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cipheramnesia · 1 year

Text

Vivisection

I sloughed the shell in a flourish of our shared sweat, blood, and mucus. Cold on the steel-grated floor lift, tech eyes wide over me as my psyche twitched itself back together from the needles. My eyes said you must be new but my mouth spoke in thick puked up fluid whilst my sopping slick shuddering fingers clawed nerve pads off my tits and slid catheter from my dick. All of us nerves had little twitches of pleasure as we found ourselves whole, and made it to sitting.

"Towel," I found language, and the tech handed it, eyes carefully elsewhere at the pink and red cockpit still quivering in urgency, wet with quenched desires. Methodically cleaned under the wet warm terrycloth ministrations, top to standing, adjusting to eyes and ears 'side skin and taste. The hangar was all echoes of more experienced crew on the teardown fifty feet up and down the shell, didn't need the look I turned anyway at my love, the crab. Rested claws in bands of carbon, four squat legs and rolling condensation off the quieting spiracles. Charred, twisting armor coated over with clotted brown patch like scabs and fading blue drips of other less evils' blood, sparkling at places from shattered refractive layers, spongy intrasteel glistening through here and there. Below it discharged glutinous tar from the trap, all spent oil and shock fluid plus shells and fused filters, burned heat hexes all and all bound for the reprocess, someone else's hand-me-down armor or shoes.

The wasp staggered past us to its own home sweet safety net so I hung the rail in a gentlemanly way and bade our tech meet my goddess in crime at her door. "They have their own lift," the tech observed. My goosebumps agreed, emphasizing the questionable temperature, but a lady must pay her respects. "I don't care," I suggested so we went.

Parked up under those gangly legs adripped with the glow and silver of thirty confirmed kills and gored holes through musculoskeletal tubing told the tale, I held my arms in chivalry as the mandibles underside the shell parted ways and dripped Ari into my embrace along side her own deluge of girl-juice and veined amniogel shreds. Knees buckled as my stomach protested my lack aforethought, but no one could dispute the benefits of a girl pressed against my breasts, slinging her long arms around me. She barfed over my shoulders, warm and phlegmy.

Ari'd pulled her cords in the shell like a good girl, still shook gainst my skin as she stuttered, "fuh- fuh- fuh-" while I jerked my head at the tech who shrugged. Outta towels, well my bad. Leaned us on the railing and thought about tonight, you know the human body's pretty heavy all said? "Your... skin is... freezing!" she articulated, not a request mere observation, but my arms acquiesced nevertheless. We leaned on each other watching black muck drain from the wasp's thorax, standing around naked in a pool of shell vomit. "Yer dumb," she added, hocking up more phlegm. "Now're both shlimy." The other shells crawled in with the tide, blasted with sterilizing powder and steam, various scorpions and mosquitos and spiders seeking succor as we finally made our way down the textured rubber steps.

"Fuckin so hungry," Ari slurred, dribbling blood and saliva while my own stomach answered midst shouts of our squad as they were reborn, crawling free and bloodied from the shell, some still babbled nonsense, tried to move limbs no longer bodied and no shame to them. "You threw up so much, 'spected," I said. Watched Spinning Jenny shaking mucus off his head, snapping teeth together.

"Gonna eat three horses," Ari added. "Fuck potatoes, my dick can fuck a pile of potatoes I'm starving." She shook my shoulder, my legs wobbled in tune, "Clingy bitch." But her hand stayed, fingers digging the tense muscles in my back, mine squeezed her hips. "Casey I want you to hold me down and force feed a gallon of cheese into me." Managed to cross the whole hangar naked, didn't eat shit. Techs hooted appreciating and I tried to bow but just did a cockeyed vanity wave. Brain twitched but kept my cool, remembered I don't see in sonar. "Maybe later tonight," I murmured sotto voce. I cleaned the fresh blood from my ears with a pinky finger.

Lockers, showers, Ari always liked when I soaped and dried her, little bit of a tease, ease of limbs back into bodily limits. She was wiping gunk from her eyes, still going, "I fuck shit swear I'm getting mission reruns in my sleep now. Bullshit we don't hang on to PDN memories, I've deffo had the same shit we throw at the elves in my head at night."

"They're not elves," I said.

"Whatever, magical monster tree bugs, I dunno, are you getting shell feedback?" I was toweling her thick curls, my own short hair dried sweet quick. Threw on those almost paper scrubs. Sexy. "Babe, we all got feedback, I'm not even sure how much me is in my mind."

She grabbed my hair and gave my head a little shake, "Lucky you, I'll fuck your brains out anyway," and blew my hair out my eyes. I grabbed her hand and pushed back, she swooned, we crushed hard as team shelled and molted, in bed or in field. Just a way to anchor, comes with the piloting, nothing new. Lots of pilots fall in twos and fours of strange bedfellow - gets you back in mind after so long parted. "Shut the fuck up," she said to my smile, shoved back, I reeled her in and smiled more til she punched my shoulder. "Fuck you, feed me." We joined the aching crowd clustering to the mess hall.

Slammed our piled trays on a table, minutes later. Scatter Hawk had beat us there somehow, last in the bay, first to the hay per usual. Jelly was still in their hair and they were tearing into a pile of beef flavored protein patties they'd slathered with garlic chili sauce and pickled carrot chips. Shoved it in their blood-smeared face with mixed results twohanding a fork, missed the target 30% of the time. "Glad you're a better shot with the 40," I suggested and they replied, "Slip your own dick sideways fish brisket," spittle and snot sprayed with each word, language not quite in the altogether I guess. I slapped some nerves back into their shoulder and they grunted wetly and appreciatively.

