Hangar Queens: A Modern Military Mecha Satire

This update got way too long. In hindsight, I really should've restricted the vote to two socials.

Also all controversial views expressed by characters are the views of the characters alone, absolutely nothing to do with what the author thinks, etc.


MUSK UNVEILS NEW AND IMPROVED LUNAR LOADER, SMOKES AUDIENCE

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has unveiled a new prototype of his much-vaunted Lunar Loader mecha, which he says will be used to support the construction of colonies on the Moon sometime in the 2020s.

The Lunar Loader, which bears more than a close resemblance to the famous "power loader" piloted by Ellen Ripley in the climax of Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien, made its appearance at one of Musk's signature promotional events in Los Angeles. Operated by SpaceX test pilot Tony Mustafa, it demonstrated the ability to lift Musk's personal car, a 2008 Tesla Roadster, which weighs nearly 1,300 kg. According to Musk, the reduced gravity on the Moon would let the Lunar Loader lift loads "over six times that amount".

Amongst the innovations touted by Musk was a new lithium-ion battery developed by sister company Tesla, which he claimed would allow for one hundred hours of sustained operations at full capacity. He also said that a redesign of the Lunar Loader's QM chip configuration would allow pilots to remain at "peak performance" during that time, but declined to share details on the new configuration.

Unlike mechas built for military purposes, which employ a spherical array of QM chips that fully surrounds the pilot, the few models currently available or being developed for the civilian market are limited to a small number of QM chips, typically positioned in a "cross" formation across the cockpit's diagonals. While this is a necessary concession to affordability, it also means a commensurate reduction in the mecha's responsiveness, and therefore performance.

The audience received an unexpected blast from the future when Musk demonstrated the Lunar Loader's ability to maneuver in space by test-firing its rocket thrusters on stage. Several attendees were reportedly hospitalized as a result of breathing in the resulting fumes. SpaceX could not be reached for comment on this matter.


You stretch and yawn, standing up from your inactive gel seat and clambering out of the cockpit. While you very much prefer the slightly eerie solitude inside the QM sphere to the chaotic discord of the hangar when it comes to performing these sorts of cognitively demanding tasks, it gets a bit unsettling in there after a while. Besides, it's bad practice to take breaks where you work, and you could really go for some coffee right now.

Standing on a catwalk that runs behind the mecha's shoulder blades, where the cockpit main access hatch is located, you're able to lean over the railing and see how everyone else is going. The sight makes you… somewhat optimistic.

Something makes a tink sound from the side of your mecha. As you blink in surprise, it happens again, and this time you catch the briefest glint of a tiny object bouncing off the Q-35A's titanium alloy frame and tumbling all the way down to the ground.

Then there's a mild impact on your shoulder, barely a tap through your Airman Battle Uniform; you probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if you weren't already on alert for it. Reflexively brushing it away, you turn to face the culprit.

A dozen metres away, 2nd Lt Antonia Clarke is perched atop her machine; lounging in a way that strikes you as incredibly precarious, given that you're both three storeys above ground level. Sitting on the camouflaged surface next to her is a little plastic box; as you watch, she picks something out of it and tosses it at you.

The glare of the floodlights prevents you from seeing it until it's too late, and you screw your eyes shut on instinct as something hard and metal strikes you on the forehead.

"Ow," you mutter, reaching down to pick it up. It's a zinc-coated carbon steel nut of the type that's utterly ubiquitous in a hangar. As you examine it, another one hits your neck and falls into your uniform collar, slipping awkwardly down your back.

"Hey!" you exclaim indignantly, trying to dislodge the nut from your uniform. "Cut that out, will you?"

Clarke raises an eyebrow, as if she's seriously considering your words. Then she throws another bolt at you. This one lands in your hair.

"Agh!" Belatedly, you take cover behind your mecha's bulky frame. "Seriously, stop it! What's the big idea?"

There's a lull in the throwing of nuts. Cautiously, you peer out from your shelter.

2nd Lt Clarke has vanished from the top of her mecha, taking the box of nuts with her. In its place is a cardboard sign duct-taped to the side. It reads FREE CANDY and features an arrow pointing in the direction of her main access hatch.

You stare disbelievingly at it, wondering what the meaning of this is.

This is so obviously a trap.

Yes, you've been known to have a bit of a sweet tooth, but you've been on the Internet, you know how this works.

There are so many other things you could be working on right now.

Your mecha isn't going to maintain itself.

You still haven't gone to get that coffee, you little go-getter, you.

There's absolutely no reason to indulge whatever your wingman has in mind.

You really shouldn't be doing this.

You're doing this.

The hatch is conveniently left open, allowing you to climb inside Clarke's machine with little trouble.

