Flew the Coop

[Sarah McFarlen]

27th March 836 – Barrier Gate Station, Coronado

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The Marauder touched the pad with remarkable gentleness for a machine of its size. Sarah paused in the cockpit for a stiff moment, as though the shutdown sequences were something foreign to her. Finally she moved, lines and lights, intakes and exhausts. The woman scarcely less mechanical in her motion than the devices that surrounded her.

A cheerful chirp from the datapad in her hand as it devoured the contents of the fighter's log.

Some things you didn't leave on the landing pad.

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8360427.txt

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Code:

James Arland: And... There.
James Arland: I think that should suffice, as far as private sector comms gear goes.
Sarah McFarlen: "Hi." Her voice, made tiny by compression, made tinier still by the cheap flight-suit.
Sarah McFarlen: "You think someone's still listening in." An amused exhalation, marred by static. "This far down, they deserve it."
James Arland: "Ah, don't mind that. I'm just a- creature of habit."
Sarah McFarlen: "Like a bird's a creature of the air."
Sarah McFarlen: But, there was warmth in the jab. A pause. "Sure you still want to do this?"
James Arland: "I-" There's a hiss that might have been an intake of air.
James Arland: "I really should try, or so I keep being told."
James Arland: "Not *going* there, I mean. I do that enough. Explaining. Talking about it."
Sarah McFarlen: A lenghty pause, not entirely attributable to the ship's slipshod comms. The solid, mechanical /click/ of a switch. "Okay."
James Arland: There's something mechanical in the way he says. "Form up, please. Shortest route is through Tau."
Sarah McFarlen: "Want to -" She slipped into silence, as the comms crackled. The reply was as casual as his was regimented; "On it."
Sarah McFarlen: "God, it's been years since I was in something like this. For more than a handful of minutes, anyway."
James Arland: "I haven't had much use for this thing as much else as a runabout between odd jobs. I'm not a- Fantastic pilot."
James Arland: "But she's kept me alive well enough, and that's all I ask."
James Arland: "Jump hole here is a bit rough."
Sarah McFarlen: "Really?" There was a note of genuine surprise there. "I would've thought they covered that."
Sarah McFarlen: "You know. Knives, pistols, spaceships. The triumvia- Hrk." A brief, stomach-lurching swallow, as the jump point yawned wide.
James Arland: "I've had a varied education."
James Arland: "But this was never quite my - hm. Passion. If that is something one can describe the portfolio as."
James Arland: "Eyes open out here. Spotted a Corsair running about earlier."
Sarah McFarlen: "Good a word as any. Take what comes, I suppose." A pause. "Where /did/ you go to school, anyway? Never talked on -"
Sarah McFarlen: "-Gotcha. Eyes out." A drum of her console. Two fingers, in something like salute.
James Arland: "Military Academy on New London, after high school. You won't be surprised to know, it kind of ran in the family."
Sarah McFarlen: "Did you like it?"
James Arland: "Yes, but I also quickly realized it was not a matter of what I *liked*. Not really."
James Arland: "Mood, as they say, is a thing for cattle, love and the like. For me, it became something I felt like I was *meant* to do."
James Arland: "And I *did*."
James Arland: "Leeds never was a very pretty system. The smog clouds, I think have been here for generations. It doesn't look-"
James Arland: "So different, from the way it's always been, from here."
Sarah McFarlen: The pause echoed down the channel, her face obscured by rebreather and visor. "Just like that."
Sarah McFarlen: And, a shake of her head, as if to clear it; as the contact list populated itself.
Sarah McFarlen: "Yep. Never had much cause to pass through, before - You know. Even less, afterwards."
James Arland: "Let's get-" ...This over with, is swallowed back.
James Arland: "Let's get a closer look."
Sarah McFarlen: "Let's." A swallow, a crackle.
Sarah McFarlen: Her fingers moved across the console. The debris, pinged ceaselessly by uncomprehending electronic eyes. Unrecognisable.
Sarah McFarlen: No matches. Another sweep.
James Arland: "Debris field from Stokes station out here. Just one of many orbital industries that were destroyed in their totality,"
James Arland: "When the Gauls withdrew. They burned everything they could get their hands on. Imagine that - they did all this because,"
