A Room
Earth?
Sol System?
1 January ????
"Hijo de la chingada," I groaned as too-bright light did its best to prize open my eyelids and chew on my optic nerves. "Turn the fucking sun down, I don't need this shit."
A noncommittal murmur came from the familiar body who shared the mattress with me, but the light kept up its assault. Fine, it was up to me. Burying my face in the pillow, I reached up above my head to twitch the curtains shut, only to smack my wrist against the edge of a headboard that my bed did not feature. More muttered cursing ensued as I rolled into a sitting position on the side of the bed, bending over my throbbing wrist. The carpet was a surprise under my feet, if less painful than the headboard.
As the pain subsided, pieces dropped into place in my mind. I had obviously been drinking heavily last night. I hadn't been blackout drunk since I was in my teens and away at college for the first time, but I still knew what a hangover felt like. Why I felt the need to drink so heavily was an open question, and one past me would have almost certainly informed me I didn't want the answer to. Drinking heavily enough to induce anterograde amnesia for the duration of a bender was a statement in and of itself.
Actually, I was surprised by just how little my head hurt, given the fuzz in my thoughts and the fact that I had no idea where I had woken up. I guess even my roaringly drunk self knew to hydrate. That was better sense than I would have credited myself with if I was being quite so self-destructive.
"Oye cabron, por que crudo?" I asked myself. My bedmate was familiar, so it was unlikely I had been broken up with. No, that wasn't it. When my mind turned to them, nothing but general warm feelings arose. This hadn't been one last show for the road. Pity I was so fuzzed that I couldn't even pull their name up. I had hammered my frontal lobe flat if I couldn't remember the name of someone I'd known for something on the order of a decade and a half and been dating for the best part of two years…but that wasn't right. I had met Terri two years ago during induction at LMS.
"Que chingados? What else did I do?" That wasn't right either…
Why was I weaving back and forth between Spanish and English? I'd only picked up a few years of high school Spanish, and my canned answer to if I spoke it was solamente un poco. But, of course, that was the product of the south end of a northbound Ranger. I had grown up with the language. It wasn't like the kibbutz was far from the haciendas of any number of norteño families. Besides, its not like you could avoid Spanish on Cerillos…
Cerillos.
My eyes shot open and I scrabbled at the bedside table for the glasses that of course I didn't wear. As if Lloyd Marik-Stanley would accept a cadet that didn't have perfect vision. Ridiculous. It felt like I had just taken a face full of ground glass as New Olympia's starlight joyfully resumed its assault on my optic nerves. Doing my best to ignore the dissonance of my mind insisting that the light streaming in through a window overlooking the Darienbad skyline was both too yellow and dim as well as too white and bright at the same time, I stumbled my way to the upscale hotel suite's bathroom.
It wasn't as bad as I feared. The lines of my face in the mirror were familiar enough. I wasn't used to seeing myself so clearly without glasses, and the lack of beard made me look like a teenager, an impression not helped by the complete absence of gray hairs. But the eyes were the same hazel, maybe trending further towards brown than I expected. Certainly, my skin did. I couldn't tell if that was lifestyle or genetics talking, but I was most certainly tanner than I had been before I woke up. I also had less wrinkles. Wore my hair shorter too, though I could still see my curls starting to assert themselves.
I was also in much better shape that I had been at twenty, which I knew was how old I was. But a fighter pilot cadet had to be. There was a level of fitness that had to be maintained to handle, or even get to handle a high-performance torch job, and it was well above that of an aimless college student, even if he did dabble in martial arts.
Rubbing my chin, I grimaced at the paltry stubble I felt there, reaching by reflex for the razor and shaving cream that sat in my travel kit. There were standards to uphold, after all.
"You know," I said as I finished lathering up and put the razor against my skin, addressing whoever or whatever decided to slap me together out of a couple of people that had certainly not asked for it, "You're a real pendejo. Tu apestas. You couldn't have asked for some consent, or even given me some direction?"
Whoever or whatever it was, it did not apologize or fix its mistake. On the other hand, it also didn't make me cut my throat with the razor. Small favors, I supposed. Then I snarled as I wiped away the last of the shaving cream. Yeah, no. Fuck that. It probably just wouldn't be as entertaining to just kill me like that.
