A momentary grin at Hanako.

"Bangers and Mash, eh, Leftenant Moriya."  She shrugs slightly.  "A banger is a good snappy thick sausage, pork is best.  Mash is potatoes that you mash.. best to have some real cream in em too if ye can."

She closes her eyes a moment.  "Been a minute since I have had some, and you want a good pint of bitters served with em too.  The O Club at Coningsby really knew how to make a body feel welcome they did."

Vance grinned, the confused look on his face fading as Hanako's question (which had also been his own) was answered.  "Well, I'd be partial to a good steak, myself, but I suppose that a good sausage would work.  Now we just need to find out if anyone on this station cooks British food, I guess..."

He gave a shrug and gestured the group forward.  They might not know how the questions from the debrief would be resolved, but they had a plan of action that would work for now.

Cain muttered, "I could go with some fish and chips if were thinking of pipe dreams..."

She pauses to bump Cain.  "Eh, it's not proper Fish n Chips unless served in the paper.  Sides, being passive aggressive no fits you, mate."

She laughs and nods to Vance.

"Steak would be proper as well, real food of any sort would be quite excellent."

Cain looks at Kelly, "Eh? Passive aggressive?!? Not sure what you mean, I just think probably the best we can hope for will be 'Hospital Food' quality.  Most of these UN Spacy personnel don't get the luxury actual sit-down meals... mostly Zero-G ration packs.  This is Luna... we might get a sit-down meal but I don't expect more than 3-star meal at best.  This is the moon, not Earth." 'shrug'

"Let's hope we get lucky and its not meatloaf night..."

"We are talking the officer's mess, leftenant.  And I personally would be greatly impressed by one Michelin star food, at all."

She was mildly amused (and it shows!) that Cain tended not to address directly what she said.. well, other than denying that passive aggressive bit that he really is guilty of, she thinks.

As the others debate what 'luxurious' meal they might wish for, Hanako finds herself looking up at the ceiling as they walk.  "I would be happy if they even serve actual rice."

As it turned out, finding the Officers' Mess was not much of a challenge...as they were walking and discussing the pros and cons of various dishes, tantalizing aromas began to linger in the air...between that and the stream of contented-looking personnel slipping out of a hatchway, it wasn't hard to follow them back to the source...

A well-appointed kitchen, that had a menu that, while not particularly extensive, offered a broad variety of regional and ethnic dishes that reflected the multi-cultural crew of the base.  Aside from the somewhat sterile and unimaginative color scheme of the place, they might have walked into a reasonably good mid-level restaurant back on Earth, by the smell and look of the food...

"And praise the lord for my commission!  Let's get a table."

She leads the way to.. well... someone may insist on seating them.

The officer's mess appeared to be a rather informal operation.  It ran buffet-style, with foods served up at counters to which anyone could take a plate and get as much or as little as desired of whatever they chose.  It appeared to be capable of seating maybe a couple hundred at a time, but was currently maybe a quarter full.

Word had, apparently, preceded them, however, because as the group of pilots stood inside the entrance, the casual energy of the place took on an expectant edge.  Talk didn't cease...but it took on a lower volume and higher intensity, as eyes around the room darted over to see the group and then returned quickly to focus on their neighbors, as if everyone was afraid to be seen as staring at them.  Even the few pilots, identifiable by their flight suits, seemed to be awed, almost to the point of reverence.

Only one of the cooks seemed to be immune to the effect.  "Well, don't stand there gawkin'," he called out, with an odd drawl that seemed to indicate growing up somewhere in the Southwest United Stated.  "Either ya took a wrong turn or yer lookin' fer some food.  Either way, grab a plate and get somethin' in ya...them carrier-platforms are nice, but I'm sure yer smellin' better fare than you get on one of 'em."  He waved them over with one hand, from behind the counter.

Not to be a bit shy about food when she is hungry, Kelly wastes no time breaking for that chow line with a plate in hand.

"Thanks, cookie!"  She calls the the damn good man.  That's a cook for you!

She slides through, and does get her mash, with brown gravy... some kind of steak, some veg, and a piece of pie on a plate.  Not served like in a O-Club, or the officers lounge, but the food looked pretty damn genuine.

