by Greg Dragon
While Wyatt was the definition of hard, the man next to him was the extreme opposite. He was pale but dressed in a tight black outfit that looked nothing like the armor they wore. Helga wondered how it was that she hadn’t seen him until now. She didn’t recall him being there when they boarded the Britz.
He was thin, sinewy, and never made eye contact. There was something about him that made her feel nervous. This man was introduced as Lamia Brafa. He was a Virulian spy who joined their company to act as scout and CQC master. He seemed out of place, even beyond his dress, and when Cilas finished his introduction he merely glanced at her.
“Last but not least, we have Petty Officer Brise Sol. Sol is our vehicle operator and engineer. It will be Sol who will help us fortify the settlement once we pull the lizards out. This is his second trip with us, ain’t that right, Sol? So you see, Ate, there’s hope for you yet,” Cilas said, smiling.
“The people on this moon have been here for a period of two years,” Cilas continued. “Since then, Geralos intelligence has located them and targeted their settlement as a place for experimentation and human breeding. As you all know, the lizards like to bite into our heads and eat the gooey goodness inside. The things they intend to do with these people will make even the hardest of us lose sleep.
“They aim to make this a farm—a human farm. Where women raise their children for the sole purpose of being food. Our job is to prevent the loss of this settlement to the Geralos and to protect the people who call this place home. Right now there are ten families living down there and they are going to need our help. We’re going to land on the lizards, send them on a nice trip to hell, and then we are going to give those settlers the defenses they need.”
When the introductions were over everyone retreated to their respective corners to prep for the excitement to come. From the simulations Helga knew that they would have several hours before they’d have to strap in.
She decided to stretch her legs and walk around the general cockpit area. Cruser was in his chair, feet up on the command panel, playing around with a star map on his handheld tablet. “What do you need me to do?” Helga said, walking over to see what he was doing.
“We have several hours before we break atmosphere,” he said. “You’re going to have to find a way to pass the time. Let’s see, you can socialize, but knowing you, that won’t happen. Or you can try to sleep. It’s what you’ll end up doing anyway.”
“Very funny,” she said. “But I’m good on sleep. We had three days’ worth of shut eye if you recall.”
“It’s a small ship so your options are minimal,” Cruser said. “Pull up a book on your handheld, or a game or something. Just figure it out, alright?”
Helga sat back down and checked the readouts. She saw that they had an estimated fifteen hours before reaching Dyn. She was a bundle of nerves, and there was a lot of time left, but her mind was too busy for reading. It also didn’t help that she was feeling nauseous, and she didn’t know if it was anxiety or the aftermath of the cryo.
She got up again and scanned the ready area to see what everyone else was doing. Several of the men were playing cards in the middle, and Cilas was having a heated discussion with Cage Hem.
Helga walked over to the card game and all eyes turned to her. “What are you all playing?” she said to them.
“Wild Nines,” said Wyatt. “Nighthawks only. Sorry you can’t play. Only lizard-killing hands get dealt into this game, not future food.” Then he bared his teeth and bit at the air.
“Oh yeah?” Helga said. “Sounds to me like you made that up. What? Are you scared I’ll win and embarrass you in front of your boys?”
When he gave her a wink instead of a counter, Helga didn’t know what to think. “Looks like the lessons start early,” he said. “Lizard food wants to play. Deal the lady in, Chief, and let’s see what she got. Now remember, fellas, Helga Ate is a second-class cadet. We don’t want to get on her bad side, so go easy this first game.”
“Are you ever going to stop?” she said, sitting down next to Varnes. “Anyway, what’s the ante? You boys playing for real credits or what?”
“Looks like we got us a gamer!” shouted Brise Sol, and Varnes began to laugh hysterically.
“We’ll see about the gamer,” Wyatt said, seeming annoyed. “The ante’s ten credits, lizard grub. Just do me a favor and don’t go crying to the lieutenant when you’re broke.”
