by Jay Shaw
“We’ll need a spreader bar to get that ramp down.”
Kate was looking through the narrow gap, a flashlight in her hand as she attempted to locate Major Dawson and his so far missing team. “I can see three of them, or at least I think it’s three.”
Brendan had returned, and with Levi’s help they cranked the bar. The ramp separated from the chassis with the ear-splitting screech of protesting metal. When the gap was wide enough to wriggle through, Julia followed Kate into the rear cabin. The interior was all dark shadows and random arcs of blue from the sparking alien circuitry that danced with each lethal surge. Two bodies lay amongst tumbled supply boxes. Kate reached the first and began to assess his condition, while Julia headed for the second. He was moaning, and trying to get free from a tangle of cargo webbing and the hard-shelled yellow weapons’ cases.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, don’t move.” Julia soothed, calmer than she felt. “What hurts?”
“My…head…” He said, turning towards the sound of her voice.
The blood running down Lieutenant Flynn’s face looked black in the harsh white of the flashlight beam, adding a garish edge to the situation. A head lac. Julia pulled on yellow gloves from the field kit, the latex snapping sharp against her wrists, and pressed a wad of four-by-fours into the Lieutenant’s matted hair; guiding his hand in place over them. “Press here. Hard.”
The Lieutenant nodded, dazed and loose-necked like a bobble-head doll, but his hand remained where she had left it.
“Zeb, can you dig Lieutenant Flynn out? I’ll keep looking for the others.” She didn’t wait for confirmation, before moving further into the depths of the wrecked glider. Unsure of what she’d find.
Major Dawson was sprawled across the console. He was breathing but unresponsive to his name. Levi came up next to her and helped maneuver the major out of the pilot chair and onto a back board he’d positioned on the floor. Being as gentle as they could, but conscious of their limited time, Julia put on a neck brace while Levi velcroed the board’s straps over Dawson’s body. Aside from the threat to life and limb should Glider two slide over the edge into the ravine – taking Rescue one and her crew with it – there was the chance that whoever shot them down would return for prisoners, alien tech, or just to make sure they’d finished the job.
“Let’s get him out.” Levi said. “Assess him back on Rescue one.”
Julia gripped the board’s handles and bent her knees. “On three.”
They carried Major Dawson out of the wreckage, avoiding the carnage underfoot as best they could, and over to where Kate was triaging Lieutenant Flynn and Airman Antonelli. Julia and Levi were lying Major Dawson on the closed gurney in Rescue one’s cabin when Zeb radioed.
“Wings, you copy?”
“Go for Wings.”
“I’ve found Doctor Tyler.” Zeb answered, the doctor’s surname caught in transmission static. “Bring rope, harnesses, the basket, Brendan, and Levi to my position.”
“On our way.” The three of them responded to the urgency in their teammate’s voice by grabbing the requested gear and running to where Zeb was holding onto a tree trunk and leaning out to look down into the ravine.
“He must have been thrown out the hatch on impact.” Julia’s stomach lurched at the picture her mind happily offered up; sound effects included.
Doctor Tyler lay face up, prone and still, on a narrow ledge forty feet down the cliff. His right leg stuck out at an awkward angle behind him and blood bloomed from under his TAC vest, to spread across his pelvis.
“Wings, you’re going down.”
Levi handed her a harness. It made sense. She was the lightest apart from Kate, and Brendan would anchor the rig with Levi to assist. Leaving Zeb to follow her down with any equipment Julia deemed was needed, once she’d assessed the doctor’s condition.
She stepped into the harness and tightened the legs straps, before clipping her rope’s carabiner through the metal ring on the front. With her feet spread on the edge of the cliff, she sat back into nothingness as Brendan and Levi took the tension on her rope. Julia descended at a steady pace and shrugged off the field kit from her back when her feet touched the ledge with a gentle thud.
“Kate?”
“Go for Kate.”
“Doctor Tyler is status two.”
“Stat-”
“I’ll need you to have the others ready to go as soon as we bring him up.” Julia interrupted Kate’s query. There’d be time later to explain the alternate realty terms that were second nature to Julia, but foreign to her new team.
