In and Out
14 Sep 2022User398289
I'd always known that dumb kid was gonna be trouble. I'd been 3 years into a study on Archon Delaine's organization, if you could call it that, and the reports submitted by Carl, with her name stamped all over it, made for interesting study. I'd been just as surprised with his appearance at the Galactic Summit, but the thought that he might have been recruited by Zachary Rackham in the lead-up to his Presidential run went far beyond anything I'd have anticipated. I'd been filtering through Carl's reports and the comms request came in from Clara,"Drop everything."
I stared at her for a brief moment, shaking off the idiocy of the statement, "What?"
"Yeah, I figured you'd react that way. Carl's in deep. Apparently Cadence got herself into some more trouble. Her Carrier's been seized by Imperial forces just outside of Cubeo. We're gonna need you to break off and provide carrier support for she and Coral."
I hadn't heard either of their names in years.
____________________________________________________
"You do realize this is all completely useless to me, right?"
Carl looked at me, rolling his eyes, and turned his head back toward the holofac screen, pointing at Iron Talons. We'd been reviewing what turned out to be Clara's last training exercise with us and the holofac showed Iron Talons conducting a roll that transitioned directly into a flat spin. Carl had been on her six and was hitting her with shot after shot from his inertia impact-engineered burst lasers.
Clara had spent the prior two minutes of the exercise running intercept to keep him away from my six before he'd finally decided to focus his efforts on tagging her out. As she began piloting in erratic patterns of movement, using a method I'd suggested of toggling her flight-assist on and off repeatedly mid-maneuver, Carl's focus grew more and more focused on her, seemingly forgetting that I'd been taking part. As the exercise continued, Clara's voice came to me through the wing-comms,
"He's not paying enough attention. If you can get on his six while I'm distracting him, you might be able to drop his shield."
She was right. As she made the break, beginning the choppy movement toward his eleven o'clock, I pulled into his six and lined up my plasma accelerators. Tagging her repeatedly, he screamed out over the comms that she'd have to do better than a poor attempt to fake him into turning his nose up, and, as her shields reached 15 percent, I hit him with my first pair. Her shield's dropped away, immediately afterward, to Carl's grunt of disapproval, as my second salvo hit him, dropping his own shields. I heard a sound from his comms and Shadow began to decelerate, Cross-Hairs pulling up beside him. We locked eyes and I laughed at him before turning away and navigating back toward the station.
Cadence and Coral were already seated when we entered, and Carl began his debriefing. He'd been focusing so much on Clara, with Cadence and Coral doing the same, that none of the three had noticed that she and I had coordinated the attack. Clara sat, with her mouth sealed tightly. Another member of the organization had joined us for the debriefing mid-way through Carl's analysis and handed her a sheet of paper, which she'd clenched in her fist immediately following a brief glance. Cadence asked for Carl to replay the final set of maneuvers repeatedly, studying Clara's flight pattern for any usefulness and Carl repeatedly looked toward me, gesturing in her direction as if to tell me that I could learn from her.
Carl began wrapping up the debriefing and the organization man stepped toward him. They briefly exchanged words, Carl taking a step back, as if shocked, before stepping toward the man again. He repeatedly jammed his index finger into the man's chest, to the man's laughter. The man repeatedly batted Carl's hand away, their discussion continuing for a few more minutes before they finally turned toward the both of us. The man began to speak,
"Girls, I'm a member of the Order of Primis Aseptus, with which I'm sure you're being familiarized." He looked toward Carl with a smile before turning back to us, "...your training has been closely monitored. As trainees for the Pilot's Federation Representative Corps, there are certain matters that will never require your audience nor your attention but, every once in a while, we get to treat ourselves with an opportunity to address you like this. Clara, as a former trainee for Ordo Mandati Fratribus, you've always been in a position to see certain matters of the organization's Pilot's Federation Representative training program that the other girls have not. This is something we'd expected on the initiation of your cross-promotion to the PFRC training program, at the end of your final review session for OMF. Our monitoring has confirmed our expectations and, in light of what we have seen, and at the Command of Munus Nullus Ordo, we'd like to extend an invitation to you to complete your training with The Order of Primis Aseptus."
