Chapter 14: Talk is Cheep

—August 18, 2018—
—05:18 GST—
Skull Squadron was in the front of the wave, leading the counter attack of VF-4 Lightings and VF-1F Electric Valkyries against the incoming wave of enemy fighters and battlepods. The enemy formation was lead by a squadron of variable powered armors and was much more numerous; Colonel Ichijo's attack wing was a hundred planes strong, the enemy mecha had closer to five hundred of various types. Beyond them was a fleet of Supervision warships much larger than the intelligence reports suggested. Just locating them to attack had been a problem, but so far most if not all of the factors of Admiral Hayase's big counter attack had either changed or vanished.

When he returned to the ship, Hikaru decided, he would put Misa over his knee. "Skull leader to Kappa, request target dope."

"Kappa to Strike Wing Cerberus, adjust course, three degrees port and fifteen down. You should be in engagement range in two minutes."

Hikaru checked his radar as soon as he was on course and confirmed it for himself. "The angle will be funny, but we can manage. All pilots, you know the plan: E-valks paint your targets and hang back once your weapons are deployed."

"Roger. Hades squadron in position." The first bomber leader reported, followed by the second and third in turns.

Hikaru looked over his shoulder at the missile laden E-valk fighters, each packed down with four nuclear mutli-warhead missiles. All of them locked into the enemy mecha at long range and clicked off their safeties. "Hades Flight, fire at will!" the leader shouted as her missiles burst from their hardpoints towards the enemy mecha. The other fighters in her squadron did the same, and the next wave moved forward and selected targets for a followup strike.

There would be a thirty second flight before the warheads impacted, but long before their time was up, Commander Gashi's voice exploded over the radio in a panic, "Kappa to all fighters! Enemy approaching from sector eighteen, closing on us rapidly! Dragon squadron is no longer responding, all fighters return to ship!"

Hikaru growled in anger, even as the multi-heads split into their separate rockets and exploded amidst the enemy mecha. The spearhead of enemy fighters were smashed to bits by the blast from the missiles, but Skull Squadron would never get a chance to finish them off. "It's a trap! All pilots, fall back to the Monitor! E-Valks, go full afterburner and standby for close combat! We're gonna try and get you guys re-armed for another sortie!" He reversed his course with one quick burst of verniers and powered back to the ship at full thrust, hundreds of now angry war machines hot on his tail. This is perfect. How the hell did they sneak up on us like this!

Misa was asking her the same question as the fleet skimmed barely a few kilometers above the gas giant's upper atmosphere. The enemy pods seemed to have come up from beneath the cloud layer, but at the speed they would have had to be moving they should have left con-trails behind them that would have been detectable. Somehow they managed to hide them, and now it was too late to counterattack; the entire fleet was caught in a swarm of enemies as overworked and overwhelmed fighter pilots and powered armors struggled to fight them off.

There was only one way out from here. "Gashi, time on target?"

"Coming up on the far side now, ten minutes to firing range! Once they rise over the third layer, we can open fire."

"I want the main gun charged and ready to fire as soon as we have a target!" If we live that long, she thought.There were more enemy fighters around them than stars in the sky, a much bigger threat than any enemy warships. The defense guns on the Monitor were destroying them dozens at a time, yet their numbers never seemed to diminish. But there was still a chance. Dozens of fighter squadrons from all the ships in the fleet would be returning to join the fight at any moment. "Kappa to Skull Squadron, what's your ETA? You better not be playing with their sentries out there!"

Hikaru was finally entering missile range of the enemy fighters and was already picking out targets for his computer. "We're almost there Admiral, don't get your panties in a wad!"

"I wouldn't be so bitchy if you'd get some of those fighters off my screen! Stop draggin your asses and get on with your job!"

"Well since you put it that way…" He locked onto the largest group closest to the ship and locked his missiles on from maximum range. He needed to clear the area in the next few minutes for the ship to safely fire the cannons, and he knew just how to pull that off. "Hades, what do you have left?"

"Wizard and Muskrat still have multi-warheads, the rest of us each have Stilettos and twenty Starbucks." The commander of the squadron wasn't far behind him, but the rest of her fighters and the other three E-Valks were splitting up in all directions. There were only three other fighters nearby, he would have to make due with that. "Hades Leader, Muskrat-3 and -4, Wizard -3, get on my wing in an echelon formation. Francis, Monty, on the rear."

All four fighters responded with impressive quickness, lining up behind his right wing in a half-v formation as they dove in. The enemy pods didn't even seem aware of his approach, but that was about to change. "Bomber pilots, it's on you."

"Roger. Bombs away..." The E-Valks behind him fired their multi-warhead missiles at the fighter group, this time from a much closer range. The wait wasn't long; only seconds later the massive looming hull of SDF-04 vanished behind a curtain of fire from, a score of separate nuclear explosions, sweeping way an entire group of enemy pods long before they knew what hit them.

"Nice shooting, E-Valks!" Hikaru said, hitting his afterburners to capitalize on the confusion. "This is Skull leader, that's our rallying point! Move into the gap and split em from there!"

