Trivis
Rochelle II
Caredon
Free Worlds League
3014
Gunn eased the throttle back as she neared the hill. Behind it, she reckoned there would be a clear view of the Carson plain and possibly signs of the mysterious visitors to the planet.
It was one of a handful of possible landing spots and she hoped she would be the one to find them. The orbital surveillance network had registered an object entering the atmosphere in a controlled descent. No one had any idea what it could be so the major had sent out a couple of lances worth of scouts to get eyes on it. Personally, she didn't know what to think. All she knew for certain was that her back hurt like hell after spending more than three hours going full-throttle cross-country.
The humming of the Maltex Vox 280 engine lessened as the mech slowed. If she crested the ridge now she would light up like a Mastora on passive sensors. Instead, she came to a halt and shut down the fusion reactor. She wanted the mech as cool as possible before she would risk peeking over the hill. The reduced sensor profile was worth waiting a few minutes. 'Brave, not fearless', as the major always said. She could hear the heatsinks pop as they got rid of the excess heat. She'd been moving at more than 100 kph for several hours and the mech had worked up quite a temperature. She relaxed.
She took a moment to revel in the sensation of not moving. The cockpit was cramped and after hours on the move, her back started hurting like hell. She cursed the people who designed this machine. They obviously never had to spend much time in it themselves. If they had, they would have realized the cockpit was too small, even for her slender frame, and that the mech was torture for the pilot when it was on the move. She wriggled around and loosened the harness a little. Now that the excruciating memory of the past few hours of moving at high speed was receding, her other, more minor, discomforts started to make themselves known. Her ass was numb, her fingers tingled weirdly and she needed to piss. Pilots were known to just do it in the cockpit if there were no alternatives, she heard some wore diapers, probably just a rumor, and others brought bottles to urinate. The bottle option was not an option for her, for obvious reasons, and she refused to even think about wearing a diaper. No Mechwarrior would do that. Rather urinate in your pants. And then there was the cockpit. It was extremely warm. Nothing new there. Mechs got hot. Her body was dripping with sweat under the vest. She almost reached for the thermos full of coffee that she had prepared and stashed behind the seat but thought better of it, no, she absolutely did not need more fluids right now.
'Fuck it', she said out loud and released the harness. She took off the neural helmet, placing it on her dashboard. Then used the handrail to lift her body. Standing on the seat, head bumping against the cockpit glass, she reached for the hatch behind the seat and popped it open. Warm, humid air rushed into the cockpit. She took a deep breath. The air smelled thick, just lack of a better word, thick with the smells of humid soil and plants. She crawled over the seat and out through the hatch onto the head of the mech.
She moved to the part of the head where it started to curve downwards, pulled down her shorts, squatted, and started pissing. As she sat there, in a squat, enjoying the relief in her bladder, piss running freely down the back of the mech head, she looked around. Remarkably, it wasn't raining. But even when it didn't rain, the air seemed to wish it was water. Above her, the three moons, Derika, Nohea, and Ululani, and their dust ring were silhouetted through the murky atmosphere. Behind the mech, the characteristic goat-like hoofprints of her machine had cut a straight slash through the low vegetation. The planet was nuked many years ago, long before she was even born. It was once a mighty industrial planet, one of the first inhabitable planets discovered by humans, but got nuked during the first or second succession war. Now most of the planet was poisoned by radiation and the population all died out. She and her mates often wondered why the regiment had left their company here. Rochelle was a dead planet. There was nothing here of value to guard, as far as anyone could tell. The planet was truly a hellhole. She was safe here, though. For some reason, they seem to have spared the area around Trivis from nuclear bombardments.
