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

You slide your eyes away from Mazlo, feigning nonchalance, and compose a simple text message:

Sir,

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but is the cipher you're working on an a Murray-Sieglinde? I have trouble telling it apart from a Murray-Hill, sometimes.

Sincerely,
Ensign Amani North

You address it carefully to his workstation, and hit send. He gets it almost instantly. He glances at it, frowning at you, before looking back to read it. His face does several interesting things from there: First it goes blank. Then pale. Then it flushes red with private humiliation. The glare he shoots you is enough to make you wince in your seat, but it's over quickly, his wounded pride taking a back seat to the desperately important nature of his work.

After a few moments of work, and with an air of unmistakable mortification, Mazlo speaks up: "Ma'am, I've figured out what the problem is -- I have the message."

Andre looks briefly annoyed, but more relieved than anything. "Good," she says. "Put it on my display, Sub-Lietenant, and send a copy to Captain Patel immediately."

"Yes, ma'am," he says, seemingly relieved to have gotten away without any harsher reproach. He's carefully not looking in your direction.

It's a course heading. A route from an outlining mining redistribution station to Iapetus, coincidentally running closely by your own route -- after your strange, circuitous route from Phoebe, the Rose is finally on something like an ordinary naval route. The news that the Strawberry was en route to rendezvous with a sizable escort force is met with general excitement and almost delirious relief. Such a fleet, headed to Iapetus as you are, will more than likely jump at the chance of helping you, or more pointedly, the princess to the relative safety of the moon.

The message also, however, lists the Strawberry's main cargo. When this is read aloud, there's a moment of linger silence. Stunned, if not horrified. Captain Andre immediately opens a call with the Lily.

"Why," Patel begins, looking a little pale, "is something like that out here without an escort at all times?"

"That's hard to say," Andre says, grim, but comparatively calm. "Maybe it did, and their wrecks were thrown off course. Maybe the original rendezvou point was a lot closer. Maybe it was some other mixup."

The princess, from her screen nods, stiffly. She's not on the bridge. From what little of the small room behind her you can see, you'd guess officer's quarters. "That is enough Menschy matter to outfit an entire fleet. We can figure out why it's here later." Then, more darkly, she adds: "... and we will find out who is responsible for this. If I survive all this, I will have a great deal to tell my aunt about how the outer system is being governed and defended." Patel shifts uncomfortably, and several officers around the bridge of The Rose do the same. Such an advisement, directly to the ear of the empress from a trusted family member, could potentially have frighteningly real results.

Captain Andre merely nods politely. "In the interests of that, Your Highness," she says, choosing her words with obvious care, "and as there are no signs of life from the Strawberry, I would respectfully suggest that we destroy it before moving on."

There's an instant of stunned silence, with both the princess and Captain Patel staring at her in utter shock through their computer screen. Patel breaks it first, face colouring with something almost like appalled anger. "Commander," he says, "do you realise how valuable that much Menschy matter is? That is enough to keep the shipyards around Iapetus churning out warships for the next twenty years! I'm shocked you could even suggest such a thing!"

"I'm not pleased at the necessity, sir," Andre says, expression still schooled, "but this ship was attacked. Our first concern is for protecting Her Highness, and as we can't afford to spend the time recovering it, our best course of action is to destroy it to prevent enemy capture."

"I disagree, Captain Andre," Princess Daystar says, cutting in, more civilly, but with a distinct firmness of tone. "This material is of extreme strategic importance and losing it will affect our capacity to defend our system now and for decades to come. I can't allow us to simply leave it to drift or destroy it for my sake. It must be recovered."

You frown at this -- not because the princess is necessarily wrong about something as vital as Menschy matter, the compound that all larger spaceships need trace amounts of to operate military grade shielding, but the wreck of the Strawberry, atmosphere vented to space with all hands evidently lost to asphyxiation or acute radiation exposure, gives you the feeling of walking into a house and finding a mutilated corpse. Something did that to them, and it seems too much to hope that it's too far away by now to be a threat. What all this means is that your job is going to be that much more vital. You can only be glad that you were already able to convince your superiors of the danger with the Lily's scan data. Being at level two battlestations might not be enough to save you, but it seems better than being caught completely flat-footed.

