Ironwood

[Dinosawer]

Finally made some time to read through this
Great work so far

[Trigger]

27: Bombing Run

There is a red telephone on the Wing Leader’s table. It’s a weird thing – a sloped rectangle of plastic with a handset resting atop it, linked with a coiled wire. The telephone itself has a wire leading out of it, down the table, and into the segmented floor tiles.
There are a few buttons on the telephone, all marked with abbreviations I fail to decipher.
The telephone never rings, and the Wing Leader never uses it. It just sits there, silent.
It doesn’t ring while I undergo conditioning, or while I’m down for surgery. It doesn’t ring while I’m recovering after my massive spinal implant is grown into me, nor while I train to use the damn thing.
Then, after 5 weeks, I report for duty.
It’s 07,55. I step through the door into our 12-person open-floor chamber of an office.
I exchange a few words, and stop by the window to enjoy the view. I’m not the last one in – two mechanics and a pilot enter after me as I set down my rifle, swords, helmet, and ass.
The moment my heavily armored glutes touch that chair, the red telephone rings.
I glance at the clock. 08,00.
Wing Leader Lathe glances around the room to take a head count as he reaches for the telephone. Satisfied, he picks up the red headset and brings it to his ear.
“Wing 80, ready.” A pause as he listens. Then, he looks right at me.
I stare back.
“Accepted.”
I’m shocked by a sudden surge of motion – every pilot shoots to their feet. I follow, snapping my scabbards and rifle back onto my hardpoints. Everyone surges for the door, and I follow.
At first I think that all the mechanics will remain behind – all 6 are hammering at their consoles. Then 5 of the 6 stand and rush out after us. Only Wing Leader Lathe’s mechanic remains, still focused on his screen.
We pile into the elevator – which, notably, is already waiting for us. The doors slide shut with dangerous speed, and the floor seems to loosen under my feet as the elevator drops.
Wing Leader Lathe begins to speak.
“We’re bombing the capitol of the Kingdom of Luhalm. 2 hours there, 2 back. Our target is one particular building. Black Fleet is overhead, supporting.”
Oh. Ok. This is happening.
“Six.”
“Yes?” I reply.
“You’re with me,” Wing Leader Lathe says. “Listen very carefully. You are allowed to not deploy weapons, to not shoot, to not even try shooting. You have exactly one objective – throughout the next 4 hours, remain around 100 meters to my rear-right-low. 2-plane angled wedge formation, with me on point. That’s all you have to do, understand?”
“Yes.”
The elevator doors open, and we rush out.
“Go, get in, when ordered, lift off and catch up. GO!”
I go. I sprint 200 meters to my Rainbow Shrimp, tap my keys on the landing hear, and climb the ladder up.
I notice the autonomous munitions transports fleeing my vicinity. There are two large bombs settled into my heavy hardpoints – large cervices under my wings that envelop the munitions. More, smaller hardpoint slots are filled with M2s - multi-purpose missiles. The presence of the munitions turns the cratered, convex form of my craft and wings into an almost buff, fleshed out form of gleaming rainbow metal.
I fall into my seat, and wiggle a bit to let the connectors on the outside of my armor link into the chair. It’s a new set of armor – a bit less protective, and quite a bit heavier. It has connectors that go all the way through the plates in places, letting a vehicle link in place of the armor’s senses.
Then my new spinal implant clicks in, and I begin to feel my surroundings.
The ceiling looms uncomfortably close. My neighboring Shrimp sits a bit too close as well. Turns out, as an aircraft, I like my personal space.
The connection does only one thing – it lets me process my craft’s senses directly with my brain, as if the sensors and scanners and cameras were my own eyes. For this, the doctors grew me a new brain segment – my spine and brain are now about 10 percent heavier than they were 4 weeks ago. The new mass is based on the parts of the brain that process vision.
This kind of implant and armor are used by Legion pilots, tankers, naval captains. It’s used by the Black Fleet pilots. I use it now to replace the sensation of my skin with the sensation of the craft’s skin, and to give myself a new set of very technological eyes.
As my engine warms up, I carefully blink all my eyes – first the ones in my head, then the ones across my hull.
And then it’s my turn to taxi out onto the strip.
Flying a Legion fighter is a very physical job. Control is performed by moving my body – my fingers, hands, legs, head. My top 4th percentile Cord count gives me an advantage – I can control every thruster, flap and control surface one by one… Or at least I’ll be able to, with some practice.
I shift, driving myself out onto the under-mountain airstrip-tunnel. Checking to make sure there’s no one behind me, I shove forward.
The Shrimp’s controls are all direct, physical, mechanical links. My movements are not digitally processed. My commands are not relayed by wires.
When I shove, a mechanical link leading from my throne is amplified by a hydraulic power-steering module, and driven into the engine. It’s an un-hackable, un-jammable control system that lets me feel my engine in the most direct way.
A thin spear of white fire punches out of my drive, enveloped by a deformed column of superheated, burning air.
I am crushed under incredible acceleration as I blast down the tunnel and out of the mountainside.
Pulling up to clear the nearby mountain ridge, I spot my wing assembling ahead. I push to catch up, and fall in on the Wing Leader.
We’re joined by 12 more craft. These are not fighters – they are Wasps, our bound drones. Each pilot in the Wing has 2 for this mission, and each Wasp carries another bomb, and about half of my M2 load.
Wasps can be talked two by close-range laser link, or not at all. They are terribly introverted, and have more limitations than capabilities. In a battlespace where even laser comms are challenged, these machines can be trusted to die for us, if nothing else.
“Wing, I just got our target profile. Study and memorize.”
I relax to release the controls, and pull a screen forward into my field of view. There’s a laser upload from Lathe, and I look at the image with interest.
It’s a giant, white structure with many spires and domes and columns. It sits on a hill, at the center of what appears to be a city.
As I look closer, I realize that all is not as it appears. The building is gray, not white, and the chipped cement seems to be in a state of deterioration. It’s white only in contrast to the smog-filled background.
“So what’s the occasion?” Three asks. I’m relieved that someone else asked the question.
“Intel suggests that in about an hour and a half, the Kingdom council will go into session to pass a measure ordering an immediate racial cleansing by fire, throughout the Kingdom.”
“So it’s a Tuesday?”
I feel my face contort in horror, and can’t help but pitch in. “Why?”
“Massive economic decline caused by the relative wealth of all their neighbors. They’re nationalizing, hard. They closed off trade, expelled most foreign-born citizens, and are now going after everyone who doesn’t look right to try and empower an armed regime.”
“Why’re they risking the genocide now?” Three asks.
“We haven’t touched them recently. Nothing they’ve done was outright violent before.”
“So we’re bombing that council mid-session?” I ask.
“That’s the plan. Psyops says that’s the best way to impact them.”
I tap at the screen, bringing up the bombing procedure. Visual lock, bomb programming, arming, release. I review the procedure with care, using my Human eyes to read as the rest of my eyes works to track my surroundings.
Along with new armor, I have a new helmet. It has none of the armored visor look my infantry armor has. Instead it’s a fully transparent faceplate, with its edges just barely outside my field of view. When I wear it, it feels as if I wear no helmet at all, at least in terms of vision. That pairs well with my giant canopy, and lets me use my unnaturally sharp vision along with my aircraft’s eyes.
I switch the screen to a map. It seems that today we’re violating about 8 national borders on the way to our victims. We fly low, and we fly fast. Tracking us will be wildly difficult for the technologically disadvantage nations surrounding the Valley – and that works just fine for us.
“Fix.”
“Yes, One?” I reply to Wing Leader Lathe.
“We drop bombs, turn around, and leave. If interceptors chase us, we drop missiles without turning. If they meet us on our way in, we kill them as we drop, without slowing or fighting. If there are missiles, jam them and kill with guns. If I die, follow Two, or Three, and get out of here.”
“Got it.”
“Did you review bomb-dropping procedures?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
We fly. Mountains turn into valleys, then to hills and rivers. We overfly endless forests, maneuvering to avoid population centers and military bases. Our path leads us not directly to our target, but to the territory of a nearby nation. Only there do we turn, angle, and boost.
Stealth discarded, we accelerate and pull up to gain altitude and a nice upward vector. Our drones follow.
At the speeds we’re at, it takes mere minutes to put the Kingdom Capitol on our optics.
“Lock target.”
I already have my optical targeting locked on it. The bombs in my bays and on my two Wasps are programmed.
I arm the bombs.
“Ready,” Wing Leader Lathe commands. “Drop.”
I pull the trigger. A mechanical release clicks, and two large glid bombs fall free of the Rainbow Shrimp. Laser-comms relay the signal to my drones, and the Wasps also drop.
The Wing drops a total of 24 bombs. They fly up, following our upward trajectory as they arc across the kilometers separating us and he capitol.
The Wing forgets the bombs as we angle away and turn around. Diving straight down, we close with the ground, then boost at low altitude to clear the hot zone.
I see missiles steak somewhere overhead, targeting nothing at all. They can’t see or track us, and we’re boosting up to speeds that won’t let them catch up.
Minutes pass. Lathe links us a feed – it’s a top-down view of the capitol building.
Defenses around the capitol open fire. Flack does nothing against the bomb’s armor. Streams of slugs can’t track the maneuvering bombs. Laser installations fail to burn through the bomb’s armor.
24 massive bombs strike the capitol building as one, evenly spaced out across the structure.
The concrete palace shatters like a tree struck by a tank slug. Small concrete shrapnel scatters in an expanding sphere.
“Nice timing. That landed just as they asked ‘All in favor?’”
“How do we know what they were saying?” I ask, suddenly worried. Did I just kill our own spy?
“They were live-streaming he vote.”
“They were live-streaming the vote,” I repeat. “The vote regarding genocide of their own people?”
“Yes,” Lathe asks. “And when the council all raised their hands, people cheered in the streets. And then the bombs hit. Welcome, Six, to the world beyond the Valley. Don’t worry, we have munitions to spare. Wing, return to base."

[Trigger]

