Misjump (Winged Praxis Story)

==Description==
Non-canon story event based between the events of Winged Praxis (Battletech 3015 CYOA) main story just after the mercenary company salvaging additional equipment after taking on first mission for the Magistracy of Canopus in 3016.
----
==Story==
===A Disputations of Operations===
Interception Director
Space One Lunar, Lagrange Point One
Earth-Moon System, Sol Star System
1st April, 1998
----
Space One swept along in its arc across the heavens, as it had for two decades, circling an empty point in space.
 
At one point, it had been thought impossible, to orbit here, balanced between the earth and the moon. The point of gravitic stability described by Euler nearly two and a half centuries ago was a lousy spot to try and place a satellite. Any perturbation, no matter how mild would move an object from the point of balance.
 
But it made for an excellent target to orbit around, as Farquhar pointed out in 1966, when discussing potential orbits for a relay satellite that would open up the far side of the moon to uninterrupted communications. His so-called 'halo orbit' was ignored at the time, attention fixed on Mars.
 
Come 1974, his flight of fancy would serve as the core enabler of the SDI system. Humanity needed to watch the Moon. It was not theirs anymore, but the beachhead of an implacable enemy.
 
Commander Arturo Miles stretched himself out in the zero gravity that had been his constant companion for his latest tour of duty. He didn't know what he had done to get assigned to Space One, but surely, it hadn't been that bad. This was no place for a HSST driver. The only thrusters that fired on this spacecraft topped out at milli-Gs of acceleration, and those were only for stationkeeping, not even under human control. 
 
He felt the effects of the ventilation system more than them.
 
Noting the clock click over to a new hour, Arturo took a look over his boards. Nothing was amiss. The monitoring constellation was showing all green, nothing on the heuristics about abnormal movement on the surface, nothing abnormal in the EM spectrum, infrared… 
 
"The hell is that?" he mumbled as a yellow light blinked at him. He twisted over to the more competent member of his watch crew. "Stacy, check infrared. TAP's throwing an anomaly." He turned to the other astronaut. "Collins, go ahead and run a self-test on TAP."
 
"Nothing on the surface," said Lieutenant Stacy Stross, eyes darting across a false-color feed of the Moon's surface. "If anything, the bugs are keeping quiet."
 
"Do you think that's what twigging TAP?" asked Arturo, floating over to look over her shoulder. His heartrate accelerated. Was this like 89?
 
"No sir," said Stacy, pointing at a known hotspot with her deeply enameled finger. "That's the Sacrobosco Crater complex. IR levels are bang on what we'd expect." She shifted her pointer to three less intense blobs. "Laser batteries are quiet, and the monument isn't even a decimal off baseline." She flipped a switch and the image changed to another false-color distribution. "Look, there's nothing on EM."
 
"A launch would mean heated lasers and a damn lightning storm in the monument," mumbled Arturo to himself. "Unless they've got some new trick." Uneasiness prickled at the back of his neck. You could never discount it with the bastards. "Preheat the birds." At her shocked look, he quirked a smile. "We're due for a drill as it is."
 
"Sir," she said, turning her sharp eyes back to the command station. "Beginning ready sequence." Stacy flipped a series of switches to ARM, chanting the steps as she went.
 
 As Stacy informed him that primary fire control radar was online, Arturo pushed off to join Collins. "Tell me that I just ordered a drill and am about to feel really foolish," he murmured into Collins's ear.
 
"Not sure, sir," said Spaceman Nikos Collins. "Self-test is reporting green, but TAP insists that there's an anomalous heat sig."
 
"I just looked over the IR feed," said Arturo. "There's nothing there."
 
"I know, Commander," said the enlisted spaceman. "Me too. But TAP's real insistent, sir."
 
Arturo's lips twisted into a scowl. The Threat Analysis Processor had been known to be oversensitive. It had to be, to give them warning of the bugs trying something new. But every time since the 92 upgrades, it had at least caught something anomalous, not just flagging ghosts. "TAP's green," he said slowly. "And it's insisting that it has an anomalous infrared signature."
 
"Yes sir," said Collins. "Except there isn't one." He gestured to the IR display of the moon's surface.
 
"We're not thinking about something," said Arturo, fiddling with his UN jumpsuit's collar. "What sensors feed into TAP?" he asked, suddenly filled with horror.
 
"All of them," said Collins, nonplussed. "Why?"
 
"Exclude lunar observation, and cycle through them, false color," snapped Arturo.
 
"Yes, sir." said Collins, flipping through the various IR detectors in the LID constellation. Nothing out of the ordinary, ordinary, blank space, ordinary…a giant blob showed up against blackness. No, there were two of them, overlapping at the edge.
 
"Freeze it!" said Arturo, hand tightening on Collin's duty frame. "What the hell am I looking at?"
 
"Looks like that's looking towards L1. Monitoring for the comms satellite on the other side of the orbit," said Collins. "Weird. Running a self-test."
 
"Belay that," said Arturo. "Give me vislight. I want to see what's out there."
 
Collins flipped the feed over to a view of empty space. "Should we alert the skipper sir?"
 
Arturo started as he realized he'd totally neglected to inform his CO of the unfolding situation. "Sound the alert," he said, even as he focused in on the blank stretch of space that was apparently pumping heat out of nothing. "What the hell are you bugs up to?" he asked.
 
For an instant, he saw the image of a pair of objects that looked like stripped umbrellas festooned with metal basketballs.
 
Then the EMP hit, and Space One went dark, circuit breakers tripping all over the station. The same instant, the multi megaton structure lurched as tidal forces rippled through the space around L1.
----
===Disruptive Arrival===
The air on the Walter Benjamin's bridge glowed scarlet.
 
The emergency lighting, klaxons, and even the smell of smoke in the air were secondary concerns. My attention was kept entirely by the feeling of my guts trying to writhe their way out of my skin in what direction was closest. My muscles cramped like someone had run live current through all of my major muscle groups, and my thoughts, when they weren't consumed by pain and nausea, were sluggish and undirected.
 
I floated through the compartment, untethered, without any means or inclination to maneuver. Was this what TDS was like? I could see why it was a disqualifying condition for pilots.
 
I smacked into another free-floating person, head to head. Pain flared, and training took over, as I reached up and grabbed them before they could float away. Slender hands locked onto me as well, and Diane's face swam into focus as we maneuvered each other face-to-face. We did a once-over for obvious wounds before pushing off of each other so that we could rebound off the walls, heading for the captain's chair, tethered by magnetic fields in the center of the workspace.
 
Captain Lief Mbeki twitched in the chair. "Begin misjump procedures," they slurred out, reaching for a control on their chair arm. The local klaxons silenced.
 
