Dragoon Gear Operation: Clipped Wings Chapter 1

I was struck with a fiendish kind of inspiration, and I've produced this. Please, enjoy!
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The marriage between woman and machine was addictive. The gentle flutter in the rudder pedals as thrusters worked and spat, the force feedback in each digit of the right hand waldo where clumsy artificial fingers skipped and caught on meteorite impact sites. The gentle whisper of relative altitude sensors, the chirps of low-level radar alerts, and the low heat from the reactor at her back. She wasn't a mere woman anymore, she was a nerve center, a cerebral cortex dedicated to the expert piloting of a machine far greater than her.

"Pull up, pull up," the altitude warning sounded in her ear. Radar alerts resolved into radar warnings at the same moment, chirps rising to a short screech and dragging up multiple magnification windows in her displays, each one focused on a ship in line to dock.

Her eyes flicked, casting them all aside, and she dove, maxing out her throttle. The machine rattled around her, the roar of the rockets carried to her by metallic vibration alone. Relative velocity climbed, 100 kilometers per second, 200, 300, 400. A remote mining asteroid had been the best pick for this particular jaunt; space traffic was heavily confined, giving her one great straight to truly let loose.

Fifteen meters and forty tons of machine blasted past the raised bridge of a merchant vessel. Space had no medium to resist her travel, nothing to transfer a shock wave, but that was unnecessary. The bridge computers would have warned the crew.

Unidentified Dragoon Gear, what the FUCK are you doing!" A man's voice shouted over her radio. Clearly, they’d noticed her.

No response came from the pilot. She was too busy looping her machine around the ship in a great spiral, close enough that she could reach out and touch the hull. If it were a military vessel, point defense weapons would already be zeroed in and loaded, but she was lucky. Merchant vessels were strictly controlled in what they were allowed to mount on their hulls, especially in Midgard Spacy controlled space.

But her flight would not go unmolested. Not after a stunt like that, so close to such an important mining operation.

"Pilot, squawk ident and shut down thrusters," a far more serious voice came over her radio. Space traffic control, an officer in the Spacy judging from the severe tone. "Deegees inbound to your location." 

She had no response for the veiled threat save a threaded pulse of her attitude control, sending her skittering down 'below' space station traffic. It was a relative perpendicular flight away from the carrier that she knew hovered at the ‘top’ of the asteroid base. There was no such thing as stealth in space, but hiding behind the asteroid would buy her time, and this was what mattered in spaceborne engagements.

Radar helpfully picked out three new contacts, moving at pace to engage her last known position. Lidar threw errors across her screen; the tangle of spaceport traffic introduced too many baffling elements for the sweeping sensors to return a silhouette match with any kind of confidence. She could guess they were interdictor models, but the specifics were beyond her machine at the moment.

No matter. She could—

"Belay that," a more familiar voice this time. Cool. Collected. "I have the bogey."

The ident code attached to the voice flashed across her screen, enough to silence any reproach on its own. But there was no new radar contact, no lidar return, nothing.

The warning came as a gut lurch and a scream from the thermal imaging array. Heat source, relative below left. A reactor roaring to true life, dumping waste heat into space. Radar and lidar shouted next, but there was no time to regard them. No stealth in space, but cover could interrupt sensor and—

Controls jerked back, driving her machine into a spiral away from the coming shots. Hypersonic rounds lanced past her cameras, an opening salvo that she couldn't answer. SHe’d made sure of it, and if adrenaline wasn’t screaming through her system 

Her deegee was unloaded, made as light as a flying missile battery with arms and legs could be. The only weapons available to her were its unwieldy fists, and she had little desire to crush a cockpit to secure her victory. This was a limitation that her foe lacked; her display pointed out the loaded rifle in its hands with an angry red outline.

The next volley did not miss, her machine just that touch too sluggish to respond in time. Rounds stitched their way up the left arm, leaving splashes of strange gel in their wake. Warnings screamed, indicators flashing on a low screen to show dead motors and lost pressure in the muscle cables. Restraint rounds, then. The arm was as good as lost; the timescales required for automated systems to restore power were beyond the length of the average sortie, especially for an aging machine like hers.

But it would make an adequate enough shield. Rudder pedals flipped, thrusters fluttered, and she presented her left arm. The approaching deegee dropped its rifle and impacted her at speed, forcing air from her lungs as momentum took hold of her body and attempted to tear it from her restraints. Through clear inflated impact bags, she spied the lidar designation of foe, superimposed over the image of its fearsome insect-like faceplate filling her main camera.

RRT-MP Hawkmoth, it read in frank letters. The impact bags deflated, returning back to whence they came.

She threw her throttle wide open at that. A military police model wouldn't have the thrust-to-weight to overpower her own machine.

