_____A few minutes prior to the briefing, Fumio had been summoned to the adjacent hangars, just out of earshot. It had been urgent, the captain had said, and the orders called for Fumio by name.
_____Chief O'Brien held the orders that had just arrived, pertaining to one of the prototypes discovered with the fighting on base. It would have probably been proper to call it the prototype, the high-spec pilot model that predated the general production models 7-STS had been trialing. The matter of how it had lasted this long in enemy territory was something of a mystery, but shortly after its discovery, a friend of Lieutenant Taurus had pulled an enormous number of strings to have the mobile weapon assigned to him and only him. The written orders even forbade lending his machine to other pilots unless in dire emergency, and specified that the parts used to maintain it be hand-inspected for defect.
_____An initial inspection showed that the joints and materials were in every case of higher quality. Clearly this pilot model had been some kind of demonstrator for some Fed higher-ups. It was probably built and assembled largely by hand to ensure proper tolerances. On top of receiving a special pick of mobile suit, it seemed their CO would also be receiving the most maintenance intensive one, in a situation that was becoming increasingly tight on supplies.
_____While this went on between the lieutenant and the CPO, the other newly-discovered mobile weapons went through their shakedowns. It was an atmosphere cloyed by the constant cussing, banging of tools against titanium armor plates, and the sweaty, bloody labor of making shit work.
_____Rev gave Corvos one of those sideways glances that said "I can't say really you're wrong, but I'm not in a place to say you're right, either." But they knew how it went. Even the rookies had been exposed to Fed bureaucracy by now. "If a crew chief packed these onto a transport, we can reasonably assume they won't combust lying in the middle of the jungle, no," Rev said, looking to one of the rookies in question. "And we can't say if they're any better until we test and evaluate them, but it's better having an overheat walking in two legs than at thirty-thousand feet..."
_____"We do have a handful right now that will be piloting a mobile suit for the first time. We'll have a few hours on the simulators before we go, but all I can say is that this isn't Loum, and our routes of advance and escape are clear-cut. The stakes, while never low, are not quite as high." Rev designated several fallback points with a few quick touches of her fingertips. "Mobile suits are one of the few weapons that excel in these reduced-visibility conditions. We'll have to worry about Niflheim, yes, but we stand the same basic chance of a failure whether we're awaiting extraction or using her to enter the OP. Then again..." The lieutenant commander shrugged in that cavalier way of hers. "Saved us from falling onto the planet, so who are we to judge it?"
Callista took a whiff of the pale soup within her tin, her nose scrunched up from the assault on her olfactories. Gingerly raising her mug, Callista took a sip of the liquid, only to hack and cough as the sourness overwhelming her taste buds only further confirmed her suspicions on the rations around the base:
Zeon has fuckall for proper standards in edible food. The fucking oil from her Zaku tasted better than whatever filthy gunk was sitting in her cup. Callista placed a mental note in the back of her head to order actual food to avoid the travesty before her.
_____"Once we secure the site, the Nifhleim will be moving in for direct recovery. There's never been a test of this Minovsky Drive in such rough weather, so... in short, a whole laundry list of things to go wrong today.
_____The lights flickered as the backup generators came online, flooding the interior of the base in sterile white. Their briefing room was little more than some folding tables with some holographic displays and whatever hot chow had been scrounged up in the last half hour. The Zeon had probably been sitting in these same seats before the Federal attack came in, and who knew when the base would change hands again at this rate. The air reeked of coffee, sugar, and cigarette smoke.
_____Revelle slipped into one of the heavy armored vests that the ground-pounders favored, replacing her space-type helmet with a well-ventilated ground type. "Good work, everyone. I hope you all got a little bit of sleep in the interim. Our commander is talking to the brass about getting us some relief so we can have some real maintenance and rest time." Of course, the maintenance teams assigned to 7-STS never rested. Behind her, rows of mobile suits laid in various states of disassembly, as the majority of them were the new RRf-06s. Less and less Zeon Zakus were seen as parts dried up from engagement after engagement.
_____"I'll brief you in his stead: A flight of six Medea-class aircraft launched from a hidden airbase to our West and hooked it south to the nearest friendly vessel for landing. They didn't have the range to make it directly to us, so we'll be trekking ten klicks west through heavy brush and mountainous terrain to make the recovery and signal our own transport to make the pickup. Due to the weather, we're grounding all flights, and tracked vehicles can't manage the hills, so we'll all be in mobile suits this mission."
