Hekate's Call, Chapter 47

Ilina rocked on one of the medbay beds holding her ear. Krystyn and Vigil administered first aid as best they could but the girl needed proper attention and a rinse down. Stuff that ought to be overseen by the ship’s doctor.

And where was Morian Kyrnn? Suspiciously absent.

Elisabet rummaged through the doctor’s desk looking for something, passing over several injectors filled with Velia’s medicine, until she found a pack of cigarettes. The woman looked like a real dyke in her tight grey undershirt stretched by her slight beer gut. Her arms and shoulders still showed signs of conditioning, and no doubt her core was in perfect shape too. Probably kept up her training in private. Couldn’t let your subordinates see you failing to keep up with them in the gym after all.

Velia and Manya sat together on the little couch. Manya held her girl’s hand tight in her own and had wrapped her tail around her possessively. Every time she caught Manya’s eyes she saw the same rage boiling in them that she saw in Vigil’s. Velia on the other hand seemed agitated in a different way. She wouldn’t look at Ilina, or anyone else for that matter.

A prisoner of obligation and vanity. Morian walks in and sees everyone huddled around her little favorite and Velia is nowhere to be seen? She’d probably feel like she needed a good reason to be absent, something to show she hadn’t just fucked off because she didn’t care about Ilina.

Hekate’s Call was a dreary, miserable outfit at the best of times, but the air had never felt this oppressive before.

“I’ve paged her several times already,” Elisabet reiterated again as Vigil and Krystyn changed Ilina’s bandages for the second time.

Since none of the cuts on her ass and thighs were actually deep enough to need stitches, Krystyn and Vigil reached for the sealant to hold the wounds closed. They might leave some light scars but at least they’d stop bleeding as the girl shifted around restlessly on them.

Those pilots cut a notch out of Ilina’s ear.

It stood out as significant to Krystyn. It was distinct. Too clean to be an accident, loudly visible in any passing interaction with her, and it wouldn’t heal. They’d never done anything like that during Krystyn’s service, but she’d been out of it for years before signing up with Hekate. It wasn’t hard to guess the meaning behind it.

Target.

Tranny, dyke, or other. Everyone would be able to tell she’s an easy target at a glance. Pre-broken. Consider it a gift, from Domon’s own hands unto yours.

Maybe the others would recognize its meaning too. Sometimes she’d forget that Liz and her were the only two who served, who had first-hand experience with the culture. And even then, Liz didn’t have Krystyn’s experience.

Krystyn should never have left Ilina alone.

“What a dour atmosphere,” Morian said before she’d fully stepped into the room. She was walking unnaturally normal. No big cartoonish movements and no uncanny smile. “Oh!” She turned suddenly at the sight of Elisabet smoking. “I thought you quit! Here, light me.”

Elisabet looked away like she was ashamed. “I did.”

Morian leaned on one leg to maintain a good view of Liz’s face. “What happened then? Plans not working out?”

“We’ll talk later,” Liz glanced past Morian toward Ilina and the others. “You’ve got a patient.”

Morian spun slowly on the ball of her foot, maintaining that awkward lean the whole time. There was something more wrong with the woman than there usually was. Normal, and then suddenly back to the same cartoonish movements but with none of the whimsical energy. She stepped this way and that, looking at each of the pilots in turn.

“Really? I don’t see a patient.”

“Falke was assaulted, please tend to her wounds.” Elisabet seemed to be the only one brave enough to speak in the Corpse Eater’s ominous presence.

“Assaulted? Unlikely,” Morian said as she crossed the medbay in even strides. “Hunter, show me your hands.”

Ilina raised her hands. Morian snatched them by the wrists and twisted them this way and that. She pushed up the sleeves of Crater’s shirt and looked at Ilina’s forearms. She made several noises and an insightful ah, I see to punctuate the performance.

“She’s perfectly fine.”

Vigil took a breath to start shouting but shuddered to a stop under Morian’s gaze. It felt like all the oxygen was being sucked out of the room. There was that aura of hers again. Cold and oppressive.

“It’s not my job to intervene or treat the results of consensual behavior between two or more adults,” thick with malice. Pointed and measured. Just detached enough. “I do not believe that Hunter’s bedroom preferences are a secret to anyone in this room. But, Liz says you were assaulted,” the Necromancer turned her attention back to Ilina. “Is that what happened?”

Ilina nodded.

“I don’t see any defensive wounds. Did they get you from behind? Do you have a concussion?”

Ilina shook her head.

“So, you saw them coming. I didn’t smell gunpowder on your hands. You didn’t put up a fight at all? Didn’t call for help? Don’t you have that little remote for your dog?”

Ilina shrunk in place.

“So. These pilots approached you, and you followed them knowing their intentions, and allowed them to do this to you? I’m not seeing an assault, Hunter.”

Krystyn finally found her voice amidst the droning in her skull, however meek it was. “It’s not her fault.”

Morian’s arm snapped straight in an instant, pointing directly at Krystyn. She turned her head, so slowly you could swear you could hear it creaking, to look directly at Krystyn with a hollowed face hiding beneath her glasses.

