The Myrddin crouched down over a fallen einherjar. The machine’s cranial unit had been blown off entirely, and it id on its back. During the fight Vivien had used a trick she'd learned from her sister, locking the cockpit down. With its main set of arms the Myrddin pressed one against the pelvis of the wreck as the other grabbed onto the front pting of the chest. Metal creaked as the pte was lifted up, and with a series of pings as the joints popped, the Myrddin tore it all the way off before tossing it away. Inside was the prize she had been looking for, one that she’d made sure would stay put for just this moment; a body. It sat in the cockpit, lifeless and thankfully not frozen solid, though blue in the lips.

  Vivien’s mind reached out and connected to the ARC inside its skull, checking for the time of death for the pilot. “This one could work… Seems he sted until just the st few hours.”

  It was unfortunate that the body was male, but there was minimal damage thanks to the padding on the inside of the restraint braces. With a thought those same braces unlocked and retreated back inside the pilot seat. The wires that connected the body to the einherjar disconnected with a series of clicks before pulling back as well. Carefully, the Myrddin plucked the stiff body out of its resting pce with its lower set of arms.

  “Oh well, good enough. If this one doesn’t rot on me, then I should be able to fix the issue of it being male easily. Human bodies are quite… Pstic, after all. It already worked once.” Thoughts of her Emrys danced in her mind as she imagined twisting the corpse much in the same way. It was almost as good.

  The front of the Myrddin opened, blossoming to reveal its cockpit. It was a rounded hollow meant to contain the egg-like housing that held one of the otherworldly Draugr that had made the machine, but it had been repurposed (or rather, grown) to better accommodate a human pilot. The Myrddin moved the body into the cockpit, and from inside braces extending from the walls secured the corpse. As the cockpit closed several cables pressed their connectors into the corpse’s valkyrie impnt.

  Vivien made the Myrddin stand and began to spin up the miniaturized sleipnir drive within it. This newest body would hopefully work out, it was well preserved and only recently deceased. If it didn’t, it left Vivien with only two choices for a physical body. She could obtain a Hamr like her sister had. It would work, and work well, but it wasn’t what she wanted. And Vivien was never going to settle ever again. The Myrddin sshed at the air, jumping into the hole in the Ginnungagap it carved out.. No, she wasn’t going to settle for less than the real thing. It would have to be a living person if this body failed her as well.

  ______

  Emrys stepped into the conference room being used for the briefing, Rico following behind her. The room itself was vish, furnishings of quality wood and comfortable chairs complete with a view of the caldera ke. Ed and Laine had arrived ahead of the pair and were already settled in, Ed gave a slight wave and Laine just nodded once before going back to focusing on reading something in her augmented reality suite. Emrys went to the nearest chair and sat.

  Rico leaned against the wall opposite the caldera and sighed. “Why do they even need us all in a room for this?”

  “Pretty sure it’s so command knows we all saw the same thing,” said Ed.

  Laine waved a hand. “Inertia, really. The suits up top, above Chanel, they love the idea of making people scramble to get into boardrooms. And yeah, what Ed mentioned too.”

  “As long as we get good information for the mission, I don’t mind,” said Emrys, voice dropped back down to a more masculine register.

  Rico scoffed. “You know you don’t have to keep forcing that, don’t you?”

  Emrys turned, the light catching on the curve of her mask. There was a silent intensity to her gaze, one that Rico had seen a few times that day, a steel in what was at first blush a withdrawn and awkward pilot.

  He held up his hands. “Fine, fine… So, uh, about the mission?”

  “If we actually coordinate this time it should be fine,” said Laine.

  Rico gred, but didn’t speak up and instead leaned back in his chair.

  Laine drummed her fingers on the edge of the boardroom table. “Chanel’s sure taking her time.”

  “Then I guess this is as good a time as any,” said Emrys, pressing the releases on her mask. “Rico’s right, I think you should meet the real me.”

  Ed looked over to Laine. “You owe me a bottle of the good stuff when we’re on shore leave.” Both Rico and Emrys stared at the two of them. “Med debt, he’s got the same kinda eye thing Laine’s got going on.”

  Emrys blinked. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. She gnced at her own reflection, she’d been too busy reckoning with this whole coming out thing to really give the other changes she was going through much thought.

  “You dumbass, she’s transgender,” said Rico.

  “Oh. Huh.” Ed sheepishly looked over to Laine. “Did you guess that?”

  Laine narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “No? Why would I have?”

  Emrys held up a hand. “I, uh….” She trailed off. This wasn't at all going how she'd expected. Then again, it hadn't with Rico back in the atrium either. “Look, just call me Emrys, nothing else really changes.”

  Ed nodded. “Just a more even split in the squad. Say, you really don't have medical debt for all of that?”

