Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

"Confirmed kill, Commander Green," the lieutenant says, retracting her mecha's energised spike from the cockpit of the lifeless enemy machine. "We're fine here. Smith is uninjured, but his Vespula is shot. I'm sending him back to the ship." There's a pause, and she can't help but add: "Why were they flying sweeps out this far? And so soon after the last one? Did they know we were coming?"

"Well, whoever's in charge might just be a paranoid bastard," Green's calm voice says in her ear. "What is it that they say about plans and contact with the enemy, kid? We're salvaging what we can and moving into position. You should--

The rest of the Commanders words are lost in the din of of her scanner's alarms -- an object moving through the debris field, at high speed -- another Banner, this one not even bothering with its rifle, flying directly at the Lieutenant's machine, cutter extended. She engages her mecha's thrusters and easily evades, flying backwards to let the Banner's considerable bulk sail past into space. The Vespulas, like what the other two scouts operate, are extremely fast. The Lieutenant deployed in such machines in skirmishes with Jovian insurgents and knows them well. The ISMX17 Provespa, what she pilots now, makes the older scouting mechas feel as awkward and toothless as the ancient training machine she learned to fly in back in pilot's academy.

"We have another one, sir, we're engaging!" This pilot demonstrates considerably more skill than the previous one, expertly maneauvering his thrusters to break and then turn in as little space as was possible. The signature coming off his machine, visible on her scans says Banner, like the last one, but seeing it up close, she can instantly tell that this one has been heavily modified. Layers of additional armour and reinforcement give the already boxy, humanoid shape a hulking appearance -- she has no doubt that failure to dodge the first attack would have resulted in her machine, prototype or not, being cut in half.

"Good luck, kid," Green says in her ear once again.

She quickly signals for her remaining squad member to circle up and attack the customised enemy from above, while she comes at them from the side, too fast to visually track, energised spike pulled back to kill him like she killed his comrade. This time, it doesn't work that way.

The enemy pilot moves fractionally in space, just enough to seize the remaining Vespula and hurl him directly into the Lieutenant's path. She's forced to pull up and abandon her attack, pulling up and circling back around for another pass. To her surprise, she receives an unfamiliar comms request, and accepts without thinking.

"I'm not a spoiled little rookie out on my first engagement," says the flat but nakedly angry voice of the enemy pilot -- a man -- in her ears. "I'm not going down so easily."

Gritting her teeth, the Lieutenant retorts: "All heretics will fall before the might of the true Emperor" and flies at him again. This time, he just barely blocks.

--

"Hir-- Sub Lieutenant Ito's engaging the enemy who killed Ensign Song," Anja reports, trying to keep the worry in her voice from becoming too obvious.

"I don't like having he and Perbeck fighting out there with no reliable intelligence." She looks at you again. "Scans, North?"

"The debris field is making things difficult, ma'am!" you report, apologetically. "It will be a moment!" Your fingers glide across your interface as fast as you can go, running the standard battery of tests and double checks to make sure that no bad intelligence gets passed on. Without accurate scans, navigation is crippled, weapons can't produce reliable firing solutions, active defences don't know what's simply a piece of scrap and what's a nuclear tipped warhead. You can tell that the confusion is already being felt by the entirety of the bridge.

On the screen showing Ito's point of view, the enemy is briefly visible -- a sleek, black and tan model sporting a similar tri-ocular design to the Vespulas, but with strange, experimental looking thrusters and a truly terrifying spike weapon encased in one arm. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Ito trading blows both with the remaining enemy scout, and with the unknown mecha, relying on his skill and his customised Banner's increased strength to make up for their capacity to fly circles around him. You don't blame Anja for being worried, he's one slip up from an untimely death.

The scan map is scattershot -- too many moving dots flagged as potential enemies to rely on or commit to any specific action. The captain doesn't look your way again, but as the seconds go by, you feel the tension mounting. "I have it, captain!" you announce, even as the finalised battle environment goes live on everyone else's displays. The collective sigh of relief is extremely short lived.

"Keel thrusters hard burn! Rotate us 30 degrees Starboard! Get us away from the station!" Andre's sharp voice snaps, and the helmsman hurries to comply. You get the familiar but alarming sensation in the pit of your stomach of the ship abruptly changing course. It's a little too late -- a faint, shuddering impact, like something heavy being dropped in the distance, can be felt even here in the depths of the hull.

