Like Family

DropShip Poignant Prologue

On approach to Redfield

Federated Suns

10 January 3025

 

“Damn, it feels good to be taking the fight to the FedRats. Hope St. Cyr’s girls leave some for us.”

In the cockpit of his Griffin, Commander Dmitri Dyubichev didn’t open his eyes. With the BattleMech cocooned and ready to drop, there was nothing to see anyway. He made a noncommittal noise.

“Think they have fighters out, Commander?”

Dyubichev ignored the voice in his earphones for the moment, concentrated on the vibrations he felt through his seat as the DropShip plowed through the upper atmosphere. A sudden shake. Was that normal, or had they been hit? He kept his eyes closed. Death wouldn’t come any slower if it caught him watching.

“Dunno, Huang,” he said at last. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“Thanks Commander, very reassuring.”

“Look Huang, if there are fighters out there there’s sweet FA we can do about it until we hit dirt. Worrying about it won’t change nothing. So quit worrying about it.”

“Think Koppel will be okay?”

He sighed internally. It was like babysitting children sometimes. “He’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine, Huang. Now stop worry and get off the taccomm.” He closed the channel.

A voice sounded in his ear. “30 seconds.”

 

“Hell of a time for a briefing,” Dyubichev rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the balls of his hands. “Not like ‘Lazy’ Liu to dig everyone out of bed this early.” He tried to find a comfortable position in the chair, with its attached writing table whose sole purpose seemed to be to make the user feel like they were 12 years old again.

To his left, Subcommander Xie Huang looked disgustingly awake and alert. “I’ve heard rumors,” he said with an enigmatic smile. To Dyubichev’s raised eyebrows, he just shook his head. “Oh no, I’m not spoiling the surprise. You can wait like everyone else.”

The guards on either side of the door at the back of the briefing room snapped to attention as Captain Jian Liu strode in, a silver grey noteputer tucked under his arm. The 30-odd MechWarriors and Techs of Liu’s Company, Second Battalion, Blandford Grenadiers rose to their feet. Captain Liu nodded to the men as he strode down the center aisle, and placed the noteputer on the podium at the front and connected it to a monitor built into the front wall. The display flickered to life, showing the crest of House Liao.

Liu bowed to the Capellan battle standard standing in one corner, then to the standard of the Capellan Hussars in the other, then finally to the portrait of Chancellor Maximillian Liao—father of the Confederation—hanging above the screen. Each time, the company bowed in unison.

Liu turned to face the company. “Be seated,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and waiting for them to settle. “Boys,” Liu paused, looked down. His shoulders heaved as he took a deep breath. Looked up again, smiling. “I have good news and bad news. The bad news, all leave is cancelled, effective immediately.”

The announcement was greeted with a kind of anticipatory silence. Dyubichev glanced sidelong at Huang. There was only one reason leave for a whole unit would be canceled. Huang nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

“The good news is, we are being transferred. To the front.” Liu smiled as the MechWarriors clapped and whistled. Dyubichev clapped too, because that’s what you did. Huang and some of the others were out of their chairs, on their feet. Punching the air.

“That’s right. We’ve been cooling our heels here on Capella too long,” continued Liu. “Now, can’t tell you where we’re headed, but I will say this: This is more than a raid. For the first time in a generation, we are going to take back a world, and keep it.”

Liu’s voice caught, and Dyubichev saw tears in the man’s eyes. “This is the turning point. The day we stop running and start fighting. My boys,” Liu paused to wipe his eyes. “My boys. I think of you as my sons and daughters, you know.”

Dyubichev felt sick to his stomach.

 

They didn’t see any fighters. When the drop pod’s ceramic shell peeled away and the Griffin pierced the low-lying clouds, all Dyubichev could see below was a great, endless plain, crimson and scarlet, sectioned here and there into the rectangles of farmers’ fields. He felt like an angel, tumbling from heaven.

They didn’t see anyone, until later.

The lance’s four ’Mechs stood in the middle of a vast, rolling steppe that dipped and swelled like waves in an ocean, the russet man-high grasses that gave the planet its name swaying in the wind as far as the eye could see, as though the world were caked in dried blood. In the distance, the straight, grey slash of the highway, a scar of ferrocrete and steel cutting across the plains.

Dyubichev keyed the company channel. “Nevsky Actual, this is Nevsky Five. We are at point Kursk.”

