Whatever Tom was dreaming was lost in the ship's aggressive deceleration, the sharp crack of skull against the head of his bunk waking him from what had moments before been a dead sleep. It took him a second to process what was going on, Trapp's sharp orders bringing him to full attention. As he hauled on his flight suit with the best of him, his brain was already starting to spin up--weren't they in hyperspace? Weren't they supposed to [i]still[/i] be in hyperspace? He put the questions aside as best he could and shot down the hallway, juking past a plodding Sokolov and Shanks to doubletime his way to the hanger. 

The technicians were clearly not happy. Pei-Jun Wei--there was an alphabet behind her name, Tom was sure, but he hadn't bothered to learn it--was already speaking in aggressive and animated Chinese to one of her associates. As he approached, they switched to English as if he would care about whatever it was they were discussing.

"This shouldn't be possible!" She was saying quickly as he approached. "We were struck in mid--"

"Doctor," he was sure she was at least a doctor, "I don't give a damn what should be. Get me in the sky." Rude, he knew, but pressing.

"We were expecting--"

"Doctor, [i]get me in the damn sky.[/i]" He was already hauling himself up the first rung on the leg of the machine, pushing towards the cabin. From the way people were hurrying he didn't have time for the stupid optimization suite, but he was in luck--without the full time for the repairs, they hadn't had time to muck things up for him again. Beading up the com-feed, he came in mid-way into a damage explanation.

"--functioning again, but the left arm is only at around 40% capacity. You're lucky you didn't sustain more damage in the previous battle."

"Always am." He muttered, disconnecting the docking clamps and pushing forward through the bay to launch himself into formation with the others.

Two destroyers, a carrier and a slew of MAS units...outnumbered like always. Looked like the enemy shared Ardin's sense of style if the new unit was any indication. Frankly, he wasn't an engineer--he didn't want to tinker with it, see how it worked. All he cared about was what it could do and whether or not he'd get to dance with it. As Maki expressed her uneasiness and the orders came from on high for Guillotine and Calamity to bring it in, he chuckled idly into the squad-channel as his targeting matrices lined up the Ferir Mk II next to the new unit. Funny thing about the field of engagement in space: with no cover, it was all just a matter of effective range. Most weapons strong enough to take down an MAS were limited by size or travel time, but the Arbalest, well...

"Damn. Here I was hoping to take Cinderella to the ball." He could almost smell Maki's disappointment, he was sure she was thinking the same thing. There was a slight beep, a solidified red line on his readout. "Guess I'll find myself another dance partner."

A flash of green lightning, faster than any bullet, and the Ferir was cored. What had the pilot been thinking, before he died?

"Won't be him, though."

"I'm always in awe of your ability to creatively interpret 'defensive'." Lin chimed in dryly. He could almost hear her eyes roll.

"Just being proactive." He smiled idly, already working on his next target. "Dead guys don't shoot."

"Show-off."