"Are you still working out of that Minato?" he asked.
Jessica13 looked up from her fiddling and studied the man closely. There was something different about him, that much was clear. It took her a few seconds to realize that his mustache was gone.
"I…yeah. What happened to that lip rug of yours?" she asked.
"Oh… I thought improving my looks wasn't worth risking having my Cinder blow up with me inside it," he said with a laugh. "But I was asking because…well, I know your mech is a fast motherfucker, but maybe one that takes ten minutes to get going might not be the best choice?"
"I’m running updates on the software and trying to get the AI working again," she said.
"Maybe don't do it while we run drills with A7 riding all our asses on it," Jack5 suggested. "If he sees you delaying, he might give you an order to choose another mech to use."
She ignored the fact that he now called the CO that ridiculous nickname too. "There won’t be this much delay for all the other times, especially if I can get the suit to stop carrying so much dead weight."
"It might not matter," he said, adjusted his pilot suit, and jogged to catch up with the rest of his group.
He had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. Armstrong7 had accommodated her preference for the mech as long as she continued to be useful to the rest of the team. The moment she was late more than once, his suggestion to choose another mech would turn into an order.
Jessica13 looked at the chip in her hand, tilted her head, and made a face before she unplugged it from the headset and tucked it into her pocket.
"Sorry, Mini," she whispered as she climbed into her partition and closed the chest behind her before she booted the mech up. "Maybe another time."
A soft trill sounded through her headset as she connected it to the mech again. She couldn't tell if it was disappointment or only the regular boot-up indication, but she wanted to think it was the former. Her imagination liked the idea that the mech wanted to be brought up to full operational capacity.
It wasn't like she needed the AI. She'd learned enough about the suit to be able to operate it without too much help. But there were certain things she wanted to say and to talk to someone about but never had the opportunity. She wouldn't dare say out loud how much she wanted to spend more time in the Outside, exploring and discovering everything new like the Great Prophet said. She also couldn’t voice the doubts that seemed to have crept into her mind, although they hadn’t yet taken discernible shape. It left her with a sense of incompleteness that was odd and unsettling, and if she could talk about it, maybe she could find the answers that would restore everything to the way it was.
"Huh," She grunted with genuine surprise as the mech disengaged from the couplers. "Where did that idea come from?"
She moved out and marched forward with the other bulletfoots to begin their usual routine. They wouldn’t carry any ammo or anything but she still had to pick up the empty steel crates and connect them to the mag clasp on her back before they entered the elevator.
This time, there were no ground-shaking explosions and the elevator didn’t shudder on the way up. She also felt no fear. It was simply a matter of doing her job to head up to support the Guardians in an attack that didn’t actually exist.
The doors opened to reveal a bright new morning ahead of her. The sky above was a bright, brilliant blue and the sun gleamed on the mountainside. Streams of water meandered from where the snow at the top of the mountain had begun to melt to flow ever downward and finally feed one of the rivers out in the distance.
"Oh," she said and drank in the gorgeous view. "That's where all this confusion came from. A view like that is bound to stir up all kinds of turmoil and trouble."
It wasn't the type of thing she enjoyed doing at the best of times, and after fifteen drills of exactly the same procedure, she had begun to like it even less.
"Not fucking good enough," Armstrong7 shouted through their team's comms. "Run it again. Jeffrey14, you'd better select a fucking delivery and make it! And remember to ping the Guardian you're restocking on your HUDs. The next two bulletfoots I see doubling up on a single Guardian will be tossed over the cliff. Sure, the fall wouldn't kill you, but you'd have to climb all the way up, and you're damn right you won’t be paid for the time you spend slacking off! Now run it again!"
Jessica13 turned and jogged toward the elevator once more. On the way, she collected the crates she had left with the Guardians she had managed to deliver to and clamped them onto her back once more.
"Why are you making me do this, Armstrong7?" the elevator's AI said in what sounded like a longsuffering tone. "It’s merely opening and shutting my doors. Not only is it a waste of power but also a waste of time. I have better things to do, you know—a whole damn bunker to keep safe from the dangers outside."
"Stop whining, El, and run it again," Armstrong7 ordered. It seemed like even the AIs were terrified of him since the doors closed behind the bulletfoots again.
A few seconds ticked by as the Guardians went through their paces and took up position to defend the Bunker's entrances before the signal came for the elevator to open once more.
"I used to work the environment controls," El the AI complained as the doors began to slide again.
Jessica13 could only hope Mini's AI would be much less annoying, but those thoughts needed to be put aside when she rushed out of the elevator first. The mech moved quickly, lightly, and far easier than before.
She had managed to make some upgrades to the software over the past couple of days, and she could already feel the smooth transition from her movements into the mech's. They were small adjustments, sure, but they were the easiest to get used to and when it came to testing, smaller was better. She would build up slowly to a full upgrade on the software, which would hopefully include a full reboot of the AI core.
