Arxtian Forward Repair Station 12 - The Yard
The desert wind howled through a graveyard of machines. Out beyond the flickering perimeter lights, the dunes were littered with half-buried limbs of steel; old mechs, tanks, and broken chassis from battles long erased by the sand.
Three silhouettes limped toward the gates. The base alarms blipped once, then died. Someone waved a green flare through the haze.
Wine's battered frame came in first, one leg dragging. Her right arm was missing entirely ripped off sometime after Hedgerow. Steam hissed from her cooling vents as she knelt, the servos whined. Aiko popped the cockpit, coughing against the smell of burnt lubricant and desert dust, sweat flowing down from her brow to the top of her bare chest thanks to her half-open suit giving way.
Behind her, Beer stumbled into view, armor plate cracked open, wiring exposed like tendons. "Just cosmetic damage," Renn muttered over open comms, voice hoarse but grinning. "A little duct tape, prayer, and she's combat-ready again."
One of the mechanics on the scaffolding spat a laugh. "Right arm's fifteen degrees off alignment. Fire that gun again and you'll blow the shoulder clean off."
Renn shrugged in his harness. "Then I'll just shoot left-handed."
Whiskey's mech arrived last. It didn't walk so much as crawl, half its leg actuators sparking, power core flickering on and off like a dying heartbeat. The left shoulder was gone, both thrusters half-melted. He powered down near the gantry and didn't move for a moment.
"Don't fix her yet," Glen said quietly. "You'll need every scrap you've got for the other units."
Inside the hangar, the heat was suffocating. The entire place reeked of ozone, welding fumes, and coolant. Sparks flew from half a dozen corners where mechanics worked on whatever still had a pulse. Most of the machines here looked more like amputees than soldiers - legs missing, torsos cracked open, exposed pistons twitching like nerves.
Chief Mechanic Edda, short, heavyset, goggles perched on her head - wiped her hands on a rag as the trio entered. Her tone was flat, but her eyes carried the exhaustion of someone who hadn't slept in two days.
"We've got nine operational mechs," she said. "Out of thirty." She kicked a crate of parts, and it clanged hollow. "Factory shipments are seven weeks late. The commander wants miracles and revive more, but all I've got are scraps and curses," She closes in on Aiko and puts her hands below her chest. "If I can turn these lumps of fat into oil, or lubricant, it would be helpful."
Aiko arched a brow, too tired to even smirk. "Try it and you'll choke the filters before it hits the pump."
Edda snorted. "Figures. Even your sass comes with maintenance issues."
Renn dropped from his mech, boots hitting the hangar floor with a thud. He pulled off his gloves and stretched his shoulders, wincing at the ache. "What's the word, Chief? You gonna stitch our girls back together, or do we start praying to the scrapyard gods?"
Edda tossed her rag aside, the motion sharp. "You'll be lucky if I can get one of them standing by next week. You burned through your heat sinks, shredded the limb servos, and Wine's right arm looks like it went three rounds with a plasma torch."
"It did," Aiko muttered, running a gloved hand across her neck. "And it won."
"Barely," Edda shot back. "She's running off half a reactor cell and a cooling system I had to rebuild out of kitchen piping. You're lucky the damn thing didn't explode halfway home."
Whiskey dropped from his mech last, landing with quiet grace despite the fatigue weighing on his shoulders. He spoke softly, eyes on the ruined machines. "How bad's the rest of the battalion?"
Edda's face tightened. "Worse. I've got pilots waiting for cockpits that don't exist anymore. Factory shipments haven't made it past the border in weeks thanks to some Victors hitting the logistic lanes yet the bigwigs think we can keep fighting with museum relics."
Renn looked toward his mech, the blue hull still steaming. "Guess that makes us the museum staff."
Edda sighed, rubbing her temples. "You three are lucky command likes your kill record. They're giving you each a salvage rig."
Aiko blinked. "Salvage rig? That's a joke, right?"
"I wish." Edda pointed toward the back of the bay - three towering silhouettes under tarp. " Old mining frames we pulled from a depot near the coast. They've been refitted for field recovery."
Renn squinted. "That's not a mech, that's a museum exhibit."
Edda ignored him. "You'll have no jump thrusters, no active plating, and the hydraulics are weak on the knees. But they'll lift what needs lifting. You're being escorted by two armed walkers and an engineering truck. You find usable parts, mechs, guns, reactor cores - whatever still breathes under the sand, and you bring them back."
Aiko groaned. "You're sending us to dig up ghosts?"
Edda's reply was dry as sand. "Ghosts don't need ammo. We do."
Aiko sighed, glancing at the towering wrecks around them. "For what it's worth, Chief… if we make it back with something that works, you'll have your miracles."
Edda smirked faintly, grabbing a wrench off the table. "Kid, if you bring me back a reactor that doesn't leak, I'll carve your name on the hangar wall with holy water."
"Collectors, scavengers, resurrectionists," Edda replied. "Call it what you want. You bring something worth fixing, or we start cutting apart the wounded for spares."
The war had been dragging too long, eating too much. Nothing stayed new for more than a week.
By dawn, the trio stood beside their rigs on the staging field. The air shimmered with heat; the ground was already dusted with grit that stung their boots.
Aiko ran her hand along the cold metal of her new ride. The paint had long since peeled, revealing the faded manufacturer's mark burned into the hull: Ikegani Heavy Works - Model 72 Industrial Frame, who knows how many years old this thing is.
She climbed up the ladder, swung into the cockpit, and flipped the ignition. The screen sputtered, then blinked to life with a distorted logo and a line of text in archaic font:
"Operator safety not guaranteed."
"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
Renn's voice came through the link, accompanied by the grinding noise of his rig trying and failing to start. "Mine's got a note carved into the console. Says 'pray before ignition.'"
Whiskey's calm tone followed. "Count your blessings. My hydraulics leak faster than the coolant line can refill."
Two escort mechs - Bastion One and Bastion Two - stood waiting nearby. Newer models, sleek and armed with an enlarged rifle modeled after the SCAR Light system and a rear-mounted multi-rocket launching system, they dwarfed the rigs in both stature and pride. Behind them rumbled an engineering truck - its chassis stacked with scanner arrays, modular cranes, and spare fuel drums.
"Alright," Glen said, his voice low and even. "Orders are simple. We hit Site Delta-Seven. Old battlefield, heavy losses from both sides. Chief wants reactors, ammo, or frame cores - hell, if you find a functioning mech, you reel her in - Anything worth giving to the yard."
Aiko sighed, sealing her cockpit.
The convoy rolled out, engines groaning in unison. The escorts took point, scanning ahead with thermal arrays while the truck crawled behind. Their rigs trudged in the center - clunky, loud, but stubbornly alive.
As the sun climbed, the horizon turned to a mirage of broken shadows - rusted weapons jutting from the dunes, the remnants of a battle long forgotten. Wind cut through the wreckage, whistling like ghosts through hollow barrels.
Aiko slowed, watching the distant skeleton of a mech half-buried in sand - its chest torn open, cockpit glass shattered, the seat long gone, arms outstretched like it was still reaching for something. She whispered, almost to herself, "All this… and we're still fighting over the scraps."
No one answered. The only sound was the endless hum of their engines, crawling toward the dead.