[FanFic] - DP/UF - Phoenix

[MegaZone]

This is a tale in the Undocumented Features universe. It takes place
post UF4: Crossroads. And now, on to ReRob's Phoenix....


"To gain these bonuses, you need to have spent a minimum of
ten hours controlling that vehicle--not that type of vehicle,
not even that exact make and model of that vehicle, but that
vehicle"

--CyberPunk 2.0.2.0. Beta--New Rules for the Dark Future

Rob entered the Victory sim chamber. It was a room filled with
an even dozen VF-2 cockpits sunken into the floor. Several of the
canopies were open. Rob sat down in one of them, and closed the
hatch. The flatscreen of the canopy went from dark to the interior of
the Concordia's fighter bay. He strapped himself in to keep from
being thrown around the simulation: while the cockpit wouldn't move,
inertia generators would simulate the accelerations he would stand.
The forearm guard and glove of CVR-5 still flopped on his right side;
his arm had only grown to the elbow. Most people didn't actually wear
the armor to introductory sims, but Rob wanted to be authentic. How
many lives had been lost because a pilot found out too late that his
flight suit caught on something when he reached for a control a
certain way? Lord knew that in VLI, he had "lost" dozens of test
pilots on simulation runs, and each loss meant a heated discussion
with the recently departed pilot, quickly followed by an ergonomic
redesign. And those heated discussions were no fun when Rob found
himself confronted with a very angry Zukowsky who had just jettisoned
stores while trying to extinguish the number two engine.
Familiarizing himself with the cockpit, Rob was glad that the
controls looked exactly like the picture in his NATOPS guide. For
once, the documentation crew was called in after the last redesign.
Not like the original Alpha guide. ("What's this?" asked Mark
"Haywire" Luchini in the early days, flipping the safety cover off a
big black button with a glowing red chaos symbol on it and pressing
said button. As Haywire watched every missile he owned shoot off into
nowhere, Tricia called out, "Smart move, Scott Bernard!" From then
on, they only let him fly Valkyries.)
However, for Rob, the cockpit was only a secondary control
structure. The true test lay in the wires on the left arm of the
pilot's seat. As he grabbed the two wires, he put them in his mouth.
Dammit, I should have left the cyberarm on until I could afford some
downtime, Rob cursed in his inner thoughts. Bringing his left arm up
to his face, he connected the wires to the ports in the forearm guard;
he had jacked into the suit itself previously so that he could use the
cyberports. Plugged in, he swung his facebowl downwards, relaxed his
body with some Bene Gesserit prana-bindu techniques he had learned
from Kelli. Finally, he spoke the word, "Link."
He was no longer in the cockpit, but a new body. His chest was
folded out from his back, his shoulders arms twisted in like some
parody of a schoolgirl hiding her breasts, his high-heeled feet laid
out behind him with toes curled, thrusters begging for fuel, his head
slung beneath him and ready to fire laser blasts. And landing gear
supporting him: one from each leg, a third at the pelvis.
One at the nose, Rob corrected himself. This had always been
the problem with direct link into variable-geometry mecha. He
reconfigured his thought patterns to fit the new shape. Now, he had
an underbelly gun mount, a nose, a fuselage, variable-sweep wings, and
two main engines supplemented by smaller dorsal thrusters. And a
GU-XXII pod slung along his ventral centerline.
"Standard retraining sequence," Rob subvocalized. He didn't
have to learn fighter piloting again; he had logged plenty of hours on
the Alpha and Beta, and even a few in the old Valkyries. He just
needed to learn this particular Veritech. He went through the launch
sequence, and was given a few minutes of free flight practice.
He shifted to guardian mode (he had always called it "gerwalk"),
felt the new mode out, then went all the way to Battloid. This mode
was the simplest of all to link into, since it closely followed human
anatomy. The birdlike feel of the gerwalk and the actual pure fighter
mode were the problems, but experience and aptitude made them
possible. He converted a few more times to make sure that he had
complete control even in between configurations, then went into
fighter mode and checked out his torque thrusters.
He was rewarded with higher spin rates than he had ever
encountered, an ability to almost rotosnap into any given direction.
This caused an "afterburner skid" effect similar to the Rapiers, which
was fatally annoying in most situations but often just what one needed
for one-on-one dogfighting.
The First Law of Fighter Combat is, of course, always point your
nose at your enemy. The problem with flying is that there were always
a dozen FLFC's, and each one had top priority. The art lay in
determining which rule was most necessary at any given moment.
A generic computerized voice sounded through Rob's spaceborne
chassis: "Opposition one: versus. Your wingman is at your four
o'clock position, callsign 'Skylark'." A radar blip suddenly appeared
at Rob's four, and visually he sensed the Victory blip into existence.
Rob switched his radar to deep penetration, and noted that the
simulator was not kind at all to him: it showed two bogies way the
hell down his six. He wasn't reading their radar blips, so they
weren't scanning him--only reading his active radar beam and thus
getting his bearing without distance. He cut the range down, then
called, "Skylark: extend radar to full and follow me. I'm doing a 180
vertical."
"Roger that, ReRob," called out a voice that belonged in an old
Buick. Rob immelmanned, followed closely by his wingman. He checked
his radar, linked to Skylark's, and noted only the two bogies. So the
simulator wasn't pulling a fast one on him. The First Law of Fighter
Combat is, of course, never assume that the enemy isn't going to throw
more shit your way. Telescoping his visual, he saw his pair of bogie
Victories--they had Super gear on, while he had only his wingman and
his GU-XXII. Confirmation from base told him that they were renegade
craft to be shot down.
"I've got left," Rob called to his wingman, who pulled a few
feet to Rob's starboard side.
Rob was flying head-on to his bandit now, seconds away from gun
range. It opened its missile shields...
...and Rob went into gerwalk mode, ruining the firing solution.
Passing over the bandit's topside, he strafed with his head lasers,
then reversed while transforming into Battloid. He grabbed his gun
pod and fired upon the Victory while it was turning around. It
launched all six long-rangers at him, and he decided to test the
automatic anti-missiler. For a moment, his arms were things
possessed, and the gun pod raked the missiles down quickly while he
snuck a peek at his wingman, who was getting towards his adversary's
six. Good.
Rob went back to fighter mode in one fluid motion, and kicked in
the afterburners. The one advantage he had over his bandit was a
higher acceleration factor: the super gear weighed two-thirds as much
as the Victory itself. Soon, he was on the bandit's six and
scissoring with him to burn off the extra speed.
Normally, a scissors maneuver requires both pilots to be
canopy-to-canopy, as the First Law of Fighter Combat states that one
should never lose visual contact with one's opponent. With a direct
link into the Veritech, though, Rob had the option of viewing from any
angle. So he activated the ventral cameras and failed to roll back,
giving his opponent a perfect view of his exposed underbelly.
Or, as Rob thought of it, giving his head lasers perfect angle
on the bandit. He locked and fired.
Boom.
A quick scan of the tactical display showed him that his wingman
was in trouble. Afterburners again, and he saw Mr. Buick being
pursued by the other Super Victory. Settling in behind the Super, he
caused it to flee from its targeting solution. Both turned to it and
wiped it out in the crossfire.
Both he and Skylark sprouted Super gear out of nowhere. The
simulator's voice stated, "Simulation one: trainee victory.
Opposition two: Invid."
Rob let an inaudible groan out and refreshed his mind with
another relaxation sequence, making a mental note to tell Kelli that
her muscle- relaxation techniques even worked on Veritechs. As the
type 3 Invid showed up at five o'clock low, he realized that it was
going to be a loooong day...


Virtual Labs, Inc.

In Conjunction With

Eyrie Publishing, Uninc.

and

Currier Kitchens

Present

An Undocumented Features Story

"Phoenix"

By ReRob

Special Effects by Your Brain on Drugs
Boom by "Do unto others,
Then loot the bodies"
Catering by Home-Home Cooking
Author's Sanity by Peter Pan,
Brockton Area Transit, and the M.B.T.A.
Shameless plug by I need a job!!!
Inspiration by Pat Benetar and Duran Duran
Faceless Baddies by Endless Hordes, GmbH

