by L Bowers
“Since we’re moving to avoid the machines you warned about, I agree with you. But next time—”
“There won’t be a next time,'' I cut in. “If I think this is needed, I’ll bring it up beforehand. That way we can come to a decision together.”
“Fair enough. So tell me, does thirty thousand feet make my ass look big?”
“What?”
Angela laughed. “It’s a joke, Ray. Lighten up.” Her laughter stopped and gave way to serious Angela. “Stay frosty up there and look out for your ass as much as mine.”
“I will, but I don’t see a need to worry.”
“All the more reason. Going back to team chat. I need to stay in the game as much as you.”
More so, I thought but didn’t say it. All in all, the job of staying high and keeping an eye out was easier than anticipated. I warned the team of two other patrols, but not much else happened as they inched their way toward the enemy.
To ensure I wasn’t seen from the ground, I’d shut off the light show and relied on good old-fashioned wing flapping to stay aloft. I wasn’t at thirty-thousand feet, so the air was plenty thick enough to keep me up with little effort.
Angela and the team were a hundred yards from the enemy camp perimeter when I caught a glint of light from something behind them. Try as I might, I couldn’t make out what it was. It didn’t help that the gleam was gone, and I couldn’t see it again.
“Close your eyes,” Aspen thought to me. “Use the power of my eyes to see.”
I did as she asked. The green form of her head still wrapped around mine, so when I closed my eyes instead of darkness, I saw the world in crisp detail. My team went from being dark specs to taking on forms. The distance between us was still too great to make out all the details, but I could now discern human shapes.
My eyes, or rather Aspen’s eyes, tracked back from my team to where I’d seen the glint. Before reaching the location, I spotted the source. A small dog sentry was creeping up behind them. Its head pointed straight down so I couldn’t see the glow of its spotlight until then.
“Guys, you have a problem,” I said while keeping the frantic fear I felt out of my voice. “You have a tail. Small dog sentry tracking you directly on your six.” While I spoke, I scanned the area to be sure that was the only problem. “Crap. There’s a bunch more. All small and all staying low. They’re closing in from all around. They’ve made a semicircle behind you.”
A flash of motion caught my eye and beckoned me to look ahead of the team into the camp. A dark spot rose from the ground, followed by three others that shot up one after the other.
“Goshawk,” Jones said. “We’ll deal with the sentries, but you have problems too.”
“I see ’em. I’ll take care of the fliers. You guys try to keep quiet while you take down the sentries.”
“Don’t worry about us. We were made for this.”
The first flying machine was on me before I could respond. It shot straight at me and caused me to dive to the side to avoid a collision.
“No!” Aspen’s voice was full of fear. “It’s them, the things that took me.”
“Don’t worry, Aspen, I’ve… Shit!” My wings flashed out of existence for a brief moment. It was enough that I plummeted down. Regaining control proved harder than I thought it would be. Every move of my wings was exaggerated by the high rate of speed at which I fell. When I managed to spread them and slow my fall, the bird head around my helmet flashed a couple of times before faltering.
“Run!” Aspen screamed into my mind. “Run! Don’t let them get us.”
The wings sprouting from my back no longer responded to my wishes. We turned and shot away at full speed. The four attacking machines gave chase. I looked back as I pleaded with Aspen to stop. The fliers were gaining on us. The prospect of being caught made Aspen scream again and try to fly as fast as possible. It wasn’t enough.
My mind raced with ideas of how to regain control. I tried talking her down, but she wouldn’t hear it. Then I moved to force as I yelled and demanded that she stop. Still, the outcome was the same. Pleading for her to see reason was equally useless. In the end, I felt there was only one option that held any chance of working.
While we fled at a frantic pace, I closed my eyes. Going to the inner place proved difficult with Aspen’s mind in turmoil. But I managed, and I was surprised to see her there. Then again, where else would she be?
“Aspen?” I spoke as I brought my consciousness closer to hers. The lack of response didn’t come as a surprise.
With a nod and the grinding of my mental equivalent of teeth, I did what I came here to do. First, I sent a tendril of energy into the great bird. It was the only way I knew to make a direct connection. The tip met resistance at first but snaked into her breast. Then I sent the usual pulses of my energy into her. It was another part of my plan to take back control.
The sphere I had hoped to use to wall her off from the manifestation of her wings didn’t appear. Without her to guide the energy back out of herself, the plan fell apart. I didn’t give up, however. Too many lives depended on me to keep fighting.
My thoughts went to Angela. That one life was enough to want to keep fighting. All the rest were the extra bit of icing to make the cake look pretty. I pulled my thoughts away from Angela and everything else that distracted me from the task at hand. I needed a way to encompass Aspen completely. Since I couldn’t rely on her for the sphere, it was up to me.
The thought was a bright bulb that snapped to life in my mind. Of course, I could create the sphere. It was my energy after all, why wouldn’t it do what I wanted? With minimal effort, I changed the shape and nature of the tendril. It fanned out while maintaining the connection to Aspen’s breast. The sphere wasn’t as perfectly shaped as hers would have been, but it covered her entirely.
