Kara relished the battlefield, of course. She could never deny that. She loved the adrenaline rush, the brutality, the pulse-pounding pace of it all. She loved being powerful, a nanocarbon calamity tearing through its enemies in a flurry of claws and teeth. The constant rumbling of titanic footfall and artillery fire, the crunch of another rig in her jaws, the suffocating heat of the monster whose heart she sat in. These were the things Kara lived for. She trembled with excitement every time Handler sent her out on an assignment, nearly fainting whenever she climbed into the cockpit. She could never get enough.

It was precisely because Kara couldn’t get enough, however, that this battle felt insufficient. That every battle felt insufficient.

She let the steel corpse of her latest victim fall from Voracity’s jagged maw and scanned the dusty chaos around her for another target. They were plentiful, of course—it took her half a second to determine that she’d be rushing down the poorly-positioned artillery frame to the southeast next—but she continued her searching far longer than necessary in hopes that she’d find a target that mattered. The only target that seemed to matter anymore.

Her.

Althea Sólyom and her Cobalt.

They were damn near all Kara could think about in the field these days. Her mind swam with images of them as her bestial mech barrelled towards the RAINMAKER that had yet to realize it was Voracity’s prey.

Cobalt was sleek, elegant despite its size. It arrived at each battlefield spotless, polished to perfection between each engagement so as to always appear indestructible. Its chassis painted in its nation’s blues and whites, armor wrought to appear as a knight of old. The shape and painted patterns of its form were customized, like every AEGIS-class, so that soldiers would know its identity with just a glance at its heraldry and helmet. Just as much a work of art as it was a weapon. A stark contrast to the mottled green six-legged thing in front of her. Dull. Unimaginative. Same as every other of its class. Basically scrap metal. There was nothing to ruin.

Hardly anything to fight, either. Voracity slammed into the RAINMAKER and its boxy abdomen flattened against the foundation of whatever ruined building they were fighting in the wreckage of. It’d noticed her charge too late and hadn’t had time to skitter out of the way. Now it was down two legs and half its crew complement as it tried to pull itself away from Voracity. No blow left Cobalt this damaged. That heavy machine brushed off most ordnance with ease, and the HELLHOUND-class Kara piloted was the only mech that had managed to meaningfully damage it in melee. That durability would mean nothing against Kara if it wasn’t piloted expertly. And it was. In all her months of deployment, it was only when Cobalt appeared that she ever felt evenly matched.

The frustration came to a boil within Kara as she pounced on the RAINMAKER desperately trying to aim its cannons at her. Metal screamed along with the flesh inside as Voracity tore it to shreds.

It wasn’t the same. No crew of half-trained soldiers thrown in a tank and told to shoot could offer her something fun. She needed a fight. She needed an opponent. Someone she could play with.

She needed Althea.

Kara made sure the RAINMAKER was fully destroyed—she was trained to be thorough, even when in the throes of desperation—and scrambled up a nearby mound of earth and rubble. She didn’t care if this would leave her open to enemy artillery. She needed to find her. Voracity stood up on its hind legs, its heat warping the air around it like a halo, and scanned the battlefield once more.

Enemy infantry attempting to pull back to the west, near where she had just come from. Three VALIANT-class rigs were approaching her from the south. A SCARAB had broken Imperial lines far to the east.

Nothing.

A sea of carnage. An entire battlefield of souls. She could have any one of them.

Nothing.

Thousands of bodies for Kara to sink Voracity’s chainsaw-lined teeth into. The metal around her thrums in tune with their heartbeat of heavy ordnance. Deafening.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing?

Kara suddenly heard nothing. No groan of metal around her. The ambient rumble of wartime was gone and all that remained was her thundering pulse and an unnatural silence. The noise cancellation in Voracity’s cockpit must have kicked in. That meant…

“Kara, dearest.” Handler’s soft voice came from all around, filling the cockpit and washing over Kara. She felt herself relax ever so slightly as she let out a ragged breath she’d been holding and her death grip on Voracity’s controls loosened.

“Sir.” Kara’s jaw was clenched tight enough that forming words was difficult. Handler’s presence was calming, but not nearly calming enough. “I…”

“You appear to be distracted,” Handler cooed. “I can help with that. Get down from that hill first; no need to draw all the enemy’s fire.”

“Yes, sir.”

Voracity lowered its frame to the ground and slinked down the rubble on all fours, ducking behind it instead of standing atop it begging to be fired upon. It was unnerving, operating this beast in complete silence. Almost impossible to do with Kara’s head as loud and chaotic as it was, swimming with the urge to play.

“Good girl,” came Handler’s voice again. Another wave of calm over Kara’s body, still woefully inadequate. “Now, dearest. Tell Handler what’s wrong.”

“It’s that girl,” Kara said, “It’s that girl. Cobalt. It’s not…”

She could feel the guilt now, mixing in with the desperation and the frustration. How could she get in such a state over something so inane? Wound up enough that Handler had to call her in the middle of combat? Because she missed her favored opponent? Shameful. Disgraceful. The thought made her nauseous. And yet she couldn’t push the desire away.

“I’m sorry, Sir.” Tears were flowing down Kara’s face. “She’s so… Nobody here is as fun as her! I want to have fun. I want to… I just… I need—”

“Stop.” Handler’s voice was harsh and piercing for that single word. Kara choked on the name beginning to form in her throat, coming to heel before the weight of Handler’s wrath. She was kind—so few Handlers would tolerate a hound as unwieldy as Kara—but Her kindness had to have limits, for Kara’s own good.

Kara squeezed her eyes shut and sniffled. “Yes, Sir.”

Handler’s voice returned to its usual softness. “I know you want to play with Althea, dearest. You two have so much fun together. But that’s not what you need. You couldn’t possibly know what you need. Isn’t that right, dearest?”