  “N-no, I don't. It's not…” Emrys looked at Laine, at her eyes. “My handler and I, Vivien. She covered all of it…”

  Laine whistled. “Her special little girlie, huh? Can't believe you're living that little bit of fiction.”

  Emrys blushed. Rico wasn't able to get any barbs in, his thoughts too slow for the pace of the conversation.

  Laine stood up and walked over to Emrys. “Knew a girl like you on my old job. You ever need a hand, you just ask.”

  “Uh, sure. But, um…”

  “Yes I know. Vivien has it in hand, right?”

  ______

  The Myrddin emerged from the yawning void over the eitr font buried within the former Veles Worker’s Front base she and Emrys had made their home for the first few months of the war. It nded gracefully and moved to the small alcove that rested beneath an observation deck for the base’s power system. Vivien brought one of the alfar that sat at the shoreline over as the Myrddin kneeled; she wanted to be sure that the corpse was properly connected. Didn’t want yet another failure, couldn’t really afford it on the timetable she was operating with. Her Emrys might need the Myrddin soon.

  Its torso bloomed and the recently retrieved corpse slumped forward, hot vapor pouring out around it from the thawing process. The connections seemed solid, wiring linked up to its nervous system accompanied by tubing to handle the various fluids a human body required to maintain life. It wasn’t working yet, lungs not drawing in breath, heart having to be circumvented by the Myrddin’s systems. With a thought the einherjar discharged energy into the corpse, making it spasm within the grasp of its wiring. It would need another; failure to achieve the ignition of biological processes had led to more rejected subjects than any other reason.

  If she could not get the corpse to reanimate, there was no chance that the draugr metal would bond with it. She needed that, The Augmented Reality Chips were small, cramped and drab; an insult to her. The systems that threaded through Emrys felt right, they befitted her. She shocked the corpse again. It’s heart beat a few fleeting times. She could not reside within Emrys though, not the way she desired. Nothing would be denied her again. She wanted to touch and be touched by her Emrys, not be bound by the limitations of being a projected hallucination into her mind. Another discharge of energy, this time applied more carefully and directly to cardiac tissue. It began to beat, steadily with the Myrddin observing for irregurities and correcting when needed. Good, this could work. The Draugr metal and circuitry only needed to bond now.

  Satisfied with the body’s renewed life, Vivien willed the cockpit shut. This was the st shot for this method, so she willed it to work as hard as she could. If the bonding failed again, if she was left without a shell to inhabit, it would be time to move on to living raw material. Vivien didn’t want to deal with the potential moral issues Emrys may have with her taking over a living host. She didn’t want to scare her.

  Her mind detached from the alfar and then broadcast itself back out into space. It had been some time since she'd checked in with her Emrys and there was a building anxiety that she had been needed, yet was unavaible. For a moment she rested inside of the massive bifrost hub, Sindur. Within its twinned pilrs connected by a band of rainbow flowed nearly all major communications in the surrounding section of space; from simple date and time synchronization to encrypted messages passed between corporate forces and everything in between.

  She left Sindur after briefly submersing herself in its vast ocean of data and returned to the Necker Group corvette above Thrasir.

  _____

  Chanel sighed as she sat back down at her console. The squad on Thrasir had had ample time to get together in the briefing room while she'd scrounged the ship for enough grains of instant coffee for a cup of the sludge. It sat near the main screen of her console wafting its acrid perfume into the air. Unpleasant, but it was better than the bitterness that indicated the scrubbers were about to need repcing.

  She connected to the surface, a tether to the communications node on the pnet forming. Her console blinked, Ben's handler. “I didn't know if you were going to be joining us. Hey.”

  “Yes, hello. Sorry for being te, I had a few things to take care of.” Vivien's feed switched from the default ck of avatar image to her constructed one. “How’s the squad been?”

  Chanel ran a hand through her hair. “Rico's vitals have been all over the pce, probably another panic attack. He seems to be stable now.”

  “And is that normal for Rico?” asked Vivien.

  “Yes, a little. Failure really rattles him, and that close call on the st mission seems to have left its mark.” Chanel took a sip of the coffee adjacent sludge. “He'll bounce back, and if it comes to it we have drugs to manage it.”

  “Well, as long as he can do the job,” said Vivien, her avatar shrugging.

  “How about your pilot?”

  Vivien didn't immediately respond. Chanel assumed she was speaking with Ben and had her console connect to the boardroom down on Thrasir. The weather was calm and so the tether established quickly to the comms unit below. The screens above her main console filled with camera feeds from the room. Ben had his mask off and held it in his p.

  “Sorry about the dey, I just needed to speak with my pilot. She's alright.”

  “Ah. So that's what was going on then?”

  “Yeah. Of course, that isn't going to be an issue. Is it, Chanel?”

  “No. At least, I hope not,” Chanel groaned, aware that there was a non-zero chance that Rico would make it an issue.

