Editing Measure Twice, Cut Once: SCRAPPER (section)

=== Bio ===

Vix Otoya was born as a Subject of Director General John Creighton Harrison III (Long May He Reign) on a world that, if sufficiently pressed and sufficiently drunk, she might just be willing to name before she assaults whoever is asking prying questions. She might just admit that she got her start fixing farming equipment.

The Purview is a meritocracy. She applied herself, got her certifications, and was approved as a Provisional Citizen when they shipped her off to Lambeth Mining Station. It was hard work mining asteroids, out in the big empty, but every day was a boost to her social credit score; by the end of her time there, she could earn Citizenship for herself and her family. Maybe even become an Able Citizen.

Things escalated slowly, until they didn't. It started how it always does; superiors demanded higher productivity, workers were given harsher demands, standards began to slip. Miners died. Workers protested. Managers cracked down. Workers pushed back. Secret meetings in empty loading docks. Sabotage. Violence. Until the workers found themselves, almost by accident, at a state of war with the glorious Harrison Armory Purview and their hired "security contractors," fighting trained killers with improvised mining explosives, refitted industrial equipment, and materiel from captured printers. (The Purview called them Ungratefuls; some of the strikers did, too, but Vix never thought of it that way.)

The fight was never one they never thought they could win. All they hoped was that they could hold on long enough to spread their message past the Purview and get Union support. They succeeded. Union came.

Vix can't say if the Union Adjudicator was corrupt, or complicit, or hobbled, or only wanted to stop the violence. A few Harrison functionaries were imprisoned, a few more were demoted or quietly reassigned. Some of the "terrorists" were sent to prison with them. A few concessions, a few placating measures, and Union was gone. Nothing really changed. A new Station Administrator in office, and operations were expected to resume.

She was slow to join the strikers, but she'd been committed. She'd set mining explosives, rewired security systems, operated the printer, and gone to the fights with crudely kitbashed combat units, mining mechs with machine guns bolted to the top. She had, as it turned out, been very, very good at it. So as an UnCitizen (her social credit score irreparably ruined by "Active and Unlawful Opposition to the Interests of the Purview and Director General John Creighton Harrison III (Long May He Reign) in Deed, Word, and Thought") she secured herself passage with some of the mercenaries she'd fought against. Done with Harrison, and with Union, and with noble causes.

Have Mech, Will Travel.