“What does that mean?” Epoc said. 

“I just… I feel like something is wrong,” Antimony said, “and I don’t think I know how to fix it.”

“I don’t think we can go back, Handler,” Epoc said, a little awkwardly as she shifted in the seat. She pressed a few buttons and moved Winter’s camera to the inside of her visor. If she was going to be having this conversation, she wanted to be able to see the person she was talking to. “I signed the contract, Handler. I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s not, that’s not what I mean,” Antimony groaned, rubbing her face. Epoc had never seen her like this. Usually she was composed. In control. She looked disheveled.

“Have you slept, Handler?”

“That’s none of–” Antimony snapped. She stopped, snapped her mouth shut, then reached out. The camera turned off. What followed was several seconds of the most muted screaming and shouting Epoc had ever heard come out of a grown woman who wasn’t actively getting her ass beat. Epoc let her Handler get it out of her system for a second before pressing the com button on her side.

“Uh, Handler? You didn’t turn off your audio.”

There was a little squeak on the other side, and then the connection cutout. Epoc couldn’t help but laugh. She was basically strapped inside of a harness that was being shipped to a giant space cannon, she was basically human property, and yet, somehow, she felt like she was the one who had her shit together. 

“Hey, Handler? Winter?” Epoc said. “What did you mean?”

After a second, the camera and microphone turned back on. Winter’s eyes were red. Epoc knew that look. Her eyes must’ve been burning. “What I mean,” Handler Winter said, “is that I’m not… very good. At this. Yet. Um.” She tucked some stray hairs behind her ear. “You are, in a sense, my first. I underestimated. This. Some of it.”

“Handler, respectfully, what?” Epoc said. “Weren’t you Handler for Wardog and Barrier?” 

“Not on missions,” Winter moaned. “I had Levi around for Aaliya, and I am not prepared to deal with Hex on a good day for any extended period of time. She’s been here for three years and has gone through eight Handlers! We just brought in a new one and she did really well but it’s always a gamble and then yesterday I lost forty women and–” She grabbed her head and groaned. Was she rocking in her chair? Epoc shifted uncomfortably. 

“Hey, uh, Winter?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not. Fucking. Okay,” Winter said. “I’ve never lost someone before! Let alone forty!” She suddenly sat up, her face extremely stern, and took several deep breaths, and composed herself. It lasted approximately seven seconds and started hyperventilating.

“That’s… I’m sorry, Handler,” Epoc said. 

“You’re my first, Epoc. My first Hound. I mean, my first Hound,” Winter said when she managed to catch her breath. “I’m doing my best here. I’m really trying. I’m doing everything by the book. So what if I do everything right and I lose you anyway?”

“Wait, is that what this is about?”

“What's what about?”

Epoc stared at Winter, trying to make the ‘unamused’ as clear on her face as possible, which was made harder due to the oxygen mask and the visor over her eyes. Oh well. Winter was just going to have to read the fucking room. 

“I just… I’m not good at this.”

“Permission to speak freely, Handler?”

“I… of course. Uh. Granted.”

“No fucking shit, Antimony,” Epoc said. “You’re fucking batting me around like a cat with a ball, and then expect me to be available at a moment’s notice to be your sex toy and then you ask us if we’re okay and like… what the fuck, man?”

“Um. That’s a bit more freely than I thought you were going to be.”

“Tough shit,” Epoc said. “No. We can’t start over. That’s not how this works. I’m a fucking adult and so are you, so I’m not going to pretend like that was okay or that I’m just over it or that it’s forgotten.”

“That’s… entirely understandable,” Winter said. “There are several Handlers we have on our extended roster. I’ll contact one of them. It’ll take a few minutes to–”

“I wasn’t finished, Antimony.” The expression on her Handler’s face was almost worth the gross overstepping of professional boundaries she was committing. “The problem is that I don’t fucking know you and yeah, I trust you with my life but that’s because I trust you to be responsible with your property. I trust you in the same way I would trust a car merchant to take care of a car. It’s good business sense.” She took a breath. “I don’t fucking know you, and I tried to get closer to you and you made it very clear that that was a bad idea, and then you got fucking mad at me over it, and that kind of shit flies when you’re a teenager and you’re dating your first girlfriend but it doesn’t fly with me!”

“You think I’m your girlfriend?” Epoc couldn’t tell if she was shocked or excited. 

“Are you even fucking listening to me, Antimony Winter?” Epoc wanted, more than anything, to take her Handler by the shoulder and shake her until whatever was going on inside of her head fell out. “I’m saying this isn’t going to work, not with me, and not with anyone, if you don’t get over yourself and accept that, if I’m going to let you in, that’s going to go both ways.” She closed her eyes and groaned. “Technically speaking, you don’t fucking have to. You own me and you can do whatever the fuck you want, but, and I need to be really fucking clear here, I will only ever be good enough. A monetary investment that makes back what you put into it. Maybe a little more. But if I can trust you, I promise you, Handler, I’ll be the best fucking pilot this company has ever seen.”

Antimony sat almost defeated in her seat and looked up at the camera. “How?”

“I’m motherfucking glad you asked,” Epoc said. “What’s your favorite band?”

“What?”

“I’m about to be fired into space, Handler. I need something to listen to, and I need to get into your headspace, right? I’m synchronizing with the Frame, sure, but I do that by synchronizing with you. You get into my head and I do that by losing myself into you. So, let’s get to know each other. What’s your favorite band?”

