Scarlet Steel

I remove another bolt, and another armor plate comes with it. I reach in to disconnect a few wires and loosen a few screws. The life support system comes free, but it’s caught behind a section of the engine, because of course it is! I’m going to have to dismantle half this thing just to swap out the life support system with something more optimized for our expected temperatures.

“Can we just scrap all of these?” I call out to Exa. “Just replace all of these with Old Earth Designs mechs. At least those things are put together sensibly.”

“Their only missile mech is a behemoth.” Her head pops out of the inside of Graff’s Halberd next to me. “Even if it could fit inside, the dropship can only comfortably carry fifty tons, and about thirty-five at full speed. And which mech can work as a hacking mech?”

“Then let's stop working on contested zones. Go somewhere without regulations and let me fix these stupid things. I’ll bolt a server onto a White Lie and call it a day. Improve the legs of a Skipper and I can attach a few missile silos.”

“Juno won’t go for that.” Exa disappears back into the mechs internals.

“Yeah, yeah.” I think I’d be less grumpy if I got more sleep. “I miss making Hoppy.”

“Oh yeah?” She calls back.

“I’m just doing the same thing over and over here. There’s no more problems to solve. Just fix the armor. Change the oil. Configure the life support systems. Repair internal damage.”

“Welcome to being a mechie.”

“What did they all do before me?” I ask.

“Fix it themselves. Janus is a good mechie, but he’s slow. Niel was…”

“Mom said he was awful. She had to fix his mistakes all the time.”

“I was trying to find a nicer way to say it.” Exa laughs. “But yeah. Let’s just say it’s a good thing you took after Lyra. Juno’s good, but Elara can’t exactly hold a wrench. Graff cuts corners, and Xenia’s fine as long as someone’s checking her work. She makes some stupid mistakes sometimes.”

“Andromeda doesn’t work on them?”

“She’s useless if things aren’t textbook.”

“Right.” I should have been able to guess that. Sentience is probably pretty important for being able to properly adapt to situations. “When I first arrived, she didn’t even realize my mech was a Hopper. When I docked she just announced error secure.”

“To be fair, it took me a few seconds to realize it was a Hopper too.”

“It wasn’t that bad!”

“Oh no, you don’t get to pretend like she wasn’t an abomination.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. I'd like to see anyone else do better.”

“I'm not saying she wasn't impressive. It's just that the most impressive thing was that she didn't burst into an electrical fire.”

“Guess I did a good job of cleaning the interior.” That's a relief. “I burnt up the only complete computer system I ever found.”

Exa doesn't respond, but I can feel her shaking her head.

I finish the Rhino in silence and move on to the next mech. I get that one mostly dismantled by the time my phone vibrates in my pocket.

“Ugh.” I set this timer for a reason. I'm already exhausted, I need to sleep. But I'm so close to finishing. “Exa, can you-”

“I got it. Get some sleep.”

“Thanks.”

A dinner bar and water is already waiting on our workshop table. I wipe my hands on my overalls, leaving grease stains behind, and quickly finish my food.

I glance at Hoppy and a small pit wells up in my stomach. I've slept in her so many times, but the dropship pilot’s seat is more comfortable. That's the only reason I'm sleeping there.

The next few days disappear in a flurry of work. Over that time I give myself exactly one break.

“Scarlet, you have two waiting messages.” Andromeda interrupts me. 

I drop everything and grab my phone. I start with Mom’s message as always. Right at the top of her message is an attached image. Ugh, if she sent something this big through, that’d explain why it took so long to arrive. I can’t be mad though. It’s so nice to see her. 

The photo is of her driving, cresting a scrap pile. The biggest smile I’ve seen in years sits on her face. I can’t believe she already has that car running again. How did she even take this picture? It’s from slightly above her. She must be using my old drone! I miss that thing. A new one to help scout would probably be a good idea.

To any quantums handling this message,

Please forgive me for attaching a photo. I know this isn’t what the network is designed for, and I know you’re already overworked, but I really believe my daughter needs to see a little bit of home. She’s too proud to admit how homesick she’s feeling.

And to you, dearest Scarlet,

If the image delayed this arrival by as much as I think it will, this should be arriving right around the six month anniversary since your departure. If someone stripped the photo, it could be sooner.

I got the car running. I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear how much your drone helped. Well, to an extent. I don’t understand how you managed to fly this thing all day. I was impressed I lasted five minutes in your headset before feeling sick. It was bad enough I had to go lay down! Although I guess you need an iron stomach to pilot anyway. You’re just made of tougher stuff than I am.

Really the entire car was done standing on your shoulders. All your tools for hauling mech parts had no problem carrying my little engine parts. I did things a little different than you did though. I went out for sections of engines, not just single pieces. It saved a little time.

