by Greg Dragon
She saw another handle jutting out from the hull, but when she reached for it she found she couldn’t. Exhaustion wracked her body and she became sleepy. “No, fight. Come on cruta, you can do this, reach for that grip,” she screamed, but then her other hand came free and she was thrown into the shields.
Helga woke up sweating and hugging her pillow so tight that her arms were numb, and she winced at the soreness in her biceps. She released it, embarrassed, and rubbed at her eyes, which did nothing to clear the blurriness of her vision. Sitting up on her cot, she felt around for her canteen, only to find a puddle where the liquor had spilled out.
“Thype,” she muttered then slung the pillow across the compartment. Her vision cleared and she threw her legs off the side, stood up and made her way over to the sink. The cold water did the trick, and she glanced at the time and saw that she was late. It was the beginning of the cycle but she had slept through every alarm on her comms.
She thought back on her nightmare and the recurring theme of near-death experiences. Whenever she slept she’d dream up situations from her past with the added twist of dying. Shield surfing was as much a part of her childhood as playing tag and craving sweets. It was normal for a young spacer to risk her life unnecessarily. There were only so many ways a child could entertain herself on a Navy warship.
Her thing had been heights; as a cadet, she would climb things just to entertain herself. Falling wasn’t as frightening as being caught out after curfew, and she could have died several times scaling the bulkhead to the top of the hangar. It had all been part of her development, but now with these nightmares, it reminded her just how reckless she was. No wonder I ended up a Nighthawk, she thought. I had no fear back then.
Helga was late for training, which annoyed her since she was supposed to be their leader, and though Cilas would be back in under a month, she took this as a test to see if she could do the job. She wanted to impress him, to let him know that he had made the right choice, but here she was scrambling to pull on clothes in a futile effort to make up for lost time.
She stopped at the door to the compartment and caught her breath. She was not mentally or physically ready for Quentin’s exercises. It had been four cycles since returning from the dreadnought, and they had spent it training as if a real mission was on the horizon. At first she’d led, taking them through simulations where they had to rely on one another. Quentin took over once they had these mastered, showing them the finer points of close-quarters combat. They started with strikes, but today they were going to be grappling and learning several throws. She had intended to sleep early to be alert for this lesson, but then she had a traumatic episode and the depression had led to drink.
When she stepped inside the tiny gym, she saw Raileo Lei wrestling with Quentin Tutt. The former Marine was having his way with the young marksman, who struggled as the bigger man mauled him on the mat. Quentin had trapped both his arms before delivering knee strikes to his abdomen.
“Hey, Nighthawks,” Helga said as she sat on a bench to change into her gear.
“Howdy, Ate,” Quentin said, and Raileo fell to his knees gasping, happy to be out of the big Marine’s clutches. “You just saved Ray here from my patented wishbone technique.”
“I don’t even wanna know,” Raileo said, looking pained, and Helga had to laugh at the face he was making.
“How’s the lieutenant holding up?” she said.
“He did well on his exams, but he’s pretty beat up. We won’t be able to see him for about thirty cycles is my estimate,” Quentin said. “He’ll be in the tank getting revitalized. I tell you, Ate, he’s a tough one. Anyone else would have been limping about down on Meluvia.”
“You say tough, I say stubborn,” Helga said. “He really should have been getting treatment after Dyn. He stays on me about taking care of myself and now he’s being submerged. Who does he think he is, showing up with this display of machismo?” She shut her mouth when she saw the two men gawking.
“I don’t think the lieutenant is showing off, ma’am,” Raileo said. “It’s pretty obvious you care for him, but he’s a dog, just like the rest of us. All he knows is to go after it when our leaders say to get it.”
“Yes, I know, which is why I made sure they learned of his condition,” Helga said. “We shouldn’t have gone to Meluvia without him getting treated, but we did and he almost died. We all almost died, and for what?”
“Well, we did remove deadly ordnance from a terrorist organization,” Quentin said.
“Saved millions of lives,” Raileo added, “and we took into custody a slimy Alliance traitor. The lieutenant paid for it with his body, but we cannot downplay what we did down there.”
“Fine, whatever, but when will it end?” Helga said. “For us to stay effective, we need breaks like this, when we as a team can hone our craft. If they keep deploying us when we’re beat to death and mentally thyped, then sooner or later one of us is going to slip. I don’t have to tell you what that looks like.”
“I’ve seen it enough,” Quentin said, “and you’re right. But we’re in the void now, ma’am, beyond charted space. The repairs will take weeks, possibly months, and then we will have a period before the captain needs Special Forces.”
“Except he gave us a mission not three cycles ago,” Helga said, grudgingly. “This is our rest period, but we’re tasked to look over the bored thypes on this ship that can’t play nice with one another.”
“Geez, Ate, that came out kind of harsh,” Raileo said.
“Well, I am sick of shiftless spacers taking up oxygen on our ships, Ray. They eat our rations, breathe our air, but bring nothing of worth to this struggle for survival. You both had your hardships but I grew up around the sort of rates that the captain is having us watch. They poison good spacers with their xenophobic rhetoric and bullying of aliens.”