What instantly strikes you as your eyes adjust to the dimness is how unbelievably messy it is. You've seen what the frat bros in college could do to a room, but 2nd Lt Clarke has them beat on pure density. Every visible surface of her cockpit is covered in all manner of paperwork, chewed gum, loose wrappers, empty coffee cups, smoked cigarettes, lewd magazines, stains of indeterminate origin… It's a wonder that the QM chips can discern anything in all this chaos, and even more of a wonder that officers haven't reamed her out for enabling it.

Clarke pops out from behind her seat and flicks another nut at you, hitting your crotch.

"Gotcha," she says.

"Oh, no." You clutch at your heart and stagger dramatically. It doesn't work very well in the confined space. "Truly, I am slain."

"That's okay." There's a playful quality to Clarke's voice that's different to the laconic manner she displayed earlier. "I don't think you were using it much anyway."

That rankles a little more than it should. You're supposed to be more mature than this, in several ways. "W-what would you know?"

"Seventeen boyfriends," she states matter-of-factly. "And six abortions."

"You– I– what–" There's so much about that statement that confounds you, least of all the idea that anyone could have had seventeen boyfriends. Let alone by her age, which looks to be about the same as yours. "S-six abortions?!" you eventually splutter out.

"That's right." She looks inordinately pleased with herself.

It occurs to you that this is the first personal detail one of your fellow pilots has shared with you. You should probably do the polite thing and try to make conversation. You were ordered to acquaint yourself with your new unit, after all.

"So, uh," you fish for something to talk about, "what's it like? Getting an abortion, I mean."

"It's not so bad. A little suction and all of life's problems go away."

"I… see." Your mind conjures up a half-remembered story on the news the other week. "Aren't there usually, uh, lots of protestors and whatnot?"

"There are. It gets annoying sometimes. I think I'll go in my uniform next time. Then I can say killing babies is my job." She snickers at her own joke.

"Next time?" This is all a little too much for your poor, sheltered, innocent brain to take in right now.

"Sure. No reason to give up on a good thing." She's suddenly leaning over her seat, left hand snaking out to grab your collar and pull your face towards hers. "So, what do you say, Ricky? Wanna be number seven?"

"I, um, uh," your heart is racing, the air-conditioned cockpit feels hot and stifling, blood scrambles along your arteries in preparation for immediate take-off, "I don't– that is– I think I should go now!" you stammer, yanking free of her grasp and scrambling through the mercifully still-open hatch behind you.

"What a shame," Antonia remarks as you retreat. "And here I had all this free candy I was gonna give you."


The next few times you're in the hangar, your movements are hurried and furtive, afraid that Antonia Clarke is going to pop out and dump a whole tub of nuts and bolts on your head or something. You wouldn't put it past her.

Thankfully, nothing of the sort happens. In fact, you barely see her at all over the weeks. She seems to be spending all of her time inside her mecha; doing what, who knows.

The lack of distraction is welcome, but the lack of any appreciable progress debugging your own Q-35A's fire control and sensor software is not. Even when you're engaged in more physical maintenance tasks alongside SSgt Perrier and his crew, your mind is always spinning through code, attempting to resolve the one true configuration that will magically make your radar and thermals work again. So far, your mind's resolution is about as sharp as your mecha's.

At a loss, you find yourself wandering over to 2nd Lt Buck's mecha. Seeking inspiration, or maybe just distraction, you're not sure.

Buck himself is working at a desk and chair set up on the catwalk; evidently, he prefers a more active working environment. He's chatting casually with one of the engineers as you approach, the two clearly on friendly terms. His fingers perform a waltz on a laptop that's so ruggedized it resembles a folding brick, which is currently plugged into his Q-35A with an extremely thick cable. You suspect the whole setup could survive a direct 30mm hit with little more than a few scorch marks.

"Hey, Buster," he greets when he notices your presence. He's wearing his aviators; not actually that bad of a choice, considering the glare from the floodlights.

"Hello, Lieutenant." The engineer, Staff Sergeant Hernandez, salutes, and you return it. "Richard, I'll go see how the armour replacement is coming along."

"Sure thing, Rosa." Buck waves her off, then resumes his typing. "So how's it going, Buster? Any luck getting that FCS to stop shitting itself yet?"

"Not really," you admit. "I was kinda hoping you might give some insights. I feel like you've been dealing with this longer than I have."

"Funny, because here I was hoping you'd bring some fresh perspective to the problem." He turns his laptop screen so you can see. "What does this look like to you?"

You start reading. "As players enter throne room, bas reliefs call out to them. Roll d20 against party's total Cryptotheology skill. If success, portal will open in 5 turns. Else, each player takes 1d4 SAN damage and…"

"Oh, hang on, those are my campaign notes." Buck alt-tabs to another window. "Right, this one. What do you think?"

