Arusian Crusade: Deployment
Prologue: The Call Goes Out
This is pretty much best summed up as 'AU with elements of everything'.
Golion? Check.
DotU? Check.
Comics? Check.
Voltron Force? Check.
V3D? ...a little tiny bit of a check, but please don't hold that against me.
"How is it going, Lieutenant?"
Lieutenant Brown jumped, taking a moment to recall where he was and figure out who was talking to him. His world for the past week had been nothing but a blur of personnel files, test scores, piloting reports, psych profiles... it took some time to remember he was located somewhere, living and breathing something other than intel. He blinked away afterimages from a monitor he'd been staring at for far too many hours straight, and looked up. General Wegener was standing in his doorway, watching him carefully.
"I think I'm finished. Just double checking everything."
"Finished already?" The general raised an eyebrow. "I'd like to see what you've come up with."
"Sir?" Brown hesitated. He'd known this was an important assignment—that was why he'd barely been out of the office for six days. But important enough for a general to be taking such a personal interest? That was something else entirely. "I, uh, of course. This is that serious?"
"Incredibly serious. Alfor's only been able to send us the vaguest hints about the nature of his project for fear of Drule interception, but the technical data is only a small part of the equation. All his indications are that this is a game-changer—and he knows the Drules, especially the Ninth Kingdom, better than most of our analysts."
If nothing else, that news made Brown feel like all the time slaving away had been entirely worth it. He pulled up a stack of printouts and handed them to the general, gesturing to a seat. Pulling up the first profile himself, he took a deep breath and started talking.
"Keith Kogane. Command."
"Any relation to Air Commodore Kogane?"
"Her nephew." Brown had almost avoided the cadet for that reason, but he'd just fit the team too perfectly. "He's basically level-headed, but has some idealistic tendencies, and prefers to be in the thick of the action with his teammates. Displays an excellent working knowledge of Drule culture, gets high marks in diplomacy, and is something of a martial arts and weapons expert." He frowned slightly. "I didn't assign a dedicated gunnery specialist for this mission, so his skill there would be crucial."
General Wegener raised an eyebrow. "No gunner?"
"No room for one. Arus only requested five pilots, and there were other priorities."
"Very well. Continue."
Second profile. "Sven Holgersson. Navigation."
The general cocked his head. "No kidding? I served with his father. His family has a long tradition of piloting service."
"Yessir." Privately, Brown wondered if that tradition might not be doing this cadet a disservice; all indications were that navigation was far from his first love. "He's a mathematics prodigy, and may already be one of the best navigators we have access to, cadet or not. Also solid in structural mechanics."
"How bad is the navigator problem?"
"It isn't." The 'navigator problem' was the tendency for interstellar navigation to attract a bunch of half-mad megalomaniacs who happened to be handy with numbers. But that was hardly diplomatic. "He doesn't fit the typical psych profile at all, which I figured was another point in his favor."
"Good thinking."
Third profile. "Lance McClain. Piloting."
Wegener's expression flickered, just for an instant. "Pretty certain I've heard of this one."
"Probably. He nearly got expelled last year for buzzing the training compound after the Skybreakers rejected him for disciplinary reasons. Really just proved their reasoning was sound, but he also proved his own point: he's equal to any of our best forces in raw piloting skill. Also a solid gunner. He's currently on behavioral probation."
"You assigned him to make up for the fact that the navigator isn't insane?"
Brown chuckled. "McClain, Kogane, and Holgersson are already close friends. They have an excellent working relationship—if a little vitriolic at times—and by all accounts, the other two are the only people who can keep McClain under control." The Lieutenant's expression became serious again. "When the Fourth Kingdom carried out its warning strikes on the Valkan VI colony thirteen years ago, his village was one of the first destroyed. His main reason for being at the Academy is so that someday he can take some shots at the Drules. Any Drules. In many ways this would be a dream assignment for him, and I expect he'd make the most of it."
The general nodded, though he still looked skeptical. "Go on."
Fourth profile. "Darrell Stoker. Engineering. His real name is Pidge, but he's a Yulie." A Yulie—ULI—was an undocumented legal immigrant: those who arrived on Earth through proper channels, but with no records of their life on their old world. They were assigned 'human' names during the immigration process, though few ever used them for anything but paperwork. "He's from Balto."
"Balto? That's unusual. Tenra or Sryka?"
"Crossbreed, which is why he didn't have any records, and why he came here in the first place." Balto was a rough backwater planet, inhabited by two races which despised each other. Crossbreeds rarely lived through their first year, and those who did found few opportunities on a world where they were seen as pitiable freaks at best. "He's brilliant even by the standards of the Tenra, though he doesn't seem to have developed their psychic abilities, and every bit as quick and tough as you'd expect of a Sryka. Specializes in computer science, and has been known to work some miracles."
Another nod. "He's rather young."
"Doesn't matter. He could've graduated last year if he'd wanted to, but he has a habit of retaking workshop classes rather than rushing through required content."
"Interesting. And the final candidate?"
Fifth profile. "Tsuyoshi Garrett, goes by the nickname Hunk. Engineering. Absolutely brilliant with physical systems, the bigger and more challenging the better. Joined the military because it gave him the biggest and most challenging hardware to work on."
The general was frowning again. "Hunk Garrett. I'm certain I've heard that name before too."
"It's possible. He was a champion crush car driver before he came here." Of course, Brown highly doubted his boss paid attention to that chaotic melee of a sport, but... "It made him a bit of a celebrity when he first enrolled, until the other students realized he didn't want the attention. He's a lot better with machines than with people."
"But you believe he'll fit in with this team?"
