WHB6 - Chpt 7-9

Here are the next 3 preview chapters for War Horses Book 6: The Sunstone Imperative!

Chapter 7 – Leadership Qualities

We didn’t find out what the Something Big entailed for another week, when Colonel Swift gave the order to consolidate all personnel and materiel for departure from Bashtu. The remainder of our contract had been bought out, which meant that someone out there wanted us so badly that they’d paid the Bashtu Governance for the entire next year that we wouldn’t be there to fill our contract, along with a little something extra for their troubles, on top of whatever they had paid us to shove off.

That took power. And not just the kind of power that comes with a fat stack of cred chits. That was regional power, and there were maybe a dozen names in the whole of the Heracles gulf that could swing it.

“Where do you think they’re sending us?” asked Dathers, as he packed his kit. He was the only person I’d met who packed lighter than me, with only a single set of civilian clothes wedged into his duffel. I knew it was his only pair because we’d been roommates in Northern since I returned from the Melee, and I’d never seen him wear anything else that wasn’t a uniform. Just the utility trousers and the button-down with double breast pockets and the air-cycle jacket now lining his duffel.

“Beats me,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Suppose we’ll find out when we get there. Maybe before, if we’re lucky.”

I skimmed through the introductory leadership course on my datapad, turning my nose up at the empty platitudes. Make your subordinates feel validated. Ensure you are always someone they can come to with a problem. Ya think? Even if the role was temporary, the training was mandatory. I had a reading list longer than my arm of required reading that was dryer than any technical manual and had nothing to do with uprights.

Dathers zipped up the oversized duffel and slung it out into the hallway for the logisticians to collect. He dusted his hands off and crossed his arms, Templar tattoos snaking around the thick muscles. He wasn’t built like Stag, but he wasn’t someone I’d want mad at me, either. “How can you just shrug off the uncertainty? When I was in the Auxiliaries, we always had clear orders. We knew how many of us would be on what world, for how long, and the strategic objectives and end-state.”

It took me a second to realize he meant the Templar Auxiliaries, not a maintenance division. He’d been a ground-pounding rifleman for two tours before learning he had an aptitude for neural shunts. We’d picked him up on Bashtu after the Templars passed him up for both promotion and upright training. Not enough church services attended, or something. Or maybe too many fights. But he was still a soldier, in his mind. I think he just got out and realized he didn’t know how to do anything but put on a uniform and shoot a gun.

“Does knowing make it better?” I asked.

“Yeah. If you know, then you can plan,” he said.

“And if you plan, the enemy can smash that plan to pieces.”

“And a good plan will include what to do when that happens.”

I considered that. A good leader views all avenues and instills a sense of order on the battlefield. “Shit. Maybe they should have made you subcommander.”

Dathers moved from his duffel to his ruck and started stuffing the last of his effects into it. “Hell, I need more time to get used to the battlefield at upright scale. You know, we ran a few ops with the Templar formations. I used to see those things towering over the battlefield like untouchable angels of death. Their pilots were the next thing to Michael’s wrath for me. I never thought they could be…”

“Us?” I supplied?

Dathers twisted his face. “Uh, yeah… If I can be candid, sir. No offense meant.”

I kicked my chair back and stretched. “No, I know exactly how you feel. Now you’re that guy you held in high regard, and you don’t know exactly how it happened, because you don’t feel like that guy.”

A good leader always puts things in perspective. Fuck off, training manual.

“When does that feeling go away?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said, chuckling. “I’ve learned that being good at this means just being good at keeping your head above the water long enough to take a breath. But most of the time you’re submerged. You just gotta hold out until you get that next breath.”

An announcement came over the base-wide system announcing movement for the uprights, and I grabbed my own bag and stuffed my datapad into it. I tapped a fist against the Chevalier patch on Dathers’ sleeve. “Just stick close to Sable when you’re riding Destrier. She’ll square you up.”

