Once upon a time, the debris field was a pce to call home. Blip avoids as much of the wreckage as she can, but physical ghosts of the past bounce off her frame body. She waves away fragments of old mining equipment and old clothing… and maybe even a couple of dead bodies. Blip is reminded of those dehydrated, defted oarfish she’s seen pictures of. Without the atmospheric pressure of Earth’s deep seas, they look dead. Not just dead, though; they lose their defining shape, their identity is obscured beyond recognition. The same thing happens to a human when their corpse floats in space for long enough.

  Bodies are rare to find, these days. Most of the Central Dysnomia bodies are recovered or long floated away. Blip should count herself as either extremely lucky or cursedly unlucky.

  The distant remains of the gas pnt glimmer. Some of the lights are still on, years after the accident, and the magnetic reactor twinkles away in there, keeping the power on for all the ghosts. Blip prays in her least sloppy Yiddish that the reactor feels calm and doesn’t throw any fits today.

  She’s moving slowly, as slow as possible. The less she moves, the less likely her data spoofing trick fails and she shows up on enemy sensors. The Dilemma is on low power mode; all nonessential systems offline. There’s naught but crimson light keeping the cockpit lit up.

  “Come on, Silver Bolt of Titan... Fuck up. Fuck up so I can find you already,” Blip says.

  It’s not that easy, though.

  The Aves Crown could be anywhere. Between the debris, and the Kuiper Belt Objects, there’s millions of hiding pces in a tiny sliver of space.

  Time’s like a stuck gear, staying put until it slips a dozen more notches forward. Blip daydreams of the testing track, of zooming around a controlled environment in a prototype armor frame. It doesn’t matter which frame, she’ll take anything that can move.

  Of course, the thrust power of the Dilemma is fast enough. But the test track is much safer and has less murderous snipers hanging around to clip her wings.

  Her eyes, the Dilemma’s eyes, scan the area. Is that the faint outline of a bird woman-shaped mech? No, that’s an old mining frame. It’s got a drill arm, not the weird beak falcon hood thing the Crown has for a head.

  “Come on…”Where is this girl? Blip just needs to fuck her shit up! What’s the problem?

  “You’re not gonna catch me off guard again,” Osprey says over the radio, “I know you’re here.”

  Blip jumps in her seat. Is Osprey here? Where is she? Is Blip being snuck up on? What the –

  “Where are you?”

  “Oh, you know. Around. I spy my with my little eye, something that begins with a ‘d.’”

  Blip ughs, despite herself.

  “Wow. We’re going to py this game, huh? And here I thought you had a stick up your ass,” Blip says, “you seemed unhappy with your, ah, coworkers, pying I spy.”

  “Yeah, but that was fucking around on duty. This is me intimidating you.”

  “Oh, I’m intimidated, sure…”

  Blip says it as a tease, but she is quivering a little bit. This woman could put a superheated beam right through her cockpit from almost any angle or distance, and Blip would have no time to react. She taps her foot to let some of the anxiety out.

  It doesn’t work.

  “So, I did a bit of homework on you,” Osprey says, “Blip Horowitz. What’s a test pilot doing out here, on the field? Shouldn’t you be going the speed of light, in a closed course?”

  Blip doesn’t let herself hesitate. She shoots back, “What’s the Silver Bolt of Titan doing, working for Security Division, huh? The most famous Socialist soldier in all of the SCR, avowed killer of fascists, working for JKIM. What’s with that?”

  “If you’re trying to get under my skin, it won’t work.”

  It’s a real blessing that Osprey likes to talk. Blip flips a few switches on her dashboard; her signal tracer beeps on. If she can keep Osprey Watkins talking, she can find her and bury a hook in her heart.

  “It’s worth a try,” Blip says, “I’m told I can be pretty annoying.”

  “Oh, honey, you don’t know annoying like I do.”

  Beep, beep, beep. The signal tracer is searching, with its ears and eyes that perceive the movement of communications across the cosmos. It’s going to take a lot more input to actually find Osprey, though.

  “Prove it, traitor. Show me what you’ve got.”

  “You sure do like to talk a lot, Blip Horowitz. Awfully unprofessional of you, isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to be trying to kill me?”

  Oh, that’s a direction. She’s about 175 degrees to Blip’s right, which is to say, almost exactly behind her. For all Blip knows, Osprey has a rifle trained on her back right now, is chuckling to herself with her husky zy voice, the kind she probably puts on when she’s all by herself.

  Blip turns the Dilemma around in a slow rotation. Hopefully the soft blinking of the data spoof is working right.

  All she has to do is close the gap between her and Osprey. That’s it. If she can get inside her guard, she can tear pieces of her feathery ass off until she surrenders. Easy, right? Nice and simple. She can grind her metal frame-boots into the dusty rock and hold the Crown down.

  “Maybe I can multitask, Osprey Watkins. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to focus as hard as you.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “You need to load, aim, and shoot without losing your concentration. Me? I can just swing a hook at you, and that’s it. Boom!”

  Osprey scoffs, “Yeah, sure thing. Only one problem, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I see you.”

  And, out from the void, a silver gleam of a ser beam bounces around the debris field. It reflects off mirrored feather to mirrored feather, until it finds Blip’s frame-shoulder and leaves a nasty burn mark.

  It hurts. Not directly, not exactly, but she feels a sympathetic pain in her shoulder. She’s not suicidal or stupid enough to plug her nervous system to her frame. But, even so, the Dilemma is another body for her, a more perfect realization of her insides. All the spikes and armor that only exist within her are now without, and she can use all the nasty bits of herself she keeps hidden against her enemies in direct combat.

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Fun fact, all Security Division personnel and equipment have tracking chips embedded in them. Stealing my gun was a supremely dumb move. Even if you can hide your frame from my instruments, I could find my rifle anywhere in the cosmos.”

