Chapter Text
I barely feel it when the technicians lower my wretched shell into my AC’s Cockpit. Moment after moment drips by like the sludge on the walls of my mind as they entrust my life support to the care of my beloved Dancing Moth. I’ve tried to ask why they can't just leave me inside the only thing that’s ever mattered. I’ve tried to ask a lot of things. Never can get the words out.
The sync hits.
Barely functioning vision is replaced by a cascade of sensor feeds and diagnostics. Suddenly I can see every angle around Dancing Moth, all the technicians skittering across the hangar’s walkways, running final checks before deployment. For the briefest moment, I think of flipping the table, sending those techs flying, and crashing loose from this damn chopper. Can’t, of course. AC still hasn’t been fully activated. Wouldn’t be in my control until deployment. Besides, this work was my only shot of approaching having a life again.
“All hands,” the intercom blares, “approaching combat zone. Repeat, approaching combat zone.” The techs scurry ever more frantically around me, as cranes bring my weaponry to bear. All the platforms retract, and the full weight of Dancing Moth settles onto the clamps fixed to her shoulders. My full weight. I am her, she is me.
Incoming coms. That’d be Walter. I tune in. More I can glean about this operation the better, he’s been even more tight lipped than usual leading into this one. “A request from a friend of mine” with neither the friend nor the request particularly clear beyond “get in, destroy it all, get out”.
Not that it mattered much to me.
“You’ll be going in under cover of darkness. Be ready for anything.”
Bit of shadow won’t do much good against anyone with decent optics in their kit, but their patrols might be lighter at night at least. Well, I’d find out soon enough.
“It’s go time, 621. Don’t worry. Not even the PCA would anticipate a solo independent mercenary.”
It’s fine, Walter, I’ve never been one to fear death.
The bay doors open, and I’m released. Rain pounds on my optics, thrusters kick in to control my descent, all the while I wait, oh, how I wait for…
“Main System: Activating Combat Mode.”
I’m alive again.
I kick the assault boosters before I hit the building the autopilot’d been aiming for. The second my lock on tracks an MT I’m firing missiles their unfortunate way. My comms pick up an explosion of chatter on the PCA’s bandwidth, masked by encryption Walter’s frighteningly powerful tools haven’t yet cracked. It won’t be long before I can hear their cries though.
An alert flashes. Boost thrusters launch me just out of reach of a lance of blue light. Artillery cannon, priority target. I touch down for the split second required to recharge my thrusters, and I’m off again, leveling my pistols at the massive cannon.
Not long ago, that Redguns brute, Gun 4, I think? Volta. He asked me in that condescending sort of way at the start of the operation if I didn’t want to bring a bit more armor. Headed into a warzone after all.
That was just moments before he got to watch me rush ahead and crack the perimeter before he could work out which way the target was.
I boost out of another beam, and unload on the artillery platform. High caliber rounds rip into the hull, rupturing the generator with a spray of plasma and sparks.
The rest is just cleanup.
Several wrecked artillery placements later, I approach the watchpoint itself. Massive circular structure out in the open water. Walter confirms as much, chiming in on my comms. “The target’s inside. Make your way in.”
I punch the thrusters again, rushing forward, but something on the radar’s getting my attention. Power signature, lot stronger than an MT, lot more mobile than an artillery platform. I reload my pistols. Got an AC incoming.
“Attacking a Watchpoint… you’re incorrigible, Handler Walter.” A voice comes in. It’s still on the PCA’s channel, but it seems this fellow’s anticipating having his comms cracked. “How many of your dogs must I kill before you learn?”
Well, well, looks like I’m not the first hopeful Walter’s dragged to Rubicon. Can’t say I’m all that surprised, but being confronted with the reality of it isn’t all that thrilling.
“Is that… Sulla?” Walter mutters. That one’s not directed at me, a little slip up on his part. Well, this “Sulla” of his drops off the top of the structure and opens with his grenade launcher. I boost out of the blast and return fire, circling around and laying into him with missiles and pistol. I haven’t had much experience fighting ACs one on one, not since planetfall at any rate. There was that liberation front woman on that intel mission a little while back, but aside from that I’ve always had help of some sort. Best stay alert.
Sulla keeps talking. “Pitiful dog. I feel sorry for you, I really do. You may have survived a little longer, if only you had a different master.”
Such a piece of me begs to respond, to call back and say it isn’t over yet as I reload my coquillettes. I don’t bother trying. It’d taken hours to adequately communicate to the hangar techs just what bits I needed for my current loadout. Didn’t matter what sort of methods we tried, it was almost impossible to get my shattered mind to get a fucking word out.
