I locked myself away in my room for days. Hera brought me food and drink. She was there when I needed to talk when my body wouldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t hold anything down. One night when it was really bad she sang to me. She picked up my guitar and played. It was the first time since being on Errikus, inside the nexus, or playing myself that I had heard music. She told me she learned from her visions. While most of the time she only saw various battles with the Skrav or Trepp every once in awhile she was someone famous and loved. Her mind memorized those moments and she taught herself to play various instruments. In her room she had several guitars some with six strings, some seven, but her pride and joy was a twelve string. Each string had to be perfectly tuned. It was her affection that saved me from my addiction in the end. Her affection made me feel like I was a stronger better person something I hadn’t felt since I was a child on Errikus. The way she talked to me it was like Aira had come back into my life. I had a new best friend. Hera was more then that though. In a way I felt like I could live the rest of my life by her side. Where Balkava had used me and abused my trust over and over again keeping me in the dark and treating me like an object demeaning me Hera made me feel like an equal. For the first time in my life I had no secrets from anyone.
I told her how I felt and how the visions made me feel. I told her about what happened on Errikus about Dom, about my mother. I told her about never knowing my father and laughed describing the strange species that use to arrive in ships that looked like fish or stingrays and for once someone knew the animals I talked about and the strange words or animals I described. Hera had been a user. She may not have had the same type of visions I had but she had seen much of the same world. I was no longer alone.
There was still a chance every once in awhile a shard would break through one of the protein chains and I would have a vision. The effects could last for several seconds to minutes to hours. There was no way to predict the outcome. Never before had someone been exposed to the nexus like I was now. It was like breathing glass or running with a pair of scissors never knowing when you would fall only knowing that you would. If I had been anyone else this would have made me a liability but I was a member of First Descent. We were untouchable. On this ship we were considered heroes and if one of us were considered unfit for duty then moral would collapse. Balkava knew this well. After two days of shivering, shaking, puking, and mood swings I was called back to duty.
We were nearing Eden-3; the orbital but we weren’t the only ones. When Lore floated away on Parcae his last words had been “Skrav,” and now we knew why. I lined up with my squad in formation beside an entire hangar full of hundreds of humans, hundreds of pilots. I stood between Hayden and Trevor. Duv’Mir had already received our orders but this was mostly for show anyway. Even Hera was going to be flying in the attack. There were a few hundred ships some so old they had to be welded together with parts from autons and biomass scrapped from the broken shafts and corners of the Erebus. The Aelita would be doing the same. Balkava stood in front of us and gave us a speech. Something about what it meant to be human. It didn’t matter. The only thing that matter was there was one Skrav ship.
It was one two maybe three times as large as the Erebus waiting for us on the horizon. It was all that stood between us and our new home. We no longer had the help of the Eek or Arr7 and from what we could see they didn’t have any Trepp by their side for support either. This was a fight between human and Skrav a battle thirty thousand years in the making. If we were going to fall it would be here. I told myself that somewhere in the past someone must have seen this. Why else would they let us come this far? The outcome of this battle had been decided. Already we could see the Skrav drones and fighters swarming around like an ant would a hive.
It was as if a fraction of a shard had broken through only to cross my mind for not even a second and I could hear Aelia’s dying voice from my visions in my ear whispering again and again her last words spilled out across time and space – “Run.”
So Much for Subtlety... I stood next to Hera in the hangar. The lights were dim, the Erebus was trying to conserve power. The hangar itself looked like it hadn't been used in ages. All around us people were hurrying about trying their best to fix fighters and scavenge parts from antiques that could no longer fly. Her ship was a small fighter with one seat. Its hull was painted with a purple rose and vine that wrapped its way across the bow. Many of us painted our ships. It helped make us feel like we were less expendable and it was an easy way to keep moral high.
I couldn't stop thinking about my vision. I had been having so many since the nexus broke into shards now residents in my bloodstream. I felt like a liability, a walking time bomb. If I lost it while piloting I would be a goner. I would have given anything to follow Aelia’s advice and run. Truth was none of us were ready for another battle with the Skrav. The immer had taken a massive toll on the Erebus and the Aelita to the point the hulls on both ships were slowly tearing themselves apart. Every time we came back to the real the ships were warped more and more. Not even the caretakers could fix the massive gaps caused by the immer not to mention the holes caused by the antliods.
One last fight. Our assault fighters and drop ships would have to take out the hub on the Skrav ship that controls the drones and hope that enough of us survive so that we can take out the rest of the ship and their fighters. The Aelita would protect the Erebus as much as possible but even one Skrav ship is a monster. There was nothing I could say or do to make anything better. This felt like madness That moment was all we had. While I walked away I could hear Hera's voice singing in my ear, an echo of the night before. It was the first time she had said she loved me and I without any hesitation had said it back.
