Skipping Stones (UEF)

The quiet thrum of the kataphrakt coming to life filled the cockpit as the monitors flooded the place with a dim green light. Daniel glanced from screen to screen, his hands moving from button to button as he ran through the start-up procedure for his machine. The entire thing rumbled as it stood up, Daniel giving a tug at the somewhat uncomfortable neck-brace they wore for safety as part of their pilot suits, before keying the mic on his radio. "This is Settle. The kataphrakt's up and everything looks like it's running smoothly, waiting for further instructions." Daniel said in Japanese. He'd been here for a while now, over a year in fact. The moment he'd completed his training Daniel had done his best to get himself assigned somewhere as far from home as possible, and as it had turned out at the time, Japan had a few openings. Since then, he'd been taking language classes, learning how to talk to people you'd be working with on a daily basis was probably a good idea after all. He was still rusty, and he generally wasn't able to get things like subtlety or tact down with the language, but that generally wasn't something he used all that often anyways.



"I read you..." came the reply back from the crew chief. "Alright, we're going to have you run through a few basic movements. Walking around, activating your boosters, all that basic stuff. Try not to break it again, eh?" The man in-charge of keeping Daniel's kataphrakt in working order was on less than friendly terms with the young man, probably due to all the extra work that Daniel piled onto his desk from the extra, and probably unnecessary, strain he put on the machine during training. Daniel wasn't ever one to simply stand back and let someone else show him up, and he wasn't afraid to push his machine, even in training. This, of course, meant a lot maintenance work had to be done, and recently the whole thing seemed to have just broken down, with the ground crews having to almost tear the entire thing apart and put it back together with new parts, which was why Daniel was here, ever so kindly 'helping' the crew this early in the morning.
In combination with the start up of the war, well... It was a stressful situation to say the least.


"Yea, yea, I know the drill. Let's just hurry up and get this over with." Daniel responded back with a groan. He rolled his eyes in exasperation and boredom. He'd already been here for an hour while the ground crew had done some final touch ups, with another hour before everyone else on base was scheduled to wake up, and he was biting at the reigns to see this ordeal done with.



"Slow down now, we're going to need to take our time with this. Gotta make sure we installed all the new parts properly."



Daniel gave a bit of a scoff over the radio. "What, you saying you can't do your job right?"



"Hey! Watch it kid! We wouldn't be needing to do this if you didn't wreck your kataphrakt everytime you got in it! Now we can either draw this out and waste your entire morning, or we can just get this done. Which one would you prefer?" That got a reaction out of the crew chief.



"Alright, I get it, I get it, I'm sorry... Jeeze..." Daniel let out a sigh. This was going to be a long morning.



By the time he was done with it all, everyone else was up already and moving around. Daniel stifled a yawn as he stepped out of the hangar and into the morning sun, hoping to get out of his pilot suit and into more comfortable clothing, though he doubted he'd be able to. It really was a shock that, at least for the moment, things seemed almost peaceful here. Elsewhere around the world, the war was raging, and with nearly all lines of communication cut off, it was nearly impossible to say how well they were doing. However, if the battles raging out there were like anything going in in-country, they likely weren't doing all that well.

It was only a matter of time until they would be called into battle themselves, and right now the entire base was on a high-alert. It'd probably do him good to enjoy the quiet while he still could. With that in mind, he began to trudge over to the cafeteria himself, hoping that this tense peace could remain for just a few hours more.

He'd been lucky enough to reach the cafeteria just a little bit earlier than most other folks, and so he was quick to grab some food and take a seat off in the corner by himself. Food wasn't the best and it was a relatively small portion too, especially with rationing being put into place now that resupplies were going to be a lot more infrequent, if they would happen at all anymore. Looking around, he could see the tired or tense faces of his fellow soldiers. They hadn't even fought yet, and already the war was beginning to get to them. He shook his head, turning back down to his food and letting out a quiet, "Fuck..."