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The last roars of Erinys’s engine melted the snow around the mech. Flames burst out of the vents on either shoulder. Jessa Karn had to work fast to shut down her reactor. Emergency symbols flashed with increasing insistence all around her. Her fingers were a blur across the banks of switches situated directly above her head. She had to wipe the blood out of her eyes to see them. The crackle of flame was getting louder.
Erinys let out one last hiss as Jessa isolated the burning engine and flooded it with fire suppression foam. And then all was quiet. The pounding of the mech’s hydraulics and the thrum of its power core were silenced. The world around her held its breath. Jessa did too.
She stayed very still, not daring to move and wake her beast. Erinys needed a rest. After holding its own against three Imperium Norns, it deserved one. When she finally caught her breath she saw to her wounds. The mech’s first aid kit would keep her alive until the rescue squad found her. Hopefully. The battle had shook her up a bit, but the blood dripping down past her dark hair concerned her.
She pulled up an external camera feed on the cockpit’s viewscreen. Wrecked machines littered her path up the valley. Three kills. She hadn’t expected any action on a routine patrol in the Sadaar range, but this brought her career total up to five. A morbid thrill shot through her veins. That made her an ace.
The folks back at base would want proof. She couldn’t stop the smile spreading across her face as she called up the combat logs.
They’d not been easy. Norns were no problem when Jessa was running with her squad, but each one was a struggle to take down on her own. The first Norn surprised her with its plasma cannon, sending a searing beam of energy through Erinys’s left arm before Jessa realised she was in danger. She’d pushed Erinys hard right away. The great thruster on the back of the mech thundered to life, jetting her directly into her attacker. They collided with a howl of screeching metal. Her thermal knife tore open its chassis, but the next was soon upon her, only fought off by the rotary cannon in her other arm. The sheer tidal wave of bullets chewed the Imperial’s black armor to bits, ripping through their joints and leaving them limbless on the ground. A swift stomp from Erinys’s clawed foot finished them off.
The last one had been the worst. Erinys’s nimble frame danced around the larger Norn, but Jessa couldn’t find an opening. Worse, a lucky jab of its spear knocked her mech off balance, and another swept her legs clean off the ground. The Imp pounced, lancing Erinys through the shoulder, pinning it to the frozen dirt beneath the snow. Jessa winced. The logs recorded everything inside and outside the machine, including her scream. Erinys let out a bestial whine with its pilot. She watched herself ratchet back a lever beside her, routing risky levels of power through her railgun. Dangerous. She’d get an earful from her commander about that back at base.
The coils in the barrel powered up, distorting the magnetic field around it just enough to force the other mech off of her or risk a systems failure. It dodged backwards, but Jessa had run this play before. Erinys’s hand dropped the thermal knife and seized hold of the Norn’s legs. The imp tried to take off to escape the grab, but the thrust wrenched Erinys off of the spear and angled her weapon right at it. Jessa fired. The heavy black frame was punctured by a 90mm tungsten shell. It smashed through the twin engines on the Norn’s back and brought its escape to an end. It fell to its knees in the snow, slumping forward with a sickening creak. The blinking red lights across its casing faded into nothingness. It sat there in the snow, facing her. Motionless. Dead.
Well, there was no arguing with the logs. Jessa punched a sequence into the console’s keypad and fed the data into a backup data stick. She slipped it into a pocket of her bomber jacket, the only clothing she wore over her skintight pilot’s suit. Another sequence activated her distress beacon. A dangerous move. There could be more Norns hiding in the drifts, but Jessa believed in her squad mates. They would be here any second.
*
“Rebel Pilot. Are you still alive?” A voice crackled over the comms. Jessa snapped upright. She was shivering. She must have fallen asleep. Fuck. Stupid. A quick glance at the console to her right told her she’d only been out for a few minutes. Scary, but not life threatening. Yet. The temperature in the cockpit was steadily dropping. She huffed into her hands and stuffed them into her pockets. Erinys’s life support was fluctuating. Reserve batteries only lasted so long.
