Untitled Mecha WIP

 

❖ This is a snippet of a future project. At this time, I'm not sure if I'll be writing it as its own thing, or just writing it in parts and then collecting it into something cohesive later. For now, let's enjoy the ride. ❖

The near-silence of space was the only place where Ego could concentrate. No overlapping voices, no deploying pilots, no distractions. Just the oh so faint hum of the cosmos. Humans couldn’t hear it, but it was at just the right frequency for Ego to hone in on. It was lazy and soft and— hell, they would say it— it was cute. The sound had become familiar to them, something that was solely theirs, over the past few weeks as they tore through ships and mechs that needed to be salvaged.

Which weren’t a lot considering the number of them. Ego had even pulled their more interesting findings all the way into an asteroid belt to save certain wreckage for later examination. Their crew hated it when they did that, but if Ego was going to do all the work, then they would dictate how the parts were treated until they were returned to the ship. If they ever were.

Their internal systems whirred as they cycled space dust into breathable air, which they pumped back into an emergency oxygen canister on their retrieval vessel. It helped keep track of the time. If one could imagine, drifting planets around a blinding white sun didn’t often make for good clocks. They were too slow; they lulled Ego into a rhythm that was hard to break from, and their crewmates got impatient (or antsy or downright angry) when they were gone for too long. Ego sucked their teeth and sneered as they drew up a holographic only they could see. C1, 29%. By the time all the canisters filled up, Ego would have had their fill of space. They pulled their gloves down over their hands and turned their eyes at the detached vessel in front of them.

Multicoloured bands decorated the long ends of the ship, signifying a research unit. Now, where the rest of the ship had gone... They focused on an obvious breakpoint where a collision had occurred and examined the damage. Bad enough, obviously, that it was free-floating on its own, but not so much that air pressure locks had been broken. Which meant that there was a chance of survivours. But Ego doubted it. Namely because they didn’t know how long this compartment had even been out here. They gently applied their thrusters to move closer to the vessel and skimmed their gloved hands against it.

The exterior was galvanized steel, but deep within, from what they could tell with a few testing presses of their fingers, the structure was sound. Beyond up to code, actually, and that made Ego wonder if this was some kind of... elite unit that had made its maiden voyage. Or maybe this was something a corporation had been working on in secret until they finalised the tech. Whatever it was, they couldn’t actually say that they had seen something built like this before. And now they had to weigh the choice of it they would drag it all the way to their belt or if they hand it over to the humans for proper study. They chewed this over—literally as well, as they started biting their lip thoughtfully—and glided along the length of the wreck.

A few knocks here and there told the same story, but they came to a point where their knocks sounded hollow. Ah, this was the cargo compartment. Well, that lowered the chances of survivours (and theoretical headaches) significantly. But now, they just had to... Ego touched the steel with the tips of their fingers and dragged reinforced nails across the metal. Damn, this thing really was a higher class. They couldn’t find the break at all, or at least not easily. Which made sense. If they were going to travel with important materials and data, they had to keep that shit locked down, right? But this was ridiculous. It’d probably be easier if they searched the breakpoint for any wires or mechanisms that would control they—

Oh. Ah! They surged both hands back to a single point and dug in. They found it! These scientists hadn’t made it easy, but— C1, 41%— it killed time. Heat surged inside of their body as they forced open the hydraulic doors. A ten percent heat increase. Thirty... They opened out the vents along their back as they pumped out heat to keep from overwhelming their systems, but even that didn’t seem to help. Ego grit their teeth. Fuck it, they thought before tapping into phase one of their overdrive state. They pushed aside unpleasant thoughts about their crew (because they knew their maintenance agent, especially, was going to bitch and yell if they pushed too hard) and focused on the satisfying creak of the doors finally wedging open.

A final blast of heat, a flex of fiberwire muscles, and then the door’s mechanisms kicked in once Ego managed to get them halfway. The inside was black. Pitch black, as impenetrable as dark matter. Ego’s fingers curled in the air. Even without using their scanner, they could tell something was here; they could feel it.

C1, 49%.

They focused on cooling down their systems before entering, but they couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch that darkness. When their fingers passed the doorway, they could feel a strange pression, and further past that, they felt... Nothing, something. A resistance. It was hard to understand this amorphous feeling against their fingers. They drew back and started to think over their options when they noticed movement.

Ego flipped over their hands. Their arms opened up longways, and one of their primary “veins” turned into a sharp fiber needle, which protruded through the opening. Their fingers curled, and the reinforced nails lengthened and became harder than the steel that made up the vessel. The darkness squirmed and breathed and writhed before their eyes. It shrank until a single mass, and Ego took on a more offensive stance.

As the shadows coalesced, the proper interior of the research vessel was revealed to them. Everything was in pristine condition still; none of the equipment seemed to have shifted even slightly from the collision or explosion or whatever it was that happened here. But they couldn’t give these observations anything more than a cursory glimpse. There was still the oddity happening in front of them. Something they had no understanding of or previous experience with. Their vents flared again, ready to burn technicolour fire in case they had to upgrade their overdrive.

The darkness hummed like space, purred like a wildcat, and soon took on a humanoid shape. Large and muscular and helmeted. Clothes began to take shape from that squirming blackness, and as Ego watched, that purring ended with a heavy sigh.

This was a pilot. The pointed helm was indictive of a strike force officer, but as far as Ego knew, that unit had been suspended for months now. Months. Who was this?

They couldn’t speak, but they could deactivate their offensive protocol—for now, anyway. Their cooldown had slowed dramatically and the oxygen filtering stopped entirely, but now that they were switching gears, everything was starting up again. The muscular pilot dropped to their knees; a hand flew out to catch them as they let out another space-soft breath. Only now did Ego decide to float forward.

You good? they wanted to ask. They set their feet on the metal floor and shifted their gravity sensors to lock down in position. Ego had a choice—they had had a few choices already. This was turning out to be quite the interesting salvage. They could tell their own research team what they had found... Or they could wait things out. As they pondered, they took a burst of photos just in case. The pilot heaved again, a sweet, low sound that only Ego would be able to hear, even if they weren’t alone, and then looked up at Ego.

“Are you my rescue team?” asked the burning low voice.

Ego blinked... and then smirked before nodding their head. Damn right I am, they thought smugly, and you owe me big time.