Expectavi
Chapter 1: "No Angel to be, I turn the sky..."
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
—Marianne Williamson
"Great liars are also great magicians"
—Adolf Hitler
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
December 30th, 2009 4:08 p.m., CST
"...thus, in many ways, 'Plan Stalking Horse', and it's public cover, were the doppelganger for the Tet Offensive. While the objective of luring in and provoking entrenched Islamicist forces to attack, exposing themselves to annihilation and "bleeding them white"—to coin a phrase—was arguably a success...largely because of it's intrinsically necessary cover, it was criticized as failure and folly from before it even began. Which brings us back to our next point—"Daria paused to tap the "blackboard" with her stylus, cueing a Powerpoint event "—the value of history's perception of victory or failure in war and statescraft..."
It was more her experience as a student than her spotty career as a teacher that had taught Daria Morgendorffer how to "read" a classroom.
There were, she'd found, only a few basic types of students to be found, in varying proportions, in a class...
"Now, this seems obvious...but in fact, we've begun to step beyond the bounds of simple agitprop;
"...Guevara said 'let the world change you, and you can change the world.' However, I find it more accurate—and more apt to this field—to say that one must be mindful of the world, of the zeitgeist, in order to change it. After all, as Heisenberg & McLuhan teach us, how the world perceives a thing can affect it as much as the thing can affect the world. "
The most "visible" types—the clowns, the bullies, the struggling morons—were, of course, obvious almost to the point of caricature. Aside from any entertainment value, they'd never especially interested Daria—no, the subtler breeds of student were what piqued her curiosity...
"I'll reiterate why this is important. Just as the mariner is mindful of the weather before starting out on a voyage—he must know how to work with, around, and through the tempest to reach port, but if at all possible, he doesn't let the weather determine where he goes. Strategy and agitprop are, at their heart, the science of extending one's will onto others. The methods of execution may vary, but if you fail to achieve this central tenet—you are jetsam in history's wake. "
There was the dull, grey bulk of the majority—unremarkable kids politely following the lesson along, except for a fleeting distraction or fit of special boredom.
Then, there were the perpetually bored students—as a group, split roughly in half (half at best, really. And then mostly at the university level) between those who'd didn't have the heart or the glial cells to do more than coast through the classes, and the quiet prodigies who merely passed the time till they were allowed to plow through the mandatory paperwork to show that they already understood the material.
But then there were the few—she'd never seen more than half a dozen at once, and never that many before leaving secondary school—who were a different breed entirely. Scribbling or typing notes in a frenzy, or staring transfixed at the instructor, peppered only with the occasional nod, like they were accepting a wahy.
Now, back to how this concerns us—in the practical application of the principles of sociostrategy. Why the principle operates delves the fields of 'Jungian Memetics' and so-called 'Fractal Destiny' theories..."she tapped the stylus again, painting the screen with a dense forest of diagrams, many hauntingly beautiful, "...but for the moment, let's disregard the quanta and demiurge talk, and simply say that any society's perceptions of the world, it's schema in the zeitgeist, tend to form in a quantifiable pattern. And any legitimate pattern can be analyzed, and to at least some extent predicted. Psychohistorical patterns are no exception. "
It was an attitude of fascination, of hunger, of intellectual longing...no, that wasn't the right word.
It was mental lust.
And damned if not every single officer she could see in her auditorium didn't have that look on their face.
"Now, fans of Asimov may be disappointed, but this doesn't mean we can predict the future in crystal clarity—think of it more like meteorology; a weatherman can more-or-less predict the course of a storm, or general trends in global climate for a century, but simple chaos principles make it impossible to judge, say, the first foggy day in Denver, Colorado, in August 2059..."
Out of the corner of her eye, Daria caught a blinking light from the entrance of the classroom. Craning her head almost imperceptibly, she brought a lens to bear on the source, wrenching the silhouetted figure in the doorway to focus.
Her assistant, Fred, took his hand away from the hallway light switch to make a "hang loose" sign against his head, followed by a rather stabbed thumbs up.
