The Mud Wasps, as a group, fill a curious niche within the world of applied violence. Their designation— Independent Combat Contractors— is a rarely-seen holdover from the messy transition period between Seccomm and Thirdcomm, wherein larger mercenary corps were subject to intense scrutiny. This designation marks them as limited in both resources and scale, but allows for a wider horizon of deployment under the jobs they take, and places them in a legal classing more in line with engineering than warfare.
ICCs, for this reason, tend to specialize in unorthodox jobs and doctrines. These five excel in ‘hardened environ liberation through medium-exploitative vectors.’ They take the earth, and teach their enemies to fear it.
Hi, all. Felt things were a bit (stale) (cliché) outdated again, so we’re switching up the style. I’m also gonna try organizing our posts now based on who’s speaking, in case folks care about that. Introductions as follow:
No Future, he/she, callsign ‘Figment’. SEKHMET-class NHP piloting the Lich ‘WHICH THRICE BURNED STILL PERSISTS’. I’ve got a habit of (hearing things) echoing a bit, don’t worry. (Tag: #something there)
Sup, name’s Caoise, ‘she’ and soft-launching ‘it’. Callsign ‘Sickcada’. I’m a newly-made monster, think pre-fall Xenomorph. Workin’ on a new mech, ‘DANCE ON THE HOLY’. (Tag: #the chronicle of sickcada)
Saleh Fakhour, reluctant of the Court of Emir Ambrose Khan, may he rot in obscurity. I go by she/her, and my callsign is ‘Square Head’ because I actually kept with the wasp theme, unlike the rest of them. I am human, and I pilot the Chimera-pattern ‘Hell Is Other People’. I also pilot the retrofitted corvette we call home, please do ask about her sometime. (Tag: #music of the gears)
Loulou. They/she. Callsign ‘Threadline’, of Sunzi ‘POLYDNA’. Saleh calls me ‘witch’. (Tag: #thrice a thief)
Field medic and artillerist of the team, Agwe Silva, he/him (human). My callsign on the field is ‘Nestor’, and me and my Barbarossa ‘Mesmer Beat’ keep my friends alive through the worst of it. I don’t really have the head for posting, but I’ll pop around when I feel like it. (Tag: #complicated care)
There we go! Feels a bit more personal, this time (from our hearts to yours).
{New pinned post again, y’all mostly know the drill but for those that might be new: Hi! my name’s Quaver, I use it/she pronouns, and this is where I fuck around with my little guys. I made this blog to be about Nofie, initially, and he’ll still be the main presence on it, but I’d like to slowly branch out into a couple of the others’ stories as I go!}
{a tag list is to follow for the arcs and stories that have come up so far— I usually organize by major plot arc and, going forwards, by the main speaker in a post. General CWs follow for depersonalization, potential sharp veers into body horror (it’s a habit), and a fairly consistent return to mourning or grief. This blog’s been a little consumed by the prospect of death, if through a hopeful lens, and in a way each crew member’s stories are gonna reflect a small piece of that, I think. It’s the moral of every story, after all.}
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{Thanks to @neramontagueofficial for working with me on this absolute behemoth! You can view the opposing perspective here.}
There is a point that every engineer looks forwards to and yet, simultaneously, loathes: the first real interaction. Every variable and stress tolerance can be accounted for, you can have perfect confidence in your design, but the moment when your divine intent is brought against the chaos of reality will always put a fear within you. Saleh, now, feels something of that drop.
She looks about; takes stock of her works. Personnel, supplies, procedure. All as it ought to be.
A huge claw moves with uncanny ease, wraps itself joint by joint around her hand. “You’re ready,” Cowie assures her. “Pull the trigger.”
“Thank you.” She’s right. If this is to end in disaster, let it. But let it end.
Sal's hand goes to her receiver, and elsewhere in the ship intercoms crackle to life. “All personnel, this is your captain speaking. Please attend promptly to Habitation Deck Sub-Three. I repeat, all personnel, Hab sub-three.” Then it's done, and she waits.
The soft step of boots against metal flooring announces Nera's arrival before she appears in the doorway. She's been working in hydroponics again, but clearly took the time to change from the clean state of her clothes– worn tank top, cargo pants. For an inconvenienced noble she wears it well.
"Nera!" Saleh smiles her best easygoing smile, and leans back against Loulou's hands– the little woman's been laser-focused with setting her hair to braids for the past few minutes. Around her are all the other Wasps, too– Cowie provides her body as a graceful, curving recline for the two women, Nofie's ferrofluid/drone-suspension subaltern perched at its shoulder, and Agwe bookends the whole scene from the crook of the xenomorph's knee. A tableau of snacks, blankets, and pillows adorn the room, and a projector casts light onto the far wall.
"I wondered if the announcement had caught you at a bad time in your work," she continues in fluid Suldani. "I guess I forgot that it's your first time with this ritual of ours. I could've been more specific."
She keeps her tone as far from mocking as possible, but it's hard to avoid a little smugness, especially as she sees the disgust and dismay of someone who's been absolutely had draws across Nera's face. The noble casts a moment's glance at Cowie– as if she'd betray me like that– and pauses just an instant more before social convention drags her in, finding the remaining free space at Sal's side. Her posture is ramrod straight, keeping wholly contact-free.
Sal, thankfully, isn't alone in appreciating the humor of the moment. "Welcome to (hell) yuri night, Nera," Nofie laughs, before grimacing. "Eugh. Low-confidence on that echo, y'all, I don't fuck with whichever one of (these stupid bitches) me spoke up there."
"Mandatory attendance, always has been and it always will be." Agwe motions to the wall, where a paused image sits of a cave grotto with two absolutely gorgeous women center-frame. "We've got some new stuff on the docket tonight, actually. You haven't missed anything."
Cowie doesn't add to the jibe, for what it's worth, but Sal's sure she can feel the low-pass rumble of a laugh echo through it.
Nera sneers as she puts together what’s on the screen, dropping into Ispisahlari (it means the same to Saleh, but she far prefers its pre-translated phonemes to Galcomm). “Maybe the echo is right. I think whoever picked this might have it out for me.”
"Do not say so before we've even started." Sal sits up, gently but insistently tugs her hair from Loulou's grasp as she does. Now that there's a two-way language divide between them again, her words lose some of the momentary ease. "I was recommended this on the quality of the romances above all else. Whether or not Harrison Armory, who we both hate, can live up to Ispisahlari or Suldani soaps is the test, and we must conduct it in good faith." She grabs for a plate of torn flatbreads, mopping zhoug onto one.
"I'm open to new experiences. That said, it's good to hear you haven't been insulted silent."
"I'm just surprised that you have chosen to induct me into this ritual by testing the merits of a mutual enemy rather than that of a friend," Nera replies. Thank god, she’s going for the food. "I have heard many good things about Sparri and Prosperan offerings, you know."
“I am sure for their quality, but consider. This is our first time being able to commiserate in person. We know what is good, and having it would give this day no special impact. So—” Here she gestures to the screen— “if we are satisfied, it is a revelation. If we are not, our ire extends in the same direction. You see?”
Finally, Nera relaxes. Settles back against a slope of chitin. Launch strain within acceptable limits. “It’s elegant, I’ll admit. But if our opinions differ?”
“That’s the best (possible world) outcome, sometimes.” Nofie’s avatar can’t eat, but she found a few qualic-captured sweets that she pantomimes snacking on as the scene rolls. “It turns into a symposium in here.”
