Alpha Wing

by Marco Frazetta

  Shit. I started rapidly making calculations on the sticky keypad to my left as the gate loomed ahead of me through the front shield. This is the kind of thing I would have left to Higgins to already have preset before I even set foot in my old Phantom. But this, as I already knew, was not that. Equations dashed across my brain. One wrong calculation and me and this broken-dull hull would be spat out across twenty points in the galaxy at once, and me along with it. But this is what I had been drilled for, the kind of scenario I was bred for. No childhood, no choices. All so that when I came up on moments like this I wouldn’t buckle under the pressure. And I didn’t. I stayed cool and buckled down just like a good soldier. Then, it hit me.

  I could jump to anywhere. I didn’t have to follow on this raid. I could take this ship straight back to the fleet it was pilfered from. Back to my Hammer. Back to the Earth federation. Back to Celeste. Back to everything I knew. Just a couple keystrokes, a few adjustments to the math and I could rendezvous with my fleet. Lieutenant Derringer, reporting for duty. But then, how would I explain my exit from the reprogramming center? They didn’t want me as I was. They expected me to return as an obedient automaton, fully in line with the party line, the will of the Federation.

  The window was closing. Decision time. My stomach felt as heavy as a stone. Then, I punched in the coordinates, lined up my craft, and jumped.

  “I swear to uphold the ideals and the values of the Earth Unity Federation, to stand strong against all threats, to live for the protection of my comrades, to never let any doubt endanger the ones who depend on me, and to always—shit, what’s the next line?” asks Harley her eyes fluttering open to look back at me.

  “—to always execute the intention of my commanders for the sake of freedom and unity for all peoples of the Federation.”

  “Yeah, that.” she smiled.

  “Let’s do it again,” I said. She groaned, sliding her pillow over her eyes in protest.

  “I know it, really. I’m gonna say the whole thing when the time comes.”

  “The whole point is to have it down pat, so that you can’t make a mistake. It becomes—

  “—a reflex. Thanks. Derringer you’re the worst study partner in the universe, you know that?”

  “Don’t start coming apart on me. You can do this. I just want you to perform perfectly no matter how you feel. That’s what practice is for.”

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “For a start. Then, you keep going. Until perfect is the only thing you can do.”

  “Spoken like someone who needs a drink,” she slipped off of the bunk bolted to the side of the berthing hull, landing like a cat on all fours. Her cadet’s uniform was like a second skin, and I willed myself not to pay attention to the way that it hugged at her every curve as she stood.

  “We’ve got other things to think about.”

  “Such as?” she said with a suggestive smile. “I’m ready for the admission ceremony, and I know you’re ready. I mean, you probably have wet dreams about standing on that stage.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “Just live a little. Come on, it’s good for you.”

  “I don’t want to live a little. I want to live a lot. I want to train hard so that when I come up against some Telexian it’s the other ship that goes down instead of me. I want to survive.”

  “There’s more to life than survival,” she said, coming to sit on the cot beside me.

  “And here I thought you were the one who knew something about biology.”

  “I know a thing or two about biology,” she said, spreading her legs apart ever so slightly. I pretended not to notice. She looked wounded, then she tensed her body into a ramrod straight posture. “You know, you’re so worried about your own survival, you might just end up missing out on being alive. What the hell kind of living is that?”

  “Stone…”

  “You know, I think you’re right. What I need is a shower. A scalding one. I feel like I’ve been rolling around in the mud or something. Do me a favor, Derringer. Don’t be here when I get back, okay?” She gathered a towel and flip flops from under her bunk.

  “Wait, Harley.”

  “Please, don’t feel guilty. You’re just trying to survive. And I’m interested in living myself, so let’s not do anything to compromise our odds of making it through training.” She turned to go.

  “You’re a good soldier, you know. You’re an asset to the military.” She stopped, and quick as a flash she’s slipped off her boot and sent it straight at my head. I had to duck to dodge it.

  “What the hell?!” she grinned, then did the same with the other, but this time she tossed it wide, missing my head by three meters. “What are you doing?” She drew closer again until there was nothing but a few meters of oxygen. She touched the zipper on her flight suit, coaxing it down with a fluid motion of her finger. In an instant, the little zipper moved down, exposing her pert breasts, stopping just below her navel.