I have to admit it’s nice to be a mechie again. Or something close to it at least. I’m reconsidering how much helping with Hoppy was to help my daughter, and how much was for my own sake. Don’t worry, I’m not about to run off and join some group, but I think I’ll keep finding projects around here. The only problem is that if I want to build anything too big, I’ll have to venture out to some of the neighboring scrapyards to find anything you didn’t strip!

I’ll keep this message short, if I go on any further, I imagine the quantums will be even more angry with me than they already are.

Holding you in my heart,

Love, Mom

The long wait was worth it.

“Exa, can you add this photo to the picture frame on my desk?”

“Done!” She yells back.

“Thank you!” I get started typing a response.

Mom,

I had to check the date, but you’re a month early! Apparently it doesn’t take all that long to send a photo, it was just a week delay. I can’t imagine they’ll let it slide a second time though.

And speaking of, thank you so much for the photo. It’s so good to see you. I wish I could send a photo of my own, but I don’t want to make you wait any longer than you have to. Plus I’m kind of busy right now. Juno wants every mech’s environmental systems swapped out within a week. Exa and I have been working hard to get that done. I understand now why you told me to find a single mech to work on, not to work on everything. I hate every manufacturer other than Old Earth Designs. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you why.

I think we’re getting into something big here. A four part mission over the next few weeks. I’ve only ever run with just the four of us, not… well, I’m sure Exa would just redact it if I tried to explain. I can’t say I’m not nervous though. I know Juno wouldn’t push us into anything we couldn’t handle, but it’s still big.

Enough about me though, that car looks great! And heck yeah! Build something bigger! There’s a few decent Hopper frames around, and the car should make things easy. Just don’t expect me to have left any flywheels around. Or decent hip engines. Or computer systems. Or compressors. Yeah just go to another junkyard.

I’ll let you know how things went when everything is over. I have no idea how long it will take.

Talk to you before too long!

“Exa, I imagine you want to edit this?”

“Most of it, yeah. I’ll make sure she gets what you mean, and if your letter gets leaked to New Horizons, they won’t suspect anything.”

“Thank you.” Tera’s next.

No, you’re wrong. You really expect me to believe that connecting an A-1 buffer to a field generator will let you absorb enough energy from an antimatter obliteration to avoid blowing the casing? There’s no way! I get you’re the expert, Miss Junkyard Mech, but over a long enough time it would absolutely fail. Run a simulation at redline for an extended period of time, it’ll fail around hour four.

Things have been quiet here, same as always. We did have a learning driver crash a ship into the side of the station hard enough to send shockwaves through the whole thing. It’s a miracle nobody died. That happens more often than you’d expect. I swear every month we get a major crash, it barely even makes the news any more. And small crashes happen daily, although those rarely do anything worse than scratch paint or poke a small leak. It’s a shame though. I managed to find a few pictures of the aftermath. It was a nice two seater with an engine way bigger than it had any right to have. No idea who gave that to a new driver.

That secret project I’ve been working on is still coming together. With any luck at all it should be possible. I’ll make sure it’s ready whenever you’re back at this station! And if not, I’ll upload a video onto the physical net. Mail carriers still travel that far out, right? Or maybe Dad can pick up a shipping route in your direction and upload it to the physical net there. It’d probably be faster than jumping from ship to ship until it happens to find you.

Stay safe! Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Every letter from her makes me smile. I can’t help it. I really hope she reacts the same way to mine. I get started quickly typing up a response.

In an unmodified engine, sure, the A-1 buffer isn’t enough. But you can overclock those things safely by almost fifteen percent. It reduces the lifespan, but that part is likely to outlive the engine anyway, so who cares? Run a simulation with that, I guarantee it’ll be fine for anything other than artificial stress tests. Even if it does, I was running the original A-1 when I built Hoppy at forty percent overclock and it only had an average of one error per hour. And that’s with a junkyard one! Even in a heavily used obliteration chamber, it held up fine for a few months.

I got the parts for a new project too. I could keep it a secret like you, but I’m not a jerk. I’m kidding! I’m sure you have an exciting reason. At the last station I restocked on parts and I’m planning on starting a scale model version of my eventual project mech! No idea if it’ll actually help anything when I do make her, but it’ll be fun to work on. Although plans for that mech might be a little up in the air, we’ll see.

I haven’t had time to actually work on it of course. There’s always work to do. Right now I’m swapping out the environmental systems on a dozen mechs, which, ughhhhh. I just want to work on interesting projects, you know? And don’t get me started on Damascus Engineering. I had to pull out half the engine to replace the environmental system! Trust me, never work on anything except an Old Earth Designs mech. It’s just easier that way.

Oh, just so you know, you won’t get an “I’m ok” message for a little while. We have a big, multi-stage operation coming up. It could take a little while. Two weeks at absolute minimum, and closer to a month is more likely. Maybe even more. I’ll tell you how it went after it’s over.

Talk to you soon!

“Exa?” I call.

“Edited and sent!” She calls back.

“Thank you!” I slip my phone back into my pocket and return to work. I just need to get this over with.

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