Phase Eleven: Keep Calm and Drink Tea

[emorangerpink]

1. (the hangar)

[After the chaos of the fight, the hangar crew are working overtime on cleanup duty. Laura's pitching in, flying around in The Great Pretender, righting fallen mechs and clearing heavy objects.

For now, though, she's in the open cockpit of the Knightpolice she's been working on in her own time for the last while, and which came

Comments

1 | dual weilding threads

[an_alpha_wolf]

[Unfortunately grounded, along with the rest of the Wolves when something dark and chaotic welded shut the doors of their dropship, Resnick sprints towards where he's been told she is and looks up from the base of the knightmare frame, an unusual expression of concern on his face.]

Laura Ericks! Are you alright?

[emorangerpink]

Resnick!

I'm okay. Broke my leg, is all. Are you all right? And the other Wolves?

[an_alpha_wolf]

Aff. Something jammed the door of our dropship shut in the attack, but the armor held.

...I hope for their sake that it was debris that broke your leg and not someone specific. [He goes up on his tiptoes, trying to see from his perspective how bad her damage is.]

[emorangerpink]

[Laura holds up her hands.] I ended up between a mech and an equipment trolley. No one's fault. It's fine, the shock lasted long enough for me to summon my armour and then the healing kicked in and I was in the air with my weight off it anyway.

We got off pretty lightly, from what I'm hearing. Lots of injuries and lots of damage, but nothing that won't heal or can't be repaired.

[an_alpha_wolf]

Nothing we have not weathered before. I will pass on to the elementals that you cannot train with them for a while then.

What are you doing to that mech?

[emorangerpink]

Thanks. It should only take a few days to heal, but I'm supposed to take it easy until then.

I'm familiarizing myself with the internal wiring and power supply. Which is to say, adding a water heater to the cockpit. It's part of my apprenticeship.

[an_alpha_wolf]

A water heater? Are you not afraid impact or the motion of the mech would spray hot water everywhere? If you are going to cook in there, would a grill not be better?

[emorangerpink]

It's only usable when the mech's parked. And a grill doesn't let you make tea. Or boil ration packs.

It's sort of a tradition on Britannian military vehicles.

[an_alpha_wolf]

Our ration packs have a heating charge in the bottom...[He rubs his chin thoughtfully.] Still, it would take some of the monotony from a long campaign and be helpful on the tundra. What would you charge to install that on Prowler?

[emorangerpink]

Charge? [Heck, Laura'd do it for free. But now that he's offered, refusing payment would probably be insulting...]

Well, I kind of cheated - this is the civilian-use version of this mech, you see, and they're standard on the full military version, so I picked up the parts as surplus a while back and just adapted it back in. Adding it to a totally new design... it probably wouldn't be too hard, and Lowe could help me scrounge together the parts... Though I'd need to read up on omnimech designs...

Let's say... [she names a modest sum, on the level where debts are settled by arm wrestling rather than duels.]

[an_alpha_wolf]

Well bargained and done. I do not anticipate any problems, especially with Lowe Gear's help. The whole point of an omnimech is to be able to swap in new loadouts quickly. I can show you right now if you want.

[emorangerpink]

Hmmm... [Laura looks unfocused for a moment, working things out.]

Sure. I'm officially not supposed to do any heavy lifting for the rest of the day, even in armour, so I can't help much here. Might as well get started on figuring this out - it'll be something useful to do while I'm resting my leg over the next few days. If you can get me the specs I'll need to make sure everything will be compatible, that'll help too.

[an_alpha_wolf]

No better way to be acquainted than to see the inside yourself. Wait here. [In a minute he brings his Timber Wolf walking slowly with its birdlike gait towards the knightpolice, which it dwarfs. The omnimech crouches, looking comically like an oversize brooding hen. A squirt of data gives her what she needs to know.] This is a Timber Wolf maximum weight of seventy five tons. My variant has ten tons armor, twenty six tons of pod space for weapons and extra equipment and an augmented max speed of one hundred and ten KPH.

[emorangerpink]

[Carefully, carefully, down from the cockpit and across to the omnimech.]

Hmmm. There should be space for it... and the power shouldn't be an issue... so long as I can hook up an extractor fan to catch the steam...

It'll probably have to wait until the next time we can resupply somewhere well-stocked, unless I get lucky when I look through our parts stores, but it should be doable.

[an_alpha_wolf]

[He dashes over to help her but then stands there frozen in mid motion, unsure if to do so would offend her pride or not. "She is not a sibbie, she can handle herself." He tells himself, though he's there if she needs support.] Again I am in your debt. You just made the Siberian campaign much more tolerable. If you can turn this into a line of devices to make the life of a Warrior on a long campaign easier, I envision a profitable future for you...

[emorangerpink]

[At first Laura's to occupied with getting down to pick up on Resnick's quandry - on to the liftwire with her good foot, down and pick up the crutch from where she'd left it... When she reaches the Timber Wolf, though, she extends a hand to signal that he should assist her, giving him an out from the dilemma.]

A line?! I don't - well - maybe that wouldn't be bad... let's just see about getting yours working and, you know, not accidentally scalding your or filling your cockpit with steam or shorting out your PPCs or anything like that...

[A line? It might be a good way to learn... but then, can I really try to sell something I'm using to learn from?]

I suppose it's better than the other way pilots might deal with a long campaign in Siberia...