I woke up the next morning when the ship’s momentum made my bed slide into the wall, producing a sharp *ping!*. I sat up at once and looked around for the source of the shock.
“Standby all hands, full stop,” said a voice from the intercom. We had arrived at the rendezvous point. I dressed and left the room, skipping dinner had been a mistake.
I took a double serving of protein paste and sat down next to Spin-Out. Before I could stop myself, I started firing questions. “Have we got Hard Armor back yet?”
“Yeah, he moved back on a few minutes ago. Briefing’s in half an hour,” he said through a yawn. I downed a bit of the paste and swished it around a bit. Very starchy, like liquefied bagels or pretzels. I’d had worse.
“What do you think the action is?” I asked.
“I smell an exhilarating CAP, recon if we’re lucky.”
“Hmm.” We wouldn’t know any of the particulars for a while. Why tell your soldiers what they’re up against? Just leave ‘em sitting on their collective asses waiting for something to explode. The chair to my right scraped against the floor and Naya dropped into it, looking better than she had yesterday.
“Morning,” she said, obviously still a bit tired.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Better. Not good, but yeah, better,” she said, trying a gulp of her own paste and looking contemplative for a moment.
“Eggs…and a sort of onion-y something.”
“Maybe the machine finally started working right,” I said.
“Only one way to find out.” Spin-Out said and ate a mouthful. He shuddered and worked to swallow. “Nope. I don’t know what that was but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t food.” He downed his juice in one go. I smiled and patted him on the back.
“So what’s your story?” Naya asked Spin-Out.
“Well, the world is so confused and maddening! I was born on the fine streets of…”
“The short version please,” I interjected.
“Kuave Azuma, former amateur mag-lev racer, now Falcon pilot. Childhood was fine; I was born on earth, raised around a lot of star stations. Mom and dad were traders, so I lived mostly on starships. Loved to fly, Conjunction pissed me off, mag-lev career was in a rut. Put it all together and here I sit.”
“I don’t think he meant that short,” Naya said, taking a drink.
“There isn’t much to tell I guess,” he shrugged, finishing the last of his paste while holding his nose.
“And what about you?” she asked me.
“Uh, Nomad Colony before here, four years in the academy, two years at said colony, trying to prove to those idiots I knew how to fly, and then I came here,” I said.
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing interesting.” I didn’t mention anything before my training. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about over breakfast since we’d only known each other for 16 hours or so. She nodded and didn’t press the subject; but I think we both knew the other was still hiding something. At that moment we didn’t really care. We had the right to keep some things to ourselves.
“CAP seems like it’s gonna be the order of the day,” she said, changing the subject.
“How do you want to do this?” I asked.
She looked contemplative for a moment. “Stay together, but don’t get in each others way until we know how the other works.”
“Assuming that something happens and we aren’t just flying around in circles sitting on our hands,” I said.
“Right.” I glanced around and noticed Tail-Burn was sitting a few tables away, looking a little wobbly. I could almost smell the liquor from here. Not just an ass-hat, but a loaded one. I rolled my eyes and looked away. There was another scrape of chair against floor and I looked to my left to spot Hard Armor.
“Morning sir,” I said.
He smiled and scooted over. “Morning lieutenant. What did I miss?” Hearing his calm bass was oddly comforting.
“Jump accident, new string of pilots, a brand new tour in an actual war zone, and Leo’s new wingman,” Spin-Out said, sliding his tray away in disgust.
Hard Armor glanced at Naya. “Welcome aboard lieutenant. You came in with the new bunch?”
“Mmhm,” she said, finishing her paste and standing to stretch.
“How badly did Tail-Burn stink it up around here?” he asked.
“Pretty damn bad, sir” I said.
He nodded and glanced briefly in his direction before looking down at his wrist Link. “I’ve gotta run, see you in the brief.” He downed his breakfast in one lengthy swallow and left. I smiled and finished off my food, feeling a bit better now that we had someone competent at the head of the squad. By now the commander would be discussing the situation with the 34th fleet admiral.
“What’s that?” Naya asked me suddenly, looking at an arm patch below my normal one.
