[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Lost Child

Length: 2717 words

A/N: To congratulate the winners of the OJ Community Card Art Contest thing, I'm going to be doing stories based on the winning entries (and possibly some of the judge's picks). This one is based on the art for Lost Child, by Esuki. You can find the original submission here. Congratulations on a fantastic entry, Esuki!

“Operator 260, requesting location of Unit T-51H. Over.”

“No visuals on the monitors.”

“Cloaking signals still detected in the base, but the area is indeterminate.”

“Last known location was…”

There is no such thing as silence in a military base, and scarcely such a thing as privacy. There are bootsteps in the hall at all hours, the echoes of drilling in the mech bay, and the smooth, endless hum of machines transmitting vast packets of data around the clock. Faintly, in the very back of her mind, Alte thinks she shouldn’t be here. She should be at home, in that old family house with the bay windows and the hanging baskets, and the polished black piano in the lounge. She should be welcoming back her husband after a long day’s work, with a gentle touch and a kiss. She should be thinking about the future. About children.

But she isn’t, and she can’t, and all she has to remind her of the way the world ought to be is the sparkling ring on her finger that she takes off every night and polishes, until it shines and until there’s no trace of the oil, the gunpowder, the blood that covers her hands. Before she joined this war she didn’t truly know what it was for something to be sacred, but she does now.

The only thing more sacred than her ring is the call, the once a fortnight phone call when she talks to her husband and to the man listening studiously to her private conversations in the communication interception room. Her husband’s voice is becoming more and more drawn; he’s always been a big man with strong hands and wide shoulders, but the rationing is getting to him. She wants to tell him that she misses him, that she loves him, that she thinks about him every night and every morning, that when they pack her off into the sleep pod she dreams of him and his voice and his touch. But then she thinks of the tap in the phone wire and all she can manage is a clipped “Love you” and then it’s done for another fortnight, so quick and meaningless but still so very necessary.

She’s sucking down the last dregs of her nutrient shake when the operator sits down at her table, a skinny girl with clean, smooth skin and a dimple in her ear from when they took her piercing out. There is always the ghost of a nervous giggle in her voice, as though she can’t actually believe where she is or what she’s doing, as if it’s all one big hilarious joke that everybody is in on. When she first started, Alte thought she’d be dead within half a year, stripped of her headset and given a gun and pushed out of the door to get shot for her country. It’s been four months now.

“U-um, excuse me! Have you seen Unit T-51H at all?” she asks. She’s been asking the whole base, and her voice is hoarse and stringy.

“Tsih? No. Have you checked the footage from the Launch bay cameras? If she’s gone outside, you’ve lost her. That stealth camo isn’t for show,” Alte replies, peering at the girl from under her hair. “She’s been trying to get outside a lot, recently.”

“Ahhhh… They keep saying she’s just a kid and kids want to play outside, but why can’t she just play in the exercise yard instead of trying to wander around?”

Alte’s voice is flat and angry. “They made her too young. R&D just don’t get it. A weapon you can’t control isn’t worth building.”

The girl scuttles off to peer at closed circuit television feeds, and once more Alte is left as alone as she can be in a base full of soldiers and cameras and microphones. Despite that, her mood has taken a foul turn. In her opinion, R&D are either idiots or traitors, although she wouldn’t think of saying that aloud. She has no patience for them and their bumbling, half-cocked attempts at keeping up with the enemy. There’s a big scouting mission coming up to get data on one of the enemy’s new prototype units, and they’d promised her a new weapon well in advance, but she found out two days ago that it wouldn’t be done until a week after the battle. What good is that? It doesn’t matter how good her new weapon is if she still has to march into a dangerous mission with an outdated rotary cannon.

Of course, in the time they could have been using to make her new weapon, they made Tsih, a girl with great specs, no self control, and a camo that they didn’t have the sensors to pierce because they didn’t want to build an accidental backdoor for the enemy. Then they get surprised when she goes AWOL to pick flowers or blow up enemy tanks or some other mundane thing. It boggles the mind, and it does worse things to Alte’s temper.

She has about enough time to grab a cup of water and wash the taste of refactored nutrient shake out of her mouth before a tinny voice is piped through the speakers. “Unit A-1T3 to the Command Room. Repeat, Unit A-1T3 to the Command Room.” Magical, she thinks. Just marvellous. Of all the things she needed today – all the things she’s missing – the biggest one was wild goose chase. Well, not anymore. She stops by her pod to pull on her overcoat before running to the command room – something tells her she’s going to need it.

