Scarlet Steel

Exa joins me on my way to Hoppy.

“Why does she never ask your opinion?” I ask.

“Elara takes care of Xenia and I, and Janus is a part of both groups.” She answers. “Saves a little time, and I’ll butt in if I need to. Same thing we do during an operation.”

“Ok, good.” I step in front of Hoppy and take her in. Her weapons systems are under her armor, it’s going to take a little work to get her ready. I shove a few tools into my pockets and hook my arm around a hardpoint. “I’ll get to work here if you get the capacitors."

“Sure.”

Gravity cuts out, and still my stomach threatens to expel everything I’ve ever eaten. I hold on to my hardpoint for a minute with my eyes closed while my body calms down. As soon as I can move, I start pulling off armor and pushing them towards the ground, letting the floor magnetize them in place.

While I work, Exa makes a couple trips into the ceiling storage area, bringing out a few large pieces that should fit perfectly inside the weapon compartment.

“You’re getting better at this.” Exa notes. “Zero g repairs are a good skill to learn.”

“When am I ever going to use it?” I reach in and start disconnecting wires.

“If this ship gets damaged and the gravity generator is disabled. If all of us get taken out from the Digital, it could end up being just you and Graff to get us out of here. He can drive, and leave you to fix the engine.”

“Yeah I think we’d die.” I shrug. “I don’t know what you’d expect me to do if a bullet ripped through the engine. Especially if more are coming.”

“Or if we’re stuck in Local Space. We’ve escaped but can’t slow down.”

“Then I have time to learn.” I remove a few bolts and slowly slide the entire weapon out and towards Exa. It’s not much shorter than I am, but weighs several times more. We’d need a crane system to remove it in full gravity.

Exa has no problem catching it, and gently pushes it into the air, towards storage. I, on the other hand, float over to the capacitors and move them towards the cavity.

“How hard would it be to build a portable jetpack?” I don’t bother yelling, she can hear me.

“Easy. A small one that won’t send you flailing in circles? You’re better off ordering something custom made.”

“Ugh, I’ll just deal with it.” It takes a minute to get the capacitors into the cavity, only to realize that the plug to wire it into Hoppy is on the other side. There’s not much space left, and reaching into a loose compartment in zero g is a good way to lose an arm. This’ll be a good test at least.

I bolt the entire thing down and pull out my phone. With just a few taps, a small compartment at the back of Hoppy opens up. My phone displays the point of view of my drone as it scuttles out and along Hoppy’s chassis. The suction cups at the end of two legs have no problem allowing the bot to stick to Hoppy’s armor.

Exa’s movement system works great, essentially flawlessly. I just guide the bot where I want it to go, and it figures out the foot placements to make it happen. I position it behind the capacitor and find the wire. From there, I take manual control of two of the arms, grab the plug, and slot it in.

It works perfectly! A single button sends the bot scuttling back to its hidden compartment.

“Ready to test?” Exa asks.

“Yeah.” I push myself off the hull, spring off the wall, and only mostly miss trying to jump into the cockpit. I barely manage to get my fingers hooked around the edge to stop myself before I go spinning off into the warehouse.

I pull myself over the edge, quickly hook myself into the harness, and follow through the startup sequence. A minute later she starts humming quietly. Exa pulls up a battery reader on the screen, which shows the capacitor filling up without issue.

“Good.” Exa says. “Seems to be working. I’m going to discharge it into the ship, stay inside.”

“Got it.” After only a second, the capacitor goes flat.

“Excellent. You can turn her off.”

I flick a single switch and she goes quiet.

“I’m not going to get zapped if I climb out, am I?”

“Probably not.” Exa reassures me.

“That’s good enough for me.” I disconnect myself from the harness, and push myself backwards, slowly floating out of the cockpit. “Any other work while we have her open?”

“I need to tweak the life support systems, but nothing else.”

“I’ll get-”

“Scarlet,” Andromeda interrupts me, “you have one waiting message.”

“You can take care of it!” I quickly tell Exa and pull out my phone. I completely miss hitting the wall, and go drifting off towards the center of the warehouse, but who cares? I pull up my Q line and find a single letter waiting for me.

Hey, it’s Tera, but you probably know that. It’s awkward to send a message during a- while we’re eating. Uh, yeah! Hope you get this, and I hope you respond! Stupid. I should just scrap

I’m not sure she meant to send the last part. I’m guessing writing with a brain implant is difficult?

“Exa!” I call. “What do I say?”

“No identifying information about our op. You can say we’re going on one, but nothing more. And I’m going to fudge the sent date.”

“Ok, but what do I write?”

“Is she talking to me? Or you?”

