The Rover didn’t think about it. It was bad luck to think about good luck in a war. It was worse luck to think about why you were different from everyone else. Being an exception to the rule was all well and good, but you didn’t want to dwell on the reasons you were still alive when so many others were dead. It wasn’t conducive to clear thinking. It wasn’t helpful in getting a good night’s sleep.
Walking through the camp, he joked and waved to those who acknowledged him, a light, easy banter that kept everyone relaxed. He knew what they thought of him, and he played off it the way an old friend might. What harm did it do? You could never have too many friends in a war.
He’d been three years now in this one, two of them stuck here on the broad expanse of the Prekkendorran Heights while Federation and Freeborn ground forces hammered each other to bloody pulps day after day after day. A Rover out of the seaport of March Brume, west and south on the Blue Divide, he was a seasoned veteran of countless conflicts even before he signed on. It was no exaggeration to say that he had spent his whole life on warships. He’d almost been born at sea, hut his father, a Captain himself, had managed to reach port with his mother just before she gave birth. But from the time he’d taken that first commission as a cabin boy, he’d lived in the air. He couldn’t explain why he loved it so; he just did. It felt right when he was flying, as if a net of invisible constraints and bonds had been slipped and he had been set free. When he was on the ground, he was always thinking about being in the air. When he Was in the air, he was never thinking about anything else.
“Hey, Cap!” A foot soldier with his arm tied against his body and a bandage over one side of his face hobbled into view. “Blow me a little of your luck!”
Redden Alt Mer grinned and blew him a kiss. The soldier laughed and waved with his good arm. The Rover kept walking, smelling the air, tasting it, thinking as he did that he missed the sea. Most of his time in the air had been spent west, over the Blue Divide. He was a mercenary, as most Rovers were, taking jobs where the money was best, giving allegiance to those who paid for it. Right now, the Federation offered the best pay, so he fought for them. But he was growing restless for a change, for something new. The war with the Freeborn had been going on for more than ten years. It wasn’t his war to begin with, and it wasn’t a war that made much sense to him. Money could carry you only so far when your heart lay somewhere else.
Besides, no matter who you were, sooner or later your luck ran out. It was best to be somewhere else when it did.
He passed out of the sprawling clutter of tents and cooking fires onto the airfield. The warships were tethered in place by their stays, floating just off the ground, ambient light sails tilted toward the sun off twin masts. Most were Federation built and showed it. Big, ugly, cumbersome brutes, sheathed in metal armor and painted with the insignia and colors of their regiments, in flight they lumbered about the skies like errant sloths. As troop transports and battering rams, they were a howling success. As fighting vessels that could tack smoothly and quickly, they left something to be desired. If they were ably commanded, which most weren’t, their life expectancy on the front was about the same as that of their Captains and crews.
He walked on, barely giving them a glance. The banter that had passed between himself and the foot soldiers was absent here. The officers and crews of the Federation airships despised him. Rovers were mercenaries, not career soldiers. Rovers fought only for money and left when they chose. Rovers cared nothing for the Federation cause or the lives of the men that had been expended on its behalf. But the worst of it was the knowledge that the Rover officers and crews were so much better than the Federation crews were. In the air, faith in a cause did little to keep you alive.