(-+++-)

“Operator 260 to Unit A-1T3. Requesting status report.”

The answer, to be honest, is not good. The western snowfields are a horrible place to fly, with poor visibility, heavy wind and freezing temperatures. She was designed as an air-to-ground model, with a particular focus on attacking massed enemy infantry and destroying guerilla emplacements. All very good in theory, until they realised that the enemy had no infantry left and was just throwing artillery and airborne robotic weapons at them. She wasn’t meant to fight this far up, where the heavy winds caused her cannon’s firing arc to become erratic. She felt cold, vulnerable. Not quite alone.

“Why do I have to look for her?” she grouses into the comms system. “Surely you could just fit these scanner modules to a Ball or something.”

“They were developed for the next models. Nothing we have at the base is compatible with the subroutines. Until we get the next shipment from the main base–”

“The main base has been giving us their outdated models for months now. They’re not sending us any prototypes.”

A frustrated silence over the comms tells her that even Operator 260, with her hoarse voice and her smooth skin, understands the hand they’ve been dealt. “At any rate, please alter your bearing ten degrees to the north-northwest.”

With the conversation over, Alte changes her bearing and dips a little closer to the ground. The land beneath her is wrapped in a mantle of snow, flat white powder clinging to every tree, every rock. The first time she saw it, she was amazed. She’d grown up by the sea, looking out into a vast expanse of blue from the roofs of houses with white stucco walls. Back when she was so short, and a little chubby, and it took her almost ten minutes to climb the great, winding staircases that connected the rest of the town to the bay. She’d never known snow. Never tasted it. She’d known it existed, but in an abstract, fairytale kind of way. It was this beautiful, magical substance. Precious, even.

Then she went to war, and wandered out into the snowfields and realised that snow was not this temporary, ethereal thing that visited once upon a christmas and evaporated in the air. Snow was wet and cold and soaked your clothes. Snow was all year round in places it should never have been, because the weapons they used had thrown the planet so far off balance. Snow would blind you, kill you if it could. It would wrap you in its cold embrace and suck out all of your warmth, and the moment you stopped feeling the cold was the moment you knew you were dying. The thoughts pile up as she sweeps her eyes up and down the featureless, rolling white. She misses her husband, and his warm arms. She misses her home.

What she doesn’t miss is the shimmer of light bending around a tiny body, or the hole in the storm that should be filled with snowflakes. She sees it only for an instant, but it is enough, and she engages her scanner modules. They come to life and begin scouring the sky with beams of angry pink light; for a moment, there is the illusion that they are surrounded not by snowflakes, but by the petals of a cherry tree. In the blink of an eyelid it is gone, and the sound of giggling pierces the storm.

“Hey, hey! Old lady! Did you come to play, too?”

“…If you think I’m old, it means everybody else is dying too soon. Hold your position, Unit T-51H. I’m on orders to take you back to the base.”

“Aw. Don’t be a stick in the mud! Let’s play, let’s play!” the child calls, and her voice is the voice of a phantom, a will o’ the wisp leading the hapless further into danger. She dips and soars, a magenta silhouette against a background of whirling snow.

“Be careful, Unit A-T13. We can’t damage the… huh? What?” the operator’s voice crackles over the comms system. “Are you sure? She’s just a kid…Yes, sir. As you say, sir. Unit A-T13, use of force has been authorised. Try to recapture the asset in one piece if possible. Bring any debris back to base to be recycled. Over.”

“…Roger. Switching off comms channels and engaging.”

She descends sharply, and for a moment all she can hear is the wind whistling past her ears. Bring any debris back to the base? Are they insane? In the first place, she’s an old model with old tech in a bad environment, up against a new unit. Secondly, there hasn’t even been any aggression. She’s resigned to the idea of doing whatever she has to do to protect her home and the people she loves, but that doesn’t mean engaging in meaningless battles with kids. And yet… and yet, her hands are still reaching automatically for her rotary cannon, and her teeth are grinding together like they always do before she fights.

She shakes her head and watches the skies, dipping as close to the ground as she dares, trailing in Tsih’s wake. The child’s outline dances on the edge of her vision, and even though she’s flying as fast as she can, the distance keeps growing. For all that R&D are idiots, complete spineless time-wasting cowards who’ve saved her life a hundred times and endangered it more than a thousand, they know how to build a new unit. Tsih’s specs are better than hers, and if this was any other war, she’d be retired, packed off home with a luxury pension and all the honours to keep her nice and docile. Back to her husband. But it’s gone too far, now, and they’ll be fighting until there’s nothing left. She will never have children. She’ll fight until the day she dies, and if they’re lucky then it’ll be the kids like Tsih that take back the debris and try to make a life out of it.

