Mythril Aces (Re)Union: Real Robot RP - Federation Roleplay Thread

"I'm Lt. Graham Harris, nice to meet you. And I suppose I might as well listen for a while." He took the offered seat, as it had the best chance of taking his mind off current matters. Not a whole lot else he could do right now apart from moping. For a moment, his subconscious reminded him that he was talking to a superior, but the culture of ranks within the Aces hadn't been particularly strict so far.

The further an object orbited from its star, the less light it would receive - common knowledge, of course. Here, in the other ring of the Bodhi system, the light received was scarcely more than what was commonly called twilight. It was here that Bodhi's asteroid belt lay - clusters of meteors slowly drawn together, a fragile equilibrium unlikely to last more than a century from now.

A flash of blue, flickering in the crevasses of one of those frigid rocks, was the only outward sign of human presence. A small craft had worked its way in, and a few small, darting shapes drifted about the hidden structure buried inside. Drones, with welders - working on the damaged communications.

Click. "Drones are nearly done, command - comm buoy's systems reading green on our end. That's the last of them - we'll be pulling back shortly."

A handset was replaced, clicking in its holster on the wall of the cramped pod. Oh, perhaps a military ship could afford things like artificial gravity and dedicated bridges - but civilian ships tended to follow the same design philosophies that had gotten mankind into space to begin with. Tight spaces, uncomfortable darkness, and a greater focus on weight reduction than anything else. When money was on the line, it was amazing what could be declared superfluous.

"That's the last of them, isn't it?" Came a second voice, and the first had to suppress the urge to try and hit it. That was another thing these ships taught you - patience.

"Aye. Until the bastards raid another one, anyways. Though I doubt they'll have time..." And not a chance of them sticking around 'til then, anyways. They knew how to recognize when a situation was about to go tits-up.

"You think there's gonna be a fight soon?"

Sometimes he was entirely too observant. "Oh, yeah. You think there won't? All those ships gathering, getting their arrays together. They can't keep up with the raiders, so they'll try and hit fast - get an inner system link, something not so vulnerable to orbits and distance."

"Wonder why they can't catch the carriers. Couldn't they-"

"Listen - we just fix them after they're broke, yeah? Leave the carrier-hunting to the Aces, and do what every smart man does when a war comes around."

The small repairship pulled away, retros pushing it gently off the asteroid's surface in a cloud of icy dust. There was a silence. "What's that?"

"Keep your head down - and look for the nearest exit."

The much-diminished squadron of aces did not, technically, find themselves on a ship - although the difference between a starship and a station can sometimes be hard to tell. Samsara turned slowly below them, its scarred and cracked surface dimly lit in the eternal twilight this far from the sun.

They were waiting, for the moment - waiting for transport. The squadron had never, technically, been assigned a carrier for their usage - the circumstances of their formation and deployment not allowing for that many resources to be given to them. They had been using a Samsaran ship for transport, but that had burned with the station, and the one that had evacuated them hadn't been available.

And today was the day they would finally get one - at least, that was what the schedules said. In practice, there was no way of knowing.

Hurry up and wait - the eternal rallying call of militaries the world over.

At the moment the station's hanger was nearly empty, most of the other squadrons having joined the fleet gathering in orbit above Samsara. The only occupants were the Aces' frames - lined up on loading crawlers to be placed aboard whatever ship was provided for them. But no ships were here, the shimmering shield that kept the atmosphere in only showing the blackness of the void. A few engineers were standing around, smoking or talking as they waited to do their job - and, surprisingly, one person who looked entirely out of place in his officer's uniform. Rear Admiral Huangxia was standing near the loading area, speaking to an engineer.

"The last communication said they would be here in an hour and a half, sir-"

"Which was nearly three hours ago now, wasn't it? And you've been unable to catch them since then?"

"No sir. We think they turned off their ansible."

"God save us from colonists," the admiral muttered. "Keep the sensors up, but inform Requisitions that we might just need to find them another ship." The engineer saluted and sprinted off, and the admiral turned with a sigh. Catching sight of Becky, however, he straightened up. Couldn't look overworked in front of enlisteds, of course. "Ah, Lieutenant Quinn- Sorry, it's still 'private', isn't it? What brings you to the hanger?" Something was happening behind him as he spoke - a slight warping to the stars visible in the void, a movement...

