Vance grinned a lop-sided grin.  "Yeah, all it takes is an aborted recon mission and no aliens to interfere, Sarge.  Why don't you set things up so all the missions go like that, and then I can stop scratching your paintjobs?"  The words were good-natured, but there were undertones in his voice, indicators of his frustration at being unable to do more than pester the aliens enough to make them back off for a little while.

He'd been in the air that day...seen how many ships there had been, before most of them had vanished and left just the few behind that had, thus far, been such an agonizing nightmare to deal with.  He knew, even if they managed to somehow get rid of the ships that had been bothering Earth, there were plenty more where those came from.

Much as he'd love to have a 'one and done' victory, the only way the aliens would leave them alone, long-term, would be to lose enough forces to slow attrition for them to conclude that Earth was more trouble than it was worth, but not trouble enough to be a serious threat.

If they ever got the impression Earth was a threat, he was pretty sure that every Veritech in existence couldn't even slow down the obliteration of the planet.  That many ships, firing on the surface?  If they didn't completely destroy humanity, the planet would be ruined, beyond habitation.

But he kept a brave face, for his crew and his squadron.  And prayed for a miracle.

As they got out of their planes, they could feel the shift in the rumble of the engines, the deck plating vibrating slightly beneath their feet.  Up on the bridge, far from the flight deck, there was a buzz of activity, as the various officers monitored their systems and made the adjustments necessary for the Ranger to achieve top operational speeds.

Other officers were hunched over their consoles...the comm officer was trying to get some kind of a sitrep from the James Madison, but was getting nothing but static.  Sensor officers adjusted their gear to the last known position of the destroyer, and began running search patterns, looking for something that might be the ship.

In their wake, its presence unnoticed, a Zentraedi spy vessel took note of their departure.  "What do you think they were looking for down there?" one of the occupants asked his two companions.

"I couldn't say for certain, but we're getting a lot of readings indicating a combat zone...looks like ruins, some of them look fire-gutted or like they've been shot up.  And the background energy levels are extremely high.  Some kind of energy weapons were used down there, and they weren't picky about who they used them on."

The craft's commander noted the readings.  "There must be something else...their ships were flying search patterns over the whole planet.  What were they looking for?"

"Perhaps they were looking for that..."  The Zentraedi officer pointed to a screen that displayed an extensive base laid out on the planet's surface...and apparently sunk some distance into it.  "The structures are all intact, but power readings seem to indicate the whole thing is deserted...I'm not sure there's even enough power running through the area to run a life-support system."

The commander nodded.  "We should notify Lord Khyron.  If these creatures continue on their path, the battle fortress should come near this planet.  If he hasn't managed to stop them before then, this might be a good place to surprise them."
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 02:06, Sat 23 Nov 2013.

Vance stayed near his plane, trying to use idle conversation with his ground crew to cover the nerves that kept trying to get him rattled and worried about just what they'd find.  He cast a watchful eye over the rest of the squadron, some of them talking with their crews, like him...others were tinkering on their planes, with a little supervision from the crew chiefs...a few were reading or playing games, either in the cockpit or on the deck by the planes.

"Any of you boys got any cards?" he asked.  "We could get through a few hands of poker before they send us out, I'm sure..."

Once she had the stairs rolled up, Hanako climbs out of her fighter and walked over to her commander, him being the nearest member of her squadron.  She showed up behind him just in time to hear him ask about a deck of cards, and gave him a bit of a smirk.  "I would think some coffee would be more important than cards, sir," she said playfully, although she wasn't entirely joking, either.

Vance chuckled.  "Maybe so, but poker cards won't leave me feeling like I've gotta pee two minutes after we launch.  Not sure how long we'll be playing...once we find the destroyer...or the alien ship...we'll be back in the cockpits.  At least some poker will keep me from sitting here, getting antsy, while I wait for orders to saddle up again.  That's really all I need..."

One of the armaments loaders unzipped a pocket on one sleeve, producing a deck of cards.  "How do you think we keep ourselves sane waitin' for you to come back with the plane, L-T?" he asked, with a chuckle.

