Post by rantinan on Jun 6, 2006 1:36:45 GMT -5
(standar disclaimers apply. Rock N Roll and Reveyne used wiht owners permissions)
How up I was about to find out shortly.
Doc Leyon, crazy old coot that he was had a surprise in store for us all
Sanders already had made it back to the whale king, and had driven out in the beat up, red and silver gustav we used for salvage. We loaded up liger bits, elephander bits, and to my surprise the terribly damaged tigers zoids. Doctor Leyon was offering them repair, and something else in return for ending their vendetta.
The doc was standing in the hanger and sitting in front of him were three black irregular shapes, with thick bunches of wires protruding.
Since the doc was finished studying the ultimate X, it was easy for me to guess what the black lumps were. But it was priceless seeing the tigers team expression when Leyon explained that he would bond an Ultimate x system to their zoids cores if they left him alone in the feature. Omari simply said Oh TOMY. Lineback let out a cry of mighty tigers! And Kirkland simply sat there staring at the black lump with tears of joy streaming down his face as he no doubt imagined what a demon of a cat like the lider could do with an ultimate X bonded to it.
Of course they agreed. The next month was spent with our whale kings parked next to each other while repairs, and U.X. configurations occurred. Leyon said many times that it was fortunate indeed tha the lord gale was both a land and air zoid, as it’s ultimate X system once reverse engineered could be fitter to either sort of zoid without to much loss of performance, and we were also able to experiment with Sanders’ sinker to adapt it to aquatic zoids.
I’d already decided I didn’t want to have an UX in my kingliger, thanks all the same, and I wasn’t ready t
Meanwhile I spent a lot of sim time with the tigers, learning the art of pointy cats.
Lots of people like to diss the tigers, and certainly their loosing streaks and poor off battlefield judgements didn’t help their reputation much. But the tigers I got to know that week were a different bunch to the completely random yahoos they had been 2 years ago when I’d last had the opportunity to watch one of their matches. Loss had brought them maturity, as had an incident that had happened six months ago which they referred to as the night of six cats. Although they certainly hadn’t lost their boyish enthusiasim, and devil may care battle style, they had been steadily more successful, enough so that not only was the Lider in play, but Omari was steadily working on restoring a vintage Descat, not to battle in, as gravity weapons were strictly prohibited, but simply for the joy of all things zoidy kitty.
Their random attempt on Leyon had been more reflexive than thought out. Kirkland readily admitted both his mistake in not recognising the boss’s whale king, and then his further mistake of assuming we’d keep the same zoids configuration we’d shown them previously. Although the boss was his normal distant self, Pearce and I got along well with the tigers, and I enjoyed several hours of their anecdotes about the much fabled blitz team.
What the tigers taught me I’ll always be grateful for. Those guys epitomise determination.
I was sad to see them go, but they promised they would keep in touch. Meanwhile we had a battle to prepare for.
We’d been challenged.
My goodness we had been challenged.
Apparently 2 teams had banded together to challenge us. The first team called themselves the thunderbolts, they were two women stormsworder pilots of notoriety. In fact they were so notorious that they used a sinker and a redler almost as often as their storm sworders. Re Veynne and Rocke Nrol had both had a string of individual successes before banding together to terrorize the flying zoid circuit. There was controversy surrounding both pilots. Re was rumoured to be a cross dresser, and Rocke apparently owed lage sums of money to a mammoth pilot called Gomez Mann.
That damnable Gomez. Because an elephander and a mammoth share the same core at heart, he had attempted legal action against the boss several times, insisting that as the only class A pilot to drive a mammoth, he had inspired the elephander and deserved royalties. The ZBC had eventually slapped him with a tort preventing him attempting said action, but it festered in him. Gomez Mann seemed to believe we owed him something and was determined to collect.
