Hekate's Call, Chapter 18

The scent of medical disinfectant and cigarettes clung to Morian Kyrnn so strongly that they might as well of emanated directly from her skin, and Ilina found it so intoxicatingly easy to find peace buried in that scent. Tense memories of her first meetings with the woman in skeleton city, but there weren't any bad ones really. It was always where the fight wasn't. Where she got paid and praised and pampered and stitched up.

As she spent another sleepless night on the zipdrive shuttle, threading in and out of the in-between like a stich, the scents might as well be home to her. Morian's wiry body holding Ilina close in, pressing her face first into the doctor's modest breasts.

"Shh," the doctor muttered, barely awake, "keep your eyes closed and focus on my heartbeat."

Morian refused to give Ilina sedatives for the second half of the trip. The in-between apparently had strange effects on the body's processing, and Ilina would have to be completely sober when they arrived at the private colony they were heading to.

"We're almost there, another few hours," she yawned.

Another eternity. She wanted to puke so bad. Even with her eyes closed it just felt wrong. And the worst moments were the so frequent dips in and out of the in-between that made her head spin even when her eyes were closed.

There was some kind of test waiting at the colony. Some exam. Morian was light on the details at the best of times, but Ilina hadn't even been briefed on what it was other than acquiring something that suited her better than the Parting Word. Despite all of her questions about what kinds of tests would be involved, she only asked Morian if she would pass.

If Morian said she would pass, then she would pass. Morian never put a challenge in front of her she couldn't overcome, even if they were more difficult than anything she'd done before.

Once they arrived at the colony, and Ilina staggered off the zipdrive shuttle and dry-heaved into the closest trash can at the docking bay, Morian took them to get registered. There were over a hundred applicants.

"You'll be the only one passing," Morian assured her. "We don't even need to do anything underhanded," with a wink, "I promise."

Ilina slept off the worst of the in-between sickness on shuttle gate benches, designed against people sleeping on them but Ilina had slept on rubble before. Once Morian finished all the paperwork they were able to go to a room to rest for a day properly. Two beds, but she still clung to Morian that night. She couldn't help it. Morian never pushed her away.

By morning she felt much better, taken to a banquet for breakfast, among the rest of the contestants. They'd formed cliques and gathered their food from a giant serving table. Morian put together a large plate for Ilina, filled with meats and vegetables and not a single pastry.

"They're doing a health screening first," Morian said idly, "so you don't want to spike your blood levels right before the test. Then you'll be doing an aptitude test. They'll explain it when you get in the room for it."

As always, Morian didn't lie. Or, she didn't lie entirely.

The health screening was as thorough as any of Morian's weekly physicals, and Ilina helped it along by attaching several of the sensors correctly while the physician was explaining the tests. Apparently it was uncommon for pilots, even rich ones with dedicated medical teams, to understand how the equipment worked and how to prepare themselves for it. That probably worked in her favor.

As for the afternoon aptitude test, it was not explained when she entered the room.

"All the details for the test were provided to you at registration," the proctor explained.

It was frustrating. But she did get the proctor to explain at a broad level what the test was for. There was a holotable with a few scenarios on it. Asymmetrical warfare, smaller groups of lesser armed combatants, against a larger force of well armed or well armored targets. Put together ideal deployments. She could only get a small overview of each units armaments from the holotable, and the proctor assured her that the full details had been included in the informational packet.

Ilina moved the pieces around. It took a little bit to learn to navigate the holotable itself, with various options like timed and synchronized attacks. That took more time than coming up with a plan for each scenario presented. The plans were easy after she glanced at the loadouts of each little squad.

Survival was the most important. None of her scenarios when played out at the end of the test, lost a single unit. Splitting enemy forces, occupying units, pincer attacks. She made efficient use of the resources. While the proctor made a point of marking her unprepared for the exam in her file, he noted that she only used a fraction of the time available to her for the test and all of her scenarios were more or less flawless.

"That's good," Morian smiled that awful, goofy smile of hers when they met back up after the first aptitude test. "Being marked unprepared but otherwise excelling in every field is going to catch people's eye."

She sighed and ate her early dinner. "You withheld information."

"To make you look good!"

