The Day When Heaven Was Falling

[Dubble_g]

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.”

[Tegyrius]

Intrigued, subscribe, newsletter, etc.

[snakespinner]

Great start.
I liked the write up of the Cheetah, it made me want to go out and shoot one down. ;)

[Kidd]

NARC podded.

[Dubble_g]

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.

[Kidd]

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.

[snakespinner]

Like the tremendous amount of sarcasm, you must be part Australian.
Groucho better watch her back after that trick. :D ;)

[Dubble_g]

@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.

[DOC_Agren]

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

[Tegyrius]

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.

[snakespinner]

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

[Kidd]

Verrrrry nice. Yeah it disturbs me that I can actually understand the CO's corporatese :D

[Dubble_g]

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.

[snakespinner]

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. }:)

[Dubble_g]

@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.

[Kidd]

Keep em comin O0

[pensiveswetness]

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...

[DOC_Agren]

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

[Dubble_g]

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.

[snakespinner]

Falling for Reina.
Start the fireworks. :D >:D

[Tegyrius]

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.  ;)

[Dubble_g]

And we're back. For now. 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.

[mikecj]

Nice, very clever.

[snakespinner]

Bad times are about to happen for Edwards.
Found your blog page, now you have a snakebot infecting it. }:) ;)

[Dave Talley]

Nice

[Dubble_g]

@ mikecj: Impressive.
@ 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.”

[Kidd]

555. You've been around, Mister.

[DOC_Agren]

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 track

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.

Given some of the lyrics in question, that... may not be a distinction you want.  ;)

He wants it

[Tegyrius]

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..."

[Dubble_g]

@ 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 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.