Dathers laughed and slung his own pack over his shoulder. “Brother, I plan to stick as close to Captain Espinosa as physically possible. You know what I’m saying?”

I punched him again with a flat expression, waiting until the look of amusement shifted to one of alarm, before breaking into a grin myself.

“I know exactly what you’re saying. Just don’t let her hear you say it if you value your bones in their current unbroken configuration. And better to stay away from her nieces.”

“Speaking from experience, Sir Rascador?”

I didn’t answer.

We made our way down to the upright bay.

The whole place was a buzz of activity as techs scrambled to load equipment onto trucks and break down repair equipment for transport. Going from a fully-functional maintenance hangar to crates small enough to stow on a starship doesn’t happen overnight. I’d honestly always enjoyed the transition. Since there was no shortage of work to do, you could grab your buddies and migrate from task to task together, joking and smoking and seeing who could carry the heaviest shit.

Now I was responsible for overseeing the self-ambulatory transition of all mission-capable uprights to Central so that they could be loaded onto the Winter. Which was a fancy way of saying I was going to herd a bunch of cats as we walked our happy asses down the highway to Central. We had more uprights than we had warm bodies to fill them, so I’d gotten a crop of cadets—some of whom would be taking their first steps in an actual upright—to make up the difference.

In order to find out who they were and how they were assigned, I had the misfortune of having to interact with Third’s most decorated maintenance lieutenant, Karna. When I say we have a fraught relationship, it’s a bit like saying a sixteen-ten capacitor has a fraught relationship with an ungrounded maintainer who forgot his safety strap and insulated jumpsuit.  

I spotted her sitting behind her maintenance desk, watching everyone else work with an eye for how she might catch them slipping up. Part of the reason I had no interest in becoming an officer for so long was because this was my primary view of them.

She spotted me about thirty seconds later, as I was heading over with Dathers in tow. Her lip curled up in disgust.

“VanDelle,” she said. She made it sound like a dirty word.

“Karna,” I said. She opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again. Probably about to insist I call her ma’am before seeing that I’d got my second pip. We were now technically the same rank, though she had seniority. It was her job to assign the cadets to uprights.

“I need the assignments for the SA movement to Central that Sable gave you so I can get these war horses on the move.”

“The priority is breaking down the gantry. You’ll have to wait for Captain Sable’s list.”

“Come on, Karna. We’ve got a five-hour march and that’s a three-hour job. Last I checked the procedure, you don’t break down the gantry on a workstation. You can forward me the list in thirty seconds, and I can be out of your greasy hair.”

“You’ll have to wait, VanDelle.” She smirked. “You may have been jumped up through the ranks as Major Hyalt’s pet project. But this is my maintenance bay. So, I suggest you wait, unless you want to explain to your formation commander why you delayed the breakdown and caused Third to miss their time table.”

I ground my teeth. Rocco had never had a problem getting Karna to do what he wanted. But then, Karna had always respected the rank of anyone above her as much as she disdained anyone she saw as beneath. I took a deep breath and unclenched my fist. I’d faced Wykings. I’d faced elite mercenaries. I could face one maintenance lieutenant. Even if I didn’t have Rocco’s weight to swing. Well, maybe there was something I could do to play her at her own game. “Fine. Keep to your gantry.”

I turned to Dathers. “Round up the cadets. I’ll issue individual assignments and call the Winter for new clearances. We’re moving out in fifteen minutes.”

Dathers jogged off and I pulled my datapad out of my bag.

Karna’s eyes narrowed. She thought she was closing the jaws on a steel trap. “Sounds like violating a direct order from a formation commander, VanDelle. You better hope that doesn’t get back to Captain Sable, or Colonel Swift.”

I scrolled through the active upright roster for Third. “Send the fucking ping, Karna. I dare you.”

