BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Player Boards => Fan Fiction => Topic started by: Dubble_g on 05 February 2018, 07:16:23
-
Couple of things I wanted to try: Writing in first person, writing about a mercenary unit, writing about aerotech, indulging in world-building.
* * *
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.
- from Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries, A.E. Housman
EPISODE 1-1: In which we meet our “heroes”
Reina? Reina Paradis? Hard Reina, the Amazon Ace, Poison Paradis, the Lightning Shrike?
Nope, never heard of her.
Hah. Kidding. Yeah, ‘course I know her. She and I go way back.
The first day I met her? Sure I remember it, clear as vodka.
This was back when I was with the Aerospace Combat Expert Solutions Group, what a name, ACES for short. Ain’t that cute? Wing Commander Edwards’ idea. He wasn’t half as clever as he thought—can you tell?
We had 64 fighters in the ACES in four squadrons of 16, and every single squadron had that kind of acronymified name: I was in the Recon Intercept and Patrol (RIP, callsign Ripper) squadron, and the others were the Ground Attack and Strike (GAS, Gasman), Tactical Escort and Defence (TED, Teddy) and Bombing OperationS (BOS, Boss) squadrons.
Mercenary air wings are uncommon but not unheard-of. Less glamorous than the robo-Kaiju fellas, so negotiations were harder, contracts thinner.
Turnover was pretty high: Some got their asses blown off, some upped and quit, and then at the end of the year Edwards would terminate the contracts of the six pilots with the lowest KD. That’s short for kudos, the ACES internal evaluation system. Shoot other guys down, blow up tanks, get valuable intel and your KDs went up; get your plane shot—either up or even worse, down—and your KDs went negative. Go too low and you got the sack, and the rest of us got motivated to do better. Not like we owned the machines we flew, so there wasn’t much you could do about it.
Unless your name was Reina Paradis, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, that’s why we nicknamed the lounge the Revolving Restaurant. New faces were nothing new, in other words.
So this was on Poulsbo. It’s easy to find on the star maps: Just put your finger on the Marik-Steiner border and follow it down, all the way right down ‘til it ain’t the Marik-Steiner border no more. Janos and Katrina had been butting heads over the world since forever.
It’s a hard world to occupy. Poulsbo has no permanent land, just a bunch of archipelagos made of floating coral. Towns, cities and airfields are built on these kind of Brobdingnagian lily pads, the whole geography of the planet shifting with the currents and tides.
The Elsies held some, we had some, and nobody cared enough to bring in enough firepower to change that. Any move by either side was going to require some serious air cover if it didn’t want to get its boats or air transports shot out from under it with nothing but ocean on every horizon.
Which is why we were in the tropical heat of the prefab plastic building where we’d set up the latest iteration of the Revolving Restaurant, knocking back a batch of Double Tap—our homebrewed moonshine. Two shots were usually enough to put you down, hence the name. I think I was on my fourth or fifth.
I was Flight Lieutenant in those days, and my flight was one short after Blue Max went down over Tinseltown. So around the table it was just me, Manny and Groucho. Well, Manny was more under the table than around it by then.
“Groucho” was Nyesha something-or-other, never learned her family name, originally from some Jamaican-Polish-Chinese family on Orloff. A fine gunner and an even finer drinker.
Manny’s real name was Jim Miller, which is about as dull a name as you can get in the 31st century, so everyone called him Manny. During one particularly spectacular bender involving distilled Arboris tree bark extract (tastes as bad as it sounds, has a kick twice as bad) he’d professed an attraction to the Rubenesque figures of a Terran sea mammal called the Manatee, and his nickname was born.
The squadron had tried ribbing him by leaving hardcopy printouts of manatees in alluring poses in his locker, in his quarters, the notice board, even in his fighter, but he’d taken to the moniker like a man possessed. I’ll say this for him: next to the endless logos of devils and hawks and jaguars on everyone’s planes, the pink manatee painted beneath his cockpit was original, if nothing else.
So, back to Reina. We’d heard she was coming, even had time to look her up on the feeds, just didn’t know when she’d be showing.
And then the door slides open just as Groucho and I were clinking glasses to the memory of dear, departed Max, and boom, there she was, together with Wing Commander Edwards. Two very fuzzy shadows standing in the doorway, halogen sun burning from right behind them.
“Guys, I’d like you to meet Reina Paradis.” Edwards pronounced it ‘Paradise’ (it’s ‘Paradee,’ and if you really want to show off, roll the R). “Let’s give her a big, ACES welcome.” Clap, clap, clap went his hands. Reina stepped inside and out of the sunlight, giving us our first good look at her.
I don’t really need to describe her to you, do I? French-Japanese, skin like silk, cheekbones sharp enough to break your heart on. We’d seen pics and holos in her file, but lordy lordy, that was like the difference between reading about a PPC and having one shot right at you. To us, even through the Double Tap fog it was like she’d stepped straight out of a recruiting holo-vid, like a Greek goddess of war alighting from her chariot.
There was uncomfortable silence for about five seconds while me and Groucho just kind of looked at her, looked at each other, with this you-seeing-what-I’m-seeing look. Edwards still clap-clapping away with increasing desperation.
I’ve heard marines, infantry or BattleMech units give new recruits a hard time until they settle in, prove themselves and ‘earn’ their spot on the team. Not so with the ACES. Our tactical unit is the section, that’s you and precisely one other guy. You rely on your wingman to watch your six, so you’d better be best buddies with them, or they’re likely to figure that helping you doesn’t help their KD any. So, there was none of that cold-shoulder BS when Reina showed.
I stood up on the first try, something of a miracle, and extended my hand to Reina. I’m not a big guy, 175, so there was definitely some neck deflection required in order to keep her face in my sights. She shook it hesitantly, a what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into look plain on that pretty face of hers.
“Aric Glass,” I said. “Welcome to RIP Squadron.”
“Reina Paradis. The what squadron?”
“Splendid, splendid,” Edwards interrupted. “Show Flight Sergeant Paradise around, if you’d be so kind Flight Lieutenant Glass. Orientation and initial briefing at 0700 tomorrow, but until then your time’s your own. Hope you get settled in quick.”
And then he beat a hasty retreat, mostly in case she tried to back out, I think.
“Right you are, Wing Commander,” I told his back, then turned to Reina. “First things first: time to meet your wingmen.” I jerked a thumb towards the table. “The Zulu gymnast with the Mohican is Groucho.”
Groucho gave a slide-flick wave, like someone trying to change a holovid channel.
“Groucho?”
“We had a mustache-growing contest a while back and she showed up with this big fuzzy caterpillar thing stuck to her lip, so yeah, Groucho. Terran pre-Exodus comedy thing, 2D.” I shrugged, then added: “She won the contest.”
“Impressive.”
“You have no idea. And the misshapen lump under the table is Manny. Say hello, Manny.”
Groucho kicked him and Manny’s befuddled head jerked up, promptly smacking into the underside of the table. He looked at it accusingly, then at me, then at Reina. “Hello Manny,” he said, waving vaguely with one hand and rubbing the crown of his head with the other.
Reina looked at me sidelong. “Manny. Do I even want to ask?”
“Well, um, huh. How to put this? He wants to sleep with a species of fat sea-cow.”
“Don’t listen to this idiot,” grinned Manny ethylly. “He’s full of it.”
“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.”
“Right on, sister.” Manny nodded sagely. “You and I both know the manatee isn’t fat at all: It’s a creature of rare and curvy beauty.”
To illustrate, I pointed to the latest hardcopy tacked on our notice board: A fine, torpedo-like specimen digitally altered to appear in a fetching pink bikini.
Reina was silent a moment. Looked at the board, me, then back down at Manny. “Right on, brother,” she deadpanned.
Manny nodded again, reassured, then dropped back to the floor and began snoring.
“Well, now you know us,” I said. “What do we call you?”
“How about Reina? It’s, you know. My name.”
“Reina, Reina, Reina,” I shook my head. “I sense you are not quite getting to grips with the way we do things here. We are going to do many things together. Some of them will be violent and dangerous. Some of them, as you’ve noticed, will be drunken and disorderly. If we’re very lucky, a few will even be drunken and dangerous. But the one thing we are never, ever going to do is call you by your real name.”
“I don’t really have a nickname. What about you?”
“Call me Sunny.”
“Oh?”
“On account of my sunny demeanor.” Groucho snorted, but I gave her a warning look that shut her up.
“Well then, call me Rain.”
“Sunny and Rain, I like it. Rain it is,” I beamed at her. “So, you’ve seen the lounge, what else can I show you? The bunks, maybe, or else the birds?”
“Edwards already showed me the quarters,” she said. “I take it the ‘birds’ means the fighters, or is somebody into orniphilia?”
“For me to know and you to find out,” I said with a wink, and led her through the lounge and down the tunnel towards the hangar, talking as we went. “We’ve got our own lingo here, but you’ll pick it up quickly. There’s ‘rolling’ someone, which is, ah, okay, that’s a sex thing. Anyway. There’s ‘yawing’ which is when your legs, wait, sorry, sex again. Never mind. Okay, I got one: Bunting. That’s…”
“A sex thing?”
“See, you’re practically one of us already. Ah here we are,” I stopped as we entered the low, reinforced ferrocrete hangar, the four aerospace fighters of my flight drawn up like sharks. You know? Flying sharks, with lasers attached to their heads.
“Rain,” I said grandly, lifting an arm with a theatrical sweep, “Allow me to introduce you to the Imstar Aerospace F-10, the Cheetah to her friends. GM250 under the hood gives you 9Gs under your ass, and do not listen to nay-sayers who claim it can’t fly in anything thicker than your BO. Dives faster than a soccer player in the penalty box, climbs like a monkey on amphetamines, turns on you faster than a Lyran uncle. Outruns anything that isn’t a Thrush, and the Sunflashes in each wing ensure you don’t have to. Has Seydlitz fighters for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Reina wasn’t really following the pitch, just looking at me kind of funny. “I know the specs on the F-10,” she said finally. Then, real casual: “Nice tat.”
That sobered me up pretty fast. I put my arm down. Thanks to the Double Tap I hadn’t been careful about showing her the ink on the inside of my upper arm. I said something noncommittal, I think.
“The others know?” she asked me.
“They have the sense not to ask.” I told her. “We’re all here for a reason. Isn’t that right, Reina … Paradis?”
She caught my emphasis on the surname, and was smart enough to know what it meant.
“Fair enough.” She stood a moment, lips pursed in thought, then gave a little shrug to herself. “Got any of that moonshine left, sir? Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“You betcha.” I was in love already. “You know Rain, I have the feeling we’re going to get along just fine.”
-
Intrigued, subscribe, newsletter, etc.
-
Great start.
I liked the write up of the Cheetah, it made me want to go out and shoot one down. ;)
-
NARC podded.
-
Hey! The gang's all here. Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone. @Snakespinner Don't you dare. @Kidd: AAAAAGH! Get it off me!
* * *
EPISODE 1-2: In which Reina learns how they do things
Edwards was busting my balls right from the get-go of the briefing.
“Optics on the last sortie were sub-optimal, Flight Lieutenant Glass.”
He meant it looked bad when Blue Max’s F-10 plowed straight into the roof of a school in the middle of Tinseltown at Mach Quite A Lot.
Luckily, it had been a weekend; the kids were reportedly ecstatic.
Edwards talked like that all the time. He had inherited the ACES from his daddy, and probably had spent less than 100 hours in the cockpit of anything, much less a fighter in combat.
Didn’t stop him from trying to tell everyone how to fly. He was the worst kind of micromanager. Which is why, for example, he was leading the briefing instead of the RIP Squadron Leader, Hans “Hanzo” Okoye, who was half-napping in a chair at the front of the room.
“KD for your whole flight is trending negative, Glass. Going forward, you need a recovery plan to raise throughput—”
It was pushing forty degrees C in the briefing room and I was sweating even with my flight suit unzipped to the waist. The lights were off while Edwards ran the laser pointer over some slides up on the screen. The dark, the drowsy heat and Edwards’ buzzword droning were conspiring to put me under. Hell of a way to introduce our new member to the wing; I glanced over at Reina and was suddenly aware of all the things sweat does to the female figure. Cured me of sleepiness, that’s for sure.
I’d have felt worse if I hadn’t noticed her eyes were focused on the base of my throat. She looked up, I rolled my eyes for her benefit, then looked back at Hanzo.
“You want us to shoot more stuff down, is that it?” I asked him. That was the way we did things around here: Blowing stuff up was the fastest way to raise your KD.
Hanzo stifled a yawn, stood and patted Edwards on the shoulder. “Great briefing sir, as always. Completely concur with your assessment.” Edwards beamed at the compliment. “Now that you’ve given us the satellite view, perhaps I can drill down to the details?” Gotta admit, Hanzo spoke Edwardian Bafflegab way better than me; that’s why he was Squadron Leader and I was just a lowly Flight Lieutenant. Edwards waved regally to Hanzo and took a seat.
I mouthed a “T-h-a-n-k y-o-u” to Hanzo.
Hanzo grinned, then changed the slide to a map of the gigapads in the northern hemisphere. “As you guessed Sunny, we want you to make a fighter sweep for us. Ripper 12 reports the Elsies have stepped up naval and air patrols near the Seurat, Signac and Angrand gigapads as well as the Dire Straight. All three pads are within striking range of Agglutination. Question is, what is it that they don’t want us to see?”
Agglutination was one of the biggest pads on Poulsbo, measuring a couple hundred kilometers from tip to tip. It was also a center for biofuel refining. Without that juice for our engines, the amount of flying we could do would be cut way, way back. Zeronized, as Edwards would say.
Ripper 12 was the callsign for “Pepper”—Flight Lieutenant Penelope Jane—leader of our flight of F-10Rs. The R-for-Recon looks like your basic Cheetah, with more fuel and electronics, but armed with a pop-gun that is marginally less effective than a flag that says ‘BANG.’ Pepper needed us to sweep the skies of Elsies if she was going to have a closer look.
So five hours and a spot of in-flight refueling later the four of us—me, Reina, Manny and Groucho—were cruising through cloud cover, 15,000 meters off the deck above Angrand.
High altitude patrols are my favorite kind of flying. It’s like a whole other geography up there, with rolling white hills, feathery and ethereal mists and hazes, the sheer canyon walls of thunderheads, the whirlpool currents of hurricanes.
Right at the edge of sensor range my fighter, the Glass Cannon, picked up two contacts and painted them on the inside of my helmet.
“Ripper five here folks,” I called out. “I have two Shoeboxes at eight o’clock, going low and slow.”
A “Shoebox,” or a “Sid,” is the SYD-21 Seydlitz, the Elsie’s standard light fighter, essentially a blocky wedge with stubby wings, a rocket strapped to one end and a bloody great laser cannon to the other. The gun in the nose is so big it takes up half the forward fuselage, forcing the pilot to sit off-center and peer out of a tiny, narrow window. Shoebox pilots end up flying mostly by instrumentation, which is no handicap in a space battle, but a dangerous distraction in the atmosphere. Especially for a fighter whose longevity entirely depended on getting the drop on the other guy—the Shoebox was slower than the F-10 and slightly less well-protected than Capellan state secrets.
Flying above and behind two Shoeboxes, apparently oblivious to our presence, was about as perfect a setup as you ever got.
“I see them Ripper five,” Groucho responded. “Permission to do some shoe-shopping?”
I figured this would be a good chance for Reina to see how we operate. “That’s affirmative, Ripper six,” I said. “Ripper eight, you’re with her. Time to put the boot in. Ripper seven, stay up here with me, we’ll keep an eye on their backs in case those two Elsies ain’t alone.”
All three radioed acknowledgement, then Groucho and Reina’s fighters each tipped a wing up and slid away
Battlefield vehicle design has always been this kind of arms race between the guys working offense, and those working defence. Depending on the era, one side pulls ahead, then the other. Knights on horseback—armor is king. But look out, here comes the longbow—offense is back on top. The tank—armor in charge again. Wait though, say hello to the self-guided beyond-visual-range anti-armor missile. On and on it goes.
Well, in the 31st century, armor is on top. The days of shooting down an enemy bird with one missile from beyond visual range are long gone. Armor is too tough. Plus any weapons system smarter than your average League politico is susceptible to spoofing or hacking, so we’re back to the dogfighting days of the dawn of aviation, like World War II or the Korean War two millennia ago, slugging it out with cannon and laser fire.
Groucho’s attack was a classic example of these tactics. She dove almost vertically straight down on the lead Shoebox, holding her fire until she was practically on top of it. Guess their sensors finally woke up to the fact they were under attack, and the two fighters broke towards her—but too late. Groucho cut loose with the twin Sunstars at the last second, burning a double line right through the lead Shoebox’s wing root, blowing the wing free and sending the Elsie down in a looping spiral of smoke.
Groucho then dove past the second Shoebox, and pulled up into a steep climb. The Elsie took the bait and turned to pursue, unable to resist the temptation of a free shot at Groucho’s tail. Which of course exposed his own tail to Reina, coming diving down a few seconds behind Groucho.
Two more laser flashes and the second Shoebox was in trouble, trailing smoke and losing altitude quickly.
Reina lined up for the killing shot. Groucho turned her climb into a loop so she was facing right back towards second Shoebox.
Then I heard Groucho shout a warning, “Ripper eight, watch your six! Break left, break left!”
Reina yanked her fighter around, looking for the threat. Which didn’t exist.
While Reina’s eyes were off the crippled Shoebox, Groucho came screaming straight down at the second Shoebox and delivered the coup de grace. The fighter blew apart in midair.
When we landed back at base, Reina was raging. But not at Groucho. At yours truly.
She came storming up while I was still climbing down from the cockpit, helmet tucked under my arm. “What the hell was that?” Hands on her hips, half-ready to deck me I think.
I’d known this was coming. Kind of a ritual every new member of the ACES goes through. “It’s the way things work around here Rain,” I said. “Groucho gets two kills on her KD, you get an assist.”
“And you let her get away with it?” She was shaking her head in disbelief. “You let her endanger me like that? What the hell is the use of a wingman if I can’t trust them?”
I puffed my cheeks and blew a second. “Look, Rain, you needed to know how people think in this outfit. This was the least dangerous way I could think to show you. Nine times out of ten, the wingman will be there for you, but if they think there’s an easy kill or they can grab some glory at your expense, they’ll take it.”
“Are you seriously acting like you did me a favor?”
“No thanks necessary.”
Reina’s voice dropped to a hard whisper. “This what they teach you in the Co—”
“Ah, ah,” I raised a finger. “Ix-nay on the Orps-kay, Miss NAIS dropout.”
She was still seething, but tried changing tacks. “Haven’t you idiots heard of the prisoner’s dilemma?”
Sure had. The classic example was two prisoners in a jail, each debating whether or not to snitch on their partner, but Reina’s point was the same principle applied to flying with a wingman.
You could abandon your wingman and maybe nail three bad guys, but there was a chance they’d abandon you too, and you’d both get zero. Or you could work together, and maybe bag two each—for a net total of four, which was better for the unit than one of you getting three and the other zero, or both of you getting zero. But it required trust.
“Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just try to live with them,” I said with a shrug. “It’s just the way the world is.”
She snorted in disgust, turned and stalked away, which frankly hurt about ten times more than any punch she could have landed. “It’s the way you’ve made the world,” she said over her shoulder, and she wasn’t wrong.
Truth is, I stood there in front of the Glass Cannon for a good long while after she left.
-
Nice, punchy summation of FASA fiziks. But that is not an outfit to work for, where the wingmen can't be trusted and the CO speaks fluent bean-counter bull-excrement.
-
Like the tremendous amount of sarcasm, you must be part Australian.
Groucho better watch her back after that trick. :D ;)
-
@Kidd: The concept is "mercenary unit run like a present-day corporation." @snakespinner: Hmm, I did have two Australian roommates many years ago. But I'm at least 50% sarcastic ass (on my father's side of the family).
* * *
EPISODE 1-3: In which Reina Paradis evens the score
Over the next few weeks, we skirmished with the Elsies a couple of times, racked up some more victories, enough to make them sweat, though it was still too hairy for Pepper’s kids to play. We heard the Elsies had decided to call in some mercs of their own, and so the flight of yours truly was sent out to probe.
“Contact. Six Bats,” Groucho sang out. “Bearing three-two-zero, range 2K.”
“Copy that, Ripper six. Looks like we found our play date. Ripper six and eight, you have the first pass, I’ll cover with seven. Good hunting.”
Bats, SB-27 Sabers, are light fighters just like the F-10, a little slower but with a bigger gun in the nose and better armor. They’ve got these trapezoidal wings that makes ‘em look like Denebolan fruit bats. It’s a design as old as prostitution with none of the charm, common as the clap but harder to get rid of. Merc workhorse, although the cockpit ergonomics are a mess, I tell you. It’s a wonder the pilots can even find the guns, much less fire ‘em.
Just like we did with the Elsies over Angrand, Groucho and Reina dove right at their formation. Groucho groused about flying with Reina, worried the newbie would bring her KD down, but I overruled. Those two needed to learn to work together. Outnumbered three to one, I hoped Groucho would fly smarter than last time.
A vain hope, as it turned out.
When they spotted us, the Bats fell into line astern and started turning circles. Looked real silly, like they were panicking and running around like chickens, but that aerial Maypole dance of theirs was a trap. See, the F-10 is not a dogfighter, and they were trying to tempt us to jump on their tails and get into a turning fight with them.
The right way to fight the SB-27 is hit and run, dive and zoom. The first element picks a target, dives down and makes a high-speed pass at an angle, then zooms up and away. The target will turn, slowing them down, and try to climb after, slowing them down even more. Making them the perfect target for the second pair in the flight, which now make their own high-speed pass and blows the damaged slowpoke to kingdom can’t.
The wrong way is to slow down and try to hang in behind one, ‘cause then you’re giving up the one advantage the F-10 has over the Bat: speed. No experienced Cheetah pilot would ever try.
Unless they were gunning for higher KD and a promotion.
Groucho and Reina plunged through their formation, lasers blazing in a textbook-perfect run’n’gun (our motto: one pass, haul ass), only damned if Groucho didn’t immediately pull a split-S and charge right back into the middle of the pack.
In seconds she had two Sabers on her tail and took a couple of hits.
“Disengage, Ripper six, disengage!” I shouted, but Groucho was hollering that she almost had one. Yeah, and they almost had her. “Ripper eight, stay up top,” I ordered Reina. Probably unnecessary: doubt she would have risked her neck for Groucho at this point. “Ripper seven, with me.”
I rolled the F-10 inverted so I could look up and see the dogfight below me, then yanked the stick into my lap and slammed the throttle full open, twisting the Glass Cannon down so we were driving straight towards them from near-on vertical.
The flight suit reacted to the sudden spike in g-forces by cinching around my legs and abdomen, keeping all that good red stuff where it needed to be. The inside of my flight helmet was painting enough red lights and green firing solutions on the inside of the facebowl to make it look like a Christmas decoration.
I could see their insignia now, a white bird perched on the bottom of a big letter C. I targeted the Bat closest to Groucho, came down on him and pumped two laser beams right into his cockpit ferroglass.
Wasn’t nothing left of it nor the pilot after that, just a glowing crater in the nose. The Bat kind of fluttered like paper in a breeze, dropping away towards the sea.
These new mercs were tough, I’ll give them that. The downed guy’s wingman rolled his own fighter, and tried to dive after me as I shot past. Gave Manny the perfect shot, two Sunstars right up the tailpipe. Didn’t down him, but he was hurt bad, pumping out smoke like an Oberon cigar, so he broke off and ran for home.
The other four were more careful, but we kept them busy for the next five minutes, diving down and scattering ‘em whenever they lined up to take a shot at Groucho as she tried to nurse her bird away from the fight.
And then I heard Reina: “Contacts, bearing one-eight-zero, altitude fifteen K. I count four, no, six TR-7s.”
Traps within traps. The Sabers were a distraction, bait, designed to lure us into a fight while the mercs positioned a flight of Thrushes to cut off our escape route and ambush us. The Thrush handles like a cow in the atmosphere, but it goes as fast as an F-10 and has better guns, so the only way to win against one is to get in the first shot.
So when Reina said “Four, no, six TR-7s” that was like a PPC to my stomach.
“Rippler eight, regroup!” I shouted, but I could tell Reina was too far away. The Thrushes would reach her before we could.
“Negative sir,” she replied. “Gotta up my KD somehow.”
And she charged head-on, right towards them.
I remember that. “Gotta up my KD somehow,” she’d said, voice hard-edged with sarcasm. Six against one. Unity. Six on one.
They never had a chance.
She corkscrewed around their oncoming fire and blasted the nose off the lead Thrush. Then a vertical climb, rolled the nose 180 and shoved it down again so she was right on their tails as they roared past her. Fired her lasers and another Thrush went tumbling.
Rolled around on the tail of another. Violet light flashing. The Thrush’s tail came apart and it spun like a Frisbee. Another Thrush on Reina’s tail though. She flipped the nose up and cut power to almost zero, hanging practically still in the air, and the Thrush behind her overshot. Reina’s fighter swept down like a spitting cobra and blew the Thrush’s engine to molten fragments.
The last two Thrushes dove for the deck and never looked back.
If you’re following, that’s four bandits down in, like, less than a minute. I’d never seen anything like it. Nobody had.
Groucho was docked KDs for battle damage, while Reina won an immediate promotion to Flight Officer and the number two position in my flight. Groucho asked to stay as her wingman, but Reina said she didn’t want anyone slowing her down. Two screw ups in as many missions, can’t say I blamed her.
From then on, I paired Reina up with Manny, though she gave me an odd look when I told her. I guess she’d expected me to ask her to be my wingman. “Hana yori dantai,” I told her, a Japanese pun: ‘Flight before flowers’ (The original is Hana yori dango, Food before flowers, meaning practical things are better than beautiful ones). The Paradis family are French-Japanese nobility on Ozawa, but she just looked at me blankly.
In retrospect, that should have been a hint.
-
Damm, she 1 hell of a pilot/killer 8)
But I have to 2nd the comment, with the CO a micro management "Corporate Freak" and Wingmen not able to trust each other to cover their 6, this is a hell of unit to work for I see why they drink. I bet what they drink it is like Jeremiah Weed
That being said I love a good story about aerospace pilots, but then 1 of my favorite "folk bands" is Dos Gringos (2 F16 Pilots)
not work safe at allDos Gringos - Jeremiah Weed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qau8Wiv7Aas
-
That being said I love a good story about aerospace pilots, but then 1 of my favorite "folk bands" is Dos Gringos (2 F16 Pilots)
not work safe at allDos Gringos - Jeremiah Weed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qau8Wiv7Aas
I have all four of their albums and I'm hard-pressed to think of a single song of theirs that is safe for work.
-
Reina really screwed with Groucho that time.
4 kills, she will be the boss if she continues like that.
Now I wonder who she really is. >:D O0
-
Verrrrry nice. Yeah it disturbs me that I can actually understand the CO's corporatese :D
-
Okay, now I'm afraid to click that link. Anyway, I'd be very worried if anyone thought the unit would be good to fly with. Wish I could say the corporatese was invented. @snakespinner: No spoilers.
* * *
EPISODE 1-4: In which justice is poetic
With half their light fighters gone, there was nothing the mercs could do to stop Pepper’s flight from having a good look at what the Elsies were doing down on the Seurat, Signac and Angrand gigapads.
Icebergs.
Well, pykrete bergs, to be more precise. What’s pykrete? Take your standard ice, inject it with a reinforcing material like crystalline nanofiber, install engine mounts and voila, your very own unsinkable, megatonnage ship in the form of a super-strong iceberg. Or in this case, stealth ships to ferry an invading army across to Agglutination.
Chances were, if we’d spotted a bunch of icebergs out in the Dire Straight, we’d have chalked it up to the weather and been none the wiser until Lyran marines were pouring off the bergs and right into Tinseltown.
It was a safe bet this is what the new mercs were protecting. We didn’t know their official name, but their insignia if you’ll recall was a white bird in a C, so we called them the C-gulls. [Editor's note: Actual unit name was Curry's Eagles]
One guy we really hated was the CEO (leader of the C-gulls must be the C-EO, right?). We figured he must be the leader since he had a Stuka, a heavy-duty fighter-bomber armed to the afterburners and stone-hard as a Kuritan’s smile, but he never attacked unless he had numbers on his side and always went after the weakest or most damaged fighter we had.
See, we didn’t mind fighting the Elsies, not really. Hell, given enough time and the right motivation (money—I’m talking about money) we might have even fought for them. Elsies treated their fighter squadrons like an exclusive club for the nobility—most of their flyers were the kids of Baron von Cashpile of Planet Blueblood in Privilege-Shire (second or third kids, usually: the oldest kid always got the family Giant Tin Can). So they were kind of relaxed about this whole ‘defeat the enemy’ business.
Like, if your ride was smoking and going down, the Elsies would leave you be, give you a sporting chance to get back to base. All very gallant and gentlemanly.
Truth was, nobody wanted to get shot down over the waters here.
In terms of lethality, the oceans of Poulsbo were the aquatic equivalent of the Australian outback on Terra: Even the smallest species was hard-wired with enough biological weaponry to waste an entire ecosystem—hyperlethal poison spines, diamond-hard razor jaws, acid-coated tentacles, a murderous pack mentality that would do the piranha proud, or some lovely combination of all of the above.
Just listen to the names: the sharracuda (jaws + pack hunting), the octopython (tentacles), vampire bass (poison + pack hunting). Swimming wasn’t a sport here, it was a death sentence. That’s why Blue Max chose to go nose-first into a school rather than ditching in the water.
So with the Elsies it was live and let live. We’d shoot them down, they’d shoot us down, but it was nothing personal.
You’d better believe it was personal with the CEO.
If you were trailing smoke, he’d follow you all the way down until you either splatted or ejected. And if you did that, the S-O-B would blast you out of the skies. Never mind the viciousness of it: it’s literally one of the dumbest moves you can pull in air combat. You lose altitude, you focus on what’s in front of you and lose situational awareness, you slow down so it’s ridiculously easy to get on your tail. If the CEO had a lighter fighter or fewer wingmen watching his back, he’d have been dead long ago.
Instead, he had both, so he’d never paid for his mistakes. Typical CEO, really.
Before any strike could go through, we had to clear out the C-Gulls, starting right at the top. It was time for some new management to take over.
Edwards’ plan was simple: Ripper squadron would launch decoy strikes on their three main airbases. Once enough of the C-Gulls were tangled with us, Gasman and Teddy squadrons in the G-15 Lightnings and F-90 Slantbacks would jump them, do some serious damage. Then we’d all run for home, the C-Gulls hot on our tails—where they’d run smack into BOS squadron’s F-100A Reivers. Those babies carry a Gatling that fires wrecking-ball sized shells and a couple hundred micro-missiles that they share three dozen at a time—the F-100s don’t just shoot down enemy fighters, they chew right through them like acid. Only problem is they’re as slow as a Lyran recon company, so they’re not really built for dogfighting … unless you can lure the bad guys right under their guns.
It wasn’t bad as far as Edwards’ plans went (which meant it was probably Hanzo’s, and Eddie was taking credit), the only downside being it required us Rippers to keep the C-Gulls busy and distracted for long enough before the cavalry arrived.
First part of the plan went okay. We were running rings around the C-Gulls, and thanks to Reina they really didn’t have anything fast enough to catch us anymore. V-12s, R-15s, Hellcats, they were getting madder than a pair of weasels down your pants. Gasman and Teddy showed up and gave them some serious whacks.
That’s when the CEO’s flight showed up.
His three wingmen softened up an F-90 and then the CEO blew its tail off with his quad heavy lasers. Pounced on a G-15, same deal: holed from side to side, it plunged towards the sea.
That’s the thing with mercs who are in it for themselves and not the unit: When things are going well, they stick together, but when things go Liao-shaped, it’s everyone for themselves. Planes were scattering, some were forgetting the plan and trying to take on the Stukas, the whole thing was quickly going to hell.
Wasn’t much Ripper squadron could do but climb up top, watch the fight and call out warnings to the bigger guys. The F-10 is a marvelous thing, can do almost anything you ask of the girl, but one of the few things she can’t is do anything more than piss off a pilot in a heavy fighter.
Tell that to Reina.
"I got this."
She rolled inverted, threw her Cheetah into a looping dive and flew right at the CEO and bounced a few lasers off his nose. But then, instead of pulling up after the pass like you’re supposed to, she kept diving. Well, CEO must have figured this was his lucky day, some dumb recon pilot panicking and diving away: Pretty soon Reina was gonna run out of sky and the CEO would catch her. He slammed his nose down and followed, lasers blazing.
Reina levelled off, maybe a few hundred meters over the ocean. The CEO dropping right behind.
Reina twirled her F-10 into a series of barrel rolls, carving a kind of spiral through the air just above the wave tops, pulling loops I’d never seen at speeds I couldn’t believe. And the CEO, bless his stubborn little heart, was trying to match her maneuvering, corkscrewing his Stuka right behind her.
The bottom of each roll was blasting troughs in the ocean from their engine exhaust. From my cockpit a few thousand meters up they looked like rocks skipping across the surface.
The barrel roll can be an incredibly disorienting maneuver for a pilot, with your head getting rolled around like socks in a tumble dryer. It also tends to bleed a lot of speed, and height.
And height.
Don’t know what happened to the CEO, either he lost track of where he was, or pulled back on the stick a moment too late, or just his fighter was going too slow to maintain altitude.
One wing clipped the waves.
Now stop me if I get too technical, but slamming your wing into pretty much anything when you’re flying at several hundred klicks per hour is what we fancy-pants flyboys refer to as a “Bad Idea.”
The Stuka immediately somersaulted, spinning on its side, tail over nose, slammed into the surface of the ocean, big chunks of wing and fuselage blown free, then damned if the thing didn’t bounce off the surface, still spinning, then plunge down again, nose first.
The impact must have set off every micro-missile in the Stuka’s belly, because a massive bubble of super-heated water geysered up and erupted, like someone had set off a subsurface nuke.
And then the final icing on the cake: A little white parachute, drifting down. The CEO had bailed just as the wing clipped the ocean, one of those flying chunks had been his ejection seat. There he was, hanging, vulnerable in the air. Would’ve been justice if we’d gunned him down, but I called off the dogs. Let him have a nice, relaxing swim instead.
I hear the sharracudas ate well that day.
-
The Australian outback isn't that bad, I used to live in it for a while.
Apart from the snakes, spiders, etc it was alright, and the beer was always kept cold.
Well the ceo of the C-Gulls did like to swim after all. }:)
-
@snakespinner: I like that. "The outback isn't back apart from the snakes, spiders, etc." Yes, mate, it's the snakes and spiders that give the rest of us the screaming heebie-jeebies.
* * *
EPISODE 1-5: In which Aric has a relaxing drink
The C-Gulls pulled back after Reina took out the CEO and the League was keen to press their advantage, so phase two of the plan was ready to go: take out the pykrete bergs.
Only. Maybe we’d done our jobs too well. Given someone upstairs an inflated sense of their own genius.
In any event, someone in the League chain of command got the bright idea to capture the bergs instead of sinking ‘em. Why? No idea. Their only value was in a surprise attack, and while the Elsie high command might have been so aristocratic it was almost debilitating, even they weren’t going to fall for their own Trojan seahorses.
Everyone thinks that military decisions are made by experienced colonels and generals, based on sound tactical or strategic objectives. Ha ha. No. Generals and colonels are people like anybody else, in an organization like any other, worried about their careers more than their men, getting rewarded for pulling off the big, flashy score and getting sidelined if people think they’re too negative, you know, "lacking fighting spirit."
So some bright-eyed boy said “Hey let’s capture those ice-cakes” and nobody had the heart to say “No, let’s not.”
In preparation for the assault, the gigapad our base was on suddenly became the staging area for three regiments of jump infantry, plus their chauffeurs in the airlift regiment. Our job would be to roll out the welcome mat and ensure they had a safe ride over.
Ever met a jumper? Take an average human being, stretch them until they’re over two meters tall, graft on as much muscle as the frame can carry, then to make up for all that extra weight remove all sense of responsibility, restraint and self-preservation.
I’m being hard on them, but damn, think about it: They threw themselves into the air just like we did, only without the benefit of 20-plus tons of armor, thrusters and weaponry. In battle, their life expectancy was measured in minutes. They lived hard and fast.
Reina’s latest triumph over the CEO earned her another promotion, to Flight Lieutenant, command of her own flight and a transfer to TED squadron with the Slantbacks. I was sorry to see her go, but knew she wanted more action than Ripper squadron could provide.
To celebrate, we’d dropped in to my favorite watering hole, the Triple B. Stood for Big Buddha Bar, and the walls were lined with spot-lit statues of the serene one in every size, every pose and every material you can think of. An animatronic, plastic pink Buddha that said a sutra to everyone who walked by. A metal, skeletal Buddha constructed entirely of welded-together firearms. A majestic, bronze, hundred-armed Buddha whose hands flipped you the bird using every gesture known to man.
Normally, it was popular with the serious drinking crowd, people who knew the name of their favorite single malt and would never adulterate it with anything fancier than distilled water.
Only that night though, the whole place was crawling with jumpers. Jumpers are not the choosiest of drinkers. Quantity over quality seems to be their thinking.
The three regiments were the 308th (the Black Eights, unit patch: a black eight-ball with the words ‘Outlook Good’ in the center), the 315th (the Vaulting Hearses: a horse driving a black limo) and the 400th (Froggers: a luminescent frog). All three were present in the bar.
This was a recipe for trouble.
Trouble, when it comes, is a shy creature, and reveals itself only in stages. A sidelong glance here. A too-loud laugh there. Pebbles rolling down the slope before the avalanche. Or in this case, before some sergeant from the Black Eights decided he wanted to dance with Reina.
“C’mon girl-l-l, waddya say?”
Reina and I had just gone to the bar to get the next round. Manny and Grouch were at a booth in the back, arguing the merits of Kuritechno versus Ambient BattleMetal. I guess a woman like Reina gets used to getting hit on, so it didn’t bother her none. She flashed me a look that told me to stay out of it, so I just crossed my arms and waited. To the sergeant, she said “My sources say no.”
The sergeant’s face changed from smile to scowl faster than Kerensky changes hairstyles. He reached out to grab Reina. Then his legs went flying from under him. Then his forehead smashed right into the edge of the bar. Then he hit the floor harder than an Atlas kick. Then there was a boot pressing down on his neck.
“My reply is no.” Reina said, with finality. She waited for him to nod before taking off the pressure.
One of the sergeant’s buddies was rolling up his sleeves. I put a hand out. “Easy,” I said.
He looked down (yeah, yeah, I’m 175, rub my face in it), and said, “Who the hell are you?”
I tapped the ACES insignia on my T-Shirt with two fingers and gave him a Cheshire smile. “The guy who’s gonna be flying escort for your transports. If I feel like keeping you alive.”
He was kind of teetering at the precipice for a second, debating with himself whether or not the satisfaction of punching me would be worth almost certain death, but in the end settled for a muttered “Malking aerojock” instead.
Leaving me and Reina in a kind of respectful circle, a negative space in the human background radiation. “You learn that move at the NAIS?” I joked.
She just looked at me and said, “No,” kind of flat. At the time, I wondered what I’d done to piss her off.
Couple of hours later I was at the table alone—Manny was dancing with a pilot from the air transport regiment, Reina and Groucho were working out their differences via some kind of drinking contest at the bar—when a hard-muscled Amazon plunked down two clear shots on the table, turned one of the chairs around and sat down heavily. She looked at me the way I look at a dinner menu.
“Which regiment are you?” she asked. “Three-oh-eight? Froggers?”
I smiled apologetically. “None of the above,” I said. “One of the flyboys.”
She went “Huh,” kind of nodded a little to herself. Gave me that look again—Pilot a la Mercenary in a Whiskey sauce, topped with a Marik Jumper. “You’ll do,” she said, and handed me one of the shots. “Bottoms up, then back to my bunk.”
Jumpers: They live hard and fast.
The glass was suddenly plucked from my hand, then slammed back down on the table, empty.
“Thanks for the drink,” said Reina.
The jumper looked up. “Girlfriend?”
“Wingman.”
The jumper’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Guess a three is out of the question then?” Reina shook her head, no. The jumper shrugged, downed her own shot, then got up. “Staff Sergeant Zsuzsanna Tranh, the three-fifteen. Come find me when this is over.”
“I’ll do that,” I said as she sauntered away, then caught the eye-rolling Reina was giving me. “Hey, just being friendly.”
“Oh yeah,” she snorted, still standing and looking down at me. “Smooth as Glass.”
“You think I’m looking at her with rose-tinted Glasses?”
“More like Glass-eyed.”
“Why Miss Rain, I do believe you’re concerned for me. Worried she was going to break this heart of Glass?”
Reina reached out and ruffled my hair. “Concerned for her, more like, when she found out this Glass was half-empty.” I think it was her way of saying, as terrible as it had been, she was going to miss Ripper squadron.
“You’re one to talk. People in Glass houses.”
Her smile was kind of sad. “I…” she said.
Which is when the sergeant’s buddy finally worked up enough courage to hit me over the back with his chair. Like I said, sometimes it takes a while for trouble to show.
Who? Tranh?
Hmm, well. I did look her up, like I promised. Staff Sergeant Zsuzsanna Tranh, B Battalion, 315th Jump Infantry, was killed in action during the assault on the pykrete bergs. She lived hard and fast, like a true jumper. Here’s to her.
-
Keep em comin O0
-
That song wasn't toooo bad. Lots of cussing and Fox-oNe but that makes the song! I wonder if they will even allow folks to cuss in the services, now that they have some crazy ass rules about the subject ( https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/02/08/new-pentagon-rule-bans-offensive-jokes-and-harassing-behavior/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow )
Please, continue with the story...
-
I have all four of their albums and I'm hard-pressed to think of a single song of theirs that is safe for work.
Well I use them at work in the office... when I handling payroll
and 4 albums? I'm missing 1 ???That song wasn't toooo bad. Lots of cussing and Fox-oNe but that makes the song! I wonder if they will even allow folks to cuss in the services, now that they have some crazy ass rules about the subject ( https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/02/08/new-pentagon-rule-bans-offensive-jokes-and-harassing-behavior/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow )
Please, continue with the story...
and yes that was a tame song....
Military is going PC I'm sure that will never have cause a problem in training them to do the real job of defeating the enemy
-
This is nice, the first time any of my threads have had their own soundtrack.
The forums down for anyone else earlier? FYI (shameless self-promo but...) if they do go down, I also post my stuff on my personal site: http://one-way-mirror.blogspot.jp/p/blog-page.html
* * *
EPISODE 1-6: In which Aric has a change of heart
The assault on the pykrete bergs was codenamed Operation Titanic.
The jump infantry would be deployed in three waves. First were the pathfinders, packed into light VTOLs that would hug the ocean and deliver commando squads whose mission was to secure landing sites and take out as much of the Lyrans’ sensor arrays, gun emplacements and other hardware as they could. Second were the vanguard, ferried in Karnov transports, who would secure and expand the beachheads. Airheads? Whatever. Finally the main body, including the field guns and other toys, would be brought in by Planetlifters.
The whole ACES wing was brought into the briefing room to hear about our part in the op.
While we waited, Manny and Groucho were ribbing me and Reina about how close we’d seemed at the Buddha Bar.
“She’s a Sun worshipper, you can tell,” said Manny.
“Aw, she just wants her place under the Sun,” Groucho wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “C’mon Sunny, into every life a little Rain must fall.”
“One crack about any orifice being wet and I will hurt you,” warned Reina, but I could see her struggling to contain a grin.
“Guys,” I mock-complained. “Take the puns and stick ‘em where the Sunny don’t shine. Or at least can’t hear.” I could laugh then because it was just a game, just a paycheck, none of it really mattered. That would change, and soon.
“I think we’re Raining on his parade,” Manny stage-whispered.
“He does look a bit under the weather,” Groucho agreed. “Too bad, guess he’ll have to take a Rain check.”
“Your theory doesn’t hold any water,” I sniffed.
Hanzo took the stage at the front of the room and the lights dimmed, putting a merciful end to the punnery. I’d expected Edwards to deliver the briefing on such a big op, but I’d heard Hanzo was gunning for unit XO, so maybe this was his chance to shine—or else Edwards wanted a fall guy in case this op went down on him faster than one of Hanse Davion’s girlfriends.
There was a map of the Signac, Seurat and Angrand gigapads, the Dire Straight and Agglutination up on the screen, covered in a fine tracery of multi-colored lines showing the approach vectors of each wave from each jump infantry regiment.
“For Operation Titanic, RIP squadron will escort the pathfinder VTOLs, TED the Karnovs, GAS and BOS the Planetlifters. We’ll be providing cover from the assigned rendezvous points, all the way to each drop zone. Once the infantry is down, remain on station to achieve local air superiority over each zone.”
There was a kind of mudslide rumble than ran through the pilots.
“Are you serious?” Reina shouted. Nods of agreement.
Anyone with flying experience will tell you assigning your light fighters to escort duty is a mistake on par with turning the defences of your home planet over to an unstable, megalomaniac Periphery kinglet with a Ghenghis Khan complex. It was a bad idea, okay, really, really bad. Pity Wing Commander Edwards didn’t have much flying experience.
“That’ll do, Flight Lieutenant Paradis,” shouted Hanzo, banging on his lectern ‘til everyone settled down.
Maybe Hanzo should have told Edwards this strategy was, um, contraindicated by mission parameters that, uh, limited our ability to leverage core competencies and achieve deliverables over the short term. Or something. He didn’t though, more shame on him.
In the sky, speed is life, maneuverability is life for the light or medium fighter, and when you’re tied to a fat, lardy whale of a transport that can barely make 500 kph you don’t have either. The smart thing to do would have been to send us out fighter-hunting, taking control of the skies over the Elsies’ bases and shooting down anything the moment it tried to take off. Instead, we handed the initiative to them and let them pick the time and place to attack.
And that was just the first problem. If you’ve ever been part of a large organization trying to put together a large project, you can imagine what went wrong: Everything. The VTOLs got an earlier draft of the timetable and went in two hours too early, without waiting for cover from Ripper squadron. The three-oh-eight regiment’s heavy transports got their rendezvous points mixed up, and wasted time sorting themselves out before pushing out for the bergs. As a result, the Elsies had plenty of time to realize something was up, react to crush the pathfinders and get their fighters into the air.
Tranh was one of the pathfinders. Heard her seven-man squad kept a company of armor tied up all morning before finally getting wiped out. Atta girl.
It was weird flying with just Manny and Groucho again, now that Reina was with TED squadron. Hanzo wasted an hour over the rendezvous point talking with Unity-knows how many FWLM controllers, trying to find where our VTOLs had gone, only to be told they’d already headed out for the bergs without us.
We tore after them at mil power, which is about three times faster than the VTOLs can fly, so we caught up to them just as they reached the target, and the whole sky lit up as the Lyran gunners woke up to the fact they were under attack.
The F-10 isn’t really meant for ground attack, since you’ve got to fly low and slow, which exposes you to ground fire, but I wasn’t gonna leave Tranh and the rest hanging. KD be damned. That was a new feeling for me, and I was starting to like it.
“Contacts, 12 APCs, bearing oh-five-zero, crossing Rocky Road.” We’d given the features on the bergs codenames, named after flavors of ice cream. Rocky Road was an ice bridge over a narrow crevasse.
“On it,” I said, bringing the Glass Cannon into a shallow dive. The bridge and a column of four-wheeled vehicles filled the gunsight. I cranked back the throttle, then thumbed the trigger and saw the lasers melt right through the ice. Rolled the F-10 a little to look over the lower edge of the cockpit as I roared overhead, watching some of the APCs tumbling end over end as the bridge collapsed into the crevasse.
I heard Manny shout in my ear: “Watch it Ripper five, Flak on Pistachio!”
Instinctively I yanked back on the stick and twisted, contrails streaming from the wings in white tendrils, just as the air behind me was filled with a stream of 20mm shells. Flak, better known as the Partisan heavy tank, is a triple-A specialist and a light fighter killer. Its quad radar-guided autocannon can fill the air with four tons of frag and AP shells in 10 seconds, while the peashooters on the F-10 won’t scratch the paint on a Partisan.
You’d have to be madder than Anton Marik to take one on in a Cheetah.
What choice did I have? Reina and the rest of Teddy and Gasman were out there, somewhere over the ocean, fighting and dying to keep the Lyrans off the Karnovs. It’d all be for nothing if they walked right into a wall of steel over the drop zone.
In air-to-air combat, usually the higher the better, as it means the other guy has to climb up to get to you, which slows him down, while you can dive down at full speed whenever you want.
When fighting a Flak tank, however, any altitude below about 5K is suicide. Just means there’s no cover, since those things look right through smoke or clouds or the useless single-band jammer that passes for ECM in an F-10.
So I dove for cover, putting a low hill between me and the tanks. Snow fields and blurry figures flying by the cockpit ferroglass like a fast-forward holo, strobing flashes of light as some of them took potshots with small arms. Peeked up to get a visual on the tanks, then banked around another hill in a wide circle as the snow erupted in violent geysers of gunfire.
There was a lance of four tanks on Pistachio, a flat bowl of smooth ice under a high, concave overhanging and what looked like the entrance to an ice cave at the back. Where they’d been hiding from aerial or orbital observation, I guess. It gave me a chance.
I twisted the F-10 up again, yo-yoing up and down and skidding from side to side to throw off their aim, and targeted the overhang. Hit it once, twice. Computer pinging helpfully in my ear to let me know their radar had locked on—yeah, no kidding. An ugly bump as something tore right through the starboard wing. One laser out. Hit the ice wall a third time.
And presto. The whole side of the overhang came sliding, tumbling down, ice boulders and stalactites crashing down onto the Flak tanks. Don’t think I actually took any of them out, just immobilized them and silenced their guns until they could be dug out.
That’d keep them off Reina’s crew when they showed, I thought. Damned if I didn’t punch the air a little bit.
That’s when it hit me, I think, that feeling I was doing some good for someone that wasn’t myself, that I was helping people I cared about and respected, tough fighters like Reina and Tranh.
Truth is, I could have gotten a job in almost any unit and they pay would have been much the same, maybe even better. Guess I realized there comes a time, even a mercenary wants more than money. You want to feel that you belong, that what you’re doing is worthwhile, that you’re making a difference. That it matters.
Call it pheromones or just my amygdala drunk on the thought of her, but Reina gave me that sense of purpose the way Edwards never had. When the op was over, I hoped there would be changes in the ACES.
I was right, but not in the way I expected.
-
Falling for Reina.
Start the fireworks. :D >:D
-
Well I use them at work in the office... when I handling payroll
and 4 albums? I'm missing 1 ???and yes that was a tame song....
Live at the Sand Trap, Live at Tommy Rocker's, 2, and El Cuatro. Their web site appears to have lapsed but all four are available on iTunes.
This is nice, the first time any of my threads have had their own soundtrack.
Given some of the lyrics in question, that... may not be a distinction you want. ;)
-
And we're back. For now (https://youtu.be/wmHLGd42UBY). I'm just gonna go ahead and pretend like I haven't been periodically clicking the refresh button here...
* * *
EPISODE 1-7: Gone fishing
Well, the pykrete berg op was a near-disaster, saved only by the solid steel balls of the jumpers, despite a series of screw-ups that would make even the Capellans proud.
In the end, as their positions were being overrun, they dropped a couple of thermobaric bombs into the ice caves holding the bergs’ engine mounts and blew them out the bottom of each berg. Some bergs capsized as the center of gravity suddenly shifted, some just broke apart. The ACES, for our part, took around 30% casualties, either dead or planes too shot-up to fly.
Reina was pretty loud and blunt in her own assessment: Edwards had screwed up by agreeing to have RIP and TED fly close escort instead of sweeping for fighters or using GAS and BOS squadrons to take out enemy armor, she said to anyone who’d listen and even more who wouldn’t. He’d cost both us and the jumpers too many lives, she said. He should resign, she said, and hand over to someone who actually knew how to fly.
Edwards was pissed, but by this time everyone knew she was the best flyer in the squadron and her rep would add a couple million to our next contract, so he just promised to take her suggestions “under advisement.”
Rebellion in the unit was brewing.
Luckily, we got a break from endless missions. After the Pyrrhic victory at the bergs, the League was winding up our contract and we were due to ship out for Galatea.
The fight for Poulsbo would go on, of course. Your average Terra-sized dirtball has an area of 500 million square kilometers give or take—you’d need 1,000 BattleMech regiments to secure just one of them. The only way there’s ever a decisive engagement is by mutual consent. The boys in the Iron Giants line up like Greek phalanxes, smack each other around for a bit, and agree to abide by the result. Limits the collateral damage, you see. But on planets not conducive to robo-battling, such as liquidy Poulsbo, those rules are forgotten and the wars drag on forever.
I’d be glad to see the little blue dot disappear beneath our DropShip exhaust plume. In the meantime, the whole unit had a few days of well-earned R-and-R before we blasted off, so I rounded up Reina, Manny and Groucho and we did what everyone does with a day or two to kill.
We went Zeppelin fishing.
Zeppelin fishing was invented as a solution to that timeless question that has vexed humanity throughout the ages: How can you have a relaxing time at the seaside with your friends when the ocean is full of Lovercraftian horrors that would tear any boat apart like tissue paper and devour its occupants in a heartbeat?
Well, you either give the hull more armor plating than a Kuritan chastity belt, or you do what they do on Poulsbo: Take to the skies.
Your average fishing zeppelin is a cigar-shaped gas bag about 50 meters long and 15 wide, with an open-air gondola slung underneath. At the front of the gondola is the pilot’s station, underneath are the propulsion units, and at the back are half a dozen fishing stations, each with a modified semi-portable laser cannon on limited traverse mounts that keep them pointed down at the ocean and stop you from accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) frying your fellow fishermen.
The blimp drops some bait, you blast anything that surfaces to grab it, then lower a net and race to scoop up your prize before anything else can eat it. Using lasers doesn’t sound very sporting perhaps, but even expert fishermen landed about one out of every four fish, I’d heard.
Manny rented up a zeppelin, piloted by a captain with a round, grey-haired face, long sideburns and an eyepatch. I wondered how Manny had found the boat ‘til I saw the captain had a sea-cow on his shirt. Then, I was mildly alarmed at the thought of a secret society of manatee lovers.
Ah well. He seemed harmless enough. We climbed into the gondola, stowed our gear under the chairs, fished and bantered and drank through the afternoon.
Groucho was going on about some guy she’d met in Tinseltown. “Skin smooth as rye whiskey,” she said. “Voice as sweet as vermouth.”
“That’s a Manhattan,” grunted Manny as he loosed off a shot. “Dang, almost had him. You’re in love with a Manhattan, Groucho.”
“I don’t think you get to criticize anyone’s romantic choices,” Groucho groused.
Manny glanced at Reina. “You meet anyone, Rain?”
Groucho scoffed before she could answer. “Doubt Lady Paradis would stoop so low. Didn’t you know, Manny, the Paradis family is one of the richest clans on Ozawa.”
I caught the sudden tension Reina’s shoulders, and decided a distraction was called for. I sighted down my fishing laser, held my breath and fired. “Got one!” I yelled.
I had, a huge Megabite—picture a whale shark with an oversized lower jaw and stalactite teeth—shot right through one eye as it surfaced. “Get the net,” I shouted to the captain, but it was too late.
A titanic tentacle, maybe as big around as our zeppelin, green and glistening, rose from the stygian depths and wrapped itself around the Megabite. The water swirled in a whirlpool as the body was abruptly sucked under the water. Through the murk we could just make out a body far below, continental in size.
“A shoggoth,” the captain whispered. “Unity. Never seen one for real before. Usually they stay way down in the deep ocean.”
We stood a moment in silence, Reina’s family and pedigree quite forgotten.
“It’s beautiful,” whispered Manny.
“Oh for …” Groucho muttered. “Here we go again.”
“Please tell me someone thought to take a holo.” There were tears in Manny’s eyes.
Just then, a sound at the edge of hearing made me look up. There was a black dot on the horizon, getting bigger very quickly, accompanied by the droning whoop-whoop of rotor blades. Headed right for us.
We watched as it approached, then tilted slightly as it zoomed by, just off our beam and close enough to buffet the zeppelin in the wash of its rotor blades. Manny waved as it went past, but something told me this wasn’t just a social call.
It was a Polecat, the League knock-off of the House Davion Ferret scout VTOL, only instead of the Ferret’s dolphin curves the Polecat is all hard angles, like a low-polygon model in a vid-game. Has a 15mm MG in a chin turret, paper-thin armor and space in the back for a squad of infantry. This one was painted mottled light and dark grey, without any insignia.
It turned in a wide circle in front of the zeppelin’s nose, then came back for another pass. As the Polecat buzzed by us again, the pilot looked up from the instrumentation, and I got a good look at his face.
It was Hanzo. RIP Squadron Leader.
The Polecat levelled off, hovered directly off our beam, and I was already moving. Grabbed Reina around the waist with one arm, Manny with the other, diving for the deck, shouting for Groucho to get down just as the MG opened up.
Sounds like a hedge trimmer, you know, a high-speed chainsaw. Fifteen millimeter slugs punched straight through the sides of the gondola, showering us with splintered chunks of it, tearing through the air right above our heads. There was a hoarse scream as a burst found the pilot, slamming him against the far side of the gondola with the force of impact, blowing huge craters out his back as the bullets went right through him.
Somewhere behind me, Groucho grunted, like in sudden surprise. Reina was screaming something, “Yet mair!” as she scrabbled for her duffel bag under her fishing station.
Another rolling burst of fire, bullets pinging off the metal railing of the gondola, then there was a muffled bang as Hanzo switched his fire to the propulsion units, turning them both into flaming wrecks.
From where I lay prone on the deck I scissored my legs up to one of the heavy laser mounts and kicked hard at the restraining bolts, trying to tear them loose. Like I said, damn things only fired down and had limited traverse—but if we could get one free, even the man-pack laser could put the hurt on the unarmored Polecat.
Reina reached into her bag and pulled out a 357 Cudazzo, a snub-nosed revolver popular with gangs on New Avalon thanks to its one-two punch of concealability and firepower. Looks like someone started making a saw-toothed aluminum boomerang then changed their mind and turned it into a gun instead.
A break in the machinegun fire and she was up, revolver braced in two hands, still yelling “Om kuay! Yet mung!” squeezing off every round in the Cudazzo’s hexagonal cylinder. With only 50 mm of barrel there’s no way you’re going to hit anything you aren’t practically touching, but I guess the fire spooked Hanzo a little and he moved off our beam, and skated the Polecat aft of the zeppelin and dropped back a bit.
I risked a peep over the railing and saw Hanzo adjust his aim up a little. Damn, he’d given up trying to hit us, and was just going to take out the gas bag keeping us in the air instead. And there was nothing we could do to stop him.
Down in the ocean, I saw something that gave me an idea.
I stopped trying to break the laser mountings, just pointed it down, wrapped my hand around the trigger, and squeezed for all I was worth. A coruscating beam of cerise light struck the water just below the helicopter, throwing up a cloud of boiling steam.
The Polecat shifted a little, as Hanzo moved to make sure the steam wasn’t between him and the zeppelin. Adjusted his aim again.
And then an enraged, mottled, grey-green tentacle the size of a BattleMech leapt from the ocean and wrapped around the helicopter, snapping it in two like a twig, then dragging it down beneath the waves. Made less of a splash than the Megabite.
Just like that. Took maybe half a second.
As I watched it go down, I got a glimpse of the thing, the shoggoth, an immense bulk you wouldn’t describe with biology, but with geography. Half a hundred eyes, not the jellied blankness of fish or the black-eyed soullessness of a shark, but like pools of stars, contemptuous and dismissive. It sank back to the depths, and was gone.
I let go the cannon and felt myself breathe again. Took stock of the damage. The burning propulsion units, the smashed controls, the tattered remains of the captain’s body.
Manny’s sightless eyes, staring upwards.
Groucho curled into a ball around the ruin of her stomach, unbreathing.
Reina and I just kind of slumped to the deck for a while. We had no way of piloting the zeppelin, just drifted on the air currents. Sun was going down, it was getting cold. I wrapped my arms around her, felt hers around me. To stay warm, right?
“Edwards,” said Reina. “It was Edwards. Had to be. Put him up to it, because of me. Because he felt threatened.”
I nodded, thinking to myself. About Hanzo, sure, he’d have done anything to raise his standing with Edwards. That XO position, right? But also thinking about a French-Japanese aristocrat from Ozawa who didn’t understand Japanese jokes, kept a New Avalon gang revolver in her bag and swore in Thai.
“Can’t trust anyone,” Reina said. “Just you and me, Sunny. Can’t trust anyone.”
No, guess you can’t, I thought.
Rental shop S&R found us the next morning. Reina waved her revolver under their noses and convinced them to keep our rescue out of the news.
We were coming for Edwards, like monsters of the deep.
-
Nice, very clever.
-
Bad times are about to happen for Edwards.
Found your blog page, now you have a snakebot infecting it. }:) ;)
-
Nice
-
@ mikecj: Impressive (http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/vqGeMsr.gif).
@ snakespinner: Hey, glad you found it. You can join all the Russian bots there (for some reason, on my blog Russia is ranked #3 for pageviews by country, despite having zero content in Russian).
@ Dave Talley: Thanks, friendo.
* * *
EPISODE 1-8: In the belly of the beast
“Need some iron.”
We were in this run-down looking bar in the slummier side of Tinseltown called ‘The Belly of the Beast.’
Thick layers of yellow grime caked to the outside of the windows. The furniture, walls and ceiling covered in a slightly organic-looking layer of epoxy, colored black and pink and purple, like you were in the stomach of a leviathan.
On the walls were stuttering, staticky ads with short holo loops for yesterday’s pop stars. Like Malalaika Monroe, you remember her? Some composite of pre-Exodus social activist and pneumatic sex symbol. Yeah, that’s right, her big single was Heaven Dog, about Laika, the first dog in space: “All dogs go to heaven, but not like this, please no, not like this.”
Just what you want to hear before launching half an AU from the nearest planet. Unity, I hated that song.
Since the zeppelin rental S&R had brought us back to land, Reina had been pretty close-mouthed. She ‘persuaded’ them to give us a ride into town in the back of a rickety old pickup that smelled of fish and with an engine that moaned like a seal in heat. All we had were the clothes on our backs, the gear in our fishing bags, and the knowledge that returning to the ACES would probably be suicide.
Reina said the Belly of the Beast was just the place she’d been looking for, though. Threw open the squeaking door and walked up to the counter, where a young woman with a face like a metal detector’s wet dream—I’m talking piercings in every imaginable orifice and some mildly unimaginable ones too—was talking to a bored bartender with a neon yellow towel wrapped around his head.
“Need some iron,” Reina said, without any preamble.
Miss Pinhead barely glanced at her. Shrugged. “Go to the junkyard then.”
Reina ignored her, just slapped a plastic, hologrammed 100 C-Bill note on the counter. “C’s not E’s.” I learned later this was slang: C’s for C-Bills, E’s for Eagles (what they call M-Bills), which on Poulsbo worth less if not quite worthless.
The bartender brushed the girl aside, picked up the C-Bill and held it to the light. Flicked it with his index finger to watch the hologram jump. Mildly surprised he didn’t try biting down on it, too.
With a grunt he motioned for us to follow, led us to the back of the bar and then down a dingy flight of stairs. At the bottom was a solid-looking steel door and a spy cam mounted above it. The bartender just waved to the cam and the door slid open.
Inside was a ratty sofa done in some retro 28th century mix of brown, orange and yellow, on which a white-haired little Asian grandmother was feeding grapes to two shirtless young men. Two tall, bony, Afro-Arabic thugs with double-barreled blazers stood by the door, one man, one woman, similar enough to be twins. On a holo-screen in front of the sofa a loud pornographic movie was playing.
The grandmother looked up, sighed, put down the grapes and wiped her hands on her blue flower-print dress. “This better be good,” she said to the bartender.
