FicWad

Author's notes: This one's the first piece of what will one day become the epic multi-cross that's been badgering my imagination for a long time now. Yes, you're not going to get parts of it, and no, this part has absolutely nothing to do with Harry Potter. It will eventually. Comments are always welcome, and in case you're curious, no, "Tons of Steel" doesn't fit into this universe. Consider it an altaverse of an altaverse ;) Anything else, email me.

"Good Morning Paxton Arms! This is Peace River radio bringing
you the morning reports. The temperature is a balmy hundred and seven
degrees, with a projected high today of a hundred and forty. First up,
financial news. Sales are up across the board on Paxton Arms products
and -"
Fumble. Click. I reached over to the table beside the bed and managed
to shut the alarm off on the second attempt. I groaned and rolled over.
The sun was just starting to shine through the blinds on the east-side
windows. One of the windows was open slightly, letting in the warm,
slightly cooked-smelling air that was the defining feature of this arid
land. The moving air set the miniblinds to swaying and clacking on the
window frame. For a moment I strained to hear the morning birdsong,
before I woke up enough to remember that in the Badlands, there aren't
many birds, and what few there are don't tend to greet the day.
I finally managed to get my eyes pried open, and I laid there
for a minute staring at the ceiling. Even though these are temporary
quarters, I'd had the ceiling painted black; a warm, semi-gloss black
that made the room seem cooler, more comforting, more relaxing. The
walls I'd had painted in a storm-grey shade, and all in all the effect
was quite pleasing. The apartment was small, but that didn't bother me
too much. After I'd gotten it painted to my liking, I often spent quite
a bit of my off-duty time there, aside from time spent asleep.
One concerted effort later, I had managed to roll up into a
sitting position, my feet on the floor and the rest of me vaguely
upright. Now, most people who know me think I hate mornings. That's
only partially true. What I truly hate are alarm clocks. I don't care
how many hours of sleep I've gotten before they go off, they always make
me feel groggy and out-of-sorts. Unfortunately, I've never gotten the
knack of waking up when I want to, so I guess I'm stuck with them. I
much prefer waking up on my own, but on a workday that seldom happens.
I stood up, stretched, yawned, scratched, and staggered over to
the fridge for a can of Mountain Dew. I don't drink coffee. Can't
stand the stuff, so I get my caffeine elsewhere. They don't made Dew on
Terra Nova, but luckily the nano-factories on the Pandemonium have the
recipe on file, and I get a case from the ship every couple of days.
Rank does have it's privilege, after all. I opened the can and drank
off half without pause. Then I stripped off the gym shorts I always
wear to bed and headed for the shower.
Twenty minutes, the other half of the Dew and a cigarette later,
I felt mostly human. I looked over at the chalkboard hanging by the
door. I keep my schedule on it for workdays, because it's convenient,
and because I've got too much to do in a day to remember it all. Oh
yes, I had a daily strategic briefing at nine, a planning session with
my pilots at eleven, and a rollout time of fourteen-thirty, which meant
I needed to be on the flightline at fourteen hundred. Yeah, Terra
Nova's rotation makes for a day that's exactly thirty-six hours long.
Noon here is at 18:00. It took us a while, but we've finally gotten
used to it. Actually, most of us kinda like it. A normal day for
people here is twelve hours of work, twelve hours off, and twelve hours
to sleep. Of course, with the outbreak of open warfare between the two
Polar Confederations, days weren't normal anymore. But we always got at
least eight hours of downtime between missions. It's specified in our
contract, and the fees for breaking the crew rest stipulations are
harsh. Peace River doesn't really want to pay the fines, so they play
by our rules. Besides, when we are up and flying, they're damn sure
getting their money's worth, and they know it.
Anyway, I had about forty minutes to kill before the day's
sitrep briefing, so I decided to wander down to the cafeteria to get a
bite of breakfast. I don't much like breakfast, either. Eating before
I've been awake for at least four hours tends to make me nauseous, but I
force myself when I'm flying. Combat air operations are stressful, and
contrary to what you might think, it's a lot of physical work. I knew
I'd need the energy. Besides, it'd help me stay awake through the
morning briefing.

