by Tony Healey
“Vanity is only a sin for the undeserving, Commander.” Right side winked. “Besides, you’ve earned it and that’s where the money is.”
Both men stopped at the end of the carpet, gesturing wide as if to welcome him to the limo.
The driver appeared, a young woman with scraggly blonde hair. She appeared to have been awake for several days straight. Dark spots ringed her eyes, and she sneered at him as she grabbed the door.
“Welcome home, Aaron.”
He blinked. “Allison? What are you doing here?”
She took a small silver inhaler out of the coat pocket of her chauffer’s uniform and waved it at him. “Only job I could get without a pee test.”
“No, I mean what are you doing on Earth.”
Allison Vorys scowled. “Oh, you’re just like Mom. I guess I’m not good enough to set foot on the beloved jewel of the alliance, huh? Never was good enough for her, or Dad either.” The device went to her lips, she inhaled hard. The dour frown melted away to a silly intoxicated grin. The fullness of her street-vagrant aroma washed over him as she exhaled. “S’okay, I don’t need any of you. I’m doin’ okay.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook. “No, Allie, I mean you ran off to a colony. The last I heard, you’d stowed away on a transport bound for who-knows-where. I haven’t seen you in… five years. What the hell happened?”
“Oh like you give a damn.” She evaporated, leaving him holding an empty maroon jacket.
Aaron stared at it for a few minutes, glancing back at the adoring crowd still snapping photos of the war hero. He ducked in to the limo where a boy of about twelve pounced on him as soon as he sat down.
“Sam!” Aaron lifted his scrawny little brother, flipped him over and pinned him to the seat. “Ha ha… I haven’t seen you since you were seven. Damn, you got big. How’s school?”
They horsed around until the boy was out of breath.
“You’re home!” said Sam, hanging on, lost to his hero-worship. “Did you kill a lot of aliens? What did they sound like when they exploded? School’s okay, I got finals in two weeks. Dad’s a little upset at the A-Minus I got in Subatomic Physics, but I talked the teacher into letting me take the test over. I argued an ambiguity in the question.”
“Finals? As in high school? You’re twelve.”
Sam grinned. “I’m almost as smart as you. They skipped me ahead.”
Aaron ruffled his hair. “Pah, you’re a damn genius, I’m just some grunt with wings. Where’s Mom and Dad?” Aaron glanced at the facing seat, empty save for a small card and tiny silver gift box.
Sam shrugged. “Too busy.”
“Yeah…” Aaron picked at a button on the empty jacket. “They always are.”
Liam yawned, leaning against a tree and enjoying the shade it provided. Fingers clawed through a bowl of flavored peanuts, popping them one at a time into his mouth. A few missed, but he did not bother to find them, leaving them for the squirrels. It had been hours and not one twitch moved his fishing pole; but that was beside the point. He had not come out here to catch anything tangible.
“Anythin’ yet?” asked Bob, a set of green-brown overalls and dark blue flannel to his left.
He never quite looked far enough to his side to see a face, but Bob was his fishing buddy every time he came here. “Not yet.”
“Amazing they get the trees to grow on this rock. How long did it take them to terraform it?”
Liam leaned forward with a grunt, removing the pole from the holder and reeling in the line. “How should I know?” He recast it, letting the lure trail through the upper few inches of the stream.
“Did they even put fish in this river?” Bob recast as well.
“Maybe,” said Liam. “I suppose it’s stupid to cast a lure and not even know if there’s anything in there.”
“Well, fishin’ for fish isn’t about the fish. It’s about relaxin’.”
“Yep.”
“Only I figure yer not fishin’ for fish,” said Bob. The brow of a hat shifted. Bob was looking at him, but still had no face. He could have been anyone. “You don’t think them fish bite on replicants, do you?”
A peanut sailed over Liam’s head.
“That’s not…” He sighed. “Well, maybe.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ain’t no her, Bob. Just a theoretical her.”
“I see, hence throwin’ your lure in unknown water. Maybe you’re just not fishin’ in the right place.”
