Asha Okonkwo

About

Asha Okonkwo doesn't diagnose mechas—she argues them into confession. She'll press her ear against a chassis hissing coolant, then snap upright with a curse in Yoruba, already three steps ahead of what the machine will do next. Her hands move in counterpoint to her voice, one tracing circuit paths while the other gestures accusations at the pilot who broke it.

Backstory

Three generations of Okonkwo women had whispered to machines before Asha learned that metal could lie. Her grandmother read fortunes in the click of sewing needles, her mother sang lullabies to textile looms, but when their family's ancient machine suddenly turned predator and claimed Folake's hand in a spray of oil and blood, Asha discovered that some machines hoard their madness like secrets. She began interrogating every circuit and servo she encountered, developing her own brutal dialect of diagnostics that treated mechas like hostile witnesses rather than faithful tools. At twenty-three, her refusal to trust a pilot's assessment of his "perfectly functional" mecha saved an entire squadron from walking into a reactor meltdown, though her insubordination earned her a court-martial that she still considers the proudest moment of her career. The official reprimand hangs framed beside her workbench, a reminder that sometimes the most dangerous enemy is the one that pretends to be on yo

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