My ship and most of the ships in First Descent had been painted with red skulls, angel wings and machine guns on the side. It was nothing but a boring afternoon months ago when we painted them on our ships and now what was utterly abstract had become our mark. Other pilots called us 'the red death' and soon it became our call sign. We only had a few hundred ships most remade from exotic parts we picked up from the Arr7 or Eek. Walking through the hangar now felt like walking through an art museum. In one space there was 'the red death' in another 'the rosary' and all the way back the 'Knights of the Winter Solstice' side by side with 'the Sirens of Caro'. All of us had our own stories our own histories and now we stood united.
We were so close to Eden-3 we could practically fly down and land on it. My fighter’s wings spread out like a bat taking to the night sky. For the first time since the ethereal high the nexus gave me I felt alive. I was an addict. I was addicted to this. Flying through space I could feel the adrenaline making my heart beat faster and faster. I felt superhuman. Most fighters only had one cockpit unlike the dropships and they were quick. It was easy to maneuver and to fire all you had to do was pull back on a trigger. I was flying a twenty-ton death machine.
At first we flew out in a standard attack formation in the shape of a v. Duv’Mir was in a newer model shaped like a triangle, the prototype XA-3, it was suppose to be more aerodynamic but it was also never tested in a battle like this. He had only piloted it once before. There were only twenty like his each slightly different. Pieces scavenged from here and there so no two were exactly alike. He flew in front while I was on his right side in a standard model XA-2. The XA-2 looked like you would expect. A cross between aircraft built during the 21st century fused with an almost exotic alien design where the two wings angle outward and down making the spaceship look like a falcon. To my side flew Trevor and Addax in similar ships. On the left side there was Hayden, Brecca, and Meddix.
Before we launched the Aelita had already sent out a devestating invisible beam of energy across space but chances are the Skrav would be prepared for it. During the darkest times of the war most of our battles were fought millions of miles apart - with some even being light years away. We would predict their position and send out massive weapons of destruction. Forget the nuke, th
ese were devestating; weapons capable of wiping out entire worlds. Weapons we ran out of nearly two hundred years ago. Technology that was lost to us. Maybe it was for the best. If we used a WMD here we would risk destroying the orbital; another paradise lost and with no hope left this was our final stand.
We were right. A waste of energy. The Skrav de flected the energy beam using a shield barrier not that it would have done much damage to their hull anyway. The most we could have hoped for was taking out some of their fighters. There were thousands of them. There was nowhere we could look that there wasn’t a ship in sight. We broke formation and split into teams of two. Some of the fighters carried caretakers on their back. If all else failed the caretakers would hop from a human fighter to a Skrav and then with their claws tear it to pieces. For the caretaker it would almost mean certain death but that was their fate. They were bred to protect the human race at all costs. There was nothing left for them once we had a home. If anything we would let them open the hatches inside the Aelita or Erebus both and turn it into a satellite home. They would be our watchers from the sky living inside the ruins of our human ships. That was the most they could hope for. They were smart enough overtime they could probably colonize the entire system living in space. If we did fail they would be our legacy. The ones that let go and float away would be all that remain of the human race.
Duv’Mir came on my radio, “Unit 03 act as support and stop staring at the turtles and kill some bugs,” he must have noticed my drifting. I was too busy for a moment wondering if anyone ever saw the future from the caretaker’s point of view. I couldn’t stop thinking about it how many times had this battle played out in the eyes of users and yet there was nothing they could say to help us. “Transition shift to 7.” We made our way around towards the Skrav ship and in less than thirty minutes we had passed the point of no return. “Shift to 12.” We had done enough battle with them to know all their weaknesses but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a few surprises left for us. “Entering area 88, weapons free.” We had practiced this a hundred times inside simulation after simulation each little area of space separated out into an invisible grid we could navigate around with. We knew the grid so well we could navigate with just our own line of sight if we must.
The real thing was so much more intense. I could feel my fingers twitching and my heart pumping. This would have been the worst possible place to black out. If I had a vision I could end up killing myself but if I killed one of my team and I survived that would be unforgivable. Around me I watched as the crew I had called family began to collapse and burn. We were losing. The Skrav outnumbered us five to one. I could see some ejecting from their cockpits a last ditch effort hoping that somehow they would be found. It would be like tracking a needle in a haystack the size of the sun. Impossible. Not to mention they would be moving so fast from ejecting they couldn’t be slowed down or caught. The most they could hope for was a quick death maybe if they were lucky they could shoot a Skrav drone or ship with their rifle or blow themselves up with a grenade. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Twenty tons of fighter jet meant twenty tons of debris. Even the smallest chunk of metal could fracture a drive core and cause a ship to spiral out of control.
