by Greg Dragon
“It’s disappointing, you’re right,” Cilas said. “How do you think this makes me feel?”
“Why don’t we go back and get them out?” Cleia said, causing Raileo to regard her with surprise.
“Because we will die?” Quentin said, knitting his brow before looking over at Helga helplessly.
“I would go back if we had some help,” Helga said.
“No one’s going back,” Cilas said. “Dr. Rai’to, it’s a noble suggestion, but we’d only be adding to the lizards’ captives. We barely got out of there when we did. Those lizards were protective of something below where we were, enough to send in four whole dropships before we made our escape. I doubt they’ll do anything to the captives, not after building all that infrastructure to preserve them.”
“Another schtill mission that leaves me feeling dirty,” Raileo said.
“Ray, why don’t you go below deck and blow off some steam?” Cilas said.
The space grew quiet as Raileo saluted his commander, then marched off the bridge without looking back. Helga could tell that he was about to explode. She chanced a glance at Cleia, whose expression had changed to one of concern, and then they heard the sound of something being thrown against the bulkhead.
“I should go check on him,” Cleia whispered, before bowing to Cilas and making her way off the bridge.
Helga looked around the space. “Can someone tell me what just happened there?”
“The pain of maturing, I guess,” Quentin said, his lips having twisted into a scowl. “Anyway, continue your thoughts, Commander. The Alliance is delaying help, and you were saying?”
“Yes,” Cilas said, “I was speculating on why they made this decision. We have limited resources, and this pirate schtill is a chance for us to earn favor with the Arisanis. The prince can get us aid for the war effort, not to mention more ships and spacers. Is the sacrifice not worth it? We all say no, but tell that to our leaders that are responsible for twelve other planets that dwarf this moon.”
“It’s thyped, but that’s the reality of our war,” Sundown said.
“What you say makes sense, but it’s hard to qualify after what we saw down there,” Quentin said.
“Anyway, you are all dismissed. Go about your duties but stay prepared. We need to be ready to answer that call,” Cilas said.
24
With the Nighthawks having been briefed on what was to come, it was all hands on deck for the rest of the working cycle. Cilas predicted that they would have four cycles before the Shrikes would contact them, so the team went to work immediately after the brief to prepare for the upcoming fight.
Helga tasked Zan with not only testing the Ursula’s hardpoints, but optimizing the way they could be used during combat. She didn’t want to take any chances in case they bit off more than they could chew and ended up having to fight a vessel with the mass to outgun them. Helga herself worked on the controls, making sure that Ursula was responsive to her commands, and correcting any delays due to language or protocol.
Much of this had to do with Cilas, as the ship’s captain. Ursula recognized Helga as the pilot and second-in-command, but weapons systems required a captain’s approval, and the delay in getting those could become a problem. Cilas knew ships but this was his first command of one, and he wasn’t interested in navigating or micro-managing dogfights.
This was the biggest difference between him and Captain Retzo Sho. The latter loved the action, and took the reins on every aspect of strategy from the Rendron’s bridge. Cilas, however, was big on delegating according to position and strength, and he trusted Helga’s abilities and decision-making during a fight. He even seemed happy when she requested full access to the Ursula’s controls. After all, if she faltered, he was still the captain and could override her decisions with one command.
Helga tested her new power, ordering Ursula to arm and disarm various weapons. She took them through evasive maneuvers, fading their thrust in and out, jerking the brakes and testing response times, learning the corvette’s response times and memorizing them, just like she would a fighter.
Until now, the biggest ship that she had used in a fight was the R60 Thundercat, which took some time to get used to. The mass made it slower on certain maneuvers, and more vulnerable to attacks. To make up for this, she had to always be one step ahead of their opponents, with contingencies loaded just in case she assumed wrong.
