Through the chair, Winter squeezed Epoc in all the places she needed squeezing to wake her up all the way. Two Frames descended from further up the shelf. 

She figured she’d be the one to open up communication this time. “Maeve and Fae’rynn, thanks for joining us!” 

“Call me Fae!” the voice chirped through the com. “We weren’t expecting a welcome party. Thought that was our job!” Fae was clearly the talker of the two. 

“Yeah, well,” Epoc said, glancing behind her more for show than anything, “I couldn’t shake these two. I take it you all know each other.”

“Yeah, we’ve met,” the other voice said. That must’ve been Maeve. She didn’t sound very enthusiastic about the TransAm Frames being present. Great. But was it personal drama or simple company rivalry? Well, time would tell. Epoc ran a quick check on both new frames as the two other teams exchanged banter. Phantom Queen was an Alpha frame, piloted by Fae. Maeve’s frame appeared to be a bruiser Beta class named Firebrand. 

Epoc remembered frames like that in the academy. They were built for short-range engagements, heavily focused on urban combat. Mobile but not the most sturdy. It was strange seeing one on the ocean floor. 

She continued her trek, sending all data to her Handler. She could almost imagine nibbling noises and managed to avoid giggling. As a thank you, Winter’s hands were all over and even inside of her. It took some effort not to let the other pilots know what was happening to her. After their missions, these women would need several days of rest, to let their brains recover from the stress of piloting. After her mission, Epoc would be coming her brains out. She grinned to herself. 

“Alright,” she said as her map indicated that the crevice was coming up. “I take it you’re all following me.” She turned around for a second and pointed to the hole. They were standing on an incline. On the map, the crevasse had looked like a tunnel, but standing here, like this, she realized it was a lot more vertical than she’d anticipated. It went down. 

“You can’t stop us,” Priestess said. 

“Not the point,” Epoc said. “My point is that we’re all about to be in close quarters with something that wants to kill us. We can let our bosses argue over who killed the thing and who has salvage rights. If we work together, at least we have a higher chance of all of us making it out alive. 

“Sounds good to me,” Fae said. 

“I can do that,” Beedok replied. 

Maeve and Priestess weren’t as forthcoming, but they agreed all the same. That said, Epoc also realized that the TransAm Frames were making sure to stay behind her at all times. They didn’t trust her. Fine. She didn’t trust them either. But she could hopefully at least rely on self-preservation to supersede any stupid inter-company rivalry. 

Without another word, she went down into the crevasse. It was careful going. The ground was angled hard, and she had to lean back to keep her footing. “Winter, I’m entering the cave system now.”

“--oc, –ing y–”

Shit. Epoc tried to adjust the energy levels. Maybe she could boost connection somehow. 

“There you are.” Winter’s voice came out of the speakers again, loud and clear. “Sorry about that.”

“No worries,” Epoc said. “Just keep me going in the same direction.”

“Can do, Epoc. Going by thermal readings, the creature is two kilometers up ahead. It appears to be dormant. Move carefully.”

“Copy that.” There was a moment of hesitation. If she told the others about the creature, they’d be more likely to land a killing blow and everything she’d said before aside, she was pretty sure Winter would be pretty happy with her if she was the one who did. That said, if it picked all of them off one by one, they’d all just be dead, and Winter would probably not be very happy with her if she was dead. Just a little hunch she had. Finally, common sense won over and she relayed the information. 

“Switching to sonar,” Maeve said. “Visuals aren’t worth shit down here.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Fae said. “I hear these things glow sometimes.”

Nexus Alpha showed something on Epoc’s scanner but she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Beedok laughed over the coms. “You can’t trust everything–”

“Careful!” 

“Movement!” Epoc shouted, just as something large appeared out of the cold dark waters, all chitin and hatred. Nexus Alpha responded immediately, keeping her body as occupied as her mind. A mouth slid over her cock like it was trying to suck the life out of her. She dodged the creature at the last possible second, her senses in overdrive, and in thanks she was being fucked even harder. 

“Good job, Epoc! Stay on your toes!” Winter’s voice echoed over the speaker.

One of the Hexapod’s legs speared Maeve’s Firebrand through the chest. 

“I’m down!” Maeve’s panicked voice came through the coms. “Peeling out!”

Epoc noted with satisfaction that the cockpit detached from the Frame and started to float up. They weren’t that far down into the hole. She’d make it to the surface. Or she would have, if the cockpit didn’t explode and then implode a second later. 

“Check your fucking fire!” Fae screamed. “Pilot down!” 

“Sorry!” The response was a laugh more than anything. “Gospel’s a little feisty today!” Priestess aimed her weapons again. Despite the depth, she was holding what appeared to be a customized cavitation shotgun. She fired again, this time actually hitting the creature. 

It tried to jump to Beedok, but the Frame dodged under its giant pincer-like claws, firing microtorpedoes at its flank. The Hexapod tried to scuttle back into the shadows but was cut off by Phantom Queen. 

Everyone fired torpedoes at the creature. The stimulation on her backside tripled with every shot fired, and she made sure to turn off her coms. She wasn’t in the mood to explain why she was moaning during a fight, but she also couldn’t deny that every shot fired was a delight to her fucking sense. 

She saw a few of the TransAm torpedoes going off-target and she wanted, very much, to pretend like it was just the depth playing with their targeting systems. Nexus Alpha blasted them out of the water with extremely controlled sonic bursts, and each one of those felt like a moan around her cock. One of those missiles was going to have hit her, and Nexus Alpha had turned it into a little moment of stimulation. Still, Epoc didn’t want to spend time focusing on the other two while the Hexapod was literally trying to kill them, but she could afford to. 

