LSDF Val'ta, Launch Deck
To Menelik's side, My'ean was quickly donning some sort of pilot-suit. With her back to him, it began with a number of patches, sticky band-aid like things over her chest, another on her back. There was an awkward moment with a catheter and then a semi opaque rubber vest of some sort that looked like it was made of clingfilm. Next, she was stepping into the full suit like it were a pair of dungarees with legs: Each foot into the legging like lower half, down into the leg and then into the boots. Gripping the sides, she unrolled it over her body: next her arms into the arms of the suit, pulling it tight. The front hung open in a lower square flap with the breast-plate as she pulled another rubberish vest out of the locker. Fingers squeezing between fingers, she ensured a proper fit. Now, she brought that flap up, Ziploc sides closing as she locked the collar of the suit about the back of her neck: the front half carrying the front of the suit making a complete ring. Then, she pulled something out of the collar: stretching something as she set two halves like a neck brace but only along her jawline, left and right halves. Blocks like dominoes sat on her cheekbones, temples and the back of her neck. Next came a watch like part: fastening into the empty wrist bangles of the suit, fastening into extruded loops and locking into cavities. Finally, she as attaching a component resembling the back half of a human spine, then a flattened backpack with a hood... She eyed the rest: Survival gear entirely and shrugged. The suit gleamed as if polished in dark brown and jet black, gray polka-dot comic-tone over parts painting a wolf along each outer thigh and the face of one between her collar-bones. It made her look naked in places, thickened in others.
"Now then. Suited up?"
"Uhhh..." Was the Nepleslians reply, coupled with a constant stream of grunts and other sounds of frustration as he worked his way into the same type of suit as My'ean, the marine not used to having to wear skintight clothes like this. Still for the most part he managed it, copying her steps with almost admirable ease. Maybe admirable for a monkey, but anyone should've been able to do it just the same. The man looked himself over and his boyish face actually colored as he noticed just how... weird the damn thing was. It felt tight all over, and in some places it was like he wasn't wearing a damn thing. He idly pinched and tugged at various spots, shifting on his feet as he got used to the feel of it.
"As ready as I'll ever be, Sir."
"Comfortable?"
Menelik rolled his shoulders and neck before looking down his front. '
At least this ain't translucent', he figured even as he pinched a bit of suit just over his belly.
"As comfortable as I'm going to get on my first time wearing this thing."
My'ean nodded, laminated hand along the inner wall of the locker-room as she followed it out, moving down a set of metal steps, arriving on what resembled a Winter II. It lacked limbs: Shoulders bare, the upper pair of mandibles missing malshaping the chest, legs missing -- the whole thing on a metal slab behind it, like the imprint of a character in a chocolate bar.
She hit a few buttons, the front of the character sliding forward, out then down revealing what looked like the padded inside of a sleeping bag: Layers of small brick pillows along the inside of of some form fitting coffin, though the shape of the body was altered some. The fyunnen set her foot to the inside, hoisting herself up inside, slipping herself into the thing like a hole made for her body. Comfortable, locks snapped, securing her to its interior. Arms free, she motioned for him to come fill the space between her and the front.
"Alright, you next. Try to match the shape, okay?"
"... Can that thing even take a male Nepleslian?" He asked before he started to step in. Of course it could, she wouldn't be asking him if he couldn't get in. He followed after her, almost tripping and falling forward and busting his head on something before he got his footing and slipped- or rather, clumsily got his first foot in, then his second.
"I don't see why not. Male Lorath are smaller than Nepleslians but most of our soldiers are women and... Lorath women are usually taller than the men. And Fyunnen like me? We're almost always taller than Nepleslians, regardless of sex and we make up most of the fighting force of the military."
Menelik slipped in with ease that surprised himself, and he let out a breath. Thankfully he was in shape, or else this would've been a problem.
The machine seemed to adjust the moment he came into contact with it. Widening, becoming taller in places, shorter in others. The neck, wider, longer.. She guided his hands into cavities in the sides of the cockpit: Big ring shaped openings, fitting into what resembled like the arms of a chair over-sized either side of him, with the rest of the canopy still open and the hinge beneath him.
"Feel around a little. There should be controls" she said, shuffling into her own cavities and getting comfortable.
It took a bit, but the man got a hold of them and gave them a testing squeeze. For a minute he shifted around, moving and wriggling till everything felt just right for him.
It felt like an over-sized desktop mouse on either side. Little more than that
"Ready?"
"Affirmative." He said, his voice suddenly very serious and crisp. His moving had completely stopped and his breathing had become calm and measured. New as he was to piloting a Frame, he was a trained Marine and it would probably do to take this as seriously as he took combat.