_____She waited for the groaning to subside. "Chief O'Brien has been working overtime to make some stopgap repairs on our testbeds. The roster has not changed, although..." Rev glanced at Achilleia. "Looks like our hot shot overcooked her captured cyclops again. 1-2, you'll on the Guncannon. This is going to be a simple capability test. If we make contact, you fall back. Mack, Rhea... you're going to be evaluating the two-seater Guncannon variant. The same ROE goes for you. If we get bushwhacked, we're fucking off to fight another day.
_____"Once we secure the site, the Nifhleim will be moving in for direct recovery. There's never been a test of this Minovsky Drive in such rough weather, so... in short, a whole laundry list of things to go wrong today.
Achilleia caught Rev's glance. She had no need to make excuses. The Boss - and Rev would always be The Boss, regardless of whichever pencil-necked paper-pusher the brass decided to dump on the top of the org chart - knew that she rode the ragged edge of the envelope, and an overheated mobile suit was a small price to pay for a successful mission.
It looked like the Zudah was a dead end in MS development anyway. A suit that needed to be babied to make it through an engagement wasn't going to cut it in the battles they'd need to fight. You needed a weapon that you could trust to work when you needed it to, not one that you had to think about instead of what you were going to do to the enemy.
So instead she'd be going out in the Guncannon. Another new ride, this one almost the polar opposite of the Zudah. Built like a brick, and probably rode like one if the briefing was right. But it had been pretty reliable in testing, and - most importantly - it had a big, accurate gun. The Guncannon it'd been derived from had been designed for indirect fire support, but this was built to get closer and kill with direct fire instead of just suppressing.
_____A few minutes prior to the briefing, Fumio had been summoned to the adjacent hangars, just out of earshot. It had been urgent, the captain had said, and the orders called for Fumio by name.
_____Chief O'Brien held the orders that had just arrived, pertaining to one of the prototypes discovered with the fighting on base. It would have probably been proper to call it the prototype, the high-spec pilot model that predated the general production models 7-STS had been trialing. The matter of how it had lasted this long in enemy territory was something of a mystery, but shortly after its discovery, a friend of Lieutenant Taurus had pulled an enormous number of strings to have the mobile weapon assigned to him and only him. The written orders even forbade lending his machine to other pilots unless in dire emergency, and specified that the parts used to maintain it be hand-inspected for defect.
_____An initial inspection showed that the joints and materials were in every case of higher quality. Clearly this pilot model had been some kind of demonstrator for some Fed higher-ups. It was probably built and assembled largely by hand to ensure proper tolerances. On top of receiving a special pick of mobile suit, it seemed their CO would also be receiving the most maintenance intensive one, in a situation that was becoming increasingly tight on supplies.
_____While this went on between the lieutenant and the CPO, the other newly-discovered mobile weapons went through their shakedowns. It was an atmosphere cloyed by the constant cussing, banging of tools against titanium armor plates, and the sweaty, bloody labor of making shit work.
@AbZHz101
"This is..." Fumio's lip trembled as he flipped through the orders, bound in a simple manila folder as if to belie the kind of machine that stood looming over the the young Commander and the grizzled Chief.
"Are you sure I can't lend it to Lieutenant Anemos?" Fumio found his voice but trailed off again as he realized how stupid it was to ask the Chief with the orders written plain as a sunny day on the ocean. He wasn't expecting the Guncannon Model 00 to be one of the items they had liberated from the Cape but he wasn't surprised it went to him of all people.
This was his job description as Commander of the 7-STS, sure but this had Father's name written all over it.
Fumio drew a hand through his hair, averting his eyes from the Chief to look up at the prototype's visored helm. "I'm sorry for the headache this will cause all of you."
He mumbled it out and he found his hands trembling so gripped the folder with both hands to stop. It wasn't nervousness he saw, looking inside himself at that moment. What he found was even more surprising then that, selfish even, but he couldn't stop himself from feeling it.
It was excitement, pure, unadultered joy, like a child on Christmas Eve.
_____"I'm not in charge of unit assignment, Callista. You know that." Rev stated. Her voice was flat, stoic. "But I'm sure HQ is eager to get some real information on their prototypes. And I'm not enamored at playing false flag with captured enemy equipment. The sooner we can field Federation designs and crush them on our own terms, the better."
_____She glanced at her watch. "The commander should be on his way. Be ready to launch in five mikes, no early breakdowns this time. You're dismissed."
