Midday, in the canteen of Leukon Base. The place is heaving as all the rebels who aren’t on active duty file in to pile food on their trays and stuff it into their hungry mouths. The quality of the meals is declining a little as the imperial noose closes but full bellies make for happy soldiers all the same, and by rebel standards it’s far from a doomed fight. Spirits are high. Words flow freely between comrades. All in all, it’s a normal mealtime.

But not for Kione. She sees the world with fresh eyes.

Since her most recent conversation with Sartha’s former handler, a very particular set of words have been burning bright in her mind. She turns them over, and over, and over, the same way Kione tosses and turns on her bed at night. There is something irresistible about them. They reveal something that, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Haven’t you ever moved through your life and felt like you were surrounded by nothing but dogs?

As Amynta and the others chatter around her, Kione watches. On one side of the room, as she waits for her meal, one rebel snaps at her friend over nothing at all. A random annoyance. She doesn’t know why, but she’ll justify it to herself somehow. Her conversation with her friend lapses into silent bitterness. A friendship soured—and why? Simple: because she’s hungry and irritable. They’ll probably forget their awkwardness in minutes, but they might not. Regardless, the point is proven.

The rebel is a slave to her animal needs, and she doesn’t even know it.

At the next table, a different rebel has spiked her own drink with hard liquor. Kione first noticed her doing it two weeks ago. It had seemed like nothing more than a fun little habit. Now she notices so much more. The rebel lifts her cup to her lips, drinks, tastes the booze. Self-loathing breaks across her face. Nothing fun about this habit. She detests herself for it. But then, a moment later as she sets the cup down—warmth. Relief. Gratitude, as the alcohol fills her belly and soothes what ails her.

A few seconds pass, and the pitiful cycle begins again. Addiction, tugging at her impulses and urges like a marionette’s string.

Sitting beside Kione, Vola isn’t so different. Oh, she’s no alcoholic. Instead of her drink, all her attention is on the woman sitting opposite her. Camarina, another of the pilots on Amynta’s squad. The two of them have a nascent little romance they think they’re doing a good job of keeping secret. But what’s interesting to Kione is just how deeply Vola dotes on her new flame. Hangs on her every word, practically. When Camarina laughs at a joke, Vola laughs too. Whenever Camarina looks her way, Vola smiles. She has eyes only for Camarina. To everyone else, she’s deaf and dull. It’s not so different from how Sartha’s come to look at Kione.

How easy would it be for Camarina to lead Vola around on a leash? Metaphorically—or not, who knows? To make the other woman useful to her, in whatever way she pleases. Camarina has no idea, of course. It wouldn’t occur to her to think of it that way. But still. How easy it would be.

All because Vola’s in love, and a little horny besides.

Hunger, addiction, lust. There are a hundred other strings that pull on people too, but none of them seem so very much more complex. It’s all so mechanical. So rudimentary. Is every human being so disappointingly simple?

Kione knows that she herself was, not so long ago. For her, it was money. The accumulation of things. How did she ever make the mistake of seeing a number on a ledger sheet increase and believing that it meant anything? A crude, shameful weakness. Kione has resolved to discard it. If she held all her worldly wealth in her hand as coins, she’d choose to let it slip through her fingers just to prove that she could. To herself. To the world.

And to that handler, of course.

But it’s not enough. Kione must go so much further to cleanse herself. She senses it. Now even the basic act of consumption disgusts her. To satisfy her hunger is to let it own her. A repulsive concession to her base nature. Kione picks at her food. It’s all she can bear to do. She plucks a piece of meat from her stew and begrudgingly spoons it into her mouth. The sensation of chewing it between her teeth makes her want to gag. It’s unbearable. It makes her feel weak, somehow. Like…

Like she’s nothing more than a dog.

Kione glances around the canteen once more. Everybody is eating. She shudders.

Even her disgust disgusts her. It feels childish and petulant. Surely this, too, is simply a stage she must pass through. With that thought, Kione finds herself wondering: how does that imperial handler do it? How does she eat?

It’s hard to picture it at all. Even harder to picture her picking at her food the way Kione is. She would never lower herself. She must eat the way she does everything: with infinite composure.

Kione tries to imagine how she might sit. How she might hold her cutlery. The look on her face, even. She tries to imitate it. Her mind’s eye fails her. Again, she almost gags. Anger flares within her; Kione accounts that another failure, but she can’t help it. Her knuckles turn white as she squeezes her spoon in her hand.

She needs to win. She needs to beat the handler. Kione will grind her into the dirt. She can discover all of that ghoulish woman’s secrets and make them her own. She must. It’s the only way. She has promised herself that she will steal the handler’s place in Sartha’s heart.

Ah, Sartha…

She’s sitting next to Kione. Eating, although Kione finds nothing disgusting in that. Sartha knows her place too well to elicit any feeling but pride. In a sudden flash, Kione remembers how uncomfortable Sartha seemed in the canteen when she was first rescued. Kione had noticed the look Sartha gave her knife and fork. Like she was no longer used to them.

Another flash. This one imagination, not memory. The handler at a table, taking her food delicately. Sartha, beside her—on the floor, lapping an ugly meal out of a dog bowl.

Yes. Yes, that’s how it should be.

Kione’s disgust is gone. Instead, she finds herself on the verge of giggling as she pictures Sartha like that. The great hero, eating from a bowl on the ground. She’d be so clumsy! There’s no helping it. Nobody, however heroic and graceful, is built for eating that way. The poor thing. Her face would end up slathered with it. How dreamy. How perfect.

Kione vows to check out the rebel commissary later. Surely they have a dog bowl to sell her.

“Kione?” Amynta Tet asks, snapping Kione back to the ugliness of the real world. “You sick or something? You’re hardly eating.”

The distraction from her fantasies is entirely unwelcome, but Kione refuses to let her irritation show. She will master this.

“It’s the food,” she complains with her usual brashness. “Hard to work up much of an appetite.”

“Appetite or no, you’d better eat,” Amynta admonishes. It’s hard to stay annoyed at her. She’s young, but such a mama bear when it comes to the women under her command. “Remember, we’re shipping out in sixty. We both know you don’t want to end up gnawing on field rations for sustenance.”

“Fine, fine,” Kione grumbles. It’s good advice, unfortunately. Piloting on a full stomach can go wrong for obvious reasons, but piloting on an empty one is just as dumb. Kione starts devouring her stew with gusto. At first, it’s unpleasant—but in the face of a sortie, she finds that concentrating on the utility of the act makes the food palatable. Kione is not a slave to her needs. Her body, much like her mech, is a tool. She must keep it well-honed and ready.

Yes, that works.

Now as she eats—for purpose, not for appetite—Kione can take a certain satisfaction in it.

The world is full of dogs. But she will not be one of them.

***

At first the glare off the snow keeps giving Kione a headache, but once Amynta tells her how to adjust Theaboros’s optics to compensate she’s forced to acknowledge that it’s beautiful up in the mountains. She’s never really had much time for nature. Nothing to do, nothing to buy. But now Kione finds a certain tranquility in the bleakness of the rocky peaks and perilous trails, away from the cacophony of the rebel base. No dogs out here. The rebels aren’t highly disciplined—at least, not in a manner the imperials would recognize—but when they’re suited up and on the march, their petty wants and needs collapse into something far more purposeful and infinitely more bearable.

There’s something else too. In months, this is the farthest Kione has been from Sartha Thrace.

It’s strange—good and bad. It’s a little like radio static receding. Kione hadn’t realized quite how constantly Sartha keeps her head clouded with her very presence. Here, she can breathe cleanly for once. But there’s a horrid anxiety, too; a fishhook stuck into her brain, its line drawing her inexorably back to Sartha’s side. Kione’s craving for Sartha is atrociously fierce. Already, she wants to see her again. To fall deep into those empty, wounded eyes. She’s grown so used to being Sartha’s handler, without the hero’s presence she feels somehow empty.

That need makes Kione uncomfortable. Needs are weaknesses. Needs are for dogs. Isn’t that what the imperial handler has been trying to teach her? Kione calms herself by reminding herself that, no matter what, everybody must have a reason to go on. Sartha is hers.

What better reason is there than true love?

In any case, Kione would certainly prefer to have Sartha with her now. Who wouldn’t, on a mission? There’s never been a better pilot. Unfortunately Ancyor is still in the throes of its refit, and the brass don’t much like the idea of throwing Sartha Thrace into a half-broken spare machine. Still—Kione isn’t worried. She’s handled as much without Sartha as with her. This sortie will be a piece of cake.

Now closing on last known position. Three hundred yards north-west, one hundred elevation. Eyes peeled. Weapons ready.

