Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

You undo the straps of the exercise rig and just let yourself drift a little, one hand barely holding onto the device to keep you from floating away entirely. Sometimes, the best remedy to mental exhaustion is to counter it with physical exhaustion -- your mandatory gym time, now completed, was an opportunity for such a diversion. As you remain motionless for an instant or two longer, something plastic and squishy gently bounces off your stomach, and you instinctively grab it -- WATER, FORTIFIED, the transparent pouch informs you.

"Don't fall asleep, North," Anja's voice cajoles you. "Stars all know, you've got a right to a nap on your off time, but save it for your bunk, at least."

Making a displeased, non-verbal sound, you pop the seal on the pouch with your teeth, and take a few grateful gulps. You could have gotten it yourself, but, truth be told, you might have just fallen asleep instead, if she hadn't come along. "... thank you," you say, afterward.

Weaving her way around the other stations -- currently occupied -- Anja takes your hand, and pulls you aside to the relative privacy of an adjoining rest area. The exercise room is small, and so time there is tightly monitored if the entire ship is to stay in shape enough not to lose its collective edge. No one's going to mind two junior officers holding onto a wall and talking for a moment, if they don't have any other duties, but Anja was right, you had been in the way. Even now, you can see someone else making use of your vacated station.

Anja stifles a snort of laughter as the unfortunate spacer, built similarly to yourself, attempts to take up resistance training without modifying your settings, with uncomfortable results for her. "Were you trying to kill yourself, North?" Anja quips. "So that you won't have to worry about fixing this ship?"

"I built up to it," you explain, laying your head back against the wall and letting your body naturally curl in on itself. Exercise clothes have a few key advantages over uniforms with skirts in terms of what positions are socially acceptable. "I've been staring at screens and readouts all day."

"You stare at screens and readouts everyday. I thought you liked it."

"I've got my limits," you say, sighing.

"Hiro's not happy about it either," Anja says, by way of agreement. "He's been complaining about having to be a 'glorified scan buoy' for hours on end. I think he actually likes it better when people are shooting at him, compared to this."

"You think so?" you ask. Complaining about a lack of action is a time honoured navy tradition, but you're not sure that anyone actually means it. Combat on a spaceship is more or less a terrifying situation where you can try your hardest and do your job exactly right, but still end up exactly as dead as if you'd never even bothered. You suppose it might be different for mecha pilots, but if anything they're more exposed, despite the relatively higher amount of autonomy over their fate.

"Okay, well, he literally told me that," Anja says, with an odd sort of tension in her voice. For the first time, you realise that, for all that she's keeping her voice light and conversational, she's actually angry. "And I might have yelled at him a little. It was… a bit of a fight. He told me that if I can't handle the risk of sudden death, then I should never have enlisted. As if that's what any of this is about. Like, he thinks I'm still nine years old and following him to something I'm not old enough for."

You let that sit in the air for a moment or two, before asking, cautiously, "... how exactly did you two end up together?"

"Hm?" she asks, taken aback.

"Sub-Lieutenant Ito's from an old military family, isn't he?" you say. "His grandfather was an admiral, I thought, with a knighthood. And your family…" you stop, confronted with the awkward problem of finishing that thought in a way that doesn't sound inappropriately condescending.

"And my family are a bunch of working class Saturnian nobodies. My grandfather was a janitor." She doesn't seem unduly offended, although she's plainly amused by your discomfort. "I know where I come from, North. I'm not like you. I know I'm not going to get much higher than this. A couple more promotions, if I'm lucky."

"... things are getting easier," you point out. "Captain Andre isn't of gentle birth. And my mother was just a soldier before being knighted."

"Not everyone's lucky enough to get knighted out of the blue, North. And Captain Andre got her rank and a ship for taking command of her last posting by hotwiring the controls to an ancillary bridge pod after the entire command structure above her had been spaced, and getting the rest of the ship to safety. So unless you're willing to die for the sake of my glorious career…" she gives you a wicked sort of grin.

You don't know how to answer that, really. She's not wrong, although finding out some of the details of Captain Andre's promotion is interesting. "You dodged the question," you point out, instead, with some justice.

"Oh, did I?" She seems genuinely startled, as if she's actually forgotten. "What about… Hiro? Oh, uh, yeah, when all the your lot hit Titan, we all had to put up someone in our homes, and my older sister had just left, so we had room for someone his age. He only had to stay for a few months, but, like… his family's dead, you know? His birth family. So my mother took him in, more or less. Even after he got his own quarters, she'd call him all the time, invite him to family events… it was way outside his social rank, and it can't have done him any favours there, but… yeah, he just never stopped."