After several long hours of cards and conversation, Helga felt better about the company and the mission they were on. Though she lost a lot of money, she won enough games to break even, and even Wyatt seemed to warm up a bit when she matched him with the insults.
They mostly swapped stories and gossip, which helped make the time go by quickly, and before she knew it eight hours had passed and they decided to call it quits.
Helga went back to her seat and pulled the foil off a hard meal ration. She ate it slowly as she watched the grey moon grow closer, and washed it down with a supplement. Once her hunger was sated, she reclined her seat, then placed her feet up on the console. Cruser was asleep in his seat with the tablet resting on his lap. Helga followed his lead and closed her eyes.
“Alright, we’re in the pipe now,” Cruser shouted, and a flurry of activity took over the ship.
Helga opened her eyes. She didn’t know how long she had been out, but the large grey moon was now all that she could see.
“Armor on, check your gear, and let’s get ready to thype some lizard tails, Nighthawk!” Cage shouted. Helga gave him a look of surprise. The stoic Master Chief had been replaced with a rowdy, backslapping leader. His gusto was met with approval from the men as they pulled on their armor and checked their weapons.
Helga looked over at Cruser and he was gearing up too, but when their eyes met he frowned at her. “Did you not hear the Master Chief?” he said. “I have the bird in a descent, Ate. Stop sitting there looking dazed. You need to get up and get moving. Now.”
Helga realized that she was still in her seat and she jumped up to pull on her armor. It had been hours since cryo, but it felt a lot shorter, and now the reality of the mission was the looming grey in front of her.
Numb fingers fumbled with straps, but she did her best to keep moving. After what seemed like an hour, Cruser was on her side, pulling down her breastplate and locking it in. “You were a second class cadet, Helga. They prepared you for this,” he whispered. “Push that fear to the side and ready your thyping gear.”
She inhaled deeply to calm her nerves and then took command of her body. It didn’t take much; she was conditioned for this. She reached into the locker, grabbed her helmet, and then pulled it over her head.
Cruser adjusted it from behind and it snapped into place, and the HUD suddenly appeared before her eyes. It showed her heart rate at 108 bpm, and a green paper doll with the condition of her armor. An empty gauge floated at the bottom of her vision, and another gauge wrapped around it all, showing how much fuel was left in her booster.
This was the first time she’d seen the inside of a PAS, though she’d simulated wearing one no less than a hundred times. All the ESOs were in their armor as well, including Lamia Brafa, who wore something sleeker with red highlights.
“Strap yourselves in, this moon is not playing,” Cruser shouted, and Cage picked up his command and screamed at them to get strapped in.
Helga jumped into her seat and pulled her straps tight, then looked over at Cruser who was working the controls.
They began to vibrate, as if a giant had grabbed the dropship and was attempting to shake them out. Helga felt as if her guts were being pushed up into her throat and then they were past it and she could see the surface of the moon.
Suddenly her HUD began to scream in red text. She could make out “breech,” and atmosphere warnings, so she looked to Cruser for help. The chief was slumped over in his seat, with a hole in the place where his face used to be. Now she heard shouting from the men behind her.
“Thype me,�
�� she whispered. “Adan, please don’t be dead.” She made to scream but caught herself. He would want her to be strong. Fumbling for the release on her arm restraints, she leaned forward to take over the controls. Two blast doors slammed down in front of Cruser, protecting the ship from the breech. Helga heard more shots against the hull, then cannons exploding everywhere.
“Ate, what are you doing? Put us down,” Wyatt yelled, and that was when her anger took over. Put us down? No, they had killed her friend. She wasn’t going to land without putting up a fight.
She righted the ship and found her attackers. They were Geralos zip-ships flying circles around the Britz. Helga thought back on her training, flying a Wyman into combat, and her muscle memory found the controls needed to arm the Britz.
When she activated hardpoints, an echo of cheers came to her ears, and she timed the flyby of one of the ships and let out a barrage of machine gun fire. Clipping the aft of the nearest ship, she watched it dip and then crash. The other ship disappeared so she scanned the radar, and was pleased to see that it was flying away.