It was wishful thinking, possibly, but it was more exciting than having to go through the same motions over and over again. Since she was the fastest and the first out of the elevator, she needed to go in and rush a resupply to the two Guardians who were farthest from the elevator.
It meant that while she still needed to mark her targets, she was literally the only one who ventured that far on the plateau and despite her speed, would be the last one to return to the elevator once she was finished unloading what she'd brought.
There was no yelling from Armstrong7 over the comms by the time she had finished and she turned hurriedly and sprinted to the elevator. The other bulletfoots did the same with only a couple of delays here and there. Fortunately, there was nothing that would piss their CO off to the point of calling the drill to a halt and telling them to run it again.
No, he would address it with them down in the bunker and in private to help them to improve.
She wasn't the first one at the elevator but far from the last as she circled inside and did her job to hold a position near the doors and stand ready with her grappler in case she needed to snag someone and drag them inside with her.
There was no such need, and the doors began to draw shut.
"Okay, good job, bulletfoots," Armstrong7 said to them over comms. "The pilots will continue to run drills here, but the rest of you head on down and get some grub. Once you're done, you'd better be working on the loot we picked up again or we'll be right back to drills. If one of you is missing, all of you drill since I figure you could all use extra incentive. Dismissed."
Incentive was generally code for hazing people until they got with the program, and while Jessica13 didn't approve of such measures, whatever the reason, she liked the idea of having to run drills all day even less. She wouldn't bully any of her fellow bulletfoots, but she would make sure that none of them stayed in the mess hall for longer than was necessary.
It wasn't like there was much to cause a delay in the mess anyway. The fare was the usual protein patty with green stew she was both curious to know the ingredients of and too afraid to actually ask. They had drilled for hours tha
t morning, and none of them had any energy to talk or even do anything other than eat quickly and head to the hangar where they could get back to work on the pieces they were still sifting through.
It was comparatively relaxing. They could talk while they worked there, and most of them loved the main aspect of the job. Tinkering with new pieces and getting new devices to work was something they all lived for.
Well, Jessica13 could only speak for herself, but when the choice was between that and racing around in the sun all day… Granted, she liked being Topside too, but with her legs, stomach, and arms aching from doing more of the work than she was used to, being able to sit and tinker was a welcome relief.
Besides, tinkering wasn't the only thing she would do.
She was the first to reach the hangar and pulled Mini's headset out of the mech before she jogged to where she usually worked, where a tall pile of possibly ruined pieces waited for her. Quickly, she sat and placed a converter, a magazine autofeed, and a couple of wiring rerouters onto the table to make it look like she was working before she plugged the headset into the coding chip she still had in her pocket.
"Let's see if I can get you working this time," she whispered and almost hoped Mini could hear her.
Chapter Six
It very clearly would not be simple. Nothing Minato ever did was simple. They hadn’t designed something that could be easily copied or used by other companies and had wanted to come up with a product that was unique and beautiful. As odd as it might seem to someone who didn’t think the way she did, they tried to make a work of art.
Jessica13 could understand that. From what the pilots had to say about the other Minato designs they had tried, every one of them had been different from the other, even if they were supposed to be the same model and designer. She was used to that by now, having adapted to the kinks and idiosyncrasies in the mech.
With all that said, there was absolutely no way she could have been prepared for what she faced next. Integrating the AI code she had worked with off and on over the past few days was nothing short of crazy. Even the basic concept of plugging it into the mech made the software go haywire, both in the mech and in the chip she worked from.
The difficulty simply made her more determined not to give up. This was the last push into what she knew would change her life forever. It wasn't something she would back down from because it was a challenge. Nothing in Sanctuary came easy. If she wanted something done right, she had to be ready to work it until her fingers were numb.
People moved constantly around her. She could hear their muffled steps on the steel scaffolds suspended above the concrete floor to ensure that the heavy weight of the mechs didn’t cause damage on their way to and from the elevator.
The folks from Topside came down, their drills over, and Armstrong7 still yelled at them for mistakes he simply wouldn’t let go of until they got it right. That inevitably meant new drills for everyone the next morning, Jessica13 knew. It was his way to get everyone on the same page while he made sure those who weren't making mistakes helped those who were to not make them anymore.
All of that registered in the back of her mind like she knew what was happening around her but there was nothing that could intrude on her brain’s current focus. With single-minded determination, she wrote and rewrote the code she worked from as simulation after simulation failed to meet her expectations. Her fingers began to numb and her brain felt like it was on fire, but nothing could stop her now.
Suddenly, it all came together. She almost couldn't believe it when the first simulation concluded successfully and held her breath until the second did as well. A third was run that had a couple of problems, but after a few superficial fixes on the bugs, the fourth concluded smoothly as well.