Reina bent at the waist in a shallow bow, pressed her hands together like a prayer, then brought them up so her thumbs touched her forehead. “Sawatdi kha. I ask a favor, Mother.”
The grandmother huffed, then snapped her fingers. One young man produced a cigarette and placed it in her mouth, which the other one lit with a stainless steel lighter. The grandmother took a long drag, exhaled. “Tong?”
“White Tigers.”
“Huh.” Another drag. “You’ll pay?”
Reina just patted her fishing bag. The bartender held up the 100 C-Bill note he’d been given. The grandmother glanced at it, then held out her cigarette, which one of the young men quickly snatched away. She stood up with a sigh. “Better come with me.” Then, she winked to the boys. “Catch up with you later.”
We followed the grandmother through a door, the Afro-Arabic twins with the blazers behind us.
Inside was an electronic shooting range, with a low counter, a man-sized target against the far wall and a transparent display that would show where you’d hit the target: head, chest, arms, legs. Scattered haphazardly about the room were black steel trunks.
“What does he need?” the woman asked Reina.
“Hey, I’m right here,” I protested.
Her eyes flicked to me, her mouth curled at the corner with a slight smirk. “You’ve got the build but not the body language, nong chai. She, on the other hand, both talks and walks the talk. You’re either an MMA fighter or merc muscle, and MMA fighters tend not to need the things I sell. If you’re a merc, then you’re hers, and you’ll do what she tells you.”
Which, despite being completely wrong, was a fairly accurate assessment. I gave her a true-enough shrug, and let Reina take over. “What do I need?” I asked her.
“He needs two irons,” she said to the grandmother. “Something smooth and something rough. Smooth should be concealable, quiet. Rough just needs a big magazine and a bigger kick.”
The grandmother eyed me critically, thumb on her chin. “Smooth eh? Spikes or lights?” she asked. A needler or a laser, she meant, the two quietest classes of personal firepower. A needler would be better for an amateur, the laser for a marksman.
“Lights,” I said, and her eyebrows twitched in mild disbelief.
“All right then,” she huffed, and opened one of the crates, reached in a pulled out something sleek and black, a long rectangle of polymer with an angled handgrip. She dumped it on the counter, then went to another trunk and produced another gun, perhaps 50 centimeters long, with a bullpup magazine and forward handgrip. She put it next to the first gun.
“Ultima Ratio’s ‘Beam Gun,’ performance envelope on par with the Nakjima,” her wizened fingers brushed the first gun almost reverently. Then she touched the second, “YoJo Arms ACDC, Armor Crew Defense Carbine. Marik military, meant for tankers. Fires the FWLM standard 6mm round, but weighs next to nothing so watch the kick when you fire on auto. Bucks like an 18-year-old Sunday night toy-boy.”
“Marik military?” asked Reina. “Stolen?”
“Hardly,” huffed the grandmother. “YoJo sells to the Circinians, who sell to everybody. You should know how it works. This is untraceable, Little Daughter.” She looked to me, then pointed at the target. “Want to take them for a spin?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
I picked up the Beam Gun first. Don’t laugh at the name, all the smaller gunsmiths do it: Gordon Industries Death Ray, Wu Armaments Tesla Gun, XWX Maser Pistol. Got to make your product stand out somehow.
The grandmother tossed me an energy cell, that clicked smoothly into the hollow of the grip. “Nakjima was a misprint, you know,” she said. A discreet green light confirmed a connection. “Their ad company dropped an ‘a’ from their first-ever brochure and President Nakajima decided he liked it.” I felt the weight and balance of it. “Farang always miss the details.”
Farang: foreign devils. I inched up an eyebrow at that crack and looked to Reina, who stood with arms folded a little behind me. She gave a what-can-you-do shrug, the way people do when their crazy relatives are embarrassing them at dinner. “Yeah, I guess we do,” I told the old woman. Raised, aimed and fired the Beam Gun in one movement. One-handed, no need to brace: no recoil, you see. No sound either, but a slight snap-hiss of heated air.
The target display said: +Head+
“That was lucky,” I commented. Tossed the gun to my left hand. Raised, aimed, fired.
+Head+
“Think I might be getting the hang of this.” Back to the right hand. Fired.
+Head+
Left. Fired. +Head+
“I like it,” I said, putting the Beam Gun back down on the counter.
The grandmother had stopped smirking. “Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll double it.”
I laughed. “Double nothing is still nothing.”
She grimaced. “If I say the word—” There was a shift as the twins raised their blazers—and the old woman was eye-to-eye with the business end of the Beam Gun.
“—you get ten percent off,” she finished smoothly. “Not a dumb merc after all. Guess the farang aren’t the only ones who miss details.”
The blazers were lowered. I took a breath and put the Beam Gun down again.
“We’ll take them,” Reina cut in. “Plus a box of 357 for me, three mags for the ACDC and three packs for the Beam Gun.” She fished a thick stack of C-Bills out of her bag. I kept my face still, as if this was quite a normal thing for someone to carry on a fishing trip.
The grandmother licked a finger and counted them off. Nodded to herself, satisfied. “Where to with all this metal, Little Daughter?” she asked, deliberately casual.
“Edwards,” Reina said to me. Then, to the grandmother: “The air force base.”
-
555. You've been around, Mister.
-
Someone made a horrible mistake
There is going to be a change in management real soon
and this one needs it's Dos Gringos sound trackLive at the Sand Trap, Live at Tommy Rocker's, 2, and El Cuatro. Their web site appears to have lapsed but all four are available on iTunes.
Given some of the lyrics in question, that... may not be a distinction you want. ;)
He wants it
-
and this one needs it's Dos Gringos sound track
He wants it
I was on my ACT upgrade, standard 4vX
The AWACS guy was out to lunch and I couldn't get no decs
I knew that they were hostile but I couldn't take the chance
So I flipped the switch to OUTBOARD and said, "Boys, it's time to dance..."
-
@ Kidd: I think that's "ha ha ha" in Thai. A friend of mine worked in Bangkok for a year and I went to visit, but can't claim any real knowledge of the culture: just thought it would be nice to feature a group that doesn't get much coverage in the fiction.
@ DOC_Agren and Tegyrius: I did give it a listen, and folk isn't really my bag but I've got to admit I've had it stuck in my head ever since. Still, are we seriously going to pretend this isn't the only soundtrack (https://youtu.be/siwpn14IE7E) this thread needs?
* * *
EPISODE 1-9: In which things become personal
Reina found an auto-hotel near the docks called the ‘Cousteau’, one of the ones with nobody at the front desk, just a machine that displayed the available rooms, took your money and spat out the passcard key. She fed a couple of C-Bills, waited while the machine hummed and whirred to itself before scooping two keys out of the tray at the bottom.
The rooms were as inviting as a Capellan reeducation camp with none of the creature comforts. Two beds with mattresses on the microscopic side of thin, a threadbare carpet whose original color would forever remain a mystery and a shower stall whose most powerful setting appeared to be ’Astrokaszy desert during a particularly long drought.’
We slung our bags on the beds and sat down, Reina on one, me on the other, facing her.
“You going to tell me what that was about, or do I have to ask?”
“What was what about?” She said it with a weary smile, like she knew the question had been coming. Well, of course it had.
“The secret handshake or whatever between you and Gatling Grandma back there.” She batted her eyes innocently, which I admit, made me laugh. “You being chummy with the Tong have anything to do with you getting kicked out of the NAIS, miss child of the Paradis clan?”
“Could say that,” she nodded slowly. “Your nosiness have anything to do with you getting kicked out of the Eagle Corps, Sunny-boy?”
Touché. The tattoo. “Wasn’t kicked out, but yes, in a way. So how about it?”
“Tell you later, maybe.”
That seemed to be the best answer I’d get. “I can wait. In the meantime, we got a plan?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line, nodded. “If you can call it that.”
“Gonna share? Like why, for example, do I now have back-to-back life sentences’ worth of black market military-grade hardware in my bag? We gonna take out Edwards?”
“I was tempted to, at first,” She sighed, just kind of let herself go at the waist so she fell backwards onto the bed. Looking up at the ceiling, she said, absently: “Then I got a better idea, a way to really pay him back: A little coup d’état. I’m gonna take over the unit.”
“Okay?”
“Call Edwards out, challenge him to a duel, better than just killing him if I want to keep the unit together. I’ve got the support, but I need time to make that challenge, which is why you need the Beam Gun.”
“All right. And the ACDC?”
“Yeah, about that.” She lifted a hand to her forehead, ran it through her hair as she lay on the bed. “There’s a chance a rival clan, Tong or familia or maybe yakuza, saw us at the Granny Gun Club and is either gonna try to kill or kidnap us. Nothing personal, you understand, just turf wars. Just business.”
*
I’ll bet Edwards was feeling kind of nervous when he walked into the hangar the next morning. Striding down the lines of fighters ready to be loaded onto the DropSip, making a final inspection—F-90s down one side, F-100s down the other.
The unit was set to take off in 24 hours, and he hadn’t heard a word from Hanzo, had he? The zeppelin rental had reported Manny and Groucho’s deaths as soon as we were out of sight, but he had to be wondering what had happened to Reina and me.
So when he walked into the hangar, with two military security guys, as well as the heads of logistics, transportation and communications in tow, maybe he was feeling a little jittery. Can’t have helped the mood when he saw me sitting on the nose of his factory-fresh F-100, Beam Gun pointed at his pancreas.
“Morning Eddie,” I said.
He froze. “How did you—” Then kind of recovered. “What are you doing here, Glass?”
“Oh, you know, this and that.”
He was scanning the hangar with his eyeballs, trying to figure out where Reina was. “And Flight Lieutenant Paradis?”
“You’ll find out where she is soon enough,” I shifted the Beam Gun so it was pointing at one of the milsec guys, who was trying to be subtle about getting his assault rifle ready. “Do me a favor and put those on the ground, okay fellas? Making me jumpy. And the rest of you, maybe give the big man a little space.”
Edwards gave up looking for Reina, just stared hard at me as the two rifles clattered to the ground, echoing in the hangar. And found himself in a widening circle as the three section heads shuffled carefully away from him. “This is mutiny, Glass. I’ll have you shot—”
“I’d be a little careful with the threats right about now if I were you.”
“—what about loyalty to the unit, Glass? What about honor?”
Funny thing was, I think he meant it. To him, loyalty was a one-way road, something that was owed rather than created. Loyalty is earned, you know, not paid for. “Since you mentioned it, what about loyalty, Eddie? What about hiring malkin’ Hanzo to murder us? What about loyalty to Manny? To Groucho?”
I doubt he’d thought of it in those terms. The ACES were a mercenary unit, and to Edwards it was a business like any other. People weren’t people, they were ‘assets,’ to be used until no longer profitable. Killing Manny and Groucho, it hadn’t been personal. To him, purging the disloyal was just a kind of office politics. In that, he was no different from any backstreet thug with more bullets than brains.
Not personal. Just business.
*
Four guys did show up at the Cousteau, in the middle of the night.
Like I said, Reina had rented two rooms: We holed up in the one furthest from the elevator, where we could watch the door of the other room.
The four showed up, all dressed in a style I’d call Poor Life Choices: Ritualized arm scarring, shaved heads, tank tops and baggy combat trousers tucked into open work boots. Oh, and hold-out needlers, dinky little pocket-sized things that would still air out your intestines given half the chance—or any fraction of a chance, really.
One of them screwed with the door lock of the decoy room while the other three shifted nervously, looking up and down the corridor. Not very carefully, cos they didn’t see me peeking out our door.
There was a bright flash by the lock, then one of them kicked open the door and all four ran in. Dumb. Should have left someone watching the corridor, fellas. I could hear the hiss of needler fire, as they perforate the two beds inside.
Now, regardless of what Reina had said, that felt pretty damn personal.
The four soldato looked a little surprised when they realized the doorway was now blocked by a guy with a submachinegun pointed right at them. A tiny little room like that, you’d have to be blind to miss and they knew it. Nobody felt like being heroes, thank Blake’s bare buttocks. I made them drop their weapons on their way out.
Smashed one guy giving me the stinkeye with the butt of the ACDC, right in the temple. Made the other three carry him out. That wasn’t business.
That was personal.
*
Back in the hangar, the three section heads were kind of looking at Edwards sidelong after my little speech. He saw it too, and I could see his internal temperature going up faster than a Rifleman firing all four barrels.
“How dare you?” he shouted at them. “This is my unit. Mine.”
“Your father’s unit,” I corrected. Wasn’t much in the mood for his hurt pride. “Quite frankly I think if the old man could see what you’ve done with it, he’d tell me to pull this trigger and call it justice.”
Bet that felt pretty personal. Edwards levelled an accusing finger at me. “They deserved it, the traitors. This is my unit. MINE. MY BIRTHRIGHT. They deserved to die—”
I raised a finger. “Ah, Edwards old chum, should interrupt you at this moment to point out I took the liberty of patching your fighter’s comm into the PA system.” I jerked a thumb at the open cockpit beside me. “The whole unit can hear you.”
Edwards shouted with incoherent range. I miscalculated, though. Underestimated him. Turned out, the raised hand was an act, giving him time to pull a hold-old sonic stunner from a spring-loaded wrist holster and zap me with it.
Nails-on-chalkboard shriek from the stunner, like cold icicles hammering into my eyes and ear drums. I reacted fast, not quite fast enough. Rolled and jumped from the nose of the fighter, but still caught some of the blast on my right side, arm and leg going numb. Leg couldn’t support me, gave under my weight and dropped me to the ground. Numb fingers couldn’t hold the Beam Gun, it went clattering.
To be scooped up by Edwards.
He shouted for the milsec guys to pick up their guns, for them to shoot the three section heads for mutiny. Turned back to face me, still lying half-paralyzed on the ground. Raised the Beam Gun.
“It was Paradis I wanted dead, not you. Nothing personal, Glass. You were just in the way.”
And everything was washed out in two blinding, searing blasts of laser light, the two milsec guys reduced to greasy stains on the floor and fine soot flying in the air. Edwards looked up, eyes widening. At the F-90 sitting across from us.
Glowing hot lasers on either wing, and in the cockpit, Reina Paradis.
“I’ll give you one chance, Edwards,” she said on the speakers. “Get that Riever up in the air, and I’ll fight you fair. Winner takes the unit. Refuse and I blast you now. I’m being more than generous: it’s a better chance than you gave Manny or Groucho.”
*
In the end, he fought. Didn’t think he had it in him; figured he’d run for it the moment his fighter was in the air. But nope, maybe it was the hurt pride, or the outraged sense of entitlement, whatever it was, like a cornered badger he fought. Edwards in his spotless, fresh off the assembly line F-100 Riever, Reina in her battered F-90, the Lightning Shrike. Took maybe 30 minutes, but the outcome was never in doubt.
We watched through binoculars and cameras from the ground below, watched the two fighters twirl and spin together, then fly apart on filmy streamers of white, painting their feud in an abstract on the wide blue sky.
Reina just used her speed to stay out of range and out of the arc of Edwards’ forward guns, whittling away his armor until his fighter seemed to kind of sag in the air, bowing in the middle as though unable to support the weight of the fuselage.
A small crump and a flash of fire, it started to dive, then a few seconds later a massive fireball consumed the whole fighter, raining fist-sized chunks of Riever and former Wing Commander into the ocean below.
Edwards didn’t eject. Gun cameras showed Reina scored a lucky particle cannon hit early in the duel that fused his cockpit shut.
Sure. A lucky hit. Sure thing, Reina.
Nothing personal, Edwards. Just business.
-
I like the way they handle management issues
will there be more please
and yeah i can see that being Reina personal sound track...
-
The termination package was very impressive. O0
-
Excellent. I smell an epilogue... O0
@ Kidd: I think that's "ha ha ha" in Thai. A friend of mine worked in Bangkok for a year and I went to visit, but can't claim any real knowledge of the culture: just thought it would be nice to feature a group that doesn't get much coverage in the fiction.
I must say, you do pick up these things fast. M not Thai but close by, always nice to see some reference to this part of the world. Crack on!
-
Mildly long intro: Jump to the three stars to skip.
@DOC_Agren & Kidd: Yes, this next post is the end of "season 1" of the story. So far I've never done a continuing story, so I thought I'd try and structure it almost like a TV series ... season 2 is in the works. (@Kidd: You from Singapore then? Another country i've only visited once--did the touristy things, the Raffles long bar, Sentosa, the zoo).
@snakespinner: Right, I'm thinking the theme of season 1 was "The Business of War," extra cynicism on the business. Sort of a funhouse mirror look at modern corporate culture--the bean-counting boss, backstabbing fellow employees, office politics, the corporate takeover.
Seak peak: Season 2 is tentatively "Command and Control" (though I reserve the right to change this the moment I get a better idea).
* * *
EPISODE 1-10: In which things become clearer
The DropShip was burning a steady one G for Poulsbo’s zenith jump point (the Lyrans held the nadir point). Some DropShips have the names of wives, husbands, lovers, others, famous places and people. Edwards had named ours and there hadn’t been time to change, so the hull still said Orbital Assault Transport Ship Number One. The OATS-1. Unity, I was glad he was dead.
Glad we were on our way to Galatea, too.
Almost all the ACES had come. Well, what else were they going to do, stick around on Poulsbo forever? Some would doubtless desert as soon as we hit dirt on Galatea, but Reina reckoned we’d have at least two squadrons, maybe three left. Enough for a new start.
Almost 12 days to the jump. The DropShip was on a night cycle but I couldn’t sleep. Got tired of trying to count F-10s flying through hoops. Just kept seeing Manny, Groucho, Blue Max, Hanzo … all the ones we’d left back on Poulsbo.
I still wonder about that, wonder what Hanzo’s end game was going to be. Get rich as the XO and retire to some ski chalet on Tharkad maybe. Huh. Ever meet a retired merc? Few and far between. Being a merc pilot isn’t really a career move, it’s just something you do because it’s in your blood, and you can’t NOT do it without becoming someone else. Like me: I was a flyer. That was who I was. Maybe loyalty to the League, to democracy, to my wingman had all been there at one point, but scratch the surface and it was just a thin coating over my need for wings.
Well, thoughts like that weren’t gonna help me get any sleep, so I kicked off the covers and headed over to the micro-lounge on the day-cycle deck. Had a viewport, a holoscreen, a couple of thick padded sofas and chairs, and an auto-bar. Of course.
There was a light on inside and I wasn’t surprised to find Reina sitting in one of the sofas in there, back to the door, looking out the viewport, chin resting on one hand.
I coughed loudly and went in, waving casually as she looked up. “Care for some company, Wing Commander?”
“Don’t call me that.” She sounded tired. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Guess not,” I said, sitting down at the opposite end of the sofa. “You know, you said we’d talk later and...” I glanced at my timepiece. “Looks like it’s half past later right about now-ish.”
“Talk about what?”
“About how a little rich girl from one of the biggest families on Ozawa doesn’t speak Japanese, carries a Tong footsoldier piece and an emergency stash of cash, and knows where to buy black-market firearms.”
“Oh right.” Not tired, maybe: Resigned. “That.” She got up, crossed to the bar, thumbed the door open by pressing on its access plate and rooted around inside. “Let’s make this interesting.”
She came back with two shot glasses and a squarish clear bottle of something dark blue and moderately lethal-looking. A small, simple label in a font done to imitate jittery handwriting proclaimed it was ‘Sapphire Stones.’
There was a low table in front of the sofa. Reina put a glass in front of me, the other in front of herself, filled them both to the brim then plunked the bottle in the center of the table.
“Simple rules: We take turns making guesses about the other person. If you’re right, I drink. If you’re wrong, you do, then vice versa when it’s my turn. Got it?”
“Got it,” I nodded. “Who goes first?”
“Ladies first,” she said. “We’ll start slow: You walking in on me just now was no accident. You’ve be waiting for the chance to corner me alone with all these burning questions of yours.”
“Guilty,” I agreed, picked up the shot and tossed it back. Fire and ice, cool and bitter citrus in the mouth turning to alcohol heat as it hit the back of my throat. “My turn: You kind of wanted someone to ask you those questions.”
She grimaced a little, and threw her shot back, then refilled both glasses. “I got one: You were never in the Eagle Corps. You got that black bird tat on your arm just to impress the girls and intimidate the boys.”
I sat back a little and pointed at her glass. “Drink.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Huh,” then swallowed her shot. “You still with them?”
“Asking questions is cheating, but no.” I rolled up the right sleeve of my shirt, twisted my arm so she could see the tattoo near the armpit. A black eagle gripping a sword. “Not that I would tell you if I still was.”
“People don’t just leave the Corps, you know.”
“No they don’t,” I agreed. “They certainly don’t. My turn. You got kicked out of the NAIS weeks before graduation because they found out you were running with the New Avalon White Tigers.”
It was her turn to sit back. “Go on then,” she said, nodding at the shot.
“No? Something else then?” I said, and drank.
Her answering smile was enigmatic, unreadable. “Now you’re the one who’s cheating. I wasn’t kicked out. I dropped out.” It was, I noted, not a denial of the Tong connection. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the sofa. “It’s the League, so, let me guess: You were forced out of the Corps for political reasons? That’s why you were slumming with a unit like the ACES—keeping a low profile.”
I considered that, then shrugged. “Yah, politics, close enough.” Another drink. Everyone in the ACES was running from something. Why I changed my name. We were all keeping a low profile, hiding, I thought, even if only from ourselves.
That thought stuck. Hiding, even if only from ourselves. A premonition ticking my skin.
Changed my name. Hiding from ourselves.
Names. Hiding behind names.
I looked Reina right in the eyes, and said: “You aren’t Reina Paradis.”
Slowly, never taking her eyes from me, she reached for her glass. And drank.
“Of course,” I winced to myself at the thought of what an idiot I’d been. No wonder she didn’t speak Japanese, or knew so much about the Tongs. No wonder. “And the real Reina Paradis?”
“Still on New Avalon. Dead, probably. Possibly not.”
“But your file… the 2D photos and the holos…” I was rubbing my temples, trying to figure this out. “What, you’re a clone, a double?”
“A what? Like a doppelganger? What a strange notion,” she laughed humorlessly. “No, just looked similar enough to fool the professors at a university over 200 light years away. Miss Paradis was a spoiled little girl who spent too much on drugs and gambling and got into debt with the White Tigers. I don’t know what they did with her, and I don’t want to know. She was disappeared. I was a courier for the White Tigers, when they realized I could pass for her. So they set up a scam: I went to NAIS, preserved the appearance of normality, and the Tong skimmed off the monthly allowances Mama and Papa Paradis were sending their kid, then had me HPG them for more.”
“And then?”
“Graduation was coming up. Mama and Papa Paradis decided to attend. I could fool the professors, but there was no way I was fooling the family. I had to drop out, so I slipped out of their reach—I mean beyond the reach of both the parents and the Tong.”
“So who knows you’re not the real Reina?”
Her eyes flicked up and to the left, calculating, I think. “Well she does, obviously, if the Tong left her alive, though honestly if the Tigers haven’t tried ransoming her back to her family yet, she probably isn’t. Who else? You, me. The White Tigers boss, maybe one or two close associates of his. That’s it.” Her eyes focused back on me. “Your turn,” she said. Bottle forgotten.
I looked away, watched the stars for a moment. “There was an op. Authorized by one faction, then de-authorized by another. We became a liability, an embarrassment. And were left to die. As far as the League knows, I’m a dead man.”
Hmm? The op? I’ll tell you. One day. Some other time.
“Oh?” she said. “I may have to rethink my stance on necrophilia then.”
Her way of letting me know it was all right, she was all right with me knowing her past, was all right with knowing mine. “I got better,” I joked, then sobered. “All this time, and we’re still like strangers.”
Reina reached across, squeezed my hand. “Well, you can still call me Reina, or Rain. I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”
I squeezed back. “Ditto with Aric.”
“Good,” she sat up, formal, and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, Aric Glass.”
“Nice to meet you, Reina Paradis.”
I figured that was the last I’d ever hear of the original Reina Paradis, because deep down, even after all I’d been through, I was still an idiot.
-
Interesting place to end it. Yes, the zoo is great innit? But you have a great eye for cultural detail methinks - Singapore is too civilised, too Americanised. The rest of SEA is a lot more colourful ::)
-
Spent 12 years in a backstabbing office atmosphere before I backstabbed the boss and spent a few years travelling around asia until I stopped laughing.
Edwards was a dead ringer for my boss at the time. :D ;)
-
Okay, on to Season 2: Command and Control
The first episode is a long one, so I'm going to try splitting it up into multiple posts, see if that makes it easier to read.
Wanted to write about mercenary contract negotiations, and have a bit of fun with the 3rdSW setting at the same time. Needless to say, the contract details and personalities are all chosen with malice aforethought.
* * *
EPISODE 2-1: Movement to contract
“BattleMechs.”
The ComStar agent at the Mercenary Review Board wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Reina and I had been waiting patiently in his office when he threw open the door with a bang and strode in, wearing one of those terry-towel robes of theirs that looks like they juuust stepped out of the shower.
The office itself was 31st century Inoffensive Utilitarian. Big glass windows overlooking Galaport, wide wood-paneled desk with a black top and built-in terminal, beige carpets and eggshell-colored walls, two stuffed leather armchairs facing the desk. Digital 2D image frames on the walls showed short video loops of Terra: red maples waving in the wind, waves rushing ashore along a white-sand beach, sunlit filtered through the stained-glass windows of a Medieval church, Buddhist prayer flags fluttering above a Nepalese stupa.
The agent had copper-brown hair turning grey, slicked straight back from his forehead. A close-cropped beard and a million-kilowatt smile. He looked like the kind of guy who would try to sell you an ’02 Gienah he insisted was in mint condition, despite being so full of rust holes it looked as though a JagerMech had used it for target practice.
He winked and pointed finger pistols at me and said, “Ah, praise Blake, here’s my nine o’clock. What can I do for you, big guy?”
I just aimed a thumb Reina’s way, and she held up a data crystal. Our digital resume, if you like, with a list of assets, organization, personnel files, unit history, carefully edited guncam highlights of some of our better engagements, as well as requested terms of employment: money, missions, command and salvage rights.
“Secretary?” he shone his smile at her as he plucked the data crystal and carried it to his desk.
“Unit commander,” she said through half-gritted teeth.
“Well, isn’t that something,” he said patronizingly, his plastic smile never melting. I wondered if he’d had his lips glued to his gums, or he was just congenitally incapable of any other expression. “Let’s see what we got here.” He slotted the crystal into a terminal on his desk, and skimmed through the content.
“Aerospace fighters?” One arched eyebrow indicated what he thought of that idea. “BattleMechs are what you want, my friends. Get you top C-Bills for BattleMechs. Blake knows, every Lord and Lady Nobody from Nowhere Special wants BattleMechs. Even if they can afford a battalion of Demolishers, they’d still prefer a lance of moldy, multiply-salvaged, malfunctioning BattleMechs.”
Reina exhaled slowly. Threw me a look of infinite patience being tested to its limits. Looked back to the agent. “We don’t have any BattleMechs,” she said mildly. “We have aerospace fighters, experienced pilots, and a winning record.”
“Hey, hey, you know best,” said the agent in a tone that suggested we definitely did not know best, indeed, that it was likely we knew nothing at all. “See what I can do. I’ll put it up on the boards, see who comes calling. No guarantees though. Standard handling fee for the posting, plus five percent of any contract. Sound good?”
Reina gave a minute shrug. “Not like we have any choice.”
The agent gave a false laugh and tapped a few keys on his terminal. “BattleMechs,” he murmured as though to himself, but loud enough for us to hear.
“When does it go up?” I asked, hoping to head off any verbal or physical violence from Reina.
“Just did, my friend.” He pointed at the screen as if this was a silly question, even though the screen was facing him so we couldn’t see.
Maybe Reina wouldn’t be the one committing violence, I thought. “And when do you think we’ll get a response?”
“Depends on the market and the unit, you know?” Indicating mild amazement that even such basic principles were beyond our feeble grasp. “Aerospace fighter unit now, jeez, I don’t know guys, could be a while, weeks, if you get any response at all. Might want to think about trading in the fighters for Battle—”
He paused, squinted at the screen. “Huh. Okay. One offer. House L … Three offers. No, four. Five. Six. There’s only five houses, how the hell did you get—it’s Wolf’s Dragoons.” I was delighted to see the smile slip a bit, though a little disappointed my lips-glued-to-gums theory was proven wrong. “Who the hell are you people?”
I looked at Reina and grinned. Guess it was infectious, since she mirrored it back. We stood, and the agent handed a stack of printed-out offers to me, still open mouthed. “Haven’t you heard,” I said, nodding at Reina.
“That’s Hard Reina, the Amazon Ace.”
-
House Liao
We met the Capellan negotiator, Gansukh Zhao, at the walled Confederation diplomatic compound in Galatea City.
The compound was done in Capellan brutalist style, all bare ferrocrete and 90-degree angles. The four expressionless guards who escorted us to the meeting room wore green parade uniforms with knife-edge sharp creases, but the auto pistols at their hips looked well-worn and ready to use.
The meeting room was also largely bare, the only furniture being two metal-tube chairs, an imposingly solid steel-grey desk, and portraits of Max and Elias Liao hanging on the walls. Each corner of the ceiling was pimpled by the bulge of a spy camera.
Gansukh Zhao stood as we entered, a thin man with straight black hair and a narrow moustache, dressed in a baggy, green mandarin-collar jacket. He motioned for us to sit in the chairs. Mine had a leg that was too short, and wobbled slightly when I sat.
“Paradis Reina,” he said, putting her name in the Chinese order, surname first. “I have followed your career on Poulsbo with great interest.”
Politeness. He’d probably only been briefed on us by the Liao hiring hall agent that morning. “You are too kind,” Reina murmured.
“Not at all. House Liao’s respect for aerospace forces is well known. Why, Chancellor Maximillian Liao’s own great aunt, Ingrid Liao, was famous for her love of flying.”
Well, yeah, okay. Also famous for getting 40 fighters shot down during the ‘Great Lee Turkey Shoot.’
“We’d be delighted to continue this tradition of course,” Reina smiled politely. “How can we be of assistance to the Capellan Confederation?”
Zhao steepled his fingers. “We would like to hire you on retainer, to supplement the aerospace forces of one of our other mercenary contractors, and you will operate under their command. Primarily for raiding, though there may be some garrison or defensive duties as well. Remuneration will be commensurate with the risk.”
“Which unit would we be working with?” 4th Tau Ceti, I figured, or maybe McCarron’s crew.
“That is confidential.”
“Location?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell you at this juncture.”
“Type of targets?”
“It would be premature to speculate.”
“Opposition?”
Zhao shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
It figured. “Figured,” I said.
We took an autocab back to the temporary mercenary lodgings close to the Hiring Hall. Reina brooded, staring out the window, watching the people swirl by like sand suspended in a river. Or maybe just watching her own reflection. “What do you think?” she asked at last.
“Too early to tell.”
She turned away from the window to look at me. “Is that a joke?”
“Wouldn’t care to comment.”
She punched me then, in the arm, but it was worth it for the look on her face.
-
House Kurita
Chu-sa Mamoru Akechi invited us to a private room at the I-Ro-Ha restaurant. Techno-naturalist Japanese, myomer-fiber tatami mats and sliding transparent faux-paper doors, letting us see out but nobody in. Table almost flush with the tatami, with space underneath for our legs, the table itself a raw length of Kagoshima oak, unvarnished, sinuous and unshaped.
Despite the name, Akechi was almost Vikingly Caucasian, with platinum blond hair almost as colorless as his dress uniform, white eyebrows and grey eyes. He ordered for us, then talked of the weather, zero-G acrobats, ComStar communication fees and aerospace racing until we were done eating.
When the table was cleared, Akechi placed a printout on what I was sure was the mathematical center of the table, first facing himself, then slowly turned it so it faced Reina. “Now, to business. Paradis-sama, in light of your battle record on Poulsbo, we are pleased to offer you very favorable conditions. These are our terms. A six-month contract, for planetary assault, in a system to be named by us upon arrival in Combine space. Your unit will be divided into individual flights, each of which will work directly under the operational Combine commander, and will answer to the chain of command. Repair and resupply will be at your own expense, purchased from preferred suppliers selected by the DCMS.”
Favorable conditions, huh? Reina looked down at the paper for a minute, collecting her thoughts. “For a planetary assault, we’d appreciate a little more leeway on command rights,” she said.
“This offer is non-negotiable.”
She frowned a little. “It’s less than the Capellans are offering, you know.”
There was a little twitch in Akechi’s mouth, of a sneer not-quite suppressed. “If you do not mind fighting on the losing side. This offer is non-negotiable.”
“At the very least keep our squadrons—”
“This offer is non—”
“—together as one unit.”
“Negotiable. Seriously, ‘Poison Paradis’ san, we admire your prowess, but you did murder your own commander to obtain your current position. Command independence is quite out of the question.”
“Salvage rights?” Reina asked suddenly.
Akechi blinked a little, then looked down at the contract, scanning. Up again after a moment. “All salvage rights remain with the Combine.” He saw me open my mouth. “This offer is non-negotiable.”
As we walked back to our quarters, Reina observed, “Tough customer.”
I grunted. “Probably a diversionary raid,” I said. “Hang us out to dry while they hit the real target. I notice he didn’t even bother to think about salvage until you mentioned it.”
“No,” she sighed. “No, he didn’t.”
-
House Marik
The Free World League negotiating team consisted of three members: Katarzyna De Graaf, Arshad Ram and Helena Serrano. The meeting room overlooked the cargo landing pads of Galaport, the windows periodically rattling with the basso boom of landing DropShip engines.
“You are a fellow Oriente native, are you not Mister Glass?” Serrano gave me a bright smile. The best kind of lie is the truth. My faked personnel file says I was born on Oriente, which is true enough. The spec ops stuff I leave off. “I’m sure you’d be happier playing for the home team, wouldn’t you?”
“Wing Commander Paradis is from Ozawa, in the Federated Sun,” De Graff interrupted before I could do anything more than return the smile. “Perhaps we should not try to play the origins card too strongly.”
“Oh stuff and nonsense, De Graaf.” Serrano sniffed, then turned her smile back on me again. “Once an Oriente native, always an Oriente native, right Mister Glass?”
“After their excellent service on Poulsbo, I’m sure both he and Commander Paradis are aware of the values the Free Worlds League represents,” said De Graaf stiffly. “Values like democracy, tolerance, and freedom, which are surely more important than any short-sighted loyalty to the planet you happened to be born on.”
A decade earlier, she might have been right. I had fought for democracy, freedom, all those good things. It had been a little crushing to learn democracy was unwilling to fight for me. It had taken me a long time to rediscover a purpose, a belief in something other than myself.
Ram sighed loud enough to drown out any further rebuttal from Serrano. “You’ll forgive my colleagues, Commander Paradis. We Leaguers are a passionate people. Too passionate, perhaps. Our emotions are sometimes easy to inflame. There is, for example, currently unrest on one of our Periphery rim worlds which we would like you to help us with.”
“The Lesnovo contract?” De Graaf looked surprised. “I thought we’d agreed on the Park Place cadre duty, to help train the air wing of the 4th Militia?”
Ram made a great show of very deliberately not rolling his eyes. “Park Place is an interior world, under no threat, De Graaf. The Militia can look after their own training—”
“I still say if we’re going to have them work cadre, Hassad and the 2nd Militia would make more sense,” Serrano put in, swiveling her chair 90 degrees to look at the other two. “It’s right there on the Capellan border.”
“And the fact that the 2nd is posted near the Duchy of Oriente is just pure coincidence, is it?” De Graaf turned to face her. “You represent the League here, not the Duchy, Serrano.”
“I don’t care for your tone, De Graaf.”
Ram tried again: “Look, can we get back to the—”
“Don’t act like you’ve got the moral high ground here, Ram. You started it by bringing up Lesnovo, when we’d already agreed on Park Place.”
“You agreed, maybe, De Graaf. I assure you Serrano and I made no such promises.”
“Well it’s the only—”
Ah, the League. Deep down, I think we Leaguers all dream of living in some sleepy seaside village, closing up our shop at five sharp and gathering in the town square to gossip, drink and dance, going to bed late and waking up at noon, spending our days in pleasant, indolent idyll. Nothing done in a hurry, everything done on its own time.
Too bad it’s no way to run an interstellar empire. A trillion people who all think they’re living in their own little village, that’s a recipe for parochialism, myopia and infighting. In a democracy, legitimacy flows from a common purpose, not from the barrel of a gun. What was the League’s purpose? To put a Marik on the throne of Terra? Yeah, no. That’s not a dream to inspire the masses.
As the three of them bickered, Reina tapped me on the shoulder and nodded in the direction of the door. I scribbled a note asking them to contact us later. We stood up quietly, and left.
-
House Steiner
Sofia Hoffmann presented her business card to us outside the Thirtieth Interstellar Infantry Fighting/Combat Transportation Vehicle Trade Show (IIFCTVTS 30): A neat, Steiner blue card with neat edges and neat white printing, ‘Sofia Hoffman, Director, Private Military Contractor Recruitment, Galatea Branch.’
Hoffmann herself was short, stocky, blond and businesslike. A short grey jacket and long skirt piped in blue over an eye-achingly white blouse. A VIP pass hung around her neck, and once the introductions were done she gave Reina and I yellow guest passes.
After navigating security, we threaded our way through the trade show floor, Hoffmann keeping up a steady but impersonal patter as we passed booths displaying the very latest infantry carriers, amphibious assault vehicles and scout cars, over which scantily-clad booth babes and boys draped themselves in artful poses.
“It’s one of the few fields of military hardware that still sees any innovation, yes?” Hoffmann was saying over her shoulder. “BattleMech, main battle tank, even aerospace fighter designs, they’ve all fossilized, yes? Stuck where they were centuries ago.” She nodded at one of the bigger booths. “Ceres Metals, yes? Jararaca 4x4 scout car, now with increased ground clearance to defeat anti-tank mines after that business on Quentin, yes? Over there, a next-generation Cascavel-6, in response to mercenary requests now available in LRM, SRM, yes, or triple-barreled MG versions for greater mission flexibility.”
“Yes,” muttered Reina.
One of the Ceres girls, dressed in nothing but a network of transparent tubes filled with liquid that changed color in time with the music blaring from overhead speakers, saw me looking and blew me a kiss. I went to wave back, caught Reina watching me from the corner of my eye, and ran the hand through my hair instead.
“Ceres sells to the Confederation, yes, to us, to the Houses, to mercenaries like the Dragoons. War is a business, yes, and business is booming,” said Hoffmann, as we arrived at the private Lyran Commonwealth booth in one of the far corners of the floor. The Ceres Metals music was mercifully dampened to a half-remembered tremor in the diaphragm.
We perched on high chairs around a small table, not much over half a meter in diameter. An aide brought tree tall glasses of something clear and fizzy which, I discovered to my distress, turned out to be sparkling water.
“And so, to business, yes?” Hoffmann smiled, as she did everything, professionally.
“Yes,” agreed Reina.
“We are suitably impressed by your victories against our forces on Poulsbo. I hope we can convince you to use these talents for us, rather than against us, yes? We offer defensive operations along our Combine border, six months, automatic extension during combat. Virginia Shire, where we anticipate a Combine counteroffensive after our capture of Port Moseby. Standard garrison pay scale, rising to campaign scale in the event of enemy action, yes? You will be under the direct command of the senior ranking general on whichever world you are posted to, yes?”
“No,” I said. “You’ll forgive me, but your generals have not inspired great faith in their abilities of late. Perhaps a liaison officer, and more deployment flexibility?”
Hoffmann threw up her hands in a placating gesture. “For your first contract with us, under a new commander, I think direct control would be best, yes, at least until we get to know each other better.”
Reina grimaced a little. “The Combine rep said much the same thing.”
A narrow vertical line creased her forehead as a thought trickled its way into her consciousness. “You have spoken with a representative from House Kurita, yes?”
Reina gave a palm-up, well-you-know gesture. “A little.”
The line deepened. “In that case, I am sure we can work something out.”
“Yes.”
-
House Davion
Federated Suns envoy Brett Anderson invited us up to his sky penthouse at the top of the DeChavilier Tower. There was an exclusive elevator up, gold-plated inside, voice-activated.
Anderson met us as we stepped off. Auburn hair, black suit, white shirt, open a few buttons at the collar. Fashionable stubble, calculated smile. He led us to the living room, a sun-drenched expanse of plush carpeting, looking out over a patio deck and Olympic-sized swimming pool.
He ignored me, fixated his gaze on Reina instead. Kissed the back of her hand and only let it go with great reluctance.
“The Amazon Ace, huh? Saw the gun cams, fantastic, just fantastic stuff. And so beautiful too. Listen, here’s what I can do for you: Retainer. Yeah, that’s right, free-floating retainer in the Capellan March, one year minimum, with option to extend for up to two more,” he said. “Rotation to New Syrtis every three months for R&R. Generous remuneration. Transportation and resupply costs all borne by the Federated Suns. Full salvage rights, independent command.”
“That’s very—” said Reina.
“Fantastic, fantastic, knew you’d agree. You’ll join me for dinner, to celebrate? Maybe for breakfast too?”
“Well I’m not—” she tried again.
“Wing Commander Paradis. Reina. Mind if I call you Reina? Reina, this is a limited-time offer. You know how it is, right? Got a lot of other units competing for these contracts. There are no guarantees once you walk out that door. Hey, I’m pulling for you here, but I’m going to need a sign of good faith. Look, I know it’s a big decision, so why don’t you take some time, maybe have a dip in the pool out there, water’s great, got a spare bikini in the guest room, I’ll order us up some Italian—you like Italian, great, knew you would—we can talk through any doubts you have. Your friend can wait at the temp quarters, catch up with you later.”
“I need to discuss—”
“Hey, I get it. It’s a lot to take on board. You need some time to think it over.” He snapped his fingers, as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. “You know what, you should come down to my summer villa, on the coast. I can have my ‘copter pick us up on the roof, we’ll be there by dinner-time. Very peaceful, very exclusive, very private. We can talk about this as much as you need … all night, if you want.” He winked.
“Mister Anderson—”
“Brett, please.”
“Mister Anderson. That’s very generous, but there is no way, No Way, I’m making a decision without talking it over with the unit.”
He sighed, as though tragically wounded. “Reina, Reina, I’m only looking out for your best interests. I’m hurt, I’m very hurt you can’t see that.”
“You’ll recover,” said Reina, then she stood and marched back towards the elevator.
“I can stay all night, if you like,” I offered brightly.
Anderson ignored me, turned away to look out the windows. Waved me away, dismissive.
The elevator sank down through layers of uncomfortable silence. “He seemed nice,” I said finally.
Reina laughed shortly.
“A generous offer,” I added.
“Very. It’s everything we were hoping for,” she agreed, sadly. “All it will cost is my soul.”
-
Wolf’s Dragoons
Faith Celik, the Wolf Dragoons recruiter, was waiting for us in the lobby of the mercenary lodgings when we returned.
About my height, steel hair pulled back in a tight bun, dark grey pant suit, discrete red and black pin on the breast, simple but timeless. Reina shook hands, invited her up to our room. Celik sat on one chair, Reina on the other, with me perched on the bed.
Celik pulled a small black box out of her bag and set it on the table beside her. A glowing red light blinked, then turned green. Celik nodded, then looked at Reina. “Perhaps we might speak alone, Miss Paradis?” she said, her hand making a gentle, open gesture in my direction.
“He’s my XO,” Reina said. “He stays.”
Celik smiled thinly. “You’ll, sorry, you will forgive me, but we have certain. Reservations. About Mister Glass’s background, given the sensitive nature of the offer we wish to make. You’ll, ahem, you will understand, of course, as a general rule we do not conduct business in front of Great House special operations soldiers. Particularly. Hm. Dead ones.”
I was impressed. “I’m impressed,” I said.
Celik tipped her head, accepting the compliment.
“What’s so sensitive about your offer?” Reina frowned.
“Well, to be blunt, Miss Paradis, your unit does not impress us much.” Celik held up a forestalling hand as a storm gathered on Reina’s brow. “You, on the other hand, impress us very much, Miss Paradis. Our offer is, how shall I put it? Exclusive. To your person.”
Reina blinked slowly, digesting it. “You want to hire me?”
Celik beamed, arms spread in a welcoming gesture. “Precisely. We feel your initiative and flying skills would make an excellent addition to our Aerospace Operations Group. I can assure you, pay will be almost double what any other outfit would offer you, plus there is—if I may be so bold—a certain cachet to working for the most famous mercenary organization in the Inner Sphere.”
Reina was dogged. “You don’t want my unit?”
“Alas, but no.”
“And him?” Reina looked over at me. “He’s, not with the uh, I mean, he’s reformed you know.”
“Perhaps,” Celik’s smile withered slightly. “That’s, ah, that is not a risk we are prepared to take.”
Reina promised to think about it.
“Well?” I asked after Celik was gone, taking her little black box with her.
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Opposite of the Davion offer, isn’t it?” I mused. “Give up yourself for the unit, or give up the unit for yourself.”
“A choice made under duress is no choice at all,” she said.
*
In the end, the choice was simple.
“It is good that we could come to a mutually-agreeable arrangement.” The House rep shook Reina’s hand, then stepped in and gave her an impulsive hug. “This is the beginning of a long partnership, yes?”
“Maybe.”
-
I laughed out loud at the Comstar agent's first line. And the rest are spot on. Loving it!
-
I feel the need for a shower after that Feddie sleaze, and I like the Feds
:)
-
Nicely written; are you sure the Feddie isn't Canopian?
-
I wonder if it's the Lyrans they signed up with.
That Feddie definitely overdosed on Viagra and slime before that meeting.
The Cappie was shifty.
The Dracs were their usual when dealing with both a woman and mercs. O0
-
Fantastic feedback, awesome to see everyone rolling with the idea. I may have overdone it with the Feddie though: The idea I was going for is the Feds in 3025-3030 have the best toys, the best leader, the biggest heroes, the best everything and they know it--and they'll use that to try to steal your Archon-designate and/or girlfriend.
@snakespinner: Not trying to make it a mystery: One of the House reps has a unique speaking style, so the last few lines give it away.
* * *
EPISODE 2-2: Total war
Why do they call me Sunny? Well, kind of a long story, but if you want to know.
Picked the name up about a year after I joined the ACES, well before I met Reina, when we were on a counter-insurgency op on Cronulla, one of the League/Capellan border worlds way down near Andurien.
Cronulla has this series of deep trenches, anywhere from 5 to 10 kilometers deep, 1 to 2 wide, and the cities are built right into the sides, either bored into the rock walls or on convenient outcroppings of rock. The ACES base was on one of the latter.
Although the rebels weren’t too heavily armed, the vertical geography made ferreting them out kind of tricky, since they were so deeply dug in. So the militia hired mercs to do their dirty work for them.
Aerospace fighters are kind of overkill in these situations unless you’re planning on carpet-bombing your own cities, and hey, this was the League, not the Combine.
The contract didn’t pay much, which got Edwards worried about the ROI (return on investment: equals profit divided by cost of doing business) of the op. Worried we couldn’t kill the insurgents quite profitably enough.
So he stowed the F-10s and all our other toys, and talked the FWLM into loaning us these captured Capellan Mujikas for us to fly instead. Officially known as the Guardian, they’re these light S/VTOL jets that can hover like a helicopter, carry 90 micro-missiles in the belly and burst into a ball of flame if you so much as say anything mean to them.
Actually, this crappy little fighter was kind of useful for maneuvering in the canyons and blasting the rebels out of their hidey-holes—schlock and awe if you will—but damn, it felt like flying naked. Instead of armor, the damn things had two defensive systems: “chaff” and “flares.” Can you imagine? Defending yourself with confetti and fireworks. These things were not so much bargain-basement as bargain-planetary core.
Still, the People’s Revolution for an Independent Cronulla (or PRIC—Unity, who comes up with these names?) didn’t have much in the way of AA ‘cept for a couple of shoulder-fired missile launchers, so there was pretty much only one way they could get to us: on the ground.
So that’s what they did.
It was late at night, one of Cronulla’s little blue moons half-visible in the narrow strip of sky above the canyon. I was walking back towards the pilot lounge, whistling a merry old tune, when I saw a black lump sprawled across the ground, right next to the crew quarters building. Drawing closer, I saw it was one of the base security guys, a big hole burned right through his chest. I knelt down and felt for a pulse. Wasn’t surprised when there wasn’t one.
Then there was a jab as something cold and hard was pressed against the back of my neck. Wished I hadn’t had quite so much Double Tap right then, or I might have heard whoever it was approaching.
“Know what this is?” said a nasty voice. Yeah, I knew. Laser pistol lensing crystal. Same thing that shot the security guard, of course.
“You’re happy to see me?”
“Funny man,” he jabbed the crystal into the back of my neck again. “This is a Sunbeam laser pistol, funny man, and in two seconds it’s gonna burn a hole right through your skull unless you put your hands where I can see ‘em.”
The Sunbeam is less of a laser pistol, more of a laser blowtorch. It would indeed blow a hole in my head, and through the wall in front of me, quite possibly through every wall in the entire building and punch right through to the other side.
I raised my hands, very slowly. Truth is, up in the air is a far better place for them when a laser is pointed at your head than down at the waist. This guy was an amateur, an untrained revolutionary maybe, a home-grown guerilla. You don’t press your gun right up against your hostage, for example: take a few steps back so they can’t grab you, and even if they make a sudden move they’re still in your field of fire.
Two figures came creeping over as I stood there, dressed head to toe in black, hooded and masked. One held a shredder, what they call a needler rifle, the other a short-barreled submachinegun.
“We shoot him?” hissed one of the newcomers.
“Not yet,” said the one behind me. “Human shield, until we take the others.” The Sunbeam jabbed me in the neck again. “Walk. Slowly.”
So we took a nice little stroll over to the Revolving Restaurant, where inside I could still hear Groucho, Manny and Blue Max arguing loudly over five-card Drax.
“Open it,” Mister Sunbeam said, so I did.
We stepped inside and all conversation stopped. Three pairs of eyes came up, running through a range of expressions like one of those hand-drawn flip book cartoons I used to draw in the corner of my textbooks at school: Annoyance, surprise, anger.
“Everyone stand up slowly or this guy’s head is toast,” growled the leader.
“Oh no,” said Groucho, clapping a hand to her mouth. “Unity, no.”
“Take it easy. Just. Take it easy,” urged Manny, hands up in a placating gesture.
Blue Max just sat still and screwed his eyes as tight as they would go. “Just make it quick,” he said. “I can’t stand to watch people suffer.”
The man behind me laughed harshly. “Oh, your suffering is just getting started, mercenary scum.”
Max opened his eyes, looking really puzzled. “Wasn’t talking to you.” He looked right at me. “Not too much blood, okay Aric?” Max knew what my tattoo meant.
Mister Sunbeam was still trying to process that when I twisted, one hand clamping on the man’s pistol hand, the other palm hammering right up into his elbow, bending it quite the wrong way with a snap. Even as he dropped, screaming, the Sunbeam was in my hand and I was spinning towards the guerilla on the left.
He was blinking, mouth a round O of shock, when the Sunbeam torched a sizzling line across his neck as I spun. The body went one way, his head went the other.
My pirouette ended with me facing the last guerilla. Give the guy credit, he’d gotten as far as bringing the needler rifle up to his hip. The Sunbeam took his arm off just below the shoulder.
Poor sap just kind of stood there for a second, staring dumbly at the smoking hole of his shoulder and the gently barbecuing arm on the ground. Gave me plenty of time to adjust my aim, and shoot him right between the eyes. Laser beam flash-fried every liquid in his skull with enough force to blow the whole back of his head open and spray it across the far wall like ejecta from a meteor strike.
“On second thoughts, I am kind of happy to see you,” I told the guy with the broken arm, then torched him, too. “PRIC,” I muttered.
“Dammit Glass, I asked you,” complained Max, looking at the blood-splattered wall.
I just wordlessly tossed Max the needler while Groucho scooped up the SMG. “Stay here, barricade the door.” I told them. “Gonna have a look-see outside.”
I opened the door just a crack and saw another black-clad figure dashing by right outside. Guess he saw the light because he slowed, frowned, then eyes widened when he realized I wasn’t one of his boys.
Fired the Sunbeam, and his head jerked back. Legs folded. I crouched over him and found he’d been carrying another Sunbeam, so I picked that one up too and put it in my left hand.
No guesses where he’d been running to. I could hear gunfire, shouting and screaming from the direction of the married pilots’ quarters. It’s a terrible thing, hearing a child scream. I thought we were done with total war, done with it centuries ago, when (after nuking ourselves halfway back to the Stone Age) the whole species had finally figured out it was a shortcut to extinction. Guess some lessons need to be learned again.
I came around the corner and saw three of them trying to break down the barracks door while two more were shooting at the second-story windows. A Sunbeam in each hand, I shot those two before they knew I was there. Other three looked up, one of them dropped a sledgehammer, clawing for his SMG. Didn’t let him get it. Put neat, orange-white holes in the two others, then in the sledgehammer guy as he tried to run.
There were shadows in the windows above me now, people wondering why the hammering had stopped. I heard some
people saw me take the insurgents down with the Sunbeams.
The last cadre had gone after the hangars: A demolitions squad, armed with satchel charges. The security guys there were on their toes more than the ones near the pilot quarters (taking better care of the hardware than the people, thanks guys) and had taken cover down the far end of the hangar.
Then along comes this madman with a Sunbeam in each hand—that would be me—who starts torching the bandits left and right. Guys at the rear, Sunbeam to the back. Satchel charge guys—Sunbeam to the chest. Set off one charge, blew him and his buddies to hamburger filler. Their leader, the traitor who’d let them into our base—Sunbeam to the head.
Sunbeams, Sunbeams, Sunbeams everywhere.
So yeah.
It was very sunny the next day, so that’s why they called me Sunny.
-
Nah, I thought all of them were good :D
-
Brett Anderson makes a lounge lizard cringe :o I feel like I need a shower now
I'm pretty sure they signed with Sofia Hoffmann and House Steiner, as the only reasonable one
House Marik, sends 3 person team with no clear lead, very House Marik
House Kurita offer sucks for the unit, and House Liao it would be crap shoot what they want from them
-
He's just a ray of sunshine. :D ;D O0
-
I'm enjoying this one a great deal. Looking forward to seeing this continue!
-
@cpip: Hey, glad to hear it and welcome to the party.
@snakespinner <-- this guy gets it!
@DOC_Agren: Yes, with House Steiner. Hoffmann's habit of ending every sentence with "...yes?" is the giveaway.
@Kidd: Thanks friendo! They were all fun to write with tongue planted very firmly in cheek.
* * *
EPISODE 2-3: Meeting engagements
After combat losses on Poulsbo, and loyalty losses on Galatea, we were three shy of two full squadrons.
“Put together a flight. See if you can find some likely candidates. Make yourself useful for a change,” Reina said with a wink. “And while you’re at it, help me think of a new name for the unit.”
“Reina’s Raiders?”
“Ugh. ‘Somebody’s something’ are the UrbanMechs of mercenary names: Cheap, cheerful and cheesy. Wolf’s Dragoons, Hansen’s Roughriders, Barrett’s Privateers, blah blah blah. We need something to stand out, not blend in. Something with gravitas.”
“Ok. Gravitas Force, G-Force for short?” She looked at me funny. “Hey, it’s got gravitas.”
“Go,” she pointed at the office door. “Shoo. Va-a-a t’en.”
So I made a list, checked it twice. Tried to guess who was naughty or nice, then dropped all the nice ones. Nice doesn’t cut it in the air.
Despite what the holovids like to pretend, being a great, or even a good aerospace fighter pilot in the 31st century takes more than mirror shades and a shit-eating grin. A lot of it is technical—you’ve got to know your fighter, know what it can do both in an atmosphere and in a vacuum, know what the other guy’s can do, know how all those things are impacted by gravity, inertia, drag and a hundred other factors, know how to use them to your advantage—not just know, but know instinctively, without thinking about it.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. Luck helps, as does experience, plus a dash of aggression—the ingredients of a vodka pilotini, always stirring, never shaken.
I started with a list of 50 names, took out those with no combat experience. We were going to the Combine front, no time to learn the ropes. Whittled down the rest by looking at psych profiles, unit evaluations, and criminal records—yeah, I was aware of the irony of doing that in Reina’s unit—ended up with a short list of five names. It was time to get to work.
Gaurav “Lucky” Singh had an infectious grin, an unruly mass of curly black hair, and stubble that wasn’t so much five o’clock shadow as midnight pitch darkness. A Sikh from the Federated Suns outback world of Panpour, he skipped the traditional turban and the beard: Wasn’t his style, he said, with a careless shrug. I got the feeling this was a guy who lived life precisely the way he wanted, other people’s expectations be damned.
I met all the candidates in a meeting room at the Hiring Hall. More of a cubicle really, two chairs and a small round table, just enough space to prop up the noteputer and read through the personnel files.
Singh glided into the room right on time, with that trademark grin of his.
“Hey chief, what’s good?”
“War, wine and women, my friend.” I stood to shake his hand, then pointed to the other seat. “Pull up a chair if you’re sticking around.”
He grinned and sprawled almost bonelessly into the chair. “How do you want to do this?”
“Well, there’s a couple of questions I’d like to ask, and if that goes okay, we’ve got 30 minutes in the flight sims downstairs for you to show me your stuff. Two 15-minute back-to-back sessions, 600K upper thermosphere and 15K standard atmosphere.” The two places aerospace fighters see the most action: either intercepting an assault before it hits dirt, or over the battlefield once both sides are on the ground.
He waved his hand, in a go-ahead kind of way. “Sounds good, chief. So shoot.”
“Tell me about your last unit.”
“The Junkyard Devas,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. Good memories, it seemed. “Merc company from people down my way, Panpour, Jodipur, Basantapur, combined arms. Great unit.”
“So great that you got cut to pieces by the Dracs.”
“By the Dragoons, chief. No shame there.”
“And you say your nickname is Lucky?” Kind of cocked my head at him, put the weight of irony into his nickname.
“Hey,” he just gave a liquid shrug. “I’m still here, aren’t I? I call that lucky.”
The flight sims were these light beige, egg-shaped pods that kind of swelled out from the floor. The actual cockpit inside was mounted on a triple gimbal framework that could spin you faster than Hanse Davion’s PR department, and while the displays were a little low-rez they were slightly more realistic than Max Liao’s chances of becoming First Lord.
I configured the two pods to simulate the CNT-1D (confusingly called the Centurion, a name it shares with a BattleMech design—though pilots tend to call it something else which also contains the letters CNT, in that order). Started Singh and I at the same altitude, flying towards each other, and the fight was on.
Singh wasn’t bad. I won the low atmosphere fight, he won the high orbit one (yeah, well, he got lucky). Well, fair enough. Skill counts for a lot, but a little luck never hurts.
*
“The Para-demons?” I suggested to Reina. “You know, Paradis plus demons.”
Reina did a quick search through the database. “Bad luck, Sunny. Already taken. Some Stephen Wolf guy.”
*
Big hair, big moustache, big jacket, big belt buckle. Big voice. That was Zack “Hack” Unomwe.
“Trust me bud, I’m the best damn pilot that’ll walk through that door. So, where’s this Amazon Ace chick? She must be pretty wild, huh?”
“You could say that. You’re the best pilot, huh? And yet the Fighting Urukhai let you go?”
“Malkin’ idiots don’t know nuffin’ about nuffin’.”
“That so?”
“That's right, I could fly circles around every damn one of them with my eyes closed and one hand holding my pecker.” He waggled his big buckle for emphasis.
“Impressive.”
“Got that right. Malking General Greenspan just too damn dumb to realize it. Greenspan, more like Greenhorn, am I right?”
“And the insubordination charges in your file are, what. A misunderstanding?”
“Greenhorn, ha ha. Or Green-spam. Green-ham. Sorry bud, what did you say?”
“Never mind.”
“You wanna take a spin in the sims? I’ll do loops around your ass so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“Know what? I think I’ve seen all I need to see.”
“So, when do I get to meet this Reina babe?”
“Let me get back to you on that.”
Good pilots are confident, sure, but there is a limit. Save the cockiness for the bar. Overconfidence will get you killed as sure as a Stuka on your tail.
*
“Black Sheep? White Rabbits? Red Devils? Blue Jays?”
“I dunno, Sunny. Maybe something more, hmm, timeless and mythic maybe?
“Mythic. Gotcha. I’ll get back to you on that.”
*
Desmond “Dope” Ball was a short guy, clothes going at the seams, looking a little pale and sweaty. One knee bouncing up and down with nervous energy. Didn’t say much.
“You’ve got a fine record with Narhal’s Raiders, Dez, up until last year. Then there’s a blank. Fill it in for me?”
He was silent a long while, long enough to wonder if he’d heard me. Finally, he said, barely more than a whisper: “I can still fly.” He looked up at me then, with desperate conviction in his eyes. “I can.”
I sighed. Rubbed my eyes with the balls of my hands. Let them fall, carelessly. Man, this was not what I signed up for. Okay, so I kind of volunteered for this, but whatever. “Let me guess, Dez: Evoke? Racer?”
One of the downsides of being a pilot is getting too used to the adrenaline rush than comes with flying. Some guys, they get addicted to that, want that rush every day of their lives. And there are people quite willing to sell it to you in a bottle, in a needle, in a lifetime’s slow wasting away.
Evoke and Racer were just two of the more common ones—dopamine and serotonin boosters, feel-happy drugs that made you feel like you were flying when you were laying on the bare concrete floor of a rat-infested basement. Just as well, cos that’s where you’d probably be after taking either for long enough.
“Does it matter which?” Desmond asked.
“Nah, not really.” Guy needed help, and a frontline combat unit was not the time or place. “Look man, check yourself into a clinic. Get them to wire me, I’ll see what we can do to help you through the program. If you’re clean when we come back this way, we’ll talk again.”
A good pilot is reliable, this guy just wasn’t. Not right then. Guess some people got to fight their own wars. Hoped he’d win his.
*
Niall “Bulldog” Davis was tall, well-built, square-jawed with a shaved head and a short beard. Slightly stubborn but hangdog look to him. Must have been pushing almost 40, with the first signs of grey in his beard.
“Your last unit was the 12th Star Guards,” I said. “Great unit, fine reputation. So what gives? Why quit?”
Davis had a solid record. Just. Well. The Guards’ evaluation was a little too generically nice, like someone was trying to write it just positive enough to get rid of him, without offering any specifics.
“Didn’t quit,” he said, kind of hurt. Like he’d known that question was coming, probably been asked it by every unit hiring, and was tired of answering. “Let go. They didn’t renew my contract.”
I let that sit in the room for a bit. Let him tell me on his own time.
“They hired a dozen new guys, fresh faces, right out of academies,” he said at last. “Said I was too old, I’d lost my edge.”
“Have you?”
His mouth set in a grim line. “Think I’d be here if I had?”
Got to admit, I’ve got a soft spot for an underdog. With my background the Confederation is the nearest thing I’ve got to an ancestral enemy, for example, but damned if I don’t cheer them on every time they scrap with the Suns.
“The 12th is on station in the Ryde Theater. Any experience fighting the Dracs?” Maybe I was reaching for a reason to hire the guy, the underdog. When he nodded kind of ruefully—in an oh hell yeah kind of way—I followed up with: “So how should I fight, say, a Sholagar?”
He rubbed his chin for a second, thinking. “Well, it’s got a bad rep, because it’s unstable in the atmosphere. But that’s the thing—it’s meant to be unstable. Just means it’s brutal on novice pilots, like Akiro Kurita.” The Coordinator’s nephew had died in a Sholagar crash in 3002. “Your best bet is to mix up your maneuvering, scissors, yo-yoing, rolls, so the other guy has to concentrate more on flying than shooting at you.”
“Sound advice. Now, let’s see if you still know a few tricks, old dog.”
The two sim duels ended up in draws. Think I was the better gunner, but every move I made he saw coming a mile away and had a counter for, so I could never land the knock-out punch.
Good instincts and training are must-haves for a good pilot, but there’s no substitute for experience.