She pulled something from behind him, her chest digging into his back in the tandem machine as a low whirring hummed: the canopy raising up. Formerly a boarding ladder, its interior had become cushion-like, matching the rest. Soon, it clamped shut, leaving the two in near darkness. Her breath against the back of his neck though the plastic: so much hotter than a Nepleslian's, given how Lorath had a much warmer body temperature. The description in his head was quite a bit less clinical, though.
"Alright, basic checks. Are you comfortable? Not too tight?"
Her chest -did- feel nice. And so did her breath. And the way the front of her entire body was pressed against the back of his - Menelik had to admit. But he pushed that aside, and focused on what was at hand. His head actually felt fine, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He stretched his neck, tilting his head to the left and right to get used to it all, and gave a curt nod.
"Everything's fine on my end. You have enough room back there, Sir?"
"Plenty enough. Do you have any stomach ache? Headache? Anything like that?"
"Negative." Another curt motion, this time him shaking his head. He really hoped they'd be able to hurry up and start, because if things stayed like this he wouldn't be able to ignore the shapely woman pressed against him.
"Right. What comes next is going to feel really weird. Take a deep breath and exhale, alright?"
Her arm shifted behind him, moving somewhere.. An audible creek of her suit and then a thud as she pulled on something.
The interior of the helmet started displaying some sort of prompt, lighting his face the same way a screen would. Text moving in both Lorath and Nepleslian: One above the other moving at the same speed, apparently saying the same thing. It was listing off systems, doing some sort of basic hardware check. Lots of progress-bars filling, arranged in six clustered points about a simple outline of the frame, the interior of the outline filling from the top as if filled with water indicating the progress.
She then pulled another handle, on the opposite side.
A bright white flooded Mene's vision: hurting for just the briefest of moments. Then the strangest thing: A sense of nostalgia. Then deja-vu. Then as if he'd laughed at a joke and had forgotten it. Then sadness. And then a sudden awareness of the shape of her body behind him, making him uncomfortable. The sound of her breathing. Her beating heart, as his senses became more sensitive.
Finally, the white came back up, this time filled with whatever was outside of the cockpit. This wasn't the display though. It felt like his own vision. Blinking, it vanished. Turning his eyes, he saw through a very three dimensional hanger. Not the place they'd boarded. They were moving on some sort of elevator: catwalks passing them by. The faint sense in his gut of motion. Wherever they were, it was huge, all scaled not for people but for frames. Out beyond the front was an opening, a long runway of metal and then endless stars, as if he were looking into the night's sky. It went on forever.
"You alright in there?" she chuckled.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out. In, and out. He steadied himself as he processed everything. This wasn't the first time he'd used something that interfaced with his mind directly, he'd had a brain spider implanted in him when he enlisted, not to mention that the PAs he had trained on used similar systems for control. The emotions and feelings that had temporarily drowned his brain in them had to be pushed out and fast, his self control forcing them aside so he could FOCUS on the stimuli being fed to him. More breathing, in and out, slowly becoming normal and controlled as he kept his eyes closed.
"Peachy, Sir."
"Its a little different than you're used to, huh?" she eyed his bio-readouts in her own vision. "Don't fight it, the system's mapping you. Just let it happen: it'll be over in a minute."
"Affirmative." Menelik continued, his voice sounding not all the way there. He relaxed and stopped trying to force things down and around, just letting whatever happened happen.
"I went over your flightrep. You're used to neural setups, right?"
"The Power Armor's I'm used to piloting use them. But nothing like this." He said with a breath as his eyes opened and he started to take in everything around him.
"Like I said, this is different. A power-armor just knows where your nerves say your limbs should be and you get feelings that trigger set actions, the same as pushing a button. This is... Well. Its more like riding a horse."
"That'd be reassuring if I've ever ridden or even seen one of those before." Menelik responded wryly before he took another breath. As uncharacteristically sarcastic as he was being, talking with My`ean really helped. "Okay, I think I've got it."
"Well, you've got a brain. Actually... Your brain's like two major parts. You've got the part of you that has all your instinctive actions, anything automatic like walking or catching a ball or once you get good, using a gun -- that's your cerebellum. Then you've got the part that holds all your observations about the world, how you feel about them and who you are, the cerebrum which you use to make decisions. Follow so far?"
A nod from him. "I think."
"Well in power-armor, you're still doing the job of the cerebellum. You're aiming. You're running. And you can only do those things if you keep your cool, right? You panic and your aim goes to shit, you get me?"
"Right, which is why you have to keep yourself calm and focused in combat."
"Well, horse-riders, specifically those of native populations who'd ridden their entire lives and hunted? Even if they lost their shit, the horse would know the rider wanted to get somewhere. They sensed the rider's intensity and they understood the importance of the situation and how serious it was. The frame becomes your cerebellum."