"Oh," you say, thoughtfully. "I wasn't on the surface much until the crowding got a little more manageable. Mother had permission for me to stay with her in orbit."

"This is probably the only context you'll ever find where a military station is less cramped than a civilian domed colony. Still must have been a bit of a change, though. You're from one of the craters cities on Luna, right? At least you didn't come from one of the shirt-sleeve planets."

"I'm from Parrot," you agree, nodding. "But all the Albategnius cities are networked fast train, so it didn't feel all that small. The station wasn't nearly as bad as the ship we were on on the way to Saturn, though. It had twice as many people as it should have had, and not enough supplies. We were living off of raw nutrient slurry for months. A lot of people got sick."

Anja makes a face at that, before reaching over to give your arm a squeeze. "Okay, I won't complain about Titan being overcrowded anymore," she says, reluctantly. "I guess having a knight for a mother doesn't spare you from everything."

"Of course not," you say, smiling tiredly, "I'm going to be sacrificed on the altar of your glorious career, remember?"

Anja nods. "Don't worry, I'll make sure to think of you at least once, while I'm getting commended. Like Mazlo -- you were down poking around at that scan problem, so you missed it when the princess was talking to him. Personally thanked him for finding that message, implied there might be a medal in it for him… North, is something wrong?"


Two days later, you float your way up out of a vertical in something of a daze, moving at an uncharacteristically reckless speed, too tired out of your mind to really care. The technicians -- your subordinates, for the purposes of this repair job -- very nearly physically pushed you out of the work area with instructions to come back when you've had something to eat and anything resembling a rest. When you realise that you're about to crash headlong into something, it's more or less too late, despite your useless, last minute grasping for a handhold.

Leanly strong arms grab you by either shoulders, expertly converting both your momentum into a spin. "In a hurry, Ensign?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am!" you say, startled, as you look up into the face of Lady Perbeck. She looks half inclined to be angry, but something about your expression is so earnestly mortified that instead she just sighs in a way that almost reads as amusement.

"Cracking heads with someone in a zero gravity shaft is not fun, North," she says, instead. She reaches out foot to brace against the wall of the shaft, and then releases one of your shoulders to grab a handhold as the two of you decelerate. You're forced to grip her arm to keep from being flung off -- if either of you were less experienced with moving in zero-g, it would have been a difficult maneuver to successfully pull off.

"I know, ma'am," you said, "I wasn't paying attention. It won't happen again."

"... when you say that, I actually believe you," Perbeck mutters. Then, at normal volume, she says: "Good. You're setting a bad example for the Spacers."

Having come to a full stop, you disentangle yourself from your grip on her, transferring it to a nearby handhold. Perbeck looks much as she did the first time you met her -- she's wearing her mecha suit, complete with sidearm, her hair tied back in a way that makes it easier to seal a helmet over it. The helmet's not here, at least, otherwise things might have gone differently just now. "You're coming back from a scanning pass, ma'am?" you venture, quietly, an absurd stab of guilt going through you for not having your work done yet.

"Yes, I am," Perbeck acknowledges. "And you're taking a break from trying to fix those bloody scans? I'm honestly glad. The last thing we need is for all of you to do a rush job and make some sort of critical mistake."

"It's… difficult to feel like I'm lazing around when I could be working more," you admit.

"That's not a bad attitude, in this kind of situation," she says. "Just as long as your quality of work doesn't slip unacceptably. You remind me of what I've heard about your mother."

You blink, surprised at this unexpected turn of conversation. The two of you are halted in the shaft now, off to the side for other commuters to easily pass you by. "What you heard about her, ma'am?" you ask, curious in spite of herself.

"Just that Dame Nalah North has a reputation for working herself half to death, if people let her," Perbeck says, with a shrug. "She's certainly earned her knighthood more than many." She gives you a strange, intrigued glance for a moment. Perhaps it's your mutual fatigue, or the adrenaline from your collision, but you notice a certain loosening of the mecha commander's shoulders you haven't before. "I would have expected her daughter to follow her into the mecha corps, though. But you went for ordinary navy."

"Oh," you say, somewhat taken aback. "I was never any good at it. I don't pilot anything well even with practise, let alone a space mecha. I spend too much time second guessing and trying to find the best solution to everything. I'm just good with scans and readouts and language. Mother was slightly disappointed, but… my elder sister was a quite promising pilot."

