by Greg Dragon
There was also the unspoken reality of being a bridge-stationed officer as opposed to a team leader in the field. Even now it pained her to face the fact that as much as she adored Quentin Tutt and Raileo Lei, there was always a nagging reminder in the back of her head that they could be gone at any time. Who could she talk to about this shroud, which made the whole brotherhood and sisterhood thing a joke?
ESOs were respected, but they did dangerous missions that could go off the rails with the slightest miscalculation. Just a year ago she had met three “brothers” who took her under their Nighthawk wing. Within a Vestalian month those brothers were gone, and all because they couldn’t predict a Geralos taking over one of their minds.
On Meluvia, Raileo was wounded, and Cilas needed tank time to recover. She too had been bitten by a brovila, and spent days unconscious as the poison worked itself out of her system. She had been shot in the head, ringing her bell though the helmet absorbed it, and had been lucky in countless dogfights with no wing to give her support.
As an ESO you were forced to accept death, or risk losing one of your Nighthawks due to cowardice or hesitation. She had been in those positions, and had never hesitated, but a part of her died with every loss. Four men were killed in action, two she was close to, and to imagine 4,000 lives on a starship… who could stomach that amount of responsibility?
Yet, that wasn’t being honest. Helga knew she could handle it, but what did that say about her? Was she so broken that death didn’t cripple her like most? As a Revenant pilot it would be no different. Flying a fighter during capital ship combat was the riskiest job for a spacer.
Pilots were looked at differently, almost the same as an ESO or planet-busting Marine. People assumed your wiring was frayed, or you cared less for your life than a mechanic, engineer, or ship-locked spacer.
They may be right, she thought, when she considered her history and the cockpit’s magnetic draw. She had always wanted to fly, yes, but she could’ve quenched that without being an ESO or a licensed fighter pilot. It was life that made the choice for her, a life of being unwanted and losing all that she loved.
Who cares if I die? She remembered saying these words multiple times before pulling on her helmet. Oh, they would care now that she was a lieutenant with success in more than one operation, but as a cadet she had been convinced that she was a mistake, forced to live out her misfit lifeline.
Graduating second class had started the rebuilding of her confidence, and when she took BLAST, and survived it, she knew that misfit or not, she was pretty good at this military thing. Now as a Nighthawk, and second to Cilas Mec, she was starting to believe that this was where she belonged, not playing second fiddle to a Joy Valance. And why should her inviting her out be upsetting, even if it was in a strange new vessel, whose computer took all the fun out of flying? Couldn’t she just override it if she wanted to?
This was a chance to relax under the guise of duty, to blow off some steam with women who shared her love of space and dogfighting. Hadn’t she spent enough time brooding on the Rendron, where the worry for the Geralos spy kept her watching her back down corridors?
“Hey, secret silent, are you alive over there?” Joy Valance said in a low, concerned voice, as if she had been hearing Helga’s thoughts.
“I’m good, just bored. First, this ship doesn’t need a pilot, and second, what exactly are we doing? Shouldn’t we split up to cover more area?”
There was no answer on the comms, and Helga wondered if she’d heard her. “We should split up, yes, but normally we wait until we’re about a megameter out. Things get iffy with the radar out there, so it’s the most likely place for the lizards to hang out.”
“I understand, Joy, and I don’t mean to be a pain, but I suggest we start it now, since these aren’t the normal patrols we’ve been doing. Think about it; the dreadnought got to us without us seeing it jump in or thrust from out of a blind spot. It just appeared out of nowhere, and we’re still not sure how it managed to do that. If Commander Nam is right about there being a warship, it is likely to be cloaked within the reaches of our radar.”
“Helga, do you hear yourself? That’s ridiculous. How would they manage to do that?”
“They had a Geralos commando onboard, unmasked and dressed for combat. It got to our engineering deck, and then Aurora, where it took prisoners. All of this happened right under our noses, and until the explosion happened, we were clueless of our compromise. They parked a cloaked dreadnought within reach of our hangar, Joy. Am I really being ridiculous, or are you not as frightened as I am? They were on the Rendron, Joy—”
“Alright. I am thyping frightened, but I just can’t fathom there being a destroyer, cloaked, and we can’t see it.”
“I get it, but I’m beyond relying on logic. Every time things start to make sense, here comes the Geralos with another trick. Joy, can you just humor me or leave me to do it? I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing I came this far out and ignored my gut feeling. How about that? You leave me here, and I’ll catch you on the return trip. We can coordinate on comms.”
“When you fly with me, Helga, you’re a Revenant. I don’t care what your uniform says, or who your commander is when you’re on the Rendron. We don’t do anything alone. There, I’ve uploaded a flight path, which will cover a third of this sector. We’ll meet up at the specified coordinates when you’re done patrolling your route.”
“And if we find something?”
Another pause, but this time Joy’s voice quivered when she replied, “We alert the Rendron, and then we run, maxing thrust as fast as we can. Helga?”
“Joy?”
“Millicent, you there?” she said, her voice still shaking as if her lips didn’t want to move. Then Helga saw it, the distorted stars in the distance, spread out like they had before. There was a mass, cloaked, much bigger than the dreadnought, and it was close enough to be well within the range of the Rendron’s radar.
