Mal

They/she. Queer enby. Has lots of opinions and writes some of them down.

Mechsploitation and Hekate's Call

I'm pretty disconnected from Mechsploitation as a broad genre. I read WARHOUND, Grasping the Weapon, HUNTING HOUND, and then I started writing. On the timeline of mechsploitation entries I believe I was the first to write fanfiction for WARHOUND, coming in very shortly after the release of HUNTING

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 46

Valuation. Legally necessary for insurance and profit speculation. It was always overseen by insurance suits and company stakeholders. Physical fitness tests. Combat tests. Intelligence tests. Reviews of reports and battle logs followed by interrogation of faults found. A deeply dehumanizing process where people wearing suits with clean hands called you

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 45

Errant HQ was a windowless warren of offices and checkpoints and little rest areas. In the green area there was even food courts and little restaurants and a small shopping arcade. Holosky projections in the high-ceiling areas and the faux-architecture reaching towards it to help sell the illusion gave Krystyn

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 44

The smell of the whiskey in her glass overpowered the lingering scent of Velia’s perfume and Morian’s cigarettes in the dreary little office. Krystyn had just finished signing over her share of Hekate’s Call to Elisabet out of an abundance of caution. Elisabet made a strong case

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 43

They were four days into a two-week shore leave on some planet that Krystyn couldn’t bother to learn the name of. Why bother? It’s Central Domon. Every planet was terraformed to hell and back. Perfect picturesque worlds with perfectly tailored, aesthetically pleasing flora and tightly controlled fauna, and

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 42

Another medical check-up, and another one of Morian’s shots. What was this one for? Allergies that Ilina may or may not have had, or maybe it was something she was just doing for the fun of it. It didn’t matter. Ilina was only here to put up for

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 41

The cockpit of the Work From Home was much nicer than The Problem With Inertia, between the nicer seat, more space, and the fact that it was better temperature controlled. Though Manya insisted that last part changed rapidly once the rail was discharged once or twice. Manya nuzzled the back

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 40

Ilina’s fingers wrapped around Krystyn’s belt with undue urgency and were repelled with undue force. Standing in their poorly decorated room, with some of the empty, bare spaces filled in with various stuffed mechs made by Vigil as presents, the two of them both scowled at each other

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 39

The simulators had been graciously tuned and upgraded by Aegis to be able to handle Hunter’s fighting style. They still couldn’t handle the Inertia and it was an impossible ask for any system to be able to accurately keep track of that many individual pieces. It was a

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 38

It had been about four hours and thirty minutes into their new room arrangement and Ilina Falke had done absolutely nothing but sit on the bed and stare into the distance with that dangerous empty-eyed stare, swinging the remote on its chain like a little pendulum. She hadn’t responded

Short Story: Strays

In some run down little block apartment, thick with an undergrowth of assorted trash that made her gag as soon as she’d entered, Mercy was silently begging for it from her back on the couch. She’d folded so easy it was almost embarrassing. The woman shook her awake

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 37

It had taken so much preparation to get this silly party set up. She had to make sure Krystyn could leave the pilot quarters. She had to get Aegis and Morian to push Trine towards letting them have the rec room for a day. And she had to convince Crater

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 36

Ilina had memorized the shifts of everyone in mechanics. After she'd snuck into the foreman's office where Taitle had been taking a nap, she was minorly scolded for not having asked instead of resorting to her usual tactics. Asking for things had never really worked out

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 35

There was a date. A cute date happened between Krystyn and Ilina, who seemed particularly enamoured by the experience practically running from shop to shop. Krystyn's hair appointment was the first order of business, done by a broad and unhappy woman who did not ask how she wanted

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 34

There was something comforting about the changes Velia had been making. It felt like progress. After years of stagnation followed by a massive upheaval, things settling into a new normal felt more like progress than anything Krystyn could think of. Even if not everything was progressing in ways she was

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 33

Morian had left sometime in the early morning to do some tests and pilot check-ups. Ilina stayed in the bed for a while longer, shifting into the indent Morian had left in the mattress and soaking up the lingering scent of cigarettes and disinfectant. She grabbed some gel packs from

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 32

Krystyn sat on the floor among the wreckage, worrying herself sick about that face Ilina made before she ran. And because the universe sought to rightfully punish her, the door slid open and Manya peaked in excitedly. "Oh," Manya giggled and closed the door behind her. She raised

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 31

It took begging Velia to create a bunch of work to keep Krystyn busy, and asking Morian to drag out Krystyn's weekly exams, for Ilina to get a whole twenty minutes alone with Manya. It was her only hope, and she felt so stupid the moment she got

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 30

It was challenging to adapt to a new commander. Charlatan was used to being given objectives and figuring out how to achieve them on her own, but the new Control was more vocal and hands-on. Specific instructions and detailed plans. It felt like taking orders from a less charming and

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 29

It was another blistering hell-day on the beautiful, barren, radioactive planet Fucking-Nowhere and Hunter Falke was crawling through more rubble on the freshly bombed outskirts of a city. Didn't matter which one. A month and a half ago people lived here. Went to school here. Commuted to their

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 28

Krystyn was the last to file into Crater's office. Any time she called for a meeting outside of the regularly scheduled times, it felt like something bad was going to happen. Crater sat behind her desk, as usual, barely bringing her eyes from from the endless stream of

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 27

After a week doing debriefs and paperwork and making up for financial losses, Hekate's Call returned to the Gestalt and Gravity. Krystyn had a lot to answer for as the field commander. Paperwork was a fine enough punishment, and Crater was willing to let her off with a

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 26

Adrenaline had long since faded from Ilina's system by the time the titanic stickbug came to a halt in some carved-out hanger in the mountains. She was suspended by a bunch of cables she'd gotten tangled in and she was in a really bad way about

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 25

There was still daylight as Hekate's Call set up camp under a devastated overpass. Tomorrow would be operation day, which meant that they were going to be having a bunch of meetings tonight and then break early and tune up their machines, and rest. For the first time

Hekate's Call

Hekate's Call, Chapter 24

FB-number-number was another blasted hell pit of an end-of-life mining colony. Or rather, it was at some point a bustling world with culture and cities and life before its vast wealth of important materials was discovered and it was rapidly converted to a mining colony. The company that owned a