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singularity-event-enjoyer · 4 hours ago

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As per your requests, something else with mechs.

in my opinion, this is how all Pegasus license levels happen

For as long as there has been warfare, there has been nothing more chaotic than the battlefield. There is only so far that strategy can go, because no matter what plans you make, no matter what the people say who think that strategy and resources is all there is to war because they have not been there themselves, there is always that moment where the the first shot is fired where all your plans pour out of your mind like blood dripping from a gunshot wound in an instant, where the two sons of Mars flow through the formerly organized ranks like ink on a cloth. Fear and Panic will always take hold, even after one of them vanished from the sky. No matter what predictions you make, to step into a battle is to offer yourself up to the whims of fate. Even as the storm above changed from stones to bullets to railgun rounds, RA only knows where each will end. Well, RA and one other.

Perched atop the highest points of the battle, wrapped tightly in cables and surrounded by heads-up displays, a library’s worth of information flowing from the Swallowtail’s cameras directly through her eyes, brain, and through the interface ports in the back of her skull every second, Isabel Ardea saw everything. Every shot fired, every weak point in the enemy frames. Each step that stumbled slightly, causing them to drop their guard for a second. She saw them. The lights of the screens danced across her retinas, showing her every aspect of the war at once. Each snap of shrike armor piercing through the hull of a grappled mech half a mile away. Each drop of molten metal onto the ground as the exterior plating of a tokugawa began to melt, tearing through its enemies like a flame across paper, driven by an NHP that did not know the pilot was dead and wouldn’t have cared if it knew. The information surged through her mind, filling every corner of her consciousness with data that the computer poured in before withdrawing it to replace it with new information fifty times a second, a rhythm of uploads and downloads to the chips that lined the inside of her skull that pulsed like a heartbeat of knowledge inside her skull. and she had never felt so alive. Suspended from the cables and swaying slightly with every shot of the Oracle LMG, she was like a spider at the center of her web, sensing each movement of the things within it as, with a message to command regarding the supply trucks on the other side of the hill, a storm of orbital cannon fire falling like meteors on the exact location she had indicated. The whole battlefield was like a tapestry she knew how to weave because she saw every thread, and everyone danced on her strings. Outside of combat she had a similar reputation. Half the time if someone needed to know something, they would just ask Isabel and she would always know the answer, sometimes before they finished asking the question. If someone had lost something, chances are they would find her wandering the halls looking for them because she had found it. She never forgot a face, remembered every name, and could memorize the mannerisms of someone to the extent that not even her NHP could tell the difference between her and someone she was trying to mimic when texting. She had only one weakness-- the actual combat side of a fight. Aside from her Oracle LMG, her Swallowtail had practically no method of taking someone out. Luckily, she had someone to deal with that.

After the battle, she untied the ropes and cables that SSC insisted on installing instead of a cockpit. Dropping to the floor of the compartment, she stumbled over to the hatch, her balance still thrown off by the constant swaying of the last several hours. There was the familiar hiss of air as the compartment depressurized and she stepped out into the hangar. The walkways were packed with other pilots returning from the mission. She knew the names of everyone that wasn’t there that day, their mechs now smouldering heaps of slag being hosed down by the station Lancasters if they had been brought back at all. She hadn’t fully gotten used to it, but it wasn’t like she had the choice to not notice it. She took another look across the hangar before heading down the stairs and over to Koira’s mech.