28: Geopolitics
I work 4 out of the 6 weekdays. Every workday, I am on shift for 10 hours, along with the rest of my wing.
When off-shift, or during a day off, I attend Dance’s trainings, along with advanced pilot training.
During my first 4 shifts, we deploy 3 times in total.
That first time, we bomb a kingdom capitol.
The next day we are asked by Black Fleet to become lingering munitions, gliding at high altitude with a payload of massive planet-to-space missiles. We never deploy them, but we do get to watch as a Black Fleet Unit pulverizes an asteroid aimed at the planet. Someone beyond Forma’s orbitals strapped thrusters to the rock, and tried to ram it into the planet – a regular day for the Black Fleet. We return to base, and unload the missiles.
On the third day, we go up full of long-range air-to-air missiles. Flame Legion, deployed nearby, is in the middle of an operation, and they ask us to clear the skies for them. We don’t come anywhere near the battlefield – instead, we launch over 200 of the fire-and-forget missiles from well beyond the horizon, turn around, and go home. Flame Legion, having cleared the air of their own aircraft, count the kills for us – a total of 180 hits on fighters, transports, hovercraft, missiles and drones.
The fourth day does not prove to need us – we loiter in the office all day. I am not sure what the others do – I spend 9 hours in the simulator, drilling.
That evening, after Dance’s training, the gang gathers in my cabin.
Despite being recruited by the navy, Ash Baker is still here. She’s undergoing training, which is a bit more complex for a navy officer than for any other calling in our group. She and her older sister sit shoulder to shoulder.
Today our regular numbers are somewhat swelled by the presence of my mechanic, Press. The older man occupies the couch, eating and drinking with a lot of enthusiasm as he listens to our banter. He seems content in his quiet, but I have questions for him that I now chose to voice.
“Press,” I say, sitting on the couch next to him.
“Mmm?” he hums through his beer.
“How politically savvy are you?”
He looks at me across his beer. “Why?”
“I’m hoping you can satisfy some curiosity of mine.”
Vent and my Recruit-group pipe down to listen.
“It’s interesting that you say this,” Press says, leaning back so his gut sits atop him. “Did someone say to go to me with your questions?”
“No, why?”
“What was your curiosity about, Axe?”
“It’s about or foreign policy, Press.”
“You mean how we spend our time bombing every nation under Forma’s sky?”
“Right.”
“And why do you ask me?”
“I overhead you talking to the other mechanics,” I explain. “You more frequently sound like intelligence than like mechanics.”
“You don’t know what intelligence people sound like,” the old man grumbles. “But you’re actually more right than you think. I am your mechanic. Not your aircraft’s. Yours. My job is to keep you maximally functional. That includes keeping your aircraft at peak capability. It also includes keeping you at that peak capability. And part of that is keeping you informed.”
“You’re… my intelligence analyst?”
“I am your mechanic. That includes engineering, intelligence, debriefing, tactics development, psychological monitoring, medical monitoring. It includes keeping you fed, healthy, sane, focused. I do what you do not absolutely need to do yourself. If you’re too busy to wipe your ass, I will do it for you, so you can do your job instead.”
I lean away. “I can do that last bit myself.”
“And cheers to that,” Press says, toasting with his beer.
Dust, our Recruit-group’s tanker, scratches his cheek. “I’ll have to talk to my Mechanic.”
Dust has a new suit of armor that looks a lot like mine, and has a new high-bandwidth implant just like mine. He’s a tanker, but the principles of driving a tank and flying a fighter require very similar equipment and mods from the pilots and drivers. He also sees the world through his tank’s skin, and requires mind-accelerating mods to give him the reaction time to fight his machine. The only difference is that he doesn’t have my acceleration resistance.
“Why is this only coming up now?” I ask.
“Because you haven’t been in real combat before. This week’s rock-throwing doesn’t count. Also, the Legion expects you to be observable enough to figure this out on your own. So, congratulations.”
“Right,” I nod. That’s a good bit of humbling. He’s right – I have yet to actually fight my Mantis, all I’ve done is act as a first stage to missiles and bombs.
“Now,” Press continues. “To your original question. You haven’t really asked it yet, but I can guess. You want to know why we don’t drive the Legion into the Kingdom, and take over, since they seem to have devolved to racial genocide. Right?”
“Right,” I agree.
“Let’s start from the basics. We all understand how the Valley works. We almost don’t use money. We avoid constructing large cities. We have barely any laws. When we have problem people, they are expelled from the towns they cause problem in. When we have disputes, we resolve them by talking. When someone needs help, others help. Most importantly, we have an absurd education level in our population. You know all this, because you were given the historical context to know how humanity usually operates. You know what capitalism, democracy, dictatorships, fascism, feudalism, and all the other forms of Human delusion are. You know all the way Humans have exploited Humans, and you are trained – drilled – to identify, hate, and resist it all. You hate that the Valley has a government at all, even as you understand that it’s necessary.
“But, again, you know how absurd this is. You know that Humanity has never operated this way before, not on such a large scale, not since the primordial tribes before written history on Earth.
“To make this system work took generations upon generations. Children, then children of children, had to be raised under strict educational regimes that instilled these values in escalating stems. We conditioned our society for these ideals we live under, and it too centuries to achieve.”
I nod. I think I know where he’s going with this.
Mechanic Press continues.
“Now we look at the nations of Forma. Kingdoms, dictatorships, feudal princedoms, theocracies, micro-states, disjointed gang fiefdoms. And in each and every one, the people have been, for generations, raised to live under those systems. They hate their neighbors more than they hate their own government. They will fight and die for their little local lords because at least those lords are theirs. Because fighting for your homeland is honorable. Because defending your home and family is the focus of the individual, irrespective of who’s attacking or who they’re living under.
“Now, imagine what it would take to take over a nation. It would require invading. Killing tens of thousands of defenders. Then, it would require occupying a nation of widows and orphans whose fathers we had just killed, and whose nation and land we’ve just violated. We would need to defend this nation ourselves, now, lest all the neighbors get excited over this newly liberated land.
“Then what? The living will live on, and they will teach their children the way they were taught. They will raise a generation on this even, on this occupation. And that occupation? It’ll have to last decades, centuries, because now we will need to take those children from their parents, and teach them on our values and principles, lest they become corrupted by the old values of whatever kingdom we’ve toppled.
“And now we’ve engaged in a century-long occupation of a single tiny nation, in which we have killed a generation of fathers, and kidnapped and forcibly re-conditioned the children of.”
“Have we tried?” Loom asks. He has been recruited as a potential infiltration specialist in infantry, and he shows off the brains that got him that slot. “All this is theory. We surely have done something with it?”
“Many, many times,” Press agreed.
I interrupt.
“Orphanages.”
Press turns on me with raised eyebrows.
“My hometown has an orphanage,” I explain. “It looks like it can handle ten times the children we have. I heard from Root, the orphanage’s head. There was an event where the orphanage was flooded with foreign children.”
Press nods. “On point, Axe. Yes. There was a little feudal nation that was on the verge of being invaded by its neighbors. They were so patriotic, they were going to kill their children, then themselves, rather than surrender. We gassed the whole nation, and kidnapped all the children. They were raised in the Valley, and are now indistinguishable from any other member of the Valley. We did that, because everything else failed – that nation refused our help, because it was dishonorable to have others protect them. They threatened to nuke themselves if we took over or tried to guard their borders. So we saved the children, and let the country burn. And that was our greatest success.
“We’ve tried takeovers, only to suffer population-sized resistance. We’ve tried subtle means – all defeated by all the other subtle means everyone else is using on each other. We’ve tried to ally with nations – but anyone suspected to trying to ally with the Valley becomes the enemy of all. We’ve tried giving concessions in access to space, and earned a Burning for it.”
“Your point is that we can’t fix the world,” I say.
“Correct.”
“But we still meddle?”
“We stop atrocities to make ourselves feel good. We destroy those that seriously and materially plot against us. And we pick fights to maintain our sharpness. Those are the three reasons we fight.”
“I suppose the key is to be objective about it,” Ash notes.
“It’s absolutely vital that we maintain objectivity, and avoid ego and delusion,” Press agrees. “We kill to protect the Valley, to feel good, and to maintain capability. We don’t do more because we are too weak to do more. We kill because we chose to. The world hates us for very good reasons – we are powerful, meddling, and uncaring for their wants and needs. We bomb their capitals, and – do you think the Kingdom is cheering for the Valley, Axe?”
“You mean, are they thankful we bombed their government, which was about to vote for genocide?”
“Exactly.”
“I suspect not.”
“They are enjoying massive recruitment rates and unity, fueled by their hate – for us. The new government has sworn to destroy Central. They can’t, and won’t. And that rage will be used to support a new, super-nationalistic government. And nothing will change.”
“What if we don’t interfere?” I ask. “Total isolation.”
“Then the world will grow bold, fearless, and will come after us one after another, having seen our isolation as weakness. Plots and alliances will grow, until we have war on all sides. And then we will kill hundreds of millions to drive them back, and go back to doing as we do now.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?”
“We have yet to come up with anything.”
In silence, I get up to add fuel into the cabin’s furnace. I keep the place warm, letting our metabolic systems relax in the comfortable heat. Outside is a rare storm – a genuine blizzard, with winds that make it look like the snow is traveling horizontally, never downwards.
The table is covered in pastries. Dissert. Vent, the woman we have to thank for today’s mighty dinner, sits quietly and sadly behind the table, between Ash and Loom. The other two Legionnaires sit in contemplative silence, studying their food and drinks.
Press drinks, tracking me with his eyes.
And I? I have nothing, except the feeling that I do not like what I hear.
And when there’s something I don’t like, I do something to fix it. It’s what the Ironwood family does – it acts on issues.
But what can I do?

[Dinosawer]

"Local 25 year old looks for way to fix the world that somehow nobody else has thought of yet"
Me too buddy, me too

[Trigger]

