Loose lips sink ships.
A/N: Well, the love fest between Vandham and Lila is well and ruined, and she's woman enough to take the blame herself. Mostly. Luckily, Lila still has her work to fall back on. Feel the enthusiasm, yeah.
Hurt, injury, slight swears. Set almost to Ch. 11, but no real spoilers past Ch. 5.
Everything besides Lila and her station belongs to the geniuses of MONOLITH SOFT. I still can't like H.B. but I certainly loved using his vocabulary.
"Get your skell out of my station."
"That isn't any way to treat a customer." H.B. kept a relaxed stance in the face of the Lila's anger.
"Get it out or I will get someone to move it. I'm not touching it. I'm going to avoid even looking at it." The manager of the refueling station moved so her back was to it, like a child ignoring her preschool teacher.
"Nonsense. You aren't going to be that petty."
"Oh, you have no idea how petty I've become. I am almost to the point of not caring about New LA or the tower or anything. Almost, but not quite. That's why I'm telling you, get it out of my station."
H.B. looked at the short technician with surprise. She looked furious, he was used to that, but she also looked sick, ill, exhausted. Bone weary, strange phrase, but it lingered in his brain. He drew on his stores of patience.
"Come now. You've always recognized my superiority, under all that hostility, and I will grant that your station does a reasonable job." He was doing her a kindness, stating that. He'd constantly had to make concessions to her weaknesses, and had often suffered the insubordination of her station crew. But he did enjoy the convenience of not having to explain his plans to the BLADE staff in the official hangar. And it could not be denied that they did a fine, albeit limited, job.
"My station did an excellent job, and, yeah, I recognized your abilities and how very helpful you've been for BLADE. I've made sure that skell was sent out better than others simply to rebuke this weird animosity thing we've got going."
"Rivalry can be corrective."
"Rivalry in this situation is stupid. I've been done with it for a while."
"Then kindly match your actions to your words. I have a mission that really can't be delayed." He gazed at Lila with magnanimous eyes, willing to ignore her little outburst. Really, she could be very emotional at times.
"Things have changed, Hector, so let me make it plain. I cannot be trusted with your skell and that is why I am telling you to move it. For the sake of New LA."
"Acting to delay my return to the fight is helping New LA? Really, that stretches even the most distorted logic." He arched an eyebrow at her, willing her to be reasonable.
She was almost shouting now. Clearly she had edged even further away from acceptable behavior. No wonder she'd never made it as a BLADE. "If I touch your skell, I swear I will curse it. I have no idea if I can keep myself from damaging it. I wish I could say, yes, I will do right by you. But I cannot promise it. I can't even promise I won't do something unknowingly. I don't really care about your safety, get that straight, Hector, but I can't let any BLADE take that extra risk. You are any BLADE. Get it out of my station."
H.B. blinked down on her with shock. "You really would sabotage my skell?"
"No, I don't think I would, actually. But I can't promise, and we can't take that risk. It isn't fair to the rest of New LA. Please, Hector," her voice broke suddenly, pleading, "take it away. Don't …" She cut herself off, face going blank, eyes suspiciously wet but determinedly focused on something very far away and probably nonexistent.
H.B. suddenly said, "I thought he already knew."
Lila snapped her gaze back on him with utter astonishment. H.B. was astonished himself. He had had no intention of telling her his mistake.
She was still looking at him, like he had grown an extra set of eyes, or fluffy cat ears on his head or something. Like she had never seen him before. Well, he certainly felt extraordinary, because for once in his life he had utterly no idea what to say next.
"You honestly didn't know." It wasn't a question, or a condemnation. She was trying the sentence out, to see if it was believable.
H.B. frowned. He really had not realized that Commander Vandham had no inkling of Lila's connections to security and surveillance, both on Earth and Mira, and with Vandham as her particular target. H.B. had just assumed that the man had known the connection and had accepted it as a feature of their embarrassingly public relationship, an unfortunate drawback or possibly a twisted bonus. Honestly, it hadn't taken too much digging to find out her side job on the Whale, interviewing the passengers to check their identities. From there, it was a pretty obvious to see her role in earlier projects on Earth. H.B. had practically spelled it out to Vandham during an argument over proposed security regulations. He'd been attempting to spur the old man towards improving BLADE security, just one more area that needed change, now more than ever, just as so much else about the organization needed to be improved. Perhaps it had been a bit low, even crude, he'd concede that, but he was growing frustrated that his suggestions were constantly ignored. How was he to know that Vandham had been blissfully ignorant, thinking that Lila was actually smitten by his dubious charms? Even without digging, anyone should have been able to see it, H.B. had thought. The woman was far too wily for someone so common. He'd completely underestimated Vandham's fatuity. The Commander had proceeded to grill him about the details, such that he knew or had surmised, before slamming out of the barracks to engage in a very public contretemps with Lila in the middle of Barista Court.
