Hangar Jannah: Entracte
"Avoir de la gravité était le problème, cette fois." L'indigène colonial a répondu presque de façon ovine, brossant ce qui était sous son nez avec le poignet de sa manche. Une autre tache sur ses vêtements de travail, mais ce n'était pas la première. Elle était plus préoccupée par le fait qu'elle avait oublié de l'essuyer la première fois. Ça aurait pu être un problème si Joan n'avait pas rempli les blancs elle-même. Elle a serré l'aumônier un peu plus fort, lâchant légèrement pendant que Yatogami partait. "Lâche une clé en pensant qu'elle flotterait. Ça ne marche que quand on est à zéro g, ça s'avère. Newton peut me remercier pour l'examen par les pairs plus tard. »
"Tu te sens bien?" La question, si proche de la première qu'elle était presque une répétition, était accompagnée d'une attention décontractée aux cheveux de son amie. L'une de ses mains s'est libérée du câlin jugé nécessaire par son entraînement intensif sur le tas-esprit-boosting-pour corriger quelques morceaux manifestement errants de cheveux d'albâtre qu'elle a repérés. "Et ne me cogne pas, père, Jack me donnera un coup de pouce pour que je puisse te gronder au niveau des yeux."
"Reculez-moi, vieil homme."
Name: Sasha C. Mackenzie
Age: 23
Gender: Female
???: Y
Skills: In a way, Sasha’s skillset was bound to lead her to working with HFVs. She had an interest in robotics from an early age, and excelled at video games. Specific ones, admittedly, but they played a key role. Both lead her to excel first as a pilot and later as a technician on the very machines she piloted. Put her next to an HFV and Sasha could tell you exactly what was wrong with it, and more likely than not, how to fix it. Those fields by far are her best, but Sasha is a passable academic in most STEM fields. Liberal arts tend to be a much weaker area, given that she never saw them as applicable in her life, but she has a passable grasp.
Given her line of work, she has a decent level of athleticism and excellent hand-eye coordination. She might not act it all the time, but Sasha is very quick on her feet and swift to learn. Additionally she has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of mecha both real and fictional. Not everyone would call it a skill. Sasha would.
Appearance: Fairly short, at 5’4”, Sasha nevertheless manages to a tiny little ball of energy. Whether it’s due to the caffeine intake that seems to be a familial trait or her own natural enthusiasm no one will ever know. Her blonde hair is usually kept pulled back into a pony-tail while she’s on duty, since hair getting caught in the machinery never goes well, and more often than not there are grease stains on her skin. Said skin, be it because of her heritage or living in a colony, tends to be paler than most people’s. Sasha is actually quite good-looking, if she bothers to dress up, but she usually prefers her uniform. If that, given how often she casts aside the uniform’s outerwear to avoid getting grease on it when working.
Personality: Enthusiastic, in a word. At least when it comes to her job. Sasha is friendly enough overall, but show her an HFV she has never seen and you won’t get her to shut up. At all. She doesn’t always seem like the brightest star in the sky but her first impression can be deceiving. The extent of her mecha fangirl status can be shocking at first, given the enthusiasm with which she talks about humanoid machines both fictional and nonfictional, but her knowledge of HFVs is invaluable when it comes to restoring, maintaining, or designing them.
What most people don’t see so much of is her ability to be shockingly hot-blooded. If she has chosen to take a task seriously she will persevere through anything to accomplish it, with evident intensity. This serves her well on the battlefield, even if her demeanor might seem a bit eccentric, but it can make her very reluctant to flee and just as easy to anger if you harm someone she cares about. Despite her enthusiasm she takes every battlefield seriously, in her own way.
History: Gerspenritter, like most colonies on and around Mars, is almost entirely run by a private entity. A valid member of the UN like any other it is nonetheless the site of X (Pronounced “Cross”) Corp’s primary headquarters and R&D facilities. A significant portion of the population works, in some fashion, for the company while the rest of the community grew around these workers. Gerspenritter is something of a paradise for scientists and engineers, with its constant development and innovation. X Corp has been a leader in robotics since the dawn of the Solar Age, and Gerspenritter was one of the earlier colonies; the earliest have been in use for more than a hundred years, but Gerspenritter has been around for a modest eighty six years. The colony has always been on the cutting edge of modern technology, both in its publicly funded and available projects as well as X Corp’s developments. Though they (both the colony and the corporation) have stumbled a few times they have always recovered.
This is the colony where Sasha C. Mackenzie, daughter of a X Corp roboticist and an independent computer scientist, was born. There Mackenzie family home was something of a mess most of the time, with components, computers, and blueprints scattered across any available surface and a coffee maker constantly providing a steady flow of caffeine. Both parents were happy to share their skills with their daughter, and Sasha as a result had a knowledge of technology from a very young age. As interesting as she found it all, it was her father’s work on HFVs that truly fascinated her. The young girl had been raised on mecha, and been surrounded with the evidence of their reality from the day she was born. X Corp manufactured high-end HFVs, fulfilling contracts both for government armed forces and Gerspenritter’s own security forces and the entire colony reflected the theme.
So it wasn’t really a surprise when Solar Age”, an exceedingly popular HFV-simulator franchise, caught like wild-fire. The original, the eponymous Solar Age, was a sleeper hit famous for being developed from real military HFV simulators. The game required a specialized controller, but it was renowned for its accuracy. The third installment, “Solar Age: Last Judgement”, was the most dedicated. It could only be played using a full sized simulator, and was most commonly played at local arcades or in tournaments that might encompass players from dozens of colonies. Sasha had no way of knowing that it would lead to her future career, but she played Last Judgement as often as she could. And she was good. When competitive play of the game began in earnest, Sasha was at just the right age to get in on the ground floor. Just barely, actually. The very first official tournament that she entered required her to lie about her age (fourteen, a week and a half shy of fifteen) on the official registration form. To try and make sure that no one caught the deception she attended in a full costume reminiscent of those from her favorite TV shows, complete with a full face mask. She didn’t expect to make it past the first round, let alone place, but little Sasha Mackenzie took second place in the tournament.
She built something of a reputation, too. The mask had stood out, and so she kept wearing it at tournaments even though she had no need to hide her identity. It was a gimmick, now, something that set her apart. As though her rankings in Last Judgement didn’t do that already. Without anything to call her, given her intentional anonymity, the Last Judgement competitive circles took to calling her what she was; a Rising Star. And others had taken notice, too. Due to its accuracy some organizations had taken to using the Last Judgement competitive scene to try and find pilot candidates, a way to supplement those they found through traditional armed forces recruitment. And X Corp wanted to offer Sasha a job.
At the age of seventeen Sasha began working as a test pilot for X Corp, putting the very machines her father helped work on through their paces. X Corp, in addition to her salary, paid for her to take the courses necessary to be licensed as an HFV technician. Within a few years she was helping to maintain, modify, and engineer the machines she piloted. This set of skills was why she was eventually let in on X Corp’s next generation Project Paper Tiger. It was well known that the Ozzies were failing, but X Corp still needed to sell HFVs. And in order to sell the most HFVs, it needed to make the best presentation.
And that was where Paper Tiger came in. But the project needed combat data. Real combat data. So after some discussion, the completed prototypes were loaned to the Ozzies with the pilots and technicians to use them. The Ozzies got a bump to their waning fighting force, and X Corp got a way to gather combat data. But of course, X Corp still needed to protect its interests. Only its own technicians would work on the HFVs, and only its own pilots would fly them. In order to guard against industrial espionage, the pilots couldn’t make themselves well known…
Which is why Sasha C. Mackenzie is on board as the XC|PT-001’s technician, and the champion Rising Star is out of retirement with a vocal modulator to help the masquerade.



