by Yronwode
Alkema wanted to change the subject to something more hopeful. “Have we regained contact with Trajan Lear’s ship?”
“Negative,” she told him. “We are preparing search teams, but once again, we will need permission to search areas outside Headhunter Territory. And his last known heading was over the airspace claimed by the Nimali Phalange.” The expression on Alkema’s face was borderline despondent. “I should never have told him to try and get a message to Pegasus. ” Eventually, they were let out and free to examine the crash site. Most of the fuselage had come to rest in a dune, except for the port wingblade, which was nowhere to be found.
Alkema, having brought no tactical gear of his own on the mission, was in the khaki-and-light grey battle dress of the Midian military, wearing the oversized sungoggles to protect his eyes from the blowing sand as he and his team inspected the wreckage.
“Check out the damage on the wingblades,” Johnny Rook indicated the deep black scorches at the edges of the remains of Zilla’s wingblade.
“Charged Plasma Scoring?” Alkema guessed. If he was right, then, whatever had brought Zilla down was much beyond any Midian technology they had seen.
General Parka met them at what had been Zilla’s forward hatch, which was sealed shut and had defied Midian attempts to open it. Alkema had Rook cut open a side-panel, and then release the Emergency Crash Lock. The hatch still would not open.
“Would explosives help?” General Parka asked.
Alkema shook his head. “The outer hull plating would resist most conventional explosives.” He inserted his arm deep into the panel Rook had cut open. “It feels like the manual release was damaged in the crash.” He looked toward the front of the ship, which was half-buried in the sand dune. He could get in through the canopy, but sand would flood in, and perhaps bury any survivors. Alkema pulled out his arm. “There’s an emergency hatch under the command module. If I can get to it, I might be able to release it.”
Parka ordered his men to bring shovels. Alkema showed them where to dig, and within a half hour, had a tunnel just big enough to crawl through and reach the hatch. The manual release worked this time, and he climbed up into the ship with a Midian Medic named Gabriel close behind him.
“What are those?” Gabriel asked as they climbed through Zilla’s weapons bay.
“The cradles for Hammerhead Missiles,” Alkema answered. They were empty.
Toto must have put up a hell of a fight. They found the hatch to the main cabin, which was undamaged. The main cabin itself, despite being in complete darkness, did not appear to have suffered much damage in the crash either. However, there was no one there when Alkema shined his light around.
From there, it was easy to reach the flight deck, where there was one person, alive but barely, strapped into the pilot’s seat.
“That’s Flight Lieutenant Toto,” Alkema told Gabriel.
The Medic confirmed. “He’s alive, but we’ll have to move him out carefully. He’ll never make it through the tunnel.”
“We’ll take him out through the main cabin, I should be able to open the hatch from inside,” Alkema told the Medic. He grabbed Toto’s arm. “I’m not a healer, but since we didn’t bring one, I’ll try and stabilize him as best I can.” He held Toto’s hand and concentrated.
The Medic opened his kit and pulled out a needle and syringe. Alkema held his arm and concentrated. “What are you doing?”
Alkem kept his eyes tight shut and whispered. “I’m trying to… give him some of my… life energy… to sustain him… while we evacuate.” Gabriel took this in skeptical, then plunged the needle into Toto’s arm.
“Ow!” Alkema exclaimed, pulling back, and rubbing his arm in the same spot where Gabriel had injected Toto.
When he had done all that he could, Alkema set about restoring emergency power to the flight deck. A few functioning data displays activated. Alkema accessed ship’s systems and found what he was looking for. “Two escape pods were jettisoned before the crash,” he reported.
A short time later, he opened the main hatch, and reported immediately to General Parka. “We have one survivor on board, the pilot. Two escape pods were jettisoned before the crash. We have to find them.”
Parka grunted. “I will inform the Security Ward that we will be setting up camp here for some time, and request additional search teams.”
“Has the other Aves reported in yet?” Alkema asked.
“No,” Parka answered.
Alkema was downcast at this.
