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“It’s revulsion, I think.
The thing they want you to feel, when they tell you how pilots are treated if they’re caught. When they tell you about the muzzles and the lights and the drugs and when they speak in hushed voices about ‘Handlers’.
I think the emotion they are banking on you developing, is revulsion.
I thought it was revulsion I felt after the first half of the seminar. ...Yes, seminars, as much as the Empire would like you to think of rebels as savages, we know how to build mechs better than they do and we understand proper teaching techniques. One day travel to, two days of intense teaching, one day of socialising, sharing thoughts and recovery, one day travel back.
It’s during that first day that they talk about the consequences of getting captured. The drugs, the formulas the rebels have figured out and the various effects they can have on a person, from making you unbearably horny to mindshreddingly numb. The dehumanization, the muzzles, the dog crates, the public displays. The lights, y’know the photo-neuro..? Actually is this-? Oh, sorry then, you don’t legally know about these. As said, the whole nine yards, with a special little segment near the end, talking about how it’s all orchestrated by specifically trained imperial officers, the Handlers.
As you might’ve noticed, I hung onto every word. I had six? Pages of notes after the day and I reviewed them at least five times before going to sleep, which I barely did because of what I at the time believed to be nightmares.
It’s revulsion, I thought. That warm feeling spreading through my body, making me sweat every time I thought about what the instructor said. That urge to get back into Reaver and throw myself at the front again. And then those ever-cyclical images in my mind, going from scenario to scenario. What would happen to me, what would they do to me, how would others see me afterward?
The next day was about countermeasures, resisting the conditioning and not getting caught in the first place. Stuff like staying in duos at least, not taking unnecessary risks and the hidden compartment they install in every fielded mech. I wasn’t actually listening most of the day, my mind hadn’t moved on from the lessons of the day before, had to have most of this stuff explained to me later. Like the way the hidden compartment is organised. The order is very specific: cyanide pill, gun, knife, rope and only once you have all four out can you get the white rag.
The only thing I really caught and made specific note of is this: Aces get captured. Being caught just means they can do what they want with you, but they don’t decide on a dime. Aces get captured, the rest just get dispatched.
Now, a thing about mech aces is that every single one of them has their wires crossed in some way. There’s different degrees to it of course, differences in how subtle or obvious it is, but it’s effectively universal. It might be some intrinsic talent with the killing machines or the neurosynch that turns learning the fifty-something inputs and outputs into picking up chopsticks. It might be proficiency with some niche tech or chopped up gear that imperial standards aren’t trained to handle. Maybe it’s acquired skill, because of some extreme sense of duty to the rebellion or empire. Maybe it’s because you can sublimate into the machine or the violence you can exert when piloting it, some selfish or selfless desire to change things or dominate others.
...or y’know, maybe you just make a puddle in your cockpit every time the neural kill-feedback stimulates your reward centers. Don’t worry by the way, the rebellion doesn’t have the time or reason to shame you and imperials don’t get paid to.
During the last day of the seminar I stayed mostly to myself. Lots of things to think about obviously. Lots of new feelings to sort out. But one acquaintance I did make was Lily, best known as the Silent Butterfly. You might know her? Short, shy, eager to please? She’s around the base a lot, mostly in the hangar. She kept me company, let's say. Had a lot of the same sentiments as I did. She already had some notoriety at the time, y’know how the rebellion is always looking for up-and-coming heroes, but she was surprisingly easy to talk to, considering, well, everything.
Yes? A thing about me, alright. So I wasn’t actually all that special at the time. Before the seminar I was a middle-of-the-bunch pilot with no notable accolades or anything. Knew the speeches, knew we were fighting for something good, but didn’t, like, truly strive for it. Reflected in Reaver. Effective enough, but an average rebel machine. Didn't stand out, in the same way blue doesn’t stand out in the rainbow. I sharpened some of those large triangular bits every factory-made mech has in their right wrist and turned them into a segmented blade, only real distinction Reaver had.
Says a lot that I can almost say more about Reaver than myself, huh. Point is: I wasn’t an ace, for no part of the definition. But after that seminar? I wanted to be. Wanted Reaver to be a tall-standing sign to the Empire and truly take up the fight. Suddenly I wanted to be that symbol of resolve that could shred through the standardised machines and strike fear into their pilots. I didn’t really understand why, where that want came from, but I wanted it.
So I talked to my engineers about it, considering it was right after the seminar, they thought it was revulsion feeding my fire. But, of course, you don’t become an ace from nowhere. They told me it'd be hard, especially from my starting point. That segmented blade? More of a dagger, made from ten of those pieces, six of which I got across eight engagements, the other four were assists. I was mediocre and I’d have to spend a lot of time training to actually get there. But I had this fire suddenly and I threw myself at the sims like there was no tomorrow. Always this strange warmth, this want driving me.
I’m not sure how long I spent in the sim. Must’ve been days, sometimes on end. They’d pull me out, force feed and drug me because I wouldn’t sleep otherwise. I failed. I will be honest about that. I failed a lot. Retreading through beginner mistakes until I stopped making them. Hundreds of hours spent failing and learning from the failures. I used to use guided armaments mostly, couldn’t handle more than one unguided weapon at once. That tail Reaver has now? Took me months to figure out how to move properly again after installing it. But I did. Slowly. Piece by piece, slowly taking from the machines I silenced. I picked from their bones and learned how to bear the weight of their weaponry. Ever that warmth driving me. That thing deep inside that I thought to be revulsion. But that’s not quite what we’re here for, is it?