"Hades Leader, now enga—" A burst of fire from three Glaug battlepod hit the fighter just aft of the cockpit and it was gone before the pilot had a chance to scream. Hikaru swerved around the cloud of expanding fragments, then lined up his first targets.

There were ten battlepods in front of him, modified Glaugs of the Supervision Army with dozens more moving into range behind him. He had no time to gripe. "Keep up with me!" he shouted warned as the battlepods opened fire. The missiles under his wing locked onto their targets and he fired six of the medium missiles in a spread, joined a moment later by the remaining bombers still in formation behind him. Enemy mecha fired wildly to defend against the missiles but all in vain; the medium warheads rippled in explosions among them, smashing the first of them to pieces. Almost immediately another group of enemy mecha came up around them, impact cannons and pulse lasers firing in a maddening barrage. Hikaru switched into gerwalk and cut his velocity, aimed the pulse lasers on both arms and returned fire even as he dodged the enemy guns. Skull-3 and -5 did the same, as did the E-Valks behind him transform and lay out a long burst with their gunpods.

"Son of a bitch! There's so many of them!"

Four more fighters appeared at his back and he turned to engage just in time to avoid their missiles. "Kappa, how much longer!"

"We need thirty more seconds..." Commander Gashi watched the deadly dance playing out over SDF-04's hull, noticing Hikaru was in a much tighter spot than he probably realized. There was an entire division of battlepods and fighters closing in around him, but the distraction was more than a welcome one. "Skull Zero, try and lure them in front of the main cannon! Hurry now, we're almost ready to fire!"

Hikaru dropped two of the fighters one at a time, but the other two pressed their attack with help from what seemed like a million more coming up behind them. "Any other options?" He fired a missile spread from the FAST packs into the closing fighters, knocking two of them out of action but bringing up almost a dozen more to replace them. "I guess not!" He fired his thrusters again and backed away at full throttle, firing in long bursts to try and keep the enemy from lining up a shot. He could already see the booms of the main cannon parting bellow him and he knew he had about fifteen seconds to get through, "Misa don't go shooting me down again!"

"I'll think about it." Hikaru's lighting was getting closer and closer every second. The timing looked almost too perfect... "Gashi, check your targets!"

"Targets locked Admiral! We're in range, energy level at the red line!"

Arcs of energy danced between the main cannon booms, Hikaru's signal to make his run. He turned around, switched to fighter mode and dipped his nose to fly just between the cannons, knowing full well that that humongous formation behind him would follow like lemmings. The arcs intensified as he passed between the cannons, and the light began to rise in his cockpit... "Firing now!" Gashi's voice thundered on the radio.

Hikaru dove his fighter as quickly as he could and cut off the G-limiter on his computer. The move slammed him back into his seat at pulling almost 13 Gs just before the main cannon fired, but he just managed to shout out on his radio "I'm clear!" The dozens of variable armors and battlepods following him instantly vanished, reduced to small clouds of vapor by the energy of the cannon on its way to strike the enemy ships just below the horizon.

SDF-04's beam, along with five Zentradi gunboats and one battleship cut through the upper atmosphere of the planet itself, ionizing particles on the way out, then seemed to burst out of the planet itself to slam into the enemy capitol ships at the front of the formation. The largest twelve vessels of the patrol group were all destroyed instantly, and the remaining vessels panicked and began firing randomly at the planet in hopes of drawing out the enemy they now assumed was hiding down there. It would take another ten minutes for them to come over the horizon and gain a line of sight to the Gallaron fleet, but by then that was more than enough time for Misa's ships to shoot through the gas giant and blast them to bits.

Hikaru kicked into gerwalk and cut his velocity to nothing, checking the space behind him for any signs of survivors he would have to mop up. Only one of them had made it through, though both of its legs were melted away and its engines were already failing. It was derelict, but not quite out of the fight even now, firing randomly in all directions trying to hit something, anything. Hikaru locked onto it with both of his laser cannons to put it out of its misery, but then he had a better idea. "This is Skull Leader to Kappa-Four, have a security team meet me in the starboard grappler hangar. I'll be landing with a guest."

Commander Gashi sighed, "Forget about that Hikaru, there's still hundreds of enemy fighters attacking the fleet! We don't have time for this!"

"I'll just have to make the time, Commander! That pilot's dead in space but for some reason he's not following his suicide order!" He zoomed his sights in as much as they would go and locked his lasers onto the mecha's main weapons systems. One burst from each laser and now the machine was harmless. "Get the team's assembled, I'm bringing it in…"

"You've got fighters closing on your position! Whatever you're going to do, do it fast!"

A burst of cannon fire from somewhere behind him told him as much, and with his ammo running low and his lasers quickly overheating, he didn't want to have to take on another small army of enemy mecha without first stopping to reload. He closed in on the crippled variable armor in fighter mode, and just before impacting with it he switched into gerwalk and effectively tackled the machine at full thrust. Once he was back in range of SDF-04's defensive guns, Hikaru eased back on his throttles and guided his way to the fighter bay where he knew the security teams would be waiting for him.