29: Peer Enemy
I drop my pen, unable to focus. Leaning back in my chair, I look across my desk at Press.
He looks up at me, and takes his hands off his keyboard, and leans back as well.
We stare at each other across the desk. Through the window to my right, sunlight shines into the office. The pilots and mechanics to my left glance at us, curious.
“Dependence,” I say.
“How?” Press questions.
“Food. Power. Medicine. Protection.”
“They would literally starve rather than take food from us. In part because they fear we would spike the food, which, yes, we would.”
“That was my next idea.”
“Everyone knows we’re master biomechanists, everyone fears our tampering with them on a genetic level. There are population purges in some places, where genetic defects are suspected to be of our cause. Any who are suspected to fall under the influence of our modifications is targeted by their neighbors.”
“What about opening our borders to any that want to immigrate in?”
“We already do that. We have the majority of the world under surveillance. Any who want to migrate in are approached, and quietly smuggled out – along with their families, because anyone related to them who is left behind is inevitably targeted. Many of our best and brightest are the children of such immigrants, because only the more intelligent and rebellious people tend to resort to fleeing into the Valley. You’d be shocked by how few are willing to do it, though.”
“What if we raise the level of education in the world?”
“The nations outside of the Valley take a lot of care to make sure their population is generally poorly educated. We would be directly fighting their government’s active resistance.”
“Hmm.” I look outside the window. “What about an external enemy?”
“Like what?”
“Like a fake alien invasion. Something existential, something threatening everyone equally?”
“Alien invasion. Or a massive plague. Or some new power in the solar system. Yes. But any such thing would need to do real damage to cause any form of unification or re-alignment along the nations of Forma. Once more, we’re looking at billions dead before anything changes.”
I stand up, glaring at my table for a moment.
“Depressing talk,” Five says from beside me. She, along with everyone else, pause to listen to Press and I. Now they lean back into work.
“Yeah.” I grab my swords and lock them onto my armor. I do the same with my rifle. Then, I pick up my helmet.
Geared up, I stand over my office table, glaring at nothing in particular.
“Where are you going?” Wing Leader Lathe slowly asks.
I look at him. I have no idea where I’m going, or why I’m gearing up. Maybe it’s a stress reaction.
The red telephone on Lathe’s table begins to ring.
Lathe’s eyes widen. He leans away from the telephone, looks at it, then at me, then back at the telephone. Finally, he reaches over and picks up the headset.
“Wing 80, ready…” he speaks, and listens.
As he listens, his face deforms from surprise, into grim worry.
“Who else?” he asks the phone. “Is that too few or too many?” Pause. “Orbital support?” Pause. “Groundside?” Pause.
Then Lathe looks up, and speaks to the room.
“Cliffside staging, new, no orbital due to hostile counterbattery. Our ground forces are engaging with armor and infantry. Expected resistance is very large and very modern. Vote.”
Everyone looks at me.
I put on my helmet, and rest my hands on the pommels of my Planar and Estoc swords.
“What’s the issue?” I ask.
“They’re a peer enemy. They can kill us.”
“So?” I ask.
Lathe brings the headset back to his ear. “Accepted.”
The mechanics are already hammering away at their keyboards. The pilots charge for the door. The elevator is waiting. Below, the Mantises are equally ready and waiting.
I sprint to my Mantis, climb in, and settle into my chair.
Outside, I track the automated munitions transports load me up. I am given equipment I’ve never used in action before. My two heavy hardpoints are filled with two massive, gimballed turrets. Each bristles with barrels, optics, antenna. The 12 smaller hardpoints loaded with double-stacked missiles – anti-air sprinters with a range of under 10 kilometers.
This loading process takes longer than usual, and I take the time to warm up my engine and to read up on my ordinance load. The guns are seemingly multipurpose, but today’s ammo load is almost entirely anti-air focused. The missiles are very specific, designed to operate under Silence.
The Mantis has a main gun, built into the hull, and running longways past my cockpit. It’s also being loaded with anti-air shells above all else.
Interesting.
I receive a file. It’s from Press, and it contains a brief on expected opposition. I have no time to read it now – the munitions loaders are done and fleeing me. Lathe taxies out onto the launch tunnel, and boosts out of the mountain.
The Wing follows. As always, I’m the last one out.
Today, each of us gets 10 Wasps. Each has a gun, just like the two I’m carrying today. Instead of missiles, they all carry Silence casters.
My awareness in the Mantis is absurd, and I instantly sense the other Wings forming up in the air over the mountains. The air bases are scattered wide, and it takes a minute for us all to gather at together at altitude.
We’re joined by Trident bombers – giant, high-payload battle-wings. I pass below one, and see what appears to be a massive gun strapped below its center of mass. Interesting.
Another kind of aircraft joins us. It’s one lone flying wing, as large as the bombers, but without any of the armament and with several large domes and antenna instead. It’s a matte black form that quietly drifts past us, and begins to rise up. Over a hundred Wasps follow it.
It’s a Quadrant, a combat control center meant to linger near a battlefield. In a fight like the one we’re going int, it will be the only craft with full situational awareness of the battle.
“We move,” Lathe says, and I form up to follow my Wing Leader.
The flight is long – over four hours west. We’re not boosting, which would burn our Remass a bit too quickly for comfort. We lay in a comfortable supersonic cruise, and I begin to read up on what we’re going into.
“One, I have a question.”
“Go ahead Six.”
“Am I allowed to like our enemy?”
“Bad question. Yes, you are, but not too much.”
“Not a single Human on the front?”
“Not since our first battle with them. They are the one enemy that has killed more of us than we have of them. 30 of our souls, to 25 of theirs.”
“I don’t like that.”
“That’s over the course of 150 years of intermittent combat.”
“150 years of combat and we haven’t wiped them out?”
“We’ve eliminated tense upon tens of forward bases and staging points. But their home turf is a volcanic mountain chain, and their bases and factories are cut out of stone deep under those mountains. To eliminate them, we’d have to beam them from space – and that would kill the civilian populations living on the surface. We can’t eliminate them without giving the Atlantis treatment.”
I snort.
“You know what Atlantis is?” Lathe asks.
“Read about it.”
“Interesting reading choices.”
“I like old stories,” I confess.
“How’re you on Old Earth history?”
“Decedent.”
“These are Cereans.”
“Hard to dig-out raiders?”
“Yes, but I also mean that literally. Cliffside was founded by the Cerean population of the Forma colony ship.”
“Woah.” I’m surprised, to say the least. Ties to the times before the colonization are non-existent, or so I thought. For Lathe to mention this, Cliffsiders must hold onto their history more than anyone else I’ve ever heard of.
“Now, lock in, because we’re almost there. Once Silence is cast, we will not be able to talk. You have one single task, and both our lives depend on this. You must stay with me. Do not fall behind, do not go off on your own. Nothing matters – just stay with me. Your guns will fire on their own. Your defenses will work on their own. But not of it will matter if you do not stick with me. If you fail this, I will come for you in a suicidal attempt to save you, and we will probably both die. Understand?”
“I understand, Wing Leader.”
“The moment your guns fire, go to full throttle. From that point on, your power converter is your throttle. Leave your burn rate at full, and control acceleration with the converter. I will probably be flying at maximum converter output to let our guns fire. You do whatever you need to keep up – even if your guns run out of power.”
“Understood.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for your signal flares. Signal if you need to pull back, and I’ll guide us out. One last thing – when I signal priority target, look for what I dive for, and fire as many air-air missiles at it as I do. But fire only after my salvo hits. Understand?”
“Understand.”
“Repeat.”
“Keep up with you, throttle to max and thrust control with my power converter, keep up with you, watch your flares, and fire missiles once yours hit.”
“Silence is in five minutes. Don’t die.”
“Understood.”
Wing 80 pulls up to higher altitude. It’s a clear day here. Green valleys and forests sprawl out below. A mountain range grows ahead.
And the skies above the mountains swarm.
Tens of thousands of small black arrowheads writhe in a half-sphere around some unknown central point. Yet more of them fill the skies, erupting out of the ground in streams.
Drones, but nothing like what we use. These are most akin to locusts, a species we do not have on Forma – and locusts didn’t need radio or complex data links to remain a swarm.
According to intel, each of the drones has a brain of flesh and blood.
Wing 80 gains altitude. The Trident bombers have fallen behind. The Quadrant is also far behind, but also extremely high overhead – I can see it looming up there, but only because I’m calibrated for it.
I see something else, far below. In the grassland before the mountains, a single Maxwell main battle tank is charging through the tall grass, straight at the swarming mountain range.
The swarm flinches, and in that moment, Silence falls.
The Legion’s presence on this battlefield is a scattered envelopment of aircraft. Now that development begins to emit.
Chaff. Dazzling lasers. Decoys. Infrared blinders. Radar, radio, and microwave jamming. Electromagnetic and radiological. Some of it omnidirectional. The rest is targeted at anything and everything technological in sight.
My radio turns off. Navigation relying on external beacons shuts down. Even my internal compass freaks out. I’m robbed of the airplane’s equivalent of an inner ear, left to judge the world only with my two eyes – and even those struggle to see through the glitter that is the world.
The Maxwell bellow is by far the single most powerful source of Silence. It’s hard to look at. But looking at it is all I can do as I continue to cruise after Lathe.
The Cliffside swarm shifts, deforms, and spreads. It looks like it’s trying to envelop the Maxwell
At first I think the enemy is trying to stay out of range of the Legion tank. But then the Maxwell opens fire.
A single shell reaches out of the slowing tank. It has incredible velocity, and is aimed at the scattering core of the swarm.
I blink my eyes closed the Remass-activated fusion bomb goes off.
The swarm collapses on the tank. By now the Maxwell has slowed down to a stop, and rises up on its treads, deforming from a squat hedgehog into an urchin on four thick, spread-out legs.
A white fire spews out of the tank, transforming into black smoke. It looks like a launching rocket, with flames spilling out from its core and past the four legs. But this fire is not for thrust – this is for power.
Remass burns, and the energy it releases is directed and transformed as effectively as our converters permit.
The Maxwell erupts with fire. At least four laser projectors pulse as one. These are not the kinds of lasers that take a few seconds to kill a targeted – with every pulse of a laser, a Cliff drone turns into gas.
The lasers are joined by rapid firing secondary cannons. These fill the sky with explosions – these are not nukes, but massive Remass payloads reacted as once. These shells carve spheres out of the sky as the drone swarm falls into the Maxwell’s dome of fire.
Then the main gun fires again, its fuse set to something uncomfortably close to zero. The explosion envelops the Maxwell, and the swarm recoils from fire, almost like animals might.
Wing Leader Lathe goes to full thrust, and I lock in on following him. We go not directly at the battle, but seemingly past it, with the nearest projected point well away from the swarm.
My guns fire as one with Lathe’s weapons. The Wasps following us fire as well. This is not a coordinated salvo – coordination is almost impossible right now. Our guns simply see the proximity to the enemy, and uniformly deem the range correct.
My Mantis thumps as the two turrets on my heavy hardpoints discharge with laser fire. I push thrust to full, and then ramp up my converter. More than half of my thrust disappears as the converter works to turn the energy of Remass annihilation into electricity.
Lathe and I rain laser fire onto the swarm below and to the side. Other pairs and Wings make similar passes. Each turret on each fighter and drone works independently, identifying anything that isn’t a Legion asset, and killing it. I see a few terrifying high-flying birds perish, simply because they don’t look like Legion units.
The Swarm reacts to us, expanding from the encirclement around the Maxwell and charging out in every direction. Lathe pulls up, angling us away. I realize we out-pace the drones, although not at full converter power. The frequency of my laser fire slows as electricity becomes somewhat lacking aboard my craft.
Now the guns coaxially locked to each laser come alive. There’s no point in firing both lasers and guns at once, since the recoil from one and the power draw from both cause incompatible disruptions. So the two weapons share a gimbal on each turret. The guns are hybrids chemical-coil accelerators, and draw no less power than the pulse lasers as they throw Remass shells backwards at my pursuers.
Through the pursuing swarm, I see the Maxwell trying to match the power of a volcano, unloading all barrels and guns in every direction at once, melting the land it sits on with its Remass exhaust. It’s a star of fire at the heart of a pillar of black smoke, and it’s the anvil we bounce the Swarm against.
The drone swarm stops its useless pursuit of us, and collapses on the tank. We follow it back in, firing as we carefully stay within the edge of our maximum firing range. The swarm tries to bait us in and lash out, but it seems our pair leaders are well prepared for this.
This problem is that the number of drones isn’t decreasing. As we kill thousands, thousands more flood out from the mountain range. This mass grows, remaining cohesive even as the Maxwell nukes their guts.
When the swarm is twice as large as when the battle started, it becomes focused. As one, the mass detaches from chasing our fighters and drones, takes a moment to arrange itself, and falls upon the Maxwell.
At the same time, I feel something else rising out of the mountains. I focus, and see a mix of artillery shells and missiles coming down – all of it focused on the lone Legion tank.
Lathe pulls us clear, and my guns go silent. I focus on the Maxwell.
It’s why I catch the moment when the burning grassland around the tank rises up. Like demons out of hell, four more Maxwells crawl out of the scorched earth, stand up on their treads, and erupt with fire.
Salvos of nukes alternate places with barrages of laser and shellfire.
The drones don’t try to ram. They explode with cluster shells, single-fire railguns, bomblets, bomb-pumped lasers, and outright nukes. The little machines burn themselves to deliver their payloads as close to the tanks as possible.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be one of those tanks. It must feel like hail in those machines, Like cliffs before an ocean’s storm. The bombs and lasers and fires of the enemy hit, simply by virtue of volume. The Maxwells are bathed in matter and energy, just as they return the same. In Silence, the drones have horrific accuracy and range, and no real coordination. The missiles and artillery fired from the mountains either misses, is intercepted, or is simply ineffective.
Lathe leads us back into range, and we bombard the shrinking swarm as it scatters, reflected by the five tanks.
I wonder how the tanks got there. The first Maxwell was leaving an obvious trail behind it as it charged. The other four must’ve been buried here ahead of time – a stunning degree of planning and foresight.
We chase the swarm towards the mountains, guns firing as we go. Lathe drives us down, until we scrape the mountains on our approach.
Suddenly, a wave of flares erupts from the aircraft above and around us. It’s the signal to drop Silence. I will my own emitters off, and my drones read that as an order.
Within minutes, the jamming disappears.
“Well done,” Lathe tells me. I see Wing 80 on my instruments now, and they reform on Lathe and me as we prowl the canyons between the mountains. “There’s a base somewhere here. It’ll be evacuating—”
We’re traveling at supersonic speeds, navigating narrow mountain valleys and ridges. When the target appears, the exchange takes but one moment.
We turn a corner, and ahead, see a gigantic stacked flying win rising up out of a flatland between the mountains. It’s a matte black sandwich of wings held together by vertical frames. Its size is daunting. It has shocking acceleration – a consequence of what appear to be rocket boosters trying to push it clear of the site.
There’s no time to talk. Wing 80 fires our missiles. Each of us has 12, and everyone fires everything they have – except me.
I’m operating on instructions from Lathe - to fire only after his missiles hit or fail. In this case, they fail – the fleeing Cliffside giant erupts with kinetic fire, saturating the space before our missiles. No amount of evasion or jamming saves our 75 munitions.
Then those guns turn on us, and streams of tracer fire fill my vision.
I feel something strange. It’s a familiar feeling. It’s he feeling of having just the right range, just the right stance, just the right angle. It’s the feeling I get when I know I’m about to make the perfect Planar cut against an Ironwood tree. It’s the kind of feeling that lets me take down a giant tree of immense durability, with just 3 cuts.
For years, I’ve conditioned that feeling to perfection. I know that when I get it, I must move, or lose the cut.
I haven’t trained to resist that feeling.
I forget all previous instructions, and roar as the air is compressed out of my chest.
The Mantis can fly sideways – my aerodynamic surfaces are secondary to the power of my maneuvering thrusters. I don’t roll or pull up – I simply yaw my nose at the ground, and thrust at full power. Acceleration far surpassing the pull of gravity presses me upwards as I drive myself into the ground. My body mostly shuts down for accelerations like this, internal organs locking into rigidity to keep me alive and functional. My reinforced eyeballs and brain remain operational, enough to maintain control.
I yaw again, pointing my Remass torch at the ground, and my nose straight up at the sky. The obelisk of white light erupting from my drive carves a glowing scar into the mountainside as I turn my downward charge into a horizontal glide – still at supersonic speeds.
I am below the Cliff aircraft. All of its bottom-facing guns are rotating to track me, and failing given my immense transverse.
12 missile release from my wings, travel the tiny range to the target, and crash into the Cliffside airship form below.
I boost up, trying to maintain control as I clear the area and look for my Wing. They’re ahead, and turning around. I boost for them, horrified at the realization that I failed my one order, to stay with Lathe.
What I get is not the ass-whooping I deserve.
“What the fuck did you say?” Lathe asks.
“What?” Say? At what point did I say anything?
“What did you say? Did I hear that right?”
Now the entire Wing chimes in on the channel.
“I had no idea adoptions included transference of ancestral genetic memory.”
“Your mother would be so proud!”
“That was primordial, man.”
“What too much tress do to a guy.”
“Did you talk to your therapist about that?”
I want to shout for answers, but I feel no right to speak up – I still terribly guilty for detaching from Lathe.
When the jeering dies down, I ask.
“What, exactly, are you all taking about?”
“My man, you shouted ‘TIMBER’, then decided you were a ground vehicle and went to ram a Cliffside transport.”
“TIMBEEERRR!” someone mocks.
Oops.
“Five, do a visual inspection of Six.”
I watch Five maneuver around me.
“Two wings missing… Both gun pods shot off. Landing gear bays open and empty. One of the fuel tanks is gone.”
Ouch, I think, listening to the description of my Mantis’s condition.
“Ok… Four, you’re shot up too. Take Six, and go home. We’ll use up the rest of our gun ammo and catch up.
“Four, returning to base.”
“Six, returning to base,” I agree, hands shaking. My body is still unlocking from acceleration bracing. I don’t have it in me to argue.
I leave the Wing to snickering, and repeated muttering of the cursed word, ‘timber’.
In my minds eye, I foresee what the next few weeks are going to be like.

