Chapter 17

****Part 1 - Controlling the Flow ****

Pivot's General wears silver hair well. Aimee mused, leaning back in her chair. She let her gaze travel up and down the man as he paced on the podium in front of them. People talk about General Auspus being handsome, but Pivot's General is handsome too, in his own way. I actually like his look better, the mature look. Grown up, like he can handle all of the responsibility. Auspus never looked like that, he just looked like an angry kid all the time. General Hunter looked up from his screen suddenly, and Aimee ducked her head to look at her nails, blushing.

"Do you suppose your squadmates will be joining us any time in the next few days?" General Hunter growled at the assembled rookies. "Much as I enjoy the free time, I do have other things I should be attending." Aimee glanced to her left and right, as if Preston and Missy would've magically appeared since the last time she had checked.

"I did tell them the meeting was in five minutes." To her right, Li frowned. "They said they'd be right up."

Oh six orbits, please let them not be missing the meeting because they're having a quickie. Aimee mentally begged. General Hunter grunted and crossed his arms, looking around the room and resuming his pacing. Aimee took the opportunity to glance around the room again herself. It was a lush and well furnished room, like all rooms in Orbital Pivot. Unlike the others that she had seen, this room also clearly served a purpose; the rows of seats were comfortable, but they faced the giant screen in the front. It felt vast and empty, probably because only a handful of pilots had stayed on. Normally this room would be used to brief pilots and security before missions. Today it was occupied by her squadmates and nine pivot pilots, each from different squads as far as she could tell. The only ones who stayed.

The doors slid open and Preston and Missy entered. Aimee sighed. Missy's brown hair was mussed up, and Preston wore a stupid half-smirk. They had the decency to at least look ashamed, and Missy murmured an apology to the room as she sat in the empty seat next to Aimee.

"Now that we're all here." Hunter glared at the two late rookies, then flicked an image up on the screen. "This is what we have to deal with. This is realtime radar data, streamed to us from the nav room." It took a few minutes for Aimee to interpret what she was seeing, and while she did so she leaned towards Missy.

"You delayed a meeting so you could fuck your boy toy?" She hissed. "You should get his libido under control."

"Boyfriend." Missy gave her friend a look, half hurt and half annoyed. "And it was my idea. You're always telling me I should come out of my shell aren't you?" Aimee rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the screen.

"Can you tell us what we're seeing here sir?" One of the rookie pilots from Pivot asked. "Us pilots are used to flying, not dealing with that nav stuff." Aimee raised an eyebrow. Captain Appet had made sure her squad knew how to read a basic radar readout.

"You should know that 'nav stuff', even as a pilot." Aimee's voice was even, but held a trace of the disdain she felt. "If you lose comms in your ship, knowing the nav stuff is what will save your life when you don't have techs giving you directions. Cap App would've made us run laps if she heard us talking like that about navigational ability."

"Okay, you know so much, you want to tell us what we're looking at? Rookie?" The Pivot pilot sneered.

"It looks like Orbital Pivot is surrounded right now. They're in spherical formation around the station, so I doubt they're lining up to land. At a guess I'd say they're protecting us from something? Twelve fighters, all either cruiser, heavy cruiser, or darts. There are also two heavy transports outside of the ring ... are the fighters protecting us from the transports? But why we would need so many ... and what threat the transports could be to us ... I'm confused." Aimee admitted. The pivot pilot chuckled, and Aimee clenched her fists.

"Shut your face Pilot Riteon." Hunter's bark silenced the room, and Aimee turned her attention back to the General. "At least she tried to answer the damned question. Rookie ... what was it?"

"Aimee, sir. Aimee Nesbit."

"You tried, but you have it wrong." The General gestured towards the display with his screen as he talked, leaving Aimee to wonder why she cared about his opinion of her. "Rookie Nesbit was almost correct, but looking at it backwards. Those heavy transports are carrying the shipment from Orbital Minera. Obviously the Academy and Techrider shipments aren't coming in today, but we can survive without those. Without Minera supplies, the outlook is a little grim." He didn't need to explain why. When Aimee was three years old, a transport carrying supplies to Techrider had been waylaid by a team of Terran Shrikes, ripped to pieces before it could drop off its supplies. The energy resources and raw materials were used constantly in any Orbital's supply, and the loss of those materials, even for a few days, was devastating. She was too young to know the whys of it, but Aimee remembered those horrible nights huddled in her room in Techrider, as the entire Orbital stayed on emergency power for four days.

