by Greg Dragon
“Being that the pirate attack on the diplomats of Arisani had been communicated across the Alliance, this transmission was taken quite seriously. It included a vid-feed of civilians being held at gunpoint on the deck of a ship, recognized to be the Lucia. One of these civilians was Prince Jorus Kane of Arisani, an extremely important diplomat from everything I’ve been hearing. Not only is he loved by millions of people on the planet, but he’s the key to an important resource that can aid in the development of future starship technology.
“I see it in your faces, and yes, this whole thing is a stinking soup with extra fecal matter added each and every cycle. Smarter people than me are connecting the dots to see if the prince was targeted or just happened to be unlucky. From what I was told, the pirates haven’t mentioned him, which leads us to believe this was random. Either way, the white suits at the helms of starships can puzzle over it while we go hunting for some lizards. How does that sound, Nighthawks?”
There were shouts of confirmation, including the now familiar “Sambe!” that Quentin Tutt would use from his native Genesian tongue. It was slang, twisted from the phrase “asram beyt,” which translated to “get angry” in the new universal tongue. Quentin, however said that the literal translation was off, and the phrase was closer in meaning to “get active,” or “let’s go.”
“Lizards, Commander?” Sundown said, causing everyone to quiet down quickly. The Jumper was an enigma who only spoke when it was absolutely necessary, and it was as if everyone knew that so they quieted to hear his words. “Have we been given a new mission that actually involves the Geralos?”
“Yes and no. Sunny, this mission isn’t new, but there’s a chance it involves the Geralos camp where the Vestalians we rescued were to be transported to. The satellite was the drop-off, and we disrupted what we now know is part of a net that involves the trade of Vestalian brains to the lizards. This makes it our fight, Nighthawks, so we can no longer view this as us just ‘lending a hand.’ Since we’ve been given more than enough proof that the enemy is in league with the Geralos, our captain has asked us to investigate Argan-10 to win some leverage over these traitors.
“Normally, as you all know, anyone attempting to squeeze the Alliance would be reduced to debris in a manner of seconds. This time, however, things are a wee bit more complicated, since unlike most lifeforms ransomed for a prize, Prince Jorus Kane has been deemed too important to die. So, instead of responding with overwhelming force to send a message to future extortionists, our captain has asked to investigate a suspicious signal on the moon, Argan-10.”
“Oh, so we’re back on for our original mission then?” Helga perked up, a bit too excitedly, and Cilas gave her a wink before thinking better of it. He was immediately miffed with what he did but hid it well, though the surprise expression on her face made it worth it.
“Helga is right. We’re back to where we started when we were waiting on a shuttle to take the Vestalian rescues off our hands,” Cilas said. “We are to drop on Argan-10 and conduct an investigation into what the Alliance believes could be a Geralos feeding camp.” He walked to the end of the cabin and touched an area of the bulkhead, causing a section of it to light up, becoming a terminal.
“If you look, here, you’ll see the information Tutt and I pulled from the screaming maw of our captive. The pirates are definitely in league with the lizards, and the Vestalians they sell are for what we call a ‘hive’. It’s a cold storage for Vestalians placed in stasis to use as conduits for the lizard’s thyped-up, brain-eating religious exercise. By disrupting that operation, the pirates could be forced from this system. The camp is likely connected to their network, and the ship they’re demanding would strengthen their position with the Geralos.
“As of right now, the Genesians have promised them a state-of-the-art cruiser. It is a lie to placate them, but can be reality if we fail to find anything on that moon. This is to be as tight as we can muster, stealth and professionalism, the type of mission meant for ESOs. If we’re discovered or killed, there’s a chance the pirates will get desperate and kill more hostages, including the prince. For this reason, we’re going in alone, but the XO is coordinating moves with several ESO teams. The Shrikes from Missio-Tral will be investigating a satellite above Argan-10, and can provide us support if we need. It is a Geralos satellite, one of several about the moon, and is monitored by the lizards, so that should keep the attention off us.”