  Oh, great. Blip removes the rifle from her frame’s back, and hucks it as far as it’ll go.

  But if Osprey can find Blip, Blip can find Osprey. And the Dilemma can take more punishment than a single sniper can dole out. Come on, shoot it, Osprey. See what happens!

  Blip abandons stealth entirely. She switches on every device in the cockpit, flips everything on, from the interior lights to the hook winches. Everything is ready, every part of her is prepared to kick this overconfident little so-and-so’s ass.

  She puts some burn on the big thrusters welded to her back. They unch her far and fast, straight across the debris field. Detritus of a past disaster parts ahead of her, like her own personal red sea. Blip is going to find this sniper. The signal tracer beeps a little faster. She’s getting closer.

  “Woah! How are you that fast?”

  “You’re asking a test pilot how she’s going fast? Wow. You’re easily impressed,” Blip says.

  “Hardly. You just have high standards for yourself. But I can still see you.”

  And then, another ser bolt hits her, from another impossible angle. The mirrored feathers are really putting in good work, aren’t they? Blip is going to have to do something about those.

  “You can take a hit like a champ, I’ll give you that. You ever considered joining a frame wrestling league? You could make a killing on winnings with your hulk of a machine.”

  The signal tracer beeps even faster. There’s a set of KBO’s, big enough to hide behind, and the tracer is pointing Blip towards them. She kills the thrust on her boosters with a satisfying click of a switch, and engages one of the tow hooks.

  She sends it to one of the two bulbous rocks, and it tches on. With a little bit of burn on the little thrusters all over the Dilemma’s body, and the work of the winch, she is pulled towards the rock. If there was any sound in the vacuum, her boots would make a slight thump when they hit the surface of the rock.

  The rock is rounded out, like an apple with a few huge chunks bitten out of it. Ice grows on it like a blue mold, if the blue mold was as ancient as the oldest water in the sor system. Blip is careful to engage the magnets in her boots. She could easily slip right off this thing.

  Now, where is Osprey? She has to be near.

  “You had the element of surprise,” Blip says, more confident than she actually feels, “I’ll hand you that. But it’s going to take more than a piddly little ser beam to take me down.”

  “Good.”

  And that’s when the Aves Crown emerges from a ridge on the rock, brandishing a rocket uncher longer than a four story building is tall. The feathers spin around and dance in a circle that frames the Crown’s falcon hood-head in a halo of silver and fshing light. It’s like staring at an angel, it’s like one of G-d’s messengers pointing a missile right at Blip.

  She might not be able to take that hit.

  Blip unches one of her hooks right at the Crown’s arm, just as it’s about to fire. The hook pulls Osprey’s aim off by a fraction of a fraction of an angle, and it’s enough. The rocket flies right past Blip’s head, and finds a new home in the debris field behind her. It explodes, and makes even more debris. If the Central Dysnomia Cleanup Effort was still ongoing, its workers would be very sad about that.

  But no matter. Blip takes the window of opportunity and charges right at Osprey, with one one of her spiny shoulders first. The rocket boosters give her the momentum to get right inside Osprey’s guard before she can react.

  This impact sends the Crown (and the rocket uncher) flying, with a few new holes in its torso. It’s a good thing Blip sharpened the spines before unch!

  “No explosives allowed!” Blip says. Thank goodness the rocket uncher flew out of Osprey’s reach.

  “Not even these?”

  From the Crown’s back, a group of tiny pinprick missiles unch. They all home in on Blip before she can say ‘oh no!’.

  She dives, right for the rock below her. With a few quick switch flips, and a healthy amount of going ‘oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck’, the spines on her back become electrical coils that zap the missiles away and detonate them before they make contact.

  “Not even those,” Blip says, “especially not those. Cheater.”

  Osprey says, “Cheaters win.”

  G-d, she can hear the smug grin from here. She wants to wipe it off Osprey Watkin’s face so bad, it hurts. Blip wants to make this woman tremble before her, in terror, or whatever else people tremble for.

  Blip pulls herself back on her boots, just in time to see Osprey’s feather drones shimmering and shaking. They shift around and glow, they glow so bright that…

  They’re gone? They, along with Osprey and the Aves Crown, have vanished.

  “Camoufge? Slippery. But you still leave prints,” Blip says.

  She can see the trail of talon-prints Osprey is leaving as she tries to sneak off. That simply will not do. Blip unches her hooks right where the Crown should be right now, both of them hungry to dine on soft metal armor.

  They don’t hit, though. Blip can see a puff of dust as Osprey takes off from the rock, off to a new hiding spot.

  “Can’t leave prints if I don’t walk,” Osprey says, “thanks for the tip, Blip. You’re a sweetheart.”“I’m not. Could a sweetheart pilot a death machine like the Dilemma?”

  “Hmm… maybe not. But here, let me give you a parting gift. You almost hit me with your hooks, and that begets you a reward.”

  And that reward, apparently, is more tiny missiles. They don’t lock in on Blip, though. They nd around her, and kick up a cloud of dust. It’s thick enough to obscure her vision.. and to hide her from Osprey’s view.

  “That dust cloud should hang around long enough that I won’t see where you’re in there or not. Try and find a good hiding spot before I can get set up again, hm? I’d hate to beat you so easily. Make me work for it a little, huh?”

  “You smug bitch.”

  Osprey ughs, and then there is no more sound from her. The signal tracer stops beeping; the channel is closed.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  Blip jets away, to a rock that looks a bit like a light bulb, and powers down all nonessential systems. Stealth time!

  * * *

  To put it politely, carrying an arsenal of weapons on her back has a few downsides. Osprey finds that, above all else, it throws off her movement. The extra mass makes every calcution so much more complex, spaces she could easily slip between before are inaccessible. All because someone gave her a stupid as fuck psma cannon, as big as a shipping container.

  So she moves slowly. She mentally calcutes each gap between rocks and debris she flits between, until she finds a new hiding spot to snipe from.

