#

Huston’s head hurt.

Alliteration aside, his head hurt with the kind of aching, nagging pain that he hadn’t had to endure since he was an undergrad in college and was learning to adjust to his first hangover.

I wonder if a cup of coffee and a few painkillers will fix this one? He thought ruefully. As he tried to stir from his prone position, the pain in his head sprang tendrils and sang the Hallelujah! Chorus from Handel’s Messiah through his neck, back, arms and legs.

And then he remembered.

Moving made him gasp in pain. Thinking only made him have to endure it. He settled on thinking, for now.

He opened his eyes, and saw the pale, irregularly bumpy surface of a ceiling above him.

He tried to turn his head, only slightly. The level of pain wasn’t as intense as what he felt when he tried to rise, but it was bad enough. If I truly did some awful damage to myself when we crashed, he thought, it wouldn’t be wise to risk making it worse just to get a glimpse of a place I can’t escape from if it was bad. And I couldn’t enjoy it if it was good, either.

A door opened behind him, shining light on his eyes. The light somehow caused pain to his other injuries as well, as if he were a vampire in the old ghost stories he’d watched on the holovid as a child late at night when his parents had been asleep upstairs.

But, today, he just scrunched his eyes shut and said “Owich!”

“Yep, Zeke? You were right. He’s awake.” The voice had the accented twang from the lower levels of town, and came from a dark silhouette that filled the doorway, the barely discernible outline and shade of an orange, visored sportcap visible on the silhouette’s head.

“ ‘Course he’s awake,Joe” said another voice, just as twangy, coming from the next room. “Ah told ya, the neuro-sed’s from Baccus-three is such a little gem. Dependin’ on the size o’ the dose, y’all can tell down to the minute when yer patient’s gonna wake up.”

“Yeah, whut ever, Zeke. Now, how’re you doing, pard?” the silhouette moved out of the doorway and closer to Huston, who could make out a face in its late 20s, maybe early 30s, along with a blue-collared shirt and the rough-fabricked pants that the lower-locals had been sporting for a while-d’nim, they called it, or something similar, along with a large, gaudy belt buckle made of some kind of silvery material, and an orange-colored sportshat with a thin visor to keep off the sun.

“Austin?” Huston croaked.

“Yer brother’s fine, general. Doncha worry, he’s just as fixed up as you in the room next door. Yer both gonna be right as Old-Earth rain once we getcha filled up with a few painkillers.”

Huston swallowed. The silhouette had gotten closer, but the details were fuzzy. “Do you have my oculars?”

“Yeah, somwhere’s. Why doncha just get yer eyes fixed, general? Tech’s been there for centuries.”

“I don’t much like people putting sharp objects and lasers in my eyes; easier with Ocs. Plus, my wife always thought they made me look dignified.”

“Heh,” chuckled Joe, adjusting his cap. “Well, you may wanna get them eyes fixed in the next little bit, seein’s how you’re gonna need to see clear at all times, general.”

Huston was about to answer when he stopped, concern and the lightest shade of panic cutting through the fog of the sedative he’d been given.

“Sorry, but…what did you just call me?”

#

“Allright, people! We all ready?”

“Sure thing, boss!” Joker said, standing and stretching, his fingers interlaced behind his back. “Ready to go shoot some turrets and save the quadrant!”

“Ha ha,” said House, his significant bulk rising slowly, like a mountain range ready to stare down a glacier. “I’m just ready to do the job and get us paid.”

“We are not paid by the job, actually,” said Jue, also rising, tiny lines of text still streaming visibly on her artificial eyeball. “Captain Dallas has set up a bi-weekly salaried system of payment which we may access…”

“What? We’re not splitting everything five ways even?”

“Joker,” Anja said, still sitting in a relaxed position on a crate, “Stop pretending you’re upset. The kapitan has enough on his mind without you acting like you don’t know how things work already.”

“Jokes aside,” Dallas said, using the face he’d practiced over and over in front of the mirror for the last week, “it’s time for us to get to our ambi-mechs and make our pre-checks. Any other questions? No? Let’s move, then!”

Dallas clapped his hands once and turned when he saw the crew was standing from the makeshift chairs they’d been lounging on. He wondered if they were as nervous as he was, but had gotten better at showing it.

Tap, tap, tap… his boots made the noise again and again against the dark metal floor of the hangar. He passed Jue’s mech, the One-Eyed-Jill, and tossed about in his head how something twenty tonnes and a good three stories tall could look like a tiny skull on a pair of mechanical chicken legs from the vantage point of his own, forty-ton ShortSword class machine. He kept his eyes forward as he heard Jue’s smaller, agile feet behind him scramble towards the ladder that led up to her cockpit, and then heard the oiled swoosh! as One-Eye’s cockpit door depressurised, opened, and then shut again as Jue swept in and began he prefight checks.

