Weapon Acquisition
Elysium Prime
Major General Tanya Rex
The last few days have been hectic. We had a brief naval engagement on the ride back but Cole wiped the fleet with ease. Then once we got back to the mainland I had to sort through all the things injured and dead luckily all our hardware is on our new ships so that’s not my problem.
I was able to chisel out some time and melt down my old visor and pour it into a ball the perfect size for a glass eye. The sphere has an interesting pattern to it from the crystal that the visor was made from and my blood. This came out to be a blueish color with crimson and gold streaks throughout.
I keep the eyepatch in a pocket just in case still. Griffin's man rabbit got replacement legs, again, though he must have gotten custom ones because they have a reverse joint in them creating a digitigrade leg rather than a plantigrade. Griffin has been saying "he's a real rabbit now".
I’ve finished the tally on who we lost and suffice to say we got destroyed in that final push. Nearly half our forces were put out of action though thankfully only ten percent died so the rest can resume their life as they see fit. Some will retire but others will demand to be returned to the 104th.
Regardless we are critical on manpower. We have become our own branch and are having to skim manpower from other places to get going. Our ships will be on a near skeleton crew until the first class graduates. My biggest concern is the ground forces.
I sigh and lay my head on my desk only to be jolted moments later by a knock at the door. Before I can say anything it opens and Bliss steps in closing it behind her. “Uh come in”
She smiles and takes a seat “You seem stressed” I nod “Has no one told you” I tilt my head in confusion “Told me what” Her smile gets larger “Allow me to clarify then you are the general of the 104th however I am the captain-general of the entire void branch”
My eyes widen “So seeing as we are creating an entire branch from nearly nothing we have our work cut out for us don’t you agree” I laugh for a few moments “I should have seen this coming. Honestly with your help organizing this mess shouldn’t be a problem”
She nods “Toss me everything and let’s go over this” I share the entire battalion’s information with her tablet and she swipes through it for a few minutes asking not a single question the entire time. It was honestly a little unnerving.
Finally, she lowers it and I watch her smile shift to a more devilish one. “We can make this work” I nod “We have to we don’t have a choice” I reply. She holds up a finger “Before we get too deep I always prefer to have some background noise, rather music” I shrug “Go ahead”
Moments later some hard rock gently emanates from my office speakers. “Now then let’s start with the easy sections” She taps her tablet a few times and then flips it around to show me.
“You’ve moved Major Griffin around quite a lot and while he is a capable leader he seems most effective in small group formations on special missions”
I nod my head in agreement, he was always an odd duck when it came to placing him somewhere. “So here’s what we’ll do put him in charge of his own squad and one or two others and give them near full autonomy to operate”
Again I nod “It’ll also give them freedom to pick their equipment as they see fit… not that I imposed restrictions anyway”
This continues for a few hours and at some point, we call Cole to join us so we can sort out the ships. Eventually, we get what we have organized but now we have to deal with the manpower issue. Cole speaks first on the topic. “Seeing as we have only a few ships we won’t need a whole fleets worth of men right now, we could consolidate the sailors until the first class graduates and split up the freshies with experienced men as more ships are finished”
We all look at the specifics of the ships, there is the flagship essentially, the largest ship but it’s supposed to hold the ground forces and an onboard factory to keep them equipped. Next are the battleships of which only one is finished it has lots of missile pods and point defense as well as large twin barrel coil guns set in turrets deck and keel. the cruiser is kind of a universal role able to take hits and dish them out. Finally, we have three frigates that are complete boasting mostly point defense and some missiles.