“You. Are. Correct. It is not Hunter’s fault. I think we all know who’s fault this is.”

Krystyn could feel her entire being twist in on itself. It was her fault for leaving Ilina alone. Letting her get caught like that. She failed to protect her. She promised to protect her. She could feel the oxygen deprivation start to blur the edges of her thoughts. Would her apology even matter? What words could matter less at a time like this?

Velia was the first to move. In the brief moment the Corpse Eater’s attention was elsewhere. She tried to make a run for the door but pushed her leg too hard and careened into a table. Morian was on her in an instant, pulling her to her feet with a fist full of hair.

“Come, let’s examine your handiwork, corpse,” Morian spat as she hauled Velia towards Ilina with all her strength.

Krystyn was paralyzed by indecision. She should act. But she didn’t. Why should she defend Velia? She should at least defend Ilina. But she couldn’t shoot the Corpse Eater and get away with it. Every decision she could have made and failed to make in the moment sprawled out in front of her.

When did she stop breathing?

That she was able to start doing on her own. She could spot out of the corners of her eyes the others come to the same realization, the same look of horrified panic in their eyes.

“Aren’t you proud of your work?” Morian pushed Velia’s head forward toward Ilina’s shivering, nearly naked frame. “You should be. Because if you aren’t, then what was the point?”

“I’m sorry,” Velia choked suddenly.

“No,” Morian seethed. “You are not sorry. This is exactly the outcome you wanted from the start.”

Watching Morian Kyrnn, a fragile woman if you were being particularly generous, rough around Velia made Krystyn’s head spin. Why hadn’t anyone moved? Why hadn’t she moved? Everyone seemed gripped by some existential horror and paralysis. The same cold, airless room they’d all been trapped in.

“It’s astonishing how well you separated Hunter from her armor,” Morian cackled as her malformed face took on various hideous expressions before settling back to something human. “Ilina is a construct of yours. Weak, pliable, and hesitant. She relies on others in a way she never did before you.”

Oh. Krystyn had forgotten that Morian and Ilina had a history that stretched back that far. Ilina’s world seemed so centered around Velia that it often felt like there was nothing before her.

“Not that relying on others is bad, of course. It’s human nature to be trusting. We all need support. But this thing you’ve made needs others to tell her what her limits are. Hunter wasn’t like that!” Morian’s voice swept the spectrum between anger and reverence and something almost inhuman. Even Crater was shrinking into herself. “Do you think your Ilina would look at a sixty foot tall mountain of impenetrable steel and decide on her own that she could kill it with her bare hands? With nothing but steel cable, salvaged winches, and some makeshift explosives?”

“I’m straying away from my point, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Morian’s laugh drifted back into her voice. “Hunter wasn’t a girl you could push around so easily. Willful and stupid. A rabid dog with a chip on her shoulder, nothing to lose, and everything to gain. She wouldn’t yield a step to anyone on anything, and any victory against her was pyrrhic at best!”

That was who Morian saw when she looked at Ilina. Krystyn could see it. When the girl was pulled away from Velia and Morian those traits bubbled to the surface sometimes. That fire in her eyes. Gods, she could even understand how Morian had been enraptured by it too.

Morian’s chest heaved with each word until she broke out onto a ragged coughing fit. The doctor shoved Velia toward the wall where she slumped into a shaking, apologizing, pathetic heap. Violence danced across Krystyn’s mind until it stumbled over itself. If Manya didn’t defend her, it shouldn’t fall to her. A thought Krystyn would ignore, usually, but it was what stuck.

“Hunter,” Morian’s voice fell deathly calm in an instant. Drained of any emotion other than that faint, professional bedside manner. “That was the name you chose. The name you fought to be recognized by. If it no longer fits, so be it. But don’t let this be the end of you.”

Ilina’s hand had extended and lightly tugged at Morian’s lab coat.

“What should I do?”

Morian pulled Ilina’s hand away and placed her palm on the top of Ilina’s head, giving her a few soothing pets.

“Teach those girls to fear you. The same way I do.”

The only thing that seemed to abate the droning sound in Krystyn’s head was that little jolt as The Problem With Inertia hooked her brain and reeled it into that sludge of data. The start-up sequence was second nature and the fact that Krystyn was barely present in her body wasn’t a hindrance for flipping some switches here and there. The way the cockpit warmed as the Inertia’s blood began to circulate was so calming.

Krystyn belonged in her steel. She failed everyone around her constantly. Led them into danger. Abandoned them. She even did the dirty work with her own flesh and bone. But she’d never failed anyone in her steel. This was the only place she could hope to redeem herself for how many people she’d hurt.

“I’m at least obligated to tell you not to kill them.” Velia had spat at them in that cramped little mission room before they suited up. “Not that a pack of dogs is going to listen to me.”

Velia was right. They shouldn’t kill the pilots conducting the other end of the valuation. But they had the unspoken permission from a higher authority. Crater used the leverage Manya had brought her to put those pilots in front of them now.

The commander knew what she was doing nearly every step of the way. Liz made some miscalculations, sure, but she ended up right where she wanted to be at the end. All in, with the deck stacked in her favor. Hekate’s Call would rate high in the valuation, and reducing Manning’s little scout troupe to a trio of red smears would hit Errant right in the wallet.

