Chapter 6: Victory

--November 5, 2017--
--09:50 GST--
Once again, Shikari's 2nd fleet was proving itself a world-class pain. Their fighters had been harassing Lazuli's scout ships for several days, appearing apparently out of nowhere and destroying the whole lot of them before they could even get within range of the defense outposts they were supposed to be evaluating. What was so frustrating was the fact that some of the enemy ships were out there fighting one at a time, hiding in the shadows of asteroids and comets or making short inner-system folds to stay one step ahead of Kraken's hunter units. It was bad enough that the resources of Lacul's fleet were stretched well beyond their limits without Shikari's fleet dogging his supply lines and interrupting almost every operation their fleet undertook.

Kraken had been foolish enough to follow a group of Zentradi carriers into the ring system of one of the gas giants of Sheora-Delkaan, only to have a cloud of reflex missiles blast 20 of his ships to bits from somewhere hidden among the ice fields. With all the tiny chunks of ice and debris between him and his targets, the only weapons that were effective here were fighters, which Gallaron always had the overwhelming advantage with. There was no way 250 Supervision Army ships would retreat from a fleet of 75, but he was loosing too many at a time and his other options were becoming scarce. The enemy ships only came out of concealment just long enough to engage in support fire for the fighter wings and then they would disappear into the rings again and switch to ECM jamming, vanishing among the vast clouds of rock and ice. Whenever he could get a battalion of battle pods or powered armors into the area to search for them, he never heard from any of them again.

Kraken's mind was spiraling around itself as he calculated his next move. Shikari's counter attack in their last battle had been truly masterful both in conception and execution. He'd never seen a more talented tactician, and a man with as many pipe dreams as Kraken Foruk would never pass up a chance like this. Shikari was the jewel he'd been searching for his whole life, the final piece of the puzzle to complete his own ambitions. Being tagged with Lazuli wasn't helping matters much, but… "Jinai, this is Kraken. I need your group for a special assignment."

As if the maelstrom of beams and missiles swarming around his command ship wasn't enough, Kraken now found himself facing Jinai on his monitors, a badly scarred, dark skinned protocran with 16 inch dreadlocks and a thin type of face Kraken had come to associate with someone very used to warm climates. Every time he looked at this man, something inside him stirred uneasily. "What is it Kraken?" He said, his voice rumbling out of the depths of his chest like the roar of a jet engine.

Kraken shook himself to get his skin to stop crawling and then gave his orders. "I need you to isolate one of the enemy's transforming cruisers for me. There's a great deal of valuable personnel and equipment there, and I want that ship captured intact."

Jinai nodded slowly, sullen as always. "You want one of the big Zentradi ships or the little one with the brainy captain?"

"The little one, if it's not too much trouble Jinai. I trust you'll carry out your assignment with your usual efficiency?"

Jinai nodded again. "I should think so." Jinai closed the Channel without another word, leaving Kraken to shake that sinking feeling out of his guts.

"Creepy bastard..."

--12:10 GST--
Kai Chan examined the specs of the powered armor again, this third time more thoroughly than the previous two. The engineering teams had done extensive testing on his accidental micronian mecha, but a great many unforeseen problems still plagued them it seemed. "Micro missile launcher?" He said again, raising a brow in intrigue, "How exactly did you manage to mount that thing on a machine that size?"

The younger mechanic in greasy overalls slapped the head of the kneeling powered armor next to them with a certain swell of pride. "We modified one of the experimental infantry weapons we've been working with. In fact, most of the weapons deployed in this powered armor are suped-up versions of standard ground weapons. The main assault rifle, for instance, is really just a fully-automatic version of the AR-41."

Kai Chan looked up slowly from the stats sheet. "The AR-41 is an anti-tank weapon. How do you fire that in full-auto?"

The mechanic laughed. "That's what we call a trade secret!"

"Hmm..." He browsed the stats of the machine again, flipping through pages, finally coming to a short list outlined in red. "Are these the problems you're having with it?"

The mechanic nodded. "We've got alot of bugs to iron out of the system. Now I know alot of you grunts have been lookin down on these babies lately but..."

