Interlude 2-R
Lyran Regulars Base, Hamarr, Sudeten
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
November 5th, 3010
Leutnant Wilfred ‘Fredrick’ Richthofen stormed into his Hauptman’s office, a paper of some sort crumpled to unreadability in his clenched right hand.
“What the hell is this shit!” he demanded, waving the paper around. A small part of him was aware that he was fortunate that there weren’t any MPs around, because it looked remarkably like he was shaking his fist at his commanding officer. It was repeated displays of this sort that had landed him with the Lyran Regulars in the first place, but at the moment he was too pissed off to care.
“I have no idea, but I’m certain you’re going to enlighten me,” Hauptman Keller, gaze only moderately annoyed at the disruption, replied.
That only put the flame back on Fredrick’s temper.
“Don’t give me that!” the Leutnant growled as he slammed the crumpled paper down on the desk. “I know you have to approve the work schedule for the techs!”
That seemed to finally clue the squadron commander in.
“This is about the standardization order?” the Hauptman demanded, irritably. “If you’ve read it, you should know that it was ordered by Admiral Cain of the Quartermaster Corps with the support of Planetary Command,” he said, his expression managing to convey ‘What the hell am I supposed to do about it when orders come down from those stratospheric heights?’
“It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a
bad call. The Corp’s already short on Aerospace Fighters that
aren’t shit in the black!” he bit out. “You know what they want to do to my baby? They want to ‘fix’ the problem with the stress on the nose structural members by
hanging a Deleaon Five Autocannon from Quikscell -- QUIKSCELL --
on the nose instead of the Sunspot that it’s designed for!” he bit out angrily. “My family shelled out a lot to get a Donal PPC to replace the Sunspot and make it fit!”
“It helps bring the overheating problem under contro-” Hauptman Keller tried to placate him, but Fredrick was having none of it.
“I’m not one of those half-trained baboons that fill out the rest of the squadron,” he spat back at his CO. “I can handle a lack of responsiveness for a few seconds while the sinks catch up, especially if it means keeping the only gun I’ve got with a chance to punch through a Slayer’s armor in a head-to-head pass!
“And because whoever designed this imbecilic refit couldn’t do simple mathematics, they decided to reduce the armor by a ton. So instead of pulling a second heat sink to fit in the ammunition for the
paperweight they’re planning to hang on it in place of the PPC, they’re leaving it
oversinked and trying to make my Stingray as much of a deathtrap as a
Goddamn Lucifer!”
Momentarily out of vitriol as well as breath, Fredrick was left leaning on his squadron commander’s desk, panting in fury.
Hauptman Keller looked … less than pleased.
“If you are quite finished with your
tantrum,” he began, which immediately got the Leutnant’s dander back up, “There is nothing that I can do about it. The refits have been ordered and will be carried out. The matter is not up for discussion. What
is under consideration is how long you’ll be spending in th-”
“Like fucking hell that refit will be carried out!” the irate pilot snarled, going from blowing off steam to deadly earnest in a heartbeat.
“Section four, subsection two: ‘Regarding privately owned aerospace fighters approved for deployment with the Lyran Commonwealth’s Aerospace Corps: Once approved at the beginning of a tour of duty, upkeep of the designated ASF is the responsibility of the assigned unit’s technicians. Any repairs necessitated by required training or combat duties are to return the ASF to it’s starting configuration. Any alterations to the configuration of a privately owned ASF must be approved by the Quartermaster’s Corp, the Wing Commander, and the ASF’s owner,’” he quoted, glad one of his instructors had forced him to memorize the regs dealing with family Battlemechs and ASFs being used in LCAF and LCN service.
Hauptman Keller seemed almost flabbergasted at his single most problem-child pilot quoting The Book at him, chapter and verse.
Did he seriously not even check to make sure this was covered by the regs? Fredrick wondered. He’d come out the far side of his fury now, and like usual he was regretting his outburst.
Should have calmed down before I confronted him, he admitted,
but I’m so damn tired of being stuck in this chicken-shit outfit. He paused for a moment as a thought came to him, then spoke.
“Hauptman, I apologize for this mess. I came in here thinking that you’d set out to fuck with me deliberately, not that the Brass were trying to pull a fast one,” he admitted.
“But I’m still not going to approve the refit. An AC-5 in the nose is just going to make the stress on the airframe worse, rather than better, and I’ve got to both protect my family’s investment, and insure that
Bobtail is in good condition to blow Dracs out of the black for years to come. Your only recourse at this point is to formally inform me, in writing, that the LCAF no longer considers my Stingray’s configuration fieldable,” he asserted.
Hauptman Keller grimaced at that.
“Shit,” he said with less than eloquence, then read through a file on his computer, probably checking the regulations in question. A few minutes and a series of clicks later, he printed out the appropriate form and filled it out.
“I’ve a feeling I know which option you’re going to take,” he said. “You’re a good pilot, even if you are a pain in the ass.”
It was as close as he figured he was going to get. Once he selected the box for an immediate discharge, signed his name, and as he returned the form, he rendered a parade-ground-worthy salute. If the Aerospace Corps didn’t want him, he’d find someone who did.