  “My patient, Emrys, she mentioned that Rico seemed interested in her transition.”

  “Well, that’s better than the alternative. Vivien, have you reviewed the intel from our st sensor sweep?”

  “Yeah, yeah. How active do you want me to be in the briefing, by the way? This is still your show.”

  “You've done this kind of thing longer than I have, you worked with a mercenary pilot for, what? Nearly a decade?”

  “Near enough. I'll add in my own insight once you've gotten them focused, sound good?”

  “Yep, let's get this done so I can finally get away from this fucking pnet.” Chanel forced down another sip of her ‘coffee’ and grimaced. “Alright, we're live.”

  ______

  Back in the boardroom, the conversation had shifted from Emrys’ gender to the prospect of getting to go on shore leave. They were all aware this wasn't going to be their st tour in their contracts, so the focus was on getting a chance to visit somewhere warm before being sent back out again. Their ARCs chirped as Chanel connected to all of them.

  “Squad, gd to see you're all here and in one piece. Before we begin the briefing proper I want to introduce a new member of the team, Vivien,” said Chanel, affecting a familiar tone.

  “Hello everyone, I'm in charge of Emrys’ mental health and general wellbeing. I am also a seasoned coordinator for einherjar combat, with experience dating back to the Veles Police Action, and following that I worked with the pilot known as Avalon as well as learning from Sirius, the mark one era ace.”

  “And the reason we're in this war at all,” grumbled Ed.

  “I don’t know why he decided to be a part of the attack on Breidablik. I had already separated from him and Avalon by that point, Ed. And as much as you might think otherwise, I can’t read minds yet.”

  Rico gred at Ed. “Doesn't matter why he did it. He was a star, the best pilot of his generation.”

  “What, you have a poster of him on your bedroom wall or something?” asked Laine.

  Rico stood. “Why are you always such a bitch to me?”

  Emrys grabbed Rico's wrist and pulled him back down. “Please, don't fight. We have a job to do.”

  “Yeah, listen to her, kid,” said Laine.

  “Don't fucking start, Ms. Jarnefeldt,” said Chanel.

  “Sorry, ma'am,” mumbled Laine.

  Rico sat back down, idly muttering to himself while Laine grabbed Ed's fsk and took a sip.

  Chanel clicked her tongue, subtly drawing attention back to herself. “Now, if we're done fighting like children, we have a mission to go over.”

  Chanel sent the data on the spaceport into the squad's ARCs, dispying it as a three dimensional map over the boardroom table. The spaceport itself was built into the side of a small mountain range, its twin unch catapults raised and connected internally to an eitr font. Outside of the main building were nding areas and hangars meant for suborbital craft. Beyond that were the defenses Mobius had erected. A few yers of automated defenses; turrets and the like. A couple areas were highlighted in orange as likely einherjar deployment locations.

  Vivien manifested her avatar in the boardroom, the familiar sight of a tall woman with long dark hair and a bck dress with intense crimson eyes. She walked over, tapping on the digital map. “The data that Chanel shared with me indicates that Mobius forces are fortifying their position here. Our repeated victories have left them quite desperate.”

  Rico turned to Emrys. “Alright, I can understand why you and her are a thing now that I can see her.”

  Emrys blinked at him. “She is beautiful, of course. But that isn't why.”

  A red light blinked on the main building. “Visual surveilnce has picked up on a weapon having been connected to the spaceport's grid here,” said Chanel. “Its design indicates that it is an eitr weapon of considerable destructive power.”

  Vivien's avatar nodded and a cone of red light projected from the empcement over the field in front of it. “This would be the area it can cover reliably. It can probably extend further, but it would require extra time to move between the extremes."

  “As such, we'll be splitting the squad in half. Ed and Rico on the west while Emrys and Laine take the east,” said Chanel. “Both Ed and Laine have long range options for disabling the weapon. Whichever of the two groups is not the focus will be responsible for that job.”

  “Yo, what about any Mobius einherjar? They're not just gonna let us do this,” said Ed.

  “Correct. I know it's asking a lot, but you'll need to contend with them as well,” said Chanel.

  “You're all quite skilled,” began Vivien, her avatar making eye contact with each member in turn, “consider it confidence in your abilities.”

  “The extra payload my upgraded rig can carry will come in handy then,” said Ed.

  “If you and Laine can get that cannon down it'll be fine. Between Emrys and my Asura the einherjar shouldn't be an issue,” said Rico.

  Laine blinked. “You've never said a good word about any of us before.”

  “Trying to be positive,” mumbled Rico.

  Vivien smiled at him before focusing back on Emrys. “And don’t forget, once we've taken the spaceport, you'll all be leaving this pnet for some well earned shore leave.” She tapped the tips of the spaceport's unch catapults. “You have six hours before deployment. We'll be hitting them at night.”

  Dark_Sun_Morrigan