One of the first things a veteran learned in this time was that every faction's flow drives looked different as they arrived. Centauri drives made a very elaborate, geometric shape, expanding outwards - while Federation drives tended to look like a number of spheres joining together to form a larger one from the outside in. This let more experienced ships prepare to engage new enemies if they recognized which faction would shortly be coming through.

But this looked like neither of those - it was far less efficient, more like a rip in space than anything else, the sign of a flow drive with entirely too much power to spare... And it was right outside the station.

A few of the engineers started to back away, one shouting a warning - before a ship hurled through the opening, approaching the station at high speed. The energy from the Flow being opened was enough to dim the lights for a moment, and Huangxia blinked. "Hm?" He turned just as the newcomer entered the hanger at speeds rather above the optimal.

The blast of wind and heat from the ship's reverse engines firing was like a gunshot, sending anyone not bracing themselves flat on the ground and wishing they'd brought earplugs. A Frame on one wall toppled over with a near-deafening crash, narrowly avoiding hitting a few stunned engineers.

When the cacophony of heat and wind died down, there was a ship in the hanger - no Federation carrier, however. It bore no marks of any faction at all, in fact, save a blue-and-white paintjob that seemed to have been done within the last day, if not hours. The design, too, was foreign - although if Becky had seen ships from the ISDTA faction before, she might recognize it as one of theirs; if so heavily modified that it was almost completely unique, covered in battle marks and signs of disrepair. A ramshackle, hodgepodge, custom-built ship... And there was only one possible origin for such a thing.

Pirates? Here?

Alarms were blaring all around, lights flashing as the hanger's engineers began picking themselves up from the floor. At least the fire-protection devices hadn't gone off... Huangxia stood up unsteadily, one hand pressed against his ear - which was ringing, but he was pretty sure it would be fine. "Ah," he said, hoarsely. "That would be, um. Your transport. Would you mind calling your flightmates over? There should be a phone in the... The chief engineers' office. I'll explain everything once they're here." He started towards the small carrier, which was extending a boarding tube towards the hanger's dock.

"I think need to go yell at someone."

edited 24th Nov '14 9:33:46 PM by Hydrall

Kara smiled. "Well Harris, get comfy and try not to fall asleep, okay?" She cross one leg over the other and propped up her head in her right hand in thought. "Now, where to begin." She tapped her chin. First mission? Daily life? What to do...

"I guess I should start when I got to Skallen. I had been bouncing around for a bit before being thrown there. Most of the time it was the same deal as with here, showing up to patch holes in numbers. Skallen was pretty much my first real assignment in a long time. So I got there and, it felt weird." She stopped and sighed. "I had done a good job of staying away from Midgard and a decent portion of Angelpunkt really, so coming even there brought up bad memories. I was really nervous, but I kept on keeping on because by that point, I was really in no position to turn back."

"But after a few days of getting settled, it became a lot easier. I still felt a lot of nerves, but I hid it better. Part of it was my crew. Most of them had been there a while, and made sure to take care of me so that I didn't freak out and get us all thrown out. But the other was the commander we had." Kara leaned back in her chair, "His name was Hobbes, good guy, great leader. He made juggling the needs of us, the colonists, and the mining companies look easier than it should. He had this presence about him, you know?"

"Also, he was really popular with the ladies." A slightly bitter note creeped into her voice, "Most of the ladies." Almost all of the ladies.

Angus returned shortly with a handful of paper napkins to mop up the mess. "Sorry again," he said coolly, and went to dispose of the sodden wad in his hand. Swinging by the vending machine again on the way back, this time actually reading the buttons before punching one, he slipped back into his seat.

"So, let's try this again," he said, making a little show of cracking the seal on his new drink and tentatively taking a sip. "I'm going to be a bit of a free agent when we're in the field, then?"

"Pass me one," Isra said as Angus arrived, only to see him wipe it into a wad and do a quick clean up.

After he'd finished, fairly quickly too, Isra nodded.

