Aaliya stood up and touched the spot right behind her ear. “Already on the way.”

Just like that, she was out of the room, leaving Epoc and Hex sitting on either side of the screen. On it was a digital recreation of the area, including a plan of engagement, all in pretty little graphs and animations. Were these automated? Did someone animate them? That seemed excessive. There was no way someone had gone through the trouble making an infographic for a time-sensitive mission briefing.

Megafauna was a problem.

Epoc didn’t think much about the planet she was on. It was just, well, her home. Her planet. She was too busy thinking about her life and her neighborhood to think about the whole thing. 

Beaudrillard-II had, once upon a time, been very lush. Untamed. Now it was not. Now it was just another slab of concrete covered in habitats and factories and warzones. For the most part. 

The reason it had originally been chosen for colonization was twofold. The first was that it was indeed, easily habitable. Perfect conditions for human life. The second was the ease with which it would be to send goods up and down. Because it was a binary planet orbiting a binary star system, gravity could get a little interesting at points, especially around the equator, when everything lined up. 

Good for sending cargo up to or down from orbit. Less good when people realized the other planet in the binary system, Beaudrillard-I, had developed a unique ecosystem that contained a strange fungal-fauna hybrid capable of ascending to and surviving in a vacuum for short periods of time in what were essentially fully sealed cocoons. By the time those landed on Beaudrillard-II, they were fully grown, hundreds of feet long, and very hungry. They migrated. Between planets. 

It boggled the mind. 

People had tried to go down to Beaudrillard-I to cleanse the planet of spores but that was expensive and dangerous and, as it turned out, ultimately futile. Orbital strikes were useless since the fungus itself was deeply heat-resistant and chemical weapons had led to adaptation that had only made the resulting megafauna even harder to deal with. 

Currently, one of the creatures, what appeared to be a Hexapod, was fishing itself out of the ocean, ready to start feeding. Soon it would pick up on the enormous heat signatures generated by the closest human settlement, crawl out of the sea, rampage for a while, and then fall asleep, spreading spores into the upper atmosphere. That was to be avoided at all costs. 

For the longest time, Epoc had looked at news footage of the Frame pilots who went up against the Megafauna with a mixture of adoration and confusion. Why would someone choose to go out there and fight something like that? Then she’d sat in a cockpit herself and she’d understood why someone would fly. Now that she’d actually been in a fight, she understood fully. 

“Damn,” Hex said. 

“What?”

“It’s barely a class-B,” she said. “Wardog is going to come home bored.”

“Really?” Epoc said. “Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“If she can’t go feral in the field, she’s a lot calmer when she comes back.”

“And you want her to–”

“--be feral when she’s here,” Hexacora said sagely. “Hey, have you checked out the sparring room yet?” She hopped and ran over to the kitchen, coming back with a bottle of water for Epoc and what appeared to be an oversized can of some kind of energy drink for herself. “Come on! They’ve got towels in the changing room!”

She was practically bouncing by the door and Epoc, a little hesitantly, followed her. “Why do you want to show me the sparring room now?” she asked. “Don’t you want to watch Aaliya fight? She might be in danger.”

“Naaah,” Hex said and chugged the can as they walked down the corridors. She let out a burp that could stop a Class-B in its tracks. “If she’s not gonna use me like a sleeve and-or punching bag when she gets home, I want to at least work up a sweat. Besides, maybe you can give me a run for my money.” She winked. “I doubt you could even land a blow, though.”

“Wait,” Epoc said, “I’m sparring with you.” She looked down at Hex. “No offense but…”

“Aaliya can’t do it,” Hexacorallia said. “Does that help?

“Wait, really?” 

“Yup!” Hex said. “We’re here!” She pushed the door open into what was basically a gym locker. The smell of stale sweat and deodorant hung in the air. This place was used recently and regularly. The two of them quickly got changed – besides the lockers there was also a dispenser and disposal unit for workout clothing. 

A few minutes later they stepped into a room that was mostly mats. Epoc had spent some time in rooms like this. Hand to hand training was common in pilot training programs. Mostly mixed martial arts. The idea that one culture or another had a monopoly on fighting better than any other was ridiculous. That said, there had been a heavy emphasis on kickboxing. 

“Alright!” Hex said. “Try to land a hit on me. I’m going to put you in holds. Bonus points if you can break out of them!” She did a little bouncy dance, moving across from Epoc, cricking her neck. 

“Do we need any rules? Like, no hits to the groin and stuff?”

“Nah!” Hex said. “I’m not going to be striking and, yknow, you’re not going to be hitting.” She kept bouncing, her feet never not moving, and nodded. “Come at me!”

Epoc did. She approached carefully, expecting a low dive into a grapple. That her opponent had told her she’d exclusively go for grapples meant there were a few guarantees. Going for a kick was going to be dangerous until she could guarantee she could land it faster than Hex could read her movements and grab. 

She launched an experimental jab and then the room turned upside down and the air was knocked out of her.

How?

She’d been out of a throw for sure! There was no way for Hex to move that quickly, except that she had mounted a full arm bar and seemed to be gently humping Epoc’s right shoulder while casually blocking her airways with her leg

“Good try!” Hex said. “I don’t think you can lift me, so I’ll just let g–” 

Epoc rolled away from Hex and then toward her, folding the girl double. Sure, an arm bar was hard to get out of, but Hexacorallia wasn’t going to dislocate her arm in a sparring session and while she wasn’t strong enough to fully lift her off the ground with one arm, Epoc was more than capable of getting her legs under her and pushing Hex down onto the mat, her left arm free. 

