*
Darla sighed long and sad, becoming quiet and morose to the point that Euroaquilo believed she had finished with her account. She had not.
Looking across the bridge, through the window at the lashing rain, she continued. “I finally came to my wits and released the securing pins locking the fighter to the transport’s mooring station. We were just floating free, I about to charge the engines, when two enemy fighters swept over the ship. One opened fire on us, six tiny red tracers blurring across my vision. The fighters blasted past, leaving us and not returning. Whether we were considered a valueless target or they were out of ordnance, I don’t know, but the damage done was sufficient to be devastating.”
“Computer systems, communications, hydraulics, electrics, the main thrusters, even life support systems were damaged or destroyed. There we were, tethered by a single line, unable to escape certain death should the giant holding us fast decide to shudder in fear or erupt in anger. And then smoke began seeping up from the bomb bay compartment into the cockpit. I needed to do something, and it needed to be done fast.”
“I rummaged through my firefighter’s gear, finding a Plesso wrench. I took its claw end to rip loose the pilot’s power control panel, and then used its side cutters to snip the lead wires going to the computer. After stripping the insulation, I managed to short out the security system, releasing us from the tether line. Then I took to jumping wires to ignite the engines, which didn’t happen. When I was about at my wits end, I finally located the main switch wires for the vertical lift retro-rockets.”
“Touching those leads together set all four of the rockets ablaze, sending us cart-wheeling away from the troopship. Fortunately, it was away and not toward, because I couldn’t shut the rockets down. It took me forever to jimmy the retro-switches before I gained enough control to stabilize the fighter, much of the wiring harness having melted when I touched those leads together, having been forced to bypass the fuses in my hurry. By the time I got the retro-power under control, we were hundreds of miles from the fleet, drifting alone in the stark emptiness.”
“While I was still struggling with the controls, about four miles or so from the transport, there was this blinding orange fireball that lit up the cockpit. Looking up, I saw the fore and aft ends of my troop transport tumble off into space, leaving a glowing white cloud of burning debris where the ship had once been. It’s funny, as I think about it. I was working so frantically to get that old T-4 under control, I gave that event little notice until now.”
“Sometime after the Armistice, I was visited in the convalescent hospital by Corporal SaleenHavson, the platoon’s clerk and my bunkmate. The corporal was part of my fire crew, escaping on the last shuttle to make it out before the troopship exploded.”
Darla hung her head in remorse, speaking in little more than a whisper. “Saleen was killed by Stasis Pirates less than two months ago.”
She then wiped a tear from her eye and cleared her throat. “Anyway, Saleen filled me in on the fate of that ship.”
“The gallant crew saved nearly three-fourths of the troops aboard the ship, losing over half of their own doing so. They surrendered up their lives to save over four hundred others. Of my platoon, everyone other than the fire crew did not survive the initial attack, their barracks being one deck above the main boiler which blew up when the fuel storage hold was destroyed. Of my fire crew, only four, including me, survived to tell of that event, Saleen being the only member to survive totally unscathed that day.”
“Two of my crew, Privates TeleoZugos and DeuroHorkos gave their fire suits to some injured comrades and remained behind to assist the ship’s company. With the death of Saleen, Sergeant LeviaBritt and I are the sole remaining survivors from the Mudpuppy Platoon, and Levia was so badly damaged later at the Battle at Memphis that she cannot recall her own name. I visit her at the High Banks Sanatorium, up north of here, whenever I get the chance. I can tell by the look in her eyes that she recognizes me. I think it lifts her spirits when I come.”
Darla groaned as she stood, her legs aching from sitting too long, making her way back to the elevator, leaning over the rail to view the sights below. The DusmeAstron was equipped with multi-leaf safety hatches on each deck so that, spreading out like flower petals, the hatches would close off the elevator opening and seal the separate floors of the ship up tight. When opened, like it was now, the exposed parts of the hatch wings pulsed green with hundreds of tiny lights. When the lights began flashing red, it was a warning to stand clear the elevator shaft.
Euroaquilo watched Darla from his officer’s chair. She was always so beautiful in form and comeliness, so concerned about how well kept she appeared. Yet today, the woman looked old, aged like the mountains, haggard. The long wars had not been nice to her, she having fought in nearly all of them. How many of her lovers’ and companions’ names were written now on the Silent Tombs? He pondered. She had lost so much, given so much, endured so much. Could her frail body continue to weather the persistent storms hurled against her? He shuddered to think of his visions and the coming Prisoner Exchange. Would that day be her Armageddon? Would she survive to tell of its passing?
In time, Darla returned to her chair. Staring out the distant portal, she noticed that although the driving winds were diminished, the rains still ruled the sky. Looking into folded hands, she continued her account.
