[Deleted]

[Andromeda Deseronto]

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[Andromeda Deseronto]

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[Andromeda Deseronto]

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[Andromeda Deseronto]

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[Andromeda Deseronto]

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[royy]

Deep in the Undercity, where more light shone from below where the neon haze reflected off of canals and flooded streets than the lights far above, a neighborhood had turned out for the ancient tradition of standing around and catching up on gossip while someone else fixed something. Most of it was kids moving away, a few coming back, new families, new faces they didn't quite trust not to rat them out to corpsec, eviction orders and squatters rights and loopholes fabricated by hackers. A few buzzed about the news. Not many -- but a few.

The pilot's concerns were on her immediate surroundings, like the strength of her harness while she dangled from the cockpit of her spider-like mech, and the pressure behind the bolts for the water pump's cooling tank. And the temperature. She braced her boots against the ladder rungs riveted to the torso of her mech and tapped a gloved pinky against one of the bolts, flinching back each time and wiggling it uncertainly. It felt numb. "F.S., are you one hundred on that gauge?" she said into her headset. The surveillance drone ostensibly assisting her -- and the man steering it -- did not buzz its way down to double-check. He was either sure, or sure her nerves were getting on his.

"Okay. Run me through it again." Below her, the water pooling in the canal around the defunct pump gave an ominous gurgle. It wouldn't be much longer until the pump was swamped. She twisted her head with a wince, and while she listened to him or made noises like she was, she watched an old man filling a few plastic LuxeBuy produce totes with the few things in his bodega that were not shelf-stable. He didn't join in the gossip, or seem to particularly listen, though he and his shuttering bodega were among the subjects.

The man had a hand-sized tablet strapped to his forearm, the screen cracked and discolored with splashes of indigo, but the stuttering and lagging image of two old women in an old trailer's kitchen could be seen. "They'll be on the causeway in an hour. You're still--? Carlos, it's a long way..." The old man shook his head, though, and maintained that the people here would provide. That they had always provided.

The pilot blew out a long breath through her nose, shut her eyes, and muttered a few things. A mantra she didn't quite believe in, nor that it would help, but she repeated it out of obligation. Necessity brought her back to the present. "F.S.," whoever he was, was done talking in her ear and waiting expectantly. The water gurgled again.

"Right. Yeah, of course," she said lamely to what she hadn't been listening to, and assured him, "I'm on it." The voice in her ear (buzzing loud enough to those watching from the nearby walkways) didn't sound reassured at all. But she bounced her toes until she could feel her long bones bracing in the ladder, then lowered her socket wrench to the pump to loosen the bolts.

Just enough, not enough for a blast that might smack her into her own mech and drop her into the canal, but enough to send water flowing through the gaps and into the open overflow tank. Balled up corpsec crime scene tape slowly floated up, and she hooked the wad with a crescent wrench and slowly worked it free of the pipe it had been clogging.

Crank, crank, crank, the bolts tightened again before they could rattle loose, as the pump clanked and whirred back to life. A few people clapped. Most were too deep in their conversations to emerge just yet. She pointed at the laundromat owner, the one who needed this water flowing the most, a strange, crabby man named Frank. He was giving her a thumbs up that froze when she rubbed her fingers together, and upside down, nodded emphatically to him.

It had started with a plumbing job, rerouting blocked rainwater pipes from the upper city. (Not that they collected rainwater up there. They just blocked it.) She looked at the recently placed white PVC that dipped into the canal, doing a spot check of the brackets, eyes showing the glimmer of visual tags she'd dropped on them while placing them. Nothing missing. She pulled on the rope running through her harness, pushed off with her feet and climbed back into the cockpit.

A few twists of pedals, the hum of a fusion drive, a pneumatic whir, and the mech straightened to loom with its long arms stretching to the far walkway, posed like a gorilla. She looked across the space at the old man outside of his bodega, folding her arms over the open rubber-lined lip of the cockpit, and said, "You're really clocking out," to Carlos' back.

The old man laughed and nodded. "For a while. If the bodega's still here when it all blows over... I'll be back." He saw a few of his neighbors looking his way, and hung his head and kept his words to himself until they turned away again. "I'm taking the grandkids to Cadentia. It'll be good to see their great-aunts. Their parents are leaving tomorrow. Belt contract."

She was sorting through her tools, racking them and slapping lids shut while she listened. She squinted at him towards the end. "It's not spreading."

He huffed a laugh. "Well, no, no it's not -- not yet. Not until they figure out it's cheaper that way, eh? Maybe it won't. Eleanor always said I was a pessimist." He shook his head and stacked the last of his crates with a groan of effort.

"...But it saved you once, didn't it?" The pilot leaned forward, folded arms over one knee, and looked at him. She glanced aside, tugging at her shirt sleeves, and back at him. She sighed. "The people here will provide... Carlos -- I'm not one of the people here."

He just smiled.

It didn't take her long to concede. "Stack your shit. I'm headed to the water anyway. I'm taking the morning ferry."

"Clocking out, eh, royy?" he asked, bushy eyebrows bouncing, and she lifted one hand from the sticks to flip an old man the bird. The gesture was tired. The edge was blunted -- at least when she turned it this way. The mech stretched out its arms, one hand steady for the man's cargo, the other for the man himself. The machine was a lot steadier than she felt right now.

Carlos climbed into the engineer's seat, squeezing himself into the small space with a groan. She stood to give him room, and to give some to her spine, too, shutting her eyes as she willed the two moons above to pull her all the way up into the black. Then she steered the mech back into motion, long arms and legs grasping brackets and walkways and cornerstones, following the steady flow of the canal down to the causeway.