It’s hardly surprising that Gomez and his partner Will Macrocosim were the other two pilots that had challenged us. Gomez drove a massively upgraded mammoth. Will Drove a massively upgraded gordos. Of the two zoids, the gordos had more firepower and armour, but the mammoth was faster, and had better electronic warfare equipment. Even though they were old, neither was nothing to laugh at, both zoids being armed with supercannons, heavy missile launchers and quad barrelled impact cannon in addition to their standard equipment. IN addition the mammoth usually fuzed with a diploguns prior to the commencement of battle, the long range railgun adding much needed trunk mounted firepower, the armour covering it’s vulnerable flanks
The Distant Thunder team had a nasty and well deserved reputation for blowing away their opponents as soon as they came into range.
So of course we needed 4 zoids, one of them a fuzor, to face them. And this is where my dilemma began.
A jammerphander would be the perfect Zoid to mess up both a mammoth’s and gordos’ long range targeting. That was Sanders. A commanderphadner with shield ears would actually weather supercannon shots without being destroyed. The boss taken care of zoid wise. Pearce of course had her DX Stormsworder.
We needed another flying zoid.
That left me a choice of the sinker, or the lord gale.
A sinker versus a stormsworder is not an even match. In fact its usually a recipe for seafood salad. Where as the lord gale could fuze to the flysizzors and have nearly the speed and better manoeuvrability than a stormey.
All it meant was taking my life in my hands, hoping the repairs and reprogramming that leyon had done to the UX system held up under combat stress.
The leg that wasn’t there was full of phantom pain. But I climbed into the cockpit of the rebuilt by Leyon lord gale anyway.
Sorry Dave was waiting me on the secondary screen.
“I don’t want to talk to you” I hissed at the ultimate X.
“Some where in the psychotic little links between your core and your A.I. algorithms, you decided to kill me. I’m only here to win a battle, I’m not here to converse with you. You want to prove you’re sorry, help me win this without trying to kill me.”
I fired up a chimera control panel, and brought the flyscizzors into life beside me. I needed practice flying fuzed.
One meaninglessly flashy transformation sequence later, my multiclawed, quad winged lordgale was headed up into the clouds.
Finaly, finaly the controls were handling right.
No oversteer
No understeer
No frantic manoeuvring to prevent myself falling head first into the dirt.
Just the sounds of gargoyle wing maglevs ripping though the air like a silk sheet.
Just the freedom of flying.
Just a missile lock warning.
“Cut it out Pearce”
“No way boyo. If you are on my wing, I need to know I can rely on you”
So began a series of manoeuvre and counter manoeuvre. She was faster. I could turn on a dime. This was gonna be interesting, to put it mildly.
I’m not going to explain it all. Fact of the matter is that I pulled off stunts I didn’t even knew were possible. The extra wings allowed for perfect hovering and direction changes. The lord gale had gone from being a brick to a VTOL. And the ultimate X was helping, instead of trying to kill me.
Of course Pearce is a much better pilot than I ever will be. She virtually kicked my ass repeatedly, but I got myself a few grabs in.
Finaly whe had to break off, exhausted.
“Well I guess you’ll do. Go for Re tomorrow, Rocke will kick your ass from here to beyond tomorrow.”
“Oh thanks for the vote of confidence!”
Pearce shrugged in the monitor. “It has to be better than dying alone up there.” She said, the usual storm sworder jockey bravado slipping from her face. “Those two are good. I wont last 30 seconds without a wingman. Sanders only knows a sinker, and I aint looking to eat zoid sushi tomorrow. Distract Re Veyyne, and maybe, just maybe I can use my over gunned monster to take out Rocke. I’m not to hopeful. That damnable Gomez! It was clever of him to get a storm sworder pilot as good as that indebted to him so he could have air cover. Damn him anyway.”
When we got down to the ground I looked up Rocke’s win loss record. Damn. Even in a malfunctioning redler she’d won her fair string of battles, and in a storm sworder she was unbeaten. Re was almost as talented, although she’d only started piloting a storm sworder recently. Then I checked Rocke’s record closer. Redler versus Zabat. Unknown backdraft pilot (female) defeated. No wonder Pearce was anxious. Rocke had already beaten her once.
