I was hoping we'd get a 'roid miner out of his claim, maybe get some sort of action. We were about an hour and a half in when things started going sour.

Maybe the dust was thick with cast-off from the mining ops, maybe they were venting excess carbon atoms in favor of something a little higher up the periodic table. Could have been a trick of the light, some nasty pulse off of Shiro, who knows, whatever it was, we didn't see them coming.

They cut at us from a sensor blind tucked between to close orbiting rocks the size of small stations. Tricky flying, engines must have been powered down and they were steering on some sort of compressed gas system. It would be like threading a needle blindfolded and with one hand. No fly by wire at that point, just raw nerves and skill. I had enough time to spot the back-lit Vladislav fist before their opening salvo came at us. Missiles cold launched without hot-lock sensors to send us scattering.

Scatter we did. Cornbread and Susan flipped and rolled, Fredricks went perpendicular with his dampers off, Domino and I pulled out and narrow, tossing chaff and flares and letting those missiles scorch past us while the others bolted. The Vlad's formed up in a pretty close group, I don't know if they were toying with us or what, but Fredricks took us in hot and nasty. He was grunting and giving commands as he flipped his dampers off and on, trying to keep from blacking out when the G-Forces kicked in.

We went in hot, blazed off a heavy salvo of our flash new tech, rail gun propelled flechette rounds of monocrys carbon fibre wrapped in atom thin layers of ultra dense monomers and diamond. 10,000 rounds a minute, moving at a few thousand meters per second. Our payload measures our ammo banks for these things in kilograms...I don't think a single round hit anything important. We scratched em up a bit, but they cut and run and started getting serious after that.

Too serious. These guys were good. I was playing tag with one of their wingmen when I flipped into a Stravinski and caught a glimpse them taking Susan out. She went up like a mini nova as secondary explosions sent her into the Big Empty. I pinched off a couple bursts and tagged my boy with twin Romero scatter head missiles, hoping like hell that I could get him with some saturation fire. I think I scorched his flank, not sure, because he was back on my high six before Susan's oh-two finished flaring.

The next minute and a half were a blur of adrenaline and weapons fire. The Vlad on me seemed to read me like a book, like he was hardwired into my skull. I'd pull a Fredricks Slide, he'd counter with Jubal's Harsh Crit. I'd flip GPB, he'd bongo down and find my exposed flank before I could squeeze off more than a few rounds. I saw Cornbread go up in flames, then right after Domino tagged one of the Vlads, blew half an engine pod off. Non-fatal, too little, too late. Three Vlad's swooped in and took out Domino and Fredricks as they closed on their injured companion.

That left me and my boy. I was so busy jumping and dodging, trying to cut and run and get word out from this stupid sensor deadzone to the Kapilavastu that I barely noticed the rest of these Vlad's had pulled back. I was a few clicks from being clear and able to pull off a tight-beam to base when the flyboy who'd been dogging me the whole battle caught my open flank.

My engines stuttered and stalled, and I was coasting in a slow flip, sensors out, comms out, down to emergency power and life support. Dead in the water and waiting. My Vlad circled around, taking his time, savoring the moment. I don't think either of us noticed until too late that some hotshot in the Vlads was barreling down on me.

Wasn't the boy on my six who got me, was someone else who sent me to the Big Empty. My last thought before I hit that blank space between death and rebirth: Man, I bet that Vlad is pissed his kill was sniped.

Kuso! They just assigned us to weekend patrol group. So much for a weekend away from boring flights past asteroid mines.

But we are still playing soft duty. Flying around in some of the best gear this on side of the Outer Belt. Our teams and crew are jelling together nicely, Domino is stone cold green. I don't think he has enough sim time to be in a flight yoke, but the brass are really pushing to get us up to full compliment.

So, patrol missions and escorts it is. Over and over, mixed with a whole lot of sim time.

I'm in Theta Wing with Susan, Cornbread, and some new fellah we picked up who is greener than me, Domino. Fredricks is running the show for us as wing command. Susan and Cornbread are first and second wing, I'm down near the bottom with Domino.

I'm content. At least I'm with familiar faces for the most part, a lot of the other crew have been through some heavy reshuffling. We are doing pretty much constant training drills to get everyone up to snuff.

It's nice, our new kit is totally whiz. Must have cost a ton of flash for Sun and Blossom to kit us out like this. Makes me really wonder what their game is.

We have her running on low alert, all view ports open. It makes her surface look like an iridescent insect's shell, even though I know she is coated in a sensor absorbing matte black. She'll be nothing more than the occlusion of stars when she is running in combat mode, and less than that if we activate her stealth capabilities.

Kapilavastu has brought a lot of pride to the Cypress Rangers, pride that we did not know was missing until we had her. We now feel special, important. These are the least of changes that we have undergone in the last few weeks. Our leaders, our commanders, have all be changed. I think for the better, though the Rangers feel like a youngster when they first enter an academy. Volatile, acting with an arrogance that tries to hide deep doubts.