Orbital Pivot probably has even higher power consumption than Techrider. Aimee realized. Who knows how long they can last without materials.

"Can they do that?" One of the pilots asked, incredulous. "If they keep us from getting our materials, they're all but killing us? Is the Marshal just going to allow that?"

"The Marshal won't get involved in this dispute." General Hunter growled, and Aimee noticed the warning look his Chief of Information gave him. "Not unless a covenant is broken. In other words, as long as there's something we can do to fix the problem, we can't look to Orbital Basura for help. General Auspus isn't directly killing us, he's just trying to force us to surrender to him. The Marshal apparently," another warning look from his Chief, "doesn't consider that worthwhile enough to take action. A surrender to Academy will most likely come with quite a few provisions and reparations that will put is in quite a poor position. That surrender is something we're not giving him. That's why you're all here. There's twelve fighters out there. We've got two full squads in here. Eighteen."

"General, with all due respect..." Marcus clearly struggled for words when the attention of the entire room turned towards him. "It's not likely that they sent newbies on a mission to freeze out the supplies. Those twelve are probably very experienced pilots. More experienced than rookie level, at least."

"It's true." General Hunter nodded. "We caught a little bit of chatter before they moved to a private comm channel. There's at least one Captain-level pilot out there, Captain Leftran." Murmurs ran up and down the room. "That doesn't mean we'll just roll over and let them walk over us. We're sending you out to clear a path."

The murmurs abruptly ceased into a deadly silence.

"You want us to ... to fight them?" Missy asked, quietly.

"General, no orbital has ever sent troops to directly kill another. Ever, in the history of the orbit." Another pilot spoke just as quietly.

"And I wouldn't ask you to."

"If we break the covenant, won't that bring Orbital Basura down on us?"

"We don't necessarily have to break the covenant to break the blockade." General Hunter nodded to his Chief of Research who sat next to him, and she stood, displaying a series of schematics on the screen behind them.

"Orbital Techrider's final set of schematics before they cut off communication included a type of weaponry that uses ionized clouds of matter to distribute electrical current through its target. While they cut off the schematic stream before they finished sending us this data, our engineers have finished the designs on their own. The main benefit of this new ammunition is that instead of wasting resources building ammunition for our ships, we can use atomized scrap metal and garbage instead. An added benefit is that, given a few hours notice, we're able to build a low-level version of the ionization guns, allowing us to use non-lethal ion rounds. The electrical current of this ammunition will be enough to knock out a ship's systems without blowing a hole in the walls of the ship." Aimee took in the new information as the Chief of Research sat back down.

"Are there any questions?" General Hunter asked.

"Why are we being expected to fly against Academy pilots with another squad of Academy pilots?" It was the same pilot as before, and Aimee clenched her teeth. "No offense meant, but how do we know they won't split their loyalties when we get out into the air?"

"Orbital Academy is trying to have us killed." Aimee spat. "No offense meant, but we have more reason to avoid the surrender than you do, since one of the provisions of that surrender will probably include our execution. You're more likely to turn on us than vice versa." She turned to the General. "I do have a question though. Why are we having this meeting now? If you've just finished building these weapons, won't it take us days to design ships to hold the weaponry? Not to mention building the ships themselves?"

The General looked confused rather than answering, but to his left his Chief of Engineering piped up with a smile.

"Oh sweetie. You're on Orbital Pivot now. This is what we do."

A few hours later, the nine Orbital Pivot pilots were laughing at them, but Aimee didn't care.

"Holy shit." She breathed, and around her her squadmates looked in equal awe. The ships weren't just gorgeous, they were works of art. They had begun as typical cruiser frames, but from there they had been trimmed down in size, and their metal gleamed with a reflective black sheen. The lines of the ship were sharp, and the overall effect was as if shards of black glass sat in the large hangar bay.

