Lodestone TLR-99

Prologue 1 - A caress of farewell

It was almost like an un-trigger. An off switch. Mehr was still not accustomed to these feelings outside of their normal context, but she could only begin to wonder how it felt on the other end, inside the actual cockpit. That soft swipe, from the nape of of the neck to the tip of the chin, was her signal that all was finished, and it was time to go, time to be a person again.

Mehr did not pilot the TLR-99 Lodestone; her pilot was Kath. Kath was the one who actually sat inside the Lodestone, hooked into its mechakinetic nervous system. She did all the running. She felt the impact of every mortar shell and tonfa blow. Mehr's cockpit, several hundred kilometers away, hidden in the depths of Basement Level Nine, controlled the Lodestone's gunnery - it, too, felt the impacts, but to a lesser degree. Her job was to keep Kath safe by fending off approaching threats before they could come within melee range, effectively allowing the Lodestone to fire autonomously, regardless of what else the machine was doing at the time. And in the event that Kath was indisposed - Mehr preferred to think that, at worst, she'd be unconscious inside the Lodestone's protective cocoon - Mehr could take over control of movement to bring the unit to safety, and try to administer medical attention remotely.

As useful as they seemed to her, Mehr never really understood why the medical systems were built into the virtual cockpit, too. The amount of equipment on hand seemed like almost too much; she couldn't figure out how they fit it all into those tiny little automatic cabinets. Articulated scalpels, forceps, several tubes, scopes of various sizes. But the one she was most familiar with was the pair of hands. She had asked the director of Medical how they were meant to be used. The director, after a brief moment of confusion as to how the question even came up, had explained. The hands - a pair of self-heated, always-gloved, average sized human hands, on articulated mechanical arms - were meant to be the ultimate fallback tool. Where forceps would be too awkward to maneuver into sensitive spaces, where gauze pads could not muster the strength to grip or apply the right kind of pressure, where a scalpel would be too precise or too dangerous to poke at something, the hands were there to do what they could not. And the self-heating, the director had said, was installed for the sake of comfort. The patient would appreciate the fact that not every tool was cold and metallic.

Mehr was not a patient. Being Kath's remote co-pilot guaranteed that she'd never be grievously injured enough to need medical aid inside her virtual cockpit. And, somehow, Mehr had never needed to use any of those tools on Kath herself, to the point that - the hands aside - she often forgot that they even existed, until the end of each mission.

The end. When the Lodestone had been secured in its docking clamps inside the dropship, the objectives complete, the dustoff successful. That's when Mehr's cockpit lights would all switch off, an unseen hand would reach out from its compartment, and she'd feel that gesture, that tender caress. The words unspoken but unneeded, "Good girl. I'll see you soon." And with that feeling of Kath's hand against her chin, the adrenaline coursing through Mehr's body calmed down in an instant. Combat Brain's job was done. Now it was time for Normal Brain. Love Brain. What-If-This-War-Ended-Today Brain.

Her body quivered with anticipation as she reached for the release cord and freed herself from the cockpit capsule. It would be a long walk from here to the elevator, and a longer wait for the dropship to return. She would make sure it would be worth the wait, tonight.