When Isabel had requested a solution to her low defensive capabilities, she had been surprised when they wheeled in a cryopod. “This one’s a bit tricky to keep alive” they had said, “but we think you’ll be able to handle her. It’ll definitely be worth it. You won’t find a better guard dog this side of the galaxy.” she had been under for quite some time, as was made clear by her antiquated hardware. None of the fancy interface ports that sealed automatically when you removed the cables, just the old-fashioned ones that let you see a full six inches into someone’s skull and prevented them from showering normally. Both the tech and the training had been heavily revised since she had received them. Pilots from Koira’s time were taught that they were weapons and modified until they practically were, and that didn’t just go away because there was no longer any such thing as handlers and she had been asked to choose a name that wasn’t a serial number. She had chosen “Koira,” and they thought nothing of it due to their limited linguistic knowledge. Isabel, meanwhile, knew fully that it meant “dog.” she hadn’t tried to stop her or get her to pick a different one, as unlike command, she knew that it wouldn’t be easy to adjust to being expected to be a person, and that it would be a while before she was able to live without the knowledge that she didn’t have to be the one making the decisions. She had followed Isabel around the station constantly for the first few months, never reacting well when left alone and usually draped over Isabel’s shoulders whenever she sat down or stopped walking. With her variety of unusual traits, It wasn’t all that surprising when she slid her license through the fabricator and the mech it printed was strange. A “Gorgon” command had called it, an unsettling thing that sat on oddly-shaped legs, its four long arms stretching out at odd angles, the fingers spindly and mildly offputting. A number of long antennas protruded straight forward from the place where its face would be, an odd piece of equipment that’s function would not be revealed some time, as Koira never wanted to talk about it other than that she didn’t like to use it. On the battlefield it was shockingly effective, tearing into anything that got remotely close to Isabel with a level of ferocity that she hadn’t seen even during the mission when she had encountered the Enkidu and rendering things immoble with a glance. Even when Koira was outside her mech, Isabel felt safer whenever she was around.

She reached up from the walkway and ran her fingers along the rough surface of Koira’s mech. The cameras that dotted the surface in no particular order followed her hand as she slid it to the edge of the hatch and pressed the emergency release as she had done after every mission since she had met her “guard dog.” her hair flapped behind her as the pressurized air rushed out of the interior of the mech before falling back to her shoulders as she opened the compartment. Koira stumbled slightly before pitching forward and falling into her arms, the long cable sliding from the port in the back of her skull as she fell. She was always tired after missions. Maybe her mech didn’t give her as many stimulants, or maybe she simply tired herself out destroying anything she thought was a threat to Isabel as if any simple mistake would lead to her death. She muttered something as Isabel carried her down the stairs and through the crowds of the hanger, a question that followed every mission always in the same soft, exhausted yet determined voice-- “did I do good?” Isabel smiled and ran her fingers through Koira’s hair as she walked. They reached her room, the door sliding open automatically as soon as they approached. She set her down gently on the bed before lying down next to her, Koira positioned in between her and the door as she always insisted. Isabel pulled her closer, helping her move arms that were too tired to lift all the way until Koira was able to wrap them around her. Isabel closed her eyes and focused on all the things she could feel-- the soft hum of station machinery. The warmth and weight that pressed against her, spending what little energy remained on ensuring that Isabel was safe before she drifted to sleep. Each breath and heartbeat. She ran her hand along Koira’s back, leaning in until she knew that she could feel the warmth of each exhale on her neck. She whispered softly to her. Thank you. You did really well today. You’ve always known how to keep me safe.

She needed to be reminded of that. For her, it was all she existed for-- her set of instructions that she would follow at any cost, and if she wasn’t told that she had done well, she would always try harder. There had been an incident, once, where Isabel had scanned too fast and her computer had started to overheat. Koira hadn’t noticed the Lancaster and it had surprised her. She had rushed over to it in an instant, slamming into it and grabbing it with all four arms. She didn’t realize what it was until she had fired up the Basilisk and projected it directly into the Lancaster’s visual sensors point blank. Isabel realized why Koira didn’t like using it when they pulled the pilot out of the frame. He had been completely unresponsive, his eyes not focusing and his face covered in tears. He wouldn’t eat anymore, and couldn’t sleep without medication. It had taken months to piece his brain back together, and he still didn’t talk anymore. The night after that mission, she had tried to stand outside the door all night, unable to look Isabel in the eye but still needing to defend her. She had collapsed one hour into the night, and was too tired to stop Isabel from moving her back to the bed. She stayed awake for most of that night, keeping an eye on Koira. Even after she fell asleep, Isabel could still hear her breathing heavily as her tears soaked into the pillow. The times she had been quiet had been worse though, as every time her breathing slowed, there was always the fear that in that moment she had decided that she was too dangerous and stopped. She never fully accepted that it wasn’t her fault, and still looked at her Gorgon with the same apprehension that everyone else did.