It was certainly a last minute decision and an unexpected one at that, but this would mark the first time in history a Supervision Army pilot was captured during battle. The battle went on, ending once again in another tiny victory for the Gallaron fleet after a brilliantly planned ambush, but the real victory was one in the starboard grappler hangar of SDF-04. The pilot of the enemy mecha was chained and sedated on his way to a holding cell when one of the fighter mechanics on the other side of the hangar suddenly... and quite accidentally... made history with the single most memorable one-liner since Neil Armstrong took that one small step. Staring in disbelief, the young mechanic ran across the room to the prisoner grabbed his shoulders and shouted out, "Tyler! I don't believe it! I thought you were dead!"

—05:34 GST—

Adjacent to the city block of the SDF-Victory on one of the lower levels, just to port of the macron barracks is the mess hall, which is basically a four story open building next to a macron-sized food court. The ship's regular crewmen spent much of their free time either here, at their homes, or at the Bad Bush club a block down the street. A few officers took their meals here, with occasional appearances by Captain Elensh and the Lighting pilots, and regular attendance by the ship's first officer, but for the most part the patrons of the mess hall were all midshipmen or enlisted soldiers.

Minmei was sitting at her usual table on the rooftop with this mornings breakfast; coffee, toast and a hard boiled egg with a tuna salad over the morning edition of the Megaroad Tribune. There wasn't much going on in the news other than the usual, but there was hope again in the eyes of people all over the Republic. The all-powerful Supervision Army had suddenly lost its teeth, and now the battle had reached maniacal proportions as GSDF fleets hurled into battle with more confidence and ever greater ferocity than ever before. Fleet actions were described as all-out brawls, and for the first time it seemed that the Gallaron forces were beginning to overpower the enemy in more and more direct confrontation. But the greatest news of all was that the center of the Supervision Army's offensive appeared to originate from only one place: the mysterious Kaladan system well within enemy lines where the 6th fleet had suffered a crippling loss a few weeks earlier. All Gallaron efforts centered on surrounding and isolating that system now, putting it in a position where a major offensive might be able to put the enemy out of action and give Gallaron the edge it needed to cement their advantage permanently. It was exciting news, and to think she would get to be a very small part of it all.

She glanced up from the paper to the sound of thunderous laugher and shouting from a table two rows behind her. She recognized one of the voices, finished the last bites of her breakfast and moved over to join them near the edge of the balcony over the macronian food court. Kai Chan and most of his squad was sitting at a table against against the railing, all laughing and joking apparently at Kai Chan's expense. "Just admit it Kai!" Aziz said, catching his breath. "You totally are! Don't be embarrassed, nobody here cares!"

Kai Chan rolled his eyes passively and took a sip of his coffee. "Admit what? I told you, I'm not gay!"

"Oh sure, that's why you haven't had a girlfriend in over six years!" Beecher said, nudging him in the ribs. "Out of this entire squad you're the only one who doesn't look at me in the shower. Even Forest looks at me and we know he's alitte sweet!"

Kai Chan rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. You guys go ahead and make jokes, but I'm telling you I'm not like that!"

For some reason, Minmei found this at least as amusing as the marines did. Kai Chan seemed so uncomfortable sitting there at that table while the others ripped into him, but she understood it was all in good fun and wasn't about to be left out. "C'mon Kai, what're you hiding it for?" He set her foot on the seat of one of the chairs and leaned on her knee, "We don't care if you ARE a switch hitter, we're all friends here, you know?"

Only now did he notice her standing there, and he turned to look at Minmei with a betrayed look on his face. "You traitor!"

The others laughed again, but Minmei grinned. "Well, it would explain why I feel so comfortable around you."

Kai Chan rubbed his eyes tiredly. "You're actually enjoying this aren't you?"

"Enjoying what? It's the truth isn't it? Why else would you go out of your way to be so nice to me and you haven't even made a move yet? Just one of the girls, huh?"

Kai Chan leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Are you finished?"

"I'm just getting warmed up!"

"You know, if I was still macronized I'd swat you like a fly right now..."

The alarm started ringing all over the ship. As if parts of some massive machine, every head in the room turned up to the ceiling, listening for the announcement from Commander Gouraz that would come only a few moments later. "General quarters, general quarters. All hands condition yellow, all civilians must vacate outer compartments immediately."

Minmei watched Kai Chan and his squad stampede off down the corridor to get to the armory where their suits were stored, and suddenly became aware of her own lack of a place to go. "Condition yellow? Where am I supposed to…?"

"Hey Minmei!" Lieutenant Doyle called to her from the other end of the balcony, in uniform for a change but still somewhat shabbily dressed. "C'mon babe, it's time to work!"