Ari pushed me onto the bench and dropped down, catted up against me and chugged hot sauce from the tube, followed by a fistful of fake bacon and chips dripping with jalapeños. "Thid fit gess weeper effy dah" she spat out with a mouthful of half chewed food, elbowing my ribs in the process, so I slipped my hand over her thigh and gave her a reassuring stim. I was busy with whatever passed for kimchi and pork flavored protein while the table started filling up with other pilots eating an entire day's worth of food in one sitting, trying to feel and speak and touch and taste all at once with mixed successes, all of us trying to pick our nerves up from the sludge being in the shell made out of our bodies. DeeDee shoved a fork at us and said, "Fuck were you, suckin dick? Tank's supposed to keep hits off."

"Yeah, take many hits?" I wiped the dribbled of blood off my lip.

"Like ten! Two in a lung!" He jabbed a beef patty for table wobbling emphasis.

Barely audible Ari whispered, "You're alive aren't you?" Head was drooped under her curled hair near to my level, flying below table radar, still about hit direct to a nerve with DeeDee's bloodshot eyes going big and Hellis beside scooting its flat ass away but none of us got further into what manner of dicks weren't or were sucked (my carefully planned speech - about the pincer move we broke while I was still jamming longways thanks and the relationship of DeeDee's dick being vaporized vis a vis our suckage - wasted). Squad command rudely storming our table with the demand: "Death Claw! Kill Strike!"

Silence resumed in sudden shock as he stood authority thrust chinward, all our eyes tracking the table. He repeated the command, "Death Claw! Kill Strike!" Silence abounded, roamed the plains, handed him a look of weary resignation as his lips, with all the distaste of gingerly dropping a dead rat into a toilet, formed, "Kitty Candy and Raccoon Enchantment," he struggled to recover his momentum but the wind was dead, "I need to speak with you both." Tablewide "ooooo" and Spinning Jenny added "someone's in trouuuble," as we took our ways in the talking wake of the baron of bluster.

Followed breadcrumbs of wet bootie prints and bloodsmeared walls back to the old bay so he could scream at us with an echo. "You semen stains mind explaining what the fuck you were doing back in that shitshow?"

Her nose was bleeding heavily again and I could feel Ari's arm spasm as she pushed close behind me, whispering without sound. I had answers mercifully drowned in a wad of spit and phlegm suddenly dumping into my mouth and down my chin.

"Gods you're all fucking sick. Disgusting. Got nothing to show for it?"

I swallowed another gob of something unpleasantly solid which mercifully shot from my lungs into my mouth giving moments for me to think forward. Rare enough, I treasured them. Figured best not mention what was the thing, blowing the drop bolts early cuz she wanted to try and fire the primary on the wasp from directly above a banyan whilst midair, sans stabilizers, which for the record she hit the thing but caught an extra eighth mile sky above the crate.

"Listen," I gurgled, wiped off my face. ("Listen SIR," he interjected, so I waved indulgently.) "Hurgle. My decoms pinged a hostile lake, looked like a stand of banyans an' a anthill so we bailed at drop beta." Ari's fingers drug out blood from under my paper sleeve, fuck ridiculous she's like eight inches taller trying to make my ass into partial cover.

"Drop beta," he repeated the words to emphasize their unwelcome intrusion to his shriveled brain. I realized the part of my memories with this squad commander's name got sliced in the shell. His face was twitching as bad as mine ever has. "There was no drop beta! There was one site, slash and burn, the end!"

"Well lucky you! We set one up before that swampfire cut our lines up, no thanks necessary please, you know we do it for the love of our jobs."

He looked at the melted up muscle and vatsteel carapace curves of my beloved crab and wasp. Some mirror shaved surfaces, bug blood all black where it congealed. "Fuckin trannies, disgusting, undisciplined- Why we hire so many I don't even-"

"C'mon, you know we're your best guys."

"You're literally my worst guys! If I had anyone else fucked in the head enough to shove into those- those fucking meat grinder abominations, I'd dump your freakshow asses so far in the back beyond you'd fart just for the conversation!"

I elbowed Ari in the gut before she said something dumber than I had in mind. "You know the old saying, a tranny in the shell will give em all hell."

His face snapped shut like crab's load-in maw. Gritted teeth rumbled, "Scrape duty for the next two hours." He shoved us out of the way off to ruin someone else's sex lives, his own probably.

Two hours and two trays of congealed processed protein with vinegar and hot peppers, we trudged down the narrow hall to bunk. The ganglia stopped twitching but it'd been a minute last I had this much elf blood under my nails and my hair reeked of burned polyfilament lubricant.

Ari stretched her arms back because the ceiling was too low for up grumbling, "Don't wanna spec nother fuckin face for a whole shift." I shrugged half drop slept and headed my roomways, brought to heel with her hand on my wrist. "The fuck you think you're going, you promised." Her, lips, just as crusted with blood and snot as mine still a cute pout in dire times.

