Scene #4156: Martian Aces High

Owner	Pose
Morrigan	Something's up. All around Mars, ships are moving. The blood-soaked UEFg Indus hangs there with the Yangtze, Katana and Altan Orde. Rumors of a mounting op, some counterattack against the GTVA. But not today. Not today. The bet was made a week ago and now, it's time for Thompson to try and collect. Lorna Simms, the most blood-soaked pilot of the most blood-soaked ship in the Federation navy, waits at a point several hundred thousand kilometers past Phobos. Noemi Laporte waits with her. Both of them girded in the wings of UEF Kentaurois.
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette Thompson had her boosts. She had certainly couched it in diplomatic langague, a calm joking demeanor that was common to fighter jocks of all types, but the noblewoman in her recognized that someone had taken that up as a challenge. And, although not a strict duel, stepping back and denoucing the whole thing as a joke... well, that would have been the cowardly way out. And she was not a coward. Of course, she could have simply bowed, and conceded the defeat. It would have be the diplomatic thing to do... but she was not a diplomat. In the end, there was only one solution, and that was to zip up in flight gear, lock in the helmet, and have some unfamiliar mechanic make sure the IVs were in place and that control jack was locked into the port. She pushed the engines forward a bit more. She could make the Mercury II dance, that was true, but she was... slightly fatalisitic. Fuel wouldn't be a concern in zero-g for a space craft that was made to insert from a carrier into orbit, but she was painfully aware she was running a transatmospheric craft aganist one built for space with technology decades, perhaps even centuries beyond hers. Skill could not hope to bridge all of that gap... But again, what was she to do? Spit out excuse after excuse? No. This was something one had to do. She's on the local net in just a moment. <<Well. Well met. Not the location I would have chosen, but I suppose I would have picked something wholy unsuitable. Have you the terms of this exercise?>>
Morrigan	Lorna Simms' voice is cool and collected, enough to freeze water, thoughts, fear. Her Kentauroi hangs like a two-pointed dart, pointed right at Jeannette's craft. "Simple enough. We switch our weapons to training mode. Simulated combat, one on one. When you take enough hits, you're out. When I knock you down, that's it. Winner takes all. And not a word of this gets back to Netreba."
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette Thompson has to respect the calm demeanor of another pilot, but she was not about to show any fear here. Match cool and collected with refined and blaise. Always good to play up the noblewoman angle. And she at least had some multiversal upgrades in the computing system. Trianing aids were already built into the fighter (it was one of only a handful, after all), and it was a quick bit of work to send out the virtual handshake to a compatible system for damage tracking. <<You know. If this was a real duel, there would be no stepping around this. A formal challenge, a formal acceptance. We could put video of it behind a paywall. But I suppose if you'd want to keep it hush-hush.>> She says, working fingers across an MFD, feeling that heated feedback of fire control systems coming on line. <<And to refresh my memory, what is our little wager? Or are we simply doing this for each other's egos and pride?>>
Morrigan	"I'm Second Fleet," Simms replies. "We do things by the book here. I'm obliging you by coming out here at all - don't make me reconsider, Thompson. We're doing this for egos and pride and to demonstrate our skill. Training with a little extra kick." Simms pauses. "I've got handshake and everything is in the green." Simms doesn't even give anything else - not a good luck, not a good hunting, not a here I come. She dives in, the burners on her Kent glowing white.
Jeannette Thompson	"And I am the Royal Triancian Navy. We do things by the books as well. Ours simply has different chapters. Including ones that allow mutally agree'd upon terms for a pugilisitic bout-" She starts, before cutting off aburtly. Damned time to give history lessons. She must be getting a bit long-winded in her old age. Flight glove grips the throttle as she jams it forward as far as it will go, vectoring the thrust to point her own nose directly at Simms. She would be good God-damned if she started this bout being chased. A flick of her controls and dispensers to either side cleared from the malleable skin of the fighter, spitting out a few loudly squawking devices cluttering the EM freqencies and making it hard for something electronic to get a lock. But this was a jousting match at the moment, so she would have to open with a rapidly firing 20 millimeter electric canon, attempting to lead her shots as the two fighters would pass each other.