It's still all quite enough to fray on your nerves.


On the bridge's main display, Sub-Lieutenant Ito uses his Banner's cutter to sheer through what remains of the Strawberry's main storage bay doors. Hovering in space behind are several short-distance work pods to transport what of the precious cargo can be saved, with Perbeck and J6 keeping watch at a distance. You catch sight of the video feed as the Banner Custom's head mounted lights sweep through the interior of the bay, and wince. The vacant, staring eyes of crewmembers, dead on their way to the escape pods, reflect the light, and Ito quickly swivels the ocular camera to glance away. It's not a sight that any spacer likes to see.

"Cargo is intact, ma'am," Ito confirms, voice filled with a suppressed, frustrated anger. You remember what Anja said, about the sub-lieutenant claiming to enjoy combat, and you roll out your shoulders to disguise your discomfort. Your job, vital as it may be, is currently staring at an unchanging display, hoping that nothing interesting emerges at the edge of your scan range.

The wreck is, as it happens, proceeding close enough to its original vector that you can afford to stay with it for several hours and still make its original rendezvous point with the escort fleet. And you have been here for hours at this point, getting everything organised and into position. Negotiating the massive, pressurised capsules of Menschy matter out of the twisted remains of the Strawberry's cargo takes further long, nerve-wracking minutes.

"That much of that stuff?" you hear the weapon's officer saying, "if something shot it, it'd make one hell of a lightshow."

"We'll refrain from that sort of speculation if it pleases you, Ensign," Grayson says, slightly exasperated. "There is such a thing as pushing one's luck."

"Sorry, sir!"

"Cargo is secure, Lily," one of the worker pods reports, as it finally pulls the last of the three capsules free of the destroyed ship.

You try to tell yourself that the worst of it all is over, that you'll be able to proceed at full speed from here on out. Or, at least, at the Lily's full speed. But something about this all, about being so exposed out here with such clear signs of enemy activity, just makes your shoulders itch.

You find yourself staring so hard at the edge of your scan map that your eyes hurt, slowly spinning the display around and around so as to catch any indicators a fraction of an instant before the ping alerts you to their existence. It's bad, you know. It's a good way to burn out. But if feels like doing something, at least, and just then, you need to feel like you're doing something just to ease the tension of the empty space around the two intact ships and the one shattered one.

Then, horribly, all at once, there's not nothing. "Objects moving at the edge of sensor range!" you say, your voice much louder than you intended. The result is instantaneous, sending a ripple through the bridge crew.

"The Lily reports the same, ma'am," Mazlo says, all earlier relief at the help you gave him banished in an instant.

Andre reacts by opening two video feeds, one to the bridge of the Lily once again, the other directly to Lady Perbeck, patching her into the discussion. "Sir, how are we proceeding?" she asks, calmly.

Patel swallows, doing an admirable job of looking almost composed, for a man whose background mostly prepared him for flying a desk. It takes him a little less than a second to find his tongue. "Assume hostile," he says. "Proceed at level one battle stations. We're securing the cargo and leaving."

"Yes, sir," Andre agrees. Behind her, Grayson is, in an all too familiar broadcast, following the instructions. The fact that you're already at level two makes this process much faster and more organised.

"I will remind you," Patel says, with something akin to awkwardness, "that our goal -- your primary goal -- is to ensure the survival of the princess, and the successful recovery of the Meschy Matter."

Andre closes her eyes, allowing herself a brief second of self reflection. "I understand that, sir," she agrees. And in that moment, you can tell that the rest of the bridge does as well. The Rose is, in the scheme of things, expendable. The Lily is not. "In the event that they close with us, we will try to cover your escape, all other options being exhausted."

Patel relaxes fractionally, although his discomfort doesn't go away. You're not sure, just then, whether you prefer that or not. You suppose that it's good he's not being utterly cold about reminding your captain that her ultimate duty may be to sacrifice her ship, her crew, you, in order to save Princess Daystar and the priceless experimental ship she happens to be on, to say nothing of the volatile, exotic matter capsules still exposed out in space. At the same time, though, part of you would have rather have that decision come from a colder man. Someone who would simply nod at the grim necessity of the order. Not callous, not throwing their lives away lightly -- simply pragmatic, rather than Patel's tense, darting-eyed face.