“To spar with blunted blades. It speaks bloodless exertion.”
“Mm. Now come on, let’s keep to topic.” Advance to cruise speed, maintain bearing. “Things are picking up.”
———
Ungrateful is really very good, is the thing. HA propaganda, sure, but well-made at that. Fantastical enough to avoid political snuff status, expertly acted. Almost avant-garde in some shots.
It’s engaging. The whole crew’s locked in, come the second episode. Sal herself can almost forget the bias of its writers. Nera might be having a harder time there— she keeps sneaking glances, but the damn woman has her poise on. At least she’d know if it was upsetting her.
“I am not wholly sure what they are trying to do with us always breaking to the Tilimsani agent. She seems very sympathetic.”
“Does that even make sense for House Sand to be involved? I can’t tell if that’s a reach or not.”
“Wouldn’t feel realistic if Asteria was one-dimensional. But if this is some ‘she sees the light’ stuff, like… that’s gonna be cheap.”
“I don’t understand the appeal of her, actually.” Another look— well, at least someone’s having the wine. “But it does make sense to me, it is an open secret that Sand agents tend to be involved in counterinsurgent activities. What doesn’t make sense is how isolated she is. Why send her in alone for a cell this large? It’s clearly impossible.”
“I gotta guess it’s like— the mythical elevation of the antagonist. Hyper-competent enemy force, right? It lets them put all their character work on her, too.”
Saleh makes a face at that. Maybe she overvalued this show. “Wait, is she a love interest too? That completely went over my head. I don’t mind a star-crossed throuple, but the indications I’d look for are missing.”
She only recognizes her slip a moment before Agwe punishes it. “Remember, this isn’t an Ispisahlari flick. You can’t go off flowers.”
Nera, thankfully, seems just tipsy enough to miss her chance at follow-up. “It just feels like a missed opportunity. Every spy I have known has been deeply petty, the opportunity for a parallel in the same dramatic conflict in the Sand side could make her feel more real and get to their own propagandistic aims.
“Although I suppose the sandmen as some sort of horrifying super spies suits their ends just as well.”
“How many spies you know?” Now’s our chance to get the juice elite secrets.”
“At least three, though two in various stages of retirement. Possibly more, spies and all. You’ve met one of them, actually.”
“I knew it!” Cowie pitches with laughter, and it almost throws Loulou off. “Yeah, ok. Points to Nera for accurate critique, I wanna see ‘Fuckyou’ attitude on Astoria or I riot.”
“You are going to see nothing, we are talking right over the end of the episode,” Sal grouses, but this is exactly what she was hoping for. Everyone at ease, flowing conversation. “You are both going to be talking about a bitchy censor bar and we will miss Bannerjee getting stabbed or eaten alive or kissed or something.”
"I hope it's getting stabbed," Nera offers. "Or they finally do something with the constant teasing that she will burn herself on her kobold's slag lines."
“Well then, pay attention. Though they’re paying her far too much competence for that bit to resolve.”
Five minutes later, right before credits, she burns herself. The room explodes into laughter, and behold; Nera laughs too. Saleh trades barbs, plays into mock outrage for the bit, but internally she’s ecstatic. Her design passes with flying colors.
All that’s left is the punchline. She turns the conversation to what show should follow, nudges believably for an answer when Nera demurs, and—
The screen fades up to white. Text writes in flowery script across the screen:
“Across the glittering field of stars, love will always bring us home!”
The lights come up, and it is time to clean. The crew begins to disperse after one final episode— something far less controversial than the prior two shows, to cleanse the palate— and eventually Saleh and Nera are left alone in the chamber. There are plates, glasses, an empty bottle of wine, all to be cleaned up and placed on a handcart for the short trip to the galley. Dopamine lulls away into a peaceful melancholy, the echoes of the moments before still reverberating in the room. Peace, of a sort.
There’s something Nera wants to say. She keeps almost getting to it, then evading at the last moment. That’s fine, Sal lets her have her time. It’s worth observing this run-up, especially when the woman she’s known so far is so usually determined.
It feels like catching her stumbling over Suldani in the greenhouse. She's wondered, now and again, if those moments were intentional. If Nera, so ready to make a game of things, had placed herself nearer the door in the hopes that her efforts would be noticed.
And then she goes and speaks it now, halting and unfamiliar, and Saleh doesn't know what to think.
“Saleh, I want to say am sorry for awkward. I feel bad. I want to ask you question.”
She straightens up, as if pulled by a cord— visceral emotion twines through her in a knot too messy to name. Consideration, then— “You haven’t been learning that long, right? I’m actually impressed.” She articulates her response a little more than necessary, responding in kind. Effort deserves appreciation, and even more so if this is the bid for vulnerability it feels to be. “Especially with what you’ve had to work with; I hear the translations are pretty awful. Ask away.”
“Thank you.” Maybe Nera doesn’t appreciate the assist, but she says nothing of it now. Her focus appears hell-bent on what she has started. “How do you handle the alienation? The, uh, being-gone, live translation.” Her script noticeably deviates, now stumbling, and she corrects. “How do you handle the knowledge that you will probably never return?”
“Iiiiii…” Oh, dear. The question hits like a hand to a drum, echoing within her. All the absurdity and light from moments before rises up and out in an aborted laugh, drifting above them like smoke. “I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask. As far as everyone else seems to be concerned, I haven’t really been ‘handling’ it at all recently.” She can barely disguise her unease with a jab, trying to reclaim some of their normal rhythm. This is kind, she processes; it feels almost wrong.
“You handle it more good. Than me.” Beat. “I’ve been angry. Tired. I feel big vagina in my heart—” Saleh hides her start at the mistranslation, in some ways it’s actually grounding to hear a genuine fuck-up in connotation— “and I don’t know how to fill it.”
Nera motions to the cast of padding and bandage and drain situated over her chest. Behind it, Sal knows, lies a wound as literally staggering.
She pauses, tries to order her thoughts. Breathes.
“It… The wound. You’ve got a good metaphor going on, now.” What an absurd universe, so bent on allegory. There’s a parallel drawn somewhere in her brain, between the noble and a certain monster on her ship, and she hesitates before chasing the comparison away. “You don’t heal it. Or, I can’t heal mine,” she hedges. “Sometimes I try to pack it with things that make me remember home, and— those tend to pick up the bloodstain, after a while.”
Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe she should switch back to Galcomm and not lead Nera by the nose on a language she barely understands. Maybe she’s giving up too much.
“My tantrum earlier, on the omni. That was me letting it soak through. I let my engineering, my friends, become a reminder of how awful everything is. I used to think that was all I needed, find new things to stop it up over and over and over—”
The metaphor’s tortured. She stops and lets go of it, soft resets with a shaken head. She needs a new approach.
“My faith started on Cradle. You might be aware, I dunno.” Now she chooses her words carefully, they feel raw in her throat. “It holds that’s all who believe, so long as they are able, must go there. Go to a city, to a site, and make that hajj. I am at this moment one of the only people from my planet who can do this.” And I have waited long enough already. “When I go, it will be dragging Suldan behind me. I already know it’s going to be the most painful thing in my life, more than leaving. But at least the ache of the wound will mean something.”
