This week's drabble prompt is 'Rubicon' from Tyronne and brings us another glimpse at the mechanized conflict between the inner and outer worlds of our solar system, but this time we get a TPA point of view about the war. Enjoy!
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Crossing a Line:
The door to Llewellyn's chambers opened. Major Hall stepped through. “It’s time.”
Llewellyn stood. “Is it, then?”
Major Hall stared at him. She was a ravishing redhead with sharp green eyes and only the straightness of her hair kept her from looking like the perfect ideal of Irish femininity. Pity she hated him, but he couldn’t fault her for that too much. He wasn’t his biggest fan at the moment either.
The pilot rubbed his wrists. The manacles hadn’t been there for some time, but it still felt like he was wearing them. “Guess there’s no need to be waiting around, is there?”
“No,” she told him. “There isn’t. Come on, pilot.”
Llewellyn followed the major out the door. Two uniformed guards followed him. Officially, he’d been pardoned or at least had his sentence commuted. Unofficially, he was never walking away from that black mark on his record. Not that he could. It would follow him wherever he went. He’d always been cocky and self-sure, but he’d pushed his luck one time to many. Only it wasn’t him that his overconfidence had gotten one over on. It was the rest of his squadron.
A limping, damaged Outie bird, trailing smoke as it limped back to base. It should have been an easy catch. He went after it and flew right into an ambush. The squadron came to help, but they hadn’t realized that just like the scout had been bait for him, he’d been bait for them. He’d made it out. No one else did. Some of them never even got to scream. Leanna’s fight turned into a fireball before she even had time to cry out. Duke screamed, a cockpit fire burning him alive before ground impact cut his agony mercifully short. Kev’s last words were a confident ‘Locking on,’ but he never got the chance to pull the trigger. Halima managed to utter a panicked call for help before the Outies on her six ripped her fighter apart. Like Leanna, Nico never said a word, his craft disintegrating as an air-to-air missile exploded in front of it, turning it and its pilot into a rain of ash.
Five other pilots, good men and women. Loyal to the TPA and to each other. Even to the hotheaded showboat who’d gotten them killed. There wasn’t a day that went by that Llewellyn didn’t curse himself for being the one that survived. His actions, the court martial determined, were gross dereliction of duty. He’d been expecting to spend the rest of his life in a cell, but fate had had other plans.
Someone from something called ‘the mobility project’ had come to see him. Doctor Franklin Zeitmeyer. Llewellyn had never heard of him before, but he was someone pretty important. A Marsie, the doc been rushed to Earth at the beginning of the Outies’ siege of Sol’s fourth planet. Whatever he’d been doing, it had had the Outie’s looking for him. His old research facility was one of the first places they hit when they came down.
The doc said Llewellyn had something they were looking for, something very rare. His sentence, he’d been told, would be commuted if he agreed to work on their project. In the midst of self-pity and self-loathing, the pilot had turned them down until the day that the Outie fleet left Mars on its way to Earth. That was the point that he knew that the ‘Sovereign Outer Worlds’ didn’t just want the freedom they’d been talking about. They wanted revenge and their pound of flesh, and they didn’t care who they took it from.
The Outies had always been assholes with a victim complex, but seeing that fleet heading towards his home made Llewellyn realize that the Outies weren’t just assholes, but monsters. They’d won their independence and they were still coming. They wouldn’t be happy until they got to do to Earth, Venus and Mars what they claimed that the TPA had done to them.
So he’d signed up to ‘the mobility project’. One he was onboard, Dr. Zeitmeyer explained what they were doing. It wasn’t just building Lancers and mechs, but building them better than the Outies. They’d been trying for years and never cracked the secret but on the eleventh hour with Earth in the balance, they had. Better tech. Better weapons, armour and mobility. Better than any Outie mech on the field, but there was a price for it. These mechs didn’t just use manual controls, but were so advanced that they needed a neural link between pilot and machine. That link put a massive strain on the pilot’s brain and body alike, and only a few recruits could handle it. They’d shown him what he was getting into, fopotage of test pilots turned into vegetables or corpses because they couldn’t handle the strain of operating the Lancer.
His medical records said he had potential to survive. His psychological assessment found flaws, but also said he could do what they needed. Testing had been gruelling, but he’d made it through. One of six Alliance Lancers. The first production run, but not the last. Earth’s last defence against the horde.
Major Hall led him to the locker room. He changed into his body glove and pilot suit, climbing into his mech. He wasn’t normally sent out and was held in reserve until and unless they needed him. The old Llewellyn would have chafed that that, argued bitterly with his superiors. This Llewellyn knew his attitude had gotten five good men and women killed. The Lancer staff were right not to put him on the front until they knew they could trust him. He’d only been deployed a few times, but he’d followed his orders to a T each time.
“What’s the mission, Control?” he asked as he ran through a power-up checklist. Loading cranes and vehicles brought in the mech’s weapons. Knight-class. Simple and descriptive for a name. A particle beam rifle to cut through Outie armour like butter and a modified plasma cutter to do the same, but close in. Two shoulder-mounted rapid-tracking gatling cannon could intercept aircraft and missiles and a hip-carried pistol the size of a jeep gave the Lancer a surprise for point-blank confrontations.
There were rumours about how the TPA had made their Knights, but Llewellyn had never seen proof of any of them. All he needed to know was how good they were and the way Outie tanks and troops burned and how their mechs crumpled. He already had six engine kills. Not as many as others in the unit, but enough. With these new machines, the TPA had started to turn the tide. The Outies were the ones on the run now, and Llewellyn was going to make sure they were run off his world and all the way back to their dark, cold shithole planets. Coming for Earth was crossing a line, and he was going to make them pay for it.
“Mishi-Khar,” Hall’s voice spoke in his ear.
Llewellyn paused. “I thought Jay was on that.”
“There’s been a problem,” the major told him. “You’re needed as backup. Get onto the hangar ASAP and be ready for a hot DZ.”
“Confirmed, Control. Completing ready sequence. Initiating link in twenty seconds.”
As his consciousness slipped into the Lancer’s systems, merging with the machine, Llewellyn felt his fists clench. A situation? If the Outies wanted to play, then he was willing to give them his undivided attention. He’d lost a squadron already. He wouldn’t lose anyone else to those bastards.
“All right,” he breathed as data flooded into his mind and he was truly one with his engine. “Black Goat is online.”