Nothing makes Amynta Tet feel good the way being saddled up in the cockpit of a huge mech suit does.

At least not anymore. It used to be that she had other pleasures. Safety. Comfort. Comradeship. Not since Leukon fell. The retreat from the Orestis Highlands has been grueling. No time to share a fire or a bed. Piloting is all she has left. Her mech’s cockpit is the only place Amynta feels safe. Here, she is powerful. Here, she can do some good. Fighting the advancing Imperial forces is not safe or comfortable, but bringing safety to others is worth any risk, and there’s comfort to be found in every Imperial mech she leaves a burning wreck. Amynta allows herself a rare, rueful smile as she straps herself into her Daseatus. That kind of thinking is probably why some of the others have started treating her like some kind of hero. Amynta’s reward for spearheading the breakout from Leukon and allowing a few of them to make it out of there with their lives.

Some reward. Amynta has learned the hard way not to believe in heroes.

But for now, the others need to. That’s why she does her best to bear it stoically when some of the rookies they’ve recruited along the way look at her with big, worshipful eyes or ask her if the stories about her exploits are true. It’d be cruel to remind them that she barely has more experience than they do. What else do they have to comfort themselves with?

For three months now, they have been fighting a running, losing battle. Each day they hide, and each night they retreat a little further under the cover of darkness, searching for another rebel group who can offer sanctuary or resistance. So far, no luck, and the pursuing Imperial force snaps at their heels at every turn—like now. As soon as the alarms sounded, Amynta was scrambling to her mech. Anything to buy the weak and wounded time to escape. She can barely see straight for lack of sleep and she hasn’t had a full belly in weeks, but what’s one more fight, after all that?

“This is Tet,” Amynta calls out over the comms as she flips the overhead switches that bring her mech to life. “Give me a sitrep.”

'They’re right on top of us!’ somebody replies. From the sounds of it, the fighting has already started. Amynta can’t imagine their hastily-dug fortifications are doing much good. ‘Don’t know how they slipped under our proximity scans. Some kind of jamming, I think? Something new. I can’t reach our patrols. Can’t get a clear picture of anything. And I think I see… wait… gods, is she-’

Abruptly, the radio cuts off. Amynta has experienced that more times than she’d care to count recently—but this is different. It’s like someone else has wrested control of the radio frequency. Instead of silence or the ominous crackle of a burnt-out mech transmitting in its final moments, all Amynta can hear is an unnatural, deafening scream. The impossible sound worms its way into the frequency, transmitting with unbelievable strength, overriding everything else and straining Amynta’s radio to breaking point.

Amynta shuts it off to spare herself a headache and immediately switches over to her radar display in the hopes of getting a clearer picture of what’s going on. No such luck. It’s the same—her radar jammed by a massive, discordant signal that blooms bright red like a spider lily across the EM heatmap. Lidar is the same. Amynta doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. She’s seen Imperial jamming before, but this is on another magnitude. The power output defies her imagination. It’s like they’re standing on top of a solar flare.

With a grimace, Amynta shuts off her useless electronics. She’s flying blind now, but a single glance out of her viewport shows her where she needs to go. She can see tracer rounds from Imperial Xiphos mortar mechs flying overhead. Amynta starts heading for the fighting, and she can see her comrades doing the same. Recognizing Camarina’s mech out there brings her a sad smile. The last of her old squadmates. Nese never made it out of Leukon. Amynta feels all those ghosts with her in the cockpit whenever she pilots. It’s heavy—but it’s better than being alone.

Then, as she gets a little closer, Amynta sees another ghost coming straight toward her.

Theaboros.

At least it used to be. Theaboros has changed, and not for the better. It still has wings but it floats instead of flying, lingering impossibly in the air between each step. Its railgun is gone, and its head now projects upward and backward in the shape of a huge ring that glows crimson with exhaust heat and vented antimatter. Amynta immediately sees it for what it is: a radar disk and the source of the jamming that currently has the rebel force scattered and disoriented. But she’s more struck by what it reminds her of. It’s like those creatures Amynta remembers reading about in old myths.

An angel. That’s it. Amynta is staring at a fallen angel.

Theaboros moves slowly, following behind the advancing Imperial formation in a manner Amynta can’t help but think of as arrogant—defying gravity, taunting the rebels with its apparent fragility. Right before Amynta’s eyes, one of her comrades takes the bait. A rebel pilot attempts a reckless breakthrough, diving through the Imperial battle line and up at Theaboros, firing off every single missile in its arsenal as it does. They streak through the air, dozens of them, each following a slightly different trajectory as they track their target—until they don’t.