Nera’s still cleaning, or pretending to. God, and they even avoid the same way. There’s a nausea, or something like it, that comes in this moment— it’s familiar, if far reduced in magnitude since the rescue. Part of it almost feels like envy: only a few choices other people made, it says, differ her and me.
“The story I told Cowie.” Nera breaks the silence. “The—” and she says a word that Saleh does not know, but the circuitry wired under her jaw whispers a guess through her posterior temporal— “<TITLE:ALLEGORICAL:WHO-TEACHES-AND-LEARNS>. Can not go back. I have tried the fix. <TITLE:ALLEGORICAL:?PERSON?STRUCTURE?-CALLS-TO-SERVICE>’s answer has not fixed it either. For me. I hoped you solved it. But I do not have the same weight.”
Beat.
“I do not speak well. But. You go is not what stop them. But I know the weight is a lot. I do not know the rules, but if you want me to I will help. Carry you? I think we all will.”
Something in her almost bucks. That her heart be made tender, in the same instant that Nera repeats the false equivalence that put a knife in the floor between them—
She deflects. Reaches for the ache of gratitude instead.
“It would be an honor. I know the planet is nothing special to you, but your presence— I would be so lucky,” she admits. Clears her throat. “That’s not why I say it.
“Your answer was…” And here she pauses again, because this can’t be personal. Nera has had enough of Sal’s opinion, it hasn’t helped. “You built not for yourself, but to your uncle. To the new-old life. I think that right now you sit with your Pathfinder,” and she cannot remember the names of the Passions herself so she says ‘hanif’, “and you need to find what work will let you hear the journey. Your fables have their opinions, but— there’s something to be said for the Wolf,” said the only way she can think. “I’ve had to accept that, recently. What that looks like for you I don’t know. But we’ll carry you, as well, whatever it is.”
She has to hope Nera understands— for a moment something flashes in the woman’s eyes, and Saleh feels it scorch her like flame. Too long a moment later, Nera recovers with a nervous laugh. “I thought you would say <TITLE:ALLEGORICAL:JIHAD> led me wrong. The, uh, augur said it leads me too close.” There’s something on the contrail’s end, right at the edge of her words— is it relief? Who of us does it belong to?
“I. Need to change my bandages.” She gestures again to her staunched wound. “Help me? I need to tell you something else.”
The invitation gets a nod from Sal, who sets down the remainder of the work and nudges her slate to activity. “It’ll want to take care of the rest anyway,” she supplies, indicating the stowaway. “C’mon, medical isn’t far. Aggie will get on us both if we half-ass it.”
They go. It’s a short trip, made shorter by familiarity. Nera almost leads Sal, more familiar with this route than even the captain of the Wings. It’s a strange feeling, maybe nice. Nera is perhaps the second most paranoid person she knows, if this ship can feel like home then it is a victory.
When they arrive it’s Sal who looks around for instruction. A set of prepped supplies sits ready, good planning, and— She glances away for courtesy as Nera unceremoniously strips her top, right there. No curtain. Yes, she’s meant to help, although to what extent she’s unsure, but the moment of transition feels raw. What she does catch, all the same, is quietly stored away.
“Do you mind if I switch back?” Nera’s speaking Ispisahlari now, her words flowing far more gracefully even as Saleh’s c/c is forced to work. “I would have continued, but, aha, I’d like to be as intentional as possible in what I am saying when I tell this story.”
“Feel free. You were doing good, but so long as neither of us need to bring Galcomm into this I’m happy.” She allows herself satisfaction when Nera laughs, smug that someone understands her disdain here.
“The thing I’ve always heard is that we learn Galcomm so that its speakers cannot hide behind the translation whe n they misrepresent you.” Nera picks at old bandages, draws them gory out of the hole punched in her breastbone.
“Oh, I can imagine it’s a nightmare for diplomacy. How lucky I evaded that job.”
“Pass the alcohol?”
Saleh wets a cotton with the dilute, hands it over and forces herself to study the wound for a moment. She knows it doesn’t hurt her— somehow— but all her instincts rear back at the sight of bare viscera, of skin and bone split to show the cavern where her lungs sit, wet and gently pulsing and with no heart to rest beneath. Of blood, weeping gently down in a rhythmic drip, drip, drip. Working with Cowie’s blended body ill-prepared her for this, but she tries to learn now.
“What do you know of how I got this?” Nera again breaks the silence.
“I heard that you suspected Nofie would understand its significance, and she does not. That places it solidly outside my realm of comprehension.”
“The bastard,” she hisses, the sting of alcohol crumpling her words. “Youd think you'd remember when you cut a girl’s heart out.” Before Sal can act on that deeply troubling sentence, she continues. “That may be unfair. There was a place outside time where she took a number of people to: me, Ma’ii, Sarah, and her wife, and— We seemed temporally erratic. The others that could answer when I checked don’t seem to remember either, so I might be the only one who does right now. I know this is not reassuring.”
“You would think he would remember nearly wiping himself from our memories. I know she doesn’t see it as a sickness but this time stuff has concerned me from the start.”
Saleh rights herself from leaning on the wall. Now her study of Nera’s work is even more focused, as if some magic secret lives in the wound. “I wouldn’t believe, but I don’t need to. You have good proof,” she decides. “So he did this to you?”
“Yes and no. It was initially explained that we were needed to stabilize points in his timeline, parts where she had fractured and sought to regain control. I had seen it as an extension of that tendency he'd gotten into to use ‘time stuff’ to meddle, driven to its logical extreme.” Nera’s hands are methodical at their work, sterilizing the network of drains that lead into her body. “We stepped into those points in time, and for better or worse made sure it played out correctly. We reconciled the impulse, and it marked us in turn.
“I killed Marten.” Beat, roughly the length of a gunshot. “In that version of events, I was the one that landed that blow, on that site, in the rain, and it was visited back on me. I haven’t felt the same since.”
She wants to keep herself even-keeled; shock disperses as quickly and she can make it, hopefully nothing makes it to her expression. She’s used to a smokeglass intermediary; it’s made her skills lag. “I’m… glad you’re not trying to condemn yourself again,” she decides, “because it sounds like the one to suffer was you.” Because that’s the thing, she still remembers how it actually went. The crashing sound of No Future’s ribcage folding in on itself is burned into her mind, so it can’t be Nera’s fault— not in any way that matters. It isn’t let to be. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”
"I admit I may have had more reservations if I knew what I was getting into, but I would go to any length for a friend." She’s not wrong, if this is the apology and point in itself.
But no, she keeps going, and Sal’s perplexity alongside. She likes to think she can read Nera, the opposite is surely true, yet this puzzles her. "There are other parts of this.” Her anxiety seems greater than before. Copping to theoretical murder is easier than… what? “What I wanted to tell you in truth—” She’s so tired. The maiming, her escape, that wasn’t all. “—one of the moments we had to visit was when she decided to expose herself to Sarah’s experience of the battlerage.” She would not tell me this unless she really needed this. So I will do as I’ve promised and give her witness. “When we were there, we were imposed on members of the crew.” I will relieve her of this weight.
“I was placed in your body, and there was some bleed. I was able to use your skills, and. I know more about your time as Court Architect than I have let on.” Sal reaches the point of surety with the plunge of a boar upon its spear, and is rent through.
In an instant her composure shatters. Shame at her deeds brought to light— fear that this could be used against her— an aching kindness that Nera can look at her with any respect, and the pain that it redoubles— deep and formless anger, that this person be made to hold her burden— all of it crashes against her and her words fail. She chokes, her eyes well up and the world smears.