"Gentlemen, it's been a long day, and we all have things to do...what's saw we wrap the introduction up next week?"
"Right then...I'd like you to read the Preface and Part One of Liang and Xiangsui..." she traced a finger over the notes on her lectern. "...additional reading assignment is Industrial Society, passages 6 through 37, and Wells' Terror; pages 23 to 24, and book two, chapter one, section one." She glanced back up, and crooked her right forearm, at the elbow, palm flat.
"...Hail Cobra."
A sea of fists leapt into the air of the classroom, accompanied with a collective roar.
"CO-BRAAAA!"
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
The bare walls of the base's main corridor shouted back peals of laughter, echoing from the screening room's half open door. As she passed it, Spindoctor noted the dry-erase marque read Today's Feature: Cannibal Holocaust ("Jungle Jollies" cut)! Daria smiled, grimly. She knew that one would be a hit with the rank.
Fred's page had summoned Daria to the top floor offices of the Extensive Enterprises skyscraper that roofed the training base. Daria ran her keycard at the vestibule to the executive elevator that would bypass the building's sky lobbies—it saved her from having to change out of her uniform to pass through the "respectable" business levels.
She felt her feet leaden as the car began the surge skyward. She took the moment to spot-check before her appearance for "The Boys." Nervous habit, really—her epaulets and medal bar were just a straight as they always were. And the patch of hair next to her bangs had come in again quite nicely.
Presently, the nixie lights over the doors flashed 1-5-0, and the car opened. The Crimson Guardsman at the entrance must have been expecting her. "'Afternoon, sir" he said, waving towards the executive suite, "The commanders will see you now."
"Danke," she murmured, almost inaudible over the hollow echo of her bootsteps as she clomped across the marble foyer. The door to the main office suite was a grand imposing thing, cast in antiqued brass, but engraved, like so many other of the base's surfaces, with a familiar stylized snake's head.
She flashed her keycard at the security probe before it had finished extending from the ceiling, and repeated her codename. She probably could have said anything to pass the voiceprint check—and as usual, fought off the urge to tell it to go to blazes.
In any case, the probe gave an approving beep, and a moment later, the great door slid open with an electric purr.
Inside the room, someone spoke "Ah! Do come in..."
A second voice picked up as the other cut off, "—Director Spindoctor. Punctual—"
"—As always." finished both voices, as one.
Daria blinked against the light as she stepped inside—it was late in the day, and the suite had a blindingly clear view of the sunset over the Chicago skyline. Brilliant enough, in fact, that it practically silhouetted the two men within, as in perfect unison, each man broke from the handless sirsasana pose he'd held on his desktop, executed a flawless backflip, and landed squarely in the seat of his office chair without a sound of effort.
Daria remained impassive. It was impressive—the first twenty times she'd seen it.
"Sirs," she opened, with a formal nod. "If this is about that...um, unseemly rumor thats been going around, I want to assure you that my department had nothing to do with it, but I've already begun taking full measures to quash—"
An echoing, unnerving chuckle floated across the office, cutting Spindoctor off. The interruption would have miffed her, if the laughter hadn't been so transparently nervous.
"Un—"
"—fortunately, our..."
"..organization requires a different set of your skills, director."
Thinking back, much later, Daria sometimes liked to imagine that her hackles raised at that last moment. It wasn't true, of course.
One of the twins keyed a panel on the desk, clouding the suite's smart glass and suitably dimming the room enough to showcase the hologram that flickered into life, dead center between Daria and her superiors.
"At 08:36 this morning..."
"...Signals intelligence detected a..."
"...Cobra-type radio signal here, in..."
"...the mountains of central Colorado."
The hologram, a masterwork of optical science, even if the perspective (as usual) was slightly "off," dutifully skinned over a green wireframe representation of a hunk of the Colorado rockies...she guessed. The unfamiliar contours looked about as random as anything else—the elaborate display was really pretty pointless.
It did, however, have a very nice circled area marked with "APPROXIMATE SOURCE OF SIGNAL," and a few lines of timestamped latitude and longitude coordinates, so apparently it proved they were getting their money's worth.
