Hekate's Call, Chapter 8

The Gestalt and Gravity was a beautiful carrier with the best accommodations Krystyn had ever seen. It reminded her of home in the least antagonistic way. Just the good parts that didn't make her skin crawl at the thought of. Not the reasons why she signed on with Elisabet and co. and got the hell out.

The pilots were sequestered away from the rest of the crew. Large two-person rooms that made her feel important. There weren't four other pilots in a room half the size packed in tight. Replacements. Waiting for her to die. Waiting to take her place and her rank.

There was a well-equipped medical bay for intensive care staffed by, despite all her problems with the woman, the most skilled doctor this half of the galaxy could name. She'd heard the epithet of Necromancer long before she'd ever heard of the Corpse Eater, but the first was earned. Hekate didn't plan on letting her die in some nameless firefight of no import.

The other accommodations were just nice. A private gym and training center for the pilots and combat personnel, featuring various simulation types and adjustable gravity and so much more. And a dedicated room for mech combat simulation so they didn't have to sit in the cockpit and spin up the machines in the hanger. The hanger, coincidentally, had a central pier leading from the pilot quarters for the pilots to mount up.

Well. They could all mount up from the pier except for the new girl with her little power armor sitting in the gulf where a real mech should be standing.

The best part about working for Hekate was that there were no men in sight.

"We're getting shore leave next month while they replan the route," Manya said while her tail started coiling around Krystyn's leg as they walked, "Will you go on a date with me?"

Egh.

Manya was a good friend. They were very close. They often shared a bed even. There were lots of girls like Manya back home too, so she didn't have a problem with her or anything. But the way that Manya phrased and framed things was uncomfortable. But it was fine! She just liked teasing.

All things being said, Krystyn really missed having some men around.

Heavy boots marched a familiar rhythm toward them from down the hall. Marching with purpose. Krystyn's back straightened as she waited to see Crater around the corner. Only it wasn't.

What was the Corpse Eater's pet lobodomite doing walking around the pilot quarters like she owned the place? There was a sharpness in her eyes and features that wasn't there for the months she was screaming and wailing in the corner of the medbay or when she tried to kill the necromancer with a scalpel during one of Krystyn's examinations.

She had the air of a real person about her for the first time.

A really angry person.

Manya was against the wall in an instant. The lobodomite was fast. Luckily she was just getting handsy with Manya, who didn't seem to mind. The lobodomite grasped and fondled and took deep huffing breaths of Manya.

"Not you," it growled.

"Too bad," Manya returned with a grin.

The lobodomite turned to Krystyn. Absolutely not.

"You keep your filthy fucking hands to yourself, you fucking queer."

They moved at the same time in the same motion. Grab, break, counter-grab. Now Krystyn was ahead as she saw the idiot shift their weight forward, all she had to do was shift away, turn and pull. Except someone turned off the gravity as she started the motion.

No. It was just Krystyn falling upwards, like it was the most natural thing in the world. A full circle mid air like that was how one stood firmly on the ground.

And then she was on the ground, on her face. The lobodomite pushed a knee into her spine and threatened an arm.

Was her shift a feint? It was the only thing that made sense, but none of Krystyn's martial training taught her how to make the throw this mental patient just did.

If Krystyn wasn't an ace she would have no idea how Morian's pet could have turned the table but she wasn't that thick in the head. They marched at the same beat. They had the same training. The lobodomite had Central Domon military training, with special counter-training. Special forces?

It pulled back the collar of her shirt and huffed at her neck like a dog looking for meat. Disgusting thing. Manya wasn't about to hop in and help. She kept her hands clean of these things.

"So, it is you," the lobodomite sighed. The edge in her voice from before smoothed out. What the fuck did she want?

"Honestly, I don't have any demands here," the woman condescended, "You can continue to beat and abuse and fuck Ilina all you want. But, only with my permission."

This was about Falke? Stars above, the lobodomite really did have screws loose if it wanted to take ownership of that monster.

"Then let go of me," Krystyn growled and struggled once before being met with the pain of the hold she was in.

"I need to set a precedent," she shifted her weight on Krystyn as she spoke, "I need to make absolutely sure nobody makes the same mistake you did."

