Quentin entered into the machine’s cockpit and felt like a god on holiday. This was technically an official Alliance boneyard, but it still surprised him to not find a single cut mark or frayed wire. Every circuit that lined the walls was in place, every display and tactile backup interface component was where it should be. Normally it would have been stripped to the struts, first by the government looking for replacement parts, then by the yard workers themselves looking to pad their salary, then at last by any random scavver with a hauler who wanted to make a quick cred.

To think they’d leave a perfectly preserved Battle Titan just lying around a boneyard! Well, not quite lying around. It stood a good seventy-five metres off the ground, moored in a modular gantry long since rusted into a locked position. He had hacked through several firewalls, torn his nice leather bomber jacket on the razorwire fence protecting the inner yard, snuck past a sentry drone or two, and used a novatorch to get past the final seal. But compared to the potential power that he could wield with a weapon like this…it was beyond worth the price of admission.

He clipped a flashlight to the headband around his head, stripped off his jacket to leave him in his stark black coveralls, and got to work. The fusion core was a push-start operation, that wouldn’t be difficult. It would still have enough juice in the fuel tanks as well. The real problem was the machine’s AI.

The size and scale of the mechanics involved with piloting a giant robot made the prospect of controlling each megaservo individually a daunting one. Battle Titans of this make and vintage got around this complexity by operating through a perfect body and mind synchronization with an artificial intelligence, sometimes called a Back Seat Driver. But the BSD could only make this sync once, so integrated was this reciprocal connection between pilot and machine to its overall operation. When the pilot died, so did the AI for all intents and purposes.

But this wasn’t the 80s anymore. In the 27th century, integration didn’t have to be so drastic. Putting a neural emulator in between him and the machine intelligence would be plenty to handle the load. To smooth things along, however, he’d still need to spoof the original pilot’s identity. And that was the real trick: convincing an AI that its pilot, someone who was likely dead or in VR Hospice at the most, had returned to turn it on again.

Disabling internal sensors was a must, he knew that right away. He went about disconnecting the nodes on the walls one by one, blinding the machine to the cockpit and, hopefully, the details about its pilot. Midway through soldering off loose wires, he saw a flash of light from the corner of his eye. The armoured cockpit of a Battle Titan had very little physical windows to the outside world. But there were a trio of transparent neoplex slits that allowed for vision even if someone takes out the cameras. And something with bright spotlights had just flicked past the one on the left.

Instinctually, he ducked down. It took a moment to remind himself he wasn’t dodging the night manager of a posh capsule hotel, he was beneath several inches of adamantite and parasteel plate. Not even thermals could pierce that. He did wait in silence for whatever was outside to mosey along, however. It did, and he got back to work.

The last sensor node snapped off its cabling with a satisfying *pop* sound. He tossed it into a pile with the rest, then got to restoring connection to the backup batteries. Revving the Titan’s main engines, the fusion reactors, would be like turning on a siren. He couldn’t do that. Not yet, anyway. Of the many redundant features the war machine had, its power wells should have been the most reliable. The design for String-net Liquid Antiparticle Batteries, or SLABs, had changed rarely in the intervening decades. Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broke, as the ancient manuals said.

In the back of the cockpit, behind the pilot’s seat and obscured by a blast panel, two elongated rectangles awaited him. One glowed a faint cyan along the edges, the only was completely dark. Perhaps he’d expected too much of the old machine. But 50% of emergency power was better than nothing. Stringing out the long cables for the mental emulator, he clipped it to the chair, then fed one line to the neural shunt built into the headrest and one to the port in his neck. If all went to plan, the AI would think it was directly linked with him while running in a BrainBox program that could easily be filtered and isolated by his neural rig. He thanked his lucky stars that this was an analog system, done with wires and connections and old style digital computing. Had he been trying to jack a modern machine with Direct Rig Connect systems or, god forbid, a nanoslime interface, Quentin would have been out of luck. He slammed the huge toggle that connected the battery back to the main power loop. Indicator lights throughout the cockpit flickered into life, like a hundred tiny eyes blinking away sleep.

“Systems reinitialising,” crackled a discordant, artificial voice. “Error. Internal scanners compromised. Safety of pilot cannot be ascertained. Attempting verbal communication. Pilot Maia, please acknowledge.”

This was it. Moment of truth. He clambered into the pilot’s seat and keyed the internal mic. “Machine, please report status.”

“Good afternoon, Maia,” the voice replied instead. Its words settled into a smooth, feminine tone. “I hope you’ve recovered from your injuries and are in good spirits.”