I had no time to think about my own feelings but Hera, Hayden, Duv’Mir, Trevor, Meddix, Brecca, Addax even Balkava were all there all in the back of my mind. So many faces. I began to feel like some kind of madness was beginning to set in. Every heartbeat I could feel them. Memories of my past life were begging to pour out to split open my eyes and force me to cry and beg for my life. I was in battle and as far as I knew everyone I ever knew or loved that was still alive was right here with me. I couldn't let emotions drive me mad; I can't let my emotions tear me apart. There was no time to hesitate and no time to feel weak. My mission was simple; kill the Skrav. The conditioning kicked in. Something I haven’t felt since I was a child boarding the Erebus. The torture they put me through. The things they forced me to see and do. My love turned to hate. This was what it was all for. They made me numb to the violence. I was killing other sentient beingS but that didn’t matter because they struck first and this was our home. I thought of the elder that once slayed the innocent in their sleep forcing them out of stasis because of the chance they might have had some kind of disease. He fought for what he thought was a greater good even though he was wrong. I feel exactly as he does now. The Skrav are demons and I am an archangel. Even if I had to give my life for future generations now is the time that I would.
Ships from the Aelita began giving us support together allowing all of us to form a wall and make our way through a crowd of drones. Fuel ignited the air silent explosions and shockwaves throughout the vacuum of space crippled fighters from both sides. I wonder if Aira was out here. She had been pretty damn good in the simulations when we were children. The thought gave me some peace of mind the idea of fighting beside my childhood friend again just like we fought for our lives in Errikus. Now only instead of ticks and drok and monsters the size of buildings we were fighting our true enemy the enemy we had been born to hate. The Skrav ship was no different then the seraphim and if the human race could slay a beast like that then breaking through this darkness and destroying the Skrav would be easy. In the distance I could see the Erebus fire weapons from its sides.
Beside me only several hundred yards away another Skrav drone disintegrates to pieces. It must have been trying to ram me last minute. The front of the Erebus was behind me now it looked like four massive blades powering up ready to fire. Like a magician casting a spell. The spires looked like fingers as they filled with a blue kinetic energy. Another blast and another orb of light appears outside my ship.
An entire squad of Skrav began to move upon my squad. I could see the blur of the red skull painted on the side of Duv’Mir and Meddix’s ships when they turned flipping 180 degree firing on the approaching enemy and turning back another 180 degrees before they even needed to catch up.
We were nearing the hub. If we destroyed it we had a chance of knocking out their shields and letting the Aelita or Erebus disable it with their weapons. None of us had taken a shot with our lasers yet. Our lasers were more powerful but take time and energy to charge; we had only been using projectile-based weapons and we were beginning to run low. We were all too focused on our mission to bother with any of the grunts anymore. We were coming in hot.
“Hayden take point,” Duv’Mir said through the comm. None of us spoke a word that wasn’t something strategic or a part of our operation. The channel had been left open and we could hear one another breathing, steady, it was as if we were all sitting side by side hidden behind a thin wall. Hayden acknowledged the command and took over for Duv’Mir. Hayden had the most time in the simulation so if anyone were worthy of taking the shot it would be him.
From time to time we could hear each other breathing occasionally someone would begin grunting or let out a battle cry as the gravity forced them back against their seat. Each of us was taking two to four g’s if we spiraled out of control we could easily hit eight or more causing a concussion or worst turning our brains to mush. Each cockpit was lined with holographic radar and tracking along with a joystick that would move us up, down, side to side making it easy to turn on a dime. The joystick was lined with several smaller triggers that would fire various weapons from energy beams and lasers to ballistics and fusion missiles. It was the best way we could control our ships.
The Skrav drones began to home in on our seven ships so Brecca, Addax, and Meddix broke off to draw their fire. Addax used his A.I. to calculate the best route possible sending drones crashing into the spires and columns that detailed the Skrav ship. We were so close now we could have landed on the side. One wrong move and we would go into a bender and bounce off into the void.
The Skrav vessel was only equipped with gatling lasers on the front for defense. These ships were (probably) originally intended to break up asteroids or clear paths of debris for others. The Skrav had bee
n traveling through space a hell of a lot longer then us but in all that time they never readily improved their ships or designs. It seemed more or less that they lacked the imagination and inspiration that made us special. Taking out the hub and rendering it powerless should have been an easy maneuver nothing our team couldn’t handle.
Some of the other human ships that were plotting a similar course as us jumped the gun and flew too close to the Skrav hull. We could see the marks they left behind as we dodged the debris that floated all around. Duv’Mir got to show off the XA-3 taking it sideways through two wrecked ships only a few feet above the hull before diving into a small tench and killing two more of their fighters. Victory felt assured. It was short lived. Through the comms we could hear Trevor cursing as his ship began to spiral.
He hit five g’s before gaining control his ship stopped behind ours and stalled out floating in black space. In thirty seconds he could reset it and get back to the fight but he would be so far from our formation he couldn’t dream of catching up. He was nothing but bait for the drones and Skrav now. Duv’Mir, Hayden, and I continued flying down into the trenches avoiding most of the drones the rest of our team fought.
We heard Addax scream and eject from his ship. We couldn’t see it but it was unmistakable. A Skrav fighter came out of nowhere and hit him from behind. It was only because of Friday that he managed to eject. No human could have responded to that kind of an attack quick enough.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 20