by Mystic
The lounge was filled to typical capacity at Metamor Valley Airbase. The perfumed smell of synth-smoke wafted through the air from the handful of addicts trying to hold out until they could get their next real fix. A television set in the corner belted out a play-by-play of the night's boxing match.
"Make a decision already, Stevens!" one of the faux cigarette smokers griped.
A blonde pilot by the name of John Johnson grinned and took a drink from his mug of beer. When he set the glass down he asked, "What's your hurry, Burns? Your boyfriend, Nick, will still be waiting for you when you get home." The remark earned a volley of potato chips in response.
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend," Doug Stevens remarked with his trademark naivety.
"Nic-o-tine, Doug," Derek Blaine elaborated for the newbie. "It's a joke."
The neophyte furrowed his brow in confusion for a moment and then he mouthed a silent 'Ohhh' before looking back at his cards. After another long moment he pushed forward the three marks needed to stay in the hand.
"Finally!" Maggie Burns exclaimed. The female pilot shoved her own money into the center of the table and demanded, "Ok, let's see it, greenie!"
The fifth and final member of the poker game bore a heavy bone structure, pointed ears, and a slightly greenish pallor from the lutin half of his heritage. Kuthesh Gurk looked at her tolerantly and laid out a full house.
"Damnit!" Maggie protested, throwing her cards down.
"I swear, it's like there's nothing we can do to keep our money out of your hands," John groused.
"How do you think they got named loot-ins in the first place?" Derek asked.
"Me take all your shinies," the winner of the pot affirmed in a mock accent as he swept the pile of currency toward his end of the table. "You guys sure you don't want to quit while you can still afford those beers you're drinking?"
Johnson gathered the cards into a deck and sent them round the table once more. "So how's Jeremy doing?" he asked.
Derek grimaced at the memory of the events from a few hours earlier. "He's shaken, but I think he'll be okay."
“That’s no small miracle. I tell you, I don’t know how someone planning to fly an aerofighter gets it into his head to get turned into a rabbit. I hear the instincts that come with that are worse than most others.”
“It’s a family thing,” Derek responded with a shrug.
“Still seems like a hare-brained thing to do,” Johnson commented, triggering a round of laughs at the table.
“Yo, Blaine, 6th Blackwell is looking for you. He don’t look too happy, either,” Mike from the control tower said as he approached the table. The rest of the poker players joined in a unified verbal wince of “Oooooooh”.
“What was it you wanted on your headstone again, Derek?” Maggie asked.
“ 'He donated his body to science to keep it away from Mags,’ ” the Aeromancer quipped as he scooped his cash into his hands and rose from the table. The messenger slid into Derek's vacated spot in the game, shielding him from a fistful of snack foods.
"Alright, y'all, I don't know what Blaine has been letting you get away with, but now that I'm here we are going to be playing men's poker," Derek heard the man saying as he walked toward the exit. "And don't worry, Mags, you've probably got more testosterone in you than Kuth or Two-John anyway."
Derek’s grin at the joke lasted him for about two hallways before it started to fade and his thoughts turned to the summons. It was doubtlessly going to be about the stunt he’d pulled with Guerra. 6th Blackwell wasn’t the last officer he’d want to talk to about it, but the man was definitely on the lower half of the list.
He rapped on the door and received a stern, crisp “Enter” from within. The small military office was sparsely decorated, with two rows of drab binders shelved along one wall and a placard with an astonishing number of gleaming medals hanging opposite them.
The IAF officer was seated behind a small desk, with a picture of a Wyvern 2 hanging behind him. Tyrone Blackwell should not, classically speaking, have been an intimidating man. His average height and the thinning frame of his fifty-odd year old body were certainly nothing that inspired submission. His white hair was mostly a memory, only clinging to the sides of his head.
There was something about him, though, that just made one wish they were wearing body armor. A single ice-blue eye stared out at Derek, perched above a hawkish nose and a neatly-trimmed mustache that still had some pepper to it. The other eye socket was covered by a patch of black material, its original occupant having been burned out by flaming debris fifteen years earlier.
"Sir," Derek said, snapping a salute.
"At ease, 3rd," Blackwell answered gruffly.
Derek let his hand fall after a respectful delay and stood with arms folded behind his back to wait.
"I've read your report of this evening's patrol," the older man said, tapping a manilla folder on his desk. "Repeat it for me."
"Take-off occurred at 2200, sir. Our orders were to run a standard patrol route between the Sea of Souls and the Sea of Stars, with an emphasis on acclimating 1st Tier Jeremy Wethers to normal flight operations. We maintained a split formation, with me assuming the role of hawk high and behind, in accordance with current orders on how to handle the Guerra probability. It theoretically offers a 50% chance of the dragon not knowing which pilot is his target."
"You sound as if you doubt the wisdom of those orders, 3rd," Blackwell observed while narrowing his eye.
"Well, the son of a bitch would have to be luckier than a casino in Kelewair for those odds to be correct, given that he hasn't missed yet," Derek opined.
The 6th Tier Aeromancer let the informal language pass, asking with a disdainful moue, "Are you putting forward a view of conspiracy?" Blackwell was known to have a pet peeve against the wild theories regarding Guerra's ability to strike with unerring accuracy. It was an attitude probably spawned in no small part due to his inclusion in some of the more irrational ones since the loss of his eye. They ran the gamut from Blackwell being in some dragon-worshiping cult, where he’d cut out his own eye as a sign of devotion, to the officer actually being the dragon in human form.
