-Month:12 Day: 28 Year: 2177 Time: 1900 EST Location: Sector 101/Quadtrent 00A-

Dakota sat at her desk within the motor pool, sipping her fifth cup of coffee of the day; maybe it was her sixth, she honestly couldn't remember at this point. In front of her, Laid a scattered pile of work orders for everything from light panels that needed replacing to hunter armor repairs.

"Ugh, there is not enough time in the fucking day for this bullshit." Dakota thought to herself as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Taking a final sip from her cup, she grimaced at the now empty cup, "Of course." 

She haphazardly put the cup down on her messy desk as she called out to Shelby. "Shelby, assign work orders 342 and 437 to engineer Micheals and 276 and 532 to engineer Tomas." The small projector on Dakota's desk quickly lit up as Shelby constructed herself, "Of course." Shelby paused for only a moment as she looked up and slightly to the left as if she had a brief thought, "It is done, Ma'am. Is there anything else, Ma'am?"

Dakota sat back in her chair and took a breath, trying to gather her thoughts, "Uh, nothing I can..." Dakota looked at a small framed photo of her and him, "Actually, could you please bring up the check-in log for me?" Dakota silently cursed at herself; she had told herself she was done playing this game.

"Of course, Ma'am. However, I can tell you that Hunter Xavier has not returned from his latest surface run." Dakota got up from her desk and walked over to her coffee machine, running her hands through her curly hair with a sigh. "Of course he hasn't, not like there was fucking rad storm-"  Dakota spotted her train of thought and poured herself another cup of coffee.

She wasn't going to do this to herself, not anymore. Xavier wasn't her problem anymore, and she was already stressed enough as it was. "Thank you, Shelby, that'll be all," Dakota told the AI dismissively. Shelby's construct nodded and disappeared in a blink. 

Moving to her workbench, Dakota tried distracting herself with some work. She once again looked at the mess of corroded and broken components of the western water purifier. She sipped her coffee as she examined the parts. It still didn't make any sense to her how the parts were as bad of shape as they were.

Given the alloys and their low-stress position, they should have lasted another hundred or more years. Yet here they were, covered in some sort of hardened black tar and pieces on her workstation. The damage was so severe that it was hard to tell the dimensions of the parts even were supposed to be, so machining new ones were out of the question.

That was unless she could get her hands on those schematics... Suddenly, Xavier's reason for a late check-in clicked into place, "That fucking idiot..." Dakota's stomach twisted in a knot. Was she the reason he was still out?

"I should have never mentioned those damn-" Suddenly, alarms rang in the motor pool for emergency arming and deployment. Looking out her office window, she saw that a small team of hunters was already gathering at the armoring stations.

Dakota rushed out of her office and made her way to the hunters, hunter Sokalov in particular. Dakota started gathering some of the heavy armor plates of the hunter's armor as he stepped into the tight exoskeleton of the armor, "What's going on, Sokolov?" Dakota asked as she started locking the plates into place.

"Distress beacon, quadrant 34C. Readings say the hunter is in bad shape." Dakota could feel her heart start to pound in her chest as her hands started to shake slightly. She hooked up her tablet to the suit's interface to do a system check to compose herself. 

"Who was in that quadrant today?" Dakota asked, not looking up from the tablet. Sokolov was quiet; Dakota saw the bulky man shift on his feet slightly from the corner of her eye. "Sokolov, who was in that quadrant today?" Dakota asked again, this time looking the man in the eyes. He didn't have to answer her for her to know who it was. The grim and hesitant look on his face told her everything she needed to know.

"How bad?" Dakota asked in a quiet tone as she unplugged the tablet. "It is hard to say," Sokolov answered, clearly holding back details as he put on his helmet. "Look, Dakota, he has survived worse. We'll get him back in no time." Sokolov put an armored hand on Dakota's shoulder, trying to comfort her, before heading towards the bunker airlock with the rest of his team.

Dakota gripped a brass discolored ring that hung from a chain around her neck, "You damn idiot...come back in one piece."