Liberation Union Mobile Firebase Delta Foxtrot

[WritesNaughtyStories]

Magda could see the dark fury rising in Emily's face. "They have a much better shot now, right? They've got us - not just the Union, but you, me Patune and Scyllia, right?"

The captain pushed her field chair back from the little table and stepped around to stand beside the younger pilot and drop one arm across her shoulders and pull her shoulder to Magda's hip. "You're who's going to get them loose, without the painful road to freedom you had to walk."

She spun the tablet back to this side of the desk and activated it again. She zoomed out the last view to include the river, "Can Scyllia get us both here?" She asked, marking a spot near the outpost in the river. "That way we can slip in and figure out if that is the food plant." A dark finger panned the view toward the ocean. "We can have the carrier drop us over here, and we can put Patune out with Flora and Granite - hopefully the brute won't get himself killed without me, but they'll be nearby and we can bail if we need to."

Payarkoon stopped suddenly, "Hang on! What if we just sneak in and turn down the amount of e-blockers once a week. Just never say anything, then show up calm and friendly after the dosage has been halved or something?"

[WickedCadrach]

Emily felt her shoulders tense as Magda wrapped an arm around her. The sensation wasn't unpleasant. No, it was the opposite, in fact. And feeling the press of Magda's shorts against her shoulder made a part of Emily want to lean back, to allow her dark pony-tail to be crushed against her captain's tank-top-covered stomach and to take the assurances and comfort for what they were. The other part, though, the part still eyeing the scans, iced over as the captain mentioned 'the painful road' she'd had to walk and with a blink that lasted just a little too long, Emily suppressed the memory of her own e-blocker detox.

Pain. She could do pain because she'd made herself hard enough to live with it. She had gotten used to hardness, crassness, steel, and painkillers... but softness? 

She listened to Magda's plan silently, the soft warmth of the older woman's waist as she stood behind her shoulder making Emily's blood rush just a little quicker.

A servo in Emily's neck began to misbehave as the conflicted feeling distracted her, and with an involuntary jerk, Emily's head turned ninety degrees, whipping Captain Payarkoon with the tied back length of brown hair before Emily was able to grab it. She mumbled an apology. "Damn cyber's acting up again. I'll get it locked down." 

Clearing her throat, Emily didn't look up, keeping her gaze on the scans to avoid the minor embarrassment, and wondering if Magda understood her cyber's quirks enough to guess at what it meant. "We can't just mess with the dosing every week. They'll know," Emily replied "It's how they keep control. Even if we pull some kind of masterful hack and the systems can't detect, as soon as some kid or rebel-minded adult starts acting up, the first thing they'll do is double-check the doses. Hell, some of them will probably be scared enough to self-report." Emily shook her head slowly. "I think you're right that our best bet is to infiltrate. We can turn down the dose for maybe a week before they realize. Not enough for a significant effect in the people, but enough to get our foot in the door and already have a week's lead when we take the base." 

Sweeping the map to where Patune and the remaining BioFrames would be held in reserve, Emily indicated the base walls. "I doubt they'll reinforce if they mean to use the outpost as a propaganda piece. Framing the story as a rebel attack is just as good as a kaiju incident. If the infiltration goes bad, we should be ready to bring the hammer down. Retreating again may provoke the Hive to do something stupid, like drop a missile on it and let the newsreels sort it out."

At that moment, Emily realized she'd overlooked something crucial. 

"Wait, did you say 'both' of us?" Turning in her seat, Emily raised an eyebrow looking up into Magda's dark eyes. God, she had pretty eyes. Refocusing, Emily's lip quirked to the side in a faint grin. "Are you planning to ride jump-seat in Scylla? She's not a war-class like Patune. It gets... cozy... in there."

[WritesNaughtyStories]

24 minutes ago, WickedCadrach said:

A servo in Emily's neck began to misbehave as the conflicted feeling distracted her, and with an involuntary jerk, Emily's head turned ninety degrees, whipping Captain Payarkoon with the tied back length of brown hair before Emily was able to grab it. She mumbled an apology. "Damn cyber's acting up again. I'll get it locked down."

"Relax." The captain said softly trying to soothe the younger pilot. "Stress. Nicstix. Both of us still worked up from the BioFrames - it's a lot." She paused, and smiled, "And not, I'm not coming on to you. At least not yet. I'll probably try that later, after we have this sorted out."

As Emily explained why weaning the outpost off the e-blockers completely without actually taking it over wouldn't work, the Captain listened closely. "This is why you're here - to keep me from getting anyone killed." She said, pursing her lips to one side as the fought chewing her lip. "So, we give it a week, move in with the war-classes and hold it, while we wean them the rest of the way off? With us there - say I can get a doctor from command and maybe a couple of medics - how long before we can safely have them completely off?"

 

34 minutes ago, WickedCadrach said:

"Are you planning to ride jump-seat in Scylla? She's not a war-class like Patune. It gets... cozy... in there."

"I am. I know, she's tiny, but the stories you've heard are true - my mother was pregnant with me when she took over piloting Patune when my dad was killed. I've been real cozy with frames for a long time." She gave a wink and a smile, "Pretty girls who smoke too much too, It's not just that it's bad for you - it's, uh, let's say distracting, for me."

The Captain turned swiped the slate to the requisition app, and thumbprinted access to the personnel system. "You, go get some rest - I'm going to see if I can get us a doctor."

She paused and looked up, "Would it be okay if I came up to your perch and came on to you later?"