That’s radio girl. Four other voices besides Kione’s signal their assent, and the column of six mechs fans out into a skirmishing formation as they head up into the large hollow, nestled between two mountain peaks.

They’re here on search and rescue. Not Kione’s usual wheelhouse, but she’ll try anything once. Last night, a rebel mountain patrol failed to return to base. No mayday call, no alarm raised. They simply vanished. Not good, obviously. The worst and plainest possibility is that they were ambushed by an imperial force of some kind; if that’s the case, the mission will be to find and destroy it. That’s why rebel command has sent six machines. That’s why Kione and the others are on their guard.

But it’s just as likely that they simply lost comms. The mountains can play havoc with radio signals, and there’s a rad cloud blowing in; Kione can see it now, the layer of vapor above the snow, and the faint, blue glow of Cherenkov radiation emanating from the frozen fog hanging in the air. Even at a mere hundred yards or so, the radio signal from Amynta’s mech is degrading like crazy. And if the rebel patrol lost comms, anything could have happened.

An accident, for instance. This terrain is hell for mechs. Steep, slippery, likely to give way to avalanche at the slightest provocation. It’s a damn miracle the rebels can operate up here at all. Kione has to keep Theaboros’s wings run out, powered just enough to lighten her step as she makes the treacherous ascent. The rebels have no such assets. They know the terrain, yes, and their mechs are modified to suit it. But even so, to Kione it seems likely the people they’re looking for are buried under fifty feet of snow and rock.

Tet to control, Amynta radios in. No sign of them at last contact site. We’ll sweep the area, see if we can pick up a trail.

She’s doing it all by the book. But there’s no reply on the long-range channel except a low crackle.

Amynta clicks her tongue. Then, Vola: Kione, why don’t you fly up? Take a look around?

Kione grimaces. “Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe if we have to. My baby is quick, but she’s not subtle. I pull that, I’m putting a great big neon sign right over our position.”

Right, Amynta agrees. We’ll save that for a last resort. For the moment, Camarina, you come with me. I want to crest the ridge, get eyes on the next valley. Vola, Avin, take up defensive positions just in case. Kione, Maara, go poke into that cave.

Kione can’t help raising an eyebrow. “It’s just a crack, radio girl.”

Looks that way. But no, there’s a large cave beyond it. The kind of place our people might seek refuge in, in a bad spot.

“Right,” Kione mutters. “Remind me to figure out my caving fee when we get back.”

Laughter over the radio. Kione immediately regrets the comment, and resents the others for finding humor in it. The joke doesn’t feel like her anymore.

At the heart of the icy hollow, there’s a large crevice, tall and wide enough to accommodate a mech. It looks like nothing more than a random gash in the rock but if it’s as Amynta says, it’s worth investigating. The other rebel—Maara, Kione gathers—is already heading in. Her mech was once a Doru, probably, but it’s been stripped to the bone, leaving it diminutive enough to navigate the crevice with ease. Kione follows slowly; Theaboros is slender but tall, and its wings painfully delicate. Gods help any survivors if Kione so much as scratches the paint finding their sorry asses.

The crevice doesn’t look deep from the outside, but after a sharp turn, it opens out into a slightly larger passageway that does, indeed, become a fully fledged cave. Perhaps even a cave system; Kione makes a note to ask if anybody has thought to map it. Little tunnels lead away on all sides and overhead, and there’s no telling how deep they might go. Kione flips Theaboros’s searchlights on and sweeps them over their surroundings. She sees nothing but shadows that could conceal anything at all.

“You see anybody?” Kione calls out over the radio. “Tracks? Wreckage, maybe?”

No… nothing, Maara replies, the interference from the rock enclosing them breaking her voice into jagged fragments of noise. But… I’m getting some… heat signatures… nearby.

“People?” Kione hefts Theaboros’s railgun.

Negative. Too… big. Small for… mechs, though. Could… be… just ticking over… for warmth?

After a few more steps, Theaboros’s scanners pick them up too. Multiple, disparate signatures. Too many—they’re only looking for a patrol of three. They’re all around them, too. Above and below. Weird.

“Maybe some kind of geothermal heat source?” Kione murmurs. Does that even make sense? Do you get hot springs this high up?

That’s the last thing she thinks before they attack.

Before her, Maara is a single, sharp-edged shape, lit up in the glow of Theaboros’s lights, of a different world to the indistinct shadows and contours of the surrounding rocks. When something dark falls on her from above, Kione’s first thought is that it has to be a loose stalactite or something. For perhaps the first time in her career as a pilot, she actually freezes up when she sees the dark shape unfold murderously; four limbs, each one sharp-tipped with claws and talons, and, worst of all, a distinct, elongated snout-like head on which four pinpricks of low, red light appear.

It’s a mech suit. It has to be. But to Kione, just now, it looks like nothing more or less than a demon.

What wa-… that? Maara asks, barely audible, as her mech slumps to one knee from the impact. Something hit-… rock? Maybe we-… of here? Could-… cave-in. I don’t thi-… we sh-

There’s no scream. Just instant, dead silence when the small dog-mech clinging to her machine’s shoulder clambers into position and puts one of its claws straight through Maara’s cockpit.

Immediately, dozens more little red lights appear in the cave all around Kione.

Including four of them directly overhead, plunging toward her.

It’s only that second of forewarning that allows Kione to survive. She stumbles back in Theaboros and brings her railgun up in both hands to fend off the assault. It doesn’t work. At least, not really. The dog-mech that had been clinging to the cave roof above her, keeping its reactor at minimum output, doesn’t miss a beat. As it lands it finds a way to wrap itself around the firearm, all four limbs slashing violence and death just a few feet from Kione’s cockpit. No, not just the limbs. On its elongated head, beneath the swiveling, quad-eyed orb that mounts its optics, there is a horrid, vice-like maw that unhinges nightmarishly wide, containing actuated spikes that Kione has no doubt would rip through Theaboros’s armor like paper.

Gods. Who the fuck built these things?

Just barely, Kione manages to keep it at bay. The dog-mech keeps flailing at her for a moment—but only for a moment, before it changes tack and starts trying to tear through the railgun in Theaboros’s hands. Within seconds, the highly sophisticated precision weapon is a sparking mess of torn plates and extruded coils, and the dog-mech is clambering through its ruin.

Kione only has one choice; that saves her from the paralysis of indecision. She throws the broken railgun as hard as she can, and the dog-mech with it. Then, as the rest of the pack begins to move, she turns tail and flees, picking her way back up through the cave as quickly and desperately as she can.

It’s a small comfort when Kione glances at her reverse camera and sees that they aren’t giving chase. Less so, when she notices that the pack is instead clustered around poor Maara’s fallen machine, tearing apart its carcass with claws and teeth, sending up great sprays of hot oil and spent coolant.

Like they’re eating it.

Theaboros has never run so damn fast. By the time Kione sees sunlight again, there are a dozen gouges in the paint and the metal beneath from how heedlessly she threw herself at the exit. The glare of sun on snow is more blinding than ever, and the shock of it hitting Kione’s eyes is enough to give her pause and make her wonder: was that real? Or was it just a nightmare? It seems impossible, after all. A cave full of half-sized dog-mechs? It sounds like something that belongs in the tall tales of scared soldiers. Not reality.

And Kione’s had nightmares like that. Oh yes. More and more, lately. Dogs. A world of dogs. And all of them for her; after her, hunting, chasing, biting, clawing, slavering. Each night, it’s worse. The dogs closer and closer at her heels. Kione runs so hard in her nightmares, she wakes up sweating and exhausted. There’s no succor or safety in those dreams. Not ever. Just an eternity of baying hounds—and on the horizon, a woman in black leathers, beckoning Kione onward, her teeth, no less visible for being entirely human, gleaming disturbingly in her open-

Kione? Ki! Gods, Ki, calm down and shut up!

It’s only then that Kione realizes she’s been screaming. At Amynta’s voice she lets the ragged sound die, but it’s a long moment before she can find the breath to speak again.

“T-they’re…” Kione gasps down her radio. “I-in the cave.”

The patrol?

“No! Or… fuck, maybe. Probably. But that’s, fuck… fuck!”

Ki, what the fuck are you talking about? Are- wait, Ki, where’s Maara?

It’s then that Kione hears them again. The scraping of taloned feet on rock and ice. The insistent buzz of all those little reactors.

“Dead,” Kione hisses. “Get ready. Hostiles coming.”

For the second time in her life, Kione is profoundly grateful for the fact that Amynta Tet doesn’t miss a beat. As soon as she registers the word ‘hostiles’ and the awful urgency in Kione’s tone she’s barking orders left and right, calling the three other surviving rebels into a loose, defensive formation, weapons trained on the crack in the rock.