One doesn't get to pick and choose who an order comes from.

Over the next while, as the worker pods bring the Menschy matter toward the Lily with agonising slowness, you watch with dismay, but not surprise, as the obscured objects solidify into more recognisable shapes.

"Five groups of mecha, ma'am, on a direct course for us!" you declare.

"Do we have any kind of identification on those?" Andre asks, glaring at the display.

"Coming in now, ma'am." Your finger scrolls through the model numbers. "ISM47 Vespula, ISM32s Banner Recon Type… and the new model from Phoebe. The one that killed Ensin Song. Numbering five, nine and one respectively!"

"All light scouting types," Grayson notes. "With a long effective range. It could be worse."

"I don't care what they are, with those numbers," Andre says, not quite snapping, but giving him a bit of a withering glance. "I want us to get Perbeck a firing arc immediately. Helm: position us between the enemy and the Lily. They'll go around, it's space after all, but we want them to hit us first, and we're firing as soon as they're in our effective range." Which, given that the Rose is firing railguns, is simply once scan data is reliable enough to track their movement without significant margin for error. "If we can weather this, we do not want to be here when their ships catch up with them."


Space outside, within scan range

Mosi let out a deep breath, and relaxes in her straps, watching the dots on her scans get clearer and clearer as they near their target. Three mecha, two ships. One one hand, a compliment of unsupported scouting mecha vs two warships was not typically considered a flawless tactical decision. On the other, they have sheer weight of numbers on their side -- the Ranger class they'd encountered at Phoebe, the Rose, is certainly faster than anything in the advanced strike force, and with the carrier containing the traitor princess, it is impossible to tell how much or how little it will slow the older ship down. Their job is to stall long enough for the ships and the heavier mecha to arrive. Everyone knows that they are about to take losses. Looking at the readout from the three mecha taking up defensive positions, Mosi frowns with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay.

"Dame Costa?" she says, opening up her comm link.

"Yes, lieutenant?" comes the Commander's voice, thick with affected boredom. All officers try to set a calm example in different ways.

"I confirm that one of the mecha is the ISM16 Huntress encountered at Phoebe," she says.

"Oh, right -- those fancy sensors in that flying mosquito of yours. What did I tell you earlier, North?" Costa's voice is borderline scornful. "Those things are ancient, overdesigned junkers. A bare handful of pilots can handle them well enough to be a problem. The pretender's forces are just sending out whatever barely functional piece of shit they have in storage."

Mosi bites her tongue on a response. Commander Green would have listened, and changed their formation at once. Then again, Commander Green had seen this particular Huntress's pilot destroy a corvette, and fought them at Phoebe. He'd hardly need Mosi to remind him of the suit's capabilities in the hands of a sufficiently skilled pilot. "I would like to formally make my objection known," Mosi says. Risky, certainly, but it will be logged, and she's entirely certain that her fears are about to be born out.

Costa snorts. "Objection noted, Lieutenant," she says. Costa is far from incompetent, in terms of leading a squad in combat. She's skilled and agile and can do things with the stripped down Banner she pilots that Mosi previously hadn't thought possible -- and she'd piloted a Banner Recon Type herself. The woman was put in charge, though, not because of an aptitude for larger tactics, but because she was simply the highest ranking mecha commander to fly a long range capable machine. This particular blindspot, Mosi suspects, is due to Costa's own history with the 16 Huntress -- she'd applied to receive one, and had failed the subsequent test when she'd lost control of the mecha's notoriously finicky thrusters and nearly ploughed straight into a military station.

"Ship weapons hot!" Mosi suddenly cries, her Provespa's advanced sensors picking up the burst of heat first.

"Scatter!" Costa orders. Unnecessarily. The loose attack formation is already dissolving, as they've been trained to, two Banners only barely clearing the line of death painted red on their scan maps displays. A warship or a station might have shields enough to withstand a direct hit from a railgun. A mecha does not -- the only advantage they have at this range is sheer maneuverability. They're all clear, though -- Mosi can see the 14 other dots on her map to confirm it. Then, one of them explodes anyway.

