by M. R. Forbes
"There's going to be opposition. Guaranteed," Millie said, referring to their first return to the planet. "We need to use the Goliath as a decoy, draw their attention while we plant the ground team."
"It's going to be like trying to pop a pimple on a gorilla's ass, no matter how we work it up," Long said, the stiffness and decorum melting away. Mitchell smiled inwardly at the reaction. He'd seen it plenty of times before. The moment the mission became the priority. The moment the person faded into the background, and the warrior stepped forward.
"I see on your personnel record you've piloted over a hundred drops, Major," Millie said.
Long smiled and nodded proudly. "Yes, ma'am."
"I'd say that's a lot of pimples."
16
Origin estimated the trip from the outward star back to his chosen point near Liberty at two weeks. It wasn't a lot of time to plan a suicidal attack on the planet. It wasn't even a lot of time to try to get the newly mixed crews settled. Mitchell didn't know how much sleep he managed to sneak in during the first week of the journey, guessing it was somewhere between "a couple of hours here and there" and "none." He spent most of it coordinating the various efforts.
Singh and Origin were placed in charge of preparing the Goliath to service the needs of the living once more, a task the Tetron had already promised would keep the engineer busy during their initial encounter. Mitchell had asked Singh for constant updates on their progress and on any suspicious actions or statements on the part of the Tetron's human configuration. He had done well hiding his identity during the debriefing and seemed to be settling into the secondary role just fine. Even so, there were too many things Mitchell didn't understand about the intelligence to trust it completely.
At the same time, he found himself stuck in the middle of the two crews as they tried to get them integrated. On one hand, there was the military ritual that all of them shared and understood. On the other, there were the countless habits and unique ways of doing things that the Riggers had come to appreciate. It was a looseness and freedom that suited the assortment of outcasts that had been absorbed into that crew. A freedom that didn't always align with the more formal Alliance perspective. It led to fistfights and disciplinary action on more than one occasion, putting Mitchell in the position of having to spin the attitude of his team into a positive when in truth it was because some of them really were murders. Rapists. Liars. And at least one pedophile.
It was a truth Mitchell was trying desperately to hide.
It was challenging enough to try to bring them all together as a team. It would have been even more challenging if Major Long and his crew knew every last one of the Riggers had been court-martialed and sentenced, not assigned. If he had known that other than himself and Millie none of them had any official rank at all in the Alliance military. Even Millie's rank was held only because of bureaucratic necessity, and his own because the Tetron had gotten in the middle of any in absentia proceedings that may have occurred to strip it from him.
In the end, even with all of Long's talk of following chain of command, he knew the man wouldn't hesitate to seize control of Goliath by force if he thought the lives of his men were at risk.
In the same situation, he would have done the same thing.
His other task was to prepare the available starfighter pilots on the Valkyrie for the drop onto Liberty. It was the one time he was almost grateful for his reputation because even with the truth about the Shot being revealed, nobody could take his time aboard the Greylock away from him. Nobody could strip him of the meaning behind the assignment, and the amount of credit and admiration he received from the other jockeys because of it. It eased the burden in one area at least.
"Alvarez, watch your six," he said, a thought sending his Moray in a quick flip, vectoring thrusters sending jets of heat out into the deadness of simulated space. He placed a beacon on the enemy Moray that was coming up on the Captain's rear, tracking it towards a lock.
"Going under," Alvarez replied, her Moray dropping sharply, forward thrusters slowing its momentum.
"Too damn slow," Mitchell cursed quietly. He was still trying to adjust to the backdated firmware Watson had loaded into the implant. They all were.
He had approached the engineer the day after the briefing. They had given him a private room aboard the Valkyrie to work on preparing the software update for the broadcast stream. He had found the engineer in almost good spirits, now that he was back among people who didn't know the sordid details of his past. Mitchell had ruined that good mood in a hurry, asking him about the storage implant and demanding an interface with it to ensure he had deleted the contents.