I’ve never seen the woman type so fast. Her hitting the send button sounded like she just dropped a sledge on her keypad. I saw an oil-slick grin spread across her face. A ping notification popped up on my pad, and I saw that she’d carbon copied Sable and Colonel Swift with a message about my insubordination.

“Oh, by the way. I’m not violating an order, Karna. I’m amending one. Altering upright rosters is my prerogative as subcommander of Third Formation’s armored assets.”

Her grin vanished.

“Oh, didn’t hear about that one yet? Well, it is just acting, so it’s not like I get the rank, pay, or respect. But I do get the duties,” I said, hitting send on my own datapad, forwarding the updated roster to the same list of people she had, as well. I couldn’t change the roster for no reason, but I knew one thing about it: that Rowdy was on it, but he was still in central doing a recon training sim with Jacque. That meant I had justification for altering it. Administrative warfare, bitch. I was just as much a veteran of skirting regs and finding loopholes in the rules.

Karna paled. She’d probably get a slap on the wrist for her obstinance, but she’d drawn Swift’s attention to herself, and she’d done it trying to throw me under the treads. Any further attempts to interfere with my duties would come across as petty vindictiveness. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to be petty.

Without waiting for a response, I turned around and shouted at the cadets Dathers was dragging behind him. “Standby for assignments.”

Now, for the capstone fuck-you. “Blakely, Bastard, Viernes, Cossack…” I ran through the rest of the names as cadets peeled off and headed for uprights. “…Diego, Sioux.” I glanced back at Karna. “Dathers, Ardennes.”

Karna looked at me strangely. She knew Ardennes wasn’t a vehicle I’d ever give up willingly. But what she didn’t know, was that all of Third’s maintainers had been telling me that Karna had fallen in love with the newest addition to Third’s inventory. She’d been all over exactly one upright in the bay: the Au’Duran jabaar, Surah. Wanted to get it nice and pristine to suck up to Third’s new formation commander. And now, I was going to climb inside her and scuff the bitch up.

I tossed Karna a mock salute over my shoulder as I headed for her favorite silver titan. She babied that upright the same way I used to baby Ardennes.  In a way, it was almost as bad as fucking another officer’s wife.

A good leader does not offer problems, they suggest solutions.

Whatever. She should have forwarded me the fucking list.

Chapter 8 – Something Big

I won’t lie. Climbing into that upright was basically cheating on Ardennes. But it was like cheating with Duri. I could feel her in the cockpit, when the command saddle with the inbuilt shunt conformed to my back it was like her wrapping her arms around me from behind. When I pulled on the goggles, it was like her hands slipping over my eyes, and then opening to show me her world. Gripping the sticks was like… you know what, let’s move past this analogy. The point is, I could feel her in the design of the thing. She’d left her mark in a hundred subtle ways. She never could have known I’d drive it, but this jabaar’s cockpit had been custom-made to keep someone she loved safe, and that bill fit me just as well as the cousin I’d scammed it from.

What would it feel like to have her design one for me, I wondered?

Her presence made such an impact on me that that I thought about it all the way through the reconsolidation and dust-off. Even though the outing turned into an eight-hour slog anyway (not because of Karna, but because of a pileup of civilian traffic). Of the patrol itself, I won’t bore you with the details. The uprights weren’t even armed, and almost everyone on it was a limited-access pilot with a working inhibitor module.

Since we had technically completed the contract before Central renewed, and then resold it, three nights after we left Bashtu, the crew of the Winter threw a wormhole party—which I also won’t give you details on. Because I wasn’t there. Sable made sure of that. Can’t say I blame her, though it’s not as though there would be a repeat of my one-time tryst with Cat. Unfair, really. That had happened over two years ago. I think it was joint revenge for that, as well as jealousy over being the first to jockey Surah, but it’s not like there was a jockey she’d have rather had driving it. I think she just believed there was no way I’d let someone else have Ardennes. Being having been inside her new tank, as well as her niece, with a little side helping of indirectly involving her in my feud with Karna, seemed excuse enough for all the paperwork Sable had saved up over the week suddenly not being able to be put off any further.

