Fatih III
"It's horrifying," you say appreciatively.
Barber nods. "Beautiful, in its own weird little way," he adds. You spare him a glance. "Well,
I think it looks nice," he amends. You snort, and turn back to the show..
Mouse is currently sprawled under a seventy foot tall military printer, giggling at a slowly growing puddle of pinkish-nutrient slop leaking from the monstrosity next to him. It's...vaguely spherical, you think, and looks like he was trying to weave something that would keep liquid in. A riot of color and texture, with a drunkenly scrawled, wholly illegible monogram covering one side in thirty foot high letters. It's sprung half a dozen leaks, staining the floor and Mouse's already pink hair. A speck of disorder the size of a small building in the cavernous, deserted interior of the
Kipling's Hangar. You're at the closest entrance with Barber, watching the festivities from above and ready to run interference in case someone stumbles in or tries to stop the festivities.
The other three members of Echo Squadron sit near the printer controls with the half-dozen engineers on duty, drunkenly laughing at Mouse's abomination and bandying about suggestions as to what to have him do next Their squadron leader, Shorn, a young, dark-skinned woman recruited and promoted during the
Kipling's last tour of duty, finally raised a hand and the squadron fell silent.
"Alright," she said, slightly less drunk than her fellows, "Alright alright alright. Here's what we do. We drag him back afore he drowns in the slop. Uh, Engie?"
"Engineer Margai, ma'am," replies the engineer Shorn's pointing to.
"Mhm. You briiiiiing up his helmet and do the safety stuff." She blinks, as if forgetting her own train of thought, and begins to mutter under her breath to herself as she tries to figure out where she was going. "And then we let him lock in a helmet thing for Rubicon and Margai sets it so he can't change it till we're done with the sector. And, that'll teach him not to get real drunk before a mission."
Engineer Margai raises a hand to interrupt. He's a tall man, stockily built, but always nervously curled inwards. The hand looks like a flag of surrender more than an interruption. "Not that it's my place to ask, ma'am," he starts, "but, uh, didn't you get him drunk?"
"I-" Shorn stumbles and slams a fist into a railing at to steady herself, leaving a sizable dent behind, "I merely
offered him as much alcohol as he could drink. He chose to drink all of it." She motions for everyone to stand up, but as you and Barber crane your heads to watch a red light begins to blink frantically in your peripheral vision. You tap Barber on the shoulder and gesture for him to head for Shorn while you slow down the incoming brass.
Despite the
Kipling's sheer size its halls are as cramped as any other warship. Warm, dull light shines through the wall, ceilings and floors, tinting everything an odd off-white. Stripes of color race along the walls, serving as impromptu maps for the crewmembers racing down its corridors at all hours, and cleverly concealed grooves hide all the unpleasant little things that keep the ship functional in case of grav failure or a hull breach or the like. Pleasant, sterile, outwardly inoffensive.
You lean against a wall, not quite blocking the way to the hangar but making it clear that you could if you put your mind to it, and wait. A minute. Two. Then the sound of swiftly approaching feet, not quite a run. Thick boots, definitely not the standard, and you don't hear a sidearm. One of the chief engineers, you think.
You're proven wrong as Lieutenant Wieniawa, the
Kipling's newest SIC, rounds the corner. He's one of the public facing types, clean shaven, handsome, well-pressed uniform with a Sphere pin instead of a corporate logo resting above his name. He got brought in recently, after the round of reshuffling and hirings that happen every time you head somewhere dangerous, when Space Intercept suddenly needs people who can find their asses with a map instead of morons no-one wants to deal with anywhere else. He's carrying a cup of caf in each hand, and for a moment you think the crisis is over until you notice the vial of SoberUp! at his hip.
Well, this is what they pay you the big bucks for.
"Wien! How are you?" you say, pointedly not getting out of the way, "What brings you to the hangar?"
"Oh, well, you know," he gestures towards the SoberUp, "Someone's drunk. Shouldn't take long-"
"That can't be it," you say, "Surely you wouldn't come all the way down from CIC for such a small thing? Hmm, let me guess..." You gently redirect him down the wrong hallway and make a show of being surprised at the coffee. "Oh, a social visit? Date with Margai?"
"Oh, no, nothing so formal, his birthday was last week and he'd mentioned this brand of coffee" says Wien, and you know you've got him. "From Kenema. Specially grown due to the soil levels and he loved it but, you know, once he got Pressed he couldn't really get access and it turns out the license is expensive-"
"Did they burn the plantations?" you ask. You're leading him in circles, more or less. You don't even need to redirect the conversation, just let him keep talking and wait for the signal.
"No, just a V and Y thing, you know? Jack up the prices on the good stuff. Keep it exclusive so it stays popular in the Core.
