I was starting to feel nervous about all the ships heading the same way, and the comment by the pilot of the expanding widow was still nagging at the back of my head. I had begun to glance at a couple cameras, cycling between them as I kept my main focus on the camera in front of the ship. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I realised I was focusing on three cameras. Watching them as if I was watching a single screen but managing to process all the information from the three. I quickly started focussing on those cameras as I cycled a few more until finally I was managing to process the information from all the outside cameras and was now monitoring every direction. That took the better part of the flight to the planet to achieve, and I was mentally patting myself on the back. I was also pleased that no one had taken another run at me since I had pulled away from the pack slightly.
I knew I was not ready for inside the ship and all the noise and disgusting things people did in private. So I touched the sensor suite, hoping that would be easier. Boy was I wrong! No sooner had I touched it than I was nearly overwhelmed and found myself flying 40 degrees starboard and had to correct the flight path. Luckily, I was still inside my flight corridor and didn't get any fines. But having corrected, it caused me to slide back into the path of the missile I had shifted to avoid. It slammed into a rear left side thruster and exploded, taking the thruster with it and exposing the engine room to vacuum.
I hissed, feeling thrusters activated and disengaged as I withered in pain. I could literally feel the pain of losing that thruster.
I quickly sealed off the engine room to keep from depressurising. I was about to start back tracking that missiles to find out what exactly had happened when I heard that annoying little piss ants’ voice on my radio.
[SGT Lerda: Expanding Widow Frigate to Terance Command. Reporting: Drop Carrier 204 has taken damage; it looks like the rear left thrusters are gone, and the engine room is exposed. I did observe the Drop Carrier 204 flying erratically before the explosion. Speculation: perhaps the Thruster was overloaded from stress due to the erratic flying. End of report.]
I was getting angry at this doaty bampot. I turned my attention to the data logs and started retracing the missile using the sensors and the cameras until I discovered it had been drop fired. I couldn't believe it, they had dropped the missile out an airlock and remote launched it. I compiled it all into a folder and was ready to send it to Terance command when a window appeared, interrupting my train of thought.
You have been manually fined four thousand credits for purposefully damaging your ship, endangering the mission and risking the lives of all personnel onboard.
You have been denied entry to the mission planet, return to the Carrier for repairs and reassignment.
“What the actually fuck!” I screamed before turning my attention to my radio so I could declare this was fubar!
[FLT Mackenzie: Drop Carrier 204 to Terrance Command. Reporting: missile impact to rear left thrus-]
I was cut off in the middle of me report by a loud screech over my radio, causing what felt like a headache, and it didn't let up until I turned the volume on the radio off. I was now pissed and fast approaching the atmosphere of the planet. My attention landed on Zeo sitting in her pilot seat playing some sort of game on her hud. A plan started forming in my head, and I pushed all the power into my thrusters, heading directly for the planet. I then compiled all the data, including my radio malfunctioning and my drop carrier's version of a black box, into an encrypted file and sent it to Zeo for her to review on her hud. It came with a simple message so only she would know the password. ‘The sand dances on a barren desert. The water sails over the ocean, the wind howls through the forest. The Silence of the Void remembers. But no matter where I roam, I still call…’ I smiled as I sent that to her.
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“I know you will get it,” I whispered to myself.
I suddenly shifted the drop carrier as I noticed the mission alert line and started skimming across it. I quickly opened the doors to release the drop-ships and turned on the alert system. Which began screaming to all pilots. ‘ALERT, Prepare for Deployment!’ while I was doing all this, I had moved my mechs to board a drop-ship. I thought about putting one on each, but I decided to split them between Ashley and Zeo, storing them inside as cargo. I then mentally punched the deployment button and waited until the drop-ships were outside before turning the drop carrier back towards the Carrier Terance as my deployment doors closed. I was watching all the oncoming ships and I even noticed twenty missiles headed towards me. I had no doubt they had all been drop launched as well. I had to dodge all that on my way back to the Carrier, and I couldn't help saying.
“Damn, looks like it's time for one more foray into the abyss, and I am feeling lucky today!”
*******
Zeo was enjoying a game app on her hud when a file pinged into her vision over the game, marked urgent and classified, it came with a message. The file even had a password to go with it. She quickly sat up in her chair and opened the message, about to read it, she was startled by an alert playing through the cockpit announcing deployment imminent.
“Shit, damn, hogtied larking space boonta!” she screamed even though she had no idea what the curse meant, but she had heard it on the Blossoming Terranova space station and had taken a liking to it.
She shifted her hud screen over to the left of her vision as she quickly took control of the Drop-ship, noticing she was not as close to the planet as she had expected to be. Fortunately, her mapping was informing her she was over the correct continent. She headed down towards it and plotted a course to her landing zone. Then she turned a bit of her attention to read the message that had popped up with the file. ‘Finish me to unlock: The sand dances on a barren desert. The water sails over the ocean, the wind howls through the forest. The Silence of the Void remembers. But no matter where I roam, I still call…’ she laughed and opened the encrypted file. A window overlaying the file appeared, and she mentally typed in ‘The Star Hawks Home’. The file unlocked and her hud was flooded with everything. The cameras, sensors, radio, and all the data logs from the most insignificant thing to a missile impacting the Drop Carrier. It even included the fine Kenna had received for that impact.
“What the fuck Is this?”
She went over it a few times and even nearly flew straight into the ground due to how distracted all of it had made her. She managed to pull up at the last moment and skim across the ground before rising slowly back into the air and turning towards the landing zone. Shortly after she had landed and began to power down the drop-ship as she performed her after flight checks and then turned to see her Squad Sergeant standing in the doorway looking at her. Even though she was a Flight Sergeant, he still technically outranked her, but only because she had to be placed into a squad while on the ground.
“What?” she asked as she turned her attention to the radio that was still powered on.
“You almost flew us into the ground, is there something I should know about?”
“Probably, but I need to contact Terance Command and inform them our Drop Carrier was attacked, because according to the data logs I just received from the pilot a missile was drop launched at the drop carrier, and then she was squelched to keep her from reporting it.”
“Is that so? Well, proper protocols would have it sent to this drop-ship so blow it up, and the problem is solved, right?”
Zeo paused as she was reaching for the radio and started to turn her head only to hear a bang and her vision turning black for a moment, then she was staring at the glass of a clone tank.
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