by Joshua James
Eli made up his mind. He adjusted the ailerons ever so slightly. He tipped her nose downward by a fraction of an inch. He dropped to within a few feet of the waves before he leveled her out.
The next time he checked his display, he saw the speed reducing faster than he’d expected. This couldn’t go on. He tweaked the ailerons by the smallest margin and she dropped belly-down on the waves.
The water shrieked against the hull. Every bump and swell rattled Eli’s teeth in their sockets. His nerves frayed to tatters, and his arms trembled with the strain of fighting her every inch of the way.
Two huge fountains of spray blasted up from both tenders. The sea ripped at the hull. Was there anything left to this ship at all?
He nearly dislocated his shoulders holding her level, and he dreaded the moment he hit land again. A range of mountains stabbed the horizon, but at that moment, a particularly large wave bounced the ship upward a few inches. She crashed down and wobbled to port. The ruined tender brushed the waves and the world caved in.
The water caught the tender. The Boomerang listed and toppled into a headlong cartwheel. The tender plunged into the drink and she shot up on her nose. The next minute, she tumbled end over end across the surface. Her forward momentum carried her without slowing.
The next time the port tender struck, the ship flipped upward. She vaulted skyward. A shade of dark green covered the window, and Eli flung his arms in front of his face for protection. She slammed down hard and everything went silent.
He sat still, listening to the torturous rasp of his own breathing in his lungs. His heart hammered into his ribs, drumming to beat the band. No amount of stillness could ever calm him down. The silence alone drove him insane.
Nothing happened. No explosions startled him. He peeked out from under his arms to stare at a utopian world of trees waving on a sandy, sun-washed beach. Glorious crystal waves kissed the shore and hissed back in undulating curves. The sun sparkled on the wet sand and the tree branches swayed in a gentle, soothing breeze.
Eli dragged his awareness out of the clouds to his predicament. He sat stunned and frozen in the Boomerang’s command chair. Smoke floated through the cockpit. In front of his eyes, the engineering console burst into a shower of sparks. The instruments blinked once and died.
Bodies littered the cockpit floor. As if for the first time, Eli became aware of a spiderweb crack shattering the window. He had to look through the distorted fracture to see the idyllic view outside.
The unmistakable lap of waves brushed the Boomerang’s hull, but the beach scene didn’t rise and fall. It just sat there without moving. Eli struggled to understand what was going on. He didn’t hear any screeches of tearing metal, or the thump of cannon fire. He didn’t hear anything. The world sounded unnaturally silent. Had he gone deaf in the battle? He wouldn’t be surprised.
Just then, a bunch of dark shapes crossed his view. Men carrying weapons ran onto the beach and stopped. They pointed at the Boomerang.
Twenty-Nine
More men appeared beyond the window. They gesticulated to each other and ran back and forth. Their behavior made no sense to him at all. If they’d come here to arrest him or put him in front of the firing squad, why stand around prolonging the inevitable?
Eli shook himself out of his shock. He could feel the seat under him now. It no longer held him in place.
He hauled himself out of it, and the pain and astonishment of everything that happened almost knocked him to the ground. He teetered to catch his balance, but his shattered mind moved at a snail’s pace. He looked up through the hull breach at the sky. How could a sky be so incredibly blue after all the explosions and adrenaline of a few moments before? His system didn’t want to return to normal. He kept expecting a cannon to blast him into outer space at any second.
He extended his arms and grabbed the torn edges of the hull. He jumped and hoisted himself through the hole. He flopped on his belly and almost disemboweled himself on the ragged edge.
When he finally pulled himself to his feet on top of the Boomerang, he stared all around him in blank incomprehension. The ship sat in about three feet of water. She perched on the sandy bottom. The waves didn’t come up past the tenders. Up and down the beach, those men darted among hundreds of spheres smoking on the sand. Craters surrounded them, and the men paid them no attention at all.