“Repeat. Rebel Pilot. Do you read me?” The words put her on edge. They carried that smarmy Imperium accent she’d heard over the comms so many times. The voice of a fresh academy graduate looking to earn their first red stripe. She checked the comms panel. It was coming over the short distance radio. One of the other mechs was still operational. Fuck. Only two kills.
“Repeat. Rebel Pil-.” A pained groan interrupted the transmission. Jessa scoffed. Two kills and an injury.
Jessa flicked the mute switch off. “Guess I got you pretty good, huh Imp?” She couldn’t help but taunt the woman in the other mech, imagining her academy uniform stained with thick blood.
“So you are in there... Rebel Pilot. Are you injured?”
“Fuck off.”
“Excuse me? I am merely trying to-”
“Fuck. Off.”
A fizz of static, then silence. Rebel command had one rule about interacting with enemy pilots. Don’t do it. She’d have to explain why she broke that. It would hardly be the first time she’d need to explain herself to one of the higher ups. Jessa didn’t care. The little victory warmed her heart even as frost grew at the edges of the mech’s camera feed.
The Imperial didn’t stay away for long.
“Your little trick with the railgun? Smart. The EM interference fried my viewscreen. Left me blind.” The enemy pilot rambled on, her sentences punctuated by little grunts and groans. As much as she enjoyed the sound of an Imperial in pain, she stopped listening. She switched on the mech’s system monitor, knowing full well it would eat into her power reserves as she analysed her situation. She had about an hour of warmth before the reactor cooled completely and the excess heat in Erinys’s bones melted away. Jessa had to hope someone would have noticed she was gone by now, but with Imps this close to their hidden base there was a chance the rest of the squad were busy dealing with their own ambushes.
“What’s your name, Rebel Pilot?” That got her attention. She held her thumb over the mute switch. She shouldn’t bite back. This was likely some ploy. A scheme to do… something. Jessa wasn’t sure what exactly a lone pilot in a broken mech could do to her. She unmuted.
“What do you need my name for? You were happy enough to kill me without it.” The comms were quiet for a long time. Another point for Jessa. She was her superior in verbal combat too. Maybe the Imps would take her as an instructor in pissing the enemy off. Pfft, as if.
“Because I need to ask you something, and I don’t feel comfortable calling you Rebel Pilot.” Jessa prickled. What the hell did an Imperial want from her? Nothing good.
“Fuck off.”
“Please…” The word felt so pathetic coming out of their lips. Even through the fuzz of the radio Jessa could hear the pain it caused her to say it. Good. An Imperial through and through. Stooping to speak with mutts like her must have really hurt. Fuck her.
“Please, I ne-“
“Just shut up!” Jessa barked as she clicked off the radio yet again. She needed a second to think. She reached behind the pilot’s seat and pressed her palm to the weapon tucked against it. The metal was bitterly cold, but she was reassured by the weight of the pistol. She left it in her lap, stroking her fingers down the textured grip and over the safety. She flicked it off. The action grounded her against the storm of confusion raging in her mind.
The longer this game went on, the more likely something bad was going to happen. Jessa had seen plenty of bad before. Imperium propaganda blared about their honourable war and just treatment of Erebus, but that was bullshit. They were stripping this planet for parts just like they did the last. It was all bullshit. Every word that came out of the Imperium was so practised, so perfectly uttered that there could be no mistaking the cruelty behind it. Each pilot was just another copy spat out of an Academy that taught them to subjugate and sneer.
But Imperials didn’t beg for help from Rebels. They didn’t show the hurt in their voice.
Jessa turned the comms back on.
“-ease! Rebel Pilot! I’m going to-“
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”
“Oh thank the Gods. I thought you might have-”
“You’re going to have to go first.” A pause. Jessa sighed. “You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you mine.”
It must have been almost a minute before the Imperial replied. Jessa rubbed her hands together and ran them over her body. Fuck, it was cold.
