"Jackal," Nicole said, staring at the computer screen with an agonized scowl. "I apologize for everything I've ever said. You were right. This isn't fun."

"You sure seemed to be having fun gloating, Spook." Burn crossed his arms in a huff. "You only beat me by like, a point."

"I beat you on the practice, and I beat you for real," she said, looking over her shoulder. "We can go for round 3 if you want. Or you could admit you got beat by a… what was it, you said?"

"...Crazy bitch."

"That's the one."

"Ugh. Fine. I got beat by a crazy bitch."

"Sorry, sorry, could you be a little louder? I don't think they can hear you back there."

BASH glared at her. "Spook."

"Ugh, fine. I'll lay off." She sighed. "But… how the fuck do you use this thing?"

The squadron leaned in towards the monitor, cascading drop-down menus. "Look, it's the old software. The shitty one." Dagger groaned. "Just because we've used it doesn't mean we know how it works."

When she had looked back at the screen, the menu had vanished. "What the hell?"

"You moved the cursor like, two pixels too far to the left."

"Fuck."

"Come on, hurry up! We gotta get the score sheets in!"

A small crowd had formed behind CIF-77 in the rec room, arms crossed, faces scowling, and feet tapping. "It's been forty-five minutes, for fuck's sake!"

Burn brought a single gloved hand up to his forehead. "Come on, Spook. It's just some dropdown menus!"

"It's dropdown menus inside dropdown menus! And they disappear if you breathe on the mouse! What sadist designed this shit?"

Suddenly, the sea of onlookers parted, many of them snapping to attention. "At ease," JC said, walking up towards the computer. "Hey, CIF-77, we need to talk. When you're done with this, my office. Alright?"

The Major nodded. "Yes sir. I'll have my squadron over as soon as possible."

Nicole gulped, and brought the mouse down the staircase of menu options. Burn gave her a passive-aggressive tap on the shoulder. "Hear that, Spook? No pressure." With that, the mouse was knocked just ever so slightly too far to the right, and she glared murderously at her colleague. "Oh, c'mon, asshole!"

It was going to be a long morning.

The squadron piled into JC's office around half an hour later. The Lieutenant Colonel gave an exasperated sigh, and watched the pilots pile into the office— the commanding officer's dress uniform as close to freshly-pressed as they came in a warzone, ribbons stacked up on his chest. "Alright, that's all of you," he said, watching the Major close the door. "We… we have something important to address."

The squadron stood in front of the Lieutenant Colonel's desk— a rather nice office, all things considered; evidently the Fed base commander there before him hadn't torched the place on the way out— but there weren't enough chairs for all of them. Major Hawthorne nodded. "Alright, JC, let's get it out of the way."

"Well, put quite simply, I'm sure you all know that General Elizabeth is visiting at thirteen-hundred today." The pilots nodded. "Quite frankly, you guys look like a pile of leftover shit."

Nicole blinked. That wasn't exactly the inspiring words she was expecting to hear. The CO swept his gaze down the line of pilots, a surrogate of the General whose inspection would come later. "You all are officers, you know. Even you, technically." He turned to her. "CIF-77 is a provisional squadron. It's not like CIF-28 or any of the other squadrons getting moved over here for the strike into Magadan— most of those are larger formations that defected together. You were all just… whoever was here." JC chuckled. "It's kinda funny. You all… well, you're the most authentically C-I-F unit here. Most of you are flying different planes. You've been wearing the same uniform for the past eight weeks, I'm pretty sure." He pointed at Burn. "Do any of you even have dress blues anymore?" The squadron shook their heads. "...I had 'em," Dagger said. "But the barracks went up in flames with the rest of the base when we fled."

"Of course, of course. And for some godforsaken reason, you've got a black eye, as if the do-it-yourself prison jumpsuit and the grossly out-of-regulation t-shirt wasn't enough." JC shook his head, pointing at Nicole. "You see what I mean?"

He turned around for a moment, looking out the window, and took a deep breath. "I have to ask, though… what are we fighting for?"

