"Dinner Disaster"
The mobile field kitchen unit hummed quietly, stationed beside a battered Model 006. Crew Chief Ilya had taken it upon himself to "improve morale" by cooking dinner. What he failed to mention was that he had never actually used the mini-kitchen’s auto-chef system before.
Ten minutes in, the stovetop lit up in a display of fiery rebellion. A plume of synthetic chili smoke shot up through the ventilation hood, setting off an alarm in the adjacent habitat unit.
“Ilya, what the hell is that smell?” someone yelled through the comms.
“Spicy morale!”
“Turn it off before it cooks the wiring again!”
He didn’t. Dinner was... technically edible. The crew joked about “unit cohesion through gastrointestinal trauma” for the next three rotations.
"Night Watch"
On the second night of a week-long recon build, with the stars dim behind a veil of industrial haze, three members of the crew sat atop the cargo trailer, watching the glow from the Bastion’s shield test pulses. It was quiet—rare, peaceful.
“Hey, you ever wonder why they call it the 'CIVFRAME Initiative' and not something cooler?” Juno asked, reclining against a crate.
“Because ‘Exo-Mega-Force Danger Squad’ wouldn’t fly with the board,” said Kael, sipping instant tea.
Arlen chuckled. “Besides, the acronym would be E-M-F-D-S. Try fitting that on a badge.”
They watched a crawler drone trundle past in silence, hauling spare couplings. Then someone added:
“I think it’s kinda beautiful, you know? All this noise and steel. It means people get to live somewhere else... safely.”
There was a quiet hum of agreement, and the three sat there until the sun peeked over the horizon, painting the deployed pylons gold.
"Patchwork Games"
The crew had downtime while waiting for the next supply run, and boredom was a dangerous thing in the field. Someone had cobbled together a makeshift game board using old tool crates, magnetic bolts, and leftover hazard tape.
They called it Bolt Run.
Rules were unclear, arguments were loud, and bets ranged from ration packs to who had to clean the grease traps next rotation. The game made zero sense, but every crew member played like it was life or death.
“You can’t just leap a Pylon with a Bastion—those are support frames!”
“You didn’t call hazard zone, so technically my bolt has line of sight!”
Field Operator Miri eventually declared herself undefeated champion and retired before anyone could prove otherwise. The crate board remained in the mess tent, updated weekly with new “rules” no one understood but all obeyed.
"Radio Ghosts"
Night shifts were long and often lonely, especially for those in solo monitoring stations. Mechanic Darnell started hearing static flickers on the comms. Not interference—voices.
“Frame 004, you still running hot?” a faint voice crackled.
Problem was, Frame 004 had been hauled out three cycles ago.
The rumor spread fast, and soon operators were sharing their own encounters: old shift calls, phantom sensor logs, frames that weren’t supposed to be online pinging telemetry for exactly 13 seconds.
It became an unspoken ritual. At the end of every long shift, the night crew would leave a spare chair open by the diagnostics screen. Not out of fear—but respect.
“Just in case someone’s still out there, riding the frame.”
"Torque and Thunder"
It started with a sheared anchor plate and ended with an emergency brace op in the middle of a thunderstorm.
CIVFRAME Model 001 was in the trench, stabilizing a collapsed foundation while lightning danced across the ridge. Operator Juno had barely two meters of clearance and four tons of steel humming around her.
“Shift it ten degrees counter,” the lead engineer barked over the comms.
“Negative,” Juno snapped. “I move it, the plate buckles and we all get a new skylight.”
She leaned into the controls, sweat running down her temple, her HUD lit with a hundred red warnings. Every movement was muscle memory. No hesitation. No room for it.
Thirty seconds later, the trench groaned—but held.
“Brace locked,” Juno said, exhaling. “Hope your fancy new footings like being dry.”
"Precision by Fire"
Model 002 was never built for beauty, but there was something graceful about it in action. Sparks flew like dragonflies as Operator Rhys carved through a rusted bulkhead to access a collapsed coolant pipe.
The hiss of plasma cut through the rain outside. The exosuit's ceramic shielding glowed faintly as he swapped tools without looking, HUD feeding him metrics and tolerances in real-time.
Behind him, the drone relay confirmed line stability. To Rhys, it was just background noise. All that mattered was the weld.
"Seam integrity 92%," the AI buzzed.
"Make it 98. This patch doesn’t get a do-over."
The power flickered once, just enough to feel it—but the torch never wavered. When he finally stepped back, the line was clean, sealed, and humming again.
Another job done. Another frame scarred with soot and heat. But still standing.
"Midnight Rig Swap"
The site was dead quiet at 02:43—just the wind tugging at loose canvas and the soft hydraulic groan of a support rig powering down. CIVFRAME Model 016 had limped into the temporary yard on half power, dragging a snapped stabilizer like a wounded leg.
Mechanic Torres didn’t need the extra work, but when a frame goes down, the whole site feels it.
He popped the access hatch with a hiss of escaping pressure, illuminating the ruined actuator with a shoulder lamp. "Looks like a snapped coupling and some cracked housing. Easy fix if you have eight hours."
He had two.
Torres worked in silence, fingers blackened with grease and eyes half-lidded from exhaustion. Every bolt, every cable clicked into place with practiced precision. Around him, a few half-sleeping crew watched from the field lounge, trading ration bars and cold coffee.
By 04:36, it was back online. No cheers, no applause—just a silent nod from the pilot and the low rumble of the rig rolling out again.