That pride swelling in Krystyn’s chest for her commander was only slightly tainted by the recognition of what a conniving bitch she was. But winning felt good, and if Liz was winning then it meant they’d all done a good job.

The encrypted radio crackled to life as everyone’s steel spun up.

“Hunter, protect Illustrious. Hound, with me.”

A round of acknowledgments followed by Illustrious.

Copy. Will manage.

They would mark Illustrious. No matter what. Hunter too. Pairing them together made sense, especially with all the tricks the two of them had at their disposal. That freed up Chaser and Hound to get into the thick of it. She didn’t feel like thinking today anyways.

I’ll help you close on whoever’s in front, then I’ll occupy the back.

Hound proposed a plan all on her own! There was a ravenous growl to the woman’s voice too.

Chaser hit Hound’s private channel. “This about Ilina?”

Hound. I hope three bodies will be enough.

Chaser laughed beside herself. “We’ll only get two. Ilina or Manya will kill the third.”

One each?

“Both for me.”

Greedy.

Yeah. It was greedy as hell. But Chaser wasn’t going to be able to look herself in the mirror after if she didn’t do it herself. Visualization was half the battle or some shit. All she had to do was picture how she was going to kill them.

Her head was filled with nothing but static. That droning finally overtaking the Inertia’s singing.

She didn’t care anymore.

Ilina hadn’t spoken since they found her. Not really, anyways. One-word answers. Gestures where possible. Krystyn had returned to the room to find her wrapped around the smoke-afflicted throw-pillow from the medbay couch. She let Krystyn fix up her bandages and took the meds that Morian had given her.

Errant’s training field for mechanized and interdisciplinary warfare was an encased city somewhere deep in the asteroid. A city in a relatively steep valley, with houses and roads crawling up the two sides. The cover at the bottom of the field faded from a downtown-like city area on one end to an increasingly sparse and open area on the other. The buildings were all shells — the kind you put up for training exercises that followed building structural codes but had nothing inside them.

An empty husk that resembled a city if you played make believe, built for the sole purpose of being trampled on repeatedly.

It couldn’t be more on-the-nose if it tried.

There would be steel in the downtown area. Trodden over cars and destroyed vehicles from previous tests, disarmed for safety and then left behind for realism in future exercises. The buildings were full of metal too, but drilling into the concrete was difficult and she’d be breaking valuable cover to build her momentum.

The Problem With Inertia ducked out of the hanger and slid down the steep face into the city directly. A Scandal In Heaven came down at about a third of the speed, making little falling jumps from road to road. The Scandal came up to just below the Inertia’s shoulder, but it was easy to forget how much of a difference that really made.

Targets ID’d.

The Work From Home transmitted a bunch of data on the enemy frames. They only needed the basics. Three machines spotted leaving the hanger on the other side of the valley. Initial headings indicated a 1-1-1 formation, same as Hekate’s Call. Close range, mid range, long range.

The rear-line was a hexapedal frame like the Work From Home, but double the size and far heavier with several autocannon turrets. Frame database suggested it was a mobile factory of some kind. A support frame, expect missiles and saturation fire to push targets out of cover. Chaser knew before the frame’s IFF codes appeared that it was Toybox.

The mid-line frame was nothing remarkable. Bipedal all-rounder frame. A melee weapon, pulsed energy rifle, and a heavier cannon. Flexible, to protect the rear-line and assist the front-liner. It was boxier than the Scandal, but lacked all the options of the Scandal’s mid-combat flash-fab. IFF ID’d as Ragdoll.

The front-liner was a fucking ghost bug. The brief catch that Illustrious got of it was like some kind of mantis with stealth capabilities. Quadrupedal speed and balance. Two melee weapons, and a pulsed energy rifle mounted for quick access. Marionette.

Their team was built around supporting Marionette as their ace.

Control. 1-1-1. Rear and mid supporting front.

Guess she had to look like she was doing her job, but hearing her voice made the droning louder.

Charlotte Fellows could take a hit. That always pissed all the other girls off. They stopped getting so worked up about it when they learned she could hit back too. Pilots were fragile, and on most sorties they came home with fewer pilots than they left with. At least until Charlotte started taking the hits. That was what she was good at after all.

The Problem With Inertia leaned down and picked up some trashed APC in one hand and bled hungrily over it as it walked between the tall buildings. It picked up another, and then another as it moved. It was a gluttonous machine.

Krystyn Zechs found out that Charlotte Fellows had a bounty on her head. Not by name, of course. It was something stupid, like The Fortress or The Wall. Someone saw the stupid red castle the last girl to die in the machine had painted on the shield and identified it that way. But Krystyn got to be a hero when everyone got home alive because of her. So what if she got a bit handsy at the bar? You’re only here with a drink in your hand cause she peeled open your wreck and kept the support crews alive long enough to pull you out. She earned it.

The droning in her head was almost as loud as the ferrofluid coursing through the Inertia’s circulatory system. Control was still trying to talk to them, like anyone cared. Might affect the valuation if she turned off the radio, insubordination looked bad on these assessments.

