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

"Neither of our pilots were injured before the enemy disengaged. As for our ship, we're currently ascertaining the full extent of the damages now, your highness," Captain Andre says, looking admirably unphased by the somewhat surreal experience of speaking directly to a princess of the Solar Empire. "You have my sincere thanks for the assistance -- that would have turned out very badly for us."

"You're here for me to begin with," Princess Daystar points out. When she appeared on the screen at first, you and the rest of the bridge staff, with the exception of Grayson and Mazlo, had been unable to suppress a moment's collective stunned staring, before hastily snapping back to your prior tasks. You, at least, knew how serious the transmission was, so this was not an eventuality you found wholly surprising, intellectually. Deep down, however, you hadn't quite expected to be confronted by none other than Princess Daystar Helios herself. "It would hardly be charitable, or in my interests, to leave you to die."

"As you say, highness," Andre replies, expression still schooled, although you think perhaps her shoulders relax fractionally. To the extent that Captain Andre's posture can ever really be described as 'relaxed.'

"Captain, the enemy corvette is moving again," you say, feeling oddly disrespectful to interrupt, in spite of the dire importance of your news.

Captain Andre's eyes immediately sharpen. "Highness, are you able to coordinate pursuit? They can't be going anywhere fast just yet."

Princess Daystar shakes her head, looking quietly frustrated. Her radiant hair spreads out around her in a way that would have looked sloppy on anyone else you've seen in zero gravity, yet on her, only makes her look beautiful and ethereal. "Not effectively, Captain. We're having technical problems on our end, I'm afraid. This is a highly experimental ship."

Andre nods. "Helm," she says, "put us into another firing angle. I'd be surprised if their shields are working yet. Mazlo, hail them and ask for their surrender." She glances up at Daystar's magnified face. "Unless you object, highness?"

"Not at all," the princess allows. "A little less bloodshed today would hardly go amiss… and we could do with some intelligence as to what exactly is going on."

Andre nods, and you feel the slight vibrations of the ship changing course, even as you concentrate on your station, on the small dots of the fleeing enemy mecha, and the large one of the Singh making its as-yet-glacial escape. Then, you feel another vibration -- this one far from slight. An explosion rocks the ship, shaking the entire room, and jolting everyone in their straps. As you catch yourself on the edge of your station, you find yourself momentarily confused -- most your display seems almost to have gone mysteriously blank.

"Forward section, report!" Grayson says into his comm, recovering first. He puts the harried response on speaker, to allow for Andre to hear it:

"Secondary explosion within the hull!" a technician says. "It went off when we changed course -- the inner hull isn't breached and no one's hurt, but we're still trying to figure out what caused it, and it might have taken out a few instruments."

"...not 'may'!" you say, eyes wide. "Our long-range scans just went out. I only have local!" Your active scan display has shrunk to the area immediately around the ship. The larger battle map that your display populates still displays the rest of the area, but it's frozen, and-cross hatched with a red grid with the words OUT OF DATE flashing from all angles.

"Is everything alright, Captain?" the princess asks, sounding alarmed.

"We're fine, highness," Andre says, grimacing, "but we're flying blind. Until we can repair it, we'll need to coordinate with your scan technicians to see where we're going, let alone catch the surviving ship."

"Right away, then," Daystar promises. You do get the Night Lily's scans as quickly as can be hoped. But it's long minutes before Mazlo receives them, can send them to you, and you can thread the new data into your compromised map. By this time, the Singh has limped its way to such a velocity that you're unlikely to catch up to it in any reasonable timeframe, short of giving up everything and chasing it with two crippled ships. The enemy mecha, meanwhile, have ominously vanished. They have limited air supplies in their units, and if you're lucky, they may simply surrender, but having their carrier destroyed and her surviving escort abandon them, they may also opt to go out in a blaze of glory rather than quietly suffocating or facing the embarrassment of capture.

