FREEFALL ( 01/13/25 *)
Lockspur sat in the engineer's seat, behind the two pilot seats. No big surprise there. He was always there, running a hundred different system checks. Although the arthritis in his hands slowed him down. But old age and pain aside, Carlos Lockspur was, if nothing else, consistent with keeping the ship's little details in order. A smooth running ship is a safe ship, is his motto. But this time, Dahl realized he was running all the checks at once.
The amount of raw data scrolling past his monitors made Dahl dizzy. The lingering effects of hyper-sleep worked at her misfiring nervous system. She turned from the blaring image, clinched her eyelids and wondered how he could make sense of.it all. He may be an old fart, but there was no way he had alzheimers. His neurons were firing just fine.
Dahl looked around. Moss was nowhere to be seen. He fled to the weapons storage compartment, where he often holed up to deal with stress and plan upcoming missions.
Dahl heard a voice and looked toward the empty commander's seat again. No one was there. She was certain someone had called her. As she closed the hatch, a thought occurred to her. He's in the back; no one is watching.
There was one crucial difference between Lockspur and the much younger interim commander. Moss concentrated on the mission while Lockspur concentrated on the ship. Moss's motto was a well-armed team comes home again.
Dahl slipped past Lockspur, eyeing the Commander's seat in the near distance. She had flown in the copilot's seat many times, but never in the Commander's seat. Johns or Moss reserved the pilot's seat for themselves. They were the mission commanders. Not Dahl. She was the boss's niece. A surrogate daughter comes to live with her uncle after the mysterious death of his brother- and sister-in-law.
Carlos Lockspur didn't see Dahl enter the compartment. Or so she believed. He only had eyes for numbers, and they were always about keeping the ship up and running. Much like Moss and his military toys, Lockspur obsessed over the inner workings of the ship and all its operating systems.
Dahl admired their resolve and learned much of hers from them. In the years since the three first met, Moss and Lockspur had become not just her friends, but her teachers and surrogate family.
Dahl stepped up beside the empty commander's seat, sneaking a look over her shoulder to see if Lockspur had noticed her pass. She was sure he hadn't. She caressed the headrest of the empty seat. Why shouldn't I sit there? It's just a seat. But it wasn't just a seat- not to Moss, and not to her uncle Johns- and she knew it wasn't. The seat represented the pinnacle of seniority and authority.
Dahl ran a slender finger over the contours of the control stick, tickling the surface. She longed for the feel of the seat's supple leather against her slender body. It didn't matter if it was an identical seat to the one on the left. To her, the co-pilot's seat was ordinary. Anyone could sit there. She craved the power of command. Having her own crew was one more step in her journey to becoming the next Lady Hemmingford.
And why shouldn't I? I'm an excellent pilot. I've flown hundreds of times. She flicked a glance at Lockspur again. He was still fiddling with his readouts. They would hold his attention for hours.
Dahl wasn't lying about being an excellent pilot. She had amazed her teachers. Intuitive and natural is what Johns and Moss had called her. But regardless of their accolades, she had never flown in the Captain's seat. It'll be OK, she assured herself, settling into the seat, smelling the rich leather and feeling the supple leather stretch around her backside. The seat smelled good. She felt in command. I'll just try it on for a little while. No harm; no foul. She peeked around the edge of the seat. Carlos won't notice, she told herself as the corner of her mouth rose into an uncertain smirk. Dahl turned back to her impending awful choice, covering the console, welcoming her.
Ten minutes later, the ship bucked as if trying to throw the impostor out of the forbidden seat. Lockspur buckled his 4-point harness and called over the comms. "To anyone who may be listening. We're here."
"Hey, grandpa, did you fasten your seat belt?" Moss called back. "We wouldn't want you to fall out and break a hip."
"Hilarious, Amigo. Hilarious."
After months of frozen travel and waking nightmares, the trio reached their arid desert target. The lone ship skimmed M6-117s upper troposphere. The ship's autopilot made several course corrections, putting the ship in high orbit, skimming meters above the thin air, separating the planet's troposphere from the frigid vacuum of open space.
On M6-117, the atmosphere is thinner than most habitable planets. If you don't overexert yourself, you can move around.
But as labored breathing was not an option on an unfriendly planet, the team would use small 02 canisters to supplement their needs.
Dahl eyed the autopilot control. Her silver/blue eyes twinkled. It wouldn't be hard to take control. No one would be the wiser. What could it hurt? Her hand floated over the controls. She glanced over her shoulder again. Hatch still closed. Engineer is still busy. Time to act. Check.
Lockspur squinted at his monitor, pretending to focus on the Desolate, rocky terrain racing by far below. Lockspur focused every neuron on the pilot's seat.
Dahl fingered the joy stick, knowing she shouldn't, but unable to stop herself. She looked over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth rising into a sly smirk, and flicked off the autopilot. A small warning light flashed twice and a split second before the alarm outed her terrible choice, Dahl silenced it.
The stick jerked forward, and the ship began an imperceptible nose dive into the upper atmosphere. Dahl pulled back, trying not to draw Lockspur's attention. The ship bobbed up out of the thin atmosphere and Lockspur shifted in his seat as if turning to look. Her heart filled her throat. Lockspur shifted back. She peeked over her shoulder, tightening her grip. Ballsy. But you can't hide it now.
Dahl hadn't considered getting caught until now. Someone back at base would notice the infraction in the ship's log. A few tense moments ticked off, and Dahl pressed the autopilot button again. It did not re-engage. The stick remained planted in her grasp. She pressed the autopilot button again. Still nothing. She pressed it in rapid succession. It refused to engage. "Dammit," she muttered with a scowl. "Should have taken a little more time to consider the consequences of a mini-mutiny." Dahl pressed the button with all her might and heard the button crack. "Great. You fucking broke the autopilot," she whispered to herself.