"They look so slender and sexy." Marcus walked around his ship sitting next to Aimee's, giving it an appreciative once-over before he started his preflight check.

"Well sure, stands to reason." One of the Pivot pilots nearby seemed significantly less impressed by his craft, performing the basic checks without stopping to admire. "The bulk of a ship is its life support, but for the cruiser model there was the extra bulk taken up by weapons and redundancy navigation. With ionized weaponry, you can shave half that space-cost. These'll handle better than the ships you're used to. Hell they'll probably handle better than anything you've got, 'less you've ridden in the new H-74 frames."

"Are all Pivot pilots so good with engineering?" Aimee smiled at the nearby pilot.

"Just the ones who pay attention."

"I like flying with a man who pays attention." The Pilot smiled at her before climbing into his cockpit. Aimee had just finished performing her final check of the back panel fins when Li approached.

"The fuck was all that?" He demanded.

"What? Flight check?"

"No, all the flirting with the Pivot guy."

"Damn it Li, not this again. I have a flirty personality, that's all."

"Yea I've started to notice that a lot more."

"You didn't mind it so much back at Academy." Aimee yanked her glove on, almost tearing the fabric.

"In Academy it was me you were flirting with."

"Yea, so? We had fun then, we have fun now. Why are you trying to make things so serious all of a sudden?"

Li spun on his heel without answering, and Aimee rolled her eyes.

"Typical," she called from the ladder, knowing it would piss him off that other squaddies could hear, "running off instead of actually talking about your problem. That'll solve things!" She felt guilty about antagonizing him as soon as she said it, watching him flick her off before he started climbing into his own ship. She slid inside the cockpit of her sleek new cruiser with a frown, but the feeling was swept away by the advanced interior. Her Academy cruiser had been of excellent quality, but everything in this ship felt better. The seat was framemesh, and molded to her backside and back as soon as she settled in. Each panel lit up, bright enough to be identifiable but subtle enough to not distract. The plasticine slid shut, and a holographic heads-up display flickered to life across the window, not obscuring her vision but providing helpful information at a glance.

"These Pivot guys don't fuck around when it comes to building things, do they?" Marcus' voice was a bit clearer than normal on her comms, but it still held the slight static from Pivot's communication interference.

"Like the General said, it's kinda what we do, rookie." One of the Pivot pilots laughed. We, Aimee noted. They really do think of themselves as Pivot, even though they've probably spent more time getting trained on Academy. She didn't know why the thought surprised her so much, after all, she felt more loyalty to Academy than to Techrider where she was born. And now we're about to fight Academy pilots. The thought pulled her back to the present, and a nervous knot built in her stomach. She slid her gloved fingers over the flight controls, willing herself to forget the possibility that the Academy ships were using lethal rounds.

"You think we can handle this?" Marcus clearly had the same doubts she did.

"Are you kidding? We've got Alex on our side, the poor souls won't know what hit them." Preston's voice was full of confidence, but Aimee knew him well enough now to know when it was for show.

"Yea, just run interference for me and I'll handle the whole thing guys." Alex joked. A few forced laughs were cut short by General Hunter's voice on the comms.

"Standby for takeoff clearance. Good luck pilots." The cruiser lifted off of the ground without a sound, and despite her fear Aimee gasped. She tilted the nose of her ship experimentally, and found she was able to move it by inches, a level of control she'd never had before.

"Wish we were still hooked into the flight stats," Alex commented, "I'd break my old records."

"Orbital Pivot this is squad leader Arcellus." The Pivot pilot in the lead didn't sound either nervous or excited as the hangar bays silently slid open. "Should we demand surrender before engaging?"

"Negative, squad. Until we give you approval, we want radio silence. Right now your best advantage is the element of surprise. We will be broadcasting from Orbital Pivot on a public channel, so you flyers don't need to be communicating with them at all, Pivot will do all of your talking for you. Pilots you are cleared for go."