Why did she care about how well the valuation looked? Elisabet explained it to her. It was hard to think. It was to keep Ilina motivated or something.

The feeling of heavy armor-piercing shells hitting the Inertia’s outer barrier brought Chaser back to her body briefly. The sensation of the outer casing exploding and the injection of molten metal forward through the barrier like a knife. The Inertia was crouched down between a nest of buildings eating the steel out of them like an animal. The Inertia perked up at the sensation of a targeting beam — like a high pitched noise emitting from Ragdoll.

She moved before Toybox’s missiles did. The scattered around and behind the Inertia as she dragged her ferrofluid mass around the long way to try to close in. Hound moved in from the other side instinctively.

Watching the dog work was always a treat. Every single time.

The Inertia rounded the corner and was met with Ragdoll’s lasgun. Forced back into cover for an instant. The Scandal moved in behind with its heat axe, matched by Ragdoll’s axe. The Scandal pushed in and jabbed a hastily flashfabbed fork at the lasgun. The Scandal stepped with Ragdoll as it pulled away, turning and pulling with the fork as it did. The lasgun hit the street as Ragdoll kicked the Scandal away to make space right as a volley of missiles hailed down.

Without a word, Chaser and Hound flew past each other. The ferrofluid mass followed quickly behind Chaser, absorbing the meat of the minigun fire from Toybox on the ridge above. Hound used the cover and several smoke grenades to make scarce. The miniguns stopped right as Chaser stepped into Ragdoll’s reach. Couldn’t risk friendly fire with the limited visibility. Hound would go keep Toybox busy.

What a wretched looking machine. Ragdoll was all sharp, uneven sharp edges, ablative plates grafted across the surface like patches sewn into an old toy. How fitting. Which wounds was she responsible for?

An idle thought of carefully remaking each wound they gave to Ilina on their carcases lingered before being drowned out by the ferofluid heartbeat.

Well, it didn’t really matter. Krystyn was going to kill them no matter what.

Ragdoll stepped back, maintaining space as it drew something behind its back. Axe forward, ready to parry. The Inertia came in with the spear, sweeping a bunch of her barrier around her other side to meet whatever Ragdoll’s hidden weapon was.

The parry was smooth and practiced, and Ragdoll stepped forward into the Inertia. The barrier that shot up from the ground was deflected by a shaped charge bolted to Ragdoll’s fucking leg. It wasn’t ablative armor, it was reactive armor. Fuck. Ragdoll swung up her free hand and separated the Inertia’s arm at the shoulder with something before she could see it.

Somewhere in the storm of ferrofluid, reactor hum, and that buzzing in her head that made it difficult to think, there was something else. She could only describe it as clarity, though it was a much more complicated thing than that. It felt like it wanted permission, like there was something separating them. A fence with a latch.

The Problem With Inertia stepped back like an amateur, tossing the spear aside. Ragdoll chased with its little knife, a short-ranged beam cutter, its mechanical implementation lay between a plasma cutter and a water cutter. The open shoulder socket gushed the fully charged loop — the previous minigun fire had charged the loop in 2.37 seconds from first contact — and severely damaged Ragdoll’s cutter-arm just above the elbow. Range of motion was limited, so Ragdoll simply jettisoned the entire arm before the Inertia’s blood grasped at it as an anchor.

A quick spin beneath the shifting barrier between the two of them bought the Inertia a moment to pick up its severed arm. Blood connected the two wrists.

Ragdoll kept the momentum going, blowing reactive plates to force back ferrofluid tendrils as it advanced. A well trained pilot that was either fearless or the punishment for failure would be too high for them to stomach. Ragdoll’s mission was always to get in close to the Inertia and take it down solo.

Well. Very few things had tangled with the Inertia in melee ranged and survived, but someone had come up with an entire playbook for dealing with the Inertia’s systems. All of the standard tricks the pilot had come up with. Now they worked together, empowered.

Chaser flicked that psychic latch. The Problem With Inertia was whole again.

Ragdoll made a half-swing with the axe, not wanting to leave an opening for the Inertia to bash it with the severed arm. The Inertia lunged forward as Ragdoll’s chest blossomed and launched countless small incendiaries. Dampen ferrofluid-pilot feedback by 45%. The Inertia brought down the makeshift weapon down on the axe as heavy as it could, catching the haft rather than the blade.

A spike protruded from end of the severed arm-club and it bent suddenly at the elbow, planting the spike into Ragdoll’s axe-arm.

Game over, child.

“Stay out of my head.”

Conversational data exchange is suboptimal in combat situations.

“Then shut the fuck up!”

The poor machine jettisoned its arm to prevent being caught by the ferrofluid barrier. Smart and reactive. Really, really clever. Chaser almost felt bad for what was going to happen to them. She pushed in close and opened every port on the chest, sides, and legs and shot ferrofluid tentacles forward to give the poor girl a hug. Each deflected by the detonation of reactive armor, but nothing could stop the Inertia’s free arm.