"Small missile group!" a harried defence technician calls. "We shot most of them down, but we had to take a couple on the shields! We're down 30%! Drawing from power reserves now!" That process will, of course, be slow, possibly too slow to matter. Shields are invaluable, but energy intensive and limited, and it is much better for them to be saved for fast moving projectiles or even beam weapons that can't meaningfully be destroyed by point defence. It is not an immediately lethal hit, but it may well prove to be lethal in the long run, especially with how many enemies are suddenly around the ship:

While you were working on the scans, the enemy that had been hiding in the debris field has moved into hasty position. In addition to the two mechas Ito is still fighting out in the debris, there are six others headed in the direction of Phoebe from different directions, half of them standard 32 Banners, the other half the rarer 32b Banner Heavy Type. It was one of the latter that hit you a moment ago, its pilot taking a potshot as they race past on their way to their real target. On the positive side, you can see that Phoebe station's own 6 mecha are moving into position to block the enemy Banners, but on the negative, even more worrisome are the two, much larger signatures that indicated two objects of warship size.

"Singh class corvettes, badly placed!" And it's true, you see at once -- One is in attack position, its weapons targeting the ground facility on Phoebe and fully in range of the anti-space guns positioned on the moon. The other, though, while close enough to make use of its main weapons, is too far away to properly guard the first.

"We caught them before they were ready," Grayson says. "What good that will do. Do they have a full carrier out there somewhere?"

"The signal's faint, but it looks like it's only a Flower Class, sir" you offer.

"The interplanetary cradle attachment for a Flower Class is bulky enough they threw in a third hangar," Captain Andre says, explaining the enemy's numbers if they truly had come from Jupiter. "It just makes it handle like a nightmare. Li, what is Perbeck doing?"

"She says she was waiting for us to give her proper scan-uplink, ma'am," Anja says, after a second of listening. "Something about getting into position for a shot?"

"Give her to me," Andre says, warily.

The ship goes through another dramatic twist, the helmsman, authorised to evade at will in combat barring orders to hold position, is attempting to extricate the Rose from the worst of the fighting around the station. Whether you are going to stay or fight, your current position means you're drawing fire from the enemy mechas, as well as limiting the arc of fire of the anti-space guns on Phoebe itself. The ship's point defence blows a few missiles flying wide of the station.

"Yes, captain?" Lady Perbeck's voice cuts in across the main comm.

"The station isn't going to last," Andre says. And she's right -- one of the Lancers has already gone down, and the shields around the Lunar facility are visibly ragged and wavering from the bombardment the two corvettes are unleashing. The station isn't much better. "We're leaving at the soonest possible opportunity. Phoebe will hopefully transmit a warning to highcomm, but our orders are not to die defending a doomed station."

"If we try to flee now, we'll be exposing ourselves to fire from the nearest corvette," Perbeck points out. "Right now you're mostly shielded from it by the station's defensive shroud. That's not going to last long, though, and the main guns on that class are oversized. We'd do better to deal with it while it's focusing on the lunar facility."

Captain Andre perses her lips for a moment or two, examining the map. "They're taking fire from the AS guns already -- Singhs are tough little bastards, though. I don't want to get into a prolonged exchange."

"I can assist," Perbeck says, confidently. "I'm not piloting this thing for nothing."

"You're certain?" Andre does not ask it doubtfully, so much as warningly. This plan going wrong may make the Rose suddenly become a major target.

"As long as the scan data you're feeding me is good, I can make the shot," Perbeck agrees.

You feel a sudden, irrational twist of anxiety in your stomach. You're confident at your job, of course, and remaining cool and poised under pressure is one of your most admirable attributes as an officer. But this is your first real life and death engagement, and the first time so much has ridden on your scan map being plotted properly.

"Fine, then. But make sure you and Ito are back here when it's time to leave. Mazlo, are you keeping Phoebe briefed on what we're doing?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says, pausing in his hushed conversation with station control to address her. "They're a little occupied, though."

--

"Five years. Five years at this post!" The station's shield integrity alarm is blaring throughout the room, accompanied by flashing red lights. In contrast to the controlled intensity of the Rose's bridge, the CiC of Phoebe Station gives the impression of an ant's nest that someone has just pitched a rock into. Aids rush in and out of the room, officers scramble to multiple stations. Now that the station's outdated scan interpretation software has finally analysed the considerable amount of local data, and the enemy's numbers and position can be seen, that sense has only mounted.

