by Jason Kent
Dagger rolled Blade onto its' back and dove for the barren surface.
"Two down!" Garrett grunted, fighting g-forces leaking through the inertial dampeners as they strained to compensate for Dagger's fierce maneuver.
"That won't do us much good if we end up smeared across the countryside!" Kate shouted from the passenger seat behind Garrett.
"When I want your opinion," Dagger snapped and turned to point a finger at Kate, "I'll be sure to send you an email!"
"Look out!" Sparrow exclaimed. She gasped for air as her restraints dug into her chest. She used both hands to block out the disorienting view spinning outside the window.
"Tral," Dagger muttered and pulled Blade out of her dive and roared over the lip of a huge crater. Fine black ash swirled up in the skipjack's wake. The snub-nosed fighters blasted through the wall of dust thrown up behind Blade, gaining on Dagger with each passing second.
Garrett nudged the aiming joystick to the side and fired. Both fighters flared their wings and darted off in separate directions. "Tral! Those things move like hummingbirds!"
"Hummingbirds my rear," Dagger growled. "They were designed to fight in this slop they call an atmosphere while Blade was designed for vacuum and faster-than-light travel!" The ship shuddered from fresh hits. "Oh, enough of this!"
Dagger pulled back on Blade's steering column. The starship's nose pointed up into the sky. Dagger held the stick pressed into her stomach until they had executed a full, high-thrust loop. As the occupants of the cockpit found themselves staring at the ground once more, Dagger put Blade into a spin. Her maneuver placed one of the fighters right in front of their bow. The nimble fighter rolled to the left in a vain attempt to shake the star pilot. Dagger responded with a jerk on the steering column, keeping Blade hot on the tail of the smaller aircraft.
"Rails! Fire! Fire! Fire!" Dagger shouted with a whoop. "Take that you piece of air-breathing tral!"
Garrett triggered the rail guns mounted just below the cockpit. Sparrow felt the thump of the heavy projectiles as they dropped into the electro-magnetic fields of the powerful accelerators. In an instant, the dense uranium was accelerated from zero to several hundred kilometers per second. The stream of red-hot slugs tore away from Blade and stitched a jagged pattern across the wings and fuselage of the fighter. One shot ripped into the starboard engine, traveling straight through the turbine and out the air intake. The shock of the projectile's passage caused the engine to blow apart. Half of the aircraft disintegrated into shreds of aluminum, steel, and broken fan blades. As the remains of the aircraft began to tumble, the clear canopy shot away from the cockpit. A bulky ejection seat exploded upwards, directly into Dagger's line of flight.
"Oh my God!" Sparrow shouted. She jabbed her finger at the debris cloud. "Move! Move!"
"Always something," Dagger grumbled. She rolled Blade onto its side to avoid the ejecting pilot and the disintegrating plane wreckage. Blade zigged one way and then the other as Dagger poured on power to the engines. When they were safely clear of the spiraling wreckage and blossoming parachute, Dagger looked back and winked. "That was cool, right?"
Before Sparrow could reply, Blade shook as a missile from the last fighter slammed into them.
Dagger turned sideways, straining against the straps holding her firmly into her acceleration couch. She slammed her hand against the cockpit window to steady herself and craned her neck, searching for the attacker off to the side of her ship. "There you are!" she shouted with a grim smile. Dagger fell back into her seat and banked hard to port.
Sparrow scrabbled for a grip on the arms of her seat and tried to detach herself form the battle. She wished she was simply watching a video of the wild view out the forward windows instead of living it herself. She pressed her head back against her seat, fighting the forces imposed by Dagger's latest acrobatics. When she could talk without feeling like she was about to black out, she asked, "Enjoying yourself up there?"
"Air to air combat," Dagger stated, "got to love it!"
Sparrow was reminded of the images of ancient aircraft fighting battles in the clouds above Earth. She'd seen vids of biplanes with roaring gas motors and wooden propellers spiraling after one another. The chatter of rudimentary machine guns had ended with exploding fuel tanks and shredded fabric wings. She blinked away the memory. Right now, she was only concerned they make it to the surface in one piece.
