WP3025 Chpt 2-1

<<Previous Book - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
==Chapter 1 - Winged Praxis (Battletech 3015 CYOA)==
==Book 2 - Sparks of Ambition​==
----
===Desperate Defense===
Garden of the Gods
Republic of Kasnov-Greenland, New Olympia
Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League
24th October, 3014
----
Terri pressed up against the tree, trying to get her breath under control. The muzzle of her service automag swept across the darkened forest, searching for the pursuers. It didn't seem possible that they had lost them, but as her heart rate came down and her pulse no longer hammered in her ears, she found that she couldn't hear the sounds of infantry in full battle rattle crashing through the brush after them. No jump packs thundering, no curses or oaths of retribution. Just the sounds of nighttime high forest in a light rain. No human sounds at all.
Well, that wasn't true. She could hear Itchy's hitching breath, weaker now, hear Cleaner's attempts at reassuring the other pilot that sounded more like an argument with God, and the sounds of Gid rummaging through the survival medkits, cursing in Spanish and Hebrew as whatever he was looking for eluded him.
 
But nothing from the traitors. Somehow they had broken contact. Despite the blood trail and forgetting the principles of stealthy movement in their panic, despite the fact that they didn't have the firepower to drive off elite jump infantry, somehow they'd managed it. With the rain and the dark and no small amount of luck, they had gotten away.
 
Her muzzle swept the backtrail again.
 
The hiss of a hypo, followed by a pained groan pricked up her ears. Seemed like Gid had found whatever medicine he had been searching for.
 
"There you go, Tommy," said Cleaner. "There's the good stuff. You'll be back on your feet in no time."
 
"Carajo," swore Gid.
 
Terri turned away from the backtrail, flakey bark of the tree sticking to Itchy's tacky, half-dried blood that soaked her flight suit's sleeve. The was clawing at Itchy's chest. Cleaner was babbling questions at him.
 
"Blood glued the chest seal down," explained the curly haired pilot, placing his ear against the wounded man's chest. He came back up, face streaked with dirt and gore. "I don't hear him breathing on this side."
The bottom of Terri's stomach dropped out. Pneumothorax. They had all known it was a danger when they'd seen the aspirating blood after that damn Militia trooper had stitched Itchy with a subgun burst. The chest seal was supposed to guard against that, but as was becoming very clear, things in the real world were a lot messier than training.
 
Gid was already jamming his fingers into the untaped side of the seal. Horrifically unsanitary, but they needed to relieve the pressure on the lung, if it wasn't already too late. Cleaner pulled out a small penlight to make it easier to see.
 
In a flash, Terri could see the bluish tint to Itchy's pale skin, before Gid batted the penlight from Cleaner's hands. The light pinwheeled through the air before breaking against a rock.
 
"Idiota!" snapped the man. "They can see that!" He looked around, listening for shouts or jump packs. "We need to move again." he said after a moment.
 
"I don't hear anything," said Cleaner, taking the moment to apply sterilizing gel to the now-uncovered wound.
 
"Neither do I," said Gid. "But they're better at this shit than us." He reached down and pulled the automag from the holster at his side, as if the Militia would appear out of nowhere.
 
"Radek?" asked Itchy.
 
Cleaner's attention focused back on the wounded man. "Yeah Tommy, what is it?"
 
There was a long moment.
 
"Tommy?" asked Cleaner again. He reached down, fingers touching the other man's neck. For six seconds, he was as still as the mountains about them. Then he exploded into screaming violence, yelling denials in Czech, pleading for Tommy to open his damn eyes, to not do this.
"They'll hear," hissed Gid. "Cleaner, you're going to get us all killed! Stom tape!"
 
Terri didn't bother saying anything. It was clear to her that Cleaner was beyond listening at the moment. Holstering her pistol, she jumped on Cleaner's back, locking a hand over his mouth in an attempt to stifle his screams. "Cleaner, snap out of it, or we're going to join him!" she snarled in his ear.
 