Kara hung her head, wracked with further shame. How could she have presumed to know something she needed that Handler did not? “Yes, Sir,” she said, her voice quieting enough to threaten disappearing completely.

“Fortunately for you,” Handler continued. “I always know what you need. Right now, you need focus. You need those pesky thoughts snuffed out so you can concentrate on your work. Don’t you agree, dearest?“

Kara perked up, nodding desperately. “Yes, Sir.”

Goddess, yes. She needed that so badly. She needed these thoughts to go away. The memory of their battles, the shape of that frame, the feeling of her claws clashing against Cobalt’s sword. The tattered poster she kept in her crate back at base, the flawless smiling face of that silver-haired pilot that she growled at before going to sleep. The urge to f—

“Good,” Handler said in a pointed, practiced tone. “Then show me your claws.”

Handler’s firm words crashing into her from all directions rattled every part of her. The emotions that had been so all-consuming just a moment ago fractured and dissolved as the shell of a psyche she’d been left with cascaded off of the emptiness within. The weapon they’d constructed in the hollowed-out cavity in her soul.

Kara fell away into oblivion.

That weapon felt the tension in its body dissipate as it came to the surface. A low growl filled the cabin as drool started to pour from the thing’s trembling lips. Its eyes darted between the viewscreens around it, searching its surroundings for prey.

This creature wasn’t any less desperate than Kara, really. It felt constantly, intensely desperate. It might have been a domesticated beast, but it was a beast all the same. Unlike Kara, its desperation was focused. Concentrated into the singular urge that had earned its mech its name.

“There you are, pet.” The beast in the pilot’s seat perked up at Handler’s voice, all its focus directed towards hearing every word She said. “Are you hungry?”

The hound unconsciously pawed at its muzzle in response. The steel cage was dripping with saliva. It shook with anticipation as its growling mixed with desperate pants and barks. Handler chuckled in approval. A lopsided smile spread across the weapon’s face as it braced for the command it knew would come next.

“Then feast.”

Sound returned to the world and Voracity broke into a frenzy.

It bolted towards the loudest thing the hound could hear. Arms fire on the other side of the hill. A few bounds and a leap from the top of the mound of rubble sent the canine mech crashing down on the three VALIANTs that’d been intercepted by a small company of Imperial forces. Voracity caught one of them underneath it as it slammed into the ground, flattening the stout thing along with one of its own Imperial allies. Voices screamed over open comms to get away as the hound shrieked and pounced on the closest thing that moved.

Pilots of rigs like these never got a chance to learn how to deal with a beast like Voracity. Searing-hot claws tore through armor built to withstand far less brutal weaponry. Both enemy pilots tried to backpedal in machines designed only to charge forward. Woefully impotent cannonfire glanced off Voracity’s jagged hull, left red-hot from the sheer amount of heat radiating off of the thing. Both mechs were piles of half-melted scrap metal within seconds.

Voracity’s head whipped around to face the seven fleeing Imperial mechs, the closest source of noise and movement. It turned to start charging as ordnance slots opened across its frame, but shuddered and stopped in its tracks as a jolt of electricity shot through its pilot.

“Not those.” Handler said firmly. “North. Entrenched infantry around forward artillery. Feast.”

The hound obliged with little more than a frustrated growl as it spun around and charged towards the indicated target. It followed the rumbling of the cannons firing on distant targets and before long it was at the overextended entrenchment. Mounted guns turned to face it, panicked bodies scrambling to do something about the building-sized beast they were suddenly face-to-face with.

But there was nothing they could do. Floodlights kicked on from the pointed, earlike protrusions on Voracity’s head, blinding everything organic around the emplacement before the machine tore through them. Gunfire sounded from all around, most shots going wide on account of dazzled operators of whatever meager firearm they came from. Voracity ran down everything that managed to aim true, the rest of the lives around them rent to strands of cloth and viscera as Voracity blitzed its way through their ranks.

The earth churned beneath Voracity’s feet, the beast rendering whatever terrain it touched unrecognizable. Its pilot lost itself in the carnage, a creature of instinct without thought. Its hunger for bloodshed was not as particular as its counterpart’s; it was content to gorge itself on its purpose as long as it was allowed. Anything that moved or made a sound or otherwise made itself at all perceptible to the hound would meet its end.

When all the meat in the entrenchment had been reduced to little more than moist rubble, Voracity set its sights on the three large cannons the infantry had been fruitlessly defending. It clamped down on one of the massive guns’ barrels and tugged repeatedly, eventually tearing the hollow length of steel from the mount it belonged to. With a flick of the head, it tossed the barrel aside and into the bloodsoaked trenches. Voracity repeated the process on the other two cannons before tearing off the plating covering the cannons’ inner workings. The artillery’s armor gone, the mech scampered off a bound or two before firing a volley of explosive shells at the ruined emplacement.

The guns went up in a ball of fire, but the hound didn’t hear the explosion, only its own rasping pants and growls as the cockpit’s noise cancellation kicked back in. It suppressed a howl—as much as it craved the rumblings of the world around it, it knew that the silence meant Handler needed something with it.

“I have a wonderful surprise for you, my pet,” Handler said over the comms, a smile audible in Her voice. Then, in that special tone, “Down, girl.”

The weapon’s body crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

Kara resurfaced, blood still pumping and adrenaline still surging from the rampage that’d taken place while she was out. She was drenched in sweat and saliva, and her throat was more sore than usual. Quiet panic took her, wired on a thrill she couldn’t have known she’d wake to.

“Handler?” Kara nervously called out into the silence of the cabin. She had to be here, She had to be the reason she—

“Kara, dearest!” Kara breathed a sigh of relief at Handler’s voice. Her tone was almost playful. “I have excellent news for you.”

Kara practically jumped up and down in the pilot’s seat. “What is it, Sir? What is it, Sir? Wh—” She bit her lip to keep herself from blabbering on—she needed to be silent to hear Her reply.

“Your favorite playmate is here.”