I snapped on the shower. I had two lives to integrate and a mountain of shit to figure out. On the nightstand, a message light blinked on.
Hotel Serena
Darienbad, New Olympia
Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League
1 January 3015
Post-shower and painkillers I felt significantly better. Still rather annoyed with the situation, but at least I had something of a handle on it. Besides, Terri was going to be back with some pastries and drinks she swore were to die for. Apparently cursing and banging my limbs on the bed were not worth waking up for, but the sound of a running shower was. Terri immediately proved herself as more moral than the god that had elected me as their plaything by accepting that I wasn't up for anything at the moment, thought she did give me a worried look. Great woman, Terri. Damn good friend. Sadly, that was as far as it could go for us. Nobles had to marry smart, and Cerillos boys from the chapparal were out of the question for a Tomlinson of Holt.
At least I knew who I was locally now. Gideon Hillel "Duster" Zalman, Gid to my friends. I had been born on Cerillos in 2995 in the Puerto Cortes Central Hospital, and grew up in Kibbutz Machseh on the edge of the Alamagordo highlands of Matzalan. My mother, Ariel Zalman, had served the FWLM as a MechWarrior, and had apparently made a name for herself as a recon and raiding specialist who fairly danced in the air at the controls of her SDR-5V Unktomi, which she had named after the stories of some of the Lakota she had grown up near. She had done well, up until she didn't. A Lyran Rifleman cut Unktomi's legs right out from under Mom, and while she managed to escape, Unktomiwas dragged away from Shiloh by the Lyrans. Eema was Dispossessed.
Of course, she was supposed to be saddled again. Little use wasting such a good pilot, and the League even produced the Spider. But no new mech arrived, and eventually the needs of the service placed Eema on secondment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's mission to the Magistracy of Canopus, where she had met Dad.
Ephraim Adelman had been a spy, working for the Magistracy Intelligence Ministry's Foreign Affairs Corps. But he had left the service for a up and coming LosTech prospecting business. Shockingly, he was successful. Even more shocking, ComStar hadn't arranged an accident for him. Part of me was shocked that I'd be suspicious of the studiously neutral ComStar. The other part of me found it hard to believe the rest of me wasn't. A difference in perspective.
I'd never got the chance to meet him. According to Eema, some noble shiksa decided that a husband who had a track record of finding LosTech and had experience in the intelligence field was just the thing to bolster her family's position. Najwa Landynski might have just been a Girin, but that was enough. A man could not refuse the marriage proposal of a Canopian noblewoman of any grade.
Which left Eema pregnant with me and an embarrassment to an up-and-coming foreign noble house. No wonder the FLWM had pulled her out. No wonder that she had applied for a home defense role back on Cerillos and brought me back to the kibbutz.
From there I had grown up Southwestern. I had practically grown up in the saddle, piloting the kibbutz's assortment of Mechs as soon as I was old enough to reach the pedals and help herd the Rangers. I was surprised to learn that I had not only never strapped on a CattleMaster, I'd never even heard of it until this morning. Maybe it hadn't been produced yet. Certainly, I was familiar with the R4N-HD RanchHand, the PTN-1 Patron, and my favorite ride of my childhood, a no-fooling Fletcher-build MR-8C Marco that had an SLDF acceptance stamp on its engine shielding.
Sadly, I was also familiar with the KIC-3 Harvester Ant, which was just the most boring, annoying, and downright painful Mech in the Sphere to sit. Who wanted to harvest crops when there were cattle to herd? Someone who had to try and herd Ranger bulls when astride that malfing putapretending to be a Mech. No wonder that the kibbutz used it as a punishment chore, one that I was intimately acquainted with.
My misadventures aside, I had shown talent, and as with any skill, practice is the most important thing to getting good. Eema would scold me for hopping Pogo hither and yon across the face of Creation when its legs actuators worked perfectly fine, but she helped me with my technique, and eventually just gave my jumps nods of approval. That was always her way. Don't do something unnecessary and risky if you don't have to, but if you're gonna take the risk, make sure to do it right. And if you didn't? Malfing up was the best time to learn. Mechs, horses, guns, romance, whatever. Just be sure to be a mensch, not a pendejo.