The two larger ships will need the most crew “It’s five ships and you're skimming your fleet pretty hard what will the shifts be” I ask. Cole takes a moment to answer “We’ll have two full shifts, while not the three I’d prefer everyone should be able to get rest in a long engagement”
It’ll have to be good enough for now. “I want this decided now, I believe we should always wear vacuum-rated gear whenever we are in an engagement and vent atmosphere” Cole slowly nods “I see that would prevent any explosive decompression and stop any fires… I agree”
Bliss breaks in “seems like the fleet will be able to operate just fine and only get smoother there is still the need for more ground forces” Cole almost jerks then says “Why not ask for volunteers maybe even from the unified East”
I almost facepalm from the obvious but bliss breaks in “Can’t this needs to be a secret as long as we can keep it” something beeps and bliss cocks her head. After a moment she straightened up “We just had an interesting development have either of you paid much attention to Bowie Industries”
I shake my head though that name is familiar. Cole does the same “Well then let’s go they just made something interesting they want to sell to the military” I shrug and we all get up and walk through the tunnels even grabbing a car to get there faster.
Bliss tells us it’ll be a fairly long drive. A thought comes to my mind “The ships need names” Cole looks at me with an incredulous look then replies “I hope you don’t mean to ask your men for suggestions that’s one hell of a can of worms”
I shake my head “Not necessarily I figured we’d name the big two and we could split up the frigates one for your guys one for mine and the last whatever wins” he rubs his temples “You’ll owe me a bottle for this but fine” I laugh “I think the siege ship should be called the onager and the battleship Thesius”
Cole rubs his chin for a while then finally replies “Good names I’ll send out the memo for the others” I nod my head “Thanks” I glance at Bliss driving and notice she has a coy smile. She evidently notices me “I’m glad you both smoothly decided who’s top”
Me and Cole glance at one another but he answers “You said the fleets hers but regardless she knows more about ground engagements I’d be a fool to try and dictate that” I nod in agreement “Likewise I picked Cole for a reason I trust him to get us to the ground like always”
Bliss simply responds “I have high expectations from you both then” The conversations seem to fall off so Bliss eventually hits the radio. I’m surprised to hear what I believe is a ballad about me and my men.
-In the shadowed haze, fearless soldiers stand,
Their blood-stained hands, a testament so grand.
They march through fire, emotions running high,
Burning with anger, through pain they defy-
All I can think as the song continues is ‘damn Dave actually did it and it’s a actually good song’ I’ll have to personally congratulate him later.
An hour and a half later we arrive at our destination. There are guards at a well-defended checkpoint but they don’t even check us. My guess is they were expecting us, plus our uniforms leave little in question about our authority. While this is a private company and they can bar anyone from entering they all served before.
A middle-aged man is waiting for us inside the checkpoint “Welcome I’m the head of security here Gorrden Harrison but please just call me Gorrden” he salutes us which we return then we all shake hands and give introductions. With that out of the way, he leads us deeper inside.
As we walk he gives us a vague idea of what’s in store “I don’t know the technical side, the project lead will be able to explain more but the thing is on the larger side and we had to rebuild and reinforce its testing hanger’s several times luckily we are well outside the city”
My curiosity is piqued. We finally get to the hangar and what I behold I immediately want a full complement of. It’s a bipedal Mech, it has two arms with rotary cannons and a large cannon mounted on its back with rocket pods on the shoulders.
The feet are jointed so it seems like it’ll actually be able to traverse difficult terrain. A man strides up to us and Gorrden introduces him as Jerry the project leader.
He immediately sounds eccentric from the first words he utters. “Ah I see you’ve seen my latest creation” We all nod “It truly is a thing of beauty, two thirty-millimeter sextuple barrel cannons thirty-two rocket tubes split between the two shoulders, and a two hundred and three millimeter cannon on its spine”
That’s going to create a lot of recoil hopefully he factored that in. “Enough dribble Drabble though you probably want to see it in action” The other two seem to be letting me take the lead. probably because it'll be for my guys “How does one control it” That sets him off “Ah well you see we asked ourselves that many times. As you well know the biggest problem all true mechs face is walking and balancing. We humans however do not have this problem so we decided why not bridge the two”
Images flash in my eyes of the horrific scene of the NATO walker with a man fused to its inside and I nearly draw my pistol. But movement in the background stops me. A man in some kind of uniform is walking towards the Mech.
