Gambit |
Summary: | Kai, Legacy, and Roubani discuss the upcoming strike. |
Date: | MD037 |
Related Logs: | Talking Strategy |
Players: |
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Ready Room
The lights in the ready room have been dimmed, and the projection screen is still rolled down from what's likely to have been a recent debriefing. It's empty however, save for the solitary dark-haired pilot quietly bustling about, retrieving a gun tape and shutting off the equipment. He's dressed in his duty blues, jacket buttoned and not a thread out of place.
Roubani timed this well. It's a quite a few minutes of silence in the ready room before he knocks and steps through the hatch, an official folder tucked under one arm. Like Kai he's in duty blues, having showered and changed after his most recent CAP. "Captain Marek, sir." He pauses a good distance away to salute.
Kai has the tape secreted away in a pocket of his jacket, and is just reaching for his clipboard and pen as Roubani steps to and salutes. "At ease, Ensign." He tucks the clipboard under one arm and closes the distance to roughly a few feet; not enough to invade personal space, but at least Roubani won't have to shout to be heard. "This looks official," he mentions, noting the folder.
"Yes, sir." Roubani folds his free hand behind his back. "Major Vendas had asked me for some ideas concerning the strike being planned. I had some notions for her that I've established are indeed feasible. She asked me to bring it to you and Captain Legacy for your approval before I submit anything official."
Kai raises a brow slightly, which is the only indication his curiosity's piqued. After a brief glance to his watch, he nods toward one of the desks at the back of the room. "All right. Show me what you've got. Should we bring in Captain Legacy for this?" He sniffs a little. Allergies? Regardless, he's already started moving.
"If she's available I would appreciate that, sir." Roubani steps back to let Kai pass, and follows him towards the desk. "I wasn't sure where she'd be at this hour."
It's not much, but it's probably what passes for a communal office where the air wing's command staff is concerned. Kai tosses the clipboard down atop a stack of papers that may or may not be his, and drags a chair closer with the toe of his boot. "Sit. Let's see whether she's free, and if not, I've been working on my falsetto." He quirks a smile, settles into the threadbare chair on the other side, and reaches for the wireless receiver.
Roubani cracks half a smile. As Kai reaches for the wireless he draws a nervous breath and exhales it silently, opening the folder and reviewing the first page of his typed words.
[Intercom] Kai says, "Captain Althea Legacy, report to the ready room."
Legacy has arrived.
The ready room's empty, having recently purged its complement of pilots headed out on CAP. Kai and Roubani are settled around a desk in the back, with what looks like official business in the form of a folder in front of the Ensign. The viper Captain is searching for a pen that works while they wait, having recently discovered that his customary one is dead.
Roubani is reading as they wait for Legacy, the first page in his folder gently tilted upward in his fingertips.
Legacy slips in, in uniform, reaching up to pull her hair back as she goes. Looks like someone just came right from a shower and into a clean uniform. As she steps in, one hand drops to her pants. Out comes a pen, which gets tossed in Kai's direction. "Captain, Ensign."
<FS3> Kai rolls Reactive: Good Success.
Thankfully, Kai's quick reflexes mean he doesn't get beaned in the head with said pen. No reason to give Legacy fuel for laughing at him. It's caught neatly, and a smile offered the woman. "Sorry to drag you out of your bath. Do you have a few minutes, Althea?" He's already moving to his feet, to fetch another chair for her.
Roubani stands up when Legacy comes in, saluting reflexively. "Captain Legacy. Good evening, sir."
Legacy dips her head to Roubani, eyes twinkling. "Spider, Cube. Of course I do, Captain. Otherwise I would have sent my regrets on an engraved invitation." With quiet thanks, she slides into the chair.
"Engraved? You know how to make a man feel special, Captain." Once she's seated, he reclaims his own chair, and indicates Roubani with a tip of his chin. "The Ensign has some ideas for us, regarding the upcoming strike exercise. I thought it might be prudent for us all to be in the same room, rather than making him track you down later." He eases back in his chair and readies his pen and clipboard. At least this one's not red.
Roubani lowers the salute. The pen's twisted between his hands as he sits back down, a nervous gesture even if his voice is calm as always. "Major Vendas asked me to meet with you both, Captain," he repeats the explanation he gave Kai, now to Legacy. "For approval or disapproval, before I went any further." He fishes copies of the top page out from under the small pile of papers, but doesn't yet slide them over.
