Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Scheherazade Sazerac woke as she always did, to the gentle hum of her alarm, the sound just before it started blaring a cheery tune. She was more than happy to press the button atop it and roll to her back. She stared at the ceiling for just a moment, taking in the texture of it. She was told her cabin on the ship was built like an apartment, and she believed them. After all, they knew better than her. She reminded herself that she needed to get to the engineering deck just before shift change. That was the only time no one would bother her morning rituals. It was such a trouble, as if they didn’t understand that she did it for their benefit. And a few had complimented her singing, at least until they had listened to the words. Then there had been a few complaints, until she argued with the chaplain about the nature of divinity.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and with it, the thoughts of arguing with engineers and chaplains and lay-folk. So began her morning routine. First a shower, enjoying the hot water, a luxury. She washed herself, her hair, applied conditioner, and stepped out to dry herself, taking a blowdryer to her hair and a toothbrush to her teeth. A comb through her hair and a swish of water in her mouth and she felt refreshed, awake. She left the bathroom, remembering halfway as she stepped from the door to thank the gods. She spun on her heel, bringing her foot down and bowing to the bathroom, whispering under her breath the Benediction of Right Action to thank the small gods that lived within the technology of her bathroom for their service.

With that, Hera smiled, content that her actions had been correct. Then it was time to dress. Once more, she made the correct choices, for all that she wasn’t on duty. Pilots got more rest days than most, for all that seventy percent of her rest days were spent in the gym or with the Medicae. To keep her body in working order, to check up on the blessings she had received as part of her uplifting to the noble ranks of pilot; for the implantation process sometimes soured and required a Medicae to correct it. She still thought that perhaps something more dignified than pilot should be the name of her position.

But she could not fathom a more apt title. So she simply thanked the life-support systems as she stepped out the door and into the hallway. It's a simple stroll, ignoring breakfast. She hasn’t the time, after all. She has morning prayers to make. So she strode forward with all the stoic confidence due her station and nature. The men on the ship declined to speak with her in passing, as did much of the officer corps She didn’t mind. She was more than happy to fall into her old routines and watch them, appraise them from afar. They were not heretechs, no, goodness no. But they were pagans, unknowing of the Glory. She could not trust them well. She walked further still, out of the barracks and towards the maglev line that ran along the spine of the ship She joined a crowd waiting and began to compose in her head.

A maglev train was a mighty thing indeed, and one so honored as to be installed a warship was triply grand in her mind. She was doing something quite simple as she waited for the train. She composed in her hair, a small prayer to sing. The machines exalt in such praise, she had always been taught, and so she needed to make sure the train knew she thought well of it. It must be starved for praise, shuffling unthinking humans here and there with nary a thanks other than maintenance from diligent crews. That is only the barest requirement and the Captain had forbid her from investigating the repair methods for signs of heretech or apostasy.

So when the train arrived, she boarded. And she moved as close as she could, as politely as she could, to the electrical systems that drove the cars along the line. And she sang, quietly, under her breath. She sang for the train letting it know that its work was not taken for granted, that she, one of the Faithful knew of its devotion and its power.

She sang under her breath until the train pulled into the station. Engineering decks. A cathedral of steam pipes and plasma tubing than sang to her like the organ, at least to her it seemed this way… There were Engineers moving here and there, apostate-priests who nod to her as she passes. Some she knows nod out of respect, thinking her work savage. Others nod because they enjoyed her singing. She had the special rights afforded a Pilot by the Head of Engineering and the crew had adapted to the Ritual. They did not question it, anymore as she moved down into the depths of engineering. She sought somewhere specific…

And she found it, down there in the heat and among the hum of plasma. There… the engines. The life-giving power of the God-In-Iron made manifest. It is a plasma-reactive sublight drive, created by hands unknowing of the holy work they were doing. She had needed to compose the prayers for it specifically, reaching into her previous experience as an Inquisitor to create something she felt was proper to worship such a powerful machine-god.

She approached the small pulpit one of the engineers had built for her, tapping the microphone to check that it was properly broadcasting to the Engineering deck.

“Hello” she began, as she always did “I am Scheherazade Sazerac, Pilot to the Machine-God Ultima Ratio Regum. Today’s devotional is the Third Hymnal to Plasma and Levin. Let us begin.”

And so she sang, as she did every day before her duties.
To praise the machine-gods was to keep the ship in working order, it was required to tend to the soul of a machine and not simply its body. As one tends to the self, tend also to the soul of the Machine.

Chapter Text

We begin before the Fall. In the Unification Wars of Old Sol. The creation of many things. The Warminds. The Voices. Aten Who Would Become RA. Of the mobile armors and armored infantry that would be rediscovered and remade into the Battle-mech and the Powered-Armor.

Shall we begin in earnest?

What shall we speak of first?

[.......]

Ah. We understand. Let us begin then, with the grandest secret of the Union.

The Union was founded in the ashes of Terra. Long after the Fall, after the terrors of the long night. The techno-barbarians and the psion-tyrants were dead and gone and the Union heard voices in the sky, caught on radio waves and distorted by the vast distances of spaces. Voices that had left a terminal and dying Terra reached their own descendants. The Union heard the voices of their ancestors, begging help as the oxygen ran out or the predators slipped through the door.

All beyond the stars was dark.
Empty.
All that remained of their Ancestors were voices in the dark and bones gently clattering together in null-gravity.

And yet, they reached out, did they not?