"Sarge, break out the chips...Lt. Hardy wants to play cards..."  There was an eagerness, verging on taunting, in his voice.  Vance looked around, at the eager grins on the faces of his ground crew, and looked over at Hanako.

"Ummmmm...why do I feel like I've just jumped into a shark tank?"

With a giggle, Hanako grins up at Vance and replies, "Because you have, sir.  This also looks like a good opportunity for me to learn how to play."  Stepping up beside her direct commanding officer, she smiles warmly at the techs and asks, "Do you suppose I could play as well, to learn the game?  If I have to bet, I can do so, but a friendly game to start would be nice, if that is alright with everyone."

With a shrug, Sarge answered, "I suppose we can stick to the shallow end of the pool for a few hands, at least...but learning how to bet, and how to read other peoples' bets, is kinda key to the game.  Doesn't have to be money...I been in games played for candy, or even just toothpicks...which is fine and well if you're playin' for bragging rights, but ain't much you can buy with toothpicks, y'know?"

He seemed a little unsure how to deal with Lt. Moriya...one one hand, she was an officer, and a junior officer at that, which was usually all the grounds he needed to be as gruff and irascible as you please.  But she was also a woman...and officer or no, he was raised to respect women.  The two impulses warred with each other.

Hanako could rather easily read the unspoken thoughts the sergeant was having, and was rather amused by the inner conflict.  "I suppose we will just have to use the chips without actually spending any money for the first hand or two, unless you have something you could wage against a kiss," she said with a playful grin, rather enjoying the idea of including such a risk that would, while having value, also mean there would be no hard feelings due to monetary loss.

Besides, it wasn't as if they didn't deserve a little pick-me-up anyway.

Vance carefully hid the grin that came to his face as he watched Sarge trying to navigate the unfamiliar waters of dealing with a female officer.  "I think we should probably keep kisses off the table as betting currency," he said with a dry tone.

"I don't know if Sarge's reputation could handle getting kissed by an officer..."  He winked at the other members of the ground crew, but carefully kept a straight face as he looked at his crew chief.

Sarge's jaw worked vigorously as he struggled to keep from saying something that could get him brought up on insubordination charges.  He was actually pretty sure the Lt. would never do something like that, but he was also just perceptive enough to realize that he was being baited, and he finally broke into a rueful grin.

"Fair enough, no kissing allowed in the betting.  Maybe we can use commissary credits?  I'm sure you officer-types get more than we do, and we sure as hell don't have much downtime around here to really do much with what we get from the commissary, so they're not quite worthless but nobody's gonna be up a creek if they lose a few.  Good enough?"

Folding her arms with a pout, Hanako huffed in protest of not being allowed to mess with everyone's heads by betting a kiss, but the compromise seemed to make the most sense from a logical point of view.

"I suppose those would work.  I do not really use them much myself except to get stronger coffee, so that sounds fair."

The cards were shuffled and dealt, bets made, cards laid down...bets collected, cards passed to the next dealer and shuffled again, and the cycle repeated, as the Ranger raced through space to try and catch up with the destroyer it had sent out.  Other ships in the task force moved ahead, others strayed behind...it was a 'best possible speed' situation, the Captain decided.

As it turned out, Vance had a terrible poker face...and really bad luck with the cards...and between the two, ended up losing, consistently.  Hanako--either because she was female and unfamiliar to the ground crew, or because she had a good poker face--ended up winning quite often, and the various members of the ground crew won the rest of the hands...usually apologizing to Sarge when they beat him.

As a result, for Hanako, the time seemed to fly by.  For Vance, it was interminable.  But, finally, the alert sounded and the announcement came over ship-wide PA--"All Veritech pilots to your fighters, standby for launch orders within the next five minutes."

On the bridge, expressions were grim.  The Invictus had reached range where it should have had sensor contact with the James Madison...and couldn't even raise the ship on communications.  They were proceeding with full active sensors, hoping to find something...anything...that would let them know what was going on.

The comm came to life.  "Ranger Command, this is Commander Davis of the Invictus.  We're getting some kind of sensor read, but it's...hazy..."

