i’m mag.

. . .

Hand clenched tightly over Karabin’s, Fours eagerly trotted at the side of her handler.

Sabbaticals to local ports was a scant luxury for the clone, even more so those not concerning her health in some way. Almost every time she was taken off the ship, it was to see an eclectic doctor for some illness that Spider couldn’t correct on-board, an experience rarely more pleasant than just living with the pain. Today, the two were engaging in a neolithic human custom known as “window shopping.”

Fours couldn’t see much around her, but there was more than enough sensation to keep her thoroughly engrossed. The sounds of music and advertisements mingled with the ambient drum of a crowd that extended as far as she could perceive in every direction. Smells of street food vendors frying in a thousand types of oils and exotic perfumes made from the flora of dozens of worlds were a welcome reprieve from stale, recycled ship nitrogen. Even the gravity—centrifugal rather than magnetic—tickled her body with the sensation of her clothes draping across her shoulders rather than floating loose around her.

One small luxury of operating within the sanctioned warzone as an unregistered mercenary company is that there’s no need to sign in and out of the war with the UE naval blockade that surrounds it. Smuggling wartime contraband in and out of Hjkor is a lucrative side-hustle for those with the stomach for it, and considering the bastardmech aboard is just about the most illegal thing one could possibly be caught transporting, some weapons or aid stashed alongside is hardly worth stressing over. Pockets flush with the profits of an arms deal carried out deep in the bowels of the station, Karabin’s wandering eye had become much less guarded to the small market pleasures of a consumer port.

Fours felt a slight tug at her hand guiding her out of the main thoroughfare and towards one of the glowing storefronts to her left. She couldn't see exactly what it was supposed to be (just about every inch of visible space was plastered with glaring neon billboards that made discerning anything through her hazy vision quite a challenge), but she could most certainly smell a minty, gentle, verdant aroma that reminded her of the conservatory Lincoln had taken her to visit the last time they stopped at a starport.

Judging by the line she was pretty sure she'd been pulled into, this didn't seem like it was another conservatory.

She wasn't entirely sure what they were waiting for, and Lincoln's other hand was occupied tapping away at her phone. The sounds of people talking, occasionally punctuated by a handful of the same voices calling out a number, didn't lend the clone much context as to where she'd been taken.

"...What is this place...?"

Lincoln's attention returned to the pilot she was guiding. Dressed in civilian clothes and free from the innards of Whisper, the thing looked almost like a regular person. She wasn't sure if she liked how that made her feel.

“Remember, the other night, when I was telling you about all the different things we use trees for?”

Four looked towards the indistinct, white frame of Lincoln’s hair. She nodded.

"This is one of those things. They use leaves to make drinks. I thought you might like one."

The wait in line wasn't terribly long, and waiting off to the side for their order to complete was even quicker. Fours wasn't entirely sure what they were waiting for, but she was cautiously optimistic about the prospect of drinking something that (hopefully?) didn't have gravmag powder sprinkled inside of it.

When Lincoln placed the drink she'd been ordered in her hands, Fours wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. The lid of the plastic cup occluded whatever it was supposed to smell like, leaving her with nothing but the faded green image of some sort of liquid in hand. It was pleasantly cold and slightly damp to the touch, topped with what looked like some sort of flat film rather than a lid. Punched through the top was a mercifully bright, distinct, wide red straw.

By the time Fours worked up the nerve to actually try what she’d been handed, the two had meandered out of the store and found a spot on a bench near the main thoroughfare. No matter how good she got at practicing a normal routine, watching the masses of humans going about their days never lost its appeal to her. Fours couldn’t make much of the glacial stampede, but being seated on a bench meant she could remain assured that Lincoln was nearby with her hip rather than sparing a hand for the task. All around, a win for all parties involved.

Fours took a cautious sip.

The drink was sweet—different from the dehydrated cocoa squares the medic gave her every so often—with a bitterness that tasted how dirt smelled. It smelled like a leaf and tasted like a milk-dipped flower, a sensation that fascinated her enough to go for a second, much less anticipatory sip.

Her second go was interrupted by the surprise appearance of a rubbery, gummy ball launching itself into her mouth, chased by a sudden murmur of surprise as she tried to figure out what she’d just unwillingly eaten. Karabin turned her attention over in worry. As soon as she'd cleared her mouth of whatever it was, the clone gave an awkward 'bleh', still fighting the ghost of a sensation in her throat. Something smooth and gooey had hitched a ride in the drink.

"Are you okay?"

"It... has something inside it."

Karabin stared at her for half a second before the realization hit. A sharp snort escaped her nose despite herself, quickly collapsing into muffled laughter behind one hand. She probably should have felt bad for not forewarning the hapless clone about it, but the thought genuinely never crossed her mind.

Fours' eyes remained crossed with worry. She didn't seem to appreciate the schadenfreude at her plight.

"You swallowed a tapioca pearl."

"...A what...?"

"The little balls at the bottom."

"...There are more?"

"They're supposed to be there. You eat them."

"...Why?"

Karabin opened her mouth, paused, then shrugged slightly.

"I don't know. Texture, I guess."

Fours considered this development. Slowly, carefully, she poked the straw back into the drink and gave it an experimental stir. Now that she was feeling for it, she could feel the resistance of a multitude more floating towards the bottom.

"...Are they plants too?"

"I think so? They're made of sugar, I think. I don't really know."

The pilot took another cautious sip. This time, when one of the pearls shot up the straw, she was ready for it. She didn't expect it to be as gummy as it was, but paired with another mouthful of the creamy tea, it certainly made a better second impression.

Karabin watched the clone chew with the sort of concentration she didn't think she'd ever seen it make in the cockpit. A small nausea had begun to brew in her own stomach, enough so that she set her own caramel taro tea down for the time being. She didn't know how much longer she could do this.

Fours swallowed.

"...It is weird..."

"Do you like it?"

Lincoln's head was facing Fours, but her attention was fixated on one of the trash cans a few meters beyond the clone.

. . .

I see you. You want to know how you can end up in your very own plugcell, don't you? It's a tough gig to nail down, but if you're so inclined, here's a handy six-step guide to surrendering your body, persona, and metaphysical self to the embrace of a radioactive moon's eager arms...

Step 1: Don’t be a “real” person.

While it can sometimes be difficult to define what makes someone “real”, your best bet is to be a recombinant clone or a genebank—something that’s made of all the same parts as a human, but without the natural gestation or any citizenship to speak of. Robots and aliens lacking a centralized nervous system need not apply; Gestalt inhabitance interfaces were only really designed with humanlike neurology in mind.

Step 2: Fall through the cracks.

Human genestock is a high-value product, and the multi-billion Yero companies that deal in organ synthesis or full-body replacement generally do a pretty good job keeping track of their inventory. Every so often, whether due to a corrupt insider or robbery in transit, these bodies have been known to leak beyond medical application and into black markets. If you want a shot at being within twenty feet of a psylune engine, you've got to lose (or, perhaps by your perspective, win) this logistical lottery.

Step 3: End up in the hands of a dealer with Remnant Corps connections.

