Memoirs From The Front:

It was just another typical patrol, another four hour lap around the local mining ops and a few figure eights around some tricky sensor blinds caused by heavy metal dense rocks. Typical flight plan, one we've been flying since we got our new gear and came out to this soft zone for training. Launch at 14:00, wing flies out to our patrol zone, start scanning for the bad guys that aren't there.

I was hoping we'd get a 'roid miner out of his claim, maybe get some sort of action. We were about an hour and a half in when things started going sour.

Maybe the dust was thick with cast-off from the mining ops, maybe they were venting excess carbon atoms in favor of something a little higher up the periodic table. Could have been a trick of the light, some nasty pulse off of Shiro, who knows, whatever it was, we didn't see them coming.

They cut at us from a sensor blind tucked between to close orbiting rocks the size of small stations. Tricky flying, engines must have been powered down and they were steering on some sort of compressed gas system. It would be like threading a needle blindfolded and with one hand. No fly by wire at that point, just raw nerves and skill. I had enough time to spot the back-lit Vladislav fist before their opening salvo came at us. Missiles cold launched without hot-lock sensors to send us scattering.

Scatter we did. Cornbread and Susan flipped and rolled, Fredricks went perpendicular with his dampers off, Domino and I pulled out and narrow, tossing chaff and flares and letting those missiles scorch past us while the others bolted. The Vlad's formed up in a pretty close group, I don't know if they were toying with us or what, but Fredricks took us in hot and nasty. He was grunting and giving commands as he flipped his dampers off and on, trying to keep from blacking out when the G-Forces kicked in.

We went in hot, blazed off a heavy salvo of our flash new tech, rail gun propelled flechette rounds of monocrys carbon fibre wrapped in atom thin layers of ultra dense monomers and diamond. 10,000 rounds a minute, moving at a few thousand meters per second. Our payload measures our ammo banks for these things in kilograms...I don't think a single round hit anything important. We scratched em up a bit, but they cut and run and started getting serious after that.

Too serious. These guys were good. I was playing tag with one of their wingmen when I flipped into a Stravinski and caught a glimpse them taking Susan out. She went up like a mini nova as secondary explosions sent her into the Big Empty. I pinched off a couple bursts and tagged my boy with twin Romero scatter head missiles, hoping like hell that I could get him with some saturation fire. I think I scorched his flank, not sure, because he was back on my high six before Susan's oh-two finished flaring.

The next minute and a half were a blur of adrenaline and weapons fire. The Vlad on me seemed to read me like a book, like he was hardwired into my skull. I'd pull a Fredricks Slide, he'd counter with Jubal's Harsh Crit. I'd flip GPB, he'd bongo down and find my exposed flank before I could squeeze off more than a few rounds. I saw Cornbread go up in flames, then right after Domino tagged one of the Vlads, blew half an engine pod off. Non-fatal, too little, too late. Three Vlad's swooped in and took out Domino and Fredricks as they closed on their injured companion.

That left me and my boy. I was so busy jumping and dodging, trying to cut and run and get word out from this stupid sensor deadzone to the Kapilavastu that I barely noticed the rest of these Vlad's had pulled back. I was a few clicks from being clear and able to pull off a tight-beam to base when the flyboy who'd been dogging me the whole battle caught my open flank.

My engines stuttered and stalled, and I was coasting in a slow flip, sensors out, comms out, down to emergency power and life support. Dead in the water and waiting. My Vlad circled around, taking his time, savoring the moment. I don't think either of us noticed until too late that some hotshot in the Vlads was barreling down on me.

Wasn't the boy on my six who got me, was someone else who sent me to the Big Empty. My last thought before I hit that blank space between death and rebirth: Man, I bet that Vlad is pissed his kill was sniped.

Endless patrols are driving me nuts. Everyone is getting itchy about the endless training and patrols. We want to get out there and test out our new kit in battle. We want to see what sort of edge we get from it. The Cypress Rangers want to prove that they aren't a bunch of fools who got taken out wholesale in one of the most embarrassing defeats in recent history.

Kuso! They just assigned us to weekend patrol group. So much for a weekend away from boring flights past asteroid mines.

So we have pulled out to a low threat sector here on the fronts, tucked back a few sectors from the Sun and Blossom/Vladislav/Brar front lines. Out there things are moving back and forth on an hourly rate as we fight back to claim territory that was ours, or as the Vlads push on our lines. It's pretty nasty on that front right now, I wonder how long we'll keep it up. The resource drain is getting phenomenal and the profit margins are dropping as the local populations polarize and taxes and sales stall.

But we are still playing soft duty. Flying around in some of the best gear this on side of the Outer Belt. Our teams and crew are jelling together nicely, Domino is stone cold green. I don't think he has enough sim time to be in a flight yoke, but the brass are really pushing to get us up to full compliment.

So, patrol missions and escorts it is. Over and over, mixed with a whole lot of sim time.

So they've reshuffled my wing around, thought not a lot. We've been re-numbered and re-flagged and re-arranged over the last few days. I think things are settled now. What a right pain.

I'm in Theta Wing with Susan, Cornbread, and some new fellah we picked up who is greener than me, Domino. Fredricks is running the show for us as wing command. Susan and Cornbread are first and second wing, I'm down near the bottom with Domino.

I'm content. At least I'm with familiar faces for the most part, a lot of the other crew have been through some heavy reshuffling. We are doing pretty much constant training drills to get everyone up to snuff.

It's nice, our new kit is totally whiz. Must have cost a ton of flash for Sun and Blossom to kit us out like this. Makes me really wonder what their game is.

Kapilavastu cuts through the black like a glittering beacon, the algae blue glow her running lights and the warm rippling glitter coming through observation ports. She leaves a trail of rippling fire behind her, that blue white that is almost teal caused by a throttled back tac drive. Ions spewed into space to flare for one brief moment before dispersing into the black vacuum.

We have her running on low alert, all view ports open. It makes her surface look like an iridescent insect's shell, even though I know she is coated in a sensor absorbing matte black. She'll be nothing more than the occlusion of stars when she is running in combat mode, and less than that if we activate her stealth capabilities.

Kapilavastu has brought a lot of pride to the Cypress Rangers, pride that we did not know was missing until we had her. We now feel special, important. These are the least of changes that we have undergone in the last few weeks. Our leaders, our commanders, have all be changed. I think for the better, though the Rangers feel like a youngster when they first enter an academy. Volatile, acting with an arrogance that tries to hide deep doubts.

We lost something when we were taken down and all ended up in Fiddler's Green, and we have not gained it back yet. The heads in the Sun and Blossom house think that new commanders will replace our doubts, but they won't. If anything, they make them more acute. We now have a whole new set of brass to worry about.

We've been deep in Sun and Blossom territory doing training drills. Getting used to Kapilavastu and her abilities. Getting used to our new crew and new commanders. It goes as well as can be expected I suppose, but I worry about the decision to place all this new kit in the hands of a crew that is over half new recruits or those with less than a year on the fronts. Sure, we have a few vets, and they are some of the best in the system, but are they enough?