The project lead continues not noticing me “At first we thought to use a modified nerve block to redirect the signals to the Mech instead of the pilot’s extremities but that had its own problems. This second generation taps into parts of the pilot’s nervous system without blocking any signals. The main system it piggybacks off of is the vestibular system”
The pilot climbs into the Mech and with a resounding roar it starts up and shortly after takes a few steps. I clear my throat and ask a question “How does the pilot connect is it invasive” The Mech starts walking around mildly impressing us.
Jerry answers me “Only initially we install a contact in the base of the skull that connects with the machine when powered on” I nod. This is almost too good to be true. “Walking in a warehouse is one thing I want to see it sprint on real terrain” Jerry starts to stutter “b but we haven’t tested that”
I grab his shirt and pull him close boring holes into his eyes with mine “You were going to try and get us to buy untested products” Cole and Bliss are just smiles, I guess I’m the bad cop. Oh well, it’s the fun one anyway.
I raise my voice and point to the head of security “You grab me something to talk to the pilot” he gives me a cut nod and jogs away. He quickly comes back and hands me a headset. I wordlessly put it on.
“Pilot move to one side of the hanger and sprint to the other on the double” he begins to reply “Uh mam my name is” I cut him off “I don’t care I’m here for that box of scrap not you” I raise my voice again “now move it”
The Mech slowly, annoyingly slowly, moves as instructed. Once at the first wall, it turns around and walks to the other end. “Your dead. Try again faster” he turns and goes again this time a little faster.
Still pathetically slow. “Dead move like you mean it” I yell through the microphone. This continues a few more times until the pilot finally pushes the Mech into something between a jog and sprint. The Mech didn’t seem to enjoy it too much but whatever.
Bliss steps up to me “Think it’s mobile enough to be of use” I shrug “Mobile enough, it won’t be in any blitz though” She nods then turns to Cole who says “It would be interesting if the feet magnetized”
I wave Jerry over to us since he’s retreated away “Go ahead and show off the weapons and I assume you have a spare move it to the surface” I hand him the microphone and he instructs the pilot to target the various sighouses on the walls.
The weapons perform perfectly though they don’t fire the rockets inside. “Have him move and fire” After a bit of back and forth the Mech briskly walks and fires. Satisfied it can move and fire without falling over, at least on nice concrete, we end this demonstration.
Some employees hurry in and inform Jerry the second Mech is ready on the surface. The speed at which they got it there is suspicious and I notice Bliss is also aware of this. In the various subterranean cities that Elysium boasts the entrances are heavily restricted and for someone to build a new one is a lot of headache.
We stay silent however and follow Jerry to what is most definitely an illegal elevator and equip gas masks then step out. I’m starting to think they did test it on real terrain but then again why did Jerry freeze when I asked him?
We spot another Mech already moving around. This pilot actually got the memo and pushed the Mech as it jogged around and navigated rocks and crags. He decided to try and show off and jump a rock successfully getting the Mech off the ground but on the landing, we heard the scream of metal and afterward a grinding whenever it walked.
“I’ve seen enough” We go back inside and Jerry seems nervous. I toy with him a bit more “It could use a little work” Cole nods and Jerry seems ready to die. Honestly, a much better look on him than that inflated ego he had. “Let's see… magnetic feet… redundant sensors, that second guy seemed to navigate fine despite the ash so props to you guys on that. Hmmm anything else… oh yeah reinforce the legs jumping is really useful”
Jerry has done color back after my praise about the sensors. I wait a nearly painfully long time and finish my thought “Fix all that and we’ll take them” The sheer surprise on his face is magnificent.
At this point bliss steps in “Fix those problems and we’ll order ten to start with obviously, we’ll need the jacks for the pilots as well” Then she adds in basically a growl “and I’ll be having a word with everyone involved in creating that damn lift”
Cole my nice cop asks Jerry “What’s it called” Jerry back to his pretentious self answers “It’s designated the MAD-A1 or the marauder”
Weapon Acquisition
Elysium Prime
Major General Tanya Rex
The last few days have been hectic. We had a brief naval engagement on the ride back but Cole wiped the fleet with ease. Then once we got back to the mainland I had to sort through all the things injured and dead luckily all our hardware is on our new ships so that’s not my problem.
