Thread:GreatDestroyer12/@comment-5365119-20140617093416

Brilliance, Awe, Fear.

Those three words do not even begin to describe the Battle of Manticore. From the pilot’s seat of my Mirage Roi, only a thin layer of transparent aluminum separated me from the chaos outside. It was unbelievable. Thousands of ships, French or otherwise, the largest human fleet ever assembled, were lined on either side of us.

“Gents, welcome to the greatest merdier humanity has ever seen,” Carl’s morbidly good-humored voice rang over the comm.

He wasn’t wrong. We were safe, then, as we fell in line along with a eighty, maybe a hundred other attack wings in front of the human formation. A thin protective line of glistening white fighters stretched as far as the eye could see, ready to attack or to defend. We were the rear guard at that point in the battle, which had been raging on for hours already. That meant that we had the best view of the carnage we were about to enter. Ahead of us, starships from the Gigaquadrant’s great empires, the Delpha Coalition of Planets, the distant Draconid Imperium, to name a few, were setting the void of space on fire. Every explosion, every beam and particle of plasma, drew the outline of one of the Dominatus’ massive starships before fading into oblivion. Debris floated close to us, and sometimes flew so violently past us that it would have torn us apart had we not ducked out of the way.

I had been in battle before––we all had––but nothing of quite this size. I don’t think anyone had up until that point, and I don’t think anyone has ever since. I could tell that we were nervous by the way we kept readjusting our the tilt of our strikecraft, activating this thruster or that. Carl Matthews––yes, him––our squadron leader, permitted this kind of jittering because he knew we were scared and that, as we waited, there was little we could do to distract ourselves. The engineering crews back on the carrier had their cards, their improvised liquor, their repair work to keep their minds off of the kind of hell we were going to enter––we had our thrusters. — Before the battle of Manticore, there was nothing special about Blue Squadron. We weren’t aces, we weren’t hotshot pilots. Heck, we weren’t really that great to begin with. People often ask me how Matthews was before fame, whether or not we suspected he would become one of the most revered aces in France’s history. They probably expect some kind of story involving Matthew’s skill in the pilot’s seat, or something along the lines of how quickly he learned in basic training, or how he could stomach flight much better than the most of us. Many of the people in my airgroup have come out with stories like this after the fact, and I can say for a fact that most of it is bullshit made up by pilots, engineers, some of them officers, who barely even paid attention to us while we were serving in Mirus, and only now are trying to cash in a little on his fame. It’s a disgrace.

If you need to know, Carl Matthews stood out like a sore thumb, but it had nothing to do with his piloting skills. For starters, he was American, a regular cowboy, there was no doubt about that. When not on duty, he liked to parade around in these thick-soled cowboy boots which clanged loudly against the bulkheads as he walked, announcing his presence to everyone two decks down. Much to the frustration of the CAG (commander of the airgroup) at the time, he had “lost” his service pistol and happened to replace it with an American model he somehow smuggled aboard. We even once played cards with him as he sat there, shirtless, with the most absurd hat I have ever laid eyes on. He seemed to love to fit that stereotype, and we laughed and loved him for it. So no, we did not see the Battle of Manticore coming. –– 