ExSol Book1 Ch5

None of the Precursor's gates were ever closer than two hundred kilometers of one another. The popular theory to explain the placement was that they interfered with one another... somehow. They did tend to cluster together in one general geographic region, probably so that the precursors could easily move materials across the Network. As a probably unintended side benefit, the layout made transits from one gate to another feasible for two young adults with a rover, a cooler full of food, and a few days to spare.

All but one of Ishtar's six gates were on this continent, loosely clustered around the northern hemisphere. For Robin and Nina's offworld excursion, two of those five gates were dismissable out of hand. They both led to AN stronghold worlds. One world was called Loquana and the other was simply designated V-435.

Their remaining options were Virsalla, the home of the closed Earth gate, Macau the dustball, or the artificial island chains over the oceans of Navann. Robin hated what salt water did to his hair, so they'd chosen to go for the Virsalla gate, up near Ishtar's northern geomagnetic pole.

Robin had somehow tinkered with Twinshya's comm buffer when they were in Abrandia. He'd built in an administrative backdoor that let him transmit to Nina without permission from his hand terminal. She'd tried to find it and dig it out of her system but Robin was way better with software than she was and he'd hidden it well. She'd been tempted to slap his ass raw over this brattery but truth be known this little game of fox and rat was the only thing keeping her even vaguely entertained on the cross-country trip. Right now, Robin was forcing an audio connection into Twinshya's system through which he was blaring some energetic girly pop music and singing along with the vocalist.

"Never understand how dysphoria got dumped on my back and not yers," Nina said with a sigh as one song ended and the opening beats of another began. Robin laughed at her and just sang louder. That obviously wasn't how it worked; ExSol's bodies were strange and capricious before Ascensions and alien environments started mucking things up.

"Hey, Miss Nina, we're coming up on the Gate. You should be able to pick up the League's repeater soon." Robin cut off the music for a second. Before Nina could respond, she Counter-Pulsed and the ventilator kicked in.

"I'll spot'er." The breathing tube assisted her by blowing some air through her vocal cords so she could speak without her lungs working, but the words still came out pretty garbled because she wasn't used to it just yet. The tube attached to her trachea directly was a major improvement over the one in her mouth, but it was still a pain. Nina hadn't imagined that Robin would actually be able to find someone who would stop by off-the-books to perform a tracheotomy on her, but the little bugger had an uncanny ability to dig up anything.

"Cool, let me know when you get the signal, I'll comb through the readings," Robin replied cheerfully, and then blasted his music again. Nina set her scanner to active listening and kept her eyes on incoming signals. Soon enough, a few signals popped up, gateway repeaters belonging to a few interested parties. The ones set up by the Hallucian Federation and by Abrandia were both encrypted because they were both lunatic organizations, but the one maintained by the Virsallan League was open-source. Nina tapped into it and forwarded the feed to Robin. A moment later, the music stopped, and Robin turned on his video feed. His hair was tied back in a ponytail with his bangs framing his face. He tucked a stray bit of hair pulled loose by the wind behind his ear and pursed his lips as he looked through the feed.

"Looks like River is running a convoy through the Gate right now. We're gonna have to delay our transit by an hour or two," Robin eventually said, throwing a report onto Twinshya's display that Nina didn't understand nor did she try to read.

"S'rest on that hill, ye?" Nina asked. Robin agreed, and the two of them drove their respective vehicles towards a hill that wasn't too steep to drive up, but was still high enough to see quite a ways around them. They were still almost an hour away from the Gate, but it was still the most commanding landmark in sight. The wormhole connecting the two planets was a spherical space just under two kilometers in diameter. Ishtar's sunlight illuminated the space from above, but the pitch-blackness of Virsalla lurked just beyond, like the Gate led to a dark dimension and not another planet much like their own. The Gate itself was a wireframe that encapsulated the space, sixteen massive metal arms converging at the top and the bottom of the wormhole, leaving three hundred meter gaps between them at the middle. The ground was level with the middle of the sphere, leaving the bottom half buried and the top half looming above the terrain.

Sure enough, a trail of machines and vehicles was entering the space, a convoy of supplies and materials from River. Nina put Twinshya into passive mode and unhooked her respirator. By the time she'd climbed out of the cockpit, Robin was already out of his rover, setting up the collapsible plastic table he'd brought with him. Nina ran a hand through her greasy hair and grumbled a bit as she felt the effects of not showering for several days.

