RidOv Chpt-39

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==Ridiculously Overboard!! (A Captain Roberts Tale!!)Chapter 39 - Storming the Beaches==
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===Plans and Confessions===
Tresspass System - Outworlds Wastes, Periphery
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"We'll be going to the surface...
...more than likely." Amanda noted, "I kind of expect no matter what, we're going to stand out." She had the service manual on the Nighthawk Mk XX suits. "These aren't as good as the Twenty-Ones, but I suspect that was intentional from the supplier."
"Really? So these were 'last year's model'?" Lori asked, as Amanda serviced hers.
"Yeah, really. War-Era Nighthawks Power Armor had better stealthing. Its not that anyone in the present is going to really notice, but when this ship was left at the dock? It was all 'left over' stocks probably. I'm thinking whoever really stocked this ship was dipping into 'surplus to requirements' and leftovers. Stuff that could be 'lost' from the warehouses, but in quantity."
She nodded at the racked rifles, "Those are Nine-twenties, not nine-sixties Mausers Weapon System (Rifles). You can tell, because the nine-twenties didn't come with the overcomplicated 'survival pack' in the stock-when they issued the nine-sixty, they were trying to get rid of backpacks, so they tried to cram the contents of a backpack into the rifle's stock. Desmond mentioned it, because the battery might be older, but it's deeper, and the Grenade Launcher can be dismounted. Point being, most of our combat hardware counts as 'irreplaceable relics', because the ship was sitting there stocked, but all the gear is inter-war, out of production or out of issue by the time it was at the station it was at when I found it. We're on a relic of someone's covert operation."
She finished making the adjustments and stood back. "but, what it also means is that if they've got that Newgrange, and it was stocked? The detectors are going to be better enough we can't count on the stealth systems of the suits...because they're a generation older than the stuff the Com Guards were issuing in the Clan War, and tech's progressed since the thirty-forties."
"But?", Lori asked
"BUT, what we've got is still better than most of the hardware in this part of space...just..." she looked uneasy.
"What is it?", Lori asked
"I was...I was mutilated by a Blakist cell, they had an objective, they stole a dozen of us and most of the other kids died, Lori." she looked at her 'communication officer' and known Raven Watch plant. "They mutilated me, I lost memories, I can see some of the gruesome stuff they did to me every time I look in a mirror. I've got pretty much a permanent head-wound, and I'm not always...all me? You get it? They had a reason, someone wanted to turn me into something...and surprise, the Bandits we've been after? they've either got a legendary Blakist nightmare atrocity factory, or they're working with, maybe for said blakist atrocity factory. How many coincidences is that, Lori??"
"We could wait." Lori suggested, "The Khan's putting together a proper battle group to deal with Erinyes..."
"Weeks away, and they might not get here in time...and I have a feeling there are answers on that ship, or on the ground, for why they did this to me!" Amanda scowled, "WHY I don't remember my parents except in loose generalities! Why I can plot a pirate insertion, and then spend minutes knocked on my ass with numbers and error messages clouding up my vision every time. Why I have an imaginary friend who can take over my reflexes so thoroughly it's starting to feel natural...and why I know how to service a suit of combat armor that was made for someone over three hundred years ago."
"Or why you can wring performance from a ship that left the slips centuries ago as well as any Snow Raven officer in the Touman?" Lori suggested, "Larry was an AFFC Naval Officer and he compliments your judgement calls-and you're still under eighteen."
"Yeah." Amanda said ton teenager would sound like if she were sulking, "Someone turned me into this, It's...I guess it's me, but...they weren't nice people, Lori, and I don't think they had 'honorable' intentions, and I want to know why!"
"How would that help, really? you're making a life now..." Lori suggested, "is it that important?"
"How can I explain it, when I don't know the words myself?" Amanda asked in frustration, "It Tasks me, not knowing what their evil plan was! Why they picked me...why I was the only one of us to survive? I can get why my first instinct on the Operating table was to kill every one of the men in white, Lori. What they did to me hurt like hell and...and it violated me, I get why I wanted to kill them, but Lori?"