"Thanks," She said as she took a drink of her own coffee, "Though it's more that we're going to have to look at it as it goes depending on circumstance and terrain. It's less free deployment and more that you might be needed in two places at once or be shifted around depending on the circumstances of the mission. Think you can manage that?"

"As long as you don't mean the two places at once part literally, yeah. I'm flexible," Angus said. "You're basically describing my squad role from when I was posted out on Venus, anyway."

"Well," Isra said with a sigh and a slightly ironic sigh, "It was worth checking at least."

"Good to know though," She looked down at her datapad to scribble in some more notes only to look up immediately, "It looks like our Ship is in the Hanger. Should we head down?"

With that question she finished her coffee in one long gulp and set it down.

"And I'd just gotten comfy," Angus griped jokingly, rising from the flat, uncushioned metal seat. "Where are we headed, anyway?"

Lilith nodded, "I'm sort of amazed you went back in like that, though. After all that, the last thing I wanted to do was do the Federation's bidding." She shrugged, "So, what was it like on Skallen, then? It sounds like you were in a really boring job, not that our last one was any better, and I can't imagine it was very rewarding."

Becky was thrown to the ground at the sudden and violent entrance of the shuttle, rolling several times before leaping to her feet again. Her first instinct was to find her frame and use it to fend off the invaders, until the admiral declared them friendly. She gave him a smart salute and ran off to the chief's office without a word. Once there she grabbed the phone sans explanation and set it to use the station's public address speakers, since she had no idea where any of her flightmates might be at the moment.

"Attention, attention!" she shouted cheerfully. "By the order of Rear Admiral Huangxia, Commander Junayd and her ragtag band of misfits must come to the hanger i-mme-di-at-ely!"

— Christine Hepner —

Looking into it and getting hours flown are two different completely different things though.

Christine stretched after hearing the call over the intercom. Honestly, Quinn was the best match out of the rest of her squadmates, but Christine couldn't quite figure out how best to work with her. Rebecca had been eager to duel with the enemy ace earlier, but during the cavern mission had preferred to sit back and run support fire.

Though none of that mattered if Christine was going to have to babysit the commander during runs. The squad wasn't big enough for her own little wolf pack.

"I'm interested in our next assignment too."

"The Hanger," Isra said with a smirk, "Sounds like Quinn beat me to the punch."

With that, Isra headed down. Assuming M'bala and Hepner were in tow behind her.

edited 24th Nov '14 8:31:26 PM by Fauxlosophe

"I meant for our next assignment," Angus said, keeping pace.

"We're mobilizing; The Nirvanese are mobilizing a counter attack after some Samsaran forward force nearly killed the Maharani. They want us mobilized and prepared to reinforce the incoming attacking, as for where they are going to hit; your guess is as good as mine. There's a lot of potential strategic points for them to start a large attack at, which is why we need to be read to jump where have to at a moment's notice."

Once they arrived, she looked over the hanger.

"Excuse me," Isra said looking over the hangar, "Commander Haungxi?"

She turned to her commander.

"I was under the impression," Isra coughed with a sideways glance at Becky, "That our Carrier arrived. But I don't see any new Carriers here."

edited 24th Nov '14 8:47:50 PM by Fauxlosophe

"Uh, sir? I think I may have found it," Angus said, pointing at the hodgepodge monstrosity outside the magnetic barrier with a look of dawning dread on his face.

"The colours are wrong," Isra remarked firmly, "And it is an IDSTA design..."

She paused and looked it over, "It must salvage or its owners are on trial for Piracy. Did they have some sort of run in with our Carrier? I imagine repairs would be necessary in such a case."

She looked around for some sort of visual confirmation from the hangar crew or Haungxi... or anyone.

Her confidence as she spoke was audibly fading, "I am confident that it must be outside and under repairs. Certainly."

edited 24th Nov '14 8:53:10 PM by Fauxlosophe

"Man, and I thought Command neglected us on Skallen..." Angus muttered.

Becky grinned, enjoying Isra's confusion. She wondered if the commander would argue with the admiral himself about the carrier. She wandered over to Angus and reached up to grab at his shoulder, leaning off him like a piece of gym equipment.

