Bitch Devourer Ch. 01

Author's Note: Heya! This is a combination of two microfics I wrote spontaneously, the first part as a silly joke on the title, that sort of developed into a full story, Ch. 02 on here is a proper short story and a proper hardcore one too, so if you like this you should LOVE that <3

CW: combat drugs and a failed suicide mission.

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The defeated Cavalier was kneeling in the damp grasses, warmed by the fires of her smoking bit of Cavalry, 3rd Mechanised Yeoman of the Lord Blackford's 4th Foot. Now the severed limb of flesh that wouldn't yet die. Don't they remember they lost 50 years ago?

She twisted her bound-up wrists, wrapped in the torn cabling of her own cockpit, from which she'd been tossed only a few moments ago. The Bitch who'd done it loomed over. "Lookin' a little faint there, Empire. Ya need water? I prefer my takes properly wetted."

"Ahh, no-- no Sir. I'm-- okay, Sir," the Cavalier choked.

"Ya sure?" The Bitch bowed low, pressed their cheek against the Cavalier's own from over her shoulder. "You put up a dozen hells of a fight."

"Sorry Sir," she muttered quickly and faintly, terrified of causing offence.

The Bitch blessed her with a hollow sympathy, "Why're you apologising? It was good! Ya just might be worth something." To whom, was all the Cavalier could think. Maybe if it was a Defector Tribunal -- she was young, unbloodied -- but if it was them.

The Bitch glanced back at the wreck, which still crackled with munition cook-off. The acrid stench of unfired phosphate. "But ya seem pretty nervous without your shell, why's that?"

Did the Bitch have to draw this out? The Cavalier knew what they did, and was being forced to admit it. "Uhh-- um, Sir. Just that-- just that you're--"

"The Bitch Devourer, I know." They tugged a knife through the Cavalier's hairband, pulled a hand through loose coils of ginger and slowly squeezed. "Am I scaring you, Empire?"

She shuddered, falling forward only to be caught and gently raised back. "Sir-- Ahh-- No-- I mean... YES. SIR. Just that everyone says--"

"--What do they say?"

"Everyone says-- that you eat the girls you capture, Sir." Her eyes shut tight, like she couldn't be hurt by what she couldn't see. The Bitch pulled her head back and breathed on her neck, and laughed. It was slow, and savouring.

Cavaliers barely knew who they were killing down here, didn't care -- rank-and-file believing anything when they found themselves losing and command nobility refusing to learn why.

They knelt down. Of all the rumours to get twisted in transmission, this was their favourite, always an emphasis on the wrong word. "Oh. Oh, I do." They pressed a knee deep, spreading the Cavalier apart, taking her struggling hands up for a kiss. "Very, very particular parts."

She squealed, terrified. But the Devourer knew -- as always -- the bitch would be squealing a different kind later.

---

Another smouldering heap of scrap -- spinal armature broken over a dead nation's border wall. The Devourer dragged a laser cutter across the hatch, over the weld that had sealed it shut, because the ennobled cunts had sent her back in a One-Shot.

It was easy to recruit the poor fucker stuck in one of these -- if you got them out in time. They dropped perpendicular into her lap, grabbed the injector cord messily stapled into her skull, pressed her revolver they'd borrowed last time to it, and--

BLAM. The Devourer wiped their lips. It was not the kind of milky, white spurt they preferred. And even a drop was fucking dangerous.

They tore the head-mounted display off, she was repeating herself endlessly, "Fuck fuck fuck. No surrender. Fuck. Won't surrender. Fffuck. No-- no..."

Her pupils were blooming at the overdose. It was supposed to kill her but right now was just fucking her brains out harder than they had. They hauled the limp Cavalier out -- sheltered from the rain under her Cavalry's worthless, sheet-metal armour.

"No, no... I-- Fuck." The Cavalier's eyes kept darting to their own -- a dim but obvious recognition. And not scared, but annoyed. "Fuck, fffuck, fuck-fuck-fuck."