So yeah, the license is expensive and he hasn't had a cup since he signed on and he says it's his favorite thing in the world. So, you know, I thought, 'hey, I bet he'd really appreciate this'. So, well, they have this limited license thing going, right? 'Just for two'. You ever-well, I guess I shouldn't pry. But!" He raises the mugs of coffee, showing you the V and Y Luxury Foods label on their handles. "They come with these super nice mug designs and I figured, 'hey, we're about to deploy, I've got some spare' so I got one for the two of us, cause he gets off work in, like, five and I thought he'd really like it."
"It smells amazing. Have anything else special planned?" you say. You debate waggling an eyebrow at him, but eventually decide against it as undignified. He'll keep going on his own after all.
"Well, no, but do you really need anything else? I mean, a heartfelt gesture, good company," he says whistfully, "It's what it's all about, y'know? The rest is just corporate trying to bilk us-"
Blue light. You're good to go.
"-to try and make love run them a profit. I say it's dumb, you care about someone for who they are, not what they got you off the Romantic Attache list or what entertainment license they can afford."
"Tell you what, don't let me keep you from your date," you say, "And say hello to Margai for me, would you?" And, with a thank you and a goodbye, you part.
Later, you would learn that they got Mouse to add little mouse ears to his helmet, and that he'd be stuck with them for the entire Rubicon tour.
You allowed yourself a smile, then, for a job well done.
*
"I thought we killed the briefing bot," says Shorn.
All forty of the
Kipling's mech pilots are in the briefing room, leaning back in gel-chairs and chatting with each other or eating snacks while the red-and-black form of the briefing bot sputters to life. It's humanoid, albeit attached to the floor, and has the shiny, un-graffiti'd form of a chassis fresh from the Printers, not yet around long enough to be vandalized.
"Too early," says Valiant, "Told you."
You're not particularly surprised that Shorn had killed the Briefing Bot at some point. The Auto-Briefer 3465 was an unliving, unfeeling avatar of corporate, programmed to sound like some profane hick from the inner colonies. It was glitchy, overly vague, and near useless at the best of times. At the worst, it procedurally generated a powerpoint presentation. And, of course, if it wasn't working when everyone filed in a person with a brain and presentation skills would do the brief instead. As a result, the Auto was the single most vandalized drone on any military warship.
And a reliable source of fines for CGVD. Quite the racket, really. Charge the government to make their troops miserable, charge the troops for fixing the problem.
Mouse sighs and rubs his forehead, "I was hoping we'd get-"
"Silence!" bellows the bot without warning, "And listen up, maggots!" The bot's neck visibly twitches as it switches scripts, juttering as it speaks. "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Rubicon Sector! We're dropping into the system in five minutes, so I'll make this quick."
On the wall behind the Auto, the mission clock read one hour to arrival.
"Rube's a podunk little nothing on the ass end of nowhere colonized last century. The Rubes have been getting pissy and piratey with each other, and someone got twisted up enough to call us in to calm things down. They have five Printers in the entire sector, fewer than there are on this ship, so we don't expect much in the way of trouble. Some E+E Supermarines and maybe some Haqqer shite. Look forwards to a lot of looking pretty and not much shooting. We'll be guarding the Terran Sphere's diplomats while they yell at everyone and smashing pirates in our spare time. Show everyone what's coming for 'em if they don't shut up and play nice."
It swings wildly as it speaks, throwing up holo-projections of some Tri-Prong mining outpost that got knocked over, nearby contract-breakers who could be involved, the corporate stakeholders in the sector, and registered schematics purchased by the locals. It doesn't reference them at all, so it's all on you to pour over the information, figure out what's useful to you and what's setting dressing, and remember what you can while it talks.
"Now, I know this don't sound exciting but y'all are representing the
Sphere this mission, so I expect some goddamn professional behavior, you hear? Your maneuvers perfect, your mechs sterling, and your behavior inter-fucking-stellar! And to show me y'all are ready for that, you're gonna print your mechs once we hit real space and fly honor guard for the
Kipling on the way into Rubicon Station. Deployment is in five, move out!"
The Auto falls silent and Mouse rises, only for Shorn to motion for him to sit down. You don't move, but quietly make an appreciative note as Mouse complies.
A minute later, Lieutenant Wieniawa enters the room. "Alright, ah,
mild problem with the Auto," he says, "I'll finish up. We've got five Diplomatic Shuttles on this job, so we're assigning two squadrons and an infantry company to each. Senior squadron has full military control while away from the
Kipling, and we're gonna be spread out enough that we can't guarantee a bailout if things go hot." He steps to one side, pointing at a chart detailing the assignments as he continues to speak. You read through it on your implanted HUD, impatient to get through the chaff while Wieniawa talks.
As head of Alif Squadron, you're assigned to Team 1, protecting Diplomat Ayub-
You blink, then read over the roster again, and plain as day, there it is. Alif and Echo Squadrons, alongside Green Company, protecting Hina Ayub. Your palms sweat, you have the nervous impulse to send her a message but you suppress it. You are the most senior pilot on the
Kipling, you are the image of control and discipline and you will not break that image to nervously text a woman because you got assigned to the same team like some collegiate coreworlder with a crush.
