[In lighter news, it’s time for more fiction! Let’s meet the very last of this first book’s core characters, and our other People’s Military League point-of-view, Morale Officer Yildiz.
Enjoy! And if you do, please comment, share, and check out my Patreon if you continue to like what you see!
--RRZ]
“High Command expects moderate resistance, but don’t be fooled. In a fighter, everything is deadly.” Her voice was calm, level, loud enough to be heard over the perpetual flurry of repairs in the Notwithstanding’s fighter-pregnant launch bays. Sixty combat pilots stood at ease, listening to her every word. The 816th Guards. The pilots, all of them in drab grey flight suits instead of her stark white Morale Officer’s version of the same, listened. They knew their lives depended on it.
“Stay sharp. Hold your formations, remember your training, trust your wing-mates. Watch your backs. Good flying is your shield.”
“Since High Command didn’t give us any others,” Rascal filled her pause with a joke. She let him. It’s why she had paused.
As a man, Noah Raskolnikov was a terrific pilot, and one of the most talented officers she’d ever met at getting the most out of rookies, making them feel at ease, and pushing them to succeed as much as survive. As a Guard-Captain, however, he was frankly not very good at his job. Administration bored him, and rather than let a paperwork error see him shot, she filled that void, took on that role. He was the 816th’s favorite big brother. She, Imtisal Yildiz, Morale Officer Second Grade, was the stern mother.
“Mark Fours, standard protocols. Wingmen, do your job. Stay focused, rookies, and trust the veterans. Listen. Obey. Fire. We’ll get you through this.”
The SISU Mark Fours needed the most help, and there were the most of them, besides. The most common snub-fighter the People’s Military League fielded, it was also—not coincidentally—the cheapest. They had no shields but basic low-buzz anti-collision fields. Life support for one pilot, short duration. No ordnance, just a pair of basic cannons. Precious little by way of armor. SISU and High Command said it was bold piloting and the best maneuverability thrusters in human space that kept them alive; Yildiz was a realist, Raskolnikov a cynic.
Nothing keeps them alive, Rascal joked when the two of them were drunk, when their breath smelled faintly of coolant and sharply of engine-tech moonshine, and when they were certain no rookies could hear, We just replace them so fast no one notices.
He wasn’t wrong.
Enlisted pilots had a mandatory year of combat time in a Mark Four. So far, in her time tracking such things aboard the Notwithstanding, Yildiz had seen barely twenty percent survive to be promoted to a more advanced ship. She was particularly proud of their high promotion rate, nearly the top in the PML Fleet.
“Mark Fives,” she shifted her attention to a smaller knot, clustered around Raskolnikov. “You know the drill. Wait for the furball to erupt, then push through it. The Fours are doing their job so you can do yours; High Command expects corvettes and frigates. They’re your targets. Full thrust through the snarl, then light ‘em up.”
SISU Mark Fives were nearly twice the bulk of Mark Fours, and filled a different role. Fours were air superiority fighters, Fives were ordnance delivery platforms. Someone in High Command had, years earlier, decided that an enlisted spacer was cheaper to replace and maintain than a DemFed-style automated loader system, so—like a tank—the Fives had room for a second crewman, a dedicated loader. Between that and the munitions involved, they needed more power. Someone in High Command had, years earlier, decided that simply mounting a second Mark Four engine was the best way to handle that. The additional power plant would have let them mount shields, but, sure enough, someone in High Command had decided against it. Instead of sidelining excess power to protective systems, they’d increased the weight with armor plating until there wasn’t much by way of excess power to sideline.
To most pilots, Fives were every bit the deathtrap a Four was. In the hands of a newly-upgraded pilot, they lacked the maneuverability of their trusty Mark Four, and were simply bigger targets. One good shot would leave a Four falling to pieces. One half-assed shot could set off a Five’s ordnance pod fantastically. The only upgrade they brought, aside from the desultory armor, was in sheer destructive force. They mounted the same nose-mounted cannon a Five carried—another holdover tech, shared nut for nut and bolt for bolt between them—but also a mission-specific loadout of concussion missiles, surface pacification bombs, and even fission or fusion warheads.