Quentin waited to see if this was a rhetorical question, but it apparently was waiting for a response. “Uhh, yeah. Hello…” The name. Titans had names. He’d seen it while he’d bolted up the stairs like a madman. It had been stenciled directly underneath a stylized fox on the far right of the machine’s torso plate. “Hello Vixen. Sure has been a while.”

There was a pause, and Quentin’s heart pounded a little harder. He’d disabled all the internal sensors, there shouldn’t be any way for the AI to determine he wasn’t who he said he was. But nevertheless, he was about to connect his mind, however indirectly, with a machine based on a fraudulent identity.

“There’s something unusual about your voice, Maia,” Vixen replied.

“Fuck, shit, fuck,” he cursed under his breath. Of course it would have voice recognition protocols, of course it would! “You suffered a lot of internal damage during the fight. Your, uhh, your vocal calibration must be off.”

“I have noticed that I cannot sense my interior, but other systems seem to be operating within normal parameters. My outside sensors, however, detect several anomalies. The existence of several large moons indicates we are no longer on Phaestus 4, and though I acknowledge that my database isn’t able to connect with local chronometry, my internal clock indicates seventy-two years have passed. But perhaps I am misinterpreting its readings.”

A flicker of hope lit in his heart; he might still be able to pull this off. “Uhh, yeah, potentially. But we’re going to need to save that diagnostic for another time. I’m going to need to activate the fusion reactor and motive systems momentarily. We’re deep in hostile territory and we need to reach an extraction point.” That was technically all true. He had a JD-3 heavy atmospheric lifter waiting about an hour’s walk by giant robot away. Any closer and he would have been easily picked up by the boneyard’s security.

“Acknowledged. Initializing pilot sync.”

The neural shunt lashed at his side as it fished around for a neck port that wasn’t there. Instead, it found the BrainBox emulation program, which should use the sync data to formulate the perfect tandem brain pattern and allow for the giant machine to move without its original pilot. He watched the display on the side of the screen as a waterfall of text flowed downward, describing the changes the emulation was making to couple with the AI in granular, confusing detail.

“Pilot sync…” the mechanical voice trailed off, something he hadn’t heard before from an AI this old. It was like it was actually considering the words before saying them aloud. “Pilot synchronization achieved, but you are not Maia.”

The smile that had been forming died on his lips. “What do you mean?”

“You do not sound like Maia, you do not talk like Maia, and your brain appears to be some kind of simulacrum of Maia. But it is not my Maia. Therefore, you are not her. Explain yourself.” The hatch to the cockpit slammed shut, deadbolts clacking into place. He thought about making a break for it, but that would give away the game entirely.

“I’m…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Vixen, but…I’ve gone through some intense medical procedures. Our last battle left me critically injured, and the doctors had to repair me from the ground up.” A long shot, more than that, a long shot practically from the five point line of a Blurnsketball court. But this was an AI, after all. It didn’t have to be believable to him, all it needed to be was plausible to it.

“Indeed? Well, perhaps I can help.”

A bubbling noise made him look around. A strange black liquid had spilled out from the base of the pilot’s chair, pooling around him in a near perfect circular puddle. But as the liquid recoiled from the far edge of the pool, it moved upward, latching onto his boots and pulling itself up. And that’s when he realized it wasn’t a spilled liquid at all.

“Nanoslime?!” he said aloud, trying to pull his foot back but the material moved with it.

“Of course. You should know, Maia. You installed the system before we went into battle.”

Fuck. Nanoslime was only experimental when the Titan was operational. It wasn’t in the specs! Trillions of tiny, self-replicating machines, all moving in unison with the BSD AI’s directive: link to the pilot.

Quentin could feel it eat through the tough synthleather of his boots until it reached his skin, doing the same to his clothes when it reached them. He waited for the pain of a million mouths chewing through his flesh, but it merely glided with an unearthly chill up his legs instead, leaving it looking like smooth, glistening latex that adhered perfectly to his body’s shape. The only hope he thought he might have was to override the AI via the BrainBox program, but as he reached for the emulator, he knocked it loose. It tumbled into the puddle. Before he could retrieve it, the black ooze slithered over its surface, consuming it, leaving only the dangling neural shunt connection.

“Connection lost,” the AI said, “Initializing diagnostic program on pilot. Several alterations already detected. Height, skeletal structure, blood pressure, galvanic response, all abnormal.”