"On the contrary, Ensign," Kai Chan set his hand on the armor, tapped the release panel to open the hatch, "I've had alot of time to think about this. The ground troops that raided the city a few weeks ago went marauding around like they owned the place. The soldiers here got overrun, and it got to the point where the women and children had to try and fight them off. Even Minmei..." His heart skipped a beat at the memory. The sight of seeing her broken body lying there on the pavement had been a deep wound to his soul. Just once before he had seen her in such a state, and the man who had hurt her in such a way had met justice by a Zentradi blade. He would sooner sell his own kidneys before he let anything of the sort happen to her again. "If you can refine this into an infantry weapon, what would it take to make it successful?"

The mechanic smiled at the question. "Numbers, Captain."

"Numbers?"

"These powered armors may be small and goofy lookin, but they're so light and agile that they literally fly circles around larger mecha. Individually it's just a hornet that can sting you if it wants, but in a large group, say a platoon or even a rifle squad, these little bastards will tear you apart."

Kai could see this already. And for numbers, that would not be a problem. Alpha Factor could easily manufacture a score of these armors for every single Stormlord. And with their smaller size, they could be stored in vast numbers if need be. "What kinds of problems are you having with it?"

The mechanic gestured him over to a control panel next to the kneeling powered armor and punched up a display on the monitor.

"There's alot of little flaws in the software, but the major one seems to be centered around the auto-balance software for the vector-control system. We can't even get it to walk in a straight line."

Kai Chan looked at the diagram on the monitors and thought it over. He knew enough about powered armor combat to know the balancers were only a small part of the problem. His combat experience was starting to pay off. "You're using the same control software as the Stormlord, right?"

"Of course. That's what the specs said when you sent em to us."

"Uh huh... well the design uses a vector control system, so let's try loading the programs from the Queadlunn-Rau's combat computer and see if that helps. You'll have to reset all the parameters though, since this machine isn't configured the same way, but more than that I want to adjust the reflex sensors around the hips and thighs." He turned away from the control consol and walked back around to the powered armor kneeling on its platform. For the first time, he began to see fully the potential of such a weapon' even Minmei would become a one-man army with powered armor like this. "The system will mimic all your movements precisely, but it's reacting to different ratios of mass. All we have to do is calibrate the sensors for someone a lot lighter."

"Good... uh, How do we do that?" The mechanic said, opening the hatch of the suit for Kai Chan's entry.

"You don't know how?" Kai stopped and shot him a funny look; the man shook his head. "Please tell me you're kidding?" The man shook his head again. "Fine. I'll do it myself..." Instead of climbing into the suit for another test run, Kai Chan picked up a nearby toolbox and picked out sockets for an impact wrench. "Yessiree, Lao Kai Chan does all the work, as usual."

--14:12 GST--
There were only three things that satisfied Miko Ichijo: flying in planes, Mariah Carey music, and ice cream. Any combination of these things was sure to pacify her for several hours, and ice cream was always the easiest to produce when nothing else was available. So, after a brief stop off in the enormous shopping district that took up the innermost ring of Megaroad city between the old and new cities, Hikaru walked half a block further outwards to the new ice cream shop in the old city called Deccola-Delcaan Siet, which Miko had told him pretty much meant "Greatest ice-cream anywhere." Hikaru bought her a double scoop of cookie-dough and set her down on a bench outside the building; not thirty seconds later another woman came out of the building with a milkshake in her hand. "Hey, are you following me or something?" Minmei said chuckling.

Hikaru smiled and made room for her on the bench. "Funny bumping into you like this. You come here often?"

Minmei sat down and sipped her shake. She would have said something to Miko, but the girl seemed mesmerized by the ice cream cone in her hands. "Occasionally." She said softly. "After the twins were born I got alittle stressed out and Kai Chan brought me here for a relief."

Hikaru smirked. "Kai Chan to the rescue, once again. You should just marry the guy."

"Oh, please…" Minmei thought about it again and once again couldn't wrap her brain around it no matter what direction she came at it from. "He's just a good friend. I couldn't see us together like that, we'd just get sick of each other."

Hikaru was still doubtful. "Misa and I were like that for a long time. From the moment we met it was like we could do nothing but fight. You remember that right?"