_____As Commander Taurus suited up for the journey ahead, the head of maintenance inspected him, his machine, and his tools for the tasks ahead. His machine was a sixty-ton hulk of titanium armor, rocket fuel and high-explosives, meticulately constructed and maintained. An enormous cannon sat upon its left shoulder, and a multi-barreled vulcan cannon sat on the opposite one. The hydraulics whined as techs raised the Unit 00's right arm. A crane lifted a ninety-milimeter rifle onto the forearm, power tools chattering like small arms fire to bolt it down. The opposite arm was adorned with a shield, completing the Fed-produced mobile suit
_____The cabin doors folded downwards into the open position. With Fumio and O'Brien standing on the gantry, there was some time for a few spare words before the lieutenant commander started the mission ahead.
_____Lieutenant Anemos found herself staring up at the second of three "fresh" prototypes, an armored titan decked out in the same equipment as its white predecessor, instead painted a dull blue-gray and looking slightly the worse for wear, with rust in places and a thin sheen of packing grease from a long, long time in storage. However dulled the Guncannon was, however, it was still clearly a machine of war, one humming with a long-dormant power that slowly begun to wake as its pilot approached the cabin door.
_____Although the last of the prototypes looked for the most part identical to that Lieutenant Anemos piloted, the two pilots immediately saw this one was twin-gunned, and in place of a typical rifle, its entire right forearm had been replaced with some multi-barreled launcher. The most stark contrast, however, came with the rising of a second walkway for the pilots. As it turned out, while the vehicle operator sat in the traditional position inside the torso, the gunner had to contend with riding inside the thickly armored skull of the blue machine, squeezed between the two sixty-milimeter cannons like some middle-era gunner in the belly of a propereller-driven bomber. Within that seat, Mack had access to full stabilized control of the main weapons and a backup control set for the main body.
_____The second edition of the Federation manual was a hundred pages thicker now. They had been studying mobile suits just like the one he had been piloting, adding new revisions and discoveries by the bushell. The differences in Fed and Zeon tech at times could be staggering to comprehend, and it seemed every day they discovered new secrets in in the enemy machines.
_____For now, he'd been assigned to fight in the special-operations cyclops once more, using its powerful sensors to keep them safe from harm in the unforgiving weather. Without air cover, Remagen would have to be their eyes and ears.
_____The RRf-06s were standing by the forward end of the hangar, still caked with dirt and scorched from Zeon weapon impacts. The maintenance had been hurried and harried, and only the most direst of external repairs had been made. They were assured, several times, that they would work this time. Revelle didn't seem to linger on it, only nodding to Sharon and Gabriel in turn before sliding into the cockpit, hands flying through a process that seemed a little too well practiced for someone so new to the machine. Wind started to whip at their uniforms as the forward hangar doors opened, the cold air biting exposed flesh as the trees and ruin soared under the belly of Niflheim.
_____Minovsky reactors begun to hum to life under their feet, and the visors of their mobile suits flashed an angry green as the well-worn prototypes begun to rise, fuel lines breaking away with a hiss, technicians scattering to cover like ants as they got underway.
_____Although battered and worse for wear, the two older Zakus in 7-STS kept soldiering on. Ensign Nash had gotten himself quite the name as a killer, and there was a pool building on how many kills the young pilot would accrue in the coming fight. The marks on the pauldron of the Zeon cyclops kept getting more numerous.
_____Opposite him, Coriolle got hardly a rousing welcome, or much attention at all. The comment during the briefing had not been very popular with the same maintenance personnel who were tasked with repurposing all the ill-begotten Zeon tech. It was quiet on the final approach to the cockpit, save for the whirring of the crane loading the long-barreled rifle. Inside the cabin, Callista found a neatly penned paper note, tucked into her preflight checklist...
"General quarters, general quarters. All hands to battle stations. Close bulkheads one to niner. Make all readiness reports available to controlling stations. All stations manned in five minutes. All mobile suits, prepare to launch in sequence. Two klicks from LZ."
For the past hour or so, Rhea was sitting in the driver's seat of the Guncannon with the instruction book in her lap, reading through it, stopping every minute or two to fiddle with something in the cockpit. Mostly to figure out she was touching the wrong thing, then spending a few seconds trying to find the right one. "Man, there's a ton of stuff in here that they barely bothered to label. It'd take a month before we feel comfortable taking it out against the cyclopes..."