"Intelligence..."
"...analysis believes it to be..."
"...that of a transport flight pod lost"
"...in the area over a decade ago."
The map display dimmed, overlayed with a technical model of...well, some kind of machine. To her, it looked not a little like a shuttlecock. After it had died, and been gnawed by rats.
"A bit long after curfew to phone home, isn't it?" Daria asked, pushing aside her inner technical writer.
"Indeed, astute..."
"...observation, Spindoctor."
"However, given the..."
"...location and altitude of the..."
"...transmission site, we believe..."
"...that the pod had crashed, buried itself..."
"...under the snowline, and only recently become uncovered. Likely by an..."
"...avalanche, or a seismic event."
Leaning towards the projection, Daria hmmmed in reply as she tapped the bridge of her glasses a smidgen up her nose. Her mind had already started mulling of the situation...
Buried object...mountainous area—geology. USGS survey team? Scratch it—nothing so urgent to warrant the Feds, on short notice, this close to the holidays. Not without suspicion. Save military—too obvious. Probably too risky. Stick with the science angle...same problem as Feds...what kind of scientists would...students! Grad work. Or obsessed geeks. Covers the rush, covers odd behavior. Absolutely imperial...
Her semiconscious cheerfully tearing into the matter, Spindoctor nodded. "I don't see any problems on my end, sirs," she said, adding a frown, "...and while I, of course, do recognize the need for security, I feel I have to note that's it's generally more efficient for me to deliver cover stories through the network..." she eyed the garish hologram, again. "...after all, there'd be no sense in building a 'paperless office' if nobody used—"
The Guard Commanders glanced at each other. "I'm afraid you..." "...misunderstand your role in the mission, " "...director." The one on the left tripped another desk button, and a pedestal sprouted out of the floor tiles with a hum. The top of the table-high new surface dilated, exposing a fresh, important looking little dossier file on top of a light panel.
Daria briefly wondered if that was the only thing that button did, as she stepped forward to take the file, stealthily avoiding the spot on the floor where she knew the trapdoor was hidden.
"As you can can see..."
"...on page three, if you please." At the twin's prodding, Daria obligingly flipped the folder open without even reading the cover...
...and her heart stopped. As soon as she saw the mission roster.
Terror, bewilderment, and several dozen questions started screaming in Daria's skull as the Commanders spoke again
"You, Spindoctor, are to take command of the..."
"...expedition to locate the crash site, and recover..."
"...from the wreckage any and all surviving..."
"...biological warfare units.
At the last phrase, all of Spindoctor's questions crystalized into a chillingly solid explanation. Damnably confirmed when she checked the "mission objectives" section of her handout.
"'Bio warfare units'..." she barely murmured the words out. "And that's why you want me...because of what happened in onboard—because of the zo—"
"Your performance in the..."
"...unpleasantness this last June was..."
"...exemplary, Spindoctor!"
"...Absolutely superb!"
"An astounding demonstration—"
"—of the kind of skill needed in such a scenario!"
"...and a different kind of 'unpleasantness' entirely than...this. A...'whole different animal.'" Daria answered, grimacing.
"True enough, but..."
"...none the less, an acceptable analog,"
"...by reckoning of..."
"...intelligence."The echoing of that last sentence rang like a knell, with a beat.
"By the same token, it means narrowing..."
"...down officers with an acceptable command experience..."
"...for this mission excepts all..."
"...but the one officer who has commanded such an experience..."
"...with exception. "
She wasn't amused. "Meaning no one else at my cotillion is going to know what they're in for?" Either?
"Not quite, director. Though..."
"...unfortunately, the pool of qualified specialists 'intel'..."
"...could find for this particular field runs rather shallow. Both in numbers,"
"...and personal reliability."
Which meant, Daria surmised, that the only technical advisors they could dig up were two quacks, some twitchy maniac, and an escaped Nazi. Totaling three persons, counting the ones only presumed dead.
"Your travel arrangements have been..."
"...arranged—as you can see. "The one on the right said, gesturing towards her folder.