*
“You wanted mythic, so here goes: The Cat’s Claws? The Stormbringers? The Doom Givers? The Battle Friends? The Foe Hammers?”
“No, nah, nope, hmm, you might be on to something there.”
*
Irina “Nova” Desiderata. Spikey as a porcupine, quick as a viper, that was Irina. Thin, gaunt, all the ink on her arms and throat maybe doubled her body weight. Some kind of dark constellation made up of bones, spiders and daggers, marching up one arm and then down the other. Seemed unaware it was possible to buy clothing in a color other than black.
Kicked the door instead of knocking. “You him?” Hands on hips, tense, like she was ready to run if I said ‘No.’
“Possibly?”
“Reina Paradis’ new outfit?” Her eyes restlessly roaming the room, as though Reina might be somehow hidden inside the walls or under the carpet.
“That’s me,” I nodded, and indicated the chair. “Take a seat.”
“Prefer to stand.” She took two long legged strides into the room. “So?”
“You’re from Tortuga.”
“That a question?”
Had I every been that young, that brash, that full of myself? Actually yeah, bet I had. Bet the look on my face right then was the same look the recruiter back on Oriente had on his when I signed up: irritation warring with knowing amusement, irritation winning out. I closed the noteputer with one hand, massaged the back of my neck with the other. “Irina—”
“Nova.”
“Okay, Nova. Give the attitude a rest and grab a seat. Watching you prowl in here is giving me a neck ache. I’ve no idea what you went through to get from Tortuga to here, but believe me, I am not your enemy. So save your poison and talk to me like a fellow human being.”
Being an aerospace also takes respect. That’s one thing Reina had reminded me: You’ve got to rely on the people around you.
For a second, I felt Nova wasn’t buying it. She looked like she was about to split, took one step towards the door, then changed her mind and sat. I didn’t know it was possible to sit viciously, but somehow, she threw herself into the chair like she was attacking it.
“It took a lot.” She said. “You’ve no idea.”
“I’ll bet. So tell me, why does a deserter from a Tortugan pirate outfit want to fly with our unit?”
“Reina,” she said immediately.
I knew the feeling. “And what guarantees do we have that you won’t desert us like you did the Tortugans?”
“Reina,” arms folded, like that answered everything. Which I guess it did.
I won both fights in the sim, but neither was easy. Nova lacked finesse, but I could see the raw talent there, and the aggression, you bet she had the aggression, just needed to temper it with a bit of good judgement. With an old hand, perhaps.
*
“Hey Reina,” I knocked on the door, threw her a wave when she looked up. “Got the new recruits for you to meet’n’greet.”
The three were waiting outside. My new wing: Lucky slouching comfortably, Bulldog standing at ease, Nova trying very badly to hide her excitement.
“Welcome, warriors,” said Reina, smiling. “Welcome to the Black Arrows.”
-
EPISODE 2-4: Friendly fire
Yeah, there’s more to being a good pilot than quick reflexes and accurate shooting. Take brains, too. For example? Huh, well, you remember I was telling you about Cronulla, right? Counter-insurgency op on the Capellan border. Planet with a crust like old leather.
One time I had to think on my feet—or on my wings, if you will—was in this place called the Cavern of the Kings, a massive karst and limestone cave system leading off one of the main canyons, maybe 300 kilometers long, with the main cave around a kilometer high and two kilometers wide. Damn thing was big enough for its own river system, which spilled out into the canyon in a two-kilometer high waterfall. It was dotted with skyscraper-sized stalactites and stalagmites explorers had named after ancient kings: Jackson, Elvis and Bowie.
Oh yeah, and at the very back of this titanic obstacle course was the PRIC theater operations headquarters. The PRICs were wedged in there good, in a bunker guarded with enough guns and missiles to take out a DropShip: Quad medium lasers, octuple machineguns, SRM-way-too-many racks. Couldn’t just starve them out, ‘cos the cave system had thousands of exits in addition to the main one, most unmapped, which the PRICs used to slip in and out like a sex toy covered in petroleum jelly.
Going in and blasting them out was a suicide mission.
“Glass, I’m empowering you to put together an agile team that can achieve mission-critical deliverables,” Edwards waffled to me.
“You want me to fly in there and take out the HQ? Hanzo, tell him how crazy that is.”
Hanzo smiled sympathetically and put a hand on my shoulder. “Aric, let me explain: We want you to fly in there and take out the HQ.”
I’ve heard of guys getting shot down by friendly fire before, but this was the first I’ve heard of it happening while you were still in the briefing room.
Eight hundred meters of height might sound like a lot, but that’s a rounding error for aerospace pilots. The F-10s couldn’t do the job, obviously: They’d just slam into the cavern walls on the way down if they were unlucky, or if they were very, very lucky, they’d slam into the cavern wall once they reached the end of the tunnel. VTOLs would have been better for this mission, but we didn’t have VTOLs did we? The Guardian would have to do. Only one way to do it: Slalom down the cavern, hit the brakes and fire off a clutch of missiles at the bunker, then flip around and run like hell before the AA got you.
I couldn’t, in good conscience, ask anyone I liked or respected to join me on this mission. So I ordered Manny, Groucho and Blue Max to do it instead.
“Did you tell Edwards how crazy this is?” Manny had both hands in his hair after I told him.
I just gave him a look.
“Oh right, yeah. Okay, well then did you tell Hanzo how crazy this is?”
“I did.” I said. “He’s behind this Charlie Foxtrot 100%.”
Blue Max whistled appreciatively. “Wow Glass, just wow.” Sarcastic clapping. “Way to get us all killed.”
“Hey,” I blew him a kiss. “The least I could do.”
The approach run was easy, since we could just fly way above the canyon, rather than along it. Then we’d dive down, pull a 90-degree turn into the cavern mouth, fly single file and slow enough that we didn’t smear ourselves across the geography, before actually hitting the target.
The approach run should have been easy, that is. Guess nobody told the PRIC that, ‘cos they had a welcoming committee waiting the minute we showed.
Groucho was the first to spot them “Contact! A dozen bandits, two o’clock low.”
Sure enough, a swarm of gnat-sized black dots were pouring out of the cavern mouth beneath us. Had a quick glance down at one of the multi-purpose displays in the cockpit to get a sensor reading and saw what we had.
A squadron of Angel light strike fighters. It’s the cheapest, shoddiest piece of machinery you’ve ever seen, with twin nose booms make it look like a metal crab—and it’s only marginally more aerodynamic. Only people on Cronulla who used it were the militia, which meant a dozen of them had switched sides without anyone telling us.
Outnumbered three to one, we did what we do best: Attack.
“Split right, Groucho. Max, with me,” I ordered. Each pair tipped up a wing and began to dive down towards the Angels, my section curving left, Groucho’s right. That way one pair would get a shot at the Angels tails, regardless of which pair they went after first.
The PRIC air force split half and half and climbed straight towards us. I thumbed off a salvo in front of the lead fighter’s nose from beyond range—an old trick, make the other guy flinch before you get into effective fighting distance. Worked like a charm. He swerved, giving me and Max a shot at his side as we dove past. Four micros slammed home and blew the fighter apart.
Then we were through their formation, heading right for the six fighters closing with Groucho and Manny. Tails towards us. Too easy. Picked a target, waited ‘till it filled the scope, fired. Whoosh as six micro-missiles leapt from the racks and corkscrewed right into the Angel. Wasn’t much left but scraps of armor, falling like black rain.
There was a shrill warning in my helmet as an Angel locked on to me. Dropped tinsel ad pulled back all the way on the stick, went rocketing straight up, a flash of exhaust beneath me as the Angel’s missiles flew past. Then I cut power and flipped the Guardian. The Guardian is vectored thrust, just like the F-10, means you can point the exhaust lots of places that aren’t directly behind you, making your fighter nimble as a ballerina. When I say I flipped the fighter, that’s pretty literal—like a kick-flip or somersault, one second the nose was pointing straight up, the next almost straight down.
Pointing right at the Angel on my tail. Thumbed the big red button on the control stick and watched the missiles roar right into the fighter: one nose boom blown off, bowling-ball holes punched in each wing, engine guttering out. The fighter spiraled away, more smoke than fuselage left, before its missiles cooked off and took out the rest of it in a burst of flame.
Got a moment to look down and see the cavern we were aiming for. Just in time to see the second wave of eight more PRIC fighters launch from the cavern.
“Aw, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Boss—” Max had seen them too. Someone had screwed up the intel on this op, and bad. Definite case of friendly fire.
It was time for a change of plan. “Groucho, Manny, try to keep them busy here. Max, on me. We’re going down the rabbit hole.”
We dove past the slow-climbing second wave, firing off missiles wildly to make them scatter, dumping fistfuls of tinsel and popping flares as we cut straight by them, never slowing, then throwing our fighters into a skidding turn into the cavern.
Half the PRIC squadron kept climbing, going after Groucho and Manny, but four Angels looped around and followed.
What a ride that was. Almost pitch-black after the first couple of kilometers, switching to night vision so everything glowed a ghostly green around me. Colossal pillars of stalactites suddenly lunging at me from the blackness. Angels hot on my tail. Scissoring back and forth, trailing a whole stream of flares and twinkly-silver chaff, the air pulsing as near-misses slammed into the rock wall behind me.
“I’m hit!” Max shouted on the comms. “Losing fuel.”
“Get clear,” I told him.
And then it was just me and four Angels.
Big stalactite coming up, called Cornell, close to the cavern wall. Stood the Guardian on one wing and went for the gap. Scraped through, meters to spare. Two Angels tried to follow at the same time, flew together and then blew out in a blinding ball of light, briefly turning the cavern night into day.
No time to celebrate. Another hard turn around Lennon, the biggest pillar in the whole cavern, then fired a full spread at Harrison, the pillar just beyond. Fountains of flying rock and debris blasting out from the surface just as I flew past—right into the path of the Angel sitting right on my ass. Fist-sized chunk went right through the cockpit ferroglass and took the pilot’s head off.
Then I slammed on the air brakes and cranked the thrusters to hover, standing the fighter almost still, letting the last Angel shoot right past me as it pulled around the stalactite. Six micro-missiles stitched into its underbelly, blowing it almost cleanly in half.
Thought I’d done it, then. Thought the ending was a foregone conclusion—I felt invincible.
Then I saw the web of AA fire the PRIC were putting up in front of the bunker. Like a deadly rainbow, a wall-to-wall killer lightshow. No way to fly through that, and live.
A word about the modern micro-missile, the ‘mimi.’ Short-range missiles are the shotgun of the battlefield these days, not the sniper rifles they used to be. ECM got so good any ordinance with any brains and maneuvering power could be turned against its owner, so for the last couple of centuries they’ve just been a quick-burn thruster with a big ‘ole HEDP warhead strapped to the front, and a micro-hamster brain that goes after the last thing it was pointed at.
Any soldier will tell you these babies have an effective range on the battlefield of a couple hundred meters. After that, the rocket runs out of fuel and gravity and atmospheric drag take care of the rest. Now, let that sink in for a sec. If you’re only 10 meters off the ground, like the ’Mech jocks, running out of fuel means the mimis hit the ground pretty quick. It’s a different story when you’re 500 meters up. The mimis don’t spontaneously combust or fly up to missile heaven. They keep on going, falling, dropping to the ground until they hit something and go ‘boom.’
So, I was heading straight towards a solid curtain of multicolored AA laser fire just waiting for me to fly into range. I nosed down, screaming right over the cavern floor, then yanked the stick back into my crotch and pulled into a near-vertical climb. And fired as the nose tipped up.
Just outside of range, I fired, with the Guardian pointed at the cavern ceiling. Dumped off the last of my mimis, two clusters of six.
Turned my climb into a loop, flying inverted just under the cavern roof. Rolled and hit the afterburners, kicked back in my seat as the Guardian zoomed away from the bunker.
Bet they thought they’d scared me off. Panicked me so bad I’d taken wild shots and run for my life.
A dozen contrails arced through the cavern. Mimis are built for random course changes so they’re harder to shoot down with AA, so it was like a nest of wispy, billowing snakes racing through the air. Up, up, then leveling out as gravity took hold, flying flat and straight. Then the contrails spluttering and disappearing as the rocket fuel ran out.
Did they wonder, then, did they guess? A dozen mimis still in the air, no longer powered, but still up there, falling now, falling back down to ground. Did they see it coming? The invisible hand of physics gripping the missiles now, the cold arithmetic of velocity, mass and resistance. Pulling them back down, towards the ground.
Red-black fireballs erupted on the cavern floor, the shockwaves visible as bows of white light pulsing outwards from each hit. An AA gun hit, pieces of men and machine tossed high into the air. A missile rack, cooking off its own load of mimis in a chain reaction. Three hit the bunker, one impacting on a viewport and incinerating a room full of cadre commanders peering outside. The other two smashed into the armored front doors, then the dual-purpose warheads filled the air with shrapnel and punched holes in the center of the door, filling the rooms beyond with twin jets of volcano-hot liquid metal.
Not much left of the PRIC high command after that.
My luck finally ran out on the way back when some lucky grunt on the ground hit me with a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. Punched a hole in the wing and forced me to crash-land in the middle of that frigid little river running down the middle of the cave.
But that’s a story for another day.
-
Great chapter!
-
I thought he would aim for the cave ceiling with his SRM's and let gravity do the rest via rocks doing the damage... still worked.
-
Ancient kings, all singers from the 20th century. O0
-
@mikecj: Thanks my dude.
@pensive: Yeah, I was thinking of that, then realized I'd already done a "blow up a bit of the landscape to take out the bad guys," so it felt like I was repeating myself. Looked for a way to have him hit the target and survive and came across toss bombing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toss_bombing), which was simply too cool NOT to use.
@snakespinner: Knew you'd catch that! I like putting in those kinds of things for people to find. The islands on Poulsbo were all named after painters, too, but maybe that was a little too obscure.
* * *
EPISODE 2-5: Battle drills
Port Moseby was nice. The word ‘nice’ has a certain connotation doesn’t it? It’s the lukewarm tea of adjectives. Slightly pleasant but not too exciting, that was Port Moseby: Mild temperatures, mild geography, mild weather. Bland. Boring. Nice.
Mind you, after Poulsbo I was in the mood for a bit of boring. It was nice, for example, to know that the continent I was on would be in more or less the same place when I woke up the next morning, and that the number of local fish species which could conceivably kill and eat me was in the low single digits.
Back in 3022, the Lyrans had surprised the Dracs—and probably themselves—by retaking the planet after generations of Combine occupation. The people had been under the Combine boot for the last two, maybe three centuries, and had the fastidious politeness and uncertain joy of a population just learning that it would no longer be a capital offence to bow at the slightly wrong angle. The people were inoffensive. Nice.
The most impressive thing about it wasn’t on the planet at all, but rather its big emerald moon, Kiwi, a shade closer and larger than Terra’s own Luna, giving the oceans some impressive tides.
As a border world, we were on high readiness at all times. Spent a lot of time in the air, even a little in orbit, putting the Black Arrows through battle drills. All the same, Reina and I still found a little time to rent a little cabin by a white sand beach, lie together in a big ol’ hammock beneath the pom-trees, looking up at that moon, hanging right over our heads.
That was nice, too.
Which, of course, meant it couldn’t last. Unity, I’d learn to hate that moon.
First sign of trouble was a grey-and-blue groundcar pulling up in front of the hangar, with a request-slash-order for Reina to get down to the 20th Arcturan Guards CP in Feintuch City, ASAP. As the only ’Mech unit on the planet, the CO of the Guards was the de facto commander of the planetary defences. The invite was for Reina and the liaison officer, Anya McBride, but Reina pulled me into the back of the car, too.
The whole party was in attendance when we got there. Colonel Jurgen Petersen, with his saturnine face and black hair and beard spiked with grey. Duchess Joan Welman, back on her ancestral home after eight generations of living on handouts in exile on Tharkad. Prime Minister Simon Teltra, a Combine-era bureaucrat who’d been senior enough to be useful to the Lyrans, but not so senior that they’d had to purge him. The militia commander, the colonels of a couple of conventional armor and infantry regiments, plus a double handful of communications techs and intelligence officers rounded out the audience.
Most of them ignored us when we arrived: Teltra started to bow, then went for a handshake. Everyone else was glued to a huge monitor, on which there was an image, something in the low-pixel count, showing the long thin needle of a JumpShip. Timestamp in one corner showed earlier that day, digital letters in another spelled out: PTMB-OLY-SCAN:Z:001.
Colonel Petersen nodded to one of his intelligence officers, who stepped forward so he was directly under the center of the image. “At 0300 Feintuch time, the Olympus recharge station at the zenith jump point detected the arrival of an unscheduled JumpShip. Analysis of gravity waves and the video images suggests it is Star Lord class, tentatively identified as the DCMS vessel Soaring Crane.”
The image jumped, zooming in and losing even more definition. Mottled grey blobs—four rounded, one more linear—detached themselves from the needle and were haloed with the pixelated fire of thrusters. “The JumpShip immediately deployed six DropShips: One Vengeance-class, one Intruder-class, four Mammoth-class.”
Reina and I looked at each other. “What the hell are they thinking?” she said. Pretty much everyone in the room was echoing the sentiment, if not quite so succinctly. The Vengeance was a fighter carrier, with maybe two full squadrons and change on board, the Intruder an assault ship, heavily armed, with space for a reinforced company of marines.
So far, so what you might expect from a Drac raiding force.
“Perhaps a merchant convoy and escort?” Teltra said hopefully. Nobody bothered to correct him.
The Mammoth, you see, is a civilian cargo ship. Correction, the Mammoth is a malking gigantic cargo ship. Nearly 20 times bigger than the Intruder, capable of hauling 40,000 tons of cargo each. But unarmored, almost unarmed. Four of those on a trading mission would be excessive. Four on a raiding force would be idiotic.
“All six DropShips began a high-G burn towards Port Moseby. The Intruder made a high-speed pass by the Olympus station, targeting sensor arrays.”
There was a brief flash of cobalt light, and grainy image on the screen cut out in a wash of static.
That was another surprise. By unspoken consent among the Great Houses, attacking recharging stations like the Olympus was generally considered unsportsmanlike, gauche, a Very Naughty Thing Indeed. Those stations were vital to keeping the scattered web of humanity knit together. Knocking out its sensors came verrry close to crossing that rather sensitive interstellar Rubicon. Had to be something the Dracs were pretty desperate for us not to see. Took us a few days to find out what.
With the intel briefing over, Colonel Petersen took the floor.
“Your grace, Mister Prime Minister, gentlemen,” he intoned like a funeral parlor undertaker. “High G approach means we may have as few as three days to prepare. I’m declaring martial law and authorizing an emergency call up of all reservists. Wing Commander Paradis—” He turned to us. “I want one squadron in high orbit at all times, the other on standby. Let’s nail as many of these Snakes as we can before they hit dirt.”
Five days later, I was orbiting Port Moseby about 2,000 kilometers up with Lucky, Bulldog and Nova in tow. While refitting on Galatea, my flight had swapped the F-10 for the heavier HCT-214 Wildcat, a Hellcat variant with the engines mounted on either side of the fuselage rather than over the cockpit.
“Ah, this is the life,” said Lucky.
After sitting in a cockpit for six hours with the flight suit’s vac-seals making the seat about as comfortable as a Marik family reunion, I was thinking a lot of things, but the joy of flying in space was pretty far down that list.
“Yeah, it’s got everything,” I agreed. “Numbing boredom, freezing death on the other side of the glass, burning death down the gravity well. What’s not to like?”
“Well,” Lucky gave it some thought. “It’s quiet.”
When aerojocks joke we should be making double what the ’Mech jocks do, it’s the cold darkness of space we’re talking about. A BattleMech handles pretty much the same in any environment its in. Buddy, you’d better believe that flying in the air is different from flying in space. It’s a whole new, frictionless, weightless, a million-ways-to-kill-you ballgame. Mercenary aerospace units tend not to negotiate about salvage rights ‘cos if you get shot down out here, then only thing they’ll be salvaging is a microscopic layer of dust spread over half the planet.
If you’ve seen that new holovid about the fight over Stein’s Folly, you might assume that defending fighters are always scrambling to get spaceborne as invaders come ploughing through the atmosphere like comets. That only happens if a very large number of people have screwed up in a very large number of ways. No, what you want to do is have your fighters already up in orbit, with enough velocity to meet the invaders wherever they try to land.
You could post your fighters right at the jump point, I guess, but since there are two in any system, plus Unity-knows-how-many Lagrangian pirate points, that would be way too easy to either overwhelm or bypass altogether. And since each jump point can be connected to the system’s inhabited world by an infinite number of routes on parabolas of varying length, the only other option is to try to catch the blighters right over the planet. Otherwise, you’d find yourself hundreds of thousands of kilometers out of position, as the invading force whizzes merrily past you.
Which is precisely what happened.
“Parsifal one, this is Camelot Home,” a voice interrupted our banter. “Drive signatures detected. Bandits inbound.”
“Copy that Camelot Home. Give me some digits.”
“Azimuth one-one-zero, altitude oh-six-five, range two million kilos,” came the crisp reply. I narrowed the sensor scan in the direction indicated, and picked out the faint flickering of the approaching DropShips’ drive flares as they decelerated, preparing for the attack: The tiny little flicker of the Intruder, the irregular blobs of the outboard thruster units on each Mammoth.
Down on the surface I knew Reina and the rest of the Black Arrows would be taking off, rocketing skywards to reinforce us up here. The heavier fighters from the 20th Guards’ air wing would follow soon after. Our job would be to clear the fighter escort provided by the Vengeance, giving the Lyrans a clear shot at the DropShips.
Bulldog came on the taccom. “Trajectory looks a little odd to me, chief.”
He was right. I punched the Lyran channel again. “Camelot Home, this is Parsifal one. Drive sigs are confirmed. We got a reading on their target zone?”
“Wait one,” came the terse response. “Calculating.”
We waited. Waited some more. Then, just for a change of pace, we waited.
“Still with me, Camelot?”
“Maybe they got sleepy?” Lucky suggested.
“Parsifal one, this is Camelot Home, inbound DropShip trajectories confirmed,” the other guy said at last. “Bogies are not headed for Port Moseby, repeat, not on course for Port Moseby atmospheric entry.” A pause. “It’s Kiwi.
“The Dracs are heading for the moon.”
Which put us a couple hundred thousand kilometers out of position to intercept them. Groans from Lucky and Bulldog. “You mean to say I’ve been stewing in my own fluids for the last two days for nothing?”
“We can still intercept over the moon,” Nova suggested.
In my cockpit I was shaking my head. The Vengeance had 40 birds, more than enough to wipe my 16 without breaking a sweat. We’d have to wait for Reina’s squadron and the Lyrans, and by then it would be too late.
“That’s a negative, Parsifal four,” I told her. “Might be something else we can do, though. Parsifal six,” I signaled Pepper, leader of the F-10 Recon flight. “This is Parsifal one. Anyone in the mood for some sight-seeing?”
*
We ramped two F-10Rs up to fly-by speed by slinging them around the planet a few times, then hurled them out towards the moon. It’d take them days to slow down and head back after their pass, but they’d also be going way too fast to engage.
It’s 300,000 kilometers from Port Moseby to its moon. Even at the terrific speeds the two F-10s were going, it took six hours until they whizzed by Kiwi like shooting stars, giving us a glimpse of what the Dracs were up to down there.
The Vengeance was in orbit, like a mother duck trailing a line of little aerospace fighters. The Intruder and four Mammoths were on the surface. The latter were unloading machinery, lobster-like things with diamond mandibles.
Drills.
The Dracs were drilling a tunnel into the moon.
-
Now that's something you don't see every day...
-
Drilling a hole on a moon. Star League base maybe.
Naming the moon Kiwi, hopefully no New Zealanders there. :D O0
-
@snakespinner: Port Moseby's moon being called Kiwi is canon, so far as I can tell (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Port_Moseby). Sources are distressingly silent on the number of New Zealanders there, however.
@mikecj: O0
* * *
EPISODE 2-6: Prepared positions
Why make rules for war? Like, ‘Don’t blow up the recharge stations,’ for example. Surely, ‘Do whatever it takes to win,’ is the only rule. Lot of people think that way, think they’re being all tough, Hard Men, not like the rest of us weak-kneed babies. Brother, I want to tell them, those rules are there to save you, not your enemies. Stop you from doing something you’ll regret, something you can’t take back. Ever.
The people who think that everything is a weapon, that nothing can be excluded lest your enemies use it first, those are the people who find too late they’re right. Use everything like a weapon, and everything becomes one. Use a nuke first, you can’t change your mind later, tell everyone they can’t use them anymore—you’ve already shown them they can. Can’t put a gun in someone’s hand, then tell them they can’t ever fire it. Doesn’t work that way.
There are other weapons, you see, just as deadly and long-lasting as a nuke, but just take a little longer to get around to killing everyone. Like insurgencies and civil wars. Like fanaticism. Learned that on Cronulla.
I’d just hit the local PRIC headquarters, turned their high command into bubbling pools of sizzling fat after knocking on their front door with a pair of high explosive armor-piercers. I was heading home, unbelievably still alive. I felt lucky, so very lucky. Then a kick, like someone hit me right in the tailbone, pain shooting right up my spine, and half the condition lights on my display turned red. Surface-to-air missile had taken off half the wing. Didn’t feel so lucky then.
Not enough headroom in the cavern to eject. Managed to get some thrust under me, just enough to make the belly-up landing bone-jarring instead of life-ending, the fighter coming to a splashing stop in the middle of the narrow river running down the cavern.
The pitch blackness saved me. Everyone in the whole cavern must have seen the plane go down, but once I popped the canopy and jumped out, it was just me and the shadows.
Didn’t have much on me: my custom Sunbeams, one on each hip, a medipack, GPS locator, timepiece and a communicator. Figured my best bet would be to make for the cavern wall, see if I could find one of the side tunnels leading to the surface, call for S&R when I got there.
The hunter squad found me just as I reached the wall. Half a dozen pairs of feet crunching through the scree and faintly bioluminescent lichen, throwing out pale beams from tac lights slung under their guns. One guy at the back with night vision goggles and a laser rifle, the rest dressed in civilian clothes and carrying submachineguns.
Ducked behind a boulder until they were almost on top of me. Then burst from cover, a Sunbeam in each hand, first shot punching a hole right through the heart of the night goggles guy, the second through the closest grunt. Confused shouting, lights jiggling and waving randomly as they tried to see who was firing at them.
Moving, shoulder roll, trying to stop them from getting a bead on me. Aimed for the lights, no sound but the hiss of superheated air around the laser beams, and two more guerillas went down, solid body shots, each drilled right through the chest.
Almost on top of the last two. Bullets spraying through the air over my head. A laser bolt torched one right through the neck. Last one. Point-blank range, so close I could see his face in the glow of his light.
A kid. A malking kid. Couldn’t be more than 14, 15 years standard. SMG pointed right at me but I froze. Couldn’t shoot a kid, not after, hell never mind after what. Hell if he didn’t pull the trigger. Hell if he didn’t try to kill me.
Click, click, click. His gun jammed. Locally-produced, cheap little thing, abused from being dragged through the dirt and mud, never properly cleaned. Damn thing jammed and the kid stood there, finger on the trigger, looking stupidly down at his gun.
A roundhouse kick sent it spinning from his hands, and then I had the two Sunbeams right in front of his face. “Not a word,” I hissed.
“Long live the People’s Front!” He shouted defiantly, and closed his eyes. Fumbled for something at his throat. I hit him with the butt of one pistol, knocking him off his feet. Holstered one Sunbeam and tore the thing from around his neck—a small clear vial, with a white capsule inside. Malking suicide pill. Threw it away as far as I could into the blackness.
“You want to die, I can shoot you in the gut,” I told the kid, brutally hard. “That’ll kill you sure enough. Take you all day, maybe. Nasty way to go, trust me. Option B is you keep your voice down and show me a way out of these tunnels.”
Kid looked mad but scared, all his courage gone with that little white pill of his. “The decadent League puppets and their mercenary running dogs are doomed,” he muttered, sullenly. “The people’s will cannot be denied.”
Ah, teenagers. You can always tell when they’re parroting somebody else’s words. He was so good at repeating meaningless blather, he would’ve felt right at home in the ACES. Hell, would probably have made squadron leader before me.
“Well, good for them.” I grabbed the night goggles off the leader, then hauled the kid up by the scruff of his shirt and half-dragged, half frog-marched him towards the nearest tunnel. More search parties would be headed this way, homing in on the sounds of our gunfight. “Though last time I saw your high command, they were looking pretty damn denied. If not deep-fried.”
“You will suffer for that.”
“Oh no, please, anything but that,” I said deadpan. Slipped on the goggles and adjusted the band. “Now move, before I show you how much suffering is involved in getting both your legs blown off.”
“Your cause is doomed,” the kid recited, but he shuffled along the tunnel all the same, a white blob in the goggles. “The corrupt nobles cannot resist the might of the righteous proletariat.”
“Sure, sure,” I agreed. “Keep moving. And Max Liao, the hereditary ruler of the Capellan Confederation and the Duke of Sian, will fix aristocratic corruption, will he?”
“What Cronulla needs is a strong leader.”
“Oh Unity,” I shook my head in the darkness. “Kid, a strong leader is literally the worst thing that could happen to you at this point. You never wonder why you never hear about successful revolutionaries on other planets? First, because 99% of rebellions fail, and in the incredibly unlikely event that they don’t, the first thing the arriving Capellans will do is round up you and your friends, and every other revolutionary cadre or green brigade they can find and liquidate you. Understand? Shoot, execute, murder you. Being a ‘strong leader’ is about control, kiddo, and the last thing a strong leader wants is a bunch of civvies who have learned they can overthrow any government they don’t like.”
“I hate you,” he sniveled to himself as he shuffled through those tunnels. Over and over again. “I hate you. I hate you.” Somehow, I don’t think my little speech had much effect on him.
So we trudged on. Darkness does strange things to your vision, you know? Like staring at yourself in the mirror for too long, your eyes get bored of looking at the same thing, you start hallucinating, start seeing that face warp and change until it’s unrecognizable. Same with pitch nothing. Inky shadows start to move, making shapes out of memory. Of other kids, other dark places, places you’d rather not think about again.
Two hours later we stopped for a break. Me slumped on a big, slimy rock, goggles pushed up on my forehead and a Sunbeam held loosely in one hand. The kid huddled in the fetal position on the ground. Blue-green glow of lichen all around. The GPS was pretty useless this far underground, but the compass stopped me from going in circles and the auto-map feature could at least show where I’d been, if not where I needed to go.
“Are you going to kill me?” The kid asked, voice gone real quiet. All the revolutionary fervor drained.
“I dunno,” I said, careless and tired. “You want me to?”
“I will be a martyr.” Poor sap, trying to convince himself. Tears running down his face giving the lie to his bravado.
“You will be forgotten,” I corrected, shaking my head. “Some nameless kid dead in some nameless tunnel on some nameless border world. Hell kid, you’re still a teenager. Live a little. Plenty of time to die, later, if that’s what you want.”
Hell of a thing, taking a kid like that an turning him into a killer, a fanatic. Everyone likes to talk about how the Ares Conventions saved the race from extinction, but you’ll notice they’re silent on the issue of child soldiers. Others worry the Conventions made war too palatable, too easy to use as an instrument of policy. Unity. Look at insurgencies like the one on Cronulla. Look at them, look at this kid, barely old enough for pimples, and tell me banning nukes was the reason we had so much war.
Hard Men, patting themselves on the back for how Hard they’d been, how ruthless, leaving no weapon untouched, not even little kids like this one. And there was the real war crime. Huddled in the blue-tinged blackness at my feet.
People sometimes ask me why I became a mercenary, why I didn’t believe in anything other than myself, my wingman and my paycheck. Well, really. Look what belief gets you.
“I’m not gonna kill you, kid,” I said, heaving myself back to my feet. “Not gonna let you go, either though. For your sake. Only survivor of a patrol that let an enemy pilot escape? Kid, you’ll be facing a firing squad before sundown. Fact is, escaping with me is pretty much the only chance you’ve got.”
That was cruel, but it was the truth. Kid knew it. Did start crying then, silent heaving sobs, rocking back and forth, all his friends gone, his family gone, nobody to go back to until this whole damn stupid bloody pointless revolution was over and done with. Hell of a thing, making kids fight. Some lines, we just shouldn’t cross.
We broke the surface an hour later. So good to feel sunshine on my face again, throwing off the goggles like a lizard shedding its skin. A dozen uniformed figures waiting for us outside the cave mouth. Camouflage fatigues, assault rifles, grim faces. Rotors of two VTOLs behind them slowly stirring, like restless dragonflies.
“Glass!” shouted a voice I knew. Max’s. One of the figures pushed back its helmet, and there he was, my old wingman. He frowned at the kid. “Who’s this then?”
“Tour guide.”
“Oh.” A puzzled shrug. “See anything interesting?”
“No, not really,” I admitted. “Just a lot of darkness.”
-
Really well written.
By the way, the Mask wants a word...
-
@mikecj: The Mask? Well, that's sssssmokin'!
Uh, I'm trying to have the turning point of the season come around episode 7 each 'season'. This time I got a little carried away, so I'm splitting it into parts I and II to save those eyeballs. Excuse the self-indulgence: I'm having a blast!
* * *
EPISODE 2-7: Unconventional warfare (Part I)
An uneasy peace followed the Drac landing on Kiwi. They had 42 fighters to our 50—18 Guards, 32 Black Arrows—but although we had the numbers, Colonel Petersen held back. Pretty typically conservative Lyran of him: Their first thought when threatened is to circle the wagons. Petersen was sure this was a diversion, an attempt to weaken our aerospace forces before the real assault arrived in-system.
So we waited and watched. Hours turned into days. Days slid into weeks.
After a brief lock-down, merchant trade had warily resumed. One fine day, about six weeks after the Dracs touched down, a Mule-class freighter called the Other People’s Money blasted off on schedule, rose high above the planet, then rolled and reoriented itself towards the nadir jump point. The main drive kicked in again, plowing the DropShip forward at a steady 1G. The crew relaxed maybe, loosened up, settled in for the nine-day trip to the jump point. A routine run.
Lyran sensors trained on the Drac base on Kiwi detected a spike in electromagnetic energy.
For about the next two hours, nothing happened. The energy surge was not repeated. The Other People’s Money plowed steadily along through space.
And then.
The Other People’s Money shattered. Like a slow-motion holo of a bullet going through an apple, the hull peeled and buckled away from entry and exit holes suddenly blown straight through the fore and aft superstructure. Atmosphere, deck plates, machinery and crew were violently blasted out either end before the entire hull buckled and split into jagged shards that were flung in every direction.
Which was how the Dracs let us know they’d built a capital-scale railgun on Kiwi.
*
At the war council, Colonel Petersen’s always-somber face had gone sepulchral. Head bowed, he addressed the 3D holo-display table as much as anyone in the room. A wireframe outline of green Kiwi waltzed slowly about Port Moseby on the display.
Reina and I were at the back of the pack, watching over the heads of the assembled brass and civilian leaders.
“We’ve received a communication from a 'General Goshi Tengwan', commander of the 2nd Sword of Light,” Petersen intoned. “Demanding the immediate grounding of all commercial DropShips in the system and the removal of all Commonwealth troops from the planet within three days.”
“Or?” asked Duchess Welman, clutching a jeweled pendant at her throat, looking positively sickly despite her name.
“Or the railgun will be turned against the planet,” Petersen finished.
“Sword of Light are fanatics,” said Teltra, the Prime Minister. “I don’t doubt he’ll carry out his threat.”
“Can he? Is this weapon so powerful?” Welman sounded horrified.
Petersen sighed, and tapped a button on the holomap. The sketchy outline of Kiwi expanded to fill the display, an angry red dot burning at the equator. “Looks like the Dracs have built a railgun capable of firing a 10 to 20-meter projectile at about 60 kilometers per second. That isn’t faster than light, so any ship en route to or from the jump point that makes irregular course changes should be safe. The greater danger is to the planet.” The holo zoomed in on the red dot, resolving into a thin red line below and almost perpendicular to the surface of the moon. “The cannon is buried here, in an excavated tunnel. Since Kiwi is tidally locked with Port Moseby, that means the gun is always facing towards the planet, though not always at the same hemisphere. So yes, given time they could theoretically use it to bombard anywhere on the planet. It would be like being hit by an asteroid strike, perhaps equivalent to 200 kilotons of TNT or more.”
A bit like a decent-sized nuke, in other words.
A railgun wasn’t new technology, but nobody had built one in hundreds of years. Even this one was so big and unwieldly it would’ve been useless anywhere but a microgravity environment like the moon. Turned out the Dracs had broken it down and loaded it into the Mammoths, then drilled a tunnel to serve as a mounting and assembled the pieces on-site. It was powered straight from the reactors of the four DropShips, and since aerodynamics don’t mean spit in a vacuum, the rocks they’d excavated for the hole became the ammo. Being buried almost totally underground meant it couldn’t be traversed more than a few degrees, but when the closest target is a couple hundred thousand kilometers away, that was enough.
“Launch an aerospace strike,” advised the Guards' air wing commander.
Petersen sighed. “The cannon is buried underground. It would take a miracle to sling a bomb down the hole. We could target the DropShips, but I doubt we could take out all four.”
“A ground assault?” one of the ’Mech battalion commanders suggested.
Petersen pursed his lips, then shook his head. “We still haven’t seen the four ’Mech battalions from the 2nd Sword yet. This could still be a diversion. Too risky with two DropShips and almost four dozen fighters flying cover.”
There was uncomfortable silence around the holotable.
“So, what, we’re just going to surrender?” Duchess Welman asked, disbelieving.
And then Reina spoke up.
“Nuke it.”
A dozen pairs of disbelieving, outraged eyes swiveled to face Reina and me.
“The Ares Conventions—” Teltra was spluttering.
“Prohibit the use of nuclear weapons against civilian targets or military targets within 75,000 kilometers of an inhabited world,” Reina interrupted. “There’s nobody up there but Drac soldiers, and Kiwi is four times further away than the minimum.”
Petersen cocked an eyebrow. “There’s the precedent to consider.”
Reina crossed her arms over her chest. “They’re already setting precedent: First they fired on the recharge station, now they’re threatening orbital bombardment. They want to prove how ruthless they’re willing to be? I say we give them a taste of their own radiation.”
Ah, our old pal the nuclear bomb. Talk about crossing a Rubicon: This was The Big One. Humanity’s fatal attraction, one we keep being drawn to and then pulled back from, each time cresting just that little bit closer to an apocalypse. And yet, what’s the difference between a 200 kiloton nuke and a 200 kiloton asteroid strike? If you’re standing underneath: Not much.
See what I mean guys? Once a line is crossed, it stays crossed. Can’t uncross it.
“You back down now, they’ll only come at you that much harder next time,” Reina said.
“But this could cause an escalation—”
“Have you been listening?” Reina shouted. “They have a cannon that can wipe out any base or city on the planet. They’ve already upped the ante. Only question is, are you going to raise the stakes or fold?”
Trust Reina to suggest we use the nuclear option. New Avalon Tong, she knew all about how to use threats and violence like tools, like levers to move people the way you want. No time for chivalry and fair play and all the other grand lies the Great Houses liked to tell themselves. What does interstellar politics have in common with gang violence? Everything. Only difference is the number of zeroes on the casualty lists.
This Tengwan guy, wanted to be the Hard Man. The toughest kid on the block, like those guerillas on Cronulla. He should’ve spent some time on the streets of New Avalon. There, they know there’s no such thing as ‘escalation.’ You either go all in right from the start, or you go home.
Teltra was going to argue more, but Petersen raised his hand. The movement stopped the conversation. Petersen just stared at the holo of the moon for a little, then turned to his aerospace commander. “Well, can we?”
Give the guy credit, he was ready for the question. “Yes sir. We have six ALMO-1s in storage.” Aerospace-Launched Multipurpose Ordinance, a milquetoast name for a 5-kiloton nuke, like the makers were afraid of what they’d made. Better known as an ‘Alamo.’ “Either launch them from the surface or they can be fitted to the W5s. Wouldn’t have to hit the cannon, just take out the power source: the DropShips. They’re close enough together that just one would be enough to do the trick.”
Petersen nodded, turned back to Reina and me. “What do you think, commander? Your men up for a little escort duty?”
*
It took more than three days to dig the six warheads out of long-term storage, check that each was still in one piece, and fit them to torpedoes that could be slung beneath the Lyran fighters.
On the third day, the dragon flame of a fireball streaked across the sky with a bone-rattling boom that shattered windows for kilometers in every direction, before arcing down over a commercial spaceport on the Java continent. The cannon-launched asteroid finally exploded about half a kilometer overhead, releasing a sledgehammer shockwave that flung DropShips about like toys and flattened every building, followed microseconds later by a wall of fire that incinerated everyone at the port.
A warning shot.
The torpedoes were ready to go the next day.
-
EPISODE 2-7: Unconventional warfare (Part II)
Six CHP-W5 Chippewas, each one fitted with a single, fat cigar of an ALMO-1 missile strapped to its belly. Hats off to those pilots, some of the bravest men and women I’ve ever met.
Heavy fighter pilots actually have the shortest life expectancy of any aerojocks. It works like this: After analyzing millions of hours of combat footage, statisticians have calculated that 3% of all shots that land hit the cockpit. Now, the bombers are in combat the most, get thrown against the most heavily-defended targets and are the easiest to hit due to their slow speed, which means they get hit more than anyone else. And so the brutal law of averages says they’re gonna get hit in the cockpit the most, which means they’re the ones most likely to get flash-vaporized by some lucky punk with a particle cannon strapped to the nose of his fighter.
Take a second to remember them, pilots of the 20th Arcturan Guards: Alex Ferguson, Eric Liddell, Nicola Sturgeon, Annie Lennox, Robert Stevenson and Muriel Spark.
We’d learned the lessons of Poulsbo, though. The Black Arrows would go in first, draw off the Sword of Light fighters, keep them busy while the Chippewas made their attack run. They could have fired the missiles from thousands of kilometers out, but Petersen was worried the Dracs might detect them and shoot them down. So, point-blank range it was.
Wasn’t looking forward to it, not a bit. Elsies and second-rate mercs over Poulsbo were one thing, but the Swords were the elite of the elite, some of the best the Dracs had anywhere. Even though we had the numbers, smart money would probably have bet against us.
We lifted off in the planet’s shadow, set a looping course that would keep us away from the cannon’s mouth, and watched that big green ball grow bigger and bigger in the forward glass (We found out later another asteroid was fired in the meantime, flattening the old Guards CP where we’d had the briefing, along with a sizable chunk of Feintuch City).
Nowhere to hide out here. They knew we were coming.
And then hours of waiting were over. Helmet display coming alive with targets, so much red my whole facebowl was rose-tinted. Clicked the safeties off, laser cannons hot and ready to rumble. Lucky above and behind my port wing. Bulldog and Nova off to starboard. Eight more F-10s behind us, Reina’s F-90 and the other Black Arrows squadron out there too, faint pinpricks against the backdrop of stars. Maybe fifteen minutes behind, the Guards aerospace wing carrying the six big ol’ atom-smashers.
I clicked the mike to get everyone’s attention. “All right, listen up Parsifal squadron. Only two orders today: Stick by your wingman, and kill Dracs. Any questions?”
“What was that second part again?”
Lucky. Take more than nuclear annihilation to make him take anything seriously. “Just watch my tail and leave the difficult part to me, Singh.” No time for more chatter. “Here we go. Party time.”
A flight of Sholagars on full afterburners, trying to punch right through our formation and get to the Guards behind us. Going so fast they couldn’t maneuver, made it easy to just put the targeting dot right on the nose of the lead one and squeezed the trigger. Armor held for a microsecond, then slagged, buckled. Turned the forward third of the fighter into a melted lump of metal, what was left of the pilot smeared inside. The fighter kept going, dead weight now, just hurtling on forever until it hit a planet or was pulled into the sun.
Sholagars whipped by, couple of laser hits scorching the armor on my wings.
Flipped 180 without killing my forward momentum—in space, where you’re heading and where the nose is pointing are two different things—and hosed the tail of another one. Hit one of the attitude thrusters, suddenly venting propellant like an aerosol can and throwing the fighter into a carousel spin. Rest of them were out of range still hurtling towards the bombers.
We had a channel to talk with the Guards, but they were filling it with headache-inducing constant chatter, so I left it off. Only people who could cut through would be Camelot Home back on Port Moseby. No way to warn them. I’d just have to hope they saw the Shos coming, and would figure out what to do.
And then chaos as we flew into the heart of their formation.
Lucky singing out targets as fighters flashed by, space coming alive with a dance floor of multicolored laser beams and micro-missile trails. “Shill, two o’clock high!” My Wildcat shuddering as a Shilone took a swipe at me before diving past. Swung the nose after him even as we slid past each other without changing trajectory, letting inertia strafe the lasers across him, gouging lines of melted armor along one wing and the fuselage, before I slammed the stick all the way to the right and rolled to avoid an answering salvo of missiles.
No chance to follow up. Another pair of Shilones diving right down at Lucky and me. “Break left!” Then ramming the throttle full open, kicked back in my seat as the engine roared to life, sending me at right angles to my last trajectory. Swinging the nose around at the diving Dracs, trigger finger working almost spasmodically, fire, fire, fire. Weapon-ready indicators on my HUD flickering like strobe lights as they fired, cycled, fired. Red holes burned deep into the other fighter.
Tough mothers, not like the novices on Cronulla who flinched if you shone a flashlight at their nose. Drac just flipped to show me his undamaged side, without ever letting up the return fire. Left him open to Lucky coming towards the other side, triple lasers carving his fighter apart like Sunday dinner.
Sensors flashed a warning as a Slayer settled on my tail. Rear-firing auto-turret kicking in, spewing out kilojoules of energy at the fighter. “Some help here, Lucky.” Spinning through three axes to avoid a hail of lead from the thing’s nose cannon.
Then the Slayer seemed to jerk and writhe as it was pounded by laser and particle cannon fire. Glanced back to see Reina’s F-90 spinning in a donut around the stricken Slayer, shattering each wing then punching a line of holes through the fuselage. Left the fighter a burning, tumbling wreck. Pilot in the cockpit probably praying he’d be picked up when this was all over.
Reina’s voice in my headphones. “Sunny, the bombers!”
Looked at the long-range scan, saw what she meant. Dracs had figured out what we were trying to do, and started throwing themselves at the bombers like wasps defending their nest.
“Parsifal squadron, protect the bombers. Maximum burn, now. Ignore everything else.”
Came up behind a damaged Shilone trying to slow down enough to get a decent shot at the lead Chippewa. Fired a seven-gun salvo, everything I had right into his back. Hammered through the belly, lasers zipping right through, punching through the back of the cockpit, through the back of the seat, through the back of the pilot.
“’Preciate the save,” said Sparks, the Chippewa pilot, on a direct channel to me. “Now let’s—” A stream of armor-piercers from a Slayer ripped through her cockpit, splattering red across the inside of the ferroglass. Her fighter seemed to hesitate for a sec, then blew apart, and I had to kick in the ABs again to avoid shooting fragments.
Three minutes to the torpedo launch point.
Liddell’s was the next to go, a crippled Slayer deliberately plowing headlong into his fighter, annihilating both in a blinding flash of light. Then Sturgeon, torn apart by a swarm of Shilones.
Bulldog shouting something incoherent right down my eardrums. “Say again Parsifal three?”
“The carrier!”
Mass detector on my sensor scope pinging like crazy, then a shadow fell across the cockpit as something came between me and the star, blocking it our entirely.
The Vengeance DropShip. Dracs had committed their carrier, risked their ride home in an all-out bid to stop us. Close-range AA batteries opened up on everything around it, surrounding the ship in a web of green fire. Missile tubes starting pumping out salvos of 90 micro-missiles at a time, swarms of murderous fish racing down towards the Chippewas.
Stevenson banking, too late, caught in the middle of a missile salvo, the white bloom of impact, another impact, hit, hit, hithithithit, they just kept coming and coming, eating through the fighter, almost sanding it into nothing.
Two minutes to launch. Two bombers left.
“Lucky, Bulldog, Nova,” I sang out. “Follow me. We’re taking out that ship.”
Crackle of mikes as each pilot clicked acknowledgement. Felt rather than heard the thrum of the twin engines roaring at maximum.
Dove into the web the DropShip was weaving, curling around fingers of killing light, approach from behind, then skimming along the hull surface, almost close enough to touch, blasting gun ports and missile launcher blisters. Other three following behind, burning livid orange gashes along the hull.
One minute.
Wildcat shuddering as a particle cannon found me, burst of energy smacking into the left wing weapons pod. Three lasers out. Then I was past the hull, out in front. Flipped, full reverse thrust, coming back towards the nose of the DropShip.
Aimed right at the bridge.
Full magnification, I could see their faces. See the captain screaming something, ship beginning to turn as my finger caressed the trigger. Four laser bursts, right through their front window. Melted ferroglass ran like water then webbed and burst outwards, unable to hold back the air inside any more. Explosive decompression, bridge crew picked up by an invisible giant and hurled outside, into the vacuum of space. They were suited up, so the ones that didn’t get cut in half by jagged glass or flying machinery would live, for a while.
With the bridge gone, the ship lost fire control. Some gunners still firing, but erratic now, uncoordinated. Drives still obeyed the helmsman’s last orders, a hard turn to port. DropShip started going in circles.
Torpedo launch.
Two silver cylinders dropped clear of the bombers, then sparked to life, their rockets hurling them forwards.
Dracs gave up shooting at the bombers, focused everything on the missiles now.
A Sholagar tried to ram one, missed, flew straight into the side of the Vengeance and detonated. Another got behind one torpedo, fired, once, twice, scored a glancing hit, torpedo corkscrewing wildly off course, headed for deep space. Last torpedo.
I dove behind on the Sho, started hammering at him with all four remaining guns. Like a bristleback with its jaws locked around a bone, he wouldn’t let go. Engine redlining. Spine felt like it was going through the back of the seat. On full afterburner, I’d get one more shot before he was out of range. Breathed. Concentrate. Fire. Hit. His drive engine flickered, flared. Exploded.
Reina yelling in my ears again, “Pull up, pull up, pull up!”
Too close to the detonation zone. Flipped, maximum thrust again. G-suit working overtime to keep me awake, felt like a family of elephants sitting on my chest. Wildcat slowed, came to a relative stop. Began to accelerate away from the moon again.
Flash.
Like a newborn sun suddenly appearing over the moon for a split second. Stark, hard-edged shadows flung across the cockpit. Then dark, like that little kernel of brilliance had sucked all light in the universe into itself.
Then boom.
The four Mammoths gone. Blown down like bowling pins. Shattered and cracked, eggshell shards sent flying into space. Their crews nothing more than flash-burned memories on stone, and an expanding cloud of molecules billowing from the surface of the moon.
The ragged remnants of our three squadrons regrouped, unpursued by the Dracs.
“Looks like they’ve got their hands full getting the DropShip under control.”
“We should finish them off,” argued Nova.
“More likely they’d finish us off,” replied Bulldog. “Live and let live, just be happy you’re alive and this is over.”
I’d just punched up the Guards channel to give them a verbal pat on the back, which is how I heard it when Camelot Home overrode the channel.
“All fighters, return to Port Moseby. Repeat, all fighters, return to Port Moseby,” the controller was calling, over and over. “DCMS DropShips inbound. Repeat, all fighters, return to Port Moseby.”
Wasn’t over. Not yet.
-
i guess that one scene from Ent matches the people going bye bye from the bridge...
-
Hang on, those were the Scots Guards were they?
-
Hang on, those were the Scots Guards were they?
Kidd taking up the pointing-out-when-I'm-silly slack. Yup. Port Moseby is in the Federation of Skye, that was excuse enough for me. O0 As a Canadian, I was sad nobody caught Barrett's Privateers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_Privateers) as the name of a mercenary unit though...
@pensive: Sorry, didn't get the reference. Only Ents I know of don't go in for interstellar travel much. :P
-
Kidd taking up the pointing-out-when-I'm-silly slack. Yup. Port Moseby is in the Federation of Skye, that was excuse enough for me. O0 As a Canadian, I was sad nobody caught Barrett's Privateers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_Privateers) as the name of a mercenary unit though...
sounds like your next unit :)
-
i guess that one scene from Ent matches the people going bye bye from the bridge...
and here I was thinking TLJ scene, not sure what Ent is??
Kidd taking up the pointing-out-when-I'm-silly slack. Yup. Port Moseby is in the Federation of Skye, that was excuse enough for me. O0 As a Canadian, I was sad nobody caught Barrett's Privateers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_Privateers) as the name of a mercenary unit though...
Never heard of it before, and I'm not that far from there
-
Work catching up with me this past week ... I'm breaking this next episode into parts for easier digestion.
* * *
EPISODE 2-8: Presence Projection
I: The Plan
Why do I get so worked up about kids? Huh, well. Guess it’s time to tell you about the time I left the Corps.
This is all fiction, of course. The Directors of SAFE and ISF will swear to Butte Hold and back that it never happened, and if you can’t trust the heads of two of the galaxy’s most secretive organizations, then who CAN you trust? Sorry, seem to have dripped some sarcasm on the floor there. Mind you don’t step in it; it stains.
I said earlier running an interstellar empire is like running a gang. Right? When you’re the leader of the gang, you can’t take any insults to your pride, ‘cos that makes you look weak, and if you look weak, you’re dead. Same goes for House rulers, only more so.
So three of these interstellar gang leaders got together in a little mountain resort on Terra called Schloss Elmau. They’d agreed to help each other, but one of them felt the other two needed his help far more than he needed theirs. Now, I won’t name names and say who the arrogant one was, except that it was Takashi Kurita and I lied just now. Sorry.
Anyway, that arrogance rankled, and one of the other two gang leaders’ lieutenants decided to do something about it.
One of the things Lord Kurita had said was that ISF wouldn’t share intelligence with SAFE, since SAFE “leaked worse than an origami umbrella in a typhoon.” Gang leaders can’t let comments like that slide. Something had to be done to put our pal Kurita in his place.
So it fell to the leader of the Eagle Corps at the time, Colonel Stanislaw Yildiz, to do that ‘something.’ Yildiz was a bear of a man, solid as an Awesome, warm as a shot of bourbon, serious as a PPC to the reactor. He was a king among men. For this story, let’s call him Arthur.
I once heard him ask a captain what he thought of the M4T pulse rifles. Captain in question said something along the lines of they’re fine, thank you sir. Arthur looked him in the eye, and verrrry quietly asked him the same question again. Now, the M4T was okay, but overheated in any sustained firefight. But the captain just gulped a bit, said no problem sir, we’re getting along fine. So Arthur said that wasn’t what he’d heard at all, in fact he’d heard they were shoddy pieces of junk, and when he asked his officers a question, he expected an honest answer.
Captain in question was gone by the end of the week, and the Eagles were immediately issued the new, more rugged and accurate Austen Vale ERS-302 rifles. A King.
This King Arthur then, he was the one asked to put the Dracs in their place. On the grey and white moon of Wendigo, overlooking the planet Atreus, was an underground complex called the Eyrie, which is the kind of name you get when hoo-rah commandoes are allowed to name things. In the innermost room of the Eyrie, King Arthur assembled a group of seven men about a round table.
Their leader was Ezekiel J… call him Gawain. Brave, bold if short-tempered. Guinevere was the demolitions expert, Merlin the intelligence specialist. Lancelot handled the heavy weapons, Morgana navigation and fire support. Tristan was the marksman, Percival the pilot.
King Arthur told them what he wanted. Some eyebrows were raised.
“Sir, but aren’t they our allies?” asked Percival. The newest member of the squad, he was young and keen. Anyway, Arthur was the kind of commander you could ask these questions—who you’d better ask these questions, or he’d think you a fool.
“Not yet,” replied Arthur with a grin. “And not on their terms, but ours. You do this right, we tweak their noses, nobody gets hurt. Do you think you can do this right?”
A chorus of seven voices: “Sir! Yes sir!” Which is the kind of reply you get when you ask hoo-rah commandoes if they can do something.
The squad grabbed their gear. ERS rifles, sonic stunners for non-lethal work, flashbangs, breaching charges, laser saws. They were calm, professional, talking and joking as they worked. As the newest member of the squad, Percival was given the roughest ride by the rest.
“Step it up, Percival. Ain’t in the provincials any more,” called Tristan. Percival had transferred from the Fusiliers of Oriente, but might as well have been deep Periphery militia for all the respect it got him.
“Think Morgana’s got his sensors all cluttered,” laughed Merlin. True enough, watching her change had driven the pilot to distraction. To Percival, Merlin said: “Give it up now, hick. She’s out of your weight class.”
Morgana overheard, but she just smiled and gave Percival an appraising look. “I don’t know boys, he looks maneuverable enough. Bet he handles well at all speeds.”
The next morning (Atreus-time) the delta wing of a heavily-modified ST-46 shuttle—bearing the skull-and-bullet hole insignia of a pirate gang that hadn’t existed until six hours before—slipped quietly away from Wendigo. The brief flare of its drive was soon lost in buzzing in-system traffic and the cloud of stars, before its faint firefly dot discretely looped away from the major shipping lanes and was swallowed by the long shadow of a Scout-class JumpShip.
What the seven didn’t know, indeed only one of them ever found out, was that King Arthur’s reign would soon be ending. A few weeks after their briefing, he returned by shuttle to Atreus. On approach to the landing strip, a confused novice in another shuttle waiting at the end of the strip thought he’d been given clearance to take off. Arthur’s shuttle slammed into the other, ripping straight through the dorsal plating and smashing into the fuel tanks. The two shuttles sat in a confused tangle of burning metal in the middle of the landing strip for a few minutes, as fire crews raced to the scene—only to be caught when the fuel tanks finally went up in a pillar of burning light.
Some said sabotage, but no: Just plain, dumb, stupid luck. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Arthur’s successor as commander of the Eagle Corps, Baz Vukovic, was an altogether different kind of man. We’ll call him Mordred, for reasons that will become apparent.
In the meantime, a JumpShip carrying the shuttle and its seven crew members—running dark an unaware of these events—emerged several weeks later at a pirate point in the shadow of the moon Olgar, orbiting the planet Altair V in the Draconis Combine.
-
Nice!
-
Knights of the round table, a prelude to Knights of the Inner Sphere.
Mordred, well that's not a name that conjures good luck for our intrepid heroes. :D O0
-
NOT at all...
-
Tristan the marksman, how apt.
Knights of the round table
We dance when e'er we're able,
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
-
@Kidd: 'Tis a silly place.
@pensive & snakespinner: All names chosen with intent, of course. As is Mordred's real name, Vukovic. Extra bonus: If anyone's familiar with Warhammer 40K, Gawain's first name is yet another hint.
@mikecj: Cheers, mate!
* * *
II: The Assault
Altair was a pretty miserable excuse for a planet, a blisteringly hot desert with tiny teacups of surface water at either pole, skin-scouring winds, industrial-grade air pollution and a species of subterranean crocodiles called sand sharks. The only thing of real note in the system was the floating wreckage of the ancient Izumi Shipyards in orbit around Olgar, where JumpShips had been built and repaired in happier times before being merrily pulverized into scrap metal by every House within reach—which, as it turns out, had been all of them.
The yards were not completely abandoned, however. A small (and supposedly unarmed) team of Combine techs and astechs, engineers and planners and supply chain managers were said to be on board, repairing what they could, planning for the eventual rebirth of the station. Among the many things these people did was run simulations on travel and repair times needed for the Combine’s JumpShip fleet, and it was this data the seven in the shuttle had been sent to retrieve.
The pirate shuttle passed out of Olgar’s shadow into the stark blue-white light of Altair’s star, and Percival saw the shipyards before him. The shattered metal ribcage of leviathan building docks that had once launched ships that sailed at impossible speeds through invisible dimensions, still trailing twisted and strangely delicate cranes and robotic welding arms, twisted as though in agony, reaching out in mute supplication. Light spilled out into darkness from narrow windows in a rotating torus at one end, but the rest was as silent as a graveyard.
“’Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’” Pecival quoted.
“You’ll be despairing if you don’t keep the docks between us and the crew quarters,” grunted Gawain. He’d made a reputation for toughness, and had no time for poetry. In the seat next to Percival, Morgana threw him a flickering smile of sympathy, then bent back to her scopes.
Percival cut the drive and they coasted in on hydrazine thrusters, avoiding sensor detection by hiding behind the station’s mass. On passive sensors only: he flew almost without instrumentation, by instinct, almost. In the cargo hold, Tristan and Lancelot shouldered heavy thruster packs, a laser saw and the collapsed hemisphere of a polymer boarding bubble.
With a flick, Percival sent the shuttle over the last piece of cover—the long, bulky cylinder of the old ammunition magazine—and Morgana switched on jammers, flooding the station’s sensors with digital shadows and drowning their communications in static.
Percival matched velocities with the rotating torus, bringing the shuttle gently against the docking port. Tristan and Lancelot exited out the cargo airlock, jetting on thrusters to the opposite side of the ring, where they unfolded the hemispherical boarding bubble around themselves and epoxied it in place.
The clock was ticking. It’d be a matter of moments before those inside the shipyard noticed something was wrong. Everyone suited up, in deliberately mismatched combat zero-G suits, stiffened with reflective ceramic plates over the chest, abdomen and upper arms. Checked seals and air supply. Grabbed their rifles, the new Energy Rifle System, ERS-302. Short and blocky, with a thumbhole stock that also housed the energy cell.
Gawain put a finger to his lips, like they needed reminding. Pointed to Guinevere, then the airlock door. Waved Percival and Morgana to one side, Merlin the other. All three crouched, rifles ready and pointed at the airlock. Guinevere pressed shaped plastic explosive charges along the outer edges of the airlock, and wired the detonators. She crouch-walked back to the others with a crooked smile and a red-buttoned detonator in one hand.
Gawain glanced at the timepiece set into his suit’s wrist. Tristan and Lancelot should be in position. He waved towards the airlock, once, twice. Attack.
Guinevere pressed the button. There was a loud hiss of primer followed by a muffled crump, and the airlock door fell inwards, landing on the station deck in an echoing metallic clang and thick haze of smoke.
Waiting for the smoke to clear. Eyes down sights. Merlin too eager to go, already rising from his crouch.
At the end of the entry corridor, two figures standing. Not techs or engineers. Black-uniformed men holding Seburo-12 subsonic assault rifles, a favorite among the Combine’s TSG, Tokushu Sakusen Gun internal security special tactics units. “Ute!” shouted one, and fired a clattering burst down the corridor.
Merlin’s helmeted head jerked back, the visor inside splattered with red, and he pitched over backwards. The Eagles were firing, filling the corridor with the snap-hiss of laser shots, catching the first man in a fusillade, kicking him back in a half-somersault as the laser bolts punched right through him.
The other man fired another burst, and ducked back around the far end of the corridor.
Morgana slithered over to Merlin while Guinevere, Gawain and Percival kept the corridor covered. She grabbed his armpits and pulled him back into the shuttle compartment. At the far end of the corridor, there was the ping of laser fire. Once, twice. The second Combine soldier slid into view, looking stupidly down at his chest, where there were two smoking holes, exposing the burnt skin beneath. He took a tottering step, then fell forward on his face.
Tristan and Lancelot had arrived, having cut their way through the hull (the boarding bubble prevented the entire hub from decompressing), sneaking up behind the soldier and putting two laser bolts through his back.
No time to celebrate: Gawain waved them on. Morgana stayed with Merlin in the shuttle, the others formed three teams—Gawain and Guinevere, Tristan and Lancelot, then Percival on his own. They split up and stormed wordlessly through the hub, sweeping room after room, the only sound the smack of their combat boots on the deck plates, gunning down a few bewildered TSG men without even slowing down.
Lancelot, Tristan, Guinevere and Gawain found more TSG barricaded in the central command hub, who they flushed out with flashbang grenades and cut down with accurate laser fire, but let’s follow Percival as—alone—he swept the outer modules of the station, the storerooms, recycling tanks and greenhouses.