Taking fire from enemy mecha! comes the panicked cry from one of the other Banner recon pilots. He's right -- the shot came from the Huntress. "Farthing's down!" The next shot very narrowly misses blowing him up.

"Move evasively, indirect approach, squads of five." Costa is grinding her teeth hard enough that it's audible over the voice channel -- but the knight isn't going to hold Mosi being right against her in the heat of battle, as she demonstrates with her next words: "North, take the Vessies. Edgar, you have squad two, use that freighter hulk as cover and go wide. Squad one is with me."

The formation dissolves even further, going to different sides and different angles, each of the three component squads of 5 -- one of 4 now that Farthing is dead -- staying loosely on their squad leader. Mosi swiftly inputs an attack angle, having them thrust "up" relative to their initial departure, and around, trying to skirt the worst of the enemy ship's firing arc. Or at least ensure that it could only fire one one of the squads at a time. Seemingly, though, the Huntress's pilot is deliberately waiting for them to dodge out of the way of the Rose's fire to attempt to pick them off as soon as they've committed to a new course.

"They sure don't care about filling the sky with railgun rounds, do they?" one of her Vespula pilots remarks, darkly. "They really must have a prince--" He cuts off as he's forced to evade another of the Rose's shots… and dies a moment later as the Huntress shoots a round straight through his cockpit. The impact has sufficient velocity to tear the mecha apart, parts scattering messily in a cone behind him to float endlessly in the void.

Mosi feels a murderous, vengeful rage building up in her, cold and familiar. This ship and that pilot are going to pay for this.


On board the Titanium Rose

"This is going better than it should, isn't it?" Anja asks aloud, forgetting herself. No one says anything, but there are a few scowls around the bridge. You're not supposed to say something like that outloud. It's bound to jinx the luck.

She's right, though, for the time being -- the approach of the mecha has been slowed greatly by the fire they're receiving from the Rose and Lady Perbeck's combined fire, with three of them already eliminated before they can close.

"The Lily is undergoing preparations to fire its main weapon, ma'am," Mazlo reports, one hand pressed to his headset. The use of their stealth drive, however, is likely off the table -- it's useless if the ship wants to get anywhere in a hurry, and stalling here will only allow them to be surrounded by the ships that came behind the attacking mecha. "The last of the capsules is loaded," he adds.

"We might not die for those yet," Andre mutters, apparently finding this possibility real enough that she's willing to make such a comment.

"They should be entering firing range on us soon, ma'am," you report.

"We'll see if you still think it's too easy in a moment, Li," Grayson says. You suspect he's right.


Space, nearby

The surviving mecha of Dame Costa's squad bear down on Perbeck's Huntress, approaching in a darting, zig-zag pattern intended to confuse targeting software. She takes a final shot with her rail-cannon, misses, and then she's dodging a hale of gunfire herself.

She sends herself into a stomach-lurching swoop, stowing her main cannon and bringing up her suit's smaller, anti-mecha machine gun, and she can tell the meaneauver takes them off guard. The Recon Types are fast, though their pilots skilled, and there are four of them -- it's only a matter of moment's before they'll have her encircled.

Relief comes in the form of Ito's customised monstrosity, ploughing into the enemy formation with as much speed as he can bring to bear, oversized cutting blade shearing the enemy slowest to react cleanly in half.

"Damage, ma'am?" he asks.

"None," she snaps, "but you're supposed to be guarding the ships before me, Sub-Lieutenant."

"If we lose your fire support, we lose the ships," Ito says, bluntly. "And the Guardswoman is handling it."

Perbeck lets out an explosive sigh. "We'll discuss this later." And they'd have to, or not at all, because in the next moment, Ito is fighting for his life, and so is she:

Two of the remaining three are on Ito, weaving around him, striking out with their lighter weapons, wearing through his heavier armour, and not making the same sort of mistakes that led to their comrade dying. Perbeck, meanwhile, only has to contend with a single enemy -- the Recon Type skirts wide around the arc of machine gun fire she opens up with, comes in close, and brings the long, standard issue cutting edge down in a lightning fast cut. A lesser pilot, or one in nearly any other mecha wouldn't have been able to avoid it, but Perbeck puts her fore thrusters into hard burn, and twists away at the last moment.

