Scarlet Steel

A fifth mech corporation exists, although they are uncommonly seen. Full House, in addition to Local Space Generators, create specialized mechs designed for work in extreme conditions. Their price alone makes them a rare sight, but when work needs to be done in excess of 1,000 degrees, or under thousands of bars of pressure, there’s no other option. - An Idiot’s Guide to Mechs, 3rd edition.

Most of Juno’s damage was superficial. I forgot that a Rhino has a second layer of armor which wasn’t punctured. Juno was never in any real danger, not yet anyway. I still had to do what I did, right? They would have gotten through the second layer eventually.

Exa and I work silently, pulling off plates of armor and setting them out. Even with the punctures, they’re actually fixable. Cutting out the holes, filling the void with liquid armor, and heating it until it solidifies is all it needs. That and hammering out the dents makes up the bulk of the work. Of course the internals need a full check, but I let Exa take care of that. I don’t know the interior like I do with my Hoppy.

After finishing Juno’s mech, I don’t give myself even a moment of rest before resuming work on Hoppy. Her armor still needs to be fixed up.

“What are you going to do when you run out of things to work on?” Exa asks.

I don’t respond, but it’s not long before I’m forced to confront that question. I finish the armor and get it bolted back in place. Hoppy is as good as she’s ever been, and repairs on the Rhino are finished.

I glance over my shoulder to see Exa staring at me. Her arms are crossed, waiting for something.

I quickly look away.

Maybe I can check the internals again? I still haven’t found the source of the camera fault. I head up the ramp and prepare to work.

“Scarlet.” Exa calls.

I sigh loudly and call back. “What?”

“There’s nothing left to work on.”

“The cameras-”

“Were me. I turned them off so you didn’t have to see anything. There’s nothing left to fix, nothing left to work on.”

“There’s always something to work on.” I insist.

“Scarlet, you killed a man.” Exa’s words hit me like a truck. “He was going to die anyway, but you did it. You pulled the trigger. That’s what this job is, that’s what we do. That’s what you signed up for. You need to deal with that, or go home, and I really wish you’d choose the latter.”

“I know.” My voice is quiet, and I doubt she heard me. “I know.” I force myself to repeat a little louder. “I’d be a dummy not to. Just let me keep working, please.”

“Alright.” She relents. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

I climb into Hoppy’s cockpit and begin to frantically mess with the console. I run check after check, desperately trying to distract myself.

Cameras green.

Motor self-check complete.

Cameras green.

Sensor checks green.

Cameras green.

Cameras green.

Cameras green.

Cameras green.

I work until I slip into an uneasy sleep.

My rest brings only a man standing in front of me, a hole in his head and blood running in rivers from the wound. It pools on rusty steel, lapping at my boots. He stares at me, saying nothing, just a sad question on his face.

I hit something hard and my eyes fly open. An echoing scream assaults my ears, fading quickly. 

I’m in Hoppy. Nothing can hurt me in here.

I force myself to take a deep breath and reach out with shaking hands. I grab a canteen and pop the top off, bringing it to my lips. More water gets splashed onto the ground than ends up in my mouth.

“Shit.” I mumble to myself. I need to do something. I reach for the console, only for my stomach to growl loudly. “Right.” That’s something I can do. I reach for my food compartment, only to find it empty. When did I eat the last bar? 

I reluctantly unhook myself from the harness and climb out of the cockpit. The warehouse is thankfully abandoned.

My stomach churns as I head for the airlock into the living area. Please let Exa be anywhere else. I'm not ready to talk to her.

The doors open automatically and I head straight for the kitchen, trying to ignore Exa lounging on the couch. Her eyes dig into me as I reach for the box of food bars.

The box is empty too? No way I ate all of them, and I definitely didn't leave the empty box behind.

“Andromeda, who ate the last bar?” I call out.

“You did.” She replies instantly.

“Shit.” I close the pantry and check the fridge. Fruit is easy, I grab one and force myself to eat.

I lean against the counter and subtly glance over my shoulder. Exa is still looking at me, and I turn back to stare at the wall in front of me.

“I’ve seen that look before. Don’t start drinking, it doesn’t help.” Exa warns.

“I’m not.” I snap back before forcing myself to let out a deep sigh. “I’m just… How long do the nightmares last?” I’m just tired, that’s all.

“Until you talk things through. I’m here, or if you want someone who can’t judge you, Andromeda is about as good a conversationalist as you can hope for from someone non-sentient. Or the first thing Xenia is going to say when she sees you is offering to hear you out.”

“I just need to work.” I insist.