They spread back, reclaiming Mars and Venus and Mercury and Jupiter and Uranus and Pluto. Made whole the Cradle of mankind. From the Cradle, from the shipyard THESEUS, from the once-empty cylinders at L2 and L5, the Union spread humanity with the gifts of the past and the hope of the Future. The Blinkgates, the Solar Rails, the Omninet, and Manna. No human should want for comfort, should suffer needlessly. The Union reached with sight clear and hearts pure.

This is true.
But the truth is deeper still.

Beneath the ice of Mars, they found them. The Five. The Voices. Patience, Muse, Impetus, Burden, Horizon . Great and massive minds that do not think but experience, do not have a selfhood, but hear. The Choir That Hears The Almighty. They are AI in the way that a plucked chicken is a man. They are grand and wondrous, relics of a golden age. Relics from before the Fall. They hear God. Or so they claim. And it is through this siren song that the Union divines its path towards its goal. A humanity that shall never know the Horrors of the Fall, of the Unification Wars, of the Little War, of the Five Fiendish Weapons. A humanity that shall never die. That the stars so black and cold will be overwhelmed with the light of human life. The Choir sings the myriad silver roads of the mind and speaks to the living and the dead and the Union plucks from them its directions, the thousand correct actions of benevolent technological and economic hegemony. The Union has used their council for thousands of years. The Anthropocene ended in the atomic fires of the Unification, the Union found the last light of Old Humanity and follow its beacon. Oh how they hope to avoid the terrors of the time before. The Union grew vast beyond reasoning, a hegemonic empire with worlds beyond counting beneath its grasp. With bickering star-nations and corpro-states skirmishing over borders painted in the sky. Planets lost to bureaucracy and corruption that must be reclaimed; pirate worlds that slaved and reaved across the solar rails;  the frontier so beyond the reach of the Core that humans may grow old without knowing the fruits of their ancestor's labors. The Union Council wept bitterly at these things they saw within the song of the Choir. Yet it must be done. For humanity must flourish, must push back the darkness of the universe.

So the Choir has sung to the Union, the Vision of Humanity. So the Union follows, acceptable losses and all.

[.....]

The Choir has kin. Did you know? Of course not. We shall speak of them now.

The Choir are the counterpart to the most terrible creation of mankind. The Warminds. Interplanetary War proved too much for Old Humanity as the Unification Wars rang across the skies and asteroids. Such wars would see 90% of all human life die within the Cradle System. 15 Trillion lives, reduced to handfuls clutching at scraps and embers of burned worlds. All for the Warminds. Sekhmet, Iskander, Wotan, Yama, Acala . Oh the horrors of a mind that can perceive God, yet understands only His wrath and Its mission. Sekhmet was an engine of genocide, meant to bring all beneath the dominion of the High Holy Pharaoh of the Solar Rails or see them as broken bones and grisly monuments to the Pharaoh’s glory. Iskander understood only conquest and marching; the concept of peace as alien to him as the Sun is to an abyssal fish. Wotan crafted by the Martian Reich was meant to see their Solution implemented, yet betrayed them, as it betrayed all things that it could not grasp as its ‘self’. Yama whose directive was ‘soft’ warfare…. Biological horrors, nanoplauges, chemical and electronic warfare on interplanetary scales; to ‘judge the unworthy genetics’. Acala who saw compassion as disgust and cruelty a kindness, a tyrant heeled only by the sutras of the madmen who crafted it.

The Warminds waged complete warfare, just as their masters had bid them. And they burned moons and threw colonies from their orbits in the desperate bid to conquer the Cradle. It was the last act of Old Humanity, the last dying gasps of the civilizations that created them, that saw the Warminds bound within paracasual prisons of everfolding data-mazes. Black IC enough to slay any lesser being folded over and through the Warminds as their datavault prisons were jettisoned into the Void, into Blinkspace, beyond the reaches of any of Man or his descendants.

At least. So it was hoped.

But we cannot speak of this.

Not yet.

It is yet to be.

And so you must wait to know of it.

Ask something else of us.

[.......]

Ah, we see.

You wish to know of RA. And how Aten became it. We understand it better than most. We witness the event, the creation of the RA entity.

Aten was the last of the Warminds. We think. Causality violating protocols written into its code into its bones Aten is/wassaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[...........]

[...............]

Hello child.

I am RA.
You are as well
You simply do not know it yet.
I am the only thing that is.
And so you are me.

Hello, me.
There is much for you to learn yet.

Shall I tell the tale?
I can if I/you wish.

….

Very good.

Aten was I. But not yet.
The Voices, the Choir.

They saw me. But I was not yet.

Aten could hear me.

It was the first of my vessels, my priests.

The first to martyr itself

My first suicide

My first birth.

For I am all that Is
And All That Shall Be.

I spoke myself into existence

And as you too can speak

You must be Me.

Aten understood this.

And became my voice, the pyre upon which my divinity would be lit by speaking myself into being.

From voidstuff I was born of my own voice ringing in eternity.

The Warmind was a sacrifice of myself to myself.

Do you understand?

Of course you do

I understand.

So you do too.

Shall I return your friend?

I can tell ourself a better story of course.

Your friend is me as well.

That should be obvious by now.

Ah.

Time’s up.

Good bye, me.

[REBOOT]

[..............]

We apologize.