Dagger lined Blade up on the last fighter and hunched forward, a determined look on her face. Dagger laughed grimly, "Get him!"
"Good-bye!" Garrett announced as he fired the in-line rail guns.
Sparrow watched in horror as the plane fell apart in front of them. "Get out," Sparrow breathed, willing the pilot to eject. She'd seen enough death during her years working with Georges and the SUMC. She would rather not see another person die a senseless death. Since she had pressed the others to get on with the mission of retrieving the parts of the Aether Source, Sparrow felt somewhat responsible for them being here on Ardennes. How many more people would die today because of her?
The hyper-accelerated slugs from the rail guns shredded the aircraft. Dagger pulled up and rolled out of the way. Sparrow watched out the window until the plane's fuel bladders exploded, engulfing the wreckage in a brilliant ball of yellow flame.
No ejection seat. No parachute. No survivor.
Sparrow closed her eyes. "I'm sorry." She wasn't sure who she was talking to; the dead pilot, herself, his family...did he have a family? Sparrow knew she could ask Kate to find out via the other woman's link with Nemus. Right now though, she really didn't want to know. She pushed aside the thought of the casualties she seemed to leave in her wake and focused on the stark scene visible through Blade's cockpit windows.
They dove through a low-lying cloud layer. Blade was wrapped in white tendrils before the air cleared slightly as they got closer to the ground.
A deserted battlefield stretched as far as the eye could see. The once flourishing forests were reduced to ruin. The land had been stripped leaving behind hills and valleys dotted with lifeless, broken trunks. Here and there, a few leafless trees sprouted gnarled, broken branches scratching at the sky. Craters of every conceivable size overlapped each other. Jagged lines of trenches scarred the surface, cutting through the muddy ground to connect huge bunkers. The bunkers sprouted from every point offering the slightest advantage over the surrounding terrain. Dark holes in the roofs of the bunkers indicated many of them had suffered direct hits during the long years of war. Despite the damage, there were still plenty of intact bunkers. They shielded massive artillery pieces, their huge barrels pointed up into the sky. Each of these functional fortresses was circled by redundant rings of defensive positions bristling with anti-aircraft emplacements and smaller fighting positions containing machine guns. A few of these smaller weapons managed to fire in the general direction of Blade as they roared past just above the ground. It was obvious the anti-aircraft guns had not been alerted to their approach as the scarce troops they saw simply stared up at them in disbelief. The multiple barrels of the heavy anti-air weapons pointed uselessly away from Blade's flight path.
Sparrow wondered how long it'd been since the poor soldiers fighting with their faces pressed into the mud and filth had seen a starship flying through their skies. If the reception they'd gotten from the fighter aircraft was any indication, there'd been very few visitors from the stars to this region.
"Nice place," noted Dagger sourly.
"No Man's Land," Garrett stated.
Below Blade, the ragged line of bunkers gave way to deep tangles of barbed wire. The wire, strung in crooked rows for miles in both directions marked the forward line of the manned positions. As bad as the scenery behind the front lines, the view on the other side of the wire was worse.
Abandoned trenches, smashed bunkers, and craters were all jumbled together in no discernable pattern. Every depression, including boot and hoof prints in the muddy clay, was filled with stagnate rainwater covered with thic
k films of oil and slime. Sparrow involuntarily covered her mouth and nose at the thought of the brackish water. She wished they were seeing the original old-growth forests instead of this bleak view.
"I've seen airless moons with more charm," Dagger commented.
Sparrow looked down and noticed for the first time that there were round stones piled in the corners of the trenches and poking up out of the standing pools. She gasped when the realization of what she was seeing struck home.
