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He tips his head back, makes a noise when the cords attach to the ports on his forehead. Half a groan with a clicking stutter as his brain rushes to feel the rest of his body, his buddy, his Power. His blood pumps through his veins in sync with the coolant and fuel and hydraulic fluid. His second heart revs to life. He opens all eight of his eyes, feeling the usual creeping sensation as he sees the back of his own head from a few too many angles. Speedmaster is not strictly his body, admitting that the meat that lets him connect his nerves to the metal and muscle of a machine that, by design, isn’t supposed to think feels like a conversation could get a person thrown out of the army. He’s done that already, without needing to say anything stupid. He rolls his shoulders and Speedmaster mirrors the motion across the flaps of its carapace. Disengaging from its harness and closing with a click that rattles appreciably through his whole body.
Trava’s read the history books. He’s fought Thinking Weapons. He knows why that’s scary, it’s just, there’s a tingling itch in his brain, his fingertips, down his spine, where Speedmaster is supposed to be. They belong to each other. That’s why they all had to go. Because after what they’d become, after Speedmaster started to reach out and catch him, they couldn’t be anything else. They don’t wan t to be anything else. Trava keeps his body still and steady as the launching jut extends even if inside he’s vibrating at being able to see the jet dark around him, filling his vision until it’s just him and the stars dotting space around him and Trava’s body from behind, the back of his head and all. He was discharged for being too good. That’s how he tells it, that’s how Shinkai tells it. It makes them sound cocky in a way that neatly covers the truth of the matter. Which is that being as good as he was, as they were, him and Shinkai and Speedmaster, together, is a symptom. It is supposed to be impossible what they do, the three of them. He thinks it happens more often than they’re willing to admit. He knows pilots who never adjust right to a new power after a promotion or an old power jittering brokenly through startup after its last pilot died. Shinkai can tell stories about mechanics who follow their pet projects around and how they never behave just right without them. They’re just, the most . And they were obvious. His numbers got too good. People pay attention to things like that in the military. They have to notice Speedmaster making adjustments too fast for even Trava’s species’ reflexes eventually. And they’d see Shinkai mumble to himself as ports in and cleans and calibrates and repairs so precisely, never even checking systems that don’t need it.
Just because Speedmaster isn’t a Thinking Weapon doesn’t mean it doesn’t think. It just can’t move unless Trava and Shinkai listen to it. And Trava loves listening. He launches with a whoop and snaps in an erratic dance around the ship.
Look, Shinkai, look at what we can do, at what we are, at how well you keep us together.