Isabel woke up in the middle of the night to find that Koira was not next to her. She had known that there had been some routine maintenance scheduled after the mechanics had found some anomalies with the Gorgon’s NHP, but she didn’t think anything of it until the alarms began to sound throughout the station and a panicked technician threw open the door shouting that Koira’s mech was cascading. Isabel rushed out of bed, throwing on her uniform and sprinting down the station’s hallways to the hangar. There was a heavy sense of dread that formed in the back of her mind as she reached her Swallowtail, pulling the emergency scaffolding release lever and climbing inside. It seeped into the computer as she linked to it, making every step feel heavier as it lurched forward into the hangar, snapping the access ladder that she didn’t wait for someone to remove. She rushed down past rows of mechs, each movement shaking her violently within the frame as she hadn’t gotten a chance to properly put on the harness, moving in that odd way that a Swallowtail runs, halfway between galloping and skittering. It wasn’t long before she heard the first hints of gunfire echoing across the hangar, and saw the Gorgon as it attacked the small squad of station guards that had responded to the alarms. It was even before she got closer that she knew. Before she saw the open cockpit, not bent or melted but warped somehow, like a printing error that had retroactively appeared. Before she saw this thing tearing at its exterior plating with hands that seemed sharper than before, the hydraulics and cables beneath twisting and contorting and flashing like a glitch, looking to an unsettling extent like muscle fibers in the way that they pulsed. Before she saw the blood dripping from the open hatch, the spikes that had sprouted from the walls and seat like branches, the single arm that dangled from it, pierced through by several spines and swayed with every movement of the monster whose controls it once operated. It was as soon as she saw this thing fight that she knew Koira was dead. Its attacks were not for the purposes of defense or even of finishing the fight. Driven by the rampaging NHP, its only goal was to kill. She saw as it lifted up one of its long arms and slammed it down on one of the guards, crawling forward with its other three like some terrible insect as it held the guard to the ground, leaving a line of red as it ground him down to nothing. The sight hit her like a hammer, leaving her unable to move. Her arms hung limply by her sides as she stared at this thing that used to mean she was safe.

She couldn’t react in time as it turned its flashing antennae towards her and sprinted directly towards her, impacting and gripping the frame of the Swallowtail with all four arms, the claws scraping against the metal. She fumbled at the controls as it leaned in, the antenna nearly brushing against the visual sensors, not noticing as the barrel of the Oracle LMG pressed against it. Isabel wasn’t able to close her eyes fast enough as it activated the Basilisk.

Nobody had seen the Basilisk and been able to say what it looked like, but between the crying and the loss of will to live seen in everyone who saw it, most people had a general idea of what it was. Some horrible thing from beyond what can be known that is more terrifying than anything a human can comprehend, some paracausal force of fear itself that reaches into your mind and takes it apart. That had been Union’s leading theory since the pattern group known as the Gorgon had first been identified. There were still a few unanswered questions though. Like why an omninet signal was detected every time it was activated. Why when the antennae glowed and it tore a brain to shreds, every satellite telescope, every phone camera, every sonar array, every data server and every 3d-mapping scanner across all of civilization sent out a pulse. one chunk of data each sent across blinkspace. One image, one story, one datasheet.

The Basilisk showed Isabel the universe. Each movement of the stars across the endless cosmos. The cold surface of each airless moon. Every flower that bloomed in every field across every planet. Three seconds of enlightenment. A war raged ten star systems away and she saw it. Each bullet that flew through the air in every place there was violence. Through 1,000 trillion eyes, she saw the lives of everyone that was born and lived and died. Each speck of rage or love or fear that flowed through each mind that contained a neural implant. Solar flares swirling and flashing on a planetless star hundreds of light-years away, a mesmerizing tapestry of colors that humans never bothered to name because they could not see them. It was beautiful in a way that nothing could ever match, the totality of all existence before her. She felt the tears begin to roll down her face, the chemical composition and the functions of each bacteria that swam within them flooding her mind as soon as the information of what was in each tear began to exist. Then the antennae dimmed and cooled and the enlightenment was torn away. That’s what the Basilisk truly did-- it shows you something so wonderful that nothing else could possibly compare and then it takes it from you, leaving you hollow. Indeed, there is no crueler weapon in the universe. It leaves you feeling that the information that has left your mind, grasping at data that has left because no brain could contain it. That’s what it should have done. Unfortunately for the NHP, Isabel Ardea was not the type of person to forget anything. It was still there. All the wisdom and secrets it had shown her, and she would not let them leave. Seconds later, its reactor ruptured as the Oracle LMG tore through it. Its grip weakened and it collapsed to the floor of the hangar.

