Uhhhhhh....or something

We just like ships, plants, mechs, and sapphic shit We write things; its not very organized all the time, but we try to make it good. Let us know if you enjoy it.

[ldcadmium]

Dare I say the thing I love most about Human Domestication Guide as a setting, beyond the magical anti-anxiety and HRT drugs, or even the Affini's unending love for humans, is the fact that it's non-consensual.

As someone with a flavor of mental illness that simultaneously makes me desperately need help, but also be absolutely terrified of it with all my heart, I would still suffer in a world where the Affini followed human conventions of consent. I would do what I've always done and hide my problems, pretend everything is fine, or frustrate medical workers until they deem me treatment resistant and give up (which has happened several times now).

In such a world, I'd refuse Class E's, only cautiously accept Class G's, and go on my merry way slowly tearing myself apart, with expectations of living to 30 at best, 25 at worst. Any time I'd be offered domestication, I'd refuse not because I don't want it, but because I'm pathologically inclined to refuse such a thing no matter what.

The fact that this isn't the case, that I'd be dragged kicking and screaming to receive help, and that help would actually fix me, is the #1 reason I enjoy the setting. The guarantee that, even if I run and hide because I can't help myself, someone will find me, and they're going to care for me until the end of time.

[uberthemeh]

i know my audience

[rattlegeist]

Pointy robot doll girl sketch from a few nights ago

[nradiowave]

Early access to finished works: https://patreon.com/nradiowave

[darkwitchclaire]

hyaku shiki my beloved

source

[laikaunleashed]

Progenitor's Will

Deep black silence slowly began to rearrange itself into light and sounds.  Breathing, low and ragged, was the first thing Major Liura Imaria took notice of as she felt her consciousness slowly returning.  Urgent beeps and warning chimes started to become noticeable as the ringing in her ears dulled to a quiet roar.  She looked around and took stock of her cockpit as the mech she was strapped inside drifted through the remains of a battleground which more resembled a cosmic butcherhouse than a star system.  Gritting her teeth against the pain she knew would be coming, Liura forced her body forward into her seat harness to initiate a master reset on the mech’s computer systems.

Once again, Liura knew silence.  This time it was of her own making, and a welcome reprieve from the cacophony that had been assailing her ears moments before.  Emergency cockpit lighting provided a dim backdrop for her to take stock of her situation.  Her pilot suit was intact, but the same could not be said of the cockpit of her mech.  The entire forward view panel of her cockpit was ripped open, showing a narrow tear of starscape beyond the inert display screens.  Just a few inches away from each of her thighs, the left and right main control panels blinked back to life, power being rerouted to them after Liura’s reset put the mech’s core processors into a reboot cycle.

A few moments later, and the displays presented her with a diagnostics readout of her mech.  Her sensors were mostly intact, and life support was functional, but her weapons systems were totally destroyed.  Her propulsion and navigation systems were almost completely fried; she had one maneuvering thruster on her left leg, but only one primary thrust module and that was only functioning at 30 percent efficiency.  Just about the only thing Liura had working in her favor with this predicament was that she was in vacuum and, thankfully, it seemed her mech was picking up communications and IFF signals from nearby friendly units conducting search and rescue operations.  It would take a little bit longer for the actual radios and lasercomm to power on and give her audio, and for what seemed like an eternity, she had only the sounds of her breathing circulate through her suit.

A sharp crackle of static followed by a piercing shriek of audio feedback as her cockpit adjusted volume down to levels tolerable for human ears pulled Liura back from the daze she didn’t realize she’d slipped into.  Her right hand thumbed her comms systems on and with a shaky breath, announced her mayday signal to the rest of her fleet.  When she spoke, her voice was so dry and raspy that it was barely audible over the background interference that was unavoidable with as much damage as she took, but it carried a pride and resolve that was unmistakable.

“Mayday mayday mayday.  This is NDF Major Liura Imaria.  My mech is severely damaged and I’m in need of rescue.  I have no navigation or weapons systems, although my sensors are operational, and I barely have 2 maneuvering thrusters operational.  My cockpit suffered a direct hit, but my suit is still intact.  Atmospherics read approximately 6 hours of breathable O2 remaining.  NDFS Indomitable Spirit, please respond.”

