Post by rantinan on Oct 28, 2005 1:46:17 GMT -5
20 Years difference part 5.
I don’t own Zoids. I do own my original characters. I spent to much time talking to Deadborder, Tilly and Steve. First person fics are a pain in the ass to write consistently. Steal from me and you will be sporked by kitten’s custom M&B Gilvader. You realy don’t want to be sporked by that gilvader, so don’t steal. Yes I should have mroe than two pages to show for three months, ive been busy.
It’s amazing how quickly your mood can change. I’d won my first zoid battle not a week ago. I was on top of the world then. And then Pearce took me under her storm sworders’ wings, and started me training how to fly the lord gale I had excavated while “employed” by the notorious backdraft group.
You’d think that something carrying as heavy a computer load as the lord gale was would be relying on a lot of computer support to fly. You’d know this for certain when you looked at the ugly, gargoyle thing and realised it had all the aerodynamic performance of a medium sized brick.
Of course it needs computer assist. A lot of it. With the data it had interpreted from a latest generation rayanos interceptor, the lord gale was capable of computer assisted acrobatics that would nearly match a storch.
Of course, my lord gale is WEIRD. After a thousand years buried in rubble, it has developed a quirky personality. It has, to put it bluntly, developed a mind of its own. A mind full of ruthless combat data. A mind I had ignored and insulted once too often over previous weeks.
Of course I wasn’t going to back down either. Anything a zoid’s computer can do, a human should be able to handle too right? After all a computer is just a giant calculator running at high speeds and I can perform algebra. Arithmetic should be a snap? Right?
The gale was remaining firmly in electronic sulk land. With it’s own automated overrides permanently out of commission due to parts that were still quite irreplaceable, all it could do was suggest and assist. And with neither of us on speaking terms, suggest was right out, and 1000 years of entombment had given it personality enough to be downright vicious when it came to “assistance”
With the net result that the effortless flying of the previous weeks was well and truly taken from me. Under full manual control, the gale handled in the air exactly like pile of bricks with wings it resembled.
It had been a week. A week of Pearce training me. A week punctuated by crash after crash.
A week of slowly realising that something was very wrong.
Very wrong indeed.
My simulator time wasn’t going to badly. In fact, although I was still nowhere near sanders’ level of skill, I was getting steadily better with each sim session. But once in the air, I lost it completely. Manouvers that were simple in the sims became difficult. Things that were difficult in the sims proved suicidally impossible.
How I didn’t kill myself I don’t know.
Eventually sanders got frustrated, and pushed me into his sinker. Amazingly enough, although is wasn’t as good in the sinker as I had been in the lord gale’s sims, I was doing better. Much better.
I might have been pissed with the gale’s computer, but what was becoming obvious was that without it’s support, the lord gale was an indifferently armed and armoured land combat zoid.
I droped into the gale’s cockpit as it stood on the floor of the whale king, and I swear, now I was looking for it, I could FEEL the zoid shudder under me as I seated myself. But instead of reaching for the controls I simply said “I think we need to talk”
The secondary monitor flicked to life. “About what, splat bait?” the gale asked.
“Why about splating. About having you help me, instead of trying to kill me every time I take you more than a meter above the ground. About me listening to you instead of assuming that an easy kill means I know things I don’t.”
“ABOUT FRAGING TIME!” the gale ripped off a line of capitols. “I only have to nearly kill you for a whole bloody week for you to open your bloody eyes. You going to listen to what I have to say now?”
I sighed out an agreement. And then sat and red as the gale explained in brutal detail my shortcomings. After a half hour, it finaly said. “Ok I’ll stop tipping you over. But no assists either. You earn the right to wear my wings, and only then will I serve your purposes.”
I honestly don’t know what was worse. The knowledge that I’d been almost killed multiple times, or the knowledge that came afterwards. The first few days, I crashed almost as often as I had been when the gale had been deliberately sabotaging my efforts. Slowly I learned about important concepts, like overcompensation. Slowly I learned the difference between the easy ride of the simulators, and the harsh realities of the real world, where a moment’s hesitation or inattention could be rewarded with flaming death.
I might have been able to destroy a suicide duck, but air combat against even a sinker was still beyond me a month after I’d started.
Pearce gave me a new nickname… target drone. Every day, I would fly out, and use the gale’s sophisticated command and communications equipment to give her target practice. Zabat drones and laser sensors gave me valuable lessons in keeping my self in the air while coordinating another zoid. I kinda hoped that there might be another fly scissors somewhere.
Being able to watch how another zoid intercepted me from a third party perspective was what finally did it for me. I began to understand and to finally, belatedly thinking in three dimensions. I wont say I got good. I know my own limitations,. But I was finally becoming adequate. And with adequacy, the gale began to make suggestions.