Fucking formation subcommander. No wonder Colonel Swift had approved it. Ackhar couldn’t transfer over fast enough.

Still, I spent the three-day wormhole transit grinding through more leadership courses while visiting Rocco in the ship’s infirmary. He had a lot to say about them as he learned to use his datapad one-handed.

“They’re garbage, Vandal. For you, anyway. If we could’ve book-learned you to begin with, we would have. Someone like Jacque might get something out of a leadership course and then put it into practice. But ol’ Randal the Vandal learns by aping. Monkey-see, monkey-do.”

He swore as his datapad slid onto the floor. I reached over and picked it up to hand it back to him.

“Guess I have the alma mater of the Teutonian streets to thank for that. Keen eyes save hides. In any case, the position is only temporary. Sixth should get their new jockey in a couple months, then Ackhar will come to Third and I’ll be a rightful grunt, again.”

Rocco grunted, raising an eyebrow at me. Might have meant to raise both, but the other had been singed off and seemed reluctant to grow back. “Don’t hide in the junior officer ranks the way you hid in the maintenance bay, kid.”

“Yeah? How’s Alpha Company Commander treating you?” I countered.

“Easy as pie. Could do it with one arm tied behind my—fuck!”

The pad slipped again, and this time I caught it before it hit the deck.

Rocco offered a sheepish grin as he accepted it. “I can’t wait to get that prosthetic mounted and neura-linked. But damn am I going to miss the cockpit.”

I nodded along. His arm was still being repaired, little by little, to the point where it could accept the prosthetic. The leg would take longer and be worse overall. His arm had been taken off below the elbow, but his leg had come off above the knee, and it had come off messy. If the armor panel hadn’t pinned his arteries shut, he would have bled out in seconds.

Rocco caught me staring at the stump, and my face reddened. “Sorry,” I said.

“Forget it,” he replied. He lifted his arm up. “You know, I can still feel it sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

He grinned, and I caught a mischievous glimmer in his eye. “Yeah, and I must be finger-blasting some phantom ghost bitch, cause I swear, my fingers feel wet.”

I felt my face scrunch up as Rocco roared with laughter. I worried for a bit that he’d give himself another seizure, but apparently the dosage had been stepped down to the point where he just blacked out for a few seconds at a time.

Before I could respond, a ship-wide announcement came on the main circuit.

“All hands, this is the captain. Winter of Discontent is transition-complete as of 2203 hours. Resume section one watch rotation.”

Rocco and I looked at each other. I leaned over to the wall and dialed the holoscreen to an external sensor repeater.

I watched as the sensor operator tracked the visual feed to each new reported contact, lingering barely long enough for me to make out the markings on the hulls. And there were a lot of contacts.

“What the hell did we just jump into?” said Rocco.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Templars and Emirs. Dozens of ships. Not just frigates and sloops, but heavy destroyers and cruisers, a few troop carriers, and a heaping helping of private security rigs, too.” I recognized the War Dogs as well as two other companies I’d seen at the Melee. “Is this about to be the biggest space battle in the Gulf of Heracles?”

“I don’t see any explosions,” said Rocco, “But you can bet a few captains have their fingers on the big, red button.”

I thought back to my time on Sienne, where I’d met the Marquis DelRosa, an arms manufacturing titan with his thumb on the pulse of trade in the gulf. He’d said something was brewing. The amount of squabbling between Templars and Emirs, as well as Emirs and other Emirs had seen a sharp decline over the last year. Now, we knew… well we didn’t know why, just yet. But I’d have bet good cred this gathering had something to do with it. I didn’t recognize the planet, either.

Rocco grunted. “I think your girlfriend is here.”

I looked back up on the screen, catching a glimpse of Ia Yukhar, one of the Paladin Devils ships. My heart beat a little faster at the potential of seeing Duri. Then, just as quick, the sensor panned away.