Morian wasn't about to budge. But that was the point. She was right. Ilina had already taken a look around and seen people buried in their information packets and talking about their examinations. There were so many of them too. It wasn't enough to just pass the examination, she needed to show levels above and beyond the rest to be picked out of the crowd.

Being marked unprepared, but still fulfilling every objective of the aptitude test would be eye-catching to someone. Being able to mount her own equipment for the medical test would catch someone's eyes. She needed to look at more than what the tests said they were doing, no doubt.

"Tomorrow is a series of fitness aptitude tests," Morian said through a full mouth, "they promised to let me watch and give advice. I guess most of the other pilots have private fitness instructors and stuff."

"Oh yeah?" Ilina finished chewing before she spoke, if only to prove she had better manners than the doctor, "got your eyes on any older women, hag?"

A thin little smile on Morian's lips suggested there was, "I think I spotted Plilar. What she's doing here, I have no idea. I heard she abdicated her post to her daughter, so I don't think there's anything to worry about there." A light hum as she scanned the eatery. "Do you miss the Butcher?"

Ilina flinched. It was a sudden question, and something she tried not to think about. She had enough to deal with just thinking about Velia and her current situation aboard the Gestalt. "You said not to get attached to corpses."

"I did. But do you miss it?"

It. Not her. Not the woman the Butcher used to be, not that Ilina had ever met her. "The Butcher had an awful taste in soap operas. Kept badgering me about settling down and having kids."

Morian laughed, loudly and deeply at that. "Never changed, right to the end! You always got along with them better than I did. The Butcher and Scavenger really adored you, you know?"

"They died for me."

"They died for me," Morian corrected. "But they did their duties and kept you alive. They understood the dead exist to support the living."

She dreamed of the wastes, and the ash fields, back home. Buried in Morian's scents, she dreamed of sitting down next to that half-bodied thing with no face or eyes, just optical sensors seeing her through a detached camera and getting a direct feed of the stupid show. Watching a text log in a separate screen populate as the Butcher's processor talked to her about the last mission. Good job, Ilina! I'm glad you're safe. How's Dr. Kyrnn?

In the morning she asked after a gift shop. Morian laughed and explained the colony was owned by a family's private military. There wasn't going to be any gifts to sell to tourists.

"You'll be going home with a wonderful new mech," Morian said, nearly giddy, "It'll suit you. You'll look great. Velia won't be able to take her eyes off you."

Not much of a consolation, but it was an attempt. And that comforted Ilina at some level as she was fitted by two doctors into an embarrassingly skin-tight suit by two menials. It felt like a fabric hardsuit, only without the reinforcement. Apparently it was for measuring her vitals during the series of tests.

The physical tests were mostly boring. What was your range of motion, how strong were you unassisted, reflex tests. More things Morian tested weekly or biweekly depending on how bored she was.

One of the more interesting tests was a navigation test of some aerial course. A bunch of little rope and wire bridges, platforms and the like. Some of the platforms were on timers too, moving at a constant speed. The lights would turn on and off irregularly. She watched a bunch of other pilots fall into the net below, or freeze while the light was off. They were being timed, of course, so stopping lost time.

Spatial awareness and confidence of movement, she would have answered if Morian had asked the point of the exercise. The ability to remember where all the objects around you were when you couldn't see them, and being able to move confidently based on your memory.

Ilina knew she could do it because Morian was so casual. Not a sign of tension in her. And it was always easy to tell if Morian was tense, especially without her cigarettes because she would start scratching at her neck until the skin started to break.

And so when Ilina was called to the front to run the test she moved with the confidence Morian had in her. Swinging across open spaces, jumping in the dark across rotating platforms, and never once stumbling. It was easier than swinging between mechs and buildings in skeleton city with far less on the line.

Ilina Falke finished in half the time of anyone in her group, and got some kind of additional mark on her candidate file from this proctor. She didn't know what it was, but Morian suggested it might be their personal recommendation.

"I think there's only one more. You're doing great," Morian laughed. "I was worried you'd choke with so many eyes on you. But you've gotten used to having an audience, huh?"

Was that a euphemism? Morian knew just about everything about Ilina's history, but she didn't usually make those jokes.