Helga looked for a good place to land the Britz, somewhere safe enough to stave off an ambush. Her answer came by the way of a ravine which dipped deep into the moon’s surface.
When she flew into the chasm, she saw large rocks and outcroppings, no ground stable enough to set the bulky Britz down. “Land the thyping bird, rookie!” she heard Varnes shout. So she chose one of the clearest areas and put the dropship down.
She stared at Cruser for a very long time, ignoring the men as they rushed about the cockpit. The pilot’s face was now a vacant, bloody hole, and a part of her felt guilty, even though that made no sense. Looks like we may have gotten here a tad bit late, Helga thought, and she looked back to see what Cilas was doing.
She saw that the lieutenant was seated on the floor, with a hole in his armor from where he had been shot. Varnes and Brise Sol were tending to his wounds while the rest of the men were scrambling around. “Let us the thype out of this thing, Ate,” Wyatt said.
“Cool your jets,” said Varnes. “I need to patch up this hole.”
Shots rained down on them from above, and continued relentlessly as Helga struggled to release the door.
Cage Hem began unscrewing an airlock that he found on the floor of the Britz. “We’re going to be exposed if we don’t do something soon!” Varnes yelled, and as if on cue, Hem pulled up the giant lid to reveal the surface of the moon.
The big man jumped through and then motioned for them to hand him Cilas. “Give me the Lt, I need to get him secured. The rest of you hawks quit screwing around. Get out here and raise hell,” he shouted through the comms.
The gravity allowed for them to carefully drop Cilas’s body, and Cage laid him down behind a pair of rocks. One after another, the men jumped through the hatch, but when it was Helga’s turn she took one last look at Cruser. “I’ll make it count,” she said, after shutting off her comms.
She picked up her rifle, synced it to her suit, then stepped into the vacant hole and dropped.
4
When they were all outside, they huddled beneath the Britz and Cage began to bark out orders: “Alright, listen up, we’re covering Brafa, that’s the plan right now. Sol, stay inside the bird and figure out what you can. Ate, get over here. I need all guns on deck. Stay by my side and act like you’ve been here before. You got it?”
“Got it,” she shouted and readied herself for action. Both Cage and Wyatt ran below the wing of the Britz and started shooting into the air at their attackers. Varnes followed close behind and started doing the same with Lamia Brafa at his side.
Helga made to run out but the Geralos vessel shifted positions. It started firing on the area right in front of her. The rocks exploded from the gunfire, and she pressed up quickly against the landing gear. The bullets had her PAS going ballistic as the computer tried in vain to find her some sanctuary.
It took everything within her not to pull her helmet off. The readouts obscured her peripheral vision and only added to the chaos. The Geralos fired a weapon that she was not familiar with, and though she couldn’t hear the bullets ricocheting off the Britz, she knew that it was all around her.
A voice was in her ear, screaming for her to move, and she recognized that it was Casein Varnes.
“Shield,” shouted Cage through their comms. Wyatt got behind him and threw up his hands. A large translucent disc formed from the device he thrust in the air. It shielded the Geralos bullets, allowing the Master Chief to mount his stargun.
Once it was in place, Horne Wyatt shifted positions, holding the shield at an angle while Cage brought his fire down on the Geralos zip-ship.
“Anytime now, Ate,” Varnes shouted at her again, but as much as she wanted to leave the wing, the Geralos wouldn’t let up. She looked over to where the Nighthawks were and saw Lamia Brafa touch his wrist. She thought that her helmet had a glitch because it looked as if he disappeared.
“Ate, come on, you have to move. They’re circling around,” Varnes said. Helga gripped her rifle and pulled it into her body as if it would provide her some protection. She waited for a break in the Geralos fire then dashed from under the Britz. Her PAS picked up the motion and the rockets came on, both in the soles of her boots and on the backpack that she wore.
She floated forward and into the air, not knowing how to stop the boost. Wyatt saw what was happening, jumped, and plucked her out of the air, pulling her down below his shield.