The battle started at 10 am the following morning. Not an auspicious time. It should have been high noon.
It was amazing just how much trouble we were in. Not one of us had considered that Gomez was a very smart character, and would attach laser pointer targeting systems to his super cannons. The first we realised was the 4 astonishingly accurate shots ploughing in towards Sanders and Stoller.
Through the cloud of jamming.
The boss got his e-shields up in time, and he and sanders ducked behind a handy pinnacle of rock. Unfortunately they were pinned down pretty good, and that damnable Gomez started blasting at the rock.
Sanders couldn’t let up the jamming. The indirect fire capacity of the supercannons would eat them alive if he did.
4 precise shots at once would be enough to hammer thorugh the double shields without the protection of the rock.
I’d have loved to have helped them out but I had my own problems.
These started began and ended with trying to dogfight a seasoned pro like Re Veyyne.
A couple of manoeuvres and we weren’t going head to head any more. No, she was on my tail. Hard.
Heeelp Pearce I screamed, angling the wings for maximum speed and tearing through the air like a brick outa hell.
She obligingly jinked and sideslipped into Re’s arc, only to discover Rocke had been waiting for this, and was now on Pearce’s tail.
*Watch your language!*.
We made two evolutions of the battlefield like this, the ugliest duckling in existence perused by three silver plated swans.
Silver plated swans with laser blades.
As we where heading back towards the elephanders I got a crazy idea.. probably from the effects of the high speed.
“boss. I need you to fire your missles right at my beacon. DO it NOW I screamed.
The missles wouldn’t be locked. Not in this well jammed environment,. They’d be coming in fast bt dumb.
Dumb enough to mis mee.
Dumb enough to come straight lining into Re Veyne instead.
It was a cheap trick but it worked. The stormsworder took enough missiles to make it shudder. Enough to make Re Veyne pull up somewhat. Enough for Pearce to gun forward and slice it open.
I shouldn’t have relaxed for a moment. I’d healed the gale round to start coming in on the gordos when there was a horrible tearing sound and my two left wings just dropped away. Seems Rocke had swung round behind me and clipped my back with one laser bladed wingtip.
The gale spiralled out of control. I spread the last two wings in a desperate attempt to get some lift, and managed to throw myself into a sycamore seed like spin. This was survivable. I didn’t have to punch out yet. As the gale crashed into the ground I commanded the computer to unfuze, sheding fly scizors parts everywhere in a very realistic appearing crash. Rocke swooped off, only to be tailed by Pearce. The two of them began jockeying for position, and I looked round. Sanders was hailing me, but I didn’t answer. That would have given y position away, and my position was excellent. I was staring down 2 AZ missles, and 2 30/20MM hybrid AZ lasers. In other words the standard tail armament of a mammoth.
Nothing else to do. Praying Gomez wasn’t paying attention I lunged forward, energy lances charged. The lances smashed off the mammoth’s tail, the ungainly, back heavy zoid toppling towards me deprived of its support.
ATTACK EM BOSS, I brawled over the radio, the mammoth’s weight driving the spikes ever deeper, causing catastrophic damage, but pinning me. The gordos swung around a little, and a quad barrelled impact canon lit off at close range, hammering the already batterd gale enough for the thing to shut down completely. It was ok. Through my view port I got to watch as the elepahnders stormed forward, 2 supercannons not enough to seriously threaten the double e shield. I got to watch as stoller sabered off the cannons, then as sanders picked em up in his claw tipped trunk and BEAT the big old stegosaurus into inoperability.
I ever got to watch as Rocke surrendered under the threat of the comanderpahnder’s now unjamed CP-15 pod, it’s anti air capacity obvious.
We’d won. I’d be taken down yet again, but I’d actually won this battle, and the points for Gomez were mine, all mine.