The larger pilot clawed at her arms, biting at her hand. His teeth pinched the flesh of her palm, but didn't cut through the tough synthetic of her flight gloves. Unable to dislodge Terri by hand, Cleaner rammed her back into a tree trunk.
 
More flaky bark flew as the air in Terri's lungs left in a whoosh, fireworks exploding behind her eyes. She hung on, barely, but her hand slipped, and wails burst from the man's mouth.
 
And then Gid was there, snapping Cleaner's head to the side with a cross. Terri felt the man's knees go weak, and pulled herself up higher, using her weight to bear Cleaner to the forest floor.
 
He didn't fight back anymore, just moaning into the loam, more in despair than in pain.
 
"Cleaner," she said urgently. "Cleaner, we need you with us. It's too late for him, but we're still alive, and he'd want us to stay that way." When the man shook his head and babbled into the ground, she slapped him upside the head. "Damn your eyes, you swore an oath! You have a duty to keep fighting these traitors, to keep protecting the living! Now we need to move, cadet!"
 
"Too late," said Gideon, despair thick in his voice.
 
Terri looked up from the still insensate Cleaner, and then she caught it too. The whoosh of jump packs was bad enough, but the rhythmic thumping sound was unmistakable. Terri had grown up with that sound. Once, it was going to be her destiny, up until a neurohelmet connectivity test put paid to that and set her on the path to LMS.
 
A Battlemech.
 
Snapping tree limbs and even the crash of an uprooted trunk heralded its rapid advance towards their position. From the rhythm and timbre of the thumps, Terri knew it was something on the edge between light and medium class, moving fast, but not flat-out. They'd never be able to outrun it. Even the slowest of mechs could handily outpace a person on foot, and it was escorted by jump infantry. They couldn't hide from it.
 
A despairing chuckle burst from her lips, even as her heart sank. Ha, escorted. The pilots didn't even have anything that could so much as scratch a mech.
Jump Jets roared, and the scarecrow-like form of a Vulcan appeared over the treeline. She knew from her father's stories that a Vulcan wasn't much of a threat…to other mechs. No, it had been designed purely for hunting infantry. The thumps of the Vulcan on the run got louder and louder. It sounded like the pilot had spotted them during his jump.
 
"Cleaner!" she yelled, turning to run. "We need to go!"
 
Whatever reply he might have offered was drowned out by the roar of the Pitban Model 9s. A wind that felt like an open oven blew a blizzard of flaky bark all around them, making her flinch and shut her eyes. A horrible chemical smell made a crazy part of her worry about just what remass the Vulcan's pilot had loaded into his machine, and what sort of poisoning she could expect from it. Not that she'd be surviving the next few minutes.
 
She could hear Cleaner screaming, and the sounds of gunfire. When she looked back, the man was holding both Itchy and his pistols, and was unloading them at the mech's head. Automag rounds spanged off the armorcrys of the mech's canopy, and the 40-ton machine flinched back in that oddly human way mechs could move, much as she had at the bark storm.
 
"Die! Die! DIE!" chanted Cleaner, even as his pistols clicked empty, slides locked back on empty chambers. "Kill you fuckers!" he swore, even as he fumbled to reload both guns.
 
With a whooshing crackle and an eye-searing wash of light, the Vulcan pilot triggered their flamer. It didn't hit Cleaner, and that was a shame. A direct hit would have been instantaneous, a rush of light and heat, and then nothing left. A mercy, of sorts.
 
Instead, Cleaner was a dark silhouette, almost overcome by the incandescence behind him. When the plasma stream ceased, it became obvious that the radiant heat had ignited anything flammable on the man. Terri heard only a short scream before the flaming corpse turned towards her, puppeted by random nerve impulse and the contraction of cooking muscles. Aqueous humor boiled in the pits that had once been eyes, and Cleaner's short scrub of hair burned like candle wicks, drawing what little body fat the man had away from his face to feed the flames. Char consumed his features, framed by incandescent metal brands in each of his flaming hands.
 