She pulls a pad of paper from her pocket, a simple spiral notebook, and another pen appears as she settles in. "I'm looking forward to this," she tells them both with a soft smile. She's clearly impressed, already, with Roubani.
Kai's own, tinier smile, might be pride with his pilot or it might be any of a number of things. Either way, he's attentive, and fixes a pair of steady, bright blue eyes upon Roubani in expectation.
Roubani clears his throat quietly, looking down at the papers rather than them. "We have a numbers disadvantage, that Major Vendas described to me. The proposal would aid an ambush strategy. There are two parts. Part one concerns the vipers. Mark VII's are very sensitive to heat, but current DRADIS specifications can only detect heat generated by a body using 20 amps or more of power. A Mark VII flying on bare life support and without main thrusters can operate at around 15 amps. I've looked at the schematics of our Vipers and determined it is indeed possible to power up our Vipers to the 15 amp level and still have them suitable for an occupant. If powered down correctly, they can be powered back up to weapons-full in 3.8 seconds. We could calculate distance to the enemy to allow for one main thruster boost to start our squadron drifting, and power down so that by the time they're in range of the opponents' CAP, they would be undetectable. Then, by using a squadron timer, coordinate a power-up and, essentially, an ambush right under their noses." He turns the papers around now, sliding them over. "That's the technical details of part one."
Thea listens attentively, expression carefully neutral as she takes in the details. When the paper comes over, she glances down, considering it for a long moment. "Frakking brilliant," she murmurs. "We can do this with the Vipers, but the Raptors run hotter, if I'm not mistaken. Is there any way to account for that?"
Kai lets Althea do the talking for the time being, and settles easily into the role of observer. Once she's done her initial perusal of the papers, he slides them closer to himself and begins reading, while keeping half an ear on the conversation.
"Not that I know of, sir," Roubani answers. "I'm not as knowledgeable about Raptors, however. The deck chief or LSO may be able to say more definitely. Though then again the Raptors have FTL as I understand it, so they could simply jump into the fight once it was underway."
"It's…possible," Thea says, shaking her head as she looks at the page in front of her. Uncapping her pen, she makes a few quick notes, simple marks on the page. "The problem with FTL and jumping into the fight is that you can't see where you're jumping some of the time. In something like that, you'd be jumping in far enough out to be safe, then having to ferry in. It works, but…" She crinkles her nose, lifting a shoulder. "I wonder about the specs here," she says, sliding toward Roubani so that he can see what she's pointing at. "It MIGHT be possible to replace this here with a lower amp," and she goes on, in detail, rattling off specs with the loving tenderness of a mother with a child. Apparently, she doesn't simply know her birds, she KNOWS her birds.
Kai remains silent on the subject of the raptors for a few more moments, then ventures with a speculative look aimed at Legacy, "I agree, jumping in poses problems of its own. But if I'm not mistaken, the transponder on a viper at least, can be reconfigured with a differential signal sublayer." He fans his fingers out, pen still held between the index and middle, as if to illustrate. "Get engineering to solder on a delayed read data strobe signal generation circuit in one of the raptors, and you've got a way of masking the comm output and FTL signature. They'd never know you were there." He glances back to the papers. "Of course, it isn't particularly viable for each and every unit taking part in the assault, but for an advance scout or two.."
Roubani draws his folded hands back as Legacy gets closer to him. He draws his brows as he looks over the Raptor specs, listening to her details. "Yes, sir, that might work. The raptors would have a longer time powering up, I think, but the delay shouldn't be -too- much longer than the Vipers…" He looks up and over at Kai as the man talks, and taps his fingers on the table. "Captain Marek's dead right. That would work beautifully."
Legacy leans back in her chair, listening, nodding her head at salient points. A few more notes are made on her paper, and then she's smiling. "So, when do we start?"
Kai takes a few notes of his own. He writes with the left hand, odd for a stick jockey, though far from unheard of. Roubani's given a fleeting smile in between sentences, though he lets the young pilot answer for himself.
Roubani looks briefly struck by nervousness, until he clears his throat quietly. "I just need to submit officially to the Major, along with a working power down and power up sequence. She wanted to present it tomorrow. If it's accepted then every pilot participating would need to be trained on the sequences, and the Vipers given synchronised clocks since radio silence would have to be maintained." He slips out another paper and a copy, also sliding these to the Captains. "This is part two, as I mentioned. We had also discussed equipping the Raptors with ejectable beacons capable of emitting between the 8-13 wavelength of infrared. Properly calibrated, this mimicks a Viper's heat signature. Engineering would have to give a definite on whether they could install the right boards in the beacon so that our pilots could tell which signatures are decoys, but theirs couldn't. It may not be possible, but if it is it could be handy during the assault."