"Yes?"
"Desmond wanted to kill them too. It was how we...bonded?" She resealed the toolbox and put it away in its alcove, and turned to her friend...subordinate? Friend. "So it had to be really evil, even by Terran standards. we need to find out what their objective really is, so we can deny it to them. Because it can't be good for any of us."
Amanda dug into her pocket, and pulled out a prescription bottle. Antibiotics and immune boosters, because her wound could reopen any time, and had on occasion. "I have to take this nasty stuff, all the time. We got lucky that your Raven friends were willing to part with it. I'm not sure I could pull off a heist for medicine and still take care of my ship and crew...but this is my reminder, that every day, I'm someone's demented science project."
"Why are you making a deal out of this now?", questioned Lori.
"Because... I can count on you not to gossip." Amanda said. "I'm...having feelings for someone on the crew and I can't tell him because a Captain can't do that."
"Not Larry?"
"Larry's like my replacement dad!" Amanda scoffed. "No, not Larry. It's Sam, and I...I don't know if I can trust my reflexes, I don't know if he...and I'm the bloody Captain!!"
"You're also seventeen, and Samuel has a certain handsome, nerdy, quiet charm...once you get past the severe introversion, asperger's syndrome, and awkwardness...wrong descriptors.", commented Lori
"He is handsome, and he's smart...and...I can't do anything about it!".
"That would be...Normal." Lori told her, "To have a crush, to like-like someone who's unavailable for one reason or another, for your age...Amanda, you'll survive. If you were Clan you could do it no strings..."
"Yeah, but I'm not, and Sam's Folk." Amanda said, "Spacer-born, not Clanner or surface-born, and I don't know!!"
Lori booped her nose, "Nobody does when they're just-turned-seventeen." she said, "You'll handle it when you're ready."
"What if they cut that part out?"
"They didn't, the fact you can feel what you're feeling, and recognize it? means that part wasn't damaged when they cut into your head." Lori reassured her. "Can you focus on the mission??"
"Yeah. I have to, Desmond wants to go for a walk." Amanda said with a lopsided grin, "Let's go hit the galley, I feel like a bagel and some jelly."
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===Change of Plans as we Descend into Trouble===
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Descending to Atmosphere of Tresspass - Outworlds Wastes, Periphery
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The math on the insertion was relatively simplistic...
...ballistic calculation. Three days tops after turnover, it included a gravitational slingshot maneuver to mask most of the acceleration needed to cross the distance in a timely manner.
Fortune smiled for this part of the year-they were at closest approach between the fourth and fifth planets, and would be so for over a month, and the fourth, Terra-like world of Tresspass was blessed with a Luna-sized moon that, thanks to timing, would be ideal to mask the braking thrust of the Mark VII's fusion engines at turnover.
A relief, since the Ion thrusters Sam could make in the machine shop simply weren't powerful enough to manage the job on their own. Though they would help in slowing prior to orbital masking, acting as a sort of 'mild spoiler' to reduce approach velocity and shorten the fusion burn by a few percentage points and seconds.
An outside observer would look at the smallcraft, and wonder who wrapped it in tarps and pillows, and what sort of prank was going on. Said observer would, of course, first need some indicator to point their telescope before they could make that comment, since the RCS of the shuttle in question, had been reduced from four meters nose-on to just under three centimeters cross-sectionally at broadside-small enough to look like ordinary asteroidal debris that won't even make it through the upper atmosphere before burning up.
The hull of Erinyes could shrug such a rock off even if one were to strip the actual armor off.
In short, 'not a threat' unless someone put direct eyes-on to the small craft on approach.
Landing would be a problem-their improvised 'stealthing' would make the aeroframe unstable in atmosphere. 
Too unstable.
So, Amanda amended the plan...
"Yo..ho...ho..."
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