Mitchell's eyes narrowed, and a quick thought snapped the Moray to the right, leading the enemy fighter. The p-rat toned lock, and he fired, sending a cluster of smaller munitions out around the ship. It tried to rotate past the missiles and failed, the explosions piercing the energy shields and tearing it apart.
"Thanks for the assist," Alvarez said.
Mitchell didn't hear her. His mind was still a bit unsettled, and the lack of sleep hadn't helped much. Watson had wound up sniveling and crying again because he hadn't deleted the contents. He said he had tried, but he needed it to relax.
It had taken all of Mitchell's will not to kill the engineer on the spot. They needed his twisted brain to work on the software, his advanced engineering skill to save countless lives just like he had already saved theirs more than once, damn him for being an asset.
The fake space inside his p-rat was overflowing with targets, only a dozen friendly starfighters and a simulated Valkyrie mixed in with four times that number of enemies, including a pair of cruisers and half a dozen patrollers. It wasn't a fight they could have possibly won, but the goal of it wasn't to win.
It was to survive and get the Valkyrie into the planet's atmosphere.
"I'm taking heavy fire," Major Long said. "Ares, we need better coverage."
"Roger," Mitchell said, pulling up the theater overlay behind his eyes. He could see all the moving dots surrounding them. He could tell right away that they were losing the race.
"Firestorm, Rocket, fall back and intercept the patroller." He marked it for them with a thought. "Polestar, Bear, stay on the Valkyrie's flank, they're breaking through."
"Roger, Colonel. I'm trying," Bear said. His callsign was appropriate to his appearance: big, hairy, and strong. He was also the weakest pilot on Long's crew. If Mitchell had time, he would have to run a few private simulations with him.
"Try harder," Mitchell snapped, his other thoughts still interfering with his focus, along with the lack of sleep. He had barely spent any time with Millie in the last week either, finding only one opportunity to reconnect with her in a more carnal way. Their combined exhaustion had left the experience less than satisfying.
"Roger, Col-" Bear's voice fizzled out as he was caught in the crossfire of a pair of enemy Morays. One laser weakened the shields, the other punched through and struck the cockpit directly.
"Frigging hell," Mitchell cursed. Warning tones signaled in his head as he came under fire from a pair of targets, the p-rat painting invisible laser blasts on either side of him. He threw the Moray into a tight turn and then went up, hard. "Sidewinder, I'm bringing them to you."
Captain Alvarez was Mitchell's wingmate, and her service record had been an accurate indication of her skill. She wasn't quite Greylock material because she didn't have the ground combat experience, but she had what it took in space.
"Roger, Ares. Ready and waiting."
Mitchell snapped the Moray back down into a steep drop, keeping one eye on the grid and the position of Alvarez's starfighter within it, and the other on the trailing enemy. He passed her like a falling stone and then flipped the nose up and reversed thrust to slow the descent. The enemy ships recognized the trap too late, making an effort to peel away and being met with fire from both fighters. They vanished in short explosions of onboard gasses and a spray of debris.
; "Nice move, Ares," Alvarez said.
Nice move or not, it didn't matter. Bear had been taken out, and the Valkyrie was coming under heavy fire from the patroller. It was countering the assault with projectile and missile batteries, peppering the smaller, faster ship's shields and making quick maneuvers in an effort to break the lock.
"On it," Alvarez said as if reading his mind. Her Moray burst ahead towards the patroller, with Mitchell tailing behind.
He checked the grid, finding Rocket and Firestorm engaged between two of the other patrollers, skirting back and forth and laying cover fire across both of the ships' shields. They had no chance of breaking them like that, and that was okay. Distract. Stay alive. Get the Valkyrie into atmosphere, and then fall back to Goliath. That was the plan, and they were sticking to it.
At least that much was going right.