Lockspur smiled.
She sat back, looked out at the star filling the void above the dazzling daylight below. Well, fuck. I guess there's no going back now. Might as well enjoy it while I can.
Dahl didn't understand why she felt anxious and downright bitchy. Or why she was sitting in the seat to begin with. She didn't want to be commander, she just wanted them to be proud of her, and now, she had sabotaged herself. There was no way her teammates were going to be okay with this betrayal. Her piss poor behavior had little to do with a long hyper-sleep and a lot to do with the unnatural effect of the region. She supposed it could result from the excruciating reanimation.
Her gums bled and itched like a million ants were moving under the throbbing tissues. She had messaged them for days. And there was a return of her childhood nail biting. She felt jittery and angry and wanted to fight, and even though the auto-doc prescribed several anti-anxiety meds, Dahl hadn't taken them. The meds wrapped her mind and body in a layer of oily plastic wrap.
Dahl's recent return to nail biting left her nail beds stinging and exposed. Spotted blood covered everything with a drying layer of anxiety. She had tried to stop the constant gnawing, but failed. And after a few days of agony, Dahl donned a set of black leather driving gloves. They looked ridiculous, but they kept her from chewing her fingertips to the bone.
The ship lurched hard to one side and slammed Dahl into the console. In a dazed state, she allowed the ship's nose to pitch forward, diving the ship into the upper atmosphere. It drilled into the atmosphere, hull heating to an alarming orange hue. A super heated layer of fiery ozone rushed past the windscreen.
Dahl fisted the autopilot button. It would not re-engage. She slammed the comms button. "Moss. Get up here!" The joy stick jerked out of her hand. She grabbed it and it fought her. She regained control, and the ship leveled out in the thickening atmosphere. There was no hiding it now. M6-117 had caught them in its grip, and gravity was pulling them down.
Moss lurched in his seat. Dahl's heated voice was the first he had heard in months, and to him, it was coarse and grating.
The auto-doc had set their recovery schedules to keep them apart and none of them had minded the added isolation, or gone looking for the others. None of them were decent company for the others and they all realized it. So, they stayed away.
Lockspur looked down at his console with a smirk and flicked off the auto-pilot bypass switch. He looked over his shoulder, shook his head at Dahl sitting in Moss' seat and thought, bad idea young lady. He looked at the closed hatch, re-accessing his choices and thought, Great. Moss is going to blame me for letting this happen. Like anyone can stop her.
Unlike his teammates, Lockspur had experienced the effects of the region before and had a plan of how to cope with the glut of negative emotions he knew they would all experience. But when the opportunity to do the right thing presented itself, he sat back and did nothing. Shit, he thought, maybe bypassing the autopilot wasn't the best idea. He looked over his shoulder at Dahl sweating the impending conflict and thought, At least, nobody will know what I did.
Lockspur knew they had to question everything three times before doing anything once. In this region of space, reckless impulsivity, debilitating anxiety, and hostilities were the norm. And he had just given in to a juvenile prank, placing them all in serious trouble. Great, he thought. When she needed you the most, you were a dickhead. Real nice guy.
Both Moss and Lockspur saw Dahl's excitement about her first mission and noted a tinge of anxiety they might not take her seriously. More than anything else, she wanted to prove herself, not just to them, but to herself. They had reassured her she would do great. But now they had arrived. The remnants of a long trip, coupled with the region's peculiar effects, had worked against them.
Under normal circumstances, Dahl would never sit in the Commander's seat. As it was, both her and Lockspur's combined moments of poor impulse control had just put the complete team in danger. And there was no telling what would happen when Moss found Dahl in his seat. If he were acting the way they were. Things may not go well. And the longer they were in the region, the more its negative effects stimulated their rage centers.
Dahl wanted to keep Moss and Lockspur from noticing her bloody nail. They knew why she chewed her nails before and didn't want them to have another reason to doubt her abilities. Unbeknownst to her, the visions of old sins had come back to haunt them all. The sounds of her sister's screams chased her around the ship almost as soon as she left the medbay. Her sister's voice asked, why did you let them hurt me? Why didn't you stop them? Dahl knew it was a figment of the region, but it was driving her crazy. She smashed a switch on the pilot's console and cringed as her gloved fingertips throbbed and burned. They were aching reminders of a dark time she wanted to forget.
Where there had once been a sense of team and belonging, now, a fiery sense of doubt filled her thoughts. She believed neither Moss nor Lockspur wanted her there or thought they needed her on this mission. She hoped it wasn't true. Why hadn't she taken her meds? Her anxiety was worse than it had ever been. It separated her from the assembled team.
Dahl had hung around her teammates for years, and still felt like a newcomer to the long established team. The main giveaways to her newness being her pristine urban camo pants with matching camo blouse- which were both starched crisp enough to cut flesh and could stand up on their own. Lockspur had given her 5 pairs of each as a welcome to the crew gift. He also gave her a 500-year-old Japanese tanto with a damascus blade folded more than a hundred times. It must be worth a fortune, she thought. Moss had given her 2 just-out-of-the-box pairs of combat boots desperately in need of a spit shine and a custom Colt 50 auto. It had started out as a Colt 1911, 45, but was re-chambered to fit cut down .50 Action Express casings. The muzzle opening was large enough to swallow her thumb. When she opened the boots, he cringed at the bare, unprotected leather. He told her a soldier should wear boots correctly or not at all. And she should be able to see her own reflection in the toes. She looked at her feet. They glowed.
