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Chapter 36 - Time Enough For A Cat -
- Victoria II 5: Wax, Burns, and Blood -[]
The Time to Shine![]
Dropship Argo - Briefing Room 26c
Geosynch Orbit
Victoria II, Capellan Confederation
January 12th, 3029
Perspective of Warrant Officer 1c Peter Kearsarge
Looking around the rest of the briefing room with my wing, I grinned. We were deploying! We were finally deploying! Sure, it had taken fucking forever for us to get cleared to go, despite all our best work, but we were finally getting to go down and fight instead of staying up here cooped up with the Good Doctor's freakshow and the failures in the ADG! I could at least respect the ones that had been dragged back up here, since there was no use in sending dropships up empty, but the ones that hadn't left yet drove me nuts! It was all mope, whine, we're going to die- that sort of garbage.
"Alright, alright, settle down kids," Captain Merryweather said from up front. I resented the implication- I was sixteen, same as everyone else here, and a legal adult in the eyes of the Magestrix and God. "We're getting deployed, despite my best efforts."
Wait, what?
Of course, Captain Merryweather was still talking. "As a result of this, I'm here to give you this final briefing. Everyone, look around yourselves. Take a good look at these friends you've got. They're your flying family, and your job down there- no matter what anyone else tells you- is to bring as many of these people home with you as you can. I've got seventy-two kids here I've taught how to fly, how to fight, and how to hopefully know when to run."
At that, there was a pause, and Merryweather pulled out his flask, setting it on the lectern.
"God willing, I will get sixteen or so of you back. Maybe nine if I'm unlucky, or was a bad teacher."
If he was drinking- if he was allowed to be drinking- this was going to be serious.
"For this campaign, you are all required to fly at least three missions to get your campaign medals, and related campaign bonus pay. Should you get your bonus pay, you could withdraw from the campaign without breaking contract. They'll ship you up here, you'll performance review with the ASF squadron leaders, and get a chance to go to technical school again and change operational billets to a noncombat post. If you can, go logistics. Nobody likes to shoot at logistics officers," Merryweather said, sighing. "Six missions will certify you for CF Officer's School. That's a fucking trap, and you'll be stuck down here forever, moving mud. Don't do it. Nine missions is a qualifying score to get into the ASF squadrons, where you're not doomed to die. Twelve is ASF officer's school."
Face grave, Merryweather slapped the lectern. "None of you want to go back to school again. I saw what kind of hell that was, I fucking taught you there to make sure you'd be getting out. Six missions. That's all you need to fly. Get in there, don't die, get out."
"Yes, sir!" we all bellowed at him.
"Good enough. Watch out for ground fire, keep an eye on your top cover, and aim for the DropShips. Formation dismissed to DropShips for transit down."
When Reality sets in[]
Airbase Olive
Victoria II, Capellan Confederation
January 13th, 3029
Perspective of Warrant Officer 1c Peter Kearsarge
Sitting around our fairly cushy barracks, I grinned at my squadron. Back in the Orphanage School, we'd been the middle of the pack, doomed for a life in the Battle Armor battalions once slots opened up and just shuffling papers for the factories until then.
"Think we'll be getting to go soon?" Eleanor asked, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. "If we're getting deployed, we're bound to be getting mission taskings soon.'
"That entirely depends on when they've got fuel and bombs," Johnson called back from the kitchenette. "Once those are delivered, we'll be flying."
"And not a minute sooner!" Mack laughed. That was all my wing accounted for, at least- and the rest of the squadron was doing the same, our little finger-fours of pilots talking.
We were lucky to be here. The requirements for the Conventional Fighter courses were incredibly light, and had been added late in our schooling- but since they were only six classes different from the Battle Armor track, it wasn't hard to transfer in. Once we cleared the bar, it was a ten-week basic training course, and then we were shipped off to Red Horse to cut our teeth over Adelherwin: mostly by bombing petty nobility that still thought castles meant anything more than jack and shit. Half the damn planet was in revolt most of the time, but since they didn't have battle armor, tanks, or mechs it was rather a cakewalk to keep them nice and oppressed. We'd been the flying hammer then, Colonel Wyrm's wrath made manifest.
"Speaking of which," I called out, checking my tablet, "we've got a squadron briefing in an hour, and then elephant walk an hour after that. Looks like fuel and ordy's come in, everyone!"
