“Well now,” he drawled, “Fuller and Toejnes finally got sick of your bull and kicked you out of Heroes Prime. And you Kev,” he stated, taking in the other pilot, “you managed to get yourself led astray by this ass wipe and earned the boot too, huh?”
The first pilot was drawing in breath to speak when Jay Dubya headed him off at the pass with a raised finger. “Don’t bother Mac,” he hissed. “Just don’t. I had enough the last time I was your C.O., and I do not need you pissing on my leg then trying to convince me it’s raining. Clear?”
Mac kept his face neutral, his eyes locked on his commander’s and paused. He nodded once.
The C.O. held his gaze a moment longer, then exhaled in exasperation. He could already feel a migraine coming on, and these two had only been on planet for fifteen minutes. He rubbed his temple in an effort to alleviate the nagging pain.
“Look guys, I seriously don’t need this. It’s a new battle group, we have less than a week to shake down and I’m already having to field complaints.” His tone was far more weary and resigned than angry, but he continued, just to make sure he had made his point. “Look, whoever came up with the bright idea to bake ex-lax into peanut cookies and leave them where Skoob could find them was bad enough, but tampering with the door controls on his Dilophus so it couldn’t be opened from the inside? That was just nasty.”
He shook his head and carried on. “And as for the bright idea of replacing all the coffee supplies at Prime base with decaf? It took three of them to pull Fuller away from the master fire control console and another two to sedate him… he was going to nuke us from orbit, just to make sure, and to hell with ‘friendly fire’ incident reports.”
He rubbed his face in his hands wearily. “I’ve brought up some pilots from H2. Those guys have done good work. They’ve earned their slot in this force. Kev? You’re supposed to be top dog now, so smarten the hell up and try and set some kind of example.” He turned his gaze back to Mac. “And you? Just stay the hell out of my sight. Dismissed.”
Kev threw a sharp salute and was already turning for the door when he realized that Mac was still staring down their commanding officer. With a warning look, he tried to tug his counterpart on the sleeve to pull him away, but Mac shrugged him off.
“No,” he whispered.
Jay Dubya swung his feet off the desk and sat bolt upright, his eyes drilling into those of the pilot in front of him. “I beg your pardon?” he growled dangerously.
“I said ‘no’, as in I’m not dismissed,” replied Mac quietly. “You’ve had your say, now I get to respond.”
The C.O’s eyes narrowed murderously, but Mac kept has gaze neutral as he spoke. “The next time you come at me with allegations of wrongdoing, especially when you haven’t a shred of evidence to back it up, you should bear in mind that there isn’t a pilot’s tribunal in the galaxy that wouldn’t back me up in calling you onto the honor field. Sir.”
Kev went white. Jay Dubya’s face went crimson and he leaned forward with his knuckles on the desk as he spat out, “Is that some kind of threat?”
Mac shook his head almost imperceptibly and carried on in low careful tones. “No, it’s my honest tactical appraisal of the outcome of a hypothetical course of action.” He held the C.O.’s gaze for about five seconds longer, then snorted. “Look Jay Dubya, I‘ve admired you since I joined H2. Neither Kev nor I would be the mech jocks we are if it wasn’t for your guidance. But for Pete’s sake, toilet humor and laxatives? Really? Seriously?” Mac shook his head in disgust.
Jay Dubya was still mad, but at least he had the good sense to reconsider things in light of that statement. “OK,” he conceded, “maybe the stunt with Skoob wasn’t up to your usual standards. But are you honestly going to try and tell me you knew nothing about the coffee switch?”
“No, I’m not,” replied Mac levelly. “I had a fair idea it was going down, which is why I took the precaution of safeguarding our collective behinds.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew an ornate key attached to a length of chain, then flicked it across onto the commanders desk. “Fuller’s master fire control key. The real one, not the fake I left him with. He may need it back at some stage.”
Jay Dubya regarded the key for a moment, then glanced back up at the pilot. “You mentioned evidence just before,” he said gesturing to the object in question. “What would you call this then?”