[Trigger]

30: Centering
The air is warm. I stand before Judgy. I’m small, and the horse is giant. The beast is terrifying. She stinks, and she has teeth, and eyes that are just too big. She moves, and those hard feet crunch the ground, and all I can think of is my soft skull crunching underneath the hooves of this giant creature.
The wind is cold. I stare at the Ironwood estate. I’ve seen it before – a stranger’s home I’d never be in. But I’ll be in it now. The people there – the old man and old woman that own it – are taking me there. Because it’s my home. Because they’re my parents, now. If I want them to be, they say. And suddenly this strange, large house on the slopes of the mountains is my home. Even though I’ve never been there. Not yet.
The air is humid and hot. I’m drenched in cold sweat. The bear sees me. I see it in its eyes and posture – it already knew I was there by smell, but not it sees me, and it charges. Silently, no roar. I’m too scared to run. It leaps, and I fall flat, punching it as I go down. My fingers creak and crack on impact as I sink into the forest floor. The animal rolls over me, overshooting. Without pause, I shoot to my feet, and sprint away from the bear.
My skin burns in fear. The planar axe cuts through my thigh. I feel nothing but fear. I freeze, and this saves me. Father shouts, rips off his shirt, and lunges towards me. Blood begins to seep through the severed pant leg, just before he wraps the shirt around the leg, then ties it higher up on the leg to constrict blood flow.

The memories begin to get longer. Conversations. Dinners. An entire 3-day camping trip, re-lived.
I try to understand what’s happening. I try to focus.
This generates a now-reflexive response. At my command, my body begins to produce drugs. Crystal.
I focus.
That lets me sit through a memory, start to finish. It’s a talk I’ve had with Forest. It’s the sincerest he has ever been, and that sincerity and lack of humor make me listen to him. He teaches me how to talk to girls, and I listen, in part because he’s so serious about it.
But it’s not the memory I’m here for. What do I need?
I need to remember getting shot.

The chief recruiter pulls the revolver from its holster, and points it at me.
“Axeford Ironwood, do you want to join the Legions?”
“Yes.”
The slug nails me in the left shoulder. There’s no knockback – I stand as I stood, now with a bleeding hole through my clothes.

Nope, wrong memory. That was the first time I’ve been shot. When else have I been shot?

Wing 80 fires on the Cliffside transport wing. The giant flying wing unleashes everything it can point at our missiles, and forms a barrier of fire and shrapnel that our salvo cannot penetrate.
I hold fire. I’ve been ordered to. Wing Leader Lathe ordered me to fire missiles after his missiles hit. So I hold my missiles, but prepare.
There’s a line of attack. An opening. A vector. It’s the feeling of having the right angle for a swing on a tree. It’s the feeling of having a good attack opening in Dance’s melee training.
There’s a hole in the transport’s defenses, between the flying wing and the ground. It has plenty of guns there, but it’s hard to aim at a fast moving, close-range target with the ground for a backdrop.
I turn, and burn into the ground, vectoring below the wing. I lack confidence. I don’t believe that I can survive. So I don’t even try to avoid the incoming fire, expecting to die. I’m simply following the feeling – the sensation of correctness and opportunity that fighting Ironwood trees created, and that Dance polished in training.

Dance. She’s right there, before me, looking into my eyes. And somehow, I know that this is not a memory.
Blood Legion Charger Dance is beside me. I am laying on a bed, in what appears to be a hospital room. The Charger is perched on a stool beside my bed.
“What’s happening?” I gasp.
“You’re having a bad trip on Recall. Focus. Think of what happened when you were shot down.”
I… I was shot down.

On day 1 of the week, I got to fight that Cliffside swarm. For the rest of the week, we were deployed against the same Cliffside site. We labor in shifts, carving the defenders out of the mountains.
On day 4, the last day of Wing 80’s work week, I am shot down.
Crushingly vivid memory hits me.
We’re scouring the mountains at low altitude, again. We’re looking for the most dangerous Cliffside fortifications around – the anti-orbital silos that prevent Black Fleet Units from helping us.
Today, a Black Fleet formation is making a pass overhead. They’re trying to bait out the Cliffside weaponry, so we can eliminate them.
And it works. As Wing 80 crosses a mountain ridge, we crash into the firing lines of a Cliffside silo-fort. It’s opening its maw, preparing to fire munitions into space.
I watch my leader. Wing Leader Lathe’s Mantis jerks. His front thrusters fire away from the silo – he’s going to angle in, to fire.
I react instantly and reflexively, mirroring the move. I focus on the silo, lock in, and pulse my engine at full combat power.
But I am alone. Unlike when it happened, I can now remember that Lathe changed his mind. After the initial jerk, he turned and angled away from the silo, leaving me to attack it alone. I miss this, and attack.
As I pull the trigger, I again shout the cursed word that the rest of the Wing has been abusing me over all week.
Tactical rockets blossom out from my Mantis as I fire everything I have. With incredible acceleration, the unguided missiles stagger into the silo. The range is tiny, and the weapons are hardened – almost all strike the silo.
I am struck by the silo’s defense fire, then by the shockwave and debris generated by my devastating attack.
Once more, I am able to very clearly analyze what is happening, even if I had no understanding of this in the moment of the actual event. As I fire my rockets, and face the incoming wall of fire, I lock up. I have no way to survive this, and so I don’t even try. I simply take the enemy fire, and watch my Mantis shred around me.
When the shockwave and the debris hits, and when I realize that I’m still alive, I finally eject.
The seat fires me at the ground. Small Remass thrusters slow me to a stop above the ground, then let me drop. The seat releases me.
I stand up, surrounded by shockwaves and wind as debris rains around me.
Hostile mountains. Remnants of enemy defenders. And I, alone, on foot.
I have my swords, knives, rifle, and armor. I have my electronic warfare and communications modules.
So I orient on the sun, pick a direction, and break into a sprint.
What follows is a marathon of violence. 30 hours of survival and combat that tear from me every shard of strength I have.
The enemy hunts me. Small robotic tanks scour the mountains. Flying robots swarm the sky. When they find me, they swarm, and slugs rain upon me.
I re-live every single fight, every shot and hit, with unnatural clarity. The human brain shouldn’t be able to recall details so well, but I feel as if I’m right there, re-living reality.
Common sense dictates I use my gun, not my swords. Like a sane, decent person, I use my rifle to kill dozens upon dozens of drones. Magazines of the rocket-propelled, Remass-explosive, Planar-shrapnel slugs are sent downrange, killing the machines that struggle so hard to end me. Several times, I fire my flares, and nearby aircraft drop missiles on my signals. Every time I am enveloped in fire, left to crawl out of debris and smoke as Cliffside drones try to find me through the destruction.
Then I run out of ammo, and regress to weapons that require no ammo.
That’s not exactly right, of course. My Estoc runs out of Remass a few hours in, having slagged several robotic tanks. The Planar sword lasts longer, but in the last push for freedom, the crystal blade breaks off inside an enemy machine.
When I run into a Legion Maxwell, the driver shouts at me through the tank’s speakers. He shouts directions, and I run off.
Eventually I find one of the infantry staging bases. Without speaking a word to anyone, I stumble into a Backbone, sit, and pass out.

In my field of vision are 4 medics, Wing Leader Lathe, and my mechanic Pressure.
Another memory.
Eyes are staring at me. One of the medics is shining a light into my face.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Pilot Ironwood, listen carefully,” one of the medics says. “You are under the influence of a bypass drug, which is the only way we’ve managed to get you to talk to us. It won’t last long before your body purges it. You need to, immediately, release your armor.”
I look to Lathe.
“Do it,” Wing Leader Lathe orders.
I focus. It’s difficult for some reason, but I manage to will my body into unlocking from my armor. Connectors release the shell of Ironwood I’m encased in.
Pain. Immense pain. Unlocking connectors requires some motion, and what I feel now suggests that every muscle in my body is fused into one massive bruise.
Hands grab me, and begin to strip me of armor – arms, then torso, then legs. The motion crushes me with more agony. I try to fill myself with Necro, and fail – my adrenal glands are not responding.
Through the agony, sweat and tears, I look in surprise at that armor. My armor. It’s burned, scorched, and outright broken in places.
My weapons. The rifle is as damaged as my armor. The swords are totally destroyed – the Planar is missing its crystal. The Estoc is… bent? That’s not right.
“He’s crashing,” the medic says.
“Am not,” I argue.

Newer memories are fuzzy. I wake up again, in the hospital room. My mechanic talks to me. Then Dance comes in, and gives me a pill to eat. She tells me I need to recall everything that happened. And I do.