"Are you alright, Captain?" I asked.
 
Mbeki's white teeth looked bloody in their dark face as they smiled at me. "I believe you pilots have a saying about crashes."
 
"Any one you can walk away from is a good one," said Vixen, taking station at the other side of Mbeki's chair. 
 
"And any misjump you find yourself breathing after is the same," said the ex-merchant spacer, with gallows humor.
 
"That was a misjump then?" I asked. Part of my mind whirred. If the Benjy had misjumped, that meant the majority of CMC was stuck wherever we were until we could secure passage on another jumpship. That was bad, but manageable. Jumpship travel was always fraught, and our contract covered edge cases like this. The Magestrix might even be pleased at the opportunity at providing us jumpship support would give her to bind CMC closer to the MoC.
 
"Almost certainly," said the jumpship captain. "Unless it's some dirty trick we didn't shake out of her from the previous owners." They shook their head. "That'd be preferable, really."
 
I nodded in understanding. It was the rare misjump that didn't do enough damage to render a jumpship unusable. Losing a Star Lord would hurt even a Successor State. But Benjy was special. The manufacturing capabilities which made it possible for us to use the Blackheart gear without fear of it all turning into scrap due to routine wear and tear were not inseparable from the Star Lord…but they did require a specialized jump collar. If Benjy couldn't jump, wherever we were was CMC's new factory zone.
 
I sucked my teeth. "How bad is it?" I asked as the crew started to regain useful consciousness. 
 
Mbeki shook their head again. "We've lost the helium seals at the least. More than that is going to take serious work by engineering." They gave me a hard look. "And even if everything comes up fine, I can't guarantee that the core didn't take hidden damage. A new jump could be worse. Much worse. Maybe these SLDF computers will catch that sort of thing, but no promises."
 
I nodded. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. What about Hida?"
 
They rapped out commands to the bridge crew, and the holotank filled with a sensor view of local space. "We've got her." They wrinkled their nose. "Looks like she's lost helium seals too."
 
"Simultaneous misjumps?" asked Vixen. "How common is that?"
 
"Not very," said the captain. "Especially not survivable ones." They paused for a second, listening to their earpiece. "They're declaring a misjump."
 
"Carajo," I swore. "We're stuck here."
 
"Looks that way," said Mbeki.
 
"Where is here, anyway?" I asked. "Looks like there's some space infrastructure."
 
"Well, it's not Adherlwin," said the nav officer. "They don't have a moon worth the name. And we just popped into the L1 point of a planet-moon system."
 
"Adherlwin doesn't have near that much water, either," piped up another member of the bridge crew.
 
"Get me a stellar fix," ordered Mbeki, then turned to me. "Misjumps can do funny things to jumpship range," they explained. "At least that world looks habitable." He brought up the image from the telescope in the holotank.
 
A familiar blue-green marble hung in the void of space.
 
Earth.
 
My home.
 
A thousand voice gibbered in my head as color drained from my face.
 
Was it really? Had I gotten so lucky as find my way home? I was wearing another body, and had another set of memories grafted onto me, but had whatever cosmic force that woke me up on New Olympia decided to send me home? With so much of my new life with me?
 
What would I do?
 
"Holy shit!" said the nav officer. "Might be a bit of stellar drift, but I think that's Terra!"
 
"Why the hell would Comstar have satellites on such a close halo orbit to the L1?" asked someone else, but I wasn't listening anymore.
 
My face hardened. There was no time for existential crisis. The worries that had flickered over my wife's face were similarly banished. My CAG stared back at me. "Vixen," I said. "Give me a BARCAP, soonest. You have the fighters. I'll spin up the battle computer on Pursuer. And Vixen," I paused. "I want Alamos loaded on a quick reaction force."
 
She nodded, swallowing. "Yes sir," she said, then kicked off of Mbeki's chair, wobbling it in the air. As she arrowed towards the hatch, she was already keying the scramble alarm on her comm.
 
I turned to Mbeki. "I'll be in my LAM. Figure out everything you can about where the hell we are and who's coming for us."
----
===Warm Greetings ===
"I understand," said Arturo, swallowing a lump in his throat. "Continue your duties with the others." He suppressed the impulse to hurl the headset across the compartment. Instead he smoothed out the wrinkles in his jumpsuit, and touched the bandage on his temple in absent thought. Pain shot through him, but he used it to center himself.
 
"I've just been informed that Captain Kobayashi broke their neck in the…gravity disruption," he said, doing his best to keep his voice even. "Effective immediately, I am taking command of Space One."
 
And what a command it was. The station was filled with injured personnel, had taken unknown levels of structural damage from whatever those damn umbrellas had done, and while the critical life support and internal comms were back up, the same could not be said about the monitoring systems and fire control. Damage control teams were troubleshooting as quickly as they could, but for the moment, the entire LID constellation was nearly blind. 
 
I hope the bugs don't take advantage of this, he thought. ARTMISS might not be able to stop another landing without forewarning.
 
"Looks like they're launching HSSTs," said Collins, who was watching the umbrellas through a hand telescope. Through the window. "Or missiles," he amended.
 
Arturo suppressed a swear. "Are you sure?"
 
"All I know is those look like drive flares, sir," said the spaceman. "Real bright ones."
 
Arturo looked out the window himself, and was surprised to see that the flares were visible with the naked eye, as was their movement. His HSST pilot's instincts told him that those were moving more like a missile than a manned craft, and some quick and dirty mental math confirmed it. If he was at all accurate in his estimates, those things were pulling multiple Gs of acceleration.
 
"What do we do?" asked Stacy, one arm immobilized in an inflatable cast. "If those are missiles…"
 
"We might be able to intercept them with the return shuttle," said Arturo. "If they come for Space One, anyway." He left unsaid that the comslink sat to the lunar monitoring constellation was a lost cause if the umbrellas decided to scrap it, as were most of the independent missile clusters. The HSST didn't have the acceleration to intercept something going for a target on the other side of the halo orbit, even if it could fly. Speaking of… "Get a damcon team to check if it's good to go."
 
"Yes, sir." Stacy turned back to the task, appearing relieved to have something, anything to do.
 
Arturo frowned. He'd have to pilot the HSST if it came down to it. There were other qualified pilots on the station, but none of them had combat experience. No one had ever expected that it'd be necessary out here.
 
"The flares look like they're heading for the missiles, sir," said Collins.
 
"Status on the HSST.," said Arturo, doing his best to ignore the hole in his stomach.
----
"Missiles, Duster," said Socks as he and his wingman made a close pass on one of the smaller satellites that circled our entry point. "Big ones. Sending you the feed now."
 