There was cheering, and I grinned to myself. All we had to do was fly twelve missions. That couldn't be that bad, and as everyone pulled themselves into their flight suits and bolted on their Neurohelms, morale was sky high. The briefing wasn't a stiff one, either, even if it did have a lot of somewhat extraneous detail to it.
Right now, the Argo was being jammed by a surface to orbit jamming array. Black Horse Mech Battalion was going to be deploying to take out any surface forces there, and would be supported by all of us in the Red Horse CF Wing flying overwatch. Because there was a risk of enemy interception, we might be getting supplemented by cruise missile fires or even proper ASF being launched off the groundside fields further back.
I wasn't worried, though, as the briefing finished and I got in my Meteor. She was a heavy CF, at 45 tons, and underneath I could see the techs locking in the nine tons of bombs into my undercarriage. Inside the cockpit, though, I just grinned as I hooked my Neurohelmet into the warbird's systems, the HUD coming up instantly as I checked the mechanical gauges too. The most important step here was making sure my bombsight and gunsights were working properly: the Neurohelmet's HUD system was infamous for how hastily it had been bodged together to use Harvest Blades standards instead of geriatric IS Standard telemetry, and that had made a hell of a lot of bugs. As much as I appreciated the ability to lock SRMs and LRMs with a head-turn and a few other systems items, I also liked everything working every time.
"Mythos squadron, sound off," I called out. Eleven additional assents, and then Tower was putting us on the tarmac. Twelve Meteors, with squadrons of Bluehawks behind us to help out as soon as we were in the air. First Group was going to notch its belt today!
"Tower to Mythos squadron, you are clear for takeoff."
That was the signal. My fusion systems were running hot, the turbines were spooling, and only my brakes held me in place on the tarmac. Pressure was rising in the turbines, though, and thrust was increasing. If I wasn't careful, my brakes could slip; the cold of the air sapping their grip. It was a brisk -42C outside, after all; but I didn't care. In my flight suit I was warm, and in my engines it had already passed 800C as I hit the first go-point.
Outside, the squadron was roaring, the heat starting to plume out from the base, warm air getting caught in the cement barriers to create a pocket of warm air under our wings. 900C in the engine now, second go point reached. I was good for takeoff.
Two switches, and my brakes disengaged at the same time as a demon sat on my chest. I was slammed back in my seat from the thrust, watching the markers on the runway tick down. 1,000m to runway end. 800m to runway end. 600m. 400m.
200m.
100m
50m- now! Slamming my stick full back, I felt the airfoils bite into the arctic air as the tyranny of gravity was thrown away under my wings. Push, push, push the airfoil, push the engine, give it every bit of power I had! Keep the nose up at thirty up, as I managed to get just a few dozen more meters under my keel, the bomb load trying to pull me back down below. Still, I would fight it. I couldn't do anything else, now could I?
As my squadron formed up around me, we set bearing and got up to combat altitude quickly- about two thousand meters AGL for this. While we were cruising in, though, the Black Hores was landing- and from what we could piece together on comms, it wasn't going well. There was a mech battalion encamped there, and a damn good one, so we'd need to crack them out of there. We were focused, ready to go, bombs ready.
Then my Rear Warning Radar started screaming. Gunning the throttle, I pulled a fast wingover as a pair of lasers streaked past me. Combat habits pushed themselves through me as the radio erupted in screaming and static- I had to get airspeed, now. Nose at the deck, I slammed the throttle past the stops, altimeter diving straight down to Hell with me as the rest of the squadron broke apart. No use trying to hide any longer, either: two switch flips and a bob of my head got me full-power radar, screaming out into the night to find where our attackers had come from.
The only thing I found was my squadron, lesse three fighters.
"Who bit the farm?" I asked, wary.
"I don't know…" Eleanor replied, nervous. "Squadron lead?"
Our squadron leader, Reine, didn't respond. As we herded back up into a stacked series of echelons for a formation, I winced as the missing birds made themselves known. Reine, Johnson, and Cormar had bit the farm there.
Johnson had bit the farm there. My wingman!
"Fuck it," Mack snapped. "Everyone, spread out by flight, and increase spacing. Who dumped ordy?"