I gauged my cramping stomach up against that hand and those lips. We hadn't been on-mission for a sec, and fuck for the moment I'm only human and very horny. Still. "You said-"

"People, I mean people." She punched the latch and I let her reel me into her narrow cabin, coming attractions you could call it. I said, "Babe, you gotta pick up your underwear - or anything - sometime." Ari grabbed a bottle of the rancid wine someone was making from cooking oil and caramelized vinegar. She put it against my chest, and put us against the stowage wall, and put her tongue into my throat. Her lips were gunpowder nachos, burning hot, both of us careless to chapped cracked open blood. I took a slug of the wine, with its notes of artificial PTSD raspberry flavor, as she pulled the bunk from the wall. I held up the bottle, tipped it to her lips, spilled it into her mouth, on her face, down her bare flesh and cheap scrubs.

Ari yanked it away and tossed it to the refuse under her fully unused sliver of a desk. I grabbed her by the front of her scrubs, they tore, so I grabbed her arm and fumbled us against the edge of the cot, struggling with my pants and paper booties. "Fucking elastic, now it works?" Ari tried to rip the pants off, snapping a yelp and a shock outta me when she snapped the band on my stomach, so I pushed my hand into her pants and grabbed her dick, hip checked her onto her back on the cot, then furiously yanked both our pants off. We smashed tongues and lips again, her guided by my fingers in her hair, me by her nails on my back, furrows through the grime mottling my acne scarred skin. I clambered onto her, a full tangle of legs and elbows with the sweet serenade of the cot, joints protesting weight and unwelcome thrashing. But I had hold of her now, me and my little growls, her softly repeating "please," as I pressed our hips, tits, lips together. Teased and pinched on and around her nipples, scratched the welcome back real world long her ribs, pulled myself to myself with her rhythmic panting breaths. Shudders passing through from her to me, traded in kind as we reminded our bodies and each other of the dwindling human embers in our chests, the dregs of what once was bright and happy in the world still enough between us to reignite into the shape we suffered through bereft of shells. A minute for our hearts to hammer together, to take in the mossy dried blood scent, the reek of sweat and metal, both of us hard and slick against one another.

When she murmured, we gingerly squirmed our legs and arms around and across each other til Ari lay on her stomach, the pathetic, thin excuse of a mattress rolled under her chest and arms. Lube was spread over her ass and my fingers with wasteful urgency. I worked my hands slowly down her back, gently caressing her sync ports with my thumb, watching them contract and gape with her moans. The lips of them tingled and sent pulses of pleasure through my hands from lingering protonerves. Moved downward to her ass and sliped in one finger at a time, stroking inside her folds, touching her walls, three in and rhythmic spreading and relaxing as she sucked in air, so I leaned up close and slipped my tongue into her neckport, the sphincter closed tight and opened wide and I could feel my ports sympatic response, taste her tasting tasting her. She twisted her pillow into knots and I pushed my cock into her as my fingers slipped out, slowly, feeling her tense up and relax.

Slivers of amniogel squished against my cock in her ass, protonerves shot echos of her through me, flaring and then crushed between us. We pressed ourselves closer, trading pulses back and forth, that one flashing minute of her ass against my hips and one hand on her dick, my face in her hair, one hand pressing into jer back ports, letting her suck the lube from my other hand. It was almost the ecstasy of feeling our minds dissolve into one another. Then we moved again. Hours or minutes, I felt her cum trickle over my hands and wiped it on her thigh as I kept going. Mucus spilled from her contracting back sphincters and my own. Fucking the trace of vat grown life to death until we might have a hope of sleep tonight.

It was humid and reeked of sex, everything about Ari barely fit, except for me, so we stole away these moments from each other to remember and forget. It was nothing in the world, but it was better than dying alone. My leg hung off the bed when we had rolled free of one another, too filthy to breathe and too wasted to shower. My elbow and hip hurt from banging against the wall. Her legs were curled up and her left knee jabbed painfully into my thigh, I couldn't find a place to put my right arm and it was falling asleep but the tingle felt better than trying to stand up. Head was jammed into my neck, couldn't be comfortable, I brushed tangles out of her hair. Muffled, she said, "You smell bad."

"You love it. You missed my pit stank, my demure little corpseflower." She made gagging noises into my clavicle. "I'm gonna have to go back to my nice bunk where the floor is clean, can't stay under my wing forever birdie."

"Whatever," I felt her lips mashed against me with each word, and braced for her to shove me off bed, but her arm just squeezed me closer. "Can so stay f'rever," she sounded almost asleep, her head pushed closer to me and she muttered something like "glove mew bits."

Rolled eyes, but pressed a little closer. "Sure, marinate some new strain of bacteria, they can spatula us out the morning." Unprepared by her momentary snuggle, my ass hit the floor in a pile of unwashed tanktops with a sleep slurred "fuck off."

I left my dignity in the laundry and blew a kiss. "You're gonna hate you in the morning if you sleep that way," she made and grumpy noise and wrapped herself around the rolled up mattress, trying and failing to fit on the metal cot. I tripped a little on the way out the door, on my half naked way to a luxury five minute hot shower to a low bid bargain cold sleep.

Dreams told tales from the shell. Techs all swore in the slice nothing transfers. True enough we lost a short term or three but that's the balance to cost against feedback, they said. Dreams were my four legs crushing earth compact from the drop jump as my decoms rolled over the banyans and bugs slinging spells, my nightmost terrors unfolding from the PDN and flooding their foci and fetishes. In the mindscape ground ran fluid under mechanized polyplastic muscle, the world putty with my gargantuan claws. Chaff launched from deep inside my chambered shell to spark the incoming green, a deathly spray to casual sunblock rads, no mind to armored skin.

