[i]A collaboration with[/i] [@vietmyke]: [center][img]https://i.postimg.cc/XJX5KsH3/suitgirl-by-beaver-skin-d6xzqzo-fullview.jpg[/img] [H3]Clara / Zoom[/H3] [/center] [hr] Clara's comms burst to life in a sudden wash of static. The station was gone. Styx was gone. She was sweating beneath her helmet. Resetting the circuit breakers of a MAS was hard enough when docked. Resetting the circuit breakers of a MAS was even harder when you were in combat. Someone had fucked up. Someone had made one hell of a mistake. And someone had almost gotten her killed on her first sortie with the 7th. She could hear the engine spooling back to life with a sudden lurch as power surged through the generator to the two boosters. She let out a puff of air, breathing in deeply. Jumping back into the pilot’s seat, she flipped the master ignore switch silencing the alarm klaxons and warning signals that overwhelmed her HUD. She’d have to risk it. There wasn’t time to double check her on the spot fix. All Clara knew was that if she made it, if she made it back to Roanoke she was going to kill the mechanic that had readied the Peregrine. Coalition MAS were still threatening Roanoke. The rest of the 7th was still fighting as Abigail and Jakunta fell towards Cerol. "Boss," Clara shouted, opening her comms. "Hardballers on your six! I’m engaging but you’ll have to do some pilot stuff right now!" "You good lieutenant?" crackled Ingram’s voice, his camera shaky and fizzy on Clara’s HUD, "Thought you were dead in the water." "I'm good now, Boss," Clara said, making no effort to hide the irritation her voice, "But someone on the Roanoke won't be if I get back in one piece. How hard is it to install a computer mainframe correctly?" Without waiting for a reply, Clara firewalled the throttle, sending the Peregrine lurching forward in a sudden burst of speed as the afterburners kicked in. She felt the injected fuel explode and the extra thrust pushed her back against her seat with a low grunt as she began to pace her breathing. She anticipated the Gs. She knew they would be there. She tensed her muscles. Her G-suit squeezed against her body, tightening around her legs and chest, pushing the blood back towards her brain. Helping her to keep awake. She breathed in. She fought the blurring that threatened the edges of her eyes, the exhausted darkness of G-loc. Gritting her teeth she began to slowly speak a word. The same mantra. The same mantra she had used since flight school. Hook. It made her feel like a pirate. She had always imagined that she was communing with the old swashbucklers. She finished the word, exhaling, before she began the technique all over again. Anti-G Straining Maneuver (AGSM). A Relic of the age of atmospheric combat. No longer necessary given the advanced suits that the UEE had developed. However, when you were pushing against the limits of what the human body could take, every second of consciousness counted, and Clara had no intention of forgetting the secrets of the old aces. The two lumbering Coalition MAS had no time to notice Clara before she came rocketing into them. Ingram was too close. She couldn't use her missiles and she didn't have time to wait. With a flip off a switch, Clara armed her cannon, watching as the HUD shifted. The Smart AI adjusted in a dance of code, projecting moving circles in front of the enemy MAS faster than she could even react. She needed to correct. She was going so fast. Not fast enough, she thought. She picked the trailing Hardballer furthest from Ingram and squeezed her trigger. She felt the loud boom of the Rheinmetall MK 508 firing, heard the hollow thud as the heavy cannon rounds left the barrel. The shield of the Hardballer crackled and then broke in a flurry of lightening as her rounds smashed into the back of the Hardballer. The leading Hardballer broke to the left. She could hear the crackle of desperate comms from the Hardballer she had just hit. Heavy damage she suspected. Next target Clara thought as she kicked her left pedal, dancing gracefully towards the much slower undamaged Hardballer. She heard the blaring warning sound of a radar lock as she prepared to fire. There was no time for countermeasures and she broke to the right, spiraling the Peregrine in a painfully high g move that sent grayed her vision and left her gasping for breath. "Oh no you don’t," Ingram growled, pushing hard on the throttle as the Sparrowhawk rocketed past the Peregrine. His cockpit rattled as he barreled in after the fleeing Hardballer, his onboard AI quickly locking onto the bright thruster flares. Had the target been