“As if we need it,” Quentin said, grinning. “We have one of the best pilots in the Alliance.”
“Sambe!” Raileo shouted, causing Helga’s face to turn red.
“I’ll tell Zan you said that, Q,” Helga said, masterfully deflecting the praise. “Though I’ll be the one taking us down on Argan-10. I’m no Cel-toc, but I’ll do my best to make sure we touch down in one piece. How’s that?”
“Good enough, Helga,” Cilas said, loud enough to quiet down the low-rising banter that had taken on its own life. “The Alliance has enlisted the Jumper agency to rescue the prince and keep him hidden until we’ve cleared the base. As to the other hostages, this will be delicate, and our number one priority is to be quick, thorough, and undetected. This won’t be Sanctuary with the enemy being badly-behaved civilians with junk weapons. There may be lizards, Crak-Ti even, so you need to be mentally ready to see some schtill.”
“This sounds like Dyn all over again,” Helga muttered. “Except this time we’ll know exactly what to expect.”
“Dyn will never happen again, not while I’m involved,” Cilas said. “They asked us to make this drop because we’ve shown that we’re effective, and the individuals inside this cabin are of the quality necessary to see it through. We showed them what we were made of firsthand on Sanctuary station, and now the Nighthawk name is revered by the top council members of our Alliance. That’s not bragging, that’s reality, so now we get another chance to show that they aren’t wrong.”
“I think I’m getting goose pimples,” Raileo whispered, looking about excitedly before putting his fist into the raised hand of an equally excited Quentin Tutt.
It felt good to be inside the cockpit of the R60 Thundercat once again. Although Helga much preferred a smaller fighter, she appreciated the flexibility that a dropship offered. After the brief they had prepared, strapping on armor, prepping their loadouts, and running even more diagnostics on their vessel to make sure that when things went awry—which they always did—they could rely on their ship.
To have equipment failure occur with no engineer was practically suicide, and having been there with Cilas on that first mission to Dyn, Helga was obsessive in her preparation.
“Everyone strapped in,” she said into the comms. “The system has given us the all-clear to jump.”
“How far are we from the Ursula, Lieutenant?” Raileo said, and before Cilas could silence him, Helga replied angrily, making sure to be as technical as she could.
“We’re at a hot 685.9 meters per second, with thrust on nosebleed, four waves out from the Ursula. Once I slide the launch lever up, we’ll enter supercruise, which is going to suck if you are not strapped in like I asked.”
“Pilot-speak, beautiful, uh… got it Lieutenant—” Raileo tried, before Quentin cut him off to call him out on being ignorant of everything she told him. He wasn’t wrong; she had done it on purpose, using a combination of pilot’s slang and nonofficial measurement. Only Cilas and to a certain degree, Sundown, would have known what she meant fully, so she cracked a smile and turned up the feed on her HUD to see for herself whether or not they all were ready.
They were joking around and having a good time, which was the typical mood before an exciting new mission. All helmets were on and the Nighthawks were restrained, so she placed a finger on the icon that would approve the system’s query to begin the FTL jump countdown.
“Jumping now,” she announced before looking at her wrist comms for the time. They had thirty seconds, and that should have been enough. Anyone still unrestrained after she’d
given them multiple warnings would have to deal with the complications that came with the compression of space about the Thundercat.
Helga adjusted her helmet and inhaled a deep breath. Oh, how she hated FTL travel in smaller vessels like their dropship. It would be difficult to explain to Raileo, how even as a pilot she dreaded those readouts that flashed red and yellow to warn of the impending jump.
At twenty seconds in, the Thundercat bolted to supercruise speed, and Helga grabbed a hold of the sides of her seat. The blast shields slammed shut to protect them in case of a breach, and all around the cockpit were those familiar chirps of warning. In the silence of that moment, Helga studied her HUD, particularly the vital signs of her comrades. Everyone seemed calm, especially Sundown, which didn’t surprise her, considering how she’d seen him perform in a shootout on Sanctuary.
