Lucky

A/N: What was the crew thinking when the Whale was attacked? Lila can tell you her story.

Set pre-game, on the White Whale, swears and spoilers to Ch. 5 and possibly all game. Lila is not Cross, she's not even close, just an NPC with a blue speech bubble with useful info on skell fuel usage. She & Gino (also not Cross) are mine, everything else belongs to the geniuses of MONOLITH SOFT.

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Dear god, why? Because...

Not everyone could make it to the safety of what would eventually become New Los Angeles on the day the great ship fell out of the sky. That was when the escape pods came into play. It was what they were designed for, after all, although the designers could hardly have foreseen the exact horror unfolding over Mira. These pods could carry groups of ten to safety on any nearby planet. If you had delayed too long, or were blocked from reaching the main Habitat Unit, this was your only hope.

Lila had done the first and was now faced with the second. She and Gino had stayed too long in the power relay room, putting out flames, hampered by the growing clutter of empty fire extinguishers at their feet. Then the great tangle of cables went dark, the ones that fed the Habitat Unit directly from the engine room.

"That's it. They've given up," said Gino.

Lila thought it was probably worse. The Chief would never give up. (In fact, the Chief Engineer had been literally thrown out of the engine control room by the first in the final, destructive round of explosions, and would have launched himself straight back in, flame, smoke and all, but for the blast doors slamming shut right on his pugnacious nose.)

She had bolted into the hallway, Gino at her heels. She still held a half empty fire extinguisher (optimists would say half full, but optimism was not very popular at that moment). Lila suddenly realized the hallway was as full of smoke as the relay room had been. The emergency lights were dimmed from the power failure, and a sudden slight tilt of the floor, quickly restored to balance, hinted that the artificial gravity was not all it should be.

"Come on," said Gino, running down the hall.

"I think... I think it's this way...," said Lila and coughed suddenly as a wave of blacker than usual smoke rushed out of the relay room. The smell of the smoke took on a more poisonous stench too.

"You don't know shit," shouted Gino from where the corridor took a sharp corner. She ran after him, not as quickly but steadily, hugging the fire extinguisher. "Forget that," gasped Gino, but she ignored him. Glad she was too, as they hit what seemed like a pure wall of fire racing toward them. She hosed Gino and herself as they scrambled frantically back, diving into a smaller corridor.

"What now?" gasped Gino. Lila tried to think, concentrating on the schematics of the ship she'd memorized. Actually, she'd spent a lot of time memorizing things during the past two years, and it all seemed to want to jump into first place right now. Think! Think! She'd memorized the plans not just because she was a good little member of the engineering team. She'd memorized them because she was constantly disoriented those first months, and whenever that happened she tended to panic. Strangely, she wasn't panicking now, just trying to grasp enough clues to decide which way to go. Level 11, starboard, almost the exact center of the ship.

"Of course! The escape pods!" She trotted down the corridors, making a series of quick lefts and rights. Even as the floor tilted sickly almost 30 degrees, she kept on course. Gino stayed beside her until the last hallway when he sprinted ahead. Lila couldn't even mutter under her breath in dismay. Just as well, because "Don't take the last pod, jerkface" wouldn't make inspiring last words.

They weren't the only ones at the station. There were several sets of pods, but they could only launch in sequence, with a few minutes delay in between each launch. Nine people waited for the next launch. Eleven, now that she and Gino had arrived. One too many, and she was last.

"Begin loading sequence," said the computerized voice, and the group rushed into the pods. "Leave her behind, she doesn't deserve to be here," shouted a tall man as he pushed past.

Lila didn't even shrug. "Rock paper scissors?" she said weakly to Gino, and when he hesitated, she plastered a smile on her smoke-covered face and pushed him towards the ten personal capsules. "I'll see you on the surface," she said, a little too cheerfully.

"Sorry about what I said back there." And Gino scooted through the door.

The door slid shut, hissing as it sealed, and the great pod, the size of a largish silvery garden shed, shifted back several meters, clicking loudly into an overhead rail. Yet another door sealed, much larger, and with a more elaborate clicking sound. It took a minute before the pod reached the edge of the exit tunnel. Another door opened, silently, or at least with no chance for sound to reach her. The boosters on the pod ignited, a small, silent, friendly explosion, and it plunged away into darkness.

"Well, that's that. Let's start the sequence," said Lila to herself. One button to push, one acknowledgement, then another, the process was fairly short, as if the ship already was expecting her answers, leaving her with several minutes of waiting for the first pod to clear and the next pod to be deemed ready.

She hoped she wouldn't have to travel alone. She hoped, in the exact same moment, that no one else needed to travel with her. She hoped that the Chief and the team were okay, that everyone was okay, although as heat started to radiate from the closed entrance doors, she knew that was not going to be true. The lights dimmed further, and she scooted closer to the pod's door, still shut as the prep sequence followed its course.

