Alpha Wing

by Marco Frazetta

  Alpha Wing

  A Military Sci-Fi Harem

  Marco Frazetta

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  From the Author

  1

  Red lights flashed as my boots drummed through the corridor. The lights washed the metal maze red, like a strobe light on a lunar night club. BRRRNNN. BRRRNNNN. BRRNNNN. The howl of alarms never failed to send adrenaline through me, even after five years of hearing them. The metal lattice under me shook, and I tugged my gloves down, tight, secure, fingers itching to grip the sticks of my Phantom again.

  “ALERT 5, ALERT 5, ALERT 5!” The Officer of the Watch announced our condition over the blaring base-wide communications system. I had five minutes to get into the cockpit. “All pilots prepare for immediate deployment!”

  Up ahead I saw other pilots streaming out from different corridors, scurrying to put on helmets, rushing to be the first to make it to the starfighter bays. The bastards didn’t know the truth: it didn’t matter who made it to the ships first, it mattered who was first on the Charts. It mattered who was first when a Colossus-X89 had its missiles locked on you, and you had .75 seconds to choose from 84 different tactical maneuvers, all of which had less than a 14% chance that your body wouldn’t be torn apart by shrapnel, a balloon popping, your eyes liquified under the heat of an exploding warp-drive engine. The one who was first in this scenario, that was the first I cared about, what the Unity Space Fleet cared about. The Charts. Where every pilot, every recruit was ranked.

  The Charts were everything, measuring the worth of each individual to minutest detail. No place to hide there, no place to pull on emotions, on weakness, on pity; there, it was mathematical, it was judgement, it was a place where one could be something worthwhile, be something that no one could ever take away.

  I hurried into a side p-way, a longer path to the ships, but less crowded. My legs pumped through the dark metal lattice. I had keen senses, as all starfighter pilots do, but even I didn't sense anything strange about this walkway until it was too late. Two gloved hands, with a grip like a python, snatched me by the uniform collar, and yanked me into a utility corridor, wires all over, barely wide enough for me to fit into.

  “Who the fuck—” I grunted as I struggled, feeling arms pulling at me, my head banging against the metal wall. In the darkness of the corridor, I couldn’t make out who or what it was—a Nevossian, a Sharul, a Rogue Bot, a Marauder? I shoved the bastard hard, but he only used my own momentum against me, and slammed me against the wall. “Fuck!” I wheezed.

  I stuck my forearm against his neck, trying to choke the bastard, but he twisted it away—clearly had close quarter combat training. I caught some of his face in a dagger of light seeping through a gap above. Hair too. Human.

  “Hell, Derringer,” the voice came, female, short of breath, Earth Federation, accent of a military born, “is this how you treat a lady? I have to say… I kinda like it.”

  “Fuck, Stone!” I spat, leering at the blonde special ops member. “I could have killed you just now! Are you out of your mind?”

  “You really think you could have taken me? Hmmm… maybe. Looks like you've been training lately.” She ran her hands up my torso, then my arms. I resisted, and she tested her strength against mine, but in the end I broke free of her grip.

  “I have a ship to get to.”

  She snatched my wrist, her eyes turning sincere. “Derringer, the fleet is deploying in 72 hours... My unit is staying behind.”

  I stopped a moment, looking back at her as rails of light were streaking down her feminine silhouette, dirty blonde hair just below her ears, wild, but not as much as her sapphire eyes. Damn, whatever I tried to tell myself, I knew how gorgeous this woman was.

  “Harley...” I called her by her first name. Weakness. “The fleet comes first. The fleet. The Charts. Honor. Service.”

  She sauntered toward me in her skin-tight glossy blue uniform, hips swaying in a way that just might kill me without her needing any of her special forces training. “And that night on Cantus 9, was that honor and service?”

  “That. That was...”

  “Maybe it was a kind of service.” She smiled, her lips perking, driving me crazy.

  “What we did was technically legal. We didn’t go all the way. We didn’t—”

  “God, Derringer, are you really going to go lawyer on me… about a nice memory like that?”