The answer? Half of us. I hadn't, mostly because I'd been too busy maneuvering, and I quickly figured out what Mack was driving at. "Anyone with bombs left, form up on me," I said, thinking fast. Our Meteors were only armed with a class-10 autocannon and a pair of SRM-4 launchers. Strafing would be next to useless.
"We'll provide top cover," Mack replied. "In case those whatever they were come-"
Just like that, he cut out into a burst of static. Checking my helmet, I grimaced: we'd entered the bloom of the orbital jamming station, about a hundred klicks out from the target. Still, I had a wing of strikers lining up on me, bombs ready. Adjusting my helmet zoom, I scanned the area we'd be entering. Usually, if we had to perform close air support on a tactical objective and couldn't get local tactical air control to vector us in, the ground troops would know to mark it with smoke LRMs so we'd see it on radar or thermals.
I couldn't see anything. Fuck it, keep flying. Overhead, our top cover stayed on, their running lights in my HUD the only sign they hadn't been bounced or died yet. Fine.
"Mythos squadron, come in!" a voice yelled, piercing the jamming. "This is Headquarters Bravo Hotel 22! If you can hear us, target the fort at GS Foxtrot 19! That's the local area jammer! Do not respond, just hit it!"
I nodded to myself, pulling up my tacmap and friendly roster. Since comms were so degraded, the background verification signal hadn't gone through- but BH22 was a valid Black Horse command post unit, so I'd take the order as correct. Now, grid square F19… yeah. Yeah, we could hit that. Banking away from the fight, I brought the bomber wing's heading in on target, and started the pull-up to bombing altitude, doing the wing-waggle along the way. Soon enough, we were ready.
Of course, the enemy got a vote too.
I didn't notice what was happening until the first flak shell hit my wing, the stick bucking in my hands as I frantically fought to keep my bird under control. I could see the fort, and it was a small one with a massive radiating antenna complex to it. Even with the radio out, though, I still had shitty laser comms: perfect for a short, fixed message.
"Aim for the antenna, bomb on my lead!" I snapped, sending the message into the buffer to be repeated by the strobe light on my ass while another burst of damage tried to pull down my craft. Fucking Riflemen! Jamming the stick back and left to balance a nasty bit of roll, I felt the rudders flutter under my feet as I got the nose in position. The target was under me now- eye in the bombsight, hold the stick ready- bombs armed-
Now!
Nine tons of bombs fell off my ship, and I felt her buck upwards as I went to full power to get out of the steadily-thickening flak cloud. It felt liberating to be out of the mess there, and as I clawed for altitude the jamming effect stopped- and the radio-screech of battle came in.
"Good hits, good hits!" a field commander called out, laughing. "Thank you, little squadron!"
"Mythos Squadron, what's your status?" BH22 called up, stomping on whatever lieutenant had been feeling frisky with that callout.
"Down three, including squadron lead, and I know I'm chewed up. Need us for anything?"
"Was that all your bombs?"
"Afirm."
"Then go home, we'll call in the next wave."
"Roger that, Mythos out."
Sighing, I just put my bird on the heading to get out of here. Everyone else was forming up on me to do it, and we left like we came in: high and lonely.
Once we were out of Black Horse's HQ range, I sighed and slapped the autopilot on for a minute to take my helmet off and pinch my nose. We'd lost a quarter of our squadron! Right there! What the fuck! Pulling the helmet back on, I just winced. Keep flying the mission. Just keep flying the mission, and-
-wait. Some of them may have punched out.
"All fighters, take a loose screening line formation, and stay quiet," I said, the idea coming to me fast. "If we're careful, we might be able to see if anyone punched out from when we got bounced!"
Slowly, carefully, seven fighters spread out. Seven? Hold up a minute! We should have nine! Did someone not make it? Had they gotten lost?
"Peter…" I heard Eleanor whisper. "...I don't think they punched out."
"They had to try, though, or the auto-eject got them if their magazines cooked off…" I tried to reply, but my tongue was thick in my mouth. Still, everyone that was left humored me.
Needless to say, we didn't find anything. Finally, we got to base and landed.
Our dormitory was cold.
Desperate Strike Mission[]
Airbase Olive
Victoria II, Capellan Confederation
January 14th, 3029
Perspective of Warrant Officer 1c Peter Kearsarge
Looking around the circle of my squadron, I gulped. Mack and Johnson were gone. Eleanor was next to me, hovering almost defensively. The rest of the squadron was handing me a hat, peaked and ominous. The Squadron Leader's hat.
