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spectrechosts · 25 days ago

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Bunker Buddies

I want to be done reuploading and all I have left is shorter stories I haven't touched in forever which means shit is getting CONDENSED into single posts so I can have all this done by Halloween.

This one might be my oldest series? It's about a polycule of rebel mech pilots. Probably too long to be condensed into one post honestly but I'm just barely squeaking in before my self-imposed halloween deadline so... it gotta. Six chapters.

The stench of garbage weed hangs in the stale recycled air of the bunker.

"-and it's just so cool, because it's like, you punch, and there's an explosion, and a giant spike shoots out-"

Kat paces the room, gesturing wildly as she extols the benefits of her newly salvaged weapon. Jade watches her from the bed through half-lidded eyes, held by Maya (already asleep) and Isa (not far behind).

"Pile in the bunker" Isa mumbles.

"-and people say that it's impractical because it's a melee weapon that uses ammunition, but the pile bunker-"

"Pile in my bunk in the bunker."

"Kat?" Says Jade, softly, but she isn't heard.

"-and besides, you never see people who only have guns get told that THAT'S impractical because of ammunition, so what's even the deal-"

"Talkin' about pile bunkers in my bunker bunk pile."

"Kaaaaaaat?" Repeats Jade, and Kat stops.

"Am I rambling?"

"Yes," Says Jade, "It's cute."

Kat blushes. "Sorry, I'm just excited."

"I know. The techs will have it installed tomorrow and we can go try it out, okay?"

"Okay."

"But for now…" Jade opens her arms expectantly.

"Cuddle pile in the bunker bunks with our pile bunker girlfriend." Mumbles Isa.

