by Calista Skye
“Hey, nobody sees us as small and cute,” Neri'on countered. “We're big and fierce. Except the Earthlings among us, who actually are small and cute.”
Charlotte fired another rocket. It did better than the first. “Well, this small and cute Earthling just killed
four enemies. How many has the big and fierce warrior taken down today?”
Neri'on grinned in appreciation of her comeback and excitement for soon being in combat. “Today? I haven't started counting yet. But certainly a kill earned with an honest blade is worth ten kills done by pulling a trigger.”
“Those rusty old things? Only in your dreams, sword man.”
Charlotte was having the time of her life. She had learned the earthy Acerex language the warriors were speaking pretty fast, and now she understood everything they said and could joke and chat with them.
The squad was a really good one, probably one of the best in the whole army. They had accepted Charlotte as their pilot without much trouble, and now they were bantering easily during actions like any good crew. They were gently ribbing her, like they would any newcomer to the squad, but there was no malice in it, and she was holding her own in a way that she knew they all liked.
Except Cori'ax.
He was being formal and standoffish, and whenever he gave orders to Charlotte, he would be completely neutral and cool, as if she was a total stranger.
She couldn't help feeling hurt about it. Sure, she understood that being romantically involved with someone in his own squad would be a tricky situation for a commander. But he hadn't even acknowledged that they had known each other before or that they'd been intimate. He also seemed to avoid her, so that they were never together alone.
It was even more irritating and hurtful because she could see how great he was. He had an easy way with command that made his men really want to do the best they could, so that he would give them a casual word of praise. He was totally at ease with them and joked just like they did, but he also managed to maintain the mystery of the commander and make them look up to him like no leader Charlotte had ever seen, including King Vrax'ton himself.
And he was a formidable warrior. He used one extremely large sword, and he swung it with such ease that it looked like it only weighed the same as a wooden stick. He could make it do remarkable things, and it sometimes seemed as if the blade danced with a life of his own.
His legendary recklessness was obvious, too. He would do things that seemed suicidal, until he had done it and come out on the other side unscathed, as if it had been no big deal. He made everything seem easy, and the squad loved it. But Charlotte noticed that he rarely took chances with their lives, only his own.
She would have preferred him to not risk his own life, either. Because she admired him more and more for the man that he was and for the value that he had for his army. But he continued to ignore her, and that was starting to become a problem.
“Thirty seconds to drop,” she said and turned on the red light in the compartment behind the cockpit, where the squad was now getting ready to jump out of the dropship to fight the Prec on the ground.
She fired six new rockets at the closest enemies, flicked the switch that would open the rear hatch, then dodged and veered to avoid the enemy spears that shot up towards the ship. She dived down to the landing zone and then pulled up on the stick, making the craft do a hard stop and then hover exactly one foot above the grassy surface among the trees.
She switched the light from red to green an instant before the ship stopped. “We're down,” she said over the internal comms, using the Acerex phrase.
There was no acknowledgement from the warriors, but she saw on the cameras that they sprinted out of the dropship in perfect formation. Neri'on jumped out, too, and then Charlotte gunned the engines and shot straight up from the ground at full speed, breaking the strange and dangerous Acerex habit of waiting to take off until the rear hatch was completely closed. She closed it on the way up instead, which was how it was always done on Earth because it just made more sense.
The craft had been stationary for precisely two seconds, which was probably a record for the Acerex. She wondered if any of the warriors realized how perfectly she'd handled the maneuver. Probably not. They were not well versed in the art of flying.
Then she glanced at the rear vision screen and saw Cori'ax looking up at her craft from the ground. There was genuine wonder in his face.
Charlotte permitted herself a tight smile. “Okay, so maybe one of you got it, at least.”
She levelled off and checked out the situation below. The flood wave of yellowish mass that was the Prec army came slowly closer, and the Acerex were ready to receive them. She could see the smoking wreckage of a handful of Acerex transports that had been shot down by the Prec spears, and she shook her head. Such an unnecessary waste! They really needed some new routines.
Acerex dropships would take off and then hurry to get out of range of the enemy, because they couldn't do much good without weapons. But Charlotte's craft could do more, and she zoomed over the Prec front line, using lasers and short bursts with the chainguns to thin the ranks of yellow blobs. Bullets were pretty ineffective, but a well-aimed laser beam could cut through a Prec and sometimes kill it.
She could take out maybe two or three enemies in one pass, and that was more than enough to distract the Prec. They concentrated on firing their spears on her ship, and since each Prec only had two of them, it meant that she was draining them of ammunition before they could use it on the Acerex warriors.
Some of the ammunition, at least. There had to be a million Prec, and they seemed to grow in number every second.
Charlotte wanted to save some rockets for when she went in to pick the squad back up, and she rose into the air so she could swoop in and give her squad air support if they needed it. She knew they would never ask for it, because it never crossed their minds to wage war in any other way than with swords and axes and bows. The Earth concept of winning by any means was pretty unknown to them, and Charlotte wanted to pull her hair out in frustration at how they fought. It was like time had stood still with them, and they didn't use much artillery or air support or guns.