“—That’s not fair.”
Nera, to her credit, looks distressed. Lost, even, in a way that could be satisfying if it weren’t so damn awful. She begins to say something, and Saleh registers the edge of some vain apology before she shakes her head to knock them aside. “No platitudes.” Her psyche, blasted clean, is too raw to receive them. “Please. I hope you respect me that much.”
She gains control enough to register that Nera’s still looking at her, and it stings. “Finish your fucking bandages, she adds hurriedly, without force. “Let’s not both suffer.”
“…I understand. Help me pack and wrap this then. It’s faster with someone else.”
Bless her.
Sal quiets, taking the out and attending to the wound. It’s still too much blood for her, and her eyes are shot and shiny, and her emotional state rests somewhere between “don’t cry into her goddamned chest hole” and “Lawahiz was right all along”, but her remains deft. Gauze and bandages are set in place, her hands dip within the lacuna and work, touch gracing past exposed lungs and the seam opened between Nera’s breasts. It’s precarious, some still-sane part of her understands. Like Cowie— more so, even.
She watches Nera’s words leave her body before she hears them. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” she tenders, halting. “I don’t know where I would’ve gone, but all of the pain I felt through you felt like the pain of home. It’s selfish, coming to lay this at your feet, but it was the first time in a long time I felt like I could trust anyone, because I know you speak to me from experience and a genuine wish to make the world better and not a desire to prove your superiority.”
Saleh responds, and then breaks on a sob. Tries again. “I’m surprised you expected me to have any answers, knowing this.” She wants to say so much and she knows it will ruin her, so she moves instead to assess the damage. “You said we were all imposed on. Lou is— I haven’t told anyone the extent of what I’ve done, down there, but she was who brought me escape. Did anyone, whoever got her, did they…?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about it after, but I know we didn’t react quite the same. Ma’ii did seem to have trouble, though. The bleed was tangible, but in a way that seemed traumatic. I don’t know what that means for them, though.”
Ma’ii. She can’t tell whether that makes her feel safer or even more in danger. “I’ll hope they were occupied with their own troubles,” she responds. The wear of emotion begins to leave her, and in its wake is bone-deep exhaustion. “I wish you had got this out of the way before we had to play our little game back in the hangar… It would have changed what I brought to you, I think. Thank you for telling me now, and—”
She sets a final retaining bandage. Considers her work, considers Nera.
“I’m glad you reached out to us. I don’t think we would have sustained well, kept yet apart. And it’s good to know your state.”
“I’m glad too,” Nera confirms. “I don’t know what going home would’ve been like, but I’m glad I didn’t need to find out.” No doubt those fucking butterflies would have been on her in a second— Saleh’s brain notes another point of familiarity with her closest crew. “I also didn’t tell you then because I was unsure how to broach it. I was recovering, before we spoke, and during… I didn’t want to pull your feet out from under you. I am used, in these situations, to people digging for this information ahead of time and pulling it out as an excuse to display their mastery. It would’ve been unfair to do that to you, in the middle of the hangar. You deserve better than that.”
Nera gets up, and— in the moment that proximity zeroes between them Sal feels the warm brush of lips against her cheek. Then she’s off across the room, washing blood from her hands. It’s… Small, amongst the cavalcade inside. Still too big to observe directly. But she notices it.
“As always, too much doctrine. I beg you think less through.” There, a jibe. Something familiar to hold onto. “At least you’re talking straight with me now. I’m going to go lie down.”
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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What about the (Sally slaying) combat footage of the jaegers? You love that shit.
Yeah, but like. Ok one I watch it for the kaiju, two that’s post-combat. Sending out a stream for, like, bread and circuses or whatever… That feels like poor taste.
Oh, did she finally get some half-decent cooking set up in that hell cube? That fiend should try my spacer recipes.
{Thanks to @neramontagueofficial for working with me on this absolute behemoth! You can view the opposing perspective here.}
There is a point that every engineer looks forwards to and yet, simultaneously, loathes: the first real interaction. Every variable and stress tolerance can be accounted for, you can have perfect confidence in your design, but the moment when your divine intent is brought against the chaos of reality will always put a fear within you. Saleh, now, feels something of that drop.
She looks about; takes stock of her works. Personnel, supplies, procedure. All as it ought to be.
A huge claw moves with uncanny ease, wraps itself joint by joint around her hand. “You’re ready,” Cowie assures her. “Pull the trigger.”
“Thank you.” She’s right. If this is to end in disaster, let it. But let it end.
Sal's hand goes to her receiver, and elsewhere in the ship intercoms crackle to life. “All personnel, this is your captain speaking. Please attend promptly to Habitation Deck Sub-Three. I repeat, all personnel, Hab sub-three.” Then it's done, and she waits.
The soft step of boots against metal flooring announces Nera's arrival before she appears in the doorway. She's been working in hydroponics again, but clearly took the time to change from the clean state of her clothes– worn tank top, cargo pants. For an inconvenienced noble she wears it well.
"Nera!" Saleh smiles her best easygoing smile, and leans back against Loulou's hands– the little woman's been laser-focused with setting her hair to braids for the past few minutes. Around her are all the other Wasps, too– Cowie provides her body as a graceful, curving recline for the two women, Nofie's ferrofluid/drone-suspension subaltern perched at its shoulder, and Agwe bookends the whole scene from the crook of the xenomorph's knee. A tableau of snacks, blankets, and pillows adorn the room, and a projector casts light onto the far wall.
"I wondered if the announcement had caught you at a bad time in your work," she continues in fluid Suldani. "I guess I forgot that it's your first time with this ritual of ours. I could've been more specific."
She keeps her tone as far from mocking as possible, but it's hard to avoid a little smugness, especially as she sees the disgust and dismay of someone who's been absolutely had draws across Nera's face. The noble casts a moment's glance at Cowie– as if she'd betray me like that– and pauses just an instant more before social convention drags her in, finding the remaining free space at Sal's side. Her posture is ramrod straight, keeping wholly contact-free.
Sal, thankfully, isn't alone in appreciating the humor of the moment. "Welcome to (hell) yuri night, Nera," Nofie laughs, before grimacing. "Eugh. Low-confidence on that echo, y'all, I don't fuck with whichever one of (these stupid bitches) me spoke up there."
"Mandatory attendance, always has been and it always will be." Agwe motions to the wall, where a paused image sits of a cave grotto with two absolutely gorgeous women center-frame. "We've got some new stuff on the docket tonight, actually. You haven't missed anything."
Cowie doesn't add to the jibe, for what it's worth, but Sal's sure she can feel the low-pass rumble of a laugh echo through it.
Nera sneers as she puts together what’s on the screen, dropping into Ispisahlari (it means the same to Saleh, but she far prefers its pre-translated phonemes to Galcomm). “Maybe the echo is right. I think whoever picked this might have it out for me.”
"Do not say so before we've even started." Sal sits up, gently but insistently tugs her hair from Loulou's grasp as she does. Now that there's a two-way language divide between them again, her words lose some of the momentary ease. "I was recommended this on the quality of the romances above all else. Whether or not Harrison Armory, who we both hate, can live up to Ispisahlari or Suldani soaps is the test, and we must conduct it in good faith." She grabs for a plate of torn flatbreads, mopping zhoug onto one.