Helga’s heart started pounding. She wanted to max her thrusts and open fire on the object, to reveal what it was. That would be suicide, and it would be careless, since Joy and Millicent would follow blindly, citing honor as they were traced by one of the vessels laser cannons.
When Millicent finally replied, Joy screamed out, “Fly home,” and though it pained her to do so, Helga did as she was commanded.
18
Cloak technology came in different varieties, with each side having their own means of achieving it. The Alliance used holos reflecting images off shields, but the Geralos had a mysterious method that rendered them all but invisible.
When the captain’s message reached the navigator, Lieutenant Toro Hanes, he set a course for the Meluvian sector, then alerted the others to prepare. Comms were alerted, and fighters were manned, ready to lift off on the executive officer’s command. On the bridge, Retzo was pacing, his right fist resting on the small of his back. His left was animated as he barked out orders to those responsible for the ship.
The sleeping Rendron came to life with her cannons oscillating and her tracers online. Power from the shields was drawn to charge the torpedo launcher, which had two warheads primed for action. The starship turned about and shifted lazily, like a weary panther that had been roused from sleep. They were ready for war, and if Retzo could help it, this time they would be on the offensive.
“Weapons are online, Captain, awaiting your command,” said Lieutenant Noe Ranks, the officer in charge of Tactical Action.
For a moment, the bridge went silent, and it carried throughout the ship. It was as if the spacers held their breaths, awaiting whatever was coming for them, or they were all focused, ready to do their duty for Retzo Sho. Whatever it was, there was no sound until Jit Nam’s voice came over the intercom telling the fighters to launch.
Then it was loud, as the supportive spacers and Marines cheered their fighters on. Cadets crowded terminals, portholes, and the large bay windows, anxious to see real combat and the thin line between glory and death.
Now she was back in the cockpit of her Classic, and it was her turn to go. She rolled it out to face the launching tube and announced her intent to the controller. Helga manipulated the power controls, which caused her thrusters to spark, then slammed the handle forward before quickly applying the brake. It was a habit she had when she was on nerves, jerking about like this, but it frightened a clueless dockhand, who dove out of the way of the roaring spacecraft.
Helga showed her teeth and whispered, “Sorry,” then committed to the thrust while pulling back on the controls. This lifted her up and out of the hangar, the overheated thruster now maxed. The first thing she saw, once she got past the shielded docking entrance, was the flashes of the Rendron’s cannons, firing on the Geralos battleship that had come out of cloak to defend itself.
“That’s a scary-looking cruta,” Helga muttered as she saw it for the first time on the Classic’s HUD.
She flew between the cannon shots and tracers, catching up with Joy and her Revenants. Together they made the perilous sprint out towards the destroyer, then added their own fire to the mix. It was classical starship warfare, with the behemoths launching long-raged salvos, all while the smaller fighters probed for weaknesses to exploit.
Retzo had commanded the Rendron’s pilots to show her starboard broadside to the destroyer. It was high strategy to keep the weaker port away from its tracers and torpedoes while giving them her strong side, which was reinforced and built for punishment.
Helga expected zip-ships to meet them in their rally and slow down the damage being dealt to the destroyer, but there were no fighters deployed, not for the thirty minutes she flew with her finger on the trigger. It was a break in pattern—there were always zip-ships to contend with—and now she was becoming worried that the Geralos were merely stalling.
She hoped that since she knew this, the XO would know it too. If not him, then Cilas Mec, Toro Hanes, or Genevieve. As long as someone near the captain could warn him, he would know that they were in danger and could set up some contingencies. Until then, she stayed on the offensive, firing into the destroyer as they flew formation about its perimeter. Maybe the shields would fail faster than the lizards anticipated, and then they would be forced to jump.
Twenty minutes more of this silence and Helga’s cannons were near overheating. Without the sporadic firing and maneuvers that came with dogfighting, her finger was becoming numb from holding down the trigger. Then the destroyer started moving; thrusters came alive and it picked up speed. From what Helga could tell on her navigation computer, it was trying to come around to the aft of the Rendron.
With the starship committed to firing off its weapons, applying enough thrust to maneuver would take time. The Geralos knowing this, put everything into their engines and were coming about rapidly.
The Rendron, anticipating this maneuver, tapped into her power reserves to allow for her massive form to turn. The destroyer moved in a wide arc about her, but she was able to shift to keep her broadside facing it. The port side aft was the area where the Rendron’s FTL was located, and was the weakest point to strike at if you could bring down the shields.
The Geralos knew this, but so did Retzo Sho, and he used it to his advantage, turning her about while continuing the barrage. The destroyer’s shields began to fail, and that was when the zip-ships launched. They were thrown out to delay the Rendron’s energy torpedoes and to disrupt the cannons and fighters so that the shields could recharge.
Helga, and the squadrons of both Revenants and Alpha, turned on these fighters like seals in a sea of krill. It was an easy feat to mop them up, and she grew nervous as the destroyer’s shields continued to falter. The Geralos defense was underwhelming, and failed to slow the Rendron’s focused onslaught.