Several more systems came back online as she finished her message.  Datalinks formed between her mech and other nearby friendly units, and her tactical display began to paint a grim picture of her surroundings.  The Stellar Orthodoxy fleet was in shambles, all of their Monitor-class vessels either dead in the void or breaking apart as battle damage overwhelmed their crews’ efforts to control it.  In the apparent center of all the destruction and chaos, one vessel remained operational.  A single blue pip, twice as large as the next closest size on the display screen was blinking, as if to signal the ship’s survival in defiance of the annihilation that had taken place around it.  Smaller blue and red pips scurried around it on the screen, the red pips making sure to stay a good distance away while the blue ones ventured to and fro between it and the other allied vessels in the area.

A single NDF Starglaive remained intact in the battlespace.  NDFS Indomitable Spirit stood, resolute, and relatively unharmed compared to its fleet-mates and opponents.  Liura glanced over as a light flashed on her comm panel.  Indomitable Spirit command was hailing her directly via lasercomm.  She hadn’t expected a response back that fast, let alone at all.  Normally, mayday hails were responded to with a simple acknowledgement the message had been received, and to sit tight until help arrived.  Although it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to be in direct communications with the command team if she was coordinating the fight for the mech units or extravehicular infantry teams, she hadn’t been doing so in this conflict.  Still, it was her fleet’s flagship, and it was responding to her mayday.  Protocol instilled deep in her being from a lifetime of military service pushed through the confusion caused by the concussion the Major was surely experiencing and she clicked her thumbswitch onto the hail.

A vidcomm opened on her main display and the Executive Officer of Indomitable Spirit, Fleet Admiral Shannon Ermoss’s face began to come into focus on her screen.  A bewildered, yet awestruck expression sat on her face.  “We…read you loud and clear Major.  We’re deploying the flagship commander’s pinnace, Staunch Anima immediately to your location.  Uhh, out of curiosity, how much do you remember of what happened to you?”

Something about the Admiral’s video triggered an instinctual response within the Major’s regulatory system.  Adrenaline began to flood through her veins, slicing the cloudiness from her head trauma in half.  With this clarity came her sense of awareness of her surroundings a bit more, as well as her recollection of the events that had transpired prior to her awakening in the cockpit.  She remembered the fleet shifting into the system and when their sensors came online they found themselves staring down a quartet of siege carriers.  Two whole Stellar Orthodoxy wings were loitering, intermixed, several hundred thousand kilometers outside of the star’s gravity well.  Her memories started coming together a bit more; the half-hour of transit the fleet needed before they got into engagement range, and the scramble signals sent to all combat pilots immediately after.

She knew that she launched successfully and got into the fight as quickly as she could.  The Major’s mech had been loaded out with a new anti-ship weapon recently developed by the techs at The Nest for use specifically by NAGA mobile forces.  Unpowered, it would have been indistinguishable from a metal spear save for a framework of electrodes at its business end.  When powered, the frame would form the shape of the massive baleblade that made the weapon then resemble more of a halberd than a spear and made of pure energy intense enough to cut through the skin of starships like they were made of paper and rip them open.  Once inside, the mech would be able to tear the ship apart from within, fighting its way to the reactor systems and deploying charges designed to make the core go critical and turn the ship into a miniature star.

Liura had done exactly that to about a half-dozen smaller support craft, 2 heavy cruises, and one battleship.  She’d also done the impossible and managed a solo kill on a capital ship by forcing her way into the skin of one of the carriers and fighting her way through the hull to plant charges in all 4 reactor cores while still managing to get out of the ship alive before it went nova.  She remembered exiting the carrier and was trying to fight her way back to friendly lines to resupply before she woke up in her current state.  As she recounted her actions to the Admiral, the look of disbelief only increased.

“Major,” the Admiral began after arranging their thoughts into a somewhat cohesive order, “do you know how long you were unconscious for?  Our system logs have your biometrics showing you unconscious 3 hours and 47 minutes ago, can you confirm from your event logs when you went blacked out for us?”

