The Blumhagen ship, the creatively named Blumhagen-II, floated in the Mediterranean, off the coast of the Peloponnese, without missiles raining down on it. The missiles were busy flying elsewhere in the world, and left the crystal waters peaceful for the birds and the crew. Unfortunately, due to the size of the ship, to accommodate the hundreds of employees and the armaments, they were unable to be anywhere near a beach. The keel sat far too low in the water, but they had an inflatable dock for people to pretend they were on a beach, floating beside the steel behemoth.

Silvy walked over, carrying a beer and a synth-beef burger, laden with mustard, mushrooms, and a fried egg. All of her bandages had been replaced with skin-patches, that weren’t quite noticeable beside her swimsuit. “Isn’t this weird?” she asked.

Iris lowered her sunglasses and looked over at the burger, glistening with smokey grease, and then at Mendel working the grill with a line of hungry logistics people behind him. “I’m pretty sure he knows how to cook.”

“What? No, I don’t mean that. Mendel grew up poor, of course he knows how to cook. I mean why are we just sitting here?” Silvy asked as she sat down on the foot of a lounge chair next to Iris.

“Because this is as far north as we can take the ship before we’re ready to launch,” Iris said, and turned the page on her paperback. The ship library had gotten a fresh copy of Embrace The Blood when she hadn’t noticed, and she fully intended on smashing through it while she could.

Silvy frowned, drank some of her beer, mulled it over, and asked, “But why are we waiting?”

Iris slid her gaze back over to Silvy, then reached around and hefted the charging cable she had plugged into her back. “I’d crash the plane if I tried to take my energy from it. Also, they’re still putting my backup together. Silvy, there’s being in a rush, and then there’s skipping important steps. This is actually as fast as we can go to save the world.”

Silvy huffed and took a bite out of her burger. She almost dropped her beer onto Iris’ lap when a surge hit the side of the ship. No one panicked though, because everyone knew what had caused it. Not a surprise torpedo, but Roselyn and Holly having round two fisticuffs down on the ocean floor.

Mendel growled and clapped his tongs at Iris. “If they break my anchor line, you’re the one going down there to fix it!”

Iris looked over the edge, saw one of them get tossed into an exposed cliff hard enough to break it, and shrugged. “The only thing they’re going to break is their temp prosthetics.”

Silvy frowned. “Are you sure we can trust them? The first thing Holly did was demand a rematch.”

“Competitiveness breeds more competitiveness. I think it’s a good thing. Maybe they’ll become friends. Better to have them on our side than still working for the Shermans, right?”

Silvy wiped some mustard from her lips and glanced over her shoulder at Mendel. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about though. While we had Roselyn prisoner, I wasn’t worried about her cooperation because if she did anything bad, we could just kill her. But you’re asking we send her in, fully equipped, to–”

“To save people,” Iris said, stuffing a bookmark into Embrace The Blood and setting it aside.

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think having the moral high ground is really what’s going to keep their loyalty? And Mendel only has so much money.”

Iris swung her feet around and sat up, propping her elbows on her knees. The burger smell finally hit her. It didn’t have the refined artisanal quality that an expert chef had, but something about it bypassed the chemical analysis. It went straight to her memories, to her parents' home cooking. Even when the patties had been blackened and the cheese melted like plastic, there had been something delicious about it.

Silvy leaned over. “Do you want a bite?”

“Don’t waste it on me.”

“It’s not a waste.”

“Thanks.” She took the bite off Silvy’s burger. The taste didn’t come through, but the texture did. The way the bun squished, and the synth-beef crumbled, it was all like she had remembered. It brought back all sorts of memories, and they weighed on her. “Silvy, do you think there even is a way out of this?”

The girl paused. Not because she was worried about Iris’ entirely sterile mouth having touched her burger, but by the words. “You’re the one leading the charge, aren’t you?”

“I’m only looking one step ahead though. I don’t know what the governments of the world will do afterwards. This mess? This Project Dragon Seed? It’s the kind of thing that might never go away. How do you get out of that mire without dying?”

Silvy shrugged. “You walk away and tell everyone else to deal with it. That’s what people have done for all of time, isn’t it?”

Iris smirked. “You make it sound so easy.”

“Because it is. People have thought the world was ending for at least the past three thousand years, and here we are–”

“Worse than ever.”

“Only sorta. Still, we’re still alive, aren’t we? Humans don’t die out so easy, and neither does nature. I heard that scientists have finally agreed there are now more than two thousand distinct species of cockroaches. That’s gotta be worth something in the scheme of bio-diversity, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to live in a world with two thousand different kinds of cockroaches. Having just one was bad enough.”

