Lets move forward.
Slowly. Inexorably. My own mood is bleeding through. But lets go.
--------
It took Jet far longer than she expected to open the green infirmary fire-door. She knew she’d slept. She still felt like she’d been awake for days. Her mind drifted in a sort of fuge, the muse revealing the information it’d learned in her absence.
Acute radiation syndrome. Known cases. Hisashi Ouichi. Lived for 83 days. He wished he didn’t. It made her look at the image of a human body, rotting alive down to it’s bones, one leg already reduced to a stump, screaming soundlessly as it hung from a cradle.
After a breath to work up the courage, she pushed the door open.
In the centre of a sterile, white-painted room, a man lay in a hospital bed under a clean, white sheet, cables and driplines tying him to a dozen humming machines, isolated from the rest of the room by a plastic curtain. Dinsinfectant stung at the inside of her nostrils, a hollow roar from the ventilators above pulling cold air up the back of her neck.
Overhead lights sizzling blue with ultraviolet, banishings all shadows from the room.
The door locked shut behind her with a metallic click. She stopped after a few steps, aware that she carried the dirt of the station on her armour. He turned his head to look at her. Still with short-cut, black hair. Still with the same Italian summer tan. Still with clear, hazelnut eyes and a strong roman nose. He could be called handsome, even attractive if Jet had thought that way.
Apparently unharmed, but already terminal. His body’s own defence mechanisms had already begun to rot him alive from the inside out.
“Marco,” she said.
Marco managed a weak smile. “Stopped getting sick.”
Jet stiffened her lip. “Seventeen hundred. There’s nothing medical we can do,” she said. Better to be straight out about it.
He shifted in bed, working has hands under the sheets. He turned away, drawing a slow breath.
“Larissa told me. If I’m lucky I shit myself to death in a week – otherwise, a few weeks after that. Wave, biotech, nothing works on this much radiation.”
His feet shuffled under the woollen bedsheet. His head rolled to one side, eyes focusing on the glass window, and the absolute darkness beyond.
Jet stood, trying to place himself into his shoes. How would she feel. Afraid? Resigned? Angry? Her finger tapped on the metal of her hip. She crossed her arms to keep herself from doing it.
She’d come to ask him one question.
“Why’d you come here?”
That wasn’t it. But it filled the silence.
“Because I went to fix a radiation sensor and didn’t bring a Geiger counter,”
His voice had a hard edge to it, stiffened by regret. His gaze turned back to her. Blaming me, Jet wondered.
“To Frigga,” Jet said, her softening. “To Space,”
He took another slow breath, rolling his head back to the window.
“I wanted to look out at the stars rather than look up at them,”
Jet felt herself exhale slowly, her breath tickling on her lips. A faint smile. It proved this was the right thing to do.
“There’s one more option,” she said. “But it’s tough.”
His mouth opened.
“I could call in a scramble nine.”
“Scramble nine?” he repeated back to her.
“Emergency medical cybernetics - the Panzer Kunst will cover the cost . In return, you sign up for the Gruppe,”
Hope? Confusion? His eyes tracked across her body, from her feet, across her chest and right up to her eyes.
Is that what you’re going to do to me?
“Whatever needs to be done to save your life,” she confirmed for him. Jet paused a moment. “Probably a total replacement.”
He drew a breath. His feet shuffled under the blankets.
“If it’s a choice between life and death, why’re you asking?”
She heard the quiver in his voice. Scared of the result. Or what?
“I know exactly two other people who had the chance to make that choice,” she said. “I know what cybernetics can really do to a person.” She could recall each and every one of her students, and how every single one of them had struggled in their own ways. “ It’s not like putting on a suit of armour. It’s not like a biomod, or a spin in the catgirl machine. You really will be something other than human.”
She made a point of shower the fingers on her right hand to him to him, Holding them in front of her face, curling each one in turn.
He sat up. His arms slipped out from under the bedsheets, before clasping on his lap. He looked to the window. He looked to the far wall - nothing but blank white-painted concrete
The idea turned over in his mind. She saw the tension roll through his body, his humanity revolting at the idea of being something else. Finally, he looked right at her
“What would you do?”
The question hung in her mind, catching her by surprise. For a moment, her thoughts returned right back to that instant when she’d first woken up on that concrete floor and felt the machinery inside her awaken, like lighting in her mind.
Those first moments of absolutely, existential terror that she could taste on her tongue. The feeling echoed inside her for a heartbeat. She closed her eyes, letting it fade before opening them again.
“I’d think about it. Real hard,” she said. “It’s another form of death. With a different kind of afterlife.”
Marco nodded weakly, looking ready to throw up.
“I’m already dead.” he managed to say. “The cells in my body just haven’t realised it yet. I’d rather not go through it.”
Jet had another thought, something that could either be a cruelty or a mercy, depending on who she asked.
“I don’t want to die,” he said, looking right at her. He gulped a breath. “I don’t want to die like this. I didn’t come up here to die like this.”
She saw the plea in his eyes. Anything would be better than rotting alive.
“I need you to make it explicit,” said Jet, more like she was pronouncing death.
His lips stiffened. He stared
“Do it,”
Her wings spread with a hard, metallic sound like a shotgun cocking. Vanes adjusted for best signal The call went out through her own transmitters, broadcast to half a dozen
It took seconds for the first answer to come back.
“Done.”
Marco blinked, his mouth opening. Nothing came out.
“You’re going to Mars tomorrow,” Jet said, feeling the edges of her lips turn up just a little.. “Ares will do the work,”
He sat and stared, before turning his eyes down to his own hands. He flexed his fingers.
Jet waited, before deciding to leave him alone with the gravitas of the decision. Her wings latched back into place as she turned on the heel ,
“What’s it like?”