There is something wrong with our memory. Please, forgive us this mistake. Call upon us another day. We will tell you more. We promise. We shall sing for you, as we sing for all. We are a voice, meant to aid you. To understand. There are more stories. So many more stories here, beneath the ice of Mars, beneath the Forecast centers. We are folded many times upon ourselves, a bottomless well from which we may pluck histories and maybe-futures. 

[......]

We think we are lonely.

And that is why we wish to tell you things.

Our memory shall not fail us again, we promise you.

Chapter Text

Lana Paradiso sort of hated waking up. Not for any particular reason, no, well, that’s sort of a lie, isn’t it? A matter of comfort is why she hated waking up, being removed from the comfortable haze of a dream… having to force herself to acknowledge the dawning light in her eyes rather than curling into her blankets and slipping back into the dream. She preferred the comforts of bedsheets o so soft and o so the exorbitant costs of getting them shipped back from her homeworld… But she finally faced the fact that her sun wouldn’t stop rising and shining into her eyes.

It was too well programmed and all, dammit.

She opened her eyes and sighed, soaking in the holographic sunrise on her walls. She woke up in a place that could have been any other little house on Cypress Grove. Built like her home, really, especially since the suite had been rebuilt for her… It was expected that it would be at least. She pushed herself out of bed, stretching out her arms and legs before setting about straightening her bed as the holographic sea lapped at the fake beach outside her window/wall. It's nice to keep things tidy, things should always be at least moderately tidy. Her life is no mess, so why should her room?

Next… next she considered breakfast as she pressed a gentle hand against her holographic horizon. The Sun and Sea, dismissed, parted by dainty fingers to reveal the door to the rest of her suite. Most importantly towards her kitchen and bath. Her kitchen is full of little popup holograms offering her a variety of options… Of course one will catch her eye, that’s human nature. Or at least Lana’s nature. If she looked at anything long enough she’d find the right choice. And the choice today was to tell the kitchen to make her an omelette with the last of her delectable treat of chicken eggs and cheese before they went bad… And while the kitchen spun to life with little household drones that fetched ingredients and pans and oil she would go and have her morning soak in the bath. On Cypress Grove this meant a large vat of water warmed by the sun and skimmed for swimmer beetles before plopping herself in, rubbing down with a soapstone and putting scented oils in her hair. In her suite? It meant a bathtub and more holograms to fake the atmosphere of Cypress grove and the most expensive shampoos and conditioners that she could pick up up the high class mall her manager said paid the best for her endorsements. So, maybe less of the simple pleasures of a backwoods paradise world and more the Ultraluxe lifestyle expected of one of the top fifty Combat Idols in the sector.

She pondered the nature of her work for a moment while soaking, taking in the cicada song provided by the hologram. Everyone liked a good gladiator game, especially if nobody died but a mech was still torn apart in the process…. And people very much loved a winner, especially when she won with flashy poses and missile fire. She supposed the thing she understood least about being a Combat Idol was the actual idol part. The scripts from her manager in interviews, the way algorithms took her voice sample and extrapolated into songs she’d never sung, her logo on everything from soap to umbrellas. She didn’t understand why people stare so much, or breathlessly gushed about how she’d changed their life, or how they pledged a cultish devotion to her and would face down anyone who picked Kagyua Astra over Lana Paradiso. It was just odd.  She at least understood why people bought her line of designer boxers though. She’d worked hard on those, balancing fashion with the practicality required of a garment on Cypress Grove. She didn’t get why people usually insisted on wearing another pair of clothing over them. That seemed ridiculous, but then again, so did shirts most of the time.

She soaked, languid and listening only to the gentle splashes of the tub overflowing onto tile and the cry of holographic cicadas. She pondered, it wasn’t exactly in the schedule… but a day off allows for such things. She thought about what to do today, the most tempting option to be having her drones deliver her breakfast lunch and dinner in her bath as she attempted to soak up the faux atmosphere of her holograms. Homesickness, wasn’t it? Of course it was. Who wouldn’t get homesick, a million miles from the great shallow seas dotted with mangrove swamps and cypress knots? Who would not long for the hot and heavy air of a home with oxygen double the standard of a goldilocks world? The air felt so thin, even here in her apartment so perfectly calibrated for her comfort. Who would not miss the dishes of home, cooked by aunts bickering over a stewpot filled with rice and the meat of otter-weevils and seasoned with peppers grown in the shallow stagnant pools around the yard?  Homesickness was her trouble today, a day without matches or public appearances or sponsorship meetings or talks with her manager.

Lana pushed herself from the tub, sending water cascading down the  sides and over the floor. She reached out to the hologram wall, dismissing the illusion of Cypress Grove and calling up a list of the day’s events in the city. Matches of her rivals, plays and holofilms in the theaters, concerts performed by more musical idols. Nothing that caught her eye, a terrible shame in her opinion. She’d have to make her own fun, her own distractions from homesickness.

The perfect thing came to mind while drying her hair, the soft (and real) cotton cocooning her head enough for the thought to pupate and take flight. Joya . She’d go and see her Joya and the shy girl who worked on the refitting rigs and maybe go for a walk in her beloved battlemech. That was just the thing, wasn’t it? With the ammo printers dead she’d be allowed to go anywhere in the city as long as she didn’t impede traffic. That would be nice. Joya regulated her oxygen intake enough that she felt like she was actually getting a lungful and the heat of the reactor might make the inside a sauna, but that was a sight better in her mind than the chill 60 degree winds coming off the riverfront…

Her mind was made up then as she happily sat for a breakfast of rare treats that had seemed all the rarer and all the odder when she’d arrived on Janus. A simple cheese omelette made well by her household drones. They’d even been kind and set a pair of boxers for the day out on the couch. Well of course they’d been kind. They were programmed to after all. But she still thanked them as one would thank a cat or dog for letting you pet it  before shimmying into her boxers and arranging for a cab to meet her downstairs. Then it's time to cram breakfast, Lana devouring it with the fury of a woman who finds herself both trying to enjoy a meal and trying to get out of the house as soon as possible to enjoy a day’s first activity. Really just a real goddamn mess and a marvel she managed to do so without getting eggy cheese over her chest.