It was young. Its armor plating wasn’t fully developed yet. It was up against four pilots. It didn’t stand a chance, and it seemed to know it. It charged Nexus Alpha, trying to pin her to the wall. 

Epoc wasn’t going to let that just happen. She grabbed both of its front legs as they tried to sink into her. The weight of the Hexapod threw her against the wall, and she got a faceful of, well, face. It wasn’t much to look at, its maw consisting of several rings of teeth and what appeared to be a second ring of small pedipalps around it to help with feeding. Not a pleasant sight. She fired a sustained sonic wave into it. At this range, it would have shredded everyone inside a submarine. The sonic wave firing vibrated through her entire body and she moaned in pleasure, squirming in her seat. 

The Hexapod didn’t stand a chance. There was an ear-piercing screech as it tried to reel back, but Epoc was still holding on to it. Releasing one of its legs, she moved to strike it, exactly once. Right in its big fat mouth. If it had worked on the Gecko, it was going to work on this thing too. 

Slamming her fist into its maw, the kinetic force was immense. A shockwave moved through the water. And all of that kinetic energy was stored in the gauntlet, and released immediately. Epoc grunted. 

A plate of steel weighing several tons shot forward from the back of Nexus Alpha’s forearm, into the creature’s brain. It stopped moving, but Epoc didn’t. That last hit had sent a thrust up her ass that was, frankly, divine, and she needed that again. Ramming her fists forward, she kept beating, the rhythm of it fucking herself too good to stop, even if she wasn’t going to come. She had done a good job. She deserved this. She deserved to feel good. 

“Fuck,” Fae’rynn said, shaking her out of it. The woman’s voice was heartbroken. “Maeve.” Epoc turned her head to see Phantom Queen kneeling by what was left of Firebrand. Fuck. Right. 

Epoc stood up, illuminating the scene with her floodlights. “I’m really sorry, Fae,” she said. “I’m sure her family–”

“I’m sorry too,” Priestess said, stepping closer. 

“I don’t like this,” Winter’s voice said. 

“You don’t get to b–” was as far as Fae got. Her cockpit exploded in a ball of superheated lead, and then all the lights on Phantom Queen went out as water rushed into the newly created vacuum.

“Sorry you weren’t more of a challenge,” Priestess chuckled. 

“Not cool,” Beedok said. 

“Oh, shut up. You’re being paid extra for this too.”

“No reason to be an asshole about it.”

“What the fuck are you two doing?” Epoc demanded, turning to the other two. Priestess had her shotgun trained on Nexus Alpha’s cockpit. 

“Do you have any idea how much we are being paid to bring this thing back? Or how much a Mako Alpha Frame would get us?” Priestess cocked the shotgun. It wasn’t necessary. It just got the message across. “Now, I’m going to give you one shot,” she said. “Uhhhh, kill yourself.”

“What?”

“Well, if I blow up your cockpit, you die but there’s less of you to sell. I’m pretty sure there’s a gun in that cockpit with you somewhere, so if you blow your brains out you don’t have to die by being compressed by a few kilometers of seawater or whatever. I’m pretty sure a little bullet to the head will hurt less.” 

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Epoc said, clenching her fists.

“Aw, beans,” Priestess said. “Too bad for you. Scan of your cockpit tells me this here shotgun will rip it to shreds, so you might want to reconsider.”

A little schematic popped up on Epoc’s screen. It showed Nexus Alpha’s material density. It also showed the weapon’s potential destructive output. 

Winter’s voice was a little worried, but determined. “She’s wrong.” 

“I’ll take my chances,” Epoc said. 

“Fine by me.” Gospel pulled the trigger. The cockpit rocked from the impact. Nexus Alpha leaned back. And then forward. “My turn,” Epoc said with a wolfish grin. 

“That’s not– that’s not possible!” 

“Kill,” Winter said. Two vibrations. 

Epoc wrenched the gun away from Priestess, striking at her with her other hand. The thrust into her was immediate and immediately addictive. The hostile frame clawed at her with sharpened talons, ripping into Nexus Alpha’s forearms, but Epoc was already too far gone. 

She laughed, cackled, as she hammered away at Gospel, immediately underneath her. Her operational arm slammed down on the Frame’s central structure and the kinetic gauntlet fired into its guts. If she’d been allowed to, Epoc would have come right there. The double vibrations came again and again, every time she landed what would have been a killing blow. She kept going, over and over again, moaning and barking and laughing. What she’d been denied with the Hexapod, she was now taking out on Gospel. 

She humped her chair like a dog in heat, fucking Nexus Alpha itself, fucking the destroyed frame underneath her, just fucking in what was both tension and release all at once. Sure, she couldn’t come, but she could go insane on her way there. 

“Dude, she’s dead,” Beedok said. Epoc’s head twisted up. There was someone else here. Right. Nexus Alpha pulled itself upright. She’d been on all fours. When had that happened? “What the fuck are you?”

“Kill,” her Handler’s voice said calmly. One vibration. Two.

Epoc didn’t just kill Skippy. She ripped it to shreds. 

She was drooling and howling, ripping chunks out of the frame while she did. 

And then everything went black. 

There were no dreams. There was nothing. 

Slowly, the world came back, like she was swimming to the surface. 

When she woke up, she was tied to a chair. 

There was a table. 

There was a gun. 

Winter took the gun and aimed it at Epoc’s head. “Who the fuck are you working for?”