Lockspur watched Dahl with an amused interest, thinking she looked like an Army/Navy store display mannequin propped up in the Commander's seat. Had they not been bouncing and skipping off the upper atmosphere at 27,000 miles an hour, it would have looked comical. As it was, even with the looming fear of burning up on entry, he took the time to snap a picture just so he could tease her about it later. After the first turbulence almost bounced his face off the Engineer's console, his thoughts of teasing subsided.
Dahl looked green, but she was ready for action. The sobering realization gave him reason to pause. She was ready. The three of them had spent thousands of hours ensuring she prepared herself for the riggers of the job.
As they plummeted like a falling meteorite through the upper atmosphere, the olive-skinned half Spaniard / half Native American sat behind Dahl, thinking about the eager little kid hanging around the docks. She was a bratty pest with a million questions about being a mercenary. They saw something tough and unyielding in her eyes and realized there would come a day when she joined the crew.
But not like this; Lockspur thought, not without warning and not on a mission this dangerous. She's out of her league, and her lack of experience increased everyone's danger. He didn't want to see Dahl get hurt, or worse yet, killed.
Dahl understood she had a great deal to prove before her teammates would trust her or place their lives in her hands. Lilith had thrust her upon them, like it or not. But in the here and now. In this nightmare fueled region, she thought, too bad. Lilith said I could come, so get over it. Their frustration was a lack of authority. Lilith had thrown Dahl into the mix without a care in the world for her safety or theirs.
Dahl had come on several runs prior and while she had not taken part in any apprehensions, she had filled a support role at the security console. She had learned everything about the business they would teach her. And the tres amigos had taught her a lot. Marksmanship: Johns said she was natural with any rifle. Lockspur had taught her hand to hand, and told the others she was lethal at close range and better with a knife than most mercenaries he had ever worked with. Moss had spent hundreds of hours teaching her tactics and strategy.
Moss and Lockspur knew this run wasn't an ordinary recon mission, or a simple snatch and grab. Things on M6-117 did not fear the law or weapons, or anything smaller than them. And compared to most of the things down there, they would be the weak ones. Moss had told Dahl, "Those monsters only know hunger."
Dahl's teammates met her on the docks when she was 8. As girls, she and her twin sister Tahlia had never left John's side. But, unlike Tahlia, Dahl wanted to be a mercenary. When they arrived, Moss and Lockspur were told their parents had died. And now, 10 years later, Dahl was family. She was willful and defiant and smart and funny and fearless. And now, they were heading down to a world like M6-117, where a lack of fear equated to not giving a monster its due respect was dangerous.
Dahl sat in the pilot's seat basking in the fantasy of command, fantasizing about a time when she would have her own ship. About a time when she could rule the docks. The look on her face gave away her innermost desires. Lockspur didn't like it.
Lilith Hemmingford operated the largest clandestine mercenary outfit in the galaxy. Everyone in her employ addressed her as Lady Hemmingford. Of course, behind her back, most of them called her the Lady in Black. Some teased she was the Dark Athena. Some, like Lockspur, believed it. Lady Lilith Hemmingford, the Goddess of war and strife. She heard them say it and set out to prove them right.
Neither of Dahl's crewmates liked her recent up-tick of cocky demeanor during the few months leading up to this mission. Even before joining the team, Dahl's ego was getting big. Sure, she was fast to learn a new skill and lethal if you let your guard down; but all practice and no field experience can make Jill a very dangerous girl to go on a mission with.
To make their uneasiness worse, Lady Hemmingford ordered them to keep Dahl safe at all costs, telling them she was important to the future of humanity. Lockspur shrugged those kinds of cryptic comments off, believing Lilith was always trying to live up to the hype. But he had to admit, Lilith seemed to know a little too much about what was coming.
The one time Lilith had warned Lockspur about a dangerous mission, he had ignored her cryptic warning and it cost him 30 stitches, a shitload of aches and pains, and a week in traction. And worse yet, Lilith had gone to great lengths to give him the whole I told you speech. He never forgot the lesson or lived down the repeated teasing. "Goddamn bruja can see the future," he told Moss, who told him it was just a coincidence.
Before this outing, Lilith had taken Lockspur aside and issued him special orders. Nothing new for Lilith. She gave specific orders to individual team members all the time. But this time, something was different. Lilith gave Lockspur a package for delivery to a nonspecific target on sight. And instructions he should hide the package from his teammates. In addition, he was not to divulge the meeting to the others. Lilith would not explain any details other than you'll know what to do when the time comes. In all his years working with Johns and Moss, he had hidden nothing from them. And now there was this ugly secret wedged between the three of them. It felt like a betrayal of trust. But Lilith was compelling. So, he did as she ordered. She knew he would., and so did he.
They loved Dahl like proud fathers. But engrained relationship would only make a dangerous mission worse. It's an inevitability. When feelings are involved, shit gets complicated fast. Their bonds would change mission dynamics in ways none of them could foresee. And through it all, there was an ugly secret keeping them apart. The effects of the region and the growing wish he hadn't come on this damn mission made Lockspur question his every move. It was making him weak.
"Are you coming or not?" Dahl said, staring through the windscreen at the now glowing nose cone.
"In a minute. The autopilot will sort it out." Moss replied. His deep voice boomed through Dahl's headset, making her eardrums vibrate. Moss hadn't meant to be so gruff, but his voice triggered her anger.
"We don't have a goddamn minute. The autopilot won't engage." Dahl said, eyes going wide. She had just outed herself.
"What the fuck do you mean the autopilot won't engage? Who disengaged it?" He demanded, yelling into the comm's control.
"I did," Lockspur blurted, before Dahl could say anything more incriminating. "I was running a systems check and found a ground fault in the autopilot circuitry. When I tried to reroute the circuit, the system fried. I'll need to make repairs before we engage the system again. Until the maintenance bots make repairs, we aren't going anywhere."