"You heard her. C'mere babygirl."

~~~

["Alright girls," Said Jade, "I know it's been a rough day, but let's try to relax and get some sleep."

A rough day was underselling it.

Isa scanned the tiny room. A single bed pushed against the wall and a desk in the corner were all the furnishings it offered. "Wow," she deadpanned, "this actually might be the shittiest place we've had to hide out in."

Jade sighed, exhausted.

"It's also the least compromised place, so I'm afraid it's this or a blindfold, a cigarette, and a gun barrel the size of your torso."

"I think they stopped giving out cigarettes at executions a while back actually." Maya said matter-of-factly, already stripping off her gear and getting ready for bed. "Blindfolds too. Makes it harder for us to look brave for the cameras."

"Well then, I guess this is positively lavish in comparison." Jade tossed her gear into a corner and sank into the bed, not even bothering to get undressed. "Requisitions says they'll see what they can do about the bed situation. Get us some mattresses at the least, we can sleep together on the floor. For now, pile in and try to get comfortable."

They were no strangers to fitting more people into a bed than it was made for, but this was pushing it. You could hardly fit two people in this bunk, let alone four.

"Kat, you're just standing there. Talk to us."

Kat snapped to attention, her mind miles away.

"I'm good, I'm uh- I'm just going to be in the hangar for a bit. Not tired yet."

"Kaaat," Jade said softly, "We have been awake for 31 hours. We were running for our lives for the vast majority of that time. Tell me what's up."

"It's- It's nothing. The room is cramped, I'm gonna sleep in my cockpit."

"Don't kick yourself out of bed on our account." Said Maya, "We can make it work."

"I'm not. I'll sleep better, you'll sleep better, we all need the rest. Goodnight girls." She said, and she trudged out on her own.

She didn't sleep.

Diagnostic readouts flickered across blacked out viewports like so many stars as Kat fidgeted in her seat. She was exhausted, but she was also particular about how she slept. The texture of the emergency blanket kept in her mech disagreed with her, and it crinkled when she moved. Back with the others would be no better; While she loved them, she also required a certain amount of space to herself that couldn't be given under the circumstances.

And so she sat in the cockpit, and she ran diagnostics, and she unfocused her eyes just right to pretend she was under the night sky and not a kilometer and change underground.

This was surprisingly relaxing, until someone started rapping on her windshield.

Kat jumped at the sound, and adjusted herself to look as though she were just running some late night checks (technically true) and was definitely wearing pants under the blanket (not true, she was half-clothed in a tank top and boxers). She flicked a switch and her viewports powered down and retracted with a hiss, opening her cockpit to the cool air of the hangar.

Kat relaxed when she saw that her visitor was only Isa, perched above her with a blanket draped over her shoulders. Her heart rate then spiked again when she registered that Isa wasn't wearing much else under the blanket, and her brain short-circuited trying to come up with any thoughts that weren't "oh my god", or "wait, was she just walking around tits out before she found the blanket?", or "oh my goddddd".

"Having trouble sleeping, Kat?" She said, and Kat nodded furiously, her brain too fried to form words. "Me too. Popped a combat stim a little before we got here just in case we couldn't stop." She opened the blanket to illustrate this, and Kat focused very hard on the injection site on her arm and nothing else not her smooth skin or the way her underwear hugged her hips or- focus, girl. Isa closed the blanket again and continued as if she wasn't casually driving Kat to hyperventilate.

"I'm amped. Could run a marathon right now if I had anywhere to go." She said, scratching behind her ear. Her energy wasn't reflected in her voice, but that was Isa. She had this unshakable aloofness that made her both an exceptionally reliable squadmate, and also really cool to Kat, who couldn't remain calm about anything to save her life.

"Anyway, figured you might still be awake and a 3/1 split didn't seem fair. Got room for one more?"

This was a tough question, because on the one hand there was not room for one more, and on the other hand she really, really wanted to say yes. It was a moot point, because Isa was already climbing in. She threw the switch to close the cockpit and joined Kat in the seat, tossing the emergency blanket away and sitting in her lap oH MY GOD-

Kat stayed completely still as the smaller girl settled in on top of her, and found her nose buried in hair that smelled of oil, and gunpowder, and a faint touch of citrus. Isa's body on hers was comforting, and yet mortifying, and Kat didn't know what to say or what to do with her hands or really anything besides desperately hoping that Isa wouldn't-

"So is that the gear shift or are you just happy to see me?"

Fuck.

"S-Sorry." She said, and Isa scoffed.

"You're allowed to think your girlfriend is hot, Kat." Isa said, and she gave her hips a wiggle that made Kat squeak in embarrassment. "It's encouraged, even."

"I know, I know, it's just-" Kat said, her face turning beet red as Isa continued to grind against her.

"Just what?"

"You know, Jade's my girlfriend and she's your girlfriend and Maya's and we're all four of us as a unit girlfriends and that's great but you and I have never really um, talked about us as a pair within the existing polycule structure."

Isa stopped and took a deep breath.

"Kat."

"Yes?"

"My darling Kat."

"Y-Yes?"

"My most adorkable of girlfriends. Are you asking me, right now, as I am coming on to you in the least subtle way I can, if I like you?"

Kat's face burned with shame.

"I just, I just like things to be clear." She offered up helplessly.

Isa took another deep breath, and exhaled shakily.

"I do like you, Kat, and I will happily discuss this with you at length some other time." Isa said, and she turned to straddle her face-to-face. Her voice was as flat as ever, but there was a fire in her eyes. "Right now, however, I'm high on military grade stimulants and if I don't do something with this energy I'm going to explode. So. I can get out of your hair and find someplace to do jumping jacks for the next hour, or I can ride you until we both collapse in an exhausted heap."

Kat swallowed hard.

"Maintenance techs'll get mad at us for making a mess in the cockpit."

"You can make a mess in my cockpit."

"That's… not an attractive euphemism."

"It really isn't." Isa agreed, wrinkling her nose. "I'll take the heat, are we doing this or not?"

"Where's Kat?" Jade asked, sitting down to eat breakfast with Isa and Maya.

"Disciplinary meeting." Isa said, between spoonfuls of oatmeal.

"What? Bullshit, what for? On who's orders?" Jade was out of her seat, ready to tear the facility apart to get her out of it, until Isa gestured for her to calm down.

"Tech officer. Improper use of a combat vehicle." She explained.

"Improper use of- Oh, that's where you went last night." Jade sat back down. "And you just let her take the fall for it?"

"She insisted." Isa shrugged. "Our stammering mess is a brave little girl scout when the chips are down."

"Speaking of." Maya nodded towards the door, where a disheveled Kat appeared and made her way to the table on shaky legs.

"Jesus, what'd they do to you?" Jade asked.

"Nothing really." Kat croaked. "Said since the mech is my property they can't stop me from doing whatever I want in it, but the techs would appreciate if in the future we would put a sock on the door so they don't get an eyeful."

"I get woken up by some guy who overrode the locks and saw my butt and somehow we're in the wrong, explain that."

"Okay, follow up question, what did she do to you?" Jade asked, gesturing at Isa with a spoon.

"You look like you got hit by a truck." Added Maya.

"Combat stim took three hours to wear off."

Maya snort-laughed, and Jade rolled her eyes.

"Isa those are for emergencies-"

"It was an emergency when I took it."

"It's true. If she had taken it just for that, Kat would be in the medbay." Maya got up from the table and patted Kat's head. "I'll find you some icepacks, lovergirl."

"She's- I wouldn't-"

She walked away, chuckling, and Isa's flat affect cracked just a little.

"I would not put you in the medbay!" She protested, her voice uncharacteristically shrill. "You're- You would have told me to stop, right?"

"You're fine, Isa." Kat said with a weak smile. "I'm just sore."

"Okay! Good." Isa said, sighing with relief and hugging Kat tightly.

"Ow."

"Sorry."