Captain Wilson keyed his comm panel.  "'Hazy', Commander?  Can you give us something more to go on than that?"

"The mass reading corresponds roughly with the James Madison, Sir, but we're not getting a solid read.  We're still at extreme range, Sir, and there's still no response to any of our hails, but..."  He went silent for a moment, then came back on.

"Sir, we're picking up multiple distress beacons...from roughly the same location."

"Hold your position, Commander, we're only seconds behind you.  If this is some kind of alien trick, I'd rather send the fighters in first..."  He turned to his flight control officer.

"In thirty seconds, launch Echo Squadron to intercept the James Madison," he said, with a look out the viewports.

"Assuming that she's still intact enough to wear the name," he added, in a low voice.

The Invictus appeared on sensors first, then viewscreens, then was actually visible through the viewports, as the Ranger came up alongside, dropping speed to match.  "Signal the other ships...rally on this location, we'll proceed from here when we've got everyone."

As he gave the order, comm officers commenced sending out scrambled tight-beam transmissions.  At the same time, the flight officer gave the order, "Echo Squadron, proceed to launch.  You'll be given flight coordinates in space."

When the alert sounded, Vance dropped his cards haphazardly on the table.  "Thank goodness," he muttered under his breath...he'd been taking a beating in the game, and the few times he'd gotten decent cards, everyone else had bailed out quickly...except for the one or two times when someone had a much better hand than he did.  He wasn't totally bereft of credits...but he'd have to be picky about what he got at the commissary for the next week or two.

He popped his helmet on as he ran to his fighter, his ground crew right on his heels, and they began removing the ladder the moment his feet were off it.  It felt like an age, but was only a relatively few seconds, before the order to launch came, and as it sounded over the plane's comm system and the launch-deck PA, he looked out the window.  Sarge gave him a thumb's-up and signaled that he was clear, he firewalled his throttle and the catapult flung him into space, combat-ready.

The Veritechs of Echo Squadron raced ahead of the Ranger and Invictus, their sensors and comm systems lighting up with over a dozen individual distress beacons.  The emergency transmitters sent the signals out further than the sensors on the Veritechs could reach, and they could vector in on the source of the beacons before they actually registered anything there.

As they approached the last known location of the James Madison, however, it appeared, at first, as though the sensors were faulty...rather than a single clean read on a ship, there was a widely dispersed signal.  The reason for that became apparent as they moved into visual range.

The primary hull of the James Madison was in at least five larger sections, floating in a cloud of debris.  What was left of the engineering section was actively venting drive plasma, and secondary and tertiary explosions were still going off, each one tweaking the spin of that particular remnant into ever-more-erratic rotations.  With the exception of the ongoing explosions, no lights were visible in any of the sections.

The sources of the distress beacons became apparent...the remains of several Veritechs were floating in the debris cloud.  Some of them were massively damaged planes with the cockpits still intact, a few were planes whose cockpits had ejected and activated the emergency beacons.  More than a couple were planes whose catastrophic damage engulfed the cockpit...these were indistinguishable from the debris of the shattered James Madison until Echo Squadron was almost right on top of them.

None of them had any active communications...and visual inspection of the intact cockpits or ejection pods revealed no sign of motion.  The only way to know if there were survivors would be to recover the bodies and hope they were alive.

Vance found himself agape at the wreckage, and it took him a moment to get himself back together, mentally.  "<TC>Ranger, this is Echo One.  The James Madison is gone...bits and pieces.  It looks like Fox Squadron got caught in the attack...most of them are still here, but none of the Veritechs are operational and I can't yet report on the condition of any of the pilots.  We're commencing salvage operations, but it appears as though any aliens in the area have moved off...not registering anything on our scopes beyond the debris field here.  I think you're safe to move in..."

He wasn't big on taking any major chances, though.  "<TC>Echo Seven through Echo Twelve, set up a picket and get us advance notice if anything else is coming into the area.  Once the Ranger catches up with us, we'll get Bixby out in his bird to help and pull a couple of you to help salvage.  The rest of us, start rounding up ejection pods and the more intact planes, let's have them ready to take back aboard once the Ranger gets here."  As he spoke, he transitioned his fighter into Guardian mode...searching the debris was something that he wanted the better mobility of a Guardian for.  Once they'd located everyone, he'd consider going to Battloid for the improved manipulation of anything they were recovering.