Captain Liu’s voice came back. “Acknowledged, Nevsky Five. Nevsky Two and Four are already advancing east. Move along Route 69 and sweep positions Peipus, Poltava and Borodino. Stay sharp boys, keep your eyes out for stragglers or raiders. All lances will converge on Borodino by 1900.”

“Solid copy, Nevsky Actual. Nevsky Five out,” Dyubichev cut the channel. Organized his lance into a diamond formation, Huang’s Whitworth in the front, Markus Koppel’s Clint on the left, Mariya Shevchuck’s Vindicator on the right. His own Griffin to the rear. They set off, aiming for the highway.

Ling’s Third Battalion had hit a column of refugees. Out here, on the open plains, they saw the smoke from several kilometers out. At the tail end of the column were a couple of Striker light tanks, blistered and scored, one lying on its side with a great rent gaping in its armor. Beyond them, cars, pickup trucks. Windows smashed like broken teeth, tires melted. A high-class limousine, flipped upside down, the passenger compartment crushed underneath. A school bus, black as charcoal. Another pair of Strikers at the front, armor cracked and pitted from cannon shells, save for the dark round holes where shots had penetrated.

Imagine being the commander who’d led all these people to their deaths, Dyubichev thought. Imagine the weight, the crushing responsibility. Poor bastard. Probably better if they were dead—there’d be no living with guilt like that.

Bodies still in the cars, some outside, scattered across the road, some in the fields beyond. Some pulverized into jelly in the middle of great indentations in the ground. Shapeless lumps when seen from 10 meters up. Dyubichev knew he could increase the magnification if he really wanted to see. He didn’t.

He walked through the wreckage in silence.

 

“What made you join up?” Dyubichev asked.

Huang and Dyubichev had been together at the Martial Academy on Tikonov. On leave after graduation, they’d climbed the hill behind Dyubichev’s home and sat beneath the stars, resting their backs against the stone monument there. They were celebrating their assignment to the same unit, Blandford’s Grenadiers. It was rare to be assigned to a unit of the Capellan Hussars right out of the Academy, but everyone agreed it was only natural for the son of the Hero of Thomas.

There was vodka, “Tikogrand” from Tikograd. There were supposed to be girls too, but they were late or had stood them up, so the two of them had started on the Tikogrand.

“A chance to serve the Chancellor.” Huang passed the bottle back to Dyubichev.

Dyubichev took a swig. “Yeah, right. Okay.”

“I’m serious. Don’t you believe in anything, Dyubichev? Something bigger than yourself?” Huang craned his neck upwards. “Look at all those lights. Each one a star, around each one a world, on each world people, people like you and me, joining together in common cause. I want to be a part of that, Dyubichev.”

“Oh Blake’s bare buttocks, not that ‘Greater Humanity’ pablum,” Dyubichev took another, longer swig. “You know what a star is, Huang? It’s a bomb. A fusion bomb. Just goes on blowing itself up for billions of years until it blows itself out. And all those people on all those stars you love so much are just the same. BattleMechs, H-bombs, asteroid bombardment. We’re all trying to blow ourselves up as fast as we can.”

“I think your father—”

“Don’t ever bring him into it, ever.” Dyubichev set down the bottle, carefully so as not to spill. Set his hands on his thighs, looked Huang right in the eyes. “Look, the old man showed me one thing: The universe runs on one kind of fuel, and that fuel is death. Not love, not loyalty, not brotherhood. Best thing you can have is no family—that way nothing touches you.”

 

Hill 407, Vermillion Hills

Redfield

Federated Suns

11 January 3025

 

Inside the battalion command post, Major Hardesy Blaze ground her teeth. She watched through the binoculars as Choi’s company came staggering back from the hill, chased by the Davion artillery. She counted the gaps in their ranks. Three down, three burning wrecks on the slopes of the hill. A Catapult missing its right missile pod. A pair of Thunderbolts dragged a legless Vindicator between them.

The air in the command post tent felt stuffy, oppressive. Blaze stuck two fingers in her collar, tried to loosen it a little.

It was supposed to have been a cakewalk. A BattleMech regiment, the Death Commandos and a mercenary battalion against militia. The most advanced weapons of warfare against farmers and shop clerks armed with pop guns. A chance to shine, a chance to show the Colonel what her battalion could do. Maybe earn herself one of those nice shiny triangles, too. Colonel Blaze, that sounded good.