As if on cue it happened: they passed from one area of space to another, and the queasy feeling that came from the sequence wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Helga was relieved when no alarms went off, and the console lit up in white and blue lights. The system spoke, a cold robotic voice that was nothing like the Ursula’s.
“Arriving at the specified coordinates, at approximately 36,000km from the moon of Argan-10. Crystal-core is on standby for 2.5 hours, now at supercruise and decelerating thrust to allow for manual control and operation.”
When the blast shields cleared the windows, what appeared before them was a rust-colored expanse, broken up by white and gray splotches that Helga guessed were debris clouds in Argan-10’s atmosphere. Whole wars had been waged above this moon, back when the Arisani and Traxians fought over control of trade. This was before the Geralos, and Vestalians being forced into space, but it was a popular topic for academics, so Helga knew about it from her schooling.
“Everyone good?” she said, her eyes moving rapidly over their readouts.
“Aside from regretting that MRE I choked down before coming aboard?” Raileo said.
“We’re good, Helga,” Cilas said, and the other two men grunted their agreement.
“We’ve got about an hour to break atmosphere if there aren’t any contacts,” Helga said. “Feel free to stretch out, but be ready to strap back in whenever I give you the warning.”
Helga removed her helmet and unclipped her restraints, then threw a leg over the side of her chair and slouched into the cushions to try and put her mind at ease. This wasn’t her first dance, but it was never easy, and after experiencing a crash-landing on a hostile moon, she had to actively work at not panicking.
Her mind went back to Joy Valance, and the masterful way she would find ways to calm her down. She wished she was here in the vacant co-pilot’s seat, cracking jokes and questioning her love life, which was always a point of annoyance. Oh, how Helga wished she’d known back then how much she would miss those annoyances now.
“On your flank,” someone said, and she turned around, hoping that it wasn’t Sundown with another lesson. Quentin Tutt rapped a knuckle on the top of her helmet, then took a seat in the co-pilot’s chair, grinning as if he was doing her a favor. Helga slatted her eyes as she surveyed him, and as expected, he was restless with adrenaline. The normally stoic giant was somewhat addicted to violent action, and before every mission, she had noticed that he would normally get like this.
“We’re hunting lizards, Helga,” he sung, and held up his hand for her to punch it.
Helga completed the greeting and her gloominess vanished, as if the older Marine had whisked it away with their contact. During their time together on Sanctuary station, when all they’d had was boredom and an open bar tab, the two Nighthawks had become quite close, her seeing him as something of an older brother.
Quentin was still a young man, not even thirty, but he had seen enough of the galaxy to make any spacer jealous. Not only this, but he had a photographic memory, and his stories would come to life whenever Helga could get him talking.
“Ever been to Arisani?” she said after they’d been talking for a while.
“That thyping desert? No way, the Alliance doesn’t have jurisdiction there, so I haven’t had the privilege. This moon will have to do for our galaxy map, eh, Ate?” he said, referencing a practice they had begun of checking off planets and moons they had visited.
“Last moon I was on, I was a literal popsicle hanging from a hook,” she said sadly. “It would be something to beat the level of suck we faced when we landed on Dyn. Eight Nighthawks then, five of us now. You would think we get off on putting ourselves in the worst possible situations.”
“Don’t we though, Ate? Let’s be honest. I am a Marine, and you’re a pilot; we’re both conditioned to chase the flames. We all signed up for a reason, didn’t we? To make an impact on this war, and we get to look amazing in our PAS suits as we take on the things that no one else is qualified to try.”
Helga had to laugh because it was true. Back on Sanctuary she had been pulling her hair out, desperate for something to do. At the time, Cilas had anticipated a week or two of shore leave before they would get another mission, but they were grounded for five and a half while their ship, the Ursula, was receiving an upgraded system.