Only to go rocketing off into the dark, the Hawkmoth choosing to disengage and vector around her rather than have a contest of strength. Correcting course was a simple expenditure of delta-v, enough to spin her around to present her broken arm to her foe again.

"I expected a deft touch on the throttle from you," the other pilot said over a private line. "And a better eye for the engagement area."

"What do you mean?" She asked, the first words since she'd boarded the deegee hours ago.

Her answer was the discarded rifle, loaded with restraint rounds, detonating mere feet from her. Ammo cooked off, and though space could not carry a shockwave on its own, the detonation was enough to cover the back of her deegee with the viscous electro-reactive gel.

Reactor warnings flashed across her suddenly glitching feeds before safety protocols kicked in. Nuclear gas turbines whined to a stop, monitors cut out, and the former warmth of an online and active Dragoon Gear was replaced with the foul red of emergency, battery backup lighting.

She struck her console in frustration. She’d lost. What else could she do?

Blindly she endured a sudden rough tugging, her machine brought in tow by the smaller deegee. Her breaths were carefully metered and shallow; she fought the need to hold her breath, knowing this would only create a greed in the next few she took. There was a panic that could come in closed spaces, the need to escape. She quieted this primal thing, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

Soon the jostling became more regular, mechanical. A docking clamp drawing her deegee forcibly into an empty ships bay, then. Her monitors flickered and came back to life, warnings left up before the shutdown forcibly cleared and removed. Next the cockpit opened, without her command. The forward monitors lifted with it, and the bank of controls and displays that bracketed her to the seat folded down and away.

Carefully, she lifted her legs and pushed free of her seat, the restraints having released with the cockpits opening. She was fortunate that she was largely alone.

Save one; the pilot that had taken her.

She 'stood' as well as one could in microgravity, back ramrod straight and booted heels together. She wore no pilot's suit; instead draping herself in the finery expected from an officer of Midgard: a smart crimson doublet, matching riding pants tucked into high leather boots, and a white mantle secured under a singular silvered epaulet. White gloves covered her hands, and a black peak cap was tucked under one arm. Even her hair was smartly braided and pulled back.

"Who 'lent' you a deegee this time?" She asked. Her skin was warm olive, but her expression was solid stone. There was some measure of anger in her, like a thermal wash across whoever had made her cross this time.

"I promised no one would know," the rogue pilot said easily. She accepted a proffered hand, and braced herself against the deegee once the cockpit closed. "Lady Gawain." It was an afterthought, almost rude in a way, even if this was not her intent.

"You know we can just check the assignment, of course. The cav who gave you his machine can’t hide from us." What was left unsaid was what would happen to that cavalier when they did find him. Thus, the promise she’d made.

Lady Gawain turned and kicked away, floating through the empty docking bay aft-wards. The pilot followed after a beat, turned for just a moment to regard her momentary itinerant steed.

The RRT-LR Zzaz was hardly a graceful machine. A vaguely humanoid stack of angular armor, its dominant features were the three six-stack missile pods it mounted, one on each shoulder and one just above the beady camera that passed for a head. This example was painted the drab muted grey of a Midgard Regular. It was an unwieldy and wholly unimpressive machine, and yet she felt a gratitude to it.

It had flown well. Its pilot cared for it.

"You won't." She turned to face the direction of her travel, where Lady Gawain was already waiting at the aft exit.

"And why is that?"

"Any exploration of fault requires manpower, and investigation of a victimless crime like this is a waste of said manpower."

"Victimless?" The exit was keyed, Gawain's stroke as measured and controlled as ever. "How much do you suppose those machines cost? Let alone expended fuel and ammunition?"

"And? I unloaded the Zzaz. It was you who wasted a restraint gun." The hall beyond was very much not empty, but the few sailors using it merely offered Gawain and the still-helmeted pilot stiff palm-forward salutes as they passed. "Which ship are we on?"

"The HMT Ghost of the Machine. The crew is well-used to discrete missions, and this is a waste of their talents." There was a forceful frustration leaking from Gawain now, noxious, sulfurous.

"I should thank you for that, then." A ship that would not speak was a star-sent blessing. "Will you continue to berate me, my Lady, or shall we simply review the notes from last time?"

"If my last castigation struck home, you would not have commandeered another Dragoon."

Many retorts leapt to her tongue, but the pilot did not speak them. The byplay with Gawain could only go one way if she did, and she found it best to move unpredictably. Keep the Lady on her toes, so to speak. The access corridor had opened up into a main thoroughfare, the lifevein of the ship that crossed its spine. Best to speak on more friendly terms now.

"How did you find my piloting?" She asked frankly.

The two slapped their palms onto the dark friction strip that marked the middle of the wall beside them. At that contact, it whirred into motion and conveyed them forward at a comfortable pace. Gawain frowned somewhat furiously, but there was a pilot's pride in her that demanded she answer honestly.

