A Mech's Life

Chapter 11: The prodigy

Elizabeth let herself fall down face first on her bed. She felt utterly dejected, nothing mattered to her anymore. There was a single thing she had a passion and interest for but her mother forbade it. The academy had even accepted her, which in itself was a very high honor. If her mother was anyone else, they wouldn't have the power to pull the strings to stop the academy from accepting her. She hated how her damned mother was the head of the directorate!

Wiping away the tears with her forearm, she turned on her back to look at the ceiling of her room. Everything was supposed to go fine today, she'd even heard that her favourite Sentinel was in the maintenance bay today. She could have gone and touched it, maybe even worked on it a bit if she'd managed to get in the academy.

If only her mother could see how natural she is around Sentinels and how adept she is at learning about them. What could she do about it when she never had the chance to demonstrate? There was...no, that would be insane. She tried to throw the idea out of her head but it remained, gnawing at her.

She bolted upright and began contemplating her idea. The consequences would be...dire to say the least. But this would be the perfect opportunity. The Sentinel in the bay right now was none other than the Thunder Lord, a Sentinel she'd read up plenty on during that time she had managed to grab the manual in the forbidden library.

She'd even had to learn a new language in order to be able to understand what was said in that book. Apparently, all sentinels were created and programmed in a now extinct language. Finding that second book to teach herself that language had been hard but so worth it.

If she went and piloted it for a brief sortie, showed off her skill with it, wouldn't everyone have to acknowledge her ability?

It was certainly a last measure type of attempt. She'd be lucky if she didn't end up in prison. Pushed to the brink like this however, seeing no hope for the future, a future without Sentinels which was her sole motivation, pushed her to this risky gamble.

Determined, she sprang up from her bed with renewed hope and went over to her desk, taking a pencil and paper to come up with a plan.

A few hours later when the sun went down, she found herself outside of the hangar. She thought it'd have been harder but she then remembered the old air ducts that still remained even after not being used for centuries. An adult would never fit in but with her height barely reaching five feet, it proved to be manageable for her. She crawled for a few minutes until she reached the hangar area, letting herself fall down the duct onto an elevated platform.

She twirled and skipped, enjoying the unrestricted access to the maintenance bay. Her heart swooned as she looked upon the Thunder Lord's chassis. Patrols would make their rounds every so often, her window of opportunity was small and she had no time for dawdling.

Hiding behind some crates, she waited for the next patrol. Then, she would have twenty minutes, give or take, before they circled back again. In that time, she'd have to prep the doors to open, get in the sentinel and get it out.

She watched the patrol make his round from behind the crates and then leapt into action as he headed deeper inside the complex and out of sight. She unlocked the latches of the large door and used the metal chain to pull it open. Slowly but surely, the door began to lift off the ground but made a lot of noise, which worried her. There was nothing she could do about it however and so she pressed on, time being of the essence and too late to go back now.

With the door opened high enough to let the sentinel out, she rushed to the metal ladder which led up to a platform where the sentinel could serviced by technicians.