I was able to chisel out some time and melt down my old visor and pour it into a ball the perfect size for a glass eye. The sphere has an interesting pattern to it from the crystal that the visor was made from and my blood. This came out to be a blueish color with crimson and gold streaks throughout.
I keep the eyepatch in a pocket just in case still. Griffin's man rabbit got replacement legs, again, though he must have gotten custom ones because they have a reverse joint in them creating a digitigrade leg rather than a plantigrade. Griffin has been saying "he's a real rabbit now".
I’ve finished the tally on who we lost and suffice to say we got destroyed in that final push. Nearly half our forces were put out of action though thankfully only ten percent died so the rest can resume their life as they see fit. Some will retire but others will demand to be returned to the 104th.
Regardless we are critical on manpower. We have become our own branch and are having to skim manpower from other places to get going. Our ships will be on a near skeleton crew until the first class graduates. My biggest concern is the ground forces.
I sigh and lay my head on my desk only to be jolted moments later by a knock at the door. Before I can say anything it opens and Bliss steps in closing it behind her. “Uh come in”
She smiles and takes a seat “You seem stressed” I nod “Has no one told you” I tilt my head in confusion “Told me what” Her smile gets larger “Allow me to clarify then you are the general of the 104th however I am the captain-general of the entire void branch”
My eyes widen “So seeing as we are creating an entire branch from nearly nothing we have our work cut out for us don’t you agree” I laugh for a few moments “I should have seen this coming. Honestly with your help organizing this mess shouldn’t be a problem”
She nods “Toss me everything and let’s go over this” I share the entire battalion’s information with her tablet and she swipes through it for a few minutes asking not a single question the entire time. It was honestly a little unnerving.
Finally, she lowers it and I watch her smile shift to a more devilish one. “We can make this work” I nod “We have to we don’t have a choice” I reply. She holds up a finger “Before we get too deep I always prefer to have some background noise, rather music” I shrug “Go ahead”
Moments later some hard rock gently emanates from my office speakers. “Now then let’s start with the easy sections” She taps her tablet a few times and then flips it around to show me.
“You’ve moved Major Griffin around quite a lot and while he is a capable leader he seems most effective in small group formations on special missions”
I nod my head in agreement, he was always an odd duck when it came to placing him somewhere. “So here’s what we’ll do put him in charge of his own squad and one or two others and give them near full autonomy to operate”
Again I nod “It’ll also give them freedom to pick their equipment as they see fit… not that I imposed restrictions anyway”
This continues for a few hours and at some point, we call Cole to join us so we can sort out the ships. Eventually, we get what we have organized but now we have to deal with the manpower issue. Cole speaks first on the topic. “Seeing as we have only a few ships we won’t need a whole fleets worth of men right now, we could consolidate the sailors until the first class graduates and split up the freshies with experienced men as more ships are finished”
We all look at the specifics of the ships, there is the flagship essentially, the largest ship but it’s supposed to hold the ground forces and an onboard factory to keep them equipped. Next are the battleships of which only one is finished it has lots of missile pods and point defense as well as large twin barrel coil guns set in turrets deck and keel. the cruiser is kind of a universal role able to take hits and dish them out. Finally, we have three frigates that are complete boasting mostly point defense and some missiles.
