by Logan Jacobs
The terrain below was a series of forests. Some forests were only smoking stumps, burned out to clear the land or just as collateral damage. Others covered endless acres with growth so thick that I couldn’t tell one tree from the next. City lights shone far ahead on the horizon, but I didn’t see any other signs of civilization.
Orla Medalla was already more trouble than she was worth. Sure, I might still be able to hand her over to the Dominion and not have them shoot me in the process. I might even be able to hand her over to the ULA and get paid by the princess herself. But even with the extra money from the sale of the murisia, I wasn’t convinced it would be worth it, especially if I couldn’t get the ship back to Grith.
“Would you rather have tossed her in the other escape pod and sent her out without sufficient oxygen?” Honey Bee chimed.
“Nah,” I muttered with a grin. “I’m saving that escape pod for myself, thanks very much.”
At least the Dominion fighter crafts hadn’t followed us through the atmosphere. Our radar was quiet. Even the Skyhawk’s alarm that she had taken damage was quiet, as if the ship was too tired to complain anymore.
There was no time to celebrate. Almost as soon as the individual leaves on the trees below came in sight, Honey Bee warned me of approaching aircrafts. Seconds later, the Skyhawk’s radar repeated my chip’s warning.
Half a dozen Dominion fighter crafts rose out of the trees below us. The military cordon above us must have already sent word to their on-ground troops, and they had made sure to roll out the welcoming committee.
“So you don’t know how to fly,” I told Orla. “I know you can shoot a shotgun, and again, thanks for that. You ever use a ship’s guns?”
The princess shook her head.
“You won’t be able to say that after today.” I grinned. “Just do what I do, okay? You’re just the backup, so I might not even need you.”
“I’m a fast learner,” the brunette defended.
“Of course you are, sweetheart,” I sighed. “Now let’s do this.”
I dipped away from the oncoming Dominion fighters and fired off a few rounds at the closest one. I caught its left engine, and it rolled away to plummet to the ground below. The rest of the fighters gave chase.
With one hand on the throttle, I grabbed the gun controls with the other and reversed them so they would shoot behind us. I fired again and then nodded at the princess to take over. I needed to lose our attackers in the trees, and Honey Bee would overheat in half a second if I tried to do both.
He’ll, the forest was impossibly dense, and I doubted anyone who didn’t have a Vespidae chip in their brain would be able to pilot even a second through the trees.
That’s what I was counting on.
I looped around to pass back underneath the Dominion fighters and away from the city. There was as much of a chance that the city was Dominion-controlled as it was ULA-occupied, but since the fighters had come from that direction, I didn’t exactly want to take my chances that we might run into more of them. Orla fired off a few rounds as we passed beneath them, and she gave a little gasp each time she took a shot. She didn’t hit anything, but she at least kept them back until I came out on the other side.
I dropped the Skyhawk into an opening in the trees below. Limbs and leaves smacked against the cockpit window, and the Skyhawk groaned as I took her down further into the forest. She was handling her shit well, even if she was a floating piece of junk.
I pulled right on the throttle, and we flipped to a ninety-degree angle to pass through two trees that were damn near the size of cruisers. I flipped her back after we passed through, but one of the fighters on our tail wasn’t so lucky. I heard the explosion behind us as he collided with one of the trunks.
I took the ship up out of the trees to gain some ground, and then I dove back down when the fighters popped up behind me again. I took her down far enough that her hull scraped against the forest undergrowth, so the fighters behind us had to adjust their course.
“Now!” I shouted at Orla as I glanced at the gun sights.
The princess fired a second slower than I would have, so she caught the fighter craft along its wing seam rather than its belly. Still, it was enough to spin the Dominion ship, and it crashed into a tree behind us.
“Again!” I ordered when the next fighter craft had us in their sights.
Her reflexes responded more quickly this time, so the fighter caught the blow squarely in its hull, and I had to bank the Skyhawk to the side to avoid the wild gunfire of the craft’s death throes.
“I got it!” she shrieked and clapped her hands.
“How about you keep your hands on the controls, sweetness?” I told her.
“But did you see it?” she asked gleefully. “I did it! I got one!”
“You sure did,” I congratulated her. I wondered if she had thought about the fact that there was a person in the craft she just shot down, or if this all still seemed like a fun game to her.
“It was good, right?” the princess pressed.
“You bet,” I answered. “Now grab hold and get ready to shoot again.”
Orla did as I said, and she fired off two rounds before she even had a target. I just grinned. It was nice to know she was at the ready.
“Let’s lose these last assholes,” I growled.
I made a big loop around an ancient tree that was as big as a skyscraper and with leaves so huge that each one could have served as a shelter for a whole city block. One of the fighter crafts tried to follow me, but it only managed to collide into the trunk and slide in a heap down to the forest floor. That left only one. I kept the Skyhawk low to the ground, and I veered back and forth to avoid its fire.
I glanced at the fuel gauge. We were already on fumes, and that meant I didn’t have much time left.
I braked suddenly, and the Dominion fighter almost ran straight into me. Instead, it flew just overhead. I grabbed the gun controls from Orla and fired two rounds. One hit the left engine, and the other hit the right, so the ship sputtered and collided with the ground in a fiery burst.