"Well, of course I don't deserve to be here," she muttered. She already knew that comment would rankle. She actually appreciated the opportunity to argue an unimportant point with someone not even there, killing time while she waited helplessly for the chance to escape. She'd recognized the man, not from close contact, but because she'd memorized personnel logs along with schematics. His cousin, Gloria, she actually had known her, back on ... Lila stopped, restarted the argument, she'd known Gloria back when the White Whale was being built, a good engineer, sweet and talented, and shunted off the project during the last weeks, left behind for the sake of someone with connections or bribes or who knew what other dark secrets. Lila had found a lot of those during her reading. It amazed her what was there to be learned, if anyone bothered to go into details.

Gloria deserved to be on the ship. Lila was here simply because of luck. But, really, everyone deserved that luck, everyone back on … She paused again. Even after two years, she still wasn't ready to directly face the thing that happened. Other people talked about July 2054, of everyone and everything they'd lost. They listed it, memorialized it, ranked it, wept over it, tried to discover a solution that would have prevented it. All of that was probably a healthy response. Lila acted like life had begun aboard the White Whale, mostly, with nothing and no one from before. Not healthy, but not so uncommon among the crew. How do you begin? Do you miss your parents first, or your neighbors, or your country? How do you mourn for an ocean? So people had ignored it. The Chief had kept silent, so had Gino, she'd liked that about those two.

She hoped they'd be okay.

She switched back to the imaginary argument. Not being able to talk about the time before was hampering her. The countdown clock still read 4 minutes, so she risked a few memories, not very important, to prove the innocent nature of her luck.

It was a gentle November night and Lila had arranged to meet friends at a bar (gone gone gone lost destroyed) (no, stop), somewhat off campus. She'd rolled into the Boston area on shore leave, and thought to look them up, partly to reminisce, and partly to ask, ever so obliquely, about possible opportunities for a retired submariner. Not that she was unhappy with her position. Actually, she loved the Navy even more than when she had first enlisted, but something seemed to be hollowed out from the whole military. Projects weren't supported, almost through lack of interest. She wondered if it was just her, if she had reached the edge of possible promotions, or if it was a general retooling that she'd probably be too old for once it truly started. Either way, she wanted to check the outside, just to be prepared.

But none of her friends had made it. A kid with a sudden fever, an international conference call, a vague promise of coffee (LOL! Soon! Or never, she suspected). She'd had a beer, considered having a sandwich, tried to relax, and looked around. Graduate students, a few locals, it was too early for crowds, a weeknight to boot. The older, professionally dressed woman down the bar stood out, which made Lila wonder how she hadn't recognized her at once.

"Hey, Professor Dominick, small world," Lila spoke, jumping past her own hesitation, trying to figure why the electrical engineering prof was there.

Something suggested the woman was working on a serious round of drinking. The extra cocktail napkins, the way the bartender brought another round at once, the speed the older woman swallowed the whiskey, whiskey that Lila recognized as a Japanese brand you were supposed to sip and prose over, making its ridiculous price seem justified while subtly bragging about your intelligence and wealth. She looked at her carefully and decided this wasn't an alcoholic routine. This was the response to strong emotion, and Lila guessed that emotion might be terror. The professor looked a little shaky, a little grey, and her too-wide eyes darted about, trying to catch onto something safe. There was a story here, and Lila suddenly wanted to know it. She'd liked Professor Dominick, a sharp-voiced woman, scrupulously fair, who had the blessed ability to explain things clearly and concretely, in a way that kept her lectures from evaporating from your brain as soon as you hit sunshine outside.

It was so easy. Lila sipped her beer and the story rolled out. She hardly had to say a word after that first greeting.

"Small world indeed. You're the second returning student I've had the pleasure of seeing today. You must know Hector, brilliant boy, he went into the military just like you."

Lila didn't correct her. The man in question was years younger, and had started long after she had graduated. Lila had heard groans about the prodigy from those friends lucky enough to stay for advanced degrees. He'd blazed through not one but three departments, nabbing prizes and breaking (intellectual) hearts, before polishing off a Ph.D., all in 3 and a half years, flat, and then leaving, mercifully for the Air Force. Lila was glad to let the flyboys enjoy the wunderkind.

"He came to visit me. Such a brilliant mind. I always enjoyed him during his short time with us, and I was glad to hear directly from him. Such a pleasure." The professor's voice wobbled a bit.

Lila kept silent but tried to look as friendly and safe as possible.