"Hey," Robin beamed a smile at her as though everything was perfect. Somehow, her boyfriend still looked immaculate, his hair was clean and tidy, he had a tiny bit of eye shadow on, his clothes were unwrinkled, and when she got close, he smelled like flowers. How he'd managed all this while they drove for 14 hours a day, she'd never know.

"How're you such a doll," she grumbled, opening the passenger door of the rover and sitting down so that she could stretch her legs.

"Aw." Robin giggled, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek. "Open the cooler and hand me the sausage, will you?" he asked, heading back to the table to set up a hotplate. Jeffie squeaked at them indignantly from his cat carrier in Robin's back seat.

"Give you my sausage..." Nina muttered, opening the indicated cooler and pulling out a tightly-wrapped package. Nina had brought along two months worth of nutrients that a printer could process into bars for them, intending to subsist off of that. Robin had been absolutely aghast at that idea, and had bought several coolers and stockpiles of fresh fruit, lab-grown meats, and other things. 'We'll eat the nutrient slop when we're starving,' he'd said. Nina handed him the sausage and went over to give her poor kitten some attention.

"Maybe after we're through the Gate," he stuck his tongue out at her for a second and went back to preparing the food. "While you're waiting, can you check the back tires on the rover for me? It felt like I was skidding too much or something."

"Ye, ye. When I'm ready." Nina agreed halfheartedly. Once Jeffie was placated, she took a moment to just stretch and relax. Eventually she got up and fetched her toolbox from the back seat of the rover so that she could hunt for Robin's mysterious problem. She half-figured that it was either Robin's imagination, or some elaborate ploy to keep her busy, but she was happy to do it either way. Within minutes of poking around she found a few problems, loose bolts, mostly. They were problems that would have been caught months ago with proper maintenance, and wouldn't become serious issues without another few months of neglect, but she fixed them anyway as the smell of cooking meat gradually permeated the air. She finished just as Robin was wrapping up and setting the table. Nina was briefly overwhelmed by the properly set table, the nice food, and the beautiful boyfriend.

She approached Robin from behind and grabbed him around the waist, pulling him back into her and eliciting a small yelp. He turned his head to look at her, and she kissed him, the tension draining out of his body immediately. "How'd I get so lucky?" she whispered.

Robin laughed softly, and Nina saw the snarky reply form in his mind and then die before it reached his lips. "Dunno..." he finally said, smiling dreamily at her.

The two of them ate while Robin kept an eye on the readout from the repeater. When they were done eating, the two of them cleaned up and then found a space to sit and watch the Gate. Nina put her arm around Robin and crushed him into her side.

Robin made a show of sniffing Nina a little and exhaled loudly. "Wow, Miss Nina, you need a shower. Or, I dunno, maybe we just hose you down?"

"Jus' m'natural musk. Don't act like y'don't like it." Nina chuckled, putting one hand on the back of his head and pushing him closer to her armpit. Robin coughed loudly and pulled away, laughing.

"Ugh. That's actually supernatural. You probably need an exorcism, not a shower." Robin waved the air in front of his face dramatically.

"Heh. How far's Legion? I'll be fine 'till then." Nina smirked at him and let him go. He took a few deep breaths but didn't pull away from her.

"Five or six days, probably," he answered and gave her a look that said 'are you kidding me?'

"Really? Whyzzat? Inn't Legion close t'the Gate?" She tried to remember what the map of Virsalla looked like.

"Yeah but you can't travel in a straight line to Legion. That part of Virsalla is really rocky and mountainous. There's this long, winding path we have to take through canyons and up the sides of mountains. This is all assuming none of the bridges are out. The repeater says they aren't but that can change fast; Virsalla gets a lot of tectonic activity." Robin double-checked his hand terminal as if he didn't trust his own account of the bridges' status.

"Ugh, what a stupid planet. Fine, I'll borrow yer rag or sum'min." She sighed. How people could live on a planet with mountains when they had their pick of tens of hundreds of them was beyond her. "Also, what planet're we on that yer not rubbin' me down like a Queen?"

"I have some dry shampoo and a spare washcloth that you can use. And if you really need my help washing yourself then--"

"Nah, no spare. Gimmie yers. S'got that twink magic on it."

"Ew. Just for that you're washing yourself. And... what's twink magic?"

"Y'know. Yer always sparklin' n'stuff."

"That's glitter, not magic."

