Chapter One, Part One
"Name and profession?" The person asking was an older woman, one eye covered by a patch and a twisting scar cutting the dark skin beneath it, her tone somewhere between tired and irritated. She held a datapad that looked like it might have seen more wear and tear than the one at the schoolhouse, divots that might have been the marks left by bullets around the casing.
"Ah. Julia. Julia Candle, ma'am." She tried to straighten up a little more, hoping her voice wouldn't crack and betray her anxiety. "Engineer on the neutrino telescopes." That last was, perhaps, a little bit of a fib; she'd only just graduated from the trade school two weeks ago, right before the fleet had made landfall and she'd gotten her first up-close look at a mech.
"All right. Julia. What makes you think you'd be a good mech pilot?" The woman's remaining eye flicked up, and then back down dismissively.
"Ma'am? Pilot? I just came to sign up to be a technician."
"You're in the pilot line, Ms. Candle."
"I'm sorry, ma'am. They're not marked, that I saw?"
That got the most reaction so far. "They're not? Vetra damn it!" She pushed to her feet, and fixed Julia with a grim look. "You wait here, while I go sort the lines out, and if it turns out you were wrong I'm gonna have your hide for a rug, you understand?"
"Y- Yes, ma'am." She was, really, grateful for the jumpsuit, which hid the way her shirt was plastered to her back with stress-induced sweat. She stood there, nearly rigid, while the interviewer hustled away, worrying suddenly that someone had set signs out after she joined the line to sign up, or that she had somehow missed seeing them, or that she'd be rejected as a troublemaker for interrupting the flow of things.
"Hey." A hand landed on her shoulder, and she found herself turned sideways to look at a tall woman with a thick red braid of hair flung forward across one shoulder. "Don't let Chamber rattle you, rookie. She's just hoping to scare off the ones who think they're going to be ace pilots the moment we touch down someplace." The hand slid off her shoulder, and then was presented to her as an offer of a handshake. "You can call me Archon, by the by."
"Ah- I'm Julia." She took the hand, wincing as the grip tightened almost painfully.
"Mm. No, you don't look like a Julia." Archon tapped the fingers of her free hand on her chin for a moment. "Doesn't matter, we'll figure out what to call you. Hey! Chamber! I'm taking this one!" Her voice spiked, cutting across the low rumble of the recruitment field. "I'll get Mask to do the paperwork!"
Whatever the response, if there even was one, she turned away and pulled Julia out of the line. "Ah- She said to wait here-"
"And I said you're recruited, I like the way you hold yourself. You're gonna join Blackthorn, instead of getting tossed into the pool with the other rookies. Welcome aboard, pilot!"
"But I just wanted to be a technician!" Her protest was ignored, or perhaps not heard, as Archon pulled her away through the crowd, toward the landing zone in the distance.