I tried my best. Did better than most. Lord knew I never made Eema cry. And when I told her I wanted to be a MechWarrior, she had nodded and said I'd make a good Allison grad. She had applied for the Liberation Units the very next day, determined to give me the best chance at the best academy in the League. Which made it awfully fucking ironic that my recruiter had totally ignored the fact I had grown up in Mech cockpits like a proper Cerillos Jewboy should, and decided that my test result, particularly my reflexes meant that I was destined for an ASF's cockpit. She'd probably been burned by some Santa Fe gringoin the past.
Eema and I had been spitting mad, but in all honesty, I had grown to love flying. Besides, my skill in a Mech made me a shoo-in for a place in the Marik Guards, so long as I could prove it. That had been part of why Terri and I were here in Darienbad. Oh sure, officially she was here to deliver a file to Allison's commandant detailing LMS's proposal for the latest joint, read competitive, freshman SERE exercises. Not even working together to hold off the Eighteenth Marik Militia was enough to dampen the rivalry between our schools.
But Terri had gotten that slot because Teresa Tomlinson deserved some birthday leave by virtue of her noble blood and her performance against the Eighteenth. I had gotten the slot as the number two on the training flight that the errand doubled as because Terri remained a damn fine wingthing no matter how purple her blood was. And because as she saw it, I was the most likely of the blooded cadets to make leave exciting, one way or another.
That was probably true, I reflected, looking at the neurohelmet that had done its best to punish me for liberating it from its previous owner by bouncing the rays of New Olympia off its faceplate right into my sleeping eyes. A true antique, the helmet was lighter, sleeker, and more capable than the one I was used to. It had also been a Liszt family heirloom until last night. I wondered if it contained a ghost, and if it was as arrogant as the idiot I had parted it from.
"You're looking better, Cowboy," said Terri as she returned with a bag and drinks. "Here, have some of these. The taste'll civilize you yet."
"Jewboy," I corrected with a raised figure, leaning into my local habits. "I know there doesn't seem to be a whole hell of a lot of difference to you up in your ivory tower, gringa, but there are folk back home who would swing on you for that."
Terri smiled. This was old ground. "Yeah, but you protest so much that you've got to be the Charlie Oscar type, not the Juliet Echo." For a gringa, especially a noble, she paid attention to the intricacies of Southwestern life. One of the things that made her so charming.
Not that she didn't get things wrong sometimes. "You've heard of a Jew that doesn't kvetch as easy as breathing?"
"Sample size of one, Gid, can't draw any conclusions from that." She pushed what looked like a linzer tart towards me along with a coffee. "Now eat this, you trail-dust coated terror."
Disgust warred with obscene levels of relish as I took a sip of the drink. The two parts of me had very different relationships to coffee. We agreed on the tart being excellent. Still, honor needed to be satisfied. "I don't know, Terri. Doesn't feel like a proper meal without some green chiles. Might just be my rough and tumble tastes."
Terri rolled her eyes. "Sure." She smirked. "So you don't want the second one I got you?"
I put on an air of stuffed shirt offense. "Now, I said no such thing of the sort. After all, someone keeps on telling me that I need expand my tastes beyond what can be made in a dutch oven over a campfire. And I am doing my level best to pretend to be all gentrified. You might even mistake me for growing up in Puerto Cortes at this point," I said with exaggerated pride.
"Not Santa Fe?" asked Terri sweetly.
"Now, there's no call to be nasty," I said. "Some things are just impossible in this creation. Now gimme that tart."
She gave it up with a laugh. "Don't know if you noticed, but you've got a message light on your comm."
I shrugged as I savored what tasted like a mix between raspberry and blood orange jam. "Wasn't marked as high priority," I said, then sighed. "Okay, it is, but it's a civilian header. And you know that on a training op, checking civvie mail can be a demerit. Figure I'm already due a couple for last night. No need to give them a chance to hang another one on me."
Terri pursed her lips. "Probably a few, yeah. But you know what they say, as well hung for a sheep as for a lamb."