“That’s, fuck, that’s just the surgery. There were some changes, but I don’t mind them!” he shouted, reflexively working to pry the goop off his body. Instead, it spread to his fingers, where it multiplied and grew until it looked like he was wearing perfect, contouring gloves.

The nanoslime slid up his waist, the two legs joining together where they ought to, and the AI discovered another anomaly.

“Anomalous Bioform detected upon pilot’s body,” it said as the goo discovered his very real, very masculine genitals. “Assigning Temporary Designation AB_1. Confirm, is this yours, Maia?”

He nodded shakily; the BSD had him by the literal balls. “Uhh yep. Got that installed, please do not remove it, it is fine.” What the hell was he going to do?

His concerns only heightened when he tried to stand and his legs didn’t cooperate. The slime apparently had control over the parts that it had swallowed up, its surface hard and unyielding when he attempted to move without its consent. All he could do was sit there and wait while it crawled up his chest and arms, finally coming to a halt at his neck.

“Restoring original body parameters,” the voice said, as calmly as one might order a food item. The slime bowed outwards in places, growing his hips and thighs until he looked positively feminine. His view became obscured when two nodules grew out from his chest. Breasts. He was growing breasts.

“Hey, is this really necessary?” he asked, “I mean, how do these help me pilot you?”

“Full-body synchronization is only possible when your physical form matches the synchronetic iodoform that I was programmed to link with. I can show you the accredited journal studies that document-”

“No, no, that’s fine. I’m just worried that I might suffocate, or…” He struggled to find the words. The slime had covered him completely and was now replacing his body. Who’s to say how far it would go? Would it eat him? Jack his body and use him like a puppet? His heart pounded, sweat beading from the skin still able to do so.

“Stress response detected. Administering endorphins.”

Another spike of cold, but this time Quentin didn’t feel like escaping. He didn’t feel like going anywhere at all. His brain exploded into a firework display of positive emotions. Bliss, joy, relief, it all tumbled together like a whirlpool of positivity. A dreamy smile crept across his features, and he relaxed into the pilot chair. Though he noticed the changes continue, they were much less scary. They were simply…neat. An interesting series of events.

“This is…so weird…” he mumbled, looking down at the skintight bodysuit that now bulged in several directions. Most prominent was his cock. Between the press of the strange slime and the rush of endorphins, he was getting aroused. His bulge throbbed for attention, pushing against the skin-tight material. So dosed was he with foreign chemicals, he lacked the shame impulse to keep from playing with himself.

“Anomalous Bioform AB_1 reacting to stimulus,” the voice said, and Quentin felt the tightness increase around his groin. He tried to feel for his anatomy, but it became obscured behind a thickening, formless bulge. “Is this anomaly giving you distress?”

“N-no no, it’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, trying to touch himself again.

“Ah, a bio-mod for off-duty pleasure activity. Adding to your readout.”

He poked the bulb again. “Can you, like, release the suit around here?”

“Unfortunately, it interferes with full-body synchronization. I am not designed to facilitate such extremities. The sync-skin can adjust to compensate, however.”

He felt the strange material ripple around his lower half, then press down on his cock. It squeezed into as tight a shape as could be considered comfortable, then the bulge inverted. With detached fascination, he watched the suit form a charcoal gray facsimile of a vagina right around where it would normally be.

“Whoa…I got a pussy now?”

“If my interpretation of the colloquialism is correct, then yes, you do. It’s linked to Bioform AB_1 via node networking. Sympathetic tactile responses should be identical.”

He was too blissed out to understand what she was saying, but he was still curious. Touching the suit around his new anatomy felt almost identical to touching the skin beneath it. His hand drifted lower, brushing the very top of his ‘clit’. Immediately, he clamped his thighs around his own hand, gasping for air. It felt like his dick’s entire nerve endings had been compressed down into a single nub of synthetic flesh.

He lost his grip on all thoughts of the heist. Enraptured by these new sensations, he curled his fingers around, like he’d seen done by several female partners, and slid them inside himself. Incredible, impossible pleasures totally unlike what he was used to. He could feel his cock twitch underneath the surface, but at the same time his new synth organ felt just as real. It was like masturbating twice at the same time. He didn’t hesitate, he kept going. And going. And twisting and shivering and clamping a hand around his own mouth to keep from moaning out like this was the best fucking sex he’d ever had in his life.