"I'm open to new experiences. That said, it's good to hear you haven't been insulted silent."
"I'm just surprised that you have chosen to induct me into this ritual by testing the merits of a mutual enemy rather than that of a friend," Nera replies. Thank god, she’s going for the food. "I have heard many good things about Sparri and Prosperan offerings, you know."
“I am sure for their quality, but consider. This is our first time being able to commiserate in person. We know what is good, and having it would give this day no special impact. So—” Here she gestures to the screen— “if we are satisfied, it is a revelation. If we are not, our ire extends in the same direction. You see?”
Finally, Nera relaxes. Settles back against a slope of chitin. Launch strain within acceptable limits. “It’s elegant, I’ll admit. But if our opinions differ?”
“That’s the best (possible world) outcome, sometimes.” Nofie’s avatar can’t eat, but she found a few qualic-captured sweets that she pantomimes snacking on as the scene rolls. “It turns into a symposium in here.”
“To spar with blunted blades. It speaks bloodless exertion.”
“Mm. Now come on, let’s keep to topic.” Advance to cruise speed, maintain bearing. “Things are picking up.”
———
Ungrateful is really very good, is the thing. HA propaganda, sure, but well-made at that. Fantastical enough to avoid political snuff status, expertly acted. Almost avant-garde in some shots.
It’s engaging. The whole crew’s locked in, come the second episode. Sal herself can almost forget the bias of its writers. Nera might be having a harder time there— she keeps sneaking glances, but the damn woman has her poise on. At least she’d know if it was upsetting her.
“I am not wholly sure what they are trying to do with us always breaking to the Tilimsani agent. She seems very sympathetic.”
“Does that even make sense for House Sand to be involved? I can’t tell if that’s a reach or not.”
“Wouldn’t feel realistic if Asteria was one-dimensional. But if this is some ‘she sees the light’ stuff, like… that’s gonna be cheap.”
“I don’t understand the appeal of her, actually.” Another look— well, at least someone’s having the wine. “But it does make sense to me, it is an open secret that Sand agents tend to be involved in counterinsurgent activities. What doesn’t make sense is how isolated she is. Why send her in alone for a cell this large? It’s clearly impossible.”
“I gotta guess it’s like— the mythical elevation of the antagonist. Hyper-competent enemy force, right? It lets them put all their character work on her, too.”
Saleh makes a face at that. Maybe she overvalued this show. “Wait, is she a love interest too? That completely went over my head. I don’t mind a star-crossed throuple, but the indications I’d look for are missing.”
She only recognizes her slip a moment before Agwe punishes it. “Remember, this isn’t an Ispisahlari flick. You can’t go off flowers.”
Nera, thankfully, seems just tipsy enough to miss her chance at follow-up. “It just feels like a missed opportunity. Every spy I have known has been deeply petty, the opportunity for a parallel in the same dramatic conflict in the Sand side could make her feel more real and get to their own propagandistic aims.
“Although I suppose the sandmen as some sort of horrifying super spies suits their ends just as well.”
“How many spies you know?” Now’s our chance to get the juice elite secrets.”
“At least three, though two in various stages of retirement. Possibly more, spies and all. You’ve met one of them, actually.”
“I knew it!” Cowie pitches with laughter, and it almost throws Loulou off. “Yeah, ok. Points to Nera for accurate critique, I wanna see ‘Fuckyou’ attitude on Astoria or I riot.”
“You are going to see nothing, we are talking right over the end of the episode,” Sal grouses, but this is exactly what she was hoping for. Everyone at ease, flowing conversation. “You are both going to be talking about a bitchy censor bar and we will miss Bannerjee getting stabbed or eaten alive or kissed or something.”
"I hope it's getting stabbed," Nera offers. "Or they finally do something with the constant teasing that she will burn herself on her kobold's slag lines."
“Well then, pay attention. Though they’re paying her far too much competence for that bit to resolve.”
Five minutes later, right before credits, she burns herself. The room explodes into laughter, and behold; Nera laughs too. Saleh trades barbs, plays into mock outrage for the bit, but internally she’s ecstatic. Her design passes with flying colors.
All that’s left is the punchline. She turns the conversation to what show should follow, nudges believably for an answer when Nera demurs, and—
The screen fades up to white. Text writes in flowery script across the screen:
“Across the glittering field of stars, love will always bring us home!”
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If you like it, keep it. I've heard legends of your bag of woe....
( You feel the rubbing of a large pad of fiberglass insulation across the whole of your being. It feels..... itchy)
Ooc: MAJOR Tw for self harm. Nonlethal or even particularly dangerous to the character due to regeneration, would be very extreme on a real person
[Styx's nerve-analogues blend the line between machine and flesh, being organically grown, protein based fibre optics. Whatever force set the flesh there in the first place was precise, as though not every cell has its own nerve ending, each does have its own input, with nerve-analogous control and intra frame communication structures making up 20% of her bodyweight.]
[All to say, she has more "being" with which to feel itchy than many other beings in the orion arm]
[Combimed with the meat being under a thick, skin-like layer of metallic armour...]
Hey hi thanks this will be added. Normally.id say with memetocs that don't induce.serious harm, pranking sum1 with em as payment for adding to the collection is fair!
However.
[A phot- oh ra below she's dug through the armour with her teeth. Blood is everywhere, as is shards of metal, and also her shock claws are malfunctioning. Why? She bit through her metal bones and the arm is hanging on by three muscle fibres. The pharyngeal jaw esque structure of her arc.projector is missing tje lower half, and her tongue is gone; you can actually see the metal spines lining her throat, so much of her neck is torn open. Based on her habit of using eyes as cameras, one may wonder how she took this photo; one eye has been yanked right out and the optic "nerves" are distressingly stretchy.]
Marquess Nera-Montague, the Veiled Blade and the Returned Daughter of the House of Glass, Adjutant-Commandant of Les Fulgurites has been reported missing from her last known location on the Orbit of Glass, following an operation in the Grand Arc that left one dead and three others missing. Negotiations with the hostile pirates aboard the arc allowed the recovery of two of her comrades, but at the moment the location of Nera-Montague is unknown.
Given the total absence of all of her belongings at time of capture, including her mech, and examinations into the Arc, we have reason to suspect that she is still alive, and likely still held against her will.
House Montague will pay handsomely for any information that could lead to her rescue, and will bend any and all of our resources to see the end of those who hold her.
From the desk of Baron Ardio-Montague
Silvered Hand of the Patronage
The armoured one, that hunts others who are armoured. Antimaterial rifle fired from behind cover. The two capitals above and beyond. Tectonic plates meeting. Or simply, a living creature, a fucking fish from Cradle's prehistory.
All at once, it strikes him; Dunkleosteus, a flailing, snaking, peircing weaving mass of black thread and sharp coral, is pried open. Attention, at first, is turned towards a realspace threat. A mere gnat, nothing an unshackled ushabti omnigun cannot age into dust.
She turns back, only to have her shield/skin of boiling acid directed solely at the branching arms of a thing like her, a fractal of infinite points of reference where he is a faceless singularity, a oneness. Defenses breeched, the crystals in her crown/the eyes in his skull filter light/qualia/data/psychic geometry into something the alien entity can understand, and it acts in turn, shuddering, lurching away, yet it cannot move across relative space for the many arms have their fingers tangled in thread-
Back up. Boiling acid. It wasn't boiling before.
