Close Chandra Orbit - Republic of Humanity Territory
- - - - -
[（ ^_^) Upgrades! New research! Orbital support! （ ^_^)]
[Opening Ship Upgrade List uwu]
►Upgrade Options
►Fighter Strikes (2)
►Kingfisher Mark 2 - Gunship (2) (NEW)
►Corvette Strikes (1)
►Additional 80-Millimeter Cannon 2)
►Carrie-Class Napalm Strike (1) (NEW)
►Drop-Pods (3)
►Mine-Dispersal Rover
►Supply Drop (Tactical)
►Supply Drop (Siege)
►Research Upgrades (2)
►Explosive Gyrojet Micromissile Rounds (NEW)
►Fire Team Mobility Ascension Unit (NEW)
“Research upgrades, huh?” Kaya sat at her desk, looking over the videos for her two most likely choices. She’d met with Gorsuch, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet until she handed him the vatanium sample. Then he’d dismissed her and disappeared into the Champ’s communication center. Five minutes later, the system had started bugging her about buying upgrades, and it hadn’t stopped until she made it to her quarters.
The [Kingfisher Mark 2 - Gunship] could have been a lifesaver at the mine; it converted one of the Champ’s two fast-attack two-seat fighters into a gunship with all its weapons mounted on one side. With the new set-up, it lost speed and maneuverability but could circle a position—marked with a beacon, of course—and provide support fire for an extended time. A Pericles would be better at it, obviously, but the Champ only carried one of those.
The other option was the [Carrie-Class Napalm Strike]. It’d vomit a single, unwieldy shell from a single modified cannon on the Champ, which would explode and cover the battlefield with burning jelly. It was probably the strongest Kaya could get as an area-denial weapon, but it was limited; her fire team couldn’t advance through a burning wasteland.
[Yep! ^.^]
[General Gorsuch tasked a science team to the Champion of Democratic Intent. All you have to do is put in a request, and they’ll get to work back at Venus Pond!]
“So why didn’t I know about that earlier? And gyrojets are pretty common, right? Half the fighter-mounted weapons are gyrojet-ammo-compatible.”
[Uh huh! Gyrojets have some bullet speed problems, though. Unsolvable without access to the right materials. Venus Pond thinks vatanium might work, but literally 150% of that stuff’s earmarked for faster-than-light engine systems. Worse, if Chandra falls. Soooooo…yeah. Your sample gives those sciencey types something to work with!]
[Alternatively, we could look into a mobility enhancer uwu]
[Imagine being able to leap over small buildings like a gazelle. Uh, that’s an animal that used to live on Lost Earth, but they were pretty bouncy! Anyway, Venus Pond needs to know what to do with the sample, so you better choose. It won’t count against your upgrades—I promise]
Kaya groaned. Gyrojet rounds could be handy. She’d seen some that could curve, increasing the shooter’s accuracy by eliminating bullet drop and wind. Explosive ones would be great for tearing into light and medium armor. But on the other hand, being able to quickly reposition Rodgers without all the climbing…”Fire Team Mobility Ascension Unit. I only get one, right?”
[Right! Choice selected. How about your Neptune Yards upgrades? You get two. The General was pleased that you locked down the mine and saved the science guys!]
Kaya considered her options. The exciting play was Napalm and Gunship, but relying on the Champ’s firepower or even a close-support Kingfisher didn’t sit well with her—even if it followed an old military doctrine.
EAF doctrine pre-MRC was to use fire teams to handle small problems with small arms fire while acting as spotters and guides for air and orbital support. To do that, Kaya needed both: the small arms her squad had plus the air-to-ground and space-to-ground firepower. And, in both her last drops, her crew had run out of ammo for at least one heavy weapon. That wasn’t acceptable.
“I’m taking the [Kingfisher Mark 2 - Gunship] and [Supply Drop (Tactical)].” Kaya stood up, stretching and smoothing her uniform. “Put in the request, send me the digital forms, etc.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
[You got it, LC （ ^_^)]
[Expect upgraded equipment and additional pre-packaged supplies to be available tomorrow!]
“Great.” There was another problem, though, and it was one that better guns, more aggressive support fighters, and napalm couldn’t solve. Kaya shivered at the undemocratic thought, but it was true. None of those things could fix Gonzales’s dislike for her, and she needed her Droppers to work well together—and with her.
“System, I’m going for a walk. Compile Gonzales’s recordings from our last two drops and have them ready for me to check out when I get back.”
[Spying on your squad? Absolutely not!]
Kaya sighed, rubbing her temples. The EAF was always watching their performance, but it wasn’t spying. It was watching for inefficiencies. How to get around the AI’s blocks? She thought for a minute, then had an idea. “System, could you show me, hypothetically, what you’d show High Admiral Shohei if he asked to see weak spots in my squad’s performance?”
[I coooould…]
“System, that’s something you could do if I asked?”
[What are you doing? This feels weird, like my circuits aren’t quite right!]
“Show me what you’d show High Admiral Shohei if he asked—“
[No! Stop!]
“—to see weak spots in my squad’s performance,” Kaya finished, grinning smugly. “Compile it and have it ready for me to watch tonight.”