"I'd expected a lighter machine. I was surprised to find you in a Zzaz."

"That's not an answer."

"You flew a fire-support deegee like a vanguard duelist."

"A second non-answer."

"Listen to what I’m not saying. That's all the answer you need."

"Be like that, then." Gawain could simply say she flew terribly, there was no need to be circuitous.

The friction strip loosed them at the end of the corridor, and practiced ease saw the pair pinging off the opposite wall to go flying towards a simple bulkhead set in the hull. A plate next to it read in plain block text DAME GAWAIN, CMDR.

"Your state room?" The pilot asked.

"Only temporarily. I was overseeing training maneuvers when I received word of your stunt. Inside, now."

The pilot rolled her eyes and entered. The instant she did so three women of furious professionalism accosted her. They wore familiar modest black and white dresses, and each wielded clothing, undergarments, and a black-stained hardwood box in turn. "I've missed some event, haven't I?"

The helmet came off with a snap of the atmosphere ring about her neck, and the lady-in-waiting removing it clucked at the state of her hair. "This is simply dreadful. We’ll have to get creative."

"I'm in your hands. Take care of me, please," the pilot responded with a familiar ease.

It proceeded as such, the pilot floating in space as the assembled servants worked her over. Gawain, ever proper, turned her back and braced with one hand on the bunk. The clinical work of undressing was familiar, enough that her skin did not even prickle against the brush of so many hands. Modesty was no concern either; she wore simple undergarments beneath her pilot's suit, but these too would come off as they were considered inappropriate for the more formal wear the servants intended for her.

Gawain was silent through all of it.

"Well?" The pilot prodded her.

"You know damned well." It was hissed, the careful moderation usual to the knight breaking. She still refused to turn, but this was no great trouble. Her frustration may as well have been an oil-slick aura clung about her shoulders like a second mantle. Even the presence of others among them did not stop her.

The pilot shifted, allowing one handmaiden to slip a delicate lace bra about her chest as another simultaneously drew a matching undergarment up her thighs. Of course she remembered, but playing coy was necessary for the fiction of it all. It was better to be seen as forgetful and passionate than flighty and fearful. It was just that the feel of the controls at her hands and the vector of thrust at her back had a way of calming her nerves.

"Remind me."

"The Imperial Mandates convene today, aboard Midgard herself. To have you so far away sends a poor message."

"The other Mandates, of course. It slipped my mind in my excitement." Next was a pair of skin tight breeches, delicate and elastic, followed by a light and breezy tunic, linen and translucent, that tucked into them with ease.

"You're in luck," Gawain continued, bulldozing past the easy lie. "The convention isn't expected until 1700 hours, Midgard time."

"And it's currently...?" A crimson doublet edged in silver, and soft leather riding boots more valuable for their image than their utility.

"1125 hours."

"Then there is little to worry over. Order the captain homeward at once."

"Captain Drey was under orders to get under way as soon as we were aboard. Rest assured, I will see you delivered by all means necessary." There was an undercurrent to Gawain's voice, harsh and sure. The pilot had no illusions regarding what the lady knight would be willing to do. "They have us maneuvering towards our acceleration vector as we speak."

It was a gentle kind of maneuvering, then, because the pilot had felt no apparent motion. Still, no reason to disbelieve Gawain. 

The handmaidens finished their work: fastening cufflinks, affixing a long white mantle to a single epaulet in mirror to Gawain, and lacing boots. When they finished, each affected a bow as best they could in microgravity, and the eldest among them held out the fine box. Wordlessly, the pilot took it; what lay within was hers and hers alone to handle. They left then, as quiet in movement as they'd been in work, to leave the pilot and the knight alone.

"You're angry," the pilot asked once the door slid shut. It was obvious.

"No. How could I be? Would you be furious with a moon for completing its orbit?" Gawain finally turned to regard her guest, who offered a small smile.

"I've known some who would have that moon shot for not deviating course," the pilot spoke, knowing that it would get a rise.

Gawain snorted. "The Mandate Herschel. One wonders how he maintains his position."

"Middle period philosophers spoke of how fear begets a certain kind of respect. His people certainly seem reluctant to see him off." Whether this was out of a grudging respect for their Baron, or the precarious position they enjoyed, sandwiched as they were between House Medici and unfriendly, under-civilized space.

Gawain opened her mouth, but whatever was to issue forth was interrupted by the untimely crackle of the ship-wide comms.

"All hands, accel, T minus fifteen. All hands, accel T minus fifteen."

With practiced ease, the two slipped back and tagged the aftward wall of the stateroom. A discreet panel unfolded, revealing petite acceleration couches. They were an uncomfortable necessity; battering the ship's crew about the insides was a hazard to the shipboard doctor's mental health after all. So they drew on the restraints and affixed themselves thusly, adopting the undignified environs with some small amount of grace and only a little grumbling between the two of them.

