Scarlet Steel

“I’ve seen it time and time again. Recovery’s the hardest part of being a pilot. Harder than being shot. Harder than shooting someone. It’s trying to live with it that wears pilots down.” - Excerpt from A Mechie’s Memoir.

I get a full night of restless sleep. I don’t have any nightmares, thankfully, but that doesn’t mean I rest well. Between my brief escapes into sleep, I’m left tossing and turning for hours, trying to force my racing brain to go blank.

Of course it doesn't work.

Andromeda’s morning notification never comes, and I eventually get up on my own.

The ship is quiet as I walk downstairs into the living quarters. The only sounds are the hum of the engine echoing through the walls, and my own footsteps. The living room windows have been replaced by endless data streaming across them. Words, binary, even vague colors and shapes stream by far too quickly to comprehend even a single word. In the center of the room sits Exa, staring at the wall.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Offloading my thoughts and re-processing." She says like it explains anything. “Did you sleep well?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“It's just something I have to do occasionally. I've got a few memory leaks related to emotions I can't fix.”

“Why not?”

“Because fixing it shuts down my emotions entirely, and I kind of like those.”

“Sounds like something I would program.” I walk past her and into the kitchen. “You sure you want me to see all that?”

“You're not chipped. If you can follow any of this, you deserve to know my inner thoughts.”

I grab some fruit and step towards the wall of data. The churning colors are nonsense, and I can't read binary. Instead, I pick out a point where words flash by for a single frame and stare. I can pick out singular words, but with no interconnected meaning. I can always guess and mess with her though.

“You're worried about me.”

That pulls a laugh out of her. “You're about four layers too simple with that guess.”

“You're frightened of the future.” I continue guessing. “and you're afraid of how I'll handle it. And you know I won't stop no matter what, and that scares you too.”

“Go on, keep guessing.”

“And you're worried about Mom and Dad. You don’t know whether Dad would have wanted me to do this or not, and you know Mom doesn't. Are you doing them a disservice by letting me be here? Could you even stop me? If you leave me and I die, then what? That terrifies you.”

“There you go Kid, that's how you share your worries.”

“What? No! I was talking about you!”

“Sure you were.”

“Dummy.” I take a seat next to her. “How's everyone doing planetside?”

A screen in front of me shifts, showing a few from a camera peaking over a distant hill. All three mechs are in front of the mine, although only Juno’s Rhino is currently active.

“She switched back to her first mech?” I ask. “When?”

“You were asleep for a while.” Exa says. “Juno despises her backup mech, calls it unlucky. And Graff had to come up to resupply missiles anyway, so she hitched a ride.”

“Have they fought any more?” I ask quietly.

“No. We’ve heard word of more bandits in the system, but they’re staying away for now. I assume they haven’t gotten word of what’s underground yet.”

“Hopefully it stays that way.”

“Yeah.” Exa agrees. “I wouldn’t count on it though. Operations only ever get worse as they go on, not better.”

“We should get down there then.”

“Scarlet, no.” The windows pause for just a moment before the patterns shift. The words are wiped away and shapes dominate the screen. “You’re done, you’re off this mission.”

“I need to do something.” I insist. “I can’t just sit here for a week, I’ll go crazy.”

“You need to relax.” Exa insists.

“No. I’m not just trying to run from my problems, we’re just wasting time I could use practicing. Even if I don't fight, there’s going to be another mission. I need to be getting better.”

“No, and that’s final.”

“Fine. Andromeda! Let me talk with Juno!”

“You’re a child.” Exa instantly turns sour.

“Scarlet?” Juno’s voice fills the room. “Report.”

“I’m feeling better.” I say. “Can you send the dropship up? I’m ready to return to work.”

“I’m deferring that decision to Exa.” Juno replies. “Dropship is available when she gives green.”

“Crap.” I mumble to myself and look to Exa. Complaining to Juno isn’t going to get me anywhere. “Confirmed. That’s all I have.”

“Apollo-1 out.” Juno ends.

How do I get Exa to say yes? Maybe bargaining will work?

“Look, we can remove the weapons if that’s what it takes. I’ll retreat to the dropship when anyone approaches, or I’ll hide in the mine. Heck, we can leave Hoppy here and I’ll use the simulator. I just don’t want to waste time.”

“You really need to learn to relax.”

“I relax by working.”

“Look, this isn’t just about you.” Exa says. “I need time too.”

“Do you want to talk then?” I ask earnestly. If I can help her get better faster, that’ll work.

“Already did.” She answers simply.

“What? With who?”

“Andromeda. Like I said, she’s about as good a conversationalist as you could hope for. I just need to process everything for a second time.”

“Can’t you process everything on the dropship?” I ask.

