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"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Chapter Thirty: Reunion

"So far, her vitals are level." The nurse shrugged, almost imperceptibly. "Medically speaking, Commander, Miss Richard is unconscious."

"Will she wake up soon?" Julie Richardson asked, perched on a cot as close as the nurse would allow.

"Will she wake up at all?"

"Oh, John." Gallant gave his XO a sideways glance while Julie made a noise between a choke and a gasp. "You really know how to keep it cheery."

"I don't foresee any complications, but I'm not a mystic." The nurse brushed her hands off on her white jacket. "I imagine she'll be up and about sooner rather than later. But I don't have any experience with whatever this is, so..."

"Right. Fair." Gallant leaned on his cane, swiveling to fix the Look on Jane Kelly. "Why?"

"Sir?" Halfway through shaking out her hair, the brunette paused. She hurriedly plucked her cap from the nearest end table, nestling it back in place and fishing her ponytail out through the back. "I don't follow, sir."

"He had her dead to rights. Caught her one on one in a tight room, and she doesn't have the hand-to-hand training you do." Gallant frowned. "Why didn't he kill her?"

"He was looming over her when I burst in," Jane supplied. "Had a hand on her forehead. Some kind of...glow going on."

"Mind control," Julie whispered.

"Okay, if she was mind controlled, I'm fairly sure we would have noticed." Gallant tried not to sound too irate, but the redhead's panic wasn't helping. "Mind controlled people don't fall unconscious, unless the person doing the mind control is a straight-up idiot. It kind of defeats the point."

"He had to be doing something psionic," Bradford noted. "Control is unlikely, but I think we should keep Sylvie under observation by security for a while, just in case. He could have done a Manchurian Candidate on her."

"What?" Jane's expression blanked. "Say again?"

"Old reference. You don't need to understand right now." Gallant waved his hand. "Yes, John, I think that's reasonable. I want her moved back to her psi-cell and the door externally sealed. Alert Hiroshi's team, and station Junior in the psi-lab until further notice."

"I can-"

"No, Richardson." That definitely was a bit snappier than Gallant liked. "If your friend there wakes up with purple eyes and sets out to murder everyone on the ship, I somehow doubt you have what it takes to hit her over the head with a wrench until she gets reasonable. Junior has no compunctions." He hurried on before Julie's blanch could turn into more panic. "He can also be programmed for nonlethal engagement, and do it safer than any fallible human."

"Sir." Someone else leaned in through the open doors, and Gallant was glad to take his attention off Julie's rebelliousness.

"Yeah?" He shouldered past Bradford. "Rogers?"

"Comms sent me." The Sharpshooter paused to sketch a salute. "We've got a read on a Reaper signal near Florence. It's Outrider."

"Oh, good. Something else getting ready to go wrong." Gallant hurried to join him, and he heard Bradford and Jane on their heels. The quartet set off down the companionways. "Any other details?"

"No, sir." Cameron Rogers pursed his lips. "Other than that she warned us to expect four incoming, not three."

"Really?" Bradford made an incredulous noise. "Did Jiaying bring a friend?"

"Are they bringing a captive?" was Gallant's opposing thought. He sighed. "Guess we won't know until they get back. Outrider's paranoid about communications intercepts."

"Probably why she took so long to set up the damn beacon," Jane agreed.

"Rogers, notify Firebrand. Give her the coordinates and make sure she's ready for a pickup." Gallant chuckled. "She just got in from the California op. Does that woman sleep?"

"God knows, sir." Cameron sidled into a side passage. "Anything else?"

"Not for you." Gallant turned the opposite way: for the elevator. "Kelly, make sure your team's debriefed and settled in, and I want you to keep tabs on Sylvie for me. Let me know if anything changes, but try to be surreptitious about it in case Julie gets defensive."

"Sir." She was a lot more agreeable these days. Gallant liked agreeable subordinates. Speaking of those...

"John, I want you to take the bridge." Gallant entered the elevator, turning and hitting the button for his office level. "Manage Outrider's recovery."

"Sir?" Oh, he'd do it, but he had his two cents to put in first. He and Jane paused before the doors. "What about you?"

"Me?" Gallant sighed as they slid closed. "I've got to make a phone call."

