Alicia punched the afterburner and felt the crash corset constrict around her jumpsuit as her ?mech hurtled over the ocean. The radio crackled.
“…still can’t believe that unholy shroud-wipe is alive. I watched him burn…”
“You’re breaking up, Carlos. I’m crossing the radio horizon.”
The maturing Artefact permitted no comms satellites, and relay balloons would betray the position of Mercy Base through triangulation. Soon, she would be on her own.
No wingmate.
No backup.
Just a void in her heart where the Saint should be. The truth was, she’d been alone since that day in the crop fields of EXO001.
“Alicia! Wait! There’s some…I….want….t….say….”
“Goodbye, Carlos.” She killed the comm and stared at her nosecam screen.
The salt glacier rose out of the ocean. Waves foamed furiously against collapsing cliffs. The salt dome—a crystalline mountain—dominated the horizon. Between dome and cliffs stretched kilometre after kilometre of sparkling salt flats.
The sky above was a perfect pale indigo.
A contrail appeared to the northwest.
And a voice in her head.
<ul>
<li>Priestess.</li>
<li>Martian.</li>
</ul>
She matched his deceleration. Both mechs transformed from AF to HOVA mode with practiced ease—thrusters defusing into legs, arms unfurling from fuselage clamps, wings splayed like titanium angels as they braked to a stop over the glacier.
The delayed sonic BOOM>BOOM>BOOMS echoed off the salt dome>dome>dome.
They faced each other across the salt flats.
The noonday sun hung between them.
The salt blistered and cracked beneath their thruster-legs.
She painted him with targeting ladar, felt a tingle in her corset straps as he did the same.
The Artefact appeared in the western sky, tracing its dark meridian.
<ul>
<li>I suppose there’s no need for parley, now, is there?</li>
<li>I don’t know how you’re in my head, witch. </li>
<li>I was thinking the same thing, ‘Flyboy’.</li>
<li>Don’t call me that.</li>
<li>Oh, was that little Evey’s pet name for you?</li>
<li>Get my wingmate’s name out of your head.</li>
<li>Hey, at least she got her ‘sunset’…</li>
</ul>
An alarm sounded in her ?mech’s cavity.
PROTON STREAM DETECTED.
The Martian was powering up his lance. She clenched her right fist tight around the corset strap, felt the hum of her own linear accelerator. Two red beams cut through the air; a fireball blooming where they met. Alicia’s crash corset rattled as she leant into the press, but she tempered her thrusters, letting him start to push her back towards the salt dome.
<ul>
<li>Looks like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, Priestess.</li>
<li>Maybe I like to play with my food.</li>
<li> You get that from your father?</li>
</ul>
Alicia tried to keep her rage from her thoughts.
<ul>
<li>Ah, the cray-cray religious chick with daddy issues. It’s almost cute.</li>
<li>Thinks the guy who wants to fuck his therapist.</li>
<li>Thinks the girl who could literally go fuck herself…if you hadn’t killed yourself, that is.</li>
<li>I had a spare.</li>
<li>Not for much longer...</li>
</ul>
With her almost pinned against the salt dome, the Martian shut down his lance and launched a m<sup>2</sup>issile stream.
It was the moment she had been waiting for.
She diverted all power to her left-leg thruster and pivoted on her spiked tail’s axis. Her ?mech pirouetted in midair. She torqued her body in the corset, clasped fists gyrating in a figure-of-eight pattern that translated into a pink blur as her proton lance batted the m<sup>2</sup>issile swarm out of the air. Black scorch lines appeared in salt dome’s foothills.
When the last projectile fizzled out, she brought her lance around in a kilometre-wide slash. The Martian backflipped—barely avoiding getting sliced in two—and accelerated towards the ocean. She pursued him over the collapsing cliffs, firing her own m<sup>2</sup>issile load in the process. They pitched and swerved between salt pillars, m<sup>2</sup>issile impacts blossoming in chaff clouds, lances sizzling in the sea spray, engines screaming from the salt dust.
M<sup>2</sup>issiles spent, they remounted the glacier and sped over the salt flats in parallel. Suddenly he banked and tried to side-tackle her in mid-air. Running on instinct and adrenaline, she coiled her body into a ball and summersaulted within the corset. Her ?mech barrel-rolled and came up behind him. She levelled her lance, but he braked, and she slammed into his huge Manta-cowl. They both dropped to the flat like skimmed stones.