~~~

Maya's arm broke.

Which wouldn't be a huge deal, her augments were standard (if overdue for an upgrade) military tech from before she deserted, and replacement parts were a dime a dozen.

What was a big deal, was that Maya fucking hated being worked on, and refused to let any of the tech crew do silly things like "remove the arm" or "sedate her", and so they wouldn't work on her, and Jade had the know-how but got squeamish seeing the skin peeled off of her girlfriend's limbs, and so somehow Kat was the only person willing to do the repairs.

"I'm disengaging the link now, okay?" Kat said, gripping a socket wrench slotted into a port on Maya's shoulder, and Maya nodded, her eyes shut tight. She twisted, and Maya's arm went limp as she sucked a breath through gritted teeth.

"Okay, I'm leaving the wrench, if anything happens I can link it right back up."

"Yeah, mhm."

Maya was pale and drenched with sweat, a far cry from the hardened merc they all knew her as.

"I'm going to take the skin off now."

"Kat, don't-" Maya started harshly, and then caught herself and restarted as calmly as she could manage. "Don't talk me through it. Talk about anything fucking else."

"Sure, um, why do you have robot arms?"

"Standard military hardware. All the grunts get them. Why do you know how to repair robot arms?"

"Oh, uh, I mean I just read the manual, I've never really-" Kat started, and Maya tensed while she was removing her skin like a glove to reveal the synthetic muscle underneath, and Kat decided to pivot into a story that would perhaps be more comforting than 'oh, I actually have no clue what I'm doing'.

"I uh, my dad had this farm-"

"You're a farm girl?" Maya interrupted, and she was shocked, but she was amused-shocked instead of focusing on Kat picking through metallic strands of muscle-fiber, and so she continued.

"Hardly. Divorced parents. Spent Monday through Thursday on Tau Ceti f; Ever been?"

"Once or twice."

"So, Monday through Thursday there, in the city, and then Friday afternoons I'd get shuttled to one of it's moons, Tau Ceti f-3, to stay on my dad's farm."

Muscle-fiber all checked out, and she got to inspecting the actuators. Maya's breathing had steadied, even if she was still looking away and clenching her other hand into a fist.

"I did not take to farming well, and he did not take to having a gangly little nerd daughter well."

Maya cracked an eyelid. "He wasn't..?"

"Oh, no, I mean that hadn't happened yet at this part of the story but he was… fine. Didn't really get it but it was fine."

Maya's eye closed again, and Kat was somewhat tickled that Maya seemed ready to beat up her hypothetical transphobe dad.

"So yeah, did not like the farm. But he had this old industrial mech just rusting on the property. It was my granddads, hadn't run since before I was even born. I was fascinated by it, and so since I wasn't much help with anything else on the farm, he set me on getting it up and running."

