Kuko opened the small luggage compartment in the wall behind them and stored Pegasus’ travel bags. Sergeant Kati signed her name at the bottom of the page and handed the clipboard to Kuko. It was one thing to be late; it was quite another to make a mistake in the launch protocol.
“This is our latest, most advanced fighter. This one was the third off the assembly line. The first went to Indra and the second to Castor Mayhew,” Kuko said, partially lying.
Kuko quickly ran down the list, examining the various gauges and levers. She moved the throttles to thirty percent and again checked the gauges. Pegasus noticed that the temperature inside the launch bay was still quite comfortable.
The excess heat is probably shunted through an exchanger that warms the barracks, Pegasus thought. What could possibly make the Nazz happier than to have their living quarters heated by the exhaust of high-performance Celestial fighters?
Once Kuko was satisfied, she briskly initialed at the bottom and handed the clipboard back to Kati. Pegasus did not need to see Kuko’s face to know what happened next. The relief and happiness on Sergeant Kati’s face said it all. General Kiena had given the senior technician a subtle nod to say ‘good job’, along with a small look of appreciation.
Kati’s face showed more than relief. Her eyes melted to a softness that caused Pegasus an unexpected touch of jealousy. She was glad her goggles concealed this sinful emotion.
Kuko threw a lever that lowered the canopy. She latched the locks and checked her safety equipment. She inspected how Pegasus dealt with the complexities in the safety harness system, decided it was close enough, and captured Pegasus’ voice tube. She plugged it into a receptacle just behind their heads.
As technicians released the safety lanyards, Sergeant Kati clicked her heels and saluted her General sharply. Pegasus was surprised to see Kati give her the same look she had just given Kuko. Then, just before she spun around and disappeared behind the door, Kati gave Pegasus a little wink. Before Pegasus could acknowledge her, Kati was gone.
As soon as the hatch behind them was secured, a large glowing light on the wall in front of them changed from red to green. Kuko rubbed her gloved hands together as she looked over to Pegasus. Pegasus could feel her smile even though the helmet’s shields covered her face.
“It’s been quite a while since I’ve flown with you,” Pegasus said.
“Yes it has,” Kuko replied mischievously, her voice coming through the audio system as clearly as if they were alone in a silent room. “And never before in one of these babies.” She gave the control board a soft tap.
“Let’s do it,” Pegasus said, her excitement building as Kuko slowly pulled back on the two throttles. The jets screamed, tugging ever harder against the restraining bolts. Kuko watched the gauges as the RPMs built to one hundred percent.
“Any prayers you wanna say?”
“With you at the stick, General Kiena, never.”
Kuko turned fluidly, clicked the cover off a large red switch, and flipped it. In rapid succession, the spring-loaded hatch flashed out of sight, the restraint interlocks released, and a rocket assist-pack engaged below them.
The fighter bolted like an angry bull smashing out of its holding pen.
Pegasus instinctively pushed her head firmly against the backrest, acceleration pulling hard against her mass. She anticipated a launch rail and was astonished by the rocket assist-pack. There was no chemical system of any type that could compete with the acceleration that existed within a high-frequency gravity well, so the rockets and jets were tame by comparison. The difference was the sound. The sound and feel that came from the Celestial Waters was quite lovely, very much like huge waves sloshing one about.
But internal combustion engines — Nazz internal combustion engines in particular — such tuning — the care and delicacy. And not just internally. Tuned with the entire craft. The sound. The vibration. It was the roar that made the acceleration so thrilling.
Immediately, the floor beneath the craft vanished and Pegasus looked down to see a barren plateau — plenty of wide-open space for killing anyone on approach to Elysium. The cry of the rain as it splattered against the windshield grew louder as their speed increased exponentially. It fell more softly as they left the lower harmonics of the Rasa and then abruptly vanished as they touched empty, open space.