The radio is still jammed, so Amynta can only watch helplessly as Theaboros turns its haloed head to regard its assailant. As soon as its attention falls upon the rebel, the missiles go haywire. Their targeting vectors overwhelmed by massive interference, they fly off in all directions and collide with one another in pairs or trios, detonating harmlessly. Only, one such explosion isn’t so harmless. It throws the rebel mech off-balance, leaving it vulnerable as it lunges clumsily toward the floating Theaboros.

Amynta wails with grief as a single, casual spear stroke cleaves the rebel mech in half.

No time to mourn. Similar scenes are happening all around her. It’s a bloodbath. Cloaked by Theaboros’s jamming, the Imperial force pulled off an ambush; now the rebels can’t so much as talk to each other to hatch a plan. While their gambit didn’t pay off, Amynta’s fallen comrade had the right idea. They need to take the angel down.

Instinctively, Amynta knows that Kione Monax is the one in its cockpit. There’s nobody else it could be. She knows what happened that day, as Leukon fell. Everybody heard the sick, psychosexual babble being blasted across every comms channel, and plenty of rebels watched from a distance, horrified, as Ancyor turned traitor again and Theaboros bent the knee. What Amynta doesn’t know is why. Was Kione paid off? Was she resentful of Amynta and the others? She certainly seemed that way—and Amynta knows something happened between her and Pela, even if the poor girl gives her a thousand-yard stare whenever Amynta asks about it. Or was she, perhaps, another sleeper agent in their midst, a victim of the same kind of brainwashing that was used on Sartha Thrace?

Amynta shakes her head to brush away those thoughts. It doesn’t matter. As she switches all her targeting over to manual and begins to pick her way through the fighting towards Theaboros, Amynta Tet reflects that the reason changes nothing about what she must do now. She learned her lesson from Sartha Thrace. There are no heroes and no redemptions. Even if it’s not her fault, Amynta only has one thing left to give to Kione Monax. The same thing the ghosts at her side demand of all the Empire’s dogs.

A good death.

***

“I love you, Kione. I think I’ve always been in love with you, I just wasn’t ready to say it back. But you’ve always been special to me. There’s never been anybody in my life like you, Ki.”

Sartha Thrace speaks, and all the stars in the cosmos sing with her.

Kione sees them now, floating at the hero’s back. Her own personal aurora. Countless pinpricks of starlight, each twinkling in time with Sartha’s words. An irresistible harmony. A love song from the stars themselves.

Kione ignores it. She counts the beats of her own heart as it pounds in her ears. It’s so very fast. That’s no surprise, although it is a shame. There’s so much weakness Kione has yet to shed.

“I know I hurt you,” Sartha says. Her voice is more beautiful than ever, and perfect in its sincerity. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Never again, I promise. I just want to be with you—together, in love. Don’t you want that too?”

Only a statue could fail to be moved to tears by such a profession of love. Kione isn’t made of stone. She feels the tears stain her cheeks. She feels Sartha’s words tug at her heartstrings. But she sees, too, the deeper truth. The one that counts. The one that’s staring her in the face, as dark as the stars are bright. Sartha Thrace is a black hole. It’s all she ever was and all she will ever be. It’s how she has the gravity to hold the stars in their orbit. Sartha is nothingness collapsing into itself. Her words are empty.

“Please.” Sartha leans in close—so close, nobody else could possibly hear her. “Take me away from here. Save me, Kione. I want to be free. I want to be all yours forever. I love you so much. Nobody can save me but you.”

Kione cannot help but try to reply to her. She wants to say yes. She wants to meet every grand declaration of love with one of her own. When she opens her mouth, a thick wad of drool falls to trickle down the collar of her jumpsuit.

“I love you—and I need you.” Sartha’s voice takes on a breathy, lust-stained note. Slumped back in the chair, Kione cannot stop Sartha from clambering into her lap and straddling her with unmistakable eroticism. Sartha’s muzzle brushes against her ear as she whispers everything Kione ever wanted to hear. “Won’t you fuck me again? Please, Ki. I’m desperate for you. Nobody else can make me feel so good. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything for you. Don’t I turn you on?”

She does. Of course she does. No girl has ever done it for Kione like Sartha Thrace. Kione feels her body hearkening to the wet-dream promise in Sartha’s voice. Blood flows to her loins, and a throbbing tent forms in her jumpsuit. Sartha coos as she notices, and makes no attempt to hide her intentions as she stretches back to rub her ass against Kione’s cock. Kione lets out a weak, lurid groan. Her body burns with longing for Sartha.