“Then work on your brain. You’ve got a squishy little machine in your skull, fix that.”

“How? And don’t say it’s by talking.”

“It’s by talking and letting time pass, in that order. Everyone does it, even after years of this shit. Staying sane is the hardest part of the job.”

“Fine.” I put down my half eaten food and reluctantly walk towards her. I throw myself backwards onto the couch. “How does this work?”

“Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Bad?” I shrug.

“You need to go deeper than that.” She prods.

“I’m feeling very bad?” I ask.

“Alright. How do you cope with things? When Niel died, you said you ran off to work on Hoppy, right? Then what?”

“And then I finished and Mom called Juno. You have a lot of parts here, I could start on a new mech.”

“That’s a good way to delay your problems, not to fix them.” She says. “What did you expect when you first came here?”

“This, I guess.” I gesture vaguely towards the mech bays.

“You guess? That doesn’t even sound like you’re convincing yourself.”

“I guess I’m not.” I let my head fall back onto the back of the chair. “It’s not like I didn’t know I would have to kill people. I just thought it’d be easy.”

“How’d you get that in your head?”

“Dad did it.”

“What, you think he just went out there and never felt bad about what we did?” Exa asks. “No, nobody’s like that. Well, never mind. Even Juno still feels bad about this kind of stuff, and she’s been doing this for an awfully long time.”

“How do they handle it then?”

“Juno and Elara depend on each other. It’s effective, but if either of them die, I wouldn’t want to be around to see the fallout. Xenia turns to religion, Graff is a bad example, and I don’t know much about Janus.”

“What about Dad?” I whisper. “Mom said he worked on his mech.”

“Only when things got really bad, and only until he calmed down a little.” She says. “No, most of the time he got awfully social. Talked about anything he could think about, to anyone who would listen, and that normally meant me.”

“What about you?” I ask.

“I’m another bad example. You can’t get much further away from a human brain than a software AI. You’ve got millions of years of evolution to deal with, I have 100,000 hours of refining my own mind. But I process, and I re-process, adding a little randomness the second time. It helps get a different perspective.”

“And you just wallow in self-destructive misery.” I say.

“Yeah. That too.” She nods. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, but I wouldn’t call it healthy. All I need is someone to pull me back.”

“Lucky.”

“You could call it that.” She says. “Things are going to get worse, you know that, right? This was about as clear-cut good as this job gets.”

“I’ll have to kill more people.” That statement feels heavier now. It was so easy to assume I’d be fine when I thought about it before fighting.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” I agree. “Not for a while though, right? Juno didn’t want me fighting.”

“Not until she’s sure you can handle it, and that’s assuming she doesn’t send you home.”

“She wouldn’t do that!” I instantly insist. “I’m ok! Really! I’m over it, it’s fine!”

Exa tilts her head back, staring towards the ceiling. “Don’t hide your problems.”

“Right, alright.” Deal with them. “Who do you think they were?”

“It’s easier if you dehumanize them.” She says. “Just a faceless bandit, and that’s it.”

“That’s awful.”

“Would you rather I tell you he was a desperate orphan who fell in with the wrong crowd, and the choice was either join up, or starve? That he sent back every arc he made to support other orphans he grew up with?”

“Did he?” I ask quietly.

“I have no idea, probably not though. Juno and I never went through their files while we were fighting, the AI they had on the ship was crazy. It’s all we could do to keep it from shutting down the mechs. If you really want to ask what kind of person he was, you have to choose what you want to believe. Was he evil and deserved to die? Or a misunderstood saint?”

“I want to know which is real.”

“You can’t. If you can’t deal with that, don’t ask the question in the first place.”

“I’ll try.” The conversation dies for a couple of seconds. “I think I should try to get some sleep. I don’t think I got much.”

“Alright. Do you feel any better?”

“How do I tell?”

“You seem a lot more yourself.” Exa says. “A lot more alive.”

“I guess I feel a little better then.” I stand up. “Thanks for making me talk.”

“Any time. And it gets easier. It won’t feel quite so much like pulling teeth next time.”

“I hope not.” I leave her behind and head upstairs. I walk straight through the door to my room, strip, and fall into bed.

I catch a glimpse of the picture frame on my desk, displaying Mom and Dad standing proudly in front of a pristine mech. Time freezes as I stare back. My mind simultaneously empties and rushes with too many thoughts to count. I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at the two of them, but eventually I’m forced to stand up. I grab the picture and take a closer look.

“Would you be proud of me? Or would you only understand?”

The picture gives no response.

Minutes later I put the frame back down, making sure they’re both facing away from me, and climb back into bed.

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