They continued speaking for a while, before Carl and the man from the organization excused themselves, taking Clara into the next room over. Cadence and Coral watched them leave before turning their attention to me. Cadence, in particular, paid very close attention to me as the holofac played on repeat.
"She let herself get taken down."
I looked toward her, measuring her carefully,
"...and?"
"The man in the black suit always says to never give up. 'Not an inch' he always says."
"...and?"
"She gave the whole of her shields. Do you think that might be why the O.P.A. called her in?"
I looked away from her. I remembered something my dad told me just before leaving for PFRC training,
"We've never been seen to be anything other than the finest of Utopian scientists, Callie. There's a reason for that. There are people all over the galaxy that will tell you that the bigger gun will score you the bigger kill, and that's what your job for Novus Ordo Siderum is going to be: To kill. You can load up your ship with the finest of shield boosters and the most powerful Prismatic shield generators. You can get into an Imperial Cutter or Federal Corvette or Anaconda and load up with enough shielding to withstand salvo after salvo after salvo. You can do all that, but it won't mean a thing if you don't execute."
I shrugged my shoulders and Carl reentered the room. He looked at me and began discussing my maneuvering again, and I rolled my eyes and asked him again how this was going to be useful to me. He looked away shaking his head,
"Callie, your shieldless build idea is stupid."
Cadence, who'd been watching the holofac on repeat, slowly turned her head to me. She was squinting at me, and her dumb little pipsqueak voice oozed out of her,
"... shieldless?"
Carl immediately jerked his head toward her, before quickly turning toward me and pointing toward the door.
Cadence and Coral rejoined me in our sleeping compartments aboard Empathy's Destitution and she crawled over to the side of my bunk, the sleeves and pant-legs of her pajamas trailing after her,
"The man in the black suit says I'm not supposed to listen to you anymore because you don't know what you're talking about. What are you talking about?"
I stared at her for a short time, before remembering her question about the shieldless builds. I considered slapping her across the face but decided to level with her,
"Every single ship you'll ever step foot aboard has an emergency ejection protocol that will put you into an escape pod. Do you know what that means?"
She looked away for a short period of time before answering, "It means we probably won't die, ever."
"well," I was surprised at how dumb an answer that was, without actually being all that dumb "... not in our ships, at least. It's one of the biggest jokes in the Pilot's Federation's codex. My parents made me test poisons on myself to show me something about the nature of our job: its gonna suck. Its gonna hurt,... and, it will do so over and over again. You can carry as many weapons as you want, you can do as many of those pushups and sit-ups and pullups as all those other meathead pilots on the flight deck as you want but if you die after taking a sip of coffee its meaningless. All that muscle that'll help you shrug off an elbow in the face, like Clara does, won't mean a thing if the only thing it does is make you a bigger, brighter target for anyone looking to score points. If you don't have a shield, you don't have a signature. If you don't have a signature, you don't exist. If you don't exist, then no one killed your target and there will never be a day that anyone has to know that you killed your target. Just that your target is dead"
She looked at me, in rapt wonder, and I considered slapping her again before she nodded her head, turning away from me and standing, wiggling her arms around to make her sleeves helicopter around her hands while pumping her head up and down as she walked toward her bed.
_____________________________________________________
I heard a snapping sound and looked toward Clara again, who was snapping at me to get my attention.
"We're gonna need you to break off and provide Coral and Cadence with carrier support!"
I shook myself from my reverie and asked,
"Where are they?"
"Cadence, Carl, and Orion are in Ehlanda. Some IMPSEN just seized Cadence's fleet carrier at the request of Princess Aisling."
My chin came to rest, violently, against my neck,
"I...," Clara laughed, mumbling acknowledgement, "... How did she get it in her head...," Clara continued laughing, "...What did she now?... and who's Orion?"
"A bunch of stuff," she curled forward, her head turning to the side, "Orion's one of the fat-bus guys. I'll get you caught up on your way over to Ehlanda."
"So, where's Coral?"
She continued laughing about Cadence, until my words caught up with her and her laugh slowly faded into a wincing groan,
"Well... She's just outside the California Sector Nebula. She... Cadence really screwed the pooch."
"California Sect-"
"mhm..."