The ravager commune was built inside and around a small moon that orbited a planet so long forgotten that even its name had been lost. The commune locals simply called it The Rock, as the planet had been stripped bare of all its natural resources by one or more corporations centuries ago.
There were other planets in the lonely system, in orbit around a dying star so far distant that only the most meager amounts of solar radiation and light reached the devastated planet. It wasn’t much, but it was enough, and the ravagers had erected several patchwork solar panel arrays that could be crewed by a handful of people. Between what energy they gathered from the solar orbitals and batteries they won during supply raids, it was enough to keep the lights on and the systems running. Breathing resources were another matter, for a while there were a number of greenhouses and algae pools that generated food and modest breathable, the commune perpetually survived by a thin margin.
There was a price for freedom, thought Sokol as he looked past the hull of the Fatalis and into the defensive debris field surrounding the moon, and he was happy to be part of that violent accounting. Communal living was nothing new for Sokol. As a man born and raised in Helion Corporation, he had joined Fiat Lux as its newest ravager, he’d found himself well suited to the job and had settled in swiftly.
In the darkest corners of his mind, Sokol was pleased that the community had not achieved full self-sustainability. Without the need to raid for supplies there was no use for warriors such as himself, and he would have been a man on the drift. Sokol could farm as well as any of them, perhaps even better considering his upbringing, but it was inside the metal womb of Ogre One that he made his contribution to the community.
Sokol absently ran his hand over his neuro-link ports, longing to feel the cold bite of his initial sync with Ogre One, and the thrill of the war machine’s grindcore igniting. Like most of the other pilots, Sokol was something of an outsider, even among the other lost souls who called Fiat Lux home. It was the same with most mech pilots in the universe, Sokol reminded himself, that was part of the cost associated with being so intimate with such tremendous destructive power.
“My ports get inflamed when they’ve been too long parted from Night Witch,” rasped Morgan as she joined Sokol on the deck, the smoky scent of her drug of choice wafting along with her. “The twist helps.”
“That it does,” agreed Sokol, and he took the hand rolled smokeable being offered by Morgan.
He inhaled and the acrid smoke of the dried kad leaves seared the back of his throat as it filled his lungs. Twist, as it was called, was good for soothing nerve pain as much as it was useful for blurring the hard edges of reality.
None of the mech pilots ever had to trade for it, somehow there were always a few rolls being freely given to them by other members of the commune. While there was a modest security cadre that protected the commune, and numerous defensive measures in the debris field, it was the Fatalis and her crew that did the fighting and the dying on the raids that kept the commune alive. In recognition of this fact, the people of Fiat Lux took care of their warriors in whatever way they could.
“We shouldn’t have to wait much longer,” said Sokol as he exhaled and handed the twist back to Morgan, who immediately took a long drag from it, “Another two or three day cycles at most.”
“Angron volunteered for a waste shift just so he could drive the standing loader, closest thing to Thunder Walks he could get his hands on,” Morgan snorted and licked her fingers, pressing them together over the burning end of the twist, snuffing out the flame before she slid the now considerably shorter roll into the pocket of her vest. “Gregory is no doubt completely drunk and trying to find another woman willing to take his seed.”
“Doesn’t he have five children he never sees already?” scoffed Sokol, unable to stifle a laugh. “Birth rates are high enough as it is. Get out from under the corporate boot and all people want to do is eat and breed.”
“Fiat Lux isn’t going to grow by itself,” snarled Morgan. She suddenly grasped Sokol by the collar of his flight suit and pulled his face down to hers and kissed him with a feral intensity. “Come on, let’s go make a baby, down in the launch bay so that the mechs can watch.”
“We aren’t the sort of people who should be parenting children,” snarled Sokol, deeply aroused at the prospect of once again bedding his comrade in view of their war machines. “And you can’t pilot if you’re pregnant anyway, the connection will flatline the fetus, you know that.”
“Nah, we’ll extract and have one of the greenhouse girls carry it,” whispered Morgan into Sokol’s ear as she slid a hand up his thigh. “Lots of couples and triples in Fiat Lux who would be overjoyed to raise our little ravager. Don’t you realize who we are to these people?”
“A little full of yourself, pilot?” smiled Sokol as he wrapped his arm around her waist and turned so that they could walk down the ramp towards an elevator that would lead them to a transit hub where they could take a skiff to the Fatalis.
“I want to take life or make life,” said Morgan as they entered the elevator, which began to descend slowly towards the bay, which was several decks down. “So until Kochi puts us back on the war path...”
Before Morgan could finish her sentence she and Sokol were knocked to the floor as the elevator suddenly rocked wildly. The elevator shuddered free of its track and fell several meters before crashing into the base of the shaft.
Sokol’s nose leaked blood, and as he wiped a dripping hand across his leg he could see that Morgan was injured. It appeared that she’d smacked her head against the floor or wall and he could see a trickle of blood from the left side where she’d shaved part of her hair away to make room for the neural-links. She was only out for a few seconds, but as her eyes opened Sokol could see that she probably had a concussion, as her pupils were wide as mess hall trays.
As Sokol pried open the elevator door with the emergency lever he found himself buffeted with a rush of air that swirled about the transit hub. Morgan mumbled something about Macross, the titanic battle in which he had first met her and joined with the commune, and Sokol assumed that the twist and the head injury had her slipping back into one of the PTSD episodes that sometimes triggered in the fierce woman. The artificial wind did remind him forcibly of his own experience on Macross, his mind jumping back to that terrible time.
Sokol had been part of the Helion mech corps, and they were conducting a series of field tests for the new Coyote class mechs. There were rumors of a trade war brewing between Helion and Grotto, and there had recently been a particularly costly encounter with Grotto forces on a distant planetoid called Tetra Prime. These sorts of clandestine engagements were common, though rumor had it that both corporations had deployed elite contractors from the Merchants Militant. That, too, was common enough, as it was the clandestine conflicts that kept the universe in equilibrium, with no one corporation amassing too much power or influence. What got the rumor mill churning was the talk of escalation.
Sokol was a brilliant pilot, and deployed alongside several other experimental Coyote class mechs to the surface of Vindi 9. It was a somewhat barren planetary body, with a wind-swept desert that covered most of the surface. There were, however, pockets of civilization where Helion settlers had been doing their best to tame the environment. As it turned out, the settlers were not accredited Helion citizens at all, but freelance pioneers operating under a temporary terraforming license issued by Helion.