"Shields are failing," Long said. "We're still twenty seconds out on atmosphere. If we lose hull integrity, we're going to burn up."
"You'll make it," Mitchell said. They had to. He swept in on the patroller, unleashing a round of missiles that flashed harmlessly against the shields. Alvarez was behind the ship, targeting the engines. He circled around and joined her there.
He was trying to get a lock when he noticed that one of the cruisers was moving in line to intercept the Valkyrie.
No. Not intercept it.
Ram it.
"Valkyrie, change course," Mitchell said. "Evasive maneuvers."
The Valkyrie started to twist and slow, Major Long making every effort to bring the ship out of the cruiser's angle of attack. It was designed to drop in and get out, not to evade. Its vectoring thrusters were underpowered, and the attack was a surprise.
Mitchell shook his head. It shouldn't have been a surprise. He'd already seen how the Tetron sacrificed people as part of their tactics.
The cruiser drew closer to the Valkyrie. Alvarez abandoned the patroller and made a last ditch effort to destroy it, as did Firestorm and Polestar. It wouldn't do any good. Mitchell could tell the hit was inevitable, their loss assured.
"End simulation," he said with an angry hiss.
17
"It's my fault," Mitchell said. He was standing in the hangar outside the Valkyrie with the assembled pilots. "I should have anticipated the kamikaze. I didn't think anyone had time to update the simulator with different parameters."
"It's a frigging death run no matter how you slice it, Colonel," Alvarez said. She was standing next to him, her eyes angry, sweaty hair clinging to her neck.
"We don't know the enemy is going to have such a large counterforce," Bear said. "If the Alliance had assets like that on Liberty in the first place, the Shot would have never happened."
"You might be right, Bear. What are we supposed to do? I'd rather overestimate and have an approach that works than pray the enemy is going to cooperate."
"Like they ever do," Long said. "I should have seen the cruiser incoming sooner. I got distracted by the patroller. The blame is as much mine as yours, Colonel."
Mitchell glanced at the Major. Like Millie had guessed, Long had fallen in line as soon as a clear chain of command was established. He was especially agreeable during the simulations and retrospectives, his role as the Valkyrie's pilot coming before any bullshit drama or internal grudges.
"It isn't working though. Not yet. Bear, I want you and Alvarez to spend some more time in the sim together. You need to work on your responsiveness and tactics. I'll grab you for a couple of sessions, too. Major, maybe you're right, but I have a feeling you won't make that mistake again. The fact that you got the Valkyrie to move the way you did tells me you don't need much practice."
"Thank you, sir," Long said.
"The rest of you, I want you to run two more solo sims today and send me the scores when you're done. Alvarez, with me."
"Yes, sir," they all barked at him.
"Dismissed."
The pilots dispersed, most of them heading out of the hangar towards the newly renovated berthing. The original construction of the Goliath had assumed a future with over three hundred souls aboard at any given time, and after Origin had compressed some of his own surface area, and Singh, Alice, and the two engineers from the Valkyrie had done some work, they had managed to get a number of racks cleaned and opened. They had also succeeded in getting the showers and plumbing operational within the last twenty-four, which had made everything more pleasant for everyone.
"What's up, Mitch?" Alvarez asked. He had asked her to call him by his name when they were alone. He'd made the same request of every member of his team though there were a few that just couldn't bring themselves to do it. Like Major Long.
"'I've been assessing everyone on my team. You're the best pilot we've got, hands down. I want to show you something."
He motioned for her to follow him.
"What is it?" she asked.
He pointed to a dark corner of the hangar. The S-17 was barely visible there. "I'm going in with the ground team, which means you're going to be running the starfighter squadron. I want you to take my fighter."
She laughed. "That relic? Mitchell, you can't be serious."
"Looks can be deceiving, Captain."
They crossed the open expanse to the fighter. As soon as he neared it, the side of the nose opened up, and the repulsors formed a stairway to the cockpit.
