Chapter Text
Day 62 of de-programming.
Subjects: Jasra Bakari, Amira Orlais
Overseen by Dr. Zarra Cyranea and Colonel Sar Mantrose.
Assisted by pilots Captain Andaiye Ledall and Captain Sunar Mariin
Since the fall of the empire, large-scale battles had ceased. But training and learning never stopped. At the edges of the Deskulkan mountains, on sloping hills littered with shattered stone, titans maneuvered. More than forty feet in height, the silver and white sentinel, Caliburn, hunkered down behind a stoney plateau. Artillery and laser fire arching overhead as hydraulic knuckles gripped a shield the size of a satellite dish.
“Amira! On your mark, enemies are within my charge range.” Shouted Caliburn’s pilot, Jasra Bakari, into a two-way comm channel. Jasra, whose hair was only beginning to grow past her ears again, and whose left eye had been replaced with a cybernetic implant barely more than two months ago, waited patiently for the only person left in the solar system that she knew she could trust.
Amira Orlais, pilot of the Broadside, steadied herself as she relaxed into the cockpit of her beloved mech, which was more than half a mile back from Caliburn. It’s frame was hunched forward, using its arms more like a second pair of legs to balance itself. Hanging over it’s shoulders were a pair of large cannon barrels. And on its back was a mounted turret with another half-dozen that were only just a bit smaller than the first two. Mounted on the side of each arm, pointing upwards towards the shoulders, another pair of cannons on rotating turrets. Broadside’s head tilted all the way up from it’s leaning position to face towards the enemy. Amira knew they couldn’t see here as well now that Broadside had been forced to take it’s old paintjob of browns and yellows back. Hiding it with the terrain. Though she would admit in private that she missed the black and gold it had been under her time with Handler. And she missed the improvements that Handler had ensured Broadside had received. All of which were stripped by Republic order after her capture.
Amira shook her head, shaking the stray thoughts away.
“On three.” She responded, something listless in her voice. Something hollow.
“I miss it too.” Jasra nearly whispered as her companion counted up. It still didn’t feel right. None of this has since they were “brought home” with the end of the war.
“Three!”
With a boom like thunder, Broadside revealed its location with a full fusillade of cannon fire. The ground beneath it shook and a nearby rock pillar toppled from the concussive force of the heavy projectiles. For Broadside was not just a lot of cannons, even with its upgrades gone, it was a siege weapon. And it packed the firepower to prove it. Immediately laser fire turned towards her, and then a moment later Caliburn came over the plateau with a jet-enhanced leap. Shield forward, crashing artillery shells exploded over the reinforced steel barrier and to both sides of Jasra. The lasers were the fastest to re-aim, and most of them followed the Broadside when it had revealed itself, though from their distance the energy weapons did not retain enough heat to do more than scorch the armored machine. The kinetic munitions that had not begun readjustment remained focused on the mechanical knight barreling towards them.
Laid out before both mechs was a line of black and gold. Standardized. Homogenous. Identical. Fifteen imperial Class 7 scout mechs. Backed by a half dozen Portable Artillery Stations.
But it was not the line of Class 7s that Jasra noticed. It wasn’t even the P.A.S. unloading in her direction. No. Behind those two lines, standing, waiting, and watching, were another pair of mechs. One was bright red and hunched over, like some sort of monstrous, metal, ape. Still more humanoid in shape than not, its fists were larger than its frame suggested they should be. That was Retribution, piloted by… Jasra couldn’t remember. A voice in her mind reminding her in stern, cold, words If you’re confused, look for the ones that stand out. Those are your enemy, Hound.
“Amira! Who… who are we fighting? I can’t… I can’t focu-“ Jasra’s head hurt. It pounded. The imperial mechs were beginning to blur together. Leaving only Retribution and the other mech beside it. Gavilon. Again, Jasra couldn’t remember who was piloting it. Though she felt like she should, was it someone important to her once? That was it, right? If it was, it isn’t anymore. Only Handler is important… only- no… no there are others. There are! But… who? Who is it? She tried to force herself to remember, or at least focus on the task at hand. She stared at the mech with two massive gatling guns built under its arms and an oversized artillery cannon over the shoulder, its white and silver matching her own mech’s new “Republic-approved” paint job.