The hangar bay was loud. Metal clanked as techs hurried back and forth, checking fuel lines and generators to ensure all was ready if another mission alert popped up out of nowhere, as they tended to do. A bustling murmur of conversation filled the bronze-tinted chamber, echoing off the far walls from a half-dozen chattering groups.

Cameron Rogers strode through the mess, sidling out of the way as several burly flight hands pushed a trolley laden with God-knew-what past. The Sharpshooter was no one's mechanic or pit crewman, and his only serious experience with vehicles had been keeping his family's truck maintained on their Manitoba farm, so a lot of aircraft maintenance was exotic and eye-catching.

It wasn't the only thing.

"Hey, Firebrand!" He waved one gloved hand, pausing at the base of the Skyranger's drop bay door. "Message from the Commander."

"Oh, joy." Her helmeted head popped out from the cockpit, quickly followed by the rest of her, all blue flight suit and anti-g padding. She put one foot up on one of the chairs in the drop bay, leaning over to mess with her laces. "Hit me."

"Well..." Cameron entered the pilot's lair, though he paused at the top of the ramp. "Outrider's signal just went off." He related the rest of the details as quickly as he could.

"I hope the Old Man doesn't expect me to fly to Florence from..." Firebrand paused. "Where the hell are we?"

"Atlantic." Cameron waited for a minute, listening to the powerful engines thrum. "Maybe over the Azores by now."

"I don't even know where that is." After reinforcing Cameron's confidence in the pilot he trusted his life to on occasion, Firebrand finished tying her shoe and straightened. "Four passengers?"

"Unless you get a load of Advent asking for a ride here." Cameron grinned. "Rowdy passengers."

"I don't take the rowdy ones. Unless they pay well." He imagined her grinning back beneath that shining metal flight helmet. He couldn't even make out her eyes through the visor. "Tell the Commander I'll get his passengers and have them back in a jiffy."

"Copy that." Cameron glanced over his shoulder as someone dropped something heavy and metallic. "Lots of bustle out there, given they didn't know I was coming."

"We like to be prepared. Trying to get this baby off the ground in a hurry is a bitch." Firebrand put a hand on the Skyranger's interior wall, and Cameron didn't have to see her face to see the possessiveness and pride in her body language. "But she's the best dropship in the world, if you give her a minute to warm the engines."

"Is she?" Cameron chewed on that. "I would have thought the Advent craft-"

"Pedestrian. Simple things cobbled together from crappy parts and broken dreams." Perhaps this was the same disdain Cameron's British ancestors had for the ME-109 in the Battle of Britain. Somehow, he felt XCOM's sole pilot would have fit perfectly in the cockpit of a Spitfire. "This machine is the best of human and alien technology. Chief Shen - senior and junior - and I built most of her ourselves."

"Really?" That was news. Cameron had never stopped to wonder where the Skyranger came from. "I always assumed she was captured from the aliens, and maybe modified."

"Some of her individual parts were captured." Firebrand shrugged, and so did Cameron. That was just life for the Resistance. "But we put her together ourselves." She chuckled. "Could probably build another one if we wanted to."

"Why not?" Cameron frowned. "We could field two squads."

"Who's gonna fly her, Moose?" Firebrand leaned on the wall. "You?"

"My grandfather was RAF." It came out defensive.

"Have you ever flown?"

"Um..."

"That's what I thought." She was probably smiling victoriously. "Hit the flight sims and impress me, why don't you?" She pushed off the wall. "Now quit stalling and report to the bridge. Let them know I'm ready whenever they call."

"Right. Got it." Cameron backed up. "Good luck out there."

"Luck?" She made a very condescending noise. "I make my own."

"God," Cameron muttered, trying very hard to keep it under the banging and chattering of the flight crew, "she really is a pilot."

"Specialist."

"It's not so bad." Aileen Quinn leaned back, hands behind her head, and grinned at her new class-mate. "You get a drone, Charlotte."

"I am not very certain about this." The other blonde reached for her drink, eyeing her assessment dubiously. "Then again, if the alternative is becoming a Grenadier, I think this makes more sense." She gestured to her decidedly unimposing frame. "But I had thought I had the makings of a Sharpshooter."

"Yeah, I thought I was a lock for a Ranger myself. Watching Jane - I mean, the Captain - screw around with her sword made me envious. Makes, I should say." She shrugged. "But she can keep the machete from Hell. I have a drone."

"This Nessie of yours." Charlotte mused on that. "Did you name it yourself?"

