Chapter 15

ISABELLA

Her alarm rang for the third time before she decided to join the land of the conscious. She decided the snooze button wasn’t much help to her morning routine. Showers helped more, and decided to go for an extra long one to set her thoughts in order. “One week,” she said to herself. Seven days ago, Mothership launched. Seven days ago, she almost died to an unknown alien race in the outer Kharak System. Seven days ago, her entire life changed as did that of everyone else on the ship. It took some time but it finally started feeling like reality to her. Accepting what had happened was not easy for anyone onboard; that became more evident as the days passed.

She knocked on Mark’s door twice before walking in. It wasn’t locked. She figured fair game. “Hey, wakey, wakey sunshine!” He didn’t respond. He hadn’t been doing well emotionally, and asked her to handle the lecture from the day before. She wanted to, so he got no complaints from her. However, today was different. She smacked his face which woke him up immediately. “Got shit to do today, remember?” His response was an incomprehensible grumble, but better than nothing. He got out of bed and made his way to the bathroom without saying a word to her. “I’ll be in the mess hall,” she said. “You’re welcome!”

She remembered the last time she closed his door. Three days had passed and the two of them hadn’t talked about it. Exploring her sexuality meant little more than recreation, but he was not Manaan. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about what happened. Dwelling on it would get her nowhere, so with a sigh she left. Things would sort themselves out one way or another as they tend to.

She ran into Jasiid on her way. She saw him from down the hall, and he waved her over. He woke up at reasonable hours like her and it wasn’t the first time they had breakfast together that week. “Two days in a row? Small world.”

“A whole two kilometres tall, go figure!”

He ignored the sarcasm. “So, what’s up today?”

“Back to the hangar for us, last day inside. Tomorrow’s all outside.”

“Oh yeah, we drop out, right?”

“Yup! Can’t wait, personally. It’ll give me something to do.” Time spent idly meant time to think, and thinking was something she would rather not do.

“Think they’re all ready?”

“Sure, I mean it’s not like they’re complete incompetents after all. Most of the others who tested out the scouts are there, a few others who’ve had minimal microgravity flight experience, all that. Leo’s hopefully gonna find an actual trainer at some point.”

Once they sat down with their food, Mark walked in. “Morning,” he said passing by to get something to eat.

“Is he alright?” Jasiid asked.

“Not sure,” she said. “He will be, at least I hope so.” She watched him until he made his way over to them, taking a seat next to Jasiid. “Nice of you to show up.”

“I did get a wake up call, didn’t I?”

The three of them sat in silence. Jasiid started recounting a story of their time together in flight academy, but she was only half paying attention to it. Mark smiled, remembering the past they’d shared. It hit her just then that she was alone, they all were. They were alone together, but she had nobody from before. No family, no former friends, no one who even knew of her. All of them gone. She suddenly understood how Mark felt. Even he had somebody, though.

“Hey, you awake in there?” asked Jasiid.

“Huh? Yeah, just spaced out for a bit.” She chased the thoughts away. It was best to let go of what was already lost.

***

Mark, Eric and her exit the elevator to the service hangar floor. Leonard was already there along with several of the other pilots. The schedule for today was to run simulations on how the five squadron pilots work with each other. Five interceptors were lined up on the deck. The squadrons would go one after the other.

“Nervous?” Mark asked.

“A bit, but where would the fun be otherwise?”

“I for one am not looking forward to this,” Eric said.

“You’ll do fine,” she said. “It’s not like replacing any of us is an option at this point. Do as bad as you want.”

They joined the other pilots and Leonard addressed them once everyone was present. “You fifteen pilots are the first line of defence to our people. Not all of you are qualified for the task, granted, but I trust that after today we will know for sure whether or not you’re all ready. The five interceptors are locked in simulation mode, and we will be providing battle scenarios for you and will track your responses. Red Squad, you’re up first.”

The rest of the pilots looked at him, and he nodded. It was clear who they saw as their leader and who they saw as their boss. She of all people knew the difference between the two.

They each got into their ships and started them up. She knew the controls like second nature. Despite being in simulation mode, the sounds and vibrations mimicked the real thing.

“Red Leader signing on,” Mark said.

“Red Two here,” she said. Eric, Carol and Henry sounded off their designations too. Her screen pinged to let her know Mark decided to set to a delta formation in defensive tactics. She shifted back, and doing so the screen showed his ship to the front-left of her. Even their ship’s display was hacked to give them a show.

“So, any idea what’s going to happen?” Eric asked.

Mark answered: “None, sorry. They didn’t tell me, so just go with it.”

They idled around for a while, long enough for her to get bored and slump back into her chair. She assumed it was to let them habituate. She wanted to complain, but held it in as it was time to act the part.