The Kurita subsonic rifles saved his life. Edging around a corner, he heard the bark of a Seburo-12 and threw himself to the deck, as the shots hammered into the hull above his head, puffs of metal and plastic detonating out from the wall and showering Percival in white dust. Any other gun, he’d have been dead—but the Combine special tactics teams like the low recoil and lack of muzzle flash of the subsonic, which gives you that fraction of a microsecond to react.
Prone on the deck, Percival spotted two TSG men crouching by metal storage boxes piled in front of one of the storerooms. He fired, rolled, firing as he rolled, blowing out a haze of metal fragments as he slagged long lines across the boxes. One guard screamed as a swarm of metal fragments flew into his face, slicing one side to red ruin. He staggered out from cover—and Percival hit him with the laser rifle twice, once through the eye, once through the heart.
The second guard rose into a crouch, something in his hand, cocked back to throw. Percival’s shot took him through the armpit, pitching the man violently backward to lie, sprawled on the deck amid a growing puddle of blood.
Percival cautiously approached the door they’d been guarding. Heard hushed voices from the other side. He sidled up along the wall, kicked open the door and rolled through, coming up in a combat crouch, weapon ready.
A startled swarm of white eyes stared at him in terror.
The storeroom was filled with people. Young, old, children. Mostly women, a few men. Most wore grey or olive jumpsuits, many threadbare, torn or stained. A baby cried. Cots and stacks of plastic cabinets were strewn about the room, and dirty plastic sheets had been hurriedly strung at intervals partitioning the space into rough rectangles, creating the impression, if not reality, of privacy.
Percival rose slowly, relaxing slowly. His helmet radio crackled with Gawain’s voice: “Camlann secured.” Code for the station command hub. “Lancelot is down. Other teams report.”
Morgana replied first. “Merlin is alive but unconscious. Helmet absorbed most of the energy, bullet just creased the silly bugger’s scalp.”
“Acknowledged,” Gawain said curtly. “If he can be moved, bring him down here. Need you to access the system while Merlin is out. Percival?”
“Two rats down, and, uh.” How to explain? “Found a room full of civilians, sir.”
A beat. “Say again Percival?”
“Civilians, sir,” Percival repeated. They weren’t supposed to be there, of course, just like the there weren’t supposed to be any guards. “Estimate about fifty.”
“Who are they?”
“No idea, sir.”
“Well find out. Lock them in and report back here.”
Percival clicked the mic twice to acknowledge. Then reached up, released the seals on his helmet and eased it off. A hundred eyes watched his every move warily. He sat down with a sigh, on a big metal case, something that had been used to store missile warheads. The red lettering that said THIS SIDE UP was upside down.
“You got a spokesperson?” he asked the crowd.
A chatter among them, fast, in Interslav or Esfinn, too fast for him to follow. A kid stood up. Early teens, maybe, shock of pale blond hair over a wide face. Reminded Percival of his own brother, back on Oriente. Nervous, but defiant, too.
“Guess I am.” The kid said. “You gonna kill us? Sell us into slavery?”
Right, the squad was dressed like pirates, see. Pirates on Altair wasn’t as surprising as you might think—these days people assume pirates only live out beyond the Periphery. Not so. Look at a star map: What you see are only the known, inhabited systems. The whole network is interpenetrated by thousands and thousands of uncharted, supposedly uninhabited systems that were home to innumerable fly-blown colonies of extremists, outcasts and ‘antisocial groups.’ Heck, even the outer edges of a lot of inhabited systems could hide fair-sized populations of bandits, pirates and slavers, dug into some distant gas giant moon.
So the kid had figured out pretty quick the newcomers didn’t look like Steiner or Davion regulars, combined with the skull patch of the ‘Black Hole Sons’ on Percival’s shoulder plates, meant his guess that the invaders were pirates was a pretty good one.
“Don’t plan to do either, no,” Percival said. “We’re just here for the data. We get that, we’ll be on our way, no trouble to you. So sit tight, stay calm and everything will be fine.” He cocked his head at them. “Who are you people anyway? Where’s your dad?”
“On ‘sabbatical,’” the kid said grimly. Combine colloquialism, meant his dad was a teacher or professor who’d voiced some unorthodox opinions, shown dangerous signs of original thought, and been ‘invited’ to attend a retraining camp. “Mom’s an aerospace engineer.”
“She got a name?”
“Nadia.”
Percival nodded. “Okay, I’ll see if we can get her down here in a bit. Maybe we can trade. I help you, you help me. Sound fair?” The kid nodded, guardedly. “All I want to do is ask some questions,” Percival reassured him. “Like, what are you folks even doing up here?”
The question was dumb enough that the kid actually managed to crack a half-grin. “Have you ever been to Altair?” he asked. Yeah, the blistering desert with polluted air thing. “Everyone brings their family, if they can.”
“You allowed to do that?” Percival asked in surprise.
“No,” the kid said simply. “Mom had to bribe the shuttle pilot. That’s why the Toku-saku are here: Somebody found out. They were going to take us back.”
See, not a conspiracy, just more dumb luck. Dumb luck we … uh, they hadn’t known civilians were on board the shipyards, dumb luck they arrived just when the TSG was sent to bring the families back.
Percival scratched his head, said “Huh, well,” or something intelligent like that, when the kid’s eyes suddenly darted to a point beyond Percival’s right earlobe. He grabbed his rifle and spun, and saw the second TSG guard, the one he’d shot through the armpit, standing there, swaying, splattered in blood from chest to chin.
“Omae wa mou,” he grinned redly, “Shinde iru.”
And he tossed something into the room, a careless underhand throw with the last of his strength, before his legs gave way and he slid wetly down the side of the bulkhead. Glass-eyed. Dead.
The thing he’d tossed rolled to a stop at Percival’s feet. A small black cylinder, rimmed in red at one end. What the League called a Red Tag, on account of the big red tag the Combine fitted to one end so uneducated troops would know where to pull the pin.
A frag grenade. In an enclosed space like the storeroom, enough to kill or maim half the people there.
“Grenade!” Percival yelled, acting on instinct, kicking the case he’d been sitting on over on top of the grenade, and then throwing himself face-down on top of it. Confused screaming—some who’d seen the guard throw the grenade, some who’d just seen the blood, some who just screamed so they wouldn’t feel left out.
A detonation like a thunder clap. Percival felt as though an Awesome had kicked the case he was lying on. Five pieces of shrapnel burst through the top of the case, three smacking into Percival’s body armor, a fourth grazing his arm with an acid sting, the last narrowly missing an eye. That case—an ammunition carrying case, made of heavy duty plate, designed to protect the warheads from abuse. Only reason I’m talking with you today. If that had been me, which it wasn’t. Of course.
Percival shakily got to his feet, counted arms and legs, and was pleasantly surprised at the result. He tottered over to the kid. “THANKS BUDDY,” he said (his ears were still ringing from the blast), and clapped the kid on the shoulder. “I OWE YOU ONE.”
“WHAT?”
“FOR SAVING MY LIFE.”
“CAN’T HEAR YOU, BUT THANKS FOR SAVING OUR LIVES.”
“YEAH, THANKS FOR SAVING MY LIFE.”
“I DON’T HAVE A WIFE. I’M FIFTEEN.”
Percival sighed, gave up talking, just gave the kid a thumbs up. Shut and locked the storeroom door, and made his way to the hub’s command center.
On the way, he passed the medical bay. Guinevere was folding Lancelot’s hands over his chest. He looked peaceful, but for the neat round hole in the collarbone. Merlin lay beside him, head wrapped in white gauze.
In the command center, Morgana was at a bank of computers, frowning over the displays, poking and prodding keys at irregular intervals while Gawain hovered over one shoulder. Half a dozen black-clad TSG guards lay torn and bloodied about the room, their Seburo-12 guns stacked in one corner. Tristan stood watch over about two dozen jumpsuited techs, astechs and planning staff huddled on the floor. One of the prisoners clapped a bloodied bandage to his ear, where Gawain had shot off his earlobe for being too slow to cooperate. Tristan’s laser rifle slung across his back and a fat, stubby sonic stunner in his hand.
“Sir,” Percival was about to salute, but checked himself. Pirates, remember, pirates. “Outer modules secure.”
Gawain acknowledged him with a brief nod, went back to watching the displays. From the corner of his mouth, he asked, “The civvies?”
“Family of the station crew, sir.” Percival threw a quick glance at the prisoners. “They say the Tokushu Sakusen Gun were here to remove them, take them back to Altair.”
Gawain grunted. “We found their shuttle. One of the other airlocks.” Gave a little tut of frustration. “Charlie Foxtrot, start to finish.” Then, to Percival. “Think they’ll give us any trouble?”
“No sir, don’t think they have much love for the Combine.” He answered. “Give me one of the prisoners to take back to them, I think I can arrange they stay quiet.”
“Do it,” Gawain waved him away.
“You all right, Tristan?” Percival asked as he walked over.
“Never better,” Tristan twisted around as Percival approached, frowned and pointed at Percival’s face, then touched his own cheek just below the eye. “This is new.”
“Shrapnel. Grenade. Could’ve lost an eye.”
“Sould’ve let it,” said Tristan. “Would’ve improved your appearance.”
“Hey, got to handicap myself somehow, otherwise you guys would have no chance.” Percival scanned the prisoners, then asked loudly, “Which one of you is Nadia?”
There was some minute shuffling as the other prisoners created a kind of negative space around one woman, flaxen-haired like the kid in the storeroom. With a grimace and an accusing glance at the others around her, she said: “I’m Nadia Saar.”
Percival nodded to her. “Ma’am, you have a fine son. I’d like to take you to him, you can make sure he’s all right. In return, we’d like your cooperation keeping everyone calm until we’re gone.
She blinked a couple of times, wiped away tears of relief with one hand. “Until you’re gone? You won’t kill us? You’ll let us go?”
Percival nodded again. “That’s right ma’am.” He looked around the room. The dead guards. Lancelot’s white face. “Been enough killing for today.”
-
Now that could have gone better... nicely written.
-
*claps* This... should be animated.
-
An Anime series on the way.
Good start for the op. O0
-
@pensive & snakespinner: I see you've spotted the anime references (If you missed them: One Combine soldier says the Fist of the North Star catchphrase, and the Combine is supplied by the same weapons makers as Appleseed).
@mikecj: Always nice to have you on board.
* * *
III: The Betrayal
Back on Atreus, Mordred was being briefed on all the missions his predecessor had put into motion. Much as I hate the guy, let’s try to be understanding: the new guy in the office, under pressure to put his thumbprint on everything the Corps did—otherwise people would start asking why he’d be put in charge. Regional loyalties also played a role I bet: Mordred was a blueblood from Atreus, Arthur a jumped-up nobody from the Rim Commonality. Well, why not scrap the uppity colonial’s plans?
This op, here for example. On Altair. That sounded like a foolish risk to Mordred, and for what? Just to show the Coordinator that SAFE knew where all his JumpShips were? It was like a high school prank. Too much chance they’d get caught, captured, leaving SAFE with egg on its face. But he couldn’t recall the squad, they’d gone dark. What to do?
Well, this Mordred was a sly old dog. He figured a way to cut his losses, and still make it look like SAFE had a leg up on the ISF. He called a meeting with one of the ‘cultural attaches’ from the Combine embassy on Atreus. That’s diplomat-speak for a spy.
They had dinner, drinks, somewhere nice I bet, a sky lounge with a view of the city, cocktails that cost a month’s paycheck served by supermodels in superstring bikinis. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
The point is, that at the end of their little soiree, Mordred turned to his dinner companion, agreed how lamentable SAFE’s performance has been recently. Why, for example, his organization has only just learned of a plan by the Black Hole Sons pirate gang to raid the Altairian shipyards—but surely the ISF already knew that and had taken steps to defeat it?
His dinner companion smiled nervously, said why yes of course, they were well aware of the situation, and would Mordred excuse him, he’d just remembered he’d left something vital at the office. Sorry to rush, must do this again sometime, toodles.
He rushed to the ComStar HPG facility, dictated a hurried message which was promptly squirted off to Altair.
Up in the sky lounge, Mordred smiled to himself, picked up a napkin and wiped his hands clean. If the squad on Altair succeeded, well and good, but if they failed, now the League was covered: He’d been the one to warn the Combine about the attack, so he couldn’t very well have been the one to order it, now could he? Either way, SAFE came out of it looking good. Pity about the squad on Altair, but that was the price you paid to play in the big leagues.
The first Gawain, Percival and the others knew of this betrayal was when the shipyard sensors detected a flight of six Sholagars rocketing up towards them from the planet at a spine-crushing 9Gs acceleration. The remaining team members—except for Merlin, still unconscious in the infirmary—had gathered in the command hub, with the station crew and civilians all locked in the storeroom.
“Hail them,” ordered Gawain.
Morgana clicked open a channel. “Incoming aerospace fighters, this is Izumi Station,” she said with forced levity. “You guys sure are going somewhere in a hurry. Where’s the fire?”
The hiss of interstellar radiation was the only answer, as the range to the fighters rapidly decreased.
Gawain shifted, his jaw clenched. “Try again.” Looking to the others, each one slowly in turn, he said: “Those fighters would’ve had to have launched as soon as we arrived, if not before.”
“Say again, aerospace fighters, this is Izumi Station. Respond, please.”
“A traitor?” asked Tristan, one hand on the butt of his sonic stunner the other resting lightly on his laser rifle.
“We’ve all been together the whole time,” Guinevere pointe out. Then paused. “Except Percival.”
All eyes slowly turned to face Percival. “Whoah, now, wait guys, for all we know those fighters are just making a friendly—”
Outside the station, six pairs of lasers smashed into the team’s parked shuttle as each fighter strafed it, punching holes through its lightly-armored hull. The whole station shook, and air leak alarms began to blare. A strong gust of wind shoved them all as atmosphere began to pour out the now-broken airlock, until emergency doors slammed shut inside the station, sealing off the airlock corridor.
“A friendly what, Percival?” asked Tristan, eyes narrowing.
Percival felt his face growing hot, took a step back and clasped his own rifle.
“Incoming transmission, LT,” Morgana said to Gawain, interrupting the argument.
Gawain gave Percival a long, hard look, then turned to Morgana and nodded. Morgana punched the video feed up on a monitor. A black man with a sharp-edged, bony face, in a stiff black uniform: “This is Keishi* Kuroyama Susumu, Altair Tokushu Sakusen Gun. You are trapped, pirates. Surrender at once, or we will show no mercy.”
[Editor’s Note: “Superintendent”, security forces rank roughly equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel.]
Gawain was shaking his head. “I don’t think so, Kuroyama. I’m holding two dozen of your personnel, plus about 50 civilians hostage on board here. The moment we detect any attempt to board, I will begin executing them. Furthermore, you will order all your fighters to the surface within an hour and allow us free passage on the remaining shuttle, or I will begin executing them. Am I clear?”
The figure in the viewscreen stiffened. “We do not negotiate with terrorists.”
Gawain frowned a little. “I see you don’t think I’m being serious. Very well, a demonstration then.” He turned to Percival. “Time to prove yourself. Bring the woman, the one with the son. Natalia or whatever her name is.”
Percival hesitated. “Sir, I don’t think that’s—” He was young and keen, but mostly young, and could still remember his little brother back on Oriente, the one that looked like the kid in the storeroom.
“Told you there was something fishy about him,” muttered Guinevere. Tristan nodded, beginning to slowly circle around Percival, eyeing him the way the wolf eyes a sheep.
“Gave you an order, Percival,” said Gawain.
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Fine. Morgana, give me the data and get the woman. Percival, give me your rifle.”
Morgana shrugged, tossed a clear data crystal to Gawain and started to move. Percival moved to block her way. “Sir, I must—”
Gawain said one word: “Tristan.”
Percival’s ears filled with pounding white noise and his vision went black.
Tristan had turned the stunner on his squadmate. Percival must have hit the deck hard, dropped his rifle or had it stripped from him. Next thing he knew he was being dragged by the arms between Morgana and Tristan, with a head that felt like it had been crushed in a vice and a mouth that felt like stale vomit. He could hear the other two talking—they must have thought he was still out. He let his neck hang, kept his eyes closed save for narrow slits.
“Think he’s really a traitor?” Tristan was asking Morgana.
“Nah, probably not,” Morgana said after a few paces. “He’s from Oriente, they’re sentimental about the women and children thing. Old-fashioned.”
“Just as bad,” opined Tristan. “No room for sentimentality in the Corps.”
“You sound like Gawain.”
“He’ll get us out of this,” said Tristan. “Just you see.”
“Here it is,” said Morgana, and the two let Percival fall unceremoniously to the deck. From his vantage point with his cheek against the deck plates, Percival recognized the corridor outside the storeroom, with its burned storage boxes and the bodies of the two TSG men still crumpled on the floor.
There were confused shouts when the two opened the storeroom door—the prisoners had felt the station shake, and heard the air alarms when the shuttle was destroyed.
In the corridor outside, Percival could see the sprawled corpse of the TSG man, still cradling his Seburo-12 rifle. He tried to lift himself on his forearms, but they felt cold and inert, and just twitched a little.
“Quiet!” shouted Tristan. “QUIET! Which one of you is Nadia Saar?” A muffled reply, Percival couldn’t hear. “Taking you to the command center. Our commander wants a word.” More voices. “No, just her.”
Percival tried again, gritting his teeth as the numbing sensation retreated and was replaced with the porcupine sting of returning feeling. One arm moved. The other. He began to drag himself towards the downed Combine soldier.
And then the boy’s voice, piercing and clear. “Where’s Percival? Why didn’t he come?”
“He’s busy son. Now stand aside.”
Inching closer and closer. The gun almost in reach. There, his hand around the stock, give it a tug. Wouldn’t move, trapped under the dead body. Tug again. Little bit of movement. Again.
“Well, make him un-busy and bring him here. Mom’s not going anywhere until we see him.”
“Already told you once, son.”
Rocking the gun back and forth, easing it out from under the body. There, got it. Percival checked the magazine, safety. Head still pounding, tunnel vision. Looked okay. He tried to stand, got one knee under him. Used the gun as a crutch, pushed himself up, leaning against the bulkhead.
The crack of metal on skin. Screaming from inside the storeroom.
With a final shove, Percival threw himself around the doorway, bringing up the Seburo-12 to his shoulder. Tristan and Morgana with their backs to him, kid lying on the floor, head cradled in his mother’s lap. Bloody gash down one side of his face. Tristan’s laser rifle aimed at Nadia’s head. Morgana leaning casually against a storage box, glancing around at the sound, staring when she saw Percival.
“Tristan, don’t.” Percival managed to rasp, though his tongue felt two sizes too big in his dry mouth.
Without turning, Tristan said, “So, you are the traitor.”
“No,” Percival said flatly. “Just the reverse: I’m the one trying to stop you guys from betraying our mission.”
“Morgana?” Tristan said inquiringly, still looking at Nadia. “Is there a reason he’s still talking?”
“He’s got a gun,” Morgana explained.
“We can’t kill these people over, over, over someone’s hurt pride,” Percival urged. “That isn’t what we stand for.”
“What we stand for?” sighed Tristan. “We stand for absolute loyalty to House Marik, the Corps and the League. In that order.”
“Tristan,” Morgana said, warningly, eyeing the prisoners. “Our cover. Saying the malking League, Tristan.”
“What?” asked Tristan. “Not like we can leave witnesses anyway.”
“The League means something, Tristan. It means we’re better than the Combine, because we don’t stoop to their level.”
“There’s a battalion of Combine troops about to break in here, and what are you going to do Percival, debate them to death? If the League survives, it will be through loyalty, honor, unity. Strength.”
On the word ‘strength,’ Tristan pivoted away from the woman, spinning around towards Percival, raising his laser rifle.
There was the crack of a laser and a dull thudding burst of rifle fire.
Tristan looked down, frowning at the blood running down his chest as though it held one of the great secrets of the galaxy, then looked back up at Percival. “Nice shooting,” he said, admiringly. His legs slowly folded, as though kneeling, and he pitched sideways to the deck.
Percival turned warily towards Morgana, who watched impassively. “And you?” he asked.
She smiled sadly, but before she could answer Gawain’s voice interrupted them. “Breaching pods! Tristan, Morgana, forget the woman, get back here! Prepare to repel boarders.”
Morgana smiled grimly. “Moot point, I guess.”
“I’m not a traitor,” Percival repeated. “I’ll help fight.”
Morgana just shook her head. “Gawain will kill you the second he sees you,” she says. “You want to be useful, keep these people safe. If we win, I might be back to kill you later. Who knows?”
She picked up her rifle, and slipped by him without a backwards glance.
-
I actually didn't get the anime references specifically (though i know of FoTNS, i never watched it until recently. I wasn't into Punch-kill anime when i was younger. Just dudes turning into girls & pandas when they got wet, who then tried to punch-kill stuff... and usually fail :D [Written Sign Board: I though it was supposed to be pill-shaped?])
-
Nice. Typical SAFE
-
@pensive: Never read FotNS either, just know the catchphrase. Just thought it was mildly amusing-not to mention culturally appropriate-to have the Dracs spout anime cliches.
* * *
IV: The Escape
Did I betray the mission? Short answer is ‘Yes.’ Long answer is more complicated, the way long answers tend to be. Does loyalty to what you see as your true mission admit, allow or excuse disloyalty to your orders or commanding officer? Old question. No easy answer to that one, and I don’t expect we’ll solve it here.
I think I’ve explained how I felt, but to recap: The Free Worlds League must stand for something more than Thomas Marik. If that’s all it is, an engine for one man’s ambitions, then it’s no different from the Combine, the Confederation or the Federated Commonwealth. And if one House is much the same as any other, well, why not back the biggest and strongest one? Might as well crown Victor Steiner-Davion First Lord now.
But. But. What if the League was genuinely different from the FedCom? What if the League said, ‘Sure, you can be the servants of a warmongering, mega-rich nobleman—but have you considered the alternatives?’ Who would join the League then?
Diversity is strength, not weakness. Consider: The armies of Alexander the Great, of Rome, the armies that defeated Napoleon and Hitler, were diverse, multinational, not unified. Debate makes us stronger, by testing our ideas, not weaker.
That’s what the League should be. A beacon for humanity—of freedom, tolerance, justice. Protecting the weak and innocent. Striking fear into the hearts of the cruel and ruthless. I think every soldier in the Free Worlds League had a duty to uphold those ideals.
Not to murder some poor woman and her child on some floating garbage wreck because some cold bastard with more gold braid than brains two hundred light years away decided to play office politics.
Or maybe I’m just trying too hard to justify my actions. Maybe it was just cowardice. Hell if I know.
The fight for the Izumi Shipyards was a brutal one, even if the conclusion was foregone. The Tokushu Sakusen Gun are the elite of the internal security forces in the Combine, but they’re no DEST. I missed most of it, but found the shipyard security camera footage, much later.
They sent a wave of breaching pods—big cousins of the boarding bubble Tristan and Lancelot used during our attack—egg-shaped containers with room for seven men, with a thruster at one end and magnetic clamp at the other. The team clamps onto the target ship, saws open a section of hull (the pod is pressurized, so there’s no explosive decompression), and drops into the enemy ship.
It works well provided the defenders don’t spot the laser saw carving into the hull. If they do, it, hmm, doesn’t work quite so well.
Guinevere attached a shaped explosive to the hull where one pod was cutting. When it blew, the charge threw razor fragments of hull up into the pod, where the fragments pinged merrily around, bouncing off the interior walls at a couple hundred meters per second, turning the seven guys inside into very messy piles of hamburger.
Another pod. Another charge. Boom. Bubbling, gurgling screams that didn’t last long.
She got too late to the next one. The TSG had already sawed open the hull, and promptly dropped a trio of Red Tags down the hole. Blasted Guinevere right off her feet, quite literally. Both legs gone from the knee down. When the squad went to check her body, they rolled her over and discovered her weight had been holding down a dead-man’s switch on a pair of incendiary charges. They probably had a second or two to realize their mistake, maybe offer half a prayer, before the entire corridor was turned into a blazing inferno.
More holes were being cut. One squad dropped down to the deck, got ready to move out when Morgana rolled a flashbang around the corner, blinding them with its intense light, before she popped around with her laser rifle and wasted all seven of them.
She ambushed two more squads before getting caught shifting position. TSG at either end of the corridor. No hesitation, she had her sidearm in one hand, the ERS in the other, arms in a T, firing both ways up the corridor before a stream of bullets cut into her and she went down.
Don’t know what happened in the command center. One of the first things Gawain did was shoot out the internal security cams.
Percival was trying to shepherd the shipyard crew and their families towards the remaining shuttle—the one the original TSG team had used to reach the shipyards. They’d hear the echoing crump of explosions as Guinevere placed another charge, or the crack of laser fire as Morgana mowed down another boarding party, and they’d crouch down, tense, before slowly getting up and moving on.
A TSG man with a burnt hole instead of one eye came staggering out from a side tunnel. One of Morgana’s victims. People screamed, threw themselves flat on the deck. Percival trained his Seburo on the man, but he paid none of them any attention. Just went tottering down the corridor, mumbling to himself. “Shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “Shouldn’t have happened. Should’ve been more careful. Shouldn’t have happened.” Percival watched him warily until he turned a corner and was gone.
They picked their way gingerly past the corpses of the other six men in the man’s squad. A fire alarm started to wail, driving everyone to the deck again. Somewhere, a TSG squad was regretting turning Guinevere over, if only very briefly.
The corridor to the TSG shuttle airlock was blocked by a heavy security door. Percival slammed his palm on the emergency override, while trying to keep an eye up and down the corridor. Nothing happened. Turned to face the controls, punched the release again. Nothing. They were trapped.
Crump. Muffled bangs. Growing louder, it seemed.
“Percival, what’re you doing? Where is everyone? What’s going on?”
At the voice Percival spun back, bringing up the Seburo. A lone figure standing shakily at the end of the corridor, ERS rifle held loosely in both arms, a white bandage around his head. Merlin.
“Merlin!” Percival shouted. “Get over here! Dracs are boarding, we’re getting off on the shuttle. Can’t get the door open.”
Percival felt a little guilty for taking advantage of him. Poor guy had been out since the team first boarded the shipyards, but Percival wasn’t about to explain the whole “mutinying” and “shooting one of the squad” thing to him.
Merlin stumble-ran up, punched at the door controls. “Depressurization alarm, it’s locked out the manual controls,” he said.
“Can you override it?”
“Hey, who you think you’re talking to?” said Merlin. “’Course I can.”
Another distant blast. The whipcrack of rifle fire. Merlin frowned as he worked, punching in a series of diagnostic codes into the door controls. “Where’re Gawain and the rest?”
“Holding the command hub.” Percival guessed.
“Who are these people?” Merlin’s eyes flicked to the civilians, huddled in a line on one side of the corridor.
“Prisoners,” said Percival. “High-value. Possible intel. We’re bringing them with us.”
Merlin shrugged, then took one step back from the controls, brought up his rifle and sighted. Fired a long burst right into the bulkhead beside the door controls. The door hinged open.
“See?” said Merlin. “Nothing to it.”
Then his chest and abdomen erupted in flaring light as a dozen laser bolts punched through him. He fell, with a look of mild surprise on his face, blood running from his mouth.
“So, the two of you planned this together.”
Gawain. At the end of the corridor, behind Merlin. The armor plates of his zero-G combat suit were cracked, a spider web of fine white lines radiating from divots where bullets had failed to penetrate. Face dirty and smudged, but eyes filled with hate.
Percival grabbed for the Seburo but Gawain’s first shot blasted it spinning out of his hands. The next shot burned a line across his thigh, another scored along the side of his abdomen. Percival sank to his knees on the deck, clutching at his stomach.
Gawain stalked down the corridor. “First, I’ll kill you,” he promised Percival. “Then, I’ll kill the rest of these damn Dracs you love so much.”
There was a cry and the boy, Nadia’s son, was charging at Gawain. Gawain barely shifted, just twitched the barrel of his laser rifle slightly. Fired. Just one shot.
Kid’s legs carried him another couple of staggering steps, then the rotating torus’s gravity kind of took over, tipped the boy right at Gawain’s feet. Gawain didn’t even look down, just kind of smiled grimly at Percival and said: “Taste of things to come.”
There was a laser shot. Another. Gawain’s eyes went wide with surprise. Another shot. Percival could hear screaming in his ears. Took him a moment to realize the voice wasn’t his own. Gawain seemed to be having trouble standing. He reached out one hand blindly fumbling for the bulkhead, couldn’t seem to find it. Ping. Laser shot. Ping. Ping.
Nadia Saar walked past Percival, holding Merlin’s dropped ERS rifle. Awkward in both hands, firing from the hip, missing almost as much as she was hitting despite the point-blank range, not that it mattered. Face a frozen scream, mouth wide open, a single long incoherent howl. Firing at Gawain as he went down. Firing, firing. Until the energy cell beeped politely to show that it was empty.
She dropped the rifle, as though sightless, and held her boy’s body. In the end, the other shipyard crew had to carry them both together—she wouldn’t let go. They strapped Percival into the pilot’s seat, then tried to brace themselves as best they could in the cargo compartment. It was a squeeze to get everybody on board the TSG’s Kawasaki Mark VII landing craft, a blunted cone with paper-airplane wings at one end. Passenger compartment built for a dozen men, now filled with over 70.
It was heavier and better armored than the team’s shuttlecraft, which was good because the Drac Sholagar pilots tried to strafe it several times before they believed the panicked hails that the shipyard crew was on board. Luckily, the craft had a good—if mildly burned—pilot, so most of the shots missed.
The landing craft was swarmed the moment it hit dirt. Cargo bay doors opened and people began pouring out, shouting, crying, meeting a rising tide of white-clad doctors, nurses and paramedics, on which floated a confused foam of candy-striped civilian cops, shouting at everyone to keep calm, and being generally ignored. Even the news media was in attendance, holocameras whirring as families clasped each other and wept in relief, whirring as a small body was stretchered away, trailed by a grey-faced woman.
The pilot undid his harness, and quietly walked through the milling, chaotic crowd. Old trick, nobody stops a man who looks like he knows where he’s going. By the time anyone thought to ask who the pilot was or where he’d gone, he had vanished.
So that’s how I left the Corps, learned to suspect anyone with a cause, and despise anyone who treats children as tools of war.
-
THIS must be animated...
-
@pensive: If you know any directors, please let them know I'm ready to part with the rights for a very modest seven-figure sum.
Trying something new again: A day-by-day account of a single campaign. Start with Days One and Two today.
* * *
EPISODE 2-9: Sustained Bombardment
People used to ask me why I never paint the number of kills on my fighter. My stock answer is, “Because the fighter didn’t shoot anyone down; That was all me.” But sometimes I wonder. When you see those BattleMechs marching across the geography from a few thousand meters up, you’d be forgiven for forgetting there are people inside. Like the BattleMechs and war machines are the ones in control, not the fragile silly little people inside.
Sortie 1-01: Landing Zone
The Dracs had foxed us pretty good, no doubt about that. Even though we’d nuked their railgun, they’d slipped their four Mech battalions and supporting regiments past us, popping out at a pirate point near L1 and landing on Port Moseby before we could race back. Four battalions of the 2nd Sword of Light plus armor and infantry against three in the 20th Arcturan Guards. Normally, that’d be pretty good odds for the defender, but they were Sword of Light, and no offense, but the Lyrans were just Arcturan Guards. Nobody thought this would be easy.
Nobody was right.
Of the 32 fighters the Black Arrows started with, after Kiwi we had 20. Two of those were in no shape to fly, including Lucky’s—the techs couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to land from orbit on only one engine. Just lucky I guess. Six more had holes of various shapes and sizes, including mine missing half its weapons pods. We had a couple of replacement birds, plus the techs sweated grease and lubricant to fix the rest up as best they could in the next eight hours, bolting on new armor plating, ripping out and replacing wiring, fitting new guns.
We were back in action the next day. Eight fighters: my flight flying cover for four G15 Lightnings. Target was the Drac landing zone, where they were still unloading supplies. Hit them hard, before they could organize, that was the theory.
Screw the theory, they were organized.
The surviving Drac fighters were still on Kiwi, but the DropShip gunners didn’t need much help. We flew fast and low, but as soon as we cleared a line of hills at the edge of the plain I started to see the comet trails of autocannon fire flying past the cockpit, the searchlight pulses of laser fire.
Our job was fire suppression, so I tipped a wing up and dove, streamers flying from the wingtips, heading right at the nearest DropShip, thumbing the trigger, the hull plates erupting with glittering light wherever I pointed the nose. One second, two. Hurtling past the target, zooming up, then slamming the stick all the way over, pulling a kind of aerial 180, skidding hard around and zooming back down towards the DropShip, plastering the other side with fire.
Distracted the gunners enough for the G15s to take a run. They’re beasts, those things are, Luxor 20 under the nose goes through anything smaller than a 40-ton BattleMech the way Janos Marik went through children.
Metallic zipper sound as they strafed the cargo piled up at the feet of the DropShips. It’s like the ground suddenly becomes alive, hurling itself into the air in geysers, sparks showering from wherever the Luxor shells hit something solid.
One of them must have hit a fuel depot: Sudden pulse of air rocked my Wildcat, octopus arms of smoke shot out everywhere before a roiling ball of flame rose into the air.
Two passes, that’s all you get before the gunners start to get your altitude and land some serious hits. We pointed our noses for home and hit the afterburners. Left one of the G15s behind though, a smoking wreck smeared across the plain.
Sortie 1-02: Landing Zone (Again)
Went back for another swing, this time with the F-10s acting as dive-bombers. Flak was pretty accurate, forcing the Cheetahs to rush their dives. We didn’t hit anything important. All four F-10s came back more holes than aerospace fighter.
Sortie 1-03: River Bridges
After the raids on the landing zone, we grabbed coffee in the pilot’s lounge. Lucky was telling a joke, as usual.
“A cop’s working the night shift in Solaris City. Stumbles onto a crime scene, there’s a dead body and a Drac with a bloody knife in his hands. Cop says: Why’d you do it? Drac says: For honor! Next night, same thing, only this time it’s a Feddie. Same question: Why’d you do it? Feddie says: For glory!—”
Bulldog was already laughing. “Lemme guess, the Elsie says, ‘For profit!’.”
Lucky grinned. “You’ve heard this one before?”
It was good to see the team laugh “Cappie says: Do what? What’re you talking about?” I offered.
Bulldog snorted, “Yeah, grasp of reality not their strong suit. Either that or he stabs himself and then says: It was self-defense!”
Nova asked, “And the Marik?”
“Oh that’s easy,” said Lucky, with a wink at me. “Soon as the cop sees it’s a Marik, he immediately lets him go. Nobody would ever believe he’d be competent enough to actually kill someone.”
Which hurt the way only a true joke can.
Later that same day, we flew out to blow up three road bridges across the Phoenix River before the Dracs could take them. Hoped to slow the Sword of Light advance down a little. No opposition, plenty of time to line up our shots as we flew along the river, brought the central spans crashing down into the water.
Sortie 1-04: Armor Column
Fourth sortie of the day. When Mechjocks complain about aerojocks getting the same pay despite only working an hour a day, they aren’t thinking of campaigns like Moseby.
Late evening take-off, sky fading to purple-black as we took to the skies, switching over to low-light vision. Went to find a battalion of light armor spotted moving down one of the highways.
Caught up to them where the highway ran through a deep forest. Heat of their engines made them glow like torches. Single file of 12 Scorpion tanks, like little ducklings in a row, all with their turrets rotated to the rear to give the drivers unobstructed views.
First pass, we took them head on. Flying right down the highway, nose down, finger on the trigger. Asphalt erupting into the air in excited gouts wherever the lasers touched. The three big cannon on my Wildcat instantly turned the lead tank into a blazing wreck. One second motoring along, then blam. A pillar of smoke and bits of armor and turret raining down like black hail.
Easy to forget there were three men inside.
-
Day Two
Sortie 2-04: Pontoon Bridges
Up at first light, shaken awake by Reina. “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” she said.
“Let me guess: The Dracs have surrendered and we all get medals.”
“Even better,” she grinned sarcastically. “They’ve put up pontoon bridges across the Phoenix River. Colonel Petersen wants us to take them out.”
“I thought we already did that.”
“Yup,” she nodded. “Now go do it again.”
Zipped up my flight suit, grabbed my helmet. Briefed the others in the flight on the way to the hangar.
My baby waiting for me there. Patched up as best the crews can do in less than six hours.
Kept my locker key on a chain around my neck. Before I’d get in, I’d toss it to Nicolai, the chief tech. You know. In case they have to clean it out. Without me. A little ritual, like I don’t want to jinx myself with overconfidence: Admitting I might not come back ensures that I do.
Climbed up the ladder, opened the canopy, slid into that familiar narrow space that would be home for the next two-three hours. Connect the oxygen and suit coolant feeds, link the helmet to the HUD. Hitting the switches, reactor online, sensors online, weapons online.
Taxi out to the runway. Wait for the signal. Then punch the throttle, kick in the pants, pressed to the back of the seat. The arc of the ground falling away, finding myself wishing I never had to come down again. That I could just fly forever.
Following the silver gleam of the Phoenix River, back to the thin black ribbons of the Dracs’ new scratch-built bridges, prefabricated sections of steel and carbon-fiber composite. Defended this time, company of BattleMechs. Spread out along either river bank (they just waded across without waiting for a bridge). Bunch of Panthers, a Jenner or two, couple of Trebuchets and Whitworths, a Dragon and a Rifleman.
“Bulldog and Nova, get on that Rifleman,” I ordered. “Lucky, follow me, let’s hit those bridges hard so we never have to see this damn river again.”
Roaring in low, just above water-level, blowing up a wake like a supersonic speedboat, avoided giving the Mechjocks and easy target. Geysers of water vomiting up around me as the Trebs tried to lock on with their micro-missile launchers. Bridge coming hurtling up, saw the beetle silhouettes of tanks racing across, then thumbed the trigger. No time to check the results, vertical climb before I pasted the fighter across the side of the bridge. Shudder as something hit the undercarriage, but my baby held together.
“Aw, hell,” said Bulldog. Like he’d just noticed he’d forgot to lock his front door that morning.
Glanced down, over the rim of the canopy. Saw Bulldog’s fighter, back half in flames, arcing down.
“Eject, Bulldog, eject!” I shouted. Nova shouted. Lucky shouted. “Eject, you silly bastard, eject!”
And then his fighter plowed into the ground and spread itself into a long line of flames and roiling smoke.
No grey ejection seat, no white parachute. Just lots of orange and black.
Rifleman locked in place on a high cliff by the water’s edge, arms raised as though in exultation. Overheated, reactor shutdown, air shimmering in waves all around it. Nova was on him like a wolverine, hit him with everything right in the back of the center torso. Ammo explosion turned it into a 10-meter high blowtorch.
High-altitude flyover by Pepper’s recon flight a few hours later showed we'd only taken out one of the three bridges.
Sortie 2-05: Phoenix River Bridgehead
“Lyrans want us to hit the bridges again,” said Reina. Then reached up, ran her fingers through my hair, just like she’d done, way back when on Poulsbo. “Sorry about Bulldog.”
“Shit happens,” I shrugged. Still too raw to talk about it. Tossed my key to Nicolai on the way to the fighter.
Pretty pointless target, now that the Dracs had BattleMechs on the other side of the river. Whatever. Just fly the mission. Three of us—me, Lucky and Nova—went in at high altitude, three 500-kg bombs under each wing. Early evening sun reflected in a thousand rippling coins by the waves, half-seen beneath a veil of thin clouds.
Dive down when we were almost directly above the target, then rammed ourselves in the stomach with the control column, hauling all the way back, and climbing away again. World going grey as blood pooled in our legs and feet, flight suit swelling and squeezing to keep us awake.
Took out the other two bridges this time. Didn’t make any difference—most of a Mech battalion was on the other side already, then the Dracs drove a whole hovertank regiment straight over the river.
Sortie 2-06: Bridgehead
Ground support, trying to dislodge dug-in tanks around the bridgehead, help the Lyrans push the Dracs back into the water. So much smoke over the target by then visibility was down to nothing. Think we might have hit a few. Hard to tell.
Sortie 2-07: Bridgehead
Back to hit the tanks again, with much the same results. As in, bugger all.
On the return approach to the airfield, some trigger-happy Hauptmann in charge of a flak company ordered his men to open fire on us.
As mercs, we Black Arrows didn’t have a direct channel to the Lyran troops. Got on the horn to Camelot Home, the air group commander. “Tell your men to cease-malking-fire!” I shouted.
“Sorry, the air group doesn’t control the flak regiments,” came the indifferent reply.
“Then find someone who does!”
“Well, I don’t know…” Meanwhile, the over-excited crew of a double-barrel 20mm self-propelled cannon filled the air around me with two tons of screaming death. Well, okay, those pea-shooters couldn’t do much more than scratch the paint—it was the principle that counted. “…I can try and see…”
With a scream of rage, Nova flipped her fighter inverted, and dived straight down on the company’s mobile headquarters. Shot away their radar and antenna. And nothing else. At night.
Suddenly cut off from their commander, the guns cut short.
“Nice shooting, Nova,” I said, but I knew there’d be trouble.
-
Your way too modest, only a seven figure sum. :D
Things are starting to get hairy, lucky the 2nd SOL doesn't have air support any more. O0
-
Day Three
Sortie 3-08: Bridgehead
Morning briefing with Reina and the Flight Lieutenants. Which is a fancy description for a bunch of half-asleep, unwashed, unshaved pilots staring at a marked-up paper map together.
“Dracs are constantly reinforcing their toe-hold on our side of the Phoenix River,” Reina tapped the map with a red-colored pencil. “Commonwealth command reckons they’re going to try to break out today. We’ll be rotating flights on station above, so the Lyrans can call us in to hit targets of opportunity.”
Door to the conference room banged open, revealing a Commonwealth Kommandant with the black and white armband of the military police. A pale face, with a luxuriant fat caterpillar of a mustache. A private stood behind him, a submachinegun held across his chest.
The Kommandant thrust a folded-up piece of white paper at us. “Where is pilot Irina Desiderata? I have a warrant here for her arrest for treason: A deliberate attack on Commonwealth forces.”
We all just kind of looked at him—Reina, me, the other three Flight Lieutenants. Can’t have made for an appetizing sight. All of us carried at least one sidearm, me with a Sunbeam on either hip, couple of guys with Kukris or other big knives. None of us looking friendly. Soldier with the SMG gulped a little, his knuckles going white.
Reina’s slowly tilted her head towards our Commonwealth liaison, Anya McBride. Nice woman. About as effective as a Cicada in an Assault Lance, but. Nice woman. “A-a-nya,” Reina said slowly, in a dangerous tone. “Who is this?”
Anya smiled weakly, turned to the Kommandant. “Wing commander Paradis requests your credentials.”
Seeing the man’s pale face turn interesting shades of red was one of the few things that gave me real pleasure that day.
The man reached for his holster, and pulled out a Grey and Mauser autopistol. “Fetch the pilot at once! That is an order!”
Anya looked at Reina. “Herr Kommandant wishes to be introduced to Flying Officer Desiderata.”
“Does he,” said Reina, flatly. Nobody moved.
The Kommandant cocked his pistol. “I said, that is an order!”
Reina sighed, looked at Anya again. “Tell whiskers here that if he doesn’t put his gun away in the next three seconds, I’ll shove it so far up his arse that he’ll be shooting bullets every time he sneezes.”
“Wing commander Paradis suggests that you holster—”
“I heard what she said, you imbecile!” The Kommandant’s lips were flecked with foam. “This is—”
“Three.”
“—mutiny! I’ll have the entire unit—”
“Two.”
“—brought up on charges before the Mercenary—”
“One.”
“—Board and GET OUT OF THE WAY YOU DAMN WOMAN!”
This last because Anya McBride had just stepped directly in front of the man’s pistol. “Herr Kommandant,” she said sweetly. “Refresh my memory, what does the rank of Leutnant Colonel look like?”
“It’s a silver diamond, what does that have to do—”
“A silver diamond. Like this one?” McBride tapped her collar. Standard mercenary relations practice: give the liaison one rank below the merc commander. Authoritative without being threatening, unless you happen to be a short-tempered military police major.
“What? Of course but …” The Kommandant realized what he was looking at, and fell silent.
“Private,” McBride said, not taking her eyes from the man’s florid face, now quite drained of color. “Escort Herr Kommandant back to his vehicle. His superior and I will be discussing possible disciplinary measures which may be required for an officer threatening a superior. Later. For now, there is a war to win.”
Huh. Not so useless after all. Though, to be honest, I was a little looking forward to Reina sticking his gun where the sun didn’t shine. Pity that.
In any event, three nights later Herr Caterpillar and his driver drove into the back of a stalled food transport truck at 90 kilometers per hour. A world in flames and this man ended up being killed by potatoes.
When we were walking out to the fighters, Nova asked me if there had been any trouble about the business with her shooting up the flak HQ. “Nothing McBride couldn’t handle,” I shrugged away her questioning look. “Tell you later.” But I never did.
The dawn strike on the bridgehead was almost anticlimactic by comparison.
Sortie 3-09: Bridgehead
On station overhead for less than 15 minutes before we got a panicked call for support. Wedge of Drac armor threw itself against dug-in Lyran tanks. Approached from behind, tried to hit the Dracs through the deck armor over their engines.
Sortie 3-10: Bridgehead
Rotated back to base for a rest, top up on fuel. Then back out to the bridgehead. Dracs were hitting the Lyran armor again, only with BattleMechs this time. Tough nuts to crack, ’Mechs are: You can pound them for hours and they still keep coming.
Sortie 3-11: Bridgehead
Pepper’s recon flight spotted an artillery battery on the far shore. Protected by high berms on three sides, only good angles of attack were either directly above or from behind.
Turned out, Pepper’s kids had missed a lance of Partisan tanks guarding the arty. We opted for the rear approach. First sign of danger was the sudden crisscross of livid, glowing tracers that sprang to life in front of my cockpit. Only time for one quick burst of laser fire, blowing the back off one Long Tom, then I was skidding, turning, diving back for the river, trying to put some landscape between me and sixteen 30mm cannon on full auto.
Control column shaking in my hands, like we were flying through air turbulence instead of four tons of explosive armor-piercers trying to turn the fighter into a sieve.
Nova held course too long, flew level and straight trying to line up her shot. Streams of firefly tracers from all four AA tanks converged on her fighter, punching into the fuselage, tearing off a wing. Her Wildcat spun wildly, there was a flash and then her seat was rocketing away, moments before the fighter kind of sighed, dropped like a stone and slammed into the river like one of the Poulsbo Megabites doing a belly flop, then sank out of sight.
Poor Irina. On foot, alone, behind Combine lines. We’d heard they’d taken to beheading captured pilots with their katana. Last we’d ever see of her, we figured.
Sortie 3-12: Bridgehead
Saw Nova’s chief tech, Lim, standing by the runway, looking anxious, fidgeting with a cigarette—in his mouth, out again, in again, never remembering to light it. He saw me starting to walk towards him. Knew what it meant. He threw the cigarette away before I reached him and stalked away.
Left him be.
Reina didn’t say anything this time, just squeezed my hand. Three days in, and a feeling of unreality was starting to set in. Like these things couldn’t upset us, because there was no way they could really be happening. We were losing a fighter or two a day. We started with 20. Cold hard statistics said we’d all be dead by the end of the month.
Lucky and I went back once more that day, with two G15s in tow. Kept the flak tanks busy as they turned the rest of the Long Toms into twisted, burning heaps of metal.
Reina and I made love that night with desperate, clawing intensity. She kept saying, “This is real, this is real, this is real.” The whole time.
-
Days Four through Sixteen
Sorties 4-13 to 5-19: Bridgehead
Sword of Light BattleMechs made a concerted effort to break the ring around the bridgehead. The Arcturan Guards were in position now, so it was ’Mech on ’Mech. Guards had the weight, Sword of Light had the skill and experience.
With bombing of enemy infrastructure and industry now largely verboten in the rules of war, aerospace fighters’ only real strategic use has been space superiority to provide or deny assaulting forces a landing zone. A task that modern fighters are ridiculously undergunned to achieve, even if they were available in anything approaching the numbers required to actually bring down a DropShip. The one or two successes fighters have actually, by some miracle, managed to achieve only obscures how laughably unequipped we are. As a result, something close to 99% of any invasion force will reach the ground.
And when it does, there does any pretense at using fighters as anything other than a prop for the BattleMechs. Second-fiddle to the ground-pounders, divided up into penny-packets, too few to do more than cause an annoyance.
Can’t even do that when two ’Mech forces are going eyeball to eyeball at the knife-fighting ranges those boys tussle at—too much risk of catching your own side in the blast of any bombs.
Fly out to the bridgehead. Look for the target. Fail to find it. Bomb something else instead. Buzz them like the multimillion C-Bill insects that we were. Back to base. Rinse and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
Sortie 5-20: Bridgehead
That was it. I should have been dead. We’d lost an average of one fighter every twenty sorties. Law of averages said I was a dead man. Certainly started to look the part: disheveled hair, three-day beard, black circles under the eyes. Maybe I did die, but like the restless dead, I was doomed to keep flying, forever.
Sometimes, it felt that way.
Sortie 6-21: The Retreat
“Yesterday, the Sword of Light managed to punch through the center of the cordon around the Phoenix River bridgehead. The Arcturans are pulling back, but they’re moving slowly. They’ll be surrounded if we don’t slow the Dracs down.” Reina sighed. “It’s a mess. Wish I had some good news for you, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to make our own.”
I pressed the key into Nicolai’s palm, the same old ritual. “Maybe, just keep it for now,” I said. I was half-convinced I’d already died. Maybe half-wishing I would die, just to get some rest.
Sorties 6-22 to 7-26: The Retreat
In the ready room, Lucky was saying “—so he asks, ‘How do you know he’s a Drac?’ And she says, ‘Because he had a great big sword and a tiny little—’”
Nobody laughed.
I patted his shoulder. “Tell us that one again some other time.”
First mission was macabre. Reports of Drac infantry in the village of Salem. Turned out to be villagers, settling scores. Combine loyalists getting even with ‘collaborator’ neighbors who’d worked for the Commonwealth, or who they just didn’t like much, dumping them in a mass grave outside of town. Keep that in mind some armchair general tells you how clean modern warfare is. They scattered when we flew overhead, and it wasn’t worth wasting ordinance. There’d been enough revenge down there.
Lucky and I pounded a couple of hovertank companies, a BattleMech recon lance, a mechanized infantry battalion. That last one turned out to be a column of refugees. Luckily we did one pass over them before strafing, averting a massacre. Another one, at any rate.
Shouldn’t have been made a target, though. People were getting sloppy, making mistakes.
Sortie 7-27: The Retreat
Speaking of careless mistakes. Coming in to land after the second mission of the day, an overinflated tire in Lucky’s undercarriage burst when it hit the tarmac. The fighter suddenly swerved, trailing ribbons of black rubber and a shower of sparks as the wheel rim began to tear into the surface. The wing clipped the ground, spinning the fighter in a circle, off the side of the runway and into a crash barrier.
Lucky slid back the cockpit ferroglass, and staggered shakily away. A white-clad medic rushed to throw a blanket over him, followed closely by a water truck with fire crews in reflective silver overcoats. They were still a hundred meters away when the fuel tank caught, throwing tendrils of flame and chunks of burning aerospace fighter across the landing strip.
“Lucky” Singh walked away with nothing more serious than a couple of bruises. Ground crews changed his nickname to “Singed” after that. Of the four in my flight, I was the only one with a fighter left.
Sorties 8-28, 8-29: The Retreat
Flew wingman with one of the surviving F-90s. Only managed two sorties. Hit a heavy BattleMech lance, with two JagerMechs giving AA fire. My Wildcat bucked like I’d been kicked, and we limped home. The third time I climbed into the cockpit, I hit the reactor switch and nothing happened. Had half a dozen techs climbing inside its guts the rest of the day, trying to figure out what was wrong.
Day 9
Nicolai just shook his head. “Power transfer bus is blown. We’ll have to tear it out, replace the whole thing. It’ll take eight hours, minimum. Not going anywhere today, Sunny.”
I watched Reina’s F-90 and the other eight fighters take off from the runway, fists clenches in frustration. Had a shower, the first in a week. Played cards with Lucky, or Singed, or Singh, or whatever his name was now. His face was drawn and grey and he didn’t make any jokes. I tried to sleep. Couldn’t. Paced outside, watching the sky every five minutes, watching for them to come back.
Only thing worse than flying was not flying.
Reina and seven others came back. Pepper’s F-10R never did—went into a cloud, never flew out. We found out why the next day.
Sorties 10-28, 10-29, 10-30: The Retreat
The 2nd Sword of Light’s aerospace wing signaled its return to battle by jumping the F-90 wingman and me on our first sortie of the day. Guess they’d finally plugged most of the bigger holes in the carrier, and limped it into orbit around Moseby. A Vengeance can’t land, so they’d be flying from airfields on the ground.
Pair of Shilones swooped down on us en route to hit a Sword of Light company that had managed to take a crossroads in the path of two retreating armor battalions. The armor on my wingman’s F-90 suddenly buckled and blistered as laser beams and missiles lanced down from the sky.
Immelmann turn—half-loop until I was inverted, then rolled the right way up, flying the opposite direction. Bore down head-on at the two Shills on the F-90s tail. One instinctively tried to dive, but we were too low. Couldn’t pull up in time.
His crashing fighter left a line of crimson across the hills. His wingman tore away, and we were too short on fuel to pursue.
Spent the next two missions flying high cover, ready to jump any Drac fighters in the sector. None showed. Night fell. Returned to base, flying on fumes.
Saw grey flashes on the horizon, tracers hosepiping across the sky. Checked the map—yup, right direction to be the Black Arrows base. F-90 and I both hit the throttle against the stops without needing to say a word. Grey resolving into red and orange as we got closer, fires burning across the base. HUD picked up two fighters, still circling.
“Bandits, bearing oh-one-one, altitude 5K.” Coming up behind and below them. Dagger profiles silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Crosshairs over the rear wingman, now identified as a Slayer. Range, speed info scrolling down my visor. Closer, closer. Their sensors blinded by ground clutter and the haze of their own attack. Brought the nose up sharply, close range pass from below and to port. Lasers give you a two-second beam before the capacitors need to recharge. Tore open his belly, leaving long claw-marks in vivid red. The F-90 behind me made his own pass, blowing off whole sheets of armor as his particle cannon hit home. The Slayer rolled, trailing fire, trying to throw off our aim.
Then I was diving back down on him from the other side, punching holes in his rudder, ailerons, taking off half the wing. The Slayer continued its roll, almost lazily, like it was in no hurry to pull out despite the altitude it was losing. Seeming to almost welcome the ground as it buried itself at over 800 kilometers per hour.
The infernos had made a charnel house of the hangars and crew quarters. They found Nicolai a few steps from the landing strip, a curled, blackened and charred little thing that broke when they tried to lift it. Melted blob of metal where a key had hung around its neck.
Never needed it anyway. The pilot’s ready room and lockers had taken a direct hit, nothing left of my locker but a smoking crater. They found “Lucky” Singh, or what was left of him, in the hallway outside. Guess his luck had finally run out.
If that seem callous now, it was. That’s the real horror of war, folks: Not that war is horrible, because everyone knows that, but rather that horror becomes normal. You get used to it.
Sortie 11-31: Outskirts of Automata City
Reina and I sat in a temporary bubble tent by the new temporary runway the Arrows were flying from. Too drained to even undress. Just kind of lying there, not quite seeing anything despite the turquoise light filtering through the thin tent fabric.
“Break contract?” I said, finally.
Reina just kind of pulled her hair up into a bun, let it go. “We’d be finished as a unit.”
I laughed without humor. “Only nine fighters left, Reina. Out of 32. We already are finished.” I ran a hand over my eyes, like I was wiping away something I didn’t want to see. “Lyrans have pulled back as far as Automata. If they can’t hold the Snakes there, Moseby is as good as lost.”
“Can’t give up now,” she said automatically.
Maybe she was right. Everything seemed inevitable. We would continue to fight and fly until we were all dead. It seemed impossible to imagine any other future.
Just before I put my foot in the ladder up to the cockpit, one of the techs came sprinting up. “Squadron Leader, urgent call from the gate guards. Someone needs to see you immediately, sir.”
At the front gate? “Who?”
Tech was already starting to jog away, turned over his shoulder and said, “Says her name is Irina Desiderata, sir.”
It was her. Standing next to a Draconis Regional Arms Company (DRACO) Model 18 jeep, with the Combine insignia laser-scored off. White-shirted body in the back seat with a hole in its temple and a red waterfall-splatter of dried blood across the back seat and footwell. Stylized kanji numeral three at the collar—a Tai-sa. Turned out he was the leader of a labor regiment—fancy term for conscripted civilians digging anti-tank ditches and pouring concrete for bunkers.
I crushed Nova so tightly in a hug it’s a wonder she didn’t break. “Nice to see you too, sir,” she said, awkwardly patting me on the back.
“We thought you were dead,” I said. The stupid, obvious thing to say. “Who’s sleeping beauty?”
“Jeep’s former owner,” she said. “He and his driver were kind enough to get stuck in the mud while I was walking by. Objected a little when I offered to take it off his hands.”
“So unchivalrous,” I tutted. “Well, we don’t have any spare birds for you to fly, but maybe Reina can find a spot for you on her staff. Desk job, but—hey…”
Nova rolled her eyes and mimed getting back into the jeep. “All right, all right,” she said. “Guess it’ll have to do. I should feel lucky, really.”
I smiled, hugged her again. “I know I do. Look, got to go. We’ll talk when I get back.” Funny, now I was sure I would be back.
Sorties 11-32 through 16-40: Automata City
Automata City was a sleepy little place that had the bad luck to sit astride the main highways and maglev lines between the capital, Feintuch City, and Variegate City, near the Sword of Light drop zone. Before the invasion, its only notable industries were holo display emitters, processes food and artisanal candles.
Fighting started by accident there—a Drac recon battalion bumped into a Lyran mech regiment. Both called for armor reinforcement. When the tanks smacked into each other, both called for BattleMechs. The BattleMechs called for yet more BattleMechs.
In the space of five days, the battle would eventually pull in 80% of the forces committed by either side.
In the meantime, in the air exhaustion had set in. We'd been through fear and despair, and out the other side, still alive. No sense in risking your neck now. Our fighters were spending less time in the clouds, more in the repair shed. When you ran into a Drac fighter, there’d be some desultory dogfighting, then both sides would peel off and head for home. Nobody pursued.
That left plenty of time to watch the Tin Cans slugging it out below, levelling whole city blocks every time they missed, which seemed to be most of the time. Turning the whole battleground into a treacherous, shifting layer of rubble, making it that much harder to advance over the next day. Just digging themselves deeper and deeper into a mire they couldn’t pull themselves out of.
Day 17, Reina woke up, looked at me and said, “It’s time someone started looking at the big picture.”
-
Days 17 through 24
Sortie 17-41: The highways
Reina had tacked a map up on the wall of the new briefing room inside a prefab building. “Pretty much every BattleMech, tank, artillery piece and infantryman the Dracs have on-planet is here,” she said, tapping a yellow blob labeled Automata City. She traced the blue line of the main highway back across the plains, past the town of Salem, back over the Phoenix River, to a black cross-hatched circle labeled ‘DZ.’ “Three hundred kilometers from their original landing zone.”
There were twelve of us gathered, standing around the map—eight of us that still had fighters, plus four with no rides, like Irina—all of us beyond tired, emotionally abraded into drone-like robots in just three weeks of constant flying. All of us not quite daring to hope Reina might have found a way out of this.
“That means every nut and bolt, every sheet of replacement armor, every actuator and gyroscope, every bullet, shell and missile the Dracs need is being ferried from their supply dumps.”
I shook my head. “Those dumps are right in the shadow of their DropShips. That’s enough AA firepower to shoot every one of us down the minute they spot our wings.”
Reina nodded, then held up one finger. “True. But once those supplies leave the dumps, they’ve got to motor across three hundred klicks of empty landscape before they reach the forward units. And that, Arrows, is where we’re going to cut them off.”
The Commonwealth liaison, Anya McBride frowned. “Colonel Petersen won’t like you taking the pressure off the front-line troops in Automata.”
Well, of course he wouldn’t. To a BattleMech regimental Colonel, the answer to any military problem was more BattleMechs.
“Come on Anya, you know we aren’t making a dent in their forces out there,” said Reina. “Time the air wing started making its own strategy.”
The supply convoy was easy to find. Skimming along at treetop level, I could see the long caterpillar line of vehicles inching its way along the highway: heavy cargo trucks, coolant tankers, ordinance carriers, even a fleet of civilian delivery trucks pressed into service.
I put the crosshairs over the lead truck and fired. The ground erupted, like a titantic subterranean worm was tunneling just beneath the surface, arrowing its way straight towards the truck. Then the laser light and truck intersected and it disintegrated, chassis blown clear into the sky in a searing blast of light.
Flashed over their heads as the column stopped in confusion, watching on the sensors as my wingman went after the last vehicle, an ammo carrier. Its detonation took out the entire highway surface, leaving a ten-meter wide crater. Trapped between the two burning wrecks, some vehicles tried to go forwards, others back, crashing into one another, snarling the road into a confused tangle.
Easy pickings as we circled, blew apart another truck, circled, destroyed another one.
Finally headed for home when we hit bingo fuel, leaving the whole horizon red with flames reaching into the sky, the lifeblood of an army slowly leaking away.
Sorties 17-42 to 24-58: The highway
The Dracs tried everything to shake us. Drove at night; we found them with our sensors. Had their few remaining fighters fly cover. We sent one section to draw them off, while a second section blasted the supply trucks. Pulled back their mobile AA guns to act as escorts. We just hit the undefended forward dumps. Retaliated with night bombing of Feintuch City. We ignored them, let the Lyran AA handle it, and hit their convoys all the harder.
And then, one day, with a sigh that was almost audible, they quit. Packed it in. No glorious, desperate last stands, no valiant charges, nothing you could ever put in a song or on a poster or in a holovid. Just an entire army running on empty, no ammo, no fuel, no morphine or bandages, no bolts or rivets. For the want of a nail, a kingdom was lost. Sorry Dracs, but there’s no samurai spirit that can withstand the terrible juggernaut inevitability of maintenance schedules and metal fatigue.
So they pulled back from the smoking ruins of Automata City and the bodies buried under piles of rubble, back past Salem where the citizens had murdered each other for a lost cause, back across the bridgehead they had bled so hard to hold, back across the river where Bulldog had died, back into their DropShips, and back to the Combine.
Defeated not by bravery or cunning or skill, but by the implacable necessities of war. By logistics and statistics. By machines.
That night, I went down to the hangar with a can of black paint, climbed up to the tail of my fighter, and painted my first silhouette: The dagger shape of the Slayer I’d shot down over our base, the one that had helped to kill Lucky and Nicolai and so many others.
On the way out, I patted the old girl on the nose. She’d earned it.
-
EPISODE 2-10: Developing the situation
Life moves in echoing patterns. It exists as its own dark reflection. Consider.
In the past:
On the moon of Wendigo, in a based called the Eyrie, a man name Baz Vukovic, sometimes known as Mordred, entered his private office. He turned the lights on, hung up his jacket. He admired his reflection in a mirror hung on the wall and ran his fingers through his hair. Opened a minibar set into the wall and poured himself two fingers of scotch.
Turned around and walked towards his desk. Saw the man sitting there.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
In the present:
On the planet Port Moseby, I landed my fighter at the new Black Arrows base. It was confirmed, the Sword of Light had turned tail, gotten back into their DropShips, and were now making high Gs back to the pirate point where they’d appeared.
I tossed my helmet to the new chief tech, shucked my jumpsuit, wandered over to the commander’s office. Stuck my head in. She was looking out the window, her back to the door. “Hey Reina, celebration’s in order. The Snakes are running!”
The woman spun around with a jerk, a laser pistol in her hand.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
* * *
And that's the end of "Season Two." Think I lost some of you there #P Thanks to those who stuck with it!
-
I´m still here, FWIW. I just have nothing to add that would be worthy of your masterpiece here.
