A Future We'd Like to See 1.1 - Live Slow, Die Hard By Twoflower (Copyright 1993) The alarm clock rings around nine in the morning. Not that morning means anything on this damn carrier. No matter what time of day or night, all you'll get is stars. It normally wouldn't ring at nine, but I juryrigged it with a quick screwdriver and toggle switch maneuver one night after I realized the circles under my eyes didn't want to go away on their own accord. Breakfast is at six sharp, proper military procedure. The way I see it, this isn't no proper military, so I don't follow their procedure. Besides, the slop they serve down in the metal box we call the Cafeteria can give you cancer. So, I spend my Heavily Armed Ambassadors of Friendship and Fun recreational morning hours in the usual way, eating dehydrated Twinkies and wallowing in grumpiness. I've perfected wallowing to an art form. Sure, that Woody Allen weirdo from the old flicks, before they invented holovision, might have said a thing or two about angst, but he's got nothing on me. I am the pessimist supreme, "La Grande Pessimiste," I guess, the one who doesn't complain since there's no actual chance anything can be changed. The name, for instance. Heavily Armed Ambassadors of Friendship and Fun. Humph. Nobody particularly liked the name, but it was all President Doofman's staff could think of when he threw up in response to a media question about the new military branch's codename. "HAAFF!" it probably sounded like, judging from the results. It was too late to change it now. Besides, what could they change it to? The only true name for this dump would be the Small Underpaid Bunch of Starfleet Rejects Who Pull Off Mediocre Missions and Face Eminent Doom In The Process, and nobody'd remember all them letters. We pilots had a motto in this carrier. Live slow, die hard. Lead a boring life in a quasi-military fashion, then zoom out into the stars and get toasted before you can blink. Most of what we did involved transport, of cargo, documents, ambassadors, or some new miracle cure for sexually transmitted diseases... stuff other people would love to get their hands on. You never know when what you're carrying is actually important or not, because for 'security reasons' all the pilot sees of it is a little black box. Take off. Jump-point to here. Drop off box, or pick box up, or occasionally blow away a stray fighter of some new enemy. Jump-point back to the carrier. Land. The same pattern, mission in, mission out. 'Cept for the unlucky ones, who are whistling away while some new Weapon of Destruction(+13) is nestled in their cargo-drop doors. If they're really unlucky, some free trader will sneak in from the A-Zones, blast 'em, and take it. If they're lucky it'll just be pirate scum. Not that we're undefended. They finally had the brains to put blasters on our ships a few years back, as well as shields, which are great for blowing away pirates in cheap knockoffs of Terran spacecraft. But for the big ships, the cargo runners, or the assault cruisers, we're as effective as gnats against a man with flyswatters for arms, legs, tongue, and genitals. One quick lighting-shock blast of some unknown purple-green ray and you're off to sleep with the fishes, or whatever the vacuum equivalent is. So here I am, Pilot Qwetzil Buttafuco, eating Twinkies in his underwear in some unwashed cabin of a carrier that resembles a bath toy. There aren't real ranks here... you're either a pilot or the captain, nothing else. I had heard some weenie far off on my family tree made himself famous for fifteen minutes near Long Island, but since I'm no history buff (and have never seen Terra) it means crap to me. 'Course, some newbie fighter jock sometimes makes fun of my last name, which is unfortunate for them, but fun for me since I make it a hobby of wrapping people's limbs into bizarre pretzel configurations when they rag on me. Clock's almost hit ten, which means it'll be time to call off the guys to the Briefing Room and dish out the assignments. Fortunately I'm placed in a bunk not very far away from the ship's Briefing Room, because I can't stand walking on ships of this size. You don't need buns of steel to fly planes, although it helps sometimes when you have to cover your ass. * Briefing. Two hundred pilots sitting in uncomfortable metal chairs, trying to digest whatever swill was being called 'food' in the Cafeteria while the Captain hands out assignments. Used to be that they'd call you individually to the Captain's office, where he'd give you a man to man chat (unless you weren't male) and send you packing. This particular carrier switched to the mass-production technique since it has the largest crew of any HAAFF carrier. Just my luck. Naturally, they won't mention what you're carrying unless it's really really unimportant. I can spot the patterns and strategies not in what the captain says, but what he doesn't say, as he hands out the missions... delivery of medical supplies to some colony... that one's legit, since the Captain don't lie. Take a 'package' to a research lab. Could be anything from expensive equipment to a deadly new virus. All you know is that someone somewhere paid good money to have the HAAFF protect their goods during shipping, and ship them FAST. Go pick off some scraggler pirates left behind on a raid. Nothing odd there. Fly cover for some cargo ship as it runs food to a