"It might not matter," he said, adjusted his pilot suit, and jogged to catch up with the rest of his group.
He had a point, as much as she hated to admit it. Armstrong7 had accommodated her preference for the mech as long as she continued to be useful to the rest of the team. The moment she was late more than once, his suggestion to choose another mech would turn into an order.
Jessica13 looked at the chip in her hand, tilted her head, and made a face before she unplugged it from the headset and tucked it into her pocket.
"Sorry, Mini," she whispered as she climbed into her partition and closed the chest behind her before she booted the mech up. "Maybe another time."
A soft trill sounded through her headset as she connected it to the mech again. She couldn't tell if it was disappointment or only the regular boot-up indication, but she wanted to think it was the former. Her imagination liked the idea that the mech wanted to be brought up to full operational capacity.
It wasn't like she needed the AI. She'd learned enough about the suit to be able to operate it without too much help. But there were certain things she wanted to say and to talk to someone about but never had the opportunity. She wouldn't dare say out loud how much she wanted to spend more time in the Outside, exploring and discovering everything new like the Great Prophet said. She also couldn’t voice the doubts that seemed to have crept into her mind, although they hadn’t yet taken discernible shape. It left her with a sense of incompleteness that was odd and unsettling, and if she could talk about it, maybe she could find the answers that would restore everything to the way it was.
"Huh," She grunted with genuine surprise as the mech disengaged from the couplers. "Where did that idea come from?"
She moved out and marched forward with the other bulletfoots to begin their usual routine. They wouldn’t carry any ammo or anything but she still had to pick up the empty steel crates and connect them to the mag clasp on her back before they entered the elevator.
This time, there were no ground-shaking explosions and the elevator didn’t shudder on the way up. She also felt no fear. It was simply a matter of doing her job to head up to support the Guardians in an attack that didn’t actually exist.
The doors opened to reveal a bright new morning ahead of her. The sky above was a bright, brilliant blue and the sun gleamed on the mountainside. Streams of water meandered from where the snow at the top of the mountain had begun to melt to flow ever downward and finally feed one of the rivers out in the distance.
"Oh," she said and drank in the gorgeous view. "That's where all this confusion came from. A view like that is bound to stir up all kinds of turmoil and trouble."
It wasn't the type of thing she enjoyed doing at the best of times, and after fifteen drills of exactly the same procedure, she had begun to like it even less.
"Not fucking good enough," Armstrong7 shouted through their team's comms. "Run it again. Jeffrey14, you'd better select a fucking delivery and make it! And remember to ping the Guardian you're restocking on your HUDs. The next two bulletfoots I see doubling up on a single Guardian will be tossed over the cliff. Sure, the fall wouldn't kill you, but you'd have to climb all the way up, and you're damn right you won’t be paid for the time you spend slacking off! Now run it again!"
Jessica13 turned and jogged toward the elevator once more. On the way, she collected the crates she had left with the Guardians she had managed to deliver to and clamped them onto her back once more.
"Why are you making me do this, Armstrong7?" the elevator's AI said in what sounded like a longsuffering tone. "It’s merely opening and shutting my doors. Not only is it a waste of power but also a waste of time. I have better things to do, you know—a whole damn bunker to keep safe from the dangers outside."
"Stop whining, El, and run it again," Armstrong7 ordered. It seemed like even the AIs were terrified of him since the doors closed behind the bulletfoots again.
A few seconds ticked by as the Guardians went through their paces and took up position to defend the Bunker's entrances before the signal came for the elevator to open once more.
"I used to work the environment controls," El the AI complained as the doors began to slide again.
Jessica13 could only hope Mini's AI would be much less annoying, but those thoughts needed to be put aside when she rushed out of the elevator first. The mech moved quickly, lightly, and far easier than before.
She had managed to make some upgrades to the software over the past couple of days, and she could already feel the smooth transition from her movements into the mech's. They were small adjustments, sure, but they were the easiest to get used to and when it came to testing, smaller was better. She would build up slowly to a full upgrade on the software, which would hopefully include a full reboot of the AI core.
It was wishful thinking, possibly, but it was more exciting than having to go through the same motions over and over again. Since she was the fastest and the first out of the elevator, she needed to go in and rush a resupply to the two Guardians who were farthest from the elevator.
It meant that while she still needed to mark her targets, she was literally the only one who ventured that far on the plateau and despite her speed, would be the last one to return to the elevator once she was finished unloading what she'd brought.
There was no yelling from Armstrong7 over the comms