Myriad wave of banyans moving, windblown, roots crawling, but there she is, my darting wasp hurling her thousand stings, finding targets in my trackers n hackers through the grassfield bugs. Their blood glows blue, all the work of their spells to brittle silver threads that fall to pieces. She lands and I bathe the hill in freaks, veritable fog of messy tracking til her thorax slides open and erects its throbbing, winged main gun, legs planted, struts in, and a hurricane throws banyan trunks to shreds, clears a canyon of death, and she screams, and I see the branches from the earth tearing her apart, I am slow, bogged in sudden mud, green spears her, the angry earth rips her legs from limb, black ichor and green coolant and I wake up screaming as she shouts for me to go. Clutching the metal edge to my cot, seeking my body again, for a moment unable to hear or see, I exist only as pounding blood and raw nerves til each flexed muscle brings me to human.

Some time passes to rise, rollout hours more hence, I spent time to feel my body, put on shorts and t-top and try to forget the dream and Ari's voice screaming for me to leave her.

I tried to sleep the echo away, then folded my cot and dug the glass bottle of beauties. Rattled a couple hatch-down to flatten it out. Nothing doing, no washing or wiping or jerking off removed the unwelcome night haunt, so I made my soft shod way down to mess.

Rigs like these, there's never quiet. Air cycles, night crew, the odd distant clatter we all always hoped wasn't the seconds off warning of full breach. I paused by Ari's door, halfway to clacking it, but moved counterspin towards mess. No sense both of us losing sleep over one misfire of psyche. Half light in the mess, couple plotters and binders poked listless fried protein and I took my separate peace with a cup of the juice. Sick sweet chemflavor kicked caffeine to my heart and guts enough to winnow away the hours trying a dozen different flavors of artificial spice on artificial food, feeling artificially alive.

DeeDee showed in first after rollout, guy was never not angry at me over some shit, angry at something, put a lot of that through the lines good for us. Hellis always hung round, I specced on their afterhours but never pried the privates. Wouldn't have minded a bunk with either, but oh well. Shadow Jumper and Stepper and Jenny and so on filing their way through gallons of sickening juice and overcooked daybreak. Ari was last in, skulking through the rising shine and din of the mess, caught a tangle of her eyes but crowds were parting our ways.

"See how long you last without that filter, you'd hurl minimal," Jenny kept prodding at Scatter Hawk putting away more forkfulls than any two of us, just grunting back, while DeeDee yelled down the table at Stepper over horrendous and audible farts. I couldn't find a minute to catch Ari's eyes, roll em back and forth with mine, she was digging a hole through her tray.

I spent a frustrated week shipping past her nights. Some asshole I learned was apparently in charge of the squad demanding press-ups and running laps spin wise. Got mad when I said we don't use any muscles and I had to do extra sit-ups, and I threw up and didn't see Ari in the lockers. Tear down on the crab, coming and she was on her grease stained way showers, grimacing. Asleep when I catted around her doors at the odd hours. Anxiety in my spare space left my skin crawling. Ran into her at the psyche cracker and said hey, how you doin? Ari said, "Fine," with those tangled up eyes.

"You okay? I do something you wanna talk?" Whatever was left inside my skull felt like it wanted me to vomit it through my ports. My intestines wanted my skin rippled.

She shook her head. "It's not. You're good, you're good, I just." She shook her head again, tugged the hem of her shirt. Bless I was horny as fuck but just wanted to untangle her eyes, please.

"Listen, I got-"

"Casey!" The skull breaker slid its door up. Check-in time, its glassed eyes and masked mouth glittered, jovial work for a septic system.

"Ari, one second doc. Hey."

Backing down the hall, miming apologies. "I'll see you around Case."

I got a good grade from the psyche. "Very little degradation today," it exclaimed. "Your connectivity must have been quite well balanced! If you maintain this synchronization, we can expect to keep memory and autonomic function nearly optimal. Please ensure you take your supplements to maintain neural plasticity, excellent work!"

It always ignored my questions so I didn't ask anymore but one time I looked up "autonomic" and I was not very excited about the implications. Clacked Ari's door on the way back roomwards, to no result. Shut my door hard, rattled more beauties down my gullet and lay on the floor, tossed aside my psyche chart with all its healthy green and admonishing yellow. Degradation did not feel minimal, I was fragile with worry and my body wanted to fly apart, uncontained by the shell and trembling with skin crawling fear. Nothing flattened, the spin felt too fast, and I wiped confused wetness off my face. I clenched fists to my sides and shook uncontrollably. When would the drop would come?

Rolled out and rounded up came down soon enough against my liking. Marched our asses cross to the bay and posted us up. The squad leader looked uniquely miserable for each syllable of "Kitten Candy! Raccoon Enchantment!" He might actually kill me if he figures out how I changed our call signs.

Ari lurked behind me, sleep deprivation coming off her in radiant heat. I'd woke on the aching floor to rollout chimes, back still sharp from the sleep I should've skipped. She'd been doing teardown some long hours fore we got the callout. "Since you two reliably fuck up anything more complicated than bright colors and shapes, you're doing drop targeting. Three sites, think you can handle it?"

"Probably not, SIR!" I said, and he was not amused, Ari flopped hands affirmatively over the task a drone could do.