The Devourer tore at a sleeve and turned the inside of her elbow up, searching for a hosepipe to stab into. "You cussing me out, Empire? Keep doing it."

(Combat Stabiliser -- or Moll, or Cavalier Chocolate if you were an asshole. They pump you with 5mg, you focus; make it 20mg, you agree; make it 50mg, you obey.)

"You fucking cunt bitch." She had four times that at minimum, she couldn't help but comply with the Devourer's vulgar command. "Sir," she spat.

They tried joking to calm their nerves as the laser-guide lined up the massive fuck-off needle. "Cunt devourer, technically. Least in most cases."

The Cavalier yelped as it slipped in -- the Devourer hitting a switch that would gently regulate an antagonist into her bloodstream for the next four minutes. She wouldn't die, not yet. That wasn't the Devourer's choice, much as they wished it was.

"Fuck you -- dumb, wetted-trench-eating punker scum." She'd ran away, from safety and a warm, occupied bed -- fled in a half-assembled scout without its bioident to lock her out. "They want me dead, because you didn't kill me -- Sir."

It was a humiliating downgrade for someone of a noble, if lesser, cadre. A clear warning to a thinning crop of loyal pilots, what would happen if you let yourself be spared. The Devourer was blessed when they'd stopped being able to afford stuffing them with poorly-shaped explosive charges.

"But-- but, but, guessing you'd rather I hadn't made that a simpler scenario." Venous Dispersal at 25%. They held her steady, flashed a light to check for changing pupillary response. "Hey, Empire-- you come from an agri-world, yeah?"

"Yes-- fuck off, Sir." Was she still following that order, or just this mad? It's always both.

"Bleat for me -- like a good, remnant loyalist sheep." Well, she was mad now -- her lips quivering in a deliciously spiteful, reverous manner. Like when she'd returned their 'nomenfavour.'

"Maaaa... Sir." she bleated, like a good-- loyal-- little sheep. The Cavalier caught her mouth with an unrestrained hand, maybe blushing would make the serum cycle quicker. It was good she hadn't realised the lacking bondage till now.

"You're ordered not to escape -- trust me, it wouldn't be pleasant," they said, tapping the antagoniser. Dispersal at 50%. "And stop saying sir."

"Oh, because you'd know what's pleasant." Her legs weren't shaking, for rare, bad reasons, anymore -- nerves chemically subdued. "Ah fuck. This looks bad on my review, doesn't it? On if you don't blow my fucking head off."

The Devourer mused; she wasn't the first one to try it, she was just the first to do it properly. "Makes you look-- less malicious, more dumb."

She huffed, it was a bitter comedy. "Better or worse to be nobility? There is the oblige, y'know." The Cavalier was supposed to at least try escaping, and had half-assedly a dozen times till she'd been tied down with soft ropes. 75%.

"No one else is piloting your Heirloom." 3rd Yeoman, 4th Foot. Five generations, and lots of upgrading in that time. Everything in that fucker was bioidented. She had to pilot it. Or it was more scrap than it already was. "The rain's stopping, we should go."

She hesitated. "Fuck-- not yet." The moll's effect was fading, and that hadn't been a command. Besides, her legs had been locked in a death trap for three days.

"I can carry you -- easily -- if that's the issue." They stared at the digital metre, seconds away from ticking off. The Cavalier looked up at them, nervously, in the pause. "And they're not going to kill you."

"Yeah, well fuck you, how should I know?" It was impressive, how dumb they made these ones. Suppose you had to be, to fight for such losers. 100%. They tossed the injector into the dirt, that was a third-generation survivor's problems, not theirs. "I come from an agri-world, you did not. This shit's still gonna be wet for an hour-- and so am I."

The Devourer smiled. This Empire was worth saving. If she fucking listened this time. And if the One-Shot hadn't fucked her legs up, they would.

"So, suck my fucking cock, and teach me your fucking name again-- Bitch."