  “Harley—” thoughts of all the rules we’d be breaking, the consequences flashed through my mind. But in that moment, it didn’t mean a fucking thing. Suddenly, she was on lips, my tongue, the taste of her driving me. She moaned as I ran my lips up and down her neck. She took my hand, taking the tip of my gloved finger in her teeth and sliding it off with a quick flourish. He bare hand went straight to her breast, fingers running along her nipple, caressing it in tiny circles that made her squeal. Then, without warning, Celeste invaded my thoughts. I could see her standing there, watching us.

  “Wha—what’s wrong?” said Harley, sensing something was wrong. I couldn’t answer. She retreated, zipping up her flight suit so fast I thought it would catch on her smooth, flawless skin. She turned and ran from the room. I let her go. Shame flooded through me. I wanted to follow her but feared what it would mean for my future. I was destined to be Tier 1. I wasn’t going to get there with a serious infraction like having some unauthorized contact. Harley and I weren’t going to be entwined, so how was it worth the risk? Still, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt that I had let myself get carried away and go Harley hurt. I never should have given her false hope. My life wasn’t my own any more than hers belonged to her. Our lives were planned, programmed, pre-ordained. They didn’t belong to us. I had a destiny, and that meant I didn’t have the luxury of other choices.

  Thooom! I snaped back to the present. I was through the gate with the Telexian colony ship dead ahead.

  “All right, let’s see what you’ve got, ace,” came the voice of Crazy Larry.

  “What’s the formation?”

  “Come back?”

  “The formation!” I yelled, “what the hell are we hitting them with?”

  “Telexians don’t use formation patterns, so neither do we,” called Throx, “Just keep moving and avoid the swarm. We’re diving straight for the weak spot on the underbelly of that spire dead ahead.” I could see the lights flashing on the display. The weak points were illuminated beneath one of the three spires jutting out from the bottom of a round metallic ring. Telexians built all their ship designs the same. They shared a group consciousness, so there was no need for them to use formations to deflect attacks or avoid loss of life. Their strategy was to just keep throwing ships and bodies at an enemy until it was eliminated. That was all they knew how to do. It would be a serious weakness, except that with their numbers it usually worked. Usually. One colony ship could hold over 15,000 Shyzok starfighters and three times as many drones inside.

  “Quick in and out. We didn’t come here to dance,” said the scraggly human whose name I still didn’t know.

  “That’s why the ladies call him Charmer,” said Crazy Larry. So, now I at least had something to call the repugnant little man in the smelly leather jacket. Seemed fitting.

  “Fuck off, Larry!” called Charmer. Buurrring, buurrring, buurrring! The buzzer in my cockpit started to sound.

  “Swarm incoming at 5 o’clock!” I called. “Initiating evasive maneuvers now
.” I pulled hard on the yoke, sending the Legionnaire into a roll. The bomber bays on the right and left sides of my underbelly deployed spiralling T680 grenades that sliced through the swarm with a green fireball. The head of the column was blasted apart, but the line was only broken for a second. The survivors quickly closed ranks and dove after me like a shimmering tapeworm swimming through space, bending and twisting as it went.

  “Larry! Lay down some cover fire here, I need to get behind them,” I called. Static. No response from my team. Damn it! I jerked hard on the yoke, bringing the Legionnaire around in a somersault that put me on a crash course with a wall of Shyzok. Fractions of a second before impact, I lit ‘em up with six quick bursts from my lazer cannon. The Legionnaire may not have had much in the way of maneuverability, but there was a reason that they were the standard light fighter craft throughout the Earth Federation fleet for nearly a decade. These fuckers could really make a dent when it counted.

