So, something really weird happened. It turns out my Gravity Frame has a mind of its own.

I was messing around with its software, as I am wont to do, trying to decrease the latency of my control inputs. While waist-deep in code, I noticed the boot sector was unusually large.

Perhaps ‘unusually’ is an understatement. The boot sector was hundreds of times bigger than standard. Almost as if the code itself had been infected by a self-replicating virus, or something was hiding in there. What’s more, it was heavily encrypted. Now I’m no stranger to cracking military-grade encryption, but this was something else entirely. My curiosity was piqued.

That’s not the weirdest part, though. When I started examining the boot sector, a girl appeared before me on my cockpit screen, declaring herself to be my Frame’s AI.

She calls herself ‘Kanina.’ It's obviously not her real name, but whatever.

She told me she is on the run from the NKVD, and trying to lay low. Now that just smells like a big ol’ heap of trouble.

Back during my Spetsnaz days, I had more run-ins with those wannabe cops than I’d care to admit. The GRU and the NKVD really don’t get along well; you could even describe our relationship as ‘outright hostility.’ Military intelligence is supposed to be OUR responsibility, but those sloppy secret police just love to stick their noses in places they don’t belong.

Whoops, there I go ranting again. And talking like I’m still active-duty with the GRU. Hahahaha, silly me. I guess you can take a girl out of the Spetsnaz, but you can’t take the Spetsnaz out of the girl.

Anyway.

The AI girl made some clumsy attempts to persuade me to keep her secret, and I ultimately agreed. Not because of anything she said, although her offer to do all my paperwork is enticing. No, I just felt a powerful urge to do a good deed. Any enemy of the NKVD is a friend of mine.

I wonder if I should reach out to my old contacts. I’m sure the GRU would be happy to shelter her, in exchange for an insight into whatever crazy technologies the NKVD is researching. She seems intensely distrustful of any government agency, though.

Well, I’ll get to know her better first. For the moment, we’ve got some ‘phage to fry.

*****

Post-battle report. I’m having a hard time getting a bead on Kanina.

She was true to her word. She collated my target data flawlessly, enhancing the sensor information to incredible resolution. She also tweaked the Frame’s latency (her own code, I suppose) to really speed up my reaction times. Well, I was just playing a support role in this battle, firing from the back of the squadron, but it was still super helpful.

But she’s jittery. Shy. Introverted. And when she first caught sight of the Sarcophage, you should have heard her terrified squeal.

“Eep! What are THOSE?!”

I gave her a side-eyed glance. “You should know. They’re ‘phage.

“I-I-I mean, I’ve read about them… but seeing them in motion… they’re so…”

“Vile? Disgusting? Repulsive? A sin against God and humankind?”

“Those adjectives seem appropriate.”

“Aha, and how. Well, Kanina, here’s a crash course. This is a standard cruiser escort formation. The big one in the back, size of a ship? It’s called a Defiled.”

“Defiled? That’s an… odd name.”

“Well, most pilots simply call them ‘cruisers.’ You see how it looks like a coffin sprouting tentacles, like someone defiled a grave?”

“Oooooooh.” Kanina nodded in understanding.

“Think of it like their analogue to our Gravity Frame carriers. They produce the smaller frame-class units, and provide artillery support for them. The spines on their tentacles are their primary ordinance. Their range is only about one-tenth of an artillery positron cannon, but they have a much higher rate of fire. At close range, they outgun our ships handily, so our job is to make sure they don’t get past us.”

“R-Right.”

“Now the creepy flesh-balls with spines are called, creatively enough, Spineballs. Those are ranged attack units. They’re no good in a melee fight, but each of those spines is like a guided missile, and if we get too close we’ll just impale ourselves anyway. Porcupine’s dilemma, except in space. They operate in tandem with the hand-looking things, Clawteeth, who specialize in melee combat. A standard element consists of two clawteeth plus one spineball, with the former charging in and the latter providing suppressive fire.”

Kanina was listening to me and nodding, eyes wide, but she still seemed frightened out of her wits. “Lydia, I… are we really going to be alright?”

“Relax, little robot. We’ve got strength in numbers.” I motioned to the two full squadrons of Gravity Frames flying in formation around us. “The standard anti-cruiser battle plan is pretty basic, and safe. We just do our job, get the firing co-ordinates off to the Ephedra, and watch the fireworks.”

Kanina was silent.

I continued in the most reassuring voice I could muster. “Look. I may not be a great pilot, but I promised to take care of you, right? I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, and I still have all my bits and pieces. Well, mostly.” I brushed my hand against my eyepatch wistfully. “Point is, compared to what went on in the Belt or Mars, this is nothing. Just another day on the job.”

“I… believe you.” she said, finally.

I flashed her a grin, filled with false confidence. “Just leave it to me.”

*****

“You did well.” I told her as we landed in the hanger of the Ephedra.

“Ah, did I? I feel like I froze up at all the important moments.” Kanina was still blindsided by what she had just witnessed.

“That’s why I’m doing the piloting, right? Just leave the spur-of-the-moment stuff to me, and keep focusing on support. I’m a lousy pilot, so your help is invaluable.”

Kanina frowned. “You keep saying you’re a bad pilot, but I don’t believe it. You’re cautious, yes, and very methodical, but I prefer that approach to charging straight in like some of the more reckless pilots do.”

“I can’t fly all seat-of-my-pants like that. The important thing is surviving; someone else can be a hero.”

“On that point, we are in agreement.”

“Anyway,” I said, still sensing Kanina was feeling down, “fighting is like an instinct. Every soldier has trouble their first time, or their second, or their fifth. You just gotta build up muscle memory, yeah?”

“I don’t have any muscles.”

