Blue and Red: Stories From Shanxi
The Ballad of Metal Angels: Third Base
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"It was late 2159. I wasn't even on a specific mission at the time, just a routine patrol, when he showed up. Although it was on the edge of contested air space, it was considered largely secure, so our patrol was pretty light, just a flight of four."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"Bad luck, I tell you. Just sheer bad luck. My team was doing a recon flyby, trying to ascertain where the turian lines actually were, when we stumbled across her little patrol group and wound up on the wrong end of four to three odds."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"By the time the initial dust up was over, there were only two of us left airborne: me and him."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"With everything gone to hell, I fell back on the default contingency for a screwed up recon mission: Bug out with whatever intel you've got ASAP and hope it's enough that they don't send you back out there."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"He was still flagged as a priority target, so I reverted back to those relevant standing orders: Extinguish the Yellow Flame."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"I still don't know how she got on my six that day. Yeah, there's a lot about my encounters with her during the war I still don't know. She's mysterious like that. Anyway, it should have been a simple matter to turn and burn and get on her six.
"Should have."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"I was still flying the test bed prototype. It had been recovered and repaired after Valluvian Twilight, and there were a few more experimental systems added. With the right settings, an eezo core can reduce your inertia to zero. It won't quite let you turn on a credit chit, but it's very close.
"Of course, if you do that, your eezo core's not giving you artificial gravity or damping the G's you're feeling in the cockpit, which is why modern fighters don't do that."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"With her guns chewing up my rear, I had to come up with something. I pulled up. She had no trouble following me, of course, but that wasn't the point. Once we were angled up a notch, I went upright and killed my engines."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"It takes a special kind of mind to think 'Oh, I've got an enemy fighter on my tail; I'll cut my engines and make like a pro wrestler!'
"Not that I knew what pro wrestling was at the time, but one minute, I'm on his six, chasing him up into the black, the next, he's dropping like a stone and wrapping his battloid's arms around my fighter, pulling me down with him."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"Fact: No fighter has ever won a wrestling match with a battloid.
"Fact: Shanxi's gravity is eight percent higher than Earth's.
"Fact: Eight percent is a lot more than you'd think. This becomes especially important when you're trying to calculate how long you have in free fall before you hit the ground.
"Needless to say, my calculations that day were... off. Just a tad."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"We ended up smashing through the forest canopy at something approaching terminal velocity. My fighter's wings were torn clean off, and his veritech's head was buried in the dirt.
"I honestly don't remember the moment of impact; I must have blacked out for a few minutes. The next thing I know, my Mehrk's still pointing at the sky, sitting on its tailpipe, completely non-responsive."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"VTs can end up in some pretty odd positions, and the engineers try to anticipate that, but I'm pretty sure no one anticipated a Baldur being partially buried upside down in battloid mode.
"Getting out of the cockpit was an exercise in itself, and the blood rushing to my head didn't make it any easier. By the time I saw daylight...
"Well, the muzzle of a pistol wasn't exactly what I was hoping to see."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"He's got good reflexes; I'll give him that. The moment he saw my pistol, he was rolling out of his seat and into a crouch. We spent at least ten minutes pointing our sidearms at each other."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"Mexican standoff. I shoot her, she shoots me, or vice versa. Either way, we're both dead. Something had to give.
"Neither of us had our fighter intact or any comrades nearby, but this was a recon mission to the edges of turian-controlled territory. Help for her wouldn't be far, and my team wasn't due back for another four hours.
"I could have shot her; I was in a good enough position to have a pretty good chance of dodging her return fire if I had to. But then what? I was at least a hundred klicks from friendly territory. And while she had already demonstrated she had a mad on for me for some reason, she also hadn't shot me in the head when she had the chance.
"So I surrendered."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"I fully expected to die right then, in a mutual takedown - it's what a turian would have done - but humans are a surprising lot.
"Of course, it's not like things were going to be that easy. I swear, sometimes, it felt like the galaxy itself was conspiring against me. I didn't have any real restraints, but there was plenty of cord around to tie his hands behind his back.
"We were just making our way back to base when one of those spirits-bedamned burrowers showed up.
"We knew about the burrowers, all right. It was clear the humans didn't control them, but they were a menace. Levo or dextro, they didn't care. If they could catch it, they would eat it."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"We're pretty sure landsharks aren't native to Shanxi. Well, what they used to be probably were, but that doesn't really count for much. When we first colonized Shanxi, we found the remains of what looked a lot like a genesis pit.
"The Regess professed no knowledge of it, so we figured it was one of the Regent's leftovers, even if there was no other sign of invid presence. Most of whatever had been brewed there had died out, but the landsharks were true breeding.
"Nasty things. They can survive off just about anything, and they even have acid in their saliva. Leave your gear lying around long enough, and they'll make a snack of it, though they're smart enough not to attack large groups or anything mecha-sized. They're tough too, with hide that can turn light small arms fire if you don't hit them dead on.
"When one jumped Tyune... well, I couldn't just let it kill her.
"After all, skinny as a turian is, she'd only be an appetizer. I'd be the main course."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"I managed to put two rounds into the burrower before it was on me, but it wasn't enough. Next thing I know, Jack was wrestling it off me and telling me to shoot it.
"So I did.
"That made twice I owed my life to him, in the middle of a war in which we're supposed to be trying to kill each other. Now, I get that this is normal for humans, but for a turian, this was one of the weirdest things I could have imagined.
"I was a very confused turian, and damn it, there he was, in a position where I could get some answers from him."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"It should have been easy. Sharing our culture had been a reliable strategic weapon in humanity's arsenal for our first three interplanetary wars. It's actually part of our military doctrine to be open about our culture.
"Yeah, that didn't work out so well. I just... I didn't want to give her the wrong impression about my species. It seemed... I dunno... important to me that I didn't screw it up.
"I guess that should have been my first clue."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"From what he told me, I pretty much gathered that humans are special. In that 'touched in the head' way. No offense, but humans are crazy. I know of no other species - except maybe the krogan - that would consider a shooting war an auspicious start to interspecies relations.
"I won't go into detail about everything we talked about - a lot of that is private - but suffice it to say that we parted on friendly terms. Well, maybe more than friendly."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"Eventually, she ended up giving me my sidearm back and letting me go. Honestly, at the time, I had no idea what to make of that, and I was too happy to care, but now? Now, I have a pretty good idea why.
"That was the last time we encountered each other during the war."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"Indeed. While we were both at Second Telos, our paths didn't actually cross there. After the war was another story entirely, of course. Isn't that right, love?"
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"Yeah. We both tried tracking each other down after hostilities ended."
Lieutenant Commander Tyune Satarn, Novus Leader
"We ended up missing each other about, oh, three or four times before we finally found each other."
Third Lieutenant Jack "Lantern" Mitchell, Viking 14
"That's a romantic comedy in the making right there. And do you have any idea how hard it is to plan a date when there isn't a restaurant in the galaxy that's vetted to not poison either of you?"