"Get synced up because that's the mission. Fuck off, the adult pilots are talking."

Could've argued, didn't, not with the halides in my skull and Ari walking away for the wasp. "Hey! Hey." Caught up around and walked with her. "Lotta radio silence, you good? I mean, girl, you look like shit, but you good?" We reached the lift. My hand was more tentative on her shoulder than my first time trying on a bra. "Are, like, are we? You know, did I say something?"

"Shit, you're fuckin impossible," Ari pulled a smile from an awful place. "Never said nothing except all I wished-" She started climbing. "Ah, fuck off, you know you're good. So good I want... like, fuck. I'm good. Had feedback something fierce this week. Hcch." I walked behind her, hand at her back and lifted, she grabbed my wrist. "C'mon, bitch, gimme a boost up."

The tech up top had the wasp open, long tongue dangling, pink, dripping ready to enfold. The mandibles were an umbrella over us, the whole cockpit slung between a sensaray and fire platform up front and the main gun taking up most of the thorax, flightless wings for short jumps and bristled with beams and missiles webbed into veins and live nerves. Ari stripped off her clothes and I helped her with the mass of thick tubes dangling from the soft flesh of the wasp's underbelly. Gentle with the catheter while she gripped my shoulder, taping the skin contacts on, then slipping the fat red sync cables and their gently writhing filaments into the sphincter along her neck and spine.

"Hey." I looked up from making stirrup hands and Ari's fingers lifted me from kneeling. "You be here when we come back, kay? I don't wanna open this cage if I don't see your ugly mug waiting."

"You fuckin wish," I said. "Believe, I'll be here, I got nothing better to do."

She had that smile, eyes almost past her tangle. "Yeah, what the fuck do I care, you're just, like. Well fuck you, anyway, you better be here, no excuses."

I put my hands together and knelt. "No excuses, bitch." She stepped into me and I hoisted her up until the closing mandibles caught her and pulled her the rest of the way in. The wasp began to breathe, the metal and polymer exoskeleton tightening as it straightened. The multiplicably enfolded legs flexed all their joints. I made my way from Ari's lift to my own, perspective and spin distorted neath my crab all encompassing the view and my world. The stairway to its cockpit was considerably longer, but no aid was needed. Sixfold mandibles waited for me, tubes lay cross the steel grate for my own administration. That same tech still couldn't look as I stripped and strapped. Didn't need help with my ports, just held crab's feelers up and they squirmed their way to the intimate fibers of my spinal cord. I sighed and my ports contracted to pull the connections deeper to the nerve.

The tech muttered, "I can't cope with the freaky shit," stepped off lively. Probably thought I couldn't hear as I wound myself into the folds of the crab's intimacy, and was encased in the dark. The peristaltic folds squeezed and swallowed me into the wet warm depths in the heavy polycombine plate armor of our turret. Impact gel, amniogel, blood and mucus flowed over my feet and hands, the added nerves and plasm more deeply fusing us. I felt my vision shriveling through a tunnel, my gritty eyes black in my skull, each muscle of my limbs unfurled from bones to thread themselves into the limbs of a colossus. My spine grew through my skin to blossom across a carapace and turret, flexed my claws and the wide flat armor wings across my back, felt the hangar through its myriad complex electrical systems and programs running in constant state of adjustment. I could smell the synapses of the crew inside the rig, all the redundant added systems, multiple layers of security, still so vulnerable inside this soft underbelly. My web crackled and fluttered along my body. I could kill everyone around me with a thought and leave only my fellow, slumbering shells for company.

I vacuumed air through my body and filters, hundreds of pounds in a breath. Piece by piece I cut my mind free of its cage, each part of it a point in a web of a thousand stars to guide my way. How had I ever let myself believe I could be human? How could I be when I was this, so much more, the parts of my mind I never before realized were incomplete. Destroy me, I urged the crab. Consume the last of my flesh and bones, and let me free once and for all. I slipped my claws out of their bands and tested link with wasp - with Ari. She vibrated enthusiasm, her stimulant chemicals were flooding overtime, and I selected the clam path of her many input and system indexes to aid her, grant her focus to the still before the burn. The dropship waited and we obliged, neither of us patient for departure and planet fall, once again to taste the alien atmosphere and feel true gravity pull at our tissue and joints.

Countdown for slow minutes, and we jammed to our sync. I felt at peace, each part of my psyche sliced from itself, and we lay distributed across our body, through small cortexes fired with the parts of my consciousness. We ticked through systems and my subconscious night terrors spooled into projectors while my self sense expanded to the decom in preparation for target tracking. Ari and I could feel one another as we synced, her slender body and long legs torquing their secondary legs into alignment. Her deepest horrors became a narrow band of foci, accompaniment to each one of her eight gun placements

We swayed for a minute as the drop slid out through the bay doors til thrusted still in a white noise of rocket and atmosphere. Open doors spilled a flurry of blinding light and boiling air. We cut the cord and took flight. Fission cycled to jets and Ari soard around my less graceful lander module decel, both flirtatious and efficient. Earthshaking on point, I breathed in the beacon for the first drop target, then pulled myself free of deeply fertile soil, felled the odd red thornbush in the way of our determinedly stealth free journey. Ari was more nimble in her travels, caught us both up fair to the prep kit. My decom swept all sides of the range for crevices of organized blue, and looked through my wavspec for tattletale knurled arms and segmented torso trunks.