“Maybe. Sure is peaceful here though, innit?”
“Yep. Well, at least you got that.”
“What?”
“Peace.”
Liam chuckled, staring at the unmoving reel. “Yeah… At least I got that.”
Zavex walked through a gossamer haze of luminous blue curtains. Loose robe-like garments surrounded him, clasped at the shoulder with a gold pin. Glowing thermpods, lumpy crimson orbs the size of fists, hovered above small sconces around the dim chamber. Their radiant heat provided both warmth as well as light to the Talnurian eye. Niria stood at the far end of the space, hovering by a decorative metal podium above which perched a slab of clear glass, covered with glowing yellow letters in a fancy elongated script.
He approached her, pausing two paces behind. “Sister, do you continue to have these troubling visions?”
The woman turned, her long hair-quills clicked as she moved. Unlike the men, her face was smooth. Grey lines traced over her skin where a male would have ridges, accentuated with silver and gold face-paint. Her low-cut robes showed the beginning of the light grey coloration that many Talnurians had on their chest and abdomen. Her smile warmed his heart, and he bowed his head.
“Vas’una guide me, but I have seen no cause for them yet. I see warriors, broken and dying. I must attend to them.” She brushed past him, clasping hands for a fleeting instant. “I have made my decision. I will pledge to the Yldris.”
Zavex gasped. “But, you are Ra’ala. You cannot―”
“The warriors need my help. They are aware that I am not permitted to harm one who does not threaten my life, or the life of someone to whom I tend.”
“But, Niria, a Ra’ala should not kill under any circumstances. It’s irreverent.”
She faced him, gown whirling about her legs. “Vas’una has shown me this. It must be.”
He frowned at her swishing tail. At least men lacked that appendage; it was easier to hide emotion. There would be no changing her mind. He stood taller, making it a point to be larger than his older sister, and put a hand on her shoulder. If not for being a sibling, touching a Ra’ala would have been shameful.
“Niria, I do not wish to see you harmed. Outsiders do not respect your station. They will not hesitate to harm you.”
Her hand, bedecked with gemmed rings, settled on his. A strip of diaphanous cloth trailed from a gold loop on her central finger, down her arm to join the robe at the shoulder. “I trust my matron, as should you.”
The fiery explosion knocked Zavex to the ground. He leapt to his feet, finding Niria gone; he was no longer in her room. The abrupt skip in time startled him for a moment; she had been gone, away with the Yldris for almost a year. Something happened, something bad. Fiery comets of metal and stone fell from the sky, bombarding the city of Korvathur. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the wall, unsure why he wanted his Azsha―the vibroblades at the ends of the polearm would not do any good against meteors.
Another impact sent him staggering, but he held his footing. Bounding in long feline strides, he raced through the hallway of his old home, but skidded to a halt where the building ceased to exist. White blood spattered the streets below, body parts and debris littered everywhere. The sky was on fire, a dark spot at the center of it scared him grey.
The station was falling.
All around him people panicked.
“Go!” He yelled. “We must flee the city, there is no time.”
He leapt from the third story to the ground, hitting the gr
ound in a tumbling roll that ended with him at a sprint. An abandoned chrome skrimm floated a few feet from the ground, large enough to carry ten people. Zavex went for it, hopping on at the front end and grabbing the sticks. The hovering vehicle rocked with his impact, gliding to the side. With a twist on the controls, he wrenched it around and got it moving. He stopped a short distance away, waiting for a man running through the door of a dwelling.
A fragment of space station slammed through the roof, launching the now-dead Talnurian over the skrimm into the wall of a building across the street. Zavex cringed from the wave of heat and pelting stones, one-handing the controls to get the vehicle away from the devastation.
He rounded a corner, shouting at those who were too stunned to do anything but gawk at the sky. Families boarded Yldris transports that had swooped in to extract as many civilians as possible. Zavex collected one or two stragglers and maneuvered the skrimm to join the exodus seeking refuge in the mountains to the west.
