2
Trellwan
For the past hour she’d kept her mind off the shakes while the technicians performed the runup and systems checks for her 35-ton Wolfhound. Now she was in the cockpit holding the clipboard in a gloved hand. It quivered in her grasp and her stomach fluttered.
Overhead the computer's dispassionate female voice sounded over the speakers with a stilted intonation. “Deployment: thirty minutes.” The voice echoed around the hanger.
She took a deep breath and brought the pencil to the first item on the list of cockpit checkouts. The tip of the pencil stuttered against the board leaving tiny dots on the paper.
FBO? Check.
Engine containment? No faults. Check.
She continued to run down the list, engaging various system tests.
“¿Estás bien?” said a voice breaking the silence.
Most people jump when startled but Ryn Carmine had always felt a cold emotional disconnection wash over her in those moments. Warmth returned to her face and her jaw unclenched as she regained composure. The assistant tech was crouching on the catwalk beside her holding a massive neurohelmet under one arm. Ryn was nestled in the cockpit and looked up at the tech.
“Si. Primera verdadera misión. Tu sabes,” she said, scratching at the paper to deflect her embarrassment.
The man chuckled and said, “Yo no. Pero sé que estos.” The tech patted the helmet.
“¿Lista?” he asked and centered the helmet with both hands. He released it and it slowly slid along Ryn’s skull under its own weight until it rested on her shoulders. The tech gave it a little twist to align the edge of the helm with a lip running around the shoulders of Ryn’s cooling suit and began fiddling with various connectors in the back.
Without the faceplate activated, the helm was completely black. Every exhale bounced back, washing Ryn’s face with heated air. Her breath grew shorter each second and a moisture began to accumulate on her forehead and cheeks. A bead of sweat wound down the curve of Ryn’s orbit onto her cheek; a small tributary broke off to send stinging salt into her eye. At last she heard the telltale clicks as all the connectors were in place and the faceplate winked on. The thick air quickly dissipated and was replaced by a cool ambient temperature.
Each Mech was housed in a separate Mechbay but each bay shared a wall with its neighbor. Together the bays formed a ring around the dropship’s massive propulsion drives. The inner ring of bays were extremely compact and housed smaller framed Light and Medium weight Mechs. The outer ring typically housed larger Heavy and Assault chassis and had much more deckspace typically used for troop formations, sand tables, sometimes card games. The deck of the inner bays, like Ryn’s, could open up for an exit from the bottom of the dropship or the front wall could collapse forward, once the larger bay in front was empty, allowing troops in the central ring to exit from the sides.
Almost imperceptibly, tiny components of Ryn’s HUD had begun to wink on one by one. Finally her vision was filled with various readouts. All along she had also sensed a feeling growing in physical size as the neurohelmet slowly integrated her mind with the three story machine she piloted.
Alicia en el pais de las maravillas, Ryn thought. She took a sip of icy water from the straw in the helmet.
Firepower to level a city that wasn't piloted so much as worn like a second skin. It’s what made these BattleMechs such a powerful weapon in the 31st Century - used for subjugation, freedom, war between the Great Houses, or even paychecks for mercenaries like the Black Highland Dragoons.
Through the neurohelmet, the machine becomes an extension of its pilot. Its sensors became their senses. Despite the tight mental connection, the machinery to move a twenty to one-hundred ton machine was only able to move so fast. Generally, Mechs moved relatively slow. Veteran pilots often retired and took on a stigmas from society for being “slow.” Other veterans knew you couldn’t blame them. The truth about these grizzled vets is that the majority of their battles were spent analyzing information being piped directly into their brains via the neurohelmet. They would be flicking through targets, checking maps, statuses on friends and foes, all in the time it took to sluggishly twist left at the waist, take the brunt of an attack to their side as their weapons recycled, then twisted back front to return fire.
The line between herself and the machine was beginning to blur. Sometimes it reminded her of staring at the chain link fence around her childhood playground. She was unable to look away as it seemed to magnify and leave her dizzy.
Where was the tech? Ryn suddenly realized she hadn’t even noticed he had left. How long ago had he even left? Ryn laughed at herself. She imagined him talking to her but receiving no answer. All the techs were probably used to it by now. Anyway, all the checks were done.
“Deployment: fifteen minutes,” droned the computer’s placid voice.
In the bay next door was Wendy McAulley. Ryn already knew she was there but now she could see a blue bounding box around Wendy’s Mech through the wall when she toggled her "cat-eyes" - the computer's friend-foe recognition. It had been a while since Wendy had been in the cockpit since she had moved up to being a senior NCO.
