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Front 1.5 - First Day Part 2
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--Recording Resumed After 5 minutes, 22 seconds --
Sorry about that, Miss Cally just came in to pick up a file she'd left in the room.
Oh-h maybe I should've had her introduce herself? Well she's my bunkmate, she's a junior navigator who's handles night-shifts on the ship's bridge.
She outranks me a bit but she seems really nice, always polite and not that much older than me. I haven't actually asked her age or surname yet but I think we're pretty similar, I just hope we can get along if we're going to be sharing this room for a while.
Anyway where was I? Oh right..... See it wasn't just that I walked past the members of my new team and then tried to act cool in front of them. After I realised who they were, well I tried to smooth things over...
I started looking around for something to change the topic with and stop their laughing, when I spotted a Vijaik in the opposite end of the hanger - A really old MBT 1 or 2 like the ones we used to have for training in and....my mouth, it, ya know, just kind of moved on it's own.....
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Arghhhhh!! I said something like; '"We're not meant to fight in that old thing are we?'" in my best impression of a 'stoic voice' like the one I just put on - And before I knew it I'd set them all off laughing again even harder than before.
Heck some passer-bys, engineers and mechanics or whatever, started giggling too.
Turns out it's an old unit that's here for testing purposes and moving crates around, not fighting.
Ya see the Fluchtig is an experimental ship with full on production facilities to create 'custom-Vijaik-Neo-Types', that means the ship has less capacity for the number of mechs it can carry, But that the one's it does are all raised in spec and stuff.
With that spare MB-Type just there for the engineers to mess around with or move cargo about. And there I went getting all flustered like an idiot.
Well I guess it could have been worse, the only other mess up came when I asked about the team leader and I'm still not sure what I did wrong there.
Miss.Emilia Von Suwen is listed as my new Commanding Officer. Apparently she was a TSU special branch member but changed sides when she realised the war crimes TSU-s are committing and now she's not only in charge of the Fluchtig's Vijaik-team but she even pilots one of the new Casnels that the Tradech battle group stole - Who better to pilot it, than its original owner I guess, right?.
Her being an ex-TSU-s member is a little off-putting but still alongside the others, having a Casnel Ace-Pilot-Boss sounds like a dream come through! - Yet when I asked where to report in to her the reaction changed.
It was almost worse than the earlier embarrassments, Miss.Scarlet went deadly quiet and mumbled something under her breath before giving us all, atleast I don't think it was aimed just at me, this death glare of pure disgust that could kill you at 10 paces, before walking away.
Mr.Nilas explained that Commander Suwen is off the ship right now and that he's acting as leader in her place, which I guess I don't mind, he does seem nice after all.
Thankfully in the end the rest of the day went a lot smoother, the ship I arrived on came in pretty late in the afternoon so it's only been a few hours. The three of them showed me around the hangers and then to my quarters, the break-room where the synthetic food machines are, with some...awkwardly long queues for those machines - And then lastly to the canteen.
Apparently they'll show me the rest like the briefing rooms and things tomorrow. Once I got to my room I met Miss.Cally already on her way to the bridge for her shift and that was about it.
Yup that sounds about right, don't mind the rustling noise, I'm just checking back over my notes, don't want to leave anything out!
Hmmmm-m, ya looks good! Well then this got pretty long haha, guess I better get some sleep, tomorrow there is a big shipment of supplies coming in and they said my new machine might be arriving tomorrow..........Apparently it's 'definitely not a MBT Mk2', not sure I'm going to live down that teasing any time soon.
Not just that even, on the guided tour of the ship people I've never met before had started calling me 'Rookie', ughhhh what a lame-cliched nickname to get on my first day - Maybe it'll pass?
Just newbie hazing right?
Well anyway I think that's plenty for today. This is Crewman 1st Class and Junior Pilot, Una O' Conchabhair signing off.
--Recording ID; UC-PL-D300 - End--
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Una sat quietly thinking about how pointless her worries of the prior day now seemed - As she waiting for the end to come, each second rolling endlessly into the next. On the screen before her, in what felt like some dramatic slow motion, she watched as the red-mech closed the distance and launched its glimmering blade inwards with an under arm thrust aimed straight at Sabban's cockpit, now only seconds from killing her ally.
She would never know now if he did actually remember who she was;
'Though I guess that doesn't really matter now...I-i...I'm going to die...'
She watched and waited, the blade seemed to hang in the air perfectly still. Although unseen, she was fairly sure a bolt from the long range rifle was snaking its way towards her too. She wondered who would go out first, whether she would be forced to watch her school friend die before she too left.
She wondered what Auntie would think back home when she got the news, would she open it on the porch where she always did her morning reading?
She wondered....wondered just how slowly that blade was moving.
Una sat up straight and stared in disbelief at the main monitor, a pale translucent blue box had made itself known now, with simple letters written in block capitals across it;
GROUP SIMULATION A-7 HAS CONCLUDED PARTY A (1st LT.NILAS, ENSIGN.VINT, 1ST CREWMAN O' CONCHABHAIR) HAS ACHIEVED 95% SUCCESS LIKELYHOOD OVER PARTY B (ENSIGN.BACHIKA, WARRENT OFFICER 'SCARLET')
It had ended.
She stared blankly, unbelievingly as the monitors all switched off one after the other but for the main one, which in turn began to display more and more information and cut from being her camera feed to a top down view of the cyan sniper-Vijaik - Which Una could now see from this angle had been compromised, as floating behind it was Lt.Nilas' machine with his custom double barrel cannon aimed squarely at the sniper's back.
A faint glow in each barrel revealing their imminent firing just seconds away.
The monitor delivered further data in a ream like fashion, with graphs and crude representations of predictions for the following moments, showing Kolme's Vijaik destroying the cyan one and then using its rifle to finish off the red machine from afar.
The plan had in a fashion worked, Kolme Nilas had taken the long way around in order to avoid all the sensors, taking the sniper off-guard and then using its own weapon to hypothetically finish the battle.
'A-a simulation, right...right, but... but it felt so real, it looked so real... It felt real when I was going to di...to die...'
She felt around herself as the monitor droned on in computerised text to voice messages about certain statistics and such like, with complicated performance graphs and pie charts she could barely hope to decipher at the best of times, not to mention in her current shaken state.
She felt at the controls, still there, still real - As was her chair and the floor below and ceiling above - But the battle, that had seemed just as real, the winding to her mid-riff still so fresh in her memory, her body still shaking from the physical impact of the thing.
Pilot Simulation Stats - [Callsign Displayed];
Rookie +40 Rank D- Scarlet Scourge -75 Rank C- Hoki Bachika -125 Rank C Sabban Vint +100 Rank B- Kolme Nilas +75 Rank C
A part of her did momentarily wonder as to who and when had someone changed her Vijaik's recognised name to 'Rookie', another part actually smiled a little at seeing her points increase, a further still contemplated the surprisingly low ranks of her compatriots despite their immaculate performances compared with her own - But most of all she simply sat there a-wash with relief, then immense embarrassment for somehow forgetting what was going on, and lastly perhaps, a small hint of indignation at the whole affair.
Finally and maybe most of all, Una felt very, very tired.
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