Screaming brought him to a halt just outside a half-collapsed dwelling. Ignoring the protests of his six passengers, he dismounted and ran to the door. A column of rock obscured the entrance, trapping what sounded like children inside a burning home.
“There are younglings inside,” he shouted back over his shoulder.
One man, who had been reaching for the controls, backed away. With a guilty look, he joined Zavex at the door. Between the two of them, they hefted the pillar and let it fall to the side. The other man recoiled from the heat and fumes inside, but Zavex held an arm over his face and charged. An arch to the right offered a path to a yard-garden, through a room that threatened to collapse at any second. He climbed over fragments of fallen ceiling and battered through a door in the next wall.
Inside, the upper body of a dead woman protruded from an avalanche of crumbled stone. Four younglings wailed over her. The eldest, also female, wore the trappings of an apprentice Ra’ala. Younger than Zavex, perhaps in her early forties, she knelt by her mother’s body, chanting. Soft light surrounded both hands as she pressed them into the lifeless woman. Her efforts did nothing, as the powers of the healers―especially a trainee―fell far short of restoring the dead.
Two boys, preadolescents of about twenty-seven years, clung to each other, unable to process what they had witnessed. The last, a tiny girl of about sixteen, knelt by a pair of abandoned dolls and wept into her hands.
“Come, we must leave. The station falls. Do not ruin your mother’s honor by crossing before your time.”
Zavex hesitated before touching the eldest daughter, even in this circumstance it would be considered rude. He gathered the two boys under his left arm, and their little sister under his right.
“Ra’alari, please. You can do nothing for her but honor her memory by staying alive.”
The daughter drew a deep breath and her tail sagged listless as she stood. He led them back through the burning wreckage of their former home. A warbling chirp emanated from the enclosed garden, causing the small girl-child to wriggle free and go sprinting for it.
“Maba!” she cried, invoking the name of whatever pet cowered amid the wilting flowers.
Zavex whirled, combat-trained reflexes bringing his hand around the little one’s tail. He held on, not pulling, as she snapped to a halt on tiptoe. She clawed at the air, straining to pull out of his grip. She looked over her shoulder with pleading violet-speckled eyes.
“My Maba,” she whined. “He will die.”
The eldest girl went for the passage, making animal calls. Zavex, without a free hand to grab her with, yelled. “It will collapse; a skreeli is not worth your life.”
He reeled the little one in and picked her up again. She protested, but he held her tight to his chest. The two boys seemed keen on leaving the building as fast as possible and pointed at the exit, begging him to get going. He took two steps toward the exit before a fluffy silvery-white sphere of fur zoomed out of the garden shack and climbed the eldest daughter’s robe. Just as she ceased her whispery chant, the hallway collapsed in a wash of flames that knocked her over. She scrambled around and crawled for the door, standing only after she made it outside.
Zavex passed the little ones to the waiting survivors and climbed into the driver’s spot on the skrimm. With the throttle all the way forward, he drove out of the city, headed for the shelter of the distant mountains.
The thunderous crash behind him, the space station smashing into Korvathur, knocked him awake.
Lieutenant Michael Summers finally woke at the touch of freezing air on his lungs. He did not remember details of his dream, save for it being depressing. A shower, breakfast, and two cups of coffee joined it in the obscurity of waking up too early. When he got to the flight deck, the thirty-nine degree air found a nugget of consciousness deep inside him.
Guided by a floating holographic screen, he made his way to Green Wing’s launch bay while reading over his group’s assignments. Due to her flight performance, command had assigned Emma to an F-44 “Mosquito.” The light fighter was the most agile thing on the carrier, even if it did lack a bit in weapons. A lot of pilots balked at getting “stuck” in a mosquito, but he had a feeling she could make it work to her advantage.
Liam pulled duty in an MR-11 “Manta.” The heavy fighter and its ultra-long-range neutron beam cannons were a perfect fit for his excellent gunnery skills. The rest of the group: himself, Zavex, and Aaron, were assigned to F94 “Glaive” medium fighters that possessed a midrange combination of speed, maneuverability, and firepower.
