Mech Pilot who is on the picket line right next to the actor who plays them in the movie.
Day one on the picket line of the mechyard workers' strike; probably the last day the press will be interested in turning out to take pictures. A bunch of celebrity activists are throwing their star power out as bait for coverage, holding placards or strolling down the snowy line handing people coffee. There have been murmurs that management might bus in scabs; in response, a couple of people have turned up with privately-owned frames and blocked the entrances.
"Is this your mech?" Hailey says, offering up the big and now half-empty cardboard tray of steaming paper cups she's carrying. "She's a Digiorno-pattern, isn't she?"
The woman sitting on the mech's foot, right under the banner draped between its arms, quirks a grin. Greying at the temples, a freckled nose, a build that says manual labour and self-assurance both. "You pick that up on set for Fulcrum?" she says, and Hailey blushes.
"Oh," she says. "Fleet vet? It was the scriptwriters, I swear, I just read the lines."
Fulcrum, after a line from General de Winter's speech on the eve of the Battle of Wallachia. One of the pivotal points of the entire war, reduced to an anachronistic, explosion-heavy backdrop for a big-budget "horny teenagers smooch it out" plot; an expensive, star-studded, stupendously successful film.
"I know, honey," the mech pilot says cheerily. "You're right, she's basically a Dithtrap, even though her pattern's a 119 derivative, and they didn't come out till a decade after the armistice. Good machines — just not for combat." She leans down to take a coffee. "Your tabloid fanclub's loving this, aren't they?"
"Oh, for sure — Hailey Venn, in a mech-based callback to her role as Sergeant Margot Scott...." Hailey pulls a wry face, then tilts her head as the mech owner snickers wickedly over her cup. "What? What's funny?" and then as the penny drops, "oh no. Seriously?"
Sergeant Margot Scott, Retired, raises an ironic toast to her.
"I'm so sorry about the script," Hailey says.