The blast from the rocket engine fell silent as it hungrily swallowed the last drop of fuel. Clamps opened — the rocket engine dropped — moments later a tiny, absolutely silent ion engine fired, delivering the expensive rocket back to the hands of the Nazz technicians who awaited on Elysium, eager to conduct an extensive examination and refuel it for another blast into space.
When they touched 5c — five times the speed of light — Kiena pulled the fighter into a tight arc. Pegasus knew this would put them on an intercept course with Eden air space.
She tightened her muscles as she anticipated the pull. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kuko take her hands off the controls and casually turn toward her. Pegasus refocused on the c-meter. Still exactly 5c.
“So, this is what Nazz engineers can do in 4,600 years?” Pegasus said. “You can automatically tune the internal gravity to be Seraphim specific? That’s why I didn’t feel anything. This is so far beyond anything I imagined possible.” The Lance will be tough news for Valkyrie Command.
“Better than that. It’s pilot or copilot specific.”
“So you can monitor the physicals of the passengers?”
“Sure. Why not? You have to be able to do that for the auto-destruct-upon-foreign-intrusion mechanisms.”
“So when did you scan me?”
“After you strapped in.”
“When would we have blown up? If I was a hostile?”
“It’s my aircraft, so it started scanning me as soon as I closed the canopy. Then, on a hidden keypad here, I punched the code that told The Lance my passenger was a friendly. Otherwise, as soon as I pressed the green button, the count-down timer would have started, giving us just enough time to clear the launch-bay and close the door behind us. No sense in destroying an expensive launch-bay if all you’re going to do is commit suicide, is there?”
“Glad you didn’t space-out and forget,” Pegasus mumbled to herself. She thought about the red button, glad to know that her Lanonandek transport craft was safe and secure on Elysium.
“Feel like testing the Valkyrie line of defense?” Kuko asked.
“Do I have a choice?” Pegasus replied as she watched the c-meter needle climb.
The meter’s scale went up to 100c. Wishful thinking, Pegasus thought as they accelerated past 10c, much faster than Pegasus thought possible in these lower realms. The needle continued to climb to 15c, 20c...
That’s all you get to see. Pegasus could almost hear Kuko’s thoughts as the heads-up display meter leveled off at 29.999c. She looked at the mechanical meter on the dashboard. Its needle was vibrating happily, just at a minute fraction less than 30c.
Kuko turned forward. Pegasus could feel her focus — growing into a steel rod so strong and flexible that you could almost pluck her like a guitar string. Fine lines of silver flowed across her green skin as she prepared herself for battle.
They flashed past the planet Jupa, property of Lord Rahu. Kuko continued to make fine course corrections as her target grew closer. Eden blurred beneath them, partially obscured by the thick waters of the Rasa. Pegasus knew that Kuko wanted to hit the smoothest waters she could find. This was always between the solar orb and the first planet. Planets created a great deal of turbulence, just as they were designed to.
I wonder what kind of mood you’re really in? Pegasus thought. How close to the sun will you risk? Because Material or Celestial, it really doesn’t matter. A solar furnace, with a corona of a few million degrees of kelvin will incinerate us both very quickly. But I guess this is as good a way to die as any.
Much to Pegasus’ relief Kuko aimed at a large patch of beautifully laminar Rasa at a safe distanc
e from the sun’s corona.
The instant Pegasus relaxed and an instant before she could fully enter into a deep panic, Kuko hit the throttle. Concurrently, all instruments vanished from the display. The Lance, Kuko, and everything vanished as well. With external cameras now feeding her heads-up display, it left Pegasus feeling as though she were alone, disembodied eyes flying through space with a completely unobstructed view of the beautiful Celestial light-show as it boiled out of the sun’s depths. An instant later, The Lance ricocheted, skipping off the thick, but perfectly laminar, newborn Rasa, as it smoothly flowed out of the surface of Eden’s solar furnace.
Kuko killed all power.
They blazed past the Valkyrie outpost. Pegasus guessed they were traveling in excess of 50c when they delicately slipped into the smooth, low frequency waters of the Rakta. Any high-diver would have been jealous.
