"Connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica," Jessica13 said. "Repeat, connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica. Your help is desperately requested."
She cut the connection quickly.
"Is that all?" Mini asked.
"If you can send that message on a loop with five-minute intervals as we move through the city, they will be able to receive it once we come inside their connection range," she replied. "That way, the word that we're looking for Hammerhand will reach them while we still continue to move so no one can triangulate our position."
"Preparing the connection."
"Great, and I'll get us down from here," she said and quickly let them down from their position at the top of the building which, while good for sending messages, also made it very obvious where they were.
"Loop and intervals set," Mini said after a minute or so.
"Then we should push on to the industrial complex on the western side of the city." She smiled. "I’m not sure what an industrial complex is supposed to be, but I have the feeling we'll know it when we see it."
Moving through the ruined streets of the city revealed exactly how much life had spread into what had been a mostly human domain. She remembered thinking about how the cities must have been a wasteland, barely habitable by the humans who had once lived there and who now scavenged for parts and riches left by those who had come before.
From what she could see, animals and plants were what had benefitted from the absence of the people who had built all this.
Mini took control of the mech to move them more quickly and glided smoothly over the ruins using Bulletfoot mode. She sent out the message every five minutes as they progressed. It was quicker to move in the city than it had been in the forest, and with the roads cutting clearly through the land, they were able to reach the industrial complex the CO at the bunker had mentioned.
And, as Jessica13 had predicted, she knew it when she saw it. Massive steel crates made up what looked like a small city inside the city and took up as much land as Sanctuary did fifteen times over, at least. The crates were the largest pieces of the landscape, stacked on top of each other and sometimes taller than the buildings in the city itself, but the ground was littered with piles and piles of mechanical junk.
Her heart almost skipped a beat as they headed between the heaps of scrap and pieces and parts of thousands, if not tens of thousands of mechs scattered across the kilometers and kilometers of space.
"I have the feeling this isn't what the industrial complex looked like when there were humans aplenty," Jessica13 said and studied a few of the mechs that were the most interesting.
"It would have been a little more organized," Mini said. "This was where most of the mechs that were made in the factories a little farther inside the city were brought for testing, organizing, and shipping. Back when they built hundreds of thousands of mechs every year and sent them out to prepare for the Invasion, this was a hub of activity."
"I can’t imagine what it must have been like to work with everything all new and shiny and still in perfect condition. I suppose it has appeal but…well, they didn't know what they were missing." She brought them to a halt in front of a larger pile of mechs that had been discarded, likely by scavengers who had no idea what they were looking at and had tossed them aside, thinking they had taken all that was worth anything.
"Back then, people had no reason to do what you do. They had everything of the best and besides that, they didn't even think to pick up the pieces others had discarded. They would simply make replacements."
Jessica13 shrugged, pushed the mech open, and stepped out. "Again, they didn't know what they were missing. There aren’t many better feelings in the world than being able to pick things apart, find out how they work, and put them together to make something others would simply throw away work again."
"It sounds like a kind of revenge against the people who threw it away in the first place."
"Possibly, but in the end, all that matters is making something work." She shook her head and gestured at the closest mech. "For instance, whoever scavenged from this took most of the chest plate armor and probably thought that since it was thicker, it was better, but ignored the shoulder pads made from steel titanium-alloy. They are cut and bunched together to not only be effective armor against even the highest-caliber rounds but also good at absorbing explosives. Basically, it's about knowing what are the best while not being the obvious pieces. Hold on."
She climbed into the Minato, retrieved her tools, and chose those she needed before she scrambled out and set to work on the shoulder pads. She wasn't sure when she would have the opportunity to install them, but they would still work as functional armor until then.
"While you're looking around there, I don't suppose you would be able to find proper power cells to work with?" Mini asked.
"Oh." Jessica13 grunted in surprise and turned to look at the mech. "What's the matter with the ones you have now?"
"Well, cycling the power from only a couple of cells would be enough for short supply runs. For longer stays Outside and with the added drain of not only my AI core but a dozen other functions that were upgrades from the original design, you run the risk of draining the cells and having them short."
She scowled. Adding to the weight with more armor would create similar problems with the power cycling.
"Shit, I should have thought about that.” She rubbed her temples, irritated at her short-sightedness. “Sorry, Mini. I'll try to find something that'll work."
"There is no need for apologies," he responded as Jessica13 continued to dig