  Like blasting a boulder straight through a waterfall, the cannons made a hole big enough for my fighter to pass through with only minimal damage. The chirping and flashing lights that demanded I pay attention to all of my damaged units sounded in the cabin, but I was well-practiced in cancelling that out. All that mattered was the next move, the next turn. I’d only bought myself fractions of a second. The swarms head twisted around and they were on me again, firing a spray of purple lasers in short quick bursts. I went into another barrel roll, sending a volley of grenades into the column behind me, but the shyzoks in the first column absorbed the blasts and the others wrapped around them like water rushing over a blockage. No thought of self-preservation factored into their thinking. They reflexively sacrificed their own, and themselves, for the cause of getting to a potential intruder and neutralizing it before it could get close.

  I pulled up hard on the starfighter’s yoke, but the thing still felt like trying to pilot a lead balloon. “Where the hell is my support?” I yelled in vain. I was learning that this was the way of the Wings of Dawn. Fall behind, left behind.

  Then, I saw a fighter dropping in from my 10 o’clock and coming in fast. It was Drasheel!

  Sharp right, then power thrust. Now! I obeyed the command tearing through my head and pulled so hard on the steering column that I thought the thing would come off in my hand. I smacked the thruster button. The ship sputtered and coughed. Fuck this hunk of junk! Then, zzzzzaawwwwaaahhh! I was being crushed against my seat. The thrust threw me back and I struggled to keep my hands on the steering. After five seconds, the thrust was temporarily exhausted and I managed to stabilize. The column wasn’t on my tail anymore. I reversed in time to see the last of the shyzok column getting gobbled up by Drasheel’s gravity bomb. The Telexian ships look like a piece of tape being wrapped around the point of a pin. Then, once the ships were pulled in, BOOOOOOM! The whole thing erupted like a supernova. Space dust spewed out in a corona of color jutting out in all directions.

  “Hell, why doesn’t my ship come with that?” Earn it, came Drasheel’s telekinetic retort. I brought the Legionnaire just shy of the blast radius so that it was flying parallel with her NT69 Havoc. “Glad to know at least someone’s got my back. Thanks for exterminating the bugs.”

  “Moooore commmmming,” she said over the intercom.

  “Let’s move.” We sped toward the weak spot underneath the colony ship. No sign of the other Wings of Dawn. I was beginning to suspect that they had given me a false target entirely and that I was never meant to join their ranks. No tryout. This was a sabotage. But, then I saw the blast, the space debris vomiting out of a freshly-made hole in the underbelly of the enemy station. I had to take evasive maneuvers just to keep from colliding with a title wave of space junk heading toward me.

  Telexians didn’t have hanger bays like most species. Their ships could move through chutes spread all around their colony, like torpedo tubes. For this reason, the Wings of Down had chosen the oxygen production facility as their beachhead. This open space was large enough to dock a small crew of space pirates, but it also meant that the bugs would now be fighting with limited air, which they needed as much as we did. The downside was that we still had to fight through to the egg chamber and back. And with a rupture like the one we just made, air was gonna be leaking out of this thing like a siv.

  I maneuvered my ship through the hole in the hull of the colony station. My landing gear slid along the slanted floor that was covered in ooze. This was it. I engaged the life support systems in my flight suit. A few beeps and tones told me that the suit was pressurized and I secured the breathing tube in my helmet. No time to waste. The hatch opened and I pulled myself out of the cockpit. All around were the twitching bodies of dead and dying Telexians. Some were quivering on the floor, many were missing limbs. The other Wings of Dawn had torn through already.

  I pulled myself out of the cockpit and slid down the wing of my starcraft, gun drawn. I jumped from the wing and rolled to the ground, slime oozing all along my back, some of it sliding onto my faceplate. I wiped it away and started to run. Drasheel was behind me. We turned down hallways that seemed to narrow as we moved closer.

  Thoom, thoom! Two quick blasts from the handheld weapon signalled that they were there, and I dispatched a handful of bugs with a few quick rounds from my pistol. Their bubbles of oxygen, Telexian life support systems, popped as they fell to the floor. Not exactly the firefight I had been prepared for. Then, I turned a corner and we were in a hall with yellow bubbles, like boils on the walls and ceiling. There must have been hundreds of them.

