Mech pilot who ain’t giving up on no log flume exhibition race.
"No, listen, right," Dodger says over his one-too-manyth daiquiri. "Civvie mechs already do racing events, yeah? And everyone loves log flumes—"
Fletch makes eye contact with the bartender and makes an unobtrusive time to cut him off gesture.
"How the fuck are you gonna put a mech in a log flume?" Kelpie says loudly, so Fletch sighs and does it again.
"You say that," Beeper says on the other side of him, and Fletch rolls xer eyes because Beeper isn't that drunk, she's just entertaining herself. "But a lot of the racing mechs are all, y'know, titanium foam and carbon fibre and metamaterials. You could tackle 'em over yourself, with a runup. You could even strip a load of weight out of something like our SIGINT walkers—"
"Custom mechs is cheating," Kelpie declares confidently.
"Might need to scale back to something like urban powersuits, then—"
"Boo!" Kelpie throws a small handful of salted peanuts at her. "Not real mechs!"
"Well, you're already gonna need 'em waterproofed," Beeper argues, "You really gonna be a stickler about a little weight calibration?"
"We got principles," Kelpie yells. "Keep it authentic—"
"Authentic traditional mech-in-a-log-flume?" Beeper grins over her beer.
"Your face is a traditional mech-in-a-log-flume," Kelpie tells her.
"No, listen, the racing," Dodger says, doggedly drawing illegible diagrams on a damp napkin, while nobody pays attention.
"Doesn't exhibition racing imply there's also a championship?" Fletch asks politely, and Kelpie gives xer a horrified look.
"Why would you start him on that—"
Fletch gives her a tight smile and dips low behind Beeper's shoulder. "Someone thinks they saw your ex-wife down on the main strip," xie says softly, by Beeper's ear.
A wave of tension washes through Beeper, and then...back out. She turns her head, doesn't quite look at Fletch.
"C'mon and sit with us," she says back, just as soft. "I'm braver with backup. She finds me in here, I can tell her to fuck off," so Fletch finds xerself sliding onto a barstool and ordering a mocktail.
"How'd she know where to find you?" xie says, and Beeper pulls a little face and shrugs.
"Company's social media?" she says. "Come find us and say hi to Kelpie and Beeper and the gang at Mechspo! You know?" and Fletch purses xer lips and leans back in.
Even softer this time, xie says, "The office might have accidentally listed Dingo as still on manoeuvres this week," and at Beeper's sideways look, "because I was leaning over their shoulders asking nicely when they did it." Xie looks away. "She ruined your visit last time."
Beeper blinks at xer several times, and then something in her face clears, like clouds dissolving from in front of the sun, and she glows.
"We gotta take that to the Cap," she says. "We gotta take that to the Cap, because how the fuck did she know? And I haven't spoken to her, you know I haven't spoken to her, so if the Cap says are you sure you didn't let it slip yourself I can't stand in front of him and convince myself I must have, because you know I didn't—"
"What do you have to tell the Cap?" Kelpie says, looking between them with her head tilted.
"About the fabulous investment potential of Formula Log Flume," Fletch says, and reaches past Beeper to clap Dodger on the shoulder. "Tell me again how you decide the racing season starting brackets?"
It's definitely not so xie spends a second with xer arm across Beeper's shoulders. Nope. Nothing at all to do with the subtle upward curl of the corner of Beeper's mouth.
"Fuck her bullshit," Beeper says happily under her breath, and Fletch quickly hides xer own grin behind a sip of xer drink.