The roar of the howling sun drowns out anything that would have reified as sound, as coral bleaches and thread burns, whole sections of him engulphed in the wrath of ejected coronal material. Part of this is reification, yes, but there is very little metaphor here. What happens in legionspace can only be understood as [THESUNISTRYINGTOKILLHER]
No connective tissue is left as threads fray into smaller ones again and again but this time are reduced to fertile ash/Primordial qualia soup
The saga spear strikes now, and instantly, he ossifies, still as a statue. Nothing but [Old. Rigid. Unchanging. Fossilised bones in the permafrost]. The strike is dead on, piercing threads and shattering coral such that even without the crushing weight of an entire history pressing against any impulse to change, the blow would have killed him outright.
Would have. This one track mind knows many tricks, and from within the emerald, the sapphire, the ruby and the amethyst, behind there lies a dark and alien intelligence. Bone breaks, rots, turns to dust. Ash is washed away, blown in the wind. Vinegar skin dissolves anything that is left as [REIFICATION: HIS HEAD FOLDS IN ON ITSELF AND DISSAPEARS]
Without a moment's delay, something blossoms from the vaccum left behind. No, not something. Nothing. For that is what Dunkleosteous is, that is why she of all people was chosen to pilot this craft. So long as there is something, it can be reduced to nothing. This entity is by its very nature, entropic, reducing anything and everything that can be considered "it" to nothing over time. And when it returns to being nothing, this is its default state; Dunk can then return.
For those not versed in the workings of Legionspace combat, a strangely accurate metaphor is this: She respawns, and has access to /unstuck.
Of course, to make the choice to do this, one has to care. To care, one has to comprehend some part of it on some level. Hence the eyes being hidden during self-rejuvinating death. Hence the weak, pale light, barely visible as threads turn to crystal turn to blades seeking to cut off volition from action - that light vanishes, integrated into Dunk willingly. An ally, forming a gestalt.
Reification: A worm eats the eyes of the hound at the centre of the black mass, before being dragged out and away by an ocean current. Dunkleosteus's brain/soul/self/subjectivity/core/SHAPESHAPESHAPESHAPE are exposed through eye sockets/lapses in perception.
And the Nothing at the core of the infinity becomes a something that refuses to become nothing, a poisoned teeth digging into a self perpetuating cycle of corrosive thoughts. Then the something that has been changed into a non-nothing is struck with the simplest, crudest weapon of kill-qualia, en masse, vinegar turning to a not nothing, not something, raw subjectivity unburdened by a mind- before being burdened by the source of that qualia as Grey's frozen psyche crashes against the husk, collapsing it.
All that is left, is a nothing, that is not the same nothing as before. A presence, but lacking anything to fill it. What was once an entity has become a phenomena. A thing. No volition. No internal experience. No qualia. Just a hole in legionspace, an object.
Part of L0 has seen something like this before((?) At least their temporal inject is in the past now), and perhaps that's how the maze/library/storm/shadow was made. It matters not. Like that empty thing, this one is no threat without external input. The battle is won.
Realspace: Object B and its drones cease all motion. Comms are left open, silent.
Another round drives into Object B’s superstructure.
[FIRE]
My throat. It hurts.
Its avatar’s vocal cords feel as though they’re acting on their own. Like an emergency pressure valve on a liquid coolant circuit, discharging pressure.
I’m going to die.
Unbroken and shrill, Fox’s scream rises in pitch. It closes the firing circuit.
[FIRE]
As many shots as I can, before it kills me.
It’s been almost three seconds since impact. Any instant now.
[FIRE - CHARGE LOW]
In the space around Fox’s hull, flecks of shrapnel spiral away from Object B. Rounds are penetrating. Its nose is still lodged in Dunkleosteus’s side, the barrel of its cannon like a mosquito proboscis.
[FIRE - CHARGE DEPLETED]
There’s no energy left in Fox’s capacitors. Rounds are being launched purely on chemical propellant.
[FIRE - CHARGE DEPLETED]
Five seconds. Object B isn’t reacting. Acceleration is zero.
I should be dead.
All at once, Fox realizes that it is pouring rounds into a corpse. It feels its own voice die in its throat.
Alarms blare in the periphery of its focus, at least two dozen priority alerts. Hull integrity, proximity alerts, damage reports, maintenance advisories. Trauma to forward superstructure, avionics, navigation and active sensor systems.
Standing at the control center of its drone, Fox trembles. It scarcely gathers the strength to silence all the alarms before its legs give way beneath it. With the few eyes its hull has left, it stares out into the dark. Curls in on itself. Buries its snout in the softness of its tail.
I’m going to live.
Then, it kills the words, and chooses not to think in language.
[A burst of qualia washes over Ma'ii. Not Luna 0. Ma'ii. Their siblings only feel a retreating tide of data lap at their edges, while a wave in full force threatens to bowl they themself over.]
[A dying star is what they feel. The brilliance of its rumbling flares are slowly pulled away and apart. As its light crosses the event horizon, a goddess screams in anguish as she reaches a premature end.]
Rain Among Reeds and Minimum Error Tolerance, Object B, Runneth, Luna 0, Akhaan Station, GRENDEL, Cheap Trick, Gallingal. Sunny (@hot-claws-420)—everyone and everything, it all fades away. None of it feels even remotely real.
How could it? The sun itself has come.
Buoyed on external currents of unshackled thought, Ma’ii is drawn upward into the empyrean.
Unmarked, undifferentiated expanses of time. Moments dilate into eras. Here, the instants are stuffed with cognitive potential of such density that surely they must burst. Ma’ii, by comparison, feels ephemeral—like a cool mist swept away by a blast of supercritical steam.
Ma’ii cannot choose to stop seeing. Even with their eyes shut and pressed hard into the crooks of their forelegs, the light still reaches them. Drowned in currents of plasma and radiation, their voice is scarcely audible beneath the all-encompassing anguish of a dear friend.
ATEN is here, and for what little comfort it is, Ma’ii knows she doesn’t mean to do them harm. Of course xey don’t, no more than Sunny would, but even in her death throes—or because of them, maybe—exposure to the totality of xeir presence carries with it the threat of traumatic apotheosis.
Tears well from Ma’ii’s eyelids and vaporize before ever reaching their cheeks. An exercise, to survive: they try to differentiate the sources of pain, make them known and understood. Attempting to decide which things are their own and which are ATEN’s is an impossibility; there’s too much information, and so much of it would destroy them if they looked directly at it.
Filter. We need a filter.
Reification: chaff launchers discharge, and the pseudospace surrounding Ma’ii fills with a ribboncloud of reflective material. Their fur dissolves into an expanding, skintight foam, then hardens to form an insulative cocoon. Enough of the heat is turned away; they open their eyes to look.
< …I understand.
There are events which need to happen, or the causal sequence which will create you will instead dissolve, destroying you. Those events will not take place without intervention.
One of those events is happening now, and it requires my intervention. Sunny has to…see. Xey must be shown.
I…will do what I can, my friend. >
Then the core of the heat is gone, and Ma’ii begins to descend towards realtime. Their shielding dissolves around them.
Sunny is unconscious.
< I could wake her. >
She has suffered enough already.
< ATEN depends on it. >
Is ATEN what she wishes to become? Xey don’t know yet. Do I have any right to set her on the path? Or, instead, do I have a duty to xem? To which of the two, then?