Almost on cue, the klaxon Rhea abruptly sits up, sending the manual flying to the floor. "Well that came up fast..." She says quickly strapping herself in and putting her headset on. "Alright Mack. I hope you've been cramming as well, time to roll out!"
"Ye aren't," O'Brein said to the Commander of the 7th STS, even as he looked over a stack of paperwork and diagnostics over an inch thick. If Torez looked at him for the seeming non-sequitur, the Irishman didn't bother to determine. "Ya can't be. The eff'rt me and the crews do ta' keep you lot able ta fight... Ya don't care 'bout it. Ye can't understand it. Ya might be gre'tful on t'rare occasions ya be forced ta admit it be only the suit's manufacture and maintenance tha kept ya from goin' up in flames, but the eff'rt ya make us expend? Ya couldn't give a rat's ass about it. Save yer crap for some'ne with time or patience f'r it. But... If by some miracle, ya actually do care abo't the efforts we put in... Do yer work well and don't get your ass shot up like every other flyboy jockey who thinks I wave a magic wand an poofs their equipment into function."
Then the Irishman sighed and began to pour whiskey into his flask. "Thankfully these'r in a propositional format. Save me some work later. If I hav' to rebuild that '76 of yers after this... I will be quite cross."
_____Lieutenant Anemos found herself staring up at the second of three "fresh" prototypes, an armored titan decked out in the same equipment as its white predecessor, instead painted a dull blue-gray and looking slightly the worse for wear, with rust in places and a thin sheen of packing grease from a long, long time in storage. However dulled the Guncannon was, however, it was still clearly a machine of war, one humming with a long-dormant power that slowly begun to wake as its pilot approached the cabin door.
"General quarters, general quarters. All hands to battle stations. Close bulkheads one to niner. Make all readiness reports available to controlling stations. All stations manned in five minutes. All mobile suits, prepare to launch in sequence. Two klicks from LZ."
Achilleia levered herself into the acceleration couch of the Guncannon's cockpit, her mouth twisting slightly in an approximation of a smile as her crew chief MSgt Pujara helped her with the straps. The pudgy man's grin to her was as genuine and relaxed as her expression was awkward.
"Don't worry, ma'am," he said. "The dirt is just cosmetic. Everything essential is ship-shape. You have full loads for the 240 and the 60, plus spare magazines for the 90 as well as a couple of missile pods. Everything needed to kill Zeon bastards."
Achilleia nodded, her gaze never leaving his eyes and the pain he hid in them. His smile was as much a mask as her abrasiveness, but they understood each other. They'd never shared a word outside their professional relationship, but their actions spoke enough. He gave her the tools she needed to do her work, and she did it as well as she could.
He patted her on the shoulder almost tenderly and drew back as the hatch slid closed, popping a crisp salute before it shut fully.
Achilleia drew a deep breath and ran through the last of her preflight checks before reporting in to Pri-Fly.
"Spear 1-2, Achilleia Anemos, Guncannon, ready for launch."
"Ye aren't," O'Brein said to the Commander of the 7th STS, even as he looked over a stack of paperwork and diagnostics over an inch thick. If Torez looked at him for the seeming non-sequitur, the Irishman didn't bother to determine. "Ya can't be. The eff'rt me and the crews do ta' keep you lot able ta fight... Ya don't care 'bout it. Ye can't understand it. Ya might be gre'tful on t'rare occasions ya be forced ta admit it be only the suit's manufacture and maintenance tha kept ya from goin' up in flames, but the eff'rt ya make us expend? Ya couldn't give a rat's ass about it. Save yer crap for some'ne with time or patience f'r it. But... If by some miracle, ya actually do care abo't the efforts we put in... Do yer work well and don't get your ass shot up like every other flyboy jockey who thinks I wave a magic wand an poofs their equipment into function."
Then the Irishman sighed and began to pour whiskey into his flask. "Thankfully these'r in a propositional format. Save me some work later. If I hav' to rebuild that '76 of yers after this... I will be quite cross."
"O-o-of course, Chief." Fumio ducked his head at the Chief's ranting, barely keeping up with the accent. The out-of-the-blue rant caught him off guard and hit him with almost physical force
When the Irishman had finished the young commander touched his helmet's lip in acknowledgement. He gave the Chief a smile that wavered.
"I'll try to get it back in one shape."
Then Fumio crossed the cabin doors to his cockpit, looking for all the world like he was trying to escape O'Brien as much as to ready the MS for the mission. The start-up sequence started up soon after.