"Spoken like someone not about to get hung," I said. "I'll check it when we get back. Speaking of, any change in the itinerary for today?" I downed the last of the tart and followed it with a long pull on the coffee.
"Nope," she said, booting up a compad and giving it a once-over. "No changes here. We pick up the Allison plans from Commandant Matthias and we take the flight back to LMS, just as briefed."
"Sure thing, Lead." I finished my coffee and stretched. "Time to go tweak the noses of some tinnies."
Allison Mechwarrior Institute
Darienbad, New Olympia
Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League
1 January 3015
Apparently, we had done just that with last night's antics. We were copping all sorts of dirty looks from the Allison cadets. Some of them were full of disbelief. Some promised murder. Really, it was a poor welcome for such stalwart former comrades. Not that I hadn't earned it…
I did my best to suppress a smug grin as I didn't quite lounge outside of the commandant's office, resplendent in my LMS cadet uniform and a pair of those most cliché of pilot affections, a pair of aviator shades.
"…15 tons," whispered one cadet out of my sight, probably near the edge of the building.
"No way," hissed another.
The grin broke free of my control and I rolled my head over to spot a pair of pair of freshman cadets who stiffened in surprise. "Es verdad," I said with a shrug. "I spotted him a 50 percent tonnage advantage."
One of them scowled. "No way," he repeated, leading his friend over. "A second-year aerospace jock doesn't beat a MechWarrior in a heavier machine."
I laughed. "You're right." I paused for effect. "Liszt isn't a MechWarrior."
That ruffled some feathers. "Listen, flyboy…" began Mr. Disbelief.
I cut him off. "He's a third-year cadet. Not like he's graduated."
Mr. Disbelief sputtered. The other cadet pursed her lips. "So how did you do it? Liszt is good."
I raised an eyebrow. "Really. You think so?" I shook my head and pushed my local disdain for Allison cadets down. I could teach a lesson here, and the League certainly needed cooperation now if ever. I drew myself up straighter, facing the two of them. "No, that's not fair. Look, I probably couldn't have done the same thing in an open field fight. He's a decent shot, right? One of the tinnies that came to New Greenland?"
"I think so," said Ms. Curious. "We didn't even get the chance. All we knew was they took all the mechs, and to sit tight. Didn't even get any simpod time."
"First year bullshit," grumbled Mr. Disbelief. "But yeah, I hear he was there. Made some big deal about pledging his mech to fight for the Captain-General. Wish I could have gone."
My smile grew compassionate. I had gotten the chance to be there, and had taken it. I could only imagine how much I would have regretted it if I hadn't had the chance to fight back. "Probably doesn't mean much coming from me, but you might want to be thankful. It got real tight." I remembered the files that Terri was delivering. "Oh, and take the SERE exercises seriously. Trust me, embrace the suck, it could save your life. But anyway, yeah, Mechs tend to do most of their damage with their weapons. So, Liszt probably focused all his time on getting better and better at handling his eight- and five-centimeter lasers, maybe his M100s." I spread my hands. "Which means nothing when you're engaging melee only."
"Fifteen tons," said Mr. Disbelief, crossing his arms.
"Which he doesn't know how to use," I said, "He can shoot, do some basic maneuvering, and maybe keep himself from lawndarting when he jumps. That's it for his piloting. He doesn't know Mech brawling from a hole in the ground. Meanwhile, I'd probably just put on a pretty light show with the Aberdoveys, but I know how to make a Mech move the way I want it to." At the look on Mr. Disbelief's face, I rolled my eyes. "This is a Cerillos accent, tinfoil. I've been running AgroMechs since before my voice broke."
Ms. Curious broke in before Mr. Disbelief could mouth off some more. "Why are you at LMS, instead of Allison, then?"
"Reflex testing?" I shrugged. "I mean, they weren't wrong, I'm pretty Sierra Hotel."
"Sierra Hotel?" asked Ms. Curious.
"Shit hot," I translated for the gringos.
Mr. Disbelief rolled his eyes. "Right. You're God's gift to flying."
"Got the kill markers to make the argument, tinfoil," I snapped. "How many have you..." I shoved down the heat, and waved it to the side. "Point is, he thought we were playing in his backyard. But I had just dragged him into a wrassle in my sandpit." I favored them with another toothy grin. "Following that, all I had to do was demonstrate an appreciation of leverage, the limitations of BattleMech strength, and the natural command of the air that is my God-given birthright."