“WHAT?” Kara’s body surged forward on instinct, snapping against the restraints holding her in place. Voracity lurched as her hands spasmed with excitement. “COBALT? COBALT IS HERE? WHERE? CAN WE PLAY?”

Handler giggled, fueling Kara’s addled grin. “Of course you can play with Althea! She’s about a mile to the east. Go have your fun, dearest!”

Voracity was already in a full sprint before Handler was done talking. Kara knew she was supposed to wait until she got the order. She knew she was just a hound, that she didn’t get that kind of freedom. As kind as Handler was, she knew she’d be punished for this. But that didn’t matter. She just couldn’t help it.

Althea Sólyom was here. Cobalt was here. Kara salivated as she looked at the little blue ping Handler had placed on the map on the left of her cockpit, not paying attention at all to where or what Voracity was bounding through. She was finally going to get a real fight.

She was finally going to get to play.

As Voracity crested a hill, Kara saw it. There, in the distance, zoomed in so that she could see it in full detail despite it being a half-mile away. No longer a dot on a map, but an image on her main viewscreen. She tore up her throat with an inhuman squeal and pushed herself as far towards her screen as she could, the canvas straps holding her to the pilot’s seat digging painfully into her shoulders. She pushed the physical controls as far forward as she could, completely ignorant that Voracity was already at full tilt, metal frame screeching and steam trailing from its open maw as Kara pushed it to the brink of overheating. Her intimate knowledge of the weapon she wielded had left her along with the drool pouring from her mouth. Everything had been replaced with hunger for the machine she was barrelling towards.

Cobalt danced, completely untarnished, through a graveyard of standard-issue Imperial rigs, streaks of light trailing behind its sword and shield. The last three BUCKLERs still standing were scrambling to keep away from it, but the rebel machine was far too nimble despite being easily three times their size. It closed the distance between it and the furthest Imperial with a single bound, propelled by the spiked wings on its back, and the thing was in two pieces with little more than a flash of electric-blue light and a single swipe of Cobalt’s sword. The second Imperial rushed it from behind, interpreting the strike as an overextension that exposed its weaker back, but was sent spinning out of control by a blow from Cobalt’s shield. As Cobalt darted over to finish the machine off, it tossed its shield aside and the armament split into three glowing shards that soared towards the third Imperial and pierced straight through its armor as it tried to aim its weapon.

Kara cackled and howled as she watched her comrades fall. The distance between her and that titan could not close fast enough. Cobalt was a powerful machine. Althea was as skilled a pilot as she’d ever met. Kara couldn’t wait.

Standing over the glowing corpses of its dispatched foes, Cobalt turned to face the charging Voracity. Barely a scratch spoiled its gleaming frame. The glow of its vibrant blue halo backlit a pointed, stylized helmet. All armor, no windshields and no exposed joints. No visible wiring, no fragile kinks, no weaknesses as far as anyone could see. Three streaks of light converged on its arm as the shards of its shield reformed. It was a thing out of a fairy tale.

Its wings spread out behind it, wingspan longer than it was tall, and raised its sword in Voracity’s direction. A challenge. Althea Sólyom was the honorable type, something Kara couldn’t understand and didn’t care to. The proposition of a duel meant nothing in terms of Kara’s behavior—there was nothing anyone could do to stop her from fighting Cobalt, duel or no—but it did get her going. It was a piece of that honor she wanted to rip to shreds. The pose Cobalt struck, poised and confident, as much to inspire as it was to intimidate, was something she couldn’t help but want to ruin. And the thought of the elegant girl in that cockpit, guided by the light of virtue in her heart, seeing the beast that is Voracity and deciding to challenge it to a duel within the confines of her honor? That thought made Kara ravenous.

The duel also meant that she had Althea’s full attention. That she had Cobalt all to herself.

So Kara responded in kind as she always did. Voracity howled, a horrid metal screeching that’d be heard for miles. It rattled the entire machine and every bone in Kara’s body. Her nose bled and her ears rang but her maniacal laughter reached a crescendo as Cobalt surged forward to meet her.

Kara braced herself for their two machines to collide head-on, but Cobalt darted to the side in the final moments before they did, propelled by the azure wings on its back. Voracity tried to lunge after it but was met with the blunt-force impact of Cobalt’s shield slamming into its face. The beast spun out, jostling Kara in her cockpit with a stupid grin on her face. She was used to Althea outplaying her in their first exchange and she never cared that she did, because in those first moments she had only one goal: to make that first ugly gash on Cobalt’s perfect body.

And there it was, a jagged claw mark across its right shin. Kara shrieked and howled as the two charged each other again.

A fight with Cobalt was so different from a fight with any other mech Kara had encountered on the battlefield that it seemed downright improper to call the latter a fight. There was always the odd rebel machine that offered up some sort of resistance, but nothing that posed a real threat. What Voracity got sent out to do was slaughter. It was a one-sided massacre with a breathing, barking heart.

With Cobalt, Kara got to relish the taste of a real battle, the back-and-forth struggle of two pilots matched in skill, will, and machine. The two weapons danced around each other in a flurry of metal and nanocarbon, Cobalt propelled by thrusters and inscrutable technological marvels and Voracity possessed by the spirit of animalistic frenzy that Handler had beaten into its pilot’s seat. Nothing life could offer Kara came close to bringing her the fulfillment that she felt in moments like these, not even the rush of pleasing Handler—though Kara’s guilty heart would never admit such a traitorous truth. It wasn’t that she loved Cobalt more than Her. Definitely not. There was just something in this experience that nobody else could give her.

The pinnacle of human spirit and the peak of bestial rage, locked in a duel no mere mortal could hope to approach.

This is what playing was.