"I am M-5! I am the microwave oven of the future!"
--Teenagers From Outer Space

Rob nearly staggered out of the simulator. He had just
defeated, if memory served him, Victory fighters, Invid troopers, the
Gorfian armada, Zentradi, Meltrandi, TIE fighters, Phentari, Eridani,
half of Baron Kazra's main force, Decepticons, every Kilrathi fighter
he could think of and a few he couldn't, the security forces of Rival
Ninja Corporation, a handful of great western dragons, and the Ko-Dan
armada. They even gave him a "bonus round" to destroy non- aggressive
targets every fourth wave. He finally met defeat at the hands of a
borglet "D6 of Doom" squadron.
Desperately searching for a soft bed (to crash in), a cold beer
(to consume), and a sadistic simulation programmer (to verbally
abuse), Rob stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a shortish Valkyrie
fighter waiting for him in the middle of the corridor. It was none of
the three, and Rob had slim hopes that it would lead him to any of
them.
The only reason that he didn't immediately think he was
hallucinating was that he had built this sort of shortish Veritech a
long while ago. It was an old friend of his, Steve Jupiter.
Steve, originally named "Artificial Intelligence Research
Project", was originally the brainchild of the SDF-17's own AI unit,
Eve, and hotshot softechie Martin "PCHammer, Grey, Diggy" Rose. It
had taken them about five years to create an AI program which was
sufficiently different from Eve herself; without Grey's help, Eve
would have simply made another copy of herself, and that just wasn't
proper in her eyes.
As it happened, the AIRP was quite different from Eve. More
specifically, it considered itself male, called itself Steve Jupiter,
and actually requested a humanoid body. In discussion with ship's
engineer Mandeville, they decided to make the body a four-foot-eight
Super Valkyrie Veritech. When Eve, Rose, and Mandeville actually sat
down and figured everything out, they determined that Eve and Martin
were mother and father to Steve, rob's HoloDECstation prototyping
facility was the surrogate mother, and Rob himself was midwife, or, as
Steve would say, "Uncle ReRob."
However, Rob remembered that Steve had always been with Rose's
Clay Pigeon Squadron, which Rob himself had been in with the
Thundergod. And that the Clay Pigeons were definitely not assigned to
the Concordia. Taking a second look, Rob noted that Steve's markings
were that of the Victory squadron VFS-261, "Eight- Ball". A third
look confirmed that Steve wasn't flat stealth black, as he had been
before, but had a polished mirror surface. "Hey, Steve," Rob called,
"what's with the new lack of paint job?"
"Decided I didn't need full Shadow gear. I can be stealth-ready
in thirty minutes, but let's face it: if you found a two hundred kilo
Veritech on your scope, what would you do?"
"Smack the scope until it registered correctly."
"Exactly. Besides, a lot of people have complained that their
eyes hurt from trying to focus their eyes on a walking black hole."
"So you decided to have fun with mirrors."
"Who was it that said that people admire you for what they see
of themselves in you?"
"I don't think they meant it quite that literally."
"Well, I haven't gotten any complaints on this finish. Oh, by
the way, I just saw the score on your last run." Steve handed Rob a
unit patch. "Tricia okayed you: welcome to the Eight-Balls."
Rob accepted the patch, only slightly displeased that it wasn't
actually a beer. "Thanks a lot, Steve. And thank Tricia, too. And
tell her," as he stumbled off to officer's quarters (he hoped), "that
I am not getting into a cockpit for at least twelve hours."

"The Russians don't take a dump without a plan."

--The Hunt for Red October

The senior officers met in the situation room. Admiral Ben
"Gryphon" Hutchins was there as CINCSTRAT and captain of the
Concordia. Colonel Patricia Currier of the WDF fighter command and
Captain Robert Mandeville of design command, both senior officers in
residence, were there as well. LTC Finney, security chief of the
Concordia, was there along with most of the bridge staff.
When all were assembled, Finney manipulated a keyboard,
activating the holotank in the center of the table. It showed a field
of asteroids, the WDF Strategic fleet on one side of it, and the
Kilrathi battlegroup on the other side.
"The Kilrathi have eliminated all anti-spacecraft weapons on ten
inhabited planets between here and the Kilrathi borders. They have
not made planetfall on these worlds yet, and in fact lack any sort of
craft for ground assaults. Their fleet is here--" she used a pointer
stick to note the ships "--and is a group of twelve Cl'tag class
dreadnoughts and twenty-five L't'k class assault carriers. The craft
most likely to be the Kilrathi flagship is this one--" point "--as it
is the most recent mark of the L't'k. They have placed warp and fold
interference pods in strategic locations between their borders and
this asteroid field, and of course there are several well-armed
surface fortifications along the old Kilrathi borders."
"Because of these measures, we are on the other side of the
field. Our resources consist of this Confederation class
dreadnought/carrier, these battlestars, several carriers of the Bengal
and Kiev classes and these Gilgamesh class destroyers. In total,
thirty-four ships, each of better armament, armor, and fightercraft
than their Kilrathi counterparts. I will now turn discussion over to
the captain, Admiral Hutchins."
Ben stood up. "Thank you, Finney. So what we have here is more
than enough firepower to defeat this fleet flat-out, but a cagey
adversary who knows that and is using this field to keep it from
getting flat-out. If we send our ships through this field, we have to
follow predictable courses in order to avoid the bigger rocks, and
there are too many out there to play archaic video games with the
phase-transit cannon." Several of the Terran officers who had been
with the Force from the start chuckled at the reference. "What they
want to do is either stalemate us here until they can get more
reinforcements, or try to defeat our fleet with their fightercraft.
This asteroid field is easily permeable by fighters and bombers on
both sides."
Colonel Currier spoke up. "But if they bring their fighters
over here, we have both our fightercraft and our ASSkickers on this
side to counter them, and they're still dead." The fighter jock's
term "ASSkicker" referred to anti-small- ship weapons found on most
capital ships, direct descendants of AA guns.
"Probably, but remember: we have the same problem," Ben reminded
her. "And we won't be getting reinforcements for a while, since most
of our ships are in the shop. Even the Wandering Child needs a
two-month makeover, since some safeties were bypassed and the Reflex
Cannon melted some key components in the fold generator."
"Hey, Ben, don't look at me, it was a rush job," Rob
interrupted.
"In any case, I'm willing to bet that the Kilrathi are not at
full strength, but took the weakening effects of the Genom fleet's
assaults en route to Cygnus Beta as a signal to stage an opportunistic
offensive, and did not have their forces massed to stage this assault
as they wanted to. They're probably pulling in ships from other
places in the Empire of Kilrah, and they could be here in days or
weeks. So, in my opinion, hitting them hard now is worth the
difficulty. Any dissenting opinions or other options?"
Silence.
"Okay, then. Recent developments in the small craft designed
for the new WDF fleets include specific anti-spacecraft bombers.
We've come a long way from the Thundergod era. Most of the heavier
stuff is concentrated within the Battlestars, and they have at least
decent effectiveness in dogfighting. However, I would like them
better protected. Currier, can you have somebody arrange a schedule
of battle so that the Kilrathi are under constant fire by our Vipers,
Dragonflies, Broadswords, and Crusaders, while making sure that they
are adequately escorted by Veritechs and single geometry fighters?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay. I'd like that flagship as first target, then the other
carriers. We'll ignore the battlewagons for now, since they have the
same problems getting to us as we do to them. If we do this right, we
should be able to swat the dog's nose with the newspaper, send them
back with their tails between their legs before this thing gets long
and drawn-out. I know this isn't a military matter, but I for one
have a wedding to attend."

"They never say 'Hello' to you
Until you get it on a redline overload"

--Kenny Loggins, "Danger Zone"