"What?" said both the cadets in unison. Okay, I had laid it on a little thick.
I put on an instructor's tone. "Right, first principles. How much can a Mech carry usefully?"
"Roughly ten percent of its weight with no reduction performance," said Mr. Disbelief.
"That's with two limbs free and assuming a BattleMech," added Ms. Curious.
"Right," I said. "Which means that Liszt had four and a half tons of lifting capacity. More, really, but I'd bet C-bills to crullers that he wouldn't feel comfortable or confident pushing beyond that. Why he might damage an actuator."
"But you would only have three tons to play with," said Mr. Disbelief.
"Irrrrrelevant," I said. "And a Spider can do better than that if you know the tricks, by the by. The next thing you've got to consider is that a Spider is way faster than a Pixie, especially if you bring the jets into play."
"Command of the air?" asked Ms. Curious with an eyebrow raised.
"The sky is my domain," I said with a modest hand on my chest. "Next, leverage. Pixie is kind of top-heavy, and it's got that wonderful 'folded wing' backpack over its shoulders. And there you go. That's all I needed for my game plan."
"But how'd you," started Mr. Disbelief, frustrated, before his eyes widened. "Oh. Oh."
Ms. Curious turned to look at him. "What is it Jensen?"
Jensen pointed at me. "He baited Listz into a bad maneuver, then jumped on him."
I rocked my hand side to side. "Close enough. It was more jumping over him and yanking as he tried to follow me. Anyway, then I mounted him…"
"You sat on him?" asked Ms. Curious in a scandalized tone.
"Sure. No way was he going to move thirty tons of resistant Mech off of him, especially with his arms pinned. Then I warned him I was going to uses his head as a speedbag." I shrugged. "He gave up after two punches."
The cadets eyes would have done decent service as saucers. Being fair to them, it wasn't everyday that someone claimed to pull a flying lucha libre leap in a scout mech before finishing a fight with an application of ground and pound. Jensen's eyes narrowed. "Wait. Couldn't he have used his jets to get you off?"
I cocked my head to the side. "Maybe? I figured he wouldn't risk the damage or trust himself with them. I had dragged him into some pretty broken terrain. And it's not like he hadn't taken a fall he wasn't ready for, followed by a few knocks to the cockpit. You know what they say, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
"Your plan worked," said Ms. Curious. "Why?"
"I didn't let him punch me," I said. "And I had two more advantages. One, he cared more about both of the Mechs than I did. The Pixie was his family's machine, and he'd signed out the Spider from the training hangar because I didn't have a machine. He was on the hook for both of them. Still can't quite believe he did that. Or even could do that."
"Two," said Terri from over my shoulder, "Duster here is almost half as good as he thinks he is."
I smiled, craning my neck up to see her. "We ready to fly, T-Bone?"
She nodded. "We are. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, just engaging in a little bit of intramural education. Solidarity is important in these trying times." I stood, dusting off my pants.
Darienbad Airport
Darienbad, New Olympia
Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League
1 January 3015
The cockpit of the venerable SL-27 Sabre LMS-TS216 was one of my favorite places to be. Never mind that the fit for a pilot could be generously described as snug. Never mind that decades if not centuries of high-G maneuvers had mashed once comfortable upholstery into something approximating a foam rock. Never mind that I needed to be ensconced in a combined G, pressure, and cooling suit to fly it without it attempting to kill me. When the tickles of the neural interface crawled across my mind and I locked the harness into place, I knew I had just been granted freedom.
"Security Check," said a matronly lady, who I knew as Betty, in my ear. "Neural Scan Within Acceptable Parameters. State Operator Identity."
"Cadet Second G.H. Zalman, Lloyd Marik-Stanley Aerospace. Training and Communication Flight," I replied. The Sabre wasn't mine, but one of the training birds LMS maintained. I didn't have a personalized security check. "Mission code Oh-One-Oh-One-One-Five-Tango-Charlie-Two-Lima."
"Code Accepted. Access Granted. Continue With Startup."