"Five years, and nothing. How am I supposed to remain vigilant for that long when there's nothing? Why would the usurper scum even come here, of all places?" Lord Cadorna's voice is filled with more rage than fear as he frantically hammers out a message, fingers dancing over his workstation at a rate not at all slowed by his continued monologue, or by his occasional digressions into barked orders. "It's not to be born! What is the status on the evacuation?"

"Civilian shuttles are primed to go, sir, but we can't guarantee their safety if they launch into this!" the voice of his assistant calls, from over his shoulder at her own workstation. The command centre of the station is simply that of a warship, scaled up -- the same imperial delta, but with multiple tiers and far, far more screens.

"Can we damn well guarantee their safety here?" he snaps. The stations' civilian population -- primarily service workers with the families of a few officers on longer rotation -- is small, but his first responsibility nonetheless. This watchpost was never truly expected to come under direct attack, barring the worst case scenario of a large scale incursion overtaking the higher value facilities in the sub-system beforehand, at which point it would be all over anyway. They have shields of course, and a few token guns, but he can already tell that they'll be lucky to black the enemy's eye before going down. "Have non-essential crew evacuate as well," he adds.

There's a brief silence around the room, a brief stillness. Almost everyone present is considered essential to the moment to moment running of the station, at least as the person currently manning their particular station. His assistant breaks the silence, voice brittle. "It's… been a pleasure, sir," she says.

"Don't lie," Cadorna says, bluntly. "It's unbecoming." A ragged, hysterical laugh goes around the room, and everyone moves back into motion, even as the aids and a few of the officers present begin to file out their designated emergency exits. Everyone is panicking, he assumes, on the inside, but he takes a small amount of pride in their being able to hold it together visibly, at least.

The station rumbles again, as more heavy mecha ordinance makes it to the shields. A hardened military station would have multiple shield frequencies set up redundantly. It would have heavy armaments, three times the number of mecha available. This isn't a hardened military station, however. It's one good shot from a ship calibre weapon from a hull rupture. "And that upjumped daughter of an ore miner or whatever she is, flying in here and telling me how to run my own command with that flat look of hers. Damn it all if she wasn't right."

"The lunar facility's shields are near failure, sir, but they're broadcasting the signal to highcomm now!" his assistant's voice has a strong note of relief now. That much, at least, they haven't failed in.

"Send the data that Commander Andre sent us," Cadorna says.

"Sir?"

"Let highcomm make sense of it," he growls. "Assuming we don't all get blown up before it's fully transferred. Why hasn't she slunk off yet in that glorified scouting ship?" he demands.

"The Titanium Rose still has pilots deployed!" a frightened voice calls out, from nearby. The control officer in communication with the reconnaissance ship. "And they are attempting to provide limited support before retreating!"

"Fat lot of good that's going to do anyone," Cadorna says. Then, pausing for a slight moment, he adds: "request transport for at least one of the lifeboat shuttles. That ship has a marginally higher chance of getting out of this intact than they do on their own." The shuttles can, of course, make their way to safety, under ideal conditions. Ideal conditions do not include being shot down by enemy mecha.

"Yes, sir!"

Cadorna presses something on his workstation, and opens up a new feed. "Captain," he says. "You're still in one piece?"

"No!" a harried voice snaps. "I'm not. But I'm flying. And down two men. Is this important?" The captain of the station's mecha squad and security forces -- technically understaffed and underequipped for what someone of his rank should be commanding -- is displaying none of his usual calm courtesy. For once, Cadorna feels no urge to yell at someone for an insufficiently respectful tone.

"We're evacuating all civilians and strictly non-essential personnel," Cadorna says. "And we're trying to transmit important data to highcomm. You need to provide interference for as long as you can."

The captain gives out a long, piercing laugh that makes Cadorna wince. "Are you going to be on the first shuttle, then?" he asks.

It shouldn't sting, but somehow, here at the undistinguished end of a lacklustre career, it does. "No, captain," Cadorna says stiffly. "I will be here, as will a skeleton crew to oversee the evacuation, man defences, and provide you with CiC support for as long as we can."

"Down with the ship, then?" The captain laughs again, and Cadorna's skin crawls.

"Down with the ship," he agrees, grimly.