Next on his left was Full House, House’s mech and sixty tonnes of pure, brawling Jotun class ambi-mech death. He heard House behind him step onto the small, one-man lift, which began to rise the pilot to the cockpit in the center of the mech’s chest.

Two more. On his right was the Red Queen, Anja’s Hankyū class mech. Named for thirty-centuries old type of bow from Old Earth, it was a walking missile-boat with launcher racks in place of arms that carried enough long-range proj-power to turn a town, a large factory or a lumbering ambi-mech into so much burning scrap. And, if their stories around the cafeteria table were to be believed, with One-Eye’s speedy legs helping to call fire, they’d done just that a number of times to dead mech-jockeys no one would ever hear of again.

Last, next to Red Queen was Joker’s ride, a thirty-ton Trooper-class mech. It sported arms like the Full House, but had jumpjets and a half-dozen midrange lasers that blasted out its shoulders, torso and arms. Joker himself had a few stories how House would get into a punching match with a much larger mech, and Joker would leap behind the opponent and do some punching of his own, right through the more lightly-armored rear of House’s target with his blasters, laughing hysterically while the enemy toppled like a severed treetrunk, or blew up as ammo and fuel ignited in a loud ball of fire.

“Whoo hoo!” Joker yelped as he jumped onto his lift and started a monologue Dallas heard the comm-button in his ear “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, honey! Faster! Joker’s gotta date with the reaper, an’ she want’s dead mechs as a come-on! Yeah!”

“Is he always this happy before a mission?” Dallas asked, knowing the rest could hear him on the comm.

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“Some folks pray, some folks’re quiet, some folks blabber their stupid jaws at a hundred clicks an hour and can’t shut the flup up for love ‘nor money, boss,” House said over the comm. “Guess which one Joker is?”

“Hey, I resemble that remark!” Joker answered with another cackle.

“Fine,” Dallas said as he stepped on his own platform and it raised him six stories high to the head and cockpit of his own machine. “This is the part where we make sure the engineering crew did their part of things, folks. Pre-drop check, starting with Jue.”

“Yes, Captain, callsign ‘Cowboy,’ Jue’s voice piped up through the comm. “Jue, callsign ‘One-Eye’ in the One-Eyed Jill. Life support green, pressure green, medium-range lasers one and two, both green, tracer beacon green, all mobile systems green, Captain.”

“Nice to hear, One-Eye. Next?”

“Red Queen in the Red Queen, Cowboy. Life support, cabin pressure green. Port and starboard missile racks both green. Port and starboard ammo dumps, both green, left and right legs at one-hundred percent green level, Sir!”

“Good to hear, Red Queen. House?”

“Yessir. Full House reporting in; life support and cabin pressure green, though my board reads one of the five press-locks on my cabin door is only at seventy-five percent.”

“Will that be a problem when we touch down?”

“Negative, Cowboy,” said Jue. “Eolus is enough of an earthlike world that even total loss of the cockpit door will not have any immediate adverse effects on House. And, for the record, his door has had this similar issue on our last three-”

“I was gonna tell him that myself, Jue.”

“Yes, House. I felt my own explanation would have been more complete and called for, given that this is the captain’s first actual mission of his career, and-”

“...and, if you really wanna follow the regs, Jue,” Dallas said, interrupting gently, “you’d know that it’s the job of each pilot to speak to the mission leader directly regarding pre-fight check.”

Pause. “Yes, sir,” Jue said.

“Not a problem, Jue. Glad you’re here. I’ll be checking in with you, and the rest of you a lot to make sure everything’s copacetic. Red Queen?”

“All systems green, Captain Cowboy!”

“Let’s just stick with Cowboy, people, during the mission. If the bad guys hear us use a rank, you paint a nice, big target on my head.”

“Oh, hell yeah! That’s what happened to our last boy! He insisted on being addressed as ‘Mission Leader’ alla time, but, dang if they didn’t hack our comms that last time, an’ suddenly everything started gettin’ lobbed his way!”

“Well, Joker-”

“I mean, zap! Suddenly, both his mech’s legs get shot out from under him,”

“Joker…”

“...and then, this big, stompin’ Jupiter class mech walks right up, an’-”

“Joker…”

“BOOM, a hundo-t foot [that means a hundred-tons, Cowboy, a hundred tons, canyoubelieveit? Stomp! And the central core just went shoom, and he was gone, alla ‘cause he just hadda be address by his rank an’-”

“JOKER!” said Cowboy and the other three all at once.

