by Nick Webb
She took a stool at the end of the bar, swinging her leg up and over it, and motioned for a beer. Swirling tattoos covered her shoulders in various designs, and her close-cropped blonde hair swept over her forehead, nearly covering her eyes. She blew it aside with pursed lips and swigged the beer offered to her by the bartender.
“Stop staring, Shotgun,” Crash whispered.
“Why?” asked Jake, as he forced his eyes to drift past the girl towards the monitor hanging on the wall. With his peripheral vision, he saw her glance at him, and smile before returning to her beer and looking up at the other monitor behind the bartender.
“Because, you don’t want to repeat the experience of earning your callsign,” Crash quipped, reminding him of the unfortunate event in which he’d been dubbed Shotgun.
Ignoring his buddy’s advice, he grabbed his drink and ambled over to the woman. She didn’t even look at him. “Mind if I join you?”
She let out a mock-sigh. “I suppose.”
He smiled as he sat down. A flirt. He liked flirts.
“You come here often? Never seen you here before,” he couldn’t take his eyes off hers—not a hint of makeup, yet easily the most striking, intense eyes he had ever seen.
“I only come here when I get through blasting Corsican bastards out of the sky. You?”
“So you’re a gunner? Which ship were you on?” Jake leaned closer to her.
“Gunner?” She laughed. A deep, throaty laugh. “No. Pilot. Hornet squad. Lieutenant Anya Grace at your service.” She set down her beer and offered her hand.
“Jacob Mercer. Uh, also pilot. Viper squad … at your … uh, service.” He took her hand, silently willing his language processing skills to work as well as the lower half of his body. “Hornet squad, huh? You guys did some nice flying out there last night.”
“You’re right, we did,” she smiled and took another gulp of her beer.
Nice. Beautiful, flirty, and confident—his favorite type. He grinned and let his eyes drop from her face. She set the glass down and wiped her mouth. “Get a good look?”
He snapped his eyes back to hers. “Sorry? Hmm?”
She rolled her eyes, then stood up, facing him. “Look, sweetie, I usually come here because I know I can find men who know what they got, and can give it to me.” She glanced around the half-empty bar, waving her arm. “Is that you, or should I go sit somewhere else?”
“No, ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am.”
His heart pounded. A successful mission, a saved battleship, a grateful Admiral, and now this. He couldn’t believe how this day was shaping up.
“Well?” she said, expectantly.
He looked up and down her perfect body, feeling suddenly flustered. “What, you mean now? Here?”
Her brow furrowed with a look of concern. “I can wait for you if you’d like to call your mom and ask her permission.”
Wow. He shook his head in disbelief, held up his hands. She grabbed one and led him to the women’s restroom. Once there, she shut the door and locked it, turning to him to rip his shirt off. She pushed him back against the wall, with her back to the mirrors, and he got to see her from behind as he pressed up against her front. More swirling tattoos graced her back and shoulders. Serpents and dragons, and, almost out of place, a small heart above her right buttock.
And she was good. Direct, forceful, and good.
When he zipped up, she reached down to pick up his undershirt for him, holding it up to her nose and taking a deep breath before she handed it over.
“Thanks, champ. Thanks for helping a girl out.” She flashed a wry smile at him and stroked his chest once before zipping up and reaching down to turn the sink water on. Her hands splashed water up into her face and she dried off with a towel before grabbing the door handle and leaving him to finish dressing alone.
“Well that was … awesome,” he said to the empty bathroom.
***
The automated taxi smelled like cigarettes and booze, and he swore the damned thing overcharged him, but nothing could pull his thoughts away from the memory of that mirror, and that naked, perfect, tattooed backside.
“Hey, you listening to me? I said, HQ called us to return immediately. We don’t have time to stop at the barracks.” Crash studied his datapad, poking at a few buttons.
Jake pulled himself away from the memory to focus momentarily. “What? Why? We’ve still got two hours, right?”