"...We shan't keep you with the details."
Spindoctor paused, then just nodded, slow. What was there to say?
"If you will pardon me, sirs..." She clapped the folder shut, noticing for the first time the cover text: Operation: LOVING OLGA. Very respectably blase.
As she turned to leave, one of the voices tutted;
"Ah, one moment, director, if you wouldn't mind?"
Daria hid the cheek spasm pretty well, she thought. "Yes, commanders?"
"Concerning another matter...I understand your"
"...term of commission is almost ended...n'est-ce pas?"
Well that was unexpected, she'd give 'em that. "That's right...this May." The 6th. Thursday. She'd checked, a long while back...a very long while back, come to think of it.
"At the risk of prying, we do hope you've given good consideration into 'reupping'..."
"...in our organization. Some of us would"
"...hate to lose you."
That was it? They drop a bloody bomb on her, then inquire about her career plans? If "Wint and Kidd" weren't joking...she narrowed her eyes at the commanders, slyly. Took in their features.
No...Daria, after everything, still wouldn't trust herself completely at gauging the mind behind a good poker face.
But with the clumsy, transparent scheming that passed for conspiracy around Cobra, she could afford to have loose tolerances.
And at that, there wasn't a trace of a veiled threat on the twins' faces. That actually was concern they expressed...but mixed, half buried with something else. She could see it, just, in their eyes. She knew it well.
The haunt of quiet desperation.
That was all Spindoctor could get. "I'll...keep considering it. Sirs." She took her leave, then, wordlessly, as the suite door opened ahead of her. What more was there to say?
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
"Wenn ich Englisch sprechen konnte, konnte ich in England erobern Ein Jahr."
The words carved into the gold skin of Jo the Skull disappeared under draped fabric before the lights in Daria's office flared up. She really had little against the grisly old relic, but he made too fine a coatrack.
Her lair in Gehenna was a windowless affair in the brutalist mold. Half a dozen different shades of rust-colored metal made the room's every surface, to proportions that subtly gave the impression of being more suited to a minor giant, and twin half-circle tracks of glazed lights facing off from the ceiling and floor provided the sole significant illumination.
In all, it seemed less like a workplace than a gallery, or a crypt.
But to Daria, at least, it was home. Her own, cozy little cave of steel. Home.
She padded across the room, slipping over the four inch incline that raised her desk bevel over the floor. A fresh pressed commando sweater was waiting in the seat of her office chair—itself a tall, vaguely gigeresque thing that more than resembled an imploded ribcage made of cedar, but that did wonders for her back. She pulled the sweater on as she plopped into her seat, and the wooden segments clattered happily under her weight.
She paused a moment, sagging. She pushed her glasses up over her brow. As she let her head rest on her ungloved hand, she could actually take time to notice the calloused pense marks on her nose, as her free hand drummed her workstation's passcode on the desk control panel.
The symphonic thrum from the desk speakers, followed by the crackley jabber of the hard drive access told her it worked—a huge surprise, really—but Daria didn't bother opening her eyes again until she heard the overhead projector flicker on.
She blinked, a second, against the light. The modest flatpanel screen that had raised from her desk only cast a muted glow. The real glare was from the image burning over the threshold across the room.
The crude folk-art of moldering bones from her personal art collection in it's usual cycle. Indeed, she found herself quietly admiring it as she brought up the BIOK mail client and rapidly pecked out a memo on her stenotype.
Presently she finished, just as the image on the wall faded from a from an ugly picture of a human to a scene of human ugliness—part three of the Stages of Cruelty woodcut, if she thought right.
That was it, then...just a matter of waiting now. She'd almost certainly get a reply to her message before she had to leave for Colorado. Time enough to prepare...
Almost mechanically, she tapped yet another pattern onto a garden of keys hidden in the shadow of her desk alcove. No fancy lights of bells rewarded her, just a muffled click and a puff of air as the drawer unlocked. She slid it open, heard the patch of black wax crack off and fall on her boot.
The contents were undisturbed, and just as generally unremarkable—papers, stamps, petty cash...and a box.