Terri screamed and the burning flesh and meat that had been her comrade pulled itself apart, charred muscles ripping apart a heat-weakened skeleton, all of it on fire, contained by what was supposed to be a fireproof flightsuit. The two automags, glowing hot, dropped to the ground, with hands still seared to their grips.
 
"Oh God," she breathed, knees turning to water beneath her. "How…"
 
A hand, like an iron vise with hysterical strength, fastened on her forearm and yanked her along. "Birchil!" screeched Gideon, voice high like he was pulling massive Gs. The Mech's Sperry Browning snarled, and the air was full of the supersonic cracks of heavy caliber slugs passing them. A storm of bark, splinters, and shredded leaves engulfed them as the machine gun shredded trees all about them. When clumps of dirt flew into the air next to them, they dodged away, heedless of where they were going, just knowing that stopping meant death. Both of them screamed in terror, and Terri had a moment to appreciate the feeling of Gid's hand in hers, here at the end…
 
And then the ground exploded behind them, high explosive rounds knocking them flying, even as the ground crumbled out from under them, and they were falling…
 
For too long, it hadn't been this long before they had tumbled down the cliff, but they were still falling, until the gravity shifted with a great yank and they went flying towards a tree, and Gid's head was going to hit the trunk, and this didn't happen, it didn't happen this way, but the trunk was there and Gid's face was looking at her with a look of loving calm, and she didn't want to see this!
 
Terri fought with her eyes to close them, to block out the view of her lover dying in front of her, but they were moving so slowly, she was going to have to see it…
 
Just before the moment of impact, her eyelids screwed shut and…
----
===Catching up with comrades and subordinates===
Dropship Giora Even, Nadir Jump Point
Canopus System
Magistracy of Canopus
15th June, 3015
----
Terri's eyes popped open. She floated, soaked in sweat, cocooned in one of the light sleeping nets that kept people vaguely on their mattresses should thrust cut out or maneuvering be required. Gravity was not a given in space travel.
 
As if to underscore that, there were the dull thumps of maneuvering jets firing, and gravity shifted again, this time trying to slide her further into the bunk, before it disappeared again. The ship shuddered and the intercom played the series of tones any experienced spacer would recognize as 'ship docked, no further gravity changes expected'.
 
Terri undid the net, floating there and bringing her rapid, shaky breath under control. She hated this. Hated returning to October over and over in her dreams. She scrubbed her hands over her face. It was worse when she woke up alone. She knew that she and Gid had made it out, but there was nothing like the certainty of his body beside her to banish the whispering thoughts. She pulled herself over to the head, pulling the curtain shut around the variable-G shower, and starting the wash cycle. The exhaust fan spun to life beneath the mesh floor, pulling her feet gently down to the surface, followed shortly by the shower spray starting. Between the pressure of the water and the suction of the fan, it made a passable imitation of a shower under gravity.
It had been rough to be on a different dropship during the burn out to the jump point, she reflected as she started lathering up, determined to spend as little time as possible in the shower. Terri knew that the Union CV had plenty of power to fully recycle the greywater produced by her crew to fresh but it never quite felt the same. Oh, the SLDF SAS ship did better than most any dropper she'd experienced, but some things were just beyond the power of technology to fix.
 
Like the smell of charred pork.
 
Terri bit her cheek, focusing on the sharp pain to push the scent memory out of her head. She wasn't doing this right now. She instead focused on her hair, which was responding well to Canopian multi-use product. One nice thing about being based out of Canopus was they had excellent soaps. She could get used to the streamlined luxury they enabled.
 
As the suds rinsed from her hair, she frowned, feeling the short hair on either side of her head. She'd need to shave that before she flew again. Her fingers probed at the undercut as she weighed the pros and cons of just doing it right now, versus going to see if she could track down Gideon.
 
