Robotech - Southern Cross Adventure

[Sherwood]

Deunan takes a moment, then says, "I agree. God help her if she decides to argue with you, though. Lets get back."

 

[Purr]

Gabi strongly felt there was no way she could help Ryuko, mostly because the young pilot had dug her own grave. So instead of worrying about things she could not change, she tried to focus herself on matters that she could.

"LT," Gabi asked over the squadron radio, "You mind if I take a long look at the PPC on Marlon's tank? It's been operating just fine for months and now it chooses today to mess up. I want to know what's going on in there and fix it if I can."

She was glad at least that the plasma cutters and EU-11A upgrades were working well, but the engineer would not sit still look till she found out what was going on in that PPC.

 

[Sherwood]

Deunan replies to Gabi's request with, "Approved. I want to have every weapon in the squad up at 100%. Just get together with Chief Hobbs and see what you can figure out on it."

 

[D. Rex]

"Would you like me to wait until after the debrief do you think you'll be able to cover for me." He asked over the private channel.

 

[Purr]

Once they returned to Brazilia Base, Gabi did just what Lt. Conway told her to do.

 

[Rykon]

"I'd like to help with that too Gabi." Alan added. "His cannon wasn't the only one acting outside of expected parameters. Also, with all the other units that were deployed, I'm sure the normal crews will be stretched thin with damaged mechs and service calls."

 

[Purr]

Gabi loved the idea and that was clear in her voice. "Well, get your butt over here, amigo! There's always room for Alan in the mech bay! The more Third Heavy Recon hands on our Third Heavy Recon mechs, the better, you know?"

 

[Psychie]

The recovery transport vehicle follows the rest of the team along to the hangar, and as you pull in, Chief Hobbs and her crew are there waiting for you, having been warned of your approach by Neo. With an experienced eye, she takes in the minor damage done to the various Spartas tanks, doing the mental calculations on how long it will take to get them repaired up to full.

Then she sees the legless Ajax on the flatbed transport come in, and her expression goes to despair.

"What the hell happened? Is the pilot ok? My goy! It is going to be a bit before I can get this one back up and flying!"

 

[Sherwood]

Deunan parks her tank in its stall and jumps out, going over to Chief Hobbs. "We had a bit of a run in with some hostile aliens, and Sgt. Narukami decided to take on one of the large dropships by herself. Not the best decision, but at least she lived through it. Can you work with this, or is it a total loss? I have a feeling that we will need to be up to full strength ASAP."

 

[Sherwood]

At a second thought, Deunan will look to the Chief and say, "We had some overheating trouble with the Spartas PPCs. I want them looked over to see if there is any damage done to them. Gabi and Alan want to help look into them. Do you mind sharing your tools with my people?"

 

[Psychie]

Chief Hobbs shakes her head. "No problem with that at all, ma'am. They are both welcome in my repair bay. Thank you for asking. Its good to see that most of your tanks have come through with only minor damage, but the more I look at this Ajax, I may have to requisition a whole new unit in, and just use this one for parts. That damage is pretty extensive, and I would hate to have a problem in the transformation systems come up with a patch job."

The Chief then starts to give out orders to her repair crew, trying to prioritize the order of repairs.

 

[Rykon]

Alan listened to the damage report given by the chief and nodded appreciatively. Often times a single accident put cars in such a pitiful state it was often best to replace them entirely rather than repair. Mecha should be no different in that regard. Especially when half of one was annihilated in combat. Such news might put a blemish on the record of the Third Heavy in some of the more cynical circles. However, Alan would be one of the first to remind others that the squad was outnumbered four to one against new enemies before counting a space worthy dropship in the fray and the unit still came out on top without casualties.

Still, it'd be hard to refute the recklessness on a finer critique. Life in the field was hard enough without the microanalysis of superiors from combat records saved to the mecha themselves. He felt bad for the hotshot pilot in a way, but at the end of the day, the Third Heavy had to operate as a team. The Spartas was a glutton for punishment. It seemed obvious to him that the heavier mecha should strive to draw fire away from the lighter, more nimble targets.

While Deunan and Marlon were off filing paperwork, he'd voice his concerns to Gabi and Neo. "That last skirmish... It was a bit of a mess I'll admit. I mean, I'm glad no one got hurt, but I am a bit worried about the next operation. I get the Lieutenant and Marlon have to make a show of coming down on her regardless, but I don't know if that's the right move to make things better for the next time. Not by itself anyway."

 

[Purr]

"Show or no show, something's got to change in her," Gabi answered, "because she's not doing the changing on her own. If left to her own Desperada ways, sooner or later - BOOM! - she's gonna die." Gabi's gaze drifted downward. "That'll break my heart. But if she don't listen to Marlon or Conway, then it can't be helped. Either they deal with her the military way or she ends up a liability and a casualty with no one to blame but herself. Hopefully she don't take no one else with her when she goes." She sniffed.

"Thing is, she was doing so good in there for a few moments, you know? She was doing what she was told, had her act together real good for a minute there! Asking questions, shooting straight. So she's got it in her to do the right thing. And if she wants to fit in, that's all she's gotta do, not this 'look at me willing to die for you' nonsense. No one's asking her to do that; she's doing that for herself. Once she reels that in, she'll be okay. But will she?" She shot Alan and Neo a firm look. "I think it's totally up to her. And if you ask me? What Marlon's about to give her is good for her. I hope it'll make a better teammate out of her. I really do."

Gabi appeared open to continuing the conversation (or any other) as she got to work.