"You think?" Moss replied, pounding his fist on the workbench in front of him. "Why didn't you check it before we arrived?"
"Stop giving him shit." Dahl blurted. "He didn't do anything wrong."
Lockspur twisted around and mouthed shut the hell up, and Dahl stuck her tongue out. He scowled at her.
"I guess it's convenient you were on the bridge when the autopilot shit the bed, right?" Moss asked, getting up and kicking his high-back chair. It rolled into a corner.
"I had a million other things to check, amigo." Lockspur said, holding up a warning hand, signalling for Dahl's continued silence. "And for the record, I told her to take over before we burn up?"
The suspicious voice emanating from the comms speaker made Lockspur uneasy, and Dahl's unpredictable tones only increased his anxiety. There was a collision of wills coming, and none of them needed it. Especially when they were entering the moon's atmosphere.
"I'll be right there," Moss snapped, not appreciating Dahl's need to don a snooty authoritative tone. A tone he was certain she would not have taken if Johns were aboard to hear it.
"Now." Dahl blurted curtly, feeling an urgency to find her place in the pecking order. "We're already in the upper atmosphere, and I need your help."
"Just turn it back on." Moss countered.
"I tried, damn it. It won't engage." Dahl said, punching the button. The autopilot engaged and her mouth fell open. She swirled towards Lockspur and blurted, "You dick."
He placed his forefinger in front of his lips in a shushing gesture. He did not want Moss the hear. "I'm not proud of it."
Moss rubbed the sweat from his forehead and mouthed the word fuck. "Do I even want to know what's going on up there, compadre?"
"Probably not."
"Just get up here," Dahl snapped.
"Listen, Missy." Moss fired back, looking down at the black canvas bag in his hand as if he wanted to whack her with it. "You are aware, I'm... the commander?"
"I am," Dahl replied, rolling her eyes. "And I'm also aware the commander was not at his post when we arrived."
"If the goddam autopilot was still on, it would not have mattered."
"Well. It wasn't."
Lockspur turned in his seat, flashing her a warning glare, and she shrugged.
The ship buffeted in the upper atmosphere as the increasingly dense air squeezed the outer hull. The turbulence almost dumped Moss on the floor before the autopilot re-engaged, snatching the controls out of Dahl's hand.
"Dammit," Moss raged. "Are you in control or not?"
"She's got it," Lockspur said.
"If I wanted you input, I'd ask."
Lockspur pressed a button on the console repeatedly, and a flashing red light in front of Moss pulsed an angry shut up signal.
"And don't button me."
Under normal circumstances, Dahl avoided arguments. It solved nothing, and more often than not, left festering hostilities in the wake of heated conflict. But the longer they stayed in the forbidden planets region, the more Dahl felt compelled to defend herself. Although she didn't understand why. To her knowledge, she and Moss had never argued in all the time she had known him. And even now, she didn't want to argue, she just couldn't stop herself from over reacting.
Dahl latched the heavy clasps of her 4-point safety harness and rubbed her ears. The endless silence of space was becoming the shrill blare of super-heated air rushing over a now blistering hull. The ship was entering the atmosphere much faster and at risk of burning up. Adjusting herself in the seat, Dahl prepared for the jarring reentry hurtling towards them at breakneck speed. This could be a rough one and without a copilot with her, it could be a deadly one.
A tall, muscular, black man in his mid-30s yanked the cockpit hatch open. He hooked the toe of his spit-shined boot on the lower lip of the steel frame and stumbled in, catching himself on the olive-skinned engineer's chair-back.
"Dammit," Moss grumbled as a barrage of inaudible expletives trailed away beneath his panting breath. He had sprinted all the way from the aft weapons room to the bridge. Moss shoved himself upright, shaking off the embarrassment of almost toppling over while dragging Lockspur down with him. "What's going on in here?" he demanded, glaring at Dahl. A thought formed in his mind and punched him square in the face. She is sitting in my seat. He made to move forward and grab her and Lockspur swiveled around, threw out his left foot, blocking him from entering any further.
"Not gonna happen, amigo."
"Move your foot."
"Can't do it; it's just a seat."
Moss didn't know what he liked less, the needless struggle with squad dynamics or the cocky bullshit of a trainee trying to prove herself. "If she wanted to fly, all she had to do was ask."
"Let it go, amigo. We have bigger issues to deal with. Like not burning up in the next few minutes."
"Fine," Moss said in a coarse grumble. The region had stimulated his rave center since they arrived. Dammit, he thought, now she thinks her position comes with rank. "Great," Moss muttered. "Now, Uncle John's little princess thinks..." He stopped mid-sentence, taking a deep breath to calm himself. He knew he was being unreasonable.
Lockspur turned to Moss with an empathetic expression, pretending not to see it. Lockspur removed an unused cleaning rag from his left cargo pocket and wiped the sweat off his bald head. His hand jittered. He tried to hide it, not wanting the others to think he was out of control. The hallucinations caused by the effects of the region resulted in Moss being hounded from the armory to the bridge by half a dozen of his dead comrades. He knew they were only leftover hallucinations of hyper-sleep, but damn if they didn't seem real. Before entering the compartment, he checked to ensure he hadn't pissed himself.
"What were you doing back there, amigo?" Lockspur demanded, banging a fist on his console. He already knew the answer. Moss was a stickler for clean gear and even cleaner weapons.
Moss stood there glaring at the back of Dahl's head as if building a scenario wherein he yanked her out of his seat and paddled her ass.. But more than violent fantasy, what he wanted was for Dahl to get out of his seat. A seat he had worked for years to earn the right to sit in. And here she comes, just walking in, sitting down and taking my post. "I wasn't doing anything," he said, drilling holes in the back of her head with his eyes.