I was rank B.
It was high noon.
How up I was about to find out shortly.
Doc Leyon, crazy old coot that he was had a surprise in store for us all
Sanders already had made it back to the whale king, and had driven out in the beat up, red and silver gustav we used for salvage. We loaded up liger bits, elephander bits, and to my surprise the terribly damaged tigers zoids. Doctor Leyon was offering them repair, and something else in return for ending their vendetta.
The doc was standing in the hanger and sitting in front of him were three black irregular shapes, with thick bunches of wires protruding.
Since the doc was finished studying the ultimate X, it was easy for me to guess what the black lumps were. But it was priceless seeing the tigers team expression when Leyon explained that he would bond an Ultimate x system to their zoids cores if they left him alone in the feature. Omari simply said Oh TOMY. Lineback let out a cry of mighty tigers! And Kirkland simply sat there staring at the black lump with tears of joy streaming down his face as he no doubt imagined what a demon of a cat like the lider could do with an ultimate X bonded to it.
Of course they agreed. The next month was spent with our whale kings parked next to each other while repairs, and U.X. configurations occurred. Leyon said many times that it was fortunate indeed tha the lord gale was both a land and air zoid, as it’s ultimate X system once reverse engineered could be fitter to either sort of zoid without to much loss of performance, and we were also able to experiment with Sanders’ sinker to adapt it to aquatic zoids.
I’d already decided I didn’t want to have an UX in my kingliger, thanks all the same, and I wasn’t ready t
Meanwhile I spent a lot of sim time with the tigers, learning the art of pointy cats.
Lots of people like to diss the tigers, and certainly their loosing streaks and poor off battlefield judgements didn’t help their reputation much. But the tigers I got to know that week were a different bunch to the completely random yahoos they had been 2 years ago when I’d last had the opportunity to watch one of their matches. Loss had brought them maturity, as had an incident that had happened six months ago which they referred to as the night of six cats. Although they certainly hadn’t lost their boyish enthusiasim, and devil may care battle style, they had been steadily more successful, enough so that not only was the Lider in play, but Omari was steadily working on restoring a vintage Descat, not to battle in, as gravity weapons were strictly prohibited, but simply for the joy of all things zoidy kitty.
Their random attempt on Leyon had been more reflexive than thought out. Kirkland readily admitted both his mistake in not recognising the boss’s whale king, and then his further mistake of assuming we’d keep the same zoids configuration we’d shown them previously. Although the boss was his normal distant self, Pearce and I got along well with the tigers, and I enjoyed several hours of their anecdotes about the much fabled blitz team.
What the tigers taught me I’ll always be grateful for. Those guys epitomise determination.
I was sad to see them go, but they promised they would keep in touch. Meanwhile we had a battle to prepare for.
We’d been challenged.
My goodness we had been challenged.
Apparently 2 teams had banded together to challenge us. The first team called themselves the thunderbolts, they were two women stormsworder pilots of notoriety. In fact they were so notorious that they used a sinker and a redler almost as often as their storm sworders. Re Veynne and Rocke Nrol had both had a string of individual successes before banding together to terrorize the flying zoid circuit. There was controversy surrounding both pilots. Re was rumoured to be a cross dresser, and Rocke apparently owed lage sums of money to a mammoth pilot called Gomez Mann.
That damnable Gomez. Because an elephander and a mammoth share the same core at heart, he had attempted legal action against the boss several times, insisting that as the only class A pilot to drive a mammoth, he had inspired the elephander and deserved royalties. The ZBC had eventually slapped him with a tort preventing him attempting said action, but it festered in him. Gomez Mann seemed to believe we owed him something and was determined to collect.
