by Greg Dragon
Helga heard a man scream as one of Raileo’s shots found home, and she scrambled up to her feet and shouted, running towards where they were. Shots scattered about her, and it was a wonder that she didn’t go down. But she was fast, and her finger was faster as Cilas joined her in her scramble to run down on them.
Several of the shadows started scrambling backwards, and one went down in a heap from Cilas’s gun. Raileo was on her hip now, his marksman class proving itself in this hour of need, and two more went down noisily, one taking three shots from Helga’s pistol.
“How many?” Cilas shouted as he pushed past Helga. They were now in a chase, cutting through the blackness of the jungle.
“Two more,” Raileo said, but Helga could barely hear either of them. She had marked the one in front of her, and he was going to die; it really didn’t matter how far he could run. It was then that she saw another figure rush from the bush, and she barely checked her pistol as Quentin overtook the first of the men. His wicked black knife reflected the moon as it rose and dove into the man’s throat, and Cilas stopped, then aimed carefully and put a round into the back of the last man’s head.
“Ate, what in the thype came over you?” he said, barely able to breathe.
“Is that all of them?” she asked, as she bent over with her hands on her knees.
“Yeah, we got those thypes,” Quentin said, and she could see him for the first time. He was soaked in blood and looked more monster than the gentle giant she had admired before.
“Wow Q. How many did you kill?” Raileo said.
“Schtill man, I don’t know, I just killed anything that moved. Two fell to my knife.” He wiped the blade ceremoniously across his chest. “Slipped around them to the north but had to delay since you all were shooting up the place.”
“Do you know if any escaped?” Cilas said.
“None that I saw, sir, but I didn’t really take the time to check,” he said.
“Good man,” Cilas said, and exhaled with what seemed like relief.
“Sheesh, how much of the fight did I miss?” Helga said. She could still hear her heart beating into her ears.
“Not much,” Cilas said. “I’m just glad that you showed up when you did.”
Quentin knelt down and grabbed a dead man and then pointed to the one that Cilas had killed. “Grab that one, Ray,” he said, giving Raileo a shortened nickname.
“Laser ray,” Cilas said, grinning, and Helga couldn’t understand why he was so happy. Just a few moments earlier he’d been about to die, if not for her suicidal run to throw off the enemy’s fire.
Cilas Mec was a stoic, through and through, yet now in this moment he was like a fun-loving teenage cadet. He slapped Raileo’s back playfully, who seemed to be loving the name. “Okay, you heard the sergeant, grab these thypes and let’s see who they are.”
Each of them separated to find the dead men and bring them back to their smoky disheveled camp. By the time they’d collected all of them, there were six dead bodies around the radiator. The men were Meluvian, though they weren’t military, but the weapons they used were from the Alliance. “These are Wolf’s men?” Raileo stared down at the corpses, now arranged in a row.
“Wolf’s men,” Cilas confirmed. “These are scouts, sent to patrol the beach. They must’ve seen the radiator—”
“Or smelled the cooked flesh from our evening meal,” Helga said.
“Then they threw a fire bomb, thinking we were all in the tent,” Quentin said. “You were very lucky, ma’am. It fell short, and the lieutenant started fighting to hold them off.”
“I can figure out the rest,” she said, kneeling down to examine the face of a dead man, who looked to be about her age. “Ray aided Rend, and you slipped into the shadows to flank them, and that’s when you found their camp. Meanwhile, little Helga Ate slept peacefully until Lei saw fit to wake me up. Fire everywhere, and you intended to save my life.” She inhaled.
“I wasn’t being suicidal, Cilas. I … I don’t know what came over me, but I just did what needed to be done. It wasn’t how I was trained, I know, but out here, like you always say, all we have is instinct. Ray’s instinct was to rely on his aim, and Quentin went back to recon. You were pinned down and immobile, and all I kept thinking about was you taking that gunshot on Dyn.”