She turned back. Marco’s question hung in the air while she searched for the right words. He sat, waiting for her answer with his hands still in his lap.
“Like….” she glanced back at the window and the darkness beyond. “Like being among the stars, rather than looking out at them,”
---
Gaige felt the seam pop as she stretched her leg over the motorcycle’s saddle. Bare skin brushing cool leather confirmed the worst.
It took her twenty minutes to struggle out of her riding gear, before donning a new pair of jeans.
She made it to Becky an hour after she meant to start.
--
The arm split from her t-shirt as she reached up to open the hydraulic access panel on the aircraft’s belly.
It took another hour to get another one.
--
Gaige kept her legs together as she eased herself into the cockpit of the jet.
Her second pair of jeans tore between the legs anyway.
“Fuck sake,” she growled.
It hadn’t even stretched.
--
Kotono saw the Bobcat first, slabs of concrete strapped to its back to keep it from tipping. Then she saw the turbine-engine; tons of metal, cradled in a pair of thick straps hung from the bobcat’s forklift.
Slowly, the driver lowered the engine into the open fuselage of the parked Rebecca Brown, Bobcat teetering on its front wheels each time the engine stopped. The machine creaked as the forks reached forward, creeping the engine into its proper place.
It teetered. It tottered.
Kotono stood and smirked, anticipating the expensive ‘I told you so’. Her body fizzled in giddy anticipation. One. Expensive. Smash.
The bobcat’s engine growled as the driver tweaked at the levers, easing the engine into with millimetre precision. A quick panic slap from his hand on the concrete counterweight kept the machine from tipping.
A deep breath of relief.
Disappointment stung her to the bone as he the harnesses went slack, the operator backing the machine free. No hilarious viral accidents for fentube today.
The grin returned as a single scarlet heelboot emerged from an open hatch, followed quickly by another. Who? wondered Kotono.
A lithe body wriggled through an opening barely large enough to fit, taught senshi fabric stretching across firm muscle. A pained groan emerged from the exhausts as the body struggled to slip through a hatch just a few centimetres too small for a bust just a few centimetres too large.
Kotono swore she heard the ‘pop!’ as the bust came free, dropping the body to a deft gymnasts’ landing. She stood, stretched herself into a yawn, and drew every single eye in hanger to herself in the process.
Gaige Kisaragi stood oblivious, wearing an oil-stained senshi leotard, toolbelts and scarlet heelboots.
“Damn,” Kotono breathed.
A little pang of jealousy cut deep. Kotono swallowed it, sensing a chance to tease. Something had to have pushed Gaige into that leotard. She marched over, savouring the smirk on her lips
“So, you felt like trying on something interesting? Gaige.”
Gaige stopped, swallowing a lump, placing a hand on her stomach, before moving them down to her belt.
“I tore every pair of jeans I had except my last, two t-shirts, and a pair of worker overalls,” Her fingers plucked at a strap fixing her boot to her belt. “I don’t know how my Sister ever wore plain stuff with a quirk like this….”
It clapped back against the firm skin of her thigh.
“Oh that’s cruel,” answered Kotono with feigned kindness. “And here I thought she was just into sexy lingerie,”
“She used to be,” said Gaige, not catching her true intent. “Before she got stuck in the suit she was always wearing something, but she always had the body for it too,”
Kotono blinked, her eyes taking a moment to crawl across Gaige’s body, and how the leotard clung unnaturally tight across her stomach and chest.
“Really?” Kotono’s eyes widened. “What did she look like?”
Gaige actually smiled, drifting back into the memory.
“She took after our mother, with grey eyes, and grey hair. But this is her body,” A single finger pointed towards a dimple that absolutely had to have been formed into the leotard, right where the bellybutton would’ve been.
Kotono’s eyes looked down “There’s no way anyone had natural legs like those.”
And other parts, she didn’t say. Nothing about Gaige’s body shape had come from nature.
“It’s what we remember,” Gaige said, looking away into the distance. Her shoulders dropped, a soft sigh escaping her lips.
“Well, you look like you could use a break,” said Kotono. She moved her hand, thinking to place it on Gaiges shoulder in that warm and friendly manner, before deciding that maybe, Gaige could’ve done without the reminder that she was wearing something completely strapless.
“I’ve three days to get the ship flying,” Gaige nodded her head towards the waiting Mig. She swallowed a moment, shifting her feet.
“You don’t want to go?”
Such awful discomfort just didn’t suit the figure wearing it. The body that should’ve stood proud and confident instead looked ready to curl up inside itself.
“Ask me a month ago if I wanted to go to the Forge and I’d have begged to get five minutes,” Gaige said, taking a deep breath. She looked up at Kotono, then down at her own feet to hide the shame on her face. “I just don’t feel comfortable with being there.
Kotono took a step forward, pausing when Gaige stepped away.
“I don’t think your Sister would let you go if she didn’t trust everyone there.”
Gaige blushed, clasping her hands together. Her lips pursed. She glanced over each of her shoulders in turn, checking to make sure nobody else might possible hear.
“I might….. do something I don’t really want to agree to.”
The words crawled from her mouth.
“Something?”Kotono’s eyebrow raised. One glance at Gaige, and the way her legs had tightened themselves together told her everything. “Oh….”
A mental image worthy of the seediest corners of the interwave destroyed any sympathy Kotono might’ve had for the innocent Gaige.
“Because it’s hilarious isn’t it?” Gaige snapped at her, before turning on a heel and marching away. The steel floor rang under her feet.
Kotono’s jaw slacked open a moment, caught by surprise by the swing. She stood, feeling naked in front of an entire hanger. For a moment, she flushed with anger. Kotono swallowed it, letting common sense take over.
“Wait…” she began
Gaige stopped. For a moment, Kotono thought she’d listen.