Minmei giggled. "I remember. You and Roy kept calling her 'Old Lady' on the radio. You know, now that I think about it, how DID you two end up falling for each other like that?"

"I wish I knew. One minute I'm getting my ass chewed by my superior officer, the next minute this lunatic runs up to me and hands me an envelope full of photographs." Hikaru said with a faint, wistful expression. "Actually, I think it had something to do with your cousin. She got all sensitive whenever he was around and I had to walk behind her with a broom to sweep up the pieces." He glanced over as Miko wrapped her tongue around the ice cream cone, slurping it up in gigantic amounts, "Slow down, Miko, I'm not getting you another one."

Minmei sighed. "Yeah, Kaifun can have that effect on people. It didn't have anything to do with me though?"

Hikaru glanced at Miko, tentatively licking the side of her ice cream cone, then leaned over to Minmei and lowered his voice. "Maybe it did. I was in love with you for the longest time and you barely even knew I existed. You just buried yourself in your work and hung out with your cousin all the time. I guess Misa had to pick up a few pieces herself."

"In that case, I guess you should thank me for nudging you in the right direction. You too, Miko."

Miko looked up suddenly at the mention of her name. "Hm?"

"Nothing." Minmei said giggling. She was set to leave at this point and head on home for the day, but as she started to stand up, the light changed and a shadow began to move across the city. All three of them looked up at the sky to see the setting Gallaron sun blocked out by the hulking figure of a humanoid battleship descending through the cloud layers, moving off towards Lake Gouraz where it's crew was waiting to board the ship at the harbor. "Isn't that the Monitor?" Minmei said curiously.

Hikaru looked at it for a moment and shook his head. "No, that's the new ship that just rolled out, SDF-Victory. You know, Kai Chan's been reassigned there."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's not a command ship like the Macbeth but it's going to be the flagship of the 7th fleet when it launches... speaking of which, not that you're all that interested, but Varcus is phasing out the Zentradi warships from the fleet now. This time next year, everything in the fleet will be Gallaron-made."

"I bet that's good for the economy or something." Minmei stared at the image of that ship descending towards the city. She suddenly had this feeling like someone was walking over her grave, that she was staring strait into her death long before it could really happen. She heard from many people that sometimes the future couldn't be changed, and that dreams like this were a warning to be prepared for the inevitable. "What's the war situation like?"

Hikaru felt like he had fallen asleep and woken up in a strange place. "War situation?"

"Yeah, what's going on out there? How's the defense force holding out in this battle?"

Hikaru had been long prepared to shirk that question. "Can't complain. War is war."

"Don't patronize me, Hikaru. Just give it to me straight. Is it really as bad as I've heard?"

Hikaru, once again, made an effort to sidestep what he already knew would be a conversation she didn't need to remember or worry about. There was nothing she could have done about it no matter how much she wanted to help. "We can handle it, don't worry about a thing."

Miko stuffed most of the ice cream cone into her mouth with just one bite, then groaned and clutched her skull from the sudden headache, then finished the rest of the cone with the second bite. "I'm all done, Daddy. Can I have another one?"

Hikaru smirked. "I told you I'm not getting you another one. You should've slowed down."

"But I…!"

"C'mon, we have to get home. We're already late to pick up your mother."

Miko sighed in defeat. "Sa."

Both stood up, Hikaru kissed Minmei on the cheek and started back for the house. "Miko," He said after a few steps, "How do Protocrans say family?"

"Badronei." Miko said after a pause. "But when there's a lot of girls, sometimes it's Kadronei.'"

Hikaru picked her up and let her sit on his shoulders; he immediately noticed she had gained weight since the last time he carried her like this. And probably 3 inches to go with it. "You learn that in school?"

"No, my friend Shumi taught me."

"Shumi again." Hikaru said. "What's her daddy's name?"

"Mr. Gashi." Miko said playfully. "Don't you know Mr. Gashi? How come you don't know Shumi?"

Hikaru thought about it, and suddenly the vague memory came back to him of the first time he had visited his first officer's family. Commander Gashi had four wives, two of which were killed when the wreckage of a Zentradi warship crashed into the forest north of what was now Megaroad City. The man had what seemed like millions of children so it was hard to keep track of all of them, but he did seem to remember him mentioning the youngest one was called Shumi, and that her mother was one of the two who died in the accident. It was no wonder Miko's little friend had such a low opinion of Zentradi, and this also raised other questions. But there would be plenty of time for that later.