“Didn’t say. They just said drop what you’re doing and go straight to the base. What did you need at the barracks, anyway?”
Jake stared out the window, towards the sprawling Eglin Space Force Base, trying to remember why.
“Oh yeah. Hey, hand me your pad for a second.” Crash tossed it to him, and Jake thumbed a button near the top. “Call Janet Mercer, of Bainbridge Island.”
The pad spoke back to him in an androgynous voice. “I assume you mean Janet Mercer, mother of Lieutenant Jacob Mercer.”
“Yes,” he snapped, adding under his breath, “what did you think I meant, you toaster?”
Several moments later his mother’s face appeared on the screen. “Happy birthday, mom!”
“Jacob! Thank you, thank you. I thought you’d be way too busy to call! Did you see the news? Have you been watching?” Her warm face filled the screen, wrinkles and all.
He chuckled. “Yeah, mom, I got front row seating.”
Her eyes widened and a hand rose to her mouth. “You mean … oh don’t tell me you were up there.”
“Classified, mom. I might have been up there, and I might have been down here watching on the big screen.” He winked at her—a signal to indicate exactly where he was earlier that same day.
“Oh my goodness. I’m just glad you’re ok. They say half our fighters didn’t make it out of that fight. Half!”
Half, indeed. He tried not to think of their faces. Not yet, at least. There would be time for mourning in a few days when the next few battles were won and they had cemented their victory. For now, though, it was still time to fight. To celebrate, and fight.
“Jacob? You ok? You probably lost some friends up there.” His mother was reaching up to her camera, as if to touch his face.
“Yeah, mom. A lot of good people died. But hey, we won, right? That’s what matters. We’re free again. No more empire. Not here, anyway. They won’t think of coming back for a long time.”
“Well I sure hope not,” his mother said, nodding. “In fact, just last week my general welfare application was denied by the government, just because of a typo. A typo!”
Leave it to his mother to put everything in perspective.
“That’s awful mother. How did you cope?” he said, wryly.
“Oh don’t patronize me, Jacob. It was supposed to be my sole source of income for the next few years until my annuity matures. It’s stuff like this that the empire gets wrong.” She seemed to notice his skeptical expression. “I mean, sure, the disappearances and the repression, and that god-awful religion they shoved down our throats for the past sixty years … sure. But it’s the day-to-day inanities that get to me.”
He nodded, as if completely agreeing with her. “Sure, mom, sure. So,” he added, “you say it was a typo? What kind?”
An embarrassed look passed over her face, just for a moment, before she nodded vigorously and said, “Ok, I may, may, have transposed—accidentally transposed—my age.”
“Transposed? You mean, you said you were thirty-six?”
“It was an accident! Really, Jacob,” she said.
“Well you come by it honestly at least, mom,” he said, noticing her humble look of oh-you-shouldn’t-have, before adding, “I mean, it’s what you’ve been telling everyone for years now, so it’s no wonder it was the first thing you put down.”
She shot him a wrathful look, then resumed her smile. “So. Get me anything this year?”
“Same thing you got me last year, mom.”
“What, a mother’s undying love? Look, Jacob, you know I�
��m fixed income and—”
He held up his hands. “Kidding mom, seriously. Yeah, of course I got you a present. Go check your mail.”
“What? I mean, really? You got me something? Oh, you shouldn’t have. Really, Jacob, you’ve got better things to focus on right now without have to worry about your old mother, I mean—” she rambled on, but Jacob could see she was getting up to check her mail receptacle.
Muting the receiver, he said, “Hey, datapad. Book one economy flight to Bainbridge Island for me in, say, uh, two, no three…” he glanced over at Crash.
“We get leave in two months,” he said, without even looking up from a game he was playing on his femtopod.
“Two months from today,” he finished.
“From which account, Lieutenant Mercer?” the androgynous voice asked.
“Which account? What do you mean, which account? My account.”
“Your account shows a balance of exactly fifteen cents, sir.” The voice almost sounded smug. Jake wondered if that was even possible. Fifteen cents? Now he was sure the autotaxi overcharged him.