He thought about that. "Okay, I've got it." With a smile he thought about going forward, about the frame taking a single step to its front!
Nothing happened.
"Ah, ah, ah. I'm still in charge. I need you to understand all this before I can hand off control, because the consequences are really severe. See.. When you want to take that first step" -- how did she know? "The frame works out the method you visualized and then asks the distance, lots of situational stuff and works out the best way to take the step, balancing for you. Now imagine you're in combat. You're trying to shoot someone down at insane speed. You can't keep up. So your thoughts become more abstract. Something like say... Kill identified targets, emphasizing those in my attention. And it works out all the telemetry and leading and ballistics on its own. But you still miss. So you get more elaborate; aim where you think my enemy is going to be and shoot there when they should pass through it with my left cannon and try to herd them into that place with my missiles, even if they miss. See how complex this can be? You can do some pretty ace-pilot tier stuff without a lot of technical ability. But having more technical skill means you make better decisions."
Menelik actually seemed to be pouting about the lecture, but didn't say anything as he digested it and let it sink in. "Then by all means make sure I get everything I need, Sir. I want to be able to make the best decisions all the time."
As if she felt his boredom, she pressed more of herself into his back.
"Alright then. Aaand.. You have control."
Menelik's vision filled with HUD elements. Thinking about even looking at any of them instantly told his mind whatever looking at them would have. They were more like placements or anchor points, really. The frame also felt... Quite heavy but at the same time, like it had real muscle -- the same way his own body did but on an entirely different scale.
"... Thank you, Sir." Mene responded before he could ask her -why- she seemed intent on pressing so much of herself against his body. He didn't seem to care, because now he actually had control over the frame. With a simple decision to go slow, he decided to just walk forward. No thinking hard about it, no focusing on it, just walking forward as if he were going for a jog.
It happened. No drama. No hassle. A step. And then another. And another. And then it stopped as he would have done, to consider his accomplishment exactly as he would.
"Oh. I find it gives male students an incentive" she chuckled. "I can't hear your thoughts, but I can make a pretty good guess with what I've got to work with. Not bad, by the way."
Dammit, that wasn't fair. How was he supposed to be able to get anything done if My`ean was flirting whim him and was trying to get under his skin like that? His complaints were quashed though, simply because he was overjoyed with how easy it was to use this machine. IT wasn't exactly like using a PA, but for all intents and purposes the basics were similar enough. Without another thought he kept walking, soon speeding up into a decently paced jog.
"Simple." she grinned ear to ear: "You ask me any questions you have. Otherwise, you follow my instructions. Oh before we go any further... You ever heard of the 'call of the void'? Its that feeling you get when you stand at a high place and you think about how easy it would be to jump or push someone, or when crossing an intersection, you think about walking into traffic?"
The frame soon sensing the desire for more speed set both feet flat and was rolling over the ground like an ice-skater: It had stepped in and found a better way to do what he'd wanted.
That wasn't quite what he had wanted to do with the machine, but he'd take it as he put it through its paces. Something in his gut told him that any firmer and he would have dented the deck. By wondering why, it had told him the reason for its decision as if were his own instinct. Once he got up to a good clip the marine tried to see just how fast it could come to a halt, trying to brake and come to a stop as quickly as possible without actually hurting himself or My`ean in the rear of the machine.
"Maybe! I didn't know that feeling had anything like a real name, I thought it was just a weird feeling that people got sometimes like deja vu or jamais vu."
"The speed's limited on deck, stupid." the thing felt not sluggish but... Nothing close to what it was capable of. "Get on the..." she paused, feeling him already moving, then stopping in place, ready. "...catapult."
"I'm just getting a feel for it, okay sir?" He almost tried to look back and give my`ean a boyish grin, but things were so tight it was probably futile. He still grinned, and started to move the machine onto the Catapult with confident steps. He has been getting a feel for it, and now he wanted to see what it could really do: flight had never been his strong suit in training and they might have never done much training for space combat, but he still wanted to let this frame stretch its legs out and give him a show.
Even in the confined space, something strange happened to his vision: as if she were "in the room" with him, not just in the frame: a feeling as if she could see, and what her expression was. Not seeing it, but all the feelings that went with it. The interior of the two cavities his has sat in were depicted... Not them as such, but the hand controls, his own arms and the sliding rail they were mounted to: The rest as if he were exposed to the deck and space itself.
Each control was like a massive desktop mouse but it wrapped under, just like a flight throttle. Thumbstick. Throttle triggers for the index and middle. Some toggles. Two hat-switches above the thumbstick. And then what resembled a small segment of a keyboard out in-front: He could reach them if he released his fingers from the control.