“Contacts closing in with Mothership,” Intel said. She immediately pulled her self up to the controls ready to go.

“Ship markings appear to be Taiidan, we’re clear to engage.” She followed his lead, the other three did the same. The first pass got them two enemy ships.

“I’m hit!” Eric said. The sim was advanced, it even faked enemy fire hitting the hull.

“Prepare for second pass. Fire on their middle ranks, try to break up the formation.” She got one of them and rolled down out of the line of fire. Carol followed her move saving her ship. They formed back up after the pass. On the HUD she could see Eric’s ship had taken the most damage so far and hull integrity was at half.

“We’ve got a tail,” Henry said.

“Evasive!” Mark called out.

“Maneuver four-five-oh?” Carol called out.

“Rodger,” said Mark.

Henry and Carol cut back and fired on the follower, taking him out.

“Above!” she called out. A second squadron came in from above them. They pulled up, avoiding enemy fire in the process.

Eric said, “Docking with repair corvette, I’ve taken too many hits.”

“Rodger that, let’s circle and keep guard in the meantime.” The enemies were cutting them a break it seemed, since they didn’t attack while this went down.

“Mothership taking enemy fire,” Command’s voice called out.

“Shit!” They sped off and fired on the assailants, drawing their attention away. The dogfight continued on for a half hour. They all had to take turns docking with a repair ship. A support frigate was available to them, and it saved them after a real bad pass that left them all critically damaged.

“Two squads coming up from behind, evasive again and split. I’ll go up, you and Carol try to drop down and meet up behind them.” She saw what he was getting at, and followed along. She pulled down as he went the opposite way, and Carol followed her. The others followed Mark, and it worked. Meeting up behind them, they opened fire. Despite this, however, they weren’t out of it yet.

“Third squadron behind us! How many are there?” Henry said before his ship took too much damage. They pulled hard to the right, but couldn’t shake them. The other two squadrons had come back around, and Carol was next to go, followed by Mark.

“Shit, shit, shit! Split up and head back to the support frigate,” she told Eric. This worked for the time being, but they didn’t last much longer. They were two against a dozen, and went down one by one but not without taking out a couple in the meantime. Upon her ship blowing up, she palmed her face with both hands taking off her helmet and opening up the hatch. The hangar’s teal light reminded her that it was bound to end one way or another.

“Hey,” she called over after powering down, “you all alright?”

“Could have gone worse,” Eric said.

Mark said, “Good fight, team.”

They were met with applause after stepping out onto the hangar deck. “Impressive work, Red Squad. No spoiling it for the rest, they have no idea what they’re in for. Come with me,” Leonard said to them. Green Squad was up next. They walked away from the others to discuss. “To be honest, I didn’t expect you all to last half as long so good work. Eric performed a lot better than we anticipated based on his lack of experience.”

“I’m calling it luck, mostly.”

“Don’t be modest, now. You kept up easily enough. Even gave you a false engine alarm. Good work checking the fuel line pressure. Carol and Henry performed marginally above what we anticipated too, all good to see. Mark, no surprise with these results. Still caught you off-guard at the end though.”

“Yes, well in a real battle we would have allies to support us. Can’t take on three enemy squadrons with five ships no matter how good you are.”

“Fair enough. It was designed to be unfair anyway. As for you, Isabella, work on controlling your emotions in combat. Blood pressure readings weren’t ideal, but other than that, same goes for your performance.”

“In her defence, sir, her last experience was quite traumatic. Cut her some slack, she still outlasted me.” He ignored the comment and signalled them to return to the group. He had the next simulation to conduct.

Mark and her waited a few moments. “Thanks,” she said.

“What kind of squad leader would I be if I didn’t stick up for my wingmen?”

“I should still up my medication dosage. I felt…”

He nodded.

***

She lay beside him considering whether or not to leave or stay the night again. He pulled his fingers through her sweaty hair. “What are we doing?” she said. “Honestly. Is it right? Technically you’re not my superior, so there’s no problems there, but still.”

“So you regret it then?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“And during the act, are you thinking of her?” He pulled his hand away. “Because if so, then I’d like to remind you I’m not her, and it’s not fair to me if you are.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, if you want to be honest about it. I really don’t. Yes, the love of my life died only a week ago along with over three hundred and eighty million others. It still hardly feels real sometimes, but I know it is, and I know she’s never coming back. I’m not pretending you’re her, Isabella. I’ll admit it, this isn’t the smartest decision I’ve made, but I never said I was always smart.” He grabbed her hand.

“Yeah, we’re pretty stupid aren’t we?” she said. “I lost everyone too, you know. Whether I gave up my Kharak life or not, I still lost them.”

“I know. We’ll see how this plays out. Deal?”

“Deal.” She nestled against him and made up her mind.