by Greg Dragon
Helmets off, pistols high, and communication was instinct only. This was how Cilas Mec and Quentin Tutt had made it through the MLF camp. They had been so efficient in their infiltration that they’d only made contact once, when Cilas had dispatched a runner with a flurry of knife strikes.
They had searched several buildings that matched Wolf’s descriptions, but so far they hadn’t seen Misa Veil. It was inside one of these buildings that Quentin Tutt took a few seconds to answer Helga’s comms. Cilas had kept his helmet off, but he could tell from Quentin’s answers that things had gotten prickly and Helga was getting worried.
He remembered how upset she was about him keeping the mission from her. She could never understand that on most missions there was a real objective, masked by another that only the team lead would know. This was the nature of Special Forces due to the Alliance not having an intelligence arm. There were the Virulian spies, called Jumpers, but their affairs were so clandestine that even the Alliance council was unaware of what they knew.
ESO missions took careful planning and were largely expected to fail. You had the surface mission, which was something simple despite the danger presented to the personnel. It was normally: rescue an important person, assassinate a key target, or his least favorite, one like this, where they were sent in to pull out a person of interest.
Below the surface, there would be an extra objective, which was the real mission that needed to be done. After learning that the Aqnaqak had invited them over for the brief, Cilas had been called to the captain’s cabin to learn the real purpose of their trip.
“Tomorrow you and your Nighthawks will be briefed on the Aqnaqak,” Retzo Sho had said. “While that mission is of the utmost importance, Lieutenant Mec, I wanted to confide in you my reasons for volunteering your team.”
At the time Cilas had been taken aback. It was not usual that the details would come from the captain himself. Typically, he’d hear from the XO or one of the commanders. But after the disaster of Dyn, there had been a change in the captain, one that hadn’t been missed by Cilas.
“Thank you, sir,” he had said, and Retzo offered him a seat at the main table inside his cabin. When he had taken the seat and removed his hat, Retzo took the seat across from him and brought out a small vial of purple liquid. He poured two shots into glasses the size of thimbles, and when he raised a toast and they knocked it back, Cilas realized why the tiny glasses were required.
A fireball of liquid exploded in his throat, dripped down into his stomach and caused an involuntary shudder. He had stifled a cough, not wanting to appear weak, and immediately wanted another once the sensation was gone. Even now as he thought about that alien liquid, he wished he had some to take the edge off his adrenaline.
“Cilas,” Retzo had continued informally. “There are rebels on every planet pushing to take over the government. Not only that, but there’s a tremendous anti-war effort going on, urging citizens to stop supporting what they’re calling the Vestalian War. For years we monitored them but saw no reason to act. After all,” he said, pouring them each a second shot, “the planets can police their own people.”
The captain had stopped mid-sentence to smile and study Cilas’s face. At the time the lieutenant wasn’t aware of what would be asked, but he had assumed that it would be a strange request, considering the drink and informal way he addressed him.
“I’m your man, Captain Sho, regardless of what you’re asking. Please trust me to carry it out and I will not disappoint you, sir,” he said. This had caused Retzo to raise a hand as if to say he never doubted it. He looked at the vial as if he considered another, but he replaced its cap instead.
“It has come to our attention that some of these rebel groups are actually a cabal that spans the Anstractor galaxy. We are unaware if there is a leader, but we do know that each cell is aligned beyond planets and space.”
“So, a criminal alliance,” Cilas had said.
“Yes, and it has come to our attention that they are in league with a group of slave-trading pirates. You and Helga Ate are both familiar with the criminals who kidnap spacers to trade for credits. While their greater motivation is shrouded in mystery, they continue to create disruption in our war against the Geralos. This mission you’re about to undertake will put you in a position to gather intelligence. I need proof of this alliance between the rebels, Cilas, but it can’t be known that this is the real reason why I’ve sent you. To everyone else—including your Nighthawks—you are on an extraction. Do you understand?”