The Skyhawk beeped a warning. There was no fuel left, and there were barely even enough fumes to run on. Between the impulse drive and the use of the Skyhawk’s guns, I’d burned it all up. I scanned the area ahead for a place to take her down, but there was no clear strip of terrain anywhere I looked.
“There is a clearing ahead,” my chip informed me. “But it is too short to be fully effective.”
“I guess that’s our best chance?” I exhaled.
“That is correct,” Honey Bee answered. “Some damage will be sustained regardless of angle of entry. However, approaching with our nose at a forty-nine degree angle will ensure that the least amount of damage will be inflicted.”
“Fuck me,” I said as I adjusted our angle of approach.
“Trevor?” the princess asked nervously. “What are you… Trevor!”
“Not a good time, princess,” I shouted over her sudden scream, and she stifled the rest of her shriek.
I could see the clearing up ahead now, and it was even smaller than I had guessed it would be. The Skyhawk would barely fit in the clearing, let alone be able to come to a full stop in it without crashing into the trees on the other end.
I slammed on the brakes at the same time I toggled the emergency brake system. I couldn’t just slam on the emergency brakes, or we’d spin out of control, so I fluttered it back and forth until we had slowed down enough to yank it all the way on. The whole ship screamed with the effort to stop, and Orla shrieked until I reached over and clapped my hand over her mouth.
I tried to open the hatch for the landing gear, but it had been too damaged in the shotgun blast to even open properly. We were just going to have to land a little rougher.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be “break your ship into a thousand pieces” rough.
The bottom of the Skyhawk bounced against the ground as we jerked across the clearing, and we skidded in a series of bumps and shakes
and screams from the princess until we stopped just beside a massive green-barked tree.
At first, I didn’t move, and neither did Orla. I was convinced the tree beside us was about to crash down on the Skyhawk, but when nothing happened, I exhaled and leaned back in the pilot’s chair. I scanned the controls to see what had been damaged in the landing.
The landing gear was busted, but of course, I already knew that. We must have hit the stabilizer too as we skidded across the clearing because its light flared a solid red and then died out. Immediately after, the control panel itself gave a little blink, and the whole system went dark.
“That must be the last of the fuel,” I sighed.
Well, we’d have to get all that fixed before we headed off-world. Without a stabilizer, the Skyhawk would shake so much that she would probably just shiver herself right apart as soon as we took off. We’d managed to land without a landing gear, but from the smell of smoke in the air, I guessed the outer hull of the ship had probably taken some cosmetic damage too.
I unbuckled my safety belt and stretched my sore limbs, but Orla just stared straight ahead through the cockpit window at the greenery all around us.
“Come on,” I told the princess.
She slowly stood from the copilot’s chair and followed after me as I made my way down from the bridge. As soon as we reached the hold door, I opened the boarding ramp to see exactly where on Orpheus we had landed. At first, all I saw was smoke at the end of the ramp, but by the time I reached the end of it, it cleared away to show endless amounts of green.
“Any signs of life?” I asked Honey Bee quietly as I exited the ship.
“Scanning,” my chip answered.
There didn’t seem to be any human life around us, that was for damn sure. I groaned as I stepped further away from the ship. We were in the middle of a jungle, and the more the smoke cleared from around the Skyhawk, the more it looked like a completely uninhabited planet.
“Where the fuck is everybody?” I swore. “Shouldn’t there be some ULA rebels coming out to greet us, or at the very least some Dominion soldiers who want us dead?”
“Perhaps we have landed on the unpopulated side of the planet,” Honey Bee suggested.
“If that’s the case, I’m not gonna be happy,” I growled.
Orla moaned behind me, and I glanced back. The brunette swayed from side to side as she made her way down the boarding ramp, but she didn’t seem to be hurt, just shaken up a bit. Her elaborate braid had almost come loose, so her thick brown hair hung in waves around her face and draped down in front of her slender shoulders.
“Where are we?” she breathed.
“In the middle of goddamn nowhere,” I said. “Without fuel, and with a screwed-up landing gear and a busted stabilizer.”
“But then…” She stared at me with wide green eyes. “But then what does that mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I exhaled.
“That it’s…. bad?” the princess asked.
“Basically,” I sighed, “we’re fucked.”
Chapter 11
As much as I hated to give that self-important asshole any credit, I had to admit that Leon Cotranis kept a well-stocked tool bag on the Skyhawk. Of course, that was only because his ship was a self-contained floating junkyard, but the tools did at least make it easier to repair things when they broke.
And right now, the Skyhawk was most definitely broken.
“Hand me that splicer, would you?” I asked the brunette princess.
“Um-- that’s the one that looks like a--”
“Like a slingshot,” I answered. “Just don’t touch the ‘V’ part of it, or you’ll probably end up electrocuted.”
Orla knelt down beside me and gingerly passed me the splicer. I grabbed it by the V portion of the slingshot and immediately pretended to shake from electrocution and gnash my teeth together. She gave a little shriek, and then I burst into laughter.
