by Greg Dragon
“How are you doing?” he said to Raileo. The man looked like a leaf about to be blown away in the wind. It was really coming down now, a perfect climax to their journey, and the wind made the water blow sideways, soaking them through and revealing the injury that Raileo was trying to hide.
“Um, Lieutenant, I think that’s our girl,” Quentin said, snapping Cilas’s head around. He had been watching the Hovex APV as it flew back to the capitol, and now as it hovered near the edge, he could see that it was piloted by Helga Ate.
“You all like the rain, or do you want to get out of here?” she said through the comms, as the rear door on the transport opened, beckoning them inside. Where the pilot she killed couldn’t manage a low hover to allow Wolf to jump in, Helga showed why she was special by bringing it down to where Quentin could easily step in.
Cilas started to laugh. It was the greatest feeling, and he walked over to Raileo, whose strength had reached its limit. He gave the young man his shoulder, and then limped with him over to the transport, where Quentin helped to pull him onboard. Wolf was bound and placed in the backseat, his face so pale that Cilas thought that he was dead.
“How’s this thype doing?” he said, as he worked his way forward to sit next to Helga.
“Paralyzed, or something else just as terrible,” Quentin said. “He’s alive, but his breathing is shallow. We will need to get him patched up before we break atmosphere. You’re not looking too hot either, Lieutenant. To be honest, you all look like schtill. Is there a chance we have an Alliance doc that can get us right down here?”
Cilas thought about it as they flew over the town. There were Alliance bases all over Meluvia, but he didn’t have the equipment to know where the closest one was. His options were to find Ati Lars, the old monk that had helped them at the ruins, or risk the town where Odam waited to see if the locals would help.
“Odam. We still need to contact him. Maybe he has someone that can look into these wounds. It’s risky, so I will need to contact the captain first. How are you doing, Tutt?”
“Still pumped and ready to execute pain.”
“Yeah, I’m still on the high too,” he said. He glanced at Helga who still seemed deaf. He looked back at Raileo and saw that the young man was slumped over on the seat, his head resting against the glass. They all had their helmets off but he still had his rifle resting on his lap. “How’s the leg, Lei?”
The normally jovial Raileo Lei rolled his head towards the lieutenant with an expression that seemed to say, “What do you think?” Helga had wrapped and treated it, but he needed to have the bullet extracted and the wound cleaned.
“We’re almost home, brother, just keep your eyes open. Ate’s going to get us out. We’ve got a true ace piloting this transport. By the way,” he said, “In case you are wondering about where you all stand. I didn’t fight with two recruits today. I fought with three Nighthawks.”
23
Retzo Sho tried to remember when last he had felt this torn about his future. It was an unsettling feeling, and the type of thing that he could never share with anyone outside of his beloved Tara Cor. Here he was a captain on one of the premier Alliance ships, yet what was on his mind had nothing to do with his duties.
He had just seen Captain Tara Cor off on a transport back to the Aqnaqak, and now he worried that it would be another year before he would see her again. Those tender moments that they had shared with one another blinded him like a shroud, in the way love tends to obfuscate duty.
He was like a teenager again, willing to risk it all for her, and he wondered if she was as conflicted as he was. Before this reunion with the love of his life, he had kept his days focused on his duties. As a captain his world was a tunnel with an undiscovered end.
It was simple, really. Keep the ranks focused on strategy while keeping an eye on the morale of the rates. Take orders from the council, make improvements where you could, and when it came to combat, stay on the winning side.
Prior to Tara’s visit he couldn’t tell what was at the end of the line. How could the end be considered when he was busy fighting the Geralos? She was seared into his brain and it made it hard to move on. Even now, on his bridge, he stared out at the Aqnaqak and wondered if she was okay.
There was a chance he had made her pregnant, and he secretly hoped that she was. It was the sort of disruption that would force the Alliance to reconsider, and for a time Rendron would be made to support the Aqnaqak crew. It would mean that he’d be able to see her whenever he wanted.
Furthermore, a child could convince them both to step down and become a family. Between the two of them there would be enough credits for a home on Meluvia or Traxis, and there they could start the final chapter of their lives.
“Captain,” a familiar voice said, pulling him out of his thoughts, and he glanced over to see his communications officer, Genevieve Aria, standing patiently next to his chair.
“What is it, Miss Aria?” he said, knowing it wouldn’t be good.
“I was just curious, sir, about our Nighthawks, since they were on a mission for the Aqnaqak.”
“Everything seems to be going as planned,” he said, curious as to why she would be asking about them.
“Of course, Captain, that was never a question. I was just worried—”
“About Cilas?”
“Yes, and Helga Ate as well, sir.”
Retzo almost smiled. Genevieve did not know Helga Ate enough to care, and he knew that there was history between her and Cilas Mec. He tried his best not to pry into the relationships amongst his crew, but he kept close tabs on his officers and knew that Genevieve and Cilas were once an item.
“Jenny,” he said, using her informal nickname. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this because you more than anyone on this bridge know. Cilas isn’t just another ESO. He is one of, if not the greatest spacer the Rendron and possibly the Alliance has ever seen.”