Pegasus heard Kuko giggling. Kuko took her helmet off and smiled like a mischievous child.
Pegasus felt relieved when she saw their insertion point had mended and their wake dissolved. The Valkyrie would not be finding slippery little Kuko tonight.
Now that the fun was over, Pegasus expected Kuko to restart the engines and quickly resume their journey to Outpost Okinawa. Instead, Kuko gave Pegasus a little mischievous wink as she flipped the cover off a small panel in the armrest. Silent motors slipped down the backs of their seats, revealing an astonishingly large resting and sleeping area.
How interesting, Pegasus thought. It seemed rather strange for the spartan Nazz to have such a luxurious arrangement in an optimized, high-performance fighter. Kuko leaned back — her boots already off — and slipped into the sleeping compartment.
As Kuko collapsed on the comfortable-looking mat, Pegasus took off her helmet. So I guess she’s tired, Pegasus rationalized.
Kuko propped herself up and gazed into Pegasus’ eyes. Kuko smiled. Her deep green eyes grew softer.
She patted the mat beside her.
Pegasus’ heart jumped. So many times, she had dreamt of Kuko slipping into her bed and blessing her with one of her sweet seductions, in the way she had done so many times on Planet Panoptia.
The zipper on Kuko’s black flight jacket was already down far enough to reveal she wore no underclothes. Instantly, Pegasus felt like a schoolgirl frozen in place by strong, passionate forces — incomprehensible and impossible to control.
Kuko then said the words Pegasus had so longed to hear.
“What are you waiting for? Do you wanna make love or not?”
Chapter 27
Defeated by Lovers
Friends are good, well, and fine in times of war — even essential. Lovers? Falling in love tends to blind you and therefore requires a much more subtle touch. So maybe you should consider postponing falling in love until the war is over.
—Josephine
Oceania
Josephine stood in the shower. The hot water felt calming.
After she dried off, she stood in front of the mirror, brushing her teeth and rubbing moisturizer on her face. She slowly combed her long auburn hair. After she finished, she studied herself in the mirror. She saw herself as pretty, and it made her happy to have been blessed with such an attractive face. But not tonight. Tonight there was no happiness. Tonight the only thing she saw looking back at her was sadness.
It was fine to have all kinds of sexual relationships. Under special conditions, it was even fine to have sexual relationships with enemies, although that line could be a bit fuzzy as her friend Pasiel Pegasus had discovered to the detriment of her career. However, because of how convenient it can be to have an affair with a subordinate, elaborate rules of play had been clearly defined.
Eons ago, Sipheria had personally developed precise codes of conduct within Nebadon, with a special group of codes for those in command. Strictest among those codes was ensuring that a subordinate knows who you are and how both of you fit into the command structure. To have a sexual relationship with a subordinate without them knowing you were their commander, even if the subordinate was clearly the aggressor, placed that subordinate in an untenable situation. Historically, it had led to many problems. There was only one interpretation — the subordinate was always the victim. The result was always the same — immediate dismissal.
Depending on the nature of the offense, with the victim never knowing why, the guilty officer would be pulled out of the command structure, locked into a prisoner capsule, and tossed into a cytometric flow conduit programmed for Sipheria. There, a terrible pain awaited any Angel, God, or Goddess who had done something so injurious to a comrade.
Josephine simply believed Collin knew who she was. He had seen her many times at the assembly on Panoptia. Of course, he knew she was a colonel. Then arriving on Oceania as a full bird, of course he knew she was his commanding officer.
It turned out to be a very poor assumption. And then to find out he had not known who she was until today…
Out of curiosity, but really because she wanted to know how much damage had been done, she asked Collin, in a joking manner, if he had told anyone about their affair. He said no. She pressed the issue. He pressed back, becoming a little irritated with her.