True to form, the sitrep briefing was long, boring, filled with
little useful information, and in general a really mean thing to do to
someone first thing in the bloody morning. They tend to go something
like this: "Everything's about the same as yesterday, except that this
particular air defense corridor has been opened. (Yes, I know. I
opened it). This unit here was in a bit of trouble yesterday, but
they've fallen back and regrouped for a counterattack. (Yes, I know. I
bombed the shit outta the people engaging them, which allowed them to
fall back and regroup.)"
I got through it without obvious snoring, and wandered back to
my apartment for another Dew and a smoke before I met the rest of my
crew for our planning session.
The caffeine and sugar finally started kicking in as I walked
down the hall to the conference room we'd been given. I opened the door
and walked in. The whole crew was there: all twelve of my pilots, our
two PRDF liaison officers, and my head crew chief. We're not a big
operation, and most of our non-flying work has been automated. Heavily.
We'd been flying out of Peace River for about a month this time, and
there were only six of my crew who weren't in the room this morning.
They didn't need to be here. They're ground crew and transport pilots,
and while I had work for them today, they worked for my head crew chief.
I walked to the head of the table. "Morning kids. I hope
everyone slept well." Fifteen variations on "morning" echoed around the
table.
"Alright, " I said, sitting down. "Let's get down to business.
We've got a deep penetration strike planned for today. We're going
after Shayan Mechanics. They've stepped up production, and we need to
take them out before the CNCS can put any more Gears in the field.
They're already putting pressure on the edges of the Peace River
Protectorate Zone, and we need to convince them to stop. So. I want
this actuator plant leveled."
I stood up again. "Cortana, could you put up a relevant map on
the holoprojector, please? Thank you." The tabletop suddenly sprouted
mountains, desert, and a small town with a large industrial area on it's
southern border. Globes of colored light started appearing on the map,
showing air threat locations and zones of control.
"Now then, we'll be flying through a lot of hostile territory
today, so we'll go with a low-level strike profile. Fifteen miles after
we fence in, here, we'll drop down to five hundred feet, and stay there
all the way in. Now then, our targets."
The tabletop holodisplay zoomed in on the industrial plant,
showing mag-rail lines, warehouses, POL (Petroleum, Oil, Lubricant)
tanks, and all the assorted outbuildings that such a site seems to
breed.
"Thanks, Cort. Okay. Everything you see here is fair game. I
want at least twelve warheads on the main plant, here. These rail lines
need to go, as do the roads leading in. The tanks here are a prime
target, and if this is the gear parking lot that I think it is, I want
at least eight cluster bombs blanketing it. Everything else is free-
fire, and remember, kids: We're not getting paid to bring weapons home.
I'll lead the four-ship strike package, callsign Viper." I looked over
at my crew chief, Sarah Lawson. "I want a mix of ordnance on this one.
Leads will carry two anti-radiation missiles, twelve iron bombs, and
twelve clusters. Wingmen will go in with twelve air-to-ground missiles,
two hardened penetrators, and a standard air-to-air mix. Alex, you'll
take Eagle, our four-ship escort. Standard combat loads. Sarah, get
the Valks armed and checked out early, then get everything loaded up on
the transports. The next series of targets we need to hit is on the
other side of the planet, and I do not want to spend eighteen hours in
the cockpit ever again. We'll fly those off the Pandemonium. I want
your transports and escorts off the ground five minutes before Eagle
starts it's taxi. Any questions?"
I looked around the table. The eyes looking back at me were
serious, bright with anticipation, but there was no fear there. Yeah,
this mission was dangerous. They all are. This one was no more
dangerous than any other, and quite a bit less than most. Due to the
extremely volatile and unpredictable weather patterns and air currents
across the whole of Terra Nova, flight was difficult without large wing
surfaces and large fusion turbines. We have both. None of the Terra
Novan nations seem to. They have a lot of short-range VTOL aircraft
they call "Hoppers", and larger sub-orbital transports they use to move
their mechanized forces, called "Heavy Gears", or more commonly just
"Gears", into position, but they seemed to be seriously lacking in any
sort of actual air force. We didn't mind a bit. Oh, some nations had a
few handfuls of actual fighters, but they were grounded as often as they
flew, and we didn't have to worry all that much about serious air
opposition. That left us free to worry about the ground-based anti-air
defenses, and there were a lot of those.
