16 August, UC 0079 - Southern Spain
“Improve its night vision,” Lieberman repeated, a sneer just visible underneath his bland expression.
Joaquín shifted uncomfortably, legs cramping against the wooden crate his CO had suborned as a guest chair. “Uh, yes sir. I—”
“You’ve been running day patrols, Alférez.” The wave of contempt broke, the hint of a sneer blossomed into the genuine article. “The exact kind of mission you’re telling me you’ve burnt your sensor for.” Lieberman rummaged with the papers on his desk, cleared away observation reports and after-action summaries until all that laid in the center of his desk was a map of Andalusia, marked up with points of importance, curves marking estimated lines of control, and Lieberman’s own crabbed handwriting.
He looked down at the map. His fingers traced a road winding away from their position, toward the north, and when he looked back up at Joaquín, he was wearing a cold smile. “I’m not wasting convoy space on it. There’s a repair shop ten klicks up the road, in Frigiliana. We’ve gotten the owner to help us with supply and repair. Go get a new monoeye from them.”
“I just told you I can’t fly du—”
“Then fucking walk it over there. Or,” he added, chin tilting up in satisfaction, “fly it over there at night. I don’t give a shit. You need to learn to stop tinkering with that thing.”
That thing. The suit. It. Your Zaku. Never the Flecha. Lieberman had never flown a mobile suit in his life, or he’d understand. Joaquín’s face was a mask of compliance; he nodded. “Yes sir.”
Not that Lieberman was fooled. “Mm. Tell von Weiss when you go, so she knows she’ll be short a pilot.” There was a finality in the way he said “short,” not to mention a disdain in the way he pronounced Angelika’s last name. He took a notebook from his coat pocket, flipped it open, and began to write something, his inattention being the only signal of dismissal.
Joaquín’s fists clenched, resting on his thighs, as he stared across the desk at Lieberman.
Accidents happened all the time. A malfunctioning mobile suit could easily lock onto its commander’s tent, could blow it and its inhabitants halfway back to Side 3.
He’d never get away with it. Palen would hunt him down himself, even if he hated Lieberman just as much as Joaquín did. Angelika would never forgive him, despite Lieberman’s open contempt for her. He gritted his teeth, stood up, gave the man behind the desk a stiff salute. “Aye aye, sir. I’ll let her know.”
No response. Joaquín whirled on his heel and stalked out of the tent.
⁂
He went at night. Guerrillas worked during the day, that’s why he and the rest of the 19th had been on day patrols. Unless a GM Sniper had dropped in behind the lines, making the trip at night was obviously safer.
Plus, he actually got to use the scuffed night vision he had rigged up. At least once.
It only took about fifteen minutes once he got out of the hangar. He boosted his way north, flashed his comms laser in greeting to a checkpoint on the road and nearly crashed because their reply whited out his sensor. Besides that, it was uneventful. He touched down on the outskirts of town, near the garage, a big hangar labeled PERALTA AIRCRAFT AND AUTO REPAIR. He crunched into the gravel parking lot, set the suit to low power, and dozed off waiting for the sunrise.
“Hey!”
Daylight. Someone banging on the Flecha’s shin, cursing in Spanish. Joaquín jolted awake, grabbed the controls; in an instant, he had his cannon in his hands. He tried to look around, but even the morning twilight made everything blown out and hard to see. “Whoa, he’s awake. Christ almighty.” The same voice fed through his speakers once again, now a little more spooked, and when Joaquín looked down he saw a slim man in worn coveralls, holding his hands up.
“You taking up five parking spaces just as an excuse to shoot me, cyclops?” Seeing the Flecha sling the cannon over its shoulder, he relaxed a little bit, let his arms down. “God knows you Zeeks don’t need a reason. What is it you want?”
Joaquín thought about fighting the repairman on his comment, but...now wasn’t the time. “I need repairs,” and the man tugged his chin, studying the suit in front of him.
When he spoke again, his voice was a little more familiar. “Yeah? Why not send a truck to pick me over, for all the good it’ll do you?” He stalked around the Flecha, eyeing it up, looking for the supposed damage. “You look fine to me. Want me to buff that scratch out of your skirt?”