I felt us slow as the energy I created began to work. Aspen’s connection to everything outside the bubble slowly cut off. When I heard the wind whistling by and felt myself falling, I pulled out of the inner space.
The wings were gone. All manifestations were gone, which left only me and the alien armor. I willed my wings to return, and to my great surprise, they did. Without Aspen’s influence, they were smaller, but they were there. Using the lessons learned from the last fall, I altered the uncontrolled descent and turned the momentum into a controlled dive. I spread my wings wide, shot up, and zoomed over the landscape.
A loud boom behind drew my attention. A quick peek was enough to see three flying machines in pursuit and one column of smoke behind them. The dive had been too much for the fourth machine. Finally, some good news.
With the good came the bad, and lots of it. The machines swiftly gained on me. I needed Aspen, but she was still a no-go since I felt her mindless fear and frantic actions as she beat against the sphere.
Without going back into the inner space, I decided to try something else, something new. I opened myself up to the power I had gained since joining Aspen. What I felt sent shivers down my spine. A vast ocean of energy sat inside me and waited for me to call on it. I took a portion of it in my mind's equivalent of a hand and pulled it free to create a new tendril. Then I pictured myself attaching the tendril to one of the wings. I was careful not to allow the energy to flow. Then I created another conduit connected to the other wing. With that done, I unleashed the energy.
My wings flared with a bright emerald flash. They were bigger now, much bigger than when Aspen was in control of herself. A wide emerald ribbon trailed behind each one and propelled me forward with far more speed than ever before.
The machines were no longer closing the distance at such a rapid pace, but they were still getting closer.
25
Goshawk
At the fastest speed I could reach, the machines were still gaining. That meant there was no need to run any longer. I cut all power to my wings and used them to flip around and face the oncoming threat. Once I was oriented right back at them, I lit up the emerald light. I shot
forward like a rocket breaking the sound barrier almost instantly.
The machines reacted by splitting up and coming at me from head-on and the flanks. That was fine since it meant I didn’t have to fight them all at once.
In the second it took for me to close with the lead center machine, I manifested my talons and established a conduit to each hand from my reservoir. I would have to speak with Aspen about the store of energy and find out why she hadn’t mentioned it before.
I tilted to the right before I collided with the bird-like machine. Talons as long as daggers raked its top since it had also shifted to avoid a head-on impact. The damage was superficial, and the attacker kept going as if nothing had happened. I turned left, ready to face the next skirmish.
The left flanker was there as soon as I turned. Dodging to the left kept me from narrowly avoiding a full collision with the thing, although I wasn't completely unscathed. The beast hit my left wing, and half of it smashed against the solid green appendage. The impact sent me into a spiral and made the machine fall.
I was able to right myself swiftly, but the machine didn’t appear to try. It made a small crater and a large plume of dust when it hit.
I hovered in place after I regained control. For a second, I marveled at how awesome it was to do that. I’d assumed that I would have to keep moving to stay aloft. It turned out that all I needed was the green ribbons pointed at the ground. Good enough for me.
The remaining two birds also hovered. Their exhaust ports had tilted down like an old VTOL aircraft. I had to assume they had all the capability of the old vertical takeoff and landing craft. Too bad I hadn't spent more time studying those machines. But who would have guessed that I would have to?
We were at an impasse. They hovered where they were, and I stayed in place. Leaning forward allowed me to change the direction without going into full-on flight mode. The machine to my left, which I leaned toward, backed away. I stopped, then changed targets and began the slow move toward it. It also backed away, so I halted.
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t expect a response. “Scared? You guys feel chicken?” I placed my hands against my sides and performed the universal chicken wing movements accompanied by the “bok, bok” of chicken sounds. They didn’t budge.
“I get it,” I said as loud as I could. My helmet seemed to amplify my words. “You’re worried that I’ll mess you up in a head-on fight. That might be the smartest thing I’ve seen any of you do.”
There was a high-pitched scream a split second before something slammed into my back. Then there was pain and lots of it. I screamed as whatever hit me pushed me through the air at tremendous speed.
Had Aspen been in her right mind, she would have pumped energy into my injuries to help dull the pain and promote swift healing. She wasn’t available, so it was up to me.
My focus shifted from my wings and hands, ready to take on a new task. Both my wings and talons vanished. The thing pushing me turned sharply to the left, dug a spike into my back, and caused me to scream. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my mind to find the energy.
I reached back and tried to grasp whatever had me. I twisted enough to see it was a bird-like machine. The black device matched the two I had killed. Beyond it, I saw three others giving chase.
The machine at my back slammed to a stop as its thrusters shifted to point forward. I wasn’t attached other than the metal beak digging into my flesh, so I continued onward. Without the aid of propulsion, my flight became a downward arc. My heartbeat fast enough to break the sound barrier, and I briefly imagined a sonic boom in my chest that burst my torso from the inside out and left behind a pink donut of vapor.
I shook my head to clear it of the less productive thoughts. Right away, I pulled from the reservoir and created a conduit. The instant I channeled power to my hurting back, the pain lessened. I felt a deep itching, which I took to mean the healing had begun.
