[color=76D0FF]”Shit, sorry!”[/color] Marit blurted out when Ziska made her aware of her mistake, giving the stuck button a whack. She had remembered to sacrifice two slices of the sausage that came with her breakfast ration to Kerensky and ask for the General’s blessing on this mission, but apparently - true to her species - she conserved energy and only blessed the outcome, not its full duration. In her infinite wisdom, Kerensky probably set it up this way so they could get all the bad luck out of the way before the shooting actually started.

Everything that was supposed to be on was on, everything that was supposed to be off was off. She pulled the seatbelts tight, leaving the shoulder straps a bit loose to help her with looking around and keyed the mic twice to confirm she understood the instructions, this time checking that the button had gone back to the ‘receive’ position as intended. She flexed both of the Archer’s elbows, making sure the right one moved the same as the left one. Minhas did a good job. As they were told to ready up, the Archer, towering over everything except Ingrid’s Ostroc, leaned forward, ready to accelerate to its top speed of… barely enough to trigger a speed trap.

And then the patrols noticed them. Some of them. One of the Scorpions didn’t get to look at them for long as Steel Rain fired, taking its hat clean off with their first shot, though both still managed to get rounds off at Ramrod and Family Man. Marit kept her launcher covers closed for the time being, her attention now split between the patrol, cursory glances at the gate and periodic scans of the skies. Archie being the slowest ‘Mech they had available at the time, Marit could ram the throttle open without worrying she would break station at the back of the formation. Raising the ‘Mech’s arms and aligning all four lasers on the nearest striker, Marit fired the arm-mounted pair first, followed by the top mount if necessary to keep the heat down as much as she could, trying to take it out or at least disarm it before it had time to shoot. Perhaps an overkill, but there were more weapons than targets to go around so far.

Now, what sort of air power were they supposed to have? It started with ‘M’, of that she was sure, was it Meteors? Or Mechbusters? Had to be Meteors, the Mechbuster was too new to have made it all the way here from the Dracs, right? Right. Now what sort of armaments did that have? A gun and missiles, but which? AC2 and SRMs? AC10 and LRMs? That would make sense, missiles strip armor at range, autocannon finishes it off up close. Plus hardpoints. Now how many? A wing. Two, four, six? Total, but how many would they send? Two sounded reasonable. As did four, but they’d definitely keep some in reserve, surely they wouldn’t send everything at once. When? Balya Zvezda spaceport was around 350 km away according to the map. How fast could Meteors be at low altitude? 1200 kph? 2400? Less than nine minutes assuming the latter, if they launched now. Even less if they were already in the air.