To: Methusulah. Subject: You're a techfinger. Care to get some grease in your beard?

Gunda Riehl grimaced - the restrainer field were -supposed- to make spine-crushing organ-splattering ejections a relic of prespaceflight history. Mind you, a thousand years ago the smart money was on visual range dogfights being absurd in the ballistics of space. I guess they didn't bank on neural enhancements and the near limitless efficiency constant of modern drive systems, did they, Gunda? Funny how history pulls a fast one. Even in one lifetime.

The mysterious stranger was good - sure, he didn't know the guts of his fighter yet - but it wasn't just his gnarled old fifty-something face that spoke of experience. He had a practiced ease that'd seen off the laconicism that came of living in the independent systems - a Freeport Two nut-and-bolt with his head screwed to his shoulders. That counted for something. Even when getting podded by the LSF's finest blacksuits deep in the beef-oiled houstonian heart of the Big Tex'.

"Hey old man. Seems you've lived through a few shifts. You're nifty at the stick."

Look, there's some project work we need people to dig into. Technical manifests stranded out here on Vierlande, now that we've got the starforge up and cranking hot toxic waste into the vacumn of space. I'm kiddin' - we filter that crap. We've got Gaians to think about. I wouldn't plug it into your vacsystem though."

Yeah, let's flash the knitty-gritty up for him.

"Onscreen you're going to be eyeballing some real... hm - hush-hush buy-and-sell orders. Now, we're Unioners - as much as the GEIST exigency is gonna' push for you to be covert rather than overt, we don't keep secrets and we don't do need-to-know. We're not soliders; we won't cosplay them even if I am your wingco' out there in the deep black battleground of the constellations, you feel me old man?"

"I figure with you plugging around in an unfamiliar star-fighter, I might make you not go crazy after your first sortie by handing you something you're familiar with:"

---------------Data, Uploading ---------------

Stennis-Ralon Multi-Cell-Shareware standardised Shield-reactor Induction anode, Fighter/bomber variant. RELA model 1.5

"That's a RELA- Union-slang for Reactor-Electromagnetic-Lace-Array; it's how we get the old antimatter initiated fusion forgedrive running with the shield grid. It's right in the middle of the big 'Oh toridal reactor on the caboose of your fighter that makes it 'go', and gives it the power to right some multi-megatonne wrongs. See, I don't know how much you heard about how we got Unioner boots on the ground in Vierlande. But there's a few ten thousand boots that deserve to be there, and arn't. Call the decks a little empty."

This is the first time you've heard Riehl embittered. By anything. Let alone a memory out of her own head. You wonder how the Vierlande massacre must have been in first person, from the rumours you must have heard in the cramped dive-bars that the Unioners had carved out of the 'roids. You realise that you prefer not to know. She snaps herself out of it, whiplashing like a chord - nearly jumping out of her chair. The Union wasn't as insensitive as most pirate movements to PTSD - it's just that everybody had it, and everybody had already filtered through the coping mechanisms. Especially the Wedel remnants.

"Every Arbeiter and Solidaritat's got more-or-less the same model with a few individual end-user tricks that the groundteams accept as a crazy fact of life that occasionally rips a rook's pacemaker out of his chest - that is, if you put the thing on ground-power outside of the reactor insulation. Don't do that. It's pretty idiot-proof, but that doesn't factor alcohol or harder drugs. Tear your implants right out of your body - brain stem gives up before we can get you in surgery, it's... Just.... don't do it, okay?"

She catches herself. Falls steady again.

""Yeah, so, the Omegas have got these little things called planetary accretion fields in their early phase of formation. Imagine the tanner belt, but on fire, and filled full of half fusing rare earths. You're talking several thousand degree particles being rammed at cruise fractions of the speed of light - now our shields can take it from weapons fire, but we don't know how they'll hold up under sustained battery in the deep omegas. We've gotta' keep our shield life expectancy up if we're... y'know..."

"Going to rescue those couldn't save. There's thirty thousand Unioners unnacounted for somewhere in Coalition space. Unioners who got freed from their life sentences only to be put to a worse fate as slaves of the Coalition. Unioners who were shot down by those they hoped were their family. Were their friends."

"I'm going to burn Volvograd to ash to free them if I have to. You're going to help me."

"So yeah, uh. Go over the shield grid and point out any flaws for long duration drain. Can't piss in Premier Selim's eyeball if we can't fly through the Omegas without getting a little toasty. I figured with your history amongst the Zoners you'd have had your fill on working on ships from those parts."

"You say you've repaired twenty five thousand ships, one for every hot meal I've had? Buddy, here's your chance to make that lie seem believable."

"Get it done, and I'll buy you a beer."

"If you'll excuse me, brother, I've got a suicide mission to work on in the heart of enemy space."

"Oh. Thanks for the assist out there. You looked after my life like it was your own; We'll make a Unioner of your yet."

The birdclock croaked when it saw the sun, tethered to a spring.
G.Riehl.
Wedel's Remnants.