Lodestone TLR-99

Itemization

"All we need is a camera mount, we don't need the entire head," Kath argued, but it was no use. This was the kind of stuff that the people back in Ops were really good at, and without them around to coordinate the purchases, and the advanced shipping pipeline afforded by the Sunnr Armed Forces, all Mehr could do was hope that something off the shelf would have the weirdly specific parts they needed.

Mehr threw her pencil down on top of the byzantine paperwork. "Do you want to see where you're going, next time, or not?"

"You're scary when you're trying to take charge," Kath said with a smirk.

"Without all these joints and pivots and and and--" Mehr flapped her hands angrily, having lost the words in a sea of billing figures-- "I can't do the job I was trained to do, without all that stuff. And if we want to stay independent out there, the job's got to be done right, no gods-damn compromises!"

"You sound like you need to cry it out somewhere."

"I need to finish the papers first, or Cap'n Stork won't have any parts on the way for us until next week!"

Kath seized Mehr's wrist on its way back to picking up the pencil. "I'll look at it. You go get yourself a drink."

"Don't low-ball them," Mehr warned.

"I know, I know. It's our mech, they're the ones relying on us." She reached into her pocket and drew out 10 crudely-minted brass coins - each bearing the stamp of an olive tree on one side, and a range of mesas on the other - and pressed them into the hand whose arm she was still grabbing. "This ought to get you a couple drinks and something nice to eat. Go on. You need it."

Having sent Mehr on her way, Kath sat on her still-warm chair at the little desk in the corner. The paperwork didn't seem so insurmountable at a glance. Four pages worth of deductibles, none of which they qualified for as of yet (save for the Militia Credit, which was marked with a faint check and a fainter question mark). The itemized list was where she'd gotten held up. She didn't really need to be this detailed, considering these repairs were for their own mech. Kath figured that Cap'n Stork - the alias used by this colony's self-appointed storage and delivery man - deserved to know when their things were needed and how much they were worth, without having to cross-reference fifteen other files. Even, apparently, something as simple as a flathead screwdriver.

Kath took up the pencil - also itemized in the list - and, without changing anything in the rest of the document, signed it and dropped it back down.

She needed that drink now, too.