They start with hand signals.
It's taking 29's trauma-afflicted aphasia a very long time to dissipate. Janila bought 29 off its previous handler, then shot the previous handler in the knee and ripped up the papers. 29 had been freed, but clung to her, since the only other person even close to family or friend was rolling around on the ground screaming obscenities. Janila, surprised, didn't know what to do, so she hired it.
The hand signals aren't for when 29 is in its mech. There, 29 speaks freely in data, in readouts, in scans and target locks. There was a language the old handler couldn't take away, and if anything demanded, and 29's augmented body and mind were so fluent in it that it often reflexively tried to speak that tongue off the battlefield.
Janila spends so much time with 29. She checks its body out personally, the cold professional hands of a field doctor, the kind of surgeon who stitches up non-augments in the middle of a war zone with N48 Gridcrackers cruising only meters above their heads. 29 has functioning vocal cords. They both know this. But it can't. It can't it can't itll get it cantitcantIcant
Janila weeps with 29. 29 wonders if Janila was an augment, too. Maybe one that got the disarmament surgeries. 29 feels sometimes like a child, but Janila has the patience of a mountain. It can't make even basic sounds, but 29 wants to. 29 wants its first words to be Janila's name, ya-KNEE-lahd, like how she says it to herself under her breath when she's frustrated.
29 might feel like a child, but 29 is not a child, and while sometimes it feels a bit babied by the involvement Janila takes in its physical upkeep, Janila treats it as an adult. 29 wants to keep the it/its pronouns. Janila respects that. 29 wants to help with the paperwork. Janila delegates resource management for her crew to it. 29 wants to cook its own meals. Janila makes it cook a meal for the whole crew twice a month, and lets it take over food planning as well.
29 gets very good at sign language.
29 marvels at Janila's compassion and empathy. She talks with it plainly about irrelevant things, Sports scores, planets from her childhood, what she wants for breakfast, ship gossip. Janila gives him a lot of responsibility, and 29 wonders how she knew that's what it needed, that there's a difference between being used as a tool and being delegated to as an act of trust. Janila knows by now that 29 will always sortie, be it rescue, salvage, battle, construction, what have you, but always gives the briefing to it before anyone else, and always gives it a choice.
29's first spoken words come years after, when one of its forearm crutches breaks due to a manufacturing defect and sends it tumbling. Janila jokes to it that it should file a complaint with the quartermaster and ask for a new one. The quartermaster, laying on the floor in a tangle of its own mobility equipment and limbs, rolls its non-augment eye and says "Thanks Cap, Love you too." She laughs, then both of them freeze. Suddenly, Janila's voice is missing, too, and five minutes later after the shock wears off, they pass more words. 29's voice is raspy, uneven, shaking off years of unuse. Janila's voice is cracking, wavering, succumbing to emotion.
They keep it a secret to themselves, but crewmembers say they hear someone playing old blues albums after lights out from somewhere deep in the carrier sometimes. None of them can place the singer, but it's oddly familiar.
The first time the crew really hears 29's voice comes as they are being invaded. A previous job ran them afoul of a mining baron in a far system, and the Baron hired mercenaries to settle the score. The mercs catch up with Janila's carrier on the moon of baldereran-6, while ship is grounded for much needed repairs. The Baron's pockets are deep, and the mercenaries are in full force. 18 V-class units, 10 C-mechs, 5 A-Mechs, and 3 Superframe Pilots are deployed including the Chief Handler, an unusual but dangerous choice.
Janila's crew aren't slouches, but they're outnumbered 3 to 1. It's not going well. 29 takes out twelve units on the opposing side, including a Superframe. In terms of pilot lives, the Superframe is the only one it spares, and then it breaks off, trusting the remaining crew with defense. Janila herself is inside, holed up near the carrier's drive core. Can't take chances. Some of those V-class units were APCs. This isn't just a raid. The deployed Janila crew panic. Why is the legend leaving the fight? What's going on?
Then the voice is broadcasting on all channels. There's video, too, grainy but otherwise visible. In the hangar bay of Janila's ship, there's an APC's worth of dead mercs, a man with a cane and a handgun, and a figure with two arm crutches and the sort of mag fed double trenchgun that's not legal anywhere in civilized space. The figure with the crutches motions to the side. The Chief Handler tosses aside his gun, and raises the hand not gripped on the cane. "29, stand down, that's an—"
The figure with the shotgun almost as big as it is hobbles closer. "Tell me, shit-handler, did you take the Baron's offer because my captain shot your leg out and you're a petty little fuck, or did you think if you killed her you'd be able to take my contract back? I'm a free agent, now, but your memory probably isn't that good, since you were crying and shitting yourself when it happened."