“I’ve work to do,”
Gaige didn’t even look at her as she strode past.
--
Another veteran suicide, nobody notices those anymore.
It took just over six hours for Tanaka to be proved wrong. Maico’s message arrived first, followed by a dozen other journalists and bloggers, flooding her personal inbox begging for any form of comment. That actual story flagged up a few moments later
KCPD investigating death of Shinji Tanaka. Former SHIELD. Jusenkyou veteran. Suspect in Mackie Jaguar shootdown. Possible self-inflicted gunshot.
They’d already started calling him a traitor. Jet hated that. Jet understood why it had to be - at least in the short term.
It still hung heavy from her shoulders.
She escaped to her own private tinkerspace, secured behind an armoured door that weighed at least as much as she did.
Perfect, absolute darkness, closed in around her as the door slammed home, giving a few moments peace to savour the familiar scents of oil, steel, rust and electric ozone.
The computers reached out and pinged her for her personal I.D. She answered after a moment more.
A pair of striplights flooded the room with a mixture of harsh white highlights and deep black shadow, revealing a chaos of technology and tools, salvaged from a dozen different places to make something approaching a workshop. The wreckage of a half-dozen unfinished projects surrounded her on three sides, filling two of three workbenches with the shrapnel of her own attempts at work- little tinkerings that’d petered out along with the inspiration that’d propelled them.
They teased her.
Others begged for time, waiting to be finished. A custom motoroid she’d been building for Daisuke ever since he’d joined the club towered over her , a training partner puppet lay in parts on a central bench, while a purple hardsuit that still waited a final fitting hung from a stand in the corner.
A bank of glass-screen monitors on the fourth wall fizzed to life, reading out in hues of blue, green, red and yellow. She passed most of her background processes through her muse and onto the screens,
Frigga begged for her attention across half a dozen hummings screens reading out new breakdowns while reporting on old problems. The MAGI kept most of it under control, prioritising the worst of it, escalating what needed to be escalated from the ground to where it could be actioned, then scheduling the work, letting Frigga govern itself as automatically as possible. Flagged in red were the petty items people insisted she take care of herself, now, as absolute priority, because MAGI had asked them to wait a week
She left them ticking through on the screen to keep them out of her mind.
Another monitor carried the Tanaka investigation. Another, a wiring diagram for a Prometheus puppet interface. In the top corner, details on the Patrol’s upcoming investigation of the Frigga accident along with Anika’s attempt to gundeck the records and unfuck the dog before they figured it out. One more stood blank, waiting for a security key.
Jet let them all run on their own, casting a softer, green light on the room around her..
The third bench in the room had been stacked with circuit-boards trailing ribbons of cable, joining up a couple of signal conditioners, an old glass-tube oscilloscope, a motoroid battery to provide power, and a metallic skull at the centre of it all.
A single coltan skull, battered and buckled but still bearing shreds of artificial muscle, skin and hair. It stared back at her
Mackie.
Her blood turned cold, every cell in her body at once revolting at the memory of her fingers tearing what’d remained of his face off, sinews and fibres snapping as the glove of skin pulled free. The sensation stuck to her hand, echoing in waves up and down the synapses of her arm.
Jet’d used an angle grinder to rip through the back of the skull to get to the cyberchip inside.
Then, it just had to be done. Now she stood, staring breathless at it, the scream unable leave her throat. The skull stared lifelessly back.
The angle grinder sat beside it.
She steadied herself with, shivering inside her armour, muscles drowning The taste of fresh bile rose into her mouth, coating the back of her throat. If her last meal hadn’t come from a spaceflight pack it would’ve ended up on the floor.
The walls closed down around her and she begged for the ceiling to open and let her Fly. Her drive’s charged with energy, coils winding up for the launch.
A ping from her comm systems asked for her attention.
She drifted weightless for a moment.
The ping insisted, demanding a channel encrypted with her personal private key.
Not now Jet, Gotta get on with this. Needs must. What was left of her mind grabbed the feeling and crushed it down, pushing it out of the way. It could sit and fester until later.
With a thought, she diverted the comm-stream to the spare monitor, if only to have her head clear.
Green eyes formed on the monitor, framed by slick, jet-black hair, and a woman’s smiling face. The woman’s expression darkened. The dread sense that she’d been caught fluttered through Jet’s body.
“A radiation accident and a scramble nine?” A.C.’s eyes sparked with amusement. “What are you doing out there?”
Jet bit her lip.
“Drowning,” she said, forcing a thing smirk to hide the truth of it “And Ares already picked it up,”
A.C. feigned her disappointment. “And I had some interesting things I wanted to try and all,”
“Maybe next time,” Jet said, thoughtlessly.
A.C actually blinked. Jet found herself wondering if that had been the clue that gave the game away.
“Anyway I’ve checked the reference number Sergeant Tanaka gave,” A.C continued, calmly reverting to her professional self. Jet’s gaze focused hard on the image on screen. “His orders were legal and legitimate, as far as he could tell. So were Corporal Broadin’s. They requisitioned their equipment from the armory with that reference, and returned it an hour after shooting your brother down. They’re victims.”
Just following orders. The same as anyone else in their position. There’s a bad guy coming through, shoot him down, take him alive. A legitimate, lawful order. No red flag waving above it.
Which meant one thing.
“There’s a name on the orders?”
Jet felt herself grin. The thought of having a face to confront thrilled the savage part of her heart.
“Somebody who wasn’t on the moon, but was on Earth at the time. They’re innocent in the affair too.” A.C. sighed. As if she almost thought they would be that careless. “But I do have the terminal where the orders were logged. And a list of ten people in that room at the same time. One of whom, you might recognise,”
The names arrived as a databurts, reading out through her mind.
“Jordan Waide,” she said. “She was head of the Foxhound program.”
