Wings

by Fearadhach MecRaudri

  How long had he been awake? It didn’t matter. He’d just lost leaving the young flyer behind as an option. The cadet would never be forgiven for letting the leader of the resistance get away, and would not know enough to keep quiet about a detail like almost putting a bullet through the brain of the Fifth Column’s leader. Lucas pumped another stun bolt into each of the other three men, just to be sure, sighed heavily, and drove a groundwave radio into the wall of the Nest.

  Luckily, they had an asset in the area, an independent cargo hauler sympathetic to the cause. The guy –after being told that price was no barrier- diverted to pick up an unspecified cargo, and flew into position in under five minutes. Two Column Wingmen showed up shortly behind. The pilot/owner groused a bit upon seeing the cargo unloaded, but wasted no time as everyone loaded up bodies and tossed out crates. The pilot then began to truly complain at seven minutes past the initial call when a flight of Legionnaire birdmen topped the ridge and opened fire. They had enough cargo out by that time, and the pilot jammed the throttle wide open as the Legion flyers called for aircraft support.

  They spent several harrowing minutes hugging cliffs and ravines, at breakneck speeds, trying to keep their pursuers from getting a clean shot, but they knew from the start that they had no chance. They were in a civilian cargo transport pursued by Legion fighter craft.

  The enemy craft were more interested in forcing the freighter to land than shooting it down, otherwise they’d have been destroyed within moments. They were probably reluctant to destroy a civilian freighter based on nothing but a backup call from a cadet. If they’d had any idea who they had on board the freighter, however, the result would not have been pretty. Except, maybe, to people outside who enjoyed watching large explosions.

  Lucas scanned a distant cliff face as they broke from a ravine into a large valley and sighed to himself. He had hoped to let this man go on living his life, but it seemed circumstances had gotten the better of him. He tapped a series of hasty commands into the cargo ship’s computer.

  The valley below covered several dozen square miles. It held grassy areas, a forest, a stream, and a small lake. Lucas allowed himself a moment of annoyance at what had to happen next, for he and his men knew this valley well. He had no time for regrets now, though.

  The display on the windshield superimposed a glowing orange square over a section of the valley wall. Lucas typed in more commands as the pilot groused about people messing with his ship without permission; however, the pilot had far too much on his hands trying not to get removed from the sky to do anything about it.

  Lucas pointed to the orange-painted section, and used his best quiet-command voice, “Fly us directly into that section of the cliff. It is our only chance for survival.”

  The pilot almost looked up from his instruments to exclaim, “You’re daft! Even if you Column nuts have some way of us not shattering into a thousand pieces from the impact, I don’t fancy living the rest of my life in one of your lairs! I worked for this rig because I loved the open sky, not the closed caves!”

  To emphasize his point, the pilot brought the craft to a new heading, plunging toward another ravine. The radio squawked as the fighters following them fired warning shots across the wings. They also scored a glancing blow…just to drive the point home. No way they could make that ravine.

  Lucas signaled his two wingmen, who moved to the rear hatch of the craft. He entered the last set of data into the ship’s computer then spoke to the pilot: “This ship is about to transmit a Column General Distress Signal. One which those fighters are going to recognize. It will also activate the controls on that patch of cliff I showed you. It will allow you to pass, and make the fighters think you have crashed.

  “We are going to pop some smoke on our way out of here, to help the ruse. You can either make this ship look like it has been abandoned and crashed into the cliff, or you can get blown apart by those fighters. Up to you.

  With that Lucas hit the final button on the panel, and the ship began to transmit an urgent call for help using a cipher which the Legion broke long ago. One of the wingmen activated a smoke grenade as the other opened the hatch and jumped. The one with the smoker jammed it into the fuselage then rolled out. Lucas strode to the hatch, jumped, and curled into a tight ball as the craft began to list towards the cliff.