The vast majority of human simulacra that end up in the galactic smuggling network find their way into the hands of those who can't get their hands on a human body through legitimate means. While Remnant Corps are one such group, the galaxy is full of other organized criminal groups, disavowed humanitarian organizations, and NGOs that have both more money and more necessity to scoop up just about anything they can get their hands on. Should your cryobag land in the inventory of one of the few bodysale groups with unregistered mercenary companies on their list of customers, you're in the right place.

Step 4: Survive.

Presuming you're picked up by a Remnant Corp, you're likely part of a bulk order. Those who can afford it tend to purchase a few bodies at a time, so you'd better hope you're the most psychically apt of the bunch. While death during the cyberization process is unlikely, you'll next be exposed to a bevy of psychistimulants and egostatic compounds to prepare you for your first contact with a lune-infused Gestalt inhabitance inteface--a first date you're statistically unlikely to survive and guaranteed to come away from different than you were before.

Step 5: Keep surviving.

Your new life in the hotseat is one of constant mental strain. Your ego is the fuel that powers the machine you're now part of, and the team supporting you is going to do everything they can to keep your spring of willpower flowing. Your primary contact, typically a pilot liaison or drop captain, will tailor your every interaction with them to manipulate you into blind, zealous loyalty. While your body will inevitably break, the idea is to keep you determined and willing to continue the fight no matter how sickly you become, no matter how much pain you're in, and no matter how loudly your basic human instincts are begging you to quit. You will fall in love. You will dream of the day the war ends. She will be your world.

Step 6: Stop surviving.

How you die isn't particularly important, but it is inevitable. Most Battery pilots succumb to lune poisoning or experience terminal psychic erosion, neither of which are particularly pleasant ways to go. Odds are you'll die with your boots on--your handler's not about to lose out on one last deployment, no matter how frail and sickly you are when you're shoved back into the plugcell. You'll promise you're going to complete the mission for her, and when you fail to resuscitate or your neural flash fails to adhere properly, you'll end up either dumped in space or cut up and sold under the table to clandestine research institutes. Your handler probably won't remember you; she doesn't have that luxury.

. . .

As Whisper approached the target strongpoint, the ravenous combat walker slowed to a gentle jog. Its sunken head fixated across the tundra, locked firmly onto the silhouette of an equally-grotesque lune-infused machine that approached to oppose it.

"Stand down, Whisper. We’re negotiating a walk-past, do not engage.”

Not engaging didn’t mean it couldn’t advance, and advance it most certainly did. Both machines practically galloped towards each other, neither daring enough to move with enough gusto to signal a threat, neither willing to admit they were slower than the other.

Where they met, in a shallow valley between two dunes of salt, there was no room between them for anything more than muzzled malice.

The mechs stared daggers across the dozen meters separating them.

The thousands of sensors dotted all across Whisper picked and preened data from every visible surface of its opponent. Even as the biosupport system pivoted from stimulants to suppressants and rapidly flushed Fours’ body of all the irritant drugs it could, the mech couldn’t help but hunger for the kill it was actively being denied.

Whisper began to pace a slow circle, prompting the other mech to do the same. Its claws twitched with hunger, engine pulsing with the same weighty bass of a predator’s growl. The other mech’s back parted, spewing forth a short burst of flares. The rev of their psylune engines left fractal imprints in the white sand below, suspending particles between their opposing gravity wells. The two dogs circled each other, each snapping just gently enough so as to not incur the wrath of those above them.

Separated from the chemical and psychic influence of the walker, Fours was practically broken to Lincoln’s every syllable. Even jacked up on dozen of combat drugs and mind-melded with a superintelligence designed to kill, the woman’s voice cut through in a way that the faceless command operators simply couldn’t. The most dangerous parts of these encounters was the strain such a counterintuitive command put on whatever ad-hoc pilot was buried inside—but any group with the technical ability to maintain and deploy one of these wretched mechs certainly had the ability to effectively brainwash the single dumb, silly little peon that’d be driving it.

Within the internal structure of Whisper, microgravity flutters rippled. She was being probed, tested by the other creature for a weakness with which to exploit. Fours did much the same, gently pulling small pockets of space in awkward, fourth-dimensional directions to feel her way towards something fragile within the lumbering shape opposing she. It didn’t take either combat system long to feel their way straight to the cockpit, tiny gravitational ripples like the barrel of a gun pressed against the heads of the biological conduits within. Whisper knew its trigger finger was faster. Fear was a blacklisted emotional response. All she needed was the command. One word and she’d splatter that weakling against the side of its own plugcell. Any second now. Just say it. Just say it. Please. Please say it. Please let m

“Disarm and get moving, they’re playing ball with us. Your objective isn’t here.”

Both mechs came to a stop, heads mere yards apart. The imperceptibly light, fluttering pressure over Fours’ chest loitered for a moment too long, then faded. Before she could even process the words, Whisper’s own gravity engine sank back to idle.

. . .

Going to the commissary and picking up a bag of catnip treats but it’s stimulant-infused milkbones for your hound.

“The taste all hounds love! Now with 15% more tritheric morpholone!”

“Choosy Handlers choose Fighties™!”

Brightly colored packages of cartoon mechs and snack bags in all different colors. Undoubtedly, a small warning at the bottom that these are not for unaugmented human consumption.

. . . The first thing she ever felt was the stick of a ten gauge needle into the back of her left thigh.

Two hands held her down—one calloused flesh pressed roughly into the top of her leg, one cold plastic wrapped around her ankle. A third wiped away the blood from the injection, smearing it across her still-dripping skin.

The first thing she ever smelled was the chemical rank of room-temperature cryogel still clinging to her body.

A crumpled, clear plastic bag lay in tatters on the floor, the pale green stain of melted solution tinting what should have been perfectly translucent.

The first thing she ever tasted was stale, recycled air.

She didn’t realize she needed to breathe until she felt the pressure rising in her chest. Laying prone on the sterile(?) medical slab put a weight on her chest the clone wasn’t aware she’d have to press back against. Her first inhale brought with it a wet glob of cryogel up her nose.

When the gel slid up her nose, she coughed. It was reflexive in a way that frightened her—new, yet natural, like a sort of physical déjà vu. Her body rocked on the slab, arms twitching for the first time as she lifted herself up to ease the pressure on her chest. There was a voice behind her, loud, authoritative, but the words were lost in the shock of the moment. A hand she couldn’t see grabbed her bicep, another grabbed the side of her neck, a third wrapped under her opposite arm to stabilize her shaky arms.

She heaved. Eyes watered, and suddenly, fluttered open. She wanted to turn around to look at the person holding her, but the plastic hand gripping the bottom of her head held it firmly in place. Through the blinding light of the room against her fresh eyes, the impression of a face loomed close. The articulated plastic fingers roughly gripping her mandible released, replaced by two soft, warm hands that cupped her cheeks and lifted her face upwards. Softened by the heat of her body, she managed to hack the gel out.

The first thing she ever saw was the face of drop captain Lincoln Karabin leaning over her.

It was soft in a way nothing else was. It was inviting in a way she didn't quite know how to process. As the world slowly fell into focus, the white hair and gentle smile of the woman holding her eased her racing mind.

