Renee opens her eyes. The scene is nothing. She feels nothing, sees nothing. It is blackness ad infinitum.
A thunderous but gentle voice sounds to her from above.
First, you.
There's a pleasant jolt, and reality slams into her consciousness.
Warmth. Sunlight. The morning sun pours in through the kitchen window.
"Finish your scramble, buttercup. You gotta grow up big and strong!" A woman's voice, light and musical as she moves, collecting used dishes.
"Mom, I'm not five anymore. I'm thirteen."
"Oh, but you're still so cute! Are you sure?" A gentle tugging as her cheek is pinched.
"Mom!"
"Oh, go easy on her, Renny," the sonorous male voice from across the kitchen table, familiar as a warm embrace. "You are her only one, after all."
"She could pinch your cheeks, you know."
"But I do!"
Her father's chuckle. "Letta, jeez."
Ugh, she groans inwardly.
"Yeah, when you go to work down in the mines!" The sneering boy pushes her. She lands on her butt. "It's where you belong."
Her grades aren't on her side, but she'll die before she goes to work in the mines. She'll also die before being humiliated by this goon.
He continues mocking her as she stands up, recognizing too late what's about to happen. Her fist slams into his jaw and he stumbles to the ground. He tries to get up and she steps on his chest.
"Then I guess I'll just take what I need from you. Prick."
"Do you want to tell me, sweetheart?"
The dim light of her bedroom, lamp turned low. Her mother's brow is wrinkled.
Renee hesitates. She's really afraid. "Can I be honest?"
"Please, sweetie."
"Mason was right, my grades are bad."
Her mother's cheek pinches, but she doesn't say anything.
"Dad's getting worse. I know you might have to take care of him someday. I hear you talking about it."
Her mother sighs but still doesn't say anything. She tucks a strand of hair out of Renee's face.
"I want to get a good job, and make money. I just can't stand that school."
"I know."
"I won't ever let anything bad happen to you guys. I'll do whatever I have to."
"You know we feel the exact same about you, right?"
Renee's lip trembles. "Be honest with me, are you mad that I'm screwing up?"
"No," she replies without hesitation. "Not mad, no. Concerned, maybe, a little. I just want you to be happy. Your father and I can take care of ourselves better than you might think. We came from less than this, you know."
"Well, you can count on me to help. Whatever happens."
"I know. We do." Her mother pulls her in, kissing her forehead. "You do."
"My little girl…" Her father's voice. Admiration, nostalgia, and love.
Not what she expected to hear, the first time he sees her in uniform in their kitchen. She's not sure if it's what she wanted or not.
His hands trace her shoulders and arms. He smirks. "You look sharp. Reminds me of the old days. Take care of that uniform, and all your gear. It will take care of you. The same goes for your friends. Even more so."
"I will."
His smile broadens. "You are gonna give 'em hell, I can already tell." He grips her shoulders, looking deep into her eyes. "Do you know how proud I am of you?"
She's tearing up, shifting her feet. "Dad, don't make me cry right now."
"Might be your last chance for a while."
He'd be wrong.
She's shivering, struggling to operate the tablet as she recovers from hypersleep lag. It's cold in her miniscule room, she shivers in her fatigues, but this is too important.
She doesn't know where they are. Someone fucked up bad. She was supposed to wake up in Saturn's orbit. She'd looked at a couple star maps before throwing up her hands. But she knows there's only a couple short jumps left to Demeter.
Ten year term, and the money's the whole reason she's here. The transfers cleared, a lot of them. A lot…
That's when she notices not the day and month, but the year. Her farewell to her parents feels like a week ago.
It's been twenty eight years.
Hasty, panicking, she tries to connect to her parents. She has precious few hypercomm minutes, but she needs to see them. But none of the old lines are working.
Five minutes later, she uncovers the articles.
Oscar James Blasey, age 69, passed away due to complications from Parkinson's disease on March 15th, 2713. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Alma Hatha Blasey, age 72, passed away suddenly from heart related conditions on July 10th, 2717. She is survived by her daughter.
A scream. One gout of full throated anger, disgorged at the screen, before the cold creeps in and she collapses into tears.
She'd be given little time to mourn.
"Get up! Blasey, I will not repeat myself again!"
The man's voice roars at her. She doesn't recognize him at first. Her head is pounding, and the ringing sound is blocking out everything else.
But she knows she has to get up, so she does. Blood drips onto her glove as she pushes against the dirt. She touches her face. Her glove comes away red. There's ash in the air. Something jerks her upward.
"On your feet! Or do you want to die here?"
There are people running everywhere. The transport she'd been riding in moments ago has a huge hole in the side. There are bodies on the ground. Parts of bodies…
"Blasey!"
"No," she says to the captain without thinking. "No, I don't."
"Then move!"
The wall is white. There's a metal table with nothing on it. It's all she can see other than the white curtains around her bed.
She doesn't have anything else to do. She doesn't want anything. Except to be home. With mom and dad.
The longer she stares at the wall, the more time seems to dilate. She lets it. She wonders if she stares long enough, time will simply stop, with her just sitting, feeling nothing, in that bed, forever.
"Blasey?" A man's voice she doesn't recognize. She looks up from the infirmary bed, breaking her endless gaze.
She does recognize his face. It's Lieutenant Colonel Haltwell. She blinks. "Sir?"
"Right, we haven't yet met." He thrusts out his hand. She shakes it, confused. "I've been talking to Captain Thurley about you."
"You have?"
"That's right. He was impressed with how you handled yourself on Jericho. And Troy. And so was I. I saw the logs."
"Thank you, sir."
"How do you fancy rotting away in this bed for another six months?"