a Garmr or a Fenrir II, Ingram might’ve been willing to let it go- it was faster than worth chasing, and in the grand scheme of things, not particularly valuable targets. On the other hand, these heavy fuckers were durable and powerful, even a damaged one with a working plasma cannon could cripple the Roanoke with a clean shot. Hardballers were tough but slow, and in its current state, it was little more than shooting fish in a barrel. As soon as his AI confirmed a target lock, Ingram flicked open one of the covers on one of his control sticks, and pushed the button it protected. There was the quick [i]thunk[/i] of the missile tubes cycling, and a split second later he felt the recoil in the cockpit as a longsword missile burst from one of his shoulder launchers. The Hardballer noticed the missile, and attempted to roll out of the way, but with its current damage it wasn’t capable of such a maneuver, and disappeared in a burst of fire, as armored limbs and plating scattered into the void of space. Without missing a beat, Ingram wheeled around and faced the other one, his maneuvering thrusters shooting him downwards to dodge a spray of cannonfire. Whilst this was all happening, the battlespace was rapidly shifting. Pips and Grizzly had begun their descent onto Cerol, Abi’s last ping pinpointing their position and noting their predicted fall path on everyone’s HUD. Already they were getting further and further away. "Commander Ingram," A calm voice called to him, and a small box appeared in the corner of his HUD across the command channel. The smooth voice belonged to Captain Sarret, commanding officer of the Roanoke. "The Roanoke has informed Command, we’re to go after Sunray immediately. Clean up and get back on board. We can’t afford to stall out here much longer." "What about the rest of the fleet?" Ingram replied, dodging out of the way of a plasma blast and returning a flurry of 20mm shells at the remaining Hardballer. Its armor was tough, and his shells weren’t getting through, but he managed to overload the shields, opening it up to more damage from the Peregrine’s heftier weapons. "The rest of the 5th fleet is falling back, the defense fleets are being commanded to hold the line until we can get to Sunray and get out. Our window of opportunity is closing fast. Get it done. Sarret out." The Captain’s face vanished from his HUD as the comm cut, punctuated by a pair of heavy plasma beams lancing across space. The heavy beams hit their mark against the Coalition cruiser, tearing across the hull. Explosions rippled across multiple decks as the plasma beams melted through the ship. Ingram growled, and pushed his Sparrowhawk forward, slamming into the Hardballer and slicing at the offending machine with his beam saber. He rapidly pushed off of it as his saber connected with the ammo drum, a myriad of explosions following it as several shells exploded from the saber’s heat. The rest of the weapon’s ammunition poured out into the vacuum of space, rendering the Hardballer’s rotary cannon useless. "7th squad," Ingram’s voice crackled through the squadwide comms, "We need to pick up the pace. Wipe the board, then RTB. Every minute we waste up here is another dozen miles between us and the recovery team." Hitting the kill button on his controls again, he loosed another of his precious few longsword missiles, hoping to get a quick kill. The second Hardballer was quicker on the ball though, and attempted to dodge out of the way of the missile at the last moment. The missile was faster than the mech however, and while it was able to dodge a killing blow, the missile connected with its side, blowing out its right leg and arm, and exposing the side of its cockpit to the vacuum of space. Still alive but limping, its main thrusters flared and failed, as the pilot attempted to use its remaining leg and maneuvering thrusters to guide it out of the battlespace. Cannon rounds splashed across the damaged Hardballer across the cockpit as Clara came roaring back into the fight. The Hardballer shuddered, thick black smoke venting from torso of the stricken MAS as began to visibly move across the torso. The heavy MAS vanished in a sudden flash of light as the engine finally exploded, venting burning fuel and shrapnel into space. "[b]Zoom[/b] reporting two Hardballers down, no damage," Clara said as she looped the Peregrine around to follow Ingram. She lowered her throttle, matching the slower speed of the heavily modified Sparrow, and taking a slow, tired breath as the speed of the Peregrine finally stopped punching her in the chest. "I'm on you, Boss."