by Greg Dragon
Her plan was not to get out of the Vixen until they docked with the Aqnaqak, so sitting in the cockpit for hours in wet soggy boots was not what she wanted. Cilas had made a snide remark about how stylish she looked, but comfort and warmth were her goals, which were met.
To think that I’m here in the pilot’s seat of a V35 Vixen, Helga thought. It was a privilege, but she disliked the price that came with it. I won’t be able to rest until Misa is back in this cockpit where she belongs, she thought.
They broke past the trees to a sprawling plain where several large animals could be seen grazing, seeming like moving hilltops in all of that white mist. Meluvia was indeed beautiful, just like its people. Despite the ugliness that war and struggle brought, this misty, damp morning brought a clarity to her mind.
She was young, yes, a fact that couldn’t be helped by bringing it up as an excuse whenever she faltered or made a mistake. When she was at her best, she was simply Helga, the half-Casanian ESO whose life had been one of proving people wrong. Even the fact that she was still alive spoke not only of her wisdom, but also to her skill and mental strength.
She was tired of doubt and feeling lucky; she had been through BLAST, and Dyn. After this mission, who would have the nerve to question Helga Ate’s resume? This thought made her smile. Oh, how her parents would be proud of what their little girl had done in her eighteen years of life.
Now, the cadets who’d made fun of her heritage would be wishing that they too had Casanian in their blood. She had heard the whisperings from Joy Valance one late evening when they were inside her compartment, sharing drinks and gossip. Someone started a rumor that “Lady Hellgate” was as good as she was because Casanian blood, when mixed with human, made for extremely heightened senses and physical toughness.
Joy—who thought it was hilarious—had asked Helga whether it was true, and what other gifts she’d kept from them as a super-soldier. At the time Helga didn’t find it amusing, but she felt herself liking the idea of the rumors.
She hadn’t analyzed it then, but now, she realized it was the biggest reason behind the looks she received as she walked around the ship. They probably thought she could read minds, punch through metal, and breathe without atmosphere. She wanted them to keep thinking this, these average spacers who at one time had made her life unbearable.
“Thype them all,” she whispered, as she brought them higher out of the mist. They left the familiar jungle to cross several kilometers of charred earth. It was a natural phenomenon, this black belt that tied off life from death, and all inside of it were strange flying creatures circling below the dropship.
Wolf had said that he came back in order to help his people, deserting the Ocelots and the Alliance Navy. She didn’t know how that felt, to give everything up to fight for people you didn’t know personally. To become a criminal, destined for an airlock, all because of politics on your old planet.
It didn’t make sense to her, but she had assumed this was due to her being a boomer. She had no planet; her father had Vestalia, and her mother had Casan. If the government of Casan began to take away people’s land, there would be nothing to convince her to steal from the Rendron and go down there to lead a rebel contingent.
The MLF was a massive organization, with Wolf’s group being a tiny blip. He was a nobody on a continent that had been written off as badlands, and he would eternally be an outsider to them. His only win would be the training he provided, and the exotic weapons from space.
They had captured him rather easily, which had bothered Helga from the beginning. He admitted he knew where they’d been since their landing, and Misa was captured when they should have been scattering to hide. Unless… Helga touched her helmet and brought up her comms, opening a private channel with Cilas.
“What’s the status, Ate?” he said in that business voice he would adopt for missions. She promised herself to make fun of him when they were hanging out in the future.
“Lieutenant, are we sure that Misa Veil is still alive? Wolf, I think, was lying about the camp situation. It just dawned on me that we may be flying into a trap.”
“No, he was telling the truth, Ate. That tea contains a chemical that makes it hard for you to think, much less fabricate facts. You should have seen him before you woke up. He rambled on and on for hours. We know everything about him now, and this is why I know that Misa is alive. Ate, Wolf may seem small time, but there’s a greater conspiracy going on up in space. That’s the part that you missed, the fact that the MLF has plans to draw out more ordinance from the Alliance. They attacked a hub—”
“What?” Helga said, the disbelief forcing her mouth to fall open.
“They’re working with a group of pirates that operate in Vestalian space. They are capturing people to trade for weapons to fight the governments on several planets. It’s a real mess, Ate. We thought the lizards were the enemy, but it turns out we’re eating our own. There’s information in that camp. Flobot recordings, computers, and intel on our ships. Wolf was a smoke screen, the real mission here is intelligence. That’s why we got a recon specialist and a true sniper on the team. It was need to know, that’s why we kept it to ourselves, but now you understand why we can’t just vaporize this camp.”
Helga felt a pain in the back of her throat, a nagging pinch of betrayal. To think that she had thought that there was a connection between the two of them that went beyond rank and orders. That he would confide in her the truth of the mission, or at the very least a hint, but his, “we” meant that only he and Quentin Tutt were fully aware.
She wanted to be bigger, to allow the secrets to not be personal, and hide her true feelings from the lieutenant, but she was tired and everything else that came along with being in a jungle when your natural habitat was space.
“I thought that I was a Nighthawk, officially, and that you and I were friends? How could you not tell me the real mission, Cilas? I’m a thyping officer, and second in command. Have I been wrong?”