  Turbulence buffeted him about, throwing him one way and the other till up and down became confused. He had always hated high-speed aerial deployments. Once the battering stopped, he spread his wings wide, unfurling in an instant. He found himself oriented upside down, but happy to at least be facing the oncoming fighter craft. He fired a couple of shots at them in the hopes of scoring a lucky hit or, at least, distracting them from the falling cargo ship.

  Lucas took a couple more shots and brought himself into a head-down dive as the high-speed fighters, no longer encumbered by the tight spaces of the ravine, rocketed past him chasing the freighter. He fought for speed with everything he had while taking note that one of the fighters veered off the cargo ship and began to loop around. He found a grim satisfaction at succeeding in distracting a fighter craft. The risk balanced the need to give that freighter a better chance of survival.

  The chance could have been better, though, one fighter still pursued its original prey. His two flyers seemed to suddenly notice what he’d been trying to do, and began turning to engage. He frantically signaled them to scatter; fearing what would happen if they failed to break off in time. Wingmen had better agility than fighter craft, but the craft had range and fire power. A flyer could, possibly, survive a pass or two by a fighter craft, but only barely.

  Having his men scatter seemed to do the trick. One fighter could not track three wingmen, and the other finally decided that a trio of Column wingmen were a more important target than a failing craft.

  Seeing that they had taken the bait, Lucas signaled his men to ground and fought hard for the safety of the trees. Those fighters could pick him off all too easily in the open sky, but could do little about him once he found the cover of the forest canopy. Then it would be a contest to make it to an entrance before they could strafe him.

  As his wings pumped furiously, scrabbling to lose altitude, a large explosion blossomed at the corner of his eye. Lucas hoped it came from just the right portion of the cliff face. He said a silent prayer that the pilot had gotten it right, and turned his attention to the details of not being shot.

  ***

  Joshua feathered the controls of his craft, trying to make his carefully directed flight look like an uncontrolled fall while keeping his eyes glued to the orange section of cliff and cursing all wingmen in general and Column wingmen in particular. His eyes squeezed shut and his body flinched as his craft met the cliff face. His ship rocked around him as he went through what seemed to be a solid wall of rock.

  Actually, shuddered would be a better word. He heard a large, but muffled explosion … only a slight shuddering of his craft as he found himself sailing through a long, open cavern. A few swift movements on the controls arrested his forward movement and brought the craft around to look at the section of cliff face he came from. A section of cliff face slid back into place, then the tell-tale blue glow of a shield winked out. He could just make out the holo-emiters which had been projecting an illusion of rock on the open section of cliff.

  He shook his head slightly. These Column people certainly knew how to set things up. No one used shields for anything anymore. Their power requirements were too much for anything smaller than a space ship, and atmosphere tended to be a constant drain on them. No one would think of scanning for a shield in the middle of a fight like that.

  A slow survey of the cavern showed a reasonable sized opening at the far side of the cavern, so he made for that exit, feeling more than a little confused and abandoned. And why shouldn’t he feel abandoned?

  Here he sat, hovering around in a sealed-off cavern, the only man still awake in a ship carrying four unconscious men, one of them a Legionnaire
wingman. The despair which had begun to set in suddenly gave way to panic as a half dozen remote sentry platforms came to rest around his ship, and his comm began blinking at him rather urgently. He hastily hit the button and it crackled to life, the radio signal distorted by the caverns it had to bounce through.

  “Attention unidentified craft, this is Farung Control. Your ship does not match any of the registrations we have on file as cleared for entrance to Sanctuary city Farung. You have failed to provide authentication codes, and the distress signal you used over the valley is obsolete. We would not even have opened that passage if it hadn’t been for the pursuing fighters. If you have authentication codes transmit them now. We can tell that your gear is receiving this message, so don’t try to play dumb. If you are unable to transmit for some reason, flash your forward lights until asked to stop. Comply. Quickly.”

  That comm. operator just had to add that last word. Joshua hadn’t been having the best day before these Column nuts contacted him, and the control on his temper began to crack. Each word of his response gained volume and emphasis. “My comm gear is working just fine, you officious bastard, and I don’t have any barmy authentication codes! I am only here because one of your Mutinous Bird-Brains told me to fly into this cliff, then bailed on me after making sure that those bloody ‘craft’ would never let me go, and now you want bloody auth codes?!