"Sure did." She cocked her head. "You thinking about what you're going to name yours?"

Oh, God, her eyes were dark as hell. "There is only one possibility."

"Really?" Aileen wasn't sure she wanted to ask, but she was the senior officer of the gathering. "What's-"

"Ranger!"

"Keep it down, kid!" Aileen shook her head. "Just shouting at us out of nowhere..."

"Sorry!" But Mariah's excitement didn't fade. In fact, her bubble might have grown. "But look at this! Ranger! Just like my father!"

"What a surprise." Aileen eyed the brunette. "You realize that's the single most dangerous combat position, yeah?"

"Oh, of course." Mariah clearly still didn't believe it could happen to her just like anyone else. "But...shotgun and sword? That's a great combination. Captain Kelly makes it work better than anyone, and if my father is a Ranger..."

"Whenever he deploys." Aileen knocked a drink back as she thought of the facility in Southeast Asia. "God bless, Sophie."

"How is Mademoiselle Richard?" Charlotte asked. Aileen thought for a moment.

"Far as I know, she's fine. Locked in the psi-lab, but fine."

"That thing," Mariah growled. Anger clouded her gaze. "I wish I'd had a shot at it."

"If it's anything like the Assassin, I'd be grateful you didn't." Aileen shivered. "She is some kind of avenging angel who needs to be euthanized."

"We'll take her down. We'll break Advent into little pieces. We have the Commander on our side."

"Well, Mariah, you definitely sound your age." Aileen ignored the stony look she go for that. Instead, she returned to her rearward lean.

Commander Gallant, our secret weapon? The idea had been laughable not long before. Aileen tasted it, and Switzerland inevitably came to her mind.

"I think you're damn right," she allowed, before raising her glass Mariah's way. "Damn right...Ranger."

"They call him the Warlock."

"Do they?" Gallant grunted in the back of his throat. "Who's they?"

"Everyone, Commander." Betos, occupying one half of his com-screen, looked both earnest and revolted at the same time. "Of the Chosen, he is the eldest, and perhaps the most dangerous. He commands the power of the Elders, and is almost as strong as they themselves."

"So, a psionic." Gallant rapped his fingers on his desk. "What did he do to my psi-op?"

"I'm not sure." Now it was Volk, arms crossed as he sat in shadow. Maybe he was related to Shadow Man. "My people know mostly of the Hunter and his pursuits, and beyond the name, we have little to go on about this Warlock. Betos?"

"I am afraid we know little more. Our memories of our time as Elder puppets are clouded." The chief of the Skirmishers paused to growl in her own language. It sounded a lot like cursing, but Gallant couldn't be sure. "The Assassin stalks my kind, and we have little knowledge of either Hunter or Warlock."

"Great!" Gallant threw his hands up. "No one knows shit about this guy! That's helpful!"

Silence. Betos and Volk hesitated, and Gallant thought they were trading looks through their cameras.

"...what?" He frowned. "What?"

"There is one who might know more."

"Who?" Gallant leaned forward, clutching the arms of his chair. "Give me a name, Volk."

"They call him Geist," Betos supplied. "He leads a cult known as the Templars. Their warriors use the power of the Elders against them in ways not even your psionics ever could."

"What's the catch?" Gallant's eye twitched. "I've been awake long enough to know it's never that simple."

"He's mad, that's the catch," Volk burst out. "Geist and his followers seek to reclaim psionic power from the Elders and forge humanity into some kind of mimic race - using the same technology and abilities as our enemies to become them in the future. They have little patience for my Reapers, and we have fought several skirmishes over their abuse of psionic power and their disdain for what they call our 'primitiveness'."

"I concur with Volk's statements." That was a sentence Betos had probably never thought she'd say pre-Mox and Dragunova. "The Templars are legitimately insane. Their warriors use the power of the Elders to engage Advent at close range, then fade into the background when they have claimed whatever it is they seek. Their cause is merely the growth of their own power so they can supplant the false gods as the cult ruling over a weakened world."

"Close range?" Gallant frowned. "Quinn and White described the unknown contact as using some kind of psi-blades to engage Advent."

"Wonderful." Volk spat. "You're being stalked by insane fanatics, Commander."

"Not my first time. I served in Iraq." He glossed over how that had ended. "If this Geist character is the only one who can educate us on the Warlock, then we have to open contact with him. Do either of you know how?"