“Ate,” he started, and then seemed to check himself. “Thank you, but you have to promise me that you won’t do something like that again. These men will need you if I go down, but just now, you charged the enemy like someone with nothing to lose. The Alliance needs you, Ate. I need you … to keep this going, even if I can’t go on.”
He turned to Raileo. “Grab your packs and collapse the tent. We need to get as far away from this area as we can. With this victory we’ve blinded Wolf, but he is going to come looking for his men. We need to find a new spot to hole up for the night so that all of us can get some rest.”
“This is a jungle, with animals,” Raileo said. “Plus we risk falling into a hole or worse, trudging around in the dark. I say we go back some and find an area near the beach. That way we can’t be ambushed again, since we’ll have the ocean at our backs and a wide area to see.”
“You’re talking ten miles of hiking through the same jungle you warned against,” Helga said. “These men, do you think that they found us on accident, or is Odam playing both sides, and they followed us in from the village?”
“No way,” Quentin said. “Not when his teacher is a spy for the Alliance. If it wasn’t an accident, it means they tracked us in the dark. I think that someone told them we were here, and they came down and found the heat signature of our radiator. They were armed and ready with firebombs so they knew that they’d be in a fight. The poor assault on our camp though, that indicates unpreparedness, and a degree of panic, which hints at this being an accident. They had a line of men shooting in from one location, which allowed me to flank them easily. They’re badly trained guerrilla fighters, probably the same rebels that Wolf is rumored to be living with. They came upon us on accident but knew that we’d be hostile. They threw the bomb to smoke us out, hoping we’d run out and get cut down by their weapons.”
“Good assessment,” Cilas said, and gestured for them to collect their things. Helga grabbed her pack and slung it on, then joined the rest of the Nighthawks as they set out. “Let’s take it further west. I think I remember seeing elevation when I scanned the map of the area. Maybe there’s a cliff face, or better yet, a cave. Something that makes it impossible to surround us, and where we can all get some rest.”
He led them back down the path and over Helga’s ditch, then turned them west through a tight crop of trees, which forced them to have to hack their way through. The whole time they walked, Helga worried that they’d find a nest of brovilas thirsty for blood. She stayed back to let them cut a path, holding her pistol near her chest. If she saw one, she was going to shoot it before it got a hold of them.
Helga wondered how she’d ever sleep. Earlier, she had closed her eyes while reclining in the tent, and the next thing she knew, Raileo was pulling her out of the fire. The exhaustion, the bite, and whatever the medicine was that Odam gave her, had kept her drowsy for the most part, so when she rested at camp her body shut down.
Now, she was ready to walk all night and take on anyone that got in their way. She loved this feeling, this out-of-body readiness, since it was the only way to shut off her mind from the numerous negatives that plagued it.
“Contact,” she said suddenly, and dropped down to a knee, aiming at a figure that stood out against the trees. As soon as she spoke Cilas hoisted his rifle and aimed down the sights at the location where she pointed.
“Hold,” he said. “That’s some sort of animal. It looks like a man, but there’s too much hair. And there it goes, up a tree. Good eyes, Ate, but that was just some sort of ape.”
“As wired as I am right now,” Raileo said, “it took everything in me not to drop it.”
“Stay disciplined,” Cilas said. “Even in the dark that could have been a child, or a civilian making their way home to a village that we don’t know about. You don’t want to go shooting innocents; it’s a burden that will break you in time. As an ESO on call, that’s the last thing you want to deal with, trust me. If the nightmares don’t get you, the things you do to cope eventually will. I’ve seen operators get grounded for staying in their cups, or becoming a regular at a brothel, or becoming addicted to spice.”
Helga thought about her own dealings, even though she’d only killed bad guys. It didn’t take much to be haunted by your thoughts, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d cope if she ever hurt a child. Cilas was right about the vices that spacers used to cope. She had become a drinker, leaning hard on the bottle when those Geralos demons would haunt her mind.