  Okay, so what does she know about her quarry?

  Well, Blip is confident. More confident than Osprey by a wide margin, and damn it, she earns it. Knocking the rocket uncher’s aim off was a slick maneuver, as was disarming her with that charge. Osprey’s pretty sure there’s a few new puncture wounds in her frame’s chest from those spines. Curse the designers who gave the Crown such a soft metal coat!

  Okay, so she has some smooth moves. But Blip also found Osprey, which is concerning. How did she do that? Dead luck? Some amazing geometry skills? Osprey did her best to make the reflected angles of the beam hard to track! She’s clearly dealing with a pro.

  Damn it, Osprey should have grabbed the rocket uncher when she fled. She can see it blip (heh) away on the instruments, a bit of a distance of a way. If she can retrieve it, maybe…

  Maybe she can scrap the Dilemma, or at least temporarily stop it that way. Blow a few limbs off, destroy those booster tanks, and that frame isn’t going anywhere. All she has to do is, you know, do it. Not as easy as it sounds!

  She can show this girl what Osprey Watkins can do, though. Osprey might not be the Silver Bolt of Titan anymore, but she has a few tricks up her sleeve still. Hell, she’s probably a better pilot than back then, during the war. They say pilots reach their peak performance around, what, age forty three or so? She’s got a good eight years left before then.

  Though she’s not a better person, now. She definitely peaked as a moral agent somewhere between growing up in the SCR and killing her hundredth fascist during the war. It was all downhill from there, really.

  Never mind that. Being a good person is for the privileged enough to make ‘the right choice’, which most people can’t. The ‘right thing’ is almost always the thing that’s worse for the person who does it; easier to look out for yourself and let someone else do the hard thing. It’s like the reverse of the prisoner’s dilemma.

  Huh.

  Why is the rocket uncher moving on her instruments?

  Blip must have it. She must think herself invincible with a rocket-powered grenade in hand, which is a foolish thing to think, though understandable. Osprey has fallen prey to that exact same mentality.

  “You know I can see where the weapon is, Blip,” Osprey says, “You can’t sneak up on me like that.”

  Blip says… Nothing. She doesn’t respond. What the hell? The uncher is still moving. There’s confidence, and then there’s being foolhardy. Blip is straddling that line like… Well, she’s straddling it, is the point. Never mind the warmth in Osprey’s cheeks, she’s thinking about professional things, like golf. Golf is professional, and more importantly, unsexy. No one in their right mind wants to think about golf pyers in their silly outfits straddling anyone else.

  Whatever. Osprey goes to investigate the mystery of the moving uncher…

  And, well, it’s just floating there. Like someone threw it and left? What in the…

  A thick steel cable, tipped with a hook, wraps around Osprey’s torso from behind. The hook sinks into her metal frame-flesh, like the long nails of a lover, and drags her backwards.

  “You really give me just enough information to make a fool of you,” Blip says, “it’s honestly impressive! I’d feel like a cheater if you didn’t cheat twice as hard as I do.”

  “Maybe I want to give you something to offset my unfair advantage.”

  Blip giggles, “Wow, so chivalrous. You’re a regur lionheart, being so kind to a poor helpless femme on the battlefield.”

  “I – shut up. Shut up. You don’t know anything.”

  The cable is still towing Osprey backwards. She struggles against it, but not that much. There’s a comfort in having someone else take the reins, for just a little bit.

  Though, she still has full movement of her arms. If Blip really wanted to keep Osprey physically inert, she wouldn’t have left her limbs handy. Osprey reaches for the energy sword, down at her frame-hip.

  She draws it. The beam powers on, a glowing red, and Osprey cuts the cable. The momentum from being towed still has her heading Blip-wards, so she flips around to face her and charges Blip with her sword out.

  Is taking her on in a melee fight a good idea? No. But who cares? Not Osprey!

  The hook is still stuck in her torso, even though the cable is cut. It stings at her flesh-body’s chest. The full sympathetic connection between flesh and metal means full sensory feedback. She has to push through the pain to attack; god damn it hurts. But she’s had worse.

  Osprey’s right in Blip’s personal space. She swipes her sword at the Dilemma, and it leaves a little love-bite of a wound on Blip’s armor. How much protection does this girl have?

  “You really shouldn’t have done that, Osprey Watkins.”And then, Blip yanks the hook out of Osprey. A yer of feathered steel and electronic components go with it. It’s not at all a gentle or humane process, having a big metal hook pulled right out of her chest, and Osprey gasps. It hurts.

  But it doesn’t just hurt.

  “Heh,” Osprey ughs, “fuck. Ouch. You’re brutal.”“You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m great. Ugh. How the hell am I supposed to hurt you back? You’re all yers of protection.”

  Blip ughs, “Well, you don’t! Not in a fight, anyways. There is nothing you can do that I won’t survive.”

  “That’s hubris talking.”

  “If you can make me bleed, I will grant you a boon, Osprey Watkins.”

  Okay, Osprey has to take that challenge. She’s still well within striking distance of Blip, so she takes another swing with her sword. It burns another mark into the armor. It doesn’t break through, but it’s a start.

  “Any wound you can put on me, I can return!”

  Blip swings the untethered hook. It slides across Osprey’s chest, once more feeling like long nails. It’s cold and hot and painful and sweet, in a way that Osprey can’t quite deal with. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “You know, I kind of admire your foolhardy nature?” Blip says, “You know you’re way less capable in melee range of me. I thought I was going to have to chase you around! But clearly you want to go head to head, where I’m strong. I could end this right now, thanks to you!”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  For some reason, Blip hesitates.

  “Come on. Make good on that. Strike me down. Kill me. You earned it! I made a mistake, one that would cost me my life, if I’d done it back in the war. Don’t you want to be the woman who killed the Silver Bolt of Titan? Imagine! They’d probably give you a medal for that!”