"Better than anywhere else, really. He and Pidge are roommates. They're said to be inseparable." He leaned back, looking away from the monitor again, and shrugged. "Besides, it's a small team, and they'll all have plenty of time to get comfortable around one another. As far as I can tell, the two groups haven't met, but the psych profiles indicate they'll mesh well."
Wegener considered this. "No gunner, but you've assigned two engineers?"
"With all due respect, sir, I've seen the cockpit schematics. I'd send five engineers if I could." He switched screens. "Garrett's piloting scores are a little lower than the others, but his gunnery covers for it, he can dismantle anything he gets a good look at. Between him and Kogane I'd say it's covered. Shouldn't be an issue once they reach Arus in any case, should it? King Alfor's running single-pilot ships."
"That's true." The general stood and nodded. "Call them all in, then. I want you to report to Colonel Hawkins in Complex D, 308A. Give him the personnel files and brief him. You two will be in charge of the training; he'll get you up to speed on the finer points. The mission begins tomorrow."
Lieutenant Brown nodded and snapped off a salute. "Yessir."
The campus of the Alliance Academy was a massive, sprawling mess of buildings, parks, tarmac, and the occasional run-down lot that hadn't quite been developed yet. One of these lots, a small fenced-in area just south of an auxiliary hangar, had been staked out by a trio of cadets. Their own personal refuge in the sea of people, work, and occasional madness that made up academy life.
Sitting on a broken slab of concrete, the first to arrive waited patiently. Mostly patiently. His pale blue eyes were narrowed as he studied every possible path to the lot, as if he were expecting an attack fleet rather than two friends to drop in. He pulled his red flight jacket closer as the wind whistled by him, ruffling his dark hair; winter was approaching quicker than expected.
The auburn-haired figure who turned up at the lot next was also wearing a jacket, though it had nothing to do with the cold. All fashion for this one. His dark eyes carried a mischievous glint, and his aura was as tough and rugged as it was carefully cultivated.
Quick greetings were exchanged, but nothing else; it was an unwritten rule that no business was to be conducted without all three present. 'Business' usually just meant complaining about classes, but then, such things were important. For as long as humans had had educational institutions, there had been complaining students. Why argue with tradition?
Finally the third member of their trio came sprinting in, still wearing his academy uniform, and skidded to a halt in a patch of gravel which nearly sent him face-first to the ground. His hair and eyes were jet black, matching the black navigation patch on his shoulder. When he spoke, it was in a heavy Scandinavian accent, a jarring contrast to his sharply Asian features. "Sorry. Captain McKallon still doesn't believe in clocks."
The brown-haired one snorted. "Sure, sure. Blame the lunatic teaching the lunatic class. We know, Sven."
"It's not a lunatic class, Lance. You're not in it."
"Oof, you wound me."
For the first time, their ice-eyed companion chuckled. "Sure he does, Lance. Sure he does. So what have you gotten us all into this time?" Keith held up a slip of paper, printed out from his room's main comm set. "Cadets Kogane, Holgersson, and McClain to report to Colonel Hawkins—a colonel!—at 0900 hours tomorrow. Priority alpha. Seriously, there's got to be a better way to get out of tactical theory."
"Now wait just a minute!" Lance flopped out comfortably in a patch of grass that had been exposed by broken pavement. "I don't know why you're blaming me for this."
Sven arched an eyebrow, took up a position leaning against the fence, and crossed his arms. "Probably because we've spent more than five minutes with you?"
"Ahhh. Yeah, that would do it." Lance hesitated and his sparkling eyes became serious. "But honestly, I haven't done anything lately. This might actually be important."
They lapsed into silence, considering that possibility, then shifted to other topics.
Basement rooms were not high-prestige. They were, however, undeniably cool. At least to the minds of the only two who'd requested such housing arrangements, and thus found themselves rooming together in the lowest level of the engineering dorms. The sign on their door said THE DUNGEON in huge, bold letters. It didn't exactly invite company, but they weren't worried about company. Actually, company would usually be an unwelcome distraction.
Sprawled on one of the beds was a boy with wild light brown hair and piercing green eyes, covered by owlish glasses. At first glance he would've appeared to simply be a young human. It would take very close study to see the slight differences—the fact that even for someone his age, he was a little too small, and his initially fragile-looking body was all muscle and sharp angles. He was staring at the ceiling, but not seeing it.
Seated cross-legged on the floor, leaning back against the other bed, was a young man who was as much larger than the average cadet as his companion was smaller. His hair was dark and messy, held back from his hazel eyes by a strip of red cloth, and his gaze darted between his roommate and the monitor on the floor in front of him.
On the outside, they had nothing in common.
On the outside.
Hunk finally pushed the computer away. "0900 hours on a Tuesday. Commander Tetsuya is gonna have a fit."
"What, just because we've already skipped more of his classes than we've shown up for?" Pidge kept his eyes on the ceiling. "Whose brilliant idea was it to take military history with the most evil instructor in the Academy, anyway?"
"I think that was you, little buddy. Something about turning a boring class into an interesting challenge?"
"Oh yeah. Right." Sigh. "He can't argue with priority alpha orders th... oh, what am I saying? We're doomed."
"Doomed," Hunk agreed. "If all else fails, the rest of the class would probably approve if we broke his neck."
"Don't tempt me."
"Sorry."
For awhile they were quiet again; they didn't need words to commiserate. At precisely the same moment, they both decided they were done sulking, pulled out some tools, and went to work on an unidentifiable hulk of metal in the corner. It was just another normal day in the Dungeon.
Maybe the last normal day.