—05:40 GST—

Hikaru came into the holding cell determined not to jump to any conclusions or be swayed by the brushfire rumors that were sweeping the ship. It had gotten grossly out of hand since this whole situation started, first with that mechanic running across the room shouting out the pilots name, but it had been made worse when his companions announced to the entire mechanics division that Chief tech Danny Norton's brother had come back from the dead as an enemy pilot. The DNA tests confirmed all this, as did the fingerprints and a pull of his service record. 1st Lieutenant Tyler Norton, commanding officer of the 215th Black Widow squadron, was flying transformable powered armors for the enemy. More disturbing still was the mecha itself; it seemed to be based loosely on the VF-4 Lighting and an older design, presumably the Supervision Army's officer suits used only by micronian soldiers. More and more evidence pointed to one terrible conclusion: contrary to previous beliefs, the crew of the space carrier ARMD-16 was still very much alive, and the Supervision Army must have salvaged more than just information from the UN warship. Understanding this helped to explain how the enemy was able to sneak up on Misa's battle group undetected; the pilots were surely familiar with the tactics of Admiral Hayase.

Hikaru was here to find out what else the enemy might have gained from ARMD-16 that the GSDF hadn't thought of yet. Having the crew of an entire UN warship under their power was something everyone knew to be a serious breach of security, but when he came into the room, he found the pilot lying face down on the floor with two medics crouched down on either side of him, examining him curiously with medical equipment. The Protocran doctor Dumo Koru was in the corner reviewing his notes, so Hikaru spoke to him first of all. "What happened to him?" He said, hugging the walls to stay out of the doctor's way in the small holding cell.

"His brain has slipped into a REM cycle from lack of external stimuli. It seems to be an automatic or programmed response based in the adrenal cortex meant to conserve energy..."

Hikaru rubbed his temples, following about one word in four. "Koru, I know I've told you before I don't speak scientist."

Koru sighed and started again using the simplest explanation he could think of. "He got bored and fell asleep."

Hikaru snickered. "What, he just nodded off? Prisoners don't usually fall asleep during interrogations..."

"This one does. He can't really help it." Koru nudged one of the other doctors, and in response the man blindly handed him a sheet of cat-scan data. "He's got all these funky electronics installed in his brain—sort of a high-tech lobotomy. It looks like an entire section of the frontal and pre-frontal lobes have been bypassed and completely shut down and regulated by electrochemical signals from a microchip planted in the inside of his skull in the middle of his forehead. You see that scar on his forehead?"

Hikaru looked, then nodded. It was a very fine mark, a v-shaped line running from just above and between his eyebrows to half the length of his forehead. The whole thing could have fit on a quarter. "Is that a surgical scar?"

"Indeed." Varcus looked back at his papers, "I've have no idea what kind of technology could have done this, but with the kind of precision we're looking it, I'm 100 percent certain that this was done mechanically, some kind of machine device designed for this purpose. After he was captured from ARMD-16, they probably loaded him and the rest of the crew down an assembly line that installed these chips, then they were conditioned and sent off to battle. The only thing I can't figure out is why he didn't obey his suicide order. We've never been able to capture an enemy soldier intact before, they always fuse those explosive charges in their helmets and blow themselves up."

"So it's a form of mind control," Hikaru said, "But apparently it doesn't always work on everyone."

Varcus nodded, "Exactly. He'll do what he's told, act on instinct, but in his present condition he's not even aware of his own existence, let alone the nature of his orders. Even the slightest error in data processing and he'll become hopelessly confused."

That's good to know," Hikaru leaned down and poked him in the chest, "How do you wake him up?"

"I don't know." Koru rubbed his scalp in frustration. "According to the Zentradi, it's a very specific set of tones he's programmed to respond to, presumably some kind of alarm system in their ship. Shikari reported during her raid a couple years ago that when the alarms went off in the enemy command ship, all the Zentradi soldiers went into some kind of homicidal rage…"

Even as he was speaking, Hikaru saw the doors flying open to whole new possibilities of combat tactics. The Supervision Army clearly had little if any trouble with discipline in the ranks since none of their soldiers could really think for themselves, but this meant that no matter what happened the enemy would almost always react the exact same way, doing precisely what their commanders ordered regardless of their situation. Since no one knew just how those orders were passed on it was impossible to take advantage of this directly, but it lead him down other more interesting avenues. "The visual cortex is still intact isn't it?"

This surprised everyone in the room, knowing Hikaru's knowledge in biology was about as extensive as their knowledge of aviation history. "Very much so. I suspect that's probably how they communicate signals to their pilots on the field, either using light patterns in the cockpit displays or by signal flares."

"Right," Hikaru made a note of this, but added, "But just a small error in data processing and they get confused, right? They won't be able to coordinate effectively, or even defend themselves."

Again, Koru was surprised. "Very good Colonel, that's exactly right. The lack of cognitive awareness means their behavior will be simplistic and predictable. In a way it's similar to your daughter's condition, only hundreds of times more acute."

