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

The HIMS Hawthorne,
Flagship of the Saturn Outer Fleet,
CIC

Lord Admiral Sikes hadn't thought he would be commanding another battle in his lifetime. He'd thought that before The Battle of Iapetus as well — at his age, at his rank, he was not precisely being flung onto the front lines in a warship anymore. Or, supposedly not. He'd intended to resign following Iapetus, but it had seemed negligent once they'd learned of Titan. With the mess this was going to leave behind, he bleakly considered whether there would ever be a time where the Empress would accept such a resignation, between now and the day he died.

"Was the intelligence bad?" someone demanded.

Commander Rao, Sikes' aide, shakes her head. Her braided black hair follows the motion a moment later, floating behind her. "I don't think so," she says. "Those documents were drafted in Jupiter, and had an exhaustive listing of enemy ships assigned to this fleet."

"And they were wrong!" the officer who'd first spoke up snaps at her, gesturing at the scan map in the centre of the room, with its greatly expanded array of enemy ships. "Look at them all!"

"No," Rao says again. "The original document slated a number of ships for garrison and other backline duty, for various minor points they expected to capture swiftly on their way here. The same as their Iapetus attack fleet. If I had to make a guess, I suspect that they pulled all of those in and consolidated them back into the fleet."

"Even if they win, they won't have any supply lines to speak of, then," Sikes noted. "Not even what little they might have had. An insane gambit, but almost understandable, if they had word that the other major prong of the invasion has already failed."

He's aware of Princess Daystar's eyes on him, from her silent place near the back of the room, strapped into a seat with her hands folded almost demurely in front of her. A trick that's hard to pull off with no gravity, but she manages it. She has stayed out of things in combat, as promised, but it's a little nerve wracking to note exactly how closely she's paying attention to every back and forth and every decision that he makes. This woman will be Empress someday. Assuming a favourable outcome from this battle.

"We still have them caught in a pincer," Sikes decides, sour lines of his face set into as close to inspiring resolve as he's ever been able to manage. It's more or less true, too. As close to true as a concept like a pincer can be on a three dimensional battlefield. "Which won't do us much good if they overwhelm the defenders before we have a chance to punch through. Their mecha corps outweighs ours considerably." He manipulated his display with a gloved hand, the larger version in the centre of the room moving with it, showing the three dimensional scan map consolidated from all the fleet's ships. "Their screen is thinnest here. We'll focus our efforts at that point."


The HIMS Titanium Rose,
Bridge

"Two light mecha squads approaching from the following vectors."

Groups of dots on a map, lines of trajectory. Firing cones. It's almost easy to think that Sylva has the right of it — that you are nice and safe away from the action here on the bridge, where everything is at a sterile remove, where you have shields and layers of armour plating between you and the lethal vacuum. This perception falls away when you look at the wider battle, the sheer number of ships and mecha engaged across the theatre the Rose sits at the edge of. It's one small, vulnerable speck among many.

Here, scouting along the flank of the battlefield, the Rose is providing vital scan data to the rest of the fleet. In this sense, it and the rest of the similarly classed scouting vessels carrying out similar tasks are low-priority targets for the enemy. But with the mismatch from before, they can certainly spare a few squads of mecha to try and sink you. Blinding the enemy even a little is still a small victory.

The razor thin silver lining on this very black cloud is that the enemy having to refocus to fend off fire from two directions is sparing the civilians more destruction, at least for the time being. They can't ignore the defenders, certainly, but their attack has slowed in that direction, momentum not dead, but fading.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that Lori's squad is outnumbered against their attackers, odds evened by the presence of the Rose to offer direct support, and by the terrifying effectiveness of Lori's ISMX40 Artemis as the enemy closes the distance. Still, it's a lot, and you find yourself pushing back into that same autopilot headspace you employed during the Battle of Iapetus, when Mosi and your mother were fighting to the death while you watched helplessly. It's a useful skill in your profession, if perhaps not one that is good for your long term mental health.

