Emissary

Stel staggered onto the bridge of the Motherwill, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat and patches of her jumpsuit stained with more of the same. Ryn sat in his command seat and looked over his shoulder as she entered before turning back to face the starlines streaking past outside the forward viewport.

"Sit. We need to talk... and plan." He sounded serious and from the way his ears were flat against his head, Stel could tell he was upset; she'd seen that emote on plenty of fennecs back home.

"What's the problem, aside from more Nalesh in other sectors." Stel asked slowly as she took a seat and spun the chair to face him. He didn't turn to her.

"That warp gate was already down before I got to it. Not damaged, the linked point was disabled. There's plenty of reasons why that could have been, but now I'm getting worried. We lost a day going the wrong way, we're more than a week from Old Earth, and your mech suit piloting is atrocious."

Stel felt a pang of irritation at the fennec's casual and matter-of-fact assessment of her piloting skills. Sure, she had only flown it twice, but she thought she was doing a damn fine job given the circumstances. "Really? And here I thought did well in taking down a whole battleship!"

Ryn finally gave her a sideways look before continuing to stare out of the viewport. "Do you know what a skilled pilot is capable of? One that is properly linked to their machine, doesn't rely on manual controls, and has taken the time to actually learn to fly rather than flounder into success?" He sighed and Stel saw his ears droop further down, his shoulders slackening slightly. "That planet would have been saved. Just one pilot with that kind of surprise advantage? And we used to run in teams of four, normally."

Stel looked at the fennec with a new eye, one that saw a tired man still wandering the galaxy in search of rest. "You were a pilot." She said, an air of wonderment and surprise in her voice.

Ryn still didn't look over at her. "No, I wasn't. I... worked closely with one though. She could do anything... you need to learn to be like that. The Emissary is a third-gen mech, updated and refitted with the latest generation of weapons. It was passed through the family and now you got it by chance."

Stel leaned back, still somewhat confused. "What, you some kind of wizard now? You know everything else about the galaxy?"

Ryn finally did look at her with an unamused look and gestured to his screen. "Manual. Came with the mech when they loaded it. Did you even look at it? I left a datapad in your room with a copy."

Stel blushed and hid her face behind her hands, attempting to look thoughtful. "I... didn't get a chance."

Ryn rolled his eyes and resumed reading, "Right. Says here that the suit needs a calibration to its pilot. Usually, it would be a genetic lock-in, family heirloom and all that, but you seem to be piloting it alright. Sure you're not related to that fennec guy you saw die? The what's-his-name?"

"Athriax. His partner said he was called Athriax. And no, I'm sure I'm not part fox. But it works for me, so what's wrong with manual controls?" Stel said defensively, still a little hurt that he thought so little of her piloting skills, minor as they might be.

Ryn scoffed, "What's wrong is I had to loop back for you and you only got one ship. A melded mech operates in conjunction with your mind. You think it, it does it. You wanna shoot? It shoots. You wanna fly? It flies. It does as you think and does it instantly. None of that clumsy controller nonsense. Good gen, the third. And since we're taking the long way anyways, I see no reason not to run a calibration while letting the slip drive cool off."

Stel perked up at the notion of learning to fly better as he suggested but then drooped at the mention of 'the long way.' "What do you mean, 'the long way'? Aren't we going to go find another warp gate? I thought those were instant."

Ryn shook his head and switched his display to a galactic map. "We're here. Cantarus is back there. Home is here. See any other warp gates marked on the map?"

Stel shook her head slowly.

"Exactly. We had one shot and the Nalesh blew it up and probably razed Cantarus for it. Lucky us we had mechs to hold them off, I doubt they'll last forever back at the colony, so we are on a time crunch. That said, the Motherwill, or any ship really, can only run the slip drive for so long before it heats and risks damage. We'll let it cool off in a secluded system along the way and get you out there in your mech, calibrate, and hope for the best. Sound fun?"

Stel nodded slowly, "Sounds fun..."

"Great. Now get out of here and do your homework. Read the manual, figure out how to rearm the guns. They gave us a small supply of ammo for your twin guns and rockets, hooray. Now you get to figure out how to load up."

"Do you know how to arm them?" Stel asked argumentatively.

"Obviously, but I'm not flying the damn thing. Stop arguing with your captain and get busy." He snapped back, settling in his chair and turning his full attention to the display in front of him.

Stel decided to leave it alone and left the bridge, slipping through the narrow hall to the bunk rooms. She needed another shower anyway.

Hosing herself off quickly, she changed into another of the spare jumpsuits in her cabin's wardrobe and promptly decided that if they ever had the chance she would buy, borrow, or steal literally anything more comfortable than these skin-tight atrocities.

Flopping onto her bunk, Stel picked up the datapad Ryn had left in her bunkroom and keyed in for the Emissary's manual and started reading. She wasn't surprised when she snapped awake an indeterminate amount of time later to find the screen had gone to sleep probably some time after she had. Stel let out a long groan at how much she detested the idea of reading this entire manual.

Skipping ahead to the arms and armor section of the manual, she began looking for how to rearm the twin hand cannons for the mech and the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Finally, the good stuff. She thought to herself and familiarized herself with the safety protocols and one-person loading procedure. It sounded like it sucked, but she didn't have a hangar crew to do it for her, so she was stuck doing it herself.

Ryn's voice came over the ship intercom, the speaker on the wall beside her bunkroom door. "Kid? You still awake back there?"

Stel got up and keyed in the talk button, "Yeah. Awake. What's up?"

"Mount up; we've hit an empty system and the sooner you calibrate the better. Let's go."

Stel felt an odd rush of excitement. Even if it was just a suit calibration, the process for which she had zero reference and grabbed her datapad just in case, it was still a big step to becoming a real mech suit pilot. It was a bittersweet moment. Her life was both marred and made by these suits; it was time to master one of her own.

Clambering into the cockpit of the white and blue mech suit, Stel double-checked the seals and keyed her communicator. "Ready, Ryn."

"Great. I'll drop you, you'll calibrate, we'll keep going. Drive should be cold by then."

"You're... not gonna help me at all?" Stel asked, a hint of confusion in her voice.

"I could fire the guns at you to make it more realistic if you like. It'd take care of both my problems at the moment."

"I hardly think I'm that big of a problem."

Ryn's gruff voice came through the comm in a laugh. "Ha, no you don't even rank. Dropping in three, two, one-"

The Emissary lurched as the mag-locks disengaged and the bay door opened, the vast starfield of empty space before her. Stel goosed the thrusters and boosted out of the launch bay to find they had drifted near an asteroid belt of large rocks, each major rock far bigger than the Motherwill with numerous smaller rocks floating in the void of space.

"Alright, kid. Time for your one-day academy crash course. I'll keep the sensors live to make sure we're alone. Go nuts."

Stel shook her head at his non-committal mentality and keyed in the calibration sequence on the Emissary's main terminal. The computer blinked once and a prompt showed on the screen.

Begin calibration?

"Yes, begin calibration."

The computer blinked again and Stel felt a little electric jolt run through her.

Preliminary scan complete. Pilot: suitable. Begin calibration.