Alicia’s braced in her corset as her ?mech slid to a halt in Ground Walker Mode, kicking up half a klick of salt dust. When her cameras cleared, she saw him staggering to his feet, the Mantamech’s hulking design showing its age.
<ul>
<li>Having fun, Flyboy?</li>
<li>I’m just getting situated, clone.</li>
<li>Let me help you…</li>
</ul>
She leapt into the air and bore down on his ‘head’, trying to pin him with her ?mech’s spiked tail. He sidestepped at the last second and she penetrated the salt flat instead. A long crack appeared on the glacier’s surface.
As she tried to pull free, his Mantamech’s club tail slammed into her side. Her corset gimballed as her ?mech toppled onto its back—spawled across the new, thin crevice created by her tail-stomp. Her nosecam showed the Artefact crossing the indigo sky overhead.
“Saint…” she gasped and fired her thrusters in a backflip attempt. But he was too quick. With a single swipe of his lance, he severed her legs at the knee joint. Thin jets of propane and hydraulic fluid squirted from the stumps. She started to raise her lance arm, but he crushed it beneath his thruster boot and aimed his own lance down at her pilot’s cavity.
<ul>
<li>This is for Eve, clone.</li>
<li>I’m not done yet…</li>
<li>Yes, you are. You’re going to die under a Mantamech’s boot just like your father…</li>
</ul>
Alarms wailed. The air between his lance and her chest began to shimmer. She had one last move to play, one desperate, dangerous gamble…
<ul>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie/Alicia looked down at the legless ?mech pinned beneath their boot/up at the huge Manta cowl eclipsing the wormhole/Artefact directly above. Around them, salt particles began to rise.
Inverted gravity tugged at their corset straps. The Mantamech’s boot started to lift from the ?mech’s lance arm…
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie triggered his lance. But the wormhole had pulled his aim off. The red beam severed The Priestess’s left shoulder fin and disappeared down into the crack. A kilometre of superheated ions punched into the glacier. He ‘heard’ the echo of her thought even as he frantically cut the proton stream.
<ul>
<li>Petroleum trap.</li>
<li>You b…</li>
</ul>
BOOM!
A wall of flame shot from the crack. Both mechs were thrown into the air. Molten salt rocks like micro meteors scorched Robbie’s wings and fuselage as the pyroclastic cloud billowed him skywards. The wormhole’s gravity pulled him clear of the explosion—until it seemed he would fall upwards forever into the gaping maw of nothing…
The wormhole passed. The Mantamech spun in the indigo sky. His wings were smoking stumps. A pre-recorded voice looped from the cavity speakers: EJECT…EJECT…EJECT…
Robbie didn’t need telling thrice. He executed the ejection sequence movements—kick-kick-double punch-kick-kick. The belly hatch blew its charges and his corset burst from the Mantamech’s chest.
He spun in the air for several seconds, trying to stabilise enough to pull the chutes. He mentally called for Eve—needing to dive as one/one—but it wasn’t her who answered—
<ul>
<li>Still need help to control your dive?</li>
<li>You’re still alive, but so am I…</li>
<li>Not for much longer. You’re going to die falling from an alien sky, just like your wingmate…</li>
</ul>
Robbie closed his eyes.
Arched his body.
Thrust his hips forward.
Raised his head and shoulders. With his fall stabilised, he pulled the cord.
His eyes snapped open as the corset straps pulled taut against his shoulders, three grey chutes deployed above him. The vista below was like a scene from a spherifilm about the Great Cascade.
The glacier was in a state of explosive collapse. The entire salt flat had fallen into the sea, molten salt slurry exploding on contact with the water. Only the salt dome remained, the angry ocean pounding its base like a blood-drunk dojo combatant. A trio of vantablack chutes tacked above the inferno, riding thermal currents up towards the summit. He followed her.
They landed in a crystal caldera filled with huge salt stalagmites—a forest of teeth. Robbie’s feet splashed in a rainwater rockpool as his chutes caught in the spiked canopy.
He had barely shrugged out of his corset straps when the ground erupted around him. Fléchette carbine. He dove left and rolled behind a stalagmite, then right as its spiked tip broke loose and crashed to the ground. He bolted between stalagmites, salt shrapnel shredding his jumpsuit and leaving micro cuts on his back, arms, legs and buttocks.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
He vaulted over a large silica boulder and crouched behind it. The firing stopped.