"These are your manuals. Anything that shouldn't be controlled instinctively. Master-Arm, for your weapons, some power control, communications, engine over-rides, a few special functions and self-destruct... And manual backups if the neural gear should fail for whatever reason. Personally, I find they're good... What's the word? If I'm visualizing an action and I need more control over it than the system normally lets me, I find moving these gives me a greater -"
"-Precision," Menelik interrupted.
"Exactly. Its not even like they do anything related to my task: Its entirely psychological. But the system is psychological. So it counts. You'll also note that in some cases, passion translates into a kind of ... Like a priority. The more you feel about an action, the greater priority the action has and the more CPU power and energy from the powerplant gets regulated into that action. Same as survival instincts work."
"So its less like piloting a complex machine, and more like... piloting a more intuitive PA?" He asked, reaching his hands forward to feel for the keyboard before getting a grip on the controls, feeling fingers and thumbs over each individual knob and button.
"No: It reads your intention. A PA only reads what your muscles are trying to do. This is asking what abstract outcome you're looking for and usually it can find a better way to do it than you can naturally. But you hook into that decision making process if you choose to. Think... In a power-armor, even as an experienced golfer you could spend hours trying to put. In a Winter II, you'll male a hole in one probably in your first attempt provided you know what a hole in one is and that you want it."
"So whereas I spent days figuring out how to pick up an egg without crushing it in my Hostile, I could do it here with no problem?"
"You could even forget about the egg if you wanted to. Its good if you're trying to move people. Up close though, you still need to understand how CQC works, some swordsmanship. Its ideas about the correct way to do something can become a bit predictable unless you step in and make a deliberate consideration."
"Hrn... We aren't too big on the swords or getting up close in Nepleslia. I can use a knife, sure, but that's just about it."
"Right, but this thing has gravity manipulation. You can pull anyone up close really easily if you want to: Its like wrangling, if you're close enough. But if they have it too, its like a tug of war. Only with engines and guns, at fractions of the speed of light."
He mused on that, hrming. That did sound like the push/pull system, but a bit different. Honestly, Mene didn't think he'd ever get into a fight where he'd have to get up close and actually be unable to use any kind of gun to get out of it. After all, Melee combat was dead, or so his instructors had said. "Sounds wasteful."
"Not really. Lorath doctrine says only armor which sits between you and who's shooting at you is effective. In this way, we can turn anyone or anything into armor. Try to imagine a hostage situation around a quarter of times the speed of light, where everybody has weapons that can hit at those speeds. It makes a massive difference when things go FUBAR."
"I... don't think I can even keep up with those speeds."
"Well yeah, you're trained for boarding and terrestrial ops. Its like... On some level, you're not aiming yourself but giving the computer averages to compute: that's true of any modern starfighter. But your judgement about where the shots go and your orientation is incredibly important. The difference here is the pilot has less manual work to do and is the decision maker, same as you are in your own body. Anyway, are you going to hug the catapult all day?"
Menelik paused his thinking and blinked, realizing for a second just how snugly up against him My`ean's uh... padding was. '
Sure let's go with that', he figured, before willing the catapult to launch her, him, and the machine!
"Nope, that's the keys. Some things are all buttons, so you can't do them by accident."
Now he felt like an idiot, his face reddened as he shifting a hand forward to put in the command to launch. If he could find it. He tried to do it by instinct actually, figuring that the machine would fill in the gaps of how to launch subconsciously through its connection to his mind.
His fingers knew where to go. Spooky.
Upon depression, nothing happened. But then, his fingers moved on their own, to the left, thumping something hard.
The sense of acceleration was incredible leaving his stomach behind him, a flash of white behind him as the catapult disappeared. Markers resembling the child's game of jacks: three dimensional + shapes appeared equidistantly, painting space as some cubic thing, their movement communicating the motion the nights sky in all directions couldn't given it was so far away with no parallax to clue him in. The markers rushed by his head, smaller ones between larger ones that marked point of stellar mass: the ship behind having larger crosses.
What did size of those crosses have to do with anything?
Wondering why even briefly, the system told him it had something to do with how 'slippery' space was and how good his 'grip'
on space was, how easily he could accelerate through it and that the further from a heavy object like a ship, rock, planet or star they were, the faster their movements could become. Similarly, because bigger ones where near 'stuff', it was almost like a kind of super-long-range radar, telling him where objects were and what their gravitational footprint was: If it had changed recently, the markers changed color -- those which changed the fastest being artificial -- something to do with probabilities but he didn't need to know that: He knew enough to use it, and some how the frame knew that was all he wanted to know.
And this wasn't just his forward vision, but he felt their presence in all directions: 360 x 360.
"Nice view, huh?" she smiled.