Walter chimes in. “C1-249… ‘Sulla.’ He’s an independent mercenary who survived first-gen augmentation.” A part of me wonders if he’s got problems too. If his mind’s half as broken as mine is. Maybe he’d-
That grenade launcher of his lands a direct hit while I’m lost in thought. ACS warnings flash all over the place as a barrage of plasma missiles hits me before I can boost out of the blasts. Fucking… “Don’t think twice, 621. Kill him before he kills you.”
That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it. Me or him. Well, I’ve got some fractured dream of normalcy still dancing in my heart, so I’m not about to go down here. I rush forward, slamming Sulla with a barrage of pistol rounds followed by the strongest kick my featherweight AC can manage. His ACS overloads with the impact, I swap to the pulse blade in my shoulder bay, and land a pair of swipes before he can reorient.
“Where’s 619 and 620? Dead?” Sulla just keeps talking. Not to me. Dammit, I’m not just… But I am nothing. Might as well talk to the one behind it all. “Which ones did I kill, I wonder?
“Don’t let him bait you. Focus.” Oh, shut the fuck up, Walter. I try to say it… All I manage is the slightest groan. Not even sure if it gets picked up on the comms.
More dancing around Sulla. He’s got more firepower, but I’ve got more than enough mobility to run circles around him as long as I can just focus on the-
“You’re one of Gen Four’s lot.” He’s talking to me this time. “I hear you make fine hounds with the right training…” I’m not… I’m not just a dog, damn you, Somewhere under this mess of life support and augments there’s a person, there’s-
“Shame you’ll have to die here.”
I try to speak. I try to scream. That pathetic moan I managed a moment before rises to a whimpering cry calling out without words or meaning beyond the horrid desperation of a hound who cannot howl. I kick the assault boosters again, and I’m met with another grenade slamming into my battered hull.
Alarms blare. Hull integrity’s compromised, right arm’s barely functioning after that blast took a chunk out of the shoulder. Another hit like that and I’m done. Might already be too late. I boost to the side, desperately trying to get my mind in order before I lose everything. Need a plan, need a trick, need something to turn the tide.
I can still move, still fly, still boost, but I can’t get my right hand to track him accurately, and my missile system’s just about falling off. I shouldn’t be able to win this, but if I can just get a few good hits of my blade in…
An idea hits. This pompous fucker, type to call someone “incorrigible”, he’d take the opportunity to gloat before putting me down. I could work with that. I swap to my pulse blade, and hit the assault boosters one last time. Sure enough, that grenade launcher locks on quick, an alert flashes, and I time my boost just… perfect.
The grenade hits my right leg, nearly blowing it off entirely, and I make quite a show of spiraling out of control after the blast. Everything spins as my poor, battered Dancing Moth goes into a tumble, sliding to a halt at the base of the watchpoint. I try to stand, but the damage to my leg’s too severe. Looks that way, at any rate. I don’t put too much effort into forcing myself up beyond a fractured kneel.
He takes the bait. Brings his AC to stand over mine, and hops on the fucking comms to do exactly what I knew he would. “Another dead dog. Was it worth it, Walter?” Ignoring me again. I’m already dead in his eyes… That’d give me my opening. “Their blood is on your-”
I strike. Generator surges to full power as I boost forward, swinging my pulse blade at that fucking grenade launcher leveled at my head. He tries to fire, but it’s too slow. The blade connects, cutting the launcher in half right as the firing mechanism goes off.
What an explosion it is. Catches me in it too, but it sends him flying back before triggering a chain reaction with every explosive he’s got in the magazine. That finally shuts him up.
A long moment goes by in silence, save for the numerous alerts Dancing Moth is throwing at me. My heart aches, knowing just how much I hurt her getting this far. Walter finally comes onto comms again, “Confirmed. Enemy AC destroyed.” I get an alert that a supply sherpa’s on its way. Better have half a mech packed in there to get me working again. “Forget about him, 621… You did good today.”
And what a good hound I am.
It takes an awful lot of welding, reinforcing and replacing to fix the mess I got myself into. The sherpa is eventually able to get Dancing Moth in working order, though. I boost around the platform outside the watchpoint for a moment just to get my bearings again… and to spend just a little longer out in the field. A little longer in control, a little longer in motion. It’s all I have.
Can’t push my luck forever. Walter will be getting impatient. I head for the watchpoint, and my AC’s systems start getting the door open. While that process runs, I keep thinking back to Sulla. How he’d called me a hound, a dog. Rusty said some similar shit back at the wall… “one of the infamous Handler Walter’s hounds”. And those communications I caught between Walter and the corps, all those big commander types had done it too. A dog.