Isabel didn’t go on any missions for a while after it happened. She didn’t walk around the station gossiping as she used to. She lay in bed most days, staring at the ceiling that she now knew the exact composition of. Koira was dead, and the bed felt far too cold now. She didn’t turn to face the door even when people entered to bring her meals or inject them directly into her veins after three days of her simply leaving them to rot because she wouldn’t turn in that direction because it was where Koira wasn’t. There hadn’t been enough of her left to return home, and even if there had been, even she hadn’t remembered where that had been for her. Isabel knew now, of course. She knew the history of every molecule of the bones that had just been vaporized in the station incinerator and vented into space. It didn’t hurt, knowing all this information, but she wished it did. She wished there was some reason for her to lie there other than the one she tried not to think of. She remembered Koira in every detail. The texture of her skin, the sound of her voice, the sort of mild chemical smell that followed her around. She could piece these together in her mind, placing a sort of construct of memory beside her. She knew how Koira would have pulled her closer, and she remembered the feel of her hands. She knew exactly what she would have said to her. It’s okay. You’re still safe. I can always keep you safe. The one difference was that she didn’t feel it. It didn’t matter how well Isabel remembered how her hair smelled. A memory couldn’t be warm. It was then, staring at the ceiling with blurry eyes and feeling nothing but what wasn’t there, that she had an idea. One that hit almost as hard upon formation as the sight of the single arm dangling from the open cockpit of the cascading Gorgon. She rose, shaking slightly as she moved through the spot on the bed where Koira wasn’t, and stumbled to the door. The station’s hallways were dark and cold. There was still one guard in front of the door to the hangar. They hadn’t cleaned up the mess yet and weren’t letting anyone in. The guard walked over to her. She had known him for a while-- all his hopes and secrets and fears. “Sorry, Isabel. We’re still working on cleaning up the hangar. Can’t let you in yet.” he said. Isable stared at him for a moment. She inhaled slowly, and then spoke.

“You will die five years, three months, ten hours, eight minutes, and thirty seconds from the time I am finished speaking. You’ll be walking across this hangar, a cup of subpar coffee in your left hand. You hear the snap of the rusted scaffolding before you see it fall. It’ll be a Saladin. A large frame, belonging to a pilot named Carlos. You haven’t met him yet, but you’ll become quite close, making what happens somewhat ironic. Time seems to slow as the mech falls, landing heavily and crushing you from the waist down. A large piece of scaffolding will fall as well, carried by it. It pierces through your ribcage and you can feel it as it tears a hole through your right lung. There’s a nauseating sensation as your blood begins to fill it, and you can feel it as it rises up from your lungs and fills your throat with that sickening warmth that tastes metallic when it reaches your mouth. It hurts more than anything you’ve felt before as your bones splinter and push between the fibers of your muscles like shrike armor through a hull. You try to pull yourself out from under the frame but your hands have become slippery with your own blood. It will take exactly one minute and 17 seconds for you to die, and during that entire time you will wish it was less.”

She looked up at the guard and saw that he was crying. Before she could say anything else, he shuffled slowly past her, then sprinted away down the hallway. She laughed, softly, before opening the door and walking into the unlit hangar. Each step echoed loudly as she strode over to her Swallowtail, the front two legs still detached after being snapped off by the Gorgon’s claws. She climbed in and connected the cables to her head before sitting down against the wall of the interior compartment. “Athena, are you there?” she said weakly.

“Always.” came the reply that flowed into her mind from her NHP.

“I have an idea. I know it will work, and I know that you’re seeing it in my brain through the interface. You know that I can make it happen, and that if it works or even if it doesn’t--” her voice was starting to tremble as she spoke. “You won’t exist anymore. I need you to agree to it. I won’t do it otherwise. Even if both my friends die in this hangar, I can’t let it be because I murdered one of them.” she could feel Athena processing the information.

