Epoc woke up, to her surprise, still in the same bed, though her Handler was gone. Her communicator was on the nightstand, a little message from Winter, apologizing for not being there when she woke up.
Thankfully, the room — which Epoc mentally referred to as The Playroom — had a shower. Going by the many, many,
many
sex toys, harnesses, straps, belts, whips and what appeared to be a pillory on the far side of the room, this was a room for sex. Sorry, no, “
Post-mission neural stress reduction.”
Yeah. Sure. It was the room where she fucked Hex until they’d both been drained, literally and figuratively.
After her shower, she got dressed and made her way down to Hound quarters. She tried calling Winter, but she got a polite “sorry, we’ll talk later,” so that was a bust.
Thankfully, the Mako Group primary facility was fine. It had been completely untouched by the creature’s attack. More regrettably was the sheer number of Rats and Cats lost in the attack. Something like this was unheard of.
Ordinarily, Megafauna made an orbital drop and then landed in the ocean. It’s how the massive creatures survived not only re-entry, allowing the water to cool them off, but it also significantly reduced their impact. So most coastal cities had massive gun batteries that could hold off anything up to a Class B, and the bigger cities could indefinitely halt a Class A’s advance until the Frames showed up.
They simply didn’t show up inland. There were no defenses for it. A vigil was being held, tonight, for the lives lost, and Epoc made a little note to herself to join them. She’d stood side by side with them and several of them had given their lives so that she could have taken the creature down.
She was standing in front of a memorial wall, laser-carved during the night with the date and time of the attack, and tried to memorize some of them. She hadn’t known
any
of these people. They had, she presumed, trusted her, or at least they’d trusted her title. Had she let them down, somehow? If she had acted faster or more decisively, would she have been able to save them? Should she have? Epoc was only one person.
On the other hand, she was a Hound. She was
Winter’s
Hound. Hand-picked. The best of the best. And yet, over forty people, apparently, had died. She let her shoulders hang and stared at the names. Faceless names, although she imagined it would be quite easy to look those up in the personnel files but what would be the point of that?
She hadn’t
known
them. They’d just be faces, no more capable of becoming
people
than their names were. They were dead. More than one person came over to thank her, though she waved them off. Group effort, and all that.
There was a part of her that felt gross. She hadn’t felt
gross
in a long time. She had felt gross the first and last time she’d slept with a boy. She’d been a lot younger then and, back then,
anything
for validation. She’d felt gross when a man on a bus had slipped his hand up her skirt. And she felt gross now.
While many had been mourning, she had been pleading and barking, begging for her Handler to let her come. While others were burying their friends and relatives, she had been balls deep in her colleague. On the other hand, what was she supposed to do? Get brain damage because someone else was sad?
She shook her head and turned around, ready to walk away, when she was stopped by someone. Epoc gave the woman an apologetic smile, sorry she couldn’t have done more. She wasn’t good enough yet.
Angel was the one who stopped her. She knew it was her because of the logo on her jacket, the crossed wings. She was more than deserving of the callsign. Not only had she saved Epoc’s life from the explosion by literally flying her out of there, but she was also much,
much
more beautiful than she had any right to. In another life, Angel should have been a dancer. There was a grace to her, like a moving statue made of obsidian. Her eyes were a pure hazel so bright they were almost yellow, and her hair was pulled back tightly. Freckles dotted her skin, and she had clear laugh lines, currently underutilized.
The worst part, beyond the default feelings women elicited from Epoc, was that Angel saluted her.
A crowd of pilots, Cats and Rats alike, had gathered by the memorial wall but there were a lot more than when she’d approached it. Had her standing in front of it drawn such a crowd. She had just… felt guilty. This wasn’t an appropriate response.
And yet, one by one, all the pilots saluted her.
A voice in the back of her head pointed it out. The simple truth behind the simple gesture. They had all lost someone. But everyone in this room was alive and for the majority of them, the reason for that was her. Forty people had died. More than triple that were alive, and that was because of her. That was worth something. That was worth, if not a celebration, then a thank you, and a salute.
“Come see me tonight,” Angel said. “We’re having a wake. It would mean a lot if you could be there.”
Epoc struggled for a second. “I didn’t know any of them,” she said. “I don’t know if it would be
right.