>*******
>Enter


Project Paper Tiger, as it is called, is X Corp’s way to ensure a large clientele for the next generation of HFV. Truthfully, it is a love letter from designer  to the inspiration of his childhood. The project’s ultimate goal is a design decried by most as a strategic and engineering impossibility for cited reasons such as power demand, structural instability, and difficulty in material tolerances. Whether the XC|PT’s intended function will have true battlefield usefulness has yet to be determined, but combat data from 001, 002, and 004 is expected by .
Regardless the XC|PT series will boast high-performance, purpose-built HFVs for the modern era. Each one is a unit meant to operate in coordination with other units, be they from Project Paper Tiger or more traditional units, and perform exceptionally well as a combat demonstration. The XC|PT series is not currently intended for mass production, but is on track to showcase X Corp’s engineering capabilities at a demonstration in the year 115.
The XC|PT series draws upon the design aesthetics of its X Corp predecessors, such as the concept model XC|RX series and the highly successful XC|RG mass production line. X Corp models tend to perform best in space and low-gravity environments, with efficient, highly refined designs. Mass production models tend to be highly customizable with exceptional pricing, keeping X Corp with a steady demand for its machines even when other companies pull ahead technologically.
Project Paper Tiger will ensure X Corp’s fame and profitability for many years in the future upon completion. Mass production versions of XC|PT units pending consideration after combat trials with the  OSDT team.