“Understood. What are his injuries?”
“Broken femur, external bleeding in the abdomen, and a head lac.” Julia rubbed her knuckles firmly against the doctor’s sternum. “No response to pain stimuli.”
She unzipped Doctor Tyler’s vest and packed a thick wad of absorbent padding against the wound in his side and taped it in place.
“Brendan, we’re going to have to realign this leg before we can get him in a basket.” Julia radioed as she velcroed a brace around her patient’s neck.
A gentle cascade of dirt and gravel signaled Zeb’s arrival on the narrow ledge, just as Julia’s radio scratched to life.
“Rescue one, this is Phoenix, come in. Rescue one, you are overdue, over?”
“Stand by, Phoenix.” She grunted, her attention focused on the patient in front of her.
Zeb had set the basket along the doctor’s side and was unpacking gauze bandages they would use to strap the realigned leg to its mate; limiting any movement on the flight back to Phoenix. Even in his unconscious state Doctor Tyler screamed when Zeb and Julia applied pressure to his thigh. The crackle and grate of the bone edges moving past each other was sickeningly loud in the silence of the crowded ledge. It was another few minutes of back and forth communication between Zeb and Julia while they dressed Doctor Tyler’s head and abdomen wounds, before it was possible to lift their patient on a blanket and into the basket for transport back up the cliff.
“Ange, please inform Colonel Archer that we’ve located Glider two. Lieutenant Flynn, Major Dawson, and Airman Antonelli are secure, but we are in the middle of retrieving Doctor Tyler.”
“How are they?” Colonel Archer asked. Julia should have known she would be right there. These were her people. What did surprise her was that it wasn’t Mark’s voice in her ear.
“Two minor, one serious, one status two. You’ll need a medical team in the Birdcage when we arrive.”
“Your ETA?”
“When we get there.” Julia groused. “Have to go, Colonel, Wings out.”
Julia’s rope was clipped to the carabiner on the basket as she balanced Doctor Tyler to the top of the cliff, leaving Brendan and Levi to haul Zeb up and carry the doctor back. She needed to have Rescue one powered up ready to go, the moment everyone was on board.
Kate had the rest of Major Dawson’s crew harnessed to the bench seats in the rear cabin and was repacking her field kit when Julia ran up the ramp and into the cockpit. Glider one had commenced ignition sequences in answer to Julia’s telepathic instructions. Zeb was only a moment behind her, running in with the second field kit and three hanks of rope. He threw them in the cargo nets in the roof before taking his seat up front.
“They’re right behind me.”
Julia nodded, watching each row of energy tiles across the glider’s wings register blue on the display as it charged. Brendan and Levi carried Doctor Tyler on board and placed him in the foot space just as the last row lit up and Rescue one stroked Julia’s mind lovingly. She was ready to do her pilot’s bidding.
“Let’s go!” Brendan barked, shutting the hatch manually and grabbing a fistful of cargo net as Rescue one shot skyward.
As soon as they cleared the planet’s stratosphere, Julia signaled Zeb to drop the cloak and upload Phoenix’s coordinates from the glider’s matrix. Rescue one began to disappear as it entered the portal. The rainbow mist of the time waves caressed the little ship’s meta
llic hull, for the milliseconds it took to planet-hop across the million or so miles to the alien city they called home.
Julia grinned as she braked hard, hovering just shy of the Birdcage floor when Glider one exited her self-generated portal. Doctor Peyton’s response team was waiting to whisk their patients to the infirmary.
“Good job.” Zeb said, patting Julia’s shoulder as he walked out.
Julia grinned, swiveling her chair to stand up. “A team effort.”
Alone in the glider, her heart had started to thud again. She would have to confront Mark and her earlier behavior. Julia removed her harness and packed it away, tidying the ropes and field kits in an effort to calm down. Or delay the inevitable. Julia sighed and filled out the medical supply screen on the glider’s computer tablet. She was desperate to see Mark. She wanted to hold him and smell the scent of his skin; wanted to share with him her pride and her success in her first mission. Julia walked down the ramp, unclipping her hair and rubbing her scalp as she went.