”
“You shoved your whole face into that thing’s mouth after landing on it, all on your own,” Angel said, “and saved pretty much all of our hides. Any one of us would have done the same thing, sure, but ‘would’ is doing a lot of work there because none of us did.
You
did.”
Looking around, Epoc got the distinct impression that Angel’s extremely generous interpretation of events was not unanimous. There were at least a few pilots who gave her not so much
dirty
looks as mildly smudged ones.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I need to go check on the other Hound.”
Angel nodded and let her through. It was true enough — Epoc wanted to see how Aaliya was doing — but she also just really wanted to get out of there. Angel really had spoken the truth, in that Epoc was pretty sure that any pilot worth their salt would have tried something as stupid and suicidal as her if it had meant achieving the mission. Sure, maybe they wouldn’t have been as… on edge as she had been, but several Stormrat squadrons had absolutely charged the Gecko.
The biggest difference had been means. Epoc had been in possession of a Gamma class with strong thrusters and a big gun. That was it. She couldn’t really hold it against some of the other pilots if they resented her for the fact that Angel was hailing her as some kind of hero.
Aaliya, apparently, was just on her way back to the Hound suites as well, so Epoc decided to intercept her and walk her the rest of the way or, as it turned out, push her.
“Hey,” Aaliya said, waving from the chair. “Lookit my new wheels.” She spun in a little circle. “Coolest motherfucker in the building.”
“Well damn,” Epoc said. “Can’t argue with that. Want some help?”
“Yes, fuck, please,” Aaliya said, relenting. Epoc gently pushed her as they made their way to the common rooms. Apparently a nurse had pushed her most of the way, had received a call, and Aaliya, in her infinite wisdom, had told her to go check on whatever it was. “I told her I’d be fine. I’m a fucking idiot.”
“So, what’s the situation?”
“Busted legs,” Aaliya said. “Gonna take me
weeks
to get back to operational strength, unless I get more implants or just fucking replace them. Might as well, my knees already sound like someone snapping twigs whenever I get up.”
“Hold on.
More
implants?”
“Oh, yeah,” Aaliya said. “One of my eyes is fake, I’ve got a plate in my skull, my right clavicle is titanium and a chunk of my lungs is artificial.” She chuckled, then coughed. It had clearly been a bad idea to laugh. “I’ve been through worse, I just hate waiting.”
“Well, I mean, one way or another you’re going to have to spend some time recovering, right?” Epoc asked hesitantly as the door to the Hound suites opened.
“As little as possible,” Aaliya said. “I live for the cockpit.”
“So what happened?”
“I got blindsided. That thing fell on top of me. They’re not supposed to do that. Hey, Cora.” She waved at the girl as Epoc wheeled her in.
Hex wasn’t wearing much, just a short skirt and sneakers with remarkably thick soles. Her tits were fully out. Despite having seen them the night before, Epoc still blushed as she saw the girl bounce over shamelessly.
“Aaliya!” She shouted and moved to give the woman in the wheelchair a hug. Aaliya held up her hand, meaning Hex ran face-first into it. It didn’t stop her in the least. Aaliya relented and let Hexacora hug her. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m in a wheelchair, Hex.”
“Yeah, well, nothing wrong with that, some of the hottest and horniest people I know use wheelchairs,” Hex said, fully crawling in Aaliya’s lap and hanging off of her neck.
“This is going to make shutting you up so much harder,” Aaliya said. “I can’t get up and go over to smack you now.”
“I could just be closer to you all the time,” Hex said, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Not happening. I’ll just have to figure out a way to shut you up remotely.”
“I can think of a few things.”
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Epoc said, wanting to extricate herself from the situation. “I’m going to see about grabbing something to eat.
“Sounds good,” Hex said, and then turned back to Aaliya. “Did you know they brought in a third party for me last night? She was pretty good. Nice tits. Not a huge cock but damn could she come. I haven’t been that full in a while.”
Epoc had been about to walk out the door when she heard Hex talk about her and there was a part of her that wanted to hear what she had been like.
“I mean, she doesn’t compare to you, of course, but she was a little rough with me and she made me come pretty good.”
“Yeah?” Aaliya said. “She came in your ass?”
“Yeah!”
“Slut.”
“Yeah!”
Epoc realized she couldn’t justify dawdling in the doorway any longer and stepped out. Checking her com, she realized she had a message. It was from Diana. Everything else was drifting back to normal. Aaliya was okay, at least.