--23:17 GST--
Everyone likes a well executed plan, especially someone as cocky and ambitious as General Shikari. The Supervision Fleet had reacted exactly like they were supposed to, sending a massive group to counteract the perceived presence of what she had made to look like a powerful enemy fleet. She was pummeling the enemy fleet now and there was nothing any of them could do about it but retreat, but since they outnumbered her more than three to one, there was no way they'd turn back now. She was tempted to jump into a fighter and get her own pound of flesh, but Captain Harper had already beaten her to it and there was no way she was going to leave the ship in the hands of junior officers in the middle of a battle. "Febb, what's the status of the third strike wave?"

The first officer had finally memorized her commander's patterns in battle, and as soon as Shikari asked she had already looked up the data. "Now returning, sir. ETA on the Ajax... two minutes. Ajax is already launching the fourth wave."

Shikari was worried, she had been worried ever since Harper sortied with the third wave to get a better look at the battlefield. He was riding shotgun with a VF-4 and an escort squadron for three squadrons of E-Valks, enough firepower to destroy her entire fleet a dozen times over, but anything could go wrong and she knew it. "Is Captain Harper with them?"

"His fighter's damaged but not seriously. Ajax is reporting successful strike."

"Great, what about OUR fighters?"

Febb checked the data input from the Defiant's strike wave five minutes behind the Ajax. "Eleven enemy ships destroyed, fifteen severely damaged and out of the fight."

Shikari did the math in her head. "After the last strike... that leaves two hundred enemies plus or minus a dozen."

Febb almost sounded relieved. "So they only outnumber us TWO to one. I could live with that..." The ship jolted as something exploded far behind them against some of the comet fragments and asteroid debris of the rings. Febb turned the viewer aft without needing to be told, and the image displayed a group of about hundred Supervision starships moving through the debris field, clearing away any objects in their path with cannons and missiles. Before Shikari could even think to say anything, her fleet was swamped by enemy fighters.

"Where the hell did those come from?!" She shouted angrily.

Febb checked their course, but the orbital path didn't seem possible. "It looks like they came out of the planet... they must have doe some aero-braking maneuver! The only way they could have come up like that is if they actually bounced their ships off the atmosphere!"

Her head started to hurt. That kind of maneuver was hard enough to pull off with just one ship, but a hundred? Obviously, she thought, luck was not on her side today. Enemy fighters and pods were battling Lighting fighters and powered armors around her ship like two swarms of angry bees, marked by explosions on all sides of them. The Lighting fighters were already starting to get the upper hand, as usual, so all Shikari would really have to worry about was the enemy fleet. "All ships come about, open gunports and fire on my command! Have the two battleships lock onto the enemy flag ship and put down a defensive blanket!"

The fleet's response was impressively quick, all of them came around and brought all of their weapons to bear on the enemy fleet. They all fired at once, missile destroyers, Zentradi cruisers, carriers, and the two Nupitiet-Verginitz class battleships they had with them. The Defiant fired its main cannon into the enemy fleet, knocking out one of their carriers with a single blast, and the two battleships fired off all twenty main laser cannons directly at Jinai's command ship. Much of their barrage was soaked up by a few hapless enemy destroyers, the rest impacted harmlessly against the command ship's energy barrier.

And then the enemy fleet returned fire, the entire mass of warships spread out and fired their main lasers and particle cannons into the Gallaron fleet. The pinpoint barriers on most of the ships found themselves overwhelmed, some taking too much fire to block properly, others actually blocking more fire than the barriers could handle. A phalanx of energy beams hit the hull of the two battleships and destroyed one of the carriers next to them. Two of the missile destroyers were immediately torn apart by the concentration of firepower, but Shikari noticed that only a few of her ships had ever registered hits. That's when she realized something. "Their radar... they can't track all of us! Perfect!" She opened a radio line to the Ajax where Captain Harper was just getting to the bridge. "Captain Harper, as quickly and quietly as you can, get around behind the enemy fleet with a destroyer group and wait there."