Voracity dodged out of the way of a swing of Cobalt’s sword, managing to get the blade to glance off its shoulder plating instead of cleaving through its front leg. Just as Althea treated Voracity’s chainsaw-filled maw with caution, keeping the thing as far away from her machine as possible, Kara gave Cobalt’s sword more respect than any other armament on the battlefield. While the thing didn’t cut through her armor effortlessly, she’d carelessly lost limbs to it enough times to know that it was not a thing to be treated lightly. Keeping the glowing blue edges of that blade away from Voracity was Kara’s second-highest priority.

The highest priority was eliminating the soaring shards of Cobalt’s shield. As Cobalt boosted backwards away from Voracity, weaving between the corpses of ruined buildings and mechs, the three fragments of the AEGIS-class’s namesake tirelessly sliced at the pursuing machine’s armor. Kara—and her superiors—had no idea how they worked, but she knew they were dangerous. Each hit the things landed was on its own negligible, but Kara had been forced to learn while fighting Cobalt that small amounts of damage add up over time and small gashes became big ones if you paid them no mind. In every engagement that she got close to defeating Cobalt, the difference had been the absence of these floating shield-bits.

Kara locked onto Cobalt with her mech’s rudimentary targeting systems and ordnance slots on her right shoulder slid open, but in a split second snapped shut as she dropped the target lock and a shield-shard glanced off of Voracity’s plating. That was Althea’s favorite way to use these bizarre weapons of hers: jamming them into the openings in Voracity’s armor just as it was about to fire, trapping the missiles so that they’d explode inside the mech. It was the most reliable way to get through the beast’s tough hide—just bypass it completely.

That also made it the most reliable way for Kara to eliminate the shield-shards. As their battle tore through the streets of whatever ruined city they fought in, Cobalt alternating between standing its ground to exchange a few blows and boosting away from Voracity to force it to pursue, Kara continuously fired staggered volleys of explosive rounds at her opponent. She cancelled more target locks than she allowed to go through, keeping Althea on her toes as to which openings were opportunities, which were bait, and which were bait.

Eventually the perfect opportunity arose. A shield-shard zipped from Kara’s right to an open ordnance slot on her left and Voracity’s jaws were in just the right position to lunge for and slam shut over the bit of metal and streaking light. Voracity clamped its mouth shut tightly, giving the thing no room to weasel its way out of its chainsaw-filled maw. The lights across Cobalt’s body flickered and the other shield-shards faltered in their flight paths as the third was torn to scrap metal. Kara liked to take that as a sign that destroying these shards hurt Althea. The thought made her giddy as she opened Voracity’s maw and let metal shavings and glowing blue liquid fall out of it.

Cobalt skidded to a stop in what must have been a park, once, before the sky split open with hellfire and desert reclaimed the city. Two-thirds of its shield converged on its arm as did so. Althea would be using her strange shield more conservatively now, Kara knew—two of the shards would be far less overwhelming than three, and easier for Kara to intercept and destroy.

Kara took a second to look over the damage Voracity had sustained thus far. Slices on its shoulders that threatened to become serious armor breaches if she wasn’t careful. Several ordnance slots along its spine had been dented shut as she used them to bait out Cobalt’s shield-shards. A claw on its right foot had been severed. Other than that, just scorch marks and superficial scratches. Kara grinned. She was doing fantastic.

Across the park, Cobalt fell into a defensive stance that Kara hadn’t seen before. Her confidence faltered, but her grin widened and excitement burned in her chest. She loved it when Althea came with new tricks. It kept their battles exciting. Kept them fun.

The two mechs launched themselves at each other once more. Their dance now largely contained to the single city block Cobalt had elected to make its stand in, only leaving the arbitrary boundary whenever a particularly powerful blow sent one of them crashing into the side of a ruin before rushing back in to retaliate. Kara pushed Voracity to be as close to Cobalt as possible as often as possible while Althea’s machine constantly sidestepped, trying to keep the rabid beast at an arm’s length to make its sword as lethal as possible.

Every so often, Kara overextended herself enough that Cobalt’s shield split into its two remaining shards to soar around to Voracity’s exposed flank. The act itself was nothing new, but Kara was again struck by this new stance that Cobalt had fallen into—it seemed to favor baiting out these overcommitments and thus the opportunities for Althea to punish her with its shield. She didn’t seem to be focusing anywhere in particular, though, just denting more ordnance slots closed and putting more gashes along Voracity’s jagged hull. What was she up to?

Even if Kara didn’t know exactly what Althea’s plan with this new tactic was, she did know she was going to take advantage of it however she could. She lunged forward in a feint, and as Cobalt’s shield-shards zipped around her mech she shifted Voracity’s momentum to guide its mouth next to Cobalt’s shield arm. Cobalt’s posture shifted slightly, and Kara giggled as she knew she got Althea. The other pilot seemingly panicked, and as she tried to recall her bizarre weaponry Voracity snatched up one of the remaining shards in its jaws.

But as Voracity bit down on the shard, Cobalt did something that Kara did not expect: it caught the final fragment of its shield in its hand, not its forearm, and crushed it. The shimmering white armor that made up the armament shattered to reveal something shaped like a knife—or maybe a syringe?—at its core. With the bestial mech still reigning in the momentum of its lunge and its mouth distracted with the multiple-seconds process of destroying the shield-shard it had captured, there was nothing Kara could do prevent Cobalt from jamming the strange device right into its neck. Voracity writhed, trying to shake Cobalt off of it, but the humanoid machine was determined to keep whatever device it had stabbed its opponent with in there.

Kara could see error messages popping up on her viewscreens, flashing blue instead of her OS’s usual Imperial red. Something was deeply wrong, something to do with that knife-syringe thing, and she needed to make sure that she got more out of this exchange if her mech was going to get messed up like this.

Voracity squirmed onto its side, causing Cobalt to maneuver awkwardly along with it, into just the right position for Kara to jam a clawed hand directly into its exposed midsection. The blow caught a superficial scratch from earlier in their engagement—as close to a chink as Cobalt’s armor had—and Voracity’s claws made purchase enough for Kara to rend a piece of white and blue plating clean off of the mech and expose the dark steel frame underneath.

