Wakako Zako huffed and puffed.
The acceleration as she was shot out of the launch bay on the slipway pressing her into her seat. Arms barely maintaining their position as she valiantly held onto the stick with all of her might.
Her eyes narrowed as her eyelids threatened to peel themselves back into her skull.
Then her own ASF's boosters activated, sending her forward at even more ludicrous velocity.
"Kickass. We're kickass!" Came the roar over her line.
"Ayoub you idiot, keep the line clear!" She roared.
"Fuck you Wacko. We're going to fight! We're going to get some kills! Hells yeah!" He roared back.
"Can you two idiots shut up!"
The bickering started within the wing as they all started to reply to each other. Some, even, were pressing down on the 'transmit to all' button to start shouting from the other wing.
Then.
Silence.
Someone had muted all of them… including her.
"Unprofessionalism aside. Your task, Vanguard Wings, is to press forward and force the enemy to deploy their ASF cover early so we can map them. Your mere presence is enough to do this, do not worry. Engage the ASF that you can, but keep going in a straight line. Don't overthink it Vanguard Wings. We'll be behind you to take the brunt of the fight." The commodore spoke.
She frowned.
She was definitely going to overthink it!
"Targets 10 seconds out, eyes forward you idiots!" Wakako roared.
"I'm picking up… hundreds of them. What the fuck? What are we going to do?"
"We charge forward. Pick a target that's right in front of you and then pull the triggers when they're in range. Just keep going forward. Don't slow down for anything!" She replied to the all net, hoping that those in her wing paid attention to her. The Commodore had already said what they needed to do!
There weren't enough of them for mistakes to be made.
She was still learning their names!
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
Her thumb depressed the trigger, the preselected target in her sights. Her thrusters boosting slightly to get her in a firing line, beams of coherent light spearing out to reach forward and touch the enemy ASF. A Stuka according to her targetting computer.
Then she was through.
"Hahaha! Made it! Haha, what about you guys?"
~BAM~
Wakako woke up with a start, her eyes watering.
Ah.
Right.
Half of them were gone.
House Vu's Aerial Lancers as some had tried to name them, dead.
Coincidentally, the ones who were pushing the name… dead.
It turned out autocannon at that velocity was enough to destroy even the most heavily armoured asfs.
Her eyes watered.
Fuck.
"They're asking for volunteers to work with the boys on the ground to call in air support." The voice of Ayoub to her right had her jerk in shock.
"What?"
"Yeah. They want some of us to go down there and call in air support for the troops on the ground. I figured I might as well, get my mind off… you know." Ayoub muttered.
Wakako nodded.
"I'll do it. Anything's better than just sitting here and thinking about it right?"
"Right. Think everyone's going to do it. We'll be riding in the Battlemechs, the ones that Duke Vu built for the ground pounders."
Wakako felt her spirits lift, even a little bit.
Sitting in a Battlemech would be interesting, every kid wanted to no matter who they were after all.
+Break+
She took back what she said about it being interesting to sit in a Battlemech.
"So, I says, daughter, you ain't marrying that oaf of a poultry farmer. Why ain't you thinking about that nice Jessup boy over on the goat concern?" The voice of a farmer filtered up into the cockpit of the Battlemech, Wakako sitting as she was in the rumble seat feeling the urge to groan as the story kept going.
Starting with said farmer's great-great-great grandmother, it had kept going until they were here… with the bloody great granddaughter.
It just kept going.
"How could she." The pilot she had been assigned to said commiserately, his stupid ass kept being nice to the old man, which meant that he kept talking!
All the while the machine under her buttocks continued to move alarmingly up and down, left and right as it shovlled the dirt that had been excavated into berms on either side of the enormous ditch. Why they were doing this she had no idea, just that they had dug, over the last hour, a giant ditch in the dirt, through the forest, then into the plains.
The 20 Ton Truck that the farmer had with an excavator arm on the back moving slowly alongside 2 others, digging out the dirt, dumping it in the same spot once the scoop went down, then the Battlemech Lance behind him would shovel the dirt to the side. Behind them was a roller that flattened down the dirt so it was smooth.
She had no idea why they were even doing this. What was the point even?
Couldn't a Battlemech just… walk over it? A tank just roll oer it?
She wanted to ask but the damned old man kept talking!
"We're nearly linked up to the next line here." Her pilot said, Turbo was his name. Of all things, Turbo.
The only thing Turbo about him was the way that he ate, scarfing down nut bars as she watched with disgust.
"Good good. Gonna make sure that those damned Dracs don't get what they want. Did I tell you about my niece?"
No no, don't-
"No you didn't what about your niece?"
"Ha! She was on Sevren you know. Spinward. Thought she could settle down there and make a life for herself. Then the Dracs came and they made a joke of that didn't they? Raided her home, killed her husband, then burned it all down. She barely made it out alive." His accent slipped… wait a moment.
He was pretending to be some kind of yokel!?
Why?
"Fuck the Dracs." Turbo said with finality.
She couldn't take it anymore.
"Why are we even doing this?" She asked, glaring at the back of Turbo's head.
"Ah! There's your passenger. I thought she wasn't there since she hadn't said anything all day hahaha. We're doing this to clear the way little miss. If the Combine make a single step in the wrong place, they're going to leave tracks which we can see." The farmer said, Wakako pursing her lips when he did so.
They had a good reason for it… she felt annoyed that they hadn't told her about it.
