Tom wondered sometimes if everyone else felt like this when they slotted into the catapult like bullets in a gun. Did everyone else miss it like he did? When he watched his colorful companions trot about the ship he wondered sometimes if there really was just something wrong with him. They did everything with such energy, such passion--they [i]lived[/i], in a way that he wasn't sure he did. It was all just killing time, just padding along until the moment he was able to do... Well. This. The countdown hit zero and the sudden push of gravity was nothing compared to the rush in his veins. Tom [i]lived[/i] for speed, for g-force and acceleration and threading the needle. As the burst out into the endless black sky, pinpricks of light and exhaust vents and rockets hurtling towards the enemy the Mosquito around him came to life, a dozen little microboosters and maneuverability vents flaring up like fireflies all across its narrow frame. Without the confines of the ship around it Tom was free to open up the Tesla drive, the flight pattern shifting ever so slightly to adjust with each motion, each limb, bringing it effortlessly into formation with the rest of the Seventh. The Mosquito lived up to its name--even compared to the Eagle, Shrike and Hellcat it was a nimble machine, fast as all hell, and if a slight bit of him wondered if he could outpace the Astelion it had never come up. Still, as enemies identified themselves and filled the sky he found his fingers itching to get moving. The Mosquito's best defense was a good offense, and he intended to use it. As soon as the team broke, Tom was a streak of light in space, just another bullet whizzing about the battlefield. Occasionally during a sharp turn the streaks separated for a moment, a left maneuvering jet readjusting to send it spinning to a new angle even as another jet adjusted to compensate, turning on a dime to suddenly streak upwards above the action. It was small and easily forgotten in the rush of the bruisers, but that didn't mean it was ignored. "Doobie-doo." He found himself whistling idly through his teeth as the Ferir broke away from the others and started an intercept run, angling upwards to try and follow after him. Tom would give it to the other pilot--a Ferir was a surprisingly maneuverable beast compared to most of the UEE mechs, their Tesla Drives a standard feature now, but it had nowhere near the Mosquito's speed and nowhere near its long range fire capacity. Already its computers were working on the solution, aligning accelerator with ionization channels. In space there was so little to create static, so little to disrupt the miniature targeting laser that lined everything up. The Arbalest plasma cannon was the moral equivalent of an anti-tank rifle--it was meant to punch [i]through[/i], to obliterate exactly the kind of heavy armor the Coalition loved to stamp all over its Ferir Mk. II's. The trick, as with all such weapons, was precision. If you didn't put the hole through a vital target like a powercore or a cockpit then it wouldn't put an MAS down, and with only short range weapons to back it up it would hardly stand up to a Ferir's fire. So he put the hole where it needed to be. The flash was brilliant in the dark of space, a lightning bolt of crackling green plasma that punched straight through the Ferir's cockpit. It was the kind of trick that would only work once but only needed to--bait the enemy into a charge to rely on the armor to buy time for a weapon they could deal with it. He could imagine the chatter through the rest of the Ferir squad as they processed the sudden loss, readjusted their tactics, and with luck were trying to evaluate the sudden threat by the time his allies fell on them. As the unit itself shuddered without input it simply continued to sail through space, momentum carrying it off like a comet. If it didn't hit anything it would keep going, Tom knew, a skeleton adrift in the cold. He wondered, on occasion, how many skeleton-mechs he'd scattered among the stars by now. "Ferir down." Much as he acknowledged the utility of informing his squadron of a successful kill, Tom Trent had tried throughout his career to place as little emphasis on individual kills as possible for the simple reason that he knew better. Already on the edge of what he considered to be an acceptable moral apathy, he knew full well that if he started caring how many soldiers he killed instead of how successfully he completed the mission it would be all over for him. Bloodlust was the only impermissible sin, the line he couldn't cross--it was small but it was there, that one last step between wanting to destroy an enemy as part of the mission and wanting to destroy an enemy for a notch on his belt. But speaking of the mission... At the new orders he was off in a flicker, his suit a neon zig-zag through the air outpacing a series of Hammer missiles fired from one of the Ferir's companions. Hardballers meant trouble for more than just their motley little crew. If a few of those plasma cannons punched through to the engines, the life support, the MAS bays, there wouldn't be a [i]Lincoln[/i] to come back to. Besides, Trent had a thing for its hotsy-totsy captain. "Rodger, Odin. Ready for a hat trick, Rabbit?" Even through his speakers he could hear the Asian girl's familiar groan. "You always do that! You always use the same jokes!" Her tinny voice whined even as he saw her accelerate towards one of the hardballers--from her position defending the [i]Lincoln[/i] she was drawing its fire and its attention while Trent approached from the rear. "Learn some new material, some magician you are!" "Magicians do parlor tricks, bunny. Me? I'm bonafide." Tom corrected with a quirk of a smile as his HUD blinked green on the Arbalest once more, the targeting system already locked firmly on Rabbit's hardballer. The only way the lighter mechs were going to punch through all that armor was with a united salvo and they both knew it--already her rotary cannon was flaring the shield at it's front as she dodged nimbly past its rockets and the massive blasts from its P170's. Trent and Lin made a good team, both high-speed precision workers in very different units. While Trent excelled in long range armaments and close quarters, Lin was solid and lethal anywhere from middle to close range. But the hardballer wasn't going anywhere with that shield and it's armor, and as it closed it began to look like the rotary cannon wasn't going to do the trick--that is, until lightning struck. A Mark III shield was one of the few things that gave the Arbalest pause. Even under fire Lin's rotary cannon it still had enough hudspah to ride out the storm, flashing and crackling