Scarlet July
Deadpan was Lechatelierite’s default facial expression. Thirty Nurro-Ichthyothian casualties last week? Deadpan. Single-handedly slaughtered thirty mages yesterday with his sidearm? Deadpan. A solid hour listening to his new subordinate’s tragic life story? Deadpan. Embracing his crying co-commander in her quarters in the middle of the night while stroking her hair and whispering in her ear? Deadpan.
So, one could imagine my alarm during breakfast when this same man jumped from his seat as though electrocuted, face beaded with sweat and body trembling. I knew something must’ve gone horribly wrong. Something big. Something concerning the greater state of the war.
We rushed from the mess hall to the locker rooms to suit up, and from what I gathered of the nervous chatter on the way, everyone was convinced the Commander had gone mad. Only my unit was aware of the origin of his crazy idea, but that didn’t do much to comfort them. I was worried sick, feeling very responsible for the doom I sensed was coming.
We headed out. Nurtic and Illia were piloting the crystallines bearing units two, three and four. I was with units one, five, six and seven aboard our old, air-only vitreous silica, soaring a couple thousand feet above. Wind whistled noisily as the manta ray sliced through the sky. I peered out the windows, straining my spectrum to see through the thick snow.
It was a long, nerve-wracking trip. The forty of us onboard stayed still and silent, waiting, wondering and worrying, as Lechatelierite, hiding his anxiety with a brave face and a confident voice, ran his mouth. I considered his constant reassurance as indicative of his internal unrest. Never before did he need to actively convince us of the infallibility of a plan; it was always obvious. Until now. And, his voice was so authoritative, so assertive, it wasn’t too long before he had everyone convinced. All around me, my comrades gazed at him with admiration and awe, all unease apparently forgotten.
I was unmoved. Everyone believed Lechatelierite’s one lost battle was a fluke, but I alone heard his dying thoughts and knew his failure was the result of serious misjudgment. I’d seen behind the mask of the ‘perfect commander’ and knew, despite his stoicism and reputation, he was breakable and fallible. My stomach churned like it was trying to digest a lump of raw dragon meat. What could’ve possibly happened in the grand scheme of things to make him desperate enough to use one of my fantasy battle-plans?
“This ship, along with our two remaining crystallines, have been recently fortified with diffusion shield technology,” Lech-atelierite told us, like we didn’t already know. “Completely undetectable by spectrometer.”
Well, now the blindness went both ways, I supposed—none of our radars or spectrometers were able to function properly since our first battle. There were teams of engineers working on the mystery as we spoke. Good luck trying to make sense of magic, I thought.
We stopped to refuel at the Fervor Station, on the southern coast of Nuria. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, refraining from clutching my stomach openly. The single, stale wheat cracker I managed to choke down at breakfast with a gulp of ice water was now threatening to come up. Abdominal pain was a regular part of my life in the military, but not to such an extreme as this. Goosebumps rose on my arms beneath my diving suit as anticipation welled in my chest. Though the cabin of the manta ray was kept at about forty degrees, I began to feel hot, all over. Especially my scalp. My stomach swooped, but from what seemed to be excitement. Like I just made some big discovery. That’s it! my mind screamed. Wait, what’s it? What was happening? Did my eyes subconsciously detect something? I peered out the windows. There was nothing going on.
Another hour passed. The ship was on autopilot, trekking across the Fervor Sea. We were getting close. Lechatelierite fell silent in mid-sentence, staring out the window, face losing what little color it had. Almost in unison, forty heads turned. It’s too painful for me to describe in much detail what we saw. A full Conflagrian fleet—each craft equipped with every sort of spectral enhancement imaginable—awaited us in formation, turrets pointed north, as if expecting our arrival. It made no sense. We never came this far south before. We launched at the spur of the moment, without prior preparation or discussion. With our ships cloaked by diffusion technology, they had no means to detect our advance. There was simply no way they could’ve known we were coming. At yet, here they were, ready.
In a flash, Lechatelierite dropped open the diving shaft.
“Out, now!” he ordered us.