Morrigan	Simms comes head-on, almost heedless to the danger. She curses the EM interference and jinks hard, working the Kent like a energetic colt. Her shields registed simulated hits but it's not enough to break them - still, a hit is a hit. Enough hits and the shields will fail. Simms slews her Kent around, keeping her nose pointed in Jeannete's direction as she drifts past her - and opens up with the Kentauroi's six primary guns: simulated plasma bursts.
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette was lucky this was simulated combat. She really had to hope that her own people would crack those damnedable energy shields one day, but her fighter didn't have that protection. All it had to protect it was the unusual nature of it's airframe. The material was... cutting edge, at least in Jeannette's time. Flexible, malleable, aborbing energy, yet send an electic pulse through it and it bacame hard and unyeilding. It did 'ablate' when the 'plasma' hit it, and Jeannette could feel the control stick shudder as the simulated damage appeared on her MFDs. Minor, but... harmful. The material would normally be reforminating, keeping the fighter as operation as long as possible until it couldn't. But Jeannette knew that another head on pass wouldn't be wise. Plasma guns like that were not something her cannon, even with the small shaped charge in each round, could defeat. The craft had been designed around kinetic rods (which would be useless) and missles (which would be decidedly not). A flick of a few screens, and the fighter was turning in as tight an arc as she could make it, before the bay underneath her fighter slide open, pressing a missle out, which ignited which much more manuevability than the mother craft. A testing shot, streaking toward the other ship, to see what she could do to defend.
Morrigan	Simms pulls a hard right, kicking in her burners again. She drops a countermeasure - a small grey thing that begins squawking out that it, not that object to its right, is the Kentauroi you want. It throws out a fake target profile, a bright but short-lived heat signature, and a few seconds of electronic noise to try and confuse the missile. Of course, it's a countermeasure designed for UEF and GTVA warheads. Who knows if it'll work on Jeannette's craft. But it might, or it might buy Simms a second or two - she turns one-eighty, still on her hard-right course, and sprays fire in Jeannette's direction.
Jeannette Thompson	EM was EM, and the principle of sensors was the same everywhere; you emitted something a sensor captured, or something radiated toward you was bounced back and read by the sensor. That made the weapons Jeannette was using effective... but it made the jammers equally so, as the missile went wide, splamming aganist the jammer in a group of fragments that didn't even destory it. But it did it's job of telling Jeannette exactly what those jammers were capable of. And if their was one thing that a missile carrying craft new, it's that destroying your opponent required... saturation. The energy blasts sent aganist her again shook the flight stick, showing more damage appearing on the screen. Jeannette pursed her lips. She had to admit that fire was an... unknown. It may have destroyed her already if this was a real fight. She couldn't say. What she could do was send the fighter spinning away, closing her eyes to avoid the vertigo and letting the feedback coursing through nerves tell her what she needed to know. When she felt that brief spasm in a muscle, almost a white hot pain for a brief instance, she depressed the trigger on the firing column. Bays opened again, and this time a pod ejected out. It only gave Jeannnette a split second to get away before Simms sensors would erupt in small contacts and energy traces, micro missiles blossoming out and seeking a sensor return. It was short range, and didn't have the computer power to be smart... but did have enough to randomize it's position when heading for a target. The result was something like a shotgun blast of energy and shrapnal over a wide area.
Morrigan	Saturation. Jeannette's figured the one tactic that both sides of the war use - saturate enough of an area and it doesn't matter how well a fighter can hide. Simms is already boring in on another attack run, and when Jeannette's missiles erupt like a storm of fiery hail, she turns off. It takes her a moment or two to realise that those are all real missiles and, so, she begins dropping countermeasure after countermeasure, hauling her Kentauroi in an impossible turn, straining the spaceframe to the limits of its endurance - the frame can hold, of course, but whether the pilot can... In the end though, Jeannette's fighter registers a kill. Simms swears under her breath.