"There are some nets I can cast," Volk allowed. Betos looked uncertain.

"Commander Gallant...are you certain of this?" She sighed. "It would risk the lives of our people, attempting to find the camp of this group that hates us."

"Give me another option and I'll take it," Gallant encouraged. When the silence dragged on for more than half a minute, he figured that was his answer. "Start theoretical. Figure out how to contact the Templars, then bring it to me. I'll use my people to do the talking instead of yours - maybe they'll be less likely to shoot on sight if it's not you who approach them."

"Similar to how you brokered the Treaty of Novosibirsk?" Betos asked.

"Yeah, something like that," Gallant allowed. "Hopefully with less Lost, less Chosen, and less...people-getting-kidnapped."

"That sounds like an agreeable change to the plan." Volk chuckled, clearly a little relieved. "Very well, Commander. I'll work on my end."

"And myself on mine," Betos agreed. "Glory to the Resistance, and may we overcome the Elders in short order!"

She disconnected. Gallant eyed the hanging shield sigil where her image had been.

"You know, Commander," Volk began. "She may be a bit over-the-top, but I think she might actually have her heart in the right place."

"I'm glad for your confidence." Gallant finally leaned back, reaching for his medication. "Let me know when you have anything. Gallant out."

He cut the connection, then took a moment and his pills. Gallant eyed exactly how few were left, and he growled.

"Have to raid a pharmaceutical company," he muttered. "Or a drugstore." He spent a moment imaging the Skyranger coming down in front of the local CVS and disgorging a fully-armed squad for a full tactical insertion. His lips twitched.

Beep!

He hit the comm button. "Gallant."

"Sir, Firebrand's inbound." That was Bradford. "Shouldn't be more than fifteen, twenty minutes until she's here. Everyone's fine, even if Jiaying's a bit worse for wear."

"Notify the med bay. And send Shen up here." Gallant didn't even wait for Bradford's acknowledgment. Instead, he leaned back, rubbing his chin.

Templars. Templars watching his team from the high ground, interfering to save them...Jane, Quinn, White, and most importantly Mariah Bradford now all owed their lives to this unknown warrior. If the Templar in question was operating on her own, that was its own ball of wax, but if she was there on Geist's orders...

"What if he comes to me?" Gallant wondered, again rapping his fingers on the desk. "What if he isn't content with his own game and wants to join the big boys?"

More support? Never bad. More political dancing? Potentially very bad. The Reapers and Skirmishers barely didn't hate each other as it was. Adding a third ball to the juggling act that was Gallant's life would make things infinitely more difficult. And, all things considered, they were less balls he was juggling and more hand grenades. When one finally blew...

"Commander?" Shen leaned through the open door. "Do you have a minute?"

"Shen, I called you." Gallant blinked. "Did you..."

"I was already on my way. I guess Central is sending someone down to an empty workshop." Shen entered, the door sliding shut behind her. Gallant frowned as he saw what was in her hand.

"In my time, we called those thumb drives." He exhaled slowly. "Why do I have the feeling you're about to give me bad news?"

"That entirely depends on how you look at it all, sir. It could be good news." Shen looked away. "I think."

"Oh?" Gallant rubbed at his eyes. "Firebrand is inbound with Jiaying and the team. You have until they get here to pitch whatever your thing is."

"Sir!" Shen lit up at the mention of Jiaying. She set the drive on the desk. "I wanted to tell you this a while ago, but when I tried, you got..."

"Pissy?" Gallant suggested. "I'll try to be human this time."

"Sir." Shen coughed, clearly uncomfortable with the bluntness. "Well, sir...remember Julian?"

"The homicidal AI?" Gallant made a face. "Shen, I can't forget Julian. He's in my dreams."

"That's not the only place." With that worrisome proclamation, Shen launched into her explanation. "An imprint of him was left from where he tried to access the ship's systems, before we went to the Tower."

"And?" Gallant straightened. "What's he been up to? What do we need to do to get rid of him?"

"Relax, Commander." Shen held up the drive. "I've isolated him on this. He's nowhere else in the system now."

"Good. Drop that in the reactor."

"Sir..."

"Oh, God." Gallant took a deep breath. "Shen..."