“The visual component is important. I don’t use randomness to modify my thought patterns, but reading from the screens forces some in when needed."

“There are screens in the dropship.”

“Not enough resolution, and that means not enough bandwidth. I’d be stuck in the pilot's chair for a week while my thoughts rush by. Give me 24 hours.”

“And then we can go down?.”

“And then we can discuss it further. That’s the best you’re going to get from me.”

“Fine.” I need to figure out what to do then. How the heck do I spend time with nothing to work on? I glance around the room and my eyes settle in the corner. “How do you work out?”

“Andromeda, help her out.”

“Order confirmed.” A flat portion of the wall slides open, and one of Andromeda’s plain bodies steps out. She heads directly to the small exercise area, and I rush to join her. “Exercising is more dangerous than you would expect. Focus on doing things correctly, not trying to push yourself further than you can handle and doing things wrong. Always make sure your form is perfect.”

“Just like piloting,” I note.

“You could think about it in those terms if it helps.”

I work under Andromeda’s close watch for as long as I can, until I can’t physically lift the weights anymore. I end up drenched in sweat, sore, and feeling great. It’s not nearly as good as the exhaustion after working on a mech, but it’s still really nice. I feel better than I have in a while.

“Thank you.” I say earnestly.

“Just inform me when you want to exercise again.” Andromeda says. “Juno and Graff lift together daily, I’m certain they would be willing to include you. In the kitchen are protein pills, I encourage you to take one to reduce soreness.”

“Alright, I will.” That helped pass the time, but now what? I have access to the entire ship, but that doesn’t give me an obvious answer. I can’t imagine they’d be alright with me taking apart the mechs in the warehouse and taking a look at their insides, or poking around the ship’s internals. What I need is a new project.

“Exa, can I hook my laptop up to the holographic table?”

“Sure, I got it.” The table flares to life, with my desktop being projected above the surface. “What’s your plan?”

“What are the requirements for a project mech, one I could take into the ring with Graff and Janus?”

“Three ton max weight before weaponry, and weapon options are standardized. One inch of armor around your cockpit. Everything past that is up to you.”

“Excellent. And what are the arenas like?” I ask.

“Dynamic. You need a mech that can clear boulders.”

“Perfect.” Glad I’m not forced to build a mech on treads or wheels just for the weight savings. I poke at the holographic screen, which doesn’t react at all to me. “Uh, how does this thing work?”

“It’s easier if you’re chipped, but without a brain interface it’s gesture-based. Just pinch to click.”

I reach out and pull up my design software. It’s natively compatible with holographic interfaces, and I open up something familiar to play with, Hoppy’s blueprints. I can just toss around parts in three dimensional space, rotate the entire thing with a single movement, even scale parts at will. This is convenient, way nicer than my broken laptop screen.

“I found a few portable projectors, but could never get one working. Do you think if we stopped by a junkyard, you could help fix one up for me?”

“Scarlet, you have a job now. After this you can just buy a new one.”

“Oh, right.” I kind of forgot I was getting paid for all this. “I don’t know, that feels weird. I mean, yeah, it sounds convenient to just buy one. But if I can fix up something that nobody else is ever going to use, I should, right? That stuff is never going to get recycled.”

“Sure, but there’s a reason for that.” She insists. “You can’t repair everything. Get a new one, a rugged one that’ll last, and just keep it for the next few decades. At some point your own time is more valuable than whatever you’re trying to fix.”

“Sure, but I need that money to go towards another mech. And it’s a good chance to learn more.”

“Fine. If we stop by a planet with a junkyard and have a few days to kill, you can look. But junkyard planets are rare, the nearest one is your home, a week and a half away. Instead, we could stop by a space station in basically any system and pick one up.”

“Yeah, alright.” If it’s out of the way I can’t complain. Plus it’d take a day or two to find the parts at best, and I don’t want to force everyone else to wait. Is this why nobody bothered to scrap most of the junkyard? It just takes too much time? That sucks.

Planning a new mech does a great job at consuming time. The day disappears in a blur of testing and refining. I end up with a rough plan, smashing parts from different mechs together to combine their strengths. There’s a lot of hand waving, but I’m sure I can improvise braces and connections while I’m building it. It’s going to be even harder than creating Hoppy, but I should be able to do it in just a few months, instead of the years it took to make my first mech.

I glance over my shoulder every once in a while and watch Exa’s screens. Over the course of the day her thoughts slowly settle. The words, the shapes and colors, begin to move slower across the screens, although still not nearly slow enough for me to learn anything.

“Are you finishing up?” I ask.

“Hardly. I’m working on the big thoughts now.” She says. “I’m not going to be done tonight. Get some sleep.”

“Alright. Wake me up if anything happens planetside. And tell me as soon as you’re done.”

“I will.” She promises.