Rob seated himself in the generic Eight-Ball Super Victory
(black with an eight in a white spot on the nose). Steve was standing
on the fuselage behind him and between the missile pods, in Guardian
mode and mag-locked to his host. Rob strapped in, fiddled with the
seat controls for a couple of moments, and twisted the front of the
armrests so that the throttle and stick were rotated downwards. He
grabbed two plugs from the right armrest and attached them to the
appropriate places in the right arm of his CVR suit. A moment's
disorientation, and he became the Super Victory. All was green,
except for a stress abnormality which he determined to be the presence
of Steve on his "back".
And not a moment too soon. Tricia Currier's voice rang through
his ears. "Eight-Ball one to Eight-Ball squadron, status check."
"Eight-Ball two: lights are green, traps are clean."
"Eight-Ball three: ready for battle."
"Eight-Ball four: let me at 'em." Bengal T, the Mighty Halfling
Wizard. The logo on his plane looked like Bilbo Baggins playing
Mickey Mouse in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".
"Eight-Ball five: I wanna kill."
"Eight-Ball six: happy and healthy." That was Steve Jupiter
himself.
Finally, it was Rob's turn. "Eight-Ball seven: linked, locked,
and loaded." Of the squadron, Rob only really knew Currier, the
Mighty Halfling Wizard, and Steve.
"Eight-Ball to bridge: squadron ready."
Vanessa Leeds, communications officer, answered, "Launching
Eight-Ball squadron. Happy hunting."
The squadron was a line of seven Super Victories side by side,
with a small Super Valkyrie attached to the rightmost one. The
left-hand fighter, Tricia's, rolled forwards into a chamber. A door
closed behind it, and reopened in a few seconds. The continuous belt
the squadron was parked on shifted to the left, and the second plane
entered the chamber. This process repeated until Rob waited in front
of the doors. They opened, and Rob saw the railgun he expected. He
applied power to the main gear, and rolled into the barrel. Lights
from the front of the barrel receded towards him, followed closely by
the staccato thup thup thup of capacitors charging to the point where
the plates neared buckling stress.
When they reached him, he lurched forwards, the meatbody inside
his cockpit almost losing his consciousness. He soon recovered, and
found himself in a bilinear formation with the rest of the squadron.
Steve detached and took position off his port side.
"Six to one: I have a vector through the asteroids. Want it
transmitted?"
"Affirmative. Eight-Ball one to squadron: log Steve's
transmission into autopilots. But keep it awake back there, people;
autopilots don't guarantee."
As they changed course to navigate the rocks, Rob checked six
and found the Viper squadron the Eight-Balls were supposed to protect.
He thought back to the old Thundergod days, where the WDF had only one
anti-starship fighter. While it was effective, the problems and
quirks inherent in the Rick Allen made it more of a testament to what
happens when one lets one's design staff get bored. The craft had
even enjoyed a long stint in the Clay Pigeon squadron, PCHammer's
comedic brainchild.
Now there was the Exo-Salusia Broadsword Bomber, out of the same
mold as the Raptors and Rapiers. It was joined by a VLI project, the
three-finned Viper, the Incom T-65 Dragonfly, and the Crusader. The
Viper was a heavy armored ship with heavy turbolasers, kind of a less
kludgy and less disgusting extension of the A-10 design philosophy
than what Rob had had in mind with the T-god. The Dragonfly, with the
two to four wing split, had lighter armor than the Viper, was more
maneuverable, and sported a proton bomb launcher to boot. The
Crusader, whose unique fin structure looked either like a dagger or a
crucifix, carried anti-ship lasers and a variety of missiles. A fact
considered ironic to many Christians in the Force, both true and
recovering, was that the one ship which seemed inspired by the symbol
of that religion was far from the pacifist the faith worships and was
one of the most common platforms for the anti-ship AIM- 666-XL3
missile, dubbed the "Antichrist".
Yes, Rob thought, The Thundergod days are truly over now. He
realized an instant later that the Thundergod days ended in a more
literal sense a matter of days ago--the Rick Allen had been berthed
within the Phoenix when it was destroyed. Rob winced at the memory.
A few moments after they navigated the natural barrier, Tricia
spoke up again. "Fighter group, class unknown, five zero zero klicks
at three twenty mark four. Here comes the welcome wagon. Change
course to intercept, and ring break on my mark. Rob, you're the
engineer, so would you do a pierce run on them?"
"Roger that, Boss." The formation changed course. To the
bogies, they looked like only two Victories, as the other four and a
half were "stacked" behind them. The Kilrathi would not be fooled
into thinking that there were only two fighters, but they had no idea
how many Victories were stacked up.
"Okay. Break now, now...now!"
Eight-Balls one through five broke hard, forming an
ever-widening ring perpendicular to their former course. Steve flew
himself to just under Tricia's undercarriage. Rob pushed hard, going
directly for the formation. He pulled up, inverted, pulled up again,
and was racing for the formation at an angle, far too fast to
attack--and too fast to be attacked--he hoped. He activated the
recording cameras.
He ripped through a formation of perhaps a dozen of these
bogies, then set the autopilot to standard evasion routine and
reviewed the tapes. Seconds later, he went back to control the craft
and joined the ring, which was revolving in an unpredictable manner in
order to evade the bogies, who had by then broken formation to deal
with them.
"I confirm unknown fighter type. Thirty-ton class. Long and
heavy guns, high maneuverability, probable missiles. Forward fire
only. Piloted by one Kilrathi. Naming new craft type 'Fishhook'".
"Eight-Ball to Concordia: new craft type Kilrathi, and pursuing
our respective sixes. Request permission to fire."
"This is Concordia: reclassify Rob's Fishhooks as bandits.
Permission granted and encouraged."
"Eight-Ball one to squadron: engage Fishhooks. Be careful out
there: I'll be taking a head count at de-briefing."
The Victories broke to the attack. Several of them had Kilrathi
"neatly and cleverly trapped at their six", and dropped into Guardian
mode to reverse thrust.
Steve called over the general freq, "Six to one: keep your
pursuer steady." Tricia lowered the amplitude of her jinking, and
Steve reversed direction to intercept the Fishhook.
The name of the craft seemed appropriate in Steve's mind. A
cylindrical fuselage, with six forward-swept fins at equal angles from
each other. Each fin had a pod on it, and the pods alternated from
engine and railgun to missile launcher and railgun. In this way, it
represented a more balanced version of the Jalthi. Odds were,
however, that the ship was never intended to bring those weapons to
bear on an opponent of the one eighty kilogram range that Steve
represented. Jupiter made a mad dash for the ship, and pods opened
from the fuselage and launched small rockets at him. Antimissiles, he
realized. He instinctively Gerwalked and deviated from his attack
course, then reversed and went Battloid while the antimissiles tried
in vain to match his turn radius. A sharp elbow to the cockpit glass
depressurized it, killed the pilot, and blew Steve clear. "One kill,
ship almost undamaged. Dissection, Rob?"
"Not...now!" Rob's lasers were proving rather ineffective
against the heavy shielding on his target. He selected "tailfeather"
mode on one of his missiles, and launched it. It headed straight for
its target, then looped around the Fishhook and impacted the tail of
the main fuselage. As Rob suspected, the Kilrathi had maxxed power to
his forward shields by pulling it from the aft deflectors. Just then,
the Mighty Halfling Wizard passed by Rob's field of view, with a
Fishhook right behind him. Rob changed course to join the parade.
The Kilrathi pilot was in the middle of a daisy chain: on his
target's six, and with another bandit on his own six. He selected his
reverse defense system and fired.
Rob saw three missiles "fall" from his target and reverse
themselves. Rob gained a lock on the Fishhook, and the missiles
turned directly towards him. He fired lasers at the Fishhook, and
crouched into battloid before thrusting out of the line of fire.
Too late. One missile hit him in the belly, breaking into the
cockpit and decompressing it. Only the CVR kept Rob's meatbody alive.
Another got his left leg, destroying the engine and spinning him for a
moment until he compensated.
"This is seven: I'm hit! Damage to cockpit and left leg engine.
Still fighting. Be advised: Fishhooks carry reversed radar riders."
"One to seven: escape and return to Concordia."
"Negative on that. Steve, I'm playing wounded mother." Rob
began spinning around, his remaining engine spiraling him into
helplessness.
"Seven, return to base. That's an order, mister."
"Sorry; no can do, One." He disengaged his engine and slowly
tilted his leg to line up with his center of mass. Steve piffled a
Kilrathi concentrating on the tasty feast of Eight-Ball seven.
Another came in, on Rob's other side, but he stood there motionlessly.
Commander Currier was infuriated, and almost in tears. "Get out
of there!"
Rob instantly realized that he had pushed her over the edge.
Oops. He activated his remaining engine, and saw a quartet of
missiles coming in at him.
From Eight-Ball one.
Three of the rockets impacted across his back, lurching him
across space but not detonating. Duds? Another missile passed
through the space he was in a scant moment ago, then found a new lock.
"Eight-Ball seven, returning to base. Sorry about that, Trish."
"Not as sorry as you'll be when I'm through with you."

"In real life, they'd have his bags packed before he touched
down."

--Bob "Hagar" Mandeville, reacting to Maverick buzzing the
tower in Top Gun.

Rob commanded his meatbody to disconnect from him. Suddenly, he was
human again. Or detian, anyway. He looked up and saw the lack of
cockpit glass. Not a good sign.
A crewman wheeled a ladder up to the port side of the Veritech.
"Glad to see you made it back alive, Sir."
Rob looked up at the lack of cockpit glass, and in a bad attempt
at humor, remarked, "Sunroof. Neeeat." He removed his helmet,
dropped it onto the deck, then flipped over the starboard side,
landing on his feet. He felt general bruises, but nothing major.
"Didn't you know I always come back?" He retrieved his helmet. "Just
not necessarily in the shape I'd like to be in."
Which the Veritech definitely wasn't. It was resting on nose
gear, right mains, and the remains of the left leg. Even the hind
fuselage had some big gouges chewed out of it. Rob found a bench and
sat down in a kind of haze as techies tended to his wounded bird.
What seemed like an eternity later, the remainder of the
squadron returned. Rob heard Tricia's voice from across the bay: "Did
Mandeville make it back alive?"
"Yeah, he's over there, Ma'am."
"Good." She started to walk towards him. "Because I'm going to
kill him!"
ReRob stood up; he knew what was coming. And that he deserved
every bit of it.
Colonel Currier started her tirade a good twenty meters from her
target, helmet in hand. "What did you think you were doing out there,
Mister Mandeville?"
"The injured mother gambit."
"Which almost got you killed. I had to disarm and launch four
missiles to save your ass!"
"No tactic is foolproof. You of all people should know that."
"Cut the bullshit, Rob. You disobeyed a direct order from your
superior, and that is unacceptable under any circumstances, especially
in combat. You of all people should know that!"
She continued, almost literally fuming. "The last time I saw an
Eight-Ball pull a maneuver that...that stupid...was when Paul Heaton
refused to pull out over Worcester! It's my job to make sure that we
don't lose people unnecessarily, and you are making it impossible for
me to do that job." She handed Rob a sheet of paper from her kneepad.
"Consider your status in the Eight-Ball squadron terminated!" She
stormed off towards debriefing.
Rob watched her pass through the door, and looked back down at
the note. It read:

Sorry
Had to be done
Discuss further
My quarters
1950 hrs
--TCG

A small smile showed on Rob's face, and he walked out towards the
showers.

"Who do you need, who do you love,
When you come undone?"

--Duran Duran

Rob stood at Colonel Currier's door, in dress uniform. He
wasn't quite sure where he stood with her, so he figured he'd let
protocol smooth the way. He pressed the button.
A few seconds later, the door opened. Currier stood there,
wearing a "Be different--act normal" T-shirt and jeans. Rob smelled
sweet baking from her quarters. She looked at her ex-squadron member
with a "you must be kidding" look and said "A bit overdressed, aren't
we?"
Rob looked down and chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Come on in, Rob."
He walked in, then removed the uniform tunic, revealing his "I
survived the Mok concert" T-shirt. Tricia took a chair, and motioned
Rob over to the sofa. On the coffee table between them were a plate
of chocolate chip cookies and a pair of glasses of milk. She offered
him a cookie; Rob accepted. He noted that the centuries had not
changed one immutable fact; Tricia Currier was still, and probably
always would be, the Cookie Goddess. "Still the best, Trish."
The Colonel kicked back a bit, grabbing a cookie herself. "You
wouldn't believe how much I get in royalties from this recipe."
"Oh, I'd believe it alright. Remember, I was the one who spent
the last century on Musashi? And remember when Vaughn showed up and
made that impromptu unpaid endorsement at Currier Kitchens in Vesper?
I was there."
Tricia laughed. The "endorsement" occurred when J. Random
Tourist made a video of Vaughn talking to Rob about the cookies at one
of Tricia's franchised bakery-restaurants. It was just a five second
snippet of Vaughn picking up a cookie, pointing at it, saying "Currier
cookies. I like 'em" and then chomping on it. Days later, the tape
had been transmitted across the galaxy, and billboards were being
propped up.
"Now that was a stroke of luck," admitted Tricia. "I mean, even
if the cookies weren't any good, I'd still be raking it in, after
Vaughn plugged it."

