(This was originally a response to the "Mech Pilot Who-" prompt "Mech Pilot who loves deploying in Swamps." It is a prime candidate for Project: Regensis, the fancy name I'm giving to "cohost stories I'd like to clean up and expand a little *or* make into full blown novels/Novellas.)
People often made fun of Hydra 1759-d for being a real world example of a “single biome planet,” a 20th century science fiction trope.
Hannah couldn’t stand those people.
Hydra 1759-d, also known as Antheia for the Greek god of swamps, was not a “Swamp World.” There were marshes, bogs, fens, mires, vernal pools, and a few types not even seen on Earth.
The marebog was the closest thing Antheia had to oceans, massive fields of what appeared to be relatively shallow water covered by tree-like organisms. However, those fields were actually hundreds of meters deep, just covered in a complex web of root structures that meant ten meters down, you were basically standing on a wicker basket woven across a planet. They absorbed salt to use as reinforcement in their structures, meaning the entire planet was nothing but freshwater.
And that was just one example.
There were dozens of others. The zeuspools were areas where perpetual storms driven by static build up from fungal like structures brought endless lightning. The hellmire was where single celled organisms analogous to amoeba produced gases that ignited in the sweltering heat, creating oven temperature regions filled with their own types of multicellular extremophiles
Hannah loved this world, and that’s why she became a ranger.
Antheia had three different life forms that served as possible Future Intelligences, and as such Antheia was off limit to the majority of humans. None of the local life was advanced enough for communication to take place, but those three creatures were on par with crows and elephants and octopuses back home.
Which meant these worlds sometimes got used by people who didn’t want to be found.
People often through people like Hannah were hunting down drug smugglers or local ma-and-pa crime lords. Those kinds of people didn’t have resources to slip onto Class 3 Limited Access worlds. The people who set up shop in these kind of worlds were corporations looking to skirt pollution regulations, or far right militias looking to train for some uprising or another.
That last one was what Hannah was up against right now. The Khorwights were looking to…Hannah had to check her log. Ah, right. They believed that the galaxy belonged to Humanity as the first starfaring races, and all alien life must be killed. Also, trans people were a conspiracy created in the 23rd century by alien parasites and a dozen other old-Earth bigotries that hadn’t been fully left behind when Earth had been put under a six century quarantine to give the entire planet time to heal.
The Khorwights had assembled six Stahmkreiz mecha. Impressive, really. On an airless moon, Hannah would have been in trouble going one on six against even incompetent pilots in a Stahmkreiz.
But they weren’t on an airless moon. They were on Anthiea.
To call it a chase was an overstatement. Hannah had to keep pretending to slow down, or have engine trouble, or get tangled to give them time to catch up. The Stahmkreiz could barely move in the thick waters of Anthiea.
“Surrender!” one of them shouted over their mecha’s speakers. “We have you six to one!”
“I can count!” Hannah shouted back. “If you have me, take me!”
Just a bit further…
There.
She leapt out of the water onto the first bit of solid land she’d seen in a while. Her mecha was a piece of custom work, built to handle being waist deep in water at all times. She could propel herself like a boat floating on her shins, she could balance on waterlogged ground, she could fire a half dozen cluster bombs right now and probably take out three of them at once.
Except she wasn’t going to. Because doing so might damage this world.
She extended her blade and crouched into a fighting pose. Even in her custom green-grey mech, she couldn’t fight in melee while drenched in water. But if she had to, she could easily do so.
She wouldn’t need to.
“We have you now!” one of the Stahmkreiz shouted.
Hannah didn’t answer. She’d turned off her speakers when she got close for a reason.
The one who had thrown out the taunt was the first to go. What had looked like just another rivulet of water rose up from the ground, wrapping around his mech like a tentacle. He screamed and opened fire wildly as it pulled him into the water, constricting him on the way down. His companions started to shout too.
Hannah waited until they were all entangled and sheathed her blade. The psuedopods weren’t strong enough to crush hardened steel. But they were strong enough to overload servos as they tried to move. She hopped out of her mecha and gently touched down on the island she had stood on.
Then she patted the ground. “Good boy” she said. There was a rumble in the air, but no reaction from the psueodopods. Hannah walked over towards one of the mechs. “You really didn’t do your homework before coming here,” she said.
“Let me out!” the pilot shouted.
“Lower your volume,” Hannah said. “The reapmarsh doesn’t like it when you’re too loud. That’s how you got grabbed.”
There was a few moments, and the pilot spoke again, this time his volume at a much more reasonable level. “Let me out, trahnic.”
“Word of advice? Don’t throw slurs at someone you’re asking for help.” Hannah pulled out a can from her suit and opened it. There was a nice crisp sound in the air. She took a drink. “But don’t worry. Once the reapmarsh lets you go, I’ll open your suit up.”
“You mean the organisms in the reapmarsh, you swine,” the pilot said.
“Nope. See, the reapmarsh is something we don’t have back home. A creature that is an ecosystem in and of itself.” Hannah took another drink and waited. The pilot finally caught on.
“You’re not wearing a suit,” he said.
“Bingo. Bioforming is much better than terraforming, in my opinion. Change our body to suit the world, not the world to suit our body, am I right?” She grinned.
“You’re unnatural.”
“You’re a primate with delusions of grandeur.” Hannah shrugged. “I’m technically classified as a semi-local lifeform now. Me and about thirty others. Our children will watch over this world for a thousand years. Their children will watch for a thousand more. By the time the local life is ready to join the galactic community, we’ll have watched this world long enough for your suit to have rusted into nothing. Your body will go with it.”
That brought a pause. “When…when does the reapmarsh let go?” he asked.
“It takes about thirty years usually. I’ll just crack open your cockpit to let the water in once it does.” Hannah shrugged. “You can open it now if you want.”
“I can’t breathe in this air.”
“Correct.” Hannah went back to her mech. “You’re already dead. I’m going to your base. You’ve got the Beastmorph mecha there, right?”
“Yes. It will kill-”
“Shut up, no one cares. Look. I can do a single strafing run. Should shatter that terraforming dome your people have built here. Your false atmosphere will rush out, local atmosphere will rush in. Your people will die. Give me override codes for the Beastmorph, and I’ll give them a chance to surrender peacefully - and if they do, I’ll come back and set you free before your life support fails. Deal?”
He’d go for it. They always did. And Hannah would keep her promise. The look in this fascist’s eyes when she cracked open his cockpit and let local atmosphere rush in was always worth the wait.
Hannah barely noticed something scamper off into the bushes and grinned. The Grex were low slung amphibious bipeds with a build somewhere between ape and dinosaur with the eyes of slugs. Personally, she hoped they would be the first to achieve communication with Earth. They were the kind of ugly that looped back around to being cute.
Little did she know that she’d get that hope. The Grex had just begun playing with the concept of religion. This one would croak to his cluster of what he had witnessed. Those tales would spread to other Grex. They would spread across the world, and the story would come with them. One day, they would tell tales of the steel giants that waged war on their world.
And they would remember the first of the Steel Wardens who had kept their world safe.
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