James Arland: "They *lost*."
James Arland: "Reconstruction is going nowhere particularly fast, I hear."
Sarah McFarlen: A softer crackle, marked only for a whispered curse by the cadence of it. "Just - Stupid. Senseless. It's - Yeah."
Sarah McFarlen: "Newer problems all around. Always and ever."
James Arland: "I overheard one of the crew on Durham talk about this place as, a highway built on top of a mass grave. Doesn't feel right-"
James Arland: "Referring to it all in those terms, not even after this much time."
Sarah McFarlen: A hollow laugh. There was no humour in it. "Not making me feel great about our flight path, James."
James Arland: "Well..."
Sarah McFarlen: "...God." The word, whispered. "You can see the craters."
James Arland: "I hate to say it. But it is not about to get any better."
James Arland: "Check your scopes. You should be seeing a lot of EM signatures. They're maintained this way deliberately."
Sarah McFarlen: She already was; though the steady trickle of sensor data reached down towards the planet's surface, rather than the monuments.
Sarah McFarlen: Climate readouts, radioactive clouds, cobalt-blast residue. "...Uninhabitable." She breathed. A shudder, as the helmet shook,
Sarah McFarlen: one side to the other.
Sarah McFarlen: "The -" Disbelief. The /what?/ The spite? The effort, expended on such idle destruction.
James Arland: A long, mechanical inhale. "I would have liked to say, 'it happened so fast.'"
James Arland: "It took days."
Sarah McFarlen: "You were here? When it -"
James Arland: "Yes."
James Arland: "If you look along the- well, what used to be western continent on your topological projection... There's a cluster of-"
James Arland: "Arcologies. Enormous industrial and residential complexes, essentially, and that's where my brigade deployed."
Sarah McFarlen: The sweep of scanners. A soft, shocked; "There's nothing left of them."
James Arland: "Yeah. I'm alive due to, what boils down to, the vagaries of *how* our force was deployed - my battalion, the one I led..."
James Arland: "Was on the outer edge facing north, along the border wastes. Containing a push across them from one of the more distant-"
Sarah McFarlen: She listened; made faceless by the helmet, made silent by the feedback-filter.
James Arland: "Complexes held by the enemy, was our main job, for a good long while. When the siege of New London broke..."
James Arland: "We had pushed out, a good distance from civilization, and when the first cobalt nuke went off..."
James Arland: "We were in the middle of staging an assault of our own."
James Arland: "Our original goal had simply been to create a foothold for exploitation."
Sarah McFarlen: "Lucky." Though, by the twist in tone, the sentiment fitted didn't quite fit in the skin it had been given.
Sarah McFarlen: *sentiment didn't quite fit
James Arland: There's another gathering of nerve.
James Arland: "You have to understand, we couldn't *stay* out there. Sure, we might not get instantly turned to vapor."
James Arland: "But the radiation would get us within days, if we didn't make it underground, to a shelter, *any* shelter!"
Sarah McFarlen: A bob of her head. Here was something like familiar ground. "Poison. No surer sort. Where'd you go?"
James Arland: There's a rising desperation there, now, an echo of the past.
James Arland: "I told them we were *completing our assault*. There was nowhere else to *go.* Threw everything and everyone who could move-"
Sarah McFarlen: She leaned a little closer to the camera; an awkward shuffling in the tight-packed cockpit. Some ungainly, make-pretend
Sarah McFarlen: -simulacrum for proximity.
James Arland: "Under their own power into it, and... We did make it that far. We killed every one of the bastards in our way, any of them-"
James Arland: "Who hadn't already picked up sticks for their own evacuations. They couldn't nuke it all *at once.*"
James Arland: "Took their dugouts, basements, makeshift shelters, whatever they had, for our own - what little was left of us."
James Arland: "By the time the assault had all culminated - I had maybe a third of my number left."
James Arland: "It wasn't the end."
James Arland: "No, it wasn't even the worst part."
Sarah McFarlen: Still, she listened. A crackle, not entirely attributable to the transmission. "What happened?"
James Arland: Something resembling a hollow laugh. Choked.
James Arland: "Happened?"
James Arland: "Oh, nothing *happened*. We did *nothing*."