“No, Ate… I mean, Helga, no. You are all those things, but when would I have been able to tell you outside of the earshot of Misa, who we barely know, and Lei, who’s a kid, despite his age and talents? This wasn’t me squeezing you out, this was me protecting the mission. You’re still young, Helga, this is only your second mission. I wasn’t sure how you would take it, if I didn’t pull you to the side and take the time needed to make sure you digested it well.”
“I understand, Lieutenant, but for all that grooming you claim to be doing for me to be leader, you chose not to expose the mission to me, when as leader, in the event you died, I would have been relied upon to finish it. What would have happened then? Would Tutt be the one to tell me, or does he rank me based on age and experience in the Corps? I just want to know am I truly your 2IC, or is something else going on for you to pretend? Because if I’m not, it won’t be the end of the worlds.”
There was silence on the comms, and she touched the panel to her right to bring up the camera system in the ship. She found the feed that came from the belly of the Vixen and expanded it to look at the men seated there. Cilas was slumped over with his head inside his hands, and Quentin was sitting up straight, sleeping peacefully as if everything was golden. Wolf, like Raileo, was still unconscious from the drugs, but Helga kept an eye on Cilas, wondering what was going through his head.
“Helga, as a Nighthawk only one person here outranks you, and that is me, the other survivor from the lizard camp. Remember that?”
“How can I forget?” she said resolutely, as she stared out at the expanse of blackness, those charred up rocks and earth where nothing was able to survive. She wanted to know what was poisoning the land, and how long it would take before the entire continent was a desert.
Was it the reason behind the rebels fighting back against the government? In space it was easy to be a good ESO, since the corruption was kept to the higher ranks and council. Retzo Sho dealt with the politics, and all they ever saw was the enemy. So
“just do the mission” was as easy as putting your head down and letting your training carry you through.
But Cilas was still talking and it dawned on her that she had not been listening. He was saying, “But when it comes to planetside missions, you know, Tutt has been through a lot, so I rely on him. I’m at my limit, Ate. You’re tough, but you have no experience. If I’d given you the full mission details, I didn’t know how you’d digest it, considering how thyped up and delicate this whole thing is.”
An older Helga would have seen that he was right and recognized that her age and inexperience would have caused her to react emotionally over what was happening to Meluvia. But young Helga felt betrayed, and that was the extent of it.
Joy Valance had offered her a transfer to the Revenants as her second in command, and she had turned her down, choosing to stay with Cilas. Now she considered it for when they made it back to the Rendron. She had tried the ESO chain, and had done well enough as a Nighthawk, but no one would begrudge her for leaving to pursue a career as a fighter.
More than anything it would show Cilas Mec that he had made the biggest mistake by shutting her out. She thought about their near kiss, and the many times in the past when they’d both come to that line, and she cursed herself inwardly for being a fool.
“Are we good, Ate?” Cilas said after a long period of silence where she stewed.
“We’re good, Lieutenant. You know best, you are our lead. I’ll let you know when we’re near the LZ. I’m going to start priming the weapons.”
She got off the comms and slammed her helmet down on the floor, which caused Raileo to open his eyes briefly and look about the cockpit, confused. Helga stared forward through the glass as two large dunes of the desert pushed through the black rot to reveal golden grains of sand.
It was dawn now, and the mist was starting to break up to the point where she could make out more dunes in the distance. “Almost go time,” she said into the intercom. “Welcome to the Swa’re desert.”
27
Due to the dampers that surrounded the entire oasis, Helga found herself above the MLF camp before she had a chance to warn Cilas and Quentin. The radar displayed nothing despite her having put in the coordinates provided by Wolf, and through the glass via her own eyes all she saw was desert, and then there was water in what appeared to be islands.
From the look of this tropical paradise in the middle of nowhere, she first understood why it would be their base, and how it was that they were able to be self-sufficient while staying hidden.
Above the beauty of it all, what amazed her was the size. The MLF was making its own country and had taken for themselves the best piece of land on the continent. Of course, the other Meluvians would not know that this place even existed, not with the suppressants and dampers to kill radar and tracking systems.
She saw small landmasses with a variety of buildings on each. There was a submerged spacecraft, which she assumed was the one flown by Wolf when he first stole the weapons to join the gang. When she saw the state of the dropship, she immediately understood that they had been fortunate to find Misa’s Vixen.
Two flashes came from a cluster of missile launchers that hovered above the ice blue water. Helga reacted immediately, even before the ship could send an alarm. One of the many surface-to-air missile systems had locked onto the Vixen, but Helga twisted the ship away and fired two blasts from her focused energy cannons.
She realized that flying as high as she was made it easy for them to lock on, and knowing the systems had a blind spot at the floor, she dipped the bird below their net, just above the trees.
“Ate, we need to go,” Cilas said through the comms. “If we want Misa alive you need to let me and Quentin out.”
Helga tried to find an area safe enough to let them out. They weren’t planning to glide in by parachute or wings, so she’d have to bring the Vixen low.
She circled the settlement, dropping all of their anti-air launchers. They were easy to spot since they’d installed them over the water, and she was so low that they did not dare to shoot in her direction.