“The enemy is still mostly out of the firing-range of our sidearms,” Arrhyth piped. “I mean, the manta ray can hit them, but we can’t individually, so I think we should fly a little further before deploying—”
“Shut up and get the hell out, NOW!”
The rear of the vitreous silica burst open in a flurry of color and sound. The ship began to spin wildly towards the bubbling-hot, Conflagrian water. Lechatelierite dove for the controls and took us off autopilot. I pulled on my helmet, stepped back from the shaft, snagged a handlebar and held on tight, allowing the others to evacuate first. The manta ray gyrated; white suits flung through the air and slammed into walls. Several men hurled through the gaping opening, unprepared, tumbling to the choppy sea. At last, there was no one left inside the half-demolished vessel besides the Commander and me.
He was still at the console, trying to direct our course. I didn’t see the point. If he didn’t get out now, the carrier was going to end up crashing and exploding with him on it.
I lifted my visor. “Commander, you can’t salvage the ship!” I yelled through the wind and the crackling. “Leave the controls and dive!”
He literally jumped at the sound of my voice—I’d never seen him so startled before. “WHAT’RE YOU STILL DOING HERE?” he erupted.
“You have to get out!”
“GO, NOW!” he screamed.
“But, sir, you can’t stay here—”
“THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER FROM YOUR COMMANDER! DIVE, SCARLET, NOW!”
I couldn’t leave him behind to die! “But, sir!”
He actually abandoned his seat then, but not to save himself. He came at me, slammed my visor down and literally shoved me right off the edge. I sloppily somersaulted through the hot air, intense wind blowing my body south. I hit the water, hard, on my side, screaming inside my helmet. I resurfaced as quickly as I could and saw I was only seventy or so yards away from the shore. No wonder the Commander was so desperate for me to jump!
A deafening rumble sounded from above. I looked up and saw the massive, half-ablaze vitreous silica soaring overhead. It spun and crashed right into the headquarters of the System Water Forces Base. And, everything exploded.
A shockwave swept through the sea as debris streaked the sky. I bit my mouthpiece and ordered everyone to dive as deep as possible to avoid being crushed by the falling rubble. No one responded. I didn’t know how many were still alive in this chaos.
I was responsible for the fleet, now; there was no way anyone still aboard the manta ray could’ve survived the crash.
I was the Commander.
Lechatelierite was dead.
“Officer two, report!” I called.
“Scarlet?”
“Nurtic!” I felt a surge of relief, forgetting, like him, to use last names as we were supposed to in battle. “Do you still have your crystalline?”
“For now, yes.” His voice sounded strained. “And, Frappe still has his. But, I’ve got three dragon ships on my tail and four units clinging to me for dear life.”
Four units? I didn’t know that many could fit on a crystalline’s hull.
“You and Frappe—round everyone up and retreat! We’re in no condition to continue this battle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A couple minutes passed.
“Okay, Scarlet, I’ve shaken my pursuers. Coordinates?”
I gave them to him.
“Alright, I’m coming for you. You’re farther south than everyone else. Between Frappe and I, I think we’ve got everyone.”
>
There was another long pause.
“Scarlet, what was that loud noise?”
What? Didn’t he see the System Water Forces Base Headquarters and our last vitreous silica literally burst into shreds?
Of course, not. Our radars weren’t working properly, and he stayed too far below the surface to see anything, this whole time.
“The vitreous silica has been shot down,” I said, bluntly. “It crashed into headquarters.”
We didn’t exactly win this battle, but we weren’t at a total loss, either. Lechatelierite single-handedly transformed what would’ve been a terrible defeat into a decent strike.
“The ship crashed into the base? No way!” Nurtic sounded, for all the world, like a teenager who’d just been told his high school principal was caught making out with the cafeteria-lady in a broom closet. “There’s just no way the Conflagrians would be stupid enough to shoot it down while it’s flying right over them.”
“They didn’t.” I swallowed. “The engine was taken out long before the ship made it above land. It took the Commander a lot of maneuvering to glide there.”