Where would her handsome colonel be?
She headed across the access bridge and ducked down the back corridor before anyone could stop her. She’d delayed enough in the glider and didn’t need anyone stopping to ask her how it all went.
The double doors to their quarters opened as she approached to reveal Mark standing there; caught in the act of leaving as she flew at him. He had just enough time to get his hands up when Julia wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. He took a step back to balance her momentum then crushed her to him. Julia was interspersing frantic I’m sorry’s with kisses to his eyes, brow, temples, nose, and mouth.
“I’m sorry too, Beautiful.” He murmured, his face buried in the tresses of her hair, mouth against the shell of Julia’s ear. “This how you feel when I’m off-base?”
She nodded, unable to find words, so wrapped up in the scent of his skin; her lips mouthing into the spot behind his ear.
“How d’you stand it?”
Julia sighed, a deep shuddery exhale that had him squeezing his arms tighter around the small of her back. “To think of any outcome where you did not return, would send me screaming into madness.”
Staring into Mark’s whiskey gaze, Julia saw comprehension and understanding dawn. She knew from experience that he had been unable to function or focus properly for the duration of her absence. The knot in her belly loosened.
“You should get debriefed.” He said, releasing his hold on her so she could stand on her own.
“I need to stay with you right now.”
It was as much a plea as a statement of fact, and Mark enveloped her back into his arms. His tender kiss lingered, coaxing her to open to him as he backed them up to the bed.
~*~
They lay together, their body heat a cozy haven as sunset darkened the room around them. And in a harsh tortured voice that cracked and wavered so low Julia could feel it like an ache in her bones, Mark told her about Afghanistan and a failed rescue mission that had lost him his lover, and eight fellow soldiers.
“I went against orders. I couldn’t leave her behind. You never leave anyone behind. Dolan and Brady, the others…they found out what I was planning and wouldn’t take no for an answer – stupid bastards – loyal to a man, couldn’t ask for better.”
He shifted against her side, but the shadows of eggplant and ink kept both memories and emotion hidden within their depths.
“We were too late. I was too late. They were dead. All of them. The wounded she’d stayed with, executed – one in the head, two in the chest. And Chelle…things were…done.”
Listening was like having shards of broken glass stabbed into her heart. Every hiccup, every stutter, every harsh broken gasp of his confession left her mourning for the lost lives of his team and his lover.
She held her weary soldier tight in her arms, attempting to infuse her strength into him; his own having drained away in the act of unburdening his soul.
“He came down out of the sun. I flew just above the deck, hoping to scrape him on the crags of the gorge below. The heat-seekers nearly had us, but I yanked her up and they detonated on the cliff face. That bird did whatever I asked of her, but she’d never be as agile as my fighter. I banked right when I should’ve gone left. Lost the tail rotor in the strafing…went down in the dunes. Did you know they’re like hitting granite? Landed hard and she folded like dominoes; knocked me out cold.”
Julia said nothing, didn’t move or fidget; just kept him close as Mark continued to tell everything he’d held onto for so long.
“Came to with Dolan screamin’ and shakin’ me. He was circling back to finish us off. Everyone was gone. All I could hear was the thwap of the rotors as he zeroed on our position. Dolan dragged me from the wreck. And we watched from behind the dune. A pillar of smoke so black in a sky so blue and clear it hurt just to look at it. A funeral pyre turned signal flare visible for a hundred clicks or more. Dolan’s leg was fucked. I dragged him back to base; passed two patrols undetected… effort after stupidity…bled out in surgery. Dead. Like the rest of them.”
He shuddered in her arms, stubble a hot rasp on her breast. But it was nothing. Paled into insignificance when weighed beside all he had suffered.
“Shoulda been court-marshalled. I’d disobeyed direct orders, lost a female medic, my squad, and the chopper. Would’ve been too, if it weren’t for my father. He knew everyone; all with the right connections. They covered it up and we never spoke of it again. The Air Force sent me stateside, and I lived with it. Escaped in flying, taking the ops no one wanted; dangerous, boring, the ass end of nowhere, I didn’t care.”