Then it's not just mecha. Through the unavoidable shifting of position in combat at this scale, an enemy frigate has found itself within firing range of the Rose, and the only thing that saves the Rose's shields from being compromised on the first pass is the quasi-stealth system. At least, if their scans officer isn't completely incompetent.

Evasion isn't enough. The enemy ship, larger and better armed by far than the strangely upgraded Ranger class, moves to follow the Rose's progress. For the time being, all you can do is engage and hope that anyone is available to answer your requests for assistance.


Space,
Near the HIMS Titanium Rose

The enemy mecha breaks away from Sylva's firing arc, and dies. The railgun round strikes the enemy dead in the cockpit, and the entire machine is annihilated beyond all repair or recognition, pilot a superheated, pink mist shrouding what little wreckage there is. It was quick, at least. Mercifully quick. There's precious little time for Gloriana to consider her enemy's pain, however — truth be told, there are simply too many of them.

As the Rose begins its slow motion dance with the distant frigate, Gloriana, Sylva and Loboda are still scrambling to defend it from oncoming mecha squads. At first, these had merely been Banner Recon types. Far more problematic, though, are the slender, agile form of the ISM47 Vespula. The same type of machine that Mosi North had once lead into battle, these individuals are outfitted with the darkly ominous shapes of anti-ship ordinance. And they're wretchedly hard to hit.

"Do more keep coming?" Sylva's voice demanded over the radio. His voice always seems to have an edge of panic in combat. It's annoying, gets under the skin. "It's like more just keep coming!"

"Just the same two squads, sir," Loboda assures him. "Watch your scan map. They just look like they're everywhere."

It's not as thought Loboda is any less harried at present than Sylva is. Or, she shouldn't be — she's currently dodging and weaving around the attentions of several of the lighter mecha, weathering their attacks with her Banner's armour as much as with skill. It's not something they can keep up, but she and Sylva are crucially acting as a screen to prevent Gloriana from being swamped while she lines up her shots.

Some people just have that almost ineffable knack for keeping a cool head in space combat. Others have to make due. A small part of Gloriana wonders, perhaps uncharitably, how a man like Sylva had made sub-lieutenant, while Loboda is still an ensign. The answer wasn't a mystery, of course: Sylva was from Mars, not Enceladus. If they both make it through this battle, Gloriana decides, she's going to give Loboda whatever kind of boost she can. Even if it means coaching the Saturnian in decorum.

"Sir, look out, that's a feint!" Loboda's voice has a desperate, warning edge that goes unheeded for the first, crucial second, the one where it could have helped.

It's as if the scenario is purposefully meant to bear out Lori's comparison between the two of them. One of Vespulas on Sylva swoops in ahead of an arc of automatic fire, cutter extended. Sylva manages to block the attack, but realises too late precisely what Loboda was trying to tell him. The other Vespula he's fending off is suddenly behind him, lining up a shot he won't have any way to avoid.

"Moving to assist Sylva!" Loboda seems impossibly far away from him — she can't possibly make it in time. Not that there's anyone else better positioned to do so: Gloriana can't very well shoot one of them with the Sub-lieutenant so close by, and she's too far away for any other kind of intervention, regardless of how quickly the Artemis accelerates. In that instant, she knows that he's going to die. It's difficult to imagine two men more different than Sylva and Sub-lieutenant Hiro Ito, but Ito's is the face that Gloriana can't keep out of her mind now.

Loboda, somehow having managed to bridge the distance in time, strikes the Vespula poised to kill Sylva square in the torso section, concentrated fire first denting then shredding the armour plating protecting the cockpit. The Vespula drifts away from the fight, hanging limp in space, a puppet with its strings cut.

"Well done, Ensign," Gloriana says, genuine relief coming through her ordinary severity.

"I'll say!" Sylva says, as the Vespula who'd been engaging him from the front thrusts up and away from him.

Loboda ignores the praise. "Ma'am, two of my zealots slipped past, heading your way!"

"Understood. Are you able to intercept?" Gloriana notes the trajectory they're approaching at. Deliberately or not, the firing angle is no good with the railgun — if she misses, the shot will come perilously close to a cluster of civilian habitats orbiting Titan. She grimly puts her long range cannon away.

