AILANTHIUM

“They outnumber us four to seven–” “Six,” Buckeye interjected with his trademark grin. “Four to six,” Donnie corrected himself. “Those odds are far from… the worst we’ve faced. Gets a lot hairier when ye take the frigate into account. We can’t… can’t let them take the defensive… around it. Take out as many as we can head-on. Then we ah… clean up the rest.” “You don’t sound too hot, Oak–” “Wasn’t asking for a medical evaluation Peachleaf!” Donnie took a moment to try and catch his breath as his companions remained silent. “Only got one chance at this. Better make it count.” “...Roger that, sir.” “Hear you loud and clear,” Buckeye confirmed. “I’ll kill a couple extra for Dogwood,” Sweetgum muttered. Buckeye and Peachleaf tore away from their battle with the lone hostile fighter, wordlessly moving into formation in an upright triangle with Sweetgum behind Oakheart. Both sides had mustered the remainder of their forces. Now they raced towards one another, guns blazing with the intent to crush the other side in one fell swoop. Donnie’s fingers relaxed against the trigger, cold and unresponsive to his commands. Even as the machine to his left was rocked by an explosion he could feel chills course through his body. The force of the explosion knocked his fighter off-course, spiraling out of control as he failed to adjust its flight path. His vision slowly faded, becoming darker and darker still until finally, his head collided unconscious against his control panel. Thump-thump... thump-thump... thump... thump...thump...

His fighter reversed its gyroscope, spinning the machine to face its opponents from behind in one sickening motion. There was little chance he’d allow them to regroup before whittling away at their numbers first. He tailed the two hostile fighters who had split right, leading his shots ahead of where the head fighter turned. It was soon filled with holes and exploded with a violent flash of light moments later. The other fighter veered away from its course, allowing Donnie to speed past it to approach the second group of two from the side. They aimed their guns to fire onto him. A few of their shots landed, but it was nothing that a new coat of paint and a couple of hours with a sander couldn’t fix. They’d need a whole lot more to fix the damage he was about to do to them, launching a missile that narrowly missed one machine only to crash right into the next. Both were caught in the ensuing explosion. “Sweetgum, Buckeye, Peachleaf,” he said, opening a communications channel with the remainder of his squad. “There’s been a change of plans: do not, I repeat, do not approach the Sequoia.” “Don’t tell me…” Peachleaf started. “We’ve been sold out,” Donnie confirmed. “The mission doesn’t change. We take out all hostile fighters and escort the frigate back to Helios. Only difference is that we get to watch that treasonous S.O.B. inside go on trial over drinks afterwards.” “Trial? Why should we let him walk out of that ship alive?! We have more than enough firepower to take the whole thing out right this fucking minute!” Buckeye’s anger had only grown with exasperation as Peachleaf and himself struggled to take their opponents down. They had taken one down already, but the other two stubbornly refused to die. “Settle down Buckeye,” Donnie warned. “Don’t forget that we’ve been charged with protecting the politician holed up in there with him.” “She could be in on this too!” “Aye, but right now we just can’t be certain. Remember what I’ve told ye time and time again?” “Temper thy rage,” Buckeye grumbled. “And it shall prove a mighty weapon.” “Good lad,” Donnie replied, carefully watching his radar as he moved to regroup with the others. “Sweetgum, what’s the status on yer escape?” “Managed to shake them off my trail,” she replied. A welcome piece of good news in a mission sorely lacking in it. “Looks like they’re headed over to your group to join up.” “It’s about time we do the same.”

