Chapter 2: Nova's face burns crimson as Rysia buckles the childish harness over her cooling vest, Petrova arching a brow at the pacifier clipped to her collar before dryly remarking, *'If you fight like a toddler, Lieutenant, you'll be treated like one—now drink your juice and pay attention to how badly you flanked Delta Squad.'*
The hangar bay’s controlled chaos had been replaced by the sterile, accusing silence of the debriefing room. The air here was filtered, chilled, and carried none of the exhilarating scents of war. Only the quiet hum of a high-fidelity holoprojector and the tap of Commander Petrova’s finger on the tabletop.
Nova stood at attention before the circular table, her boots seeming too loud on the polished floor. She was back in a clean uniform, but the memory of the onesie was a ghost on her skin. Her left arm ached—a deep, phantom throb where the Razorfalcon’s limb had been sheared off by particle beam fire. In her mind, she could still feel the violent lurch, the shriek of metal, the cascade of damage warnings that had flooded her brain.
Petrova didn’t look up from her data slate. “At ease, Lieutenant.” The words were flat.
Nova shifted her weight, the relief minimal. Rysia stood a few paces behind her, a silent, observant pillar. Her presence was a guarantee and a threat.
The Commander swiped a command. In the center of the table, a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Durgan Canyon engagement sprang to life. Miniature luminous mechs danced in the silent slaughter. Petrova zoomed in on the Razorfalcon, a agile blue sprite against the hulking red enemy Atlas. The footage played at half-speed. They all watched as Nova’s mech, beautifully aggressive, ducked under a swipe of the Atlas’s autocannon, scoring a trio of laser hits on its cockpit.
“Good maneuvering here,” Petrova noted, her voice devoid of praise. It was a simple observation.
Then the scene progressed. The Atlas’s PPC fired. A near miss, boiling canyon rock into glass. The Razorfalcon’s external camera feed flickered with static. On the hologram, a smaller secondary data window popped up—Nova’s real-time bio-readouts from the cockpit.
Heart rate: 180bpm. Neural stress: 87%. The graph was a jagged mountain range of spikes.
“See that?” Petrova said, freezing the image. The Atlas was winding up for another swing. “Your vitals go haywire not when you’re evading, but right after. Post-action. A full three-second lag before you re-establish positional awareness.”
Nova’s throat tightened. She remembered those three seconds. A white-hot burst of humiliation, so acute it was physical, as the warmth spread in the cockpit, a stark, wet betrayal her mech couldn’t shield her from. The spike on the graph was a perfect echo of that moment.
“The EI feedback loop,” Nova said, the explanation ash in her mouth. “A surge of disorienting sensory—”
“A surge of shame, Lieutenant,” Petrova interrupted, finally looking at her. Her eyes were granite. “The telemetry is clear. It’s not the enemy fire causing the spike. It’s your body’s… ancillary systems overloading your focus. You’re not present in the fight for those seconds. You’re here, in this room, worrying about a secret you think you’re keeping.”
She tapped the slate. The hologram advanced. The frozen Atlas completed its swing. The Razorfalcon, a hair too slow, took the hit on its left arm. The assembly sheared clean off in a shower of virtual sparks. The mech stumbled.
“We lost the limb because you were distracted by a biological inconvenience your therapist has a protocol for,” Petrova stated. “That arm is four hundred thousand credits of Coalition taxpayer money. The near-fatal vulnerability your stumble created is incalculable.”
Silence hung, thicker than the ozone in the war room. Nova’s cheeks burned. She felt Rysia’s gaze on the back of her neck.
“Doctor,” Petrova said, not taking her eyes off Nova. “Your assessment. Is the current regression protocol sufficient?”
Rysia stepped forward, her movements calm, assured. “The protocol is sound, Commander. But its effectiveness is determined by consistent application. Pre-combat grounding is one thing. Post-combat reinforcement, especially after a stress-induced lapse, is crucial for rebuilding the necessary neural pathways.” She held up a small device. “The bio-readout spike is a textbook trigger for a Level Two reinforcement session.”
