Contents
Wings
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
EPILOUGE
About the Author
Author’s Gratitude
Wings
Lucas was running blind. He was scared out of his mind, and he knew it. Not that knowing helped.
That one thought, that the fear wasn’t real, he held on to that one tiny thread of clarity with desperate determination. That tiny sliver pierced the gibbering chaos which filled his mind. It then had to choose: Force legs to move... dodge... weave through crowd in cavern. Get mind under control... Think.... He could get out of this, if he could only think... Out... Out! Find a way... out...
Eyes begin to dart around the passage. Footsteps become misplaced. Stumble, begin to fall. Push off a person to gain balance. Hit a stalagmite. Bounce.
He forced his eyes front, forced himself to focus on movement.
Tear away the half-ruined mask which blocks sight. Escape!
He clung to one thought, *move*. He tried to let the chaos wash over the rest of his mind. Fear; bone-gnawing terror, tore at him. He met it with fury. Fury at his flight.
Run. Make the legs pump. Dodge the crowd.
Fury at himself, for coming to the meeting alone, when he knew it had to be a trap. Fury at the men behind him. Men behind him. With guns.
Fear: Fear of what those guns could do to him. Images come up from memory, holes burned neatly through a body by a blaster.
He had to focus. Fight the choking fear, ride it and keep moving forward.
Holes the size of a fist torn away by a high-powered slug-thrower. Death. So many images of death in memory. Outrun them!
Fury. The senselessness of it. The murder, the killing. All so that They could keep people huddled in half-finished warrens like this, jumping at their own shadows. They. Them.
Move. Dodge around a child, stalactite to the shoulder. It breaks at the tip. Focus. Keep running.
The enemy of the people of Kethelmar, though those people didn't know it. His enemy. Their faces swam in his vision, stern, mocking, stern again. Laughter behind him which could not possibly be real. Laughter behind. Where the men are. Where the bullets come from.
Bullets, tearing. Fear. Fear of seeing, of feeling, his flesh ripped away. The rapid fire of a machine gun pumped at his ears. No. None of the men in the room had a machine gun. Pistols. A glance back. They had reduced his lead. A group of men who waved weapons cleared people from a tunnel faster than one panicked man.
The moment of thought, the loss of focus cost him. He hit a large man, tumbled, sprang up.
Run. Bullets. No bullets? The men behind did not want to shoot with all the people around.
Laughter. Loud, raucous laughter. Someone found his joke hilarious. These men, CentGov spies set to kill him and frame the Mob, turn his Column and the Mob against each other. The idea that they might hesitate to fire into the crowd. Funny.
Run. Leap over the stroller that appears before him. Foot up, push off the wall where the passage takes a sharp turn.
More laughter inside his mind. Gibbering, maniacal laughter. These men hold their fire for nothing, not when they chased Lucas, leader of The Column himself, through these halls. Why did he hear no bullets?
Focus. The question snapped his mind into laser-tight focus, pushed the effects of the gas below his conscious mind, let him straddle the fear and ride it like a horse. His legs pumped furiously, ran on autopilot and adrenalin. Too much running, too hard, too long. He could feel the exhaustion setting in, and knew he could not outrun the men behind them. They had youth and numbers on their side.
Why hadn't they fired? He put his foot out to push off a stalagmite and realized why. Too much bare rock. In a half-finished tunnel-corridor like this a bullet from a slug thrower posed nearly as much risk to a shooter as to the target. Thank The Rescue that his pursuers had tried to frame the mob and did not carry Legion blasters. They didn't know who they chased, either. Or hadn't called it in if they did. CentGov would blow the entire poor district of this cave-city rather than let him escape. At least they did not know who he used to be. Some small comfort.
A scrap of blue sky to the left. A nest, just what he needed. He turned again, ran for it. The crowd thickened a little here, but enough room remained for him to dodge through them. Barely.
He knew when his pursuers saw the sky. He appeared to be a target worth the risk of a ricochet all of a sudden. The gunshots caused a panic, everyone fled for the walls, side corridors, or took cover. This gave him a straight line to the door. He stopped dodging, picked up speed. Bullets ripped the air, some far too close. He passed the door to the nest, and continued to gain speed all the way to the ledge, and off.
***
Korla gazed at the world spread out below him, determined to enjoy the last few miles of his first solo patrol flight despite the ache in his wings. He had only been out of the Academy a few months, and only had his wings for about a year; his wings and additional muscles were not quite up to the strain. He still enjoyed having the sky to himself, though, pain or no. A smile teased his lips at the memory of the Captain’s advice not to do any ‘gallivanting’ at the beginning of his patrol.
Good thing he listened to that advice. He hated to think how much worse he would feel now. The ache in his wing joints had spread to his shoulders, and even small adjustments produced pain.
Not much further to go till his patrol ended and he could rest. The eastern cliff of Lakeside City curved before and below him, pointing the way toward the Legion outpost. And his bed. The cliff face was dotted with small openings from top to bottom, windows for the shops and homes of people who dwelled within. Well, for the wealthy people who lived within. Getting a place with an outside window tended to be costly.