I eyed the crash start 'scramble switch' with some longing, but school regs were clear. Cadets were to run full startup sequences. It was better practice for us, gave us better understanding of the fighters' systems, put less stress on the fighters' systems, and made sure if a system was not spun up, it was our fault, not the computer's. With such ancient birds, if you didn't have to trust the automated startup, it was better not to.
Or so the instructors at LMS claimed. We'd slapped the scramble switch all the time during the fight against the Eighteenth, and I was bone-certain that graduated pilots used it all the time. Given just how important the DI computer was to the function of an ASF, I was very skeptical of the utility of the manual startup.
Still, demerits. My hand uncovered a safety shield and I snapped the revealed switch to IGN, holding it there as I watched a needle climb through the red into the green. I waited a beat more, letting the needle get further into the green before I let the switch go, spring bringing the switch back to the ONLN position.
"Reactor Online. BIT Running. Complete. Zero Faults. Cooling Loop Online. BIT Running. Complete. Zero Faults."
I snapped the shield back down. Didn't want that switch going anywhere. My left hand snapped two switches to ON as my right flicked another two in a row to ON and STBY respectively.
"Plasma Pump One Online. Main Power Online. Plasma Pump Two Online. Auxiliary Power Standby."
Two more switches for my left hand, unshielded and held forward to SPOOL, as my right started to twist knobs.
"Cyclonic Torch One Spooling. Cyclonic Torch Two Spooling. Avionics Online. BIT Running," said the voice as I clicked on MFDs and the HUD. "BIT Complete. Zero Faults. "
Noting that the torches had reached the green, I let the switches go and reshielded them. My right hand swiped a whole row of switches forward, then I held my thumb down on a conveniently placed button.
"Flight Control Online. BIT Running."
As Betty announced this, I looked out of the cockpit to watch the control surfaces flex, listening to the myomers that actuated them contract. I already knew what Betty would say.
"BIT Complete. Control Surfaces. Zero Faults. RCS. Zero Faults, Fuel State 10. Thrust Vectoring. Zero Faults. FLCS CAT I."
My hands were already moving, left to the sensor panel, right to the comms. More switches clicked.
"Sensors Online. RADAR Standby, LIDAR Standby, LRHAWR Online, EOS Online, MAWS Online, TPC Online. Communications Online. UHF Online. VHF Online. Datalink Online. Satlink Online. Comm LASER Standby. ILS Standby. TACAN Standby."
I turned my full attention to my left hand as I let my right configure the MFD pages and comms frequencies on muscle memory. You wanted to be awfully careful with this panel.
"Weapons Online. MASTER ARM Safe. Laser One BIT Running. Complete. Zero Faults. Laser Two BIT Running. Complete. Zero Faults. Laser Three BIT Running. Complete. Zero Faults. Laser Array Heat Transfer System BIT Running. Complete. Minor Fault, Mount Two. Heat Transfer Below Nominal Parameters."
I grimaced. Two One Six's nose mounted Tronel II had always had gremlins, and no one had been able to track down exactly why. It had used to have issues with focusing as well as the wing mounts, but after battle damage following a strike mission that got really dammed dicey, it had gotten rebuilt. The issues with focusing were gone, and on the flight out, it had been just fine. But now it was going to be cooling that little bit worse. Not that it was running hotter, just that the heat would stick with the mount. Which was on the left side of the cockpit. Joy. I noted the fault down on my kneeboard to the side of the prebriefed waypoints and frequencies. It wasn't going to be much of an issue in training mode, but we were scheduled to hit the live-fire range before we transferred to DACT, and while the bombing would be fine, the strafing and strike profiles were going to be unpleasant. "Logged." I pressed the enter key on my UFC, letting Betty continue as I toggled my left MFD to the stores page.
"Pylon One, MER Loaded. Pylon Two, Loaded. Pylon Three, Occupied, Fuel Transfer Online. Pylon Four, Loaded. Pylon Five, MER Loaded."