Cilas had confirmed and followed his command, which had won him the ire of Helga Ate. Now he was here on the actual mission and he was having his doubts. He wondered if there would be any plans to steal. There had been no updates, and finding the camp had been a stroke of luck.
With no intelligence or other agencies to help, Retzo had gambled on giving him this task. He was sure that the captain would understand if he returned empty-handed, but if he did find something, the Alliance—and his career—would benefit greatly from it.
At first, he had thought about splitting up, sending Quentin after Misa while he snuck into the buildings to look for their plans. But he was the team leader, he reminded himself, and if he went off solo, he could die and leave the Nighthawks in a terrible position.
He didn’t wear his helmet, which at the very minimum kept him on comms, but it was a hindrance in close quarters combat, and with Quentin Tutt with him, he decided they would get the plans first.
“Lieutenant,” Quentin whispered, gesturing with his head towards a small hut. There was a tall, muscular woman guarding the door, dressed in the uniform of the Aqnaqak Marines. Cilas nodded at his comrade and scanned the area, which had been abandoned some time earlier after the Vixen flew by. If that is where Misa is being held, then they didn’t expect us to infiltrate their camp, he thought.
Cilas studied the Meluvian woman, whose arms were on display from the tank top that she wore with her armored pants. She had an Alliance tattoo on her upper arm, one that he recognized from somewhere, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. As Quentin made to move in on her, Cilas pulled him back into the bushes. When he looked around to see why the lieutenant made him stop, Cilas leaned in and beckoned him to listen.
“There were two ESOs when we nabbed Wolf up on that roof. I think that woman was one of them, but it was dark so I can’t be sure.”
“Thype me, that is the one … I knew I recognized her from somewhere,” Quentin said. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t say. She looks like one of my exes.”
“Your ex looks like that?” Cilas said, his face revealing his surprise. “Your children would be giants. I can’t imagine what it would cost to feed the lot of you.”
Quentin gave him a devilish grin. “Too bad for this one. She cheated death at the capitol just to come back here to die.” He raised his pistol but Cilas stopped him short as a group of men ran by. They looked haggard and wet, as if they were corpses risen from the depths and were chasing Helga’s Vixen with a launcher.
“Ate’s lighting them up but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cilas said. “That bullet hits her, and she makes noise, and who knows what they’ll do to Misa.”
“How about I use my knife while you find a way in?” Quentin said, and Cilas nodded in agreement as he sized the man up. He had assumed the former planet-buster would be effective on the ground, but Quentin Tutt had been impressive beyond his wildest dreams.
He was deadly reliable and could move silently despite his size. Before seeing him in action, Cilas had assumed that he alone would be doing the reconnaissance. Quentin Tutt was on a level he had never seen. He was catlike, silent and graceful, and his intelligence in the field was unparalleled.
Cilas waited for Quentin to move then left the bushes in a crouch, slinking around another building and then sprinting to gain the hut. There was no backdoor, so he hopped up on a barrel and used it to examine the roof. While it looked like thatch from a d
istance, Cilas found it to be solid to the touch.
It may have started as grass, layered on top of wooden beams, but something akin to tar had been used to make it waterproof. Whatever it was, it felt solid despite its appearance, and Cilas found that it would actually support his weight. He climbed on top and crawled to the edge to look down on the guard at the front door. There he waited for Quentin since there were no other entrances but the front.
A noise to the right caused his head to snap around, and the guard woman looked up to see what the source was. Almost immediately Quentin ran from the side of another hut and was on her in seconds, driving his fist into her temple. Cilas covered him from the rooftop, then dropped down and joined him by the door. Quentin grabbed the woman and hoisted her up on his shoulders before spinning and kicking the door in.
Cilas Mec moved like lightning as soon as Quentin’s heel touched the wood. He dashed inside, time slowing as his training kicked in on the breach. He saw Misa tied up on a chair, with her face bloody and swollen to the point where he thought she was dead. To one side was a table laden with maps and computers he recognized as Alliance property.