  “When I agreed to haul the occasional cargo for you bunch of daft buggers, I never agreed to firefights, transporting injured Legion feather-brains, flying into cliffs, and certainly not to being secreted away in one of your Rescue-Forsaken caves, as I’m sure you plan to do. And, my boy, if you think you are going to take me from the sky, you have another thi…”

  “SQUEEEEE” a noise pitched at the painful edge of human hearing played through his speakers for a moment, and the voice on the other end of the line began speaking with a deliberate calm.

  “We saw the flyers jump from your craft. One of them actually engaged the fighters pursuing you. We have not had contact with him yet. If you are carrying the cargo that you claim, then we cannot leave you there to wait for them to confirm your story, assuming they have survived, which we believe they did. Fortunately for you we have a manned outpost not far from where you are. Please hold your position and prepare to be boarded, flyers will be along shortly. Farung control out.”

  Joshua made several rude comments to the unlistening airwaves about what Farung control could do with their flyers and their manned outpost, then settled down to wait.

  A wait of some twenty minutes passed before the flyers actually turned up. They came in wide, avoiding potential lines of fire, peered in through the forward screen, and then entered the cargo door with guns drawn. One of them went directly to the downed bird-brain. He inspected the legionnaire’s bonds first, then the wound.

  The flyer grimaced, and spoke in brusque tones to his friend about the legionnaire’s youth, fresh wings, and other unsavory habits of the Legion. Other than the gun trained on him, Joshua might has well have not existed. The kneeling wingman turned his attention to the dressing on the wound, and shook his head slightly.

  “I don’t know who dressed this wing, but he at least knew what he was doing. It isn’t the best field dressing I’ve ever seen, but it will hold till we get him to Farung.”

  A voice came from the hatch where the bat-winged flyer stood, arms crossed indolently. “Well, I’m glad you approve Alex. It is rather hard to dress a wound like that while the craft you are on is trying to dodge a pair of fighters, you know.”

  Joshua felt his bile rise at the sight of the man who had called him to that infernal nest, and the man’s flippant tone brought his blood to a boil. He barely noticed the other two flyers snapping to attention through the red-tinged edges of his vision. The events of the last hour, and the implications those events held for the rest of his life, finally caught up with him. His hands locked painfully into iron-tight fists as he strode purposefully toward the blasted flyer who thought he could just commandeer his craft and force his life undergrou…

  WHAM!! His world exploded briefly into stars as the man with the gun lifted him bodily off his feet and into the side of his craft. When his senses stopped protesting, he felt the cool steel of his shuttle behind his back, and found himself staring into a weapon muzzle which looked, from this angle, to be dozens of times larger than reality.

  Chapter 2

  Lucas wove through the trees, wincing occasionally when a wingtip slapped a branch. He changed directions radically several times while following the slope toward the water, hoping that the trees would give enough cover to prevent the fighters from tracking him.

  His ruminations were answered by the sound of explosions as the fighters randomly fired into the trees, hoping to get a lucky shot. He tracked the fighters by sound and fought cold fear as they fired their afterburners for a steep climb. If they were going for altitude instead of searching then they were likely planning on resorting to cluster bombs. He shouted a warning into his comm, grit his teeth, and pumped his wings even harder for the water.

  A glimpse of rippling waves showed through the trees, and then a rocky beach flashed by beneath him to be replaced by blessed water. Lucas’s wings beat a momentary upward course, then furled in tight as he made a ballistic dive for the lake.

  As his path rose, peaked, and plummeted toward the water the sound of cluster bombs deploying their payload of micro-explosives came a moment before his impact with water knocked the wind from labored lungs.

  Cold mountain water enveloped and stabbed at skin as lungs burned for want of air. Lucas pulled a micro-rebreather from his survival kit while cramping legs kicked hard for depth. The cold had to be put out of mind as he checked the locator device and swam for a particular rock outcropping, thanking The Rescue that he ended up with bat-wings instead of bird wings.