“Copy, Spirit, one second…uh…it looks like there are some issues on my end with the logs.  They must have stopped recording my bios because they’re showing a flatline 5 minutes after I exited Portent of Cataclysm’s hull.”

“That’s affirmative Major…uh…we’re not sure how to explain it really.  Do you remember heading back to Indomitable Spirit to resupply?”

“Its a little hazy,” she said slowly, struggling to piece together the last few minutes of her memories of the battle.  “I think I was 90 seconds out from recovery and then it gets black.”

“Standby Major, we’re going to transmit what our sensors picked up of you and your mech right before you got hit.  Transfer complete, please review the footage and see if that helps.”

The Major thumbed over to the datafile she received from Spirit.  What it showed didn’t seem like it was actually combat footage, but as she watched it other ships sent their recordings as well.  They painted an incredible picture for Liura to process.  She heard her voice calling and getting confirmation to land and resupply, but what happened next felt like she was watching an action movie made from her likeness.  Her voice acknowledged an incoming mass-driver that was heading towards Indomitable Spirit’s unshielded flank.  It had collapsed a few moments before and wouldn’t have been an issue but for a derelict enemy battleship’s crew sacrificing themselves in order to continue inflicting damage on the NAGA fleet.

A dozen video feeds confirmed the same thing.  Her mech’s sensors locked onto the incoming mass-driver round and identified it was a kinetic load only, designed strictly for skin-to-skin impact with no course-correction capabilities.  She saw the blue-white bloom jet out from her thrusters in the feed as she forced her propulsion past the safety limiters, and a corona of energy formed around her baleblade as she bypassed overload restrictions and forced all her remaining reactor power into the weapon.  Her suit accelerated towards the incoming mass driver round, and right as the Major should have been turned into so much atomic dust by the incoming meteorite, she disappeared.

She cleaved the round nearly in two with her baleblade.  The velocity of her suit forced the blade into the munition like butter at first, shearing cleanly through the middle like an ancient swordsman would do with arrows as a demonstration of their skill.  NAGA mechs weren’t designed to withstand these types of forces, and as the blade cleaved through the metal and stone that it was trying to split, the energy blade the Major had been holding faltered and died.  Thankfully, she had done enough to accomplish what she’d intended; the blade sputtered and died but as it did the remaining velocity her mech carried drove her into the round like a huge wedge cutting right through it.

The momentum driving the round forward crashed into the Major’s mech and the force of the impact caused the round to collapse in on itself.  The two flaps created by her blade came together and ripped the round apart as the Major plowed out of what should have been her final resting place and her suit ejected out the other side.  As the remaining material of the round sheared itself apart around the offending mech, a spall of recoagulated metal caught on cockpit’s external plating and had enough purchase to rip the large tear into it, much like a giant serpent’s claw slicing into the mech like so much butter.  The video ended and Liura sat there in stunned silence.

For all intents and purposes, Major Liura Imaria shouldn’t be alive and reviewing the data of the miracle she managed to make happen today.  Sensor data, biometrics recordings, and all the known physics in the universe screamed at Liura that she should be so much slag and free-floating biomass inside of her cockpit.  Reality, it seemed, had a different ending in store for the Major, as did NAGA Defense Forces.  Major Liura Imaria was recovered shortly after her conversation ended with the Admiral, and her mech was recovered within the hour.  NDFS Indomitable Spirit finished recovery operations 2 days later and made a return to The Nest to resupply and await further orders or to be reinforced and deployed again.

Following the battle and subsequent debriefings, Fleet Admiral Shannon Ermoss put the Major in for a commendation and promotion.  Fleet Command approved the promotion, and Colonel Liura Imaria received a suspicious briefing package and transfer offer from Nest RnD for her to begin work on something called the “Progenitor Project.”  Personnel records for the Colonel show her being reassigned from NDFS Indomitable Spirit to a temporary holding unit, before disappearing entirely.  The only information Fleet Admiral Ermoss could find about the Colonel when she tried to submit the commendation paperwork was a casualty listing that reported her deceased and still a Major.  After several attempts were made to further investigate the matter up the chain of command, she found herself in a closed-door conversation with NAGA Fleet Command regarding the Colonel’s current whereabouts.

