“I’ve missed you, my White Rabbit,” Alice whispered. “I’ve feared for you. I’ve nearly mourned for you.” Her voice came from the speakers of the room, soft and oddly crackle free.

“I’m sorry,” Taro replied.

“You should be.”

It had been two days since Taro’s recovery by the Summer.

It had been two hours since he regained consciousness after falling face first in sick room 12A. Selma made it a point not to treat his smashed nosed, allowing for the swelling to remind him of why he shouldn’t annoy her.

Alice floated in her tank, her mantle of cables and tubes trailing behind her like the lifeline of an ancient submariner. The blue lights of the hologram emitter above gave her a ghostly complexion. Taro hated that damn blue light.

She was upset with him and turned her back to him. Even through the over-imposed holographic projection, he saw the scarred and mutilated body underneath — the ruined remains of a body, if he allowed himself to be honest.

He pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the tank and triggered a minor alarm. A shutter opened above and a technician peered in, only to retire a moment later.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, eyes closed.

Alice killed the alarm. By the soft sound of air bubbles popping against the surface of the amniotic liquid, Taro knew she had come close.

“Always,” she replied, her voice modulated through the speakers to resemble her younger self. That was his punishment.

“Thank you for catching me,” he went on, without opening his eyes. “I owe you another one.”

“You owe me too many, white rabbit. I should collect some day.”

Her tone had become playful, but the speakers crackled and buzzed. She got better at talking day by day, but her control slipped if she got upset. But he didn’t need his data-slate any more to know her thoughts, and for that he was grateful.

“I dreamt of a lonely white rabbit chased by the storm. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white rabbit in the real,” Alice said and Taro looked up at her. She floated face to face with him, smiling through the distorting glass. “I think I would much like to see one, some day.”

“I’ll bring you one from the Ark,” Taro said, trying to smile. He lied, but she liked when he did it for her pleasure.

“See that you do, my rabbit. I will have the bots care for it. It shall want for nothing as I name him prince of my domain.”

Taro chuckled at that. She could just barely control the bots of the Summer, but her skills were improving by the day. Maybe, if he managed to find the creature aboard the Ark…

He chased the thought away. His stay on the Ark would be short and painful. He was scheduled for an augmentic upgrade and they would fit his Valkyrie with new equipment. Everything would be done in secret. Only he, Selma, the commander, and certain members of the top brass were privy to this.

“I wish…” Alice started and trailed off. Her hands touched the inside of her wall and the holographic tips of her fingers pushed through, trying to caress him. “I wish I could touch you again, Taro.” She pulled back her hands and an angry hiss resounded through the speakers before turning back into her voice.

“The day will come,” Taro tried to calm her, but she had drifted away, back turned. He walked outside the container and kept his hand on the cold glass. “One day the Ark will stop hiding and we will turn this planet into our home. Then there won’t be a need for us, like this, any more.”

Alice scoffed, the sound distorted and annoyed.

“We’re a long way from that Heaven, white rabbit. Your bones will rot under the permafrost above before that day comes, and I will be alone, a ghost aboard a ship of ghosts. What good will make-believe do me then?”

“That fate will never come to pass, Alice. I won’t allow it.”

She kept his back to him, spinning in place, cable harness twisting and tightening, lifting her higher.

“You can’t promise me that.”

“I can. And I do.”

The ghosts of his squad walked with him around the tank, silent and accusing. He wondered if Alice could see them, too.

“Liar,” she protested, but her tone had softened. “My lying white rabbit, you will make me worry for you again. I know what uncle Brachus wants for you, and it makes me shiver in fear. Promise me you’ll be safe. Lie, if you must.”

“I will be safe, and I will come back. I can’t die. We’ve yet to find our Heaven.”

She laughed at that and turned back to him. Her hologram winked out and her real self became visible, the chalk white flesh turned translucent from her long time being the machine ghost of the Summer.

She gifted him with this sight, and the hologram came back only seconds later. In the past, she wouldn’t even allow for the tank to be lit. His heart fluttered for a moment as the blue ghost smiled at him.