“Oh, squad number,” I said, tapping the small red three on the patch. Every flight suit and uniform someone owned on an Alliance ship had that persons arm patch. On it was the GLA insignia, three triangles forming a larger one. In the top one was a small sword, in the left one was a tiny griffon, and the right contained a hammer. There was a second triangle the size of the other three, but inverted making the whole thing into a diamond. In the second triangle was a badge representing rank. Mine was a silver bar. First lieutenant.
Beneath this was my squad patch. This just showed that I belonged to third squadron. It was a plain red three, nothing special, but it still meant something. Every new pilot had his own rank badge, but none yet bore the squad patch. On Atlantis it was a badge of acceptance. New pilots were generally paired up with veterans; and when the veteran decided a rookie had earned it, they received a squad patch. I roughly explained the squad patch to her.
“So all I’ve got to do is save your sorry behind enough times?”
“That’s one way of putting it.” I stood and stretched as well.
“Let’s go see exactly where we’ll be flying in circles, shall we?” Spin-Out said, dumping the remaining contents of his tray into a trash can. I stopped, the smallest of noises catching my ear.
Naya perked up her own ears and caught my eye. “You hear that?” she asked.
“Yeah. That’s the Hydra turrets spinning up.”
“Okay, so maybe we won’t just be flying in circles,” Spin-Out said. There was another muted shake as we accelerated.
“All squadrons report to pre-flight briefing,” said the communications officer. We set off at an even stride, leaving the mess and heading for third squads ready room. The whole way there, people were moving faster than usual, passing us at a measured jog, their eyes alive with activity. Something was happening. The intercom only added to the speculation. “Check and load all Hydra turrets. Run pre-flight launch checks on all launch tubes. Spin up gravity drive to 0109.”
“Sounds heavy,” Spin-Out said. We ignored him and kept moving. The ready room was almost full by the time we got there, people scrambling to find seats. We sat down and signed on, typing our names and passwords into the computers in the arm rests. Hard Armor walked briskly onto the stage, flipping through notes as he went. He closed his binder with a sharp snap before speaking.
“Okay, here’s the deal. We were scheduled to make the last jump into Altor in the next hour. We had an escort of two cruisers and an ACP waiting for us. Apparently the Conjunction got wind of our arrival and launched an attack against our escort about four minutes ago. Every capable ship within jump radius is going in. Assuming that escort is still alive, our counter attack will consist of those cruisers, a destroyer, and a total of four ACP craft. As for numbers of enemy ships, we can’t tell for sure. All we got was that they were surrounded before we lost contact. We’re guessing at least four midsize ships and one point craft, most likely an enemy ACP equivalent.”
“Why did five ships put our three in that big of a bind?” One of the new pilots asked.
“I’ll get to that if people don’t interrupt. Here’s the tactical situation from what we gathered.” The board behind Hard Armor changed to display a diagram of the battle. The information had been put together by automatic reports from our escort’s damage control and targeting computers on top of what they’d managed to tell us. “The enemy force jumped in surrounding ours, all sides covered. Moments after jumping they fired a first volley into the center of our force, detonating upwards of 30 warheads. Early damage reports say that the two cruisers each lost at least 30% of weapons capability, and the ACP took the brunt of the force. The ASV Avalon took hits all along the port side, crippling half of her launch tubes, along with most of the guns on that side. These ships are bleeding bad and trying to hold out long enough for us to get in there.”
There was silence as the room waited for orders. “Here’s what I need from you. Third squadron is on strategic bombing duty, first and second will be keeping as many of the fighters off you as they can. T’s are already being loaded with charges, C’s, you’ll be on escort duty. Lock your sticks and cover your wingmen with shriekers while they disable the enemy. E’s will roll in for demolition duty once you have disabled a ship. Is that clear?”
“Yes sir!” Echoed through the room.
“Then get your asses in those fighters. Good hunting.” Everyone scrambled for the exit. Naya and I looked at each other. For a first flight, locking the stick was going to be tricky. I would be almost riding her thrusters and she would be steering both fighters at the same time. I’d be relying on guided missiles to keep us safe. It was dangerous, and required a lot of trust. In one instant both of our eyes sent and acknowledged the same message. “Don’t do anything stupid.” We both stood and left, our minds turning to the battle.