-
I´m still here, FWIW. I just have nothing to add that would be worthy of your masterpiece here.
Oh hey, that's cool too. Thanks for reading!
-
Thou shalt not end on a cliffhanger, for it is an abomination unto the Lord.
-
Thou shalt not end on a cliffhanger, for it is an abomination unto the Lord.
But it's a double cliffhanger, and since two negatives make a positive that makes it A-OK. Pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere. Probably Revelations.
-
But it's a double cliffhanger, and since two negatives make a positive that makes it A-OK. Pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere. Probably Revelations.
11th Commandment: Thou shalt not be a smartass towards thine readers, for thou art crunchy and tasteth well with ketchup.
-
A malfing Dallas ending... W.T.F... :D
-
WTF.. I think I missed something there at the end
-
:o :o :o :o
-
Hmmm, well, without giving too much away, my current idea for "Season Three" is to explore more of both Aric's and Reina's pasts. Pity we don't have spoiler tags, but broadly (and with minimal smart-arsedness):
- "In the past" -- Vukovic was mentioned in Aric's recount of why he quit the Corps. Given Vukovic's role in that history, and that the narrator (i.e. Aric) appears to be familiar with what happened, the identity and motive of the mystery person is, I hope, guessable. Future, yet-to-be-written flashback episodes would follow this strand.
- "In the present" -- This ties back to the ending of "Season One" (Episode 1-10), the very last line of which was meant to foreshadow what would happen. Most I can say is that there's only one person who has been hinted at in the story so far that Aric would potentially mistake for Reina, but who wouldn't know who he is. Future "present-day" episodes would follow this strand.
Anyway, the intent was not to confuse, but to give observant readers a clue as to where the story is going next.
-
I'm enjoying it. I've got a theory as to who both people are, and I am absolutely looking forward to finding out.
-
Been following you all the way, I'm the one underneath the cactus behind you.
A double cliff hanger (followed by a long drop) set's the stage for your next masterpiece. O0
-
Well, now that snakespinner is comfortable (?) under the cactus, on with the dropping. We can see if cpip has guessed right on one count today.
* * *
SEASON 3: Esprit de Corps
EPISODE 3-1: The company of wolves
In the present:
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
Which is funny, because I was about to ask her the same thing.
It’s hard to focus on someone’s face when it’s on the other side of a Core Arms pulse laser pistol, but there was no mistaking hers. So like, and yet so unlike. The same jaw line, same almond eyes, same long wavy black hair. The left side of the face was a mass of scar tissue though, a twisting network of angry red lines.
The hand holding the Core Arms twitched. “YOUR NAME?” she shouted.
“Hey, it’s me: Aric.” I slowly raised my hands. “Reina?” I said, dumbly. Still watching her, but now paying attention to my peripheral vision, too. Every drawer in Reina’s desk had been opened, the contents dumped on the floor. Muffled crashing noises came from the bedroom located adjoining the commander’s office. A 2D picture of Reina and me had fallen on the floor, just by my foot. I shifted slightly, to cover it with my boot.
“She malking stole MY NAME,” the woman hissed, the barrel of the pistol jumping with each word. Nasty-looking piece of business is the Core Arms, a long black tube with a handle halfway down its length, the laser equivalent of a machine pistol. “I’M REINA PARADIS. IT’S MY NAME.”
Jagged, broken pieces of memory were starting to fall into place—the story my ‘Reina’ had told on the DropShip from Poulsbo. Of a rich aristocrat who’d fallen afoul of the New Avalon triads. I assayed an easy smile. “Hey, look, whoever you are, I’m sure this is all one big silly misunder—”
“Shut up,” she snarled. “Just shut up, shut up. We’ll find out who you are later.” Then, a little louder, “Cutter, Saw, in here.”
A pair of hard-faced men tramped in from the bedroom. Wearing blue-and-grey Commonwealth security uniforms, but I’d never seen either of them: buzz cuts with a lightning bolt shaved into the sides, Core Arms pistols filling their hands.
Good money said: Triads. Better money said: This was the original Reina. Best money said: Oh, crap.
They looked hard at me, then at the woman.
“Come on, we’re going,” she told them. “He’s coming with us.”
“Look, much as I love to meet new people, I kind of have a thing—”
“If he talks again, shoot his kneecaps,” the woman said, striding past me. The men grinned evilly, and one waved his pistol to indicate I should follow the woman.
I sighed, turned and followed the woman out the building. There was a ground car there, in Port Moseby government livery, with a crowned, cursive ‘PM’ on the front doors and four silver stripes running down each side. A driver was waiting behind the wheel, evidently produced from the same factory that had churned out Cutter and Saw, the two guys behind me.
The woman climbed into the front seat, while one of the grunts opened the back door. His buddy shoved me in the small of the back and I clambered in. One of them got in either side, sandwiching me between them, each with the muzzle of their pistol pressed firmly against a kidney.
The car was stopped by the security checkpoint at the edge of the base. The guard took the papers the woman thrust under his nose and eyed them suspiciously, then caught sight of me in the back. I nodded, just a fraction. The guard blinked twice, and returned the papers. Banged the car on the roof. “On your way,” he said.
The ride was as silent as it was uncomfortable. Reina—the real one—in the front seat pulled out a long thin white tube, stuck one end in her mouth and lit the other with a match she struck on the dashboard. It filled the cabin with cloying, sickly-sweet smoke that made me feel torpid and drowsy.
They drove into the suburbs of Feintuch, turning towards the neighborhoods that had been shattered when the Dracs fired an asteroid at the Arcturan headquarters, about one month before. Smart-looking glass office towers and neat residential apartments gave way to ruins and deserted, garbage-line streets. Buildings with a thousand shattered windows like jagged, broken teeth, buildings where one wall had collapsed leaving a kind of layer cake slice visible inside, beds or chests teetering at the edge of the gaping hole, buildings that had collapsed in the center like a V, the two sides leaning drunkenly together.
The car stopped in front of one relatively intact apartment complex, squat like a boxer, with thick concrete walls and some of its windows still intact.
Inside the dented front doors, the lobby had been cleared out and a series of long tables set up, lined with a mismatched array of office chairs, armchairs and stools, filled with people who could have passed for my escorts’ extended family—buzz cuts, unsmiling faces, personal artillery stuck in a waistband or left carelessly on one of the tables. Banner in one corner with two Chinese characters, black ink on white: ‘White’ and ‘Tiger.’
The instant we entered all conversation stopped and the men jumped to their feet, watching me with shark-eyed hostility.
“Upstairs, with the doctor,” the real Reina said to my two boon companions. “I’ll see to the other one.”
My eyes followed the chipped and battered steps as they hugged the walls, going up and up in a right-angle cyclone, the top levels lost in shadow. “Can’t we take the elevator?” I asked. A jab in the back with a laser pistol was my answer.
About five levels up, they shoved me into a room off the main staircase. A thin man in a long white coat stood beside something that looked a bit like a dentist’s chair, with cracked green padding and suspicious red-brown stains underneath. The man wheeled a trolley next to the chair, laden with an array of sharp-looking implements I’d bet had never seen the inside of a real hospital.
“Got another case for you, Doc,” said Cutter. Or was it Saw? Whichever.
“Make him comfortable,” said the Doc, waving at the chair.
“Oh jeez, nice of you to offer but I only just had an appoint—oof” I said, as Cutter (or Saw) kicked me in the back of the knees. I staggered, falling against the trolley with all its shiny little toys. “Hey, on second thoughts why not.” I muttered.
Saw (or Cutter) strapped my wrists to the arms of the chair with those plastic zip ties the cops use on criminals. He tested the tightness once, grunted in satisfaction, then went out the door. Cutter (or quite possibly Saw) folded his arms and leaned against the wall next to the door, watching me with grim anticipation.
“Now,” said the Doc suddenly, standing over me. He switched on an overhead light, shining it right into my eyes. He picked up a datapad and stylus. “Let’s start with the basic questions before we get creative. The woman you know as Reina Paradis is a fraud, an imposter who has stolen the identity of the real Reina Paradis.”
“No.” I said. “I’m shocked.”
“This is a serious crime of course, and you would be doing your duty as a law-abiding member of society in helping us bring her to justice.”
“Yes, I can tell being law-abiding means a lot to you people.”
“So let me ask you,” he continued, ignoring my levity. “Where is this woman now?”
“I would shrug, but you know,” I looked down at my wrists meaningfully.
The Doc tapped something on the pad. “Shortly before her disappearance, the imposter placed a hyperpulse message to the planet Galatea. Who would she be trying to contact there?”
Now, that was news to me. I frowned a little in thought. “I dunno Doc, that’s a tough one. Let me ask you something first,” I said. “Where did you get your license Doc? Because frankly, your bedside manner is the pits.”
He smiled thinly. “I got my ‘license’ by studying human nature. For example, when they are brought to me, some men stay silent, some shout insults, some beg, and then some use jokes and sarcasm. In my experience, those in the last group are trying to cover their fear. They don’t last long under torture.”
“Trying to cover their fear?” I asked, raising one eyebrow. He nodded. “You’re sure about that? Not trying to cover the sound of themselves sawing through their restraints with one of your scalpels?”
He frowned. Then eyes widened.
My right arm was free. Brought it over, sliced the left one loose. Then I was out of the chair like a shell from an Imperator, the scalpel I’d palmed when I fell against the trolley in my hand. I grabbed the Doc by the front of his coat, then stabbed him in the throat with the scalpel. Once, twice, three, four times. Blood fountaining down my arm as I bore him backwards, ramming him against the wall. Stabbed him once more in the chest for good measure, twisted the blade and left it there. Left him bubbling and gurgling as he slumped to the floor.
Whirled on Cutter (I’ll just assume it was Cutter), only now getting over his shock and pulling his Core Arms pistol free. Ducked and charged right at him, felt the heat as a burst of laser fire passed right over my head. Grabbed the wrist with the gun, then threw myself backwards onto the floor. Sudden shift in the center of gravity and a foot planted in his abdomen sent Cutter flying over my head, landing with a bone-crunching crash on the floor.
I scrabbled for the Core Arms, now lying on the floor. Saw burst through the door. Found my new pistol jammed against the bottom of his jaw. Fired a burst that went right through Saw’s brain and blasted the top of his head across the wall behind him.
Swung back to Cutter, struggling to his knees, and pointed the Core Arms at his head. “She said there was another prisoner,” I said to him, quietly. Keeping my voice level despite breathing hard. “Where are they?”
He bared his teeth. “I’m not telling you a damn thing.”
“Okay,” I said. And shot him twice, once in the head, one through the chest.
The room was silent, except for the feeble gasping and flopping from the Doc, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood. Should’ve stuck to medicine, Doc; far safer than the company of wolves.
From outside, I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
I peeked through the crack in the door. There were four men on the landing outside, just coming out of a room on the next landing up. Two more thugs, with a bloodied white-clad man held by the armpits between them. A fourth man, armed with a Cudazzo revolver like the one Reina had on Poulsbo, was squinting suspiciously at my doorway.
I ducked back around the side of the doorway just as he fired, splinters of wood fountaining from the door as the bullets punched through. Then I went through the door in a roll, came up firing, three shots taking the gunman full in the chest.
The other two dropped the man in white, reached for their own guns. Too slow, far too slow. The Core Arms punched right through them, leaving scorch marks and sprays of blood on the walls.
I raced up the steps and bent over the man on the ground. Turned him over: A face I didn’t recognize. The uniform, however, I did. ComStar. “Acolyte,” I said. “Acolyte, can you stand? We’ve got to get you out of here.”
The man only moaned. “Galatea…” he whispered.
What had the Doc said earlier? Something about my Reina sending a message to Galatea. “Yes, Galatea,” I leaned down to hear him better. “Who did she contact on Galatea?”
His next words were a shock. “Brett Anderson,” he said.
“Okay,” I blinked. Put one of his arms over my shoulder, levered him to his feet. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Sure. Why not.”
He smiled and nodded. “Brett Anderson,” he said again.
A burst of laser fire stitched into him. One shot went into my arm. Now, lasers don’t have the kinetic impact that bullets do, but your nervous system does tend to react a little to being suddenly stung with what feels like a 1,000-degree needle. I dropped the gun and ComStar Acolyte, clutching my arm.
The real Reina strode from the interrogation room, Core Arms held in both hands. Oh right, should have remembered she’d said she’d be in the interrogation room, too. “You knew,” she said, accusingly. “You knew she took my name and YOU DIDN’T CARE. YOU LET HER GET AWAY WITH IT.”
“No hard feelings, huh?” I gasped. Which would have been pretty pathetic as far as last words go.
There was a detonation from the ground floor, followed by the unmistakable thudding of a heavy-barrel machinegun opening fire. A blast of hot air boiled up the staircase, followed by a cloud of dirt and soot. There were screams now, coming from below, mixed with the whipcrack of gunfire and the sizzle of lasers.
Reina-the-original looked down in horror. Then spun and ran back into the interrogation room. I staggered after her, but found the room deserted, a window open. Ducked my head outside but jerked it back in as she fired a spray of shots at window, slagging parts of the frame. She’d gone down the fire escape, where a ground car was parked.
I cursed, ran back for one of the dropped guns, but by the time I got back the car was already gone.
I threw the gun aside, sat down and waited. Didn’t have to wait long. Commonwealth security forces came pounding up the staircase, led by the guard who’d been on duty at the Black Arrows base. The cavalry had arrived.
“Tracking bug on the roof of the car?” I asked him, remembering how he’d banged the car as we left.
He nodded happily, then his smile disappeared. “The woman?”
I aimed at thumb at the window. “Got away,” I said, tiredly. “S’Okay, though. Got an idea where she’s going.”
Galatea. Brett Anderson.
Not much of a start, but maybe there was an old favor I could call in.
-
An exciting way to start the day.
The fake Reina really needs to clean up her mess. O0
-
EPISODE 3-2: The firing squad
Yeah, a favor. It actually started with me asking him for something, funnily enough. When I first started down the path that ended with a surprise guest in Baz Vukovic’s office.
In the past:
He didn’t look like much. Sitting in the back office of a dingy, grungy, cluttered, foul-smelling auto shop. Overflowing ashtray on his desk. Oil-stained overalls, oil-stained hands holding a cigarette to nicotine-stained teeth. The air pierced by the metallic squeal of power drills and the hissing whine of saws cutting through metal.
All the workers bent over the dissected bodies of ground cars and custom-built bikes, hover buses and ATVs. Not tattoos, no missing pinky fingers, too easy for the law to spot in that case, but no mistaking the muted sense of threat they kind of threw off in waves like cheap tobacco smoke. All of them kind of watching me without watching me, you know, corner-of-the-eye stuff. Ready to turn those saws on me if the order came. If the oyabun gave the word.
“Gaijin,” he muttered, which was rich. I’m about as Japanese as Hanse Davion, but he still had me beat in the paleness department. I held my tongue, though. This white-faced, white-haired weathered old man was Tadamasa Shibata, the head of the Shibata-kai—a branch of the local yakuza syndicate—and my ticket off the miserable sand trap that was Altair V.
Dealing with the yakuza is a tricky thing. They’re loyal to the Coordinator but not to the Combine. To the culture but not the government. Does that make sense? Probably not, but I’ve noticed if there’s one thing human beings excel at, it’s at holding two mutually contradictory opinions at the same time without batting an eyelid. They revered Kurita as the figurehead and symbol of their way of life, then cheerfully ignored and subverted every law and dictum he tried to enforce. They fiercely believed in the superiority of Combine language and food and fashion and music and morals and behavior, but wouldn’t hesitate to murder a Combine bureaucrat who got in their way.
A bit like your relationship with your family, maybe: The only people allowed to insult family members are family members. Any outsider tries it and you all close ranks.
So there I was, standing in this blue-smoke haze, feeling the tobacco-stink seeping into my clothes and skin and hair, asking this oyabun to help an enemy of the state escape off-planet. Would he see this as a cultural issue, and turn me in, or a legal one, and help me out?
“Gaijin,” Shibata said again. “You’ve offered us money, gaijin, because you gaijin understand nothing of honor or responsibility. You do everything for yourselves, never for the benefit of others. We Draconians are different. We understand that without society, one man alone can do nothing.”
Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. If I was getting a lecture, it meant Shibata would help. Just to assuage his sense of propriety, he’d have to frame it so he was the wise and benevolent teacher helping the ignorant and mannerless barbarian.
“I’m sorry if I have offended you,” I said. “Money is all I have.” I’d stolen a couple of things from the landing ship—medical supplies mostly—and sold them to black market dealers. That’s how I’d come to the yakuza’s attention.
Shibata looked at me shrewdly, dropped his cigarette into a half-full coffee cup to extinguish it. He leaned forward slightly. “Not so,” he said. “A man in my position hears things. Many things. About a pirate attack on the Izumi Shipyards, for example, and the miraculous escape of the crew and their families. Funny that, considering none of them are qualified pilots.” His jaundiced smile appeared again. “As I said, for Draconians, society is a web of obligations and favors. A man of military talent could earn a favor, perhaps one large enough to earn passage off Altair.”
The next morning I was out over the Herbert Desert at the controls of a DRACO-3 light observation helicopter. Basically an egg-shaped bubbled of glass with a rotor blade glued on top, a Y-shaped boom sticking out the back and two landing skids instead of wheels, the little one-ton craft bounced about the sky with every gust of wind, dropping a couple of meters whenever we hit a patch of turbulence.
“Ah,” said the passenger beside me as we bucked up and down. “Ooh. Er. Huh.” Instead of a seat harness, he had a cord clipped to the roof, which would allow him to lean out the doorway, when the time came. He clutched the lead with one hand, a Kiltek laser sniper rifle with the other—Kiltek is a modified Intek, great for amateur snipers since you don’t have to worry about wind or bullet drop or time to target. Just point and shoot. Over a thousand meter effective range before atmospheric diffusion means you’re only tickling the target. Beam is tuned to the x-ray band, so it’s invisible to the naked eye.
His name was Kamo, and he was Shibata’s wakagashira, his first lieutenant. He’d tried to explain the mission on the flight up, but it was just a tsunami wave of Japanese names to me.
“Altair is run by the—ulp—Hashiba-gumi, but there are a lot of—woohee—factions. There’s us, the Shibata-kai then there’s the Uesugi-kai, the Takeda-kai, the Shimazu-kai—whoah—and lots of others. Each faction has their own oyabun. We’re all under the Hashiba kumicho—what’s that light on the control panel? Nothing? Okay—all under the Hashiba kumicho. Hashiba’s an evil little man, to be honest, as devious as a BattleMaster’s back side, he’ll smack down anyone he thinks is getting too big for their britches, but he basically lets each faction run its own turf the way it—hey, hey, HEY, oh thank god—the way it likes. Problem is the Takeda-kai has been moving in on our turf, so we’re going to send a message.” He patted the Kiltek.
The oyabun of the Takeda-kai must have known he’d stepped on some toes, because he’d holed himself up in a retreat deep in the Shaddam Mountains, surrounded by sheer cliffs on three sides and accessible only by a single, winding mountain road. Or, as it turned out, by air.
The plan was for a ‘peace’ delegation from Kamo’s Shibata-kai to drive up to the complex, ostensibly to negotiate a truce. When Takeda himself stuck his head out to greet them, we’d pop up and Kamo would drill him through the head. With the Kiltek’s invisible beam, it would take a few seconds for his lieutenants to figure out what had happened, allowing the ‘peace’ party to escape. For the plan to work, they needed a pilot. Enter yours truly.
For my perspective, the plan did have one major weak point. Once the job was done, I’d have to trust that old Shibata felt honor-bound to keep his word to a gaijin; in other words to someone who wasn’t a part of his web of responsibilities and favors. Instead of just seeing me as a loose end, to be quickly and fatally tied off.
I kept the DRACO-3 behind a hill while the dark blue Toyo-Matsu sedan bounced up the mountain road towards the complex gate. One of the guys down there was bugged, letting us listen in on their conversation. Once they’d confirmed Takeda himself was in the open, we’d move.
Our earpieces crackled with the man’s voice now. “Ohayo gozaimasu, Takeda-sama. Gobusata shite orimasu.”
“Ike, ike, ike,” said Kamo, bringing the butt of the Kiltek up against his shoulder and shifting to the edge of his seat, straining at the end of his safety lead attached to the cockpit roof. “Go, go, go.”
I hauled on the control column, bringing us up over the crest of the hill we’d been hiding behind, tilting forward and catapulting us towards the compound. High-walled, ferrocrete dusted orange-brown to match the rocks of the cliff on whose edge it sat. Series of low, narrow-windowed buildings inside, with a helipad jutting out over the cliff’s edge. The blue Toyo-Matsu just inside the gates, the four Shibata envoys standing in front of it, surrounded by a ring of Takeda’s men. Little pink circles as faces turned up in surprise as the helicopter appeared overhead.
“Got you know, you bastard,” Kamo hissed. Leaning out of the side door, focused on the Kiltek’s sight.
Which made it easy for me to reach over, unhook his safety lead, and kick him in the small of the back with one foot. A startled shriek and he was falling, one foot caught the landing skid and he tumbled, head over feet, somersaulting over and over until he slammed into the ground just behind the Toyo-Matsu, and his body splattered like a dropped watermelon.
The four Shibata-kai men were shocked, but not for long. Takeda’s guards opened fire. The envoys’ bodies jerked and writhed and fell in untidy heaps.
The old man was waiting as I set the helicopter down on the helipad, along with a couple of his lieutenants. They watched impassively as the rotors slowed down and drifted to a stop. I tucked my flight helmet under one arm and went to meet them.
“I kept my end of the deal,” I said to Takeda.
See, Kamo—my ex-passenger and amateur skydiver—was Shibata’s first lieutenant. Turned out, Shibata’s shateigashira (second lieutenant) and my initial contact, a guy named Uragiri, had made a deal with Takeda to bump off his boss and chief rival in one little move—two birds with one bullet. Uragiri would be head of his own faction, Takeda would gain an ally, win-win, chilled sake all around.
Takeda was Shibata’s mirror image, heavyset where Shibata had been slim, bearded instead of clean-shaven, immaculately dressed in a white suit instead of dirty overalls. “Half of it,” he allowed. He waved one of his lieutenants—same general height and build as Kamo had been, wearing the same clothes, carrying an identical Kiltek rifle. “Shibata will come out to meet you when you get back.” Takeda patted the man on the arm. “You know what to do then.”
I held up a hand. “My ID and travel papers?”
“When Shibata is dead.”
I shook my head. “Not the deal.”
“You question my honor?” Takeda’s lieutenants all looked fit to burst. How dare I question the honor of a man who’d just gunned down a peace delegation in cold blood? Guess I’m just funny that way.
“Sorry chum,” I gave him a big false grin. “You know how we gaijin have no concept of honor. Goes with the territory.”
That’s the real risk of ethno-centrism folks: Not that people will disagree when you say that you’re different from them, but that they’ll agree with you, and decide that means they don’t have to play by your rules. If your attitude is ‘You will never be one of us,’ then boom, there goes any incentive to try.
Old Takeda gave me the silent cold-eyed glare treatment for a bit, just to save face, but he produced the papers in the end. “Pleasure doing business with you,” I said, and knew if I ever saw him again I was a dead man.
An hour later, I hovered the helicopter over Shibata’s body shop. Slowly brought her down as if to land in the car park outside. Couple of workers came strolling out of the shop, hands raised to shield their eyes against the sun or keep their caps on in the wash of the rotor blades. The fake-Kamo beside me sat, rigid and tense.
Then he was walking out across the asphalt, old Shibata himself. Big grin, thinking his lieutenant was back from the hit on his worst rival. The sniper in my passenger seat raised his Kiltek, sighted and fired. An invisible beam struck Shibata square in the forehead. He staggered a step, then collapsed.
The sniper was grinning beside me. Shifted his aim and fired, and fired again. The two workers closest to Shibata’s body dropped slackly to the ground. Some of the men were running now, others staring about in confusion, a few more were pointing at the copter. The sniper laughed, fired again.
A storage shed at the edge of the car park exploded outwards in a shower of shattered roof tiles and wooden beams. From the explosion strode a six-meter high monstrosity: tree-trunk wide, whirring metal legs, gorilla arms under which multi-barreled machineguns had been strapped, a barrel torso topped with an open-air cockpit. A WorkMech. It raised the two arms towards the copter and fired a double burst—barrels blurring as they spun, giving a high-pitched whine like a runaway sowing machine, spent brass fountaining out the back.
The bullets slammed into the passenger side of the DRACO-3, cracking the glass into a frosted white sheet, tearing silver-rimmed holes through the boom, the engine, the fuel tank. Tearing into my passenger, throwing him against me with a started squawk before he pitched headfirst against the control panel. Might have saved my life, suddenly jerking the control stick as he fell against me so most of the burst missed.
The helicopter was mortally wounded though, slewing about the sky even though I had both hands on the stick, dropping like a stone, thick oily black smoke belching from the engine.
As I dropped, I got a good look at the WorkMech pilot: Uragiri, the second lieutenant who’d hired me to betray his own boss. Looked like I wasn’t the only one doing a bit of double-crossing that day.
Uragiri fired another knitting-needle burst, but the bullets zipped overhead as the smoke I was dumping obscured his vision.
I had one weapon, and one way to use it.
Jammed the stick forward, using both hands, then adding a foot to keep it there, angling the rotor blades downward and forward. The helicopter burst through its own smokescreen meters away from the WorkMech, giving Uragiri a split-second to look up before the two machines crashed together.
The whirring rotor blades sliced him in half, fanning blood and gore across the car park like rain. Then one blade hit the WorkMech metal, snapped and sent the copter pirouetting away, spinning around and around until it crashed into one of the body shop work bays with the scream of tearing metal, throwing me brutally hard against the control panel before finally skidding to a halt.
I think I passed out then. Next thing I knew, the copter was surrounded by dozens of black-suited men, forming an arc with a short, thin, smiling, grey-haired man at its apex, a white coat thrown over his shoulders. Two men hauled me out of the smoking ruin of the helicopter and dragged me before him.
“Glass-sama,” he said, smiling.
“Hashiba kumicho,” I said. This was the man himself: leader of the entire yakuza syndicate on Altair. Probably the most feared man on the planet.
“I see my subordinates have been … overzealous,” he sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck ruefully. “Didn’t know Uragiri had an armed WorkMech. I suspect he harbored ambitions above leadership of the Shibata-kai. My own fault, of course. If the student learns nothing, then the teacher is to blame. I will have words with Takeda.”
I felt sorry for Takeda, then. Just a little.
“But thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Hashiba said. Yup, triple-cross on my part. As soon as Uragiri came to me with his plan to betray his leader, I’d found someone in Hashiba’s inner circle and warned them. They’d had me play along—and intended to catch Uragiri in the act. My impromptu rotating guillotine had saved them the bother. “And you seem to have tied up all the loose ends for me. Very neat, Glass-sama. Now, I feel you will be anxious to leave our little colony on Altair, and given the way dead bodies seem to multiply when you are around, I can’t say I will be sorry to see you go.”
He snapped his fingers and a lieutenant stepped forward. “Take Glass-sama to the spaceport. I believe Takeda-oyabun has already provided him with the necessary documentation.” To me, he said: “Thank you again, Glass sama. I am in your debt.”
Now that’s real power. Shibata or Takeda, they would rather have killed me that owe me anything. Hashiba could acknowledge his debt to me without any cost to himself. Any favor I might ask would be trivial for him to fulfill. “Whatever we can do for you.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then, as now, I had a DropShip to catch.
-
*clapping LOUDLY* :D
-
Very nice. Enough content here that you could've spun it out to a story of its own, frankly.
BTW I sense Richard Morgan has influenced you quite a bit.
The double-crosses here reminds me of tales from the office... wonder what that says about corporate culture...
-
That was an impressive amount of betrayals for a short story. [notworthy] [applause] [cheers]
-
Still working on the next episode, but thought I'd stop by for a chat.
@pensive: Thanks for that!
@snakespinner: Absolutely. Our man Glass with a hat-trick there. I started out with a double, then realized I'd done those before, so upped it to a triple. The irony is meant to be old man Shibata going on about how honorable the yakuza are, and then they spend the rest of the story back-stabbing each other.
@Kidd: Re length, while I do try to break up some of the longer posts for easier reading, I'll admit I don't pay too much attention to pacing. Might be different if I was doing this for money (and would be open to offers, eh CGL? *finger pistols*), but really this is just me writing whatever ideas come into my head down on paper (OK, on screen), and then hoping other people find them entertaining. If it ain't fun, don't write it, is my motto.
Re influences, this is something I could talk your ear off with VERY little encouragement. You're right though, I'm now re-reading Morgan (e.g. Broken Angels (https://one-way-mirror.blogspot.jp/2018/02/a-break-from-cyberpunk-broken-angels.html)), and I think his use of dialogue and description of action have influenced me. My biggest influence though is definitely Iain M Banks (Use of Weapons in particular (https://one-way-mirror.blogspot.jp/search/label/Banks)), e.g. the cynical/sarcastic main characters, the large-scale worldbuilding, the tongue-in-cheek tone. William Gibson is another, especially the way his characters feel a natural part of the setting.
Blade Runner, Mad Max, Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed are other touchstones. Finally, I've been reading a lot of World War 2 & Vietnam history and fiction for this story too. Len Deighton's Bomber and James Jones's Thin Red Line are probably the two that affected me the most.
-
EPISODE 3-3: Nosebleed section
In the present:
I’d left the Black Arrows (or what was left of them) in the care of Irina “Nova” Desiderata, under the cover that I was going to Galatea to recruit replacements to fill out our ranks. After the bruising fight on Port Moseby, the Commonwealth had agreed to rotate them back to Summer to rest and refit. Summer was Duke Aldo Lestrade’s personal fief, so I figured they’d be safe there.
Couple of jumps later I was on Galatea.
From a distance, the Circumpolar Star looked more like a cruise ship than a train. Twenty cars long, each car four floors and twenty meters high, a hundred meters long, making the whole train stretch for two kilometers. It ran in the flat, shallow U of a maglev bed, itself supported on titanic ferrocrete pillars 100 meters off the ground.
The line ran arrow-straight from Galatea’s north pole to its south, crossing Galatea’s wide band of equatorial desert at a stately 40 kilometers an hour, taking three weeks to complete its journey, then reversing and following its own path back again (Once the loop had extended right around the planet, until fighting between the SLDF and Amaris forces had left a two-kilometer gap in the loop on the Western Hemisphere that had never been repaired).
It was the plaything of the Inner Sphere’s aristocrats and military nobility, a kind of mobile casino, nightclub, resort spa and desert safari all rolled into one. The lead car was three-quarters covered in gold-tinted glass, with four-story windows that let Great House recruiters and their mercenary clients sip cocktails while being serenaded by classical musicians, watching the great desert dunes slip by in supreme comfort as they negotiated the cost of destruction, the price of death.
Behind the observation car were two flat-topped heliport cars, allowing passengers to board or leave at any time, or to participate in excursions in helicopter or tiltrotor aircraft stored in hangars underneath.
Next were the four dining and entertainment cars, packed with restaurants, casinos, dance halls, karaoke parlors, sports gyms, even an open-air swimming pool at the top of one car. Then ten cars of luxury suites, and finally bringing up the rear were three cars for cargo and storage, as well as the quarters for the crew and staff.
Somewhere on the Circumpolar Star, like a lump of black carbon amid all those glittering diamonds, was Federated Suns recruiter Brett Anderson. The last person my Reina Paradis had contacted before she disappeared.
I’d placed a message with my yakuza acquaintance before hopping the DropShip for Galatea. Old Hashiba had come through, and arranged for a guest invitation and transportation. The former was a thin, business-card sized wafer of platinum with a built-in holo emitter that would display my host’s credentials as well as my own. The latter was a LoCBM Turmfalke tiltrotor aircraft, sort of a narrow pencil suspended between two huge engine nacelles and rotors like windmill blades.
The pilot, a pixie-ish Asian woman with bug-eyed black sunglasses, had noticed my interest in the cockpit and jokingly offered to let me fly. She spent the rest of the flight clutching the arm rests of the co-pilot’s chair as I dove under and around the maglev line, weaving among the ferrocrete pillars, standing the plane on one wing, then the other. Been ages since I’d had so much fun.
At the helipad I was met by a security detail that scanned my invitation, as well as me for any weapons. Dressed only in a grey three-piece suit and tie, I felt strangely naked. “Welcome, Mister Glass,” said the guard. “Your host, Miss Graves, is currently in the observation car. Please carry your invitation with you at all times: It functions as a key to all electronic doors to which you’ve been granted access, and the GPS chip allows us to locate you in an emergency.”
The guard extended his hand as if to shake mine. When I clasped his hand, I felt something hard pressed into my palm. “A pleasure to have you with us, Glass-sama,” the guard said, very quietly, though his face remained in a rigid smile. “There have been a number of other unusual visitors to the Circumpolar Star today. Hashiba-sama would be most … disappointed if anything were to happen to you.” He withdrew his hand, leaving the whatever-it-was in my palm. “The observation car is that way.”
Figured the yakuza would have somebody on board. Crime knows no boundaries. That’s why you find yakuza on Galatea, the triads on Port Moseby or New Avalon, the Bratski Krug on Tharkad and Atreus, the Cosa Nostra everywhere there’s gambling, the Zetas everywhere there’s drugs.
I nodded my thanks, and headed to the exit he’d indicated. Casually put my hand in my inside jacket pocket, which gave me the chance to see what he’d given me: a Nambu Toge hold-out needler, a five-shot flechette gun only effective up to about 10 meters but would puree the insides of anyone at less than that. A thoughtful little gift.
My contact, Laetitia Graves, had skin like burnished mahogany and a dress like molten gold. Her close-cut hair was shaved into abstract whorls and spikes across the back of her skull. “Ah, my foreign guest,” she said as I found my way through the chattering crowd of cocktail-swilling people in the observation car.
She shimmered like flame as she turned towards me. “That old coot Hashiba has been holding out on me. If I’d known his boys looked so delicious, I’d have ordered room service.” She winked and took a sip of something the same ice blue as her eyes, then slowly licked the moisture from her lips.
I shrugged apologetically. “I’m the surprise ingredient,” I said. “Since we’re here, think you can serve up Brett Anderson for me?”
“Ah well, guess there’ll be time for desert later.” Her lips pursed in disappointment. She tilted her head upwards towards the roof. “Balcony, fourth floor. You’re not the only one interested in Anderson today, you know. Mind you don’t bite off more than you can chew.” With a wink and a wave, she disappeared back into the crowd.
Anderson was leaning against the railing of the exterior balcony, as promised, looking much as I remembered him: designer suit, designer stubble, designer smile. A mirror-shaded bodyguard, easily over two meters of swollen muscle that suggested a daily diet of protein and steroids, stood a few paces away, glowering at everyone.
My invitation card unlocked the sliding doors and I stepped outside, feeling the faint rustle of air as the train trundled along. Anderson looked up as I approached.
“Oh hey,” he frowned a little, reaching for a memory. “Eric, my guy, so good to see you again. So nice of you to stop by and say hi. What can I get you?”
I smiled tightly. “I’m looking for Reina Paradis.”
“Fantastic, fantastic,” he beamed at me. “Popular girl, got a lot of people looking for her. Folks from New Avalon. Even got folks from the Combine asking about her, something about a war crime. As it turns out, you’re in luck. I know just where she is. Nothing simpler, my guy. Anything for an old friend.” He waved a casual arm, elegantly vague. “She’s right behind you.”
I slid to one side so I could keep him in my field of view, and glanced back.
“I told you once, I’m Reina Paradis.” She wore a red evening gown that matched the livid red scars crisscrossing the side of her face. Held her fists clenched tightly at her sides, and looked at me with murderous intent. I guess the ComStar Acolyte back on Moseby had cracked and let Anderson’s name slip before I got to him.
“Oh, you two know each other?” Anderson clapped his hands, once, twice, exaggerated. “Oh that is just too precious. Old friends, huh?”
“Well, she’s taken a great interest in my health,” I allowed. “Tried to do a pre-mortem autopsy on me last time we met.”
“Just stay out of my way and you can keep your liver where it is now,” she shot back, then looked at Anderson. “All I want is a location, a location we’re prepared to pay you well for. We had a deal, Anderson.”
“Sure, sure, sure,” Anderson nodded. “Of course we do, doll. And I want you to know how much that means to me, really it does. But doll, thing is, information’s like any other product, supply and demand, am I right? The higher the demand, the higher the price. And looks like we just got a bit more demand right now.” He tilted his head towards me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Oh, jeez, I dunno,” he tapped his chin in mock thought, then snapped his fingers. “How about my own private aerospace force?”
“You want the Black Arrows?” Knowing I would say yes, I’d give it to him if it meant getting my Reina back.
“Black Arrows? Great name, really great,” he nodded. “Maybe Anderson’s Arrows? Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”
The real Reina stepped forward. “Let’s not be hasty,” she said, one leg sliding out the slit of her dress suggestively. She hiked it up a little higher. “There are other ways I can reward you.”
Anderson threw his head back and laughed. “No offense doll, but I can have the real thing any time I want.”
Her face contorted hideously. “I’M THE REAL THING YOU MALKING BASTARD!” Her hand running up her leg came up, holding something cold and glittering that burned along its edge with white fire. A vibro-blade.
With a roar Anderson’s bodyguard lumbered forward, pulling out a small black baton that telescoped out into a nightstick with the flick of his wrist. He swung, Reina ducked under it, knife slashing a red line across the guard’s abdomen. He grunted, reversed his swing, caught her right on the elbow. A jarring blow that made her drop the knife, sending it skittering across the balcony floor.
She glared up at the man, teeth bared in rage. The guard grinned, raised his nightstick over her head. Then glass behind him shattered. Red spots appeared across his chest. The nightclub fell from his nerveless fingers.
Reina wasn’t the only Triad on board. A dozen other guys had also snuck on board, some as guests, some as crew. One of those emptied his Cudazzo revolver into the bodyguard’s back.
The effect on the crowd inside the car was unexpected. For the triads. Half the people, the recruiters, aristocrats, socialites and hangers-on did the expected things: screamed, cried, pleaded, begged, threw themselves on the floor. Looked terrified. The other half, however, were the most ruthless, brutal killers humanity had produced in three centuries of warfare. Some of them, I realize now, didn’t look terrified. They looked, well. Happy. They grabbed anything that came to hand—bottles, knives, corkscrews—and fell upon the triad gunmen like they were a Star League cache.
One triad made it through the crowd, out onto the balcony. I saw Anderson lean back over the railing, grab the lip of the roof and haul himself up, out of sight.
Then the Nambu was in my hand and I was firing. Needler pistols are really quiet, until they’re really noisy. The quiet part comes when you pull the trigger: compressed gas hisses like a spitting snake, ejecting a cloud of ceramic needles out the barrel. The noisy part comes with the screaming, when those needles rip right through some triad gunman’s face. The gunman took a few more steps forward, his face turned into a red and white pulpy mass. I put out a hand and the body thumped blindly into it, then fell backwards.
Quick glance around. Inside the observation car, it was chaos, fighting everywhere. Reina was on her knees. Her vibro-blade was by my foot. No time for revenge; Anderson was up on the roof of the train—if he went, there went my only lead to my Reina. I grabbed the blade, stowed the Nambu, took hold of the roof and pulled.
The roof of the Circumpolar Star was a smooth, gently convex arc, broken by a few bumps of sensor clusters and power cables. Forty kilometers doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re on a slippery, sloping metal roof with no guardrail, it feels plenty fast enough. I staggered cautiously to my feet, and saw Anderson’s silhouette just reaching the far end of the car, near the edge with the next car, the helipads.
“Anderson!” I shouted, and the figure spun around. Raised one hand. There was a sizzle of superheated air. I threw myself down on the roof. Idiot was shooting at me with some sort of pocket laser pistol. I crawled behind a sensor blister. “Anderson, it’s me, Aric!” His next shot scorched the blister casing. Damn, should have said Eric.
I looked back, towards the front of the train. Two triad men were just levering their heads and shoulders onto the roof. Looked back towards Anderson. The fool was still looking my way, pistol held outstretched. Not seeing another two triads coming up behind him.
I found my feet, started charging towards him. “Down, get down!” I shouted. Fired, deliberately high, even though it was well out of range—just wanted to scare him into taking cover. Worked well enough—he ducked down, giving me a clear field of fire at the two men behind him. Hiss, hiss, hiss. Three shots from the Nambu before it clicked empty.
Hit one guy in the leg, made him scream and drop his gun, then he lost his footing and went sliding off the edge of the roof. Cracked his head on the maglev bed ferrocrete before he went falling 100 meters down to the desert floor.
Other guy just smiled, took his Cudazzo in both hands, and aimed. Footsteps from behind me too, the other two approaching. Anderson crouched down low, hands over his head, shouting “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” over and over.
There was an ear-shattering squeal. Starting off loud, progressing to painful before moving straight on to being mind-numbing. The brakes. Belatedly, someone had reacted to the bloodshed in the observation car and slammed on the emergency brakes. The sudden deceleration knocked us all off our feet, sent us sliding, scrabbling across the roof.
One chance.
Grabbed Anderson by the collar as he slid past. Vibro-blade in my other hand. Hit the stud, brought the blade down. Into the roof of the train. Then kicked us both off the side. Blade tearing through the metal skin like butter, but slowing our fall even though I felt like my arm would tear out of its socket. Hit the edge of the ferrocrete bed beside the now-stopped train.
Looked up. Faces appearing over the edge. A whine as a bullet smacked into the ferrocrete beside us. Looked down. A hundred meters of nothing. And something else.
“What now, man?” Anderson looked desperate. “What now?”
“Jump,” I said. And pushed him.
He screamed, but only briefly.
I jumped after. And landed next to him on the roof of the hovering LoCBM Turmfalke. Dorsal hatch was open, Laetitia Graves’ standing there, visible from the waist up, a Zeus rifle held at high port. “I don’t normally pick up my orders,” she shouted over the whine of the tiltrotor blades, then fired a burst towards the train. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”
Locator in the invitation card, you see, let her know where I was.
I just grinned, crawl-dragged Anderson to the hatch and stuffed him head-first past Graves into the plane. “Variety is the spice of life,” I agreed.
-
Reina Paradis, is a witch
Mr. Anderson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XooISvoZ_rs) My my what are you involved in
-
@ DOC_Agren: Let's see if he can dodge this.
* * *
EPISODE 3-4: Winging it
In the present:
The inside of the LoCBM Turmfalke was done up like an executive transport: Plush beige-and-chocolate sofa with a scattering of yarcat-skin cushions on one side, a pair of oversized reclining swivel armchairs on the other. Bit of classical 26th century music piped in, Tourmaline’s “Ode to Oleg Tikonov.”
Brett Anderson sprawled in the middle of the sofa, his multi-million C-Bill hairstyle in disarray and his gigawatt smile lost somewhere over the desert. I sat in one of the armchairs, leaning forward, elbows on my knees.
Laetitia Graves climbed down from the dorsal hatch, strode over to a weapons rack on the back wall and deposited the Zeus rifle there. I noticed there were also—in order of increasing illegality—half a dozen handguns of various shapes and sizes, a laser sniper rifle, and a shoulder-fired recoilless rifle mounted there.
Graves poured three drinks from a bar under the weapons rack, a clear, chilled sake, handed one to me and the other to a numb, unseeing Anderson, before sitting with the last in the other armchair. “Now that we’ve had the appetizer,” she smiled into her sake. “Perhaps it’s time for the main course?”
I cocked my head at Anderson. “How about it Brett? What say you cut the games for once and just tell us where Reina Paradis is? And don’t ask me which one, or I might get annoyed.”
He blinked up at the ceiling a couple of times, slowly seemed to realize where he was. Looked down, and locked gazes with Graves. “You know who I am? Do you? I’m Brett Anderson, chief recruiter for the Federated Suns on Galatea. That’s right, of the Federated-largest realm in the Inner Sphere-Suns. You do not want to mess with me.”
Should have known asking Anderson to play straight was like asking Max Liao to stop being devious or Takashi Kurita to take the stick out of his arse.
Graves sighed. “Oh dear, he’s a bit dull, this one,” she said to me. To Anderson: “We know exactly who you are, Mister Anderson, we know about your wife on Argyle and your mistress in Galatea Hills, and the other mistress at your vacation house. We know about your smuggler friends on Galatea V. We know to the last C-Bill how much you lost at the casinos last month, and how much you embezzled from mercenary contracts to cover it up. Do not think to threaten us, Mister Anderson.”
He swallowed noisily, flashed a forced smile as he rapidly reevaluated the situation. “Hey, hey, of course. You’re business people, right? Always pays to know the competition. I can respect that. Really, I can. Absolutely. So let’s talk like business people, okay? Let’s talk about profit. You know how much this woman is worth? What the triads are willing to pay for her? What the Combine is willing to pay for her after that nuke on Moseby? You get where I’m going here? Fifty-fifty split.” He flapped a disparaging hand in my direction. “Got to be way more than whatever this little guy from a nobody unit can offer you.”
Graves laughed throatily. “The triads are something of competitors, while the people I represent are not exactly. Hm. On speaking terms with the DCMS. Our arrangement with Mister Glass is of a personal nature, not a business one.”
The plane was buffeted by wind, shaking the inside of the cabin. The glasses rattled in their cup holders. Brett stared at Graves a moment, jaw visibly clenched in frustration. Bit of a shock to find there were still things that money can’t buy.
“She contacted you?” I pressed.
He nodded once, reluctantly. “Yeah. Yeah, she did.”
“Why?”
“Said someone was after her. And she wanted. Passage. Back to the Federated Suns.”
“And did you give it to her?”
He was silent, staring at his feet.
“You didn’t.” I said slowly. “You sold her out. Or you’re holding her somewhere. Where?”
In the silence, I reached into my pocket, and took out the vibro-blade I’d picked up on the train. Tossed it up and down in my hand a couple of times without switching it on. “Brett, my old chum, I’m a patient man.” I stopped tossing the knife, held it point towards him at eye level. “Why, I’ve only stabbed or shot six or seven men so far to find Reina. So rather than make it eight, why don’t you. Just. Tell. Me. Where. She. Malking. Is.” I pressed the stud on the blade, feeling it hum to vicious, thirsty life.
“If you kill me, you’ll never find her.”
“Oh don’t you worry about that,” I smiled, weaving the knife in slow, lazy loops, watching his eyes follow it, spell-bound. “I won’t kill you. No matter how much you beg me before the end.”
The pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Hate to spoil the party back there but I’m going to put on a bit of speed. There’s an aircraft out there that’s been trailing us since we left the train. Strap yourselves in, this could get uncomfortable.”
Brett immediately grabbed for the seatbelt underneath the sofa cushions, and cinched it hard against his waist. Graves too, although a little more slowly.
I switched off and pocketed the blade, then pounded up to the cockpit, looked over the pilot’s shoulder at the sensor display. “What is it?” I asked.
She shrugged, pointed at the readout. “Damnest thing. Never seen anything like it.”
I squinted at the icon, scanned the mass, speed and altitude data. Then felt cold. The pilot might never have seen it before, but I had. Half-fighter, half-BattleMech. A Stinger Land-Air ’Mech, LAM for short. About as rare as Takashi Kurita’s smiles, and still produced at exactly one factory in the entire Inner Sphere: Irece. In the Draconis Combine.
“Anderson,” I shouted back into the lounge. “Please tell me you weren’t actually stupid enough to let on to the Combine that you know where Reina is?”
He gave a sickly grin. “Maybe.”
I swore. In fighter mode, the jet-powered LAM could easily catch up to a tiltrotor aircraft like the Turmfalke, then switch to AirMech and blow us to pieces with its triple lasers. “Head for the maglev line,” I told the pilot. “Keep it between us and the LAM so he can’t hit us.”
The pitch of the engines scaled higher as the pilot jammed the stick down, making the aircraft tilt and lurch nose-down, sending my stomach up into my chest. My eyes bounced back and forth between the view out the cockpit and the growing contact on the sensor screen.
The maglev line appeared, a solid line of grey among the undulating ochre of the desert. We were skimming along at maybe 20-30 meters now, kicking up a double fantail of sand as we roared over the dunes. The LAM was almost in range. “We’ll make it,” grunted the pilot between clenched teeth.
She hit the rudder pedals, skidding us from side to side to throw off the LAM’s aim. The maglev’s ferrocrete pillars grew bigger, from toothpicks to solid bars. “We’ll make it.”
Red fire lanced down in front of the cockpit, blowing geysers of sand into the air. The pilot banked instinctively. The LAM flashed overhead, bare meters overhead, then seemed to come apart. The rear of its fuselage hinged down. The sides seemed to bulge and distend, birthing two spindly arms. The fuselage split into legs, thruster jets firing downward, bringing it to a hovering halt.
“Ram it!” I shouted to the pilot. Knew the LAM could avoid us, but hoped making him flinch would buy us time. The LAM went from small dot to looming monstrosity in a split second. It pirouetted back towards us, and fired again. Then skidded almost lazily aside as we blew past.
A kick, one wing hammered down. Looked out the port side, saw a torn red line in its side, guttering orange flames within. “Shut off the fuel line to the port engine!”
The pilot shook her head, both hands clamped to the stick. “We’ll crash on only one prop.”
“We’ll explode if the fuel catches. Bring us down!”
The grainy ocean surface of the desert was coming up alarmingly fast. “I’ll try,” gritted the pilot. “Hold on.”
Just got myself strapped into the co-pilot seat when the belly smacked into the top of a dune. Like being kicked by a giant. We bounced up again. Brief sensation of weightlessness. The horizon disappeared for the cockpit window, then rushed back up again like we were in a diving submarine. Smacked down again with vicious force. There was a tearing, screaming metallic sound from the aft compartment. Sand was clawing at our belly with a million diamond spikes, shaking the whole craft like we were dice in the palm of an Atlas.
And then the noise slowed, dropped in volume. With a final jerk, petered to a stop.
I hit the harness release, fighting the urge just to sit in stunned relief, staggered out the back, the pilot right behind me.
What a sight. Tail of the plane had torn right off, leaving a massive, empty round O of surprise in the back. Anderson was still strapped to the sofa, face white, bleeding from the abdomen. Looked like a shard of glass stuck there.
Graves’ chair had torn loose and was lying a few dozen meters behind us. Couldn’t see if Graves was there or not.
Sauroid, reverberating footfalls from outside. Two legs appeared out the gaping hole in the back of the plane: the LAM, now in BattleMech mode. “Surrender Anderson and the rest of you will not be harmed,” boomed the pilot on the external speakers. I believe this was what’s known—in the mystical and ancient traditions of the Draconis Combine—as “A Lie.”
“You’re not Anderson,” the pilot continued mildly. One arm pointed at something wriggling in the desert. Graves, trying to haul herself up on one broken leg. A laser fired, her scream cut short, body blackening and crumbling in seconds.
The mouth of the laser cannon swung towards us. “Now if the rest of you could just cooperate—augh!”
The first shell from the recoilless rifle dented the side of the head armor. Aside from the weight, the shoulder-fired ones are fairly straightforward to use; as the name suggests, there’s no recoil. Put the back end on your shoulder, grab the trigger, aim and fire. Just make sure there’s nobody standing behind you.
The Turmfalke pilot rammed another shell in, slapped me on the back. Ready. Aimed and fired. Full-throated roar as the shell’s rocket fired, blowing a torch of flame two meters behind me. The shell screamed through the air, blasting a hole in the front of the LAM’s head as it turned in surprise. The ’Mech staggered to one side.
Reloaded. Fired. Hit just above the last shell, ferroglass cracked and crumbling. LAM pilot fired reflexively, unaimed. Too high, just sliced through the top of the plane. Reloaded. Fired. Round black hole punched into the cockpit. Inside of the ferroglass splattered in red.
The LAM remained locked in position, like one of Medusa’s petrified statues.
I dropped the recoilless rifle, let it thump to the desert floor. Followed the pilot back into the wreck of the aircraft. The pilot bent over Anderson’s still form on the sofa, feeling for a pulse. Shook her head grimly.
“He’s dead.”
-
I remain terribly amused. And yes, I was right about who was in that chair, though I didn't expect what happened next, or any of the rest of this.
Kudos for bringing a LAM into this wild, crazy ride!
-
@Kidd: Re length, while I do try to break up some of the longer posts for easier reading, I'll admit I don't pay too much attention to pacing.
Pacing's fine. I meant the plot content of a typical post of yours could easily clock in double the wordcount in the hands of others. Kudos.
Re influences
Your protag might as well be named Takeshi Kovacs frankly :D Now I want to look into Iain Banks' work, sounds promising.
-
A LAM... wowsers.
-
Congrads you just captured a Stinger LAM
But now you have to find "Reina Paradis" and you lost your best lead
-
That's okay. I'll bet Hashiba will be willing to accept a LAM in exchange for losing Graves' services.
-
A LAM could buy a lot of information or in the hands of a skilled SF operative obtain that information and cause momentous amounts of trouble.
Very nice touch there. ;)
-
You know, it's odd, this thread averages about 30 views per post, but I still kind of feel like I'm sharing a story with a group of six guys. Now I know what everyone likes: LAMs. So naturally I'm going to follow up on this triumph with a post about ... you guessed it ... two people talking. #P
@Kidd: Oh dear, I do hope not. Lots of things to like about Morgan's books, but for me the characterization of Kovacs isn't one of them--too brooding and serious for my taste. I'm aiming for somewhere in between Horza (Consider Phlebas) and Zakalwe (Use of Weapons).
* * *
EPISODE 3-5: A regimented lifestyle
Moons and smugglers and pirates. My life would have been so much simpler, if it hadn’t been for moons and smugglers and pirates.
In the past:
The old man on the bench by the canal was nothing much to look at. Short, neat man, evidently aged and worn clothes carefully mended with close-spaced stitching, thinning grey hair brushed back arrow-straight from his balding pate. Magazine tucked under one arm. Chin fallen on his chest, rising and falling in gentle, wheezing snores.
You’d never look at him twice, thinking him some history teacher perhaps, or else an accountant, a tour guide at one the less well-known museums. You’d never think this was one of the deadliest assassins ever produced by the Free Worlds League, but that was precisely because he was so nondescript. He could become invisible just by standing there, could be holding a man-pack particle cannon and your brain would still tell you to ignore him and look for the real killer.
Only thing out of place in this image was two bottles of ouzo lying on the bench beside him, one empty, one full.
“Major Kucera,” I said, and nudged him with my foot. Then louder: “Major Anton Kucera.”
The old man woke with a start, a lifetime of training coming online in a flash, causing him to lash out with deadly speed and precision. If he’d been armed with a knife, I’d have been maimed, quite possibly killed. As he was armed with a copy of the previous month’s Bird Fancier magazine, so my injuries after his slash across the ribs were a touch more survivable.
“Relax, old man. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I threw myself into the bench next to him. Put my arms up on the backrest.
“Haven’t I?” Kucera stared at me for a few moments, then reached out with a tentative finger, and poked me in the arm, once, then again slightly more firmly. “Feel pretty solid for a dead guy,” he grunted. Balled his hands into fists and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Time you stopped drinking.”
“I’m not drinking,” he said huffily, picking up and inspecting the empty ouzo bottle with owlish wisdom. Let it fall back on the bench with a disappointed clink. “I’m enjoying my retirement.”
“How’s that working out?”
“Fine until you showed up,” he grumbled. Made the sign of the cross at me, then shrugged. "Just checking," he mumbled.
Together we watched the tourist boats and barges putter slowly up and down the canal, pursued by flocks of multicolored birds cawing to one another in aerial excitement. Sunlight outlined each gentle wave in a sparkling halo, and the trees looked down and nodded and rustled their approval.
A cyclist went by, following the path along the side of the canal. Then two women, joggers, in marvelously form-fitting athletic wear going the other way. One threw me a wink and a wave as she bounced past. Lifted a hand in a half-wave reply.
It was. Peaceful.
Time was, this seemed like the worst life to me. To spend all your days in one little corner of the galaxy, going through your daily routine with same people, day in, day out. But this wasn’t so bad. Give it time, maybe I could have forgotten.
Almost gave it up right there. Leave the vendetta, let the dead lie. But there were ghosts that day, of Morgana and Merlin, of Guinevere and Lancelot, even Tristan and Gawain. Driving me forward, tearing me out of the soma haze the landscape tried so desperately to wrap around me.
“Figured you were in for life,” I said at last.
“Me too,” he admitted. “The Corps had different ideas.” Kucera had been an instructor when I joined the Eagle Corps. He tilted his head up, where the faint, almost transparent outline of Atreus’s moon Wendigo was visible, even in the daytime sky. “New man upstairs, cleaning house. Most of the old hands are gone now.”
“Colonel Yildiz?”
“Shuttle accident.”
I watched him carefully. “Accident?”
He nodded, still watching the moon. “Accident,” he repeated. “They do happen, you know. New guy, Vukovic, local lad. Wanted a fresh start, in with the new, out with the old. And here I am.” He kept his head tilted up, but his eyes slid to find mine. “And here you are, Alexander.”
Oh, yeah, well. That’s my real name. My little brother couldn’t say it when he was younger, so Alexander became Sandy, glass is made from sand, and voila: My new name.
“Here I am,” I agreed.
“Heard you were in for life, too. Emphasis on the past tense.”
“Reports of my death etcetera.”
“Gawain? Guinevere? Lancelot?” A long pause. Then, slightly more quietly. “Morgana?”
I shook my head.
He looked away for a long moment, so I couldn’t see his face, shaking his head. His voice took on the rough, coarse edge of emotion harshly bitten off. “Then why are you reporting to a drunken old bum, instead of your new commanding officer?”
“Oh, the usual ghost things. Haunting old acquaintances. Thirsting for the blood of those who wronged me.”
Kucera turned back and squinted at me. “There many of them, are there?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.” Closed my eyes a moment. Seeing Morgana there, like a fool I’d been in love with her, so utterly out of my league. Merlin, like a brother. Gawain, cold and stern as a father. Opened my eyes again. “Someone tipped off the Combine though, Major. There’s a mole in the Corps. Someone who knew we were going to Altair, someone who could send a message to the Combine before we arrived. That’s a fairly short list.”
“Very,” he nodded, sadly. “At a rough estimate I’d say it’s got about, oh, I dunno, roughly … one name on it.” Sucked his teeth. “Timing fits too well, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” I agreed. “In with the new, out with the old.” Crystallized a suspicion that had been growing inside me, ever since that day. At first, I’d thought it had to be Colonel Yildiz, impossible as that had seemed, but now learning of his death, of his replacement, that crystal became hard-edged certainty.
Kucera nodded toward the moon. “Up there?”
“Still have connections? Can you help me? Get me in there?”
“Alex,” said Major Kucera, suddenly sounding all of his 60 years. He slapped the Bird Fancier magazine onto my lap. “Alex, don’t do this. Maybe Vukovic did betray your mission, maybe he didn’t. Doesn’t matter. You’re alive now, son, that’s all that counts. In 100 years, there’s nobody in the Inner Sphere who’ll remember this, one way or the other. So sit a while. Read up on birds. Or run after that girl just now, and tell her you realized you absolutely had to get her name or you knew you’d regret it for the rest of your life. Choose life. Cause all that’s waiting for you up there is death.”
I shrugged. “Death is waiting for us down here as much as up there. That’s one of life’s few certainties.”
“Look, Alex.” Kucera shifted around on the bench so he could face me directly. “Humanity is a bit like a solar system, you know? Here, in the center, that’s our House leader, around whom everyone revolves.” Kucera pointed towards Atreus’s star. “In orbit around him—or her—are the nobles, some lesser, others greater. Each with their own retinues of satellites, rings, moonlets and cosmic dust, dragging us all along in their wake, locked into these ever-repeating patterns by the pull of money and power. What to do? Learn to live happily in the orbit assigned to you. What else can you do? Escape gravity’s pull like some Periphery lordling, cast off into the cold emptiness of the void between stars, or be pulled down into the gravity well and be crushed into nothing.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I nodded. “Maybe it’s just a matter of accepting what life hands you. Or maybe. You can fall, a shooting star, and know that if nothing else, at least your passing has been marked. Or. If you hit the right place, at the right angle, at the right speed, maybe more than that. It was an asteroid—a flyspeck of dust on the cosmic scale—that killed the dinosaurs.”
Kucera looked at me grimly. “That what you are, son?” he asked. “You the flying space rock that’s going to shatter the moon? How many more will die if that happens? I won’t do anything that weakens the League.”
“Weakens the League?” I laughed bitterly. “More than sending six men and women, men and women you trained, sending them to lonely, cold, useless deaths?” I threw up my hands. Gave up. Handed him back his magazine. Stood, slowly. “You’re right, forget it Major. You’re right. Maybe I’ll go find that woman, tell her, like what you said. Might make her day, if nothing else. Add a bit of sunshine to the world, instead of darkness. Truth is, she reminds me a little of Morgana.”
Kucera was blinking up at me, at first I thought because it was so bright. Then saw him wipe away a tear. “She was one of the best.”
“She was.”
“I trained her, you know, taught her everything I knew. Knew she was something special.”
“She was.” Stuck my hands in my pockets. “Something special.”
“You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
“Think we all were, Major.” Gave him a wry smile. “Even you?”
“Like a father.” He nodded once, slapped his knee, hard. “Like a father.”
I sighed. “Just another comet, huh? Wandered too close to a star, got burned. But hey, like you said, in a century this’ll all be forgotten.” Looked down at him, then around at the canal, the boats, the oblivious birds. “Enjoy your retirement, Major.”
“Hold on a minute, Alex, one thing before you go.” He put old a hand to stop me, still surprisingly strong. He lifted up the second bottle of ouzo. Unscrewed the cap and raised it towards me. “To Morgana, and the rest.” He took a long swig, coughed into the back of his hand, then handed it to me.
“To Morgana,” I said, tipping the bottle to the sun, then the moon. “And all the other shooting stars.” Felt the alcohol burn its way down, like a hurt, like a memory.
Kucera took the bottle back. Slowly screwed the lid back on. “A shuttle called the Coriolis Comet, landing pad six, five o’clock. I know the pilot.” Looked like he was going to say something else, then just shook his head. “He used to be a smuggler. He’ll get you in.”
-
You know, it's odd, this thread averages about 30 views per post, but I still kind of feel like I'm sharing a story with a group of six guys.
Think maybe 10 of those are web bots.
“A shuttle called the Coriolis Comet, landing pad six, five o’clock. I know the pilot.” Looked like he was going to say something else, then just shook his head. “He used to be a smuggler. He’ll get you in.”
17,000 credits, myself, the boy and 2 droids, no questions.
-
Oh I read them...............just don't have any serious comments to make is all.
-
I read this as well. Every post, every great story.
The post verification is just too much of a hassle.
-
Think maybe 10 of those are web bots.
or WOBBIE looking for hidden messages }:)
-
Be reasonable, there's only 23 bots following this story. ::) >:D O0
-
@Kidd: See, I made a crack about bots in one of my other threads, and everyone was memeing about it for the rest of the story.
I've learned my lesson. You're all wonderful, real human beings, especially you, michael11899181!
@2ndacr and Spite: Great to hear from you guys! Not trying to discourage people from lurking; just commenting there seems to be a pretty tightly-knit group that follows the fan fiction posts.
Still scribbling the next episode...
-
Not a bot, but not one for typing much, either. I am enjoying a story about aero jocks rather than mech jocks. However, once Maverick & Ice Man show up, the carcharhiniform shall be truly leapt over. That way lies madness.
SMc
-
I was under the impression that it had already been established that I am one of those bots....
I have been checking in and reading every couple of days.
-
If we're all reading this- are we a botnet? ???
-
Oh good lord, this has turned into a reverse "I'm Spartacus" scene. (Or "I'm Brian" scene, given the number of Monty Python fans there seem to be). Quick, I'd better put something up to distract them.
This turned into another long one, so here's part one.
* * *
EPISODE 3-6: A division of labor (Part I)
In the present:
There are times in one’s life, times when one is beset by failures and setbacks, when the galaxy itself seems to fold space and time like a rug, just to catch your foot and trip you up, those are those times when you just have to take a deep breath, hold it in a few seconds, let it out slow.