I gave Rocco the side-eye. “You really don’t know why we’re here?”

Rocco’s pad started to slip, but he caught it and shook his head. “Swift played this one even closer to the chest than usual. But there’s only a handful of things in the universe the Twelve and the Archon would come together for.”

“Any guesses?”

“Fucked if I know.”

Our commpads buzzed simultaneously. I pulled mine out to look at an alert for an emergency meeting of all Alpha Company staff—which apparently included acting subcommanders. I had to assume Bravo—that is, formations four through six—had just been summoned to their own meeting.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” I said, pushing to my feet and tapping the top of Rocco’s leg on the medical cot.

“No need,” he said. “I’ll be listening in. Don’t say anything stupid.”

Such a lack of confidence.

Chapter 9 – Special Assignment

The wardroom had never felt like home, even after I’d become an officer. Some of the junior rankers saw it as a place to be awed and revered, one of the few places on board designed for those with brass on their collars. I was never one of those guys. I always saw it as more of a stainless-steel nest of snakes. The bare metal tables scratched with generations of cutlery had been long-polished to a mirror sheen by all the elbows the brass so likes to bump. And the officers within were people who would be quick to catch you on any perceived infractions.

That was true of some star-side officers from the Winter. But I learned quick that jockeys couldn’t give less of a fuck about anything a junior Chevalier might do as long as it didn’t fuck up their tank. They were warfighters who wanted to play with big toys and leave craters.

When I opened the hatch to the wardroom, I spotted Sable right away and snagged a seat next to her. About half the other formation brass was in already, as well as a few of the marine officers and senior sergeants. I spotted Cortez chatting with the subcommander of Second Formation, an older, wire-bearded jockey now in charge of my friend, Angel.

“You see all the traffic out there?” I whispered to Sable.

“Hard to miss it,” she said. “Stop whispering. This isn’t a chapel.”

Ok, so maybe I was a little bit one of those guys. I straightened in my chair and shook my shoulders out. But they tensed up again as soon as I heard the walk. There’s a distinctive cadence when someone walks with a prosthetic leg. It’s sort of an off-beat tempo with a harder sub-note from the limp that doesn’t ever completely go away. The injury that took Colonel Swift out of the cockpit had happened maybe twenty years ago, around the time my earliest memories of Teutonia were forming in the rainy, flooded gutters.

“Attention on deck!” someone called.

Everyone rose. Not a drill, this time. The colonel demanded respect. Even at my most insubordinate phases, I knew better than to disrespect Swift’s position at the head of the company.

“Take your seats,” said Swift. She didn’t need to raise her voice. I wasn’t the only one who knew the soft sound of her steps. With a brief scraping of chairs across old flooring, the room drew quiet.

Her orderly, Ardmore, paced behind her with a set of datapads. He deposited one in front of every person in the room—except me. The fact of which did not go unnoticed by several of the majors and captains. Aside from the subcommander of Fifth Formation, who was also a first lieutenant, my pips were the lowest collar insignia in the room. I tried to sneak a glance at Sable’s, but she had it angled in such a way that the screen had too much glare. The bare metal of the table in front of me felt very conspicuous.

“Before I begin this briefing,” said Swift. “I’ll need you all to sign this non-disclosure agreement with our tertiary partners—with the exception of Lieutenant VanDelle, who thought it would be a good idea to sign one over a year ago and not inform his commanding officer of the fact that he had done so.”

Oh shit.

“Good one, Vandal,” murmured Sable. Now she was whispering?!

Now I could feel the eyes burning into the back of my skull as blood rushed to my face. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what she was talking about and resisting the urge to ask what she was talking about. Not wanting to be left in the dark, I heard a scrabble of stylus pens across screens, and a clatter as datapads were dropped back on the table for Ardmore to collect.

