Andréa, Canis Lanonbinary

Mech Pilot who doesn’t listen to the voices.

"Two. Six. Niner. Yankee. Oscar. Uniform."

Tom fiddled with the knobs on the receiver, it sounded like a goddamn numbers station. The voice chopped in and out until he could lock the signal. He was... 300 kilos due north west of the planned drop zone, not a friendly in range of IFF, or he got hit so badly it mangled his data link. Old radio was working however, one of those survival features you expect not to need to use. He glanced up at the visual display. His exo was crammed into a ravine.

"Two-Six-Niner actual, call sign Nimbus. How copy?"

He barked out the old IFF passphrase of his unit. The 269th Battalion's "cloud-fuckers" had used clever sentences with the word Nimbus to signal to each other when IFF was jammed or they were too drunk to see during a bar hop. Now this too-cool-for-school passphrase into the pillow fort was his gamble for life.

"Two. Six. Niner. Charlie. Oscar. Mike. Echo.

That was odd. If it was a person on the other end, they'd have probably given him somewhere to go. Either it was actually supposed to be a request to give details, or it was an enemy with a shortwave fucking with him. He wasn't buying it, but he tried again.

"Two-Six-Niner, call sign Nimbus, got fucked by a cloud and made like Icarus..."

The static became choppier, it practically felt like it was clawing at his ears. He flipped the volume down, but the knob spun freely without any give. Louder. Louder. Tom grated his teeth, weathering whatever hellish radiation spike was flowing past his exo.

"Two. Six. Niner. Romeo. Uniform. November."

It's just instructions. She must have eyes on or something, the exo won't budge. Looking at the visual, he could make out the distinct outline of an enemy heavy walker in his rearview, just the top portion of the silhouette. That meant trouble, and the smoke it was trailing could be from his buddies. He punched out, the ejection pod shot out and careened down into the canyon, ejecting clear of the crash site by about half a kilo. The jocksuit helm radio crackled to life on the shortwave band momentarily, the numbers-station lady calmly repeating her instructions on a loop two more times. Once the ejection pod slammed into the topsoil at the bottom of the canyon, he hit the ground running. Orienting himself by the sun's position and a little bit of memory, he took off into the night.

No sooner did he bail with his ejection kit did things go from bad to worse. At first, enemy infantry seemed to erupt from the hillside, but as the jogged away from the crash site, their lack of engagement made him pause. Three of them at first. Arms calmly at their sides, striding calmly. Then eight. Twelve. Thirty... pilots. It was enemy pilots, wandering towards the crash site like they were enraptured by something. Tom felt the hairs on his neck stand up, goosebumps and all. His training said fuck 'em, but his human instincts were awash with a need to connect, to understand the fuck they were doing.

"Uh- h-hey! Anyone? Hello!?"

He started waving his arms, calmly at first then more frantically as the veritable heard of exo pilots ambled past. No one had their suit helmets on, and the shortwaves interference suggested potentially lethal radiation. These guys were maybe already dead, most were wounded extremely badly, and then he saw Combat Lead Marco. His top half. Dragging itself, a smear of crimson trailed behind him, leading into the sunset. That along with a sideshow of uniquely disquieting gore as he looked closer at the faces of enemy pilots was enough to shock him into action. Whatever the fuck was going on, he wasn't going to stick around to find out.

"Two. Six. Niner. Hotel. Echo. Lima. Lima. Oscar."

The static crackled to life through his speakers, piercing his ears, making him squeeze his eyes shut reflexively. He glanced backwards, the crowd of downed pilots had dispersed, leaving footprints and blood where they were just moments ago. The sun was now fading, a twisted landscape of shattered exos and walkers spanned before him, the ground littered in oil, debris, and dead bodies. Where was he...? Weakness took him to the ground, he writhed with an unseen pain across his body- it felt like every goddamn nerve cell was personally being offended all at once. He scrambled to drag himself away, groaning, kicking, clawing. He couldn't go much farther.

"Two. Six. Niner. Sierra. Lima. Echo. Echo. Papa."

He couldn't comply with that. Every fiber of his being screamed out in agony as he fought with his medkit, jammed his veins full of morphine, adrenaline, and epinephrine. Shortly after as his vision cleared, he threw his helmet off and swallowed as much of the water his closing throat would permit before the pain penetrated too deeply, and threw the helmet back on. Not on this planet. Not in this canyon. Not like this.

Two days of misery. The whole way out of the canyon system, she taunted him. Orders of suicidal nature spelled out in phoenic alphabet, across a shortwave band he didn't have to tune. He didn't need to think about it any deeper, the numbers lady was some kinda ghost.

Two. Six. Niner.
Surrender.
Two. Six. Niner.
Submit.

Two. Six. Niner.

Please.

He followed the river out West, chasing the sun. Once he was clear, he could faintly make out an array of black stone towers mixed into the canyon walls. Probably some cosmic bullshit, or someone's sick prank of a super weapon. He hoped on his data link coming back up, but upon seeing a friendly Exo, he shot one of his ejection kit's signal flares. Evac was timely, he'd crashed along with his entire strike team and apparently he was all that was left. No one wanted to go into the valley, it was a radioactive hot zone. He spent the next two months just fucking melting. His DNA resembled swiss cheese, and that meant an endless medical nightmare of pissing blood and getting skin grafts, gene therapy, synthetic organ transplants, and of course paid leave and medals.

His shortwave from that mission? It was totally fried.

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