Prelude
After Tate kidnapped the Gods on Aurea, Sarah had come to the realization that the only thing that could allow her to fully master Shadow Magic and thwart Tate's evil plans is the Eye of Heru, a shadow artifact hidden in an unknown location that no living person would know. Only Akhet-Ra, Taftenkhamun's deceased father, would know, and since his burial location is unknown, Sarah cannot ask his ghost where he hid the Eye of Heru. Knowing this, Tate hid the Atlantean Tomes, an omniscient magical book that could find where Akhet-Ra was buried, deep within Fort Palm, an extremely well-defended island fortress on a secluded island on the planet Atlantea. Sarah's Ishga allies and several groups on Atlantea, under the command of Ishga King and Sarah's friend Michael, had already tried to assault the fortress a month or so earlier, but were bloodily repulsed after encountering unexpectedly strong Tatian resistance.
This failure resulted in a huge embarassment for Michael, whose legitimacy as Ishga King was briefly questioned after what could only be described as a media shitstorm. Most of Michael's allies on Atlantea threatened to desert, and Crustacean Emperor Locustam even privately considered switching sides and joining the Tatians for a short time. Despite this, Michael knew he needed an even larger force to take Fort Palm this time, and was able to bring in a decently-sized portion of the Aurean Starfleet, as well as a small detachment of the Ishga Starfleet with him. However, Tate foresaw this, and used a large detachment of the Tatian Starfleet to take control of the planet's atmosphere and the space around it almost immediately after the events on Aurea.
In the month since then, Tate had constructed a massive particle shield above the planet that would disintegrate any vessel trying to enter or leave the planet's atmosphere, meaning Michael and his ground force was already essentially stuck down there and completely cut off from both the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets. In addition, the shield blocked all Ishga and Aurean communication frequencies, meaning Michael and his ground forces have no way of coordinating with the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets except that both know the scheduled invasion time. With the odds stacked against them this time even more than the first attempt to take Fort Palm, Sarah and her War Council (with Michael being unable to attend the meeting due to being stuck on Atlantea) decided that in order for the invasion to have any chance of taking the Atlantean Tomes, they would need to send in a much smaller strike team to infiltrate the base, get the Atlantean Tomes, and dynamite the entire structure, using Michael's attack and the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets as a massive diversion. However, there was only one strike team that wasn't already on a mission elsewhere: the small-but-elite Squidian Brigade, which contained many of Sarah's close friends, some of whom were even on the War Council itself, most notably Cole, Lord Jimenez, Noah, and Reshon.
The War Council held a vote on whether or not to send the Squidian Brigade on this extremely dangerous mission, and the decision to send them was only passed by one vote (all of the members of the Squidian Brigade on the council voted yes). To get to Atlantea, the strike team would need to find a way to get past the shield surrounding the planet. A solution soon presented itself when Ishga intelligence decoded several Tatian messages regarding cargo being flown in via certain Tatian Shuttles to Fort Palm, as well as providing exquisite detail on where the shuttles would take off from and at what times they were scheduled to depart and arrive. Seizing on this, a squadron of 10 Ishga Fighters ambushed one of these Tatian shuttles in the Tarrant system almost immediately after it took off and captured it, making sure to jam their communications before the battle started so the pilot could not radio for help. The crew of the shuttle was taken prisoner and the shuttle was brought to Awal.
It was decided that the parts of the Aurean and Ishga Fleets involved in the attack, as well as the Squidian Brigade's captured shuttle, would leave from Awal, the closest Aurean-controlled planet to Atlantea with a usable airfield. The plan for the invasion was as follows: in the early morning hours of June 27th 21 AR, the 60 A-20 Boars the Ishgas have on Atlantea will sortie out to Fort Palm with the goal of soaking up anti-aircraft fire and bogging down any fighters the Tatians had stationed there in dogfights. Simultaneously, Ishga bombers would drop their payloads on the Tatians' ground defenses to soften them up, and Ishga paratroopers would drop behind enemy lines to keep reinforcements from reaching the beach from the fort proper. After an artillery bombardment from the 4 Ishga Battleships Michael had assembled to further soften up the defenses, the ground troops would land on the beach. With the troops on the ground thoroughly distracted, the Squidian Brigade would land their shuttle in Fort Palm's hangar, pretending to deliver the cargo shipment that the stolen ship was scheduled to bring in.