“Just, just, I don’t know, apply for an advance against my next paycheck from the military. And send a confirmation to my mom in a nice pretty envelope. Hurry.”
“Processing. Loan applied for. Funds will be deducted from your next deposit. Booking flight now.”
His mother’s face returned to the screen, and he clicked the mute off. “—nothing there. Jacob, are you sure you sent something?”
“I’m sure mom. Go check again—I got confirmation that it’s there. Maybe you missed it under the junk mail.”
“Well, ok. Be right back.” He waited for her to reappear, and when she did, she grasped a shining silvery envelope, on which he could clearly see printed the words ‘Happy Birthday’. Man, that computer’s getting good.
“Jacob, really? You’re really coming up here?”
“Yeah, mom. Happy birthday!” He glanced out the window, and saw that the grav-car was slowing down. Eglin Space Force Base loomed nearby. “Hey, look mom, I’ve got to go. I’m back on duty.”
“All right, dear. Say hi to your father for me.” She forced a smile. Jacob knew that in spite of the nasty divorce twenty years ago, she tried to keep things cordial for him and his sister.
“Dad? Heh, I haven’t seen him in years.”
“But Jacob, he’s right there in Destin. Really? Years?”
“Yeah, mom. Hey, gotta go. Good to see you—you look great, by the way.” He swore he could see her blush.
“Bye, sweetie. Call soon!” Her face disappeared, and he handed the pad back to Crash.
“Sweet lady,” said Crash as he folded the pad and stuffed it in his pocket. The door opened for them automatically as the car landed, just outside the command center at Eglin.
Jake nodded. “She’s the best.” The woman basically sacrificed her journalism career to raise him and his sister Claire all by herself. And yet, still, after all this time, she was classy enough to send regards to her ex-husband. Maybe she was right. He decided the first thing he’d do when he got back from the next mission would be to look him up. Destin was only ten miles away, after all.
***
The main briefing room in Eglin’s command complex was immense, with hundreds of seats arranged auditorium style, and enormous curved viewscreens wrapping the walls. They settled in some seats next to a few other Viper squad members, and conversed quietly—there was an odd mood in the air, not at all what one would expect the day after such a stunning victory.
Several hundred officers jumped to their feet, and Jake, not seeing who had entered the room, rose with them. Through the doors behind the podium, a tall, bald, elderly-looking officer made his way onto the central dais, and approached the microphone.
“Greetings,” said Admiral Pritchard. “Please sit.” His voice was unusually subdued, and a knot began to form in Jake’s stomach.
Kit leaned over to him. “This sounds bad, whatever it is.”
Jake nodded, and focused on the wrinkled face of the Admiral. “At oh seven hundred, our listening post in low orbit around Arcturus picked up a gravitic signal. The signature of the spectrum indicates an imperial presence, and after careful analysis we’ve determined that the mass displacement at the source of the signal was on the order of three or four billion metric tons.”
A gasp of disbelief rose from the assembled officers. Four billion tons? Jake tried to do the math in his head.
“For those counting, that translates to between fifteen and twenty Centurian-class heavy cruisers. Our best guess is that the empire has wrapped up operations stemming from the rebellion in the November sector far earlier than anticipated, and is now heading here. As some of you know, for capital ships larger than ten million metric tons or so, the gravitic shift navigation route from Arcturus passes through the orbit of Vega, then directly to Sol. Our listening post shifted the datapod directly to Earth orbit of course, due to its minuscule mass.”
This last part he said over the rising din of chatter among the increasingly nervous men and women. He paused, tapping the microphone with a finger.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please. Hysteria will be of no service to us. We will press on, and keep calm, and do our duty. The fallen heroes last night demand it of us.” He paused, letting the memory of their friends steel their resolve.