Lockspur cleared his throat, trying to draw him out of the reverie of dream-state madness. Under normal conditions, Moss would never act on the outside forces stroking his anger. But these weren't normal conditions, and Lockspur could see Moss was nearing the point of giving in to his darker impulses. He coughed again, wanting Moss to focus on anything but the inevitable, fast approaching test of wills.
"Weapons check." Moss admitted. His somber tone suggested his displeasure with Dahl could spill over into their conversation. It showed Lockspur could divert him from his current path.
"Let it go, amigo." Lockspur warned again. "It's just the region." He knew a heated confrontation could put their lives in jeopardy. But neither of them seemed willing to control their behaviors, or even though they were both aware, they were being unreasonable.
"That's my seat." Moss repeated, his thundering voice echoing through the cockpit. He wanted Dahl to hear him and say something, giving him a reason to go the fuck off. He stared at the back of her head, imagining she had heard him and was smirking through the windscreen.
Lockspur saw Dahl's reflection in the windscreen and saw she was indeed grinning through the windscreen. From Moss's vantage point, he could not see her.
"If you need a seat, amigo. Take mine." Lockspur said, trying to further defuse the escalating volatility. What he wanted to say was, cut the shit, you big baby. But why cause further hostilities, or escalate the situation to a dangerous level? Moss' head wasn't screwed on straight. He needed time to gain control, and the glaring look in his eyes did little to hide his inner a-hole. And come to think of it, Dahl was looking more than a little bitchy herself.
"Who's side are you on?" Moss replied, staring at Dahl fiddling with several knobs and buttons on the pilot's console. Unbeknownst to Moss, she was indeed fiddling with switches to aggravate him. He didn't know it; but Lockspur did.
"Ours." Lockspur countered, losing a little of his tact and a whole shit-load of his patience. The idea of letting them duke it out crossed his mind, but then he remembered he was supposed to head off the impending power struggle, not encourage it. "No good can come from seat wars, amigo. And even if it could, you don't have the time to wage it. We are going to die while you stand here looking like a child."
"It's my-" Moss began.
"Christ," Lockspur blurted, cutting Moss off before he could continue. "Amigo, she's just a kid. And you're supposed to be the fucking commander. So, try acting like one before we end up dead," Lockspur ranted in a harsh whisper.
Moss glared down at him and Lockspur turned back to his duties, leaving a few moments for Moss to process his response. "Let it go, amigo." Lockspur repeated. "We have a mission to complete."
Moss looked from him to Dahl and let out an exasperated sigh. "She is a monumental pain in the-"
"True." Lockspur said, cutting him off again as he swiveled around, almost knocking Moss over. "And such is the folly of youth." He glared up at Moss for a quick moment, before adding, "Pity, you seem so hell bent on returning to your own youth." He had finished dancing around it. They were both being childish, and Lockspur wanted them to cease the hostilities. He smirked up at Moss. "But you have always been a little anxious right before the tailgate drops. Aye, Amigo?"
"And you're not?" Moss countered, jabbing a finger towards the hyper-tightened harness holding Lockspur in his seat. The sidebar had diverted Moss' attention away from the power struggle. He looked down at the heavy black canvas bag Moss dragged in. "It would appear we share a common dread."
"That's why we work so well together."
"Indeed, Amigo. Indeed."
Prior to joining the crew, Moss had been a captain in an elite Company Rangers outfit before the corps booted him out for physically disagreeing with several orders leading to the deaths of half the men in his command. Moss had been a model officer and a career minded leader. Although, his bruised and battered company commander would disagree. His Company Commander claimed Moss placed the wellbeing of his men above the mission. A sentiment making Moss wish he had finished the job of beating the man to within an inch of his life.
As for Lockspur, he left cargo transport to join Dahl's uncle, Colonel Nathaniel Johns, while docked at Sol Lucia 20 years earlier. He had gotten drunk and helped Johns chase a fugitive into an alleyway, only to find Lady Lilith Hemmingford instead. The details of the frightening encounter, as Dahl tells it, are a tale of drunken exaggeration and the dangers of excess drug use. But no one can say what happened for certain, as Lockspur never spoke of the incident in great detail again. The surrounding rumors swirled and grew throughout the years, and Lady Hemmingford was more than happy to fan the exaggerations to new heights.
An eye-squinting glare burst through the windscreen as the nose cone heated to a cornea searing brilliant red. The light reflecting off Dahl's eyes made Lockspur remember the first time he met Lilith on Sol Lucia. The memory of what she looked like haunted him even now, two decades later.
"Get strapped in," Dahl ordered, peering over her shoulder at Moss. "I need help to slow our descent or we're gonna skip off the atmosphere and break up in space or sink in and fry like steaks on a grill."
"I hate this part!" Lockspur thought aloud, swiveling back around and seized the console with a white knuckled death grip, bracing for the worst; he always did. Dahl had taken to fucking with him on reentry and Moss had turned an amused, if not blind, eye to her torments.
"You realize that's my seat?" Moss snapped, standing next to Dahl, waiting for her to vacate his spot.
"Maybe next time you should be in it when we arrive," Dahl said, staring at the glowing nose minutes from burning off.
"Don't question me." Moss snapped.
"Do we have time for this shit?" Lockspur asked.
Moss saw the white hot nose cone and red warning lights, and slid into the co-pilot's seat. He threw the four point harness over his shoulder and hooked himself in the seat as he fumbled through several calculations on a nearby consol. "Decrease our descent vector by 18°, maintain our pitch attitude and extend the flaps to maximum."
Dahl did as Moss instructed, and as he watched her effortlessly making the course corrections, the glaring light forcing its way through the windscreen dimmed. Their flight pattern smoothed, warning lights blinked out, and the hull cooled.
A real natural in the seat, he thought. Then the evil little voice added, just not my seat. He laughed and shook his head, thinking, shut up dickhead.
