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

Onboard the HDMS Sacred Victory,
Flagship of the Divine Navy attack fleet,
CIS

Duke-consort Renaud Grangier is out of his command seat — technically unsafe in battle conditions, but if either of the enemy fleets penetrate far enough into their defensive formations to hit any of the carriers this early, and in particular the flahship, then the battle might be wholly lost already. He grips the edge of his display in the manner of leaning over a table, for all that he's as weightless as anyone else in the white and gold room.

He's utterly, miserably sober, on the ragged edge of a hangover, but not actually impaired. Fortunately, he does some of his best work in this state, for all that doctors and his wife tell him this is an unhealthy delusion. "Losses?" he asks, frowning at the elaborate scan map projected in the centre of the room's inward facing chevron. Too much is going on to keep track of each and every engagement, won or lost. That's what subordinates are for.

"A battleship and two cruisers, Sir. More taking fire in the same quadrant."

Renaud examines the map narrow-eyed, focusing on the space in question. "It's like they knew how we'd deploy the capital ships," he says, giving voice to a heart-sinking suspicion.

"Sir?"

"Pull ships from the following quadrants to stop up the gap," he says. "Before the defenders coordinate their own counter-attack." There is no time to explain. The enemy is only attacking in earnest along a relatively short range, plainly informed by intelligence that they shouldn't possess. A wedge to split his fleet and unite with the defenders, already rallying with reinforcements so close at hand. This means a change in battle plans that were carefully laid out back in Jupiter, when things were nice and clinical and the death was only theoretical, euphemistically hidden behind words like 'heretic' and 'rebel-held infrastructure' and 'acceptable losses'. A further change, on top of the additional ships pulled from less vital duties.

Renaud thinks of all the men and women still under his command, who have braved the dangers of deep space to fight here with him. Those that are already dead, those that can still be saved. A stirring narrative, certainly, but not one that helps. Renaud is the sort of man who is more than capable of putting those he cares for ahead of the lives of strangers. Tragically, he is not the sort of man who feels no guilt afterward. His hands have been dripping red since his house's defection in the Civil War, however. The dead civilians are nothing new. They should feel routine by now.

Who was worse? A mad dog like Lady Namakmura, his would be rival, a woman who killed in their Emperor's name without a shred of conscience... or Renaud, who knows in a very fundamental part of his being what evil is, but does it anyway? One supposes that the distinction is academic. The dead civilians are still dead civilians, regardless of whether the one making the order feels bad about it.

As he gives orders to move a fleet and end countless lives, a part of Renaud's mind can't help but think of Lorelei. His duchess and spouse of many years. Before he'd left for Saturn — right before he'd embarked on the long, dark voyage through interplanetary space, she'd stopped him, looked him in the eye with that piercing, serious gaze of hers. "Do the family proud," she'd ordered. "Please our Emperor. Do not disgrace me." She'd held that gaze for a long moment, and he'd been on the verge of replying, when she'd softened slightly, a glacial cliff face cracking in a spring thaw, and reached up to adjust his uniform hat. "And then come back, my darling."

In the eyes of his Divine Majesty, perhaps Renaud had already failed the first instructions she'd given, and that stings — His Lorelei is the harshest woman he's ever known. She'd betrayed her oaths as an Imperial Elector. Throughout their children's youth, she'd been a cold and demanding mother, changing little now that even Arianne, the youngest, is nearly grown. He strongly suspects that she has lost extraordinarily little sleep over that great betrayal, over the countless bodies she's climbed to the position she now occupied as Governor of Jupiter, even as he had turned to drink. But, Sol help him if he doesn't still love her. "I'll try, Lorel. But I'm starting to think I'm not coming home." The words are quiet, whispered to himself, for no one else's ears.

In a very real way, he doesn't deserve to come home anymore, if he ever did.


The HIMS Titanium Rose,
Bridge

"We're trying our best, Captain, but the shields can only deflect so much!"