"Sir, he could actually be fairly effective at piloting a SPARK unit," she finally burst out. "If I strip out some of his higher-level functions, he gives us a ready-made AI template we can use to construct another SPARK and operate it. I'm not the computer coding expert my father was - the most I could do on my own would be to merge the GREMLIN AI with the SPARK systems, and who knows how well that would work out. But Julian is here, and Julian is clearly capable of running a unit in combat."

"Yeah: against us." Gallant shook his head. "This is insane, Shen."

"I can make it work, and I can make it safe. By the time I'm done with him, Julian won't be able to run a calculator program without Central's approval or yours." She looked surprisingly set on her course. "Another SPARK would be an exponential increase in our combat capabilities. Junior is a tank in a world of infantrymen."

Gallant grunted. "That may be so, but..." He looked away. "I'll think about it. Keep him isolated until I've made up my mind."

"Yes, sir!" Shen beamed. "Thank you, sir-"

Beep!

Gallant hit the answer button. "John?"

"Firebrand's landed, sir. I'm sending them up your way."

"Copy." Gallant turned to Shen. "Shouldn't be long."

"I guess not." She bounced on the edge of her seat like a kid for a moment. "I haven't seen her in almost twenty years."

"A lot can change in that time," Gallant warned. "I learned that pretty harshly."

That did a good job of inflicting silence for the next few minutes. Commander and Chief alike waited, nerves riling them both up for different reasons.

Beep! That wasn't the comm unit, but the door. Gallant heard Shen inhale.

"Come in," he called, before reaching for his cane and rising in slow and laborious fashion. The door hissed open, and four figures entered. Dragunova and Mox, Gallant recognized in a flash, but the other two...

"Jiaying!" Shen's face lit up, and she almost threw herself on a woman who didn't look much like her at all. Dark hair, dark eyes - definitely an Asian face, but Gallant had never been one of those Americans who couldn't see the differences between Chinese and Korean heritage. Certainly Jiaying shared some of the former with Shen, but whichever parent was Shen's aunt or uncle must have take up with an ethnic Korean.

"Hello, Lily." Jiaying's voice, however, was almost identical. She hugged the engineer back. "Been a long time, cousin."

"Sir." Dragunova and Mox saluted, and Gallant returned it. He glanced to the last member of the gathering, saluting just the same.

"Who's this?"

"Mordecai Kowalski, Commander." He was clearly a Reaper, from the dark coat and the helmet tucked under his arm. "I have partnered with Outrider several times. My position in Italy was becoming unstable, so I elected to join you here on the Avenger to maintain the war."

"Well, if you're half the Reaper Outrider is, I'm glad to have you." Gallant returned the salutes, then offered his hand. He was pleased with the Reaper's grip. "Welcome aboard, Mordecai."

"Thank you, sir." He had a heavy accent. Gallant didn't mind a bit: if he'd literally only spoken the Cherokee language, the Commander would have found books and learned it if that was the price for getting another Reaper added to his team. Whether this addition was temporary or permanent was a question he'd have to take up with Mordecai and Volk alike at a later date.

"Now." Gallant turned. "Jiaying Shen, I presume?"

"Yes, that's me." She hesitated. "Do I salute?"

"You're not technically XCOM yet." Gallant offered his hand instead. Her grip wasn't nearly as strong as the Reaper's, but women didn't normally go for the hand-crush thing anyway. The Commander examined the bandaged cuts on Jiaying's face. "Fall down?"

"A couple of times." She shrugged. "I'm all right. Nothing a painkiller and a good nap won't take care of."

"Good." Gallant eased down into his chair, and everyone else followed suit. "I'll want the mission report in a moment, Outrider, but give me that moment first."

"Of course, Commander." She kept whatever her opinions were hidden even without her mask.

"If you two would be so kind," Gallant invited, steeping his fingers, "I think it's finally time Shen tells me the details on how you know each other. All I've got to work with is your relation and the fact that you're an engineer too - and you said you had Advent information we could use."

"I am, and I do." Jiaying reached into the bag she'd set at her side, and she held up a drive. "This is information on Advent supply lines running across East Asia. It took me a lot of work to acquire, but I think the information will still be relevant if we work fast."

"Good." Gallant nodded. "More supplies are always a plus. But...you two?"

"Our fathers were brothers," Shen explained. "Both engineers, but Dad was tapped for the XCOM Project."