Since the cargo included a critically endangered Aztlanian Yutyrannus that the Tatians were trying to smuggle in for military purposes (the Yutyrannus was jettisoned in an escape pod during the shuttle's capture and was nowhere to be found), Neza reluctantly agreed to let his own Yutyrannus Rory go on the trip with the Squidian Brigade to keep the illusion up.
Tate, meanwhile, knowing how important holding onto the Atlantean Tomes was to winning the war, was far from unprepared. One of his most trusted warlords, Matt Lemonbutter, was put in charge of the ground defenses. Since the last Ishga landing attempt, the Tatians had doubled the number of troops defending the island, flying in several extra legions, as well as extra tanks. Extra pillboxes, turbolaser emplacements, mortars, machine guns, tank traps, barbed wire, and other defenses were added as well. In addition, Tate had stationed a large number of Tatian Fighters in a hangar at the fort to strafe any ground forces that dared land on the island's shore and to guard against any potential air attack.
Knowing that the Aureans and Ishgas were bound to relieve the beleaguered Michael regardless, Tate had stationed a large portion of the Tatian Fleet, including its newly repaired flagship, the Godbreaker, above the shield generator to prevent any assault by the Aurean or Ishga Fleets.
Battle
At exactly 3 AM on June 27th, 21 AR, the first Ishga A-20 Boar sorties left the aircraft carriers they were stationed on. Arriving less than an hour later, the A-20 Boars managed to fulfill their objectives for the most part, distracting many Tatian Fighters with dogfights. However, enough Tatian Fighters remained available to harass the Ishga bombers and paratroopers that would arrive at around 3:50 AM, causing the bombing to not do as much damage to the Tatian defenses as the Ishgas had hoped and the paratroopers to be dropped in a chaotic manner that resulted in many of them missing their targets.
An hour later, the four battleships the Ishgas had with them were within range to fire on the Tatian defenses while simultaneously deploying their landing craft. The bombardment did much less damage than expected, as the morning was unexpectedly foggy, obscuring the sight of the gunners and resulting in many shots missing their targets.
At 6:30 AM, the first landing craft made it to the island's northern shore and were met with overlapping fields of machine gun fire, artillery bombardments, turbolaser strikes, and mortar bombardments. Like the first attack, the Platypusians performed their Haka war dance just before the boats landed to raise morale. This time, however, heavier traditional weapons such as the Taiaha were banned, with tribal soldiers only being allowed to bring along smaller traditional weapons if they wished (i.e. Yirian boomerangs or Dolphinesian shark tooth clubs). This led to a drastically reduced rate of the Ishga allies' soldiers drowning on their way to the beaches from being weighed down by their equipment compared to the previous landing attempt.
Meanwhile, the captured Tatian shuttle landed as scheduled in the hangar of Fort Palm. Using the captured uniforms of the original crew, the Squidian Brigade was able to simply walk into the fort unnoticed, with their "captive" Yutyrannus in tow. In their "cargo" crates were high explosives that they would hide in unsuspecting locations as they searched the base and would detonate once they had the Atlantean Tomes and were a sufficient distance away from Fort Palm (which would, according to their plans, be completely destroyed in the explosion).
Although the paratroopers were scattered by misdrops, most of them were able to successfully perform their duty of keeping the Tatian reinforcements from the fort away from the beach. Despite this, however, some Tatian tank divisions were able to punch a hole in the paratroopers' lines after a skirmish on a large hill between the fort and the beach, allowing Tatian tanks to reach the beach much sooner than expected.
By this time, most of the beach defenses had already been dealt with by the Ishgas, who used grenades and other explosives to clear the barbed wire and chlorine trifluoride sprayers to melt the pillboxes and turrets into hot porridge. However, in many places the Ishgas and their allies still struggled under heavy Tatian machine gun fire and casualties began to mount as a result. This led to much of the same breakdown in organization that led to the first invasion attempt being such a failure, however these issues were not nearly on a large enough scale to take the Ishgas out of the fight just yet. Ishga military engineers worked tirelessly to remove tank traps to make way for Ishga tanks to be landed on the beach, though this was a slow process.
The situation gradually improved on the beach as the Ishgas and their allies took out more and more remaining beach defenses, especially machine gun positions. However, this quickly changed once Tatian tank divisions from the breakout mentioned earlier started appearing on the beach. With the Ishgas and their allies completely unprepared to be facing armor of any kind at this point and still being under machine gun fire in some places, the tanks began to rapidly punch through their lines and threaten them from both the front and the rear.