A sonic boom made him turn around. The Nautilus hovered over the wide ocean, and a salty breeze stung Eli’s nostrils. He was back on Earth, all right. Shouts drew him back to the beach. More people gathered. They shouted at him, and a few waved him toward the shore. This was the fate he’d agreed to when he’d made Quinn that promise. They would clap him in chains and throw him in the brig while they decided on the most torturous execution method for him.
Eli let out a shaky breath. His ribs and diaphragm didn’t seem to be working right. They pinched every time he breathed. He braced his arm across them and slid down the hull waves. He landed up to his knees in seawater. He might have spent the last decade and a half running away, but those days were over. If this was what Quinn wanted for him, then he could accept it.
He waded up the beach. He blinked at a bunch of men rushing the other way. They plunged into the ocean and surrounded the Boomerang, all scrambling up at once. More carried stretchers between them, and positioned themselves ready to carry away the wounded.
Eli turned around to stare at them while he made his way the rest of the way onto the sand. He’d barely turned to face front when a dozen men charged him, all shouting at once. In half a second, they closed him in a jostling, shoving mass of humanity. They drew him up on the beach and clapped him on the back.
He blinked up at blurry faces. His eyes wouldn’t focus. The men all talked at once in some language he didn’t understand. He reached up and rubbed his face. Sand and water mixed with blood and sweat and snot and who knew what else came away. But his vision cleared. He could read the expressions on their faces. They broke away to point out to sea before they surrounded him again. They clasped his hands and his vision went blurry again.
A stretcher passed him. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Waylon with a mask over his face. Another one appeared with Yasha. Eli looked behind him. The Nautilus hovered on the horizon. It brought up such a mixture of feelings, Eli didn’t know what to think.
He never thought he’d ever set foot on Earth again. He certainly didn’t think it would play out like this.
All at once, he became aware that the men around him had stopped talking. When he checked behind him, he saw the crowd thinning out. A tall man with narrow, slanted eyes and dark hair strode between the men to stop in front of Eli. He wore a Squadron uniform with captain’s bars on the lapel. His name badge read Fukuoka, and a patch on his sleeve showed a familiar spiral of orange and cream. Underneath, gold thread etched a single word into the navy fabric: Nautilus.
He examined Eli with penetrating intensity. He opened his mouth in slow motion and spoke in impeccable English. “If you’ll come with me, Captain, I’ll show you where you can sit down while the doctor attends to your injuries.”
For a second, Eli didn’t understand him, either. His mind recognized that he was injured, but he didn’t seem to be able to move.
Captain. This man was a captain, and he’d called Eli Captain.
Eli wanted to correct him, but he didn’t have the strength. He just nodded as Fukuoka turned sideways and waved behind him in an attitude of having all the time in the world. Eli took a deep breath and fell in next to Fukuoka.
“The others?” Eli rasped.
“Already pulled clear. My people are doing what they can now.” He glanced at Eli. “You were the only one who managed to … walk away.”
That left a bitter taste in Eli’s mouth. If anyone had died while he’d walked away he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
As if reading his thoughts, Fukuoka said, “I have no reports of life-threatening injuries as of now.”
Eli quickly
ran down the crew roster as they crossed the beach. Fukuoka touched his ear and spoke quietly for a moment, then nodded. “We have everyone. All alive.”
Eli nodded. It was more than he could have hoped for. The captain diverted toward the trees. The farther he walked, the more Eli’s mind cleared. He was walking side by side with the captain of the Nautilus. In a way, this moment brought full circle the cycle that had begun when Eli left Earth.
Beyond the tree line, a camp was springing up. Soldiers pitched tents and erected tables everywhere. They scurried in all directions, talking a mile a minute.
The captain conducted Eli to one of the tents. He exchanged a few words with one of the soldiers and gestured toward Eli.
The man approached Eli with his hand out. “Welcome. I am Doctor Li. Please, take a seat so I can examine your head.”