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette's trying to recover from her dodge (the lovely thing about zero-g is you could move in one way and keep your weapons pointed in another). She had a follow up to that rain of missiles. It would scramble her up, so she would send out another two of the larger ones. Try to drive her into a... She blinked, for a moment. She did suppose the tactic could have worked, as the enemy signal bleeped red on her sensors. She hadn't /expected/ it to, of course. Then again, she hadn't expected any of it to work. But... well. There it was. Deep breath. Learning experience. She /was/ a Commodore, and gloating could be done in bars (which would happen). <<I am lucky that one worked. I only carry 4 of those things. They're normally meant to be strapped to the airframe and used one by one, but this was a tactic we used to swarm a more numerical, more inferior air force. Good aganist larger bombers and certainly for picking a constellation clean. I've... had to use it more aganist Multiversal aces, though. It leaves me... worried. Are you quite all right?>>
Morrigan	"I'm fine," Simms replies. "Good tactic. Wasn't expecting you to pack missiles like that. We've got missiles that do that - we call them Slammers. Great for clearing out Tev wings, they just evaporate." Her breathing is heavy over the communications link but she seems okay. And then four new contacts clip into view, heading on an intercept course. "Knock it off!" Simms snaps, "Jump flash, tally bandits two by two! Nyxes. Gunship killers. Someone's tracked us and vectored in a strike. We're in trouble."
Kushiko	For what it's worth, there was a watcher. A silent one, mostly owing to the fact that the Liset of the Tenno could be cloaked and hiding itself rather admirably. Ordis chimed in, "Ooh, that's some of /those/. We don't necessarily have to intervene--/but it could be FUN/." Yeah, Ordis wasn't necessarily well adjusted as he corrected himself. "Readying Archwing systems. Deploying at your order, Operator." Lotus spoke up as well. "Be careful. Given what we have heard and seen, prolonged intervention may not be the best option. However... seeing how they react could be good for us." The Liset began phasing out of cloak long enough for the underside of the vessel to spin, revealing first the Nova Prime frame, the figure pushing away from the ship as the Itzal Archwing was similarly released from the Liset. The Warframe was temporarily adrift as engines ignited on the Archwing, unfolding into wings as it banked and attached to Nova Prime, linking its life support systems to the Warframe. The Fluctus, a heavy energy caster was pushed into the Warframe's hands, taking advantage of the low gravity environment to wield a weapon as big as the rest of her. Once she was secured in the harness of the Archwing system, she ignited the thrusters and suddenly blazed out from what seemed like practically nowhere, twin lilac energy trails marking her as she practically seemed to teleport rapidly forward to intercept as well. Which... might seem a bit visually odd for both sides to see.
Jeannette Thompson	Oh, that was just wonderful. Note to self. If you were fighting a duel in a street, ensure that snipers weren't angling themselves along the rooftops. <<I hate to say it, but those missiles aren't going to do the job her. Training rounds are meant to impart little kinetic shock and break up on impact. My armamant is decidedly limited...>> She flicks the switch on the cannon and... another tool from 'TRAIN' to 'WAR', and presss her throttle forward. <<...But not non-existant. If anything, I shall give them something else to shoot. Ensure that reinforcements are timely.>> She notes, before angling herself toward the enemy that appeared. This would be... not as easy as she wanted. It should have just been a matter of acchieving a lock, firing everything, and letting them sort things out amongst their circuitry. Now, though, it meant getting close, dodging shots... Risking death. She could feel that familiar surge of aderenline, and forced it down. She really shouldn't enjoy things like this. She kept saying so. But she supposed by nature or nurture that was going to happen anyway.
Morrigan	Four on four. That's good odds, really. They're good pilots, flying off the decks of the GTD Atreus - Steele's personal pilots, the 60th Bloodletters. They split, one on each target, regardless of whether they match a UEF fighter or not. The Nyx is an excellent fighter, excelling in all areas bar cost, with eight guns and numerous missiles. They burn in hard and the dogfight is joined. Energy blasts and missiles streak from fighter to target.
Kushiko	Realistically speaking, the Warframe officially has two weapons using the Itzal. The Fluctus, which basically spat plasma energy 'cutters', something that she opened fire with in a way that angled the sweeping energy arcs where they might herd an unwary pilot towards other shots. Of course, her other weapon was basically a close ranged anti-/ship/ sword, but she didn't yet pull that out. No, there was a feeling out phase; she was studying the pilot's response to her shots from the Fluctus, fanning fire from the energy caster and using gravity to her benefit. After all, agility afforded her due to the nature of her Archwing conceptually meant she wanted the Nyx pilot to get a little bit pissed and try to smear her across it's hull.
