From: megazone@wpi.WPI.EDU (MegaZone23)
Subject: OIC (3)
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 21:07:40 GMT

--------------------------------------------------------THREE

     "Alia jacta est."
                         --Julius Caesar

                     BACK TO THE PRESENT

     "So they've come back to torment me yet again," Largo
said to himself.  "Fools.  I'm ready for them this time."  He
picked up his desk phone.  "Orbital control, this is Largo.
Mobilize the fleet for home base.  We are under attack."
     "Sir?!  I mean, confirm attack on home base and go for
fleet atmospheric operations."
     "Confirmed.  Code six.  Now move it!" Largo barked,
slamming down the phone.  Regaining his composure, he picked
it up and dialed again.  "Section twelve.  This is Largo.
All defense systems have already been activated, I assume?"
     "Yes, sir," the chief of defense, one Markus-05 (a Super
Buma), replied.  "All systems are on standby awaiting
positive identification of the vessel."
     "You idiot!  That's the Wedge Defense Force--those
accursed Wedge Rats all over again!  Destroy them!"
     "Yes, my lord.  All fighters are away.  Ground defenses
opening fire."  The complex began to shake with the discharge
of massive weapons.  Beams of energy reached for the sky,
searching for the SDF-17.

     In the fighter bay of A.R.M.D.-01, Gryphon checked the
controls of his VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie for the eighteenth
time, making sure all ordnance was secure and ready, his
fusion turbines were running right, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
Behind him were the three grey, black, and blue fighters of
his squadron, and two generic beige VF-1A Supers with
temporary markings stuck on with contact plastic.  The
Eight-Ball Squadron.
     The left hand comm screen on his panel blipped into the
view of a pretty silver-haired woman with deep gold eyes.
"Follow Kei's advice," she cautioned him, a note of concern
in her voice.  "Be careful."
     "Don't worry about me, Eve," Gryphon replied.  "I'll be
fine.  You watch yourself--they'll all be gunning for the
ship, not me."
     "I can take care of myself," Eve (or, more properly,
Enhanced Video Emulation) replied.  "You should know my
capabilities--you wrote me."
     Gryphon grinned.  Eve was the replacement he had written
in CLULESS to replace the idiotic AI that ran the SDF-17 (the
one who talked like a combination of an '88 Buick Regal and
KITT).  Not counting Kei and Yuri, and he didn't, because
he preferred to think of them as completely autonomous people
now--which indeed they were--Eve was the crowning achievement
of his gweeping career.  He took considerable pride in her.
     The light above the bay doors turned green.
    "Back to the salt mines," Gryphon said with a smile.
"All Eight-Ball fighters, report status," he ordered.
"Eight-Ball One, okay."
     "Eight-Ball Two, okay," Daver reported from the cockpit
of his VF-1J Super.
     "Eight-Ball Three, okay," Erik Swimm echoed from his
-1A.
     "Eight-Ball Four, okay," Mark "Haywire" Luchini
reported, for once not shouting something like "KILL!  KILL!"
     "Eight-Ball Five, okay," Tricia Currier called from her
generically beige fighter.  She had only recently finished
Veritech training, having been held up by some foolish snag
in her vision-correction program, but was already fitting
into the squadron as if she belonged.
     "Eight-Ball Six, respond," Gryphon ordered after a
second or so.
     "Huh?" Paul Heaton replied from his fighter.  Paul had
been held up in training deliberately, as the WDF and the
personnel of Utopia Planitia tried excuse after excuse before
running out of reasons not to make him a Veritech pilot.
They had at least kept him from becoming a Beta driver...
     "Respond, asshole, this is a preflight check!"
     "Okay, okay, jeez, calm down," Paul replied in his
arrogant way.  "Christ, you act like you own the squadron."
     "I do," Gryphon replied.  "That's what my commander's
bar means.  Got it?  You follow my orders or so help me I'll
blow you out of the sky myself."
     "You're welcome to try," Paul replied with a sneer.
     "You guys--cut it out!" Trish shouted.  "You sound like
our old calc class."
     "Right.  I'm watching you, Heaton.  Fuck up and you're
mine.  I don't want you in my squadron, I didn't have a
choice.  So just shut up and do your job."
     Paul had nothing to say to that.
     "Eight-Ball Squadron ready for launch," Gryphon
reported.
     "You are like cleared," q replied from the bridge.
"Like intercept enemy fighters in sector seven, they're the
most immediate concern."
     "Will do.  Eight-Ball Squadron--launch on my mark.
Three.  Two.  One.  Mark."  He slammed his throttles all the
way to afterburner, at the same time thumbing the catapult
switch.  With a surge of acceleration he was thrown out of
the bay, across the deck of Armor-One, and out into the
golden sky above Worcester.  Around him and behind him his
squadron did the same, with nearly perfect precision.  Nearly
perfect, except that Paul was a second late.
     The fighters were in a relatively clean configuration,
since inside an atmosphere, their snap-on supplemental armor
and missile pods degraded performance too much to be worth
the trouble of carrying them.  They were running in pure,
original Valkyrie mode.
     The six Valkyries screamed into the sky above
Neo-Worcester.  Ahead of them, to the Wayward Son's port, was
their immediate target: a large group of GENOM fightercraft.
Gryphon muttered a curse as he saw and recognized them.
Unlike the starfighters encountered in the last battle,
similar to the Lancer I space fighter, these craft were quite
deadly-looking and very effective at their jobs.  They were
small, red, and crablike, mounting twin plasma projectors on
the top of their shells and sporting articulated and almost
insectoid limbs.
     "Invid Armored Scouts.  GENOM builds Invid Armored
Scouts," Gryphon muttered to himself.  "Why am I somehow not
very surprised at this?"  He keyed his radio for a squadron
broadcast.  "Eight-Ball Squadron, this is Eight-Ball One.
Engage and destroy.  Break formation, they're thick up here,
but keep it as tight as you can, we don't want anyone getting
lost."  He pulled away from the formation, reaching up to key
the cool shades in his helmet down, Rick Hunter-style.  Rick
was a schmuck, but he had his cool moments.
     "Hey, Gryph," Tricia called, "aren't those--"
     "Aw, no way!" Mark shouted.  "Armored Scouts!  GENOM's
ripping off the Invid!  DIE!!"  He threw himself furiously
into the fight, ripping into a pack of the scouts with a
missile spread and a furious GU-11 strafing run.
    Gryphon ducked to the left and down as one of the
Scouts ripped a burst of annihilation discs over his cockpit
bubble.  Kicking his fighter over and down, he pulled the
nose up and performed a quick spiral.  The hexagonal
targeting reticules on his HUD quickly locked on three of the
GENOM craft and pulsed as a lock tone sang in his ears; he
flipped the cover off his thumb trigger, selected the
appropriate missiles from among the switches to his right
with the fingertips of his throttle hand, and let fly.
     From the pylons under his wings, three medium range
fighter-to-fighter missiles (designated in "official" Wedge
Defense Force documentation as the AIM-6-XL Reaper) roared
free on thick white vapor trails, Roboteching picturesquely
before ripping into their targets and blowing them to little
red flinders.
     "Eight-Ball One, check six," a calm voice rang in his
earphones.  Gryphon tossed a look over his shoulder while
pulling up and boosting, in time to see Erik's Valkyrie chop
a quintet of Scouts off his tail with an impressive spread of
missiles.
     "Thanks, Erik," Gryphon replied.
     "No problem, Gryph," Erik replied, streaking off toward
another corner of the battle.
     "These things are maneuverable as all hell," Daver
observed.  "They're actually outmaneuvering us up here."
     "It's because they're so damn small," Gryphon replied.
"Take this battle down into the streets--we can get the edge
on them down there."
     "Roger, Eight-Ball One," Daver acknowledged.  "Gerwalk?"
     "Yup."
     "I like."
     "I thought you would.  All Eight-Balls, this is
Eight-Ball One.  Descend to street level and engage
configuration G.  Try to keep the collateral damage somewhere
below the standard Lovely Angel level, okay?"
     Back on the bridge of the Wayward Son, Kei glanced at
Yuri, who glanced at Kei.  They both shrugged and resolved to
kill him later.
     "Take us lower too," ReRob ordered.  "Hovering up here
is making us a hell of a target for whatever they have.  Make
for the tower at the lowest altitude possible."
     "Right," Yuri replied, and guided the massive ship down
almost to the tops of the buildings.  "Gravity control drive
is functioning at optimum."
     "Good.  I was wondering if the structural members would
hold the grav pods in or not..."

