Short Story: Sad Girls in Metal Bodies, vol. 1: Praxis & Ovira

[aschooloffish]

Her problem is, she doesn't know when to quit.

Praxis burns mechs hot, just like she does with everything, believing she can squeeze just a little more speed out of engines that should have gone critical minutes ago. She doesn't have a breaking point, so why should anything else?

By all accounts, she's a nearly flawless pilot. It was a struggle to convince the Renegades that I could take her on, rookie that I am. They only let me try because I said I'd take the Bright Future, the shittiest mech in the arsenal. The machine barely functions, even with all the love I could give it. But they were going to junk it anyway, I argued, so why not give it a chance to go down in a blaze of glory?

Praxis, on the other hand, looks sleek and impenetrable in the Imperium's flagship rig, the Fortune Favors. She moves like a flame, swapping from beam lance to kinetic rifle to missile launcher and back faster than I can blink. She's always been a beautiful sight in battle, and it's difficult not to be distracted just watching her. For years I pored over recordings of her movements, wishing I could be up there with her, burning like a guiding star.

There's no dodging the missiles. My seat in the cockpit shakes as they explode against my outer plating, slagging off the armor I had hastily welded onto the Bright Future before setting out. The exterior of my mech is a patchwork, layer after layer of whatever metal the Renegades could spare. Praxis has been working her way through it with deadly efficiency, while I've barely managed to get a shot off on her. Forget winning the battle - it's all I can do to survive.

What Praxis has always refused to understand is that things do break, no matter how much she believes in them. Vehicles, people, relationships - they've all got their point of no return. Just because she never sees it coming doesn't mean nobody else does. I do. And (though I didn't give the Renegades this specific detail) after servicing the  Fortune Favors for the better part of a decade, I've got a pretty good idea of where to apply pressure.

The bad news is, it has a lot of failsafes built in. I knew Praxis would push any mech past its limits, so I did everything in my power to make the Fortune Favors keep up. I manage to shoot a few kinetic rounds at her, and they bounce against the Fortune's energy shields. I can tell by the faintness of the ripples that they're below fifty percent, probably nearing twenty-five. Praxis must be diverting power from them into her thrusters. If she wanted, she could send it back the other way, pulling power off her propulsion and into defense. It'd probably be good for her with how hot her engines must be burning about now.

But I know how to keep Praxis burning.

I slam back on the Bright Future's controls, pushing it into a full-speed reverse and forcing Praxis to give chase. She's faster than me, but the moon we're orbiting is small enough that I can hide behind the horizon. I've got about a minute before she gets within visual range.

By the time she comes into view, I'm speeding towards the ground. She follows unquestioningly, and it's not until too late that she notices the field of shrapnel I'm releasing behind me.  She gets a couple decent scrapes before stabilizing, sizing up the field, and then setting off on a zigzag pattern that will keep her from taking too much damage. She's good enough to manage it, but it will eat some of her RAM, and hopefully keep her from firing for a moment.

I'm about halfway to phase two when I get a ping over comms. Fuck. She's trying to mess with me, I know she is, but I can't stop myself from picking up.

"You fucking traitorous bitch, Ovira!" Praxis screams, her voice crackling and peaking out my speakers. I'm sad, for a moment, that the last time I hear her is going to be so distorted.

"Missed you too, babe!" I shout back, because pissing her off is something I can do without breaking concentration. I get one hand on the breaks, and one hovering just over the launch button. I've just got to hit them at the right time, I tell myself, and this will be over.

Praxis is still cussing me out over the radio. "-everyfuckingthing we ever fucking stood for!" I catch her saying. "Our whole fucking lives, and you just threw it away! You fucking threw it away just like you fucking threw me away!"

Now, that's just not fair. "Oh, I threw you away?" I spit, keeping half an eye on the altimeter. The timing needs to be precise here. "Not how I fucking remember it. Which one of us detonated a sunrise grenade on whose fucking planet?"

A streak of fire hurls towards me from her shoulder canon, and I just manage to dodge it. "You literally threw me away!" she shrieks, peaking my audio again. "You threw me off the ship! Into the ocean! While my housing was recharging and couldn't fight back, you complete fucking bitch!"