I confirmed Betty's report with the data on the stores pages. My two outboard pylons were filled with multiple ejector racks of smaller bombs, while my inboard pylons carried a ton of HE bomb each. My centerline pylon contained a bag with another half-ton of fuel in it. It would leave Two One Six sluggish until the bombs came off at least, but mud-moving was a critical part of an ASF pilot's job. Besides, sluggish was a relative term when it came to a craft that could generate five eyeballs-in Gs in a straight line, without going pushing beyond so-called 'safe thrust', even when laden. The bigger issues were in atmospheric speed limits and laden positive and negative G constraints. Speaking of which, I looked down and swapped the FLCS to CAT III.
"Warning. Warn…Resolved." Betty, ever faithful, was ready to warn me of the CAT mismatch. I was just ahead of her.
I moved ahead, powering the life support suite.
"Life Support Online. OBOGS Online. Reserve Oxygen State 10. Reserve Nitrogen State 10. Atmosphere Scrubbers Online. Auxiliary Filters State 10." Betty paused.
I held the canopy switch down, letting the transpex slide back and seal me in, cutting off much of the sounds of the flight line with a hiss. I worked my jaw to pop my ears.
"Pressurization Check Running. Complete. Within Parameters."
I felt chill worms creep up and down my body even as pressurized bladders squeezed my limbs.
"Crew Temperature Control Online. Anti GLOC Systems Online. Air Conditioning Online" Betty paused once more. "One Fault. All Other Functioning Systems Nominal."
I smiled and toggled on the external lights. "Hermes One, Hermes Two, Comm check. How's the lightning, T-Bone?"
Terri growled at me. She wasn't flying a LMS Sabre, but rather her own F-90 Stingray. It was a slightly more involved sequence, due to the extra weapons. The PPC's BIT in particular added an extra twenty seconds or so. "Copy, reading you Lima Charlie. Say state, Hermes Two."
I played my hands over the controls, running my own ground controls check. "Lima Charlie Hermes One. Single fault. Laser two's mount is acting up again. Thermal transfer is under specs. Otherwise all green."
"Copy. Hermes One is all green." Terri's voice shifted as she addressed the tower. "Darienbad Tower, this is LMS Hermes Flight, one Stingray, one Sabre, requesting taxi and take off."
"Hermes Flight, tower. Cleared for taxi to runway 00, taxiway C, hold short."
"Copy tower, Hermes Flight, taxiway C to runway 00, hold short. Hermes Flight." Terri's Stingray jerked as the brakes came off and the barest whisper of power from her torch started her rolling. ASF ground handling could be tricky. There was simply so much power at our fingertips that the birds wanted to leap from the ground. I followed as soon as her tail had passed the safety line.
Another unnerving fact of ASF taxing. Torches could do plenty of damage on their own. Terri's VOX 240a could spit out enough plasma to turn me into a cinder in my cockpit at this range. But if you didn't trust your wingthings you weren't going to be much of a combat pilot. Better to get over it and leave the pyrophobia to the MechWarriors. That was the mantra that my local thoughts repeated as I crossed Terri's tail, wishing the tower had given us runway 18.
I still didn't look too close at the F-90's torch, and happily took up position offset and behind her right wing. Now in a position of relative safety, I took a moment to look at what sort of traffic Darienbad airspace had. Toggling my right MFD to a datalinked HSD, I grinned. No heavy flights or civvie stuff was close so this looked like we might get to have some fun. I depressed the brakes as we came to the hold short line, coming to a textbook stop off Terri's wing.
"Darienbad Tower, Hermes Flight," she said, with a hunger in her voice. "Holding short, runway 00. Request takeoff and unrestricted climb to 10,000 meters indicated."
"Hermes Flight, Darienbad Tower. You are cleared for takeoff and Mach restricted climb for 10,000 indicated."
"Spoilsport," I grumbled, not entirely to myself, checking my kneeboard.
"Skill test, Hermes 2," replied the tower. "Try not to give us a glazier's bill."
"One flight of idiots a decade ago, and suddenly ATC's a nanny," said Terri. "Tower, Hermes Flight, takeoff and Mach-restricted climb to 10,000 indicated." I could hear my flight lead doing the calculations in her head for how much thrust she could use to stay just transonic as she read back the instructions. I, of course, was doing the same.
"Put on a show Hermes," said the tower with a chuckle.
