[center][img]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/630508873102655513/735007391581732914/kon1.png[/img] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/630508873102655513/732382304319832175/konstantin.png[/img][/center] [hr] As the dull brown sands of the alien planet were cast into hellfire's orange by Konstantin's mech-scale satchel charge, the roaring thunder that rolled over the desert was sliced open by that same screech of metal rent by metal, now at a fever pitch, as if the plainly [i]synthetic[/i] hostile were in agony. For a moment, the long howl seemed as if it would have no end, carried upon the rushing wind and heat through dust and sky. Kon began to believe he would seriously need use of his TLS and go for it's throat in both literal and metaphorical senses— And then, with no preamble of denouement or trailing volume, it ceased, the ape of alien steel slumping into the sand as its top half nearly made the trip on its lonesome, roughly shorn into what was almost two by the blast. As it careened to the earth, its silence was mirrored by its brethren, a lance of light from the Voyager high above descending into silent metal, the foreign orbital shutting down with it. The silence did not last long. <<[color=#239C89]Nothing quite like watching the fireworks, eh, Stojanovic?[/color]>> <<[color=ed1c24]Good kill Stojanovic. It made a pretty light show.[/color]>> [color=6ecff6][ERROR: Data Transfer to PANDORA unable to complete. Suspected Signal Interference. Retry? Y/N][/color] A field of orange light danced across Kon's screen for an instant, replacing the hues of explosive flame with that of a very, very confused machine learning program— one that pinged every unit on the board, be they designated hostile or friendly, as simply "Unknown". The pilot clicked his tongue, dissatisfied sneer beginning to form on his face as the system's diagnostics began to fight to reconcile some form of order with the scuffed dataset. How very usual for this bleeding-edge crap. Stress test it for the first time in real combat, and suddenly all the bugs that had somehow hidden themselves away for fifteen years of development came to the fore. [color=6ecff6][UPDATE: Data Transfer f̵r̵o̵m̴ PANDORA completed. Cached tactical data dumped to PANDORA.][/color] [color=f26522][i]..?[/i][/color] Hadn't he been uploading [i]to[/i] the Pandora? ...He was no network analyst or technician. Maybe it was a data synchronization between the ground team and the ship far overhead. Maybe the ship used its stronger comm arrays to connect to him. Maybe the alien scream had fucked with his electronics like the toxic rounds they'd loaded into it. It wasn't his job to know. For now, it seemed to have sorted itself out save for that minor, maybe even graphical, glitch. Friendlies were friendlies, the marked AO was unchanged, even chemical composition data was consistent with pre-kickoff (save for a little more in the way of atmospheric heavy metals). The Pandora's techs and General Resources attache would have ample time to figure out whatever the hell had just happened. For now, he had to just get it back in one piece. [color=f26522]<>[/color] He returned to comms, circling overhead in a similar, if somewhat lowered, lazy drift around the ground team as before, conserving fuel for primary burn to leave the gravity well of this alien, now definitely hostile world. His eyes, drawn inevitably to the spoils of victory, prompted the display to magnify the charred remains of Bandit Two. [color=f26522]<>[/color] He came to a stop just a ways above his slain adversary, the jet wash from his propulsion beginning to hit the sands with enough downforce to kick up small plumes again, gentle clouds terminating a few meters away from the torn giant of silver. Were he not the man he had been shaped into by his youth he would have felt the urge to cup his chin in thought. But he hadn't been the type to let a hand leave the controls for well over a decade. [color=f26522]<>[/color]