The Inertia, burning from the incendiaries — oxidants in the mixture prevent the flames from going out when smothered — cocooned itself with the full weight of the barrier around the pinned Ragdoll. A black shimmering orb ejecting the incendiary mixture as the ferrofluid sorted its materials. Ragdoll’s limbs were severed by ferrofluid currents like saws.

No radio contact inside the bubble.

The pilot launched a series of emergency surrender flares. The ferrofluid wanted to sort and eject those, but Chaser wasn’t about to let anyone see a surrender.

Limbless, disarmed completely, and welded into her new coffin. Call it deniability.

The Inertia stood up from the barrier, carefully, glancing towards Toybox on the top of the ridge. A moving, measured firefight between Toybox and Hound, exchanging bursts of fire followed interspersed with missiles from both sides trying to push the other out of position. Presumably their plan was to overheat the Inertia and turn on Hound with these two.

Temperatures were in the danger zone.

It was safer to back off and cool down before reengaging.

She could taste blood and wanted more.

Something more rational than the taste of iron between her teeth crawled to the front. The faster she took out Toybox, the sooner Symeon could help Ilina.

We are united in purpose. Focus. Move.

“Which part of stay out of my head don’t you understand,” Krystyn spat a mouthful of blood onto the cockpit floor in contempt. “This is my machine. If you aren’t going to listen to me, I’m going to get out and fight them with my sidearm.”

You lead. We will follow.

“Someone needs to update your language modules,” Krystyn muttered. “Or better yet, remove them.” She gave herself a few quick slaps to get herself back in the game. The Inertia’s reactor was going wild with heating errors, and there wasn’t exactly an easy way to vent cockpit heat inside the bubble of ferrofluid. Fine. Fine. United in purpose, or whatever.

The Inerta stepped from the bubble, the black fluid clinging to bone and hauling out Ragdoll’s torso out of it felt like she was skinning it. The reactive plates were all eaten off, any paint markers scrubbed away by the friction. She dragged the lump of steel with her one good arm towards the ridge where Toybox was holed up. Right down main street.

She could see one of the miniguns on Toybox’s hull swing in her direction. She wished she got a few more steps in before having to really push things.

The Inertia swung Ragdoll’s torso around and around and let it fly towards Toybox, blocking the line of fire. Like track and field. A few sparks flew as it ate the first minor barrage from the miniguns before hitting the street.

The Inertia hauled a bunch of the ferrofluid barrier onto her body as it barreled down the street beneath the ridge. Everything needed to be fast, and she needed to take as few hits as possible before she made it up. The Scandal covered her approach with volleys of missiles and suppressive fire, pushing Toybox back from the edge just enough that the Inertia had a moment.

Charge the fluid and use it to create a large puddle. Brace yourself atop it. Dampen pilot feedback again. She crouched at the right moment and pushed off just as the ferrofluid pool errupted into a jagged steel pillar beneath her, launching her almost the entire distance up the ridge. Her feet were numb due to the dampened feedback, but the readout said she had stumps from the shins down from the spike jump.

The Inertia grabbed the top of the ridge and started hauling its broken body over, weighed down with a giant mass of black sludge covering half her torso and shoulder where her arm had been.

Minigun fire point-blank, incendiaries, right into the stump. These girls really loved incendiaries. They’d all been primed for dealing with the Inertia. Momentum was guided through the ferrofluid armor and through the loop, and let right out from a port in her ribs, sending a fluid ejection like a spear, carving the minigun turret from Toybox’s hull.

Tendrils reached out and snatched at the nearest of Toybox’s massive legs as it tried to scurry away from her, dragging the Inertia across the ground. What a sight she had to be. A spectacle. Did the battle logs prepare any of their little representatives for what a victory looked like for The Problem With Inertia?

Reactor nearing critical.

Didn’t matter. She’d kill this girl like she almost certainly did the first.

The black tentacles dragged the Inertia’s skeletal form right up against the bucking crab-tank. A few more embarrassing movements and the Inertia managed to haul itself ontop of the mobile factory. It was riddled with ports and launchers, and had two turrets that could shoot just about anything above or beside the thing. It wasn’t a factory as much as it was a mobile fortress.

Before she could even think to avoid being bucked off the top the ferrofluid blood had begun to reach and drill into the surface, finding any crack it could to put down roots. Angled ablative plates — real ones, not the reactive plates Ragdoll had — to prevent aerial gunfire, and enough micro-turrets and other armaments to stop missiles. But that meant it had lots of lovely little gaps to get her fingers in.

She lurched forward atop it and ripped off one of those angled plates and shoved her arm into the hole and started bleeding into the machine. A ritual. A parasite.

Her awareness expanded. The details of the factory beneath her became as known to her as all the blood vessels in the Inertia’s body. She didn’t need those details, but she knew what she needed to turn off. Take over the comms array. Disable the flare launchers before it could signal a surrender.

The roots quickly strangled out the mechanical launchers before they could be fired. They fizzled in their nozzles uselessly. The comms hack was quick and efficient — jammed first by using the roots as antenna to emit a strong enough radio signal to drown out a distress call, and then dropped the jamming once the Inertia had integrated Toybox’s comms.