Perbeck seems to notice the past tense verb in reference to your sister. Her look acknowledges it, but she steers clear. "My mother would have been happier with me going into your speciality, I think" she says. "Although what she really wanted was for me to simply grow up to be a lady and a politician. I think I was a thorough disappointment."

"By… becoming a knight and achieving command rank, ma'am?" you ask, a little baffled. Surely, that much success at a relatively young age should be enough.

"If I'd been bad at it," Perbeck reasoned, "then there would have been that much greater chance I'd give up and come home. Besides that, she died before I had a chance to get quite this far."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am!" you feel your face heating slightly at your accidental insensitivity. "I didn't know."

"I didn't tell you," Perbeck says. Which, you suppose she's probably not in the habit of doing, to ship ensigns whose only point of contact with her is non-standard repair work. "It happened a long time ago, North. I don't think of her all that often anymore."

You're speaking before you can really think to stop yourself, your usual social poise weakened by the long work hours you've been pulling. "We lost father during the civil war," you say. "He was captured before he could get to an evacuation ship, and then wouldn't denounce the empress and mother as a pretender and a traitor, and so he was executed."

Perbeck's lip twitches sympathetically downward. There's an odd sort of pause, and her eyes go distant, thinking of something else, before they snap back to alertness. "There was a lot of that going on," she agrees. "Brave man, though. Was that the Utopia Purge?"

"Yes," you agree. "He was just on Mars doing an audit when the war broke out." You laugh a little, in spite of the sad memory. "He was an accountant."

"People die in war," she says, in a resigned, if sympathetic way. "Not just the ones who sign on for it."

You nod, the bitter sweet smile leaving your face. She's right, of course, and it's not at all funny to think about how likely it's looking that there's another war about to break out -- people have already died in this one, and more are likely to follow them.

"Believe it or not," Perbeck says, breaking the silence after a moment, "I think I needed this."

"... you needed to nearly have a head-on collision, ma'am?"

She sighs, but her mouth twitches a little again. "No, Ensign. I needed an excuse to slow down for a few minutes. I suspect you did as well."

You nod, slowly. "I think so," you say. "... next time, I'd rather do it in a safer way, ma'am."

"We should both keep that in mind, North."


"... no," you say, scrolling through the simulation results on your tablet, another several days later. "no, we're still significantly under-performing. We're missing something."

"... again," the technician nearest you sighs, laying her head against the bulkhead beside with her a faint thumb, and closing her eyes.

"We'll keep working on it, ma'am," says the second, whose face is visible on a smaller cutaway display on our tablet. He's wearing a technician's vacuum suit, and is currently working within the ship's superstructure, on the other side of a temporary airlock, to conduct repairs within the bowels of the damaged area between the Rose's outer and inner hulls. His feed minimises as he goes back to work.

"No choice, is there?" the first tech says, finally pushing herself up, and towards the open hatch leading to the air-ed up portion of the superstructure. "We're flying blind until we can fix absolutely everything."

"That's the spirit, Nowak," you say, trying to sound encouraging, watching the skinny technician squirm her way into the tight confines of the yellow-and-black-painted maintenance shaft. The last thing you want to do is allow your voice to betray the weariness and frustration you're feeling yourself. You are not, as your small, ad hoc team has been consistent in pointing out, actually certified to enter the maintenance shafts, let along conduct physical repairs. What you're actually here to do is to test operations through a series of operations and actual scan attempts, and to make sure that the ship's ordinary array of scan software is operating as intended. You're also in charge of this operation, however, rotating in shifts with an increasingly haggard engineering officer.

When a piece of warped outer hull sheared off during the latter part of the previous battle, the resulting damage created a small explosion, which triggered a power surge in the area -- fortunately, the maintenance shafts are kept in vacuum during combat, but some of the ship's scanning array was physically destroyed and has needed to be replaced. Other portions of it, as well as the adjoining systems, simply aren't working the way they need to, or at all. You could technically run scans with the repairs done so far, over the course of long days in nerve-wracking transit, but it's not really to be relied upon. With an inward sigh, you open up the diagnostic feed, and begin another painstaking pass through it.

"Are you having difficulties?"

You give a start of surprise, fumbling your tablet, but grabbing it before it can drift away from you. "Oh, hello, Guardswoman," you say, awkwardly. "And, you could say that. But we have things under control here."