Burn jumped in, ever the patriot. "We're fighting for Cascadia, sir."

"For Cascadia?" The Lieutenant Colonel turned around, the dress-blues clad commanding officer meeting the flight-suited pilot's eyes. "Son, that's one real goddamn vague reason to fight. Hell, listen to those crazy bastards with the red planes— some of your old friends, I presume," he pointed to Nicole. "If you listen to the Feddie propaganda, now that Solana's down and they can't hide the existence of the war anymore, they're fighting for Cascadia, too! For Cascadia's future, they say. For our prosperity as a member of the global community of nations." He took a solemn, somber pause.

"Do you think we, the CIF, a ragtag group of rebellious patriots, can offer the people of Cascadia something more enticing than prosperity? Than knowing that there will always be food, always be water, always be power? Hell, even the Periphery states that have those three only have them because they parley with the Federation to gain it. You should know that better than anybody, Lieutenant Khoury. Take the Atlantic States, your homeland, as an example. Sure, they're not officially affiliated with the Federation— and they've always tried to keep them at arm's length, too, but why did your country have the supplies to be able to turn down most of the Federation's more invasive advances? Because your country has served as a haven for Federation corporations. You're too young to remember what happened before they moved in, of course. There was a great famine, and Federation aid saved your people. It was all over our newspapers, along with every other newspaper in the Federation. The Federation star, a symbol of hope for these poor people of the Periphery. It was the feel-good story of a lifetime— for us, anyways. The aid, of course, had a cost— the cost of your government allowing Icarus, Henderson, Magansk and their ilk to do whatever they pleased, a nice little backwater where Feddie corps could break whatever law or principle they pleased, a perfect place for the Federation government to be completely unaccountable for the actions of their military-industrial complex. The Federation did not care if your Atlantic States bucked their yoke, as they so often did— after Oceania was over, I heard stories that a lot of the people we couldn't bag ourselves wound up on the East Coast— because at the end of the day, they knew something." He cocked his head. "Your military was tiny— not even an Air Force, the only fighters surplus Federation Hornets operated from two carriers they sold you. Your society was fractured, along lines they helped draw— pro- and anti- Federation. You were dependent on external aid if you wanted to keep the lights on and your bellies full— Cordium from Cascadia, livestock and grain from Magadan, doctors from the Federation Core ensuring your hospitals had enough staff to run at all… what were you going to do? Defy them in a way that mattered? No, they weren't afraid of that. The worst thing that could happen was a civil war— pretty likely, too, if you've checked the news— and after that you'd be even more dependent on them. They subjugated you just like they subjugated us. Or tried to, anyways."

She looked down at her feet. JC was right. Brian was right. The Federation was not the benevolent force for good her father had believed in, even if it had given him the time to raise his daughter, even if it had given their marketplaces the food they needed to live more than a meager survival. Even Josh's research, which she was sure he wholeheartedly believed was just academics, was likely funded and directed by a Federation defense contractor, whether he knew it or not.

BASH nodded, looking over at Nicole. "There's the Federation, and there's everybody else. Periphery. And the Periphery either serves the Federation and prospers, or is ignored by the Federation and starves."

"Exactly, Major Hawthorne." JC gave a curt nod. "So, Lieutenant Bernitz. We're fighting for Cascadia. But what else? Let me tell you. We're fighting for Cascadia's sovereignty. No, actually— we're fighting for the possibility of sovereignty to exist outside of the whims of the Feds and their empire. We are fighting for Cascadia to exist as an independent nation, Lieutenant Bernitz. And that means restructuring the world order as a whole, destroying the chains of empire that the Federation has bound the world with. This is nothing short of revolution on a global scale. Which means we need something, something far more valuable than gold, or cordium, or food. We need legitimacy. Tell me— does a ragged, tattered group of guerillas project legitimacy?"

"No, sir." Burn shook his head.

"What does?" The CO raised an eyebrow.

Burn gave a measured, punctual reply. "A military, sir. An army. A navy. An air force."

