War of Alien Aggression 3 Lancer (6 page)

A thick storm of burning, osmium-tungsten sabot and HE shells tore across the Squidy, drilling it in a dozen places and burrowing deep before they detonated. When the alien flight leader cooked-off, it lit up the 50 autonomous Dingo QF-111 drones with Snooze and Gusher as they rocketed past, strafing in a massive pack like a gorgeous, fire-spitting swarm. It wasn't much of a tactical formation, but there were a hell of a lot of them – enough to convince the last Squidies to use their superior speed to bug the hell out while they still could.

The Dingoes couldn't catch up, but they tried. As the last two bandits escaped, Colt shivered violently in his cockpit. It was like being cold, but he was sweating. He shook all over – not his hands so much as everything else. He knew that feeling. He used to get it after a ballistic glider run. It's what happens when your body releases too much adrenaline at once. Now, just like then, willpower alone kept him from shaking apart.

Chapter Eight

Despite the rips in the armor and outer hull, his Bitzer flew mostly fine on the way back to
Arbitrage
. He'd been lucky and the enemy's particle stream hadn't holed anything critical. There were no warnings of reactor problems from the hit he took, but
Arbitrage
wasn't taking any chances. They didn't want to lose every craft in the launch bay if one wounded bird suddenly blew. 

While the rest of the squadron landed, the ship's redsuits made him park the fighter 200 meters outside the launch bay and sent a pair of knuckledraggers with a team to check it out. They said it would take a while and they'd portage his fighter in by hand. He didn't really want to leave his 151 with them, but Burn told him to get out and swim for it like he had a pair.

It was only 200 meters to the ship and the bay was 170 meters wide, so he wasn't worried about missing. All he had to do was power down, grope around until he found the manual release system, open the cockpit, and extricate. Burn even talked him through it. "After manual cockpit opening, you will egress the cockpit. You will face
Arbitrage's
bay in a crouched position, aim with your eyes, and push off with your legs."

"What do I do when I get inside the bay?"

"You will decelerate using the launch bay's rear bulkhead."

"The wall? You want me to just smack into the wall? Is that the best procedure you came up with for this part?"

Burn was all quiet on comms for a couple of seconds. "Okay then, zoomie. Just for you, we'll make up a better procedure. When you launch, aim for the doors of airlock 2. They're softer."

He got a good launch. He went right where he'd aimed himself. Problem was, that was the airlock 2 doors. From fifty meters out he saw the light over them began to flash. That airlock was cycling. Someone was coming through the lock.

Up on the bridge, watching on camera, Burn was laughing her ass off.

As he crossed the threshold into
Arbitrage's
launch bay, the local .3 gees of artificial gravity from
Arbitrage's
pinch pulled him down, but he was still headed right for the doors more than a meter and a half over the deck. To his right, he saw his fellow pilots exiting the cockpits of their fighters and pointing at him, the orange blur-streak ripping across the bay.

It looked like maybe he'd catch a break and hit the doors
before
the airlock door opened, so he rotated his feet to land on it instead of smashing flat into it like an idiot. Then, it opened.

It opened, and he saw the maintenance crewmen inside. The redsuits in there had nowhere to go. He was headed right for them. Impact was imminent and if he'd spread out his arms and legs and belly flopped into them, it might have dissipated his kinetic energy over the first row of redsuits he hit. Instead, he tried to make himself small so maybe they could all get out of the way. He tucked his knees in and grabbed them and turned himself into a human cannonball that plowed deep into the crowd and sent at least nine of them careening off the bulkheads and bouncing off each other until all their bodies and limbs tangled in a heap of cursing with him in the middle.

Burn laughed over comms before she put her professional voice back on and said, "This is Burn. I am impressed. J. Colt,
you
are deadly ordnance. You are now J. 'Ordo' Colt."

"
J. Ordo
?" Shafter wasn't convinced. "Nah... try Jordo. He's
Jordo
. That way, the stupid, stand-alone 'J' in his name finally stands for something. Write it on your helmet, nugget. Jordo. That's your name."

