Space was always a comforting environment for Rikki. Something about the vast openness and the unimaginable distances from place to place felt right. The rest of her squadron was in formation behind her, and they were about to put on a hell of a show for the brass.
“All right Skulls, let’s get this done and show these people why we should be the highest paid mercenary command in the Federated Commonwealth.” She put the fighter into a steep dive, and the rest of the squadron followed her in. She loved the interplay of physics at work when she put her fighter into a planet’s gravity well. She felt a sublime sense of relief when the fighter’s engines roared, protesting against the laws of nature that preceded human existence.
“Tax Man’s a coming…” She heard Duncan singing into his radio.
“He’s got the Earth on his sleeve…” Roy chimed in.
“All he’s going to leave us is something to grieve…” Ben smiled into the radio.
The entire squadron broke into the song right after that, and Rikki shook her head as she added her voice to the chorus. It was an old protest song from the days when Terran colonization efforts had spread humanity across the stars. She was pretty sure it predated the Terran Hegemony, and she knew it predated the Star League. She’d spent years studying the pictures of the battlefields of the Reunification War, and the Liberation of Terra. She’d found those lyrics scrawled on walls, vehicles, and in some cases even a battlemech or two.
The Fighters came in hot, focused in on their target. The Dropsite was locked in, and the AA fire kicked off as they came in hot. Bursts of smoke and laser fire criss crossed the skies as they came in. Mechs would have been easy targets, but they were moving at speeds that were hard for the gunners to track.
“All right, Rainmaker.” She started the nose dive towards the drop site, locking her guns onto a pair of gun emplacements. The lasers scored armor and she saw one of the turrets go down. Those weren’t the main targets though. The Starport that was the primary target came into view fast, and she clicked the release toggles for her external cargo. Smart bomb was a bit of a misnomer, but they had practiced dropping bombs on a lot of things over the years. The entire squadron dropped their payload and continued their dive.
Aerospace fighters had a curious relationship to the other branches of service. Everyone loved the ability to rain down fire and close air support had been an integral part of warfare since planes were originally built. However, they spent most of their time by themselves. Aerospace fighters went places that other combat units couldn’t. They rode barely controlled fusion reactions chained to a combination of mechanical parts that could fail catastrophically at any point, and when they went up, they were often fatal to the pilot. They were the lonely ones, like the gods of old who rained down thunder and lightning on the field of lesser men.
“Reconfigure, drop on the command center, the barracks, and see if you can’t isolate those roads and give those militia boys the scare of their lives.”
“Roger that, Skull Leader.” The radio calls affirmed the orders and they were pulling the second part of their mission. She smiled as she felt aerospace fighter start to shift. This wasn’t a standard aerospace fighter, no, this was a Phoenix Hawk LAM. One of a very few reconfigurable battlemechs that could transform between battlemech and aerospace fighter. Her entire squadron was outfitted with them, and they were about to show the FedCom Brass why the Star League Defense Forces called them “Angels on our Shoulders.”
Her wingman, Roy, came down right next to her. His Wasp LAM came down firing SRMs into the gates around the command center his medium laser was firing into the larger command center. Rikki pushed the Phoenix Hawk further into the area, levelling the large laser at the observation deck.
“Gentlemen, Ladies, you’re all prisoners of the Skull squadron, if you’d kindly empty your wallets, put your jewelry into a big bag, and surrender peaceably, that would be great.” She also leveled the machine guns at the large glass windows. Radar checks confirmed they’d hit the star port and captured it in a span of 4 minutes. No damage had been sustained by her command, and they had successfully completed the mission.
“A Robbery? Really?” The deep voice echoed through her radio.
“Everybody needs a sideline, right?” Rikki answered him.
Later that afternoon
“I have to admit, the AFFC was very impressed by your performance today. The stunt with the laser guided munitions was a nice touch.” The old man said to her.
“We thought showing off the razzle dazzle would be a good way to convince them we knew what we were doing.” She smiled up at him.
“And they are happy to put you to work, next year.”
“Why the delay?”
“Because, i need all of you to do something very important, Star Captain.” The old man said with a tinge of melancholy.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled again. “How can we help, Galaxy Commander?”
“I need you and the rest of the squadron to travel to Theta, ready our ships for departure, and get the crews moving towards our Exodus road.”
“What about us, sir?”
“You have more than lived up to the reputation of the LAM squadrons of the Star League, but those are not units that have a place in the Touman of any clan, even one as open minded as ours.”
“Then what shall we do, Sir?”
“Take the contract with the Federated Commonwealth. Stay here and continue to be our eyes and ears. Stay in service as long as you can, and then do what you want to do. You have spent most of your combat service doing the ugliest jobs that needed to be done. I have updated your accounts with a bonus for exemplary service.”
“Why would you have us stay, Sir?”
“Because you earned it. You took a hangar full of broken down scrap from the Star League and put an entire squadron of land air mechs back into service. Then you taught yourselves how to fly them. This pursuit of the history of the League is very much our way. However, you are all freebirths, and your cross training will not be appreciated by our people. So i want you to stay here and serve the clan as best you can.”
“Will you be coming back, Sir?”
“I do not know, yet. There are many things to be done, and promises to be kept. I will be uploading a database of potential sites you can explore in your free time, as well as ownership of a jumpship and transports for your LAMs.”
“That’s very generous of you, Sir.”
“It is very hard to be an angel of the battlefield if you can not get to that battlefield, Rikki.”
“I know, Sir.” She smiled up at the old man. It was the first time she’d looked up at his face since they met that afternoon. He was old...older than anyone she remembered from the homeworlds. Deep creases lined his cheeks, and his eyes were marked by pronounced crows feet. The long mane of hair had turned almost silver with age. He kept his body in shape, and he was still an amazing specimen of the Elemental phenotype, but he seemed mortal for the first time since she’d seen him. “Are you all right, Sir?”
“Just an old man staring down the end of his days.” He smiled back at her. His eyes were still constantly moving. He hadn’t lost any of his wit, or his intelligence. They were still bright and glittering gems set firmly in his head. “You have done extremely well for yourself Rikki, and i know that you and your parents were not especially close, but i believe they would be proud of the person you have become, and the contributions you have made to our clan. If you could compile your reports and your papers, i will see that they are entered into our library, and your name added to the rolls of the Seekers who walk the Lonesome Road.”
“That would be nice, Sir.” The Lonesome Road...the Seekers who never made it back to the Clan. Whether they were lost in the pursuit of an artifact, or ambushed by pirates, or just ran out of fuel, the Seekers had lost people in the field, their stories unrecorded and their contributions lost. He was giving her a way out.
“You have many tasks to carry you forward, and not much time to complete them. Be well and i hope i can see you again, soon.”
She nodded at the elder warrior and felt wetness on her cheeks. She hadn’t cried in years.
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