You know you should be grateful, all considered -- no one else is dead, the princess at least is safe, and for having survived two battles with actual warships and enemy mecha, The Rose is in admirable shape. All the same, however, you know without even having seen the damages yet, that there will be a lot for the technicians to do in order to fix your blinded ship, and the costs of not doing this are simply too great to fathom at the moment.


It's a lengthy, nerve wracking period of time -- most of a day -- before you can be certain that the immediate area is free of all enemies, time that you'll never get back. Of the two enemies that managed to flee, one mecha is eventually destroyed in a quick and dirty mecha battle in which only minor damages are sustained. Left all alone, the other promptly surrenders, and its pilot is taken onboard the Night Lily. Which, among other things, has a much more substantial brig than the Rose does.

Repairs so far have been slow -- you've been heavily involved, helping to supervise the ship's engineers and scans-certified technicians as you all slowly assess the damages. They're not irreparable, thank all the stars, but they are substantial enough to give you pause. As luck would have it, with the area finally clear of enemies, the Night Lily, as heavy on technicians as it is light on all other kinds of crew, is able to send a shuttle over to assist.

You are arranged in the tiny shuttle bay, along with as much of the Rose's crew as can fit, because of precisely who is to be the first one off of the shuttle. As the airlock indicator above the exterior hatch cycles to green and Princess Daystar floats out onto the ship, you and everyone else present immediately snap a salute in your smartest zero-g parade posture. The princess is, it has been explained, here in her capacity as an honorary Commodore, and can thankfully be greeted as a superior officer would. Thankfully, because while you are at least somewhat prepared for court etiquette, as are the other higher born officers present, you're somewhat less certain of the largest part of the crew. Anja, you're aware, would probably not make the cut.

The princess, and one of the officers from the Night Lily, make their stop directly in front of captain Andre and the other senior officers of the ship, technicians trailing behind them. "It's an honour to have you aboard, your highness," Captain Andre says. "Welcome to the Titanium Rose." You do not, in your experience of the captain, actually believe she's pleased by the princess's presence, so much as she understands the necessity of it. Like making the rescue mission out here in the first place.

"At ease, Captain." The princess returns the salute, with the air of someone for whom military protocol is a jacket they put on sometimes, rather than a world they live in full time. "I've never had a chance to come aboard a Range class vessel," the princess says, pleasantly. "The honour is all mine -- it will be good to remind myself of what a real serving ship looks like, after so long with the unfinished and the experimental."

"I'm not quite certain our broken little scouting ship is a fair comparison with your own vessel," the captain says, "but, thank you, your highness." She glances at the technicians arrayed behind Daystar. "I hope that your people won't be too dearly missed on your own ship, for the duration of the repairs? I understand you have had your own issues."

Daystar laughs at this, and the officer beside her winces uncomfortably. "You could say that," she freely admits. "Part of why I was sent to this station in the first place was to see just how well the housing on a positron cannon would stand up at ship-scale. As it would turn out… the answer is: 'Not as well as could be hoped." There's a silent, but noticeable ripple around the room, as those present sufficiently versed in proposed weapons tech, in spite of being at attention parse the words 'positron cannon' and 'ship-scale.' Grayson in particular nearly does a double take. It isn't your specialty, so you're not particularly informed on the various competing types of experimental particle beam and high powered laser weaponry, but you did at least see the result of such a weapon, which in its way is enough. "The technicians we need for those repairs are quite specialised, and most of the other things we need, we can get by. It will be much faster to get your ship back to battle readiness than ours."

"I… see," Captain Andre says, doubtfully. "I take your word for it, your highness. Will there be any immediate problems in taking out leave, when the time comes?"

