Holly floated to her extended cockpit and pulled herself into her seat, fighting the inertia of her kick off the floor. As the cockpit retracted and closed around her, she strapped herself in and plugged the Alaya-Vijnana interface in with practiced motions. The interface engaged, and her hands convulsed in her lap,  her already-bleeding nose giving a particularly strong gush. She wiped it savagely with the back of her hand.

The "Big Boi," as she called her Rodi, was lowered to the catapult deck first, and Holly grabbed her normal suit helmet off the floor and put it on. After everything was checked, she announced into the comm feed:

"Holly, Familiar One, Man Rodi, taking off." 

~~~

Captain Brun drifted into the bridge, where the [i]Witch[/i]'s command and control staff was already gathered. Carrot was standing dutifully by the Captain's seat(the only one that looked reasonably comfortable), and only glanced briefly before announcing "Captain on the deck!" 

Brun took her seat and looked over the monitors. There wasn't a lot to see yet, so she glanced at the cockpit feeds in the five sortying mobile suits. "Blood on that one's face. Did it take such a bad hit out there?"

Carrot answered at once, "No, ma'am. Her suit sustained some damage, but she was uninjured when she checked it. I suspect the Bosun bloodied her nose for her." 

The Captain sighed, "If he's not more careful with his playthings, he'll break them. And then how will he entertain himself?" As she spoke, her hand reached out and absently stroked Carrot's hair. The girl bore this stoically. 

~~~ 

Holly gritted her teeth against the force of the catapult, even with her inertial control working overtime. As her Rodi’s speed leveled out, she glanced around at her displays. There wasn’t a lot to see in the visual scans yet. The Debris zone was full of detritus from destroyed ships, pulled together by the unnatural gravity of abandoned Ahab reactors. If you didn’t know to look for it, the [i]Mercurial Witch[/i] didn’t look all that different from some of the larger chunks. There were a few other full ships just sitting out here, but this was so deep in the Zone that trying to recover one was simply infeasible. 

Local area mapping was almost worse. Radar was useless, so the mapping was based on a conglomeration of visual data, with Ahab waves layered on top. This is what she was scanning, after a quick look to confirm that her squad was following on. 

“I’ve sent the wave signature to your mobile suits,” Mick’s voice came over the LCS comm. “But it’s moving into an area with particularly high wave density, so keep sharp. And try not to break the LCS line.” 

“Don’t stretch your leashes, rats,” the captain’s voice cut in, “Remember where you have to return.” 

Holly murmured with her microphone off, “Yeah yeah,” before opening the channel and speaking aloud, “Yes, cap’n.” 

Holly spotted the wave in her mapping, but it was in an area that even her visual data was failing to generate. The Big Boi’s thrusters propelled it forward into the cloud of debris, putting on reverse thrust to slow it down as it approached a particularly large chunk of armor plating. She maneuvered around it, and stared into her displays, eyes wide and pupils flitting back and forth. 

“There,” she said, “Sending visual, do you see? Looks like a Graze, but… fancy?”

There was a ship here, a proper battle ship of old. Holly could just make out the emblem of Gjallarhorn in faded and scuffed paint. The size of the ship, and particularly the Ahab reactor inside, had attracted a great many smaller ships and other space garbage. Two things stood out, however: the first was a set of boosters resting gently against the hull. It was obviously much newer, and looked like it was meant to attach to a mobile suit. This explained how a suit had gotten all the way out here, and the suit itself was the second thing. It was painted yellow, and had more flourishes in its armor than any of the ones on board a Jolly Rog ship. 

“That’s a Schwalbe Graze!” Mick said, in some amount of surprise. “Those are rare as hell.” 

“And probably working for Gjallarhorn,” the captain cut across in some alarm, “Do not let it escape to report back!”

Though the body was facing a rent in the hull of the Gjallarhorn ship, the head was turned, and the shroud around its sensor orb was retracted as it stared directly at Holly’s mobile suit.