"Understood. Do what you can." Andre looks grimly resigned at the steadily falling shield levels, perilously low after three glancing hits. The quasi stealth drive has saved you all from the worst, but it's not a miracle device. Ranger class vessels can hit above their weight class, as reconnaissance vessels go, but you're up against a frigate now, not a flimsy little Singh class escort corvette.

You yourself are checked out, not thinking about the odds, about dying. About losing. Your world is once again numbers and sensors, points of light on a map, your attention laser focused with everything else partitioned away for later. There's no way you could have kept this up if you'd had to deal with that error message the whole time, breaking your workflow, violating your workspace, dragging you out of this state.

Your ship hasn't done much damage to your enemy, although the Rose's guns have weakened the detectable output of its shields. Compared to your vessel, the armour beneath is thick, but the ship is also slower, less maneuverable. You'll probably do some damage, before the end. Something catches your eye, and you zero in on it, subtly recalibrating the sensors to detect—

"Captain, enemy Singh class is targeting us with main weapons!" You ping the location as you tell her.

The orders to move cme just barely in time to avoid a direct hit, one that might have punched cleanly through your shields. The change in positioning makes the shot go past you to wander the space beyond Titan. The return fire from the Rose is swift and accurate, your own scan data allowing a firing solution that overloads the target's shields with enough momentum to slam it hard in one side. Another shot will cave it open, ramming a knife into a spraycan.

Regrettably, there are two ships in two directions — this time, the frigate does land a direct hit. The entire ship shudders harder than it has any of the previous times.

"Aft armour compromised!"

The active defence officers are in a full on directed panic. "Shields overloaded, trying to get them back up!"



The attempt is doomed to failure. Now that it knows it has your real location, the frigate unloads a full forward facing salvo. Multiple hits rock and twist the hull, the groaning shudders shaking the Rose down to its deepest compartments. For a heart-stopping instant, the lights flicker, but come back on strong. The alarms also come on, though, so the reassurance is minimal.

"Hullbreach on segment—"

"It's the shoddy patch job from after Iapetus, I knew that wouldn't—"

The ship's outward sensors show that there's a dark rent in the side of your vessel, compartments venting violently, even as the ship does its best to automatically seal off the affected section.

"Helm, why aren't we rotated yet? Defence, where are my shields?" Andre demands.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Trying, ma'am!"

Andre acknowledges the latter with a heavy sign. "Damage report," she says, directing it to a different officer.

"Depressurisation on Crew Deck 1." The voice shakes slightly, but doesn't falter. "Casualties should be minimal. Mecha hangar airlock is dam—" A further shudder rocks the ship again, this one less violent, and he's forced to amend: "Mecha hangar airlock has blown. Mecha deck depressurising, casualties... it looks like the entire repair crew. Fire on Crew Deck 2, suppression system is functioning."

Andre steels herself, then says, in a voice like she's just been beaten over the shoulders: "Grayson, begin level 3 evacuation procedure." Non-essential personnel abandon ship, with 'non-essential' being rather generous.

"Yes, ma'am." Grayson is as solid as ever, at the very least.

Are you? Your hands are still moving over your workstation, trying to find any fault with the long-range sensors almost automatically. The panic of your own mortal peril still feels far away, surreal, something that's happening to someone else. Surprisingly, what gets to you most is a sudden, stabbing sympathy for Lori: The mecha support crew were hers. She'd worked with some of them for years, saw them every day, was responsible for them. First Song, then Ito, now all of them — none of the subordinates she set out with at the beginning of your first voyage, that routine patrol from another lifetime ago, are still alive. And now, separated by space as well as by rank and protocol and dire circumstance, you're powerless to do anything for her. That, more than anything else, is what finally, irrationally pierces your calm.

You square your breathing, keep your face locked in neutral lines, and fight down the mounting panic. You have a job to do, until you're told otherwise. If you're not doing that, then you really will be powerless.


