~ * ~ * ~
Something had happened to Rafian when he met Camille, and she would not leave his mind for many days. It was something beyond her looks—even though she had the most exotic light-gray eyes he had ever seen—and her lips had a shape that looked as if she smirked at the world, unimpressed. She was nothing like the girls he had grown up with on the Helysian. Her face would not leave his mind, and he found himself finding every excuse to talk with her beside her ship.
The pair developed a friendship and a kinship they couldn’t understand, and the days of talking turned into weeks before Rafian admitted to himself that he was in love with her. The ship’s deck was the ultimate spot for them to talk and hang out, since they were both introverts and the only two pilots who loved to clean their own ships.
Rafian found himself looking forward to it from the time he awoke till the time he was landing his vessel after his recon rounds. Camille was always there, waiting for him in the same location. On the days she wasn’t, he found himself becoming anxious, worried she had left for another ship.
On one of his rounds Rafian saw a blip in the distance as he flew his H1G8 away from Helysian. The spark was so tiny that he almost wrote it off as nothing, but his intuition would not let it be. He looked at his radar for any changes but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Still, his mind wouldn’t rest so he flew out past his typical boundary and kept on scanning for anything strange.
The only thing that registered on the radar was Helysian, and a few pieces of debris from a Geralos zip ship that had been destroyed when they found it spying. Rafian had seen the blip with his eyes and not with the equipment so he hoped that whatever it was would make the same mistake again.
There it was, that same tiny flash, and this time he was sure that he had seen it. He pushed the ship forward about two waves, then stopped to scan his radar again. There was nothing but he could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise. There was something going on and he was in trouble.
“Helysian, this is Centuri, do you copy? I’m on recon and I think we have something incoming,” he said into the ship’s comm.
“Rafian, this is Admiral Abe RUS. Where are you located? We can’t pick you up on our immediate radar.”
“That’s the problem, Admiral, switch to the star map. I think they are drifting it at about fifteen waves. They came out of FTL when I spotted them visually and they’re drifting in cloaked, somewhere near my location.”
The comm grew quiet and Rafian looked around, but all he could see was the impenetrable darkness with the occasional speck of color to indicate a star. If what he said was true then he was relatively safe, if they were being pursued by a Geralos stealth ship, the captain would not risk shooting him down because the Helysian would pick up on him missing.
“Good work, Captain, but you need to jump. We’re sending a smart bomb to your location and I don’t want you to be near its trajectory when I give the order. Cloak and head back, but do it fast. I want to hit them when they think that we’re sleeping.”
Rafian plotted a course near Helysian and then cloaked his ship; he then put the nose where he needed in order to fly a straight course and pushed the ship forward at fifteen waves. He blinked out of sight and appeared about a mile away from Helysian, a bit too close for comfort but safe nonetheless from Abe RUS’s smart bomb.
As he made to fly towards the dock he saw a white ray shoot past him, and then his radar lit up with a Geralos destroyer. The bomb had been fired exactly ten seconds after he had been commanded to jump and it struck the hull of the invisible behemoth and brought it into view as it bore down on top of them.
Rafian whipped the H1G8 around and flew into action, dropping one zip ship after another as they flew patterns around him, trying to bring him down. The two warships began trading blows and the Helysian pilots, including Camille, joined him in the middle, where they tested their mettle against the Geralos elite.
There was no time to admire the irony of being in a star fight similar to the one that had romanticized the notion to him as a child. Rafian was all focus as he called out formations to his men. His only thought—if there was anything outside of strategy—was that the lizards were intent on hurting his people, and Aurora’s face kept him on the razor’s edge.
He hoped they would not be forced into a retreat that would take them into deep space; the last time it had kept them there for over five years. Deep space meant that he would be away from Missio-tral, there would be no opportunities to visit Meluvia, and no more missions with his friend Val Tracker.
They lost a number of fighters but the Geralos got the worst of it, and their ship’s depleted shields began to fail under the heavy fire. In a last ditch move to get the Helysian to ease up, the destroyer shot a trace laser that took out over thirty ships. Some of them were Geralos but most belonged to Helysian. Camille and Rafian almost collided as they pulled off the same maneuver, a roll and a twist to get to the far side of Helysian in order to get away from the Geralos death ray.
It hurt them badly, but the Helysian took the blow and countered with its own tracer that cut off a significant portion of the Geralos ship. Once that happened its FTL drives came to life, and though Abe RUS ordered the gun batteries to focus on the source, the wounded ship was able to jump away to safety. Rafian and company were able to pick off the stragglers and before long they were all docking while counting their blessings.
Rafian landed in his spot on the dock but didn’t get out. His heart was racing and his body was soaked, and he was feeling sick to his stomach. What if I hadn’t seen that blip, he thought, and shook his head at how careless they had been. He loved Abe RUS, admired him as a leader, but he blamed the death of his numerous friends on the lack of foresight by their admiral.
A knock on his glass brought him around angrily and he saw that Camille had climbed up to check on him. He retracted the glass and feigned a look of happiness, but he saw understanding in her silvery eyes and she nodded at him as if to say, “I know.”
He exited his vehicle and joined her on the ground and his anger passed as he regarded her. She was sweaty like he was, and seemed to be waiting for something, and everything within him wanted to pull her in and taste the kiss that he would hold until she broke away. He looked away quickly and made to leave. If she had seen the intent in his eyes then she would probably start avoiding him. He didn’t want that, so he tried to remain professional.
“Ace flying out there, YAN, ace flying,” he said.
“It’s Cammy, Raf, all my friends call me Cammy. You saved our butt by going off course today. Wow, I had no idea those things could cloak!”
Rafian shook his head at her to show his disbelief. “They had us, Cammy. That was gonna be it, we weren’t even shielded when it pulled up.” He sat under the H1G8’s wing and held his head, hoping that Abe RUS would realize the mistake in their lax behavior.
Camille sat next to him and then lay back on the floor. Her hair was everywhere but she didn’t seem to care. “The ship that I was on before I got here was the Aqnaqak, and there was never a time when we didn’t have probers out at least a jump away. It’s too hot right now for us to be this lax, Raf. What in the hell is the—”
“Don’t say it, Cammy. There are ears everywhere, and despite our standing we can’t talk like that about leadership. I lost a couple friends out there; one has a little baby boy. That trace got him, and he has been in over a hundred fights. It drives home the point that our lives aren’t schtill. I’m thyping shaking right now.” He laughed. “I never get the shakes.”
Camille’s hand found his and their fingers interlocked. He wanted to take it as an invitation to everything that he wanted, but he knew that it was merely support from one survivor to another. His rage became a burning sensation in his chest, and he let it burn while he kept his mouth shut and cherished the feeling of Camille’s damp palm.