"You didn't know, and you didn't mean to let him know. You never meant to hurt him." She was still trying out the sentences.
Yes and yes and, well, he wasn't sure about the third. Commander Vandham infuriated him, disappointed him, was an obstacle to the greatness that he was sure the city, the colony could achieve. But, no, he wasn't cruel by nature, he didn't like to think so. He wasn't even insensitive. His intention was ever to insure that humanity would survive and improve, both as a whole and individual by individual. Bursting the Commander's little dream like that? It was accidental, but H.B. comforted himself with knowing that it had removed a potential weakness, so it had done the man some good. In the long term. Vandham would thank him for it, eventually. And Lila still had her station.
"Put it in Bay 2, that's the best one. Can you manage the restraints or do I need to show you?" She was heading towards the back of the station, towards the fuel storage.
H.B. looked at her blankly, before he let dismay cover his surprise at her change of heart. "Surely you don't expect me to do that menial task?"
"I'm a little shorthanded, if you haven't noticed." She was already behind the bulk of the equipment, but he thought he heard her add, "And don't call me Shirley."
He had noticed how quiet the station was. Usually, every bay was full, with a skell or two waiting, her crew of rejects bumbling around madly. Part of the charm of visiting the station was the certainty that they would let him jump the queue. A demonstration of his primacy. Today, there had only been one skell refueling, quietly ticking away in the first bay. Only been Lila, sitting idly by her office.
He maneuvered his skell into the framework, and was working on the first set of restraints. Lila came back and had the other three done before he was finished. She pointed to a console located at about the shoulder height of the skell, reachable by ladder. "Punch in code #334829X, then hit the blue button. Wait. You aren't going to Oblivia, right?"
"What business is that of yours?"
She spoke slowly. "If you're headed that way, I'll want to figure a different code. Different fuel ratio. Electrical storms, you know, I hear they're bad today."
He still didn't understand. "No, not Oblivia."
"Great. #334829X," she repeated slowly. "Now, blue button." He felt uncomfortable, having her give him such simple instructions. He started to descend, but she stopped him. "Wait right there, I'll be done in a moment."
She wrestled with a stiff and heavy cable, locking it into the fuel connector with a great sucking click. "Okay, hit the big green button. It should be lit up." He did, feeling foolish, and the skell thrummed as refueling began.
"You can come down now." When he reached the deck, she smiled at him. "Congratulations, Hector. You'll make a fine station attendant."
He had to tamp down the absurd pride he felt at her praise. "I don't believe I asked for such a dismal honor. Why isn't your crew here, doing their proper jobs?"
Her smile vanished. "Gino quit, Ricky's looking for him and not finding him, and Twyleth comes when she wants to. She doesn't want to right now. It's kind of a quiet time. I'm thinking of doing some maintenance, maybe painting something. Anyway, thanks for the help. Saved us a couple of minutes, right?"
"At least I'm not your only customer. You still have some business."
"Yeah, you and whoever else that one belongs to," she said, pointing to the rather clumsy black skell in the first bay.
"You don't know who it is?"
"No. It was in the bay this morning. I didn't even hear it arrive. Note on the front, saying regular refueling, pick up later. No one else has been by."
H.B. didn't know what made him suspicious. Perhaps something about the armor was too crude. Perhaps the ticking sounded different, although Lila hadn't noticed anything so probably not that. But he decided to take a closer look at the skell. He walked around it, slowly. Lila trailed him.
"Do you recognize it?" she asked.
"No, and I don't recognize the type."
Lila had an answer. "Tricked out baby skell. All that oversized black armor? Trying to make it look bigger, only making it look stupid. Still just a plain old baby. I checked the serial number on the center frame, just to be sure. It's listed as scrapped. So it must have been built out of a reclaimed frame. They're using what little they can scavenge for the new BLADEs," she said glumly. "There've been a lot of new BLADEs recently."
H.B. was up the stepladder, peering into the hatch. The visor was smoky, but he thought he could see a bundle in it. A blinking bundle. The blinking of a counter reaching down to a very small number. A river of ice spilled down his spine.
"Look at this," he motioned to her. Something must have been in his tone. Without hesitation, she climbed up beside him, an awkward balancing act, and looked where he had looked. The counter clicked below 100, and kept going.