“Only kidding, princess,” I teased.
“You know you’re horrible, right?” she hissed.
“I’ve been told something similar a time or two,” I laughed again. “But I’ve also been told I’m ridiculously good-looking and an amazing fuck, so I think it all evens out, don’t you?”
She exhaled heavily but didn’t answer, so I turned my attention back to the repair of the Skyhawk. We had landed at an angle, so the flattened part of the ship stuck up just enough for me to slide under and see most of the damage we had taken. Orla wasn’t much help when it came to fixing the ship, but she could at least pass me tools once I described them to her.
The stabilizer was busted like I had thought, but with a little tender loving care, I had almost fixed her as good as new. All she needed was a new coil, and she should be good to go. And since the Skyhawk was a fucking relic, most any kind of coil should do the trick.
I finished splicing the last two cables together and screwed the panel back on. That was all I could do until we got the coil. Now there was just the small matter of the fuel and the landing gear.
“Alright, sweetness,” I said after I shimmied out from underneath the Skyhawk to join Orla. “Let’s go see what your shotgun did to the—”
“Look, I said I was sorry--”
“Even the prettiest apology cannot repair a shotgun blast to the landing gear,” I told her.
“I don’t know what my being pretty has to do with anything,” the princess scoffed with her nose in the air.
“Oh, I didn’t say you were pretty,” I said with a grin. “I didn’t even say your apology was pretty. I was just speaking in generic terms, you know.”
“You don’t think I’m--” Orla stopped herself.
“Do you want me to think you’re pretty?” I asked, and I made sure to keep my face deadpan.
“No, I-- no, it doesn’t matter,” the brunette snarled. “Just never mind.”
I smiled to myself as we headed back into the main hold, and then I bent down beside the metal grate that had a massive shotgun hole in it. The hole was almost big enough that Orla could have slipped through, but I ripped out the whole panel so we could both go into the ship’s interior and assess the damage.
“After you,” I said and gestured for the princess to go down into the hole.
“I’m not going down there,” she protested.
“Oh, you most definitely are,” I responded. “Or should I just pick you up and toss you down there myself?”
“Fine,” the long-legged princess groaned. “But I better be able to shower after this.”
“No can do,” I answered. “Your dearest Saint Leon managed to get the water main busted before he took off for Ineocca, so nobody’s gonna be able to shower on board until we get that fixed too.”
Orla looked up at me from the grimy underbelly of the ship. Her green eyes were furious.
“Hey, don’t blame me,” I told her with a shrug. “You’re the one who picked this sorry ship, not me.”
“Well, you,” the princess said with a dramatic pause, “you were not supposed to be flying this ship.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I laughed. “Isn’t that right?”
I hopped down beside her and raised my light to see the damage. The landing gear itself hadn’t been harmed, and that was a genuine relief, but the shotgun blast had warped one of the extenders, so it seemed all I would have to do is bend it back into place.
“Alright, princess, it’s time to get your hands a little dirty.”
Orla glanced at the grease stains already on her arms, and she gave a little sigh.
“We’re gonna need a little heat,” I said. “Why don’t you warm up this bad boy here, and I’ll make sure there’s nothing else that needs to be fixed.”
“How do you warm it up?” the brunette asked.
I handed her the heat gun from the tool bag. I toggled the two safety switches off, and the long barrel of the gun hissed loose.
“It’s a manual one,” I explained. “So it doesn’t have to be connected
to a power source to work. So you just wrap your hand around the barrel and jerk it up and down until it starts to get warm.”
“You’ve got to be joking,” the princess whispered. “I am not-- I am not going to jerk it up and down.”
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” I teased. “But sure, it’s up to you. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’ll take us longer to get out of here if you don’t help me, but hey, I’m not the one who wants to shower and get all prettified before I show up as the ULA’s newest recruit.”
“Does that mean you’ll take me to them?” the long-legged woman breathed.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said truthfully. “But if you don’t help me out, we may have the Dominion swarming up our asses before I get a chance to make up my mind.”
“Ugh, fine,” the brunette groaned.
She jerked up and down on the barrel of the heat gun, and I tried not to be distracted as I watched her from the corner of my eye. This was better than an apology for shooting the landing gear compartment.
By the time I finished inspecting the compartment and found nothing else to worry about, Orla had successfully warmed up the heat gun, and she handed it back to me with a roll of her eyes.
“That was super helpful, thank you,” I said with a smile.
“Mhm, yeah, whatever,” the princess sighed.
“What princess-y language,” I laughed. “Now hand me that hammer.”
With the heat gun in one hand and the hammer in the other, I set to work. Orla just watched, but she kept out of the way. I heated the damaged extender until it was pliable enough to adjust, and then I banged away at it with the hammer to move it back into its proper structure and position.
It took longer than I would have liked, but there was no point in doing a half-assed job. The Skyhawk was somehow still in one piece, and if I wanted to get paid for her, I needed the ship to stay that way. That meant I had better do the best bang-up job on this extender as I damn well could.
“A little more to the right,” Honey Bee told me after I had passed to let her run the math. “It is two degrees short of being at ninety.”
