Even on the
Jannah, a veritable Island of Misfit Toys in space...
Joan Heidenreich didn't fit in.
She was just a chaplain. A reserved woman of God, expected to fit into this team of strong personalities without taking too much care to let them run amok
or massage them. She may as well have been balanced precariously on one of Judah's mighty fangs. In her unmentionables. While her hair was on fire. It would do her as much good as trying to get a grip on the masked men and enormous windbags of the Paper Tiger unit.
Even despite all its symbolism...Judah had been built for a pregnant woman. Someone they had joked with, trained with, someone Joan would never meet...who had delivered another little miracle to God and allowed Joan a place on a team she both admired and shrank away from.
"Morning, Father. You should get to your HFV."Sasha would often inquire if there was something wrong with Judah, for the Father would always keep the HFV at arm's length when not performing live fire exercise or overseeing its maintenance. She took it as a personal failing on her part that Joan didn't go moon-eyed at the very thought of being nestled in the cockpit and never emerging again. The original cure had been more cuddling and twenty-six seconds of hair stroking, a remedy specifically concocted to wipe the pout off Sasha's face and bring back the bright eyes and the sunbeam smile the hyper mechanic was known for. The second had involved them sneaking out of bed one night to the hangar and Joan physically climbing into the cockpit and pretending to pilot.
Not like a simulation.
Just...sitting in the cockpit. Like a little kid.
Making
pew pew noises.
It wasn't that there was a thing wrong with the mech. It was Judah. The Lion amidst Paper Tigers.
She wanted Judah.
She just wanted it to feel like
hers.But there was no point in waiting to
stop feeling like an outcast when there were pirates at the door. Pirates. Corsairs. The Barbary pigs of the Solar Age, here to pillage what they saw as the last ghost ship of a dead agency. God her Lord Above only
knew what the Paper Tiger prototypes in the hands of such brutes could mean for X Corp. And though she was not X Corp herself...her team was.
Bonded by name, blood, and non-disclosure agreement...
...for now, she was X Corp.
But that was not her primary calling.
By the time she had changed into her pilot suit and reached her HFV, most of the coffee that the mechanic had brought for Sasha McKenzie was consumed, and the remaining joe
swished around softly in the paper cup. Standing before Judah's full might, Joan tilted back her head to glare at the lion's gleaming visage...and chugged the rest of the coffee in a gulp. A mean brew in the morning was necessary as it was delicious for Joan Heidenreich. In the days of old, when Catholicism ruled Western Earth with a death grip, there was a fabled land in the east where women who were deprived of both coffee and a satisfactory lover could demand a divorce and come out on top.
Sasha loved that little piece of trivia. Especially when she pointed out giddily that Joan, ordained as she was, had the power to bring the tradition back on board. The selfish blonde imp. She had even needed to move her espresso machine from
Jannah's chapel - where she preferred it - to their room in order to keep Sasha's energy levels up, as if they were ever in danger of going down.
She didn't seem to understand that Joan, as a coffee-chugging woman herself, was just as entitled to cut loose if she was not allowed a chance to properly savor her coffee. And thanks to these pirates, she'd had to rush her morning cup.
"Those..."
"Those..."
I n f i d e l s.She would just have to bring this conflict to a quick end in the name of the Lord, and let Him sort out the
dramatis personae for himself! He would understand!
"Transferring timing controls to the Judah. All systems green. One way or another, I will bring them closer to our Lord."She had never been in combat, but the urge was there inside every good Catholic - a bestial hymn that rivaled any pure song that rang within a church's walls. It was no different for Joan.
The rest of the team thought she was sane because she hadn't spent her childhood with mecha.
They forgot to consider that she had spent her adulthood with Catholics. And they had clearly forgotten the story of Daniel.
Only the Lord could turn back the lion at its hungriest.
"Father Joan Heidenreich...announcing a Crusade~!"She would spill the blood of the Barbarians who had ruined her morning full of lattes and mecha geeks.
Spill.
Spill!
SPILL!For Jesus her Lord, of course.
"LAUNCHING!"The catapult flung her out into space - vast, terrifying
space, dotted only with HFVs and Jannah behind her. Space, the grave of so many pilots before her. Space, the blissful dream and the waking nightmare of so many frontier spirits. Space...so cold, so black, forever expanding...
She loved it for just that reason. More space meant
more room for God!As the pirates would soon learn, as Joan Heidenreich kept to the back of Paper Tiger's formation and trained her gargantuan twin railguns on the triangle of HFVs.
All they needed to do to avoid being cooked alive was throw down their weapons and throw up their arms. Cast their eyes skyward. Plead loudly for mercy from on high.
And Father Joan would take them into her flock with her open, gentle, caffeinated heart.
Amen.
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