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Chapter 13 - The Wind at my Back, Stars at my feet[]
The Coast Guard hadn't been Samantha's first choice, or even her tenth choice. Her father, Michael, had been a militant sort of man, a believer in the dream of a Free Skye, and he'd been a ship's captain. She'd grown up among the smugglers and the underground of Free Skye, and at sixteen, she'd let herself be talked into an act of defiance, the theft of an LCN support ship.
The conviction led to a sentence. That sentence sent her to Blackgate Prison at sixteen, a forty year sentence at hard labor.
Among the 'onnest criminals of Blackgate, grand theft isn't bad for status, but it can lead to problems. Even for someone with connections to Free Skye, because there are higher tiers and Blackgate is co-ed...and Free Skye was on the outs, even among the criminals with their failed revolution having made it easy for the Word of Blake to take so many worlds and commit so many atrocities.
When a Lt. Commander in Khakis showed up with a writ, and an offer, she took it, and was promptly taken to Spider Moon for basic training and evaluations, along with four slicers and two smugglers.
The smugglers didn't last ten days, only two of the slicers survived phase one of basic training, and Sam had almost coasted through it. The graduation hadn't been all, or even mostly, criminals. There was a war on, and every hand was needed.
Even criminals and convicted traitors.
The Guard took her in, The Guard gave her something she'd been missing-Honor, Respect. She'd flown with the Squadrons into the Terran system as an LCN ensign, made Junior Grade on the day after they put paid to Geneva, when she commanded a Marine Platoon storming Ceres and freeing political prisoners.
Her contract is twenty years, half the sentence she'd pulled for a failed hijack. She's made O-3, next promotion will be back on a Destroyer, as the XO.
Assuming they live through this and make it home.
o/~"..raise the black flag..." she hummed, "...yo, ho...a pirate's life for me..."o/~
They're using their smallcraft as escorts and jammers, with fighter cover. they're expecting guided weapons.
Calculating deflections was old-hat. The enemy's patterns were semi-random, the smallcraft jinking, but the fighters had to stay close to protect them, and they moved...a moment ahead of the 57s.
"Gotcha."
{you can't coat a ship in point defense fighters, and this was a Nightlord, not exactly a modern design, no...they build to SLDF standards wi'out knowin' why...}
She smiled an acidic smile. In the back of her mind, a different tune rose, drowning out the irony of the first. She was humming as she laid out the attack plan. "...let not one damn cur pass by, how many of them can we make die?" Samantha thought.