At around 9 AM, the parts of the Aurean and Ishga Fleets sent to take out the shield generator orbiting the planet arrived and engaged the Tatian Fleet. However, the Aureans' famous ion corvettes did not appear (under orders from Taftenkhamun to stay in hyperspace until his command, since Taftenkhamun was basically the only Aurean commander who anticipated that the Tatians would have the Godbreaker back up and running so fast). Completely unprepared to face the Godbreaker, the Aurean and Ishga fleets started taking heavy losses at first, losing 4 capital ships in 2 minutes thanks to the Godbreaker's rapid-fire turbolaser cannons. The only ship the Aureans or Ishgas had with them with shields powerful enough to resist the Godbreaker's firepower was the Liberator, the Aurean Flagship, which soon basically had to remove itself from the fighting to soak up the Godbreaker's fire. As a result, the Tatian capital ships and fighters were free to engage the Aurean and Ishga Fleets directly, which was good news for the Tatians since they outnumbered both fleets combined here.
Seizing the opportunity, Taftenkhamun gave the order for the ion corvettes to come out of lightspeed directly below the Godbreaker and immediately fire their ion cannons at the ship's shield generator. Not expecting the ion corvettes at all, the Godbreaker's crew was taken by complete surprise when they found their shields suddenly crippled by ion blasts and their sensors indicated the presence of ion corvettes directly below the ship. The crew of the Godbreaker ordered their gunners to fire all of the turbolaser cannons and machine guns on the bottom of the ship at the corvettes, which destroyed 8 of the 20 ships. However, the damage had been done and the Godbreaker now had to rely solely on its armor for defense.
Now that the Godbreaker's shields were taken out, the Liberator was finally able to return fire with its heavier but slower-firing turbolaser cannons. While this managed to do some damage to the Godbreaker's armor, it did not penetrate enough to do any meaningful damage to the Tatian flagship itself. Thinking quickly, Taftenkhamun ordered the remaining ion corvettes to target a seemingly random Tatian capital ship. Taken completely by surprise and distracted battling Aurean and Ishga capital ships, the defending Tatian cruiser only managed to destroy 1 of the approaching corvettes before it was disabled by ion blasts.
Seeing the success of this, Taftenkhamun repeated the same process on both of the Tatians' 2 dreadnoughts. Since the dreadnoughts both saw this coming and had bigger and more numerous weapons than the cruiser, 5 of the ion corvettes were destroyed during the mission, and another was so severely damaged that it had to abandon the mission to dock in the nearest Aurean cruiser. Again, the damage had been done however, and the remaining ion corvettes had managed to disable both dreadnoughts. It was then that the Godbreaker's captain looked at the bridge's camera feed and realized what Taftenkhamun had been doing: the 2 dreadnoughts and the cruiser were so close to the larger Godbreaker that the Godbreaker's gravitational pull was rapidly drawing the three ships in. With the Godbreaker too slow to evade the oncoming ships, the ship's Captain Nootau made the cowardly decision of jettisoning his escape pod just before the three disabled ships collided with the Godbreaker, causing three massive explosions that completely destroyed the disabled ships and blew massive holes in the Godbreaker's armor. With a well-placed turbolaser blast, the Liberator was able to exploit the holes in the Godbreaker's armor and completely destroy the ship's bridge, effectively disabling the vessel entirely.
With all of its systems crippled by the destruction of its bridge, the Godbreaker began to fall into the gravitational field of the only object in the area larger than itself: the shield generator orbiting Atlantea. The hundreds of escape pods jettisoned from the Godbreaker, as well as the three ships used to destroy it, were quickly swept up by the Liberator's tractor beam, with everyone who managed to escape the ships being captured, including Captain Nootau. Meanwhile, the Godbreaker broke into several massive pieces as it fell down towards the shield generator. Despite this, even the smallest piece of the Godbreaker was so large that it simply smashed the shield generator to pieces upon impact, releasing so much energy that all of the pieces of the Godbreaker and the shield generator were vaporized instantly. In one fell swoop, Taftenkhamun had taken out the pride of the Tatian Starfleet and an orbital deflector shield.