"I hope you're looking out there and not at my butt or something, Sir." He chided her in a joking tone as he started to smile again. He
liked this, the sense of flying through space. He had almost never gotten to do it during training and the truth of the matter was that Mene had tried to become a starfighter pilot before he settled on Marine, something about him being too big to be a pilot and not being officer material. Before he actually paid attention to the controls Mene closed his eyes and just enjoyed the simulated sensation of zero gravity for a few seconds. When he opened them again he was ready to actually pilot the frame, mind taking in and making sense of the data fed to him: the dips in space-time from the footprints of various objects, the vastness of space itself which for the first time felt comprehensible in his life. He even listened and could almost hear the hum of the stars, the radio waves emitted by them and planets like moon song: how long they took to reach him and listening for patterns, he could see in his mind's eye what was like a kaleidoscope of complex particle relationships he couldn't quite wrap his head around, but he could appreciate the representations of the patterns he searched for: almost like how different people had different smells: he recognized the feeling of the carrier behind him. Of another frame in the distance. Of the stars in the further beyond of the great night that swallowed them up. And the deliberate fog of war, telling him how long all of it took to reach him: making it clear what he knew and what he didn't know.
. On some level the Nepleslian knew that this wasn't an actual thing, that the simulated data was being filtered to him by the machine he rode into a format his limited senses could understand. In a way, he didn't have to understand: Just feel. And it was never too much.
"This is a nice view, though."
"Understatement of the century. A lot of people choke up at this point. Either panic attacks, confusion or they tell me the synesthesia is like tripping balls."
"You ever think about giving them a warning?" He offered, before he shook his head and thought about how to put the motions of flight into a form of mental thought he could do. It wasn't like walking or moving on the ground, which he had a very good frame of reference for. He shook his head again and actually laughed at himself when he considered that he was overthinking it.
"That's nothing. Try this."
There was a sense of disembodiment. It took Mene a moment to realize he was looking at the frame in third person, from the outside. The subtle motion of joints and muscle, as if it breathed like looking in the mirror. Motions of its limbs to try and match that mirror image in his mind identically. Then he did the same with the carrier, which felt like some sort of whale or massive fish, but he felt it clearly not to be himself.
"This is actually..." He had a thought and tried to make it minimize the image of the Winter in the bottom right corner of his field of vision while filling the rest of his view with the 'normal' view. He then hummed to himself and took the image of the carrier and moved it to the bottom center. This he could use, and it felt right to him. It wasn't quite like the computer systems in his Hostile: Hell, it was better, less clunky and more flexible and he loved it.
The image did exactly that, first person returning with the image blended like a cloud where he'd expected to find it. Thinking about it, it was faded over his own vision. A flight of fancy caught him, doing the same with the frame in the distance: Like looking down a rifle scope but without losing his own wider vision. Feeling which engines were working on it, what they were doing, its load out, its inertia and emissions.
"This is great! By the Creator, is this what I was missing by being rejected from pilot school for being too big?"
"No, this is very Lorath. Its brand new. This doesn't count as conventional piloting: Its its own discipline, really. I'm... Nearly fifty now and I've been piloting since I was about eight years old. A lot of what I know about piloting is useful here but this is not piloting. Its more like riding."
"... Wait what."
"Mmmm. My folks were teachers. Lead a flight school. So I got lessons when I was really young."
"I mean the 50 years old part. You look to be barely a few years older than I am." He said, revealing just how little he knew about the Lorath.
"We age about half the speed you do and last twice as long. I'm old enough to be your mother. Wild, right?"
"You're older than my mother."
"Did she love you?" My'ean pressed her front into his back again. Her meaning was not platonic.
He actually seemed shocked that My`ean would imply such a thing. Either meanings of it, really.
"Well, depends on how you mean! If you want to know if she loved me or not like a-"
"Well, my father taught me carnal stuff. Same as most orthodox families. Modern and reform, not so much. Did your mother?"
"Oh. Oh. OH." He paused, feeling uncomfortable about just... how weird the Lorath were compared to his people.He was off balance and just a bit disturbed by things. Then again, he had been told that '
The Lorath were alien, from a different culture.' This was just one of those examples.
"No, not at all! I don't want to cause a problem, but Nepleslians don't do that kind of stuff between family members."
"You're the fourth Nepleslian to tell me that. So how do you know what you're doing when you finally meet someone you like?"
His face turned red. He looked very intently at everything in space.
But everything in space didn't have an answer for him.
"I've watched... Videos. And read books. But I mostly plan on winging it."
"You've never...? So you're a cherry, then?"
She could feel the frame squirming. His feelings were bleeding over.
Nopenopenope "NOPE." He said forcefully and then tried to go forward, trying to see just how fast the Winter II could go. Well, there's My`ean's answer.
