V S M Fighting Back

Broly

[A] Mrs. Gilgamesh
Level 2
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
29
Essence
€5,087
Coin
₡500
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World
Cevanti
Profile
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It had only been four hours since she had gotten into bed. Five hours since her shift ended. Valeria shifted beneath the sheets, rolling over to face her desk. The buzzing noise that had stirred her was the mail clerk altering her that he had delivered everything to her box. She had asked him not to buzz, but he did anyway. Grumbling to herself, Valeria threw off her covers and slid her legs out of bed and to the cold floor. She had an extra-large t-shirt on from one of her many previous boyfriends as a nightie. Her eyes were bloodshot. She looked and felt exhausted. Moving to the door she unlocked it and slid it open just enough to reach out and grab the bundle of mail from the box next to her door. Sliding it securely shut she engaged the lock and moved towards her desk. Sitting down in front of her terminal the mechanically inclined woman began thumbing through the letters.

Bills.

There was a new one with red ink on the envelope. She took the knife from her desk and sliced it open, unfolding the notice.

“Miss Von Markham.

Your application for hangar access has been approved. Hangar 72 now houses your zoid. Please find enclosed the invoice for your first month’s hangar fees plus a security deposit. Your employment with the Union grants you a five percent discount which has been applied.

Regards,

Chief of Finance, Pilots Union”


She sighed. At least they remembered she was an employee. Good thing she had just been paid for her previous two weeks of work. Almost all her paycheck was going to bills. Sure, she could technically afford all the debt she had been saddled with. However, it left her with very little money for food. Valeria had been skipping eating at home and only eating on her lunch break at work. Food was provided in the cafeteria as part of your employment contract. The woman had been sneakily taking food home from work, but she hadn’t been eating it. She was too tired. Pushing a button on one of the monitors on her desk the three terminals came to life. She followed the instructions and created her Union hangar account, promptly paying her first month of fees and the hefty security deposit. With a defeated sigh she closed out of the portal and slumped back in her chair.

Might as well do something today.

Her only day off. She had wanted to spend it sleeping. With everyone working quadruple shifts she had had to postpone the remainder of her piloting lessons. It didn’t matter. She had zero time to work on Geno Breaker. She had gotten him running, but she hadn’t begun patching him up or evaluating what weapons he had available. Valeria got up from her desk and went to the mini fridge next to her bed. With a disgusted sigh she opened it to the smell of spoiled food and milk. Grabbing a bag from the storage bin under her bed she bagged everything and tied it off. Throwing on a dirty pair of jeans the blue haired woman took her trash down the hall to the chute. On her arrival back to her abode the flashing screen of her communicator caught her eye. There were several missed messages from Steve, her current fling. While she didn’t have the energy to be very social today, she did crave the release he could provide her. Which reminded her.

Valeria reached up to the shelf above her little microwave and pulled down a little tray with all her medication in it. Grabbing a bottle of water from the little fridge she sat down at her desk and began to put together the dose she needed of each one. The blue haired woman had been prescribed various medications following the accident that took her arm and luckily the one thing the Union did have was immaculate health care coverage. Everything was covered if she paid a fee that was automatically deducted from her pay. Birth control, various vitamins, the anti-radiation pill required by Union regulations, and a little red pill she took every six days to keep her cybernetics from being rejected. Popping everything into her mouth Valeria took a long drink of the cold water before setting the bottle down on the desk. Screwing the cap on she tapped the keyboard and plugged in the website for Cytokine Industries’ home delivery service. With the little money she had left she ordered various hygiene products, milk, eggs, and coffee.

With the estimated delivery time of forty minutes, Valeria shed her clothes and turned on the shower. Sitting down on her toilet to pee she waited until the shower was hot before stepping in. The apartment complex had the shittiest water heater available, and she could maybe get five or ten minutes of hot water before it turned lukewarm at best. Taking the time she had, Valeria pulled out her ponytail and rinsed her hair, shampooing it thoroughly. She had shaved the night before so she could forgo that for now. The buzzing of her communicator made the woman roll her eyes.

I swear that man can never wait for me to reply.”

Steve was a bouncer for The Guild. He worked for one of the various sub bosses who reported to Thelonious Rex. Despite her being a senior mechanic with the Union, this meant that he was paid more than her. He had offered to help pay bills, but she always declined. Besides, Valeria didn’t know how long she was going to put up with him in her life anyway. She was beginning to suspect he might be falling for her. Which was bad because the blue haired woman didn’t want a serious relationship. Every guy wanted a girlfriend who was a slut, but eventually they wanted you to be their “special someone.” Can’t a girl be a slut without romantic entanglement? Besides sleeping and working on the Geno Breaker, which she had yet to name, it was the only other release she got from the stress of her day to day; and to be honest…her vibrator was nice and fancy, but she preferred the real thing.

The shower had finally gone cold, forcing the woman out of the stall and to the side of her bed. Reaching down she pulled out a giant bucket of clothes that fit snugly under her bed. Taking a towel from one corner she dried herself off before throwing on some underwear, a fresh pair of jeans, her shoulder holster, a tight fitted t-shirt, and a loose-fitting zip up hoodie with the Cytokine logo on it. Reaching above her microwave she pulled down a fresh pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and several condoms. Taking her revolver from the desk she holstered it beneath her left arm and took the gun belt her communicator was attached to from the floor and fastened it around her waist. Placing the earpiece to her comms in one ear Valeria slid her wallet into her back pocket and, grabbing her keys, exited her apartment and locked it.

The woman had already dialed Steve as she made her way to the stairwell.

“Hey. Yeah, I got your messages. I was in the shower. You home? See in you fifteen.”

The blue haired woman exited her apartment building and made her way down the street towards Steve’s place to get her release, completely forgetting that she had ordered groceries.
 