Jet looked to the monitor for a moment.
“And under investigation by Internal Affairs, for espionage.” A.C. said, mildly.
“Oh what the fuck?” Jets voice rang back at her off the walls. She stepped back from the monitor, like it’d given her a physical electric shock. “What?”
“Internal affairs have a suspicion, which is why she was reassigned and the program closed.” “They had no evidence otherwise.”
“Fuck me,” Jet breathed. She placed her hands on her face, taking slow, deliberate breaths, before placing the on the bench in front of her. The steal groaned as her fingers tightened. Her eyes scanned around the room, moving from the kipple of tools and equipment, back to that single, staring steel skull, and the simple fact that Mackie had been wanted alive. It ”This…. I know what this is about - if it’s Waide”
“If…” A.C. said.
“SHIELD’s compartment for the Foxhound was Iron Crone.” The words raced from Jet’s mouth. “The a sub-compartment for the engine design was called Iron Crone Snap. ”
Given her position, naturally the Scarlet Angel would have access.
“Restricted,” A.C answered after a few seconds.
Jet felt herself blink. “You can’t access it?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I can’t access everything in SHIELD’s database on demand. But…” “It only shows Special Access Required, with no qualification or...”
“I thought you’d be able to see it,”
“There’re many files I don’t have access to. But very few which won’t tell me why.”
With a half-second’s hindsight, Jet knew why. Listing the reason, defeated the purpose. The one secret that went beyond need to know.
A.C needed to know, whatever the cost.
“That….” Jet sighed. “That might be because it’s secured under the Khan Directive.”
A.C.’s hands clasped in front of her face. Jet caught the subtle shift immediately - the hardening of the shadows on her cheeks, the sharpening at the edge of those green eyes.
Darkeyes. Jet felt the shift run through her spine.
“What are you doing out there?” A.C’s voice carried with a darker, harder edge. Her green-eyed gaze penetrated the screen. “Did Mackie come across something technically sweet?”
The accusation stung, catching on her breath with a hot twinge of anger drawn by the subtle betrayal - the idea that A.C. could even think she’d do something like that on purpose. The sensation mingled with the momentary fear that things would get rapidly out of hand if anyone jumped to conclusion. She stepped back, for a moment expecting something to reach through the screen.
It passed in a heartbeat, Jet’s own self control taking over again. She pushed herself to meet the gaze coming through the monitor, if only to prove she had nothing to hide that didn’t have a bloody good reason for being hidden.
I haven’t done anything wrong.
“It was an accident, like a software bug.” she said, trying to keep her voice as deliberate as possible, despite the tension in her throat. “ We found it, and built an engine that made it impossible to exploit,” she said, taking another beath. “The details aren’t in Snap, just that the Directive is why we built the engine the way we did,”
A.C’s expression softened as she shrank away in the monitor. No tragic superhero misunderstandings today.
“It was an accident?” A.C. asked.
“As much as physics can be,” said Jet, with a breath of relief. “There’s a group that’s been working on patching it for years. But it’s another five years at least for natural wear and tear to run its course, and even then there’ll be a few survivors for a long time.”
“Hardware related?” A.C. asked, voice picking up speed. “How bad is it?”
Jet allowed herself a moment to gather her words, closing her eyes to read her own thoughts back to herself, to make sure there wouldn’t be a misunderstanding.
“The physics version of that Crashdown bug. The hardware is common. It’s difficult to patch. Impossible to patch without revealing what the bug is. Trivial to fully exploit by someone in the know.”
“How trivial?” The unease in her voice was clear.
“A week.” Jet said.
The rest of the jigsaw came together in A.C’s mind. Jet watched it come together, written across her face one little realisation at a time. Only one source of transuranics could be that common, and that hard to clean up without giving the game away.
A.C settled back into her chair, letting the idea fester and the full implications take hold. Her eyes turned to a point somewhere off-screen.
“Oh. Oh God.”
The fact that she’d had the same reaction herself, three years beforehand, came as little comfort to Jet.
“Yeah,” she filled the silence that fell. Both knew what it meant. Jet still felt the need to say so. “Either I get to the end of this and find out where this secret has gotten to, or. Mackie stays dead.” The next part choked in her throat. “And Gaige prioritised for immediate effect if under threat of capture,”
Don’t let them take her alive.
Jet already knew it’d cost her soul to do it. Even the idea of it burned a mark.
“I can help,”
“No”, Jet shook her head slowly, side to side. “It should be me if it comes to that,”
Her voice was lost in her throat, barely making it past her lips.
“It shouldn’t.” A.C. assured. “The Forge is secure. Gaige can stay here for as long as needed. And I can definitely help her with her other problems. I do have relevant experience,”
The screen zoomed back to frame A.C’s body, sitting in a leather chair with her legs tightly crossed, a black carbon riding crop sitting on her lap. A black leather corset compressed her breasts just tight enough to allow for the appropriate quantity of spillage, covered by both her hands.
She pushed them together, deepening darkness in the valley between them, an impish grin
Jet felt herself smile again. Jet found herself aware of the body inside her armour for the first time in months, pressing against the metal. She tried to strike a pose, liquid light flowing across the polished curves of her armour.
“Thanks,” she breathed.
Amusement sparked in A.C.’s green eyes for a moment, before the frame of the screen zoomed in to her face.
“We still need absolute proof it’s Waide, not just circumstance,” she said. “If Alexandria flight is attacked, the location will confirm the identity of our mole. If not, I have sources I can call on.”
A.C’s gaze shifted off-screen, to another monitor or notepad. Her lips pursed together.
“And she still needs to disappear without tipping off her handlers.”
Jet thought a moment. Her eyes closed, looking inside her own mind.
“I might have an idea.”
Shinji’d given it to her.
