Purge of Prometheus (12 page)

Shaking free of the spell that had befallen them all, people began running for cover.
 
Like cattle, people on the street pushed and strained against one another as some ran inside buildings and others ran toward the spaceport on the edge of town.
 
Merchants fled, leaving behind piles of substandard food and trade goods that they had been selling at high prices.
 
The streets were in chaos, punctuated time and again by sounds of gunfire and the screams of those unfortunate enough to fall and be trampled by the fleeing masses.

Keryn lunged from the railing and threw open the door to the hotel room.
 
“You guys need to see this,” she yelled into the room.
 
“Now!”

Adam, who had pulled on pants but remained barefoot dripping with water from his shower quickly joined her on the balcony.
 
As the cold blast of air struck him, he shivered reflexively.
 
Penchant quickly joined them as well, appearing in his natural state and still stained with Cardax’s dark blood from his clean up in the back room.

“What the hell?” Adam asked, breathlessly, as he stared up as the vanishing sun.
 
He shivered again in the cold air; the temperature in Miller’s Glen was dropping rapidly as the sun continued to disappear.
 
Staring at what remained of the sun, only half the sphere was still yellow.
 
The rest had been consumed by the inky darkness.

As they watched, the darkness spread both on the sun’s surface and across the planet below.
 
They stared as another quarter of the sun vanished; the planet was cast into a growing twilight.
 
Keryn squinted against the fading light of the sun, straining to see a flicker of movement in orbit above the planet.
 
Her eyes spreading wide, she pointed near the base of the now nearly black sun.

“Do you two see that?” she asked.
 
Following her lead, Adam and Penchant watched as two separate concentric blue circles expanded in the sky.
 
“Is that what I think it is?”

Adam clenched his jaw tight as he watched the blue circles spread.
 
“They’re plasma explosions,” he said, his voice sounding dead and in disbelief.
 
“I think we just lost the two Interstellar Alliance Cruisers in orbit.”

Keryn shoved at them both, trying to push them back inside the hotel room.
 
“Get back inside.
 
I think this is about to get a lot worse for us all.”

Slamming the door behind them, Keryn pulled free the radio on her wrist.
 
“Cerise, this is Keryn.”

Static was the only reply she heard in her earpiece.
 
Pressing the talk button, she tried to reach the
Cair Ilmun
again.
 
“Cerise, this is Keryn.
 
Respond!”

As she released the talk button, static again leapt to life on the otherwise silent radio.
 
Her hand shaking, she pushed the button one last time.
 
“Cerise, please answer me,” she said weakly.
 
Letting go of the button and hearing static one more time, Keryn turned toward the other two, tears in her eyes.

“I think we might have lost the
Cair Ilmun
too.”

CHAPTER 10:

Placing his hand on the smooth metal of the fighter’s hull, Yen perused the line of ships in the gargantuan hangar bay.
 
The small
Duun
fighters were dwarfed by the mass of the bay, holding the full complement of his Squadron’s ships.
 
Even the
Cair
ships, made for transporting assault teams, seemed insignificant in the hangar.

Though he moved from fighter to fighter, his thoughts were miles away, stuck invariably on Keryn’s face, the Wyndgaart who saved his life and with whom he had fallen in love.
 
The thought of her smile and touch haunted him as he went about his tasks, checking fighter after fighter in his Squadron.
 
Absently, he typed the closest ship’s serial number into his palm display, bringing up the maintenance report for the ship.
 
It said what he already knew it would: the ship was immaculate.
 
Yen had the best crew and pilots in the Fleet under his command, and it showed in his vessels.

“It’s still good, you know,” a female voice called from behind him, her voice seemingly lost in the vastness of the hangar.
 
Yen didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
 
Among his pilots, only one had truly become his confidant and friend.

“Warrant Morven,” Yen said, turning toward the attractive Warrant Officer.
 
Though her blond Pilgrim hair was tussled and grease smeared on her cheek from working on her ship, he was still warmed by her smile.
 
Iana Morven was one of the higher-ranking Warrants under Yen’s command.
 
Though there were a number of full officers on board the
Revolution
, Yen was the only officer in the Squadron; all other pilots and staff were Warrants or Crewmen.
 
The theory behind the rank dispersion was that the life expectancy of a fighter pilot was so low that it was a waste of Alliance resources to train full officers, only to have them die on their first mission.
 
Yen, however, had always found solace in the lower ranks, finding their camaraderie more genuine and conversations more palatable.

Yen lowered his display screen before he continued.
 
“Sorry, I was distracted.”

“I know,” she said, leaning against the edge of the fighter’s low wing.
 
“That’s the third time you’ve pulled up the maintenance report on that specific fighter.”

She crossed her arms over her ample chest, concealed poorly by a thin grey sleeveless shirt.
 
Her maintenance coveralls had been unzipped, the top half of which hung lazily around her waist.
 
Iana raised an eyebrow, encouraging Yen to explain.
 
Yen scowled, knowing she already knew what was on his mind, but willing to play the game with her.

“My heart just isn’t in the inspection today, I guess,” he explained, covering the truth with his poor explanation.

Iana smiled smugly.
 
“It’s interesting you mention your heart, since that’s the reason you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing,” she chided.
 
“You’re thinking about
her
again, aren’t you?”