Just like the enemy, our advantage would lie in the element of surprise, we would catch them off guard, giving us the time to drop a few more bombs. It still meant skimming the surface of an enemy ship and praying they didn’t have time to stop your run.
We reached the flight deck and separated, both heading for our own fighters. I could see a pair of deck hands working frantically to swap my regular missiles out for shriekers, agile and fast but a much smaller payload. They could punch clean through a Conjunction fighter so long as they hit the canopy. The problem was waiting for that clean shot, if I was off by even a few degrees it would either bounce off or hit something nonessential. I pulled on my flight suit and climbed into my fighter, starting preflight.
“How’s it going down there?” I shouted above the noise.
“Very slowly sir, these were only ever meant to come out of the business end in a hurry!” one of the deckhands shouted back to me. The con-red alarm started blaring and the communications officer came over the speaker.
“All hands prepare to jump, we are now in condition red, say again, condition red. All remaining pilots to launch positions. All batteries rotate starboard 73 degrees by 32 degrees…”
“C’mon, I need to get out of here!”
“I’ve almost got it, just hang on!” I pushed myself back into my seat, angrily drumming my fingers on the side of my cockpit.
“Jump in 40 seconds”
“I need to be in the goddamn tubes!”
“Last one! Okaaaay…got it!” The deckhand sealed my magazines and rolled out from under my fighter. A second one threw my flight package up to me. I plugged it in as fast as I could, double checking my systems. The other deck hand tossed my helmet into my lap and I crammed it onto my head, locking it and starting the oxygen flow with my free hand.
“Jump in twenty seconds”
“Admen, C-class, you know the rest, get me the hell out of here!”
“Copy that, third squadron is launching first, move to tube in five seconds.” I checked my munitions monitor. It registered the change in ordinance, now marking my secondary trigger as “FIRE M2440 ‘Shrieker.’”Aim for the cockpit and pray I don’t miss. A loader hooked onto the front of my fighter and dragged me into a tube. I switched com channels.
“Naya, status report.”
“Check your nine o’clock.” I glanced to my left and saw she was loading into the tube next to mine.
“Copy that.” Another channel switch. “Squadron lead, Sigma wing is ready for launch.” I put a hand on my flight stick and took a deep breath. I was ready. I felt the same tug in my gut once again as the communications officer’s voice rang through my headset.
“Jump in five, four, three, two, one.” I felt the world vanish and reappear as the gravity drive bent space, we slid across, and then released. Moments later I felt the whole ship vibrate slightly as the guns started firing off a barrage. The fight was starting. I rested my foot against the thruster pedal, my grip on the flight stick tightened.
“Jet, gimme a go no-go.”
“Go.”
“Third squadron launch in ten seconds” the DM said. The heavy steel door in front of me slowly slid open. Beyond it I could make out the enemy force. They had been right: five ships, one slightly bigger than the others, all circling our would-be escort like sharks. “Five, four, three, two, one, clear!” I pressed my foot down and my body pressed back into my seat, the combined pneumatics and thruster fire pushing me forward. In a matter of seconds I was free of the tube.
“Orders, sir?” I said.
“First and second squad will take care of the fighters, there’s seven wings and five ships. Alpha, Gamma, and Lambda will take the ACP. The rest of you, pick a ship that isn’t occupied and blow it to hell. Stay out of that cross fire and clear the place for the E’s. Weapons free people, take ‘em down.”
I locked my stick and formed up behind Naya’s T-class. “Controls locked, your wing lieutenant,” I said.
“Copy that, charges set, going after the cruiser at eleven o’clock,” she said. Even knowing which direction we were going didn’t help with the sudden shift. I’d gone from driving to riding shotgun, even simple maneuvers felt wrong when you weren’t the one steering.
We were headed towards the cruiser at an angle. It was a captured GLA model, maybe ten years out of date. At least we knew where the targeting array was. All around us there were explosions, distant flashes of light all serving to distract us. I kept my eyes narrowed, searching for a fighter to break off and go for us. “Time to target 30 seconds, get ready,” I braced myself as we rolled right hard, dodging fire from the surface of the ship. We leveled out, she had rolled us out of its range.
