"From the City-that-Was, do you think?" Jessica13 asked, her head tilted in thought.
"That's probably where they got all the firepower from, anyway," Lance7 said. "They liked to do all the manufacturing in those places before…whatever it was that happened. There were more people in the area so they could put in all the work the bosses wanted them to."
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"Read it in a book somewhere, I think," he replied. "Or maybe someone told it to me when I was little. All I could imagine was how cramped they had to feel with so many folks crammed into concrete slabs climbing up in the sky, and vulnerable too. Imagine living your life in one of those and then all of a sudden—boom, something falls out of the sky and your whole home, everything you've built for yourself, is gone in the blink of an eye."
"It sounds like you put some thought into this. I thought I was crazy, always thinking about how it was like, living in the Cities-That-Were."
"Sure, imagining the paradise folk had back then is nice to daydream about on a boring day," Lance7 said. "But if the stories we hear of the folk living in the Cities-That-Are is any indication—the fear of the Skyfall, the radiation, the poisoning, and the monsters… Well, I'm glad we have our Sanctuary here. Not all folks are so lucky."
"I was thinking the same thing," she said softly, still working on the mech that Jack5 had all but shredded. "It's nice to watch the Skyfall but having to worry about it falling on you? That's no way to live. And what about monsters?"
"Oh, I agree," the man said with a chuckle. "Think about how many bunkers there are out there in the Outside. Not many, from what I hear. But those buildings you see…they're only the beginning. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Cities-That-Were that got destroyed by Skyfall over the years. They say there are even a couple they built under the great waters to try to escape the poison in the air."
Now there was a thought. Jessica13 could imagine what a city under one of the big waters would be like. She'd only seen pictures of it, of course—water as far as the eye could see. It was interesting to build a city under the water instead of a bunker under the mountain, but it was hard to believe that the poison in the air wouldn't poison the water as well.
There had to be monsters in the water too, and mountains protected far better against those.
"I’m sure my Mini could outrun and outlast anything out there," she said after a moment.
Lance7 laughed. "What makes you say that?"
"She's quick, and the core she runs on could last forever if you treat it right," she replied with full confidence. "And I know how to work her. Most of the other pilots say she's a piece of shit, but that's only because they don't know how to work her."
"I'll be honest, I've said that about the Argonauts a time or two," he admitted. "Not while A7 was listening, of course. But then you see one of those big bastards busting literal heads and you think twice about that."
"You call him A7?" She raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, he all but made it an official order to call him that in combat situations," he said with a chuckle. "He said Armstrong7 is too much of a mouthful when you're shouting enemy positioning and whatnot. I guess he has a point."
"I don't think I'd ever feel comfortable calling him anything other than Armstrong7, combat or no combat," Jessica13 admitted. She was all but finished with the mostly ruined mech, having placed most of it on the recyc pile. There were a couple of pieces that were functional and there was an interesting processor for the sensory systems that actually looked better than the one she had.
Thoughts of acting like the pirates and simply taking any piece she wanted and plugging it into Mini did occur to her from time to time, but they weren't pirates around there. They protected Sanctuary, and that came with certain rules, one of which was that it was a CO's job to divvy out necessary parts when they were needed.
It was a little restrictive—and frustrating—to know what she could do to make Mini better and not be able to do it, but that was one of the costs of safety. Rather than chafe under the limitations that constantly seemed to try to squash her into a mold she hadn’t been designed for, she ought to be grateful. The rules were there to protect them, and if that meant she had to give up certain things, it was worth it.
She glanced once more at the deceptively appealing view of the Outside but was distracted by the glint of metal at the edge of the plateau a fairly short distance from the elevator. Curious, she moved closer and immediately identified it as a grappling stuck on the rocky rim. It was much larger than the one she had on the left hand of the Minato and its purpose was unmistakable. She peered cautiously over the lip to locate a pirate mech that had used a grappler to climb the cliffside. It had obviously been felled by a Guardian as a couple of rounds had punched through the armor to kill the man inside.
It didn't have the kind of AI that could keep the mech running without any input from the person inside. Most of the Guardians were equipped with that kind of tech, which meant they could continue to protect Sanctuary when the pilot experienced difficulty. It also worked out well enough for when they didn't want to necessarily do the work they needed to do.
If Mini's AI had worked properly, the task ahead was something it would have been able to do automatically. Since it was mostly gutted through poor coding, there was no way to accomplish it without doing the work herself.
The reality was a little frustrating, but she had grown accustomed to it by this point. Once she’d primed her grappler, she aimed it at the mech still about ten feet away from the edge. The sheer size and weight of it were probably enough to be a challenge for the smaller Minato, but she wasn't about to give in to it. She had the advantage, after all.
She wasn't dead.
The secondary firing mechanism was launched to fire it to a higher point on the mountain, from which it could pull the larger mech up. It already whirred, working slowly as she fired another line into the ground below her to enable her to descend carefully to the ascending load.