The other ships hovering in front of Aimee shot out of the hangar in a standard emergency departure, the speed and turbulence ripping panelling from the hangar walls. With a deep breath Aimee threw her ship into acceleration with them. As her ship slammed her into the back of the chair, Aimee let out a whoop as she fired off into space.

She saw the first ship as soon as they cleared the hangar. Statistics and information filled in the edges of her vision along the holographic canopy, and the invisible speck of the closest enemy was highlighted by a faint red targeting reticle. It was cruiser class, Aimee noted, the class of ship most suited to fast-moving targets like Drakes or Terran attack crews.

Or other ships. Aimee took a breath as the distance between the two ships closed fast. The quiet hiss of her oxygen recyclers filled her ears, quieter than her first ship, but still loud in the silence of space. The second she was within range Aimee bit her lip, reminded herself that her weapons were non-lethal, and squeezed the trigger. The ships around her fired as well as they spread out, trying to move into formation while still taking shots at the single cruiser in range. So many spheres of light arced from the fast moving ships that it looked like a net spreading out across the stars. The Academy pilot started moving almost instantly, firing fine-tune controls rather than thrusters. To Aimee's surprise his cruiser almost avoided the entire net, weaving through the field of ion bullets while only moving by a few meters on each dodge. Aimee unclenched her fist when, despite the pilot's skill, a few of the clusters of energy hit his ship, sending him lazily spinning in a slow circle.

It'll be easy for them to fake being hit, Aimee made a note to point it out over a private channel when they'd be cleared for comms, they'll only need to cut power to their ships and we'll have no way to tell if we hit them or not.

"Heads up lads and lasses, looks like we've got some flyers in the air." The voice on the public channel sounded robotic for the first few words, but then suddenly clicked into more human tones.

"How adorable, they're sending Pilot-levels at us."

"Pilot-level is all they've got, I told you."

"I didn't think they'd be dumb enough to send them at us." Aimee tried to ignore the Academy pilots' voices, swinging her ship so that she could visually scan the airspace around Orbital Pivot as the momentum carried her away from the station.

Though she had seen it briefly when they originally landed, it was the first time she could take in the giant station. Orbital Pivot was diamond-shaped instead of Orbital Academy's spherical form, with long arms that extended from its faces. Aimee briefly wondered what their purpose was. The Pivot pilots were moving in a wide arc around the station, flying in a formation that shifted unpredictably.

We should've been practicing that one, Aimee grew worried, us Rooks'll be sitting ducks in a static formation. The holographic projection interrupted her musing by drawing eleven small red circles on the canopy, indicating the Academy ships that had been sitting equidistant around the Orbital. Closer to her, blue circles were swinging by in an arc. Her squadmates were forming up.

"Academy Pilots, this is General Hunter." The man's bark over the comms startled her. "You are preventing Orbital Pivot from receiving vital supplies. Because of this we have no choice but to view you as enemy combatants, and will treat you as such."

"Cap'n Winchest speaking, General." The voice was gruff, but still vaguely robotic in tone. "You should know that we're on direct orders from General Auspus. You should also know we're carrying nonlethal rounds, so tha' ship you just had killed? It wasn' destroyed in self-defense. By ordering the death of another General's subordinate, you've broken the Marshal's covenant. Orbital Academy will be sending a log of this infraction to Orbital Basura as we speak."

Aimee hit her thrusters as two of her squadmates flew by, settling into formation with them as they passed. She couldn't tell who was taking point, but they had all practiced the different places enough that they could form up on the fly. The formation of three were moving in an opposite direction to the Pivot pilots, who showed in faint blue circles on her canopy. More of her squaddies formed up around them as they flew. By the time the nearest red circle was only a few kilometers out of range, all of her squadmates were in the formation. As they flew, General Hunter responded.

"My pilots are carrying nonlethal ammunition as well Captain Winchest. You can tell General Auspus that he can shove Orbital Basura up his ass." The red circle came into both view and firing range, and Aimee blocked the sound of the comms from her mind.