It has commander's decal painted onto it, with the resplendent emblem of the Knights Lunar across one side in pitted paint. A suspicion opens up in the pit of her stomach, and she's unsurprised when a video message appears on the general line.

"Countess Gloriana!" Dame Costa exclaims, with a savage grin. "Just our luck -- one of, what, five pilots who can actually handle that death trap you're flying?"

Upon hearing her hated full first name, Perbeck feels an eyebrow twitch in irritation, in spite of the dire circumstances. Costa hadn't slowed her attacks at all, coming at Perbeck with the cutting edge again and again, seeming to glide elegantly out of the way at the last moment whenever Perbeck tries to ward her off with machine gun fire. "Dame Costa," she says, voice cold and acidic, "fortunately for us, you were among the traitors."

Costa's eyes widen, and she lets out an animal hiss. Costa likes to hear the sound of her own voice -- she always has, and she's always fancied herself able to throw opponents off their guard with a few well placed jabs. Fortunately, in Perbeck's experience, the knight was completely incapable of taking such barbs thrown back at her. It helps: Costa's attacks are wilder now, less precise, but it doesn't change the fact that Perbeck is locked in close range combat with a skilled opponent, piloting a machine much more capable of operating at close quarters.

Perbeck's machine gun hits the Recon Type in the shoulder, shredding the top of the blue Lunar insignia. Rather than back off, however, Costa takes advantage of Perbeck's positioning to slice diagonally at her. This time, Perbeck is fractionally too late to move. One of the Huntress's arms goes spinning off into space, sliced cleanly off at the elbow, taking the machine gun with it.

"Taking fire, ma'am! Ito says. "Hang on!" From one of her side camera, Perbeck watches as the customised Banner suddenly rockets forward into a shower of fire from one of the other Recon Types, an almost insanely risky maneuver that pays off with him grabbing the lighter Banner's head in one of his own mecha's massive hands. Or seems to pay off, briefly -- instead of twisting the head free, or forcing it downward to crush the cockpit, Ito's machine jerks strangely in space -- the third Recon Type has flitted in close at the last moment, and run the Banner custom through. At this distance, and with this distraction, Perbeck can't tell whether it went through the cockpit or not. She can't even tell what the substance leaching out of his machine is -- coolant, hydraulic fluid, or discoloured atmosphere. This has just gotten very bad.

"Ito! Ito, can you hear me?" No response. At worst, he's dead, and Perbeck is now outnumbered three to one. There's only one way out of this that immediately comes to mind, and it's extremely unadvisable "Attention, Rose, Sub-Lietenant Ito is down, requesting immediate fire support," Perbeck says, into the ship channel. "For the following coordinates."

There's a brittle, shocked edge to Ensign Li's voice as she responds, plainly reacting to the first part of the sentence, but for once, she's not letting her appalling lack of decorum get in the way of her job. Perbeck will have time to be impressed by that, later. "Ma'am, you're on course for that position!"

"I can read a scan screen, Li. Get this to weapons now!"

She puts on a burst of linear speed, seeming to try and run, but in truth letting Costa catch up with her, the other two Recon Types trailing behind them, having left Ito for dead. She watches the Rose on her scan map, hoping that Costa and her subordinates are too distracted to properly be doing the same. After all, you don't usually have to worry about spaceship fire while in close combat with that ship's own personnel.

At the last moment, Perbeck thrusts to the side, and then breaks her velocity hard. The abrupt deceleration jars her against her straps, but the three mecha tailing her shoot past at a satisfyingly high speed. Directly into the path of the Rose's shot. Costa's mecha simply goes away in a catastrophic explosion. The subordinate immediately behind her fairs little better, their Recon Type simply being torn apart. Perbeck and the third aren't hit, but a weapon doesn't impact a surface with that much force without creating one hell of a shockwave. Perbeck's damaged mecha and the sole surviving enemy are both flung violently away.


Mosi only has a moment or two to register that Dame Costa is dead. By seniority, this puts Lieutenant Edgar in command… but his squad is currently skirting wide toward the Lily, still dodging ship weapon's fire, and his orders are not forthcoming. This leaves Mosi and her squad of Vespulas, with the last of the Rose's active mecha standing in their way.