It's broadcasting on all channels. The fighting outside slams to a halt. The Handler says something, but it's not clear. 29's legs might not be able to carry its full weight, but its left one has enough speed and strength to knock the Handler's cane out from under him and kick the braced, injured knee in a direction it's never supposed to go. The Handler falls to the ground, swearing and gripping his maimed appendage. He stops when the double-trench is leveled at his mouth.
"Shut up. I'm talking. If you so much as cough you're not going to have a mouth to do it from anymore. You're going to learn to listen like a good little boy, or you're going to be paste, got it?"
Handler nods slowly.
"Good. I hope you hate the sound of my voice. I hope every second of it brings you pain. How many were there before me? More than 29, I'm guessing. What are you up to now? What's the count at, huh? No, don't fucking answer, I don't care. I heard you're letting the non-augments keep their names now, look at you! A couple decades and maybe you'll be decent enough to just be an asshole! Word of advice, these arm crutches are sveli6hide, don't buy the cheaper ones, they'll just snap on you. Ask me how I know! The cane looks hokey. Did you know, sometimes the augments leave gaps behind? There's these places where they fill in with memories of whoever you were before. It's fucking wild, Whit. I guess I used to work at a bodega or something, and I used to shoot the shit like this all the time, even when I got robbed. You're like the old boss. I used to chew him out all the time. God I wish I knew anything else about me. Too bad! Too bad. Even if they deaugment me it doesn't come back, so you're stuck with the me you made, jackass!"
The man on the ground opens his mouth to say something, but the weapon in his face waggles a little. He shuts it.
"Good boy. Do you know, Whittimer? Do you know why I kept my augments? The designation 29? The it/its pronouns? I could have left them all behind. Janila offered to pay for them all to be removed, something that I know would have bankrupted this whole company at the time. She has taught me what a leader should and can be. She respected my decisions, and her crew followed her lead willingly, just like everything they do."
29 bends down, looking Whittimer in the eye. "The reason I stayed an 'object' is because Captain Janila treats objects better than you treat people you claim to fucking respect."
As it stands up, the handler on the floor begins to say something. The augmented human swivels the double trench to the handler's good knee, and for a moment the sound clips and the video goes white. When visuals return, the handler is unconscious and most of his leg is gone. 29 tosses the gun to the floor, and coughs hard. Then, it staggers over and as best it can, it squats by the camera.
"Rhodran, I kept my end of the deal. He's still alive. He needs medical attention very soon, and you can find a facility on baldereran-2 that has the equipment to save him. It's the closest one. I'll never fucking understand what you see in him, but a deal's a deal. Next time it's on sight. As for the rest..." —29 looks over its shoulder, briefly— "...well, sorry, but that's just the business we're in. You have 15 minutes to come in here to clean up the bodies, Shittimer, and whatever's left of his foot. Bring a medpod for him. You can tell the Baron we're even, and if he ever starts shit with Janila and her crew again, she'll send a little bird his way, just one, and she won't have to send a second. My crew, let them finish, and I'll forgive 'rode hard and put away steaming' just this once. We'll debrief later."
He slowly gets up, and hobbles towards the ship's interior. "If anyone needs me I'll be in Cap's quarters making tea. My throat suddenly hurts, for some reason."
Towards the edge of the frame, one of the bodies slowly moves. It begins to raise Whittimer's discard handgun towards 29. 29 stops dead in its tracks. "Holy shit, you're still alive!"
It bends over, snatching the gun from the wounded soldier's hands. With casual precision, it drops the magazine from the gun, unchambers the round, and tosses the gun and mag in opposite directions. 29 hollers back to the video feed, "Rohdran make that 2 medpods and 20 minutes."
It exits the screen, singing some old blues song, about how if it didn't have bad luck, it'd have no luck at all. The feed cuts.
29 still serves on Janila's crew. Still an augment. Still it/its pronouns. Still won't give any of that up.
But rumour is, someone on Janila's crew has earned the callsign "Mockingbird".
Author's Note: this prompt was originally submitted to me 17 September 2023. I hope whoever submitted it sees it now, but I have no way of knowing. Still, inspiration finally struck in november, and I've been working on it patchwork since, so here it is.
