RP: Origin OIF Karakoram episode 1.1: A New Hunt

The twins nodded at the two suggestions.

“Both very good ideas, what do you think Anna?”

“I agree, two very good options, given that we are two as well why not do both?”

“Dibs on making him apologise!”

“Fine, guess I’ll try and talk to him when we get there, but you better back me up if he gets mad Bella.”

“You know I got your back sis, we’ve made it this far as a team and no hot shot jockey is gonna get the best of us! What would Kyrss think.”

The pair giggled and looked at their respective shoulder phantoms. “Are you guys gonna stick around? We could have a real party in this cockpit with 4 of us.” Anna asked, flashing a grin and a thumbs up as they waited for the final preparations on their unit to be complete. Bella looked out once more to spy on charles with a flat expression, watching him hook up the gun.

Bay Two

On Charles' way back to bay one, he passed by the ship's only other male crew member, Malik Ibn Rashidan. The heavily damaged, brightly plumed man gave the young blonde nothing but a glower, seeming slightly less than happy about something, but, the Iroma went on his way without giving the Nepleslian any hassle. As he made his way into Mecha bay Two, he spared only a glance at Destiny, quickly passing by her ten meter tall M5, and opening the M4 that had been designated as his, boarding the Mecha without much more than a grunt before closing the hatch and announcing on the comms; "Ibn Rashidan ready for duty. I hope this Nohman is ready as well."

Bay One

Anna and Bella would receive negative nods from the tiny wisps on their shoulders. "At this time we cannon accompany you more than a kilometer or two past the ship" Kara answered "However, we can have the crew rig something up to bring us with you if you'd like!" Kora added, before the two wisps spun and vanished with theatrical little poofs. Their voices remained, however. "Your suit is almost ready! Charles is coming with the final part." they announced in unison, before the voices faded out.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAALRIGHTY EVERYONE!" Nora's voice filled the groups comms. "Looks like we're about ready to go! Chey and Jennifer your suits are ready, just hop on in and we'll be out of hyperspace in no time!" The bubbly redhead announced, finishing off with a giggle. Indeed, the countdown timers that Nora had sent to everyone were coing down to the last few minutes; it would be just a short time before they would hopefully be in combat, dealing with the pirates that the ship had been trying to find for almost a year.

“Do you think they can do it before takeoff? Can’t you just put yourselves into the mech computer instead.” Anna asked the voices as they checked over their cockpit and made sure everything was working and ready. They’d never driven a 2 person mech before, infact they’d never even fought in actual combat either regardless of if it was in mechs or not.

“Yeah, we dont have much experience in combat so we could use the help!” Bella added, strapping herself in and checking in the direction the sprites had mentioned to see Charles on his way back. Looks like he was getting the Last bit of the gun hooked up for them.

“Hey Nora, can we have the AI come with us, pleeeaaase!” The twins then chimed over the radio, hoping their leader for the mission would be chill.

Mecha Bay Two
"Xiaah" Cockpit.

Oracle couldn't help but feel her blush brighten, her face burning now as her mouth hung open and eyes went wide in shock at this small maleling that had dared to pat her head. Not even Sen'Ythy or her brother Velor had ever done something like that. Even her parents had rarely done such a thing to her, and every fiber of her screamed at her to tear into the man. She wanted to destroy this little man for going so far as to do such a thing to her, and yet she couldn't. She wasn't the Xiaah here, she was a contractor, some nameless nobody and she had to bite her lip knowing that. She never even noticed Malik walk past her as she silently ground her teeth and readied herself, ready to be out in space and fight. It might help calm her down...

With little else she closed her cockpit, and after she double and triple checked her area that no one would be there and in danger when she started her suit up. She nodded a little before she spoke up.

"Xiaah, ready for launch." She offered to the rest of the squad and those in charge.

Bay One

As Charles attached the power adapters into place and the large gun was attached to the Twins' mecha, the gun began to hum to life. A popup would inform the two pilots of their new weapon's readiness as Charles made his way back over to his frame. Pushing off of the 'ground' and up towards the top of the green and white frame, Charles slipped into the cockpit.

He began to activate the systems of Bellona, running through all his earlier checks again, as well as new ones. Weapons, targeting, shields and thrusters all were put through a diagnostic routine as the frame's posture switched from a slight slump to a ready stance, as it began to pick up its shield and rifle from the weapon racks nearby. "Bellona shows all green." Charles reported over radio.