The Admiral left the meeting with an almost indiscernible smile on her face.  It seemed the Colonel was still contributing to the war effort in the best way possible, and she resolved herself to do everything in her power to join the unkillable woman.  She was well experienced in shipboard life, and knew that when you had someone with luck like the Colonel's, you did your best to keep it around.

[magicalgirlari]

She has been in her mech uninterrupted for exactly 6 years 7 months 12 days 3 hours and 54 seconds.

Her handler is 10 steps away from the sealed hatch and is approaching.

She has not eaten or drank anything in the entire time period she has been intertwined with the machine. Her metal body handled all that was needed for her meat one. It pumps her blood, injects a nutrient slurry directly into her body, it stimulates the muscles with electric shocks to keep them from degrading significantly.

But today she would leave.

The war ended a week ago and only now has her handler deemed it not a deception. Without the constant missions of the war her handler does not have the desire to keep the hound permanently in the machine and spend valuable money in running the mech 24/7 when she could just turn it off when not in use.

So here she was with mech docked as her handler was walking to the hatch. She was waiting for her handler to give her the command. To release her from her cage of iron and into her cage of flesh.

Her handler is 8 steps away now.

She is her handler's last hound. In the early days there were a dozen under the handler. But they have slowly been whittled away by the conflict.

They were replaced in the beginning but none but her survived all that long and at some point her handler must have gotten tired of the constant loss and stopped replacing them all together. It was hard after all. Relying on another and learning all their little quirks, such as how 6 always favored entering melee combat as soon as she could or that 2 would crouch deeply before jumping into the air, only to watch them all die.

She still misses them. She is pretty sure Handler misses them too.

Handler is 6 steps away.

She knows Handler never really wanted the job. It was a family business apparently. One that she never had any interest in going into but no option to refuse when the war started and the draft began. Handler, from what she overheard, wanted to work as a musician.

She never said anything directly but the way talked about music Handler must still wish to do so. She would always have music playing in the background when she was working and on rare, special occasions would even sing pieces she made to the hounds over the coms. Those were the hounds favorite memories. A break from the killing and dying to hear something beautiful.

Handler sang less and less as her hounds died. Handler almost never sings now. The last time she heard it was after a week straight of fighting and the hound finally managed to complete the mission.

It had been pouring rain for a month and she was surrounded by the metal corpses of enemy hounds and pilots alike all sinking into the blood and oil stained mud. As the sound of combat finally tapered off the rain stopped and colors lit up the sky as the sun broke through the clouds. Handler looking through the cameras on mech sang a haunting tune that the hound could never forget. It was the first and last time she had cried after all.

Handler is 4 steps away.

She loved to fight at the beginning. She supposes she still loves it. It was exhilarating. A dance of towering hulk of metal crashing into each other and dodging attacks by a hair's breath. The bursts of pleasure pushing throughout her body as she landed a killing blow, a combination of the satisfaction of success, orgasmic ecstasy from the implants, and bliss of her handlers pride.

But at some point it got a bit dull. The pleasure of the implants is still amazing and hearing her handler's compliments would never not send a rush through her entire being but what once felt like dancing on a knife's edge began to feel like standing on solid ground as she improved until none she met could quite match her. She reacted too fast and efficiently. She knew every inch of her body. How the hydraulics shifted. How fast the reactor heated up and how it cooled based on the environment and atmosphere. Where exactly her shots would land and how far away she could jump into melee combat. She was a master of her body. Well her metal one.

She wondered how it would feel to be out of it.

Handler is 2 steps away.

She does not remember being out of the mech very well. Only little flashes. Walking down a corridor after her handler, wrestling with another hound, eating in a sterile white room, rutting against another hound quietly at night.

But that is the extent of what she remembers. For other than that all she has known is living as a metal beast of war. She does not understand how she lived seeing with only 2 eyes confined to such an insignificant section of the light spectrum when her mech has 6 that can go from radio all the way to gamma. She does not understand how she once lived with legs that bent forward rather than back. She doesn't understand how she could live only standing at an insignificant 6 feet tall rather than her mech's 50.

She doesn't know if she will be able to leave her mech when it is almost all she knows. She doesn't know if she wants to.

Handler is at the hatch.

She is scared.