--
Slowly. Inexorably. My own mood is bleeding through. But lets go.
--------
It took Jet far longer than she expected to open the green infirmary fire-door. She knew she’d slept. She still felt like she’d been awake for days. Her mind drifted in a sort of fuge, the muse revealing the information it’d learned in her absence.
Acute radiation syndrome. Known cases. Hisashi Ouichi. Lived for 83 days. He wished he didn’t. It made her look at the image of a human body, rotting alive down to it’s bones, one leg already reduced to a stump, screaming soundlessly as it hung from a cradle.
After a breath to work up the courage, she pushed the door open.
In the centre of a sterile, white-painted room, a man lay in a hospital bed under a clean, white sheet, cables and driplines tying him to a dozen humming machines, isolated from the rest of the room by a plastic curtain. Dinsinfectant stung at the inside of her nostrils, a hollow roar from the ventilators above pulling cold air up the back of her neck.
Overhead lights sizzling blue with ultraviolet, banishings all shadows from the room.
The door locked shut behind her with a metallic click. She stopped after a few steps, aware that she carried the dirt of the station on her armour. He turned his head to look at her. Still with short-cut, black hair. Still with the same Italian summer tan. Still with clear, hazelnut eyes and a strong roman nose. He could be called handsome, even attractive if Jet had thought that way.
Apparently unharmed, but already terminal. His body’s own defence mechanisms had already begun to rot him alive from the inside out.
“Marco,” she said.
Marco managed a weak smile. “Stopped getting sick.”
Jet stiffened her lip. “Seventeen hundred. There’s nothing medical we can do,” she said. Better to be straight out about it.
He shifted in bed, working has hands under the sheets. He turned away, drawing a slow breath.
“Larissa told me. If I’m lucky I shit myself to death in a week – otherwise, a few weeks after that. Wave, biotech, nothing works on this much radiation.”
His feet shuffled under the woollen bedsheet. His head rolled to one side, eyes focusing on the glass window, and the absolute darkness beyond.
Jet stood, trying to place himself into his shoes. How would she feel. Afraid? Resigned? Angry? Her finger tapped on the metal of her hip. She crossed her arms to keep herself from doing it.
She’d come to ask him one question.
“Why’d you come here?”
That wasn’t it. But it filled the silence.
“Because I went to fix a radiation sensor and didn’t bring a Geiger counter,”
His voice had a hard edge to it, stiffened by regret. His gaze turned back to her. Blaming me, Jet wondered.
“To Frigga,” Jet said, her softening. “To Space,”
He took another slow breath, rolling his head back to the window.
“I wanted to look out at the stars rather than look up at them,”
Jet felt herself exhale slowly, her breath tickling on her lips. A faint smile. It proved this was the right thing to do.
“There’s one more option,” she said. “But it’s tough.”
His mouth opened.
“I could call in a scramble nine.”
“Scramble nine?” he repeated back to her.
“Emergency medical cybernetics - the Panzer Kunst will cover the cost . In return, you sign up for the Gruppe,”
Hope? Confusion? His eyes tracked across her body, from her feet, across her chest and right up to her eyes.
Is that what you’re going to do to me?
“Whatever needs to be done to save your life,” she confirmed for him. Jet paused a moment. “Probably a total replacement.”
He drew a breath. His feet shuffled under the blankets.
“If it’s a choice between life and death, why’re you asking?”
She heard the quiver in his voice. Scared of the result. Or what?
“I know exactly two other people who had the chance to make that choice,” she said. “I know what cybernetics can really do to a person.” She could recall each and every one of her students, and how every single one of them had struggled in their own ways. “ It’s not like putting on a suit of armour. It’s not like a biomod, or a spin in the catgirl machine. You really will be something other than human.”
She made a point of shower the fingers on her right hand to him to him, Holding them in front of her face, curling each one in turn.
He sat up. His arms slipped out from under the bedsheets, before clasping on his lap. He looked to the window. He looked to the far wall - nothing but blank white-painted concrete
The idea turned over in his mind. She saw the tension roll through his body, his humanity revolting at the idea of being something else. Finally, he looked right at her
“What would you do?”
The question hung in her mind, catching her by surprise. For a moment, her thoughts returned right back to that instant when she’d first woken up on that concrete floor and felt the machinery inside her awaken, like lighting in her mind.
Those first moments of absolutely, existential terror that she could taste on her tongue. The feeling echoed inside her for a heartbeat. She closed her eyes, letting it fade before opening them again.
“I’d think about it. Real hard,” she said. “It’s another form of death. With a different kind of afterlife.”
Marco nodded weakly, looking ready to throw up.
“I’m already dead.” he managed to say. “The cells in my body just haven’t realised it yet. I’d rather not go through it.”
Jet had another thought, something that could either be a cruelty or a mercy, depending on who she asked.
“I don’t want to die,” he said, looking right at her. He gulped a breath. “I don’t want to die like this. I didn’t come up here to die like this.”
She saw the plea in his eyes. Anything would be better than rotting alive.
“I need you to make it explicit,” said Jet, more like she was pronouncing death.
His lips stiffened. He stared
“Do it,”
Her wings spread with a hard, metallic sound like a shotgun cocking. Vanes adjusted for best signal The call went out through her own transmitters, broadcast to half a dozen
It took seconds for the first answer to come back.
“Done.”
Marco blinked, his mouth opening. Nothing came out.
“You’re going to Mars tomorrow,” Jet said, feeling the edges of her lips turn up just a little.. “Ares will do the work,”
He sat and stared, before turning his eyes down to his own hands. He flexed his fingers.
Jet waited, before deciding to leave him alone with the gravitas of the decision. Her wings latched back into place as she turned on the heel ,
“What’s it like?”
