Dirty Rocco waited for us in the briefing room, already fully kitted with a plate carrier, carbine, and high-cut helmet. He spoke into a radio, but when he glanced up and saw us a brief look of relief crossed his face before he mastered his expression.
“They just walked in. Yes ma’am, looks like everyone aboard. Break. Papa, Diablo, stand down.”
He put down the handset.
“About time,” he said.
“About to send out the search party?” I asked.
“About to tear you a new asshole for trying to give me a heart attack,” he said, and pointed to the armory. “You’re late. Let’s get you kittens kitted up.”
When jockeys go into battle, the armor doesn’t stop at the hull. They go in a pared-down version of the marine combat kit, comprised of an unpowered ballistic plate carrier, folding carbine, sidearm, and light-weight helmet—or so I thought.
I glared at the bulky tactical vest with my name tape stuck on lopsided, and the heavy trauma helmet in the armorer’s hands. “What’s all this? It must weigh as much as I do.”
“This is the real reason you sweat yourself silly in all those conditioning workouts,” said Rocco, slapping his chest. “You think Chevalier paid for this segmented plate carrier? Hell no.”
Stag pulled his on, barely fitting his broad shoulders into the jacket-style armor and securing the ballistic plate to the front. He probably barely even noticed the added weight, but he definitely noticed the tight squeeze. I helped him secure his sidearm’s leg holster before struggling into my own tactical vest.
As a maintainer I’d never had to wear one, and never once envied the marines slogging these jackets around, even if theirs were powered and had augmented leg exos. It felt like wearing twelve extra shirts made of lead and a bag of tools across my chest. I vowed my first credit chit as a jockey I’d get one like Rocco’s.
No carbines for cadets, either. Just cheap sidearms. While I secured my own holster to the lugs on my cadet uniform, I looked out the internal window of the armory, into the underground hangar where the Third Formation uprights waited, powered down.
“Why aren’t the Chevalier uprights deployed?” I asked.
“Rebel attack looks like a feint so far, lots of artillery and some probes on the outskirts like the one you ran into. Very few uprights. Paladin Devils haven’t shown their hand, either. For now, we’re on combat-alert standby, and not high on the list—what with having three cadets on the roster. Valor will be assigned to Theseus until surface movement is safe enough to get her to First Formation.”
We headed down to the underground hangar level where the rest of the formation jockeys waited for the word to mount up while they watched status feeds from the Winter. Athena had already joined the other techs performing last-minute maintenance and tuning on the uprights. I was glad to have her maintaining Third’s equipment. If I can’t be the one doing the wrenching, Athena is a close second.
Theseus knelt alongside a handful of recon uprights and MBUs I didn’t recognize. These must have been the other cast-off re-cobbled salvage heaps Swift told me about. So many unblooded vehicles… the surprise attack at the fuel refinery had crippled almost all of Third’s uprights, and the staff as well. What used to be a flagship cavalry squad (by Chevalier standards, anyway) now qualified as barely fieldable and under-trained.
I collapsed onto one of the Naugahyde couches, scrounged from God-knows-where and about as soft as a pile of rusty nails. The tactical vest prevented me from getting comfortable, rigid plates seeming to find soft bits to pinch into no matter how I readjusted. The weight made it harder to breathe. Twice I caught myself bouncing my leg, fists tight, and forced myself to relax.
Below ground you couldn’t hear the battle to the south so much as feel the rumble of the explosions buzzing through the soles of your boots and echoing in the dust shaken free from suspended lights. The tedium of the wait was getting to me, despite the dread of actually climbing into a cockpit and facing enemy uprights. I couldn’t bring myself to look at a data pad but looked longingly at the maintainers.
“Hey Rocco,” I began.
“No,” he replied, without looking up.
“You don’t even know what I was gonna ask!”
Rocco glared at me over the bezel of his data pad. Ok, so he probably did know what I was going to ask. After eight years together we could read each other like annotated tech manuals. “First Formation is already under strength with Valor stuck here. The last thing I need is for you to break a wrist or fall off an upright gantry and leave me short here, too. No maintenance during ready alert.”
I looked away, and then back. Rocco’s eyes slid to the foot I didn’t even realize I had started tapping again. He sighed and set down his pad, then got up and slid into a chair across from me.
“This was the worst part on my first combat patrol.”
“The waiting?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’d been on four or five runs at that point but no combat. No sweat—joyrides, really. Scenic walks, at worst. But before the sixth run, our formation commander made it clear he expected us to encounter MBU resistance. Know who that was?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Pug.”
“No shit?” I said.
Rocco laughed. “That sour old dog used to be my formation leader, believe it or not. Complete hard ass. Amazing how much teaching softened him up.”
I thought back to the iron-hard trainer, exercising next to mercs a third his age and making them look straight sloppy. His curly, gray-haired skull bobbing up and down as he pumped out push-ups and yelled at any slackers (mostly me). “He never mentioned.”
“That man blooded so many cadets he probably doesn’t remember the first half of ‘em,” said Dirty Rocco. He leaned back. “Anyway, before that patrol I had six hours of standby. I sat around, hungry but couldn’t eat, staring at the wall, and tearing the foam out of a hole in my chair pinch by pinch just to feel some level of control.”
“Poor chair. So, what did you do?”