“Turret problem solved, but we can’t hit the targeting system from here,” I said
“That’s not what I’m aiming at.”
“Then what are you aiming at!?”
“Something that’s going to be a bit of a larger problem in a second!” What was she talking about? We were heading towards the front of the ship from the port side, there was nothing on the sides except…
“Oh you have got to be kidding me.”
“Nothing against your skills, but you can’t kill ten more fighters before they kill us!” The turrets had gone after us instead of shooting at Atlantis because they were trying to cover a fighter launch. She was aiming for the launch tubes.
“You realize there’s a very good chance we’ll smash into one of the fighters, right?”
“There’s a better chance we’ll be shot down!” I rolled my eyes and spotted a fighter coming towards us from the other side of the ship. “Ten seconds!” I lined up my shot and waited for a lock, if I was off by a few inches on my side I could miss. My crosshair turned red, I had a clean line. I held my breath and fired. A missile the size of a finger shot out from my fighter’s nose at 800 KPH, curved hard and collided head-on with the cockpit of the Conjunction fighter. It flew off at an odd angle, its pilot dead.
“Hang on!” We rolled over on our side, exposing the underbelly of Naya’s fighter. I felt a dozen charges separate and fly straight at the launch tubes of the cruiser, aided by its gravitational pull. More shockwaves hit me as they detonated, crippling the Conjunction ship’s launch tubes. I closed my eyes and prayed that nothing launched straight into us. It lasted about five seconds and I swear something grazed me, but we flew out the other side of the run unharmed. I let out a breath and looked back, their tubes were trashed. That ship wasn’t launching fighters anytime soon. “Hoo boy. Don’t ever let me do that again!” she said.
“The feeling is mutual lieutenant. But good shot.”
“Thank you. I’ve got one more payload, let’s hit the targeting system.” We flipped straight over and drifted for a second before beating momentum and starting to race along the surface of the ship again, going bow to stern this time. The turrets were spraying out at the fleet again, so we were unopposed for a few seconds. Three enemy fighters broke away from another skirmish and raced after us.
“Three closing, I can’t hit all of ‘em!”
“I’ll pin the throttle on your mark!” I lined up my first shot and fired. A sickening burst of red appeared on the canopy of my target before it drifted off at an angle.
“One down, other two closing.”
“Time to target fifty seconds.” I lined up another shot, agonizingly waiting for the second fighter to expose it’s cockpit. It had picked up on what happened to its buddy. About a second too late I realized it had pulled left, and my shrieker bounced harmlessly off its side.
“Scorch it lieutenant!”
“Copy that, hold onto something!” We screamed forward, knocking me back against my seat. “Thirty seconds and they’re still on us!”
“Damn it! I can’t hit two of ‘em they’re almost on top of us!”
“I’m open to unorthodox ideas Jet, we need something really stupid right about now!” It was impossible, I couldn’t hit them both even with the mother of all good shots. Only one way out of this.
“Give me your pitch, roll, power and yaw readouts right now!”
“0, 0, 187 and 5” she repeated. I took my hand off the stick and entered the numbers with a keypad on my right side.
“Keep going!” I said, and unlocked my stick, the manually entered values kept me drifting on her tail. I flipped over and sighted one of the fighters, firing a massive spray of tracers and cutting it to shreds. The other was in range and fired, its rounds just barely bouncing off my armor. I gritted my teeth and rotated just a bit, never taking my hand off the trigger. The stream of rounds met and then passed the fighter, leaving it in bits. I flipped over and locked my stick again before letting put a breath and panting heavily.
“Admen that was thirty kinds of howling mad!”
“Call it payback for your little stunt earlier,” I said, a little giddy from adrenaline.
“Ten seconds to target.” The area was clear, no other fighters tried to stop us. I felt the charges leave and drop straight below us. Naya pulled away and I looked back just in time to see them go off. A massive display of blue light, the shockwave pushed us around a bit. The turrets all cut out a few seconds later.
“Perfect hit, that thing is defenseless.”
“Lieutenant Zakera to Atlantis, target 03 disabled.”