Kione falls in with them. Her only remaining ranged weapons are the vulcan guns in Theaboros’s chest, so she extends her spear and drops automatically into a defensive stance.

And then—nothing.

Nothing moves. The dogs of war do not appear. Along with all the other rebels, Kione just stands there for a full minute, waiting.

The doubt creeps back in. Was it real? Was it a nightmare? Maara’s gone. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? Kione slaps herself across the face just to punish herself. She shouldn’t be guessing at this. She should be sure. It’s just that sometimes her nightmares don’t end when she wakes. Sometimes the things that she sees in her dreams wake with her and sit in the shadows in the corner of her quarters while she lies there, paralyzed.

Ki? Amynta again. The doubt in her voice fills Kione’s cheeks with dark anger. What exactly are we dealing with here?

How can Kione possibly answer that? Certainly, half-sized mechs aren’t unheard of for specialist duties, but Kione has never seen anything even remotely fucking like those beasts. The way they’d been hiding was bad enough; the way they had moved was beyond description. Ferocious, violent, downright desperate, like they felt the bloodlust in their pistons and motors, but worse than even that, there was something eerily animal and fluid about them. A kind of coordination of limb and purpose that could easily elude even the best of pilots.

Ki?

“Uh…”

Hold on. Camarina saves Kione from needing to vomit out all those fetid thoughts. I’m getting something on the seismic scanners. It’s faint, but it’s definitely movement.

How many?

Hard to say.

You get a count, Kione?

“Maybe… a dozen? Less?” In her mind’s eye, it’s already blurring into terror. “But small. Uh… I didn’t see firearms.”

Gods. She can sense their skepticism.

Heading this way! Camarina yells. Her sensor suite must be top-notch. Get ready.

They’re ready. Fear and uncertainty made Kione’s hands shake, but a stern tactical assessment stills them. The crevice is narrow. Even those dog-mechs will only be able to come single-file. The rebels are in a close skirmishing formation—near enough together to support one another, far enough apart that there’s no risk—at a good vantage point, weapons all trained on the entrance. A twelve year-old could tell you it was going to be a bloodbath.

It’s a little strange, though. If they’re heading this way, shouldn’t they be here by now? Kione knows the tunnel leading to the surface wasn’t all that long.

“Camarina,” she calls out, “how far out?”

That’s the weird part. Kione can hear the frown on her face. Signal’s bad. Kinda… fuzzy? Hard to say. But they should be right there. Almost on top of us, actually.

Kione shivers. Not what she wanted to hear. She wanted very much to simply watch her allies blast those creepy dog-mechs into scrap. The wait is dragging on, and it's murder. All she can think about is them moving around down there, scrambling, loping, growling. The more she thinks about it, the more it’s like she actually hear it; the scrap of metal on ice as they move through all those little tunnels, the ones that seemed so easy to get lost in, leading up and down, left and right, off on all sides into the mountain’s unfathomable depths…

…and under their feet.

Oh, shit.

“Move! Now!”

They do, a mere instant before everything goes white.

Kione’s first thought is that her viewscreen died as she launched herself into the air. It’s only once she hovers high enough that she sees what really happened: the ground gave way under their position, throwing up a massive spray of powder snow. More than enough to blind the retreating rebels. It confuses their thermal sights too, leaving them all but helpless as the awful dog-mechs crawl out of the tunnel and begin to hunt.

Diminutive, half-sized mechs like these are far from unheard of. As labor mechs, for one, but even in warfare they have their specialized uses. In stealth and infiltration units, for instance, or as sappers. It’s rare to see them in direct combat roles though, because it’s so damn easy to get yourself killed in one. In a world of giants, being half the size of your enemies makes you ludicrously fragile. A single kick can snap you in half. Splash damage from a half-decent cannon might be enough to do you in. You have to be one hell of a pilot to survive long enough to truly get to grips with it all. Kione’s one hell of a pilot, but she’s always thought that you’d need to be insane to climb into one of those death traps.

But here’s the thing: it’s rare because it’s so difficult and dangerous. Not because it’s not effective.

When you’re that small, there are a hundred different ways you can fight dirty. Kione’s heard of a few mercenaries who’ve developed their own styles for it. Hunter Falke, for instance, who uses hooks and anchors to clamber all over her foes. As long as she doesn’t get swatted out of the air like a fly on the approach, it’s all but impossible to stop her. How is a mech supposed to fight back against something like that? Against an enemy that can simply clamber into its blind spots and start disassembling it at her pleasure?

With the dog-mechs, it’s a little different. They don’t have hooks and grappling lines. But they’re fast, and they’ve got the rebels off-balance. Outnumbered, too. So when a dog-mech lurches out of the glowing blue, rad-tinged snow clouds, claws bared, the victim isn’t ready. They lurch back unsteadily, trying to create distance. Trying to buy a moment to come to terms with the new hell they’ve found themself in. Only, it doesn’t work.

Because there’s another one, already snapping at their heels. Another dog.

And they can’t move away in time. Not again. So they take a hit. Just a little one. Those claws aren’t big enough to bite deep. But they bite deep enough to be the first of a thousand cuts, as they find their way into all the little vulnerabilities every mech has. The joints. The rear. The underside. Each time they tear out something important. Not indispensable, but important. A power coupling. A hydraulic line. A coolant pipe. And the wounded rebel is left even more panicked than before, fighting through confusion and blaring damage reports, wheeling aimlessly back into the broken snowscape.

And then another dog appears out of the rad-mist…

From the sky, Kione sees it happen over and over again. The dogs move with preternatural pack instincts, switching effortlessly from one target to the next, a never-ending dance of predation and violence as they harry the rebels apart from one another. It’s remorseless. It’s horrifying. It’s beautiful.

It’s going to kill them all.

Kione should do something. She needs to do something. She can hear loud voices over the radio. Everyone’s screaming for help. Not even for Kione’s help—they don’t know she’s just floating there like a useless coward—but all the same, their screams claw at Kione. Why can’t she move? She should just…

What?

What can she do?

She doesn’t know. Kione keeps trying to find an angle, a tactic, an opening, anything, but she can’t. It’s all simply too much for her. The cave. The dog-mechs. The snow and the screaming. She can’t get the situation clear in her head, and worse, her tactical mind is starting to shut down as her breaths come ragged and thin. A useless, stupid, bleating voice in her head keeps telling her instead: run. Run just run. You can’t go down there, you can’t not with the dogs, the barking is driving you crazy, just let them go, just let it all go, run run run run run.

Kione laughs hysterically as it clicks. Great. She’s having a fucking panic attack.

G-gods! Everybody shut up. Amynta’s voice. She’s grunting and panting and sounds like she’s about to panic herself. She sounds very, very far away. Who’s still alive? Sound off, in sequence. From the top.

And they do, miraculously. Radio discipline slowly reasserts itself. Nobody in the rebel squad is a greenhorn. Everybody sounds pretty fucking distressed, but it seems like everybody—except poor Maara—managed to keep themselves alive.

Ki? Kione?

“Wha… uh…” Gods, embarrassment is the last emotion she has time for right now, but it really is embarrassing how dumb she sounds.

Kione! Are you good?

Suddenly, somehow, she is.

“Yes.” All business again. “I’m in the sky.”

Good, Amynta grunts. I might have something. There’s an outcrop up on that peak to the west. It’s not too far. Looks like there could be a cave up there too. Should be defensible. We can make it there and hunker down. Figure out a real plan. Understood?

A chorus of agreement. The snow in the air is clearing up. Kione can see the outcrop Amynta is referring to. It’s not a bad plan. Mostly, she’s just pathetically grateful to have Amynta’s voice in her ear at all, calling her back to herself. That’s her radio girl.

Kione. Amynta’s breathing hard. Kione picks her out of the melee below. She’s fighting well, but taking hits all the same. You’re the only one with a clear six right now. I think most of us are limping already. Need you to cut us a path.

Fear buzzes in Kione’s brain. Not down there, not with the dogs, not amid the barking and drooling and-

“You got it.” The swaggering confidence comes easily into Kione’s voice. It’s an old friend. “Just give me the word.”

Amynta laughs. She sounds just as grateful for Kione as Kione feels for her. Gods, girl, you think we’ve got time for that? Just fucking go!

Kione laughs too, and throws herself into motion.

Cut a path? That’s a tall order, especially without her railgun, but she’ll make it work. Kione glides to the edge of the melee and waits for an opportune moment. The rebels are all doing their best to pull together, to circle the wagons against the wolves. They’re in bad shape, but eventually they manage to win an inch of room for themselves.

And that’s enough.

Kione kicks up the acceleration and flies forward in Theaboros, nice and low. Instinctively, the dog-mechs shift back a pace, wary of the new threat. As Kione moves between them and the rebels she pitches over, tipping a red-hot wingtip into the snow. The heat is more than enough to vaporize it all into a curtain of hissing steam.