“Me.” I quietly admit. Ugh, I’m on my own.

I stare at the blank screen for minutes on end, until I float to the other side of the room and gently bounce against Juno’s Rhino. Fuck it, I just need to write something.

Hey! Finally got your message. Hopefully this gets back to you a little faster than yours got to me. I had to ask Andromeda, our ship’s AI, to notify me as soon as it arrived so I could stop checking every hour. That probably sounds really lame, ignore me.

We’re heading out on a mission tomorrow. Exa says I’m not allowed to give details, but we have a solid plan and I’m not going to be in that much danger. I’ll send another message when I get back to the ship. 24 hours probably? Maybe a little more?

Things have been good here, just a lot of training, and a little practice with my gun. I’m the worst shot in existence, but I’m pretty good in Hoppy, so that doesn’t matter. Oh! Spidey works great by the way. We installed a little compartment for her to hide in, so she’s always in the mech. I was swapping out a weapon for an extra capacitor and forgot to plug it in, and Spidey managed! Sure, Exa’s pathfinding algorithm did most of the work, but I’ve gotten really good at ignoring how much she does.

So, yeah! Things have been pretty boring here. Hope your job hasn’t been too bad, and I hope you’ve been working on some interesting projects. Oh, might as well ask while I can. I’ve been working on a project mech, two of my co-pilots go to fight rings sometimes, and I’m making something to join them with. I’m attaching my plans to this message if you want to look it over and tell me what you think.

I’ll send another message soon! I don’t know how to end a letter.

I let out a breath and read over my message a few times. Is this too much to send? Is it not enough? I only get to talk to her once a month, sending as much as possible only makes sense. I don’t know what else I could talk about though?

“Exa, is this fine?” I kick off the floor to turn towards her. She’s already reattached the armor and is just leaning against the wall.

“You’re overthinking it.”

“Ok, yeah, probably. But is it fine?”

“Just hit the send button.” She shakes her head.

I hover my thumb over the button, but can’t force myself to press it. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and am still frozen in fear.

“You do it.” I toss my phone in Exa’s direction, who has to hop off the ground and catch it, using her internal jets to bring her back to the floor.

“Scarlet, I’m in your phone. You don’t have to throw it.” She has the good sense to not throw the phone back at least.

“Right.” I take another breath. “Did you send it?”

“I did.”

“Ugh!” My stupid, stupid brain finally thinks of dozens of more things I could have added and better ways to reword what I wrote. I sounded dumb in literally every sentence, and way too desperate. “You can’t undo it, can you?”

“Nope.”

“Fuck.” I close my eyes and resign myself to floating through the air.

“Didn’t think you’d be the type to get this dramatic over a crush.”

“It’s not a crush!” I quickly defend myself. “She’s just really cool and I don’t want to mess this up!”

“Yeah. That’s what a crush is.”

“No! A crush is when I want to kiss her.”

“And do you?”

I don’t even need to say anything, the answer’s obvious. Who wouldn’t want to kiss someone as smart and cute as her? Anyone would. I make the mistake of glancing at Exa and know she’s about to say something stupid.

“You get off your homeworld, and the first girl you meet…”

“Uh-huh, I bet it's very funny.” I roll my eyes with enough force that I'm pretty sure it affects my angular momentum. “And it wasn't the first girl! You didn't see me crushing on the woman who helped with my suit!”

“Right, second girl, silly me.”

“Yeah, that's much more reasonable.” I insist.

“I didn't say it wasn't.” She reminds me. “You want to come down? Or are you going to float up there the whole day?”

I just shrug.

“Either kick off the ceiling or I’m reactivating gravity with you up there.”

“Ugh.” I glance upwards and find the ceiling slowly approaching. I reach out, catch myself, and push off with as much force as I can muster. I do my best to get my feet beneath me, and the moment I land, stupid gravity sends me sprawling on the floor. “Was my message as stupid as I think it was?”

“What, are you embarrassed that you were… talking to her? Making the most of your limited communication?”

“I don’t know!” I moan.

“You can worry about it in a month when you get her response. Until then, there’s literally nothing you can do, and if you keep being miserable, I’m going to send a follow up message telling her all your embarrassing childhood stories.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Dear Tera, it’s Exa. Scarlet used to fall asleep to me telling her how random objects work. Sometimes, she’d fake taking back-to-back naps just to listen, waking up the moment I stopped talking, and somehow didn’t think to just ask me to explain things.”

“Alright! Alright, I’m up!” I scramble to my feet. “Asshole.”

“Sure am.” She turns around and heads towards the living room. “Want a real dinner before the op? Xenia’s cooking.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”