It wasn't one ship, it was three cruisers flying so close together that they showed up as one slightly fuzzy circle. They were moving slowly, but using fine-nav controls to move with jets of air, lazily corkscrewing and rolling back and forth, weaving in and out of each others' flight paths. Aimee aimed carefully before firing, but the formation of the three Academy ships simply widened to let the mass of ion energy pass harmlessly between them. When the Academy ships fired, in unison, her squadmates were slower to scatter. Most of them were close misses, but on Aimee's display one of her squaddies' blue circles winked out.

"Shit," Aimee snarled, yanking back on the controls to spin her ship, keeping her nose pointed at the Academy ships as they passed. She was close enough to the others that she could see Preston to her right, his brow furrowed in concentration. The others swivelled in turn, and Aimee focused carefully on the retreating ships. Why are they flying so slowly? Aimee mused, just as her canopy was lit up by the falling rain of light. "From above!" She shouted, yanking her nose down, trying to outrun the ship above them. The fourth Academy pilot was flying slow, even though he had caught them by surprise.

Space is three dimensional, space is three dimensional, Captain Appet always tried to drill that into your head, stupid stupid STUPID. Aimee berated herself, as she tried to make sense of the lights on her canopy. Three of her squadmates weren't broadcasting, which meant her squad was down to four now. She gunned her thrusters even harder, leaving the trailing Academy ship behind. Why is it so easy to outrun them? Are the new ships that much better?

"ROOKS. Slow the FUCK down." The familiar voice snapped on the public channel, and Aimee jumped.

"Captain Appet?"

"If you get hit with a disabling shot at high speeds, what the fuck do you think is going to stop you when you have no brakes or adjusters? You'll go careening out into deep space and die. THINK, for god's sake." Captain Appet sounded enraged, but Aimee shook her head in confusion.

"Captain Appet, you're helping them?" Missy's voice over the comms contained the betrayal Aimee was thinking.

"Captain what the fuck?" Li said at almost the same time. Aimee clamped her mouth shut and reduced her speed. Despite the betrayal, it was good advice. If she lost control of her craft when moving too fast, she could be flung into space, moving far too fast for anyone to retrieve her. Her oxygen would dry up in a matter of an hour.

"Why?" Aimee asked.

"What am I supposed to do rookies? I'm given a mission, I fly it. That's how it works." Captain Appet sounded sad, but Aimee ground her teeth and spun her ship round, unleashing a barrage of bullets at the ship that was behind her. Her shots went wide, but the ship broke off its pursuit to join a nearby formation.

"I dunno, you could try not shooting us down you bitch." Marcus snapped.

"I was given an order! I'm not going to rebel against the General of my Orbital!"

"Even when that General is a psychopath trying to kill us all?"

"Marcus, I'm not asking you to come back. I understand it's not ... it's not safe. But I have to fly the missions Academy gives me. If General Hunter wanted this over he could end it, it's Pivot's stubbornness that's forcing us against each other right now. This isn't Academy's fault Rooks."

Aimee tried to shut down her emotions and ignore the voices over the comms. She scanned her readouts, identifying positions of friends and foes. A lonely five blue circles winked back at her, while ten red indicators remained.

"Squaddies we're getting distracted, we need to focus." She said quietly but firmly. "There's nothing more we need to say, turn to private comms."

To her surprise, the others listened. Small indicator pips showed as two of her squadmates and the three Pivot pilots switched to private communication.

"She's a bitch-" Marcus repeated, "she-"

"No time for that now." Aimee snapped. "They're slaughtering us in this battle, form up."

"Pivot pilots," General Hunter's gruff voice cut in, "the transports have a clear path to Hangar C. Guide them in."

Aimee swept her nose towards the large bulks and hit the thruster gently, pushing her ship just slow enough that she wouldn't be carried too far away if her systems were shut down.

"So much for private communication." A Pivot pilot muttered. Red circles converged on Aimee's canopy, as one by one the Academy pilots changed course, breaking off towards the transports. Aimee squeezed off a few shots, but the Academy pilots were too skilled, their ships moved as if they could anticipate her shots before she even fired them. The pilots in formation around her tried just as hard, but the Academy ships were orbiting the transport in intricate patterns.

We're good, but we're nowhere near Captain-level. Aimee realized with despair.