She reached for the clippers.
----
"Hey Cap," said a man whose light brown hair floated around his head in the zero G of the docking tunnel. "You headed over to the jumper too?"
 
Terri caught a grab handle and arrested her flight, seeing her number 5 pilot waiting in front of the sealed hatch. "That was the idea," she said. "What gives?" she asked, gesturing to the hatch.
 
Sgt. Emil Holden, or 'On' to his fellow pilots, shrugged. "Mbeki hasn't quite squared away his…`scuse it, their crew yet." He looked back to the hatch. "Should be someone by to cycle the airlock soon."
 
Terri frowned. "I thought there was an automated system for that. Did it break down?" That would be just their luck, tech crapping out right as they were headed out for their first contract.
 
Emil shook his head. "No, the way I hear it, Mbeki has all the optional automatics on standby for training. Just in case something does go wrong, they want their crew ready to do things the hard way."
 
It made sense, reflected Terri, but that didn't mean she had to like it. On the other hand, it wasn't like she hadn't been drilling her pilots hard… "Lots of training left to do," she said. "Who are you seeing?"
 
"Meeting up with Popper," said her pilot, giving the callsign of one of Vixen's air lance leaders in Skull Squadron. He didn't ask who she was going to see. The Canopians might have looked at her askance for being a League noble, but none of them ever said word one about her being the Colonel's mistress… which was more than she could say for some of the Southwesterners.
 
It was an odd mix of where she stood with the Southwesterners, actually. They loved her for leading the charge against the assassins' backers, respected her as a pilot and leader, and held space for her as Gideon's comrade. But she still heard the whispers of 'homewrecker', 'shiske', and most of all 'gringa'. Angel vengadora and puta in turns. It was maddening.
 
The hatch hissed open. A crew member who looked like they had floated out of a DCA recruiting poster hung there, image only marred by the obvious incipient shiner on their cheek and the CMC patches on his jumpsuit. "Gomen…" they cut themselves off and started again in English. "Sorry for the wait. Still haven't quite gotten used to a Star Lord yet." They rubbed their cheek. "Took a wrong turn."
 
"Slow equals smooth, and smooth equals fast," quoted Terri, remembering her command lessons at LMS. "You'll get there."
 
"Thank you, ma'am."
 
Catching the questioning look on On's face Terri nodded. "Go have fun. Just be ready for your next scheduled sim pod time."
 
"Copy that, T-Bone," said On, pushing off and floating into the Benjy.
 
Terri turned back to the crewman. "Is the Queen Anne docked yet?
 
He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The Colonel's in the command quarters last I heard, if you're looking for him."
 
Terri suppressed a sigh. He was being helpful, and she had all the right in the Sphere to go see Gid. "Thank you. I won't keep you." She pushed off to go find her lover, thoughts roiling.
----
===Heated Arguments and Reunion===
"We need to discuss this," insisted the dark skinned woman with emerald green eyes, glaring at the redheaded complication in Terri's life. Ana Maria Centrella's black hair was pinned into some elaborate design that held it's shape through tension in the zero-G environment. Diane 'Vixen' Zalman, by contrast, had pulled her hair into a loose ponytail that spread out behind her like a cloud of fire.
"Sure," said Vixen. "But not right now. I told you Gideon's looking over some files not related to the contract, and it's not like we aren't going to have time to hash out any concerns. We've got two jumps to get to Borgan's Rift."
 
"We've already wasted two weeks," said the Centrella, who had been assigned as liaison to the Coyotes.
 
Vixen rolled her eyes. "You wasted two weeks," she corrected. "You had your choice of berth on our ships."
 
"I got on the ship with his mech!" exclaimed the Canopian, exasperated. "Who ever heard of a mechwarrior who abandoned his mech?"
 
