Eve was thumping the side of her fist lightly the side of a tire when the call came in. She shifted her hands to balance her tablet atop one arm, then fished in the pockets of her cargo vest for the handset. The screen projection was already lit by the time she had it turned where she could read it, the words it displayed drawing a quirked brow. Audio only, Maj. Katrinn Dunlap?
"Major?" the woman proffered, turning her head just enough to glance curiously across the cavernous cargo bay. The faint sound of thudding feet, rustling cloth, squeaking heels, and rasping breath in the background further stoked her curiosity.
"How soon can we launch?!"
"Uh." Eve blinked, taken rather aback. Her eyes turned to the floor gratings.
"We're... doing walkabouts now - you're twenty minutes early?"
"... change of plans, emergency deployment, get the flight plan from the tower, how much longer?!"
"Giiive me five minutes?"
"You've got until I get there Lieutenant!"
The call terminated, and left Eve in a stunned silence. A momentary one, at least, as soon a sigh escape her lips, and her feet turned to head for the
Endeavour's cockpit, where the pilots were already running through their checks. They'd all known that once the meeting concluded, there'd be no point in staying in Caelian Hill. Whether they were flying home to continue the project or to clean out their lockers, the return flight to Stützerkopf was still a certainty. Thus, she'd felt, it never hurt to work ahead and be ready to go whenever the moment came. Just not... quite THIS soon.
Presently, Vance found it his turn to fish out his comm stick, giving his fingers a cursory pass with a napkin first. It wasn't hard to find - it was in its alotted pouch on the belt of his normal suit. He leaned back from the chow hall table, settling against the firm seatback to peruse who exactly was interrupting their lunch. His heart dropped just a little to see it was the Lieutenant, which probably meant either an actual problem or some technicality to keep in mind. Flicking his thumb over the switch, the call ID receded, and the holoscreen filled with her slender features.
"
Lieutenant."
"Sergeant, there's been a change to our schedule. I need everyone at their stations ready to depart, as soon as possible."
"Yes ma'am. Any particular reason? Where's the major?"
"Right here!"
Heads swiveled at the outburst. There she was, at the dining facility doors, her cheeks just the slightest bit flushed from the activity. She wasn't much the worse for it though - if anything, she was still bristling with kinetic fervor. A fervour she displayed as she, with eyes still locked on her subordinates, presented a sidelong pantomime of running.
"So let's..." she crooned, rather briskly jogging in place for a few seconds, before freezing for the sting, "...go, Sergeant!"
With that, she went. Off like a shot, much to Lael's chagrin. Now that Katrinn had zoomed off, the chief engineer was revealed from where she'd been standing behind her, doubled over to catch her breath. Grudgingly she hoisted herself to full height, curled an arm against her chest and directed a thumb at the major's vapor trail. She grimaced in sympathy to the pilots, even as she silently re-emphasized they needed to go. Now. And then she was gone too, leaving the pilots to pick themselves up and follow suit.
By the time the members of VX-41 had exited the building, their numbers had swelled to nearly a dozen, with Katrinn a great many meters head of the pack. Most all of them scurried up the rear hatch of the
Endeavour, bolting for their stations just as fast as their feet could carry them - some groaning for the impromptu exercise so soon after their meal. The Star pilots bounded up the knees and onto the thighs of their units, punching the releases for the glorified tool drawers that passed for cockpits. Below them, ground crew were pulling the cables loose from the Tau drives and retracting them back into the plane. One by one, the Stars floated up on clouds of GN particles and took off toward the coordinates, the vast black wing joining them not terribly far behind.
"Coming up on the coordinates now, ma'am."
"Excellent." Katrinn chirped, just finishing zipping up her normal suit, "Get us in a holding pattern, and have the CTO deploy her probes."
The
Endeavour was the flight's stealthy home-away-from-home, at least while still on Earth. Like the
Discovery in orbit, it was both transport and forward operating base. The platform for not just ferrying the squad swiftly and silently on the rare occasion they needed to take a field trip, but taking pictures and recording videos of that trip. It was just unfortunate that it had been originally made to tote two Flags snugly, so even managing to still squeeze two Stars inside required careful maneuvering. The Major and the Lieutenant were occupying those units at the moment - the rest of the squad were in formation outside.
Riding high above the clouds, the black wing opened a pair of bombing ports. Per Katrinn's request, these ports now loosed a series of projectiles. But rather than plummeting to a fiery end on earth, they fell a short distance and then jolted to life, joining in the convoy. Laser scanners swept the jungle below, peeping through the vegetation to spy out any changes to the topography of note. In this way, too, they began to track the advance of the machine horde as well, the simplified map of red and green outlines popping up inside each of the Star cockpits.
Grier whistled at the sheer number. Katrinn set her jaw. Just like the cataclysm. Just like the moon. Just like the incident at Hinnom. Once again, it was an overwhelming curtain of machines. If this kept up, they'd have to start thinking about bolstering either their fire rates or their yields for constantly fighting thousand-machine armies. Her musing was cut short by one of the
Endeavour pilots coming across her line.
"Major, I'm hearing chatter over the open lines about a downed unit. Looks like it might be that new Gundam you mentioned."
"Is it out here unsupported?"
"I'm not hearing a handler for it, but the other units are reacting to it crashing."
"Roger that." A chance. Perhaps. Her fingers slid over her comm switches. "Tindall. Darzi. There's a crashed unit in the line of fire. See if you two can haul it back for a checkup. The rest of us will cover those two while we try to assess the threat. Understood?"
A collective
"Yes ma'am!" came across the lines. Switching one more time, she signaled launch readiness to the transport's cockpit. The long but slender aft doors slid open, and she and Eve's Stars glided backwards, into the sky.
To the rest of the assembled forces, six contacts would presently appear. Six shooting Stars emerging from the clouds, their noses pointed planetward, coursing more rapid than eagles. Switching to open comms, watching the world rocket toward her, she addressed them.
"Master Puppeteer, Maj. Dunlap of the 41st reporting. Sending you telemetry on our current flight-plan. Request same, over."
The sextet kept a wary eye out for the Wing and Taurii as they neared the ground - all of them, in unison, snapping into MS mode once they drew close to where the Astaroth lay. The 41-3 and 41-6 each stowed their rifle into the outside hand, dropping smoothly to the land just long enough to try to hook an arm under one of the Astaroths. As soon as they both had, their drives flared to life again, attempting to hoist the suit along with them, to ferry it back up toward the
Endeavour. The rest of the squad holding steady, forming a floating line in the air between the rescue attempt and the mobile armor horde.
