Introductions
Diva Groove has a burn scar on her face that she doesn’t like talking about. She’s medium height, muscular, and at 23, she is old for a pilot. Too old some might say, have said in the countless talk shows that center around the hardships of pilots.
So she carries herself with spiteful defiance. When she is asked about retiring her smile says, “Claw me out of the cockpit yourself,” while her mouth goes on about how she is just that good.
Her attitude is bad, her uniform replaced by something more personal. Something cool. They call her punk, a real rebel. As if those words mean anything at all when they’re displayed in gaudy fonts over stupid online articles.
That she is always the first to respond to distress calls is ignored. That she stopped saluting her officers was not reported.
Diva has a perfect track record. When they rewired her and optimized her body, she was back up in under a month. No one commented on the fact that she started wearing sunglasses inside. Just another quirk of hers, another oddity in which the young people of this empire could see themself. We don’t just protect you; we get you, support you is what her image said. You, too, can be rebellious and still have a place here; the fact that she was never interviewed, no opinion of hers ever published didn’t seem to matter.
The surgical improvements meant better piloting. You could truly feel what your mech was feeling. See, not just through screens in front of your face but truly see as if its cameras were your eyes. The size, the strength, the sheer power. The pain. It was intoxicating to be so much more than what the gods had made you. It was no wonder that the pilots who had been enhanced were increasingly strange. Normal people suddenly felt as if they were gods, with inflated egos and confidence big enough to fill those giant machines. Only humbled outside when they started reaching for things far away, stumbling down stairs because they misjudged the distance their legs could reach.
Diva took it wordlessly. Or at least no words ever reached the public. Her improved skill did, however. So it was, once again, a success.
The type of machines used in this war are more diverse than the average citizen would know.
For example, The SM-0-11 wasn’t the typical Unit one would write about. It’s not the type of unit that would spectacularly win a war, or any fight at all, really. For good reasons, it was just a couple of feet taller than the pilot that would sit inside, making it tiny by military standards. It needed to be fast. A scouting unit, not meant for battles but to avoid them. Made to save lives on the own side, not to take them on the other.
SM-0-11 and the dozen other SM-0-Marks fulfilled a vital role in this fight. Still, most pilots saw it as a punishment to be assigned to one.
A manufacturing error, that’s what they called it. SM-0-11 was if you were to put it next to their sister machines, even smaller. No one could explain how this could’ve happened. The Empires head mechanic theorized that an early malfunction with the Reactor had condensed the Metal when it was still hot. But it worked, so there was no need to investigate the problem further and the resource it was could be utilized.
SM-0-11; a cruel joke of a name, earned by nothing but the fact, that it was the 11th of a kind. Not as cruel as the name they had written graffitied over it, though.
Morticia. Earned by the wake of dead pilots she left behind her. A much more grim legacy.
“The last friend you’ll ever have.” They said to the new pilots.
Humor wasn’t something the empire was known for—cynicism, on the other hand…
Tally marks decorated the sides of the machine. Simplified drawings of helmets, marking the deaths this machine had caused.
A curious addition, one could think. This wasn’t a machine that was supposed to kill the enemy. But a closer look made the intent clear.
The helmets drawn with red color weren’t of the Kingdoms, the Allied, or the Otherworldly. Only Empire Helmets would find their way on this machine. One at a time.
The Empire was nothing but resourceful. Nothing was to be wasted, least at all information. So everything was recorded.
And new pilots had to study the material and learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. What they saw was a disappointment at first sight. What they heard were last words, muttered, screamed, and whispered.
‘Tell my family that I love them.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘No, no, no, no, no!’
‘Don’t worry; I’ve got this.’
And then there were the prayers. Those were the ones that hurt particularly. The Empire disapproved of any religious endeavors, so for a Soldier, Recruit, or Pilot to undergo the heresy of praying to the old gods they needed two deciding factors.
The first one was time. Nobody mutters a prayer spontaneously.
The second was the indisputable knowledge that they would not return. You do not want to be one of the unfortunate souls caught praying in the Empire. There was a reason this war was fought *against* the otherwordly, after all.
Praying meant for an empire soul, that their life was forfeit while not knowing if it had been proper.
What they don’t see on the tapes is the little note SM-0-11′s last pilot, stuck in the Cockpit.
’Maybe this time it’s going to be different’
There is an air of defeat around Diva when she approaches SM-0-11, two weeks after she was scheduled to launch.
The hangar is dead quiet, too, nothing of the usual quips and mean jokes when a new pilot was assigned this death machine.
“Pathetic,” she says when her eyes fall on the tally marks on the Unit’s side.
She climbs in, refusing the help offered. The thing was barely taller than her, and even though she moved stiffly, as if from some underlying hurt, she wouldn’t let them humiliate her more.
She needs a moment to make sense of the controls.
Rewired pilots were assigned only the best of the best, massive units that could defeat armies. This thing was none of that. The cockpit feels claustrophobic and messy; there’s blood smeared over some controls. Diva makes a face at the smell. Sweat, fear, death.
“Could’a cleaned this fucking thing at the very least,” she yells outside but doesn’t receive an answer.
She rips down the note, her face impassive, then does the work to connect herself. She might as well be the first pilot in this thing that had been rewired, would explain why there was no actual port for her, and she had to mechanically open one of the controls to plug the Units wirework into her own.
There is still no emotion on her face when she feels the connection, her senses extending, though it’s wrong and dull because this machine was not built for this.
She’s passive when the cockpit hatch closes and when she does the routine movements to see if she’s ready for launch.
She doesn’t complain about any orders, and only when they’re done, she suddenly turns off the cameras and microphones recording her. It’s simple to do when you’re actually plugged in.
She stretches, not just inside, but with the mech too; every one of her movements is shared.
“You’re supposed to be fast, hm?” she mutters, and it almost sounds like a challenge, and suddenly her passive face splits into a wide grin. “Let’s go for a run then.”