“I am concerned that your technology not fall into the hands of the Xirong,” Parka told him. “They are highly skilled at ‘backward engineering.’ They could apply your technology to improve their offensive capabilities, as they did with the Kariad technology.
“Five or sixes crises at a time is my limit, General,” Alkema replied testily. “We’ll worry about that after we find the escape pods and the other Aves and figure out a way to communicate with Pegasus and get off this planet.” Parka went on, “An extensive search will require land vehicles, and additional equipment brought in by heavy-lift ornithopters. We could use those same ornithopters to transport your ship back to the Security Base, if it can be dismantled.” Alkema nodded grimly. “Technician Greebo can show you where the structural disconnect points are.” He touched his COM Link. “Rook, Jordan, over here.” Rook and Jordan had been watching Toto be carefully removed from his ship on a stretched and carried to a waiting ornithopter. They ran to Alkema double-time.
Alkema gave them orders. “There should be two jet-packs in the rear cargo bay. If they’re fully functional, make an aerial survey of the environment. Find those escape pods.”
“We get to use jet packs,” Jordan responded, with such completely inappropriate enthusiasm that Rook had to punch him in the gut.
“We’ll find them, sir,” Rook assured him.
Midian Security Base 1
Two ornithopters returned to Security Base 1. Blade Toto did not regain consciousness during the flight, and was rushed to the base Medical Center as soon as they landed. A team of experienced trauma surgeons from the West Xiyyon Medical Complex was being flown in by air ambulance to treat him.
Alkema was met on the landing pad by Captain Steadfast. “You look tired, Lt Commander,” she said, finally getting his rank right. “We’ve arranged quarters for you and your personnel. It’s an older barracks, formerly used to house new recruits to the Security Forces during their basic training,” Steadfast sounded almost apologetic.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” said Alkema without even looking at the pictures she was handing him. It was late afternoon, the intense sun of the Midian system has been baking the hardpan and concrete of the base all day long, and dust devils whirled beyond the perimeter fencing. When he exited the ornithopter, he at first had thought he was standing in its exhaust. The merciless heat seemed to pull all the energy from Alkema’s body.
Midian tactical aircraft were lined along the runway, hulking gray things with blunt-noses and stubby wings. Armored windscreens shielded their cockpits. Alkema had a mind to go to the barracks, shower, rest, then return to the search for the commander, and begin the search for the missing Prudence.
“If we can find out from the data the exact time the pods were ejected, and figure out Zilla’s position, we might be able to locate them,” he was saying to Steadfast, but mainly out loud for his own benefit, so he could figure out what to do next. “The problem is, we don’t know Zilla’s position at the time they were ejected. If we can reconstruct her course prior to the crash…”
Frustrated, he realized they didn’t have the necessary equipment to do that.
Steadfast tried to comfort him. “General Parka is very experienced at search and rescue.”
Alkema didn’t want to hear it, although, so far, he liked General Parka better than any of the others in the Midian military he had met so far. “What about access to your classified surveillance and reconnaissance data?
“The Intel
ligence Ward is working as fast as they can to get you limited access,” she told him. “Some of the data you want has to be approved at the Security Ward level.”
Alkema all but exploded at her. “Do you think we really care about your security data? Do you think there’s anything on this godforsaken planet that we even want?”
“I don’t make the rules, Lieutenant Commander,” she responded. “You ought to be grateful for the amount of resources we’re putting behind this rescue effort.” Before Alkema could vent again, the base’s alert sirens began screaming for attention in the distinctive three-note-bursts of the Midian military.
Steadfast seemed shocked. “A missile attack? In broad daylight.” Alkema cocked his head skyward. “Just exactly what we needed.”
“We should take cover,” Steadfast advised him urgently.
But Alkema turned toward the Northwest sky, and found himself enveloped by a weird sense of calm. As though everything around him had dropped into slow-motion, the sirens and the yammering voice of Captain Steadfast became muffled. Although he knew she was pulling on him, and yelling at him, he couldn’t stop staring at the sky, where a distant point of light had begun to bear down on them.