Dahl had an intuitive style of flying, like a bird following magnetic fields. But in the here and now, she and Moss were fighting off a storm front of raging anger and the ghosts of their pasts. If any of them had been thinking right, they would have waited before attempting a landing. But, as it was, damn the torpedoes were going in now, like it or not. As for Lockspur, he was on the or not side.
Dahl looked over her shoulder, studied Lockspur sitting at his engineer's station, gripping the console for dear life, and smiled a Faustian grin. She wrenched back on the stick. The nose cone rose. She jammed the stick forward and the nose cone dove. And back and forth, it wavered until Lockspur's toasted almond complexion morphed into a sickened green. The sweaty, hopeless expression someone gets when speeding out of the bottom of a roller-coaster ride they shouldn't have gotten on.
"Really," Moss warned, looking over his shoulder at his comrade's worsening facial expression. His face had faded from pale green to whistling tea pot scarlet. "He's gonna blow."
Lockspur's stomach dropped as if gravity aimed an overloaded slingshot filled with puke at the roof of his mouth. Spit built in his mouth. His eyes watered and guts flip-flopped. Time slowed to a crawl as the unwanted game of who will blow first played out.
The rubber band stretched between the bottom of his stomach, and the roof of his mouth snapped. The entirety of Lockspur's stomach contents exploded upwards, coating his throat and scorching the roof of his mouth. He covered his blistering lips, preventing a geyser of chunky bile from spraying the pristine console in front of him. A split second later, he leaned to the side and laid down a soggy carpet of goo. Its stench wafted through the cockpit like a cloud of mustard gas drifting through a WWI trench line. Everyone's eyes watered. Moss gagged and Dahl covered her nose in disgust.
"Every time?" Dahl asked, as if she weren't responsible for the gastronomic eruption spreading across the cockpit floor.
"No," he answered, forcing down the remaining acid clogging his searing esophagus. He fought off the urge to grab a handful of vomit and throw it at the back of Dahl's head. The thought trailed away. Replaced by the realization, his cohorts were laughing. "Not every time."
"Compadre, that's disgusting." Moss said, waving the stench of stomach acid away from his nostrils as he stifled the grin forming on his face.
"You think." Lockspur replied, spitting a multi-colored gob of snot on the back of Dahl's headrest, missing the back of her short blonde hair by an inch. It oozed down the back of her seat. Would serve her right, he thought, wiping his dripping chin with the back of his well-pressed sleeve. His now giddy teammates stifled their giggles as he bitched beneath his breath.
"What did you eat?" Dahl asked, struggling to contain her own stomach contents as the stench churned in her searing sinuses.
Lockspur glared at the festering carpet. "Chimichangas and a bag of sour patch candies. It tasted great on the way down; not so much on the way up."
"Out here?" Dahl replied, waving a hand in front of her face, trying to clear away the assault on her sinuses. "Where the hell did you find chimichangas out here?"
"Chimichangas are one thing," Moss said, "Where the shit did you get sour patch candies? They haven't made those in 150 years."
"Lilith gets them for me. No idea where. They must cost a fortune. "
"Suck up." Moss said.
"Suck this," Lockspur said, and both he and Dahl broke into hysterics. "I always bring a little home with me on every mission," Lockspur added, thinking about the duffel bag full of snacks he had hoarded in a locker out back.
"Home," Dahl repeated. "What do you know about Earth? You've never been to Earth." She was right. Lockspur, like most mercs, had never been to Earth. Most mercs were off world trash or military rejects looking to earn a few easy credits just to get by. Most mercs never survived more than a few missions. But John's, Moss and Lockspur had survived hundreds.
The ebbing red glow illuminating Dahl's alabaster gave way to an empty, pale blue sky. The ship flew straight in the frigid air of the atmosphere. They had arrived 3 months, 18 days, 6 hours and 5 minutes after departing the guild docks on Sol Luca.
Moss jumped out of his seat, causing Dahl to lurch in her seat. Lockspur shook his head as Moss headed towards the armory. He returned a short while later, hauling two heavy black duffel bags behind him and a load of weapons slung over his shoulder.
"Crap," Lockspur said, as Moss lugged the overburdened load towards the front of the compartment. "You are fucking paranoid."
"If by paranoid, you mean prepared," Moss replied, tossing Lockspur a bag of armor, pushing him deeper into the engineer's seat. "Yes, I am. And thanks for noticing." Moss said, remembering his final meeting with Johns before they left Sol Luca. "Johns warned me what's down there." The ominous warning warped his face into a mixture of concern and uncertainty. The worried expression gave rise to an ominous dread in the others.
"Vanjo," Lockspur whispered, shoving the bag off his lap just in time to catch the weapon hurtling towards him. The bag fell off his lap, barely missing the puddle of puke. He fumbled to secure his rifle.
Moss looked at the bag sitting at the edge of the puddle. "Nice job, compadre."
"Amigo, I was about to say the same thing." Lockspur replied, kicking the bag away from the puddle.
"Cut the shit," Dahl said, amped up on the leftover adrenaline of entry.
Her teammates glared at her, and she looked away. Lockspur's left brow lifted his chiseled face into a dark scowl, drawing a sympathetic snicker from Moss.
"Let it go, compadre" Moss teased, flashing a- how do you like it when she does it to you- smirk. "She's just a kid."
"Is she?" Lockspur asked, considering spitting at the back of her head again.
Dahl stared at the sun bleached surface below, thinking about the luck it took to ride the ghost lanes all the way out to the forbidden planets region. She thought it was a gutsy move passing through an unregulated haven for pirates, rogue mercenary factions, clandestine Mega Corp Security teams and fleeing criminals of all varieties. None of whom came for any good; or you wanted to encounter while defenseless in a stasis pod.
