Chapter Perspective: Reagan

“Comm check, this is your Flight Leader, Albertson from BLUE RIDGE flight, online and standing by. Charlie Squad sound off.”

“Frederick, TYPHOON flight, online.”

“Wattson, WISTERIA flight, online.”

“Novarod, NEUTRINO flight, online,” Nova chimed in as we sounded off one by one.

I swallowed, still surprised that I was in fact piloting one of the defense drones, “Reagan, NEUTRINO flight, online.”

“Everyone pull out of the hanger and fall into a Flying V formation on my tail, we’ve got two newbies on our flight this time around, Novarod, Reagan, are you two solid on the specifics of our mission and basic group flight patterns?” Albertson asked and I pushed the controls forward, pulling my drone out of the hanger as my display outlined and lit up the other members of our flight.

“Aye sir,” Novarod responded immediately. “A massive meteor storm is incoming, we need to fly out and blow them up, seems pretty straight forward.”

Almost too straightforward. It was all I could think as I got a feel for the controls and cursed myself for not keeping my piloting skills more polished. For all the alarms going off, all the ruckus that had been happening around the station the last few days, for it to be nothing more than some semi-annual meteor storm… I just didn’t buy it.

“We are also to follow instructions of our flight leader and assist in collection of any meteorite pieces that are pinged by command as they have already been scanned and tagged for resources,” I added, feeling that my status as just the Weapons officer for my ship already had the older pilots judging me.

“Keep an eye out for any abnormalities as well. At this point I’ve done at least a dozen of these and I haven’t seen any abnormalities yet, it’s a good practice to keep. You guys are fresh faces, but you’ll learn that “Eyes Open” is pretty much a motto,” Albertson explained his drone starting to accelerate forward and we all followed without waiting for his instruction.

“I am so getting more this time though, tired of you always gloating about blasting the most rocks out of the sky,” another girl, Wattson I think she had called herself, said.

“Hey the more we blow up the better,” Albertson replied casually as our drones zipped away from the station. “We are thirty seconds behind Alpha and Beta flights so they are going to get in on the fun before we do, don’t let that slow you down. As soon as the storm is in sightline, you have leave to break formation and begin firing on any meteors not marked on your display for collection, those we will handle last, we are covering sectors three and four but don’t hesitate to knock on either two or five if they are in range.”

“Roger Flight Leader, you ok with me dropping over to Abukhdair’s channel? Me and him got a running bet going about who’s gonna blow the most up,” Frederick’s voice echoed with a bit of static behind it that nearly made me pull my headphones off.

“Sounds good, just keep our main channel off to the side, I’ll ping it if needed, I’m going to put on some tunes anyway, always makes the process more fun,” Albertson replied casually and I quickly watched as both Frederick and Wattson dropped off the flight channel. An alert on my display revealed Novarod opening up a private comms channel to me and I selected it, keeping the main channel tabbed off to the side just as our Flight Leader told us to.

“Heck of a Saturday, eh?” Novarod laughed and I couldn’t help but chuckle myself. “Like, I was seriously wondering what to do with all the free time so this is sort of lucky.”

“Odd way to describe being told that we were expected to defend the station, I honestly was expecting aliens or something, weren’t you?” I asked. The storm was close enough in range now that I could see blasts of laser already starting to light up the blackness of space.

“Oh absolutely I was, still not convinced that they aren’t keeping a vital piece of information from us all the same. I saw way too much activity last night for it to have just been scouting parties,” Novarod offered, the humor in his voice disappearing almost completely.

“Agreed, but what can we do about it other than go with the flow, sure as hell ain’t about to try and break the system by sticking my nose in stuff waaaaay above my paygrade,” I said, feeling my fingers itching for the trigger as the older three pilots all peeled off of the formation, swooping in different paths and opening fire, immediately blowing large chunks of rock to miniscule pieces with their first wave of shots.

My initial reaction was, admittedly, a bit slow and I once again cursed myself for not dedicating more time to simulator training, that was going to have to change. Novarod whipped his drone around a large rock that was already tagged for collection and it took everything in my focus to pull my ship away from colliding with the same meteor, opting instead to pull up and fly above the storm. The command staff had been very clear, crashing a drone was a quick way to not be provided the opportunity to assist in the future, not to mention how it might look for someone still in training.

“Grounds! Now this is what I’ve been waiting for!” Novarod was bursting with excitement as I saw several explosions coming from inside the storm. The others were still on my screens, picking meteors off from the outside, but for some reason Nova had gone right into the heart of it. I actually had to pull my headphone out as he let out another whoop of a holler before I saw a large burst of meteors get knocked off course from the center of our sector.

“Dude holy crap, you okay in there?” I asked, though I did my best to return to the task at hand and started launching powered rail-rifle shots at a cluster of small stones that were bouncing off of each other. They each shattered as my shots connected, the smaller rubble easily manageable by the stations static defenses.

“Sorry, adrenaline… I think,” he started, but a light flashing on our main channel made us both quickly hop back over.

“Novarod, the hell kind of insane are you?” Albertson asked incredulously.

“A solid eight on a scale of one to ten I’d reckon,” I offered and Novarod let out a hearty laugh that really caught me off guard. I’d have to ask Doc if Nova was bipolar or something because when he was in a cockpit it was almost as if he became an entirely different person.

“I wouldn’t say I’m that bad, just overeager to be doing something other than simulator based fighting,” Nova offered, another round of explosions revealing an actual open space in the center of our sector of the storm and Novarod’s drone came rocketing up and over.

“You’re using the actual hydrogen torpedoes instead of the rail-rifle…” Albertson sighed.

“What? It’s because they are effective at clearing things quicker. Why would the drones be loaded with them if we weren’t supposed to use them?” Novarod hit back immediately and this time it was a trill giggle of a laugh that caught my attention.

“It’s not that we’re not supposed to use them, just that other pilots have gotten in trouble for accidentally catching resource tagged meteors in the explosions. It’s a lot harder to collect those things if they are blown to bits, so it’s rare to actually see folks using the torpedoes so freely. Though, everyone also tends to work from the outside in,” Wattson spoke up and I realized the only person not on the group channel now was Frederick.

“Well I am on the outside now,” Novarod laughed. “And I haven’t hit any of the tagged stones either, so I’m assuming nobody will complain that much, right?”

“The other pilots will, one thing you can always count on are the senior pilots doing stupid things if someone junior to them shows them up in any quantifiable way,” Albertson offered and I even noticed as he dipped closer in to the storm and let off one of his own torpedos.

“Well if they are going to feel like that anyway,” Novarod started and I could already hear where he was going with it.

“So I’m going to just go ahead and say he’s a solid ten out of ten for insanity, maybe even higher if you want to break the scale,” I said and this time I did watch as Novarod dove back into the storm, and continued blasting.