Volume Eight – Prologue

Prologue

“Catherine?” Lucy asked as she stepped out of the elevator into the parking garage and was instantly hit with some regret.

Why wasn’t she wearing pants? Why did she go down to the parking garage in flip-flops? Why didn’t she at least have socks on?

“Fuck, it’s cold down here,” she muttered to herself as she crossed her arms for warmth. The doors into the garage were open on either end of the parking space, and with so few cars here… that left very little to stop the wind.

Cat’s new carrier, the Bastion of Sekhmet, was sitting not too far away, serving as a wall against the freezing, humid air coming in from outside. She walked fast, not towards the ship, but rather towards the addition Cat had installed within the side of the parking garage.

Lucy frowned as she walked over. They needed more words to call things than ‘garage’ because saying that Cat had a garage in the garage just stripped the word of all meaning.

“Cat?” Lucy asked as she came up to the entrance of the garage-garage. This wasn’t some back-alley fixer shop like the sort where folks would come to have their DRM’d parts cracked and replaced. This was a high-tech samurai’s garage.

There were wall-mounted armed… gizmos and… lifts and tools and stuff.

Lucy knew that she wasn’t a stupid woman, but she also knew that she didn’t know jack about any of this stuff. Cat seemed to be in her element, though.

Her girlfriend was sitting on a little stool with wheels, head bobbing in time to some music that Lucy couldn’t hear. She had large headphones on, strange ones that covered both her human ears and the cat ears atop her head. In front of her was her old mech, the Nyanzerfaust. The jacks set into the floor were raised up to cradle the mech’s chest so that none of its legs touched the ground. Cat was at one of those, humming to herself while fiddling with a long row of wires nestled inside the leg.

Bits of armour were placed on the floor around her, and one of the wall-mounted gimbals was holding out a platter with more parts on it right next to Cat, well within reach.

She gestured, and another servoed arm brought down a selection of tools that Cat looked over for a moment before picking from.

Lucy just watched. It was strange, seeing Cat so deep in the zone, focused on her own little thing. She was used to seeing Cat getting things done, it was one of the things that made Lucy love her, but usually it was more… big and brash than this.

She couldn’t complain. This was a cute hobby, not that she’d tell Cat that she thought it was cute. If Cat asked, then Lucy would tell her that having a big strong butch mechanic girlfriend was the hottest thing ever.

In reality, she was just happy that Cat had something keeping her home sometimes. Home and busy with something she seemed to genuinely enjoy.

“Piece of shit,” Cat swore as she fiddled with something small. A little round nut thing fell and rolled a bit.

Cat leaned to the side to pick it up, but Lucy was faster. “Here,” she said.

Cat jumped slightly on seeing Lucy’s hand, then she looked up with wide eyes and her surprise turned into a genuine smile. “Lucy,” she said before tearing the headphones off. Lucy picked up the slight rumble of some metal music from around Cat’s neck. “Didn’t notice you coming in. Are you just wearing a t-shirt?”

“It’s what I was sleeping in,” Lucy said. “Like it?”

“You’re gonna catch a cold,” Cat said with a shake of her head. Her eyes were on the effects of the cold, however.

“Yeah, I bet,” Lucy grinned. She crossed her arms again for emphasis. “Having fun with the mech?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Cat said as she turned back to the machine. “This leg isn’t too bad. I didn’t think I’d need to poke at it at all, but see these lines here? They’re like super-thin hydraulic lines that go down to the toes and ankles. A few of them got crimped when the mech got thrown around. So I flushed the system out and I’m replacing them as I go. Kind of a pain in the ass, honestly, but I can see why it’s made this way?”

“Sure,” Lucy said.

“Sorry, I know this isn’t the most interesting shit,” Cat said.

Lucy shrugged. “It’s fine? It does look kind of interesting, but I feel like I’m missing a lot of… context, I guess?”

“Yeah,” Cat said with an easy nod. “I barely understand it myself, and I’m elbow deep in it.”

Lucy reached over and casually started to run a hand through Cat’s hair. It was new, the hair. Sleeker and softer than it had been before, but still somehow very Cat. “I’m happy you’re having fun.”

“Fun? This shit sucks. I’ve got like, a month of little fixes to go. Some of the parts in this thing are just plain nonsensical, I swear. Fucking alien engineering.”

Lucy resisted the urge to grin. The anger was real, but she suspected that if Cat hated it that much, she wouldn’t be here now, toying with the mech so early in the morning.

“Anyway. Did you just come down to tease me? Because I’m okay with that.”

Lucy snorted. “Nuh-uh, it’s too damned cold down here for anything like that.”

“I could warm you up.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Lucy flicked Cat behind one of her cat ears. It twitched and she grinned back. “That’s not what I’m here for. I, uh, got some news? I think it’s good, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Huh? Anything up? Things have been… kinda quiet, yeah?” Cat asked.

“Yeah, mostly quiet,” Lucy agreed.

After the whole Phobos Incident–which was what the news was calling the whole entire thing with Phobos being flung at Earth–things had gone pretty quiet. Cat’s big projects, the sewers and even Lucy’s Kittens thing had been going… pretty smoothly?