It was Snakewood. Sleak, every angle polished away, even the hinges to the lid concealed. It was marred by only a single element; a gleaming, red disc the size of an old half dollar, inset on top.
Absently, Daria ran her fingertips across it—ochre-red enamel, inlayed with black lacquer, and a few sprigs of silver, centered around a tiny profile of a Galea helmet...
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
Somewhere south of the Himalayas
Six Months Ago
"...all right, we may now go to active radar," came the insufferable man's voice over Daria's headset. Followed shortly by a soundless rumble from behind—her own ear protection and the shriek of the Rattler's two live engines muted the noise of the dorsal turret's traverse very nicely. "...six o'clock is clear."
"Copy," Spindoctor replied, tersely. It was yet another thing she "liked" about this trip—not only was her flight instructor not actually sharing the cockpit—and, more importantly, the backup flight controls—with her, but now he wasn't even looking in the same direction she was.
She sighed. At least it meant she didn't have to put up with the damned Rammstein collection he was always playing.
The Rattler's backseat driver's intercom crackled again; " haven't heart radar status, yet," Wild Weasel snapped.
Yes, mom, Daria thought, fingers playing over a control panel. "RWR is clear"—no one was "painting" or locking onto the fighter with active radar. Considering how far they were out in the boonies, this was hardly news. But there was no need to get a SAM up the rear just from being careless. She automatically adjusted the tuning knob next to the radar monitor to screen out the obvious ground clutter from the readout. She ended up blanking it before confirming that the omimnous wedge that appeared onscreen wasn't the shadow of a mountain.
"...contact. Bearing 315°. heading 315°, range...20 miles" They were directly astern of their target, closing. Not bad at freakin' all.
She glanced up, out the canopy window. This proved pointless; with the fast approaching twilight in the misty gray rolling off the mountains, visibility was far less than the radar range.
She resisted the impulse to ratchet up the throttle and close the distance to target—it would have been a rookie mistake. Haste makes waste, slow and steady...
The screen shifted, numbers changed. "Range, 14 miles..." Her head twiched back up, birdlike, to catch the view through the heads-up display through her glasses. Still nothing.
She repeated the process half a dozen times more—radar check, visual check, nothing. Her tension rose...this had to be taking too long. Had she made—no, she had to have screwed it up, somehow. She must have locked onto a cloud or something...the track was too perfect. DAMNIT! You were depending on this, you...
She almost missed it...a little spot had bloomed in the haze dead ahead, a flurry of shadows whirling above a dark keel.
It was growing, at that...and too slowly to be part of the scenery passing below.
"Visual contact," she heard herself say, mouth strangely dry. "Range, 10 miles." The "target"—that was underdescriptive to the Nth—resolved itself as the distance closed; a troika of wheeling rotorblades, circling silently through a few acres of air, slung above a crux of metal half a mile long, studded with the trappings of a nightmarish power planet...and a dull red roundel over the skin of an enormous rudder. There it was...there she was.
CS Argent Bifid.
The Monster loomed over the countryside like an iron cloud. Only the dance of it's shadow across the hills below belayed the incredible: the Beast was still moving.
The intercom cracked again; "That's close enough; transition to VTOL."
Spindoctor automatically checked the fuel handle for engine #3—unnecessary, as it had been left off for cruising, but a standard safety procedure...the booster jet would sent the fighter tumbling ass over nose if left "live" during vertical flight—and tightened her grip on the control stick as she pulled the thrust vector handle all the way back.
There was a groan as the Rattler's engine nacelles began to rotate backwards, along with the outer third of the wings. The Rattler bucked a little, nosing upwards in strained protest, before settling down. Daria relaxed her grip.
"Get your hand off the speedbrake. You won't need it."
Outside the canopy, the world seemed to sink away, An unnerving, but perfectly normal effect as the main engines dragged themselves heavenward.
Almost immediately, she was cutting back the throttle—the full engine thrust could keep the Rattler in the air, but the afterburners were what kept it from descending. But they did their job too well—kicking the plane into a climb. Perfect for a jump-jet takeoff, but a nightmare when trying to maintain a hover.