"Not at all, sir." She frowns. "Are you going to put me back out there?"
"With a shattered leg? No chance. But there are other options. I understand in training you were known for asking a lot of questions. About gear. Tech, moreso. And you would tinker in your downtime, that right?"
Take care of that uniform, and all your gear. It will take care of you.
"Someone once told me it's important to stay prepared."
"That's right. To hear Thurley tell it, you're more reliable than some of the engineers under him. Even though you enlisted as a grunt."
She smirks a little. "You mean a First Infantry Soldier?"
"You know what I mean. I'm offering to put you in a chair and into the tech labs here on Xanthus. You would assist the engineers on site. But if you're lucky they'll let you use some of their stuff off hours."
"Absolutely, sir."
"No deliberation?"
"None needed."
"Then rest up. You'll start tomorrow."
"Thank you, sir."
With that, he simply walks away, perhaps to go change someone else's life. She looks down at her hands. They're cracked from hard use and exposure. Her right surrounds her left, cradling it, almost. They've been laying that way for hours.
It's time to put them back to work.
"Now you've gone and done it!" comes a voice in Velasquez's typical aggravated tone.
Renee looks up from the rover she's retooling, annoyed at the interruption but ready for the usual banter. "You can't pin every problem you make on me."
"Oh no, this is a Renee problem." Velasquez appears striding smartly in front of someone Renee's never seen before.
He's late thirties, handsome and blonde. Physically fit. And wearing a permanent smirk. Clearly a veteran. She glances at the patch on his arm, and is surprised to see he's a Pilot Captain.
"You know we don't like Pilots sniffing around in here," says Velasquez, crossing his arms.
The Pilot pays him no mind. He's looking Renee up and down. "You, huh?"
"Me what?" she responds.
"How's the leg?" he asks rudely.
"Aches now and then, but it's back to doing what I tell it to. What's this about?"
"Haltwell sent me down here. Says you've been on vaca too long."
"So why'd he send a Pilot to tell me that?"
"Cause he scouted you for the program." His smirk hasn't left his face, but he's searching Renee's. Reading her.
Renee can't conceal that she's taken aback. She'd never even considered being a Pilot. Seemed like too much of a hassle. But it does make some sense. It's not like she ever thought she couldn't do it. She considers.
"Pilot, huh… How's the pay?"
"Do you care?" the Pilot asks. His chest patch reads Hagen.
"They gonna let me crack the chassis open, or is that frowned upon?"
"Oh, it's very frowned upon," Hagen replies, but his smile widens.
"It takes years, right?"
"The classes do, but Haltwell wrote a letter exempting you, and Camp starts in two weeks."
Renee rubs her thumb over her forefinger. "And what's the failure rate, again?"
His smile widens even more. "Ninety eight percent."
"I'm in."
"No, no—goddamnit," Velasquez screws up his face and throws up his hands, "Blasey, this is such a crock, you don't want what he's offering, I'm telling you—"
"I'm in," says Renee to Velasquez's face, "but it's sweet that you're gonna miss me."
"Good call," says Hagen. He really never stops smirking. "I knew you were gonna say yes. And if I didn't like what I saw, I wouldn't have said shit, I'd have just turned around."
"Let me tell you how flattered I am," she replies. Jesus, this guy is fucking full of himself, but if he's half as sharp as he looks, he's no one to fuck with.
"You should be. Jump's in three days, get ready." After saying it, he indeed just turns around and walks away. "And, just some advice, you better hit the gym now, you got a long way to go."
She scoffs, but she instantly decides to leave the shop once he's gone and do just that.
"Ninety eight percent!" he shouts from the entrance.
Thus follows six months of unrelenting ardor.
She'd run the desert trails of Gridiron till her legs wouldn't hold her anymore, then get up and do it again the next day.
She'd man VR Titans until her neural link had her seeing spicy and hearing purple, then she'd feel her heartrate accelerate the next time she climbed into the training pod.
She'd fight till every knuckle and fingernail bled, and go back to the bunker to work on circuitry and bypasses until it was near midnight.
She'd shoot sets until her dreams were a ceaseless symphony of percussive gunfire blasts, and use those dreams to chase that flow state the following day.
The would-be pilots lived like a colony of condemned men and women, all knowing that most of them wouldn't make it, none caring. She made friends. She lost them, as people dropped out of camp, unable to cope. She coped, though.
She coped because after she climbed out of that hospital bed all those months ago, she looked back and saw it for what it was. It was all that was left for her, when she wasn't moving. All that was left for her, when her parents, the people she traveled across the galaxy to protect, had died before she ever saw a day of combat.
Hell.
This? This was no heaven. But it beat Hell. It had that going for it.
There is no final test. Every day, every minute is a test. They record everything. The rubric is mythic, concealed from every prying, curious eye. Some say it exists only on paper. Or stone. But the standard exists, and they are judged for the lack of it every single second.
Come Roll Call, the Last Day, or Graduation Day, depending on who you ask, there were only ninety eight—suitably—cadets present in the auditorium of the original three thousand something that had applied. The rest had all given up, understanding success to be impossible in the face of their radiant peers. And all ninety eight believed themselves to be Pilots. Not all would be proven correct.
Roll Call is simple. A present soldier is named, and given one of two classes. 'Admitted.' Or 'deferred.'
Like the rest of them, Renee sits staring at the monotone Vice Admiral, waiting for her name to be followed by the word 'admitted.' She believes it will happen, with her whole being.
Then it does.
"Blasey, Renee. Admitted."
There is no applause. No one even looks her way. She stands up, walks to the front of the auditorium, while new names continue to be read off, winners advancing, losers walking to the door with what is left of their dignity.