  “That wasn’t a nice memory… that was weakness. It was risking our futures, a mistake.”

  Her lips parted, her eyes wounded, but only a moment. A second later, she shook her head and was herself again, cruelty in her eyes mixing with a lascivious smirk.

  “You know, Derringer, you should really break a rule for once.” She walked away. I tried to stop her, but words didn’t come. The alarms blared me back to the moment.

  I have a ship to get to.

  My legs pumped and moments later I entered the round hangar where my MK7-Phantom was waiting for me, a beautiful, gleaming dagger in its scabbard. Its wings were shaped with a curve that could make you feel like you were soaring through the stars just by looking at it.

  “Derringer,” my mechanic greeted me with a curt nod. He rose from his crouch, his smudged coveralls thick with grime.

  “Higgins.” I returned the professionalism. “Final checks complete?”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  “Thanks, brother—nice work.”

  Our fists pounded. It was the same routine with us every time I flew.

  “Thank you, Sir!”

  His hand snapped to a crisp salute, which I returned with one of my own.

  My feet clattered on the stepladder, and my legs swung in a practiced entrance that had become second nature. I nestled into the cockpit, pulled my helmet on.

  “Greetings, Lieutenant,” the Phantom’s computer system spoke to me, while status updates flashed before my eyes on my helmet’s heads-up-display.

  “Hello there, Computer,” I replied. “How’s she running?”

  “See for yourself,” the system replied.

  “Oh yeah? All right then. Initiate neural link.”

  “Aye, Sir. Initiating neural link.”

  I felt the implant in my head activate... then a moment later, my perspective broadened and then the ship and I were connected. While the ship was not entirely controlled mentally, the neural link allowed me to operate certain systems with my mind alone, such as my window displays. They all had a manual version as well, in case I turned the neural link off or it malfunctioned. Additionally, the link honed my reflexes in, magnifying them so I could respond in fractions of a second, effectively making me borderline superhuman. Oh yes. Higgins knows his craft. She felt strong, fast, and agile. I felt the power of her engines; it raised my hairs on-end. The cockpit windshield clamped down, and as that layer of tetron glass closed, I became someone else.

  I wasn’t Lieutenant Max Derringer anymore. I was Clockwork, point man of the 131st Phantom Squadron, the highest rated squad in the 9th Star Fleet.

  Switches lit up. Control screens buzzed alive. My hands wrapped around the sticks, black, grooved perfectly for my fingers.

  “Clockwork to Control. All systems go.”

  “Control to Clockwork. Cleared to enter flight deck.”

  With that, I gave my Phantom enough juice to taxi forward, smooth as a pool cue in my fingers. My cockpit window gleamed as the tunnel lights swam all along it. Then these translucent reflections gave way to the hazy, purple sky of the planet Isolation 11, with its enormous moon l
ooming overhead, only one of its twin stars visible this time of year. I glanced to either side of me. I was the farthest left of my squadron, and so to my right was a row of fellow Phantoms and a single Warhammer Gunship, all emerging from their own hangars, the sound of all our engines coming to life. “Sigma Squad,” I spoke into our group comms, which Control was synched to. “This is Clockwork onboard. Signals clear.”

  “Golden Boy, reporting for duty,” Elfen “Golden Boy” Beazly’s voice came over the comm and his face appeared on the far right of my window display, a thin olive face, a boxing glove decal on his helmet.

  “Nitro, online,” Nitro, his Nubian accent thick through the comm, his obsidian skin overlapping Golden Boy’s on the window.

  “Jackal here! Boys, I missed breakfast, and I am damn ready to rip into some fine drone meat. Woo!” Jackal, always the utmost professional, came online.

  “Knight present. Engines ready, systems ready. Most of all, weapons ready.” Knight’s pale, triangular face appeared on the side comm window, his eyes the finest money could buy, Cantus steel with glowing red slits through them.

