Authors: Max Feinstein
He paused and looked around slowly, studying the
area around them. The place looked like a warzone with the earth scorched black underneath them and toppled trees all over them, knocked down by the raining metallic debris. Duntan’s eyes finally settled on the mountain range to their east. He ran his eyes up towards the summit from which they had escaped only a short while ago and noted the complete change in scenery. No longer was the pinnacle covered in beautiful white snow, instead that entire part of the mountain was an irregularly shaped, black and gray, half-molten mass of rock.
“We tried to raise command on comms, but nothing went through.
” The pilot continued. “I think they got the Cave, Chief. I sent Daisy to check it out though, maybe she’ll run into some friendly units that made it through all that shelling.”
Duntan gave a small nod, knowing that sending a pilot alone through a warzone probably wasn’t the best of ideas, but also seeing that their options were limited for the moment.
If the TACCOM they all referred to as the Cave had indeed been destroyed, Duntan would have to try and locate the second most senior surviving officer and receive new orders. Until other military units were located, however, he had a team of soldiers to locate and command.
“Any word on other survivors?”
“Negative,” Weslow said with a lowered head, “I counted two dead on my way over, Tiler and Houku, from the engineering team. There should be another debris field to the southwest of here. Saw it on my way down.”
Weslow pointed with one hand as the other reached inside his flight uniform’s pocket. Slowly and almost painfully he extracted it back out and pushed it towards Duntan. In his hand was a pair of small metallic
hexagons. Duntan studied his hand for a second before tentatively reaching out to take the identification tags from the captain’s palm. He rolled the tags with his fingers, wishing he wasn’t holding them, but finally touched one of the edges to watch parts of the surface recede into the material to reveal the name, rank, and etched picture hidden there. With a promise to avenge their and everyone else’s lives lost in this attack Duntan made a fist around the two ID tags and stuffed them into one of the armor’s compartments.
“Let’s try to locate the rest, shall we
,” Duntan quickly said as he turned his head in the direction where Weslow had pointed.
He knew there was a faster way to determine the fate of his team and has he stood there part of his shoulder armor detached before accelerating straight up. The micro-UAV ascended to one hundred meters and hovered in place as it scanned the area for any transmissions and signs of live. It took almost no time at all before icons started to appear on Duntan’s display as the UAV detected
SOU Echo’s transponders and even communications exchanges between some of the team members. He saw that they were scattered mostly in small groups throughout a one kilometer semicircular area. Two of those transponders, however, were not moving and under direct inquiry to their individual computer systems Duntan saw that their vitals had faded during the crash. The loss of life was starting to finally hit home for the Colonel as each one of those soldiers had been his family and his responsibility
Duntan initiated his comm to give orders to the remaining members of his
unit when an incoming encrypted transmission stopped him, “to any available unit this is Sergeant Logwari with a Priority Red request, repeat Priority Red. Kalka HQ has been overrun. We are exfiltrating with the General and require assistance.”
Those words brought new life and a tinge of rage to Duntan. Weslow had suggested that the Kalka subterranean HQ had been destroyed, but there was always some hope in the back of Duntan’s mind that he was wrong. Now as he stood there with his hands in fists, the reality of the situation revealed itself. There was also only one thing Colonel Slaige could do.
“Sergeant, this is Colonel Slaige, Priority request received. Proceed to the destination I send you. Keep off the TacNet and follow my updates,” with renewed determination Duntan brought up the map of the area surrounding the now overrun base and started to formulate a plan.
Master Sergeant
Felix Logwari
felt the shuttle vibrate underneath him even through the insulated armor that covered his entire body. He wasn’t a designated pilot, but he knew enough and with the help of the shuttle’s flight assistance software Felix was able to get the ship under control in the turbulence of the canyon. Cursing under his breath, he corrected the shuttle’s flight path once again as the winds threatened to push it into the tall rocky walls on either side. He hoped above all that Colonel Slaige knew what he was doing and wished they had been able to find a real pilot before evacuating, but there had been no time for that and Felix instinctually made the call to leave as quickly as possible.
The sergeant and his security comrade Specialist Nolan Velarsk had a duty to perform, that of protecting General Stelle to best of their abilities, and they were not going to stop until that mission was accomplished. From the moment the Kalka Command and Control Center was attacked
Felix had a plan in place to get the General to safety and the plan had worked flawlessly, except for the lack of a pilot part and the total loss of communications. In the confusion of the explosion within the Command Center, Felix and Nolan had whisked General Stelle’s unconscious body to safety through a series of hidden exits. These were passageways unknown to anyone else working at the facility and whose sole purpose was to facilitate a quick escape route should an emergency arise.