As Kara tried to follow up with a killing blow, however, she found Voracity unresponsive to her command to jab its claw into the chink she’d made. She slammed the control stick forward again and again, but the beast did not move an inch. She tried opening and closing its mouth. She tried firing ordnance. No response from Voracity.

Kara tried to remain calm. Cobalt must have injected her mech with some kind of computer virus that stopped it from responding to manual inputs. With a program that strong, though, why hadn’t it turned off her viewscreens, so she couldn’t see what was happening? Or the cooling systems, so that she’d boil alive in her cockpit? The goal of this maneuver had to be something other than simple victory, otherwise—

“Hello?” A woman’s voice came crackling unbidden over Voracity’s comms. “Are you in there?”

Kara held her tongue. This voice was soft and pretty, but it wasn’t Handler. It didn’t carry the same certainty and was definitely many years younger. Kara wasn’t to respond to anyone other than Handler unless she had permission to do so.

That restriction was all but discarded when a video feed flickered to life in the corner of Kara’s viewscreen. Flowing silver hair framed a pale face with piercing blue eyes and gentle features. A network of tubes converged on her back from various spots in the cockpit. Glowing electric blue lines crawled up her features along veins, coming from somewhere below her neck and under the plugsuit that matched the colors of her mech.

“ALTHEA!?” Kara squealed, wiggling Voracity’s control sticks excitedly. “ALTHEA HI!”

“I—” Althea started, blinking incredulously. “Hi? Um, who are you? Why—?”

“I’m Kara!” She bit her lip and her hands shot to her muzzle. “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to say that. I’m not supposed to talk to people unless Handler tells me to. She told me I could play with you, though. I think that counts? I hope that counts…” Kara shuddered, but her smile didn’t fade. “I just missed you so much!!”

“Handler…?” Althea looked so confused it made Kara giggle. “Wait, what? You missed me? We’ve been trying to kill each other for months, what do you mean you missed me?”

“I mean I missed you, obviously,” Kara said. “I’m always so excited when I get to fight you! You and Cobalt are so much more fun than all the other rebels.”

“We’re not rebels, we’re Sol Union soldiers,” Althea spat. “And this isn’t supposed to be fun.” It stung, for some reason, to hear Althea snap like that.

“But it is fun!” Kara assured her. “It’s so fun to fight you. You’re so strong and quick and Cobalt is soooo pretty! I just love to get it all beat up.” She beamed at the other pilot. “You’re just my favorite playmate!”

Althea’s face curled in disgust. “Playmate? What the fuck is—”

“Can we keep fighting?” Kara interrupted, wiggling Voracity’s controls in an effort to make the beast move again. When that still yielded no results, she started trying other buttons and switches around the cockpit. “I was having so much fun! We can keep talking while we fight if you want.” She paused as she bit her lip sheepishly. “I think we can. I’m not supposed to make friends with rebels. Handler will be mad at me if we become friends. I don’t want to make Her any more angry… I’m already going to get punished for not waiting for orders earlier. I just got so excited to play with you! We can talk and play and not be friends, right?”

“Handler? The fuck do you mean…” Althea’s disgust faded into horror. Cobalt took a step back from Voracity. “Oh gods. Handler. The collar… Your muzzle… The captain was right. Fuck, what did they do to you?”

“I don’t like your computer virus,” Kara said, an edge of frustration in her voice. Althea kept acting strange, saying weird things and not understanding things that made sense. Kara really wished she’d stop and just let them get back to playing. “It’s not very fun. You’re not being very fun, Althea.”

“This isn’t fun, Kara,” Althea said, a sense of urgency in her voice all of a sudden. “This is wrong. The Empire is wrong. What they’re doing to you is wrong!”

“You’re being weird!”

Kara flipped a series of switches and a large, ominous lever and all the screens around her shut off. Turning Voracity off and back on again was a simple solution, and one that she was only half-expecting to work, but it was the only thing she could think of at the moment. After waiting three seconds—she didn’t want to push it, and with the mech off the heat would quickly become completely unbearable—she pushed the lever back upwards to start Voracity’s quick boot process. The startup sequence included a purge of most alien code, specifically designed to root out bugs but occasionally capable of snuffing out a virus.

Kara’s viewscreens came back on within a few split seconds to reveal Cobalt, sword cast aside, scrambling to pin Voracity down. She took the opportunity provided by the other pilot putting herself in a desperate situation to test if her solution had worked. Voracity’s canid head shot forward, front paws gripping its opponent’s shoulders, and took the base of Cobalt’s left wing in its maw. With the intense heat of her bestial mech and as much horizontal force as it could muster, Kara tore the appendage clean off of the other machine’s back.

A scream rang out over Kara’s comms. While she had control of Voracity again, the video feed of Althea in her cockpit flickering to life made it clear that not every effect of the virus had been purged from its systems. One of the tubes behind Althea had burst, a glowing blue substance coating her shoulder and much of the cockpit wall behind her as Cobalt stumbled backwards. The mech itself bled coolant and fuel as it tried to regain its balance with a severely offset center of mass.

Voracity tossed the clipped metal wing aside and charged. It leapt to bite into the disoriented mech again as it continued to fumble with its own weight, but Cobalt leaned into the momentum of its imminent fall to deliver a hundreds-ton blow to Voracity’s face. It was sent crashing into the ground with a nasty dent in its head just before reaching its prey, but the canid machine was already scrambling to its feet.

“Fuck!” Althea’s eyes were bloodshot, and the glow of her veins covered far more of her face than they had before, creeping closer and closer to her eyes. “Do you even know what you’re doing? What you’re fighting for?”

Kara slammed a mechanical paw atop Cobalt’s sword as it reached for the thing mid-stumble. The humanoid machine fell to its knees as a result of the failed maneuver, and Kara took the opportunity to shatter the blade with tooth and claw.