"My father lacked the well-rounded experience they were looking for," Jiaying agreed. "He mainly worked in infrastructure, not weapons technology and manufacturing, so he was happy with this arrangement." She shrugged. "When the war really kicked off...well, Lily had to stay somewhere. My family had settled in Vancouver in the nineties, and that seemed far enough off the beaten path that Uncle Ray sent her to us."

"So, most of the time the war was on, you were living together?" Gallant pointed between the Shens with the nearest pen. "You would have been...ten, Lily?"

"I turned eleven while I was there," she chided. "Dad collected me after a while, but I spent almost a year in Canada. Even before that, we'd seen a lot of each other, our fathers being close."

"After the war, Lily and her father vanished to start setting up the Resistance," Jiaying picked up. "My parents kept their heads down in the cities, giving the image of being model Advent citizens while secretly working against the regime. We never joined the Resistance outright because we thought our positions - my father's as an engineer, my mother's as an accountant, and mine in Dad's footsteps - gave us too much access to the Advent network to throw away. So we fed data to local resistance groups as best we could."

"Fighting them from the inside." Gallant thought of Shadow Man. "Takes guts."

"Thank you for saying so." Jiaying sighed. "Times changed. I wound up moving to Italy - it's a very long story, but I saw opportunities to rise in the Advent administration and increase my access level. I couldn't turn it down, and I'm glad I didn't. Without the move, I never would have gotten that data." She nodded to the drive.

"What made you contact us?" Gallant asked. "Why now?"

"Because I heard of you, after Switzerland." From her tone, that was to be expected. "I thought XCOM might actually be able to defeat the aliens, and I wanted to help if I could. That's why I risked what I did to get that data for you, and it's why I opened up contact now." She quieted. "I wish I'd been able to keep my comfortable position with Advent. I could have done so much more for you from the inside, feeding information out."

"Well, this could potentially mean a lot too," Gallant assured her. "And you said you're an engineer?"

"I like to think I'm a very good one."

"Well, I'm sure the Chief over here would love to have you on her staff." Gallant didn't even wait for Lily's enthusiastic nodding. "You could do a lot of good there."

"Thank you, Commander. I think I'll take you up on that." She hesitated, as if she had something else she wanted to add. "And..."

"Jiaying?" Shen frowned. "What is it?"

"It's..." She finally shook her head, taking a deep breath. "It's nothing. I just wondered if...Uncle Ray..."

"No," Gallant muttered, and left it at that. The story was Shen's to tell.

"Oh." Jiaying bowed her head. "I see."

"Well." Gallant cleared his throat. He picked up the drive. "We're glad to have you, Jiaying. And I can think of a lot of things I can do with this that will do a lot of damage to the Elders' plans."

Gallant would have been quite worried if her wolf's grin had been turned on him.

Author's Note 30: Fly The Friendly Skies

The Skyranger makes less sense the more you think about it. Maybe it's because my father wanted to be an aeronautical engineer before going into soda cans(bit of a slide there), but I can't take the flight design of the dropship very seriously. It lacks wings. I realize that's a thing in sci-fi, but it doesn't have vertical thrust either. Its engines are rotary. As soon as they turn to point backward, logically speaking, the Skyranger drops like a stone...just a stone going very fast forward. Iron Man has the exact same logical problem with his own flight style: vertical lift like a helicopter works - he, and the Skyranger, would make fantastic chopper analogues. But they're shown soaring, shooting along like missiles. Missiles have fins...for a reason.

That said, the Skyranger is pretty cool to look at. I'm not incapable of enjoying it because it doesn't make a load of sense. But the logic of XCOM even having one is difficult at times too: my explanation is about the only one that doesn't fall apart too badly under thought. If it was inside the Avenger, why does it look so different from Advent's ships, of which presumably it was once one? If it was stolen, was it stolen before, or after the Avenger? If before, how did a mobile Resistance movement keep it maintained and fueled before they had a carrier to launch it? If after, how did they get to it in the first place? And the same question about its stylistic differences from Advent ships. It can't be leftover XCOM tech from the First Invasion because it's way too advanced.

Logically, it must have been built by the Shens and possibly Firebrand herself. Which adds an entire additional layer of logical problems related to manufacturing, assembly, labor, automation, tolerances, precision machining, and aeronautical design, but I'm going to do what fantasy and sci-fi writers do best and gloss over anything that smells like detailed economics and engineering for the sake of a kickass story. Bite me, Dad.

Until next time, Vigilo Confido.