Rascal, despite having been offered a more advanced fighter time and again, cheerfully stayed in his Mark Five and oversaw bombing runs personally. He was moving in on Fleet’s capital ship kill record for a snub-fighter pilot, and loved it. He stubbornly insisted he wouldn’t fly behind shields until all of his men did the same. Yildiz left him there not because she liked him, though she did, and not because morale would plummet if she reassigned him, though it would, and not because she respected him, though she did, that, too; it was simply because the seat of a Mark Five was where he was his brilliant best.
“Sixes,” Yildiz gave them a nod. ‘Them’ being both of them. “Enjoy your shields. Watch their backs. The Fives are trusting you as escorts. Once they’re through, double back and dive in.”
The veterans, “Dip” DiPippa and “Three-Jack” Diehl didn’t need to hear much more. They’d done their year in a fragile Mark Four, confirmed their mandatory kills in a Mark Five, and earned their shields and firepower. SISU Mark Sixes were cosmetically similar to Fours and Fives—by design, and, again, sharing quite a few parts—but were the best of both worlds. They had the engines of a Mark Five, a truncated ordnance pod that let them punch well above their weight class, and the shields and maneuver thrusters of a Mark Four. Yildiz had adored her time flying a Six. Most Six pilots did.
“And,” she gave them all a confident nod, “I’ll be right behind you.”
Rascal took over the briefing with that easy smile of his.
God, she missed flying a Six.
Her mistake had been enjoying it too much, flying it too well, earning too many kills. She’d leapt at the chance to fly a ‘Heavy Half Dozen,’ back when she’d been Guard-Captain Yildiz. She’d done too well and drawn too much attention. Her Captain—senior to her in every way, a tiny god aboard his powerful warship, and her just the commander of the air group—had felt threatened, and when old men are threatened they kill with pens, not swords. He had suggested her for promotion, a lateral transition, a push well outside the chain of command.
Guard-Captain Yildiz had vanished, had died, had withered to nothing. Morale Officer Yildiz had replaced her, now a half-step outside of the traditional ranks, far away from traditional combat promotions, a lifetime away from true warfighter’s camaraderie.
She flew a Type Ten, now. An altogether different craft. It bore triple cannons and a full ordnance load, enough to make a Mark Five blush. It had shields and armor plating, both, far more durable than a Mark Six. It also allowed for secondary crew to aid with ordnance, carrying more crewmen than a Mark Four. The Type Ten heavy fighter/bomber had two things none of the others did; a compact Pritchett-Horn drive for long-distance travel, and absolute authority.
The pilot of a Type Ten, the most advanced fighter in the People’s Military League’s considerable arsenal, was reserved for Morale Officers, and was allowed, by law and High Command, to gun down any PML flier derelict or incompetent in their duties.
Type Tens lagged a little behind the lighter craft, by design. Without jump capabilities, Marks couldn’t get away, no matter how they sprinted. Type Tens had longer practical range, longer life support capacity, even ignoring their jump abilities. They had more firepower. They had more armor, better shields. They had the power of life and death over their charges, and levied terrific destructive force to see that mission carried out.
Yildiz preferred to keep her guns pointed at the enemy, but her pilots understood. She would be watching their backs, yes. She’d be offering combat support—right alongside Raskolnikov—to any nervous Mark Fours as they dove, climbed, wove in and out of the twisting madness of a three-dimensional knife fight in the cold, hard, void. She’d be herding and protecting the Mark Fives as they did their best to ignore the lethal distractions all around, tried not to engage, not to defend themselves, not to be distracted from delivering their payloads against the ships, not just snub-fighters, they’d fight against. She’d be assisting the Mark Sixes, aces and veterans, as they watched over the rest of the herd, as the pair of them were her shielded, up-gunned, fists on the battlefield.
As a warfighter and an ace many times over, Imtisal Yildiz would be watching their backs. As a Morale Officer, though, they all knew…she’d also just be watching them.
“We’ve got thirty minutes until we drop,” she took over as Raskolnikov petered off, voice sharp, eyes bright. “Hydrate, period. Shit if you need to. Pray if you want to. Empty stomachs, be stim-ready, we launch as soon as the Notwithstanding’s out of PH-burn.”
“Do your jobs. These DemFed bastards won’t know what hit ‘em.”
Rascal saluted the lot of them away, then turned to chatter with Dip and Three-Jack. Yildiz watched the lot of them go, hoping the only fighters she’d space in the next hour would be painted up in DemFed Lunar Guard grays, and not any one she’d just briefed.
Again.