Broly

[A] Mrs. Gilgamesh
Level 2
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Messages
29
Essence
€5,087
Coin
₡500
Tokens
20
World
Cevanti
Profile
Click Here
One hour and three condoms later Valeria had passed out on Steve’s couch after she had gotten her release...several times. She had figured her boyfriend would let her sleep, but that wasn’t the case. They were now into the second hour of a giant argument about feelings and emotions. He chastised her for being distant and ignoring him, but Valeria argued that she had been providing everything he was looking for. That the only reason he felt unfulfilled is because he was falling in love with her. They hadn’t even said “I love you” yet nor had their relationship been that serious. Sure, it was exclusive, but it was mainly for sex and friendship. They had been friends before ever being in a relationship. Valeria valued Steve as a friend and was honest with him. She didn’t want a serious relationship. The blue haired woman argued that even though she only had one day off she had chosen to spend it with him. She couldn’t see why he was upset. It’s when he kept trying to spin the problem onto her, did Valeria begin to take issue with the discussion. She had been as open as she could about what she wanted, and it wasn’t good enough. The woman kept finding that it was never good enough. A call on her emergency work line interrupted the argument.

“Saul? What’s wrong? He did what? That mech needed more work. It was not combat ready! Recall it now! I’ll grab Feron and be in as soon as possible.”

With an exhausted sigh she turned to Steve who was sitting on his couch staring at the wall.

“They’re calling me in for a reactor core rebuild. I need to go. We’ll talk later, okay?”

Valeria could tell Steve was upset. With a sigh she zipped up her hoodie after securing her weapon and exited his apartment. Descending the stairs she made her way into the streets of Markov, dialing her boss.

“Yeah, Saul. It’s me again. Have them move it to bay thirty-four and shut it down. I’m headed to grab Feron now. We’ll get it rebuilt as soon as possible. Can you double check if we have the plasma on hand for that model? Oh! And check if we have a new reactor housing in storage.”

The mechanic paused a moment to cross an empty street. She was four blocks from her building.

“We do? Good. Have Jimmy pull everything to that bay and get it ready.”

She ended the call and sighed. The war effort was putting a major strain on everyone involved. Because of the high stress environment, management started extending work time for each mech or zoid that needed to be repaired. Two reactors had exploded on startup last week, taking the lives of both mechanics involved. The unmaking assault had been stopped and they were still losing people. King Dulmare had requested that the Markov infrastructure be given top priority which had pulled most of Valeria’s co-workers away from the mech bays. This had left her team and Mike’s team as the two functional repair groups. Mike was the head mechanic for the fifteen bays above her set.

***​

Valeria had gone home, changed into work clothes, and grabbed Feron. She had put away her groceries, thankful that they hadn’t gone bad. As she began her trek along the catwalk towards mech bay thirty-four, Saul intercepted her to give her the documents on what she was going to work on.

“The reactor core ignites, but it rapidly overheats and shuts off. It had taken a direct hit during the siege. The previous mechanic, who will remain unnamed, thought they could repair the core without replacing the housing, but the data we’re getting is that it’s going to need a total refit.”

She knew who had fucked this up. No sense in making a big deal though.

“Thanks for coming in, Markham. The pilots know you and your crew have been coming through for them. I got approval to double your salary for this job considering you’re technically on your mandatory day off.”

Valeria grinned as she put on her goggles, keeping them in on her forehead as she wheeled her tool kit into place on the catwalk.

“It’s not a problem, Saul. I’m happy I can keep the pilots in the game.” She replied.

“Your team is the best one I manage. I get requests for you directly.”

Valeria smiled. As a measure of transparency each time a mech or zoid was repaired, the mechanic doing the repair was required to log their information into the command system so that it would be stored and viewed as needed.

“I’ll leave you to your work. Take your breaks as you see fit and I’ll give you time for lunch and dinner since this job will probably bleed into tomorrow.”

“Way ahead of you.” Valeria said with a burp as she raised a can of her favorite energy drink.

As her manager left, she finished off the can of caffeine and tossed it into the trash bin on the catwalk. Moving towards the extension of bay thirty-four and took the catwalk controls from the railing. Each bay had a system of automatic scaffolding that could surround the mech being worked on, providing a place to store removed parts high up in the air. Each bay had several cranes capable of lifting tremendous amounts of weight.

Putting her goggles on her eyes, which had a direct interface with Feron’s systems, she attached one of the crane hooks to a core structure and tightened the line. This specific mech was bi pedal with a machine cannon for one arm and a laser array for the other. Both weapons were powered by the Minovsky core located in its chest. Switching on power to the subsystems, Valeria viewed the logs that Feron displayed to her headgear in a virtual environment around her.

“Pull the logs going back six months. Has the core temp been a problem the whole time?” She asked Feron.

As the files flashed in front of her, she groaned. She had hoped that replacing the housing and the internal plasma would have been enough to get the core running normally again, but the logs were showing a pattern of overheats and forced system resets. Not every pilot treated their equipment with respect, and it looks like the one who had been assigned this mech liked disabling the safety features of the reactor so they could run it above one hundred percent power.

Saul was making his rounds below her when she shouted down to him.

“Have Jimmy pull a replacement reactor, Saul! This one is fried!”

He gave her a thumbs up before rushing away to find her parts guy, Jimmy. While they did that, Valeria punched in the codes for reactor maintenance into the computer. She watched as the chest cavity of the mech she was working on opened and the entire reactor assembly was pushed outward along a rail. Almost immediately she could see heat damage all along the housing. Even the rail system designed to extract the system from the mech unit’s chest so that it could be repaired showed signs of having been damaged by either heat or gunfire.

It was going to be a long day.
 
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