"Okay, I wasn't expecting that," Alvarez said.
Mitchell smiled, scaling the repulsors and reaching into where the helmet rested on the seat. "This helmet has its own tech in it that will supplant the systems built into the implant. It will improve your targeting and maneuverability." He shook it in his hand. "The trouble is that it's programmed to only respond to my brain waves. I need to talk to Singh about how to update it to listen to you."
"Listen to me? You make it sound like it's alive."
Mitchell ran his hand along the frayed upholstery. It had seemed that way to him, too, the way the weaponry replenished itself. The way it anticipated threats. It was almost like a less advanced version of Origin, and maybe it was. Had M used some part of himself to create the ship?
"It might as well be. I don't know if she'll be enough to turn the tide, but it has to help."
Alvarez scaled the repulsors, coming to stand next to him and peering inside. "I've never flown one of these before."
"Not even in training?"
"No. These were out of service before I did my first tour."
"Most of it is just for show, anyway. Like I said, the helmet is more advanced than anything else we've got."
"Except I can't use it."
"Not yet. I'll take care of that."
They climbed back down to the hangar floor. Alvarez glanced off to the Valkyrie, resting in the distance. "So, you're saying you led me over to a dark corner to give me a ship I can't use?"
Mitchell laughed. "It's supposed to be an honor when your CO gives you the best ride."
Alvarez returned a smile. "I am honored, Mitch. I guess I just don't know exactly what you've given me yet."
"I took out three patrollers single-handedly with the weaponry on board that fighter," Mitchell said. "I expect you to do the same."
Alvarez's face told him she was impressed. She reached back and put her hand on the fuselage. "In that case, I'm even more honored. I won't let you down, Colonel."
"I know."
"Since we're here, this is a dark corner, and I need a shower anyway." Her eyes locked onto him as if they were still in the simulator and he was her next target.
Mitchell sucked in a breath and held it, keeping his eyes locked on hers. He would never say he didn't think Alvarez was attractive, intelligent, or skilled, and Millie had told him she didn't care what he did with his spare time.
Or who.
He breathed out. "Now I'm the one who's honored, Captain. Please don't take offense, but I'm going to have to decline your invitation. Give me five minutes of downtime, and I'll be asleep within one."
She bit her
lip, her face turning red, a little embarrassed at the rejection. "Understood, Colonel. I'm sorry for being presumptuous."
"Don't be. I appreciate your candor and the offer. Believe me, it isn't because you aren't desirable."
"Oh, I know it isn't that." She approached him, leaning up and kissing him on the cheek. "Get some sleep, Mitch. You do look tired."
18
Mitchell's rack was near the front of the berthing, which itself was a long corridor of open cutouts that resembled the inside of a beehive. There were cells stacked three high on either side, and each of the cells was composed of a secondary platform with a foam mattress on it, a small task chair, and a surface that folded out from the left side of the wall. A storage locker was embedded into the right side, big enough for a few pairs of grays and some underwear.
He stepped into it and hit a button next to the entry, closing the windowless privacy hatch and activating a small, dim light that snaked around the ceiling. He only had eyes for the mattress, his head heavy and his eyes already threatening to roll back. According to Origin, the rack he had chosen belonged to Major Katherine Asher, and he had confirmed the fact when he'd discovered a photograph pressed beneath the mattress. The Major, her parents, and a chocolate Labrador Retriever.
The image had brought subconscious, ancient memories back to the forefront of his thoughts. Everywhere he went, the ghost of Major Asher followed him. She had sacrificed her life and the life of her crew to bring the Goliath to him, to help him fight a war that wouldn't start for hundreds of years. He felt a connection to her. A constant closeness that overcame eternity and placed her with him, sometime, somewhere.
Lovers.
He grew more certain of it every day. Even in the dimness of reconstituted matter, the knowing of her was more clear to him than it had been with Ella or was with Millie.
Would it be the same with Christine?