Hikaru started to smile. It was a good guess, and it would be quite a bonus to finally know exactly how the enemy soldiers operated. Even the Zentradi didn't have this kind of detailed information about the Supervision Army, and he already knew just how to prove his theory. He stood to leave, but paused in the doorway before he forgot himself. "Koru, I want you to figure out a way to reverse the process and put this man's mind back together. His kid brother is the chief mechanic in the starboard grappler and he's a little worried about him."

"We'll take him to the infirmary and get to work." Koru turned back to the sleeping prisoner, then shouting him back into the room. "Colonel wait! I just remembered, I finished reviewing your test results this morning! Would you like to know now or would you rather be surprised?"

Hikaru wasn't exactly sure if he knew the answer to that, but he was sure he wouldn't be able to wait long. On the other hand, he had learned a long time ago that sometimes it was best not to spoil a surprise. "I think I'll wait a bit." He said coyly. "But it is a girl right?"

Koru winked at him. "You can go ahead and tell Miko she's going to have a baby sister."

"Excellent! I'll give her the news right away, just as soon as I make a phone call."

—05:40 GST—

The PR officers were already on top of things with a dozen men scrambling all over the ship to get to their posts, some to cover the events as they unfolded, others to act as go-betweens for the anxious civilians onboard the ship; this is where Minmei came in. This was the first real battle Victory had been directly involved in since she got there and she was understandably jumpy. Lieutenant Doyle had been no help, his complete unfamiliarity with basic tact already started to backfire. "Where are we going Boss?" She said, bracing herself against the side of the side of the elevator.

"The Coconut Room." Doyle said plainly. "That's where we direct most of the action around here. It's pretty much the media department's bridge." The elevator car ground to a stop, then moved sideways a few hundred meters before stopping again at the station just bellow the command tower. "Relax, it's your first day. I'll walk you through everything."

Minmei followed nervously to the main monitor room in the command tower's E-Deck and entered into a room laid out like some kind of bizarre combination of an old NASA control center and the control room of a TV studio. There were thirty five very small cameras built into the hull of the ship with angles in all directions and from this room they could access any one of them at any time. This control room served a dual purpose, keep the public up to speed with what is/has been happening and, more importantly, document combat actions for future use by military intelligence. "What do I do?"

"Over here…" Doyle grabbed her by the elbow and thrust her into a padded chair behind a small computer consol one corner of the room. "How are you at public speaking?"

"It comes with the job. I've got lots of practice."

"I thought so." Doyle reached under the consol and brought up a radio headset. "We don't do live video feeds, this will be voice only. You only talk when you have something to say and you'll only have something to say when we give it to you. Push this button…" He gestured to a red switch on the left hand corner of the consol "…for a hot mic, this one for radio. This calls out to all the loudspeakers, radio and TV sets in the ship."

Minmei nodded. "This goes out to all the civilians?"

"Some crewmen too, pretty much anyone without a direct line to the bridge. Sometimes Commander Gouraz or Captain Elensh takes care of this, but most of the time we do it ourselves so they don't have to worry about it."

Minmei could fully understand that. The civilians on Macross had been enough of a headache for the officers to worry about all the time, and she seemed to remember a great deal of war propaganda being sent out over the loudspeakers following just about every air raid. In many ways, she knew this was at least as important to the ship as the men out there who were doing all the hard work. "Boss, you know what's going on out there?"

Doyle looked around at the two dozen nervous technicians and intelligence officers around the room, then back at Minmei. "You're the one who has to talk to the people. Ask somebody."

Minmei looked around the consol and found the switch to set the microphone to radio only. "This is PA, I need to make an announcement. Does anyone know what's going on?"

Barely half a heartbeat later, someone on the other side of the room answered her. "Radio here. The ship's come across some wrecked warships in our flight path and Captain Elensh thinks it might be a booby trap. There's a few Meltrandi warships in the area, but mostly Supervision. None of them are moving."

"Then why the alert? What are we doing?"

"Captain wants to keep her distance until the scout teams can check it out. That usually takes about half an hour."

Minmei took it all in and jotted down a few notes on the computer screen. "Okay… what do I say?"

Doyle pointed to the red button for the public announcer line, "Tell them the ship has encountered a hazardous situation and there is no immediate danger."

"Just say that?"

"No, put it into words that make it all seem pointless and stupid! C'mon girl, you know how this works!"

Minmei thought it over, jotted down a few lines on her computer screen, and nervously pressed the red button. "Attention all civilians, this ship has encountered a navigational hazard. As a precaution, please remain indoors until the situation is secured. Sorry for the inconvenience, this shouldn't take long." Minmei let her finger off the button and took a breath. "How was that?"

Doyle smiled and laughed out loud. "Minmei, baby, you're a natural!"