Nightmare nothin'...Daria thought, as she struggled to maintain a slight forward velocity, well below stall speed, over a moving target.
At dusk.
Somewhere in the back of her skull, a little imp asked if she was still glad she wasn't manning a register at a box store. Or occasionally selling a penny dreadful to Argosy, the imp added, before skipping away, giggling.
The speed...that was almost the worst of it. A terrain landing, even a vertical one, could be almost routine. A midair docking, at near cruising speed, was even easier; if you could match speed with the target, you could just about pull up over the deck, drop the gear straight down, and set the parking brakes before you cut the engines.
Wild Weasel had been right, though—she wasn't going to need the speedbrake—the plane was rapidly bleeding off forward energy, but even the forward inertia—140 knots. Gear!—that had the aircraft sliding towards the carrier was closing the distance frighteningly fast. They were almost on top of the main rotor, descending again...she relit the burners, pulled open the gear lever with a fluid yank. Climbing again, more drag...
She was halfway across the Bifid's 2700' beam, first rotor clear.
Her arm had taken on a spasming rhythm as she clutched the throttle, killing and relighting the afterburners from second to second. Cut the throttles again—still a bit fast. Damnit.
She was over the pair of amidships rotors—almost matching the carrier's speed—and sliding frighteningly low over the blades. A debate club in the pits of her brain began wondering if the jet might be drawn with the downwash and minced before or after it's own exhaust melted through the rotors to send the Bifid into a crashing heap with all souls aboard...and they were already clear before it became an issue.
The external flight deck of the helicarrier was fairly small, by modern standards. Only 400 feet—the length of a 40 storey building laid on it's side, and not quite a third of that wide.
From the air, it seemed even smaller...
From the air...and a little high, a little fast. Spindoctor cursed, silently. As if it weren't bad enough—she could abort, go around for another try. It would have been permitted, even expected...but it was probably never going to be a completely ideal approach, was it?
It was her instructor's stone silence that decided more than anything else, in those few instants of time.
She knew, just knew he was watching her as more than just a teacher.
The old campaigner eyeing a contender. Are they good enough? Reliable?
Worth keeping around? One of 'us,' or just another one of...
"Screw it" she pulled the life from the engines, and nosed up, ever slightly. Obligingly, the Rattler began a controlled plunge towards the deck. Sink or swim, kiddo...
There it was...she'd descended into the worst part. The sickening part. The sweet, horrifying moments in a prow landing before wheels-down when the cockpit view of the target became completely blocked by the blind matte of the Rattler's own body. To the pilot, the grand ship below had just as well disappeared.
Crawling around the canopy to regain visual contact wouldn't be worth the effort...in fact, with the concentration she found herself applying to the landing, it would have been suicidal—
There was a kick, form rear and starboard, as one of the gear hit the deck. One of the gear—she'd come down crooked, after all. Crooked in the damned vertical axis, no less...and in the few fractions of a second, Daria felt it—she knew—the error was not correcting itself. In another blink, it was going to be the wings digging into the...
The jinked, hard, on the control stick, forward left, and slammed the throttles closed.
The Rattler pivoted on it's right gear like a knife switch, sending the other two tires crashing onto the landing pad. "Crash," the be correct, was unfair. It was a landing proper as it could be. But "gentle" enough that the ginger pill that was crushed into powder as Daria sucked it between her teeth was the only thing that saved her from cracking a molar.
As the engines died, Daria spared a glance over the side of the canopy. She could see the deck of the Helicarrier again...it had stopped moving, while the countryside continued to roll along below. "Touchdown" she said, quietly, keying her mike.
There was a pause, long enough that she almost repeated herself, before the intercom spoke. "Very good," Wild Weasel replied, with an odd note of kindness. Contentedness, even. "Please page the tower for pushback. Sir."
"F-A-B," Daria's brain croaked, numbly. Sliding her hands off the stick. Her fingers quickly pranced across the comm board, rewarding her with a dull mechanical voice over the radio when "pri-fly" confirmed her passcode. "Iden-tity confirmed. Proceedtoent-er. Welcomeaboard." it paused, then added "Have a nice day."