"... Y'actually use glitter?"

"Of course?"

For the next thirty minutes, Robin exhaustively showed Nina how to use 'dry shampoo,' which was a ridiculous concept, but she did it to humour him. As they were finishing up, Robin's terminal blipped at him, and he quickly snapped it up to check. "Looks like Gate's clear for now. Let's get going."

Nina climbed back up into Twinshya's cockpit, hooked her ventilator back up, activated Pulse, and they were off. Mercifully, Robin didn't flood her cockpit with his awful music this time. The Gate slowly absorbed the horizon, the strange space between worlds dominating their view.

"Y'ever crossed a gate 'fore, Butterfly?" Nina asked during her Pulse.

"My brother travels to Navann sometimes, but not me. You?"

"Nah. S'bigger than I thought."

"Yeah, no kidding. Makes you wonder how the Humans took so long to find Earth Gate, huh?" Robin giggled a little at the idea.

"Nah. Earth never saw what's right in front'a em. No mystery there." The two of them randomly picked one of the gaps between the many arms of the Gate, and headed for it. They had to cross through the middle of the shared space and out the other side in a mostly straight line in order to properly transit through it. Nina wasn't sure how that worked, but she was definitely not inclined to play around with the exact mechanics of alien wormholes.

As they got close enough to the Gate to see the shimmering distortion in the air that denoted the edge of the wormhole, they saw that the first glimmers of morning light from Virsalla were starting to peek through.

"So, we jus... drive through?" Nina asked, stopping Twinshya right outside the distortion.

"Yeah. There's a sort of tunnel that forms through the space based upon where you enter from. Just walk in a straight line and don't wander too far off to the sides. Everybody says it's easy," Robin replied, not sounding as confident as his words implied.

"Right. Easy...," Nina murmured, and then set Twinshya into a walk. As Twinshya passed through the gate, its sensors went wild for a brief moment and then returned to something resembling normal. Immediately in front and behind them, everything looked ordinary with just a small bit of additional background radiation. Off to the sides, the readings were incomprehensible, and as her Mech moved forward, she saw why through the cameras. Every step they took towards the center of the Gate-space, the distortions multiplied, like looking into a reflection of a reflection. She saw the twinkling of stars and suns and nebulae, hidden under a series of twisted reflections of herself and the Gate-space surrounding them. The tunnel they walked along wasn't much wider than the opening between the two arms of the Gate, and it suddenly made perfect sense to Nina why the Gates were as big as they were.

As they reached the center of the Gate-space, the distorted visions off to the side merged and multiplied infinitely, forming a blinding rainbow of colour that overloaded her sensors. It was only visible for a few meters, a clear marker of the very center of the tunnel they were traversing. It was as they crossed that threshold that Nina noticed she felt lighter in her seat, like gravity itself couldn't reach them in this space between worlds. "Creepy as heck," Nina murmured, not sure if Robin would be able to receive the message.

"Super cool, if you ask me. I wish we understood how these worked," Robin replied, his voice as clear as it had been the whole trip. They reached the other side of the Gate-space without incident; it was as easy as Robin had said it would be. The light of Virsalla's star was starting to shine through into the tunnel. Sunrise didn't take very long on that planet, apparently. Twinshya's sensors went wild again as they exited, and returned to normal just as quickly.

"S'gravity s'posed to be like this?" Nina asked grumpily, feeling like she was half-floating.

"Yeah, I think Virsalla is 0.4g compared to Ishtar's 1.1. Sure feels like it," Robin replied. He tossed his hand terminal up into the air and giggled childishly as it twirled and fell in slow motion back into his hands.

"Where next, then?" she asked.

"Well we need to get away from the Gate before another AN convoy comes around. I'm not getting any broadcasts from where we are. I think we should find higher ground and I'll see about getting an updated map of the area. The League's repeater can't be far."

They slowly and methodically travelled up a winding road out of the canyon that the Gate was nestled in. It was slow going and made Nina appreciate how it could take so long to travel just a few dozen kilometers. By the time they made it to the top of the mesa, Nina was yawning.

"Butterfly, I ain't makin' it t'Legion today," she said

"Mm. Yeah, I feel you. Let's find a spot to camp," Robin sounded sleepy too.

They went off the road and found a rocky clearing. Nina set Twinshya down and Robin parked. She disconnected her ventilator and rubbed at her neck, enjoying the freedom of being able to move her head without a hose attached to it. She spritzed disinfectant upon the port and wiped it down to keep it clean. She'd been warned extensively about what would happen if she let her tracheal bypass get infected.