*****

Everyone got Baked Alaska that night. After they finished their burger-filled buns, they went back for it, and Cook himself set it on their tray and lit it on fire. Jordo ate his and felt like he deserved every spoonful. Snooze savored it. Holdout and Gusher did the same. But the rest of the C-Block pilots ate theirs without the same satisfaction. It was like they questioned the taste of victory. Jordo told himself they just weren't having as good a day as he was.

When Burn came through the hatch, the nuggets noticed her entrance. She was never around without a reason and he saw it when she spotted him. She didn't look at him again until she'd walked down the ranks of tables and benches to the one where he and his flight were basking along with six other pilots. "Jordo. The boss wants to see you. Don't make him wait." And then she was gone.

"You don't think they're gonna' washout Colt for hittin' the red button do you?"

"Call me Jordo," he said.

*****

The Staas Security Guards had been stationed in pairs to keep C-Block below decks, but when the two at the lifts saw him coming, they didn't even glance at him. He tried to walk like he knew where he was going as he stepped into the lift.

Shafter's quarters were on the upper decks, in what they called officer country. Officer country on
Arbitrage
smelled better – just like the redsuits' jokes said it did. Jordo knew it was mostly just because there weren't very many officers, but the maintenance crews said it was because officers never actually worked up a sweat. 

The hatch hung open. Jordo rapped the belt-iron steel with his knuckles, and Shafter turned in his chair. He sat at his desk with a matchbox computer projecting the local stars in front of him. He had maps and charts Jordo had never seen before. "The yellow spots and dotted lines between adjacent systems mark the locations of interstellar transits," he said, "viable FTL passages from system to system."

"Why don't
we
get maps?" 

It all disappeared with a wave of Shafter's hand. "Come in and shut the hatch."

He did, and after he turned to face Shafter, he put his hands behind his back, set his feet at shoulder width, and stared ahead of him like he thought he was supposed to. Shafter said, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Being at ease?"

"It's called 'standing at ease'," Shafter said. "You're a privateer. Stand normal." He tried to stand normally and ignore the fact that however he held himself now, it wasn't going to feel normal. Shafter's stare bored into the spot between his eyes. "You think you won some kind of victory today,
Jordo
? You come up here thinking I was going to pin a medal on you?" 

"I did well today."

"I guess that's why you're looking so smug. Yeah, well, credit where it's due. I guess you are doing pretty well. Yeah,
Project Jordo
is coming along just great. Hero of the day. Finally got a name. Good for you. But the fact that you look so pleased with yourself makes me wonder if I was wrong about you. I thought you were the convict who was lookin' out for more than just his own ass. You look so happy now that you must not give much of a goddamn about how the rest of your squadron is flying like crap and how it's going to get them killed. You saw what happened in the OPFOR exercises before Squidy crashed the party. If our pilots fly like that, then they're going to die."  

"Hey! You're the one who decided we could all be fighter pilots in less than a month. Why the hell are you telling
me
how bad we are?" 

"Because, god help me, I'm putting you in charge, Jordo. I'm making you a flight leader. You're Lancer 2-1 now." Shafter shook his head and laughed a little like he couldn't believe he was doing this. "When Lancer Flight One isn't around.... if me and Burn and Dig and Topper aren't there, then you're in command. The 44 Lancer nuggets are your responsibility now."

It came out his mouth like a question. "Thank you?"

"Don't thank me. They're going to have to fly better than they did today if they're going to survive."

"We can only learn so fast. We need more time."

Shafter looked away. "No more time. They're out of time," he said. "
Now
is when we need you. Orders will be on your matchboxes before reveille at 0500." 

"What? We're going in? We haven't even had four weeks of training! Not to mention the fact that 20% of this squadron might just pass out or puke or have a panic attack once the action starts."

Shafter just nodded at that. "This isn't my plan. I'm just in charge of executing it. For the record, I think it's ethically indefensible to send you people in now, and if it were up to me, it wouldn't happen. But. I don't get to pick and choose. I didn't choose to fly the 151 and I didn't choose this. A Staas Company VP and Privateer Admiral named Harry Cozen told us to get our recruits from Bailey Prison. He signed his name on this plan and if you ask me, he doesn't really much care if you make it or not. But the we do. The Lancers do. Me and Burn and Topper and Dig give a damn if you live or die. We want you to make it." 