Thea considers the new set of specs, mulling them for a time, brows up slightly. "ALL of our pilots would need to know," she muses quietly, then glances across at Kai, a brow arched delicately. The first thing they teach in Captain's school is non-verbal communication.
Kai doesn't need Captain's school to decipher that raised brow from Legacy. He meets her gaze for a moment, gives an imperceptible nod, and returns his attention to the next set of papers. "The goal being to fool them into believing we have more vipers in the air than we actually do?" he confirms with Roubani.
"Yes, sir." Roubani replies, turning the pen around in his fingers as he looks between them. He hasn't been taught Captain Eyebrow Language yet.
Thea's lips twitch ever so slightly and she looks back to her sheet of paper, making a few more quick notes. She does that a lot - makes notes, that is.
"If they believe they're outnumbered, they won't attempt a stand-up fight," Kai muses, having paused in his own notetaking. Perhaps he expects Legacy to fill in the gaps for him. "They'll likely deploy the flak cannons, and mount a retreat. But, if we can keep their birds in the air and engaged, we buy time for our boarding team to get in and disable FTL. My wager is that we want them to believe they have the advantage."
Roubani simply nods to that, letting the Captains muddle through this part. Not a tactician, is the young flying physicist.
"It's likely, though, they're going to know what numbers we're fielding," she tells Kai, leaning back in her chair, pen tapping her lower lip slightly. "They'll have that information ahead of time. What do our chances look like for a…mmmm." There's a bit of silence as she considers. "Send in a few, with the beacons as the front runners, get them running, up and confused, then decoy them out?"
Kai listens as Legacy offers her piece, eyes on the papers in front of them for for a place to focus, than something in need of perusing again. "Yes, you have a point on both counts. I think this is a discussion we need to have with the CAG, herself." He pauses, then meets Roubani's gaze again. "I'd like you to present the information in section one, as the Major requested, but lets hold off on the rest until we can finalise some things with her and the rest of command." He shadows a glance to Legacy, as if to confirm.
Damnit. There goes Captainspeak again. Thea just looks at Kai for a time, lips quirking to the side slightly, then nods. "We'll meet with the CAG as soon as we can and see what we can get going," she tells Roubani, finally turning to him.
If it's possible for Karim to look mildly chastised, he achieves it in those few scant seconds. His eyes are lowered, brows beetling as he scribbles some notes down for himself. "Thank you, Ensign. Good work." That's it. Good work.
"Sir." Roubani doesn't sound like he expected anything more from Kai. He caps the pen and closes the folder. "May I be dismissed, Captains? I need to finalise some of these technical details."
"Actually, not quite yet," Thea says quietly, head cocking slightly to the left. She glances between the two men for a moment. "I never did get your callsign, Ensign. I've been calling you Cube since I didn't know the real thing. But what were you christened with?"
A smile tugs at one corner of Kai's mouth, and he continues writing as he speaks. "I think a couple of the pilots have been calling him Rubix." A pause. More scribbling. "It beats the frak out of Kissybear."
Roubani looks slightly embarassed. "I'm not altogether sure how a 'christening' works, sir," he says, sounding like he might be dreading finding out. "I suppose Rubix has come to be unofficial."
Thea just gives Kai one of Those looks, lips pursed slightly, then she turns back to Roubani and nods, slowly. "If the other pilots ask you to go for a swim, run," she tells him, looking solemn.
Kai says noooothing. Maybe he didn't even catch that look. He continues with his summary of their meeting.
Something flickers across Roubani's expression that might be nausea. "Yes, sir." His hands fold in a very formal posture.
Legacy studies the poor Ensign for a long moment, then glances over to Kai. It looks like he's busy, so she kicks him under the table. Perhaps not lightly.
What is it with people kicking poor Kai? He grunts softly and tosses his pen down, with a stern look tossed Althea's way. "Dismissed, Ensign," he addresses Roubani crisply.
Roubani clears his throat and stands, gathering up his things. "Yes, sir." Terse reply repeated, he gives proper salute before turning away and for the door.
Thea returns the salute, but doesn't stand. She remains where she is, relaxed.
Kai also returns Roubani's salute, then fetches his pen again to finish off the sentence he was nearing the end of. There isn't a word from him as the Ensign steps out.