“You know, this sucks.”
“I hadn't noticed,” First Lieutenant ‘Colt' Tyler drawled, sending an unamused glare across space at the Viper holding steady on his wing, “but orders are orders…”
“Maybe,” came the reply, “but this still sucks.”
Colt sighed, shaking his head as he turned back to his own displays, flicking swiftly across the ‘glass' cockpit, “would you rather be on Thundersdawn on Alert 5?”
He hid a grin at the long pause before his partner replied, “that sucks worse. I've been there, sitting in your cockpit, not allowed to get out even to take a piss, just ten seconds away from being in space but more often then not, never getting there.”
“And when you do?” he couldn't help asking.
“It either gets uninteresting very quick… or it gets real interesting even quicker.”
Colt snorted, “The age old rule of the military, 99% boredom…”
“And 1% I need new pants, stat!”
They shared a chuckle at that, even as they unceasingly gazed between their instruments and the black, star laden gulf of space outside their fragile cockpits, carefully not thinking about how strong the glass composite was and what damage a single speck of dust in the wrong spot would cause.
“Well Stardust,” Colt noted contemplatively, “did you ever really believe you would get here?”
“I hoped,” he replied quietly, “the boys in the Black Aces knew when I joined ‘em out of the academy, it was how I ended up with this handle. But believe it? No, I don't think I ever did.”
“Neither did I,” grimacing, he glanced across once more at this wingman, “but then, a lot has changed.”
“Yes, not all for the better.”
Colt considered this, “true, but what can we do?”
A snort came over the radio, “our jobs. Keep Earth spinning with us on it and hope the politicians don't screw it up.”
“Hah! Also an eternal truth of the military… I think we're missing just one now…”
“Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait,” Stardust intoned swiftly, “hell Colt, what are we even doing out here anyway. Its not as if anyone on route to attack Earth is just going to happen to stop right in front of us and allow us to report back. We're in the freaking gulf after all, there's shit-all here.”
“That's true,” his eyes rising fractionally as a blip flickered up momentarily on his screen, then disappeared after mere seconds, he shrugged inwardly, “as a tripwire, we're fucking useless, least ‘till they can give us sensors capable of looking into hyperspace.”
“Then why are we here?”
Colt sighed, “because the brass thinks the practise with the jump drives is a good idea, beause they want us to keep busy, because the small chance of spotting an inbound enemy is better then no chance, because they want to discourage the creation of outposts and monitoring stations in the gulf. Hell, because we're ordered to be here. Pick one.”
The radio was quiet for a minute, “thought about it a bit have you?”
Colt snorted, “Not had much else to do when flying with ninja. That guy couldn't string two words of conversation together to save his life.”
“Unless you're talking about…”
“Those useless fucking Lancers. ” They chorused together.
“You know what the best part is,”
“Oh?” Colt asked.
“Little birdie tells me he's going to be posted…”
He glanced up interested; there was just too much glee in Stardust's voice.
“…to project whetstone.”
“Whetstone?” Colt frowned, “haven't heard of that one.”
“He gets to be the test pilot for the mark three Lancers. ”
Barking out a laugh, he shook his head, “oh that's just too beautiful. How the hell did that happen?”
“As I heard it, he may have been a little… indiscreet with his comments on the Lancer when one of the Williams twins was in the room.”
“Sounds about right,” Colt admitted, “I've met one of ‘em, or maybe both can't really tell, either way they got a wicked sense of the perverse sometimes but also somewhat of an understanding of humanity.”
“Oh?”
“What's the better they tell ninja he's on whetstone until those ‘useless fucking lancers' aren't useless no more?”
“That's evil,”
“Well it would take somebody with a fine appreciation of their issues to get those birds fixed.”
They shared a chuckle at that then the radio went quiet once more.
“Three more hours of this…”
“And not even a gas stop to break the monotony.” Colt replied swiftly.
“Tell me about it, least that helped keep things interesting.”
“Not sure I would want to try it in these birds,” Colt noted, “I've spoken to some of the Lancer guys who've tried it, apparently that's actually easier and quicker in atmosphere.”
“Now that says a lot,”
“I know,”
“Well lookee here,” Stardust intoned, “that's the fifth time that blip has lit up then disappeared.”
Grimacing, Colt reached up and grabbed the helmet on his compact spacesuit, clicking it swiftly into place. God, how he hated the thing… but one day he might hate being without that final seal even more.
“I'm sealed,” he noted finally, “seal up yourself then give me a location.”
“Sealing now Colt,” came the swift reply.
Less then twenty seconds later, a nav point flagged up on his display; “copying to command now...”
“Like anyone is going to hear it for a few hundred years or so…” stardust pointed out.
“That's why I brought a loudspeaker pod with me,”
“Fuck, didn't see that.”
Colt smiled, “it's on the other side of my bird that's why.”
“Just need the geeks to replace the shitty radios we got with those vo'cume based ones and these patrols might just start doing some real good.”