Is that all I am?
Of course it is.
Walter’s never said it to my face, always shown me the least bit of respect, but there’s too much floating around him pointing to me just being another pawn in whatever fucking game he’s playing.
The door opens. I proceed.
The interior opens into a vast chamber sinking down to the ocean floor, and quite possibly beyond that. “There. Destroy the device in the center.” Walter chimes in, right as I get a visual on a massive construction at the bottom of the space. I take Dancing Moth off the edge, falling like a stone past an uncountable number of lights and screens on the walls, no doubt indicators of sensor arrays and computers more complicated than I could comprehend. I hit the ground just a few meters away from whatever “device” I was sent to destroy, and raise a pistol.
Am I just playing into his game by going along with it?
Do I have a choice?
…
He said we might be able to get my life back.
I fire.
It only takes a few shots before something in the core goes critical, and the whole thing goes up in a blue flare. I lower my pistol, and watch as the whole space loses power, every blinking light in the place flickering and going out, leaving me in darkness.
“We’re done here. Head back to base.”
I turn away and ready to take off, but the floor… everything begins to glow red. Bits and pieces of machinery carry that unearthly aura into the room, rising in intensity with each passing second.
“Wait… No. 621! Get out of there!”
The center of the chamber explodes with that red glow, and everything fades away.
I don’t know where I am… the readouts and sensor inputs are gone, but I’m not exactly back in my damned body again. There’s too much… clarity. Too much empty space surrounding me. All I can see, though, is the faint edges of that red light. It arcs about gently, gathering around a single point that seems closer than the rest of it.
A voice echoes through the nothing. Who are you? I don’t bother trying to respond. She carries on, An older type of augmented human. Fourth generation… Have we… made Contact?
I’m afraid I don’t know what that means, whoever you are.
I am Ayre–A Rubiconian.
I’m… a hound I suppose.
You certainly sound a bit more intelligent than a dog.
…You can hear me?
It seems we’ve made Contact so, yes, but you must wake up, or else-
No no no this can’t… you can actually understand? You can hear me, you can, you can-
Please, listen, there’s not much time before your consciousness is scattered completely.
What are you talking about? Scattered? What’s going on?
You’re not supposed to be here. Too much longer and the Coral flow will overwhelm you entirely. Focus on yourself, where you are, bring yourself back to you.
Will you still be with me?
Please, I… I don’t want to be alone again.
I will.
Then… alright. Let me see if…
“Augmented human C4-621: Vital signs confirmed.”
I’m back in Dancing Moth. Seems I’ve been taken outside the watchpoint, perched on top of the structure.
“Disabling autopilot. Establishing comms link with Handler–”
The onboard assistant stops yapping there. Seems something’s interrupted it. Ayre? Is that you doing that?
I’m here, Raven.
That’s… a name you could call me. Probably better than anything I used to have.
You seem unsure of that.
It’s something stolen. Not really my own. How’d you know to call me that though?
It’s in the logs of your AC. “Dancing Moth”, right?
That’s her. My darling. My everything.
You certainly- hold on, I’m picking up an incoming hostile.
Sure enough, I’ve got a PCA contact on the scanner approaching fast.
Alright… I’m with you. I’ll synchronize with your brain waves… and maintain Contact to support you.
I’ve gone into combat a lot. Hell, I’ve gone in with friendly contacts behind me plenty of those times, but… this might be the first time I’ve ever felt like I have someone by my side.
How long will it last?
Something rockets in across the rooftop. Some kind of weapons platform built onto the back of an AC. It’s already got a pulse shield deployed, and as soon as it’s got a steady hover going, it deploys these huge racks of missile launchers from its rear frame.
Let’s go, Raven.
Right.
The missiles launch, easily more than a hundred heat signatures appearing on my HUD. I dash forward, slipping under the barrage and keeping up the chain of boosts until that whole swarm goes crashing into the rooftop below.
I’ve looked into the enemy craft. It’s an autonomous PCA weapon–Balteus.
Name’s not going to help much. That didn’t come up in the dossiers I got.
Going to have to figure out its capabilities on the fly then. I’m sure you’ll manage.
I loose as many pistol shots as I can into that shield while it’s close. Damn thing’s fast. Halfway through my magazines it surges out of reach and readies another barrage. I reload as I close the distance.
Listen, Ayre, I… I appreciate having you here more than I can describe, but how long-
Raven! Incoming!
Another fucking grenade launcher. Hits my core dead on, overloads my ACS and leaves me open to an incoming missile salvo. I’m just barely able to kick my booster online in time to get out of the worst of it.