I sat in Pursuer's cockpit, power on, with the neurohelmet snugged down on my head, hands and feet off of the controls. The Blackheart battle computer that served as the LAM's brain fed me information from all the sensors of my units, supplementing my threat board with a ethereal sense of knowledge of what my people and machines were doing at that very moment. A neuroimpulse brought up the feed from Sock's ladar, tri-vid, and broad spectrum cameras. A four-pack of missiles bigger than an ASF floated in space, cradled by an open framework with RCS clusters and comms antennae. As far as the sensor packages of our fighters could determine, the missiles and support frame were just about dead, insufficiently hardened for our emergence pulse at such a close range.
 
"Same here," said Hammer, Cutlass's squadron leader. "Four big missiles in a framework, dead to space."
 
"Whoa!" called out Bonfire, one of the lance leaders in Cutlass. "One of the missiles just detonated. I'm getting pings on my rad detector. These might be nukes. Damn dirty ones, too."
 
"Cutlass 3, Coyote Actual," I cut in. "Was that a nuclear detonation?"
 
"Coyote, Cutlass," replied Bonfire. "Negative. Looked like the fuel going up and scattering an ancient warhead. Weapons are still on safe, sir. Wasn't us."
 
"Coyote, Crossbones Lead," said Terri. "It might have been a malfunction from the gravitic shear when we came in. I'm looking at what looks to be a comms satellite in rough shape."
 
Or they could have tried to fire it at us, only for it to malf due to the damage, a suspicious part of my mind pointed out. Well, at least it isn't Comstar. No way would they station something so close to a pirate point…or so primitive.
 
Which wasn't that comforting of a thought. We might have misjumped to an Earth, but it wasn't my Earth. Either of mine. No one had stationed a battery of nuclear missiles at L1 in my time. Hell, there was a Cold War era treaty that forbade it.
 
And here I was sitting with a combined arms regiment of bleeding edge Star League equipment and the methods to make more. I could only imagine the splash I would make.
 
I laughed to myself. As if popping off an EMP in a strategic weapons park wasn't making a splash. "All players," I said, "Keep a wide berth on the station. Even if that wasn't our doing, no need to provoke them further." I switched channels. "Captain Mbeke, any response from the station?"
 
"Nothing," said Mbeke. "We've been broadcasting in the clear, but no response yet. I've been cycling through all the languages the crews know, but nothing seems to work."
 
"Keep at it," I said. "Our first impression was bad enough. I don't want to make it any worse."
 
"Yes, Colonel," they said.
----
===Unformillar Radio Chatter===
"I think that was an explosion," said Collins. "I think they just popped one of the missile platforms!"
 
The hole in Arturo's guts grew larger. "Confirm that."
 
Collins searched with his telescope. "RWS-12 is gone, sir. One of those flares headed towards it, and then there was a blast." The spaceman looked back at him. "I didn't see a launch or anything."
 
Arturo shook his head. "You wouldn't see chaingun fire at this range."
 
"Or a laser," put in Stacy.
 
"Or that," said Arturo. "This doesn't look like the bugs, but…whatever is out there just put out SHADOW's eyes."
 
"And they're pulling our teeth too." said Stacy.
 
"What I don't get," said Collins, as he turned back to the telescope that was serving as their sensor suite. "Is why only the one. They've made other close passes."
 
Stacy stiffened, listening to something over her headset. "Commander, the HSST is confirmed as good to go."
 
"Some good news at last," said Arturo. "Lieutenant Stross, you have the watch. Your overriding priority is to get Space One operational. Focus on the lunar observation link."
 
"Yes sir," she said with a salute.
 
Arturo was already making his way to the hatch. It was a journey of minutes to the HSST docking station.
 
"Hey, Gallery," greeted the loadmaster at the hatch. "Got her all ready for you."
 
Arturo nodded to Daniel Jablonski. "How'd you load her, Ski?"
 
"Gas and missiles," said the loadmaster, closing and dogging the hatch behind him. "You, me, and Yamata."
 
Arturo twisted around as he rebounded towards the cockpit. "Twitty?" he asked, referring to the second-most experienced HSST pilot on Space One.
 
Jablonski shook his head. "Docs have him in an induced coma. Flight crews got hit hard."
 
Arturo clicked his tongue. It wasn't by the book to go out without a co-pilot, but he seemed to have missed the chapter for EMP umbrellas showing up above the moon. "We'll make do," he said. "Go strap into your position. We might need to boost in a hurry."
 
"Got it, boss."
 
Arturo swung into the cockpit, grunting to see Kei Yamata at her flight control station. "What's the situation, Racer?"
 
The Japanese woman, who made a habit of commandeering a jeep whenever they got planetside leave and leading the MPs on a merry chase, nodded to him. "Looks like the Cold War era hardening held up, Gallery. I was about done with the checklist."
 
"Small mercies," said Arturo, strapping into his pilot's station and flipping switches as rapidly as he dared. "We were due for some good luck today." He snapped the comm array online.
 
<<"…peat. Esta es nave espatial CMCJS Walter Benjamin. Hemos sufrido problemas de…">>
 
"Naniyo?" said Kei. "Is that…Spanish?"
 
"I think it is," said Arturo, cursing that his family didn't keep up the mother tongue at home, fifth-generation Americans that they were. He reached down and keyed the XMIT switch. "CMCJS Walter Benjamin, this is Commander Arturo Miles of the United Nations Space Force, Commanding Officer, Space One. You are in restricted space."
 
<<"Oh, sweet merciful bouncing baby Jesus,">> said the voice on the comms, sounding like nothing so much as an American Southwesterner. <<"I was worried I'd have to try and muddle my way through Swahili or something. Lemme patch you through to el Jefe.">>
 
<<"Commander Miles?">> asked another voice, this one shaded with a bit of what he thought might be Israeli flavor. <<"This is Colonel Gideon Zalman, commanding officer of the CMC. I'm afraid we've suffered an engineering casualty on both of our ships. We are happy to exit restricted space, but it will take some time. Our ships' maneuvering drives are not very high thrust.">>
 
"Colonel Zalman, I appreciate you willingness to exit restricted space, as well as your limitations in doing so. Unfortunately I am far more concerned with the fact that you have compromised Earth's shield against the BETA."
 
There was a long pause, and Arturo was just about to call back the Colonel when the man's voice came back on. <<"Commander Miles, did you just say BETA?">>
 
"I did. Beings, Extraterrestrial, Threat, Alfa." Arturo refused to dignify the silly backronym of 'Beings of Extraterrestrial origin That is the Adversary of humanity.' Racer's countrymen had a lot to answer for.
 