"Sounds about right," Rob agreed, "Vaughn's inane smile could
sell Kevin Tefft a subscription to Buxom Babes."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. I owe Vaughn a big favor."
"He found Iczer-1, so he might just be hanging around with her
and Iczer-2 down at Planetia when we come back. Bake him a batch of
these, and he'll probably call it even."
Tricia smiled evilly, then went to a drawer and pulled out a
well-worn cookie cutter--Rob was surprised that it was still around.
"A batch of cookies and a pink dinosaur cake!"
"I'm the baby, gotta love me!" Rob's imitation of the character
from that old show was at least half-decent. One day, Tricia decided
that Vaughn's face looked remarkably like that of the baby from
Dinosaurs, and he had been humorously lamenting the comparison ever
since. Tricia had happened to have a large cookie cutter in the shape
of a profile view of a six-inch T.Rex, and found an extreme pleasure
in tormenting Vaughn with her small (and usually pink) dinosaur-shaped
cakes. Since he liked Tricia's cakes so much, however, it didn't take
too much persuasion to get Vaughn to accept one in any shape.
"Oh, jeez. Talking about Planetia just reminded me of
something, Rob. I promised Kei I'd have a wedding gown for her when
we got back."
Rob chuckled. "That oughta be a neat trick."
"It won't be too bad. I've got her measurements, and I've had a
maternity routine programmed in for a while. Never know when you can
use one. So all I have to do is hit the holoDECstation, run the
routine, and build the dress around the model."
Rob said humorously, "Man, and I thought you could only design
mecha with an HDS. I still get a kick out of it, though."
"Kick out of what?"
"The whole situation. Ben's been going out with Kei for three
hundred years, she spent the next hundred trying to kill him, they get
back together, and he still gets her pregnant before proposing to her.
I married Deedlit, we were together for three hundred years, and then
we started a family."
"Well, that's Ben and Kei for you," Tricia mused, "Don't ask me
to explain them. But you've got kids?"
"Yeah. Surprised?"
"A little, but maybe I shouldn't be. I just never heard."
"Never had the time to tell you. We had three of them, back on
Musashi, and they've all grown up by now."
"Really? What are they like?"
"You know what you get when you cross a Detian and a Salusian?"
"No clue. Very furry, maybe?"
"Nope. Might have been, if Deety wasn't humanized the whole
time. You get elves."
Rob specifically timed the last sentence to coincide with his
hostess drinking milk. Predictably, she snarfed it out her nose. She
grabbed a napkin to clean up the mess, and chuckled, "You're kidding!
I do have to kill you now."
"Yeah. When Sylvia--she was our first--was born, the ob-gyn was
ready to fill out his resignation. She's hot music property now on
Musashi. Her stage name is Black Rose."
"I'll have to meet her someday. And the others?"
"In the middle is Keyra, my only son. Engineer and all-around
street fighter, with more than a little chip on his shoulder. Did a
little...ummm...unauthorized law enforcement work around town. He's
applying to the WDF academy. Finally, Vicki. A true fighter jock,
just like her mother. Also applying to the Academy, with flight
training hours in VLI."
"I'll expect your daughter in my squadron in ten years or so.
They're still Detian, aren't they?"
"Yeah, kinda sort of. Detian genemods are dominant, but they've
only got half a set, so their kids only have a fifty-fifty chance of
being Detian. Only difference is that the ears point, and they have
slimmer builds than Deety or I. They kinda look like a cross between
Paul Ard and Veda was the mother." Paul Ard and Veda were the male
and female Wedge Rat epitomes of slender builds. Neither were
actually anorexic (in fact, Veda was an admitted chocoholic), but they
looked like they spent a little too much time on the rack.
"Yeah, I will have to meet them. They're going to the wedding,
right?"
"Oh, yeah, all three of them have RSVP'd in the positive.
Sylvia's at U.P. now, rehearsing with Jim Tyrrell." Jim "Punkman"
Tyrrell was the WDF's oxymoronically resident wandering minstrel.
Rob spoke again. "I've got the distinct feeling that we've been
sidetracking each other. What'd you invite me over for?"
"I wanted to talk to you about today's mission."
"I thought we did that--in the hanger."
"No. I chewed you out in the hanger. I want to talk to you."
"Aaah."
"First off, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings out there."
"Well, you did, but I deserved it."
"Yes, you did," she noted quite frankly. "And I had to, both
because I was pissed off and because if I didn't, it would have
disrupted discipline in the squadron. I know you're a captain, but I
had to do it. Actually, that's why I had to do it."
"I can be two grades superior to God and I still answer to you
if I'm in your squadron."
"Exactly." She sat back with her glass of milk, trying to put
Rob at ease. She succeeded, but only to a point. "Now what happened
out there?"
"I did wounded mother with Steve Jupiter."
"With one engine? You only do wounded mother when you're
lightly but graphically hit, or when your chances of successful
retreat are nil. We were only outnumbered ten to six, and every
single Eight-Ball has more flight time logged than Kilrathi do when
they retire. So you had a good escape chance, but not good enough for
wounded mother."
"It just seemed right at the time."
"No, Rob, it just seemed suicidal at the time. If I didn't kick
you out of the way with those missiles, we wouldn't be here holding
this conversation. Did you want to die out there, Rob?"
Rob flashed Tricia a pained look. "Maybe I just don't care
anymore."
"Well, I do care, Rob. All of us do, one way or another. You
just need time. It was tough enough on me alone to lose Deedlit. She
was a good friend. I couldn't stand to lose you, too That's why I
kicked you off the squadron."
Rob just sat there for a moment. In his current state of mind,
he had missed the obvious. "Thanks, Trish. I guess that when you've
counted on one person for so long, and lose her, you forget that there
are other people who care for you. Thanks for reminding me."
"I'll always be your friend, Rob. Even if I do have to kick you
off my squadron."
"You're much more than my friend, Trish. Much more." Rob and
Tricia had been closer than most friends almost from day one--but in
an absolutely nonromantic way. They were soul-siblings, Rob reminding
Tricia of the brother she would never see again, Tricia reminding Rob
of the sister he never had in the first place. He started to chuckle.
"What is it?"
"Just the incongruity of the situation. Look at this room. One
of the hottest design engineers in free space, the second coming of
Chuck Yeager, and a plate..." snag "...excuse me, about half a plate
by now of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, like some kinda kiddie
tea party."
"Remember, Rob, we were human beings since before we did our
respective engineering and piloting, and we've been friends since
before we ever signed up for this outfit."
"Now there's a take-you-back. Have you ever learned to write a
calculus report?"
"Too bad you only have one life, Rob. I have to kill you three
times now; once for being stupid out there on the mission, once for
making me snarf and once for bringing up calculus reports!" The two
had met through an experimental calculus course at WPI which required
project reports; Tricia was taking the course, and Rob had been
tutoring the writing aspects of the program.
"You know, it just seems so weird..."
"Bha?"
"Well, Edison Bell was right when he warned us about the dangers
of Omega- 2. It plays tricks on your mind. Look at me, Trish; I'm
four hundred and eighteen years old. Do I look it?"
"Of course not, Rob; you don't look a day over three hundred."
"Flattery will get you nowhere with me, hotshot. Fact is, as
far as any doctor is concerned, I'm seventeen years old, and in
perfect health. Never mind the vacuum exposure, the completely
amputated arm"--he wiggled real fingers on his right hand for the
first time in over a century--"scars from knee surgery, the one dimple
from piano lessons, lung-tissue scars from that laser coolant accident
on the Prometheus--and you probably have a longer list than I do,
since I spend most of my time as a virtual desk jockey. You know what
that does to you?"
"No. What do you mean?"
"They called Omega-2 treatment 'immunity from death'. More
specifically, it makes you ignore death. I keep forgetting it's even
possible for our type. Oh, once in a while, somebody or something
will remind me--Shasti, the Bumas at Reunification--that Kilrathi you
saved my ass from--sometimes I just think of Mike O'Malley and Steve
Clark and it wakes me up. But I'm just so used to living--so full of
the adolescent immortality syndrome--that I forget that I'm not
immortal, and neither is anybody else--with the possible exceptions of
Vaughn and Edison."
"It still hasn't sunk in that Deedlit is gone," Tricia intuited.
She got up, and sat on the sofa next to him.
"No. I don't think it has. Deedlit died in transito--that
dirty bomb fragged her transport signal. I couldn't even go around
the shipyards with an interstellar Hoover and pick up the dust that
was Deedlit, since she was just quantum waves at the time. It's one
thing to look in a coffin and say 'yes, that's my wife' and it's quite
another to have your best friend take you aside and tell you they lost
the transporter lock."
"Trust me, I know a little bit of what you're going through.
I've lost enough pilots to know that when you die in a small craft,
there usually isn't anything identifiable left for your loved ones.
Is that part of it?"
"Yeah, but only part."
"What's the rest of it?"
"She died on my ship."
"No, Rob, your ship was the Wandering Child. That was the plan
all along."
"Not like that, Trish. The Phoenix was my ship, I built it.
You want to know the story behind that ship?"
"Tell me."
Rob leaned back "It was all a big mistake. My intelligence was
way off base as to the number of forces Genom could amass at one time,
being on a peacetime footing. I thought that the Phoenix, the
Daedalus, and a few markers I could pull in from places like Cybertron
could shut the company down. So when Gryphon briefed me on fleet
strengths, I realized that we were a minor player in a major war. I
called her the Phoenix because it was reborn from the fall of Musashi.
"I got word from UP that they wanted to use the Phoenix for
bait, and I went with it. Not that I was happy about it; they wanted
me to fix a fold drive on the fly.
"We got there, in transporter range, and we got permission to
dock at UP. I told them not to, to stay in the fight. While I left
to what might have been the safest ship in the entire fleet. I never
even hugged or kissed Deedlit good- bye, just gave her a thumbs-up.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we'd be back together,
enjoying a couple of cool ones in the O-club bar and a couple of hot
ones elsewhere, within the week. Absolutely no fucking doubt in my
mind." He sunk deeper into the sofa, if that was possible. "The last
I saw of her, the turbolift doors were closing. I just assumed.
Sure, I knew there'd be casualties, but I was so goddamn certain that
the Phoenix would make it through. Why? Because I designed her.
"That's the sick part about it. The entire bridge was
ejectable, but there were no actual ejection seats in the bridge
itself. I decided in favor of more overhead armor. I could have put
them in and told everybody to wear CVR just in case. But I decided
against it. Even though I remembered the Challenger quite clearly."
"The Challenger?" Tricia interrupted. There was no Challenger
on the rosters that Rob would have "remembered".
"The space shuttle."
"Now that's a long way back."
"Yeah, but I thought I had learned my lesson from that. Largo
didn't kill her, the Bumas didn't kill her, the transporter beam
didn't kill her. I killed her. Me and my own piss-poor design work."
Tricia placed a reassuring arm across his shoulders and stifled
the urge to say, "You don't really believe that, do you?" In his
current state of mind, he most certainly did. Instead, she asked, "Do
you know what would have happened if you installed those ejection
seats, Rob?"
Rob was on the verge of tears. "What?"
"Bumas are programmed to consider biological intelligence a
severe threat. One of the gunners would have been ordered to destroy
the survivors. Deedlit would have been alive for about another 3.4
seconds, according to the statistics they gave me."
"Somehow, that doesn't make me feel much better."
"Eventually, it will." She pulled him towards her in a
supportive embrace, and he almost grasped in return. Jeez, she
thought, he probably hasn't had a hug since...since he lost Deedlit.
And he's been desperately needing one ever since. Her views were
confirmed by the dampness developing on her shoulder.