She slammed her fist down at her opponent’s face. If the goal was to hit her opponent, then all she had to do was make sure the other woman knew she was taking this seriously. 

Instead of skin and ( potentially, teeth) like Epoc expected, she hit the mat. Two hands grabbed her wrist and the room did another somersault. She landed on her back a second time but this time two legs landed on either of her arms. More insulting was the girl’s package, landing on her nose and mouth.

Hex slapped Epoc’s stomach. 

“That would’ve been a crotch shot, taking you out of the fight!” She wiggled her ass in Epoc’s face, then rolled off and started to dance in place again. Epoc got up with an indignant huff. Hex giggled. “That would have really hurt if you’d hit me!”

Okay. strikes likely weren’t going to achieve much. She had to think smart, because Hexacora was much, much faster than her. She had to negate that speed somehow. She wiped her face and took up a more aggressive striking stance. 

A few steps forward and, feinting like she was going for a hook, she swiped at Hex’s legs. The girl had seen it coming and jumped over the kick with little effort. 

Pretty much the exact way Epoc had planned it. She punched as hard as she could at her opponent’s center of mass, stopping several inches short and pulling her arm back. As she expected, Hex had anticipated the jab and had reached out to grab the arm and turn the momentum in another grapple, presumably another bar. Instead, Epoc’s hand was the one to close around her arm. 

“Gotcha,” she said with a grin, and kicked Hex in the ass, hard. The girl yelped and laughed, then spun around to grab Epoc.

“Is that the best you got?!” she shouted. 

Alright then, you little shit. Epoc grabbed her other wrist and twisted both behind her, kicked the back of her legs, and forced her onto her knees, then her stomach, and finally straddled her. 

“You,” Epoc said, “are really fucking slippery.”

“That’s what Allyia keeps telling me!” She seemed almost pleased. 

Epoc slowly caught her breath and relaxed a little, though she kept Hex’s arms in their uncomfortable position. It wasn’t a bad view. Hex had a nice ass. And she did like to be punished. She pushed the loser a little harder into the mat, and carefully pushed her own hips forward a little. Tentatively. Hex responded by purring and pushing her ass back. Alright then. 

Just about to fully grind against her, Epoc jerked up when the door to the changing room opened with a shout. 

“Handler on DECK!” 

She jumped upright, and so did Hex. Both of them immediately stood in a line and saluted. Pilot training was pretty adamant that you show respect to a superior officer. Apparently even Hex didn’t joke about that. 

The woman who had entered the room had a lion-like mane of gray-white hair that rolled down her shoulders, cascading like a frozen waterfall. She was, somehow, bigger than both Diana and Aaliya. Possibly combined. 

Epoc knew why, too. There was a previous generation of pilots that had undergone extensive physical modification. Back then, physical strength and limb length had played a much greater role in effective piloting. This woman must have been one of them. 

“Hexacorallia!” the Handler shouted. “Looks like someone finally got the better of you!”

“She outsmarted me, Handler!” Hex responded.

“Can’t have been too difficult,” the woman said with a grin. “Epoc Mako?”

“Handler!” Epoc said, looking straight ahead because looking at the woman would have left her extremely normal. She was somewhere in her late fifties, possibly sixties. It was hard to tell because she’d undergone significant rejuvenation treatment. On top of that, she had kept in shape. Her muscles didn’t bulge, but she looked like the world’s largest swimmer, moving with an intentionality that was hard to pinpoint until you imagined her piloting a Frame. 

“You can call me Levi Mercer, Epoc,” she said. “At ease,” the woman said. “Both of you.” 

Instantly, Hex launched herself forward at Mercer, wrapping her arms around the much larger woman’s neck. Levi didn’t even budge a little, only holding Hex in place with an arm and a laugh. 

“Levi!” she said. “You’re here!”

“Of course I am,” Levi said. “After the ass-whooping Epoc here gave my girl yesterday, I had to come over myself to meet her in person.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Handler,” Epoc said, defaulting to the woman’s title until she was sure of the kind of relationship she was supposed to have with her. 

“Of course. You don’t know jack for shit yet,” Levi said, and held out her hand. It was massive. Like a dinner plate. Epoc did her best to shake it. “I’m Aaliya’s handler,” she said and squeezed very lightly. There was a sound like someone trying to quietly bite into a potato chip.

“Wait,” Epoc said, her face not moving a muscle. “Handler Winter said you were her predecessor.”

“Oh, of course she did. She can be so vague. Never let the enemy know what you’re thinking.” Levi laughed, a loud and uproarious sound. The kind of laugh you only got when you truly stopped caring what others thought. It filled the room. “It’s true,” Levi Mercer said. “In a way. I’m a graduate of the program too. Her grandmother trained me, actually, but I didn’t get on nearly as well with her as I did with Antimony’s mother.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, that’s why we had her.”

“Ah.”

“You fuck her yet?”

“She hasn’t!” Hex shouted helpfully. “Handler Winter got her off a couple of times though!” Levi laughed again and slapped Epoc so hard between the shoulder blades she flew forward and slammed face first into the mat.

Elamimax

Let's keep going, yeah? As long as I keep writing 2 chapters a day, I'll keep publishing them. I wrote another 5k words today, so it's looking good for the horny-enjoyers!

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