She was on the deck in an instant. "Get those restraints off your skell, H.B., and move it as soon as you get it clear." She was up and down the second bay already, hitting that big red button you are never supposed to hit, pulling off the cables and tossing them clear, heavy as they were. An alarm began to blare.
"What about this one?" he shouted.
"I don't want to trigger anything." She was racing back to the fuel storage area, slapping the red button on the third bay as she flew past, increasing the racket of the alarm. He could see people noticing across the causeway.
H.B. hesitated. Logic dictated he should get in his skell, get it to safety, perhaps keep others as far away as possible. Instead, he ran after her. She was madly swinging levers and pushing buttons, no, not madly, this was a systematic shutdown done at lightning speed. "How can I help?"
"Get in your skell, H.B.! It'll protect you even if you can't move it!"
"You need to come too."
"I need to get this done! Go!"
H.B. sprinted back to his skell and swung into it. No time to remove the restraints, no time to warn anyone, the timer must be close to complete.
It was already done. The blast ripped sideways across the station even before he was buckled in. As his skell slammed towards the outer city wall, H.B. vaguely spared some admiration for the shape of the charges. Little enough wasted energy, it must have been well designed to direct the blast so nicely. Human? It felt very, well, old school, not resembling the strange and varied explosions that they'd had to deal with on Mira. He hated those, especially those puges that would self-destruct at the last moment, denying him a proper victory.
I'm rambling, he thought with disapproval. The blast was over now, but it was still overwhelmingly loud. His ears were ringing, and everything was blue. First he thought it was his eyes, then he felt a greater horror. They'd blasted straight through the city wall, into the protective crystalline gel. How could he have possibly survived? Worse yet, the city itself was compromised. He struggled to open his hatch, but the gel had solidified and sealed him inside. Mostly solidified, but some was still liquid. He realized that it must be new, fresh. He remembered that there were safety features in the hangar and industrial areas, spraying the area in case of explosions. Well, that had worked nicely, at least he hoped it had worked. The city wall would be undamaged. It would be just as strong as before.
Recovery crews were there, already he could hear them. Had he been knocked out? He didn't like to think he'd lost time, but somehow he must have. Someone was scraping at the edges of his hatch, and within a minute they had pried it open. He needed help to climb out, humiliating. He saw a fire team spraying several flaming shipping containers, and other BLADEs standing outside the area, watching and gesturing.
His legs felt wrong, slightly. One was painful, almost twisted. "Lie down here, we'll get you up to the sick bay shortly," said a woman with a gentle but concerned expression.
"Lila, the station manager, she was behind the office." He was having trouble hearing himself over the ringing in his ears. The pain was really quite extreme, and it was all going a little dark, although he thought he could see 1's and 0's dancing along the edges.
The medic, that must be who she was, looked even more worried. "Please, relax. We've found her signal. We're trying to retrieve her even now."
It wasn't that bad, in the end. He'd needed surprisingly little treatment, and was back on duty within the week. His skell had been damaged even less, which he attributed to his superior choice of armor. Nonetheless, he'd taken the opportunity to add several upgrades, although it had cost him a pretty sum. The refueling station was a complete loss, of course, and reluctantly he'd had to return to getting his skell refueled with all the others in the BLADE hangar. The blast's cause wasn't yet determined, but he had told Lara Mara quite clearly that he wanted to be kept up to date. He shuddered at the memory of the Mediator's arch expression. He did not like that man at all, but for this information he was willing to suffer the interaction. He did learn that Lila had eventually been dug out of the impact gel. To everyone's amazement, she was still alive, if unresponsive. He had to grant that she was a tough little thing. A credit to the hardness of her head, he thought to himself with a note of amusement. If she ever was released from treatment, he supposed he'd have to find a reason to talk to her again, just for the bracing effect of their venomous banter.
A/n: Eldest Child and I recently figured out who was behind the hit, and we informed Mara Lara. It wasn't the Ganglion, why would they care about a filling station? Not Walser the industrialist from Chapter 4?, again, he was venal, not crazy. Not some vigilante bent on reproving New Los Angeles for its failings (don't say a thing! Not one thing! I'll just start crying again). No, it was a result of infighting between two Nopon mafia families, trying to corner the market for Nopon lotto tickets. Gino had been quietly selling them on the side. To their credit, the Nopon thought the station was shut down and empty. Their aim was to remove one point of sale, not any BLADEs. They were very sorry.
Next up: Eleonora does not let her hair down, even when Jack proposes. (Yes, I said Eleonora. Lila is out of action and Eleonora rules.)