Actuators were fine too. Faulty connection? She hesitated, but Maya seemed calm enough, and she had told her not to talk her through it. Maya winced as Kat started to decouple the arm from her shoulder socket, but didn't stop her. Kat kept talking.

"I was stoked, from then on every weekend I was working on the mech. Got all the rust off, started picking compatible components out of scrapyards, reading manuals when I was planetside."

The arm decoupled, and she placed it gently in Maya's lap and started inspecting the socket.

"And this took years, mind you. I was one teenager trying to repair a relic two days a week. Got into college, transitioned, and still every weekend it was back to the farm to work on it. I was living on my own at this point, the custody agreement didn't apply anymore, I just wanted to finish the damn thing."

Socket was fine, she'd have to take a look at the main control unit. She recoupled the arm first, for the sake of Maya's stress levels.

"Anyway, I finally get it running, all systems green, and the fucking thing still won't move. Screens just displayed a warning that the model was outdated and I needed to purchase a replacement. Which, fuck off?"

Maya smiled. "I don't think I've ever heard you swear this much in one conversation."

"Well, you're getting repairgirl Kat. She's gruff."

"I like her."

"You're not about to. I need to take a look at the control unit."

Maya bristled. "Gahh. Fuck, okay just turn the arm back on for a sec first."

"Sure." Kat said, and she slid the synthetic flesh back on to Maya's arm and twisted the socket wrench to re-engage the link. Maya wiggled her fingers, but the movement was jerky. "Yup," She sighed, "Still fucked. Control unit is between the shoulders, you'll be able to feel it over the spine."

"Got it." Kat said, and picked a scalpel off her tray of tools. She gently ran her fingers across Maya's well muscled back, feeling a slight bump no bigger than her palm between her shoulderblades. She made her incision.

"So, uh, I was already almost graduating with a comp-sci degree, I wasn't going to let some stupid DRM lockout stop me."

She peeled away a strip of synthetic flesh, and the problem was thankfully immediately apparent. A single red LED blinked at her in a line of green ones, and she checked the manual.

"One of your control chips is fried. I just need to turn the unit off for a minute so I can fab a new one and replace it."

Maya grumbled. "Don't wanna hear that. The DRM lockout, what'd you do?"

"Right, sorry. So the DRM lockout." She pressed a tiny switch, and both of Maya's arms powered down. She pulled the chip and checked the serial number, and punched it into the fabricator. "It was simple enough to get around. I did some research and the next time I visited it was trivial to hack past it and get the suit up and running." She paused for a moment, watching lasers etch tiny circuits into a new chip. "That's where I fucked it all up."

"Hm?"

"I didn't hack it right. Corporate security force showed up the next morning. The system had pinged them, I was in violation of the terms of ownership. 2.5 million credit fine for bypassing the lockout."

"Jesus."

"And- And we couldn't pay that. Not if we sold everything we owned. So they were gonna take me away, and I was screaming, and- and-" She had a white knuckled grip on the fabricator console, and her voice quieted.

"I didn't even know my dad had a gun."

The fabricator chimed, finished. Neither of them moved.

"He shot the one grabbing me, and the other three turned on him, and I just ran. Made it to the mech. They couldn't shut it off remotely with my bypass in place, small arms fire just dinged off it. It- It was just a small team sent to grab one farmer in the middle of nowhere. They came up in a van for fucks sake, they couldn't touch me. And they got back in the van, they tried to get away, and I just picked it up and I-I-"

Maya thumped her shoulder against Kat's back in an armless approximation of a hug. Kat hadn't heard her get up.

"It's okay, Kat."

She didn't know when she had started crying, but her face was wet with tears.

"They killed my dad."

"I know. It's okay."

"They weren't a threat to me. I could've ran."

"You don't have to talk about it."

"I want to. I want somebody else to know."

"Okay."

"I- The mech didn't have any weapons. It was for hauling, or building barns, or- I don't know."

She took a shaky breath.

"I just picked them up and smashed them into the ground. Again and again. For- For far longer than I needed to. The wreck was unrecognizable."

"We've all done things we regret."

"I know."

"I don't think less of you for this, none of us would."