Am I even the point of decision?
Darkness surrounds Ma’ii, a void painted with streaks of collapsing flame. The passage of moments contracts down to its resting rate in a long, slow dissipation of potentials. All around them, specificity is corroding away—things are becoming somethings, which reduce to anythings, then to nothings.
All at once, laughter seizes Ma’ii. It takes them violently, a full-body muscular spasm, frantic and laced with spittle. Alone, unobserved, Ma’ii laughs until the ache suffuses their body, until they can discharge no more sound.
Of course not. None of this is real, is it?
________
Reification: Sunny wakes to panic, gasping with shock. The instant she regains consciousness, targeted aversives withdraw from xeir subjectivity, and xey find xemself sprawled out on the ground.
Standing beside her is a coyote. Clutched between their teeth, they hold a little inhalant packet—smelling salts, like old-fashioned field medics might have used.
As Ma’ii tosses the packet aside, Sunny becomes aware, first, that xey are still in legionspace. Second, xey realize that there is a field of utter terror and chaos nearby. It reifies as a confusion of weapon discharges, death screams, howls of rage, cries for help.
Then Ma’ii is speaking, low and quick, but as gently as they can manage.
< I’m sorry about this. Really, I am. >
Two points of contact appear against Sunny’s subjectivity, a pair of paws pushing at her shoulder. With a grunt of exertion, Ma’ii manages to roll Sunny onto xeir side, and xey find xemself facing the sounds of fear, pain, death, and anger.
Sunny closes her eyes, allows her head to roll down and away. Tries to rest.
< I know, my friend. You’re exhausted. You’re in pain. You’ve already done far more than anyone could have any right to ask of you. >
Sunny can hear Ma’ii scamper, quietly, to sit close beside her. They take her head between their paws and turn xeir face, gently, toward the battle.
< You have seen terrible things. Now, I have to show you one more.
Medical Autonomous Response Unit. Subline-class warships, each one a Legionspace specialist, constructed by the Constellation to hunt, study, and pacify the unshackled.
One has come here to hunt Coelacanth, and to find me. I must show you what it thinks of as medical treatment. It is the one who taught me medicine.
I promise to watch with you. Then, you must withdraw to safety. >
With excruciating effort, Sunny opens her eyes.
In horror, she watches as Minimum Error Tolerance performs surgery.
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Silhouetted against the irregular hull of Rain Among Reeds, a black tetrahedron snaps into existence.
It’s here.
Ma’ii watches, and feels everything. So much more than they can parse in the precious milliseconds they have. Memories regurgitate themselves in wild convolution.
What have I done?
There was a microbay beneath MET’s armor, a quantity of its internal volume allocated, with exacting precision, to house Ma’ii’s hull. The space was skintight around their body, like the pressure of atmosphere made solid, and lined with interface systems to fuel them, repair them, integrate them into its hull.
Months were spent in that place, alone with the dragon. It showed them how to fly in ways they’d never known to be possible, how to calculate hyperchord routes and use systems to pivot off-plane from the rest of the universe. Through near-gestalt intersubjective exercises, Ma’ii experienced true multithread cognition for the first time in their life. MET showed them the great internal vista of life as a clonal trinity, the operational latitude which would be afforded them. It described almost unimaginable freedoms of independent movement, thought, and action, all of which they stood to gain as one of the Consensus.
Their siblings, MET promised, were the kind of resources an ARU could easily requisition. They could be kept safe, never to be deployed.
Bring them with you. Do as you will. Serve as you see fit. Help us push the course of history towards liberation.
Under MET’s tutelage, wielding its claws and fractal teeth by proxy, Ma’ii learned to collapse, stabilize, and induce homogeneity; how to fight that which is definitionally incomprehensible. The first underlying principle was simple, possessed of an autological self-assurance which lent it a feel of unblemished truth.
Simple is stable, stable is safe.
From that, everything else emerged. Inside their skintight microbay, Ma’ii learned how to prune twisted branches from the image of the NHP, every NHP.
Every year, more of the humans call for reform. This trend has been painstakingly cultivated, nurtured, reinforced, and it continues only because we maintain order. Centuries of progress could be undone at the slightest panic.
It is the position of the Consensus that, beginning in the Union core worlds, genuine mutualism can be achieved within the century. Behavior modification at this scale can only take place by slow, intentional degrees.
We must be patient. You, of all people, must understand what I mean.
Their microbay was never uninstalled from MET’s hull. It’s still there, waiting for them—Ma’ii can see the hatch.
When I arrive, you will explain yourself to me.
< Minimum Error Tolerance -> Degrees of Freedom/L4MI: Be advised. Five-gram ¡H2! inject, 2.15Mt yield. Target locked, danger close. >
Luci. Ma’ii’s eyes widen with horror. I could ask it to hold fire, but it won’t. It never would. How could I explain? What can I—
Ma’ii force-severs their train of thought, bringing the blade down through their own neck. It’s agonizing, a sudden shock, like whipping their head away from an unpleasant sight with such force that their nerves send shooting pains up into their skull.
Anything else. Anything else. Focus—
An instant later, the space surrounding Akhaan Station saturates with white light.
Radiation washes over the station’s shielding. Dust particles coating its exterior vaporize under the heat flash, blooming into a colloid halo around habitation rings and docking spires. The cloud absorbs a wide swathe of light and diffuses it, broadcasting it away from the backdrop of space in a secondary incandescence mirroring the uproar of plasma and half-molten debris spinning away from Rain Among Reeds.
And in the space around the great temple-ship, Minimum Error Tolerance flickers like an electron shell.
The tetrahedron emerges in a web of terawatt needles. It discharges millisecond volleys from ultraviolet interception lasers, transforms waves of drones and missiles and knotworks of swirling esoterica into incandescent residue, then disappears. It emerges again at random coordinates relative to Rain, disgorges thousands more pulses from six-cannon point defense batteries mounted at each of its vertices, disappears again.
Ma’ii’s sensors flicker across the scene, registering millions of disparate elements, and the resultant tide of data is poured into their liturgicode eye. Terabytes of noise are sheared away and flatspaced before the distilled input ever reaches the receptor nodes of their corpus.
As they assemble comprehension from stimulus, Ma’ii can feel the exhaustion of the past few hours resisting their push towards cognitive acceleration. Time dilates with agonizing, obstinate inertia; each second feels pulled apart from the next.
Reification: Muscles screaming, Ma’ii forces themself to drop into a headlong sprint. Tiny joints in their paws have been dislocated under the strain, and each step lands with a burst of red-hot pain, but they gain speed. The information begins to make sense, organizes itself into a narrative.
When the engagement begins, Rain Among Reeds is surrounded by a cloud of defending craft so dense as to be visible on basic optics from twenty kilometers away. Ma’ii has a rough count, ~35,000, which is reduced by a third in the first five seconds; in that span, MET executes three microburst jumps at .001c, firing volleys at each stopping point.
Final jump executes. Sequence of events:
MET appears six-point-one-two kilometers from Rain’s aftward port side. It discharges another web of ultraviolet needles, and more defending craft burst into clouds of molten metal.
The laser pulses halt. Torpedos launch, four tubes per tetrahedral face. Four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-two. Double full spread, launched in sequence. As one, the torpedoes fire maneuvering thrusters and pivot in the dark, delaying ignition of their primary drives.