“Of course I know, silly,” Kara said, struggling to maintain her air of mirth. She was trying to have fun; why was Althea so upset? “I’m doing as I’m told, fighting the rebels for Handler!”

Cobalt interrupted another bite from Voracity by catching its jaws, titanic arms straining just to keep its mouth from closing. “Who the fuck is this ‘handler?’ Why does she matter so much to you?”

“She’s Handler!” Kara sneered. She’d have cursed if it hadn’t been beaten out of her. She tried to regain her composure—Althea just needed her to explain. She could explain! “She’s everything. Handler is what gives me purpose. Without Her I’m just a mutt, but She took me as Her hound, and now I’m something useful!”

Still holding Voracity’s jaws, Cobalt shifted its weight, dragging the other mech out of its position dug into the dry earth. Cobalt spun, lifting Voracity off the ground before hurling it at the wall of a ruined skyscraper. The beast’s mouth snapped shut with a crunch and a plume of dust billowed around where it crashed through the obliterated building. Cobalt collapsed to the ground once again, landing on its hands and knees. Kara could barely see the other mech through the dust and debris and Voracity’s fritzing viewscreens while the blood rushed to her head in her upside-down cockpit.

“You aren’t nothing without that handler!” Cobalt’s hand went to the base of its remaining wing, and Althea’s brow furrowed as she braced herself. “You’re a skilled pilot! You’re brave! You’re… You don’t need someone else to give you purpose!”

Althea grit her teeth and let out an agonized scream as her mech ripped its right wing off of its chassis. As Voracity righted itself and prepared to charge, Cobalt fell into a wide stance, holding the wing in both hands like an oversized greatsword off to one side. Not a challenge but a promise of retaliation.

“You make your own purpose!” Althea shouted, eyes alight with determination.

“You don’t understand,” Kara lamented. She began to doubt if Althea could understand. Was she dumb? “I’m a weapon. Without a wielder I’m just scrap. Handler’s strong hand makes me more than that.” The practiced words came out effortlessly, the most fundamental truth of Kara’s existence. Surely this would—

“You’re not just a weapon, Kara. You’re a person, just like everyone else in this war!”

“No… I’m not… You don’t…” Kara fumbled with her words, at a loss for what to say. How did you convince someone of the truth when they refuse to see it entirely? She shook her head as she realized Voracity had been still for over ten seconds at this point. This argument was distracting her. Kara shoved whatever thought she was trying to form out of her mind and charged.

The boosters on Cobalt’s wing roared to life, scorching a line of glass into the sand underfoot, but Voracity moved into a low slide just as the wing swung overhead, rattling both machines. Its claws caught Cobalt’s shin and it stumbled, bringing the mech crashing down to one knee.

Voracity scrambled to regain its footing just as Kara saw a flash of blue and her entire mech buckled under the weight of a devastating impact. Sparks flew inside her cockpit and a viewscreen to her left flickered out. She’d dodged the initial attack, but Althea had carried the momentum through and hit her on the backswing. Kara could feel Voracity starting to resist her movements after that blow, servos straining through their damage and coolant struggling to keep the thing on the edge of overheating. Voracity lifted its head to see Cobalt cast aside the now-tattered wing as the two mechs fought to simply right themselves.

“I do understand,” Althea insisted. Her eyes shifted in and out of focus, either from blood loss, pain, less of whatever chemicals her mech pumped into her, or some combination of the three. They glowed a sickly blue as the subcutaneous markings had reached them. “The Empire hates freedom so intensely it can scarcely allow it to exist even within its soldiers’ minds. It knows absolute power is unnatural, that it cannot coexist with freedom, so it strips all freedom away even from those who fight most desperately to serve it.”

“Can you stop talking?” Kara pleaded, an edge of panic creeping into her voice. She couldn’t fight like this, with her attention divided and her mech beginning to fail. “Can we just fight? I don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re confusing me.”

Voracity lunged at Cobalt and the two of them tumbled to the dusty desert ground together, their dance of death reduced to a thrashing grapple amidst a meaningless ruin rendered unrecognizable by their struggle. Voracity bit and clawed at Cobalt as the other mech threw it around, slamming it into the earth whenever it could. It was a tangle of metal and nanocarbon and heat and fuel and fire and fundamental inability to understand. Kara’s head throbbed and bled from getting slammed around in her cockpit.

“You’re confused because you can feel that I’m right!” Althea sounded so confident, even as her neck ran red with the blood of the untruths she spat. A bubbling fear rose in Kara’s throat. “Your Empire has betrayed you! Kara—the real Kara—is somewhere in there, beneath all that Imperial programming!”

“Handler!” Kara looked frantically around her cockpit. She didn’t know what to do. Althea was scaring her, confusing her, filling her head with thoughts that didn’t make sense. Handler could fix this. Where was Handler? She should have called her, given an order, known what to do. Handler always knew what Kara should do. Why hadn’t she heard from Her? “Handler, please! Where are you?” Kara cried, not bothering to mask the fear in her voice.

Cobalt managed to secure its position over Voracity, straddling it with its legs and using both arms to hold down the beast’s jaw and one of its paws. Voracity scratched at the other mech with its free claw, but its range of motion was limited and there wasn’t enough force behind each rake to cause any meaningful damage.

“You don’t need that person,” Althea said, her voice so sweet despite the horrible words it carried. “They don’t need to control you. I can take you back to Sol Union territory. I can find someone to undo your conditioning. You can be free, I promise! Just come with me! I can save—”

“SHUT UP!!!” Kara shrieked, slamming a control stick forward and sending Voracity’s free claw shooting straight upwards into Cobalt’s torso.

A satisfying CRUNCH reverberated through the two mechs. Kara felt her machine’s paw plunge through the gash she’d made earlier. On her viewscreen, Althea lurched and coughed up blood. One of Voracity’s immense claws was plunged into the cockpit wall next to her head. Another pierced through her chest.