Space,
Near the HIMS Titanium Rose

Gloriana had fought as hard as she could, against these darting, stinging enemies with their ship-killing payloads. In the end, it hadn't mattered. She'd killed one Vespula, cutter piercing directly into the lightly-armoured mecha's cockpit. The second had miscalculated, dodged away from her at a bad angle, slowed just a little too much and had been promptly burned up by the Rose's point defence array. They had left Gloriana dinged, minorly damaged, but more or less intact.

And it hadn't mattered a bit.

She can see the ship — not just on scans, actually see it — seemingly half torn open, debris rushing out in a torrent of atmosphere, mecha hangar a dark, gaping cavity that had once contained so many lives Gloriana was responsible for. Now, they're dead. She gives her head a savage shake, trying to chase away the faces of the fallen. She doesn't have the luxury of grieving yet. The ship is wounded, horribly wounded, but not yet dead. Amani isn't dead. Grayson, shaping up well as he sheds some of his naive inexperience, isn't dead. Their jaded, cynical captain, who always expects nothing but the worst the universe has to offer her, isn't dead. Nor are countless others. That's what she has to focus on.

Allied ships are finally, belatedly coming to their aid. She can't even hate them for being slow, for prioritising other parts of the battle ahead of one scouting ship, as valuable as its scan data currently is. But the satisfaction in seeing them open fire on the frigate and the corvette that threaten to sink the Rose, even as a first wave of escape pods are flung away from the Ranger class, is still tinged with bitterness.

Her Artemis forward-thrusts hard to bring herself to a relative stop, rail-cannon snapping down. "Aligning firing vector," she says.

"Understood, Lady Perbeck," the control officer says, voice tight and strained. Is the girl going to cry? Just what they all need. "Synchronising fire in five."

The countdown appears on her display, as well as the Rose's projected vector, the frigate's shields going down under a hail of fire from Outer Fleet forces just in time for Lori and the Rose to fire their respective main weapons, to strike almost the same place on their enemy's unprotected hull, the sheer force of the rail cannon only stopped from flinging Lori wildly into space by the Artemis's outsized thrusters, the kind of power that most pilots can only imagine having at their disposal.

It is with a thrill of icy vengeance that she watches the frigate's hull rupture in a small taste of what it has inflicted on her own people.

"Sylva, Loboda, status report," she says, voice crisp as ever.

"One enemy down, light damage to left arm," Sylva reports. "Still engaged with remaining Vespulas.

"Considerably more than light damage, ma'am," Loboda admits. "Armour's stripped over my reactor, and I don't like how this thrust is feeling." And there's nowhere to get any of it repaired, unless they brave the distance to the nearest allied ship, leaving the Rose to fend for itself. Gloriana considers that, weighs Loboda's life against the lives onboard the ship, and makes the only obvious choice, another small knife through her heart, even as she assists her subordinates in killing first one, then the other remaining Vespula.

It's merely a respite, and a brief one — the battle is bulging out toward them, the enemy's formations wavering and malforming under attack from both sides. It's not a guarantee of victory, but it's a cautiously good sign. And absolutely no guarantee that the Rose won't lose its own small part of the war, even as the Outer Fleet seems on the verge of punching through. And it's certainly not a guarantee for Gloriana and her squad — her scan map shows more enemy mecha in the area, and she doubts they'll be overlooked.

Sometimes, a wounded predator is at its most dangerous. Optimism is another a luxury she can't afford.


The Outer Fleet has seized the momentum, taking losses in the face of a greater enemy than they anticipated, but using their existing intelligence to hit the enemy where it will have the greatest effect. Now, they're pushing through, splitting a rent in the Divine Navy's wavering formations, subject to fire on all sides, even as their allies in the Inner Fleet coordinate their own push.

In the face of this opposition, what goes right?

Pick two. Votes will be counted as a set.

[ ] Gloriana's squad isn't overwhelmed before friendly mecha can arrive

[ ] The Inner Fleet's counteroffensive doesn't fail

[ ] The Outer Fleet doesn't take severe losses while reaching their allies

[ ] The Divine Navy fleet doesn't entirely regain its coordination