“What the hell just happened?” Helga said when she could finally catch her breath.
“Suit reacts to your thoughts,” Wyatt said, while urging her to get behind him. “Didn’t they teach you this stuff back in the academy, second class?” he said, and she resisted the urge to punch him in the back of his neck. He had risked his life, pulling her down from that fatal jump, so she took it on the chin and saved her anger for the Geralos.
When Helga finally could see what it was that they were fighting, she was quite surprised that it wasn’t a zip-ship. If the Britz was a beetle, this vessel was a mosquito, with a pair of rotors for wings. It flew out from above the Britz, maneuvering to get around the shield, but Wyatt was brave and stood his ground.
Some of Cage’s shots finally clipped one of the shooters, who hung from the side of the thopter shooting down at them. The creature fell from the craft and was impaled on one of the rocks. This caused the pilot to panic, and attempt to fly them out of the chasm.
Varnes took advantage of their hasty retreat and began firing at the exposed men. Helga lifted her auto rifle and sprayed the sides thoroughly, hoping to hit one of the Geralos hanging out on the edge.
Suddenly a thin line of light flashed through the cockpit of the thopter. Helga recognized it as an impact laser, fired from the upper portion of the rocks. She knew that it was friendly, but wondered at its source. The thought of a sniper—possibly from the colony—hiding out near the chasm crossed her mind. Those settlements had all sorts of people, some with military histories, and all kinds of skills.
The thopter began to spin out of control and she knew that the pilot had been hit. The Geralos onboard tried to jump for safety but one got caught inside the rotors and was brutally cut to shreds. Another lost his footing and swung around with the vessel as it hit one of the rocky walls and then crashed into the ground.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Hell of a shot, thin man,” Wyatt shouted. Then Helga saw Lamia Brafa descending from the rocks. In his right hand was a laser rifle, which she didn’t recall seeing him have before. He took his time, the essence of confidence, using his boosters to slowly glide down to the floor.
“They had no shield around that thopter,” he said, as he walked over to where they stood. “It was easy enough to just pick off the pilot. They’re not used to humans fighting back.”
“I heard about you Jumpers when I was back on Virulia,” Varnes said. “But, brother, what I just saw you do blows all those stories to bits.”
&nbs
p; “Lamia’s our secret weapon,” Cage Hem said, and Helga could tell he was smiling when he said it. He led them over to the wreckage to make sure that the Geralos were dead. Helga felt queasy when she saw one up close, this being her first time seeing one in the flesh. She couldn’t understand why the humans called them “lizards” but assumed that it was due to their rough, scaly skin.
From what she saw lying broken in front of her, the Geralos were very much a humanoid race. Their faces were flat, and they had holes instead of noses, but they did not look like “lizards” at all. She knelt next to one and pushed back his lids. The eyes were recessed, giving him a menacing appearance. Next she studied the mouth, which hung open. The sight of the teeth sent shivers all along her spine.
“Nasty cruta, isn’t he?” Varnes said as he walked over. He shoved the body violently with his boot. “I think this one here is the leader of their party.” He began searching the body as if he knew it held something he wanted.
“How we looking on the repairs, Sol?” Cage said through the comms. “There’s bound to be more coming back, and I don’t want to be down here when they show up.”
“It’s not looking good, Master Chief,” he said. “The engine was hit several times and it’s fried beyond repair. The system works, so it could provide us some shelter, but the Britz will never fly again, sir.”
Cage growled with frustration, and marched off in the direction of Cilas. “I’m going to check on the lieutenant. You all can finish up down here,” he said. “We’re not taking hostages. If lizzy moves, lizzy dies, you hear me? Stack their bodies inside of that…thing, and then move before we find ourselves freshly thyped.”
When he gave them this directive, Varnes quickened his search of the leader. “Expecting to find something on him, Varnes?” Helga said, genuinely curious as to what he was doing.
“Geralos leaders carry those awesome swords,” he said. “Hey, Brafa, can you show Ate your sword? I don’t think she’s seen an actual las-sword before.”
