Beyond the Clouds_Retaliation

by Daniel Chappell

  The LSAT seems to have been in a better position over the battlefield at the time as well. Whereas the other satellite was on a heavy angle, approaching the edge of its orbit relevant to the battlefield by the time of the battle, LSAT Seven was almost directly over the area. I zoom the image in until I can almost see the scratches on the paint of the friendly planes, then pan the image over to where the enemy planes are located. After a bit of searching, I manage to find the tight-grouped targets. The image is still slightly blurry, but I’m able to make out the unmistakable details of planes I’ve never seen before.

  “Rion? I think I found something. Not completely sure what to make of it.”

  He looks up from the papers strewn across his desk and turns around. After walking closer so that he’s standing next to me, he stares at the projection, panning the image around and zooming a bit. After a moment, he sighs.

  “Yeah, definitely the prototype I was afraid of. We should probably get this info up the command chain. This has the potential to drastically change everything about the battles we’re fighting. Fast doesn’t begin to describe the thing.”

  “How did you find out so much about this… whatever it is? I would think it’d be a heavily guarded secret in the Republic. Or am I going to get kidnapped by the spooks for even asking you that?”

  “No, you’re fine,” he says, a smirk playing across his lips despite his serious attitude. “The High Velocity Engagement Craft, abbreviated HVEC and pronounced as havoc, is—maybe was, if they’ve made that much progress already—an experimental aircraft capable of moving at speeds of up to Mach 9. It can be outfitted with a variety of payloads but, due to its design, most of those are air-to-air suites. In theory, it can get in, take out an entire enemy force, and get back out before anyone has time to do anything about it.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It isn’t,” he agrees. “The Republic really does love their tech.”

  “Indeed. You still didn’t answer my actual question though.”

  “Ah. Well, I was initially supposed to be one of the test pilots for the program. It’s how I got to be in the know on one of the elite squads of the air force over there. A part of me wishes I’d stayed a bit longer just to get a chance to try the thing out.”

  “So, then, the people flying those monstrous things are…”

  “My old squad mates, yes. Unless they decided to change the pilots after my, uh, betrayal. I’d doubt it though. They’re among the best pilots in the Republic.”

  “What were they like, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  He takes a moment to think. “They’re good people,” he says finally. “The squad leader was a little… intense, but the other three were pretty lovable. Especially…” He stops for a moment, trailing off before continuing. “I guess really anywhere you go pilots are all about the same. It didn’t feel too different from hanging around some of the guys here sometimes.”

  I kind of regret even asking as a wistful look forms in his eyes. I’ve come to hate that look. As much as he wanted to come back home—and I’m sure he loves being back—he’s been a little distant ever since. Regardless of what he says, a part of him stayed behind in the Republic.

  “Mhmm. I’ll bet you just found some girl over there that went all googly eyed for you.”

  He just smiles sadly. Wistfully. I’m taken aback for a moment. That expression is more than just the usual nostalgia he gets when anyone mentions his time over there. It’s more like… longing. Like there’s something—or someone—that he dearly misses. It bugs me.

  “Did you? Find someone over there?” I’m a glutton for punishment, right?

  “Well… there was someone I took an interest in. She was one of the pilots in my squad.” He stops there, clearly tactful enough to not go into detail.

  “What was she like?” What is wrong with me today? It’s no business of mine anyway.

  He pauses for a long moment. A part of me hopes he won’t answer the question at all. Another part of me wants to know the answer. The rest of me has an odd, sick feeling. After what seems like an eternity, he finally answers.

  “She was really fun. Whenever we spent time together off base, I had a blast no matter what we were doing. Despite how much pressure I was under and how much I longed for home, she had this way of making me laugh and forget my stress, if only a little bit.

  “And she really loved to see nature. There was this garden she took me to one evening. The flowers spread out right beside the sea and the moonlight hit the place with a majestic light. It was one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. Honestly, she kind of reminds me of…”

  “Reminds you of who?”

  “She reminds me of you.”

  My throat feels very dry and the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach has become borderline painful. I shift my balance to the other foot and look absently at the long-forgotten radar data.

  “Did you sleep with her?” Hitomi! What is wrong with you, girl? Are you a masochist? Do you really like torturing yourself like this?

  “In a literal sense, yes,” Rion answers, and my heart drops. “But, to answer the question you’re actually asking, no, I didn’t have sex with her.”

  “Do you ever want to go back? To be with her?”

  He takes a moment to think. A long moment. “No,” he replies finally. “Either way, that bridge has burned.”

  The terrible pain looming in my gut grows ever stronger with every word he speaks. What is this feeling. Am I… jealous? It’s not like I’m dating Rion or anything. But, I am in love with him. With everything that’s been going on since he got back, I still haven’t had time to come out and tell him straight up, but that hasn’t changed.

  My eyes start to burn a little. Maybe I took things for granted. I guess I always just thought I had all the time in the world; that I could just take my time and eventually things would end up with me and Rion together. I never thought someone else would come along and steal away his heart, if only a little. Even still, a part of me is furious. To think that, while I sat here at home, first believing he was dead, and at one point fighting the suspicion that he’d turned traitor, he was off playing with another woman.

