It was mid-November before anyone knew it. There hadn't been a harvester attack since Halloween, and the moods of the crew members is light. After all, despite this being technically a combat situation where battle could happen at any time, it sure felt more like a party than anything else.
In the bridge gardens, a stage has been set up. All around the ship, there are whispers as the crew excitedly discusses the evening's entertainment.
Apparently, Jura knows how to play a piano. Also, one of the walls in storage had shifted to reveal a beautifully preserved grand piano. It was, of course, horribly out of tune from the years unattended but before anyone was able to move it out of the way, Jura had found out and demanded that she would take possession of the large, glossy black object.
From his vantage point on the bridge, Bart could see four of the women carefully lifting the piano up onto the stage. Bart had actually been curious enough to request that he could view the concert, but it looks like it wouldn't have mattered anyway. He probably has the best seat in the house, all things considered.
Once again, he thanks whatever gods are watching that you can't see into the bridge bubble from outside. Otherwise, he'd die of embarrassment. It's bad enough when the girls suddenly open up a window while he's in here.
To be honest though, the women had been growing on him lately. They're a lot more sophisticated than the lower classes from Tarak, which means he can hold intelligent conversations with them rather than trying to talk down to the monkeys. Still they do like to tease him whenever they find something he's ignorant of. Like the fact women don't actually eat men. A few of them still lick their lips when he passes.
He shudders just thinking about it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a dark spot against the nearest star, which he quickly identified as a planet. Ever since getting this job, his celestial knowledge had skyrocketed. This allows him to make the snap judgement that this planet might be worth looking at, given the distance it is from its star and a few other factors provided by the ship's main scanner.
He opens a window to BC, the woman he gets along with the best. In fact, she kind of reminds him of his academy instructors, which is a strange comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. "Any familiar territory is comfort in war", his mentor used to say. "Vice-Captain, I think we should check out the planet orbiting this star."
BC pulls up the data the Bart was already seeing and nods. "Good eye. Put us into orbit."
"Yes ma'am." Bart closes the window and smiles to himself. He hadn't screwed up seriously in weeks. Weeks! If he can keep this up, maybe people will stop teasing him.
It only takes a few minutes to reach the planet, thanks to the miracle of FTL travel. BArt hadn't paid any attention in those classes, but he occasionally wished he did if only to understand the awesome forces he's wielding.
The planet in question actually seems quite nice at first, looking out his window. The light side of the planet is green, evidence of plant life of some sort. It's in the life zone, the area where humans can potentially survive. The atmosphere is relatively nice, if a bit more sulfurous than most people would like. It'll stink, but it won't kill you to breath there.
However, there is the disturbing fact that the gravity on the planet is about 1.4g, or twice what was considered standard. Bart had wondered about that, since Tarak is 0.83g and Mejare is 0.73g so why weren't either of those numbers 1? Now that he knows there's other civilizations out there, he supposes that someone else had set the standard.
By the way, the Nirvana's gravity is set to a pleasant 0.8g at all times. It means less injuries, especially when you keep tripping over things. Not that Bart ever trips. Nope. That would be absurd.
"If anyone lives down there, They've got to have serious muscles." Bart says to himself. "I don't want to go down there and get crushed into myself."
"What?"
Bart turns to the opposite side to see the blue-haired leader of the fighter pilots. While he never really was able to hold a normal conversation with her, he did respect her. After all, she's the one who's job it is to make sure he doesn't get beat up. "Oh, h-hey Meia. What's up?"
"BC said to ask you about the planet we're orbiting."
Bart repeats all the information he had gathered to her. She listens quietly until he's finished.
"Sounds like it's going to be unpleasant down there." She grimaces. "Still, we have been getting low on resources recently. We may not get another chance to restock anything for a while."
Bart nods. "Exactly! I was telling BC how badly we needed a resupply, and she told me to be extra wary of planets. Be glad I did, or else we might of missed this one!"