Only these farmers had been raided before, had time to prepare, and knew how to fight. The whole hillside was honeycombed with ferrocrete bunkers and tank firing positions. Militia armor would drive up to the crest of the hill, fire a salvo, then reverse down out of sight. The left flank of the hill ended in a sheer cliff that plunged into the angry waves of the Bluewater Ocean, the right in the morass of the Greenmarsh Swamp. Tempting, but somewhere out there was a battery of Davion Long Toms that would have a field day if she tried to wade her men through that.

“An unfortunate setback, Major.”

Of course, this would happen the day the Colonel visited the CP. Of course.

“Choi’s men showed tremendous fighting spirit sir,” Major Blaze said, not looking over her shoulder. You couldn’t admit to weakness or failure. Not in front of a superior. Especially not this one. “They’ve pinned the enemy in place, now we just need to follow up and deliver a knock-out blow.”

“Is that what happened?” the Colonel asked dryly. “Looked to me like your men got their asses handed to them by a bunch of second-line militia.”

Inside, she wanted to curl up and die. “The next assault will crack this position wide open sir,” Blaze replied instead. Disagreeing without contradicting.

You had to watch what you said to the old man. Pavel Ridzik, Senior Military Coordinator of the Capellan Armed Forces.

“I certainly hope so, Major. For your sake.”

Major Blaze swallowed hard, then rapped her communications officer on the shoulder. “Get me Captain Liu.”

 

“I’ll visit, of course. On the holidays. When I can. Write when I can’t.”

Dyubichev stood in front of the house, twisting his new cadet’s cap in his hands. Behind, the ground car to the airport honked, anxious to be away. Above, the autumn sky rumbled its rainy thoughts and dreamed of thunder.

His mother looked so frail in her wheelchair, skin almost translucent, as though she were slowly fading from existence. Her mind was somewhere else, more often than not, and it seemed her body hastened after it. He hated this, this slow dissolution of the self, hated the helplessness of it. They talked about fighting disease, but how? Could summer contend with winter for a few more days of warmth? Could thunder cling to the clouds, hoping not to fall?

“You should say goodbye to him. Before you go,” she said, each word hobbling from her mouth with painful effort.

His eye flicked up, to the hill behind the house. “Mother,” he said patiently. “There’s nothing left to say.”

“So stubborn, you two,” she sighed. “So much alike.”

Dyubichev didn’t bother to contradict her. He jammed his cap on his head, kissed her on the cheek and picked up his duffel bag. He glanced at the sky.

Let it thunder if it wanted. He was done with feeling helpless.

 

“Choi’s company already had a crack at it and got pretty badly beat up. Major says there’s maybe a company of tanks up there, backed by infantry,” Captain Liu explained over the company channel. “Goblins and Vedettes, maybe some other models. Infantry in bunkers, with small arms mostly, but they’ve got a couple of heavy support weapons. Lasers, particle cannon. Thing is, they’ve got artillery, so we can’t just sit back and pound them. Got to get in close, so they won’t dare risk hitting their own guys.”

Dyubichev had to admit, the militia here had an eye for real estate. The only high ground for a hundred kilometers in any direction. To the naked eye, it looked like a perfectly peaceful, normal hill. No signs of fortification or violence, save for a few divots like acne scars blown in the hillside by Choi’s men.

“Look, sir, why bother? Why attack at all?” Dyubichev asked. “We’ve got them locked down here. Can’t take more than a week or so to starve them out. Nobody’s going to come charging to the rescue. In the meantime, we can bring up the big guns and fighters and either they sit tight and we pound them into dust or they come down off the hill and then, you know. We pound them into dust.”

“Don’t want to hear it, Dyubichev,” Captain Liu snapped. “Major Blaze has ordered C Company to mount a frontal assault on this position. You don’t like those orders, maybe you can take it up with the Major. Or better yet, the Colonel. I’m sure he’d be very understanding.”

“De Salvo’s at the CP?” asked Helen Redgrave, leader of the Recon Lance.

“No, guys, the Colonel. Definite article. P-for-Pavel R-for-are we done jawing yet?” Liu slapped his console of his Warhammer in frustration. “Unity boys, this is the Confederation, not the malking League. No more debate. Last time I checked I was the Captain, and as the Captain I say we follow orders. All lances will advance in line abreast. Get the boys ready. We move in 10. Dis. Missed.”