<<"Carajo!">> swore the other man, reminding Arturo of his grandfather. <<"Commander, what is today's date?">>
 
"April first," said Arturo, with a growing sense of unease. "1998."
 
This elicited a few more swears from the man. <<"Look, I've got nuclear armed interceptors on ready five. I can maintain your shield until you can unfuck SHADOW. But you've got bigger problems. Unless I'm very much mistaken, you've got about three months until the BETA invade Japan.">>
 
"How the hell could you know that?" asked Arturo. "Are you some kind of time traveler?"
 
<<"Oh, it's so much stupider than that,">> said Zalman. <<"Look, I'll try and work on a briefing packet. Do I have permission to maintain station for nuclear intercept of hive cores, Commander Miles?">>
 
Arturo got the feeling that this impossible Colonel wasn't going to take no for an answer, and that the UNSF might not be able to do anything about it. "Permission provisionally granted, Colonel Zalman. I get the feeling that this might be above my pay grade."
----
===Breaking the Unfortunate News===
I sighed as I looked at the door of the briefing room. I was not looking forward to this little chat. Terri had been stunned when I went over the basics with her in private earlier.
 
On the upside, she hadn't shot me. On the downside, she hadn't come up with any answers to…any question I had asked, really. I suppose that I couldn't blame her. Trying to wrap her head around that I was some chimera of her love and some psych grad student, and had been hiding it from her for months was wild enough. Being told she had been shunted into some other universe that may or may not have been fictional was just gilding the lily.
 
Needless to say, she was sitting this staff meeting out.
 
That still left both JumpShip captains, all the Dropship captains, my company commanders, and my squadron commanders. Along with my senior tech, astech, scout platoon commander, line infantry commander, armored infantry commander, VTOL commander, heavy and light armor commanders, senior medical staffer, air defense SME, and Natan, in his role as secondary leader for Ariahai Company.
 
At least I had proper briefing facilities this time. I opened the door and strode to the lectern.
 
"Alright, settle down. We've got a lot to get through," I said. "First, if you somehow missed it, yes, we've suffered a misjump." I nodded to the jumpship captains. "Captains Mbeki and Oyagi have told me that we've lost our liquid helium seals. While the seals are something we can repair on our own, apparently spare liquid helium was not something the Blackhearts saw fit to carry in inventory." 
 
A round of gallows chuckles crossed the crowd as I thought dark thoughts about potentially having had just that before some giggling devil had decided to land us here. "Further, we can't be sure that there's not any further damage to the jump cores. So for the meantime, at the least, we're stuck here."
 
Another round, this one of dark mutters, filled the compartment. "Sir," said "Big Jim" MacDougall, the CO of Bronco Company, "Is it true that we jumped all the way to Terra?"
 
"Yes," I said. "We dropped in at the L1 point between Terra and Luna. But that's where things get complicated." I took a deep breath. "According to the locals, this is the year 1998."
 
That got an eruption of questions, arguments, curses, and prayers. I rode out the storm of voices, until I heard someone asking if time travel was even possible. 
 
"Temporal displacement isn't unknown in cases of misjumps," I said, pitching my voice to carry over the tumult. I left out that the only case I knew about involved a displacement to the future. "In fact, the thermal portion of the emergence signature shows up prior to the jump out, even in normal jumps." Which was to say nothing of the fact that FTL travel was essentially time travel as far as causality was concerned when you got into it, but that was physics I only half understood, if I was being generous to myself.
 
"That's true," said Captain Mbeke, "Though I've never heard of anything quite like this happening before." They chuckled. "Though I don't suppose I would have."
 
I shook my head. "No, probably not. Because now we come to something even harder to believe." I took in another deep breath. "If we had simply time traveled, we'd be witnessing the start of the Second Cold War."
 
"Second Cold War?" asked Marc, "Was that some Star League thing?"
 
I shook my head. "No. We're much deeper back than that. In 1998, humanity hadn't got beyond a few landings on Luna and some very primitive orbital infrastructure. The Terran Alliance, what became the Terran Hegemony, hadn't formed yet. We're pre-jumpdrive. Hell, we're pre-fusion. At this point, every single human being that's been born or died existed on that little blue-green dot." I jerked my thumb at the bulkhead for emphasis, then cocked my head to the side. "With the exception of 12 people who visited Luna," I amended.
 
I looked over the shocked looks on the faces of my senior staff. Before they could snap out of their stupor at just how far back we had traveled in time, I went on. "But like I said, things aren't that simple."
 
"You call this simple?" asked Marc, wearing his hats as supply officer and as captain of the Wiglaf. "Going back a millennia in time?"
 
I snorted. "Sure. We're in a different damn universe." I clicked on the projection screen, showing a map of the Earth. "If we had just gone back to 1998, we'd just be watching a couple of human power blocs saber rattle back and forth." Another click shaded the majority of Eurasia red, with tendrils starting to reach into Africa. "Instead, humanity is fighting a war against a genocidal alien force," I said flatly. "The red is alien-held land, for reference. Give it a couple of years, and humanity will be down to a billion souls or so."
 
"You're kidding..." said Zelko into the silence that followed that statement. The former Anton-loyalist looked surprised that he had spoken out loud.
 
I laughed. "I wish. That's roughly two-thirds of the human race, by the way. Killed and reprocessed for resources if they're lucky." I didn't want to think about the unlucky ones. "But things get stranger. As far as I can tell, this roughly matches to a fictional property I'm…familiar with."
 
Natan laughed, sounding slightly hysterical. "What? You mean you read this in a holonovel on your cruise to Canopus? Gid, that's a bit much."
 
I shook my head. "No." I sighed, sucked in a deep breath. "This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened to me." No one said anything. "I've got the memories of growing up on Cerillos," I said. "But I also have the memories of a fan of a wargame called Battletech." I gestured to them. "Where the Great Houses fought over the remains of the fallen Star League in a series of bloody Succession Wars."
 
The room erupted in shouting.
 
Okay, maybe this wasn't the best way to break it to them.
----
===Difficult Situation===
Arturo pursed his lips as he watched the EVA crew clamber over the main LID comms sat. While his people had gotten the links to the lunar observation constellation on Space One sorted out, that was a lower bandwidth channel as compared to the main satellite that orbited opposite of Space One. 
 
Hence why he was out here, shuttling about repair crews. And would be for quite some time, until some of the other flight crews could become available. After the comms were up and running to an acceptable level, there were also the missile platforms as well. They'd lost two more of the platforms to detonations, and who knew how many more were ticking time bombs. If they weren't so critical to Earth's defense, he would have just wrote them off as too dangerous to repair, but even with Colonel Zalman offering to take over nuclear interception duties, the UN had a duty.
 