“Fine. Um. It’s ZK-53b” Jessa let out a loud, hearty laugh. Even begging for help, this Imp was struggling not to break protocol. Unlike her–who must have broken half a dozen Rebel opsec rules.
“Not good enough, ZK-53b.”
“Fine.” A cough. “It’s Zyrene.”
There was interference over the radio. Some kind of rhythmic thumping. Jessa narrowed her eyes. Was the Imperial drumming her fingers against the comms device? Was she really that anxious about telling Jessa her name? Well, she had it now. Jessa pounced.
“That’s a cute name–Zyrene.” Jessa rolled the word around in her mouth, languishing in every syllable. The knowledge gave her power. She understood why demons were always hunting for mortals’ true names. “It’s pretty. But very Imperial. Can I call you Zy? That doesn’t make my skin crawl quite as much.”
“Fuck off.” Zyrene’s turn to curse. Jessa only grinned wider. Now she was getting somewhere. She didn’t trust a girl who didn’t curse.
“Oh, that kind of language doesn’t fit such a pretty name–Zyrene.” She was a cat, playing with the little mouse who had no hope of escape. “Zyyyy…”
“Your fucking turn!” Zy snarled at her. Jessa had touched a nerve. Good. She’d take any opportunity she could to make this girl’s day even worse.
“I’m Jessa.”
“Okay.”
“What? That’s it?” Jessa blurted out all too quickly. She’d hoped for a back and forth, a healthy volley, some kind of tit for her tat. But her mouse had dropped dead. “You don’t think it’s pretty?”
“It’s fine. A bit… basic. You couldn’t pick something better?”
“I spent days agonising over it! I had a whole list! It’s not basic!” Jessa thumped her communications console, as if she could wound the Imperial pilot over the air.
“Whatever. It’s not important.”
“Says you. As if I care what some Imperial-”
“Stop sulking and let me talk.”
Jessa opened her mouth to shoot back another retort, but the sight of her breath crystallising in front of her caused it to die in her throat. The piloting suit that clung to her tan body was engineered to distribute the heat that built up in Erinys’s cockpit. She was right on top of the reactor. It was a measure to keep her from overheating–it did nothing to retain that warmth. She tugged her bomber jacket tighter around her and listened to Zyrene.
“Look. I scanned your mech. Your stunt with the railgun, that really drained your power. You must be on your backups now.” Zy sounded anxious. For Jessa? That was impossible. Imperials didn’t even see the Rebels as people. Just dogs to be put down.
Jessa interjected, venom on her lips. “Are you enjoying the mental image of that? The hapless Rebel shivering in her cockpit?”
“No! Not at all! Jessa, I didn’t mean…” Zy trailed off. There was more hurt in her voice. Good. Good? Jessa sucked her teeth and backed off. A little.
“What’s your point then?”
“I have batteries. A spare, anyway. You got me good, that shell of yours. It was a nice shot. The trick where your mech grabbed mine. Smart. For a second I thought I was battling a demon out there.” She was rambling again. It seemed Zy could talk about the intricacies of a battle until she was interrupted. Jessa took a moment to rub her forehead. Her fingers came back bloody.
Was the Imperial complimenting her? Her? The Rebel who shattered her Norn? None of this was making sense.
“So- yeah- The shot tore through my cockpit. I’m…” A pained groan and a whimper came over the fuzzy comms. “There’s a hole the size of a baseball directly behind my left shoulder. I can taste the wind. I’m not gonna make it much longer exposed to the elements like this. But I have a battery. A reserve...” Zyrene’s tone grew softer and softer until she stopped. She must have been waiting for Jessa to say something.
“I… I don’t understand.”
“Jessa. You can have my battery.”
“Fuck off.” The curse came out of Jessa’s mouth on instinct, and she quickly had to follow it up. “I mean- Fuck. I don’t- What? Why would you give that to me?”
“I don’t want to die out here. I don’t want to end up like those other girls.” Zyrene’s voice was trembling. Jessa’s eyes flicked to the two other scrapheaps she’d left across the valley. “I surrender.” Was this a trap? Her hand tightened around the handle of her pistol. She didn’t say anything.