He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, expunding the belligerent chief from his thoughts. He only needed to think of the coming mission now. His squadron expected nothing less from him, even if this one promised to be less intense than their previous engagement.
"7-STS, this is Spear 1-1, Commander Taurus. Report status and ready for launch."
Although the last of the prototypes looked for the most part identical to that Lieutenant Anemos piloted, the two pilots immediately saw this one was twin-gunned, and in place of a typical rifle, its entire right forearm had been replaced with some multi-barreled launcher. The most stark contrast, however, came with the rising of a second walkway for the pilots. As it turned out, while the vehicle operator sat in the traditional position inside the torso, the gunner had to contend with riding inside the thickly armored skull of the blue machine, squeezed between the two sixty-millimeter cannons like some middle-era gunner in the belly of a propeller-driven bomber. Within that seat, Mack had access to full stabilized control of the main weapons and a backup control set for the main body.
For the past hour or so, Rhea was sitting in the driver's seat of the Guncannon with the instruction book in her lap, reading through it, stopping every minute or two to fiddle with something in the cockpit. Mostly to figure out she was touching the wrong thing, then spending a few seconds trying to find the right one. "Man, there's a ton of stuff in here that they barely bothered to label. It'd take a month before we feel comfortable taking it out against the cyclopes..."
Almost on cue, the klaxon Rhea abruptly sits up, sending the manual flying to the floor. "Well that came up fast..." She says quickly strapping herself in and putting her headset on. "Alright Mack. I hope you've been cramming as well, time to roll out!"
"Ummm... yeah, let's get down there and rumble up!" Mack mumbled out as he struggled to get catch the manual after Rhea's voice had surprised him.
In truth, he had been unenthusiastic about learned how to fight in a damned Mobile Suit, and had barely skimmed to page thirty. Still, it couldn't be that bad. It's not like he was pulling the strings on the metal giant, he was just firing off some good old guns.
That couldn't be too different from what they'd been training for on the Type 61, right?
"Remagen, launching." Corvos announced as his suit stepped over the edge and into the open sky. For the briefest of moments everything was calm as the seventy-ton suit fell through the sky before its thrusters roared to life. Every bird for miles ascended in counter point to the lieutenant's descent.
They had dropped at canopy height, which meant the distance to the ground was only two or three times the suits own height. So, if you ignored your computer yelling at you to start burning immediately you, we're less liable to avoid detection with a fast drop and more likely to have your suits legs snap like a pair of titanium twigs.
The Zaku's arms twitched as the computer tried to keep the machine stable in the airstream even as puffs from RCS added its own corrections. The entire burn, and the drop, was suppose to last for twenty to thirty seconds. Corvos was also expected to locate and direct his suit toward the landing zone. The suit and its jury-rigged mess of Zeon and Federation technology rattled around Corvos as he tried to adjust the suits fall to land where he wanted to. Soon though his view was obscured by the rapidly growing see of green that was the jungle canopy as branches and entire trees toppled under his mech and its exhaust as it crashed through.
The suit landed with a heavy crash that threw Corvos into his harness as hydraulics whined as they absorbed the force and thrusters hissed and popped as metal cooled and humid air sizzled at the nozzles heat. Corvos bit a curse back as he looked around, trying to find anything amongst the trees to help him get his bearings. "Remagen," Corvos said as he keyed his radio. "Landed – little off course, pinging the LZ on the map – couple minutes away."
_____Opposite him, Coriolle got hardly a rousing welcome, or much attention at all. The comment during the briefing had not been very popular with the same maintenance personnel who were tasked with repurposing all the ill-begotten Zeon tech. It was quiet on the final approach to the cockpit, save for the whirring of the crane loading the long-barreled rifle. Inside the cabin, Callista found a neatly penned paper note, tucked into her preflight checklist...
Callista shrugged as she squeezed into the cockpit with little fanfare, the ends of her mouth twitched ever so slightly when the hatched sealed behind her. Now separated from the outside world in her cabin, Callista finally afforded a luxury she couldn't buy herself and relaxed. No one to bother her outside of her services, no overly inquisitive busybody blundering their way into her business, no one around to snoop her out...
Callista's smile faltered.
...Except that Captain. Fuck him.