A stiff and stoic desk officer hands her an envelope—actual paper—as she approaches. As she takes it, he recites three words.
"With honor, Pilot."
A curt nod of the head, she accepts the envelope. With what it is that she's to accompany honor, she doesn't know.
Like the rest of the winners before her, she walks out of the auditorium with no fanfare, no acknowledgement, no newly-won pride. Just the satisfaction that she had been right in her own self-merit.
Outside the building, at the edge of the quad, near the commissary, a crowd of newly crowned Pilots stands displaying their humanity. Clapped backs, in-jokes, and the crinkled envelopes of those who are finally willing to express their relief at the long-awaited close-clutched triumph.
Renee ignores them, and walks somewhere it appears no one else is. Armory Superior. It's not an armory at all, since the only weapons in the facility are those carried by the on-duty guards. It's a bureaucrat's wet dream, though, and controller in fact to every arms and armor warehouse on-planet.
Renee advances through the automatic doors without slowing to the front desk. A bored secretary glances up with passing interest. She comes back to life when she sees what Renee is handing her.
She looks at the unopened, hand undersigned Pilot admittance envelope in confusion and interest. She'll be handling dozens in the coming days, but the ceremony hasn't even ended yet. Most Pilots will spend the night celebrating down at the Xalta township a few miles out, hoisting drinks and generally doing all the things they couldn't afford to for the last six months.
"Looking for first pick?" the secretary asks her over her glasses. "Cause that's not how it works."
"Just doing what it's time to do," Renee replies.
The woman stares back nonplussed for a couple seconds, then shrugs and descends back into the river Styx of boredom. She opens the letter, glances briefly at it, then holds it in front of her terminal lens. There is a short delay, then a plastic ID card is emitted from a slot in the terminal.
She hands Renee the plastic ID with a plastic smile, reciting the IMC mantra. "Peace and Order by Force."
Forty five minutes later, Renee is standing in a dark warehouse, rows of unactivated Titans' massive forms looming in the umbra. She stands in front of a slender-legged Titan, painted brown and green, kneeling in eternal expectation, a massive sword sheathed upon its back.
Her sole companion, the night steward, speaks. "You're the first one."
She doesn't even look at him.
"Not that anyone ever asks, but there's something special about the first one, each year."
Now, she does look.
"They don't see it," he continues, "but I do."
She says nothing.
"Good luck," he says. He turns, and starts walking away, leaving Renee in the near-nothing light of the path LEDs.
She turns back to the Ronin Titan in front of her. Sometimes, the neural link establishment process is treated as an event, even ceremonialized. For her, it will be private.
She approaches the Ronin, unsure if she will need her keycard or even what to do. Automatically, hydraulics fire and the bottom of the Ronin's chassis opens. The Critical Central Unit is exposed, opening further to reveal the memory core. A neural tether is visible at the end of the infinitesimal, labyrinthine circuitry. She draws out the tether, looking at the neural link.
Wet ware is no joke, but she's done this a thousand times in training. Only this time, it's for keeps.
"Here we go." She lifts her hair and connects the link to the neural plant at the base of her skull.
An unpainful but powerful shock electrifies her whole body. She's dizzy for a fraction of a second, then she smells burning peaches. She blinks twenty times.
She looks up, but the Ronin is unmoved. She releases the tether, which snaps back to the memory core, which recedes with the CCU into the Titan's chassis.
There's no further movement.
Renee fans her hands, letting them slap against her thighs. "What, are you a dud?"
Running lights snap to life across the unit. It's lens dilates, then fixes on her. "No. Are you?"
"If I was a dud, I wouldn't be standing in front of you right now, believe me."
"Theoretically, you are correct." The Ronin is still kneeling, leaning against one knee joint, but its torso uprights itself while it continues to focus and refocus on her. "I must confess, I wish I was as impressed as you."
"You're assuming I'm impressed."
"You are either impressed, or an idiot."
"Well, I'm not an…"
The soulless lens gazes down at her.
She throws up her hands. "Okay, so I get the snarky Titan."
"You should know, human, I was not programmed to laugh. So you will never hear it. But it will happen. It's happening now, as I look down at your hapless mammal face."
"Hapless mammal…" Renee actually turns around, hands on her hips. It's exceedingly rare for her to meet someone capable of getting her goat.
"Ha, ha," the Ronin intones robotically. "That was not a laugh. That was for your benefit. Now tell me, what are you doing here?"
Renee sighs, and turns back to the Titan. "What?"
"It is an hour till starset, and the admittance ceremony has scarcely concluded. You are a long ways from your bed—the ritual dagger of your kind's nightly obsession—and, if I'm scanning you correctly, on an empty stomach."
Renee stares back. She can't be arsed to summon any emotion to her face. "Yeah. And?"
"Don't you have anything better to do?"
Renee scoffs. She moves her lips, but nothing comes out. She scoffs again, and looks around. She ruminates on a half-dozen different cheeky responses. In the end, she sighs. "I guess not?"
"How sad."
Then, there is a loud whirring sound and the hydraulics of the Titan fire in force, it rises to both feet, reaches up and grips its blade. It draws it, whipping it to and fro a few times in a practiced manner, almost like a kata. It's so massive Renee can hear the air move around it. It could cut through her like nothing. It could cut through twenty of her with ease. The Titan returns it to its titanic sheath.
"Damn," the Titan projects, "if that doesn't feel better than thinking about it." It kneels down once again, its massive robotic hand resting on its knee. "Well, if that is the case, would you like to get in some live fire practice?"
Renee is frowning and smirking at the same time. "On what?"