"So when the General gets here in a few hours, I want him to see an air force. Not a bunch of patriots with planes and a pipe dream. If we want to win this war where it matters most, we have to shape up. The CIF has to be a legitimate fighting force for a legitimate nation. That is how we offer the people of Cascadia something more enticing than prosperity."

Dagger spoke. "And what would that be?"

"No matter how kind the master," JC gave her a steely glance. "There is nothing the slave dreams of more than to break their chains. Talk of independence has circulated for as long as we've been a Federation member. Cascadia is a land of plenty. If we break the Federations' grip on us, we have nothing to lose… and we may well be the only place in the world where that is true."

"Lieutenant Colonel, sir, I appreciate the philosophy," Nicole reached a hand up and scratched her head. "What does this have to do with us?"

"Oh, you guys? You're about as far from legitimacy as they come. Yeah, the General can't know any of you are pilots. We're going to shuffle you all around, and hide your plane in specific, Lieutenant Khoury. But first, I believe there's something you need to take care of. I don't know who put it there, but there's a spray-painted marking on the left tail fin that reads 'FUCK THE FEDS.' That is extremely unprofessional. Cover it up." He reached under his desk, pulling out a pair of maintainers' cover-alls and a can of spray paint, and passed them to her. "Go talk to Sergeant Crespo in the hangar, you'll be acting like you're part of his staff. It'd explain the black eye, you were working under the plane when a bolt fell. It'd also explain the… well, y'know." He waved a hand around her. "You doing alright?"

She was taken aback, but she couldn't exactly object, having seen herself in the mirror earlier. "Yeah, I'm fine." Oh, I see how it is.

"Bernitz, guard duty. Hawthorne, Ashido, weapons handling. Hyder, supplies. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," the line of pilots replied, a grumble under their collective breaths. They knew better than to complain.

"Dismissed."

She grumbled, sweeping the paint can across the tail of the F/E-18. The minor vandalism there had not been her work— she suspected it was Burn, as it had shown up about a week after her first flight. Something he would do. Maybe not anymore, but definitely back then. Her work complete and the expletive successfully expleted, she let the paint sit for a few minutes before covering the plane in a tarp. She glanced at the clock, as Sergeant Crespo walked over. "Not a second too soon, Spook. General should be landing any second. If he comes over to shoot the shit with us— and he will, he's the goddamn Old Man— keep your cover. Hope your lil' pilot nickname fits." He chuckled.

It wasn't long before a C/T-17 came in on the runway, its distinguished passenger disembarking to salutes and armed escort. She watched pilots from CIF-28 and other, new arrivals salute and shake hands with the General, who gave the pilots cordial smiles and rousing words.

Eventually, he turned to approach the hangar, and as the maintainers snapped to attention so did she. The General called them all to stand at ease, and they did, but she didn't feel any sense of ease at all.

She was a foreigner, in a foreign land, fighting for a cause she wasn't entirely sure how much she believed in. Day by day, she'd see things that convinced her that she had the right thing to fight against, but she always felt out of place. She had only signed on with the CIF because it was one step up from jail, which was one step up from a bullet in the head, which was one step up from mistakenly bombing civilians for the sake of the world order or however she knew Zmei and the others would most likely justify it.

"To each and every one of you," the grizzled veteran, stars flanking his shoulders, spoke in a booming voice. "I thank you for your bravery. In each and every one of you I see the future of Cascadia." He stopped, and looked at her. She froze. He knows. He knows I don't belong here. He knows—

He smiled.

"Young lady, you remind me of my daughter. The reason why we're fighting in the first place. I'll let you in on a little secret, miss. Old men like me don't fight for ourselves. We fight for the next generation. Yours. I'm proud of each and every one of you." He turned to address the others. "You are the sons and daughters of a free Cascadia! As one, we will tear the standard of the Federation's yoke to blue and white ribbons— Hooah!"

A chorus of replies. "Hooah!" She said nothing, too lost in thought to join in the General's pep rally.

The next generation. The words echoed in her mind. Where have I heard that before?