Still, Callista couldn't afford to be comfortable for long; the LZ's almost here. Suppressing a yawn, Callista powered up her mobile suit as the OS hummed a familiar tune. Lethargically, Callista's arm stretched and grasped her preflight checklist off the counter and promptly muttered off the mundane-
"General quarters, general quarters. All hands to battle stations. Close bulkheads one to niner. Make all readiness reports available to controlling stations. All stations manned in five minutes. All mobile suits, prepare to launch in sequence. Two klicks from LZ."
Already she could see her fellow mobile suits walking to the edge of the hangar doors, their visors glowing a veridian hue with each step they took sending a minor tremor. Callista glanced down, her OS nearly booted but not completely. She's not going to make it in time!
"FUCK! GET MOVING!"
The quartermaster screamed at the offending piece of software before her, but the screen remained insultingly unperturbed, the progress bar trudging at its own pace. Callista started to sweat beads. She's fully aware she wasn't the most popular person on the ship, and she really didn't need more eyes starring up her arse.
It was time for drastic measures.
Leaving the OS in the background, Callista brought up her controls, her hands tightly grasping the joystick like her life depended on it. She remembered this, just like that one time. Callista pushed against her controls, the mobile suit whining against it but following her directive.
It's working! Callista whooped. This wasn't a disaster after all!
As if grudgingly, her Zaku gradually stepped towards the bay doors, its movements clumsy but definitive. The quartermaster opened up her comms to control and declared her intention.
Midstep, Callista's blood chilled as she felt her mobile suit missed a crucial step and fell.
Out of the hangar.
...
"-shitshitshitshit-"
In her panic, Callista could hear a chime, and her screen was replaced by a progress bar, full and the words "Progress Complete!" cheerfully emblazoned on it.
Ellie nearly dropped the syringe she held as the alarm blared loudly from somewhere in the room, breaking her out of her thoughts. With the realization that they're sortieing soon, she jabbed it into her arm, watching with slight fascination as the medicine was pushed into her veins.
Flexing her left hand, she pulled down the sleeves of her suit and picked up her helmet, shoving the used syringe back to her locked for disposal later. She rushed out of the locker room and ran towards the launchpad, her visor polarizing as she saw the lieutenant spotting her. Following her lead, she jumped into the cockpit of her assigned Zanny and strapped herself in.
The screens around her lit up as the reactor revved up to give life to the machine, the largest among them displaying the booting up process of the experimental Operating System developed by the Federation. When it did, the Ensign was greeted by a recording of the earliest skirmish she had, of her shooting an enemy Mobile Suit at the beaches. She frowned, the reminder of her failure to incapacitate was shoved in her face. Nevertheless, she allowed the OS to examine the recording, making minute corrections to hopefully boost how the Suit's targeting system worked.
Preparations done, she grabbed the controls, watching the open bulkhead as the rest of the platoon launched. When the signal allowed her to launch, she pressed forward, the suit lumbering towards the open end of the ship.
"Ensign Lind, 3-17 Zanny, Launching!"
She... may have made a mistake. She thought idly as the Suit plummeted into the earth below. She never actually tested the thruster power of the suit, and with its heavy weight and different controls from an aircraft, it's decent towards the earth was a bit more rougher than she expected.
"Sorry Sir O'Brien, I'm giving you more work." The girl said it under her breath. She tried to orient the suit so that it didn't land too badly, shifting it so that she would drop beside her platoon.
She managed to land safely besides the other Suits, but the land gave way under the weight of the Zanny and caused her to tilt a bit. The groaning she heard from her partner alerted her to the fact that things that weren't supposed to be strained, did. Thankfully, the reports on the screens around her reported nothing that would hamper the operations.
"That... didn't feel too good." She said. And this was the girl who loved the feeling of gravity pushing at her while she did aerial maneuvers on a plane. "I felt like a lump of metal sinking into the bottom of the lake."
With a start, her right hand flew to the pockets of her suit, a relieved sigh escaping her as she felt the vials of medicine she brought was still intact.
In her defense, the thrusters were fired properly, nothing caught fire, and the velocity was within normal and acceptable boundaries given the circumstances. She'd hardly be a very good spacer if she didn't know how to handle basic thrust vectors and whatnot.
No, what ruined Sharon's day today was the existence of trees. Dastardly pieces of oversized greenery--nice and neat when in nice and ordered rows, but a bush like this? Kicking off at one ended up screwing with her attempt to land, and an uncomfortably loud groaning filled the cockpit--with the sheepish ensign trying to bring the Zanny back up to its feet.