There was a man on a microphone—the only inhabitant next to Misa—and on instinct, Cilas shot him, twice in the chest and once in the head. Examination of the room and the elimination of the threat had taken less than two seconds after Quentin kicked the door in. He stepped inside and threw the unconscious woman down before dashing over to Misa to see if she was alive.
Cilas Mec was at the table, snatching up files and storing them inside his backpack. He grabbed the computer, several holo-chips, and everything else that looked important.
“How’s she doing?” he said, once he’d gathered it all.
“Barely holding on, but she will live,” Quentin said.
“Great. I have the plans, and we have Misa Veil, but none of this means schtill if we can’t get out.”
“There’s a hoverbike outside,” the big man said.
“Finally, some thyping good news,” Cilas said. He pulled on the helmet and activated the comms, trying to calm his nerves as he worked at the controls. “Ate,” he said. “We have the package and we’re heading out, but I need you to keep at them for about fifteen more minutes. Once we’re clear, vaporize this place and leave none of these thypes alive.”
28
When Cilas Mec told her to vaporize the camp, Helga didn’t know whether he really intended for her to launch the torpedo. It was an order, that was clear, but did he really want her to wipe out the entire camp? She had suggested as much, but that was before she saw the homes, and the fact that some of the MLF had families.
They were bad men, yes, but it depended on who you asked. Pure evil would not have inspired a man like Joran Wolf to throw away a career to join its cause. Plus, where in their orders from Commander Cinnila Tye had it said that they were to destroy the rebel camp? They had Wolf and Misa, which was the mission. Hadn’t they completed their job?
Time didn’t just slow as she weighed her decision, it came to a halting stop. Helga turned inwardly on herself as two states of mind fought for control. Lady Hellgate wanted to launch that torpedo, but Helga Ate worried for her soul.
Lady Hellgate, Lady Hellgate, thype me, how I hate that stupid name, she thought. “Lieutenant, did I hear you right? You’re asking me to shoot a torpedo into that camp?”
“You heard me right. Wait, and then launch that torpedo from a safe distance. This camp holds all the ordinance stolen from the Aqnaqak’s stores, and they are going to use it to hurt the Meluvian people.” With that, he clicked off comms and left Helga with her orders. I hate this, she thought, feeling the familiar pang of hopelessness when you’re all out of options.
Helga pushed the controls forward and took one more flight across the camp, pushing out into the desert until the oasis was but a shimmering line on the horizon. Her eyes found Raileo’s and her heart skipped when she saw how he looked at her. His eyes seemed sad as he sat and stared, taking in the weight of what she was being made to do.
She tried to be good with it, thinking about the town where so many innocents had been butchered with the Alliance guns. She thought about Misa and how she’d been captured and threatened with death, and she thought about the bullies in Kua, chasing them through the forest. Wouldn’t the death of a few innocent people be worth the thousands that would live as a result?
Helga brought the Vixen about and hovered, staring at the shimmering oasis. A lifetime of suppositions rushed through her young mind, and she decided that there was no choice. Thirty minutes had passed but she hesitated, waiting ten minutes more to be sure that Cilas and Quentin would be far from the blast.
“Maker, forgive me,” she said into the comms as she aimed and placed a target on one of the buildings in the camp. She thought about her mother, reading to her when she was but a girl, and wondered how she’d feel about her little Helga now.
The torpedo fired a second later, then there was a ball of light, and a sound that would haunt her for years to come. It was as if the planet bellowed out in pain as all those lives were snuffed out in an instant. The Vixen climbed into the sky, and Helga Ate stared wide-eyed at one of the suns.
She felt empty, unheroic, everything that she had tried to escape by joining the Nighthawks. A hand found hers on the controller and she looked over to see the sadness in Raileo’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you probably want to take us down now, ma’am.” Helga saw for the first time that she had maxed the thrust and was about to break atmosphere to take them into space.