Harper gave a slight squeak of anxiety. "Wait there?! What for?!"

A pair of variable powered armors appeared in front of the bridge and pointed missile launchers at the dome. Half a second before they could fire, a flurry of pulse lasers from a flight of VF-4s hit both of them through the main body, destroying one of them immediately and sending the other careening off into space with flames shooting out of its belly. Shikari breathed a sigh of relief, then turned her frustrations on Harper. "Why do you always have to argue with me?! Shut up and do it!"

"Yes ma'am." Harper said curtly, and began moving the Ajax laterally out of the line of fire behind a cluster of extremely small rocks. SDF-03 was in cruiser mode so it wouldn't be all that hard to get back their unnoticed, but that left the problem of how long it would take him to get there.

A group of battlepods closing from the front vanished to nothing after a barrage from the defense lasers pummeled all of them, and a group of fighters behind them was caught in a crossfire between a squadron of Lightings and one of Defiant's missile batteries. Harper needed more time, Shikari would have to give it to him. "Full barrage, all ships! Keep firing no matter what!"

The two behemoth battleships quickly joined the rest of the fleet, firing all of their laser cannons and particle turrets at enemy targets as they approached. All of the enemy ships took hits, most of them losing their defensive barriers immediately, some of them taking too much damage even to stay in the fight. Another bombardment from the two battleships cut down a half dozen cruisers and destroyers, again without penetrating the defense field of the enemy command ship. The enemy return fire was slightly less impressive than the last time, much of their fire missing the targets and the rest of it being screened off by pinpoint barriers. Another Thor class was disabled and started scrambling escape pods, and four of the Zentradi cruisers moved forward with one battleship to press the attack to the enemy.

Febb's panel started blinking, a preset to indicate that the enemy fleet had closed to five thousand kilometers. "Enemy ships now in missile range captain!"

Shikari had been waiting for this. "How long until Captain Harper can encircle them?"

Her radar officer frowned at the plot, "Too long, sir."

Shikari figured as much. "Let's buy him some time... tell all ships to pull back to ring Sector 35 and fire reaction missiles to cover us!"

"Yes sir!" Febb sent the orders, not really sure what Shikari was hoping to accomplish by retreating but not really caring either way. All of the fleet vessels fired missile tubes right then and made their retreat, and Febb watched the track of the missiles negotiating their way through the scattered debris of the planet's rings. "Four thousand kilometers and closing!"

"Pull back all ships! Tell that battleship and the cruisers to bring up the rear."

"Yes sir... three thousand kilometers to impact!"

Shikari looked at her own screen. The missiles were closing on the enemy fleet in a line formation so all of them would impact at once. Closer and closer they got to impact; the detonation from the missiles would put up enough radiation to blind the enemy for a few minutes, giving Harper ample opportunity to attack them from behind. She knew it would have been easier to just execute a space fold and quit while she was ahead, but she didn't want to leave here without giving the enemy something to remember her by. "One thousand and closing.." She said, reading the display. The enemy fleet was accelerating very quickly, closing the distance extremely fast. "Nine hundred.. Seven hundred..." and then the screens lit up with an energy bloom from the Supervision Fleet, a burst of energy identified at first as a hyperspace fold. First a few, then fifty, then every one of the enemy ships activated their fold drives, only to emerge from hyperspace barely a hundred kilometers behind Shikari's fleet. A number of enemy ships folded too close to debris fragments and found themselves immediately disabled or destroyed, but most of them appeared out of a halo of light and fired another full barrage at Shikari's fleet.

One of the Zentradi battleships soaked up too much enemy fire; secondary explosions began to tear the ship apart from the inside before one tremendous explosion split the two and a half mile battlewagon in half like a toothpick. A hail of laser fire pelted the Defiant from all sides despite it's best efforts to defend itself with pinpoint barriers. The deck rocked suddenly and the sound of an explosion reverberated through the corridors of the ship, even Shikari could hear it. "Direct hit! Starboard grappler's losing power!" Febb shouted, reading off her consol.