“Now!” Kione yells. “Go!”

A few clipped words of gratitude and the rebels are sprinting up the mountain slopes as best they can in their hobbled machines.

The screen of steam leaves the dog-mechs confused and unable to pursue—but only briefly. The steam quickly freezes to snow and falls out of the air, and the sight of their targets brings back all of their viciousness. Kione has the count now—ten of them, fanning out as a pack, moving on four limbs when needed to find purchase on ice and rock. Small but fast. Even with a head start, the rebels aren’t likely to win a running race.

Which means Kione needs to fight a rearguard.

No time for cowardice now. Kione sets herself down on firm ground, readies her spear, and sets her sights on the nearest hostile.

Fighting it is worse than Kione could prepare herself for. It’s relentless. It has no respect for the rhythm of close combat, for parry and riposte, for distance and danger. It just comes at her again, and again, and again, and again, throwing its entire body forward, heedless of the tip of Theaboros’s spear. Kione has to work at her limit just to keep up with it, let alone to keep her eyes on its pack mates skirting around the edges of their duel. She lets herself be driven back so as to keep her six open, but that doesn’t help with the knowledge that Kione is fighting death with each moment. Sure, Theaboros could take a hit—but it wouldn’t be just one hit. Once this thing makes it inside her guard, that’s probably the end.

Gods. It reminds her of the bridge, and Sartha-

No. Kione won’t let herself think that. Sartha is nothing like these monsters, not ever. Besides, they might have Hound’s ferocity—more, even—but they have none of Sartha’s skill. That’s the only reason Kione’s still alive. Why her parries work, why her light, jabbing thrusts are sufficient to keep her foe at bay.

The dog-mech comes at her again. Kione swings her spear in a broad sweep, hoping to keep it at bay, but it falls to all fours, ducking under, and then springing up straight at Theaboros’s center of mass. Kione fires off a burst from her chest-mounted vulcans, but even a half-sized mech has armor that’s proof against such a small caliber. The gunfire’s violence does drive it off, though; the dog-mech falls short, before scrambling to its feet to come at her once more.

Gods. Don’t these things ever get tired? Don’t they have any sense of self-preservation? What the fuck kind of pilots are these?

Time for questions later. For now, Kione needs to bail. She’s being encircled. As she fires her wings up again and leaps out of the reach of the baying, snapping hounds, Kione has to hope the other rebels have made it far enough.

They haven’t.

Most of them are on the outcrop, or close enough. One of them isn’t. Looks like Avin took a crippling hit to one of her machine’s legs. Amynta drops back to help her, but there’s only so much she can do. Avin’s having trouble navigating the mountain slopes. About half the pack was on Kione; the other half is hot on the rebel’s heels, gaining on her rapidly. One look from Kione, and she can tell: the poor girl isn’t going to make it.

She closes her eyes and looks away when they pounce on her, driving the rebel’s mech against the snow. The sounds of twisting steel and screaming are bad enough.

Quick as Theaboros’s wings will carry her, Kione ascends the peak and touches down on the outcrop beside Vola and Camarina. Should be a safe spot, at least for a few minutes, but Kione doesn’t allow herself to breathe easy. Not yet. The dogs. They always keep coming. Kione is immediately on lookout, sure that at any moment she’ll see a claw on a ledge, and a beast pulling itself up, barking and drooling and-

There’s nothing.

Kione is grateful—until she sees why.

Down the mountain, where Avin fell, they congregate. Drawn there, it seems, by instinct greater than the hunt; Amynta isn’t so far away, she’s within reach, but they don’t seem to care. A couple of the dogs were on her, but they’ve already broken off pursuit. Kione can only watch in mute terror as the entire pack descends on the slain machine, fighting for position like jackals around a kill, each desperate to get their claws on it. To rip, to tear, to bite, to defile their trophy beyond reason.

At least now Kione knows she hadn’t imagined it in the cave. It really is like they’re eating it.

On second thought, she wishes she had simply imagined it.

All around the dog-mechs, the snow is turning gray as soot and ash are thrown from the carcass of Avin’s mech. Then black, as they bite deep into the joints, sending great sprays of oil over the white.

Then red, as they reach the cockpit.

Kione is very glad to have eaten so little earlier as she heaves and retches in Theaboros’s cockpit.

The rest of the dwindling rebel squad is faring little better. Their sounds of disgust, or fear, or insane grief are loud over the radio. Eventually, Amynta makes it up to them and starts giving orders—mostly, Kione thinks, because making them each do something trivial is better than letting them watch their friend’s corpse get stripped.

Camarina, watch our flanks. Vola, check out that cave. Looks small, but I don’t want any more nasty surprises. Kione, can you find a vantage point higher up? Maybe find us a way down?

Nobody says anything, but they obey. Kione takes wing and glides up a little higher. Finds a ledge to perch on. She doesn’t bother looking for another route down. Not really. She very much doubts there is one. She’s just glad for a moment of quiet. Glad that up here, the wind whips away all the sounds of crushing, eating and gnawing.

What the fuck are those dogs? What the fuck have they walked into?

Then—a sound. A radio hail, in fact. Kione makes the mistake of letting herself hope that the rebels at Leukon Base have found a way to punch through the interference, even though only the imperials have tech like that. Then she takes note of the frequency, and feels something else altogether.

She should have known. She really should have known.

And she knows she shouldn’t answer. There couldn’t be a worse time to let somebody fuck with her head.

Hello, Kione. How are you finding the mutts?

This time Kione can’t see her, but she can picture perfectly those cold, thin, immaculate lips, their edges pulled up into the faintest of smiles, so close to her ears they practically kiss her as the handler speaks. Kione breathes out, and as she breathes in she swells her lungs with hatred. It’s as cold as the snow outside her mech; its bite as sharp, as clear. She’s grateful, in a way, to have the handler speaking to her. It’s clarifying.

“You,” Kione growls. “This is all you, isn’t it? Those… things.”

That’s right.

Kione is so ready to be angry, but something she hears in the handler’s voice surprises her so much she forgets all that. The woman sounds almost… pained?

“You don’t sound too pleased about it,” Kione probes.

My participation in their creation is somewhat regrettable.

“Yeah?” Despite everything, Kione smiles viciously. She’s never met a knife she didn’t want to twist. “Even you have your limits, huh. Get squeamish all of a sudden?”

Not at all. But I do disapprove. My hand was forced.

Kione can barely believe what she’s hearing. It’s bizarre, on so many fronts. To be talking to the handler at all like this, up a mountain, a pack of dogs still hunting for them, is ridiculous. The fact that the handler is sharing her troubles like they’re coworkers around a water cooler is an absurdity beyond even that.

“Guess even you have to answer to somebody,” Kione mutters.

I answer to the empire. But politics is ever an obstacle, and I have enemies. General Kynilandre, for instance. This is her latest petty gambit—to force me to waste my time with mutts. The project was too appealing to high command for them to refuse, I imagine. It speaks to one of their greatest obsessions.

Her voice weaves a spell over Kione. She’s greedy for each secret that passes the handler’s lips. “And what’s that?”

Mass production.

Kione sucks in a sharp breath. That’s what those monstrosities are? Gods.

I’m sure she will have advised them that the merits of my work—such as those are, in her eyes—are wasted on the cultivation of specific individuals. They are inclined to favor the development of a template instead. A method that can be easily reproduced at scale, to furnish the military’s ranks.

“That’s…” Kione can scarcely summon the word for it. She sees it already; a waking nightmare. A thousand thousand dogs crawling across the face of the world, leaving ruin behind them. “Disgusting.”

And foolhardy. They cannot fathom what we know intimately, Kione.

Kione’s skin crawls—but there’s something else too, a kernel of pleasure at being acknowledged a peer. “And that is?”

That battles are not won by armies. They are won by heroes. There are individuals that stride the battlefield like titans. Warriors that the gods love as their own. They are the world’s fulcrum. The kind of men and women who would be entered into song in any age. Be it with boldness, inspiration or simple skill, they turn every tide. They matter, and they alone. Not the throng.

Kione doesn’t need to ask. She already knows it in her bones.

The handler’s talking about Sartha.

How many times has Kione seen it? Sartha Thrace and her Ancyor at the speartip of the rebellion, winning battles nobody else would dare to fight. Whenever she appeared, a kind of magic would settle across the field. Logistics, numbers, equipment, reserves, terrain—material facts such as those seemed to melt away, until all that mattered was Sartha. Her story. Her rebellion. Her victory.

Who could blame Kione for falling in love with her?