"Hey, if the others don't show up soon we should just leave without them," she declared. "They're practically disobeying orders already, I said immediately! I said it very carefully so even the stupid one could make it out."

"They should be grateful then that you aren't their commander yet then," Isra smiled at the scene, "Though if it would get them down sooner, I'd see you named Admiral."

"Your humour aside," She paused for a moment with a sterner expression, "I'd still expect you to have the sense not to drag us down for early to see some scrap in the hanger while our ship is still in transit."

Kara sighed slightly. "Sometimes I wish I had backed out, but it's not like I grew up getting any real marketable skills. Dad made sure most of my mind was on the military, and besides," a slight frown grew on her face, "If I leave, they'll just find some other kid to take my place, who may or may not know what they're getting into. I'd rather keep on for as long as I can."

"But Skallen," she exclaimed, changing the subject. "My flight mostly did escorting duty for VI Ps, both in and out, and since the place is so busy, we usually were out on the field more often or not. Most of the time it was quiet, a few hit and runs here and there, but nothing too bad at first. Sometimes the companies made sure that only their guys covered them, others had us work with their men." She grimaced. "Those tended to be the most stressful. Imagine disgraced Knights, reject Aces, and full of themselves hotshot civvies all flying together verbally beating off every moment they can. It wasn't always like that, though it happened enough where I'm pretty sure it was ninety percent of the time. Though there was this one pilot-"

Kara stopped as a familiar voice rang over the PA. "Attention, attention! By the order of Rear Admiral Huangxia, Commander Junayd and her ragtag band of misfits must come to the hanger i-mme-di-at-ely!" Kara groaned and slid off the chair to the floor. I thought we had kids, but looks like we have some brats too. "I think we have to continue later. Lilith's best friend is calling us." She stood up and stretched. "Thanks for listening, but I don't think they'll let the new Lt Commander get away with skipping to do storytime. C'mon, let's get moving."

edited 25th Nov '14 12:00:13 AM by GIG

When Roland had returned to his quarters, he felt like he was going to vomit. So many people lost so quickly... dammit, this was not supposed to happen to us! They were supposed to be Aces, weren't they? Aces didn't get killed in stupid little skirmishes! It felt like just as he was starting to actually get somewhere, his bad luck caught up with him. He spent a while lying against the wall, glowering at the opposite side of the room.

The next 48 hours brought little, if any rest. Like Angus, the image of Arath's Frame slowly melting and bringing its occupant closer to an agonising death. Worse still, he knew that it wouldn't have happened if Arath hadn't been trying to protect him. He tried to justify it by telling himself that if it wasn't him, it would've been someone else. It rang hollow. Roland kept himself going with as much caffeine as he could get.

When the ship first arrived, Roland thought the station was under attack and began to draw his side-arm, but stopped as he heard Becky's less than professional call for the flight to assemble. Mumbling several curses under his breath, he trudged over to the hangar. Even the dark mood he was in didn't prevent him from double-taking as he saw the ramshackle metal beast outside the magnetic barrier. It took a moment for it to click, but when it did he couldn't stop himself from grimacing.

"Aw, hell no..." Roland said under his breath. He desperately wished that this was some sort of perverse practical joke on high command's part. True, the ships he had seen during his piracy days weren't any better, but at least they weren't being used for official business.

The alleged carrier's docking umbilical had connected already, airlocks hissing open to allow for transport aboard the craft. Currently it was merely the smaller of the ship's two docking tubes, meant more for personnel than cargo - a second one was extending still from the craft's front. Of course, the engineers were still attempting to lever Rain Maker from the hanger floor where it had collapsed during the 'landing', so there wouldn't be much cargo being loaded even if it had connected.

The rear-admiral stood at the airlock's entrance, staring down a large man advancing down the glass tubing, not taking a step towards their ship. As soon as they had approached to within earshot, he spoke up. "Three hours, captain Ganzo. Three hours late. Do you have any explanation for this?"

