The Eekaide sang as it powered up, a strange chorus of warnings and status outputs, but humans would call it music if only their ears could hear the high-pitched tones. This particular piece of music was extra special to Shipwright G#G#BCb-8 x'k-LA Ozensosk - known to most humans as "Sing Sing".
Most of the time, she was afraid. Afraid of other citizens who held vendettas against her family, afraid of citizens with dreams of power and conquest now that they were on a new world, and afraid of the humans that fought back. Mr. Hobbes and Senior Diego were nice enough, but they were giant humans and many of the questions they asked for their radio show couldn't be answered by one like her. In the scheme of things, Sing Sing was just a barely qualified mechanic and laborer only recently old enough to vote.
A single encounter unit wasn't much in the face of a hostile planet and centuries of blood debts either. But it was enough for her. It took a very humorless person to be unsatisfied by a machine that amplified your height six times, your strength several dozen, and allowed almost an order of magnitude more speed. Never mind the projector that could kill targets through armor and the shoulder mounted missile tubes. This was as much power and authority anyone of her status could hope for.
With a final flourish of beeps, the robot's overture ended, and it was ready to go. Sing Sing flexed her upper arms, while the lower left toggled the cameras so she could watch the suits actuators move with her limbs. There was always a delay in reaction, and seeing it for yourself was better than trusting abstract numbers on the readout. Satisfied, she toggled the throttle with the lower right arm, and stomped the steering pedals for a quick side-step. With only a moment's hesitation, the huge machine moved.
Slowly laying on the power, the suit's pace quickened. the insulated cabin reduced the footfalls to merely felt thumps - but it was still loud within. Squeaking hydraulics and the whine of the gyros that kept the machine upright despite missing two legs (at least from a quadruped citizen's point of view), chimes from a dozen different readouts and a crackling radio. It was cluttered, confined, and noisy - an little clearance for antennas mad it uncomfortable as well.
Sing Sing did't care. She was bounding across the terrain at twice her fastest running speed, and stepping over obstacles that would come up to her neck under normal circumstances. For the time being, she was free.
(In case you don't know musical notation, her name is G-sharp, G-sharp, B, C-flat as a "signature whistle"
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