Of the mercenaries who flew into battle that afternoon, less than half returned. The base commander, Colonel Alexei Leonid, seemed surprised that it was actually that many.
"Hunh. I wasn't even expecting any," he said to me, grinning as he looked over the remaining planes in the mercenary unit. He was a large, plain-looking man, with brown hair and dark eyes, forgettable except for his boisterous demeanor. The look in his eyes told me he wasn't entirely serious, but I found the morbid humor a bit off-putting. "Why so serious, Mr. Gaunt?"
"It's just..."
I didn't have a way to voice my discomfort, and trailed into an awkward silence. The Colonel glanced over at me, but whatever he intended to say changed, as he spotted someone approaching from behind. "Good to see you back, Lieutenant Commander." As I turned, he raised his hand in a crisp salute, to the blonde-haired woman standing before us.
The wing commander of the bases remaining complement, Lt. Cmdr. Alyona Galina, had been by all accounts the one who had made it possible for so many planes to return. She smiled tiredly as she smartly returned the Colonels salute, but it was clearly genuine. "Thank you sir."
"At ease, Commander."
"Sir." She nodded slightly, then glanced over at me, pointedly.
"Oh, yes, my apologies. This is Andrew Gaunt. He's from the OBC, covering the war."
She nodded, giving me a scowl. Her gaze was almost hostile, but after a moment she turned her attention away from me. I gave a muttered hello, feeling even less comfortable than before, as she and the Colonel exchanged a few quiet words.
"If you'll excuse us," Leonid said, "we need to carry out the debriefing." I nodded and took the veiled suggestion to depart—as a member of the foreign Press, I was on this Base on its commander's sufferance. It would not do to press my luck so early on. As I walked over towards the crew lounge, I looked over isolated clusters of the surviving mercenaries, alongside the base's staff, leading various planes to the hangars.
They were among them, having returned, unharmed, back to the Earth.
Ranma's breath misted frostily in the wintery air, hovering momentarily before the young woman's face before being ripped away by a ferocious gust of wind. Ranma drew her hood closer around her face and shivered; it had been explained to her that Seiper Air Base was frigid at nearly all times of the year. It would be spring in another month or so, however, and as such she hoped that the frozen facility would thaw.
Deciding that she'd had more than enough of the bitter outdoors, she ducked into the not quite as bitter hangar in which her plane was being worked on. She watched the ground crew as they went over the not at all inconsiderable task of getting her "slightly used" J-35 Draken into proper flying shape.
The sleek, double-delta interceptor was a matte-grey, lighter on the underside, and hadn't been so much as nicked in the prolonged air-battle. Ranma was rather proud of that fact, particularly as she had spent much of the battle ditching one pilot after another.
And on the nose, just beneath the cockpit, were stenciled three planes. Ranma was not entirely sure how to feel about the presence of those marks, but thinking about what she'd had to do to earn them made her uncomfortable, despite the accompanying pride, and so she'd avoided further introspection.
"Hey, Ranma, you okay?"
Ranma glanced over at Akane, and shrugged. "I thought you were over in the crew room," she said after a moment. Akane narrowed her eyes, tiredly.
"That's not what I asked you."
Ranma tried to think of something to get the other girl off of her case, but despite all the changes that had happened, she was still a social neophyte. "If only..." If only she was still a man, if only she still had her strength, if only they weren't on Seiper Air Base, but instead back in Southern Osea. Or better yet, the Tendo Dojo, the closest thing she had to home, quite literally worlds away from where they were now.
"Ranma?"
"I'm fine." She lied, failing miserably. She knew it, for once; her face had twisted unhappily, even as she'd said it, and her voice carried an all too obvious bitterness. Her expression softened after a moment, and she glanced over at her friend, longingly. "If only... if only..." She felt her eyes growing moist, and fought it off. "Not gonna cry."
"... sure you are." Akane finally responded, her voice carrying the same hint of bitterness that had tinged Ranma's, her expression having gone hard. But the odd, angry distance was momentary, and it evaporated like smoke. "I'm... I'm sorry. This is really... it's... it's hard on me." The other girl finished lamely.
There was a time, only a few months ago, when Akane would have vented that anger, her fiery temper an easily noticed blaze. Ranma would have balked at the time. Now, she would give anything to see some sign of the Akane-that-once-was, and not the dimming ember that remained. The thought lingered for a moment, before Ranma angrily banished it; they were not beaten yet.
"C'mon Akane, let's get some grub."
Akane paused for a moment, as she gazed over Ranma's again defiant eyes, before she grinned. "Yeah, sure," Akane nodded, and together they turned and headed back to the crew area.
And for now, 'If only' was banished back to the dark recesses in which it belonged.
First Lieutenant Mikhail Volodya leaned back in his favorite chair, the thin, rakishly handsome pilot having managed to muscle his way through to it before anyone else could grab it. His face, with its classic pretty boy features, relaxed in contentment, and his cool blue eyes, with which he had melted the hearts of many a young maiden, slipped closed for a moment as he leaned back in his seat.
The seat in question was a rather battered but extremely well padded monstrosity of leather and wood. It was too small to seat two, but large enough to sprawl in, which made competition for it somewhat fierce. No one was exactly sure where it had come from, but as far as the lanky pilot was concerned, it didn't matter. It, the most comfortable chair in the crew room by a large margin, was his, even if only for the moment. Leaving the seat would assuredly mean that someone else would abscond with it, and many were the ploys used to separate pilot and comfy chair.
Despite this, however, Mikhail was seriously considering getting up. It was not out of any personal need—he had beer on hand and enough stale nuts to last him for the rest of eternity. He waffled in indecision for several moments, then glanced over at one of the benches, amongst the cruelest instruments of torture ever devised by man. He wasn't exactly looking at the bench itself, however, but rather its sole occupant.
To be more accurate, he was all but staring at that particular girls rear end, which in his opinion was very, very nice. And it wasn't the only part of her which qualified, he thought‐she was the whole package, a fact that her flight suit couldn't hide. Her companion, sitting directly across from her, was much the same, but there was a large hunk of gnarly wood masquerading as a table obscuring everything below her chest, so ogling her wasn't nearly as much of an option.
The comforts of the chair couldn't quite compare to a warm, pliant female. Admittedly, he did have a very nice view, but he certainly wasn't a man who was content with merely looking. He took a moment longer to admire the beauties before him, then stood, sweeping a thin, nimble hand back over his close cropped sandy hair. He glanced at his reflection, noting that everything was in order, and felt certain that he could score at least one additional victory tonight.
A cocky grin spread across his face as he made his way over towards the table. "Hell, man, think big. Ménage à trois."
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(Posted Sat, 10 Jun 2006 18:02)
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