"Take it," Robert said, his normally smiling face seized in a frown. "You didn't panic yesterday, and we voted on it."
"Alright," I muttered, slowly picking it up. "They're probably gonna downcheck us, though."
With only seven fighters, we weren't fit to fly. That was that. Nothing to be done about it-
A knock at the door startled us, and I went to answer it. The person there, a staff major, coughed lightly. "I assume you're the acting squadron leader?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes?" I said softly.
"Very good. Huntsman Squadron has been downchecked, and their pilots and aircraft are being transferred to you. Expect a mission tasking in about eight hours."
With that, the staff major left, and a pair of lieutenants brought us five pilots. They looked about as miserable as we did, and it didn't take much work to bring them into our quarters and press cups of hot tea into their hands. At least with our numbers back up, it was easier to pretend nothing was wrong until an incorrect face sat poorly in a chair they'd never seen before.
"So," I said, looking around them. "Names?"
"Christopher, Louise, Manny, Typhon, and Conte," Christopher said, pointing to himself and each pilot in turn. "Where were you flying yesterday?"
"With Black Horse," I replied. "You?"
"Over Bougainvillea. They've got an Arrow IV lance on flak duty."
I hissed. "Oh God."
"Arano's out of cruise missiles, so we had to blow another hole in the walls. We drew the card- in and out, one pass. It didn't even matter- once we all got locked up and the missiles started coming in, everyone had to drop their bombs and dance like mad," Christopher said, eyes dimming. "You ever see the bullet with your name on it?"
"Not yet, but my bird's got plenty of holes addressed as 'to whom it may concern' in the hangar," I replied, taking a sip of the tea. "We were going after a battalion of the Big MAC - and they have a lot of flak, and air cover too."
"Fuck, and we're in Bluehawks!" Typhon snapped. "We'll get slaughtered!"
"What's a Bluehawk got on it?" I asked, tapping the table.
"Double LRM-10 packs. You?"
"AC/10 and a pair of SRM-4s."
"We're gonna get fucked," the teenager groaned. I couldn't disagree with him. Before anyone else could say anything, though, a runner was pounding at the door.
"Mission brief's ready!"
Great. The mission wasn't formally assigned yet, but they had the brief ready. Had some other squadron shit the bed? Going to take it, I tabbed through it quickly. We'd be hitting the Big MAC again, this time aiming for DropShips that had landed near the AO to allow the unit fighting the Black Horse to stage a retreat. Included in the packet was a threat assessment- two enemy Tomahawks for air cover, and a lance of Riflemen and another of Blackjacks in the enemy ground forces. Our mission objective was to cripple or kill the Overlord-class dropship Marblehead- without it, the rest of the fleet of Unions and Leopards wouldn't be able to fully evacuate the drop zone.
Looking for the squadron leader to have a plan, I nearly panicked when I realized I was the squadron leader. Looks like I had to do the planning now. Fuck.
"Alright, there's air cover in the zone, so we'll need to plan for that," I planned out loud. "If we have a three-ship loaded with flak, that'll… maybe be enough. We'll need the Bluehawks and some of the Meteors to have bombs, though. I'll lead the anti-fighter element."
"I'll be with you," Eleanor said, before Jones- one of our quieter pilots- nodded and assented.
"Good. Christopher, you're leading the bombers. We'll be going in from max altitude- pull a dive bomb, hit it, leave. That thing's covered in guns, and a lot of them will be slinging flak."
"How bad will it be?"
"Six AC/5, six Large Lasers, and two or three LRM-20s."
"Bomb it and run, got it."
I nodded, filling out the loadout sheets for the squadron quickly and handing it to someone to put in the fax machine. "Great. Everyone, head to bed. We'll need our sleep, and this is gonna be a rough one."
Needless to say, nobody slept well. At the very least, the mess hall catered us out food before we "formally" got batched the mission, and after dinner it was back into our flight suits and into the hangers. Now, instead of a bushel and peck of bombs, the underside of my Meteor was stripped clean except for a centerline sensor pod. Mounting it, I winced as my foot dipped into a crater where my footstep panel was supposed to be. The armor damage had been fixed, but the cosmetics weren't worked out yet.