Petrova leaned back, steepling her fingers. “A session being?”
“Immediate re-establishment of the care dynamic. A tangible reminder of the safe, controlled environment, to counteract the chaos of the battlefield memory.” Rysia’s tone was so matter-of-fact it made the proposal sound clinical, inevitable. “We can do it right here. It will be more effective if the conscious mind connects the consequence directly to the performance failure.”
A cold dread pooled in Nova’s stomach. “Ma’am, with all due respect, this is a military debriefing. I can… I will submit to additional therapy in the medbay.”
“This isn’t therapy, Lieutenant,” Petrova said. “This is tactical re-conditioning. Your weapon glitched. We are debugging it. Proceed, Doctor.”
Nova took an involuntary step back. Rysia was already moving. From a storage locker at the room’s edge, she withdrew a piece of equipment Nova had never seen. It was a chair, but unlike any in the ship. It was made of brushed steel and matte black composites, with tall back supports and a wide, high base. It looked like a pilot’s seat crossed with a child’s high chair. A harness dangled from the back. A wide tray locked into brackets on the arms. A prototype EI-dampening rig, Rysia had called it once. To Nova, it looked like a throne of pure humiliation.
“No,” Nova breathed.
“It’s not a request,” Rysia said, her voice losing none of its calm as she wheeled the chair to the edge of the briefing table. It settled with a soft thunk. “The chair’s dampening field will help soothe the residual neural static from the severed EI link in your arm. The structure provides security. Come here.”
Nova looked at Petrova. The Commander’s face was a mask of detached pragmatism. She gave a single, slow nod.
Trembling, a tremor that began in her knees and radiated outwards, Nova walked the five steps to the chair. The metallic smell of it filled her nostrils. Rysia’s hands were on her shoulders, guiding her to turn around. She placed her palm on Nova’s back, a firm pressure, and pushed gently.
Nova sat. The seat was cool, unforgiving. Before she could process it, Rysia was leaning over her, pulling the heavy harness across her chest and lap. The clasps clicked shut with a series of definitive, metallic sounds—locks on a cage. Then Rysia swung the tray into place. It locked with a solid clunk, a black composite barrier sealing her into the chair, its surface smooth and empty about a foot from her chest.
Nova was trapped. The harness pressed the uniform fabric against her, a cruel mockery of the secure swaddling of the onesie. She felt impossibly small, her feet dangling centimeters above the floor.
Rysia produced a sealed, flexible pouch with a silicone nozzle from a compartment on the chair’s base. It was filled with an opaque, creamy nutrient mix. She placed it on the tray.
“You need electrolytes and calming agents. Drink when you feel the need.” Rysia’s instruction was gentle, final.
Petrova reactivated the hologram. The discussion resumed as if nothing had happened. “Now, the salvage team indicates the Atlas’s cockpit was breached prior to its reactor shutdown. Your lancemate’s missile barrage was the kill shot, but your initial laser fire likely incapacitated the pilot. A tactical victory, albeit a costly one.”
Nova stared straight ahead, through the holographic battle, her vision blurring. The officers’ voices—Petrova, the logistics chief, the flight controller—became a distant drone. Her world had narrowed to the feel of the harness, the shameful exposure of the tray, the pouch of baby food in front of her.
The phantom ache in her arm pulsed in time with her heartbeat. The bio-readout spike on the holoscreen seemed to mock her. She could feel a different need building, urgent and familiar. A consequence of the stress, of the shock of the amputation, of sitting here like this.
She tried to clench, to hold, but her control was a frayed wire, severed the moment the harness clicked. A warm release began, slow and inevitable, soaking into her uniform, a secret played out in real-time under the gaze of her commanders. A hot tear escaped, tracking down her cheek. She couldn’t wipe it.
She stared at the pouch. Her throat was tight, dry. With fumbling, harness-restricted hands, she picked it up. The silicone nozzle felt alien against her lips. She sucked.