  “All squads on exercise, this is Commander Celeste Zenithan,” a female voice came online, one I knew well. My mind augmented the control screen via the neural link and her comm window appeared centered, maximized so that she was more than life sized upon my cockpit windshield. “Admiral Bradson wishes you Vision and Unity in this last exercise before the 9th Fleet’s deployment to the frontier.”

  All our engines began roaring. I glanced to my left. Less than half a mile away was the control tower, where Commander Celeste was speaking from. I zoomed my cockpit telescope, enough that I could see her form live, not just the cut off bust that appeared on the comm screen, but her full form as she gazed out through the huge tower window. Her raven hair fell in languid ease, straight as nightfall, and her heavy lids rested on her violet eyes like satin curtains. She was tall, willowy, pert breasts that were hugged tight by her teel uniform, as desirable as any woman I had ever known. The slightest smile curled her violet lips, and she raised two fingers to her temple, subtly, and I returned the gesture. It was the sign, our sign, unknown to anyone else, that we gave to one another, reminding us that soon, when I had reached Tier 1 just like her, it would be legal for us to couple and become life-entwined. That night was going to be the greatest in my life, so great I worried I would never want to get up from our entwining bed.

  One more drill. Her private text appeared on my window. I grinned. “One more: Today,” I mentally texted back. All the nights studying the manual, all the mornings watching the Charts, every day spent lifting weights, suffering in the G-Chamber, soaring through the sky, and my final drill was today.

  My eyes narrowed, and my engines blazed to full power.

  “Clockwork, you are cleared for launch,” Celeste’s voice spurred me on.

  “Then here I go.”

  My Phantom shot out from the runway, torching the air.

  We were in the purple lower atmosphere then, the barren surface of Isolation 11 rushing under us at Mach 2, Mach 3, 4 and climbing. Though our atmosphere modulators adjusted for the enormous speed, the Phantom was designed to preserve all energy systems and so some of the sheer pressure of the turns still pressed on our bodies. My limbs vibrated, my jaw rattling as we climbed in speed and made a wide arch, pivoting to our 9 o’clock.

  “Knight, I want you on scan lead. Sensors at 9,” I ordered.

  “I know my function. No need to tell me.”

  “There is actually,” I corrected him. “That’s protocol, which you would know if you read the manual.”

  “You really worship that thing don’t you?”

  “Just do your job.” If Knight wasn’t always obsessed with outdoing me, with topping me for point man of the squadron, he would be the finest pilot I knew in the fleet.

  “Hey now, who needs drones when we can have a battle royale out here, ey boys?” Jackal laughed over the comms.

  “Yeah! Loser gets Reprogrammed!” Golden Boy added.

  “Reprogramming is not a thing to joke about,” Nitro’s deep, husky voice reflected his serious nature.

  Jackal quickly took Nitro’s side, replying: “Shit yeah Nitro, no bet is worth becoming a fucking Zap! Hey, any of you guys know somebody who got Reprogrammed?”

  “No way man,” said Golden Boy.

  “I don’t spend time with questionable persons… except for you lot,” Knight responded.

  “What about you, Clock?” Jackal asked me.

  My mind strayed into the past. A boy being stripped from his family. “Yeah,” I told them. “Once. A long time ago. Never saw him again.”

  The boys had nothing to say for once. Not much was known about Reprogramming, except that it was used only in the most serious cases of personal digression from the Unity Government ideals. I knew that the technology used during Reprogramming was similar to the neural link tech in our Phantoms, but that was it. I shook off my own mental digression: “Alright, let’s stay frosty. Prepare for engagement.”

  We rose higher into the sky, leaving the intense brown haze that hovered on the planet’s surface, but I made sure to stay well within atmosphere. The systems change was not something we needed.

  We were soaring, and I was tracking all of them on screen, little blue dots moving in a V line. “Knight, I’m picking up some kind of scramble signal, six clicks away. Confirm.”

  “I’m observing. No need to remind me.”

  This guy. I swear. “Any day now.”