The place was jumping with activity now after hearing the shots from her cannons, and the window was closing for her to be able to let Cilas and Quentin out. When she was on the far side of where she’d flown in, she saw a sizable dune, one of the many natural rises that kept the oasis hidden.
She brought the Vixen around, backed up and then lowered its tail close enough to the ground for Cilas and Quentin to jump out safely. When they were out and running from the hill, Helga went back to circling the camp.
“Whoa,” Raileo said, and Helga realized that he was awake. She wanted to check on him, but she was occupied with the rebels, and her lieutenant and fellow Nighthawk were relying on her. For the time being she kept the Vixen low, shooting at anyone with a weapon in their hand. This was easy with a vessel meant for versatility, not limited to space combat and rebels wearing light armor.
Helga almost felt bad, picking them off one by one, and then she heard a shot from her right, and saw that it was Raileo Lei. He had taken to the controls, manning the gun on the aft of the Vixen. “Ray, kill the ones that have launchers. They could deplete our shields,” she said. “And any transport that flies or has weapons. you’re free to put fire on them.”
She could hear Cilas inside of her head telling her how a leader should approach this situation. Safety is optimum, their lives are on you, she could hear him say, and that was when she remembered that Wolf was still in the back. Getting off the gun she gestured across the panel, using her peripheral vision to pull up the feed to the rear of the dropship.
“Actually, let me deal with the rebels, Chief. Your main objective is to watch our prisoner, to make sure that he doesn’t find a way to jump out. We lose Wolf, and this is moot. They’ll murder Misa and our Nighthawks will have to evacuate empty-handed.”
She glanced over at the feed, and it was worse than she thought. Wolf, unsupervised, had managed to get his hands in front of him and was working on the binds to get free.
Helga pulled back on the controls, forcing the Vixen to climb. This slammed him into the bulkhead, then into the divider when she dove. There was a crunching noise, and Wolf was on the ground, unconscious. Helga straightened them out, skimming water as she brought them around, and then let loose with a barrage of shots into a cluster of men prepping a missile launcher.
“This isn’t even fair.” Raileo laughed. “You obviously don’t need my help.”
“I need your eyes, Ray. I can’t do this by myself. Keep your focus on Wolf. He could be faking it. And stay on that cannon; I need that too.”
Helga was becoming concerned. She had been flying around for ten minutes, and now the entire camp was awake, desperately fighting for their lives. By now someone would have radioed for help, and fighters would be incoming. This op was supposed to be at the most a half hour. Cilas and Quentin should have had Misa by now.
“Lieutenant, I need a SitRep,” she said into the comms, hoping that he still wore his helmet. Dead air on the other side, then it switched on and all she heard was breathing. Then he was gone again, just like that.
She tried Quentin Tutt, whose reply came back as, “On the move. Keep doing that beautiful thing you’re doing, Ate.”
Helga rolled her eyes. They were out of time, and if she didn’t pull up and remove herself from the oasis, at any minute now she’d be surrounded by aircraft.
“This is a bit different from flying Phantoms about the tracers of a Geralos destroyer, huh, ma’am?” Raileo said as he worked at the cannon.
“Different? Yeah, there’s gravity to contend with when you’re doing planet fighting, and a limited range on where you can go, making it easy to get yourself surrounded. That is my main worry here if we don’t hurry up with this rescue. We could do all this, get her out, just to be routed by small military thopters. This isn’t my VC or a Phantom, which are super maneuverable. This is a dropship, built
for space, and the shield is the only thing keeping us alive right now.”
She glanced at the shield gauge. It was still in the ninety-percentile range, which was due to the Vixen being peppered by small arms fire coming from the ground. Helga had managed to avoid all of the missiles that had been fired, and the anti-air cannons that had frightened her in concept were all now submerged, worthless hunks of metal, leaving the camp easy pickings for them to manage.
“We have a lot of red coming up from the south, Ate,” Raileo announced after what felt like the one-hundredth orbit of the expansive oasis. Helga flew around some more, trying to get them in front of the Vixen. When she finally did, she saw that it was infantry, more MLF on hoverbikes, transports and on foot. They came from an area west of the camp, which led her to believe that there was another camp close.
“Is there another oasis?” she said to Raileo, but the wounded Nighthawk merely shrugged.
Helga considered the reinforcements. She could decimate them all if she let loose one of the Vixen’s torpedoes. It would be far enough away from the camp to spare Cilas, Misa, and Quentin Tutt, but she decided instead to fly directly at them, letting the cannons free on one of the transports.
The convoy scattered in several directions, some trying to flee, while others merely wanted out from the line of fire. Many shots were volleyed back, but they were nothing against the shields of the V35 Vixen. Helga toyed with them some more, destroying all of the vehicles with weapons that posed a threat. Then she flew back to the camp as Raileo picked off individuals abandoning the reinforced effort.
“Well, they tried,” she said, annoyed by how long Cilas and Quentin were taking. “Lieutenant, Tutt, how are we looking?”
They didn’t answer immediately but she hoped that at the very least they were close.