There was a stunned silence.
“But, doesn’t that mean Lechatelierite is—are you saying he’s—?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, quietly. “But, I think so.”
Nurtic had no response for that. His crystalline soon came zipping in my direction, and though nearly every square inch of his hull was already occupied, I managed to grab on.
We rode home in complete silence.
Cease Lechatelierite
“THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER FROM YOUR COMMANDER!” I screamed. “DIVE, SCARLET, NOW!”
“But, sir!”
That was it. I couldn’t go knowing I was taking my replacement—the best replacement I could’ve possibly hoped for—with me. Moreover, I refused to spend my final minutes agonizing over the imminent death of the first person I’d come to care about since Inexor. So, I lunged at her, snapping her visor shut and pushing her right through the open shaft. I breathed a sigh of relief as her tiny body tumbled into the wind.
I returned to the console and strained forward, nose nearly touching the windshield. I fixed the ship’s path straight for the base’s main facility. Then, I put on my helmet and sat back, not bothering with the harness.
The vitreous silica lurched and I was thrown out of my seat. This was it. I was choosing the destruction of headquarters over my life. But, I was going out with honor. Perhaps, upon dealing the enemy this blow, the Trilateral Committee would decide it wasn’t yet time for surrender. Finally, I would be redeemed for Inexor’s death. This was my payment, my sacrifice.
The ship was perpendicular to the ground, now; my head slammed violently into the windshield.
For you, Ichthyosis.
For you, Inexor.
Blackness engulfed my sight.
Scarlet July
It was past midnight before we got back to Icicle. There were two-dozen more divers entering hospital wing, but we’d all managed to make it home alive. Everyone except Lechatelierite.
I tried to understand why he did it. Why he sent us off, unprepared, on a stupid mission based on a stupid battle plan.
My battle plan.
He died because he took me seriously. Because he trusted me when no one else even wanted to hear what I had to say. If Apha died because he didn’t listen to me, Lechatelierite died because he did.
Lechatelierite didn’t just do dumb things for no reason at all. Something must’ve pushed him to abandon reason and take this step. Something must’ve made him loose his mind. I found the answer while pacing the empty mess hall after lights’-out. I found a soggy stack of paper on top of a crushed water glass.
It was a report from the Trilateral Committee—the first one Lechatelierite didn’t immediately share with me. I read it in the dark. As usual, all the stats and projections were dismal. That alone couldn’t have sent the Commander into desperation.
I flipped to the last page and found a letter addressed directly to Lechatelierite, signed by the chairmen of the Trilateral Committee and the Nurian and Ichthyothian heads of state. And, sticking to the back of the wet packet was a battle diagram sketched on lined notebook paper—one of my drawings from that boring review class, earlier this month.
I threw the stack on the table and kicked the remains of Lechatelierite’s glass on the floor, suddenly furious at him. We were supposed to surrender. We’d lost the war in any case, and Lechatelierite had to go get himself killed for nothing. Destroying the headquarters of the System Water Forces Fervor Sea Base didn’t win the war for Ichthyosis, it just pissed off the enemy to whom we now had to make amends. Today’s battle was a waste. His death was in vain.
I sat in his seat at the table and put my burning face down on the cool, wet pages. My tears seeped into its thickness. The war was lost. The Conflagrian people would never be liberated. The System was going to take over Ichthyosis—
Cease was dead.
Oh, Tincture, Cease really was dead. I’d never see him again. I’d never hear his hypnotic, authoritative voice blare in my helmet, again. He’d never lead the fleet into battle, again. He’d never scold us, or glare at us, or pace up and down our line and critique us, again. He’d never lay his stern, silver-grey eyes on mine and tell me what to do, again. He was gone. I killed him. Me and my damn creativity.