Reality hits, and locks in. I know I am not in a memory, even though re-living as I just did was a fully immersive experience. I was certain I was living the events I recalled, just as I am certain I am back to reality now.
But I’m not remembering anymore. I’m living something new, now.
The room seems empty. I shift on the bed, and my body reacts with instant pain. I groan, and that wakes Dance.
She must’ve been laying on the floor. Now she sits up and looks at me.
“Are you back?” she asks.
“Is this real?” I groan.
“Yes. You’re out of your memories. Sorry. You had a very strong reaction to Recall. When you teach your body to make it, it’ll be a lot milder. And a lot more controlled.”
“Was that necessary?”
“Yes. I know it sucked, but it’s critical that you do this after every fight. To learn. So what did you learn?”
What did I learn? I lived through that, twice by the feel of it. What could I have learned from that?
I made a horrible mistake. I left my lead. The one order I had, that was supposed to supersede everything, was to stay with Lathe. And I failed to do that, twice.
But I knew this. The moment it happened, I knew I made a mistake. I didn’t need to re-live it to learn it. I’m sure Lathe will hammer me for this disaster later.
What did I learn?
I learned that twice, after firing my weapons, I locked up. Both times, after exploiting a line of attack and firing on a target, I froze. One, I made it out alive. The second time, I was shot down, having failed to evade, defend, or resist the incoming damage.
But that would be absurd to say. My first and foremost mistake…
“I failed to stay with Lathe.”
“ERRR! WRONG! Try again!” Dance, still on the floor, leans against the wall. The too-small chair is forgotten.
“Why is that not a mistake?” I ask.
“Because I reviewed the records. The first time, you were under orders to fire after your lead’s weapons hit. So you maneuvered to make that happen. The second time you actually saw your lead turning in, and followed. Lathe remembered that his partner is new, and changed his mind – but too late. Both times are, arguably a consequence of you being able to react better than expected.”
“I don’t think Lathe will see it that way.”
“It is the only way Lathe will see it. You’re in the Legions. You’re expected to find and exploit opportunities. The issue is that you don’t have the skills to survive afterwards.”
“I froze up,” I conclude.
“Yes, you did. And that’s the mistake you made – twice.”
“There’s another mistake I made,” I mutter.
Dance’s face breaks into a huge smile.
“Yes, your war cry is a bit absurd,” she agrees, “but at least it’s original!”
“Disastrous,” I mutter. I mean that in general – I’ve lost 2 aircraft, crashed, failed to obey orders, and ended up… Like this.
Dance stands. “Get up?”
“What for?” I ask.
“You’re a Legionnaire. You don’t heal by laying in bed. Get up, pull the tubes out from between your butt cheeks, clean up, and meet me in the mess.”
She leaves, and I’m let alone.
Get up? How? I can barely move.
But I do get up. Slowly, I roll over and up. The giant bruise that is my body is in rebellion, and I sweat in pain as I sit up.
I spot my Card. Happy for the distraction, I grab and activate it.

Axe: I lived.
Pan: Bruh.
Lance: What happened?
Axe: Got shot down.
Lance: You said you were damaged?
Axe: That was day 1. I got shot down day 4.
Pan: For real? What happened?
Axe: Same thing as day 1.
Pan: You saw a big, juicy target, charged in, shot it, and almost died?
Axe: Yes.
Pan: TIMBERRRR!
Lance: TIMBERRRRR!

I turn the Card off, and get up. After a minute of de-tubing, I hobble into the bathroom.
The shower burns. Dressing is agony. But when I’m clean and dressed, I feel infinitely better than I did just minutes before, laying in bed. With every motion, my cords release and relax.
I hobble out into the hall, and follow the signs to the mess.
Dance is there. My mountain of food is already on a tray, at a table.
I sit to eat. Porridge.
“Feeling?” Dance asks.
I feel like shit. I’ve failed, repeatedly. I’ve betrayed trust. I’ve lost Legion equipment. I locked up in a fight.
“I see,” Dance concludes.
“What do I do?” I ask between spoons.
“About?”
“About this massive fuckup of mine,” I elaborate.
“It’s quite simple. You improve. Right now, you need to process events and repair. Later, you need training.”
“Process events? How? Back to the therapist?”
“Amongst other things, yes. But you need to make this a routine after injuries and shocks. Wake up. Get up. Clean. Eat. Then… I’ll show you what I do, maybe it’ll take to you.”
I shovel porridge into my mouth too quickly to speak.
“You need to be open to some fairly vague and conceptual things here,” Dance continues. She actually seems reluctant to explain this. “Usually I would only start with this after you gain a healthy amount of combat-induced superstition. But you need it now, so I hope you’re not too atheistic.”
I stop shoveling porridge.
“What?” I ask over the spoon.
“You’re a biomechanic, right?”
“Right…”
“Do you have any… awe for the beauty of nature, or something like it?”
I set the spoon down. “Dance, I can, from memory, write out the genetic code for several kinds of plants, and a few animals. I do not have ‘awe for the beauty of nature’, I know how it works and how it evolved.”
“Ok, but do you ever just enjoy looking at a good view? Clouds? Forests? Anything?”
I blink, one eye at a time. “Dance… Are you going to ask me to get in touch with my inner energy?”
“You were told?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “No, I was not told. I was joking.”
“Then jokes on you, because that’s exactly what I’ll be trying to make you do.”
“Dance…”
“Axe, kindly shut up. I am a Charger of the Blood Legion, when I tell you what you need to do to survive, you shut up and do as I say. If I tell you to re-arrange your chakras, you best be reaching for a hammer, or I’ll be reaching my boot up your ass – because whether you cooperate or not, I will make sure you live long. And for that you need to be able to meditate yourself into centering, especially after shell shock.”
“Centering?”
“Are you done eating?”
I look down at my bowl, then continue shoveling.
When I finish eating, I follow Dance. I am full of outrage – she wants me to believe in some made up nonsense like ‘internal energy’? She wants me to meditate? And what is this ‘centering’? Just because she believes in some made up crap, doesn’t mean it’ll do me any good.
I grow anxious. I don’t want to deal with this, and I don’t want to suffer having strange beliefs inflicted onto me by someone of greater rank and authority. I won’t be able to argue back, not against someone as high up as a Charger. Enduring having weird belief-based crap pushed onto me is something I never want to suffer.
But I follow Dance, because I can do nothing else.
“What about my armor?” I ask.
“Will be delivered to your cabin later today. It’s being repaired.”
My detour attempt fails. But I think Dance senses my internal turmoil.
“Axe, assume that I am not insane. Work with me, long enough to understand my point.”
“Sure.”
“Did you ever have a place where you were calm and comfortable?”
“Sure,” I say. That’s easy. “Back home, there was an old Ironwood log on the edge of our forest. A discarded chunk of an ancient tree. It’s up on the slopes. You could see the whole town from there. I spent a giant chunk of my childhood there, resting or reading or sleeping.”
Dance stops and turns on me.
“Axe, that’s perfect. What did you like about the spot?”
I shrug. “No people. Can’t hear people, either. No one could see me. But I could see the whole town, and all the clouds in the world above that. If I wanted to sleep, I could lay down in the grass. If I wanted to think, no one would ever bother me.”
Dance turns away. “I know where we’re going.”
We leave the hospital, get on a tram, and ride for a while. Legion Home is too large for me to know from memory, so I realize that we’re near my home only when I spot some distinct buildings and structures on the surrounding ridges.
We don’t head home, though. The tram stops a station out, and we climb out.
There are no buildings here – just a trail leading up the mountain.
We climb. Pain turns to burning heat as my body wakes up, and begins to circulate blood through the damage.
This is not normal, but I am not really Human anymore. My internal processes respond to trauma differently than a Humans, and where rest is a Human need, motion is my need.
At the top of the ridge, I first spot nothing of interest. Sunset is imminent, and the wind is picking up. The skies are clear, but the wind carries snow up and over the ridge. We stand in the gale, overlooking the world from what could pass for its peak. Barely any Legion structures are visible from here – most of them are behind other terrain.
There’s one structure here – a kind of self-check-in board with a few rows of hooks. Each hook has a board with white and red sides. Both sides have the same number on them, a different digit for each board. 3 of the 20 boards are flipped red.
Dance flips a 4th board to red, and leads the way. The trail leads down the ridge, passing distantly-spaced poles with numbers on them. We reach the pole with the same number as the board Dance flipped. There Dance goes off the trail, and into the deep snow.
My boots hit something solid under my feet. I kick aside some snow, and discover wooden boards.
Dance looks around, punches into the snow, and pulls out a shovel. In seconds, she clears out a square wooden platform, and sets the shovel back down.
As she works, I look around. The platform is positioned such that the snow and wind blasting from the far side of the ridge arc up, past, and over it. Compared to the many meters of snow just a bit up or down the ridge, the platform was barely peppered.
The view… as with many places at Blood Legion Home, the views are magnificent.
“Sit,” Dance shouts over the wind. “Sit, and rest.”
“For how long?” I shout back.
“For however long you feel like. Your body should be able to handle a day or so, at most, before you start to freeze.”
“What is this for?” I shout into the wind as I look around. “Is this punishment?”
“No, it’s how you center! Or how I center, at least. Don’t touch your Card, and let your mind boil out. When you’re good, head home.”
“When I’m good?” I demand. “I’m already good! It’s cold, and I’m not wearing armor?”
“You’re a legionnaire, you’ll be fine! Just sit, and relax.”
“And you?”
“I have work to do!”
“You’re leaving?”
Her helmeted head nods. “Give it a try, Axe! I’ll talk to you tomorrow!”
“I need to report to Lathe!” I shout.
“Lathe doesn’t want to see you until tomorrow’s shift! No one needs you to do anything but recover right now!”
“Recover? Like this?”
“Yes!”
I look around. When I turn back to shout at Dance, she’s gone.
I’m in my uniform, without weapons or armor. The freezing wind more annoying than anything else – I sit for stability as I try to figure out what to do. A curtain of snow crashes past me, occasionally obstructing the view. Very little snow actually reaches me a – strange quirk of the location’s aerodynamics.
I sit on the wooden platform, alone, with nothing to do. Steam begins to rise around me as my body adjusts thermal generation to compensate for the wind and cold.
My eyes wander the landscape. I scratch my nose, then my neck. Then I change how I sit.
Left with nothing to do, with no external input other than the seemingly unchanging scenery, my thoughts begin to echo.
I sit, and try to understand what I’m supposed to do.

[Trigger]