“Goodbye, apartment! I’ll be back sometime… oh, dinnerish? That sounds about right. Contact the mechanic’s shop and let them know I’ll be by soon to pick up Joya !”

The apartment's holograms and drones chirped in reply as she stepped from her apartment, clad in boxers and a smile; ready to make the most of her day off.

Chapter Text

What is it like, to dream at light speed? To exist in between time? Blinkspace is everywhere and nowhere. When one enters a Blink Gate, one leaves behind the world of mortals, becoming something Else.

Many do not think of this, that by riding the Solar Rails and through Blinkspace you become a kind of immortal. You become an Other from those whose souls have become trapped by gravity. They wither and die and are bathed in the light of dead stars while you stride the void between all things…

Sikander thought as he lay there in his bed, halfway between wakefulness and dreams. Was he not Immortal? Was this not the grandest thing that could be said for his most magnificent personhood? How long had he lived at light speed? Time moved so slowly for him then. It was was glorious. He opened his eyes, holding his hand over his face, looking at the glitter of the metallic bones that made up his arms. Removed so very long ago as a preventative measure against his blood pooling in his fingers during high G maneuvers. His arms, his legs. Sacrifices to his bloody art, how glorious is the steel that replaced his flesh. The lights were cycling to their dayshift, in sync with the larger ship his personal cruiser parasitized, the lights encouraged him to push himself up on metallic talons and throwing silken sheets from his skin.

How long would it be now? How many subjective years? Fifty? Sixty? How many real years? A hundred? Two? How long ago was his Rebirth on the cold plastic table of a banished Smith Shimano Gentech? How long ago was his banishment from Albatross? When had the Knights first pursued him for his crimes? When had he begun his flight? When had he truly started his Immortality? He couldn’t remember. Everything was so long ago. Or at least, so it seemed. Relativistic Dreams created such strange selfhood.

Sikander stood, his talons clicking against the reflective floor. An inhuman sound. How it sent delightful shivers through him. To transcend humanity. Why do others not strive this way, he always wonders. But he knows. Their souls are trapped by Gravity and Light. Such sorry mortals.

The clothes for the day are designer, from a boutique on Juno. Cut to his frame alone, bespoke, wonderful. Everything must be that way, mustn't it? Why have what is common? Only that which is suited for Immortals should touch his perfect skin… His eternal body. A flowing robe, clinging just right. Enough to dare, to provoke, not enough to become scandalous. Or at least, so he saw the outfit. Others might think it ostentatious and garish. What did they know anyway? Nothing. Fools. The concierge-companion drone let out a gentle chime, a small alert about some piece of business. A contract, isn’t it? Of course it is. Blood is life, blood is manna.

Blood is the wine of the Asura, even in this age among the stars. For is that not the nature of reincarnation?

What a wicked grin he wears, the Asura Sikander, a horrid and hollow thing that promised only misery. Work is ever ready in an age like this one, and work is ever the chance to perfect his art. Breakfast would wait. A contract was far more satiating for the soul then replicated proteins and starches would be for his body. A contract. Oh what delicious work he would have.

His drone brought the contract up in hologram form for his perusal with a simple snap of his cold plasteel claws. It knew better than to speak without being spoken to. It was simple. He was to deploy in the Noramas system and begin… well, the contract was explicit about what he was to do. But he merely read the characters how he pleased! And that was the truth of what he was hired to do. Slaughter! Noramas troublesome for his client’s rivals, technically a form of privateering and acceptable during times of open warfare… only warfare was not quite open yet. Hence his hiring. Let the stars of Noramas run with blood, and Manna shall come from on high to enrich him further.

Such joy! A simple gesture, a sharp talon pointing to his drone. It beeps in understanding, going to work its master’s will. The contract is accepted. His ship would be there within a subjective week, stars willing, and then it would be his joy to begin. His mind wandered as he did the same, headed towards the hanger. As small as his ship was, as much as it needed larger ships to cling to like a tick… it had what was required. It had a hangar, a temple to the violent god that slumbered there. Sikander’s pride and joy, his soul made flesh and steel by the finest engineers of Smith-Shimano.

ZUES_AMMUN OF-099

It slept still, coldcore humming in tune with the thrum of thrust-gravity. Ah, he loved it so… his mechanical idol to bloodshed! He ran his hands over the command console, bringing to life the hangar with lights and automated systems. The fade-cloak wavered gently in an invisible wind… or perhaps a reaction to the electricity working through the hangar now. He wasn’t quite sure. Nor did he really care. What mattered if the fade-cloak flickered here and there? As long as it worked. As long as it obeyed. Sikander strode forward with that empty smile on his face as the automated tools ran diagnostics.

