User Friendly Network (working title)

[Valles]

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The system of Alpha Cucurbita - originally V354 Cephei - had absolutely nothing to recommend it except its location. Its single star was an elderly supergiant with a volume greater than some entire star systems. By stellar standards it was at death's door, with barely a million years remaining until its inevitable supernova. There had been some concern about that even becoming a threat to the colony at Hestia, barely forty light-years away, but the time scale had been investigated and determined to be acceptable.
Instead, the giant sun shone redly in the southern night sky of Earthpeople's newest home.
"I'm bored. Boredy boredy mcbored. So bored I'm willing to talk to anybody just to get some noise to be bored to. How 'bout you, how bored are you?"
First Lieutenant Coda Parino of the United Nations Space Forces closed his eyes and reminded himself, as patiently as he could, that neither punching his fighter's control console nor turning to shoot down his WORTHLESS OBNOXIOUS DEGRANZ EXCUSE FOR A WINGMAN would be acceptable in any term longer than a few days. "I brought a book. Which I was enjoying, until you opened your mouth."
"A book? Man, you shouldn't mess around with that kinda shit - guaranteed to rot your brain overworking it all the time. It's not healthy!"
"And you're not funny. Clear the com and watch your screen, Two."
Alpha Cucurbita was one of more than thirty systems forming the outer shell of Hestia's defenses. Unlike most of the rest, however, that was all it was. The bloated star's expansion had long ago swallowed its rocky inner worlds and melted and evaporated the icy moons and rings of the outer ones. The thick, slow flood of exited plasma and particles boiling away to its escape velocity tangled into the atmospheres of the gas giants and tore them away into the void layer by diaphanous layer. The aurorae were magnificent with the density of charged fields and particles, but the bloody light of the swollen sun was too chilling for even a hope of tourism.
"Hey, what are you getting so tightassed about? It's not like-"
An alarm screamed.
One of the many wise pieces of advice that his ex-soldier parents had given Coda when he went to enlist was that convenient incidents never were. His father had spun tale after tale of the way the cunning enemies of the Zentradi could attempt to lure an escort ship to its doom, and his mother had pithily noted how many of even the elite Quadrono battalions had found their prayers - if Meltrandi could be said to pray - for relief from boredom ever-so-briefly answered.
"I repeat: Shut. Up."
"Rodger, lead. I show two capital contacts, seventeen cruisers, fifty-three lighter units, over."
"Confirmed," Coda said. "Vectoring Ghost three-eight for distant sensor pass per procedure."
The outer perimeter's purpose in the overall defense of the Hestia colony was simple: to provide warning of intrusion. It was for that reason alone that automated fold-sensors had been constructed and distributed across this and so many other systems. It was in the spirits of shadenfreude and standardization that those sensors had been designed as add-on packages for the United Nations Space Forces' existing robotic fighter craft. Standardization, in that by using those platforms no new designs or parts would need to be produced or paid for. Shadenfreude, in that hostile forces would find that destroying a front-line fighting craft, even a burdened one, was a far different matter than eliminating a mere floating satellite.
The robots sat in space and watched, and the humans assigned to monitor them and decide what was worth reporting to their commanders sat in space in cramped fighter cockpits for days on end and meditated on the sins that had gotten them assigned to such a miserable duty. Until something different happened.
Time passed. Even with the powerful engines of the drone fighters, and even with hundreds of them scattered across the volume of a sphere the size of the orbit of the system's outermost surviving world, the sheer distance involved in the interception made it a matter of hours before more data than the mere presence of the fold came in.
"Hmm... that looks like a CAP perimeter to me, Two."
"They've got the fighters in among their escorts, too, though, Lead."
"True... I don't think those are escorts, the formation's wrong. Transports, maybe?"
"A bit small for that... hey, they're intercepting the Ghost."
"Agreed. Locking them to course and speed... Weapons are safed, sensor take incoming... Pin-pon, look at band 228.3."
"...Sounds like Zentradi, sorta."
"Something like... Woah!"
"I have no idea what that meant, but it sounded pretty feisty."
"'Feisty's' one word. I were you, I wouldn't want this 'Starbuck' lady pissed at me." Coda paused and listened closely to the 'alien' communications. The language did sound like Zentradi, vaguely, the way Italian sounded like Spanish, and getting the gist took concentration. Verbal report describing the drone... something about writing... looking for a cockpit...
The excitable wingman that 'Starbuck' had chewed out just moments earlier yelled two words - one that couldn't have been anything but an explitive - and Coda watched through the sensor feed as he snap-rolled his fighter into the robot's six and fired.
"Damn, I hope the brass don't make us pay for that. What's a Cylon?"
"Dunno. Some kind of robot, maybe? Ghosts are, after all."
"Or a stocking."

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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

I still think it should've been "...some kind of stocking?"

ETA: And it is. ^.^

--Sam

"It's delicious, delightful, and deculture!"