“Well don’t leave me hanging there, out with it lad!” “They’re good, really good.” Dogwood coughed throatily into his mic. Something splattered against the console. “But I’m better.” “The blazes are ye talking about?! Regroup with the rest of us NOW!” Two blips on his radar collided and defiantly disappeared. His communications channel with Dogwood suddenly cut out, leaving him with the unsettling sound of white noise. “Sweetgum, ye have to tell me what’s going on over there!” “I couldn’t stop him.” Donnie’s hands gripped tightly around his controls. Like water bubbling inside a steel pot, his emotions threatened to boil over. Forcing the lid over it only trapped the steam inside. He took deep breaths through his nose to vent only a little of it out. “His engine was failing, and...” Sweetgum paused to collect herself. “He rammed the hostile fighter. Dogwood’s machine is still intact but I can’t confirm his status.” “We’ll worry about that later, lass. Toss out a couple of chaffs their way and pull back, we can–” Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip. Five more fighters approached from directly ahead of the escort frigate. The pack was led by a custom machine, painted in green-and-brown camouflage and sporting an obnoxiously large chaingun on its underside. What kind of hillbilly motherfucker paints their space fighter like they’re hunting wild deer? Donnie thought to himself. He rolled to avoid the whirlwind of bullets the lead fighter hurled towards him, dipping below the escort frigate. As he adjusted his targeting systems to fire back he could see the escort frigate falling behind him. “Sapling, return to cruising speed and aim your flak cannons dead center–” “You should’ve taken the chance to surrender while you could, Roland.” Donnie blinked as the wind was knocked out of his sails. His grip on the controls loosened for only a moment. “Ye were in on this from the start.” His words were met with silence. Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

“These twats are better than yer average swashbucklers,” Donnie muttered. “Dogwood, Sweetgum, I want ye to engage with the enemy at a distance. Keep the Sequoia in sight but out of range.”

“Roger that Oakheart,” Dogwood replied.

“Won’t even see what hit ‘em!” Sweetgum chimed in.

Marking their new positions on the holographic projection, Donnie rearranged the fighters to form a spear around the Sequoia. He watched the others move into place as he slowly took the spearhead. “Now what’s our motto?”

“Stand Tall, Stand Firm, Stand United.”

Dogwood and Sweetgum trailed away from the ship as they pursued the enemy fighters, careful not to stray too far off course. It seemed as if the enemy was aware of their limitations, leaving themselves open to attack if they could just branch out a little farther. The fact that Dogwood and Sweetgum were outnumbered hardly helped the situation. Donnie was tempted to send another fighter their way when yet another foreign blip appeared on his radar.

Another three bogies raced in from the left, sparing little time before they fired towards the escort. One shot scraped against the Sequoia’s hull and another narrowly missed Buckeye’s cockpit, causing its pilot to shriek in fury.

“Oakheart, this is enough,” Sapling started. “We’ve sustained serious damage twice now and you’ve failed to–”

“Have ye suffered any critical damage to yer engine or life support systems?”

“No sir, the last shot only grazed our hull.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about, Sapling.”

Donnie lowered the volume on his communications channel with the Sequoia to drown them out with his music. The frigate’s captain was some blockhead from the ‘Colonial Liaison Division’ or whatever it was called. He doubted the man had ever seen an ounce of real action in his life. Donnie’s own son had bitched and moaned less after he fractured his leg crashing his bicycle into a redwood. He could hardly believe a little boy could bleed so much, and it nearly scared the life out of the boy’s mother. Worst they’d felt inside the frigate was a light bump and a flicker of the lights.

“Buckeye, Peachleaf, I think ye know the drill. And remember what I told the others: stay out of range of the Sequoia, but don’t wander off too far.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Peachleaf remarked.

“Those cocksuckers are going to pay for what they did to my baby. Its paint job is ruined, ruined!” Buckeye howled.

“Don’t worry too much about Buckeye. I’ll keep an eye on him for you.”

“I’m counting on ye,” Donnie replied. “Both of ye.”

He tapped at the console to create a holographic projection of the immediate area, a single dot incoming from the outer edge of his machine’s sensors. Two more followed close behind from a lower angle than the first. Donnie’s systems warned of incoming fire, but he knew that it was little more than an attempt to throw him off his game. They couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn at this range, he assured himself. “Sapling, this is Oakheart speaking. Doubt I have to warn ye about the three bogies coming in hot from two o’clock.” “That’s a negative, Oakheart.” “Makes my job a whole lot easier. Just stay the course as best ye can, the rest of us will swat away these gnats.” “Considering our circumstances, we may want to parlay wi–” “Stay the course. That’s an order, ye hear?” Donnie fired back at the hostile fighters as they drew close, forcing them to peel away moments before they entered the escort frigate’s flak range. “If they move even an inch closer they’ll get blasted into space dust and they know it. We keep a tight formation, send a fighter out to chase them off if they try anything stupid.” “... I hope you’re not taking this lightly…” “Me? Never,” he insisted. “This is just business as usual.”