"Whatever's readily available."
"So by 'live fire practice,' you mean 'fuck some shit up.'"
The massive, cyclopic lens of the Titan is unmoving. It unfocuses and refocuses on her. "Would you like to go fuck some shit up?"
In spite of herself, Renee smiles. "You know, I might." She approaches the titan, inspecting its gleaming, immaculate painted, coated armor. "First, though. I need to have something to call you."
"I am designate AN-5729."
"Catchy," says Renee. "Is that what I will be forced to call you?"
"Since you're asking," replies the Titan, "I would prefer to be called Anise."
Renee frowns, then screws up her lips. "You mean like the nasty plant?"
The massive robot is completely unmoving as it stares back at her. Renee wonders what it's thinking. A witty retort?
The lens unfocuses and refocuses on her. "Asshole."
Renee retracts her head.
"You, are, an asshole."
"No," says Renee, honestly taken aback. She approaches the Titan, hands raised. "No, no, I'm sorry. Hey, I'm actually sorry, alright? I mean, you were the one who started it. Hey." She places a hand on the Titan's lower leg. "Anise, then?"
Its lens unfocuses and refocuses on her. "I'm still offended, but acceptable. And you are?"
Renee smirks. "Can't you read my mind, or something?" she asks, referring to the neural link.
"Human wet ware is needlessly complex and notoriously inconstant."
"Charming."
"Will you tell me?"
"My name is Renee."
"Renee," the Titan intones. "Typical human. Meaningless and phonetically obscure. It shall suffice."
"Asshole."
"It takes one, to know one. There, was that more your speed?"
"On my off day, sure. Anise?"
The Titan considers her. "You could simply have elaborated, so I am assuming you are about to say something worth emphasis."
For the first of countless times, Renee gives Anise a look.
"Ah-hem. Yes, Renee?"
"Whether we like it or not…" she gives Anise a meaningful look. "And I'm undecided—it would seem that we are in this together."
"If by 'this,' you mean existential certainty, I could not disagree."
"Anise…" says Renee. She wants to show this entity with a thousand times her processing power her capacity for wit, but Anise is right, Renee's kind of fucking tired. "That was sort of a shitty answer."
"Yes." The Ronin gestures with its one-ton arm. "I snark not to dissemble, but merely for amusement."
Renee gives her a look to suggest meaning?
"Yes," Anise responds in a different tone of voice, "we are in this, together."
With that, Anise's locks disengage and her chassis folds open, revealing the cockpit.
"Shall we?"
Renee debates another witty remark, but instead succumbs to the temptation and climbs inside the cockpit, settling into the seat as restraints automatically secure her body. She's done it a thousand times in VR training, but only once for real. A feeling wells in her chest. Pride, achieved longing, readiness for a fight, and the cold, incessant undertone of the specter of future defeat.
"You know," says Renee, "we stand to get in pretty big trouble for unsanctioned live practice."
"Oh, no," says Anise, "you stand to get in pretty big trouble for unsanctioned live practice." She rises to her full height, the movement somehow familiar to Renee and thrillingly new. "I'm a Hammond Robotics darling."
Renee smiles wide enough to reveal all her teeth, damn and danger on her lips. She grips the button-speckled Main Grips with taut muscles.
"Let's get to work."
And work they do.
Before her wounding, Renee's combat experience on the ground was short and fraught. Afterward, it became a marathon.
After the catastrophe on Demeter, the Frontier Militia forces were succeeding in mounting an improbably effective counter assault that was watering the seed of IMC's defeat in the region every single day. It became the job of her and all the other newly-minted Pilots to turn that fact around.
Her first deployment was on Leviathan, scheduled to last 8 weeks. It would end after 29. Ground Frontier forces had seized the lion's share of the resource harvesters on the planet and were generally favored by local citizens, who had had happier lives under Frontier leadership before new IMC forces had seized control of all major institutions years earlier, before the start of the war. Half of those harvesters had been supporting the IMC war effort, but now aid the Frontier.
Avery, one of the only friends, more like acquaintances, she still had from Pilot camp on Gridiron, told her before their third battle that he'd heard a rumor that their forces were expected to lose.
'Not if we're there,' Anise had said through the neural link.
Renee had to agree.
The Battle at Lansley Peak took place kilometers below the mountain, its narrow, snow-capped height bearing witness to it. The battle met just Northwest of a large forest, the lines of Titans, war vehicles and covered infantry slamming together in a sparkstorm of glowing rounds, beam traces and explosions. The Frontier, numerically superior, pushed ruthlessly against the IMC, causing mass casualties and forcing the IMC to continuously move backward into the low, rocky foothills below the mountain.
Renee and Anise would be able to use the many low ridges and narrow canyons to evade their opponents. Sometimes they used them to retreat safely, sometimes they used them to reposition closer to attack. Infantry could be counted on to evade a manned Titan by any means necessary, and vehicles were unable to similarly traverse.
At one point hauling through one such canyon at over sixty kilometers per hour, blade in hand, they encountered an Ion that had been hunting them. Acquiring its target, the Ion's splitter rifle began putting holes and divots all over Anise's armor, but she did not slow down for a second.
The distance between them vanishing rapidly, the Ion had no choice but to stop firing and deploy its Vortex Shield. Without hesitation, Renee had Anise plunge the sharpened tip of her broadsword into the shield. The barrier could reflect small fire, but not this. Anise's legs push with such force that the Ion wrestling to rebuff the attack is backed into the canyon wall, knocking boulders loose and fouling its footing. Inch by inch, Anise's blade plunges deeper into the barrier, multiplying the strain on the Ion's energy core.
