Rico paused to pant as he reached the top of the stairs to the atrium. He couldn’t have returned to his room; even if Chanel was otherwise involved, she would still be notified if he did. He held onto the railing tightly, desperately. His knuckles went white.
“That bitch,” Rico rattled, “she had no fucking right to say that to me. She hid on that fucking ridge the whole fight! What does she know?”
He was the one at the front; the tip of the spear, him and the Asura. It was the others' fault. They had failed to back him up, that was all. He took another step into the atrium. Throughout the space withered pnt life clung to partially exposed trellises, their faded colors illuminated by the orange glow of the caldera that the resort was built around. Every little thing cast long shadows, from the myriad empty seating to the now brittle vines that had crept across the smooth stone before the ck of water had caught up with them.
The tightness in his throat and chest wasn’t going away. “I’m better,” he said, teeth together, lips pulled back.
If he was truly better, then why was it that he ended up on his back? Why had his einherjar been wrecked and the others, in their old gen machines, been fine? Their specs were not even close to near that of the Asura’s. The Vajra only had a single reactor for fuck’s sake, their output wasn’t even able to support modern eitr armaments without an external battery. They weren't trained like him either! He was raised for this. After he'd been given up as a forfeit, Necker Group had chosen him. They saw how much better he was, that he was meant for great things, like the ace pilots of the mark one era. The company would have him in their best machines. Laine was just a medical debtor, Ed was an obsessed gearhead, and Ben… He didn't know what Ben was. Didn't matter; he was special, and they weren’t.
He coughed and pushed himself forward still. In his vision a notification of an incoming comms request from Ben blinked. “I don't give a shit,” said Rico, dismissing it with a reckless swipe of his hand.
Rico stumbled as his foot caught on an errant vine. Even in its desiccated state it was enough to trip him. He tumbled over himself and down a few steps, nding hard on his forearms. The impact knocked what little air he’d managed to pull into his lungs out. He found he couldn’t get any back into himself. His chest was tight. It felt like he was back in that damn tube, his lungs full of viscous sludge; breathable liquid, what a fucking joke.
Rico cwed at the polished tile he id upon, coughing and spluttering as if he’d just gotten out of the Asura. This wasn’t at all dignified, nothing had been since he began real sorties. His runs through the simutors were always something he understood, even when they added the new cockpit type it was predictable. People, real ones, they weren’t.
______
Vivien left Chanel and the small command vessel she resided on to travel through the bifrost. Her mind passed through the nearest major node, Sindur, and from there to the frozen tomb that was Veles. During the months she and Emrys had stayed there she had gotten the underground facility running again; the cameras rigged so she could see, the environmental controls working and most of the corpses disposed of. They weren’t viable anyway, nearly a decade of neglect after the Veles Police Action had seen to that.
After a cursory scan to look for any signs of intrusion or storm damage she slid her mind into an alfar resting at the edge of the eitr font. The ke of liquid light rippled as the alfar entered it, sensors briefly struggling with the excess power that coursed through the machine. The Myrddin had been damaged just before Vivien had impnted Emrys within the squad, that was true; but it had been ready for action far sooner than she’d let her pilot know. The stocky body of the Alfar came to rest in front of the kneeling, four-armed, einherjar.
“Time to see how my little project is going.”
Vivien connected with the Myrddin and its torso opened like a steel-petalled flower, its two subordinate arms resting beneath the opening. The Myrddin bled. Rotten blood and chunks of flesh fell from its chest cavity and into the luminous eitr below. After a moment a skeleton held together by spoiled muscle tissue and wrapped loosely in the Myrddin’s cables and wires fell into the machine’s waiting arms.
The cameras of the alfar unit focused on the broken body cradled by the Myrddin’s lower set of arms. “Another failure. To be expected, but no less galling.” The Myrddin lowered the corpse slightly and Vivien turned it over, inspecting it. “Seems the issue isn’t solely one of freshness. Perhaps a living subject truly is required.”
Vivien grabbed the corpse with the alfar, the Myrddin’s cables retreating as they disconnected from it, and stuffed it inside the open cockpit. She’d need to examine it in detail, and the middle of the font wasn’t the pce for it. As she left the Myrddin closed itself up and went inert once more.
______
Emrys hurried across the threshold and into the halls connected to the hangar. She was certain what was going on with Rico, she'd had enough experience with it herself to know. When she reached the intersection of halls, she paused. She couldn't know for certain which direction Rico had gone. It would be easy to just call Vivien and ask for her help, but she already relied on her for so much and she had said she'd be busy. Besides, she could prove that she was getting better, more capable for her.
