HereComesTheSnow

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

All accusations of "showing off" are strictly unfounded, he'd do it if there wasn't a soul around either

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

I kind of vaguely went with the “Aircraft Carrier EMALS compatible with orbital boots” re: catapult description

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

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"No bugs, right? Last program test showed everything running clean." Harling's voice piped into Konstantin's ears at roughly the same time he experimentally flexed the Orbital's digits and checked the wrist's wrange of motion. All green. Smooth response time, too. Honestly, it felt like the Orbital had woken up from a refreshing nap of its own— he had half a mind to ask if it hadn't gotten a little extra fine tuning under the hood. He certainly would appreciate such.

"Yeah, a few." the Serb replied in a pointedly off-handed tone, eyes sweeping the field of view the Bedwyr's visor afforded him. "It seems you replaced my HUD with something from a videogame. I can paint you guys on the ground just by squinting a little. What happened to regional, manual designation?"

"Eyeball tracking includes your pupils. The system reads your subconscious dilation and retinal movement when you recognize another human— we all instinctively do it. For our expedition's purposes, all humans are friendly until further notice, so don't get any funny ideas regarding the tiny blue dots."

"Can it be spoofed by images? If video feed gets uplinked, I don't need the COO with a blue box around her. I know she's not friendly."

While his technical advisor snorted, maybe even scoffed, Konstantin busied himself with double-checking to ensure that he hadn't been broadcasting on any of their official channels. He didn't fear any man or woman, but he was willing to admit that he feared the possibility of being forced to sit this initial sortie out.

"You've got a spectroscopic program working in tandem with it now that we overhauled the program to play nice with this— and a few other new toys. I'll keep it brief since they're ushering us out: the chemical composition of the human body's unique enough that with 15 years of free time we found a way to sneak it into the list along with shit like iron and water."

"So it'll cross-reference. I see. From what I understand, I'll also be providing video feed to the research teams?" He asked, testing the orbital's "neck" by letting his gaze follow the team out of the hangar. As the door slid shut, Harling turned back from his position as last in line, a wry smirk on his face.

"Well, if we're tracking where you're looking, may as well track what you're looking at. Happy Hunting, Pilot. Bring her back in one piece."

And with a single chime, the audio feed from the mechanic's handheld disconnected. Fair enough.

Couldn't really argue with the logic.

He satisfied himself with cycling between the Merlon System's visual filters— thermal, geiger, low-light— when a small ping in his ears and at the bottom of his vision (would need to get used to that) indicated a direct connection request from... well, who else?

<<If you want to check compatibility, I'd sooner suggest dinner.>>

His reply came evenly, dry as Kitezh's equator, and accompanied one last pass through his flight control surfaces. Sterling. Everything to spec— damned near factory-new. That was the last of it that could safely be performed in-hangar. Time to get out there. He already had the navigational information at his literal fingertips; all it took was one button on the dash for the heading arrow to appear, just above his velocity gauge.

<<Better everything work than something get in the way of our full potential, I say. We're dropping into a new world— best make the best impression we can.>>

Heat shield carried in crimson hand, the OF-2D looked in so many ways a crusader of old as Konstantin walked it out to the catapult bay, tall and proud and so very dangerous. It was common among pilots to liken Orbitals to bikes— once you learned, you never forgot. Nothing else in the worlds compared, truly. No matter how mechanically taxing, complicated, or abstract it could be, there was a certain irreplaceable something about mastering a twenty-meter war machine shaped in man's own image that drew men and women like them in. Heedless of danger, of worry, they found beauty in the act, in the experience— something that made it worthwhile to them. Not even those elder statesmen, bless Cross and Zakharin, could peel themselves away. They had their reasons, surely, but Konstantin was sure they also shared his.

He switched to the universal shared comms channel as he pulled up to Catapult 2, alongside Adam and the Starstrike. Indulging in the mechanical possibility within the Bedwyr's design, he greeted the man with a nod, the yellow visor bobbing his field of view up and down with the motion. He leaned back in his seat, getting in one last stretch of the spine.