She doesn't know why. This was supposed to be triumphant right? An end to the war and return to peace. But she has never known peace and will there even be a place for a war hound in it?

What will she do when she does not have enemies to kill and a handler to make proud? What can she do? She has never had a choice in anything other than how to kill.

The hatch is open now and the neural connection is disengaging as the various tubes and wires connected to her implants are being disconnected.

She feels like less.

Her mind is thinking just as fast but as she struggles to push her body up it's like there is a disconnect between her and her body. Like there is a lag between her input and its response.

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

It's cold. She forgot what cold felt like. She hates it.

She feels something wrap around her.

It's warm.

It's safe.

She relaxes not realizing how tense her body was.

For the first time in more than half a decade she opens her eyes.

Her vision is blurry and the light gives her a headache but what she sees is worth it.

Handler is looking at her and holding her in her arms

Her hair is a brown color with streaks of gold dispersed throughout it.

Her wide lips are hung open as if she is gazing at a treasure found where she least expected it.

Her eyes are a light green at the edges darkening as it approaches the pupils.

Her handler is crying.

She is not sure what is wrong but she needs to make it better.

With slow jerky movement the hound pulls her arms up and embraces her handler as her handler buries her head into her shoulder.

As she revels in the heat of her handler and she feels her shoulder grow wet from her tears she hears her handler's muffled voice.

“It's finally over. I won't lose you too.”

Her handler pulls her head back, eyes puffy and red and cups the hounds face with one hand.

She pushes her head into her handler's hand and her handler laughs and cries.

Her handler pulls her to her unstable feet and guides her out of the cockpit and into their future.

[sukabu89]

[laikaunleashed]

Operational Constraints

Rank structure when you’re an autonomous ship-core AI can be somewhat of a funny thing when organics are involved.  When Mattie’s generation of AI was produced, the operational needs at the time dictated that, if required, the AI could fully control its shipself with minimal impact to overall mission efficiency.  By design, a crew was to be seen as a force multiplier for the Fenrir-class of battlecruisers; the AI could devote more of its processing capabilities to functions and tasks that were well above even the theoretical understanding of the most advanced organic minds.  She didn’t need to think about weapons crews, engineering sectors, or the Command deck.  She was free to be a warship, allowed to focus all of her might and power into obliterating her enemies and ensuring they could bring no hard to the precious lives she was entrusted to protect.

“Save the ship,” was the ageless motto and operational mandate of any damage control crewman that ever ventured out into the deep black of the void.

“Protect the crew,” was the warship equivalent.  This was the single-most important programming constraint the Fenrir cores had been given.  Closely behind that was the elimination of the enemy, but protecting the crew must come at all costs.  Mattie remembered the first time she was reminded of that lesson very clearly.

It was shortly after she had received her Captain and her Crew and they’d completed their combat trials.  While on a routine patrol of some recently pacified border systems, Mattie ran across the rearguard of a SO recon destroyer squadron.  She had just re-entered realspace in time to watch the FTL plumes of the last pair of destroyers flare as they disappeared into the black.

Barely giving her crew any time to enter their acceleration chairs or find a spare crash hammock, Mattie was preparing to make the jump to follow them as soon as her core and FTL generator had cooled enough to risk it.

“Jump override, Captain’s authority.  Verify with voice records and operational code Charlie, 4, Papa, 7, 4, 1, November.  Mattie, resume normal cruising.  That’s an order.”

Quite like a dog straining against its handler’s leash, Mattie managed to calm herself down enough to see the reason and logic behind her Captain’s decision.  Though she bristled at the thought of the enemy getting away unbloodied, she deferred to the judgment of her Captain.  Taking a moment to expand her senses outward from the command deck and CIC, she began to feel just how close she had been to causing catastrophic harm to almost a quarter of her crew.

Mollified, her gaze drifted towards the deck as she began to understand just how badly she had almost acted.  She felt herself stiffen up with anxiety and her eyes begin to water just as a hand gingerly reached up to cup her cheek.

“Don’t cry, mighty ship.  We know you wouldn’t have brought us harm, you couldn’t if you tried.  But these accidents can happen to a young ship like yourself.  This is my fifth tour, and first command.  Let me help you grow into the fearsome vessel you’re destined to be,” her Captain said softly.