He came, hard. Quentin fell backward against the padded headrest, limbs feeling boneless. The pussy clenched in sympathetic timing with the waves of his orgasm, and beads of what could only be his own seed spilled out and drizzled onto his fingers. Tossed amidst the sea of ecstasy, he didn’t notice that. He didn’t notice his surroundings, or his AI captor. He was so caught up in the bliss, in fact, that he hadn’t even noticed the neural shunt being slid into his neck port by the selfsame goo that had given him so much joy.

“Holy shit…being a girl rocks…” he said, catching his breath.

“Input not recognised. Neural scan records that pilot is female.”

Quentin was a little hazy. The deception he’d been trying to run ran aground while his mind was in a pleasure-addled state. “I mean, well…”

“Pleasure reinforcement mechanism discovered, attempting neural reset.” The slime bulged out around the pilot’s seat, warping into a vaguely cylindrical bulb that took on a much more familiar shape as it grew.

“What are you- ah!” he cried out, body still sensitive to the touch. The bulb pressed against his pussy, teasing at the entrance.

“This pleasure is for Maia alone. So who are you, pilot?”

Quentin’s voice caught. This was all a part of the plan, right? There was a plan…there had been, at least.

“Ah…yes. I’m Maia, your pilot.”

The bulb slid in. He clenched his fists, voice unhindered by any worries about being caught any longer. Words, pictures started to flow into his mind. Were they thoughts? But they weren’t his own. His eyes widened as he felt the back of his neck, noticing at last the neural shunt. But it was too late, the slime had already covered it. He was trapped in the link. A word pushed through the noise in his mind. Four letters, endlessly repeating.

He nodded reflexively. The slime didn’t return. It still couldn’t see him. He had to vocalize it.

“I’m Maia,” he said, and it thrust. He did it again, and it thrust again. A simple call and response. More endorphins flooded his system. It became hard to think at all.

“You are a woman,” it said, accompanied by more images and ideas. An identity loomed on the horizon, one that was not his own. He reached down to feel for his cock, but it wasn’t there. Had he imagined it?

“I’m a woman?” he asked, or she did. Thoughts were so cluttered, but the pleasure of the slime-bulb between his legs was so clear. It pierced through the haze like a sword through a screen door. Maia found her clit again.

“The pilot Maia is a woman,” the machine stated, and Maia couldn’t wait to agree.

“I’m Maia,” *thrust*, “and I’m, anh, I’m a fucking hot woman…oh god.” It became a chant. A creed. Joy blossomed in the repetition, and more information slid effortlessly into her mind. Feelings now. Memories…ones that she couldn’t recall…

“Warning: insufficient power to complete full restoration. Recalculating…recalculating…”

Dissonance. Discord. Two separate entities vying for the same space. It was all too much, too much! She felt herself losing consciousness, falling into a great void of sensation and memory.

“Solution found. Attempting cerebral dataloop.”

That was the last thing she heard before her eyes fluttered closed.

***

But Quentin was not asleep. He was aware. What’s more: he was himself. But the titanjacker was not in the waking world. He existed on a vast and formless plane, yet it held his feet like solid ground. He took a step, and his booted footfall echoed off a kaleidoscope of invisible walls.

“Hey, my clothes are back,” he said, still a little confused. A vast nothing swept in every direction. “Still…could use a chair or something. Or a plant.”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting visitors.”

Quentin spun on his heels to find a woman in an identical set of boots and coveralls to his own. Her eyes glowed an artificial, iridescent blue. Was it cybernetics? Was it gengineering? Or was it really just another mystery of this place.

“Who are you?” he asked, hearing his voice echo off the same ethereal surfaces.

“I should ask you that. You’re in my house, after all.” She reached out a fist, a traditional greeting among pilots. “Maia Tannenbaum, 33rd Mechanized Cavalry.”

It was her. The real her, or something. This had to be some figment, some vestige of the woman, trapped in the computer. He bumped her fist with his own, though after a moment’s hesitation.

“Quentin tau-Zedna.”

Maia cocked her head. “You haven’t served?”

“I’m not a military pilot. I’m…” He wondered just how much he should tell this...ghost? “I’m just here to relocate Vixen.”

“To steal her, you mean,” she corrected. It wasn’t said with malice, but with a sad tone of resignation. “Sorry, I’m just leafing through your memories right now. I mean, not all of them, just the ones from when the shunt interfaced with you.”

Well, shit. Too late to deny it now. “It’s been sitting in a boneyard for decades. The government isn’t going to retrofit something this old, but there are plenty of places in the Outer Sphere where a machine like this can do a lot of damage. I’m here to jack it and sell it.”