“Copy that, demolition crew inbound.” I glanced out in time to see the silhouette of three E-class fighters making their way towards the cruiser. E’s are big, damn big. Massive flying triangles with tons of anti-matter charges strapped to them. They flew slowly over the cruiser before curving off. Four or five massive explosions followed, and the cruiser split into three separate pieces.
“Admen to squadron lead, target destroyed, awaiting orders.” I glanced down at my OTACS screen. Three of the five enemy ships had been destroyed or disabled, but they refused to route. The cruiser was taking fire from Atlantis, while the ACP was being torn up by the remainder of our fighters.
“Sigma wing, all fighter forces are currently concentrating fire on the ACP, three wings are still committed to cruiser 01, get them out of there,” Hard Armor said.
“Copy that.” I unlocked my stick and loosened up a bit, flying beside Naya instead of behind her. “I’ve seen how you bomb lieutenant, let’s see how you fly,” I said.
“Understood. Your wing, your orders. How do you want to do this?” I glanced out at the cruiser. On the side untouched by Atlantis were six fighters caught in a skirmish against just as many Conjunction ships, but they weren’t holding up too well. I switched channels.
“Wings Beta, Psi and Eta, the cavalry has arrived. I need a sit rep.”
“Jet from Blackout, Eta wing, we are up shit creek! I lost an engine, I can’t outrace these guys. The whole thing’s gone to hell, we’re all isolated from each other! I don’t…” There was a small burst of light and his readout disappeared from my OTACS screen.
“Naya, kill that son of a bitch before he switches targets!” I said.
“On it.” She accelerated and quickly got behind it. Before it even had time to realize it was being chased she fired a short burst and tore it to pieces.
“Three more have noticed us, break left and suppress.” I pulled left and raced towards the three fighters flying in tight formation. Naya broke off and fired madly into the three, spraying rounds all around them to confuse and demoralize. Sure enough, they quickly broke off and tried to reorganize, easy pickings. I locked onto the first before it had even managed to flip over and tore it apart. I switched to another and swept the stream of rounds into it, never moving my hand from the trigger, and destroyed it. The third hadn’t fallen for it and had stayed its course. A burst of rounds sped towards me, forcing me to pull an awkward roll and dive. It followed me, still trying to strafe me with an unending stream of fire.
“One on your six,” she said.
“I… noticed…a little help!” I said, still dodging and swerving away from the fire. She dived, straight down before rotating and chasing. The fighter pulled off the chase, trying to get away. Another burst of fire and it was gone.
“Neutralized.”
“End for end, go after the last one,” I said. We both rolled over in place and flew back for the rest of the fight. “Anyone left, get on us and tear up that last fighter,” I said to the remaining five fighters. There were three T’s and two C’s. The T’s and one of the Cs quickly reorganized and joined us, the last C was still trying to fight off the last fighter, dodging and rolling its way out of the fire. I glanced down at my OTACS, I could have guessed who it was. “Tail-Burn, back up’s on the way.”
“Understood, no way to hit this guy, he’s following too close!”
“Break right and scorch it on my mark, all we need is one clean shot!”
“That’s not gonna work Jet, it’ll just correct and kill me!”
“No it won’t, trust me!”
“Fine, on your mark!” I aimed as best as I could and accommodated for speed.
“Five, four, three, two, GO! All fighters, wall of death now!” Tail-Burn, caught off guard accelerated as we let fly one massive volley of rounds and disintegrated the fighter.
“You could’ve killed me!”
“Only way I could catch that thing off guard was to do the same to you sir.” It worked didn’t it?
“Whatever. Fall back, we’re done here,” he said.
“Yes sir. Naya, on me, let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Copy that.” We turned and I switched channels
“Jet to Hard Armor, wings recovered, request orders.”
“The ACP is down, fall back to Atlantis, say again, all remaining fighters RTB.”
“Yes sir,” I said. I corrected and plotted a course to go around to the side of Atlantis that wasn’t firing.
“Oh fuck INCOMING!” said one of the pilots we’d saved before a warhead collided with him and blew his fighter apart. I swore and swerved right.
“Naya break right now, the cruiser’s switched its fire to us!”
“Oh that’s just perfect!” she said, rolling right and dodging another warhead. There were six of us now, six of us against twenty heavy turrets.