"Me," said Diane in a tone that screamed 'obviously'. "Given he's a pilot and decided to take some time with his wife." She smiled at the annoyance on the Canopian's face, but winced when she spotted Terri in the background, mouthing 'sorry' at her. "Besides," she went on when Ana Maria had calmed down a bit. "It's not like the comm doesn't work."
 
"It's not secure," objected the liaison.
 
"With a tightbeam laser?" asked Vixen, "Near as dammit." She made a show of smiling at Terri. "Hey T-bone. Gid's in there. See if you can't knock him out of his latest research obsession."
 
Terri tried not to smile at the offended expression on the Centrella's face, wishing that she could have Vixen's utter lack of concern in the security of her relationship to Gideon. Really, it would have been easier in some ways if the older woman had tried to force her out. It would make the resentment easier to bear. But instead, she was stuck with the fact that she had advocated for the other woman to marry Gid, and yet was jealous of the time he spent with her.
 
She went through the door to what had been the SAS operation commander's quarters, letting her eyes adjust to the lower light. Gideon floated above the desk chair that would serve in spin gravity, neglecting the straps as his face was painted by the lights of multiple screens.
 
"Variables, protos, dying stars," he mumbled to himself. "Brown dwarfs, of course." Something clicked behind his eyes, and he slammed a fist into the desk, pushing himself towards the ceiling. "That's why!" he yelled in triumph, then noticed her with a look of shock.
 
"Why what?" she asked, even as she watched him flip in midair to absorb his unintended maneuver with flexed legs before gently pushing off towards her.
 
"I was going over some of the data on possible locations for SLDF caches," he said. "It looks like the Castle Brians weren't the only model for tucking shit away. For black projects, they seemed to like to use abnormal stellar or near-stellar objects, like Zikaron."
 
She caught Gid, letting his arms enfold her and holding him to her. She felt tension flow out of her body, and pressed her lips to his. When the kiss ended, she brushed her hair back from where it had drifted and considered him. The look of post-kiss happiness was welcome, of course, but he was still carrying tension, almost looking hunted. Maybe he was having nightmares like her.
 
Or maybe Diane was banishing them, and he didn't need her anymore, but was too kind to say it outright. She stepped on that line of thought. "So, what does that mean?" she asked.
 
"Well," he said, appearing to relax a bit more. "It gives us context to some of the strange coordinates in the Benjy's databanks. Some of them might even be other caches. And it might be that there's room for a new approach to lostech prospecting, looking over stellar science and exploration that the Star League was funding. I'll need to talk to Captain Rose about that."
"Do you think Yanchep is hiding some secrets?" asked Terri, thinking back to the vast O'Neill cylinders the Star League had built as a system observatory for the still-forming worlds of the abnormal Yanchep primary.
"Probably?" said Gideon. "I'm not sure why the SAS would base out of a station that was almost certainly going to become a trade hub, but it's possible." He frowned, working the idea over. "I suppose with only one stellar jet, it's possible that the other one isn't that strong and they're hiding a facility in what looks like a radiation plume." He stroked his beard. "The Cylinder One environmental collapse could have been a bioweapon leak too. I wouldn't put it past the Blackhearts to have a more subtle way of applying pressure than an obvious human-targeting plague."
 
 Terri shuddered. What files she had looked through on the SAS's mission were nightmarish. She knew that things were more…expendable, back in the glory days of the Star League, but to do so much damage to the Periphery, even to the member states, just so Star League could maintain its control? Kerensky had done them a favor by going on his Exodus.
 
 Not that it had stopped the chaos of the first two Succession Wars from burning away all but the merest fragments of interstellar civilization, a little voice reminded her.
 
Gid's voice snapped her out of it. "We might have a little trouble getting a Canopian salvage operation into Yanchep, though," he observed wryly. "Especially with how closely they guard Cylinder One. Doubly so with Andurien taking advantage and snapping up independent systems." He paused and looked at her for a moment. "I missed you," he said finally.
 