[WickedCadrach]

17 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

"So, we give it a week, move in with the war-classes and hold it, while we wean them the rest of the way off? With us there - say I can get a doctor from command and maybe a couple of medics - how long before we can safely have them completely off?"

Emily closed her eyes. The question couldn't help but bring back flashes of her own detox. For just a moment, she was a fifteen-year-old girl again, shaking and huddled against the wall behind a mattress that was laid directly on the concrete. The doc hadn't trusted her not to open her wrist on the edge if they gave her a bed frame, and he was right to worry. Emily hadn't had the benefit of meds or leftover Hive rations to wean her down. She had been freed in a hit and run operation, emphasis on the run, and she was in the full throes of withdrawal when all the ordinary hormones of being a teenaged girl came crashing in, riding on on the agony of now being able to feel the loss of her mom and dad in the kaiju attack that prompted the LU's arrival.

For Emily, it had been three months of hell: Confinement, sedation, the indignity of being restrained while her nails were clipped to prevent the worst of the damage to her arms and legs as she picked at herself from the unbridled anxiety of e-blocker withdrawal. For the first week, she'd felt like she was in the middle of a prolonged heart attack, her clothing drenched in sweat as her chest hurt from the racing heartbeat that refused to let her sleep until exhaustion claimed her and panic woke her again. She'd hallucinated that her parents were alive, that they were trying to get her out but that the LU team treating her were keeping them away. And each time reality returned, she grieved their deaths all over again. 

By the ninth day, the worst was past. The anxious spiking of her heart still came on unexpectedly, but Doc Grim was able to start giving her more conventional meds to help. In retrospect Grim had been a saint for the way he guided her through, retraining her brain to handle the newly freed emotions the e-blockers had suppressed—though she viewed him at the time as a prison warden... In a flash that wasn't really a thought, Emily felt the pang of wondering if she'd ever let the old combat medic turned doctor know how much he'd mattered. She certainly hadn't at the time. Despite the control that came with his counseling, she was still a pain in the ass. As Emily left the med bay and began to be given tasks around the camp and later the carrier, she gained the practical experience in sharp words, slaps, and kicks to teach her to rein in the emotions she had. 

It was odd at the time... It felt like a contradiction to be told going off these meds, a process that felt like dying, was good for her... but then to be told she needed to learn to control these feelings instead. At one point, she begged Doc Grim to put her back on e-blockers. It was just too hard. He couldn't have even if he wanted to, but it didn't matter to Emily at the time. She had just wanted the pain to go away. 

She was full of hate, full of pain and rage with nowhere for it to go. And despite most of the withdrawal having passed in that first month, the desire to just end it... to just die and be done with the pain began to come back. Maybe Doc Grim noticed, maybe someone else had... or maybe it was pure coincidence the doc chose that moment to open up the archives to her. 

Until that moment, Doc Grim's words about the beautiful pain of emotion and the expression of spirit in art had sounded like pseudo-religious nonsense. But as Emily's fingers clicked through the physical drives holding the remnant of humanities ancestral pain and ecstasy... as she pulled a thumb drive marked with a black sticker and red marker that spelled a word that she didn't know... it made sense. 

Emily was in her second month of breathing free air when Lizzie Al-Azhar's powerful voice punched through screaming guitars and chaotically beautiful keys that fell like a chandelier shattering in slow motion and reached her soul. Emily wept and she sang along even though she didn't know the words... She finally understood. And she lived. 

"We can drop dosage for the first week, but if you don't want a hab-wide crash-out, you're looking at probably three months of very slow reductions before we can just cut them off." Emily sighed out the last phrase, wiping her face and leaning back, not quite realizing in her distraction the way her head now lay against Magda's waist. "We'll probably still have trouble... Case by case people can be helped, but you're going to have people in there that have never had to deal with anger, or jealousy, or sadness on their own. It's a battle in its own right."

When the captain followed up with a wink and assurance that she was more than comfortable getting 'cozy' in the flea-class BioFrame, Emily could feel the way her chest tighten for just a moment, her vision feeling more 'real' as her pupils dilated at the flirtatious admission at how distracting Magda found Emily's little vice. 

18 hours ago, WritesNaughtyStories said:

She paused and looked up, "Would it be okay if I came up to your perch and came on to you later?"

Emily stood from the table, crossing toward where Magda stood at the door. As she stepped closer, the three-finger difference in their height grew more obvious, and Emily traced the nearly invisible vines of Magda's dark irises with her gaze as she looked down.

This game between them was interesting, the captain having authority and the sort of compassionate affection for Emily reserved for those in a position to protect, while Emily had height, grit, and the confidence of the damned. It made the question of who was coming onto who a bit muddier, and moving forward felt like the sort of careful infiltration Emily was used to with Scylla, dense forest, murky waters, and mist obscuring the way ahead. And the thought Emily had earlier lingered: Maybe I can show her I don't need to be handled with kid gloves. 

Her eyes remaining on Magda's, Emily pulled the nicstik from her pocket again, the LED tip flaring green as she inhaled and released, the nearly silent operation of her artificial lungs sending the thin smoke through the vents in her neck as Emily lifted her chin out of pure muscle memory. 

"Diego's on watch," Emily said, her voice low, heavy with intent. "The others are on hand to corral that new Hive mech, so the pilot barrack should be quiet... if you don't wait too long... sir."

Reaching past Magda, Emily pressed the door release, smirking as she held the e-cig in her teeth and watched, holding her position as she silently goaded her commanding officer to be the first to turn and walk off.