"We'll just crack it open."

--John Bigboote, Buckaroo Banzai

The next morning, ReRob moseyed down to cargo bay four. There,
he found a Fishhook, standing sideways on padded jacks and missing its
cockpit glass. Strangely enough, the seat and "Jesus rings" (you
know, the black-and-yellow ejector rings you grab while shouting
"JESUS!" or praying to same) were still there. He heard a clanging
noise emanating from it. This was not good.
"Hello!"
"Zat you, Rob?" Steve. That explained the clanging. The
Valkyrie poked his head out over one of the fins. "Not much new to
learn from this that we didn't get in combat. It looks like a Jalthi
built for three dimensions. Big guns, coupla missiles, three engines
placed on outriggers to max the torque out..."
"And a mighty potent stench. You catch it?"
"Lemme see." While Steve had a chemical analyzer, it wasn't on
at all times like similar structures on humans are. "Hmmm...something
organic, coming from..." He crawled over to the cockpit. Sounding
like he had pinched his nose, he noted, "Oh. Looks like somebody
forgot his kitty litter."
"Nasty," Rob agreed. "but death by explosive decompression will
do that to you. Steve, I'll be back in a minute. I'm amazed you can
work with that stench!"
"Didn't notice it until you mentioned it," Jupiter replied,
"I've been using spectrograph to do all the chemical analysis, since I
can't smell the armor and frameworking."
Rob left the room, and came back five minutes later with a spray
can labeled "Krazy Kevin's Organic Odor Killer". This, of course, was
another product from the manic mind of Rob's friend, keyboardist, and
former T-god gunner Kevin "Bitch" Tefft, chemist extraordinaire and
absolutely no known relation to the famous frankfurt manufacturer of
St. Canard. He took a deep breath, strided over to and leaped on top
of the nose of the Fishhook, and sprayed the cockpit down. By the
time he had to take another breath, Rob was relieved to notice that
the stuff had worked. He put the can down behind him on the nose, and
remarked, "An easier way to do this would be to just pull the rings."
Steve looked up. "But man, would that leave a mess on the
ceiling. I may have thrusters for feet, but I'll be damned if I'm
going up there with a mop and a bucket. Besides, I'd rather keep the
seat. If you don't need it, I could use some more furniture." As if
Steve could comfortably sit in one of those things.
"Actually..." Rob, of course, recognized most of the cockpit; it
had to be simple enough for their techies to repair, and Rob knew more
about Kilrathi fighters than some Kilrathi fighter techies. That was
his job. "Spudwrench!"
A half-meter cube on robotic arms and legs responded to his
call, walking up to the side of the craft.
Rob ordered, "Seventeen krelb sept wrench," and held his hand
out behind him as if expecting some nurse to come up and hand him a
scalpel. Which, in a way, he was.
His "nurse", Spudwrench, opened its lid, reached in, grabbed
what looked like a largish Allen key, and reached up to place it in
Rob's hand. Rob considered it fortunate that his roving toolkit had
that tool in seventeen krelb. The Metric system was fine, so long as
everybody used it, and the Kilrathi were as stubborn as the old
Americans were about using the system. Then again, whenever Kilrathi
got their hands on a Federation ship, Rob imagined one of his furry
opposite numbers would be cursing the inventor of the millimeter.
Within a few minutes, he had the seat unbolted. He lifted the
thing out of the cockpit and heaved it over the side. He'd dry-clean
it later, he figured. "Spudwrench, catch!" He took the bolts and
dropped them into the waiting lid of his animated toolbox. "Save as
Fishhook seat bolts." He found it to be rather useful to know where
all the parts from machines he dissected came from.
He sat himself down in the cockpit, a bit lower than he should
be since the seat was gone and he was now sitting directly on the
ejector charge. He immediately checked and found that the charge was
indeed disabled. "Thanks for safetying the eject, Steve!"
"No problem. Just remember your safety precautions." Clang,
clatter, clatter.
Damn it if he isn't right, thought Rob. After all, he literally
wrote the book on dissection of enemy hardware, and he screwed up by
not safetying the eject himself. But Steve, of course, had the book
on binary recall.
Okay, cockpit check. Similar controls to older models, and
absolutely inscrutable. Sometimes, I wish I did learn Kilrathi, he
mused. But he had a Salusian. Solution. Damn those mental Freudian
slips!
He took a pair of wires streaming from a small box the size of
an old-style walk-along cassette deck and jacked them into the twin
plugs in his left wrist. On the box was the VLI logo and the acronym
VHDS.
"Translate visual Kilrathi to English," he "thought" to his
wires. Instantly, Rob's field of view put English subtitles on every
piece of writing in the cockpit.
Okay. One major new control, labeled "Detector Floodlight
Follower" Rob translated the VHDS's version all the way to "radar
rider." So that's what happened.
A thought entered Rob's mind. Naah, he thought. Then another.
And a third. The floodgates opened for what seemed like an eternity,
but could have been clocked as maybe ten seconds. He snapped his
fingers, then leapt out of the cockpit, grabbed the pilot's seat, and
ran out the door with all the gay abandon of Dr. Emilio Lizardo.
Steve shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work.


"Mess this one up, and you're coming home in a mailing tube."