We lost something when we were taken down and all ended up in Fiddler's Green, and we have not gained it back yet. The heads in the Sun and Blossom house think that new commanders will replace our doubts, but they won't. If anything, they make them more acute. We now have a whole new set of brass to worry about.

We've been deep in Sun and Blossom territory doing training drills. Getting used to Kapilavastu and her abilities. Getting used to our new crew and new commanders. It goes as well as can be expected I suppose, but I worry about the decision to place all this new kit in the hands of a crew that is over half new recruits or those with less than a year on the fronts. Sure, we have a few vets, and they are some of the best in the system, but are they enough?

Our new home away from home came in last night. She is amazing. Kapilavastu. Built by one of the finest ship builders, Swaagat! Incorporated. Each ship they sell comes pre-christened with a name, apparently they treat the entire process of building a ship as a holy act, one of the few major corporate syndicate houses to have religious leanings these days. To them it is an obsession and a passion, a holy act, to build a ship.

Boy do they do good work. I have never seen a capital ship quite like Kapilavastu, she looks like a new design. Massive, three times the size of our lost carrier, she skirts that territory between a carrier and a battleship. Kitted out with heavy arms, a hefty defensive grid, and flight decks that can hold over 100 Tora's, 15 mixed corvettes, AND two frigates.

She is nearly two kilometers of sleek lines, gentle curves, and baroque accent work. Not one of these stale Nihon crates, all boxy utilitarian lines. Not our Kapilavastu. She has style, even if she has been painted a matte black as flat as the Big Empty.

The Cypress Rangers are getting an upgrade, with the 200 odd crew left in the squad we'll be running a skeleton crew. We'll need to staff up big time, and the bean counters in the Sun and Blossom house have opened up the purse strings I guess. We are shipping out in the next 48 hours, destination undisclosed to crew up and pick up our new command staff.

All this money and investment can mean only a couple things. They are going to send us into the central system, probably Shiro, to show off the wealth of the Sun and Blossom house... the other option excites me far more. It means we'll be going into some nasty territory. It means, I wager, we'll be going to take on House Vladislav again.

So here we sit, waiting for them to finish the math and tell us what we are worth. In the mean time I've been exploring Fiddler's Green. This is the first neutral port-o-call I've ever been to, I grew up in firmly loyalist territories. It is such a strange mix here, loyalists, neutrals, rebels, anarchists, separatists, cultists. They fill the concourses of the station and clog the streets, they must be running Fiddler's Green at 120% capacity. Everything costs a fortune, I've been living on protein bars. The locals seem dedicated to some form of cockroach soup... I guess it helps keep the rampant bug problem here down.

I asked a local why they called it Fiddler's Green. She claimed the central concourse used to be a huge park, with a grove of oak trees, and that the Fiddler was a reference to the family who paid for the station to be built. It has long since been covered over with layers of squatters and concrete, though she claimed someone had built a wall around one tree, and it was hidden in some estate that may or may not belong to a crime lord.

Interesting place, this Fiddler's Green. I can not wait to leave.

We were pushing hard against House Brar's open flank, and digging deeper into Brar territory. Sarge kept complaining that we were pushing too far, and it was starting to smell like a trap, but the brass said push, so we pushed. Sometimes I wish commanders would trust the instincts of front line vets like Sarge more, if it wasn't for his constant write ups and reprimands for being bluntly outspoken, he'd be further along in rank.

We were deep in Brar territory, and they hit us from behind. They hit us hard. Three of the biggest capital ships I have ever seen, they had to have been two clicks long each. Two full carriers, hundreds of support ships. We were sitting ducks.

They made our carrier, our home, our base out here in the black their number one target. Their three battleships unleashed hellfire. I've never seen that many missiles, that heavy a barrage of laser fire. They had some nasty mass driver cannons launching slugs the size of a Tora. We hot scrambled, and tried to protect our ship. Pilots were throwing their ships in front of missiles, blowing up, crawling out of the tank and into a spare Tora to go back out.

We lasted about 15 minutes. 15 minutes in hell, and the engine core ruptured. That took out everything 2 klicks out from the carrier. For 30 seconds nobody on that field of battle who died could move from the Big Empty to a new body, we were held in limbo while our digital memory maps and genetic data flowed across the vast distances of space, on death-net, to the nearest friendly flagged port-o-call.

I died for the first time last week, and woke up at Fiddler's Green with the rest of the Cypress Rangers. We're sitting here waiting to see what happens. To see if the Cypress Rangers are going to exist any longer. To see if the Sun and Blossom house are going to grant us emergency funds and a new compliment of ships and Tora's...