Terri felt her heart skip a beat. "I missed you too," she said, feeling the hungry heat rise within her. She kissed him again, hands moving to the fasteners of his clothes.
----
Some time later, they floated there, spent, toes hooked under grab bars by trained habit as they basked in the afterglow and each other's body heat. Terri pressed her cheek to her lover's chest, listening to his steady breath, the thump of his heart. Moments like this everything seemed right. She wished that she could live forever in the sliver of time and space she now occupied.
 
But.
 
"Gid." she said, quietly.
 
"Mmm?" he mumbled, craning his neck towards her with a questioning expression.
 
She looked back at him. "Why…why did you choose the Queen Anne?" she asked.
 
He blinked, then his expression sharpened, frowning as all the things she wasn't asking out loud registered. He took a long time to think about it. Finally, as her lips pursed to prompt him with another question…
 
"I don't think I did," he said. "Make a conscious choice, I mean. It was just the default. I'd been doing my business out of her since we picked her up, and so much of our early history as a unit is tied to the Queen Anne." He gave her an uncomfortable look. "It's not a good answer, I know, but I don't think I was really thinking about it."
 
Terri tried not to feel the stab of pain. She really did, but it reminded her of another flight out to a jump point, back in the New Olympia system. "Oh," she said.
 
"I'm sorry," he said, and she knew he was telling the truth.
 
She pressed her face into his chest, unable to look at the sincerity in his eyes. Again, the thought came that it would be so much easier if he didn't care that he had hurt her again. But he did. And words about hurt froze in her throat. "I've been having the dreams again," she said, instead. "About the mountains."
 
He shifted, arms enfolding her more securely. "Me too." he admitted.
 
Anger blossomed in her chest. "At least you've had Vixen with you." she accused.
 
"It's helped," he said, heavily. "But Di isn't you, Terri. And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."
 
Terri's lips skinned back from her teeth, the combination of honesty, hearing Gid's pet name for his wife, and the obvious concern for her filling her with an emotional cocktail she couldn't name. Her limbs and core wound tight, for what she couldn't say. Not a betrayal, just a hurt, she told herself. You chose this path.
 
By degrees, she forced the tension from her limbs. "Be here for me now," she demanded, voice on the ragged edge of breaking.
 
His limbs tightened around her in response. "Of course." he said, and the universe felt right again.
----
===Recovering from Trauma and Reorganization===
Terri had just slipped back into her jumpsuit when a hand rapped on the cabin door.
 
"Come in," called Gideon, who had anchored himself near his desk.
 
The door hissed open to admit Vixen, who had a quick flash of disappointment cross her face before she closed the hatch behind her, and turned back with a smirk. "Our liaison does not like me," she reported, floating over to Gideon for a hug, and a quick peck that she diverted to his cheek at the last second.
 
"Maybe not the most politic choice," said Gid, mildy. "We aren't free of Centrella influence yet."
 
"Kinda the point," said the redhead, taking a position where she could see both Gid and Terri. "I'm pretty sure she's a honeytrap. We've got our orders straight from the Magestrix and Colonel Van Dame and full command rights. A liaison officer would make sense. They could help interface with MAF forces. But a minor Centrella?"
 
Terri frowned at the logic. Vixen had been sensitive to the point of paranoia about Centrella seductresses ever since her and Gid's first meeting with the Magestrix. Which said things about the other woman's feelings she really didn't want to examine. "It doesn't necessarily have to be that," she said. "The Magestrix might be trying to court CMC," and Gid, she didn't say, "but that doesn't mean she trusts us." She spread her hands. "It's pretty standard for a house to send a member along to look after their interests."
 
"I guess." grumped Gid's wife.
 
"I'm going to have to meet with her at some point," said Gideon. "We should set that up. On our terms, but we should." He rubbed his beard. "If I act as a conciliator, it might even play on her cultural assumptions."
 
Terri chuckled.
 
"What?" asked the man.
 
