forum “ I think my lion's got issues” -Voltron redo
Started by @DancingWithMyDemons business
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@EldritchHorror-Davadio health_and_safety emoji_events

Romulus growled quietly, his frustration ramping up. The swarm was relentless.

"Eyros, go to auto-pilot and focus on your fire patterns. You can shoot them down quicker if you're less worried about juking them out." The blue lion pilot was an excellent pilot, but he tended to get distracted by the thrill of flying.

Romulus punched through the swarm, pulling even with the transport and leaving a shielded spot for Caleb to pull in behind him, very close to the transport. The green lion could probably stand on the hull if Caleb chose to.

He began focusing his fire in a widening cone, slowly clearing the area. He noted the red icon pulling its weight and smiled a little, before offering Codie some help.

"Codie, you copy? Ask your lion to turn on point defense, so you don't have to work so hard to shoot everything down. It'll auto-fire the weapons along its sides, so you can focus on what's in front of you." He softened a bit. "If you need help, holler at me, I can clear your tail."

He didn't pester Caleb, not wanting to interrupt the brilliant tech's train of thought.

@ScotchTapeWorm group

Caleb was absolutely ecstatic, the yellow lion was functioning exactly as he'd always imagined it would. Of course, he was confident in his designs and Romulus was an absolutely brilliant engineer, able to execute and innovate on instructions in masterful ways. But there was always that first thrill of seeing something you'd help make.. Actually work! The yellow lion was able to take hits that would have destroyed a lesser vehicle, and was dealing catastrophic damage to the enemies.

If there was one thing you could count on humans for, it was their love of turning thing that should not be weapons, into weapons. Anything that could be turned into something deadly was done. And humans seemed to have a particular fondness for kinetic weapons, an old favorite from swords to guns. Nothing beats an object going really, really fast. Caleb was still amazed they'd gotten a railgun to work so effectively, the navy back on earth had given up on them years ago, preferring less expensive and temperamental guns.

As Romulus cleared a path, Caleb stuck closely behind, letting Ione deal with any stragglers that managed to avoid the yellow lion. The green lion was much less heavy in both armor and firepower, but Caleb made up for it with speed and flexibility. Ione had less weight to carry and was maximized for speed as well as the more delicate, small maneuvers that a larger ship might struggle with. He kept one eye on the flashing lights that indicated the battle going on, his mind running it as a background task, while his conscious thoughts were focused on the issue at hand.

Caleb nudged Ione closer, practically pressed up against the side of the transport, which shielded the right side of the lion as an added bonus. The paladin began to tune out the noises of battle, even the coms, he hummed quietly, now that he was in range he was able to connect Ione directly to the ships systems. Flashing error signs popping up on his screen, just as quickly to disappear and be replaced with a different problem. The crew on the ship were panicking, worried by the loss of power, having most of the energy concentrated on life support, prioritizing keeping everyone alive. It'd slowed down their ship, letting the Galran crafts swarm them. By prioritizing life-support they'd almost doomed everyone aboard to death anyways. It was irrational. A better decision was to gather the crew in a main area that was smaller and easier to keep alive, and thus freeing up more energy to engines and shielding…

But that was in the past, now it was Caleb's job to fix it. He sent a few rapid messages to the people inside, telling them of his plan. He'd move the green lion near the bottom of the ship, and they'd have to send somebody outside to couple the ship to the lion, and from there Caleb could give them Ione's emergency power reserves, which would fix one of their issues. The white haired man was staring hard at all the screens around him, filling his vision and completely blocking his outside view of space. He was effectively out of the battle until he could find a way to remotely reboot the ships systems, without shutting down anything important. The schematic were an absolute mess! Someone hadn't been running routine programs to keep everything up to date, and upgrades had been made without prior notice. The ship also wasn't in the greatest shape, a few pictures he'd requested on some of the engine rooms showed rust and verdigris on the wiring and wall. It was an old ship, but able to haul massive amounts of raw resources with it, so it hadn't been updated, probably a bureaucratic issue. Red tape and economics. Caleb frowned slightly, trying to understand the jumble of numbers and figures.

The problem would keep him occupied until the transport sent someone out to link the ships, Caleb muted his com, the last noise being heard from him was a mumble, something about disorganized files?