“Huh?” Quentin said, perking up. “I thought we were to look out for people fighting and disrupting the peace. You’re talking about specieists. Is there something that I don’t know about?”
“You don’t see it because you’re a fine specimen of human being,” Helga laughed. “You’re tall, good-looking, and you’re built like an assault ship. I think that something is going on that our leaders refuse to share, and it has to do with traitors and agitators in our midst.”
“Better believe my eyes are open now,” Quentin said. “For all that we go through, all that we’ve been through, you would think these fools would realize that all we have are each other.”
“Hard to see that when you never leave the ship,” Helga said. “ESOs travel; we had to in order to participate in BLAST. You were a planet-buster, so you have been places where you are the minority, and Raileo is from a hub, so he grew up with aliens stuck in the same poor conditions as the humans.”
“That you’re wrong on, ma’am,” Raileo said. “Hubs are human; coming up I only knew two people that weren’t Vestalian. Difference there is that we were so small a community that if anyone said something specieist, there would be several people to shut it down. Don’t get me wrong. We had our hate groups, but they were so ineffective that the rest of us just laughed at them.”
Helga realized that she was souring the mood with her talk about xenophobes and badly behaved humans. “Rest and relaxation, eh? This will be my first break as a Nighthawk. You two are lucky, you just barely joined, and here we are stuck in deep space.”
“That’s fifty or so cycles of eating, training, and thyping.” Quentin grinned. “How’s this for a reward after the schtill we suffered on Meluvia, eh?”
“Good for the lucky ESOs who have a warm body to lay with,” Helga said, returning his smile. “Too bad for Ray, eh? Stuck up here with nobody to love.”
“Speak for yourself, ma’am, I get plenty. Lots of warm bodies, you had better believe it.”
Quentin put his hand to his face and shook his head in disappointment. “You’re too easy, Ray,” he said, and the young man looked up at the overhead and starte
d to laugh.
Since Helga was now in attendance, Raileo was let off the hook from having to wrestle Quentin Tut. The big Marine assumed the role of drill sergeant instead, and led them through a series of strikes, followed by simulated fighting.
Every time they would train it would be something different, but it was all in a manual, meant to keep them sharp and always improving. When the Nighthawks started training without Cilas Mec, it became evident that Quentin should take the lead on CQC.
Helga was happy to learn from Quentin; she had never been good at hand-to-hand combat. In the cadet academy, women were taught to stay armed, and in situations where they were no weapons, gouge out eyes and bite off tongues.
It hadn’t dawned on her that she had a deficit in her skills, since BLAST was survival with no need for combat, and in the field she had her PAS suit. Quentin Tutt stressed to her the need to improve her hand-to-hand combat. He showed her vids of tiny women in full-on fights against men.
He told her to forget exchanging punches and kicks, to use techniques more suited for a smaller person. This meant dodging instead of blocking, redirecting instead of absorbing, and when he demonstrated this way of fighting, she fell in love with it immediately.
Now she did this when he made her fight Raileo, who made the all too common mistake of taking it easy on her. He feinted a few jabs, which she bobbed and weaved around before catching his arm and rolling on the deck, sending him into the bulkhead.
“Oops,” she said as she came to her feet, but Raileo was already up and coming at her, mad as a hornet. Before Helga could react he was already on her, and she threw up a block and instantly regretted it.
Raileo’s fist felt like a battering ram crushing her slender arm bones, but she refused to scream, though every ounce of her wanted to more than anything. Another fist glanced past her left arm and clipped the side of her head. There was no stopping it, and Helga shouted in protest. The pain was too much to ignore.
Fearing a third blow, she lurched forward suddenly and wrapped her arms about his waist. She stepped between his legs awkwardly, doing as she was taught, and he toppled backward with Helga on top of him raining punches into his chest.
“You got it, Ate,” he said, guarding his face as he laughed.
“I knew that it couldn’t have been that easy,” she said, playfully slapping him on the head.
They stood up and touched each other’s shoulders in friendship before turning to Quentin for his judgment.
“Great job, Ate. You’re a fast learner. You could be quicker on the takedowns, but I imagine that a few more cycles and you’ll have it down. Ray, you’re really working at hiding it, but that first takedown got you, didn’t it? You were surprised and lost control on those punches. You have to watch that; we’re on the same team.”
Helga wanted to smile. It felt good to get the win over a warrior as athletic as Raileo Lei. This gave her confidence that if ever she was disarmed, she would have a chance, whereas before she wouldn’t have been so sure.
“Hey Tutt,” she said, cutting off Raileo who was pleading his case. “Could you and I go next?”
5
Every cycle had the same routine of hand-to-hand training followed by hours at the shooting range. While Quentin Tutt played instructor for the CQC, Raileo Lei was the marksman. At the range he helped Helga to improve her aim and showed her a number of tricks with the pistol.
After the range they would break to eat with the rest of the crew in the mess. They had their own table in the corner, which made Helga happy since it was below one of the terminals. When it wasn’t displaying a report or a PSA from command, it would play random movies, shows, or well-made documentaries on the history of the Alliance.