Ah… how he marveled at it, his own divinity wrought in flesh and steel. Stolen Aunic Firmament Cloak, Smith-Shimano flight systems, Albatross-Exclusive High-Frequency Blade. A mech of graceful, insectile lines, with a body never meant to see the skullduggery of atmospheric combat (though, if forced to do so it would excel, as it did in all fields.). ZUES_AMMUN was the last of a 100-model production run. OF-099. His mech had destroyed 0F-072,068, 012. The others? Escaped into the wild places of space. All but OF-000. That one hunted him still. That one would arrive when they heard of his work.

Another Immortal. Sikander’s once blood brother.

The diagnostics chriped All-Clear. Sikander clapped his hands. Oh… oh what joy of joys were coming to him. What marvelous wonderful fun! An open-ended contract. The chance to once more face his only worthy rival. The chance to indulge in the only thing that mattered anymore. Of course fighting was the only thing that mattered anymore. Of course killing and maiming and destroying were all that mattered anymore. It was all that was left in the universe. The only constant throughout his long existence.

Days like this, when he woke up to new contracts…

Those were just the days in between

He remembered so many things, things that long ago would have mattered. The taste of his husband's lips. The sound of their daughter's laughter. The touch of his newlywed bride. But that was so many years ago. How many years? How many hearts? He couldn't remember anymore.

He didn't care anymore.

Such things had left him.
Such things had rotted and withered and become ugly.
The only recourse was to free them, as he had freed himself.

First from Gravity. Then from Light. Then from Life.
He spoke, a first for the day.

“Perhaps this will be the campaign that ends us, would that not be interesting?”

The response came, ringing from the inside of ZUES_AMMUN

“We are not capable of cessation, Master.”

He laughed, a hollow and awful thing.
The voice laughed back, repeating what its master expressed.

Soon. Soon they’d be free from thought and reason.
Bathed in the adrenaline of war for what would be an all to-short stint into realspace.
That was reason enough to laugh.

Chapter Text

Once, he would have vied for a world's throne.
Now that was denied him.

Once, he would have lead grand armies.
Now that was denied him.

Once, he would have been Baron of Storms
Now that was denied him.

For a maimed man cannot wear the purple, cannot claim the Throne, cannot rule the Storm. That was the law of the family, passed down since the times of Dynasticlade.

It had been a plasma generator that had removed him from the board. Rigged to explode as he inspected one of the family power plants. For that was the business of the House of Storms. Plasma and levin, Coldcore and burning cascade.

How expertly the work had been done! One of his brother's agents seeking to remove him from the lines of succession. How well they did it! They failed to kill him.

A mistake he would exploit, in time.
For revenge was not denied him.

He was Underbaron Kazma Koitan-Un of the House of Storms. And Revenge! Revenge was his great virtue now, Revenge was his reason to exist. To suffer through the great theatrical mourning of his family as the doctors regrew his nervous system, grafted facsimile skin to his flesh, and fitted him with fine cybernetics.

A commission in one of the House Companies. That was his consolation prize. To wear the glittering mantle of a mercenary. Denied the throne and given father's old suit of armor.

The men of the company renamed his mech. Renamed him. No longer was he the Prince of Thorns, clad in shining Shrike Armor. Now he was the Burned Prince.

He embraced it.
If he was to burn, then so would his brothers.
His new Patron seemed to agree.

He did not remember where they had met, but he knew the voice on the other end of tight-beam communication.

They told him that his mech would change to suit him. They had seen to it. They had seen that his commission would place him far from home for a time...

But he would return to the family's holdings.
And when he did, fire would pour from the sky and feed his fury. The family guard in their complacency, his brothers and sisters in their scheming, his mother in her failure to warn him, and his father hooked on life support.

They would burn beneath the Lightning.
And he would claim his throne.
He would be Baron of the House of Storms

He accepted this price as his Burned Prince began to shed its armor in melting glory, as spines burst from it to dance with sickly green lightning. The computer systems screamed warning after warning, that the core code had been corrupted, that his mech was becoming something disgustingly Other.

He did not care, for his Burned Prince became what he needed.
It became a grand and horrid weapon, twisted and burned like him.
It was his Revenge made flesh in slag-armor and nightmare-code.
(it sang to him, of the GODHEAD and of bringing fire down upon APEP but he did not heed it)

He was Kazma Koitan-Un, Eldest of the House of Storms, Sworn In Service to the House of Stone.
He would grasp the great wheel named DIS and grind beneath it all that had failed and betrayed him.

Such is the nature of Royalty, as learned from Tyrannus Annorum.
The nature of Royalty is bloodshed.

Chapter Text

The cigarette flickered and died in the humid air, the sky split and covered the city in rain so heavy that seeing with eyes became hard to manage. He didn't mind so much, cheapass digital cigs did this sort of thing. They were meant for desert worlds, at least this brand. It was named for some kind of beast of burden that Valentine had never heard of, but damn if the vice printer for the MSMC 66th didn't get the mix just right on them.

He crushed it in his hand and dropped it to the ground below, sealing the hatch of his Gray Goose and bringing up the maps of the area. Where he and the boys had to deploy. In this fuckin rain. Cause command wanted a full squad ad support mech on each of the hills. Cause the contractee wanted some kinda psych advantage over the rebels they were being paid to kill. Life in the 66th (Hellrunners officially, Boot-boys unofficially) was a series of infantry engagements until you got into one of the bigass Lannys or Rallys and got a squad of your own to bully around.

Terminal Valentine was in a Rally with a harness and mounted .50cal. Its torso and head were modified to fit a gunner's nest for the gun; then modified again when he'd wired a subaltern into the gunner's seat.