The final exercise was a climbing wall. Strange and angular, with some large gaps in handholds. The wall being used in the exercises was nestled between to larger ones with heavy overhangs. Timed, all the exercises were. There was an ideal path that Ilina could see clearly from the first glance, and she could probably climb it as fast as the best in the group.

"Ready?"

"No," Morian cut in. "Come, Hunter."

The four of them walked to a far point on one of the side walls. The proctor and the spotter for the climb looked bewildered as Morian pointed to the wall.

"Start from here," Morian smiled.

The proctor. "Why?"

Ilina's nose twitched. That wasn't a no. That wasn't a the test is for the other wall. Ilina nodded and squat down like a cat, reexamining the strange, angular walls. Shapes started to jump out at her when she started to put together the test. There were shapes like Doru armor plates among them. The inner wall had the right angle to be the chestplate, and the target handhold on the wall that required a bunch of maneuvering to get to, was where the emergency cockpit handle was.

"Got it," Ilina said as she planned her route.

The test wasn't your climbing ability. It was a fitness test, and everything was outfitted with a sensor. They'd been wearing the suits all day being monitored constantly. Stalking, tracking, endurance, and more. The timer was important, sure, but it was a feint.

"She doesn't need that, shoo." Morian got in the way of the spotter, walking him backward away from Ilina.

The proctor made a note of something as they watched Ilina do a bunch of stretches. She wasn't out of shape, but she was out of practice for this kind of activity. She hadn't had to run up imperial mechs since before she worked at Carrion. She needed to stretch and activate the muscles for this kind of climb, especially since she was about to do a series of very unwise maneuvers with no safety net.

If she fell, she died.

If she slipped, she died.

If she moved the wrong way at the wrong moment, she died.

A smile spread across her face. If only there was some heavy winds and people eighty meters away shooting at her in the dark. She'd feel right at home again. It was good to be back in her element. It had been too long, really.

"Ready?" Morian pat her on the head as she finished her stretches.

"Ready."

"Knock em dead."

The proctor did a countdown, and Ilina took a running start at the wall. The first overhang on the wall was easy. There weren't many holds on the top side of it, but it had a healthy slope to it. Once she secured her footing she glanced to the second wall. It had a vertical overhang, but she wanted to grab one of the holds above that.

She swung herself forward along her current wall, breaking into a run first on a could of handholds and then the wall itself as she approached the bottom edge. With all the strength in her body she threw herself across the gap, about fifteen feet, to grab the next wall. She was used to using the mech's momentum to help launch herself, but in this situation it was all under her own power and she undershot it.

Emergency backup. She missed the handhold on the topside of the overhang, but was able to catch a deep one on the underside. She swung forward from it enough to kick the wall to send herself the other way. A little jump to switch hands on the hold and a spin to catch the other one. With the momentum she was able to swing enough and get her hand over the top of the overhang and grabbed the original hold she'd aimed for with the jump.

Back on track now. She spun and pulled herself up over the overhang. Ilina didn't perceive it as such, as she'd been able to do it her whole life, but a deep part of her knew that her ability to pull her entire body weight up with one arm at a time from a bunch of fucked up angles was something impressive. It was a survival skill.

Now on the upper side of the overhand she readied herself for another jump. This slope was steeper and making the run and jump off it would be much harder. She got herself some additional height and moved closer to the final wall before making her falling jump across the gap.

If she'd started on the main wall she could have gotten to the handhold twice by now. Somewhere below her an audience had been gathering to watch her climb. That was fine. A bunch of soldiers and mercenaries who didn't know what they were doing. Their stupid little attendants and menials all slackjaw watching her move. It felt good to be admired, or reviled, it didn't matter which as long as they all recognized that Ilina worked harder and deserved more than they did.

Three. Two. One. Ilina used the grip of her soles to help guide her down to where she wanted to launch herself to the final wall. It was a clean jump. Then in a few motions she was five feet below the target hold. There was some path she could have and would have taken around the side to reach it. You had to lower yourself to it if you followed all the holds. But Ilina was already running the clock up and needed to finish as soon as possible.

Two hands on the highest, closest hold she could managed directly below the target. Her two feet picked a hold in line with that. She took one, two, three little practice hops, not actually launching herself up the wall but making sure that when she did she wasn't about to throw herself away from the wall.