Shikari's jaw tightened. That had been an incredibly gutsy maneuver on the part of the enemy, one she had seen somewhere before. Now she was certain, the commander of this group must have been the one called Jinai, a commander so infamous there was no record of him ever losing a battle to a Zentradi fleet. Not that any of this mattered, without that grappler arm, the ship wouldn't be as maneuverable and would loose much of its defensive advantage. The only thing left to do was fold and hope the enemy wouldn't be able to follow them… but then a signal burst through over the loudspeakers on a Zentradi frequency; a deep, emotionless voice came thundering through. "Gallaron fleet, by order of the Galactic Supervision Army you are ordered to surrender your ships and prepare to be boarded. There is no escape for you, surrender now and we will spare your lives. If you continue to fight, you will all be destroyed."

Shikari heard it but couldn't believe it. The Supervision Army never offered surrender as an option, not even when their enemies had something they wanted. Everything she knew about their ancient enemy had just gone strait out the window, but at that moment something else occurred to her. Harper's fleet had been moving around behind them before they folded, but now... "Ajax, this is Defiant, are you in position yet?"

There was a long pause before anyone answered, and then the computer identified a radio source fifteen hundred kilometers to the rear of the enemy fleet. "Affirmative, Shik."

Shikari smiled to herself. This couldn't have worked out better if she planned it... "That command ship is a real pain. Could you do something about him?"

"Just give me the signal." Harper said playfully. "A light show or a flare or something..."

"Coming right up... Susan, charge up the main cannon and target that command ship." Shikari opened a channel to the command ship and cleared her throat. "This is Shikari Raskanos to Commander Jinai of the Supervision Army. I'm sorry, but I can't surrender right now. You understand right?" Shikari nodded at the tactical officer, and seeing her chance, Lieutenant Marcus pushed the switch. Defiant's main cannon flickered to life, then fired a tremendous blast from between its cannon booms directly at Jinai's ship. The energy wave smashed into the defense barrier with a brilliant flash of energy, followed shortly by the main cannon of the Ajax from far behind and energy beams from a half dozen destroyers along with it. The defense barrier collapsed from the combined barrage, and then the beams cut into the hull of the ship itself. Shikari's cannon didn't have enough power to punch through the barrier, but Harper's blast clipped off a portion of the starboard hull, sending the massive horseshoe-shaped vessel tumbling out of control.

Shikari looked, then laughed out loud. This turned out to be a pretty productive day after all, but there were still about a hundred ships bearing down on her at almost point blank range and hundreds more undoubtedly on the way from Kraken's fleet now that they knew where she was. She'd had her fun, it was time to go. "Thanks for your help, Ajax. All ships, commence fold operations immediately. We'll leave the system as soon as the last of our fighters have been recovered."

The VF-4 squadrons and the last of the E-Valks were already on their way back to their ships, some setting down on the hull and keeping enemy mecha at bay while their ships made preparations to fold space. After a few minutes, the Gallaron fleet vanished into energy plumes as their fold drives sped them away from this system, leaving a hundred Supervision Army ships and thousands of mecha firing into a hole in the sky.

--25:01 GST--
Camera angles displayed on the monitor showed the suit from all sides, close-ups of both legs and both arms, computer CGI graphics, charts and graphs of various data from the sensors in the ground and taped to Lieutenant Beecher's skin. Such a seemingly petty task like walking up a flight of stairs didn't seem to warrant such attention from the development team, but by now they had all learned to treat the Apache like a baby who was just learning how to walk. The new learning computer Varcus had installed in the prototypes would speed up the process in the program, but that still meant failing a number of times before they got it right.

Beecher was finally nearing the top of the staircase, two stories up from the floor of the test facility. One foot at a time, slowly, carefully, she rose up to the next step, and the next, and the next... Kai Chan caught a flutter on the otherwise smooth curves on the line graph, indicating a sudden shift of weight onto her right leg. "Jessie, shift left."

She shifted her weight back to the left in mid step and the weight distribution evened out again. Kai Chan breathed a sigh of relief on this one. "Thanks, Kai. I couldn't even feel it that time!"

"I hear you." Those damn balancers are adjusted too tightly. No matter what we do, she STILL has to do it manually. He jotted it all down in the notebook at went back to watching the test. Beecher was coming up on the top step now, raising her foot to step up onto it and declare her victory... the bottom of her foot hit the top of the step lightly, and the weight didn't shift into the leg like it should have. Instead, it all went back into the heel of the powered armor and the suit started to tilt backwards. "Jessie, shift forward."