"Where is it?" she muttered to herself, searching the desolate terrain below as if she might find what they came for by happenstance. Of course she didn't. The long buried answers hidden on M6-117 would not come out without a certain amount of blood-letting and horror.
Moss went back to the seat on Dahl's left, switched on the topographical scanner and scanned the terrain for signs of the Hunter Gratzner wreckage. They were just outside scanner range, but he figured the sooner they found it, the sooner they could head home. "This could take a while," he warned, switching on the back-up telemetry array to run overlapping scans of the surface. He was in a hurry to get what they came for and leave; but he didn't want to miss anything important either, and running overlapping scans meant they could search the larger area from a greater distance.
Lockspur pulled up the mission brief Johns issued before leaving. It had been months since they discussed the plan and now was as good a time as any for a refresher.
"What are the coordinates?" Dahl asked, maintaining their altitude. She was in no hurry to touch down before they knew where to look. Walking out in the open was a dangerous proposition on M6-117. There were hungry eyes on you everywhere you went.
"These longitude/latitude coordinates are shit. I can input the longitude, but someone redacted the latitude numbers," Lockspur answered, scrolling through the files. When he couldn't find what he was searching for, he turned to Dahl with a grave look. "Lets hope we didn't put ourselves through 3 months of hell for nothing."
"Let's," she agreed, trying to decipher the data files in front of her. The bright crimson readout reflected off her pale skin. "Do you have the coordinates to the abandoned mining facility cited in the report?"
"Yes."
"Good," she replied. "combine the latitude coordinates from the mining facility with the longitude with the crash site and we'll find our target." After he did, she banked hard left, lowered the nose, and headed towards the area. "A small group of survivors reached the facility before the eclipse." The ship dropped, approaching a small mountain of jagged rocks. The facility was just on the other side. "We can start our search there."
"Already on it." Moss replied, trying not to lose his temper at her constant need to issue a steady stream of unwanted and unappreciated commands. He sighed and shook his head.
Lockspur coughed behind him.
"Dont button me," Moss snapped.
"What?"
"Nothing," he said, widening his scan to include the area surrounding the mine.
"The wreckage shouldn't be far from there," Dahl continued, staring out the side window at the rocky terrain far below. "Accounting for shit terrain, low O2 and blinding sunlight. They couldn't have traveled more than a few kilometers before the lights went out."
Lockspur walked up between them. His unexpected appearance made Dahl shift in her seat. She wished he would stop sneaking up on her. He had an odd habit of appearing out of nowhere. It reminded her of Lilith. It was his hunter gatherer heritage; she supposed. He steadied himself by holding onto the backs of their seats and leaned forward, peering out the windscreen with an ominous squint. "Aye, amigo. Do you think Johns was messing with us? You know... about the vanjo." The sincerity in his deep voice only made Dahl feel more uneasy.
"Vanjo?" Dahl repeated, staring at the deepening grooves dividing Lockspur's dark brows.
"Chupacabra."
There were differing forms of vanjo littered throughout the known galaxy. They were all lethal and none of them belonged on the worlds they inhabited. And no one knew how they got there. Dahl knew them as the monsters that slaughtered her parents.
"Type 2, Bio-raptors." Moss clarified, in a foreboding tone, contorting his features even deeper than Lockspur's. The creatures looked like giant scorpions with the heads of hammerhead sharks. He had encountered them before, during a mission with the Rangers. It was the mission where his entire team had died and he ended up spending a week in the infirmary with a half dozen tubes jammed in every hole God gave him. Come to think of it, the experience was a lot like being in stasis.
"Johns doesn't joke about mission planning," Dahl blurted, coming to his defense.
"Sure," Moss said, voice stretching out in a playful, sarcastic tone. She missed the playful part. Moss looked over his shoulder at Lockspur and winked as if she was being naïve. She did not miss the teasing. Both men laughed in unison, only making her feel more like an outsider.
"Aye, amigo, remember..." Lockspur began, signalling a memorable tale was on the way.
"Pegrino 3," Moss finished his thought. The two men shared the unspoken memory replaying in their heads, causing Dahl's sense of being left out to grow 10 fold. "Did he believe he could hide in a world of farmers?"
Dahl frowned and her soft features turned pensive. "It's best to prepare for anything," she said, staring out through the side screen.
Lockspur strained to get a look at the terrain below, his nose almost touching the thick windscreen. "Why does it always have to be chupacabra? Why can't it be fuzzy bunnies or glittery unicorns?"
"Hey, man." Moss said in a half-hearted tone, suggesting they had encountered an assortment of bizarre creatures in the past. "Everything out here can't be cute and cuddly."
"I'd be happy with a hard shelled vegetarian. Why does everything have to have jagged teeth and bad tempers?"
"Yeah," Dahl added, staring out the windscreen as if this wasn't her first mission. "It would be nice if everything wasn't trying to eat us."
"Not gonna happen." Moss replied, tilting his head in Dahl's direction. He looked at Lockspur out of the corner of his eye and winked. "At least we're gonna have time to see how the newbie measures up."
"Newbie," Dahl blared, face reddening. "Screw you."
Lockspur reached forward, booted up a monitor I set into the bridge console and pulled up an image of Dahl sitting in the pilot's seat. He pinched her starched blouse and said, "I don't know. You look pretty cherry to me."
"I'm not-"
"As the virgin mother," Moss cut in with a huge grin.
"You complete assho-"
"Too bad Johns had to stay on Sol Lucia?" Lockspur teased, winking at Moss as if to say, this will push her buttons. "He's going to miss a real shit show," he added, drawing out his words to an exaggerated length he knew she wouldn't like.
"Shut it," Dahl said, squinting through the windscreen at something below.