This was the second time Hanako had to perform Search and Rescue in a place where the chance of survivors was slim to none, and it was still an emotionally trying exercise.  It would probably always be like that - all she could hope for was to be able to hold back the emotions and keep a cool head so she could do her job and save the most people she could.  "<TC>Roger that, Echo Lead.  Initiating Search and Rescue procedures," she replied, her voice calm and cool.  Her squad mates could tell, however, that she was clearly holding herself together through sheer willpower.  Choking back tears, she began to follow the standard procedure, moving her spotlight over the various bits of wreckage and debris in her area and cutting her radio before she started letting the tiny sobs she was fighting back escape into the ears of the others.

The various planes of Echo Squadron set about their tasks, joined very quickly by Bixby in the Two-Ex, the plane's enhanced sensor gear and onboard coordination of input from the various planes establishing a more secure perimeter.

In some cases, recovering the cockpits that had ejected was obviously a case of corpse retrieval...shattered canopies revealed pilots who'd barely had time to trigger the ejection before a fatal pass by an enemy craft had finished the pilot as thoroughly as the plane.  Others were not so easy to guess at.  A couple of the Veritechs had been effectively shattered before the ejection could be triggered, and the cockpit was still attached to what was left of the nose of the plane.  A few others had ejected cleanly, but there was no sign of life within the cockpit.  Whether the pilots were dead, or just unconscious, it was impossible to tell.

Two cockpits showed definite signs of life...with the rest of the plane missing, it was impossible to tell for sure who was inside one...but the other was very plainly Lt. Abernathy...the visor of his helmet was shattered, and blood streamed from a cut over one eye, but he waved and gave a thumbs-up when Hanako's plane closed in on his ejected cockpit.  He said something...but either his comm system was offline, or his mic had been damaged by whatever broke his visor.

Hanako's hope of finding genuine survivors was dwindling with each wreckage and pod they found, but she did her job and passed them along the line to those running to and from the wreckage and the fleet, small as it is.  When she saw Lt. Abernathy moving and waving to her, however, she brightened considerably and relayed to everyone, "<TC>I have found a survivor!  Lt. Abernathy is alive and attempting to communicate, but it seems his comm systems are down.  Visible wounds are blood on his face with a shattered helmet visor.  Moving in to recover."  Switching to Guardian mode, she moved her Veritech so that the two cockpits were facing one another and reached out to take hold of the cockpit Abernathy resided within.  Once she had a solid grip, she began to carefully maneuver them to a safe position and pulled out a survival flashlight to start blinking morse code to him in the hopes he'd get the idea and reply if possible.  If he had something important to say, it would be better to hear it now than when he finally got back to the fleet.

"EXTRACTINGSTOPADVISEIFIMPORTANTSTOP."

Second lieutenant Parker Andrew Harvey had been aboard the ship, the Ranger for a only a short while now.  Before they shipped out for Mars, he was part of the restocking of crew lost in earlier battles.  He had been working on projects to help finalize the integration of the experimental fighters into the ship’s compliment.  The young man had already earned the reputation for being friendly if not a little flighty with his hair color.  This month he had his hair dyed bright red, as a personal choice.  He was excited to be here, but as of yet, had not been out on any combat missions.  Parker was one of the thrill seeking youths who just wanted to fly.  He drove the veritech out to the launch catapult and then sat there awaiting the launch command by the shooter.  The crewman, whoever he was seemed to enjoy his job.  He did his rhythmic hand movements and Parker gave him the salute to show he was ready.  The engines roared as he prepared to launch.  There was no sound in space of course, but Parker always liked to imagine the WHOOSH of the catapult as he shot off into space. He was rather impatient a lot of the time.  The cockpit was the only area he seemed to be able to relax.