But already, the wheels of Kione’s mind are turning. Since Sartha was taken, the rebellion has suffered greatly. Defeat on so many fronts. Is… it all because of her? Did they lose more than just a good pilot? More than just a pretty face on the propaganda posters? And what did the empire gain when they hollowed her out and replaced her soul? More than a pilot, perhaps. Her light. Her mandate of heaven.

It sounds childish. But it feels true.

That’s why I’ve contacted you, Kione. To wish you success. I would hate for the high command to learn the wrong lessons.

That raises Kione’s bile again. “Wish me success? Fuck you. You want me to beat them? Tell me how to beat them.”

I’m confident in your abilities. You will find victory. And if not, then perhaps you’re not the woman I had hoped. I would have to content myself with winning our wager.

And winning back Sartha? No. Kione promised she will not let that happen. That promise, above all, is unbreakable. She forged it of steel within herself. But thinking of their wager calls to mind another detail of their previous conversation.

“You mentioned some kind of lesson, last time,” Kione spits. “What kind of deluded lesson is this, huh? I’m not playing the eager student. Just tell me.”

This is merely the beginning. You will find the true lesson in their ruin. I look forward to its fruits. Don’t disappoint me, Kione. You haven’t yet.

And before Kione can swear at her again the transmission cuts off, leaving Kione alone once more with the howling wind and the dogs.

From this up high they’re little more than black shapes, details indistinct but their presence all the clearer for being cast against the snow. They seem to still be gathered around Avin’s carcass. Not much left of it now, judging from the way they’re crowding tight and jockeying for position. As Kione watches, the crack of Amynta’s long gun shakes the snow from nearby rocks. Its shell pierces the fog and lands square in its target. One of the dog-mechs twitches and slumps, all but snapped in half by the high-caliber round.

Nice one, radio girl.

Only, with their grisly feast all but over, the shot seems to remind them of their purpose. As one, the dog-mechs look up. They begin to move, fanning out across the snow, slowly picking their way up the peak the rebels are stuck up. Their sudden patience is even creepier than their earlier ferocity. This isn’t the hunt’s frenzied climax. It’s the early stages. Driving the prey. Tightening the net. Deceptively calm, but inexorable. And when Amynta’s firearm sounds again her target sidesteps in a swift burst of motion, and then simply keeps walking up the mountain.

Fuck.

Nine of them now. But with three rebels plus Kione, that makes the odds worse than two to one. Laughably slim.

Kione. Amynta, on the rebels’ comms channel. This time, her voice isn’t so reassuring. It’s pitifully obvious that she’s asking from sheer desperation. Almost as panicked as Kione was earlier. Got anything for us?

“Negative,” Kione replies. Heading up the peak had been a good idea at the time, but now the rebels are stuck. On every other side, the mountain falls away into escarpments so steep they couldn’t possibly navigate them.

Then… Camarina, this time. What do we do?

There’s no reply.

Amynta. She tries again, even though everybody else wishes she wouldn’t. What’s the plan?

I… Her voice cracks. It’s the sound of a woman at her limits. I don’t know. Then it gets worse. The head of Amynta’s mech tilts up. She’s looking at Kione. She’s surrendering. Kione, what do we do?

That pause that follows is brutal.

“Just… give me a minute,” Kione replies. “I’ll think of something.”

Kione turns her radio off.

Her fist slams forward. The reinforced glass of her viewscreen doesn’t crack, but the skin on her knuckles sure does. Kione doesn’t care. Barely feels it. No, that’s a lie. She feels it, and she wants more. Another punch. And another. And another. And then she loses track, and she’s simply screaming again as she beats against the inside of Theaboros’s cockpit.

Fuck.

It’s not panic this time. It’s all anger. With each blow, Kione imagines that the viewscreen is lit up with the face of the imperial handler. It’s infinitely satisfying to imagine that the pain she feels is hers, that the blood trickling down the screen is hers, that the brutal crack as a hairline fracture finally appears in the glass is the sound of her pale, perfect nose being crushed to a pulp by Kione’s fist.

“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

She’s screaming it, her voice and thoughts growing darker with each repetition until eventually, all the strength deserts Kione’s body and she slumps forward, limp as a child’s rag doll.

Kione is a hundred clicks from Sartha, up a forsaken fucking mountain, in the middle of a fight for her life, and still the handler makes her feel like she’s playing some twisted fucking game she can’t possibly understand.

There’s only one way Kione has ever known to respond to a taunt like that.

She has to win.

But how the fuck is she supposed to win this? According to the handler all this is barely a prelude, but to Kione the situation seems beyond doomed. They’re outnumbered, with no support and no option for retreat. A bad start. Kione’s fought against superior numbers a hundred times, but to win out you need an edge. Firepower. Planning. Terrain. Hell, even the simple ability to trade space for time.

They have nothing.

The dog-mechs are closer to a pack of animals than a conventional enemy. A swarm. How do you fight a swarm? Kione calms herself and brings herself to bear on the problem. Obvious answer: swarms are dumb. You lure them, get them clumped, and blow them away with ordnance. So, what ordnance do they have?

Nothing.

No heavy weapons on any of the rebel mechs. The rebellion is wanting for them in the first place, and in any case it’s not the kind of thing you’d choose to bring on a rescue mission in the mountains. Kione’s railgun might have served, but that’s broken and discarded.

OK. She’ll circle back to that. How do you get them to clump up?

Lure them into a chokepoint. Perhaps there’s a cave around here. Only, then they’d be even more like trapped rats. The way the dog-mechs are moving now—slow, prowling, methodical—suggests they aren’t quite as dumb as Kione needs them to be. For that reason, triggering an avalanche is also a dim prospect. They’d be more likely to kill themselves than the dogs.

But Kione has seen them clump up entirely of their own volition.

That’s something. Maybe.

Of course, there is one obvious option that Kione is pointedly ignoring. She could hit the bricks. Fly away. Leave Amynta and the rest. The other rebels would never even know. Kione allows herself a small, rueful smile as she considers it. High time for her to stop pretending she’s ever going to play that card. For a dozen reasons—but most of all, because running is not winning.

Kione needs to win.

Another possibility comes to mind: set her antimatter reactor to go supercritical and throw herself down the mountain, into the dog-mechs’ waiting jaws. Blow them all to hell, and half the mountain with it. That might actually work. The dogs’ ghoulish feeding response strikes Kione as all but compulsive. Unfortunately, killing herself probably doesn’t count as winning either. Besides: Sartha needs her. Sartha needs her so very, very much. That matters almost as much as winning.

No. There’ll be no self-sacrifice for her.

What, then? There has to be something. Think, Ki. What do you have? Your spear? That’s no good. Your wings? Kione almost cut her own head off with those a dozen times when she was still getting the hang of Theaboros. Maybe that’s something, if she cranks the reactor output to suicidal levels. Maybe that’s something, if the dog-mechs all agree to stand in a nice, helpful conga line.

Kione punches her cracked viewscreen once more, for good measure. There really is something there. An answer, lurking just out of sight. Kione was never good with problems like that. Always a lazy student. Always quick to give up. But this time, that’s not an option.

Then it comes to her. Not the answer. Not right away. But another question. The right question.

What would the handler do?

Kione thinks about all the resources she has at her disposal. Instantly, she perceives: it’s enough. It’s not about ordnance or terrain. Not about time or space. It’s about people. It’s about rebels. What would they do? Anything? Almost. That’s the good thing about rebels. They’ll do anything—for each other. Which is the bad part. They’re not focused. Not like the handler is. Not like Hound is.

Not like Kione needs to be.

So find the crack, Ki. Who has the least to lose?

No, wrong question.

Who has the most to give?

Kione thinks back to earlier, to the canteen. The answer comes. Beautiful in its simplicity. It’ll work. She knows that even before she opens her mouth, and so despite the awful task ahead, a nasty grin comes to Kione’s face as she switches her radio back on.

“I’ve got something,” she whispers. “I… I think I can pull it off.”

Kione keeps a tight rein on her own voice. Wouldn’t do for them to hear that grin she’s wearing. Instead, she makes sure she sounds nervous—but excited. That’s what they want to hear.

Yeah? Amynta answers—pathetically grateful, and pathetic is good. She won’t have the authority to gainsay this. What’s the move?

“No time to explain,” Kione assures her. She lets them pick up on a little of her confidence. They’re hooked immediately, she can just sense it. But here comes the hard part. “But… I need somebody to take point. To get their attention.”

Sudden silence. Some of the rebels are young, but they’ve all seen enough action to know a bullshit euphemism when they hear one. ‘Get their attention’ is about as blatant as they come. They pick up what Kione’s putting down.

She’s asking for a sacrifice.

The rebellion is desperate enough that nobody is a stranger to those. That’s part of the problem. Given half a chance, they’ll all volunteer. And that means discussion, and arguing, and how long before one of them gets the inevitable bright idea: ‘there has to be a better way’?