"Seems like convenient timing," Moss added, raising an eyebrow at Lockspur and shooting him a sly wink Dahl missed. He wasn't messing with her to be an ass, but including her in their lighthearted teasing. It was tradition.
"Say that to his face."
"Remind me later." Moss countered. "Like... when he's here."
"Point is." Lockspur cut in, rolling his eyes at Dahl. "We're here; he's not."
"Yeah." Moss said. "He's 150 light-years from this sundried shit hole."
"And safe." Lockspur added, as Dahl's face became a deep burgundy.
"F you," she snapped. "When Lilith gives an order, he follows it the same way everyone else does."
"Kid," Lockspur said, knowing he'd get a rise. "Johns and I have worked for Lilith since before you were in diapers." Lockspur looked down at the planet with an expression encompassing their storied exploits. "It's always been the same. She lines up the work and we get it done. Hell, sometimes she comes along just for fun. And when she does, it gets interesting."
"What?"
"I'll tell you what," he added. "In all those years, this is the first time Lilith has ever told him to stay behind." He turned to Dahl, concern twisting his features. "Staying behind isn't S.O.P. And neither is this mission."
Moss turned to Dahl. "No one cuts off their arm right before getting into a fight for their life."
Her two teammates were not joking anymore. Lilith's willingness to deprive them of a seasoned team member while letting them embark on a dangerous mission with an inexperienced crew member in his place. To them, it seemed more than just a little wrong; it seemed irresponsible; if not outright reckless and dangerous.
"She's his mother, for God's sake." Dahl stressed, grabbing Lockspur's arm. "She's family. She wouldn't put us in danger."
He looked at Dahl's hand with a raised brow, warning she was about to cross a line. "She is his adoptive mother." He didn't like the incursion into his personal space, and lucky for her, he had long since come out of his own fog.
"There are some who say she's the Dark Athena." Moss added, knowing it would get another rise.
Lockspur glared at him.
"Superstitious bullshit." Dahl countered, scowling as if he were messing with her. "No such being. I've known her my whole life. She's wonderful."
"Yeah," Moss said with a slanted grin. "Just be glad you don't have a bounty on your head. Because if you did, I can assure you, you'd redefine your idea of wonderful."
"What do you think people would say if I told them about the day I met her? About what I saw?" Lockspur asked, removing her hand from his arm.
"They'd say you're full of shit," Dahl interjected with furrowed brows.
"I saw her change. She's not normal."
"Well, maybe you should redefine your idea of normal."
Moss laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. He stared at him unreadable, and Moss said, "Come on, Compadre. It's a tough story to believe."
"Why." Lockspur asked. "I've seen her black magic for myself. The bruja is no more human than the things down there are. She looks like us. She sounds like us. But she's not one of us."
"Have you said any of this to her?" Dahl asked, straightening out his sleeve. "I did."
"And?"
"And… she smiled and said no one would believe me." He turned to Moss and added, "But he does."
"I have to admit, Lilith has a dark-side." Moss admitted, the tone of his voice suggesting there may be some truth to Lockspur's story.
"Like one minute she looks hot," Lockspur said, and Moss shifted in his seat and grinned. "Aye, amigo. Keep it in your pants. There's a kid around."
Dahl turned to Lockspur and said, "You can fuck off." She turned to Moss and added, "And you. Evw. Gross. Don't ever."
"What are you, like 5?" Moss asked.
Before Dahl could respond, Lockspur said, "And that brings me to her age. She looks 35."
"So," Dahl said.
"She looked 35 when I met her 20 years ago."
"And I swear, she can see inside your head." Moss added, remembering she seemed to know everything about him before they met.
"Well, that's not true. Because if he looked your head she wouldn't be-"
Moss elbowed him in the ribs before he could finish.
"Who is 5 now?"
"And what about the way she vanishes whenever she wants?" Lockspur said, rubbing his stomach.
"Over there." Moss blurted, gesturing down at an instrument cluster. "The wreckage is twenty degrees off the starboard bow." Moss tapped the console touch screen. "I put the coordinates in the nav-system."
Dahl pitched the ship hard to starboard, pushed the nose into a steep dive and said, "Hold on. I'm taking us in. She turned to Lockspur, who had turned green. "Don't puke on the console. It already stinks in here."
He looked at the noxious gob of puke hanging off the back of her headrest and thought; I bet it does, young lady.
Dahl circled the forward wreckage as Moss checked for signs of life on his instrument cluster. When they were certain nothing was in the vicinity, Dahl set the ship down three hundred fifty meters in front of the wreckage with the tailgate facing the crash site. She didn't lower the tailgate, fearing the area may not be secure.
"Suit up," Dahl instructed, walking towards the rear of the compartment. She stopped, turned to Moss. "I mean, we should suit up, sir."
Lockspur laughed at Moss, as if to say the girl has spirit and followed her towards the rear of the ship, ensuring she didn't get too far ahead. After all, he cared for her in his own way, and he had his orders. Keep her alive.
Twenty-five minutes later, Dahl stood by the tailgate control waiting for the others to finish gearing up. "Everyone ready?" she asked. The danger of what they were about to do filled her widening eyes with an ominous sense of foreboding.
"Do we have a choice?" Lockspur asked, flipping his weapon's selector to fire as he took a deep, restorative breath before the tailgate lowered.
"Not if we want to get paid," she answered, starting the open sequence. "Make sure your 02 is on. This rock has a less than optimal atmosphere."
"Affirmative." Moss replied, pulling his nasal cannula down and pushing it inside his nostrils. The high 02 levels made him feel jittery. A side effect, he attributed to getting too much of a good thing. The feeling would lessen outside. So would the good thing.
"Come on." Dahl said, squinting as light pierced the cargo bay.