"Alright then," I said, "I want everybody on the flight line at
fourteen hundred. Get your personal belongings packed up and on the
transports, get something to eat, and get some rest. It's gonna be a
long day. Oh, and Sarah? Tell Misato that we're having prime rib for
dinner. I haven't had any real cow in a month, and it's making me
cranky."
Sarah grinned at me and wrinkled her nose. "Already done, boss.
First thing this morning."
I laughed. "Alright everybody, get outta here!"
I stopped for a moment to talk to Lieutenant Angela Kanna, our
air liaison officer. We spent a few moments going over communications
frequencies, callsigns, and what other flights were scheduled for the
day. I always like to know what else is going to be in the air when I'm
operating. If I know what's supposed to be out there, then I can easily
figure out what isn't supposed to be there, and that sort of thing keeps
my pilots out of the sick bay. Then I went home and started packing.

I slipped into my CVR armor (black, with grey highlights),
grabbed up the two bags of personal effects I was taking with me, and
headed out to the flight line. I was leaving behind a lot of the things
I'd purchased for my apartment, because I just plain didn't need them on
ship. When we came back to Peace River, I'd just go reclaim my
apartment.
I secured my bags in the transport, picked up a couple of high-
energy snack bars for the flight, and walked out to the pad, where my
Valkyrie was sitting out of her revetment, already armed and ready. She
was gleaming in the sunlight, looking freshly washed and polished. Her
base color is a light grey, with flat black highlights, and a large
wolf's head on each of the twin tails.
Her paint is actually an adaptive camouflage, designed to
emulate whatever's on the other side when power is applied, but we
weren't using that particular feature much these days. Between our own
extremely sophisticated onboard electronic warfare suites and active
control provided by the Pandemonium in orbit, we just plain didn't need
adaptive camo to do our jobs and come home, and I don't believe in using
tools we don't need. It increases the potential for those tools to
actually work when we do need them. It was for this same reason that
we were operating strictly as a mercenary air force, and not making any
use at all of the Valk's mode-changing capabilities. I wanted to keep
the Gerwalk and Battroid configurations as an ace up my sleeve. I
didn't know if I'd end up needing that ace in this campaign, but if I
did, I wanted it to have the impact of a piledriver when I played it.
At five minutes to fourteen, I climbed up into the cockpit. I
checked that my personal weapons were in their rack behind the ejection
seat, and that the Cyclone personal mecha was secure in it's slot. Then
I sat down, strapped myself into the seat, and turned on the auxiliary
power unit. This gave the electronics enough power so that Cortana,
good friend and personal CI (computer intelligence. She hates the term
"artificial intelligence") what she needed to start checking the
Valkyrie's systems and powering up the fusion reactors.
I settled a little deeper into my seat and began running through
the startup sequence.

We were in our Valkyries, engines running and ready to fly,
fifteen minutes before our scheduled taxi time. We always were. Not
only was it good sense from a planning standpoint, it gave a little time
if someone encountered mechanical problems before a mission. Which
never happens, but still. The big reason for out earliness, though, was
simple. Our cockpits are climate controlled. More specifically,
they're air-conditioned, and the flight line is hot. I can almost
always count on the air temperature being thirty degrees hotter on the
pad than it is in the open sky, and today my ambient air-temperature
reading was a hundred and thirty-six degrees.
I watched as our transports and their escorts taxied out to the
runway and began to roll.

Finally we were given clearance to taxi, and we moved off toward
the runway. As I sat awaiting my turn, I got that peculiar sense of
anticipation that always comes on takeoff. Then Eagle flight cleared
the runway and started their climbout, and I slid out to the end of the
runway. I stomped hard on the brakes and jammed the throttle all the
way up to the first stop. The airframe started vibrating under me as
the turbines spun up past ninety percent power. When they reached 101%
and I felt the deep roar and increased vibration of the afterburners
kicking in, I released the brakes and shot like a bullet down the
runway. I think this is why I love my job so much, this exact moment.
It always feels like I left my stomach back in bed, like I've just been
kicked in the ass by the world's biggest mule. It's the best feeling in
the world.
All too soon my airspeed passed two hundred knots and the nose
began to rise. I eased the stick back just a touch and like a floating
feather the Valk rose into the sky. My rear wheels left the ground with
five hundred yards of runway to spare, and I retracted the landing gear
as I passed the end of the runway, which just happened to be on top of
the city of Peace River. Flying over the far end of the runway and
seeing a fifteen hundred foot drop makes life just a bit more exciting.
