Petals of Carbon Steel -- You're a Pilot, Not an Ace. Try your best.

"Come on, we can still catch them," you lie, pushing off down the shaft even more aggressively. Graves sighs, but follows. He seems to be resigned to letting you take the lead here, despite this being his ship — you'd like to imagine it's because of your air of competence and authority, but you have a sneaking suspicion that it's so he's not responsible when this all goes sideways.

The shafts all meld together as you go, with the two you're ostensibly still chasing nowhere to be seen. Which isn't a surprise — you know you won't catch up in time. Best to keep up appearances, though:

You flip open your comm unit, contacting the bridge. An irritable sounding communications officer answers. "What is it?"

"This is Himegami. I've lost track of one of the delegates."

"And you're telling me?" the voice demands.

"Well, yeah, I thought you'd maybe--"

"Do your job!" he snaps. Then the call ends.

Well, you've done all you can do! Or, well, no, that's a lie. But you have done the bare minimum you can do, which is more important under the circumstances. There were things you could have done to sell the urgency of the situation, people who actually know you whose ear you could have bent. And later, someone might call you on that. Or if you're lucky, you might get away with it. Either way, though, for now there's something very bad happening out in space again, and you can't do a thing about it yourself. You've never seen Agnieszka pilot before, but you have seen Jay fight plenty of times. If she really is better than him like he's implied, setting her loose on whatever enemy is attacking you is at least making some kind of difference.

You both arrive at the hangar in time to find it in turmoil. The strange mecha Angieszka came in with — the Cerberus, you recall — is already up and moving toward the mecha airlock, which is being opened for her. When you have a mecha up and moving in a space like this without proper lock down procedures, it is understandable to want it out as soon as possible.

"Looks like we're too late," you say, stopping yourself short. You're just barely quick enough to grab Graves' arm as he misses his handhold and starts to fly out into the hangar. He dangles awkwardly out into space for a second or two, before you help him to the nearest handhold.

"Yeah, you sound real broken up," he snarls, panting from exertion. It's not like running, but having you catch and readjust one's course over and over again while going fast in zero-g takes a lot out of you, eventually.

"Well, we tried," you say. "If she makes it out there, that's another mecha on our side, ideally. She's like Jay — they're hardly helpless."

Graves opens his mouth to say something, but another impact shakes the ship. This one a deeper, more resonant bass that nearly throws you clear of your handhold. "That hit metal!" he says, eyes very wide.

Because you're a good person, you don't say 'no shit'. But you certainly broadcast it a little with the look you shoot him. "We need to find a compartment to strap down in," you say, grimly.

"No complaints here," Graves mutters. An impact like that can smash your head against the wall of a shaft as easily as not, even if the next one doesn't just breach the hull outright. You can already see the few maintenance personnel here in the hangar scrambling to restore order after the shaking dies down.

The pair of you back out of the hangar, alarms blaring louder in your ears as you head for the nearest suitable compartment — he's leading now, more confident in his knowledge of the ship's layout.

"This," you say all at once, as another impact rocks the ship, jarring your hand badly as you attempt to cling to a handhold, "is so much worse than being in a mecha!"

"What, worse than someone shooting at you personally?" Graves asks.

"Yes!" you say. "Then at least I can— ow!" a residual shudder causes you to bite down on your own tongue, which is very annoying timing. At the same time, your communicator begins to chime an emergency sort of tone. Through a sixth sense about when you're in trouble, you somehow know before you even pick up that this is someone calling to yell at you over letting Arianne leave the ship, much sooner than you would have expected. Sure enough, Bernard's voice cuts in before you can even try to say something past your throbbing tongue.

"You had one job!" he shouts. You wish you had a hand free to hold the earpiece away from your ear a little.

"Yeah, sorry about that, sir!" you manage to say, slightly out of breath as you follow Graves. "I called it in."

"Who did you call?" his tone is dangerously stressed. Which is understandable, he likely actually knows what's going on outside.

"The bridge," you say, "to make sure that that the hangar got locked down, and it got passed onto you. The comms officer brushed me off, and by that point, it was too late." You are absolutely throwing someone under the bus here, but the comms officer was being a dick anyway, so you don't feel too badly about it. "I tried to stop those two from leaving, but have you seen how they all move in zero-g? It's ridiculous." And kind of sexy, although Agnieszka's brand of murder aura isn't your thing even if you were interested in women.

