Twenty-Third Century Joyride

Recreation Deck 2
Union Aerospace Corporation flagship Proscription
Normal space near Mirkithet-3
0304 hours
1 May 2222

Moments after taking a final drag off his cigarette, Corporal Mark Willamette chugged a shot of bourbon. Two narrow runnels of smoke escaped his nose as he slammed the glass down on the metal bar, shattering it. He extinguished the cigarette by squeezing it in his hand until the heat subsided. The barman, James, lounged his way. He looked at the shattered glass, then at Corporal Willamette.
“Jesus, Mark,” Mike said. “You look like shit.”
“Noticed, have you?”
“Kinda hard not to.”
Mike extracted an extremely ancient cloth rag with the UAC logo barely visible through decades of alcohol cleanup from his right pocket and wiped the table clean of glass, giving Willamette a very patronizing look the entire time.
“One thing the you-ack does right, uh?” he asked. “You-ack” was a popular nickname for the UAC.
“Mmmm,” Willamette replied. “Can I get another bourbon?”
Mike turned around, pulled a fresh shot glass from a cylinder, and shoved it underneath a dispenser. In seconds, he was shoving a fresh shot into Willamette’s hand. “Your last one,” he said.
Willamette scoffed, and drained the shot in less than a second. He slammed the glass down on the table, gently this time, and staggered off the stool. He’d only put down three half-ounce shots, so he was nowhere near drunk. He “looked like shit” because he’d had an agonizingly long day patrolling the reactor chamber. Fourteen hours of holding a Mark VIII Plasma Weapon while watching attonewtons of plasma energy stream past him at incalculable speeds. In his opinion, whomever decided to put that Dr. Spice Up machine in that alcove near the engine-room end of the chamber should be given the highest honors the UAC could dream up.
He yawned tremendously as he strode down the narrow rec-deck corridor. He had half a mind to go back to his quarters on Deck 9, but the other half was all for having an adventure. At the end of the corridor was a lift that could either go up to the storage decks or down to the service corridor, the latter of which allowed access to the hangar bays.
Willamette stood at the elevator’s call panel, thinking about what he wanted to do. If he wanted to stay out of trouble and catch a few Zs, he would go through a door behind him and to his right to find an elevator that would take him down to the Marine’s quarters. If he wanted to have some fun and take the risk of being severely punished, he could call this lift and head down to the service corridor. He eventually decided on amusement, so he called the lift and stepped in.
Half an hour later, Willamette was standing alone in Hangar Bay P12, staring openmouthed at a brand-spanking-new Werewolf starfighter. This was one of the newest examples of the UAC’s only fighter class, which itself was very new. Its ultrasleek triangular body was extremely wide (it nearly spanned the entire hangar), but very short and even thinner. Two plasma induction engines stuck out of the paper-thin wings. The five centimeters of titanium-quartz armor was covered in a flat-black hue, which apparently aided in stealth. The thing was positively gorgeous. The entry ramp was open. He jogged toward it.
The Werewolf’s interior was cavernous. Although the ceiling was very low, the fighter had two sleeping rooms, a lounge, two escape pods, storage rooms, and even a small armory. Willamette looked slowly around the interior as he walked toward the cockpit.
The first thing that hit him about the cockpit was the monstrous number of controls. Orange-backlit buttons, blue-backlit buttons, green-backlit buttons, buttons without backlighting, switches, levers, triggers, red lights, green lights, blue lights, blinking lights, joysticks, and screens covered the M-shaped console stream and a control spine along the ceiling. There were four view monitors, one in front and another to the side of the pilots. It was overwhelming. He approached the console and examined a few of the buttons near the side viewscreen. A square one with a light blue backlight caught his attention. ENT RAMP. He pressed it and watched the entry ramp close and seal the ship into its own environment.
A button on the back of the pilot’s seat caused it to slide back to allow access. Once he settled into the slightly stiff chair, it automatically slid forward to the console. A binder was propped against the forward viewscreen. He closed it and read the cover.

GETTING TO KNOW THE “WEREWOLF” INTERCEPTOR STARFIGHTER

Willamette set the thick binder in his lap and started thumbing through it. The table of contents took up five pages by itself. Section One went into painful detail about the fighter’s dimensions and specifications. Section Two went over the locations and functions of the Werewolf’s 207 controls, plus various combinations for doing things such as starting the fighter’s operations system, which he promptly started doing. He pressed the three buttons on the left armrest of the chair, three more on the console to his left, one in front of him, two on the console to his right, flipped two switches on the ceiling spine, and pushed another button near that. There was a whirring as the four viewscreens and a smaller screen built into the console next to him displayed the UAC logo for a moment. The forward viewscreen began displaying a camera view of what was in front of the fighter, inlaid with some technical and heading data. The one to his right showed radar data, as well as a picture-in-picture display of the rear-facing camera. The small screen showed the current airlock status.
“Wow,” he whispered in wonderment.
He again referred to the manual, this time in an attempt to figure out how to make this beauty move.