The first thing she ever heard (that meant anything to her) was the voice of that woman.

. . .

“03, what’s your ETA? We aren’t showing you in the zone yet.”

The glimmer of smeared stars streaked across Sinope’s vision. Very few things in the universe are capable of traveling faster than light—fewer so allow the humble human eye the privilege of seeing such hallowed environ. From a perspective beyond light and darkness, the universe was a gorgeous tapestry of color imperceptible; a regular person might be rendered blind by the sight. A human synth bred and built specifically for this purpose was fortunate enough to get to enjoy the view without worry—even if Mission Control loved to spoil the serenity. 

The pilot didn’t need to move, she only had to speak with the intention of replying to the hail. Her body and mind were one with Her Deafening Whisper, to open a communications channel and project her voice across the hyperley was as instant as willing such to happen.

“I’ll be there in one. Make sure the fighters aren’t in my punchout this time.”

The arrival of a Tidal Gestalt ripping back into normalspace, paradoxically, is incredibly easy not to notice. In a naval skirmish between ships hundreds of meters long, the sudden blip of a thirty meter astromech appearing might be missed on scope of an inattentive radar operator. The subsequent bulge in gravity, especially for those nearby the ingress point, is typically the first sign that the battle is about to end.

When Her Deafening Whisper arrived, she did so as the gentle ripple across the surface of a pond. She moved smoothly, mingling with the space surrounding as though born of the stars rather than the red Martian sand below, dragging a slow gravitational tide in her wake. Narrow muscular fingers grasped the void, wiggling idly as the dark head of the pale machine took in the world around her and prepared to impose upon the conflict.

As she entered realspace and connected to the fleet’s wartime frequency, Sinope caught the very end of a broadcast from her commanders back home.

“—ers. Repeat, Tidal Gestalt support is arriving in the operational area. Maintain nonproximity of at least five hundred meters.”

The pilot seated at the apex of the elegant mech was the head of a small committee that brought the machine to life, but that didn't stop her will from being the absolute arbiter of Her Deafening Whisper’s actions. Across the battlespace, the picket line of Independence Front destroyers didn’t appear to have noticed her appearance behind the United Earths Peacekeeper’s corvette. She would make them regret such a lapse in awareness.

Devoid of scale, the lune mecha didn’t look all too dissimilar from a person. Her body was white as granite, bare save for the United Earths emblems painted across her form and the various more traditional weapons and defense systems affixed to her torso and shoulders. Every inch of her form, save for her head, was constructed from tissue harvested from the very core of a moon. The head, featureless and obsidian-black, reflected every flicker of a missile thruster and twinkle of a laser emitter. 

The seat of power Sinope occupied would be suicide, undoubtedly, for a real person. It was perfect for something greater than.

Driving the machine to war took little more than a thought, a natural extension of the unnatural body she was gifted with. Only the faintest brush of her hand was required to enrapture the drifting debris of a scuttled starship. Binding such to the shape of a crude javelin demanded little more than her idle attention as she drifted beneath the Peacekeeper's corvette. Accelerating the wreckage from standstill to a blinding streak was as natural as batting an eyelash, accomplished with only the disinterested wave of her hand.

. . .

The world spun in circles around Fours. Her eyes had long since faded a dull grey, but that didn’t stop even the vague blobs in front of her from drunkenly sloshing side to side as she staggered across the cold hangar. Every step ached deep in her bones, the unrelenting tug of magnetic gravity scraping away at metal inserts she could practically feel sliding around inside her marrow.

Words were being shouted on all sides, but none of them were even remotely parsable to someone dosed on twice the lethal limit of dexothalimide. Two forces pushed her from behind: one, a gloved hand clasped firmly to her bicep, the other the cold steel of a weapon pressing into the small of her back. Foot by foot, they progressed across the hangar, drawing ever-closer to the beckon of the giant white shape at the other end of the room. Fours could feel it calling.

It didn’t demand anything of her out loud, like the countless voices and echo of machinery in the busy hangar on all sides of her did. It didn’t draw her in physically, like the uncomfortable tug of GravMag bolting her to the floor. Through the nausea and dizziness and weakness that wracked her body, the indistinct monolith before her was a clear and definite objective that demanded nothing and promised everything. The machine had never made good on any of those promises, as far as Fours could remember, but that didn’t stop her heart from aching for the embrace of the cockpit. The iron maiden awaiting her deep within its bowels was the fastest way to make Lincoln proud.

Her toes caught on almost every step up the catwalk, scraping uncomfortably against the metal-tracted stairs. She’d long since outgrown the reflex of reaching outwards to steady herself on the handrails, stifled by the metal cuffs linking her wrists together behind her back. The further they climbed, the darker their surroundings became–the waiting maw of the machine as they stepped within was some small comfort. A tiny mercy of the mech's excruciating punishment was that it burnt the brain so severely that remembering the pain was practically impossible.

Whoever was guiding her withdrew their weapon only long enough to free their second hand. The haze of the pre-sortie cocktail coursing through her ragged veins dulled the sensation of the tight metal cuffs binding her so effectively that she hardly noticed her escort roughly drawing them off. The world lurched into smeared motion as she was spun around, the pulsing orange lights of the hangar masking the large shape of the hazard suit that was pressing her backwards into the plugcell. Things happened around her. Fours floated along with it.

. . .

When Whisper arrived, it did so as a storm. It moved fast and low, mingling with the salt taiga as though one with the ground, dragging a crystalline cloud in its wake. It was one with the whipping wind and stone outcroppings, weaving across the exoplanetary surface with all the poise of a naturalized predator. Hydraulic fingers grasped the saline snowcaps, clawing for inertia in tandem with a hungry set of traction-padded feet that dug deep into the dune beneath.

Mascoweave muscles pumped with unimaginable force, heaving along an indifferent skeleton and unwilling organs towards the smell of vehicular prey. There was nothing else but the kill on this entire planet, no other sensation than the closing gap between the satmarker and the mech’s own location. Whisper’s head remained pinned forward, as though its eyes could cut through the gale it tugged in its stead.

Eleven meters of lust for the kill propelled itself through sparse foliage, battering petrified treestems and kicking up sharp chunks of calcified mineral as it barreled through untouched tundra. The machine was not subtle, nor did it need to be; it charged headlong, desperate, fixated in its entirety on the reward that awaited it on the other end of the slaughter. The terrain was burnt into its very mind, each rock and crevasse accounted for as though the orbital survey cameras mounted to the underside of its support craft were a third eye. All at once, the automech could see the slow progress of its target convoy, the pair of walkers maintaining a light jog to either flank, and its own approach to the east, data parsed through the onboard digimind before being run through the Battery for a final cognitive parse.

Fours wanted blood.

The creature shackled somewhere deep inside the lower spine of the mech was, objectively, the tiniest stakeholder in its own existence, but that didn't stop her hunger from influencing even the judgement of the KRIEGSHIRN warmind that was currently utilizing her brain as wetware. If the hunter-killer automech AI wanted to budge the pulsating white lune muscles that gave the machine its horsepower, it needed to forcibly inhabit a human brain. If that brain wanted to force those muscles to pump with the same vigor as its own, the flesh body it was hidden inside required a series of (eventually) fatal hyperradioactive particulate injections. Suicide, perhaps, for a real person. Perfect for something less than.