Within the minute, a robot "jet donkey" had crawled out of the hanger at the rear of the flight deck, and hooked onto the tail of the Rattler with a thunk. Daria watched it approach over her shoulder—as best she could, with the body of the jet in the way. And at that, she found herself distracted by the silhouette in the dorsal turret, backlit by the strobing caution lights of the robot.
Her instructor was leaning back in his seat, easily scratching away at a clipboard. He never even glanced up—he could just as well have been doing a crossword puzzle on a beach. She decided she was going to take that as a good sign, for the moment.
With a surprising smoothness, the Donkey began dragging the fighter backwards, wheels rumbling over the rubbery non-skid runway coating. Daria instinctively looked away from the exterior view, just before a pang of vertigo hit. After a moment's debate, she chose to forgot snapping down another ginger pill—it might look a tad too undignified (And she'd want to save some for the trip back, to boot).
The were inside the cover of the hanger presently. The Argent Bifid was not, any longer, a combat vessel, but like any other carrier, the hanger deck was cramped to the point of overflow; mostly palettes of cargo and equipment, rather than materiel, but hanging overhead from the cavernous roof was the entire half-dissected fuselage of an EB-50 e-w plane (the "Uncle Slam"— it's name, judging from the nose art, which she couldn't help but noticing as the Rattler was pushed flinchingly close underneath it—had certainly seen better days).
The robot slid to a stop, briefly sagging Daria back into her seat cushions from inertia. She automatically tapped on the parking brake, and played a trailing pattern over a row of buttons beside the panel. There were a few dial-tone sighs, and the last of the avionics went dark. The bird was asleep.
She left her headset hanging on the ejection handle as she cracked the canopy, gliding it open with a pneumatic hiss, and hefted herself over portside, to the crude wire ladder than deployed automatically. The motion was without even a vestige of "daintiness"—she'd long gotten used to not wearing a skirt on the job.
Below on the deck, Wild Weasel already waited, still scratching away on his board. She didn't think he'd even noticed her presence, until the man spoke; "You neglected to return the wings to horizontal."
A bolt of panic went through her, momentarily, before being choked down by reason. And mild annoyance.
"I was told" by you "that this is the exception made for naval landings. To reduce deck footprint, and deflect jet-"
"-jet blast. As it does. Very good." the man finished, not breaking his gaze from the clipboard (she didn't think. He hadn't removed his helmet—he never did, not that it was unusual for the company they kept).
The man tapped at the form with his pen. "I see you've already qualified...on two vehicles so far,— yes?" he asked, raising the pen to chin level, quizzically. The effect was somewhat eerie...not the least because he should have known damn well what she was certified for, already.
"That's right, the 'Stinger' and the...combat flight pod." The subject was a sore one, as things went. The former vehicle, the "Stinger," was little more than an unlicensed copy of a Land Rover ripoff. Daria herself had an inconspicuously uparmored one at her apartment garage. And the latter...
"'Pod'? By that you mean the...?" Wild Weasel lead on. Cocky bastard wasn't going to let it slide.
"'Trubble Bubble.' That's right." Spindoctor answered, with not a bit of a wince.
"Yes...good, simple platform. Recently retired, wasn't it?"
Daria narrowed her eyes, imperceptibly. "Well...it was getting a little long in the fang. Besides," she shrugged, "it's probably time I traded up." she patted the side of the Rattler, semi-fondly. Strange...through her glove, and the thick layer of paint, twenty-plus tons of metal felt very much like a living thing.
"If you insist..." her instructor looked back to his clipboard, a moment, before gesturing towards Daria with his pen, like a conductor's baton.
"You need practice, and more than than technical skill to master this aircraft..."
For a second, Daria felt a cold, tingling sensation beneath her gorge. But it was suddenly allayed when the man whipped his hand back to the paper. "...but that's true of everyone. The flight qualification is yours." he finished, adding checkmark and signature with a quick flourish.