And then it was go time. She looked like a frog making a standing leap. She threw herself as high as she could as fast as she could and managed to get her hand overtop the hold, gripping it tight as the rest of her body rested against the wall. The timer stopped, and she could hear a bunch of begrudging applause from below.

Ilina looked out and saw the rope from the spotter. It was still dangling nearby. Ilina looked down to the man and then pointed towards it. Morian said something in his ears and he braced himself. Ilina leapt through the air and grabbed the loose end of the rope that would have been attached to her, and coiled it around her arm as she was lowered safely to the ground.

"Circus freak." One of the onlookers.

"I thought it was impressive, actually," another countered.

"The kid is so scrawny."

Insults and derision, more than a few trying to discredit their earlier awe, came from most of the spectators. Morian was beaming down at her and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Proud of you. One more test and then we can go home."

Ilina's body hurt all through the evening. She took advantage of all the services offered to her as an entrant that made it to the final day of testing. Massages and the spa and stuff. It made her feel a lot better, but some of the pain was just that some of the specific muscles involved in the climb had atrophied. She could compensate.

"What's tomorrow?" She asked Morian once they were in the room, winding down from the long day.

Morian smiled, "You'll see tomorrow. It's going to be an easy one for you."

She could see the reverse-horizon of the station from her perch atop a mid-sized building. The artificial gravity here was created by the turning of the outer ring. It was combined with regular artificial gravity to create a close-enough approximation, but for the special demonstration Ilina was poised to give it could be dangerous.

Morian refused to elaborate further than that. This was a special job that she had to complete as a special demonstration of her talents. The rest of the candidates who made it to this round of testing had teams working with them for this, but Ilina was alone.

"There are three mechs. You only need to take one to pass. But you're better than than," Morian had taunted her. "Show them what the Hunter is capable of."

She was supplied some form of hooksuit analog. It was light, with thinner cables and an automatic hook replacement mechanism. It was a bonafide hardsuit with all the latest technology. And worst of all it was all designed by Morian for Ilina for this special day.

In her youth, jockeying in her hacked together suit it was suicide to think she could kill them. Or it was until she tried and started succeeding. It was a lesson Morian was keen on having her repeat. Nothing is impossible until you die doing it.

And the necromancer would never let her die.

She had six spike charges and a combat rifle.

Ilina wasn't a novice. She spotted the trio of machines moving and plotted their course. She set an ambush where the buildings were as tall as they were. Two frames she would have identified as some kind of armored Doru, but had been informed they were GMS-Standards -- the takeaway there was that the empire back home was so resource-strapped they couldn't field properly outfitted machines. The third was a mobile platform like the WFH, except with a large autocannon instead of a railgun. A railgun was dangerous in a colony for every conceivable reason, and during a live-fire exercise it was unrealistic to fire one anyways.

It was a lot of set-up for what was ultimately going to be a short exercise. That was why she had so much time to spend wondering what the point of it all was other than a convoluted excuse for Morian to reignite her obsession with the Hunter of Skeleton City or whatever nonsense name the necromancer decided on.

The wires were special breakaway cables that let her detonate and split the cable any any point along it and a new hook would form from the end, and the winches were much more powerful than her old suit. She could move faster and redirect in the air now, and she spent a bit getting used to it in the colony's gravity. Moving was a breeze, and the biggest challenge was the approximate gravity.

The suit had a large suite of features, but was still nothing more than a fancy hardsuit. It could change colors too, Ilina had to control that via the neural interace. She approximated the grey-blue sky and the dark-grey of the surrounding buildings as presets to switch between.

Imagine what you could do if you weren't afraid.

Ilina had so much more free movement than she used to in skeleton city and she was a lot more confident now. She wasn't afraid of the sixty or eighty foot death machines and how they could tear her limb from limb with ease. She was afraid of something so much more mundane.

She was afraid that she might hesitate.

The first GMS-Standard passed by her. It was go time. Ilina fell forward off the seventy-story building. Her first target was the second one. Break their formation and force the first Standard to move away from the mobile platform, in opposite directions.

Her suit was a dark grey against the greyness of the bombed out towers -- if she didn't know the colony was made for military training she'd feel like Morian moved mountains to make her feel at home -- and while it was no optical camo, and well-tuned sensors might pick her up and track her, it was a small advantage to be able to trick a human's eyes. And every advantage mattered.