"Always glad to see a student, always glad," Professor Dominick repeated. The woman took a breath and then spoke rapidly, without pause. "He said he was working on a project, a space project of all things, intended to evacuate as much of the human population as possible. Within the next four years, he said, maybe less. Not for colonization, or exploration, he was very clear, merely to get as many people safely away from, well, he didn't say what was coming, but he felt that it would be pointless to defend or prevent or … well, he mentioned fighting, surely that must have been a misunderstanding. He thought I might be interested in helping, although it would involve a move to California."

The professor looked up, a certain decisive if drunken superiority in her face, now that the tale was out of the way. She was clearly ready to reject it. "So very ridiculous. Of course, I looked it up once he left. There was nothing about it, absolutely nothing. The location he mentioned is merely a solar array, the leader he named is the energy plant manager, I believe she's fairly well respected in the field. It's all connected to a scheme for a battery manufacturing super-factory. I was disappointed that he felt he had to tease me that way. I am perfectly able to accept that some things must be kept military secrets. I don't need science fiction to keep me happy."

Lila had laughingly agreed, and the conversations had switched to some very concrete topics, right down to odds on the Army-Navy game (she had staunchly if foolishly supported Navy's chances for that year). She was glad that the professor had slowed her drinking, and more glad when the woman asked the bartender to get her a cab ("Sharing economy, nonsense, it's a way of skimming the wealth and pushing down the risk.") Lila had finished her beer, seen the woman out, and headed straight back to her hotel.

By the end of the week, Petty Officer Brown had sent a resume and 3 references to what she sincerely hoped was the project in question.

She had found the White Whale early and she had some interesting qualifications. That might have been enough to get her in, or perhaps not. But she had a second piece of extraordinary luck, in the form of one of her references. Not her captain, good man that he was, or the head of engineering on her previous boat, also a solid reference. No, she had gone wide, almost weird, on her third reference, sending a request to the head of a strange and short-lived project from a few years back, and that had done the trick.

The Navy had been trying to use gravitational propulsion on smaller ships, without much success. After the first month, Lila had been longing to get back to the submarines and away from what felt like pointless tinkering. That changed when a new project leader stormed in, a man-mountain of an engineer who had taken over, pounded out a solution and promptly and correctly declared it utterly impractical. All over in 3 months. Lila had taken a risk, sending a reference request to him, in the hopes that this would prove she was more than your usual grease monkey. She actually hadn't been very key to the project, mostly fetching this and that and tightening what needed to be tightened. And keeping the forklifts in working shape, they seemed to constantly be breaking down and she had a way with them. She'd wasn't sure he'd remember her, or give much of a reference, but she'd respected him and hoped he was a smart choice. When she got his email that Friday morning, she went with it.

She'd had no way of knowing he was the chief engineer on the White Whale division of Project Exodus. She wasn't even sure that he'd given her much of a reference, but it had certainly been worth its weight in gold. She'd joined the busy facility on the California-Nevada border, under a merciless desert sky that had almost been her undoing later. The Chief had helped her out then too, switching her to night shift and the maintenance sheds. Others had sympathized with her seeming exile. She didn't explain the point. Luckily there were a lot of machines that resembled forklifts, only really majestic ones, in need of oiling and cleaning.

Towards the end of the project, when good people like Gloria were disappearing, there was a last piece of luck that had probably saved her, but she didn't want to think about that, because it felt far less innocent.

"Begin loading sequence," directed the voice. The ship was making sounds like distant bells. Lila didn't hesitate. She found an individual capsule and snugged herself in. The capsule sealed, and her mimeosome automatically began a slow shutdown sequence, a deeper and less voluntary version of regular maintenance sleep. She hoped she'd be okay. She hoped that Gino was okay and wondered how soon she'd see him again. She hoped that Gloria's cousin and Hector (who was just as irritating as her friends had said, as well as frighteningly competent) were okay. She started to hope, very hazily now, that the Chief was okay, when she stopped thinking anything at all.

When she opened her eyes, she was on Mira, and lucky to be alive.

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A/n: One of the first pieces I ever typed, whilest Youngest Child howled about math beside me. First I imagined Lila, then I had to make her backstory, then, well, then I ended up with everything else (hello, Gino!).

Please note, this is slightly AU. Game canon has the ECP project fairly public knowledge from the start. By the time I learned this fact, I was a good 8 stories in, so in this universe, the evacuation plans were kept hush hush for as long as possible. I had enough to revise when I hit Ch. 5 and Ch. 12 in the game (plus certain affinity lines), and didn't manage every turn.

I'm slowing down, kids, with any new stories, so I'll be putting up this big block. Right now, it is rated T; I'll warn you when I make the switch. (Hello, Switch! Whoooo! okay, calm now.)

Next up: Hello, Mira! What lovely mud you have. Mind if I examine it?