Chapter 6: Battlefield Humiliation
The plateau wind whipped fine granules of clay against the Razorfalcon’s cockpit, a faint, constant scratching. Inside, Nova kept her breathing even, her eyes locked on the tactical hologram materializing between her control yokes. Petrova’s voice was a wire-brush scrape in her helmet.
“Target drones will emerge from the eastern and southern gullies in waves. Your objective is area denial for the simulated convoy route.” Petrova’s holographic pointer danced over the map, highlighting choke points. “Razor Two, you hold the southern ridge. Razor Three, the eastern approach. Razor One,” the pointer landed on a broad, open killing zone directly ahead, “you are the anvil. Nothing gets past your firing line.”
The center. The most exposed position. The one requiring flawless, sustained fire. Nova’s gut tightened. “Understood, Commander.”
“Good. Sync your IFF and weapons free in thirty seconds. This isn’t a walk, people. The drones are running new evasion algorithms. Don’t embarrass yourselves.”
The hologram winked out. The lance channel crackled to life.
“Anvil, huh?” Jax said, his Vindicator already trudging towards the southern ridge. “Guess they need something solid and immovable to hide behind.”
“Just don’t crater the ground too much when you stumble, Nova,” Vik added, his Enforcer pivoting east. “Makes it hard for us to advance.”
Their laughter was static. Nova muted her mic. She couldn’t afford the distraction, couldn’t risk the volcanic reply that trembled on her lips. She focused on the new PPC. Its interface was a cool, blue stream in her neuro-feed. She ran a final capacitor check. The hum through the connection was a promise of pure, released power.
A system chime sounded. The exercise clock started.
“Contacts! Multiple bogies, south and east!” Vik barked, his voice shedding its mocking edge for focused alarm.
Nova’s world telescoped. The EI feed flooded with vectors. The first drone, a skittering wheeled unit the size of a cargo truck, burst from the eastern gully, its rotary autocannon spitting tracer fire at Vik’s position. A second and third followed. From the south, two more drones sped towards Jax, employing a zig-zag pattern that was unnervingly fluid.
Her mind segmented. A part of her tracked Vik’s return fire, the bright flashes against the grey rock. Another part noted Jax’s medium laser slicing a drone’s wheel off, sending it cartwheeling. The largest part of her, the part that was the anvil, settled into a terrifying calm. The open ground before her was empty, waiting.
She knew the pattern. They would test the flanks first, then try to punch through the center.
“Pressure’s on, Razor One,” Petrova’s voice came, cool and observational from the command post. “Don’t wait for an invitation.”
A new cluster of signals erupted on her sensors. Not from the gullies. From concealed pits directly in the center of the killing zone. Three heavier drone units, bulky with mock missile launchers, lurched into view, their treads churning mud. A surprise. For her.
Time compressed. Adrenaline, sharp and clean, burned through the last of her mental fog. This was language she understood. The PPC’s targeting reticle swung, liquid-fast, powered by her will. She felt the capacitor dump its energy, a rushing sensation up her synthetic arm. The world outside flashed an actinic, blinding white. A beam of man-made lightning connected her fist to the lead drone.
It didn’t explode. It vaporized. The screech of tearing atoms drowned out all other sound. A cloud of superheated particulate swirled where its center mass had been. The remaining two drones split, scrambling.
“Hell of a scalpel!” Vik whooped over the comm.
Nova didn’t hear him. She was already turning, the Razorfalcon’s torso rotating with a hydraulic whine. Her left-arm medium lasers stitched a line of emerald fire across the second drone’s path, shredding its treads. It ground to a halt, inert. The third was veering, trying to loop around her. She took a heavy step forward, the ground shuddering. She brought the PPC to bear again. The charge cycle felt longer this time. The hum climbed in pitch.
A proximity alarm shrilled in her ear. Not from the front. From the south. A lone, fast drone had slipped past Jax’s fire, streaking across the open ground directly toward her right flank. A classic pincer. She was committed to the PPC shot.
“Jax!” she snarled, yanking her controls. The Razorfalcon stumbled, the punishing shot on the third drone going wide, carving a molten trench into the plateau. She tried to bring her right-arm lasers to bear, but the drone was inside her minimum range, a buzzing insect. It fired. A volley of mock missiles, harmless training rounds, but their impact sensors registered as solid hits across her mech’s torso. Her damage schematic flashed amber in her vision. A warning klaxon blared.
“I see it, I see it!” Jax shouted, but his laser fire was late, slicing the air behind the nimble drone.