—05:41 GST—

Kai Chan shifted his weight on the hull and tested it again, scanning with the thermal imager of his VFX-12. There was no doubt, there was definitely a heat source somewhere inside this ship, and given his proximity to the engine hull it was easy to guess what it was. There were bodies floating in space near him as well, female soldiers in flight suits with trails of frozen blood spiraling around them, yet he could not seem to find a breach in the hull where they might have come from, nor could he see any wreckage from dead powered armors or fighters nearby. The sheer number of bodies floating around was also troubling; they were so close together and there were so many of them, his visibility close to the ship was becoming more and more limited as he approached the engine room. Despite everything the Zentradi had taught him while training him and his battalion for mecha combat, his basic marine training took over. He knew this place, he knew what was going on, and he was pretty sure the others knew as well. "Eyes open folks." He said, keeping off the un-coded channel. "Live people are watching us. Infantry, fall back by squads to the Victory. Section Zero, stick by me."

The three Stormlord squads moved first, while the VFs in Kai Chan's unit gathered up around him and started their return trip. They quickly but carefully negotiated the scattered debris around whatever ship they were closest to and began filtering back to the Victory, scanning in all directions for the ambush they all knew would come at any moment. Barely a few hundred meters from the bow of a destroyer, Beecher caught something out of the corner of her eye, a barely perceptible glint of movement, half shrouded in shadow but still detectable. She switched to thermal imaging and saw it more clearly; just a chunk of debris moving away from the ship, but just what had disturbed this fragment in the first place was painfully obvious. "Kai, on my six, five hundred meters."

Kai Chan saw Beecher moving away from the destroyer, and he saw a fragment of metal drifting away from that very destroyer at a fairly slow velocity. It was perfect, brilliantly planned, but poorly executed. "Second and Third squads, wait for my signal, then give us a protective blanket of fire. Once we're out of the kill zone, turn and run like hell." Kai Chan scanned behind him and locked his weapons onto the fragment. "Ready… OPEN FIRE!"

Twenty Stormlord armors all turned at once and fired with both plasma cannons, some adding in a burst from their gunpods, some firing chest lasers and autocannons to add to the barrage even as Kai Chan's squad added their gunpods to the attack. The maelstrom of energy beams and shells made fast work of the floating hunk of metal, revealing a silver powered armor underneath and likewise reducing it to a hunk of twisted metal. The surprised pilot actually tried to bail out of the suit, only to float face first into an impossible storm of death.

All hell broke loose behind them, powered armors suddenly burst from concealment and began to fill the skies. At first Kai Chan was daunted by the prospect of having yet another hard days work ahead of him, but then his scanners identified the attackers for who they were. "Queadlunn-Raus! Damn, it's the Meltrandi!"

Three of them locked onto his fighter and fired a burst of lasers from both arms; switching into battloid mode, Kai Chan was just able to dodge the worst of it before falling back with the others. Two Stormlords behind him went down one after another, both destroyed by missiles from the same powered armor. Kai Chan locked onto it with his gunpod, lead the target, and caught it through the legs with a long burst. One of his shells hit just high enough to knick the pilot, and the suit started to retreat beyond the range of his guns. "This is Black Zero to Delta-Vee, we have a bit of a situation here!"

Imura almost sounded annoyed. "I can see that Black Zero, stand by."

Kai Chan wasn't too happy with the idea of waiting for Imura to connect whatever weird plans she had up her sleeve, but he didn't really have a choice now. Two more armors closed in from behind him, both firing with impact cannons at wild angles obviously meant to drive him in some direction. He guessed at where they wanted him to go, and turned his head just enough to see something moving against the stars, silhouetted against the flare from its own engines. A black Queadlunn-Rau armor with light gray shoulders; this was an ace pilot, and this was Kai Chan's way out. "Imura, I need you to fire the secondary cannons directly at my coordinates in fifteen seconds!"

She no longer sounded annoyed, now only puzzled. "You want us to shoot you down?"

"I want you to shoot AT me! Ten seconds, hurry up!"

Imura decided Kai Chan knew what he was doing, so she nodded at Lieutenant Merrick and started the countdown. "Firing in eight seconds." Kai Chan aimed the gunpod at the two armors and traded shots for a little bit. "…seven… six…" No more time to play, he turned all his attention on the enemy ace and switched to IR only. He could see the outline of it's heat signature even at this distance, and it was more than enough to keep track of it. The suit quickly caught on that he was following and began a dizzying array of maneuvers like a panicked horsefly. He switched back into fighter mode and followed as best he could, and firing his afterburners to get in closer. "…five… four…" He let fly with everything he had, missiles, head lasers and his gunpod, but true to his expectations this enemy danced around everything he had like some kind of game and returned fire with equal intensity. It was all a diversion anyway; all he could hope was that she wanted to kill him as much as he wanted her. "…three… two…" He stopped dodging and charged in as straight as he could, using only small movements to throw off her aim. He tried an old Zentradi trick, a tight zigzag pattern that invariably made a pilot dizzy but was always effective in avoiding enemy fire. Only a hundred more meters… "one… zero… firing now!"