  When Blip fails to kill her, or even attack at all, Osprey sighs. “You’d be doing me a favor. I wouldn’t bme you, you know? I am a traitor. I’m every bad thing everyone has ever said about me, Blip Horowitz. I’m every retionship I ruined, I’m every girlfriend I left cold and alone, I’m every promise I broke. I was an avowed socialist, a queen of theory and praxis and all that shit, and look where I am now! Come on. Do it. Use that big sharp hook and drive it through my heart, and you can go home and I can finally rest!”

  But, instead of doing what Osprey wants, Blip kicks her, and sends her flying. Osprey barely has time to right herself before she makes a nding on another chunk of ice and rock.

  “I was instructed, Osprey Watkins, to neutralize you, not kill you. In fact, your ex, Commander Miranda Schubert, prefers you don’t die. So I’m not going to kill you! I’m not going to be gentle, but I’m not going to do as you ask. Is death going to assuage your guilt? Offer you absolution, do you think? It won’t. If you want forgiveness, from yourself, or anyone else, you’re going to have to fight for it. So come on. Fight for it!”

  Blip’s voice is… sweet. But cruel. But sugary as ever. The words sting, sting like a hook in the chest, sting like nails on skin. How is Osprey supposed to fight for her forgiveness? There is no forgiveness, ever!

  “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Osprey says.

  “Show me, then. Make me eat my words!”

  “You’re pying with fire. I guess you are a test pilot, after all. How do you feel about psma?”

  Osprey takes the psma cannon off her back; it’s a big, awkward weapon that takes two hands to operate. She’s never fired one before, but she’s seen them in action. This is the kind of weapon that can level an entire city block without much thought, this is the sort of tool that destroys at an industrial speed and efficiency.

  She points it at Blip Horowitz. It starts its long powering-up process.

  “You’ve got ten seconds while this thing warms up. Don’t throw your life away,” Osprey says, “you’re my one chance at redemption, one way or another.”

  That’s a lie. It’ll be at least thirty seconds before Osprey can fire a shot off, but it helps to give a sense of urgency. Do something, Blip, do something and make Osprey eat crow.

  * * *

  So, faced with the threat of being melted with a ball of psma, what does Blip do?

  Well, first, she knows it takes longer than ten seconds for one of those suckers to warm up. So she pushes the envelope a little bit. It’s a dare; Okay, Osprey, let’s see you actually shoot that thing. Eight seconds have passed, nine, ten, twelve. The lights along the psma cannon are, one by one, switching from green (‘safe’) to red (‘primed and ready’).

  Blip might be a bit of a daredevil. It takes a certain personality profile to, you know, fly dangerous prototypes. She waits out the charging as long as she can, which turns out to be about 15.5 seconds.

  After that, she gives full power to the boosters, and unches herself at Osprey. Is she still in the line of fire? Yeah. But let’s see her fire when she kicks the weapon out of her cws.

  “I thought I asked you to not throw your life away,” Osprey says.

  “Who says I am?”

  She’s back in Osprey’s guard, up close and personal. If their frame-bodies had the equipment, they would be close enough to kiss. Though the Crown has a beak, and the Dilemma has five eyes and no other facial features… So a kiss might be a bit impractical.

  Regardless, she kicks the psma cannon.

  Or, she tries to. Osprey swings it at her like a club, before her kick can nd. The cannon knocks against the Dilemma’s chest, and there is metallic sound through the cockpit. There’s a dozen strata worth of pting between Blip and the outer yer of armor, but this is as close as anyone’s gotten to touching her in a long time.

  “It’s funny, you ride me about my death wish, but you’ve got one, too, by the look of it. Hypocrite much?”

  The impact leaves Blip floating backwards, away from Osprey. Momentum goes forever in microgravity; no equal and opposite reaction here!

  “Maybe, Osprey Watkins,” Blip says, “my own experience with having a death wish informs how I want you to not throw your life away! It’s so easy to die, isn’t it? Inside, or out. Living is work. And work sucks, sometimes!”

  “Only sometimes? And here I thought you were a real socialist. Are you one of those, what is it, wine socialists?”

  “That’s not the phrase, it’s –”

  Osprey fires off a psma ball from the cannon. It doesn’t even graze Blip’s spines. Was that a warning shot? Or is she not as good with it, if it’s not a rifle?

  “Beer socialist? No. Gin? Whiskey?”

  Blip is ready to be shot at again. She moves, and moves quick. Even a brief burn of her boosters will send her pretty far. She manages to evade another ball of green psma; it melts some old bits of scrap metal floating around on its trajectory.

  “No,” Osprey says, “Agh! This is killing me. I knew the phrase! Have I even forgotten the words leftist types use to say other people aren’t leftist the right way?”

  “We invented a whole bunch of new ones, while you were gone. You won’t believe the new arguments we’ve gotten into since the war ended.”

  “I guess being away for 14 years will do that. Damn. I’ve missed so much discourse!”

  In between dodges, Blip says, “Yeah, and that’s a good thing. Discourse is the mind killer.”

  “I think we’ve established my death wish already, sign me up! I don’t want to think! Let me be subsumed, Blip! Let something consume me and use me up! It’s all I’ve ever wanted!”

  “Don’t joke about that.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  Blip is bouncing from rock to rock, dodging each shot. There’s ample time to avoid them. Psma balls are slow moving and highly destructive… but also, Blip is pretty sure they wouldn’t hit her to begin with. It feels like…

  It feels like Osprey is pulling her punches. Even after the whole ‘you don’t know what you’re asking for’ spiel. Clearly her heart is in the fight, but maybe Osprey isn’t really trying to hurt her. That’s weird! Doesn’t she believe in what she’s doing?

  “Hey, say something, Blip. It’s no fun if I’m the only one talking.”

  “This is fun to you? I thought you were a consummate professional, Osprey.”