"Run em up, Duster, formation takeoff," said Terri, suiting action to words, lighting the torch as she held the brakes. Her Stingray trembled, right on the edge of slipping the leash of gravity. As I slid the throttles forward, toes holding the brakes, I could feel Two One Six do the same thing around me. A millimeter more throttle and I'd skrag the brakes. "Three, two, one, release brakes." Our fighters leapt forward, staying welded in formation as we advanced the throttles, spraying hot hydrogen in actinic flares behind us.
As we passed the first marker, still accelerating, Terri counted off again. "Three, two, one, rotate." I applied backpressure on my sidestick and my wheels came away from the ferrocrete. A quick flick brought the gear up. I felt the thumps through the spaceframe as the lights told me all three were up and locked.
We hit the second marker, and advanced the throttles again. An impulse hit me. "Terri? Helix climb?"
Terri laughed. "They asked for a show. Cleared for helix, Gid. Third marker coming up, here we go!" We sucked in a couple of grunting deep breaths, then we stood our fighters on their tails.
Color drained from the world as I suddenly weighed six times my normal weight. You didn't bend your vector 90 degrees in atmo without feeling it. 216 clamped down on my limbs and lower torso, and I grunted as we forced the blood to stay in my brain where it belonged rather than my heels. And then the pull was over, and the Gs were the easier eyeballs in. Terri opened her throttle to full, torch leaving another layer to the mark ASFs over the centuries had left at Darienbad. I held back full thrust for the climb, not wanting to break Mach. I did feed in some right stick and rudder, diverging from Terri's straight climb, barrel rolling around her vector, trusting my nimble little Sabre to keep up handily, Mach cone forming just behind my cockpit as I wove a spiral of fire into the skies.
"Pretty airshow, Hermes," came the voice of the tower. "You are cleared to proceed. Darienbad clear."
I smiled as we danced our way up through the clouds, all thoughts of demerits and pissed-off nobles left far behind. Up here at 10,000, with Olympica spreading out above my head, I knew that the world was good, and nothing could go wrong. I sighed into my mask at the sight before rolling wings level and slotting in on Terri's wing.
What an idiot I was.
New Notes:
And here's the edited version, reflecting Historical: Brush Wars. Thank you for your patience as I futzed around with this. I know I probably could have left the story as is without any major complaints, but it just felt wrong to not reference a canon event that would have had such massive impacts on the host character. I hope you enjoy the new version. If you'd like to compare the two, or if you prefer the old ones, the original versions of the first five chapters will be under spoiler tags. Thank you very much for your continued positive response to my mad ramblings.
Original Notes:
So this came about due to a dive back into Battletech proper and sourcebook collecting spree that I indulged in recent years. I've been a Battletech fan for years, but I started as a 3050s guy. Lately though, I've been enjoying the more sandbox nature of the classic Third Succession War setting and its potential for storytelling. And then I found Fitzgerald's CYOA template and figured it might make for a decent story generator. So here we go. A FWL ASF cadet with extensive Mech handling experience, and a father from the Magistracy of Canopus. I've not used it exactly, as you can see. Gideon is not on Atreus, after all, but New Olympia. I'm also using half-powered but doubled numbers of quirks and disadvantages for extra dramatic hooks. We'll get into the actual details of the inheritance and some more of the details of the quirks and disadvantages in the next chapter.
As for some likely themes of the story, you should expect some culture clash from a Trinity Worlds Leaguer coming to Canopus. There's also going to be quite a bit of conflict between the SI and his local self, because while they are somewhat integrated, and the SI has control, Gideon's previous reflexes and norms are still very present. No arguing between two different distinct identities, but more of a case of balancing a pair of rather different, often contradictory worldviews coexisting in one skull. Expect some religion as well. It comes with writing a Southwestern character, and being a Jew myself, I wanted to expand on some of the canon descriptions of my people in the Sphere and particularly the Trinity Worlds. Finally, the big one, one you may have guessed from the title. I'm pretty left-wing, far more than the Inner Sphere supports, by and large. This is a story about someone with that mindset given power and agency, and the intersection between theory and practice. With giant stompy mechs and fusion torch fighters.
Hopefully it'll be entertaining. I appreciate your critique and commentary. Till next time.