The mix was vaguely sweet, cloying. It was a physical anchor, a regression made liquid. With each sip, the sharp edges of her humiliation began to soften, not into acceptance, but into a heavy, drowsy detachment. The drone of tactical analysis—tonnage ratios, ammunition expenditures, salvage rights—faded into white noise.
Petrova glanced at her once, mid-sentence. Her eyes flicked from Nova’s tear-streaked face to the pouch, to the now-damp uniform pants barely visible above the tray. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t pause her analysis. It was just another piece of data.
Rysia, standing sentinel by the door, watched Nova’s eyelids grow heavy. The violent tension in the girl’s shoulders slowly ebbed. The bio-readout spike on the frozen hologram was just a historical blip now, its cause being methodically addressed in real-time.
Nova’s mind floated, untethered. The battlefield chaos, the searing loss of the mech's arm, the crushing weight of Commander Petrova’s disappointment—they were all still there, but muffled, wrapped in layers of soft, shameful cotton and nutrient slurry. She was safe. She was contained. She had failed, and this was the consequence. A strange, terrible peace settled over her, deeper and more seductive than any post-victory high.
The debriefing wound on. Nova drank, and drifted, and surrendered. By the time Petrova said, “Dismissed,” the pouch was empty, and Nova was swimming in a warm, numb sea where nothing, not even her own dignity, could touch her.
The clicks of the harness release were gunshots in the quiet room. Nova stumbled as her feet hit the floor, her legs weak, her mind foggy. Rysia’s arm was immediately around her, holding her up with effortless strength.
“Good girl,” Rysia murmured, the words for Nova’s ear alone. “You took your medicine. Now let’s get you cleaned up.”
As Rysia led her out, Nova cast one last glance back. The hologram was off. The strange chair stood empty by the table, a stark, ugly piece of furniture. Commander Petrova was still at the table, head bowed over her data slate, her expression unreadable in the sterile light.
The door hissed shut, sealing Nova into the hallway with her keeper. The walk to the quarters would be long. But for the first time since the drop, the frantic, skittering fear in her chest was gone. In its place was a hollow, quiet void, and the steady, sure sound of Rysia’s footsteps guiding her home.
The hollow void inside Nova was a relief. It meant the shame had burned itself out, leaving only numb ash and the physical reality of Rysia’s arm around her ribs, holding her upright. Her own legs were traitors, rubbery and uncooperative as they moved down the featureless hallway. The lights were too bright. They made the damp patch on her uniform pants feel exposed, a glowing beacon for anyone they passed.
No one passed. The corridor was empty, just the hum of the ship’s life support and the synchronized click of Rysia’s boots. “Almost there, little star,” Rysia said. Her voice wasn’t soft, exactly. It was factual. A statement of distance remaining.
Nova hated the nickname. She also leaned into the support more heavily.
Their quarters hissed open at Rysia’s proximity chip. It wasn’t a soldier’s bunk; it was a suite, soft-lit and divided. One side held a standard desk, a terminal, a rack for her dress uniform. The other side was different. Padded flooring. Low shelves holding neutral-colored containers. A large, plush chair that didn’t look like it belonged on a warship. The air here smelled faintly of vanilla and clean linen, an artificial calm that felt like a physical wall against the ship’s metallic sterility.
Rysia guided her across the threshold, then turned, her hands settling on Nova’s shoulders. “You did well.”
Nova blinked, head fuzzy from the nutrient mix. “Did what well?” Her voice was a hoarse scrape. “my mech lost an arm. I… I failed in front of Petrova. Again.”
“You drank the full pouch.” Rysia’s thumbs rubbed small circles on the tense muscle above Nova’s collarbone. “You sat through the entire debrief without a single outburst. You let the chair do its work, let the dampeners smooth the rough edges the EI left.” Her gaze was direct, evaluating. “You accepted the consequence. That’s the work. The mech is just hardware.”
Nova wanted to argue, to twist away. The praise was a hook in a tender place. It connected to the part of her that had finally, in that horrible chair, stopped fighting. “It doesn’t feel like doing well. It feels like losing.”