Derek certainly didn't do more than laugh at pilots who whispered such paranoias in the night. Still, he couldn't rightly explain how the dragon did what he did without having something up his sleeve. Rather than invite further displeasure from his superior officer, Blain simply said, "I don't know that I have a good answer for how he does it, sir. It seems to me that perhaps a 1st Tier on his maiden voyage simply doesn't fly like a 3rd Tier."
The seated man made no comment on the hypothesis beyond a grunt, so Derek continued his report. "On our return pass, approximately twenty kilometers south of Metamor Valley Airbase, Tower reported that 1st Tier Jeremy Wethers had come under attack by a draconic entity and required assistance. His communications were subsequently jammed."
"Required assistance?" Blackwell scoffed. "He was helpless and screaming his head off." He traced a finger through the report and noted, "It says here that you did not intervene until the tower reported the situation to you. You didn't think to act when your wingman started wailing?"
"I heard nothing over my comm-channel from Jeremy about the initial strike," Derek answered. "It is my belief that a separate communication barrier was put up between me and him before one was established between him and the tower."
The wave of a hand prompted him to continue. "After receiving the request for help from the tower, I dove in toward the reported position and proceeded to warn off Guerra; first verbally, and secondly with low-power arc-bolts. After some resistance, the dragon executed a successful kill spell on Jeremy's engines and deposited his Wyvern on the ground. I proceeded to attempt to drive him away from the 1st Tier Aeromancer to prevent further acts of aggression. In the ensuing conflict he managed to grapple with my aerofighter and execute a kill on my own engines. He then set my craft down and departed. Thirty minutes later I was able to restart the engine and return to base."
"Nice and neat when put that way, isn't it, Mr. Blaine?" the aged aeromancer said in a subtly caustic tone. "It utterly fails to evoke the image of a cocksure aerojock playing a game of tag with a multimillion-mark piece of equipment, near an international border, and over an area populated by twenty-two million citizens of the Empire!”
“I think the fact that I let Guerra have that fight rather than jeopardize those things shows my awareness of them, sir,” Derek answered, resisting the urge to throw barbed words back at the higher-ranked aeromancer.
“There it is again!” Blackwell exclaimed, pounding the wooden desk in front of him so hard it shook. " 'Let Guerra have that fight'? No pilot in IAF history has so much as come close. You were outclassed from the get-go. Faced with a superior opponent, you went looking for a dogfight instead of maintaining a defensive position!”
"The best defense is a good off—"
“Don’t give me that rubbish!” Blackwell insisted. “You should have maintained a defensive position above your wingman, and called for the base to scramble more fighters if the target didn’t disengage. This was about your ego and some kind of itch that Guerra put between your shoulder blades. The very idea that there is someone out there who is better than you is an affront to all that is Derek Blaine, isn’t it? It must make it all the worse to know he isn’t just better, he’s so much better than you that he can toy with you.”
The piercing blue eye and harsh voice drove the judgments into Derek like an uppercut to the jaw. His own eyes ignited with anger. “Guerra is not a god, and the IAF is not a toy, sir. You think—"
"Yes, 3rd, I do!" the older man interrupted. "Which puts me a step ahead of you tonight." He reached out and flicked a second folder to Derek's side of the desk. "You were not called here for a trial. You were called here for sentencing."
The confidence the 6th Tier Aeromancer seemed to exhibit in the punishment put a chill on the anger Derek had been feeling. He tried to hide that behind a steely stare as he grabbed the folder thumbed it open. After a few moments of stomach-tightening resignation, he admitted, “You’re very good at what you do, sir.”
The folder contained a list of schedules; names, dates, times, and places. Enough to span more than a month of travel. Most of the planes on the list had conspicuous designations in the single digits. A glance at the watermark on the page proved his suspicions to be correct. It was a travel manifest for flights requiring the Honor Guard. For some pilots it would be an honor. For Derek Blaine it was going to be hell. Uncomfortable uniforms that needed to be kept meticulously clean. Hours on the tarmac waiting for dignitaries to decide they needed to hop across the Empire.
“You sure you want to take this away from someone it would mean something to?” Derek asked in a do-or-die bid. “There are lots of other ways I can be punished.”
“None that I find so appropriate,” Blackwell answered. “This assignment will teach you discipline; to someone with your particular personality defects it will be unpleasant; and it will keep you from being a bad influence on the incoming class of Aeromancers for several months.”
The mustachioed officer scanned the blank slate of Derek’s face, looking for any lingering signs of resistance. Seemingly pleased with the outcome he brushed the offending pilot from his office with a hand gesture. “Dismissed.”
Derek snapped a salute, and turned to leave. As he stepped into the hallway, Blackwell stopped him with an addendum. “Oh, and Derek? The Honor Guard asked me to send them one of my more capable pilots for this rotation. Try not to let on too early that I ignored them.”
Blaine swore he could almost feel the barb against his back. He shook his head in slight amusement and closed the door behind him. He could almost get to like Tyrone Blackwell if the man wasn’t such a bastard.
FIN