Robbie tried not to think as he unclipped his service carbine—an implosion-round six-shooter—from his left calf.
<ul>
<li>Don’t play coy with me, Flyboy. I know you’re not dead yet. </li>
</ul>
Robbie breathed in, breathed out as Olivia had taught him. Cleared his thoughts. Picked up a piece of polished silica and raised it over his head. When nothing happened, he risked a peek over the boulder. Nothing but stalagmites.
She couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see her. Unless…
<ul>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie/Alicia crouched behind the boulder clutching the six-shooter/crept through the stalagmite forest reloading a fresh fléchette cartridge, knee-deep in the rockpool next where the Martian’s empty corset and grey chutes lay flaccid…
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
</ul>
The shot hit the stalagmite to Alicia’s left with a dull POP. The spiked structure imploded into a distorted tetrahedron which hovered in the air for a fraction of a second. Then the shockwave blew Alicia off her feet.
“Saint!” She landed on her back in the rockpool, the fléchette carbine flying from her hands. The air was a blizzard of frenzied salt particles—luckily the fall had winded her, or she would have inhaled the caustic debris. She pulled an osmosis mask from the pocket of her jumpsuit and plastered it over her mouth and nose. Able to breathe again, she flipped to her feet and pulled her combat knife from its sheath on her thigh.
<ul>
<li>I’ve got five more of those where that came from, Priestess.</li>
<li>You’ll have to find me first…</li>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Alicia/Robbie couldn’t see a thing through the salt mist.
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie hissed in frustration as he tried to keep the carbine level with one hand while he slapped on his osmosis mask with the other.
<ul>
<li>If you keep syncing us, you’ll trigger a paradox. Just like with Eve…</li>
</ul>
He fired again. And again. And again… POP.>POP.>POP. Stalagmites imploded and collapsed with a sound like breaking glass. The mist intensified.
<ul>
<li>I make that two shots you’re down to, fly boy.</li>
</ul>
POP. SMASH.
<ul>
<li>One.</li>
<li>It’s one more than you’ve got.</li>
<li>Better make it count…</li>
</ul>
He crept forwards. Salt particles clung to the film of his osmosis mask. An intact stalagmite loomed out of the gloom. He stepped around it, gun held outwards…
A flash of vantablack filled his vision. He yelled—verbally—in surprise as the top of her foot slapped into his wrist. He squeezed off the last shot— POP—just before the gun went flying from his hands. He’d barely got his guard up before she completed her axe kick and lunged. He saw the knife in her thoughts and grabbed her attacking wrist. The black blade cut through his jumpsuit and grazed his lower rib, but he was running on adrenaline now. He fell onto his back, dragging her arm between his legs, his calf under her chin, torquing the arm against the joint. Amazingly, she held on, and sunk her teeth into his leg, strait to the muscle. This time he did feel the pain.
“Gah!” He released, kicked her away and drew his own knife from his other calf. They both rolled into a crouch, face-to-face for the first time outside of dreams.
She was lithe in her jumpsuit, wiry muscles visible beneath the vantablack material. Her jet-black hair was tied up into a severe knot. She had preternaturally high cheekbones, and arresting blue/green mismatched eyes…
“Hello, Martian…” She slowly stood to her full height—only a few centimetres off his own—smoothly swapping the knife to her other hand. He slowly matched her movements.
“Priestess.”
The dust began to settle. They were in a clearing of sorts, created by his shooting. He now a slight advantage. He had maybe ten kilos on her, and greater upper body strength. But she didn’t look scared. She looked...
Dominant.
Vulnerable.
Exotic.
Beautiful.
Dangerous.
He should kill her now.
<ul>
<li>So why don’t you?</li>
<li>Do what?</li>
<li>Kill me.</li>
<li>Ladies first.</li>
<li>What?</li>
<li>Attack me, clone!</li>
<li>You haven’t answered the question.</li>
</ul>
They circled closer, like two animals. You could cut the tension with a…
<ul>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Blades clashed; sparks flew. They whirled apart; positions reversed.