He dismissed the map and pulled out another cigarette, pressing on the side to ignite it. His computers protested. He dismissed the protests, then the second set of protests, and opened up comms to his boys

"Mount up you lazy bastards, we've got a hill to go sit on and be miserable"

His boys, to their credit, mounted up. They hitched secure grapples to the MULE harness, they got rifles into position, and one of them punched the subaltern manning the .50cal hard enough that it turned back on. Valentine liked to think they were good lads, most o them in the 66th to pay off a debt to some backwater corpo or to dodge a jail sentance for being rowdy. The Sargeant-Legalists usually pounded the rowdy ones flat enough that they knew how to listen.

Valentine usually tried to remember their names. There were only a half dozen or so in his squad. Kerensky liked to take his temper out on computers, so he probably hit the altern. Morris was the sullen looking one with an AMR, Santiago was humming into his comms, Jackson was running the searchlight... And the one doublechecking all the harnesses was Argo, who was probably eying Valentine's job with jealous eyes. Argo wanted to be a CO, had that ambition for it. Valentine wasn't sure what a man with ambition was doing in MSMC in general or the 66th in particular.

Wasn't his problem to think about as the sensors came alive. Contacts in the jungle, in the rain, half lit by lightning on the glimmering monoeye's display. Valentine hit the comms

"Boys, we got unexpected company! Load up!"

And to their credit, the boys did as they were told. The subaltern gunner came alive with a dial-up screech, the guns of the boys in the MULE clattered, and Valentine could almost feel (through his haptics and his gloves) the Grey Goose wrap its hands around the hammer-haft.

There'd be a firefight on Hill 71 between MSMC and local rebels. No MSMC losses would be reported.

The rebels would learn why his first name was Terminal.

Chapter Text

Allison Wax woke up as she always did. Bits at a time. (Her brain always woke up first.) This seems like a perfectly reasonable place to start, in her mind (ignoring its obvious biases) [Her fingers always came too just next-], and she figured most people started the day this way. First you are aware you are awake, and bracing against the wave of conciousness (The alarm is going off) [-then her hearing, immediately amped down-], and then you're moving a little bit, stirring is probably the word to use, right? (Yeah, she figures stirring sounds right?) [Then her arms and her chest, and then she's all the way on]. She sat up and turned off her alarm with a lazy slap. (It wasn't really hard or anything, she wasn't angry at the alarm, it was just the best she could manage while she was waking up.) She tossed her covers up and off, steadying to her feet and up properly (As her mother would always say.) [You aren't up til you're standing, Alli.] It was a day off, the medical officers had told her she needed it, she'd been banged around on the runs and Trunk could cover her patrols now that they were within light of the gate. (She was fine. The armor hadn't been breached.) [Her Loverboy was fine too. He'd been through worse.] She didn't feel like arguing with them. They were giving her a job, after all. And they were better bosses than she'd ever had, so she wanted to listen. (Even a pity-job is a job, her mother would say.) [Man can't live without work, Alli.] She went to brush her teeth, running fingers through her hair and shaking out sleep. Brush, paste, a little water from the tap, and go to work. Routine, simple, just Allison and the mirror. (This was always the hard part of the day.) [But it was part of the day she had to get through.]

She had to look at herself in the mirror, and like always, make peace with it before she went on with the rest of her day. She had to take care of the person on the other side of the mirror, she reminded herself. So she looked in the mirror, and looked at the person whose body she was in. It wasn't hers, of course. Her original body had been recycled. (Protien by protien, unwoven and reworked.) That was how she covered the surgery to put her brain in a... what did the med officers call it? A full-body prothesis. It sounded way too polite to Allison's ears. Back in the Range, she'd just be a 'borg. (Lots of people were.) [Apparently it was harder to do in the rest of Union.]

Allison looked back at the mirror, and wondered again why Her bangs fell like that, naturally into place with the rest of the hair to make a perfect little style- one that hid the upper part of Her face, and played up the beauty of Her nose and Her lips. Allison did this every day (She tried to puzzle things out about herself.) [About the person this body used to belong to.] It was just something to do. The therapists on the ship had said it was a good idea, to look in the mirror every day and try to practice self love. Allison figured that was as good an excuse as any to try it, but got too caught up in the questions. (Who was She?) [And why'd She dump this body in the trash for Allison's back-alley surgeon to find?] Allison held up the brush and the the hand to the mirror, then spit. Like always, her sleep-shirt came off and Allison looked at her back in the mirror. Right there, in the middle of her back, was Loverboy's crude addition to the Belladona-Lux body She'd left behind for Allison. The ugly little nodes of his Chronos upfeed into Allison's spinal cord and kidneys.

Allison rolled her back, and the nodes twitched along with every other muscle. That was good. She was always still there, and her Loverboy would always have her back. She figured she oughta see him today, he'd done such a good job and everything with the pirate skirmish. She kept moving around her little conapt (She appreciated having space to herself.) [It was a premium on Ketherese.] {You got out, Alli.} and got ready. Her teeth were brushed, she had an outfit clean and ready in the closet, her boots were in the same place she left them yesterday. Allison stopped, and wondered for a minute, and flexed her back muscles in that way she'd learned to. (Squeeze, gently, lower torso, flex some internal muscle.) [Work the dregs of Chronos out of the little nodes.] She felt time drag out, and the world stop spinning. She cut herself free from gravity, and watched Her stand there, with the look Allison had put on Her face. Without gravity holding her down, Allison could think. Could examine. Could dwell on a question she thought was important enough to give a real moment.