“Maybe, we still got that intermittent contact to check out,”
“Right,” Stardust replied, “I'll play follow the leader.”
“Back-off a bit too, just in case.” Colt ordered.
“You want weapons hot?”
“Not yet,” Colt grinned, “let's avoid the paperwork unless we have to k?”
“No complaints here,” came the amused reply.
He nudged his controls, bringing the craft around in a slow economical loop that five minutes later had them closing with surprising rapidity on the unknown contact.
This promptly vanished in the brilliant glow of a thermonuclear explosion.
“Screw me!”
Colt found himself hard pressed to argue with the sentiment as he tried to blink away the large spot in his eyes, “You're filters catch that in time?”
“The hell they did, I can't see for shit!”
“Fuck,” he groaned, “neither did mine.”
“Well least we got one thing confirmed,” Stardust muttered, “no way was that natural.”
“No shit Sherlock,” he flicked the ‘manual' filter; a large pane of tinted glass down over his suit helmet, “don't think my eyes are getting better neither.”
There was a silent pause, “call it in boss.”
“Can't see the controls,” Colt replied, “it's an add-on pod isn't it? No hardwired switch to go over to it.”
“Figures,” Stardust laughed, “tell me this isn't a government job.”
“Had to be a self-destruct,” he noted slowly, trying to view the control panels out of the corner of his eyes, “we'd be dead otherwise.”
“Think it whistled up some unfriendlies at the same time?”
Colt paused at that and then shuddered, “SCM when you can't see? That just wouldn't wash. Least for landing, we can try and slave control over to the station….”
He heard a rhythmic sound over the radio and didn't need to ask to know stardust was bashing his head against the rear of his helmet.
“We can't can we?” he stated flatly.
“Eight steps on the touchscreens plus a ten digit security code…” came the dry reply.
“Next time I'm setting a bug-out button programmed for the sol system,” Colt noted after a minute.
“The horse has already bolted,”
He laughed, “You're in a rather dry mood today aren't you?”
“Of course, not as if we get rain in space after all.”
“True,” Colt conceded, “but you're right. This sucks.”
“Great,”
He didn't miss the soft, almost scared sigh that followed that, “problem?”
“I must have been looking right at the damn thing when it blew,” Stardust replied, a shudder evident in his voice “can't see anything at all now.”
He would have to admit that a chill filled him at those words, but in truth, not much he could do about it beyond trying to whistle up some assistance. Which, if he was going to be honest with himself, would be difficult if not impossible with his own eyesight as impaired as it was.
“Then we got a real problem,” he finally conceded, leaning backwards in his seat.
“You can't see the controls well enough to send an SOS…”
“Naturally,” it was Colts turn to be dry.
“Figures,” came the reluctant response, “do you remember taunting Murphy at all this morning?”
“Well, I don't think so,” he replied, “I'm sure I didn't mention anything about how the long boring patrol sucked. ”
Silence filled the radio and mentally the First Lieutenant notched up one in the win column.
“How long do you think it will take for someone to come and check-up on us?”
This he considered for a moment, “let's see, they'll give us five minutes to do the investigation before they start to radio us for an update. I give it three minutes of them trying before Peters is called to command then another two minutes to call us up before she declares an alert and bring all the defences in the Sol and Alpha Centauri systems to stage 2. Without an enemy on the scopes, I figure that will take about ten to fifteen minutes.
Then they'll need to decide what to send after us… figure 30 minutes total.”
“You could have just said too freaking long,” Stardust replied dryly.
“Hah,” Colt replied, “how long do you then think it will take for them to decide what they're going to do with us. I mean, it's not as if the guntop is in town.”
“She's not?” came the surprised reply.
“Saw her go,”
“Son of a bitch,” Stardust replied, “so either we figure out a way to jump back or we see if the Colonials will let their big boy pay us a visit.”
“Which will add even more time…”
“Yep,”
“Great,” Stardust replied and then after a moment “so how did you get Colt anyway? Had a gun you wouldn't get rid of?”
“Guns no,” he snorted, “horses yes.”
“There's a story there isn't there?”
“No one I'm going to tell.”
“Now I'm interested…”
“You can stay interested.”
The radio went silent again, “it been thirty minutes yet?”
Colt considered this then tried to glance at the clock on the displays out of the corner of his eyes. This he failed at, with only peripheral vision, a clock that was dead centre of the displays and the narrowed view provided by the helmet it just wasn't going to work.
Taking his helmet off would make it easier but he wasn't sure he wanted to do that just to see the clock.
“Can't see the watch,” he responded slowly.
“Fuck, this is going to be an age isn't it?”
“Yep.”
“So are you going to tell me how you got that handle?”
“No,”
The radio was silent a moment, “sure?”
Colt sighed, yes this really was going to be an age wasn't it….
I do not own nor do I claim ownerhsip of characters and or concepts from Stargate SG-1, Battlestar Galactica or any other non-original works contained within.