It was a glancing blow, a stumble. But in the cockpit, the violent lurch translated into a sudden, brutal pressure deep in Nova’s abdomen. The stress, the adrenaline, the physical jolt—it tripped a wire. The fear she’d held at bay, the humiliating oversight, the relentless tension of the last hour coalesced into a single, catastrophic failure of flesh.
There was no warning cramp, no gradual need. It was a hot, sudden release, a flooding sense of utter helplessness that had nothing to do with battle. The warmth spread rapidly through the seat of her fatigues, a shocking contrast to the cool synth-leather of the command couch. It soaked through the fabric, a spreading, undeniable wetness that seemed to swallow her whole.
Her breath seized. The EI feed flickered, a blast of neural static as her humiliation, raw and mortifying, feedback directly into the system. The Razorfalcon’s right leg locked mid-stride. It stumbled again, a true, graceless stagger that sent a shower of rock down the plateau’s edge.
“Razor One, report!” Petrova’s voice was sharp.
Nova couldn’t speak. Her throat was sealed shut by shame. She stared at the warm, spreading dampness on the seat, her brain short-circuiting. The drone, having made its pass, sped away. The battlefield seemed to grow silent, the only sound the frantic pounding of her heart and the low, accusing hiss of her cooling vest.
The silence on the command channel lasted two full seconds. Then Petrova’s voice returned, utterly devoid of inflection, a stark contrast to the chaos in Nova’s cockpit.
“Rysia. Your charge’s biological systems have malfunctioned. Handle it. Razor Two, Three, cover the center. Exercise continues.”
The words were clinical, broadcast to the entire tactical net. Biological systems. A malfunction. Like a leaky hydraulic line.
A sob tore itself from Nova’s chest. She slammed her fists against the control yokes, a useless, furious gesture. The wetness was cooling now, a clamby, awful reminder. Tears blurred her vision, mixing with the sweat on her face.
Before Rysia could even respond, Jax’s private channel light blinked, a venomous green eye on her console. She opened it, unable to stop herself.
His voice was a whispered, triumphant sneer. “Whoa. Talk about a system failure. Did you just piss yourself, Nova? All that hype about the new PPC, and you’re losing a fight with your own bladder. Petrova had to call your mommy to clean you up.”
Every word was a nail. She could see his Vindicator on her tactical display, holding the ridge, perfectly functional, utterly in control.
“Shut up,” she breathed, the words choked and wet.
“Make me,” Jax singsonged. “Oh wait, you can’t. You’re too busy having an accident. Guess the isolation tank didn’t fix everything. Maybe you need a bigger diaper.”
The connection cut as Rysia’s voice overrode all channels, a calm, powerful signal crashing through the static of Nova’s ruin.
“All units, this is Control. Razor One is experiencing a temporary neural feedback loop. Disregard anomalous movement. Continue the exercise. Razor One, power down your PPC and maintain position. Do not, I repeat, do not disconnect your EI. Stabilize your breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Follow the sound of my voice.”
Rysia’s instructions were a lifeline, but Nova was drowning. She could still feel the dampness. She could still hear Jax’s laughter echoing in her skull. The Razorfalcon stood motionless in the center of the blasted field, a monument to her disgrace, as around it, the simulated war ground on without her. Her face was a mask of hot tears, her hands trembling on the controls. She tried to breathe in, as instructed, but it hitched, caught on the rubble of her pride.
She was the anvil. And she had shattered under her own weight.
The plateau fell silent, the last drone deactivated by Vik’s final laser blast. The only sounds were the groaning metal of cooling Mechs and the whistle of wind through fresh scars in the earth. In her cockpit, Nova didn’t move. The warm dampness had gone cold, a clammy prison against her skin.
Petrova’s voice crackled, tinny and final. “Exercise terminated. Return to bay. Debrief in one hour.” There was no mention of her performance, no critique. The silence was worse.
Jax’s Vindicator stomped past her stationary Razorfalcon. It didn’t pause. Vik’s Enforcer followed, giving a brief, almost sympathetic bob of its torso before turning away. They left her there, standing alone in the center of the field. She watched their retreating backs on the sensor display until they were just heat ghosts.
She wanted to disappear. She wanted the cockpit to seal forever, to become her tomb. The idea of unstrapping, of moving, of exposing her shame to the hangar lights and knowing eyes was an impossibility greater than any battle. She powered down the primary systems. The low hum of the EI, that constant thread of connection, remained—a fragile tether to a self she no longer recognized.
Minutes bled together. The hydraulic hiss of the main bay door rolling shut echoed across the empty range. Then, a softer sound. The scrape of a personnel hatch, boots on gritty concrete. Not the heavy, synchronized tread of techs. A single, deliberate walk.