The 12 BattleMechs advanced slowly across the rising ground. Dyubichev’s lance on the left, by the cliffs and the ocean, Liu in the center, Redgrave on the right. The hill waited, patiently, silently. Gusts ruffled the blood-red grasses. Scudding clouds cast piebald shadows across the ground, and were gone.

The range from the peak of the hill shrank. One kilometer. 800 meters. 600.

The company’s advanced slowed, stopped by unspoken consent.

“I can’t make out anything on visual, thermal or MAD,” reported Koppel. “Maybe they’ve pulled back?”

“Wouldn’t bet on it, Koppel,” Dyubichev advised. “Keep your eyes on the skyline, folks. They’ll try to take potshots at us and hide before we can fire back. Fingers on your triggers.”

Captain Liu stalked his machine forward. Raised one of its massive PPCs. “Alright boys, let’s—”

A blue thunderbolt stabbed down from the top of the hill, blasting into the faceplate of Captain Liu’s Warhammer. The ‘Mech folded at the knees, knelt as if in prayer for a moment, before toppling face-first to the ground. Just as the first Long Tom shells came whistling down, geysers of dirt and rock erupting in volcanic fury as they hit.

“Move!” yelled Dyubichev, slamming his Griffin’s throttle fully open. His ’Mech’s actuators whined in protest, but the machine lurched forward, gaining speed. “Angle left. Put some fire on that hill!” Dyubichev made for the ocean cliffs, raising the right arm particle cannon and plastering the hillside with cobalt fire. The Griffin staggered as a shell landed nearby, but he kept his balance, kept running.

His computer began to paint red icons on his heads-up display as tanks peeked over the hill line, cannons swinging as they searched for targets, loosing megajoules of killing energy or bursts of cannon fire. The icons winked out as they pulled back.

“Fire at what?” cried Koppel. “I don’t have a target.”

“They don’t know that,” Dyubichev snapped. “Might make them keep their heads down.”

A shell landed just behind Shevchenko’s Vindicator, knocking the ’Mech off its feet. She swore over the lance channel, bringing the ’Mech back up on one knee. A second shell impacted nearly on top of her, sending the Vindicator tumbling and burning across the plain.

Cover, there had to be cover somewhere.

There, 200 meters ahead. A cliff carved out of the hillside, high enough to shelter a BattleMech. It would provide dead ground, hiding them from the tanks on the hill. Dyubichev spared a moment to tap his navigation map, placing a waypoint for the lance. “Nevsky lance, head for my marker.”

He reached the base of the cliff at a dead run, then slammed shut the throttle, jerking the Griffin to a halt. He had to put a hand out to stop the cockpit from ramming into the rock face. He noticed the armor over the arm was cracked and pitted from cannon shells, and wondered when that had happened. Huang’s Whitworth and Koppel’s Clint sprinted up, each with their own scars.

It was eerily quiet in the lee of the cliff. The rocks muffled the sounds from higher up the hillside, like listening to the battle through cotton balls in his ears. Dyubichev couldn’t see either of the two other lances. He glanced at the tactical map, and wished he hadn’t. Command and Recon Lances were pulling back. They were on their own.

His control board lit up with an incoming message from the battalion.

“Commander Dyubichev, what the hell are you and your men doing?” roared Major Blaze.

“Taking cover from enemy fire, sir.”

“I can see that, you malking coward. Attack!”

“Sir, I don’t think that’s a—”

“Commander, I just gave you a direct order. Do not make me repeat it. Now you take your ’Mechs, push through the center and clean out the enemy positions on that hill.”

 

When he came home from school, the silence told him something was wrong.

His mother was slumped on the floor, more in shock than grief. Dyubichev was surprised how calm he was himself, wondered whether he shouldn’t be screaming, crying, he didn’t know, reacting somehow. Instead, he just felt helpless.

Major Maxim Dyubichev, his father, the Hero of Thomas, looked so small now. The towering colossus of his childhood reduced to this ragged lump, as though death had sucked away whatever greatness his body had once held.

His father was slumped in his favorite chair, facing the portrait of Franco Liao, founder of the Confederation, that hung over the mantelpiece. His left hand still clutched something, and when Dyubichev pried the fingers open, he saw it was his father’s Liao Cluster of Conspicuous Heroism, silver wreath and curved dao sword surrounding a silver inverted triangle.

His father had clutched the medal so hard the edges had bitten into the skin.