Parker was able to stay in formation with the others of his squad as they approached the location of the James Madison.  An audible gasp escaped his lips involuntarily when he saw the condition of the ship and Fox squad.  This had been a massacre.  The aliens can do all this?  Holy crap we have our work cut out for us.  Parker immediately started in with the others of the squad to search for survivors.  He was assigned his own section.  She transformed to guardian mode to be able to carefully move debris to try to aid himself in his search.  Parker saw some gruesome reminders of the dangers of being shot down in space.  Body parts, frozen in the chill of deep space, were most of what he found.  He was glad he had a light breakfast this morning.  He didn't want to have to clean the inside of his helmet again like back in training...  he shuddered to think of that so he swallowed hard and kept on working.  The only bright spot in the day’s activities was when Echo Three…  Hanako was her name he recalled, had found a survivor.

Parker finished his sweep and was disappointed but not yet surprised to find just corpses…  or rather parts of corpses.  “This is Echo Four, negative life signs in my section.  Echo Three, do you require assistance?”  Parker said over the tactical net to the rest of his squad.  He was eager to do something that might have a positive outcome today.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:12, Sat 03 May 2014.

Looking pained, but still smiling, Dutch gave a halting thumbs-up through the cockpit, then leaned back in his seat and started working on removing what was left of his flight helmet.

Throughout the debris field, others were working to recover the cockpits that still seemed intact, even if they couldn't determine the condition of the pilot...by the time everyone reported in, seven of the twelve planes from Fox Squadron had recoverable cockpits.  How many of those seven pilots would be able to operate a plane was another question...

Vance continued searching through the debris, as more and more calls were made reporting intact, or presumably intact, cockpits were made.  He began checking off the numbers in his head, habitually counting off planes and pilots.

Seven pilots recovered...five unaccounted for.  None of the planes would be serviceable, but someone with more expertise than he had would have to decide how much of which planes was salvageable.

Given the limited resources available...that the majority of the Veritech construction facilities had disappeared with the SDF-1 and Macross City...it was a major blow to the capabilities of the UEDF.  "<TC>Ranger, Echo Lead.  I think we're safe to send out the salvage craft.  Hopefully, between the cockpit data recorders, we'll be able to piece together what happened...but I don't think we're likely to find many more survivors with the Veritechs.  Any survivors on the destroyer are so deep in the hull that we're not getting any indicators of their presence...maybe clearing some of the debris will improve the clarity of sensor readings."

The resignation in his voice was clear, even to him.  He didn't expect to find anyone else.  The destruction was pretty thorough...

Parker muted his mic and let out a sigh of relief.  Apparently he had been in the section that had the most KIA's with the destroyed cockpit modules.  The others were finding survivors which made him feel a little better about what they had found here.  he swung his guardian around and switched to jet form once again.  He loved the tickle of the thinking cap as he thought through the transformation in the blink of an eye.  He hit his mic off mute and then to transmit on the team channel.  "Echo Four to Echo Lead, should I proceed to perimeter patrol while the salvage craft come out or would you rather I stay and assist them?"
This message was last edited by the player at 03:19, Mon 19 May 2014.

Wanting to raise their morale as much as she could in the situation, Hanako sent a final message in Morse code to Dutch, attempting to bring a bit of light to the otherwise dark situation.  The last message he got from her before she started gently towing him back to the Ranger was short, simple, and to the point.

"KISSKISS"

As she transported him back, she kept an eye on his canopy, not wanting any cracks or leaks to form due to carelessness.  She fully intended to live up to her earlier promise, too.  He'd earned it.  But just one, on the cheek.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:22, Mon 19 May 2014.

Vance was thankful he was on an audio-only feed at the moment.  The dour expression he felt on his face wouldn't be conducive to maintaining squadron morale.  "<TC>Four, go ahead and join the picket formations on the perimeter.  Just because they've left the area doesn't mean the aliens won't come back by to look at their handiwork, and we don't want to be caught unaware if they do."

"Four Copies."  Parker said with a slight sigh of relief.  He didn't want to be sifting through more body parts for a while if he could help it.  He punched the throttle and quickly went to the edge of the area and took his place in the perimeter patrol.  He kept one eye on the 3D radar and the other on Mark-One Eyeball--or visual scanning for threats...