They would take over everything and put her back into that cold room again. There she was helplessly hanging from a hook while they cut out a section of her head. Even the thought of it now made her crave a stiff drink, but her nerves were on end, so she quickly moved past it.
“Ate,” Cilas whispered, grabbing her arm.
“What?” she said, turning on him, suddenly confused.
“You were just standing here, staring at that tree. Stay by my side, we’ll get you the rest you need.”
Helga jogged after him, now concerned about the infrequent lapses in her consciousness. It had been a long road to normalcy after the events on Dyn, but for all the problems she had fitting back in, blanking out wasn’t one of them.
Maybe he’s right, and it’s the poison making me sick, she thought, and now she was on board with finding a safe place to sleep. With rest she could be normal again and prepared for what the day would bring. Still, it was frightening to have her alert mind slipping, so she focused on Cilas’s muscular form and followed him back to the team.
14
With their shelter burned up and there being a chance that more of Wolf’s men were lurking, none of the Nighthawks found it easy to sleep. Their eventual camp was inside another rock formation, which looked to have once been a building or shrine.
Two stayed on watch while two lay on their bedrolls beneath a set of large leaves. Helga again was told that she was to sleep and recover but her mind would not allow it. She and Raileo had been made to rest first, but while the young recruit passed out as soon as his head touched his pack, Helga lay on her side, uncomfortable, and kept imagining a brovila slithering out from the rocks.
After a time, she got up and walked out towards Cilas and Quentin. “I’m just wasting time laying there,” she said. “Do either of you want to trade turns with me?”
“Nice phrasing,” Quentin said, glancing over at Cilas, who didn’t seem amused by the Marine. Helga thought about what she said and when she realized that her offer sounded sexual, she shot Quentin a look of disappointment.
He forced a grin. “Bad joke,” he said. “Trying to lighten the mood and failed. I apologize, ma’am—”
“Accepted, but you need to work on your timing, big guy.”
“I’ll grab some shut eye,” Cilas said, squeezing her shoulder as he walked past. “Wake me up in two hours, and then you’re getting some sleep, even if we have to glue your eyes shut, Nighthawk.”
Helga slipped the handgun from its holster and walked out to stand with Quentin. Looking around, she felt better about their chances, since they were wedged inside a gorge with only one way in and out. Above them were giant trees, which Helga remembered studying in her classes as a cadet. Ba’lovian Ash was the Vestalian name for them, and they were as tall as some ships were long.
This forest was thick with them, but here they were denser than anywhere else she had seen. The diameter of some of the trunks went upwards of about five meters, and the limbs grew in a spiral, with leaves so big that one could shelter a company of soldiers. The trees in their nook grew so close together, however, that the leaves made a ceiling at the top of the pass. The ground felt like clay, with large clumps of grass, and it all formed a gorge leading back into the rocks.
“We should mark this spot, in case we need it coming back. You couldn’t ask for a better place to sleep out in the wild,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Quentin said, as he leaned against the trunk of a tree and stared up at the patchwork of leaves. “If we find it cozy, then there’s a chance it’s someone’s home. Now, I don’t know about the natives, but I’m not big on coincidences.”
“Some sort of animal?”
“Maybe, or some vicious Meluvian cruta. Survivalist native-type, knows this jungle the way we know our way around a starship. It comes back and we’re toast, because it will know ways in that we will miss in all of this blackness.”
“Are you ever positive?” Helga asked, and the big man shot her a weary glance.
“Heck of a first day, ma’am,” he said.
“Heck of a first day, Tutt.”
They stood in silence for a very long time, and Helga found herself dozing as she leaned against the rock. Rubbing her face to wake up, she instantly regretted giving up on getting some sleep. Stifling a yawn, she looked over at Quentin, and noticed that he was in the same place he was when she’d walked up. Is he asleep? she wondered and cleared her throat to gauge his actions.
“Had a good rest?” he said as he adjusted his stance, and she gave him an obscene gesture.