The minute those words crossed Li’s lips, Eli felt bruises around his jaw, neck, and temple. His skull throbbed, but he hadn’t noticed it until now. Still, he found it impossible to react.
He scanned the doctor up and down. “You’re not the doctor on the Nautilus. You’re not wearing a Squadron uniform.”
Dr. Li smiled. “I’m not in the Squadrons. One of the spheres landed in the ocean and started a small wave. It flooded a nearby village. The primary medical team from the Nautilus is busy treating the injured there. I work in a hospital in Manila. The Nautilus picked me up along with several others from the local disaster team.”
Eli blinked at him. Had he lost time? It had seemed like only a moment. He felt his injuries catching up with him. They screamed pain at him all over his body. He wouldn’t be able to remain standing much longer, but an invisible hand held him rigid and upright. He’d probably stay standing up until he toppled. He just couldn’t bring himself to collapse. “So that’s where I am? The Philippines?”
Dr. Li bit back a tiny smile and nodded. “You’re on Polillo Island, east of the Philippines.”
Eli looked around him one more time. He tottered on his heels again. He only hoped he could avoid falling into the doctor or the captain, to save them the embarrassment.
The doctor motioned behind Eli, who looked back and saw a bench sitting there. It had materialized out of nowhere, and it looked almost painfully inviting. He didn’t have to hold himself together anymore. He’d done what Quinn had asked him to do. Now he could sit down and let someone else take over.
The doctor steered him toward the bench. Eli managed to lower himself onto it without falling on his face. As soon as he sat down, the energy drained from his body. His eyes came to rest on the ground. Once they did that, they remained fixed there. He couldn’t imagine ever looking at anything else again as long as he lived.
Dr. Li knelt down in front of him and started doing something to Eli’s face, but he didn’t feel even that. Fractured memories of explosions and weapons fire replayed in his mind, and left him shocked and deaf to everything. He saw the doctor’s lips moving, but his mind drifted far away to some other world.
Fukuoka rested his hand on Eli’s shoulder and squeezed. Then he walked away.
Thirty
Two Weeks Later
Eli gazed across the Pacific Defense Battalion Base. This vantage point on top of the flight platform gave him a perfect, unobstructed view of thousands of ships parked on the dispatch lanes. Tiny cutters and speed scouts dotted the tarmac between enormous destroyers and freight vessels. Their shiny hulls glittered in the sunshine.
For the thousandth time since he’d wound up here, Eli experienced a confused turmoil of emotions and impressions. His memory carried him back to his boyhood, when he’d dreamed of nothing else but becoming the captain of one of those ships. He’d fantasized about piloting one of them into space and battling the enemies of Earth.
All tangled up with that, he still nursed smoldering resentment and bitter enmity toward the Squadrons. Coming back here brought it all back, along with the heart-wrenching agony from his first days of exile.
Yet another part of him could admire all these ships and the crews that manned them. They really were stunning in their power and majesty. He loved each and every one of them as only a soldier and ship’s captain could really love a ship. He longed to fly each one, to get to know their idiosyncrasies and their unique capabilities.
That would never happen. He had the Boomerang, and that was enough. When he turned around to look at her, he admired her more than all the other ships in known space. He loved her because she was his. He’d never let her down, even if she was getting a little over the hill—just like himself.
She gleamed with the fresh brushstrokes of the welders’ buffers, which had repaired her tenders and put her back together. They’d done a damned sight better job than Eli and Waylon and Jood and River ever could, but they couldn’t completely erase the ravages of age and rough treatment.
Even so, Eli thanked the stars he was taking off in her and not in any of the other impressive craft parked on those dispatch lanes. She spoke to him, and he understood her language. He hoped he never flew in another craft as long as he lived.
While she sat in a hangar with fitters and welders crawling all over her, the crew had spent the last two weeks in the hospital, recovering from their many and varied injuries. After Captain Fukuoka had shared a few hushed words with the base admiral, the admiral had arranged to house the delinquents in a private wing devoid of any other patients. Whether he did this to protect the crew of the Boomerang or the other patients, Eli never really knew.