Kione can’t let that happen. She needs to win. Which means she needs to pick. And she has her girl.

“Vola,” Kione says heavily. “You can do it, right?”

More appalled silence. But within that silence, Kione senses compliance. She’s put it all on Vola’s shoulders. The rebel won’t allow herself to shift or shed that burden.

Yes, Vola replies ardently, eventually. Whatever it takes.

Because she’s in love.

No! A raw shriek across the radio channel. That’s Camarina, right on cue. Vola, you can’t!

Good. Argue with her. Not with Kione.

I have to, Vola replies calmly. It’s the only way we’re making it down from this mountain, and you know it.

Kione all but purrs with satisfaction. They’re all so quick to accept the framing Kione offered. All it took was a certain efficiency of language and voice. The mercenary is beginning to understand the power of that. Of playing to their psychology; from the moment they join up, each and every rebel believes themself a martyr in the making. When somebody provides the opportunity, it feels like nothing more or less than destiny.

But-

There’s no time, Cam. Vola is gentle with her now. I wish we had more time. A lot more time. But you will, OK? Promise me.

Camarina promises—time and faith and love and many more things. She’s still fighting what’s happening with every breath, every whispered denial stained by tears and panic, but she’s losing the battle. Vola is determined, and quick to steady her. Their two breathless voices melt together as they begin to say things they had always meant to say, some day.

Kione, Amynta pleads quietly, above their affections. Don’t do this.

She doesn’t want this. She’s angry, but her anger hasn’t had the time to crystallize. She’s out of focus. She couldn’t find the answer, so nobody is listening to her. They’re listening to Kione.

“I’m sorry.” Kione lets a little banked-up sorrow out. It’ll keep her from interfering. “This is how it has to be.”

She sounds sure enough that her certainty sweeps away the three others. She has them.

What do you need me to do? Vola asks above Camarina’s sobs.

All business now. Get everything in motion. “Head down there while I get in position. Get them on you. All of them. Buy me as much time as you can. That’s all.”

Got it.

Vola steps forward, her mech planting one foot on the edge of the outcrop. Kione feels herself a player, advancing a piece on the chessboard. It’s a new kind of euphoria.

But there’s no time to indulge in it. She has work to do. As Vola throws herself from her perch, Kione throws Theaboros into the air and flies.

Up. Straight up. As high as she can. The altitude is the point. It’s not the distance, nor the speed she’ll pick up on the descent—although both are valuable. It’s the cold. Up in the sky, the air would freeze a person to the bone in an instant. Not a mech, though. Mechs run hot. All of them, but Theaboros especially. Heat is a resource. A budget. An overhead. The more she can cool her baby down, the better Kione’s odds of actually pulling this off.

Kione reaches up and punches a few large, analog switches. There’s a whir as, all over Theaboros, cooling vents and hydraulic flaps yawn as wide as they can. Kione’s beloved mech suit exhales steam and coolant, bathing itself in a strange halo that turns to crystalline snow at the next gust of arctic wind. Then it inhales, drinking deep of the mountain air, drowning its profane reactor in it. Kione watches as the temp dials plummet, and frost begins to form on the inside walls of the cockpit.

She’s ready.

Kione has to crank Theaboros’s optics all the way up to see what’s going on at ground level. Her IFF readout helpfully picks out Vola for her—just one of several specks, at this point. She’s giving the dog-mechs one hell of a chase. But in the end, there’s simply no hope. Nine against one. The beasts have all the time in the world to chase her this way and that, pinning her against the edge of a great ravine while the pack unfurls and blocks off her escape.

Giddy though she is, Kione’s glad she’s so far away she can’t actually see it when they bring her down.

And in any case, there’s no time to dwell on the grisly spectacle. This is Kione’s moment. Her triumph—but only if she can thread a hundred needles at once. Kione takes one deep breath, bringing herself in sync with Theaboros’s cooling cycle. Once she’s ready, she pitches her entire mech suit forward and begins to fall.

Vertical, Theaboros is a knife through the air. The wind is loud but it’s far louder, a dreadful trumpet-howl as the mech’s aerodynamic frame slices a path straight down. The instant she points the machine’s head at the ground, Kione redlines the antimatter reactor. She’s used to making gravity her bitch, but the vicious kick as Theaboros’s boosters kick in and the numbers on the altimeter become a blur is something else entirely. This isn’t flying. This is turning Kione’s precious Theaboros into a ballistic missile.

Kione howls with laughter at the sheer insanity of what she’s attempting. What else can she do?

The world outside the viewing port starts narrowing as Theaboros picks up speed. There are no longer three dimensions. There are two. Up, down. Kione’s vision distorts. Everything stretches; a line, a warpath taking her back toward the merciless earth. Distantly, Kione realizes she’s passing out. That’s no good. She reaches down for one of her little emergency measures. Imperial combat stims. Kione jams the tip of the needle into her neck and lets the autoinjector do the rest. An instant later, she’s more awake than she’s ever been. She can think so fast, Theaboros starts to seem slow.

Kione laughs again. Fuck, maybe she’s actually going to survive this.

But not at this rate. Not fast enough. Not hot enough. She reaches up to the array of switches you really, really don’t want to mess with and, one by one, flips off all the safeties and limiters. At once, Theaboros’s cockpit explodes with alarms and warning lights. Kione curses briefly before finding the switch to disable those too.

Sorry, babygirl. If it’s any consolation: we’re in this together.

Theaboros, ever-faithful, rises magnificently to meet her every unreasonable demand. The antimatter reactor gives more than it ever has. The entire cockpit around Kione starts shaking and shuddering with alarming violence as every part of the machine is flooded with power and subjected to subatomic forces mankind can barely comprehend, let alone harness. Kione can imagine what kind of damage she’s doing to the internals.

But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is her wings.

Out of the viewport, Kione can see them. All six, fully extended—and, oh, how they’re shining! Whenever Theaboros is in flight they’re surrounded by antimatter. A layer, one subatomic particle thick, barely visible but burning a rich, deep red as it annihilates with the air. But now, as the reactor output keeps spiraling upward, shunting more and more power into the antimatter arrays, it becomes something much more.

It becomes a miracle.

As Kione watches, the glow of annihilation grows and grows. It extends to fully cover each of the wings and then pushes beyond; an inch, then a yard, then more, much more, as reality is kept at bay by Kione’s sheer, hysterical, bloody-minded refusal to know her limits. More and more, conviction is sweeping her away. She can do this. Nothing is more real than your own will.

The handler taught her that.

This is real. This is godhood.

As the antimatter sheathes on each of the six wings meld together, becoming two vast, glowing, sweeping pinions, the heat coming off Theaboros is impossibly fierce. Inside, Kione is cooking in her own skin. If not for the combat drugs, she’d have passed out a hundred times over. Outside, the falling snow is vaporized as it approaches, becoming a vast halo of hissing steam. Kione’s grin is a jagged thing, tearing her face in two. The world cannot touch her. She will rend it apart. She will make it her own. Theaboros, the handler, Sartha, the rebels, the dogs, the sky, the-

-ground.

Oh, gods.

Kione wrenches back on the controls a heartbeat before it’s too late. Theaboros’s wings shift, suddenly catching the air instead of slicing it. The sheer violence of the maneuver almost rips the mech into a thousand pieces, but its vast antimatter wings work their magic, protecting her from even that. The air annihilates before it can beat against Theaboros’s metal shell.

Untouchable.

Theaboros pulls horizontal in a great, swooping glide. That’s one death avoided. It dips so low the tips of its feet are practically scraping the snow. That’s another death avoided. This could still go horribly wrong, Kione knows—only she doesn’t, because now her belly is fully with the confidence of kings. She knows exactly what to do. She’s got this.

The pack of dog-mechs lurches into motion at the sound of the approaching death-scream, but Kione is already threading the needle. It’s far, far too late for the mutts. Kione is supersonic. She’s an unstoppable force. She picks her path, straight through the center of the pack, directly above the spot where Vola fell, and then she carves a jagged scar of herself into the world with her passage.

On either side, her wings cut through the dogs like they aren’t even there.

Kione doesn’t feel the impact. Not even a little bit. The heat coming off her wings is unimaginable. It simply melts straight through them. In her wake, each dog-mech is nothing more than a bisected pair of superheated slag heaps collapsing under their own weight. As she savors her triumph, Kione is quick to SCRAM her reactor, fire her airbrakes and reverse burners, open every possible cooling manifold Theaboros has got, and then plant her victorious angel in the snow as it comes to a screeching halt.

One last death avoided.

Holy shit. She did it. She actually did it.

