Mech Pilot who is putting squadrons of space-fighters out of work.
"Create jobs," say the newsfeeds, in chopped-up speechwritten soundbites; "secure our plantary defence." And it's all lies, of course, because it's out of the mouth of politicians and pundits; crooks and bastards.
The Vaandi have had one of their dynasty-ships at a local Lagrange point for generations. Their shimmering single-seat spacefighters are planetary defence, and their presence makes this a trade route destination for any caravan likewise accompanied by their more mobile cousins. It's pure crowd-curdling, frame-shifting xenophobia, the insinuation that plantary defence ought to be done by real locals.
Already, seeing the writing on the wall from their people's whole history with people like this, the dynasty-ship elders are framing the early, soft-worded warnings that if that's the road the locals want to go down, even generations in one place are not enough to forget what the engines of a dynasty-ship are for.
Tarragon hasn't had a real job in years. Real jobs don't exist, at street level; real jobs are what the management class give each other, after they give each other the class-solidarity nod and the funny handshakes and the exchange of oh YAH, one ALSO went to the correct sort of school and knows the correct sort of person! And that means she's forced to engage with Welfare, and here's how you know the entire "local mech defence force will create jobs!" is a fucking scam that someone's making dirty brown envelopes off of: it slowly trickles down, in quiet policy tweaks and riders to innocuous-sounding programme rollouts. If you're on Welfare — if you were born too poor for anyone to give you a job that'll pay the rent the same people demand — you need to earn your survival, in the face of their constant attempts to starve you, because they resent that the tax their accountants get them out of paying subsidises their parasitism of your labour. If you're on Welfare, you first may, then are offered the opportunity to, then encouraged to, and finally are unilaterally informed you will agree to train in the Defence Reserve.
There's an enhanced Welfare rate, if you learn to pilot a mech. Learn, in principle, to kill people.
It's closer to a survivable income.
Tarragon learns to pilot a mech. The Vaandi dynasty-ship sets a departure date; the media blare smugly about security from foreign influences as trade dries up and the economy staggers to its knees. Food prices balloon; even pseudojobs thin on the ground. Rents rise, in the face of landlords laggily noticing that they fucked themselves.
There's a transfer route, if you're in the Reserves already, to full service; allegedly, a promotion fast track once you're in. Signing bonus. Annual pay review. On-base housing supplied.
Tarragon's landlord triples her rent overnight. Delivers the new contract personally, leers sweatily, says maybe there's a deal they can cut. Just for her, she's so pretty. Not like there's anywhere to go, is there, she should think about it.
She thinks. She thinks: fuck, they already got her, after all. She already learned to pilot. Is it really that much more of her soul, to survive?