It’s hardly surprising that Gomez and his partner Will Macrocosim were the other two pilots that had challenged us. Gomez drove a massively upgraded mammoth. Will Drove a massively upgraded gordos. Of the two zoids, the gordos had more firepower and armour, but the mammoth was faster, and had better electronic warfare equipment. Even though they were old, neither was nothing to laugh at, both zoids being armed with supercannons, heavy missile launchers and quad barrelled impact cannon in addition to their standard equipment. IN addition the mammoth usually fuzed with a diploguns prior to the commencement of battle, the long range railgun adding much needed trunk mounted firepower, the armour covering it’s vulnerable flanks
The Distant Thunder team had a nasty and well deserved reputation for blowing away their opponents as soon as they came into range.
So of course we needed 4 zoids, one of them a fuzor, to face them. And this is where my dilemma began.
A jammerphander would be the perfect Zoid to mess up both a mammoth’s and gordos’ long range targeting. That was Sanders. A commanderphadner with shield ears would actually weather supercannon shots without being destroyed. The boss taken care of zoid wise. Pearce of course had her DX Stormsworder.
We needed another flying zoid.
That left me a choice of the sinker, or the lord gale.
A sinker versus a stormsworder is not an even match. In fact its usually a recipe for seafood salad. Where as the lord gale could fuze to the flysizzors and have nearly the speed and better manoeuvrability than a stormey.
All it meant was taking my life in my hands, hoping the repairs and reprogramming that leyon had done to the UX system held up under combat stress.
The leg that wasn’t there was full of phantom pain. But I climbed into the cockpit of the rebuilt by Leyon lord gale anyway.
Sorry Dave was waiting me on the secondary screen.
“I don’t want to talk to you” I hissed at the ultimate X.
“Some where in the psychotic little links between your core and your A.I. algorithms, you decided to kill me. I’m only here to win a battle, I’m not here to converse with you. You want to prove you’re sorry, help me win this without trying to kill me.”
I fired up a chimera control panel, and brought the flyscizzors into life beside me. I needed practice flying fuzed.
One meaninglessly flashy transformation sequence later, my multiclawed, quad winged lordgale was headed up into the clouds.
Finaly, finaly the controls were handling right.
No oversteer
No understeer
No frantic manoeuvring to prevent myself falling head first into the dirt.
Just the sounds of gargoyle wing maglevs ripping though the air like a silk sheet.
Just the freedom of flying.
Just a missile lock warning.
“Cut it out Pearce”
“No way boyo. If you are on my wing, I need to know I can rely on you”
So began a series of manoeuvre and counter manoeuvre. She was faster. I could turn on a dime. This was gonna be interesting, to put it mildly.
I’m not going to explain it all. Fact of the matter is that I pulled off stunts I didn’t even knew were possible. The extra wings allowed for perfect hovering and direction changes. The lord gale had gone from being a brick to a VTOL. And the ultimate X was helping, instead of trying to kill me.
Of course Pearce is a much better pilot than I ever will be. She virtually kicked my ass repeatedly, but I got myself a few grabs in.
Finaly whe had to break off, exhausted.
“Well I guess you’ll do. Go for Re tomorrow, Rocke will kick your ass from here to beyond tomorrow.”
“Oh thanks for the vote of confidence!”
Pearce shrugged in the monitor. “It has to be better than dying alone up there.” She said, the usual storm sworder jockey bravado slipping from her face. “Those two are good. I wont last 30 seconds without a wingman. Sanders only knows a sinker, and I aint looking to eat zoid sushi tomorrow. Distract Re Veyyne, and maybe, just maybe I can use my over gunned monster to take out Rocke. I’m not to hopeful. That damnable Gomez! It was clever of him to get a storm sworder pilot as good as that indebted to him so he could have air cover. Damn him anyway.”
When we got down to the ground I looked up Rocke’s win loss record. Damn. Even in a malfunctioning redler she’d won her fair string of battles, and in a storm sworder she was unbeaten. Re was almost as talented, although she’d only started piloting a storm sworder recently. Then I checked Rocke’s record closer. Redler versus Zabat. Unknown backdraft pilot (female) defeated. No wonder Pearce was anxious. Rocke had already beaten her once.