<<Shall we, then?>>

And then, he gazed out into the void. Into the inky blackness, the many stars drowned out by the light that reflected off of Kitezh's dusty surface. At the ball of mud and brush itself, far below. All of this before him, endless and massive. He knew why he couldn't imagine himself doing anything else, every time he stepped up to the plate.

This was a pilot's kingdom.

The flight control team had given them the green light. Sliding his orbital into place and listening for the magnetic clamps locking, Konstantin gave the universal pilot's ready signal: a thumbs up with the free hand.

<<This is Stojanović. I'm headed out.>>

And then, with all the energy the powerful generator far, far below could pump through those electrodes at his feet, the mechanical knight rocketed forward, down the strip, a sharp yet smooth acceleration that carried him clear of the bay in a half-second, full second, second and a half—

Pressed into his seat in the most enthrallingly familiar fashion, Kon pulled back on the controls.

—Just as the catapult released him, the Orbital suddenly swept upward, thrusters firing at full burn and sending all that momentum into a tight curve, hitting multiple Gs mere instants after takeoff. Screaming silently through the vacuum, the OF-2D corkscrewed, retros and pilot rolling it through undeterred. It could handle much more than this. The first model, with its shittier avionics, could effectively Immelmann in Earth's atmosphere. Out here? Maneuvering was child's play.

Yep, everything's working.

Swiftly guiding his chariot onto the proper heading, there was a previously-absent touch of vigor in Konstantin's voice as he made the first radio transmission between two objects in Kitezh's orbit. That they knew of, anyway.

<<Proceeding to LZ.>>

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

I'd imagine it was at the very least pretty involved for outer colonies, that asteroid belt is probably an annoying bitch for the UN to send relief through

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

takeoff sequence to come when i am less clearly braindead than i have been for the past 48 hours

with god as my witness, i will bludgeon you all with Ace Combat vibes, just wait

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

I might sooner say mid-250s for Kon, with the caveat of "i didn't think about time dilation or travel distances for anything before the expedition too hard"

you know how not hard i thought about it?

I forgot we left in 249

i'd say he probably did, then

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

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"Kitezh," Konstantin breathed in a murmur, allowing the name to roll over his tongue like a new, alien taste as he stood at attention. Before him was displayed the image of their new "home". Or perhaps their new "target". It depended on mentality, maybe, but it did not change that the colony module was now their forward operating base in the stringent terms of official military designation. If that dusty rock of brown, splotched by greens and blues by the lifegiving dye of liquid water, was to be treated as official combat Area of Operations, then he as a soldier would reflect the part.

There would be no higher security measure taken than this first drop into the gravity well, atmosphere, and most importantly, biosphere. Extant lifeforms had long been confirmed, that he now knew, and it was a fleetingly rare moment in history when people like them— those thinking themselves explorers, pioneers, trailblazers, made truly peaceful contact with anything native to that unknown land. Readiness was a sword on the hip, even if you came in peace.

Upon their dismissal, the pilot wasted no time reporting to the hangar. That it was ordered of him by their CO was one thing, but simultaneously... he'd slept for 15 years. Even if his mind barely knew the time had passed, and his body had not felt the ravages of a decade and a half upon it, both felt a distinct yearning for the controls. The recycled air of a cockpit. The power of an Oberth Reactor, thrumming through the frame of the walking fortress beneath him. He suspected it to be the same for his fellows, all assembled at their Orbitals in a conga line of the various stages of pre-launch checks.

The Bedwyr was not hard to spot, even amongst its kin. Konstantin's personal chariot, a colossus of iron, stood tall and proud amongst its fellows, cutting an almost knightly silhouette where other designs leaned more towards the utilitarian, or to the feral, or even to the fey. The wings, folded behind and flat below the shoulders of the great machine, almost suggested the form of a surcoat. A quartet of guns protruded outward from the otherwise human bodyplan, a pair above and a pair beneath where arm met torso. A yellowed visor impassively regarded its pilot from high above, as though gazing upon an old friend from between the massive barrels of its shoulder turrets, so routinely polished as to gleam in the white cast by florescence high overhead. Took our time, didn't we? It seemed to say, matter-of-fact as he was.