The pilot took a shuddering breath, her eyes full of terror and leaking electric blue essence.

“Like fire— Ghhkn—”

Althea’s eyes burnt out. Her head slumped. Cobalt’s blue glow faded and her video feed flickered off.

Kara was left in silence.

“Althea?” she called out, uncertain. “Althea, are you there?”

The thing atop Voracity offered no reply. Kara unsheathed its blood-soaked claw from Cobalt and pushed the thing off of her mech. The other machine crashed to the ground beside her. Voracity slowly rolled over onto its feet, peering down at its greatest rival.

Just a metal corpse.

“I won…” Kara murmured. Her face broke out into a giddy smile, and the hesitance in her voice gave way to elation as she began to cackle. Voracity jumped side to side in her excitement as she jumped up and down in her cockpit to mirror it.

“I WON!!!” she cried. “I DID IT, ALTHEA!!! I FINALLY BEAT YOU!!!”

Kara ran Voracity in playful circles around Cobalt’s lifeless chassis. It had been months of deployments where they’d met on the battlefield, nearly twenty duels that Althea had challenged her to. Each one had ended with orders to retreat, a desperate rescue of the losing mech by its allies, or some sort of draw. Now, finally, victory had been decisive. There was a clear winner, and it was Kara.

In her excitement, Kara took Cobalt in her jaws and shook it wildly, titanic limbs flailing as Voracity thrashed. She cackled in the cockpit as she wiggled her control sticks. Voracity’s grip on its plaything slipped after a few seconds, and the mech went flying a short distance, crashing into the ground as a jumbled mess of tarnished metal.

Kara squealed, letting go of the mech’s controls to flap her hands. “I GOT YOU! I GOT YOU! I GOT YOU!” And there was nothing Althea could do! It was so fun!

Voracity’s segmented tail wagged as the beast slowed down to inspect the wreck, Kara drinking in every bit of visual data the lines of cameras along her mech’s head could give her. She’d never seen Cobalt so still up close—it was usually a blur of hull and sword or far enough away that she couldn’t inspect it too closely. This perspective on her favored playmate was so novel. So… invigorating.

So intoxicating.

Kara reached for the downed mech, gripping one of its arms in her claws. Cobalt was beautiful like this. She’d spent so long relishing the violent dance she and Althea did together, the energizing majesty of that brilliant machine in motion, but she’d never seen this aspect of its allure. Here in this demolished park, perfectly still and serene, covered in scratches and blemishes Kara had inflicted, Cobalt was truly gorgeous.

Voracity’s grasp on Cobalt’s arm slowly tightened. Kara watched the white metal fold and collapse on itself, listening intently to the muted groan it made. She’d never seen this so closely, been able to so intimately give Cobalt’s injuries this much attention. There was always the constant movement of both their mechs obscuring the display and the noise of them exchanging blows drowning out the crunch. Now, with Cobalt finally stilled, she could fully appreciate hurting this beautiful machine, properly relish its ruination.

Kara giggled to herself. Was Althea more fun dead?

She glanced down at Cobalt’s midsection, where her claws had pierced through its armor and claimed Althea’s life. The wound bled. Glowing blue liquid interspersed with pockets of crimson essence trickled down from the breach, further staining the hull and mixing into the sand beneath the dead machine.

That was it. The wound that made Kara win. Her ultimate victory over Althea, the final triumph of their endless duels. She found herself mesmerized by the incision, Voracity’s front paw moving to trace its edges without her even thinking about it. It was with almost a reverence that Kara slid Voracity’s clawed thumb into the wound, entering that sacred place where victory was forged.

Staring at Cobalt’s fatal injury while defiling it with her touch, Kara finally noticed the deepening of her breath and the growing heat between her legs.

The profound desire she felt for this machine hadn’t faded with its death—that much was clear from how much fun the corpse was to play with—but it had… shifted? Kara looked Cobalt up and down, taking in each contour, each angle, each blemish that she had inflicted. The elegant beauty she had ruined. That same hunger gnawed at her. No, maybe this wasn’t new. Maybe it wasn’t hunger at all.

Kara grabbed onto Cobalt, holding its waist with its claw still shoved in the gaping hole in the thing’s cockpit. Voracity, already atop the wreck, lowered its haunches until it was pressing the two machines’ groins together. After a few panting breaths and only half a thought for whether or not Handler would approve, Kara started Voracity moving.

A horrible screeching reverberated through the machine, vibrating both hull and pilot with each movement of Voracity’s hips. Meat and metal rattled within the machines alongside the rock and ruin surrounding them. Claws dug into plating, giving the canid thing purchase on its prize. White and blue paint scraped and melted off Cobalt’s armor, ground into vapor by the simmering beast atop it.

Kara’s own panting heat mirrored the steaming aura of the mechanical hound she sat in the core of. Her eyes were fixated on the wreck on her viewscreens with uncontrolled lust, her pulsing arousal pushing against and leaking through the black flight suit she wore under her loose-fitting beige uniform. Sweat dripped down her brown skin, her clothes and terracotta hair already damp with the stuff. She moved the mech’s control sticks in a simple cycle, mechanically, completely entranced as though Handler had dropped her Herself.

The tubes connecting Kara to the mech she piloted did little more than provide her with combat stimulants and read her vitals, but despite the lack of a neural-link the hound always thought she could feel Voracity. She could hear any sound in the thing’s hull and know where it was and what caused it, same as she could tell when something touched her body and where. Controlling it did not involve her thinking about the specifics of which buttons she pressed and how she moved the control sticks, same as she didn’t think of each individual joint’s operation when she decided to walk forward.

Thus, Kara felt Cobalt.