Rysia’s figure appeared in her peripheral vision, a tall silhouette against the grey landscape. She stopped by the Razorfalcon’s foot, looking up at the cockpit thirty feet above. She didn’t call over the comms. She just waited.
Nova closed her eyes. She could pretend she hadn’t seen her. She could stay here until they sent a recovery team with welding torches.
A gentle chime sounded on a private, hardline frequency. Not the command channel. The one Rysia used for just the two of them. Nova let it ring three times before she answered, saying nothing.
“I’m coming up,” Rysia’s voice was quiet, a statement, not a request. “The ladder is deployed. I’ll be at the hatch in ninety seconds.”
“Don’t,” Nova whispered, the word sticking.
“Ninety seconds, little star.”
The connection died. Nova heard the clang of the access ladder connecting with the Mech’s leg, then the steady, rhythmic clicks of boots on rungs. Each one was a tick of a clock she couldn’t stop. She fumbled with her harness release, her fingers numb and clumsy. The straps fell away. She felt exposed, the full reality of the cold, sodden fabric hitting her anew.
The cockpit hatch hissed, unsealing. Cool bay air, smelling of oil and ozone, washed in. Rysia filled the opening, her expression unreadable. She didn’t recoil. She didn’t sigh. Her eyes took in everything: the tear-streaked grime on Nova’s face, the white-knuckled grip on the command yoke, the way Nova seemed to curl in on herself.
“The exercise is over,” Rysia said softly, stepping inside the cramped space. “It’s time to come down.”
“I can’t,” Nova breathed, staring straight ahead at the darkened viewscreen.
“You can. It’s just walking.”
“Everyone saw. Jax, he…”
“I heard,” Rysia said, her voice gaining a razor’s edge that wasn’t for Nova. “That is a separate matter. This, right now, is you and me. And we need to go see the Commander.”
The mention of Petrova sent a fresh bolt of dread through her. A debriefing. Having to sit there, in this state, and be analyzed. “I can’t face her. Not like this.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Rysia’s tone softened again. She reached out, not for Nova’s hand, but to carefully unplug the neural interface cables from the ports at her temples. The disconnect was a sudden, hollow silence in Nova’s skull, leaving her own ragged thoughts screamingly loud. “There. That’s the first step.”
Nova flinched at the loss, the disorientation. Rysia’s hands were steady, practical. She unfastened the cooling vest, laying it aside. She didn’t comment on the state of Nova’s fatigues. She simply offered a hand. “Up.”
It was a monumental effort. Every muscle protested, stiff with shame and spent adrenaline. Nova placed her hand in Rysia’s, the touch both a lifeline and a surrender. She let herself be pulled upright, her legs wobbling. The cold, wet fabric clung to her, a grotesque reminder with every shift.
“Easy,” Rysia murmured, anchoring an arm around her waist. She guided Nova toward the open hatch, toward the ladder and the waiting world below. Nova looked down at the dizzying drop, the concrete floor, the empty bay beyond.
“I don’t think I can climb,” she admitted, the confession a defeat.
“You’re not climbing,” Rysia said. She turned, positioning Nova onto her back with a practiced, effortless motion. “Arms around my neck. Hold on.”
It was the thing Nova claimed to hate, being carried. Now, she buried her face against Rysia’s shoulder blade, clinging tight as Rysia descended the ladder one-handed, her other arm securing Nova’s legs. The strength in her caretaker’s body was absolute, a fortress against the void of her humiliation. Each step down was a movement away from the Mech, from the warrior, and towards the woman, broken and damp and utterly dependent.
They reached the ground. Rysia didn’t put her down immediately in the vast, echoing bay. She adjusted her grip, holding Nova against her chest, and began the long walk across the hangar floor. The lights were too bright, illuminating the streaks of coolant and grime on the Razorfalcon’s new PPC arm. Nova kept her eyes shut tight, hearing only Rysia’s steady footsteps and the distant, tinny echo of a tech’s wrench.
Finally, they passed into the relative dimness of the personnel corridor. Rysia shouldered open the door to a small, private washroom near the medical wing. She set Nova down on her feet beside the sink, keeping a supportive hand on her shoulder.
“Clean up,” Rysia instructed, her voice low. She reached into a small duffel she must have brought, pulling out fresh, soft fatigues, wipes, and a thick, absorbent brief. She laid them on the counter. “I’ll be right outside the door. We have fifteen minutes before debrief.”