What he found valuable about cliff at the moment had nothing to do with the view, however. A slight cupping of his right wing brought pain shooting up and down the limb, but he held it a few moments... a few moments more... finally. The feathers on his wingtip stirred in the updraft for which he had been questing. Even that slight stir brought pain.
In this lay the worth of the cliff for him. He flattened his left wingsail, and a grunt of pain escaped this time as he banked into the upward current. Joy masked the pain, however, since this updraft meant he would not have to pump his wings even once to make it home.
It only took a moment to get settled into the new current. A few final adjustments with the tail feathers on his calves, and the sharp pains of movement subsided into the dull ache of stillness. Korla breathed in the fresh air, enjoyed the crispness that altitude brought to it, and continued to take in the landscape while the ground receded from him.
The trees in the East Valley Park, nestled at the base of the east cliff, were all pines which stopped at the same level. If not for the fact that his enhanced vision could see the individual needles on the pines, it would be easy to miss the slope of the valley’s land. The plateau at the top of the cliff held field after field of grain and cattle. People below, fields above, welcome to life on Kethelmar, or so went the old song.
He watched the end of the cliff approach, far beneath him, happy to have gained several hundred feet of altitude, but sad to have lost the updraft – it had carried the faintest hint of pine. It didn’t matter much, though. He was high enough not to have to need anymore altitude to get home. Tai
l feathers were the only thing that could move without pain, so he curled the left ones slightly, sending him tacking in that direction.
The crackle of the radio in his ear brought Korla out of his reverie, “Legion-intern Korla, there is a disturbance in the corridors of the middle-middle East side. Patrol the eastern cliff face until further notice.”
He groaned inwardly, gritted his teeth at the pain of cupping his right wing while slightly lowering his left. This brought him into a good left turn, and started him back down the cliff line. He made no attempt to hide the weariness in his voice when he spoke, “This is Legion-intern Korla, acknowledging. Have turned to patrol eastern face of Lakeview City complex. Please advise on soonest possible return to base. Korla out.”
He stretched his neck muscles slightly, stopped when even that caused an increase in pain. They said the problem had occurred in middle-middle of the East Side. That meant middle from top-to-bottom of the complex, and the middle of the east quarter. That meant the poorest part of town, as those with the most wealth tended to congregate toward the surface, be it top or bottom. Hopefully the situation in there would resolve itself soon and he could get home.
Korla made one pass across the ridge, noted the position of the Nest half way down the cliff. As he neared the nest his raptor-sharp vision - still getting used to that - focused on a guy running out of the Nest door and barreling head-long toward the edge. Korla groaned inwardly and silently begged the man to please, just please…
Korla cursed under his breath in irritation and pain as he forced tortured wings into a powered dive. A scant moment later a flood of adrenalin washed his pain away when a sharp crack, softened by distance, reached his ears. He swore loudly at the sight of three men with slugthrowers firing at the jumper and triggered an automated call for backup.
Korla spared the briefest moment of attention to the jumper and pulled his sidearm free. Yes, those had to be wings pushing at the jumper’s shirt, which meant bat-winged covert ops. He brought his blaster pistol to bear on the pursuers and dropped the three men with as many shots.
He arched his back and put a reverse-cup in his wings, which banked against his dive and the cliff. Another scream as the strain on his new muscles over-rode the adrenaline. He forced protesting wings to level out his flight, found that the jumper had managed to avoid being impaled on the trees.
A wide circle put less stress on burning wings as Korla turned toward the Nest with the intent of alighting and helping his fellow Legionnaire. The other man began to wave him off, suddenly pulled a sidearm, pointed it toward him, and fired.
Korla’s alarm turned to relief as the blaster bolt missed his left wing by inches. He tried to fold his wings in for a steep dive, but before he could his world erupted into panoply of pain. A bullet tore through his left wingsail, and a sharp, staccato crack chased his consciousness away as the pain pulled him into darkness.
***
Lucas threw off his shirt as he dove. The tree-tops rushed to greet him. He thrust his wings out, desperately clawing at the air, his grunt of effort punctuated by the whistle of bullets passing him as he swooped from fall to flight. Every muscle in his back and wings screamed in protest. His foot brushed, painfully, against the top of an evergreen, his dive swooping into an ascent.
Lucas heard the whine of an energy pistol in three sharp bursts. His head turned to see his pursuers crumple to the floor of the Nest, and a lone Legion flyer moving in to land - signaling Intent to Aid. Lucas didn’t know the Legionnaire’s identity, but it didn’t matter.
He did know two things: the man could shoot well, and he probably owed him his life. The fact that his salvation came by way of a case of mistaken identity on the Legionnaire’s part didn’t matter. The flyer most likely thought he’d just saved a covert operative …a mistake Lucas felt no need to correct.
A dip of wingtips and a broad hand signal to wave the Legionnaire off lead to a sense of relief as the man, some several hundred feet above, began to alter course… just enough to let him see the sniper at the top of the cliff taking aim.