I held down the push-to-talk button on the side of the throttle.
"PRDF control, this is Viper lead. We are free and flying."
"Roger Wolff," Angela's voice replied. "Winds are out of the
southwest at thirteen knots, but the weather looks clear. Contact
tactical control at fifteen-fifteen. Merlin will be sunrise in three-
zero minutes. Good hunting, sir."
I smiled. "Thank you, control. Warheads on foreheads. Viper
lead, out." I love the particular brand of formality that always seems
to accompany combat flight operations. Some things just never change, no
matter where in the multiverse you happen to find yourself.
The first time we used these runways, we almost got a nasty
surprise as we passed over the outer wall of the city and saw the
fifteen hundred foot drop to the mesa below, all within seconds of the
rear wheels leaving the ground, followed three hundred yards later by
the next thousand foot drop to the plains surrounding Peace River Mesa.
The sight is still enough to give me a mild case of pucker.
I kept the throttle wide open as I pitched back to thirty
degrees of climb. We were a few minutes behind our escort, and we
needed to make up some time. We leveled out at twenty thousand feet for
the flight over friendly territory, and settled ourselves in for the
boredom of what amounted to a ferry-flight for the next forty-five
minutes. I polarized my visor slightly to filter out the bright
sunlight, kicked in the autopilot (her name's Cortana, and she's an
absolute dear), and enjoyed the strange, floaty feeling of sitting up so
high in such a relatively small aircraft. The world, so small and so
very far below me, seemed like a dream.

I came out of my reverie five minutes before we entered
contested airspace. After taking a minute to review the mission in my
mind and make sure my brain was on the same page as the rest of me, I
switched the radio to the squadron guard frequency.
"Alright boys and girls, it's time to shake the cobwebs out.
Wolffpack, this is lead. Fence check."
In my helmet I could hear Cortana calling out in her no-nonsense
business tone:
"Copy fence check. Radar BIT (built in test) runs clean.
Emissions control is set to full. All hardpoints read green. Jammer
set to automatic. Chaff and flare dispensers armed. Both engines
running clean and normal. All control surfaces responding normally.
IFF squawking 3557. Threat Warning Indicator BIT runs clean. External
gun pod spinning at 600 rpm."
At this, I could feel a slight lurch in the airframe as the
external gun pod spun up to firing speed. It uses a lot of power to
keep the six barrels spinning throughout the flight, but with a fusion
reactor, who cares about power expenditure? Besides, it gains us an
extra quarter of a second firing speed, and half a minute of angle
accuracy.
"GPS and inertial navigation synched. Anti-radar missiles read
green, self-protect mode enabled. Ventral turret reads green, point
defense mode engaged. Radio one set to PRDF control, radio two set to
squadron guard. Cortana reports Viper-One, ready op."
"Viper two reports ready op," came Rei Ayanami's completely
emotionless reply. She never changes. Sometimes I wonder if the girl
has a soul at all, except that I know better. I have it on the best
authority. Besides, she is good at what she does. If I can ever
convince her to think outside the box once in a while, she'll be ready
to move into a lead slot.
"Viper three, go mission," came Steve's slightly amused tones.
When he stops acting like life is a joke, usually perpetrated on him, I
worry.
"Viper four, ready op," called Will, the thrill of eminent
battle always evident in his voice. He's young, and I sometimes wonder
why he was chosen for this life. He's proven himself in several
missions, though, and I let that thought go.
In the background, faint but understandable, I could hear Eagle
flight checking in with Alex Logan, who was flying lead today. Then
Alex himself spoke up, clear as a bell.
"Eagle flight reports go mission. We are clean, clear, and
naked. The skies look pretty empty today, Viper," he said.
"Roger that, Eagle. Let's hope they stay that way. Wolffpack,
we are weapons free at this time, repeat, we are red and free."
I reached up to my console and flipped the master arm switch
from safe to arm. Then a new voice sounded in my ears.
"Wolffpack, this is Merlin. Sunrise, sunrise, sunrise. We are
on station, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."