Synaptic oscillators wired deep within the clone's brain fired artificial pulses across neural bridges at the behest of the AI possessing her, but that couldn't entirely suppress her raw willpower from infecting the commands the machine gave her drug-hazed body. Even after the strain of the lunar synchronization and the skull burn of the digibrain's mind meld quite literally killed her, like divots worn away in a road, the very way her brain chemistry was wired predisposed it to hunger. Lust for the kill. Obedience. Above all, a pitiful desire to be praised for a job well done.

Shortly into the deployment, the agony within the mech faded to a shameful whimper. Well before the machine made contact, the onboard monitors no longer read a pulse. Even still, as the hulking tower of living death crested a dune and met the line-of-sight of the convoy it sought to terminate, the indomitable bloodthirst of the corpse within still burned bright.

. . .

The machine staggering forth against the whipping polar wind, more than anything else, was an ungainly creature. Whisper was already an unsightly walker, even when it was operating at full capacity, but the state it was deployed in did it no favors.

A crude, stretched out skeleton wrapped in bands of limp white musculature that hung across it like a weight shambled over the empty tundra. Its short, squat head hung practically limp over its hunched chest, oversized arms dragging oversized hydraulic knuckles across the salt-snow beneath. A set of double-jointed legs labored with each painful step, hoisting above twenty feet of dead weight with an internal backup support system barely capable of sustaining its heft.

Within, buried in the lower spine of the mech, Fours floated in absolute darkness. The clone couldn’t really tell if the floating sensation was literal or just a side-effect of the stimulants and suppressants being fed through the multiple tubes that hung from her bandage-wrapped arms. The gentle hum and sway of the machine melded with the whine of the narcopumps ebbing her vision and mind with splashes of red, orange, green, blue, purple—none of which visible in the pitch black of the tiny cell she was locked within, yet each as vivid as the heat she felt as they melted over her mind. Even if she wasn’t practically blind, it’s doubtful the clone would be able to see the mist of her own frigid breath.

The lumbering mech came to a stop, body unwavering as the white sandstorm beat against its hull.

“System alert: minimum safe distance cleared. Psylune engine arming. ”

The voice of the automech AI reverberated through the metal harness shackling her legs and the aural implants behind her ears all at once, briefly drowning out the sound of the walker’s structure groaning with each uneven step. Surrounding the Battery, several beeps and blips signaled a switch in drug administration and the winding up of several more direct-control systems.

Fours didn’t realize she needed to be afraid, but even without any conscious memory of the process, her body had become conditioned to the excrucia. She didn’t know why the whine of the dialytic pump speeding up or the click of the artificial fibrillators implanted against her chest and side made her heart start to race, or why cold sweat began to condensate against the even colder air surrounding her. There were very few things that the clone did know, but perhaps the most important thing she took security in was that the walker captain would take care of her. That Head Karabin had her best interest in mind. That Lincoln loved her.

A light a few inches from the pilot’s face began to blink.

“You’re starting to spike, Fours. I need you to relax.”

The pilot’s legs flinched together against her harness. Her breath caught in her throat. The machine, halfway through subsuming her body’s vital functions and unsatisfied with the respiratory interruption, pulsed her diaphragm to force the breath out.

“Take a slow breath for me, you can do that.”

The voice of the captain cut through the darkness and the cold in a way nothing else could. The heat that washed over her wasn’t (just) from the spooling of the fusion turbines sitting a few feet anatomically superior of her cell, nor was it (entirely) the voice-activated dripdose of myphine intended to reinforce the sheer euphoria that was receiving even a small glance from her superior; it was something Fours never learned a word for. It was a hunger. It was a need. It was a borderline imperative. She could take a slow breath. She could take a thousand slow breaths if she was asked.

“That’s looking better. We’ve still got half a bottle of that kvithe from the last station—do a good job for me and we’ll polish it off together when you get back, okay?”

The pilot could only whine in response. She certainly knew the words to announce her desperate agreement with that proposition, but buried under an hour of the sort of chemical therapies that even the perpetrator’s execution couldn’t come close to making atonement for, there was very little of the clone left to voice herself. Perfect synchronic harmony with the alien tissue surrounding the mech required a near once-in-a-galaxy genetic match. Good enough harmony required a lifetime of meditation. Fours’ version, a loose partnership rather than any meaningful harmony, requires a hospital’s worth of narcotics.

The clone’s brain flickered idly across thoughts of Lincoln, shared memories of theirs, and her own observations about the cockpit around her. She was excited to get to celebrate something—anything—if it meant being in her commander’s company. She wondered if she’d be able to try food again. It had been a long time since she’d been given the chance. Her breath crept back within the acceptable range.

“This is going to be a walk in the park for you. I know you'll make me proud.”

There was a small greenhouse aboard one of the stations the company had stopped at. It wasn’t as though a halite wasteland like Hjkor had trees, so experiencing (read: touching) real ones left quite the impression on the clone. Lincoln always did promise to take her to a “real” park. Maybe that would be soon? Her endocrine limiter reported the correct balance of hormones to indicate a peaceful state of mind. Quietly, a series of neural snapshots were captured—enough to reconstruct her brainstate after the digimind transfer shattered it.

“Thatta girl. That’s exactly where you need to be.” There was a short dead silence over the hyperley radio. Then, the light darkened.

Most of all, the clone wondered if all the flowers in the galaxy smelled as nice as the ones in the greenhouse did. Maybe, just maybe, one day, she could even—

A pair of pneumatically-primed three-inch nervespikes fired behind Fours, contacting two ports on either side of the top of her spine, just above the top of her neck. In an instant, the entire cognitive capacity of the onboard KRIEGSHIRN tactical-level warmind--a supercomputing organ roughly the size of a dresser--was forced through one tiny human* brain.

Whisper's stranglehold on the Battery's autonomic processes prevented her from screaming. Even if she could, nobody was listening anymore. Every neuron inside the clone's head burned white-hot with the agony of intellect thousands of times beyond a brain's capacity squeezed across its pathetic synapses. Every flinch of the waking muscles bathed Fours in sickening degenerate radiation. The only agency she was left with was the freedom to feel her pathetic biological makeup shatter at the seams beneath the strain of the machine using her like one of its many organs.

Fours wasn't the one thinking anymore, but the automech AI that made itself at home within her skull could feel the ghost of the Battery egging it forward. Fours wasn't the one moving anymore, but as her body twitched in tandem with the white lune muscles that now seized with life, the system reported her compliance with its directives. The Battery's last thoughts, frozen in time beneath the cognitive avalanche, were of her captain, plants, and hope.

The tundra surrounding the mech rippled like the surface of water as gravity leaked from the abominable weapon. Its bone-white muscles pumped with new life, no longer dead slabs of weight. Its head twisted, perhaps in agony, perhaps in satisfaction.