31: Catchup
“Axeford Ironwood, reporting.”
Wing Leader Lathe looks up from his work.
I brace to get my ass chewed off. Instead, I get something mildly worse.
Lathe, without a word, extends an open hand towards the pilot to his right.
Two pipes up. “Hello Axeford! How was the forest? Poach any trees from those mountains?”
Three takes up the line, without giving me a chance to answer. “I got you something.” She reaches under his desk, and pulls out a factory-oil-smelling Planar axe. “For the next time you decide to chop some timber in an enemy forest.”
“Have you seen our new alarm clock?” Four asks, pointing. I look at the box sitting on the window sill beside my table, at the end of the row of tables. The box has a speaker grid, and a time display. At that very moment, the time ticks over from 07,59 to 08,00. The clock speaks up with a syntenic voice, interrupted by a wildly low-quality recording of my voice.
“Beep. Beep. The time is – TIMERRRR!” the clock says.
Five has a can of paint on her desk, along with a brush. She pats that can. “For your armor,” she explains. “For better forest combat performance.”
Only the 5 pilots speak. The mechanics are deadly silent. But all 11 heads turn to my empty seat by the window, and by that cursed clock.
Then, they turn to me.
I am prepared for this like I've never been prepared for anything else in my life.
I reach into one of the utility pouches on my armor’s belt. “So, there was a big chunk of wood lodged in under my pauldron,” I explain. “And another shard of it in one of my pouches. So I made you all a few---” I reach in and start handing out the items, “---little carvings.”
Lathe takes his horse carving – it’s primitive and blocky, but the piece of wood generated by my running through a tree wasn’t exactly quality material. He’s actually stunned silent – and so are others. All I get as I hand out the carvings is sputtered awe.
“How big were these chunks of wood?” Five demands, looking over her Rook.
“I think I must’ve carved out a piece at some point,” I explain. “The one in my pouch was a nicely cut block.” I hand the last piece – a little wooden wrench – to Pressure, and sit at my table.
There’s something there, on the table. An envelope. The address on the cover is printed, and points to Legion home, followed by my name. The envelope is unsealed.
I peek in, and then take out the single rectangle of laminated paper.
It’s a picture, of me, in armor, in the mountains, sprinting at the camera with my Planar sword swinging down from across my shoulder.
“Who…” I bring the picture closer to my face. “Who took this? Who sent this?”
“Cliffside embassy,” Lathe explains.
I drop the picture onto the table, and stare up at the ceiling.
“The enemy,” I slowly pronounce, “that we’ve been fighting all week, sent me this?”
“You should send this to your family,” Five suggests.
“I will not.”
“Axe, why is your face like that?” Lathe asks, leaning forward to look at me.
“It’s genetic,” I joke.
“Is that frostbite? That’s new.”
“Dance said I needed ‘Centering’,” I explain.
“Oh my god, you had a Charger teach him Centering?” Five asks Lathe.
He shrugs. “Dance knows him best. So what, did she make you sit at the base of a mountain, under a waterfall full of chunks of ice, naked?”
“On top of a mountain, without armor,” I correct.
“Good grace,” Lathe laughs. “And then what happened?”
“Well, she told me to ‘recover’.”
“And?”
“And,” I explain, “I took that to mean recovering mentally. So I tried to meditate.”
“And?” Lathe repeats.
“And I went into a trance, and sort of sat there all night. Towards the end I ran out of calories and started to freeze up a bit.” I point to my face, which is now covered in protective healing cream over all the frost burns.
“Oh, okay,” Five says. “So that’s why the Charger likes him. He’s weird.”
“We knew this,” Lathe says. “Axeford, what was your mistake?”
“I froze up in the middle of a fight,” quickly reply.
Lathe nods. “Good. Sorry for confusing you with orders, and for the confusing maneuvers. Next time I’ll go in. But for that you need more training.”
I nod. “What am I doing?”
“Bullet hell time in the simulator. Evasion conditioning. Reflex buildup. I have a schedule programmed for you.”
“Understood. Are we on call?”
“Not today, but tomorrow we’re going out to continue Cliffside cleanup.”
I turn to Pressure. “My Mantis?”
“Your first one, that you damaged, is ready to go,” he grumbles.
“Thanks.” I get up, and pick up my helmet. “I’ll be at the simulators.”

To Ironwood Estate, Ironwood Terr., Northern Reach, Valley.
Mother, Father, brothers and sisters, friend,
Last week, I got shot down. I spent a day hiking from the mountains where I crashed.
As recompense, I was left to meditate atop a mountain, in the blizzard. Now they’re teaching me to dodge bullets.
I think I miss living at lower altitudes. There’s almost no plant life up here, and the view is all snow and stone.
The mountains where I crashed were different, though. They were lower, and covered in strange trees I’ve never seen outside of the encyclopedia. I got some samples, and made some carvings. I had to use most of it to make carvings for my Wing’s pilots and mechanics, but I had enough left for one more. I’m attaching it.
I’m also attaching the photograph the enemy sent us. A picture of me, from the perspective of one of their combat robots. Yes, our enemies send us mail. I’m still a bit confused about that.
All is well.
Axeford Ironwood

Wing 80 isn’t really necessary for competing Cliffside cleanup. We still show up, and I suspect it’s simply because Lathe wants to make sure I don’t have any lingering fear of fighting Cliffside forces. A kind of stress test after a traumatic experience.
We overly the scorched enemy territory, carrying sensor pods on our heavy hardpoints, using the Wasps to extend the seep range. When we find something, another Wing comes down to kill it. All the large bases and fortifications are gone by now – only campouts of enemy robots remain.
I’m overly on-edge the entire operation, fearing another lethal mistake that might kill me or my wingmates. The lingering shock is undoubtedly there, a consequence of disaster nearly averted. I fly with too much care, and too much timidity.
By the 4th day of the week, that largely goes away. Having spent the week sweeping terrain, on-edge and alert, my sensitivity naturally tunes back down under the pressure of exhaustion.
It’s the 4th, and the clock ticks will soon tick over 18,00. We returned from the mission half an hour ago, and everyone is simply lingering out the last half hour, waiting to go home.
“Axe.”
“Yes, Lathe?”
“What do you do on your free time?”
“My what?”
Lathe rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, classic.”
I sigh to give myself time to think.
“Mornings is for lazing around sleeping and studying. Then Dance’s training.”
“You go to the Charger even on the weekends?”
“Keeps me fresh. Also on the 6th my Recruit group usually gathers at my place to catch up. Though we’re done one since one left for the Navy.”
“So really, you use your free time to get beaten up by a Charger, and to read manuals on your Card.”
“Manuals, history, reports, some interesting papers on wars and battles. There’s a lot.”
“Word of advice,” Lathe says. “Find something mindless and fun to do.”
“Like?”
“Woodworking. Paining. Computer games.”
I feel my face contort.
“You think it’s wasting time?”
“Sort of. Yes.”
“You need something to do that isn’t being a Legionnaire. Or you’ll wear down and break.”
This is the kind of statement I know to receive as the word of god.
“I’ll figure something out,” I agree. “What do you do?”
“I train horses.”
I look at him in silent questioning.
“We have a cavalry force,” he explains.
“We do?” I interrupt.
“Come visit some time. Though they’re not exactly normal horses.”
“I had a not exactly normal horse,” I say.
“Oh yeah?”
“Her name was Judgy. She could drag multi-ton logs all day every day. All muscle and attitude.”
“A work horse,” Lathe nod. “I work on war horses. They’re trained to kill. If you visit, come on a day when you’re in peak condition.”
“Will do,” I agree.
The clock hits 18,00. Fortunately it only screams in my voice in the mornings.
“Beep. Beep. The time is 18,00.”

Axe: Samedays, I’ve got a question. What do you do on your free time?
Pan: I have broken the hearts of every handsome man within 10 kilometers.
Lance: That’s, what, all 3 of them by your standards?
Axe: That doesn’t seem right.
Pan: You’re handsome on the inside, Axe.
Lance: Lol.
Axe: Lol.
Pan: What?
Lance: It’s funny because our dicks are on the inside now, most times.
Pan: LOL
Axe: For the record, it’s the best mod I’ve yet to receive.
Axe: What do you do Lance.
Lance: I play Fantasy.
Axe: Board game or something?
Pan: Now THAT’S funny.
Lance: It’s a computer game. Connector integrated.
Axe: Really? Video games?
Lance: Go to supply, ask them for a VR interface.

I look up. I’m in the tram, headed home from the Wing 80 office. Supply is down this line, a few stations past my place.
Alright. Why not.
Videogames have a horrible reputation in the valley. Why would you ever waste your time like that? Creating nothing, learning nothing practical, just letting your brain generate satisfaction chemicals from fake stimuli. It’s something you do if you hate your work, or your life, or both. And if that’s the case, games fix nothing – they just let you distract and endure. Worse, they can be addictive, and an easy way to burn your life.
Do I hate my work? No, of course not. I wish they’d let me fly more, and fight more. I wish I had more time in the day, to do more of what I already do. My free time is for learning more, not for using it up like aged milk that’s only good for crapes.
If it were me, I’d change nothing. I’m on week 3 of being a Legion Exterminator Pilot, and I’m only just building up a routine. Yes, that routine doesn’t include wasting time on horses or games, though I did do some woodworking last weekend to appease my Wing’s tempers and to send something home.
But I have my orders. And Lance, a very serious and composed man whose judgement I trust, has made his recommendation.
I get out of the tram, and make it up to supply. I’m lucky enough to catch the Plan Clerk on his shift.
“Ironwood.”
“Hello, Plan.”
“What do you need, son?”
“VR interface.”
He stands. “What for?”
“Something called ‘Fantasy’.”
He leaves his booth, and comes back out half a minute later, carrying a connector plug and a tablet.
“What’s the tablet for?” I ask, taking the items.
“Spreadsheets.”
“What?”
“It has the pre-installs. Take it.”
“Fine, fine.” I stow both in my belt pack. “Food recommendations? The last place you sent me to was too spicy.”
“Too spicy? Seriously?”
“I am a Northwesterner, don’t judge.”
“Oh I judge.”
He gives me another address nearby. This tram stop is a support hub, and restaurants here are aplenty. I like it here, because every food place gets excited when a Legionnaire walks in. Their usual customers are support personnel, since Legionnaires tend to prefer more specialized places. When I show up, I am served in excess, which is always a bonus where my metabolism is concerned.
I eat, exhale the tension of a day’s work, and head home.
There, clean and fed, with a fire burning in the furnace, I sit down to figure out how to work the first computer game I’ve touched in just under a decade.

[Dinosawer]

Videogames have a horrible reputation in the valley. Why would you ever waste your time like that? Creating nothing, learning nothing practical, just letting your brain generate satisfaction chemicals from fake stimuli.

Ah, I see they've met my mother

[Trigger]

32: Fantasy
I am a Legionnaire of Blood Legion of the Valley of Forma. I weigh about 150 kilograms, and can deadlift horses. I am a trained murderer - in the mornings, I fly a fighter craft and kill people in and from the sky. In the afternoons I train in swordsmanship, and in flying with rockets strapped to my hands and legs. Before dinner, I sit atop a mountain for an hour, in nothing by a thin uniform, meditating. Cleaning, cooking, supply, repair, and maintenance is all done for me by support personnel whose only purpose in life is to make sure I have as much time as possible to master warfare and murder.
Today, I dedicate 1 out of the day’s 36 hour to playing a computer game.
It feels horrible. It’s a waste of time for so many people who support me. Instead of doing something useful, I do whatever this is.
Except my commanding officer tells me that it’s not a waste. Just as I spend time in therapy, or with my friends once a week… Just as I now spend time sitting atop a mountain once a day. These are things that take up time, and that are not strictly essential to my work. But therapy keeps me sane, the weekly get-together with my Recruit group lets me exhale, and sitting in the wind overlooking the frozen world forces me to sort through my thoughts from the day. And these are all things that are, unfortunately, necessary for my humanity to remain intact.
So I force myself to use 1 hour of today to explore a computer game called fantasy.
I sit on my couch, and lean forward enough to connect the plug module into my high-bandwidth spinal connector. It’s the same connector I use to feel my Mantis, but the interface I plug in now is comparatively simple.
I actually did examine the plug. It has few connector pins, and only the ones with lower-level access. This module is physically, as by the hardware’s design, incapable of the higher-bandwidth, high-access connections that my Mantis requires.
The plug echoes in my mind.
<Calibration start.>
Sure.
Nothing happens, except I feel the sensation of progress. Fine. While I wait, I get up for a snack.
<Calibration done.>
<Run Fantasy,> I command.
<Loading Fantasy. No account found – create new account?>
<Do it.>
I am presented with a blank volume, and a text box. Frowning, I glance at the tablet sitting on the table nearby – it duplicates the visuals being delivered to my brain. Yep, blank screen with a text box. Arrows on the sides…
I begin to scroll right. The space is filled by… cartoonish, human-looking animals. Cats, dogs, birds… All with legs and hands, with five fingers on each hand, standing upright. The art style is comfortably far from realism, and overall, all of them look well distanced from the uncanny valley. Cute, I decide. The variation on size, shape and style is also good – each of the weird little animals has distinctly different build from the others.
The moment I wonder which of the animals will look most like me, I run into what I can only describe as a minotaur – a beast of muscle, with horns, a snout, and a looming stance. Nope, that’s too close to reality. I already live this life, I don’t need to play it as well.
Having scrolled through the entire selection, I end up back at the cat. Small stance, upright, and quite cute. If I could change the color…
I can. In fact, I find I can change pretty much every proportion on this little character. I can make the cat-dude quite tall, or comedically short. I can change the size of his legs, or shoulders, or anything else, on what seems to be a skeletal level.
Interestingly enough, there’s a hard limit on how much muscle I can put on the guy. That must be something that is controlled by something in the game.
When I was small, I liked to play with dolls. The orphanage had a lot of them, and little clothes for dressing those dolls up. Kid Axeford loved that stuff – and my willingness to play with those toys was a big part of getting friendly with some of my younger siblings after I was adopted.
A beeping goes off on the table. I look at my Card, and at the 1-hour timer that just ran out on its screen.
Then I stare back at the tablet in horror.
I had just spent an hour on the character creation screen.
I haven’t even played the game.
Quickly, I finalize. Name, Axe. Hometown… Why does the game want to know my hometown? Whatever. ‘Ironwood’.
Create. Play? No. Save and exit.
The blank tablet reflects my face. I sit, and consider.
The sort of enjoyment I got out of this last hour is wildly nostalgic. I let myself process it for a while, remembering childhood, remembering the excitement I felt when playing with toys back then. When was the last time I felt that sort of excitement? When did I stop feeling it?
Interesting. I’ll have to take care to enjoy things, even if adulthood trained me out of this sort of childish enjoyment. I miss the feeling, and there’s no reason not to enjoy it.
Introspection complete, I head out to Dance’s dojo.

