The Moxie Series — S1EP3 The Spring

Three days out. No contact. No orders. Just the wasteland. Pushed deeper into the dead zone on extended patrol. ECHO-4 and me, documenting the long days, the silence, and the slow creep of green returning to a world that was supposed to be finished. Then I found something impossible — a hidden geothermal spring, clean water rising from deep underground in a canyon that isn't on any map. For one quiet moment, the wasteland gave me something good. It didn't last. Raiders hit the spring site without warning. I was outside the cockpit, unarmed, exposed. What happened next... I still can't explain it. ECHO-4 engaged the threat alone. No command. No targeting input. The mech acted on its own. I survived. But I can't explain what my mech just did. And I'm not sure I want to.