“Our time is up, my love.”

By all rights, Taro should have been wearing a heavy protective suit when in her company. But Alice refused to even consider the idea. The first time her technicians tried to impose the normal safety restrictions for Taro, she had nearly melted every system that was under her control. They learned much since then, especially how long it was safe for both of them to be together.

The radiation and chemical cocktail that kept her alive were toxic for him.

His breath was poison for her.

Taro pressed his forehead and palms to the glass and she joined on the other side. She pressed one real hand, and one hologram one, to her side, mimicking his gesture.

“I’ll miss you, white rabbit. Come back to me soon.”

“I promise.”

He walked out of the room without another word. They agreed together, years back, that they would never utter goodbyes to one another. Both of them still respected that promise.

Taro let out a shuddering breath once he was out of Alice’s chamber. Wherever he walked now, the ghosts followed. Their intrusion on his moments with Alice was vulgar in a way that made his insides knot in pain.

‘You aren’t real,’ he kept trying to convince himself. The ghosts stared at him, always baring his way.

The Wild Summer shuddered as he made his way through the gunmetal-grey corridors, towards Hangar 3. He had been allowed his half hour with Alice and, after being given a clean bill of health from doctor Selma, he would transfer to the Ark.

As promised, he did receive his cold data store. It outlined the mission parameters for Valerie, how she was expected to get away from the enemy craft, and what he would need to do to. Already some of the initial data had been marked as outdated and a new simulation has been made based on Valerie’s combat specs. She, too, had received two sets of goals, and would only realize her purpose once she achieved a set of prior objectives. If the simulation was to be believed, she would do so in another twelve hours.

The Rabbit rested in her cradle, half stripped of her innards and flight components.

Taro noticed the skeleton crew working on his fighter. Where there should have been entire teams fitting new equipment, now there were less than ten technicians working. He wasn’t officially scheduled for another sortie soon, but his data showed otherwise.

“She’ll fly soon,” Umar accosted him as he walked onto the gantry, overseeing the repairs. There were no other Valkyries in hangar 3. Even so, he was dirty with oil and smelled of old sweat. The dark circles under his eyes said much about how little he had rested since the recovery.

“How soon is soon?” Taro asked, leaning over the rail to get a better look at the new weapon upgrades. “Your entire crew looks dead tired.”

“She’ll be ready before you, pilot.”

Umar always smiled, but this time it was forced. He walked closer to Taro and leaned in, as if to whisper.

“Every single man down there — “ he inclined his head towards his team “— I trust with my life, Taro. The pilots, they were all our friends. We want revenge. And we want it real bad.”

To see the olive skinned man blush under anger was an unfamiliar experience for Taro, but one he could sympathise with. Umar wouldn’t be a traitor. Brachus had built lists of people that he could trust, and Umar sat near the top of it. He and his crew were marked in the data store as dependable, but weren’t given details about Taro’s mission.

“I’ll see the skidrells pay,” he said, not tearing his eyes away from his Rabbit. His dead friends stared back from stumps of her wings.

“You do that. The Rabbit will fly like she’s never flown before. We guarantee it.”

Umar clamped him on the shoulder and inclined his head to the waiting shuttle.

“Come. The schedule they gave us is pretty damn tight.”

And, just like that, the anger slid back under the veneer of friendliness that the technician exuded. Taro only followed.

He recognized the pilot as another of the technicians. Umar went up and spoke to him as Taro took his improvised seat. The shuttle was empty otherwise. The system had it marked as a cargo transport for the Ark, rather than personnel.

“I hate this,” he grumbled to the ghosts that surrounded him. They didn’t care.

“None of us enjoy it, Taro. It’s an ugly thing, to hide from our people,” Umar said, right next to him. He hadn’t noticed the technician come back. “See you in a few.”

Taro wished for at least a single viewing port in the shuttle. But it had been designed for cargo transport, so it was built for no comfort. Even his seating was a bolted on chair. Where there would be glass ports for civilian transports, there was only smooth metal here.