She began with a basic function of the ARC in her head, calling yourself a map of the resort. With a hand she reached out to where it was dispyed in her vision. When she touched it it felt like it did when she was with Vivien, a tingling sensation at the point of contact along with a light pressure. With a thought and a motion the two dimensional map expanded to a three dimensional model.
“How was it that she did this,” mumbled Emrys, her hands making some of the more common gestures to try and get the interface to do what she wanted. “Just, just connect to Rico.” The mask produced Rico’s contact, the connection pulsing as he failed to pick up again. “Where are you?” hissed Emrys.
The model of the resort quivered, the force of her will disrupting the image. Small stars appeared across the map with little images of each ARCs owner. A clump in the hangar, another in the area near the prisoners and a few glimmering throughout the resort. They began to blink out one by one as Emrys felt a tickle in her mind, her thoughts transting into action in a manner far more smoothly than she’d ever experienced with an ARC before; it felt more like when she was connected to the Myrddin. The mask was, after all, a piece of the machine that had been made for her by Vivien. Soon the markers for the other ARCs narrowed to just Rico’s. He was in the atrium, and with that she was on the move.
______
The alfar pulled the failed host body out of its cockpit and dropped it on the floor. Vivien had set up the Myrddin’s cockpit to handle biological processes, but the body had clearly been dead for too long. The draugr material that threaded through her pilot hadn’t managed to find purchase in the corpse. As much as she had wanted to avoid taking a living body for this project, that eventuality seemed to be becoming more and more the only route left to her.
Roughly, the alfar picked up the corpse by its waist and took it over to one of the unused elevator shafts and tossed it down to rest with the others. Vivien detached from the alfar and returned to the Myrddin. It felt simir to how it was inside of Emrys. Or, was it the other way around? She stood the einherjar up and ignited an emitter on one of the main arms’ palms. The plume of super-heated eitr reduced until it was just dancing above the center of the Myrddin’s hand. She pressed it close to the einherjar’s open cockpit, the heat boiling then burning away the organic matter from the failed host body. Its torso closed back up after a quick flush of coonts ejected any remaining ash from the cockpit.
With a thought she spun up the miniaturized sleipnir drive inside of the Myrddin, then tore a hole in front of herself then leapt through it into the Ginnungagap, that vast darkness just under the surface of reality. The Myrddin glided through the inky unreality of that pce as it approached a thin seam of light, propelled by thrusters across its body. On Thrasir, a few dozen meters above a ravine littered with wreckage from the previous days’ battle, the Myrddin emerged and gently descended to the ridgeline.
______
Rico pushed himself up and tried to stand. His legs went out under him, spying to the sides as he came to rest looking toward the proper entrance to the atrium. Stood there, as if holding up the balcony, were a pair of older Necker Group einherjar. They were Pitris models with their blocky design and hi-vis strips still applied. He’d first trained in one of those models as a child, but now they seemed to mock him, judging him.
“Fuck you!” he shouted before coughing again.
He heard his heart pounding… No, it wasn’t that. It was coming from behind him. He turned to see Ben approaching, that stupid fucking neon green jacket fpping as he ran.
“What do you want?” asked Rico, gring at Ben. “Come to mock me too?”
Ben slowed as he descended the small set of stairs. “No, that’s... That isn’t why I’m here.”
“Then what?”
“I came because I was worried about you.”
Rico grit his teeth, lips pulling back briefly before another bout of hacking coughs. “Worried about me? Why? I’m fine.”
“Yeah.” Ben leaned down and offered a hand. “Also, I promised to expin what happened back in the hallway too. I thought you wanted to know.”
He grabbed Ben’s hand, letting the other pilot help pull him to his feet. “It’s just the breathable liquid, that’s why I was coughing.”
“Of course. That’s gotta be hard to deal with,” said Ben, leading Rico over to some of the chairs in the nearby patio.
“It’s the cost of piloting a cutting edge machine. It’s so the G forces aren’t so lethal.” Rico stumbled and caught the edge of a chair, gring at the masked pilot briefly, daring him to say something before taking his seat.
Ben walked over to a seat of his own and sat down. “I can imagine, the Asura is an impressive machine.”
“Better than the Vajra by far.” Rico leaned back. It was good to get a chance to brag again. “Three eitr reactors, capable of sustained flight and the use of eitr weaponry. Wish they’d sent one of the rifles or cannons down too, can’t stand the kick of kinetics.”
Ben nodded. “The Vajra have their issues. I can’t stand the response dey.”
“What do you know about that? I never saw you in the academy,” scoffed Rico.