These pilots responded differently. The motion programs were different, and they weren't afraid of seeing Hunter clinging to them. She used a small burst of thrust from her hardsuit to slow her fall and start her momentum forward instead of down as she hooked the top of the torso and swung across its chest. She wound herself back up and tossed one grenade behind the knee.

The first klaxon sounded. Her job wasn't to be hidden, so that they knew she was present already was fine. If she kept moving they wouldn't get a lock on her.

She cut the wire once her momentum was horizontal, cutting it at the wrist so she could fire again immediately without having to wind any cable in. In a fluid spin she grabbed another grenade and tossed it behind the other knee and fired a cable into a building. Short thruster boost to help her on the way back up.

In her mind, two floating numbers appeared. The explosive charges she'd stuck to the Standard. She could detonate them individually with a thought. It was exactly like the Parting Word's grenades, only scaled down a bit. That means she knew how mechs would react to the force of the explosion at their joints. She knew how the ACS would compensate for the force.

The Standard had turned down the street she'd jumped down. She needed it to stay still and scan the area for her instead of assuming it lost her. She took stock of the other gear on the suit. Rescue kit. Three emergency flares. She grabbed one and fired it into the air as she got her footing at about head-level with the titan.

The head of the mech tracked the flare to her, and lifted its rifle. Hunter shifted, grenade in hand like a lead baseball, and gave the pitch everything she had.

In the corner off her vision, through the building across the street from her she saw the mobile platform skittering up the side of the building like a mechanical spider. She was working on negative time.

Distance was approximate, but the angle was perfect. She wouldn't have to airburst it then, she left number 3 to detonate on impact. Two hooks to the other side of the street and a pull with all her strength, winches screaming out. Where she stood a moment ago was concrete dust as the Standard's pilot tried their best to track her movement and reduce her to red mist. Too slow for Hunter though.

The grenade exploded between the Standard's eyes, causing enough of a blast that the machine's top half tilted back and a leg slid to compensate. She was mid air, circling the corner of the building and flying towards the mobile platform when she detonated grenades one and two behind the first target's knees. It slammed into a building across the intersection.

Did it buy her time?

The mobile platform's anti-personnel guns shifted at her, despite switching her color to make her harder to see. Hunter fired a second flare directly at the platform's main sensor suite. In all her trainings she learned that the WFH always had a second or third set of detached eyes, so blinding the main platform didn't stop Illustrious. But that wasn't the case for a production line model. The delay bought her the second she needed.

Wires cut. She wouldn't have made the whole jump on her own anyways. But she could make this second one easy. She fired her two wires past the flare and hooked the mobile platform, and swung under it. Thruster on the upswing while reeling in the cables so she could make it all the way over the top. And then she was on the hull.

The platform's emergency cockpit switch was in the same place as the WFH, and well marked since it wasn't designed for infantry combat. She pulled it open and swung into the cockpit with her rifle first, pulling the trigger long before she could see the person inside. By the time Hunter was in the cockpit there was just a corpse in the chair. She reached under the seat and pulled out the emergency self-destruct. The platform was still live for the next ten or so seconds until it realized the pilot was dead and leaking. Once she activated the timed self-destruct she jammed the throttle on full forward and jumped.

The first Standard she hit was still in the process of standing when the mobile platform crashed into it. Whether the Standard's pilot survived the platform's self-destruct or not didn't matter. The Standard was out of commission.

Her HUD lit up with messages, and audio over the radio screamed in her ear. Hunter silenced them and turned off the radio. The mission wasn't over, there was another Standard to remove from the field. Morian told them to show her what she was capable of, and she still had plenty of juice left in the tank.

Nobody was better than Hunter in her element. All those other pilots who'd been running fitness tests and trials were nothing more than chaff. In a city like this? In combat like this? Hunter could have downed these machines with her old suicide rig, but with her new equipment she could kill them.

She was no better than all those narcissistic aces and wannabe heroes. She was probably worse than any of them. There really was no contest. No principals or morals. Barely even a goal in her mind once the adrenaline started pumping. Only base survival and that sickening, gross wetness between her legs.

