Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who stole their first Mech off a farm, out of a barn, out from under a sheet
The road goes endlessly through monoculture fields of biofuel crop, and the pall of black smoke is visible for miles.
Whatever it is, it's not Hadley's business, and the sooner she gets this rented car to the spaceport, the sooner she can be off this rock; away from the hypnogogic sway of genecorn and everything else she doesn't want in her life.
It's a stompy old tractor. She knew it would be. Stopped on the shoulder, the dirty orange of grease flames murmuring behind the vent grilles on the side; one of the ones with even the cockpit cage sawed off, just a juddering saddle up front. A shock of dyed hair; a slumped face resting on clenched fists; the irregular jerk of sobbing shoulders.
She's hit the blinkers and pulled over before she knows she's going to, clutches the wheel with white knuckles for a long minute.
"Hey," she says, her own fists balled in her jacket pockets as she walks to the back of the car. "I don't think your mech's going much further."
Only, she thinks, if someone hauls it for scrap; and then a furtive, angry face is looking through the frame of only-slightly-parted fists, and hers tighten at the black eye she's not surprised by.
"What did she sound like when you started her?" Hadley says, because the long way round is the only way they're gonna get to any real topic, and the kid looks at her like she's speaking tongues, so Hadley closes her eyes, remembers, and reaches her hand out for where the left stick is on an Auriga. She mimes holding down the button combo to unlock the panel, then flicking ignition. "Boomp. Then the big gyro hums up." She jerks a thumb in the direction of behind, then points down and in front. "Then a load of chatter while the joints self-check what posture you parked in." She reaches for the memory of the main brake lever, down below the right stick, throws it. "And then the drive train—"
She opens her eyes, raises her eyebrows, waits.
"Ticking," the kid says eventually. Which, yeah.
"Stashed in the back of the barn?" Hadley guesses.
"Under a tarp."
The Tick of Death ends one way: the entire train seizes, and your tractor catches fire. And it's not a cheap fix; there's a lot of old Aurigas rotting in barns and by the side of fields.
Hadley makes an educated guess, based on how much fuck-all is on the satnav, how far the kid must have coaxed a badly fucked mech. Not bad. "Where did you need to get her?"
"New Vilnius."
Not like there's many other places; Hadley chews the inside of her lip. "The Foreign Legion does check ages," she says, even if they don't check much else. "If you weren't old enough, you'd need a plan B."
"I'm old enough." It's sullen, but it doesn't just sound like teenage bravado. "I have ID."
Hadley heaves more of a sigh than she really meant to. "You're headed for Vilnius," she says. "I'm headed for Vilnius. My transport isn't on fire...."
"What do you want," the kid says, and good, because she's going to need that, you can't just trust people.
"Mostly I want to get off this rock," she says honestly. "The Legion weren't always good about checking ages. Didn't check mine." She weighs up how much of it to parcel out. "Plan B was pills and vodka."
There's no fucking way she's letting any Legion recruiter get fangs into this kid. Nobody was there to stop her; somebody's fucking here today. They've got space on the crew for a kid with enough mechanics basics to limp a death-rattling Auriga this far; the Captain will rip Haley six new assholes, but she can swing it. The kid doesn't need to hear that, yet.
"Okay," the kid says, and who even fucking cares what she does to me if it gets me out of here resonates loud in it.
Hadley's never going to not hate rocks like this one.