Stalling the controls, she rolled and looped, bringing them down to where the oasis had been. There was nothing left to see; even the water hadn’t survived the explosion. Between the power of the payload and the hundreds of weapons buried below the huts, nothing had a chance to survive the blast.
Did Cilas make it? Helga wondered as she flew a wide circle around the perimeter. She could never have anticipated this much destruction, and she shuddered at the thought that she’d killed the three members of her team.
“Good job, Ate,” Cilas said, excitedly.
“What’s your location, Lieutenant?” Helga said, not feeling his enthusiasm as she fought against thinking or saying anything more.
“Come to the badlands, we’re almost there. We’re on a hoverbike. You should be able to get us on the radar.”
“On my way,” Helga said before she clicked off comms. She ripped off her helmet violently and placed it on her lap. She screamed so loud that Raileo flinched, and she turned on him, ready to punch him in the face. But it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his orders. He was right here with me, she thought.
Helga picked up her helmet and pulled it back on, then flew towards the tree line and the rotted earth. You wanted to be a Nighthawk, you ignorant cruta, so be a Nighthawk and stop feeling sorry for yourself, she thought.
“To live is to hurt,” Joy had once said. “And expecting that to change is what drives people crazy.” She remembered her friend saying those words, and she had laughed at her, thinking that she was just having a bad day. Now she knew that those words were true, as she felt a dull pain in her chest.
“Do you believe in a soul?” she said to Raileo as they hovered above the blackened earth.
“Like religion? Something beyond this? I don’t think about it, ma’am. That line of thinking just hurts my head.”
“But if you don’t believe in anything, what gives you the want to do anything?”
Raileo merely shrugged. “You’re going to laugh, but I will say it anyway, ma’am. Living life to the fullest is my motivation. I owe it to the universe to give something back. I’ve killed men, it was them or me, and as you can see, the universe chose me. To take a man’s life, and rob him of his family and his ambitions, only to turn around and squander your own life? That’s the worst thing in the worlds to me, ma’am, that selfish schtill right there. I think that any person who takes a life owes t
hat person, regardless of how evil he was when he was alive. We owe our victims a full life since we took theirs. That’s what I believe in, regardless of the maker, reincarnation, or whatever.”
Helga stared at him in disbelief. It was the most she’d heard him say on this trip. She found that she liked it, and it made her feel better about herself. “If it wasn’t inappropriate and the fact that I would have to kill you afterward, I would give you a hug, Chief Lei,” she said. “Thanks for telling me your beliefs. It’s actually kind of beautiful. Motivates you in one breath, and makes you feel better about murder in another.” She laughed. “Thype me, but can we Nighthawks be any more messed up?”
“We’re all crazy together, ma’am,” he said, and held up an open palm for her to punch it.
Tasmin sat up on the bunk and rubbed her eyes, then stretched until she felt a soothing pop in her elbows. She always liked that pop, though her mother would scold her continuously about it. Something about the body and how doing it was bad, but her mother had no medical training, so she would only pretend to listen.
Throwing her feet off the bunk, she hopped down to the deck, pulled on her shoes and tossed her hair. She took a deep breath as if it would strengthen her resolve, and touched the controls near the door, sliding it open. Outside there was no one in the passageway and panic struck, causing her to back away from the door.
Her heart began to race and all she could think about was the Geralos. What if they had been on that strange ship, raced after the Corfist and boarded while she slept? It would be very likely that Codi Arc was dead, he along with, Urja Loo. They would be coming for her now, to bite into her brains or to take over her body in order to do something wicked on the Aqnaqak.
She had only two choices from what she could see: hide beneath the bunk or walk out into the passageway to investigate. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, but her heart only seemed to thrum louder. Tasmin had always been a fighter—it was necessary for the hub, where the weak didn’t make it to their seventeenth birthday.