--The King of Salusia to (then) Lt. Perry Aldizinjal

Beep.
"Come in." The door opened.
Admiral Benjamin D. "Gryphon" Hutchins saw what he least
expected to see: ReRob in an almost manic state. He wasn't quite sure
what was going on. "Hi, Rob."
Rob immediately realized that Happy Fun Gryphon was neither
happy nor fun at that moment. Something was seriously wrong. "Hey,
Ben, what's up?"
"This." Ben activated a small holotank above his desk. It
showed the Concordia, the remainder of the Tactical Fleet, the astroid
field separating the Federation and Kilrathi forces, and the entire
Kilrathi fleet--fifty-seven capital ships. Fifty-seven capital
ships?!?
"Looks like our Kilrathi friends got their reinforcements,"
added Ben, "Just got a massive fold-in, three hours ago. Twenty new
capital ships. We're evenly matched, Rob. Which means that our quick
little war has just become long, drawn-out, WWI style trench warfare.
And I've got a fiancee to get back to. Whazzup witchew?"
"I think we can end this border skirmish quickly."
Ben slightly cocked his head, signifying interest. "What's up
your sleeve?"
Rob looked at his right arm, holding it up and flexing each
finger in turn. "New flesh-and-blood arm, but that's not important
now. What is important is that on our first mission against the
Fishhooks, Steve got one almost intact and we can repair the damage."
"Alright, what does that get us?"
"A ticket into their flagship, maybe?"
"And how do you figure that?"
Rob hovered over Gryphon's desk. "Very simple. We engage
Fishhook fighters from the flagship, destroy one in our jamming
radius, launch our Fishhook on the far side of the Concordia, I land
with the sortie with Steve following in stealth mode, I split during
debriefing and, well, what better saboteur than an engineer?
"Rob, you're missing one major point."
"What's that?"
"You get out of that cockpit and onto that flight deck, and
you'll immediately be recognized as human."
"Well, I wasn't exactly intending to show up in full WDF dress
uniform."
"What do you want to do? Get a mask? They're cats, Rob, they
use all their senses. You're going to have to look like a Kilrathi,
growl like a Kilrathi, even smell like a Kilrathi."
Rob returned Ben's emotion with studied nonchalance. "Been
there. Done that."
"What the?..."
"Salusians have been pulling this sort of trick for millennia.
You know those biosculpt tanks? The ones they used to humanize the
entire 105th FTL Cavalry?"
"Yeah."
"They were around aeons before they ever met humans. The entire
concept was originally intended for anti-Kilrathi espionage. I should
be able to Kilrathify myself."
"You need a genetic pattern for that."
"Gunk on the pilot's seat; Steve was messy. I'm having sickbay
extract it now, as well as set up a tank."
"Okay. You'll be a Kilrathi. But can you act like one? Do you
even know the language?"
"Just downloaded it into my picocomp, along with social. Our
friends the Bastard Sons of Kilrah left it in our library comps."
"Wait a minute. Since when did you get a picocomp?"
Rob lifted his left hand, revealing the twin golden discs on his
wrists, covers for his interface plugs. "I've been wired ever since
Shasti. I had a whole mechanical arm, so of course I got the mental
mods. When I ditched the arm, I decided that I still liked the
headware. Picocomp, Bio-87 math coprocessor, vehicle link, virtual
link, and virtual HUD." He thought for a moment, then, "Damn! That's
what I miss."
"What?"
"Back on the arm, I had a universal remote in the index finger."
He looked at the new arm he grew. "Really couldn't install one here.
Oh, well, the disadvantages of using flesh..."
"No wonder you're so fucked up, Rob. You're a cyberweenie.
Look what happened to Zoner."
"Zoner and I are in totally different leagues. If cyber was a
drug, I'd be smoking hash while MegaZone mainlined heroin. I'm not
the one you can stick notes to with kitchen magnets. It's only a
difference in degree, but one hell of a difference. And Zoner's still
the best damned fleet admiral in existence."
Ben stood up. "So you think you can pull this off?"
"I know I can pull this off."
Ben thought for a minute. Then: "No."
Rob was incredulous. "No?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Rob, you're a captain with almost three hundred years active
service in the WDF. You're too important to risk."
Rob stood up, being careful not to press his one inch vertical
advantage. "Ben, You're an admiral, you're in charge of this
campaign, and are authorized to...ordered to use any and all resources
to end this conflict with as little damage as possible. The term 'any
and all resources' includes my own person just as surely as it
includes the Phase Transit Cannon. More than that, you're ethically
required to win this one as quickly as possible, because of Kei. Our
forces are just about evenly matched out here, the Kilrathi got
reinforcements and are ready to handle a reduced-strength WDF, and
could keep us out here for who knows how long! Don't you see? I'm
trying my damnedest to keep your beloved Kei from walking down the
aisle with your newborn in her arms!" Then, in a more hushed tone,
"Ben, I can get us back while Kei can still see her feet."
"Rob, I'd rather go back late than go back without you. Kei can
wait; I love her, but she's in no danger. And, to be quite honest
with you, ever since the Eight-Ball incident, I can't let you off this
ship for fear that you're going to commit ritual suicide with a
Kilrathi."
"Ben, I give you this: my word that I will place my personal
safety above success in this mission. I may not come back from a
crippled ship, but if it is within my power, I will come back."
The two admirals locked eyes for what seemed like hours.
Finally, Ben saw what he needed to see: a look in his shipmate's eyes
that told him that Rob stood squarely behind that statement. That
would almost be enough. Almost. "Okay, Rob, you and Steve are on the
mission. But remember this: you die on this one, and you have
severely screwed up our strategic position. Which means that by the
time I get back, my child will already be saying 'Mama' and 'auntie
Yuri'. There's something I've noticed about you, and it's your
problem, almost as much as it is Zoner's: you won't lift a finger to
save yourself, but you'll move heaven and earth to help somebody you
care about. So come back on this one, Rob. If not for yourself, for
me. For Kei. For the baby."
"You have my word on it, Ben. The tank will take three days.
The mission will take less than one. In under one hundred hours, I'll
be standing in front of your desk again. If I have to personally
dispatch every Kilrathi on the flagship, I'll be standing right here
in one hundred hours."
"Okay, Rob. Good hunting."

"Beauty and the beast...but if anybody calls you 'beast' I'll
rip his lungs out"

--The Joker, Batman

The biosculpt treatment is simply another retrovirus; it rewrites
one's DNA to simulate that of another species. In fact, Omega-2 could
be considered a biosculpt treatment, as it changes a Human into a
Detian. However, as it is a morphologically mild treatment, it is
survivable without any external assistance. However, when making
external morphological changes, such as between Humans/Detians,
Salusians, Kilrathi, and presumably Klingons and other humanoid
bipeds, one needs to immerse the patient in a special chamber called
an biosculpt tank to prevent trauma and shock. It wouldn't have
killed Rob to take the Kilrathi retroviral injection with his Detian
genemods (which are unaffected by this other retrovirus), but it would
still have, in his own words, "hurt like a fuddrucker".
Not that he spent those three days in some inert trance. He was
receiving transmissions from his VHDS unit into his cybersystem,
learning certain Kilrathi ways of doing things, and old ship layouts
which might still be valid. Large amounts of data, the entire
Kilrathi language for example, he simply downloaded into a picocomp;
there was no way he could learn it in a half of a week.
Steve's preparations took much less time: he had already
downloaded all the Kilrathi technical data he needed, and didn't have
Rob's complication of needing to interface with the natives. Rob
would be working on the inside, using anonymity, while Steve would
work from the outside using his simple stealth. His physical
preparations consisted of a half-hour down in engineering getting
spray- painted with stealth black.
Finally, the genetic preparations were over. The biofluid
drained out of the tank, and a shower turned on to pummel the
remainder of the stuff from Rob's newly-grown orange fur. A hot-air
drying cycle completed the process, and a techie opened a hatch in the
tank.
Able to see clearly for the first time in days, Rob noticed that
about half the Sickbay staff, as well as Admiral Hutchins himself,
were standing there--and Rob in his all-together. Being an official
function, Rob saluted the C.O. "Sir."
Gryphon returned the salute, then Rob took a quick scan of the
room. "Uhhh, anybody have a uniform for me? Please?"
"Examination room two," the techie offered.
Holding his left index finger up in a "Hold that thought"
gesture, Rob said, "I'll be back in a few minutes." Rob hastily
padded--literally, since he felt the pads on the ball, toes, and heel
of both feet, into the examination room, where he found a replica of
the flight suit worn by the pilot of the ill- fated Fishhook. He
returned, feeling a bit more dignified, though he heard a muttered
comment saying, "should we tell Darensbourg?" Rob cleared his throat
loudly to discourage the comment.
That is to say, he attempted to clear his throat. Translated
through his new responses, it came out as a hiss. Against their
better judgements, several of the orderlies stared at him like some
sort of monster in their midst. "Well, is the mission a go?"
"As soon as you're ready."
"You'd better believe I'm ready. We'd better get this show on
the road before I get an incredible urge to shave."

"All those kids, and they thought I was Santa Claus, the
Easter Bunny, Rambo and Kerry Eurodyne rolled into one. And
then--WHACK! Oh, my God, the memories alone keep me warm at
night! Thank you, Largo, for the eidetic memory! God! It
was so glorious! All the blood! The brains! The young
lives snuffed out! I'm writing a book! I'm going to
Disneyland! I want the movie rights!!"

--Type 33/S Buma GRF-HN

Rob sat in the Fishhook in CB4. The Fishhook required only
minor repairs (dry-cleaning the upholstery and replacing the
klasterglass) and was in full fighting order. He had the radio tuned
to a frequency for this particular mission.
"Eight-Ball squadron away."
Minutes later, "Eight-Ball squadron baiting and engaging
squadron of Fishhooks."
"Mighty Halfling Wizard, just trapped a tasty morsel on the dark
side of the Concordia, showing number three seventeen, now switching
you over to the victim's radio--"
Robots in the bay hastily painted the hull number on Rob's craft
while the audio switched.
"So the monkey boy can fight!" Alert sirens, multiples of them.
"My offspring shall aven--" static.
"That's your cue, Rob," said Leeds over the comm. "Ready when
you are."
A robot appeared in front of and to the left of the
now-decompressed bay, and touched one arm to the deck. Rob gave a
thumbs-up, the doors opened, and Rob jetted his way out of the
Concordia.
The Veritech Rob had all but destroyed, now repainted with Bilbo
the Sorcerer, led Rob around the ship under remote control. Rob
opened fire with his railguns and reduced Eight-Ball eight to mere
slag. The Mighty Halfling Wizard returned to the ship to complete the
illusion.
Though he didn't see it, he knew that tailing his six was Steve
Jupiter.
A second squadron came out of the Concordia, and the order was
given to retreat. Rob heard the order, though he pretended he didn't.
He did, however, follow the group. He toggled the navigational lights
on his Fishhook several times, the Kilrathi signal meaning, "My
radio's out." His fellow wingmates flew a triangular formation around
him, showing him which course to follow. They had determined that
there might be some codes in use during the mission, and this was the
only way to safely circumvent them. The signal reminded Rob of a
technique used on ancient ground vehicles to inform somebody that they
should perhaps activate their headlamps.
As they returned to their ship, the Fangs of the Night, Rob
"simulated" another emergency. He shook the control stick wildly,
intentionally faking a short in the fly-by-wire system. He selected a
collision course for the landing bay, and while his wingmates were
lining up to destroy him to save their capital ship, Rob reached up
and pulled the twin rings. A shaped charge blew the klasterglass
upwards and backwards, while another charge ejected his freshly dry-
cleaned (ancient Kilrathi secret, huh?) seat from the craft. While
the Fishhook augered in, damaging the landing bay, Rob found himself
free of the seat and in pure freefall. He then felt metal across his
chest, though he saw nothing. A clank against his helmet, and he
heard a familiar voice: "Jupiter's taxi service. Where ya wanna go?"

"It's time to put the gun in your hand
and take it to mister!"