Ursula, a corvette over ten times the mass of the Thundercat, required eyes seeing combat from three dimensions, and lightning-fast decisions based on the status of the enemy and loadout. Unlike a fighter or a dropship, she wouldn’t be able to do much of this herself. Piloting was her primary duty, and while Zan could be sufficient, an AI’s answer to combat would become predictable, and the Geralos knew Cel-tocs better than anyone else.
It was why living aces were still valuable to the Alliance, since no two pilots were alike behind the cockpit. Joy and Helga were similarly wired in being fiery daredevils during a skirmish, but where Joy had a line, Helga had none. It was something the two women would argue about constantly, but illustrated how pilots were unpredictable. So she worked on becoming more commander than flight jock when the Ursula was her vessel, and that meant leaving the weapons system to her android co-pilot.
Tracers had been firing for hours as Zan taught herself the art of cycling through them seamlessly. She had gotten the timing down and programmed a new sequence into the Ursula’s system. It was a macro command for activating one tracer after another, each firing off a stream then charging while the remaining cannon took turns going through the rotations.
When Cilas received the corvette, they had upgraded the broadside cannons to these miniature tracers, and though they were superior, the time it took to charge when you fired them had made them only ideal against other mid-sized vessels. Going up against a squadron, dipping and diving as they whittled down your shields, would be difficult to defend using tracers. The engineers had thought about this, as well, and included several camouflaged turrets above the bridge.
These were manned by the remaining Nighthawks, using the recessed battle-stations that comprised the bulkhead about CIC. Helga ordered everyone in them to practice, even Cleia Rai’to, who she thought should learn something of the ship’s defense systems. They were given virtual targets generated by Zan, but only on their HUDs. For hours they practiced, getting scores from the Cel-toc, who reported back to Helga, and she began to see the standouts were Sundown and Raileo Lei.
Other than weapons, they had their standard emergency drills, cranked up to a new level to simulate things falling apart during combat. Cilas cut off the gravity at one point while everyone was going about their business, but this was a weekly drill that they knew, so everyone reacted well and adjusted. They simulated a loss of atmosphere and oxygen, forcing everyone to scramble for their masks, but this had to be stopped prematurely since Cleia wasn’t ready, and panicked.
Drill after drill they went through, preparing for a war, and while it was stressful and nerve-wracking, spirits remained high and everyone tried to do their best. By the time these exercises were over, they were sore, over-stimulated and ready for a break. The following cycle was quieter, since it dealt with general preparation, and everyone worked with a single focus of preparing the Ursula for anything.
Cilas wanted to be sure that if the Shrikes failed, the Nighthawks would be ready to step in. This meant preparing the cages within the dock for visitors, and stacking them with MRE, vitamin supplements, and water. The Shrikes were from Missio-Tral but they were still their ESO family, and in the event they needed rescuing, the commander wanted comfortable berthing for them. Even Cleia had twelve beds prepared inside medbay just in case, and she and Raileo developed a process for getting the injured transported in quickly.
In the cycle before contact, the team was instructed to sleep, or at the very least relax and unwind. In less than eight hours they would be escorting the Shrikes, and the commander wanted them sharp
and decisive during that time. Helga found herself restless, so she went looking for Cleia to see if the doctor wanted to finish learning about spacecraft.
On her way aft, she stopped by the mess, where Sundown was alone, sipping tea as he scrolled through a tablet. He wore only a tank-top, which gave Helga pause, since she had never seen so much of his skin. Tattooed glyphs spilled out from his shoulders, trickling down to around his wrists. These “tattoos” seemed to be glowing, and Helga wondered if it was the ink and the contrast with his dark skin. She cleared her throat, and he looked up, smiling, then reached back for his jacket to cover himself.
“Are you doing that because of me?” she said, feeling guilty for disturbing his peace.
“Sorry, but I assumed that everyone was getting some shut-eye,” he said.
“You’re Virulian, right?” she said, walking over to take the seat across from him.
“Virulian, yes,” he said.
“Is that why those lines on your arm glowed the way they did just now?” she said.