Still. On went the flight helmet, in went the cables, and out to the elephant walk I rolled.
"Alright everyone, you all know the drill. Standard echelons, anti-fighter element up top."
One by one, our birds took wing. This time, I was off the runway at the 400 mark, wheels retracting into the undercarriage gracefully as I started blasting the radar hard enough that even Argo could probably see. I wanted to see them coming- and the rounds of flak stored in my hold wanted to greet them, too.
This time, we were taking a very different course; a massive dogleg or two adding a half hour to our flight, but keeping us mostly over 'friendly' territory where we could get picked up if we managed to eject.

Meteor Conventional Fighter (variant shown)
"Where are those fuckers?" Eleanor grumbled, shifting her wings carefully. "I'm getting nervous."
"So am I," I replied, stretching my hands around the stick. "Still. Fifteen minutes out."
"Holding steady, aye."
We were close enough to see the battle on the ground and the light of dawn tickling over the horizon, painting our target DropShip starkly against the field of smaller droppers it was kin to. Bucking at the leash, Christopher spurred the bombers on, thrusting hard for the launch point as the formation evened out into the three sequential bombing echelons.
Below me, flak opened up, the lances of AA mechs trying to scythe us down from the air. It wasn't working- we were too high, too fast. Too close to the sun, and yet so far from Heaven.

Tomahawk Aerospace Fighter in combat
"First flight, diving!" someone called out, but I couldn't tell who- my radar was finally pinging, the two Tomahawks having been hiding in the hanger of the Overlord.
"Dogfighters, they're pulling!" I yelled, my actions following my deeds as I snapped into a diving roll, trying to paint the Tomahawks in my gunsight. They were fast, though, ripping up through the clouds at what had to be War Emergency Power as I tried to take a bead. It wasn't enough, though, the Tomahawk ripping past me into the clouds to wingover. I still had the gauge on him, though, and as the G-force tried to suck my lungs into my stomach I barely got the piper on him.
Roaring like thunder, the Class 10 Autocannon in the belly of my bird opened up. A few shells scratched the Tomahawk, but he had enough armor to shrug it off and keep pulling through the turn while I battled G-lock. Finally, when I couldn't track him anymore, I rolled out and slammed the throttles past safe, trying to get some energy back.
"Peter, left, now!" Jones shouted, and I did it without hesitating. If I hadn't, the second Tomahawk would have speared me through with both his lasers- as it was, I barely dodged in time.
"Thanks!" I yelled back, looping back over to try and track- there! The first Tomahawk was trying to line up to bounce the second wave of bombers, but I was holding too close. We were nearly making this a head-to-head pass, but his target fixation meant he didn't see me coming in, gun thundering again. This time, this time I managed to land the entire burst on him- and as we seared past each other, my SRM packs fired too, ripping chunks out of his wing plating.
"Bombers, anyone clean, try and bounce Bogie 1!" I snapped, turning to try and find the second one. "There's twelve of us and two of them-"
As I said that, two of our bombers slammed into the Fortress we were trying to cripple. Fuck! "-just paste him!"
"I'm going for it- shit!" someone cried, and then we were nine. I could see the second one, though, pulling over to track him again as he took the outside turn to try and line up on our last echelon of bombers going in. Once again, it was the head-to-head, and this time he let them rip into me- not the bombers. One laser scored my right wing to the bone, while another nearly blew my nose off.
My plane was fighting me like a lion, flaps locking, as I started to lose control. I'd flown too close to the sun there, as my hands frantically flew over the switches. Main hydraulics, gone- switch to secondaries. No leverage- go to blown flaps. Nose was dragging left, trying to pull me into a spin- trim right. Trim was inducing roll, counterbalance that. Ground was getting too close to cockpit-
Pull up.
As my elevators dug into the frigid air of Victoria, I beat the death spiral with forty meters to spare and powered out without blinking. "Fuck," I swore, trying to track the nine- eight- no, seven remaining squadron members of mine. We were trying, damn it, but those Tomahawks were tough as hell. I'd been beat to hell- nobody would blame me for retreating.
I couldn't, though, not while my friends were still up there. Slamming the gas, I could feel the loose armor in my nose trying to rattle as I got back in the high-altitude dogfight. "C'mon, hold together," I hissed, feeling the shakes intensify as I got back to speed. "Trust me, we're in it together."