“I see.” She clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face into the distance. Quentin was sure he could feel a distant breeze on his face, like they were both on the edge of some vast, impossibly wide canyon.

“Can you tell me what you are? Like, are you the real Maia, or just a remnant? Do you know?”

There was a long pause before she spoke. “I remember the last battle I was in, I remember the heat of the cabin from running the lasers too hot, the blood in my mouth when I took a heavy impact to the torso, and then my left side felt like it was dunked in ice water…then the rest was just blank. Or maybe not blank. I remember flashes of activity, of seeing from outside Vixen’s body like it was my own. And then here, now. So am I the real Maia? Some memory subsystem flashburned with her true consciousness? Or am I a simulation? Something Vixen created to try and reroute around the need for a human mind to pilot.” She shrugged.

“Okay, fair. I wouldn’t know how to answer a question of if I was real either. For all I know, I’m just a figment of someone else’s imagination. Though judging by the last few minutes I can remember,” he blushed a little, “Someone really messed up.”

“Right. The nanoslime.”

He nodded. “It’s a little invasive.”

“It’s meant for me. It’s trying to recreate me, in a weird way. Vixen’s been alone for longer than either of us were alive.”

“Well can you stop it? I mean, not to be rude, but I don’t want to be you.”

“It depends,” she said, turning to face him again. This time, her back straightened, the sadness tossed from her voice like shipborne detritus. “Do you still want to pilot Vixen?”

Screens appeared in the air around them. External camera feeds from all over the Battle Titan. There floated several sentinel drones and a government issue guard mech. Not a Titan, but still one with enough arms to paste him if he was caught in the open.

“Shit, shit, shit! How did they find me?”

“While you were out, Vixen has reactivated the systems she has access to without a pilot. And you can’t *quietly* turn on a Battle Titan. The engine’s discoverable on a seismograph. But you haven’t answered my question: do you want to be a pilot?”

He nodded hastily. “Yeah, sure. I don’t want to end up in a stockade, if that’s what you mean.”

Maia closed the distance between them, poking her whole hand into his chest. “It’s not what I mean, scuzz. Anyone can sell a Battle Titan and make a few credits at the scrapyard. But do you want to be a Pilot. Do you want to be one of the most feared damn people in the entire galaxy?”

Quentin swallowed. Despite the fact that she was most likely a computer program, she was rather intimidating. And given the fact that she might actually have control of the machine at this point, she might just hold his whole fate in her simulated hands.

“I’m actually kind of a coward. I’m not a fighter.”

“But I am,” she replied, pointing at her simulated body’s own neural port. “Here’s the deal I’m offering: I’ll let you take Vixen, I’ll get us out of this mess. But in exchange, you give me control of your body. Just temporarily, until we’re out of danger. And then we’ll go from there.”

He was already shaking his head before she finished speaking. “Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

“You’re already kinda look like a Maia already!”

“I’m not letting you bodyjack me!”

She scoffed. “Fucking civvies. Listen. We’re in the shit together. I don’t have a body, and you’re scrounging in boneyards for cash. Neither of us is where our life coach would want us to be, yeah?”  

He made a face. “I mean, you’re not entirely wrong. Ouch though.”

“So we work together. Unless you think you can pilot Vixen better than I can, or think that you can make more money stripping her for parts than you can as a gun for hire.”

Quentin ground his teeth. The last thing he wanted was to lose autonomy. As someone who had gone freelancer and had spent not an insignificant amount of money staying outside the system, that was an important part of his life. And he had no idea if this digital revenant would keep her word and give him back control. But as much as he feared what would happen if he let Maia do her thing, he was terrified of being locked in a government prison for the rest of his natural life. A life of mediocrity, of forced labour or worse: forced counselling sessions. But it was either that, or…

“Alright...alright. What do I do?”

She stepped closer to him, their faces mere inches away. He could feel her breath, he could smell the shampoo in her hair. She was real.

“You gotta let go. I know it’s not easy. I never like losing control. But,” she put a hand on his arm. It was strong, but her grip was gentle. Her fingers slid up to his neck and pulled him closer, pressing his lips to hers. They kissed. It was the first kiss he’d had in a while, and the first ever that he hadn’t initiated himself. It felt nice…

Quentin pulled back reflexively. He felt it. Like that shock awake where it feels like you’re falling. He could feel his control slip away. Momentarily panicked, he looked for an exit. Her hands brought him back to looking into her eyes. Her beautiful, glowing eyes.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. We’re both in this together. See?”