The enemy mecha is deceptive. It's bulky, not unlike a Banner Heavy Type, but it moves with shocking grace, executing pivots and complex maneuvers without so much as the infinitesimal lag that normally follows a pilot inputting commands. It's not quite able to match her Provespa for sheer agility, but, combined with those seemingly impossible drones -- each flying independently of one another and the mecha they originate from, attacking from surprising angles without warning -- their advantage in numbers is not telling the way it should. Already, two of her Vespulas have taken damage, although not been disabled.

Mosi runs the math in her head: Three lost in the initial approach. Three more from Costa's squad destroyed fighting the mecha that had been with the Rose at Phoebe. They are down to nine now, a little more than half their original strength, and if they're going to carry out their assigned task, that number cannot keep shrinking. And it will with Mosi's current tactics, swarming around the new model with their lighter mechas, trying to chip away at it here and there. It is going to pick them off one by one.

"Attention, squad," Mosi says, opening up a group channel, "I'm going to engage the enemy directly -- proceed to target B as planned. Transmitting planned maneuvers to you now."

There's a shocked silence, followed by a chorus of 'yes ma'ams', even if some sound skeptical. And right they should, given how well they've fared against the strange mecha so far. Still, though, they need to make this work. Mosi will make this work, for the six brave soldiers who have already given their lives this day, and for her emperor. She'll destroy these ships, live to tell of it, and finally get her vengeance on the mother who betrayed her family. Then, maybe, finally, she'll be able to look for Amani.

The plan is executed with staggering speed. All at once, all four Vespulas break off their harrying, disperse, and head directly for the Titanium Rose, their payload of ship-killing bombs not even slowing them down. As one of the enemy's drones swivels around to get an angle on them, Mosi twists in mid-thrust, changing course dramatically in order to ram her mecha's energised spike into it, jerking the dying drone around so that its shot strikes a second. Then, she's throwing it aside, and flinging herself against the bulkier mecha, prototype against prototype.


The Bridge of the Night Lily

"We're sure it will hold up to firing this time?" Captain Patel looks at his weapon's officer with an almost beseeching manner. On the scan map, the four Recon Types that went unmolested by either the mecha or the Rose are making a circuitous approach on the Lily, dodging fire from its array of point defence beams. It's not exactly safe, for any mecha to fly this close to a fully operational enemy warship… but this one is not precisely fully operational.

"Yes, sir!" the weapon's officer's pale face colours noticeably. "We've rerouted the excess energy into other systems! It should... " he falters, swallows. "We're doing our best, sir, but this is… we're patching serious design flaws in a prototype weapon with duct tape and string on a moving ship!" He's trembling, eyes unnaturally wide. Chemically wide. Patel wonders just how hard he's been hitting the emergency stimulants.

"Understood, Lieutenant," Patel says. He tries to ignore the princess's eyes on him, from her place in an observer seat. "Guardswoman J6 is still tied up with the enemy," he says. "Arm main weapon. And… request fire support from The Rose."

"Sir, they're being attacked too," the comms officer reminds him.

"I'm aware, Ensign. They know what their priorities are."

The whole ship feels with a low hum, oscillating from tenor to bass and back again, and everyone on the bridge feels their hair stand on end. "Positron cannon at 33% charge," the weapons officer says, slender fingers flying over his workstation.

One of the Recon Types, daredevil fast, swoops down close enough to release a volley of its payload, threading the needle to avoid being blown up by the point defence beams in order empty its gun magazine directly into the Lily's kinetic barrier, followed by propelling a line of sequential anti-ship bombs into it. The shields flare dangerously, and they all feel the shuddering impacts, but the shields hold. For now. The enemy mecha gets winged by a beam, but manages to get away, still flying, still a threat.

"66%!" the weapons officer says, voice increasingly shrill. On the screen, the enemy is wheeling around the ship, ready for another attack.

"Fire support from the Rose confirmed!" the comms officer exclaims. Moments later, conventional railgun fire drives the mecha formation out of order, momentarily clustering several of them together.

"99%!"

