Katya and Zim
It was the sound of Lorenzo voice over the inter comm the brought Katya back into the waking world. The young woman finding herself laying on her side in her pilots seat with her forehead throbbing.
"Ow. I really need softer consoles," she thought reaching out blindly in the total darkness. Katya found one of her consoles and tapped on it a few times only to have nothing happen. The young girl cursing as it meant her mech was powered down and getting out would pain as she would have open the hatch by hand something she hated doing.
"Crap... I better find the manual release," she muttered as she fumbled around her seating looking for a leaver with a handle. After several minutes Katya found what she was looking for and with grunt she pressed down on the leaver and pulled the handle up, her cockpits hatch hissing as it opened slightly letting in a little light into the darkened space.
Now having some light Katya reached to the partially opened hatch and started pushed on it. With no power the door didn't resist her much as she slowly pushed it out then pushed it down. With the hatch now wide open Katya climbed out of her mech.
"The engineers are going to kill me...." was the girls first thought when she made it out and saw the state of her mech. Caretakers left leg sheered of in the blast and flown off somewhere.
Listening to the comm chatter, it sounded like everybody was accounted for and checked in except for Zim in Black Star. Katya decided to head over to check on the older pilot. Making use of the rocket boots on the plug suites, she made relatively quick work of the travel. Once she got to Black Stars wreckage she found that the hatch was still sealed shut. A quick radio in to HQ got them to remotely deactivate the pressure lock on the hatch system.
Chnk, hisssss, chnk chnk chnk chnk chnk.
Zim stirred awake. "What was that?" he thought as the hatch was remotely released. The pressurized hatch was held in place by six internally driven bolts against a pressurized gasket seal. After the first bolt was withdrawn the pressure hissed as it was normalized between the cabin and the outside world. He still wasn't sure exactly what the sound was when the dark cavity that was Black Stars cockpit erupted with natural light from the outside. Through his closed eyelids the world burned red and white. He jerked against the pain in his harness. As his eyelids flickered open he was starting to see a shape, a face maybe? A voice accompanied it. Finally the haze lifted. "Oh, it is Katya," He realized as he focused.
"Did we win?" He finally asked her.
Hearing Zero's voice Katya was filled with relief.
"Yeah... although for little I know we took a real beating," she stated partly climbing into his cockpit so she could reach Zim and help him out of his cockpit.
"How about we get you out of there. You can't be comfortable," she said giving him a smile and offering a hand to help pull him out.
"Yeah, good plan," Zim said, as much to himself as to anybody else. He felt around until he found the harness release. With a snap he was able to pull the harness straps out of the way. He, as much out of habit as anything else, reached up and pulled the zipper of the plug suit down part of the way down his chest. Nothing indecent by any measure.
"I guess you were right," Zero said as he took Katya's hand, "I was the first one out on Team Sigma, wasn't I? Looks like I'll be depending on you more then I want to out in the field. At least until my Sync rate improves."
Katya felt happy he seemed to by okay at least. Seeing him partly unzip his plug suit, Katya couldn't help but feel little embarrassed. Glad he stopped part way down his chest, anything further might of made her a little too embarrassed help him out.
"I don't know if you where first. Everything happened so quick I'm still trying to process everything. I'm afraid I'll have to depend on you just as much... I got a nasty reminder just how limited my combat ability is in Caretaker. Not that I'm bad mouthing my mech I love the hunk of metal. It reminds me of home and why I'm here." she stated rubbing the back of her head with her left hand.
Zim noticed the flush of the younger girls face. He raised the zipper back up to a nearly closed position, "Sorry about that, habit."
"It was a learning moment for all of us," Zim said as he settled himself on the wreckage that was Black Star, "The commands were all over the place with no real leader. You shouldn't have had to take a fully offensive position, support, sure, but unless you are trying to protect someone while your drones are running. I don't think you should be directly assaulting the opponents. But what do I know? Besides, what are teams for but for them to depend on one another."
Hearing Zero say is was a learning moment for all of them Katya could do but nothing but nod in agreement. But his next comment caused her to once again nod as she agreed while she didn't mind fighting she simply wasn't equipped for front line combat.
"Zero seems like he's quite a clever little bug." she thought looking at Black Star her mind picking out the damage thinking of ways to fix it.
"Wow he took more of beating then me. Well it looks like it, any way," she muttered softly to no one in particular merely expressing her thoughts out loud.
Zim sat in silence a moment, surveying the damage. Black Star was still primarily three pieces. The main body of the Framewerk, the destroyed armor wing, and then finally the chuck that had been torn out below the cockpit from there it was impaled.
"Home, huh?" Zim said, finally turning back to Katya, "Where is home for you?"
Katya smiled felling home sick for a moment looking at Zero for a moment before looking up into the sky.