And then scream “GOD. DAMMIT.” Up at the sky, as loud as your lungs can manage. I highly recommend also falling to your knees and pounding the sand in frustration.
Doesn’t help none, but does convey your displeasure with the universe in convincing style.
Those times are blessedly few and far between, but there was one, right there, in the middle of the deserts of Galatea, standing in a ragged hole torn in a wrecked aircraft, at the foot of a disabled LAM, next to a man—perhaps one of the only people who’d known where one of the few human beings I still cared about was—staring sightlessly up at the clear, turquoise sky. A slightly, I don’t know, disappointed look on his face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I told the corpse. “Your own damned fault.”
The pilot gave me a strange look, then clambered back up into the cockpit. I could hear her voice, talking indistinctly, someone replying with crackling, digitized distance.
I levered myself back to my feet. Two deep breaths. There had to be some clue, some trace, some trail we could follow to find Reina again. If Anderson had trapped or imprisoned her, he hadn’t done it alone. Find the accomplices, find Reina.
I emptied his pockets—yes, I know, no respect for the dead, add that to my long list of crimes—found his handheld communicator, a timepiece, his Circumpolar Star invite, his biometric ID and credit card. I used my stolen vibro-blade to hack the invite to pieces and destroy its GPS tracker. The ID said nothing I didn’t already know: name, address, nationality and occupation, age, height and weight and hair and eye color, fingerprint, retinal scan, blood type.
Tried the communicator next, flipped through its address book. Evidently this was the one he used for pleasure, not business. Long list of names, almost all of them female, with numbers next to them: Adrienne 3.5, Ayalee 4, Batira 3, Becky 1.5 (ouch, sorry Becky), Caroline 3.5, Charlize 4.5, Dizzy 3, Evangeline 4.5, Fiona 4, Five—that was a weird one, maybe the name was the score—Gina 2.5, Helena 3, Imogen 3, Kaori 4, Khaleesi 4, Marlene 4.5. Anderson was a busy man. No Reina though.
I tossed the communicator back on the body, disgusted.
The pilot wandered back from the cockpit. “Made a call,” she said, and went over to stand at the foot of the immobile LAM. Shading her eyes and looking up at it, in wonder maybe, or just wondering how they’d get it back to Galatea City.
“What now then?”
The pilot turned around and shrugged. “Sit tight and wait. Hashiba’s crew is sending someone to get us. Shouldn’t be too long. We’ll be fine as long as smugglers don’t find us first.”
“They dangerous?” I asked, thinking of the armory the plane still had tacked up to the wall.
“Only if they think they can get away with it,” she said, reaching out to pat the LAM’s leg. “They’ll steal this, if they can, and whatever else they can carry from the plane. Sell it to black market traders. Kidnap you for ransom too, if you’re rich and famous. You famous?”
I indicated the suit I was still wearing. “This is a rental.”
“Ah, well then,” the pilot nodded. “No need to worry; they won’t kidnap you then.” She winked. “Only kill you.”
Something itched there, a memory, and how it connected with the present.
In the past:
The Coriolis Comet looked like your standard ST-46, though its belly was a patchwork of black and grey where worn heat tiles had been replaced, and its once-purple paintwork had faded to a smudge-stained lavender. It ran one of the milk runs to Wendigo, carrying up food, water and other essentials, taking down waste on the return leg: not to the Eyrie itself, of course, but to the zero-G marine training base.
Her captain was named Hal Vinewood. Big guy, with the wild-eyed stare of a man who’d probably spent too much of his youth being a little too experimental with his own brain chemistry. Disconcertingly twitchy smile. “Any friend of Anton,” he said, smile appearing and vanishing like a broken LED. “Used to be a small-time crook ‘til he found me and hired me to run guns for Liberation units on places like Pencader. Owe him this much.”
I recognized his accent. “You’re from Andurien?”
That got another gap-toothed smile. “Hey man, home isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind, a feeling. Home is family and people.” He nodded towards the cockpit where his co-pilot, a woman named Ivy, was running through a pre-flight check and studiously pretending I didn’t exist. “People like Anton and Ivy, you know?”
I nodded, thinking of the people who’d brought me to this point, whose memories stuck their spurs in me every time I felt like giving up. “You know why I’m going?”
“I can guess. Morgana was my niece.” He ambled over to a storage box while I stood there, stunned. “Home is family,” he told the box, then turned around. “Here, put this on.”
He tossed me a large, heavy package. Inside there was a body suit, more shadow than physical thing, weirdly frictionless beneath my fingers. Touch-activated fasteners at the throat and either wrist, with a hood that covered the entire face except the eyes. Matching boots and gloves. Finally, a face-covering mask with cyclopean visor, offering three-sixty low-light and IR vision, air filtration and even its own internal air supply.
“You want me to put this on now?” I asked him.
“Naw. But I would put it on before we land,” he grinned lop-sidedly, then giggled a little, high-pitched. “Unless you’re real good at holding your breath.”
I stopped with the mask halfway up to my face. “Why? Where am I going to be hiding?”
He pointed behind me. I turned, saw a stenciled label on the bulkhead: Waste Water.
“Is that…”
He nodded, shoulders shaking a little with laughter. “Sure is. IR/ECM sneak suit keeps you off the scanners, and they’ll never look for you there themselves. Hell, you’d have to be crazy to go in there.”
Well. Quite.
In the present:
“Smugglers?” I repeated, and the pilot nodded. “What is there to smuggle around here?” I waved my hand towards the endless sand dunes, the endless acres of nothing that there were to smuggle.
The pilot sat down on the foot of the LAM, leaning back against the leg. “Ah, you’d be surprised,” she said. “Galatea’s a mercenary hub, so there’s a huge market for black market military tech. Some of it they smuggle in from other systems, some of it they just straight up steal. Plenty of merc units come out to the desert to train, to test new equipment, even to settle their differences, and some of their stuff always goes missing.” She patted the ’Mech foot under her. “Like Land-Air ’Mechs. Plus there’s all the old favorites: drugs, guns. People, either willing or unwilling.”
I remembered my own trip as human cargo on the Coriolis Comet, back on Atreus. The waste tank on your standard shuttle was tiny—not much waste water with only a dozen passengers and crew, and flight times of 10-20 hours, tops. Curled in the fetal position, in total darkness, aware only of the distant rumble of the drives and the press of deceleration as we’d come into land. Hoping we’d arrive before my air supply ran out.
“Willing or unwilling?”
“Yep. Kidnapping and extortion are quite a racket. Slipping people across the borders to the League or Combine, even to the Fed Suns, is another.”
The itch was back, that prickling at my scalp that said I was on to something. “What about the yakuza? Are you on friendly terms with the smugglers too?”
“Nah, not really. They don’t take well to organization, and we’re all about the hierarchy. Most of them work in small, independent bands, extended families sometimes. Though there’s rumored to be a big gang based out on Galatea V.”
That was the second time I’d heard about that planet today. Who’d said something? Anderson? Graves? Hadn’t seemed important at the time. And something else. More recent.
I bent back over Anderson, picked his communicator up again. Flicked through the address book.
Dizzy, Evangeline, Fiona.
Five.
Pressed the number. Listened to it ring. Click.
A voice at the other end. “Yeah, Anderson?” Unfamiliar, but male, impatient. “You make a deal for the woman yet?”
Cut the connection. Five. Galatea V—Galatea Five. What had Graves said? ‘We know about your smuggler friends on Galatea V.’
Loosened my tie, threw it onto the fuselage floor. My jacket followed. Rolled up my sleeves. Went to the weapons rack in the aircraft fuselage, moving fast, grabbed the first gun I found. Sunbeam, my old favorite. Tapped the charge indicator, confirmed it was green. Strapped it to one hip: good to go. Next one: Nambu auto pistol. Slid the magazine out, checked it was loaded, slapped it back home again. Felt the weight of it, the balance, tried looking down the sights. Slid back the receiver. Other hip.
“So, hey,” I called over my shoulder, wrestling down the sniper laser. A Kiltek, just like the ones on Altair. Slung it by the strap, over my shoulder. “Just supposing I did want to meet some smugglers, what would be the quickest way of doing it?”
-
Niiiiiice.
I don't speak fluent lounge lizard. What the hell does a "0.5" denote?
P.s. Bwian, do we have a Bwian?
-
That soldier from the Marian Hegemony, Bigus Dikus will be the star of your next story.
He was in Life of Bwian as well.
-
@Kidd: A .5 indicates a score in between the two intergers: a 3.5 is between a 3 and 4. This gives a 5-point scale greater granularity. I had a roommate who did precisely this. We don't have a Bwain, but we do have a XaosGowilla and a DOC_Agwen.
@Snakespinner: My my, BTech does have some very inside-jokey names doesn't it? I remember one unit was led by Colonel Hardy Harrharr.
Part II today. Part III to come.
* * *
Part II
In the present:
Turned out the fastest way to meet smugglers was to sit right where I was. Our crashed tiltrotor and its friendly neighborhood Stinger LAM were the biggest bits of debris for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. As Galatea’s sun began to set and the sky elided from turquoise into indigo, a small convoy of one-man ATVs, dirt bikes, jeeps and armored cars appeared at the top of a nearby ridge.
I’d climbed up to the top of the LAM, and from my perch on its shoulder watched them cautiously edge closer through the Kiltek’s scope. One man standing in the roof hatch of one of the armored cars seemed to be the leader, a wiry little guy with pencil-thin moustache, in a poncho and dusty goggles pushed up onto his forehead, where they held back a wild tangle of curly hair. His face filled the scope, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. I shifted my aim slightly, putting the scope crosshairs over a pair of binoculars the man held in one hand, and pulled the trigger.
The binoculars went spiraling away into the night sky, a neat orange hole drilled through the center, and the car jerked to a sand-slide halt. The man lost his balance, flipped out of the cupola, rolled down the car’s windscreen and landed in a heap on the sand dune in front of the radiator grille.
“That’s far enough,” I shouted. “Who are you?”
“Mighty fallen,” he man shouted back, voice muffled by the poncho that had fallen over his head.
“Yes, I can see that,” I said testily. “Now, who are you?”
The man sat up, pulling his poncho down to more or less the right place. “No, that’s our name: Red Savage’s company, The Mighty Fallen. Has kind of a double meaning, see?”
“Smugglers?”
“Free agents,” he said, offended. Slowly he stood up, brushing dust from his trousers and poncho. He’d lost his goggles in the fall, and peered around in the ground for them.
“In that case, I’ve got a proposition for you,” I shouted. In the scope, the man was still turning in searching circles. “Behind you, two paces. No, little more to the right. That’s it.”
“Ta,” said the man, scooping up the googles, shaking the sand from them. “A proposition?”
“Yeah. I want to know where the base on Galatea V is.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Well. How about I don’t kill you?” I fired again, blowing out one of the armored car’s headlights, perhaps three centimeters beside the man’s arm.
The man jumped a little, and replied in half a heartbeat. “Y-y-y-okay.”
“And what security measures there are.”
“Sure.”
“And a floor plan of the base.”
“Gotcha.”
“And how many men there are, what weapons they have, and where prisoners are kept.”
“You got it.”
“And the hand of Romano Liao in marriage.”
“No pro … what?”
“Just checking.” I lifted up the barrel of the Kiltek, butt braced against my hip. “You know, I thought you’d take more convincing.”
“Are you kidding?” the man laughed. “Been hoping someone would take out that old bastard Savage for years.”
Machiavelli might have said it was better to be feared than loved, but trust me, being feared isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is, for example, the incentive it gives your people to either side with your enemies, or at least stand aside when they come knocking. Or, if you’ve been especially naughty, come after you themselves. Eh Vukovic?
“Fair enough,” I said. “The boys will be disappointed though.” I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled. As I slug the sniper rifle over my shoulder and slip down a chain-link ladder from the LAM’s head to the ground, a dozen heavily-armed yakuza emerged from the aircraft fuselage and rose like phantoms from hidden pits surrounding the smugglers.
“Oh, whoah, hey, how’s it going guys. Nice to see you.” The leader turned in a circle, taking in the laser rifles, auto grenade launchers and recoilless rifles being held in his general direction. He looked up as I approached him, and whispered “Who are these guys?”
“Think of them as potential business partners,” I said, and slapped him on the back, then held out my hand. “Aric Glass.”
“Derek Forrest,” he replied, shaking my hand. Up close, I could see he had a short-circuit smile and bright, blue-eyed stare that reminded me a lot of Vinewood.
I swept my arm in the direction of the fuselage. “Won’t you come into my office?” I said grandly. “Oh, and one more thing.”
He took a step towards the aircraft, stopped mid-stride. The smile flickered off, then returned. “Yeah?”
“You got anyone who can fix a hole in a LAM’s head?”
In the past:
“Who the hell are you?” asked Vukovic.
Alarmed, but not scared. Not yet. The black sneak suit and pistol leveled at his head were fairly strong signs I wasn’t friendly, but then I hadn’t shot him. Not yet.
“Former member of the club,” I told him, with a tight smile. “Before your time, if only just.”
It had taken hours of crawling after I’d unscrewed the waste water tank lid and slithered off the Coriolis Comet, thankfully dry (sneak suits are hydrophobic—not much use in having a stealth suit you can’t use anytime it rains), through the marine base armory (found a rack of Sunbeams—first one with a depleted power pack, but the charge on the second was green), through Eyrie maintenance tunnels and ventilation shafts, until finally, I’d reached the commander’s quarters.
He set his drink down slowly on the desk. “If you’re an assassin, you’re either incompetent or an idiot,” he said. “The longer you sit and talk, the more chance there is you’ll be discovered. So what is it you want?”
Like Anton had said, we were all prisoners of power’s gravitational pull. By that logic, Vukovic’s betrayal had been as inevitable and blameless as an avalanche, just what was necessary to maintain the trajectory of his career.
More than anything, I wanted to defy that certainty.
“Sit down. I want to tell you a story.”
If society was just the mathematical product of people’s mass and motion, then my presence there was just as inevitable as Vukovic’s betrayal, the equal and opposite reaction demanded by power’s peculiar physics. A distorted and distended military snapping back into its rightful shape.
For while Generals and Colonels get to kill their own men as readily as the enemy’s—a necessary feint, a useful diversion, a time-winning last stand—they do so based on the promise that the lives they’re spending are bought with the currency of victory, security, the safety of one’s comrades and fellow citizens. Betray that promise, and your rank no longer protects you.
“A story.” He slowly sank into one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. “You are mad.”
“In the sense of ‘very upset,’ sure,” I agreed. “In the sense of ‘crazy,’ well I guess that’s a matter of perspective. Consider this krvna osveta, a blood vendetta. Some people might call that crazy, I guess.”
“Krvna osveta?” he sneered, but in our neo-feudal times vendetta among noble houses was something of a tradition (of course, it didn’t apply to commoners like me, but hush). I’d deliberately used the Serbian word for it, playing on Vukovic’s own heritage. “You won’t get away—”
“Can we skip the empty, formulaic threats?” I interrupted. “As I said, I’d like you to listen to a story. It’s an unfinished one, and the ending depends largely on how closely you listen.”
“Go to hell.”
“Now, now, Colonel,” I got up and walked around to his side of the desk, and sat at the corner. “It’s not a long story, and I think you’ll find it’s quite familiar. You see, there once were seven eagles who were sent to steal something from their enemies, only when they arrived they found the enemy had been told that they were coming, and all but one of them died. Ring any bells?”
Vukovic shifted slightly in his seat, his eyes narrowing. “Altair?”
I nodded encouragingly.
He drew breath. “Captain Ezekiel Juhasz was a fine soldier, and I know he would have gladly sacrificed—”
“The three last things "Gawain" Juhasz did were shoot Merlin, murder a child, and try to kill me,” I snapped. “He didn’t sacrifice anything, and while I hated him for it at the time, I realize now he was a victim of circumstance. He should never have been put in that position.”
Vukovic scoffed. “If he cracked under pressure, that is hardly my fault. What do you want me to do about it?”
“You tipped off the Combine.”
“Nonsense. The mission failed, these things happen son. I repeat: What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want them remembered,” I said, leaning towards him. “I want them recognized. Give them all medals. Look after their families. I want you to take responsibility for what you did.”
His smile was steel. “What I did was nothing more than—”
He exploded out of the chair, grabbing the barrel of the Sunbeam while chopping down on my wrist with his other hand. Twisted the Sunbeam free, in the same motion his elbow caught me in the chest, knocking me back off the desk and onto the floor.
He stood over me, panting, Sunbeam aimed at my head.
“You little idiot,” he smiled. “Krvna osveta? Revenge, for your poor dead friends? You idiot. Death is part of the Corps, son, and the only way an eagle learns to fly is being thrown from the nest.”
“You admit it, then? You betrayed the mission?”
“I did. I did what I had to. It was a stupid, futile mission and I minimized the risk to the Corps and the League.”
“You killed them, sure as you pulled the trigger yourself.”
“I killed them. And speaking of pulling the trigger.” He squeezed the Sunbeam. It beeped dully at him. He squeezed again, again.
“Just wanted to hear you say it yourself,” I admitted, and took the other, loaded Sunbeam out of its holster in the small of my back.
Vukovic was drawing breath to shout for help when I fired, so the wide beam blasted his lower jaw into two large fragments that blew away from his face and ricocheted against either wall of the office, before punching out the top of his skull and pasting most of its contents across the ceiling.
I stood up, took the recording device clipped to my belt and extracted the data crystal, and placed it carefully in the middle of the desk.
They say revenge is an empty endeavor, for it does not restore the dead nor heal the living, but let me be honest, in that instant I felt only satisfaction. If revenge was such a hollow pursuit, we would not love it so—but instead it’s coded into us, that red-jawed atavistic urge to take an eye for an eye. It was done, and I did not feel sorry.
The door to the office crashed open. Two guards stood there, submachineguns held to their shoulders. I slowly raised my hands.
“Alex?” said one of the guards, looking from me to the body on the floor. Anger and confusion warring on his features. “Why?”
“A blood feud,” I said, simply. “The crystal explains.” I indicated it with my eyes, keeping still, my hands where they were.
The guard plugged the crystal into the noteputer on Vukovic’s desk while the other covered me. Listened to the recording, to Vukovic’s voice. He nodded. “Gdikiomos,” he said. Greek, means the same as krvna osveta, a vendetta. “We’ll give you five minutes. Go.”
As Red Savage would find out too, Machiavelli was wrong: it is better to be loved than feared, because it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you’re in any position of authority people are going to fear and hate you just on basic principle, while there is zero guarantee that anyone will love you enough to lift a finger when those people come calling.
-
@Kidd: A .5 indicates a score in between the two intergers: a 3.5 is between a 3 and 4. This gives a 5-point scale greater granularity.
Do you work for Microsoft too?
-
I now know two new words, words that mean the same thing... *claps*
-
@Kidd: No, I lived with two Australians for a year.
@Pensive: BattleTech is easily the most educational 31st century giant robot combat tabletop game on the market!
Here it is, third and final part (and the reason this ep took so long to write...having too much fun with this)
* * *
Part III
In the present:
Planets come in an astounding variety of sizes, compositions and colors, but when you get down to it, really there’re just five types: hot dry ball, cold dry ball, wet, frozen or gassy. Venus is a hot ball, Mars is a cold one, Earth is wet, Europa is frozen, Jupiter is gassy. You get the picture.
Galatea V was as dry as a Kurita’s sense of humor, as cold as a Katrina’s husband, as big as Hanse Davion’s ego, as full of holes as Liao’s claim to be First Lord, and at 0.7G had all the gravity of a Marik threat. The whole package was wrapped in a thick haze of carbon dioxide and nitrogen that made flying interesting and breathing impossible. However, what made pilots weep was what made smugglers smile, for it was those very clouds that kept prying eyes away from whatever they did down on the surface.
So there was nobody to see when a deep fissure off the planet’s Polar Depression was suddenly illuminated in staccato flashes of light. The snug blanket of atmosphere didn’t carry sound very well, but if you’d listened carefully, what you would have heard was this: Crash. Bang. The howl of a jet engine. Some screaming, followed by a lot of choking. The crackle of laser fire. Bit more screaming, followed by more crashing, gradually growing in volume and frequency until it was more or less constant, before abruptly cutting off.
I can’t claim to be an expert on Land-Air ’Mech pilot training, save to say that I’m fairly sure most manuals do not recommend becoming self-taught while flying a hastily-patched LAM through subterranean tunnels. This method, however, does have the wonderful effect of focusing your attention.
My lessons had started out unpromisingly, as I did my level best to kill myself switching from aerospace to AirMech configuration on approach to the Mighty Fallen’s base. Only the planet’s low gravity had saved me from decorating the Polar Depression with bits of Glass, but after a short but sharp bit of plummeting, the LAM switched configurations and I had things more or less under control.
The AirMech handled a bit like a wing in ground effect vehicle, which was handy to know if you’d ever flown one of those. I hadn’t, so. Yeah.
Flew down the fissure with only a few minor bumps into various rocky obstructions. Gained entry by the simple expedient of lasering a circle in their front door and kicking it in. The interior had mostly been built to ’Mech scale, so I roared down corridors, following the map Forrest had given me, pausing only to incinerate the odd pirate who objected to my presence.
The prisoner cell block was human-scale, so I parked the LAM in the tunnel outside, exchanged my flight helmet for an oxygen mask and slid from the cockpit. Blasted the door hinges off with my Sunbeam. Inside was a guard room, bathed in jumpy shadows and yellow-orange light as oxygen warnings blared (I’m afraid blowing open the front door had not helped the atmospheric integrity of the place).
The prison guard was still trying to fit on his oxygen mask. He froze and looked up in panic as I walked through the smoking doorway, tossing the now-depleted Sunbeam aside and drawing the Nambu. “Open the cell doors,” I told him over the keening alarms.
He clawed for his sidearm. “Nev—”
I emptied all 12 rounds of the Nambu’s clip into him. I was done screwing around. Kicked his body sliding off the console and took stock. The door controls were easy enough to find—a row of numbered, green-lit buttons controlling the electronic locks on each cell. I shrugged, hit them each in sequence so they all glowed red.
Reina’s cell was at the end. Bed carved right out of the rock with a thin mattress, single feeble light in the middle of the ceiling. She had her bed sheet wrapped around one arm as a shield, held a plastic eating knife in the other, crouched and ready when I entered the room. Her head drooped in relief when she saw me, shoulders shaking. She dropped the sheet and knife before looking up, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“Hello stranger,” she said. In the background, lights flashed, alarms blared. “I see you’ve opted for the subtle approach.”
“I was in a hurry.” I threw her the oxygen mask I’d taken from the prison guard. “Good to see you, too.”
“Yes, yes, oh thank you my brave gallant knight.” She braced one hand on the rock bed and pushed herself to her feet. Instead of pulling the mask down over her head she left it hanging from her neck, then stepped forward and pushed mine up onto my forehead, grabbed my head in both hands and pulled it down towards hers. We kissed long, brusingly, like we were trying to push ourselves into each other’s skin.
She drew back. “That do for now?”
“For now,” I agreed. “You, me, explain later, much talk. Ride’s this way.”
She stopped when she saw the battered Stinger LAM, braced on its two stubby legs, parked in front of the prison door. “You know how to fly one of those things?”
“Nah. Not really.” I climbed up, then offered her my hand.
She clasped it, and hauled herself up to the cockpit. “What stopped you from crashing?”
“Um, sense of self-preservation?” I offered, strapping myself into the pilot’s chair, shucking the oxygen mask and pulling the helmet down over my head.
“Says the man who single-handedly attacked an entire planetoid filled with ’Mech-armed pirates.” There was a fold-down jump seat behind the pilot’s, where she pulled on her own harness and fitted a spare helmet.
“Yeah,” I agreed, powering up the LAM. “Wait. The what-armed?”
Her voice was distorted by the helmet’s mic. “Didn’t you wonder why all the tunnels are ’Mech-sized?”
The AirMech’s ground-effect jets roared to life, jerking us up off the cavern surface in a billowing cloud of dust, idling about two meters off the ground. “Think I was too busy not crashing to think about it,” I admitted. “How many?”
“No idea. Let’s not find out.”
“Let’s not,” I agreed, and pushed forward the throttle.
The LAM roared down the cavern, back the way I’d come, twisting through tunnels, flying around corners. Then I slammed it to a stop. The tunnel in front of us had collapsed—either from damage or deliberately sabotaged by the pirates—leaving me faced with a sloping wall of scree and boulders.
“There a problem?” Reina asked from the back seat.
“Shortcut,” I said, spinning the LAM around and racing back the way we’d come. Down a side tunnel. T-junction: left or right?
Right.
Massive metal doorway blocked the tunnel. “Hold on,” I said, and fired the lasers, burning three molten lines the top and sides of the door. It held firm. “Ah,” I said, yanking shut the throttle and firing as the door loomed larger and larger, filling the cockpit view. The lasers lanced out again, carving deeper in to the metal, making the door sag, not falling yet, but our inertia was carrying us forward. I slewed us sideways so an arm hit the doorway first, echoing like a gargantuan bell, and the door fell inwards.
In the HUD display, the side armor flashed yellow and a brief message displayed. Didn’t have time to read it, but pretty sure it was something to the effect of, ‘please do not do that again.’
Beyond the caved-in door was a short, brightly-lit cavern. Twenty-meter high metal scaffolding and cranes on either side. Three held BattleMechs, a Javelin, a Valkyrie and an Assassin. The fourth was empty—mainly because the blood-red Spider it had held was just stepping free. The heads of four ’Mechs turned toward us.
“There he is. Stop him!”
Left, definitely left.
I slammed the throttle all the way out and kicked us back out of the Mech bay on twin pillars of superheated air and a thunderclap of noise, careening down the tunnel outside. Lasers belatedly chased after us, slamming into the cavern ceiling and walls, fragments of rock rattling off the armor. Thunderous footfalls echoed behind as the smugglers gave chase.
The tunnel opened up into another cavern. Like a medieval torture chamber for BattleMechs. The arms and upper torso of a Commando leaned against one wall. Dismembered arms and legs littered the cavern floor. A series of massive pedestals held a mournful Trebuchet head, a pair of derringer forearms from a Marauder, the axe of one of those spanking-new Hatchetmen. The smugglers’ storehouse of salvaged, stolen or black market ’Mech parts.
I weaved among the vivisected machinery, under a leering Banshee head suspended from the cavern ceiling, around a clutching Archer arm, keeping them between us and our pursuers. The arm rang like a bell as four missiles struck it, toppling it over.
Another cavern, this time lined with a forest of pillar-like liquid storage tanks. “Ugh, not waste water again,” I muttered, remembering my trip in the Coriolis Comet.
“Aric, that isn’t water,” said Reina. “That’s liquid hydrogen fuel!”
“Oh, great.” Hydrogen is a wonderful propellant, because it’s light, non-toxic to humans, and burns very, very hot. “Perfect.” There was enough explosive material here to bring down the entire complex, and reduce the Stinger to very, very fine dust.
“An elevator or lift shaft,” shouted Reina. “We need to get vertical.”
“See what I can dooooooo—”
On the other side of the tank farm: darkness. And we were falling. In AirMech mode, the LAM’s jets fire downwards, creating a cushion of hot air between it and the ground, much like a hovercraft. That does, however, required you to have some ground on which to cushion.
We were over a sloping cargo lift shaft, hundreds of meters deep. Our air cushion vanished, and the AIrMech promptly nosed down and dropped like a stone. Wind screamed around us. At the bottom of the shaft was an open cargo lift, racing up towards us a breakneck speed as we fell. I slewed us around in the buffeting, shaking air, got the Stinger’s legs pointed at the sloping side of the shaft, and fired the jets again.
Got us under control. Jets pointed the right way, but still falling, still hurtling towards the cargo lift..
Fired the jets again, towards the lift this time, flinging boxes and machinery that had been stacked there around in a furious vortex, the metal of the lift turning orange, then red under the heat. We slowed. Stopped. Hung there.
Reina pointed over my shoulder, towards a pinpoint of light just visible at the top of the shaft. “Launch bay,” she said. “The way out.”
We shot back up the shaft like a bullet down a gun barrel, keeping the jets aimed at the shaft sides now to give us lift, back up towards the cavern holding the hydrogen fuel. Three Mechs stood at the ledge, firing downwards at us—the Assassin, Valkyrie and Javelin.
The LAM shuddered as laser pulses tore into the nose and wing armor. I fired back wildly as we hurled past them, laser tracing fiery lines across the shaft walls. We drew level with them. I fired the arm laser as we flashed by—missed. Hit a fuel tank instead.
Liquid hydrogen sloshed around. Met the oxygen of the air inside the complex. Was gently warmed by the lingering 5,000-degree heat of the slash the laser had carved in the tank. Exploded.
The hydrogen in tanks on either side caught the full force of the blast, and they too, went up in balls of flame. There were a string of massive claps of sound as the remaining tanks blew like dominos, incinerating the entire level, including the three ‘Mechs still firing at our rear as we zoomed up the shaft, before a billowing wall of flame burst out into the tunnel behind us and began racing up the shaft.
At the top of the shaft was a domed DropShip landing pad, with a round launch bay door irised shut above it. I kept my finger jammed down on the laser trigger, blasting away at the doors. Blew a hole right in the center. A rain of metal fragments fell around us, rattling off the armor, shaking the LAM like a tornado.
Was the hole big enough? I aimed for the center, and prayed.
Then we were through, out into the atmosphere. My shoulders relaxed. “Oh thank—”
There was a flash of something huge and red just as we cleared the doors. The LAM suddenly dropped a wing, flying nearly sideways. An engine overload alarm blared. My eyes flashed to the external sensors: there, hanging from the leg, both arms wrapped around the foot, was the last ’Mech, the blood-red Spider.
“That’s Red Savage,” Reina spat. “Bastard who’s been keeping me prisoner.”
“It could be Blessed bleedin’ Blake for all I care! We’re overweight,” I shouted over my shoulder. “We’re going down!”
“Fighter mode,” Reina shouted back.
I slapped the controls to shift us back. First thing the LAM does when switching to fighter mode is stow its arms and legs. Arms folded into the sides. Feet retracted. The Spider clawed desperately as its handhold disappeared, clutched futilely at the leg as it was drawn up and slid into the back of the fuselage.
It fell. Not far, maybe 30 meters or so. Trivial for a BattleMech to survive. Unless you fall right into the path of a volcanic eruption of exploding hydrogen fuel. The Spider disappeared into the middle of a rising mushroom cloud of fire as the LAM’s engines kicked in and we soared away.
-
Very nice!
at 0.7G had all the gravity of a Marik threat.
Ouch. Ouuuch.
-
he could still survive... Bah! hahahahaa....
-
Oops.
-
Blood feuds, go on and on
Love the Stinger LAM action
-
Ouch. Ouuuch.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a purple bird guy first and last. But you have to laugh at the way they've been treated by the fiction.
Gonna follow my three-part actioner with a short talky one. It's like classical music: the big loud parts are followed by the soft quiet ones. That's right. I just compared my fan fiction to Beethoven. :))
* * *
EPISODE 3-7: Flight of imagination
In the present:
The LAM landed in the center of the Tabula Rasa salt flat, high in Galatea’s equatorial mountains.
It was night when we climbed down, and out here, in the cooling desert far from the busy heat of the cities, the icy crystals of evening stars revealed themselves in a slow and sinuous arch scattered from horizon to horizon.
The smooth surface of the salt flat, covered in a thin film of rainwater, perfectly reflected the sky, so the ground itself disappeared, and we stood suspended among the mirrored stars—no forward, no back, no up or down—in all the universe, there were only us, only her head beside the heartbeat in my chest, only my arms around the impossible reality of her, only the ticking of time like the long, slow exhalation of a galaxy already tired of existence.
I closed my eyes as I held her, and told her about a woman without a name, about a doctor who healed no one, about a train that went nowhere, about a people-person who’d died alone. And then, because it seemed part of the same story, about a broken shipyard, a broken moon, a broken man.
The was symmetry there, I had been the one seeking vengeance, now I would help the one on whom vengeance was sought. A vendetta begun, another ended.
I talked and held her.
She listened. She listened and said just enough to keep the story going until the end, which was its beginning. She held me back.
“Your turn,” I said.
For a while, she didn’t answer, and I didn’t rush. Finally, she said: “I’m going to New Avalon.”
“What’s on New Avalon?”
“The White Tigers, the ones backing Reina. The real Reina.”
“Okay.”
She drew back from our embrace, titled her face up to me. “Just like that, okay?”
“Just like that,” I nodded. “Look, I am disappointed. That you didn’t come to me for help, that you didn’t trust me enough. But I’ve been alone and hunted, too, so I’m trying to understand what I can, and taking the rest on faith. If you need to do this, that’s good enough for me.”
“I think I do,” she said, and put her head back on my chest. “Problem is how to get there. Anderson’s really dead?”
“’Fraid so. Glass.”
“I knew you didn’t like him.”
“Na, not me, the clear transparent stuff. Not to worry though—got a good feeling about this Forrest guy. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Crazy as all hell, but a good guy deep down.”
“Mmhmm, reminds me of someone, too,” I felt her head tip up again form where it lay. “Can’t think who.”
-
EPISODE 3-8: Not single spies, but in battalions
In the past:
After Vukovic’s death, I wandered, lost, for many months. Vinewood put me on a freighter headed for the Rim. I paid my way by working as a shuttle pilot or DropShip crew. A storm-blown cloud, I went wherever the currents of intergalactic commerce carried me. Days and nights smudged and ran together, as though a great hand was pressing me down and spreading me across a sheet of time like paint across a canvas.
My vendetta was done, but once you achieve your life’s goal, how then to go on living?
My dreams of flying for the League were dead. My squad was dead. My family might as well have been—no way I could return to them now. I didn’t even have revenge to keep me going any more.
I wound up on Lesnovo, way out in the Rim Commonality, the world Colonel Yildiz—Arthur—had come from. Don’t know what I was planning, don’t think I even had a plan, just some weird notion of finding his family and, and, and what? Telling them what he’d meant to me? I knew any such pilgrimage would be about me, not him, not his family, so. No.
I’d taken a place in the City of Atropos, little one-bedroom place above a coffee shop. I’d sit outside with a thimble of black espresso, watching the people flow past like raindrops. You know how you can’t see each individual drop, just blurred streaks? That was crowds to me—streaks of humanity, falling past my table outside.
The owner would smile behind the counter and nod as I came down each morning, and hand me my coffee, unasked. A slim young girl, his daughter I think—a pretty face, but eyes always downcast, shy—wiped the tables with a pink and white cloth. The music was almost always something bluesy with a slide guitar, over which a woman with a whiskey voice crooned patriotic ballads: ‘It’s cold in space, my love, but I have heat enough for two.’ The man would hum along as he poured the coffee, “Heat enough for two,” and set it on the waarwood counter. I think I envied him, more than a little, maybe even hated him, for the easy comfort he seemed to take in each day’s rhythm and routine.
“Not from around here?” he’s asked me one of those mornings as he poured.
“No.”
“Oh? Where then?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Come a long way?”
“Yeah. Too far, maybe.”
Atropos was a university town, its streets filled with cetacean-slow pods of students, nobody ever in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything, unless it was to get drunk at parties.
It was wedged tight in a high river valley, and I’d spend the day wandering blind streets and forgotten paths, or just leaning on the railing of one of the iron-filigree arches over the river, watching boats float their inevitable way down towards the sea. It was startlingly beautiful and peaceful, cupped between snow-capped mountains, quiet but for the rhythmic slap of waves against the river banks.
Even in this Eden though, you couldn’t escape the shadow of war.
There were a lot of statues—Atropos University was famous for its visual and performing arts programs—displayed on either side of bridges like bookends, or sprinkled like confetti across the city’s plazas and parks. BattleMechs were a favorite subject, as were birds of prey, the Selaj family (Lesnovo had once been part of the Principality of Regulus), and suffering soldiers atop plinths listing the names of the glorious, fallen dead. There were a lot of those.
It struck me as sad how deep it had wormed its way into our souls, this love affair with death and battle, that when we thought of beauty now, we pictured engines of destruction, the terrible majesty of war machines, Like every moment of peace was just a squalid refractory period while we prepared to plunge in again.
One morning: The man, humming, holding out my espresso (“Heat enough for two”).
“You said you were a pilot?”
I had. Nodded.
“If you need a job, an outfit called the ACES is hiring up in Zletovo, the capital.”
“Huh.” Took the espresso. “Keep it in mind.” I wouldn’t though, I swore. Leave war to its other admirers, those who would sell themselves to with a light conscience and heavy wallet.
The waitress cleaned the table next to mine, met my eyes and smiled, before blushing and looking down. Scrubbing a little harder. I said I had to go, and left my coffee half-finished.
Not strictly a lie—I wanted to do some climbing up in the hills about the city, try to keep in shape. Atropos sits in a narrow V of land, so after just two hours walking I was out of the city and found a hiking trail, a narrow dirt path that scissored its way up the hills and vanished among the thickly-clustered trees.
I’d just reached the tree line when the sirens began to wail all across the city. A screeching caterwaul that rose and fell and echoed down the valley.
I stopped just inside the tree line, shielded my eyes with the flat of my hand and watched the valley below. Nothing. A few scattered ground cars along the main highway had pulled over, tiny dots of passengers standing around in confusion. Someone was making an announcement, some muffled and distorted warning that came to me only as a bass counterpoint to the shrill alarm. The dots scattered, running under bridges or into buildings.
Then I heard it, that familiar rolling boom of aerospace fighter jet engines. Black shadows against the underside of the clouds—squinting, I figured them for F-90s by their V silhouettes. Probably from the garrison, the 8th Orloff Grenadiers.
There was a blinding flash of blue lightning from the clouds that struck one of the fighters. When I could see again, the two dots were twisting, turning, now joined by two more. Pulses of light flickered back and forth as they circled, slashed, and fell apart again.
“Break left, break left, towards him … left you idiot … “ I found myself urging the Grenadiers on. “Wait, hold your fire, wait until you’re on top of him. Damn.” I punched a tree, then shook my hand ruefully. “Yes, hit him again, again!” My depressed detachment completely forgotten.
The two enemy fighters had taken enough, and dove for the ground, one trailing streaks of grey-white smoke. The Grenadiers tore through the skies close behind. Two more bolts of crackling light, booming like thunder, and the second enemy fighter shattered. An angry red sun blossomed in the sky, a wing came spiraling off, then the plane itself was falling, falling in a drunken helix, plunging down, down. Towards the city. Towards Atropos.
It was a 60-ton fighter, a Hellcat, part of a pirate raiding force. It crashed through three houses—shearing the roof off one, obliterating the second floor of the second before its remaining wing bisected the living room of a third—then plowed on its belly through a convenience store and an Italian restaurant before smashing into the front wall of a shop. The wreck sat for a second, almost like it was thinking, then exploded, a thunderous detonation that shattered every window on the street and reduced the store to a broken, burning tangle. The pilot and two people inside were killed instantly.
From my vantage point on the hill above, all I could see was the line of destruction it carved through the city, and then the night-black mushroom cloud of smoke rising from its final resting place.
I knew I wouldn’t be doing any climbing that day. So I started walking back into the city, back to my room above the coffee shop. Lost sight of the roiling cloud of smoke once or twice with all the buildings around me, but every time I spotted it again it always seemed to grow bigger, nearer.
Couple of blocks away there were clumps of people standing in the road, some with their hands to their mouths, others with them on their hips, talking over each other in random bursts of shock and confusion. Debris was scattered across the streets from damaged houses—roof tiles, broken brick, shattered glass. The smoke almost filled the sky now, blocking out the sun.
Must have hit really close, I thought. Hoped the old man and his daughter were okay.
And then I turned the last corner and saw where the Hellcat had crashed. There was an overturned table in the middle of the road, blown clear by the explosion. A shredded scrap of pink and white cloth hung from one of its legs.
There was a police cordon across the street, a dozen cops with their backs to the crowd, watching the blaze, and a ring of firemen hosing water onto the shattered building. Even at this distance, the fire was intensely hot.
I tugged the arm of one of the policemen, pointing at the inferno. “Was anyone inside?” Knowing the answer already.
The cop turned away from the fire and looked at me. “You family?”
“No, a tenant. I rented a room there.”
“Oh,” he turned back to the fire. “Yeah, two people. Owner and his daughter. Tragic.” (Heat enough for two). A thought occurred and he looked at me again. “You got a place to go?”
War finds us, wherever we go. Like a jealous lover, striking out when it is rejected, finding a new victim. Easier to sink into its embrace, worship its cold and demanding beauty.
I remembered the morning’s conversation. “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I do.”
-
Kinda expected that... but it does fill in the gaps...
-
Kinda expected that...
Right, the theme here was the inevitability of what happened--wanted to write something where the reader can see what's coming, and has that kind of foreboding to it. That's why the city is called Atropos ("inevitable"), who was the Greek fate who decided how each man died (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropos).
Next episode might end up going long again. Still writing.
-
EPISODE 3-9: A legion of demons (angels)
Part I
In the present:
If you thought the Steiner-Davion alliance disrupted the political map of the Inner Sphere, spare a thought for what it did to the criminal one. Organized crime follows the paths of people and power, latches onto the veins of influence and money like a leech. Suddenly, new paths were opening between the Commonwealth and the Suns, people and money began moving in new ways, and the New Avalon triads and families, the Tharkad brotherhoods, and every gang in between slashed and clawed at each other in a scramble to the top of the new heap.
In our conflict-addicted times, the heat map of organized crime is nearly identical to one showing military deployments—just as money and power accrete around military commands and contracts, so too does the underworld.
Take either one of those maps (like I said, they are much the same). Zoom in here, in the system of New Avalon: one such point, glaringly white, incandescent even. Zoom in further, until individual grains of power become visible like salt crystals—the capital, the NAIS campus, the Guards Brigade HQ—but look now to the opposite side of the system. There, about the L3 Lagrangian point, on the opposite side of the system’s star from New Avalon.
It was called a SHEL—Space Habitat: Ecliptic/Langrangian—a 24-kilometer long, 6-kilometer diameter rotating cylinder of inhabitable atmosphere, attached to a great bowl of solar sail, and the unofficial black market capital of the New Avalon system.
Our DropShip—Derek Forrest’s Buccaneer—docked with one of the rings around the long tube’s center. Three of us stood in front of the airlock, waiting for it to cycle: Derek, myself, and Reina.
“And the government knows about this place?” Derek was asking.
“Yes, and yet they tolerate it,” said Reina. “Politicians, allowing crime to go unpunished? Shock horror, I know.”
“Some of them are regulars here?” I guessed.
“Those that have … interests you can’t indulge back on NA,” Reina nodded grimly.
“You grew up here?” Derek looked at Reina.
She nodded again.
“No place like home, huh?”
“Thank god.”
The airlock hissed slowly open. On the other side was a small antechamber, filled with about a dozen men. Most were dressed in black fatigues and combat boots, with light impact armor over their chests and upper arms, with stun sticks on one hip and pistols on the other. In the center was a tall, slim man, dressed in a grey suit and black turtleneck, leaning on a cane despite his youthful face. The face was familiar: narrow, angular jaw, aquiline nose, wavy black hair. Very familiar.
I felt Reina beside me suck a sudden breath and go completely rigid.
That man’s familiar face broke into a wide, toothy smile when he saw us. “Sister!” he said, and raised his arms as if to embrace Reina.
Reina stood statue-still. “Lucien,” she said icily.
“Come now, Alys, is that any way to greet family?” He kept his arms raised. “Come on, come on, step aboard, don’t wait for a formal invitation or we’ll all die of old age here. We’re not big on ceremony. So good to see you again. I see you brought your attack dog as well.” This last directed at me.
“Woof,” I agreed, following Reina/Alys through the airlock into the antechamber. “Alys?” I mouthed silently at her. She grimaced and shrugged.
The man named Lucien hobbled forward and enfolded Reina in a hug that she didn’t return. When he broke away, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Well, damndest thing, sis,” he grinned at her. “While you’ve been away, I seem to have become boss of the White Tigers. Isn’t that something?” He laughed as if this was quite the strangest coincidence he’d ever heard of. “But let’s not stand here jawing. Travel tubes are up in the hub, I’ll take you to my office and we can do all our catching up there. Oh, but first, your weapons.” Looking pointedly at me again.
A guard stepped forward, metal detector baton in one hand, which he ran up and down me with practiced precision. I slowly handed him my pistol, barrel up—a holdout Nambu needler, like the one I’d used on Galatea—as well as the vibro blade I’d taken from the real Reina. He placed both in a black pouch, which he fitted to his belt at the small of his back.
Lucien led the way, flanked on either side by black-clad guards. Another four fell in behind us, with the other six remaining in the airlock antechamber. From the airlock we went ‘up,’ away from the hull and towards the center of the habitat, climbing in zero gravity through a two-meter wide transparent tube. Looking down, we could see the curve of the habitat’s interior surface, cluttered with ramshackle buildings that seemed to roll endlessly beneath us. Near as I could tell, the landscape seemed to cycle around about once every two minutes or so.
“About 30,000 people, living in a simulated 0.9G down on the hull,” said Lucien, noticing my gaze. “Front and back halves rotate in opposite directions to cancel each other’s gyroscopic forces out. Ah, here we are.”
At the center of the hollow tube of the habitat were the travel tubes, a cluster of eight elevator-like shafts traversing the length of the station from top to bottom. Lucien led us to one labeled “EXECUTIVE,” inserted a card and pressed the button, and waved us inside with a bow and a flourish.
The elevator car was cylindrical, carpeted, with semicircular plush leather sofas arranged about the rim. Looking up at the ceiling, I could see an identical arrangement of furniture there, for when the car accelerated in the other direction. Lucien floated over to one, waved us to another. “We’ll get a touch of gravity when we get underway. Make yourselves comfortable.” Two guards stood by the elevator control panel, two more on either side of Lucien.
Sure enough, acceleration pressed lightly down on us as the car jetted away from the boarding platform, and Lucien crossed his legs with a sigh.
“Nice place you have here,” I offered.
He smiled coldly. “It’s not all drug dens and hitmen—”
“Those are just kind of a hobby, are they?”
“—we have a number of legitimate enterprises run through, aha, ‘shell’ companies.” His mouth quirked in amusement at his own joke.
“Shell companies? SHEL companies? Reina, are you sure you’re related to this guy?”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Oh, between us we can drop that ‘Reina’ nonsense,” he sniffed. “How’ve you been Alys?”
Reina-who-was-Alys sat ramrod straight at the edge of the sofa. “On the run from my murderous doppelganger,” she said. “That was your work?”
He smiled and nodded. “Guilty!”
“You let her off the leash. Why?”
“Why, to bring you back to us, of course, little sister. I knew you’d come back when threatened.”
“Most people just send a postcard,” I offered. He didn’t even glance at me.
“After our late, dearly departed leader accidentally shot himself—such tragedy—I knew I wanted to make some changes,” he explained. “The times are changing, the triads must change with them. This business with the Commonwealth, for instance. We need a toehold on their side of the border. We need muscle to protect it.”
“After what we survived, what we endured as kids under these people,” Reina/Alys shook her head. “After all that, when you climbed to the top you just, what, decided to keep on doing exactly what they had before?”
“Well, now that I’m here, I can see what good sense it all made. Including keeping the real Reina around—always useful to have someone you can wield as a weapon, eh?” he winked at her.
“I think he might be talking about me again,” I put in helpfully.
Reina/Alys sighed and put her fingers to her temples. “What do you want, brother?”
“What do I want?” he repeated. “I want to have my cake, and eat it too. I want stability and continuity, but at the same time I want the Tigers to grow and expand. I want to maintain my position amid the reshuffling and reordering of the landscape that the Federated-Commonwealth alliance will bring. I want an army to enforce and defend that position.”
“And what, you thought she would scare me into joining you? Into agreeing to let you use the Black Arrows?”
Lucien’s smile faded, and he gripped the top of his cane with both hands. “We gave you the best education any human can aspire to, opportunities not one millionth of a percent of people ever experience, dear sister.” Those last words came out between bared teeth. “And how did you repay us? By turning your back on us, by suddenly vanishing into the cosmic night. You owe us, Alys, but more than that, you belong with us.”
“Not anymore.”
“No? Who do you belong with then? This ravening dog you call a lieutenant?” He took one hand from the cane, and waved it in my direction. “Have you seen what he’s been up to in your absence? Have you seen the scores of broken and mutilated bodies he’s used to pave his trail after you? You may think me cruel, little sister, but at least I’m human—he is a monster, a wolf in human skin. Violence follows him like a shadow.”
I shrugged modestly. “Hey, I don’t like to brag.”
The elevator car slowed as it approached the ‘nose’ end of the habitat, opposite the station-keeping thrusters and solar sail. “End of the road,” Lucien said, standing. “Don’t be stubborn now, Alys. Before you said ‘No’ definitively, there’s someone I think you should talk to.”
Reina/Alys reluctantly stood, and I followed. Aware of the guards now standing uncomfortably close.
The elevator doors slid open, revealing another landing platform, two guards. And the grim, red-scarred face of Reina Paradis.
“What the hell is she doing here Lucien?” Reina/Alys gasped, one foot still inside the elevator.
“That depends very much on how our conversation goes. Sister.” Lucien was no longer smiling.
“Aric,” Reina/Alys twisted towards me. “Come on, we’re going back.”
“Oh, I’m afraid your dog isn’t going anywhere,” said Lucien, and nodded to the guards.
Two grabbed Reina/Alys as she howled, stamping down on the foot of one that tried to grab her from behind, twisting under the arm of the other charging from the front, striking him under the chin and sending him reeling back.
And the elevator doors slammed shut, leaving me inside the car with four armed guards. The car pinged politely and dropped away, heading back towards the center of the habitat, and the five of us gently sank towards what had been the ceiling.
“Going down, huh?” I asked, mildly.
“Going to hell.” One of the guards growled, and then the two behind me had each taken hold of one arm and the two in front were drawing their stun sticks.
I threw myself backwards, ramming the two behind me against the elevator glass as the other two charged forward, used the leverage to flip up from the shoulders, one of my feet connecting with a charging guard’s head with a crack, the stun baton from the other whistling beneath me and into the abdomen of the one who’d grabbed my right arm.
The stun stick crackled and spat electricity, jolting the guard into a twitching seizure, letting me wrench one arm free, pivot and slam the heel of my hand against the underside of the jaw of the man still holding my other arm.
The guard I’d kicked was the one who’d taken my gun and knife. They were there, in a pouch on his back as he sat up on the floor, shaking his head woozily. I grabbed it, tearing it away. Then the one who still had his stick was swinging at me again. I ducked, the baton connected with the elevator controls. There was a flash, an electronic shriek and the elevator suddenly juddered to a halt.
Deceleration flung us all into the air. Lost my grip on the bag, watched it go spinning. Tried to swim after it in zero G. It tumbled just beyond my fingertips.
Impact as two guards launched themselves at me from the floor, one catching my legs, the other getting an arm around my chest. Caught a glancing punch along the side of my face. The three of us went whirling, tumbling against the roof, hit, bounced back down into the middle of the elevator car. Back down towards the two with drawn stun sticks, who grinned in anticipation.
Back-up motors kicked in, and the elevator lurched into motion again.
The three of us slammed back down, the guards on my legs and chest underneath, me on top. The impact stunned both of them, let me flip back onto my feet. Something falling—the gun bag. Grabbed it as the other two guards came forward again. No time to open the zipper—just felt for the shape of the vibro-blade inside, hit the power switch. White-hot blade slashed straight through the black material, right into the stomach of the guard nearest guard.
As he blinked, unbelieving, feeling the wound, I got a grip on the knife, stabbed him in the chest, the throat, through the eye. Used the body as a shield as the other one swung at me, let the gasping, dying man take the stun stick blow, then kicked the body away, the two going down in a tangle of limbs.
The other two had drawn their guns, murderous-looking needler pistols. I dropped to the floor as both fired, lips peeled back in pain as three flechettes found my shoulder, hearing the staccato crack as hundreds more quills struck the elevator glass and stuck there, leaving it bristling like a startled porcupine.
My own holdout needler was there on the floor, where it had fallen from the bag. I grabbed it, rolled, fired once from the prone position, tearing one guard’s legs to ribbons. As he dropped I was up, firing, hitting the other in the chest—where the needles simply stuck into the armor without effect—then the head.
One still moaning on the floor, clutching at his knees. I stood over him, fired once, downwards. He stopped moaning. The last one staggered to his feet from under the body of his companion, fumbling at his waist for his gun. Let him look up, see the barrel of the pistol I had pointed at his head. Then pulled the trigger.
The spikes went right through him, pinning the body against the side of the elevator car, left him hanging there like a ragged, blood-drenched scarecrow.
I tossed the now-empty holdout needler away, and then reached up to pluck the three needles from my shoulder, like pulling shards of glass, each coming free with a tiny cloud of blood. Picked up two of the guards’ pistols, stuck one in my waistband, kept the other in my hand.
The emergency system that had activated the back-up motors brought us coasting to a stop at the next travel tube station.
A recorded, feminine voice said, “This car is out of service. Please debark here and change to another tube.” The doors chimed gently open.
I swam out of the car into the micro-gravity of the station, leaving a bubbly wake of blood as I went. A crowd of people looking at me first in puzzlement, then growing horror. Someone screamed, and they began to claw past each other to escape.
I hit the ‘up’ button, then smiled and waved my needler at the three people inside when the doors swished open. “Your stop, I think,” I told them. They scrambled off. The inside was a lot less plush that the executive transit tube, bare floor and ceiling and stirrup-shaped straps around the edge rather than sofas. I punched the button for the top floor.
The station where Reina/Alys and her brother had gotten off was empty. One wall was marked with the distinctive comet-shaped burns left by laser fire. A thin trail of blood led to one of the spoke tunnels connecting the central transit tubes to the outer rim of the station. I floated down cautiously, keeping the needler out in front of me, hauling myself along by my other hand.
Something bumped against the edge of the tunnel up ahead. I made out a foot, black-booted. One of the guards. As I passed him, I saw his throat had been cut. His partner was at the bottom of the tunnel, looking like he’d been attacked by a bear, every inch of exposed skin torn and gashed.
The corridor at the bottom was under gravity, and at the end of it a door. I flattened myself on the bulkhead beside it and pushed it open. An expensive office, waarwood desk, black leather furniture, a rug of something large and tawny. Two feet stuck from behind the desk.
I snapped around the door, covered the corners. Empty. Walked in a wide circle around the desk without getting too close, and saw who lay there.
I sighed, and crouched down beside them. “The conversation went well, I take it?”
-
Well, I've been right so far, so I presume the body on the floor is Lucien, as the conversation didn't go the way he planned, and Alys and Reina are somewhere else tearing the place apart...
-
Well, I've been right so far, so I presume the body on the floor is Lucien, as the conversation didn't go the way he planned, and Alys and Reina are somewhere else tearing the place apart...
(Whispering into collar) He knows too much... execute operation "Purity Control."
* * *
Part II
Lucien’s face was grey, his breathing quick and shallow. His stomach and thighs were drenched in blood, which had seeped into the carpet beneath him. The silver handle of a knife still jutted from his chest.
He opened his eyes a crack. “Ah, the attack dog.” His whispered voice came through clenched teeth and panting breaths. “I seem to … have … misjudged how to handle … your breed.” One hand twitched feebly towards the blade in his chest.
“Reina did this, huh?” His only reply was a grimace. “No offense buddy, but I was tempted to do the same thing myself, and I’ve only just met you. I’m guessing she didn’t like your plan to bring your sister back into the fold none. Perhaps a gentler approach?”
He coughed, tried to spit, but all that came out was a thin line of blood, tricking from the side of his mouth and down his cheek. “If you are alive … then you’ve just murdered four men … do not lecture me on gentleness.” He coughed again. “Yes, I used Reina, I used Alys … just as she uses you … Power, winning, those are the only things that matter … the way the world is … I don’t expect a fool like you to understand.”
I sat on my haunches by his side. “Hey look, we could swap insults all day,” I eyed his wounds critically. “Well, I could, maybe not you. So how about we skip all that and you just tell me where they went?”
A flicker of a smile passed across his face. “No, I don’t think so, dog,” he wheezed. “I may have to spend my last minutes talking with an animal … I’ll take the small satisfaction of thwarting you to my grave … after all, you can hardly make things worse.”
I sighed, reached over to the hilt of the knife, and twisted it. Lucien gave a shocked, outraged shriek, his legs kicking feebly on the floor. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this funny old galaxy of ours,” I told him, giving the knife another twist before letting it go. “It’s that things can always be worse. Now: Which. Way. Did. They. Go?”
He cursed me inventively and at length in a number of languages. I reached out for the knife again. “All right, all right,” he hissed. “Reina said she would … destroy the station … something about the engines … Alys went after her.”
Back the way I’d come. Of course. I stood up. Lucien was fumbling for his cane, raising it trembling towards me. I kicked it away irritably, just as he pressed a catch in the handle, firing a beam of brilliant red light from its tip into the ceiling. I pointed my needler at him, but saw the look of eager anticipation on his face. “Sorry, Luce.” Let my arm fall, turned and walked out the office. “Just the way the world is.”
I hadn’t seen the Reinas—either of them—coming down through the office’s private hub access, so they must have gone out the main entrance. Outside the office were smooth, black-tiled corridors, now filled with knots of people looking at one another in dazed bewilderment. Knew the feeling. Must be on the right track. The few who spared a glance for the bloody-shouldered man carrying a needler quickly dove back into their offices, amid sounds of locks being turned and furniture being piled against the doors.
At the end of the corridor was a wall of glass windows, one of which lay in frosted shards across the floor. One the other side was a wide pedestrian walkway, perhaps two floors above the curving ‘ground’ floor of the habitat on the inside hull surface. Someone was on the ground out there, half-hidden by a forest of legs of passers-by standing uselessly around.
I stepped through the broken window and shouldered my way through the crowd. People pushed back until they saw my face, then parted like the sea. The figure on the ground was a man—thank Unity—one hand clasped to his neck, blood feebly pumping from between his fingers.
I ran on, following in the chaos wake the two women had left, clear as any trail. I dashed across walkways suspended above crowded streets. Ducked and wove among the slow-moving shoppers, locals and tourists. Past neon-lit strip bars and smoky Evoke or Racer dens, dead-eyed users sprawled against the walls outside. The SHEL habitat was a rough place, but luckily this meant most inhabitants had a live-and-let-live policy, and I got dirty looks but little else. Only one man, emboldened by four of his friends backing him up, was brave or foolish enough to put out an arm to stop me.
“Where you going in such a hurrrk!” he said, as he found the muzzle of my needler jammed against his forehead. “Easy now buddy.”
Our little conversation was interrupted by a muffled crackle of laser fire from somewhere up ahead. I just shook my head at the man, withdrew the needler and sprinted on. Across another bridge, around a corner, through an open shopping arcade.
People were streaming back towards me, some flat-out panic-running, others glancing over their shoulders, running because everyone else was, others just shuffling back nervously, unsure if they should be running or not.
“Police!” I tried shouting, but people just looked at me strangely. Right, probably not the best place to try that trick.
Nearly tripped over a man sprawled across the walkway, another black-clad guard, trying feebly to crawl away on his elbows, leaving a red-slick trail behind him. Saw his holster was empty. He might've been the one I heard firing, but now someone up there had his gun.
Two figures were on the bridge ahead, kicking, striking at one another. Couldn’t tell who was who, but that was kind of what started this whole thing, wasn’t it? Not like the needler is exactly a sniper’s weapon in any case. I tried to put on a last burst of speed. Watched a kick lash out, get blocked and turned aside. The counterattack caught the other off-guard, drove them to the edge of the bridge, and then over. Clinging to the edge of the bridge by two hands, dangling twenty meters above the ground.
I was close enough now to see the one hanging from the bridge wore Alys’s red jumpsuit, the one standing above her, real-Reina’s black dress. I must have shouted something, because Reina looked up, snarled and raised one foot over Alys’s hands. “No closer,” she yelled. “Shoot me and she dies.”
I halted, needler held outstretched in both hands. “Works both ways,” I shouted back. “If she dies, you’re next.”
“She deserves to die!” the woman screamed. “She stole my name, she stole my life. She left me with these animals! Killing her would be justice.”
I caught Alys’s desperate glance at me. Saw her swing her legs a little from side to side. I took a step forward. Keep Reina focused on me. “Justice?” I repeated, taking another step. “Way I heard it, you did this to yourself. Not her fault you threw your life and privileges away.” Alys swinging her legs in bigger arcs now.
“They were mine to throw away,” she shouted back. “Not another step! Not one more.”
Too soon. We needed more time. I raised my hands slowly, let the needler clatter to the ground. “All right,” I said. “You win. Just let her go.”
Reina’s face split into a wide grin. She reached into her dress—and pulled out a slim, shiny laser pistol. She shot me—
—Alys swinging her legs, hooking one up over the ledge of the bridge—
—ducking, twisting away from the beam, but it still gazed me along the temple, a white-hot line of pain—
—Alys finding her feet—
—me falling, one hand held against my temple, the other finding the second needler in my waistband and throwing it—
—Reina turning, shocked to find Alys behind her—
—Alys catching the needler, turning and firing it right into Reina’s chest—
—hit the ground, half-blinded with pain, seeing only the back of Reina’s dress suddenly balloon out as dozens of ceramic shards tore right through her—
Reina staggered back a step. Tried to bring up her laser pistol, but her arm didn’t seem to work. And then she lost her footing at the edge of the bridge, pitched over, and was gone.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrkQUBysMk somehow i doubt Bloody Red Dress girl left a grenade behind but I'm reminded of this scene (that and a scene from a space movie where a woman is spaced, her suit expands then she discharges blood out her mouth, don't remember what movie it was however...) again, she might not be dead, yet Jim...
-
Very nice, I always like smooth villains. Very Bond.
Woof? Can he open pickle jars too?
-
very nice
So does that mean Alys now runs this place?
-
@DOC_Agren: Hmm no, I don't think the triads work on a Trial of Position basis. I'm assuming big brother Lucien worked his way up to trusted lieutenant before he bumped the old boss off, but Alys is very much an outsider.
@mikecj: I don't get the reference so I'm just gonna go ahead and say "Possibly."
@pensive: That was an impressive amount of flashbacking for that was likely a 2-3 second fall.
* * *
EPISODE 3-10: A fleeting moment in time
In the present:
The trip back to the DropShip is a bit of a haze, on account of the ‘nearly getting my brain laser-fried’ thing. I’m not sure how I managed to put one foot in front of the other, just kept moving forward blindly, like a stone rolling down a hill.
In my nauseous state I thought I could feel every millimeter of motion, the rotation of the grav deck inside the habitat, the orbit of the habitat around New Avalon’s sun, the sun around the galaxy, everything in terribly, unstoppably accelerating, an avalanche of movement. In a weird way that made walking easier—my own tiny vector added next to nothing to the hurtling speed I was already under.
I think Alys had one arm around my shoulder, her head under one arm, and that was the only thing keeping me anchored to the ground, and I clung to her as if I might be torn flying away by the terrific forces clutching at me. I was in awe of her, then. Her arm was around me, which meant she must be moving, tumbling through space just as I was, yet she could walk, seemed miraculously unaffected by the twirling, the rushing of the cosmos.
Alys, I thought, Alys. Focused on that, that tether, that connection. Alys. It was still strange to think of her that way. Must have been saying it out loud.
“Well, what’s your name then?” she asked as we lurched through spinning, fearful crowds. The needler in her hand stopped anyone from asking questions.
“Alex,” I told her.
“Oh, how dull. And far too similar to mine.”
“You can see why I stuck with Aric Glass,” I said, as the deck revolved, revolved, around and around again, unnoticed by everyone. “Little brother couldn’t say Alex, called me Sandy. Sand. Glass.”
“Brother, huh?” she asked.
I nodded and immediately regretted it, each bounce of my neck causing my vision to white out in a blinding flash of pain. The habitat hurtled heedlessly through space at over 100,000 kph, taking me with it.