The pilot found the cockpit seat of a deegee far preferable, but did not voice this. The argument with Gawain had only just subsided. At least there she had her monitors, she had control. Here there would just be—

"Three, two, one, mark. Ahead fast."

—the punch of acceleration against her chest, four gravities worth pressing her into the pittance of accel-foam afforded. She fought to breathe, lungs straining to fill under such a pressure. It was less than she'd experienced in those short maneuvers against Gawain from the cockpit of the Zzaz. And yet even so she struggled, knuckles white on the restraint and the box both.

Gawain beside seemed so much surer, stronger under the strain. How many military accelerations had she dealt with? The training and conditioning alone must be superb... She had often watched the older woman train with the traditional saber, but this made it all the more apparent exactly how seriously she took such physical matters.

What felt like hours but was surely merely half of one, passed until they were returned to blessed microgravity. She withheld the need to gasp and metered her breath to appear more composed than she truly was, but there was a kind of sense from Gawain that told her she had failed.

"Decel at 1400 hours, crew free."

They unbuckled simultaneously, but Gawain kicked away towards the main door. "I have some work to attend to. You should stay here, out of the way."

"Are you certain? I could—" But the door shut before she could finish, Gawain leaving in a flourish. The pilot remained, drifting slowly through space. The dismissal hurt, like a noxious lance to the chest.

And so it was for the next few hours, the pilot whiling away the time in a lonely stateroom as they approached Midgard, left to consider all the weight of that. It was a heavy cloak, but one she had worn for some time now. The timeworn box turned over in her hands as she considered it, but her mind refused to latch. The Mandates would convene, and business would be discussed, the kind of Imperial necessities that would determine the lives of billions.

And yet her mind turned to the matter of piloting, as surely as a celestial body must turn. Even the stolid and ungraceful Zzaz would be preferable to her internment here in these cramped quarters. It was with a nervous energy that she nearly yanked herself towards the controls that would operate the door, in order to sneak out and reclaim the machine that she knew was still moored down below.

She stopped just short, drifting backwards into the door instead. Enough momentum was imparted to send her slowly drifting the other way. And so the travel passed, with the pilot imagining the greener pastures of waldoes and foot pedals. It was some time before Gawain returned, as solid and impassive as ever.

"We have a shuttle. Come."

"The Machine isn't docking?" The pilot asked, twisting just so to plant her boots on a surface and push.

"Negative. Maneuvers don't stop for merely a Convention."

They followed a different path through the ship, passing a similar amount of clandestine personnel moving about their business. Now, with the concealing suit gone and her regalia donned they offered far stiffer, formal salutes as they passed. She bore it with ease, offering smiles and easy nods in return. "Then we should let these good people get on with it."

She did not spy the shuttle sent for her until they found the proper docking port, and even that was a mere glimpse of the cockpit glass. Gawain keyed their entry, and they pulled themselves inside. "I don't suppose you know when the Mandates are expected to arrive?"

"Medici and Black ships were spotted on in system radar approximately thirty minutes ago. but they're still two AU out and coasting on vectoring thrusters."

They were being politer than usual, the pilot mused to herself. After some normalizing of cabin pressures - to avoid passenger discomfort - the outer lock opened and they found themselves in far more luxurious environs. Gone was the stark metal of a warship, replaced with the gentle upholstery one expected from Midgard aristocrats. Plush acceleration couches with magnetic cup holders, in a beautiful white leather to contrast against the burgundy carpet. A hatch led to the pilots cabin, but she had no need of this. Harassing the poor pilots wouldn’t help anyone.

She found a seat and settled in, these restraints automatically fastening about her waist and shoulders in a gentle bind. And there, out the hardened glass view port was Midgard. Her home. It was a ring, distance rendering it small outlined as it was by the blue-white gas giant it orbited. She could draw its gentle shores and rolling hills, the capitol streets and festival grounds, all by memory.

And in the glare there she was, blonde hair bound up in braids she'd never felt the handmaidens placing and green eyes diamond bright despite the odd ache in her heart at the sight of her home. Had she always been so pale? Those around her described her features as delicate and comely, but she always struggled to see it herself.

"Is there something you're forgetting?" Gawain asked as the ship undocked. When had she taken her seat beside her?

"Of course," The Mandate Midgard, Princess Alvenica Midgard answered. The box in her lap came open, and in her hands she drew out the delicate chain of precious metal within.

It went about her head in a spider-web of glittering silver, mined from the asteroids that Midgard's host planet drew into its orbit, before the final loop was laid across her forehead. There an emerald rested; the Third Eye of Midgard and its crown jewel, between her brows.

She was ready, as she ever was.

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Seen here until I've produced enough backlog to feel comfy posting elsewhere <3