“It’s a different kind of surrender.” Rysia’s hands moved, starting on the clasps of Nova’s uniform jacket. The movements were practiced, efficient. “The battlefield one is violent. This one,” she said, peeling the damp fabric away from Nova’s shoulders, “is intentional. It takes more strength.”
The jacket pooled on the floor. The undershirt followed. The cool air hit Nova’s skin, raising goosebumps. She stood passively, watching her own arms hang limp at her sides. Rysia knelt, working on her boots, then the trousers. She didn’t flinch at the state of them. She simply folded the soiled fabric inward and set it aside.
Exposed now, shivering slightly, Nova felt the last vestiges of the soldier fall away. Here, she was just a body. A collection of needs and failures and bio-readout spikes.
“See?” Rysia said, her voice lower. She didn’t point. She just rested a warm palm on Nova’s abdomen, a quiet claim. “You’re here now. Not caught between the cockpit and the command room. Just here.” She stood, retrieving a soft cloth and a basin of warm water from the sanitizer. “The mission is to keep you present, Nova. Petrova needs you sharp in the Razorfalcon. I need you whole out of it.”
The washcloth was blissfully warm. Rysia cleaned her with a methodical, gentle thoroughness that brooked no argument. It was clinical and deeply intimate. Nova closed her eyes, her breath hitching. The numbness was receding, replaced by a raw, aching vulnerability. The phantom pain from her mech's missing arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
“Good,” Rysia murmured again, more to herself this time, as she dried Nova’s skin. “Just breathe through it. Let it go.”
From a shelf, she took a fresh onesie. It was gray, soft brushed cotton. Nova didn’t protest as Rysia guided her arms and legs into it, as she zipped it up the front. The fabric felt like an embrace, a defined boundary for her fractured self. Rysia lifted her, cradling her against a solid chest, and carried her to the large plush chair.
She sat, settling Nova in her lap, arranging her like a heavy doll. Nova’s head found the crook of Rysia’s neck. Her damp hair smelled of ozone and sweat and the ship’s recycled air.
Rysia began to rock, a slow, steady rhythm. “You are exceptional, Nova. Not just in the cockpit.” Her hand stroked Nova’s back through the soft cotton. “What you endure, what you allow me to do to keep you flying… that takes a courage Petrova will never understand. You are so very strong for me.”
The words dismantled something final inside Nova. A dam cracked. A choked sob wrenched out of her, then another, shuddering through her small frame. She cried for the lost mech limb, for the humiliation in the war room, for the terrifying freedom of having no choices left. She cried because she believed Rysia meant it.
And she cried because, wrapped in that impossible praise, she felt more like herself than she had in months.
Rysia held her through it, the rocking never ceasing. “That’s it. Let it out. I’ve got you.” Outside the ship, in the infinite black, the war waited. Debris from the Durgan Canyon engagement likely still spun in the void. But here, in this room smelling of vanilla and salt tears, there was only the rhythm of the rock and the solid beat of a heart under her ear.
Nova’s sobs subsided into hiccups, then into deep, weary sighs. The emotional purge left her boneless, her mind quiet. The EI’s usual constant static buzz was a distant memory. In its place was a profound, almost painful clarity.
She nuzzled closer, her fingers curling into the fabric of Rysia’s tunic. The past hours replayed in her head, not as a montage of failures, but as steps in a process. The spike, the loss, the chair, the walk, the cleaning, the rocking. The praise. It was all connected. A single, ugly, necessary circuit.
“Will she bench me?” Nova asked, her voice muffled against Rysia’s shoulder.
“No.” The answer was immediate. Certain. “Petrova is a tactician. She saw the cost today, and she saw the solution being applied. She won’t like my methods, but she’ll respect the results.” Rysia’s hand stilled on Nova’s back. “Your next sortie will be flawless.”
Nova wanted to ask how she could possibly know that. She didn’t. Instead, she focused on the feeling of being known, of being seen in this broken, regressed state and being called strong for it. The contradiction should have been maddening. It felt like the only truth left in the universe.