Four of the beam cannons on the Victory's hull aimed and fired directly on Kai Chan's position. He reacted quickly enough to get out of the line of fire, but the other pilot had been so distracted by their duel she it took her an extra millisecond to react. She avoided the beam cannons by an extremely narrow margin, but it gave Kai Chan the half-heartbeat he needed to catch her; he switched back to radar, popped open the internal missile bays on the legs and fired all sixteen of his mini-missiles straight at the female armor and immediately moved to circle around behind her. This time she wasn't fast enough, and as the missiles exploded against her suit she could do nothing but curl up into a ball to deflect the missiles with arms and legs.

The suit emerged from the explosions with both arms gone and both legs chopped to bits, spinning out of control as Kai Chan came up behind it. The hatch opened a moment later and the pilot leapt from the dead mecha, almost directly into Kai Chan's arms as he passed the armor in battloid mode. He put one arm around her waist and held his gunpod against the faceplate of her flight suit with the other, let her stay there for a moment to consider her position. He was at first amused that she tried to struggle free of his grip, even though his VF had enough strength to physically crush her if he needed to, then she seemed to relax a bit and accept the hopelessness of her situation. Once Kai Chan was satisfied, he toggled through standard Zentradi frequencies, "Tell your soldiers to stop fighting." He said firmly.

The pilot stopped struggling, and in surprise half turned to look at the fighter now holding her captive. "What!"

"Tell them to stop fighting. This battle is a waste or ammunition."

The pilot nodded, understanding suddenly that some mistake had obviously been made and clicked the radio controls on her wrist. "This is Commander Tiamat to all units, we are engaged with friendly forces. Cease fire immediately. I repeat, cease fire immediately."

—23:31 GST—

Slowly, gradually, Corina became aware of a ticking sound in her ears, something that seemed to grow louder every moment. She opened one eye slowly, the other more slowly, then glanced around in a kind of daze to determine her surroundings. She was in her office, she was alone, and the old clock on the desk that Misa had left her ticking off the seconds almost next to her head. Without raising her head off the desk, she read the hands of the clock to see she had been sleeping like this for almost two hours; it felt like two years.

Partly in regret from wasting so much time, she lifted her head up slightly, then peeled off a sheet of paper stuck to her face and looked it over. "Strategic readiness report for Deck-42," she said, reading the heading, then noticing the rest of the documents sprawled out on her desktop. The report itself was over eight pages long, and as usual contained little more than a summary of every officer's conduct during the last three combat actions, anything worthy of note anyway. How this kind of thing ended up on her desk she wasn't quite sure, but she decided she would either think of her reason for requesting it or else give it back to the duty officer who was supposed to take care of these reports every week. But then there was a new sound in the quiet of the office, a knock on the door and a muffled voice from outside. "Come in." She said tiredly, brushing the wrinkles out of her uniform and smoothing he hair back.

Major Sutherland stepped into the office with a file in his hand, making no pretense of standing at attention of military procedures. He walked as he would into a friends bedroom, but Corina was in no mood to care. "Just got the report from the strike wing, ma'am." He said casually. "The raid was a total success. The carriers never saw it coming."

Corina nodded appreciably, thumbing through the papers and glancing at the pages. "Well at least we've saved Gallaron the trouble of having to fight off another little raid... hey, why so many casualties? It says here Black Lion squadron lost six planes on the first pass."

Sutherland shrugged it off. "It was a pretty rough furball from what I heard. The pilots all ejected though, and some of the fighters can be salvaged."

"Not good enough." Corina stood up behind the desk and handed him back the report. "We can't afford to loose this many craft in every operation. We have an eight-to-one kill ratio against enemy fighters and ten-to-one against warships, but of course you know we're outnumbered by alot more than ten-to-one."

Sutherland nodded solemnly. "You're right Captain, I'll work with the other squad leaders to try and improve efficiency."

Corina yawned and dropped back into her chair. "You'd better. This war is going to be hard enough, we need every advantage..." She rubbed her eyes and yawned again. She felt like she was going to fall asleep right in front of him, but by willpower alone she forced herself to stay alert until he was gone. For some reason when she looked up again, Major Sutherland was still there. "Is there anything else Major?"

"When's the last time you slept Captain?" He said casually.

Corina rolled her eyes. "I'll be fine, thank you Major." She turned slightly to give him the cue to leave, but the man was still there when she looked up again, staring at her relentlessly. She had been annoyed before, but for some reason she could appreciate the concern. The rest of the crew probably shared a similar sentiment. "I'm fine Glen, I'll take a catnap or something later. Just go on with your shift."

"I'm off duty now, Captain. I came here because Amelia said you haven't been feeling well."

Corina made a note to herself to have a little chat with Commander Ryder next time she had the chance, then turned to the Major's disposition. She knew he probably meant well, but his presence was quickly becoming an intolerable nuisance. "Glen, I appreciate the concern, but I would appreciate it even more if you would stop staring at me like some lovesick schoolboy and make yourself scarce."

"Aye Captain." He said casually, finally turning to leave her office. "Take care ma'am, and try to get some rest."

