Relia-robot

You set up an encampment, clear down among the Firstcomer ruins; a waystation for the occasional delver venturing that far, with salvaged and repurposed machinery, technological marvels of all kinds carefully tinkered by your skilled hands. Clean water - hot or cold as needed - and fresh food grown under ancient sunlamps; medicine for the strange ailments lurking in the ruins; and even an ancient device that could retrofit people with augmented components of metal and unbreakable glass. A shelter, a waystation, a place to rest and recover, there nearly a mile beneath the surface.

Sounds nice 😊

You delved into a Latecomer ruin whose top sat just above the waters of a large, cold lake; each floor had to be sealed and drained, not having been an aquatic facility when it was built... Until you reached the seventh floor down, where merfolk had taken up residence - albino sealfolk and their pets, great blind otters that would sniff around the numerous stories below after the strange clams and oysters that lived in the effluvia-polluted deeps, growing pearls replete with arcane power. They were more than glad to trade with you for things of the world outside, where the sun would burn them if they tried to venture out.

Mech Pilot who finds themselves bidding for the same protection contract as an old squadmate.

There are only so many roles for a peacetime surplus mech pilot, and while Rika knows a lot of people ecstatic to hop in a construction mech for the Terraforming Corps, after the Fleet and a tour with Klein-Mackenzie PMC she appreciates the value of planets with preinstalled internet and hot showers. It's a step down from piloting a full frame, but a road-legal powersuit and tendering bodyguarding applications to hypercorp executives is a living, even if it's one that's heavy on ramen.

The gloating weirdo power plays of job interviews with these people has to be the fucking worst. Though this is the first time she's ever spent a whole second-round interview being grilled for a character reference on one of her old K-Mac colleagues.

She sits still in her sharply-cut suit and uncomfortable shoes and practices being an expressionless blank. Not that she puts in many hours out of armour, on the job; but every second she's in this building is a second she can make an impression, and making her wait — wait again, after the damn interview itself — can only be yet another tedious test.

The exit from the interview rooms opens again, and the same emptily smiling corporate assistant points a second person to the sweeping line of sunlit chairs. All leg and smile and chestnut curls—

"Hello, Hendriks," says Sharpe, and lowers herself into the seat right next to Rika.

Rika's last night with K-Mac: buzzed and tousled and bittersweet, she begs five minutes from her leaving drinks for fresh air and props herself against one of the company scout mechs, head tipped back to look at the stars.

"Hello, Hendriks."

Rika piloted fast attack frames, and Sharpe was a scouter. They didn't work that closely, but they got on fine, no problems.

"Sorry," Rika says, pushing herself upright and giving the mech's leg a light pat.

"No, no. Just checking you're not passing out in a ditch," Sharpe says, grinning crookedly. "You good?"

"Yes. Thanks." Rika nearly goes back to stargazing, but Sharpe is looking in some kind of a way. "What?"

"I'm wondering," Sharpe says, "if I can give you a leaving present," and she slowly and politely puts a finger under Rika's chin to tilt her face up, leans in, hovers for a second over her lips, then kisses her.

"Hm," Rika says thoughtfully, when Sharpe equally slowly draws back. "Was that the present?"

"We could say that," Sharpe says, but her eyes are very dark and her hands are on Rika's hips.

"That is downright chivalrous of you," Rika says, undoing the top button on Sharpe's shirt.

"Funny interview technique they have here, isn't it?" Sharpe says lightly.

"Well, you got this far through," Rika says. It's not as though they'd kept in touch; she hadn't even known Sharpe had left K-Mac, although it doesn't surprise her. Sharpe has that kind of every-few-years restlessness to be doing something else. "If they were waiting for me to tell them you're a good hire, then you're in."

Sharpe beams at her, crossing legs somewhat too long for these chairs. Still, Rika thinks, affecting cowboy boots. Some nice girl someday is going to get rid of those; and therefore, by implication—

"Drinks on whichever of us they hire?" Sharpe says.

Rika smiles back. "Maybe they won't hire either."

"In that case, a round on each of us, somewhere cheap?"

They always did get on fine.

The corporate assistant opens the door, but nobody else comes out. "Ms. Hendricks, Ms. Sharpe? If you could both come this way, please."

"What if they hire us both?" Rika murmurs as they stand, which isn't a question about drinks.

"Then we'd better check what time work starts before hitting the bar," Sharpe murmurs back, but her eyes are very dark, and Rika's pretty sure it's not an answer about drinks, either.

You, O Mouse of Blue, found a cylindrical structure sunk hundreds of feet deep, where moss and fungi had grown in splendid isolation for ages, such that fungal creatures crept amid it all, relying wholly on scent and taste to guide themselves, all of it descended from a singular robotic construct, long defunct, which had bled oils and stranger chemicals onto their ancestors, causing them to mutate and evolve. Nearly everything in that space had immense thaumaturgic potential, and you made it a life's goal to study and understand it, as much as you could, eventually founding an arcane academy devoted to fungimantic principles.