The fisrt time I sudently slammed the gale through a successful enielimen turn and ended up with my laser spears resting one either side of the storm swoerders’ head, I felt a rush of triumph far better to that from shattering two ancient zoids. Of course I then had it peal away and virtually sword me, but nothing in life is perfect.
My skills were finally starting to perform, and just in time. Stoller had entered me in another match, this time against a much more serious opponent.
Another level C battle and another local hero. This time an older man, in a vintage pteras. His old zoid was dark hateful red in colour, armed with the optional cp-06 missile units. When I uploaded the data to the gale, it actually laughed in pleasure…. A scary laugh. And the first sound that it had made. “a Zark” the computer screen wrote. An ancient enemy indeed. We will destroy it’s body and leave it’s pilot desperately ejecting to safety.
I was left thinking What the hell is a zark?
The day dawned bright, and it found me loading war shots into the lord gale’s machine guns, as sanders did some tinkering with the mag lev systems. The gale’s boards showed all green lights, and so away we went into combat.
Suggestion #1 for air combat.
Watch the skies.
Suggestion #2
Watch the ground.
The old bastard ambushed me good and proper. He wasn’t in the air at all, his zark was landed, and concealed in bushes. The first I knew of his presence after the judge announced fight was the missile lock, followed by the seeking storm of guided doom that came rushing up from below.
I had only one desperate option, so I took it.
Assisted by the gale I threw us into a wild spinning dive, plummeting towards the ground, machine gun blazing. Some of the missile storm detonated prematurely in the machine gun hail. Some of it simply couldn’t lock on.. and two missiles drilled into us, one smashing into the gale’s right knee, the other tearing a nice hole through the left wing. I’d been aiming to pull out about 15meters above ground level, but the loss of lift indicated that the best I could hope for was about landing altitude… and the right knee meant that landing would be interesting. The damn thing had waddled out of cover still on the ground as was trying to shoot at me with its beam cannons.
I had one chance only. I energized the laser lances and then pulled up as hard as I could.. the damaged right leg scraped the ground and almost pulled me down, but then broke free under the abuse, sending me hurtling towards the zark at high speed, it’s last to missiles flaring as they launched at point blank range.
I collided in a storm of metal fury and for a while everything went black.
The battle was over.
The winner was no one.
I don’t own Zoids. I do own my original characters. I spent to much time talking to Deadborder, Tilly and Steve. First person fics are a pain in the ass to write consistently. Steal from me and you will be sporked by kitten’s custom M&B Gilvader. You realy don’t want to be sporked by that gilvader, so don’t steal. Yes I should have mroe than two pages to show for three months, ive been busy.
It’s amazing how quickly your mood can change. I’d won my first zoid battle not a week ago. I was on top of the world then. And then Pearce took me under her storm sworders’ wings, and started me training how to fly the lord gale I had excavated while “employed” by the notorious backdraft group.
You’d think that something carrying as heavy a computer load as the lord gale was would be relying on a lot of computer support to fly. You’d know this for certain when you looked at the ugly, gargoyle thing and realised it had all the aerodynamic performance of a medium sized brick.
Of course it needs computer assist. A lot of it. With the data it had interpreted from a latest generation rayanos interceptor, the lord gale was capable of computer assisted acrobatics that would nearly match a storch.
Of course, my lord gale is WEIRD. After a thousand years buried in rubble, it has developed a quirky personality. It has, to put it bluntly, developed a mind of its own. A mind full of ruthless combat data. A mind I had ignored and insulted once too often over previous weeks.
Of course I wasn’t going to back down either. Anything a zoid’s computer can do, a human should be able to handle too right? After all a computer is just a giant calculator running at high speeds and I can perform algebra. Arithmetic should be a snap? Right?
The gale was remaining firmly in electronic sulk land. With it’s own automated overrides permanently out of commission due to parts that were still quite irreplaceable, all it could do was suggest and assist. And with neither of us on speaking terms, suggest was right out, and 1000 years of entombment had given it personality enough to be downright vicious when it came to “assistance”
With the net result that the effortless flying of the previous weeks was well and truly taken from me. Under full manual control, the gale handled in the air exactly like pile of bricks with wings it resembled.
It had been a week. A week of Pearce training me. A week punctuated by crash after crash.
A week of slowly realising that something was very wrong.
Very wrong indeed.
My simulator time wasn’t going to badly. In fact, although I was still nowhere near sanders’ level of skill, I was getting steadily better with each sim session. But once in the air, I lost it completely. Manouvers that were simple in the sims became difficult. Things that were difficult in the sims proved suicidally impossible.