“By the time I got control of the retrorockets, we were alone in the galaxy. All I knew was that we were somewhere in the Oreion Shelf Region, a most unhealthy place to be. This was still very much enemy-held territory, and was a well-known haunt of the Stasis Pirates. But we did have patrols in the area, and a few military encampments scattered about the star systems. There were also some neutral colonies within range where rescue might be afforded. Still, even that was a reach. I needed to find help soon or there would be no worry about who found us. Asteios and I would only be a couple of frozen castaways drifting through a cosmic wonderland of an eternal evening.”
“The smoke and toxic fumes were gathering in force. If it hadn’t been for the chemical filter canisters on our fire suits, I doubt we could have survived. I locked Asteios’ helmet on, she crying out in pain at my slightest touch. When I explained to her what I was doing, she begged me to let her die. I could not.”
“I figured we had ten good hours of clean air from those filters…longer if we conserved our energy. I foolishly attempted to do without my canister, thinking it better to save it for Asteios, if need be. After I puked twice, almost passing out the second time, I had no choice but to use the apparatus. My radio was broken in my helmet, so communication was impossible. I have no idea the suffering Asteios went through. I was heartbroken that I couldn’t even speak consolingly to her. At least she was staying alive.”
“I am a child of this wicked age and have few of the witching powers of my older siblings. Still, I attempted to focus in on the energy of the universe around me. It was so difficult, what with my growing fatigue and my ever-aching ankle. I drifted in and out of sleep continually. It was during one of my waking times, when I was adjusting the retro-thrust that I realized I wasn’t alone in that wilderness.”
Darla smiled. “As I slowly manipulated the thrusters, ever so slightly changing our course, I began to notice a quiet tune playing in the back of my head. The more I altered course, the louder the tune played. I discovered that if I stayed on that course, the music would play hauntingly loud and clear, it diminishing when I veered from it. It was the same music that has always been with me, my companion when the world around me is going to Hell, when all hope is lost, when nothing is going right. That little tune will start playing, guiding me down a safe path, if I should make sure to listen to it. I did this day.”
“I was so tired… Every bone in my body ached from the stress of the day and my lungs burned from breathing so much poisoned air. I finally fell into a silent stupor, having no idea how lo
ng I slept. I awoke to sudden quiet. No music. I began to panic until looking out the canopy. There, much to my surprise and relief, I saw a beautiful blue-green planet.”
She looked at Euroaquilo, wondering aloud. “I lost track of time, I know, but after I was rescued they told me the name and location of that star system. There is no way that broken T-4 managed that distance in only ten hours. Even with full thrusters and hard running, it was a good day’s journey from where our troopship was attacked.”
“Anyway, trusting to the fact that the music had delivered us here, I prepared to attempt a landing on the planet. I worked my way forward to Asteios, opening her helmet long enough to communicate my intentions. She was groggy, offering little more than a nod and a weak smile.”
“I had to close her helmet because of the toxic air, but when I strapped her into the seat, oh, the pain she must have endured, me twisting her broken back the way I did. I cried out to Mother, tears streaming down my face to let me, please, take Asteios’ pain and carry it for her. I believed Asteios was dying, her injuries more severe than I’d realized. I wanted so badly for my companion to pass away in peace, dreaming of happier times and more pleasant places.”
With tormented eyes, Darla lamented, “There are times when I have wished that death take me. This was one of those times. You know, the devil takes his own, but I guess nobody finds me desirable...” She broke into a little rhyme.
“Heaven and Hell both reject this waif.
So she wanders the world on a midnight broom,
Seeking solace with the wolves and snakes.
Ever, ever onward goes the wayward child.
Chasing Death as it flees her wiles.
Oh, my dear love, why do you run from me,
When in your sweet arms is where I should be?
So sings the sailor lost on desperate seas.
With all hope gone but the breath she breathes.”
A sad smile crept across her face. “That Jebbson fellow gifted me with that tale. Said he made it up oen night when the schooner he was on was taking water and everyone thought they’d all drown. Jebbson said an old Indian medicine man told him that ‘if you seek death, it will flee you’. So he made up that little poem and shouted it out to the storm. Well, he and the ship survived the tempest. After that, he would sing that little ditty when Death walked with him, for he said that Death is like a flirtatious lover who ever seeks to catch but never be caught.”
“I changed the words a little, but… well… I don’t know why I thought of it just now. That Jebbson is a strange fellow. He can get into your head – deep, I mean - like he knows who you are and what you’re about without you ever saying a word to him. I like him a lot.”