Whisper turned towards the rising suns and began to walk. Then, jog. Then, run. Then, bound. Alive and hungry, a creature no longer Fours and no longer an automated combat system sought only to complete the captain's orders. It wished only to plant its claws deep within the cockpit of its target. It hoped only to please Lincoln.

Lincoln was no longer watching.

. . . According to Karabin’s vague understanding of lunar poisoning care, the pilot’s bandages didn’t strictly need to be changed nightly. Lincoln still chose to.

Fours sat cross-legged atop the bed, white strips already covering her feet and calves up to where they disappeared into her nightclothes. Her shirt lay discarded on the blanket beside, left arm extended forwards as the Division Head delicately swaddled each of her lesions, blisters, and synchburns. It was a slow, tedious ritual, but one that the pilot had grown to find comfort in. Even if she couldn’t see the woman sitting across from her very clearly, the warm white color of Lincoln’s long hair and the gentle pressure of fingers against her skin were all she needed to know she was in safe company.

“You’re looking better. I’ve got some new lotion from Yaro waiting for us at the next port, it’s supposed to help with the pain. And it smells like meilfluer.”

“You are… from Yaro, too.”

“I am. I told you that… what, last week, right? Surprised you remembered.”

The pilot couldn’t help but smile at the praise. Linc was mindful to inflict her tone upwards, but her cheeks were far from risen.

“Is that where… dogs live…?”

“Oh, no no, real yre pas are from the Earths. They can’t live on planets out here.”

“That’s sad.”

“It isn’t sad, they just aren’t made for space. Besides, they live nice happy lives in the cities on the Earths, with nice happy people who take care of them. No walkers, no war.”

“No walkers… no war…? That's sad, too…”

Lincoln shook her head in silence, turning the pilot’s palm over as she pinned the final gauze strip into place. The pilot couldn’t imagine a life without warfare; what in the world did people do all day, if they weren’t wrestling three-story mechs to the ground or dodging installation rocketfire? What was the purpose of life, if not to fight?

“It’s not as strange as it sounds. One day, I’ll take you to see a real city.” Lincoln let go of the pilot’s hand, and began to return the various tools she was using to the aid kit. “For now, shirt on, it’s bedtime.”

“What about…its face…?”

“The air will help it heal faster. Just be careful when you lie down, you don’t want to rub it wrong while you sleep.”

Fours gingerly reached up to touch her own face. It had been weeks since it wasn’t covered in bandages, even longer since it had been exposed to the cool recycled ship air for any meaningful amount of time. In truth, she didn’t even know what it looked like; her vision had always been poor, and the general wear and tear of being a lunar conduit had only worsened her sense. Tape-wrapped fingertips against the raw flesh felt novel: uncomfortable and new at the same time, some mix of painful and welcoming. But, how did it compare to…?

“What is…its face…like?” Fours slowly managed, turning her sightless eyes towards the driver captain sitting across from her. Lincoln paused, one finger halfway through extracting a contact lens, contemplating how exactly to answer that question. The initial link had taken many different things from many different batteries over the years, but Fours was the first to lose her sight so aggressively to the machine—for once, this was a question she hadn’t had a dozen previous chances to answer, but she’d yet to let such a hurdle crack her improv before. After a brief pause to think, Lincoln turned her body, and scooted closer to the waiting pilot. 

Fours could only see the vague, indistinct blob of Karabin’s hand move to rest atop her own, cupping her hand tenderly. The Division Head took her pilot’s other hand and raised it up to her own face, placing Fours’ fingers against the curve of her cheek.

“Your cheeks are higher than mine. And your jaw is more narrow.”

The pilot felt frozen in time, her senses keenly attuned to her hands, comparing and contrasting the sensations. Lincoln moved Fours’ hand across the front of her face, tracing the bottom of the eye towards the bridge of the nose. She felt her left index finger glide across Lincoln’s vital, warm skin, while her right was guided delicately over her own raw, tingling flesh.

“Your eyes are bigger, and gray. My eyes are smaller, and brown.”

Fours blinked, silent. She had some idea of what Lincoln looked like, between catching crystal-clear glimpses while connected to the walker sensory suite and her memories of seeing the Division Head when she’d first been woken up in Sandfog’s care. Still, never in all her life had she possessed a better mental image than this moment. 

Lincoln lifted their hands upwards in tandem, curving the pilot’s fingers forward gingerly to allow them to comb across their scalps. Fours could immediately feel the difference: Lincoln’s was thick and straight, still damp from their shower, while her scalp was tender and hair thin and slightly tangled.

“My hair is white and long. Your hair is short and black. Before I bleached it, my hair used to be brown.”

Fours nodded slowly, transfixed by the sensations. Never before had she felt such comparison, two things the same and yet so different cascading between her fingertips, guided by Lincoln’s hands. Slowly, her eyes drifted shut, the pilot more than happy to lose herself in her tactile sense for the time being.

“Your nose is smaller than my nose. A little more narrow, too.”

Lincoln pulled the Fours’ hands down gently, past her mouth and chin, letting them rest against the pilot’s lap, before cupping Fours’ cheeks tenderly. The battery had barely opened her eyes when the warm blur of Lincoln’s face subsumed her vision. So close, she could make out some of the larger details for herself, but her vision was just poor enough to protect the pale hesitation plastered across the Division Head’s expression. The heat of Lincoln's breath overwhelmed the stale, dry room air. If it weren't for the hands holding her cheeks, the clone wanted to lean closer to it.

Karabin lingered inches from Fours’ face long enough for her racing heart to catch up to her brain, then let her hands fall from the clone pilot’s face. The human among them couldn’t will herself to push the envelope any further. No matter how badly she felt like she needed to pretend otherwise, she was alone in this room.

“Our mouths are different.” Her voice was low, hasty.

Just beneath Fours’ eye was a barcode string: tiny text printed into the skin, and a seemingly endless series of numbers. This sight, the human commander found, was much more grounding than immersing herself in the animus of the… thing sitting across from her. 

. . . “No hostiles remaining. System starting Battery relief cycle.”

Having come to a stop in the midst of a sea of broken armor, the sides of a single titanic war machine parted, chest folding forwards and back splitting open to reveal a single tiny human form within. The little body was barely significant in the midst of such a towering, bloodstained monolith, accompanied only by the callous intonation of an onboard automech AI.

“System administering four hundred thirty milligrams: meitothyl psythenigor.”

The halite planet of Hjkor III was always considered a power position in the system for the endless tundra of salt it bore, but devolved into a corporate warzone the day reserves of rare metals and fuel elements were discovered within its crust. Even if the rock bore a semi-breathable atmosphere and tolerable gravity, planetwide artillery shelling and the constant threat of any small homestead being interpreted as a rival corporate incursion is a pretty effective way to gatekeep colonial efforts. The lifeless corpse buried within the mech cared little for the politics of the war; it hardly had the facilities to comprehend them.

“System administering ninety milligrams: brimophyntynol.”

The pilot’s body twitched, exposed like the pistil of a flower in the freezing air. Her short, sweat-caked hair tossed in the arctic wind. Whatever human was in command of the idle giant was severely indisposed, form sagging without so much as a hint of vitality.