When she emerged from Twinshya, Robin was already fluttering about and setting up a tent using one of Twinshya's legs as an anchor point. The two of them worked together and they had their tent and bedrolls set up in short order.

Nina laid down on her bed and grunted in relief. She was stiff from so much time in her cockpit. It had been made for Carrina and it was a little cramped for her.

She'd expected to immediately drift off to sleep, but somehow it didn't happen. She wondered for a brief moment why she was still awake.

Robin crawled into bed next to her and cuddled up close. She immediately realized as he pressed his body up against hers why she wasn't falling asleep just yet.

She was horny as shit.

Her hand went around Robin's waist and she grabbed his ass. She squeezed as a soft growl escaped her lips. Her cock stirred. The slowing effects of estrogen nowhere near enough to stop her from feeling the need to fuck her cute boyfriend.

"Hey, Miss Nina," Robin giggled at her coyly. She leaned into him and dragged him into a kiss. His mouth smoothly yielded and let her tongue inside. He moaned softly as she forced herself on him. Nina had been pretty rough with him the first time they'd met and fucked. She'd felt horrible and apologized profusely afterwards. She'd learned not long after that Robin was a total whore for that kind of treatment.

Her hands ran along his soft, smooth body. He wriggled under her fingers, enjoying the attention. Her hands wandered lower and her fingertips brushed against Robin's dick. He was extremely hard and leaking a little already.

"Needly lil puppy, ain'ya?" Nina whispered to him. Robin just moaned softly in reply, his breath coming in little gasps. Nina roughly ran her palm across the tip. He jumped a little at the feeling. Nina didn't jerk him off, she just firmly ran her palm up and down. She knew this would be a mix of pleasureable, painful, and frustrating.

Sure enough, Robin started whimpering and bucking his hips in frustrated desperation.

"M-Miss Nina... c-c'mon..." he finally started begging.

"Mm. I 'member some major brattin' on the way 'ere. S'at sound like reward behavior t'ye?" she asked.

"But... but..." Robin tried to conjure up an excuse but she knew he wouldn't have been able to even if she wasn't driving him crazy.

Without letting him cum, she grabbed him by the shoulder and roughly flipped him over. She straddled him, letting her cock flop in between his soft ass cheeks.

"Where's the lube?" she asked. She didn't have to ask if there was lube. Robin had put this camp together; there was lube somewhere. Robin pointed to it. There was a bundle in a pouch that was sewn into the canvas wall of the tent. Nina fished out a bottle of lube and drizzled some into the crack of Robin's ass.

Robin usually prepped extensively. The horny little bottom was always finding ways to stealthily lube his hole and stuff it with a toy. Nina knew he'd been driving all day today, though. Not even Robin could have found time to stuff a toy in him. She started slow. Pressing into that ring of muscle until she felt Robin's breathing tense, then backing off. Robin never advocated for his own comfort, so she had to read his body language. It was kind of hot sometimes, but tonight she didn't feel like hurting him.

She pressed forward again, and got a bit further before Robin tensed up again. The process repeated six times until Robin's tight little ring of muscle yielded. Nina was a thick girl, and Robin still whimpered ever so slightly as she entered him.

She lowered her weight until she was essentially laying on top of him, smothering him. Her pert breasts and hard nipples dug into his shoulder blades. It ached just a little for her, too, but the pain was a reminder of the tissue growth she'd yet to achieve.

She wrapped her broad forearm under Robin's neck. Not enough to choke him, but enough to force his head up and let her control him.

She started to fuck Robin with slow, forceful thrusts. Robin let out a strangled gurgling sound as his slender body convulsed against her muscular frame. At this angle, she knew that her cock would be pulverizing his prostate to the point of torturous overstimulation. That's precisely why she'd pinned him down so thoroughly.

"Yer so tight fer how much've a whore y'are..." Nina grunted as she ground her hips against Robin's asscheeks. He was squeezing her so good. His soft insides felt incredible under her and around her. She was forced to slow her pace a little to hold her orgasm off.

Robin just shuddered and squirmed underneath her, unable to move and unable to escape Nina and whatever pace she wanted to set. Between the destruction of his prostate and the friction of his dick against the bedroll, Nina knew he'd probably cum at least once already. She wasn't going to stop because of that, of course.