You thought the long, tangled mess of spaghetti C code you'd been fiddling around with was bad. This was somehow worse. "So many gotos…"

"Yeah, I know, right? All those programmers who get paid big bucks to sit around and play WoW all day, and they couldn't be assed to write something that doesn't look and run like dogshit. Man, when I get out I wanna go work for Lockheed. It'd be like what I do now, except even closer to the source of retardation. I wanna see how close I can get before my brain turns into a big smelly mush from things man was not meant to know."

Truth be told, you haven't given a lot of thought to this topic. It's another one of those frightening life things you find it's much easier to quietly push back into the fridge for a while until it breaks out again.

"Right, where was I? The program that tells our robots how to shoot stuff – or, should I say, programs. You see, in the infinite wisdom of whichever generals happen to run the Pentagon's Integrated Acquisitions Technology and Logistics Life Cycle Management System, Lockheed subcontracted the targeting system to Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and BAE Systems. All of them write their own code and all of them use different style guides. I guess since they were gonna build a giant robot for four different services, they thought that four different contractors were gonna just get into a circle, sing Kumbaya, and a working targeting system would just magically fucking descend from the heavens. 'And on the seventh day, God could not rest, because the software he wrote was really fucked up.'"

"That… explains a lot."

"Oh, it gets worse. When Northrop released 33.4.5g, they somehow managed to totally fuck up the –"


"So… Cryptotheology skill?"

"Oh, you play? It's a homebrew I whipped up based on Delta Green. The campaign's all about saving the Internet by digging out the relics of a long-dead kitten civilization, 'cause if there's one thing ancient Egypt had in common with us, it's that they drew on walls and worshipped cats."

"Sounds kinda like Snow Crash," you observe.

"Yeah, maybe. But check this out –"


"…Weren't we supposed to be working on your targeting system?"

"Nah, it's alright. I always wanted to kill a lot of sand. See, when I was a kid –"


One day, you climb out of your mecha after another marathon debugging session to find 1st Lt Taylor standing right there on the catwalk.

"Oh! Hello, Lieutenant." You hastily salute.

"Good afternoon, Johnson." Her hair looks incredibly shiny today, but maybe it's just the floodlights. "Do you have a moment?"

"Sure." Internally, you brace yourself for an officer doing officer things. "What's up, ma'am?"

"I've been analysing the logs from our last sortie. It's my belief that the greatest factor affecting a mecha's performance is pilot skill, and I found yours sorely lacking. It's my assessment that your performance would benefit from immediate remedial sharpshooter training."

Ouch. That was pretty blunt. "Now, ma'am?"

"That's right. Was there something else you planned on doing?"

"Well–" The look she gives you quickly shuts you up. "No, not really, ma'am."

"Glad to hear it. Follow me, please."

A short elevator ride down and buggy ride later, you're standing behind the line of H-3 Air Base's modestly appointed firing range. It's mostly used by the Security Forces, but there are a few booths reserved for pilot use. The one you and Taylor are using is set up with a Barrett M107 anti-material rifle on a bipod, the closest equivalent to how your Q-35A's anti-tank rifle handles.

To tell the truth, you seriously hate doing this kind of sharpshooter training. It's not that you're necessarily bad at it – you probably wouldn't have been assigned a sharpshooter role if that was the case – but rather that it's the kind of inherently physical, dexterity-demanding activity that you've disdained ever since at least elementary. It's not that it's hard: it's that it's boring.

Also, you've heard that the muzzle brakes on these rifles can make your retinas fall off, which is kind of freaky when you stop to think about it.

"You're still too slow," Taylor chides at the end of another round of shooting at far-off targets in the scrubland. "You may be far enough from the enemy to have the luxury of picking and choosing your targets, but your wingmen don't have the luxury of waiting while you do so."

"Yes, ma'am." It's hard to avoid a little resentment creeping into your voice. You get it, you really do, but that doesn't make this any more enjoyable.

She gives you an appraising look. "We'll take a short break," she declares, reaching into her pack to retrieve something. It's a little plastic tub that doesn't contain nuts and bolts, but rather… a batch of cookies. "Would you like one?"

"Yes, please!" The prospect of sugar overrides all rationality.

Taylor hands you a cookie. You take a bite out of it.

"How is it?" she asks expectantly.

"It's actually pretty good," you reply, genuinely appreciative. "Kinda reminds me of the ones my mom used to make back home."

"Really? Where is home, Johnson?"

"New York State. Buffalo, to be exact. The place where Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

"What's it like?"

"It's okay, I guess. Winter sucks. Every year people seem to forget how to drive as soon as a single snowflake touches the road somewhere. There's a lot of wrecks on the road."

"That sounds charming. I'm from Arkansas. It gets a bit hot in summer and a bit cold in winter. It's… not a very exciting place."

