| From: | Brian Angliss <ANGLISS@****.PSU.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Back in town, so here it is |
| Date: | Sat, 9 Oct 1993 13:53:14 -0400 |
Green
Earth gettin stuff for Wiz. Weird guy, him, but I ain't tellin why. He made
it very clear that he didn't want any trouble, and that me tellin the world
bout him would be trouble. Cute too. Too bad he's married... But I finally
have time to up-load this drek.
*****Engage Edited(partial) Sensory Feed*****
Baby notices you when you enter her through the turret hatch. She has also
been monitering the developments outside the garage/hanger and as you go
through the preflight checks and strap yourself into the acceleration couch,
informs you of the projected force now engaging the PSU Security Force and
probable number or airborne targets: 10-13.
A moment of disorientation occurs as you join your mind with the expert Pilot
system and computer of Baby. You become one in a ritual which has never lost
its appeal, and never will. It is almost like religious experience that the
mystics of the previous world professed to believe in. If you were a Shaman,
maybe you could draw an analogy between speaking with your Totem and the total
trust and absolute interconnection between you and this machine, but you are
not a Shaman, only a rigger, and where the connection exists between your Baby
and yourself, there is only You.
Engines rumble loudly to life, systems dead for several days return to life and
you feel your senses expand to cover everything you can see, from thermal to
ultralight, air pressure on your metal skin, strain on bulkheads and struts
that should be replaced when you get back to Denver this time. Kaneda and Nige
have taken off, and if you weren't still here, you would have too. But the
Boss needs you and so do your friends. The PSU administration knew the risk
they were taking letting you use thier place as a hideout, and accepted it.
Even to the students you were a hero of the Night of Rage, something you hope
they will never have to live through. And the reason the students here are
trained so well in more than just academics. Amazingly you have time to
think these thoughts as you double and triple check all your systems only to
find everything operating at 100%. You'll need every bit of it today.
You begin your power taxi up toward the garage entrance, finding it blocked by
an Appaloosa Light Scout Vehicle. Your engines resonating within the confines
of the garage must have been louder than you had thought, as they drew a lightlyarmored,
but well armed Muscovite varient of the LSZ to the front door. Just asyou are about to
get blasted, you catch a large heat source manifesting before
the LSV; a fire elemental, controlled by someone nearby, giving you the time
you needed to blow a hole through the wall directly before you with an HE
missile. A few cannon rounds to the edges and it large enough to accelerate
through. You power taxi toward the Gate in the Great Wall just before you and
you pass through as it opens automatically to your Priority Security signal.
Turning down Park Avenue, you begin to accelerate for your VSTOL take-off,
hoping you can get airborne fast enough to not crash into the Mobmaster coming
down upon you. You succeed, but not before MMG fire rakes your belly,
destroying a Ruthenium sensor. Your camo coverage will be lowered today, just
when you need it the most.
You streak out over the campus, noticing that your friends are heading out towards
Universtiy Drive where you can pick them up quickly and get airborne again.
But even with the trikes they have just found, it will take them about 5 minutesto get
there. And its about this time that you notice the Eagle bearing down
on you. In the instant that you have before you get an ordinance load from the
computer databanks, you notice that there are NO PSU students around, anywhere.
Ordinance load: 4 HE SuperBandit AGMs, 6 AP SuperBandit AGMs, 4 improved AAMs,
2 basic AAMs, and two outerwing Vengeance MMG Minigun weapon pods. You are not
going to enjoy this...
Combat is joined and you begin the acrobatic maneuvers that made you and your
ex-bestfriend from the Army the best Panzer pilots they had. Even with your
severe speed disadvantage, you realize that this pilot is not all that good,
but still good enough to know his enemy, you. In an effort to pin you to a
straight track, the miniguns spit thier lead at you, as does the twin Rotary
Assult cannons in the fuselage, a surprise that your system did not notice them
as well. But with the advantage of three-dimensional combat experience and a
vehicle that is about as aerodynamic as a brick, you drop out from
under the dozens of rounds and pull up again behind the Eagle.