In truth, his OF-2D had been very clearly the subject of spirited upkeep in its entirety— even his trademark coat of paint looked touched up for the occasion. Striking reds upon a subtly blued white, ascending past the realm of mere trimming or pinstripes when the eye inevitably found itself drawn towards that left arm, awash with the hues of blood. Not for nothing, either.

"Looks like you kept him in good shape for me." he called from below, clambering up the ladder to the boarding catwalk as the head of the attached tech team hailed him with a wave. A veritable tree stump of a man, Konstantin couldn't help but note that a few more wrinkles had graced the ridges of his eyes, even if the GR pin on his lapel was nice and shiny. He had already been pushing 50 when they'd last met.

"Had a hell of a time with it too, considering your proclivity for coming back with three limbs. After reading your record, I nearly decided to just ditch the damn thing entirely." He made a show of grumbling as he pulled up the master schematic on his PDA, blue light reflecting off of the nametag: Harling Schroeder. While not strictly military personnel, his presence on the repair crew was all but essential. To begin with, the representative had been involved with OF-2 project since its inception in Germany, and likely had a greater working knowledge of the errant specifics of the platform than any other greasemonkey you'd find—

"Ah, it was only twice. The red is for good luck."

"If you say so. Either way, we've got her running hot as she's ever been now that Jim worked out a bit of a balancing issue. Just to be sure, give your wings another pass once you step inside. The aileron right here wasn't responding in time, wiring issue. Other than that, we just need to get you acquainted with Merlon."

—And he had also brought with him a skunkworks project the Dam's software division had cooked up. Gesturing to the helmet that rested within the crook of the pilot's elbow and then to the open cockpit nestled within the Bedwyr's chest. Konstantin had already noticed the differences in design to his usual headgear, most notably the input jack for what he had to assume was the systems integration process between suit and frame.

"You'll find the wire over the left shoulder. Think the opposite of a seatbelt."

Of course he would— the fiber-optic cable that dangled behind his seat was impossible for him to miss. Even if he wasn't familiar enough with this machine that it felt like slipping on an old glove, his eyes still worked.

Wisely, Konstantin did not share the sentiment, instead slipping the sleek plastics and composites over his skull as he nestled himself in. Getting snippy with the guy in charge of maintaining your machine was like shitting on your waiter— just asking to get spit in your beer. Considering that he was currently in the middle of plugging something into what was very close to his own brain, he was not to keen on finding out how the metaphor might translate to information to and from a seventy-foot war machine. The doors closed before him as he tugged on his harness, satisfied with its snugness. For a brief moment, he was alone in a dark box.

Then, with the flick of a switch he hadn't needed to see for ages, the world came into crystal focus once more, the yellow eye of the one-armed knight flaring to life in the hangar as a low hum sprouted from deep within the Orbital's iron breast. Ambient audio, the muted sounds of orbitals and crew alike within the hangar, piped into his ears to back the current silence on official radio frequencies— one shattered after a moment by a bell-like chime, and the flashing image of a sword stabbed into an anvil superimposing itself upon his video feed.

AVALON DAM
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

STARTING...

LOADING PLUG-INS...

INITIALIZING...

DATA FOUND...

VERIFYING UPLINK...

SYSTEM ONLINE

Oh.

He took a brief moment to appreciate just how many objects of interest in his field of view had been designated, complete with shorthand IFF descriptors. FRND. FRND. NTRL. FRND. NTRL. NTRL. NTRL.

That's new.

A gleam in his eye, he began to jaunt his way through the practiced routine of finalizing pre-flight checks, brimming with an intense curiosity and excitement, a child that couldn't wait to play with this new toy. In so many ways, this promised to be perhaps the most eye-opening sortie he'd ever experienced.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

unidentified heat signature bearing vector 280, contact with lz in 5 minutes

zero system engage

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

more in reference to my brain just saying "no" whenever i asked it about writing for the past two weeks but that too