by Greg Dragon
Cilas nodded when she said this, then nudged her out of the way and brought up a large handgun. He fired off several rounds, putting nine Geralos down, then moved to the table where he ejected the clip.
“You make a good point there,” he said as he reached for another weapon. “How do you think I feel? I’m never grounded for this long. I’m hearing that the Geralos are in Meluvian space, and there’s a real chance we’ll make the jump to give aid to our allies. That happens, Ate, and we’re off this thing. Just be prepared. Once we start it’s going to move like light.”
“Not looking forward to cryo, but Meluvia is worth it,” Helga said. “Plus that’s only a few light years away from the Rendron. We can help the Meluvians and then hitch a ride on one of their ships… that’s unless the Inginus decides to rendezvous with the big ship.”
“Good. You sound ready, but until then, Ate, you need to start taking care of yourself. Get out of that compartment of yours, and meet some Marines. Kick the schtill a bit and socialize. The longer you stew, waiting for the Rendron, the more your mind is going to convince you that you’re messed up. Listen, since coming out of that coma, I’ve seen nothing but impressive action out of you. None of this is your fault. Brafa got corrupted. He was our best warrior, but it happens.
“Even if you had tried to stop him, he would have wiped you out in less than a second. Something tells me that when he got flipped, there was enough of him left inside to spare you. Earn the chance he gave you, Ate. Kill so many of those thypes that they start calling you the angel of death. Let them learn who you are and what they did to you. They will realize that it would have been better to let us rescue that colony, since now they have the attention of Helga Ate.”
Helga felt herself smiling. It was like fuel for her rage, and now more than anything else, she wanted to fight. Grabbing the auto rifle, she leaned over the barrier and began to drop one target after another. It felt good, but she wanted the real thing, though she didn’t know when it would happen.
A few days later she got her wish. The Inginus was to jump to Meluvian space to help to remove the Geralos from the planet. The announcement came over the comms as well as the computer system in her compartment. Everyone on board was to report to the deck level E, which was where the cryogenic units were housed.
Helga met up with Joy on her way to the transport, and they fell in with the rest of the squadron. Joy and her aces called themselves the Revenants, and had little spirit icons on their helmets. She assumed that these were used to keep track of their kills.
It wasn’t possible to look at a pilot and immediately know her skill. The icons on the helmet did that, and from a glance you could tell that Joy was an ace. As Helga looked them over, she noticed a trend: not one of these pilots had more than ten. Joy Valance had the most, eight spirits in a line at the base, which made sense to Helga, since being elected flight leader meant that you were one of the best.
“Looks like we got some more excitement,” Joy said as Helga fell in beside her. “Good news for you is that we’ll be jumping in next to your old ship.” She was smiling as if she was the luckiest woman in the world. Helga wondered if this was due to Cilas or her being excited to fight the Geralos.
“You’re just happy that I’m going to be gone soon,” she said, smirking. “This way you can remain flight leader and I won’t be a threat.”
Joy nudged her violently, causing her to run into an ace named Wynter Sol—no relation to Brise. She was surprised when Sol didn’t shrug her off, but Helga straightened up quickly and stifled a laugh. “Truth hurts—I know, Lieutenant. But even with a Vestalian Classic I’d be coming for your spot.”
When they were back walking together, Joy touched her arm again, but this time it was gentle, no shoving or punching. She pointed at her helmet. “Do you know why we didn’t hand you any boos for your kills?” she said, and from her tone Helga could tell that she was about to get schooled.
“Because I’m not a part of your squadron? I don’t know. Not that it matters that much to me, anyway. I just want to fly,” she said. “And you call them boos? What in the worlds is that? It’s so childish and cute. Not very scary for infiltration pilots.”
Cilas Mec came up quietly on the other side of Joy, and Helga was surprised that they didn’t kiss. Their coupling was no longer a secret on the ship, but they seemed determined to keep on pretending.
“First of all, the ‘boo’ got its name from Commander Lang’s baby girl. You go tell Gloria Lang that her boos are too childish for us,” Joy said.
“Well, when you put it that way,” Helga started, but Joy held up her hand to continue her explanation.
“Second of all, these boos are for lizard warships that we helped destroy. For every sortie that we fly and survive, we hand out a boo. Now that you know their meaning, big mouth, I want to give you this.” She reached under her helmet and produced a sticker, which she handed to Helga with a wink.
The aces stopped walking and surrounded her, and then they began a series of cheers. Helga realized that she had been set up, and that this all had been planned. She took the sticker, peeled off the back, and stuck it to the top of her helmet. When she held it up, the cheers intensified, and a genuine smile came to her face. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said under her breath. “This is the nicest surprise. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll formally join us. Earn yourself more boos. Try to take my position, Ate. If you’re as good as I think, it’s bound to be yours anyway,” Joy said. But when Helga looked at her, she burst out laughing, and that was when she realized that she wasn’t being serious. “I have eight boos, cruta, you’re not catching up,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t give me a run.”
Helga thought about the offer. If wrecking warships gained you boos, then Joy would always be ahead of her. Only sickness and death would close that gap. On the Rendron they had no boos, but she would be building the Nighthawks with Cilas.