But she doesn’t fuck dogs. So instead, she makes herself think about meat.

Everything is meat, and Kione herself is no exception. The pounding of her heart, the mechanical swelling of her arousal, the way her brain hearkens to the sinister green drug she pumped into herself—these and a thousand more biological processes add up to form a human being. But a human being is nothing more than an animal. Humanity is little more than meat begetting meat through the instinctive satisfaction of its inane cravings.

Humans are no better than dogs. That is the handler’s first secret.

The second is that it is possible to be more. To be a person rather than a dog. To rise above. To hold the leash—and the first leash Kione must hold is her own. She must see herself in all her ugliness. So she counts the beats of her heart. She notes dispassionately each breath. She dissociates from herself, and the sheer strangeness of that brief, out-of-body experience fills the animal called Kione Monax with disgust. She must put a stop to this unseemly, humiliating rutting. She must put this dog in its place. The only tool Kione needs is her own will. With great effort, she pulls the strings of the drugged, insensate meat-puppet she inhabits. She moves the lungs, and the tongue, and the lips, and though it is not elegant, she manages to say what must be said.

“Sartha,” Kione drools. “Off The Leash. Get down.”

As quickly as it appeared, all that love and lust drops away from Sartha’s face. Then more—then everything. They were lies, just like each and every moment of Sartha’s life in which she pretends to be more than a drooling wretch. Faithful to Kione’s command, she slips out of her lap to kneel on the ground in silent obedience. The itching cravings of meat recede. Kione returns to herself. She has vanquished this falsehood. She has passed the test. Through her drugged, starlit haze, Kione allows herself to enjoy a moment of satisfaction and quiet.

Until the slow clapping of gloved hands pierces the silence anew.

“Well done,” Handler pronounces. “Handler Kione.”

The three of them are in a room deep underground beneath the Imperial base. There are dozens of rooms down here, if not hundreds. A labyrinth. The Kennels have been Kione’s home for months. Her home—but not her prison. Handler made that perfectly clear from the start. The only thing keeping Kione here is the fact that if she runs away, she’ll never be able to come back. It’s more than enough.

Not that Kione wants to leave. Not when she has so much to gain by staying. Her curious apprenticeship has consisted of endless lessons, demonstrations, tests. Kione has grown more than ever. She has been reborn here, beneath the earth. It hasn’t been easy, of course; Kione can’t count the tears shed or the hours spent staring at herself in the mirror, frothing with guilt and uncertainty. She looks at the floor, where the syringe of liquid starlight Handler offered her slipped out of her hand after she injected herself. This isn’t the first time she’s been drugged, either. Sunlight, sanity, and friendship have all grown strange to her.

But it’s worth it. It’s worth it. It has to be worth it.

Handler beckons to her and Kione rises to her feet. She’s a touch unsteady, but the drug is beginning to wear off and without Sartha in her lap she can get her bearings. As she stands she almost trips from the weight of her black leather coat. Another of Handler’s gifts. She’s not used to wearing it yet, but she will be soon. It fits her perfectly, after all. Kione stands at attention to receive another gift: a badge of rank, pinned to her collar. With that, it is official.

She’s an Imperial handler.

“Follow me,” Handler instructs, turning Her back. “There’s something more. Come along, Sartha. On The Leash.”

Kione follows Handler out of the Kennels. It’s not her first time—they’ve sent her on sorties already—but it’s her first time like this. As a higher being. The Imperial personnel they pass as they exit up into the cavernous hangar bay note her new rank with unease. Despite the mutinous resentment in their eyes each one defers to protocol, standing stiff and offering Kione a perfect Imperial salute. It’s funny; the Imperial penchant for saluting and ‘sir’-ing is something she always used to laugh at. It seemed so pointless. Now Kione knows better. Now she understands that each of the soldiers saluting her is, at heart, no better than a rabid dog. Kione still hears barking all the time. It reminds her: human beings cannot be permitted to run free across the surface of a precarious Earth. They must all be leashed; pretensions like rank and uniform are adequate enough for those born into domestication.

Isn’t Kione herself the perfect proof of her new ideology? When she was off the leash—so to speak—what did she make of her coveted freedom? Nothing. Less than nothing. She ruined herself and Sartha both. Unforgivable. Now she gives thanks for the collar on her neck, and she’ll expect it for each collar she places on others. Now she works for the betterment of all mankind.

There’s no sense dwelling on her past sins, is there? It was only human nature.