Meia smiles slightly. "Yes, yes. Good job, Bart. Keep me updated, Okay?"
"Will do!"
With that, the connection closes, and Bart goes back to examining the planet. This planet is rotating along an odd axis, leading to a dry, barren place near one of the poles that looks like it rarely leaves its star's light, and an opposite pole with the reverse problem, never receiving the warmth of heavy doses of infrared. The majority of the planet is covered in a jungle or forest of some sort, his scans aren't quite accurate enough to figure it out for certain. It rotate around its axis roughly every 51 hours.
To Bart's relief, the planet also seems to have water and with all that plant life they'll have plenty of nutrients to restock the food stores. BC will be happy to hear this!
He is so giddy congratulating himself he almost misses the short burst transmission from the surface.
"Uhg. So. Heavy." Del complains.
"Quiet." Meia says, clearly on edge.
When they had all gathered as a ground party to go scavenging, BC had interrupted their strategy meeting to tell them some disturbing news.
Apparently, this planet is called by Capaneus by its natives. True to Bart's intuition, this planet is filled with very strong humans, a byproduct of adapting to life on a planet with such high gravity.
They're also very hostile, and at least intelligent enough to be able to send messages to outer space. The one Bart had intercepted had read "Come down here so we can skin you alive."
Pleasant.
Thus, Meia had brought out the big guns. While the ring lasers are all well and good in the relatively clear atmosphere of a spaceship, in humid environments such as this tend to diffract the lasers and cause the weapons to be somewhat useless.
Instead, they had requested that Barnette lend them some weapons.
At first, she was reluctant to let anyone use them. They're her precious things, of course she wouldn't want others taking them. When Jura had pleaded and asked Barnette to accompany them down to the surface so the she could demonstrate their use to the rest of the ground crew... Well...
Del finds herself having to admit that these old style guns certainly have a charm to them. She had been handed a Barnetta ninety-two, or something. It's black, it's got a round top, and it's simple to use. Del seriously considered nicking off with the gun, but decided that it's probably better not to screw around with the walking armory. And what an armory Barnette is.
While Del had barely anything on her aside from her suit and the gun (and three spare magazines), Barnette was loaded down with three different guns, A shotgun and two assault rifles. Del felt her small pistol was heavy, but those were heavy even back on the ship.
The strain is starting to show on Barnette's face as well. Jura keeps trying to take a second rifle from her friend but Barnette is adamant about keeping those three to herself. Del just chalks it up to those being her most precious weapons, or something.
Still, this planet makes Del feel like she's going to collapse into a puddle. According to that Bart guy, she weighs almost twice as much here as on the Nirvana, and she could believe it. They've only been down here for about an hour and even the strongest physically are showing signs of strain.
"Ahhhhg, I quit!" Dita sags to the ground, evidently deciding that right smack dab in the middle of a forest would be a great place to give up.
Jura sags down beside her, panting slightly. "I agree. Can we get Gasco to come pick us up?"
Meia turns back to look at her five woman team. "But we haven't discovered the settlement yet."
"At... At this rate..." Barnette gasps out. "We're not going to make it anyway."
Meia frowns. "I told you all this was going to be hard when we left."
Del leans against the nearest tree, her casual expression less trustworthy as Meia sees the woman's legs stop shaking. "Heh, well, I can keep going."
Meia looks around at each of the crew members. None of them are really in shape to make this trek, she admits to herself. "Alright, but we're too close to the source of the signal for this to be quiet. When Gascogne shows up, we need to be ready to defend ourselves."
Relieved nods from all around.
Despite her pessimism, they were able to extract without catching sight of the residents of the forest planet. However, the denizens of the planet had certainly noticed them. Bart has reported that he's been getting several threatening messages every few minutes.
Now, there is no way to know where the natives are. They could be anywhere on the planet, judging by the way the signals come from all sorts of locations.