"I know. But-"

"No buts. They would have put you in the dirt and never lost a minute of sleep over it."

"But I was so angry-"

"Because they ruined your life! Kat, I would have done the same fucking thing. Freaking out when some assholes show up and kill your dad doesn't make you a bad person."

"I know, I- I know. I just… I just needed to hear it from someone else."

She sniffled and picked up the new chip.

"Turn around, let's get you fixed."

Maya did as she was told, and Kat slotted in the chip and flicked the switch. Maya's arms came to life, and a row of green LEDs shone from the control unit.

"Okay. You'll need to get a medic to sew your back up, but everything looks good."

Maya flexed her arm and wiggled her fingers, checking everything was in order, and then wrapped Kat in a powerful bear hug from behind.

"Eep! Maya, you don't have to-"

Jade crashed through the door, with Isa hot on her heels. "What's going on!? Maya messaged us that there was an emergency!"

"There's no-"

"Kat needs huuuugs." Maya said warmly, and Kat wished she could break her iron grip and at least attempt to hide that she had been crying. Jade and Isa didn't need to be told twice, they were already clinging to her and reassuring her.

"It's okay, babygirl." Jade said.

"We've got you." Added Isa.

"Girls, really, I'm fine-"

"You need to tell her you loooooove her." Maya continued, and Kat turned red.

"Seriously-" Started Kat, who was then drowned out by a chorus of I love yous and started tearing up again.

"I… I love you too. I'm really lucky to have you all."

…

"Now please let go of me this is really embarrassing."

"Nope."

"Nuh-uh."