  Lucas found the outcropping not a moment too soon, for exposed muscles were already beginning to cramp from the cold. A brief swim through a tunnel, then a light appeared above, distorted by the surface of the underground pool. He clambered out of the moon pool, his entire body shaking from the chill, and slapped the button for the furnace. He closed his eyes and spread wings wide as dry, delicious warmth chased the water’s chill away.

  He dried himself quickly, then made for the caverns and took wing. It took a few wrong turns and a bit of guessing to zero in on Joshua’s ship. The hatch stood open. There seemed to be a disagreement inside. As feet met aircraft, he saw Jateth holding an angry Joshua at bay by menacing him with a weapon and Alex making a comment about his hasty, patch-work first-aid.

  Lucas felt grateful for the fact that both of the men sent to Intercept and Inspect knew him on sight. Gratitude gave way to irritation as his attempt to lighten the mood backfired and the pilot started to move, violence in his eyes. Joshua barely got a full step in before Jateth slammed him against the wall with a pistol in the man’s face. Both men were vibrating on the edge of deadly violence.

  “Jateth! STAND DOWN!”

  Jateth let go, flowing two steps back, but kept his gun trained on Joshua and death in his eyes. Joshua looked for a moment as if he would attack anyway. Instead he visibly mastered himself and slowly turned on one heel to face Lucas.

  “Listen here you son of a---“

  Jateth took a menacing step before bellowing. “You will show respect when addressing The Commander!!” Jateth now vibrated with indignant rage, and Alex’s sidearm appeared. Lucas motioned them both to back off, glad that Alex had the presence of mind to at least keep his weapon pointed to the floor.

  When it became clear that he wasn’t going to be shot, the red-faced Joshua started in again, with tones no more civil than he had used before.

  ”Oh, so it is Commander is it? I couldn’t care less if you were Lucas himself! My contract with you people extends to occasional cargo only, and emergency runs if, if, they pose no danger to me or my craft.

  “Yet, here we are. I am officially dead, and wi
ll have to stay that way, and you damned bastards have pulled me from the sky! Do you bunch of feather-brained air heads have any idea what it took for me to crawl out of the depths of those damnable cities?

  “I was born the son of undersea-laborers. I grew up in caves below sea level, you dolts! I didn’t get my first breath of dry air until I was fifteen and my first glance at actual open sky until I was twenty. I spent years fighting to be taught how to fly, and years more buying this bucket of bolts you just commandeered.

  “And now, after I clawed and crawled my way out of the depths of the Lostar city complex, you decided to take my craft, ruin my life, and knock my head against the wall to boot? I am expected to just give it up because one of you bird-brains decided to do something stupid and get himself shot at? Concern for the common man my afterburners! I’m going to take my complaint to Lucas myself if I have to! You bunch of basta….!!??! What is so bloody funny?!?”

  ***

  Joshua didn’t think his blood could get any hotter, but it did as he saw the medic flyer trying to suppress a grin and the overbearing piker with the gun suddenly wearing a smug smile. The medic spoke, “If you wish to take the matter up with Lucas, I’m sure he will be willing to oblige you, provided you don’t mind allowing me to pilot your craft.”

  The bat-winged man nodded: “I would be happy to.” Joshua felt his knees go a bit weak and the color drain from his face as the man -it couldn’t possibly really be Lucas. Could it?- continued: “I’m sorry for the trouble this caused, but the need was both urgent and dire. I am guessing that Control didn’t have time to look up the specifics of your contract.

  “I assure you that this incident is going to be even more troublesome for me than for you, however. It will be a long time before my seconds allow me anywhere near an exit without a full pack of bodyguards, while we can almost certainly have you out of the Sanctuaries and back in the air in a couple of weeks. However, before we get into the details, I assume you are willing to allow Alex to fly us to the Enclave? He is a capable pilot.”