Crossroads

[jammi]

"Stay in line, do not deviate! Move forward in an orderly manner!" The tannoy blasted out again, cutting through the hubub of panicing voices. A mass of scared people had been packed into the sorting square, guided by modular crowd control barriers that slid from the floor. Very slowly, they were being fed towards a customs office. Riot armoured soldiers watched disinterestedly from gantries that ran between the rooftops, eyeing the crowd for trouble. Ryan Harper had no intention of causing trouble - he had every intention of getting on a transport and getting off the goddamn planet.

"Stay in line, do not deviate! Move forward in an orderly manner!" The rationing had got more intense over the last couple of months, as had the soldiers. On government orders, they'd been ruthlessly cracking down on dissent and insubordination. They were on edge, running scared. Everyone felt the electric tension in the air, the calm before the storm. They were coming. Leeds' population awoke every morning expecting to hear the warble of raid sirens, or see the explosive fireworks depicting the final struggle for orbital superiority. Then Gaul landing ships would fall like raindrops, plumetting through the atmosphere carrying cargos of death and destruction. Occupiers. Conquerers.

"Stay in line, do not devia-." The tannoy adruptly cut off, mid-broadcast. The burble of confused voices rose as people peered around, looking for the cause. Suddenly the announcement resumed, this time spoken by a different man. He had a rough voice, laced with menace. "Citizens, at the command of the Planetary Governor, you will cease movement and clear a path to the spaceport! Move now!" A file of soldiers carrying assault carbines forced their way into the square, pushing people out the way to clear a space. Their mirrored hazmat combat masks made them faceless, inhuman and terrible. Forcing compliance, the automated cue barriers began to shift, ramming people out of the way. Indignant cries of protest rang out as the royal dragoons formed a corden, lining a direct path to the other side.

The commanding sergeant snapped to a salute as a weathily attired man and woman wandered in. They were wearing small rebreather feeds that clipped over their noses, powered by discretely hidden filters. A hover-trolly of belongings was pushed along behind them by another soldier - they probably weighed seven times the weight allowance of a refugee's luggage, and were worth twelve times their yearly wage. Insults and cat-calls rang out as the priviledged were fast-tracked through. Bretonia had always been stratified by an oppressive class system. Ryan felt furious. He recognised the pair - franchise owners of a local supermarket chain which had increased their prices time and time again, well above the rate of inflation or common decency. War profiteering vampires, both of them.

The insults intensified. A stone bounced off the helmet of one of the soliders. Laser rifles were immediately charged and trained on the increasingly hostile crowd. The soldiers added to the din, bellowing at the crowd to get back. The man in front of Ryan made a jump for the barrier to try and get at the suits. With a cry of, "those bloody murderers!", he thudded into one of the soldiers, who crashed to the floor. Ryan lunged forward and tried to grab the back of his shirt to pull him away, to no avail. A carbine flashed, and the man fell dead with a smoldering hole in his back. A shocked silence fell, before the roar rose.

Carbines spat again and again and again.

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[jammi]

Maria Izabetha lay dozing on her bunk, deep in the depths of Cadiz. The giant fortress-city was a marvel of engineering, criss-crossed by caverns and tunnels. The Corsairs had fortified it as an impregnable bastion, a first line of defence to protect the women and children of Crete. Daily, Cadiz found itself battered by the barbarian hoards of Hessians and their murderous allies. The men and women of The Rock had the unenviable task of holding the line. Over nearly a century of continuous warfare, the death-toll had ticked upwards into the thousands, but Cadiz still held, and the Corsairs would fight on.

Throughout the pilot casemates a low warbling wail began to howl - raid sirens. Groggy warriors began to roll out of bed, shaken by the din and the red flashing lights. "All pilots, to battlestations. Crimson alert! All hands to turrets or ships! Alert!" Maria sat up with a jolt. Crimson was a full scale assault - defence and raider wings were to man the perimeter. Other pilots were running past now, pulling on boots as they went. Enrico de-Miguel skidded to a halt before her. "Maria, hurry! They're pushing towards Hamen, we have to get out there now!"

"Si, si, I'm on my way!" She grabbed her pilot's sidearm from the hook where it was hanging and rang out after Enrico. As they passed through the hangar entrance, loaders were throwing additional clips of ammunition to passing pilots - a final backup policy to leave an impression if they were captured. Support crew were swarming as Centurions, Titans and Praetorians were rushed from their storage racks. Maria made a bee-line for her own M5, Maria's Infireno. The alarms continued to warble, warning lights dying the hangar a bloody red.

Ships were already manoeuvring to launch racks, ready to be ejected into the airlocks and then sent out to war. Maria felt the tug on her control stick as hangar command pulled her own ship out. She put out the radio check. "Raider Blue Wing, Maria checking in. Sign off, hermanos."

"Raider 1, Enrico here."
"Raider 5, Manuel, copy."
"Raider 3, si."
"Raider 4, Carlos ready to go."

She sent a return pip as confirmation. There was a sudden rush of Gs as the ship was launched, then the ambient noise from the hangar died altogether. The ship was plunged into silence, save for the rumble of the engine and the hum of the radio. Feathering the engines, she pulled around to join formation with Enrico, Blue wing's commander. A message crackled through on a private frequency. "Maria, careful on this one. This is a big push. Watch my six and I'll watch yours."

"Copy. Spend too long looking at my six and I'll give you a black eye when we get back." Both laughed. The sound was strained - both knew what they were getting to. The wing punched through the edge of the Hamen Hole and entered hell itself. Tachyon and laser criss-crossed the clearing, with dead and burning ships boiling through the vacuum. Screams rang out across the tactical net as vessels were vaporised. Maria gunned her thrusters and blasted into the fight.

Cycling a missile, she sent a Cannonball streaking towards a passing Odin. The blast caught its tail, flipping it over and rupturing its reactor core. As an escape pod blasted from the cockpit, the ship was lanced by Salamanca fire. Another Titan burst through the flaming debris - as it did so, an angry glyph appeared on her HUD. Red Wing commander admonishing her for tagging his mark. Her grin was cut short as fire rained down on her shield, shaking her violently from the impact.

Desperately pulling evasive manoeuvres, she signalled to the rest of the wing to deal with the two tailing Odins. As they pulled back from their own fights, her shields dropped. Sparks erupted from the dashboard as a shot penetrated the power distributor on her aft wing. Enrico slid in behind the lead enemy fighter and stitched tachyon across his engines. Smoking, it broke off to seek cover from friendly forces. Another call came out across the Corsair battlenet.

"More incoming! Four wings, approach vector 22-30. Regroup and attack!" The remaining tail broke off as the rest of the wing arrived, and gunned its engines for the approaching reinforcements. The remaining Corsairs began to disengage in order to regroup and meet the renewed attack. "Enrico, we need more ships!" Maria shouted.

"We'll make do with what we've got, watch and see" he replied with a growl. As the Corsair wings spread out to advance in a staggered line, there was an explosion from within the asteroid field behind them. The hulking form of a Legate smashed its way through the last wall of asteroids using the brute force of its mortars. The gargantuan form pushed its way into the clearing, asteroid impacts flaring off its shields. A triumphant battlecry went up from the Corsairs.

"Viva los Conquistador! Viva los Corsairs!"

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