You will sit through this meeting, you will prepare for launch and organize your squadron, and then, and
then, you will carve some time out of your schedule, sit down with Hina, and have a face to face conversation about this social and professional nuke that got dropped into your laps like an
adult.
Your reverie is broken as Wieniawa finishes his speech. "-Teams One and Two," he says, "You're escorting the
Kipling into Rubicon Station. Submit your print orders and head for the hangars. Everyone else, get some shuteye. Dismissed!"
You nod, waiting for him to leave the room before leading Alif Squadron to the Ready Room Terminal and keying up the Print Order. Your mech's schematics pop up on the terminal, . You do a quick once over, examining cut-outs to make sure you hadn't changed anything while browsing through licenses, or that corporate hadn't 'accidentally' reverted something for their own stupid reasons.
Your mech's a custom suit, tweaked over a decade of service. Tell me about it.
[ ] Disney Mechworks H-90 Handsome Prince, 'Ali'.
Disney Mechworks is a subsidiary of the ever-growing colonial octopus that is the Disney Corporation, and is famous as the company's first foray into military equipment. They haven't branched out much beyond mech production, a few small warship schematics, but they're a heavyweight in the market with a long line of aesthetically pleasing and aggressively marketed mechs.
The 'Ali' is a modified Handsome Prince, one of Disney's premier assault mechs. He's heavily armored, has insane straight line acceleration, and is equipped for a brawl. Head mounted vulcans, a dual-use alloy axe and assault shotgun, and a heavy mech-scale shield with integrated grapple line launchers and munition storage. Ali is a simple, high end mech for a simple, high end pilot. You get into melee fast and you rip the enemy to pieces while you're there.
[ ] Polaris Northstar 615-Garuda, 'Butterfly'.
Polaris Northstar is one of the oldest players in the colonial exploitation game, and has designed their mechs to match. They field a wide variety of machines specializing in pirate-hunting and dealing with large groups of inferior opponents, like rebel fighter squadrons or grunt mechs. Their reputation is unpleasant, and their PR team works overtime keeping stories from reaching the Core, but their output is good and rewards skillful piloting.
The 'Butterfly' is a modified Garuda, one of Northstar's premier high-agility hunter-killer schematics. You've taken an already zippy design and pushed it to new heights, arming it with enormous thrusters and maneuvering jets, fabber-equipped missile racks, a pair of chest mounted plasma rifles, and a beautiful, deadly high frequency shamshir for melee combat. She can outmaneuver anything else on the field, ripping apart hordes of lesser enemies with missile fire or dueling worthy pilots with her blade and blasters.
[ ] E+E NE-70 Fire Drake, 'Ifrit'.
E+E/Heavy Manufacturing Corpro is one of the older manufacturers in the galaxy, but the majority of their output isn't worth much. Cheap and generally reliable, but nothing special, fielded mostly by countries that can't afford industrial-scale licenses on anything else. They haven't had a standout design for over a century, and are a regular source of weird, blocky schematics they're sure will be the next big thing in duelist circles as a result. The Fire Drake is one of the few that actually worked. It's an odd design, boasting a thermonuclear engine and advanced active cooling systems, designed to work alongside an enormous variety of heavy energy weapons that would tax a weaker reactor.
A sane pilot puts in one gun and a few high-powered supplemental systems, giving them hard-to-match performance so long as the cooling holds up. The
Ifrit mounts a small arsenal of integrated flamethrowers, particle beams, and blasters, carries a superheavy plasma thrower, has weaponized its heat vents for melee combat and spends the entirety of any pitched engagement riding the fine line between blowing itself up and blowing everything else up. The biggest threats to you on the battlefield are your reactor core melting down and enemy fire, in that order.
[ ] The Abdul Haqq Revenant, 'Ghul King'.
Abdul Haqq is...technically not a mech manufacturer. Legally they're some sort of freeware collective, a presence on the noosphere with unknown, if any, physical assets. They're a secretive distributor with an agenda of their own, providing information and licenses to those they deem worthy. They've been implicated in hacking, piracy, and illegal creation of Industrial and Military Printers, and thrown up as a cover by all sorts of terrorists and criminals who don't want to take the blame for their work. All sorts of rumors swirl about who they are, and what you need to do to earn a license, and why they do that they do. As one of the select few they've chosen, even you aren't sure why they quietly passed you the license you eventually turned into the Ghul King. The results, however, speak for themselves.
The Ghul King is a top of the line E-Warfare and command machine. Armed with a single plasma blade and an integrated set of disney-licensed magnetic cannons, it doesn't appear to be particularly impressive at first glance. However its electronic warfare and computer suites are second to none and the ordnance pods hanging from its back are
filled with assault drones. You can pick a mech to death from a dozen angles, force a catastrophic meltdown in its support, shut down some of the galaxy's most advanced smart weapons systems, and coordinate a battlefield full of allied mechs. And on a good day, you can do those simultaneously.
