Orga had a plan.
It was reckless and stupid.
It was the best shot we had.
It had to be.
"Noah! Yamagi! Did you get the instructions I sent you?" I wasted no time getting to the hangar. By then everyone knew we were to prepare for a fight. The crews crawled over the Suits like ants, finishing last minute repairs and latching pieces back into place.
"Yeah, we already sent the info to the bridge." Noah grabbed my outstretched hand, pulling me to a stop on one of the railings overlooking the maintenance bays. His black hair was ruffled and, like me, he had ditched his shirt for the regulator suit.
He, like all of the boys, wore a black suit with grey seams along the arms and chest; those ones were for people with the Whiskers implants. Mine was the regular white with grey seams reserved for anyone without the implants. Because none of us had spent much time in space we needed them to help keep temperature fluctuations and excess radiation from affecting us too much.
"Thanks." I said to him before turning to Nadi. He had ceased to call out orders and looked to me instead. It was quite the role reversal and the moment was not lost on me.
"How are the Suits? Can they be used?"
"The Graze just needs a pilot but Barbatos needs more work," I stared at him a little longer, "We can make it work, just not at 100 percent." He sighed.
"Thank you." I said both to him and Noah, who handed me one of our intercom headsets. Their weight felt all too familiar around my neck. How many more times would I wear them before this job was over and I could go back to hiding in the repair hangar?
"The ship is preparing for battle. Gravity will now be deactivated." Ms. Admoss's calm voice sounded through the hangar speakers, "Prepare for 180 degree turn in two minutes"
"Akihiro and Mika are on their way." Chad's voice crackled over the comm. I gave a thumbs-up to Nadi: our pilots were coming.
"Load the Graze up first, we'll send Barbatos out second!" Nadi's voice boomed through the hangar. Even though he followed my instructions I knew who was really in charge. It was comforting to know that he had my back and wouldn't let us screw up too badly. Hopefully.
"Yamagi, Takaki, take your teams and ready eight Mobile Workers." They nodded at me and kicked off across the bays. Our Workers were strapped into the side of the Hangar, out of the way yet still accessible if needed. Getting them ready meant refueling, loading ammo, and of course moving them into launch position.
Noah was part of Shino's boarding team so he would be leaving. They were in charge of their own guns, ammo, and suits so I didn't need to spend time on that. I watched the boy, barely younger than me by a year, swing around the door to where the boarding gear was stored. He seemed so sure of himself but I knew he was scared. Any sane person would be. Shino said that was what kept you sharp: the fear.
"Akihiro, you're set to launch." Nadi called out. The broad boy was already in the normal suit and made a beeline for the graze. Those suits were the only things that would keep the pilots alive if there was a breach in the cockpit. They were pretty basic, like most of the equipment on the ship, but they had basic life support for an estimated one-hour of space-time. I prayed we would never need to figure out if that was an over or under-estimate.
In the controlled chaos that was the hangar I almost missed Mika puling himself into the Barbatos. Nadi was with him, probably explaining what was keeping the Mech from being at 100-percent.
I pressed the speak button on the side of the headset. "Ms. Admoss, can you send a visual of the battlefield to my E-pad? I'm sending the ID-number to you." Instead of a verbal affirmation, a message popped up on my screen. I tapped it and multiple windows opened at once, each one was linked to a different camera.
"Thank you." I said quickly. The Graze was picked up by the loading crane and set into the catapult that would launch him into the battle.
"Graze, Akihiro Altland, heading out." Akihiro's gravely voice was the next to come through the speakers. A cheer went up around the hangar. The Barbatos swung into position after the Graze was launched. I flicked through the windows until I found the blue-hot fire from the Akihiro's thrusters.
The enemy had already launched one suit and was in the process of launching a second. The models of both were too hard to make out but I could tell they weren't Grazes: the basic balancing was too different. I hoped the lady from the
"Barbatos, Mikazuki Augus, heading out." A similar cheer; a second blue streak joined Akihiro. Both of our guys were on the field.
The loading crane moved quickly, placing the Mobile workers into the catapult like bullets in a gun. The ship shuddered around us from artillery fire. I tapped the screen again and pulled up another base page, this one showed all of the mobile workers and their statuses. They were nearly all at 100 percent.
"And here I thought you were bad with computers." I was so focused that I didn't notice anyone behind me. Orga reached over my shoulder and flicked back to the page with the battlefield visuals.
"Even old dogs can learn a new trick or two." He had totally broken my rhythm and I tried to hold on to the pieces. I could not afford to be distracted here. I turned around to look at him and put a few inches of space between us. He raised an eyebrow but I think he got the message because his commander face came back.
He cut an impressive figure in the Normal Suit. A gun hung behind him, it would be loaded with gas canisters. The live ammunition was in a magazine attached to the outside of his suit. The goal of the mission was to make the Turbines sit up and take notice of us. Make them understand that we were more than just a bunch of kids playing at being an actual organization.
"My guess is that negotiations totally dissolved?" I asked.
"Not without Biscuit's best efforts." He pulled himself over the guardrail and kicked down to the Mobile Workers. Of course I followed, I always do.