The merger would make Brar/Vladislav one of the largest houses in our area of space, certainly one of the largest houses that don't support the Akarui Empire. Comm's rarely get along with Demo's, though if you ask me the Vlads are just as pro-corporation as any other house out there. They may talk about the worker and the nobility of the miner, but in the end they are just as money and resource hungry as any other house.

Some are saying they may make a run for empire status. I'd like to see that, they don't stand a chance. Even with Barr they are smaller than Sun and Blossom. And we plan to keep them small.

That is one reason why I've been quiet for the last week. The Cypress Rangers were tapped as part of an expeditionary force sent to pound on House Brar's flank while they are busy restructuring during the merger. We've pulled out in full stealth to our current location, and are running hourly sorties against Brar outposts. We've been hitting their resource ops pretty hard. I've racked up five kills in the last week, things have been easy pickings. Mostly older model Tora's kitted out for colony and mining op defense in what is supposedly a secure area.

The commanders think we'll be getting some serious heat soon. I say bring it on. With the supplies we've raided and the resource links we've re-directed, we're rolling in kit. Anyone tries a move against us and it'll be a bloodbath...

I guess I should explain how all this works for the folks back home...

Right, so, the Cypress Rangers are a moderate sized battle squad that is aligned with the Sun and Blossom House. The Sun and Blossom House, I am proud to say, are Akarui Empire loyalists with direct ties to the Akarui royal bloodlines. The Cypress Rangers, as a battle squad aligned with the Sun and Blossom House, get all our resources and funding through them, and it is to them that the Cypress Rangers are accountable.

One of the reasons I was happy my application to the Cypress Rangers was accepted is they are not a mercenary battle squad. It means a lot more stability, and I don't think I could ever handle working for separatists, or worse anarchists, as a merc.

At the moment profit margins for the Sun and Blossom House are down, I think their stock is trading at under 3,500 vcred. Things have been a bit tight for the last six months, houses like Praetor Jurdis and the Graendel's have been really pushing in on their mining and manufacturing sectors. Lots of pirate activity lately too, anarchist movements are on the rise. Seems every day more people are fighting against a unified Hokori-Shiro system.

Politics aside, the drop in Sun and Blossom House stock has the bean counters worried, so, us poor shlubs down on the bottom of the totem pole get to fill out endless accountability reports and expense filings.

I'm pretty sure I am going to get a nasty warning letter from some bean counter for shooting down Susan. That has really been dragging my performance stats down, though Sarge says not to worry about it, they give a lot of lee-way to new recruits. One thing in my favor is I've kept my ordinance usage down and I haven't lost a ship yet. Since my kills count as earnings, I've got at least one hostile kill to balance things out... a bit anyhow.

I better get to my patrol briefing... at least when I'm in my cockpit I don't have to worry about those damned ACC reports.

I saw them as lost, and needing a guiding hand home. Over the last few months out here I have really started to see things differently. There are people out here, like the Praetor J's, who are more interested in money than peace. More interested in chaos than stability. They don't care about safety or the generations to come. They care about what they can get, for themselves, now.

They may cloak it in communism, or the freedom of anarchy, or any dozen of flowery terms of their own creation. But the truth is, at their core, they are corrupt and poisoned. Some of the warlords out here really are despicable, and they really are enemies to everything I hold sacred.

Yesterday's patrol was the worst so far. Light from the twins was casting wicked shadows through our patrol region, we've got enough rocks out here to get some serious dark zones and sensor blanks. To make matters worse, some time over the last few days the Praetor J's seeded a huge area along our flight path with smutt. Looks like they used left over slag from one of their mining ops, flew it in on big barges and dumped it out over the last couple days with those supped up Tora's they are flying. The mining slag was everywhere, playing hob with our sensors, mucking up our ports and intakes, some of the fines they tossed out were even putting a filmy coating on my visual ports.

So here we are, flying through some touch and go territory, and Cornbread pipes up and says it was like "flying through Purgatory." No sooner than he opens his mouth than my search light tags some glitter, and three of those cranked up Praetor J's kick to life and come storming down on us.

Flying dead is risky biz, it takes almost a full minute for a Tora to power up fully from a full shut down. Only way you can really hide from a full sensor sweep like we were doing is to shut everything down, and cool your reactor cores. Basically, you turn into a sitting duck and hope you don't run out of Oh-Two before your mission is over.

We were running full hot, they were coming out of full cold. We made mince of em. The extra weapons they've been bolting on to their Tora's must have made powering back up even nastier, because they were sluggish as I've ever seen, even with their reactor cores over-clocked.

I pulled a standard flip-n-drag, cutting my dampers in and out textbook. His tracer fire was criss-crossing my path, and he scored a few superficial hits on my hide. Pulled a high-gee turn with my dampers off, almost had a red-out I was running so hot, then sighted down on one and took him out with two Grimlock's. My first full on kill of an enemy unit. From then on it was three on two, Sunscorcher bagged one, Cornbread the other. I was pretty jazzed up to have bagged my first kill. To celebrate I shot some Bird out over the com channels... wasn't really breaking regs, but I sure bent them pretty hard. Took a reaming for it in debriefing. So worth it to hear Charlie Parker out there. Bird Lives.