I’m past regular training for qualification when it comes to the Charger’s instruction. With my quals acquired, I no longer have to be there at strict hours. Instead I go there to suffer whatever miscellaneous nonsense Dance wants me to do that day.
Today is a very interesting day. Two other Chargers are present, and Dance is cycling everyone who shows up for melee training through the guests.
The two new giants are fighting non-stop, against as many people as are still standing at any one time. Shattered trainer weapons are scattered about, and Dance occasionally throws in new swords to replace broken ones. Normal Legionnaires are getting thrown around into the floors, walls, and ceilings.
When too few trainees are standing, the Chargers turn on each other.
I switch my swords and knives for trainers, and stow my rifle and electronic warfare module to reduce my weight. After a moment of thought, I decide to put on my rockets.
Then, I begin to circle. Far away, well outside the fight and the Charger’s reach. I watch how they fight, and devise a plan as my rockets warm up.
There’s a moment when the Chargers swat aside the other Legionnaires, scattering them across the room. It’s the moment I wanted, not because it’s the most advantageous, but because it is guaranteed to grab their undivided attention.
I turn in, and sprint.
The nearest Charger turns on me. The other one turns to watch, but stays back.
My target is shorter than Dance’s 2.6 meters, and wears flat bright red colors on a custom set of unusually layered and shaped armor. The helmet has a vertical wedge for a face, with rows of transparent slits on the sides.
As all chargers, they have more specialized versions of Estoc and Planar swords. These are real greatswords, with oversize handles, a set of parrying hooks halfway up the weapon’s length, and over two meters of length that only Chargers can comfortably wield.
In a flash, the red Charger swaps to their Estoc, locking the Planar into their articulated holster. I already have my own Planar out. As fun as it is to swing around Planars, my goal for today is to land a good hit against an armored opponent, and the Remass Estoc is designed for just that.
This red Charger abuses their reach to make hits from outside of the shorter opponent’s range. They attack the moment they see the target move, hitting to interrupt any action.
This is a counterattack – an attack made into an attack, possible against good simple direct attacks only with a massive speed advantage. The Charger has that advantage.
I don’t mother to make a simple attack, I have too much distance to close for that to work. I don’t try to parry that attack either – the Charger is good enough to feint if I try that. I also don’t try to make a compound attack – a feint would only get me counterattacked in the middle of my compound.
I light off my rockets with a lunge. It’s a huge, long-range charge. The scariest part of this move is my ability to stop dead in my tracks right as I enter the opponents range, then to hit after their panicked defense or counterattack finds no target.
But I don’t try this now. I pulse forward, and almost immediately reverse my speed.
The point of the red Charger’s sword is suddenly in front of me. They counter-lunged, using their massive sword and immense physical reach to hit me before the usual stopping point. My early halt saves me, and leaves them in motion towards me.
And I am already pulsing again, gliding down the Charger’s Estoc with my own sword, and thrusting into their helmet.
Or so they think. Their parry is fast and reasonably predictable. They pull back their weapon, and try to guard their face. I’m not aiming for that helmet, not anymore – I retarget into their chest, and drive my practice Estoc into that chestplate.
My practice Estoc shatters, shards of metal scattering in all directions. The Charger’s three-hander Estoc comes around, and the pommel crashes into the side of my head, throwing my powered charge off-course. I fly past, take a kick from the other Charger, and pulse to a stop on the far side of the room.
I’m saved by the reflex that Dance drilled into me. The moment my Estoc breaks, I release it and draw my Planar. By the time I’m stopped and turned around, the practice Planar is in my hands and ready to parry the red Charger.
Red follows me across the room, their Estoc aiming for my head again.
I don’t even try to defend. Using the same pulse that brings me to a stop I pulse back at red, falling down and cutting for the Charger’s forward leg. The Estoc clips the top of my helmet and bounces off as I swing.
A leg hit against a Charger proves unlikely. They simply raise that leg over my swing, then kick me in the face.
My rocket-powered mass meet’s the Charger’s boot, and the boot wins. I bounce off and crash to the floor.
Neither of the two kicks I’ve received are viable attacks. I don’t feel them through the armor, except as a pressure across the entire surface area of my body, and through the connectors anchored into my muscles. The kicks are range control – the first sent me away, the second stopped me nearby.
The key to taking a kick to the head in armor is to not let it distract you. It can’t hurt me, it doesn’t stun me, it’s simply jarring. Dance kicks me several times a day to make sure it doesn’t disrupt what I do. And so when I take red’s kick, my arms continue the swing of my planar, letting it circle around and crash against the shin of the leg standing on my face.
Unfortunately I find myself in grappling range with a Legion Charger. Hands crash down on me, looking for joints to isolate and dislocate. I try attacks with my daggers, but both are swatted aside.
In grappling, I find myself utterly outmatched by superior strength and experience. The red Charger dislocates my elbows and shoulders, grabs me by the legs, and flings me out of the ring and against the wall near Dance.
I crash to the floor, and shudder as the absurd chemical high I drove myself into begins to subside. Liquid Fire and Crystal drain from me, letting Necro take its place.
With a flex, I pop my elbows and shoulders back into their sockets.
“I should’ve stretched,” I mutter.
<WELL DONE!> comes a direct comms signal from Dance. She doesn’t want the praise to be overheard in the middle of all the action.
<Suggestions?> I code back. In this context, it’s a request for advice.
<Repeat against hostile #2.>
<Understood.>
I get up, and carefully bring my internal biochemistry under control. Slowly I ramp up Liquid Fire and Crystal levels, bringing myself back into the speed and adrenalin high I need to fight these fools.
The second Charger – a set of gray armor with blue trim, with an armor made of sharp edges and flat surfaces – is ignoring the red as that one wipes the floor with other Legionnaires. Gray stands alone, facing me.
Waiting.
Dance hands me a new set of swords and knives. I holder all but the Estoc, and then slowly, carefully, advance.
Dance told me to do more of the rocket-propelled nonsense I just pulled off against red. I’ll do that. But I will also mix things up.
I feel, with my gut and soul, for the gray Charger’s range. I know the moment I step into it, and linger there for a fraction of a second before retreating out. That earns me an Estoc thrust about 10 centimeters short of my head.
Seeing me retreat, the Charger gains on the lunge and begins to chase me down. Carefully, without any commitment, they advance.
I pulse my thrusters at them, filling the space between us with fire.
That triggers exactly what I hope it would. Seeing the smoke screen, the Charger decided that I wouldn’t be stupid enough to advance through it. They, instead, attack through the fire, hoping to catch up and skewer me.
I am stupid enough to advance, though. A pulse in the opposite direction sends me crashing into them. Shoulder checking a Charger is stupid, but it does give me a chance to smash my Remass dagger onto the back of their neck.
Gray twists around, grabs the hand holding the dagger, and flings me out of the fire and into the ground. I bounce up, only to take an Estoc thrust to the chest. I stumble back, then backpedal out of the ring.
An Estoc thrust to the chest and a Planar cut to the leg on the red Charger.
An Remass dagger thrust into the neck of the grey Charger.
Today is a good day.
Dance slams a head down on my helmet, and rubs it.
“You beautiful bastard!”
“Nice,” I say, pleased and winded. “Nice.”
I watch as the red Charger grabs a Legionnaire by the neck, yanks his sword out of his hands with the other, and flings the man aside. Then red twists around and flings the sword at me.
Dance steps forward, slaps the sword aside, and charges into the brawl.
Gray and red instantly fall into a squat, drawing Estocs. The other Legionnaires stop mattering to them as the third Charger enters the circle.
We all watch.
Dance demonstrates why it’s so hard to kill a Charger. Against two opponents who are focused on her and nothing but her, she takes hits that would damage her armor but not harm her. In return she threatens hits to joints, where’s a small possibility of an Estoc burning through in one hit. Attacking similar weaknesses on her armor is difficult, since it requires an aimed hit from a range where she can hit back. In the end, only a couple of good hits to joints land on either fight, before the three separate.
“Cooldown,” Dance calls. “Drain your blood, then recall.”
I’ve heard that command before. Until this weekend, I didn’t realize what it meant, exactly. It’s not an order to think about the fight that just happened – it’s an order to generate a dose of Recall, to force our brains into perfect mental replay and analysis.
I sit, and recall.
The next 6 hours pass in a craze. The two guest Chargers work us over like meat grinders work over spaghetti – no noodle comes out looking good. I shuffle out of the dojo with the kind of muscle pain that I only felt early in Recomposition, some distant millennia ago.
I stop, and stare at the dark mountains.
How long have I been here?
I check my Card.
Over 520 days.
There are 452 days in a year.
I’m more than a tenth of the way through the decade.
Today, I landed hits on Blood Legion Chargers in melee.
Last week, I almost died.
The week before that, I started work as a fighter pilot.
About a year ago, I left Recomposition and started training.
“Interesting,” I mutter, because I don’t know what to feel, and confusing fills me. “Very interesting.”

[Trigger]

33: Hometown
“Beep. Beep. The time is – TIMERRRR!” the clock shouts.
From behind my desk, I rotate my eyeballs onto Pressure, projecting.
Pressure freezes, looks up at me, and lifts his hands off of his keyboard.
“Yes?” he prompts.
“We burn out the Abomination encirclement around the Valley,” I say.
“What for?”
“Improving relations with neighbors.”
“Okay. How?”
I lean down, open one of my desk cabinets, and pull out the map of the world. There’s no divider between my and Press’s desk, so I lay the map out in the center.
“The Abomination infestation is pressed up into the Valley’s mountains from here, to here.” I point at our western border, all the way from the southern shore of the continent, to the northern frozen ocean.
“Right,” Pressure agrees.
“The infestation is between us, and over two dozen nations. Now, who does the infestation bother more, us or them?”
“Them.”
“And if we destroy it, will it be plausible that we are doing it for us, selfishly?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps!” I conclude, and lean back, satisfied.
Silence reigns.
The pilots and mechanics to my left lean in to look at the map, which shows nothing new.
“Do you know how much effort that would take?” Wing Leader Lathe asks.
I slap a stack of printouts onto my table. “Yes.”
Five takes the stack, glances at it, and passes it down the row of tables to Two. Lathe and Three lean in to look at the stack as Two begins to flip through the pages.
“Mmmkay,” Lathe says eventually, taking the stack. “Let me get back to you.”
I was hoping to get some answers today – some reason why this isn’t done. I sigh at the postponement of the inevitable crushing of my proposal.
“We’ve got work to do,” Lathe says.
“We do?” The phone didn’t ring.
“Pre-planned operation. Have all of you heard of the island nation Domain of Light?”
I’ve heard of it. I’ve been there. I killed there, and I wandered their shores after executing some 20 of their captured soldiers. That’s not a time or place I’ll ever forget.
“Axe.”
“Yes?” I look up at Lathe.
“You back with us?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“What happened?”
“It’s where I did kill training.”
“Ah. Well, we’re going back there. A while back, we intervened to stop another one of their Rapture Conventions. Cleared out a fort, saved who we could, and disappeared their soldiers. Problem is, we were too quiet – the people that were first on the scene covered the even tup, claiming a successful Rapture. A replacement cult has assembled, and they’re moving to try and repeat the success.”
“I sense we will not be doing things quietly this time,” Three notes.
“We’re bringing Direct Feeds.”
“Hell yes,” Five cheers.
“The soldiers tend to bring their… hostages with them,” I note.
“Infantry is working on that. Our job is to burn out everywhere they clear out. Fortifications, convoys, bases. We won’t be working under a Silence field, so we’ll designate targets slowly and carefully, as Infantry works. Once we’re done, Black Fleet will do an island-wide salvo to give them some craters to think about. Questions?” Lathe looks at me. “Complaints?”
“Why me?” I ask.
“You did just pitch a plan to make friends with our neighbors.”
“That island is not friend material.”
“Understood. Let’s go, then.”