The shakes didn't slow down, but I did get back into position to slam a warning burst of autocannon shells at one of the Tomahawks, so that was mission accomplished. Now all I had to do was survive, as one of them came after me trying to blow my tail off. Jerking the stick back and slamming the WEP button, I tried to dodge, but a small laser tickled my tail to blast up an elevator.
Elevator gone, pitch moment out of control- pitch down, roll hard flaps. Blow both sets.
Pray.
"You think I'm gonna die that easy?!" I roared, yawing over and ripping out a massive spray of gunfire that caught the first Tomahawk again as they kept snapping shots off at the Bluehawks that were trying to play their LRM packs. "You'll never kill me!"
The reality was different, though, my plane screaming as I pushed another burst of fire out. They were definitely gunning for me now as I tried to bait one of the planes into a Split-S, engine roaring like hell as we raced away from the furball. Roll into the turn, pray I could get the nose around fast enough to shoot, miss a few rounds, carry through. Roll into the turn, hope to god this wasn't turning into a turn-fight, see I was nearly late to turn again.
Still, I had all my thrust, and more importantly enough ammo to make this painful for him as a burst of flak caught him right across the wing root. He was peeling out into a dive now, and I followed, trying to secure the kill.
That's when my RWR went off- the second Tomahawk was gunning for me! Fine! He could wait until I killed this one! Guns blazing, I piled on the hits, even drawing close enough for my SRM packs to fire as I chased my target straight to hell. Every time he looked like it would be a chance for him to recover, another burst of flak or missiles would knock him loose again, until he burnt all his altitude and slammed into the ground.
Pulling up myself, I let loose a shaky laugh- just in time for two large lasers to blow my right wing clean off. I wasn't a fool, though. I wasn't bringing her home, and I had an ejection seat for a reason. Grabbing the lever between my legs, I waited for the remains of my Meteor to complete their roll, and pulled the handle.
As the cockpit flew away and the rockets blasted me out, I blacked out.
The Struggles Weighty Decisions[]
Dropship Argo
CIC Annex - Annex Offices
Victoria, Geosynch Orbit
Capellan Confederation
January 14th, 3029
Perspective of Lt. Gen. Tam Gallowglass
Staring down at the reports, I glared at Wyrm.
"Normally I don't feel the urge to rake my commanders over the coals, Wyrm," I said, tapping the papers, "but this one's special, and I'm really not happy. Care to guess why?"
"The seventy-two million C-bills in lost equipment?" she asked, looking incredibly pained over the reports.
"Yeah, the seventy-two million C-bills in lost equipment is a good start," I said, pinching my nose. "Then we can go over the eight and a half million in staff costs that wing ran us, and after that we can go over the pain in the ass it was to carry thirty-three hundred tons of Conventional Fighter out here when we've been scrimping and saving to get all our shit in the Argo and the Mules."
"This is entirely my responsibility-" Wyrm started, and I just cut her off with a wave.
"No. None of that Draconis bullshit. I signed off on it too, and most of this money is shit you screwed out of Adelherwin, so that's not as much a problem as the numbers look. The problem is organization."
That shocked her, which, well, made sense considering the scale of a bath I'd taken here. "Organization?"
"Organization."
Taking a sip of coffee, I looked over the papers. "Look at this. Everyone was warrant officers until you hit group-level, and then you didn't have flying officers, you had repurposed staff officers. You started with six squadrons- Mythos, Huntsman, Jubilee, Theremin, Xandros, and Lunacy. Mythos and Huntsman were the first ones in rotation, both get shot to shit and combined, then shot to shit again. Jubilee got wiped entirely because they were used as a recon asset in an environment where we knew they had ASF waiting, because Mythos damn well said so! Theramin took half its birds as mechanicals and lost a quarter the squadron doing interdiction runs on the siege, because the enemy has flak trains- that one, honest mistake, no blame. Xandros fucking mutinies instead of following orders to fly over Bougainvillea, and I'm dismissing the charges on them because it's completely valid considering how dogshit this mission brief is!"
It's easy work to give Wyrm the offending mission brief, and I glare at it for good measure. "Hunting suspected enemy tube artillery. In a city actively contested. Where we don't know what they have, except for a lance of Arrow IV launchers, with anti-air loads. What the fuck?!" she yelled, slamming it down into the table.