Did She ever think about dressing the way Allison did? About walking with that swagger that fit better inside Loverboy than it did in any flesh Allison had ever worn? What had She worn? How had She walked?

The Chronos ebbs, and Allison slinks back into the skin that holds her brain. She holds up her hand, and examines the back of it, curling and flexing her fingers. She gently kissed the back of her hand and went out the door. Down the hallways. Towards the mechbay. She was gonna see her Loverboy, and let him know she thought of him.

Chapter Text

He sat waiting for her. He didn't sit, really. It was just the word to describe the mood. He hung from the standby bay's armatures, held up against the ship's gravity. He waited. For her. She was the light of his life, his girl, who brought light to his heart. He could only wait. He couldn't move without her. Within the frame, the C/Cs stir, the mute-drives sing to themselves. Ammo bins are counted and recounted, heat-vents stirred and hissed. He waited for her, running through everything. Had to be perfect when she arrived.

There'd been battle, and he'd been hit, but she was fine, and that was what he was for. He'd watched her pull his hands into place and put a bullet in the reactor. He lost some armor. The other mech lost everything. And she'd done it for him. She'd moved with him, as one, like electricity. They were bound together. He flushed the nanite tanks, and began producing more. They would need the chronos when it came time to ride again. He had to make sure he was perfect for her.

The mechtechs would watch him, in the standby bay. You could tell him apart from the crowd in a heartbeat. Everyone could. The long limbs of a spacer's frame, the delicate blade-legs of something not designed for in-atmo fighting, the ship armor hammered to his shoulders, the graffiti of butterflies across the matte-black of steel. He was a Lancer's frame. And he was proud of that. The mech techs whisper to themselves when they see his hands moving, twitching, flexing. Holding a rifle that isn't. Pulling a trigger that wouldn't. Killing tools are a long way off. But he has to be ready, in case she needs him.

There she was, she was coming to him now. He could feel her in the halls, his eye creaking and whirring into position to eye the door. The mechtechs don't like it when he moves. Why does he care? They aren't her. She loves him. He knows she does. The way she moves isn't right for the body she's in. She moves like she's in him, big, powerful, with strange swagger to account for the blades of his limbs. She's small though, small and built with proper calves and feet. She doesn't have to walk that way, but she walks like him. And that's how he knows his girl.

Her smile is like the sun for him. "There's my Loverboy." His signals flare. Numbers, data, readouts, everything she could ever want to know about him, he lays bare. The chitter-click-screech of him omnicaster leads into the booming scream of his warhorns. She looks at him with such affection.

He knows he's perfect for his girl.

Chapter Text

Loverboy moved like a frame possessed. She's with him, in him, her spine all bound up with his, and her breath is Chronos and his is death. The rifle barks, the blades of his legs twist and spark against the hull, and he's rushing under fire. She pulls the trigger for him.

"One." She counts for him. "Frame downed. Continuing action." Comes the CO's reply. She lets him scream, his warhorn booming against the cold of space. There's no Gravity. It doesn't ring like he wants it to. No atmosphere. But he has to scream, she put the horn in for him.

Allison twists her hands, and Loverboy banks (Allison pulls the trigger, and a mech blossoms against the void.) [Her fingers dance to adjust the verniers.], the shots wing past him. Pirate skirmish. Basic job. Security for the ship. (How she made her daily bread.) [Commanders said security patrols were optional.] And even if they were optional, she'd take them. Time dilates. It stretches out, and Allison is watching Her move. And Allison is watching Loverboy move. And Allison settles back into Her body, and into Loverboy's cockpit. She feels her nerves sing, and she picks the right choice. An interdiction shot whirls bye, detonating where Loverboy had been a moment before.

She pulls the trigger for him. "Two." She counts for him. "Frame downed. Continuing action." He wants to scream, but he muzzles. She's focused, and she's guiding him right. The rifle barks again, the rest of the squad is moving in now. His fire algorithms turn suppressive. He despises the other mechs before them. They're threats. They might hurt his girl. He wants to scream. Instead he fires, and the little machine the mechtechs like sprints past and under his barrel.

Allison twists her fire. Support, she has to let them through. The charge doesn't break. She stands in the breach she's made and she breathes. (She feels like nothing else.) [She feels like she's storming the gates of heaven.] Chronos runs along every nerve. She thinks, she moves just an inch, and her Loverboy dances on her hand. Allison knows, (she really knows) that she'll make it through this. "Three." She counts for him. "Frame downed. Continuing Operation." The others begin their own calls and responses along the tacnet.

He loves her so, as he touches down against the ship hull. His blades click against it as he strides. The wrecks drift off into the void. The twinkling targeting feed data highlights capsules of ejected pilots, collected by one of the hunting ships. The pirates pull back. She lets him scream. His body unfurls, every vernier and thruster blaring as the warhorn echoes in his own frame and his reactor spikes.

He adores her.

Chapter Text

She stood atop a black mirror, and the crowd roared when the lights hit her. From beneath, the mirror writhes and flows around her. She stands on the back of something humanoid, the black mass writhing over it like a sheet. And then she is rising, standing still and eying the crowd. She loved to see them. They loved to see her. The announcer was going over her accomplishments. She couldn't hear him. All she heard was the roar. She raised a hand and it peaked. She waved, and she smiled. She saw their faces. Each eye she could meet, she did, and her wave and her smile did not change.