"We're
supposed
to make it, right? I mean, it's not a suicide mission you're sending us on..." 

"I've seen the mission plan. It's not a suicide mission, but your survival is not required for victory."  

The bottom fell out of Jordo's stomach. "Say that again?" 

"Your survival is not required for victory. But you
can
survive," Shafter said. 

"How? You and Burn and Topper and Dig. You had
thousands
of hours of flight time before you got in a Bitzer. We can't do what you do." 

"C-Block didn't lose every OPFOR skirmish against superior planes because they can't fly. They lost because of who they are. They lost because of what's most important to them." 

"Are you saying we can't be pilots?"

"No. I'm saying that fighter pilots have to react fast...faster than you can consciously think. They work on instinct and instinct comes from
inside
. It's part of who you are – what you want – what you fear – what's most important to you. Your pilots' instincts are telling them to watch out for their own asses
first
because that's who they are. They'll never survive like that." 

"I'm helping out the weaker links where I can."

"You don't get it," Shafter said. "This isn't about helping them
fly
better. They fly just fine with the AIs handling the complicated stuff for them." He held his breath for a few seconds and then exhaled out his nose. "I put you in charge because they're already following your lead. But do you even know why they follow you? Do you? It isn't because they crave being under someone's authority. They
hate
authority. They don't follow you because you can fly or because you chose to be a leader.
They follow you because you showed them they were better than they thought they were.
" 

"What are y-"

"During the physical exam back at Bailey Prison... When the guards cranked up the gees on that pinch and tried to turn you all to spam? Remember? You helped those convicts save each others' lives."

He was stunned. "You
knew
about that? And you didn't stop it?"

"We saw the recordings after it happened. It wasn't supposed to be like that."

Jordo felt his nostrils flare. "Some of us died in there."

"It wasn't supposed to be like that," Shafter repeated.

"But it was." The anger was like a fire under his skin.

"And when it
was
like that, you could have walked out and saved yourself. When Snooze got your ass off the floor, you could have just walked out on the rest of C-block, but you didn't. You made a choice to be something
better
than what you were the day before. And you helped Holdout up and Dirty and Gusher. The rest of C-block make that choice, too. You helped them be something better than they thought they were.
That's why they follow you.
They don't follow you because you can fly, they follow you because you showed them they could be something better. And they
want
that. Think about it. Think about it hard when you think about how to lead them." Shafter reached in his breast pocket, pulled out a small box, and gave it to him. "Don't look at me like that, nugget. I'm not proposing to your sorry ass. Open it." Inside the box were silver bars, 7cm long, meant to be worn on his exosuit collar. "You're an officer now. You're Lieutenant Junior Grade J. 'Jordo' Colt of the Staas Company Privateers' 133rd Fighter Test Squadron. Congratulations. Don't screw up." 

*****

While the rest of them slept, he told Snooze what Shafter had said to him and how he was afraid they were all being sent to die. It was highly likely, he said, they'd all bought into a steaming load of bull dunk of record-setting stink.

"Yeah," Snooze said. "That's kinda the way I saw it going down. I think we're getting served up. Maybe a decoy squadron or something. They've been feeding us bunk from day one, but..."

"But what?"

Snooze half-laughed. "It's not like they ever
fooled
me, boyo. I mean, I knew it was bullshit... I still took the deal." Jordo nodded because he thought he understood why, but he didn't. Snooze said, "You're nodding like you get it – like you get how I'm sick already. I'm dead anyway in a year or so and you're thinking that's why I took this deal. But that's not why. Some asshole Psych is gonna say that I think I can get out of what's coming and
that's
why I'm doing this, but it's not. It's not like that... It's..." Snooze actually grinned when he figured out what he was trying to say. "I just don't want to be who I
was
anymore. And I don't have to be. Shafter offered us a chance to be something else. Yeah, they're sending us out...not just to maybe die, but probably. And yeah, I knew it was coming. They never fooled me, boyo, not for a minute. But...don't say they tricked me."