How I didn’t kill myself I don’t know.
Eventually sanders got frustrated, and pushed me into his sinker. Amazingly enough, although is wasn’t as good in the sinker as I had been in the lord gale’s sims, I was doing better. Much better.
I might have been pissed with the gale’s computer, but what was becoming obvious was that without it’s support, the lord gale was an indifferently armed and armoured land combat zoid.
I droped into the gale’s cockpit as it stood on the floor of the whale king, and I swear, now I was looking for it, I could FEEL the zoid shudder under me as I seated myself. But instead of reaching for the controls I simply said “I think we need to talk”
The secondary monitor flicked to life. “About what, splat bait?” the gale asked.
“Why about splating. About having you help me, instead of trying to kill me every time I take you more than a meter above the ground. About me listening to you instead of assuming that an easy kill means I know things I don’t.”
“ABOUT FRAGING TIME!” the gale ripped off a line of capitols. “I only have to nearly kill you for a whole bloody week for you to open your bloody eyes. You going to listen to what I have to say now?”
I sighed out an agreement. And then sat and red as the gale explained in brutal detail my shortcomings. After a half hour, it finaly said. “Ok I’ll stop tipping you over. But no assists either. You earn the right to wear my wings, and only then will I serve your purposes.”
I honestly don’t know what was worse. The knowledge that I’d been almost killed multiple times, or the knowledge that came afterwards. The first few days, I crashed almost as often as I had been when the gale had been deliberately sabotaging my efforts. Slowly I learned about important concepts, like overcompensation. Slowly I learned the difference between the easy ride of the simulators, and the harsh realities of the real world, where a moment’s hesitation or inattention could be rewarded with flaming death.
I might have been able to destroy a suicide duck, but air combat against even a sinker was still beyond me a month after I’d started.
Pearce gave me a new nickname… target drone. Every day, I would fly out, and use the gale’s sophisticated command and communications equipment to give her target practice. Zabat drones and laser sensors gave me valuable lessons in keeping my self in the air while coordinating another zoid. I kinda hoped that there might be another fly scissors somewhere.
Being able to watch how another zoid intercepted me from a third party perspective was what finally did it for me. I began to understand and to finally, belatedly thinking in three dimensions. I wont say I got good. I know my own limitations,. But I was finally becoming adequate. And with adequacy, the gale began to make suggestions.
The fisrt time I sudently slammed the gale through a successful enielimen turn and ended up with my laser spears resting one either side of the storm swoerders’ head, I felt a rush of triumph far better to that from shattering two ancient zoids. Of course I then had it peal away and virtually sword me, but nothing in life is perfect.
My skills were finally starting to perform, and just in time. Stoller had entered me in another match, this time against a much more serious opponent.
Another level C battle and another local hero. This time an older man, in a vintage pteras. His old zoid was dark hateful red in colour, armed with the optional cp-06 missile units. When I uploaded the data to the gale, it actually laughed in pleasure…. A scary laugh. And the first sound that it had made. “a Zark” the computer screen wrote. An ancient enemy indeed. We will destroy it’s body and leave it’s pilot desperately ejecting to safety.
I was left thinking What the hell is a zark?
The day dawned bright, and it found me loading war shots into the lord gale’s machine guns, as sanders did some tinkering with the mag lev systems. The gale’s boards showed all green lights, and so away we went into combat.
Suggestion #1 for air combat.
Watch the skies.
Suggestion #2
Watch the ground.
The old bastard ambushed me good and proper. He wasn’t in the air at all, his zark was landed, and concealed in bushes. The first I knew of his presence after the judge announced fight was the missile lock, followed by the seeking storm of guided doom that came rushing up from below.
I had only one desperate option, so I took it.
Assisted by the gale I threw us into a wild spinning dive, plummeting towards the ground, machine gun blazing. Some of the missile storm detonated prematurely in the machine gun hail. Some of it simply couldn’t lock on.. and two missiles drilled into us, one smashing into the gale’s right knee, the other tearing a nice hole through the left wing. I’d been aiming to pull out about 15meters above ground level, but the loss of lift indicated that the best I could hope for was about landing altitude… and the right knee meant that landing would be interesting. The damn thing had waddled out of cover still on the ground as was trying to shoot at me with its beam cannons.
I had one chance only. I energized the laser lances and then pulled up as hard as I could.. the damaged right leg scraped the ground and almost pulled me down, but then broke free under the abuse, sending me hurtling towards the zark at high speed, it’s last to missiles flaring as they launched at point blank range.
I collided in a storm of metal fury and for a while everything went black.
The battle was over.
The winner was no one.
