“Are you going to be training us?” Hex said with a twinkle in her eyes that would be delightful if it had come from someone else. She dropped to the ground.
Levi Mercer shook her head and handed them both a towel. “I’m just here for Aaliya today.” When she got a sad-puppy look from Hex, she put a hand large enough to be a helmet on the young woman’s head and ruffled her hair. “First off, I’m out of shape,” said the pilot that looked like someone had tried to put clothes on a muscle golem, “and besides, day one is way too early to put our new Pilot through her paces.” She grinned at Epoc.
Epoc nodded and then squinted. Levi looked familiar. “I’m sorry, Handler,” she said, “if this is too forward.” She chewed her tongue for a second. Her boss’s mother had just asked her if they’d already fucked and she was worried about being inappropriate. “Do I
know
you from somewhere? You look familiar.”
“Hah!” Mercer said. “You might have. I was in some ads back in my day.” She struck a pose, hands on her hips, looking dramatically and wistfully at a non-existent horizon. “
For a brighter future,
” she said. “Hah! I haven’t been Leviathan in
years.
”
“Wait, Leviathan?” Epoc said. “You piloted Scylla Nova! Holy
shit!
I had posters of you!” Epoc’s desire to pay due respect to a superior officer (not to mention the mother of the woman she’d been nose-deep inside of less than a day ago) evaporated in the face of one of the people that had made her want to be a pilot in the first place.
The Leviathan had been an almost legendary character among Frame pilots. She’d had a background in corpo work, but most of her career she had been a mercenary, famous for saving the day when nobody else could. Epoc realized that the ‘corpo work before she became independent’ meant she’d been a Hound at Mako Corp. There had been so many stories about her, it had been hard to sift fact from fiction, and the name of the corporation she’d worked for hadn’t been a big part of her marketing machine when she was independent. It also explained why she’d had a career that was longer than almost any other living pilot.
“Did you really do a sub-30k ft deepwater mission?”
“Fuck, kid,” Levi said with a laugh. “You’re bringing up old memories. Yeah, me and the old Coyote went down into the trench once. One of the big bugs had dropped down and was laying eggs down there. Depth charges weren’t cutting it, so we went down there on a bug hunt.” She shook her head. “Man, that was a fight. Every step was like lifting a car. Coyote ended up sacrificing his dumb ass for me, too.” She frowned. “I feel like I need a shot if I’m going to be reminiscing. You guys wanna do shots?”
“Levi, it’s 9 in the morning.”
“Fuck me, I’m jetlagged to
fuck,”
Levi said. “It’s like 2 in the morning for me.” She put her hands in her pockets and left the room.
Hexacora nudged Epoc. “We’ll talk about what happened earlier some other time,” she said with a wink. “I didn’t know you were clamoring for my gussy
that
bad.”
“Your
what?”
“You know. Girl-boypussy.”
“Your ass?”
“If you want to be pedantic about it,” Hex said and chased Levi down. Epoc had to hurry to follow them. Levi was taking a casual stroll, the other two jogging to keep up.
“Good thing I barely need sleep,” Levi said. ”Come on you two, let’s at least get something to eat. The ladies at the cafeteria know what I like.”
“What do you mean, you don’t need sleep?” Epoc asked as she and Hex followed Levi to the cafeteria. For every step Levi took, they had to take an outrageous
three
. “Is it because of your body augmentations?”
“I said
barely,
” Levi said. “And no. I’m just built different. How tall do you think I was before I joined the old pilot program?”
“Uh,” Epoc said.
“I know this one!” Hex said. “You were 6’6!” She grinned happily as she bounced backwards through the hall to look at them both. Several engineers rushing by had to dodge her. “Mother of the beast,” Hex said. Levi looked a little smug.
“Yup,” Mercer said. “The program added an extra foot and change, but I was already a mutant and a half. They did
so
many tests before me and Winter could have a kid. Uh, Miranda. Antimony’s mother. But I wasn’t toxic, just really fucking weird.” She chuckled. Every head in the cafeteria turned when she walked in, which was immediately followed by cheering and whistling. When Levi held up a hand it quieted down.
“She’s basically a celebrity here,” Hex said. “She’s been with the company longer than anyone.”
“Thanks for making an old woman feel older,” Levi said. “The rejuvenation treatments work miracles, but fuck, those diminishing returns really do diminish.” They grabbed some food – Levi had two
very
full trays, Epoc noticed – and sat down at a table. Levi’s bench creaked dangerously, and her legs stuck out on the other side of the table. “But yeah, I was a massive anomaly already. I can hold my breath for like ten minutes before my cognitive function suffers, and then another five before I’m in trouble. Ask me how I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because at the end of that deepwater mission I was taking water, and I had to walk back to base. They said I was unconscious by the time I was on the shore, but I kept walking. Apparently Hydra was a walking water bowl at that point!” She laughed and ripped a steak in half with her teeth, eating it like most people would eat a sandwich. Epoc liked women a normal amount.
“Is that when you renamed her?” Everyone was listening in at this point. Hearing an old fighting machine like Leviathan tell war stories was a rare treat.
“Yeeup,” Levi said. “I was hired to do a ton of aquatic missions after that, until they realized they needed my help for land-based drops too. I mean, that’s where Hydra started to begin with. Because there was a triple attack in one day and I dealt with all three.”
“The Seaside Rampage,” Epoc said, positively salivating. She was sitting (diagonally) across from a living legend. The Leviathan had been her hero for years. And now she was here and she was close enough to touch and she was… “Hold on, how old
are
you?”