The rocking continued. The soft light seemed to dim slightly on a timer. Nova’s limbs grew heavier, the warmth from Rysia’s body seeping into her bones, soothing the last echoes of phantom pain. Her breathing slowed, syncing with the rise and fall of the chest beneath her.
Just before sleep pulled her under, Rysia’s voice came again, a low vibration against her cheek. “My brave girl. You did so well.”
And Nova, drifting into a dreamless, dark sea, believed her.
The words followed her down into the dark. They were a blanket, smothering the last embers of panic. When she woke, the room was still soft-lit, but Rysia was gone. The space beside her in the wide bunk was cool. A faint ache lingered in her muscles, a dull echo of the phantom limb pain, but the screaming static in her head was absent. For a few heartbeats, she just existed in the quiet.
Then the schedule reasserted itself. The chronometer on the wall glowed 0500. Pre-op brief was at 0700. Deployment at 0830. Scituate.
The door hissed. Rysia entered, carrying a tray. The scent of rehydrated protein and synthetic coffee cut through the vanilla. “You’re awake. Good.” She set the tray on a low table. “Eat. Your metabolic levels need stability.”
Nova pushed herself up, the soft fabric of the onesie rustling. She felt disoriented, peeled raw. The clarity from last night remained, but it was a cold lens. “The Razorfalcon?”
“In Bay Three. The techs have been working through the night.” Rysia stood beside the bunk, looking down at her. Her expression was neutral, professional. “The arm’s connection housing is toast. They can’t mount a replacement in time. So they’re stripping the whole weapons pack.”
Nova’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth. “Stripping it?”
“Everything. The autocannon, the missile racks, the standard mediums. Gone.” Rysia crossed her arms. “They’re welding on a whole new left-side assembly. Six extended-range medium lasers, three per panel. And an extended-range particle pulse cannon in the center torso. It’s a direct-energy overload. No ammo dependence. Pure heat management.”
The implications settled in Nova’s gut. A gunner’s build. She’d need to stand off, pick her shots, manage a heat curve that could fry the cockpit if she got trigger-happy. It required a cool head. A steady hand.
She looked at Rysia. The unspoken condition hung between them, thicker than the ship’s atmosphere.
“You know the parameters,” Rysia said, her voice leaving no room for the protest forming in Nova’s throat. “Your neural stress indicators are still in the yellow zone from the spike. The chair session was a reset, not a cure. You go into that cockpit tomorrow, you go secure. Or you don’t go at all. Petrova signed off on it.”
The humiliation was a physical wave, hot and immediate. It chased away the last of the grogginess. “Secure. You mean…”
“I mean you will be wearing a contingency garment under your combat jumpsuit. The jumpsuit seals over it. No one will know by looking.” Rysia’s gaze was relentless. “But you will know. And I will know. And if you have another… incident… in the field, it will be contained. Your focus stays on the battle, not your own biology.”
Nova’s appetite vanished. She pushed the tray away, the clatter loud in the quiet room. “Haas will find out. He always does. He sniffs out weakness like a bloodhound.”
“Then that is your burden to carry,” Rysia said, unmoved. “Is your pride worth more than the town of Scituate? More than your lancemates’ lives?” She leaned forward, planting her hands on the bunk’s edge, caging Nova in. “You are a weapon, Nova. My weapon. I am ensuring you are operational. This is maintenance. Do you understand?”
The word ‘weapon’ should have felt degrading. After last night, it felt like a truth. She was a thing to be calibrated, a system to be managed. The fight drained out of her, leaving a cold, hollow acceptance. She gave a single, sharp nod.
“Verbal confirmation.”
“I understand,” Nova whispered.
“Good.”
The preparation was a silent, clinical ritual. Rysia helped her from the onesie. The diaper was a thick, medical-looking thing of white polymer and absorbent mesh. It felt absurd against her skin, a laughable prosthetic for a broken part of her. Rysia taped it securely at the hips, her touch impersonal. She didn’t speak.