She turned back. Marco’s question hung in the air while she searched for the right words. He sat, waiting for her answer with his hands still in his lap.
“Like….” she glanced back at the window and the darkness beyond. “Like being among the stars, rather than looking out at them,”
---
Gaige felt the seam pop as she stretched her leg over the motorcycle’s saddle. Bare skin brushing cool leather confirmed the worst.
It took her twenty minutes to struggle out of her riding gear, before donning a new pair of jeans.
She made it to Becky an hour after she meant to start.
--
The arm split from her t-shirt as she reached up to open the hydraulic access panel on the aircraft’s belly.
It took another hour to get another one.
--
Gaige kept her legs together as she eased herself into the cockpit of the jet.
Her second pair of jeans tore between the legs anyway.
“Fuck sake,” she growled.
It hadn’t even stretched.
--
Kotono saw the Bobcat first, slabs of concrete strapped to its back to keep it from tipping. Then she saw the turbine-engine; tons of metal, cradled in a pair of thick straps hung from the bobcat’s forklift.
Slowly, the driver lowered the engine into the open fuselage of the parked Rebecca Brown, Bobcat teetering on its front wheels each time the engine stopped. The machine creaked as the forks reached forward, creeping the engine into its proper place.
It teetered. It tottered.
Kotono stood and smirked, anticipating the expensive ‘I told you so’. Her body fizzled in giddy anticipation. One. Expensive. Smash.
The bobcat’s engine growled as the driver tweaked at the levers, easing the engine into with millimetre precision. A quick panic slap from his hand on the concrete counterweight kept the machine from tipping.
A deep breath of relief.
Disappointment stung her to the bone as he the harnesses went slack, the operator backing the machine free. No hilarious viral accidents for fentube today.
The grin returned as a single scarlet heelboot emerged from an open hatch, followed quickly by another. Who? wondered Kotono.
A lithe body wriggled through an opening barely large enough to fit, taught senshi fabric stretching across firm muscle. A pained groan emerged from the exhausts as the body struggled to slip through a hatch just a few centimetres too small for a bust just a few centimetres too large.
Kotono swore she heard the ‘pop!’ as the bust came free, dropping the body to a deft gymnasts’ landing. She stood, stretched herself into a yawn, and drew every single eye in hanger to herself in the process.
Gaige Kisaragi stood oblivious, wearing an oil-stained senshi leotard, toolbelts and scarlet heelboots.
“Damn,” Kotono breathed.
A little pang of jealousy cut deep. Kotono swallowed it, sensing a chance to tease. Something had to have pushed Gaige into that leotard. She marched over, savouring the smirk on her lips
“So, you felt like trying on something interesting? Gaige.”
Gaige stopped, swallowing a lump, placing a hand on her stomach, before moving them down to her belt.
“I tore every pair of jeans I had except my last, two t-shirts, and a pair of worker overalls,” Her fingers plucked at a strap fixing her boot to her belt. “I don’t know how my Sister ever wore plain stuff with a quirk like this….”
It clapped back against the firm skin of her thigh.
“Oh that’s cruel,” answered Kotono with feigned kindness. “And here I thought she was just into sexy lingerie,”
“She used to be,” said Gaige, not catching her true intent. “Before she got stuck in the suit she was always wearing something, but she always had the body for it too,”
Kotono blinked, her eyes taking a moment to crawl across Gaige’s body, and how the leotard clung unnaturally tight across her stomach and chest.
“Really?” Kotono’s eyes widened. “What did she look like?”
Gaige actually smiled, drifting back into the memory.
“She took after our mother, with grey eyes, and grey hair. But this is her body,” A single finger pointed towards a dimple that absolutely had to have been formed into the leotard, right where the bellybutton would’ve been.
Kotono’s eyes looked down “There’s no way anyone had natural legs like those.”
And other parts, she didn’t say. Nothing about Gaige’s body shape had come from nature.
“It’s what we remember,” Gaige said, looking away into the distance. Her shoulders dropped, a soft sigh escaping her lips.
“Well, you look like you could use a break,” said Kotono. She moved her hand, thinking to place it on Gaiges shoulder in that warm and friendly manner, before deciding that maybe, Gaige could’ve done without the reminder that she was wearing something completely strapless.
“I’ve three days to get the ship flying,” Gaige nodded her head towards the waiting Mig. She swallowed a moment, shifting her feet.
“You don’t want to go?”
Such awful discomfort just didn’t suit the figure wearing it. The body that should’ve stood proud and confident instead looked ready to curl up inside itself.
“Ask me a month ago if I wanted to go to the Forge and I’d have begged to get five minutes,” Gaige said, taking a deep breath. She looked up at Kotono, then down at her own feet to hide the shame on her face. “I just don’t feel comfortable with being there.
Kotono took a step forward, pausing when Gaige stepped away.
“I don’t think your Sister would let you go if she didn’t trust everyone there.”
Gaige blushed, clasping her hands together. Her lips pursed. She glanced over each of her shoulders in turn, checking to make sure nobody else might possible hear.
“I might….. do something I don’t really want to agree to.”
The words crawled from her mouth.
“Something?”Kotono’s eyebrow raised. One glance at Gaige, and the way her legs had tightened themselves together told her everything. “Oh….”
A mental image worthy of the seediest corners of the interwave destroyed any sympathy Kotono might’ve had for the innocent Gaige.
“Because it’s hilarious isn’t it?” Gaige snapped at her, before turning on a heel and marching away. The steel floor rang under her feet.
Kotono’s jaw slacked open a moment, caught by surprise by the swing. She stood, feeling naked in front of an entire hanger. For a moment, she flushed with anger. Kotono swallowed it, letting common sense take over.
“Wait…” she began
Gaige stopped. For a moment, Kotono thought she’d listen.