“All wings, pin the throttle and head for home!” said Tail-Burn. I pressed my foot down as hard as I could and felt my body press back against my seat, now racing towards Atlantis. There were already more missiles coming after us. Three fighters were hit and exploded behind us, leaving only two wings, Naya, myself, Tail-Burn, and one other T-class.
“This isn’t working! We’ve got to take evasive maneuvers!” I said.
“Negative, keep going, we’re almost out of range.”
“We’ve lost three already, we’ve got to break formation!”
“Just keep going.” I gritted my teeth and willed myself to press down harder. Naya’s T-class was slower; she might not clear the edge of its range.
“There’s one coming after me!” she said.
“Pin the throttle lieutenant! That’s an order!” The warhead was gaining on her, closer every moment. She had five seconds tops.
“Almost there…” she said, her voice full of determination. The missile went off about fifteen meters from her and she was tossed forward in an odd spin. She cried out and swore. There was a vague thump, she had probably been pushed around the cockpit a little.
“Naya! Are you okay?” There was silence. “Lieutenant Nayana, please respond.”
“Uuuuugh. I’m all right. Just a bit shaken up. Lost one of my engines, trying to stabilize.” She slowed down and forced herself out of the spin.
“We’re out of gun range, let’s get out of here. Are you still in control?”
“Yeah, she’ll fly.” We made our way back to Atlantis just in time to watch the cruiser finally go down with a little help from the E class fighters, bursting apart in a series of blue lighted explosions. We landed, caught the claw, and watched the airlock seal behind us. I glanced around the landing deck. It looked like there had been a few casualties. I took my feet off the thruster pedals and shut my system down. I was going to need some repairs. I closed my eyes and waited, feeling a loader lock on before being dragged onto the lift and brought slowly back to the flight deck. Only when I had come to a complete stop did I open my eyes and eject my flight package, sliding the canopy open and passing it to a deck hand. I left my helmet on its hook and quickly stripped off my pressure suit.
“How bad was it?” The DM had come over to check damage.
“Could’ve been worse. Bunch of small hits on the armor, nothing all that important.” I’d have said the same thing even if I was flying a cockpit with one engine. Two wings had just bought it from our squad alone. If any of them had managed to punch out or get control of what was left of their fighters they needed his full attention.
“Good, I’m gonna have my work cut out for me later,” he said, his eyes following a fighter that seemed to have lost the better part of its left side as it rolled in. He tossed a curt nod in my direction before moving past me to the next fighter.
“Hey.” I jumped a bit and turned to face Naya. She was leaning against a tool chest next to my fighter. I walked over and looked her up and down. No bruises, no cuts, no nothing. She was something else.
“I’ll be frank, that was impressive.”
“Back at you,” she tossed something a little bigger than my fist at me. I caught it and looked it over. It was a charred piece of machinery, still warm.
“What am I looking at?”
“That,” she said, retrieving it from me “is my rear life support axel, keeps the O2 flowing. Took a hit from that warhead. Another two seconds after I got in here and it would’ve died,” she said, tossing it into a pile of scrap metal.
I raised my eyebrows. “That close, huh?”
“That little axel could’ve killed me.”
I leaned back against my fighter. “Maybe we should start calling you Axel.”
She smiled and rested her arms against the tool chest. “Maybe you should.”
“Beats the hell out of some other callsigns I’ve heard.” There was a crash from further down the deck and we both looked over, a pilot had just tossed a wrench at someone. We straightened up and moved towards the source of the commotion. Tail-Burn was having a shouting match with his wingman.
“You almost got me killed! Hell, you did kill almost everyone else with us!” his wingman shouted, throwing another wrench and missing.
“I did what I had to! Stand down lieutenant!” he shouted back.
“You fucked up that whole sortie, not just the escape. You didn’t hit jack with those shriekers, I had to wave off three times!” He pointed a thumb to the underside of his fighter. “I still have a payload left and it took combined fire from Atlantis and other wings to take that thing down! Your piece of shit flying cost a lot of pilots their lives!” Tail-Burn drew back a punch and I reacted before thinking, catching his fist before he swung. I stared hard into his eyes, seething with rage.
“Back…off…lieutenant” he said, taking care to stress the last word.