She started pressing harder, thrusting longer and more forcefully. Robin's vocalizations devolved into a torturous, resigned whimper. He'd definitely cum and was now just stewing in overstimulation. His problem, not hers. The fire in her chest and her crotch grew, engulfing her, and she moaned loudly as orgasm took her. It wasn't quite the same as it had been. Hormones were changing that every day. She had to keep working, keep thrusting, to chase that high and ride it instead of letting it just punch her in the dick. She loved it. She worked herself until her hips ached. Her cock throbbed in Robin's ass, shooting her cum into him until she was spent and exhausted. She collapsed on top of Robin and he made a tiny distressed noise. She stayed like that on top of him for a bit because she liked the way his body felt against hers, then rolled off.

"Uuuugggghhh... Miss Nina..." Robin panted, as though that were a coherent commentary. It kind of was.

"Y'feelin?" she asked. The afterglow of her orgasm was still blazing strong in her, but she felt tiredness lapping at the edges of it, like a sugar cube dissolving in water.

Robin made some happy, contented noises, and scooched over to snuggle into her side. That was more than enough of an answer. She had more than enough of a sense of Robin at this point to know what he liked. That happy thought stuck in her mind as she drifted off to sleep.

***

It was morning by the time they woke up and broke camp. Virsalla's short rotational period had them sleeping all afternoon and all night. Nina actually wasn't sure how many hours a Virsallan day was, and made a note to ask Butterfly when she had the chance.

They got into their respective machines and set off towards Legion. It took only about twenty minutes of travel before Nina's instruments registered something. She scowled and looked more closely. A power surge from Twinshya's fried conduit, probably. It was blank now.

"Umm... Miss Nina..." Robin's voice came through her comm systems. He was worried.

"Summin' th'matter, Butterfly?" Nina asked.

"Miss Nina, your radar must be hecked. There's a pair of Mechs on the ridge watching us," Robin's agitation grew.

"Huh? Oh, Heckin' tits." Nina rebooted her overloaded sensors and the data flooded in. Two Mechs were up on a ridge about two hundred meters away. They both had her target locked and looked like they could shred Twinshya in moments. She had an incoming connection request. "Right... gonna accept this request, okay Butterfly? Things turn grizzly, you turn around n'rabbit through the Gate, ye?"

"Uh... Y-Yeah, okay, Miss Nina. Ready when you are."

"Right... s'do this..." she murmured, accepting the connection.

***

Jeffrin bit into his sandwich and frowned, grunting in pain as his teeth clamped down on a rock. He pried apart the two slices of bread stuck together with a thin sheen of butter and snatched the knuckle-sized pebble out of his snack. He narrowed his eyes, scowling and casting an accusatory glare around the camp. Everybody within eyeshot wasn't looking at him, more so than usual. He snatched up his hand terminal and started typing a message into their internal network.

1)General [Jeffrin] - Rock in my food again? Really?

1)General [Allag] - Its the same rock. We keep picking it up after you throw it away

1)General [Petri] - ROFL

1)General [Jeffrin] - You're all swine

Jeffrin rolled his eyes and threw the pebble at Allag. It dinged the older man in the forehead and he burst into fits of giggling. Petri and a few others joined him but most of the crew were too distracted with their work. Jeffrin and Petri were the group's pilots, so they had much less to do during their downtime than the mechanics and other support workers did. On the other hand, Allag actually had the biggest workload in the entire camp and somehow managed to get it all done with no problems and then find time for mischief anyway.

1)General [Crawford] - Guys. Got movement coming around the path from the south.

1)General [Jeffrin] - Paint a target. If it's Hallu we might have to scram.

A general ripple of unease spread through the camp and the people working on their Mechs started to finish up their tasks so that they could get the duo combat-ready. Jeffrin quickly trotted over to his Mech, Ambrosia, just as the person working on it was snapping a service panel shut. Ambrosia was a maneuverable round-bodied Mech with four long legs that lifted the body up six meters off the ground when the power was on. He nimbly climbed up the ladder and hopped into the cockpit, but avoided activating his Ascension, instead bringing Ambrosia into low-power mode by cutting into his battery reserves. He avoided activating his Deluge at every opportunity. It was unsettling having it on and he'd never gotten used to it. But, he'd inherited the Mech when the previous pilot had died piloting the thing drunk in combat. Nobody else in their camp had Deluge. Somehow he'd ended up becoming the unofficial leader of the group, too. Swine.