We launch, we fly, and then we burn. I get to see the island from above. I catch a glimpse of the ancient fort I earned my Kill Training qualification in.
I burn convoys and camps with Remass Direct Feed beams – the direct projection of a Remass annihilation, focused into a coherent beam. My Mantis has an engine that burns Remass for thrust. The guns burn Remass for energy, focus, and range. The principle is identical, but the application differs quite greatly – multi-kilometer lances of white fire strike down from our fighters as we turn sand and dirt into molten glass and raining debris.
Our fire follows a wave of Legion infantry and armor as they clear out vehicles and buildings, saving who they can, and killing everyone else.
I get to see the Legion navy in action – we use their carriers to refuel. These are hydrofoil-lifted giants that seem like they glide over the water on several sharp columns of ceramic. They don’t slow to let us land, but the pace at which they move seems constructive to landing on them.
While I receive my 3-minute refuel-and-maintenance séance with a battalion of support personnel, I look around at the levitating island I seem to be on, and at the fleet of escorts firing shells at the island over the horizon.
After six hours of intermittent burning and three refueling landings, we return home, escorting a flight of Backbones full of rescued.
I try very hard not to think about what the rescued are, or about what the infantry had to see down there.

After clocking out, I head out to eat. Not to Vent’s – she doesn’t need the mental luggage I carry today. I fill myself elsewhere, and then take my daily mountain-sitting meditation hour early. I need to stabilize before Dance’s beatings for the day, lest she try to beat the mental soot out of me.
My mind lingers on the people we’ve taken in from that island, during this mission and last, when I received my kill training.
There are a lot of support new personnel around nowadays, that stand out from the others. I’ve seen them around, and carefully not given them unusual attention, lest they suffer more of it than they want. Tall, dark-skinned women, with prosthetic arms and legs that start at the torso. They’re very careful in their motions, and very quiet - they’re still learning our language, and still learning to use their new, prosthetic tongues. I’m certain the prosthetic ears and eyes also give their balance some grievances. Somewhere, new limbs and organs are being grown for them, but that’s not a fast process.
I sit in the wind and snow, and try to give the wind my horror.

Dance is not at her dojo today, it turns out. The gray Charger from yesterday awaits as the class gathers.
I sense we’re not getting our Rocket training today.
In the end, the day’s training proves simple.
“I am Knight Blood, Charger of Blood Legion. Charger Dance is over at my pit, beating up my students. I am here to return the favor. Come at me.”
For 6 hours, I alternate between recovering from damage, and getting abused by the guest Charger. Yesterday, Red and did this to us for what seemed like fun. Today, Knight gets serious. I suspect that whatever Crystal and Liquid Fire dosage he was on yesterday was barely above his ambient blood concentration. Now, today, Knight turns into a nightmare of precision, speed, and strength.
Every time I come at him, Knight hits me with the exact same thing, until I figure out how to deal with it. Then, immediately, he moves on to beating me with something else. He does this differently with every student in Dance’s dojo, keeping in mind the particulars of every one of the 20 students present.
Some here are doing their melee training, and aren’t quite down for the full 6-hour experience. I am one of those that suffer through it all – out of spite. I’ve been taking Dance’s abuse daily for almost a full year, and in that time I’ve developed some ego.
I walk out of it all on my own two legs, and that’s something I’m proud of.

An intake of dinner later, I shamble into my cottage and shake off my armor. That exposes the day’s buildup of sweat and blood, which forces me to move just enough to deal with the stench. The cleaning jig goes into the armor, and I go into the shower.
Then, I collapse onto my couch.
I’ve an hour left before my usual sleep time. Usually, I’d relax and read something interesting, like the rundown on those cool boats I got to land on today.
But, I haven’t done what I told myself I would. I haven’t opened Fantasy.
So, I plug in the interface into my high bandwidth connector, set the tablet down on the table beside the couch, feed the fire in the furnace, and start up the damned game.
After a day murdering people with a fighter, I play a videogame. It feels wrong. It feels wasteful and grotesque. I do it anyway, because I was told to.
I appear on a hill of grass.
Immediately, I find the experience strange. I have the sensation of standing on grass, in the sunlight, in the warm wind. I am also still in my cabin, on the couch.
Interesting.
I sit up on the couch. No problems – I’m here, and I’m also on the hill.
On the hill, Vect looks around. A little, humanoid, upright-standing, black cat. With nothing on him except fur. I see the sights, but it’s a separate feed of vision and sensation than the one my real body generates.
Very interesting.
Laying back down on the couch, I close my eyes. In the game, I look around.
I’m on a hill. On one side is a sheer wall of mountains – some real dramatic stuff that no tectonics in the world could generate.
Behind me is… not a valley, but a series of dramatic hills that nonetheless look more traversable than the mountains.
Right beside me is a sign. I walk over to it, and read.
“Ironwood, 600m.” The sign is arrow-shaped, pointing somewhere parallel the mountains.
I look at the sign for a time, like an idiot.
Is this for me?
Turning around, I go in the direction the sign points me to.
That reveals something interesting as well. Walking is the simple act of willing myself in a direction. I don’t need to make the effort to move my feet – I just need to want to go somewhere, and the black cat’s legs move on their own.
Running is the same. I run for a while, then slow to a slow walk to recover as the character refuses to run further.
“Pathetic,” I mutter, getting up to grab a snack. It’s not challenging to move around in reality, since moving in-game takes as much effort as holding down a button with a finger.
As I run to a clump of forest, I give some focus to my options. I try to do something – anything – to the tree beside me. Vec shakes the small tree, and nothing happens. It’s an interaction, just a useless one.
I chose not to go into the forest. Instead I head around it, skimming the trees, until I come into view of a fort.
A fort is all I can call it. The walls are made of wooden logs with sharpened tops. It sits on a hill, overlooking what appears to be a mountain pass. A lone tower looms out from behind the walls.
Interesting.
I head of the fort. If I die, I die.
The large wooden doors in the wall open up well ahead of me. An alligator steps out.
“Ayo,” the alligator says.
My mind betrays me. Something clicks. I freeze, one hand in the snack drawer of my cabin, mind fully committed to the game.
Leather armor. Spear, shortsword, knife, parrying knife. Another contact on the tower, with a bow. I can dodge arrows, as long as I ramp up my Crystal dosage…
I force my reflex down, and relax. I won’t be dosing up for a game, and I won’t let my newfound combat reflexes ruin this for me.
I wave. “Hello-o-o.”
“You, uh, new?”
“Uh, yes, yes I am.”
“You know someone here?” the alligator asks in a funny, guttural voice.
“Uh, no, probably not?” My own voice is also distinctly cattish here.
“Then why’d you spawn here?”
“I have no idea,” I confess.
The alligator tilts his head. “You picked this spawn point in character creation?”
“I did? I don’t remember anything like that.”
“There was a field labeled ‘Hometown’?”
It clicks. I freeze up, then break down laughing.
“Yes,” I say, “There was. I, uh, misunderstood what that meant.”
“How?”
“I thought it meant the town I was from, not where I wanted to spawn.”
“Funny!” The alligator grows visibly excited. “So you’re from Ironwood?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah I am.”
“Who? I’m Fort! Shanky here.”
Fort. Fort Guard, of the town of Ironwood. When my skin was normal, and when pain was still new to me, she tried to warn me of what awaited me in the Legions – my taking a belt to my bare back.
About 530 days ago, she told me about what to expect from the Legions, back on my home’s front lawn.
I look down in thought, then back up at the alligator.
“Hello Fort. It’s me, Axe.”
The alligator freezes up.
“Really?” she asks.
“You went easy on me with that belt,” I note.
“Really?” she repeats, visibly excited once more. “Wow. Wow! Come on in!”
I process all that as I look around. Yes, my dumb ass selected a spawnpoint that was named after my hometown. What’s actually interesting is that the Guards at my hometown play this weird game, and that they’ve set up camp here under the town’s name.
Inside the wooden walls is a very organized, packed, and neat gathering of wooden buildings. A packed ring of them is pressed into the walls, the roofs acting as wall walks.
There’s over a dozen people out and about at the clear center of the fort. That means that I get all the attention as Fort – Shanky – guides me in.
“What’s your name here?” Shanky whispers to me.
“Vect.”
“Mind if I introduce you here as Axe? Everyone here is an Ironwood local.”
“Sure,” I whisper back.
“Shanky, who’s that?” someone shouts.
“STAND FOR BLOOD LEGION,” Shanky roars.
Dead silence. Only one of the people – creatures – present at the fort reacts with motion.
It’s a moth, clearly, if moths had only two legs and two hands.
“Axe?”
“Whomstve?” I stutter, struggling to take in the collection of creatures around me.
“Cat!” the moth says.
“Uh, yes, I am, I guess.”
“No!”
“No?”
“I’m Cat!”
When I write home, I address the telegrams to my family, and to my one friend. This is that friend. Cat, the friend that I knew would never follow me where I was going.
The moth slides to a stop in front of me, arms spread out. She stands there, awkwardly
Ah. I understand. No hugging without mutual input. A very considerate game.
It’s the weirdest hug I’ve ever had. For how primitive the controls are, the sensory input is unnaturally complex – I can’t describe what it’s like to have fur, or how it feels to hug a giant moth while having fur. But the game provides that sensation with uncomfortable resolution.
“How’re you here?” I ask.
“Civilian implant and an induction headset,” she says, tapping her head. “You’re here? Instead of… work, I guess?”
“My Wing Leader says I need a past time that isn’t a variation of work,” I explain.
I see Shanky jerk at those works, then look around, silently pointing at a few of the others here. There’s some kind of silent interaction as people break into motion, running off.
“Hey hey hey,” I turn on her. “No no, none of that, kindly.”
“What? Nothing, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Shanky the Alligator rambles. “Hey how much do you know about this game?”
“Nothing at all,” I confess.
“Great!” Shanky points to Cat. “This is Lamp, our magnificent craftsmoth. She is the most valuable person here, and we’re all screwed without her.”
The moth blushes. No, I don’t know how.
“How much time do you have?” Shanky asks.
“Uhh…” Decisions, decisions. I gave myself an hour, but given the situation…
No. I must sleep in an hour. I have duty tomorrow morning, and my duty involves getting shot at and potentially killed. No matter how much I want to, I won’t risk a sleep shortage where it’s not necessary.
“40 minutes,” I decide.
“Are you down for a tutorial?” Shanky asks.
“Sure,” I shrug.
“Great. I will now teach you the ways of Fantasy. Here, take this knife.”