The booming voice that answered had a thick accent to it - Atlantic in origin, perhaps even Jamaican. "Weeell, maybe, if ye hadn't told your interdictors to keep out erryone, we could have avoided that problem, now couldn't we?" The captain was huge, a giant of a man in breadth and weight, with black dreadlocks that nearly reached his feet and skin that looked an odd, patchy mixture of dark and light in places. He tugged at his coat and sniffed, turning up his nose. "Not much of a welcome for us."

"That is because we are at war here," Huangxia replied, gritting his teeth. "It was my intention to have you arrived at a distance and coast into the station outside of the Flow."

"What? And have you cruisers blow us outta de sky because you accidentally neglected to tell them I was on your side? I deal with the Federation before, that sort o' accident happens more often than you might think."

"You could have killed someone!" He said, despairingly.

"Ah, but we didn't!" The captain seemed proud of that fact. "Was a solid landing, got to say. Me pilot's never led me wrong before. And more importantly, nobody but de hanger crew saw us arrive. You like t'do things military, bredda, and I can respect that," he said, in a tone that implied nothing of the sort, "but I don't think you want to be associated with lettin' known pirates in, do ye? You people ain't the only ones with eyes watchin', are they?"

Huangxia said nothing. The captain's grin widened, and he let out a bark of laughter. "Didn't consider that one, did ya? Oh, 'ave no fear, bredda," he said, laying a hand congenially on Huangxia's shoulder. "You've got pirates to do that sort of thinkin' for ye." Ganzo chuckled again, before removing his hand. "Now, where's our cargo? De people cargo, not the machines. Much more interested in the former. Tell them to come aboard - it's time to meet their new berths!"

"Want to bet? I say he gets himself shot in ten fucking minutes, the way he's carrying on. They're feds, has he lost his mind?"

The command bridge of the carrier was cramped and dark, with only a thin glass slit letting light in from the hanger outside. The rest of it was sealed beneath layers of armor, and its pilot hardly needed the light. A multitude of high-pitched whirrs and clicks were the only constant sound here. A thin, spindly limb stretched out and hit several switches in succession. The response came quick, in mechanical, filtered tones. "Have my doubts. Captain very charismatic when he... Needs to be. Federation needs us, anyhow."

"Guess so." The first voice - a girl's - sounded hardly convinced.

"No comment? Well. On bright side: Working with real mechs - instead of fakes. And amnesty, if we play our cards right."

"Brother thinks so, anyways. You agree with him?"

"No. But only chance. Got to take it."

The girl made a sound of discontent, standing up from her seat near the pilot's chair. "I'm heading back to the hanger - gotta make some space, I guess. Keep an eye on him, spider. I don't like this."

"You never do." As her footfalls receded, another whirring, clicking limb stretched out and tapped a screen.

On the docking umbilical the ship's doors opened, letting those outside enter.

Kara Cheslock slipped in a moment later. "Okay, I hear noises so-" She stopped and just sat and looked. Rain Maker had fallen to the floor, thankfully not anything major. Unlike Grand Sword. With all the mods and stuff I had jammed in over the years before it went, parts would have gone flying. And then she saw the carrier. She looked it over. And looked it over again. And again. And the tapped the side of her head to make sure her eye was working. And looked again.

"Well," she said after a long moment, "At least I've been in worse rides."

Graham walked in behind Kara, mentally readying himself for whatever mission had suddenly come up. He looked at the carrier docked in the hangar, and looked back at Kara as she seemed to be implying this would be their ride for the mission. "What the...I don't know what we're gonna be doing, but this rustbucket doesn't look like it would survive getting shot at. And it's gonna be carrying all our Frames and equipment?"

Kara chuckled at Graham's outburst. "Harris," she replied, smiling slightly, "You can worry about a lot of things about this craft. The outside might be ugly, who knows how well they can service our stuff in an emergency, for all we know the toilets might all be broken."

She stepped towards the ship, giving it another look. "But I wouldn't worry about it getting shot down so easily," she said, unconsciously tracing the scar running down her face. "Nothing in existence gets to looking like that without an incredibly strong will to live and a few tricks to survive." She suddenly turned and waved him forward. "C'mon, let's take a look inside. If we're lucky, they have just as strong a will to keep a somewhat clean place."