“What if I am?” Yen said defensively.
 
“Keryn is out there trying to find a cure for the latest Terran attack and all we’re doing is polishing fighters and adding fresh coats of paint.
 
She’s doing something substantial, not to mention that we have so much riding on the success of her mission.”
 
Yen scowled to himself, regretting his decision a few months before the invasion of Earth to tell Iana about his feelings for Keryn.
 
Still, though obviously hurt by his rejection of her advances, Iana had still remained a close, if not brutally honest friend.

“It’s not her mission you’re worried about,” Iana said, shaking her head and reaching out to place her hand on his arm.
 
“It’s okay to admit that you’re worried about her.
 
Truth be told, I’m sure she’d like to know how much you cared.”
 
She turned her head away as she continued.
 
“But…”

“But?” Yen asked, suddenly feeling like he had been led into a trap.

“But we need you to be less of a whipped puppy and more of a Squadron Commander,” Iana said harshly.
 
“In the near future we’re going to be engaged in the greatest series of battles ever fought by the Interstellar Alliance.
 
You are going to be a key part of that assault, leading the fighter Squadron from the Alliance flagship.”
 
She placed a hand on each cheek, pulling his face down so he was eye level with her shorter stature.
 
“We need… no, I need a commander who will be focused and tactically aware.
 
I can’t have you getting distracted at the last possible moment, not when so many lives depend on the decisions you make.
 
Focus, sir.”

Yen placed his hands over hers and gently pulled them away from his face.
 
“I wish it were that easy, Iana.
 
With everything else going on, I can’t seem to get her out of my head.
 
Every time I let my mind wander, it naturally wanders to her.”

“Then you need something to take your mind off of her,” she said coyly, stepping close so that her firm breasts pressed against his arm.
 
“And I don’t mean another hobby, you need something that will match the ferocity with which she got into your head the first time.”

Yen didn’t have to be psychic to understand what she meant.
 
It also wasn’t hard for him to see that she was offering herself as his distraction.
 
He felt his eyes wandering past her face and toward the exposed cleavage, more pronounced by her loose sleeveless shirt hanging open in the front.
 
Though he couldn’t deny that Iana was attractive and possessed a very well endowed body, he just didn’t feel the yearning that he expected when he looked at her so clearly throwing herself at him.

“You’re probably right,” Yen began.
 
“But…”

“But,” Iana stated, smiling at the irony but appearing crestfallen nonetheless.

“But I just don’t think I’m ready to grab a woman, especially one that I care about and have known for so long, just to appease my physical desires.
 
I think there should be a deeper commitment.”

“You’re a strange man, Yen,” Iana said as she turned to leave.
 
“But I’m not wrong.
 
You need to find someone, and soon.
 
Overcome your need to make sex more than what it is and get it out of your system.
 
If you can’t get your head in the game, you’re useless to us as a Squadron Commander.
 
Just think about it.”

Yen watched her leave, her hips swaying in an obvious taunt toward his decision.
 
Though the thought of Iana’s ample breasts pressing against his body did cause a stirring in his loins, his ideations were quickly interrupted as his transponder crackled to life.

“Squadron Commander Xiao,” the stern male voice stated.
 
“This is Eminent Merric.”

“This is Yen,” he replied as he continued to watch Iana walk away.

“Yen, I need you to report with me to the aft weapons bay,” Merric called over the radio.
 
“Captain Hodge has tasked us both with ensuring that all weapons bays are in perfect order during the next inspection.”

“Roger,” Yen said curtly into the radio.
 
Unless provoked, Yen often chose to remain in the hangar as opposed to traipsing through the stuffy halls of the ship and examining weapon systems that had no bearing on his tactics within the Squadron.

“I will meet you there,” Merric replied, his tone as emotionless as usual.
 
“Eminent Merric, out.”

Yen collected his equipment and, buttoning the top button on his dress uniform to ensure compliance with uniform regulations on the ship, left the hangar and made his way toward the aft weapons bay.
 
The walk was long, having to go from midship to the elevators that would take him to the upper floor where the weapon systems were housed.
 
He used that time to think about what Iana had said.
 
Perhaps she was right.
 
Perhaps he did need something to distract him from his thoughts of Keryn.
 
However, Yen knew he was right to not accept Iana’s offer in the hangar bay.
 
Building a relationship, even for only one night, with a subordinate was a recipe for disaster, especially when he was required to make decisions that toyed with the lives of all his pilots, including Iana’s.
 
Emotions would be a hindrance in such a situation.
 
Still, he couldn’t help but agree that a distraction would serve him well.
 
Distracted as he was, Yen barely noticed when he arrived at the large metal doors that led into the aft weapons bay, having traversed the entire ship while lost in thought.

As the doors slid open, Yen stepped inside the busy weapons bay.
 
The silence of the
Revolution
’s corridors was quickly overwhelmed by the oppressive noise within the room.
 
Vehicles drove across the open floor, some carrying plasma rockets delicately in their padded claws while still others bowed under the weight of tons of the dense slugs for the rail guns positioned throughout the room.
 
In the midst of the chaos, Merric stood beside Warrant Scyant, her dark hair tied back in a professional and practical bun and her uniform immaculately maintained.
 
As he approached, he was able to admirer her Wyndgaart features, including her body tattoos of blue and green which complimented her deep green eyes.