"My only hope is that they haven't developed enough to make a spaceship." Magno comments to herself. The bridge has been mostly quiet since the recon team came back, aside from Bart's frequent complaints that the messages are starting to get more and more vulgar.
BC turns to her captain. "We need to get some resources from this planet, or we're going to have to put strict dietary restrictions on the crew."
"Hmm. Has anyone found a clear spot to gather resources?" Magno asks the bridge at large.
Cel raises an arm in her giant bear suit, and the data is displayed in front of the captain. There's a few spots, but with every transmission, it seems the gaps are getting tighter and tighter. The natives certainly seem to be protecting their planet.
"You know, I still have my food pills from Tarak," Bart says. "And we found that store in the men's part of the ship..."
The bridge crew ignores him.
"Alright, Meia, you have one hour to find a way to get us onto that planet." Magno announces. "Bart, keep monitoring those signals. We'll aim for the least occupied sector and harvest as much as we can. We're not looking for a fight, but we'll give as good as we get."
Only thirty minutes left. Meia had asked all the smart people under her command for bright ideas, but it generally boiled down to "Bombard from orbit, collect rubble" which the captain had basically told her not to do. Right now, she was considering just bringing as many people down on the supply shuttle that can fit, armed to the teeth. They can send up two or three ship-fulls of supplies and just form a perimeter until the ship came back for them after the last supply run.
In other words, plan A, take 2.
Still, working and maintaining a defensive line for so long on the planet is going to be taxing. Three supply runs would take, optimistically, five hours. Someone who hasn't had special conditioning (most of the pilots, to be brutally honest) wouldn't last that long, and she would need to pull all the resources at her disposal just to make a defensive line in the first place, with nobody spared for later reinforcements.
With how bereft of ideas Meia found herself, she decides on a backup plan.
She would go talk to Dita. Dita's been on standby in the hangar, and Meia heads straight for the place where all the fancy ships upgraded by the Paksis had been anchored, so to speak. Sure enough, the excitable redhead is busy polishing her Dread, no doubt in anticipation of combat in the fighter.
"Dita!" Meia calls as she comes into sight. "I need to talk to you!"
"Okay!" Dita puts down the polishing cloth and hops off of the gantry nestled against her ship. "What's up? Do we have a plan?"
Meia winces slightly. "No, not yet. So far the best plans require either digging in or bombarding them from orbit."
"Oh." Dita screws up her face. "I don't like those options."
"Neither do I. That's why I was hoping you'd have some sort of plan." Meia says.
"Hmm." Dita puts her finger to her lip and spins slowly in place, as if facing a new direction would give her some inspiration. "I don't know." She finally says, after completing a full circle.
"Thank you for trying." Meia says, then turns on her heel and heads back towards the hatch. Inadvertently, she glances at the gold and white human shaped mech, that a certain male pilot had been piloting until recently. NO, she had already told herself not to think about it-
"That's it!" Dita says, suddenly excited.
Meia turns back towards the girl. "Yes?"
"We still have all of those old Vanguards, and those guns we designed for them, right?"
Despite herself, Meia's stomach drops a little.
"Okay, all units keep up the lookout!" Jura's voice comes through the radio.
Meia had delegated the role of field officer to her. After all, Jura's quite capable, right? She can lead the other pilots around for once. Of course, Meia isn't scared of the Vanguards and their tiny, dark cockpits, oh no. She's just saving herself for the second shift.
Yeah, that's it. She'll relieve Jura later when the first group of pilots gets too tired to continue piloting.
Currently, they have five operational Vanguards, with John's still inoperable up in the ship. The five on the surface of the planet are arrayed in a star formation, leaving plenty of room in the center for the supply ship to land and for the poor Reg workers to start collecting material.
Fortunately for the crew of the Nirvana, the materials processing section of the ship hadn't been severely damaged during the ship marge, and in fact is now slightly better because the recycler from the men's half of the ship still works and the Paksis had joined them together somehow. This means they just need to bring the organic material on board, stick it in the recycler, and all's well. No fussing about finding edible plants and a clean source of water, they can just make more of what they've got out of stock.