 

Dyubichev keyed the lance channel. “Alright guys, we’ll use our jets. No battle line in the universe can hold a jumping ’Mech from going where it wants to go,” he said. “Keep bouncing forward and clockwise up the hill. We’ll flank their line, like crossing a ‘T.’ Once you hit the top, charge anything you see. Use your feet to your advantage. Tanks are the main target, but waste the PBIs if you don’t see anything else.”

Dyubichev took a deep breath. This could work. It would work.

“Now.”

He jammed his feet down on the jump pedals, sending the Griffin rocketing over the lip of the cliff and onto the hillside above. Immediately he heard the shrill alarm as the computer detected fire control radar pinging his machine. A spider web of tracers and laser fire blazed around him.

The Griffin had no sooner touched down than Dyubichev hit the pedals again, bounding the ’Mech further up the hill. He blasted the PPC as fast as it could recycle, aiming at any icons the battle computer painted, not caring if he hit or not. He could see Huang and Koppel following after, bathing the hillside in green tongues of fire.

The cockpit temperature rose from warm to sauna to oven. A few more seconds of this and the machine would overheat, leaving him helpless in full view of the enemy.

And then he was over the top of the hill and behind the crest line.

The militia tanks were spread out in a long line on the reverse slope. Dyubichev came down next to a Vedette, its turret belatedly swinging his way. He kicked it in the side skirt armor, creating a massive dent and sending it skidding 10 meters sideways. The turret stopped moving, the crew probably in shock. Dyubichev put a bolt from his PPC into the side, blasting through the weakened armor and igniting a fire that blew open every hatch with a roar like a furnace.

“Sappers on the flank,” Huang called a warning, coming down on Dyubichev’s right. The Whitworth’s three lasers lashed out at squads of infantry rushing through the grass with satchel charges, bursting bodies like obscene balloons. The survivors fled.

The Griffin staggered as a laser burned across its chest, armor blowing out in a white-hot molten line. Dyubuchev saw two Goblins reversing down from their firing positions, cannons pointed his way. He brought up the left arm like a shield and let the armor absorb the next shot, then stamped down on his jump pedals.

The Griffin lumbered nearly vertically into the air, too high for the Goblins’ main guns to track. Missiles corkscrewed through the air under his feet. At the peak of the jump, Dyubichev fired his PPC down at the lead Goblin, piercing the weak deck armor over the engine and igniting its fuel tanks. The explosion blew the turret out of its ring.

The Griffin came hurtling down, 55 tons of titanium-alloyed steel, from 50 meters in the air, directly on top of the second Goblin. Metal screamed in anguish as the turret buckled and crumpled, and the armor plates of the main body burst like an overripe fruit.

The Griffin staggered from the impact, fell forward on one knee, and Dyubichev only barely got an arm out to steady it. The missile alarm screeched a warning and he twisted the torso to the left, just in time for a salvo of missiles to detonate against the right-arm shoulder baffle. The HUD highlighted the threat, a lumbering Manticore, high-sided turret bristling with missile pods and a particle cannon, wreathed in smoke from missile exhaust.

Cannon fire crackled across the Manticore’s glacis plate as Koppel’s battered Clint joined the fray. The tank’s main gun swiveled and blasted the Clint, piercing the right chest. A series of explosions, gathering speed like a string of firecrackers, consumed the Clint as its autocannon ammunition detonated.

Dyubichev brought the Griffin to its feet, and threw it into a thundering run. Straight at the Manticore. Grabbed the cannon barrel in the left hand, actuators keening as the ‘Mech fought against the Manticore’s turret motors. Braced the Griffin’s feet, reached down with the right hand and hooked it around the Manticore’s skirt armor, and heaved upwards.

The price of all that weaponry in the turret was a high center of gravity, and the Manticore tilted up, up, until the barrel was pointing at the sky and the tank crashed down on its side, treads spinning futilely. Dyubichev stepped back and put two bolts of PPC fire into the underbelly, gutting the tank with incandescent energy that writhed and arced across its surface.

Beyond the smashed hulk of the tank, three more Manticores waited.

One glittered as half a dozen laser beams hit it, then it erupted into a fireball. Dyubichev blinked in surprise. Over the crest of the hill, the rest of Liu’s and Choi’s companies came charging.