[(╥﹏╥) I can’t believe you’d do that! So mean! Compiling data]
◄▼►
A Briseis-class drop corvette didn’t offer much space for walking, and the tiny workout room was booked for the night. Kaya didn’t want to use her privilege as commanding officer to take over the single treadmill, not when Strathmore was sprinting full-bore while wearing a mask that set his oxygen to 80% of normal, and a line had already formed behind the big man. So, instead, she watched his muscular frame bounce along for a minute.
The man’s cloned body was a finely tuned machine—nothing but muscle, and not too much of that. He’d never be a bodybuilder, but—at least according to the timer—he could maintain an all-out, 15-minute-thirty-second 5,000-meter pace and hold it for almost half an hour. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his frame.
Kaya wasn’t quite that fast; her cloned body could hold a seventeen-minute 5k pace. But with the amount of enhancements she and the other Droppers took, that was well below the twenty-minute bare minimum. Still, Strathmore wasn’t human.
She couldn’t say that out loud. The accusation, even joking, could ruin his career and put him in prison. But she thought it.
She tore her eyes from the man’s running, and the biometrics readout. Turning away, she walked back to the engineers’ room and then all the way forward to the bridge. A quick glance at the holo-map showed that not much had changed. The fleet’s Droppers were still fighting, and they’d successfully slowed the Bonravan advance across Chandra, but both escort dreadnoughts had been forced out of the fight with the worldship.
Without their cover, the drop corvettes couldn’t get too close to the gargantuan worldship, and they’d been forced to drop squads on the edge of Bonravan territory. Now, the fleet and its Droppers were concentrating on beating Bonravan ground forces to various military compounds across the ever-expanding front. Evacuations, bombings, and controlled demolitions covered the map. The strategy wasn’t new to Kaya: scorched earth. The Republic’s finest wouldn’t ever let aliens steal its secrets or weapons—not while they fought on.
After a quick check for any orders from Gorsuch revealed nothing, Kaya checked the map over again, looking for a mission that would test her troops and also give her some downtime in the field. A plan had started forming in her head; she could use field time to build camaraderie with her squad. She picked a base a couple hundred kilometers from the last-known front with a ten-hour timer, moved her ship’s icon over it, and nodded. “We’ll go after that one next. Get some sleep. It’ll be a messy one.”
The bridge crew nodded. “Shift change in an hour. Will do then.”
Kaya was already heading back to her quarters.
She locked the door, pulled off her uniform, and lay on the bed. “What’ve you got for me, system?”
[I found no flaws. Your fire team performed within fifteen percent of optimal, and your casualties were shockingly low uwu]
That couldn’t be right. Kaya remembered dying twice during the mine assault, and Rodgers had died a few times, too. “Show me all the footage, three times normal speed. Stick around, because I’ll want to watch some things a few times.”
As the 4-panel helmet-cam footage filled up the system’s screen, Kaya stared, confused, as the battle at the mine went off mostly without a hitch. She reinforced Strathmore, but other than that, the fire team didn’t have any of the problems she remembered. This is going to be a problem. If I’m trying to correct my squad’s mistakes, but they haven’t made those mistakes, they’re going to think I’m even more of a stickler for the rules than they already do.
New plan: I don’t make a single correction until I’ve figured out the operation’s timeline—not my timeline, but what everyone else thinks happened. I can’t fix everything, but if I focus on one or two ‘real’ mistakes, maybe my team will start believing I want what’s best for them. I mean, Rodgers can’t like dying while we fly away, right?
The battlefield recordings scrolled on and on. Even at three times the speed, so much of it was moving around, waiting for something to happen, or the whole squad holding their breath in the mud, that Kaya found herself drifting slowly to sleep.
◄▼►
[ALARM! ALARM! ALARM!]
[Lieutenant Commander Cameron! Your next drop location is in range, the time-to-drop is forty-five minutes, and your new upgrades are installed on the Champion of Democratic Intent!]
“Understood.” Kaya covered her head with the pillow. “Five more minutes.”
A flashing light filled her otherwise dark room, and even the pillow wouldn’t block it out. The damn recording had played on a loop all night, she realized. It was still playing on the screen that hovered over her desk; right now, it showed Strathmore getting blown off the top of the vatanium pile by a rocket. She winced; that should have been a loss, so why hadn’t the whole mine blown sky high right there?
[Lieutenant Commander Cameron, this is the wake-up call you set for the mission you assigned your squad. I don’t care if you get out of bed ¯\(°_o)/¯, but it will reflect poorly on you! ಥ_ಥ]
“Fuck.” The system was correct. Also, it was annoying as hell today. She dragged herself out of bed, pulled the under-armor suit over skin that was too smooth for the number of times she’d been dismembered the day before, and stomped out to get breakfast.
[The mission is pretty simple, uwu]
[All you have to do is escort the nuclear technician to the nuclear missile silo you picked, help him enter the nuclear launch codes, fuel the nuclear missile, and then nuke a bunch of cows!]
“Say nuclear again, I dare you,” Kaya grumbled.
[Uh, nu…no thanks?]
“Good call.”