He and the others like him talked about AIs being akin to training wheels when you used a suit. They were useful for beginners but got in the way of the more advanced pilots.
Jessica13 wasn't sure which side of the spectrum she was on. Her Athena genes made her better at working the mechanical part of the suits, which allowed her a better knowledge of the inner workings of the mechs she and others used. Of course, there was a difference between fixing and using, and while the Mini's AI was mostly useless, it still greased out some of the more difficult functions like aiming the grappling hook and keeping the stabilizers in place while she carried heavier weights on the mag-clamps on her back.
It was for precisely that reason that she wouldn’t take the first mech she could fit into. She intended to use the one she was the most comfortable with.
"Not that one!" she shouted, turned quickly, and jogged farther down the line until she found the one she still had the headgear for. She grinned when a pleased series of whistles came from the AI in the headset.
"Damn it, Jessie, not fucking now!" Armstrong7 shouted over the blaring sirens, but she gestured to her head to pretend she couldn't hear him and pulled the entrance at the front of the chest open.
The inside of most of the mechs smelled of sweat and grease since there usually weren’t enough resources to clean the insides more than the basics needed to function, and Mini was no different. At eight feet tall, Minis were the runts of the mechs they had in Sanctuary. She was a tighter fit but in the end, that suited Jessica13 fine and she slipped inside, paired the headset with the rest of the suit, and watched the HUD come alive.
The screen lit up on the edges and a tiny little flower appeared on the top right side. It never failed to make her smile. It was like Mini was sending her a message. The AI had no verbal functions as far as she could tell from her work on the coding, so the little details of their interaction while she was in the mech were always a bonus.
"Good morning to you as well," Jessica13 said and for a moment, all the fear that had swamped her since the warning lights had started flashing vanished.
The screen suddenly came alive with a text.
203 updates available, it told her. Would you like to reboot and install them?
"No thank you," she said. "We need to get moving now."
She could already see the other support mechs starting to decouple and pull away from their harnesses.
Reboot engaging, the screen told her and the screen powered down as the AI engaged with the rest of the suit once more, leaving the updates for a later date.
She hadn't been bugged for updates before. It might have had something to do with her work on it. Either way, she didn't know what the updates would do or why Mini asked for them. They would have to wait until after the battle had ended, but it was still an interesting development.
"Come on, Mini, I gave you a vote of confidence. Don't bone me here," Jessica13 pleaded as the mechs began their march down the hallway toward the elevator that had returned. The doors peeled open once the AI within confirmed there were no contaminants that could harm the folks still under the mountain.
"Jessie, we aren't waiting for you or that piece of shit mech," Armstrong7 seven called through the comms. "If you ain't here on the first trip up, that'll be docked from your canteen, you hear me!"
"Loud and clear, boss!" she acknowledged in response and tried not to show any of the frustration she currently felt. Frustration was better than panic at this point, but she really didn't need that docked from her canteen. She had already spent most of what she had on the manuals with barely enough to keep the lights on in her little room.
"Best to get a move on," she said aloud into the mic but disconnected from the comm channel. "That is if someone would bother getting off her lazy electronic ass."
A series of chirps and whistles issued through the headset. It sounded like Mini was moving as fast as she could but was also a little frustrated.
"Sure, I guess it's a little my fault too," Jessica13 said. She usually pretended she could understand what Mini chirped at her. "But you understand that I only took you out of the mech to get you some upgrades, right? So that we could work better together. You were there when I picked the manus up so quit your complaining and come on!"
More chirps and whistles followed as Armstrong7 marched past her with his hulking Argonaut and waved at her with the mech's exaggerated motions.
"I wasn't toying with you, Jessie. I mean it!" the man shouted as the other bulletfoots began to board the elevator. Another of the support team began to load the steel crates on the magnetic locks on her back as the HUD finished rebooting.
"About rutting time!" she muttered, engaged with the controls, and felt them connect to her movements and disengage from the harness as she pulled herself free. There was an upside to using the smaller mechs and in this case, it was because it took her less time to acclimate to the controls. Moving three tons of mech was much simpler than moving fifteen, after all.
She picked up the pace into a jog while making sure the hydraulics were stable under the weight of the ammo packed on her back. They wouldn’t hold the elevator for her, and Armstrong7 was about to board himself.
Once he was in, the doors began to slide shut. They were slow, though, like the AI working it knew