The two larger ships will need the most crew “It’s five ships and you're skimming your fleet pretty hard what will the shifts be” I ask. Cole takes a moment to answer “We’ll have two full shifts, while not the three I’d prefer everyone should be able to get rest in a long engagement”
It’ll have to be good enough for now. “I want this decided now, I believe we should always wear vacuum-rated gear whenever we are in an engagement and vent atmosphere” Cole slowly nods “I see that would prevent any explosive decompression and stop any fires… I agree”
Bliss breaks in “seems like the fleet will be able to operate just fine and only get smoother there is still the need for more ground forces” Cole almost jerks then says “Why not ask for volunteers maybe even from the unified East”
I almost facepalm from the obvious but bliss breaks in “Can’t this needs to be a secret as long as we can keep it” something beeps and bliss cocks her head. After a moment she straightened up “We just had an interesting development have either of you paid much attention to Bowie Industries”
I shake my head though that name is familiar. Cole does the same “Well then let’s go they just made something interesting they want to sell to the military” I shrug and we all get up and walk through the tunnels even grabbing a car to get there faster.
Bliss tells us it’ll be a fairly long drive. A thought comes to my mind “The ships need names” Cole looks at me with an incredulous look then replies “I hope you don’t mean to ask your men for suggestions that’s one hell of a can of worms”
I shake my head “Not necessarily I figured we’d name the big two and we could split up the frigates one for your guys one for mine and the last whatever wins” he rubs his temples “You’ll owe me a bottle for this but fine” I laugh “I think the siege ship should be called the onager and the battleship Thesius”
Cole rubs his chin for a while then finally replies “Good names I’ll send out the memo for the others” I nod my head “Thanks” I glance at Bliss driving and notice she has a coy smile. She evidently notices me “I’m glad you both smoothly decided who’s top”
Me and Cole glance at one another but he answers “You said the fleets hers but regardless she knows more about ground engagements I’d be a fool to try and dictate that” I nod in agreement “Likewise I picked Cole for a reason I trust him to get us to the ground like always”
Bliss simply responds “I have high expectations from you both then” The conversations seem to fall off so Bliss eventually hits the radio. I’m surprised to hear what I believe is a ballad about me and my men.
-In the shadowed haze, fearless soldiers stand,
Their blood-stained hands, a testament so grand.
They march through fire, emotions running high,
Burning with anger, through pain they defy-
All I can think as the song continues is ‘damn Dave actually did it and it’s a actually good song’ I’ll have to personally congratulate him later.
An hour and a half later we arrive at our destination. There are guards at a well-defended checkpoint but they don’t even check us. My guess is they were expecting us, plus our uniforms leave little in question about our authority. While this is a private company and they can bar anyone from entering they all served before.
A middle-aged man is waiting for us inside the checkpoint “Welcome I’m the head of security here Gorrden Harrison but please just call me Gorrden” he salutes us which we return then we all shake hands and give introductions. With that out of the way, he leads us deeper inside.
As we walk he gives us a vague idea of what’s in store “I don’t know the technical side, the project lead will be able to explain more but the thing is on the larger side and we had to rebuild and reinforce its testing hanger’s several times luckily we are well outside the city”
My curiosity is piqued. We finally get to the hangar and what I behold I immediately want a full complement of. It’s a bipedal Mech, it has two arms with rotary cannons and a large cannon mounted on its back with rocket pods on the shoulders.
The feet are jointed so it seems like it’ll actually be able to traverse difficult terrain. A man strides up to us and Gorrden introduces him as Jerry the project leader.
He immediately sounds eccentric from the first words he utters. “Ah I see you’ve seen my latest creation” We all nod “It truly is a thing of beauty, two thirty-millimeter sextuple barrel cannons thirty-two rocket tubes split between the two shoulders, and a two hundred and three millimeter cannon on its spine”
That’s going to create a lot of recoil hopefully he factored that in. “Enough dribble Drabble though you probably want to see it in action” The other two seem to be letting me take the lead. probably because it'll be for my guys “How does one control it” That sets him off “Ah well you see we asked ourselves that many times. As you well know the biggest problem all true mechs face is walking and balancing. We humans however do not have this problem so we decided why not bridge the two”
Images flash in my eyes of the horrific scene of the NATO walker with a man fused to its inside and I nearly draw my pistol. But movement in the background stops me. A man in some kind of uniform is walking towards the Mech.