Their enemies usually didn't, either, but that should just have made them easier to beat. She could only guess that the militarism that seeped through the whole Acerex society made it hard to change the sword fighting idea.
Well, she hoped she could show them a more efficient way.
The warriors attacked the Prec as soon as they reached the trees, and Charlotte had to admit to herself that the swords worked pretty well against this enemy. She couldn't hear what was going on down there, because only a handful of Acerex commanders used radio comms in battle, and no one in this army did. That was another thing that should be changed if they really meant it about winning their endless wars.
But Charlotte had to know what was going on. She set the dropship's cameras to give her the image of Squad Nine's area of the battle, and she directed one to focus only on Cori'ax.
Watching him fight was almost hypnotic. He slashed and spun and jumped and hacked, always with a smile on his face and always exchanging jokes with the rest of his squad. She even saw him slap his knees and obviously howling with laughter at something that was said, in between slicing two enemies in half. The other members of his squad were good, too. But they didn't have Cori'ax's easy and effortless mastery. His bare torso glistened in the light from the red alien sun, and his elaborate flame tattoo flexed with the muscles underneath.
He was having just as much fun sword fighting as Charlotte had flying. They could be such a great match.
Why wouldn't he talk to her? Was he embarrassed at what they had done? Was it because she was an alien? Was it because she wasn't the thinnest girl in the world? Did he regret it?
“Fuck.” She couldn't think about those things now. She had to concentrate on the battle.
The Acerex fought well, but the Prec advanced steadily among the trees. There wer
e just too many of them.
Squad Nine was holding its own, though. There was a half circle of clear ground where they were breaking the wave of Prec that was flowing towards them, and the outer edge of it was littered with dead aliens. But the other Acerex were giving way, and in between the trees it was probably hard for Cori'ax to see that his squad was about to be cut off from the rest of the army. If they got surrounded by Prec, they would probably not be able to fight their way out. They were fifteen, and the Prec were still at least a million.
Charlotte slapped the instrument panel once in frustration. This could have been so easily handled if they'd had radios! She could just have warned them and they could have taken care of it with no trouble.
But now the ring of enemies around them was about to close. Cori'ax seemed to be engrossed in the fight and enjoying himself so much that he couldn't see how far ahead of the other Acerex forces he and his squad had come now, even if they were really just fighting in one place.
When Cori'ax decided that they would leave, he would throw a grenade that released green smoke to show Charlotte that he wanted her to come and pick them up again. But if the whole squad got surrounded, it would be pretty hard for her to land and get them all aboard without getting hit by the spears the Prec were shooting. The dropship was heavily armored, but she wasn't sure it was thick enough to withstand several hits. And the craft did have weak spots.
The circle of enemies closed around Squad Nine as she watched. Now they had to fight back to back, completely surrounded by the tentacles and spikes and spears that grew on each Prec.
Charlotte seethed. Cori'ax was leaving it dangerously late. “Come on, dude ...”
Already she was pretty sure she wouldn't have room to land without crushing a whole bunch of Prec. That didn't worry her too much; it was more the damage they could do to her dropship that was the problem. She couldn't clear a landing area using rockets, because they had splash damage and could easily injure or kill her own squadmates.
But something had to happen. Now.
She dived down and fired all the chain guns and lasers as close to Cori'ax as she dared. The burst only took down one Prec, but it got the squad leader's attention. He gazed up at her, and started waving his hands in a way that had to mean 'come here'. And now she saw it – he had used the smoke grenade to get her to land, but it hadn't gone off right, and the little orb was lying on the ground, just leaking a green fluid.
“Acerex quality,” Charlotte hissed between clenched teeth and located Neri'on on the ground. He was the copilot and had to get aboard first, as the inflexible Acerex procedure dictated.
She set the dropship down right by him, flung open his door and helped him climb in. He got into the copilot's seat, smelling of nauseating Prec fluids and breathing heavily.
“Spirits, that was close.” He bent double in his seat, his breath fast and raspy, bleeding from many cuts on his torso.
Charlotte wasted no time in taking off again. She didn't want to sit on the ground as a stationary target any longer than she had to.
“How you doing, Neri'on?”
The warrior was still panting, and he looked pale. “Still alive,” he said and coughed. “For now,” he added, an untypical thing for an Acerex to say. Charlotte knew he must be injured pretty bad if he was even remotely willing to admit that he was in anything less than perfect shape.
“Hang in there, warrior. We'll be at the mothership pretty soon.”
He didn't reply, and that was even more worrying.
Charlotte flew another round, firing the last of the missiles and noticing that the Prec didn't shoot their spears at the dropship anymore. They had to be out of ammo.
Just like she was almost out of fuel. The pickup had to happen in one move, or she wouldn't have enough juice to get back home to the Acerex mothership.