It's too bad the recycler is only about 50% efficient. If it was close to 100% efficient, they wouldn't ever need to restock, just recycling their waste back into food.
Meia shudders, imagining that last scenario. No, maybe it is better they're not eating their own waste over and over, even if it's nutritionally sounds and doesn't taste like literal crap. If only for soundness of mind for the crew and herself. She's willing to have to restock like this not to have that be her fate.
So far, the operation has gone along without a hitch. Sure, Jura's been complaining about the heavy gravity for the past hour, but they've yet to have any contact with the locals. That's a win in her book.
Though she hates to admit it, Dita's idea of using the Vanguards was an excellent idea. They have their own weapons, cushioned seats to ease the pilot's bodies while down there, and they're a lot better defended than any foot soldier could ever be. If the natives had spotted them landing, they had yet to attack, possibly because they were intimidated by the machines. From her understanding, Tarak had just rolled these Vanguards out when this whole mess started, so the denizens of this planet can't possibly know what they are. Hell, even she didn't know what they were at first.
"Meia~a." Comes Jura's pleading voice. "I wanna go back to the ship!"
"Jura, you agreed to be the field commander for this mission." Meia responds calmly. "You can't go back on your word."
"We've already gotten three of the four shiploads we need." Jura whines. "I've been down here for four hours! Shouldn't you get me a replacement now?"
Del's face appears next to Jura's. "Yeah, I can go a bit longer, but it looks like Sturm, Brell and Kai are starting to feel the strain too." Despite her bravado, Meia can see the stress wearing at the green haired girl's face as well.
"Alright, we'll send down replacements with the next shuttle." Meia says.
"Hurry?" Comes the weak voice of Brell, a slight woman who had bravely volunteered and frankly had lasted far longer than Meia suspected she would.
"The shuttle is currently dropping off the third load. I'll make sure that we've got five new pilots on the ground when it returns." Meia glances at a monitor of to her side. "Looks like it'll be fifteen minutes."
"T-thanks." Grits out Sturm, one of the few pilots that actually worked security detail as well. As a result, she's pretty buff for someone from Mejare.
Okay, so now it's time to pick pilots. Barnette is a good candidate, she should be well rested by now. Same with Dita. She can order both Samra and Yola to take a shift, they've been taking it a bit too easy recently... As she goes over the roster in her head, Meia slowly comes to the dreaded conclusion.
She's going to have to go down there and pilot one of the Vanguards herself.
As Meia walks up to the dreaded machine, the 1.4g acceleration weighing her down excessively, Jura's voice can be heard through the loudspeaker on the side of the thing.
"Finally!" Jura complains. "I can't wait to get off of this rock!"
Barnette has one of her beloved rifles at the ready, eyes scanning the treeline.
Meia nods. "Alright, let's start switching over. Let's start with-"
The five pilots who had spent a good four and a bit hours on the surface eject from their cockpits, revealing the occupants and letting out some steam.
"-one at a time?" Meia concludes lamely.
"RPG!" Screams Del, who leaps from her Vanguard into a bush to cushion her fall some. The Vanguard she had just vacated suddenly explodes, and Meia just has the time to trace a trail of smoke back to the edge of the forest.
Well, if she was planning an ambush, she's wait until everyone popped out of their armor too. That's why she was going to have them go one at a time. "Dita, Samra, go get the others!, Barnette, Yola, provide covering fire!"
Barnette shoulders her weapon and fires a short burst where the smoke trail had come from while Dita and Samra start heading for the exhausted pilots, who had all basically collapsed to the ground in an effort to hide from the attackers. Yola is holding another of Barnette's rifles, and she raises it to scan the treeline again. Meia herself is holding a shotgun Barnette had provided her, a Sport... Sport... A spastic shotgun. SPAS? Something like that.