The project lead continues not noticing me “At first we thought to use a modified nerve block to redirect the signals to the Mech instead of the pilot’s extremities but that had its own problems. This second generation taps into parts of the pilot’s nervous system without blocking any signals. The main system it piggybacks off of is the vestibular system”
The pilot climbs into the Mech and with a resounding roar it starts up and shortly after takes a few steps. I clear my throat and ask a question “How does the pilot connect is it invasive” The Mech starts walking around mildly impressing us.
Jerry answers me “Only initially we install a contact in the base of the skull that connects with the machine when powered on” I nod. This is almost too good to be true. “Walking in a warehouse is one thing I want to see it sprint on real terrain” Jerry starts to stutter “b but we haven’t tested that”
I grab his shirt and pull him close boring holes into his eyes with mine “You were going to try and get us to buy untested products” Cole and Bliss are just smiles, I guess I’m the bad cop. Oh well, it’s the fun one anyway.
I raise my voice and point to the head of security “You grab me something to talk to the pilot” he gives me a cut nod and jogs away. He quickly comes back and hands me a headset. I wordlessly put it on.
“Pilot move to one side of the hanger and sprint to the other on the double” he begins to reply “Uh mam my name is” I cut him off “I don’t care I’m here for that box of scrap not you” I raise my voice again “now move it”
The Mech slowly, annoyingly slowly, moves as instructed. Once at the first wall, it turns around and walks to the other end. “Your dead. Try again faster” he turns and goes again this time a little faster.
Still pathetically slow. “Dead move like you mean it” I yell through the microphone. This continues a few more times until the pilot finally pushes the Mech into something between a jog and sprint. The Mech didn’t seem to enjoy it too much but whatever.
Bliss steps up to me “Think it’s mobile enough to be of use” I shrug “Mobile enough, it won’t be in any blitz though” She nods then turns to Cole who says “It would be interesting if the feet magnetized”
I wave Jerry over to us since he’s retreated away “Go ahead and show off the weapons and I assume you have a spare move it to the surface” I hand him the microphone and he instructs the pilot to target the various sighouses on the walls.
The weapons perform perfectly though they don’t fire the rockets inside. “Have him move and fire” After a bit of back and forth the Mech briskly walks and fires. Satisfied it can move and fire without falling over, at least on nice concrete, we end this demonstration.
Some employees hurry in and inform Jerry the second Mech is ready on the surface. The speed at which they got it there is suspicious and I notice Bliss is also aware of this. In the various subterranean cities that Elysium boasts the entrances are heavily restricted and for someone to build a new one is a lot of headache.
We stay silent however and follow Jerry to what is most definitely an illegal elevator and equip gas masks then step out. I’m starting to think they did test it on real terrain but then again why did Jerry freeze when I asked him?
We spot another Mech already moving around. This pilot actually got the memo and pushed the Mech as it jogged around and navigated rocks and crags. He decided to try and show off and jump a rock successfully getting the Mech off the ground but on the landing, we heard the scream of metal and afterward a grinding whenever it walked.
“I’ve seen enough” We go back inside and Jerry seems nervous. I toy with him a bit more “It could use a little work” Cole nods and Jerry seems ready to die. Honestly, a much better look on him than that inflated ego he had. “Let's see… magnetic feet… redundant sensors, that second guy seemed to navigate fine despite the ash so props to you guys on that. Hmmm anything else… oh yeah reinforce the legs jumping is really useful”
Jerry has done color back after my praise about the sensors. I wait a nearly painfully long time and finish my thought “Fix all that and we’ll take them” The sheer surprise on his face is magnificent.
At this point bliss steps in “Fix those problems and we’ll order ten to start with obviously, we’ll need the jacks for the pilots as well” Then she adds in basically a growl “and I’ll be having a word with everyone involved in creating that damn lift”
Cole my nice cop asks Jerry “What’s it called” Jerry back to his pretentious self answers “It’s designated the MAD-A1 or the marauder”