Once he had done so, Swift hit a prompt on her own datapad, and a screen descended from the ceiling and whirred to life with a title screen that read Sunstone Imperative.

“In times of duress, or opportunity, or in the presence of an existential threat, the Templars and the Twelve can sometimes cooperate; as evidenced by the two fleets not currently exchanging anti-ship missiles. The Sunstone Imperative represents all three. To wit, it is the name of a joint plan between the Emirs of the West Gulf and the Archon to engage the Wyking threat when a weakness is perceived and strike a direct blow that reduces their ability to launch raids on worlds in the Heracles Gulf in the future. Right now, both sides of the Gulf believe the Wyking clans are in a state of civil war across much of their territory.

“The Sunstone Imperative is nothing less than a plan to drive a dagger into the side of Wyking space and establish an extended front at strategic locations to bottleneck future attempts at invading Templar and Emirate space so the Twelve and the Archon can return to their squabbling unmolested by savage raiders.”

Swift looked around the room at understandably agitated faces. Our last encounter with the Wykings had gone poorly, and there were not a lot of folks keen to tangle with them again. Hell, a few of the faces here had traveled the same blood road on Xenotia to get to their current positions, just as I had with Rocco. Major Svaldt of Second Formation had lost his Commander trying to get as many civilians as possible out of Xenotia Central. The previous subcommander for the First had permanently damaged his spine on ejection after his upright was hit with a degauss beam on the snow fields.

The commander of First, Major Asterion, raised his hand. “Attempts to corral the Wykings in the past have been unsuccessful. What makes them think this time will be any different?”

Swift folded her hands over her datapad. “The problems inherent with assaulting the Dwimor Worlds at the Wyking Gates have thus-far been three-fold: The bottleneck allows allied Wyking factions to consolidate defensive postures well in advance. Sunstone intel believes this current civil war has reduced their readiness to unprecedented levels. Secondly, environments on many of the Dwimor worlds are overtly hostile, lending to fortress worlds with primarily subterranean infrastructure impossible to take with conventional infantry. The remedy to which is the subject of those non-disclosure agreements you recently—or less recently—signed. The third issue is that the Wykings have an as-yet undetermined edge in spaceborne engagements on defensive fronts. Again, intelligence is hoping their reduced readiness will undercut this advantage.”

“That’s a lot of ‘hopes’ Colonel,” said Major Asterion. He sighed. “But I suppose if I want certainty, I’m in the wrong business. Viser Juste.”

Swift offered a sour half-smile. “Aye. That we are, Steven. The only thing I’m certain of, is that it’s a big galaxy, and there are few asses in it less deserving of being kicked than those frozen, bloodthirsty bastards that killed two million civilians on Xenotia. So we’re going to give the Xennies on board a chance at a little payback while we get some for ourselves.”

That actually got a smattering of applause across the room, and I surprised myself by joining in.

“Now, as to that pesky second factor, the planetary assaults, that’s where we and several of the other private security companies present come in.”

She stepped the briefing forward another slide, to show a 3D-rendering of a familiar vehicle, and everything became clear. It had a humanoid chassis, tri-jointed legs with narrow feet, two high-mounted belt-fed guns, and small, stubby arms. It was sleeker than the one I’d last seen, and now sported a narrow slit of transparent alloy at the front. The figure of a human stood next to it for scale.

“This is the Au’Duran Industries Seraph Mark I tactical battle upright armor, the first production model. It houses a micro-fusion reactor, weighs less than a light utility vehicle under nominal counter-grav load, and it is capable of traversing most indoor environments. Crucially, this includes underground facilities and hardened structures.”

I heard more than a few people utter “Holy shit” as well as a whole lot of chairs scraping as people scooted closer to the screen.

“That thing’s only three meters tall?” someone asked.

“Is it shunt operated?”

