(Jimmy Nimitz took a moment to think about how he wanted to start. He hung his bomber jacket over his chair as he looked at the station build itself on the table. He looked at the other tables setting themselves up as their game masters started.
He almost wished he had pulled the invasion card to go with his team of flying mercenaries. Nothing he could do about that. He had to take what he could and make lemonade.
“We're going to start with a meeting at a bar,” said Jimmy. “Then we'll work our way out from there.”
“Yeager and I will meet with the client,” said Web Davis, pushing at his glasses with a hand covered in tattoos. “Mannheim is our lifeline in case something goes wrong. Schultz is our quartermaster and mechanic and should get any supplies we might need.”
“Most of the supplies are good, but spare parts might be good to grab, Lois,” said Jimmy. “If you can list out what you think you need, we'll haggle over it after the meeting.”
“Right,” said Lois Miles. Her short blue hair was high in the middle of her skull and nonexistent on the sides. She pulled out a notebook. “What's the budget?”
“Just grab what you need and we'll subtract what you can't afford after I roll some dice for the money,” said Jimmy. “I am going to say you have money in the bank for normal stuff.”
“Right,” said Lois. She pulled out a rule book for equipment and started marking down what she wanted for their flying base.
Jimmy put the plot cards in their slots and thought about what he wanted to do.
“Let's start with some general description,” said Jimmy.)
Station Arnold hung above a gas giant in the middle of the habitable zone for the Lilac System. It handled hundreds of ships from all over every day. Travelers used the rotating cylinder for resupply and repair, sometimes rest and recreation when a landfall wasn't close on the schedule.
The Aces used it for contracts. The System had numerous raids that needed to be carried out, and they led the field in air attacks so far. The government based out of Eiffel had the team on retainer to bomb anything that looked like a threat across the system.
The two pilots paused at the door of the Lift Off. The place was a circular room with plenty of tables lining the walls. The bar took up one part of the room. They had tried to do a circle in the center of the room. The idea had been abandoned when too many people got caught stealing the alcohol.
“There's O'Hara,” said Yeager. “How do you want to do this?”
“We just talk to him about what he wants, and if the pay is good, we see if the others want to do the job,” said Doolittle. “I don't like he is here by himself. He should have someone from his crew with him.”
“I'll keep an eye out,” said Yeager. “Go see what he wants so we can get our refitting done, and see if there are any real jobs around.”
“Schultz can handle all that,” said Doolittle. He loosened the pistol in its holster. “You're right. The faster we get this done, the better I'll like it.”
They split. Doolittle walked to the table where O'Hara waited. Yeager went to the bar. The wingman kept an eye on the rest of the room. If trouble started, he wanted to be able to take cover behind the bar and shoot at anyone shooting at him.
“What's going on, Bucky?,” said Doolittle. He settled across the table from the other pilot.
“I need to hire your crew,” said O'Hara. “It's a salvage job, but it turned dangerous on me. I need extra hands.”
“What happened?,” asked Doolittle.
“There was a distress beacon out at the edge of the system, out at the Red Line,” said O'Hara. “I took the ship out there to see what was going on. The beacon was coming from a small rock floating near the Line. We landed. Energy beams started lighting the Ell Zee up. We lost Kowalski trying to get out of there. Ship is full of holes.”
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“And you want to go back and see what was going on?,” said Doolittle. “This sounds like something the Air Force should handle.”
“Talked to Colonel Custer,” said O'Hara. “He says he can't order anything to go out that close to the Line. I need private operators to cover me while I go in and look around.”
“Do you have the coordinates?,” said Doolittle. “We'll do an overflight but the Fort is being refitted. The only thing we'll have is our fighters.”
“I'm trying to do the same with the Constance,” said O'Hara. “It'll be hours before we can relaunch from the station and head out there.”
“Give me the coordinates and we'll look at it,” said Doolittle. “We'll go back in force when the Fort is ready to go.”
“Here,” said O'Hara. He handed over a data chip. “Kearn said it will be hours to replace the armor on the Constance.”
“I don't know what Schultz is doing to the Fort,” said Doolittle. “We're just looking for extra money to help pay for the refitting. We'll let her do that while we take a look at this. If anything bad happens, we might need her to bail us out.”
“We'll head out as soon as we're done ourselves,” said O'Hara. “Be careful. We never saw what came at us.”
“All right,” said Doolittle. “Standard pay rate applies for this.”
“I'll cover it out of whatever we can salvage, if anything,” said O'Hara.
“All right,” said Doolittle. “We'll head out and see what we can do.”
He got up from the table and headed for the door. He turned in the corridor and headed back to where the Fort was docked. He was interested in what could be out there, but doubted his crew would want to look for anything hostile close to the edge of the system.
He was thinking about doing a onceover on his own, and letting the crew stay behind and work on their mobile command center. If something happened, they could fly in and bail him out if he survived to send a distress signal.
“What do you think happened?,” asked Yeager.
“I think the distress signal was a trap,” said Doolittle. “I'm just going out there and flying by. Landing might be a big mistake.”
“One of us is going to have to go with you,” said Yeager. “You can't go in there alone.”
“I don't think it will be that dangerous as long as I don't land,” said Doolittle. “The chip O'Hara gave me should tell me the area to avoid.”
“One of us should go with you, while the other stays with Schultz,” said Yeager. “And since I am the best flier, I think that has to be me.”
“You just don't want to work on the Fort,” said Doolittle.
“I'm only passable as a mechanic,” said Yeager. “Schultz is the best for that, and Mannheim is good at keeping an eye out for trouble.”
“All right,” said Doolittle. “We'll talk to the others and then we'll launch the fighters and head out to the Line. If we can secure the salvage before O'Hara gets out there, that's more of a payday for us.”
“Did he say what hit them?,” said Yeager.
“Said he didn't even see what was shooting before he had to lift,” said Doolittle. “Hopefully we'll do better.”
“If we get hit with something that could poke holes in the Constance, our fighters will go up in pieces,” said Yeager.
“I know,” said Doolittle. “That's why the plan is not to land until we can figure out where the energy cannons are.”
“I approve of that decision,” said Yeager.
“I'm glad that you do,” said Doolittle. “That makes me feel good inside.”
“I am glad that my approval ranks so high with you since I am the better pilot,” said Yeager.
“Better at crashing,” said Doolittle.
They reached the tube that would take them out to the Fort. Doolittle smiled when he saw the angular form at rest inside the station's arc of rotation.
They crossed over to the Fort. The pilots stepped into the airlock and cycled through to the ship's hangar deck. They spotted their partners putting together a piece of machinery to be added to the launch bays for extra push out from the chamber.
“I got a small job,” said Doolittle. “Bucky O'Hara got pasted when he answered a distress signal out close to the Red Line. Yeager and I are going out there to see what's going on. As soon as you are done with your refits, we're probably going to need the Fort out there to cover us until we figure out how to handle things.”
“Some kind of pirates?,” asked Mannheim. He was the oldest pilot by far, with a stocky build and a red pilot's overall.
“O'Hara gave us a chip to show us the relevant files,” said Doolittle. “I figured that his sensor array hadn't seen anything, but we need to look at it before we go out there.”
“Let me get a reader,” said Schultz. “We don't want to upload anything from another crew into our mainframe.”
Doolittle handed her the chip. She went to the back of the hangar and dug around inside the lockers until she found a reader. She plugged the chip into the slot and powered everything so they could see the images in real time.
“Let's see what happened to Constance,” she said.