The choice seemed obvious, since she was ambitious and wanted it to matter. If it was a month before she’d gone to Dyn, she would have jumped on this opportunity without question. But she needed to find who set them up and make them answer for Varnes and Cruser.
“I appreciate the offer, Lieutenant, but I’ll always be a Nighthawk. After the things we went through down there on that moon, I have a score to settle with the lizards. You’re my girl, though,” she said, and the two women touched fists. It was something they started doing when they were out drinking.
“We’ll fly together … whenever you wish, Lieutenant,” Helga said. “Whenever you need me, I’m your cruta.”
Joy looked over at Cilas who was beaming with pride. She gave him her customary violent shove, and that forced the laugh out of him. “I told you that Helga was loyal, Joy,” he said. “She isn’t on my team by accident.”
The three continued to joke until they reached the cryo bay, then they went their separate ways to their assigned pods.
On infiltrators like the Inginus, the cryogenic chamber took up an entire deck. It had enough pods to accommodate three times the ship’s crew, since it was assumed that they would capture prisoners. There were hundreds of pods, lined up in long rows near the bulkhead, and over fifteen levels, with additional pods stacked on top of them.
Helga’s assigned pod was on the third rack, so she would only have to climb up a few steps. There was a locker near the pod to store her clothes during the jump, and dividers installed for privacy.
She stripped down and threw her clothes inside of the locker, using the mirror on its door to look at herself. There was nothing worse than bringing a foreign object into the pod, since the sensors would literally scream at you—which was the most embarrassing thing ever.
Tyrell Lang’s deep voice came over the system. “Thirty minutes till faster than light speed, Marines. Get into your pods and prepare for the jump. Officers run a head count, we don’t want to miss anyone.”
Helga touched the smal
l square on the side of her cryo-pod, and the system read her vitals and confirmed. “Welcome, Ensign Helga Ate of the Rendron,” it said. “Please step inside, make yourself comfortable, and touch the yellow icon when you’re ready.”
Taking a moment to look around at her comrades, Helga thought about everything that she had been through. She was a veteran now, there was nothing green left. The next time she stepped on the Rendron, she would be afforded the respect of a true Alliance ESO.
She remembered being a teenager and seeing the reaction on the cadets’ faces when Cilas Mec came in to talk to them. “That is going to be me,” she said, smiling at the thought. “I went through hell, and I made it, and now I’m going home.”
This was the first time since deployment that she allowed herself some praise, and she knew it was due to Cilas, who all but drilled it into her head. Thank you, Lieutenant, was her final thought as she placed her back against the cushion.
29
Sirens, loud sirens, and shouting everywhere. This was all that Helga could hear as she opened her eyes to darkness. The pod did its standard checkups to make sure that she was intact, and then the glass dropped its tint, bringing in the brightness of the chamber.
Helga rubbed her dry eyes when they began to hurt, remembering where she was. All around her pod were Marines scrambling, and she wondered what was going on. A number of commands came over the system, and the officers on her level barked orders at the Marines. A half-naked, older man ran in front of her pod, then stopped and backpedaled to look hard at her.
“You need to get out of there,” he said. “We got lizards up our rear. Get ready and get going, spacer. Get up and come on.”
He took off running as Helga sat up in a daze. Did that just happen? she thought. Oh, never mind. She threw herself into motion, pushing open the cryo pod’s glass and stepping out to locate her locker. Pulling on her underwear—they were so cold that it was almost painful—she found the Revenant branded coveralls and dressed in them quickly.
There would be no time to find Cilas and Joy, so she ran along with the rest of the Marines. Her intuition warned her that she would be trampled—there were just too many of them running through the narrow passageway. She pushed past the few Marines, keeping track of where she stepped, until she gained the door that led out to the main hangar.
The place was in chaos with pilots sprinting for their ships. It was obvious that there would be no speeches or well wishes for them. The Inginus had come out of FTL into a sweltering situation, and the ship was being torn apart by a Geralos battleship.
“Get out there and take the heat off mother,” she heard Joy say over the intercom.
When she saw several phantoms take off through the deployment tunnel, Helga stopped and looked around. “Are we seriously doing this without prep?” she said to no one in particular. There will be a lot of people dying today, she thought, and felt saddened at the fact that there would be no goodbyes. She put it out of her mind and sprinted towards her Classic. There, she pulled her helmet on and climbed into the cockpit.
Once she was given a runway, she launched up and through the tunnel. There was a phantom in her way but she squeezed past it and shot out into space. It looked like a maelstrom of destruction when she emerged, black with splotches of bright sparks, lasers, and ballistics.
There were fighters everywhere, pepper and salt in this mélange of metal and science. Even for a woman like Helga, with countless hours of time in the cockpit, she couldn’t help but worry that this would be her end. Nothing simulated or real could replicate what she was seeing, and no inventive cadet weaving tales of glory could come up with a lie this complex.
Flying anywhere between the battling warships was suicide, and she knew it. Unlike the former destroyer that the Inginus had beaten, this new ship was bigger and had someone at the helm that could fight.