“The academy?”
A smirk crept across his face. “Necker Group’s combat academy. Well, I was in the combat section. My synchronization rating is really high so I got fast tracked into it, ran simutors through my ARC as soon as I got it put in.” He points back over to the Pitris einherjar near the resort’s entrance. “Used those for a little before the Vajra was put into development.”
“I…” Ben trailed off.
“It doesn’t say much about you in your file,” said Rico.
“That… Has to do with the other thing I was going to tell you about.” Ben reached up with both hands and pressed on the temples of his mask.
Rico clicked his tongue. “I get to see what’s under that little mask? You’re not fuck ugly are you? Maybe a burn victim or something, Ben?”
Ben sighed and lifted the mask off his head. Beneath the mask were full lips, slightly flushed cheeks and a piercing pair of artificial eyes. Stark, glowing rings of crimson around brown irises that encircled pupils of the usual bck. The pilot’s face had a softness that marked Rico’s suspicions back when they ran into each other in the hallway as accurate.
“I don’t think I am. Do you, Rico?” asked the unmasked pilot, voice raised back up into a more androgynous range.
“I don’t, Ben,” Rico coughed, taking the moment to think of a response. “Then you’re a medical debtor like Laine?”
They shook their head. “That isn’t why I’m here, no. And don’t call me Ben.”
“You’re one of those types, huh? So what’s the new name?”
“Emrys. My handler chose it for me.” The flush in her cheeks intensified. “She’s why I’m here too, she wants me to get better at piloting an einherjar. She cares a lot about me.”
“You’re in love with your therapist?” Rico scoffed.
“Why wouldn’t I be? She saved me.” He’d expected some sort of cpback, or a threat, not sincerity. “I was in a really bad pce, somewhere I thought there was no way out of, and she just got rid of everything keeping me there.”
Rico waved a hand. “So just because she cut some bureaucratic red tape you’re into her.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Emrys’ lips parted, eyes unfocusing briefly, paused. “Well, Rico… Was there anything else you wanted to know?”
Rico pushed the tip of his tongue against the point of his canines. “Are you, uh, taking anything for it?”
“I don’t fully get how it works, but she had an impnt put in me that regutes my hormones. She monitors everything for me, and makes any adjustments I might need.”
“And you just trust her with that?” he scoffed.
“Of course I do.” Emrys smiled.
“And physically, what,” Rico trailed off. Why was he thinking about this? He’d seen people like Emrys before in the corporate etiquette seminars, knew most of the details already. “What is it like?”
Emrys blinked. “Well, things feel a lot… More now.” She looked down at the thin lines of crimson under her nails. “Though I can’t be sure what is causing that exactly.”
“Not just that, I mean,” his eyes focused more on Emrys’ chest, there was certainly something substantial there even if he couldn’t see them clearly under her loose fatigues. “I know I felt um, those when I ran into you.”
“Oh, uh,” she trailed off, concaving her chest slightly. “They hurt sometimes. The pilot suit is a bit tight too.”
“I never really noticed them when you were in that thing.” Rico exhaled through his teeth. “Do you like it? I mean, you must if you haven’t asked her to stop, right?”
Emrys’ eyes flick to the mask for a moment. “I uh, I guess I do.” Her fingers drummed on the hard polymer as she took a moment to figure out what to say next. “Vivien and I…”
“You what?” asked Rico, leaning in.
The orange glow of the caldera framed Emrys, casting her features in shadow. Even in that darkness her blush was clear, practically as luminous as her eyes. “She rewards me after a good job.”
“How? It’s–” Another small fit of coughs interrupted him, “it's not like she’s down here on Thrasir. Isn't that unprofessional?”
“Isn't what? Sorry, are you okay?”
“I’m fine!” Rico snapped then grimaced as he choked another bout of coughing down.
Emrys nodded slightly, waiting for Rico’s breathing to return to normal. “Alright, then. Just what do you mean?”
Rico wiped a bit of the breathable liquid from the side of his mouth. “Well, a therapist and her patient being romantically involved is… Supposed to be frowned upon.”
“I don't really care if it is,” said Emrys, slight smile on her lips.
It was another unexpected response, and it left Rico at a loss for words. Before either could say more, a notification blinked in their vision. It was time for their briefing on the next sortie, an attack on a Mobius controlled spaceport. And, the only way off pnet that wouldn’t require Necker to risk a cruiser.
Emrys stood, her lips twitching as she stared off a moment ter she looked back to Rico. “We can talk more ter.” She grabbed her mask and put it back over her face. “You coming?”