Fair Gabardine
The ship the Ichthyothians called ‘vitreous silica’ spun wildly as it dropped, like a hobnail with its tail on fire. Dragon ship six shot its windshield and the glass shattered spectacularly, sending the pilot’s limp body tumbling through the air, heading straight for me. In a flash, I caught him with a lock of hair. The Ichthyothians were retreating, but I figured we should take at least one prisoner—if he was still alive, anyway—because we needed to find out why Ichthyosis, after sixteen ages, suddenly decided to pick a fight this far south, and why Nuria would break the Isolationist Laws and allow foreign warcrafts to refuel at its ports. I used the rest of my hair to latch onto dragon ship eight, flying overhead.
I was a System soldier. Leader of Flame Team Seven of the Water Forces. I was chosen by Principal Tincture himself to join the secret war against North Ichthyosis. I received the notice six ages ago today, on July twenty-fifth of the eighty-seventh age. Though it was the best thing that ever happened to me, I remembered that day with mixed feelings. It was the day my life gained direction, but it was also the day my best friend, Scarlet Carmine July, was deported. Though I loved Scarlet like a sister, I couldn’t visit her that afternoon because the System ordered me not to, and System didn’t make mistakes. I didn’t always understand their decisions, but it wasn’t my place to question them.
Dragon ship eight began its descent, cloaked from sight, now. We were arriving at the Mage Castle on the Fervor River, which fed into the Fervor Sea. The Castle’s underground floors and hangar served as our primary Water Forces base. Thankfully, the one in the Fervor Sea didn’t house the majority of our men, materiel, crafts or supplies.
Cradling the Ichthyothian diver in my hair, I went inside and bound his limp form to a seat in a POW cell, took off his helmet and removed his utility belt. He was still breathing.
He also had three stripes on each arm.
Holy Tincture. I didn’t just capture any old pilot, but the Leader of the Ichthyothian Resistance, himself!
“Ma’am!” I called to Crimson Cerise, who was in the corridor just outside the cell. My Commander—whose aura was so red, she nearly received the Reserved Name of ‘Scarlet’ when she was born, but was denied it the moment my dear, troublemaking friend came around—entered hastily, arms swaggering at her sides.
“What is it, Gabardine?” she snapped.
Crimson was always snippy to me because she knew I was once close with Scarlet. But, I could hear the winds of change begin to blow; capturing Cease Lechatelierite would surely land me a promotion. Already, I was the one responsible for predicting today’s at
tack. I saw the Ichthyothians coming in a vision, a mere hour prior to their arrival. I had no idea how that was possible, since I had no connections to anyone who could’ve possibly been in the Diving Fleet. But, I sure wasn’t complaining; the intel was invaluable.
“Commander, I captured an Ichthyothian diver from the vitreous silica.”
“Goody for you!” she yelled. “If you haven’t noticed, we have an enemy carrier sitting inside Fervor Headquarters! We’ll question your little trophy later!”
So, the Ichthyothians damaged our oldest, most deserted base. Conflagria was still going to win the war. Today’s battle hurt us but didn’t exactly turn the tables.
I gestured to my prisoner. “Ma’am, it’s the Diving Commander, Cease Lechatelierite.”
Her burly frame froze as her gold eyes went wide. Her eyes always reminded me of her brother, Ambrek Coppertus, a two-tone, ‘Iridescent’ hand-mage who always had a weird thing for Scarlet, growing up.
“But, he’s in critical condition,” I continued. “We must hurry—we can’t interrogate a dead man.”
Cease Lechatelierite
My body was on fire! At least, that how it felt when I opened my eyes. It was as though liquid plasma surged through my veins. My mouth was bitter with blood. I blinked several times, but the haze wouldn’t clear. I couldn’t make any sense of my surroundings. I assumed, from the oppressive heat and humidity, I must’ve been somewhere in Conflagria. I couldn’t move—ropes burned around my hands and feet. Stomach twisting, I tucked my chin and vomited on my lap.
How on earth did I survive the crash?
I heard the creak of a door. Two figures, one a splotch of red and the other a splotch of brown, advanced on me. I tried to focus on the red blur.
For a fleeting moment, I allowed myself to hope.
“Scarlet?” I whispered.
“No. The System wasted that name on a Useless,” a voice spat in accented Ichthyothian.
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