Kione opens her hatch. With Theaboros flat on the ground she crawls out of the cockpit and presses her face against the snow. She sees blood drip from her nose to stain the white, and she does not care. The bitter, piercing cold is the reminder she needs.

She is alive.

She won.

It’s a shame the others don’t seem to agree.

Once Kione clambers back into Theaboros—still in running condition, by some miracle—she heads back over to Amynta and Camarina. She expects awe. She expects adulation. Instead she finds silence and grief. The two of them have made their way down the mountain in their mechs and are huddled around what remains of Vola’s machine, picking through the wreckage. They say nothing as Kione approaches.

“Hope you got that on camera,” Kione radios, prodding them for the praise she so richly deserves. “Cause otherwise, I’m not sure anyone back at Leukon is gonna believe me.”

More silence. They aren’t even looking at her. Just at what’s left of Vola.

Kione. Amynta, eventually. Give us a minute. Please.

That’s all it takes to make Kione’s euphoria run cold. She’s still high from the combat stims; the emotional whiplash bites far harder than it usually would. Already stewing with bitter recriminations, Kione stalks off into the snow.

Fine. They can have their minute. Kione is a merciful god.

Without really meaning to, Kione comes upon the remains of one of those creepy fucking dog-mechs. The sight of its impotent upper half, mechanical innards spilling out and melted into sludge, fills her with no small amount of smug glee.

Not so scary now, huh? Not such a predator now, huh?

Curiosity strikes. The torso is relatively intact. Cockpit practically peeling open from how the heat of Theaboros’s wings warped it. It seems unlikely that the pilot is still in one piece—but you never know.

The handler’s words come back to her, unbidden. You will find the true lesson in their ruin.

It’ll give Kione something to do while Amynta’s being maudlin, if nothing else. At Kione’s command Theaboros kneels and cups its hands around the dog-mech’s corpse, sheltering it against the cold and the wind. Kione dismounts with the ease of long practice and clambers up the machine’s ruined hull. The hatch is loose, but still emits a tortured, metallic scream as Kione levers it open with both arms.

Then she sees the pilot. And she really, really wishes she hadn’t.

Like any ace, Kione has seen more pilots die than she cares to remember. Once it starts going down, a mech suit is little more than a very expensive death trap to the one piloting it. For that reason, just about every pilot spends a little time rehearsing how to bail out in case it ever comes to that. Survival comes first, always, and well-designed mechs go to great lengths to facilitate it. Eject capsules, quick-release hatches—whatever it takes. Theaboros is packed as full of contingencies as its slender frame will allow. Kione has always been convinced that even if there are causes worth fighting for, there aren’t ones worth dying for.

Perhaps that’s why the first thing that makes her retch is that this machine’s pilot was living dead from the moment she was first sealed into it.

The poor pilot is, quite literally, strapped into their seat, wrists and ankles bound by leather straps to keep them in position. There’s no sign of any way for them to even open the hatch. It’s like the cockpit was only ever meant to be opened or closed from the outside. Kione gingerly climbs inside and as she does, it only gets worse. Now she can see that the pilot’s head, too, is bound, kept fixed in place and directed forwards by an awful, metal brace.

And she’s muzzled. Of course she is.

Already, this is a thing of nightmares. But there are fresh horrors yet to come, and the first of them is these: she is still alive.

Only just. A huge, jagged piece of spall ripped through her side as her mech melted down; there’s so much blood, Kione assumed she was already a goner. As she senses Kione’s presence, though, the wretch rouses herself to one last fit of wounded consciousness. Kione’s heart stops as her eyes open. There’s no awareness in them, no true sentience, just a frenzied shadow even deeper than the one Kione has seen in Hound’s. The pilot’s lips draw back as she tries to growl, froth pouring forth from between her teeth. Kione jumps back, terrified, leaving the pilot to snap impotently at the intruder with what little strength she has left in her body.

At once, Kione perceives that the muzzle is more than merely symbolic. There are appalling marks all over the pilot’s arms and hands. Even over her lips. It’s like she’s been gnawing at herself. At anything that comes too close, probably.

Kione has never wanted to run so far, or so fast.

It’s a mercy for Kione and the pilot both that her last gasp doesn’t last long. After just a few seconds of barking and growling, her eyelids slump again. The life goes from her. A mutt, put out of its misery. Kione is quietly grateful she doesn’t have to do the deed herself.

“Gods,” Kione breathes quietly, to herself. “What did they do to you?”

Better that she had said nothing at all. She isn’t expecting an answer—but all the same, one comes. A radio in the cockpit, half broken, spits back to life and lights up as a fresh transmission comes in. Even before she hears it, Kione knows whose voice is coming. Even here, there’s no escaping her.

Well done, Kione. Magnificently fought. You have my admiration.

Hands into fists. Knuckles white. “Shut up!” Kione yells.

The imperial handler laughs a little, the sound distorted by the near-broken radio into something even more sinister.

I thought you wanted answers.

She shouldn’t. Kione knows that. If she was a good person, she’d be too horrified to care. But Kione’s never considered herself one of those. The handler takes her silence for acquiescence.

I advise you to take a good look. Behind the head, assuming enough of that is intact. Perhaps you can grasp my intentions.

“I advise you to kill yourself,” Kione mutters—but all the same, she clambers even further into the dog-mech’s maw and peers at the equipment surrounding the deceased pilot’s head.

Fresh horrors. How does it keep getting worse?

The pilot has undergone some form of experimental surgery. At least, Kione certainly hopes this was done in an operating theater—not that it would ever pass muster as safe or restorative. A circular opening has been carved into the back of the pilot’s head, just above the neck, and a section of skull simply removed, leaving the brain itself—gods!—exposed but for a delicate, metal mesh that has been placed over it. Into the open port, a long, thin, arm-like appendage has been inserted. It’s covered in wires; some of them are attached to the surface of the pilot’s brain by electrodes whilst others pierce and knot into the gray matter as if pilot and mech have been woven together on a fundamental level.

Kione cannot imagine how the assembly could ever be removed without simply killing the victim.

There’s more. Those long tubes running into the pilot’s brain stem aren’t all wires. Some of them are IV lines hooked up to hanging bags of saline, of antiemetic and anti-inflammatory medications, and of another drug that Kione doesn’t recognize; a foul, green substance within which something twinkles faintly. It’s like starlight in liquid form, if the cosmos itself was as diseased as the mind who conceived this butchery.

Kione has seen enough. She knows what this is. It’s an attempt at something that, to her knowledge, has never before been successfully achieved. The sick dream of mad geniuses ever since the first days mech suits walked forth on the world’s surface.

“Neural link,” she whispers.

Very good. I am not proud of the mutts, but even a misconceived project can prove occasion for a breakthrough.

Kione shakes her head numbly. What she’s seeing is impossible. Inconceivable.

Neural links don’t work.

That’s what she and everybody else with half a brain has concluded, after reading up on the grisly outcomes of all previous efforts. Kione has always had an interest in cutting-edge mech tech, and she once found neural links alluring—until she educated herself. The idea is seductive in its simplicity: what if you could control a mech as easily as you control your own body?

Well, too bad. You can’t. Doesn’t work. A mech is not a body. It doesn’t move or work like a living thing. The way a human mind moves a human body is instinctive, anchored to blood and muscle and meat. You force those instincts to bear on a sixty-foot colossus with hydraulic limbs and mechanical joints, there’s only one outcome: incompatibility. Rejection. Damage.

They call it the interoception barrier. The frontier of the self. The fundamental inability of the human ego to transcend the anchor of its individual, physical body. It cannot be crossed. It has never been crossed.

Until now, it seems.

Kione has a million questions. But the first of them is this:

“Who was she?”

A prisoner. I did not acquaint myself with the specifics. Suffice it to say: nobody of consequence.

There’s an emotional part of Kione that rises, red and furious, eager to scream at her that she is a living atrocity. But there’s another part, nodding thoughtfully, because it makes sense. Prisoners, naturally disposable. Stray dogs, unworthy of her notice.

Kione’s stomach churns. She turns to her next question.

“How?”

My research concerns itself with neuroablation and reconditioning. How to alter thought patterns. How to reconfigure a subject’s sense of self. Even bifurcate it, if necessary. You have enjoyed the results for yourself.

Gods, this awful woman sounds so damn proud of herself.

Once I turned my attention to the problem, the solution presented itself clearly. Could I not simply apply the same techniques? Induce the pilot to conceive of the mech as their authentic self—just as Sartha conceives of her auxiliary ego as hers? As you can see, my approach has been highly successful.

Sartha. It all comes back to Sartha. Why is it that every evil Kione encounters seems to well up from the depths of her soul?

Answers beget more questions. Kione thinks of the distinct, canine physicality of these monstrosities. What sense does that make? Is it simply to torment her?