Jennifer nodded, finishing the last of the documents she needed to, that way the entire team was loaded up. Hitting her intercom. "Brigitte, please tell me Scrapyard's good to go. I got stuck up to my forehead in last minute paperwork." She said, standing up and putting her hair into a low ponytail as she waited on the response from the tech who lead the team on Jennifer's mecha, for when Jennifer couldn't work on it herself.

"Good to go and got the wench lines stowed. We loaded ammo for the standard arms of the rest, hopefully they don't need more than that." Came the response in an accent very similar to Jennifer's own.

"Right. On my way." She said, closing the intercom and walking to her bay. Of all the Mecha's loaded on the ship, Jennifer's was definitely, the one that stood out the most. While everyone else was loading into proper combat mecha's, Jennifer was loading up into a heavily modified mecha usually used for support or construction work. Of course, teh irony was that it had more raw power than the combat mechas, since it'd been rigged to be a recovery unit as well as supply point for the rest.

As the final preparations were becoming completed, the crew were finally all able to get into their mechs. Not long later, the Karakoram gave the slight shudder that signaled the crew they were finally out of hyperspace and had returned to sublight travel. the ground crew's tempo sped up, as hoses and cables and connectors of all sorts were removed from the Mecha as their final checks were cleared out, with all of the Mecha showing green.

"Sorry, girls!" Nora apologized "But the avatars won't be able to come with you today. Perhaps we could rig something up for next time? We've got the best tech crew in Origin on this boat, so it should be easy!" the Freespacer explained to Anna and Bella.

"Alright everyone, the countdown is getting close!" the redhead then let all the pilots know. and as if that was the cue, the doors to both of the forward hangars began to open, revealing the vast darkness of space, pockmarked with tiny pinholes of light, which were still moving past at quite a blur as the Karakoram seemed traveling toward its target at max sublight speed. That was, until suddenly they could feel a shift in momentum and the stars seemed to stop moving past as quickly. The Mecha's sensors began to pick up objects flying past outside the bays; tiny meteorites and small asteroids, most passing harmlessly by, but occasionally giving a light show as they impacted the Mecha carrier's navigational shielding, bouncing off in various directions with little heat scars from the contact with the energy barrier. It soon became obvious that the ship was entering into an asteroid field.

"Okay, Everyone, call in ready, we launch in two minutes!" came a bubbly order from the frame team leader.

"Rashidan and Nohman, Ready." came the first response, from Malik.

"This is Charles, Bellona is ready for launch." Charles said in response to Nora. "Do you know how far we are from the target?" He asked, as he began to examine his own sensor readouts, noting the locations of the largest asteroids as they passed through for future use.

"Awww" Came the joint response from Anna and Bella as they got the bad news about their AI friends.

"Well, we'll see you later!" Anna said to her floating friend in the cockpit. Both girls strapped themselves in and did some final checks, it would be fun to finally fly a mech and see some real combat.

"Bella here, uh, this mech is ready."

"Me too!"

"The Xiaah is ready, as is Oracle." Came the call from the Lorath contractor as she gripped her controls. She had to take a few calming breaths as she stared at the inky black of space spread out before them. She checked over her systems one last time and prayed silently that all of her gear would work as intended.

She was ready though, ready to get into combat, her first combat since she had been rescued from her ship... Her first combat since her other ship had been destroyed around her. She gripped her controls tighter and just waited for the order to launch.

Slowly, almost imperceptably to the pilots, the Karakoram's momentum came to an almost complete stop, and the small vibration of the craft's engines almost entirely ceased with the Mecha Carrier going into low power mode. the lights that illuminated the bays for the ground crew's work to be done by shut off, leaving the only lights being those of the stars in the distance, and the sun of the system they were currently in. Maps and data suddenly flooded the HUDs of the frame team's mecha, provided via Nora's own computer system, showcasing several interactive and live-updating maps of the portions of the asteroid field they needed to navigate, leading ultimately to a large asteroid that floated just outside the field, situated in a type of lagrange point on the sunward side of the ring-shaped collection of enormous celestial rocks.

This specific approach had been chosen to get the ship as close as possible to the asteroid without alerting those whom had turned it into a base of sorts, and now that the data was disseminated, a signal alerted each of the pilots it was time. "Alright! We're a go for the operation!" Nora called over the comms, Bangarang boosting its way out of the mecha bay and making a sharp turn toward the prow of the Karakoram, boosting her way till she alighted upon the back of a nearby asteroid, and then, following the route that she had laid out and sent to the others, she boosted to a different asteroid, starting to make her way through the field, pausing for just moments behind each asteroid in turn, always checking ahead of her for enemies. "Looks like we're clear so far," she noted, before her HUD alerted her that she had spoken to soon.