James Arland: "We waited. Hid. For days. Wondering which of the flashes and quakes would finally, finally get us."
James Arland: "And over the time I spent hunkered in a cellar. Watching my Geiger counter tick, up, up up, more and more, by the hour-"
James Arland: "We dwindled. Not every hole we could find was created equal."
Sarah McFarlen: A pause. The slow-dawning horror. She worked with drives. Shields and fields, the feeble, man-made protection from that
Sarah McFarlen: certain, creeping-sickness that rotted bodies from the cells on up. Yes. She knew. She could imagine.
James Arland: "At first it was the wounded. Those with compromised suits. The civilians we found - oh, they had no personal protection gear."
James Arland: "We'd tried, you know? Put them in the best protected places we could find, but- But, it was no good when atmo started to *go.*
Sarah McFarlen: "God." She breathed.
James Arland: "I did what I could. Ordered what I could. Scavenge scrubbers, filters, meds, from those who couldn't use them anymore."
James Arland: "I could count the ones I had left on two hands when I was confident enough there wasn't more coming."
Sarah McFarlen: "So few."
James Arland: "I had started the deployment with about eight hundred."
Sarah McFarlen: "You -" A rattle, an exhalation. "-You did what you could. Saved who you could."
James Arland: "It'll never feel that way."
Sarah McFarlen: "It won't."
James Arland: "...That's all there's to the story, as far as I lived it. I fired up an emergency beacon when I figured we were clear, and to-
James Arland: "Give them due credit, the folks in orbit were quick on the scene. I was terrified nobody was there, couldn't hear it through-"
James Arland: "The electromagnetic interference."
James Arland: "Thanks. For listening, I mean- I've- I've told this to maybe two people so far."
James Arland: "Including you."
Sarah McFarlen: "What're friends for?" A pause. "I'm sorry. Wasn't there then. Wasn't here sooner."
James Arland: "Don't, don't, trust me, you didn't want to have to deal with me back then. I was a mess."
James Arland: "And definitely do not apologize for not having been here when it happened."
James Arland: "I'm glad you weren't."
Sarah McFarlen: A shifting of flightsuit, an attempt to rub at her nose, neatly obstructed by faceplate. "I'm glad you made it."
James Arland: "I tell myself, that if at least one person thinks that much - it's enough."
James Arland: James terminates his topological display, maneuvers his vessel facing away from this *thing* that happened here.
Sarah McFarlen: "It's - Hard, to get your head around." She said, finally. "A ship. A family. A - Household. That's okay. That -"
Sarah McFarlen: "-Fits. Sort-of. A whole /planet./"
James Arland: "I don't want to think about-"
Sarah McFarlen: "I don't understand it. How someone could give that order. How someone could follow it."
Sarah McFarlen: The ship hung, still, in silence. "A lot to - Yeah." Another brief, resigned crackle.
James Arland: "I meant to say," A huff of annoyance at the distraction. "I don't want to think about all the other stories running in-"
James Arland: "Parallel to that me and mine did. Within the next five klicks. Ten. A hundred?"
Sarah McFarlen: "It's too much. Doesn't - It doesn't fit."
James Arland: "And if I ever get the opportunity to *ask* who made the call..."
James Arland: "I am actually, very curious. To hear them explain."
Sarah McFarlen: "Think they'd be one? An explanation."
Sarah McFarlen: *there'd be one?
James Arland: "I somehow hope there is. Not a justification, but at least a  - line of reasoning."
James Arland: "Something that isn't a *petty, kneejerk* decision made by a panicking junior officer shoved into a seat too big for them."
James Arland: "And again, if I had the opportunity, I would kill them for it no matter what the answer was. But I would at least have liked-"
James Arland: "To hear it."
Sarah McFarlen: "It'd be -" She hovered, disgusted, over /nice./ "-Something, at least. Some - Rationale."
Sarah McFarlen: She stiffened, ever-so-slight, at the casualness with which James administered his hypothetical execution.
Sarah McFarlen: "Back to Coronado?" She said, finally.
James Arland: "Sure."
James Arland: "I'll - I'll be thankful, to stop coming back here."

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"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."

- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.

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