He looked up. "...and keep your officer's vehicle proficiency requirement?" he added, with an odd tilt of his helmet.
Spindoctor smirked right back. "I prefer to think of it as 'keeping my flight pay.'"
Wild Weasel made a horrible noise that might have been a laugh.
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The delegation arrived just after the "purple-shirts" finished refueling the Rattler.
Heading it up strode a tall, svelte blonde wearing a slick uniform that engulfed all but her head, and a burning air of extreme confidence.
Spindoctor was actually a bit disappointed...the good doctor didn't wear her usual uniform blouse. And she carried it so well—
"Commandant!" The blonde said, with a crisp nod. "A pleasure to have you aboard, sir."
"Thanks. All mine, I assure you, Professor Deming..." Daria replied, glancing across the small pack of department heads and their praetorians. "...Dr Arkville couldn't join us?"
She was sure she heard Deming's teeth clack together as the woman suppressed a grimace. "He...my apologies, sir, we thought you had been told. The doctor has been, ah...dispatched on a temporary sabbatical."
Daria's blood turned a little colder. It was a standard style euphemism, really, though the "temporary" qualifier provided less comfort when it came to lab and research personnel. With their lot, "Not Killed..." could far too frequently be paired with "...unfortunately" or "...so god help us if It breaks free."
And with the project at hand...not good, check one.
"That's...unfortunate." she replied, drawling. She let the unease percolate a couple of seconds, before affecting a lazy shrug.
"But no reason not to continue as planned, I think. Besides..." she gave a ghost of a smile, "...I'm eager to see this wunderwaffe that I've been bankrolling." That was an exaggeration, of course—the Cobra 'Public Affairs' division (something between PR and agitprop, when the two weren't outright combined) had taken up funding and overseeing most of the project, in the agreement with herr doktor Mindbender's applied sciences, but her own financial stake was fairly minimal. Unlike some of her...contemporaries, she didn't care to gamble her Nest Egg for a chance at prize shares.
But...Deming wouldn't know that. And it sure got her point across, well.
She excused herself a second, long enough to scoop up her flight bag from where she'd set it, against the nosewheel. Her former instructor was already clambering, silently, up to the Rattler's cockpit.
"You'll be back for the pickup in the morning?" she asked, checking herself before she mentioned the specific time. It never paid to let people know exactly how long it'd be till you were missed.
The helmet nodded. "To base camp, as scheduled. I won't keep you waiting." Wild Weasel's focus was already buried in the aircraft as he settled into his seat, flashing a hand signal utterly meaningless to Daria to the deck crew as he strapped himself in. And that was that.
She let Deming lead the way from the hanger deck as she rejoined the group. "I...understand you've come straight from the Nepal recovery dig, sir..." the woman said, pleasantly, "there must have been some...fascinating finds."
"...'Gooble gobble.'"
Deming nearly tripped. "Wh-pardon me?"
Daria didn't even break stride. "Freaks. Hyperborean monstrosities, professor..." she glanced backwards, cued by the unmistakable shriek of the Rattler's engines spooling up.
Daria tossed a stiff wave at the plane's pilot before finishing; "...I'm up for a good sideshow as much as the next girl, but one does like an occasional break from the parade..." she glanced pointedly at the scientist, over the top of her glasses. "...wouldn't you agree?"
Spindoctor actually missed the nervous expression appear on Deming's face—the blurring of her naked eyes saw to that, more than the doctor's efforts at hiding it. Not that it mattered, really. Daria knew she'd put it there.
On the other hand, she also missed, across the hanger, Wild Weasel return her wave. Though the pilot had waited for her to turn her head away before he quietly curled his two middle fingers palmward, just for a second. Safely out of her sight.
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Author's Notes: Yes, the first chapter of the INCREDIBLY drawn-out and delayed third installment of the "Daria: Agent of Cobra" series, now available on , with more to come!
Medal design by, and used with permission of, Starviper on joecustoms dot com.
Next chapter will, of course, include more horrible in-jokes, cameos, puns, and war crimes. Also the Youtube playlist soundtrack, if anyone's interested.