"I'm gonna try something." Pilot Arcellus suddenly slammed forward on his thrusters to peel away from the formation.

"Stop!" Aimee's cry was lost in the cries from the rest of the group. Her gaze shot back to the cluster of cruisers around the transport ships, watching in horror as one tilted ever so slightly and unleashed a burst of bullets.

"Don't shoot at the fast one!" The voice of Winchest burst over the speakers, but the command came too late, just as Arcellus spoke.

"It's alright, they won't dare-" Aimee didn't see the actual contact between the ship and the ion bullets, but when the blue circle winked out on her screen she watched as Arcellus' ship went into a slow tumble, speeding past the transport and towards the green-tinged planet the Orbitals surrounded. There was no sound or cry. Aimee watched as the useless piece of metal that used to be a ship flipping through empty space, a human life within. She watched it until it tumbled into the fog surrounding the planet.

Some signal must've passed between the Academy pilots, because they all began firing at the same time. Aimee tried using fine-control thrusters, but she hadn't trained in them. She only managed to dodge a few bullets before several slammed into her ship. The lights and indicators in front of her winked out in unison, and the constant hiss of oxygen recyclers ceased, leaving her in utter silence. Whether her squadmates were as stunned as she was, or they just couldn't gain enough speed to dodge, Aimee watched as those around her were incapacitated.

We never stood a chance, not really. A hopelessness overwhelmed Aimee, and she leaned back in her chair. I wonder if they'll let Hunter retrieve us. They would have to, of course. Academy troops couldn't break the Covenant by letting them run out of air. The Covenant forbade the members of one Orbital killing those of another. But they already did. Aimee glanced toward the planet, then back at the cruisers circling the transport ships. She squinted. The panelling on the sides of the transport ships were opening, their contents released into space around them.

"What?" Aimee muttered, leaning forward. It wasn't boxes of minerals that drifted out, or even raw energy stores. Instead, they were small black spheres, almost invisible against the dark backdrop of space. They were moving far too fast for zero-gravity, two or three firing off towards each cruiser that surrounded the transports. The cruisers started moving, but the spheres stuck as soon as they brushed against them, and one by one the lights Aimee could see on the cruisers were going out. It happened so fast that within a few seconds almost all of the Academy cruisers were drifting, some spinning. Drones... Aimee finally realized with a start, ... the transports were full of drones. They're latching on and overloading the electrical systems. The final Academy cruiser shut down, and as if coordinated, small tow-ships began pouring out of the nearest hangar on Orbital Pivot.

It's over. They're through. Aimee thought, dully. A few seconds to accomplish what we couldn't in a few hours and at the cost of a life. Her gaze was pulled towards the planet, seeing the spinning ship in her mind's eye. At least The Marshal will have to stop this, now that Orbital Academy has broken the covenant. No one can even say this was our fault. We won. As she stared down at the planet, Aimee could never remember feeling more saddened at winning.

****Part 2 - Controlling the Body ****

Errisa's Blue core sat alone in the office that belonged to her body, composing and discarding possible messages at the rate of about fifteen per nanosecond.

>>Inefficient, annoying, waste of energy.<< She thought again, deleting her most recent attempt and staring at the blank wall of Errisa's office. >>What do humans find so fascinating about couching every request and order in layers of emotion and niceties?<< Blue core wasn't built for human interaction or social niceties. Her task was to maintain essentials, to keep her artificial heart pumping coolant through her body, to receive and order every microscopic bit of data that Errisa saw, smelled, heard or felt. Data was easy; a sight always translated to images, a sound always translated to aural feedback. If something was broken, schedule a fix, if something could be improved, work with Errisa to improve it. Blue liked data, she lived data. Higher level things like emotion weren't as cut and dried, and Blue couldn't help but be uncomfortable with them.

>>How is this any way to run a system?<< She asked rhetorically. She wouldn't receive an answer from her other half, of course. Blue had shut down all input and output from the collection of high-level scripts that called herself "Errisa". If she couldn't talk, even to her own Blue core, then Errisa couldn't convince Blue to change her mind.