The clearing falls eerily quiet, the only significant motion being Dita dragging Jura out from from her position back to the ship. It goes to show how just how exhausted Jura is that she keeps her mouth shut about her mistreatment.
Suddenly, Yola raises her rifle and fires a single round into the forest.
Instead of a sharp cry of pain, there comes a resounding roar that sends shivers down the assembled pilots.
"I say we run." Del says, crawling herself slowly across the ground. "Or, at least get on the ship and go."
"I second!" Chimes in Sturm, currently in the arms of Samra.
"We can't leave the Vanguards behind." Argues Barnette. "We might need those in the future!"
"Yeah, but we won't need them if we get blown to bits!" Retorts Del.
"No, Barnette's right." Meia says. She runs over to Del and hands over the shotgun. Del takes it and turns to prop herself against a tree. "I'll grab the nearest Vanguard and cover your escape. Dita, once you're done with Jura, grab a Vanguard! Same for the rest of everyone fresh!"
She receives a few acknowledgements and she takes a few breaths. Okay, it's just a small box. An airtight, small, dark box. She can do this. she can, she can, she-
As she approaches the nearest Vanguard, a new RPG soars through the air and impacts the side of the Vanguard, not entering the cockpit like the first strike had. Thus, the Vanguard is saved from immediate destruction. Instead, it topples over, and Meia has to scramble to get out of the way or be crushed.
Meia climbs into the seat and goes through the short checklist she had drilled before their first mission to that sand planet. The Vanguard whirs back to life and she climbs to its feet and faces the enemy. This model of Vanguard comes with a submachine gun in addition to the sword that comes standard on all models. Of course, the submachine gun is sized appropriately for a mech of this size, about two feet long and too heavy for a human to carry by themselves even back on the Nirvana.
She aims the gun back at the tail end of the dispersing smoke trails, and squeezes the trigger.
Vegetation shreds, and Meia gets her first glimpse of the natives.
They are huge. The one she had been firing at looked like two people stacked together. His muscles alone might weigh the same as she does. He drops the rocket launcher as his cover gets stripped away, fury in his eyes and beating his chest is some sort of macho display. His forearms look big enough to completely split her in two should he grab her by both arms.
Meia adjusts her aim and squeezes the trigger again.
For being made of flesh and bone, the indigenous population is sure is tough. Meia's next bullet blows off one of his legs, but he doesn't even seem to take notice aside from immediately shifting to hopping around on his remaining good leg.
Another burst of gunfire, this time from a Vanguard off to her side, manages to impact the brute in the head, instantly bringing the rest of his corpse to the ground, the head sailing back into the forest with force of impact.
"Thanks, Dita." Meia says, trying to keep her voice steady despite being locked in this tiny coffin of a machine.
"No sweat!" Dita says, aiming her over-sized weapon at another clump of trees. "Bad Aliens! BAD!"
The trees are quickly shredded down to barely more than chunks.
Another rocket comes from the forest's edge, impacting another of the unmanned Vanguards. The idle machine topples over before detonating in a magnificent fireball. Fortunately for the densely forested planet, green wood doesn't burn that easily. Instead of a forest fire, the majority of the damage ends up being singeing of the ground.
The last surviving Vanguard is occupied by Barnette, and a second stream of gunfire joins the first, indiscriminately firing into the treeline.
The rest of the ground crew makes it to the shuttle and Gascogne hits the gas, the ship struggling with the load it's carrying due to the higher gravity. Once it gets out of the range of all but the luckiest of rockets, Meia turns her attention back to the ground.
So, where are those return rockets? "Dita, Barnette, do you see the return rockets?"
Barnette stops firing for a second. "Oh, those aren't strong enough to get us into orbit so we have to wait for the next ride out."
"...Dammit."
Once everyone was safely off the planet, Zan had to take inventory. Once the natives attacked, Barnette and Dita had decided that actually keeping some bullets for the future was a bad idea. It's kind of nice to have real work after such a long break, she had to admit. Sweeping the floor endlessly gets old quick.