I smiled. This meant that the Pandemonium had risen up above
the curvature of the planet, and all her sensors were focused on our
particular piece of airspace. I love orbital AWACS. For a five hundred
mile radius around us, Delilah (Cortana's sister) was tracking,
analyzing, and classifying anything that moved, and quite a few things
that didn't, and downloading the pertinent information to our own sensor
suites, in real-time. This is why we usually flew with our on-board
radar systems off. We didn't need 'em.
"Roger, Merlin. Nice to see you. Did you get my message?" I
asked.
"Sure did, Wolff. We're doing recovery operations right now,
and everyone should be on-board within twenty minutes. I'm assuming you
want Yorkshire pudding?"
I laughed. "You know it, love."
The conversation trailed off, and I switched the radio back to
PRDF control.
"PRDF control, this is Wolffpack. Turning tactical control over
to Merlin now. We are ready op, bullseye heading 030 for seventy-five
miles, angels 20. Please confirm go-mission, over." I said.
"Copy Wolffpack, you are on time and on bearing. Wait one for
mission confirm." Angela Kanna replied. We're pretty friendly with our
liaisons, and of course we're even more friendly with each other, but we
don't screw around much on the comms channels. It can get people
killed.
Last-minute mission confirmations are SOP for us. See, the PRDF
brass don't pick our targets for us. They tell us what they want to
happen, and we pick the missions that will make that happen. This is
basically their last chance to veto a particular mission. But they'd
better have another target for us if they do, because they're still
paying for flight time.
"Viper lead, Control. You are clea..." squelch
There was a half second of truly nasty noise in my ears, and
then it stopped. So did the transmission.
"...the fuck?" I muttered. Comm jammers? Nah, couldn't be.
The nasty white noise had stopped. My brow furrowed in consternation.
"PRDF control, this is Viper lead, please respond, over," I
said. No answer. I tried twice more, with the same lack of success. I
glanced down at my radio control panel and saw that even the carrier
signal had been lost. "Oh no," I breathed.
I quickly switched to channel two. "Merlin, Wolff. We just
lost all contact with ground control. What the hell's going on?"
"Wait one, Wolff." Misato, my nominal second-in-command aboard
the Pandemonium, broke into the channel. Her voice sounded odd,
strained, and I suddenly got a very bad feeling about things.
Then the data-link icon in my left-hand display popped up. I
touched it, and a picture appeared, cross-linked from the Pandemonium's
cameras.
"Oh my god." I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. It was
an orbital view of the city of Peace River. The looping video that
Misato had sent us showed Peace River, and then a blinding white flash,
and then a whole shitload of rubble, and not much else. I started
shivering.
"Misato?" I asked, holding on to my composure by the barest of
margins, "What the fuck just happened?"
"From the preliminary sensor readings, some sort of anti-matter
device, probably in the hundred-megaton range. Peace River has been
destroyed." I heard a strangled sob as the channel cut off.
I'll never be able to tell you how many thoughts raced through
my head in that first second. I don't even know myself what most of
them were. But suddenly there was a burning pain right under my
sternum, a feeling in my guts like the onset of diarrhea, and an
incredible urge to vomit all over my canopy. I took my hands off the
controls, closed my eyes, and let my chin sink to my chest. I'm not
sure how long I stayed like that, it might have been one minute, it
might have been five. I looked up, blinked the moisture from my eyes,
and put my hands back on the controls. I almost idly noticed that my
hands were shaking.
"Wolffpack, this is lead." I took a deep breath, trying to use
ingrained habit to steady my voice. "Weapons safe." Another deep
breath. "Viper flight, dump air to ground stores."
I reached down and marked the pylons that contained the bomb
racks and AGM's. I double checked my selections, and then hit the
selective jettison button. A tremor ran through the airframe as sixteen
tons of weapons and ejector racks dropped off the aircraft. It was the
first time we'd ever dumped a mission load, but the extra aerodynamic
drag would prevent us from reaching orbit.
"Come right to heading 140, pitch plus-30, 600 knots. We're
going home."
We made the slow turn, starting our climb to orbit. I sighed
into my helmet. "Alex, this is Wolff." Today was the day for throwing
away tacnet discipline. "Take everybody home. Two drink rule is in
effect, get whatever rest you can, but be ready if we're needed. I need
to go take a look."
"Roger, Wolff. Better you than me, buddy. We'll be waiting for
you. Fly safe," he replied.