Once they had finished eating, it was time for simulation, which was the only part of their day Helga looked forward to. Quentin and Raileo did mostly simulations that dealt with survival on the habitable planets, and Helga would try out different ships, flying them into simulated combat.
Every starship in the Alliance kept these simulations for training, and as a cadet, Helga had practically lived inside of a virtual cockpit. Back then, when she wasn’t doing her duties, she was in a Vestalian Classic simulating fights with the Geralos. It honed her skills, and was one of the things she credited for her achievements now as a Nighthawk.
Simulation was her nostalgia, and whenever she would strap on the helmet and step into the booth, she would feel like a teenager again. Every cycle she simulated piloting a different fighter from the exotic but deadly Genesian models. Genese, an exclusively industrial planet, was the Alliance’s greatest manufacturer of war machines. Rendron was never near the, “iron planet,” so her dream of swapping her Classic for something new was relegated to the world of simulation.
Helga found this daily routine boring but when they separated it was the worst part. She was left on her own, which meant that she had to find something to pass the time. Having no lover or family beyond her team, she would get lonely and restless, and then the self-pity would settle in. To avoid her thoughts, she would typically go to the bar in hopes of seeing Joy Valance. If not Joy then Millicent, or one of the other Revenant pilots.
They were all drinkers and a lot of fun, and they would close the place down with her before stumbling off to their berths. It wasn’t the drinking as much as the conversation she craved, and since they were pilots who shared her passion, this was the highlight of her cycle. If there were no Revenants at the bar, Helga didn’t drink alone. These were the times she would go to the hangar and volunteer for late patrol.
The area of space where the Rendron drifted had the most beautiful nebula Helga had ever seen. It reminded her of her mother, an artist who loved to paint. Being out in her Classic, which offered a 360-degree view through its cockpit, she could stare at those clouds and imagine that she was out there.
For hours she would drift, not patrolling, just existing, thinking about life beyond the war and everything that she knew. When Joy was with her it was even better. She too had demons, and the pair of them would drift in silence for hours. This was a form of meditation for the young Nighthawk, who used the time to focus on clearing her head. It was a futile exercise for someone who had been through the things she had, but she kept on trying, regardless.
The first break in the routine came when Helga woke up to a message beeping on her compartment’s computer. It was a summons to medbay for an “examination,” which made her wonder if she had contracted something in the jungles of Meluvia. Since their return to the Rendron, she hadn’t felt like herself, which only added to her depression when she wasn’t with her team.
They had all been through the decontamination chamber and had been cleared to board the ship, but her follow-up physical hadn’t been positive. She was fatigued, undernourished, with signs of traumatic stress, and at the time it was recommended that she visit the ship’s psychiatrist.
Despite her want for something to disrupt her training schedule, the last place Helga wanted to be was inside of medbay. She considered ignoring the summons and making up an excuse until she remembered that Cilas was in a tank. As interim team leader, she needed to be ready to act, and if her health was a concern she was likely to let them down.
She wasn’t sure what she was afraid of with getting the treatment, since even Cilas had admitted to seeing the psych several times in the past. She got up and got dressed in her Rendron blues, and stood examining herself in the floor-length mirror. “I look a mess,” she said, running her fingers through thick, brown hair. Not too long ago she had a Mohawk, but now she looked as if she had walked into a stasis field.
I should just shave it all off, she thought, annoyed by the speed at which it had grown. She cursed under her breath, grabbed her comms and exited the compartment, slamming the door. There was a spacer standing off to her right, cradling a baby in her arms. Helga recognized her from the cadet academy. They had been friends. Not close, but friends nonetheless.
“Greetings
, Gallia,” Helga said, and when their eyes met, the woman suddenly looked embarrassed. She forgot my name, Helga thought, disappointed, so she focused on the baby, making her best attempt at baby talk. The boy seemed intrigued with Helga’s identification tag, which wasn’t a surprise since it glittered beneath the bright light of the passageway.
Gallia brought him closer to Helga, and she played with the tiny collar on his shirt. “He’s so adorable,” she said, and his mother nodded in agreement. “It’s Helga, by the way. I knew you back in the academy. Commander Qu’s class. You probably don’t remember me without the pigtails.”
“Helga,” she said, touching her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I was about to call you Hilde, and I just knew that I was wrong.”
“Don’t stress it, Gallia. I’m no good with names either,” Helga said, then worked her finger away from the baby, who had taken it into his grasp. She kissed his little fist, then turned and started towards the medbay, but a wave of sadness hit her so hard that she was about to cry.
Helga realized that most of her “friends” had forgotten her now that she was a Nighthawk. It wasn’t surprising or disappointing, it simply just was, but she wondered why this was her reality.
When she arrived on the “heal deck,” the smell of chemicals violated her nostrils. It reminded her of why she disliked coming here, beyond the needles, tablets, and other unpleasant “treatments.”
The bulkheads were brilliantly white, all of their surfaces practically flawless except for one terminal façade, built to resemble a porthole, showcasing Vestalia. Despite her dislike of false windows, this one had a peaceful effect on her mind. Was there something in the air? She felt relaxed, and had been staring at the planet for a while before she realized she was doing it.