It was game over for Toybox too, but she wanted to crush the girl inside.

Reactor critical.

Fuck.

Concepts flooded her head, a bit too many to make sense of. Magnetic cooling. Passive cooling array. Sudden heat shift causing a air pressure vacuum effect as its expelled. The math behind them too. Details didn’t matter. Or, she guessed, the Inertia could handle the details. Just needed to bring the temps down fast. Didn’t matter how.

The Inertia opened parts of the reactor dress that was only ever opened for maintenance reasons, opening up the back of the machine and exposing the most vulnerable components. Ferrofluid crawled through her skin towards the reactor, connecting with the radiator fins directly, before ejecting out the back.

Each fin-extension needed to have an internal liquid loop to help move the heat away. She was used to having a more solid core and moving the fluid along the edges as a sort of grinding tool. The fins extended into the air behind her and she powered the currents with Toybox’s reactor — freshly integrated via the roots she’d planted in it.

It was loud even in the cockpit as the superheated air moved through the open chest cavity  and across the thousands of little fins. Vacuum effect, huh? The rapid release of super-heated air created a natural air current, which drew cooler air through the front of the Inertia.

Core temperatures dropped like a stone until they plateaued. Still in the danger zone, but avoided reactor criticality. Success.

The Inertia cracked open the top Toybox’s hull before she could wrap her fingers around the cockpit-core. A round object, indistinct. Suppose it was meant to be ejectable in an emergency. The Inertia tossed it over its shoulder and set it tumbling down the ridge as she began devouring the corpse. The Inertia needed to remake its arm and the legs she shattered. And patch up the rest of the damage.

And if Toybox survived, she wasn’t about to get her machine back.

Hunter caught sight of herself in the mirror of the changing room halfway through getting into the skintight fabric hardsuit. She turned and tried to look at her exposed back, but couldn’t make out what the words on her back said. Despite the protests from the other pilots, Morian said that the bandages would make it too hard to breathe while piloting. The wound was still scabbing and oozing. She’d have to get it disinfected after the valuation.

She didn’t envy whoever was going to have to wash out the hardsuit when she peeled it off later.

Nobody had told her what they put on her back. But maybe they couldn’t really tell. On each side she could catch some letters. An F and a P on one side, an S on the other. She could make some guesses. Domon girls weren’t very clever.

FAGGOT PRINCESS

Unfortunately it would be kind of hot. At least so long as Toybox had a steady hand and it didn’t look like complete ass. If it was unreadable maybe Ilina would have someone touch it up.

The notch in her ear, cauterized by Morian to stop the bleeding, was going to be an ongoing problem. After she zipped up the back of her hardsuit and had it adjust itself tightly against her frame, she applied the gel Morian had given her to the little triangle of missing cartilage and flesh. She was warned that it would screw up her ability to locate sounds. The Again in Hell could compensate for that, so it wasn’t too much of a worry in combat.

And unfortunately, as Hunter looked at herself in the mirror, with her matted hair pulled back and dead eyes, she kind of liked how unique it was.

Imagine the look on their faces if Hunter showed up after dismantling their machines piece by piece, their titans like tissue paper before Hell’s axe, and getting a Thank You for their souvenirs.

Teach those girls to fear you. The same way I do.

Morian’s order echoed in her head as she made her way to the hanger bay and donned the Again in Hell.

The doctor would ask her later what the lesson was supposed to be. Hunter knew the answer instinctively. Killing those girls wouldn’t be enough to reinforce it. Those girls were nothing. If this exercise wasn’t a team valuation, Hunter could kill the three of them on her own. They wouldn’t even get a sensor lock on her before she downed the first one.

The lesson was simple. Hunter was unbreakable. Hunter was unstoppable. Hunter could take more beatings than anyone could dish out and she still wouldn’t yield. Not a matter of physical strength, of which Hunter had plenty. Nor a matter of masochism, of which Hunter had plenty more. It was a matter of willpower. This incident would not be the end of Hunter Falke.

She pushed out the echoing laughter she’d been hearing since she’d been dragged from that storeroom to the edges of her mind as she clambered atop the Work from Home. There was an obstacle in her way right now and she didn’t have the time to work out why those sounds were following her.

“Does it ever stop? The laughing, I mean.” Ilina had managed to ask deep in the night.

A half-asleep Krystyn, coiled around her like it might offer some kind of assurance, responded, “Never.”

Well. That would be an issue for later. It was an inconvenience. Another obstacle to overcome, when she needed to. And once she’d overcome it, there would be a new obstacle. There always was.

But when had that ever stopped her?

Out the hanger atop the Work From Home. Didn’t listen to the briefing. Last thing she really listened to was Chaser’s voice telling her that she was on babysitting duty. Of course she was. The dogs felt guilty. Guilt and anger were good motivators. Spite was a good motivator too. The only one who wasn’t particularly motivated among the pilots was Illustrious. But Illustrious was a professional, and it wouldn’t show in her piloting at all.

At the top of the ridge, Hunter looked down at the playground provided to her. A skeleton of a city between two huge walls. The fights would funnel into the streets, which would funnel the machines down predictable paths, but there was no such restriction for her movement.