“System administering two hundred ten milligrams: carcyl methodine.”

Somewhere within the lifeless slab, a heart seized with unsolicited life.

“Stage one: cardiac vivification complete. Beginning stage two. System administering four hundred thirty two volts.”

Poking through the uncountable tangle of bandages and tapes coating every inch of the pilot’s suit, a faint light blinked against her flank. Some metallic element, pressed against the flesh of the body and wired deep into the waiting entrails of the machine, had plans for its tiny ridealong.

“System administering regulation rhythm: seventy eight beats per minute.”

A light across her collarbone, opposite the first, blinked in time with its pair. Solid green, interrupted with flashes of red as lethal amperage passed through her flesh, wrestling the heart into some semblance of a healthy beat. The blips steadily grew more regular, pulsing in pairs as they settled into a comfortable, faux-natural pace.

“Stage two: pulmonary benchmark reached. Beginning stage three. System administering neural flash.”

In an instant, the previously limply bowed head of the pilot shot up, faded and foggy eyes filled with bloodshot vigor. Still hands grasped wildly at the first things in reach, knuckles whiting as the pilot gripped the metal harness at the middle of her thighs. Her legs remained deep inside the torso of the four-story pillar, but that didn’t stop her from wriggling and screaming as if she could do anything about it.

Between the phlegm and blood sticking to the inside of her throat, and the fact that her heart could only beat at the resting rate it was artificially induced into, she could only shout and fight for a short time before light-headedness forced her into a weak pant.

“Reaction noted. System administering correctional dose. One hundred forty milligrams: glucomic tripsthentonol.”

The pilot could barely hear the words of the machine speaking through its flayed frame, but she could feel a warming presence melt through her body and mind, and that was good enough for whatever was left of her brain. It was only at this point that she began to think, primal lobotomized animal instinct put to bed by a rational human psyche that knew (vaguely) where it was and knew not to be afraid.

She knew she didn’t need to be afraid of being trapped inside the thick spinal column at the core of this walker: that was the best place for a pilot to integrate with the JF-S systems. She knew there was no reason to fear the pulsating, pale white endomusculature surrounding her, because those thick strips of flesh were what kept her safe. She knew better than to fear the dry and salty air whipping at her side–it didn’t matter if it was safe to breathe or not, her bloodstream was already so rigorously filtered that nothing short of being exposed to vacuum could kill her.

There was no reason to fear the sea of burning tanks, shattered human bodies, or the mangled pile of mech oozing flame in front of her. They were dead.

She had no recollection of how she ended up here, of course. The Battery spent her time riding shotgun in her own mind–her only purpose aboard the bastardmech was to serve as a biological connection between the pulsing muscles surrounding her and the bones of the traditional ground walker contained within. There was more kinship to be felt from the rhythmic vibrations of the idle musculature around her than the void of silence the autopilot’s brief disconnection left in its wake. The fact that she was having any measure of independent thought, no matter how benign, was an uncomfortable feeling to reacclimate to.

“System command: when ready, please recite your licensure number to verify cognizance.”

The voice of the walker systems reverberated through the resting, steaming internal muscle of the machine. It vibrated through the spinal interface, through the pilot’s ears and skeleton in parallel. Her number was one of the few things left that she could recite on command, but even then, placing the digits in order took a long few minutes to prepare between violent fits of coughing to rid her throat of mucus, blood, and bits of necrotic tissue. When she was finally able to speak, her voice could barely be heard over the whipping translucent winds; the weak vibrations of her speech were read through implants against the throat, meaningless utterances checked against a small library of predefined command phrases to give the Battery some illusion of control and agency within the titanic war machine.

“Sta… st-sta… sta…”

The pilot murmured, lip quivering, chin craning upwards as though she was looking for some god to answer her. The sky, for the moment, was silent.

“System command: please recite pilot licensure number.”

The mech system beneath reiterated, artificial voice slightly more forceful.

“St-sta…tus…”

she tried again, eyes fighting to remain open as the initial rush of the revivification drugs began to fade off. The automech system was silent, working overtime to parse the faintest of murmurs from the spent body against the vibrations of the whipping wind.

“System record: priority target neutralized. Target ground resistance force neutralized. Area secure. All objectives met. Extraction craft inbound.”

The automated readout paused, before continuing with the only part of the status report the frayed pilot actually cared about. “Head Karabin sends her approval.”

Between the bandages across her face, the pilot’s dry lips turned to a smile. Her legs tensed, wiry muscles pressing against the restraint harness. She wiggled ever so slightly, head lowering to her chest and arms wrapping around her body. Her lungs began to seize, regurgitating sounds somewhere between a cough and a giggle.

“It… did-d… it…. It… di-did… it…It…it… di-di-d… it…”

Her voice was so small that it was lost in the exotundra gale, interrupted occasionally by weak hacking. The AI could barely process the fragments of words she sputtered, but it knew better than to try. After a moment of her senseless babbling, it once again repeated its first demand.

“System command: please recite pilot licensure number to verify cognizance.”

The pilot paused, recalling those specific words being important. Did it say “number”? That was important. She knew a number. Voice barely above a whisper, she recited the number.

“Four… four… four… eight… t-two… one… three… one… nine… sssssix.”

Each was labored and ragged, held together only by memorization and repetition so worn into her mind that she could (and often did) murmur it in rare moments of sleep. If pressed, it was unlikely she could recall the numbers zero, five, or seven. At the very least, she knew why everyone called her “Fours”.

“System confirms: Battery cognizance. Relief cycle will end in five minutes, or upon detection of hostile activity. System recommendation: Enjoy the view.”

Whether or not the subjugated pilot trapped within the machine could even comprehend the voice of the automech systems hardly mattered. She was ancillary to the whole operation, an outdated holdover only relevant due to lost technology, no more in control than an engine commanded a car.

At the very least, though the drug-addled haze and overwhelming exhaustion, the Battery pilot could still stare out at the jagged horizon of this empty saline world. Even if her gray, cloudy eyes were most of the way towards blindness, the warm shape of a sunrise in the distance never ceased to mesmerize her tiny, ragged mind. As the whipping wind relented, her tiny voice was just barely audible over the hum of the mech and the wail of the clime.

“It… did… it…”

. . .

After retrieving their Remnant Mech, priority number one for the Sandfog Company was to remove the Battery. The clones are more expensive than any standard walker fuel cell, and Lincoln Karabin never failed to be the top name on the extraction itinerary. She had a philosophy–a dangerous thing for a mercenary commander to have–and believed that certain policies within her group could stretch their dollar further than the baseline. With finances as tight as they are, any practice that can squeeze an extra deployment or two out of the expensive clones is agreed to be well worth the headache.

Despite the potential dangers, Linc was always right up on the hangar railings as the ramshackle machine returned to its standing bay, watching with baited breath through the hazy visor of the crew’s sole hazard suit. She knew better to approach until the proper restraint bolts had been fitted and the valuable machine-mind core had been removed, of course, but no sooner than those tasks had been completed was she barking for the technicians to open up the Battery access and bring out the umbilical bridge for her to approach.

