Well, that was harder than I thought. Lets try this.
Dovetails into the JMC scene.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:------
Maico was dead on her feet climbing down the loading ramp of the transport. Harsh light assaulted her eyes as she made her way out into the bay. She struggled to grind the bleariness out of her eyes.
Her headset was running, documenting everything just in case. The spider tanks were busy shifting crates, under the direction of a scottish accent coming from the mouth of....
“Oh my....”
A kilt....and....
She was far too tired to to speculate, even if the thought made her giggle just a little giddily. She adjusted her backpack straps. It bulged with worn clothing.
Getting out here had been... it was what she would politely call ‘a journey’. She yawned, and shook her head to clear the sleep from her mind.
“Excuse me,” she got his attention, “I’m here to speak with with A.C. Peters about the Knight Sabers,”
“Aye, we heard you were coming.” A smile lit up his face. “I’m afraid she’s a wee bit busy right now, but I’ll let her know you’re asking about her,”
She found she really didn’t mind. She found she could see his nose trying to retreat into his face.
“What?”
His smile wavered a little, growing just a little embarrassed. “Maico. When was the last time you had a chance t’...rest?”
And he picked that last word very carefully. Maico felt her face begin to burn with shame nevertheless.
“I’m so sorry I’m just...” she started to babble... “I’m just been going from station to shuttle to station so much lately that I haven’t been home in a long time, and....”
She felt sick with the shame of it.
“It’s alright,” He gently stopped her with a raised hand.“There’s shower facilities in the guest quarters if you’d care. I’m sorry to say won’t have the time to take y’anywhere ourselves afterwards, but a JMC transport is due in two days time. You’ll be welcome to stay until it arrives,”
“Thanks,” Maico breathed.
Guest quarters proved to be ‘comfortable’. The water in the shower was hot. The towels were soft. She had space to sleep in peace and comfort. And she’d figured out that the bathroom door wouldn’t stay open unless she jammed a shoe in it. Still, all told, two days waiting didn’t seem so bad anymore.
“Sylia the puppet. Sylia’s been around since 2016, so she wasn’t created specific for the Knight Sabers. That’s something that came after. It was something she decided to do”
She glanced at the notes on her screen...
“Unless. Sylia was woken by Jet. Sylia’s Jet’s daughter. That makes more sense. It put’s her at the centre, rather than the periphery. It explains why she would have connections to all three. She goes through her mother...”
Another glance at Jet’s file.
“Father,” she corrected herself with a sigh. “And if Sylia’s an AI, who’s to say the other three aren’t? Ryan thinks Pink is too. They’re either all Jet’s daughters, or a collection from among the three.”.
She paused. She remembered, months earlier, a meeting she had on Stellvia. It struck her like a brick.
“Noah Scott too. Noah asked me to quash this, because they’re doing good. What if he knows who they are?” She found herself feeling just a little sick.”That’s four. For four hardsuits.And the perfect people to have on your side if you wanted to run a group like this in secret. ”
A beat. She cringed.
“Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself with speculation. I’ll see what happens on Frigga, and what Jet tells me.” She drummed her fingers on the table, scowling a little, “But if she’s anything like Sylia she’ll probably lie about it, anyway....”
“There is no more space available to record,” her headset interrupted.”Delete old files, or insert a new disk,”
“What?” she blurted. “Disk full?”
Obviously. She’d dictated gigabytes of video over the last few weeks. Time for a break. There was another spare disk in her jacket, she just had to get it out of the closet. She padded over on bare feet, still feeling a little bleary-eyed, and slid the door open.
And yelped in shock at what greeted her there. Her head whirled around, scanning for surveillance camera’s.
“It’s just a quirk,” she whispered, pushing as much of her will into it as possible. The door closed itself a moment later. It was a quirk of the station she reassured herself.. Nothing more. Nothing deliberate. Nobody else even knew it was there.
Her heart was jackhammering in her chest as she desperately tried to doublethink that side of her self away. She didn’t dare speak aloud in case she was overheard.
A knock on the door nearly made her burst through her skin.
“Yeah?” there was a quiver in her voice.
The door opened. Maico’s gaze bounced, starting with a pair of intense green eyes framed by raven fringe, falling down to tall high-heeled boots that seemed to crawl up taught thighs to a tight bodysuit that clung desperately to a figure that stirred sharp pangs of jealousy in deep inside Maico. She stopped for a moment at the bustline the where the bodysuit did, then finally plucked up the courage to meet her gaze.
“It helps ferret out spies,”
“Uh....”
A.C chuckled. The description ‘sultry’ entered Maico’s mind... that was how she’d describe it on paper, but that some how seemed unfair. “Whatever’s in there, maybe you should try it on,”
“Not right now,” she sputtered out, nervously. “I was just finishing some notetaking before going to bed,”
The door slammed shut behind her.
“Yes, you’re here about the Knight Sabers?”
Maico nodded. A.C. offered her a thumb drive. “A complete archive of the Stingray Project’s discussions on the subject of their hardware, and potential suppliers. They have a good handle on the technologies the Knight Sabers would need to employ,”
“Thank you, “ Maico accepted it, holding it tight in her own hand “I spoke with Stengovich.”
“Who probably suggested you ask me about them. Yes, I would be capable of building them. No, I did not build them.”
Maico nodded slowly. That didn’t mean she didn’t supply technology or know-how. For a moment, she considered outright asking her, but that wouldn’t help.
“I’ve linked the Knight Sabers to Jet Jaguar. Not conclusively... but enough to be worth investigating. I know they use her fighting style, and she began the Stingray Project, and it’s her fandom. From what you know about her, would she be capable of building the hardsuits?”
There wasn’t even a pause for a breath.
“Jet is an amateur, an occasional hobbyist. Nothing more.”