"'They?'" He seems less immediately angry at you than he had a second ago, which was your hope here.

"J-Subjects," you say. "I've seen— shit!" your shoulder hits the side of the shaft, and this time it's Graves who grabs hold of your arm to keep you from hitting any more surfaces. "Still trying to get strapped down, sir," you say, through gritted teeth.

"We'll speak more later," he allows, grudgingly. "Don't get your brains bashed out."

"Don't get us all killed, sir," you reply. He actually laughs at that, before ending the call.

"Who was that?" Graves asks, stopping in front of a hatch.

"Oh, just the High Commander," you say, innocently.

"Fuck. Why didn't you just let it ring?" Graves asks.

"What can I say? I love being yelled at," you say.

He breaks the emergency seal on the compartment, which takes a moment before he can slip in and you can follow. To your surprise, you very quickly realise that this compartment isn't empty at all.

"Seal the door!" Lovak says, distractedly. He glances up at you and frowns. "And get strapped in, at least. You both look like shit."

"Well, if you insist," you say, doing as he instructs. The hatch seals with a slightly creaking hiss, and you fumble your way to the nearest wall-mounted harness. It's only once you finally get your fumbling hands to fasten you into it that you look up and really take stock of your surroundings here:

You're in a small compartment, seemingly mostly used as a break room for this level of the ship. There's a food and drink dispenser against one wall, some magnetic tables, and a lonely, ancient workstation. One of the room's several inhabitants is strapped down to it. "What are you doing?" Graves demands.

Lovak's armcandy looks up from where he's furiously navigating through what definitely doesn't look like the publicly accessible areas of the ship's file structure. "Telling us all what's going on out there," he says sweetly. That sly, slightly wicked smile would be distracting for you under other circumstances. As it is, you glance around at the several other guards who are in the compartment, evidently having just watched the two delegates do this without objection.

Somehow you doubt that this has been authorised, but you can already tell you'd be swimming against the tide if you objected. And you aren't exactly going to complain, once he somehow manages to get first a copy of the scan map up on his display, and then a feed from some exterior cameras. All your attention turns to trying to get some sense of the fight you're missing:

It could be a lot better, frankly. Your forces look scattered, facing an enemy moving skillfully through space. Everything is distant enough that the camera feeds are very nearly useless, but the map at least can be followed. "I guess this is what happens when I'm not out there using my winning personality to boost morale," you murmur, more to try and entertain yourself than to convince anyone else. Graves at least laughs, if not very hard.

You can't tell who, precisely, the enemy is from this feed alone — but the moving objects on the map that have been flagged as hostile mecha or ships are plainly visible.

"You're a pilot, normally?" Lovak asks, his dark eyes not looking up from the display.

"Yes, when my leg isn't a mess," you agree.

"And when she hasn't just gotten her unit shot out from under her," Graves mutters, if anything even more transfixed than Lovak.

You don't offer a correction as to how, precisely, your mecha got banged up — shot out from under you is certainly what was about to happen before you took decisive action, after all. "I am currently in between machines," you admit. "The rest of my squad is out there, of course."

"Well, given that they're between me and an untimely death, I wish them luck," Lovak says. "I must say, though, I'm not particularly impressed by the counterintelligence measures that the AIJ is employing for this meeting."

"Tell you what. If we all blow up, you can tell us all you told us so," you say. But your heart isn't really in it. For once, you blowing up is not at the top of your priority list: those little dots on that scan map, the flashes of light on the camera feed... those are your friends, and squadmates, not to mention Jay in particular.

The end of the battle doesn't take that long, objectively, but for you, having already affected the outcome of the fight in the small way you can, it feels like an eternity.

Article:

What is the outcome of this fight?

Kana is injured and without a mecha. She was not able to participate in this skirmish, which results in the number of choices you can select for this vote being reduced by one. Because you involved Agnieszka in the battle, one of the more severe consequences has been removed.

Pick two one option from the following list. You have one second chance remaining. If you are using a second chance, use plan voting.

[ ] None of the Esther Strova's pilots are lost
[ ] No important allies were hurt
[ ] There isn't a breakdown of relations with either of the other rebel groups
[ ] You don't further alienate your Imperial allies
[ ] You don't lose the engagement