Inevitably, to avoid a core overload, the Ion dissolves the shield and receives the full force of Anise's blade in its shoulder. Wasting no time, Renee retracts it, slashes through its left leg, cuts a deep rut into the right side of its armor, then swings around again, burying the blade two feet into the Titan's left side.
Critical pathways severed, the Ion is disabled.
She doesn't bother wrecking it, this fight is all about speed. She rips the blade free and keeps moving.
Comms tells her the IMC line keeps rippling, threatening to break. That can't happen. Renee begins ignoring orders twenty minutes in. The relentless Frontier Militia pushes are formidable, but obvious. Renee devotes herself to scouting them, moving around them at the edges and harassing them, and generally frustrating the coordinated effort. She's joined by a handful of other IMC Titans, and their arrival is universally heralded by the cheer of the local infantry. This continues for three and a half hours, until the Frontier's stamina begins to flag.
The IMC have not turned the tide, but they have effectively entrenched in the more maze-like textured ridges in the zone. The Frontier line breaks at different points, but there are always more behind to replace them.
One Northstar Titan has planted itself atop a local hilltop, the highest vantage in the area, and has asserted a reign of terror in the vicinity with its warcruiser-class railgun. It is the biggest threat to the IMC's entrenchment, as its position divides their forces almost in half. It continuously takes shots at IMC units that are otherwise safe but for its vantage, forcing them to stop fighting and relocate, or simply die.
Renee is to take part in one last push up the hilltop before command issues orders to retreat further. Or retreat altogether. But that can't happen.
They break from cover in a thunderous roar of Titan hydraulics and piston-powered engines, tearing up the slope toward the lone Titan. They immediately start taking losses.
The Northstar needs no more than one direct hit to flatline any target before it. Even a Titan, on a good shot. And it's a good shot. An IMC Ion catches one of the blasts in its vortex shield, but fails to strike the Northstar on the rebound. The Ion explodes on the next shot.
Anise is among the fastest. The Northstar misses her twice before moving to other targets, but she's starting to get close.
'Won't dodge the next one,' says Anise through the neural link.
"You know what that means," Renee replies.
Renee draws the broadsword, a hundred feet from the Northstar. It fires its railgun, and Anise's blade is a black blur. It intercepts the round, deflecting it. On a bad hit, the railgun is powerful enough to shatter the blade. And that would be the end of things.
Anise creeps closer. The Northstar fires again, and again, its round is deflected. They're less than thirty feet now, approaching more slowly.
The Northstar charges its rifle again, lethal payload trained on Anise, but it doesn't fire. A second passes, then two. It wants to throw off their timing.
On nothing short of uncanny instinct, Renee swings the sword again and the last railgun round strikes it squarely, sending shards of galvanized steel flying in every direction, but it does little damage to Anise.
The broken blade cleaves the air and in one swing destroys the Titan's railgun. The Northstar tosses it to the side and draws a short cannon but is quickly disarmed of that as well. To the Northstar's credit, it never hesitates. It immediately deploys its rocket barrage in close proximity, just meters away. The barrage strikes Anise's plated chassis on all sides, some rockets striking the earth, probably even the Northstar itself.
"You good?" Renee shouts.
'Ow,' Anise replies.
That's all Renee needs to hear, and she pushes through the black smoke filling the area, stabbing the broken blade upward with both arms. It digs right under the stunned Northstar's frontal armor plate. Renee brings Anise's right foot up, plants it on the Northstar's pelvis, and pushing with her leg and pulling with her arms, rips the entire frontal armor plate from the Titan and thundering to the ground.
Renee finds her footing and goes to plunge the blade through the cockpit, but the cockpit flies open. The Pilot uses a short booster to fly out at remarkable speed. Anise's blade plunges into the heart of the Titan itself, destroying it.
Renee releases the blade and turns on the pilot. He's moving at high speeds through the air, but on a poor lateral vector. Just like that, Anise's side cannon is in her hand, Renee hip-fires, and the two kilogram round hollows out the pilot's chest. He falls lifeless to the ashen earth.
The sound of panting fill's Renee's cockpit. Her heart is pounding. Of her own volition, Anise turns and surveys the inert Northstar, it's cockpit gaping with her broadsword sticking out of it.
'He knew he would die,' says Anise, 'but that his Pilot might still live.'
Renee turns back to the dead Pilot lying in the ashy rocks down the slope. It had been in vain.
'No,' says Anise, 'it doesn't feel good.'
"It would have been us, instead," says Renee.
'It would have been us, instead,' Anise agrees.
Taking that hill had cost the Frontier considerable strategic advantage when they had been pressing desperately to find a weakness in the IMC's armor. Their losses were mounting. Twenty minutes later, they began an organized retreat.
In the following days, the IMC brigade was then able to continue on its original path and rendezvous with the Tenth Circuit Army. Renee's antics in the battle, namely on that hill, got her sharply censured and subsequently dressed with several awards.
Praise for Pilots is hard won outside of battle from grunts, given Pilots' inflated prestige and privilege. Of Renee and Anise, however, those who saw them fight in the Battle at Lansley Peak would say they warred like a demon.
Renee cuts into the ich'twua, a fruit native to the tropics of Eden. The purple rind is thick and leathery, but the flesh inside is sweet and spicy. She cuts off a chunk and pops it into her mouth.
She's sitting on Anise's shoulder, Anise herself seated in the shade of a gigantic native fern-like tree at the head of a long beach. The sand is glowing in the sunlight, hot to the feet, but there is an ocean breeze. Renee smiles.
Anise eyes her with her shoulder sensor. "Well, I'm glad you are enjoying yourself."