There was a palpable sense of frustration building, a sense of incovenience rather than anything else. This was cutting into the time of something important.
“Could she do it, if she had help? If she was able to purchase some of the technologies needed?”
“Anyone could, given time.”
Time to wrap this up. Patience was wearing thin. She had somewhere she needed to be.
“Frigga advertises that they use Forge-built combat drones as part of their exercises. Could they have purchased dual-use equipment?”
“Yes, they do, and have. But the exact nature of any commercial deals with Frigga are private and confidential. Frigga has accounted for any hardware they’ve purchased to our satisfaction.”
And the well was, quite obviously dry.
“Thanks,” Maico offered
A.C. left her with a curt nod, the door breezing shut behind after a few seconds. Maico heaved a sigh and sat on the bed, giving herself a generous amount of time to calm down. Bad timing.
“Accounted for to our satisfaction,” Maico paraphrased for the benefit of the camera. Which means either she knows and doesn’t disapprove, The Sabers aren’t based off Frigga after all, or the Sabers got their hardware from somewhere else.
There was a nice big list of potential suppliers on the jump drive. Stuck on the Forge for a few days, what else could she do but try and research them, and research Jet.
------
The crew of Blue Midget 5 had given Maico her own cabin. How nice of them. Getting clear across the main belt from Prometheus via Ganymede seemed a bit silly at first. But JMC were her ride, and they gave her her own private cabin for the journey.
It was a peaceful place to think. She found a blog post from Republicon. Someone who’d made their way around the exhibition hall, reviewing the spacecraft on offer in turn.
“ “It’s just something for our own use. We brought them along because if we had something to exhibit, we got free entry, and early entry too to set up our stand. So we get to see all the cool stuff before the crowd.” Jet Jaguar isn’t shy about hiding her real reasons for coming. “And it’s good advertising for Survival Shot”
Still, I’m here to review each piece of hardware in the hall, regardless of origin, and the 2-seat brutal flying battleaxe that is the GR-02 Havoc is waiting with open cockpit door.
It’s a cramped cockpit, but not uncomfortable like. Ergonomics are alright, and with all the armour surrounding it definitely feels like a safe place to be. Everything’s in easy reach and there’s something peculiarly satisfying about punching buttons and thunking switches. It’s very much a pilot’s spacecraft.... there’s zero AI support, just a course-following autopilot, and the controls have a direct action, rather than being fly-by-wire. Cockpit glass is laminate venusian diamond, and the armour is reasurringly thick.
A teenage boy takes the rear pilot’s seat, leaving me in the gunner’s up front. Visibility is good enough. The gun camera tracks where I look, and I’ve got a nice targeting reticle on my visor. It takes me a moment to realise they’ve done nothing more than bodge up a smartlink system. The targeting array is similar to an early model Y-wing. Cheap, robust, satisfactory for the job at hand, but lacking many modern features.
The rotors pulse as it takes off, and for a few moments, everything seems normal. It accelerates smoothly up to a slow top speed of just 6.5% C. It’s all very unimpressive, right until the teenaged pilot stomps on the pedals and spins the chopper around through a one eighty. While still proceeding along the same vector at full speed. What follows is a dizzying riot of maneuvers that always seem to outpace the ability of the drive fields to damp it out. I’m glad they don’t use touchscreen when I’m bracing myself against panels to keep from being pinned. There’s no doubting this thing’s maneuverability is A-grade. It’s beyond A-grade . It’s the one thing that earns the Havoc it’s place in the exhibition.
Overall, it’s not a bad spacecraft by any means. I know people who’ve paid for much worse. It’s definitely a curiosity. In the hands of a pilot who knows how to use the hypermaneuverability to their advantage, a Havoc could surprise supposedly superior hardware. But there’s no hiding the age of the technology aboard. It never loses the air of something built down to a budget, because an amateur builder couldn’t afford or understand anything better. Still, I suspect fighting one of these would be like taking bites out of a porcupine. It can bring it’s quills to bear in any direction.
Score. 2.5 out of 5. Not bad, but with some issues. Sales are ‘Plans only’. It would make a fun project, especially if you spend money upgrading the avionics yourself, and maybe wake up an AI to make things easier. But if you do nothing else this week, do take them up on their offer of a free ride in the gunner’s seat. It’s a blast.
Too bad the twin-rotor Hokum was a single seater. And repeatedly refused to start.”
Maico read it twice.
“Amateur. An occasional hobbyist,” she repeated for the benefit of the lens. “Everything I’ve read agrees with that. A.C. specifically denied building them, and Jet may not have been able to design them either....” She was drumming her fingers on the desk again. “And I’ve a nice long list of people who could’ve supplied individual parts. Probably without knowing what they went for. I won’t prove the parts link.”
She yawned. “Still. If I get into the specifics of what she said. She never said she didn’t design parts, and I wonder if Jet wouldn’t be capable of following the plans.” Draw a probable conclusion. But nothing conclusive. Typical.
Nobody smart lies. Lies can be disproved. And a disproved lie was as valid a story as the truth, even more so. She felt herself smirk a little at the thought. But half-truths; half-truths let her read between the lines and crawl forward, but she doubted she could actual use as newsworthy facts. She needed something ironclad. “And spending years on a project just doesn’t sound like an occasional hobbyist’s style....”
Maico had something to eat, and took the chance to freshen up before landing.
“Red Alert!” the intercom announced. Maico started, a shock of fear lancing through her body. Frantic, she glanced around looking for the seatbelt, then for her backpack. “Red Alert.” the intercom repeated. “We’re approaching landing,”
Huh?
“Shouldn’t that be a Blue Alert sir?” a second voice questioned in a soft, mid-Canadian accent
Dovetails into the JMC scene.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?