"Trying, ma'am!" The two remaining Vespulas that are still on Sylva and Loboda are the ones running interference now, darting and striking against the two Banner pilots, while the other half of the two surviving squads bear down on Gloriana. They'll reach her before her subordinates can assist.

Gloriana switches to the ship channel. "Rose, I'm switching to close combat maneuvers, unable to sustain long range fire support." As this has been going on, the Rose has succeeded in remaining frustratingly hard for the frigate to hit but worrisomely, the near misses are coming closer and closer all the time. The Rose's return fire has yet to penetrate the enemy vessel's shields. This was going to turn into a mess.


Space,
The thick of battle

Milo Owusu dodges a burst of light anti-mecha ammo, feeling the shuddering impact as one of the rounds grazes his ISM32ex Empress Banner. His first close brush with death in this battle. He's forced to immediately change course to avoid his second — an enemy Banner's cutter driving straight for his cockpit.

"Sir, this is too much!" a frightened voice says, over his comm. "I can't— this is too many!"

"I'm on my way, Sub-lieutenant," he promises, weaving around the multiple opponents he's entangled with. She's gotten separated from the group, hemmed in by several enemy mecha. Not so far that he can't swoop in and save the day. He hasn't known the squad he's been put in charge of for long, but he's not about to—

His path is momentarily blocked by the enemy that had fired on him earlier, and that delay is enough. One enemy Banner lays open a broad section of armour from the front of her mecha, and a second, coordinating closely, pumps round after round into the exposed inner workings of the sub-lietenant's unit, tearing it half to pieces. Her signal on Milo's command UI goes dead.

Dammit. He'd liked her — sharp in a way that reminded him a little of Ensign North, if Ensign North had a mild fixation on targeting software rather than codebreaking. Not anymore.

Chaos is everywhere, thousands dying in the silence of space as the expressionless faces of Titan and Saturn look on like disinterested parents. In the near distance — near enough that it's a shape, not just a point of light, a dot on his scan map — a ship goes up, hemorrhaging atmosphere until something violently ignites inside it, gutting the vessel as its hull ruptures. What's the average crew complement of a cruiser, again? How many didn't manage to get off? The dot that winked out on his scans was red, though, so now wasn't the time to invest too much emotional energy in the plight of the Divine Navy personnel currently trying to murder them all.

Near his squad is the familiar, mirror-finish bulk of Guardswoman J6's strange IDIMX Morrigan, weaving in and out of engagements with a grace that the smaller Banners can't hope to match, its trio of cannon drones firing in all directions at once. One riddles a Banner with machine fire, another nearly cuts a Vespula in two. But there are always more, so many more, and J6 is making herself more and more of a target. Even she can be overwhelmed.

He's only just had this thought when Milo finds himself beset by a pair of Vespulas himself. They're meant to be scouting mecha, as far as he understands, but they maneuver on a dime, and they have enough firepower to take out a standard Banner in a pinch. Milo's not fighting in a standard Banner, thankfully, but the Empress Banner's improvements lay more in the realm of speed, scans and communication — It still isn't as fast as the ominous, eight-eyed shapes darting toward him through space.

One of them scores a hit, the shots striking his unit's cutter arm at an angle that doesn't penetrate, but he doesn't like the way it's suddenly sticking. He'll need that cutter when they close. Space around Titan, win or lose, is going to be a graveyard for years to come. Any one of them could become part of it.


Even as the individual combatants become embroiled in their own smaller fights, the larger Battle of Titan proceeds. There's good news and bad news already. What has been accomplished, and what has it cost so far?

Pick one from each list. Choices will be counted as a set.

[ ] The Inner Fleet defenders rally at the appearance of reinforcements

[ ] Mosi's intelligence allows the Outer Fleet to eliminate several key targets early on

[ ] The enemy formation is becoming scattered and stretched thin in trying to respond to the Outer Fleet

But...

[ ] Population centres on Titan's surface take serious damage

[ ] Someone you care for is lost

[ ] The Rose is severely damaged