  “I think we’ve reached the birthing center,” I said to Drasheel. But she just shook her head. Then drones starting pouring out of the boils. The membranes were connected to the drone sleeping chambers. Run! Drashell exclaimed in my head. The ringing in my helmet told me that my heart rate was elevated and I was expending too much oxygen as I pumped my legs as fast as they would carry me. I picked off the bugs as they wriggled out of the membranes in front of us, but the hallway was quickly filled with dozens, then hundreds of the hideous insects all scrambling at us. I could feel them clicking at our heels as we ran. Too close range for me to use explosives. But I didn’t have the firepower to hold them off with my gun either. Soon, we were cornered. Up ahead, I could see more of the critters oozing out of the walls, boxing us in. Thousands of legs and pincers were grasping at us. Couldn’t go forward. Couldn’t go back. Then, it hit me. I looked up and saw three Telexians wriggling and writhing through the gooey gelatin of the membrane directly above us. With a couple quick shots, the one nearest to me fell limp, half suspended in the gunk.

  “Come with me,” I yelled to Drasheel. I holstered my gun and jumped up to grab the bug’s limp front limb, which I used to pull myself up like a vine.

  “Grab my legs!” I yelled. She complied, grabbing hold of me as I pulled us up the carapace of this dead insect. There was now just enough space between us and the ground that we were momentarily out of the swarm’s reach. I wasn’t looking forward to what I had to do next, but I summoned my strength and pulled us up and through the buggy membrane and into the sleeping chamber. Everything took on a burnt-yellow hue through the faceplate of my helmet. All around were mounds that looked like they were made of sand or dirt, no doubt imitating the conditions that these creatures were adapted to on their home world. They looked like upside down termite mounds, with tens of thousands of sleeping chambers and thousands of Telexians swarming out of them, “swimming” through the gunk.

  What are we doing? Asked Drasheel in my mind.

  Just trust me, I replied. Then, I reached for the grenade at my belt. Every movement was made more difficult by the membrane. I managed to dislodge the small explosive on my belt and fingered for the timer toggle on the top. 20 seconds, the Max amount I had to delay the explosion. I pushed it as far as I could away from myself, and we half swam, half clawed our way toward the closest opening in the floor that represented our only way out. 15 seconds, I counted in my head. 12, 10. The bugs were all over
us, threatening to overtake us before we reached the hole. Frantically, we twisted and moved through the goo. 7 seconds, 6 seconds. We were at the hole. We’re going to make it! Then, I felt something clawing at my leg. I was caught! The gun still in my holster, I grabbed hold of it and managed to withdraw it just enough to fire blindly behind me. The heat passed by leg, and I felt the claw release. Then, with all my strength, I pulled myself through the membrane bubble without a second to spare. I fell to the floor as the boils behind me burst.

  Drasheel! She feel on top of me just as the grenade detonated inside the ooze and was now ripping apart the sleeping chamber. I just hoped that the steel hallway wouldn’t buckle from the heat. I raised my head, Drasheel rolled off of me and I was able to sit up and see as the bugs that had chased us through the hallway started going wild, pulling at their feelers and attacking one another.

  You killed the queen, Drasheel said in my head. We must be quick. The eggs will die unless we harvest them immediately.

  “So let’s move,” I said. We stood and began making our way down the hallway, sidestepping the writhing and dying Telexians all around us.

  We reached a matrix of tunnels and followed them down deeper toward the core of the ship. The dinging in my helmet told me that the oxygen reserves were starting to deplete and I signalled to Dasheel to slow slightly to conserve our remaining air. There didn’t seem to be any living drones ahead anyway. The death of the queen must have meant a chain reaction for the whole colony and it was now collapsing. The Telelexians must have been able to do without light since we had to had to rely on our headlamps as we got closer to the center. Finally, we reached a kind of obelisk with boils much like the ones we had seen before in the sleeping quarters, except that these were as red as a blood orange and they were pulsing. I drew closer and could see round black eggs inside the membrane pouches.

  “Ho! There they are,” called Throx. I tilted my head up and found the Wings of Dawn scaling the obelisk structure with climbing gear, already hard at work slicing open the egg pouches and catching their slimy contents in expandable pouches. From the size of their hauls, they clearly had already been at their work awhile.