“All fighters return to mother,” came an announcement over the comms. “I repeat, return to mother, immediately. All squadrons, return to mother.”
Helga hesitantly complied, taking evasive maneuvers as she worked her way out of the melee to find her way back to the Rendron. Why are we running? she thought, bewildered at the sudden summons now that the destroyer was at its most vulnerable. Where was the fun in all this if they couldn’t finish off a near-disabled warship?
“Any clue what this is all about, Joy?” she said.
“If I were to wager a guess, I would say that we’re about to launch a torpedo and that vessel is too close to our vector for us to be guaranteed safety. Get back as fast as you can so that we don’t hold up the process. Their shields are at critical levels, and this will be a well-timed knockout blow.”
Helga hadn’t considered the torpedo, as she hurried back towards the hangar. Since she wasn’t a part of a squadron, she wouldn’t be accounted for on the dock. It wouldn’t be hard for her to be left behind if the Rendron was to jump, then the destroyer would turn its batteries on her Classic.
“Let the aces do their thing. They’re backed up by the squadrons coming from our two infiltrators,” Cilas had said. But, he couldn’t understand the thirst, that incessant need to be out there with Joy and the Revenants, thinning out shields and distracting batteries.
Helga shook off these thoughts and maneuvered the Classic around, looking for the bright yellow lights that indicated the entrance to the hangar.
“Ate, you’re the last one left. What are you doing?” Joy said.
“Sorry,” she replied, then saw the lights and flew through the shields and into the docking bay. She had come in so fast that all she could do was try not to slam into the bulkhead. The Rendron didn’t wait for her to land, and finished the countdown for jumping to light speed. The captain gave the order, and a charge was sent to the engine’s crystal reactor core.
It sounded like the boom of a cannon as the space before the Rendron parted, allowing her to slip through. Helga lost control of her fighter and struck one of the shelves loaded with ship parts. Her shields—which were still activated—absorbed the damage, but she was forced to engage thrust.
The Classic bounced off and into the overhead, then her thrusters burned a black line along the top of the hangar. Below her, everyone panicked, but she was too busy to see them fleeing and running for cover. Only the Cel-tocs stood their ground, betraying the fact that they were not coded for self-preservation. Inside the cockpit, Helga’s hands were a blur, manipulating space brakes, thrust, and eventually the landing gear.
In time she was able to bring her fighter down to the deck, where she touched down before an audience who seemed convinced that she was the angel of death. Throwing off her helmet, she cursed, then punched the console, bloodying her knuckles. She could hear it now from Joy Valance: “If you were on my team, I’d have your wings for that stunt!”
Her rage subsided and she finally noticed that a crowd had gathered around her Classic. Embarrassed and wincing from the pain, she placed her face inside her hands and took a breath. She was sweating, and she could smell the blood running liberally through her fingers. She knew she needed medbay, and tried to think of how she could get there without anyone noticing. She popped the glass and descended the ladder, not hearing the words of encouragement or the harsh accusations.
Helga pushed past the aces, all decked out in their colorful flight suits, and glanced up to see what sort of damage she had done. It wasn’t as bad as she had imagined, thanks to the shields absorbing the impact. There was the black mark, which the hangar’s chief would have a conniption fit when he saw, but no one had been hurt and no equipment had been destroyed.
Nothing seemed more attractive than having a drink now, and she no longer cared to know why they’d jumped. She just wanted to be alone, to nurse a drink while she got her hand treated. She remembered that Quentin was a medic, and was one of the most private spacers
that she knew, so she considered heading down to Aurora deck.
“Ate,” said a familiar voice. “You’re wanted in the ready room. XO wants to have a word.” She looked over to find Cilas, who had fallen in next to her, examining her hand with a look of concern. “You’re hurt. Let me take a look at that.”
“I’m alright,” she said, brushing him off quickly, wondering why the XO would want to see her now. “The sudden jump threw me since I’d just flown in, but it’s alright, Rend, no one got hurt, and the Classic sustained minimal damage. So, we decided to run when we had that thing sunk. Are we really at light speed, now?”
“Yes, we’re headed back to Alliance space. A few things have come up,” he said, glancing around to see if they were alone before pushing her inside one of the open doors. It was a locker room for the aces, but none were in attendance, and Cilas reached behind him to shut the door.
“Hey, what gives?” she started to object, but caught herself when he reached up and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Cilas, here … now?” she managed, her heart ramping up once again as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Helga, someone frigged with the Rendron’s computer system. The navigators have had issues with the radar since we made it out to deep space. The worst part about it is that no one informed the captain. Pretty scandalous if you ask me, and this is why we were forced to flee. We have to find the Geralos, Helga. We would have just been cornered and disabled by another destroyer. That fight was a ruse. They were holding us up for something bigger to jump in and hit us in our blind spot. Someone was on this ship, updating the enemy on our moves, and we almost lost it, believing that we were winning that fight.”
“Do you have any idea who it could be?” she said, relieved yet disappointed that he hadn’t closed the door for something else.
“That’s what the XO wants to see us about. Turns out we were right about the indoctrination.”