“Run!” Steadfast ordered him, tugging on his arm. Physically, he began to move but his eye and his mind were fixed on that distant point in the sky, where a point of light was growing rapidly larger, and heading straight for him.
He stared at it. Unable to move. Steadfast kept pulling on him, but he remained fixed on the ever-growing point of white and smoke in the sky that was closing down directly on him. Everything else seemed to lose its reality around him. Steadfast pulled him, but she was like a dream figure. She gave up and made her way to a dugout bumker by the side of the tarmac.
Three Midian soldiers in heavy battle gear, who had returned on his ornithopter, now ran toward him. They looked like black shadows to him, without substance. The only real think was the incoming missile, now a speeding comet with a hazy gray tail against the arc-light white Midian sky.
Putting himself into motion, Alkema ran past the bunker, and dodging the guards to the dust-encrusted chain-link fence at the edge of the field. He raised a pair of gigantic binoculars to his eyes, and fixed on the incoming missile. After several long seconds, he snapped back into time, into reality, and called out, “That’s no missile, it’s one of our ships.”
Steadfast raised her head above the dugout, and raised the binoculars to her eyes, and commanded, “Missile defense, remain at hot stand-by. Lock on target, but do not fire until identity is confirmed.”
Alkema did not hear the response, but a second later, Steadfast yelled into her communication device, “It could be another Visitor ship! Stand down those missile defenses!” She hopped out of the bunker and joined Alkema at the chain-link fence Alkema trained his eyes on the incoming fireball. It was an Aves, and he knew it was Prudence. Her entire rear quarter was in flames, and smoke was trailing her in a thick, billowing pillar of black.
“If you have any emergency crews, this would be a good time to bring them out,” Alkema advised Steadfast.
“They’re on their way,” Steadfast confirmed.
Just as they heard the thundering roar of her approach, Prudence cleared the perimeter fence, hit the ground at the far end of the runway with landing skids retracted and skipped twice more before finally slamming down on the runway. She slid on her belly, spraying sparks all along her crash path before turning 180 degrees and scraping to a halt two-thirds of the way down, nearly a kilometer from where Alkema was standing.
From the far end of the field, emergency vehicles began to converge on the ship. Alkema began running toward it, too. Before he was even halfway there, the escape hatch above the canopy opened. Trajan Lear exited through it, jumped to the ground, and walked backwards, surveying the damage to his ship from the abrasions on the hull, to the mangling of the port wingblade, and finally to the plasma fire the ground crews were scrambling to extinguish.
“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Trajan muttered, shaking his head, as Alkema and Steadfast caught up with him.
“How did you survive?” Captain Steadfast asked. “No one has eve returned from an encounter with the containment system.”
Trajan sighed, as though retelling the story bored and annoyed him. “First, I reasoned that the containment system was designed to keep ships from leaving the planet, so, I thought, what if I just return to the surface, maybe they’ll leave me alone.” Alkema wondered we he had not thought of that.
Trajan Lear continued. “So I reset my holoflage shields and dove for the deck as fast as I could.”
“Holoflage shields?” Brave asked.
“They refract light and electromagnetic energy around the ship, making it mostly invisible to detection,” Trajan explained briefly.
“That allowed you to evade them?” Steadfast persisted. Alkema and Lear could see a glimmer in her eyes, as she imagined Midian aircraft protected by Sapphirean shielding technology.
Lear shook his head. “Not entirely, but they bought me few seconds. So, I dropped my altitude to the deck and found a canyon to hide in. I thought I’d wait them out, but when I came up an hour later, one dragon was still waiting for me.”
“A dragon?” Steadfast asked.
“Affirmative on that, a big red son of a bitch who shot proton blasts from his mouth. He hit my portside fusion generator, which made me lose power. So I made a dive into the sea and tried to make it look like a crash-out. I think it fooled him. I waited as long as I could before surfacing and flying back to this base. They didn’t chase me this time.”
“So, why were you on fire?” Alkema asked.