  “I, um…” I clear my throat. “I’ll go report what we found today to Colonel Feng.”

  “Hitomi…”

  Before he can say anything further, I’ve already turned around and stormed out of his office, probably closing the door a little harder than I need to.

  Chapter 6

  Captain Hitomi Saruyama

  November 12, 2112, 15:23

  The squad room is abuzz with the chatter of the squad as we wait for the briefing to begin. This will be our first mission in almost a week, so everyone is eager to find out what it’s going to be. I sit at the back of the room with Saika and Kat, quietly having a conversation. Rion walks in and there’s a complete stop in the chatter around the room as he approaches the front and launches straight into the briefing.

  “Alright, today’s mission is a simple transport escort. We’ll be launching and flying west to meet up with the transport here.” He gestures and the screen switches to a map view with a waypoint. “We’ll then escort it up this line to northwestern China, near the border of Kazakhstan which, as you all know, is hardcore Republic territory. As such, we expect heavy resistance toward the end of our flight.

  “That said, Command has only budgeted us a single squad directly involved in this operation. I was, however, able to convince them to allow us a squad stationed closer to us. While not directly beneficial, it’ll help us respond quicker if anything goes wrong. With the odds of us seeing some action, it’s a welcome safety net.

  “My squad will be taking the lead role on this one, with Smith’s squad coming along halfway and landing here.” Another dot appears on the map, around the middle of China. “Johnson, you’ll have the run of the house while we’re out. I give you full authority to make combat decisions for the remaining squads on my behalf if the ne
ed arises. We’ll be wheels up at 16:00, so take care of anything you need to before then. That’s all.”

  He dismisses the briefing, and everyone gets up to tend to various tasks: some checking over their planes, some looking through maintenance logs, others just getting some last-minute relaxation in. I get up and cross the room to go check on my own plane.

  “Hitomi, can I have a word with you?” Rion asks as I pass him.

  “Is it about the operation?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then, no.” I start to walk away from him.

  “Hitomi, you know the rule. We don’t leave anything unresolved before a mission.”

  I sigh audibly, causing a few heads to turn in my direction as I turn back around to face him. The team has definitely noticed that the chemistry between us is off lately. Not surprising, I guess. I haven’t talked to Rion much in the last few days outside of official reports. Even then, my tone has been drab and monotonous.

  “What?” I practically hiss at him.

  He looks around at the room, still occupied by half a dozen people. “Not here.”

  After shutting down the screens, he leads me out of the squad room and through the hangar. We walk around the huge building to a spot where we’re out of earshot and won’t be seen quite so easily. He turns to face me and I look at him, arms crossed, leaning back on one leg with the other foot tapping impatiently.

  “Alright,” he begins. “I get that you’re immensely upset with me right now, and I can kind of gather part of the reason, but I want to hear it from you directly.”

  “Really? That’s it?” I roll my eyes in exasperation. I’m probably being unreasonably hostile toward the guy, but whatever. Screw him. “I thought you were dead. Poof. Bang. Heartbeat ceased. Meanwhile, you were off gallivanting with some woman in a foreign country. In the meantime, I took on every responsibility you so irresponsibly left vacant. I had to run a squadron down two people, all the while not letting it get to me that the man I love was dead. Or so I thought.

  “You get that I’m upset? You don’t have a clue, Rion. Kat and I saw you with the enemies, acting as one of them. I made her keep quiet about that until we knew more. All this time later, we still haven’t told the rest of the squad about it. Then you slid back in here like nothing ever happened. And we welcomed you back, as we should have. And I threw myself on you, all emotions, thinking that, finally, after all that time, you had come back to me.

  “Yeah, I know we’re not dating, and that we haven’t ever been dating. But, how can you act the way you do with me, play with my heart this much, and then go off and seduce someone else? Five months I waited, fingers crossed, for you to come home. Five. Months. In that time, I had to keep it together enough to be responsible with the lives put in my hands. And where were you? In someone else’s bed.”

  I take a deep breath, my tirade complete. When I look back at Rion, however, his expression almost scares me. There’s a mass of sadness in there. Not the earlier sadness of just missing someone, but a genuine, heart-wrenching sadness. There’s also rage. A burning rage that he just barely manages to keep beneath the surface. The last time I saw him this angry was in high school, when a group of guys tried to attack me. It didn’t end well for the guys.

  “First, I will say this,” he says, his voice terse and measured. “I shouldn’t have compared you to Nicole. Regardless of our relationship, it was rude and insensitive of me to do so. For that, I apologize. You have every right to be upset with me for that. As for everything else…”

  He takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. Oh, shit.

  “How fucking dare you, Hitomi? You make it sound like all that time I was doing nothing but playing games and having fun. My life was in danger, even more so than the danger that comes with our job. I was deep in enemy territory with no friends and no help, surrounded by people who, if they knew my real identity, wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me.