He looked back behind him into the small cabin for a second and studied the situation. The General’s body was still motionless on the floor with Nolan leaning over it
to secure the InstaCast around his left leg from the knee down. They had already injected the quickheal compound into the man’s system moments ago like they had been trained to. These two medical applications should stabilize the General’s broken tibia and help it heal in record time. The quickheal had also kept his internal blast injuries contained by stopping all of the internal bleeding and relieving an increase in cerebral pressure due to a brain hemorrhage. With the compound in his system Felix was hopeful that General Stelle would hold out until they reached the closest field hospital.
“How’s he doing?”
Felix called out as he watched his partner work.
“I got him stabilized, but he’s still unconscious. I’m not a doctor, though, so I don’t know when or if he’ll come out of it.
The MedI estimates a good outcome.”
The sounding of a warning alarm prevented
Felix from replying to the comment and caused him to turn back towards the front quickly. Stretching out in front of him was the river floor of the canyon and two vertical rock walls on both sides. Interposed between these canyon walls, however, were directional markers that were actually part of the shuttle’s heads up display. As he gazed further out into the distance he could see part of that directional tunnel start to blink and knew they were receiving another course update from Colonel Slaige.
This was the fifth course correction in the past half hour and
Felix hoped would be the last. They had managed to avoid the enemy air patrols all this time by staying within the confines and radar clutter of the canyon, but that luck couldn’t last once they did as this new update instructed them to do. Their good luck ran out early, however, as a proximity alarm blared out suddenly and the right stone wall exploded in front of them. There was no time to avoid the deadly cloud of rock debris and Felix watched the shuttle’s shield glow blue in front of them as they flew into the cloud at high speed. At such velocity the normally harmless rocks battered the ship like small missiles, causing the craft to shudder and tilt from the weight of some of the impacts.
It didn’t take long for another alarm to blare out, this one accompanied by a shield failure notification on the forward viewport. The shuttle wasn’t designed for hostile environments so wasn’t a surprise to
Felix that the shields couldn’t hold out against such a pounding. Even so the weak shields had held just long enough for the craft to emerge out the other side of the debris cloud in one piece. Felix applied more speed and knew now that they had to get out of the canyon. There was no room to maneuver inside its confined space, making the shuttle an easy target.
He pitched the craft up so that he could crest the top of the canyon wall just as another explosion overtook them, this one much more powerful and no longer a near miss.
The holographic control panel in front of him went dark almost instantly as the entire shuttlecraft lost power. The blast also lunched the ship forward and caused it to pitch nose up, threating it to send it spinning backwards end over end, but fortune smiled on them all once more. Cockpit controls lit up again as the power returned just as suddenly. With the computers now functional again the FAS took over the pilot duties for a moment and automatically terminated the ship’s tumble just before they hit the tree line at the top of the canyon.
Felix
felt the force of renewed accelerated push him back into the seat as the engines powered back up again. He knew instantly that something was wrong, however, when a harsh vibration over took the vessel. This was further confirmed when various sections of the photohaptic control panel overlay started to flash red. He slammed his hand down on the holographic projection to stop the alarms from going off once more, but watched as an image of the entire ship appeared on the viewport in front of him. The image quickly rotated and sections of it turned from green to yellow and red in order to indicate the severity of damage inflicted upon it. Various control surfaces of the ship appeared to be damaged or completely destroyed causing the craft to rely more heavily on its repulsor units and thrust vectoring. With only one remaining engine, though, maneuvering the shuttle would be much more difficult.
As
Felix looked out ahead and watched the bluish green Fronta tree canopy rush under them he heard a soft groan through his comm. “You alright back there, sorry about the bumpy ride.”
“Yeah, just fine sir
,” Nolan called back sarcastically as he picked himself off the floor. “The General might have a few more bruises when he wakes up though.”
“You better strap him in, we aren’t out of this yet, and it’s probably gonna get worse.”
The Sergeant issued the order just as he patched into the shuttle’s rear cameras and visualized their pursuers first hand on his helmet’s visor. He let out a long winded series of curses as he watched three enemy ships turn towards them. Two of the crafts seemed to be small fighter sized ships and followed at a low altitude. Felix could swear that both looked somewhat familiar to him for reasons he didn’t have time to think of at the moment. The third ship, however, was completely different. It was an almost a teardrop shape cut in half with the top curving back into a sharp point and a rather flattened belly. That ship was also many times larger than the other pair and hung back at a higher altitude, almost observing the unfolding melee.
Frustration built up inside
Felix as the banked the shuttle side to side, weaving in order to try and avoid any further attacks. All he wished for was a chance to fight back, being a warrior of heart and training, but the shuttlecraft he was now piloting was completely unarmed. In such a situation Felix was left with only one choice, that being to keep his charge alive at all costs. He hoped that reaching his designated end waypoint would fulfill that responsibility.