Handler leads Kione and Sartha upward until the three of them reach the large, suspended walkway that passes through the hangar at cockpit height. As they pass through the forest of faceless, identical Dorus, Kione can’t help but spare a moment to admire her own mech, marked out from the pack in vibrant red. She’s started to come around on the Imperial refit that Handler insisted on. A handler who is a pilot is, it seems, unusual. Her ability to oversee hounds directly whilst in combat is valuable—so valuable, Handler has firmly discouraged the kind of suicidal acrobatics Kione has become known for.

Her babygirl has been overhauled accordingly. Less flight time. No more huge railgun that redlines the reactor with every shot. Kione misses it a bit, but the new electronic warfare suite has done much to make it up to her. The antimatter reactor’s power output allows for an awful lot of awfully high-spec equipment to be crammed into the strange disk that now forms the mech’s head. It’s the same kind of tech Genetor was using that fateful day, but infinitely more refined. Kind of boring to be relegated to back-of-the-battlefield command and control duty, but Kione quickly found ways to pull off some fun, sadistic little tricks with targeted jamming and brute force hacking. After a few missions, she loves her rebuilt beauty more than ever. She’s taken to calling it the Theaboros Archon.

They walk on. Exiting the hangar bay, they head for the holding cells. The military ones, used for captured rebels of all stripes. The Kennels are only for the select few who win Handler’s attention; those in the Imperial military who revile her methods insist on a careful separation and on making her requisition her desired assets through official channels and tedious paperwork. Handler turns to Kione as they reach one of the featureless rooms used for processing fresh catches.

“Wait here. I will finalize the transfer arrangements.”

“Yes, sir.” Kione salutes and watches as Handler sweeps out of the room—leaving her alone with Sartha.

In months of Imperial custody, Handler has been careful not to leave Kione and Sartha alone together. Always one of her people in the room. Always watching—but not now. Kione’s struck by the preciousness of the moment. Who knows when it might come again? Kione has to use it well. She has to ask.

“Sartha,” she begins haltingly.

“Sir?”

It feels strange to hear Sartha calling her that. It feels kind of awful, actually. But there’s no helping it. Kione is a handler—even if she’ll never be her handler.

“Those things you said back there,” Kione ventures. “You didn’t mean them, did you?”

Sartha just looks at her, eyes as wide and guileless as any puppy’s. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

Kione shivers. Sartha is often like this now that she’s back at Handler’s side. She lives inside a shrinking dream of herself, conscious of little more than the task given to her and the praise waiting for her. Gods know how many hours she spends in a state of complete, blissful dissociation between missions. It is impossible to tell whether she remembers what happened mere minutes ago—but Kione needs to be certain.

“You told me you loved me,” Kione reminds her. “You told me you wanted me. Is that true?”

“I did?” Sartha’s foggy eyes widen for a moment. She’s drooling a little behind her muzzle. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Never mind apologies,” Kione replies quickly. Who knows how long they have? “I just need to know if you meant it. You… you begged me to save you. You asked me to take you away. Is that what you want?”

Something within Sartha stiffens—some instinct, driven deep into her skull by merciless conditioning. “I would never want to be separated from Her.”

It’s a conditioned response. Kione can tell. She needs to pry deeper.

“But if it was me. If you could have me instead. Would you want-“ Kione cuts herself off. She hangs her head. Not this again. She’s setting herself up for the exact same fall. “Never mind. She just told you to say those things, didn’t She?”

“Did She?” Sartha echoes numbly. She knows nothing. She is nothing.

“Yes,” Kione decides, hardening her heart once more. “It was a test, after all. She fed you a script. That’s all it was.”

Something passes over Sartha’s face for the briefest of moments. A pang of recognition. A moment of grieving. It looks like she wants to say something. Perhaps even reach out. Perhaps even shed a tear. The moment passes. It’s like it never happened. Kione decides it didn’t. The starlight drug is still wearing off.

That settles it. No regrets. Something else presses on her, though. Something else that demands to be said in this precious moment.

“I’m sorry,” Kione blurts out. She finds herself shaking as the words leak from her in an unbridled rush. “I’m sorry for everything. For how I treated you. For what I did to you. I…”

I brought us here. I sealed both of our fates. I snuffed out every last hope that you could heal or that the two of us could truly be together. I deserve to die. I deserve to be hung upside down and put on display as an example of what’s coming to every single idiot, traitor, failure, collaborator who can’t look past the end of their own dick or their own overbearing need to be loved by-

No.