green as it diverted the forked blast and dispersed it across its systems. But this wasn't their first rodeo, and between the two of them it buckled and slug began to punch away at the thick of its armor instead. Still, it showed absolutely no hesitation in surging forward, firing off another pair of energy blasts that had Lin surging down to avoid them. It roared past her, all inertia and heavy thrusters as it kept its focus where it had been all along--the [i]Lincoln[/i]. "Come on, Rabbit, show me a hole...anywhere'll do..." Trent muttered in a focused monotone, left side rockets flaring to slip past a hammer missile that thought it could touch something as fast as the Mosquito. He was coming in too fast, he was going to pass it and be ready to fire before she managed to crack open that hard damn chest of its. He could see her blasting full speed in reverse, trying to keep level with it as her steady stream of fire left shrapnel and particles in its wake. Another pair of blasts had her scrambling to the side, rocking a barrel roll in midair to keep her firing solutions. "We're getting too close, Rabbit--" "I know!" "I'm not going to have time to pull--" "I [i]know[/i]!" If he hit the [i]Lincoln's[/i] shields that would be it--no way the Mosquito's little Targe could hold a candle to those big capital bad boys. But his voice was even, his hands steady, his lips curled in the biggest shit-eating grin you'd ever seen. This was the kind of shit he [i]lived[/i] for. "Two...One..." "Got it!" She gasped, breathless and hurried as she spiraled down and out to get out of the way. "Got it, got it, left side torso, straight shot to the core!" "You're a peach." In the same instant he blazed past the hardballer at full throttle, a screaming streak that rolled, flipped its thrusters back, took aim-- Lightning. Clean through the heart, dead a shot as a hunter could ask. It was all fire and forget though, no time to celebrate as the hardballer's core started to go critical--while the [i]Lincoln's[/i] shields could take the debris, the Mosquito's really, really couldn't, let alone what would happen if it was pancaked between the two. The kind of G-force that he pulled to get out of there was enough to make even his head spin. He could hear the alarms ringing in her ears as the back of his shield brushed against the [i]Lincoln[/i]'s, draining the power until a slight adjustment brought him far enough away-- "Wizard!" The cry woke up up for the reverie--apparently the third hardballer hadn't been dealt with yet, the beast of a machine barreling through after Trapp's hatchet trick spun out the second. Omega was on its tail, its shield was brought down, but as it turned to focus on the carrier it found instead a juicy little Mosquito in its path. Missiles might have been easy to dodge, but at this range the P170's were not. Two flowers of green blossomed in front of it, one after the other, the hardballer earning its name. If he'd thought about it at all he'd have been a crispy critter, but Tom had long ago learned to move without thinking. He was a pilot in a machine that could literally respond to flicks of his fingertips, and that was all that saved him as he opened up the throttle straight down beneath the blasts. He shot out of the way like a bullet but didn't account for the splash as the plasma ballooned on the capital shields, swelling before dispersal and racing after him fast enough to blow past his shield. It would never have stopped a blow and barely was strong enough to withstand this, but he was just out of range by the time the green plasma receded to the ship itself. "Shield's down, systems green." He chimed in, cool as a cucumber but for the grin on his thin lips. "One hardballer remaining. Omega, you got it?" "Negative, Wizard, while you were busy cheating the reaper new orders came in. Clean it up and meet up on Rally Point Alpha, we're escorting his [i]Highness[/i] to the ball." Astelion's distaste was obvious enough, through Tom ignored it as always. Orders were orders, nothing to sneer at regardless of how fucking stupid they might be. "A little help here, boys!" Lin snapped over the comm, already engaging the final hardballer as it skated along the shield, moving to flip for another pass. About as maneuverable as a refrigerator, it was too close to risk its plasma cannons and the angle was wrong for its missiles, but that wouldn't hold true for long if they didn't do something about it. "I need a clean shot, Rabbit." "Negative, Wizard, I repeat, Negative!" Lin was saying as she chased ahead of it, serpentining her way past one missile after another. With margin of errors so slim it was a wonder the girl held it together when he put her through shit like this--Tom only did because he liked it that way. "Then I'm coming to you. Hang pretty, Lin, be there in a heartbeat..." He muttered, taking aim and firing all thrusters. Physics was an odd thing in the void--some of it applied, some of it didn't, but Sir Isaac Newton had been the deadliest motherfucker in space for an awful long time and that wasn't about to change now. Objects in motion, and all that... The benefit if the Talwar was its asymmetric field. Weaker on one side, it lit up into a crescent of plasma like the sabers of old and worked on the same principle--put an awful lot of momentum along a thin, curved edge and watch multiplication happen. And a Tesla drive and all the experimental energy his personal nuke could pull off, even a bitty Mosquito could hit skin a 'baller with enough speed worked up. "Are its shields--" "It's fucking shields are down, Wizard, pull the damn trigger!" "Your wish, darlin'." He managed as the distance between them vanished and he screamed past the heavy mech at breakneck speeds, the plasma blade angled to shear through the weakened joint at the arm in the kind of spinning-slice that made boot-camp boys weak at the knees. He careened past it and only briefly cared as he heard Lin call in the kill, pumping rotary rounds through the opening in the armor until it faltered and detonated along the shield. "Way to take your time..." She muttered into her comm, righting herself before streaking for the Cadillac of shuttles they were supposed to keep safe. "I thought that thing was supposed to be fast..." "Sticks and stones." He chuckled, taking aim on the one Trapp had left adrift. It was probably out of commision with some whiplash like that, but a little red light confirming the firing solution on his HUD told him to make sure. "Wizard, reporting in. Hardballers neutralized, rendezvousing with the escort crew. Let's bring in an Admiral." Lightning struck the drifting Coalition unit, a steak of orange already on its way.