Beyond the battle loomed the mighty Aqnaqak, the deadliest battleship of the Alliance. Its presence gave Helga hope, despite the reality that Meluvia was in trouble. Next to it was the Soulspur, the Rendron’s other Infiltrator.
Helga saw that the Aqnaqak was shielding the Soulspur, but the Geralos battleship was firing on them both. While the big boys fought it out, the smaller fighters were trading blows. Some were dogfighting with the Geralos while others destroyed gun batteries and whittled down the shields.
Two bright flashes came from the Inginus then, and a torpedo shot out towards the battleship. A number of Geralos zip ships cut in front of it, giving up their lives to defend the bigger ship.
“Revenant squadron, what are you doing?” said Tyrell Lang, his authoritative voice a gavel on the comms. “Get those damned lizards off our guns.”
Several phantoms took up the charge, flying towards the Geralos attacking the Inginus, but a trace laser—like a yellow line of death—sliced through their numbers and destroyed them. “This is flight leader, Lancer. Revenants, we need to be smart,” said Joy Valance. Her voice was firm but pained, impressive for someone who’d just lost a handful of friends.
Tyrell Lang is an idiot, Helga thought after seeing what had happened. She maximized her thrust, circling to the safer side of the Inginus. Two Geralos ships followed her away from the trio of warships, firing on the Classic and depleting its shields.
Helga ignored the alarms coming from her computer and flew out into open space. Here she could get them by themselves without retaliation from the battleship. They were good, but she was better, and they went quickly to their deaths.
Maybe I can lure them out here one by one, she thought as she flew back to the Inginus. That was when her comms came alive again, as an out of breath Joy began to speak.
“Revenants, the Meluvians are in trouble on the surface. Our Marines just dropped, but they have zero air support. Break atmosphere and rendezvous at my coordinates. Let’s show our allies some support and catch the lizards with their pants down.”
Helga quickly did the math on how long it would take for her to get to Meluvia. There was enough fuel to get down there and back, but she knew that it still wouldn’t be enough. Thype it, she thought. I’ll figure it out. She put all resources into the thrust and then switched velocity from Wave to light speed.
The Vestalian Classic transformed itself by collapsing the wings into the side. Then the cannons rolled to the bottom of the ship, where they slid up into compartments. Once in this mode, the ship was defenseless, but it would allow for faster travel around the system.
Helga located Meluvia and punched in the coordinates, then closed her eyes and touched the activation link. As the countdown towards light speed ticked, Helga chanced a glance at her radar. To become combat-ready took a cooling down period, and she no longer had shields after committing them to thrust.
“Fifteen seconds,” the computer said, but it felt more like fifteen minutes. Helga saw a blip on the edge of the radar, a Geralos zip ship seeking her out. If that lizard shunts his thrusters, I’ll be toast in less than ten seconds, she thought.
“Please, not like this,” she whispered to any deity or entity that would listen. It was a silly thing, she assumed, but that did not stop her from praying.
A shrill sound caught her ears and then everything went white as the Vestalian Classic shot towards the planet of Meluvia. When it had reached the coordinates, Helga retched inside her mask, coughing as orange liquid obscured her vision and breathing.
Pulling off the mask, she gasped for air, then took the time to take in her surroundings. All she could see was Meluvia. Several shades of blue and green, broken up by clouds, and debris. She was close enough to break atmosphere but there was no one else in her vicinity. Where’s everyone? she thought, checking the location to make sure she was in the right place.
Unzipping her flight suit, Helga pulled off her shirt and used it to wipe the vomit from out of her helmet. The smell was so strong that she retched again, this time into the shirt. When she was done dry heaving, she triggered the artificial air. It blew cold and smelled
of the Classic’s engine, respite from the stench of her undigested breakfast.
Frustrated, Helga slammed her fist down into her thigh. How did I forget how much traveling in light sucks? She placed the helmet off to the side and pushed her thruster forward. When the ship didn’t move, she made to panic—checking the fuel gauge—but then a message flashed across the HUD: Cooldown initiated. PLEASE STANDBY.
The system had given everything to get her to this position and had forced itself into a state of self-repair. Flipping through the information screens, Helga found the timer and saw that she had an hour before her thrusters would be online.
“Perfect,” she whispered, then reached up and wiped her mouth. “There’s got to be something that can remove this thyping smell.”
She spent the next hour scrubbing her helmet clean, and by the time the system was ready, she was able to wear it again. “This is Rendron, breaking atmosphere,” she said into her comms, hoping that the lieutenant would pick up her voice.
“It’s about time,” she heard Joy Valance say. “Get down here, Rendron, you’re late to the party.”
The Meluvian region that was under attack was off the coast of a country known as Dwax. Joy’s coordinates took Helga to a colorful mountain range, where the pastel giants spread out for as far as the eye could see.
The Meluvians, not wanting to defy this natural phenomenon by ripping up the surface with architecture, chose to use floating cities that hovered between the valleys. Many of these cities had been attacked and were burning as they floated. This ugly sight brought Helga back to reality.
Below her like a swarm of insects were the Marines from the Inginus. She wondered if Cilas was with them, leading, taking the fight to the Geralos.