A sonic hammer hit her in the lower back, hurting deep in a way Krystyn had never felt in years as a pilot or her years in the infantry. The woman got up and gave her a light kick in the side, but she couldn't move an inch as the pain started expanding. What was she hit with? Something was wrong. Whatever was broken was something that shouldn't be broken like that. Warmth spilled from an invisible wound inside her body.

This was bad. This was really bad. What just happened? Did she do this with a punch? She didn't have a tool or implement. This was bad. Bad. It hurt so much.

"I also just don't like girls like you. Queer? Really?"

She watched her bump hips in passing with Manya, exchanging flirtatious grins. Manya still wasn't helping her, instead watching Morian's fucking attack dog saunter away. Get your fat ass into gear Manya. Help.

Eventually Manya leans down and starts to pull her to her feet. It hurts so much. The pain was dizzying and stars started to build at the edges of her vision. Medbay. She needed to be in the medbay. She can't form the words but Manya is already guiding her in that direction, barely supporting her.

The bruise on Krystyn's side was darker than it was minutes ago. She was bleeding internally. That lobotomite ruptured something and now Krystyn was on the floor of the medical bay being told no anesthetic? No treatment? That wasn't how things worked around here.

"I'll report this," she wheezed in pain.

"Go ahead." Kyrnn knelt down in front of her. "Leave the office, walk down the hall, take the elevator, and drag yourself all the way over to your commander." She smiled that awful yellowed smile and let out a plume of cigarette smoke. "We both know she'll just tell you to come back and apologize and do what you're told."

What did Kyrnn want again? The pain was making her stupid. The anger was making her short. But the commander treated Kyrnn preferentially. That was saying something considering how the commander treated the fucking dog.

Fine.

Fine! She wasn't about to die over her pride.

"What do you want?" Krystyn forced the words out through gritted teeth. Each breath was starting to hurt more and more.

"First, you will apologize to Hunter for your conduct."

She groaned and nodded. "I'll apologize."

Dr. Kyrnn lifted her head up by the chin. She was suddenly gentle. Like she was with Falke. Like the commander was with Vigil. Disgusting freaks. Krystyn opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue like a dog just like Falke did when Kyrnn made the motion. It was what she wanted, right? It was just a sign of obedience. All Kyrnn ever did was pat Falke on the head after.

"No, no," Morian hummed. "I'll teach you. Make a little cup with your tongue and pool your saliva there."

It was hard to focus, but Morian demonstrated and Krystyn obeyed. The pain was making her stupid, and she couldn't grasp the point of this.

"Quick learner. Good girl." Her bedside manner was impeccable. Soothing and nonthreatening. Everything a real doctor needed to be.

"I am going to put out my cigarette in your saliva. It is going to hurt a lot. You will want to pull away but you need to avoid that because you could cause a lasting burn and we do not want that. Do you understand?"

Did Krystyn understand? Did she?

No?

Cigarette?

Her brain finally wrapped around the statement in its entirety and her eyes went wide, staring deep into those bottomless pits in Kyrnn's face. She was serious. This was the only way she was going to get treated.

"Say it back."

"I won't pull away," Krystyn managed. It was the important part, as far as she could tell.

Kyrnn made the same gesture and she obediently formed a pool of saliva in the cup of her tongue. The cigarette approached with an accompanying, condescending hum from Morian that felt too much like she was feeding vegetables to a child.

The pain was intense. An animal instinct, something primal, screamed at her to get away from it. The same instinct that told children to pull their hand away from a hot stove to keep the damage to a minimum. But the pain brought a sharpness to her mind that was dull previously, allowed her to notice things she wouldn't have in the moment.

Morian Kyrnn was not smiling like the monster movie villain she touted herself as. She didn't look like she was pleased with the ritual one bit, despite Krystyn's obedience. This wasn't some fucked up sex thing for the necromancer like she assumed. There was, for a moment, a deep sadness in the woman's eyes that Krystyn might not ever forget.

The pain dulled as the cigarette went out.

She might never forget the taste of ash in her mouth, but that look would haunt her.

"First, you'll apologize to Hunter," Morian repeated softly, "she deserves better than to be treated like that again. Second, you're going to protect her from Elisabet."

What? The cigarette wasn't the second thing? She forced herself to nod anyways. She couldn't do anything if she died, and the pain in her stomach was getting worse somehow. What the fuck did Morian's abomination do to her?