"Wait, no, it looks like we have some company. I'm reading either five or six reactors up ahead, making their way toward us; Everyone, prepare to fight!"

Charles followed Nora out of the Karakoram, but unlike her, once he reached a sufficiently sized asteroid, he moved to conceal himself behind it, sending out four of his eight drones to scout out the enemy and take potshots if they were able. As they approached the enemy, and telemetry and visual data began to be sent to Bellona, Charles sent it out over the Karakoram's Frame Team, feeding targeting data to his teammates. He then began to peek around the edge of the asteroid, training his plasma rifle onto the vector of the foremost target and preparing to fire once they came into firing range.

Jennifer held back from the front of the group. Sure, she had a weapon in her Scrapyard's more 'hand-like' manipulator, but that was more intended for self-defense. She was busy making sure her systems for keeping the rest of the time functional were heated up and ready to go in an instant. Since she'd need to be fast and accurate on her work to ensure the missions success, be it passing power units/ammo cases, or adhoc repairs on the fly.

"Scrapyard here, all my systems are green. I'll hang back and avoid getting into the thick of it since that's not what my mech's built for. Let's get 'er done!" She said over the radio, watching the pings on her radar. One of the many 'uparmored' additions to her frame over the default M10 Producer. Plenty of targets approaching. Looked like she was gonna be a busy woman here shortly.

Oracle felt herself pushed back into her seat as she was catapulted from the ship and grit her teeth. Her stomach began to drop out a little as she finally broke free and felt the acceleration slow a little, but she quickly moved to the front of the group as best she could. Her job was to be the front line in the biggest mech, not to mention her weaponry dictated where she would be up close and personal, she figured it best to start off sooner rather than later. She left her finger on the trigger to activate her shield as she made sure the hammer was gripped half way down the handle to have the best chance at swinging it.

"Get behind me, I can give us some protection when the fight starts. Anyone with longer range, take cover and I'll protect you." She called out over the communication line and centered her mecha on the incoming enemy signatures, ready for a fight. She let out a small huff as she waited, eager to get her first fight jitters out of the way.

It was lucky the twins hadn't turned their earpieces on properly as they both screamed in delight as they were sent flying from the side of the ship, their mech tumbling over in a summersault in space as they entered the 0g environment. After a moment of enjoying themselves they decided to actually get to work properly, they may not have been experts but even they could tell their gun was meant for longer ranges.

"This is uh, what are we called?"
"Doesn't matter, I'm sure they know it's us."
"Yeah, well anyway we're gonna hide behind you since we got the big gun this time."

The twins positioned themselves a little way behind Oracle in her mech in order to avoid accidentally shooting their teammate or getting in each others way, without waiting they opened fire, grins plastered across their faces as the cannon lobbed its deadly payload towards the enemy, taking a moment between each shot to line up again, an accurate depiction of their movements was that of someone who'd spent time using such weapons though clearly they had no actual combat experience.

Inside the cockpit the twins were happily working in almost perfect harmony with the bare minimum of communication, having grown up in a circus came in handy when they had to work together, they'd spent years performing all kinds of death-defying acrobatics with the utmost faith in one another, to the point they could anticipate almost every action the other would make.

"It's a shame there isn't a third seat in here Charlie, you could have brought refreshments for us to have during the fight."

As Nora Sped forward, the unmarked frame belonging to Malik did the same, a few kilometers to her left. Behind them, Bellona's drones raced forward, their attempts at making any shots blocked by the fact that the enemy frames were leapfrogging from asteroid to asteroid as well, though he did get some good data on the frames; They were less advanced than the M3's and M4's most of the team was piloting, and far inferior to the M5 that Oracle was piloting. however, there were more of them, and they seemed to know the asteroid field quite well, as they would disappear from the drones' sensors entirely every so often, only to appear again a few moments later from several asteroids away. there was something somewhat familiar about the Mecha that they were piloting; visually, they looked like cleaner versions of M1 frames, although the energy signatures and weapons loads were clearly different.

