by Greg Dragon
“You sure?” he said.
“Very,” she replied. “Plus you’re next up to deck if I explode or something.”
“That isn’t funny. Master Chief would flip his top. All of that work he did to keep you alive, just for you to explode with this thing.”
“The irony would probably cause him to laugh,” Helga said.
“Cage Hem laughing? I’d pay real credits to see that happen,” Brise said. “Alright, I’ll leave, but don’t do anything stupid. If we need to be on foot again, I don’t think any of us would mind. Just be careful, Ate. I’m being serious. You can’t die. We’ve lost enough already on this mission, and I don’t see us getting back home without you.”
Helga appreciated him saying this, but it did nothing to help her confidence. Her flying them away would give them an opportunity to build a camp and properly attend to the lieutenant. They needed time for Cilas to heal, and to make a call to the Rendron to report their situation.
The communication itself would be a complex science, and the equipment they needed was back on the Britz. This meant that they would have to make a call to Louine, and beg them to transmit the news to Rendron. They wouldn’t be able to do this while they marched on foot, with one of them carrying Cilas.
Helga and Cage Hem were of the same mind on this, which was why he’d allowed her to try the thopter. A long trek across the moon wouldn’t get them to the settlement. It would just leave them open to more Geralos attacks.
The thopter had to fly, this was what she told herself. So she tried to think of a way to make the controls work. In her training she had been made to fly a myriad of different spacecraft. Her choices had ranged from Vestalian strike ships to the slow Meluvian frigates with no hardpoints.
Each one of these vessels was unique in its own way, and with ships from Meluvia, Louine, and Genese, there was a language barrier that she’d had to overcome. Only once had she been made to try a Geralos ship, and it was in a simulation, with a situation just like this.
Helga had failed the exercise at first, relying on her instincts with flying alliance ships. It taught her that the Geralos were in fact quite unique’ their ships relied on the AI to be synched with the pilot.
Remembering this now, she removed her gauntlet, and placed her palm on the glass. She closed her eyes and cleared her mind, letting the computer synch with her thoughts. When it accepted her as the pilot, she could feel it in her head. The sensation was alien, and frightening. It was as if another person was sharing her brain, but now she knew the thopter as if she were part of it.
The glass lit up and she opened her eyes, removed her hand, and grabbed the controls. It would only fly for her now, and she had total control. She put aside her doubts and brought it up to hover.
The rotors came alive, and the thopter began to shake. Then it grew steady and rose up from the surface. Helga liked how responsive it was to her every move. She tilted it forward and flew past the men, circled around the perimeter, and then brought it down in front of them.
When she opened her comms she could hear them cheering, and the weight on her shoulders fell off. She had frozen during their first skirmish and missed her shot on the worm, but here in the cockpit, they could rely on her to do well.
She placed the thopter near the ground, remembering that she had no landing gear, then opened the doors to let them in. Lamia Brafa was first, jumping in with little effort. He grabbed the overhang with his left hand and pulled aboard the bulk of their heavy equipment. Next came Cilas, who he strapped in next to Helga, while the rest of the team quickly boarded.
“Stargun is mounted. You can fly us out, Ate,” Cage said. “Find us a good location, preferably one without worms.”
“Aye aye, sir,” she said, and took them up a little ways before tilting the stick forward and exhaling with relief.
Cilas touched her arm to get her attention. She was surprised that he was conscious, so she looked over to check on him. “This is stupid,” he said. “What have you done? They will locate this vessel and shoot us down.”
“How will they know that we’re different from their own?” she said. “Plus, we have the same radar they use. Besides, if they come for us I have a plan. You all will abandon the thopter, using your PAS, and I’ll lead them off while you make your escape. Since we can track one another, you can come for me later on, once I’ve rigged this thing to fly auto, while I jump and—”
“Planets, Ate, shut up,” Cilas said. He slumped down into his seat and threw up his hands. “You don’t know anything about our enemy. How they can literally smell you, and track your armor. Do you think that their finding us in the cave was just a mere coincidence? Cage knew they would come, but he wanted me to be safe. Have you not been paying attention? The only way to stop the Geralos is to kill them, dead. That is why we’re here. It is what we have to do.”
Helga stared forward, stunned, not knowing what to think. Everything she’d tried to do had turned out to be wrong. “What’s your order, sir?” she said, frustrated to the point of giving up. If she couldn’t get this right, this area of her expertise, then she’d just reserve herself to being a brainless puppet.
“We’re already in this thing, so let’s take advantage of it,” he said. “Turn around and take us here.” He brought up his wrist comms and gestured across it. A detailed map of Dyn’s surface appeared on her helmet’s HUD. There was a red circle around an area on the map, north of the rocks where she’d flown them from.
“That’s the colony of Abarion and the mission we were sent to do,” Cilas said. “Take us in, keep her low, and watch that radar closely. On contact we’re not bailing like that boneheaded idea of yours. What we will do is engage the enemy, and you’re going to fly the way I know you can fly. Am I making sense to you, Ate?”