Kione cannot allow herself to think these things. Not now, not ever. If she does and if they’re right, she’d fall apart all over again. Kione does not have the strength for that, which means they have to be wrong and she should not think them. It’s as neat and tidy as that. It really is embarrassing that such falsehoods threaten to make her voice tremble and her eyes well up with tears. Wouldn’t do for Handler to see her like this. That could jeopardize all the rewards Kione has won as Her apprentice—as hollow and bitter as they seem, in the strange mood that has suddenly claimed her. So, Kione tells herself: reach for your mask. You know the one. The one you always put on after you’ve done something wrong. Wear it properly. Wear it with pride. Wear it until there’s nothing left behind it.

Kione draws herself upright. She lets her emotions drain away and her face slump into a bastard’s grin. Handler has shown her how. All is right with the world.

“I’m sorry, Sartha,” Kione begins again. Her familiar, cocksure facade comes to her so naturally it barely feels like she’s pretending. “For ever trying to treat you like a person. Stupid of me, really. Just look at you. But don’t worry, puppy. I won’t ever make that mistake again. That’s a promise. You’re exactly where you belong.” Her sardonic smile widens until her face aches. “Duh.”

Trapped in her waking dream, Sartha does not truly understand. All the same, she welcomes the abuse. Her empty eyes fog over with bliss, and her muzzled face relaxes into an expression that speaks of nothing at all. Yes, they’re both exactly where they belong.

The door opens. “She is ready,” Handler says as She returns. “Follow me, Kione. Sartha, wait here.”

Kione follows Her, leaving Sartha behind. Beyond lies a long corridor lined with cells, each marked by a large, heavy-duty security door with a number stamped into it. The corridor goes on a long way; Kione wonders how many cells are filled. She wonders if any of them are filled with faces she’d recognize. Then she decides to stop wondering. She’s getting better and better at that.

“I think you’re ready for one of your own,” Handler tells her as they walk. “Do with her as you see fit. I have confidence in your instincts.”

“Not Sartha, then?” Kione tries to keep the hope out of her voice.

“Not Sartha.” From behind Her, Kione can see Handler’s thin smile. “But you’re welcome to visit my hound as often as you require.”

So that’s Kione’s leash. No sense pretending it won’t work.

“I was pleased we could recover this specimen from your deployment earlier,” Handler continues. “I gather you have some history with her. That can be either an asset or a hindrance. Make it an asset. Exploit her familiarity and her passion. Remember your lessons.”

“Yes, sir.” Kione remembers it all. Ego totems. Psychographic profiles. Pharmaceutical textbooks and photo-neuroablative techniques. Even strange theories about the falsehood of souls. Things she cannot unlearn. It’s all part of her now.

“Here.” They reach cell forty-nine, where an Imperial soldier is waiting for them. She salutes, then unlocks the door. It opens with a loud, metallic clunk. “Savor it,” is Handler’s last piece of advice. “There is nothing quite like your first.”

Kione heeds Her words well as she steps across the threshold and recognizes the person inside. She doesn’t feel guilty. She refuses to let herself feel even the slightest shred of guilt. She’s wearing her mask—the smug mask, the cruel mask, the cold mask. The mask she’ll wear until it’s the only face she has.

The woman in the cell recognizes her too, even though she can barely raise her head to see her. She’s on her knees, straitjacketed and bound in a painful, bent-over pose by a set of eight taut straps that attach to anchor points on the walls, leaving the rebel unable to move even an inch. She’s wearing a muzzle—not the light, mostly symbolic kind Sartha wears, but a thick, sturdy, heavy-duty cage, painted black and marked with hazard symbols identifying her as a dangerous militant. She remains silent as Kione enters, but the eyes that glare up at Kione from beneath the rebel’s messy, bloodied hair scream pure hatred. Kione shivers ecstatically at the expression of loathing and defiance. Yes! Hate me! I deserve it.

And I can use it.

Kione reaches into one of the pockets of her black coat and produces a small vial. This is not the starlight drug—disodium isoseratrin, as she now knows it—but merely something to begin softening the mind. Kione reaches down through the muzzle’s bars from above to pinch the rebel’s nose and wrench her head upward. When she opens her mouth to breathe, Kione pours the vial’s contents out onto her tongue. The rebel does her best to cough it up, of course, but some of it trickles down her throat all the same. Kione giggles a little at the violent look on her face and the dumb, guttural, animal sounds she makes as she chokes. She’d almost forgotten how fun this could be. A petty pleasure? Certainly, but if she’ll never be her best self, why not be her worst? Isn’t that a kind of victory?

Isn’t that the only kind of victory?

“Hey, radio girl,” Kione calls out, sing-song, to Amynta Tet. To the woman she’s going to ruin. “Guess I’m finally getting you that drink after all, huh?”