Her eyes looked down, and his followed. They were both naked, that strange breeze making the hairs on his legs and arms prickle. She truly was gorgeous. Wide hips, a hefty chest, everything the suit had tried to duplicate on him. Her right hand slipped down to his cock, which was already rising to the occasion at the sight of her.

“But…if you take control…how do I know you’ll give it back?” His words were fraught with worry, but he was already moving back for another kiss. She stroked his erection gently, easing his fears with her skillful touch.

“You just gotta trust me. In the field, you can’t know exactly what the person next to you will do. Will they flee? Will they fold under pressure? It’s out of your hands,” she explained, her own hand moving up and down as her words spilled into his ear. “All I can say is that I don’t want to hurt you, or subsume your mind. But I need to move, to drive, to be in control for a while. When we get out of here, we can take this Titan and be gods out there. You can have the fame, the fortune, and all the hot babes on your dick you want. All I ask is you let me be the pilot. Let me fight.”

His worries were hard to hold on to. She was so confident, so effortlessly charismatic. It was like there were pieces of himself that had been missing all his life that she slotted into effortlessly. Quentin let her take control. It felt too good not to.

His awareness flickered. One moment she was stroking him off, the next he was doing it himself, the next she was masturbating her own cock that looked identical to his. To hers. It was all a jumble. That same fear response threatened to surface, but she submerged it with another kiss. But who was she kissing? It was only them there. Her there. Quentin moaned out through her mouth as they both climaxed in perfect synchronicity, simulated seed spilling out of her and onto her fingers. Until his voice was her voice. His body, her body.

“Rest now, Quentin,” she whispered, feeling the tug of her awareness back to reality. “I’ll take it from here.”

***

The threat assessor’s chirps increased in pitch and volume, filling the cockpit like a menagerie of terrified birds. Weapons lock from three sides. Flying drones wielding autocannons, and a trio of guards in a Class II Sentry of unknown construction. A priority override jammed the Titan’s com channel open.

“...property of the Alliance Government. Under authority of the Military District Command, are to surrender the Battle Titan at once! This is your last warning!”

Still, the pilot sagged in the cockpit.

A fingertip wiggled. Then a foot. A whole body awakened again, buffeted by sights and sounds both familiar and strange. Her hands found the joysticks on either side without looking, then reached for the toggles and switches above. Blood pounded in her heart once more. The feeling of muscles moving beneath her skin at once felt alien yet familiar. The pilot opened her eyes; her glowing, blue eyes.

Vixen slid into her mind like a hand in a glove. Even after all these years, neither had forgotten.

“Pilot synchronization achieved. Cerebral dataloop online,” the BSD declared, “All systems nominal. Welcome back, Maia.”

“Good to be back, Vix. How’s Quentin?”

“Cognitive Entity 2 of 2 appears stable. He’s setting up some furniture in the cognition buffer’s landscape. Maia, had I known you were trapped within me, I would have-”

“You couldn’t. You were as trapped as I was. It’s fine. We’ll talk later.” There was no time for commiserations or to worry about what was past. She was alive again, breathing and free. But if she didn’t get a move on, it wouldn’t be for long. She flew through the mech’s startup sequence. The engine roared to full power. Even after all this time, all these years, Vixen purred.

“Final warning!” The guard screamed, voice cracking. Vixen loomed over him. Even though she was a relic, she was still a giant. Adrenaline surged into her new body. The stuff of life. Maia keyed her mic to reply on the guard’s frequency.

“It’ll have to be one at a time, gentlemen. I’m a bit rusty.” She unlocked the safeties on the weapons and checked their readouts. Missile racks empty. Gauss rifle rails were spalled and stripped of ammo. But the laser emitters were still intact; the focusing crystals humming in resonance after the better part of a century of dormancy. Fusion pumped direct energy weapons were an older weapon going by Quentin’s memories, from a less civilized age. But they were reliable, required no ammunition, and in Maia’s hands, she could use them like a surgeon’s scalpel.

“Lots of things have changed, and I don’t quite know the new steps. But I figure it’s just one of those things that comes back to you.”

“Target is readying weapons, open fire, open fire!” a panicked voice screamed. The sentries’ weapons pinged off her armour. The autocannons they used were modern, newly issued. They were some of the latest in government tech. But Vixen was a Titan, after all. A paragon of battle. And she was alive, in more ways than one.

Maia smiled, her fingers finding triggers as the machine lurched into motion.

“Let’s dance, you and I.”