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette would have to look those fighters up later. If she was around, that is. On the bright side, she might get to see how this fighter actually survived aganist plasma fire aganist one of these things. The best defense, of course, is not to get hit. And Jeannette does a /very/ good job of that. She could still /feel/ the plasma licking the airframe, the energy absorption of the fighter's skin not able to handle the heat of being warped and ripped off... but her jammers knock the missles down long enough for her to make the right angle and hit her own attack. Missiles of her own lance out... practice rounds, but they don't know that. It was meant to heard him into the right area, so she could lead and blast with the cannon in her nose, which /was/ firing live ammo this time.
Morrigan	The Bloodletter pilots are intense, not letting up for a second as they dance their dance with each UEF pilot or Elite, driving them away from each other, seperating them so they're easier to kill. Standard wolfpack tactics. Kushiko gets her chance - Taurus 2 comes barrelling right towards her, all eight guns blasting away. Jeannette jukes Taurus 4 and turns, opening up with a volley of missiles. The Tev pilot slips away, dropping countermeasures, and putting him right in her gunsights for a split second. Under repeated blows, the shields drop and the fighter pops in a bright scarlet flare. There's two more contacts then, bigger ones - UEF Uriel gunships. The steed of choice for the cavalry of Lieutenants Ng-Mei and Olefumi. With their assistance, Laporte and Simms are able to see off their adversaries - not one makes it back to the Atreus' flight deck.
Kushiko	The only problem with a Wolfpack tactic here is that, with the case of the Tenno Kushiko, she /knows them/. Instinctual memory calls it out almost immediately, causing her to angle her wings to pivot and thrust away, dancing just as elegantly in the storm of fire. Because the moment that actually happens where the Bloodletter pilot decides to bring itself in, this is when she swaps weapons; the Fluctus folding up and attaching itself to the underside of one wing and her arm thrust into the shield-sword combination, those eight cannons /hammering/ hard on her shield in the swapover and knocking her backwards by it. But her shields hold; just long enough that she surges her systems, blinking forward to disappear from the crosshairs of the Nyx and now a scant five meters from the Bloodletter. And as she arrives, she's spiralling: unfolding a twin-pronged blade making the sword twice as long as her but fully capable of using it to attempt to slice down the starboard side of the Nyx itself to damn near bisect the wing off unless the Bloodletter's pilot reacts fast enough! ... but given the speed she's going, the chance may not be there.
Jeannette Thompson	Okay, that /was/ a relief. Wolfpack tactics would have worked... aganist pilots who weren't trained in their use. Triancia had good pilots. Very good ones, in fact. When it came to test pilots, better ones. And when it came to a test pilot who had enough metal in her to make her children part robot connected via a high-bandwidth spike into a fighter designed by the best technology... No. No, wolfpack tactics would, at best, delay. But one would have died, and then a second, and like a knife fight, odds of survival would dwindle. Maybe she was being too cocky, seeing as the fighter that wanted to kill her just erupted into a silent orange ball of energy. But she wouldn't have to find out today. <<Well, that was a... vigourous work out, ladies and gentlemen. WOnderful to see this Navy on it's toes. I don't suppose anyone sees survivors?>>
Morrigan	Kushiko finishes off her opponent with aplomb - the Nyx spins out, suddenly missing one thruster, and detonates. Just like that, it's over. There's no survivors. It's not common to have any. "I don't see any," Laporte comments. "Except for us, that is."
Jeannette Thompson	Jeannette Thompson paused for a moment, looking toward the floating wreckage that was rapidly becoming a fuzz of nothing on her sensor screen. It had been... violent. Almost deliciously show. A quick knife fight, one person vying for the upper hand, and the blade in the throat. She kept telling herself it shouldn't be exciting, but it was. That she had just ended a life but it was distant. It was just victory and exalutation, and she wouldn't be able to tamp down on things. She could only hope she'd be able to work some sense into herself when taking alook in the mirror the next morning. But the day was one, the enemy was so much oppurtunisitc paste, and it was time to get back into the hanger and explain to Cahil that she needed more fighter skin. They always took some talking to part with it, but what /else/ where they going to use it for?
Kushiko	"No more contacts," the Lotus remarks over local band as Kushiko has already begun her rapid return back towards where the Liset could scoop her eventually. But for what it was worth, the Warframe elected simply to enjoy the flying for now. She was /fast/--as fast as an advanced fighter. Hyperion Thrusters ignited, adding a stronger burst of speed as she arced herself in a slow curve, wings and arms at either side of the female shape as she scythed past some of where the others were. In effect: /weeeeee/.