Maybe your estimate of the pilot's skill was a little low as he VIFFs and you
fly right by before you are even able to get a missile lock. Unfortunately,
he is also good enough to avoid your turret's guns and your cannon rounds are
expended without good use. You begin the rotaion of the turret to take down
the Eagle with a firing tactic that it can NOT duplicate when your sensors
notice a figure that you know very well from his very signature. Collussus,
who you know had left NY on foot, has arrived here at PSU, and just in time
to see you get shot out of the sky by a FB Eagle. What your sensors don't
tell you, however, your optics do; that there is also, all around him, a crowd
of metahumans, obviously students, and many of them looking unusual, but in a
way that you cannot devote time to determine. Just as you get a lock signal
from the Eagle behind you, it dies out suddenly and you catch the flash of
an explosion. The Eagle appears, as it falls from the sky, that it had run
into a wall that hadn't existed there before. It makes a pitifully small
explosion when it hits the ground, a sorry exclamation to its existance.
But now that you are done playing with the Eagle, it is time to get your friends and get
the frag out of PSU. Hopefully the Army and airsupport will follow
you and leave PSU alone. You land, carefully, on University Drive, and pull up
to where you know Nex, Roxey, AJ, Hellblast, and Collussus will be arriving, andin about
20 long seconds,second
they do show. Just as two Yellowjackets you had been
monitering arrive to ruin the welcoming ceremony. Well, the crowd of metahumansaround
Collussus has disappeared when you notice him coming out from behind
Breazale Nuclear Reactor/Fusion Power Plant building. You aren't quite sure what it is he
is carrying, but know that if it's in the spirit of weaponry you
know he enjoys, the Yellowjackets won't. With his unusual, cybernetic speed,
radically faster than even the fastest sam and more on a vehicular level, he
arrives at your side before everyone else and opens the emergency side hatch I
(WARNING-Editor Failure Imminent, excess of Edited terms reached...) you had
installed several years ago for just these occasions. He stays outside and covers one of
the 'Jackets as you cover the other, shooting individual rounds at
each of them and keeping them under roof level. Nex is the first to arrive,
but in his typical heroic manner, waits for his friends. AJ and Hellblast
arrive almost at the same time with AJ running inside and strapping himself in.
Hellblast jumps in after and takes the gunners pintle in the rear of Baby.
Collussus: Get in, Nex.
Nex: Frag you, what about Rox?
Well, to show Nex that he means it, Collussus picks up Nex and deposits him
upon the lip of the hatch. Nex, just a little surprised, lets his jaw hang
open at the total lack of effort Collussus just demonstrated and mumbles
something about not wanting to piss him off any more than AJ or Slicke. But
the yellowjacket that Collussus was covering with the Panther cannon he had
got from the Findly Commons Armory took this momentary distraction to launch a
rather large volly of over 20 unguided 12.7 rockets and fire off several LMG
bursts. Collussus is fast enough to swing that cannon around like a rifle and
put a round into the gastank, but the ensuing explosion doesn't stop the just
fired rockets closing fast on the area. Deciding not to stick around, you
activate the emergency override on the emergency hatch and slam it shut just as
Nex screams something about Roxey still being outside. He jumps up into the
turret and as we get mobile, sees the earth around Roxey and Collussus erupt
upwards in a jet of molten fire and melting rock. To you, it appears as if
the ripple struck the ground just short of your position and started a FAE or
FAI(Fuel Air Incendiary) fire. You don't think that unguided rockets are
capable of such distruction, but have no time to contemplate it. In a blood-
curdling scream that could raise the Wild Hunt itself(Editor's Note: Editor
Failure at 01:47:32/10-07-54), Nex straps himself into the turret in the
commander's position and begins to fire up the unactive weaponry and reload the
missiles. He seems to be running on sheer adreneline and hate.
*****Break Sensory Feed*****
I thought I'd hack it off there just before it got interestin(evil grin). As
you know, Roxey and Collussus are ok, mostly, so I was obviously wrong about
the incendiary explosion, but I'm sure that it'll come out sooner or later.
And it fraggin better be sooner, Col!]<<<<<
-- FM(13:51:47/10-09-54)
