Eva sat in her core with her eyes closed as she flew across the surface of a pristine forested planet. She was deep into a Promethean Merge, and perceived the world through her fighter’s sensor suite.
Trees whizzed by on her flanks as she flew at top speed above a brisk river.
Readouts of the terrain spilled into her visual cortex as the ship continually scanned its surroundings. She had become used to the amount of information her mind received while merged, and was able to filter it out on the fly. Though it was still incredibly taxing to her.
Even though she was just doing some basic flight on an uninhabited planet, she was still overwhelmed with the data she received.
After some time, the rushing river turned to roiling rapids. And at 200 m/s, it didn’t take long
There’s always consequences to messing with your own mind.
The four pilots split up the moment they arrived on Helios. It wasn’t as though they didn’t enjoy each other’s company (well, for the most part anyway). Simply, they had spent a couple hundred hours with each other, in that lab. They were sick of the project, of brother and sister Chase, and of each other as well. They seriously needed a break from all of it. So they bid a temporary farewell to each other, then headed on their separate ways. Redstar went off to find her racer and jock buddies while Merlin spent some time with his crew. Miko decided to visit a hackerspace and get her coding game on. Eva decided that she needed to sweat a whole lot. Though she had worked her mind to death the past two weeks, her body had languished to some degree. Being the kind
Pelli was deep in thought about Eva, her form, her determination. He had admired her tenacity and love of the hunt. But even more so, he loved that she wasn’t aggressive for the sake of it. In fact, she had retained much of her femininity in spite of it. Like any bird of prey. His heart thumped heavily with that thought. “Hey!” Eva yelled. “Get your head outta the clouds!” She came in with a strong left kick aimed at his ribs, which he was just able to block. But it still pushed him back, and knocked the wind out of him. His arm stung from the force of impact. He stepped back, shook off the pain in his arm, and lunged forward to attack. She may have had a finely-
Eva and Pelli were all over each other as they passed through the doorway to her hab. The heat that drew them together was powerful, and they explored each other with their hands, eyes, mouths. The passion they had for each other was too strong for them to care about anything else, and so the lights remained low. They fumbled a little as they pulled off their shoes, unwilling to part their lips. Pelli pushed Eva up on a wall and kissed her passionately as his hands slid down to her waist. Her skin was smooth, and a little damp from their workout. Better still, she was hot to the touch, as though she radiated heat from deep within. His hands traced the small of her back until his fingertips touched the top of her athletic pants. Then they slipped in under
Merlin took a long drag of the NicStic in his fingers. The stick’s far end lit up with a cool blue light for a few seconds before he parted ways with it, and exhaled a large vapor cloud into the air. It smelled a little sweet, and a little earthy. He, along with a shadowy man, stood just inside of a dirty alleyway next to an old bar, somewhere in one of the seedier districts in Helios. “What’cha got for us?” asked the shadow. When Merlin spoke, his previous stoic and simple accent was gone. Instead, he spoke with much more informality and with a very slight American drawl. “I found some great tech y’all might be really interested in,” he said. “Way better than those AniMox pods you’re all so attached to.”
Miko entered the building, eyes and mind wide open. She polished off her takoyaki as she stepped onto the spiral ramp headed downwards. As she descended, she saw the wide open hackerspace before her. It was roughly 40 meters high, and had a handful of mecha stations in each of its four corners. And in each of those stations was a fairly basic mecha. Most of them had civilian-type mecha in them. Two were industrial heavy lifters, another an outdated construction model, and the last was a disarmed and muzzled military combatant. They were in various states of repair, and they all had parts that had been taken down and opened up. One of their legs had been completely disassembled, its various parts splayed out on a large stretch of open area. Miko found it all to
The four test pilots stepped off the Federation frigate and back onto Tartarus Base, the asteroid research station secretly stashed away somewhere in Federation space. They were all in relatively good spirits, Eva especially. Even Redstar had gained some of her exuberance back. The four of them had originally planned to head straight to their quarters, change into their flightsuits, then head to the lab. However, just as they left the hangar itself, the Admiral intercepted them in her hopper. They jumped in with their bags on their shoulders, and barely had time to sit down before the hopper quickly sped away. It joined the other vehicles traveling down the base’s main concourse and headed directly towards the Admiral’s lab. The Admiral had snapped them up rather quickly, almost as though they were getting kidnap
Mack’s bloodshot and bleary eyes widened with surprise and envy and sadness all at once. At the same time, his heart fell from within his chest and disappeared somewhere into the depths. Not that he even noticed. On his screen was Eva’s full stream, which he had been downsampling for later editing. Seems like she accidentally forgot to turn it off, and sent more than she intended. Far more. Mack fell deeper into a void as he watched Eva and Pelli draw themselves towards each other. Hour after hour of footage was of her and Pelli, fighting, playing, flirting, fucking. It ate away at him fiercely to see the two of them spending their time together. The moment he began watching, he felt jealousy stab him deeply. Mack wanted to be exactly where Pelli was, and yet couldn’
On realizing just how much their minds had been altered, the medic in Commander Chase immediately hit the alarms. His voice was filled with passion and authority. “Alright, I’m putting a stop to this,” he said. “No more Prometheus for the rest of the cycle. There’s something else going on here, and I’m not allowing that to harm you!” Eva would’ve much rather spent the remainder of her time in a Promethean Merge out in an actual machine. Just the few hours she had been out here had already changed her perspective on piloting. No way was she going to give that up. “Aww, but there’s so much more I wanna check out,” she said, somewhat hazily. “And besides, we’ve still got hours left on our merge!” “No! Absolutely not! You’ve clearly been affected! No way can you keep goi