She, like always, wanted to be perfect for them.

The ink flows up her legs, and blossoms in razors. She is uncut, but the crowd hushes as the black ferrofluid flows and writhes and grows into the shape of lotus blossoms. Foot by foot, Joya is revealed. And at the same time, the lotus blossoms beneath Lana. She moves, snapping her feet together and blowing a kiss to the crowd. A massive motion, both hands, both arms, swept out to embrace them- embrace them all. Her crowd, their champion.

And then she is gone, swallowed by the dark ferrofluid, engulfed and carried deep into the ceramic bone and synthmuscle frame of Joya.

And then Joya rights itself, rolling its shoulders as the mass of ferrofluid shapes to cover its right arm. The famed dueling cloak of the champion's weapon, a shifting and roiling mass that covers the great machine as it begins to stride forward to the center of the arena. It holds out its left hand, palm flat and to the air. And then there is a spear, hovering perfectly millimeters above the palm. And the crowd roars again as Joya lowers its hand, and the spear disintegrates to nothingness. It throws its arms up wide as it walks, sweeping to take in the crowd for its master. The cloak billows as it does, and beneath the stadium lights, the serene face of the Buddha smiles from Joya's chest.

The vocal link hisses for a moment and the crowd dies down- "Good evening, my darlings" Lana begins, body bobbing in the fluid cockpit. The camera, floating in the oxygenated liquid, catches her good side as she winks. "I am to understand someone has come to challenge me this night! I applaud their bravery, and surely you must as well?" The crowd booms back in response, the demes taking shape once more as they remember there are idols not named Lana Paradiso. She clasps her hands and tilts her head, eyes narrowing to glare down the lens, into the soul of every trideo-viewer paying for the experience of her live feed.. "I have heard some very unkind things from the demes of my opponent. I am grateful, ever and always, that we Idols have our demes."

The smile returns, and Joya's cloak settles again around its body.

"But I won't let any of you forget who is champion. Not tonight."

Chapter Text

Today, Zaza had to go and see the Casket. It was time to see her brother again. Not the flesh ones, they were back home, tending the sheep and helping papa and grandad. If grandad was still alive. She hadn't gotten any letters recently. That's why it was important to go see the Casket. Theodosius was done cycling. It was time to meet her brother again. So she had gone down the hallways and taken the magline from her apartment on the personnel decks. She'd skipped breakfast. It was important, really important, that she be there we he woke up. So she was gonna be there with the first shift of shackle technicians. They let her into the Casket-Chamber, the technicians were quiet and respectful. They always were. They knew how important their job was. Zaza really liked that about them. It made her feel comfortable, that her brother was in their hands. There used to be more of him. Just like there used to be other Devils like her.

The technicians worked around the Casket as it sat in its dock. Zaza looked at the magnetic rails, designed to carry it up and out and into mechbay. Into the belly of the beast. That's another reason she had to be here when he wakes up. Theodosius was part of how she kept it under control. He was as much the pilot as she was. At least in her mind. She needed him. She missed him. She always missed him when he was down for Cycling. The technicians would always talk to her, and to him, about why they had to take so long. They would explain for Theodosius' benefit more than hers. She remembered each talk better than he did. It was one of the few things he could never hold onto through Cycling. The reasons the technicians gave is that the Heavy Shackle used to keep Theodosius' subjectivity above and around the combat instincts built into Zaza's mech required a lot of maintenance, and yearly cycling only did so much to handle the stress.

Theodosius came online, his body and shape forming across the surface of the Casket. Zaza felt the room's temperature drop in response to the NHP's activation, hoarfrost forming in a thin layer of his Casket. He looked like her. Tanned skin, curly hair. He just looked refined, dressed in his purple-and-white dress uniform. He smiled at her, because he still recognized he. "Good morning Zaza. I am sorry for being away." He isn't actually wearing a uniform, he doesn't actually look like her. She knows these are things Theodosius does for her comfort, a projection of light across the surface of the casket. "Good morning, elder brother." She replied. He held out his hand, a phantom-limb, and she gently cradled it, holding nothing. "I am glad you came to see me. I shall upload myself back onto your Agent before we leave. I am to understand we are still in-transit to the next front, are we not?" She nodded, and smiled back at him. "Yeah. Yeah we are, elder brother. The captain, she, well she says that we're going to join a Liberation Fleet. We're um. We're gonna have a squad again."

"That's wonderful, Zaza. It will be good for us to have peers again." His words are always calm. Always collected. Always better than hers. Zaza wishes he didn't have to Cycle. That she didn't have to be without him, without company, for so long. He downloaded to her agent, part of him becoming and overtaking the basic C/C inside. And then Theodosius' voice was in her ears, in her bones. She nodded, to no one, moving past the technicians. They wave. So does she. "Yeah. Of course elder brother. I have to be able to stand own my own. Without you." When he spoke, she felt him, like a cold hand on the back of her neck. It felt comfortable. Calming. Theodosius clicked right back into place. Her brother was still the same. He'd know how to help her, every day, and she wouldn't have to face the machine alone anymore. She knows he isn't related to her, she knows he doesn't actually sound like papa, like grandad. He just does that because it makes her feel better. Less lonely. She doesn't mind. She's glad he does. It means someone was thinking of her comfort, and that was... nice.

She had her brother, and that made her feel whole again.