The walker bore a small head, torso speckled in observation cameras and sensors to keep up awareness where its neck could not. Even as the machine’s body split like a flower, plating and lunar-composite musclebands peeling away to reveal the hybrid alloy endoskeleton, it was hard not to get the feeling it was watching every move made around it. The catwalk extending into its body, straight back to the thick spinal assembly, gave the image of some carnivorous plant luring helpless insects between its maw. Despite all of this, when Lincoln confidently strode down the gangway, pulled the release, and opened up the Battery’s makeshift internal plugdock, she felt no fear towards the scrawny rag of a girlshape trapped within. There was only the exhaustion, and a desensitized echo of pity.

What had once been a cockpit was crudely converted into a plugcell hardly fit for a convict, welded straight into the spinal chain and sealed over by a muscular sheath. Most of the bones of the machine had once belonged to the walker commander herself, although the Frankenstein’s mech stapled to the wall before her was practically impossible to recognize as the Colony Rush-era corp armor it started life as. She knew the machine inside and out in ways even the underqualified crew of engineers that duct taped it together couldn’t imagine, and while that familiarity did contribute to the sort of career washed-up armorjocks could seldom dream of, that wasn’t to say that the job was completely free of unpleasantries.

Karabin didn’t bother regurgitating a smile—even if the Battery wasn’t blind as a bygr, little more than the vague impression of eyes were visible through the visor of her radsuit—but she didn’t have much choice but to dig out a voice wholly unlike her own: something soft and nurturing, saccharine to the ear of a vatgirl who didn’t know any better. Playing mother to a revolving door of disposable clones grew tiresome about as quickly as one would expect, but some semblance of love had a visible impact on the lifespan of the uncomfortably expensive Battery pilots.

With a heave, Lincoln threw the plugcell release, raising her free hand as the hiss of depressurization rushed across her crinkly suit. Inside rested only the lifeless corpse of the Battery halfway through vivification, yellowing bandages covering almost every inch of suit and skin not restrained by the metal harness shackling her to the core of the mech. The blinking indicators of the pilot’s onboard defib packs signaled their regulation of an induced heartbeat, as did the weary heave of her breath confirm a successful neural flash, leaving only her physical removal to complete her temporary separation from the semilune warform.

When the worklight of the hangar finally flooded the tiny plug, the Battery could only make out an indistinct orange blob standing on the catwalk opposite she. Even through the fog of revivification, color association and raw habit instantly attuned her mind to the identity of the person standing before her. One shaky hand reached out, fingers flexing somewhere between elation and desperation, and met with a reassuring clasp.

“You’re okay, Fours. It’s me.”

Karabin spoke. Beaten, burned, bloodied, and only minutes removed from death itself, the pilot still found the strength to smile at the voice calling out to her.

. . .

“It did it…Linc…oln….”

“You did. You did very well, Fours.”

The Battery pilot wiggled like an enthused dog, wet hair sticking to her face. Lukewarm water cascaded off her naked form–any warmer would agitate the synchronization burns, any cooler would risk disrupting the work of the antilune medication in her veins. Behind her, Linc held the showerhead, gently rinsing off the white particulate sticking between the pilot’s cybernetic spinebrace and her inflamed flesh.

“One or two more good contracts like that, and we might just be able to stay in business. This water is warm because of your hard work.”

Fours remembered a time when heating the water was too expensive, and before that, she remembered when water itself was rationed for drinking aboard the ship. She looked down towards her bare feet as Lincoln’s hands moved up her neck, skin tingling as the Division Head’s fingers delicately brushed her hair aside. In truth, the disposable clone pilots didn’t need to be bathed (the cryogenic bags they were intended to be stored in disinfected their bodies inside and out), but the merc found a personal touch to pay dividends enough to be worth the hassle.

“It has… a ques…tion.”

Lincoln paused. That was new. She leaned forwards, resting her chin atop the shoulder of the shorter girl in front of her.

“What’s your question?”

She spoke in a soft voice, briefly pressing the showerhead to her stomach to stem the noise of the water.

“Who is… it a cl…one of?”

Lincoln blinked.

“Spi…der sa…id it–”

“Spider.”

Lincoln repeated, confusion disappearing as quickly as it had set in. “Forget Spider, you aren’t a clone of somebody.”

Fours didn’t immediately say anything, but the slump of her shoulders hardly looked convinced.

“You’re a recombinant, it’s different. People like me are made when two other people swap genes, but you came from a thousand donors being all mixed together into something brand new. You’re about as unique as they come.”

It was a canned deflection of the question, words so practiced they were practically racing each other out the door. Linc’s eyes idly scanned the hundreds of identifying tattoos across the clone pilot’s body, but the foamy soap dripping down her back covered the majority of them.

“It's… uni…que?”

Sandfog Company’s fourteenth consecutive Battery pilot slowly repeated, latching hopefully onto the only part of the monologue Karabin needed her to process.

“One of a kind.”

Lincoln joylessly confirmed. She’d had some variation of this exact conversation no less than thirteen times past. Spider, the closest thing to the company's onboard medic, seeded it just to spite her, she imagined.

. . .

“No hostiles rem-rem-remaining. System starting Battery reli-eif-ei-ef cycle.”

Having come to a stop in the midst of a sea of burning colony town, the sides of a lone war machine parted, chest folding forwards and back splitting open to reveal a single tiny human form within. The little body was barely significant in the midst of such a towering, bloodstained monolith.

“Revivification res-res-res-erves drained. System administering emer-mer-mergency backup: thirty-five milligrams bizendotrine.”

The tundra planet of Hjkor III was well on its way to becoming a prosperous colonial effort. After the end of the corporate war, and the mass culling of the mercenary companies who’d contributed to so much death and destruction, the halite world was a prime spot for humanity to set down new roots and begin to rebuild. Even if the rock only bore a semi-breathable atmosphere and tolerable gravity, it was as good a place as any to plant flags and start anew. Not that the lifeless corpse buried within the mech cared.

“System inducing: gas-gastral purge.”

As soon as the emergency dose of bizendotrine was injected into her stomach, the lifeless pilot suddenly shot to life, screaming and bellowing like the devil incarnate. She was quickly interrupted by an artificially-induced heave, head lurching forwards as bile and blood poured from her dry, cracked lips. Bizendotrines were the caliber of chemicals used to ease alien megafauna out of cryo, one drop was enough to kill a human several times over. A concentrated dose in the right spot could damn near reverse death… so long as it was expelled just as quickly.

“Stage one: emergency vivifica-ca-cation complete. Begin-nn-ing stage two. System administering six hundred nine-nine-ninety eight volts.”

Poking through the uncountable tangle of crusty, brown bandages and tapes coating every inch of the pilot’s suit, a faint light blinked against her flank. Some old metallic element, crudely welded into the flesh of the body and wired deep into the waiting entrails of the machine, was not ready to let her go just yet.

“System administering-ing regulation rhythm.”

A light across her collarbone, opposite the first, blinked faintly in time with its pair. Solid green, interrupted with flashes of red as lethal amperage passed through her flesh, wrestling the heart into some semblance of a healthy beat. The blips steadily grew more regular, pulsing in pairs as they settled into a lopsided, barely natural pace.