--

The ISM16 Huntress is not a common sight on the battlefield. It performed exceptionally well during the testing phases, and was rapidly approved for a limited production run, but there, it hit several snags. The pilot who conducted the prototype tests was selected for extraordinary reaction time, aim and spatial awareness in order to compensate for the challenges inherent in such an ambitious design, and this has turned out to be its own sort of problem.

A mecha sporting as its main weapon a railgun nearly the full length of its body, a piece of a calibre not conventionally issued to anything short of a small warship, and perhaps for good reason. Managing such a weapon in space requires highly sensitive and powerful thrusters, enabling a sufficiently skilled pilot extreme maneuverability, but leaving most pilots to careen helplessly through space for long seconds after every shot, in addition to the necessary sacrifices in armour and durability that had to be accepted for an already costly model. And even assuming one has a pilot who is physically capable of operating the mecha to its true potential, there is the harder question of whether or not such a person should. All mecha sized weaponry is dangerous, and can cause tragic collateral damage, but there is a world of difference between a standard anti-mecha rifle and a fully realised rail cannon. A single careless shot is capable of destroying allied mecha or even ships or, worst of all, puncturing civilian habitats. And in space, of course, should the shot in question ever miss, the projectile -- tiny, but with the stored kinetic energy of a large bomb -- it will simply keep going until it does hit something. It has been determined that a pilot must pass a rigorous battery of aptitude and personality tests before even being issued such a machine on even a trial basis, and the Huntress has never seen true mass production as a result.

For Lady Perbeck, operating the Huntress is as simple as breathing. She expertly weaves around the enemy mecha, warding it off with a brief burst of fire from its light, secondary weapon, before powering up the thrusters to zip away. The Banner in question is not, currently, her target.

"Ito, are you able to come back toward the ship?" she asks, speaking into her radio even as her eyes stay focused on the scan map with laser like intensity. "We're going to have to run."

"I'll try, ma'am." He's clearly not happy about the idea, but not to the degree that he'll do something stupid. "I'm bringing Song back with me." Or, maybe, he will.

"Ensign Song is dead, Ito," she points out, unnecessarily.

"Yes, ma'am," he confirms, not sounding at all like someone fighting for his life against two more agile mecha.

"And if you did retrieve her body, we'd give her a spacer burial anyway, as per regulations," Perbeck points out further. Her vantage point is close, flagged on the map as the optimal location for what she's about to attempt. The Singh Class corvette, longer and sleeker than the familiar shape of the Rose, is attempting to limit its exposure to the still-functional anti-space guns, which are opting to hammer the enemy ship over the enemy mecha, mixed in as they are with the station's own forces. The second Singh is still in the process of moving into position, from an entirely different angle.

"Yes, ma'am," he agrees again, not sounding at all like her comments have reduced his desire to rescue what was left of a comrade who had, after all, disliked him intensely.

Perbeck sighs. "Just don't get blown up yourself. I'm already writing to one family once we're out of this."

"Lady Perbeck, we are nearly in position, do you confirm?" Ensign Li, the chipper Titan mecha control officer, sounds uncharacteristically grim. Combat can do that.

"I'm in position now," Perbeck says, adjusting thrust so that she's at a relative stop to the corvette she's targeting. Its primary weapons fire in rhythm, even as its shields flare again and again from the AS guns, with the foreground the violent melee of mechas clashing. She's impressed by the fight that the Phoebe garrison is putting up, but they're clearly outclassed. The Lancers look spindly and weak against the bulkier Banners, and their thruster technology is primitive enough that that doesn't even translate into faster maneuvering.

The Huntress's main weapon, folded up against its back, snaps down into place, joints locking and interior environment sealing with a hiss that's lost in the vacuum of space. She brings up the scan data, fed to her by the connection with the Titanium Rose. Another issue with the Huntress's main weapon -- even with its scan technology significantly improved over what most mecha, even much newer ones, contain, it's still not quite beefy enough to fire a gun this powerful in such a chaotic environment. The computer quickly calibrates the shot, with Perbeck giving the results an instinctive nudge or two. They need to take into account the trajectory not only of the target, but of the station and of every one of the mechas darting around. Even if she hits an enemy, that could mean a loss in velocity that ruins everything.