3)Pilots [Petri] - Ready to go.

2)Admin [Crawford] - Looks like just one mech and one rover. Hailing them.

2)Admin [Allag] - Weapon analysis in, sending it to you. Nothing too impressive, we can take it if it gets feisty.

1)General [Jeffrin] - Looks cold, crew. On toes anyway, please.

2)Admin [Crawford] they're taking a minute to reply, I don't like this.

Ambrosia and Petri's Mech, Valkyrie, rose from the dead and headed for the ridge. Jeffrin target locked the Mech with Ambrosia's main weapon, an ultra-heavy plasma caster. At this point, the target lock alone was purely symbolic, the weapon wouldn't actually work unless he activated his Deluge. Begrudgingly, he did so.

Many ExSols experienced paranoia when activating Deluge. A feeling of something not quite right in the universe. Jeffrin had learned through the support groups for ExSols with Deluge that he experienced it much more keenly than others. He couldn't escape the feeling that a horrible malefic presence slept all around him, and when he used Deluge, he was nudging it.

Ambrosia came fully to life as he did it. The main cannon cycled up and the ready-to-fire light went green. The foreign Mech still wasn't responding. He hovered his hand over his fire controls.

The connection request to the tripedal Mech timed out. Jeffrin flinched. A moment later, the request reappeared.

Oh. Did it just do a system restart?

He held his fire. The connection request was approved. Jeffrin had only put in a request for text. He quickly adjusted permissions so that the Admin team could read the conversation and sent a message to the Mech.

6)Private [Jeffrin] - Jeffrin here, repping the Fox Catchers. What's your purpose here?

6)Private [] - Names nina just an independent gettin away from hallu and abrandia

SYSTEM: New User 'Nina' Registered.

6)Private [Nina] - Why just text?

Jeffrin rolled his eyes. It was shocking to him that more groups and crews didn't operate text-only. It was honestly just the smart thing to do, plus it wasn't like speech-to-text was hard to use if someone typed like a shrew.

6)Private [Jeffrin] - We just do.

6)Private [Nina] - Whatev

6)Private [Nina] - Can we pass? just lookin for some scav jobs this pile needs some parts

2)Admin [Crawford] - Chief, that Mech just Counter-Pulsed. We have so many Pulse-specific parts just rotting in storage. Get her up here for an interview.

2)Admin [Allag] - Get pics she sounds cute

2)Admin [Petri] - I call dibs if shes hot

2)Admin [Jeffrin] - You sure? Scan that Mech to make sure it's not a trick

2)Admin [Allag] - We can share, sis.

2)Admin [Crawford] - Looks legit. Just interview her, we can pay her in parts that are just taking up space anyway.

2)Admin [Jeffrin] Alright, alright. Don't skip the barracuda, it's just an interview.

2)Admin [Petri] - Only thing you're sharing is my balls in your face

2)Admin [Crawford] Just give her a fair shot.

2)Admin [Allag] - That's not how mom raised us.

2)Admin [Crawford] - This is not what the Admin channel is for, you two.

2)Admin [Petri] - Sry.

6)Private [Jeffrin] - You can pass if you want, but you should come up here for a chat if you're looking for work.

6)Private [Nina] - Hold on

Jeffrin watched Nina's Mech on the radar and also just through their cameras. When he zoomed in, he could see a pretty young man in the driver seat of the rover talking into a terminal. A few moments later, her reply came.

6)Private [Nina] - Alright were gonna come up but you guys are covering lunch

6)Private [Jeffrin] - Fair enough. See you in a few.

2)Admin [Jeffrin] - She's on her way. Do you have an analysis on her Mech yet?

2)Admin [Crawford] - Looks pretty old and beaten up with some serious patchwork. I think some of the weapons systems are down. If she goes grizzly on us, just avoid that railgun and it won't pose a serious threat. You know how dangerous Pulse Mechs' railguns are.

3)Pilots [Jeffrin] - Petri, keep your distance but be ready anyway. Do a shallow patrol while we talk to her.

3)Pilots [Petri] - Rgr.

1)General [Jeffrin] - Got an interviewee coming in, friends. Someone make her a sandwich and all of you behave like adults for a bit.

1)General [Allag] - I refuse.

1)General [Petri] - Ditto.

1)General [Lola] I'll make a proper lunch

1)General [Allag] -