“Put it down, captain.” He looked hard at me. I didn’t change my expression. Slowly, he lowered his fist and I backed away. He made to leave and I turned my back. A single movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I ducked left and felt his fist narrowly miss my ear. I backed off and centered myself lower to the ground, raising my fists to meet any other blows.
“I have had it with you Admen,” he said quietly, pulling back for another swing, clearly not thinking straight. I ducked right, his fist sailed into nothing.
“C’mon TB, don’t make me fight you.” He swung left and I pulled back, this time he missed my stomach.
“Then keep your sorry ass out of my business!” he said, pulling a one-two that I blocked with my forearms.
“Your business’ is your flying, and since you’re in my squadron, it’s my business too. That was a bad call, own up to it, learn from it.” It was exactly what he didn’t want to hear, and that was exactly what I was going for. He put his whole body into it and I rolled out of the way, making him plow his fist into a wall. I brought my fist into his face, upper cutting him into a rough standing position. He stumbled away and shook himself, eyes now fixed on me with even more hatred, if that was possible.
“You just struck a superior officer; I could put you in the brig for that.”
“Your case wouldn’t be helped by the fresh dent you just put in that bulkhead.” He wiped a small trickle of blood away from his mouth where I’d hit him. This wasn’t going to end nicely, I had to stop it now. He took another swing at me, this time I ducked, and kicked him hard in the shin, sending him toppling to the ground. Before he could move I put my boot on his chest and pressed down just hard enough to hold him there.
“Get off!” I made no effort to move my foot.
“I’ve got it from here LT,” someone said from behind me. I turned and found Hard Armor standing there, still wearing his pressure suit. I moved my foot and backed off, Tail-Burn slowly got to his feet. “The hell was that?” he said, not to me, but to Tail-Burn.
“Admen got in my face, so I…”
“I’m not talking about the fight, I’m talking about your flying. I saw everything you did. You failed runs, missed every shot, and made poor decisions time after time after time. That was bullshit captain. And yes, we may have the same rank, but this is my squadron, and I don’t want you here. You have fucked up for the last time. Get off my flight deck. You’re done. You are hereby relieved of duty,” he said, tearing the third squadron patch from his shoulder and turning to leave. Tail-Burn started to open his mouth but Hard Armor turned back. “And if you want to come crying to me about that fight, I know that you threw the first punch. I honestly don’t care, and your wingman is kinda my hero right now for finally telling you how hard you have failed at your job.” Tail-Burn turned his face to stone and roughly saluted.
“Yes sir,” he said, and walked away.
“He get you anywhere?” Hard Armor asked.
“I’m fine. How many did we lose?”
“Grand total of eight pilots and 15 Falcons from all squadrons put together. Blackout and Munch were the only ones from 3rd, others managed to punch out, E’s are scooping ‘em up. Looks like the nuggets are gonna need some on-the-job training,” he said. I nodded half-heartedly. I didn’t know either dead pilot very well. “Carry on lieutenant. Get some rest,” he said, and thrust the third squadron patch into my hand before walking away and signaling the DM for a damage report. I was left standing there clutching Tail-Burn’s old squad patch. Everyone who had watched went back to what they were doing, Tail-Burn’s wingman had hopped back into his fighter and was running post flight.
Naya sidled over. “You’re just full of surprises Admen.”
“Didn’t even think about it, just reacted. He got some good people killed today. He deserves it,” I said.
“Did I hear that right? They’re going to push some of the nuggets up to cover our losses?”
“We can’t very well transfer now that we’re in the middle of scenic nowhere can we?”
“I suppose you’re right. Does Atlantis even have orders yet?”
“I don’t think so, we just got called in on this op to save our ships. Real orders will probably be in a few hours or so.” She stretched and loosened her hair.
“Well, we’re not on CAP rotation; I’m gonna go take a nap or something.”
“Yeah, I could use one of those myself.” She started to leave.
“Hold up a second.” I jogged after her and pressed the third squadron patch into her hand. “You had a good run out there. You earned this,” I said. She smiled and dropped it into her pocket.
“Thanks.”
I walked past her and turned back mid step. “Welcome aboard…Axel.”
The Wings of Atlantis 