In the Broadside, Amira was struggling with the same thing. When it was just pings on her screens, it was easy. Fire towards the line showing the opposing formation. But when she lifted her head to study with her own eyes the field arrayed before her, the line of black and gold blurred. If you’re confused, look for the ones that stand out. Those are your enemy, Hound. As blasts of laser fire bounced off her protected hide, Amira reached for her mouth. Reaching to grab something that was not there. Her fingers clenched on her face and a whimper escaped her lips.
“We do what we’ve been told. Like we’re trained to.” She finally answered. Her other hand quickly moving to remotely adjust her munitions trajectory.
It was at that point that another communication line crackled to life within both cockpits. And a woman’s voice came over the line. She sounded worried and not a little bit unsure. “Pilots. Your orders are to target the Class 7 units and their supporting P.A.S. We are watching.”
Amira swallowed hard and let her hand fall from her mouth where she’d still clutched empty air. She didn’t like that word. “Pilot.” She knew it was what she was. What she had been even from the earliest days of the war. When she’d joined the rebellion. But it didn’t ring true in her ears anymore. It didn’t sound like her. She missed what her Handler used to call her. She missed hearing her voice. But for two months she’d been told to forget that voice. And everyone around her, everyone but Jasra, have told her how terrible the word “Hound” is. How it meant slavery. How it meant cruelty. She couldn’t see it though, even now. Even as friends and loved ones implored her to be the woman they remembered from before. Before…. Her. Before Handler. And before becoming a Hound. The words she spoke next echoed from Jasra at the same time, their voices hollow and monotone.
“Understood. Orders received.”
Back at base, Dr. Cryanea gave a hopeful nod towards the Republic Colonel watching the test.
From the center, Caliburn drew down upon the enemy mechs. From behind Caliburn’s shield the other hand withdrew, and a flash of crackling plasma ignited around the blade in it. While above, heavy penetration shells made to pierce through mechs and detonate within or behind them hurtled down from above. The aim had been precise, and the munitions would not hit Caliburn. Set to hit their marks seconds before the front-line mech was on them.
Thousands of tons of steel and weaponry. Ready to rend asunder the enemy. It wasn’t until the last moment, as they approached the blurred line of black and gold, that training kicked in. That muscle memory and instinct took hold. It was Amira who shifted first. Without thinking, purely on instinct, she redirected the munitions. Triggering trajectory jets on each shell to go off, altering their path. Past the line of black and gold. And without a word, Caliburn leapt in tandem. Explosive rounds whizzing past her on both sides and ripping through the waiting mechs past the imperial line. Caliburn’s blade would finish what Broadside’s guns hadn’t. And both pilo… no, both hounds thought the same thing at the same time. “those that stand out.”
Before the surprise turn was even complete, an alarm siren and red lights were already blaring in both hound’s cockpits. And an automated voice cut through their focus.
“TRAINING SIMULATION TERMINATED. Simulation pod hatch release. Please exit the Simulator.”
The alarm lights flashed and a rush of air as the simulation pod’s hydraulic doors pushed outwards from the cockpits. And as the hound’s pods opened, the two opposite theirs did as well. From the second pair of pods stepped out two more women. Each one in a soft blue flight suit with silver edging. A badge marking them as Republic pilots on their chest and name tags opposite them. Captains Andaiye Ledall and Sunar Mariin. Captain Ledall looked frustrated. Her brown hair had partially pulled from the bun it had been in, and fell in front of her face. Her lips formed a thin line and her eyes glared with a mixture of anger and pain at Jasra and Amira as they emerged.
Captain Mariin on the other hand, looked mostly just crestfallen. The thumb of her left hand fidgeted unconsciously with an engagement ring she wore. It’s blue gem once matched the one worn by her fiancé. Though Amira no longer had hers. She ran her fingers through her bangs, only for the black hair to fall back into place as soon as she had. She forced a smile onto her lips as she stepped towards their traumatized sisters of the rebellion, moving to help Amira from her pod.
Amira flinched at the hand that was offered. But took it with a second thought. She remembered Sunar. She remembered their engagement. She remembered meeting in rebel trenches before they’d earned their own mechs. But that felt like another life. Another person. Sunar had promised to marry a very different woman than Amira was now. And Amira had, in her twisted mind, failed Sunar long ago. Ever since that moment she realized it wasn’t her fiancé that she loved, but Handler. It had always been Handler. It was best if Sunar just moved on. Why won’t she just move one? Amira couldn’t help but think for the millionth time as she stretched her back and looked towards Jasra. There was comfort in the distant, vacant look in her eyes.