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DYSYNC!</li>
</ul>
Alicia stared at the Martian. She’d fantasised about this moment, about killing this arrogant flyboy who’d killed one of her and left another maimed. She could do it too—she was faster than him; he was rash and graceless without his dead wingmate. Just slip under his guard and push the blade through his torn jumpsuit and into those perfect abs…
The way he was looking at her, though. With those deep, brown eyes set in that square-jawed yet strangely delicate, almost feminine face. She liked the way he was looking at her—not like Carlos looked at her, like a sad puppy chasing a mech who wouldn’t know what to do if he caught her—but like a hunter who had sighted his prey but didn’t know if it would kill him first. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen the Artefact over EXO001’s skies, that desire to be consumed, to be swallowed whole and taken somewhere new…
<ul>
<li>One of us has to die today.</li>
<li>You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, Priestess.</li>
<li>If we don’t finish this, the war continues.</li>
<li>Do you really want peace?</li>
<li>No!</li>
<li>Then why are we doing this?</li>
<li>Because you killed my clone.</li>
<li>Because you killed Eve…</li>
<li>Because you’re an infidel…</li>
<li>Because you’re a clone…</li>
<li>You believe in nothing.</li>
<li>You disgust me.</li>
<li>I hate you…</li>
<li>I hate you…</li>
</ul>
Blades locked. Feet tangled. They fell to the hard salt ground, a knot of limbs. He quickly got on top of her, forced his blade downwards towards her throat. She thrust her knife upwards, the tip of her blade caressing his jugular. Their lips were almost touching through the 2D film of their osmosis masks. It wasn’t clear who decided to…
<ul>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
In one reality, graphene lips met. Knives clattered to the ground. Robbie’s hands seized Alicia’s wrists and pinned them over her head. They savoured the gain/loss of control as—in another reality—cold blades slipped into soft throats and warm blood flowed.
<ul>
<li>Stop…/Stop…</li>
<li>Paradox…/Paradox…</li>
<li>We should…/ We should…</li>
<li>Separate…/Separate…</li>
</ul>
Instead, they kissed harder, growing hard/wet as they rode the DMT death-rush beyond oblivion until two/two realities collapsed into one/one.
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
</ul>
Back in his own body, Robbie felt strangely self-conscious. He broke the kiss and sat back on his knees.
<ul>
<li>What are we doing?!</li>
</ul>
What was he doing? This woman was his enemy, she’d killed Eve, yet now here she was, legs flexing beneath her jumpsuit as she…
…kicked him in the face. He reeled backwards, blood pooling in his mouth even as she stood over him, her face momentarily ugly with rage and lust. He covered his head to defend himself, but she grabbed the zipper on her jumpsuit and peeled herself out of it in one smooth motion. For a moment he just gawped up at her. Her black hair had come loose in the tussle, falling over her pale breasts. Her osmosis mask was a barely visible bubble popping in and out of her lips. Her mismatched eyes glowed in the twilight.
<ul>
<li>Priestess…</li>
</ul>
The word had barely crossed his thoughts when she dropped onto him, pinning his arms with her knees and mounting his face. She was so wet that he was forced to drink her in through his mask, and he found the taste of her intoxicating.
<ul>
<li>F…..fuck….</li>
</ul>
“Fuck!”
She gasped mentally and verbally as the graphene tip of his tongue began to orbit inside her.
<ul>
<li>Ok, stop…</li>
<li>You’re the one on top of me!</li>
<li>Where in the River of Spacetime did you learn this?</li>
<li>The Helles Basin strip, if you must know. And I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like…</li>
<li>No…</li>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie/Alicia shuddered as the pleasure centres ignited in both of their brains. They could now optimise his lapping even further. And they now had two bodies to play with…
In a smooth motion, they pivoted Alicia’s body so that she faced his legs, then used her hands to claw open the crotch of his fléchette-shredded jumpsuit.
<ul>
<li>Holy Saint…/Holy Saint…</li>
</ul>
They savoured Alicia’s locker pin-up view of Adonis abs and throbbing cock/savoured the breath in Robbie’s his lungs as he finally came up for air. The view from his eyes was now up over her ass and bare back…
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
<li>Problem?</li>
<li>Your tattoo! The ?… </li>
<li>What about it?</li>
<li>It’s gone!</li>
<li>Of course it’s gone, you idiot. This is a fresh clone.</li>
</ul>
Alicia felt a wave of revulsion pass through Robbie’s mind. He grew even harder.