Babysitting duty. Well. They had to send someone to mark Illustrious and keep her busy, otherwise their side would lose instantly the moment she took the first shot with the rail. Marionette, probably. Marionette talked like she was in charge, even though Toybox called all the shots. Toybox would be in the back controlling the fight, Marionette would be up front taking the credit, and Ragdoll would be somewhere between the two doing what she was told.

A small counter of wire traps filled the corner of her vision. She had stored more in the Work From Home, accessible from the outside. As soon as the Work From Home got down the ridge she jumped off and went to work setting up the wires.

She had to work fast. Hunter was always on the offensive, but needed to set up the environment to really shine. Mounting the wire traps to the cement buildings, letting them drill and anchor themselves and manually setting the path. There had to be a mixture of high and low and mid wires, and wires that cut across the streets and intersections at odd angles.

Reactor signal vanished. Illustrious’s voice was breezy over the radio. Routine as any other mission for her. Kids in the playground.

An absolutely miserable mission. The Work From Home’s drones stayed at maximum altitude, scanning the back half of the faux-city for movement. They didn’t rely solely on visuals, so the active camo was only so effective. Unfortunately Marionette’s machine was about as unmarkable on sensors as the Work From Home was when it was trying to hide.

Minutes passed. Explosions and gunfire rang out in the distance. Hunter continued to move through the buildings and set up wire traps. She was over halfway through her stock. The whole area was thick with them.

Both Illustrious and Hunter held radio silence. She made it to the top of the building and established laser comms with the drone, which fed back to the Work From Home, perched somewhere.

They could have double-backed.

“No. They’re after you,” Hunter whispered, as if her voice could make it beyond her machine and alert anyone. But she was supposed to be hidden, so she instinctively played the part. “I can draw her out.”

If you do something stupid and die, they’re going to take it out on me.

“Then make sure I don’t die.”

Hunter swapped her comms to the public frequencies. She didn’t care if it hurt her valuation any. Besides, she had somethings to say to those girls. With no rise of anger or chuckle of pride, she spoke calmly and evenly.

“I got saddled protecting the Work From Home. You should thank the dogs for giving you a handicap.”

There was no response. Radio discipline had been hammered into those girls. The little bits of signal catching she did on the encrypted channels showed short bursts, probably only a few words at a time. Signal catching was a trick she’d learned from her mama long before Morian tried to teach it to her. Morian was able to glean a lot more information out of those bursts than her mama ever could though.

“If they had let me fight all three of you on my own, you’d all be dead. Pick you off one-by-one like a slasher flick.”

Hah! Marionette broke radio discipline. Impulsive and cocky. Of course she’d break first. How do you get off talking like you’re all that? Runt like you wouldn’t even be able to take Rags on one of her bad days. I bet Carie’s listening too—

Hunter’s guidance software lit up. Not that she was looking at it. Between feeding her own information back to the Work From Home, one of those little insect drones, and the Work From Home itself, they got a pin on Marionette.

She was on the move before Illustrious could signal her on the radio. Before Marionette could finish whatever she was saying.

The grey cityscape was a blur. They didn’t even put glass in the windows, so there were no broken mirrors to catch the light. Just skeletal buildings with no sign of life in them. Only as structural as they needed to be for combat operation simulations. Like a child’s block set, piled up so they could be knocked down by the scary monsters.

Breathe. Be calm. The throbbing pain at her back helped calm her through the awful squelching feeling of the blood beneath her suit. It was pooling in her lower back and around her waist. Places between the external armor plating. Anywhere her body bent naturally.

The wet between her legs was different. That was a familiar feeling. Between the pain and elation at spotting the outline of her prey flicker across a street two blocks away, of course she’d be wet.

In some inane little debrief someone put forward the idea that her arousal was part of a runaway feedback system. Morian, embarrassingly, deflected the idea by informing the whole room that she had been like that since she was jockeying mechs in her homemade suit. Maybe even before that.

Focus. Focus. Don’t think. Act.

Hunter triggered every wire trap in the surrounding blocks immediately, once she’d confirmed Marionette was inside the area. Hunter switched from swinging on her reels to grabbing and swinging from tripwire to tripwire. It was harder to spot on visual sensors than her swinging, and kept her from forming predictable parabolic paths through the air.

The Work From Home lit up the entirety of Marionette’s machine in Hunter’s targeting suite. Might have helped someone else, but Hunter dialed that information into the background. She could track the machine in camo with her own eyes. The way the light ‘bent’ around the edges and the way overlapping sections of camo seemed to dislocated objects so slightly, like an object half in a still pool of water. The signs of active camo that Morian taught her to see.

Those lessons were like some of Irene’s lessons. Standing in public and taking notes on everything. Except instead of tracking the movement of people, she was stood on the side of a combat and watched ghosts fight. At first she could only see the marks on the ground and those brief clashes when the active camo flickered. Morian kept giving her little hints until she could see the shape of the ghosts without the help.

Don’t think. Don’t stop moving. You will only get in the way.

Morian described her mindset as limbic or something. Even beasts acted on more than instinct. They had priorities. But the way Hunter could detach herself so completely was something unique, apparently. It was valuable. Special.