@Anxietyfilledcinnamonroll group

Codie, on the other hand, was still shaken up. Getting swarmed by persistent aliens wasn't on the to-do list today, nor was it on the to-do list of any other days. In fact, getting overwhelmed by a bunch of little fleet ships made his anxiety swell. This was one of the reasons he was about to get honorably discharged at the age of 24— his onset of problems related to anxiety (Sorry if that wrong, I'm not too acquainted with military practices). But he couldn't let that shake him. He heard the voice of the yellow lion's paladin speak to him. Honestly, Rom's voice got a little grading, but he couldn't deny help. "Uh, yeah, I copy— I can try.." Codie stared at his lion's controls and pressed a button, begging his lion silently to turn on point defense. The lion obliged, doing what it did best, make Codie freak out. But it did its job effectivity, shooting the missiles in its line of sight, so Codie could semi-relax. He still thought he wasn't fit for this job. He couldn't be a good paladin. Codie place his head in his hands, feeling like a screw-up yet again. The lion jolted, throwing Codie's head back into the seat as if to say, 'focus and stop whining.' And that's what Codie did, he focused.

@EldritchHorror-Davadio health_and_safety emoji_events

Romulus took a deep breath as he checked the situational markers. His armor was at 70% and stable, Caleb had gone silent on coms, Eyros and Codie were both focusing better and working in tandem. Things would be ok as long as this continued.
He switched from the cone he'd been coring to a more single shot approach, gutting some of the bigger fighter ships. Some seemed to be seating two pilots, rather than one, and he focused on this. An fight slapped by a railgun round was dropped quickly, and Rom could see an end to the horde.
Eyros was moving and spinning and ducking, the blue lion a blur, and a lot of the fighters were trying to follow him and tag him. Codie was less mobile, but was definitely putting out more fire power, and their lions must have synched up, because every time the blue lion looked like it was about to be overwhelmed, it would pass close by the red lion, which would thin the herd considerably. It was a good strategy, and put the two paladins strengths to use.
Caleb seemed to be making progress, and was focusing hard, if his coms escape was anything to go by. Romulus glanced over, making eye contact with the green lion out his viewscreen. They were close enough for him to see the physical cables making a connection to the transport. Its shields were holding, but barely, flickering ominously now. Rom had full confidence in the quiet tech's ability to handle it though.

Things were going fine, and that set off his instincts. Things never went fine.

It was at that moment that a Galran light cruiser decloaked in the empty space behind them, dwarfing everything but the transport.

@ScotchTapeWorm group

Caleb had started lightly humming as he worked, his brain finally having switched him out of his normal mode of thinking and into a work flow that he was much more comfortable with. If it wasn't for the occasional noises he still overhead from the coms, it was likely the green lions paladin would have forgotten that he was involved in a battle entirely!

The interior of the transport wasn't as much of a mess as he'd initially feared and the crew was being wonderfully accommodating with getting the cables hooked up to Ione. Almost as if their lives depended on it, aha. Caleb shook his head, trying to avoid gallows humor, his step-mother had often scolded him for it as a child. But when one's life is in question it becomes all to easy to talk of nothing else, and even that needed some humor to lighten it.

He'd just succeeded in getting the transports lights to hesitantly turn on and had remotely instructed some of the still functioning maintenance machines to begin rewiring things in a more efficient way. The paperwork these poor people would have to do after the battle would be astounding, but a few fees for unauthorized repair and upkeep would be nothing compared to losing the whole shipment and the lives of the crew. Caleb had just received the go ahead that the two ships were connected, and now the riskiest part of the whole thing began.

While Ione was an incredibly advanced, complicated, and awe-inspiring creature made of metal, it was still mostly a computer. It only had so much processing power and right now Caleb was asking it to do something it wasn't made for, and miraculously, the feline could comply, but only slowly. The soft man had to manually disable his own shielding and finish up any tasks he had for the transport now, as he wouldn't be able to do anything, not even move for the next few minutes. Time being a precious commodity on a battle field, this was a very vulnerable position he was putting both himself and his lion into. But it had to be done.

Submitting the last few tasks for the crew and programs to run on the transport, Caleb finally allowed Ione to begin letting out its emergency power reserves, which were vast batteries that held energy Caleb still wasn't quite sure he'd grasped fully yet. But it seemed compatible with other vehicles for as soon as the process started, locking Caleb out of any piloting or otherwise important functions, the shields on the transport began to flicker more strongly. It was faint, but noticeable.

Letting out a breath of relief, Caleb leaned back in his chair, stretching out his arms and back, sore from the frantic, hunched over typing. The others seemed to be doing well! Mopping up remains of the scattered Galran fleet, they'd probably be able to return to base within the hour, if they were lucky-

A massive energy signature suddenly flashed on the screen and it took the paladin a moment to recognize it. His heart dropped into his stomach, already a pit of anxiety. A Galran light cruiser was bad news on a good day, especially not one that had the scattered reinforcements of the remaining crafts that the blue and red lion were clearing out. Caleb sunk lower into his seat, his chin pressed against his chest, unable to do anything but watch and listen.