“He’s not, um, the leader of any organized crime syndicates is he?”
I blinked a couple of times, until my vision focused again. “He was 15 last time I saw him. So unless he was amazingly precocious, no.”
“That’s a relief.” We walked in silence for a few minutes. “Did you … was Lucien …”
“I’ve seen people who looked healthier.” I winced as a step sent a jarring crackle of pain up the side of my face. New Avalon’s sun corkscrewed through the void, uncaring. “Been to better family reunions, too.”
“Ah, but have you been to any worse?”
“Not that I can recall,” I admitted. “Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be,” she said wearily. “Lucien took lessons in brotherly affection from Anton Marik and learned everything he knew about serenity and calmness from Redjack Ryan. Would be nice if everyone’s family was a haven, but we can’t all be so lucky.”
“You still have the unit.”
“I still have the unit,” she agreed. “It’ll be a relief to have everyone who is trying to kill me armed only with 100-ton death machines. Hope Nova’s taken good care of them.”
“Summer is Duke Lestrade’s personal fief,” I said. “How much trouble could they get themselves into?”
Alys just cocked her head and looked at me.
“Right. Better get back soon.”
That feeling again, of dreaded, unstoppable movement, of floating at the edge of a vast, inescapable maelstorm. Some monolithic force dipped a finger in the fabric of the universe and stirred, whirling us all about in its wake, carrying us irresistibly onwards like a black hole, and nobody seemed to mind. Somebody stop the universe, I want to get off.
Derek Forrest was waiting for us in the airlock antechamber, wearing his perpetual look of mild distress, a laser rifle held casually in his arms and four dead guards at his feet.
“Thank Unity,” Alys smiled. “Thought you might have left without us.”
“Are you kidding me?” Forrest grinned back. “You guys are practically family now.”
Alys’s smile disappeared and Forrest looked at me in confusion.
“What? What did I say?”
* End of season 3 *
-
@pensive: That was an impressive amount of flashbacking for that was likely a 2-3 second fall.
* * *
It's Cowboy Bebop. Decades later, it's still the to-go-to example of Cool anime...
-
It's Cowboy Bebop. Decades later, it's still the to-go-to example of Cool anime...
Ah don't let me get to you. I've never seen it--anime to me is Macross/Robotech, Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor. Oh, and Appleseed. Wings of Honneamise. Sky Crawlers. That's about it. Everyone tells me I'm living in the wrong country.
-
Well I had to ask because what I can tell they have taken out a # of the Family Soldiers
-
Well I had to ask because what I can tell they have taken out a # of the Family Soldiers
They did rather, didn't they. And the triads had precisely as many hirelings as the plot required. :))
-
We'll, hope you enjoyed that. The original idea was to see if I could write a serial series about a mercenary unit, writing one episode at a time rather than figuring the whole story out in advance.
Some of the episodes worked out well I thought, others I'm more ambivalent about, but it was an interesting experience. In the end though trying to write constantly is a bit wearing, and it's not as much fun as it used to be.
Thanks again to everyone who read and/or commented.
-
anime to me is Macross/Robotech, Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor. Oh, and Appleseed. Wings of Honneamise. Sky Crawlers.
Yeah... Wings is really good... I'd recommend Bebop to anyone, you'll like a number of those.
-
It can't be over! Not like this! :D
I've never seen it
Its said to have influenced Firefly - a couple of bounty hunters fly around the galaxy hunting bounties and meeting people, along the way they pick up a childlike kid who seems to be smarter than she looks. Its also 1 of the very few anime whose English dub is generally considered superior to Japanese - by the creator as well IINM.
Even as a not-anime fan, I quite liked Cowboy Bebop, Gundam IBO, and GITS.
-
They did rather, didn't they. And the triads had precisely as many hirelings as the plot required. :))
I just wasn't sure if they they made a play for it, that they could not be the top dog as they took out a # of mooks wasn't sure how many middle level players
It can't be over! Not like this! :D
Its said to have influenced Firefly - a couple of bounty hunters fly around the galaxy hunting bounties and meeting people, along the way they pick up a childlike kid who seems to be smarter than she looks. Its also 1 of the very few anime whose English dub is generally considered superior to Japanese - by the creator as well IINM.
Even as a not-anime fan, I quite liked Cowboy Bebop, Gundam IBO, and GITS.
Cowboy Behop is a hoot
-
Finally managed to let RL and work let me get to a computer.
Been binge reading the rest of your story.
Reina had a very impressive family to say the least.
Glass made a very reflective attack dog. Great job. :thumbsup:
-
It can't be over! Not like this! :D
Well never say never. Depends if inspiration strikes. The ending there is meant to hint of trouble brewing with Duke Lestrade, whose shenanigans will be familiar to anyone who has read the Warrior series. So I've left the door open.
I periodically try to get my scribblings published in grown-up magazines for real cash money, but so far no success. A lot of the short fiction markets now seem to be focused on "literary SF" but all I want to write is fun space opera adventures about things going boom. Just try to keep finding that niche I guess ... or if anyone has any suggestions on how to break into writing for game companies?
Glass made a very reflective attack dog. Great job. :thumbsup:
Hey, the snakester is back! Thanks for reading, my dude.
-
I enjoyed it, thanks!
-
Well, I did have one idea for a continutation of the story. Bit of a change of pace and/or tone, so maybe think of this as the season where the show fired all the old writers and brought in some new faces. Bit less pulpy this time, more political machinations than techno-blitzkrieg action.
Just to recap, here's a who's who:
Aric Glass: Mercenary aerospace pilot from Oriente/Free Worlds League and former Eagle Corps operative. Fragged his commanding officer after the latter berayed his unit to the enemy. Dislikes: Elevators, trains, dentist offices and other places people have tried to kill him.
Alys: Born on an organized crime-controlled space habitat, assumed the identity of a rich noblewoman from Ozawa named Reina Paradis after the latter was abducted. Under her identity as Reina, current commander of the Black Arrows mercenary air wing.
Derek Forrest: Leader of the Might Fallen smuggler gang, after the previous leader had disagreement with Glass. Owner of both a Buccaneer class DropShip and a truly world-class worried frown.
* * *
EPISODE 4-1: Perceptual disturbances
Watching a spaceport through the ferroglass always strikes me a bit like watching a holovid. I can never quite shake the feeling that what I’m watching isn’t real, like there’s no way these ungainly, metal-plated Easter eggs could get 10 meters off the ground, much less blast themselves into space. I just keep waiting for one of the puppeteers to slip up, for the wires holding them to be exposed, the whole painted backdrop to come crashing down. Like the whole thing was an elaborate con, that humanity had actually been stuck on Terra all these centuries.
Mind you, spaceports themselves are covered in a kind of glaze of unreality, aren’t they? All built in the same swooping, curving cream ceramic, filled with lavish aristos-only lounges, modern art displays of metal in liquid shapes and kiosks with coffee at eye-watering prices. Like you’re on a holovid set: All distinguishing marks or features carefully sanded away, leaving you in a kind of eternal, omnipresent limbo-land, a not-place that exists at the intersection between every Planet You Were On and every Planet You Want To Be On, a spiritual and intellectual void to complement the physical one you just crossed between the stars.
This one was on Addicks, I think. Though it might well have been Quentin. Or Fomalhaut? No, definitely Addicks. Like I say, all spaceports are much the same. We were traveling slow on Forrest’s Buccaneer, picking up cargo on one planet, taking it to the next, where we’d pick up the next shipment, take it onwards. Edging steadily closer to Terra and the Commonwealth. Sometimes legitimate cargo, sometimes not—the latter rarely exciting, just booze or oil or anything somebody didn’t feel like paying taxes on.
Alys-who-was-Reina had gone on ahead to the unit on Summer while I aimed for Galatea, which left me with only our smuggler friend for company. Forrest was off meeting someone about our next cargo, the rest of the crew scattered about the spaceport or out in the town enjoying themselves.
So it was just me and the almost-but-not-quite-holovid screen of the ferroglass window looking out over the vast acres of cracked and weather-stained ferrocrete that formed the spaceport landing pads. A couple of DropShip crew in beige overalls and merchants in silk shirts were watching a holovid in one of the public waiting lounges, something about an up-and-coming Solaris duelist named Xiang. The Solaris Circuit is one of the reasons I’m glad I never became a MechWarrior—pilots are untainted by the commercial depths to which they’ve dragged the BattleMech. Blood sports for the citizens of a decaying Rome.
I just tried to shut out the noise and enjoy the view. Sky so blue it had to be fake.
The chair was reclinable, and if you fed a C- or D-Bill into the slot on the side, it would massage your back and neck for 15 minutes with stubby, insistent robotic fingers moving beneath the leather.
I was about to feed another bill into the machine when a voice stopped me: “Mister Glass?”
I turned and saw a big slab of human, lots of hair on his forearms and the backs of his hands, dressed in a chocolate brown spaceport security uniform that seemed about a size too small for him. Wide “Addicks Spaceport Security” armband around his bicep, an organization whose acronym was about as smart as its employees.
He also wore small wire-framed round glasses that sat, incongruously tiny in the middle of his blocky face. Five other security types stood in a rough semicircle around my chair, about five meters away—well out of lunging distance, in other words. Armed with sonic stun guns attached to lanyards around their necks: the stunner’s a non-lethal weapon, but even those can mess you up bad if used close enough, for long enough.
The big guy who’d spoken looked like he belonged in a holovid, too. He reminded me of the brother on “Home is Were the Hart is”, you know that one? The family of were-creatures, with the dad who turns into the horned Master of the Wild Hunt, and the brother turns into a bear. That’s the one. He did not, in other words, look like the sort of guy who turns into a spaceport security officer when he wakes up in the morning.
“There a problem?” I asked.
“What there are, Mister Glass, are questions,” he intoned slowly, with heavy emphasis on the last word. “Questions about a certain nobleman’s daughter. Questions you might be able to answer.”
“Okay, shoot,” I said, then flicked a glance at the others. “Not literally, guys.”
“Not here, Mister Glass, but in private,” the were-bear gestured with one paw. “If you’d follow us please, this way. The matter of a nobleman’s family calls for certain discretion. As I’m sure you can understand.”
Well, no, no I didn’t, but then I figured if they wanted me dead, I’d be dead, and if I didn’t go willing I’d probably wind up going unconscious, so what the hell. “Hey, sure thing,” I said, and bounced out of the massage chair. The other five guards either took a step back or reached for their stun guns, but I noticed Hairy Bearson just kind of half-dropped into a fighting crouch. Instead of a stun gun, his holster held a Stetta machine pistol, big blocky thing with a magazine big as a cigarette packet and a custom-molded grip. Interesting. Definitely not one of the boys. “Lead on,” I told him.
One of the security stiffs walked in front, Bearson just behind my shoulder, the other four making a loose box around us. We got lots of odd, surreptitious corner-of-the-eye looks from passers-by eager not to make eye contact, but I didn’t see either Alys or any of the crew.
“You’re not security, are you big guy,” I said conversationally, over my shoulder. I saw the name badge over his breast pocket read ‘A. Tracey.’
“I am not,” he agreed. “I assist my clients in finding certain personages of interest.”
“Bounty hunter, huh? I thought you had a green outfit and a Marauder?”
“Not The Bounty Hunter Mister Glass, but A bounty hunter.”
“A-Tracey the bounty hunter? That some kind of joke?”
“Sometimes it’s convenient to take a name that suits one’s place in life. Isn’t that right, Mister Glass?”
“Sure.” I smiled and waved at a small kid in a straw hat who stared at us. He ran behind his mom’s skirts. “Any hints on who’s offering the bounty?”
“All in good time, Mister Glass.”
They led me outside, which answered any lingering doubts about whether this was a legitimate security stop or not. Parked directly in front of the terminal entrance was a hover car, a rounded block of mirror-polished black, more dolled-up Harasser scout tank than limousine. A number of small round ports down the side suggested the thing’s idea of an anti-theft device was a series of flamethrowers. There was an unfamiliar crest on the front—three black birds, like lean turkeys or peacocks with long stringy tails, arranged in an inverted triangle pattern on a silver background.
Only Tracey and I got in, the other security guards stood uncomfortably outside, clearly relieved to be rid of us and wishing we’d just go.
Inside were two rows of plush seats, facing each other with maybe a meter of space between them, and a sheet of bullet-proof glass, cross-hatched with a tracery of steel wire, separating the passenger compartment from the driver. I sat in the rearward-facing seat, Tracey diagonally opposite, corded arms folded across the expanse of his chest, one hand just above the butt of his custom Stetta.
There were no windows, but rather a flat-panel display to either side of the seats, linked to cameras mounted on the vehicle.
“Forrest sell me out?”
“Every man has his price.” His face looked sad, like this was one of the bitterest truths life had taught him.
The hovercar-slash-tank lifted from the ground with the soft electrical purr of a fuel cell engine rather than the rough chugging of biofuel, and on the screens to either side I saw we were slaloming effortlessly through traffic as cars either pulled over or slowed down to let us through.
“Those pheasants on the front?” I asked Tracey, wondering who’d have enough clout to clear the roads like that.
“Birds of paradise, Mister Glass,” he informed me.
Well, that confirmed that suspicion.
-
Ahhh yes. Welcome back, Mister Glass.
-
Very glad to see the story continuing!
-
Glass really likes attracting the wrong people.
I wonder what his conversation with Forrest will be like when they next meet. ;)
-
EPISODE 4-2: Delusions of grandeur
The building we stopped in front of looked like an ancient Japanese shrine or temple, if ancient Japanese shrines and temples had been built of frosted glass and steel. The shape was right, but instead of wood panels and beams there were these ink-black metal spars and multi-meter tall sheets of semi-transparent stuff, through which you could see vague shadows moving and somber lights flickering.
The door was opened by liveried footmen dressed in black and white, with the three bird of paradise crest on either shoulder. Two armored guards, similarly monochromatic, watched us disembark from a respectable distance, auto shotguns slung over their shoulders.
One footman guided us inside, around mossy rock gardens and carp-filled pools, through a seeming funhouse maze of mirrored walls and floors, to an inner courtyard where a young man dressed in loose white robe and billowing navy pantaloons held a two-meter long bamboo bow. At the other end of the courtyard, a small target—flanked on either side by the three-bird crest—was already pin-cushioned with half a dozen arrows.
Behind the archer, on a raised veranda that ran around three sides of the courtyard, a man lay face-down on a table positioned in the middle of an intricate Turkish rug, while a female masseuse worked on his shoulders and back. The man was gray-haired and wore only a towel about his buttocks; the masseuse was completely naked, save for silver jewelry about each wrist and ankle, and a stud in her belly button. Armed guards stood at each corner of the courtyard.
“My Lord: Mister Adolphus Tracey and associate,” the doorman announced with a bow, then quietly shuffled backwards.
The man with the bow looked up and frowned, then back down at his bow. He fitted an arrow to the string, lifted both bow staff and arrow over his head. Brought the two down and apart at the same time, held the arrow near the cheek for an instant, and loosed. The bow twirled in his fingers as he released the arrow, spinning so that the string faced away from him.
Thwack. The arrow hit the edge of the target.
There was a moment of quiet, interrupted only by the tinkle of jewelry and the rhythmic, liquid slap of the masseuse’s hands on the old man’s bare back.
“Ah, Adolphus, success I take it?” said a muffled voice from the massage table. “A little lower, my dear. A little more. Ah, just there. Harder, now, don’t be shy.”
Tracey was frowning at his feet, a little embarrassed by the skin on display, I think. “My Lord, the gentleman in question is present,” he told his shoes.
“Howdy,” I offered. “Nice rug.” I winked at the masseuse. She blushed.
“Ah, thank you dear, that will do for now.” The old man sat up, wrapping the towel around himself as the nude woman bowed and padded from the courtyard. Got a good look at the man’s face: Angular features, black hair gone to steel. “Thank you Adolphus, efficient as always. Have you told him who I am?”
“Figured that out for myself,” I replied before Tracey could. “Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you, Mister Paradis.”
Thwack.
“My Lord,” hissed Tracey.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to call him ‘My Lord.’”
“Well, I doubt he’s supposed to kidnap people from spaceports, but here we are,” I said, crossing my arms.
Tracey tensed but Lord Masayuki Paradis, Count of Toyokawa, owner of half of Ozawa just smiled and chuckled. “You will see, in due course, why such secrecy was necessary, Mister Glass,” he said, a small smile still tugging at his lips. He snapped his fingers and a servant rushed forward with a Japanese-style robe. He held out his arms as the servant fitted the robe and cinched it shut, then let his arms fall. “I take it you can guess why I wish to speak with you?”
“Reina Paradis.”
“In part,” he said. “My wayward third child and second daughter. Tell me, Mister Glass, do you know where she is?”
“Yes.” Well, I knew where she had been several weeks ago: splattered across a sidewalk inside a SHEL space habitat at the New Avalon L3 Lagrangian point. Where she’d fallen, shortly after being abdominally perforated at point-blank range with a needler pistol.
“Is she with you now?”
“No.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “I suspected as much. Did you kill her?”
“No.” Might have helped a bit, but didn’t actually pull the trigger, so technically not a lie.
“A wild child, she did rather seem destined for an early end. And the woman commanding your unit, she is impersonating my daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to answer every question with just ‘Yes’ or ‘No’?”
I thought about that for a second. “No.”
“Glass,” Tracey rumbled threateningly.
“Oh back off, Fozzy,” I told him irritably. “Lord Peacock Feathers wants something, he can get right to the bloody point.”
Thwack.
Paradis sat down on the edge of the massage table with a sigh, beckoned a servant who brought a tray with a wine bottle and half-filled glass. Paradis took the glass, then told the servant, “Leave the bottle. I have a feeling I’ll need it.” He took a sip, swilled it around his mouth a moment, savoring it, before swallowing. “Mister Glass, anyone who learns of our meeting will assume I wished to talk to you solely about the whereabouts of my daughter. Well, consider my curiosity assuaged.”
He nodded towards the young archer. “Hiroyuki is my heir, his sister Mina is set to be wed to one of the Devries. Reina was always a bit of an afterthought. A marriage for her to one of the lesser Sandovals or Sorteks might have helped cement our position, but perhaps this new woman can be persuaded to fulfill that role—after all, I hardly mind if she’s my blood or not. It’s the alliance that matters, not the children that come from it.” He set down the glass. “However, all this is smokescreen. I have another reason to speak you, one which coincidentally, is also related to marriage.”
I looked sidelong at Tracey, but his face betrayed no understanding of where Paradis was going with this. “I’m very flattered,” I said. “But you’re not really my type.”
Paradis harrumphed, clapped his hands twice, sharply, the sound ringing out like gunshots in the courtyard. The servants and guards bowed and made themselves disappear. The archer—Hiroyuki—looked up at the old man questioningly. “You too,” Paradis said. “The less you know of this, the better.” The young man scowled, threw the bow down on the ground and stomped off, bare feet slapping against the hard glass flooring.
Tracey took a step back, before being halted by a raised finger. “Not you,” said Paradis. “You’re my insurance in this.” Then he turned back to me. “Now, Mister Glass. You are from the Free Worlds League, are you not?”
I nodded. “Oriente.”
“What if I told you there was a threat, a very real threat, to the continued existence of that League?” Paradis asked. “Wouldn’t you want to do something to warn your homeland?”
There was clockwork calculation there, the same dead voice that had spoken so casually about replacing his own daughter. There was a shape behind those words, hidden between the steel planes and knife-edged panes, what I was hearing was a blurred reflection of his real intentions.
I moved past him, down the three shallow steps from the veranda to the center of the courtyard, bending down to pick up the bamboo bow. It was huge, taller that I was, but surprisingly light. The wood felt strange in this place of glass and metal, a single living thing amid all this millimeter-precise architecture, the hard surfaces and ambition, the cold calculation. I frowned to myself, thumb rubbing across the bow, holding it crosswise in front of me, parallel to the ground.
The old lecher had asked a good question though. Well, would I want to warn the League? But as soon as I asked myself that question, I saw it was the wrong one. “Depends on whether I believed the threat was real,” I said. There was a long quiver of arrows leaning against a bow stand. I took one and fitted it to the string, feeling Tracey’s eyes intent on my back with every motion. “Depends on why a Federated Suns nobleman would want to give such a warning.”
“You’ve heard of the alliance between the Lyran Commonwealth and Federated Suns?”
“Well, that’s no secret.” I stood, arrow still against the string, holding the bow vertically now, straight out from my body. “Hardly seems worth a secret meeting to tell me that.”
“There is a secret clause in the alliance.”
Feet slightly apart. Raised both hands high above my head, bow still held perfectly straight. “One that lets you kidnap space tourists?”
“One that promises Melissa Steiner in marriage to Hanse Davion.”
The arrow slipped from my fingers then. I fumbled for it, caught it before it hit the ground. “Not just an alliance then,” I said. “A union.”
I nodded to myself. It made sense, from Davion’s point of view anyway: access to an industrial base capable of supporting his patently unsustainable military spending. Seemed like political suicide for Steiner though, instantly making an enemy of every Commonwealth Duke, Margrave, Baron and Earl who’d hoped to marry whatever spotty, greasy, inbred heirs they’d produced to the Archon-Designate.
All seemed kind of academic, though, especially for a second-rate nobleman from a third-rate world. I fitted the arrow back to the string. “Still, can’t see how that harms you, unless you’d been planning to marry Reina off to him? In which case, you’d have to get in line.”
“What will happen, once this clause becomes known, do you think?”
“For the happy couple? A few years of bliss, followed by long decades of slow realization that you can never truly know another person and we are all ultimately alone in the universe. Oh, and three to five kids, who may or may not contribute to the aforementioned existential dread thing.” Drew the bow and arrow down and apart. Arrow to my cheek, just below the eye. “For the rest of us? The usual: War.”
Release. Bow spinning in my hand.
Thwack.
“No, not the usual war, Mister Glass. Something quite different.” I turned, to see Paradis smiling thinly down at me.
“You missed,” observed Tracey.
At the other end of the courtyard, my arrow jutted from the eye of the top right bird of paradise on the crest painted on the wall. “How careless of me,” I murmured.
“Since war is inevitable, the Commonwealth and Suns will launch preemptive invasions of the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation, respectively, and once they fall the League will surely follow,” Paradis said, refilling his glass. “However. The Draconis March will be denuded of men to reinforce the strike against the Capellans. Now do you understand why this insane plan must be stopped?”
I nodded, slowly, feeling again that the bow was the only natural thing down there in the room. Standing with a man who’d sell not just his own daughter, but his own realm if it served his interests. “You are worried you will lose your fief to a Combine attack while the AFFS concentrates on the Capellans.”
“Sono toori, Mister Glass. Ex-act-ly. This is where our interest align.” Paradis took a long drink of wine. “Conquered Capellan worlds will be given to the Lyrans—to those weak-kneed bankers while ancient Marcher families stand to lose everything. What does Davion care if he loses a world here and there if he conquers a score from the Confederation?” He suddenly flung the wine glass away, shattering it against a wall. “He will abandon all of us in the Draconis March to serve his own grasping ambition!”
There was irony in this man criticizing ambition, but I somehow doubted he would see the humor. “Why tell me?” I said, placing the bow carefully in the stand. “I doubt the Combine or Confederation are going to take the word of an ex-League mercenary.”
“Because we have obtained a complete, detailed copy of Operation Rat, the plans for the invasion of the Capellan Confederation,” Paradis said, triumphantly. “Troop movements, timetables, targets, everything. With this you have all the evidence you need to warn the other realms and prepare them. Find someone you can trust, and give them the plans. Once it becomes clear his enemies are alerted, Davion will have no choice but to call off his damn-fool invasion and protect our borders—all our borders.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Why not ComStar, say?”
“Who do you think arranged this treaty?” Paradis scoffed. “ComStar is in this up to their necks. With you, as I said, I have a cover for arranging a meeting. You’re a League citizen—even with the stakes involved, I’m not sure I could stomach giving this information to a Kurita or Liao—and I trust that motivates you to do your best to pass on the information. And, let’s be honest, you are deniable—if you are caught or attempt to betray me, I can expose your complicity in the impersonation of my daughter, and discredit anything you might say.”
I chewed my lip a little, looked up, watched the sky. Still too perfect, not quite believable. “Okay, so you cancel the invasion and get to hold onto the family mansion.” I glanced around the courtyard. “Or mansions, as the case may be. What’s in it for me?”
“Other than the warm patriotic glow of knowing you are helping to save your homeland?”
“Yeah. Other than that.”
Paradis’ jaw twitched a little. “Very well, I undertake not to expose your commander’s charade and allow the two of you to live unmolested. How does that sound?”
“You undertake, do you?” I raised an eyebrow, looked at Tracey. “Hear that? He ‘undertakes’. What fancy words you have for blackmail.”
“Ever man has their price, Mister Glass,” Tracey said slowly. “Just not every man gets to choose it.”
I sighed. “No, I guess not.” I was starting to regret not letting the spaceport security just shoot me. Unity, I needed a drink. I walked back up the steps to the veranda. “What’s your angle in all this, A-for-Adolph Tracey?”
“He will continue to represent my interest in this.” Paradis had a confident smile again. “He will be your escort and bodyguard, until the information is delivered. He will keep you from harm, in other words, meaning both the suffering and the causing of. I trust him, because I know he is loyal to whoever pays him the most. And I do not doubt for a moment I can pay him far, far more than you can ever offer.”
“I try not to let things get complicated.” Tracey spread his big hands wide, and gave a little shrug.
“All right,” I reached over, picked up the wine bottle still beside Paradis, lifted it to my lips and took a swig. Dry, very dry. “This from Ozawa?”
“No, Mister Glass. All the vineyards on Ozawa were irradiated during the First Succession War. On my world, we know how terrible the price of war can be.”
“Yes, so terrible, the damage it can do to wine,” I deadpanned, and put the bottle down. Looked around. “Okay. So, where are these plans?”
Paradis rubbed fastidiously at the neck of the bottle with the sleeve of his robe. “Oh, I’m not so foolish as to keep anything so grossly incriminating around here,” he tutted primly. “You will meet our courier in the Optimates Lounge at the spaceport.”
“The spaceport?” I groaned, dragging one hand across my eyes. “You mean you drove me all the way out here just to have this little chat, and now you’re going to ship me all the way back again. Doesn’t this strike anyone as a touch. You know. Inefficient?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going out there,” Paradis said, brows furrowed in puzzlement like the very concept was unimaginable. He flapped a hand dismissively. “Run along now, Mister Glass. Adolphus knows the way. I do so very much hope we shall never meet or speak again.”
-
I'd forgotten the timeline of this thing. Hmm. Okay. Let's see where this goes, since it seems we already know how Paradis' plans turn out.
-
I'd forgotten the timeline of this thing. Hmm. Okay. Let's see where this goes, since it seems we already know how Paradis' plans turn out.
mmmmmmmmaybe. Mr. Fancy Pants thinks COMSTAR is involved in the deal (historically, they were not). As for the nudity? Well, when the movie comes out, i guess they will offer Rated-R and Rated-NC-17 versions at release. :D
-
Before I say anything, I should mention I'm not a lore guru, and indeed I find discussions about what can or can't happen in BT because of this or that obscure reference highly irritating and counterproductive to good storytelling.
So, with that, a few comments on the 'lore' of the story.
Every fan fiction is by default an alternate universe from accepted canon, if only by virtue of not being an official publication. I tend to write 'soft' AU, in that events don't directly contradict major events in the established timeline. Whether or not this is a soft or hard AU is, I hope, part of the fun in reading along--will it or won't it stick to the script?
The reference to Xiang as a new Solaris contender and lack of public knowledge about the marriage puts this in early 3027 in the canon timeline. My impression from official publications was that ComStar's involvement was canon: the FedCom accords were signed on Terra with the knowledge and support of the Primus. I think there was a Battlecorps story about that, too. If that's been contradicted elsewhere then eh. Paradis' comment wasn't meant to indicate anything (to the reader) other than how well-informed he is.
-
Every fan fiction is by default an alternate universe from accepted canon, if only by virtue of not being an official publication. I tend to write 'soft' AU, in that events don't directly contradict major events in the established timeline. Whether or not this is a soft or hard AU is, I hope, part of the fun in reading along--will it or won't it stick to the script?
Indeed; if somehow Our Hero manages to derail either the FedCom wedding or the Fourth Succession War ... well, I'm here either way, because the story's going to be grand whichever happens.
-
EPISODE 4-3: Hypomaniac episodes
The limo-tank that had brought me to Paradis’ mansion was still waiting outside.
“He do this a lot?” I asked Tracey as we climbed back in. “Shuttling people around like cargo—not the high treason thing.”
Tracey shrugged, a mournful little landslide of muscle. “He can afford to.”
“And yet he’s still alive,” I marveled. “Adolphus my friend, you are a paragon of patience. A saint.”
“They pay well and on time,” he said by way of explanation, taking off his small eyeglasses and rubbing them with a cloth. The whole lens disappearing beneath his thumb. “It’s easy to hate the rich, but what would you do differently in their place? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because they’re still people, still the same species, the same DNA as the rest of us, so in a real sense they are you or me, but for accident of birth. The nobility are just like us, only. With more money.”
Which was more than I’d heard out of him all day. Perhaps a sensitive topic. “Yeah, maybe,” I agreed. “But on the other hand: Definitely not.” A sensitive topic for me at any rate: One didn’t go to Princefield Military Academy on a commoner ticket without developing certain views on the subject. “There’s such a thing as entitlement.”
Two Addicks Spaceport Security guards at the entrance to the Optimates Lounge moved to block our path. Tracey, still in his ill-fitting uniform, produced a guest pass which a guard scanned with a handheld device shaped like a fat grey scorpion. It beeped reassuringly. He waved us in.
Inside the Lounge was a long wooden reception counter and a beaming hostess in a form-fitting black tuxedo suit and bowtie. She consulted a glowing monitor behind the desk, then looked up at us. “Ah, Mister Tracey. So nice to have you with us today. You’re here to see Lady Querrey? This way, please.”
She led us through the main lounge, a long rectangular room lit by the glittering constellation of a gigantic chandelier, the room’s wide space dotted around the edge with plush chairs and sofas of various shapes and sizes. A string quintet played softly on a low stage at one end of the lounge—three violins, two cellos. Playing Tourmaline’s “Exodus of Exo Dust.” The musicians were all hairless albinos, dressed in Renaissance style with outrageous ruffles at the wrists and neck.
There was a long buffet table with a layer of crushed ice, piled high with pyramids of multicolored fruit, bleeding red meat and soft, pink slug-like cephalopods, some of which were still moving. Guests ranged up and down the table in restless, animated herds, spearing this food or that with long, gold-plated forks. A side table with chilled wine and champagne did brisk business, while the hulking, frothing drink dispenser had enough barrels to win the Solaris Grand T.
There were women in shimmering gold silk as sheer as body paint, with long braided hair and the side or back of their heads shaved like Commonwealth MechWarriors. Wizened old men in long-tailed jackets with warpaint-smeared faces, pseudo-tribal logograms or leering skulls in vivid pastel colors. A young man in tennis wear, racket under one arm, though I hadn’t seen any courts in the spaceport. A woman trailed everywhere by a small drone hovering overhead, which projected a series of wildlife holos across the canvas of her white dress.
Some people said it was odd humanity hadn’t yet encountered any alien life, but looking around the lounge I wasn’t so sure we hadn't.
The hostess led us to a door off the side of the main lounge, pressed an intercom button beside the door and stood, beaming politely at the smooth, reflective surface in the way of service people who’ve been told to never stop smiling.
A green light winked above the intercom and the hostess said, “A Mister Tracey and guest to see you, My Lady.”
The door swung open, apparently automatically, and the hostess bowed and ushered us inside. The door swung closed, suddenly cutting off Tourmaline’s Exodus of Exo Dust in mid violin-swell. Soundproofed walls, a nice touch.
The walls inside were paneled in glossy black wood, and in the center of the room was a long table laden with a noteputer in the center, and three chairs each facing a truly impressive tonnage of silverware. Looked more like a surgeon’s tool kit than a dinner setting. There was a meter-high window stretching nearly the entire length of the far wall, with a view away from the spaceport, over the anthill outline of Saint Randall CIty and towards the rose and violet mountains in the distance.
Tracey coughed, maybe he meant to do it politely but with lungs like his it sounded like an elephant giving birth. “Lady Querrey.”
In front of the window stood a woman, just turning towards us, short platinum blond hair, an off-the-shoulder black dress beaded with lustrous stones, a voluminous wide skirt studded with metallic glowing nodes around the hem. Streams of ruby, sapphire and emerald butterflies danced and whirled around her feet and legs, before abruptly disappearing when they rose past her knees.
“Holo emitters in the skirt,” she said, noticing my attention. She pointed at the luminous blobs at the bottom of her dress. “Used to have them set to ‘Avalon Mist’, so I could appear enchanting and mysterious, but people kept thinking my dress was on fire and pulling the fire alarm. So it’s butterflies now, instead. Less exciting but I stay drier.”
I pinched the collar of my navy blue DropShip crew jumpsuit, rubbing the material between thumb and index finger. “Yes, well, only thing this does is turn black. Eventually,” I said wryly. “If you don’t wash it for long enough.”
“Don’t mind him, My Lady,” rumbled Tracey. “Irreverence seems to be his default setting.”
“Well then, let’s be seated and get this over with,” she said, moving to the table. “Then he can go be irreverent at someone else.”
Tracey and I sat on one side, Lady Querrey on the other. Facing a phalanx of forks, spoons, knives and other things which could as easily have been torture implements and eating utensils.
“What’s this?” I asked, picking up something that looked like the galaxy’s smallest stainless steel spatula, with two curved prongs jutting out of the handle.
“A lobster fork,” Querrey replied, with a slightly condescending smile.
“Aha, so that’s what one looks like.” I twirled it around in my fingers. “And what’s a lobster?”
“Delicious.” She folded her hands atop the table. “Mister Glass, this information is being provided to you at no little risk to us. I hope you will appreciate the gravity, and act accordingly.”
“Us?”
“Count Paradis is not alone in his … concerns. Hanse Davion’s obsession with the Capellans is one thing, yes. If he fails in his gamble, it will be a disaster for the Draconis March. The danger to the rest of us, though, is: What if he succeeds? What stops him from proclaiming himself Emperor, Autarch or Star Lord then? Already, his Brigade of Guards could wipe out any Duke he likes on a whim. With this alliance, he grows twice as powerful, yet a planetary Duke gains no power at all. His success threatens us as much as his failure.”
Ah, the tightrope act every House Lord must walk with their nobles. If the ruler is too weak, they attract contempt and revolt, usurpation even. Look at Alessandro Steiner. But by the same token, if they are too strong, too popular, they attract jealousy and fear. Not among their enemies, or not just among them, but among their own vassals as well: fear of being stripped of their privileges, of losing their independence. Our neo-feudal society is a tripod, with the House Lord’s power supported by the legs of the aristocracy, the military and industry. Weaken support from any one of those three, and the whole thing comes toppling down.
“Hasek-Davion?” I guessed, still toying with the fork. “Sandoval?”
Querrey gave an elegant, negligent shrug. “It could be both, or neither. Does it matter?” She reached over to the noteputer in the center of the table, flipped up the monitor and turned it around, so that it faced towards Tracey and me. “Now to the matter at hand. We realize you will have a hard time taking us on faith. You may inspect the file and confirm its authenticity before you leave for Galatea.”
“Its authenticity?” I mused, tapping the spatula end of the fork against my palm. How was I supposed to judge that? I occurred to me this could be Davion’s version of Operation Fortitude, a deliberate deception meant to send Combine and Confederation forces to defend the wrong targets when the blow finally fell. Paradis and Querrey might even genuinely believe the information to be true, but the plans themselves might be fake ones purposefully leaked by DMI or MIIO. It was enough to set one’s holo-butterflies all aflutter.
I tapped through a few pages. From what I could tell, it was just as Paradis had described—Davion was gambling everything on a massive, overwhelming strike aimed against the Confederation, hoping to take them out of the fight before the Combine could intervene.
As a strategy, it relied on the Combine not doing precisely what the Federation was doing—going straight for the jugular. That seemed a dangerous gamble to make with the Combine, whose smaller but professional military was essentially the concept of ‘go for the jugular’ distilled and given physical form. Without the Commonwealth as allies, it would have been madness. Even with them, it still seemed risky, since a lot was riding on both the Lyrans’ ability to take on the Dracs—something they had singularly failed to do for much of the previous two decades—and on the League not counterattacking in the Confederation front, not distracting the Lyrans by opening a second front, indeed, on them not doing anything at all.
“Well, it’s not exactly Aleksandr Kerensky,” I said. “But then, I bet even Aleksandr Kerensky wasn’t exactly Aleksandr Kerensky, so who knows. Is it possible? Maybe. Is it real? Couldn’t tell you.”
“Is it believable, then?” she said a little frostily. “And for Unity’s sake, put that fork down!”
As if on cue, the fork slipped from my fingers, hit the edge of the table and clattered to the floor. “Got to be careful with these things,” I muttered. “You could put someone’s eye—”
I bent down to retrieve the fork.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
I glanced up. The window now sported three neat, round, orange-glowing holes. Looked over—the noteputer monitor had a matching hole, while white stuffing was blowing from two holes puncturing the back of the seat I’d just been sitting in. Tracey was already prone on the floor, shouting “Cover!” while Querrey sat there, mouth in a round ‘O’ of shock.
Sniper laser.
I joined Tracey as horizontal as possible on the floor, then kicked the crossbar of Querrey’s chair and sent both it and her toppling over backwards, just as another series of crackling laser shots punched through the glass, blowing divots out of the walls on either side of the room.
“Try for the door?” I shouted at Tracey.
He shook his head. “He’ll have that covered.”
“Well, he’s going to figure we’re on the floor soon,” I looked over to where Querrey crouched in a puddle of black satin. “Can your dress still do the mist thing?” She nodded mutely. “Do it, dial it up to 11.”
She fumbled at the base of her dress, cringing as the sniper aimed lower now, shots burning straight through the wall and blowing up tiny eruptions of carpet. Then the room was filled with slightly pixelated, undulating mist.
“Now!” I shouted, grabbing Querrey by one arm and fumbling for the data crystal in the noteputer in the other, crouch-running for the door. A row of fiery red holes appeared in the door’s surface, just above waist height. Tracey had already crawled next to the door, threw it violently open, and all three of us dashed into the main lounge.
A couple of people looked curiously in our direction, then away in boredom. A flush-faced noblewoman bursting from a private, soundproofed room with two rugged military-looking men, her dress in disarray, was cause for gossip and smiles hidden behind hands, not alarm.
“You okay?” Tracey asked me as we walked briskly towards the exit, running without looking like we were running. Mist continued to swirl up from Querrey’s dress.
“I think at this stage of the proceedings, my being okay would be a pretty strong sign I wasn’t okay,” I remarked, half-dragging Querrey along with us. Nodded pleasantly to the tuxedoed hostess as we swept out of the Optimates Lounge. “I’m unhurt. We got a destination?”
“The DropShip,” Tracey nodded through Querrey’s digital fog, towards the departures lounge. “Put some distance between us and that trigger-happy maniac. Preferably a few light years of distance. You believe the plan is real now?”
“I believe someone believes it’s real.”
“Please tell me you have the crystal.”
“Oh sure, no problem, it’s right here in my hand,” I held up my hand to demonstrate. Nestled inside it, gleaming in the concourse lights, was the lobster fork.
“Ah no, wrong hand.” I held the crystal between thumb and index finger, while Tracey just gave me a long look, and slowly shook his head.
Then someone pulled the fire alarm and the ceiling sprinklers burst into life.
-
ROFLcopter.... 'what's a Lobster'...
-
The song rock lobster just keeps going around in my head. :D
With Comstar they knew about the wedding, the alliance, but not the invasion of the Capcon.
Hanse was doing everything to hide it, sending messages by jump ship and black boxes.
-
With Comstar they knew about the wedding, the alliance, but not the invasion of the Capcon.
Well, works for me. The evil count wouldn't necessarily know how much ComStar was involved, just that they weren't to be trusted. Plot-wise it gives us an excuse for the conspirators to need a physical courier rather than just making an interstellar phonecall.
Anyway, this is what bugs me about canon discussions - they detract from the actual storytelling. I hereby declare this an AU and therefore not bound to any canon. Take that Mr Stackpole!
-
We'll, works for me. The evil count wouldn't necessarily know how much ComStar was involved, just that they weren't to be trusted. Plot-wise it gives us an excuse for the conspirators to need a physical courier rather than just making an interstellar phonecall.
Anyway, this is what bugs me about canon discussions - they detract from the actual storytelling. I hereby declare this an AU and therefore not bound to any canon. Take that Mr Stackpole!
an AU that just happens to follow cannon... from a certain POV :D
-
I don't really care if it's canon or not, I am just hear for the story and the free beer. ;)
-
I don't really care if it's canon or not, I am just hear for the story and the free beer. ;)
There´s free beer? I´ve been reading this wrong the whole time.
-
Great reaction there from Sir Chaos: Well, I don't normally comment on--
free beer. ;)
--wait. This requires more discussion.
-
EPISODE 4-4: Persecution complex
The fire alarm turned out to be a stroke of luck. Thank Unity for whatever overzealous good Samaritan decided to pull the little red bar when they saw Querrey’s steaming dress.
Shrill bells started screaming, water was pouring from the ceiling, people looked up, looked at each other, then stampeded for the exits, blasting straight through the desperately reassuring, calming brownie-clad security guards like a PPC through kindling.
“Come on,” I shouted as the three of us plunged straight past spaceport security and out onto the tired grey hardtop of the launch pads. A lone Draconis March Militia Valkyrie stood like Egyptian statuary at the edge of the field by the security fence. People were scrambling, dashing amid the cargo carriers, fuel tankers and coolant trucks. It was at least 100 meters to even the closest DropShip, as bare as Candace Liao after a night of drinking, and suicide to cross with a sniper still out there, somewhere. With the panic, though, there were hundreds of people all bolting across the field in every direction, so we could make a run for it and pray whoever it was wouldn’t just mow everyone down and damn the consequences.
“Which one’s our DropShip?” I shouted at Tracey, a bewildered and now bedraggled Querrey still in tow.
“That one,” he pointed to a battered olive green cargo DropShip with swept-back wings terminating in oval weapons pods. The side of the hull proclaimed it the Market Equalizer.
“Ha, no, Adolphus, that’s Forrest’s DropShip.” I slowed my pace so he could catch up, let me drop my voice to a less lung-busting volume. “I mean the DropShip that’s going to get us out of here.”
“Yes, that’s the one. Is there a problem?”
“You tell me: The man’s already been bought at least twice,” breathing hard now, the boarding ramp right in front of us. “Doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“You can go back if you like,” said Tracey, waving back to the shrinking spaceport building in the distance and all the exposed ground between us and it, then pounded up the ramp.
Swearing under my breath, I followed, slamming my palm on the door close button once we were inside.
The bridge was much as I’d left it that morning: a haphazard collection of consoles and acceleration couches, none of them the originals and no two exactly alike, with jury-rigged wiring sprouting like multicolored tentacles from every surface, coiling underfoot in anaconda loops of sheathed copper and fiber-optic cable. The sort of deliberate, defiant clutter of a rebellious teenager’s bedroom—I think Forrest kept it messy just to make the point that order was overrated.
Derek Forrest himself was standing in the center of the bridge, talking to a man I didn’t recognize—bearded, dark-skinned, with intense eyes. Forrest turned and did a double take as we entered the bridge, still dripping wet from the fire sprinklers, boots squishing with each step. Querrey had the hem of her dress in both hands and was wringing it out on the deck.
“H-hey Glass,” Forrest smile weakly. The perpetual crease of worry down the middle of his forehead deepened into a crevasse. “Didn’t expect to see you again. I mean, so soon.”
“Shut up and stop worrying, Forrest,” I said, fighting for breath and leaning against one of the consoles. “I won’t kill you. Now.” Smiled warmly at him. “Just kidding. Maybe.”
“Got a problem, Derek,” said Tracey looking at the new guy. “Who’s this?”
“Oh hey, yeah, the newest member of the crew, just signed on today. Say ‘Hi’ to Jafar guys and why are you pointing a gun at us Jafar?”
As Forrest was speaking, the man had reached casually down into a large olive duffel bag at his feet, and when he straightened was holding a brutal-looking gun in both hands. It looked a bit like weaponized indoor plumbing: A short length of steel tubing with a trigger and foregrip welded to the bottom, a folding shoulder stock and massive revolver-type drum magazine. The whole thing was painted a bright, cheery yellow, except for the muzzle, which was tangerine orange.
A 40mm FedArms riot gun, capable of firing a variety of non-lethal ammunition, like tear gas or pepper rounds, but also just as capable of firing perfectly lethal stuff too, like a drink-can sized solid shot that would not so much leave a big hole in you, as leave a little you around a big hole. No guesses which this one was loaded with.
“Shut up Forrest,” said the man, echoing my words from seconds earlier. He kept the FedArms aimed about halfway between Tracey and me, ready to waste either of us with a slight twitch. “The data crystal, if you please, gentlemen.”
Keeping very still, I said: “It’s in the pocket of my overalls. Going to have to let me move to get it.”
“Slowly,” he said, the black maw of the FedArms not wavering.
I reached into my pocket. No weapon there, unless you counted the lobster fork. Which, while deadly to crustaceans, probably wouldn’t do much to assassins. Still, better than nothing, I figured. Pushed it up my sleeve with one finger, then brought up my hand, data crystal held between thumb and index finger.
Jafar toed his bag slightly towards me. “In there, if you would, Mister Glass. And don’t think of throwing it away. I’ll just paste the pair of you and look for it after.”
I slowly tossed the crystal into the open bag. Let the fork fall down into my palm as I lowered my hand.
“Excellent. Such a pleasure to work with professionals,” Jafar smiled. “Now, if you would remove your dress, Miss Querrey.”
She looked at him blankly, eyes going quite wide. She shot a look at me, at Tracey, but I could only give a tiny shrug.
“As distasteful as this is, my employers wish this kept as quiet as possible,” Jafar’s widening smile suggested he found nothing even remotely distasteful about it. “A noblewoman caught in a compromising situation will ensure everyone does their best to keep this out of the public eye.”
Querrey swallowed noisily, nodded one, twice jerkily. “Okay, okay. Oh Unity. Please don’t kill me. Got to disconnect the emitters first, otherwise the dress won’t come off. Please.”
“Do it.”
She slowly crouched down, a trembling hand reaching for the emitters, just the way I’d seen her do before—when she switched them from butterflies to mist. She shot me a look through her eyelashes as she bent down. I tensed. Her hand brushed an emitter.
Strobe. An intense, blinding flash of light, directed right at Jafar’s eyes.
I leapt over the consoles as Jafar reeled backwards, barrel of the FedArms flying up, and stabbed him through the right hand with the fork, trying to make him let go. Didn’t work. Jafar screamed, pulled the trigger. Deafening roar, punching a bowling-ball hole in the ceiling—thankfully stopped before it penetrated all the way through. Shower of metal fragments like confetti raining down on us.
I grabbed the barrel with one hand, keeping it upwards, twisted the fork through the tendons of his hand and forced him to let go the trigger. A sharp kick to the back of the knee sent him crashing to the deck. I stepped quickly back out of reach, the FedArms in my hands now, flipping it to point at Jafar as he struggled to rise from the deck.
“Right.” I breathed. “Now—”
My words were cut off by a burst of gunfire, a metallic roar shockingly loud in the cramped bridge, Jafar’s head jerking back and fountaining blood across the deck, dark roses suddenly blooming across his chest.
Tracey stood with his Stetta held in both hands, smoke curling from the barrel.
“Understandable,” I said to him. “Though a little. Extreme. Perhaps? Might have waited until after we’d had a chat with the man. Who sent you and all that.”
Tracey shrugged, slowly lowering the Stetta. “Thought he had a grenade in his belt,” he said. “Better safe than sorry.” He turned towards Forrest, still holding the machine pistol. “A new recruit, you said? A slight … lapse, in judgement, or something else?”
The worry line on Forrest’s forehead became a crevasse. He tried to back up, but bumped straight into a control console instead. “Hey … no … look … the thing is … it was like this …”
“Like what?”
“Oh, lay off him Adolph,” I said, shaking my head. I threw the hand cannon back on top of Jafar’s bag, wondering why it was bright yellow—to disguise it as a paint gun or power tool, maybe. Bent to pick the data crystal back up. “This one time his incompetence works in his favor. No way he has the wit to be a triple agent.”
“Th-th-thanks Aric.” Forrest’s smile was one hundred percent desperate insincerity.
I was about to ask Querrey if she was okay, then realized what a stupid question that was. “Nice work,” I told her instead. “Quick thinking.”
She kind of nodded absently, looking at Jafar’s body in a daze.
The communications console crackled to life. “DropShip Market Equalizer, this is Addicks spaceport control. Everything okay down there folks? Had a report of gunfire.”
Forrest blinked, kind of shook himself—looking a bit like a ferret after a swim—and moved to answer the call.
“Wait.” I said. “You recognize that voice?”
Forrest cocked his head, shook it. “No, but, there must be lots of people who work at the spaceport. Why?”
“How in Unity’s name did anyone file a report when they’re in the middle of a fire alarm?” I asked. “Look, if this guy and his sniper friend were DMI or MIIO, we’re probably about ten seconds from them calling in the militia and boarding us, secrecy be damned.”
“What sniper? What fire alarm? Why would Davion intelligence be after us?” Forrest’s forehead was beyond crevasse territory now, well on its way to a worry chasm.
“Repeat, DropShip Market Equalizer, this is spaceport control. Please respond.”
“All the crew on board?” I asked Forrest.
“Market Equalizer, respond please.”
“Well, yeah, except the now there’s no pilot—” he said, gesturing helplessly towards Jafar.
“Don’t need him,” I said, sliding into the pilot’s couch. “Strap in folks. We’re leaving.” I punched the ship-wide intercom. “Attention all crew, this is your pilot speaking. Prepare for liftoff in … well, right about now.”
Then grabbed the straps of the couch restraints and brought them clicking together. Fired up the DropShip’s reactor.
“Market Equalizer, what the hell is going on down there? Turn off your reactor. You do not have permission to take off.”
Glanced around. Everyone else was buckled in. Tracey looking grimly intent, Querrey’s eyes screwed tightly shut, arms folded across her chest as she gripped the straps over her shoulders. Forrest essayed a weak smile. “Could be this guy’s for real. Maybe we should just tell them—”
Reverse. The DropShip suddenly lurched into motion, jerking back away from its docking port. Orange and yellow sparks flew across the viewport as power cables that had linked the ship to the spaceport’s power supply stretched like rubber arms, then snapped violently free.
“That’s it. We’re calling in the militia—”
The voice cut short as Tracey closed the circuit. Now forward throttle, turning us in an arc towards the aerodyne DropShip runway. Slowly gathering speed, distant tremors as the rugged landing gear transmitted to us the negative spaces of gaps between ferrocrete blocks. Luckily, the Buccaneer could take off from improvised fields as well as prepared runways.
Forrest was still babbling: “No need to be paranoid, I’m sure if we explained—”
Proximity alarm started howling. A Fury DropShip falling straight toward us, nose up, making its final approach. I rammed the throttle all the way open, get us under and past it, the DropShip leaping forward, sudden acceleration pressing us down. Engine noise kicking up from elephant rumble to hyena scream.
Fury pilot must have seen it too, tried to abort his landing, struggling to gain altitude, drive flare blossoming from the rear of the DropShip like an incandescent torch.
Passing over our tail plane, meters to spare. Drive exhaust scorching a black line down our dorsal armor. Heat gauge in the cockpit surging into the yellow zone. And then we were past it, shooting underneath, nothing but the straight runway ahead.
Nothing, except the 10-meter high figure of the militia Valkyrie standing in the middle of it.
“Brace for impact,” I said. The Buccaneer is 100 times more massive than a Valkyrie. Hitting it wouldn’t do much to slow us down.
“—it was all just a misunder—Oh Unity, we’re all gonna die—”
Mechjock must suddenly have realized we weren’t slowing down. He raised the right arm, fired a laser pulse at our nose. Crouched and brought the left arm up in front of the cockpit—like that would have helped any.
Lucky hit impacted right against the ferroglass. The glass held, but for a split second I was blinded, muscles reflexively twitched to avoid the blow.
Thud. Thudthudthudthud. We’d swerved, just a few degrees, but we were running diagonally across the field beside the runway now. The muted juddering of the cracked ferrocrete became full-on titanic shaking, like some hundred-handed giant was rattling us like dice in a cup. Control stick aiming to rip both my arms from their sockets. Spaceport security fence coming up fast—10 meters of reinforced ferrocrete topped with electrified barbed wire.
Hauled back on the stick. The Buccaneer hesitated a little. Fence getting real close real fast. Forrest finally shut up, just watching the viewscreen white-faced. Querrey audibly praying to a number of gods in quick succession. Fence really too close now.
Kick as the wheels left the ground. The DropShip seemed to stagger, surprised to find itself airborne, then powered forward, up, up, not fast enough, up. Dull bang as something caught the top edge of the fence, tearing free. Glance down at the control panel showed we’d lost one of the landing gear.
Wobble in the flight, one wing dipping. My arms like steel around the control stick, bringing us level again.
Then tilting us up, up, almost vertical, powering higher and higher into that too-perfect, false blue sky.
-
That Valk jock needs a psych exam and new underwear.
-
It's the next surface landing that will be interesting (unless Forest knows how to repair a main mount in 0g IAW the MIM's)
-
Forrest will probably be turned into duct tape to repair the wing.
Dubble_g, didn't you notice in the contract free beer for all readers for their reading enjoyment. ::) >:D
-
shhh snakespinner, that was what the elite contract negotiator slipped into the deal when he wasn't looking
-
Okay, that's it, just for you guys I'm including free beer in the story. Not telling where: you'll have to look for it. (Readership triples...)
Speaking of which, I'm honestly scared by how many views this thread gets whenever DOC_Agren has the last comment which I'm SURE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH NSA MONITORING.
* * *
Episode 4-5: Imposter syndrome
“Can someone explain to me,” Forrest asked in a whisper. “What the hell is going on?”
Querrey just mutely shook her head, over and over. Everyone was still strapped into the acceleration couches, feeling double their usual weight. Thrust pressing down on us with a thousand invisible hands, clinging to the arms, neck, legs, making every little move an adventure in kinetics.
“I think the key thing to understand,” sighed Tracey, “Is that Glass has a magical knack for attracting precisely the wrong kind of attention.”
“Didn’t you read my file?” I asked over my shoulder.
“I did,” he nodded. “I was convinced most of it was an … exaggeration.” Another sigh. “I stand corrected.”
“Not helping, guys,” Forrest interjected, looking around at Querrey. “Who the hell was Jafar working for? And who is she?”
“Lady Querrey has shared … some sensitive details the Federated Suns would rather nobody else knows,” I said. “Hence Jafar’s interest in the data crystal. He was probably military or civilian intelligence, DMI or MIIO. We’ll take the crystal to Galatea, find a buyer there.”
“I think we should head directly for the Combine or Confederation,” Tracey argued. “Why risk the long journey?”
“Small World, Ingress or Murchison,” suggested Forrest.
“Either one of those realms would just take the data, then torture us to death to confirm its authenticity,” I said. “Not too keen on that, myself. Do the handover on neutral ground.”
“Fine, then why not Sirius or Procyon?” Tracey insisted stubbornly. “Far closer than Galatea, and no need to go through potentially hostile Lyran territory.”
“Aha, yes, well.” I smiled. “See, thing is, I’m, er, wanted in the League for murdering my commander. Could lay low when I was just a mercenary, but the League will probably try to find out all they can about me if I suddenly show up with … with Lady Querrey’s information here. Fingerprints, retinal, blood. Not likely to just take our word on this one.”
“Of course, Lady Querrey,” Tracey said suddenly. “We need to find a safe port and let Lady Querrey off. Think of her position.”
“Think of her funeral, if she tries to go back,” I countered. “Whoever was shooting at us definitely saw her face.” Switched my gaze to her. Seemed to have reeled in whatever parts of her psyche had taken the last hour as an excuse for an extended vacation. “Lady Querrey. I’d say your best bet is to stick with us, but. It’s your choice.”
Laughing. Then crying. I’ve been a mercenary so long it took me a second to realize that was actually a very reasonable reaction to being shot at, threatened with a grenade launcher and then strapped into an acceleration couch inside a DropShip with a certifiable maniac at the helm (that would be me).
“Lady Querrey?” She laugh-sobbed. “I’m just a bloody courier. One of the help.”
“You’re not a noblewoman?” Tracey sounded personally wounded.
Of course not. Expendable, deniable, convenient scapegoats, every one of us.
“I’m about as aristocratic as the French Revolution.” Getting herself back under control. Deep breaths. “Lady Marchburn, Baroness of Mirage, she’s the highborn one. I’m just one of her servants.”
Tracey still looked hurt. “Why the charade then?”
“Her ladyship offered me the chance, and I took it,” Querrey’s shoulders rose and fell awkwardly beneath the harness, a kind of strangled shrug. “Wouldn’t you? It sounded so easy, all I had to do was hand over a data crystal to some mercenary. Along the way, I could play-act the regal noblewoman, take a trip in a luxury liner, wearing dresses that cost more than most families earn in a lifetime, swanning about places like the Optimates Lounge, eating the food, drinking the wine. Experiencing everything, everything I could always see but never touch in her ladyship’s household.”
“Please tell me your name is still Querrey,” I asked. “Just once I’d like to work with someone who uses their real name.” Aware of the irony of me saying that.
“Well, you’re in luck, my name’s still Querrey. Grace Querrey.”
“Okay. Grace. Derek, Adolphus, Aric,” I pointed at each in turn, myself last. “We should be able to stay a step ahead of the Feddies now. We’ll jump to Ingress as Forrest suggested, but shtum on the crystal thing, cut through to Alula Australis, then just two jumps to Galatea. Once we make the delivery, there will be no reason for anyone to be looking for you. Let’s see if we can avoid any more excitement.”
“Yeah, about that, Aric.” Forrest was back in forehead-canyon frown mode. “Got two aerospace fighters on an intercept course.”
Twisted back to the console and looked at the 3D sensor map. Two contacts hurtling towards us, from almost directly aft. Draconis Militia Sparrowhawks: Feddie interceptors that look like a bull elephant’s head, with the deadly tusks of two Martell lasers jutting from the nose. Makes them about as aerodynamic as a pachyderm too, but fast enough in space to run rings around the Market Equalizer.
“Hailing us,” said Tracey.
“Let’s hear it.”
“—repeat, turn your ship around and return to Addicks immediately. This is your final—”
“Forrest, old chum, I’m a little sore at you at the moment, but here’s your chance to make it all better,” I said. “Please tell me you’ve been a good little smuggler and added a few guns to this thing?”
Moving back onto familiar ground seemed to help Forrest reorient. Fleeing from the law: Here was a situation he was familiar with. “Triple ventral and dorsal turrets. Double lasers in the tail,” he said. “Weapons officer station.” Nodding towards an especially ramshackle collection of display screens and control modules squatting in front of an empty acceleration couch.
“Atta boy, Forrest. Might let you live.” I eased back the throttle to 1G acceleration. Wasn’t like we were going to outrun them anyway. “Take the helm,” I told Forrest. Palmed the harness, slipping out of the chair and bounding over to the junkyard collection of weapons control interfaces. Be lucky not to electrocute myself before I’d fired a shot. “Just try not to hit anything. That’s my job.”
Punched the power and grabbed the control yokes. Slipped a bulbous black-visored FC helmet over my head. Nothing. Then disco static. Kicked the bottom of the console. Facebowl of the helmet flared to digital life, quartered view from the viewpoint of each of the turrets as well as the forward guns in the nose. Tried switching between each, getting a feel for how quickly each turret turned, the smoothness of the controls. Crosshairs bouncing like homicidal fireflies across my vision.
There, two pinpoints of drive flare in the rear turret monitor. Set the rear twin lasers to chain fire, each one firing while its mate recharged, let them fire on auto. Just wanted to stop the interceptors sitting on our trail. Let me concentrate on the top and bottom turrets.
The two contacts danced and twisted away from the laser fire, then split—one arcing up, port high, the other diving beneath us, starboard low. Making sure one of them would have a clear shot at our side, no matter which way we turned.
“Roll to starboard, 45 degrees,” I shouted at Forrest as the two fighters came screaming in. Firing both the top, then the bottom turret at the same target as we rolled, trying to concentrate fire on one fighter. Glittering explosions skittered across the thing’s armor, but it plunged through, fired a salvo before twisting away. Armor ablated and boiled away from our belly, then from a wing as the second fighter swept across, spewing green fire. “Roll back!”
Chased them both with the triple lasers, but they were too fast, too nimble.
They looped around for another pass, on the opposite angles now, port low, starboard high. Trying to wrestle the crosshairs over their dashing outlines. Stabbing, killing light. One hit, two, but not enough, just scratching their armor. Another rain of laser beams pelting our outer armor. In my helmet, the ventral turret screen froze and then went dead.
Bad news. Wouldn’t take them long to figure out we were blind underneath, then sit there and hammer us to pieces. Called for something unexpected, a lobster fork of a dogfighting move.
“Forrest, on my signal, 1G reverse thrust.” Two red icons swooping in again. “Now.”
The Market Equalizer slammed to a relative stop, deceleration hitting us in the back like going over a bump in a roller coaster, brief weightlessness of zero G, then gravity pushing us hard against our restraints.
A Sparrowhawk flashed over top of us, going too fast to slow or turn. Drive flares filling the forward viewscreen. Right in front of the Market Equalizer’s two big laser guns, as well as four more in the wings. Link-fired everything—no need to worry about heat with these DropShips—and watched as six lines of fire converged on the fighter’s tail, blowing off the tail plane, slagging one engine, sending the fighter tumbling away from us in lazy spirals.
“Forward thrust.” Another split second of freefall, then slammed back against the acceleration couch.
Surviving fighter coming around now. Militia pilot, rattled. We’d just taken out his wingman. Angry, careless.
Strafing run from directly off our port side. Flying straight at us. Zero deflection, easy target. Hammering away at his nose armor with all four lasers from the top turret. He held course, didn’t sheer away. Gave time for another salvo. Sliced through the barrel of one Martell. Snapping free, the barrel crashing directly into the wing, tearing it half off.
The fighter wobbled, rolled. Looped away. And kept going.
Gone.
“Precisely the wrong kind of attention,” Tracey repeated quietly to himself in the relieved silence that followed. “Precisely.”
-
So who is now left that does not want to kill Aric, and ideally also everyone he associates with?
You have to admit, Tracy is exactly on the money there...
-
DOC just refreshes a lot :D
Now to hijack a Jumpship...
-
they still gotta land somewhere... i am no longer convinced they will do any repairs IAW...
-
What you blame me for all your views, I'm shocked... 8) but hopefully the good monitors from the None Such Association, are enjoying this too.
-
What you blame me for all your views, I'm shocked... 8) but hopefully the good monitors from the None Such Association, are enjoying this too.
The correct term is "No Such Agency".
Signed, [REDACTED]
-
The correct term is "No Such Agency".
Signed, [REDACTED]
And you blamed me... see I had no knowledge ;D 8) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-CG5w4YwOI)unlike oh Sir Chaos (http://www.serendipity.li/cia/lyon.html)
-
I'm going to rename this thread "The Day When the NSA Drank Free Beer." Just rack up those views in no time.
* * *
Episode 4-6: Wishful thinking
Alula Australis had an Olympus recharge station where we juiced the JumpShip’s batteries and repaired the Market Equalizer’s landing gear. Bit of maintenance, too: Paint job, new name, the works. Gave us a few days to kill on the public grav deck, a kilometer-wide spinning torus of restaurants, lounges and entertainment parlors, all showing their centuries-old age.
The concourse had only one store, selling a mishmash of League-approved kitsch along with a few things normal human beings might actually buy. Patriotic flags, badges, key fobs, iron-on shirt patches and holos in five different colors: lilac, violet, lavender, grape or purple. League Family dolls, one big happy interstellar gang made up of Oriente, Regulan, Andurien and Marik members, their plastic smiles looking rather strained.