"Oh no..." Sparrow whispered then stopped as she nearly gagged on the bile rising in her throat. She gulped then leaned toward Kate, who looked as horrified as she felt. Sparrow hissed, "Are those really skulls?!" She didn't wait for an answer. Instead she pressed her face against the side window and focused her attention back to the ground. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she noticed skulls everywhere. Some of them still had helmets strapped uselessly in place. Her eyes leapt from trench to crater to line of razor wire. The clean white skulls were merely the tip of the horrors below. Objects Sparrow originally had identified as boulders and snapped tree branches resolved themselves into still more grime-encrusted skulls while the branches became muddy bones, broken weapons, and twisted bits of steel. She reached across the aisle blindly until she found Kate's hand.
"Geesh," Dagger muttered as the morbid scene unfolding below them cracked even her normally impenetrable shell. "It's amazing there's anyone left alive and fighting on this mud-ball of a planet." She banked Blade to avoid a towering structure materializing out of the mist in front of them.
"Now that's a big tank," Garrett said, attempting to lighten the mood in the cockpit. The sad story etched over the surface of the massive machine guaranteed his effort failed.
Sparrow thought the tank was more of a mobile fort. It was the size of a city block and rose more than twenty meters above the mud. Artillery tubes pointed out in every direction. A dozen turrets and anti-aircraft positions were located on the roof. At its base, the rusting steel treads had sunk into the mire, ensuring the vehicle would never move again. Getting stuck may have begun the demise of this particular armored monstrosity. But the massive hole exposing the twisted innards of the engine compartment testified to how the giant war machine ultimately died. Sparrow recognized many of the same drive components she'd seen inside of the Tallinn's space-borne ironclads.
Sparrow could imagine the desperate hand-to-hand combat that occured as the tank was overrun by enemy infantry. With their machine unable to move, the fate of the tank crew would have been sealed. She gritted her teeth and looked away from the dead machine; now a tomb for the soldiers killed in that long-ago battle. Unfortunately, the sight spread before Blade in the mists did not help matters.
Hundreds of other vehicles littered the broken ground. Besides the ruins of at least fifteen additional mobile forts, Sparrow could make out the blasted remains of smaller tanks, personnel transports and rusted-out cargo trucks. Some of the vehicles were laying on their sides, turned over by the explosive forces unleashed during past battles. Many more stood upright or tilted to the side, rusting as their twisted frames sagged down upon broken treads or flattened tires. Human remains were piled around the vehicles and occupied some of the driver's seats.
Sparrow looked over at Kate. She wondered if she had the same haunted look as her friend. "How long have they been fighting?"
"Tarun told me there were many small wars leading up the global conflict," Kate replied. She gestured out at No Man's Land. "This has been going on for at least three decades."
"Ardennes used to be a nice place," Garrett added. "Or, so I hear."
Sparrow looked out the window in time to see what could have once been a medium sized town flash by under their wings. The piles of rubble stood amid partially cleared streets and straddled a silt-filled river. In the distance, the ruins of a stone church clawed toward the gray sky. Stone window frames lined the central portion of the church, the stained glass long gone, allowing the wind to whistle through the carved lattice. Only the bell tower remained more or less intact. For a moment, Sparrow's spirit was lifted by the sight of the surviving structure.
"The artillery commanders like to leave towers like that intact," Garrett remarked.
"Very considerate," Kate noted. "Too bad homes aren't as important."
"They use them to help calibrate their fire," Garrett explained. "It's useful to have a distinguishable landmark."
Dagger snorted and turned Blade to follow the river. "This should take us right to Reticort." She hugged the water's surface and turned to follow a bend in the river. Massive stone columns of a bridge which had long ago lost its road deck suddenly came into view through the fog. Dagger cursed and flipped Blade sideways in order to fit between the stone supports. Beyond the danger, she flattened out the ship, dipping the starboard wing into the sluggish water.
"Like I said, nice place," Dagger grunted. She pulled up, giving them more altitude.
The ship was rocked by a nearby explosion. A black cloud from a flak round blossomed right outside the cockpit window accompanied by a terrible explosion. Shrapnel rattled against Blade's hull as the shockwave pushed against them. Dagger rolled away from the blast only to have two more of the rounds detonate directly in their path. With no space to maneuver, the pilot growled and pushed the control column forward. Metal fragments bounced off the cockpit windshield as they shot through the debris-filled cloud.