He continued, “We expect they will shift from Vega orbit within the hour, and when they enter Sol orbit, only minutes are required to charge the gravitic energy banks to make the shift to Earth orbit. We have …” he took a deep breath, “countermeasures planned. But they will not save us without the skill, the concentration, the grit, and the resolve of each and every one of you and those who serve under you.”
“I am needed elsewhere, but Admiral Gutierrez will brief you on the battle plan.” He stepped aside from the podium, his shoulders vaguely hunched—the man has seen more battle as a commander in the imperial fleet than the rest of us combined, Jake thought—and slowly, straightening his curved back, raised an arm to his forehead in a solemn salute.
Every soldier in the assembly hall rose to their feet, and returned the salute, in a silence that seemed to Jake both heroic and ominous. Admiral Pritchard turned and left the auditorium, and Admiral Gutierrez approached the podium.
The briefing went on for over twenty minutes, and Jake grew restless. As battle plans went, it was a simple one. Defend Earth. Go to any length possible. Now that the majority of the Earth’s governments had officially sided with the Resistance, new resources lay open to them including, happily, four capital ships that the North American and European Joint Space Fleet had been holding back, a few dozen extra frigates and light cruisers, and hundreds of extra fighter squadrons.
So the odds were not hopelessly against them. But the chances that most of them would not live to see the next day were high, and they all knew it. Jake grit his teeth.
Gutierrez continued his briefing. “Second division fighter squads, you’re assigned suborbital patrol and defense duty for northern latitudes, third division squads have southern latitudes. Every other fighter division is in orbit. First and fourth, you will escort the Fury, as usual, and fifth through eighth will escort the USS Odierno. All other divisions are on the frigate and light cruiser battle groups. Lower orbital teams, you are responsible for missiles that make it through the perimeter defenses, in support of the ground-based ion beam cannons and surface-to-air missile interceptors. Upper orbital teams….” The Admiral spoke quickly and efficiently, flipping through some maps and orbital charts on the viewscreens before pausing and glancing up at them all.
“I suppose I don’t have to impress upon you all the importance of your performance today,” he started slowly, in a more somber tone of voice. “Earth’s very freedom hangs in—”
An explosion rocked the building and the power momentarily went out before auxiliary lights kicked in. Jake heard Crash swear.
Another blast, this time a little farthe
r away, but followed by a third that appeared to hit the auditorium building, as large chunks of the ceiling caved in, crushing half a dozen people in the center of the room.
“To your stations!” yelled Admiral Gutierrez, and he ran from the podium with his security escort through the double doors behind the raised dais, narrowly dodging more falling debris. The room erupted into organized chaos as nearly two hundred officers bolted for the double doors on either side of the room. Another blast rocked the building, and Jake wasn’t sure if he was glad or not that he was in the command complex. On the one hand it had reinforced blast-proof walls and ceilings, and could nearly survive a full-on nuclear or antimatter strike. On the other hand, it was a target, and whoever was bombing it right now was persistent.
“Who the hell is it?” he yelled at Kit as they scrambled for the door. If they could only get to the fighter bay, they could have a chance against whatever threat lie above.
“Probably some imperial sleeper cells. Or, now that I think about it, the Asian Republic. They never announced their support for the Resistance, and now that the imperials are on their way back in force, they’re probably just trying to curry favor.”
Ahead of them, a man and a woman tumbled to the ground, and they both bent down to assist the fallen pair who, by the blood streaming from their heads, seemed to have been struck by falling debris. The woman glanced at their flight uniforms and insignia.
“Thank you, boys, but don’t worry about me. Get the hell to your ships and blast the bastards out of the sky.”
Jake noticed her commander’s bars on her uniform and shouted, “Yes, sir!” Once out of the auditorium, they sprinted down the hallway, aiming for the doors that would lead outside and to the Viper hangar bay.
Despite the bad news from the Arcturus listening post, and the current bombardment, Jake felt alive. This was what he was built for. This was why he signed on to the Space Fleet. He thrived on adrenaline and he knew it, and couldn’t help grinning inside as he ran.