They’d tried to separate Jood from the rest of them, but Eli had threatened to burn the building down. In the end, they’d just put the entire group of them under armed guard. Other than that, they left Eli and his people completely to their own devices. They never had to deal with anyone besides the medical personnel—until now, that is.
When the neurologists had scanned Yasha’s brain for injury, they found an electronic device implanted in her brain stem. They refused to explain its function to her or Eli or anyone else. They wouldn’t even let Eli see it. It vanished before she left the operating theater, never to be seen or heard of again, but at least they removed it. Yasha hadn’t had another seizure since she’d woken up from the sedative.
Jood, River, Waylon, and Yasha sat in a row on the guard rail, waiting for Eli. When he surveyed them one after another, he suffered a poignant ache of pride in his middle that he was flying with such a fine crew. He was grateful to be taking to the air with each and every one of them, including Yasha. He never had to worry about her detonating her psychic weapon on him or the Boomerang again.
Waylon elbowed Jood in the side. “Aw, come on, Jood. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how many prostitutes they have over in Manila? You and me could tear that damned town apart before Lover Boy gets back. We have enough money to drink ourselves into a coma. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
Jood sat bolt upright on the guard rail at Waylon’s side and didn’t turn to look at him. “I do not know how many prostitutes reside in Manila, but I am quite certain that you do, Waylon. Need I remind you that Xynnar are not susceptible to alcohol? Besides, I am afraid I don’t consider an escapade of that kind enough of an adventure to hold my interest. I say nothing against your tastes, you understand. If that class of adventure appeals to you, you should go ahead.”
Waylon smacked his lips and turned away. “None of you is any fun. Let me guess. You consider that stunt of attacking a horde of alien vessels and getting shot out of the sky enough of an adventure to hold your interest. It really is sad, you know.”
River spoke up from Jood’s other side. “I thought you left all your money at the Epsilon Outpost. You don’t have a red cent on you to spend in Manila. You’re blowing hot air out of your ass as usual, Waylon.”
Waylon turned toward Yasha, who occupied the place to his left. “What about you? Don’t you want to tie one on in Manila before you waste the rest of your life out in space? Come on, don’t leave me hanging here. Please tell me I�
��m not the only person on this pathetic old crew who knows how to have a good time.”
Yasha indulged in a smile that showed all her perfect white teeth. She smiled so easily now. She joked and teased Waylon mercilessly. “I’ve been known to tie one on in my time—in Manila and elsewhere. After the Battle of St. Petersburg, we used to drive into town every other day and get smashed in the bars before we’d drag our asses back to base. That was the only way we could get up the courage to face the next day’s fighting. Do you know five of my squadmates lost their lives not from enemy fire, but from crashing their Jeeps on the road when they were too shitfaced to drive?”
Waylon slapped his thighs and hooted. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Finally, someone I can talk to. Come on. Let’s go grab a drink right now. These duds will never know we’re gone.”
Yasha burst into a grin, but it faded in a second when a door opened to one side of the flight platform. Everybody stiffened, and Eli turned around to meet Dr. Tim Knox.
Thirty-One
Tim strode across the platform wearing his Squadrons uniform. The sight twisted Eli’s guts. All this time, he’d never really considered Tim a soldier. He’d treated Tim and his opinions with no more consideration than he’d give a passing stranger on the street.
Now he had no choice but to acknowledge that the man in front of him really was a soldier. He was a doctor in the Squadrons, but Eli already knew that.
The one thing he wasn’t anymore was his daughter’s fiancé. At the thought of Quinn, Eli pictured her broken, bloody face looking up at him. He pushed the image away. He’d have to deal with that memory someday, but not now.
Tim halted in front of Eli. “Sorry it took so long. I’ve been in front of the Judge Advocate for the last four hours, but they won’t budge. Admiral Wescott is on the panel. As long as he continues to maintain his innocence, there’s nothing we can do.”