Guardswoman J6 moves toward you with the grace of a born spacer, having just emerged from a vertical. Transit through this section of shaft is officially disallowed at present, for anyone without specific business, so you're a little curious as to why she's here -- it can't simply be her passing through. She stops up so neatly at the nearest handhold to you that you'd almost swear she had gravity to help her, only the movement of her eerily white hair giving lie to the illusion. "I see," she says in a quiet, clipped tone. "Simple repairs wouldn't have taken this long," she reasons, correctly. "Especially with the extra technicians lent from The Night Lily. What exactly is creating the holdup?"

You give her a strange look. She's just looking at you, intent to an almost uncomfortable degree, face still, voice almost without inflection. Does she disapprove? Is she sympathetic? In addition to being from a different military branch entirely, subordination to Lady Perbeck aside, a Guardswoman First Class -- you spot the third sun ray pinned to her brilliantly orange ship uniform -- is roughly equivalent to your own rank, give or take. The guard has a simplified command structure with less ranks, compared to the Imperial Navy, but it's close enough that you don't feel as though you're speaking to a superior. "We have the obvious repairs done," you say, "but the scan output isn't reliable, yet. The equipment is extremely delicate and needs to be very finely tuned, and all my simulations keeps coming back with too many false negatives, or even false positives."

She nods, looking thoughtful.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced," you continue, filling the silence.

"You're Ensign North," J6 says, immediately, "I was told you'd be the one down here. You are…" she scans your face briefly, as if reminding herself that it is you she's talking to. "... distinctive. And you clearly know who I am already."

You wonder if that's a compliment or a backhanded insult. The refusal to abide by basic courtesy is more than a little offputting. "... can I help you with anything, Guardswoman?" you offer, instead. "I'm afraid that I am quite busy."

"No," she says, simply.

"... excuse me?" you ask, plainly confused.

"I'm here to help you," she says. "We're vulnerable like this, and my princess may be put in danger again if we can't rely on your ship. I'm good with systems. Analysing them, at least."

You stare, confused -- it's not that uncommon for a mecha pilot to have skills pertaining to the maintenance of their own unit. In particular an unconventional prototype like the Morrigan. But that rarely extended to something like ship maintenance. "You're… certified to work on a I-3000 series military grade scan suite?" you ask, dubiously.

"I am," she says, automatically, giving you a shallow nod. "I have time before I'm scheduled to perform my next reconnaissance sweep. I require less rest than most people. Do I have your permission to help?"

"I… suppose," you say, frowning at the strange young woman. "How do you intend to help?"

She's floating past you now, to the open wall panel to your right, examining the various data hardpoints ordinarily in the recessed compartment. Then she pulls the standard issue carry bag she has strapped on around to her front, pulling out a tightly coiled length of high capacity data cable. "This isn't as good as an immersion rig," she admits, "but it should save time."

"Save… time?" you ask. You don't see anything like a tablet for her to hook the other end into. Instead, she's pushing her hair aside, clearing it away from the raised, metallic pattern on her temple. You'd thought of it as some sort of strange body art, perhaps something that the Guard regulations permitted -- you've hardly had occasion to interact with a member of the Imperial family's personal forces before, so you wouldn't know. With it fully revealed, however, you realise that it's actually some sort of induction plate grafted directly into her skull. When she plugs the cable into the wall, and snaps the other end onto her head, you think you even catch a metallic flash up on shirt sleeve.

"Direct interface saves time," she says, simply, before her eyes glaze over, and her face goes slack. On your tablet, you receive an urgent "authorisation requested" message. With an instant's hesitation -- this whole thing really is bizarre -- you grant it. The Guardswoman is quiet for a long time, although her body twitches in place, one hand still fast to the handhold above the open wall panel.

"Ensign North, ma'am, are you doing someth--" Nowak's voice trails off as she pokes her head up from out of the maintenance shaft, freckled face a mask of surprise. "What is she-- is that a direct interface jack, ma'am?" she asks.

"The Guardswoman is certified to assist with I-3000 series scan suites," you say, by way of avoiding a question you have absolutely no answer for.

"That kind of technology shouldn't be…" Nowak suddenly looks distinctly nervous, glancing from side to side, as if a superior might drop in out of nowhere. "Well, you hear rumours out of Jupiter about… you know." You don't, actually, know. But mechanical hardware is not your specialty, nor is political news, nor is experimental medical science.

"Are you quite certain she can't still hear you, Petty Officer?" you ask. You're not -- although you're equally uncertain that she can.