REPULSOR ACTIVATION: Press Boot 3 (spine group 1) > Ignite 1-4 (FVW group) > Execute (FVW keyboard)

A minute later and the fighter lifted a few meters off the ground. He pressed two more buttons, and a message on the forward screen informed him that the landing gear had retracted. He tapped the airlock screen and watched it equalize pressure with the hangar. The massive door slowly rose. Once it finally opened, Willamette pushed the throttle lever forwards just enough for a single green bar to appear next to it, but not before he flipped two switches to ignite the engines. The ship immediately obliged by starting toward the airlock with the tiniest of shudders. He took a breath and cracked a smile. Feeling this awesome ship move was the best feeling he’d ever felt.
There was only one problem. He didn’t know how to stop the Werewolf. As the ship moved closer and closer to the meter-thick airlock door, he flipped frantically through the manual, tearing out three pages while trying to figure out how to stop the ship. Finally, he found something. Barely a meter from the door, Willamette pushed the throttle lever down and forced it back. The fighter jerked to a stop a centimeter from the door. He breathed a sigh of relief as he again pressed the airlock control. There was a faint roar as all the air pressure escaped into the vast expanse of space.
He pushed the throttle forward. Fifteen green bars lit up to the right of the lever. The Werewolf blasted forward, pushing Willamette into the seat for a moment. It was a beautiful feeling, flying the sleek Werewolf through the infinite nonresistance that was space. He didn’t see the need for such a thick manual. Once one got the basic controls down, the fighter practically flew itself. He settled back into the seat as he flew farther and farther away from the Proscription.
Willamette took hold of the control sticks and pushed them full-lock to the right. Almost immediately, the fighter began a slow lateral twist. The dull orange moon ahead of him spun around along with the ship. For a minute, it seemed as though he wasn’t flying an ultra-advanced starfighter. It seemed like he was flying a glider through space, with (not quite) effortless controls, extreme lack of drag, and unmatched quietness. He closed his eyes.
BEE-OOO-BEE-OOO-BEE-OOO-BEE-OOO-BEE-OOO.
He jerked out of his daydream before it even started and whipped to face the right screen. Three unidentified contacts approaching fast from the rear. A series of touch commands appeared. Willamette pressed “query” and “rear view.” The former command informed him that there were three other Werewolf fighters gaining on him, and the latter showed that the Proscription was also approaching his ship.
“Shit,” he muttered. He looked at the two buttons on the right armrest. RFBG and PLAS. He pressed the RFBG button. Red triggers snapped open on the control sticks, a targeting reticle spun into place in the center of the forward viewscreen, and an empty charge meter appeared at the lower-right corner.
AAAN. AAAN. AAAN. AAAN.
The very loud klaxon caused him to look at the right screen again. HOSTILE CONTACTS DETECTED. ENGAGE AUTO EVASIVE MANEUVERS Y/N? The three Werewolves behind him had not only activated their weapons as well, but they were locked onto him. Even worse, the massive flagship had also been identified as hostile. It alone could melt the Werewolf into vapor in less than a second. He forced the throttle to its maximum extent. The fighter immediately blasted toward the moon at breakneck speed.
WANANANANANANANANANA.
The Werewolves behind him opened fire with their plasma cannons. Bright blue filled the space around his Werewolf. Willamette went into a sharp forward dive just in time to dodge three RFBG blasts aimed at him. He glanced at the side screen. The other fighters matched his move and continued blasting away with their plasma cannons. He had to fight back at least somewhat. He jerked the ship around to face the other fighters, targeted one, and squeezed both triggers. There was a shudder as a bright green ball of energy raced toward the center fighter. It slammed into its left wing with a brilliant green explosion. Fire and vented atmosphere issued from a massive melting hole in the wing as the damaged fighter blazed ahead of the group and past Willamette. He slammed the PLAS button. Another trigger pair snapped into place on the control sticks; similarly, a smaller targeting reticle spun into place on the forward viewscreen. Still at full throttle, he blasted right over one of the other fighters, missing it by half a centimeter and causing it to dive out of the way.
He was now charging a quickly turning UAC flagship in nothing but a starfighter. Bad idea, so he pulled a U-turn and chased after the two regrouping starfighters. They started filling the air with blinding blue, so Willamette returned the favor.
BOOP-BOOP-BOOP-BOOP-BOOP-BOOP.
The Werewolf trembled as plasma bolts pockmarked its armor. He wrenched the ship down and to the right; four hundred times as many bolts and the two opposing fighters blazed over him. Stress roared through the ship as he made another top-speed U-turn. He fired the RFBG twice and surrounded the shots with massive plasma fire. Both blasts, and almost half of the plasma fire, slammed into the fighter on his right, blasting in cleanly in half. One half dropped harmlessly away, but the other half was spinning directly toward him like a flaming, disintegrating top. He centered the targeting reticle for the plasma cannons on the spinning wreck and flattened the triggers. Bits of white-hot armor broke off and launched away as the superstructure rapidly melted.
“WE JUST LOST YANKEE THREE! REPEAT, YANKEE THREE IS DOWN!!!” the fighter’s pilot screamed. “BREAK OFF, BREAK OFF!”
“He’s on full throttle!” his co-pilot yelled. “He can catch up with us before we can do anything about it!”
“Oh, shit! He’s 330 meters away and closing fast! Help me shake him! Switch to manual override of evasive maneuvers and bring reactors and engines to 125 percent! Now, now, now!”.
“Yankee Two,” boomed the captain of the Proscription, “come round to heading zero one four point seven. That will bring the enemy into our line of fire. Pull out when I give the order.”
“Roger that, sir, entering heading now,” replied the pilot, sounding relieved.
“Oh, no,” Willamette said. “You are not trickin’ me that easily.”
The other Werewolf, now a long line about four thousand meters ahead, moved down and right, directly into the line of fire of the Proscription’s entire RFBG cluster. Eight cannons, each with firepower fifty thousand times that of the single cannon on the fighters, were rapidly charging to full charge. They would destroy everything of the Werewolf, even the quarks that made up the protons and neutrons in the titanium armor. Willamette pulled a decimal point ahead of the heading of the other fighter, a move that would remove him from the danger of a direct hit. He referred to the manual, which was somehow still on his lap.

In order to bring reactor and/or engine power to a level beyond one hundred percent, press Ex Pow (FVW group) and use FVW keyboard to enter a digit between 100 and 180 separately for the engines and reactor. It is recommended that the pilot increase power to the reactor first.

So he did. He punched in 150 for both the engines and reactor. The Werewolf positively roared with acceleration, catching up with the other ship in the space of two seconds.
“WHAT THE-??” screamed the pilot of the other fighter. “HE’S RIGHT ON TOP OF US! GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!!”
“I CAN’T DO ANYTHING IN TIME!” the co-pilot cried. “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”
WHAM!
Willamette smashed his fighter into the other’s interior-space dome traveling nearly five thousand kilometers per hour, tearing it off like a tin-can lid. The force of the impact hurled him out of the flight seat and slammed him headfirst into the forward viewscreen. There was a tremendous screeching as the other fighter’s ceiling structure crumpled and tore away. He tasted blood and saw it smeared across the center of the viewscreen. The flagship fired at him. He frantically pulled back on the throttle and threw the Werewolf into a nearly vertical ascent. The starfighter’s superstructure creaked and groaned under the strain. Below him, the massive RFBG blast screamed through the wrecked Werewolf’s debris field without stopping, leaving nothing but a backdrop of stars behind. Energy beams from the blast chipped away at his fighter’s armor.
BEEEEE, BEEEEE, BEEEEE, BEEEEE, BEEEEE.
The side viewscreen exploded with flashing red. REACTOR TEMP CRITICAL. INITIATING FAILSAFE SHUTDOWN. There was a drone as the reactor ground to a halt. Flashing red lights bursting to life all over the console, the Werewolf began to slow and return to a horizontal leveling. The controls, sublimely fluid five minutes ago, turned into two sticks stuck into metal; they were not moving. Angry voices emanated from the comm speaker.
“Don’t you think I saw that, Ensign?” snapped someone, probably the captain. “We all saw it. There was nothing we could do about it.”
“But, sir,” said another heated voice, “we’re reading a reactor failure on the part of the renegade fighter. We can take it out right now and act like none of this happened.”
The first voice scoffed. “And how the hell can we do that, Ensign? Tell me how we can act like this never happened, when it’s been recorded on four goddamn mission logs. Tell me!”
“Sir—”
“Never mind that! Send another squad of Werewolves to investigate and tow the renegade ship out.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Illuminated now only by flashing red lights, Willamette watched the flagship and three more Werewolves approach. He knew that, having just stolen a UAC fighter and destroyed two of them, if he were to be discovered here, he’d be emptied into on the spot. He noticed that his sidearm pistol was still holstered, but fighting was out of the question. He had to hide. He climbed over the back of the pilot’s seat, sprinted toward one of the storage compartments, and locked himself in.
Five minutes later, the Werewolf shook as another docked with it. Willamette could hear voices; people were coming aboard.
“Keep your eyes open, men; guy could be anywhere,” a very familiar voice said. Willamette gasped. That voice was Mike the Rec-Deck 2 barman.
“Fuckin’ place smells like burnt plasma,” a second voice said. “What the hell’d he do to this poor thing?”
He heard a door open. “Nothin’ in the armory. The storage rooms are still locked inside and out, so he isn’t in any of those.”
“Where the hell did he go?” Mike said. “Neither one of the escape pods have been jettisoned.”
One of the Marines fired a burst from a machine gun. The rounds pinged off the walls very near him. There was a long silence, punctuated only by the faint intertwining beeping of a few warning lights.
“There ain’t nothin’ in here,” the burnt-plasma man grumbled. “All right, Whiskey Three, were comin’ in. Get ready to tow this baby home.”
The Marines walked past him, mumbling angrily between themselves. The Werewolf shook again, then started to move. Willamette started breathing once again. If he could get off this ship once it was back in the hangar, he would be in the green, at least on paper. There was always the chance that some smart-ass UAC nitpicker would search the fighter with a fine-toothed comb; of course, opening this compartment and finding him here crouched in the dark. Then, he’d be put in front of the firing range on the spot. Most UAC infantry carried a license-built version of the Human Armed Military Force’s 10mm AK567D rifle, called the MG-444 Compeller. Willamette wondered what it would be like to be shot by what would end up being five or six of those rifles. He’d fired one before; it was extremely light and had minimal recoil, but it could tear a target apart at three hundred meters. After a few minutes of replaying the sheetmetal and particleboard target blast apart under the impact of a three-round burst, Willamette hoped against hope that he wouldn't feel much.
Interestingly enough, there was always the chance that nothing would happen. After he felt the ship settle down in a hangar bay—probably the same one he’d stolen the fighter from—he hid in the storage room for another forty-five minutes and waited for an execution that would never come. With all caution, he unlocked the compartment, opened the door, and peeked out. The entry ramp was deployed, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. He heaved a tremendous sigh of relief before he started sprinting as far as he could from the starfighter and the hangar.
He was probably on Deck 12 when he finally collapsed against a Dr. Spice Up machine in a refreshment alcove near a transfer bay, gasping for air. He could not even begin to believe that he’d made it out of that alive. A can of Dr. Spice up cost six credits. Willamette fumbled through the pockets in his armor before finally spilling about twenty credits all over himself. He counted out six, then haphazardly forced them into the machine and punched in one of the buttons. A very red can dropped out of the machine, which he promptly took, tore open, and began squeezing its contents out, trying to get as much of it into his mouth as possible.
Then he heard a horrifyingly familiar sound: a MG-444 Compeller being cocked and raised—at him. Willamette looked over in the direction of the sound. What he saw made him drop the can. Mike the barman had the long light-blue rifle aimed directly at his head.
“Why you runnin’?” he demanded.
Willamette couldn’t get his vocal chords to work. All he could do was stare in horror at the scene that was unfolding; two other Marines came through the airlock, and cocked and aimed their rifles at him too.
“Wanna know how we knew that you stole that Werewolf?” the man whom the burnt-plasma statement came from queried. At this point, Willamette was actually trying to die. “You were tellin’ ol’ Mike here how you’d seen one of those new fighters a few weeks ago, and how you’d kinda like to steal one of ‘em and take it for a nice little joyride.”
Mike guffawed. “Yeah, Mark’ll let out anythin’, just give him a few shots of bourbon. Ain’t that right?”
Willamette couldn’t say anything. He was too busy trying to shut down his own heart.
The third Marine, a short, wiry geek with thick square glasses, moved closer, his rifle looking as though it might fill the alcove with bullets at any second. “Looks like you’re trying to kill yourself.” He began to squeeze the two-finger trigger. “Maybe we could help you with that.”
BO-OO-OOM.
Willamette screamed as three 10mm armor-piercing rounds tore his chest wide open. Blood—his blood—splattered all over the alcove. He started to slide across the soda machine, struggling to stop the massive bleeding that had ensued. But it was all for nothing. With four final, very bloody coughs, Willamette simply stopped. His heart stopped beating, he stopped breathing, his brain stopped working; he just stopped. As it all went dark, he realized he was wrong. It did hurt to get shot with the license-built rifles. Just not for long.
What Willamette didn’t know was that it was not the furious geek that killed him. Mike the barman, previously his best friend, had pulled the trigger and ended the corporal’s life. Once the dust settled, Mike lowered his smoking rifle, then dropped it barrel-first to the floor. The metallic clatter echoed throughout the small space. The three Marines remained silent and motionless for several minutes, watching human death wrap up in front of them.
“A-all right. Let’s g-get him outta here,” he said.
Mike picked up his rifle and slung it, then moved toward Willamette’s lifeless body. The other Marines followed suit. Thirty minutes later, a janitor would come and clean up the blood. The next day, the Dr. Spice Up machine, which also got hit, was replaced. Willamette’s monotonous job of patrolling the reactor chamber was refilled two weeks later. Everything went back the way it was, except for one thing. The new guard carried a MG-444 Compeller.