Eternal Sapphtember writing prompt — Girls who sink
“Aw, heck,” one of the decommissioned mech pilots says in the conversational tone that Mandy’s learned to zero in on instantly, like the way you learn to leap at a unhousetrained puppy starting to squat on carpet.
Mandy is neither qualified nor paid enough to do therapy for ex-mechies. No, Mandy is an enrichment activity facilitator, which means about fifty per cent aggressively negotiating group booking discounts and vetting proposed activities — pottery classes yes, paintball under absofuckinglutely no circumstances — and the other fifty per cent playing the role of kindergarten teacher to the field trip voted most likely to turn her hair prematurely grey.
She’d been on a week’s vacation in a log cabin with no internet on purpose when someone in the office had okayed a taster session involving boats. And she’d had words, many words to say about that when she got back, but by then it was too late.
The thing about the ex-mechies, the ones who’ve suffered having their brains opened up and spliced onto the back end of a war machine, a militarised bundle of wet flesh and twitch reflexes cutting all the possible middlemen out of the sensorimotor loop, undergone the traumas of war, and then suffered again having the machine lopped off; the thing is, they’re a particular cocktail of insanely dangerous to themselves and others because they’re…well, insanely dangerous; and insanely dangerous to themselves and others because they’re hapless little baby-bird critters.
“Aw, heck,” in this instance means that Wobbles has tried to go swimming. Again.
The thing about all the pilot implants is that they add up to quite a chunk of metals. The standard-issue human body has a density not too far off water — slightly more than fresh, slightly less than salty, and Fleet training on ditching a mech in water amounts, pretty much, to try to avoid doing that. Negative buoyancy contributes substantially to the low survivability of the scenario.
The other thing about the ex-pilots is, they really like Mandy’s crisis response; because when shit hits the fan, Mandy starts yelling orders to do practical shit. Partly it’s because the contrast is hilarious — mild-mannered Mandy, who’s not there to tell them what to do, zero to sixty: Stop that! Grab that! Put that fire out! And partly it’s because nobody much gives them orders any more.
(People are real careful not to, as much as possible. Mandy’s not one of their therapists; that doesn’t mean they aren’t undergoing a whole lot of experimental deconditioning. They like orders. Far, far too much.)
In the moment, there’s no room for worrying about undermining their therapy work, only the column of bubbles as Wobbles goes down like a rock. “Robson!” Mandy yells at the pilot looking, unperturbed, over the side of the little sailing dinghy at the receding underwater shape. “Grab that anchor and pitch it over after her!”
“What if it hits her—”
“Serves you both right!” Mandy bawls. “Everybody else out of the boats onto dry land!”
She knows, and they know she knows, that they collectively engineer this kind of shit just for the sweet hit of a drill sergeant voice bellowing simple instructions. That Wobbles — all of them — are rebuilt for far worse than a couple of minutes of holding their breath; that the pilot will cheerily climb up the little anchor’s rope and play the aw shucks, oops idiot.
She’s going to have to do so much fucking paperwork about this.