Hunter Falke was unkillable, unstoppable, and for the first time in all these years truly alive.

The third machine was frozen like a deer in the headlights. An odd reaction for a solider. They weren't suited for warfare if their reaction at the first sign of trouble was locking up like that. That made it easy though. Hunter moved with accelerated swings around the city block to come at it from a new angle. She had never been in its sights and it probably still didn't know what it was looking for.

The machine started to move when she got eyes on it again. Hunter was getting used to the manual color-shift, and started approximating colors with a glance over her shoulder. She just needed to be close-enough. These machines seemed to be better equipped than the Doru back home in that their sensor suites could pick her up, but they seemed to be slow about it when she was moving at speed.

She got her fourth grenade attached to the intake valve for the last remaining Standard's reactor. There was a matching intake valve on the opposite side she needed to get her fifth grenade in. She might even have one left over by the time she was done.

With Morian footing the bill she might as well use it for fun.

The Standard was swinging and shooting. It absolutely couldn't keep up her, even with the pilot adjusting the tracking in real time. Grenade five found its home on the rim of the intake valve. They were 'sticky' like the Parting Word's grenades, and like the Parting Word she could turn that part off temporarily. She switched them both to impact-detonation and turned it off. With a little whoosh both grenades disappeared into the Standard's core cooling system.

Hunter had always wondered what would happen. She had a bunch of theories. The Doru back home weren't really well made, so they might explode like they did in the movies. But the two echoing blasts in the final Standard made it simply stop. The pilot's systems were probably throwing up a hundred red alerts as the machine stopped to cool the reactor safely.

Not that the pilot seemed to be keen on hanging out and figuring it out. The cockpit hissed open.

The poor pilot was exposed.

Easy prey.

She swung up from below, using her little thruster as a boost to get above the pilot. He had a rifle and flare gun in hand, and he hadn't seen her yet. She cut her wires at the wrist and fired two new ones into his back, twisting in the air to wrap the cables around the man's neck, and landed on the other half of the cockpit's step.

In the same landing motion she pulled the cables taut and hauled the man over her and threw him over the edge.

The cable unspooled as the pilot fell.

Hunter remembered the books her mothers had. Graphic and disturbing, and really not fit for a child of her age to read at the time. But one of them was on executions. Too little rope and they would suffocate to death. A difficult ask even in the light hardsuits these pilots had been equipped with. The correct length of rope to hang someone would result in a clean broken neck and instant death. Unfortunately that required a noose, placed correctly to grip and twist the neck.

She let the pilot fall for a few seconds before locking the winch and bracing herself against the step. The cables pulled taut with force for a split second, nearly pulling her out of position, and then went slack.

Too much rope, according to the book, resulted in decapitation.

She cut the wires and tossed her last grenade into the dark, alarm-lit cockpit before setting off towards one of the gates back to the outer ring of the colony to end the exam because, frankly, she wasn't keen on sticking finding out if this thing was about to go critical or not.

The hardsuit's radio clicked back on, despite her attempts to keep it off.

Morian. Hunter, heel. Exit five-seven-seven. Good work.

She chewed her lip as she adjusted her path to the exit she was being called to instead of the close one she'd spotted on the map. Hunter wasn't Morian's fucking dog. But she didn't disobey orders.

Like a good mercenary, Hunter Falke did what she was told.

Beyond the five-seven-seven gate stood Morian smiling ear to ear with that awful straight-toothed smile and a bunch of ghost-faced proctors still struggling to pick their jaws off the floor. Ilina removed her helmet and took a breath of station-air, realizing that her lungs absolutely weren't ready to function without the hardsuit's forced oxygen system.

Her legs gave out under her as everything caught up to her with force. She'd made it all of three steps into the building before falling to her knees, shaking, and vomiting what was left of her breakfast until there was nothing left. Her arms could barely hold her up.

All the sensations she ignored. The way her feet and fingers tingled when she looked down from the buildings. The suppressed fear response when she had taken the first dive. The mental images of being painted across those grey buildings by the mech's rifles. Everything came all at once the moment she was no longer in danger.

"You did great," Morian's voice tugged away the flood of anxiety and fear building up on her.

Someone brought an oxygen mask to her face, and her vision started to clear. Her head was absolutely swimming in every chemical her body had to offer.