“I waited. Drove myself crazy, and then went on the patrol. It sucked. We got battered and rebuffed, forced to retreat. But the anticipation was worse.”
“Yeah?”
“Not really, no,” said Rocco, pursing his lips. “Huh. I actually forgot how bad we got our collective asses kicked that run.”
He clapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “But the point is, you can’t do anything to control the wait. You can only control how you spend it. Get some rest, study if you can, eat if you won’t kick it back up. Find a chair with some padding left and tear it out. Don’t just stare at the wall and dwell.”
He glanced at some of the techs crawling over the uprights and waved. Athena waved back down at him.
“You could also find a friendly pair of legs and a room with a lock, if you think you can get it up. But extracurriculars in one of those armored jackets is… complicated.”
I rolled my eyes. And he wonders why Kayle can’t stand him.
He raised his eyebrows, leering grin spreading. “Ask me how I know.”
“I think I’m good,” I said, standing up and heading away from the staging area. I didn’t think I could survive any more of his abysmal attempt at a pep talk.
Rocco shrugged and stretched, calling out after me. “Chances are we’re not even mounting up tonight. They’re testing our responses, trying to figure out where they can drop the Paladins to do the most damage.”
I paced the briefing room and lounge for a couple hours, occasionally peering at the news feeds. Then I wandered over to the galley, hoping something might pique my appetite. At some unknown point, a nameless cook had stained the white backsplash of the mess with a splatter of red sauce, and I turned away empty-handed, unable to stomach the thought of food.
I passed back by the staging area, where several of the other jockeys dozed in curtained-off cots, despite the maintainers hammering away on steel and polymer. Rocco was completely passed out, head back, mouth open, and snoring on the couch. Others listened to music or books stored on their commpads. I left Rocco where he lay and headed for the maintenance hangar.
Not that I was planning to disobey Rocco’s orders now that he was asleep (though it wouldn’t be the first time); I just wanted to be back near the tanks and around the tools and maintainers, and the smell of grease, propellant, and hot metal. I looked up at the hulls of the Chevalier uprights, at the guns and missile racks welded on and loaded with belts of heavy ordinance. I stopped at one, almost not recognizing her new look.
Ardennes had gotten a new coat of paint after I’d scraped off the last one with a parking deck. She’d been given a blue-black matte urban cammo finish, with white checkers on her trim and mantlets below the turret. I circled around to see the Chevaliers’ horse-skull logo, along with the motto “Viser Juste Chevalier” on her side. And underneath, her name, which had been imposed on the silhouette of a horse mid-stride. Colonel Swift’s pride and joy restored and looking fucking fierce.
She’d be Rocco’s ride now, with Marmaluk’s chassis still under enemy control. Ardennes was the heaviest hitter in the Third now that the rest of the formation mostly consisted of reconstituted recons and welterweights that had seen too many battles and junkyards. Looking down the line, I wondered which of these would be my forever-tank. Would I paint the silhouettes of enemy uprights under the cockpit? Or would I be the one painted?
I heard snores and circled the maintenance berth to find Athena stretched out on a cot, coveralls thrown over the foot-end and a thin woobie blanket pulled across her. She stirred when I approached and looked up at me. She yawned and stretched in a way that made me keenly aware that the maintainer uniform draped over the edge of the cot did her no favors. She must have noticed.
“Don’t get excited, Vandal, I’m still wearing shorts.” She rubbed the back of her neck and yawned again. “Besides, I’m clearly out of your league.”
I squatted and leaned against one of Ardennes’ ankles, smiling. “Even now that I’m a jockey?”
Athena lowered her voice as deep as she could. “Oh, look at Mr. One-week-in-the-sim-makes-me-a-real-jockey,” she said, bobbing her head side to side as she mocked me, trying and failing to keep a straight face. I put the bottom of my boot against the leg of her cot and nudged it. Her hand shot out and grabbed my shin. “Don’t you goddamn dare!”
I laughed. Really, I saw Athena as something closer to a sister. And besides, inter-company romance was… complicated at best. Despite Rocco’s recommendation, I usually found it better to look to the temporary companionship of whatever planet we found ourselves on. Plenty of local girls willing to help me spend my pay in degenerate places, and new faces on every world to salve the burn of a wounded heart left by the old ones. Even on a planet like Tyunta. Many of the women here held to more conservative views on sex. Maybe the Saracen traditionalists that used to run the planet had something to do with that. I lamented the loss of all the local skin joints and watering holes they would probably shut down after they won.
Ardennes’ hull felt cool against the back of my head. I tilted back and looked at the Bulldog cannon on her left side. The inhibitor module I’d kicked free had been replaced, but it looked like whoever had done the replacement hadn’t wound and secured the cabling as thoroughly as I would have. “Honestly I wish I was still in here turning wrenches.”
“Of course you do,” said Athena. “Who wouldn’t rather be wherever I am?”
“Stag,” I said.
She threw her pillow at me, then held out her hand for me to return it. Once I handed it back, she buried her face in it and muffled a scream.
“I take it you heard how he got his name?” I asked.
“Shut up. Shut up, shut up. Shut. Up.” Athena pulled her blanket over her head and rolled away, and after a few moments I heard her snores resume.
I grinned, which turned into a yawn. I tilted my head back again, realized how comfortable the collar of my tactical vest suddenly felt, and promptly passed the fuck out.