“I’ve work to do,”
Gaige didn’t even look at her as she strode past.
--
Another veteran suicide, nobody notices those anymore.
It took just over six hours for Tanaka to be proved wrong. Maico’s message arrived first, followed by a dozen other journalists and bloggers, flooding her personal inbox begging for any form of comment. That actual story flagged up a few moments later
KCPD investigating death of Shinji Tanaka. Former SHIELD. Jusenkyou veteran. Suspect in Mackie Jaguar shootdown. Possible self-inflicted gunshot.
They’d already started calling him a traitor. Jet hated that. Jet understood why it had to be - at least in the short term.
It still hung heavy from her shoulders.
She escaped to her own private tinkerspace, secured behind an armoured door that weighed at least as much as she did.
Perfect, absolute darkness, closed in around her as the door slammed home, giving a few moments peace to savour the familiar scents of oil, steel, rust and electric ozone.
The computers reached out and pinged her for her personal I.D. She answered after a moment more.
A pair of striplights flooded the room with a mixture of harsh white highlights and deep black shadow, revealing a chaos of technology and tools, salvaged from a dozen different places to make something approaching a workshop. The wreckage of a half-dozen unfinished projects surrounded her on three sides, filling two of three workbenches with the shrapnel of her own attempts at work- little tinkerings that’d petered out along with the inspiration that’d propelled them.
They teased her.
Others begged for time, waiting to be finished. A custom motoroid she’d been building for Daisuke ever since he’d joined the club towered over her , a training partner puppet lay in parts on a central bench, while a purple hardsuit that still waited a final fitting hung from a stand in the corner.
A bank of glass-screen monitors on the fourth wall fizzed to life, reading out in hues of blue, green, red and yellow. She passed most of her background processes through her muse and onto the screens,
Frigga begged for her attention across half a dozen hummings screens reading out new breakdowns while reporting on old problems. The MAGI kept most of it under control, prioritising the worst of it, escalating what needed to be escalated from the ground to where it could be actioned, then scheduling the work, letting Frigga govern itself as automatically as possible. Flagged in red were the petty items people insisted she take care of herself, now, as absolute priority, because MAGI had asked them to wait a week
She left them ticking through on the screen to keep them out of her mind.
Another monitor carried the Tanaka investigation. Another, a wiring diagram for a Prometheus puppet interface. In the top corner, details on the Patrol’s upcoming investigation of the Frigga accident along with Anika’s attempt to gundeck the records and unfuck the dog before they figured it out. One more stood blank, waiting for a security key.
Jet let them all run on their own, casting a softer, green light on the room around her..
The third bench in the room had been stacked with circuit-boards trailing ribbons of cable, joining up a couple of signal conditioners, an old glass-tube oscilloscope, a motoroid battery to provide power, and a metallic skull at the centre of it all.
A single coltan skull, battered and buckled but still bearing shreds of artificial muscle, skin and hair. It stared back at her
Mackie.
Her blood turned cold, every cell in her body at once revolting at the memory of her fingers tearing what’d remained of his face off, sinews and fibres snapping as the glove of skin pulled free. The sensation stuck to her hand, echoing in waves up and down the synapses of her arm.
Jet’d used an angle grinder to rip through the back of the skull to get to the cyberchip inside.
Then, it just had to be done. Now she stood, staring breathless at it, the scream unable leave her throat. The skull stared lifelessly back.
The angle grinder sat beside it.
She steadied herself with, shivering inside her armour, muscles drowning The taste of fresh bile rose into her mouth, coating the back of her throat. If her last meal hadn’t come from a spaceflight pack it would’ve ended up on the floor.
The walls closed down around her and she begged for the ceiling to open and let her Fly. Her drive’s charged with energy, coils winding up for the launch.
A ping from her comm systems asked for her attention.
She drifted weightless for a moment.
The ping insisted, demanding a channel encrypted with her personal private key.
Not now Jet, Gotta get on with this. Needs must. What was left of her mind grabbed the feeling and crushed it down, pushing it out of the way. It could sit and fester until later.
With a thought, she diverted the comm-stream to the spare monitor, if only to have her head clear.
Green eyes formed on the monitor, framed by slick, jet-black hair, and a woman’s smiling face. The woman’s expression darkened. The dread sense that she’d been caught fluttered through Jet’s body.
“A radiation accident and a scramble nine?” A.C.’s eyes sparked with amusement. “What are you doing out there?”
Jet bit her lip.
“Drowning,” she said, forcing a thing smirk to hide the truth of it “And Ares already picked it up,”
A.C. feigned her disappointment. “And I had some interesting things I wanted to try and all,”
“Maybe next time,” Jet said, thoughtlessly.
A.C actually blinked. Jet found herself wondering if that had been the clue that gave the game away.
“Anyway I’ve checked the reference number Sergeant Tanaka gave,” A.C continued, calmly reverting to her professional self. Jet’s gaze focused hard on the image on screen. “His orders were legal and legitimate, as far as he could tell. So were Corporal Broadin’s. They requisitioned their equipment from the armory with that reference, and returned it an hour after shooting your brother down. They’re victims.”
Just following orders. The same as anyone else in their position. There’s a bad guy coming through, shoot him down, take him alive. A legitimate, lawful order. No red flag waving above it.
Which meant one thing.
“There’s a name on the orders?”
Jet felt herself grin. The thought of having a face to confront thrilled the savage part of her heart.
“Somebody who wasn’t on the moon, but was on Earth at the time. They’re innocent in the affair too.” A.C. sighed. As if she almost thought they would be that careless. “But I do have the terminal where the orders were logged. And a list of ten people in that room at the same time. One of whom, you might recognise,”
The names arrived as a databurts, reading out through her mind.
“Jordan Waide,” she said. “She was head of the Foxhound program.”