Sundown studied her face, then removed the jacket, and up close she could see that they were a patchwork of symbols that she couldn’t recognize.
“The ink that they use for these markings is called Misen Mesh, and it comes from the crystal caves of Plesk, on the continent of Moru, Virulia. The extraction takes a very long time, but once it’s been refined, the colors continue to change no matter the substrate. When you become a person in my order, you must choose one of three different paths. There is the path of the hunter, like Lamia Brafa, which focuses primarily on stealth, then there is the path of the scholar, reserved for those who are gifted with the texts. Me, I chose the last path, that of the warrior, which comes with the ink so that our enemies will know who we are.”
“It sounds like something from an action vid, Sunny. They force you to get a tattoo so that you’re never able to hide? Where is the win?” Helga said.
“I could ask you the same, Nighthawk. Where is the win?” he said, smiling. “I have been with the team for a short time, yet I have seen more action than the two years prior when I was a fugitive on a space station that wanted me dead. Are we so different? We serve masters with little consideration for our lives, and the more we kill and the longer we survive, the more we’re utilized. Now, what’s keeping you up, Lieutenant? You look tired, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Nerves, I guess,” Helga said, studying the intricacies of his braids, which were pulled back into a bun and tied with a bit of black cloth bearing the same glyphs as his tattoos. “I should be grateful.” She rubbed at her neck. “This is leagues better than tussling in The Pit with criminals like your lady, Domina Ryse.”
“The Pit was the result of power mongers overplaying their hand,” Sundown said, reaching back to adjust his hair. “Your Alliance—”
“Our Alliance, Sundown. Our Alliance,” Helga corrected him.
“Our Alliance,” he said with a cursory nod, then took another sip from his mug. “Our Alliance elected the representatives on Sanctuary, who in turn used untrained thugs as their police force. Before you all came to the station, there was already trouble brewing. Satellite security was extorting businesses and many of the citizens were starting to take notice. People were vanishing, particularly those who were vocally challenging those of the untouchable elite class. When enough of these ‘accidents’ started to happen, the citizens looked to us outlaws to deliver their justice.
“Deliver we did, expeditiously, dear Helga, and the Alliance council began to question the lack of trust in their security squad. What they couldn’t see from up high in their cozy little bubbles was that money and privilege will always trump the rights and needs of the people. To them we were criminals, dangerous vigilantes who they couldn’t control. So they hunted us down and poisoned our name, calling us gangsters, killers, and all sorts of labels. It drove us deeper into the shadows, and what shadow’s blacker than The Pit?”
“Sad that you think that way about the Alliance,” Helga said, “Though I saw enough on Sanctuary to know that you’re not completely wrong. Were you in love with Domina?”
“A Jumper is not allowed to fall in love,” he said. “Not unless the subject of that love is a person.”
“But, you were no longer a Jumper when you were on Sanctuary,” Helga spoke carefully. “You were exiled, and worked as a gun-for-hire, or what did you call it? An outlaw? I doubt that hunting marks for credits vibed with your order, so I’m going to ask again. I saw the way you looked at her Sunny, before we turned her over to the council.”
“Domina Ryse was not always a gangster. We found each other in The Pit, when we were both professionals trying to earn enough credits to go topside. We … were close, but she changed. Something happened and, well, you saw it, the jewelry and the robes.”
“So you did love Domina once, and acted on it back when your order turned against you,” Helga said. “Now that they’ve reinstated you, and you’re with us, you can no longer love her unless she somehow made it into the Jumpers. Thype me, no wonder you’ve been so spiky lately, Sunny. You do realize that everything we do is for the Alliance, right? Should I be worried?”
“No, that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I’ve already made my peace with the Alliance. I’m sworn to the commander, La’una, and as a Jumper, that bond is eternal, unless I’m asked to perform an act that brings shame upon my order. I’m sworn to you, as well, but it is different.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “How are you sworn to me now?”