Each of the clamshell like pods behind it opened up like the wings on a bird's back: Four wings total, each with feather like fingers: Pure power screaming from the rowed vent like interiors and the matching slits down the backs of the frame's entire legs: a smoke-like glowing, oozing behind in a wake like the rear of a bubble: Thrust gliding through its shaped pathways like blurred veins and arteries or blood through an invisible river: The wake of plasma itself becoming some sort of field that acted as an antennae for other equipment inside the frame: forming long wing like protrusions swept tight rear and delta.
At this point, the plasma wasn't for acceleration but to boost some strange field that altered the shape of space: Like a vacuum of spacetime in front of the craft, a nested pocket wrapped about them and a compression wave behind them just like the interior of a ram jet engine or the aerodynamic lift of a wing. Within seconds, they had a fraction of the speed of light itself. It felt strangely clinical: Zero sense of acceleration from the act itself (it would have crushed him) but instead, what the frame chose for him to feel - almost like a roller coaster or a fast car.
As he felt that rush of acceleration and raw power the Winter II was kicking out, Menelik had to slow down and take a breath to get stock of himself before he rammed into something. Not that he could ram into something in a simulation, but still. Even thinking about it, the frame turned 180, drifting in reverse, plasma wake inverted like the many tails of some kitsune fox: watching space rush from behind him, falling into the middle of his vision: not landmarks, but space itself as the markers depicted it. And then, a slight skip to the left: a massive stellar object, a rock bigger than New Kyoto rushing by his peripheral. The frame knew not to hit it and made sure he didn't by a wide margin. Within seconds, it was a tiny blip in his vision, then it vanished again.
Shaking his head he took a breath: He could slow down and change direction faster than that, couldn't he? He needed more than just turning around and accelerating in the opposite direction. What if someone was shooting at him, or he had missiles following him?
His vision shuddered. It wasn't thrust but the field again, like fingers reaching into space. He came to an instant switch in velocity, but his perception of spacetime was shifted by the acceleration making it feel like he'd hit a bungee-cord and had been flung the other way, lensing light around him in what felt like it could have been forever: All inside that instant. All given to him by the frame, artificial memory to make him understand the maneuver he just made so he wasn't disoriented by it.
Okay, Menelik had to stop, letting the Winter II coast as he got stock of himself and wrapped his mind around what it- what he had just done. His breath stayed calm, now that he had shaken off what My`ean had earlier said, and he was back to being able to focus on the flight.
"So... I don't need to just accelerate in directions in order to change my heading, do I? I can use that gravimetric field, like on a Hostile but way better, to change my direction instantly without worrying too much about inertia."
"You have different concerns, Mene. The shape of space. Its slipperiness. How stretched it is. Its like the incline of a hill. The grip of a floor. How much affordance you have. How wet or solid the ground is. Texture. Hardness. Stuff like that."
"So I can't do that too close to anything with enough mass, like a planet?"
"The closer you get to an object of high mass, the harder it gets. You're fastest on the rim of a solar system or deep space and slowest near a star, same as any other distortion based technology."
"So its like an FTL drive. Got it." He seemed to have picked up on that, at least, fairly quickly.
"Yeah, but not anywhere near as intensely -- its more your acceleration this time, rather than your top speed. The difference between you and a PA is you know the shape of space because you have fighter-grade avionics on board, not a hollow helmet's worth: You know the lay of the land. They don't. You can use it to your natural advantage. Things like the most efficient orbital burns or how to loop a shot around a pair of planets."
"I'm getting it." Mene admitted, and smiled at My`ean. He was back to being calm and collected now. "And for your information, I
am a virgin. For now. I'm just shy." He looked down at the controls of his machine.
"Well, you're a man. The fact you're chaste and a foreigner is ... Actually kind of refreshing, I'm honest. I don't think boasting sexual conquests is particularly becoming of a man. You had something else you wanted to say? I can feel it."
"The only woman I want to be inside is right here. Well, women, plural. I'm not particularly interested in becoming a skirt chaser like that damn Akemi, if you catch my meaning."
"You know he's a woman, right? I've seen him before. Dr. Kalopsia's had a close encounter with him and I basically ended up being her shoulder to cry on."
"Oh by the son." He let out a sigh. " Don't tell me that she hates foreign men because of that idiot?"
"Oh no, just cats. Dr. Kalopsia LOOOVES foreign men. She's one of those fetishists. You ever heard of them?"
"But. Wha. You just told me that she-" Menelik seemed at a lost, absolutely confused by this information combined with what My'ean had earlier told him of Dr. Kalopsia.
"Oh, she hates them. But its the same way someone who gets hanky panky with the canine division of their household can either be really friendly or really frightened of dogs. She sees all foreign men as animals but that's also why she likes them."
"... I'm not an animal."
"Oh, I know that. See, she has a giant brain but she also never has sex. So she spends all her time thinking about it. I think she's thought about it so much that she has some really unrealistic expectations."