She left, the door clicking shut. Nova was alone with the mirror. She looked hollow-eyed, her hair matted, her skin pale. She looked like a ghost of the person who had vaporized a drone just an hour before. Her hands shook as she peeled off the soiled clothes, the act slow and mechanical. The clean-up was a ritual of its own, a deeply ingrained humiliation that today felt scalding. When she was dressed again, the fresh garments feeling alien and insubstantial, she just stared at her reflection.
A soft knock. “Nova? Time.”
She opened the door. Rysia gave her a once-over, a nod that was neither approval nor pity, just acknowledgment. “Ready?”
No. “Yes.”
They walked to Petrova’s office in silence. The Commander’s door was ajar. Petrova was at her desk, staring at a holodisplay of the exercise data, the faded scar on her temple looking deeper in the blue light. She didn’t look up as they entered.
“Sit,” Petrova said, flicking the display off.
Nova sat in the rigid chair across from her. Rysia took up a post by the door, a silent sentinel. The air was thick with the smell of old coffee and ozone gel.
Petrova leaned back, her chair groaning. She studied Nova for a long moment, her gaze missing nothing—the puffy eyes, the rigid posture, the way her hands were clamped together in her lap. “The PPC integration is flawless,” she began, her voice flat. “Your targeting solution on that first drone was the fastest I’ve seen from anyone in the regiment. Pure instinct.”
Nova said nothing. She waited for the ‘but’.
“Your neural feedback spike and the subsequent system freeze, however, created a critical vulnerability in the lance’s formation for forty-seven seconds.” Petrova tapped a data-slate. “In a live scenario, that would have gotten Vik and Jax killed. They’d be ash in a cockpit, and the convoy would be scrap.”
The words landed like physical blows. Nova looked down at her hands.
“Jax’s commentary was unprofessional and will be addressed,” Petrova continued, a flicker of distaste in her eyes. “But it doesn’t change the tactical reality of what happened. Your body failed. Your mind followed. It compromised the mission.”
Here it came. The relegation to sim-duty. The permanent medical waiver. The end.
Petrova let the silence hang, then leaned forward, her elbows on the desk. “The 5th Ariana Grenadiers are pushing into the Kelso Fringe. We engage in twelve days.”
Nova’s head came up.
“I am reinstating your frontline status, effective immediately. Full clearance for general operations.” Petrova’s eyes were hard, pragmatic stones. “The regiment needs its best Mechwarrior back. The one who can put a PPC beam through a target’s eye-socket at nine hundred meters. We need the anvil.”
The shock was so total it felt like a vacuum. Nova just stared. After what had just happened. After the humiliation everyone witnessed.
“You… you’re clearing me?” The question was a hoarse whisper.
“I am. Your… support system,” Petrova’s gaze flicked to Rysia for a fraction of a second, “remains in place. That is non-negotiable. But your mech is your post. You will be on it, in the line of fire, in twelve days.” She stood up, the conversation clearly over. “Dismissed. Get some food. Rysia, a word.”
Nova stood, her legs automatic. She walked out of the office into the corridor, the Commander’s words swirling in the empty space where her pride used to be. She was cleared. She was needed. She was the anvil.
And she had never felt more like she was made of glass.
The corridor outside Petrova’s office was sterile and quiet, the kind of quiet that amplified the roar inside her skull. Nova walked. She didn’t know where. Away. Her body felt like a poorly tuned transmitter, all static and misfiring signals. The reinstatement should have been a flood of relief. It was a weight, heavier than the Razorfalcon, crushing the air from her lungs. She was cleared. She was needed. The anvil.
The thought made her stomach lurch. Anvils got hit. Over and over.
She found herself in a narrow equipment alcove off the main hangar access tunnel, surrounded by silent racks of replacement myomer bundles and sensor housings. The light was a dim, eco-friendly glow. She slid down the wall, the cool metal seeping through her fresh fatigues, until she was sitting on the hard floor. She hugged her knees to her chest, resting her forehead against them. The tremors started in her hands, a fine vibration that traveled up her arms into her shoulders.
She replayed it. The pressure. The sudden, hot release. The cold, clinging aftermath. Jax’s voice. Did you just piss yourself, Nova? The cold clarity of Petrova’s command. Handle your charge’s malfunction.
Then the other memory, sharper and more recent: Petrova’s flat, pragmatic stare. We need the anvil.
A choked sound escaped her, something between a laugh and a sob. The contradictions were a vise. Valuable weapon. Broken child. They existed in her simultaneously, and the friction was tearing her apart. Her body, betraying her. Her mind, a frayed wire. Her bladder, a traitorous, weak thing she couldn’t command.