"Get yourself on the table. I won't even leave a scar."

The Corpse Eater loved her own voice. She loved to play with it. How deep she could growl or how high pitched her cackling could get. The woman would just hang around the medbay making sounds or delivering speeches to what were probably real human organs in jars.

She talked to a heart in a jar the most often, and the most softly. When she'd forgotten Krystyn was in the room, recovering on one of the beds, she'd just stare at that jar with that same heart-wrenching expression on her face.

"I was never good at dealing with people, Dr. Kyrnn," she said to it once, "So I don't know what I should do about her."

A reflection? Her own heart, removed and preserved? The heart of the real Dr. Kyrnn? The problem with legends about the Corpse Eater was that they were all older than the woman herself and none of them seemed right. Legends also said that she was called the necromancer because the first thing she brought back from the dead was herself. It was all very stupid.

Morian was true to her word, in any case. Krystyn didn't know what the lobodomite broke, but the necromancer removed it, stopped the bleeding, grew and fit a replacement, and stitched her back up and didn't leave a trace. The interior needed some healing, and the pain would last about a week, but she would be fine.

"Ms. Fellows," Morian began one day, "As long as I am here, you cannot die. Even if, against all odds, you managed to kill yourself, I wouldn't let it stop you from piloting the Inertia. You will fight until I have no need for you."

Another one of her insane speeches.

"Do not forget your oath, Charlotte," Morian wrapped up, dramatically. "When Elisabet comes for Hunter, you will protect her. That is your only use to me."

Charlotte Fellows was a woman who died almost a decade ago in Central Domon during a coup, and had nothing to do with Krystyn anymore. But Morian called her that during every checkup, every private passing, and never once in earshot of a living soul. Elisabet did the same. Some fucked up power move to show they could have her killed at any moment. Manya called her Charlotte too, but she said it was just a play on her callsign.

She missed the weekly training. She was in charge of leading those. Manya hadn't visited her once, but then again Manya could be doing anything. None of her business anyways. But neither had Vigil or Elisabet. An hour after the training would have ended, Krystyn's first visitor finally arrived.

"I request that you file a full report to the commander as soon as possible," Ilina Falke said with a deep seething anger.

Everything about Falke the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She was dangerous. Krystyn knew she was dangerous before seeing the combat logs from her boarding operation. She knew the girl was dangerous from the second she laid eyes on her.

When you raised a hand to normal people they flinched.

When you beat normal people into the ground they cried.

When you raped a normal person they broke.

There was nothing about Ilina Falke that was normal.

Manya could describe hundreds of infinitely smaller ways that Falke was dangerous and she would be right about every single one of them. Analyze every movement and explain the ways that movement spoke to a deep readiness for violence and some lack of fear. She was good at those things. She had an eye for those things.

"About what?" Krystyn asked, trying to mask her urge to swing and run.

"Velia Lore," Falke hissed. "She is a civilian who assaulted mission critical combat personnel. If anything happened while you were confined to the medbay, there would be bodies. It's unacceptable."

This was one of those things about Falke that wasn't normal. Your girlfriend runs down someone who assaulted and abused you and you try to get your girlfriend martialed?

"She also told me to keep my hands off you. Why're you taking my side here?"

Staring into Falke's eyes was like staring into the still-warm coals in a dying furnace. There wasn't a fire in them, but the threat of a fire extinguished. All it needed was the right fuel. The right jab.

"Your license statistics are garbage," Falke seethed, "but the live logs show that you're entirely responsible for Vigil and Carie's numbers. Without you, every formation and combat playbook Hekate has goes out the window."

She finished with the most unhinged thing another pilot had ever said. One of those unreal things about Falke, because she probably believed it.

"You can do whatever you want to me because I'm replaceable. The Inertia isn't."

Krystyn's voice cracked a bit, and she let out a strange wheeze instead of a real sentence. What the fuck was wrong with this girl? Even back in the core worlds nobody said the quiet part out loud like that. Nobody admitted to being replaceable, let alone offering that as an defense for that kind of abuse.

"Manya and I are going planetside next month to go shopping when we get shore leave," her voice wavered with disgust and fear. "I'd like it if you came with us."