We stopped at one of the Workers, the E-pad said it was fully fueled and ready to go. I rapped the side of the machine with my knuckles, "You still know how to actually pilot one of these things?"
He grinned at me, "Just because I don't pilot doesn't mean I can't." Right, part of the image he maintained. Sometimes you had to look like a person in charge in order to be one. Orga usually stayed out of the pilot seat in order to dole out orders on the battlefield. He'd given that role over to Nadi, Eugene, Biscuit, and me.
"Maintenance crew: When you're finished get out of the catapult, the airlock is about to close!" Nadi called through the speakers. The rest of the boarding team was settling into the workers, it was time for me to leave.
Before I could kick off, Orga grabbed my hand, "I'm com–"
"Nope!" I cut him off, confusion spread across his face so I softened my expression and squeezed his hand, "I understand, but you know that phrase is a jynx, promise me you'll never say it to me again?"
He smiled, "Yeah."
"Enough flirting you two!" Noah's voice crackled over my headset and I glanced around to find him grinning at me from a Worker adjacent to Orga's. I slipped my hand out of Orga's and kicked off and out of the catapult.
"Hush you." I'd have stuck my tongue out at Noah if there weren't other people around.
I looped an arm around the guardrail in time to catch Yamagi and swing him over. He had a dazed look on his face and he was holding his left hand. Panic lanced through me and thoughts of him being hurt flashed through my mind.
"Yamagi, are you okay?"
He looked at me as if he just realized I was there, "Oh, um, yeah."
He seemed embarrassed about something but I didn't push. All that mattered to me right then was that he was okay. The airlock closed with a pneumatic hiss and we were cut off from the Mobile Workers and their pilots.
I flipped through the visuals of the battlefield again, another enemy Suit had come into play since Mika and Akihiro launched. Yamagi and I took turns swiping back and forth to keep the battles on the screen but there was only so much the ship could capture.
"Yamagi do you know those suits?" I asked.
"Hyakuren, not a Gjallarhorn Suit." Yamagi muttered, quickly identifying the enemy. If they weren't from Gjallarhorn then that meant Teiwaz had their own supplier. A good one.
Another shudder rippled through the Isaribi. The third suit had closed and was peppering the ship with bullets. This one had a large propulsion pack that increased both speed and agility, making it a target our anti-craft guns couldn't dream of hitting.
Mika forced her to change course with a few shots from the Barbatos's shoulder cannon. The enemy's propulsion made them too agile for any of the shots to land but their focus had been shifted. Mika and the enemy flew in tight formation around each other, eventually moving out of range of the cameras.
The Isaribi had a few tricks of its own, including a plentiful stash of smokescreen missiles. The bridge fired a volley of these in the direction of the Turbine's ship, the E-pad identified it as the Hammerhead. They wasted no time in intercepting the missiles causing a smokescreen to envelope their field of vision, and ours.
I hoped Eugene was a good enough pilot not to flatten us against the battering ram that gave the Hammerhead its distinctive shape. The cameras on the bow showed a shadow, then the full ship can into view. The Turbines hadn't even stowed their bridge they were so assured of a win, I felt my eye twitch in annoyance.
"Mobile Workers launching!" It was Takaki's voice that called out this time. Yamagi and I practically glued our eyes to the screen, to the ever-growing ship. Eugene turned us at the last second so that we barely missed the Hammerhead. If the Workers moved into the wrong position, they would be flattened. But we wouldn't know their until the battle stopped.
Yamagi switched to Akihiro's side of the battle and I prayed that the Graze was holding up. He had kept the Hyakuren away from the Hammerhead for our game of spaceship chicken. Apparently they had caught on to what Akihiro had done and tried to leave the battlefield to protect their ship. He would have none of that.
The Graze rushed the closest suit, causing it to turn about and parry with what looked to be a giant combat blade. The Graze couldn't match the Hyakuren's output and its axe was tossed aside. The enemy suit slashed down on the Graze's torso, knocking it away.
It seemed as if Akihiro was stunned for a moment before the back thrusters fired off and recklessly shot him toward the enemy. Without the axe Akihiro pummeled the enemy with his fists. It reminded me of a brawl, definitely not something you should do with a Mobile Suit. Where Akihiro's moves resembled those of a street fighter, the enemy's were those of a trained martial artist.
The Hyakuren locked the Graze in its grasp and brought a knee up to smash the head sensor, effectively blinding Akihiro. He was knocked back again but didn't give up: the shoulder canon shuttered into place but the Hyakuren easily dodged the shot. That gun was for ranged attacks, not close combat.
The enemy ripped the gun off of the Graze, causing the barrel to explode, knocking Akihiro into the other enemy Hyakuren which, until that point, had remained on the sidelines. He wrapped the Graze's arms around the leg of the enemy Mech and punched it ineffectually, again something that would work in a human fight but not in a mech battle.
The first Hyakuren returned to assist its comrade. It grabbed the ruined Graze and whipped it around like a rag doll. The second Kyakuren wrapped around the back while the first poised its combat knife to shear off the rest of the Graze's head. My breath caught in my throat. Yamagi's hand grabbed for my own and squeezed. I squeezed back, eyes glued to the screen.
"They've agreed to hear us out." Biscuit said over the ship's speakers, "It's over."