Mac flashed a wintry smile. “I’d call it a sign of good faith. And I’d say it has enough purchasing power to buy some use of common sense on your part.” He snorted again and carried on. “Look, yes, it’s a stunt I had been looking at for a while. The problem with it was the way whoever it was executed it. Wasteful and amateurish. Far better to do it on the morning of a Gold medal battle… the only detail I hadn’t quite worked out was how to convince a caffeine starved addict in a berserker rage that the opposition were the ones that had stolen the real coffee.”
He allowed a few moments of quiet for the information to sink in and for the C.O. to consider it, then summed up the situation. “Look, I’m not going to say that you should trust me. That’s stretching the truth so far even I couldn’t pull it off convincingly. What I will say is that same as last time, you’re the boss and I’m on your side, OK?” then he paused and concluded, “Think it over.”
Jay Dubya obviously wasn’t happy, but he reached for the key and held it up by the chain, thinking through the options. “Fuller’s going to expect you to name names,” he stated. “Especially when it comes to important crap like his coffee supplies getting tampered with.”
Mac shook his head. “Can’t,” then he corrected himself, “sorry, won’t.” He held up a hand to forestall the incoming objection. “Same rules apply… just because I know something is going down doesn’t mean I have concrete proof of who’s responsible.”
With that he turned and headed for the door, ushering Kev out in front of him. They were out into the corridor and at least twenty foot away from the closing door before Kev whispered intensely, “Seriously, I do not want to get involved in this kind of crap. Especially not when you damn near call the Boss out for a duel!”
“Relax Kev,” smiled Mac. “It’s not like either of us were going to let that happen. The Boss is too much of a professional to let either of us get killed or hospitalized this close to a war.”
Kev looked dubious. “That doesn’t mean you have to provoke him though. And I mean, c’mon, tampering with Fuller’s coffee. That’s crazy even by your twisted standards.”
Mac glanced sideways at his companion and tutted. “You wound me Kev. Like I said, that wasn’t me. Think to yourself, ‘who is likely to wind people up for no material gain?’, hmm?”
Kev had half opened his mouth before his brain caught up and the possibility had dawned on him that his fellow pilot was actually telling the truth. Which admittedly was a stretch because the sure sign that Mac was taking somebody for a ride was that his lips were moving.
“Leg-Humper Eric?” Kev queried and Mac nodded in acknowledgement.
“Yup,” he confirmed. “I simply took advantage of the situation he created. I needed a reason to have that key so I could return it to Jay Dubya and validate my innocent credentials.”
Kev was starting to look confused. “So what about the stuff with Skoob and the laxatives?”
Mac shrugged. “Yeah, that was me. I needed to be called into the office so I had the opportunity to hand the key back.”
Kev looked aghast. “That was just mean! And you lied to Jay Dubya! You said it wasn’t you!”
“Point of order old chap,” Mac put in, wagging a finger in his companions direction as they walked. “I did not force feed those biscuits to Skoob, he gutsed them down of his own volition. And secondly, if you recall I did not at any stage outright deny that I had made said biscuits, nor that I had tampered with the door controls.”
Kev looked at his companion in disbelief and shook his head. “So let me get this straight… You let leg-humper mess with Fuller’s coffee and risk us getting nuked, just so you could steal the key so you could hand it to Jay Dubya to prove that you hadn’t done anything, including the shit that you actually did do deliberately to get called into his office so you could hand back the key to prove you were innocent?”
Mac beamed at him and patted his shoulder encouragingly. “Exactly!” he exclaimed, “You’re getting good at this!”
“WHY!” Kev wailed, almost in tears of exasperation.
Mac looked at him blankly as if the answer was obvious. “So I had a legitimate reason to be in his office of course.” Seeing Kev’s jaw drop, he continued by way of explanation. “How else was I supposed to get the opportunity to scope the place out so I can hack into the command channels on his terminal? You should have heard the news coming in from the tap I have in Fuller’s office before we shipped out…. Bounties on clones, rogue A.I.s, pilots getting accosted in the street and forcibly harvested of genetic material… there’s far too much going on in this Mecha Galaxy for me to be out of the loop.”
“Did it never occur to you to just ask Jay Dubya for a meeting?”
Mac waggled his eyebrows impishly. “Of course it did,” he replied. “But my way is more fun…”
Submitted by David McCallum # 701548