"Not gonna happen."

~~~

The logistics of funding a revolution were… iffy, at the best of times.

Thousands of mostly independent cells operating in the shadow of an empire that spanned dozens of planets did not lend themselves well to any kind of structured allocation of resources, nor any aboveboard method of obtaining those resources in the first place. If your unit was lucky, you had a pilot sympathetic to the cause who could "lose" shipments that might prove useful. Really lucky ones had fronts to funnel money in directly.

The cell Kat was a part of was not lucky, and so her and the other pilots were out knocking off cargo ships.

"Target should be in your visual range right about now." Isa crackled over comms. She was off on some hilltop with a better vantage point, while Kat, Jade, and Maya lay in wait. The ship came into view right on cue, and Kat booted up her engines.

"We have visual." Said Jade.

"Great. Hold there, I'm gonna put him down right next to you."

Kat could almost hear Jade rolling her eyes.

"We're exposed out here, just take the shot before he sees us."

"And make my favourite girls walk all the way to the crash site?"

"Isa."

"Jaaade."

"Isa, he's going to see us."

"Won't do him much good~" Isa said, singsong.

A crack like thunder, and the ship lurched. Cargo haulers like this weren't aerodynamic, they managed in-atmo flight through thruster power alone. Something that's much more difficult when a railgun slug the size of a fridge is suddenly embedded in one of your-

Another crack.

-both of your engines. The ship was coming down fast, right on top of them.

"Alright, I'm headed back to base. Trucks are inbound." Said Isa, the slightest tinge of smugness coming through her mic. "Have fun unwrapping your present girls, get me something nice."

She dropped out of the comms channel.

"I wish she wouldn't show off like this." Jade said, and Maya chuckled.

"Hasn't backfired on us yet. Any crew?" Maya asked.

"Just the pilot."

"Think he'll live?" Asked Kat, quietly.

"Through the crash? Definitely. Ship like this, pilot'll walk off without a scratch." Maya said, powering up her weapons systems ominously. "After that is up to him."

The ship slammed into the ground no more than 100 metres away from where they were waiting.

"How does she do that?" Asked Jade, exasperated.

"Explanations I've gotten from her include 'vibes', 'techno-occultist magicks', and 'eyeballin' it'." Offered Maya. She placed a metallic foot on the mostly intact cockpit of the wreck and flicked on her loudspeakers.

"Pilot, you have thirty seconds to exit your vehicle or we will remove you by force."

"That seems a little short…" Complained Kat, and Maya flicked her speakers back off.

"I'll wait longer, it just gets 'em moving."

Forty-three seconds later, a panicked man scrambled out of the smoking carcass of his ship.

"D-Don't shoot! It wasn't my idea, I swear!" He yelled, and Maya smelled blood in the water.

"What wasn't your idea?" She purred, and the pilot's panic mixed with confusion.

"You guys aren't cops?" He asked.

"Nope. What wasn't your idea?"

"Nothing, I-"

His words were cut off by the whirring of Maya's minigun spinning up.

"I couldn't quite hear you." She taunted.

"It's just a little contraband! Take it! It's yours! Container 17!"

"That's right." She cooed, and powered down her weapons. "Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind."

The pilot started running,

"Alright." Said Jade. "Trucks should be here any minute. Start unloading cargo, make sure to nab container 17, we get first dibs on any good shit."

"This is the shittiest contraband we've ever found." Complained Isa, as she sorted through boxes of illegal brain implants. "Accounting implant, Marketing implant, Beginner's French? How are you going to get a brain implant to cheat at learning and only be a beginner?"

"I have…" Kat squinted. "Political Theory For Dummies? That can't be ethical, that goes in the trash pile."

"When you said you were bringing back contraband I expected drugs, or booze, or, I don't know, gay porn?"

"If that guy was hauling a full shipping container of gay porn I could not in good conscience rob him." Said Maya. "Hell, I'd give him a medal. He would be my hero."

Jade peeked her head in. "I've got a guy who says if we can get these offworld he's got a buyer. Pick out anything you want to keep and pack the rest back up." She said.

Maya stood up and raised her hands. "I think I have enough questionable metal in me. You girls have fun."

She and Jade left, leaving Isa and Kat to sort through their ill-gotten gains.

"You know Jade doesn't like your 'making the ship crash at our feet' trick." Kat said delicately.

"It's not a trick, you of all people should know that you nerd." Isa replied teasingly. "A cargo ship is as aerodynamic as a brick. If I know how fast it's going and I know how high it is, I know where it'll land if nothing's keeping it in the air. This is highschool physics."

"I understand how it works. She doesn't like how close you let the ships get before shooting."

Isa shrugged. "Jade worries too much. They're gonna call for help when they get hit whether they see you three or not. Factor in the extra time to get to the wreck, them potentially having a chance to take a defensive position, I see it as safer this way." She paused and held up a box. "Ooh, Indoor Agriculture! I could start my own grow op, get us something better than month-old stems."

"Please don't put the sketchy implant in your brain." Kat sighed. "And just tell Jade that you think your way is better, I'm sure she'd understand if you stopped framing it as something you do to impress us."

"Ah, but then she wouldn't be as impressed."

"She'd also have healthier blood pressure."

"I think it'd take more than that to fix her stress problems. Luckily for her…" Isa held up a box labelled 'mindfulness exercises'.

"Brain implant that makes you calm sounds actually horrifying."

"Yeah, I think we're done here. Let's go see if the food crates have anything good."

~~~

Jade trudged into their room and dumped her gear on the floor.

"Hey."

She jumped.

"Jesus, Kat! I thought you were all out scouting."

"Nope." Kat said, lounging on their mattress with a magazine. "Fuel line rupture, I'm grounded. How was the meeting?"

Every couple of months the scattered resistance cells would convene in a conference call and attempt to convince all the others that they had come up with a path to a successful revolution. As the leader of their strike team, Jade got the privilege of sitting in on these meetings.

"You may be shocked to hear this, but it turns out we're still vastly outnumbered and outgunned." She said, slumping into Kat's arms.

"Mm." Kat hummed, putting aside her magazine and running her fingers through Jade's hair. "Public opinion?"

"Varies. Lots of people know they're living in an evil empire, but don't wanna risk their necks."

"Same as always." Kat said, gently rubbing circles into Jade's back. "So what do we do?"

"Oh, I'm so glad you asked." Jade said, shifting to her side and pulling out a datapad. "I took notes."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah. Up first, we have 'Full on assault on the capital'."

"I love plans where we all die."

"Followed by 'Put down our arms to get public opinion on our side'."

Kat scoffed, "That's a cop."

"Mhm. Next we have 'Research new FTL tech and get far enough away the empire can't chase us'."