“Stage two: pulmonary ben-ben-benchmark reached. Beginning stage three. System administering neural-al-al flash.”

In an instant, the head of the pilot shot up, faded and foggy eyes filled with bloodshot vigor. Still hands grasped wildly at the first things in reach, knuckles whiting as the pilot gripped the metal harness at the middle of her thighs. Her legs remained deep inside the torso of the four-story pillar, but that didn’t stop her from wriggling and screaming as if she could do anything about it. Teeth clenched as offloaded memories surged through her frayed mind, her entire life and personality re-injected into a brain that was well past its warranty.

Between the phlegm and blood sticking to the inside of her throat, and the fact that her heart could only beat at the lopsided resting rate it was artificially induced into, she could only shout and fight for a short time before light-headedness forced her into a weak pant.

“Reaction noted. No correct-ct-ctional dose available.”

She groaned through the pain, knuckles white against the harness that sealed her within the spine of the resting machine. She didn’t need any ‘correction’, she just needed to push a little further beyond. One more mission and everything would be back to the way it was. One more ambush and life would be right again. One more contract and they could retire like queens.

Even if the thick spinal column at the core of her walker was the best place for a pilot to integrate with the JF-S systems, that didn’t make it feel any less like a tomb. The pulsating, sickly white endomusculature surrounding her was deteriorating, slowly, but that rancid synthfiber flesh was what kept her safe. The lukewarm air surrounding her was just barely safe to breathe, but even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t let something so trivial slow her down.

There was no reason to fear the sea of crushed prefab homes, overturned trucks, and burning generators surrounding her feet. The target had been neutralized.

The best part of the lunar dust-infused musclebands surrounding her was that they bled with a hellish odor, which made damage very quick to assess. The fingers of her walker were coated in a black ooze, no doubt sourced from the oil reserve (enemy walker?) she’d thrown a dozen meters to the east. In the salt that piled thick as snow, she’d easily be able to smell any severe leakages by the putrid reaction the two made when they combined, but a quick once-over confirmed she’d executed the mission without taking any meaningful damage.

“System com-mm-and: when ready, please recite your licensure number to ver-ver-ify cognizance.”

The staticy, broken voice of the walker systems reverberated through the resting, steaming internal muscle of the machine. It vibrated through the spinal interface, through the pilot’s ears and skeleton in parallel. Her number was… her number… she had a number… she knew it…

When she was finally ready to speak, no sound emerged from her dry, bloody lips. Her mouth curved into one single word, body so spent she could hardly muster the breath to give it life. The mockery of life she tried to persuade the automech systems still resided within her wasn’t even being checked for anymore; any meaningless utterance was automatically verified and accepted against an empty library of passkeys and command phases

First, her dripping lips closed tight to shape an F, then widened slightly into a long O. The lower lip stiffened slightly as she curved up into a U, then sustained an R. As her strength sapped, her mouth relaxed into the hiss of an S. Fours

.

“Sys-sys-system confirms: Battery cog-cog-cog-cog–Relief cycle will end in fi-fi-five minutes, or upon detection of hostile activity. System recommen-men-men-men–Enjoythevi-vi-view.”

The Battery pilot’s mouth continued to move even as her head hung and her eyes closed, throat fighting to press enough air to hit the sharp “st”

. All she needed was the tiniest vibration in her neck for the system to pick up on her intention: after so many hundreds of missions, the AI had grown quite accustomed to the only two words she ever spoke.

“Ssss…sss…ssss…ssst…”

The Battery weakly hissed, lip quivering, head hanging on her shoulders as though an apple atop a tree.

“Sta-status-us.”

The walker AI repeated, not much better than she at vocalizing the word. Still, it soldiered on. “System rec-record: priorit-ty tar-target neutralized. Target grou-nnn-nd force neu-eutralized. Target escape pre-pre-prevented. All obj-obj-objectives met. Extraction craft unav-av-av-av-av–Head Karabin sends her ap-pp-proval.”

Between the countless scars and burns across her face, the Battery pilot’s eyes welled with tears. Those five words were the only reason she kept fighting, the only fuel for the limitless flame of willpower that burned inside of her. Those five words caused her to rock in her harness, dig her chipped fingernails into her sides, and throw up once more. Lincoln approved. Lincoln said good job. Lincoln praised her. That rush hit harder than the bizendotrine.

“It… did-d… it…. It… di-did… it…It…it… di-di-d… it…”

Her voice was so small that may as well not exist, dipping in and out of pantomime as her lungs struggled to keep up with her attempts at speech. Bits of phlegm and necrotic tissue clung to her mouth and chin, sickly hot in the cool breeze that billowed across her overheated body.

At the very least, even though the drug-addled haze and lifeless fervor, the Battery pilot could still stare down at the carnage around the feet of her walker. Even if her gray, cloudy eyes were most of the way towards blindness, the warm shape of burning buildings and the red-on-white splotches of corpses in the white salt-snow was close to what she remembered a sunrise looking like. As the whipping wind relented, her tiny voice was just barely audible over the hum of the mech and the wail of the clime.

“It… did… it…”

. . .

By the time the deteriorating Remnant Walker limped back to base, the sun was already well below the horizon.

Fours never questioned why Sandfog’s crew never moved out of the crash site of their flagship–none of the personnel were much for talking these days. That was alright, though; she had earned them out of tougher spots in the past.

The walker bay was impossible to access, but Fours didn’t want to moor herself there anyways. Even though the automech AI wasn’t supposed to be able to dock anywhere but its designated standing bay, the Battery pilot’s willpower proved more than sufficient to redirect the machine just about anywhere she wanted.

The three-story walker came to a stop near the side of the ship, at a point that gash easily five meters tall and ten times as long carved a jagged hole in the hull. The sickly body of the mech flayed and spread itself open on command, and after a short (equally painful) revivification cycle, the pilot unfastened herself from the restraints and slowly crawled across the fleshy innards of the mech until she could pull herself into the hole in the ship’s hull.

Even unable to make out all but the blurriest of shapes, the pilot knew this route by heart. She knew the exact place to drag herself through the gash to avoid getting cut on the uneven metal, she knew exactly how far to crawl down the catwalk within and exactly which hallway to stop at. Even if she couldn’t read the words “ESCAPE POD” written on the wall, she knew that the door with the bright orange number two on it was the one she needed. She’d done this hundreds of times, and she’d do it hundreds more. She’d crawl through this ship and mount up in the walker every day until she could finish enough contracts to save the company.

The door to the malfunctioned escape pod was jammed open. Inside, belted to the seat, was a decomposing body dressed in an important-looking uniform. It took all of the Battery pilot’s strength to pull herself up into the seat, curling her legs atop the lap of the stiff body in the pod. Gingerly, she rested her head against its shoulder, allowing herself to sink into that familiar plush. Deeply, she inhaled. The small space reeked of death, decay, gas, and rust. Somewhere underneath all of that, it smelled like Karabin.

“It… did it… Linc…oln…”