“That is extremely arguable since you’re still here with us,” Genevieve said, squatting down close to his chair so that only he could hear. “Cilas is special, but he isn’t you, Skip, and this is why I worry about him.”
Retzo smiled at her compliment, though he was too much of a gentleman to accept her praise. He was a living legend, considering the things he’d accomplished in his life, but so was Cilas and many other Marines on the Rendron. “You’re too kind, Genevieve, but Cilas will be alright. If there’s one person who I could trust to survive anything, it’s him.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she said and then stood up and returned to her station. Retzo saw out of the corner of his eye that a squadron of smaller ships had flown up to start their docking sequence with the Aqnaqak. Would he miss this if he was forced to retire and play at being a civilian family man? He wondered if he would, after enough time had passed, and he was living with Tara on the surface. Who would they give the Rendron to once he retired? Jit Nam or whomever the council decided was best for the role?
There were a little over 30 Alliance starships in Anstractor, each with a capable captain and crew. They would ask him to elect a candidate and he would of course name Jit. Before Jit there was Cruz, who had been an easy choice as XO. He had seen combat several times over, had spent a decade on the bridge, and had taken the lead in a major fight against a Geralos destroyer.
Any argument that the Alliance would have made to counter him as a candidate would not have held water, considering his record. He was the de facto captain-to-be of the Rendron until that awful day when he took his own life. After him had been the CAG, Adan Viles, who turned out to be compromised by the traitor, Tyrell Lang.
The Rendron’s history of executive officers had been both disastrous and tragic in every way. Following the death of both Viles and Lang, Retzo had struggled to fill the vacant seat. The choices had been Commander Jit Nam, the young lieutenant, Cilas Mec, and his favorite officer, Genevieve Aria. While he was happy to choose any of them, the obvious choice had been Jit, since he wa
s the only one with experience helming a starship during war.
Jit had been the commander of the SoulSpur, a deadly infiltrator with a crew of 150 hardened Marines. The decision was still difficult considering his relationship with Genevieve. But she was inexperienced in the art of war and could prove a liability if ever he was killed. He would promote her eventually, but not to executive officer, and the other choice in Cilas Mec was needed to lead the Nighthawks.
“Nighthawks,” he whispered, still worried about his team. He got up from his seat and walked over to an empty station where he stared out through the window at the repairs happening outside.
Retzo thought of the late commander, Tyrell Lang of the Inginus, a man that had betrayed him and endangered the lives of all his men. He had been part of a conspiracy to become XO of the ship. This plan had involved getting Cilas Mec out of the picture, as well as Jit Nam and any other officer qualified for the job.
Lang’s foolish maneuvers had caused the Inginus to be disabled. It would be a long time before the infiltrator would be a force to reckon with again. But he had promised himself that she was going to be resurrected, one way or another. It was a complicated effort with many stages in the process, from assembling the construction auto-mech to tethering it to the base of the ship.
Only once before had he witnessed this construction. He was nine years old, barely a cadet, when the Alliance had made the order. Back then the starships would be the ones out scouting, locking horns with the Geralos, and risking thousands of lives. One starship too many being reduced to debris had shown that this method was reckless.
He remembered being with his mother at the time, along with every cadet on the ship. The construction of the auto-mech took a little over a Vestalian month, but it made short work of the development of the SoulSpur, their first infiltrator. The blueprints for the robot-builder along with the infiltration ship were uploaded to the systems of every Capital ship.
When the program was launched a directive was made: all ships with a crew larger than 4,000 were required to have a pair of infiltrators, each with a crew of 150 Marines. If a starship was a body, then its infiltrators were its fists. They were built for battle, each loaded with the deadliest ordinance of the day.
A few weeks earlier during the battle with the Geralos battleship, Nian, the Inginus had exposed itself and was split in half with a trace laser. If not for the Nighthawks, the sixty surviving Marines would have died, and there would be no Inginus for them to fix with salvaged parts. Now he watched that old robot, resurrected from the bowels of the Rendron, working on the Inginus, adding parts from chunks salvaged from the Nian.
The items needed to create an infiltrator from scratch would have had the Rendron parked for months. There was the crystal fusion core, which required several crews to assemble, then there was the power distributor to control it, and a sensor module regulator. The final step was mounting the shield generator and then testing if it would listen to the power distributor.
Luckily the Inginus still had its core, and the shield generator was attached to the half that remained. Retzo wished that he’d had the foresight to tell the Marines to assemble the auto-mech right after they had won the battle. Perhaps then they would have been able to grab the other half of the engine. Then the repairs would only have taken a month.
But the other half was still in orbit, floating somewhere above Meluvia. It would break apart eventually, becoming a nuisance to any pilot unlucky enough to fly into its field. Maybe someone will take a trace laser to the rest of the chunks, he thought. It was a hefty wish, being that most pilots would rather avoid it than shoot to try and break it apart.
Retzo worried that some of the debris would make it past Meluvia’s atmosphere, turning into fireballs destroying anything in its wake. Millions of lives could be lost, and for what? His failure as a captain to clean up his mess?