"Unfeasible and doesn't actually solve anything."

"Yeah, you're getting the general vibe of these meetings." Jade said.

"What was our plan?"

"Captain didn't have one. Stay the course, I guess."

"What's yours?"

Jade was silent, for a while. Kat kept gently rubbing her back while she thought.

"Keep you all safe, I guess. Is that selfish?"

"I don't think so."

"It feels selfish. I should have an idea to actually fix things."

"Why?"

"I dunno. I want us to have a real life together."

"This feels pretty real."

"Yeah, but I mean like- One where people aren't trying to kill us."

"Me too. And we're working on it as best we can."

"Okay but-"

"No buts."

"-but I want to-"

"Destroy fascism by yourself?"

"Literally yes. I want to fix every problem and then there will be no more problems and then I can relax."

"Now who's making unfeasible plans."

Jade was quiet again, and slowly let herself relax into Kat.

"Were you always this good at this?"

"Fuck no, I think you three are rubbing off on me. It's weird being on this side of the conversation."

Jade giggled.

"Want to hear more plans? There are funny ones."

"Sure."

Jade flicked through several pages of notes.

"Kill everyone now."

"Classic."

"Ultrasonic weapons that make you feel slightly hungover."

"Sure."

"Usher in new era of intergalactic peace by inventing strap that gets tgirls pregnant"

"…Like just the strap does it? There's no surgical aspect?"

"Listen, I just write down what they tell me."

~~~

Kat had never expected to have three girlfriends, but then, she had also never expected to be an enemy of the state and well, life comes at you fast.

Jade had said she had something important she wanted to talk to them all about, so she hurried up to their quarters from the hangar. She walked in to see Jade and Maya sitting on their mattress waiting for her.

"What's up?" She asked, and Jade gestured for her to sit with them.

Maya took a long drag from her cigarette before responding.

"Jade's pregnant." She said, and Kat bluescreened.

Jade smacked Maya on the back of her head. "No I'm not, asshole. I'll say what's going on when Isa gets here."

"Oh thank god, this is no place to raise a baby. So many people are trying to kill us all the time."

The door slid open and Isa entered, and she asked "Why the serious meeting?"

"Sit." Jade said, which was a mistake because it gave Maya time to dramatically exhale another cloud of smoke.

"Kat's pregnant."

Isa narrowed her eyes. "What? No she isn't." She said, and then got a look at Kat, who was still white as a sheet from when Maya had pulled the same joke on her. "Wait, is she? Can that happen?"

"Yeah." Said Maya.

"No!" Said Jade. "Nobody is pregnant! You know, I had a serious thing I wanted to talk about."

"I'm sorry," Said Maya, chuckling and clearly not sorry at all, "Please go on."

Jade rolled her eyes and cleared her throat.

"I'll get right to the point. I love you all very much, I trust each of you with my life, I think we should get married."

The three of them were stunned into silence.

"Don't all say yes at once now."

"Married?" Said Maya.

"Yes."

"Can we even do that?" Asked Isa.

"Well, legally no-"

"I don't have a dress." Said Kat.

"I- You're getting bogged down in the details. The actual act of a wedding isn't important to me, we're all broke and living in a hole. I just want to call you all my wives."

"Ah." Isa pondered for a moment. "Yeah, sounds nice." She said, and pounced on Jade, kissing her. "I'm your wife now, no takebacks."

Kat scootched in to join the tangle of limbs. "Me too. That goes for you two as well, if you'd have me."

"Oh you know I will, my second wife." Said Isa.

They all looked expectantly at Maya.

"I have never considered myself the marrying type."

"She's hesitating. Wives, pout at her." Ordered Jade.

"-However," Maya added, before she could be submitted to a barrage of pouting. "If it's you three, and we're not getting all dressed up and kissing in front of our extended families, I think I could change my mind."

"Three wives?" Asked Isa.

"Three wives." Confirmed Maya, as she joined the pile. "You'd all be lost without your big tough butch around to ogle, I couldn't do that to you."

Kat had never expected to have one wife, let alone three wives, but again, life comes at you fast.

#mech pilots #Spectre Writes

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