here.'
'Fuck off,' he said angrily. 'I withdraw my resignation. But listen...'
'No, Brian,
'Yes,' he said, fuming. 'It's clear.'
'Now Mendez is your sis. Period. End of story. You have three training missions a day scheduled for the next two weeks before we do a final stand down for maintenance. You'd goddamn well better find a way to put aside the problems you have with him or you're both going to end up splattered across a mountainside out there in the wastelands. I'm sure Mendez isn't any more thrilled than you are that he's been paired with a cop. But he hasn't been in her threatening me or bitching at me. So get your ass out there and run your mission like a good little pilot, okay?'
'Fine,' he spat, turning on his heels and heading for the door.
'Brian,' Jorgenson called when he was three steps away.
He turned to look.
'I'd accommodate you if I could. You have to know that. But there's simply not enough time to go changing things now. If I reassign your sis, I'll have ten crews in here in the next hour wanting to do the same thing. So don't take it personal, okay? It's not becoming.'
Brian stared at him for a moment and then turned back around. The door slid obediently open in front of him. He walked through it without another word.
The mission planning room was a large, windowless office located directly adjacent to the ready room. It had small desks arranged in a manner so that as many flight teams as possible could occupy the space at the same time. Each desk had an oversize computer screen mounted on swivels so that it could be turned back and forth. As Brian entered the room the rest of the squadron was already in there, each flight team sitting together and going over the maps of the training area and planning their upcoming missions. The babble of conversation echoed through the room as the pilots and system operators discussed the best means of attacking the MPG column that was to be their target for the day.
Brian found Mendez sitting at one of the desks, a digital satellite shot of the training ground on the screen before him. Mendez, like all of the other flight crewmembers, including Brian himself, was dressed in the standard issue MPG red shorts and white T-shirt. He was smoking a cigarette thoughtfully as he traced over the landscape on the screen with his finger, highlighting certain areas. Brian felt himself seething with hatred as he looked at him, as he took in the Capitalist tattoo that was plainly visible on his arm. Not so long before he had been throwing vermin like that into jail. Now he was supposed to fly with one? To trust his life to him?
With another grunt of disgust we walked over and sat down in the chair next to him.
'Hey, boss,' Mendez said. 'Where you been? Have to take a big shit or somethin?'
'Where I was is not any of your concern,' he said shortly.
Mendez stared at him for a second, hostility flashing in his face for an instant and then disappearing. He shrugged. 'I guess not,' he said. 'Anyway, I started the mission plan while you was gone. I got a prelim path through the southern part of the range about sixty klicks from the target area. I think that the category four hills and ridges will give us good coverage for the...'
'I don't really care what you think,' Brian cut in, grabbing the computer screen and turning it towards himself. 'Computer, purge current document and set up a new one.'
'Say what?' Mendez said.
'Confirming that you wish to purge the current document?' the computer asked.
'Computer, confirmed,' Brian said. 'Get rid of it and open a new one.' A moment later the map and the tracings that Mendez had completed disappeared and was replaced by a blank view of the area.
'What the fuck did you do that for?' Mendez demanded. 'I had a goddamn prelim path already completed!'
'Like I'm going to trust my life to any flight path that you've worked on,' Brian spat. 'No thanks. I'll figure out my own flight path to the target area if you don't mind.'
'You didn't even fucking look at it,' Mendez said. 'I worked on that thing for half an hour while you were off jerking your missile somewhere.'
'As I said,' Brian told him, 'my whereabouts were not your concern. And I don't really give a shit how long you worked on it, I'm not flying any path that you've come up with.'
'We only got forty-five more minutes until wheels up,' Mendez said. 'And I was doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm the sis, remember? I'm responsible for...'
'Get this straight, newbie,' he said. 'You're not responsible for shit on my aircraft. I'll come up with the flight plan. I'll fly the goddamned plane. You will sit your ass in the back seat, keep your fucking mouth shut, and shoot at the targets when I get us into the target area. That is all that you will do. Is that clear?'
'That ain't how its supposed to work,' Mendez told him.
'Well that's the way its gonna work on my aircraft. Now just sit your ass over there and shut up until its time to fly.'
Mendez' hands clenched into fists and it seemed for a second that he was going to throw a punch at Brian. Brian sincerely hoped that he would. He would then have an excuse to kick the vermin's ass into the ground. He would also have an excuse to have him thrown out of the MPG. But Mendez didn't rise to the occasion. He simply took a few deep breaths and then slumped back in his chair.
'You're the boss, boss,' he said through gritted teeth. 'But you'd better get crackin I think. We got about twenty minutes until we hit the ready room.'
They roared into the red Martian sky an hour later, Brian's hastily assembled flight plan programmed into the navigation computer. Matt tried reading off altitude and upcoming heading changes to him over the intercom — something that had been drilled into him in training — but Brian only told him to shut his ass again.
'I've got the nav references on my HUD,' he said dryly as he leveled them off at 1000 meters. 'I don't want to hear anything out of you until the target area, and even then the only thing I want to know is when your weapon is discharged.'
Matt's glare burned into the back of his head through the cockpit partition. 'Is it okay to breathe back here, boss? Or is that too noisy for you too?'
'You're talking, newbie,' Brian said. 'You can breathe, piss, shit, jack off, or do whatever the hell else you want back there. Just don't talk.'
'You can't fly a mission this way, Haggarty,' Matt told him.
'Oh? Are you basing that statement on your years of flight experience or on the superior education that you received in Helvetia Heights? Or is it maybe a combination of both?'
'It's common sense, asshole,' he said. 'Remember common sense? Its the thing we're supposed to be fighting for here?'
'Yeah, I remember it. And General Jackson showed a distinct lack of that factor when he let you vermin in the MPG. Now keep your mouth shut or I just might accidentally eject your ass over the Sierra Madres.'
Matt fumed but did as he was told and kept quiet. Brian continued to fly without verbal input from his system operator and using a flight plan that had been put together far too quickly. It wasn't very long before things started to go wrong.
Brian descended the aircraft to 200 meters and streaked along the uneven surface towards the mountain peaks. He dropped down another 100 meters just before passing between two of the peaks. He cut hard to the right, his hands and feet manipulating the controls, his eyes watching the guidance carrot on the display in front of him as it moved back to center. He straightened the plane, flew onward for another fifteen seconds, and then the carrot suddenly swung back to the left. With no warning of the upcoming course change, he was forced to react strongly, pulling them into a turn of nearly four times the force of gravity. He then had to scramble to level the plane back on its course. Just as he did, the next turn came up, forcing him to cut hard to the right.
'Goddamn, Haggarty,' Brian grunted as he was slammed up against his restraints and his G-suit squeezed forcefully on his legs. 'You're gonna lose it if you keep this shit up!'