  “Usually, yeah. But being a professional means sitting still and watching the world through a scope, you know? You push me to do more. To be more.”

  Blip says, with a ugh, “Wow. I didn’t realize I was so inspirational!”

  “I’m barely keeping up with you! You’re an incredible fighter. No one’s given me this trouble in a long time.”

  Huh.

  Blip smiles. If Osprey wants to py, then she can py, too. There’s no need to get serious right away.

  “Well, come on then. See if you can catch me!”

  “Hang on. You’re going to run around, far away from me? That’s where I’m strongest. Be careful,” Osprey says.

  “Yeah, the commander said you’d ‘snipe the shit out of’ me. I want to see the Silver Bolt in action. I know you’ve got more in you than you’ve shown me.”

  And then, Blip jets off. Full speed ahead, away from Osprey, towards the husk of the old mine. It’s an invitation. It’s a challenge. It’s a bit of a tease. It’s all of that, plus a little more, a maneuver bigger than the sum of its basic motivations.

  * * *

  Osprey gives chase.

  She ought to stay cloaked the whole time, keep Blip guessing. But, see, that’s no fun. Osprey instead will be cloaked, and for a few seconds uncloak and have the pinfeather mirrors move in a dancing formation, before slipping back into invisibility. She’s not sure if Blip can see her doing it, but she hopes so.

  It takes about ten minutes to catch up with Blip. That girl can move, she can really jet along. The Crown is a precise body, but it’s one purpose-built for standing still and watching. Its means of engaging with the world render it nothing more than eye, gun, and beak. The Dilemma seems more all-purpose, more able to interact with and alter the world. Osprey feels a bit jealous.

  Not that she’d ditch the Crown. The Crown is hers, as much as her face is hers, as much as her hair is hers, as much as her heart is hers. She’d sooner die than pilot another machine, for any other machine would not be her.

  There’s a point most pilots hit, sometime between five thousand and fifteen thousand hours of time in the cockpit, where the bodily lines become more… malleable. The inside and the outside kind of… mix, when a person puts that much time in. It can be hard to tell which body is the ‘real’ one, in a sense.

  This phenomenon has been pretty obsessively studied by JKIM and other corporate entities, as well as governments and academic institutions. But none of them understand, not the way a pilot with those hours does. They look at it as a thing to prevent, or control, or study intellectually.

  You know what Osprey thinks?

  They’re scared.

  They’re afraid of bodies, of their own bodies, of the possibilities of the flesh and the metal.

  But an experienced pilot knows there’s nothing to fear. Or, at least, the things to fear are different from the things people are actually afraid of. Thinking the hands of an armor frame are her own hands isn’t scary; the things she can do with them, however, are. But people can do horrible things with their own flesh and blood hands. The metal isn’t unique for that. They still make human-sized guns, human-sized bombs, human-sized war.

  She’s caught up with Blip, in the shadow of a massive shell of a campus of buildings. It looks vaguely industrial, and extremely haunted. Most of the lights are off, but a few of them still blink away into the ceaseless night. They’re all squatting on a massive TNO, the kind that would make JKIM hundreds of millions for all the minerals in it.

  “Nice spot for a fight,” Osprey says.

  “Isn’t it? We might as well give the ghosts some entertainment, after all. I’d hate for us to be the only ones having any fun.”

  “You’re so kind, Blip.”

  “Mmm… no. I’m really not. I’m cruel. But I can be cruel with a bit of sugar in my voice~”

  It’s a great time to think about golf again. Osprey grew up at the base of a hill, in a city on Titan, and before the SCR revolution, the park near her apartment was a golf course, with real Earth water. They really pumped Terra Aqua onto spaceships, and carried it all the way to Titan to grow real grass and run in artificial rivers. Thank god they tore all the grass up and made it a proper social space.

  “Hey, Osprey, are you there? Earth to Osprey, hello?”

  “I’m here! Yes. Hello.”

  It might be useful to keep thinking about golf, but it’s fine. She can keep focus.

  “So… how do we start this?” Osprey asks, “fighting again, I mean. Like what do we…”“For fuck’s sake, we’ve already been fighting. Let’s just get back to it!”

  “Yeah but… it’s different now. I don’t know. Like, I feel like we know each other better, Blip. Of course, we have to, we have opposing goals and everything, but… I don’t know. You start. Try and attack me maybe.”

  The Dilemma shifts, but Blip doesn’t attack.

  “No, you attack first. Draw your sword, and let’s have a melee.”

  It’s then that a very pointed Email arrives on the main console; Osprey’s brain is flooded with the sense of panic only an Email can possibly give her. It has the subject line SCRAP THAT MACHINE OR ELSE SGT. WATKINS, and no body text other than WE ARE LISTENING IN AND WATCHING SO YOU BETTER DO YOUR GOD DAMN JOB. IF YOU DON’T WE WILL.

  Thanks, Captain.

  Osprey sighs, knowing that she and whoever it is that ‘we’ constitutes can hear her doing it. The brochures for Security Division left out the constant surveilnce and the feeling of being on dispy at all times. Talk about false advertising!

  “I’ll start,” Osprey says, swallowing, “Here.”

  She draws the energy sword. If there was sound in the vacuum, it would have an electric hum, like a neon sign. As it is, it just shines and casts blood red light in Osprey’s vision.

  And, with a moment’s hesitation, she swings.

  Blip dodges it, of course she does. She’s strongest when she’s up close, in her element when she doesn’t even need to drag someone into her effective range. The hooks are old and grimy and sharp; somehow they still shine in the light of the sword.

  A swing of the hooks is Blip’s answer. She holds both in her frame-hands and brings them to Osprey’s frame, chipping away at the outer yer of metal.

  God, it stings. Osprey shivers.