And who knew just how long the offer would last? Or if it was even real. The BETA's tricks tended to be in the realm of showing off a new capability no one was ready for, but no one had actually seen any of the CMC personnel. This could be some massive, uncharacteristically subtle ploy on the part of the bugs.
 
Arturo grunted. He knew that was probably paranoia, but who could blame him, when the universe kept throwing him curveball after curveball?
 
"Sierra One Tango, Space One, priority, over," said Stacy over his headset.
 
"Space One, Sierra One Tango reads, standing by for priority traffic, over," he answered back.
 
"Commander, the BETA have started burning a hole in our lunar net." Arturo's eyebrows rose at Stacy's words. That was something that had always been considered to be possible, but hadn't happened, excepting point defense fire against exploratory weapon strikes against the lunar hive. "I think they're trying to blind us for a sneaky launch. We don't have any direct view, but we've got a big spike on EM. Looks like the bugs underestimated us, over."
 
"Copy all. That's some luck at least. Go ahead and warn ARTMISS that they may be getting incoming, and tell the CMC folks that they might need to pull interception duty at a moment's notice. We'll try and get some of our interceptors online as soon as I can bring the work crews back," said Arturo, already triggering the emergency recall alarm. "I'm not sure it'll do much good, but we've got to try at least, over."
"Yes, sir. Earth link is still spotty, but we'll do our best. Out."
 
Arturo drummed his fingers on the console as he watched his people make their way back to the airlock. Of course, the BETA would take advantage of this massive cockup. The only surprising thing was that they hadn't earlier. It burned, being the man holding the bag as forces beyond his control sped the human race towards disaster, with nothing more to do than chase faint hopes and trust the people at the center of this mess could pull the planet's ass out of the fire. 
----
===Scramble!===
The priority alert cut right through my self-pity.
 
 I'd let the others hash out what me being half an outsider to their universe and to the Trinity meant to them on their own. They could ask me questions if they wanted, but at the end of the day, they had to decide if they could trust me and could follow me. It probably wasn't the optimal move, as far as maintaining my leadership position went, but if people weren't going to follow me, I didn't have the stomach to coerce them to.
 
So here I was, sitting at a desk in a grav deck and trying to remember everything I could about Muv Luv. Between my mood and the fact that I only had passing familiarity with it, it wasn't going well.
 
I snatched my comms unit. "Zalman," I said, omitting the rank I was half-convinced that I was about to lose.
 
<<"Colonel,">> said Captain Mbeke. <<"Space One has called us regarding a suspected BETA launch.">>
 
I sat bolt upright. "Suspected?"
 
<<"The aliens have disabled a portion of the monitoring satellites, and their hive is showing an electromagnetic signature like it did on a previous launch. They are requesting that we prepare for intercept.">>
 
"Tell them that we will do our best," I said, pressing the button to trigger the scramble alarm. "Zalman out." I tuned to the fighter wing override frequency, even as the klaxons sounded. "Now hear this," I said. "We have suspected alien activity. It looks like a launch. All pilots to your fighters and prepare for nuclear intercept. Ground crews, Arrows and Alamos. We aren't taking any chances with this, people. I want every single torch ready for the black, soonest. Move!"
 
I took my own advice and sprinted for my flight suit.
----
===Lock and Loaded===
The Alamo missile was being loaded on my fighter as I swung into the bay. I didn't hassle the techs. They knew their business and didn't need me jogging their elbows. After all, even if the missile was weightless in freefall, it still retained all five tons of its mass, and that was a hell of a lot of inertia just waiting to kill or maim someone.
 
I hung back, floating in easy reach of a stanchion as they finished bolting the bespoke Alamo rail to my centerline pylon and started connecting the datafeeds. It was a slow process. Every aerospace academy trained on nuclear weapons delivery, but no one ever expected to actually have to do it. Yes, the Ares Conventions did carve out exceptions for use in the void, but it just wasn't done. And yet, their crazy Colonel was practically asking them to start slinging nukes as their first impression on a new reality.
 
No one was complaining, at least not in this hangar. Everyone was treating this with the sort of solemnity weapons of mass destruction deserved. Even I, who had made the call, was waiting with bated breath as the weapon was slid onto the rail, cabling connected.
 
But a different part of my mind was worrying that the staggeringly powerful weapon at my command wouldn't be enough. An Alamo was only a 5 kiloton device, after all, roughly a third the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The warhead could be, and had been, set to generate a initial blast spike much like the Casaba howitzer concept to try and burn a hole in warship armor and allow the main blast to take place inside the armor where it could do the most damage, but that was a system that often failed, and even if it did work, who knew what it would mean to a BETA hive core? I had no idea just how much punishment those could take, other than knowing a huge beam cannon was enough.
 
It wasn't something that inspired confidence. Not when I knew space was the worst environment for maximizing a nuke's effects. And not when I knew that only six of our fighters could even carry an Alamo. There was a chance, I knew, that we would have to swarm the core and attempt to cut the BETA apart with our onboard beams.
 
And with no idea of what sort of defenses a hive core had in space, that could be a death sentence.
 
Still, another hive core couldn't be allowed to land on Earth. If the BETA could seed Africa or the Americas with a hive, the game was likely up, and if they had gotten clever and attempted a splashdown in deep water…well, that was suspiciously close to a bad end the franchise had shown. I didn't have high hopes for humanity's chances if that happened.
 
"Weapon loaded and safe!" called out Kalpit. 
 
I pushed off, floating over and catching myself on the open cockpit. "Thanks, Chief."
 
He smiled up at me. "No problem, Colonel. She's ready to fly. Never loaded this before, but according to the LATOPS, everything should be good to go."
 
I nodded. "How are your people doing?" I asked, lowering my voice.
 
"Keeping busy is helping," he said as he helped me strap in. "There's a lot of tension, but that's to be expected, with a misjump and all. Focusing on getting a deckload strike prepped was probably just what the doctor ordered."
 
I smiled a bit. "And you?"
 
He shrugged. "I always knew I was leaving home, signing up to a merc unit like this. This is a bit more extreme than I'd expected, but…" He looked around to check that no one was listening, and dropped his tone. "…is the other memories why you're looking out for people like Jai and me?" he asked.
 
I took a deep breath, thinking about what I had seen over my two lives. "Probably fair to say," I said, deciding not to get into specifics or pick at something I just wasn't ready to confront.
 
He nodded. "Well," he said, connecting my neurohelmet to the fighter, "whatever it is, I'm glad I ended up with CMC. Even if the world seems to spin off its axis around you, sir,"
 
I smiled. "I appreciate it, Kalpit." I sealed my mask to the helmet, and closed the canopy, throwing up the hand signal to clear the bay for emergency start-up.
 