“Oh- yeah. Sorry, Cowboy.”

“Not a problem, Joker. Ship says we just broke atmo, and touchdown’s in five. Can you give me your prefight check?”

“Uh- yeah. All green. ‘Cept- I’ve got one drive motor on one of my lasers that’s in yellow- shouldn’t be too hard.”

“You’ve got five other lasers on your ‘mech that should make up for it. Okay, folks! Strap in, power up, shut up, hands on, safeties off! Time to earn our money! XO, are you there?”

“Heh,” Gareth spoke into Dallas’ ear through the earcomm, “right up here on the bridge, Cowboy. Executive Officer reporting for duty.”

“Good to hear, XO. Have we reached minimum orbital height yet?”

“M-O-H is imminent, Cowboy. Are we still go for doing a highdive landing?”

“Affirmative. Scans said the surface was a tad too bumpy to land the Palefroi on, so we’ll stick with the original plan and jump. I don’t quite see the coordinates for our landing on screen, though.”

“Ah,” said Gareth, his voice rising, as if he wanted everyone in the room to hear him, “I believe that is the comm officer’s job, sir, and he is even now fulfilling the duties for which we give him such fair compensation…”

Before Gareth’s speech was finished, a blip sounded on Dallas’ screen as a small glowing dot appeared on a rendering of the landmass below them.

“Excellent XO. Drop point visible. Open doors when we reach MOH.”

“Yes sir!”

“Cowboy out.”

Dallas flexed his hands in his dark leather gloves as he picked up a very old neurohelmet.

He’d worn this very recently, but then he hadn’t had time to give any thought to the significance of what he was about to do. Now, with a few minutes of time before he had to move, he thought briefly about the helmet and who’d worn it before him.

Pater wore this, he thought. And maybe his pater before that. I’m going to use it now. True, he’d stolen the mech, and was using it as a mercenary. But I’m going to use this only for the good, he promised himself, and any ancestors whom he hoped were listening. He’d make money, use the Galatine for a good cause, and then return triumphant. He’d wipe away the stain of dishonor that the Galatine had been given in the last war, and then land on New Avalon. Maybe in the same spot he’d taken off from! Pater would walk to him with his arms outstretched in greeting and acceptance, Mater would have tears of happiness in her eyes…

“Boss?”

Dallas blinked. The mechs of his crew were standing at the bay doors. A space between them was just large enough for the Galatine, with Anja and Jue on one side and House and Joker on the other.

“Boss?” said Joker through the comm. “You ready?”

“Hells, yeah,” Dallas said, pushing the pedals to move his mech forward, hoping the swagger he was trying to show didn’t look too affected or phony.

Dallas stopped at the bay door and breathed deep. “Everybody ready?” he said?

“Yes sir!” the four at his sides yelled, making him wince just a little but also making him smile.

“Magsoles on!” Dallas said, flipping a switch he knew from hundreds of hours playing sims, and laughing as friends’ virtual mechs got sucked out of airlocks at the beginning of their virtual missions.

“All on?”

“Yes, sir!”

“XO, open bay doors!”

“Bay doors, opening, sir!”

A dark seam appeared in the middle of the wall in front of Dallas. The seam grew wider, becoming a glowing line that was thin as a stylus, then a finger, now a handspan. The breech kept widening until what had been a wall became two hinged doors, huge enough to admit exit to mechs twice the size of those in Dallas’ lineup.

“Set?”

“Set, sir!”

“Track beacons on, enable steer jets. Gwen, you awake?”

“Yes, sir, Captain Morgan,” said the A.I. Dallas smiled under his helmet; he hadn’t heard her speak since the last time he’d sat in this chair, nearly two weeks and what seemed like a decade ago.

“Good, Gwen. Lock on to the coordinates, steer me to a soft landing, and make sure my crew follows me.”

“Absolutely, Captain.”

One more breath. Then…

“Mags off, people! Follow me!”

Dallas flipped the switch back he’d used earlier, and walked his mech to the lip of the bay. Another breath, and he eased the steerhandles just enough to jet him to the outside of the ship.

Gravity already began to take notice of the forty-ton machine he helmed, and Gwen gently steered the huge mech with short bursts of jetted fuel, until the Galatine’s feet were firmly positioned above the planet’s surface.

Dallas looked up. In the silence, he saw the other four mechs of his crew, the ship’s bay visible behind them, and the stars visible behind that.

“Alright, children! Let’s drop!”

Joker cheered. Jue began saying something in another language which Dallas later learned was a Shinto prayer she used whenever the crew did a drop.

The jets on their mechs blasted, and hundreds of tons of technology plummeted towards the ground.

#

TO BE CONTINUED...