  “Yes,” he hissed. “Scramble signals coming from 46 degrees. Six clicks.”

  “Golden Boy,” I called, “get on that.”

  “You got it, Clockwork.” Golden Boy began putting up counter scramblers, his ship having a stronger version of the standard Phantom anti-scrambling equipment, making sure that our systems wouldn’t go haywire. These drones that we drilled with weren’t anything to mess with. They flew at speeds that matched and could even exceed our own, and in the chaos of some drills it was not unheard of for planes to crash as they were trying to pull off intense maneuvers. Much of Starfighting was a battle of scrambling and counter scrambling ship systems. At one point in the history of warfare, starfighters never had a visual lock on their targets, but fired from over fifty, even a hundred miles away. Then scrambling developed to where a ship could simply cause another’s targeting systems, or even entire computer systems to completely malfunction. Thanks to the increase in various technologies, that had greatly been reduced. Now, most of the time the scramble and anti-scramble just canceled out one another, though the long range targeting systems on ships had been made mostly ineffective as a missile could not carry its ship’s anti scramble technology with it as it flew to its target. That’s why visual point battle training was so important. A targeting system for a missile might be scrambled, detections might be scrambled, but good luck trying to scramble a good old lasgun and a trained pilot’s eye.

  The violet sky rippled under the pressure of our engines as we rushed forward. My eyes narrowed, searching. “We should be coming up on them any second.”

  “I got eyes on them!” Nitro’s accented voice came through.

  “Notch 1! Notch 1!” I called out over comm. All obeyed my command and slowed to Notch 1 dogfighting speed. “I spot them too.” They were faint, but I could see the glow of thrusters whizzing through the old city of Pharaoh. It had been devastated in the war fifty years ago, and the Unity Government Military had left the city as a kind of training ground once Isolation 11 had reopened to us. The city buildings rose up into the dusty sky, a thousand rows of broken windows, irradiated tombs.

  “They’re setting up an ambush for us. Remember squad, this is a full-scale warzone aggression scenario. We’re taking those drones out for good, and blowing whatever we need to straight to hell. Knight you’re going to flush them out. Hovering speed, full firepower on location.” Knight was good at what he did. I had to give him that. And he had the right equi
pment for it, an NM41 Warhammer gunship, with a blunt nose, short thick wings, lasguns that could fire at six times our rate, and twelve times our missiles. He never seemed to mind what he gave up in maneuverability.

  “Golden Boy, get missile locks on anything that comes out of that cover. The rest of us will engage in one on one pursuit. Tri sectors. I take middle, Nitro left, Jackal right.”

  “Aye, aye, captain!” Jackal said, ever the comedian.

  “I’m not a captain. I’m a lieutenant.”

  “Aw come on, Clockwork,” Jackal brayed, “I know that, for crying out loud.”

  “Let’s go. Do your job.” The time for jokes was over.

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” Knight said. “Unlike some fools.”

  With that, lasgun fire began raining down on the cluster of old city ruins. Better than a lasgun light concert, my cockpit window glowing as the plasma roiled in concentrated blasts. It was quickly followed by missiles which began shattering concrete walls apart, wrecking metal frames, leaving them glowing bright orange. Knight was positioned above us, and he was slowly descending as he continued spitting volleys of firepower.

  Golden Boy opened fire as well, in a support role to Knight, waiting for those missile locks.

  The trio of us Phantoms soared on, drawing closer and closer to the building cluster. The friendly fire was like fireworks and we made damn sure to stay clear of it.

  “The drones!” Golden Boy’s voice came over comm.

  “Locks, Golden Boy! Locks!” I flew straight ahead, spotting a drone cluster that was swooping out of the buildings, maneuvering slightly to my left. A bomber drone, shaped like a lozenge, all sleek silver, escorted by five silver diamond shaped fighter drones, all of them glowing with a mini-warp drive engine inside them. The fighter drones opened fire at me, their red lasguns pinging past me. I was already barreling downward, anticipating their fire and so they all missed and flew past me.