"Whistle clean," I thrummed to Ari and she slipped up through to the prep barely shifting a twig. My hearts beat in time to her showy work then my pace crushed the evidence in passing. Exultation flooded my glands and fluttered my filtration, we set to the lungs of the future. My claws could lift and move enough whilst Ari's more dexterous complex digits hooked in power, nutrient starter, bacteria loads. All color coded and writ large enough couple pilots couldn't fuck it up, track records notwithstanding. Few hundred and we'd be able to turn the toxic swamp of atmosphere to nearly breathable. Plenty for firsts, let them deal with the messy genes for the twenty-threes to come later. Not us, not our yards and acres of lungs filtered enough to breathe near vacuum. Minutes confirmed the bactomix was good, and we beamed our confirmation.

"Nice and tidy," Ari observed the dirt churned circle round the target. I tasted the ground, messy but starter ready.

"Good enough. It'll be dust in a year anyway. Grab a ride?" We're supposed to march it point to point, no riders no passengers, but it's slow n tedious. She grappled to my exo instead. Put a safe-ish distance from the drop target, hunkered. Earth churned to mud and boiled around my feet as we sank down, I wrenched all I could from dirt rocks clay, sprayed hot waste out my vents, and we exploded into the air on jets carved from living thorns and earth, second drop in record time. Nothing rumbled I could spec but still. "Tastes sour," I trembled contact to contact. Ari slithered down and crouched near my shoulder.

Moments she said, "It's stilled air, might be some action crosswinds." Her wings flexed a bit and we looked for the petrichor druid chemsign. At range I could pick out just the echo of their craft, the sizzle of their spells registered a bare zero zero DV scale. "Specced it, action's noways near," I thrummed between us. "Sus, though, we're ahead of schedule, let's walk it." She affirmed, and we moved like glass, opened the target pack and specced every step.

Thorns still, sharp rocks earth clay uphill still, air still, but the maddening aquamarine fuzz of rain cluttered my sights. Ari flexed her wings on her thorax again, rocket platforms twitched nervously. "There's too much fizzing," she hissed, picking up my discomfort. Gauss guns on her sensary pointed hither and yon. "Fuck it," I thrummed, "Bact's good, bail." She mounted me from behind and we dug in the dirt, boiled and processed and locked. Branches burst up from earthbound as every spec greenlined on me, and I screamed in sickeningly fractured agony.

I could feel my exo cracking where the branches of an Atlas banyan crushed around three of my legs, pain and fluids pouring out of my body. Had to be a twin trunk, at least. Even my spiracles bled. Jagged shapes stung my left claw and numbed one of my injured legs. I could hear Ari's screeching and felt her weight shift from me to the ground. My specs were greened out in swampfire, I could taste the ozone and my own charred exo, but I was blind.

"I can't scope!" Ari's panic crackled and echoed through my body, fuled the rush of toxic stims and lit up my heat sinks bright from overclock. "I'm on it, I've got guidance," I lied, throwing a narcofilter into com. I dialed in broad spec and fired a wave of chaff, unspooled PDN for mass nightmare. Swapped high-speed into UV infra sonic organize scope range til I could line out the elves. Ari's screeches spiraled in time to hits I felt in my neuron clusters, dirt and rocks rattled from being skywards. Contermanded a second hit of stims in my system, cooled collect.

Instant recovery between the chaff and PDN. The stinging cold geometry faded its intensity on my exo. I experienced the reward of disrupted Atlas' soundscreams enduring the mortifying ordeal of being scoped. Shortburst the dial range to Ari. Caught backflow of her relief. Found the seconds we needed to move.

The Atlases were over halfway out of the soil, still partly wrapped their heavy branches over Ari and me. Quad trunks, fuck. Druid support, double fuck. The fully exposed organizing casters ways off, spec a kilo or two, but their alien decoms were holding up to the PDN. I pulled back to Ari and my pain receptors shut off the instant my legs twisted and shed broken exo like ice, steel grinding itself each movement. I checked her stat. Half a leg and one wing had been torn off. Her body was coated with slick black and green fluid, mixed with white foam. Her secondary leg was intact and functional, but I could see six bad hits from those light spears.

I cut loose a second wave of chaff, narrowed for the type-beta shieldworks from the druids, scattered an arch of green spears - I put my wings and claws out front to do their job just in time to take the secondary hit of jagged blue geometry. My back legs twisted excessively past their limit. The tri-polyplate claws held, mostly, some smoldering layers blasted free and others melted. I tight focused neural disruptors at the Atlases, cut more chaff, joyed at their screams of fear and agony. "Ari, my target." She swayed but unfolded her stabilizer struts, hit one of them with three rockets, a particle shot, and a full sec from the gauss, frosted it's decom and tore up the left half of its body. Glistening dark blue blood exploded across the other two and it laid out, alive but no threat. Heat fins spread wide open white hot underside her wings, her legs. "Casey your fuckin legs they-"

I flickered low beams at the druids, didn't connect but gave em a minute to think, redirected a broad neural disrupt at our six, more encouraging screeches, I filled the crab with the worst of my mind to saturate multiple kilometers in the PDN of my own fears and nightmares. "Ari, not now, cover."