A vibration on his wrist brought his attention away from the repairs. It was his comms, a call from Tara Cor.
“Miss Aria,” he announced.
“Captain?”
“I’ll be inside my cabin, and I am not to be disturbed, do you understand?”
“I do, Captain Sho.”
“Good. You have the bridge but keep me posted.” With that he walked out in long meaningful steps, anxious to hear what Tara had to say.
Corporal Urja Loo ushered Tasmin down the passageway, past the galley and the compartment where she had first stayed. Tasmin hadn’t realized that they had given her a room near the fore and that there was a lot more ship behind her.
The corporal held her hand as she walked, taking her through spaces and passageways. Finally, she stopped inside a large compartment loaded with crates where a lonely table sat in the corner. Tasmin looked around.
“Can I go somewhere with a window?” she said, dreading the thought of being stuck somewhere, clueless as to what was coming.
The corporal walked over to the bulkhead and pulled open a hatch. There she manipulated a sequence of controls and the bulkhead split and slid apart, exposing a massive window. Tasmin could see Vestalia and the fragments of what used to be Syr. She brought a finger up to her mouth and held it pressed against her lips.
It felt odd to think that her family being kidnapped was good fortune, but had they been on that satellite when—No. She shook her head. If not for the attack in the first place, her home would have not been destroyed. This was not a coincidence or some ill turn of fate; it was part of whatever plans had the SatSec enforcers turning on civilians. If only she had some training, she would be inside of her own ship right now, chasing down the traitors.
She looked around and saw that the corporal had taken a seat on top of one of the crates. “I’m okay,” Tasmin said to her. “You don’t have to watch me or whatever.”
“I know,” the woman replied cheerfully. “But orders are orders, and my place is here with you until we are back on the Aqnaqak.”
Tasmin shrugged. “I see. Okay,” she said and turned back to the sadness outside. There was a dull ache in the back of her throat, and the constant urge to cry, but Tasmin had decided that enough tears had been shed. She would get back at the people responsible for this.
She stood there staring for a very long time, expecting the corporal to say something. She turned to see if the woman was still there or if she had drifted off to sleep. She was still on the crate, her legs swaying ever so gently as she stared out at Vestalia with a smile on her face.
Is something wrong with her? Tasmin wondered as she examined the Marine from head to toe. She was short—they were actually about the same height—and her skin was flawless, smooth and brown. Tasmin wondered if she’d ever seen combat, since she lacked the hard edge of the other Marines.
Her large brown eyes seemed impressed by everything, as they danced above a long nose and a set of full lips. Tasmin decided that she was attractive and wondered how she avoided being harassed on the ship.
“What’s it like on the Aqnaqak?” Tasmin said, placing her back against the bulkhead and sliding down until her bum touched the deck. “Is it all soldiers, or is it like a combination of, um, regular people—like me, and Marines, and spacers, I mean, pilots or whatever?”
“Have you ever been on a starship?” Urja said, and Tasmin shook her head no. “There’s nothing quite like it. On the inside, you tend to forget that you’re in a massive box floating around up here where we don’t belong. Not much different from your hub, I’d imagine, just a lot bigger, with rules because it is an Alliance warship. We have Marines, formal Navy, ESOs, and cadets, our cute little spacers in the making. That’s what you get on most Vestalian starships, and the Aqnaqak is no different.”
“Will you train us to fight? Me and my family, that is. If we’re to be on a naval ship, we would need to become soldiers, wouldn’t we?”
The corporal smiled. “You’re going to be our guest. Leave the fighting up to us, young Tasmin. We really don’t expect you to enlist
.”
“What if I want to? What if I want to be a corporal, like you?”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Then you would become a recruit and would need to go through basic training. Typically, we start young, eight or nine to become a cadet. There you get your schooling while learning the basics needed for a career in the Navy, and you graduate at about the age that you are now and enlist in whatever branch they need you in.”
Tasmin was interested now. Urja was unknowingly playing her song. Since the dream of being a SatSec officer was now gone, she was happy to hear that she could actually become a spacer.
She had long dreamed of joining the Navy as a means to get off the hub, but someone had told her she was too old, so she had set her focus on the next best thing. Tasmin Rose living on an Alliance starship had sounded impossible, but here sat an actual Marine saying that it wasn’t.
“My little sister, Celeste, is only eight. Do you think she would be allowed to become a cadet?”
“Would your parents want that?”
Tasmin shrugged. She really hadn’t given it any thought. She had always done what she wanted to do, so she assumed that for Celeste it would be the same. “So, Aqnaqak is all Navy, with no regular people on board?”
“That’s correct.”
“So, what will they do with my parents once we catch the bad guys? Celeste and I will join up so I imagine then we could stay, but what do you do with my parents? Will they be made to live in another hub somewhere?”
“Tasmin, we have an area where retired spacers live. For all sense and purposes, it’s as civilian a setup as you can get. They are separated from us, but they have nice facilities like a park, recreation center, and theater. You and your parents will probably live there, and if you choose to enlist, then you’ll be part of the Aqnaqak family. Our captain is the best, and there is no way she would throw you out after everything you’ve been through.”
