Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who thinks this moment needs some jazz
"Everybody halt," Quinn repeats firmly, just in case anyone needs to hear it. She doesn't think anyone does, not after some kind of anti-armour mine just took out Baxter's Stepping Razor at the knee and pitched it, rolling sickeningly over and over, all down a rocky slope. A hundred yards? One-fifty?
"Baxter," she says, and carefully picks her way right up to the ridgeline. "Baxter, come in."
("Only gonna be a problem if we make it a problem," Baxter had said, three months earlier, a buck-naked surprise in Quinn's bunk. "And you're ultra professional, everyone knows that."
("Any ultra professional would kick you into the corridor right now," Quinn had said, before thinking about it, and that — everything about this stupid, wild, exhilarating downfall was already right there in that one sentence, wasn't it?
("Ice" Quinn should have, and didn't, kick her out.)
The Razor's taken a beating. They're meant to, and keep the pilot intact. Maybe Baxter's not answering because the rolling sheared off her antennae, maybe the radio's out, maybe—
"Baxter, come in," Quinn says.
"We could take the squad down there and—" starts Ninehearts.
"And all be in the open if they send over a drone to check out the noise," Quinn says. "You want to get shelled, Nine?"
"If we leave Baxter—"
"They won't call down artillery on one downed mech." Leave her, backtrack from the minefield, salvage the op. Negotiate a prisoner handover later.
Quinn feels nauseous.
"C'mon, boss," Ninehearts says, and Ninehearts is always the one bleeding herself out over every hard choice, it's not personal, and Quinn wants to put a boot right up her ass. "It's Baxter, it's Babyface, you don't want to leave the company baby in a downed can. Half an hour. We go down there, we pop her cockpit, and she rides bitch with someone back to base—"
"And we all get shelled," Quinn says coldly, while her heart hammers like it's trying to murder her from the inside. She toggles rapidly through all the comms options on the board. Baxter's Razor is still part of the tacnet, gamely autoreporting Reactor Online and estimated map coordinates and a dashboard full of ERROR (unavailable) underneath a vestigial status line left over from the code being rewritten from a social media plugin, name and avatar and Now listening to: <none>, all filled in and CSSed up in glitter pink to play up to the "Babyface" callsign—
"Baxter," Quinn says sharply. "We're not getting any comms from you, but I can see some of your live dashboard — if you can hear me, pull up a music player, hit play on something."
The wait is long enough for Quinn's chest to start to do something hot-cold and terrible.
Now listening to: Nina Simone — My Baby Just Cares For Me
Quinn scrabbles to mute comms, and clutches a musty decade-old standard-issue sickbag to her face for long, long seconds before she's sure she's not going to need it right now.
"One track skip for yes, two for no," she says finally. "Do you need medical attention?"
Now listening to: Thelonious Monk — Straight, No Chaser
Quinn stares at it and stares at it, willing it not to change, not willing to believe it won't. It doesn't.
"Ninehearts," she says eventually, "take 'em back up as far as the trees and head for higher ground. Take it easy and watch for signs of any other mine laying. Bandaid, you're with me. Let's pop that can and check on Baxter. I want her in this cockpit and to be chasing Nine's tail in thirty."
"Boss," Ninehearts says, not entirely successfully covering surprise.
"Go!" Quinn snaps, and spends twenty minutes taking a cordless grinder and crowbar to shock-deformed cockpit hinges. It passes in a blur, and then suddenly she's brusquely herding Baxter into the now-cramped confines of Quinn's cockpit.
"Let me just squeeze back here," Baxter says, braced against the headrest and about to try to slot herself into the leg-cramping second "seat" behind the pilot's, and Quinn doesn't know she's going to do it until her hands are bruisingly hard on Baxter's hips, yanking her into Quinn's lap.
"This is a problem," Quinn says roughly into her neck, and holds her there for the entire rest of the mission.