“Free of thought. Free of need. Free of want. Free of self. There is only the body, with which to act upon the other. An action so perfect and unerring that its result is the only one that could have ever been.”

Morian’s poetry skills needed a little refinement.

Contact.

Hunter flung herself away towards a high wire across the street from Marionette. She tossed a grenade upward as she twisted to catch the wire in her hand. The cable strained as she flared the thrusters to maintain the momentum through the swing. Her free hand pulled free the axe in its collapsed form just in time to meet the grenade she threw with the flat of the blade.

The grenade traced a high, straight trajectory towards Marionette as it turned its mantis-shaped head towards her. The thrusters must have caused enough static to draw the eye.

Boost low towards the street. Air-burst the grenade above the enemy. The ripple disrupted the active camo and should have disrupted the visual sensors for a moment. Hunter caught a wire close to the street, almost touching the ground as the wire strained, and directed her momentum back up towards the frame’s quadrupedal legs.

During her mid-air twirl she spun the haft of the full-sized axe around her body to give the axe as much momentum as possible at the moment of contact. The axe soared through Marionette’s leg like it wasn’t there, tearing a massive hole twice the size of Hunter out of the leg. Critical system damage to the leg.

Hunter caught a mid-height wire on the falling end of her jump and directed herself skyward to a high wire with a quick boost, from which she redirected herself back towards Marionette. Keeping her momentum again with a horizontal spin and extra movement with the axe, the blade was moving as fast as she could make it at the moment of contact. Her second pass, mere seconds after the first, while it was still attempting to set itself right, resulted in a large bite from its lower torso.

Her feet hit the lower chassis, where the four legs connected to the body. The suit ate most of the impact, but she could feel the stress in her knees. She needed to avoid doing that. A quick adjustment and boosted kick-off sent her down the cross road.

Frames were not quiet implements when they started to take damage. There was a sound, something different, that her body reacted to before she could process it. A spin in the air with the axe to meet the falling blade at the perfect moment, sending the sword and Marionette into the building beside. Somewhere was a second crash of the other half of Marionette’s sword hitting the ground, split at the point of impact.

Hunter made some space and broke visual contact. She’d caused enough damage that the active camo was starting to fail all over. She’d be able to locate it quickly.

What the fuck is happening over there? Illustrious’s voice shook over the radio. VIGIL, what the fuck is going on?

She muted her comms. Illustrious was focusing on the rest of the team, so she didn’t have to worry about getting interrupted by gunfire.

The wonderful thing about all the buildings being hollow shells was that it allowed Hunter to move in ways other machines couldn’t. She landed halfway up one of the taller buildings and ran directly across the floor at a sprint. Doubling back quicker than she could have been expected to, coming from an unintuitive angle.

She let a little cable loose from her wrist-reel and attached one of her grenades to the end. Out the other side of the building, spinning the grenade-on-a-rope at speed before letting the reel unspool. The grenade traced a wide, strange arc as it caught on another cross-street wire closer to the ground. Hunter moved the opposite direction as she cut the cable in multiple places, throwing the grenade at Marionette from below.

It exploded under the mantis’s flickering carapace as Hunter dropped from above. Her core muscles strained as she pirouetted down, thruster-assisted, with the axe.

In the moment where the chest opened and bled Hunter would later swear she could see Marionette’s horrified face in the exposed cockpit. In the moment there was only action. A brief moment where the machine was still enough that Hunter could land on the lower chassis and do a standing wind-up to bring the axe up to speed, giving it enough force to lob off an undamaged leg properly.

Marionette fired off emergency flares, signaling that it was out of commission. Like it wasn’t obvious that it was finished long before it had the chance to tap out.

Chaser, respond. What is happening?

Hunter’s comms lit up with screaming the moment she unmuted it. Control, Hound, and Illustrious, all having a synchronized panic attack over something. She scaled a building with the wires to get a better view for herself what they were looking at.

There was a pool of crude oil viscera, and a rough trail like someone dragged the carcass down the main street. There was a flutter in her little heart looking at it, for probably normal reasons. The end of the trail was the beast heaving over the corpse atop the ridge. Roiling, devouring sludge. The Inertia was somewhere in that sludge. Had to be.

Suddenly it all stopped for an instant.

The thick sludge liquefied and flowed back into the Inertia through every crack possible.

The Problem With Inertia shuddered, it’s back bulging like something was trying to escape, before it sprouted black wings, feathered by a shimmering array of razor-thin knives.

It was… pretty. Gruesome, but beautiful in an intangible sense. For a moment Hunter thought the wings were moving, like the whole of the Inertia was preparing to take flight.

Instinct took over. Hunter rolled back off the building and dropped towards street level before the wave hit. A tidal force of hot air, ablated by rubble, knocked the Hell’s reactor to near-critical heat levels. Several of her systems failed in concert.

But Hunter could swear somewhere in the static burst from the Inertia’s little stunt there was Chaser’s broken, stim-induced cackling. She could have been imagining it, but even if she was she knew Chaser was laughing. The same way she always did when she pulled some new stunt like this.