"Also to provide them some very nice walkable paths for them to move along. The flyboys and ground boys can ambush them all day long." Another oldie said.
"But why are we doing this and not building defences or something?" She asked.
"That's because there are too many of us haha. When we saw what those bastards in the sky did, we though that if they were willing to do that in space, what are they going to here on Tetersen? We can't let them do whatever the hell they want! So we're going to do what we can to make this as hard as possible for the bastards! We got some building casa die Festung, some laying minefields, some putting down tank traps, and us over here. Lots of us farmers with our Utility vehicles!" The farmer shouted, (she didn't even remember his name). "My daughter, and my grandson and my granddaughter and my great grandaughters live on this planet, I'm not giving up a single centimetre of this land. If the Combine want to take it, they're going to have to fight me for it!"
Turbo laughed.
"Exactly, after we watched you go up against nine times your number up there in the sky, we can't let you take all the glory Wacko." He said to her, turning in his seat to grin at her, unwittingly turning the entire machine as well as it read his thoughts. She felt the urge to puke rise up again, the bastard.
"Wait, the little lady up there was in that furball? Why didn't you say so!? I need to meet her and shake her hand, that was the bravest bit of flying I've ever seen in my life! 16 of you against how many? Dozens? Hundreds? Ha! I can't shake your hand if you're up there can I?" The farmer continued to shout excitedly. "Dawson, Anders! Did you hear that? We got a homegrown hero here on our hands!"
"I heard you old bastard. You ever show up at Dawson farms down the road from Mount Utility, you just walk right on in. Anyone who's that brave deserves all the food she can stuff herself with."
"And Anders too! Don't forget me! I'm going to be talking about this with my grandkids. They're going to know everything about this, imagine that, meeting an actual hero! What possessed you to go out there like that lass?"
"I mean, we were just ordered to go. They wanted us to spike the Dropships and force them to release the ASFs. We were just meant to fly in a straight line and spook them. I mean… we had a month of training." She muttered, squirming uncomfortably in her chair.
"Woah. A month of training? Is that all? Seriously? And they sent you out?" Turbo muttered.
"I mean, someone had to. Duke Vu gave us all of this, we have to repay him somehow right?" She muttered.
"Woah. One of the Duke's personal guard did that? I knew the Duke couldn't be a bad guy. I knew it, didn't I say so? Look, he even sold us these Trucks on a 50 year loan. Interest at interest rate too, he's a good guy that Duke." Dawson shouted.
"Ha! Don't lie to the kid, you said he was bringing too much change too fast!"
The men bickered for a while longer before one of them addressed her.
"You lost a lot of friends up there in the void. That's hard kid. I still haven't worked my way through my platoon biting it on Carse. If you want to talk about we're here." The still unnamed old man said.
"What do you mean we're?" She asked, the compartmentalised knowledge that half of her Wing was dead coming to the fore of her mind.
"All of us at the community. Old. Veterans. If you need someone who understands, we're going to be there. You too 'Turbo', we'll be here." She could hear the way he put fingerquotes around Turbo.
She frowned.
Did she trust this man?
"Right, we're done here. Let's check back with the rest of the guys. Die Festung Dawson is ready for the Combine." The old man said.
"Why is it named after me? Nothing that's ever named after me goes well Sven."
"Eh, this time it's going to be different, you'll see!" The now named Sven laughed.
"Wait, what have you been doing this whole time?" Wakako asked.
"You'll see when we get back to the town." Turbo said, humming as he continued to move the enormous shovel attached to his mechanical frame.
The talking continued, the old men leaving her alone to her relief.
The enormous flat track of packed down dirt following them.
The excavator attachments pushing down on the roots of the trees that surrounded them to snap the wood before a second thrust dug it out. The careful shuffling of clay and earth to create an enormous flat trench.
Eventually, in the distance, she could see the town, only, there wasn't a town anymore but an enormous revetment. An enormous earthern wall that had been built up.
So large in fact that they towered over the machine that she was in.
"What?" She voiced.
"That's Die Festung Dawson. The safe harbour for an Armour Regiment and two infantry Regiments. They're going to patrol outwards during the day and night, return here to rearm, refuel, and rest, then head back out again. Every town and important position around Mount Utility has been turned into a Festung. They're going to land, they're going to try and find food, and they're going to get nothing. All the food has been harvested and brought inside, all vulnerable towns fortified. Now we wait." Sven said with a malicious chuckle.
"Right. So. Why was I brought along anyway?" Wakako asked, all she did was just sit in the seat and be jerked around in the worse ride of her life.
"Ah? You volunteered didn't you? I figured you'd want some peace and quiet so… yeah." Turbo answered.
The pilot felt her fingers clench into a fist.
She couldn't even blame them for it, this was all on her.
"Combine will be here in 12 hours. They're going to land uncontested… then we're going to close the trap behind them. They're not leaving Tetersen alive." Sven said.
"What's closing the trap?" Turbo asked.
"What? You didn't know?" Dawson asked.
"Ummm… no? Nobody told me anything."
"Sounds like things are messy with you boys right now. Might need to talk with whoever is in charge then. The Jumpships, the ones that survived are going to sit over the entire battle and stop anything from trying to leave. Then you boys are going to hunt them down on the ground."
"Oh." Turbo answered, Wakako felt herself rolling her eyes. Wasn't he paying attention to his own officers?
"Let's get you boys settled. You're going to want to be ready to go when the Dracs land."
Wakako yawned. That was true.
Better get some rest, tomorrow was going to be a big day.