“But why-“

Why dogs? Initial prototyping suggested the value of a non-human mammalian reference point. A kind of intermediary. Our minds can more easily conceive of a dog’s locomotion than a mech’s—but it’s still inexact. The conceptual gulf there is useful. It helps the pilot’s mind grapple with what they experience as unfamiliar, without rejecting it entirely.

And so they learn to be a dog, instead of a person. Ghoulish. Ingenious. And Kione is certain that the symbolic associations—servility, loyalty, ferocity—are only assets to the handler’s cause.

Although…

“They’re defective.” Kione means it as a taunt. It doesn’t come out as one. To her horror she sounds more like a student angling for extra credit—but she can’t stop. “They’re… they’re hungry. They try to eat things. Can’t help themselves.”

Ah, yes. The feeding response. A simple case of overidentification. The mutts forget themselves. They forget they have steel bellies that cannot be filled. Dialing back on some of the integration protocols should resolve that. The calibration will require great care, however. Provided they can keep it under control, their hunger makes them so very effective, don’t you think?

“Fuck you,” Kione spits, but she’s scorning herself as much as the handler.

She hates that she finds all of this so utterly hypnotic. She hates that she can feel herself joining dots and making conjectures. Like everything the handler tells her, it’s an infection. An idea that cannot be unthought. She sees in this—in all this—the awful face of all mankind’s future. A muzzle on every raised head. A firm hand on every leash.

A world of dogs.

It disgusts her, of course. It would disgust anyone clinging to even a tattered shred of their humanity.

But she can see it. She can see the nuts and bolts, the levers and gears that would make it tick and spin and work.

It’s hell.

It’s coming.

I have something for you. The promised lesson. A gift, too. Something you’ll need.

“What?” Kione growls. She’s had enough of this. Of all of it. She’s at her limit. She craves home and Hound.

Do you see that green bag, suspended above the pilot’s head? That’s gift and lesson both. Take it with you. It should be easy enough to unhook and store.

She’s talking about that liquid starlight shit. It gives Kione the creeps. “Why would I do that?” Kione demands, although she’s already reaching up to disconnect the IV lines.

Because you will need to put it to good use. Therein lies the lesson.

“What is it?”

The handler laughs again, just once, before she terminates the transmission.

It’s Sartha’s medicine.

***

Nothing but grim looks on the faces of the hangar crew as Kione and the others haul in. That makes sense, Kione supposes. The rebels were probably hoping they’d return home with the missing patrol in tow. Instead, only half of the rescue mission made it back. A bad result by any measure.

Still, it irks Kione that she’s yet to receive any recognition for the insane feat of piloting she pulled off. It’s the only reason there’s three of them instead of zero. She deserves a fucking parade for that.

Instead, it was all silence on the way home. Amynta wasn’t in the mood. Camarina was nursing her grief. And Kione, for her part, had her head all wrapped up in the things the handler told her. Still though—mission accomplished. They aren’t all dead, and it’s pretty clear what must have happened to the missing rebel patrol. That’s gotta be worth something.

Guess not. As soon as Kione dismounts her Theaboros—burnt and blackened on the outside but still, somehow, in one piece—she sees Amynta heading down the berth toward her, fists clenched, face of rage.

So much for her parade.

“I need to talk to you.” Amynta demands, as soon as she’s within earshot. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Everybody turns to look. Oh boy. This isn’t going to be pretty.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Kione shrugs, stretches out languidly, even though her aching muscles scream at her for it. She doesn’t let it show. She needs her armor.

“Cut the shit,” Amynta snaps. Come on, girl, Kione thinks. Didn’t we have a good thing going? “I’m talking about that stunt you pulled up there. You might as well have just killed Vola yourself.”

A hundred or so paces behind her, Camarina is slumped on the ground, bawling her eyes out. As soon as she clambered out of her mech, it hit her. She went down like a sack of potatoes. Friends are rushing to her from all sides, offering comfort. Once word spreads of Vola, their faces turn ashen.

Kione feels bad for her. Really, she does. She liked Vola. But why are they pretending?

“That stunt I pulled,” Kione replies dangerously, “is the only reason you’ve still got the breath to bark at me like that, radio girl.”

To her credit, Amynta doesn’t back down. “Not the point, Ki,” she shoots back furiously. “You knew exactly what would happen. Admit it. You sent her down that slope to die. You used her as bait.”

“So what if I did?” Kione explodes. Doesn’t she get it? You don’t win a game of chess without trading away a few pieces. “This is war, Amynta. Or did you forget that? What I did wasn’t nice, I know. But it was the only way.”

“You don’t know that!” Amynta cries, exasperated beyond reason. She’s tearing up too. “Gods, Kione. Do you really think I’m so stupid I don’t understand we were in a rough spot? That’s not what this is about!”

Kione rolls her eyes. She’s so, so tired. Enough grandstanding. A this point she’d sooner take the imperial handler’s sinister candor. “Then what is it about, huh?”

“It’s that you didn’t even try!”

Something about that completely short-circuits Kione. What? She tried. Didn’t she? She must have. She remembers wracking her brains. She tried everything. Didn’t she?

“That’s not…”

That’s not fair. Is it?

“Save it.” Amynta sounds appalled. Kione knows she’s probably just getting it out of her system. She’s tired. Overtaxed. Guilty, too, from the way she ran dry of ideas in the heat of the moment. Maybe Kione will get a half-hearted apology later. But that won’t change the fact that Amynta means every word of this. “I heard you. You were so fucking… so fucking excited with yourself. And you sold it so well too, didn’t you? Were you as proud of yourself as you sounded? Did it feel as good as it seemed? I hope so.”

The venom in her voice is too much for Kione. She’s unsteady on her feet. She just wants to be gone.

“Maybe you don’t understand this.” Amynta slows down. Wobbles a little. They’re both beyond exhausted. “But we don’t fight that way. Understand? We don’t use each other like that. We’re not disposable. Maybe it’d have always gone the same way, in the end. But I’d sooner have laid down my life trying to get every single one of us off that mountain. Understand me? That’s how we fight.”

There’s only one thing Kione can think of to say to that—even if the words damn her, even if there might never be a way to mend the wedge they hammer home.

“Then I suppose I’m simply not one of you after all.”

Amynta’s anger vanishes as quickly as it appeared. In its wake, she looks exactly as tired and sad as Kione feels. It’s enough to bring Kione to the verge of apologizing. Amynta looks like she’s about to do the same.

Then her gaze shifts. She’s looking up, over Kione’s shoulder and beyond.

Kione turns to look at whatever caught her attention.

And sees Sartha.

Sartha, rushing towards her. Sartha, throwing herself into Kione’s arms. The mercenary barely manages to catch her without toppling over. Then Sartha’s scent washes over her, and all is right again.

“Ki,” Sartha whispers gratefully. “You made it back. When I heard that only three… gods, I’m so glad.”

Kione squeezes around her, tight as can be. Then, all of a sudden, she becomes aware of her own fragility. Of just how close she is to collapsing to the floor, a sobbing wreck. It’s too much, it’s all too much. The dogs, everywhere, and all around her. The mechs, up in the mountains. The handler, and her dark words. Kione knows it won’t end, but maybe it can stop for a moment. Maybe there’s a way for her to stop thinking, just for a short time.

Maybe, with Sartha, she can build a private, fleeting little world of nothing but the two of them.

Because she’s not sure she can take her own useless fragility a moment longer, Kione puts her lips to Sartha’s ear and gives her exactly what she always wants, even though there are dozens of people watching.

“Sartha,” Kione whispers. “Off The Leash.”

She can’t see Sartha’s eyes while they’re embracing, but she can feel the change. She can feel Sartha go limp against her for the briefest of moments as her spirit exits her body, allowing something simple and crude and artificial to fill the vacuum. Base, instinctive, canine—but not merely a dog, no, no, no, nothing like those awful beasts. This thing is the product of precise craftsmanship. It is loving and precious and beautiful—and inside and out, it is Kione’s.

The fragility recedes. Instead, Kione feels smug. Powerful. Everyone’s watching, but none of them know what Sartha truly is. They think they’re simply seeing two lovers lean into each other. Nobody else knows. Only her.

“I need to sleep,” Kione whispers, holding Hound tight against her. “With you. Take me to my room.”

Hound doesn’t reply. She just squeezes Kione again, and then allows the mercenary to lean on her heavily as they two of them walk away, heading for the pilots’ quarters, while Amynta and many others watch silently.

Kione is entirely content with the judgment in their eyes. Now that she’s spoken it, the truth has petrified within her heart.

She isn’t one of them. She never will be.

But that’s OK. Sartha isn’t one of them either.

They’re in love. They have each other.

That’s enough.

That’s everything.