We’re here for the great victory, the success, binding the story up. Not my success in this case, but still. It was a pretty standard engagement I think, on the larger side, but I’d gotten used to those by then. I was in a squad, leading it in fact. I was pretty good at it, despite the distance that had always stayed between me and most other pilots. There’s only so close you can get to another person when you keep such a deep-reaching secret so closely guarded. And if you do truly open up to them, as I did with Lily? Well, I guess there's no way around having all the walls come down.
This was about two and a half years after the seminar and I had mostly gotten to terms with it all. I was closely monitoring frequencies, trying to pick out any slipped words, any errors in wavelength tuning. So now imagine the feeling rushing through my body when the radio picked up an open frequency, completely unencoded. In clear orders, the words “capture squad” and “Target: Reaver”. Just… electrifying. I don’t quite know what exactly happened in that moment. It felt like everything unfolded right there. Total clarity. All the days spent in the simulation, getting better, getting noteworthy. Trying to get so good that I’d be targeted. The way the thing I thought to be revulsion drove me ever closer to perfection, ever closer to a Handler taking me into Their crosshairs and the hours spent in my bunk, masturbating to the thought of what might happen to me once They do.
I knew, in that very moment, that I would not return from this battle. I tried to resist that fact at first. Focusing down on what the mission was, standard pilot training. Didn’t work. Over and over, my thoughts lapsed back to the dots on the radar, trying to guess which would be trying to lure me beyond the battleline, which would encircle Reaver and bring her down to her knees. I don’t think any of the other pilots knew me well enough to notice anything off. They didn’t notice the slight delay before firing, the way I slowly steered us toward the front. The ways Reaver’s sword hesitated before burying itself in the enemy’s machines. Only Lily noticed, but there had long since been a silent agreement between us at that point. They were blindly following a senior pilot, leading them into an ambush. I don’t know quite what possessed me, but it felt so Right.
I didn’t drag them down with me and I am still glad I didn’t. When the moment came and the trap sprung, we were just far enough away to give them a fighting chance, but only if a few of us stayed behind, holding the imperials of. The warmth inside me let me know what I would do, pre-decided, like so many of my decisions are now. I would like to claim we fought valiantly, that Reaver only crumpled after felling a wave of shiny black machines, her armor cracking under the assault of the self-same machines it was pieced together from, but I am not allowed to lie anymore.
Surrender happened the moment our prior allies were out of sight. The second they could no longer watch their rising heroes drop their weapons, we did. Beyond that it's just a gray, warm haze. The thing I thought to be revulsion became something far more beautiful, so much deeper, worming and wrapping its way down to my core as they marched us back to the imperial base. You cannot fully disarm Reaver, not without rending her limb for limb. Claws, tail and blade made sure I could harm them at any moment, yet I never even considered it. On that march, all my thoughts were focused on the cruel fate that awaited me, that I had willingly surrendered myself to.
Then, in the hangar, after they hauled me out of Reaver’s cockpit and threw me down on the cold, concrete floor, I first got to lay my eyes on Her. I thought in that moment that it was all worth it. Even if after all the pain, She just gave me an assessing glance, that was all it would’ve taken. Yet, I got so much more. I wasn’t thrown away like a broken instrument or an ill animal, I was added to the small collection of people in the kennels.
Now the thing is: the kennels don’t really have a use for ‘people’. It doesn’t matter how much you consent to the procedures, how willing you are to bend under the pressure. That’s not what they need. That’s not what they’re designed to do. The kennels break you. They break whatever part of you thinks it is human.
The drugs can make you feel like anything Handler chooses you to feel like. The lights. Photo-neurosynchronic sculpters. You don’t legally know about these. Do you know what a sculpter does? They take a block of worthless rock and break pieces off until it becomes something beautiful. The Handler’s talk down on you, They change you, They treat you as the thing you really are, lesser. They give you things, a padded cage to sleep in, a muzzle to wear, more gifts, if only you’re good. They make you associate more with an animal or an object, until your brain thinks of itself more as a pet or property rather than a person. She made me love Her, truly and utterly, with pain, pleasure and every other feeling, human and inhuman and in turn I got to help Lily love her Handler as well. She got skittish, it happens.
It’s revulsion, you know?
The thing they want you to feel, when they have me sitting here, telling my story in nothing but a collar and a muzzle. When I explain what happens even to willful surrenders, when they have Handler give a demonstration at the end of this and She walks me out on Her leash.
The emotion all this is banking on you developing, is revulsion.
This is supposed to be a cautionary tale and I’m sure for many of you it will be. The imperial officers want you as far away from us dogs as possible. It’s revulsion, you’ll know. You’ll stay away, you’ll keep your head down, never falling into the crosshairs.
But a few of you will just think that it’s revulsion and to you I want to say: revulsion isn’t a warm feeling, it doesn’t envelop you. It doesn’t make you want to be the best at this. It doesn’t make you want to surpass others. It doesn’t make you want to be seen. It doesn’t make the thought of weari-
Yes, Sir?
Now? I would be delighted, Sir.”