She shook her head. "Nothing. I'm just appreciating you trying your hand at intrigue." That got a smile out of Vixen as well. "Just make sure it's something you can be sincere about," advised Terri. "That helps you a lot, but you're not good at being dishonest."
 
Gideon frowned deeply. "I'll keep it in mind," he said finally. "Anyway, Vixen, Terri had a suggestion. Put on your CAG hat."
 
"Oh?" asked the redhead, pivoting to face Terri more fully. "What are you thinking?"
 
Terri took a deep breath. "You and Gid shouldn't be on the Queen Anne. Skull should be moved to the Giora Even."
 
An immediate look of mulish defiance took over Diane's face, but she took a deep breath and forced her face back to a neutral expression. "Go on." she said.
 
"Queen Anne might be a good fighter carrier for a squadron," said Terri, "but the GE has better command facilities for a wing, and you're both top-level command staff. It's also more survivable, has better sensors, weapons…" She shrugged. "The only thing it's lacking is a half-G of thrust."
 
"And my history with it." said Vixen, but it was grudging.
 
Terri nodded. "On the GE, you'll also be available to more of the wing, day-to-day."
 
"There's another reason," said Gid, and his voice was gentle as he said it. The redhead turned to look at him. "You still avoid bay five," he said.
 
Terri watched in amazement as Diane's carefully crafted neutral expression broke and pain flooded over her face. Tears welled up, pooling in the corners of the redhead's emerald eyes. "I…I…" she said.
 
Gid floated over to her and enfolded her in his arms, brushing away the tears. "Di," he said quietly. "You're hurting yourself by staying here. I know you've got history with the Queen Anne, but every time you force yourself to visit bay five, you wake up screaming."
 
Shame flashed across the older woman's face and her legs pulled up towards her chest as she tried to curl up, blocked by Gideon's body. Terri watched in amazement. Sure, Diane had told them she carried memories of horror as well, but it had always seemed like the redheaded pilot had been so on top of things. Terri shifted, feeling uncomfortable, like an intruder.
 
"And that's okay," soothed Gideon, rubbing Vixen's back. "It's okay to hurt. I just don't want you retraumatizing yourself. You're too important to me to ever want that. You deserve to let the past go and enjoy the future."
 
Terri realized with a start, that the sounds she heard from the mass of red hair against Gideon's chest, even now twitching into a nod, were unguarded sobs. She left her position against the wall and floated over to the other two, awkwardly putting an arm around her shoulder. It's like when the two of you comforted Gid when he saw his father's cabin, she told herself, ramming down all of her thoughts of jealousy and helpless frustration. She's a comrade in need. It helped.
 
Some.
 
Eventually, the sobs trailed off, and Vixen relaxed a bit. Terri held her tongue as Gid kissed away his wife's tears, and Diane turned to her with still-watery eyes. "Told you I wake up screaming too." she said with an attempt at a joking tone.
 
Terri gave her a hug. A real one. If Vixen was going to show her vulnerability like this, she'd be a disgrace on the name of her house if she didn't offer comfort. "You did," she said.
 
Vixen floated back, wiping away the remaining tears. "Okay," she said. "Okay. We're moving Skull to the GE. You're right, it's the best decision for the unit, and for me." She brushed her ponytail back behind her shoulders. "So, who do we move over?"
 
Terri felt a spike of panic as she realized she might be assigned away from Gid again. But surely Vixen wouldn't do that to her…
 
"I mean," said Vixen, settling firmly back into the role of CAG, "I'd really prefer to have you leading the fighter complement on Queen Anne if it's not me," she said to Terri. "I can trust you implicitly."
 
Terri felt a spike of pride, followed close on its heels by shame. "I…" she started.
 
"Let's assume," said Gid, "that there could be similar morale issues with that arrangement." He gave a meaningful look between the two women.
 