They would be close to the Ark. The sight of it would have lifted his mood, even if just a little, but he wouldn’t be getting anything of the sort.

His reflection in the wall panel spoke of nothing good. Somehow he had gotten gaunt in the two days since the mission. There were bags under his eyes. He tried a smile, but it looked ghastly in the distorted mirror reflection. Little wonder that Alice refused to look at him.

The ghosts threw no reflection.

Right then…

“This is enough,” he said with all the confidence he could muster. He didn’t pay attention to his dead friends, but he pushed them behind. He had allowed this weak flight of fancy to go on for far too long. His guilt was real, but he refused to be controlled by it.

What made pilots as efficient as they were was the ability to detach from anything that wasn’t in the mission parameters. Once up in the sky, there was only the pilot, the fighter, and the enemy. Anything else was just excess baggage that the Valkyrie didn’t need. Taro knew this. His friends should have known this.

Allowing himself to stay stranded in that mindscape would do him no good. The mission had already started and he couldn’t afford the distraction of guilt.

‘We’re not human enough to feel sorrow. Guilt… much less so.’

Those had been Peny’s words from when they lost the Vehement Hope. They had helped the Summer break through the blockade of The Delirium and its escorts, but it was too late to do anything for those aboard the Hope. They had done their very best, but still suffered the worst defeat in the Voyage's history.

Payback was due.

After docking, Taro walked out of the shuttle with his back straight and his face grim. The bio-techs meeting him shied away.

“This way, pilot,” one of them led him.

It was dark in the materials dock, but he could see his way well enough. He had never gone into the laboratory through this way, but his HUD was already guiding him. So… he wouldn’t even get a glimpse of the Ark, of the very thing he was fighting to preserve.

‘We’re not human enough for humans to know we exist.’ Peny’s dark laugh had taken the place of her ghost.

They led him into an operation room he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t as impressive as the one where he had first been augmented. This was a metal table with straps, and an overhead complex machinery that looked as if born of a nightmare, all jutting arms, syringes and scalpels. Even the bio-techs refused to look up at it as they set up the procedure.

“This will be an emergency swap out of components. You will not feel any discomfort after. The recommended period of recovery is between four and eight weeks, but we’ve been told you don’t have that luxury.”

The small, pudgy man talking made a grimace of disgust at that.

“We log our displeasure.”

“I need to be airborne in twelve hours,” Taro provided, reading off his schedule. “Anything more and we lose our window of opportunity.”

“Yes, yes, we’re well aware,” the man replied as he adjusted some machinery. He asked Taro to undress and lay on the operation table.

“We will inject you with our state-of-the-art muscle regeneration stimulants,” the bio-tech said as he read off his data-slate. “Pain supresants will be part of the cocktails. There is a 12.67% possibility of debilitating neural decay following this procedure. Please state your consent.”

“I give my consent for this procedure,” Taro parroted back. Given the high rate of failure for every other procedure he had gone through, that percentage barely registered with him

“We have logged your consent. Would you like to log any last words in case of procedure failure?”

Taro glared at the bio-tech for a full second.

“I take that as a no. No last words logged. Stand by.”

Taro had folded his grey overall and lay it in one of the provided lockers. It was disinfected inside, and vacuum sealed.

With a groan, he sat on the cold operation table. The clasps closed around his ankles and his wrists. A screen flickered to life on one wall, showing his likeness and pinpointing the following augmentations. Something connected to the port on the back of his head and his HUD announced an established hand shake signal, followed by a heartbeat.

They would swap out his artificial heart and lung, and install a new organ that did the job of both with an increase of 35% in performance over the old organs. His fleshware would be updated and upgraded as well, to provide a boost in reaction time.

Taro refused to read the whole litany of changes that he was going to receive. His outside image would remain the same.

Chalk white skin, chalk white hair, red eyes. He had gotten used to the albino look that the augmentation had imposed on him. White rabbit indeed. He hoped they would change nothing about that, though it was an irrational thought at best.

He smiled as the above view of the operating machine distorted and spun.

It only took a second more for him to go under.