Then came the combat jumpsuit, a slate-gray second skin of reinforced synthetic fiber. It hissed as it sealed up her front, the interior climate-control filaments weaving a cool net over her body. It disguised everything. From the outside, she was just a pilot, slim and lethal.
Rysia stepped back, appraising her work. “Functional. Remember, it’s a tool. Nothing more. Now, let’s go see your other tool.”
Bay Three was a cathedral of noise and fury. The scent of welding ozone, hot metal, and lubricant was a familiar welcome. Her Razorfalcon stood in its gantry, its left side a masterpiece of brutal, fresh modifications. The new laser arrays were sleek, blackened boxes with vicious emitter lenses. The particle pulse cannon, mounted centrally, was a blunt, heavy snout still trailing coolant lines.
Techs swarmed over it like ants. She saw Chief Vargas on a scissor-lift, shouting at a welder. Her heart clenched seeing the naked shoulder joint where her old arm had been, but the new weaponry was a promise of raw, distilled violence.
“She’ll run hot,” a voice boomed from behind her. “But she’ll hit like a freakn’ supernova.”
Nova turned. Lieutenant Haas, her lancemate, leaned against a cargo crate, picking his teeth with a conductive filament. He was a mountain of a man, crammed into his own jumpsuit, with a grin that never reached his eyes. His mech, a hulking Ymir, stood nearby, all crude armor and ballistic fists.
“I can manage heat,” Nova said, her voice tighter than she wanted.
“Oh, I know you can, Ice Queen.” He pushed off the crate and ambled over. His eyes didn’t go to her face. They performed a slow, deliberate scan down her sealed jumpsuit, pausing at her hips, then traveling back up. A knowing, greasy smirk spread across his face. “Heard about your little… meltdown… in Durgan Canyon. Guess the docs are making sure you don’t leave a puddle in the Razorfalcon this time, huh? Extra precautions?”
The bay’s noise seemed to recede, tunneling into a roar in her ears. Her face burned. She could feel the exact contours of the garment under the jumpsuit, a secret suddenly plastered on a billboard.
“Stow it, Haas,” she snapped.
“What?” He held up his hands in mock surrender, his grin widening. “Just making conversation. It’s practical, right? No bathroom breaks. Maximizes operational uptime. Gotta admire the efficiency.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried. “Does it come in fun colors? Or just hospital white?”
Rage, bright and chemical, flooded her veins. It was the same rage that made her a killer in the cockpit. Her hands clenched into fists. She imagined driving one into his smirking mouth.
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. Not Rysia’s. Chief Vargas had descended from his lift, his weathered face grimed with soot. “Lieutenant Haas, your Ymir’s gait actuator is still out of alignment. I suggest you be elsewhere while my team fixes it, unless you want to face-plant on the march to Scituate.”
Haas’s smirk faltered. He threw a lazy salute. “Wouldn’t dream of interfering, Chief.” He turned, but not before shooting Nova a final, withering glance. “See you on the field, Ice Queen. Try not to get… distracted.”
He sauntered away, barking a laugh at one of his own crew.
Nova stood rigid, trembling. Vargas’s hand squeezed her shoulder once, then fell away. “The loadout is aggressive,” he grunted, staring up at the mech. “But it suits you. The ER PPC will crack an Atlas’s cockpit at 600 meters if you lead the shot right. The lasers will slice anything lighter to ribbons.” He looked at her, his eyes old and tired. “Ignore Haas. He’s a bully because he’s scared. He’s seen your telemetry. He knows what you can do when you’re focused.”
The chief walked back to his lift, leaving her alone at the foot of her machine.
The anger didn’t leave. It crystallized. Haas’s laughter, the feeling of the diaper beneath her suit, the memory of the high chair—they all fused into a single, cold point of resolve in her chest. She looked up at the Razorfalcon’s modified silhouette, at the deadly new facets of its power.
She was a weapon. Maintained. Operational.
And tomorrow, she would be pointed at the enemy.