Scarlet Steel

Old Earth Designs’ most popular scout mech, the Hopper, is a common sight in budget-conscious mercenary groups and defense forces stationed in outposts. A five ton mech with two legs and a chassis with .50 cal machine guns bolted on both sides, the Hopper meets the standard for what a mech is, and nothing more. Despite its simplicity, or maybe even because of it, owners often heavily customize their Hoppers to fit their needs. - An Idiot’s Guide to Mechs, 3rd edition.

I wake up and get to work, even before Mom is up. If whoever stripped this mech missed so much, there could be more they missed, more I can bring home. I climb into the chassis and begin removing bolts, pushing aside random panels and revealing the interior. They didn’t remove anything behind any of these panels! I assumed because they stripped out the computer system they would have taken out everything else! But no!

“Find anything good?”

“Ow!” I jump at Mom’s sudden voice and slam my head on an edge with a dull thud.

“Are you ok?” Mom rushes inside the mech with me, reaching out to help me out of the compartment I was exploring.

“I’m ok.” I groan, pressing on my new injury. I remove one hand and look at it. Thankfully I must not have hit a sharp edge, there’s no blood.

“Hey, take a look at me real quick.” I open my eyes and wipe away the budding tears. Mom has a single finger held up in front of me. “Watch my finger.”

Mom traces her finger through the air, and despite my pain, I follow it.

“Ok good. How do you feel?”

“In pain.” I answer.

“And what happened?”

“I hit my head.”

“Where?” She asks.

“There’s probably a dent there.” I point at the compartment I opened up.

“Ok good. Sorry, I was just making sure you don’t have a concussion.” Mom pulls me into her, gently holding my head. “Is the pain fading?”

“Mm-hmm.” I nod.

“Good. Well, did you find anything before I interrupted you?”

“Some sensors. I always need more. I have a bad habit of wiring them up backwards and frying them.”

“I almost did that to Exa once.” Mom says.

“What?” I pull back out of her arms, my pain entirely forgotten.

“Yeah. I was working on refitting your dad’s mech. The computer systems took a hit. They didn’t know I wasn’t done and hadn’t had a chance to do checks. Well, when a scramble alarm went off in the middle of the night, he hopped right in and plugged her holo in. I sprinted to the garage trying to warn them the mech wasn’t ready, and arrived just as she got connected. I thought I killed her.”

“What happened?”

“Two wires were shorted without me realizing. So when power got turned on, her data lines were connected directly to the mech’s power lines. I just got lucky that another board burnt out before Exa did. I put in fuses on every single line after that.”

“What’s it like being a mechie?” I ask and head back into the mech’s internals.

“It’s a mixed bag. The mechs are great. I swear some of them are cursed though. Parts breaking randomly, bolts falling out in the middle of a firefight. Those are the most fun to work on. I started taking pictures of every piece of work I did on a Rhino I was working on. A screw I have proof that I put in just disappeared. The circuit board wobbled, cutting through a wire. That wire touched the mech’s shell, pumping the entirety of the Photon Lock Shield through the internals. Every single piece of electronics had to be stripped out and replaced.”

“Where did the screw go?”

“No idea! It was a closed compartment. No way in, no way out. The screw wasn’t in there. Unless some dormant planetary quantum was secretly trying to screw over a training exercise, it was just cursed.”

“That sounds really fun! What do you mean it’s mixed?”

“Well, like I said, pilots are wired up all wrong. They all have their little quirks about how they like things being done, and if you don’t do something perfectly the way they want, they complain like the biggest babies you’ve ever seen. I ended up working on them just as much as the mechs. Don’t just become someone on call for any job. Find a single pilot and work with just them. My life got so much easier after I fell in with your dad and Exa.”

“If things were so great, then why did you stop working on them?”

“Your grandparents got sick. Someone needed to come take care of them. We both quit our jobs with a military and moved halfway across the Spur. I settled in here, and your dad found Juno, a little mech band that’s just a few systems away. Turns out I liked the peace and quiet here. By the time they passed, you were in the picture.”

“I didn’t know I met my grandparents.”

“Yep. Both of them held on until you were born. We were a downright normal family for close to a year. Your dad and Exa came home to help when I got too big, and stuck with us for a long time after you were born.”

“Exa too?”

“Yeah, and she adored you. She told me once it felt like she got a sister. To be fair, she was kind of right. The two of you were inseparable from day one. Of course neither of them could sit still forever, and our savings couldn’t last forever either. Juno paid well, kept us comfortable, but she doesn’t run a charity. Your dad and Exa could have worked in the recycling plant of course, but wouldn’t be happy here. And none of us would be happy if I worked while they stayed home with you. So I stayed with you, and the two of them went back to work.”

I focus on disconnecting everything I can reach and passing them to Mom. Turns out this is way easier with two people. I pass her enough to fill up our backpacks with parts and smaller bits of metal before climbing out.

I rest against the side of the mech and pull out my tablet. Mom watches over my shoulder as I pull up my blueprints. Every part is color coded, blue for working, black for missing, red for broken, and orange for not vital.

“You’ve put a lot of her back together.” Mom says.

“How does it compare to what you worked on?” I ask.