  “Do you think I didn’t want to come home? That was just about the only thing on my mind most days. I spent so much time convincing myself not to just abandon the mission and go AWOL to see my family again. But I didn’t because I knew that, in the end, what I was doing was going to save the lives of thousands. Maybe even millions. I kept at it even when everything was against me, deceiving even the people that graciously welcomed me with their friendship.

  “To say that I was off seducing another woman… that couldn’t be farther off base. Yes, I found Nicole attractive. Yes, she was a breath of life in the dark, deceitful, death-filled world I was in, even if she was one of the people I was deceiving. Yeah, we were totally close and there might have even been a chance for something between us in different circumstances. But I didn’t go there seeking someone to have a good time with, nor was that on my mind at any time.

  “I know you thought I was dead for months. For my cover to work, everyone on the Alliance side, bar a few high-ranking officers, had to believe I was dead. I’m very sorry that you had to go through that. But while we’re on the subject, can you imagine how I felt when I believed beyond a doubt that my little sister and my father were both dead? That I’d essentially killed them, along with the millions of other people living in Saitama? Can you fathom how I felt watching that bomb go off, watching homes be destroyed, seeing people get vaporized? I don’t have to imagine, because I see it every time my eyes close.”

  “Watching the…” my voice trails off as I think about the implications of that statement. “You were the one that dropped that bomb and nuked our home city! How could you do something so heinous?”

  He holds up his hand for me to be quiet. The sudden movement causes me to flinch. He’s never hit me, and I’m sure he never would, but the tension of the situation just seems dangerous that way.

  “I’m not the one that dropped the bomb. Nor was I even aware what the bomber’s mission, target, or payload were. I was simply an escort. But, when I realized that its target was civilian, not military, I didn’t act to stop it. I probably would have been shot down in the process of destroying the missile as it descended, but maybe, just maybe, I could’ve saved all those people.”

  I look at him incredulously. I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me about why he was so upset when he first came back. It was more than just the pain of losing family in his eyes. Now I finally know what it was. He was involved, however indirectly, with the attack that wiped out our hometown. Millions of people, some of them our friends and neighbors. I know it’s not his fault and that he couldn’t have done anything about it, but a part of me still feels differently. The buzzing from my watch interrupts the intensity of the moment.

  “We’ve gotta get ready to sortie,” I say, turning around.

  “Hitomi.”

  “We don’t have time for this!” I jog away, leaving him standing there alone.

  ***

  A thin layer of clouds wafts past beneath us as we fly in formation around the transport plane, headed northwest. Smith’s squad left us to land at the midpoint base about two hours ago, leaving just four of us and the hulking cargo plane. There should be just under half an hour until we reach our destination.

  My head is still reeling from the fight I had with Rion earlier. It’s the first time we’ve ever fought about anything since we’ve known each other, and it turned out to be such a huge conflict. By this point, I know I’m being unfair and spiteful, but my emotions seem to keep winning the battle against my mind over my words.

  With Rion and I not speaking to one another and Akane being the definition of strict, disciplined silence, the airwaves are unusually quiet as we float along toward our destination. Even Kat hasn’t said much since her first attempt to break the tension between Rion and me failed. Republic forces seem to take pity on us and chime in with some action to take our minds off things.

  “Four radar contacts due west of here, heading in our direction at high speed,” Rion announces as our radars ping the aircraft.

  “Are they the same on
es that attacked last time we were all the way up here?” Kat asks.

  He takes a moment to deliberate. “No, I don’t think so. Their current speed and movement suggest standard Republic fighters.”

  The fighters in question path toward us at the usual fast speed, as opposed to the super-fast speed they’d be going if they were the experimental planes we discussed the other day. There’s no change in their heading as they make straight for an intercept course with us. Rather than break away from the transport, we continue our course and wait for them to come to us.

  I’m already preparing to take my first shots, my finger on the trigger waiting for the enemies to get in gun range. The process is so repetitive that I nearly go on mental autopilot every time we’re about to begin combat. Part of me has become numb to even the fear of being shot down. Typical jaded soldier, I guess. You spend enough time escaping death, it stops scaring you so much.

  As the enemy planes get closer and closer to us, we angle away from the transport a slight bit to intercept them. Just as I’m about to start locking onto the nearest target, an urgent wailing comes from my onboard computer.

  “Missile in the air! All units, pop flares and scatter.” Rion orders.

  I bank hard up and to my left, dropping flares as I go. Well, we call them flares, but they’re more like cylindrical miniature targeting jammers. Traditional flares haven’t worked against missile guidance systems in decades. The tiny devices float through the air, causing the missile to go rogue and detonate on a cluster of them.

  “Where did that come from?” Kat asks.

  My computer starts screaming at me again as a second missile, then a third and fourth go airborne, headed our direction. I dump more flares and wiggle out of the way of the coming explosives, checking my surroundings for the source of the onslaught.

  “SAM site on top of that school building,” Akane informs.