Apr 14, 2016

[Ready for another update?  Let’s meet the rest of this season’s contestants, huh?  As always, remember this is early draft material (no one’s gone over it with a fine-toothed comb yet, least of all a third-party editor), and names are subject to change.  I’m not above bribes!  ;) 

Keep spreading the word, keep sharing what’s been posted so far, and let’s get some more pre-orders, so this book can happen!  You guys have been great, let’s keep it up!

--RRZ]

“And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, Randy!”

“That’s right, Danny.  It’s time for every good citizen to meet the High Protectors!”

A slow pan as the camera feed flickers away from the flawlessly-smiling flashcasters and back to New Hibernia’s gorgeous blue skies, then a zoom.  Another zoom.  An Adeyemi Enterprises Coyote, the High Protector’s smallest workhorse, their catch-all small craft;  jump capable but still ship-deployed, a jack-of-all-trades that serves as a heavy fighter, a bomber, an assault shuttle, and a planetary invasion craft.

“Oo-rah,” Danny Xie’s scarred face, a picture-in-picture, splits into a smile around her instinctive Marine grunt.

The DFMC, every one of them, has a crush on the Coyote.  Even she, off the battlefields for years and trading her carbine for a camera, can’t help herself.

Randhawa covers for her slight gaffe by taking point, cuing the rest of the image montage while Danny just watches the ungainly—so ugly it’s gorgeous—craft’s rear hatch open.  Feeds come to life from within the craft, and a half-dozen jumpers prepare their grav-chute rush out the back.

He talks while the bold TECH scrolls into place, overlaying a montage of the first High Protector jumper;  they’re huge, having to noticeably duck to keep from smashing their helmeted head on their way out the Coyote’s assault hatch.

“First up is the lowest-ranked High Protector, Private First Class Chen Urbanek, hailing from Crake IV—it says here his one request upon accepting a spot on the show was that we say hello to his family, what a trooper!—and as you can see, PFC Urbanek wasn’t hurting for food out there on that agri-world, was he, Danny?”

“He sure wasn’t, Randy, he sure wasn’t.”  The brief montage is startling;  he’s as tall as a low-grav-born, but as broad as most who grew up on high-grav conditions.  A jaw like the jutting prow of a Coyote, dark hair regulation-short, shoulders and rippling muscles like a recruitment poster.  One brief shot of the ship technician in action has him lifting—solo—a busted modular power relay section out of its assembly slot, while three of his shipmates struggled to haul the replacement module over.  Whether from his time aboard ship, pasty-white parents, or the unique environment of Crake IV, he seemed constitutionally incapable of getting much of a tan, though.   

“They sure do grow Devil Dogs big on Crake,” Danny continued, sounding almost as dreamy as when she’d eyed her beloved Coyote.

“And speaking of,” Randy cleared his throat, TACTICAL rolling onto the screen, “We’ve got another Marine up next, of course, and another enlisted man.  Lance Corporal Sunjay Armstrong!”

Armstrong was more graceful, more efficient in his movements, than Urbanek.  His every movement was clipped, precise, whether the practiced way he leapt from the rear of the combat shuttle, or his curt actions in the array of screen-within-screen scenes being displayed.  In more of them than not, the Marine had his standard carbine at hand.  His skin was as dark as Randy’s, a struggle with a perpetual five-o’clock shadow that darkened it even more seemed to be Armstrong’s only violation of uniform protocols;  the Corps likely granted him leeway, there, simply chalking it up to excessive testosterone that had to seep out from somewhere, lest he explode.

“Every Marine is a rifleman, they sa—“

“You’re damned right,” Danny cut in.

“But of course, some of them are nothing but, and that’s LC Armstrong, here.  He’s a shooter, through and through, and his only secondary training has been adding versatility to that;  additional insertion methods training courses, Oh-Gee Assault,” the zero-gravity tab showed on one of the young Marine’s uniformed shots, “And, it says here, he’s actually rated at the very top of the MACE protocols.”

“Marine/Army Combative Exercises,” Danny said with her usual gusto, “It’s the real deal, and so is he.”

“You bet’cha!” Randy defaulted to his camera-perfect smile again. 