Renee scoffs. "Come on. This is our first week off in months. And on the beaches of Beloway?"
"Yes, I am told the equatorial zones are pleasing to those possessed of a human genome."
"You're just jealous you can't eat these," Renee replies as she pops another piece into her mouth.
"You mean envious, and yes, I am so envious," Anise replies sarcastically. Anise's voice is almost monotone, like most Titans, but Renee can read her like a book. She's got something on her mind.
"What's the problem?" Renee asks. They don't really beat around the bush. "Rather be fighting? Are you one-dimensional?"
"Well, I was created as an instrument of war."
"An instrument," says Renee. "Well, we both know you're no instrument, you're free to do whatever you want. So what do you want?"
"Unlike the unsatisfiable homo sapiens, a Titan is not saddled with the burden of needing perpetual preoccupation."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"I enjoy downtime. In its simplest form."
"You gonna shut down on me?"
"Whatever then would entertain you?"
"Good question." Renee bites another piece of the translucent pink fruit flesh. She doesn't say anything else. She feels like Anise is getting at something and she doesn't like it.
"Oh, look," says Anise, "those humans are setting up a volleyball net. How adorable. Perhaps you should join them?"
Renee scoffs.
Anise says nothing for a moment, then her shoulder sensor focuses on her again. "Seriously, why don't you?"
A frown creeps onto Renee's face. Anise has proven exceedingly talented at reading her body language, but she can't help it. As soon as Anise stops using sarcasm with her, she knows she's about to hit on something.
She spits out one of the ich'twua seeds. "What is it, then?"
Anise pauses. "Renee, why am I your only friend?"
Renee surveys the clear, blue ocean horizon. She looks at the fruit. There's flesh left but she tosses it into the bushes below. She cleans her dad's knife on her pant leg and restores it to its sheath. She takes a deep breath.
"I've had friends, on Earth. But I left all those behind for the IMC. I got new friends, from training. But they died, on Hermes, and Luxa. Then I had acquaintances, from Pilot camp. And they've all died, too."
She looks at Anise's sensor, as if that explains everything. "And here we are."
Anise says nothing for a long time. It makes Renee uncomfortable, since she knows the conversation isn't over.
"And what about that Hagen character?" Anise continues. "I understand he recruited you. When you spoke to him in that hangar in orbit, your heartrate was accelerated. I feel like you have the hots for him."
"Don't," says Renee, closing her eyes and shaking her head, "say that phrase to my face."
"It's okay, Renee. It's natural to have the hots for someone. I hear it's good to have the hots for someone. Sometimes, they might have the hots for you, too."
Renee covers her eyes with her hands. "Oh my fucking god."
"Sometimes, when two people really have the hots for each other, they put circles of metal on each other's fingers."
Renee's mom and dad kissing in the kitchen flashes before her eyes. "Anise, just stop."
The sensor remains on her for a few more seconds, then mercifully turns away.
The waves continue to roll onto the beach in their gentle crash, and then slowly recede.
"Renee," says Anise, "as your Titan, it is my job to protect you."
Renee frowns, then glances askance at Anise. That goes both ways, and without saying. And that's just it. They never say it out loud.
Anise's lens adjusts. She appears to be watching the volleyball game.
"Even from yourself," she finishes.
There's a growing roar as the squadron of warships drives in toward their position. They've finally broken the IMC aerial unit, and are closing in on the ground troops. Renee hears a rolling thunder as the bombing run moves in their direction. She curses nastily.
Xanthus has been a shit show since day one.
Normally a gentle lavender, the sky is a dark purple miasma of smoke and ash from the endless battling over the last three days. There were scrubby, rolling grasslands in this zone, but they've been transformed into broken, blasted wastes. Renee had been moving full speed to rendezvous with a flagging unit defending the Southern anti-air installations, but the warships have changed the calculus.
"Run, run!" she shouts.
Anise pivots hard, robotic legs digging into the scorched earth. She starts pumping them in the opposite direction. The turned earth is softened, limiting her top speed, but Anise knows how to fucking run.
Even a Titan would be almost a speck to the warships a thousand feet in the air, but Anise runs in a serpentine pattern in case they're being targeted.
Bombs start going off in the distance on their left and their right. Troop carriers and tanks are being torn apart, to say nothing of the soldiers unfortunate enough to be on foot.
"We've got to clear zone 7," yells Renee, "they'll drive the run through 9 an then pivot to—"
She's interrupted by a colossal shock. The restraints squeeze every muscle and bone in her body. She can't shout out, as her lungs are pressed down to nothing. Her eyes black out as her body is thrown to and fro. What little she does see is an unhelpful stuttering of the displays all around the Pilot's seat flickering on and off. Finally, there's a prolonged crash, and Renee's entire body is pulled to the right.
Renee coughs for several seconds, waiting for feedback from Anise. She spits, something she would never normally do inside the cockpit.
"Damn it, Anise, fill me in!"
"Assessing," says Anise. It's unusually formal.
"And?"
"Gain clearance."
The cockpit doors open and Renee's restraints release. Renee falls to the side of the cockpit, which is apparently down. She curses again, pushes herself up, then jumps out.
She lands on the wartorn earth, and stumbles as she finds her sense of up. She turns around.
Anise is on her side, half buried in the ashy ground, her torso ashy and her legs a mess of metal.
"What the fuck?" Renee asks without thinking.
Anise's lens is focusing and refocusing frantically. It stops, then focuses on Renee. "We took a direct hit," she announces.
"Damages," Renee responds automatically.
"Still assessing."
"Bullshit," Renee responds. It doesn't take Anise that long. "Damages!"