Things were still not going well on the ground, however. While the Tatians' original beach defenses were pretty much gone by this point, the Ishgas and their allies found themselves completely at the mercy of the Tatian tanks, who had by this time punched through their lines so many times that their "lines" ceased to be lines and were really an incoherent mess. As clearing tank traps from the shallows was a slow process, only a few Ishga tanks had been able to make it onto the beach so far to assist the overwhelmed infantry, and those few that made it onto the beach were so outnumbered that they were essentially feeding themselves into a meat grinder, and on some parts of the beach, 1 out of every 2 Ishga tanks landed was destroyed within 3 minutes. Between the beach and Fort Palm, however, there was one piece of good news for the Ishgas: the Ishga paratroopers had finally managed to close the gap that the Tatian tanks had smashed through their lines, preventing any fresh Tatian tanks from coming onto the beach.
It was at this point that Michael was critically wounded in the chest by a tank-mounted machine gun. Michael was immediately taken down to a part of the beach free from tanks by a team of medics, who haphazardly laid him down in the sand, administered an anaesthetic, and began an emergency operation to repair his lung, which had been collapsed by the bullet.
Inside Fort Palm proper, the plan was still going well, as the Tatians had not yet discovered the identity of the Squidian Brigade. However, the group was basically wandering around the fort seemingly aimlessly in their search for the Atlantean Tomes, which was beginning to arouse the suspicion of some patrols. Knowing that they would immediately be discovered if they asked anyone for directions, Noah managed to get the location of the Atlantean Tomes by hacking into a computer. However, the move was picked up by a security camera whose feed relayed directly into Matt Lemonbutter's office. Now having caught the infiltrators red-handed, Matt gave the order for all Tatian soldiers still within Fort Palm to kill the Squidian Brigade on sight.
Meanwhile in space, the nigh-impenetrable shielding and incredible firepower of the Liberator was able to send the Tatian capital ships and corvettes into retreat and absolutely wipe the floor with any fighters that dared challenge it, leaving the Aurean and Ishga Fleets free to enter Atlantea's atmosphere and join the battle on the ground. Before long, dozens of Tatian tanks on the beach found themselves being taken out from the air by Aurean and Ishga fighters. Once he witnessed Aurean and Ishga fighters wrecking his tanks, Matt Lemonbutter radioed Tate himself and informed him of the situation. In what was basically a panic, Tate responded by ordering his superweapon capable of destroying an entire solar system, the T-Ray, to immediately disengage from its current mission, set a course for Atlantea, and enter lightspeed.
As Aurean and Ishga air support intensified, the Ishga and allied infantry rallied, pushing what was left of the tanks and Tatian Legionnaires back off the beach. Now trapped between the infantry and paratroopers and facing continuous aerial strafing, the Tatian Legionnaires and their tank crews were forced to surrender. Less than 10 minutes later, communications were established between Michael (who was now recovering in a medical tent), Taftenkhamun, and the Squidian Brigade.
By 4:00 PM, enough tank traps had been cleared for a significant number of Ishga tanks to finally make it onto the beach. These tanks joined up with the infantry and paratroopers, and these three groups prepared for an all-out assault on Fort Palm. However, this plan blatantly conflicted with the plans the Squidian Brigade had already made to completely destroy the fort with explosives once they got the Atlantean Tomes out of there. Since the explosives were already planted, the Ishgas basically had no choice but to allow the Squidian Brigade to blow the fort.
Inside the fort, the Squidian Brigade found itself under increasing pressure as they were fired on by every Tatian soldier they saw. As a result, they had to be extremely careful not to get surrounded, as that would effectively end the entire mission right there. Eventually, they did manage to find an archive room where the Atlantean Tomes had been uploaded to a supercomputer. Reshon and Lord Jimenez worked to get the Atlantean Tomes onto an external hard drive, while Noah and Rory guarded the two entrances to the room. While the Atlantean Tomes were transferring onto the external hard drive, Reshon contacted Michael and the Ishgas and urged them to attack the fort immediately to cover their escape. The Ishgas and their allies then commenced a general advance towards the fort, which Matt Lemonbutter dealt with by sending almost all of the troops in the fort out to hold them off. He then assembled his group of 42 elite Arachna Warriors and hurried to the archive room to take out the Squidian Brigade and recover the Atlantean Tomes.