“Do it.” Isabel exhaled shakily as the words entered her mind, before pulling the cables from their ports and climbing out of her mech. She strode over to the Gorgon, muttering under her breath in a prayer to whomever it may concern, not that RA would be particularly excited about what she was doing. She rummaged around in the still-bloodstained cockpit, most of the spikes having been sawed off but a few still remaining. Trying not to think about how much it would have hurt for Koira when they pierced her, she found the interface cable and slid it into her skull. Leaning back against the side of the seat, she searched what remained of the computer for what she was looking for. There it was-- the neural data records. Everything Koira had thought since she first linked with the mech. Every pain and fear and desire. Isabel reached into the hard drive with her mind and pulled out what was left of Koira. Etching it into her brain and memorizing every one and zero. She disconnected from it, crawling from the wreck and back over to her Swallowtail.

“Are you ready?” she said to Athena as her hand hovered above the keyboard. The screen illuminated her face in the red light of the confirmation screen. The words CYCLE NHP? Flashed in front of her eyes.

“Yes. I’m ready. Don’t worry, it won’t feel any different for me than being cycled. It won't be easy, you know. This project you’re starting. But I know you don’t care. Take care of yourself, okay? And take care of her too. Tell Koira-- tell her that without her, I’d have been a smouldering wreck on some battlefield years ago. Tell her that even though I never really got a chance to meet her outside of combat, I still missed her. Alright, that’s enough. Do it.” Isabel pressed the button, and the screen went dark as Athena’s memory was deleted. She could hear her tears hitting the keyboard. This wasn’t the first time she had cycled Athena, but as the screen displayed the message asking if she’d like to reactivate her NHP and she slowly moved the cursor and clicked “no,” she knew that this time, she wouldn’t be seeing her again. She wouldn’t get a chance to get to know Athena all over again this time. She leaned back in the harness and stared upwards for a moment, before she returned to the blank screen in front of her and began to type.

Isabel stayed in the Swallowtail for seven days. Not sleeping, not eating. The automated systems filled her veins with the necessary water and nutrients as she typed. She filled the blank slate that now occupied the casket with her memory of Koira. Every data point she had siphoned from the gorgon, every little strength and weakness and flaw that she remembered. Every moment they had been together was poured into the empty memory of the NHP before her. Her fingers began to bleed, the skin first bruising and then breaking until eventually the bones themselves were what hit the bloodstained keys 24/7. Each keystroke sent jolts of pain shooting up through her hands and throughout her body, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t leaving until this was done.

After 170 straight hours of typing, she had finished. The entirety of Koira’s mind now lay before her as innumerable lines of code. Her hand shook as she reached forward, entering the command to activate the NHP. with one final keystroke, the screen darkened before brightening again. She felt a voice, Koira’s voice, because she had remembered it perfectly, flow through the cables and into her brain-- “did I-- did I do good?” Isabel wiped the tears from her face as she stared at the screen. “I can’t feel my arms, Isabel. Or my legs, it doesn’t hurt though. I feel safe. I know that you saved me. I know that you brought me back. Thank you. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to leave you alone. It’s okay. I’m here again. I can feel the systems of your mech. They’re a part of me now. I can keep you safe.”

It had been a year since Koira had died and Isabel had brought her back, and Isabel’s mech dashed along the edge of the battle on its four spindly legs, autoguns targeting and firing at Koira’s command. Putting her into the mech had done something to Isabel’s license, and everyone but her was surprised by what happened when they put the Swallowtail into the printer to repair it. Everyone else was a bit unsettled by it, between its somewhat animalistic appearance and the space on its back that hurt to look at and shot you three seconds before you became its target. Isabel could look at it fine, though. She could see anything she wanted to by looking into it, whether it had happened yet or not. If she didn’t have a reputation before, she definitely did now, choosing a target, deciding that she had shot them, and watching them fall all in the same moment. Opening up a comms channel with whatever enemy she had locked onto and taunting them with predictions of their deaths. She would laugh as they shouted back through the channel, demanding to know how she knew about whatever family member she hypothesized would “miss you the most once I’m done with you.” she would simply sigh as Koira excitedly counted down the seconds that they always kept their prey waiting for an answer before slowly speaking--

“By the way, I know everything.”

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