“Yes, sir,” she said and turned them around. She banked the thopter slightly, flying a wide, low arc back the way they had come. When she steadied it, Cilas stood up, touched his wound, and walked to the back. A few minutes later he was over the comms, thanking them all for saving his life.
Helga barely listened, still stinging from his words and doing as she was instructed. As he made what would probably be remembered as a great speech, her mind drifted to days when she was a cadet on the Rendron.
Back then, there was always someone asking her about her parents, and whether or not they were people of note. The spoiled offspring of rich Vestalian opportunists took great pride in making her feel unwanted. The older girls were the worst: they would say the nastiest things to her, especially when she wouldn’t play along.
Most of them were human or Meluvian, so Helga’s Casanian heritage was often brought up in mockery with some inference to her mother being a prostitute. The cadet academy felt like a prison sentence that she was made to endure. But there would be glory upon graduation; this was what the cadet commander, Loray Qu, would often tell her whenever she would go to her office to complain.
One day while eating noodles inside of her tiny compartment within the barracks, a buzzer alerted her to someone at the door. It was past curfew, but the cadet commander would often make unannounced visits to check if they had contraband or fellow cadets inside their compartments.
Helga still found the buzzer odd, since the commander had access to all of their compartments. She had picked up her pistol—which she had stolen to protect herself from her bullies—checked the charge, and slid it into the small of her back as she walked up to see who it was.
“It’s a bit late, don’t you think?” she had said, annoyed at the possibility of someone playing a prank at that late hour. Having been jumped a few times by angry groups of girls, Helga knew that she had to be ready for anything.
Cutting off the light inside her compartment, she’d touched the panel to unlock the door. But when it slid open, she’d seen that it was a man; tall, bald, and poised to attack. Helga’s training kicked in and she’d pulled him inside, twisting her body in a way to throw him into the table.
As he scrambled to his feet with vicious intent, she had jumped back quickly and shot him in the chest. Blood had burst from the wound as he went down and all she could manage to do was just stand there shaking. It was the first time she’d shot anyone outside of a simulation, and all she could remember now was just how frightened she felt.
Helga couldn’t recall if her fear was for the possible repercussions, or for what the man would have done if she hadn’t been armed with that weapon.
When the cadet commander came in with an MA in tow, she had fully expected to be kicked out of the academy. But the commander protected her from expulsion, even though it was unforgivable for cadets to have a firearm inside their compartment.
She had loved Loray since, the way she imagined people loved a big sister. She remembered her words as clear as if they’d been uttered the day before.
“You are a first class cadet, Ate. I don’t care if nobody else sees it. What you did here tonight shows that you have sand. And girl, that means no matter what life throws at you, you’re going to be ready to shoot it in the chest.”
Those words were her anchor when the bullies would come, and she remembered them whenever she had to make a hard decision. Taking this thopter had been a hard decision, just like speaking up to this company of seasoned warriors. It had stung to be scolded by the lieutenant, but when they needed her, she had managed to step up.
The memory was painful but it reminded her of who she was. She was a new recruit that had been given the privilege of becoming a member of the Nighthawks. Being insecure was natural when placed in a company like this, but hadn’t she proven herself time and time again as a cadet? Did she not belong with the Rendron’s elite team?
The memory helped and she was able to focus and catch the end of Cilas’s speech. It was something about getting home and honoring Cruser’s sacrifice, which brought hot tears to her eyes.
The thopter’s glass had shattered when they killed the pilot and now the diminished shield was her only protection up front. A well-timed shot would kill her the same way Cruser had been killed, and Helga couldn’t help but think about him.
“Anything yet?” Cilas said through comms as he walked up to retake his seat. He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze before sitting.
“Nothing yet, Lieutenant, just dunes and craters,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Either they are looking for us in the wrong place, or they haven’t realized that we’re on our way back. These lizards have a way to communicate without the need for comms. There was one time when we thought that they were all part of a hive mind. Turns out that they have empaths, special soldiers who can read minds, communicate telepathically, and even take over other minds.”
“I’ve heard of those,” Helga said. “It’s the scariest thing about them. How do they do it, do you know? Why don’t they just take us all over and end the war?”
“From what we know it’s too much of a sacrifice. The parasite is unable to return once he jumps inside a new host. Basically the lizard becomes you in every way, and while it does its actual body withers away. Not all of them are okay with this, as you can well imagine. Only the fanatics, but they have a lot, so every time we face them we face that risk.”
“Thype,” Helga whispered, thinking of what would happen if one of them got flipped.
“This is why we don’t allow you to salute during war. As soon as a lizard knows who’s in control, you run the chance of being compromised.”
“Makes me regret being an officer,” Helga said.
“Now you know why men like Varnes refuse to take command,” he said. “They want to fight, but they fear the head games. Do you think that it doesn’t haunt me every waking hour? I keep a low profile, and you will need to think about this as you climb the ranks. Never lead from the tallest horse, Ate. Stay on the ground, and keep it low key.”
“They won’t be able to get into my mind if they’re too busy watching their six, Lt. I don’t plan to be on the ground much. I want to be in a cockpit lighting them up,” Helga said.