Even on a wing and half a leg she was a beautiful flower of agony, spread of rockets, heavy beams, blistered depslugs streaking from her to seek the druids proved weakest by their alchemical conversion to bright blue explosions of blood and bone. Steamed heavy off her sink. The second Atlas was fighting up through my disrupt. I hit it with a PDN flare mix, and didn't catch the green blue spellwork shield crackling twixt its bark til I had to duke it.

The Altas caught a claw with one limb, put two more into my main body, right center, and I was overwhelmed by the vomit stench of my tissue and exo and endo rupturing, polymuscles shredded, but I boiled my feet in deep with stage one for jump, and got my other claw on its middle trunk. My com was choking garbled but I said, "Ari-" before I felt the left rear third joint sheer and snap.

She was to me before I could waver with her forelegs' high beam up to max in its face. Light hotter than stars burst the banyan into three flaming pieces, sheer through the trunk, bloodless, charred beyond recognition in a second. She buzzed me. "We can't stay." The last of the Atlases was pulling a highdef organized multiplier out of the earth. Looked like pine tree trunk but carried in a single limb. I specced another Atlas closing. One good HDOM shot would dust my armor. One bad shot would vaporize Ari. "You're right."

I tried to spool up, but the PDN was dead, so I blasted chaff along the ground in front of the Atlas. Give it some hot shrapnel to work through, dialed the rest for max dispersal, and cut three quarters skyward. "Grab a lift," I snarled and she was on me. "And set your main."

The earth churned and my legs threatened to give, but held. "Case. I tried that last week, rec? I couldn't hit shit."

"Yeah. You tried it. We didn't." I hit the jump, we caught sky.

Ari's limbs folded around my body, and her remaining claws clamped, support struts pierced my exo secondary limbs unfolded to add more stability. She shifted the main rifle forward from inside her thorax and opened the remaining wing, heat vents fully extended, coolant spraying out of her wounds as it pumped triple time through her sinks. Her thorax flexed heavy with breath and the gun's wiring and nerve rigs flushed the scent of her excited musk around us. I wrapped my three remaining legs up over my body and clung to her, spun us with my wings on our axis. We had a beautiful aerial view of the remains of our own ambush, our legs fallen close like hands of dying lovers.

The main gun of the wasp would not be possible to see if we had human eyes. A three stage system requiring the finest care with aiming and multiple stabilizers to the firing platform ensuring a clean hit, combined with full heat dispersal for blowback. It would break up shield and decoms, disruptors and polyplate, followed instantly by a particle beam depslug mixture.

I wrapped my claws over her cockpit segment and she fired. The slug obliterated the Atlas, its multiplier detonating and spraying organized green spears haphazardly with blue geometry. The drop target went up and threw a cloud of concentrated bacto over what looked like eight kilometers. I saw the beam digging a canyon through the earth moments before the bacteria and debris blacked the site.

We were thrown, I lost a second leg and both wings. Deaf to coms. My chaff clattered off us, shredded our armor. The full thorax and both of Ari's rear legs were torn away by recoil and a furnace blast of overheating power couplings as I held fiercely, even when my left claw was cleanly severed by the last flash of the beam and my main body punctured and boiled by her shrapnel. I realized I wasn't deaf, I simply was unable to hear anything except Ari screaming and lost valuable seconds - nothing to see but sky and only rushing air over our spinning bodies.

I jetted waste from my secondary vents, they spat angrily but caught air. Risked it, held Ari with my only two legs and put my claw between us and the freight train rush up on drop target three. I hoped enough was left of her to hear me shout, "Impact Impact Impact!"

The ground was very wide and very fast and black. It was-

Nothing. Black.

Casey. Casey. You need to get up.

"Casey," Ari's hiss was a near inaudible comm. "Casey please... I can't move my legs."

I specced, half blind, dialed it through. There was a flicker of distant green. Move. I felt joints and plastic muscle, raw tissue and white foam dig the earth, I moved in a little circle. The drop ship was waiting - no pilot, just auto for a grunt mission in and out.

"I'm up," I lied to Ari. She hissed, "I know you aren't." I specced myself. One leg could move, claw somehow intact, thank you polyplate. Other legs just partial joints, trailed their hydraulics and burned nerves. Quarter chopped off the rear platform. "Am so," I thrummed and put my claw in the ground, levered. Slid my partial legs underneath and my one good one up. "I'm up." I started pushing myself along the earth.

Felt like dragging the big protein drums on kitchen duty, couldn't lift much as rock myself back and forward one side at a time. I found what was left of Ari.

"How's it look," she hissed. One of her two remaining legs was shattered in half a dozen places, congealed foam doing nothing for the fluid leaks. Her other leg might last. Sensary might even be salvageable. There were holes gaping in her deformed cockpit, gel and blood oozing through cracks. "Looks great," I thrummed. "You lost so much weight."

Her laugh wheezed. "You got one good leg Ari, I need you to hitch a ride." She fumbled in the mud and found the tattered edge of my exo, dragged herself half onto what was left of my main body, and I pushed. Her voice was distant now, "Hey Case, remember that night fight, we jumped a bunch of elves with a flashblind."

Just a few meters. "Yeah, pretty funny. Guess they remembered us." She wheezed again, her comm was rattling. "And that time we used ice for heat sig?" My claw hit metal. I strained on the loading ramp without traction. "That was pretty good too, yeah." Fuck it. I grabbed one of the less important control struts and heaved, pulled. Felt my innards and Ari slither along metal, almost home. One more pull. "Hey Casey, hey. Remember when the fuckin elves ambushed us with our same dumb ideas and you thought I should shoot em on the jump."