"Roger that. Wolff out."

I eased the the ship ten degrees nose-low and dropped out of
formation. Once I'd attained two thousand feet of seperation, I stood
the Valkyrie up on it's right wingtip and yanked the stick back. The
sudden onset of g-forces kicked me in the stomach. I felt the
flightsuit I wore underneath the CVR start to constrict as the G forces
built. I let the nose drop below the horizon to pick up speed, and
pulled through the turn back to Peace River at thirty-five G's. I was
right up against the onboard G-limiter, and I heard the airframe start
to creak with the strain. I straightened out bearing 240, and slid the
throttle forward to the first stop, then left and forward. I felt the
top-mounted boosters kick in, and I headed down like a falling angel to
see what could be seen.

It was truly indescribable. The central core of the city was
nothing but a smoking crater, and the suburbs were nothing but rubble.
The place we'd spent six months out of the last year was just gone.
The Paxton Arms Tower where we'd all had our living quarters just plain
didn't exist anymore. I'll always hate myself for it, but I couldn't
stop the tiny voice in the back of my head that was rejoicing that I'd
picked today to send my ground crews home.
I don't remember much about the flight back to the ship. I
don't remember landing the plane, either. The next I knew, my Valkyrie
was sitting in the hangar pod, the engines spooling down and the canopy
coming up. I killed the power supply and left the rest to the deck
crew. I slid down out of the cockpit and stood there on the deck, my
arms hanging listlessly by my sides. I reached up and slowly took off
my helmet, barely even aware of moving. Somebody put a hand on my
shoulder, and somebody else pushed a glass into my hand. I raised it to
my lips and drank it off without even really thinking about it. Halfway
down the glass, I realized it was straight vodka I was drinking. It hit
my stomach and reacted hard. I dropped the glass, which shattered on
the hard decking, dropped to my knees, and threw up everything I'd ever
eaten.
After a long moment, somebody picked me up out of the puddle of
my own vomit and lead me away. I remember getting stripped out of my
armor and then out of my flightsuit, and I remember a hot shower. I
think someone washed my hair for me, but I'm not really sure. I was
dried off, and then I remember the cool crispness of sheets. Mostly I
remember trying not to think.
War never changes. It's a nasty business. Nobody knows it better than we do.
We've been at this a long time now. We're not all just a bunch of jet
jocks, either. I spent three months last year with the 3rd Peace River
Expeditionary Force as air liaison officer. I lived on the ground with
the grunts, doing the same things they did. We ate the same slop, shat
in the same pits, and I saw a whole lot of ugliness. It was a nasty
campaign. But, damn. We've bombed a lot of installations into dust.
We've killed a lot of people, made a lot of orphans. But, fuck me! We
have never, NEVER attacked a civilian center. Everything we've ever
dropped on has been a legitimate target of war. There's no point in
bombing a whole fucking city. All that destruction, and for what?
Yeah, Paxton Arms is the largest weapons manufacturer on the planet.
But the city of Peace River itself is fairly unimportant. Yeah, they
lead a coalition of mercenaries and freeholders to try and keep the
equatorial Badlands neutral from the squabbles of the two polar
superpowers, but so what? They're only a very small thorn in the
polars' collective side. They can pretty much protect the territory
they claim as a defensive zone, but not by much. And not after today.
I realized that my eyes were open, and that they were trying to
find patterns in the textured paint of the ceiling. Shock, I suppose.
I slowly got up and staggered over to the dresser. I pulled out
a clean flightsuit and began to get dressed.
"Cortana?" I said, though it came out as more a croak than
anything else.
"Yeah?" she replied softly. Her image appeared on the wall
viewer. Her hair looked limp and lifeless, and there were dark rings
around her eyes. She feels it too, I thought. It sometimes catches me
by surprise, even though to me, she's simply another member of my crew.
Hells, here on the ship there are holographic projectors everywhere, so
she can manifest in full 3D, in living color, and in complete solidity.
Yeah, here on the ship you can actually touch her. Don't ask me how it
works. I'm a tool user, not a tool maker. Ask Penpen, he's the
engineer. As a matter of fact, I asked him once. I'll give him this,
he is patient and he tried to explain it to me, with simple one-syllable
words. It just didn't help.