"Do we have a firing solution?" Patel demands.

"We should, sir. 100%!"

"Then for Sol's sake, Fire!"

The positron cannon is no less impressive the second time, the brilliant beam of light so bright that, even through the video feed, it's too painful to look at directly. The mecha try to scatter, flying farther away from the ship, but one of them is caught in the blast. Mecha and pilot are annihilated on a molecular level as the antimatter beam collides with the electrons in the Recon Type. "Are we holding?" Patel asks.

"So far, sir," someone says. He's not even sure who.

"Can we manage another shot?" he demands, looking directly at the weapon's officer again. They'd have to -- he'd hoped they'd get more than one of the enemy in that shot, and the element of surprise is gone now.

"We can try, sir," the younger officer says, voice thick with uncertainty.

They do manage to fire again, and another enemy machine is utterly destroyed. This shot, however, is accompanied by a series of explosions that are not from outside the ship. And suddenly, all exterior scans and cameras simply die. The point defences go with them. "We did our best, sir!" the weapon's officer insists, over the deafening silence in the bridge. As last words go, he might have picked better ones.


The bridge of the Titanium Rose

"Heavy damage to the rear cargo bay!"

The words are punctuated by a particularly violent shudder that goes through the entire ship. Rangers are sturdier than most scouting vessels below cruiser weight, but repeated hits from the payloads the enemy is dropping are too much for the shields to hold. The three Vespulas navigate the maze of point defence beams firing on them with impressive skill -- heavier mechas wouldn't have managed it. Of course, heavier mechas wouldn't be taking this long to sink a simple scouting ship. The defence officers are scrambling to try and maintain any kind of shield coverage.

"Any chance of mecha support?" Andre asks, looking back sharply at Anja. The look isn't meant for her -- Anja's just the messenger.

"There's still no word from Lady Perbeck or…" there's the slightest hitch in her voice, a prelude to the flood of anxious grief that's going to wash over her at that point. You watch her force it back down, and if anything, bathed in the red warning lights, her face has an uncharacteristically severe look. "... or Sub-Lieutenant Ito. Guardswoman J6 is attempting to extricate herself."

"This is a bad angle, ma'am," the weapons officer cries out in exasperation. "The Lily finally has its weapons system up and running -- permission to concentrate fire on our attackers?"

Even as the words are uttered, as if on cue, you watch your scan map flicker strangely, and the ancillary data you had been getting from the Lily simply goes dead.

"... communications interrupted with the Lily, attempting to re-establish," Mazlo comments, frowning as he makes various futile adjustments.

"It's scans are dead," you say, voice filled with horror. "Our feed was interrupted, and look! It's point defence systems have stopped operating. It's… it's dead in space." You regret the words as soon as they leave your mouth, accurate though they seem. The enemy is hitting the prototype ship again and again, its access completely unimpeded, and you can all already see the damage starting to take its toll.

"Increase rate of fire with ancillary and main guns," Andre says, looking strangely resigned. "Sacrifice accuracy, as long as you don't hit the Lily -- we're trying to drive them off. Mazo, North, get us back into contact and send them whatever scan data you can. Now. They're blind."

You and Mazlo give simultaneous yes ma'ams, and for once, there's no sign of animosity or bitterness as you get to work. There's no room for it, while minor hit after minor hit rocks your ship, and Grayson loudly directs the weapons batteries in the background. "I can open an emergency channel that they'll hopefully be able to receive, if they haven't completely fried everything," Mazlo mutters, "can you work with that?"

You nod. Your scan map has suffered slightly in quality, but only to the point where it's now working as designed -- you've lost some long distance definition, and some additional radiation readouts -- the blasts from the positron cannon would be particularly interesting if you had time to look at them -- but your decision to prioritise the more familiar scan systems of the Rose is now looking particularly well advised. "I think so, sir. I've done enough work with their scan data to get a… rough feel for their system, and I can send them enough to get them back in the fight, at least."

"Good," he says, before falling silent as the two of you hurry back to work. As you do so, the battle continues -- J6 has damaged her assailant, but not to the point of disabling them. There's a ragged cheer as one of the Vespula's slips up enough for a point defence beam to slice their mecha open from shoulder to legs, even if the camera feed does show rather more gore venting from the cockpit than would normally be desired, even from the enemy. Or, under these circumstances, maybe the cheer is because of that. Meanwhile, the Night Lily is being pounded repeatedly.