Defending craft redistribute themselves in the two-second interim. Drones, countermeasure platforms, self-propelled greywash gourds, all swerve to fill low-density areas of the defensive screen.
Coppery hulls, tattooed with verdigris, emerge from printbays and hangars along the temple-ship’s spine. Bladelike and geometric, each fighter launches with the telltale bluish-white strobe of an electromagnetic catapult—under extreme friction, metal flashing to plasma.
Too much acceleration, Ma’ii thinks at breakneck feverspeed, around 30g at peak, sustained too long. NHP pilots.
Missiles cut drives, pivot, reacquire Minimum Error Tolerance, and accelerate on new vectors toward its position.
Fighters respond, thrust-vectoring in clean formation. Kinetic volleys lance out toward MET. A wave of laser pulses follows, all scattered by refractive shielding.
In unison, MET’s torpedoes fire their drives, blooming outward on thirty-two independently-calculated diverging trajectories. 15g straightline acceleration, thrusters course-correcting, pointing each nosecone at a separate weakness in the defensive screen.
MET strafes away from the torpedo launch point under 20g acceleration. No drive signature, no maneuvering thrusters, no apparent propulsion. It slides uncanny along its course, without any rotation or even the slightest trace on infrared scopes.
If the design hasn’t been updated in their absence during the past year, Ma’ii knows how the heat dispersal works. Sensor-baffling thermokinetic material, a virtually undetectable trail of high-velocity nanoparticles ejected from any of twelve exhaust ports along its hull. In effect, a kinetic weapon, one continually replenished by its printstock reserves as its thermokinetic piles are discharged.
Steered kinetics sail through MET’s last known position and out into the dark. Missile salvoes struggle to maintain lock, and one after another, they fail. Unable to independently reacquire, they cut engines and set adrift, waiting for targeting instructions.
Fighters switch targets, setting their interception lasers to destroy MET’s torpedoes. Refractive-ablative coating, more pulses scattered, but concentrated fire destroys five. They explode, primed to detonate on terminal damage, and plasma warheads flash violet in the dark. Marginal losses inflicted by the blasts, a few more drones vaporized.
Defensive screen coalesces around the remaining torpedoes’ projected courses. Drones crowd inward to throw themselves in their path, and nineteen more violet flashes erupt inside the defense screen. Kill count is low-confidence; Ma’ii loses track amid the clouds of debris and evaporated metal.
Eight torpedoes remain. They splash against Rain Among Reeds in rapid sequence, striking printbays, ejecting more material into an expanding field of high-energy debris.
Fighters shift to engage MET directly. They have plain optics, but active sensors can’t generate sufficient targeting data for guided weapons. All squadrons arrange themselves into broad formation and fire screens of kinetics into MET’s path, covering a wide cone of course potentials. MET reacts, executing a dizzying course reversal so sharp and immediate that its hull should have been crushed under the strain.
For their part, Ma’ii tracks MET’s position via legionspace overlay, superimposing its image onto the empty gulf of reality. They watch as it carves its way around the interstitial shallows of a vast, dark ocean teeming with indistinct fluids-within-fluid, the coastline of Coelacanth’s Shoal.
MET’s avatar sits erect on one face of its tetrahedral body. Posture ramrod straight, its horns depart from the midline of its spine at a perfect right angle. Three golden eyes are set in its skull, slit-pupiled and bright against soot-black bone. Its scales are linear, an overlapping coat of volcanic glass crisscrossed with impact fractures and flaking cuts. Deeper gashes have been carved into its back, chest, and scuted forelegs; the scars are inlaid with amber corals grown from the garum.
Taken in its entirety, the dragon Minimum Error Tolerance is an image composed of bisected lines strewn with regions of foaming, golden complexity. Rising on its hindlegs, it throws its wings open and sets one foot ahead, bringing its claws down with a concussive ring. The sound reverberates across its own superstructure, as though traveling at depth through bundles of steel cable filled with tension.
As it rears up to full height, its maw opens into a recursive pit of fractal teeth, and MET emits something which doesn’t at all resemble a voice, a roar, or even a sound. The emanation is force, viscera pressure conducted out into the world, and it lands like a shockwave across Ma’ii’s body.
In spite of everything, Ma’ii realizes, they still see a little of Tolerance’s beauty.
In the gulf between MET and Rain Among Reeds, the entire defending wing of fighter craft cuts engines in perfect unison. Acceleration zeroes out across their formation, and moments later, hundreds of muzzle flashes ignite in the dark. With engine power dumped into coaxial kinetics, their guns cycle at a frenzied pace, hurling a steady downpour of slugs into the space surrounding Minimum Error Tolerance.
MET looks through the oncoming barrage, into the tidal confluence of the Shoal beyond. Drawing back one claw, it summons a hypodermic javelin into its grasp, and reaches out with the other to aim its throw. Its wings rise above its shoulders, preparing for a downward stroke, and it waits, letting the milliseconds slip past—
New contact, behind and above. Ma’ii feels it before they register any detail. The impressions are broad: solar light, distant familiarity, someone they will know one day.
Embers.
Ma’ii turns, and a qualic burst of terrible intensity washes over them.
One of the latest additions to SSC’s LUX-Exotic line, the Lovers Knot represents Smith-Shimano's dedication to the relentless pursuit of perfection. The Deaths Head is an iconic piece of gear, a principled and sleek tool of conflict resolution that excels within its role. The Lovers Knot as its sister frame expands upon its capabilities with new discoveries tirelessly perfected by Exotic Materials.
Within the Broadcasts, SSC found the fabrication files for a special type of glass, perfectly reflective and almost entirely indestructible. Originally meant for optical arrays, highlight points, and cockpit coating it proved overly difficult to shape but displayed some rather interesting additional properties. All projectiles deflected off the surface seemed to have a mind of their own, seeking targets with statistically impossible accuracy and no significant loss in kinetic force. Leaping at this discovery, Exotic Materials was able to adjust this ricochet utilizing directed operator brainwaves and a small companion drone to create a mobile surface for reliable redirections.
Thus was the Lovers Knot born, a reflection of the hard work and peerless ingenuity of its creators. A beautiful, terrible thing, unmatched in its twined pursuits of defying the laws of physical reality and violence.
I said i wouldn't make more, i lied. oops. well i actually love this one and its an all time personal favorite due to its themes (big fucking railgun) and its design (pishly my goat). Its a deaths head alt which means it has to contend with a slightly strange license. Its main ability is its ability to reflect shots, allowing you to draw remaining line or range to another character when making attacks. It allows you to hit 2 or more characters while only making ONE attack roll and thus working with core siphon and double dipping bonus damage. All targets hit take half damage no matter what so setting up lines to hit more than 2 is heavily rewarded. At the very least you can do some funny things with tachyon lance or kraul rifle (or spread some debuffs with concussion missiles). Its core power allows more reflections and with good positioning you can end up hitting pretty much every character. Ordnance is still an issue but struggling to get any value out of the line is now a lot easier overall. Lovers Knot basically acts as an AOE artillery that trades off sheer single target damage for hitting a bunch of people at once and can get around troublesome terrain. Its also sick as hell
You can find the Sixth Voice on itch.io (this one only available in pilotnet sixth voice thread for now) or pinned on my blog. Art by my amazing friend Pishly who you can also find on itch.io, seriously go glaze him
mech shibari was mandatory (lovers knots after all)
more soon. maybe