"You're alive," the necromancer's voice continued to cut away the worst of it. "That's the most important thing."

Ilina was alive. She was taking labored breathing and being tended to by a bunch of doctors who were double-checking her vitals. All of their words, lost in the faint ringing in her ears, affirmed Morian's diagnosis. She was alive.

"You're safe now," Morian said softer as she finally took a step closer to Ilina. It was the only thing she could hear clearly through her own haze. "Deep, slow breaths. Let them take care of you. We'll talk once you're calm."

After several check-ups by a group of very concerned doctors, and a quick trip to the washroom to change her underwear, she met up with Morian in a big room with lots of chairs that oversaw the colony's training grounds. In the distance through the glass she could see repair crews fussing over the machines she'd downed.

Morian smiled at her and gave her a pat on the head with all the energy of a parent who's child won first prize at the local murder competition. The regionals, even. The energy was infectious too, even Ilina couldn't keep herself from smiling and laughing as the adrenaline started to fade.

A weathered, dark looking woman marched into the room with a scrambling attendant. Scars and weapons abound. She gave the vibe of some story tale warrior rather than a soldier, and she held herself with the nobility of one.

"You are the examinee?" She eyed Ilina up and down for a moment. "You murdered three of my men. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

She didn't do anything wrong. No. She wasn't about to shirk away from this challenge, not after being shot at by three machines with live ammunition with nothing but a hardsuit to protect herself with.

"I completed the objectives I was given," Hunter asserted.

"The exam's objective was to successfully disable one machine along a preplanned route."

Hunter snarled at Morian. She hadn't been given any information about a route and had only been told to take out the machines. She hit the field with no forward knowledge of her loadout. That kind of blind confidence in her that she hated the most about Morian.

"That wouldn't have shown Hunter's true skill," Morian practically sang. "With such a precious family heirloom on the line, your aspirations are so low. Surely there's none more worthy than her."

The woman measured Morian. "Are you her guardian?"

"If only I was so lucky."

"Then you have nothing to do with this. You are dismissed."

Morian strode from the chamber with her big clomping steps, prouder than she had any right to be.

"Sit," the woman motioned to one of the seats, front and center with a perfect seat of the salvage operation. "You look... pale."

Ilina sat herself down while the woman settled into the seat next to her. The warrior seemed upset, but it wasn't Ilina's fault.

"Does she wear the gaudy lab coat everywhere she goes?"

"Yeah. She has awful taste."

There was a silence between them until the warrior spoke again. "She's right. There are two days left of testing but nobody will be able to match you. You aced every test with recommendations. There was an unprepared mark next to the tactical assessment. I take it your doctor friend hid all the details for the exams from you?"

Ilina nodded. "She's like that."

"You're a mercenary." Ilina cocked an eye at that. The woman's stony face broke into a grim grin, "Thought so. If she'd told you the requirements, I bet you would have done the bare minimum. Contract to the letter."

"It's what I was taught to do."

"Do you know what you've been fighting for?"

Another day under the sun. It didn't matter what she was fighting for, only that Morian told her this was a task she needed to do and it would make things working at Hekate easier. The only things that mattered was surviving and taking care of Velia.

"It's a family heirloom. For anyone else, there would have been a big ceremony and I'd have taken you as a member of my family. Better than my useless sons. You don't care about any of that."

"I already had two moms," Ilina rolled her head from side to side, "Morian's like a third, I guess. Crater, my CO, reminds me of one of my moms too. I don't need a fifth."

To that, the woman burst out with a hearty laugh. "A pantheon of mothers," she teased with that deep voice, "I am glad to be among them. I will send my information with the Again in Hell, my soldiers are at your command. If you need anything, so long as you live, you need only ask and it will be done."

That was generous. And more tangible than the necromancer's blessings.

"That's wonderful," Morian wheezed, hand on the back of the chair. When did she get here? She looked like she'd been sprinting. "Sorry to break this up early. Plilar spotted me, Hunter, we need to go now."

Ilina groaned, "Who's Plilar?"

Morian smiled, less confident and more apologetic. "The Butcher's granddaughter. And she's pissed. We need to speed up the proceedings, Velia's in danger."