#pressly

CONFESSION:

I’m still proud of it. So I’m going to share it. Hope you don’t mind indulging me. The delightfully grouchy duo of Joker and Pressly was one of my favorite things to come out of that story.  

From here. 

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The Normandy shot through the relay under Joker’s steady hands, a swath of hot dust and radioactive particles smothering the shutters with blue-lit gas.

Joker wasn’t looking at the shutters. All he’d find was a cocoon of stillness and silence. But the ship’s sensors were alive with heat – a chaotic hail of ordinance and high velocity projectiles tearing across the vacuum, with no gravity or air resistance to stop or even slow them down.

Just a target. Whether they reached their intended target was irrelevant. Every quantum torpedo loosed in the melee would eventually find something to hit.

Newton’s first law was a bitch.

Ladar identified dozens of enemy vessels, from bombers and frigates that darted swiftly in and out of attack lanes to the slower, sluggish cruisers and dreadnaughts anchored all around the tightly sealed cylinder of the Citadel.

Alliance transponders winked into existence around the relay like tiny stars, the overwhelming task of dispatching so many ships at once creating staggering amounts of drift. The smaller, more maneuverable vessels immediately dispatched to cover the flank of the Everest, the kilometer long dreadnaught Hackett presided over with a proportionate main gun that made the Hiroshima bomb seem like a tea party, complete with princess hats.

Against the geth, it might not be enough.

Fighters launched in droves, streaking towards the geth onslaught as the bow guns of cruisers sounded off in rhythmic patterns. Light on light, heat spike upon heat spike, a carefully but brutally coordinated clash of ordinance playing out in energy pings and return signals.

“Damn,” Pressly murmured, looking at their scans.

The Destiny Ascension registered on sensors as a collection of kinetic fields and venting coolant, surrounded by geth fighters and frigate transponders that had driven past the turians’ hasty blockade. That close her main gun was useless against the agile craft eating away at her barriers, leaving her vulnerable to the geth dreadnaughts firing from range.

Hackett had diverted Shenyang, Jakarta and Cape Town to do something about the dreadnaughts. Joker intended to do something about the rest.

“Have no fear, cavalry is here,” Joker replied. “Normandy to Admiral Hackett. If you can give me some cover fire from those cruisers I’ll put some hurt on the frigates.”

“Acknowledged, Normandy. Do what you can to save the Ascension.”

Joker skipped the Normandy in and out of enemy sight lines, painting targets and lashing out with disrupter torpedoes to shred kinetic barriers in preparation for the Alliance wolf packs closing in their wake.

Pressly’s posture tightened as Joker skimmed the ship closer, diving into a crossfire of disruptor torpedoes less than ten kilometers off the Ascension’s hull. “Joker, what the hell are you doing?”

“Taking the GUARDIAN lasers for a stroll,” he said through gritted teeth.    

The hull shuddered. The tactical scanner became a blaze of heat as the defense systems erupted, shearing lasers identifying fighters that got too close slicing them open at the speed of light.  Several enemy transponders vanished off ladar.

“I’m reading two frigates still engaged with the Ascension,” Pressly reported. “Her barriers are down to twenty nine percent.”

“How do you feel about a knife fight, old man?”

“Torpedoes armed and ready.”

Flight Lieutenant Jeff ‘Joker’ Moreau, with a skeleton made of balsa wood and fractured glass, performed a waltz on limbs of steel.

Pressly has learned new skills.

Confession:  It would be pretty cool if Michael Hogan, who voices Captain / Commander Bailey, voiced Charles Pressly. After all, Pressly is an XO and so is Michael Hogan with his role as XO Saul Tigh in Battlestar Galactica! Take away Pressly’s beard and it kind of looks like him, too.