--Maria Mercurial

Rob saw the futility of pointing from a half-klick out.
Instead, he spoke into his helmet, "See the hatch between the third
and fourth characters in the hull name?"
"Yep." Steve's gunhead, which housed his speakers, was pressed
against Rob's helmet. No radio contact was necessary.
"Let's go." Rob felt acceleration, Steve rocketing him to his
destination. They pivoted and retrofired, landing within a meter of
the hatch. Rob opened the access door to the hatch controller, split
a pair of wires, and crossed them. The door opened. Rob ducked
inside, and tapped helmet to gunhead again. "You know what you're
doing out here?"
"No. Will that stop me? No."
"Okay. Just keep an ear out."
"Right. Take care of yourself. I need an overhaul in four
thousand hours, and the engineering staff of the Concordia is
ham-handed."
Rob stifled a laugh; he didn't quite want to find out what a
Kilrathi "laugh" was from the first-person perspective. "Alright."
And with that, he ducked inside the chamber and dogged the hatch down.
Thinking of the irony of that term, he finally broke down and
laughed. When he saw other Kilrathi laugh, it looked like they were
going to launch a hairball. To Rob it felt like dry heaving.
Finally, the air cycled and the other door opened. Rob was out
on the deck of the Fangs. He took his helmet off, and went to the
nearest intersection to find a map. Good, he thought, quite similar
to earlier models. He took the stairs down to the next level.

On most ships in most navies, design becomes a compromise
between security and repair. To design a truly tough ship, one not
only has to make it so that parts fail rarely, but so that parts that
do fail can be reached and repaired or replaced easily. In other
words, integrity is not only a function of structural strength but of
damage control efficiency. And damage control efficiency means
multiple and easily accessible routes to all important parts of the
ship.
This, of course, annoys the Security people to no end, since
more passages mean more places for intruders to slip by. So security
people want fewer passages, or passages accessible to fewer personnel,
or better monitoring of these passages.
In the end, of course, the security people are bound to lose,
since the ships are always designed by engineers and never by security
officers. However, the security personnel have won at least some
small moral victories, as could be witnessed on the Fangs of the
Night.
On board the Fangs, the main network of engineering passages are
the crawlspaces. To access these spaces, you need to look into
certain retina scanners to open certain hatches. Since these hatches
were about five meters from each other, no one would be very fast, and
all motions would appear on a master security board.
All this was to Rob's advantage, for it provided absolutely no
live security forces throughout the network unless something was
tripped. Which Rob was very unlikely to do.

He stopped at a door. It read "LJG Kraven Milkpaw"--or, at
least that's what the subtitle in Rob's line of sight read. Milkpaw
was the unfortunate who donated the Fishhook to the WDF's cause, so
Rob knew it was vacated. The only thing he had to worry about was the
chance that they were specifically monitoring this door. Rob did a
bit of electronic voodoo and the door opened.
Once inside, he looked up and saw an access panel, just as he
had expected. He jammed the door controls shut. Then he snapped a
table leg and used it to physically jam the door shut. Even if they
knew he was there, they would have to blast their way in. Security
people would never think of using the accessways to get in.
Rob went over to the computer terminal and ripped the case off
with a small prybar. He unzipped his flightsuit and took out the VHDS
box. From a compartment, he pulled a half-dozen alligator clips. He
clipped them to wires in the terminal, then flipped a switch.
Humans had the advantage in computer security over many other
races because of their instinctive urge to flaunt authority. The
Kilrathi, for example, had the authoritarian rule mandated by almost
constant war. This anarchic element surfaced on Earth in the late
twentieth century as what were originally called "hackers" and then,
more specifically, "crackers". In response to these, programmers
spent more and more of their time and resources keeping these hackers
and crackers from reaching and altering the data which were their
goals. The escalation in this virtual war gave humanity a relative
edge in both making and breaking computer security.
All of this boiled down in an instant to the fact that a being
with the body of a Kilrathi, the mind of a Human, the constitution of
a Detian, and the reflexes of an Intel found himself in a playground
of a logistics computer. A couple of password crackers, and he found
himself in contact with the security program.
He instructed the computer to take a new retina scan from his
station, with the associated account of "csh". He then told the
passage monitor that the csh account was not a person, but a test
routine. Whenever it registered csh's retina, it would cycle through,
and catch the motions in a file to be analyzed later.
As if he was ever going to pick up that file.
He took off the gator clips, opened the access hatch he found
before, and boosted himself into the passageway.
Clang. "Ow!"
New body, new balance points, new reflexes. Damn. He backed up
about a foot, and leaped again, making the hatch this time. He closed
the hatch behind him. A smart security team, if one was searching for
him and going to Milkpaw's quarters, wouldn't miss the fact that he
was using the access ways, but it would take them a few minutes to
figure it out with the hatch closed.

For the next forty minutes, Rob went around the accessways,
eventually making his way to the sections around the engine room. He
didn't have to touch the actual engines; starship complexity was to
the point where the term "manual override" had very little meaning.
All it took was a little bit of creative rewiring...
"Steve, you there?" Rob had tapped into the surface sensor net,
not wanting to use his radio and thus call attention to himself.
"Right here."
"Want some power?"
"Sure."
Rob spliced a few pairs of wires. "Here you go. Wait until I
get out, and take all their maneuver orders in the meantime and
execute them. If they don't know you've got their engines, they won't
look for us."
"Roger that. How long till you get out?"
"Maybe a half hour, I want to do some more customization. Yell
if they find out."
"Will do. Jupiter out."
Another fifteen minutes, and Rob had found cables leading to the
fire control computer. Normally, the Kilrathi computer nets were
separate, or at least connected at only limited and well-monitored
points, to prevent saboteurs from doing just what Rob was up to. As
they would have said on Earth, "Sneakernet is the ultimate cracker
stopper". Rob had just linked the fire control computer net and the
drive computer net to the surface detection grid.
All while Steve linked himself to the surface detection grid and
did some software cracking.

"Friendly fire isn't"

--Murphy's Laws of Combat

Steve Jupiter, "sitting" in guardian mode on the hull of the
Fangs of the Night, felt a tap on his wingtip. He turned around and
saw Rob staring back at him. Steve battloided, and they tapped
helmet-to-gunhead.
"Jack?"
"Jack."
Rob took out a pair of cables, and plugged them into his armor.
He was already plugged into the armor, as it would be difficult to
jack through a pressure suit without it. The other ends of the cables
went into Steve Jupiter's back, while another pair of cables were
already connected to a camera.
Rob felt his mind swimming around in nowhere. He called out,
"I'll take guns if you take engines. Want to burst a transmission out
to the fleet?"
"Too dangerous. They'll know we succeeded."
"Just remember to keep our side out of gunrange."
"You're telling me." Steve loaded the sensor data, showing the
stars, rocks, and ships in the cybernetic nullspace.
Rob "pointed", specifying a Kilrathi battle cruiser. "Hey, that
one looks annoying..."
"Let's party," agreed Steve.
The Fangs of the Night edged over closer to the battle cruiser.
Rob imagined that inside the ship, a helmsman was unfairly
getting chewed out by the captain. Too slagging bad, thought Rob,
Don't you know that all's fair in love and war? Rob let loose with
the Fangs' main guns.
For perhaps a half a minute, the targeted cruiser failed to
react. After all, what is the protocol when your own flagship starts
shooting you? Probably a quick "Hey, what's going on here?" call to
the flagship, answered by an embarrassed admiral shrugging his
shoulders and saying "Beats me." By the time the cruiser did react,
it was too late, and the ship was up in flames. Fifty- six.
"Rob, getting a self-destruct order. I'm intercepting it and
stopping it."
"What's the delay on it?"
"Five minutes."
"Let it through, and try to slow down the clock cycles!" The
self- destruct, caught by Steve as it was essentially an engine
overload, was one thing that could be manually overridden. One heavy
weapon in the right place, the mag bottles go, and the ship's a
temporary star in a fraction of a second.
Steve transmitted again as Rob started pummeling another target.
"I'm re- routing every other clock tick." Good. He just bought
another five minutes. The crew wouldn't notice because they'd be too
wrapped up in other things.
"How much time do we need to exit kill zone?"
"Two minutes."
"Then we unjack with three, just in case."
About five minutes later, the Fangs had destroyed two more
ships, and escape pods were piling out of the flagship. "Thirty
seconds to exit," noted Steve.
Rob looked at the situation as it came through his jackplugs,
looking for the densest concentration of capital ships he could find.
Then: "course one seven five mark two oh three...five-eighths impulse.
Engage. Jack out." Rob pulled his plugs, followed by Steve, having
given the Fangs of the Night its last order. The Valkyrie scooped Rob
up in his arms and took off at two gees, the max he could do with his
Detian cargo weighing him down.
Steve found a big asteroid and got to the Federation side of it.
It's mass would be a better blast shield than any more distance he
could make would be. Seconds later, the two saw light penetrating the
field, then felt the rock accelerating them towards the Federation.
Steve picked Rob up again and weaved through the field, ending up in
the clear just as WDF fighter groups were passing through the other
way.
"Eight-Ball six to Concordia," Rob picked up through his helmet
radio, "requesting landing permission."
"Granted on bay one. Be advised: we are accelerating. Is the
captain with you?" Which meant that they were pressing the attack,
possibly through the field itself.
"Right here." Rob's radio was now in range.
"Admiral Hutchins wishes to see you on the bridge as soon as
possible."
"Get a security team to bay one to escort me. I don't need
people thinking I'm somebody I'm not." The last thing Rob wanted was
for some over-zealous greenie to blast him as a suspected intruder.
Steve landed in battloid mode, putting Rob on his feet. Two
security guards walked up to him, saluted him--then handcuffed him.
"Huh?"
"The captain will explain."
They led Rob to the lift, which they took to the bridge. The
three walked onto the bridge, and the guards removed the shackles,
retreating onto the lift.
"Sorry about the cuffs, Rob," said Gryphon from his captain's
chair. "Figured it'd be best for safety reasons. When you're done
here, we'll cuff you again and escort you to sickbay. Unless you like
fur."
"Not that much, Captain. What's the hull count? I missed the
end of it."
"Ten, including the flagship of course; eight damaged, and
thirteen more out of position. The thirteen is what sunk it for them;
now we're keeping them busy with our fighter groups, so they can't
come around to get a clear shot at us. We're sending the main force
through the rocks now. What the hell did you do to that thing?"
"Took over engines and guns, and ran the whole show through a
box on the outer hull. The last place you look for an intruder is
outside the ship: what would that be, an extruder? It was their
captain's idea to put on the self- destruct, so we just aimed the
beastie into the core of their formation."
"I swear, Rob, you almost got a chain reaction going."
A voice from the side said, "Captain, you have an incoming
message."
"On screen."
A Kilrathi bridge, and it's commanding officer. "This is
Captain Gurtav Nip, acting Commander in Chief of the Kilrathi forces
in this sector. I wish to discuss terms of peace."
Humans were one of the few races to make a fine and lengthy art
of diplomacy, and the Kilrathi were one of the many who like to hammer
terms out quickly. This suited Ben fine, as he was no diplomat.
"Terms are that this border between Kilrah and the Federation stands
as it was four standard months ago. You leave, and we'll synchronize
a cease-fire order."
Gurtav looked to Gryphon's side. "One more condition."
"What?"
"You turn the traitor over to us."
Ben followed Gurtav's eyes to their target. "Sorry, Captain.
That's Captain Mandeville, and was never a citizen of Kilrah to my
knowledge."
"You can thank the late Kraven Milkpaw for the genetic material
I needed for the face-over," noted Rob. "I assure you, however, that
he was not captured, and that he died in the service of his Empire.
We had to pick the DNA from his ejection seat." Rob took the knife
from his Kilrathi flight suit, cut some hair from his head, and placed
it in a plastic bag. He placed the bag in a materializer cubby and
said, "Vision, would you beam this bag over to the Kilrathi when and
if they accept?"
"Of course, Captain."
"Very well then. But I will transmit the synchronization order,
and we will not leave until I am satisfied as to the proof of the
genetic scan. We agree to the terms, so long as the sample provides
evidence that Lieutenant Milkpaw's DNA are involved." The bag of fur
disappeared. "I will transmit one pulse on fourteen point two seven
megahertz." The captain's records, taken from camera footage from the
remainder of the squadron, showed that Milkpaw died in combat and had
no chance to betray his Empire.
Gryphon pressed a button on his bridge controller. "All units,
this is Admiral Hutchins. You will soon be receiving one pulse on
fourteen point two seven megahertz from the Kilrathi. This is a
cease-fire order, and will be obeyed under my authority. You will
assume a defensive stature and allow the Kilrathi to retreat in an
orderly fashion. Hutchins out." Then, to the screen again, "We're
ready."
"As are we. Synchronizing cease-fire...now."
The Kilrathi captain pressed a button, and all firing on both
sides stopped.
Moments later, the comm station onboard the Concordia sprang to
life again. "Captain, text message only from the Kilrathi."
"Read it."
Captain Nip to Admiral Hutchins: our sickbay has analyzed the
sample and verified your claim. The terms are agreed to." On the
screen, Kilrathi fighters returned to their ships, which then
retreated into the void.
Ben noticed that the door to the Captain's office had just
closed. Considering that only he and the chief of security had access
to that door, he found this puzzling. He motioned the security chief
over, and opened the door.
Standing in front of his desk was a Kilrathi with a funky
haircut.
"Rob?"
The feline looked at his watch. "One hundred hours, more or
less."