“So, what do you think?” she said, still watching him pretend to be a part of the tree. It actually worked. He was still in his uniform, and with the subtle movements he made to stay comfortable, it would be impossible to spot him from a distance. This made her self-conscious as she sat slouched on one of the rocks.
Here she was the senior Nighthawk, but Quentin was in his element, having fought in regions like this before. She wondered what he thought about her beyond his respectful, “ma’am”. Did he respect her as an officer, or did he see her as a naive rookie that was in way over her head? She wanted to know, but Quentin was as firm as the rock she sat upon. He would only tell her what she wanted to hear, and it would be convincing.
“Ma’am?” he said.
“Sarge, you can call me Ate. Nighthawks are a team, remember? We’re not on the bridge of the Rendron. I just want to talk a bit. It helps to silence the mice running around in my head.”
“You see anyone about those mice?” he said, crouching as he scanned the area.
“Sure, I see doctor brandy just about every night.”
“Temporary solution, Ate. Take it from a man who has a small nation of mice running around in his head. You have to surrender to that psych. Take the treatment they give you and allow the memory wipe. I don’t know everything about Dyn, ma’am, but I did read that you were a prisoner, though they didn’t give much detail.”
“You want details, Tutt? I’ll give you details about that trip. How about we landed into a schtill storm, where half of our team was gone before we reached the colony. Lizards ambushed us, stripped us and stored us like food in a freezer. They wanted to cut open my head and bite into my brain.” She chuckled. “But Cilas broke out and rescued us. I don’t even know how long we were there. After that we were picked up by pirates … friendly pirates who seemed really nice. Planets, I still don’t know how we made it out, but here I am with the mice.”
“See the psych, Ate. You’ll be … hold,” he said, going still, and then raising his weapon to stare down the sights. “False alarm, it’s some animal, freaky-looking thing sulking about. Yeah, the psych treatment, it’s worth it, especially for what we do. As to your earlier question on what I think. I like what I see in our lieutenant, and the strength I read in you. Ray, he’s a sharp boy, talented, and we’ve already spilled blood together. I’m happy to be here, Ate, tired eyes and all. How can I not be, considering what Wolf is and what he’s done?”
Good thing you came in this year, and not last, Helga thought, remembering the disaster at Dyn. T
hey grew silent again, Quentin, the camouflaged statue, and Helga, having slipped down to blend in with the bushes, again fought against the exhaustion of the day. She was losing this skirmish, and her eyes grew heavy despite all the tricks she tried. Soon she was asleep in the most awkward position, kneeling in the dirt below the low leaves of the ash.
When her eyes came open, she didn’t know how long she had been out, but she noticed a few things immediately. First, there were new sounds, loud and shrill. It was these squeaks and squawks that roused her, even though she was still groggy and confused. She also saw that she was inside of the rocks, with the leaves above her that completed their tent. She didn’t recall going back in there the night before. Matter of fact, she only remembered standing watch with Quentin.
Helga looked around frantically and saw that she was alone. If she was asleep, then so should Quentin, since it would be Cilas and Raileo on watch. She rolled herself out of the big leaf that had apparently been her blanket, stood up, stretched, and then stumbled to the entrance of what she now saw were ruins.
The place where they camped was really the inside of a small stone structure. She could see the woodwork, which had supported the stone, and the wooden frame for some sort of ceiling, which Cilas had replaced with the leaves.
Outside it was light, and Helga remembered that she had indeed been on watch with Quentin. Thype me, I fell asleep on watch, she thought, not wanting to face the men. What is wrong with you, Helga Ate? she scolded herself. You are a senior team member, but you’re acting like a recruit.
As she walked down the path towards the area where she’d posted up with Quentin, she could hear voices she didn’t recognize. The tone was low and even, as if it was a friendly chat, but she primed her handgun, just in case it was the men from the night before having caught up with them.
“How many?” said a voice with a thick accent that was like the people from Odam’s village.