"Damn, that steak looks real."

She takes her prize and finds the closest empty table big enough for their team and wastes no time sampling things.  She turns in her chair after a sample and gives the cook she somehow knows is watching a big thumbs up!

Cain shrugs and makes his way through the line grabbing steak, baked-potatoes, green beans, and corn... and washes it down with a mug of strong cold Root-Beer.

AND FOR ONCE... Cain has Nothing to say as he devours the repast... giving only a Thumbs up for the Cook, before going back two or three times for a refill of his Root Beer!

Having a chance to eat something that's not basically reconstituted protein or some form of MRE, Hanako smiles and fetches herself the most Japanese meal she can.  Which, considering what is before her, is not very Japanese at all.  A steak, a baked potato, some vegetables - her plate looks almost identical to Cain's, just with smaller portions.  For a beverage, she simply takes whatever tea is on offer - no sugar or cream.

She eats with impeccable manners, nary a bit of food missing her mouth or falling onto her chest or lap.  By the time she is done, however, the plate looks almost spotless, as if there had never been food on it at all.  This is what happens when she uses the baked potato to soak up all the drippings from everything else, because she is not about to let any of this food go to waste.

Cain does get an odd look from her for drinking root beer, though.  Being Japanese, root beer has always been a 'challenge drink' and not consumed for pleasure, so it still weirds her out a bit when people actually enjoy it.

But she likes natto, and she's gotten plenty of odd looks for eating that, so she at least understands it's a more cultural thing.

Vance grinned as he made his way around the buffet, taking experimental sniffs.  "Man...you weren't kidding about this being better than what we've been getting.  I mean, I think the cooks on the Ranger do some damn fine work...but there's only so much you can manage with whatever fits in cold storage for a few months..."

He ended up with a smaller steak, cheese-stuffed potato, bacon, salad with Italian dressing, steamed broccoli, corn, fresh-baked roll with what seemed to be real butter...and a large slice of hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream starting to melt into it.

"This'll do for a start," he said as he sat down, with obvious anticipation on his face.  The last time he'd eaten something that hadn't been overly-processed-and-reconstituted had been a shoreleave that was so long ago he'd lost track of how much time they'd spent in space.  He wasted no time digging in with obvious gusto.

Subdued conversation slowly resumed around them...but eyes flashed back to them on a regular basis, and it wasn't hard to figure out that the group of pilots were the topic of everyone's conversation.

It wasn't until one of the younger officers got up the nerve to go say something to the cook that the conversation topic was clarified.  "Hey, Greenbean here was wondering if all the chatter about the aliens and their ships is true...they REALLY that much bigger than we are?  How are they to fly against?"

He shrugged, looking around the group, who all looked at both the cook and the officer who'd approached him with some combination of dismay and annoyance.  The cook was unfazed (the officer wasn't...already startled that the cook had burst out with what had apparently been intended as private speculation, he shrunk rapidly before the glares of his fellows.)  "I mean, most of us here been on lunar duty since before the aliens attacked.  They pretty much ignored us...they's always after somethin' down planetside or in orbit, so's we never saw 'em close-up like some of you must've...and God knows, there's more'n enough gossip contradictin' each other.  You been out there...give it to us straight..."

Cain paused looked at Hardy and shrugged...

Turning around in his seat he started, "...the 'Aliens', on rumor mind you... look just like us; except they are on average 50 to 60'ft tall.  Yeah, Giants.  None of us has personally seen them in the flesh... but too many anecdotal accounts by other soldiers on record seem to point to this.  But what really matters is they are extremely aggressive and for lack of better intel.. inexhaustible in numbers.  Casualties do not seem to matter to them. As for pilot skill.. I'd rate them all as veteran killers... not soliders..killers.  They make no attempt to protect their forces from casualties, have no medical units we can identify, and make no attempt to rescue their wounded.  They fight like a pack of piranha.. each only hungry for blood."

"As you can guess such colossal beings have colossal sized ships.  They average about a mile in length... with some reports measuring their command ships types, YES multiple command ships, being as long as maybe three miles long!  And again they seem to have an inexhaustible number of these titanic warships.  And they are ALL warships.. we have not encountered any real 'support' craft... the Aliens entire battle line are warships."