She hit the switch to open the rear hatch, and then for good measure opened all the doors and hatches on the sides too. It was unusual, but any way the squad wanted to get aboard now was fine with her. She wanted to stay down for as short a time as possible, but she would leave nobody behind.
She set the dropship down hard, and it rattled as it squished one Prec under its skids.
The squad got the point and they all came running in a textbook example of orderly withdrawal.
Charlotte kept a close eye on the screens and counted the warriors on board.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
Then fourteen as Cori'ax sauntered leisurely into the main bay and sat down, clearly cracking a joke and taking about half the worry off Charlotte's shoulders. He was safe.
Just one more warrior now. The Prec were closing in fast, a wall of huge tentacled beings in every direction.
She flicked between the cameras, trying to find the last member of the squad. “What the hell is keeping him?”
Ah. There he was. On the ground, clearly injured, but still alive and conscious, crawling towards the shuttle.
Charlotte thought fast. Only she could see him, and she wasn't about to tell the exhausted and wounded Neri'on to get back out there. The closest Prec were still far enough away, and they were all out of venomous spears to shoot. It would work.
She powered up the engines and made the craft hover two feet off the ground while at the same time moving slowly backwards in the direction of the wounded warrior's position. With one hand on the touchscreen she dropped the rescue net that would enable many warriors to hang onto the outside of the craft if necessary. But this time it would only be the injured man.
The craft kept backing up and she saw the warrior becoming aware that he still had a chance. He crawled slowly towards the dropship, then grabbed hold of the large-meshed rescue net that hung from the craft, an old idea from ocean-going ships back on Earth that worked just as well on alien planets.
“Hang on!” Charlotte yelled out her open door, then powered up so the shuttle soared skywards. The injured warrior hung on to the net, but he couldn't stay there much longer, and Charlotte didn't want to set the craft down again. Already the computer was protesting against the low reserves of fuel.
She looked down. The injured warrior hung right underneath the cockpit where only she could reach him.
She rolled the net as far into its holder as possible, bringing the man closer to the hull.
“Can you climb in?” she yelled over the engine sound, but she immediately saw that he couldn't. He'd broken one arm and at least one leg. Any climbing was not happening. And he had to get in now.
She looked over at Neri'on. He was unconscious in his seat.
“Hey, guys,” she said over the comms. “Look out on the left side, down and to the front. Someone has to go get him. I'll open the hatch and slow down.”
The warriors back there got the picture right away, and soon two of them were hanging on the net too, reaching for the warrior.
Then she saw it – his broken foot was caught in the net and they couldn't drag him inside.
At the same time, the computer gave a calm warning: “Thirty seconds to fuel emergency.”
She had a half minute to fix the problem, or the craft wouldn't be able to reach orbit and the mothership. They'd be stranded on the planet.
“Fine, I'll be reckless, too.” She opened her door, then leaned out, trying to reach the wounded warrior and his foot. But her arm was a few inches too short.
“Fuck.” She had no choice. She unsnapped her harness, leaned her upper body out of the dropship and reached down as far as she could. Hanging on for dear life, she untangled the warrior's foot and the two others dragged him in.
Suddenly the craft jerked hard to the right and a Prec spear shot past. Charlotte grabbed behind her, but her hand only found thin air.
There was a roar in her ears, she couldn't find purchase anywhere and it was harder to breathe. The alien sky tumbled in front of her eyes.
In the chaos of sensations, it took her a couple of seconds to realize what was going on – she was falling. She was no longer
inside the craft.
She flailed wildly as the situation dawned on her and she panicked for a split second. Then the emergency parachute snapped open and everything was suddenly very quiet.
Except for the sound of the shuttle's engines, accelerating hard away from her. It would have fuel to get back to the mothership, but there was no chance it could return to get her. It was on autopilot now.
“Shit!”
She realized what had happened – the autopilot had clumsily tried to avoid the single spear shot at them at that moment, and it had rolled the craft out of the way just when she was leaning out. She'd rarely had worse luck.
She looked down. The heaving mass of pink and dirty brown right underneath her was the Prec army. She was going to land right among them.
And that ...
She felt a moment of panic again. That would be the end.
No one expected the pilot of a dropship to ever need a parachute – the craft would either work perfectly, or it would be shot out of the sky by the enemy. That usually ended in a bad crash or a hard explosion. The emergency parachutes were simple and designed mostly so that they would be small and not take up much space on the outside of the flight suit.
But it could still be steered, at least a little.
She grabbed the two strings that dangled in front of her face and pulled them so that she was slowly drifting towards the forest, where the mass of revolting enemies was the thinnest. But still she was mainly falling straight down.
She looked down her flight suit. She had a multitool, a small first aid kit and her watch, which was pretty advanced but didn't contain the tactical nuke she'd have liked to drop. The tool did have a knife blade about three inches long, and that was the closest thing she had to a weapon. No one expected a pilot to ever need to defend herself against an alien enemy. The dropships were too well armored for that to ever be an issue. Until now, anyway. After this, she'd make some changes.