“Time to get locked in, Nighthawks,” she said, noticing for the first time that they were about to reach the moon. Quentin chose to stay in the co-pilot’s chair and strapped in securely while Helga pulled on her helmet, then braced herself for entry.
The dropship shot down past the cloud of debris, and Helga lessened their thrust, adjusting for gravity taking its hold. Flashbacks of Dyn slammed fists into that closed chamber of her mind, and it came open for the first time in months, threatening to flood her thoughts with an ocean of trauma.
Tears poured down her face despite the entry being smooth and uneventful, and she was happy that her helmet hid it from Quentin’s observant eyes. With these thoughts, Helga found herself frozen, staring at the surface of Argan-10 below. It was quite a sight to see, glorious canyons and plateaus, with a splash of vegetation here and there. Off to one side there was an expanse of ocean, with several rivers running away from it to slip between a set of looming mountains.
“Good job, Hel. You alright up there?” Cilas spoke through a private comms into her ear. It was what she needed, and him using that pet name forced a smile to break the ice on her face. She sat up and inhaled, cleared her throat, then pushed back against the darkness that shrouded her mind.
“All is well, Commander, thanks for asking,” she said, then switched to the ship-wide comms. “Nighthawks, prepare for landing. Oh, and welcome to Argan-10.”
16
“Hang on back there, I’m bottoming out on the clear,” Helga announced. “Helmets on and be ready to move. This isn’t our moon, and I’m not certain we weren’t spotted. Clearing comms.”
She triggered the cloaking sequence on the dropship to render it invisible to the naked eye, then put them down low to the grassy surface, limiting the chances of them being on radar. To be safe, they had come in approximately 451km from the structure they were to investigate, and chose what appeared to be a vast jungle to break atmosphere over.
For the twenty minutes it took to get underway to their destination, there hadn’t been any signs that the enemy knew that they were there. Above Dyn, however, they had been hit immediately, which had not only injured Cilas, but killed Adan Cruse, their pilot.
In remembering all this, Helga had her nerves on edge and her heart pounding thunderously in her ears.
“Get ready,” she spoke into the comms, and took the Thundercat down into a valley lush with vegetation and rivers bubbling and throwing up steam.
She took them through this scenic gap between the mountains, then across a vast stretch of wasteland, where they could make out tracks from something mammoth-sized and segmented. This too sparked memories Helga wished she could forget, like that of the Meluvian brovila, which had latched on to her arm, injecting her with venom and scars that were still visible to this day.
Helga didn’
t have the best relationship with worms, snakes, or anything that crawled on its belly. The thought of facing a giant one now made her wonder at what this disaster would be. Sundown whistled and clucked his tongue, then Helga saw what triggered that reaction.
There was a crashed ship of some size, far off in the distance, which the Thundercat’s system identified as their destination before generating a holo-image above the console.
A number of vines and branches from the surrounding trees were growing around it, revealing that it had been there for quite some time. There also looked to be a perimeter fence of sorts, constructed of something that appeared to be rocks.
“That’s no compound, that’s an Arisani cruise-liner,” Helga said to the Jumper. “What sort of surveillance was the Alliance doing out here for them to mistake an obvious civilian ship for a Geralos war camp?”
“It’s likely that it is one and the same,” Sundown said, leaning forward to get a closer look at the holographic ship. “From orbit, the disk-like shape and the purposeful clearing out of a perimeter would fool any captain that this is a structure, not a downed ship. Are we the first to actually investigate the situation?”
“We are,” Helga said. “To be fair, there was no reason before, considering Arisani and Hiyt are neutral planets.”
“Can we get a sit-rep back here, Helga?” Cilas said, and Helga realized for the first time that she hadn’t made an update since clearing the clouds above the moon. The beauty of everything around her and this strange, saucer-shaped vessel had been enough of a distraction for her to zone out.