Jet looked to the monitor for a moment.
“And under investigation by Internal Affairs, for espionage.” A.C. said, mildly.
“Oh what the fuck?” Jets voice rang back at her off the walls. She stepped back from the monitor, like it’d given her a physical electric shock. “What?”
“Internal affairs have a suspicion, which is why she was reassigned and the program closed.” “They had no evidence otherwise.”
“Fuck me,” Jet breathed. She placed her hands on her face, taking slow, deliberate breaths, before placing the on the bench in front of her. The steal groaned as her fingers tightened. Her eyes scanned around the room, moving from the kipple of tools and equipment, back to that single, staring steel skull, and the simple fact that Mackie had been wanted alive. It ”This…. I know what this is about - if it’s Waide”
“If…” A.C. said.
“SHIELD’s compartment for the Foxhound was Iron Crone.” The words raced from Jet’s mouth. “The a sub-compartment for the engine design was called Iron Crone Snap. ”
Given her position, naturally the Scarlet Angel would have access.
“Restricted,” A.C answered after a few seconds.
Jet felt herself blink. “You can’t access it?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I can’t access everything in SHIELD’s database on demand. But…” “It only shows Special Access Required, with no qualification or...”
“I thought you’d be able to see it,”
“There’re many files I don’t have access to. But very few which won’t tell me why.”
With a half-second’s hindsight, Jet knew why. Listing the reason, defeated the purpose. The one secret that went beyond need to know.
A.C needed to know, whatever the cost.
“That….” Jet sighed. “That might be because it’s secured under the Khan Directive.”
A.C.’s hands clasped in front of her face. Jet caught the subtle shift immediately - the hardening of the shadows on her cheeks, the sharpening at the edge of those green eyes.
Darkeyes. Jet felt the shift run through her spine.
“What are you doing out there?” A.C’s voice carried with a darker, harder edge. Her green-eyed gaze penetrated the screen. “Did Mackie come across something technically sweet?”
The accusation stung, catching on her breath with a hot twinge of anger drawn by the subtle betrayal - the idea that A.C. could even think she’d do something like that on purpose. The sensation mingled with the momentary fear that things would get rapidly out of hand if anyone jumped to conclusion. She stepped back, for a moment expecting something to reach through the screen.
It passed in a heartbeat, Jet’s own self control taking over again. She pushed herself to meet the gaze coming through the monitor, if only to prove she had nothing to hide that didn’t have a bloody good reason for being hidden.
I haven’t done anything wrong.
“It was an accident, like a software bug.” she said, trying to keep her voice as deliberate as possible, despite the tension in her throat. “ We found it, and built an engine that made it impossible to exploit,” she said, taking another beath. “The details aren’t in Snap, just that the Directive is why we built the engine the way we did,”
A.C’s expression softened as she shrank away in the monitor. No tragic superhero misunderstandings today.
“It was an accident?” A.C. asked.
“As much as physics can be,” said Jet, with a breath of relief. “There’s a group that’s been working on patching it for years. But it’s another five years at least for natural wear and tear to run its course, and even then there’ll be a few survivors for a long time.”
“Hardware related?” A.C. asked, voice picking up speed. “How bad is it?”
Jet allowed herself a moment to gather her words, closing her eyes to read her own thoughts back to herself, to make sure there wouldn’t be a misunderstanding.
“The physics version of that Crashdown bug. The hardware is common. It’s difficult to patch. Impossible to patch without revealing what the bug is. Trivial to fully exploit by someone in the know.”
“How trivial?” The unease in her voice was clear.
“A week.” Jet said.
The rest of the jigsaw came together in A.C’s mind. Jet watched it come together, written across her face one little realisation at a time. Only one source of transuranics could be that common, and that hard to clean up without giving the game away.
A.C settled back into her chair, letting the idea fester and the full implications take hold. Her eyes turned to a point somewhere off-screen.
“Oh. Oh God.”
The fact that she’d had the same reaction herself, three years beforehand, came as little comfort to Jet.
“Yeah,” she filled the silence that fell. Both knew what it meant. Jet still felt the need to say so. “Either I get to the end of this and find out where this secret has gotten to, or. Mackie stays dead.” The next part choked in her throat. “And Gaige prioritised for immediate effect if under threat of capture,”
Don’t let them take her alive.
Jet already knew it’d cost her soul to do it. Even the idea of it burned a mark.
“I can help,”
“No”, Jet shook her head slowly, side to side. “It should be me if it comes to that,”
Her voice was lost in her throat, barely making it past her lips.
“It shouldn’t.” A.C. assured. “The Forge is secure. Gaige can stay here for as long as needed. And I can definitely help her with her other problems. I do have relevant experience,”
The screen zoomed back to frame A.C’s body, sitting in a leather chair with her legs tightly crossed, a black carbon riding crop sitting on her lap. A black leather corset compressed her breasts just tight enough to allow for the appropriate quantity of spillage, covered by both her hands.
She pushed them together, deepening darkness in the valley between them, an impish grin
Jet felt herself smile again. Jet found herself aware of the body inside her armour for the first time in months, pressing against the metal. She tried to strike a pose, liquid light flowing across the polished curves of her armour.
“Thanks,” she breathed.
Amusement sparked in A.C.’s green eyes for a moment, before the frame of the screen zoomed in to her face.
“We still need absolute proof it’s Waide, not just circumstance,” she said. “If Alexandria flight is attacked, the location will confirm the identity of our mole. If not, I have sources I can call on.”
A.C’s gaze shifted off-screen, to another monitor or notepad. Her lips pursed together.
“And she still needs to disappear without tipping off her handlers.”
Jet thought a moment. Her eyes closed, looking inside her own mind.
“I might have an idea.”
Shinji’d given it to her.
--
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.