She thought it needed some kind of triumphant moment, but there was nothing. The silence, broken only by the sound of her fellow mechanics as they tinkered with their pieces, coughed, or muttered something under their breaths, was deafening.
This auspicious moment deserved something a little more dramatic, she thought but had to accept the anonymity of her triumph. The only applause was the thudding in her chest and she struggled to believe she had actually done it.
Worse, there was no one to celebrate it with. Well, yet. That would have to wait until she actually plugged the finished corrections into the processor that was supposed to fully repair the AI core.
In theory, she reminded herself. There were only so many things that could be accounted for in a simulation, and Jessica13 almost couldn't stand the fact that she had to wait until she was on her own time to get it running again.
Wait, why did she need to wait to be on her own time? She called the Minato her mech, but it did belong to Sanctuary, after all. Anything she did to improve it was action taken to improve the lives of everyone in Sanctuary by association.
Hastily, she stood from her desk and looked around at her coworkers. They were deeply immersed in their work and made not even so much as a sound of protest as she moved away from the place where she had worked for the past few hours. Her muscles told her how long it had been, and she was only able to move again after a luxurious stretch and a stifled yawn and blood began to pump through her sore muscles once more.
After another hasty glance at her coworkers, she strolled casually to her mech, still fiddling with the headset she had worked from. Excitement began to build in the pit of her stomach and she felt oddly twitchy—like her brain tried to find something that could go wrong before she plugged anything in.
But no, there was no way anything would go boom. Nothing could break the mech any more than it was already. The processor plugged into the AI core was already not used by anything else. If anything broke there, it wasn't like she would lose any of the functionality of the mech.
"Nothing will go wrong," Jessica13 told herself firmly as she pulled the chest of the Minato open to provide access to the control that would open the back. "You're that good. Nothing will go wrong, right?"
No cheerful chirp emitted from the broken Mini AI. Nothing that she could hear, anyway, as she climbed onto the back and used the harness for support to stretch in to find the processors that did most of the translating from commands into action by the mech.
Even though the Mini was supposedly one of the simpler designs, there was still a mess of wires for her to negotiate as she pushed deeper into the back.
"Nope, still going to need the life support," she said, talking to herself for reassurance while she navigated the electronics until she found what she was looking for. It was one of the least used processors in the suit. She had left it in and kept it in place as she hadn’t wanted to risk losing access to the AI core entirely. A part of her had known and hoped this day would eventually come.
"Don't let me down now, you hear?" she whispered softly and disconnected the processor from anything that might misfire and cause her all kinds of trouble. Once everything was clear, she disconnected the wiring of the chip from her headset and plugged it into the processor.
In an instant, the lights lit up in a way they hadn't done in what Jessica13 assumed were centuries and made her grin like an idiot. She simply stared at them for a moment and watched the code she had labored over start to take effect. It seemed to work faultlessly to wipe the corrupted shit and replace it with everything it was supposed to be, straight out of the factory.
What it was doing was enough to catch the attention of a handful of pilots who had worked on their mechs over to the side. Whatever they were doing couldn't have been that interesting as they were quick to gather around. Three of them already waited at the foot of the Minato by the time she closed the back and clambered down herself.
"What do you think you're doing in there, bulletfoot?" one of them by the name of Becker3 asked. He tilted his head and tapped the Minato’s armor lightly. "I thought you would have all the repairs squared away by now. Isn't that what you were supposed to do down here while we were upstairs drilling our asses off?"
> "Technically, I was supposed to adapt all of the pieces we picked off of the dead mechs up there," she replied. She was in too good a mood to be brought down by a chav in a flight suit who tried to talk her down. "But this isn't standard maintenance. I think I've finally managed to get the AI working again."
"Bullshit," he said with a chuckle. "Not nothing in the world, under or over, could get that damn thing working again."
"You know what you're looking at then?" Jessica13 asked as she pulled the chest open.
"What?"
"Nothing in the world, under or over," she said and flashed him a cheeky grin as she pushed herself into the control seat. She isolated all the controls and connected the headset before she closed the chest with her inside.
For a moment, all she could see was blackness and all she could hear was her own breathing—which came a little too rapidly for her taste. She always imagined herself being cool and collected when this day came, calmly and methodically gathering everything she needed and putting it all together.
But no, she was excited and there wasn't much in the world, over or under, that would keep her from reveling in the moment. If she was successful, of course. She had yet to pass the final test.
Lights came on, activated the HUD, and displayed the little spinning flower that told her the suit had begun to boot up. It took a little longer than it normally did. That was entirely to be expected, of course, as the software she had spent so much time painstakingly installing began to merge with the rest of the suit.
Finally, a soft chime drew her attention as the HUD illuminated a little brighter than usual before it returned to its original settings. It felt like something—or someone—was stretching, testing, and waking up to slowly adjust to the setting of the mech suit.
"Is…someone there?" Jessica13 asked, her heart in her throat. "Can you hear me?"
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