"Wait is that what you're doing? Trying to set me up with her so she'll chill out or something?" He asked, incredulous. He hadn't even met the woman!
"No. Let me explain. She has this really messed up condition: You know what aspectation is, right? Well, one of her aspectations makes her feel hostile when she feels excited, ostensibly as
a breeding response to select the most dangerous and therefor most successfully survivable mate: " she said, miming the doctor's odd way of speaking. "Sort of like picking a fight and only going with someone who can kick your ass because they're better genetically than you are.. And the other means she gets excited faster, more than she would naturally because its a fundamental component of the animal's social hierarchy, sex instead of violence. Its not her fault though: she didn't pick the second: Contaminated sample or something, she says. Anyway, the result is if she thinks you're even thinking of her sexually and she's not done it intentionally to manipulate you, she'll act like she hates you because on an instinctive level she's a masochist but on an emotional level she's a sadist and she wants any excuse to be given carte blanche to fuck you up for life in a way only a psychologist or a surgeon can."
"..." He paused. "And Akemi broke through that?" He asked, shocked as he started to once again put the Winter through its paces, seeing how agile he could get it to go.
"No, she hates cats. I don't mean nekovalkyjra either: Just cats. Its kind of a phobia or something, I think. She never went into the specifics."
"Maybe she's allergic? And what's this aspectation thing anyway? I've noticed that some Lorath have, well, weird animal parts."
"No, more like a pathological fear, the same way mode rodents do. Some Lorath of a particular caste can take on animal DNA. The percentage is super tiny in their own DNA and the gene expression even smaller. Its mainly part of some shamanistic thing. Originally some survival behavior, taking characteristics from other animals to kind of cheat evolution. They make amazing trainers. Some have it more than others. But they're only supposed to have one, not two."
"And that's the problem with Ms. Kalopsia?" He asked, before shaking his head. "Well I suppose that no matter what I do when I meet her, she'll likely end up hating a foreigner like me, so it can't be helped."
"What, because she has some
tsundere disease?" My'ean tried not to laugh. "Look on the bright side: Maybe she'll hate you because she hates you, not because you give her butterflies. Honestly, she's a lost cause. I can't stand working for her. Don't try to fix her either: She has a double masters in psychology to outwit you with and enough experience as a surgeon to cut out whatever part of you offends her, whether its your brain or your dick. It wouldn't be the first time. Probably."
My'ean stretched, pulling her arms out of her alcoves and setting them loosely about Mene. Unexpectedly, it was purely platonic. In Nepleslian it had a very "bro-ish" feel to it mixed with that big sister vibe again.
"Just means I should avoid getting injured or sick while I'm on the Val'ta." He said back to her, mood lightened. "Besides, there are better Lorath women to spend my time with."
"Oh? I guess I get to play wingman while being your wingman then?"
"As if- You're on that list, Sir." he said as he tried to flip the WInter end on end so it was upside down and facing backwards from its previous heading before accelerating full force in the direction it was now facing. "But I still want to shop around and not just, well, throw away my virginity to the first woman who grinds her breasts against my back."
"Oh, about that: You're little brother material in my eyes. Fooling about is fine if some woman breaks your delicate heart and you need comfort, but a relationship is absolute no-no territory."
"Who said anything about my heart being delicate?"
"I did."
"I'm not one of your dainty Lorath Men." He seemed mock indignant.
"Nepleslian men and Lorath men are pretty similar, really. I'd say Nepleslian men are more emotional, if I had to think about it."
"But in honesty, I was joking about that part. I'd prefer not to have the Captain thinking that I want to be assigned as a Frame Pilot just 'cause I'm your boyfriend or something."
"You're not my type and Porrim's probably the only one on-board who knows what my type is: Your valor is safe. Virginity not so much."
"Besides, telling me that I'm like a little brother just makes it weird."
"If anything, it makes it less weird."
"For you, maybe. Anyway, I get the feeling that I'm not... quite the type of guy that Lorath Women are interested in."
"Depends, really. There's lots of 'types' that we like."
Menelik groaned, already knowing where this was going. "I'm just the type for L'manel, aren't I? That'd be my luck, and that'd totally make Akemi never leave me alone."
"Well, Akemi's a prick. I wouldn't mind going a few rounds with him but when he's always so aggressive...? I think the cultural equivalent would be feeling emasculated. Defemminated? When he's aggressive... Its a bit gay, like I'm being pursued by another woman. Not really my sort of thing."
"I think he's just a vaguely molest-ey prick. By my standards." The nepleslian paused and then cursed. "Shit even when he isn't around conversation is about him. Quick, Change the subject, change the subject!"
"I once broke a pair of chopsticks using nothing but my abs" she audibly grinned in his ear.
Wherever he went meatheads were meatheads. The culture didn't matter.