The Ishgas, who now had more tanks than the Tatians, in addition to air support, were able to encircle the Tatians sent to stop them relatively quickly, causing them to surrender en masse. With no knowledge of Matt Lemonbutter's force approaching the Squidian Brigade, the Ishgas now simply proclaimed victory and waited outside the fort for the Squidian Brigade to emerge with the Atlantean Tomes, while their allies were tasked with herding the Tatian POWs down to the beach to be shipped off to POW camps on Taku Island and elsewhere.
In Fort Palm, however, the situation turned sour very quickly once Matt Lemonbutter and his Arachna Warriors stormed both entrances to the archive room before the Atlantean Tomes were fully downloaded. While Rory's extremely loud and intimidating roar almost always put the average Tatian Legionnaire to flight, it had no effect on Matt Lemonbutter's elite Arachna Warriors that were trained from early childhood in the agoge-like Hive in Vigam's Blue Desert. However, Rory's feathered and scaly skin proved difficult for the Arachna Warriors to pierce with either their glaives or their Astral Magic. Noah, on the other hand, was having a relatively easy time gunning down the Arachna Warriors charging his entrance with his self-invented SHIT (semi-automatic high-capacity incendiary trapshooter) Gun. All seemed to be going well until one Arachna Warrior used Astral Rock to knock Noah's gun out of his hand. Before Noah could even scramble to pick it up, another Arachna Warrior hit him right in the chest with a blast of Astral Lightning, rendering him comatose. For good measure, yet another Arachna Warrior impaled him through the heart with his glaive, killing Noah.
Just as Noah was dying, Reshon and Lord Jimenez managed to get the Atlantean Tomes onto their external hard drive and Rory managed to kill the last of the Arachna Warriors sent against his entrance. With Matt Lemonbutter and his Arachna Warriors blocking the only of the two entrances that led anywhere near Fort Palm's exit, Reshon and Lord Jimenez had no choice but to hop on Rory's back and ride through the corridors until they find a way to access the communications tower. Matt Lemonbutter, immediately realizing what Reshon and Jimenez were doing, gathered his remaining Arachna Warriors and gave chase, though he had no hope of outrunning Rory to the communications tower.
Around 10 minutes later, Rory reached the communications tower, and began guarding the one entrance while Reshon hooked up his external hard drive to the tower and Jimenez informed the Ishgas on the ground and the Ishga and Aurean Fleets of the situation. As the Atlantean Tomes were transmitting themselves to the Liberator, the T-Ray emerged from lightspeed and immediately fired its massive shadowbeam at the Liberator (albeit at the lowest power setting), which was extremely lucky its shields were still up. As a result, the blast was only able to punch a hole through the ship's armor and damage a few important power couplings. However, this was enough for the main reactor to have to be shut down, effectively crippling the Aurean Flagship.
Meanwhile on the ground, the Ishgas withdraw in an immensely chaotic operation back to their landing craft upon seeing the T-Ray appear in the sky, escaping the island with most of their troops. However, many were left behind. In the fort, Jimenez is immediately blindsided by Matt Lemonbutter and his Arachna Warriors. Rory and Jimenez managed to hold off Lemonbutter and his warriors long enough for Reshon to finish transmitting the Atlantean Tomes, even killing the warriors in the process. However, what none of them saw coming was Tate ordering the T-Ray to immediately fire on Fort Palm. The ensuing blast (although again on the lowest power setting) completely destroyed Fort Palm and killed Rory, Reshon, Jimenez, Matt Lemonbutter, and all of the Ishga troops still on the island instantly.
The explosion rapidly moved outward from the fort, with the Ishgas having to hastily pack themselves into transport planes on their battleships to escape. Due to the fact that there were not enough transport planes to fit everyone, and many Ishgas were left behind and killed when the battleships were gobbled up by the explosion.
Meanwhile in space, the Aurean and Ishga Fleets watched in horror as the explosion claimed millions of square miles of Atlantea's southern hemisphere. A single landing craft coming from the T-Ray, taking advantage of the Liberator's crippled state, then hooked itself up to the airlock and broke into the ship. None other than Santa Muerte and her team of 15 Elites entered the crippled Liberator. Thinking quickly, some of the Liberator's crew downloaded the Atlantean Tomes onto an encrypted flash drive and tried to escape to the Pa-Ankh, which was where Taftenkhamun was and was inside the Liberator's hangar. That one soldier and a small group of other crew members, however, was intercepted by Santa Muerte and her elites just before they could reach the Pa-Ankh.