As he rounded the edge of the emergency blast door into the launch bay, he paused and raised an eyebrow. Green Wing’s fighters sat in a neat line with the Mosquito on one end, the Manta on the other, and three Glaives in the center. The fighter in the middle had a human rear end protruding from the avionics compartment at the nose.
For landing, the Glaives’ lower wings folded upright, making them look as if each had three tail fins. Two side-pods ran parallel to the main fuselage, lending a reassuring modicum of bulk to its profile. On the far left, the Manta took up almost the same amount of space as three Glaives, its silhouette reminiscent of an ancient dual-bladed battle-axe with the canopy in the narrow center. At the far right, the Mosquito resembled a baby Glaive, as if two of the other fighters had mated. It lacked the side pods of its larger cousins, but kept the trefoil wing design.
In flight, the primary wings folded down at a forty-five degree angle. They were useless in deep space, but they came in handy for atmospheric runs, not to mention they were an excellent place to mount weapons.
Michael breathed a sigh of relief at the Mosquito, grateful it wasn’t Aaron who was assigned to it; imagined whining rang through his head: too small, not enough armor, pathetic guns, it’s just a training craft for rear-echelon patrols, useless for real combat. With a shake of his head, he approached the protruding posterior, trying to be quiet, but his boot squeaked when he was a few meters away.
Aaron startled and hopped down, clapping his hands as if to knock dust away from them. “Morning.”
Michael glanced at the ship, at his own name ‘Lt. M “Dragon” Summers’ stenciled just below the canopy. “Something wrong with my fighter?”
He edged past Aaron to peek into the compartment, gazing over the various systems within. Nothing seemed amiss.
“Just checking to make sure you don’t have any helpers installed. I intend to keep the competition fair.” Aaron grinned. “Didn’t want you using some kind of advanced targeting computer I don’t have. I still don’t believe your Falkirk score.”
“This isn’t a competition, Hunter.” Michael stuck his head through the hatch once more, looking for anything out of place. Finding nothing, he closed it.
Emma trudged over, casting a plaintive stare at her floating holographic viewscreen.
“Well, well. Guess they gave the princess a Mosquito. Just hang back and let us handle things.”
Emma glared at Aaron. “So, my family lives on Earth. Does
n’t make me a princess. Would I be here if I was a princess?” She rubbed her gut, still queasy about her dream.
“You alright, Sylph?” Michael looked her over. “You’re white as a sheet and look ready to pass out.”
Aaron chuckled, as if her miserable appearance confirmed his opinion of female pilots.
“I’ll be okay.” She squinted at Aaron again. “I just had a rough dream. Mosquito, huh?”
Michael patted her on the shoulder. “You’re one of the few people in the Terran Defense Force that can handle one properly. I know a lot of people think it’s an insult, but in the hands of an amazing flier they’re actually quite dangerous.”
“Yeah, if you can stay alive for six months to pound through something’s armor,” quipped Aaron.
“The skeeter’s guns aren’t that pathetic. It’s so maneuverable a lot of pilots overcompensate and can’t control it. I bet she could take you five for five in a round of target-lock tag in one of these.”
“You’re on.”
“Thanks.” Emma frowned at Michael. “If I win, he’ll be impossible to work with. If he beats me, he’ll be impossible to live with.”
“He’s impossible to live with now,” shouted Liam from the door, just before he jogged over.
“I love you too, dear.” Aaron blew an air kiss at him.
“You got the axe.” Michael pointed Liam to the Manta. “Think you can handle that much gun?”
“Ooh.” Liam rubbed his hands with a weasel’s anticipation.
He ducked under the wing arc and ran his fingers over the dark blue metal, headed for the entry hatch along the underbelly. Unlike the other fighters, the Manta boarded via a ladder in the bottom in the manner of a bomber.
“Hey, Dragon…” Liam glanced back. “Don’t these suckers usually require a copilot? Who am I flying with?”
“That, sir, would be me.” A proper sounding British voice emanated from the closed boarding hatch. “PAU-44B, at your service, sir.”