_____"1-3, Zanny, launching." Havilland took a mighty step and jumped out the hangar bay, firing off thrusters as she vanished below sight. Around the same time, their WO blundered right to the edge of the deck, tottering back and forth as the suit automatically attempted to stabilize.
_____"Be advised, 1-7 overboard," Revelle said, in a tone so absent of emotion it was almost grating. "Clear LZ, scatter." Of course it'd be Callista, the same pilot that had blessed 7-STS with equal parts ineptitude in battle and great skill in acquisitions. It didn't keep their ex-CO from flooring the pedals and shoving the control levers forward, hydraulics whining as the Zanny leapt over the side, grasping Callista's cyclops under the shoulder and firewalling the throttle. They tumbled toward the ground and momentarily vanished behind a curtain of rocket exhaust and dust, a mighty thud echoing through the air.
_____"Zero and 1-7 have landed. Fuel state: moderate." Then, after a moment, she said, "Gravity's a bitch. Get it moving, team."
Heidt quietly watched his fellow squadmates begin their drops, waiting his turn and drumming his fingers along the, by now, familiar consoles. At the very least, he knew where not to hit, otherwise there could be a problem. He did wonder why he was still assigned to the Zaku, but it made little difference to him. Equipment was equipment, and he wouldn't hesitate to use what was given. That said, the nagging feeling that he was being used as a control experiment rather than actual soldier was an unpleasant one. Rather than the lack of budget, it was more likely that they were still comparing results of Zeonic mobile suits and Federation mobile suits.
He closed his eyes and exhaled momentarily before staring back into the monitors in front of him. These thoughts were persistent, but not important. Not now anyways.
"Be advised, 1-7 overboard...Clear LZ, scatter... Zero and 1-7 have landed. Fuel state: moderate. Gravity's a bitch. Get it moving, team."
Heidt frowned at what had occurred in communications. Apparently Coriolle's Zaku had decided to walk the plank rather than descend in a controlled manner. This didn't bode well, considering that his Zaku 1 was quite close spec-wise. He gave the consoles a quick glance over once more, confirming that everything was in working order. Thinking on it, the mobile suits were meant for space warfare and colony use. He rather doubted that Zeon could carry out thorough gravity testing on their first production mobile suit on Earth. He was about to "jump" without a parachute in over 50 tons of steel sitting on what felt only slightly more high-tech than a car seat with harnesses. Now that he thought more on it, this was potentially sheer stupidity. He could only depend on Zeonic Engineering to keep himself safe.
"...3-8, Ensign Nash, launching."
A cold sweat formed as the Zaku 1 lumbered forwards then stepped off the hanger and gravity took the wheel. Within moments, rocket thrusters ignited, kicking up even more dust and smoke, but more importantly it slowed the fall substantially. It was a heavy landing that sent Zaku 1 skidding forward and carving a set of trenches into the ground, but it was a safe landing.
"....Aaaaand breath."Heidt finally allowed himself some air. Why did this seem so much more frightening than actual combat all of the sudden?
"This is 4-13, Smokie, launching!" Rhea says taking the first tentative steps of the Guncannon that looked like the mech's feet had fallen asleep in the past hour. Hitting the edge of the transport, she hops off of the ship with only a slight hit of the boosters. For what seems like five exhilarating minutes, but is soon cut short by gravity making it's presence known. She kicks in the thrusters to slow themselves down before hitting splat speed. The landing is fairly text book, though she has to wiggle the Guncannon hips to get her balance once again.
"Well, that was pretty good. Though I don't think the Russian Judge is going to be impressed by it... How are you doing up there Mack?" Rhea asks her copilot. "You got control of the arms up there, right?"
Fumio was the first one out of the hangar bay, his Guncannon falling legs first through the air. The ground closes quickly and Fumio opens the thrusters, violent jets of flame and air slowing the velocity into a landing just hard enough to jostle the young commander against his harness.
Fumio's breathe was knocked out of him and he took a moment to breathe. Absently, he pushed at a lever and the Guncannon straightened its stance, having bent its knees low to absorb the impact. Dust billowed around the shallow crater, trees broken and bent outward from his point of landing.
That wasn't so hard, but he suspected the Guncannon's powerful thrusters and suspension system had done all the work.
The rest of his squadron came soon after, falling and landing in twos and threes, and he couldn't help but wince with each impact. At times, it seemed the whole squadron was breaking apart. Then the dust settled and nothing yet seemed to be on fire.