With that thought in mind he looked at the counter at the edge of the HUD and watched it quickly count down the kilometers remaining to the location that Colonel Slaige had sent him. It was during this glance that he also witness
ed the outside air distort and shimmer directly in front of the shuttle before a line of fire and smoke cut through forest below him. As he weaved the ship in the opposite direction another line of trees disappeared in a new firestorm, this time closer than before and from the other direction, leaving behind only blackened tree remains.
Felix
increased his speed as much as the ship’s systems would let him and closely monitored the enemy craft pursuing him. At the same time he continued his erratic zigzag pattern of flying above the treetops, trying his best to not give them a sitting target. As he watched the enemy try their best to line up proper kill shots, Felix’s mind couldn’t help but wonder why they were expanding so much energy on direct line of site weapons. They had proven only moments ago that they had missiles capable of destroying the shuttle, so why did they switch tactics all of the sudden, Felix thought, when they could have finished them off already.
The time for those mysteries to be solved would have to wait, however, as more flames and smoke appeared in front of him. He flew through the rising line of smoke and glowing ambers and watched as the two fighters followed him. One went through the smoke cloud as well, while the other swung around it and held a straight line of flight instead of following
Felix’s bank to the left. He was confused for a second as the distance between them grew larger, but a series of flashes from the larger ship hovering above them caught his eye through the rear-facing camera. A series of explosions followed those flashes almost immediately, creating a wall of fire directly in front and to the left of his path.
A series of concussions in rapid fire succession passed over the shuttlecraft and caused
Felix’s primitive instincts to almost take over. It was only his advanced training and wartime experience that prevented him from pulling the ship away from the explosive fire ahead of him and into the opposite direction. His mind ran through the calculations as if on automatic, identifying the ploy even before his instincts could overpower him. He now realized why that other enemy fighter had gone wide. The gunship-like ship was trying to herd him into an optimal firing position for that second fighter.
Not wanting to give the enemy the satisfaction,
Felix allowed himself a slight cocky grin as he did the exact opposite of what was expected of him and turned directly into the ascending smoking inferno. He punched through the flames without a problem and proceeded towards his intended destination, which was rapidly approaching.
Just hold on for a few more minutes
, he willed the damaged shuttlecraft.
Felix
reached over to punch in the overrides to the ship’s safety protocols in order to cox as much speed from the craft as possible when a horrible singeing and scraping sound resounded throughout the ship. He looked back towards the cabin in time to a see a shimmering yellow beam slice through the entire left side from stern to bow. This beam was accompanied by a tremendous shower of sparks from the conduits and subsystems that ran along the top of the cabin. For the second time in as many minutes the controls surrounding Felix blinked off and the shuttle lost all power, but unlike before there was no sudden resurrection for the craft. Instead, with the engines nonfunctional and the repulsor field projectors without power, the ship lost all control and fell towards the forest below.
As they arced towards the tree canopy,
Felix took a deep breath and leaned back into his pilot’s chair. There was nothing else to he could do and so he would just have to wait and see what happened to them all.
“Get ready, i
t’s going to be a bumpy landing,” he called back towards Nolan through the comm.
Felix
never heard if his partner replied back before the shuttle’s blunt nose clipped one of the tall Fronta trees. The slight impact triggered the ship’s crash response system, which was a self-contained and heavily shielded unit, causing crash webbing to eject from both sides of the pilot and occupied passenger seats. Within a fraction of a second the malleable webbing surrounded each seated member from neck to ankle and tightened automatically to secure everyone firmly in their place in preparation for a collision.
The events thereafter unfolded
before him in adrenaline induced slow-motion. One second he was looked at the dense tree canopy and in the next he was being spun around in a clockwise direction. His vision was a quick blur, too fast for his eyes to register distinct details, but even so Felix thought he saw a blossoming explosion at the previous location of one of the small enemy ships. He wasn’t able to form another complete thought as he felt a sudden weightlessness, which finally culminated in a horrible crushing sound and sensation from the rear of the shuttle.
That weightlessness was caused by the other part of the crash response system. At a pre-calculated altitude the antigravity generator activated just before ground impact and bled off as much velocity as possible with an opposing force to the planet
ary pull. As such any damage from the crash was greatly reduced and the gravity free environment allowed for a decreased chance of injury to the passengers within. Felix experienced the effectiveness of the system first hand when he opened his eyes and gazed out of the cockpit viewport into the blue and gray sky above crash.
It didn’t take the sergeant long to see that they still weren’t out of the woods, so to speak. A dark colored delta-winged craft, with two orange stripes on each wing, and a large central ventral air intake was turning towards them in the distance.
Felix watched as the fighter quickly lined up with the downed shuttle and accelerated towards them. The fighter’s nose dipped forward slightly to line up for a ground attack. With nowhere left to run and no time to get everyone out of the shuttle, Felix did what any soldier in his place would, he reached down to grab the sidearm hanging around his thigh through the crash-webbing.