"As for their fighter craft, they have these walking battlepods with clusters of particle-beam cannons, that are well suited to Urban, Air and Space combat!  They come in a few variants - missile pods, recon birds and officers pods 'bigger and more guns'.  Clearly, they have been making these for a LONG time ~ and are VERY good at it!  I've also seen some semi-cone shaped fighter pods without legs that carry internal missile stores and particle beam weapons, but not many."

"The REAL problem is with THAT massive of a fighting force they Clearly have unfathomable resources to draw upon that frankly we'd need our whole planet's entire economy tooled to nothing but producing weapons and still they would outresource us.  We don't build mile long space warships En-Masse!  We cannot attack their war producing facilities as we have no idea where they are and likely they are not in Sol System anyways.  They clearly are not interested in our planet's resources... seeming only interested in killing us whenever we encounter them.  They have made no attempt nor do they reply to any attempt to communicate with them. So trying to 'force' them to stop attacking by hitting supply and logistics.. don't seem likely."

'Shrug', "It don't look good for a 'peaceful' resolution."

He sighed, "I'm telling you this cause I'm not going to candy coat it for you... we're in some deep shit here!  The reason they have not bothered you here on Luna is WE don't seem to matter to them.  They are here for something else... we just don't know what exactly that is."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:24, Thu 31 Dec 2020.

Vance coughed, a little uncomfortably.  "That's mostly true," he commented drily.  "Everything about the ship types, fighter craft, fighting style...pretty much dead on.  But they're closer to forty feet tall, by my best estimation...although there's no guarantee that the ones we saw weren't on the short end of the scale."  He squirmed a little bit, holding up a hand before anyone could start showering questions.

"It was for MAYBE a couple of seconds, at best, and we were bugging out before the hull breach we created caused secondary explosions...but a few of us DID see them.  Kinda blue-gray skinned, massive...but proportioned very much like us.  Don't know if that makes them more or less scary, considering what our own history has been like with regards to how wars have been fought."  He scowled for a moment.

"But they not only don't have medical personnel that we've been able to identify, they also apparently don't have any sort of repair facilities or know-how.  We've tangled with the same small task-force of ships a few times since their initial attack on Earth...and nothing that we blew up got repaired or replaced.  It's like their whole philosophy of war is built around disposables...up to and including personnel."  He frowned a little more, adding, "They're also not very adaptable.  We've been flying combat against them, of one sort or another, for months...a lot of the missions against the same ships, like I said...and they still fly the same formations and seem to follow the same protocols.  It's cost them a lot, because the longer we fly against them, the more we recognize those formations and flight patterns...but they don't seem to care.  I mean, they've always got more craft to throw into battle.  It's like they've been indoctrinated to fight war by active attrition...where we've gone defensive and engaged them on our terms, fighting hit-and-run engagements and striking where they aren't, they seem to have adapted to the concept of just bludgeoning away at any resistance until they break it down."

He glanced at Cain, then at the others. "I'm sure there's a bottom to the well they're pulling craft and personnel out of...but I don't know if we've got anywhere near enough rope to reach it.  Like Lt. Edwards said, there doesn't look to be much hope for any sort of peaceful resolution.  Right now, there's only a handful of them that seem to be at all interested in Earth, though...if we knew what brought them here in the first place, maybe we could figure out how to make them go away.  But we don't.  There's still a whole lotta guessing going on..."

Finally having the chance to speak up, Hanako points out calmly, "I managed a look inside one of their capital ships during an engagement.  They are huge, but hitting the reactor lit up the whole thing.  They may be numerous and large, but they are not indestructible."

With a tiny smile, she decides to try and cute things up and hopefully lighten the mood by miming an explosion with her hands, then making a poor attempt at miming fireworks, and saying "Dokaaa~n! Tamaya~"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:20, Wed 30 Dec 2020.

Cain nods to his friends.  Turning back to those listening, "Yeah, I join Echo Flight later in their deployment so.. I've not seen all they have, but Lt Hardy is correct.. they have nothing in a way of repair operations or technical teams they fight til it breaks, and they seem to stick to a standard attack plan... once you get use to it they are Easy to predict how they will attack."

