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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gestalt and Gravity sailed through space at a respectable enough speed towards a gate several weeks away. There was an upsetting calm and quiet to things that was driving Krystyn up the wall. The minute Kyrnn was off the ship everything changed. The drugs, of course. Couldn't

The medical bay was just about the only place on the Gestalt that Krystyn had found she didn't get fuzzy-headed from the pervasive drugs being pumped into her system at all times. The only thing that made her head fuzzy in Kyrnn's domain was the scent

Of all Hekate's staff, the only person that Ilina was ever excited to see was Symeon Vigil. Morian barely counted as Hekate staff, and Velia was a very lovely freeloader. But she'd only ever had good encounters with Vigil. Also she was hot. Like insanely hot.

Hours passed. Manya really wasn't coming back tonight. Krystyn laid awake, completely alone for the first time in years, staring at the ceiling. Somewhere deep down she didn't want to close her eyes because the nightmares might come back. She was doing fine until those three

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Crater adjusted a few objects on her desk, waiting for Ilina's response. The seats of her office were taken up by the other pilots, leaving her to stand and face them all. She'd been reprimanded before