“And last but not least for the Marines, we’ve got Siobhan Rhett,” Danny kept talking as FLIGHT scrolled into view, amidst a flurry of slow-motion shots.  “She’s just the third Warrant Officer we’ve had on the show, and our first graduate of the DFMC’s new Accelerated Flyer Training program!”

Cranberry-red hair and Crake-pale skin clashed in shot after shot of the wiry young pilot, her smile more fierce than friendly when the drones showed it.  In real-time, away from the dreamy montage pieces, she’d done a jaunty little flip while leaping from the rear of the shuttle.

“Rhett also comes from an edgeward world, and took advantage of the Corps as a way to see the galaxy,” Danny supplied helpfully.  “She sure seems to be making the most of it.  She’s racked up three kills so far in her young combat career, and I’m sure she plans to add to that as soon as she can.”

“Well, let’s hope it’s after the season’s over,” Randy laughed, sounding forced again.  “But you know who’s not from an edgeward world?  Ari Schumaker, that’s who.  The Lieutenant’s actually from the second moon of New Oxford—just a shuttle ride away from the capital!—and his credentials and education certainly show it.”

TECH floated onto the screen, alongside the DemFed Navy’s logo, at long last.

“Lieutenant Schumaker’s one of the few commissioned officers the High Protector sent to this year’s competition, but he’s no slouch.  A graduate of the Dangxiong Technical School and near the top of his class at the Nevatim Academy, Schumaker brings some heavy academic credentials to bear, this season.”

Schumaker seemed bookish, but sharp-looking.  He wore smart-glasses in more of his montage pictures than not, whether in the classroom or the flight bay, eyes perpetually a hair out of focus, soaking in a dizzying array of holographic data alongside whatever the rest of the world was seeing.

  With that weapons-engineering experience, heavy focus on power plants, and those type of aptitude scores, he’s going to be tough for the Low Protectors’ best and brightest to compete against.”

“Not that the Lopies sent thei—ahem, moving along, though,” Danny pushed through a smile as TACTICAL and a fresh set of images snubbed her.  “The Fleet’s lent us Master at Arms First Class Larissa Ree for the season!”

As Ree leapt from the rear of the Coyote, the flashcast screens filled with images of her running through cramped hatches and hallways with a compact shotgun at the ready, leading a hand-to-hand class, or—in one instance—slapping a fist onto the main control of a brig hatch, shutting some petty shipboard criminal up.  Ree’s spiky hair was going salt-and-pepper, by far the oldest of the season’s contestants, but she hadn’t lost a step.

“Ree’s another top-notch MACE student, and no slouch at all in shipboard actions.  She’s been commended for repelling boarders on four different occasions, and once even stowed away with Marines leading a counter-attack operation, just getting carried along by the momentum of the fight.”

“She’s going to be a real asset this season, that’s for sure,” Randy nodded.  “And she is, of course, this season’s Top Vet, so let’s all take a second to celebrate her years of service.”

The ‘second’ for enlistment-time celebration was fairly accurate;  dead air was dead air, and the producers didn’t like it.  Instead, a bold FLIGHT scrolled into view again, as the final contestant prepared to leap from the rear of the assault shuttle.

“And last of all, this season’s highest-ranked contestant—“

“Following in the footsteps of her aunt, a Rear Admiral!”

“—We have Lieutenant Commander Tomiko Covington,” Randy pushed through, as he always did, as though Danny didn’t walk all over his lines.

Covington gave a crisp salute to the drones—the only contestant to acknowledge their presence so far this episode—before following her team in her grav-chute deployment.  Her montage showed jet black hair in a stark ponytail, startlingly blue eyes, and a ramrod-straight spine.  She was young, surprisingly so, for her rank, but the dazzling array of medals on display when she was shown in her dress grays left it clear she’d earned her the stripes on her sleeves.

“The Ell Cee, of course, is the niece of the Hero of Epsilon Secundus, Rear Admiral Asuka Covington, who brought the Dashing to bear and turned the tide.  Covington—our Covington—was engaged elsewhere at the time, but along with Lieutenant Kalinsky, she’s also an ace.”

“More than double ace, at that!  With her fourteen confirmed kills, Lieutenant Commander Covington’s proven herself to be a real scourge of the PML, and, before her reassignment here for the season, led her Air Wing, in fact.”

“She’s a real firecracker in that cockpit, that’s for sure,” Randy nodded.  “And a natural team leader for the High Protectors this season!”