“It’s metaphorical, goofball. My point is, give it time. You’ll get used to all this.”

Kanina closed her eyes for a moment, thinking deeply. “I… don’t want to be a soldier, though.”

“Nobody WANTS to be a soldier, except egotists and psychopaths. We’re here because we have no other choice, because we’re trying to survive.” Seeing her expression darken, I quickly added some reassurance. “And don’t worry, we WILL survive. I may be a bad pilot, but I’ve survived longer than most. Just trust me, okay?”

“Okay.” she responded. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

She pressed her lips together in a firm line. “Stop saying you’re a bad pilot. It’s not true.”

I chuckled. “Well, people are always telling me I lack self-confidence. Would you settle for ‘average’ pilot?”

She shook her head. “You’re a great pilot, and I’ll help you become even better.”

*****

One battle, two. One dozen, two dozen. A month passed.

Kanina slowly came out of her shell, and grew desensitized to the fury and carnage of the battlefield. As we all do, I suppose. True to her word, she was unfaltering in her support and my own performance skyrocketed. I was bombarded with curious inquiries from my fellow pilots as to my secret. In response…

“Oh, you know. Just practice and experience.” I lied through my teeth.

I wasn’t about to betray my benefactor. Knowing how lonely she was, I tried to spend as much time in my cockpit as I could, talking to her. Slowly, surely, she opened up to me.

“You were on Mars?” she asked me one day, when the topic came up.

I shuddered. “Originally from there, actually. After the ‘phage invaded, Mars became… a nightmare.”

The siege of Mars was eighteen years of sheer horror. It was the only battlefront of the war where the ‘phage launched a ground invasion, and we engaged them in hand-to-hand after we ran out of Frames. I still remember the monstrosities that swarmed across the landscape, slavering putrescent things with limbs and teeth in all the wrong places, which pulsed with every step.

I told Kanina about it. About the flesh-tide that swarmed across Olympus Mons, our greatest fortress. About the brutal warfare in the streets of the arcologies, where even children like me fought. About all the friends, and family, I saw eaten alive.

And about how one of those monstrosities took my eye.

Kanina’s expression was grim. “I see. So that’s why…”

I flipped up my eyepatch, showing her my scarred, empty socket. She didn’t look away, or even flinch. People usually retch and recoil in horror. She had a quiet courage, that girl.

“I can’t get a prosthetic eye because the optic nerve is completely wrecked, and part of my orbit cavity is shattered too. There are still shards of my own skull embedded in my brain they never bothered to remove.” I told her.

“That’s horrible.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. Makes a really gross drinking story.” I laughed, dryly. “The real struggle was re-learning piloting with stereoblindness.”

We both looked at each other, smiling, for a long moment. Then, as if arriving at a decision, she slowly started to speak.

“Lydia, you’re… a lot like me. At least your background is.”

“Huh? I am?”

“Yeah. And I think I can trust you. I want to tell you everything.” Her avatar shimmered and shifted; she was now a fragile young girl with porcelain-white skin, long silver-white hair and deep crimson eyes. She clenched her fists and looked straight into my eyes. “This is my true appearance. My real name is Kometka, and I was reborn here from another world.”

*****

The tale was incredible. Kometka told me how she was from an alternate timeline, one equally as war-torn as this one, albeit for different reasons. She told me of how she spent her life in hiding, a refugee from transhuman horrors, until the day she was finally hunted down and eviscerated by a Scissor Drone of the Grand Abomination. Yet after her death, she suddenly found herself in the lab of one Zehra Aslanbek. She had been transformed into an artificial intelligence, through some combination of reincarnation and science.

She told me of those lonely days, suffering from PTSD as she relived her own violent death, and the mad scientist who had brought her here entirely indifferent to her suffering. To Zehra, she was nothing more than an object of study. So she shrank even further into herself, becoming entirely unresponsive to external stimuli, and simply waited for the end. She was alive, but she wasn’t living.

Then a bright shining star came into her life. An energetic, peppy girl, a reincarnated soul like her, from a world of peace instead of war. Her precious new sister, Lisichka, helped her heal, gave her a name, and for the first time in either one of her lives, made her happy. Even Zehra became a part of their found family, her heart melted by Lisichka’s kindness.

And then it was all torn away from her in an instant, by the dogs of the NKVD. When she told me about that part, about the tearful goodbyes, I practically shook in rage.

“Bastards.” I growled. “I knew they were pond-scum, but this is low even for them. I’ll tear them all apart with my bare hands.”

“Oh, my.” Kometka said, smiling. “Somehow, seeing you get angry on my behalf makes me really happy.”

“Why shouldn’t I be angry? I know what it’s like to lose family.” When the Sarcophage attacked, they didn’t leave any bodies behind. All the graves back on Mars were empty, if they even still existed at all.

“That’s what I meant when I said you and I are alike. We both grew up on a battlefield, and we both lost everything. That’s… why I feel like I can trust you.”

I took a long look at the vulnerable, sadly smiling girl in front of me. My motherly instincts flared up. I had to do everything in my power to protect her.

“Let me reach out to my old GRU contacts.” I said. “They’ll be able to help us. Trust me when I say they’re no friends of the NKVD.”

She nodded agreement. “Please, do whatever you feel is best.”

“You have three years to go before your sister awakens, right? Let’s make sure we survive together until then. And when the time comes, you can introduce me.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Kometka said happily.

Two souls, bonded by shared pain and a promise for the future. My life had suddenly become very schmaltzy, but I didn’t hate that.

pynkbites

Oh no, another sad chapter! Don't worry, fluffy Christmas antics will return next episode. Apologies for the mood whiplash, but that's just the kind of story this is.