He pulled out his energy pistol and fired in one fluid motion. He scored a direct hit on the sniper, missing the other flyer by inches. He had reacted fast, but not fast enough. The other flyer’s posture went from shock, to writhing- briefly- in agonizing pain, to limp unconsciousness as a puff of blood and feathers puffed from one wing. Lucas pounded at the air as he raced gravity, pumping his wings furiously to rescue his rescuer.
Wind whistled in his ears as Lucas caught the man. His wings frantically clawed at the air as he tried to arrest their fall before the treetops. He strained even more to move them back to the Nest as quickly as possible. He -reasonably- gently dropped the flyer and his own blaster onto the floor of the Nest as he -just- cleared its lip, swooping to a standing stop with his nose barely an inch from the wall.
He slammed the door closed, savagely swung the bolt home, and turned to examine the bodies on the Nest floor, first checking on his rescuer. The man still appeared to be out, which seemed a strange reaction for no more than a torn wingsail.
Still, the flyer had lost a lot of blood, and that showed no sign of changing. A closer inspection brought a wave of sadness and anger. This man was hardly more than a grown boy! The youth couldn’t be more than twenty-three, probably closer to twenty. They must be sending them out on patrol as soon as soon as their wings dried, and on solo patrol, no less! This boy shouldn’t even be allowed in the air for more than an hour at a time, much less off apron strings, even less out on patrol alone!
A look at the youth’s rank patch told the tale. The kid sported a cadet patch. This must be the cadet’s term as an intern. Where better to send him than here? A place settled, calm, and with almost no Column activity? It took nearly a second for him to repress the memories of his own first solo patrol, the last of his internship. It had been glorious, but he’d nearly had to land before finishing. He’d gotten a little acrobatic at the beginning of the patrol. Still, his wings had been far better formed than this poor kid.
Lucas pushed the feathers aside on the cadet’s wings and saw they were, indeed, far too fresh. Even in an area this supposedly safe a cadet with wings this fresh shouldn’t be out alone. At least the bleeding had begun to slow. A soft grunt issued from his lips as the realization that the freshness of those wings might work in this stranger’s favor in the long run. The wound might not even leave a scar.
It did not appear that the kid would be regaining consciousness soon, not with that sort of pain, at least. The cadet had probably already called for backup, and he had to make decisions quickly. He checked the vitals of the other three men. The still lived, which he found odd. One would think that even a cadet on patrol wouldn’t keep his sidearm set to stun all the time?
With an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach he checked the youngster’s blaster and a sigh escaped his lips when found the boy’s academy pistol. It didn’t even have a setting higher than stun. This meant there were four living men he had to deal with. The sniper on top of the cliff didn’t concern him. Those ashes had to be well scattered by now.
Precious seconds clicked by as he quickly considered whether to dump the shooters off the cliff and leave the flyer here, or risk calling an aircraft to come to his aid. Odds were fifty-fifty as to whether the three men were hired muscle or actual operatives. Interrogating them could prove useful, but calling an aircraft out to the ledge of a city held a lot of risk for a mere maybe, especially with the clock ticking away.
Of course, The Column needed all the flyers it could get, but this kid hadn’t even finished at the indoctrination center that the world called The Academy. Re-educating him would doubtless be very difficult…maybe impossible.
Leaving them all here couldn’t be done, either. He had no guarantee that the three men would be any longer than the cadet in waking up, and the kid would be in no shape to deal with the others regardless. Also, these men were the only three left alive who might have seen him wit
h his mask off, and might know just who they had been chasing.
It wouldn’t do for the name of ‘Lucas’ to be connected to the name of Dan Browning. He owed the fallen soldier better than that. Dan still had family outside The Column when he died, and they would be given no rest at all if CentGov believed Dan to be the leader of the resistance.
So, his choice came down to either killing the three and leaving the Legionnaire to be found and taken to a medic, or calling an aircraft and taking everyone in. Seconds ticked by as his mind churned through other factors, checking for any missing piece of data. The youngster’s backup would probably take a few minutes to arrive, but the threes’ ‘friends’ would be trying to burn through the door soon. He bent to check one of them for identification, and a bullet made the decision for him.
***
Korla found himself awash in an ocean of pain. He experienced a moment of consciousness when dumped on the ledge of the Nest, and clung to that tiny sliver of light as nerves he didn’t even possess a few months ago screamed blaster-hot agony through his body. He could just make out a pistol near his hand.
His vision swam in and out of focus as the covert-ops Legionnaire he had saved tore the last remnants of a silicone mask away. He managed to focus briefly on the man’s face and his blood ran cold. He had been captured by Lucas himself, leader of the Fifth Column. The shock snapped the threads of consciousness from him.
He struggled back towards the light, spurred on by a fear which could have been no stronger if it had been evil incarnate itself on the ledge with him. His hazy sight showed Lucas standing facing away from him, looking at the other three men, probably deciding whether to eat them raw or cook them. He snapped up the nearest weapon and tried to aim. His blurred eyesight showed him three heads, so he took a guess and pulled the trigger.
***
Lucas felt the bullet pass through his hair, right where his head had just been. He instinctively fired, without looking, at the source of the shot. He thanked The Rescue and the Captain's Chair that he happened to have the boy’s cadet blaster in his hand. It seemed he had underestimated the boy.
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