Euroaquilo agreed. “He’s a good man. He’s a lot like you. Likes a good fight and wants to see it through to the end. He’s a scrapper, can stir the pot with the Council. Doesn’t make a lot of friends there, doesn’t care to. If I was Death, I’d be afraid of him, too...”
Darla smiled, nodding. She then shook her head as if to clear it of these and other distractions. She planted her hands on her knees, leaning forward a bit. “Let me get on with it.”
“As you know, and I learned that day, the T-4 is a stout ship, designed back in the days when the welfare of the pilot was more important than the ship’s. Its wings are massive enough to permit a dead stick landing if need be, and for us it was need be. With retrorocket propulsion, we would be able to enter the planet’s atmosphere without overheating. Then, with the fighter’s generous wingspan, I should have time to search out a reasonable landing place.”
“There were many worries that crossed my mind in the fateful moments before making the final maneuvers into descent. I had one shot at this. There could be no turning back, so I wondered: ‘Would I find ‘friendlies’? Was there truly breathable air down there? Not knowing the damage to the ship, would it hold together after entering the planet’s heavy atmosphere?’ ”
“Some gauges still worked, like altitude and air speed, but few others. I had already chosen the landing location in the northern latitude, but close enough to the equator to offer some seasonal warmth. Visuals looked good, low mountains with broad valleys that, hopefully, offered several safe landing spots. I waited for my descent window and then committed us to whatever the Fates offered us down below.”
“The retrorockets held long enough to get us through the most dangerous part of the entry. Much to my joy, the batteries maintained a strong charge all the way down, allowing me reasonable flight control over the air wing. My calculations were quite adequate, bringing us down on deck at a perfect altitude and slow enough descent to study the general terrain. I saw no signs of civilization, no cities, communication towers, power dams, nothing… at least yet...”
“Narrowing my search to just north of a line of rocky outcroppings, I swept down in a wide, arching circle and lined up at what looked to be a broad valley ideal for my purpose. Well, I guess that others also found that valley to be the ideal for similar reasons.”
“I’d dropped in real low, hiding myself from possible hostile eyes. But that trick had also blinded me to my landing spot because of several high hills to my immediate north. Passing just south and west of a tall rocky bluff, I lined up on my landing zone, nosed down a little and set up a gliding trajectory for the location I’d decided on to land. About six miles out, I noticed some strange shapes hidden among the scattered giant conifers up ahead. At just over two miles, I recognized those shapes to be camouflaged fighters and buildings. I’d chosen to drop in on an enemy encampment!”
“I know I screamed in panic and frustration. I don’t remember it, but I know I did, because I felt my heart rip right out of my chest, I was so terrified. ‘Get away! Get away! Get away!’ I remember me shouting those words to myself over and over. I almost tore that old joystick right out of its socket to turn away. Yanking the nose up and rolling that T-4 over, I gained enough altitude to clear those same bluffs and make my escape south.”
“We had been drifting straight in toward the enemy’s camp, apparently on their same flight path. They took no notice until I banked hard and retreated the scene. It would only be a matter of time before they’d scramble their fighters and come after us. Still, I guess they’d believe we were skedaddling, not thinking we were coming in for a crash landing. And we were going to crash, for sure.”
“The question was, ‘how far could we get away before it happened?’ As I hurried south, I hit my retros again, hoping there might be something left in them. There was - about a four second burst, enough to get us another eight or ten miles away. The terrain was also dropping, maybe several hundred feet, but it looked real ugly. We’d tear ourselves apart if some better landing sight didn’t appear soon. By now I was flying the valley, hills above us on either side. Seeing nothing but death approaching, I chose to follow a narrow canyon that ran east between two tall buttes, and prepared myself for a hard landing.”
“After turning hard to port and descending into the canyon, I noticed that up ahead was a tiny patch of gray and green several hundred feet long filled with pebbles and sticks. I dropped the flaps and lifted the nose to stall out. I don’t remember the rest of the ride. I just remember holding back on that stick with all my might, and then everything going black.”
“Things got a little fuzzy after that. I woke to the stink of smoke, not much, but a real bad noxious stink. It was then I realized my helmet was missing. How or when it came off, I’ve no idea. My fear of dying from the poisonous air was quickly assuaged. The cockpit was smashed all to hell, with the canopy twisted beyond recognition, its glass shattered to the winds. There wasn’t enough left of that old T-4 to know it had ever been an interstellar fighter.”
“The clearing I landed in was really a volcanic wash filled with boulders and broken trees. The ship piled into that field at over a hundred miles an hour, ripping itself to pieces as it skidded throu
gh that jumbled mess. Little was left other than the cockpit, upper hull, and part of the tail section. At least the fighter had cut a straight path along the skid way, not flipping, it finally slamming to a stop against some ancient giant tree trunk.”