     Gryphon dove his VF-1FS into the streets of
Neo-Worcester, pulling down the lever on his control panel
which was labeled with the big "G".  Immediately, the
aerodynamics of the fighter changed.  Its V-tail folded down
into the storage position, then flipped up onto the fuselage
to expose three small jet thrusters.  The vector-thrust
nozzles on the twin engines split into two sections, widening
out and forming a V.  The engines hinged down, articulated
and looking suspiciously like legs, as sections of the
underbelly unfolded and extended, ending with retractable,
fully articulated hands, the left one of which was now
holding the GU-11 gunpod.
     A fighter jet with humanoid limbs sped down Main Street,
getting a ground effect from the thrust of the main jets
being directed downward and speeding at nearly Mach 1 a scant
few meters above the ground, dodging traffic with relative
ease.  Behind Gryphon, the other five members of the squadron
dropped their craft into gerwalk configuration as well and
descended into the street.

     "Sir, their fighters have entered the city.  They appear
to have variable geometry technology.  Our aeroforces are
unable to pursue them effectively without great risk of
collateral damage," Markus-05 reported on the main screen of
Largo's desk.
     Largo's office had transformed into an armored command
bunker.  The windows had been covered by huge armor plates
upon which were projected the image of what would've been
visible through the windows had the shields been open; the
desk had rotated on its dais to face said windows.  The chair
and desk themselves had changed, the sides of the desk
folding around to meet the sides of the chair and locking
together into a single armored unit, as the desk folded in
the center and various screens and other apparati rose from
the top.  With the high back of the chair bending down over
and out around him, Largo looked almost as though he were at
the controls of some small space cruiser.
     "Deploy the shock troopers, then, and call general
curfew again.  Most of the civilians should be in their
shelters by now anyway--forget the collateral damage!  We
rebuilt Worcester from a radioactive crater fifty miles
across--we can rebuild it again if we have to!"
     "Yes, sir!" Markus replied, saluting and vanishing.
Largo went about his other business, reaching down to press a
key on the top of his desk marked "AIR DEFENSE".  It glowed
and the master screen in the center of the console reported
AIR DEFENSE SYSTEMS ENGAGED--DEFAULTING TO MASTER CONTROL.
T-joysticks arose from his chair's arms, and before them,
perfectly banked for his long, thin fingers, were banks of
fingertip selector switches.  A HUD-like projection appeared
on the window view, bracketing the SDF-17 in a big triangular
reticule.
     "Now, Wedge Rats," Largo growled.  "Feel the wrath of
GENOM." He smiled and began selecting and firing weapons.

Xref: sparky alt.prose:1273 rec.arts.anime:19033