She was so cold. A deep, internal chill no environmental system could reach. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. The pressure in her lower abdomen, ignored in the torrent of shame and shock, made itself known again. It was a dull, full ache. She’d barely had a sip of water since the exercise. It didn’t matter. The strain of the debriefing, the seismic shock of Petrova’s decision—it had all been too much. Her body, stupid and obedient to its new, degraded programming, simply let go.
There was no heat this time. Just a gradual, shameful warmth spreading through the fresh, soft fabric, a slow seep of utter defeat. She didn’t move. She barely acknowledged it. What was the point? It was just proof. A biological confirmation of everything she feared she was. She stayed curled, her world narrowed to the smell of lubricant and the dampness spreading beneath her.
Time became sticky and slow. She didn’t hear the footsteps.
“Nova.”
Rysia’s voice wasn’t loud. It was a solid thing in the fuzzy silence. Nova didn’t look up. She couldn’t. The footsteps came closer, then stopped. She heard a soft intake of breath, a knowing sound.
Then, warmth. Not from inside. From outside.
Rysia’s hands, broad and capable, settled over Nova’s own where they were clenched white around her shins. They didn’t pry. They didn’t demand. They simply covered them, a blanket of living heat. The touch was an electric jolt to Nova’s frozen nervous system. It wasn’t the EI’s false sensation. It was real. Grounding.
A sob ripped itself from Nova’s throat, harsh and ugly. She uncurled, just an inch, her forehead lifting from her knees. She stared at Rysia’s hands on hers. The knuckles, the faint scars, the sheer, steadying reality of them.
“Hey,” Rysia murmured, her voice low. “Look at me.”
It took everything. Nova’s gaze traveled up, over the familiar lines of Rysia’s fatigues, to her face. There was no disgust there. No pity. Just a focused, weary calm. Rysia’s eyes dipped down for a second, taking in the dark patch on the fabric, then returned to Nova’s. She didn’t mention it.
“Can you stand?” Rysia asked.
Nova shook her head, a tiny, helpless movement.
“Okay. That’s okay.”
Rysia released one of Nova’s hands. She reached into the small duffel at her hip, the same one from the washroom. She pulled out a clean, folded brief and a packet of wipes. The routine was as familiar as weapon checks. She didn’t speak as she gently guided Nova to lean forward against her shoulder. Nova went, her body limp, her face pressed into the rough fabric of Rysia’s sleeve. She smelled of metal and clean soap.
Rysia worked with efficient, gentle motions. The soiled brief was removed. The cool wipes cleaned her skin. The fresh one was fastened in place. It was all done with a clinical care that felt, in that moment, like the purest form of devotion. An acknowledgement of the broken thing without flinching from it.
Once Nova was re-dressed, Rysia didn’t immediately move her. She kept one arm around her, letting Nova’s weight sag against her. She just held her there, in the dim alcove, while the distant sounds of the hangar echoed like another world.
“You called me something,” Rysia said softly, her voice a near-rumble against Nova’s ear. “After the last immersion cycle. When I got you out of the crib.”
Nova went very still. The memory was a blurred, painful haze of sensory deprivation and desperate need. A single word, gasped from a place so deep and regressed it terrified her.
“You were barely conscious,” Rysia continued, her thumb making a slow arc on Nova’s back. “You were crying. You reached for me and you whispered it.” She paused. “You called me ‘Mommy’.”
A fresh wave of heat, this one of pure mortification, washed over Nova. She tried to pull away, but Rysia’s hold was firm, not restraining, but anchoring.
“I didn’t… I was out of my mind,” Nova croaked into her shoulder.
“I know you were,” Rysia said. “I’m not bringing it up to shame you. I’m bringing it up because you need to hear this.” She took a slow breath. “In that moment, you weren’t a Mechwarrior. You weren’t a soldier. You were just a hurt, scared person reaching for the only safety you could conceptualize. And I held you. Because that’s my job. But also because I wanted to.”
Nova’s breath hitched. She stopped struggling.
Rysia leaned back slightly, just enough to look down at Nova’s face. Her expression was unguarded, serious. “The therapy has protocols. The regression has guidelines. But that word… it came from you. Not the program. And my answer to it doesn’t come from the program either.”
She cupped Nova’s cheek, her palm warm and rough. Her voice dropped, losing all its professional distance, filled with a raw, simple tenderness that shattered the last of Nova’s defenses.
“So you listen to me, little star. Right now. However broken you feel, however much glass you think you’re made of, you are not alone in this. I am here. Not just to clean up the mess or enforce the rules. I am here for you. The you that is a terrifyingly good pilot, and the you that is scared, and the you that whispered that word in the dark. All of it.”
She brushed a thumb under Nova’s eye, catching a tear that had escaped. “You are my little star. And I’ve got you.”