I think the name fits him. He loves the stuff, even though it's dry as dust and only tastes good when you drown it in butter or syrup. His flying can be, at best, described as 'dry as dust'. He even spends time in the mess hall working on new cornbread recipes using the food dispensers.

Anyhow, Cornbread, Sunscorcher, and myself are going out on patrol solo tonight. Susan's running the show, while the two boys play wingmen. Should be another exciting patrol of the back-sides of 'roids and dwarfs. Hoo-Ha!

Like most of us out here, we have friends and family back home. I've got a girl, Helen, back at the Academy. She's training as a med-tech, and should be wrapping up soon. We are hoping she'll get transfered to the Cypress Rangers with me, but that may not happen. Makes things a bit difficult. We went into our relationship knowing how hard military life can be, and that we may not always be stationed together. We are both thinking of settling down together after our combat terms, though who knows how many we are going to take.

I don't think either of our folks had different stories. My mother and father met while at the Academy, split up and got back together as assignments allowed for decades. It wasn't until after their fifth tour that they finally settled down and started having a family. My mother would have gone a sixth tour if my father wasn't forced to take over control of the Yoshida Bloodline. Helen's parents have almost the same story.

It's weird, at school they make you take these history classes, and they talk about how we were once at peace. How we traveled for generations from Earth and settled and tamed the wilds around us together, as one people. Our classes talk about how the Akarui Republic was held together by respect and diplomacy, and how a small minority of dissidents ripped that away from us.

They talk about a time when people never went to war, and families were never separated for years at a time by conflict.

I guess that is the dream I fight for, why I decided to go enlisted rather than officer. Every day I deal with being away from my loved ones by reminding myself that I am out here fighting for the Akarui Empire, trying to bring back diplomacy to our lives. There are a lot of people who don't want that, who fight for anarchy, who control through terror, and who act with evil and malice.

That's why I fight. I fight so that the great dream of a unified system can come true. I fight so the Republic never really dies. So that one day our kids don't have families ripped apart for years by war.

Susan's pissed too, says I've been following her around like a sad puppy. Today in the mess hall she finally blew her stack at me, and said I was acting like a typical rookie. Said out here on the Front we all lose a body here and there, and she was just glad I was the one to 'pop her tank-time cherry' rather than some unknown freebooter or cultie.

I went to talk to Dr. Langdon after Susan blew up at me. He says it's not uncommon for soldiers to freak out after their first friendly fire incident. He used that term, 'friendly fire incident', then rattled off a bunch of statistics. I guess that is all it is to him, a statistic. Another set of numbers that we are all charted on. He recommended facing it head on, and using my datalog as a place to face it if need be. Said to go over the events, and write them all down as I remember. To get it out of my system.

Here goes...

We were out on patrol, a typical flight plan. Circle through the some of the rocks out here, check the areas that the big ships' sensors can't hit, and report back. We've done these sorts of sweeps every day since I got assigned to the Rangers.

A flight of Tora's in the Praetor J's red, green, and gold came tearing out from one of the sensor blind spots behind a thick field of rocks. Came out hot and fast. I've never seen Tora's kitted out like these ones, they had these bundles of big 50mm cannons slung under their engine pods, and it looked like the techs over at Praetor J's figured out how to amp up the engines. These guys were leaving ion trails as bright as Hokori, the rad back-lash must have been cooking the pilots alive.

Was a typical flight of five, just like ours. But these guys tore into us, we lost James and Ghan on their first pass, then we broke off to mix it up. Sarge and Susan ripped it high and starboard, I cut low and port, chasing down the ion trail of one of the Praetor J's. Man, they were running hot, my rad alarms were freaking out, all reds, as I pulled into his six.

I was sighted and my tracers were flying past his head when one of those enemy Tora's opened up with those jerry-rigged 50 mil bundles. Fired from below and to my starboard side, coming up under me. I slapped off my dampers, and did a cut-n-run, shooting full throttle for two breaths, then cutting back down to damper speed before I could red-out. I must have pushed to too hard, because that's when things went wrong.

I saw a Tora come into view, and I swear it was in Praetor Jurdis red, green, and gold. I guess it wasn't, and the hard cut-n-run had my brain a bit short on blood. I didn't think, I just fired.

I always thought it would be James who was the danger out there in a real dust up. Guess I was wrong. I nailed Susan good, cracked the housing on her port engine pod and let her ruptured containment field do the rest. By then Susan and Sarge had knocked off three of the Praetor J's, and the other two had cut and run.

So there you have it, one textbook friendly fire incident.