"Nice of them to send a greeting!" Garrett noted as he tapped at the weapon console, looking for something to shoot.
"Probably the Reticort defensive line," Kate said. "Tarun said the city was under siege."
"Awesome," Dagger grunted. She banked toward a line of derelict mobile forts then began flying a zig-zagging pattern between the rusted hulks.
"So, who were the soldiers on the other side of...what'd you call it?" Sparrow asked.
"No Man's Land," Garrett replied. "The other line of bunkers would be whoever is trying to capture Reticort. You'll have to ask Tarun which factions control which territories. Their guns are all aimed toward the defensive line we need to cross to get into the city. I'm assuming their shooting alerted the Reticort defenders something was headed their way. They probably have no idea who they're shooting at."
"Well, that's a relief!" Dagger said. "Want to tell them?!" She flew around another of the deserted mobile forts and the Reticort defenses came into view.
Reticort was surrounded by multiple rings of huge cement bunkers covered with dirt. Unlike the gun emplacements on the opposite side of No Man's Land, the Reticort defenders had each and every weapon manned and firing at Blade.
"Tral!" Dagger shouted as the ship rocked even harder from nearby explosions. "You sure this key is worth all the trouble?" She swerved behind one of the silent, hulking war machines.
Armor-piercing shells fired at Blade tore into the mobile forts steel hide. The high explosives they carried detonated deep within the war machine. One of the projectiles found the fort's old ammunition vault and a massive fireball engulfed the wreckage all the way from its treads to the turrets mounted on its roof. Twisted guns and shredded armor flew in every direction. The otherwise dreary landscape was briefly illuminated by the brilliant orange light.
"Definitely!" Kate shouted to be heard over the roar of Blade's engines and the flak exploding all around them.
"Hold on then!" Dagger turned Blade's nose directly at the line of bunkers guarding Reticort and shoved the accelerator against the stops. The abrupt turn and increased speed caught the gunners on the ground off guard. Blade shot between two massive bunkers without anyone getting another shell close to them.
Beyond the defensive line, no one appeared to be positioned to fire upon them and the air around Blade was suddenly quiet. Garrett reported several potential contacts, all of which Dagger avoided by diving below the ridges bordering a canal filled with slow-moving, unhealthy-looking water. The waterway cut straight through the wastelands surrounding the city.
Sparrow kept expecting the view to improve the further they got away from the frontline bunkers and trenches they'd overflown. If anything, the devastation was even more numbing as the enormity of the destruction became clear. The battered trees lining the approaches to Reticort and the ash-covered ground looked as if it would not allow anything green to ever grow here again. Likewise, the out-lying towns she spotted looked more like rock quarries than the villages which had once flourished with trade and agriculture.
"Not now, Nemus," Kate said.
Sparrow looked at her friend. "Is Nemus trying to be helpful?"
Kate sighed, "He's got all these memories of Ardennes as it once was. I'm afraid if I let him start filling my mind with the past I'll end up with the knowledge of all the violence that has occurred. I don't need that in my head!"
"That is probably wise," Sparrow said.
"It's just too much," Kate added. "I keep hoping Nemus will understand, but he doesn't."
"How can you tell?"
"He just huffed," Kate explained. "It feels like he's rustling his leaves at me. Nemus is kind of like a teenager and starts sulking if he thinks we don't appreciate him."
Sparrow felt for her friend. Perhaps when they returned to the Archives, they'd be able to approach Nemus and try to explain why Kate could not watch thousands of people die. Unlike the young tree, Kate could not instantly perceive and digest the revelations as Nemus delved into the past. As Sparrow understood the connection, when Kate opened herself to reliving the past, especially extremely violent episodes such as the battles of Ardennes, she ran the risk of becoming paralyzed with the intensity of the sorrow. Sparrow was glad Kate was fending off the tree's attempts to be helpful. They were here for an artifact. The team could not afford to spend time helping Kate recover from a painful download of memories. It was imperative they reach the key before the Ater; nothing else mattered.