The battle started at 10 am the following morning. Not an auspicious time. It should have been high noon.
It was amazing just how much trouble we were in. Not one of us had considered that Gomez was a very smart character, and would attach laser pointer targeting systems to his super cannons. The first we realised was the 4 astonishingly accurate shots ploughing in towards Sanders and Stoller.
Through the cloud of jamming.
The boss got his e-shields up in time, and he and sanders ducked behind a handy pinnacle of rock. Unfortunately they were pinned down pretty good, and that damnable Gomez started blasting at the rock.
Sanders couldn’t let up the jamming. The indirect fire capacity of the supercannons would eat them alive if he did.
4 precise shots at once would be enough to hammer thorugh the double shields without the protection of the rock.
I’d have loved to have helped them out but I had my own problems.
These started began and ended with trying to dogfight a seasoned pro like Re Veyyne.
A couple of manoeuvres and we weren’t going head to head any more. No, she was on my tail. Hard.
Heeelp Pearce I screamed, angling the wings for maximum speed and tearing through the air like a brick outa hell.
She obligingly jinked and sideslipped into Re’s arc, only to discover Rocke had been waiting for this, and was now on Pearce’s tail.
*Watch your language!*.
We made two evolutions of the battlefield like this, the ugliest duckling in existence perused by three silver plated swans.
Silver plated swans with laser blades.
As we where heading back towards the elephanders I got a crazy idea.. probably from the effects of the high speed.
“boss. I need you to fire your missles right at my beacon. DO it NOW I screamed.
The missles wouldn’t be locked. Not in this well jammed environment,. They’d be coming in fast bt dumb.
Dumb enough to mis mee.
Dumb enough to come straight lining into Re Veyne instead.
It was a cheap trick but it worked. The stormsworder took enough missiles to make it shudder. Enough to make Re Veyne pull up somewhat. Enough for Pearce to gun forward and slice it open.
I shouldn’t have relaxed for a moment. I’d healed the gale round to start coming in on the gordos when there was a horrible tearing sound and my two left wings just dropped away. Seems Rocke had swung round behind me and clipped my back with one laser bladed wingtip.
The gale spiralled out of control. I spread the last two wings in a desperate attempt to get some lift, and managed to throw myself into a sycamore seed like spin. This was survivable. I didn’t have to punch out yet. As the gale crashed into the ground I commanded the computer to unfuze, sheding fly scizors parts everywhere in a very realistic appearing crash. Rocke swooped off, only to be tailed by Pearce. The two of them began jockeying for position, and I looked round. Sanders was hailing me, but I didn’t answer. That would have given y position away, and my position was excellent. I was staring down 2 AZ missles, and 2 30/20MM hybrid AZ lasers. In other words the standard tail armament of a mammoth.
Nothing else to do. Praying Gomez wasn’t paying attention I lunged forward, energy lances charged. The lances smashed off the mammoth’s tail, the ungainly, back heavy zoid toppling towards me deprived of its support.
ATTACK EM BOSS, I brawled over the radio, the mammoth’s weight driving the spikes ever deeper, causing catastrophic damage, but pinning me. The gordos swung around a little, and a quad barrelled impact canon lit off at close range, hammering the already batterd gale enough for the thing to shut down completely. It was ok. Through my view port I got to watch as the elepahnders stormed forward, 2 supercannons not enough to seriously threaten the double e shield. I got to watch as stoller sabered off the cannons, then as sanders picked em up in his claw tipped trunk and BEAT the big old stegosaurus into inoperability.
I ever got to watch as Rocke surrendered under the threat of the comanderpahnder’s now unjamed CP-15 pod, it’s anti air capacity obvious.
We’d won. I’d be taken down yet again, but I’d actually won this battle, and the points for Gomez were mine, all mine.
I was rank B.
It was high noon.