Mark rambled as if now the dam had cracked there was no halting the onslaught of self-loathing. A life history no primetime television drama would ever consider touching, even with a thousand ten-foot poles.
“One day I was ordered to fly General West to the Arctic Circle, North Pole – there’s nothing there, no candy cane sign post to Santa’s workshop, nothing, just ice, blizzards, and more ice. It’s the loneliest place on the planet, which made it the best place for me. Or so I thought. Got drafted my first day, for a no questions asked extraction undetermined mission. I was running and Dragonus seemed like it might be far enough away, even for me. Of course, it didn’t work. The guys, Chelle, they hitched a ride; haunt me day and night.”
Julia stroked her fingers through his hair and in the deafening silence that followed his last stuttering words, she whispered.
“The dead don’t care about blame or guilt, Mark. They’re dead. No matter how much you might want to, you can’t go back and save them.”
“I know.” He sighed a shuddery breath and pressed closer, head heavy on her breast; hair a soft tickle under her jaw.
“Do you really think Michelle, or those soldiers, would want you torturing yourself every day for the rest of your life?”
“No.”
His eyes were glassy; unshed tears reflecting the first moonrise beyond the panoramic windows, lips pressed together in a thin tight line, face still and body tensing in opposition. It was a truth he wasn’t ready to hear or accept.
“I agree.” She answered quickly; fearful he would bolt, or worse close himself off from her. “Michelle would want you to mourn her, but not forever, Mark. She’d want you to move on with your life. Those soldiers, your squad, all of them knew the risks and still they volunteered. They did what they thought was right.”
“Yeah.”
“You need to let them go.” She whispered close and intimate, an edge of steel in her tone. “And forgive yourself.”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His face was ragged with the demons he had been battling for years, the carved contours of grief, and the beginnings of old wounds healing.
“This is our time. We’re meant to be together now, for however long we’re allowed. I feel it with every fiber of my being.”
“You’re amazing.” He whispered. “I’m so fucking glad, I fell through that p
ortal.”
She laughed; undone by emotions not hers to own. “The universe plots in its own unimaginable way, and it heard my heart calling to yours.”
“Just as well someone was paying attention then.” He nuzzled her neck. “I don’t know how much longer I could’ve gone on without you.”
He traced the contours of her face with the pads of his fingers, lingered over the rise of her cheekbones before tracing the shape of her lips. “Thank you.”
She pulled him down and kissed him; letting him know without words that the time for brooding and soul-searching was over. He kissed back, his tongue invading the cavern of her mouth, to dance with hers until she was panting and gasping with want.
“Mark.” She pleaded, lost in a sudden swell of overwhelming panic. The talk of death and loss had unnerved her and all she wanted was Mark, as close to her as he could get.
“I’m here.” He whispered in understanding as they held each other in companionable silence. The darkness could no longer harm them.
And as the haze of sleep coaxed her closer, Julia heard his choked whisper.
“Bye, Chelle.”
He shuddered, his body sinking deeper into the mattress as he relaxed into sleep. Julia smiled to herself with tenderness in her heart. His ghosts were at peace, and he would begin to heal.
“Yes.” She answered the universe’s silent question. “I am his. He is mine. And I will love him. Always.”
Chapter 12
When Myken was given the news about the decimation of his third-best guard unit on a miniscule planet so utterly insignificant to the concerns of Arcadia, three pleasure slaves, a bronze platter of sweetmeats, and a pitcher of Darvacion blue claret lost their lives to his wrath.
‘Why am I thwarted at every turn by the stupidity of Faekults who dare to call themselves sons of Arcadia?’
The messenger cowered where he knelt. Blue claret ran with the rich red of slave blood along the mortar; a curious blend of warmth and chill pooling beneath his bare knees. His Lord paced. The flex of huge muscles and billow of leather cloak were a stark contrast to the motionless accusation staring up at him from the naked corpse.