Vixen nodded. "Agreed. I'm just not confident about Crossbones Squadron, loyalty-wise." She waved a hand at Gideon. "I know Hammer is a J-girl…"
 
"Admittedly, not one I grew up with." said the man. "Galistean. But yeah, she'll be loyal."
 
"But the rest of the squadron is a mix of mercs we picked up, and it's the squadron with the least time together as a unit," said Vixen.
 
Gid shrugged. "All true. But we can count on the techs and ship crew, and I'm pretty sure I trust Spuds."
 
"Yeah," said the redhead. "Meyer's solid. Shame she wants to waste her talents on dropships." She bit her lip. "It just feels wrong leaving her in someone else's hands."
 
"You're still CAG," pointed out Terri. "Queen Anne is still under the wing."
 
Diane nodded. "I know. And it'll be good to have all of us on the same ship."
 
It was Gideon's turn to frown. "Honestly, I might need to transfer over to the Wallenberg when we get in-system to Borgan's Rift." He held up both his hands at Terri and Diane's objections. "I know, I know. I'm not looking forward to a twenty-one day burn alone, myself. But let's face it, I'm going to be operating out of Pursuer most of the time on planet," he said, naming his LAM. "Between the battle computer and the political element of mech forces, it's pretty much required. And I do need to get in on the training with the mechwarriors."
 
Terri traded looks with Diane. She saw the logic but…
 
"Yeah, no," said Vixen. "You're part of the wing too, and we need to practice with the LAMs as well." She held up a hand as Gid opened his mouth to object. "Hear me out."
 
The curly-haired pilot closed his mouth and nodded. "Okay."
 
"We have plenty of fuel to burn for limited shuttling operations. We'll shift four birds into storage to open up bays for the LAMs, and you and your lance can fly back and forth so you can exercise with both units."
 
"That's…" he considered it for a moment. "That's workable. Maus, Dyejob, and Nat could all use more training, and you're right, we have been slacking on integrating the LAMs with our fighter screen."
 
"And you sleep on the GE." said Vixen.
 
"Training schedule permitting," said Gid.
 
"We write the damn training schedule!" snapped the redhead. "We can make it work. Especially when it comes to the well-being of a squadron commander, the CAG, and the damn Colonel!"
 
Terri looked at the expression of guilt on her lover's face. She could see him telling himself that he didn't deserve to take advantage of his rank like that. It was a familiar line of thought to her. "Gid," she said. "Please."
 
That did it. The J-Boy nodded. "Okay," he said. "We'll do it."
 
The silence stretched for long moments before the intercom chimed. "Colonel," came the voice of Captain Mbeki over the link, "docking operations are complete, and we are beginning jump preparations. You and the CAG are welcome to join us on the bridge if you would like."
 
Gideon pressed the intercom button. "Thank you Captain. We'll be there shortly." He turned to the women. "We'll need to write up the training schedule and transfer orders as quick as possible, not to mention getting the meeting with the liaison sorted, as well."
 
"I'll work on the wing training schedule," said Vixen. "Terri, can you handle the transfer for Skull and Cutlass?"
 
Terri nodded. "Can do. There'll be some grumbling, but it shouldn't be a problem."
 
"And I'll bring in Natan and my company commanders so we can sync the mech schedule up with the wing," said Gideon. He smiled. "It might be some extra work, but I really wasn't looking forward to that in-system burn." He pushed off for the door, giving Terri a peck on the lips as he floated past. "Come on, Di. Don't want to keep the skipper waiting."
 
Terri smiled as the two left the compartment and the door shut behind them. Things weren't fixed. She still had a storm of emotions roiling in her head, but at least things would be a bit better. She turned to the desk, borrowing one of the SLDF vintage noteputers, and started working up the orders for transferring squadrons between dropships. You just had to work at things.
----
*;Notes from the Author : And now the story proper starts up again. Welcome to Terri's viewpoint. She's been having a rough time, to put it mildly.Not sure what else to say, other than to remind you that these characters are all flawed.
----
<<Previous Book - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
2-1