Nowak clams up at that, looking distinctly nervous. "... right, ma'am," she murmurs. Then looks even more alarmed as, abruptly, J6 stirs, face working strangely as if shaking herself out of a deep sleep. One hand reached up and slides the cable interface out of her cranial port, blinking a few times like she's just come out of a dark room into bright station lights.

"Are you alright, Guardswoman?" you ask, uncertain.

"I'm unharmed," she says, simply. "I've forwarded you a copy of my report, after evaluating the system. It has flagged problem areas. Also some repaired areas that are simply… interesting."

Sure enough, a moment later, you receive a report -- it's so long and detailed, with so many hand-added notations, that you find it difficult to believe that it wasn't created by some sort of highly sophisticated computer suite. Of course, given that she has cybernetic ports grafted into her body, there's no guarantee that it wasn't. It has almost instantly, assuming accuracy, jumped you ahead at least a day's work. "Thank you, Guardwoman," you say, a little stunned. "What does… interesting mean, however?" you open one of the offending areas of the report.

"Non-standard repairs," she replies. "Perfectly functional. Better than standard, sometimes. But not following repair protocol. Using improvised software bypass techniques to integrate hardware more quickly than they should be able to. It's not something that someone would normally notice unless they are looking very close."

Nowak is suddenly looking distinctly, suspiciously innocent.

"... do you have any idea where this could have come from?" you ask, giving Nowak a gentle, but searching look.

She squirms under your scrutiny. "Not… precisely, ma'am," she admits.

"It may have to do with the child," J6 suggests, glancing down the shaft over your shoulder.

"Child?" You whirl around, catching sight of a small, dark-haired head -- you recognise Faiza, the civilian girl, peering out of another open maintenance hatch. One of the ones that you are not cleared to enter, let alone an underage civilian. Seeing that you've spotted her, she looks briefly panicked. Then, her gaze hardens with something like personal dislike, she sticks her tongue out, and disappears back into the maintenance shaft.

"Petty Officer Nowak," you ask, calmly. Softly. "Have you, in your hours working in this area of the ship, noticed a young girl poking around illegally in our ship's systems?"

"... illegally, ma'am?" Nowak looks a little panicked.

"It is illegal for an uncertified civilian to tamper with or alter any part of an Imperial naval vessel without express clearance from the officer commanding," Guardswoman J6 says, simply.

"Well!" Nowak seems to consider vanishing back inside the maintenance shaft herself. "Well…"

"Have you observed her attempting to repair the Titanium Rose or not?" you press, a little more firmly.

"Attempt nothing!" Nowak finally blurts out, suddenly exasperated. "She's honestly amazing, ma'am! She's saved me a damn pile of work, and I just… I just…"

"You just decided not to tell me, or one of the other officers you're reporting to?" you ask.

"I just… decided you were too busy to concern yourself with it?" she offers, a little lamely. At your continued silent stare, she squirms a little more, before muttering: "It's an emergency, ma'am. I was worried you'd make her stop. Or worse, make me revert the changes. This is life and death out here! And you're, well… well…"

"Well?" you ask, tilting your head just a little imperiously.

"... very keen, ma'am," Nowak admits, glancing to the side. She's older than you are, and has been in service for a number of years longer than yourself, you realise -- the inexperienced, overly rules bound junior officer has likely become a familiar figure in her career. But there's cutting a few corners when necessary, and then there's… this.

You sigh, and delicately pinch the bridge of your nose, aware of J6's quiet, interested scrutiny.

While both J6's report, your own simulations, and the expert eye of Ship's Mechanic Petty Officer Nowak, First Class indicate that the girl's work has hardly been a detriment -- quite to the contrary, in fact -- you can't help but wonder what would happen if it ever got out that you have become aware of the civilian girl messing around with the internals of the ship, and did nothing to correct it. Visions of reprimands or court martials parade through your head. Of course, for you to get in trouble over this, you will first have to actually survive the voyage.

What do you do?

[ ] Officially report Faiza's actions to your superiors
This will likely result in her being confined to her quarters, and almost certainly necessitates precious time spent reversing her apparently perfectly functional repairs.

[ ] Have Faiza sent away, and quietly instruct the techs that that further "help" from her will not be tolerated
This will get the ship back in order more quickly, but if this ever officially comes to light, you may be in trouble.

[ ] Pretend you never saw Faiza, allow her to keep working
Definitely against regulations, and quite possibly the law on your part. On the other hand, it will greatly speed up repairs, which are vital to your ship's safety and that of an Imperial Princess, assuming J6 doesn't rat you out.