Joaquín’s face burned. “Do I look that up my own ass? Besides, I can do that myself.”
“Maybe the big shot ace has other shit to do besides polish his armor.”
“No. My image sensor is shot. And as for why not a truck, my CO sent me to get a new one myself.”
“Cause ya broke it yourself, huh?” the mechanic laughed, and turned away, striding across the parking lot to a Zaku-sized door in his shop’s back wall. “All right. Post up in the gantry and I’ll see what I can do.” He hit a button to raise the door, and Joaquín guided the Flecha in, stomping through packed gravel and onto polished concrete.
Two levels below, the mechanic pushed a cart between sparsely-filled shelves, occasionally pulling a bin to check its contents, then shoving it back in. Joaquín stared at him, wishing his eye worked so he could get a better look. He seemed...he’d seen him before, surely. A guerrilla at his day job? A deserter from one of the other teams’ ground crews?
“I know I had—” the mechanic muttered to himself, before finding what he was looking for. “Aha.” He tossed a bin with a single large sensor array onto the cart, and started wheeling it toward the elevator. “Ripped this out of a Z’Gok the other day,” he told Joaquín conversationally. “Or what’s left of one. Had the cockpit melted to shit, right out of the middle, but the head was still salvageable.”
“You know that’s how your guys ‘pay’ me sometimes.” The elevator whirred to life. “They dump their trash in the junkyard, and then I get to sell it back.”
Joaquín swallowed, throat suddenly dry. “A dead Z’Gok? Do you remember whose it was?”
“Nah, the arm was melted off. Why, you lose someone?”
“No.” Melted to shit… He’d seen what beam rifles could do. Didn’t need to know the Z’Gok pilot to feel bad.
“Ah. I was gonna say it was a fair trade for those kills on your shoulder.” The mechanic got to eye level, began to wheel the sensor over to the Flecha.
It would be better to stay silent, he knew it. But he had to say something. “You don’t seem to feel too bad for the Z’Gok.”
“I’m not fixing you up because I like you, boy.” He hopped the scaffold’s armrails into Joaquín’s blindspot, sensor tucked under one arm.
“Oh.” The repairman was in his head assembly now, drill in hand to unbolt something, and Joaquín tried to make out his features through the static and lens blur. Maybe it was just he looked like someone from home. This was the right area of the world. “Why then?”
“Because you Zeek fucks will steal everything I own if I don’t.” There wasn’t any change in his expression as he said it. It was just a fact to him. The last bolt dropped from inside the suit’s head, and he set the drill down to wrap his arms around the broken sensor.
Joaquín stayed silent as his feed disconnected. After what the mechanic had said, even a few seconds still felt like an eternity. When his sight returned, now pristine and clear, he felt his shoulders loosen, sank into his seat. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” That was it. The way his mouth flattened in disappointment and contempt, it reminded him of his mom when he’d gotten pinched for racing as a kid. The clear video feed made the resemblance obvious. He began to screw the Flecha’s head back together, before climbing out of the eye assembly, down his arm and back onto the gantry. “All right. You’re good to go.” He turned away, as if that was it.
Joaquín’s thoughts came out in a rush. “I’m sorry if we— the army— pushes you around. I could talk to my CO about it, or help—”
“Nah. You’ve got enough on your plate killing Feds, I’m sure.”
“But we owe you for helping—”
“You don’t owe me shit. Your CO makes sure I survive.”
“And he’d have had my ass if you hadn’t been able to fix me up. I owe you.”
“I guess.” The mechanic turned around, leaned against the rail as he looked up at the Flecha’s eye, considering something. “You wanna do me a favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Just show me your nameplate.”
That was it? Joaquín hesitated; the request was too simple. Wouldn’t it be better to spend some off time organizing the junkyard, funnel some rations to him, something like that? But if that’s what he wanted. He lifted his shield arm, showed the mechanic the neat white letters stenciled on the blue paint of the Flecha’s forearm.
CPO J. ALFÉREZ
19. MS TEAM
His uncle’s lips pressed together in a thin, wavering line. He took a while to speak again. “So you are Maria’s kid. I thought so. I guess I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“That’s all,” he said after another moment. “Get out.”