Farther back, it was clear that Xiaah's thrusters were much better than everyone else on the team's, but the more veteran pilots such as Malik, Nora, and Charles were still outpacing Oracle, due to skill more than anything else. The Twins' long-range potshots proved almost useless, doing little more than smashing a few asteroids, but with all the debris, it was impossible for the two to make a good hit at this range, they would need to get closer. Jennifer's Scrapyard, and Cheylarus found themselves hanging around the Karakoram for now, assisting the ship's point defense in diverting space debris while providing a last line of defense in case any enemies got past the attacking team, or, in Jennifer's case, in case anyone took major damage and needed help.

"Just keep the pressure on!" Nora called over the comms, "Looks like they outnumber us, but we're better than them! Looks like we'll be in range in about ten seconds!" Nora pulled her shotgun up, and into proper firing position. Although normally she could hit them by now, the dense coverage given by the asteroid field made it impossible to get a good shot out from normal range. Just as she did so, the first few potshots from the enemy frames began to make contact with the asteroids around the Karakoram's frame team.

Anna sighed long and hard while slumping in her chair as much as the harness would allow before gunning their mech forwards, Bella knew exactly what her sister was annoyed about, while she was actually the one in control of the gun Anna never liked to miss with big guns or at least if they did it needed to still look cool, smashing some boring rocks wasn't good enough for her so getting closer was their only chance it seemed.

"You know what, I blame Charlie for that missed shot."
"Why's that?"
"I dunno, he setup the thing and you're not a terrible shot so it has to be his fault."
"We're super far away, moving in space in a mech which neither of us has ever used, and we're not even trained firearms experts outside of a mech."
".... Still his fault."
"Yeah, you're probably right."

The twins chuckled to themselves as they continued forwards, Anna managing to keep them in motion and without smashing into anything or anyone else, she was no pro by any means but at least she could fly without training thrusters. Bella kept a keen eye on the various targets, she could tell just by looking at them that externally at least they were inferior though not by how much. The twins didn't know and understand tech as much as its designers, they just used enough different pieces to know what looked like what in which conditions.

The call over the comms spurred Bella into taking a few more shots, lining up with her targets before pulling the trigger, their weapon would probably be in range before the others but she still had to get used to the aiming and adjustments, all the digital targeting nonsense was annoying her too, making adjustments she didn't like even though they would probably help.

Frame Team
Charles' drones continued to tail the enemy, feeding the team sensor data as he grew closer to the enemy. Shots that would normally have been possible kept being marked as impossible by the frame's targeting computer, blocked by asteroids. He pushed a button and spoke over the radio "Frame team, this is Bellona, these drones won't do much good in the thick of things, I'm sending the drones up above, out."

Charles then began to send commands to the drones, which began to maneuver themselves 'above' the generalized flat plane of the asteroid field. While some debris would still block their 'sight' lines, their sensor picture, combined with that of the frame team's own, would provide the group with a notable advantage. Already the idea began to pay dividends, revealing some of the enemies that were sneaking between asteroids.

"Got a better picture for you guys. The bogies are using the field to hide, and they're closing fast, out." He simply said, his brisk tone and use of fighter jargon a far cry from the fairly easygoing young man that the pilots who had been there from the first cruise had gotten to know. Soon, he was within range of his main weapon, a Light Pulsed Plasma Rifle. The sensor data from the drones was proving useful and helped him to predict when an enemy would emerge, right into a stream of plasma fire.

Frame Team

Oracle grunted with each impact against her shield whether it be debris from the asteroids or any shots from the enemies. Her advance remained steady, a chance for the others to cooperate and stay around near her and the safety she afforded, even as the thumb of her mech played over the handle of her hammer as she readied herself for any enemies that may come close enough for her to attack.

"I can provide cover for anyone that needs it, don't forget that!"

S h i p d e f e n c e b o i s

Cheylarus' metal digits had been idly tapping at the metal furnishings of her mech's cockpit as she scanned around for incoming debris, a sensor lighting up as a chunk of iron-rich space rock, which in turn caused the Nepper lass' head to whip around towards it.

"I got this one!" her peppy voice chirped through their comms channel, suddenly energized by the prospect of being able to do something other than sit around and look shiny - Jagermeister's thrusters flaring up as Chey flew forwards and arced to the ship's port-side with her shield raised as a chunk of stone lazily tumbled towards her, servos and hydraulic rams whining silently in the void of space as the M3's arm wound back before swinging it forwards, causing small parts of the asteroid to flake off as it was struck and sent careening into the void, the blonde-tipped brunette making sure it wouldn't hit anything else before darting back to her previous position.

"Well the ship is good so far... you guys need me to hang around? over," she spoke into their comms again, somewhat downtrodden that she had been given guard duty, but trying to not complain too much lol.