"I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am."

"You didn't get to answer when I asked you before. What made you decide to join the military?"

"Well…" This isn't the sort of thing you should really disclose to a superior officer, but something about 1st Lt Taylor disarms you. "Honestly? I didn't really know what else to do. I finished high school and found myself in a world that wasn't the one I grew up in. I guess… this is the only thing I've really been able to do in life, so far."

Any other officer you know would've chewed you out for failing to demonstrate proper patriotism and pride in your chosen service, but Taylor just nods. "I understand. I was a little like that too, I suppose. For a while, I felt like I'd lost my purpose and there wasn't anything else for me in the world."

"But you're here now," you prompt, when you see her starting to reminisce a little too much.

"Yes. I decided there was still a lot of good I could do in the world. I realize that might sound strange, but there's a lot more to piloting than just death and destruction. I hope you realize that."

"I think I do, ma'am."

She purses her lips. "Just Taylor is fine, Johnson."

"Okay."

The two of you continue to munch your cookies in silence, punctuated by the occasional crack of gunshots in the background.

To tell the truth, this is actually kind of relaxing.

As with all good things, it comes to an end far sooner than you'd like. "Alright, break's over," Taylor announces, rising to her feet. "Let's see you hit those targets again. Faster this time."

"Yes, ma'am," you sigh.


"Yes! I am invincible!" you shout triumphantly and punch the air. You've no idea how you did it – all your deliriously-typed documentation is filled to the brim with typos and reads like gibberish, or machine language – but, somehow, it actually fucking works.

With the aid of your college-trained 'leet programming skills, your fickle and capricious hangar crew, and a few long-winded rambles from Richard Buck, you actually managed to whip the core of your Q-35A's fire control software into something resembling good shape. You haven't had any chance to test your changes outside of a simulation yet, of course; but in the virtual world of ones and zeroes, you find that your attacks on targets at long range err slightly closer to one than zero.

You let out a sigh of utter euphoria, and promptly fall asleep in your seat, leaking drool onto the amorphous gel.


Congratulations! Your +3 Maintenance stat kicked in and allowed you to marginally improve one of your mecha's myriad faults. Well done!

Of course, you didn't spend all of that time working on the fire control software. There were enough engineer-hours on the side to slip in a little mid-season upgrade too. What was it?

[] Refactoring the fuel management program.
Unlike certain other parts of the Q-35A's operating system and associated software, this program was written mostly in-house, and is consequently easier to make unauthorized bugfixes to.
+ This notably increases the time your mecha can remain airborne, already considerably higher than the baseline with your sharpshooter configuration.
- Any rewriting of core code has the potential to introduce new and exciting bugs, even in seemingly unrelated parts like the load balancing program.

[] Replacing the AESA radar with a new and improved model.
By some inscrutable workings of the USAF supply systems, a batch of Raytheon's new and improved radars arrived at H-3 Air Base. They don't seem to be asking for it back, so, in theory, there's nothing stopping you from installing it yourself. It should integrate about as well as the rest of the Q-35A's systems have so far.
+ This increases your ability to pick out enemy mechas and armour against background clutter, aiding both scouting and sniping.
+ This will also counteract the negative effects of IR smoke.
- The signals produced by this radar are incredibly powerful, which will lead to enemies more easily detecting your mecha and prioritizing it as a target.

[] Applying blocks of explosive reactive armour.
Similar to the ERA used in TUSK upgrades for the M1 Abrams, their "appliqué" nature makes their addition to mechas a simple and pain-free process.
+ Moderately improves your mecha's durability in combat, particularly against tank rounds and mecha swords.
- The number of blocks needed to provide full coverage severely increases the mecha's weight, hampering its maneuvers and reducing operational endurance.

[] Installing the newest generation of active protection system.
Originally co-developed by the Rafael, IMI, and IAI trifecta to protect IDF tanks from ATGMs, its components are generalisable enough to be fitted on mechas. For a modest sum of aid money, you too can enjoy the benefits of this system.
+ This will provide extra protection from tank rounds, RPGs, and ATGMs.
- The sensors required for the APS to function correctly are not properly integrated with the Q-35A's own sensor suite, hindering reconnaissance and long range attacks.

[] Welding a bayonet lug to the end of your anti-tank sniper rifle.
This isn't really the USAF's preferred style, but as it turns out, it's a surprisingly simple modification to make. Bayonet included.
+ Restores CQC ability to the sharpshooter variant.
- The Q-35A's handling and balance is adversely affected by the additional weight and increased profile, making it a little more difficult to perform finer maneuvers.


SV is doing the weird thing where it adds a zillion newlines to the text again. Fortunately I have access to a workaround, but do let me know if the formatting got messed up anywhere.