[drakensis]

The 'there go the ghosts' line is a bit ambigious as well. I'm guessing from the next line that they were shot down, but it could also mean they
started firing off expensive missiles or something.

From the make up of the UNS forces I'm presuming that this is set around the Frontier time period.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Norgarth]

I assume this setting involves the original Macross or one of it sequals, and not Robotech's version of Macross.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[ECSNorway]

Heh.

Do continue.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

Yes, original Macross, circa 2050 or so.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Minor nit: "Quadrono" is Robotech. You're thinking of "Queadlunn-Rau."

Otherwise, keep it up

--Sam

"Bad man... hit dog... with STREET!"

[Valles]

Hm? Had thought that the Quadrono were the unit and the Queadlunn-Rau their equipment.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

To the best of my knowledge, Quadrono is solely the Macekization of Queadluun-Rau (which I misspelled in the above post n.n.

Handy reference site: the Macross Mecha Manual (Now updated
with what little there is to know about Frontier!)

--Sam

"Kyuu, kyuu... kyuu, kyuu..."

[Valles]

Each of the two monitor pilots' fighters had been equipped with external ordinance suited for their mission: Mark 3 External Fold Boosters. Unlike the Mark 1 booster that had seen trial-by-fire in the Varauta conflict, or the faster and longer-ranged Mark 2, the Mark 3 was a reusable system. The difference lay not in the design or ability of the fold-engine itself - indeed, every Mark 3 in current use had been built around the core of an existing Mark 1 - but in the presence of extensive cooling systems and liquid heat sinks designed to keep the lightweight components of the miniature drive from overheating fatally. While the system's range or frequency of jumps couldn't hope to match those of the larger starship installations, it was ideal for cases where deploying fighters independently was called for.

The procedure for their use involved a capped trigger and the entry of the desired target coordinates into the mounting fighter's flight computer, and it was as Coda was doing the mental mathematics that presaged that act that he realized his error.

"Two, warm up your fold pod and squirt our logs to Command ASAP."

"Command...? FUCK! FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck fuck..."

Coda wasn't particularly thrilled about the idea of his superiors reaction to their failure to report right away, either, but there was nothing he could do about it. "Clear channel, Two."

"Right... burst away."

Faster than light communication signals were, of course, another function of existing fold engines, though the power demands to route a massless particle through superdimensional space were far below those required for physical transportation. Short-ranged FTL comms were only marginally larger than the sort of radios that would be required to transmit across interplanetary distances anyway, while interstellar versions tended to have effective ranges that ranged from dozens of light-years to almost infinite... but required the attention of full fold-drive installations to operate.

Across the distance between Alpha Cucurbita and Hestia transmission delay was only a few seconds, and Admiral Voychek a decisive man. The reply came a bare minute later: "Pumpkin Lead, fold to the bogies' perimeter and establish contact; do not fire unless fired upon. Identify their origin and mission. Pumpkin Two, hold your position and relay to us. Third Division is folding out to Grid Eight-Three band Point Four in two minutes from... Mark. ETA four hours. Confirm."

"Pumpkin Lead to fold to intruder perimeter and establish verbal contact under Rule-Of-Engagment Two. Query intruder origin and objective. Understood."

"Pumpkin Two to hold position and provide communication relay between Pumpkin Lead and Dragon, understood."

"Good. Watch yourselves, Pumpkin. Dragon out."

Coda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Here goes nothing," he said, and flipped the switch.

There was a short burst of rainbow light from outside his cockpit canopy, and he saw - could feel - a ripple travel back from his hands towards his body as his fighter dove briefly into the unnatural spaces that lay outside the corporeal universe... then popped back out only a few hundred kilometers from where that lonely Ghost had died at the hands of a panicked alien rookie.

Then he switched his transmitter to band 228.3 and tried to pitch his voice to the intruders' accent of his native tongue. "Unknown fleet, this is Second-Rank Officer Coda Parino of the United Nations of Earth Space Defense Forces. I am ordered to ask where you are from. I am ordered to ask what you want."

The wingpair that had intercepted the Ghost hadn't gone far, and had swerved towards him when he folded in, but they cut their engines and coasted after he sent that, and, after a chorus of "FRAK!" from half a dozen different sources, there was a long moment of silence.

Then the carrier that had mothered the closing fighters answered. "Officer Parino, this is Commander William Adama of the battlestar Galactica of the Fleet of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. We seek safe harbor from the Cylon destruction of our homeworlds."

Refugees. That explained the escort patterns, anyway.

"Wait one, Commander Adama, I must report," Coda said, in the particular Zentradese tense reserved for a junior addressing a senior outside his chain of command, then smacked his control panel's 'upload' key. The plane's computer compressed the conversation's logs into a signal burst and sent it to Pumpkin Two, who would in turn relay it to Hestia.
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."