Ryn was dropping eight miles north-east of the main body deployment, securing the right flank. McAulley was going eight miles south-west in a Jenner, tending to the left flank. That put about sixteen to eighteen miles between them but somehow she still felt better that Wendy would be on the ground. In the mission simulators, the Black Highland Dragoons had conducted lance and company mission runs. Each time they had succeeded in their objectives but in one simulation Ryn had been killed; but only barely.
Muerto está muerto, she thought. En la vida real.
She popped open the SRD radio-text keyboard and typed a message to Wendy.
Alley Cat. Remember where to put the keys?
“Deployment: ten minutes.”
Ryn began running through the mission in her mind.
The Dragoon’s force composition was lighter than usual. The broad plan was to drop in the city and secure the spaceport. Main body would occupy the bulk of a mile long V formation and would advance while closing it in a circle. Ryn and Wendy were at the ends of the two arms moving fastest and sweeping the outer edges of the formation.
The SRD flashed Wendy’s response and Ryn pulled it up.
Do pushups.
Ryn laughed but stopped short when the entire dropship bucked hard. Atmosphere. The dropship began decelerating and a bit of dizzy greyness crept into the edges of Ryn’s vision as her blood accumulated a little more in her lower extremities. The klaxons in the bay seemed to be pulsing in time with the heartbeat thumping in her ears. It always cleared up well before they reached mission time.
Ryn wasn’t shaking anymore.
She heard several series of countdowns and checks over the radio in her ear as the dropship crew coordinated with the aerospace fighter vanguard while the command element tended to the shifting battlefield. Mission decisions are based on the best intel possible but until you see the situation with your own eyes some decisions have to wait to be set in stone. The multitude of chatter humbled her a little bit; only a cog in the machine.
Her vision continued to bounce violently in the turbulence. Through the roaring engines Ryn could faintly hear a sporadic sound like rain on a tin roof. Dropship command reported incoming fire.
The mic keyed on, a male voice broke in.
“Chalk one, Command. Time on target, fifteen seconds.”
“Command, chalk one. Green,” came Wendy’s reply, so fast it sounded to Ryn like a singular word. The jump caution lights were flashing orange in all the bays.
“Go!” rang out over the comms.
There was a short, deep metallic sound. Wendy was away to juliet south-west dropzone. The dropship was descending along a north-east diagonal and would be landing at the bottom of the initial V formation. Wendy and Ryn would deploy with BMJP which allowed for a higher altitude insertions. The BMJP was an external system that allowed them to course correct in the air to hit their DZ. Once on the ground, the BMJP would be discarded.
“Chalk two, Command. Time on target, fifteen.”
“Command, chalk- chalk two. Green,” said Ryn.
She started counting in her head.
Fourteen, thirteen, twelve…
City below. The deck had opened up too fast to see and now Ryn was in the air looking at the metropolis below, familiar to her from the mission simulator. In three-hundred sixty degrees around her Ryn saw the sky glittering as the sun danced through the cloud of chaff that had deployed with her. Looking up and to the right the massive spherical dropship was already shrinking as she fell toward bravo north-east DZ.
The ground below slowed its forward rush as Ryn engaged the BMJP. The chaff was tied into her controls so that as she fired the lateral thrusters they too would heat up to displace her signature.Tracer fire continued to flash out at various points around her as enemy infantry attempted a little “recon by fire.”
On her HUD a municipal park was overlaid with a translucent orange rectangle. She was coming in a too far south of the DZ. Ryn continued to tap the laterals to maneuver back on course but needed to make damn sure she didn’t used all the fuel doing so. The Wolfhound had no jump jets of its own to augment her landing if the fuel on the BMJP ran out.
The trees in the park began to rise in the parallax and obscure the rest of the landscape. A lake shimmered off to the right. To the left an empty street crept forward out of the buildings and bordered the park. It ran back behind her out of sight. An electronic warning began sounding to indicate the last thirty seconds of fuel.
Four, three, two...
The Wolfhound made a thunderous landfall that belied its relatively gentle arrival. Ryn toggled the BMJP and it disconnected from the Mech’s back, falling to the ground. Overhead two aerospace fighters tore through the sky on missions of their own.
Ominous sirens continued their lethargic rise and fall throughout the abandoned metropolis of Sarghad as they had for half the day. Normally these signals were reserved for impending natural disasters - flash floods, funnel clouds. It was the best the city could do as the Black Highland Dragoon's dropships had entered the system.
“Command, Ryn. Oscar mike, out.”
Ryn Carmine punched the throttle forward. She felt like a natural disaster.
Edited by TygerLily, 01 December 2015 - 01:51 PM.