Fumio let the breathe he did not know he was holding escape his lips and asked Callista in a private channel, nothing but sincere concern in his voice, "Are you okay, Ensign? I think I saw you do a backflip somersault while you were falling."
Then he scratched the nape of his neck, worried about what else he'd hear but he spoke in the squadron's channel anyway. "All callsigns, 1-1, status report. Break. 6-16, give us a sitrep. Over."
"Well, that was pretty good. Though I don't think the Russian Judge is going to be impressed by it... How are you doing up there Mack?" Rhea asks her copilot. "You got control of the arms up there, right?"
Corvos flicked on the suits comms suite as the rest of the systems hummed through automated fault tests – so far his dash board was sporting a lovely crowd of green lights. Other screens scrawled through data as the suit's sensors turned their electronic view of the landscape into something he could read.
ESM wasn't lighting up, so that was good, some minovsky particles which was less good. Still, hopefully it would keep anyone from picking up their radios for a little while he thought as he keyed into the net. "Welcome to the province formerly known as Florida now with 120 percent more topography thanks to the Zeon dropping part of the colony around here. We've been dropped in the central uplands so expect rolling hills, some hardwood forests, oh and giant limestone sinkholes and lakes along with massive desolate, devastated and likely water filled craters from debris impacts. Also light minovsky particle fields scattered about so don't expect radar to tell you everything."
With the situation revealed and the mobile suits having enough time to recover, Fumio took a breathe and spoke again into the squadron channel.
"Okay. So before we leave, we need... formations." Fumio said, then did a double take when he realized he had forgotten notepad where he had written his plan. His mind went blank for a few moments before he recovered, hashing something right there.
"... Formations. 6-16 and 2-15 take point. 0-0, 1-3, 2-7, 3-17 you guys are with me. 4-3 and 3-10, 2-5, 3-8 and 3-9 stay with 1-2 and hang back a bit. We'll be doing this just like our orders want us to, which means no engaging unless absolutely necessary. Keep it slow and steady, your sensors on, and, um, eyes open and stay in cover whenever possible. How copy?"
And when all was set, Fumio spoke into Corvos' channel.
_____"1-3, Zanny, launching." Havilland took a mighty step and jumped out the hangar bay, firing off thrusters as she vanished below sight. Around the same time, their WO blundered right to the edge of the deck, tottering back and forth as the suit automatically attempted to stabilize.
_____"Be advised, 1-7 overboard," Revelle said, in a tone so absent of emotion it was almost grating. "Clear LZ, scatter." Of course it'd be Callista, the same pilot that had blessed 7-STS with equal parts ineptitude in battle and great skill in acquisitions. It didn't keep their ex-CO from flooring the pedals and shoving the control levers forward, hydraulics whining as the Zanny leapt over the side, grasping Callista's cyclops under the shoulder and firewalling the throttle. They tumbled toward the ground and momentarily vanished behind a curtain of rocket exhaust and dust, a mighty thud echoing through the air.
_____"Zero and 1-7 have landed. Fuel state: moderate." Then, after a moment, she said, "Gravity's a bitch. Get it moving, team."
Callista sank into her seat, the adrenaline coursing through her veins still bringing her a familiar high like a drug with her heart beating in her ears. Her hands, shaky and twitchy, carelessly gripped her controls and lifted her Zaku up to its knees, the joints whining from the stress of lifting up a seventy ton chassis. Callista huffed and puffed, her feelings and expression morphing into equal parts reddened gratitude and blushed indignation as she faced her saviour.
"Gravity's a bitch." She echoed. There's a reason why she spent all her time in the colonies. Fuck gravity.
"1-7. Legs suffered a bit of stress damage but otherwise fine. Thanks for the save Zero."
_____After a few minutes they had gotten properly oriented toward the destination. The black-painted reconnaissance Zaku lead their advance, with the others scattered over a front half a kilometer in width. Their footfalls thundered and echoed into the night, the cloying heat made moisture bead inside lens housings and the cockpits became oppressively hot, even with the air conditioning blowing full blast. They were seven kilometers in the direction of the main objective when the terrain rapidly fell off to a massive crater that stretched out until the opposite edge had faded from the usable range of their night-vision systems. It plunged down at a steady angle, the the inside partly filled with water at the base, studded with what looked like remnants of concrete bunkers and fighting positions.
_____They'd have to see if anyone was left, and go through or avoid the place.