“Jessa.” Zyrene said the name as if her hands were clasped together in prayer. “If I come over there with the reserve, will you let me in your cockpit?”
The radio was silent for a long time. Jessa’s finger drifted to her pistol’s trigger. She didn’t want to trust the Imperial. She certainly didn’t want her in the cockpit with her. A pilot was trained to only open their mech’s canopy in the hangar, or in case of irreversible damage to her mech. To willingly expose herself to an enemy combatant was suicide. There were a hundred ways to kill a pilot outside of their mech. Not the least of which was nature. Frigid winds lashed across Sadaar range, whipping the snow up around them to obscure the rest of the valley.
The whole world vanished. Only Jessa and Zyrene remained in the white void. Their own circle of hell.
“How can I trust you?” She zoomed the flickering camera feed onto the opposite mech’s cockpit, readying herself for some hidden weapon to come bursting out of the black skeleton. She swallowed the saliva that had been pooling in her mouth.
“You won, Jessa. Your mech tore mine up, there’s no chance I could get a shot off without some systems malfunction. Or worse. A catastrophic failure in the plasma cannon turns me to ash. I’m not risking it. I don’t want to die…” There it was again. The wobble in her voice that turned Jessa’s heart to lead.
“But… You could have a weapon on your person; a pistol, or a knife, or something. And-“ It was her turn to ramble now.
“Jessa. Have you ever seen the inside of an Imperium Norn?”
She knew the schematics. Blueprints. Systems diagrams on aging computer hardware. The initial thrust their engine could produce. The specific alloy of their spears. The precise amount of force needed to crack one open like an egg.
“No.” Jessa admitted.
“They’re coffins. We go out there to do a job, and either we do it, or we don’t come back. The Imperium didn’t stock us with a spare weapon. I don’t even have a first aid kit.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” Zyrene snorted. There was a strain in her voice, but Jessa could picture a dark smile curling across her lips.
She shouldn’t be thinking about her lips.
“It’s not like I have much room myself. I mean, there’s no other seat. You’d have to be in-“ Thankfully Zy cut her off before Jessa could picture the exact position they’d need to tangle themselves into.
“Jessa. Please. Shut up.” Jessa shut up. “Open your cockpit.”
Jessa curled her fingers around the cockpit’s release handle.
“What the fuck am I doing?” She muttered to herself.
“Saving both our lives.”
They acted in sync. The Norn’s black chestplate ejected away, skidding across the snow to Jessa’s right. Erinys’s hatch lifted upwards and Jessa was consumed by the cold. She felt its icy bite in her bones. Her bomber jacket flapped around her. The data stick was whisked from her pocket and sent soaring into the void. Jessa hardly noticed, she was too busy squinting, hunting for Zy.
The Imperial Pilot was so pale. Jessa could barely make out her face against the white wind that whipped between their machines. Her long red hair hung in matted strands down her shoulders. Her Imperial piloting fatigues were torn, exposing a bloody gash across her collarbone.
Zyrene lifted up the battery as she trudged through knee-deep snow. Every step took so much effort, sapping the strength from her shaking body. She was smiling. Jessa smiled back.
A shot rang out across the valley, scaring a bird that had been roosting in a nearby fir tree.
“Scratch one!” A figure slid down the ridge, dressed entirely in heavy thermal gear. She held a marksman’s rifle over one shoulder. Smoke wafted off the barrel and disappeared into the grey sky. “You doing okay there Karn?” Her heavy boots thudded past the Imperial body, not giving the girl in the snow a second look. “I spy three dead Norns!” Jessa didn’t need to see the woman’s face to know who it was.
Cassie Bryar. The rebellion’s poster-girl. A hero.
She’d killed Zyrene.
Cassie clambered up into Erinys’s cockpit and clapped a hand on Jessa’s shoulder. “Guess that makes you an ace.”