"I got it." The suit began tilting back even more, slowly at first but then picking up speed as the top of the thruster pack passed its heels.

Kai Chan's heart skipped a beat. "Jessie, I said shift forward!"

"I AM! The damn damn controls just locked up on me! It won't mo..." Her leg jerked suddenly as the control system snapped back into action, further speeding up the process. The entire machine came tumbling backwards down the stairs in a clumsy heap, ultimately crashing to the floor on the top of its head before tipping back over on its face. "Ohhhhhhhh... I pushed the feet too hard. It must have gone into aerial flight mode and stiffened up for the boosters. Good thing my fuel tanks are empty."

Kai Chan raised a brow. "I guess we calibrated them too sensitive... why the hell would it lock up like that?"

"Beats me. I'll say one thing though, I wouldn't wanna be in the air when it does that."

"Good call... alright, looks like it's back to software for a few days..."

"Captain Lao Kai Chan," someone shouted from across the room. Kai Chan glanced over his shoulder at the doorway to the monitor room, finding a slender form silhouetted against the light in the hallway, "A word with you please."

"Punch out, Jesse, I'll be down in a minute," He took off his headset and set it down on the control panel, then left the panel and stepped out of the room with Captain Elensh in the lead. "Morning Captain you're looking... positive." In truth she looked more than a little irritated, but the cause of her frustration was anyone's guess.

"Captain, I wanted to ask you about your battalion."

"What about it?"

"Well... it seems a number of your soldiers are displeased with their assigned mecha. And for that matter I myself am a bit puzzled."

"By what?"

"Your female pilots have all been assigned to Stormlords."

Kai Chan blinked slowly, certain he was missing the point somewhere. "And?"

"Most of them still have functional Queadlunn-Rau armors back on the Macbeth, but you've deliberately taken the time to change their assignments."

It took him a moment to think about it, but then Kai Chan understood the problem. "Oh uhhh... you see Captain, with the factory satellites in such disrepair the Queadlunn-Rau expensive as hell as produce and we don't really have any spare parts for them. And besides, the armories on the Victory were designed for the Stormlords. If we added powered suits the size of the Queadlunn-Rau, we'd loose ten to twenty percent of our numbers."

Imura shook her head in disagreement. "Just one of those suits would be more than worth..."

"But we still don't have the parts, Captain. The Stormlord armors are cheep to build and even cheaper to repair, and their combat performance is easily thirty, maybe even forty percent of the Queadlunn-Rau. When we get into the thick of it, we're gonna need those numbers alot more than we're going to need the firepower."

Imura shook her head again. Something else was bothering her besides just a tactical concern. "Captain Lao... you... I understand we come from two very different backgrounds, but even YOU have to admit the value of giving more capable weapons to more capable pilots. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Not really..." It took him a moment to remember some of the more colorful aspects of Captain Elensh's personality-- maybe not colorful but definitely old fashioned by Zentradi standards. "Captain, I think it would be in everyone's best interest if you tried to keep an open mind. In a combat situation, men and women may perform differently but that doesn't make one any more valuable than the other."

"I'd like to think so, but the world doesn't always work out fairly. There are some things men just aren't up to."

It was a strange conversation for a human to be having, but for the Zentradi it had become something of a cliché, and a hardly arguable one at that since an angry meltran officer was one of the most dangerous things in the universe to be around. "We'll see about that. In the mean time, I'm in charge of this battalion and I have the final word in this matter. I will make a note of your suggestion but I'd like to keep a few command positions open to male officers."

Imura rubbed her eyes tiredly, apparently finding the entire conversation something of a farce. "We'll just see how your battalion performs then. Keep in mind that I was willing to look the other way during our tour on the Macbeth, but the Victory is too important to jeopardize on some idealist theatrics. The moment I find your command abilities are not up to par with what they should be, I will see that you are replaced by someone better. Is that clear?"

"Yes ma'am." Kai Chan saluted and Elensh went on her way to her next errand to the engine room. "This is gonna be a long flight." He said under his breath.