Tsih’s shape slows and then drops suddenly, swooping down to the ground. For a moment, the search beams lose sight of her entirely. Alte sweeps them across the land, and sees not one shape but four, one child and three big, lumpy figures. Her hand twitches towards her weapon again, but she pulls back. Not now. Not yet. If she needs to fight, she has the advantage on land. She can afford to go a little longer. She touches down on the snow and feels it give under her weight; her boot sinks all the way past the ankle.

“Look, lady. Aren’t these the best snowmen you ever saw?” Tsih appears behind her like a ghost, running over the snow as if she weighs nothing at all. The trailing sleeves of her jacket – even the smallest uniform they could order her was still far too big – are sodden with snow. But she has a wide, easy smile. She doesn’t know the trouble she’s in. She doesn’t know how close they came to destroying her. “Well? Well? What do you think?”

Alte sighs. The snowmen aren’t very good. How could they be? They’re just lumpy collections of snow, haphazardly arranged into three figures – big, medium, small. No scarves, no hats, no coal for buttons or carrots for noses. Nothing like the ones she saw in books as a child. Her smile is wan and forced when she answers. “Yeah. Yeah, they’re very nice.”

“Whee!” Tsih says, and twirls joyfully. “I made a mommy, a daddy, and a kiddy snowman. I’m super proud of them. I hope nobody knocks them over.” She pauses for a moment. “Hey, you wanna play hide and seek? I’m the best at hide and seek.”

A mommy, a daddy, and a child. There is something aching inside Alte as she walks over and ruffles Tsih’s hair. “Sure, but we have to do it in the base, alright? You shouldn’t play hide and seek in the snowfields. The snow shows up against your stealth camo. It might get you–” killed “–caught.”

“But the snowfields are my favourite.”

“I know, I know,” Alte says, and switches her comms relay on. “Operator 260? Tell the Commander that the live search drill is over and the asset has been retrieved without incident.”

“Live search drill? There was no drill planned for…”

“Live search drill, correct. If you look hard enough, you should find it on the schedule,” Alte says, meaningfully.

“Huh? Oh! Oh, yes. Yes! I’m sure I’ll find it. Must have overlooked it and panicked. All Units, return to base. Thank you for your support.”

Alte sighs once more. Assisting in a military cover-up. She must be an idiot. Or a traitor. Or maybe, just like everybody else, she’s sick of this war, and she wants it to end, one way or another. She slips Tsih’s hand into her own, and gently rises into the air. They have a long way to go before they can rest.

(-+++-)

They’ve bundled her up into her smart dress uniform, the smallest they could find. Little enamel badges on the lapel. Usually she’d be excited and fiddle with them. Not today.

She stands with her back straight and her hands curled into fists as they read the liturgy. The commander, a round-bellied, red-faced man, gives them a short reminder of the events. She already knows them.

The old lady went out on a mission, and never came back. For the first day, she thought they were just playing hide and seek again. The lady was good at hide and seek. But then she noticed how people’s faces fell when she asked them where she was.

Operator 260 is awaiting court martial for gross incompetence. There are murmurs going around amongst the soldiers that it’s unfair, and one of the lieutenants is going to try and challenge it. But there are other whispers going around that the challenge won’t mean anything. A valuable military asset was lost, and somebody needs to be punished for it.

She doesn’t quite make it to the end of the ceremony before she needs to leave, to bundle herself out of the doors into the corridor, to hear the hum of machines instead of the mournful silence of the chapel. She remembers the lady, who only played with her a few times, but every single time was full of fun. They could have been real good friends, she thinks.

As she remembers the good times she had with her only friend and the dry, heaving sobs force themselves out of her chest, it’s difficult to tell if she is laughing, or crying.

A/N: Whew... This ended up being more about Alte than Tsih, huh? But then, there's not really much to go on for Tsih's character. I knocked this up in about four hours, from start to finish, and I'm relatively pleased with the result -- even though the ending is a little sadder than I usually like. Still, it's a pre-war piece, so...

Just to reiterate: you can find the original submission that inspired this piece here. If you appreciate the artwork, I encourage you to go ahead and tell the artist so! This story wouldn't exist without them, for better or for worse.