“What?”

“What do you listen to? Work with me here, Antimony. I’m really trying here.”

There was a moment of silence. “WOL,” she said. “

“Never heard of them,” Epoc said. “You control the speakers in here. Put something on.” There was a shock through the cockpit. “Hold on, I think I’m getting on the lift.” The Frame came alive around her, and her Handler was relegated to a corner of her vision as the cameras around Nexus Alpha’s head showed her an expanded view of the world around her. 

The orbital lift was a near-impossible feat of engineering that, as far as Epoc understood it, had not been recreated on any other world. It was proprietary technology (of course) so there was a lot of speculation on how it actually worked. Current theory was that it folded space within a narrow tube, moving mass through the tube at extreme speeds without applying the massive pressure that came with acceleration. It was how you got anything off world. That’s why FR8 owned the whole planet. 

Epoc was on a circular platform in the middle of the lift, a mechanical voice counting down from sixty. “We only need you in low orbit,” Winter said. “So the trip will take thirty minutes at most. After that, you’re going to intercept a couple of satellites. We purchased them, and there’s enough fuel left in there to break your fall.”

“You know, they really make all this sound so simple in training,” Epoc said. “It’s just not the same when there’s hundreds of tons of piledriving you down into the planet.”

“That’s why we’ve got the rockets to slow you down. Besides, you’ll be landing in the ocean. This is the least dangerous part of the whole trip.” 

“Hah!” Epoc said. “Don’t remind me. Come on. Music.” 

“Alright,” Antimony said. “You have to promise not to make fun of me.”

“Make me.”

“I order you not to make fun of me.”

“Aye aye, Handler,” Epoc said. 

“Good dog. So World’s Okayest Lobotomite is a kind of post-trance neo-edm mix that’s based entirely on sorting algorithms. You know, they say she recorded her entire first set on a calculator.”

“Let’s hear it,” Epoc said. The orbital lift was down to ten seconds. “Engaging all primary systems.” Epoc slipped a little more comfortably in the seat while what was, indeed, the sound of a sorting algorithm spooling up played through the speakers. As the algorithm went through its paces, however, she started to notice a beat start to peak through the electronic beeps and boops. 

Even more interesting was how her Handler had closed her eyes and was gently bobbing along to that rhythm. To think she had been scared of this woman. Epoc shook her head. 

That’s when she felt it. Not the seal around her crotch and the probe against her back, but something more… subtle. Like a hand against her stomach. 

“What,” she said, and then Winter shushed her. 

“Shhh,” Antimony said. “Listen. Listen to the beat. Close your eyes.” 

Epoc did as she was told. There was only the music, and the sense of fingers against her flesh. She was reminded of parties back at the academy, when she’d drunkenly been pressed body to body with a dozen, a hundred other drunk, horny partygoers. Of a girl feeling her up on the dance floor, someone whose name she didn’t even know, high on life and drunk on cheap booze shoving her tongue into Epoc’s mouth. 

As what could only be Winter’s hands, first one, then two, then three, then too many to count, caressed her body, she was reminded of a time when she’d gone home with two girls from a band in what had undoubtedly been an awful idea but there was only so much one woman could do when two goths stood on either side of her and looked at her like she was a chew toy. 

She remembered their hands undressing her eagerly, hungrily. The way they’d scratched and clawed at her in a way that had made her feel desired, for the first time. 

When Winter pushed against her ass, it reminded her of the first time she’d slept with someone like herself, someone she had met online, as they made their way to a hotel room. The other woman had been just as insecure and inexperienced as she was, but she had been just that bit hornier and Epoc had felt her bulge press against her ass in the elevator. 

When it slipped inside, it reminded her later, the way her then-still-very-sensitive breasts had been pressed against the shower wall while the woman finally worked up the courage to penetrate her and how it had hurt and then all of a sudden it had hurt good and her eyes had rolled up into her head. 

The entire time, the awful, awful, perfect music thundered through her skull, just a grade above safe. Whatever. If she got hearing damage, that was future Epoc’s problem to work out with the medics. Through the probe, which had a lot more give than the previous ones, Winter made love to her. 

This was different than ever before. The flexibility of the pilot’s chair was absolute. She felt hands wrap around her wrists. They didn’t pull her back, but she felt restrained all the same. Hands on her hips, like they were holding onto her. Like Winter was pulling her into herself. 

Epoc sneaked a look at the camera in her Handler’s pod. 

She didn’t know what she’d expected. A look of pure, absolute concentration on Winter’s face. Her hands moving across a table of controls, her fingers a blur as they moved buttons and knobs, sliders left and right. Every action taken by her Handler was reflected back directly onto Epoc and that it took so much effort and direct concentration was strangely attractive. Winter was putting everything into this. There was sweat on her temples. Epoc smiled and whispered something, too low for the microphone to pick up. That was okay. That was just for Epoc. 

Strangely, her cock had been largely neglected. Not that she minded. She was being railed, pinched, caressed and stroked everywhere else. She wasn’t going to be coming any time soon anyway. A part of her imagined her cock sticking out of the chair’s crotch, dripping on the ground, and couldn’t decide if it was funnier than it was hot or the other way around. 

The orbital lift fully started to pick up speed, she was informed. She couldn’t tell. The platform didn’t seem to be moving, and neither did the walls of the lift. 

“ETA five minutes,” Handler Winter said.