I punched the recall code, the hatch cranked shut, dumped the tangled mess of our bodies into the drop bay. Acceleration crushed us. "Yeah Ari, that wasn't the best idea ever." The rig loomed up. "Right Ari? I'm an idiot." The comm was quiet.

We were in the bay and I was in a pool of sludge. I could feel my legs and arms and bruises and my own real blood on my face. I could walk and and almost stand, crawling clambering falling down the lift stairs before the tech could say anything. He slipped after me, clutched railing and tried to keep his footing in the mucus as I went sidewinding to our sad and shattered shells, tech prying open the jaws of Ari's with hydraulic levers.

I shoved through as the seal cracked, reek of poisoned atmos and stagnant amniogel, the snap of bone and it fell open, pouring Ari onto the hanger floor, washed up against me. I was on my knees, she was in my arms. Bone showed through one of her broken legs and a bloody hole in her ribs frothed blood. Her bottom lip split so bad I could see her shattered teeth sticking through it. Blood from her ears, nose, eyes, whole body a contour map of bruises.

Ari's one good eye cracked and she gurgled wet and rough, "You look like shit, Case." She spit blood.

"Told you. No excuses bitch."

"Fuck. No exchs." Nitrile gloved hands pulled us apart, and meds were shoving tubes into her, slapping dermals on her. They had a stretcher. Someone shone a light in my eye, I felt the cold slap of a dermal on my shoulder blade. "No excuses," I slurred as loud as I could. He said, "You shouldn't be standing up." I didn't know if Ari could hear. "I'm gonna be waiting!" They hit me with another dermal and goodnight.

It was like that for awhile, before I could go back to my bunk. Lot of debrief, I got a commendation, which mostly meant some extra cash in my account if I lived to spend it. Some looks. DeeDee came by and said "Mad respect." Scatter stopped in with some nearly not paint thinner whiskey. Squad leader came in and chewed me out. Then some days in my smaller, worse bed. I lay on my clothes and punched back painkillers and beauties, then got out of my space and flipped the latch on Ari's room to get into hers.

It looked the same. Laundry unlaundered, whiffs of fermented sweat and sex, crumpled up wrappers for hot sauce, thermalprint hentai, congealed shampoo and soap blocks. I held a tanktop to my face and inhaled, poked around her trash listlessly til I saw a scrap of print. Her last psyche, pages of red and yellow, warnings cautions, parts of it printed red on black. I banged out of her room with it clenched in my hot fist, storming along the counter spin corridors to Ring 2.

Medical. Deep breath. I pushed the door in and gave Ari the biggest smile I could muster and she asked, "Oh no. What's wrong," from where she was still ensconced in tubes to keep her lungs working while the biogels slowly closed her skin over. "What do you mean, what's wrong," I forgot to separte teeth for talking. Maybe a couple weeks before she was walking wounded. "You got a smile like you dropped a battery pack on your foot."

She looked better with her lips stitched back together. Her new front teeth were steel. I blinked and shook and pursed my lips so I wouldn't snarl when I unfolded the psyche chart she'd left balled up under her desk. Needles prickled along my feverish forehead. Tried to find words as she shifted her eyes away from mine and just said, "Oh. That."

I dropped it on her stomach. "Why? You could've- It... Why?" I've been called poetic in my time.

Ari started to bite her lip then stopped. Rubbed her eyes with her palms. "Ow. Everything hurts - Casey, what are you gonna do when you get outta here?"

"Because you can- Huh?" I blinked several more times rapidly. "Uh, I dunno. Little place with some twenty-threes? Maybe a dog? Nothing too special, just wanted a shot at like... living yeah?"

"But you think about it and... y'know, you see something?"

"Yeah, I guess, I mean a little. Who knows?"

She shut her eyes. "Well I didn't see anything." Squeezed her eyes. "I didn't think I'd- Case, I didn't come here for a shot at living. I... didn't see that. That idea." Tears slipped out of her eyes and she grimaced, shoved her hands against them. "I never planned to live that long," her breath hitched.

I didn't know what to do with my hands, whether to move over to her, or what. I nodded to her closed eyes, felt stupid. "Ari, I'd, uh, like it if you did."

She let out a long breath and opened damp eyes. "That's what, I mean, I met you. It's been good, and like. I realized I had started thinking about it."

"Thinking about it?"

"About being alive. Somewhere there, I mean, like, I thought about that I might want a future if it had you in it. And I guess I freaked about the idea it might not happen, and I wanted to keep you somewhere safe where I wasn't going to mess that up."

I folded my arms. "Ari, I fucking swear." She looked back at me. "I don't care how much it hurts, move the fuck over right now, I'm gonna hug you so bad you break another four ribs."

She slid a bit, and I managed to half lay in the bed around the IV tubes. I managed not to break her ribs. Big, stupid and hot tears dripped down my cheeks and nose as I squeezed, then grabbed her hands in mine. "Every day you wake up. I'll give you that future. You might not see yourself and that's okay because you'll see me, and I hope that's enough."

"I kinda kinda love you bitch," I clutched her tight. She kissed me, stitches rough against my lips, and smiled as she did. "You can stay," she said.

"I'll stay." And I did.

#gore cw #body horror #t4t #mecha #original fiction

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