 

Dyubichev’s father won a medal, once. It should have been cause for celebration; it seemed to break something in him instead. His father had never been much of a talker. After the medal, little talk turned to none at all. In his rare visits home, Maxim Dyubichev locked himself in his study, leaving only to share wordless meals with his grey-faced wife and nervously fidgeting son.

Dyubichev awoke once, in the middle of the night, and saw the door to the study ajar. Heard his father, the warrior, the commander, the hero, weeping as though his soul had broken. Dyubichev pushed open the door and saw his father slumped in his chair, head bowed, the medal sitting pristine upon the desk.

His father must have heard him. His shaggy, unkempt face turned, bleary eyes unfocused. “Dmitri? That you boy? C’mere.”

Dyubichev didn’t want to go, but his traitor feet wouldn’t obey, carried him inside the room instead, shuffling like a lead weight pulled by a magnet.

“I killed them, you know, Dmitri,” his father mumbled as he drew near. “I killed them. I killed all of them. Me, not the Feds. I told them where to go. Yelled and screamed and cursed until they went. So why? Why them and not me?”

Dyubichev stood mutely, hoping his father would forget he was there, hoping he would let him go, hoping he wouldn’t start crying again.

“Listen, son, I know I haven’t been—” Maxim reached out, fumbled for Dmitri’s hands, grasped him firmly in a grip that still had iron. “Doesn’t matter. Just listen, just this once. The universe is cruel, son. There’s no morality, no purpose, no reason. Only death. Only thing you can do is look out for yourself. Can’t change the way things are. What’s one man, against the universe?

“You understand, son?” The bloodshot eyes pleaded with him. “Got to be like a fortress. Don’t make the mistake of caring. Let nothing in. Do you understand me, son?”

Dmitri nodded, understanding nothing. At least not then.

 

“Dyubichev? Rings a bell,” Pavel Ridzik mused, ignoring Major Blaze nearly weeping with relief.

Ridzik’s aide tapped at a noteputer. “Son of Major Maxim Dyubichev. The father fought under you on Thomas in 3011,” he said after a moment. “You decorated him for heroism.”

“Right, Maxim, tough bastard. Led the final assault on the Hussars, pushed them back despite casualties.” Ridzik nodded. “Like father, like son.”

“Hope not sir. The father died in 3015. Suicide.”

“Suicide? Or ‘suicide’?”

The aide shook his head. “Couldn’t say, sir. He was clean, but a note in the son’s record says his loyalty to House Liao is questionable. Probably why he was assigned to the Grenadiers: Putting a hero’s son in a prestige unit is good for PR, keeping him on Capella is good for security.”

Ridzik stroked his beard to hide his smile. “An overreaction, I’m sure, as his performance attests.” Ridzik strode from the command post, forcing his aide to hastily scoop up the noteputer and scramble after.

Dyubichev slumped against the foot of the Griffin, feeling nothing. Koppel dead, Shevchenko dead, but what of it? Like a fortress. Somewhere far away, it seemed, Huang was pounding him on the back and shouting in his ear. It didn’t seem that urgent, until Huang stopped.

Dyubichev looked up at Huang, but his old friend wasn’t watching him. Huang stood ramrod straight, right fist to left breast in the Liao salute. Dyubichev followed his eyes and swallowed. He pushed himself to his feet and sketched a salute as Colonel Pavel Ridzik approached.

The Colonel clapped Dyubichev on both shoulders, grinning broadly. “Fine work, Commander Dyubichev, damn fine work. Some of the best piloting I’ve seen since your father’s day.”

Dyubichev forced a smile. “You’re too kind, sir.”

“Nonsense,” cried Ridzik, putting his arm around Dyubichev and leading him towards a waiting skimmer. “Putting you up for the Sunburst of Gallantry, Dyubichev. And a promotion. Know who approves those? I do!” The man laughed like a hyena. “Can’t have you wasting your talent in some rear-area parade showpiece regiment like the Grenadiers though. How’d you like a transfer to a real unit?”

“Sounds good sir,” Dyubichev said dutifully.

“Splendid!” Ridzik beamed. They stopped in front of the skimmer, engines rumbling loudly. Ridzik leaned in closer, voice dropping until it was only just audible. “You know, the CCAF may not be big, but that’s our strength, you know? We look out for each other. I look after the interests of the men under me. All I ask is they look after my interests in return. You follow me, Commander?”

“Solid gold crosshairs, sir.”

“I have a feeling we’re going to get along well, Captain Dyubichev. Like family.”