Levi looked down at her plate and for a brief moment the cafeteria went
very
quiet. “You’ve got some fucking nuts on you, Epoc, I’ll give you that.” She downed her pitcher of water in one go, then put it down carefully – the alternative was shattering it. “I’m eighty-four years old,” she said with a grin. Her teeth glittered. Her canines looked like they could tear metal. “Looking pretty good for my age, huh?”
“
Ye,
” Epoc managed. “I was just wondering.”
“Well now you kn–”
Every single com in the room went off at the same time. Hex frowned. “Again? That’s the second time today. They don’t usually fall at the same time. This is really–”
The main alarm went off too. Antimony Winter’s voice echoed through the complex. “Crimson alert. Multiple orbital drops confirmed. All hands to battle stations. Repeat. All hands to battle stations.”
Hex touched her ear and her face fell. She sprinted out of the room followed by all the other pilots.
Levi looked at her wrist. Her muscles tensed up. “Epoc,” she said. “You’re with me.”
They rushed to Operations. It was a part of the complex hadn’t been to yet because she didn’t have clearance. When she’d been exploring, the doors to the elevators had simply refused to open, and a small camera had been pointed at her face the entire time. She’d given it a small wave and had moved on. That made sense. Operations was where the actual missions were distributed from. It was the nerve center for all the Mako Group’s frames. It was also half a mile underground.
Walking next to Levi, though, the doors opened and the elevator shot down. There were handholds, and Epoc found herself needing them. Elevators didn’t usually go this fast.
When the doors slid open, a cacophony of voices and ringing communicators blasted them in the face. The Operations headquarters was in complete disarray.
“Antimony!” Levi said, her voice easily carving the noise in half like a gun through butter. “What the
fuck
is going on?!”
Antimony Winter was standing by a table at the center of the room, a headset around her neck. She looked positively haggard. By the far wall were a series of chairs that were completely isolated, literal glass bubbles built around them. Only one of them was occupied. The one labeled A. WINTER was turned sideways and the door was open. So this was where the Handler sat when she was in Epoc’s ear.
“We don’t fucking know, Levi,” Antimony said. “Cerberos is in pieces. We have a crew trying to recover what’s left of Aaliya but she’s half a kilometer under water. We’ve got two more orbital drops, one of them two klicks out from New Cordoba. Serpent class Alpha, it looks like.”
“And the other one?”
“Other two. The first landed on top of Wardog. Some kind of high-altitude flier. No classification yet but it came down and destroyed Cerberos,” Antimony said. “The Megafauna on the are sticking together headed east. It looks like they’re headed to Villafranco.”
“And the fourth one?” Levi said, looking at the map. It was a mess of notifications and lines. Epoc had a hard time making out what it was supposed to say.
“Coming here.” Antimony said.
“This is an attack,” Leviathan said. “A bicontinental drop doesn’t just
happen.”
“That’s not possible,” Epoc said. Everyone around the table suddenly looked at her. They probably hadn’t even noticed her. “They’re just animals, dropping in from orbit. They can’t have a plan.”
“Yeah, well,” Levi said, “in that case we’re very unlucky.” Everyone looked at Leviathan – not a difficult feat, considering she was the kind of person to take up roughly a third of the real estate in someone’s vision simply being in the room. But she nodded at Antimony. “What’s the plan, boss?”
“Reefdancer is spooled up. Callsign Barrier is headed to New Cordoba.”
“Good. Hex can take care of a class Alpha. NC’s current CEO has a good head on his shoulders and some fantastic rail guns to go with it. All Hex has to do is be smart and be fast.” Levi took a confident breath. “Is her Handler up to it?”
“We’re about to find out,” Antimony said, glancing at the occupied chair behind her.
“We’ll see if she earns her plaque,” Levi said.
“She will.” She took a breath. “I need Epoc here to defend the base. The Rats and Cats are suiting up as we speak, so she won’t be alone. We’ve got a few mercs coming in as well.”
“Who owns Villafranco at the moment?” Levi asked.
“Wingspan,” Antimony said. “And yes, before you say anything, I
know
. There’s a reason we don’t buy from them. There’s no way they can hold off an attack of this size on their corporate headquarters. But maybe they can slow the megafauna down.”
Levi growled. “No,” she said. “They might be able to turn them around. I’ve seen those guns.”
“You really think so. You think we shouldn’t deploy?”
“Absolutely not,” Levis said. “If they manage to turn them around, they’ll go back the way they came, and Cerberos is back there.” She stood up straight. “I’m waking Scylla up. I’ll clean up the duo at Villafranco. Everyone else, deal with the other two.”
With that she was out of the door. Epoc blinked and turned to the CEO. “What, uh, what about me? Am I supposed to pilot Nexus Alpha?”
Antimony Winter shook her head. “No. Nexus isn’t ready for the field yet. It won’t be ideal, but we have an artillery frame on standby. It’ll suit you fine, and it’s guaranteed not to fry your brain. I’ll be with you the entire time.” She put a hand on Epoc’s shoulder and squeezed. “You can do this, Epoc. This isn’t how I wanted your first sortie to go, but if that thing reaches Mako Group’s headquarters, it’s all over. Be smart. Be fast. Be one with your Frame.”
Epoc took a deep breath. “Yes, Handler,” she said. “Two questions.”
“What is it?”
“What’s her name?”
“She’s currently being prepped. Her name is Arcus. She’s feisty. You’ll like her.” Antimony gave her a slight smile that failed to reach her eyes, as much for her own benefit as it was for Epocs. It didn’t work. “What was your other question?”
“Where, uh, do I go?”