“Do they work?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” said Swift. She went to the next slide, which displayed a video of one moving around a test range. When I’d spoken to Duri last, the then-current test models were problematic, and so I only got to see one moving in the sim. But it seems like Duri had gotten the issues smoothed over, because the production model moved with both the heft of an upright and the preternatural grace of a jockey. I watched the shoulder-mounted guns track and engage several airborne targets as the operator hefted a heavy rifle and planted it against a flat panel below the forward sensor—a feature Duri almost certainly integrated based on my suggestion. My head felt light. The person inside (Yusef, I’d bet anything) took down a half-dozen wooden silhouettes with the rifle.

“How expensive are they?” asked Major Annemarre, from Second. Not surprising the question would come from him. His formation was primarily fire support, and they burned through missiles and mortars like marines through a twelve-pack. And he had to track the purchasing of every piece of ordnance that left his upright’s tubes.

“Ruinously,” said Swift. “But Au’Duran has pitched them to the Twelve and the Templars as the only equipment in the Heracles Gulf that can get the job done. If the joint fleet outside our hull wasn’t enough proof, then the greater powers being willing to foot the bill for the free companies to train and operate these systems should be a testament to how much they are willing to invest to see this campaign succeed. We’ve been assigned sixteen seraph units to form a specialized strike squad to work in tandem with marine elements for key tactical planet-side objectives. I want recommendations from each formation commander and marine element on jockeys and marines they feel are suited for temporary duty aboard Ia Yukhar to cross-train on these platforms. Bear in mind, these are shunt-operated devices, so outside active jockeys, only marines with high assessed shunt aptitude should be submitted by 0600 hours.”

Swift’s steely gaze turned to me. It was both harder and colder than the stainless steel table beneath my clammy hands. “One jockey has been requested by name and will report to the hangar bay at 0900 hours, regardless of his formation commander—or CO’s—assessment of his suitability.” She looked away. “Any other questions?”

Everyone was still too busy ogling over the looping video. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time having only delved into the sim, but these devices were poised to change the face of warfare in the Heracles Gulf. And I hadn’t even bothered to tell Colonel Swift about them. In my defense, I had thought they were years out from production, which—yeah, ok, so it had been a year and change. But still! The fact Duri had iterated so fast was nothing short of incredible work that no one, least of all me, could have predicted. But when corpo sharks smell blood in the sea of stars, they move in for the kill. It’s easy to forget that Duri is as dangerous as they come in those spaces.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t excited at the prospect of seeing Duri again, but I was also hyped for the opportunity to jockey the production model of the Seraph. That’d we’d be going against Wykings in them was a bit of a damper on the idea, but what could you do?

I waited in my seat while the others filed out. Swift regarded me with one eyebrow raised.

“You have something you wish to add, Vandal?”

Vandal. Not Mr. VanDelle, as I was so used to hearing for many years. I swallowed. “If I may, Ma’am, I have a handful of names that might not otherwise be considered.”

“By which you mean your growing club of pass-thru cronies that have managed to duplicate your trick of parsing visual sensor data through the shunt, despite my effort to discourage such experiments.”

I felt the blood drain from my face, but Swift barked a laugh. “VanDelle, you’ve got the poker face of a Spanish virgin. There’s little that happens in the Chevaliers that I don’t know of. And while I wanted to dismiss this particular flight as mere fancy, the fact several fresh jockeys have managed to replicate your trick from Xenotia—yes, I had the data collectors pull your old sensor logs after the Melee—means I cannot simply dismiss it.”

She couched her chin in her hand. “I jockeyed Ardennes for years before you were even a mote in your worthless mother’s eye. I knew in my core that my bond with her was the strongest she would ever see, but…” Swift shook her head. “Even after all these years, the old girl yet has some surprises.”

I nodded, and then rubbed a hand on the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Seraphs.”

“Considering what demands were placed on you immediately after, I’ll attribute it to the additional stresses of the campaign, and not your complete lack of judgement and forethought.”

“Yes Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.”

“0900 hours. Don’t be late.”