“Absolutely not. I learned this lesson with a lot of pain after getting the crap beat out of me a few times by an incensed Angel. Let anyone assume anything they want. To speak out? No way. Brag? You might as well saw your own head off because the moment they find you, they’ll cut it off for you.”
It made her feel better for a few minutes, but only a few, because then he told her the impossible. Something that sealed her fate. He said today was the first time he had seen her in uniform. Her mind blistered through their past on Oceania and realized this was true. He did not even know until today that she was military. He just thought she was a particularly attractive member of The Sister’s of Mercy who had decided to open a dress shop. SAS security precautions on individual identities really worked this time.
Josephine knelt beside her bed to pray, just the same way she had prayed to the The Universal Father and The Infinite Mother every single night since she was a child.
But tonight, no words came.
She looked up toward the heavens and thought of King Joshua and the trust He had placed in her.
She had failed Him.
What would her mother and father think?
For the first time in her life, she could not pray.
She got into bed and curled up with her pillow, crying over the loss of a position she had worked so hard to obtain.
Soon she would be busted, and she knew it.
Chapter 28
A Friend of the Angels is a Friend of the Heart
How do we know El Elyon is the God of Love? We know by the friends He sends us.
—Josephine
Oceania
Pool, pink sand crunched under Josephine’s bare feet. She had been wandering the beach for hours, finally reaching the fence and the remote military guard shack for the Valkyrie base at the far tip of Oceania. A single guard dog momentarily lifted his head, glanced at Josie, sniffed, and lay back down to continue his morning nap.
Her plans to sleep late had not worked out. Intrinsically, she was a morning creature, a point of conflict in her relationship with Collin. Unlike Collin, Josephine did not have thick curtains and blinds over her windows. As a result, except on a couple of rare occasions, they always met at Collin’s cottage.
Had their assignations always been at Josephine’s, he would have eventually noticed her uniform. If he had reacted so poorly to Sipheria’s book, she wondered what he would have done if he had noticed a silver eagle and double thunderbolts on a Valkyrie uniform hanging in her closet.
The Valkyrie fence line continued along the top of a long, tall, rock breakwater that ran out into the ocean protecting the northern beaches from the strong surf. Inland to the beach, there was a small lush meadow filled with wild flowers and dotted with trees. She sat down, leaning against a coconut tree. She bent
her knees to her chest and squeezed them, trying to comfort herself. Seeing the vacationing Angels sailing back and forth on the turquoise ocean brought no joy.
For the first time in her life, she, who had been continually surrounded by the best of counselors, had no idea what to do or with whom she could talk. She knew everyone had periods of sadness and isolation, but until this morning, she had not imagined how deep those empty emotions could run.
“Dear Heavenly Father. What am I to do?” she asked, resting her head on her knees, lost in the hopelessness of it all. The wind rustled through the palms, while the ocean futilely tossed itself against the breakwater.
The wind brought a gentle voice to her ears. “Hi Josie. Is that you?” The words were so kind, so gentle, so filled with affection that they seemed otherworldly — like a pleasant dream, a voice of love flowing from Heaven.
Josephine did not respond even after David Pesagniya sat down and took her hand. She looked over and saw his kind, blue face looking back at her.
Since arising, she felt what she deserved was derision — her mind had been shouting at her for her stupid, senselessly juvenile mistake. The contrast between her internal reproach and David’s kindness did not register as real. Maybe this was just some happy memory from Ninveth.
She had known his face her entire existence. Every time she skinned her knee as a child, PaPa would be right there to comfort her. Tightly, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her. He kissed the top of her head, patiently waiting for her to say whatever she felt like saying.
“PerfPe?” he asked, using her childhood nickname. “Is this still about Collin?”
“Yes,” she responded quietly, to a presence that hardly felt physical — more like a warm bath gently flowing over her.
He ran his fingers through her thick auburn hair, waiting for her to continue.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said finally.
“Are you in love with him?” he asked.
Lilith: Eden's Planetary Princess (The Michael Archives Book 1) Page 18