  She kicks the Dilemma away, to give herself some breathing room. It’s fun to have Blip all over her, but it’s hard to think with a girl dragging her hooks through Osprey. Will the captain accept this as trying hard enough?

  Why does Osprey even care about this? She hasn’t cared about anyone, especially not herself, in years. Reality turns to meaningless grey sludge in her hands, indistinguishable, and it gives her indigestion. Why now, why Blip, why here?

  Well, whatever the reasons, Blip is grabbing a chunk of free rock with her hook. She swings it like it’s one of those medieval fils. Osprey’s sidearm makes quick work of it. Superheated sers do the job!

  “Hey!”

  “No improvised weapons for you, Blip!”

  “Osprey, that’s hardly sporting. You’ve got all those huge guns, and what have I got?”

  Osprey scoffs, “Layers of armor I could never penetrate, twice the skill I have as a pilot, and sharp bdes?”

  “Oh, baby, you can –“

  Blip stops herself, before a wave of ughter can stop her.

  “I’m sorry, that was too much.”

  “What were you going to say?” Osprey asks.

  Blip turns tail and flies towards the old mining campus, without another word. She’s ughing up a storm over the radio.

  “You get back here and tell me what you were going to say, or else!”

  “Or else what, Osprey?”

  “Or else I’ll… snipe you! Snipe you and make you say it.”

  Blip vanishes behind a tall fluid tank, one of those big cylinders that are easily ten stories tall and as wide as an apartment building. She’s still completely invisible on Osprey’s instruments, somehow, which is fucking bizarre. She could be behind any of the six big tanks by now!

  She sets the pinfeathers to surround her and activate their cloaking. Osprey is going to sneak up on Blip, and then…

  Well, she’ll cross the bridge when she comes to it.

  * * *

  Seriously?

  ‘Oh baby, you can penetrate my armor any time’?

  What was Blip thinking, saying shit like that? Or, well. She stopped herself from saying it. Why is it so funny? Why does she still kind of want to say it?

  The answer is obvious; she gets like this when she wants to impress a girl at a bar. Dumb jokes, innuendo, showing off a little. It’s all cssic Blip maneuvers, in or out of the armor frame. The difference, though, is the stakes.

  Osprey is supposed to kill her.

  Blip’s not an idiot, she knows flirting with enemies is unprofessional and stupid. But, for some reason, she can’t help herself. Not with Osprey. There’s a way Osprey’s voice shifts when Blip puts on the right tone, and it’s adorable. Is seduction a valid way to neutralize Osprey?

  But it’s not even that. Sure, she is flirting, but the image of seduction is one of manipution…

  And Blip doesn’t really want Osprey to do anything for Blip’s sake. She wants Osprey to do something for her own sake. There are people Blip can’t help but want to see succeed and get better, even if that getting better involves Blip getting hurt. Maybe especially if it means Blip getting hurt. She can take it. That’s what her armor is for.

  She’s scanning around the campus for Osprey. That invisibility trick with the feathers is a smart one, one she ought to learn from. It’s got to be some kind of refraction thing, right? What kind of materials does it use?

  Maybe some kind of silver alloys? No, no way. That’s got to be a metal with an extremely high melting point, else the ser rifle would shoot right through it. Unless the ser rifle Osprey’s packing is a lower temperature than most ser weapons?

  Man, she should have taken the gun she stole apart when she had the chance. It’s back in the debris field somewhere behind her, now.

  Speaking of ser beams, she gets hit from behind by one. She can’t see the armor on her back, but she knows it holds just fine. Most of the hits Blip’s taken have been around her torso. So, she ughs. Getting shot in the back is what she gets for losing focus on the battlefield.

  “Nice hit,” she says, “very sneaky. Now I assume you’re going to slink off and ghost me until your next shot.”

  “Have you been talking to my ex?” Osprey asks.

  “Ooh! No, I haven’t. Do tell! Is Osprey Watkins a heartbreaker?”

  “Not on purpose. But… yes.”

  Of course! Oh, this is perfect. Blip looks up, around the old fluid tanks. They haven’t exploded, which is good. Osprey can hide forever around them, but she won’t. Blip knows these tanks.

  If she recalls correctly, tank three has a massive dent in it, from when someone’s construction frame impacted it at full speed. It’s the perfect size for most frames to hide in, in the mechanical guts of the fluid storage site.

  Ever so slowly, she goes into the interior space between the tanks. Some of the lights are still on, which only makes it worse.

  The pce is fucking haunted. The lights cast shadows out over the pipes and power cables, the inhuman shapes of industry. The whole fluid storage site is a metal stomach, grafted onto the body of a huge rock. Blip hopes she isn’t digested by the pce.

  “Osprey, trust me: you don’t want to hide here.”

  “I could be anywhere. ‘Here’ is a secret you don’t know.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  Yep, there’s tank three. There’s a few pieces of an old construction frame embedded in the outer wall; the spyed steel finger, the square shoulder armor. But there’s a sort of ripple effect over it, like Blip is looking through a pond at it. It shifts, reflected, through a mirror.

  Or mirrors, plural.

  Blip shoots out a hook, which passes right through the illusion. The hook and the cable are vanishing into the pond, rendered invisible.

  “How’d you find me?” Osprey demands. The mirror illusion drops; the feathers all shake with irritation. As beautiful and damaged as ever, the Aves Crown is there, shining in the dread light of fluorescent industry. Blip thinks maybe Osprey is the most beautiful machine she’s ever seen, the Crown the most beautiful person.

  “I grew up here, I know all the hiding spots. Sorry. Home field advantage!”

  Osprey draws her sword, which turns all the lighting in the tight space red.

  “You don’t want to do that here,” Blip says.“Oh yeah? How come?”

  Brat. Blip would ugh if it wasn’t so dangerous.

  “See these tanks? They’re full of votile acid, and fuel, and coont. And, they’re pressurized on the inside. If you break them, all that fluid will be sucked into the vacuum all at once… you don’t want to see how that turns out for you.”