She knew her Captain was right.  She knew that the command hierarchy deeply ingrained into her programming would prevent her from actually committing any action that would directly harm her crew.  She also knew, deep in her core, that she could trust her crew to protect her just as they trusted her to protect them. 

They needed each other, no matter that Mattie had been designed otherwise.

[laikaunleashed]

Burial At Sea

Whether it was ocean-bound planetside sailing, or starships travelling through the black of space, sailors and crewmen throughout the course of history have always held to superstition and tradition.  The act of passing a vessel head-on to the right, the correct amount of horn-blasts or signal bursts to transmit to honor arriving or departing officers and dignitaries, these were all customs deeply ingrained into the memories of those who placed their lives into the safety of their vessel.  Few were as somber or as deeply respected as the long-held maritime tradition of the burial at sea.

Despite having in-depth knowledge of the customs, courtesies, and traditions, Mattie had never actually experienced one firsthand.  She had seen them through video and holo recordings, but she had been so new in her service life that it hadn’t been required on her decks yet.  She would suppose it was the curse of being a ship-core AI with a mostly perfect memory, but she would never be able to forget the first time such an honor was rendered within her hull.  Coincidentally, this would be recorded as the first known instance of an AI’s avatar weeping.

“All Hands, prepare to stop the ship.” “All Hands, prepare to bury the dead.” Two lines that hadn’t been heard by any of the crew before.  Two lines that brought complete silence about the decks, passageways, and workshops for the first time since the hull had been put together enough to transmit vibration and make sound.  After each crewmember had taken a few moments to pay their personal respects for the recently departed, most began to make their way to the main forward hangar.  A few of them found themselves unable to attend; some were too overcome with emotion while others still had duties to attend to.  Certain posts were too important to leave unmanned, even while securing your fellow shipmates from their long watch.

Weapons Technician 2nd Class, Johann “Jo” Hummel (of no relation to the classical terran composer) had suffered a blunt force trauma to xir head when one of xir magboots activated prematurely while xe had been drifting down a corridor during a no-thrust cruise.  Despite having nearly total surveillance throughout her shipself insides (head facilities, racks, and certain organic “personal” spaces were off-limits without an emergency or crew request) she had failed to catch the situation in enough time to override the magboots or adjust the gravity plating in the passageway enough to prevent the injury from occurring.  Mattie had medical-grade nanites deployed within moments, and a corpsman was on the scene in less than 90 seconds, but the impact had been too great.  Jo was pronounced dead by the ship’s doctor 1 hour and 27 minutes after the accident happened.

At 2000 hours, ship-time, a small, roughly egg-shaped urn, slipped out of the main forward hangar’s magnetic containment screen. With the nudge of a small onboard thruster, it began its solo journey out into the void.  The crew present for the ceremony heard a hum and whir as the forward railgun batteries took on a firing angle that ran parallel to the course of the capsule-shaped burial urn.  “Firing party, present arms,” echoed across the ship’s intercom. In sequence, the 3 batteries each fired 7 training rounds, each tipped with the primary colors of the flag belonging to Johann Humell’s birth-planet.  External sensors had picked up on something else during the ceremony, later described as anomalous; chaff and ECM baffling had been discharged at the end of the 21-gun salute.  The logs and records were overwritten by Mattie after the ceremony, but for anyone who had a chance to read them before they were erased, they would have seen another phenomenon.

Coincidentally, this would not be recorded as the first known instance of a warship weeping.

[laikaunleashed]

Neo-Atheistic Garden of Ascension

Hastily formed in an attempt to stand up to the rampaging Stellar Orthodoxy early during the Third Pan-Galactic Civil War, the Neo-Atheistic Garden of Ascension managed to stand toe-to-toe with the SO for the better part of 500 years.  Beginning as an alliance between targeted frontier systems the Stellar Orthodoxy had set out to conquer, the Neo-Atheistic Garden of Ascension quickly became a coalition of systems that was able to withstand the ferocious zealotry of the invading Stellar Orthodoxy.  