Just as the door closed behind him, Corina caught a glance from him over his shoulder, a glance that for some reason suddenly made her feel very uncomfortable. "What the hell was that all about…?" And then it hit her, the readiness report from Deck 41. She remembered she had called for it to get more information about Major Sutherland; she remembered she was trying to find a reason to have him transferred anywhere else in the universe but here. Unfortunately, whatever impulse had moved her to this decision was lost to oblivion, but she was sure it would come back to her sooner or later.

—August 19, 2018—

—27:50 GST—

There were only five ships in flight towards the rendezvous point with the Zentradi vessels, SDF-Ajax, Defiant, two destroyers and a single battleship of the old Bodolza fleet. This would be the envoy of the first face-to-face negotiations between Gallaron and Zentradi armies. Shikari was unhappy with Gyzol's choice of representatives, but he had explained to her that Tiamat was the only members of his fleet operating in their part of the sector and that she would have to do. He apologized in advance for any discomfort she might and most likely would experience because of Tiamat's impulsive nature, and already that apology had been put to its first use. Imura warned her over a secure line that the meltrandi fleet was barbaric and whimsical even by Shikari's standards, and she was careful to stress that they were extremely likely to judge her on appearance alone. Coming from Imura, who had respected Shikari less than anyone when she first took command of her fleet six years before, it was a very powerful statement.

Tiamat's fleet was now waiting for them in a section of inter-stellar space near the Kaladan system close to where SDF-09 had run across them during their patrol, and Shikari's envoy was almost at the rendezvous point. She was worried for this meeting for more reasons than even she could count, and other stresses and distractions were piling up, so she decided the best thing was to take a few hours before that fateful encounter to relax with the people closest to her; a few minutes later, Captain Harper received a phone call.

Shikari met Harper in his apartment like she had planned, but quite contrary to his designs she showed up in full uniform with takeout from the King Lao's in the Defiant's city block. Matt immediately knew she was in no mood for fun. "You didn't have to bring food," He said innocently. "I was just gonna cook for us."

"Did you start yet?"

"No..."

"Well don't, we've got plenty here for both of us." She pushed past him and set the two large paper bags on the table, each one filled to the top with various cartons of Chinese Food.

Matt recognized that with her quirky metabolism this meal would probably feed her for a couple of days, but if she put it off much longer she would become extremely unpleasant to be around so he figured he might as well indulge her. "Well that was thoughtful or you, thanks."

Shikari smiled and unloaded the last of the cartons. "I think we should talk."

A warning flag went up in Matt's brain. He knew only too well that good things never come after a woman says 'we need to talk.' This was trouble. "Talk about what, honey?"

"About us, about our future, that kinda thing." Shikari opened up the first carton of rice, reached for a massive spoon next to the table and took two huge shovels of food one after another, caught her breath, then went on slowly. "I know I'm new to your culture and I don't know much about relationships, but we've been seeing each other for a fairly long time now..."

"Well we've only been going out for seven months."

"Yeah..." Shikari took another shovel of fried rice, then popped open a carton of egg rolls. "...but we've had an intimate relationship and in your culture this level of closeness usually accompanies a very large commitment."

Another warning flag went up, this time at the context of the word "commitment" in this conversation. Matt suddenly realized was in more trouble than he thought. "What kind of... commitment?"

"Well," Shikari bit off part of one egg roll. "Traditionally, most sexual partnerships take place between married couples. I read about this in your archives and the idea kind of excited me."

A third warning flag went up in Matt's head. He was afraid something like this would happen, and now he was closer than ever to getting burned... "Shik, I've been thinking about it too. Believe me when I tell you, word's could not describe how much you mean to me. It's just that... I'm just not ready for this yet."

"When will you be ready?" She said, finishing her egg roll and moving back to the rice.

Matt Harper was happy with the way things were, he was satisfied with the pace of their relationship as it was. Now he realized that Shikari may have been naive, but she was an incredibly fast learner. "We've got a good thing right now," He said, referring more to himself than to her. "I don't want to screw it all up by taking unnecessary risks. We should go slowly, we shouldn't rush things."

Shikari smiled warmly. "If that's how you feel, then that's what we'll do. We'll go slowly, we'll get even closer than we are now until you have nothing left but to marry me!" She giggled at the idea, then finished the carton of fried rice with one more scoop.

Matt broke into a cold sweat. "Yeah... sounds good..." Once again he thought to himself, I am definitely about to get burned...

The loud speaker interrupted both of them, Commander Faulk's voice ringing through. "All sections, condition yellow. We are now approaching meltrandi warships at rendezvous point. General Shikari, please report to the bridge."

It was well past time, but alittle early in context. She still had an entire dinner to try and finish up, but there would be plenty of time to scarf it all down later. "I want you to take a fighter and escort me to Tiamat's ship. I'll setup a meeting on her turf."

"You sure that's a good idea?"

Shikari shook her head. "This is going to be a very long and dangerous meeting, and whatever happens do not get involved."

Harper nodded reluctantly. "Sure, I know you can take care of yourself…"

"No matter what. Even if I seem to be in trouble, don't do anything unless I tell you first."