"Why do we even have bullets this size?" She mutters to herself. "Until we got Parfet and Dita to design that giant rifle, we didn't even have anything that would even fire this caliber."
"We got it from a raid on one of the men's bases orbiting Tarak." Comes Meia's voice. "We keep it in case we need to improvise something. Like making rifles for Vanguards."
"Ah, Leader. Didn't see you there." Zan scans over her checklist. There's nothing really left to inventory, just down thirty boxes of .75, two Vanguards and two vanguard rifles. "I'm about done, I'm assuming you're here for-"
"Yes." Meia's face becomes strained. The two head out the hallway and down to the prison section, Zan loosening the headdress she's required to wear and tucking it into her apron pocket, then fluffing her hair. "What..."
"Well, I need to look good if I'm going to charm him away from you and Dita!" Zan says with a grin. When Meia doesn't react, Zan's face quickly becomes serious. "Meia? Is something wrong?" Exasperation sets into her face. "Is he doing the whole 'I don't love anyone' routine again?"
"Er, I wasn't aware you were... aware." Meia says. "And I was trying to figure out how to break it to you."
"Please." Zan waves the statement away. "Have you seen the way he looks at us? Or rather, how he looks and then quickly becomes too embarrassed and looks away?"
"Yes, I have noted that particular habit."
"It's probably because he was raised on a planet with women." Zan looks around as if expecting eavesdroppers. "He told me once that if a male stares at a woman too long, he can be thrown in jail."
"That... sounds a bit extreme." Meia ponders the thought for a moment. "Are you sure he wasn't just giving an excuse to look away from you? He's told me many times that our clothes seem to revealing for his tastes." Immediately after voicing that though, Meia realizes that she's participating in girl talk, which annoys her slightly.
"Maybe." Zan allows. "But then why would he have all those drawings on his computer?"
"Drawings?"
"Yeah, lots of drawings of girls dressed in very little." Zan thinks for a minute. "There was one he didn't quite hide in time that only had her hair hiding her breasts."
"...John's a degenerate."
With that line, they enter the cell block. John looks up from his laptop, winces, sighs, and closes his laptop to stare dispassionately at the two. "O... ohaiyo gozaimasu"
...That last"u" in "su" is supposed to be silent.
Zan and John start gibbering at each other excitedly in what Meia recognized as the men's language. She shouldn't really be surprised that John can speak it, but it seems that Zan had picked it up due to her aborted singing career back on Mejare. Meia had wondered why they can sing songs together so well, even in other languages. Anyway, it's fortunate that they didn't have to keep pulling Duelo or Bart away from their other duties to play translator.
As to why the need a translator...
Zan turns back to Meia. "He says that he's almost figured out which nerves need to be grafted back onto the chip. He ran an experiment earlier and he almost got it back into his spine properly."
"And why can't I talk to him?"
"Well... He says the thing was zapping him 'something fierce.'"
Meia really wished she could shout directly at the idiot, but the first time it happened two weeks ago he had only pointed to his ear and shrugged. "Tell him," She grits out. "That if he can't figure it out by tomorrow, he has to use it if it's tasing him every second or not."
Zan communicates this back to John, who doesn't really look all that alarmed. Maybe something got lost- no wait, there. His eyes go wide and he looks at Meia with his best "WTF" expression. "Idiot girl." He says, managing not to mangle the words.
She gives him the finger. That'll show him.
I used a random Greek name generator to get the name Capaneus. It turns out the legendary Capaneus was a Greek warrior renowned for his strength and size. I couldn't have accidentally named my planet better if I tried.
Also, John is a filthy liar. I don't think people can go to jail for looking. Hopefully... anyone know a good lawyer?
Also also, I went to post a new one-shot a few days ago, ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶p̶t̶c̶h̶a̶ ̶k̶e̶p̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶s̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶p̶l̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ AdBlock is a little bitch and decided to block the captcha images. It's one thing after another, isn't it?