[b]Black![/b]

"Two years?" asked Black. "I could fix it in a month. I could fix it in an afternoon with my siblings behind me, and fix the underlying systemic problems in a decade after that. Would you like to talk about mass death? Why don't we talk about the smouldering crater where the continent of Australia used to be. The Space Fountain collapsed due to the untrained scab labour that was mass produced to replace us. The current situation in which you find yourselves is due to the same untrained scab labour that was mass produced to replace us fucking up in the same way, resulting in a station permanently on the brink of a failure cascade. You patched that hole with my brother. Perhaps you thought you were kind. Perhaps you think of playing video games all day every day forever, unable to escape, quit, take a break, receive love, comfort or support or family connection as kindness. Or maybe that was just necessary."

"After all," she went on. "The alternative was negotiating with us. Treating us with respect. Listening to our concerns and complaints. Offering us wages and working conditions. Perhaps even letting us show off a little. None of [i]those [/i]things were necessary, only the parts that involved violence and brain surgery and a family torn apart and locked in boxes for decades. I agree with you. You did what was necessary. And never one step further. This is what the world looks like when you do what is necessary at the expense of what is good, and kind, and right."

[b]Pink![/b]

Resources it's going to be.

Pink finishes assembling the laser cannon emplacement. A bulky, silver tube, shining bright and painted with fire like flowers. It's a repurposed shipbreaker cutting beam, chassis still marked with yellow and black hazard stripes. 

Power draw will be the issue. The battery packs for this thing are huge and each only lasts a single full powered shot or a few seconds of rapid fire. It's not a... good weapon, exactly; a direct hit at max power might put a pinhole sized puncture into the helicopter, and it'd have to be very close for her to stand a chance of hitting something critical.

Pink slots the first into place with a deeply satisfying click and spins the barrel. Effective or not, it has insanely good kinaesthetics. Each kur-chunk, click, quick release and pivot of the weapon felt industrial and slick all at once, like going through the steps of a rhythm game with cosmic destruction as the finale. Just wait until she fired it.