I got a glass of water from the wall dispenser and tried my
voice again. "How long have I been out?"
"About two hours. Maybe a little less," she answered.
I sighed. "Alright. First, I want three Horizonts prepped for
flight. Remove the combat resupply pods. Outfit four new pods as full
field hospitals. I want the rest filled to the brim with emergency
supplies. Food, water, clothing, blankets, you know what's needed.
Then have both Valkyrie squadrons stand down for maintenance checks.
Wait, make that all but four. I want those four outfitted for light
escort duty. No underwing ordinance. Let's try to look as non-
threatening as possible. The rest of the Valks I want broken down,
cleaned, polished, whatever. Just keep the ground crews busy. Assemble
the crews for the Horizonts in the briefing room in thirty minutes. Get
everyone else to assist with the loading. Stay on the radios, find
someone left in charge down there. Tell them we're coming in with
emergency relief. Also, keep me advised on what the CNCS and AST are up
to. I'd really prefer not to get jumped while we're trying to pick up
the pieces. Do what you have to do, threaten orbital bombardment, I
don't care. Just keep 'em outta my hair. Oh, and one other thing.
Return the last payment made to Paxton Arms, with my condolences.
They need it right now, more than we ever could."

The next three days were some of the worst I've ever seen,
surpassing even being caught in a week-long sandstorm in the middle of a
pitched battle. Seen up close, the devastation was nearly total. Then
the casualties started coming in. At last record, the population of
Peace River was somewhere near 750,000 people, not counting those living
in outlying research and military installations. I doubt we found more
than fifteen thousand survivors. Another five thousand or so died in
triage. It was nothing less than one long nightmare of rubble, of fire,
of blood and body parts. We didn't have time to mourn, not yet. The
tears would come later, but for now we had to try to take care of the
living. Even with our highly advanced medical equipment, there were far
too few of the living.
I was leaning against the side of one of the field hospitals,
having a smoke. It was a short break in a haze of work, of never having
enough hands to do what was needed. I heard footsteps approaching, and
finally got my eyes to focus.
"Hey bro," Steve said, handing me a cup of water.
I blinked, forcing my foggy brain into activity.
"But..." I mumbled "you're not supposed to be here. You're
supposed to be up on the ship, aren't you?"
"It's been three days, bro. I brought a crew down to relieve
you. You haven't slept in over a hundred hours." He put a gentle hand
under my elbow. "C'mon, we've got a cot set up for you. We'll take
care of things. I will hold the watch until you awake." His voice was soft, and he led me away to a cot set away from the noise and lights. The pillow was soft, the blanket was
warm, and if I dreamed, then I count myself fortunate that I don't
remember anything.

I awoke almost twenty hours later. It wasn't nearly enough
sleep, but it was enough to banish most of the headache I'd been
ignoring. I reached down without thinking, my questing fingers finding
a canteen exactly where I was expecting one to be. After drinking down
a quart of water, I woke up enough to realize that I hadn't been the one
to put the canteen in my accustomed place. Then my time-sense caught up
with the rest of me, and I realized that I wasn't still out in the field
with the 3rd. The rest of my recent memories came rushing back, and I
groaned involuntarily. I sighed and lit a smoke.
I reached up, the fingertips on my left hand touching the hard
lump just beneath and behind my left ear. A mastoid communications
implant, the only piece of cyberware that will ever touch my body.
The only function of this implant is to give me constant,
uninterruptible communication with Cortana.
"Cort?" I asked gently.
"Hey boss," she replied softly.
I asked, "How long have I been out?"
"Almost twenty hours," she said.
I nodded, knowing she'd pick up on the gesture.
I lowered my head to my hands as the events of the previous four
days washed over me. I sighed.
"Status report," I said. I was awake now, and that meant it was
time to get back to work.
"The survivors have all been cared for. There's not much left
here for us to do. The 3rd is on their way home, and should be here
within the hour. Oh, and the CNCS and AST have declared a cease-fire in
the wake of the disaster," she replied.
"Huh," I said, "so this is what it takes for those boneheads to
see reason." Yeah, that's a pretty bizarre sentiment for a mercenary.
But we're not common mercenaries.
"Okay. When the 3rd gets here, we'll turn things over to them.
Tell Del to prepare for recovery operations. We'll be going home soon."
"Roger, boss," she said softly.