Silvy laughed and held up a hand, fingers spread. “At least five are considered viable foodstock for humans.”

Iris wanted to vomit, despite not even having a stomach. “Let’s try to avoid that kind of diet, shall we?”

Silvy paused. She almost dropped her beer, snatching it back up as it slipped between her fingers. When she realized her mouth was hanging open, she cleared her throat and arched an eyebrow. “We?”

Iris’ face grew hot, mirroring Silvy’s blush. She twiddled her fingers together. “Silvy… I don’t think I’d know what to do without you. I’ve spent the last decade of my life as a soldier. What’s after that? I end up drunk and watching younger people steal my motorcycle from me?”

Silvy twirled some of her hair around her finger, glancing around the ship to avoid looking at Iris for a moment. “I don’t think anyone would be able to rob you, no matter how old you got. You’re in a HAB unit.”

Silvy was smirking, but it made Iris grimace. It hurt inside, a tension through her heart. The lack of reaction through her body just made it seem fake, like it wasn’t her body. “So I’m supposed to live the rest of my life as a living weapon, like this? It’s one thing when I need to fight but… I still can’t even get drunk! Or taste a grilled burger! Or do anything that would be pleasurable to do.”

Silvy’s attitude began to settle down to the level Iris was at. She set her food aside and rubbed her fingers on her can of beer. “Well, if you do save the world, I’m sure they’d compensate you. Xi Chang was able to get drunk, wasn’t he? I’m sure all those things are just a matter of money.”

Iris laughed. Her gaze had fallen from Silvy’s face, to her knees. Slender, once delicate, now bruised. “Silvy, I don’t even know how much longer I’m going to live. My heart will give out in another thirty years, but they can print me a new one. Cloned fresh from my own cells. My brain? That’s anyone’s guess. I could go crazy and lose myself in a decade, or maybe I’ll be fine a century from now. I don’t think I can keep fighting for that long, but I know I have to keep fighting for now. I don’t have a choice. I’m too tied in. It’s like I’m in a spider’s web and can’t get loose.”

Silvy reached out and grabbed hold of her hand. She squeezed, soft and warm. She didn’t have the strength of a machine, crushing down around her metal digits, just feeble human strength. “That’s a bridge you can cross when you get there. When you beat BISON and save the world, I’ll be right here for you, okay? I mean, I’ll probably be helping you do it in some way, but you know what I mean.”

The tension in Iris’ chest eased. She gently squeezed Silvy’s hand and nodded. She looked up at the girl’s smile, and she smiled too. “I’ll hold you to that, okay?”

Silvy grinned, her smile big and toothy. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The water beside the ship erupted, showering the off-duty crew as one of the two combatants twirled through the air. Roselyn crashed onto the inflatable beach, moaning and coughing out sea water. Half her limbs were bent the wrong way and she didn’t jump up to resume the fight. Everyone watched hesitantly, and then Holly’s head popped up. She laughed. “I knew it! Victory is mine. You just had an overgeared mech.”

Mendel abandoned the grill to march over to the railing. He grabbed on and hollered, “I thought I told you two not to break each other? Who’s going to pay to fix her, huh? You looking at me to do that? Am I your daddy or something?”

“N-no Commander Mendel,” both of them answered, each having the same stumble as they sat down on the inflatable and hung their heads.

Silvy snickered, which made Iris laugh too, and then she said, “We have a problem though. At this rate, the whole world is going to suck to live on.”

“Cabin in the woods?” Iris proposed.

“You mean with no internet?”

“Neo Orleans suburb?”

“I mean that’s an improvement…”

Iris snapped her fingers and grinned. “Yacht in international waters.”

Silvy glanced aside, to the crystalline waves and grinned. “Now that sounds like a plan. If you can afford it after saving the world.”

“One way to find out,” Iris said, and unplugged herself. Her synth-skin slid back into place, hiding the port in the small of her back as she joined Mendel at the railing. “Hey, are you two ready to go fight monsters?”

Holly and Roselyn glanced at one another, frowning. Roselyn mumbled something about comparing kill counts between the two of them to settle it, which made Holly sigh and fold her arms, but she nodded in agreement. Roselyn cupped a hand around her mouth and asked, “We flying out then?”

“Yeah, so get ready. We’ll be sending you in the best way we can. You’ll love it,” Iris said, giving them a thumbs up.

Mendel frowned. “Best way we can? I’ve only got one option,” he said, gesturing at the cargo plane waiting for them off the back of the Blumhagen-II. A logistics crew were lining up drop pods beside it.

Iris laughed. “Like I said, the best way we can.”