Thread by @Lancer_RPG

Hi everyone, happy new year!

On the heels of 1.8, we've got the first of our community pilot stories!

First up, we meet Solmaz bint Aziz Ibn Bilal Al-Almuli, a veteran Albatross pilot (@LBrawlo) on campaign.

>//...

>//BEGIN_TRANSMISSION

Solmaz winced, but did not cry out as her Wings pried off her shattered cuirass.

“A good hit,” Ali muttered. “Superficial, and straight through.” He tossed the ruined armor aside, wiped his hands.

Layla flushed the wound with warm water. She apologized, and pressed hard.

Solmaz woke to Layla patting her cheek, to pain deep in her side. Ali’s words-under-breath.

“How many pieces am I in?” Solmaz muttered.

“One,” Ali said. He looked up from his slate, frowned. “Nine tenths of one. Nothing missing.”

“Let me get you some chai,” Layla said.

Mint, hot with one cube of ice, and a drop of honey. Real honey, from the last Elysian royal hive.

The steady beep of life support. The hiss of forced air. Coriander, cloves, salt, and cypress. An empty bunk above her, a desk to her right.

Makteba Kano.

Solmaz was home.

She regarded her new wound.

Or well, the bandage that held her together. A stark white stained red and yellow against her dark skin.

She frowned, traced the line of her old tattoo. A touch up, then, when the torn skin healed.

Her body, kintsugi form in flesh and synthoderm.

Solmaz beat the heavy bag, no wraps around her fists. Rough canvass, layered brown and glistening red.

She slid around it, barefoot, alone in the gym. Three more days before course change meant three more workouts.

Not enough time. Her side ached.

Not enough time.

“I can fly,” Solmaz insisted. “Put me on entry. Let me prove it.”

“No,” Ibn Bilal didn’t even look up from his slatework.

“My wound is healed,” Solmaz tapped her cuirass. “And the techs say they will have my chassis ready before pre-check. I can lead my wing.”

“Solmaz, no."

At pre-check, Solmaz addressed her pilots.

“I will run tactical from the bridge, and see to it you all come home.”

“Try not to spill your coffee, Sis” Khalid and the rest of Wing Hamza laughed.

“Commander,” Solmaz corrected. “Fly safe. Give me no reason to worry, Brother.”

Ibn Bilal stood in his command suite, arms crossed behind his back, and finished his breifing.

“Keep your bridges open. Listen for al-Basir’s counsel: the Maw employs paracausal agents unknown to us.”

A mutter through the deck.

Fear.

“It does not matter. We kill it here.”

“Wing Hamza, go,” Solmaz ordered. She paced the Kano’s deck.

A cascade of Y acknowledgements filled her subtext in time with the dots on her tac switching from red to green.

“Wing Themania, on my go.”

Each dot was a life. A flat screen, alight.

“Go.”

She wore her cuirass. A point, to be made to the officers who had long forgotten what it meant to drop.

The two-tiered deck was dark and dim-lit, every face buried in a screen. Subtext scrawling across HuDs.

Solmaz held her heart, a febrile bird, a hammer of god, and listened.

The deck stank of sweat and coffee.

Off to her side, one of the Loyal Wings cursed and tore off his helm. Palmslap to his eyes and a scream of pain, medics hollering as they ran to him.

The others stayed calm: they expected ontoloterrors.

On Solmaz’s tac: twenty green dots.

Nineteen, and one scream cut short.

Eighteeen, silent.

A dim yellow light, and a second, and a third, one-two-three so fast as to be simultaneous.

One more. Now three red, three yellow, and fourteen green.

“Status,” Solmaz demanded.

Transmission hiss of deadspace.

“It’s the grey, Sister,” Khalid, over the sound of gunfire. “We have it under control now.”

“Commander,” Solmaz corrected. “Hamza Lead, close your tightbeam feed, switch to subtext.”

>//+Y

>//-ARE YOU SAFE

>//+I’M FINE

>//-ARE YOU SAFE

A dot blinked yellow, and red.

All around, Loyal Wings played commander, each leading a pair of wings-in-flight. Ten commanders, in command of two hundred lives.

A mere hundred and fifty kilometers below, across the surface of some miserable rocky moon, the Albatross of Kano fought the Maw.

And Khalid —

Solmaz turned and looked to the center of the bridge.

Honored Wing Ibn Bilal sat forward on his couch. A recorder stood at his side, scribbling on her slate. Ibn Bilal stroked his chin and watched the battle play out across his many screens.

“Pull them back,” Solmaz shouted.

Ibn Bilal did not, and the Albatross were victorious, and the lift shuttles were packed with bodies, and the lift shuttles were packed with the newly liberated.

Solmaz ignored her mentor and commander’s prohibitions and went to see for herself what had become of her brother.

>//END_TRANSMISSION

>//And if you like what you read here, want to talk rules, corrections, homebrew, and/or participate in our most active community, come join us on Discord! Link here: discord.gg/TcWQ4Qs