"We're in position, ma'am," Li's voice says. Sure enough, the Rose is rolling out of the shadow of Phoebe Station, its main weapons primed to fire. The corvette's shields flare even more, suddenly very close to the verge of collapse. From her cockpit, Perbeck can feel the shudder of the huntress's own main weapon priming, even as the corvette orientates itself to return fire on the Rose. A few rifle rounds whip past the general proximity of the Huntress -- one of the enemy mecha pilots appears to have taken note of her and what she's doing, but their accuracy at this distance leaves much to be desired. Ignoring the incoming fire, Perbeck finalises the trajectory, and pulls the trigger.

--

"Evade, evade, evade!" Andre shouts, and with good reason -- when the corvette's main weapons are brought to bear against you, the shot punches through the Rose's shields, compromised as they were by the earlier hit. If the shot had been taken directly, instead of glancingly, the damage would have been catastrophic. As it is, the bridge is filled with the shriek of alarms and the blare of emergency lights, and you can physically feel a jolting rumble pass through the ship, much closer than the previous ones.

"Damage to the upper spinal quadrant! Section sealed, ma'am!"

"Working on getting shields partially restored, ma'am!"

"Casualties?" she demands.

"No word yet!"

"Grayson, Find out what we've lost and take care of things. I do not want to survive this only to die in a ship fire," Andre doesn't even look at her first officer, or acknowledge his affirmative, but for good reason. Even as the Corvette turns to try and track the Rose's faster movement, Perbeck takes her shot. The corvette's shields, barely holding from the AS guns and the hit they've just taken from The Rose, give out completely under the impact, and the projectile from Perbeck's shot strikes the ship in its thinnest section, visibly breaching the hull and sending a spray of miscellaneous debris jetting out into space. You find yourself hoping, somehow, that if any of it is human, that they're already dead, enemy or not. The corvette's problems aren't over yet. Phoebe's AS guns continue to fire away for nearly a minute longer, before the lunar facility's shields finally fail, and a bombing run from one of the Banner Heavies silences them forever. The corvette's own shields don't come back online. It doesn't blow apart, but it's a very near thing.

"Lady Perbeck and Sub Lieutenant Ito are both on their way back!" Anja says, sounding almost giddy with relief.

"We have a lifeboat shuttle requesting permission to dock with us, ma'am," Mazlo adds. Sure enough, Phoebe Station, clearly as doomed as the lunar facility, is ejecting a small swarm of shuttles, most going into hard burn to put as much distance between them and the battle as possible. Already, some are taking fire, intentional or not.

"If they can get here in time, let them on," Andre says. "But we are leaving as soon as Ito and Perbeck are back here. The enemy mechas aren't going to take that lying down."

"Three friendly mechas approaching!" you announce. Then, correct yourself "Two, sorry: Sub Lieutenant Ito is towing Ensign Song's behind him. They're being pursued!" Behind the two of them, the enemy, including the two remaining enemy mecha's Ito has been holding off all this time, are hot on their heels, trading weapons fire with your two surviving pilots. They finally, mercifully make it just as the remaining corvette fires a shot into Phoebe station that blasts a large chunk out of its habitat ring. Another, much larger burst of atmosphere and debris, and the entire ring splits open like a tin can.

"We're leaving. Full acceleration, away from here!" Andre orders. The acceleration from the engines is so sudden and dramatic that you know it's unsafe, but far better than the alternative. Even with the lead you have on the other corvette, you know that this is not going to be an effortless escape. Still, though, with the last of the Phoebe garrison still valiantly running interference, you somehow make it out of the danger zone.

At what cost, though?

--

OoC: This was our first batte, and honestly, it went significantly better than I anticipated. When selecting Amani's skillset, you chose precisely the one that was going to be immediately useful and give you some warning of the enemy ambush, allowing the ship to take minimal damages while heavily damaging one of the enemy ships, allowing Phoebe Station time to at least attempt evacuation, and possibly allowing them to transmit the data in full to high command. Things would have played out quite differently with different approach to gaining accurate scan data, but that was always a situation with trade offs rather than a clear best solution.

Your choice now, and one you'll be presented with after every ship battle, is to decide as players how things shook up in the aftermath here, in terms of the immediate consequences of the battle, before things return more directly to Amani's perspective and you decide what she does next.

Choose two. Votes will be counted as a set.

[ ] The damages to the Titanium Rose did not result in loss of crew life
[ ] The battle did not result in significant expenditure of the Titanium Rose's finite resources
[ ] Most of the civilians and crew fleeing from Phoebe station made it out unscathed
[ ] Phoebe's communications facility managed to transmit all of the data you found to high command before it was destroyed