“Never heard of any pilots being made into puppets, so I can see your point,” he said. “But it can happen to anyone, at any time. Let’s hope that we’re spared that nightmare.”
8
When the enemy thopter appeared behind them there was no warning from the radar. Cage had the portside door open, and it was only when he started firing that Helga realized that they had been ambushed.
Time went still as the Nighthawks scrambled for their weapons. Two shots from the enemy caught the aft rotor and sent them spinning. Helga adjusted to stop the spin, taking evasive maneuvers. She dropped the nose and flew them into another ravine.
The Geralos followed as she took them through a narrow gap, then climbed into a vertical rise once she was past the rocks.
“Ate, what are you doing?” Cage shouted. “Position us where we can kill these thypes.”
“There’s another one cloaked just over the rise,” she said. “If I slow down they will cut us to pieces.”
She ignored his objections and flew the way she’d been taught on the Rendron, trying to avoid being caught between the two enemy thopters.
After a few minutes of this, Cage seemed to give up and barked out commands for focused fire. He and Varnes aimed at one, depleting its shields immediately. But instead of evading—now that it was vulnerable—the Geralos fired back at them. Helga saw it coming, and dodged as best she could before firing back at them with the thopter’s gun.
The Geralos thopter rocked violently as one of the rotors went out, and that was when its pilot made an attempt at escape. Helga smelled blood in the water and turned on it with relentless fire, but now the other thopter was onto them, trying desperately to pull them off.
“Stay on that cruta, Ate,” Wyatt shouted from the back. “Do not let those thypes survive.”
His words resonated when she heard them, her biggest critic egging her on. She growled with fury as she stayed after the thopter while simultaneously dodging the other. As her bullets found home she saw the thopter begin to sink, and one by one the Geralos started jumping to the surface below.
Eventually their thopter stalled and crashed into a rock, and Helga went into defensive maneuvers to evade their new attacker. But her shields were falling, and they were too close to shake. Cage Hem was still screaming for her to stabilize to give him a shot.
“Ate, I am not going to tell you again,” Cage said. “Level this cruta and let us do what we do,” he growled.
“Do as he says, Ate. He knows what he’s doing,” Cilas said, and she noticed for the first time that he was no longer sitting beside her.
Against her better judgment, Helga obeyed, and leveled off the thopter with their pursuer. Cage Hem opened up with little care for overheating his gun. Back and forth they fired on one another and then the enemy’s shields went out.
Helga gnashed her teeth as she braced for impact. She could feel the vessel rocking as their shields gave out. But Cage kept on firing despite the danger, and to Helga’s surprise the Geralos turned around.
Taking the cue to pursue and finish them, she engaged the thopter’s thrusters and aimed for the enemy’s rotors. The fleeing vessel became a fireball as the Nighthawks cheered through the comms. And just like that it was quiet again, and they were the only thopter remaining of the three.
Helga felt as if she’d been underwater and had finally come up for air. Blood rushed to her head as the adrenaline lifted and she screamed in victory and pumped her fists. It felt good to win and survive an attack that for all intents and purposes should have been their undoing. But she was with a team that excelled in the impossible, and a Master Chief whose stargun was the stuff of legends.
She leveled them out and pushed forward on the control stick to tilt the nose down as she increased the thrust. Cilas struggled over to his seat and sat back down, throwing back his head in what appeared to be relief.
“Very impressive,
Ate,” he said. “I knew you were capable. But now the rest of these men know it too.”
After another hour of flying, the domed tops of Abarion appeared on the radar at 80 km out. Helga looked over at Cilas and assumed that he was sleeping, since he had been sitting still with his mask inclined.
“Lieutenant,” she said and he turned slowly to look at her. “The settlement,” she said, pointing off towards the domes.
“Oh … Well, put us down in that crater over there,” he said.
She did as she was instructed and took them down inside the crater. Without any landing gear, she hovered close enough to the ground for them to jump out.
“Good job, Ate,” she heard Cage Hem say before exiting the vehicle with the rest of the men. Cilas remained behind and Helga wondered if he was okay. When he didn’t move, she reminded him that the landing gear was damaged, and that he would need to jump out soon.
“Once I’m out, I want you to fly this thing over to that rock formation,” he said, pointing at an area on the radar. “It looks to be about a klick off to the Louine side, so it should be relatively easy to get back. Do you understand?”
“I do, Lieutenant. I’ll fly to the rocks, put the thopter down amongst them, and then rendezvous back here.” It made sense to hide the vessel, just in case the Geralos came back. She hadn’t thought about it when they approached, but now it seemed like common sense.
Cilas nodded and then stood up, touching her on the shoulder again. Helga had learned that this was his way of letting her know that they were good. He was so much her senior in rank, and she had stumbled since joining the group. She had been scolded, yelled at, and even insulted, and none of the men were going to apologize. The squeeze was Cilas being Cilas, supportive to the end. It let her know that none of it was personal, they just wanted her to catch up.
He walked slowly to the back, held his wound, and jumped out. Helga lifted the thopter out of the crater and turned it towards the mountain of rocks. They ended up being a little farther away than she had estimated, but upon approach, she saw that they were ruins from an old building.