Kara felt Cobalt the same as if she were inhabiting every nanoangstrom of Voracity’s hull. She felt Cobalt the same as if it were her meat rutting against its ruined corpse and not the steel and nanocarbon of the mech. Each needy thrust against the wreck vibrated her seat and gave her some small amount of physical pleasure, but it was more than that. Voracity was her body.

She was fucking Cobalt the same as if she crawled into its cockpit and had her way with the organic cadaver at its heart.

Kara moaned her inanimate mate’s name between her panting, months of desire spilling out through desperate words.

“Cobalt… Cobalt… Cobal—”

The pinging of gunfire against her shoulder cut through the lustful haze of Kara’s rut. She swung Voracity’s head around with a growl to see whatever vermin had the gall to interrupt her claiming of her hard-earned prize.

Three VALIANTs were advancing, semi-automatic firearms pelting her with slugs as they did. They must have seen the terrifying Imperial attack dog distracted and their resplendent champion in need of rescuing and thought themselves heroes.

Kara didn’t care who they were or what they thought they were doing. The last of her ordnance slots slammed open and rained all the hellfire she could down on them. The VALIANT in front was reduced to slag almost instantly, the other two stumbling away from their fallen comrade as they lost their balance from the sudden shockwave.

Then Voracity howled, that same awful noise that pierced the entirety of a battlefield with just one pull of a lever. It screeched at those insignificant things with the all intensity it fought Cobalt with as Kara in its cockpit ran her throat ragged with her own feral shriek.

It got the point across. Something deep inside the meat at those rigs’ cores recognized that horrid sound, instinctively knelt to its authority. Even “civilized” beasts knew what an apex predator was. Even hopeless rebels could understand when you were not to disturb something that could kill you with barely more than a thought for disturbing it having its way with a prize. The VALIANTs turned and ran without needing any more warnings.

Kara turned back to Cobalt, the perpetrators of her momentary distraction already pushed out of her mind by the all-consuming desire driving Voracity’s hips. They had been a nuisance, nothing more—there wasn’t a mortal in the galaxy that could come between Kara and Cobalt. The only one that’d been able to keep her at arm’s length from it was Althea, but she laid lifeless in the battered metal fucktoy that Voracity continued to grind on.

Cobalt was Kara’s. It belonged to her as much as anything could belong to anyone. She’d wrestled it into the ground, asserted her will over it, plucked out its soul so that it could do nothing but be hers to ravage. Their duels had been to the death. Winner takes all, on a battlefield like this, and Kara was taking what she’d won.

Kara pressed Voracity’s body against Cobalt, feeling all its angled ridges against her hull, and took its head in her maw. It felt so good, grabbing her toy like that. It was so undeniably hers, held in her steel jaws. The sheer ownership of it all gave her a rush as vivid as playing with Althea had.

Chainsaws roared to life in her jaws and tore into Cobalt’s helmet as her grinding became more desperate. Cobalt was hers. It was hers and no one else’s. Not the rebellion’s, not Althea’s, not anyone’s but hers.

Hers to ravage.

Cobalt’s hips warped and melted under the heat and friction of Voracity’s lust.

Hers to ruin.

Its helmet caved in under the roiling pressure of Kara’s jaws.

Hers to play with.

Kara felt herself approaching climax with every vibration in her hull, every shriek of grinding metal. Every inch of her body and hull burned with desire for the corpse in her jaws and she was so close to—

Everything went silent.

In the throes of her lust, Kara slowed, reigned in by the reliable familiarity of her conditioning. She blinked unfocused eyes, raised her head to listen with ears thundering with her own pulse.

“Han— Handler,” she moaned into the cockpit.

“Kara!” Handler’s voice washed over Kara, as sweet as the metal groaning that Voracity’s cockpit was blocking out. “We finally reached you! How are you, dearest?”

“Good, Sir!” Kara found the composure, somehow, to stop her grinding now that she couldn’t hear the sound and Handler’s voice was there to listen to. A drunken smile spread across her face. “I got Cobalt, Sir! I finally beat Althea, did you see? Cobalt is mine now!”

Handler laughed over the comms, a pleasant sound that was as affectionate as it was condescending. “I saw, dearest. You’re having so much fun with your new toy, aren’t you?”

Kara giggled and subconsciously wagged Voracity’s tail. “Yes, Sir!”

“Althea was quite strong,” Handler said. “But you pulled through, like I knew you would. I’m proud of you, dearest.”

“THANK YOU, SIR!” Kara squealed, her heart soaring at the praise. “I mean, um. Thank you, Sir.”

“Tell me, dearest,” Handler continued, ignoring Kara’s excited outburst. “We lost contact with you for a few minutes there. Did you speak with Althea in that time?”

Kara looked down bashfully. “Yes, Sir. She gave Voracity some sort of virus, and it let us talk to each other. I know I’m not supposed to… But you said I could play with Althea, so I talked with her a bit.”

“I see.”

“We didn’t become friends, though!” Kara reassured Her, suddenly terrified that she’d made the wrong assumption. “She said so many confusing things, about how what I was doing was wrong, about me being a person. She even said you didn’t matter…” Kara shuddered at the memory.

“That sounds quite distressing,” Handler said gently. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, dearest. We’ll make you forget all about that little conversation when you get back to base, how about that?”

Kara felt the tension in her body dissipate at the promise of forgetting all those strange, scary ideas. “Yes, Sir!”

“Good girl. Now come along, it’s time to head back.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Voracity began to slink off from the park it had destroyed, but turned to look back at Cobalt when it had made it about half a block away from where Kara had left it. It was in shambles, now, a tattered metal frame in the vague shape of a person. Scratched and scuffed all over. Pelvis ground beyond recognition. Head all but destroyed. But Kara still felt that allure. She wasn’t done with it.

Kara must have been whining as she gazed at it, because Handler, in Her immeasurable kindness, noticed her yearning.

“You can bring your new toy, dearest.”

“THANK YOU, SIR!”

Voracity scooped up the wreck before bounding off towards home with Cobalt limp in its jaws.