“It’s uh, not exactly equivalent to what I used to do. I’ve rarely had to put a mech back together with parts not designed for it. If that thing rolled into my shop and anyone other than you tried to work on it, I’d tell them it was unrepairable. But I don’t know anyone who I’d trust more to fix up that thing.”

I beam at her praise.

“So, how do you want to get this thing home?” Mom walks over to the electromagnetic spring.

“Very slowly. This is my least favorite part.” I finish marking off everything in my tablet and grab my backpack. Inside I have a few large, inflatable wheels with a universal mounting mechanism above it. It’s easy to strap a few to the bendy spring. I connect a rope to the front mourning mechanism and connect the other end to my backpack. All that’s left to do is to attach the battery and let the spring straighten out. “Can you just keep it vertical? Normally I’d add more wheels, but it’s too thin.”

“Sure.”

The two of us set off once again, but it’s very slow going. The weight isn’t even the biggest problem, it’s just so long! I have to make wide turns around even small obstacles. At least Mom is doing a good job at keeping it upright.

Mom makes sure that I stay hydrated throughout the entire day, and even forces me to take breaks a few times to let her pull. I don’t exactly have the energy to complain.

We work all through the day, and barely say anything to each other before stopping for bed under the stars once again. We’re both just too tired.

It’s only half way through the second day of work that we make it to Hoppy. She’s exactly how I left her.

“Do you want to get this installed?” Despite Mom asking, she collapses onto the nearest makeshift chair and works to wipe the sweat off of her face.

“Not yet.” I glance behind Hoppy where her legs lay on a tarp, entirely dismantled. “I still need to run tests on all the parts, and the engine needs to be working first.”

“Sounds good.” She reaches into her backpack for yet another container of water. “At least once you get Hoppy working you can just walk over and pick up any armor you need.”

“I can’t wait.” I open up my backpack and spread my new parts across a table. I have a small test bench, and I start plugging in and testing sensors.

“So what’s the biggest thing you’ve ever dragged home?” Mom asks.

“An engine block. It took eight weekends to drag it back.” I answer. “If it cracks I’m not rebuilding her.”

“If it does, we’ll rent a ship to pick one up.”

“We could have done that the whole time?” I yell.

“Do you really want it to be that easy?”

“Yes! I had to fix up an entire wagon to bring it back!”

“And was that good experience?” She asks.

I don’t respond. I just focus on testing components. Impact sensors, temperature readers, networking receivers and transceivers to account for potential damage, and so much more. 

Working through the entire backpack takes hours. Sensor after sensor after sensor. A lot of them even work right away, or with very minor repairs. Dropping the mech from a few hundred feet definitely isn’t good for anything inside it, but these pieces are designed to hold up in extreme situations. Sometimes it’s just their backup systems still running and the primary sensors are dead, but that’s fine! Working is good enough for now.

Mom spends the hours with my tablet, closely inspecting Hoppy. She has to interrupt me to ask questions almost constantly.

“You have a brace marked in green here on your tablet, but I don’t see it in the engine compartment.”

“Huh?” I look back. She’s pointing at a brace that I cut off that connects to some tubing. “Oh, that’s a tube from an Aphid, the size is different and the brace wouldn’t fit. I reinforced the connections instead. It should work.”

“As long as it doesn’t buckle.” She reminds me. “The engine has shock absorbers, if the mech falls on its side, the engine’s going to shift.”

“Crap.” I mumble under my breath. It can’t survive lateral force like that. “Mark it yellow. I’ll weld a cage around it.”

“Done. You’re also missing a transformer you marked green.”

“I bypassed it. Newer parts run at a higher voltage naturally, and I just installed smaller transformers in front of any device that needs it.”

“And the missing CO2 scrubbers? Actually, the entire air conditioning system.”

“The chassis isn’t air tight anyway. I’ll just put a few holes in the armor.”

“You’re just going to make more work for yourself in the future.”

“That’s fine! I just want to get it running so I can walk around and carry big parts.”

“Uh-huh. And the wiring for the electrical system?” She takes in a rats nest of wires behind the computer system.

“Please, just trust me it works and don’t touch anything.” I beg. “I’m using parts from three different mechs, each running a proprietary OS. I don’t even know how it’s all working together, and I don’t think I can do it again.”

“Got it. You have the live wire hooked up to the negative terminal on one of your antimatter suspension tubes.”

“Oh, no, I just ran out of black wire. If you trace it back, it pulls off the 12 volt line.”

“Uh-huh. And the black wire going to the positive terminal?”

“I ran out of red wire.”

She continues to ask about every single makeshift fix I’ve memorized, but forgot to write down. Exa always- Take a breath. I’m ok. She would always get mad when I didn’t write everything down, I just never learned.

When I finish testing the sensors, I take the ones that work flawlessly and climb into Hoppy’s chassis. Even in here, when I’m contorting my body to fit into tiny crevices, desperately trying to get bolts lined up, pulling wires through holes that are already packed, Mom still asks for clarifications about my mech. Throughout the day, she does find a few genuine mistakes that need to be corrected, but for the most part she’s just amused by my answers.

We work until the sun goes down and sleep under the stars for a third night. I wake up early to get a little more work done, but when Mom wakes up, she wants to head home.

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