The crew members tried to open fire on Santa Muerte and her elites, but they were able to easily deflect them all and use either their weapons or Astral Magic to kill them all. The crew member with the tomes, however, managed to get the door to the Pa-Ankh open, but there was not enough time for him to escape, so he sacrificed his life to hand off the tomes to someone inside the Pa-Ankh, who closed the door immediately and hit the emergency takeoff button and gave the tomes to Taftenkhamun.
Aftermath
Once Sarah and her friends obtained the Atlantean Tomes, they were able to track down Akhet-Ra's grave site on Bharatam, where after a long chain of events, Sarah and Taftenkhamun were able to get the location of the Eye of Heru out of his ghost. However, the situation still looked relatively bleak elsewhere. Once the rest of the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets above Atlantea figured out that Santa Muerte had captured the Liberator, they turned around and started attacking their own flagship. While the armor of the Liberator was still able to hold back most of the enemy fire, some shots from capital ships managed to punch holes in the armor that allowed a swarm of Aurean and Ishga boarding craft to put troops onto the Liberator.
Now facing potentially multiple legions of Aureans and Ishgas with only herself and her elites, even Santa Muerte knew she would be killed or captured if she stuck around, just from sheer weight of numbers. As a result, she found a group of escape pods equipped with matrix rippers and escaped with most of her elites. However, there were not enough escape pods for all of her elites, and two of them had to stay behind and were captured.
Once the dust cleared from the T-Ray's massive explosion, a massive lava-filled crater the size of Earth's continent of Australia was now in the southern hemisphere of Atlantea, centered around the spot where Fort Palm had once been. All of the members of the Squidian Brigade who had participated in the mission were now dead, in addition to Rory. Due especially to the hasty retreat from the explosion, the Ishgas and their allies had lost even more soldiers during the attack than the 1st Battle of Fort Palm, losing around half of the troops they arrived with. The Tatian Garrison fared even worse, facing the deaths of 75% of the troops originally present at Fort Palm, with the rest being Ishga POWs.
Despite losing so many soldiers, the press Michael faced after the battle was not nearly as bad due to the fact that the Atlantean Tomes were captured, along with the fact that Michael himself was injured in battle. However, public pressure forced him to take time away from the war effort and build a monument on the edge of the crater as a memorial to those who were killed during the battle and ensuing explosion. During the construction of this Fort Palm Memorial, the Ishgas discovered that the explosion had forced massive amounts of diamonds and other rare minerals buried deep in Atlantea's mantle to the surface, and these minerals formed much of the exposed outer ring of the crater. Seeing the opportunity to make tons of money off this and secure extra mineral supplies for the war, Michael opened the area (with the exception of the Fort Palm Memorial) to settlement as a mining colony. Within weeks, this area began attracting settlers from all over Atlantea and the wider galaxy.
The situation was even worse for the Tatians, however, with them having lost control of the Atlantean Tomes, as having completely destroyed their last remaining stronghold on Atlantea. In addition, Matt Lemonbutter, one of Tate's strongest warlords, was now dead and Santa Muerte had only barely evaded capture. All of the troops and supplies that had been devoted to defending Atlantea were now lost as well, along with their flagship, the Godbreaker. Although the Tatians had struck fear into the hearts of the galaxy's citizens with the T-Ray's intense display of power, it was now public enemy no. 1 in the eyes of the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets, with Michael getting to work on plans to take it out as soon as he had recovered from his injuries and dedicated the Fort Palm Memorial.
While the Aurean and Ishga Starfleets prevailed over the Tatians and took relatively light losses in this encounter, the Liberator was on the verge of complete destruction by the time of Santa Muerte's retreat, meaning it had to be towed into port on Atlantea, specifically to the Yirian capital of Jubenar, for at least a full month of repairs before it would be in fighting condition again.
While Sarah and Taftenkhamun were away on Bharatam, the rest of Sarah's friends, especially the War Council, mourned the deaths of Reshon, Lord Jimenez, Noah, and Rory. Out of all of them, by far the most affected were Cole (who felt personally responsible for the deaths of his best friends since he was too sick to go on the mission even though he was part of the Squidian Brigade and not tied down elsewhere) and Neza (who had raised Rory as his pet from a hatchling, and who treasured Rory as one of the last things he had from pre-Xibalba Aztlan). Neza would later make a trip to the Fort Palm Memorial, near which he would be presented with one of Rory's feathers by an Ishga miner who found it in a quarry and recognized it as all that remained of Neza's old pet.