  “Oh, I’d die?”

  “No. Maybe. But your frame would be melted, or exploded, or all its electronics would be fried. Put the sword down, and let’s fight somewhere else.”

  Osprey doesn’t move. The sword shimmers, shadows shake in its bloody wake.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’d hate for my frame to get destroyed… but, man.”

  “Osprey…”“I… Blip. You really should have finished me off, back when you killed raptor one and two. I’m not better than them, I’m not special. I’m just another shmuck doing evil work for my awful bosses. You believe in the SCR, right? Like I did?”Blip doesn’t say anything.

  “If you do, you better kill me and run home quick. They make trophies out of the most avid believers. There’s a fascist, or a corporate stooge, hiding in everyone’s heart. Don’t let them bring out yours.”

  “Osprey. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Do you think I chose Security Division? No. I didn’t. I was a war hero, I had the Thomas Sankara Medal and the Pavlichenko mark of rifle mastery and… fuck, Blip. I had a fiancee and everything.”

  Is Osprey crying?

  Blip approaches her, in a light step.

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it really isn’t. Blip, JKIM and every other fucking government and corporation is chomping at the bit to break any rebellion, the SCR especially. Do you think they have snipers posted and a blockade around the strike because the strike is going to overthrow capitalism? No. It’s about breaking their spirit. They want the miners, their children, and their great grandchildren to never even think about striking again.”

  The gap between them lessens with each step Blip takes. The lower booster on her back rakes against the rocky floor beneath her, kicking up dust behind the Dilemma.

  “Osprey. Dying isn’t going to fix anything, okay? It won’t, and it can’t. If you feel guilty, use it. Do something with it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Fight me!”

  Osprey says, through hitched breath, “Hate to break it to you, but that’s what we’ve been doing! And news fsh: nothing has changed.”

  “Hmm… One second.”

  “Wh-”

  The front of the Dilemma’s chassis folds outwards, soundless, but still with great drama. What the hell is Blip doing? Osprey watches, and finds her answer: Blip is exiting her frame. It’s as confounding as an answer can get. The whole point of piloting is to pilot, after all, so…

  “What the hell?” Osprey asks.

  There’s a knock on her cockpit.

  If this is some kind of long-con trap, Osprey is going to be so mad at herself for falling for it. She may as well sit in the Crown and let the oxygen run out if she’s going to…

  Another knock. Fine.

  Osprey opens the cockpit, consequences be damned. Her vitals sign monitor indicates her heart is pounding. If this is going to be the choice that kills her, let her at least have a bit of fun first.

  Vacuum rushes in to meet her cockpit, scatters and sets free the air. It no longer has to be useful, trapped and kept tame, it can spread out into the cosmos. Osprey feels jealous of those particles. No one will scatter her atoms into the sor system! It’s not fair.

  But she has little time to consider this, because Blip Horowitz is right there, floating in the space in front of the open cockpit. The flightsuit she’s wearing emphasizes her features; the delicate curve of her neck, the length of her legs, the pouch of her stomach. Something warm and wet licks at Osprey.

  “Hey,” Blip says, through the open radio channel, “come here often?”

  “Beg pardon?”Blip offers out a hand to Osprey, an invitation, a threat, a greeting. What option is there beyond accepting? Osprey could spurn it all, but in that extended hand is possibility, potential. It could lead to further pain… or…

  She accepts the hand before hope blossoms in her stomach. Hope would burn too much, in a way the fires of a nuclear reactor could never match.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We,” Blip says, “are going to change something. Are you polished up on your hand-to-hand combat training?”

  “No.”

  Blip ughs, like an explosion, like the birth of a star, and says, “Good. Because neither am I. No hits below the waist or above the cvicle.”

  “Your idea of ‘change’ is a fistfight? Punching each other is the way to break the monotony?”

  “You don’t have to punch. Kicking is also a valid means of attack.”

  Osprey cannot help but ugh. What was the SCR doing, keeping this girl in the test piloting division? This woman is clearly deranged enough to be an ace pilot for the history books. Time and space should bend themselves around her with how suited Blip Horowitz is suited to being a hero. It has not done so; at least, not yet.

  Osprey, for as much as she wishes she didn’t have to be alive, finds the desire to see Blip become a hero. It would be fun to witness, if nothing else.

  “Alright. How many rounds?” Opsrey asks, “best two out of three?”

  “Best five out of seven.”

  “No, best three out of five. Seven is too much.”

  Blip nods, “Deal. Shake on it?”

  They’re still holding hands, which renders the whole idea of shaking meaningless. Blip’s gloves are tight around her hands, so much so that Osprey can feel how long and lovely her fingers are under that second skin.

  “We don’t need to shake,” Osprey says. She does not mention the hand holding, because touch like that is a fragile thing. If she calls attention to it, it will wilt and rot away. Commemorating touch is a terrible thing; pressing a flower kills it, saying it out loud breaks the spell.

  Blip says, without breaking the electric circuit between their hands, “Alright then! No shaking. Best three of five. No hits below the waist or above the cvicle. And no improvised weapons.”

  “I didn’t agree to that st one.”

  “Call it a safety precaution.”

  Osprey smirks, and asks, “What, don’t trust me?”

  All Blip does is smirk back. Is she wearing red lipstick on a sortie? How can she manage the effort? Osprey doesn’t even wear a bra on the job. If the vacuum of space was a pleasant way to die, she wouldn’t even bother with her flight suit.

  “I trust you enough to fight you, Osprey Watkins. But not enough to fight you without a few provisions. Do you want me to trust you?”

  Yes. God, yes. More than anything.

  “It’s not a problem either way.”

  “Hmm. If you say so,” Blip pouts, which is just unfair, “shall we start?”