“It was eerily quiet, other than a little hissing of a steam vent and the popping sounds from tiny electrical fires. I figure my fuel dump before we started our descent saved us from a fiery inferno that would have surely enveloped us had the tanks not been emptied. As it was, there was little to burn. The fires died quickly.”
Darla blinked several times, shaking her head as her heart returned to those fitful hours. “I was waked by a burning sensation in my leg. Also, the fingers on my left hand were crushed and broken, and blood ran down my face, half blinding me. I was a mess! Blinking away the blood, I saw that Asteios’ navigator’s seat was torn loose, pinning her between it and the control panel. I bolted forward to help her, instantly falling back in screaming agony.”
“When I regained my senses, I checked to see what the matter was with my leg. Shocked I was to find a barb of metal sticking three inches out from where my kneecap should have been. It was then that I realized how close to death I’d come. My pilot’s seat was skewed and twisted, but it had held…how I don’t know, what with the wreckage piled into it. Our sudden stop into that tree must have broken all kinds of things loose behind me, driving the rear of the ship into the cockpit. One jagged spear-like piece of metal punched its way through the lower panel of my seat and into the back of my leg, ruining my kneecap.” Feeling with my hand, for I could not see the damage done to me, I discovered that my leg was skewered, the spike of the shaft sticking some three inches out the front of my knee.”
“’Oh, this is a sweet one you’ve done, fool.’ I said to myself. What was I to do now? My sister was possibly already dead, and I? I was near to being little more than a trophy for the day’s hunt, my head the guest of honor at the night’s festivities, it garishly staring down from the pike at the end of the feasting table. This was not good. I must do something quickly. I must get away, but how, what with my leg already being skewered upon that spike?”
“As our friend Jebbson has been heard to say, ‘desperate times call for desperate measures.’ Well, I was desperate. The only way I was going to escape torture and certain death was to get unstuck. The first attempt racked my body with such nauseating pain that I wretched into passing out. When I came to, I was sweating profusely and breathing hard. I began to panic, feeling there was no escape.”
“I fought down the panic, reasoning that any pain I might inflict upon myself would be far less than what the enemy would do when they found me. Pain was my friend for the moment. Pain offered me freedom. All I had to do was reach out and embrace it, seek it like one does the arms of a lover. I gripped the front of my seat and, with all my strength, lunged forward.”
“Well…” Darla smiled, grimacing with the memory, “It was no lover’s embrace.” She admitted, “Having my belly ripped open at the Battle of Argototh was nowhere as cripplingly agonizing an experience. Pain was no lover, but it did save me that day, freeing me from a certain, even more painful death.”
“While the world spun around me, turning ever gray, I stumbled forward, falling over the wreckage to get to my sister. I’m sure she was already dead, but I refused to accept it. ‘I’ll get us out!’ I screamed. ‘Hang on! Hang on! We’ll get out of this!’ I then began slamming my shoulder into the cockpit side door to smash it open.”
“I have no memory of the following moments or hours. When I awoke, I found I was free of the fighter, a pilot’s pistol and my life support system beside me. There, only feet away, Asteios lay, looking like she was resting, so peacefully resting.”
She shook her head. “How I – we - got out of the fighter and down to the ground, I cannot imagine, and with all the emergency supplies scattered about, too. There was food and water to last for a while, and whatever tools and equipment I might be able to haul away with me… us. Yes, I refused to leave my sister behind to have her temple desecrated by those animals. I cared not the cost to me. It was all or nothing. And that was that.”
“I believed it to be late in the day and possibly the season to be high summer. The air was dry and dirty with dust, enough so that the sun was setting in an orange haze. That explained why we were not yet discovered, and their possible notion that we had not crashed, but hightailed it away. I was sure when they found no trace of our ship on their radar screens they would conclude we were hiding out somewhere, but maybe not so close as we were. Still, it was only going to be a matter of time before search parties would come calling.”
“Rummaging through the emergency gear revealed a treasure trove of valuables. The medical kit contained everything from gauze, bandages and painkillers to surgical equipment. I soon discovered that the T-4 was captained by a ‘Major somebody or other’… the name I don’t recall. It was in transport to Commodore CythereaNoah’ha’s flagship, Cyrene, to be delivered to the major.”
“I tell you this because of how well stocked I found the fighter to be. The major must have personally stowed those treasures aboard before departing with the fleet. Well, whoever the person was, I’m grateful to ‘em. Those supplies saved my life.” She paused, quiet in thought.
Euroaquilo patiently waited.