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[right][hr][color=white][b][b] Mech Simulation Deck, [i]Fortuna[/i] | In Transit[/b][/b][/color]
February 14th, 3061[hr][/right]
[indent][indent][indent]It was late in the night yet the sky radiated with light. The city of Antaura, the so-called Jewel of Mars, burned. Flames flickered atop golden spires of phototropic glass. So soaring were these towers that whole networks of shuttle tunnels ran between them, snaking and twisting through the air like a floating highway. Tens of thousands of refugees surged through those tunnels. Packed shoulder to shoulder as far as the eye could see in either direction, the crowd was a flood- anyone who slowed or stumbled was sucked underneath the waves.

Outside, the nightmare continued. The tracers of solid projectiles and the beams of stray lasers lit up the atmosphere. The dark shapes of ships hung above the planet, thousands of smaller objects pouring from their bellies on a direct course for Mars. A meager fleet of fighters left the ground to engage them, though they stood no chance; there were a dozen hostile vessels for each one of theirs. Desperate battles waged across the planet from surface to stratosphere. Every Martian strong enough to lift a gun was expected to stand their ground for faith and nation. The Sol Union called this their Blackest Day scenario: when Theden forces pierced the Solar System and invaded the core worlds.

John Marshall had put thousands of flight hours into this exact scenario, to the point where he'd memorized every possible variable. He could rattle off the exact model, armament and I.D number of every exoframe he'd encounter. He knew which direction every hostile pilot favored when reacting to incoming projectiles. Knew the exact number of unpreventable casualties coded into the program. It was forty-eight thousand, three hundred and twelve: a massacre of unimaginable proportions. And that was just when he did everything right.

It was a textbook unwinnable scenario. Its purpose was to force exo-pilots to confront impossible situations and adapt to them as best as possible. They had to learn that not every fight was winnable; sometimes the best you could do was cut your losses and make as safe a retreat as possible.

The steady thrumming of the H-11 Carbine in the Ulysses's hands rocked the cockpit. John shuffled in his seat, finger twitching on the flight stick. He held it in a death grip with his left hand. Beads of sweat slid down his forehead. His heart palpitated in his chest. It always irritated him just how anxious he got in the pilot's seat. He'd put over a hundred days into this sim; how'd it still make him so goddamn nervous?

An H-11 had a variable fire rate of anywhere between six hundred and fifty rounds a minute to as high as eighteen hundred, depending on the specifications of the exact model and its settings. The Ulysses's H-11 was tuned to the highest possible rate for maximum killpower in close quarters. It could spit out more than thirty individual pulses of superheated energy every second- firing fast enough that it could be mistaken for a continuous beam, if not for the horrific skipping screech that accompanied the light show.

At that speed, Marshall could slag an exoframe before its pilot even noticed the blip approaching on their radar. 

The Ulysses danced between broken towers with the odd, bouncy movement of a bumblebee. It was frighteningly fast; faster than any twenty tons of steel ought to be. Four, wing-like thrusters propelled it forward through the Martian city, carrying the exoframe along even as it turned to unleash a round of missiles from hidden racks in its limbs. Hornet seekers curved around the side of a building and out of sight, exploding against an exoframe Marshall only knew was lurking there from repetition. Its ambush always slowed him down by three seconds too many.

About half a click ahead lay was an intersection where the fighting was thicker than molasses. Heavy frame Sol Union mechs stood their ground against a veritable swarm of smaller yet far more numerous Theden light frames. The Union mechs had erected a makeshift barrier by piling up chunks of road and discarded vehicles, but it wouldn't buy them much time at all.

John kicked the exoframe into high gear, ignoring the warnings flashing across his deck about the inertial dampeners. If he slowed down at all, even for a quarter of a second, those men would die.

He pressed down on the trigger once he reached his effective range, and the carbine began to kick once more. It sang a horrible tune as it cut through hostile frame after hostile frame, shredding their shields until their exposed, metallic bodies could be delivered their fiery purification via a round of seeker missiles. It was rare to watch a pilot die in their cockpit. Most of the time they were lost in a flurry of lasers or the bright light of explosions. Sometimes, though, John would catch a glimpse: an arm here, a face there, something that may have been coolant fluid or human blood. Or maybe his mind was trying to trick him into feeling guilty.

A sudden, intolerable pressure slammed into his body. It crawled up along his spine, digging its fingers into his nerves and sinking its teeth into his blood. His vision swam. The world drained of its color. A heavy, invisible hand pressed down against his face, but he ignored it. Marshall fought to keep his finger on the trigger and his reticle pointed at the enemy. Ignore the Gs. Complete the mission.

The whole of his cockpit rocked with a sudden, hefty impact, and he felt his exoframe begin to tumble head over heel. A great, metal face dominated his primary viewscreen- there was another frame grappling with his. John blinked a hundred times as he tried to check his systems for damage. It looked like a foreign object had pierced Ulysses's lower right thigh. A knife, maybe, or an improvised weapon.

More warnings flashed, this time across every screen in the cockpit: emergency failures across multiple vital systems. Total loss of flight control. The Gs were pouring on and the Ulysses's inertia dampeners were refusing to compensate. John gasped for air in bursts, wheezing, begging for the pressure to lift from his chest for even a moment- just a moment to catch his breath.

Two tangled exoframes slammed into the side of one of Mars's golden spires, shattering glass and snapping steel beams in twain. They tumbled for a few hundred feet before the floor gave out and they were falling again, surrounded by the broken remains of office furniture. John wasn't quite sure how many floors they fell. It could've been as few as two or as many as a hundred. Try as he might, he couldn't focus. Pain wracked his body, addled his mind, but he refused to lose consciousness. 

But Blackest Day was a textbook unwinnable scenario, designed and programed to adapt to the user's every attempt to conquer it. The greatest pilots in the galaxy couldn't stop Antaura from burning.

John blacked out, and the simulation ended.
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