“Our bond is a traditional one, more ritualistic,” he whispered, and she glanced about the compartment skeptically, wondering where he was taking this conversation. “I saved your life on Sanctuary, remember? Then you saved mine by vouching for me, and helping to convince the commander that I was worth a second chance. My life was forfeit in The Pit, and I was living on borrowed time. Our actions have completed the circle of trust that forms a seal between you and me.”
“We’re not getting matching tattoos if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Helga said, and surprisingly he gave her a smile.
“Try some of the tea. It will make you sleep but not for long, la’una,” he said. “Domina Ryse is likely to be dead now that she’s been tried and found guilty of her crimes. I will always toast her, we had a lot of good times, and she was a light inside a place where I couldn’t even see myself. All that to say, I hate the elite in charge of this galaxy and the war, but I know my role as a person within my order.”
“Order-shmorder. You’re a Nighthawk, Sunny, just accept it. You may not be Navy, but you’re with the team, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re one of us. Lamia Brafa was a Jumper with no ties to the Navy, but to us he was a brother, and he’ll always be remembered as a Nighthawk.”
Helga ran her fingers through her hair, trying to remember why she’d asked about Domina Ryse. She didn’t know the woman well, but had always been curious about she and Sundown’s past. He did save her life from an assassin who had been ordered to eliminate the Nighthawks. Ever since then they had developed a relationship, which started out bitter but evolved into something nearly paternal.
“I get it with the outlaw situation on Sanctuary,” she said. “Those same thugs tried to kill me, and without you, maker knows if I’d be alive to be sitting here sipping tea. Sunny, the Alliance is our master, and it will fray our morale if we begin to question what we do. It’s kind of the job as an operator. This whole service thing. We cannot allow ourselves to falter.”
“I know. I too ‘served’ before the Jumper Agency claimed me from my unit. I’m not supposed to discuss it with outsiders, but many of us got recruited out of the Alliance Navy. That is all I can say; you’re one of the chosen, so if you repeat any of this I’ll say that you learned it from a vision,” he said, winking at her devilishly. “You’re like a psych. Anyone ever tell you that? I’ve never divulged this much information to anyone outside of Domina. Here, I barely know you, yet I’ve told you more than an
yone, even the commander. Can I trust you to keep it to yourself?”
Helga tapped her forehead with her knuckles. “While this box of secrets is full, I’m sure that I can find a spot for the things I heard today.” She glanced at the doorway to make sure that they were alone. “I do want to go back to a question you asked me during our last chat. The one about me telling Cilas what I am.”
“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair as he drained the last of his tea. “Have you told him?”
“No,” she said, quickly. “I’ve decided against it. Do you find that disappointing?”
“It has nothing to do with me, la’una, but this burden that you carry, others knowing can help to lighten the load. Take our talks, for instance. Have they not eased your mind somewhat?” he said.
“They have, actually, if I’m being honest,” Helga said. “No-one likes to be the only freak, and you understand that better than anyone else. Cilas is understanding, but it’s still difficult because of his position and his relationship with the captain. He could ground me if he feels that I’m too valuable an asset for the lizards, and if he blabs to Retzo Sho, then he’ll ship me back to Sanctuary for them to dissect me or something similarly thyped up.”
Sundown laughed, a rasp that betrayed a former life of smoking. Its intention wasn’t to ridicule, though Helga couldn’t help but feel foolish.
“He would do no such thing,” Sundown said. “The commander values you most on this team, and if he doesn’t already know, I would be surprised. You were captured by the lizards and quarantined because they dared not bite into your head. A Casanian, whose blood is toxic to their palate, and a seeker that possesses the very gift they want. What you are is something wonderful; you have the positive traits of both your species. The ultimate weapon against the Geralos. In the old age, you would have wanted for nothing. Seekers had the ears of monarchs, many being seen as messengers from the maker.”