<ul>
<li>I’m getting mixed signals here, Flyboy.</li>
<li>You were grown in a sac!</li>
<li>You were grown in a WOMB, so this is a lot weirder for me. Like fucking a Russian doll.</li>
<li>What?!</li>
<li>Think about it.</li>
<li>I’m trying not to.</li>
<li>Then let me help you…</li>
<li>Wait…</li>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Robbie/Alicia gripped the base of Robbie’s shaft with one of Alicia’s hands, then pitched her forward like a marionette. They moaned in parallel as she slowly bobbed onto him, his bulbous cock distending the osmosis mask as it slipped into her mouth. With her other hand, they reached behind her to grab Robbie’s hair and pull him into her once again.
For a moment, Robbie/Alicia felt like an oxygen-starved ouroboros, a snake eating its own tale. The sensation was overwhelming. It wasn’t quite true to say that Robbie had never had cock down his throat before—he’d had an experimental fling with [REDACTED] a couple of years back—but the feeling of his own cock in a foreign throat was too much for Robbie/Alicia, as was the mirrored sensation of enthusiastically eating her/being eaten out. Devoured….
<ul>
<li>DESYNC!/DESYNC!</li>
</ul>
They came apart, physically and mentally. Robbie gasped for air on his back, clutching his throat from the residual sensation of his own phantom cock. His face was soaking wet with her, the salty air and her fluids mixing into a heady brew. Alicia pushed herself onto one elbow and leaned over him, smirking.
<ul>
<li>Too much for you?</li>
<li>I’m a lot to handle.</li>
<li>I guess Eve never got to find out… </li>
</ul>
Robbie reached up and grabbed her by the throat. She gagged, blue/green eyes bulging in surprise as he planted his feet and flipped her. She tried to lock her legs around his ribs, but he used his free hand to grab her ankles and lunged forwards, forcing her feet up to her ears.
<ul>
<li>Don’t mention my wingmate again!</li>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
Alicia/Robbie eased up the choke just a little, but didn’t completely relinquish it. Instead, they dug Robbie’s heels into the ground, causing his shoulders to pin Alicia’s legs even higher. They entered at a perfect angle.
<ul>
<li>Saint!/Saint!</li>
<li>Fuck…/fuck…</li>
</ul>
Waves of pleasure washed between their brains as they began to thrust/writhe in hypoxic ecstasy. They had Robbie withdraw a little, teasing themselves before ploughing back in. They had Alicia clench her tight vaginal muscles in a surprisingly effective down boy clamp. Then they were just mindlessly fucking, harder, harder, his choke keeping her killer instincts on lockdown, her clenching preventing him from totally losing his load…
But they could only stave off the inevitable for so long. The heady mix of her lack of air, his clamped cock, her overstimulated virgin G-spot, and his pent-up aggression reached a crescendo.
They came in perfect sequence, the orchestral cascade of her orgasm a perfect foil for his explosive whiteout. They experienced both/both as a continuous rush of beautiful white noise. Somewhere, salt glaciers melted into the sea. Stars exploded.
But it didn’t stop. Bounced between two psyches, two endocrine systems, the orgasm became recursive. It couldn’t dissipate, so it just built, and built, and built. Robbie’s hand fell away from Alicia’s throat, and the sudden rush of air was like oxygen to a space station fire. They were only dimly aware of Robbie’s load filling her/Alicia’s nails sinking into his back/his hands grabbing hold of her ass/her teeth sinking halfway to his jugular as they tried/failed to contain the rushrushrushrush.
Time became meaningless. Robbie/Alicia could have sworn they levitated.
The comedown, when it came, was slow, smooth. Amazingly, Robbie stayed hard beyond the peak, and they kept fucking, riding down the serotonin curve. They were both shaking now, her feet spasming against the ground/his hands losing their grip on her as muscles deflexed. They looked down at her blue-and-green eyes/up at his contorted gaze.
At some undefined point, they separated their bodies, but not their minds. They never wanted to desync again. This was real, this was what being ALIVE was.
Sex and death.
They lay on their backs, staring at the sky through two pairs of eyes. Night had fallen. EXO19’s aurora appeared overhead, green waves rolling over alien stars. Through this celestial sea came a shimmering circle of nothing. Stalagmites quivered. Beads of sweat ran upwards over skin.
<ul>
<li>What’s wrong with us…/what’s wrong with us…</li>
</ul>
The void held no answers.