 

[D. Rex]

Marlon climbed down from the Spartas, to leave it in the chiefs care. "Ryuko. See that corner of the hangar bay? You will stand right there at parade attention until I return. I do not want hear that so much as scratched your nose without me telling you to." He said firmly. He was eager to tear into her. But debriefing too priority. He would leave with Duenan to do what needed to be done.


Gundam Watcher 27

 

[Rykon]

Alan turned his eyes away from Marlon and the end of the hangar bay as a matter of proper etiquette. "I just want everyone to make it home safely. We all do. I think that's what matters most. Whatever it takes, so be it." Alan said quietly with a sigh. "On the note of what keeps us alive... I may as well fuss about this now. Not having splash damage options against a crowd that numerous sucks harder than a Dyson. I'd like to take a look at what can be done to make some of the old rounds usable still when we have clusters of enemies like that. Those Robotech 'Masters' may've been chumps, but having to single each of them out one at a time was tedious and a bit dangerous considering how long most of them had to continually rain fire on the squad. Couple that with how long it takes the cannon to cool and we could get in a lot of trouble very fast if we aren't careful. I don't know how many more they have, but they'll probably send more than last time."

 

[Psychie]

Chief Hobbs looks over at Alan, and offer up this, "Well, there is a variant of the Spartas that is in blueprint stages that is effectively a 'poor man's artillery unit'. It has a total of two of the main guns in it instead of just the one, at the cost of replacing the tri-laser with the second cannon. I might be able to secure one of the old main guns off the first series tanks and mount it into your mecha, but you will lose the secondary upgrades that you have now."

 

[Rykon]

"So lose the tri-laser for a second cannon, but we'll still have the upgraded EU-11 for Battloid mode engagements, right? If so, I'm all for it. As long as we're approved to make the change by the Lieutenant, I say let's get to work. Until she has time to weigh in, let's take a minute to double-check the heat regulation of the existing cannons." Alan replied, obviously excited about the prospective upgrade.

 

[Purr]

"I've thought about doubling up on the Spartas cannons too, but my concern keeps coming back to ammunition. Just how much can the 105mm hold with the PPC in there? If it can be worked out, you've got a hefty machine that can fire quite often, but what good is it if you run out of rounds too soon, you know?"

 

[Psychie]

Hobbs looks over at Gabi and says, "Well, the ammo for the cannon is stored inside the weapon housing in the arm, so it wouldn't take up too much room that hasn't already been tasked for the shell thrower. The only trouble might come from me having to hunt down the hardware for it, but with all the tanks that have been upgraded to the new PPC, we should have plenty of the old guns around somewhere. We would just need the ok from the LT to make the fix."

 

[Purr]

Gabi replied, "Un minuto ("one minute") and I'll see what she wants to do."

She took a step away and contacted Conway with all of the details. "I think we got something good here. Besides LT," she finished, "when was the last time any of you used the tri-cannons, you know?"

 

[Sherwood]

Deunan nods as she listens. "Its true, I have never used that weapon except on the training range. Much of the details on the mechanics are over my head, but I have faith in your skills to be able to know if this would work or not." She thinks for a moment, then says to Alan, "Well, if you want to give it a try, and if the Chief can find a few of those cannons, I'll sign off on this to let you give it a shot. My only concern is the level of recoil if you try and fire both cannons at the same time. Might end up putting you on your ass if you are not careful."

 

[Purr]

Gabi looked at the communicator strangely when Conway contacted Alan instead of just telling Gabi her decision. Evidently the lieutenant wanted Alan in charge of the situation instead of the person who called her about it.

Must be a tanker thing, she shrugged it off and went right back to work.

 

[Psychie]

With the ok given by Deunan, Chief Hobbs heads over to her office and begins to make some calls, looking for a supply of the old cannons and enough ammo to last a while, along with attempting to secure a new Ajax for Ryuko. As she is doing that, her crew of mechanics are hard at work fixing the relatively cosmetic damage done to the various tanks and to Gabi's Ajax.

While the repairs are underway, the members of the Third Heavy are expected to get busy with their paperwork going over the mission summary. Luckily for the team, you were able to keep the collateral damage to the industrial area to a minimum, so Capt. Edison will have little to gripe about when it comes to your performance. Another lucky thing for you is that the combat footage of your gunsight cameras show without any doubt that your team was not the ones to fire off the first shots against the enemy, but instead it was one of the mobile missile launcher tanks. It was not a big surprise that things developed into a shootout, though.

The intelligence experts are busy going from squad to squad, gathering up all the footage of the enemy's performance, including maneuverability and firepower of the Bioroids and their hover sleds, and there are rumors that there are several damaged Blue Bioroids that have been pulled out of the wreckage of the downed dropship that are getting disassembled piece by piece to learn as much about the enemy as possible.

 

[Rykon]

Alan goes through his software's own interpretation of the data to see if he can glean any insight to feed up the chain.

Rolling Artificial Intelligence to see if machine learning has anything useful to add for the analysts. If he finds anything, he feeds it up to the command chain to Deunan.

[Looks like that's a no. Worth a shot anyway.]

 

[Sherwood]

Heading to her small office, Deunan tosses her helmet aside and takes a seat, planting her face in her hands with her eyes closed, reflecting on the events of the fight. That damn girl is doing her best to get herself killed! I have never lost a soul under my command, and by all that is holy, I don't plan on letting that fact get changed anytime soon. If Ryuko doesn't get her head into line, she is going to be experiencing a nasty cramp as I shove my foot up her ass!

A few deep breaths later, she sits up straight and does her best to compose herself. Now, I need to get my After Action Reports done. Lets see what I can find out about the enemy by reviewing the tapes of the fight, and send in my data.