"Which comes down to this... ship for ship WE CAN outfight them... and Echo Wing has been doing just that!  I'd weigh our skill and adaptability to their mass numbers 5 of them to 1 of ours anyday!  If your willing to put in the hard effort and try to let us get your flight crews up to the task... WE can indeed teach you what we've learned in fighting them! We're NOT dead yet! If they want to come to our Earth and try to take it.. then THEY are in for one HELL of a fight! We're not about to roll-over for them... we're gonna make them PAY for every kg of Earth the try to take with blood! THIS is OUR World.. and we're not gonna give it up without a Fight!"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:46, Wed 30 Dec 2020.

She had been staying out of the.. lack of OPSEC... but at the very Japanese mention on fireworks, she started to laugh.

She had a few rotations in Japan, herself and had Japanese friends when she was there.  An introduction to the proper cheering of fireworks was done for her.  A long time ago there were competing manufacturers, and the people would cheer them on, somewhat argumentatively.

"Kagiyaaaa!"  She answered Hanako, and burst into a full laugh.

The CO of the post, had he been there, would have been envious of the focused attention that his troops directed on the group of pilots, eyes wide as the front-liners laid down some hard data for them that had, thus far, only filtered through via rumor and in tantalizing dribbles of reports that only some of them had seen.  It became rapidly obvious that they could have told the group that the aliens were giant rabid bunnies and it would have been taken as gospel truth...

The young officer whose comments to the cook had triggered the whole discussion gave a wan smile as Hanako talked about blowing up an enemy ship like fireworks, and nodded.  "Not gonna lie...that was a lot more than I was expecting.  But I think I...and everyone...appreciates hearing it from people who've actually been there.  There's so many damned rumors flying around here that I've heard everything from the enemy ships being focused-energy projections that can't be damaged because they're basically holographic to Earth has already been overrun and the Powers That Be just don't want to tell us."  His smile took on a grim edge.

"It's good to hear that they can actually be beaten on some level.  Every time someone claims it happened, someone else says it never happened, but none of us have been out there to know.  Dim hope is better than no hope at all, right?"

Vance smiled grimly as he nodded agreement.  "Right now, whatever they're after must be on the SDF-1, because they're thick as flies on horse shit around her right now..."  Even as he said it, there was a doubtful gleam in his eye...considering what they'd just been lectured about, before the meal, it was impossible to know if any of the information regarding the existence of the SDF-1 had actually made it back here, yet...

But, he reasoned to himself, he hadn't been ordered to keep the ship's continued existence a secret...

The shocked looks on the faces around the mess hall made it apparent...news of the SDF-1's survival had not preceded them to the moon...or, at least, hadn't yet made it out of official channels and spread through the troops.

Bixby nudged Vance with an elbow to the ribs.  "Good thing that's not an official military secret...yet..." he said in a low mutter.

As if that were a cue, chaos erupted.  Everyone who wasn't shouting questions at the group of pilots was asking those questions of whomever was sitting next to them.  It was all but impossible to follow any individual's speech with all the noise...but enough individual words were decipherable to understand that everyone was demanding verification and information about what they'd seen.  The last anyone on the base had heard of the SDF-1, officially, was her mysterious disappearance and presumed destruction that had also turned Macross Island into a barely habitable sliver of its former self.

"So, now what, Fearless Leader?" Bixby asked, with a wry smirk.

As Vance mentions the SDF-1 still being around, Hanako lets out a long sigh.  "Haaaaaaa~h... now you have done it," she says quietly, resting her face in her left palm, just before the chaos erupts in the mess hall.  As the questions fly, she looks up at Vance with a slightly exasperated expression, knowing better than to make any accusations or snarky comments.  After all, those would just make things worse.  Instead, she waits for his answer to Bixby's question.

Kelly was delicately eating the very genuine pecan pie after polishing off steak and potatoes, leaving a plate that was quite clean (Much like Hanako's).  When the other female pilot expresses her dismay she nods to her, pausing to take a sip of water.

"This is not going to be pretty."