  * * *

  Blip and Osprey separate. Though Blip would not admit this if asked, she is disappointed to lose Osprey’s touch. She will not have to wait long to have it again, thankfully. When someone has not been touched for so long, a bout of hand-to-hand is as good as any other form of intimacy. Though, Blip must confess, it’s not as exciting as fighting in an armor frame.

  They take positions at opposite sides of the old gas tanks. Blip takes the odd numbered side, with tank three’s dented form at her back. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be leaking; industrial strength is much safer contained in a pressurized tank than out in the open.

  Osprey takes the even numbered side. She is stretching, rolling her shoulders back and flexing her palms, like she knows what she’s doing. That does not bode well for Blip, all told. The Horowitzes stretching back have been great at interfacing with machines, with the guts and gore of levers and pulleys, but not the machinery of the human body. Fist fighting, shooting, it’s all beyond Blip.

  No matter.

  “Okay,” Blip says, “on three.”

  “Counting down, or up? And, are you going to zero, or on one?”

  “Zero? No. Counting down. We start after I say ‘one’.”

  Osprey smiles. She says, “So, on zero, but you don’t say zero. I see.”

  “Brat.”

  “What are you gonna do about it, then? If I’m such a brat, then make me regret it.”

  The nerve of this woman! Blip is happy to oblige her, if that’s what she wants.

  “Okay! I will. On three. Three,”

  There is a feeling of static electricity. Of course, there is no weather in space, but there is so many conductive materials around the gas pnt that the static feeling exists regardless. Is this…

  “Two,” Blip says. It’s not a magnetic storm. It can’t be. What are the odds? And, if it was, Blip and Osprey would be stranded in this graveyard, without any means of reaching the outside world. So it’s just some static. That’s all it can be.

  “One.”

  And, with that, Blip lunges. The vacuum is full of electricity, both figurative, and extremely literal. The light fixtures on the catwalk high above blink.

  Fighting in a frame and fighting flesh-to-flesh couldn’t be more different. Space and geography are mere suggestions in an armor frame, helpful ideas that one can dismiss with ease. To fight outside of the frame, on the other hand…

  There are no thrusters to right Blip’s trajectory, so she misses Osprey and nearly collides tits-first with tank four. There are no hooks to grab distant targets, and no chain with which to reel them in. Hell, there are no tools to track Osprey’s position but Blip’s eyes! And what with the lights blinking…

  Blip is trying to right herself when Osprey grapples her to the ground. The lights go off for a moment, so the only reason she knows it’s the ground beneath her back is the frigid cold biting at her. The lights come back on quickly enough to see Osprey’s face; she is grinning as she holds Blip down.

  Osprey says, “One point to me, is that?”

  “I don’t know how you snipers did bouts, but in my training, you had to bring someone to submission with a countdown.”

  “Okay,” Osprey says, “zero, one, two…”

  Blip squirms. She is pinned to the ground, with Osprey’s hand at her stomach and wrist. The sensation of hands around her wrist is comforting, like…

  She breaks out of Osprey’s grip, just as easily as she accidentally broke out of those trick handcuffs. It really broke the scene when it happened then, but right now, it’s all in the service of keeping the momentum.

  Before Blip gets herself caught like a rabbit under a bird’s talons, she elbows Osprey. It’s undignified, but it gives her some space to get up and recover.

  As she gets back up on her feet, Blip finds another thing that she dislikes about flesh fighting: she can’t really talk and fight. In the frame, there’s time to chat, time to taunt, but there is no such thing here. Either she fights, or she loses. The simplicity beguiles her.

  Osprey is still reeling and floating away from the elbowing. Thank you, microgravity. She is ughing, even as she is adrift.

  It’s the perfect opening. Blip steadies her boots against the harsh ice of the ground, cold biting and baying, and unches herself at Osprey. From the time of her unch to contact, there is no up, no down. Her sense of direction hides in a hole as she grabs onto Osprey Watkins, and takes both of them towards tank four.

  They nd on the tank’s side, ughing as they wrestle–

  And then, there is a feeling, like standing in a lightning strike. At first Osprey assumes she is merely falling in lust with this woman; that proves to be not the reason (though it is still true). What is instead happening is far more extraordinary.

  From the dead buildings of the gas pnt, a surge of electrical fury is shing out, a cat o’ nine tails of lightning, streaking out into the dead void of space. The debris that both Blip and Osprey spent so much effort avoiding become conductors; dead ships and frames, steel sidings and spent power cells. Golden lightning spreads out, as hands grasping into the vacuum, grasping for any and all touch.

  And then, the power at the gas pnt, in the pair’s armor frames, in all the half-alive husks of vessels, all go out.

  Blip and Osprey are left in total, absolute darkness. Not even the emergency power kicks on; any and all circuits are dead. Were the pair not already locked in a wrestler’s embrace, they would have utterly lost each other.

  “Oh, right,” Blip says.

  “Our radios still work?”

  “They’re low voltage enough. Do you remember where our frames are? I have a crank-driven fshlight we can use.”

  Osprey doesn’t.

  “We can feel our way toward them. We’re up against the tank, right?” she says.

  “It’ll be a leap of faith.”

  “I’m in the mood for a leap of faith,” Osprey says, “how about you?”

  Blip takes Osprey’s hand, and squeezes it. Osprey, of course, squeezes back.

  “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  They reposition themselves, standing on the side of the tank. If they aim wrong, they could wind up floating forever in the vacuum. If they aim it right, somehow…

  “Three, two, one, go.”

  They push off together, hand in hand, and another streak of golden lightning issues forth above them. For a moment, the shadowed fluid storage area is cast in electric amber light, bathed in the shine of pure psma.

  The pair safely nd right against the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, with the storm’s light raging above them.

  Announcement And that's chapter two! I am a sucker for the vaguely butch/femme dynamic of 'butch who is trying to be cool' vs. 'femme who actually is cool, no big deal'.

  See you next week with chapter three!