Short Story Sunday: The Waiting Game

 I'm a bad person. It is known.  Here's a long overdue short story, hopefully more to follow. 

The beast was running hot, hotter than she normally ran.  Everything had gone to hell in a hand basket, and Shaunessey was stuck sitting in an overheated mech waiting to die. 

Shaunessey hated waiting. 

Computer said it would be another thirty seconds to operational.  The heatsinks were white hot out the window, desperately trying to soak up the overload from the last strike.  The cannons were beautiful, big, devastating, and hot.  Too damn hot.  Shaunessey wiped the sweat out of her eyes and hit the override button again.

“System Error.” said a pleasant voice while blocky text flashed the same message across the canopy.  Shaunessey slammed her hands down on the non-operational controls, furious.  She checked the time remaining. 

27 seconds.

Outside she could see her doom crouched in the tropical early morning light.  The rising sun glinted off the canopy, a nearly blinding little star that seared its way into Shaunessey’s scowling eyes.  She was a light mech, a scout.  Had almost gone out in one shot, and would be strewn all across the beach right this second if Shaunessey’s piece-of-shit, played out, ancient goddamn mech hadn’t overheated in this ridiculous tropical weather. 

Well, and because she’d been riding the jumpjets ever since she booked it out of Korio.  And because she’d fired all her weapons simultaneously in an attempt to cream this prick all at once.

And possibly because she’d removed a heat sink to fit one last extra teensy weensy little cannon on her mech. 

But screw that, she was going to blame the weather.  Stupid, muggy, soup-air weather.

Twenty seconds. 

She could see the auto repair finishing up on the pissant little scout.  Any second now it was going to power up and blow her to smithereens while she could do nothing but watch.  Son of a bitch was probably laughing in his cockpit. 

Jerk.

She reached up and switched off the audio warning.  For some reason it had become an unintelligible suh-suh-suh-suh repeated over and over again.  Awesome.  Last thing I’m going to hear before I die is my mech having a nervous breakdown.  Fantastic. 

No, that’s not true.  The last thing I’ll hear is the short range missile exploding on the canopy, shattering my pretty face with hot metal and glass. Sigh.

Twelve seconds.

Shaunessey put her fist under her chin, and rested her elbow on the side of the cockpit.  This was practically boring now.  Just a matter of time. 

She wished the little shit would just get it over with.  She let her eyes play over the control panel for the thousandth time, and was surprised to see her hand absent mindedly mashing the Heat Override button over and over again, a half dozen times per second. 

Well that’s good.  At least the audio isn’t broken, she thought.

Sigh.

Eight seconds.  The scouts exterior lights came on.  The hydraulics started to pop. This was it.  Shaunessey wiped an ocean of sweat off her face, and wished she could have died somewhere less tropical.  She had to crane her neck around the new words flashing on the canopy to see the little scout prick that was about to murder her. 

Suddenly she realized what the canopy said, and she flicked the audio back on.

“Override Engaged.  Have a nice day.”

Huh.

Shaunnesy gripped the throttle and stick, grinned, and thought hell... I just might.