"Home? A desert world called Kormm. A world with 3 suns. But my home is mining outpost in the middle of one of its desert. Always hot, always sandy. The sound of machinery going by day and Merry making by night. My pet scuttle running around getting into my sock drawer, eating them or just getting into mischief. My mother spending her days underground dig for ore..." she said trailing off there was more she wanted to say but at this time wasn't willing to talk about one of her family who might be dead.
"What about you Zero. Where's home for a you?"
"A planet called Fortress. It is a rocky place, more hospitable then Kormm, it sounds like. It is protected by the debris of a broken moon or something that has stayed in orbit. Attempting to approach the planet was nearly impossible during the early settlement days. But now the debris work for us. Between mining them and using them for defense platforms, we've also rigged up some of them to be able to control their position so we can open up a hole for people approaching with permission. I haven't been home in so long. I worked on a terraforming team before I joined up with the PDF..." Zim trailed off. He wasn't ready to talk about Fleck yet, not with a stranger... No, Katya and the rest of the team were no longer strangers, they were compatriots. He didn't say what he was going to say, instead he ended with, "So I have seen some pretty weird planets."
"Wow that sounds so cool. I'd love to see that see that some day." she stated trying to picture massive chunks of rocks orbiting a planet being moved to make a gap to allow ship passage. Although she was sure whatever her mind could cook up wouldn't even come close to the real thing. When Zero mentioned he worked on a terraforming team, Katya looked at him stumped having heard the word terraform once before but couldn't recall the meaning of it. But after a moment shrugged finding it didn't really matter.
"Sound like you had an... ummm, interesting life. Beats mine, I grew up in mining outpost signed for the military service to escape home. Then have spent the last 8 months learning how to operate Caretaker. This is the first world I've ever set foot on outside of my home world. Gotta say though never thought other worlds would be so cold. I have no idea how you people deal with it. Still what a the weirdest planet you've been to?" she said sounding curios, Katya having in interest in hearing about other planets thanks to her father.
"A hollow planet," Zim said quickly. It didn't take him long to think of the weirdest planet at all, "The outer crust was all that was there. There was no sign of organic life on the surface of the planet, despite it being in the hospitable zone. So we assumed that the atmosphere was toxic, but that didn't prove to be the case, so we started drilling, looking for why the planet was dead. Our core drillers only got a quarter of a mile into the rocky upper crust of the planet before they made open air. Sensors couldn't see anything, the hole was too big. We drilled a few other places on the planet and it was the same everywhere we went. Best theory about it was that it still had an active core somewhere in there, otherwise there wouldn't be any gravity, but that the planet had been mined out by someone... We listed it as a dead planet and continued on, reported it to the Planetary Exploration Corps and moved on. It was definitely eerie being on that planet surface. Always felt like someone was going to pop out at you."
Hearing Zero mention a hollow planet Katya listened intently hanging of his every word. Having never heard of a planet that was hollow. It seemed to deify the tiny amount of knowledge she know about planets and how they worked.
"Wow, that sounds really cool in a creepy sort of way. Not sure I could handle being on a world with no life on it what so ever. The idea of a livable world just sitting in space devoid of life just doesn't sound right," Katya commented once again trying to picture it in her head which caused her to shutter. After that she became lost in her thoughts for a moment almost like she was deciding something in her head.
"Thanks for sharing that, I appreciate it. You know, you're not so bad, Zero. I think we have potential to get along well."
"Thanks?" Zim said, "I suspect that we will, indeed. Who do you think will get command? My money is on Harold. Through the chaos he tried his best. He's got experience as a leader too. And, meaning no offense to you, the vast majority of this fighting force is far too young to really be able to take command, I think. But, what do I know."
'Fleck was young too, when he first got his command on the Terraformer ship, and I think he did just fine,' Zim thought to himself. Zim missed Fleck, he would admit it to anybody that asked, but the truth was that he missed him even more then he was willing to admit. But maybe, with the help of people like Katya and Serah, perhaps Zero could find someone to help alleviate that hurt.
Hearing Zero say he suspected they would get along Katya clapped her hands together once with smile on her face. Which quickly faded as she thought about his question of who she thought would get command. Thinking on what little she knew of the others.
"No offense taken. To tell you the truth I agree with you a lot of us are "young". As for who will be the officer I actually can't think of who it might be. I don't really known anyone so its hard to hazard a guess. Personally I hope its not me. I happy being in a supporting role, it what I'm trained for. Although if it was offered to me I'd take it. My instructors always told me challenge give people a good chance to grow." she said thinking on who might become the officer a little more. Before shrugging seeing little point on dwelling on it, they'd find out soon enough.
As the two continued to chat the extraction helicopters came into sight. It was unnecessary, of course the flight crews knew where everybody, and every body, was. Despite this, Zim raised to his feet on top of Black Stars broken form and waved down the extraction team. Anything else that was said between the two was washed away by the sound of the helicopter blades as they were whisked away to join up with the rest of the team, as well as their mission debriefing.
Ariamis
Simple Unicycle