fiction

I tried this for a while, the chemistry’s pretty straightforward, but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. In order to get an optimal energy yield, without a couple years of lead time or buying the kind of equipment that gets the serious government investigators asking questions, your only real option is the CALAx Process. I thought the warning signs I put up were extremely clear, but some schmuck opened the door and exposed my batch to outside light during the CLE_vi subcritical titration phase, and it took a couple weeks before it was even deemed safe enough for Facilities to go in and start cleaning up the damage. Everyone kept saying it was my fault for setting up volatile chemical reactions in the squad kitchen, but I needed a space with several burners and good ventilation, and there were other perfectly usable kitchens right there in the adjacent wings! How was I supposed to know Kitchen 4 was the only one that had Colander’s favorite snacks?

Anyway, after that, I went back to my usual strategy of carrying a couple empty fuel drums and a siphon on missions. All in all, it’s just simpler, and the cost-performance can’t be beat.

There are a lot of advantages to customizing your mech. You can mix and match components to your exact specifications, and build a machine that’s perfectly suited for the way you like to operate! You can express yourself through your vehicle’s design, and show off your individuality and creativity! You can remove those annoying legally-mandated power throughput limiters on your beam weapons, and imagine the looks on enemy pilots’ faces when you blast right through the 6-foot-thick concrete wall they thought they were taking cover behind! (Just slap on a couple more heatsinks, it’ll be fine, all these off-the-shelf units are overdesigned anyways.)

The biggest disadvantage to customizing your mech is that sooner or later, some dumbass kid is gonna decide you’re their Fated Rival or some crap like that. They recognize your mech after a couple consecutive battles, start going out of their way to pick fights with you, shout angsty bullshit over short-range comms and expect you to respond with something dramatic - it’s a pain in the ass, and the little bastards are almost impossible to shake off.

I used to think this sort of thing was only a problem for the kinds of smug assholes who give themselves stupid nicknames and pilot flashy overpriced mechs, painted Shoot-Me-First Red and freshly polished before and after every mission. My current custom model is scrapped together from a rusted-out Octavo, armor plating I tore off a New Dawn Bishop when nobody was paying attention, and a Heracles servo array with the input cables awkwardly soldered to connect to a Blackstone tritium power converter. Most people mistake it for an abandoned wreck, right up until it’s taking them down with a jet-boosted leg sweep. And yet, somehow I ran into the one dumbass melodramatic enough and desperate enough to want an epic confrontation with me and my custom-built shitbox.

I’ve never really been the romantic type - I’ve tried dating a few times, but it’s just not for me. I met my first partner at university, in a Principles Of Large-Scale Mechanical Engineering course. I caught her eye while I was being dragged out of the lecture hall for “disruptive arguments about auxiliary motor placement”, “insulting the professor’s family”, and “not being enrolled at this school”. We dated for a month or two, but it didn’t really work out. She wanted someone who’d make clever conversation and go to death metal concerts together, and I wanted someone who’d keep an eye out for guards while I dug through scrapyards gathering parts for my latest project. Most of my other relationships have gone pretty similarly.

Still, every now and then I meet someone who makes me feel a spark. Like that mechanic at my last squad - quiet guy, kinda awkward in that endearing way, and damn did he look good in a tight pair of overalls. We’d pass by in the hallway now and then, but never really said more than a couple words to each other. I spent weeks thinking about the best way to ask him out. How could I break the ice? What could I suggest for a date? How could we keep things quiet enough that I wouldn’t get in even more trouble with the higher-ups, especially after the Satellite Incident?

Transforming mechs are all the rage these days. Personally, I’ve never seen the point - why have one mech that does two things badly, when you could have three mechs that do three things badly? I don’t need to waste any time on nonsense like compactible mechanisms, lightweight alloys, or regulating heat output to keep all those scrunched-together subsystems from frying each other. In fact, being able to swap into a completely different mech, ideally with completely different insignia and ownership records, can be life-saving after a mission runs a little too hot.

A few years ago, in some sort of misguided effort to promote “squad cohesion”, the higher-ups announced that we’d all be given the same timeslot of maintenance bay access to fix up our mechs after missions. Working side by side as a team, sharing technical know-how, finishing up and hitting the showers together to wash off the sweat and grease - sounds great in theory, I guess.

In reality, before we even made it through the maintenance bay door, squad cohesion was plummeting faster than a Schiaparelli Peregrin with misaligned antigravs. Everyone looked at me funny when I started handing out the radiation dosimeter badges, so I explained the process of disconnecting and inverting an overcharged N2 core, and how the standard 30-minute safety window is drastically reduced once the operating lifetime passes 10000 hours. N2 cores are technically illegal for sale or purchase in the Earth Sphere, so I had to “salvage” mine off a 0063 Morningstar destroyed in a joint operation with a Venusian squad, and I don’t know how many hours it had on it when I got it.

[Also on AO3]

My eyes stare unfocused out at the endless road and the starless night, and I realize that I would rather be anywhere else, anywhere at all, except here in this goddamn car. I hate the throb of the engine, I hate the smell of sex and gasoline, I hate the song playing on the radio, I hate the flashing of the streetlights racing past, I hate the rushing wind in my hair, I hate the feeling of Kazuya’s arm around my shoulders as he speaks, soft and smooth in that way he does, saying something I haven’t really been paying attention to.

“… It’ll be easy. The two of us together, there’s nothing we can’t do.” He’s leaned in close now, his other hand resting on my thigh, but I don’t feel anything at all. “All we have to do is win, and everything we ever wanted, it’ll all be ours.” He’s grinning, but it just looks hollow in this godawful flickering sodium light. “Just trust me…” I’m so tired. Tired and carsick.

From the driver’s seat, the man in the fancy white jacket finally speaks. “I now reveal the end of –”

“Stop the car.”

He chuckles, deep and rich. It makes my head hurt. “No need to worry, we’ve almost reached our destination. Now –”

Without really thinking about it, my hand finds my breast pocket and pulls out Kyoko’s switchblade, the one I haven’t let go of since the day she died. I’m already reaching around the seat, holding it at his throat. “I said, stop the fucking car.”