The ground crew got, and I slapped the scramble switch, fighter coming to life around me.
 
<{"Security Check,"}> said Betty. <{"Neural Mapping Shows Variance Within Acceptable Deviation. To all who came before."}>
 
"We say, pa'lante." I finished the line.
 
<{"Code Accepted. Reactor Online, Cyclonic Torches Online, Sensors Online, Weapons Online, All Other Functioning Systems, Nominal. Welcome, Colonel. Ready for operations."}>
 
"Hurray to the goddamn riff-raff," I muttered to myself, before settling my hands on the controls and pressing the transmit key. "Squadron Leaders, Coyote Actual. Check in with status."
 
"Cutlass Squadron is greens across the board." said Roni "Hammer" Adler, a Jewgirl from Galisteo.
 
"Crossbones Squadron, bombed up and ready to fly," said Terri, sounding like she had during the early days of the Battle for New Olympia.
 
"Skull Squadron, all green," said Vixen. "Duster, your Devils are ready to fly."
 
"Alright people," I said. "Our target should be moving on a ballistic trajectory. I know the locals were able to send one off course with a nuclear intercept in the past, but we simply don't know much about this thing. The one they sent tumbling might have been killed, and never got a chance to maneuver. This one might be more lively. Defenses are unknown, but may include lasers of unknown power and range. What this is likely to be has also shown the ability to project tentacles for close combat, so no close passes to flip it the bird."
 
I heard a round of chuckles from my pilots, and smiled behind my mask.
 
"With a little luck, it'll eat the Alamos and die easy," I said. "But the BETA have a reputation for pulling surprises out of their asses, so we're going to play this smart. If the nukes aren't enough, we carve it up with long-range fire from the medium fighters and Spads. If that isn't enough…" I paused, then continued. "…we swarm it under with Arrows and every damn beam we have."
 
"Duster, Crossbones Lead," asked Terri. "You said it might have lasers. What if it outranges us?"
 
"In that case, I intend to burn straight in and kill it as fast as possible," I said, knowing that was likely to be a death ride for all too many of us. "Make no mistake, if that damn thing lands, it'll have a death toll worse than a warship bombardment from the First Succession War. And it'll be slow about it."
 
"We're with you, jefe," said Marina "Crypto" Suarez, a gringa from the Taurian Concordat, flying as Cutlass Five. "Ain't never been much for invaders." A chorus of acknowledgements followed her statement.
 
My throat thickened. "Glad to hear it, Devils. As soon as we get confirmation of target launch, we're on our way. Check seals and open the hangars. I don't want to lose seconds if it's going to matter." I followed my own orders, double-checking the seals on my cockpit and toggling the launch status to RDY. The bay door opened, affording me a view of the moon.
 
"Huh," I mumbled to myself, microphone off. "This'll be my first combat."
----
===First Contact with the enemy===
"Bravo zulu, boys!" cheered Arturo as his EVA crews reported they had got a second of the nuclear missiles clear to fire, and a third one looked possible as well with only a little clearing of twisted framework if it could pass a systems test. "I'll tie the frame back into the fire control network."
 
Or what passed for one, anyway. Space One was passing as much sensor data as they could grab to Arturo's HSST, where Racer was working to massage the different time-lagged feeds into something vaguely coherent. It was going to be a mess, what with the gap the BETA had burned in the LID net. At least they could focus all of their sensors on that volume of space.
 
Still, their detection range and launch window would be far shorter than Arturo liked to think. Not to mention he'd have to set the intercept himself, rather than using Space One's computers. The HSST's fire control system had been tuned for missile combat in low Earth orbit, not intercepts at the ragged edges of the Earth and Moons spheres of influence.
 
But at least he had two shots to take now.
 
"Gallery," said his flight engineer. "Space One just registered a massive EM spike and falloff from the lunar hive. It looks like they've launched."
 
Arturo growled, then opened the channel to his EVA crew. "Clear the framework. Launch warning! Repeat, launch warning! Get yourself clear immediately. Firing point procedures will begin as soon as we have a contact!" He watched as blue and gray spacesuits scattered away from the missile frame, all except a small group still working at the front of the third missile. "Dammit Parsons, that means your team too!"
 
"It's just a jammed hinge, Commander. We can get it!"
 
"I can't delay the launch," said Arturo. "Not with our net compromised with this."
"I know," said Parsons. "An extra fifty percent salvo density is worth risking our lives. We all agree. We're staying until the job's done."
 
The HSST pilot grimaced. It had been drilled into him at command school, don't give orders that won't be obeyed. "All other teams, stay clear," he broadcast. "We can't afford to lose anyone else."
 
"Thank you, sir," said Parsons on a private channel.
 
Arturo scrubbed his face in frustration, caught between the wish for early acquisition of his target, and longer for his stubborn EVA crew to accomplish their task.
 
"That's got it!" said Parsons. "Missile three is good to go! Moving for safe distance"
 
Arturo had hardly finished tying the third missile into his FCS circuit when he heard Racer gasp. "New contact! Master Thirteen! It matches previous observed BETA lunar launch. Current course will result in Earth impact."
 
Arturo did not hesitate. "Firing point procedures," he intoned. "Target, Master Thirteen." 
 
"Track is ready," replied Racer.
 
"Weapons One through Three are ready," said Arturo. "Launch frame ready. HSST ready."
 
"Majority of work team clear," forced out Sringaya, the top level EVA worker.
 
"Engaging," said Arturo, as he depressed the button, the nuclear missiles' boost motors flashing to life. The missiles flew free.
 
There was an inhuman scream from Parsons's private channel. But it was mercifully short.
----
===Evading Enemy===
The trio of missiles shot out towards the BETA construct, moving on the mathematically perfect rails of a well-considered interception court. Puffs of reaction control thrusters kept them on course as they accelerated to meet humanity's enemy, seeker heads locked on the roughly spherical alien construct.
 
As they burned fuel, the missiles reached higher and higher acceleration as they no longer moved the same mass as they had on launch. Soon, the fuel in their boost motors ran out, and they abandoned the dead weight, which would impact the uncaring surface of the Moon long after the human drama of the interception had played out. 
 
The terminal guidance stage coasted on that initial boost. Their combined closing velocity with the BETA core was so high that any more thrust would only complicate the final attack maneuvers. This portion of flight would proceed on easily understandable, Newtonian physics. The UN Space Force had done this before, and killed their enemy. Now, they would do it again. Despite the unbelievable events of the day, LID stood strong, its soldiers equal to the task.
 