“One problem down,” I said in a slurred voice. Must have lost too much blood. “One problem to go.”
I thought about the conduits I had previously created to my wings and expected to have to make them all over again. They were still there, but lying dormant as they waited to send energy to make me fly. I granted their wish, and my wings flared to life. A couple of flaps later, the arc of my downward travel leveled off.
I hadn’t realized how foggy everything had become since the injury. Not until my back started to feel much better. I was still missing a lot of blood, and the energy didn’t seem to help with that. The only way to fix the issue was to survive.
That meant I had to fight and win. I pumped as much juice to my wings as I could, and they rewarded me with the familiar boom of breaking the sound barrier. At this speed, turning wasn’t fast. Facing the enemy was important if I wanted to win, so I kept going.
A black shape streaked by inches from my faceplate. A bright orange tail that caused the metal of my armor to turn bright red followed it. Inside the suit still felt like a cool sixty-eight degrees despite the flame that superheated the outside.
A shadow fell on me from above. I took the hint and dove while rolling to the right. A machine shot past but missed entirely. I rolled left and angled up. Two more fliers shot by at high speed.
“What do we know?” I asked myself while I performed evasive maneuvers to the best of my ability. “They’re faster than me. Clear-headed from not having blood to lose. I’m willing to bet they can talk and decide what action to take faster than I could with my team. So how the hell do I beat that?”
My thoughts were interrupted when I had to dodge and keep dodging as all four machines tried to take me down. One of them managed to clip my right boot, which sent me into an uncontrolled barrel roll.
The truth was, I had no experience to draw from when it came to an aerial dogfight. The one entity I could turn to who might have expertise was incommunicado. What could I do to change the tide of battle?
The first thing was I had to stop the barrel roll. Or did I?
I pulled another set of tendrils from the reservoir and directed them to my wings. I stopped before connecting them. “Who says I have to have only one set of wings?”
No one had, so I manifested a small set on each ankle while maintaining the large wings from my back. The idea was to create new ones without putting too much strain on my concentration and cause the first set to die out. Pain lanced my brain when the new wings appeared, and it took all my attention to keep all of the wings going. Then the conduits attached and I cracked open the dam.
Power flooded my new smaller sets of wings. I shot forward as new ribbons of emerald light left them. The barrel roll became a controlled flight I used to shake off my pursuers.
I was free.
After a few minutes, I killed all power to my smaller wings and dismissed them. If I needed them again, I could call them back, and the conduits would be waiting. That was if my assumptions about my experiences so far were correct.
At that point, I knew one thing for certain. I could run, and I could run hard. As great as that was, it wouldn’t win the fight. I needed more. I briefly considered pulling my rifle and taking shots at the birds. That idea immediately sounded like a good way to waste ammo while the rest of the machines snuck up on me and ended the fight.
I tried flying at one and slicing it open with my talons. The metal tore, and a satisfying shower of sparks flew from the opening. The engine spluttered, and the bird plummeted down. It caught fire before it eventually slammed into the ground. I turned to do the same to the next closest, but it also turned and moved away.
For a long time, I played what amounted to a shitty game of “keep away” with the birds. That somehow evolved to a hybrid version of “keep away and smear the Marine” as the machines tried to hit me while my attention was focused on one of them.
“Aspen,” I thought to her while hoping she had come to her senses.
“Run!”
So no, she was still terrified, and I was still on my own.
&
nbsp; I decided it was time to change the rules of engagement. I took off as fast as I could with only one set of wings. Then I flew down and made a hard landing. My feet hit the ground, and I rolled to try and absorb some of the shock. My wings wrapped around me at the same time to keep me from being hurt. That didn’t stop the twinge of pain in my back.
I rose to my feet and kept my wings up and ready to slice and dice any bird machine that attempted to test me. They lowered to the ground and hovered ten feet up while keeping me surrounded.
I opened up a small window in the shield around my great bird. “Aspen.” No response. “I know this is scary, but I need you. Please come back to me.”
She didn’t respond, but her wild thrashing stopped. I counted it a small win. “If you help me now, you never have to be terrified of these things again. We can win if we work together.”
“They killed my bonded, and they killed me. I was one of the greatest of my generation, and they ended me as easily as if they hunted a field mouse. I am prey, and I can’t stand it!” The last two words came out as a scream.
“I get it.” I remained calm. “Now is the time to turn the hunters into prey. Now is the time for you to make the machines that killed your bonded, and hurt you, pay. Together, we can do that.”
A machine lunged forward, and I responded by jabbing a wing at it. The thing stayed out of my reach, but another darted in. It was old hat now. Since I started fighting them, I had seen their bait-and-switch tactic used over and over. Not this time. My other wing shot out and impaled the flier. It twitched once, and its engine died.
I brought the machine still stuck on my wing around so I could get a good look at it. What I saw, she would. “They’re machines, like every other one we’ve demolished. Help me so we can send all of these things to the junk heap.”
“You…you killed it.”
“You’re damn right I did. Would you like to kill one?”