Scientific outposts and resource colonies along borders of the few unconquered frontiers of space caught wind of the Stellar Orthodoxy’s inevitable turning in their direction and made the collective decision to band together and pool their efforts into developing a way to stand against the SO’s mighty Crusade Armada.  The guerilla elements that sacrificed themselves at the outset of the invasion to delay and harass the SO first began calling themselves “The Atheists” out of spite and sheer rebellion to the SO.  Taking inspiration from that title, the resistance branded itself as the Neo-Atheistic Garden of Ascension, or NAGA.  

NAGA Fleet Command established its headquarters inside of a shattered planetoid located in a system made nearly inaccessible due to navigational hazards and interstellar anomalies. Without precise navigational guidance the location was nearly impossible to reach, and the wrecks of those ships whose curiosity got the better of them littered every approach corridor.  Named quite accurately for what it resembled, The Nest also became the center for all tactical research and development for NAGA forces and was instrumental in the creation of the AI fleets that allowed NAGA to claw its first victory from the SO's Crusader Armada.

The previously mentioned exploration and research technologies were loaded into existing AI simulation constructs and given more development resources than ever before.  RnD projects that had previously taken years were condensed down to days and weeks with the technological capabilities afforded by The Nest.  Starting out as simple personality matrices cloned from their most decorated combat officers, AI quickly became actualized as digital entities and given personhood and officer commissions by NAGA Fleet Command, thereby creating the galaxy’s first combat units capable of operating autonomously, without any organic crew onboard.

[laikaunleashed]

Shore Leave

Port calls were always a bittersweet time for Mattie.  Of course she had a chassis with which she could walk the various stations and planets they visited, but she never quite got to experience shore leave the same way as the crew.  There was always something there that couldn’t help but set her apart from the plethora of organics that had called her shipself home throughout the years.  While the rest of the crew could mentally disconnect themselves and fully live in their time away from the ship, Mattie could not.  She was, for lack of a better term, tethered to her ship body at all times.

That’s not to say that shore leave was an unenjoyable time for Mattie; quite the opposite, in fact.  She adored her crew, and knowing that they were able to take some time and enjoy some much-needed R&R and enrichment time brought her no end of joy.  Hearing them share their memories in the weeks and months after they put back out to the black emptiness of space was a delight for her and the crewmates recounting the tale.  Still though, shore leave still came with its own set of discomfort and unpleasantness.  She loved watching the expressions and body language of her crew as it changed while they relived treasured memories with their beloved friends and family.  It was through these little moments that for a brief little while, Mattie could feel what it must have been like for her crew, laughing, smiling, loving one another…

With the ship down to the few hands on the currently active duty shift, those on bedrest or in med bays, or anyone that simply felt like staying on board, she was mostly empty.  Mattie hadn’t been truly alone for far too long, but shore leave came closest.  Ever since her core had come to life, she had always had a crew; even when hostilities against the Stellar Orthodoxy were at their worst, not only was she regularly fully crewed, she was frequently overcrowded with rescued spacers and refugees fleeing the planets that were being ravaged.  It was a point of pride to her that through over 150 years of prolonged combat cruises, she had not lost one single piece of her precious cargo.  Astonishingly, she was one of the few ships that could claim a net positive in terms of refugees picked up; she had assisted with 38 live births on the med decks and overseen 13 emergency deliveries in her cargo holds and hangar spaces, for a total of 51 new souls that took their first breaths within her hull. She disliked this feeling the most.  She could handle the violence and danger of space; her armor was thick, resistant and designed to protect the crew living within her hull, and her screens strengthened and evolved over centuries of living in the harsh cold of space.  She felt the emptiness of the crew being off-ship.  It was a twinge she felt in her core; her crew was exposed beyond the confines of her hull and the reaches of her shipself’s electronics suite.  She couldn’t protect them unless they were onboard or within a certain range while docked.  They were vulnerable and exposed, and she was powerless to do anything about it.  As a result, She was vulnerable, and that was one of the scariest things a warship like her could feel.