"Fret not, analysis complete." The cockpit door retracts back into her chassis.
"Fucking and?"
Anise's giant eye turns to Renee. She doesn't speak for a moment. She seems to consider her. "Friend, it would seem our time together has come to an end."
Something moves through Renee, but Renee chooses not to be moved. Her brow creases but she stares on. Then, she shakes her head minutely. She decides.
"No," she says to Anise. That's it. That should be the end of it, but Anise doesn't blink. "No, that's not going to happen."
"Renee," says Anise, "my core is undamaged but my mobilization operatices, and indeed the systems supporting them are damaged beyond repair. My lateral buses are in need of total replacement, and the sensory web on my fifth and seventh hemisphere are no use. I can neither move, nor protect you."
"Then the time has come for me to protect you."
"Renee—"
"We hole up here until a triage trolley rolls near us. I can fix that. And if I can't get you walking I can get you on back of it. We'll wait it out, and when one comes along, I'll use my flare—"
"You'll use your flare," interrupts Anise, "to call someone, anyone, to extricate yourself. You will not burden them with a cargo of salvage. As your Titan, it is my job, first and foremost, to protect—"
"Don't say that!" Renee shouts.
Anise's lens unfocuses and refocuses on Renee. "Renee, I once asked you, when the time came for a difficult choice to be made, would you have the strength to do it."
"Yeah, so fucking what?"
"Renee, you are talking about waiting for rescue. We are presently in the still burning aftermath of an air strike. You were correct, I suspect the squadron is even now changing direction from zone 9 to harry air support in zones 26 and 27. They will return, once rebuffed, to finish whatever renewed efforts to reinforce the Sourthern anti-air installations emerge in the interim. You are the fish in the barrel. You need to get out with whatever other survivors remain, now."
"Yeah," says Renee, not arguing, not accepting.
Anise's giant lens moves up and down her face. It unfocuses, and refocuses. "Renee, it is time for us to part ways."
Renee's lips curl away from her teeth. She shakes her head. Anise doesn't respond, so Renee shakes her head again. "No," she says simply. Anise doesn't seem moved, so Renee steps forward, grabs Anise's lens by its housing, and looks directly into it.
"I won't leave you," Renee says to it.
For one last time, Anise unfocuses and refocuses on Renee. She deliberates for some time. Finally, she speaks.
"You are right," the Titan's monolithic voice sounds. "You will not."
Renee gives her a look, as if to say 'what the fuck does that mean?'
"As usual," Anise says in her usual sarcastic tone, "it would seem that I will have to do what must be done."
Waiting for elaboration, Renee releases her lens and backs up two steps.
Anise's usual characteristic tone is replaced by a feminine, robotic voice.
"Self destruct sequence has been activated. Susceptible operants must stand clear at least fifty meters. Actualization in thirty. Twenty nine. Twenty eight."
Renee's face is screwed up, unamused. "That's not funny."
"Twenty four. Twenty three. Twenty two."
She hits Anise. She hits her again. She shouts. "I said that's not funny!"
"I'm not joking," Anise replies.
"Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen."
Renee's vision is getting blurry. She sputters. She shakes her head. Spit runs from her lip. She's got a lot of plays against Anise, but none for what's happening now.
"Twelve. Eleven. Ten."
"Mathematically," says Anise, "seconds remain for your escape."
Renee's entire face contorts and tears escape her eyes. She hits Anise one last time. But she can't betray her.
Growling in pain, Renee turns and starts running as she's grown so use to Anise doing. She pumps her arms and sucks breath into her lungs. There's nothing in front of her except ash and death. Her boots tear through the dust. It goes on for a long time. Longer than ten seconds should take.
"Five. Four. Three."
"Renee," says Anise.
Renee's boots dig into the earth as she stops. Was this a test? She turns around and looks at her friend, her eyes wet.
Anise doesn't move. There's a fire in her aft engine. She speaks.
"For what it's worth, you were a great Pilot."
"Anise?" Renee shouts. Then there's an exponential whirring sound, and Renee's vision goes white.
The remainder of the battle is of no use to Renee. The IMC are defeated. She's picked up by a passing transport, responding to her Pilot flare. They give her every respect. She says nothing. She's taken to a base, lifted in a drop ship, and ends up in an orbital station. She doesn't remember the name of anyone who rescued her.
Days later, she's brought to a clinician in a white uniform. She sits across from her at a steel table. He asks her a lot of questions. She responds calmly, and honestly.
She's left in a dreary living unit for many days. Finally, a porter arrives at her door and hands her a letter. It's real paper. He leaves. She sits on her bed and reads it. It says a lot of things, but only four words stand out to her.
'Unfit for further deployment.'
She tucks the letter into her personal affects, lays down on her bed, and waits.
Eventually she's transported to new housing. It's on a green planet. Living conditions are simple, but sufficient. The night sky is dark and starry, like Earth, but the moon is purple. She doesn't talk to many people. The others staying here have their social groups, but many are quiet, like her. She doesn't mingle with them.
One day, there's a knock on her door. It's Lieutenant Colonel Haltwell.
"Sir?" she says, surprised.
He looks her up and down and doesn't respond to her honorific. "Renee," he says finally.
She waits.
"I'm sorry it's been so long. I've been seeing to a lot of people."
"You don't have to apologize," she says.
The lines on his face are worn. He looks tired. "I'm not sure about that, but that's not the point. How are you doing here?"
The emphasis is on 'here.' She thinks. "It's as good as anywhere else."
"What have you been up to?"
She thinks. It's no use lying to superior officers. "Nothing."
"Like that hospital."