"No, Captain," Daystar says. "We're spaceworthy, barely, just not quite battle-ready. If they'd attacked us six months from now, it might be a different story, but at the moment, our ship is a mess of experimental systems that haven't been properly integrated yet, and we'll need to do a lot on our end to be any use in a fight at all. As I'm sure you've all guessed by now, while I cannot discuss specifics, the facility I was here to inspect was a top-secret R&D station. I have no idea how the enemy found out our location, but clearly we were too lax -- they caught us flat-footed, and our escort ships and all their crew died for it." There's an uncomfortable silence, as Daystar stops talking for a moment, momentarily reflecting on the magnitude of the loss. "At any rate," she says, "I have something else to offer, with your permission."

"... yes, your highness?" Andre asks.

"Guardswoman J6 -- she assisted your pilots in the fighting." She gives Lady Perbeck a slight nod here, which is returned courteously. "Our ship is… not quite equipped for properly maintaining a mecha in combat, just yet. Which is silly, given that we were supposed to be a carrier, when the budget was drawn up for this project." Behind the princess's continued gentle smile, this time you can practically see the image of R&D funding being slashed, and department heads finding themselves out of a job or worse. "As I understand you are short a pilot yourself, would it be unreasonable to accept her and the IDMX Morrigan onboard, for the time being?"

Andre glances to Lady Perbeck, who looks thoughtful. "Guardswoman… 'J6' performed admirably in combat, your highness," she says, "And I have no objections to serving with her again, so long as I can be assured that she will obey my orders in combat. Although I am less than confident our staff will be up to the task of maintaining such an advanced unit."

The princess is unphased by Perbeck's courteous, if direct tone, and equally so that Andre would look to the countess and mecha commander's opinion before making any final decisions. "She is quite capable of handling her machine's more specialised maintenance requirements on her own," the princess says, "and of following your orders, once I ask her to. You can rely on her, Lady Perbeck. But please take good care of her." The last seems a bit of an odd request to you, and, visibly, to Perbeck, who is a second or two late in responding.

"I take care of my subordinates, your highness. But war is war."

Seeing Daystar nod her understanding, Andre, voice having cooled slightly, says: "Then you have my permission as well, your highness. We can receive her and her unit at the main mecha hangar when she's ready."

"Excellent," the princess says. "And I should stop interrupting your crew in their work at such a vital time." She looks over the assembled crowd of you, pointedly. "Although, while I'm here… I certainly wouldn't mind a tour -- I've never been on a Ranger class before, after all. And I understand that you have a number of civilians on board who would no doubt prefer to have an explanation for why they were suddenly thrust into combat once more."

Andre blinks, looking ever so slightly blindsided by the request. "A tour… of course, your highness. And that would, I admit, ease their… anxieties." A lot can be read in between the lines with the word 'anxieties.' "Meanwhile, I hope you don't mind if your technicians begin work right away? Ensign North can direct them to the problem area."

You feel a familiar sinking feeling grow in the pit of your stomach. You hadn't really fooled yourself into thinking that all this would mean less work for you, but you can't quite shake the feeling that it might, somehow, actually mean more in the end.


Despite repairs not yet being completed, the decision is made to depart anyway, using the Night Lily's scans to suffice for both ships, and having the mecha pilots fly regular sweeps to fill in the gaps. It's hardly an efficient solution, but particularly with the escaped Singh having run off to report, you cannot afford to sit around in a compromised location for so long, and both ships depart on a long trajectory to the fortified moon of Iapetus.

You will be kept very busy helping to oversee the repairs and reintegration of the ship's scan suite, and as such, you have precious little in the way of downtime where you aren't working on that, eating or sleeping. But you do have some, a few precious hours forced onto you now and again. How do you spend them?

You have two points of downtime to spend. You may choose as many options as you can afford, which will be counted in blocks, as per last time:

[ ] Spend time with Anja (one downtime)

[ ] Get to know Ito (one downtime)

[ ] Get to know Lady Perbeck (one downtime)

[ ] Use this opportunity to retool some of the ship's less optimised scan systems that have always bothered you even if you have to run yourself and the technicians a little ragged (two downtime)