Shit. Need to focus. I boost closer, putting more and more rounds into that shield once I’m close. With the last couple shots I have in the mags, I managed to punch through. Swap to the pulse blade, rush in to rip it apart while it’s recovering. I land the hits, and move to keep the pressure up, but…
Ayre, I need to know, please, just, how much time do we have before this all falls apart?
Massive heat signature detected, it’s firing again!
I know, just, look, I know this can’t last, you’ll leave me too, everything in my life already has, and-
I only manage to dodge half the barrage. Huge chunks of plating are blown to bits as more than a dozen missiles detonate right on top of me. Shit.
Raven, you need to focus, please. Dancing Moth can’t take another hit like that, and its shields are still-
I NEED TO KNOW I WON’T BE ALONE AGAIN!
…
I keep my distance, swerving past a sweeping arc of flame from Balteus.
Ayre, I know you can hear some part of my thoughts. I don’t know how much you can see but I’m trying to… I don’t know, send it all your way. How long I’ve been stuck in my own head, how-
Another missile barrage. I slide under it, boosting past with every bit of agility I can muster.
How I haven’t spoken to a soul since the augments went in, how I’ve lost everything but the nimble dancing of my beloved Moth, how I can’t bear the thought of going back to the silence.
More flames. ACS anomaly alarms blare, but I’m able to get out of the worst of it.
Ayre, please.
Please…
I’m here, Raven. I won’t leave you.
Thank you.
Right… Focus. With that reassurance behind me, I boost out of another grenade blast, and reload. I’d force myself to take a deep breath, but the life support’s got respiration out of my control. So, I force out every blaring alarm, and recite something old and familiar. Something that’s been there at the core of me since I first hit the simulators in early training.
Everything in motion.
Motion is everything.
I kick the assault boost. Another grenade comes rocketing in, and I’m out of its path the moment it leaves the barrel. Swap to pulse blade while my right hand shoots and my rockets lock on. I land the blade and sweep out of the path of another barrage.
It rockets away, I give chase just as fast, firing some missiles of my own and swapping my left hand back to my pistol. Keep the pressure up, be faster than it could dream. Flames arc by just a meter from my hull, but that shield finally gives way again under my assault. Moth’s barely holding together, but I might just be able to finish it.
Everything in motion.
Motion is everything.
Assault boost in, land a full body kick with every scrap of momentum I’ve got, then keep moving forward, dropping my pistol and taking hold of Balteus’ frame. It tries to take off again, but my grip holds, and I manage to climb further up ‘til I’m right on top of it. I ready my pulse blade, but it's not going to be enough. plating over that generator's too heavy to get past in one burst, and if that shield goes up again it's over. Maybe-
Go, Raven, I've got an idea.
Ayre?
Now!
I activate the pulse blade. Alarms flare to life, ones I've never seen before, only to be dismissed before I can read further than "regulator error detected-". Capacitor banks empty in an instant, my generator roars with such intensity that I can feel the cockpit shaking, and the weapon on my hand ignites with a furious light it's never managed before. The weapon's housing shifts to a dully glowing orange, the entire thing rapidly turning to a lump of slag, but before it falters that brilliant blade rips into the exhaust system, right on through to the oh so critical generator below.
The blast sends me spiraling, crashing to the ground in a heap. I’ve got half a dozen alerts about compromised thrusters, gyroscopes and plating sections, Dancing Moth’s barely able to move, and I have to wonder if my core being upside down like this might do bad things to the life support machinery keeping me alive, but…
Enemy systems down. It’s silent.
I’ve won.
We’ve won. You and me, Ayre.
I’m glad I could be a part of it, Raven.
Don’t suppose you’ve got a way to get my ass recovered out here?
Your Handler’s already called for pick up. He saw the whole thing, thought he was talking to you through it too. I… thought you might prefer him out of the way.
Yeah… I think that was a good call.
I silence the various warnings and wait for pickup. A long quiet falls, save for the pounding of the rain outside.
Rain. Can’t help but wonder what that feels like. Seems so distant I’ve forgotten it entirely.
The techs extract me from Dancing Moth with greater urgency than I’m used to. Seems all that excitement was rather rough on my own shattered frame, and I’m sure that I’ll see no end of pain in the coming weeks as a result, but at least… at least I won’t be alone again.
I have someone with me now.
Ayre, you there?
Raven… you need rest.
I know, and I will, but… look, thank you for staying with me. Being able to talk to someone… it reminds me I’m real, that I’m human, despite it all.
I’m not going anywhere. But… I should warn you.
That Coral surge you were swept up in? That was just a glimpse.
A premonition of the storm of flame that will burn Rubicon.