Castle Brave by Hawkings Austin

Author:Hawkings Austin [Austin, Hawkings]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798839389809
Google: TRNNzwEACAAJ
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp
Published: 2022-08-12T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Corporal Canden:

Overwatch

1200 04/56/23

P

rivate Airnest and the Major sniped at each other, little quips and tics designed to piss each other off. I didn’t care enough to get involved. The Major wasn’t in his chain of command, but he still couldn’t stop fucking with officers.

Airnest’s record contained about twenty pages of black marks. I could give him another one, if I cared. I knew he had a flask of gin in his thigh pocket, but he’d never been drunk on a mission. He’d just take a drink to ‘calm his nerves.’ Nobody cared about that as long as he always made his shots. He never missed.

Umbra gave me a questioning look. I just shook my head. I thought about having a look on my face, but the urge passed.

I run a tight three-Kin team. After the Cassian rebels, many of whom were my friends, died by Dragon fire, I joined the VAF. I’ve been in SFFD for most of that. I’d expected to die of Dragon fire myself a few dozen times, but for some reason I keep surviving. Survival was just another thing I didn’t care about.

I’ve had Airnest on my team for most of five years. I’d had a bit of worry that I’d lose him about three times, when he’d been promoted up to Corporal and out of my unit, but he’d always get busted back to Private before the next mission, so I’d learned not to worry. We’d lost Shortbush three missions back. He’d served me over a year. He’d been a good scout. It was a damn shame, but I don’t make emotional connections with my team, anymore.

I’d drawn a new recruit from the SF pool. Private Umbra stank of fresh, but she’d showed up on the VAF doorstep with a lifetime of practice from the orphanage and refugee camps. She knew how to vanish and be silent. She didn’t start life as a killer, but she’d learned how to kill. I’d guess growing up like she did was insane by pre-war standards. She did her job, so I dealt with the crazy.

Maybe, I am not the one to complain about crazy.

I made sure my drop feather hadn’t fallen off the chain around my neck for some reason, which would make for a bad jump. It was hanging next to my spirit crystal. I tapped each pouch to make sure I had my crossbow, slingshot, knife, and lunch. Then, I stepped over to the dropgate and stepped out. We were up about two-thousand feet, or about ten seconds to ground.

All field SF wore a drop feather, which are small bird bones carved to look like feathers and scribed on the back with an Air Mandala. My team used personal equipment for air drops, the Merrycent feather medallion, which gave us near perfect control of drop speed. The military had provided a MIL-STD Verilight, but we left those in our kits.

Commercial grade Verilight was crap. They slip velocity all the damn time and you could break a leg.

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