XXXXX
Olivetti Weaponry Campus, Hamarr, Sudeten
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
November 7th, 3010
“I heard through the grapevine that you’ve been looking for pilots.”
It had taken the rest of that first day to handle out-processing, and it had taken all of yesterday to get
Bobtail, his Stingray, relocated to the civilian facilities at Hamarr’s Spaceport. That had left him looking for either more permanent living arrangements than the cheap hotel room he’d rented, or gainful employment.
He’d picked looking for work. If he was lucky, either he wouldn’t need to find an apartment or at least the nature of the job would dictate his options.
The Olivetti representative appeared to have finally gathered his wits and made to respond.
“Uh, yes, we have been,” the man behind the desk said, then belatedly began to fiddle with his computer. After a moment, he continued, “Um, I have an application printing for you now. But, uh, unless you’ve got your own Aerospace Fighter, I have to tell you the positions have been pretty well filled at this point.”
“Then I suppose I’m fortunate,” the former Leutnant responded.
XXXXX
November 24th, 3010
He’d been expecting the position at Olivetti to be on Sudeten. He thought he could be forgiven for that, since so far as anyone knew, Olivetti only had the one production site.
Seemed ‘anyone’ was wrong. As usual.With a sigh, he put the manual he’d been reading to kill time aside.
The Centurion was an interesting bird. It needed some tweaks, some updated electronics for sure, but it was, in his opinion, a better Interceptor than either the Saber or the Seydlitz, if only because it could take a hit or two from the tail guns of heavier fighters without turning into an expanding cloud of debris. The relatively beefy seven and a half tons of armor meant that his Stingray only carried about fifty percent more than the Centurion, a fighter half its size.
Heavier armor meant fewer casualties and more surviving airframes. That in turn meant less expense involved in buying and training replacements. It also meant that pilots would tend to survive and accrue experience. It made a lot of sense to field.
So of course the Aerospace Corps isn’t interested, he shook his head in disgust at the thought. What the hell was the point of picking up the design from the Feddies if you weren’t going to use it?
He was reaching for the manual again when the interview room’s door slid open.
The first thing he noticed about the blonde that entered was that her bust preceded the rest of her by several inches. Trying not to stare, he took in the short hair and military bearing that marked her as either an ASF pilot or a Mechwarrior, noting in passing that she was damn good looking for a woman in her forties before he remembered to get to his feet.
He opened his mouth to introduce himself, but she beat him to the punch.
“You Fredrick Richthofen?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he responded, not sure if he should be saluting or not.
Before he could decide, she stepped forward and offered her hand.
“Geraldine Kowalski, good to meet you,” she introduced herself as they shook. She had a solid grip, but not a crushing one. “Have a seat.”
He sat back down, trying to figure out what unit she was with. Must have been Mercenaries of some sort. LCAF Mechwarrior types were usually more formal, but he thought he’d remember a unit run by a woman who looked like the one across from him. That was about the time he noticed her noticing his reading material.
“I thought you flew a Stingray?” she asked.
“I do,” he confirmed, “but the rest of the unit is going to be in Centurions, so I need to know their birds as well as I know mine.”
“Ha!” the woman let out a bark of laughter.
“I just won a bet,” she explained a moment later. “You were bored as fuck with the Regulars, weren’t you?”
“Pretty much, Ma’am,” he answered, setting aside the temptation to say something pithy instead.
“Figured. And call me Comet; we’re going to be working together, after all.”
“Then it’s nice to meet you, Comet,” he replied, not sure where she was going with this interview.
She seemed to sense it, or maybe she was finally ready to get down to business herself, because her next statement changed the subject.
“So, you’ve had a couple weeks longer than me to check out the rest of the pilots. They as green as their dossiers say they are?” she inquired.
He grimaced.
“Yeah. At least,” he said. “Haven’t seen them in the air yet, but they’re all former militia pilots. Don’t get me wrong,” he hastened to add, “they’ve got the basics, but flying is about all they’re good for. Any Drac Regulars squadron would take them out like shooting skeet.”
Comet nodded, a grim expression on her face.
“I was afraid of that,” she admitted before again changing gears. “You familiar with how to run training?”
That caught him a bit off guard.
“Well, yeah. Don’t really have NCOs to foist it off on with pilots.”
“Alright, then. Contingent on the boss’s approval when we get back home and good performance in the meantime, you’re squadron leader,” she announced. Before he had a chance to switch his brain back into gear, she continued, “We’ve got a bunch of kids who want to be ASF pilots back home. Mostly they’re fighting over flight hours in shuttles, but we’ll want double crews for every ASF except your personal bird, eventually. On the other hand, we ordered a bunch of spares and we’ve got enough fuel that even a squadron of thirsty Interceptors couldn’t drink us dry anytime soon.”
He nodded along, even surprised by the abruptness of her statement.
“You’ll be a bit restricted on the trip back to the Holdfast, even an Overlord can only carry so much fuel, but once we make it back to base,” she smiled, “don’t expect to have any time to be bored.”
XXXXX
Thanks again to Yellowhammer, LordsFire, and Seraviel for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking.