Which Way Did He Go?

Posted on Fri Sep 2nd, 2011 @ 7:58am by Lieutenant James Holbridge

ARBORETUM 4
LEVEL 26

The trees offered a comfort to Jim Holbridge, a kind of solace that was difficult to come by after the loss of his backseater. His informal meeting with the admiral had gone weirdly his way, and he had cancelled his appointment with the Professor at the last minute. There was no way he was gonna teach basic fighter skills to wet-nosed cadets, no matter what aptitude they had for the craft.

Flying fighters for the Corps was a dirty business. The trade demanded absolute precision, maniacal confidence, and a truckload of luck. There was always some smart-assed jockey who thought he was God's gift in the cockpit that wound up getting smeared across a deck or blown into sub-molecular goo. Equipment failures, lucky shots from ground artillery, incompetent mechanics, and plain ol' bad luck all hated the average flier and did all they could to bring him down hard. Jim knew that after countless hours in the cockpit, the law of averages was getting ready to punch his clock in a major way.

It was time to get out of combat flying, but not until the investigation into his sabotaged ship was completed. No punk-assed saboteur was gonna scare him off the trail, no siree-Bob! Jim was afraid to get back into the cockpit pure and simple, but he had to know who it was that tried to kill him and why.

VAMPIRE SQUADRON HANGAR

Jim walked back into his area and greeted his fliers with some warm words of encouragement, "What in the blue fuck are you assholes doing sitting on your tails? There are decks that need supervising, ships that need pre and post-flight inspections, paperwork that hasn't been done in six months to catch up on move it, move it , move it!" Holbridge got a chuckle watching his fliers scramble out of the ready room and into the hangar. His philosophy was simple, if you are sitting on your ass, you ain't busy enough, a maxim he had learned from a grizzled old deck chief back on Mars......

Jim rose from his desk and looked around. Something was off, but it was nothing major. There was small thing amiss in the ready room, then he heard a noise. A small rattling came from an equipment locker, followed by a muffled curse. Jim's hand instantly filled with a pocket phaser as he made his way over to the wall locker. He quickly flung open the locker....and saw nothing.

The attacker, hiding under an empty desk came up behind Jim and smashed something heavy onto his head. Jim spun right down to the deck, the last sound he heard was footsteps running away...from him......what the.....

TAG: Smith