Love/Hate

Inside of the dark, closed space he felt calm. Surrounded. Safe. A dim portion of some old part of his mind threw out fears of being stuck here, unable to leave. Trapped and dying.

But as the first of the instrument lights switched on those thoughts were banished for the emotion to come.

It was the pulse of the engines mounted to his back that, even under his pilotsuit, gave him goosebumps and set a tingle along his spine. Blind to the world in this instant, but brimming with enough power to defend it.

The monitors click from bios to full feed, and he can see the interior of the hangar. As his eyes scan, the hud reads the movements and cameras track, giving him enlarged views and datareads. 20mm shells linked together getting fed into his secondary ammo hopper, a gout of steam complete with chemical readouts, the old man shouting at a wrenchturner who had gotten underfoot.