Model: XC|PT-001 G-Valkyrie
Specialty: Prototype-Run Rapid Assault HFV
History: The G-Valkyrie, as Sasha has dubbed it, is the first unit in Project Paper Tiger. Designed based upon the last generation of transformable HFVs, X Corp’s limited production run of XC|WR units, the G-Valkyrie is the lead unit in the project. It is designed for high-speed and high-maneuverability combat, with alternate Waverider configuration for greater maneuverability and decreased visual presence. The Waverider was a happy side effect realized early in the design phase, one that made a Waverider possible with only minimal alteration to the transformable frame intended for .
Though design of the G-Valkyrie, officially known only as “XC|PT-001”, had begun before Sasha was brought onto the project she had a hand in its refinement. Given her status as its pilot, and her knowledge of HFV engineering, she worked closely with Project Paper Tiger’s engineers to tweak the G-Valkyrie (a name of her own choosing, adopted slowly by the project’s staff) into a machine she felt she could use more effectively. Given the nature of a transformable unit’s armor, it was Sasha’s decision to emphasize speed and offensive power over defensive ability reasoning that “they can’t hurt me if they can’t hit me before they’re shot down”.
Appearance: At 22m tall the G-Valkyrie is slightly above average for an HFV’s height, it is nonetheless significantly more lithe than most HFVs. Like most X Corp designs the G-Valkyrie is angular rather than smooth, and lanky rather than bulky. It nevertheless manages to exude an aura of grace, and of raw power. The legs are long and almost seamless in appearance, one pane of armor transitioning gracefully into the next with thrusters adorning its limbs. Its torso is less clean, with clear signs of how it was intended to transform, but nonetheless manages an angular, elegant cockpit region. The shoulders are given additional bulk by the thruster assemblies attached, while the arms themselves are largely simple with the left mounting the shield. The unit’s cranial assembly is defined by v-crests angling back from its top, above a protruding forehead and emerald visor.
The G-Valkyrie is colored white and blue, primarily, the two colors also most apparent in Waverider form. The shield becomes the nose assembly, while the rest of the G-valkyrie compresses into a narrow arrow-like formation. The Waverider manages a maximum rocket thrust output of 240000kg, while the HFV form manages 112600kg. The G-Valkyrie has a standard weight of 28.7 tons, and a maximum weight of 62.3 tons.
Equipment:

Transformable Frame: The G-Valkyrie is capable of converting from an HFV form to a Waverider and back again, the process taking approximately 0.5 seconds. This process can be undertaken, hypothetically, at any time but becomes difficult if not impossible if one form or the other is damaged. The Waverider is the only stopping point, currently, but additional portions of the frame seem to indicate its future use in another configuration.
Special Comm Systems - Not a remarkable feature, but still one worth mentioning, the G-Valkyrie has a specialized communication system to allow for further encrypted communication with other HFVs from the XC|PT series. In addition to encrypted communication, the system allows for ease in transferring data between units as well as GPS position relaying.

Armaments:

Shield x1 (Left Arm)
80mm Vulcans x2 (Side-mounted in Waverider, torso-mounted in HFV)
Jawaid and Jawaid Split Missiles x16 (Shoulder mounted, x8 per shoulder unit, each missile subdivides into three micromissiles halfway to target)
X Corp Beam Shot Launcher w/ Heat Spike Tip x1 (Handheld, side-mounted in Waverider)
Beam Sabers x2 (Hips)
Heat Blades x2 (Foot Mounted)

Weaknesses: First and foremost, the G-Valkyrie’s primary piece of specialized equipment is completely useless under Earth gravity. The Waverider cannot generate sufficient lift due to its shape to remain airborne under Earth or Earth-like conditions. For this reason transformation is senseless under these conditions, relegating the G-Valkyrie to the role of a high-performance ground-based machine. The G-Valkyrie, additionally, runs the risk of being stuck in one configuration or the other if damage renders its transformable frame inoperable.
When considering its design as a whole, the G-Valkyrie is highly maneuverable with a high level of firepower. Especially for its weight. The tradeoff for this, and its transformable frame however lays with its armor. The G-Valkyrie sacrifices significant armor for the sake of agility, speed and transformation. This means that its survivability depends less upon enduring a shot than it is not taking one in the first place. Though its shield somewhat mitigates this, said shield does not exactly have a very large surface area. Additionally, the G-Valkyrie must be in HFV form to fire its missiles.


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See relevant file.