"Gee, Ovira," I shoot back, "Sorry for burning your entire family alive! Sorry everything you love is fucking ashes now! Sorry I don't-"

I'm cut off by a screech of metal as my cockpit shakes with impact. Praxis has given up on her serpentine descent, braving flaming shrapnel to slam into me directly. The Fortune Favors and the Bright Future grapple in midair, descending toward the moon at breakneck speed.

"Everything you love? Everything?" her voice is shrill, something I'd almost call hysterical in a human. "What about the Imperium! What about me? You said you loved me! You said you loved me and you threw me away!"

She's never going to understand. She doesn't have a home, not the way I do. Did. She's a war machine, and loyalty to the Imperium is her first truth. Trusting me used to be her second. There was a time - a brief, beautiful time - when I thought she might love me enough to override the loyalty protocols. She might care enough for me to spare my family. But it was never going to be possible.

It's time. I hit the Bright Future's breaks, burning the atmosphere around us to slow our descent. It's dangerous, in an atmosphere that's almost pure Oxygen, to hit my thrusters this hard. I let them burn as hot as they can get. Then I hit the launch button.

The atmosphere slams into my body. For a moment after I eject, I'm lost in the maelstrom of sounds and sensations, burning and freezing and battered by the air and the shrapnel. I manage to get my bearings as I start to fall. I get eyes on the mechs, still speeding towards the ground despite my attempts to slow them. I orient myself towards them as best I can and shoot a mag clamp from my wrist launcher. It catches, and pain explodes in my shoulder as I'm yanked downwards so fast I think I'm going to be stripped to a skeleton. I reel myself in blindly and slam into the Fortune with a sickening crunch that I feel all down the left side of my body. I think I scream, but the sound is lost in the burning wind.

There's no time to catch my breath.  I reach out through the haze of pain, feel the seam where I know her back entry hatch will be. I try to reach further, to the lever that will open it, and almost black out as I roll onto my left side.

I can't reach the lever while holding onto the mag clamp. But if I release the clamp, I'll disconnect from the mech entirely. I reach again, fire shooting through my ribs and my shoulder, and scrabble uselessly against the hull.

"Praxis!" I yell, or think I yell. The atmosphere rushing around us carries my voice away. "Praxis, let me in, please!" I can't breathe. "Praxis!"

For a long moment - a day? A century? - I don't think she hears me.

Then the hatch slides open, and I fall into the body of the mech, just managing to let go of the mag clamp before I dislocate my shoulder even worse.

I lay there for a moment, hyperventilating.

"I could have let you fall," Praxis says eventually, her voice perfect and smooth on the Fortune Favors' internal speaker. I say a silent thanks that I got to hear her for real after all. I give myself five deep breaths, but on the third I cough out a worrying gob of blood, which means it's time to get moving before I can't anymore.

"I could have thrown you away," Praxis continues. I  drag myself up into the empty seat. How many times have I sat here, running diagnostics, tinkering on Praxis' behalf?

"You fucking abandoned me," she says. I think about turning on the AI avatar. It's too risky, but fuck, I wish I could see her face one more time.

"Like I was nothing," she says. I've never used this key command, but I know it by heart. I can reach two of the four keys with my good hand. I slump my bad elbow onto a third, gritting my teeth through the pain.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she says. With no other option, I jam my nose into the final key. I can't see the individual lights winking off, but the control panel around me starts to go blurrily dark. Shields, fans, firewalls, all my beautiful failsafes - all gone.

"Ovira?" she says. Every cell in my body shrieks in agony as I contort my left hand, leveraging it against the UI console. After what feels like eternity, my finger nudges the other button on my wrist launcher.

The Bright Future explodes, setting the air around us alight. At the center of the inferno, shields down, the Fortune Favors doesn't stand a chance. 

We don't have any final confessions, no apologies or I love you's. We're both too angry, or too injured, or both. I can't bring myself to care. I'm with her, surrounded by her, practically kissing her with my face smushed against the melting keypad. We're going to stay on this moon forever, the metal and flesh of our bodies welded together long after our souls are gone. The Imperium always got between us; now nothing ever can.

The world rushes up to me, an infinity of light and heat, and I think, I finally got to burn with her.