And then…the closing velocity changed.
----
"It's maneuvering?" snapped Arturo. "The last one didn't maneuver!"
 
Racer let out a sound like she had been punched. "They learned from last time," she said, despairingly.
 
Arturo nodded, lost in processing what his sensor board was telling him. "We should have realized," he said, mostly to himself. "They didn't blind us last time, either." His mind tried to imagine the alien general behind this latest stroke so he could try and unravel their thinking, see if there was a slim chance to turn things around. All his mind would provide him with was gnashing, bloody teeth the size of a TSF.
 
"Do you think they were just…waiting for us?" asked his flight engineer. "To have an emergency?"
 
He nodded slowly, eyes still fixed on the display. "They knew we could stop them if they just charged through, so they waited for something to go wrong and blinded us in close to improve their chances of getting through." Something tickled at the back of his mind. "But we still knew they were launching," he said slowly. "They didn't know exactly what we could see with our satellite net."
 
"So," said Racer, "They might not know just how hard our interceptors can maneuver."
 
"Update CMC with the news that the target is maneuvering, and tell them to launch," said Arturo. "With any luck, our missiles will smack the bug." He started tapping in commands to the console. "But if not, maybe we can drive them into our guests' hands."
 
The terminal guidance stage lit their engines, bending their vectors to chase the dodging BETA. It was a difficult task. The hive core had no thrust plume to analyze. The electronic minds of the missiles could not estimate maneuvering performance of their target, and they had only so much fuel of their own. While they did not need to impact their target to kill it, nuclear weapons effectiveness dropped off rapidly in space with target distance from detonation.
 
The weapons did their best, but they had not been designed for this. Two of them could not make intercept, and detonated at the point of closest approach, multiple kilometers away. The hive core was bathed in a sudden surge of X-rays, and illuminated as if under God's own camera flash, but neither warhead threatened the alien appreciably.
 
The third missile, however, the one that Parsons and his crew had given their lives to enable the launch of, it was able to shape a course that would bring it within a few hundred meters of the hive core. A detonation at that range would surely kill, or at least wound the BETA, sending it tumbling away into interplanetary space.
 
A laser beam melted the seeker head before cutting through the warhead and into the rapidly depleting fuel tank, and the missile came apart in a soundless blast of rocket fuel and high explosive lenses.
 
The shrapnel that had been the missile flashed past the hive core without incident.
----
===Dogfight===
"Confirmed," I gritted out through the 4Gs of thrust our laden strike package was restricted to. Not for the first time, I cursed the fact that we hadn't been able to provide Terri's F-90 with a high spec engine. "Target maneuvering, no visible thrust plume, at least one laser with anti-missile capabilities."
I studied my threat board. Unless the BETA showed significantly more ability to change its vector, we were going to be able to run it down without any problems. Oh, given it apparently had some sort of reactionless drive, it might have more delta-V than us, but in this case, that wouldn't save it from us engaging it. On the other hand, reactionless drive suggested fuckery from those…G-elements, I thought they were called.
 
"You'd better not have a Hayes field," I muttered to my target. I knew that humanity had figured out how to make a laser deflecting shield using the BETA's exotic elements. If this thing could do the same, who knew if we'd even be able to touch it, with our laser-heavy armament? Terri had a PPC to work with, but the rest of us would essentially be unarmed aside from our slung ordnance, which the BETA could apparently pick off.
 
I bit my lip in self-rebuke. We would work the problem if it arose.
 
"Devils will prosecute," I said, accepting what we were presented with. Potential losses be damned, there was a world of people counting on us. "Hear that people?" I asked, switching to the wing channel. "Pendejo's got teeth and legs. We're going to kill it anyway."
 
"Do you think we can pull those teeth?" asked Hammer. "Our long beams and lightning can reach out further than effective range on the Alamos. Maybe we can fry their lasers."
 
"Good idea," I replied. "No reason not to if we can. We don't have solid intel on their range or power either, so go combat spread and if you get a ladar lock warning, dodge immediately. The BETA have a low energy portion to their laser cycle, and apparently have issues with target tracking during it."
 
"I should lead us in, jefe," said Mike "Arroyo" Goldstein, flying Terri's wing. "Got the toughest nose," he pointed out.
 
I pursed my lips. Arroyo was right, the Sandstone Hawk was the most armored fighter we had. I just didn't know what that would mean in the face of the BETA's beams. Gideon had grew up with Arroyo at Kibbutz Machseh. Was I sending a part of my childhood to die as a tripwire?
 
"Crossbones Two, press." I said.
"Copy, press." The Corsair poured on an extra burst of thrust, leaping out ahead of our formation. It was the right tactical move, and Mike had volunteered. Only a bit more until we came into range… "Spike!" called out Arroyo, jinking laterally. "Defending!"
 
I activated CTNA, descending into a world of virtual reality, seeing and feeling what my fighter did. The BETA only a little more range than our longest reaching weapons. With any luck, they'd only get one unopposed volley against our long-gun fighters before we could bring hate to bear on them. It'd be worse for the shorter-ranged birds, but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The only remaining question was how powerful the beams we were facing were.
 
Arroyo's icon blinked as he took fire. "I'm hit," he reported. "Looks like PPC equivalent, continuing press. Firing." The Sandstone Hawk's single ER Large Laser spat coherent light back at the alien.
 
I considered for half a moment. As much damage as a PPC wasn't great. While any of our birds could take that a few times before having its armor breached, any one hit could potentially do damage through the armor as the spaceframe took the shock of ablating armor. Only Arroyo had armor thick enough to shrug that off entirely, and only on his nose. "All players, buster," I called. "Spoil him for choice."
 
I was pressed harder back into my seat as I went right to the edge of what my laden fighter was rated for. Our Samurai and Spads put on another half gravity of acceleration, and the Sabres an extra three and a half, though they had farther to catch up. Terri's Stingray fell behind, already at maximum laden thrust.
 
I hadn't made the call to put Terri in the safest spot…but it was a happy accident. If only I could do the same for Vixen, who maintained her position off my wing.
 
"He's feeling it!" called Arroyo. "Target maneuvering to hide where I hit. Still getting spikes." I watched the range come down as the Corsair danced in on the alien, coming up on the all-important line of missile range. "Bruiser!" called Arroyo as the missile came off the rail, even as they took another laser hit.
 
The BETA immediately reprioritized the missile, and beams lanced out at it. Unlike the local's missiles, the Alamo had been designed for the Star League battlespace context. It was armored against trivial interception, and was programmed to make things hard for any antimissile systems that would defend against it, shaping a high-G evasive course.
The rest of the squadron hit range on our long guns, and a panoply of laser lances stabbed into the hive core, searching out the defensive lasers and turning them into bloody vapor as fast as we could.
 
