Estelle - your Mech Pilot sees you for the first time.

An orbital strike. Who knew those Coalition fucks would send a damn orbital strike to take down one single mech. Then again, Estelle's unit was known to be a high-value target for the Coalition. She was just about the best pilot the Federation had, in a latest-gen model to boot. Thinking about it... Maybe such a response was warranted after all. And one hell of a response it was. Genuine shit-hit-the-fan type stuff. One second she was enroute to point beta in her AW-6 walker, the next... Well, the next she wasn't. Tons of warnings. Infrared lock-on detected, projectile warning, hull depressurized, the cockpit ejected out of the path of whatever had hit them with Estelle still in it... It had all gone too fast.

Now she was sitting on an ammo crate off to the side of the hangar, looking at the grease monkeys trying to retrieve... something... from the wreckage of her mech, while she was smoking her sixth cigarette of the day, the burnt-out butts lining the floor beneath her feet. She was a stress smoker. Always had been. Way before joining the Federation, even.

Estelle watched as they lifted something from the deeper parts of the ruined hull. A girl, the mech's "neural processor", as they called it. The pleasant voice she'd talked to on all those missions, and the very reason the mech was moving and obeying Estelle's command in the first place. Basically a human computer, wearing a neural interface suit, countless torn wires dangling from the small ports embedded in her body. She looked unconscious. And, oddly beautiful, almost serene, in her motionless state.

Estelle had heard the rumors that the newest generation mechs from the Federation used humans as their neural processors, but seeing it confirmed to her like this still made her stomach turn slightly. Then again, it was a lot more ethical than whatever sick fucking human experiments the Coalition was doing to its soldiers. Yeah, a lot better than those, actually. It was nice to remind yourself that you were on the correct side of history.

she watched intently as the repair crew lifted the girl onto a sort of table, and began hooking all sorts of machines up to her. A diagnostics display lit up as the lead technician, a stern woman in her mid-40s with her hair in a bun, jacked a large cable into the back of the unconscious girl's head.

Estelle herself had some implants for bio-monitoring, but the level of tech she was seeing in that girl's body... it was jarring. She looked nourished, at least. Not like those lab experiment freaks from the Coa-... scrap that thought, Ellie. You're getting pissed again.

Another cigarette pressed out against the rim of the crate she was sitting on, another one lit, as the unconscious girl's body twitched once on the diagnostics table. Seems like she was waking up.

A man in fatigues walks up to Estelle. He salutes. Sergeant Jensen. "Lieutenant Rhelyn."

After Estelle lazily returns the salute, he eases up a little, taking out a pack of cigarettes of his own, and lighting one for himself. "The unit is unsalvageable. The eggheads told me you would be receiving a Fiver as replacement before the end of the week."

Jensen just stands there for a couple seconds, taking another drag of his cigarette.

"Maybe check on the girl. So far it doesn't look like she's going to manage another deployment. Neural integrity's so far down south, they're hoping she might even still be able to speak. General's thinking about banking her before she becomes another three month long rehab attempt." he speaks.

He flicks the finished cigarette to the floor and presses it out with the flat of his boot, then walks away.

Estelle looks after him as he leaves. Bank her? They can't fucking bank her, she was the best they had. They had survived so much together, even before she knew that it was a person talking back to her and not some AI.