“You’re getting better, babe.” Captain Mariin offered, “it won’t be long now befor“
“Sunar, stop.” Captain Ledall cut her off, they’d all been friends once. But now all she could see from the two women before her was the burning wreckage of friends they’d killed when they turned traitor. “We’ve been at this for months. They’re CHOOSING to attack us. They haven’t targeted anything BUT us in every simulation we’ve put them through. They’re not broken. They’re traitors. When are you going to accept that?”
Sunar opened her mouth to respond, but it was Jasra that beat her too it.
“You weren’t there. You don’t understand, Andaiye. We’re trying. We’re fighting. Every fucking day. If you just let us see Her. Let us talk to H-“
“You still talk about her like she’s a fucking god! You don’t think I can’t hear it in the way you talk? You think we all can’t hear it?”
Jasra flinched. Andaiye had been her friend even before the war. They’d gone to school together. Went through pilot training together. When Andaiye transitioned, Jasra was the first person she came out to. They’d explored everything from sexuality to political targeting of people like them. Those simply being who they were. Before everything changed, Jasra would have snapped back at her oldest friend. She’d have met iron with iron. But snapping back wasn’t in her anymore. It felt wrong. It felt like she was being insubordinate. Worst of all, just the idea of lashing out without permission sent echoes of electric shocks through her spine. A pain she hadn’t felt in months, and somehow a pain she sometimes missed. It kept her in line when she couldn’t control her attitude.
Instead, Andaiye watched Jasra flinch, to which she scoffed. Further proof this woman wasn’t the friend she’d known. Sure, she’d heard the details of the imperial “Hound Program.” But it was hard to believe everything they’d been told. It was easier, in a way, to believe that she’d just never known Jasra, or Amira, than to face that they’d been so brutally tortured that they were almost unrecognizable. That they’d kill those they’d once called brothers and sisters.
Before she could continue, the steel door to the simulation chamber slid open. In full military dress, Colonel Sar Montrose entered the room. Her military-issued boots sounding like thunder on the metal floor.
“That’s enough, Captain Ledall. I will debrief the prisoners. You and Captain Mariin are dismissed.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
And with a shared salute between the three, the captains left. Sunar’s eyes fell first on the doctor standing behind Col. Montrose. Dr. Cryanea was the psych doctor that’s worked most closely with the “former”-hounds. And her eyes shared the disappointment of Sunar’s. Then the captain looked back at Amira. Every time, it was like looking at a ghost. The face was the same. But her eyes. There was no fire in them. No light at all. She’d seen eyes like that before, in the vacant stare of dead friends still laying in the wreckage of their machine. She couldn’t help the shiver that ran up and down her spine as Amira’s gaze met hers. Had her eyes changed color since her captivity, or had it always looked like staring into the abyss? A hand set on Sunar’s shoulder, pulling her from the moment of wistful thoughts. Andaiye forced a smile and shifted her head towards the door. And the two of them left without a word.
When the steel door closed behind the pilots, it became the Colonel’s turn on the stage. She was angry. She was disappointed. But, most of all, she was ashamed. These two pilots. These two incredible women once served under her. Back before they had ranks and titles. When they were a rag-tag army built up of those the empire had sought to control. When she had first led the overtaking of the imperial prison camp, it had been Sar that had formed the most elite team of mech pilots she could assemble. And with time, both Amira and Jasra would join that crew. It had been heartbreak when they’d been presumed killed. And further heartbreak when their mechs returned to the battlefield, kitted with imperial tech, sporting the black and gold, and still as destructive as they’d ever been when fighting the good fight. And if that had not been enough, heartbreaks compounded when it was discovered that it wasn’t just the mechs that had returned, but their pilots had as well. Serving the Empire that had sought to destroy everything they cared about. It was enough to break most people. And, in fact, there were many that it did break. Many that had given up the fight when they realized what was happening. When the horrible stories of the so-called “Hound Program” began to circulate. And now, here she was, a colonel of the newly minted “Republic of the United,” commander of Echo Base, caught between an arid mountain range and a desert. And if an out of the way outpost of a base wasn’t enough. She had been assigned as the handler for the very woman who had broken two of her close friends and rebel pilots. These were women she was supposed to protect. And she’d failed them. And now she was floundering to save them again.