Trajan Lear pouted. “I blew a relay on the trip. Prudence was pretty banged up in the dragon-fight.” He paused. “Now, that’s a sentence I thought I’d never say again.” Steadfast kept working on her point of interest. “So, the containment system uses some kind of dragon to attack ships that try to leave the planet.”
“I think they were just projections of dragons,” Lear clarified.
“Do you have a memory crystal?” Captain Steadfast demanded.
“A what?”
“A record of your encounter with the containment system?” Trajan looked back toward Prudence, just as a fresh spray of sparks erupted from behind the busted up canopy. “Oh, you mean sensor logs. I left them in there,” he deadpanned.
“Did any of the Hammerheads get through the barrier?” Alkema asked him.
“I don’t the hell know,” Trajan Lear answered. “If they managed to get through, I guess we’ll find out when Pegasus responds.”
“If they can,” Alkema sounded disappointed, then, he asked. “Are you injured?”
“Thank you for asking … finally … and I’m fine, couldn’t be better.” Trajan Lear squinted at Prudence, which was surrounded by emergency crews spreading foam coolant on the parts of her that were still hot. “I messed up Matthew’s ship again, He gets so dicked off when I do that.”
“Didn’t you also mess up Phoenix a couple weeks ago?” Alkema asked, with a hint of a smile.
“Maybe,” Trajan Lear deadpanned. “Speaking of that which is messed up, where are Rook and Jordan?”
“Still out on the search and rescue mission,” Alkema said.
“Oh? Can I go?” Lear asked.
“You’ll have to catch up later,” Alkema told him, “They’ll need you to help dismantle Zilla and bring the pieces back here. You should get cleaned up and rested out first.”
“Actually, Flight Lieutenant Lear, a message came for you while you were away.” Steadfast handed him a message on fancy Starcross Emissarial Stationery.
“This came through while we were out in the desert. You have an audience with His Holiness the Nova Pontifex.” She turned to Alkema. “I would have told you sooner, but…”
Alkema nodded, “But we didn’t know he was alive.”
Trajan examined the note. “You have got to be kidding me.” The Wild
erness of Howling Zeal
Fifty meters above fields of black rock and gray-brown drifts of pumice-y sand, Johnny Rook and Max Jordan soared through the air, jet packs strapped to their backs emitting little white deltas of thrust.
Their Spex were attuned to a scan of the landscape below them. The rocks and debris that littered the canyon floor were briefly outlined in bright blue before the analysis program decided they were insignificant.
“What do you think?” Rook asked through the COM Link.
“What?” Jordan radioed back.
Rook clarified, “Jet packs… more fun or less fun than Razorbacks?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan answered.
“Either way, better than monitoring telemetry from a lab on Pegasus,” said Rook.
“If you say so,” Jordan answered. “Race you to the next ridge.” They both poured on their thrusters. In Max Jordan’s perspective, Caliph appeared, like a little glowing hologram pixie with a nice rack. “Wheee!”
“Wheeee?” Jordan asked.
“What?” said Rook.
Caliph was ecstatic. “I get why flying is such a big deal. It’s because you have mass. I can feel how your brain is stimulated by the differential effects of velocity and gravity on your inner ear, producing unique sensations of flight and acceleration.”
“Oh… the cipher chick,” Rook realized.
“Also, the view is nice,” Caliph continued. “Or, I guess it would be if we weren‘t flying over a bunch of stupid rocks and sand. We should try this again on a nicer planet.”
“Warfighters, in general, don’t get to go to nice planets,” Rook said to them.
Caliph took on a thoughtful expression. “I’m detecting some residual energy signatures just beyond the rock formation 1,600 meters northeast of us. She relayed the position to the tactical display.
“Let’s check it out,” Rook said. He banked his jet pack and Jordan followed.
When they reached the scene, it was unmistakable. There was a long gouge in the dusty ground. From the looks of things, the escape pod had hit the ground, bounced, and then skidded sidewise, probably rolling over before it came to a stop.