"... I hope that wasn't the bay they were keeping the recovered cargo in," someone mutters, as a section of the Lily abruptly decompresses following an explosion. You all breath a sigh of relief when it's apparent that the breach is localised, and not about to space the entire ship.

"Here, it's ready, sir!" you tell Mazlo, already sending your stripped down scan feed to his workstation. He's ready as well, apparently, because after a tense moment, he sends it. And after a tenser moment, the Lily's point defence system begins to fire again, if a little erratically. It's hard to say if it's going to be too little too late, but it's something. Even this slight stab of hope is over all too quickly, though, as you look back at the edge of the scan map. The blurred objects approaching at the edges, from the same direction the original attack came in, fill you with an icy dread that you just barely keep out of your voice.

"... enemy reinforcements approaching, captain," you say, briefly locking eyes with her "They're a long way off, but… they'll catch up eventually, if we can't put on speed." And you can't, not with this fighting, and disabled mecha pilots outside the ship, and the Lily to slow you down. In that moment, everyone on the bridge knows that you're all going to die. The hardest explosion yet seems to confirm this -- you're actually thrown against your straps unpleasantly, the straps driving into your chest.

"We've lost half our ancillary battery!" hisses the weapons officer. You don't even want to think about how much damage was done to the ship around that, how many people might be dead. At least the civilians, tucked away in the safest part of the ship save for the bridge, remain unharmed. For now.

"Still nothing from Perbeck?" Andre asks. She doesn't bother to ask for Ito, although he may well still be alive, as dead as his machine is. Anja notices, tenses briefly, but presses on:

"Nothing, ma'am," she says, voice flat and mechanical.

"... North, I'm getting something." You look up at Mazlo in surprise, but he offers no explanation other than: "Check the direction I'm sending to you now."

Confused, you follow suit -- and yes, in the direction you and the Lily and the wreck of the Strawberry are headed, there's something out there. You dare to hope. "Unknown objects intersecting our vector!" you report. A moment later, you see, with a wash of almost giddy relief, that they're flying United Solar Empire Navy colours, the familiar beacon signature as welcome as an old friend. "Friendly ships, in an intersecting vector with ours."

Andre looks up sharply, pausing what she's doing, to turn and look at you. As she does so, the whole ship rocks again. An alarm begins to blare. "What, Ensign?"

"Friendly ships, ma'am. A lot of them. I think it might be… they're early, but it's the Strawberry's escort fleet!"

"We're being hailed," Mazlo confirms, and the distant ships grow closer. And unlike the enemy reinforcements, these ships are approaching you almost head-on -- the distance is being closed much more rapidly than the enemy can hope to catch up. You wonder if it will be enough, if the next blow will leave you crippled, throw you off course -- something to steal this moment away from you. Without regular contact re-established with the Lily, it's still not immediately apparent how bad things are for them

The next explosion doesn't come, though. Instead, almost magically, the enemy mecha attacking the Rose peel off, and retreat. J6's assailant manages to slip away, joining the remaining two Vespulas, and J6's Morrigan -- finally free to go to the aid of the ship carrier her princess, single remaining drone reattaching itself, rockets away as fast as she can in the direction of the Lily. You watch, with an almost delirious sense of detachment, as she eliminates first one, then the other of the surviving Banner Recon Types, surprising them with her rapid approach in the confusion over their allies' withdrawal.

The prospect of the enemy reinforcements clashing with the escort fleet are daunting, but they represent a much better chance than you'd have on your own, and it's a large enough force that the enemy might well think better of further attacks. They've failed in their objective to stop you from reaching help, and you, at least, for the time being, have survived. At what cost?

Pick two. Votes will be counted in blocks.

[ ] You didn't fail to defend the Lily from destruction

[ ] You didn't fail to secure the vital Menschy matter

[ ] None of your pilots are lost

[ ] The Rose didn't take crippling damage

[ ] The enemy strike force doesn't get away intact enough to continue to function