PA59

 "They wouldn't have had any. Kid, when you're in control of a big army made of robots, you don't let there be multiple copies of the machine you use to give them orders. If you have to have one, and Atlas did, then you keep it in the safest place you can. Theirs is back in Atlas, but this booster is here – on General Ironwood's flagship."

"The last place they expected someone to take," Jaune filled in. The command bunker of sorts. If this fell, Atlas probably assumed the battle was already over, and most of the Paladins destroyed in the defence. "The safest place," he sighed. "Coincidentally the best place to keep an important prisoner too."

"Pretty much. Anyway, we need to come up with a different plan if we want to have any chance of surviving this-"

Roman's words were cut off by a loud explosion. It rocked the ship and knocked Jaune from his feet. It didn't sound like they were under attack, though. It felt more like they had fired their weapons.

"Neo!" Roman howled, turning to the girl. She stood by a different machine, and behind her – through the windows – he could still see the dust from the ship's canons. "What on Remnant are you shooting at?"

She shrugged and jerked a thumb behind her.

Jaune's mouth fell open.

"Great. Just fantastic," Roman sighed. "That's a dragon. I've officially seen everything. Now all we need is a magical school girl and we've got the whole range of messed up shit to deal with." He stormed over to a seat and sat down, pushing a few buttons. "I'm guessing you want us to open fire on that thing?"

[...]

"Keep shooting!" Jaune yelled, suiting action to words as he blasted cannons at the monstrous creature. It was so large that it felt almost impossible to miss, but several shots exploded on the Grimm saturating the air long before they reached it. Anything they could do to thin the horde would be good, but it looked like that dragon could spawn more. The explosions that raked its scaly hide did little. "We need bigger guns!"

"I'm trying my best," Roman said. He leapt out of his seat and rushed to another. "These damn things aren't exactly labelled. I don't know which is which. Neo, any luck?"

The pink-haired girl shook her head. She pushed some buttons but gave up with a huff, pushing down on the console and flipping herself over the back of the chair. She jumped on top of the one next to her, but seemed displeased with that too and moved on.

The battleship was made to be piloted by more people. The three of them couldn't run this, even if they knew where the main weapons were. A ship this size had to have larger weapons… some kind of artillery or missiles, surely!

[...]

"We still need to take it down. If it wants to sit still and make our job easier, more power to it. Neo, get on those guns again. Quantity has a quality of its own. If you pour enough dust into something, it'll die eventually."

Jaune waved a hand as Neo nodded and rushed off to comply.

[...]

"Cinder's there," he screamed.

"Great," Roman replied. "More reason to bathe the whole damn thing in fire. Neo, try and topple the whole damn tower if you can. Let's see if she can survive that." Roman sounded like he wasn't quite sure she wouldn't. "Just in case, we'll drop some bombs on it afterwards."