There wasn't much that she could do herself but finding the controls for the pirate mech's grappler gave her more to work with. There wasn't much to it other than connecting the Minato's controls to a connection port in the mech, which was found in the boot, and then working the mechanism like it was in her own mech.
It wasn't long until the combined strategy hoisted the larger mech onto level ground.
"I fucking hate Lancers," Jessica13 said softly as she hauled herself onto the chest of the larger mech. It would take her all damn day to take this fucking thing apart.
"That's not a Lancer," Lance7 said and shook his head. "They aren’t that big."
"Sure, they put on a few extra tons of armor but that still didn't do them any good," she retorted. "But it's a Lancer all right. You can tell from the helmet structure. People like copying it since it's so effective and really cheap to make. Well…effective is kind of subjective in this case."
"Yes, I wondered exactly how well all the extra armor worked," he replied, his tone slightly sarcastic.
"I guess they thought more was better," she said as she removed a piece from the chest plate. "All they ended up doing was welding a mess of useless metals on. Look at this—it's not even for a mech. It looks like…something…"
She wasn't sure what she was looking at. The square chunk of aluminum had been shot through easily, but a couple of bright red words were scrawled on it, clearly an indicator of what it had been before—Live Free or Die Hard, coming to theatres this Jun.
"What do you think that means?" she asked in bewilderment.
"I think die-hard is a term old-timers like to use," Lance7 explained. "It means going out while kicking ass or something like that. Or maybe literally hard. Who knows?"
She tilted her head and studied the chunk of metal. Dying hard wasn’t very appealing at all but the live free did seem more interesting. She merely wasn't sure what the theaters part meant.
"Yeah, who knows, but it'll take me a whil
e to get through all this," Jessica13 said. "Are you sure you want to stick around for it?"
"Sure." The man looked around. "People say I have too much Outsider in me, but I like being up here and out in the open. It’s not really fresh air we're breathing, but we can still pretend, right?"
"That’s dangerous talk," she warned and ignored the fact that it triggered an immediate response within her. "I know they don't exactly banish folk here for talking about the Outside, but they might send you to the recyc unit."
"I know that well enough," Lance7 replied. "Believe me, I don't want to get stuck working the furnaces. But it's… nice to be out here looking at everything in the world. It's…beautiful."
He was a bold one, that was for sure. She doubted she would be caught dead saying anything like that. Aside from the obvious deterrents like recyc, she liked her job too much.
And yet, a quick peek at the world spread below them and still gilded in what was now gold and pink told her she felt the same way. There was something about being Topside and looking out at it all that sparked her imagination. It made her wonder what the world had been like before the Reaping. She pushed the odd sense of yearning aside and focused on her task.
It was slow work to cut through the heavier armor on the Lancer and to climb off it each time she had to place the pieces in their particular piles. Five other bulletfoots did the same work she did, while others carted everything in to be scanned and cleared to enter Sanctuary. Most of the Guardians had already gone down, while a handful remained Topside to guard the smaller mechs while they worked.
"All right, folks, listen up," Armstrong7 called over the comms as he came out of the elevator. "No one wants to be out here come nightfall, which will be in about fifteen minutes. Put that on your timers and have everything you can ready to be taken down by then. We'll start again at sunrise. It’s highly unlikely that anyone will carry anything off between now and then. Let's move it!"
Jessica13 snapped out of her distraction when it appeared that Lance7 was called to the elevator himself and he closed the comm line with her.
He didn't need to tell her not to rat the personal thoughts he'd shared with her to the higher-ups. They were all in it together, and everyone had personal hopes and dreams that didn't need to be shared. Personal being the operative word, of course. Everyone needed dreams, but they didn’t affect reality.
"I wish I could stay out after nightfall," she said softly—to herself and maybe a little to Mini as she continued to work on the mech in front of her. "I bet the Skyfall would be a whole new kind of beautiful when the sky's all dark."
Mini responded with a trill of appreciation.
She wouldn’t finish the Lancer before the deadline, and by the time she lugged the last haul of the day to the elevator, the sun had already begun to slide behind the horizon. Her final glance gave her one last glimpse of the gorgeous view before she slipped between the massive steel doors that closed behind her.
This was her reality—back to the crowded, cramped halls, the neon lights, and the metal tables and chairs. She sighed and shook thoughts of the open spaces above from her head. Once again, a persuasive sense of oppression sneaked in, no doubt stirred by the thought of the regimented confines that awaited her.
The elevator doors opened again when the scan on the new material was completed and all contaminants had been removed, and she dragged her haul through the corridor. It was a little more crowded than usual as it looked like word of the deaths had already started to spread. Some of the folks from the administrative level had come and were talking to Armstrong7 and a couple of the other pilots while they tapped the tablets in their hands.