"So Xandros isn't getting hauled up on charges," I continued. "They are getting broken up and sent back to school, but that's the breaks. Lunacy flew one mission as CAP, came back, and were on stand down, so Wing Command decided to sent the duct-taped together Mythos and Huntsmen out to chop a dropper on the ground. Which, by the way, is so against code it's not funny."
"Yeah, the twenty-four hour mission pause is there for a reason," Wyrm growled, and nearly spat at the sheets, "and squadrons need at least a week to amalgamate!"
"Exactly," I replied. "So. Now that you've gotten your preliminary raking, here's the deal. I can't spare the money to replace this shit, and as you proved on Adelherwin, we do need the capacity. So, you're paying for the replacement."
Wyrm did some finger math, before flinching. "Only about two and a half hundred years of pay, that."
"Good thing you whistled those up outside your paycheck the first time," I replied mirthlessly. "The second thing I want is you to get some people together from Black Horse and Pale Horse and go through your battalion tactical group after this is over. This was a shitshow. An inexcusable shitshow. It had to have come from somewhere, and as bad as it was I'd recon there may have been malice aforethought."
"Counterintel work, yay. Just what I'm not trained for."
"Ask nicely, and I'll give you some MAF agents we stole."
"Got it," Wyrm said, sighing. "Anything else?"
"The rest of the Red Horse deploys in eighteen hours. Make sure your other officers know this just turned into a final exam on their competency, and that sufficiently bad performances are rewarded with a bullet. Now go get some sleep."
"Thanks."
With that, Wyrm left, and I just groaned. Fuck. Black Horse had burned itself up to break that jammer, but taking out the Overlord had netted us something like a company's worth of salvage in exchange for half my fucking tanks dead and a quarter of Black Horse's mechs. I'd traded a unit for victory, and the only reason it had worked was Wyrm's pilots.
Still. Plusses. Look at the plusses, Nyan. The jammer wasn't bait for a rapid relocation. We'd captured more metal than we'd lost in mechs, and most of the tanks were cheapshit bait. The Black Horse Infantry were still operable and could take over security to move more of Kamea and Emma's units forward. We'd traded heavily here, but it was an acceptable trade I'd come willing to make.
It didn't change how terrible I felt, though, moping around until my adjunct brought around one of the ASF captains.
"Yes?" I asked, barely looking up.
"I'm Captain Julian, 5th Squadron ASF," he introduced himself. "I came in because your secretary told me to come to you for personnel transfers?"
"Transfers about what? I doubt you need any right now?" I said, confused.
"Well, no, but we need more ASF pilot candidates," he said, tapping on a dataslate. "Some of your CF pilots looked promising, but didn't meet technical qualifications, so I'm asking for a waiver to get them into ASF school."
Now my eyebrows shot up into my hair. "And this couldn't wait until the battle is over?"
"Well, no, sir. We need them not to fly out in some shitty CF deathtrap."
I nodded, and then went over the list. Six pilots, with notes on bombing skill and in one case shooting down an enemy ASF. I shrugged, signing off on it. "They're all yours," I replied, handing it back to him. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have to get back to this paperwork soon. Medical has officially called me to let me know they're ready for the first three troop transports of wounded are ready to send home, and I need to handle scheduling."
"Of course, sir. Thank you."
I just sighed again. Just two more days until I could be done with this stuff, and take a field command. On the obverse, though, I had to cram every bit of long-term paperwork into these next two days. Not even a weeklong battle for a planet could slow down the endless march of paperwork. God willing, it would be ready come deployment time.
God willing, I wouldn't be deploying myself straight into a siege. Until then, I needed to make sure we had enough doctors on those hospital ships- because where most people saw wounded, I saw a way to speedbump my abominable mother. I just hope she didn't get up to anything- I wasn't risking my sons and daughters in this uncivil warzone, so she had them all for this short duration. At the very least, I knew she wouldn't experiment on them. Just proven modifications, if she wasn't sufficiently distracted and they asked an unwise question.
Was it cruel to send these wounded men and women into the jaws of a tiger to save my children? Maybe. They'd probably get whatever replacement bits they needed out of it, though, so it'd be worth the trade for now. Still, I was already sick of this war, and it wouldn't end any time soon unless a miracle happened. Good thing I knew they existed- one had dragged me here, after all.
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