Epilogue

"I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find.
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world
I will learn to survive."
--Simon LeBon

A pair of eyes looked out onto the inner surface of the vast
Dyson sphere which was Utopia Planetia. Directly overhead, the sun
stood eternally, a pair of small planets still racing rings around it.
A few hundred yards away, the WDF Wandering Child, the second SDF
built for the Wedge Defense Force, lay in drydock as workers replaced
the burned-out components of the Reflex Drive. Her predecessor, the
WDF Wayward Son, remained soaking in her own radiation light- years
away from Planetia at her own final resting place.
While the Wandering Child was one of the largest warships in
space at eight thousand meters, she herself was dwarfed by the vast
surface of the sphere. Only a small fraction of that surface was yet
in use, leaving the rest as an exposed plasteel surface. The sky
itself was gunmetal gray.
The eyes surveying the scene were once, long ago, shielded
behind optically curved glass to correct their inherent imperfections.
Today, however, they gazed directly upon the scene with only a window
of flat glass between them and the view. Today, those eyes were
considered the best in the galaxy at what they and their mistress did
professionally. The eyes and the person had a symbiotic working
relationship: they would recognize the shapes of enemy fightercraft
from across vast distances, and she would shoot them down.
The lady who belonged to these eyes was, in spite of her
profession, quite pleased with the fact that they recognized no enemy
fightercraft at the moment. While one reason was simply that she had
nothing at her immediate disposal to fire upon them with, there was
probably something more.
Thoughts from an unknown source entered her mind. I'll deal.
It almost felt telepathic.
Tricia quickly turned back to face Rob. "What was that? Sorry,
I kind of got mesmerized by the view."
"Oh, I can believe. It's a great flat, lets me see the
shipyards, but it does sort of launch your mind into the ether. You
asked how I felt about Deedlit. I said I'll deal."
"You're alright, then?"
"Not yet. She'll leave a hole in me, maybe even permanently.
I'd like to say it'll be permanent considering how much she meant to
me--still does mean to me,in fact--but that's mighty rare among
Detians. With time, all wounds are healed, but I think that this one
will leave a scar."
Tricia had just swallowed some spaghetti: Rob had returned the
favor of her inviting him over for cookies with some of his
worlds-famous, four-hour, damn- the-vegetarians,
stick-the-spoon-in-and-it-stays-up Italian sauce. "I'm still trying
to put myself in your shoes, and I keep failing. Are you sure that
'hole' of yours is healed up enough?"
"So that I don't need the psychological equivalent of intensive
care? Yes. I've gotten to the point where I can at least get a
decent night's sleep. It seems to me that a lot of different kinds of
love have certain important things in common."
"Huh? You lost me."
"Something you said waaaaay back...when we were back at WPI,
even. You mentioned that having good friends was more important than
having a good boyfriend. Never having had a good boyfriend, I took
your word for it."
Trish chuckled a bit. Rob was careful not to make her snarf.
Sending four-hour spaghetti sauce out one's nostrils hurts--even if
you are a Detian. Rob continued:
"Probably the best thing about having Deedlit around was that
she was the ultimate stress buster. There were some times that I
thought I'd go nuts if she wasn't there. I think I returned her the
favor. You know how cuddling up with the right person can put your
mind at ease, no matter what's going on in the outside world."
Tricia nodded her head in agreement; she knew that rather well.
The acceptance, and almost encouragement, that the WDF gave to forming
relationships inside the Force had been credited with keeping morale
up and post-traumatic stress disorder (shell shock) down. This had
been a far cry from the accepted operating procedures in the armed
forces defending the WDF's birthland, where units were often
segregated by gender and same-sex relationships were officially
frowned upon. The soldiers had nothing to do but watch third-run
movies, listen to military radio, and catch new and educational
diseases from the natives; it was a wonder they could operate at all.
"A lot of times, though, just having friends around helps out a
lot. It certainly kept me going on board the Concordia. You helped
out a lot, and so did about a half a dozen others on board. Thanks
for helping out, and especially for giving me a shoulder to cry on."
"You're more than welcome, Rob. After all, you've helped me out
enough times. Just thinking, are you going to stay with the
Concordia? You seem stable enough, I'll give you your old slot in the
Eight-balls if you want it."
"Thank you, but no. It'd be kind of silly for one squadron to
have a Colonel and a Captain in it, and I'm not exactly the Force's
best Veritech pilot. I'm going to stay here for a while. Gryphon
gave me the yards because he feels this insane urge to be in the
Captain's seat, and I still have a company to run. Unlike your
outfit, mine can't really be organized into little autonomous
franchises, so VLI actually needs me."
"So your starship days are over?"
"Hell, no! Look at this." Rob got up and grabbed a folder,
placing it on the table. "I haven't been here for one day and I get
status reports of three new starship designs, including two of Ben's
babies. Is he going to see them through? Noooooo. He says "Welcome
to the shipyards, Rob," and lands them in my lap. And guess who's
going to take the conn on the shakedown cruises."
"You are, I take it? I guess you won't be staying home."
"Exactly. The only difference with Ben and Zoner are that
they're sure that all the bolts are tight on their ships. I get to
figure out any SNAFUs that didn't get caught by the computer sims.
And from what Cheryl tells me can sneak by on little bitty fighter
craft, these designs are going to have problems that'll make Captain
Gloval and the Incredible Flyaway Antigrav Pods read like a bedtime
story!"
It's the same old ReRob, thought Tricia. He'll be alright.

After dinner, Tricia left to go home to her temporary
stationside quarters. Rob cleaned up, read a few reports on the
SDF-23 repair work, made a couple of mental notes about what he would
have to do the next day, and went to bed. He took a pair of wires and
placed them into the jackplugs in his left wrist. As the pink noise
caressed his brain, he wondered if Tricia had someone special to go
home to. He hoped that she did, but he had forgotten to ask her.
Even as he lost consciousness, he knew that, asleep or awake, in
spite of everything he had just told his old friend, the nights were
going to be cold and lonely for a long time...