It hadn’t taken long for the Republic to decide what to do with imperial scientists. Almost immediately they were deserting and seeking asylum in exchange for their knowledge, and the brass had eagerly petitioned the new government for some of the spoils. Part of those spoils was Andrea Song. The woman Amira and Jasra called so affectionately “Handler.” The task given to Colonel Montrose: “To understand how the Hound Program functioned. How its effects could be reversed. And how the Hound Program findings could be used for “humane” reeducation of former imperial assets.”
So here they were. Unable to give up on the goal of de-programming these former heroes by orders from above. And unable to believe they can be saved from experiences in front of her face.
“Dr. Cryanea. What is your assessment of the prisoner’s performances today?”
“I will admit, I had been hoping that we’d made more progress than the results show. But the patients are improving, even if not in the simulations. Amira had targeted the correct marks up until the forced muscle memory response kicked in.”
“Sixty-two days under your care,” the Colonel began, before turning her attention back onto the pair of stone-still pilots. “Eighty-four, if you count the recovery time in the med bay after your first arrival. In that time you’ve done twenty-seven simulations. How many imperial assets have you destroyed in those twenty-seven simulations…? Jasra?”
There was a pause for a moment as the hound in question attempted to recall. Months of torture and praise had gone into making her proud every time a sortie she was on returned with “Zero-Imperial Losses.” And in the way the colonel had spoken, the swell of pride she did not want tried to bubble upwards. But like vomit forcing its way up, she swallowed it down. She understood it wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing. The Imperials were the enemy. At one point. But every sortie without losses earned praise from Handler. And was met with pleasure and reward from the one and only deity she had ever known. She could almost taste shoe polish on her tongue as memories flooded her, making her grow wet between the legs. Jasra bit her tongue. Hard. The pain shot through her and pulled her from the spiraling emotions in her ragged soul. A trick she’d been forced to learn as her and her only true friend were forced each day to face all of the guilt, failures, and misery that they had thought they’d escaped when Handler saved them.
“None, Ma’am.”
Colonel Montrose took in a deep breath, and let it out as a long, pointed sigh. “So tell me, Amira, what good does all of this achieve if, after everything the Doctor and the hospital staff have done for you, you still prove unable to see us as anything other than a target?”
The doctor spoke up at that, before Amira could open her mouth. “Sar! That’s hardly fair to them. They know we’re not enemies. They know we’re their friends. That the empire used them. And hurt them. But the conditioning was thorough. It’s going to take time to re-condition them. Especially without re-traumatizing them!”
“You aren’t targets, Ma’am. She promised that S… Sh… that she… wouldn’t make us hurt you. Not unless we had to.” Amira said. All of her focus had to be put on reining in the way even mentioning Her made her feel. Referring to Her felt like tasting ambrosia. It felt like a blessing she was grateful to understand, when so few didn’t. And, many times, she and Jasra had been told not to put respect into the mention of Her. That She was not worth it. Though Amira could not believe that. She knew better than all but Jasra how truly worthy their creator and savior was of the admiration they gave willingly. After all, when Amira had failed her fiancé, and had failed her friends, and had failed the rebellion. When she had failed to live up to her own standards. When she was drugged and gave up valuable information, failing those who trusted her. When she had failed in every, single, facet of her life, it had been Handler that had offered her a chance to succeed. A chance to do right by someone. And, in return for finally succeeding, being loved and rewarded. Something she was fully and completely sure she would never be again for all she had done. Handler loved her. Amira believed that. Handler was proud of her. And, most importantly, because of Handler she could finally do something right. Of course Handler deserved respect. She wished they could understand. Instead Sunar had cried when she’d explained it. And the Doctor had told her she was “suffering from traumatic brain injuries” and “trauma-induced cognitive revision.” Which sure felt like more failures to her. All it took was being taken from Handler.
The woman’s “assurance” was hardly comforting. And Montrose clenched her fingers tight into her palms as she forced herself to maintain decorum. “Doctor. Please escort the prisoners back to their barracks. I’ll send one of the guards in the hall in to assist. I have a meeting with the science lab, and to check up on… that one.”
Oh, to all the gods above and below, she hated the way her old friends strained to hear, however subtly, every time she had to reference Andrea Song. They’d gotten better over the weeks, but Sar knew them well. And could see it in the shift of each of their bodies. Dogs waiting for a crumb to drop that they might lap it up. Made her shudder to consider the comparison.
And with that, Colonel Montrose left the Simulation Chamber. She had enough of her prisoners for the day, and any day she had to check in on Andrea was a day she couldn’t afford to have anything less than steel nerves ready and strong.