colony. Strange that they'd want five ships guarding the sucker. There's ambush bait if I ever saw some. An emergency recovery of a downed pilot from an emergency mission to recover a downed pilot from an emergency mission. Must be a pretty hot location to sound a three alarm fire. I'm surprised whoever hired us for that one didn't aim higher, say, for Starfleet or even Space Patrol. Not that the Patrol is higher than us; we're better armed and considerably better trained, but they've got some real wildcards which drum up publicity easily. For some reason, all the really warped space- time-disaster missions end up in Patrol hands. I blame drama myself. Never can trust drama. Ah, here's an interesting one. Four missions in a row of 'package' to totally random places. I've seen this before, it comes with the Extra Security Package for those who pay our bills. Five of the six pilots sent out are carrying crap to unimportant places, and the sixth is making the REAL run, probably with something very hot and deadly. There's the fifth pilot being assigned. Damn. The sixth slot falls on me. Standard stuff, take Box A to Space Station B and get back real fast. Of course, it'd have to be standard stuff, or else it'd looks suspicious. I can't stand playing postal carrier, but when a carrier isn't guarding a planet or performing some special duty, it gets all the menial, dangerous crap. One out of six. Well, odds were in my favor. Knowing my luck, I'd be ambushed invariably, but I'm a decent dogfighter and can blow away any shit they throw at me. Pirates? Bah. Undertrained gimps in cheap ships. Traders looking for fast money? Those could be a problem if they're armed, but normally they won't stray from the Anarchy Zones outside Terran space. This run is deeeeep inside the chunk of the galaxy belonging to the Terran Confederation, so no probs there. Shift back into the daily pattern. File out of the auditorium, grab a flight helmet, take an Inertia out and do the run. Here's another fun part of the HAAFF : the Inertias. The Terran Confederation Guide to Spacecraft describes the Inertia as "A small, lightweight fighter/cargo pod designed to evade enemy fire and deliver/pick up small objects/people at high speeds, enabling it to escape/avoid danger." Well, that's fine and all if the rest of the baddies are lightweight too, but one zap with a heavy cannon on some medium sized ship and it's toast city. High speed and really gut- wrenching 90' corners alone do not a fighter make. Neither does the body frame of a cheap '10 Volkswagen starbug. Yes, a Volks. Those cute little 'Herbie' things kids seem obsessed with. This way, all the HAAFF has to do is mount some thrusters on it, some really bitchin' gravity altering doohickeys and a compressed fuel tank and you've got a cheap fighter. The Economy Warhorse, the pilots call it. Gunfodder, I call it. Open the door, climb in, check the fuzzy dice (they double as air fresheners... the think really stinks up a cloud when the engines are on full blast) and maneuver out of the carrier. Click the sucker in autopilot, then sit back and ponder the stars for a few hours while the microengines of the Inertia rocket you onward at ridiculous speed, tiny black box of mystery buried under your seat in an armored vacuum isolation tube, garunteed to survive if you don't... * The alarm buzzer yanks me out of autopilot, cutting a snore neatly in half. I wipe the drool off my chinguard and flip on the radar. Light fighters, three of 'em. Pirates, and pretty low class ones at that, in carbon copies of Inertias. 'Course, the fun part is that the pirates never have shields; they rig up their lasers to do extra damage with the shield power, figgerin' that if they shoot you enough they won't be shot at. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I bend three hard nineties and slam a blaster bolt into one of 'em, grinning at the orange fireball which engulfs itself in the no-oxygen atmosphere of infinity. Pause while the pirates gape in horror, then watch them awkwardly fly the too-responsive Inertias in mad little rectangular orbits. They split up, probably in panic. Time to hunt 'em down and bag 'em individually, I guess. These blaster bolts can't take out two in one shot unless they're reeeeel close together anyway. Zip this way, a few more nineties and I'm right behind the one with the leakage from his exhaust pipe. A brief green glow... what's this? The bugger behind me's taking potshots. I quickly blow his buddy to oblivion, bend ninety twice, pause, two nineties and I'm on his ass. Blast, blast. No more pirate. God, I love these physics-defying things. Crappy construction, awesome power. It's moments like this that give me brief senses of satisfaction and optimism. I'm a great pilot, no doubt, got this Inertia eatin' out of the palm of my hand. Things are looking up. Invariably, as predicted earlier, things look down. The pirate's home ship decloaks, and in a split second blasts the hell out of my ship with another of those odd purple ray things I can never remember the name of. Shrapnel flies by my eyes as the energy bakes my body alive. I smell bacon very briefly before the eternal vacation starts. Exist like a slug, dragging on from day to day with brief bursts of speed in the stars. Get waxed in a fast, clean, surprising manner. Live slow, die hard. That's the way of the HAAFF pilot. I really hate this job.