It wasn't quite enough. The BETA's beams ablated away the Alamo's nose armor, and the warhead failed to detonate.
 
Which still left a multi-ton mass moving at considerable velocity to hit the hive core on its trailing edge. Glowing blue liquid and black carapace splashed into space, and the thing stopped accelerating instantly. "Alamos and Arrows tight!" I called, sensing an opportunity. "Laser it down!" I continued my beam fire, silencing one of the last weapons still firing back at us as I jinked its pulse.
 
"Once its teeth are pulled," I said. "Begin salvage operations." 
----
===Reflecting on out come the events===
"They're doing what?" yelped Arturo, who immediately regretted how it would sound on the cockpit recorder.
 
"It looks like they're collecting the BETA's corpse," said Racer, sounding as surprised as him. "That big metal basketball that detached from the umbrella looks like it's shaping a rendezvous course for the hive core."
 
Arturo looked down at his sensor readings. The so-called basketball, which was pretty obviously some sort of parasite ship to the umbrella ships, was shaping a course all right…a direct brachistochrone at a full G of acceleration. That was a ludicrous amount of thrust to be using for casual maneuvering…or at least it would be for any UNSF spacecraft. CMC apparently didn't think on the same scale.
 
Which, now that Arturo thought about it, made sense. The so-called aerospace fighters had showed more than four times that much thrust in the intercept. It made sense that a larger ship would be able to pull similar accelerations, if not more.
 
And them choosing 1G of thrust was comforting. As much as CMC were willing to fight on Earth's behalf, and sounded human, that didn't mean much. Their technology was far in advance of what Earth could bring to bear.
 
Actually, maybe them preferring 1G was less comforting than he initially thought. Fighting for Earth from another advanced alien race was not something humanity needed right now. But that was paranoid worries for the future. For now, he opened the com channel.
 
"Colonel Zalman, Commander Miles. What are your people doing?"
 
<<"Salvage, Commander,">> came back the voice of the other man…if he was a man. <<"Waste not, want not.">> he said.
 
Arturo hung in his chair's straps for a moment. The other man's words were spoken in a manner like they were the most sensible thing in the world but… "Can you elaborate?" he asked.
 
<<"Well, for one,">> said Zalman, <<"I'd like to know my enemy better. For two, I'll just bet this thing is chock full of tasty exotic materials to be able to pull the tricks it does, and I'd like to get those into the hands of some of my mad scientists and engineers. And finally, we're used to keeping what we kill, and since we did this one pro bono, I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on salvage rights.">>
 
"That's awfully mercenary, don't you think?" asked Arturo, mind spinning about the potential trove of intelligence insights and G-elements the hive core could represent. He knew the UNSF wouldn't want to just let it go, but equally couldn't see how he could stop Zalman and CMC from taking it.
 
A laugh came over the link. <<"I suppose I never did give our full name,">> said the colonel. <<"CMC is an acronym for El Colectivo Mercenario de Coyote. That's Coyote's Mercenary Collective, if you don't speak Spanish.">>
 
"A little," replied Arturo.
 
<<"Look," said the other man kindly. "I have to look out for my own people, especially seeing as we seem to be stuck here for at least a bit. But I think we're on the same side, and we can dicker over research and resource access. I just have to look out for my people's interests. You understand.">>
 
"I do," said Arturo, feeling like it was at least half a lie.
 
<<"Glad to hear it," said the man. <<"Hopefully we can arrange a face-to-face meeting soon, maybe get this kicked upstairs to the decision makers so I'm no longer a source of gray hairs for you, and I have a proper contract for my people.">>
 
"I'm sure that will be possible. Miles clear." He closed the channel, and sighed, only to turn as Racer burst out into guffaws. "What?"
 
"Nothing, Gallery," she said, wiping tears of laughter away from where they pooled on her eyes. "Just imagining what the brass is going to make of all this." She gestured at the space outside the HSST. "Can you even begin to think what the people down on Earth are going to make of this?"
 
Arturo shook his head. "No, I guess I can't." He thought to the various countries, militaries, intelligence agencies, political cliques, and people that made up the collective mind of the UN. "I bet it won't be simple, though."
 
Racer's expression got somber. "No, it probably won't."
 
"Because they're missing the point," said Jablonski, the loadmaster opening the door to the cockpit to join the officers.
 
"And what's that, Ski?" asked Racer.
 
"BETA tried to drop another hive on us," said the loadmaster, with an expressive shrug. "And it got stopped. I call that a win for humanity."
 
Arturo nodded. "I like the way you see things, Ski."
 
"Well, shucks sir, thanks."
 
Arturo smiled, waving the spaceman back to his duties, while he considered the console before him. Ski was right. The Earth had been saved from another fresh hive, and that was good. But his smile faded as he thought further. Still, the chaos that the events of this April first would cause would reverberate throughout the world, he was sure of it. Only time would tell if it would be to humanity's advantage.
----
--FINI--
*;Notes from the Author : So yeah. CMC has misjumped into Muv-Luv Alternative/Unlimited. Let the chaos begin.For those of you not familiar with MLA/U, it is a Japanese mecha franchise originally springing from a somewhat atypical visual novel, which has since been adapted into a number of anime, manga, and light novels, and probably plenty else besides. The mecha design is honestly pretty wonderful, as it has the conceit that its mecha, known as Tactical Surface Fighters or TSFs, essentially replace all tactical fighter aircraft from the Vietnam War onward, and the TSF's designs incorporate cues from the real world aircraft. There's also a lot of overlap in combat doctrine and relative performance specs with real world, or at least commonly understood real-world fighter stuff.The flight suits are, however, ridiculous, and I will not elaborate here. Visual novels gonna VN.But the more important and intriguing part about MLA/U is the geopolitics which, again, mirror much of the real world...filtered through a somewhat ultranationalistic Japanese lens. I think there's a lot of interesting room to explore what appears to be a reversal of the decolonization of Africa and to some extent, South America under alien threat. There's a lot of ugly political knife fighting in Muv Luv that makes up a large part of the drama, even as humanity faces a very real threat of extinction. I don't tend to think that they handle it particularly well, but they raise a lot of interesting question with their worldbuilding, and that's definitely worth something.Now for those of you going "Colonel deFraug, didn't you say that there wouldn't be any Gideon viewpoints in Book 2? Wasn't that stuff about identity and command of CMC just glossed over? What about all that stuff you were setting up across the Inner Sphere? This was labled as a Battletech story, dammit, not a cross-over!" If you're thinking along these lines....I hope you have an excellent April Fools Day, and I'll see you next time.
----
Misjump
Misjump
Misjump