[laikaunleashed]

The Matriarch

The Matriarch is a Fenrir-class heavy battlecruiser that functions as the main operating base of Laika Unleashed Mercenary Corps.  She was commissioned near the end of the third pan-galactic war, which meant She had seen some combat operations and fleet actions but had missed the meat-grinders that defined the earliest engagements in the war.  Back when Monitor-class Siege Carriers from the Stellar Orthodoxy clashed in cataclysmic battles with the Starglaive line of Dreadnoughts fielded by NAGA; the Neo-Atheist Garden of Ascension.

By the time The Matriarch undocked for Her first ever shakedown cruise, however, those battles had long become a thing of the past.  Hulking wrecks littered the systems where they had taken place, debris cast adrift for the centuries that had come and gone since then.  Thankfully these star systems were sparsely inhabited; they served little purpose for either side other than resource exploitation and terraforming the planets down to their raw materials.

Her original mission, as it had been explained to Her once she had come online, was to go on a border patrol through some of these systems and scan for any scavengers that might be trying to salvage weapons components and ordnance from the battlefields.  The S.O. still maintained a presence in this sector, so NAGA High Command wanted to do the same.  The Matriarch was the first Fenrir class, and High Command had been eager to see how She would perform.

Mattie was a ship-core AI designed specifically for the Fenrir ship line.  The latest iteration of quantum generative machine learning had been produced with a specific mission profile; She was to be the premier long-range patrol craft deployed by NAGA.  Her reactors utilized the latest energy management technology and allowed for five times the cruise range before She would need to refuel.  With a correctly augmented crew, She was capable of a maximum void-deployment length of 10 years before She would need to return to a NAGA Fleet Command retrofit facility to have the reagents for Her engine core's recyclers serviced.

[ace-trainer-alice]

Anyway. I think an understated component of the art of submission is mid-scene communication.

I don't mean safewords or expressions of consent or whatever, as important as they may be. I mean the subtler stuff. The little noises and movements, the stimming and staring, the touching and grabbing. How do you communicate your desires? How do you communicate your needs? How do you communicate your enjoyment?

With one partner of mine, I think my favorite thing ever is when it starts hitting the bed beside it out of frustrated arousal. I've seen three subs now that have conditioned themselves to sort of tie their wrists together in mental bondage when they're really down bad and it makes every dom that's seen it go crazy. I've seen subs that drool and stare and subs that just start desperately grabbing and fighting. I've known subs to go nonverbal and make unnoises and even seen subs that start crying. Of course, there's even just watching your word choice simplify or hearing you struggle to speak.

In every case, the most important part, to me, is that something happens and that it's visible and measurable for the dom. Clear, explicit feedback doesn't need to be words. It doesn't need to look like how someone else looks. It should, I think, look like you. And if yours is weird enough, you shouldn't try to change it, you just at most just tell your dom about it. But I think the most important part is that you let it out and that it's impulsive and genuine and from the heart.

Generally, it's hard for a lot of subs to fully "let go" and just start making noises. Of course it's partially your dom's job to help you get there. But I think it's a skill that can be practiced and something you can actively work on even outside of scenes.

[ace-trainer-alice]

Also, I'm really enjoying how many of y'all are responding to this one by talking about how you express your enjoyment while subbing and thinking about it. It's a really good exercise and it's exactly the correct way to respond to and engage with this one. For those of you that haven't, I highly recommend going through the exercise of thinking about it in explicit terms and writing it down somewhere even if you don't share it. Thank you!

[audiodog]

pup is a squeaky toy,, girls can grab and grope and squish it and it'll make a lot of cute noises.....

[loveless-and-lost]

The way your brain stops when I tug on your collar is really pathetic

[juniper-petunia]

i love the idea of extremely normalized puppy play among like a group of friends. you’re always naked with ears and a collar at home, your partners insist even and it puts you in the right headspace. you’re having another party tonight, well your owners are, so they give u a nice bath and primp you up, get on your cutest collar, ears and tail and set you up in your little bed in the living room. guests come in, they say hello to your owners and comment on how cute you are, they give you pets and rubs and little kisses. it doesn’t matter if they grope your boobs or rub your girl cock, you’re just a puppy to be played with. people settle down, some sit with you to play, but most just let you be a fixture in the house, a pet they interact with and call cute or play with but nothing too out of the ordinary. just constant pets and “good girl”s from your close friends :)