The only other customers were a pair of twins, young women, Teutonically blond like Querrey, sleek young hard-muscled things like gymnasts, dressed in reflective black body-hugging athletic wear that highlighted every curve and line. One grinned at me as we brushed by in the narrow aisles, but I just nodded politely, kept browsing the jingoistic kitsch, the useless trinkets hard to see as destined for anything but some ungrateful recipient’s garbage can.
The shop also sold data crystals, rows of identical, indistinguishable pure white shards, blank slates on which to write an allegory of man’s hubris and folly. I bought a dozen.
I found the other three in a booth at one of the concourse’s restaurant-bars, an interstellar diner done in red and white plastic trimmed in dull, fingerprint-smudged chrome. A kind of desperate, depressing jollity about the whole place. Trying so hard to convince you that you were enjoying your drab, rundown surroundings. The meat was actually tofu, the fries, cardboard.
One side of the restaurant was lined with holo emitters, supposed to project a three-dimensional landscape image onto the bulkhead, make the place feel bigger, less claustrophobic. It started out as a seaside on Alula Australis, somewhere with jagged basalt rocks and majestic pounding surf, though the effect was kind of ruined by the lack of wind or sea-spray whenever a really big wave hit. Ended up just reminding you that you were in the cosmic equivalent of a paint can, spinning in a circle once a minute just to retain even a fraction of gravity.
Tracey and Forrest were playing leapfrog, a board game a little like checkers, where the object is to leap pieces over others in order to capture them and remove them from the board. So you won by stripping clean the board, leaving nothing behind. An appropriate game to play in our era.
Grace Querrey watched them play, toying with a long drink whose paper umbrella was as miserably festive as the rest of the place.
“So just what was our cargo this time?” Tracey was asking as I sat down.
“League Family,” Forrest said, eyes on the board, embarrassed.
“Human trafficking?” Querrey was shocked. “Unity Forrest, where were you hiding them?”
“Na,” he flapped his hand, negating. “League Family, as in the kids’ dolls.” Waved a hand in the direction of the concourse convenience store-slash-political indoctrination outlet. I saw the greyhound-slim twins walking out. “By law you’re supposed to make ‘em in the League, but it’s too expensive. So they pay this place in the Confederation to make ‘em, ship ‘em in here quiet-like.”
“Even our propaganda isn’t ours,” I shook my head. “Might as well surrender now.”
A waiter drifted by to take my order. Had to work my way halfway down the list to find something they still had in stock—no beer, no whiskey, no vodka, no rum—but they did have tea. Always thought of tea as more of a Skye thing, but I guess some things creep across the border through cultural osmosis, sneaking in like Forrest’s Capellan-made figurines.
When the waiter had gone I noticed he’d changed the holo background on the wall to a leaf-shaded canal on Zosma.
“Well, why don’t you?” Querrey asked suddenly, leaning forward over the table. “Why not surrender? Would that be so bad? Wouldn’t ‘First Lord Hanse Davion’ be a small price to pay for peace?”
A timely reminder that my companions and I were doing this for very different reasons. Baroness Marchburn and Count Paradis—through Querrey and Tracey, their local boots on the ground—wanted to protect their own interests, not save the League. Wasn’t even sure I wanted that myself or not—just wanted to get Count Paradis off our backs, remove that sword hanging over our heads.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it?” I pulled a data crystal from my pocket, set it down in the center of the game board, on one of the open squares. Ready to be leaped over, captured. “Is this plan of Count Paradis’ even going to work? If we succeed—we actually find someone who believes us, takes this information to their House, what then? Scenario one: Hanse Davion realizes his plan is compromised, calls off the invasion. Hooray, Paradis was right, plastic propaganda dolls and umbrella cocktails for everyone. Or. Scenario two: He realizes the other Houses know his plan, so gets his staff to make a different one—maybe one that leaves the Draconis March even more exposed. Scenario three: He doesn’t realize what we’ve done or thinks the plan’ll still work, invades anyway. Scenario four: Figuring they’ve got nothing to lose, Marik, Liao and Kurita don’t wait for the blow to fall, but strike first.”
A waitress brought my tea, a tall thin glass of brown-orange liquid without an umbrella, then she flicked the holo wall back to the Alula Australis coastline as she went back to the kitchen. Waves crashed soundlessly, throwing up sprays of nothing that came down as air.
Forrest nodded, staring down at the crystal. “I see what you’re saying. In three out of the four cases, we achieve little or nothing. Or even make the situation worse.”
I stabbed an index finger at him. “Exactly. Just think: They tried to stop us twice on Addicks—first the sniper, then Jafar. Jafar knew Querrey’s name, which DropShip we’d be using, everything. So Davion intelligence has to know their plan is compromised.”
“The job is to deliver the plans.” Tracey rubbed a stubbly chin with his pitcher’s mitt-sized hand, then shook his head. “So we deliver the plans. Not our fault if things don’t turn out the way Paradis expected.”
The twins entered the restaurant and sat at one of the other booths in their sea lion-slick outfits. The one I’d seen before waved to me, a brief flipper-flicker of fingers before she put her hand down. Best to ignore, I figured. Not like I needed any more complications.
“But if there’s a chance, shouldn’t we take it?” Querrey asked. “Never mind what Count Paradis or Baroness Marchburn, or even Captain-General Marik want. Ethically. Morally. Think of the lives we might save, if we can stop this war. How many will die, do you think, if we do nothing?”
“Might stop this war, but not the next one, or the one after. People will die if we do nothing, people will die if we do something,” I observed. “People dying does rather seem to be the one constant in all of this.”
Forrest frowned, reached for the crystal but stopped at an ‘ah-ah’ rumble from Tracey. “So what, we just give up, throw it away? Not like the DMI or MIIO are going to believe us if we say we don’t have it any more.”
I shrugged, picked up the crystal, tossed it in the air once or twice. “Kill a million by our actions, or allow a million to die by our inaction? Or—” I put the crystal down on the table, then brought the heel of my hand crashing down on it, shattering it into tiny rainbow fragments scattering across the table.
The reactions were interesting. Forrest looked stunned, only more so than usual. Querrey was horrified, eyes wide, mouth wider. Tracey was furious, both hands forming battering-ram fists. From the corner of my eye, I saw both twins spin round, alert.
“Relax guys,” I dug my hand back into my pocket, brought out another half-dozen crystals and let them tumble into a pile on the table. “A blank. Just a joke.”
“Copies?” asked Tracey.
“Not yet, but I will. Copy it. Seems a sensible precaution. Just for us though: Leaving hundreds of copies lying around seems guaranteed to convince Kurita and Liao the information is a deliberate plant, misinformation rather than genuine.”
“You’ll go to Galatea then?” Looking at me very intently.
I ran a hand over my face. Let out a long breath. “Oh, don’t worry Adolph, I will. Screw the ethics of it though. I’ll do it because I told Paradis I would, and it’ll save Reina and I from looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives. All comes down to that in the end, doesn’t it? Everyone just doing whatever makes their life easier. And just like that, a few billion die, because it was too much effort to think of a way for them not to.”
“Hunh,” Tracey grunted. Heaved himself to his feet, which was a bit like watching a historical holo of Easter Island natives raising a Moai statue. “Good. Better if you could’ve made up your mind without the ‘joke,’ Glass.” He juggernauted out the restaurant, past the twins, past the holo wall which was, I noticed, back to being the Zosma canal again.
Forrest scooped up the leapfrog pieces, threw them into a black velvet drawstring back, sliding the board in last. Muttering excuses, he trailed after Tracey, leaving Querrey and I alone in the restaurant.
“He frightens me,” she said quietly. “Tracey, not Forrest. Even more than you. You trust him?”
“Forrest? Not even a little. Adolphus? About as far as I can throw him.”
A sad smile, a dry laugh. “Right. How do you build a 25-ton Locust? Put Adolphus in the cockpit.”
“For a mercenary, he is strangely insistent that we carried out this job, even though we know it’s probably futile,” I observed. “Professionalism, or something else? Then there’s the way he got rid of Jafar before we could question him. Lot of question marks. But then, full disclosure, I’m not even entirely sure I trust you, either.”
“Well, someone did try to murder me to stop me from talking to you.”
“Did they?” I’d been thinking about this. “Pretty bad shot for a sniper, weren’t they? Managed to very carefully not hit anyone at all, even after what, a dozen shots? And didn’t fire even once when we were out in the open, on the landing pad. Then only two light fighters sent to pursue us. Like they wanted me to escape with the plans.”
She froze. “That’s … suspicious of you.”
I heard what she hadn’t said. “Paranoid, you mean?” A helpless laugh. What else could I do? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to kill you. “Why I hate this. This secret. The mentality it forces on you. So many ways all of us could be playing each other false. Like those two women over there,” I flicked a finger in the twins’ direction, made it look like I was toying with bits of broken data. “Innocent passers-by or Davion spies?” Knuckled my eyes with both hands. “Driving me crazy.”
Shattered shards across the tabletop, aborted blocks of information, useless knowledge.
“Crazier,” I amended.
-
"This will increase readership!" he said ... *crickets chirping*
* * *
Episode 4-7: Confirmation bias
The renamed, repainted Buccaneer-class DropShip Free Beer touched down in Galaport in the chalky, bleached-out light of the yellow-white sun.
While a team of grey-clad customs officers crawled all over the cargo bay (no dolls this time: sunglasses, hats, parasols, goggles, UV blockers, zinc cream, everything you needed to stay wrinkle- and cancer-free on this planet), a red-bearded officer scanned our IDs while keeping up a constant patter of impenetrable Skye patois.
“Alexander Gould, eh? Weelcum t’Gala’ea,” he said, handing back my ID. “Firs’ taim wi’us muckers, izzit?”
I blinked, not just at using my real name for the first time in years, but also trying to remember if I’d ever been on Galatea using it before or not. “Yes,” I nodded. “First time.”
“Ye wun o’them jockies are ye noo?” Wide grin, quick glance to Querrey, dressed now like Tracey and I in a crew jumpsuit rather than her multimedia gown. “Be wit’ ye in a flash, hen.”
I had the distinct feeling he was pulling my leg. “Right. Aerospace pilot.”
“Pilet? Wellies on t’grown fir me. Yir off yer heid me laddie,” shaking his head, gave me a comradely first-bump to the shoulder. “Still, down t’emmer timorrae, eh? Enjoy yersel tennite. Go’an get bevvied.”
“Fantastic,” I nodded. “Great.”
“Bevvied, lad. Ye no? Be-ve-rage. A drink.” Miming, little finger extended, tipped up, thumb to lips.
“Right, stay hydrated.”
Shaking his head, muttering “League Sassenach” as he turned away. Then beaming at Querrey as he scanned her papers. “Grace Querrey? Ah, welcome to Galatea, Lady Querrey. Delighted to have such a distinguished guest from the Federated Suns with us. Please enjoy your stay … ”
Bought a couple of things at the port—prepaid communicator, something to wear other than the damned jumpsuit, handheld panic alarm. Looked like a baby blue oval key fob, had a 150dB buzzer inside. For women and kids it said. Sure. Or potential kidnap victims.
The three of us piled into a forest-green Celestial Wagon taxi, Tracey in the front—giving the taxi a decided list to port—Querrey and I in the back. “Poseidon Park Hotel,” Tracey told the driver, a white-haired Asian man perhaps one-third Tracey’s size.
We’d chosen Poseidon Park as it was the one hotel in Galatea City that had rooms not at the top of some skyscraper, but underwater, dug into a cliff below the surface of Lake Leto, just to the south of the city. A little far from the Mercenary Review Board, but it did make it rather hard for anyone outside the hotel to spy on what you were doing in your room, unless they had a submarine or full diving kit.
A motorcycle pulled up alongside the taxi at a stop light. Missile-sleek speed machine, seat kind of floating above the rear wheel on a spike of chrome and leather. Rider seemed shrink-wrapped in black leather from head to foot, save for the sliver crescent of a mirrored helmet visor. Arrow slim.
My brain said: woman.
The visor swiveled once, towards the taxi. Held a second, then looked forward again. Wrist twitched. The motorcycle shot away before the light changed.
My brain said: Uh oh.
“Interesting bike,” I said aloud, deliberately casual. Mindful that the cabbie was listening. “You recognize it?”
In the front passenger seat, Tracey squinted, shook his head, causing the taxi to rock gently. “A … Federated Suns model, maybe?”
“Could be,” I agreed. “Probably more than one in town.”
“Let me know if you see one again.”
Querrey looked back and forth between us, like a spectator at a table tennis game. “Oh Unity, not again,” she muttered.
“Tell you what guys, change of plan: I’ll hop out at the MRB, you guys head on to the hotel.” Our chance to see if I was being paranoid or if we really were being followed. Also gave me an excuse to get away from Tracey and Querrey—not that I didn’t trust them, just … no, okay, I didn’t trust them. “Just want to test the waters first. I’ll catch up later.”
Opened the door. Tracey leaned out the window. “You got it?”
Nodded towards the trunk. “In my duffel bag.” White lie, that. Actually had it in the breast pocket of my crew jumpsuit. “Leave it in the room after you check in, okay?” Tracey made the OK sign as the cab pulled away.
From the outside, the MRB looks like a successful but conservative bank, or maybe the terminus station on a maglev line. Sort of a combination of arching glass and gothic columns. Vaguely vulture-like gargoyles around the edges. Defensive camouflage, I think, both physical and psychological—make itself look less threatening, distract you from the fact that the business conducted in here was the business of body bags, bodies for hire, death for rent.
Hopped out the taxi and waved the other two away, then through the metal detector and body pat-down outside the doors—conducted by men in ComStar ivory this time, not Steiner grey—and into the main concourse. Officially on ComStar ground now, not Lyran. How they got away with having representatives from enemy states hiring soldiers here.
Duke Nowakowski, being a practical, businesslike Lyran, accepted them as a necessary evil, and happily took a cut of the proceeds. Guess he figured the other four Houses were going hire mercenaries anyway, so might as well make sure he got a slice, charged ComStar rent.
Bit like a stock exchange inside, five big hollow circles, one for each great House, ringed with monitors showing available contracts, staffed by the monk-like ComStar fixers and go-betweens. A constellation of smaller circles around them, for Periphery states, corporate or private noble contracts. Around each island flowed shoals of mercenary negotiators or their ComStar agents, distinguishable by their red armbands, tagged with the unit they represented.
Down here on the main floor it was small fry, lance, platoon or company-sized units elbowing each other aside for a chance to catch a fixer’s attention, land that one special contract that would see their unit through another season. Bigger, richer units didn’t come down here on the floor themselves—the second through fifth floors were for private offices, where agents lavished more individual attention on their most lucrative clients.
I wandered the floor almost at random. Drifting one way, then suddenly turning back and heading in the opposite direction. Stopped by the Confederation ring. Left a message for Gansukh Zhao, a negotiator I’d met before we signed our first contract. Remember him? Combine island next. Note for Mamoru Akechi, the Rasalhaguian with a Japanese name. Call me babe. League one last. Katarzyna De Graaf, Arshad Ram, Helena Sorreno. Let’s do lunch sometime. Figured that should confuse my tail, if there was one. Started to doubt that though a little, as I’d completed maybe three circuits of the place, and hadn’t caught anyone watching or following me. Of course, that might just mean they were very good at what they were doing.
Stepped back out the doors and almost ran straight into a petite Japanese woman, fur-collared leather flight jacket, bug-eyed sunglasses that covered everything from hairline to cheekbone. “Aric!” she cried.
Took me a sec. Right, last time I’d been here. Tiltrotor pilot. Working for the yakuza. “Hey—” fumbling desperately for a name.
“Mori,” she supplied, using her surname. Japanese thing.
“Right, Mori-san. How’ve things been?”
“Less exciting since you left,” she said with a wry smile. Pushed her sunglasses a little further up her nose with one hand. “Though that may change. Things have been dicey with the triads since you left. Please tell me you aren’t staying long.”
“Gone before you know it,” I lied. “How’s … our mutual friend?” Old man named Hashiba, a kumicho, gang leader. I’d done him a favor, he’d done me one. Okay, several. But I hoped leaving him a stolen Stinger LAM had cancelled out that debt.
Mori shrugged. “Far away. We’ve still got your parting gift in storage somewhere. Might come in handy if the triads try to take things a step further.”
I wasn’t really listening. Starting to get nervous, standing out front of the building, in full view of the traffic zooming past. Though, that might work to my advantage. “Oh right? Yeah, look, might need to ask a favor.”
She snorted, lowered the glasses slightly to look at me over the tops of the rims. “Another one? What do you want to do this time Aric, start a war?”
“Na. Stop one,” I said, and took a milky white crystal out of my pocket. Blank, no data. Watchers wouldn’t know that, though. “Look, just give your oyabun this, okay? If he wants to know more, I’ll be at the Poseidon Park. Name of Gould. With a U.”
She reached up hesitantly. Took it, held it a second, chewed her lip. Felt guilty, then. Felt like Count Paradis, using whoever was convenient. There was a honk from the road, deep blue Avanti pulled over by the side, window rolled down. Two black-suited men in front. Mori looked up, back at the crystal, undecided.
“Hey, it’s just data,” I said. “How much harm can it do?” Aric, you lying arsehole.
Honking again from the Avanti, more insistent. “Look, got to go,” Mori said. Snap decision. Pocketed the crystal. “All right, I’ll give it to him. No promises. Like I say, this isn’t really a good time. No freebies, either.”
How wrong she was. “No freebies,” I nodded solemnly.
One suit opened the back door of the Avanti, glaring at me even through his solid-black shades. Just from the set of the brow, you can tell, right? Slammed the door shut, car peeled away.
Watched it go. And. One. Two. Flash of a motorbike. Familiar black-on-black leather fetish getup, mirror helmet. Swerving through traffic, hot after the Avanti. Well, someone somewhere was either about to go on the wildest goose chase, or else stir up a whole badger’s nest of trouble. At any rate, I figured I’d lost my tail for now.
Raised my arm to hail a cab.
Not a Celestial Wagon this time, burgundy red, Reed’s Rides. Logo was a caricature of a balding man with a frizzy halo of white hair, presumably the titular Mister Reed, giving me an enthusiastic thumbs up. Reed, old buddy, if you only knew.
Took a step towards the cab when there was a distant, hollow crump. From the direction the Avanti had disappeared. Like thunder, if you were a civilian. Nothing at all like thunder if you weren’t. Stopped me midstride, trying to see. Taste of guilt in my mouth.
Movement in the corner of my eye. Blinked. Motorbike slewed to a stop, maybe three meters from me. Slim rider, leather black as shadow, silver helmet. Impossible, my brain said. No way she could’ve gotten back here. Not so fast, so soon.
And then, the old synapses making the connection.
Alula Australis. Twins.
Unzipped a pocket of her midnight jacket, reached in, arm unfolded, hand at the end of it holding a Mydron auto pistol. Whoever their handler was, seeing my apparent handoff, pushing the panic button. That blast? The other twin had pulled in front of the Avanti at a stop light, then rolled a grenade under it. Boom. This twin was here to clean up the other end of the deal.
Things moving too fast for the eye now. Black round eye of the pistol level with my own. Combat instincts, lunge forward, knowing it was futile. Movement in the corner of my eye, dark blur, massive, fast. Machine howl of a combustion engine mixed with the eagle screech of tires on asphalt. Crunch of metal on metal. Motorcycle, rider, gone. Vague impressions: A blur hurtling across my vision, the woman half-turning, then caught, flying in the air, off the bumper, head-first off the windshield, pinwheeling bonelessly through the air, landing in a wet heap almost exactly where she’d originally been standing. Metal, flattened pancake of the bike, curled like a U.
See, there are some things a yakuza gang expecting a war with the triads will and will not do if you throw an explosive at one of their cars. The list of what they won’t do is rather short, but at top of it is ‘Sit around wondering if they’re doing the right thing or not.’ The list of what they did do, in this case, was somewhat shorter, with just three items: One, concluded that the triads had just declared war. Two, spread word that the triad assassin was a black-clad female biker. Three, run a 5-ton converted, marginally de-militarized armored car—with muzzle-like bumper bars specifically designed for ramming into things—right over anyone who fit the description, at the fastest practicable speed.
The car didn’t stop to check how I was doing, just kept right on going at full speed, leaving me prone on the pavement by the side of the road, just in front of an open-mouthed Reed’s Rides cabbies. Road was Lyran territory, so the ComStar guards were also all prone, like we were playing the galaxy’s worst game of Simon’s Says, only in their case they all had rifles pointed at the road, whereas my weaponry consisted of the Addicks lobster fork—kind of a good luck totem for me now.
Lyran security showed up a few minutes later, bustling everywhere with the kind of studied incompetence only true professionals can achieve, doing everything very correct, very by the book, achieving absolutely nothing. Cordoning off the crime scene. Interviewing witnesses—including me. It’d all happened so fast, there was no reason to link me to the murder: Looked like a gangland hit, far as they could see.
I commiserated, agreed how terrible. Had they heard anything more? Explosion, a car bombed. One dead, two seriously injured. Bomber had escaped. Matched the description of the victim here, but couldn’t be in two places at once.
Which meant the other twin was still out there.
-
"This will increase readership!" he said ... *crickets chirping*
The irony, eh?
How pissed is Mori going to be at being patsied though? And will it matter?
-
How pissed is Mori going to be at being patsied though? And will it matter?
That's about half of Episode 9, and also has a role in the finale. And that's all I'll say.
-
That's about half of Episode 9, and also has a role in the finale. And that's all I'll say.
So she's one of the seriously injured? Yes, i ROFLCopter'd at the ship name, Free Beer...
-
Finally a dropship I can respect. :beer:
-
Finally a dropship I can respect. :beer:
It was going to be something lame, but y'all saved me from that. Cheers.
Might pick up the pace on these posts. Sigh. I always start with such energy, then get burned out about three-quarters of the way through. Like, ugh, what rubbish is this? kind of feeling. Swear I'll never do another. Then a few days later I get another idea. This time it'll be different, I tell myself. But no. So anyway. Gonna try to wrap this one up soon.
* * *
Episode 4-8: Loss aversion
I walked to the hotel.
Planetary militia were in the streets. Long columns of dove-grey jeeps and trucks flew past, like migrating birds. Soldiers in those odd mollusk-like Lyran helmets strung links of spiked chain across the roads, setting up checkpoints. Had my ID scanned as I went through each one, waved onward wordlessly by tense-looking conscripts.
At one, we heard the pop-pop-pop of distant gunfire, convulsing the whole checkpoint into frantic action, everyone trying to get as flat as possible on the asphalt or crouching behind cars, cement planters, bollards or fences. Soldiers went hedgehog, tight little circle with guns bristling in every direction.
Stayed like that for 30 minutes before they let us get up, keep moving.
If my objective was to stop a war, I was off to a bad start. Yaks and triads were busy evening old scores, most of the victims that first day just targets of convenience, the owner of a shop popular with the yaks a merchant who’d once done business with the triads, lives taken to repay debts they didn’t even know existed.
Poseidon Park had acquired its own garland of tire-puncturing metallic snake-spikes across the entrance and exit, as well as a platoon of militia, including a flamethrower-armed APC parked right in front of the entrance.
“Already checked in,” I told them, and they had a young private march me over to the front desk. He hovered behind me, hand on his laser rifle, until the breezily efficient receptionist handed me the passkey to my room. “Room 26. Mr. Tracey has the other copy,” she said with a smile.
From the lobby, took the elevator down: a sterile, spotless grey box, embodying the best in Steiner design—safe as a bank vault but only half as exciting. Little 2D screen over the buttons tuned to a news program, where an anchor urged calm while showing the most hair-raising footage of the day’s violence they could get past the censors.
Doors swished open onto a long corridor of natural stone, minimal lighting, ambient sound of rushing waves, done to reinforce the awareness you were under the lake’s surface here.
A slim black shadow detached itself from the wall in front of Room 26, giving me a jolt of panic before I realized it was Grace Querrey.
“Saw the news,” she said. “Worried about you.”
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
“No, not worried for your health. Worried what you were getting up to.”
“Arranging a diversion. Seems to have worked. Maybe a little too well?” I held up my passkey. “Now, it’s been a long walk, so maybe we can continue this some other time?”
She leaned against the door. “You could invite me in.”
“Does that seem like a thing I’m likely to do?”
“Try it and see.”
“Look, Lady Querrey. Grace. I’m really not—”
“Please?”
Felt my shoulders slump. Too tired to deal with this. “Would you like to come in?”
A show of thinking about. “Now that you mention it.”
I handed her the key, watched her swipe the magnetic strip and swing the door open. Lights came on automatically. Not a huge room, but had a double bed, pair of chairs, a glass wall looking out into the depths of Lake Leto. School of orange fish swimming by. Flashback to Poulsbo made me suppress a shudder, but felt better when I saw none of the fish had three-meter fangs, barbed tentacles or poisonous spines. Just kind of large goldfish, really.
Contents of my duffel bag spread liberally across the top of the bed, a shirt or two on the floor, half a dozen sparkling crystals on top of the heap. Adolphus Tracey squeezed into one of the chairs, facing the door, Stetta resting in the plateau of his lap
“Come in Aric, shut the door,” said Tracey. “You too, Lady Querrey.”
Flicked it back with my wrist, without moving or turning. Soft click. Standing very still.
“Where is it, Aric?” His fingers brushed the grip of the Stetta.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s worthless now, if it wasn’t always,” I said. I still planned to sell the information, but testing Adolphus like this was interesting. Thought I’d see how far I could push him. “Davion intelligence has been following us since at least Alula Australis. Probably just to see who we’d try to give it to. The plans are either a deliberate lie, or the plans have been changed now the Feddies know they’ve been compromised.”
“That’s not the deal you made with Count Paradis, Glass. Your job is to deliver the plans, nothing else.” Tracey lifted a hand from his gun, to point at the memory cubes on the bed. “Blank. All of them. Where is it?”
“Jumpsuit, top pocket. Unity, Tracey, you’re being damned weird about this. Paradis isn’t here, he’ll never know if we did or didn’t hand over the plans. Man’s probably got problems of his own—Feddies either knew he’d leak right from the beginning, or they do now. He isn’t going to be coming after anybody for a good long time, if ever. Relax, guy.”
“Got a reputation to maintain. I serve the people who pay me,” he said, his hand dropping back to the gun. “Contents of your pockets, on the bed. Now.”
I sighed in frustration, unbuttoned my chest pocket, tossed the little translucent cube onto the bed. Prepaid communicator, lobster fork. “What is it you think I’m up to?” Hand closing around the panic alarm in my pocket.
“Starting to think you’re getting cold feet. Or perhaps Miss Querrey is trying to convince you not to go through with this?” Hefting the Stetta, letting its barrel go tap-tap-tap against the arm of the chair. “Maybe you need a reminder—”
Querrey, indignant: “I did not—”
“Maybe you need to drop the mob enforcer shtick and back off,” I said, raising the panic alarm, my thumb over the button. “Or there’s a whole platoon of soldiers upstairs who are going to come running if I push this.”
Tracey’s face set. “Go on. Push it then.” His machine pistol stopped tap-tap-tapping.
Ice tableau, both of us frozen in place, neither one of us backing down.
The silence was shattered.
Burst of Malalaika bleak-pop. Repeated again. From the communicator on the bed.
Querrey on her knees, hyperventilating on the carpet, where she’d fallen when the music started.
“Gonna let me answer that?” I asked.
“On speaker.”
Reached over pressed the answer button. “This is Aric.”
“Ah, Glass-san. Chu-sa Akechi here. You wished to speak?” A faintly Swedenese accent.
“Not like this,” I said, never taking my eyes off Tracey, who was slowly lowering the Stetta. “Face to face.”
There was a long pause. “There are currently no available contracts with the DCMS for a black-listed unit such as yours, Glass-san.” This was a negotiating tactic, clearly. He’d called, so I’d piqued his interest—but he wanted to deal from a position of strength.
“I’d like to clear up any misunderstanding lingering over Port Moseby,” I said. The DCMS had built a mass driver on Port Moseby’s moon—and then on our advice, the Lyrans had destroyed it with a nuke. “With a small gift, a token of our sincerity.”
“A gift?”
“Face to face, Akechi-san.”
I named a time and place, and switched the communicator off.
“You went to the Combine?” Tracey said. “Well, I suppose they are more capable and trustworthy than the Ca—”
Malalaika tunes.
“Glass here.”
“This is Chief Negotiator Gansukh Zhao calling for Flight Captain Aric Glass.”
“Speaking.”
“Weird audio. Are you on a speaker? Hm. Anyway, I’m calling about your message.”
We set a time and place to talk further, and I clicked off.
Tracey and Querrey were both looking at me oddly. I started to smile, I admit. It had been a terrible day so far, but I was starting to enjoy this.
“Both of them. What game are you playing, Glass?”
Malalaika.
“Hi, Aric, this is Helena! Always a pleasure to talk to someone from the Duchy. How can I help you?”
The look on Tracey’s face. Priceless.
“Well, Lady Sorreno, maybe I can help you this time.”
Clicked off.
Couldn’t help grinning now. “Hey, I’m a mercenary. Sell the info once, get paid once. Sell it twice, get paid twice. The deal was to provide the info; I never promised to give it away for free. That’s just good business sense, Adolph.”
Tracey frowned at me for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. Clicked the safety back on his Stetta, stuck it into a hip holster and dropped his shirt over it. “I will be glad when this job is done,” he said, looming to his feet. “And I am done with your, hm, humor.” A battering ram finger stabbed at me. “From now on, you stay with us. No more surprises.”
“No more surprises,” I agreed.
Surprises, no. Suspicions, yes, especially where he was concerned.
-
Episode 4-9: Pseudocertainty effect
“Was there anything else, Grace? Or did you come here to threaten me as well? Because I have to tell you, that’s getting very old very quickly.”
Querrey slowly picked herself up off the carpet, half-staggered to one of the chairs and slumped into it. Behind her, a school of electric blue delta fish swam in lazy circles, then scattered as the black slash of a knifefish cut through their formation.
“Wanted to ask if there was any way I could help,” she said. “Feeling bloody useless at the moment. Well, for most of the last two weeks, to be honest.”
Instinctively, I wanted to trust her. Or maybe I was just tired of suspicion—wanted someone I could believe, and she seemed to have the most to lose and least to gain of any of us. I pulled over the other chair, the one Tracey had used—cushion still deformed from where he’d sat—turned it to face her hand sat down. “You heard the calls; we’re almost done,” I told her. “Meet them, hand it over, end of story.”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “You think it’ll be that easy?”
Sighed, dragged a hand across my head. “Nah,” I admitted. “No such luck.” What I was planning was what the Feddies would be expecting. Somehow I doubted I could keep the meeting place and time secret. What I needed was a surprise.
“Maybe I should stay here then, out of your way. At the hotel,” she offered, standing back up. Slim, dancer build.
Gave me an idea. The way she’d scared me, out in the hallway. Right height for it, right shape. Something unexpected.
“How would you feel,” I asked her, “If I asked you to change out of that jumpsuit?”
*
After she left I had all of five minutes to myself before the phone rang again. The room phone, not my communicator this time. Well, there went any hope of getting some rest, I though. I picked up, and was greeted by the receptionist’s voice. “Mister Glass, there is a woman here to see you.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Miss Mori. Says you were expecting her. I can send her down, or would you prefer to meet her in the lobby?”
So, not dead then. I felt a guilty wave of relief, followed very quickly by realization that she probably wouldn’t be entirely happy with the way the afternoon had panned out.
“Is she alone?”
“No, two companions.”
That could be bad news. Or it could be something else unexpected. In any case, a public meeting would probably be safer, I figured. “Ah, well in that case, I’d better go up there. Please ask her to wait.” Changed out of my crew jumpsuit and into the new clothes I’d bought—too much risk Tracey had put a tracer or bug somewhere in the jumpsuit. Mercenary chic: collarless olive jacket with plenty of pockets, white T, black trousers, low boots. Communicator, panic alarm, passkey went in one pocket. Data crystal in another. Lobster fork in a third.
Stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, and found Mori waiting by the front desk, along with two looming dark-suited bodyguards. Black guy with a scarred face and an Asian one with slick-backed hair. Mori positively tiny by comparison, one side of her face swathed in white gauze, left arm in a sling. Both eyes watching me with deadly intensity.
“Good to see you again, Mori san,” I said. She just nodded, slowly. A raised eyebrow said, ‘And?’ I waved towards the adjoining lounge. “Maybe we can sit and talk?”
The lounge was as dimly lit as the hallways underground, and what light there was, was projected in kaleidoscopic azure and aquamarine shapes that rippled and swam, as though the light were being filtered through meters of water. A 2D video screen filled the far wall, tuned like the ones in the elevators to a news station. Chaos in Galatea City. Fighting on Pacifica. Latest from Solaris. The sound was muted, but details filled in by a stream of text along the bottom of the screen. A variety of watery sounds played instead, thunder, rain falling, splashing as it landed.
We sat down on aquamarine sofas on either side of a low table. Cushions shaped like clamshells. Really committed to their esthetic, I guess. The table was bare, except for two memo pads with matching pens in upright holders.
The lobby was empty save for the two of us, and Mori’s twin shadows. They took up forbidding position on either side of the lobby entrance.
We’d barely sat down when Mori snapped, “What the hell was on that crystal?”
Deep breath, let it out slow. One chance to turn this around. “Complete, detailed plans of a massive Federated Suns invasion of the Capellan Confederation. Timed for the middle of next year, in coordination with a Commonwealth assault on the Combine.” I took out a copy—the real thing, with the plans I’d gotten from Paradis—and placed it on the table between us. Hadn’t planned on giving it to them, originally, but the game had changed. Time for a new move.
Mori leaned forward, looking at the cube dubiously, the blue overhead lights reflected infinitely within its facets. “For real?”
I shook my head. “Almost certainly deliberate disinformation spread by Davion intelligence. It will perhaps contain a grain of truth, in order to initially convince the Confederation and Combine it is real, ensuring they protect the wrong targets or try to assault ‘defenseless’ positions that turn out to be heavily fortified.”
“Why would you give this to us?”
“Need your help in moving it. As you saw, there are some people who’d rather it remains a secret.”
She looked up, hard into my eyes. “So who tried to kill me? The FedRats?”
“Ah, now that is the question, isn’t it?” I held up two fingers. “There seem to be two agencies involved, one that knows the information is false and wants it spread around, and one that thinks it’s real and wants it kept secret. My best guess is it’s either the Lyrans who don’t realize it’s a hoax, or else the two Fed Suns agencies, the DMI and MIIO, haven’t been talking to each other.” I shrugged again. “Then again, it could be somebody else entirely. The people who gave me this information seemed to think ComStar was involved, for example.”
She nodded absently, unconsciously scratched at the arm in the sling. “Did you know they’d try to kill me?”
Ah, the tricky question. “Honestly? No, I wasn’t even sure they were following me. Hey, look, the biker your people ran over was about to kill me, so it’s not like this is all part of some elaborate plan of mine.” I slid the crystal towards her. “Here’re the details, for what they’re worth. Consider it a kind of negative information—the lies someone wants the Combine to believe. Could be useful to you—military contracts, disruptions in security, all that good stuff.”
She picked it up with her good hand, holding up to the light. “This is a start, Glass san,” she said after a moment. “The value is speculative, though perhaps we can use it to forge a truce with the triads. What we really want right now is the woman who attacked our car.”
“Hey, that’s what we both want,” I said. “Now, I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to turn up when I hand these plans over.” I tore a sheet from a memo pad on the table, used the pen to scribble the location and time. Folded it and offered it towards Mori.
Her eyes narrowed. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because,” I smiled thinly, “I’m almost certain one of my traveling companions is working for them. And I made very sure they know when and where the handover is happening.”
“A trap,” she said fiercely, taking the memo. She scanned the writing, then broke into a wide grin. “Perfect,” she said, balling the paper in a clenched fist.
“And I’m the bait,” I said. “All you need to do is catch the rats.”
“This will work?”
On the news screen, a clip from Solaris was playing. A Rifleman taking down a garishly-painted Centurion whose autocannon seemed to have jammed. Scrolling text at the bottom: Wolfson wins grudge match, kills Xiang.
“Hey. Like I said, no guarantees. Anything can happen.”
-
A Rifleman taking down a garishly-painted Centurion whose autocannon seemed to have jammed. Scrolling text at the bottom: Wolfson wins grudge match, kills Xiang.
Wait what?!
“Hey. Like I said, no guarantees. Anything can happen.”
Have a little sympathy for the fourth wall there, brother :D :D
-
Have a little sympathy for the fourth wall there, brother :D :D
SMASH DESTROY!
-
Episode 4-10: Auditory hallucinations
Tracey looked worried when I joined him in front of the elevator the next morning. Him in a long, loose grey shirt hiding the Stetta at his side, me in the clothes from the previous night, olive jacket, white shirt, black trousers. Unarmed except for the panic alarm in one pocket.
“Querrey is missing,” he said. “Not in her room, no sign of a struggle. It’s possible she’s either done a runner or sold us out.”
I just grunted, nodded. “Too late to worry about that,” I said. “Be over tonight, either way.”
“You have it?”
I patted one of my chest pockets.
The door chimed and slid open, revealing the brushed-metal cubic minimalism of the elevator interior.
“Stay close,” grunted Tracey, hand briefly going to the concealed holster at his hip. “Let’s not have any more surprises.”
Brief ride up, watching the news on the mini screen. Rebellion on Verthandi. Raid on Barlow’s End. Violence in Galatea City dying down, troops remaining on alert.
Doors slid open. Reception counter, cerulean lounge.
“Ah, Mister Gould. There is another young lady to see you,” chirped the receptionist, with a knowing smile. She waved towards the front doors, where a figure was waiting.
Slim, dressed head to toe in black leather. Motorcycle helmet, mirrored visor. One hand on her hip, the other in her jacket pocket. Faint outline of something in there, something hard and pointed.
Tracey and I froze. Kept our hands where she could see them. Receptionist looked back and forth between us and the woman, confused.
Tracey took two steps laterally away from me.
“Gladiator, Excalibur, Radar, Spartan,” he said, pronouncing each word slowly, carefully. “This is an MIIO op. We’re on the same side.”
I stayed very still, watching him move only with my eyes. “Adolph, what are you doing?”
“Keeping you alive, among other things,” he said, without looking at me. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.” This at the receptionist, who had been slowly sliding back from the desk. She went deer-in-headlights still.
“Thought you were a professional,” I said. Hard to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“I said I’m loyal to those who pay me,” he replied, unapologetic. “And MIIO pays very, very well indeed.”
The woman said nothing, silvered crescent of her helmet tracking Tracey as he moved. The right hand stayed in her jacket. She pointed at Tracey’s hip with her left.
Frowning, he slowly lifted his shirt, unholstered his Stetta, held it horizontally a moment, and then tossed it lightly towards the lobby lounge. It bounced off one of the sofa cushions, landing under the low table where Mori and I had talked.
“Didn’t you hear me? This is an MIIO op,” he repeated. “Gladiator, Excalibur, Radar, Spartan.”
I sighed, and dropped my hands, shaking my head. “So it was all a set-up?”
He looked from the woman to me. “Yes, MIIO, deliberate disinformation. Only these DMI idiots kept trying to screw things up. First Jafar, now these two. But what do you care? MIIO will take care of Paradis for you now they know he’s a traitor, and it’s not like you have any loyalty to the League or anywhere else. Now, I’d get your hands back up before she shoots, Glass.”
“Should have been straight with me. I don’t like being used, Tracey,” I said, then nodded towards the woman. “Think she has even more reason to be angry, though.” Took a couple steps away from him, angling to get between him and the Stetta.
The woman took her hand out of her jacket, dropped the lobster fork she’s been holding in her pocket, reached up and pulled off her helmet. Revealing, underneath, the face of Grace Querrey.
“You marble-mouthed, baw-faced, scabby arse-trumpet,” she seethed, hurling the helmet at him. It clattered to the floor, well short of its target. “I’ve lost my home. My life, you absolute weasel.”
“Shouldn’t have sold out your own people then,” Tracey returned.
I took a few more steps towards the lounge in the meantime.
“Well, that’s that then,” Tracey sighed. “Guess I’ll have to call the whole operation off.”
“You utter, lavvy-headed … What, really?” Querrey halted in mid-rant.
Tracey smiled. “No,” he said, and launched himself at me.
Don’t know what his plan was, not sure he had one. Just animal rage and frustration at seeing his plan thwarted, looking for a convenient target to take it out on. Berserk battle rage.
Flying tackle, no chance to dodge, both of us somersaulting backwards over the back of the sofa, me coming crashing down in the middle of the table, the whole thing breaking under my sudden impact. Wheezing, gasping for breath, scrabbling in the carpet for the Stetta that had to be down here, somewhere.
Kick caught me in the side, sent me rolling away from the table, caught flashes of the room as I went rolling: receptionist gone, either behind the desk or straight out the back office, Querrey looking at us in horror for a second, then dashing out the front doors. On my own then.
Bounced to my feet, saw Tracey looking for the Stetta. Aimed at kick at his head but he caught my foot, twisted it, sent me sprawling back on the ground again. Twist, kick. Caught his elbow. Like jamming my toes into concrete, white flash of pain up my leg, but he let go the leg. Aimed a kick at my head instead, but I rolled away, let it catch only air.
Back on my feet, throwing everything I had at him. Flurry of strikes, aiming for his head, neck, ribs, Krav Maga stuff, stay on the offensive, go for the weak points. Didn’t work. Tracey swept them aside like I was tickle fighting. Like punching a BattleMech. Solid hit to the ribs, he didn’t even grunt. Just screwed up his face, plowed a punch right through my guard and into the solar plexus. Dropped me to the floor, choking, wheezing for breath.
Table leg under my hand. Gripped it, swung it like a baseball bat as his next kick came flying at me. Caught his knee, threw him off balance. Shoulder charge, drove him back one step, two, cracking right into the news viewscreen on the wall, but didn’t take him down. Hammered me in the side, forced me to let go, stagger back.
He charged me with a roar like a bear, dodged aside but too slow, one paw caught my shoulder, spun me backwards. Needed a weapon, any weapon. All I had was the panic alarm. Dug it out, hit the button. Jet roar peal, deafeningly loud in the small lobby. Tracey charged again and I clapped it against his ear.
He chopped my hand aside, shattering the alarm against the wall. In the shocked silence he stood, shaking his head. Might have burst an eardrum. Gave me one last chance to dive for the Stetta.
But Tracey was already moving, slammed into my side, grappling for me. Stabbed for his eyes, desperate now, hadn’t much strength left. I broke his glasses, hit something liquid, forcing a bellowing scream out of him and driving him back a step. Dodged back. Caught a right hook all the same, whole room spinning, like a broken grav deck, couldn’t seem to find my feet.
Took one step, drunken, sideways, two steps, fell again. No air, no strength to stand.
Tracey just looked down at me, wiped his eye, walked slowly over to the table, found his Stetta, crouched down at picked it up. Slid the receiver back with a click. “As ever, precisely the wrong kind of attention, Glass,” he said.
“All right, drop your weapon,” said a new voice. “NOW.”
Tracey and I both looked up. Half a dozen Lyran troops in mottled grey combat fatigues were pouring through the door, crouch-running, laser rifles tucked against their shoulders, eyes down the sights. Fanning out in a semicircle focused on Tracey. The hotel’s own garrison, after my trick with the yakuza. We’re supposed to hate the Elsies in the League, but right then, I’d never been happier to see another human being.
Tracey began to raise his hands.
“Drop it,” shouted the Leutnant in command. “DROP IT.”
Tracey dropped. Into a firing crouch. Stetta sweeping across the six soldiers, full auto with the trigger down, bullets hammering into them, kicking them back in red-black eruptions. Only the last kid even had time to fire, two scarlet beams striking Tracey’s shoulder, abdomen. Then he was down too, neck half gone, fingers spasmodically reaching for the hole. Poor kid—the one who’d brought me in when I first arrived.
More Lyrans bursting from the back entrance now, not bothering to shout, just firing. I stayed prone, tried to be as two-dimensional as possible. Tracey ducked, turned, and ran for the entrance. Leaped right through the glass in a crystalline explosion, shots smacking into the door frame around him. Missing.
Tracey hit the ground outside. Stood.
WHOOSH.
That’s about as close as I can get to the sound an anti-vehicular flamethrower makes. APC parked out front turned Tracey into a writhing, screaming torch. He took a step, sank to his knees, and pitched over sideways, still wreathed in flame and oily, foul-smelling smoke.
Shouting voices told me to stay down, and I figured that sounded like a pretty good idea. Aching ribs, ringing head. Yeah, horizontal on the floor sounded about the best place to be. The Lyrans had a lot of hard questions, later, about why our traveling companion had a gun, why he’d tried to kill me, but all I had to do was plead ignorance. The man was clearly insane, I said. Claimed to be some kind of secret agent.
With nothing else to go on, they let us go, with an admonition not to leave town any time soon. Fair enough by me. Had plans in town, in any event.
-
Episode 4-11: Gambler’s fallacy
“DFA” was the name of the casino tucked into the far corner of the ComStar compound that held the MRB, accommodations for visiting mercs, and heavily-guarded warehouses holding their equipment. It was a vertical knife of steel and glass, with a narrow base in whitewashed ferrocrete, then broadening to the main glass-clad casino levels, and slowly tapering to a lofty point some fifty stories up.
Another one of Duke Nowakowski’s brainstorms, this. Give mercenaries with too much money and time on their hands something to spend it on, let ComStar handle the dirty work while he skimmed off a percentage. Easy money for no work. Of course, ComStar had themselves delegated the work, but no guesses who to.
We were in one of the private roulette rooms up on the fourth floor. Unlucky number in Japanese—their word for ‘four’ is pronounced as the word for death: shi. Looked out over the mercenary warehouses, long marching rows of uniform ferrocrete-and-steel boxes, distinguishable only by the huge, color-coded numerals daubed across their doors and on their roofs. Green for tanks, blue for fighters, red for BattleMechs.
It was dark out, long past sunset, the blocky silhouettes of the warehouses outlined in the faint ice of moonlight, broken by pools of orange from overhead floodlights.
ComStar patrols everywhere, marching black shadows along the perimeter fence, in the roads between the warehouses. Most from Periphery or near-Periphery worlds, from what I could tell, though I guess that’s where you found people who still viewed ComStar with something approaching religious awe.
Up on the fourth floor, we had a standard roulette table, polished brown wood and silver-spiked wheel at one end, green felt covering, checkerboard blue and red squares (not black and red here in the Commonwealth—these Houses do love their primary colors). Seven brown leather swivel chairs around the edge. Lucky seven. Big monitor on one wall, Querrey at the noteputer connected to it, seated at a table underneath. Petite Asian croupier, face a little white, like she was using makeup to cover something up. Two doormen outside: one black, scarred, one Asian, gel-haired. Like I said, ComStar had outsourced the casino work.
Chu-sa Akechi was the first to arrive, in his dress whites as always (Did he sleep in them? Probably—if he ever slept). Swept the room with a glance, and took the seat opposite mine, without uttering a word or giving any reaction. Great poker face. Is there such a thing as a roulette face? Anyway, man didn’t know it, but he was trying to play the wrong game. I could wait.
“Well?” he said at last.
“Waiting for the other players,” I said.
Gansukh Zhao was next, stopping abruptly one step into the room, then nodding awkwardly to Akechi. He left a chair empty between them, and sat down slowly, eyes nervously shifting between Akechi and myself.
“A little unusual,” he said mildly.
“A definite break from tradition,” I agreed. “Hopefully the start of something new.”
Helena Sorreno was ushered in before we could say more. She smiled at Akechi, glared at Zhao before turning to me.
“Mister Glass, a pleasure,” she said, with a glance at Zhao. “Though I see your taste in company has gone downhill since we last met.”
I indicated an open chair. “Matter of perspective, Lady Sorreno,” I smiled. “So glad you could join us. Please have a seat.”
“So, what is all this about?” asked Zhao.
“Well, we’re at a casino, so—” I reached into my pocket, and placed a data crystal down on the green felt table. “—let’s gamble a little. Here’s my stake.”
“What is it?” Akechi asked, eyes narrowing.
“Complete plans for a Federated Suns invasion of the Capellan Confederation.” I nodded to Querrey, and the 2D screen sprang to life. A star chart of the Inner Sphere appeared, color-coded by House, annotated with troop strength and locations, movement. A number of systems flashed red across the green of the Confederation, spreading like wildfire, until the green was almost gone.
“As you can see, it calls for an initial diversionary strike against the Tikonov Commonality, followed by a blitzkrieg thrust through St. Ives, aiming straight for Sian.” I looked at them each in turn. “The importance for you, Mister Zhao, I should think is obvious. As for Chu-sa Akechi, as you can see, in order to achieve local superiority over the Capellans, Hanse Davion will strip much of the Draconis March of its forces. This presents your realm with certain opportunities.”
“That’s an enormous risk,” Akechi mused. “He must be mad.”
“Not if the Combine is occupied elsewhere,” I said. “Not contained in the crystal, but mentioned, is a full-scale Lyran assault on the Combine, aiming to incite the independence movement in Rasalhague and break that prefecture away from the Combine.”
Akechi was silent a moment. “Rasalhague, you say?” He fell silent again.
“Where did you get this?” Zhao asked suspiciously.
“Leaked by members of House Davion’s own vassals,” I replied. “A number of nobles want to weaken and discredit him, to strengthen their own hand. They see him as more of a threat than the Confederation, as terrible as that must be for your ego.”
Sorreno tapped the table irritably. “Well, that’s good to know for those two, perhaps, but what is the benefit to the League?”
I shrugged. “That depends on you. If you can put your differences with the Capellans behind you, there’s an opportunity to work together and give the Davions a bloody nose. Or, if you can’t work with them, then there’s a chance to hit the Capellans while they’re down or swoop in and kick the Feds off captured worlds while they’re still licking their wounds.” Zhao’s face darkened. “Sorry, friend, that’s just the way the system works.”
The monitor went black as Querrey shut the feed down.
Akechi spoke again. “What is your price for this information?”
“Cutting right to the point I see, Akechi-san.” I smiled. “For the Combine, the price will be to drop all accusations against the Black Arrows regarding the invasion of Port Moseby and the use of WMDs. If you’re honest, you’d realize you’ve no hope of winning this case before the MRB, not after using the mass driver, so really you’re doing yourself a favor and stopping yourselves from wasting time and money.”
“Hai.” Akechi’s face was unreadable. The Japanese ‘yes’ is a little different from the Standard—often just means ‘I heard you’ rather than agreement or acceptance.
“For the League, you will issue a full pardon for Eagle Corps Lieutenant Alexander Gould in the matter of the death of Colonel Baz Vukovic.” Sorreno frowned. “Gould with a U. Look it up.”
“And the Confederation?” Zhao asked.
“You will end all financial and material support for triad criminal groups operating on Galatea,” I said. Quick wink at the croupier. Tracey was right, everyone had their price, from the lowest to the highest, from gang leaders to interstellar princes.
“A small price to pay,” Zhao allowed. “If the information is true. Is it? Do you have any proof?”
I shot the croupier a look, and she nodded slightly. “Well, given the small price and large potential value, I’d hoped you might take this on faith,” I said. “As luck would have it though, you don’t have to. You see, a strike team of Davion Military Intelligence agents has just entered the building. If you please, Miss Querrey.”
The screen flickered on again, this time bisected into quarters, each showing the feed of a security camera in one of the casino lobbies.
A private entrance for VIPs, direct access from a heliport, reception desk with two white-clad ComStar attendants, and a pair of double doors leading into the casino proper. A sleek tiltrotor had just set down on the pad, and disgorged a group of four black-suited men, two carrying large, grey steel suitcases.
Akechi and Zhao leaned forward, almost eagerly. Sorreno’s hand fluttered at her chest.
“Not to worry,” I reassured her. “The casino is well-guarded. And prepared.”
They entered the lobby, walked to the counter. Spoke to the receptionist, who smiled beatifically, and pressed a button under the counter. Metal security shutters slammed down the blurring speed over the desk as well as the doors to the casino. The lights went out, briefly blacking out the cameras, then the lobby ghosted back into shape, in the wraith-like grey tones of low-light vision, the glaring white outlines of the four men standing out like beacons.
After a second of hesitation, they leaped into action. Cracked open the suitcases, pulling out rifles, fitting masks just as casino security began to pump tear gas into the lobby. One ran forward, placed something against the security door blocking access to the casino, then they all retreated back to the far end of the lobby.
On the screens, a brilliant torch of light, washing out the view. In the casino, a dull crump that rattled the ball in its roulette wheel, like the jolt of an earthquake.
When the feed cleared, the men were on their feet, rushing forward. Movement at the ceiling, a panel opening, something dropping down. Remote pulse laser rifle. Angling down, then ripping loose with a stream of fire. Caught two men in the back, bodies jerking once, sprawling on the ground. Another hit in the leg, fell to the floor, screaming, clutching at the blackened, blistered skin. The laser whined again and nailed him to the floor with another fusillade.
Last one raised his gun, squeezed off a long, rolling and perfectly useless burst of fire against the armored laser gun. Bullets pinging off its shell with bright sparks. The barrel shifted, sighted, fired, kicking the man back, out of frame.
“Any further doubts?” I smiled to hide my disquiet. The team had included four men. No sign of the remaining twin.
On screen, a squad of ivory ComStar guards cautiously approached the bodies, weapons ready. The leader sighted at the head of each of the fallen men, and fired once, four times total. In low light, all we saw were bright pulses of light that kicked a spray of black liquid across the floor with each hit.
They don’t mess around, out there on the Periphery.
“What you ask will take some time,” Akechi said slowly. “I can’t authorize what you ask.”
“Nor I,” said Zhao, looking shaken. After all, it was his realm being threatened with annihilation.
I nodded in understanding. “Of course. Shall we meet again here in, say, a week?” I picked the crystal back up, stuck it in my pocket. “I’m afraid I’ll be out of touch until then, just in case any of you get tempted to take this information rather than pay for it. Now.” I put a stack of chips on the table. “While we’re here, let’s enjoy the game, shall we? I’m feeling lucky tonight.”
The white ball raced around the spinning wheel, a shining moon around its planet, or perhaps a man drawn inevitably downwards towards his destiny. It jumped, bounced, flew off the table and went skittering across the floor.
“What the—”
Dull crump, crump. Like an earthquake.
Or, the feet of a BattleMech.
I turned, slowly, to look out the windows, out over the military equipment warehouses. Just in time to see a massive sheet shutter, painted with the red number seven, blast free of its hinges and crash to the ground, kicking up a blast front of dust.
Out stepped a 25-ton Commando, painted in a confusing dazzle of white, purple and green, the logo of the “Wild Jokers” on its chest.
The ’Mech paused a moment, then turned towards the casino. ComStar guards scattering, knowing their small arms were useless against the machine. Except one lunatic who stood his ground, light machinegun barking, sparking off the thing’s legs until one foot came down and crushed him against the asphalt.
I was on my feet, kicking back the chair, backing away from the window. “Not to be alarmist or anything folks but—”
The Commando raised its left arm, and unleashed a searing beam of jade light that blew out half the windows in a silvered hail of shards, punched through the ceiling and brought the room above crashing down.
I was prone on the floor, trying to crawl towards the exit, slabs of ceiling crashing to the floor around me. I could hear the croupier—Mori—yelling into a palm-sized mini communicator, “Guardian, guardian, guardian!”
I was still crawling when the missiles hit. Rippling explosions all along the side of the building, then the floor shifted, tilted down, broken tiles and loose chairs sliding past me, towards a gaping hole blown in the glass wall. Started sliding myself, rolled onto my back, tried to dig my heels in, but I was still sliding, closer and closer to the edge. Nothing in my pockets but the damned lobster fork.
Worth a shot, Stabbed it down into the carpet, tried to jam it into the floorboards, but the fork was too soft, too weak, didn’t do more than slow me down a little as it dragged, then bent and broke.
Zhao went tumbling by, his face a red mask of blood, just rolled right out the hole and into open space, dropping from sight. Sorreno was screaming, holding onto the roulette table for life, Akechi already clawing at the exit, dragging his torso out the room, over the bodies of the two doormen. Querrey and Mori braced against the noteputer desk, Mori still shouting “Guardiaaaaan” into the palm of her hand.
The Commando was right outside the windows now, one-eyed nightmare mask leering right into the room. Faceplate twisted left and right slowly, actuators whirring, taking in the whole space. Gave me the time to slide a few more centimeters to the ledge, really enjoy that feeling of inevitable doom, one foot over the edge now. Nothing but ten meters of nothing, and then hard asphalt.
The face came to a stop looking directly at me. Audible click as the sensors refocused.
A loudspeaker voice: “For my sister.”
The right hand came up, high over the Commando’s head, balled into a fist. Hesitated, the face tracking up, away, just as the boom of jet engines rattled the building, shaking free another avalanche of glass shards.
A trio of blinding red beams lashed down, hammering into the Commando’s back. A bat-winged shape dropped from the clouds, with a needle nose and the vestigial arms and legs of a Stinger LAM in AeroMech mode.
Must’ve hit the gyro, as the Commando couldn’t seem to stand straight. It tried to turn, but reeled drunkenly, one shoulder crashing against the casino wall. The jade light of the left arm laser fired wildly, piercing the night clouds.
The Stinger dodged higher, firing all three lasers in sequence now rather than together, keeping up a continuous rhythm, one-two-three-one-two-three, constantly pounding the Commando, shaking it, sheets of armor running like water. Until finally, the Commando staggered, tilted overbackwards, and crashed headfirst into the roulette room.
The impact shook my tenuous hold on the angled floor, sent me skittering towards the edge—then jarred to a halt as I landed on the BattleMech’s forehead.
I counted to ten, very slowly, before bracing against the Mech’s head and trying to find my footing. Dusted myself off, brushed the glass from my clothes and hair. Gave a mock salute to the AeroMech pilot. Saved all our lives. Turned to give Mori the thumbs up, too.
She wasn’t smiling though. Pointing behind me, shouting something. Which is kind of when I noticed the hiss-clang of a BattleMech cockpit hatch opening.
Turned just as the twin came flying at me, screaming like a banshee, wedge-tipped tanto blade in her hand. I grabbed for the knife, lost my footing and she stabbed it down into my shoulder. Impact as she bowled into me sent us both sprawling. Ended with her straddling me, tearing the knife free from my shoulder, raising it for another strike.
Threw the palm of my hand up at her chin, felt it connect, saw her head snap backwards. Then her arms pinwheeling as she tipped over backwards, rolling, right off the edge, gone with a startled scream that quickly faded, then cut short.
Which is about when my brain, encouraged by blood loss, decided it had had about enough of this shit, and knocked me out entirely.
-
Wait what?!Have a little sympathy for the fourth wall there, brother :D :D
what if this sorry ends up as the beginning of Paunzerfaust150's Clover Spear?
-
Knew that Stinger LAM would come in handy one day. :thumbsup:
-
Wait what?!Have a little sympathy for the fourth wall there, brother :D :D
The Fourth Wall is the dropship's next name.
-
Knew that Stinger LAM would come in handy one day. :thumbsup:
All it needs is to have painted on the nose "Chekov's LAM"...
-
The Fourth Wall is the dropship's next name.
All it needs is to have painted on the nose "Chekov's LAM"...
I think Blatantly Obvious Literary Device might be more appropriate...Good catch by both Kidd and cpip though for seeing through my cunning plans.
Tangent time: Much as I enjoy bantering with the regulars, it's fantastic to see some of our quieter members drop in the thread from time to time. Makes me feel like I might be doing something right if I can motivate you guys to comment from time to time.
While we're on the subject of literary devices, the codewords used by both Tracey and Mori are Easter Eggs for Robotech/Macross fans.
Mori's name is a very, very dry joke as it means 'Forest' in Japanese (and the Free Beer's captain's name is...Forrest).
Finally the episode titles are all symptoms of mental instability or irrational behavior.
Here's the epilogue to 'Season 4.' I'm at a low-energy stage right now so not sure if/when I'll get around to 5. I notice that other threads with this many replies have 4-5 times more views, so perhaps this isn't really what people want to read anyway. Hm. Well, with that, the epilogue:
* * *
Epilogue
Warm sunflower sunshine through an open window. Crisp white sheets with some incredibly high thread count. Lavender in the air, not quite hiding the bleached smell of disinfectant.
And standing by the window, Reina Paradis, arms crossed, dressed in a fancy blue and white uniform I didn’t recognize that seemed to involve sashes at various angles and large amounts of braid at the shoulder.
“I leave you alone for five minutes,” she said, shaking her head. “The Lyrans who found you said you seemed to be trying to headbutt a Commando.”
A smile didn’t seem to hurt to much, so I treated myself to a small one. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.” Tried to lift a hand, but my shoulder informed me that was a Very Bad Idea. “Nice threads,” I said instead. “Nice room.”
She turned from the window. “Nothing but the best for the XO of one of Duke Lestrade’s personal units,” she said with a wink.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “What?”
“While you’ve been busy trying to get yourself killed, I’ve been making friends,” she said. “We’re now on long-term contract, part of Duke Lestrade’s personal household guard.” She came to the side of the bed, bent down and kissed my forehead, patted me gingerly on the shoulder. “Get well soon, Aric. Sounds like he has something special planned for us.”
-
Uh oh... this cannot be good.
I mean, sure, it´ll make for a good story, but if Duke Lestrade plans something special, it´s going to end up being very unhealthy for a lot of the people involved. Including the Duke himself, I hope.
-
Hi there. Been reading for a while and really enjoy the story so far.
Hope you to continue the adventures of mr. Glass and tell us how they will survive their new assignment (I want them to still around for even more adventures!)
-
great stuff, I was more worried Mori might be joining Comstar soon.....
-
Now that your finished with the Forrest of free beers, a certain Lestrade catapults himself into the picture.
Working for Lestrade will give Glass plenty of room to get into more trouble. >:D
-
Just wanted to leave a quick note to say thanks to everyone commenting. OpacusVenatori especially, fantastic to see a new name. Cheers for the enouragement.
There's a germ of an idea about what Lestrade is up to, if I can get those creative juices flowing again. Further exploring the idea--introduced in this last series--that another war would be the straw that broke the camel's back regarding the integrity/coherence of the 5 houses. Instead of unifying the FedCom, the 4SW shatters the Inner Sphere.
Maybe more free beer needed?
-
Wherever it takes you, man. We are most amused.
-
I've been lurking in on this (and your other stories) very regularly. I appreciate them!
Never posted because I dislike having to scroll through the fiction board pages to find the author posts.
-
There's a germ of an idea about what Lestrade is up to, if I can get those creative juices flowing again. Further exploring the idea--introduced in this last series--that another war would be the straw that broke the camel's back regarding the integrity/coherence of the 5 houses. Instead of unifying the FedCom, the 4SW shatters the Inner Sphere.
I'm very interested to see where that goes. One of my occasional issues with the original setting is that the G5 are so big that it's hard to enact meaningful change without throwing a novelist at them. A Balkanized Inner Sphere with a couple dozen smaller polities would be much more interesting in terms of politics and temporary alliances - and would contribute a lot toward faction specialization and Lostech rarity.
-
Bring on more...
-
Maybe more free beer needed?
Tell you what. If by some chance you and I are at the same con, I'll buy you a beer or two for writing this. It's been great fun.
-
Tell you what. If by some chance you and I are at the same con, I'll buy you a beer or two for writing this. It's been great fun.
Unless they hold the con in Asia, that might be tricky. But thanks for the offer! I knew this writing gig would pay off one day. For now though, my childish side is just happy we got this thread to 6969 views. Good on yer, Internets!
-
Dubble_g, great story mate.
I have been lurking from the beginning and enjoyed it a lot. Sorry I didn't put a good word in earlier, but I do hope we get to see more from you.
-
so when do we get back to flying? It's been quite a bit of James Bondy lately (never a bad thing)... just oddly curious to our other heroes...?