Mene sighed and hung his head. "I think that Aran'ya is cute. A shame she seems to actually like Akemi."
"Not my area of expertise."
"Well, not that it matters. I don't have time for a relationship, I need to focus on my career." Yes, that was a good way to avoid talking about this kind of thing. He slowly made another looping turn.
"I think I've got the handle on piloting a Frame, My`ean. It's not really that hard."
"The basics aren't, no. The more complicated stuff is though. For one, you can switch between distortion field and regular engines. In some situations, you might want one over the other. Then there's also positron injector, analogue apogee, sling shotting, wrangling..." she chuckled quietly. "See, distortion is in some circles, illegal. Then there's the fact that it can be a big give-away on gravity sensors which have a better response-time than optics do so if you think you'll be sniped, step down into conventionals. Third, by mixing and matching the two, you can confuse and misdirect your opponent. And fourth... Distortion's top speed is hugely limited if you travel through anything other than a vacuum and in some situations, its acceleration is worse than that of conventionals because of mas-lock. Still not very hard?" she fought the urge to flick the back of his head. Not that she'd be able to reach.
"Well, it won't be hard once I've had some practice using it." Well... He wasn't wrong.
"The reason we use gear like this is because for every hundred Yamataian soldiers and every seventy Nepleslian soldiers, there's only one Lorath. Its not that the physical logistics of our military are that much smaller so much as we prefer either diplomacy or asymmetrical warfare and our requirements of a soldier are a bit higher so we make up for bulk in excellence."
Mene actually seemed to frown. "Yeah... I'm kinda expendable compared to a Lorath soldier. There's tons of Marines who can use a Hostile. I suppose on the upside, I'm more valuable than a cat?"
"At least 20% more."
That rewarded My'ean with another sigh. "Well, I've got a lot to learn, so let's get back to the training, okay?"
"I want to see you execute a landing, with the arrestor on the deck."
"That shouldn't be that hard." He said and turned the Winter II. He slowed his acceleration, giving a few bursts of backwards thrust to slow his closure rate as he started to line himself up with the Carrier.
"Drop out of distortion... That's it... Close up the wings. Good... Legs down... You're going to hit the deck hard: The legs actually have two knees, like a dog's legs. But the second shin actually folds up into the first with beefy shock-absorbers."
Mene slowed himself down, following My'eans instructions but more simply feeling the Frame and his movements as he guided it in nice and slowly.
"See, the idea is the Winter II can make really tight landings. The theory goes when a carrier wants to jump out you don't have to mess about with slowing down as much. Similarly, same goes if you're doing popshots over terrain and you need to expose yourself as little as you can. Really hug the ground, you know?"
A plume of blue tickled from the frame's legs, slowing the descent some.
"Like you're hugging me?" The Nepleslian Marine-turned-pilot said as he gently put more acceleration in from the leg thrusters to ease his descent.
"Har har" she said, giving him a firm squeeze. "You're feathering this: You need to go down harder. Faster. Remember, like half the mass of this thing is legs. Line the hook up with the tether: It'll stop you."
With the apparent gentlest of thumps as the Winter II clumped down onto the landing deck, and Mene let out a breath he'd been holding.
Tutting, grumbling.
"Well, its not bad considering its your first landing. I mean, its tidy, but its still very civilian. You hit the ground at 0.6G of acceleration. A combat-landing is around 5G or so."
"Well, I don't want to damage the Frame and have one of the mechanics working on it get mad at me for putting a scratch on their machine and throwing heavy wrenches at me, like I've heard Iroma mechanics do."
"...Most of the joints repair themselves between sorties: Fixing one is like doing surgery, you just remove organs the the rest takes care of itself... You also missed the arrestor hook."
"I did. That's bad, right?"
"Well, your entry speed was about 60 kph. Your ideal entry-speed is closer to 350kph."
"So I need to be faster and less scared of hurting the Frame?"
"Much. There's also a subspace catch-arm. Its like a field that instantly decelerates you. You can be doing anything up to around three hundred meters a second. Strike the field and it'll bring you down to around 600kph. You always check with home first to make sure its operational though or you're going to make a very pretty smear."
"That seems like it'd put a damper on my future plans."
"You'd be surprised what you can live through. I think we can call it a day."
"Roger, Sir."
The world around Mene went black, as it was to begin with, the prompt still there as if it had always been there. Then light about the edges of the sarcophagus. It took Mene a moment to realize the entire suit had become a harness, removing the need for a conventional seat: His body lurching as the joints disconnected from the interior of the cockpit. And then her reasoning for holding him became clear, keeping him upright.
"Steady. That's kind of annoying: When you depart, always hold onto something before the contact-suit decouples. You'll get used to it."
"Well, That's just peachy."