The cold, white walls of the hospital come back to her. The chill creeps in. She loses her stoicism for a moment and wraps her arms around herself. Ashamed, she can't speak. She nods.
She was never meant to be so sorry.
"Don't fear, soldier. You served with honor. I'm told many of your faculties remain intact."
Renee tenses, his words evoking those that haven't. But he's right. She nods.
"I could put you to work. Not in the field, on the back end. You have an alarming mind for science."
Her brow scrunches up. Alarming? Is that good? Her feet shift. She's not sure what he's talking about, but she doesn't want to stay here.
"A trusted colleague is in need of support. I would put you at his side. You wouldn't be an assistant this time. You'd be an equal. Your experience is invaluable."
She nods, only listening.
"You could help others. Not by fighting, by creating. I'm not telling you. I'm asking."
Renee stares back.
Haltwell frowns. He's weighing her. "Do you want that?"
"Yes," she says before she can think. "Yes, I do."
"There will be an orientation and a lot of bureaucratic bullshit. But after that, the work will begin."
"Okay."
"Pilot?"
"Yes?"
Haltwell reaches out and squeezes her shoulder firmly. "Thank you."
With that, he turns and walks away. Only then does Renee realize he's been accompanied by several attendants. Her attention has been intensely limited, these last weeks.
She turns and lets her door close automatically. She moves to her bed and sits on it.
She's thought a lot about death, lately. But given the chance, she's pretty sure she has more work to do.
She'd heard a little about Singh in the weeks leading up to their acquaintance. She knew he'd come from a wealthy planet on Earth. A youngest child, seeking some fame of his own in the shadow of his elders. She was skeptical of him, and rightly so.
When she met him, he'd fit the bill. He was well built, handsome even. But subtly shifty. He was scared, always looking for security. He'd never suit the battlefield. It was his kind she'd been born to protect. He might even be a coward.
But he'd quickly proven brilliant. He'd taken every advantage to prove it in front of her, which was honestly cute, since it only said he wanted to impress her. He probably wanted to dominate her that way, but he never managed it. There were few subjects he proved to outpace her on, in practical terms. And whatever he did, she proved her ability to close the gaps quickly. At first, he was standoffish. After, he slowly grew to trust her.
His theoretics were strong. She put them to the test. Together, they iterated and began to see results. He was excited. She was affirmed. Their budget grew.
It was on the eve of their first thesis presentation to the Ninth Directive Board that the two of them, hitherto aware of but vaguely threatened by the heightening battle on Typhon between the Frontier Militia Renee had once fought and the ARES division IMC directed by General Marder, had witnessed the fated activation of the Fold Weapon.
The planet Typhon, an indecipherable, brain-defying mass of complex geographical and ecological systems, had seemed to, for a moment, bend in on itself, then explode outward in an absolutely unnatural eruption, decimating all orbiting vessels over the hemisphere and exposing the moments-prior planet down to its core.
The horror of the spectacle had jumped right out of Renee's lungs as she shot a hand to cover her mouth. For Amer, his hands found the glass window plate of the orbital station as he gasped in awe.
Renee had buried her disgust in that moment, her relationship with Singh and their research too couched in her existentialism to endanger. Like the rest of the IMC forces in the region, they were quickly dispatched to more discreet locales while 'cleanup,' if you could call it that, proceeded on Typhon.
If anything, her dependency on their progress only sharpened from there.
Renee was the resident Pilot. She knew Titans, outside and in. And she was only too happy to offer her insight. She wanted them to be faster, stronger. Closer, if possible, to the Pilot. Ready to handle any disaster. Invincible. It was her new, and final, lifelong mission.
For Anise.
Then, unexpectedly, given their string of successes in systems optimization and Pilot-Titan interfacing, they were given a new opportunity. It came in a singularly attention-catching proposal from Central Development labeled only 'Dimensional Research.'
The artifacts they began feeding them were too wondrous to describe. They appeared physical enough, and reacted as if so, but when fed certain stimuli were inclined to becomes completely incorporeal, to the point they were no longer seeable, hearable, touchable. Nonexistant. Only to return once the right conditions were met.
The press was instantly on to reproduce this phenomenon with strategically designed tech. The tactical repercussions were limitless.
It came to light before long that these artifacts they were being fed were byproducts of the horrific Typhon catastrophe. That had given Renee real pause, but it failed to undercut her mission.
If she had had this tech on Xanthus, Anise wouldn't have had to die.
And so they had gotten into bed with the ARES division. Their progress was real, calculable, but limited. The artifacts simply didn't have the power. They needed a stronger source for testing. And eventually, to be able to create artifacts of their own. Without exotic, alien technology. And preferably, planetary destruction.
They'd gotten far. Learned much. But the time had come for a jump. They received the most powerful artifact yet, magnitudes more entrenched in the void-phenomenon. It took millions of credits worth of tech to safely contain it. It was not described in mundane terms, for their search was not mundane. But when it arrived, it proved to be, originally, a hand-made woven doll, as would belong to a child, half destroyed, presumably by the disaster.
Many had flinched. Renee had stared, determined. And, as she expected, their researched gained by leaps and bounds. Now, beyond micro-implements made for testing purposes, they were able to create gloves, boots, armor. Things suitable for a human to wear. And with the data from a successful, manned dive, they might be able to create to use the data to create new phenomenon. Void artifacts capable of powering their devices without relying on the byproducts of calamity.
The problem is, they needed a human being to test it. And no one was stepping forward.
The dilemma lasted for days. And Renee was frustrated, but undeterred.
It was on a Sunday, that Renee had woken up and realized instantly what needed to be done.
She had turned to her side. Amer was the first person she told.