It was weird how they looked cleaner than everyone else. They did have a more generous canteen account, as most admins did. It was a difficult job, after all, to pick up the pieces and find ways to tell parents their kid had died.
Jessica13 avoided them, moved over to the coupler, and disconnected from Mini. She waited for the HUD to go dead before she pulled herself out of the suit.
"See you in a while, Mini," she said softly and patted the shoulder of the mech before she dropped lightly onto the causeway. She kept her head down to avoid drawing the attention of the admins.
Chapter Four
No one liked the early roll calls. The teams had collapsed after a long, tough day as almost everyone had been called in during their off-hours to help with the attack. Of course, no one was surprised when that time wasn't comped back to them, but being woken this early seemed to add insult to injury.
Well, they would get canteen for the extra time, but it still sucked.
Sometimes, though, they needed to go with the bad because there was extra meaning to it. The relevance was soon revealed when the pilots who had been involved in the attack the day before were called to the recyc level, where the furnaces were burning and made the whole area much hotter than anywhere else in Sanctuary.
Some of the workers were present, their skin already stained with sweat and soot despite the early hours, as well as a couple of people from the admin level.
One man, in particular, stood out. John5 was dressed in clean white clothes and his wispy white hair and a thin beard on his chin identified him easily as the oldest man in the room. He was also one of the oldest members of Sanctuary and certainly the oldest Jessica13 knew. There was talk about folks in the research levels who were well into their hundreds, but she hadn't been able to confirm that. They didn’t come to her level in the mountain much and many not at all.
John5 was present, of course, because of the deaths. He was one of those with the Athena genes, like her, and he had helped to coordinate the admins with the engineers who worked around Sanctuary. The man was well-liked among the folks and was often seen as a de facto leader among them, always willing to give anyone a chance to be heard among the sometimes arrogant people who administered the bunker.
Once all the pilots and bulletfoots were present, he raised a hand to bring them to a respectful silence as he walked over to where the bodies were laid on two shifters that would move them into the furnaces. The old man liked to say a few words over the dead because it helped those who knew and loved the departed to cope with the grief of their passing.
Of course, the bodies had taken a great deal of damage and so had to be shielded from sight by a rough brown cloth.
"Thank you all for coming here today," John5 said, his soft voice still very clearly audible over the roaring of the furnaces. "As you know, I sometimes like to say a few words over our dearly departed to make sure they remain in our memories as we continue to press forward with our lives here in Sanctuary. These brave souls gave their lives defending the security we all enjoy."
Jessica13 nodded and lowered her head in respect as the older man spoke.
He cleared his throat gently before he continued. "We must always remember that the safety we enjoy in this bunker is not given freely but earned through the efforts every one of us contributes. Nothing makes me happier than to see the harmony we all live in while we work together to make our home a better place. And nothing makes me sadder than to see one of those members fall into darkness."
She'd never really understood that term—fall into darkness. People always said that when they talked about people dying. Maybe it was what people went through when they died? If so, how did they know that? Maybe when you died all you saw was a bright light instead. She shook her head to clear the curious thought and felt a little guilty that her mind refused to stop, even in the face of tragedy.
"It's in times like these when I remember the words of our Great Prophet Sagan," John5 continued and looked at the men and women gathered in the sweltering heat. "There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the distance is endless. The sensation of depth is overwhelming and the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, and fierce, but light exists almost nowhere and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.”
Jessica13 didn't un
derstand how anyone could know about that either, but then again, she wasn't one of the researchers. Maybe one day she could be, but for now, she tended to trust them and their trust in the Great Prophet Sagan. The sneaky voice in her head reminded her that it was only because she didn’t know anything else, but she shoved it out with a mental sigh.
John5 turned to the bodies, held his hands over them, and closed his eyes. All those gathered recognized that he was about to end his prayer with the traditional words and bowed their heads and closed their eyes in reverence.
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. Go forth and find out. Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust," he said. His voice cracked a little as he spoke and he raised his hand to wipe a couple of tears from his wrinkled cheek.
She liked that. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. It was a wonderful thought and something that felt like a genuine assertion—something she could believe herself. It wiggled into her mind and settled there like a presentment of some kind, although she had no idea why it felt important.
The old man took a step back to allow the recyc operators to step in and do their jobs. They pushed the bodies into the furnaces and to feed the fires and release their energy one final time for the benefit of Sanctuary.
"Thank you all for coming," John5 said and raised his hand in farewell to the folks assembled, who began to shuffle aside quietly to create a path to the elevator. The recyc operators resumed their business as usual and to feed most of the materials they had collected from above the day before into the appropriate furnaces. Some pieces would be smelted down to be used elsewhere, while others simply fed the fires.
When John5 and the other admins disappeared into an elevator which would take them to their levels, Armstrong7 turned to the pilots and bulletfoots who had been assembled.
Bulletfoot One Page 4