Angel of the Alliance (Lady Hellgate Book 4) Read online

  Though Helga was one of the best pilots of her age, she couldn’t assume the role, since the Nighthawks needed her on missions. She grew up with Cel-tocs, so she didn’t feel any emotion towards Zan, though the android had proven to be just as social as she was technical and had tried to engage Helga in small talk.

  “Before we get to it, how are you, Nighthawk?” Cilas said, sipping slowly from a steaming mug.

  “I’ve been doing well actually. No more fatigue, and I’ve gotten back a bit of my appetite. You know you’re not well when you actually crave the taste of a protein ration.” She laughed. “I scarfed down a whole half of one earlier. Hate being sick, it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, ooh maker take me. Why, were you worried?”

  “Just a little, but Ray took it personally since he made you that drink.”

  “Uh, that was coincidence; it’s not his fault. Is he really blaming himself for me getting sick?”

  “He’s been in the range for an entire shift, firing off his guns. I’ve only seen him on his duty rounds, and when he comes up to get food and drink. Something’s on his mind and he isn’t talking. The only change around here has been your illness, so this is my attempt at logic.”

  “Ray can be sensitive. It could be anything; in a lot of ways he reminds me of Brise Sol.”

  “Come on, Hel, he is nothing like Brise, not one bit. He’s loyal to a fault, braver than most spacers I know, and he respects the chain of command. When I give Ray an order, I walk away knowing it’s done.”

  “Alright, let’s not go down that dark path,” Helga said. “What I meant is that they share similar passions. They love hard and hate harder, which makes disappointment devastating. Ray is a sniper, yes, and one of the best graduates from BLAST that any team could hope to have, but Brise was an engineer playing poorly at ESO to make his family proud. I’m not arguing, Commander, just clarifying my statement.”

  Cilas seemed to think for a time as he held the mug to his lips, then brought it down slowly with a sigh.

  “That was a tough time for everyone. We lost our team and got captured, then found ourselves trapped inside a pod, stranded, hoping for rescue. Emotions were high, as they should have been, and much of mine clashed with his. We were lucky to have you,” he said, smiling. “Your diplomacy showed me that you had what it takes to be a leader in this Navy. Anyway, enough about old Nighthawks, let’s focus on the now.”

  “Actually, Rend,” Helga said, turning about to face him, “I was thinking, now with the Ursula as our ship, we could reactivate Brise. You’re the commander, you have the power now to put in a request. We can bring him back onto the team to be our chief engineer. Cilas, he would make the Ursula sing. You remember how he modified our pod out of nothing.”

  “I do remember. He was one of the best, but I also recall him defying me whenever and wherever he could. We need an engineer, Hel, but not that one. He was your friend, and I know you think you could keep him in line, but you cannot quit the Navy, then come back to a post as chief engineer.”

  “Of course you can’t, Commander, but I feel it necessary to remind you that Brise was showing signs of trauma. He was shaken after Dyn and needed a psych and time, but Commander Lang wouldn’t afford us that, and he felt cornered and alone. It was either he left us or maker knows what he would have done.”

  Cilas seemed to consider this as he grew quiet and went back to staring at his mug. “Brise is out, Hel. Even if I wanted to risk it, the Alliance would never allow him to work on this ship. There’ll be other engineers, possibly as talented as Brise.”

  “Not the point,” Helga mumbled, but decided against pushing, since Brise was a sore subject for Cilas. Anyone else and he would have considered it, and with his reputation, sway the Alliance to give that person a second shot. But Brise was as emotional as they came, and would speak out of turn to the point where he had shouting matches with Cilas, his then lieutenant.

  Brise would bring out the worst in their normally stoic leader, and she had been forced to play mediator on more than one occasion. He had been a disappointment to Cilas, both in the field and off, but where he shone was on vessels like the Ursula. What she wanted was to bring him aboard, not as a Nighthawk, but someone loyal and committed to her and the ship.

  Cilas, however, was a closed book on the subject of Brise Sol, and she missed him. Their banter was always a treat, even on the cycles when they thought that they would die inside that escape pod.

  “Helga, listen to me. You see our team and how we mesh? It keeps us alive in the field. You and I are close, but if we’re on a mission, you respect the chain of command. I asked you to do some hard schtill on Meluvia, and you didn’t hesitate. Not you, Quentin, or Ray; you did as you were ordered. That goes a long way with me, a long way. You just don’t know, and you see Brise, for all his genius, when I needed him to act, he did not budge.”

  “Oh, he knows he failed you, Cilas, it’s what broke him in the end. He didn’t feel like a Nighthawk. You’re right, of course, he was insubordinate, and we cannot have that in the heat, but hear me out. I was thinking about the Ursula. He could be the ship’s engineer, not one of the Nighthawks. He would be crew, like the doctor, and he would have to answer to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Helga, I can’t do it. I can’t imagine being stuck long cycles out here with that man defying me at every turn. Do you even know where he is, if I considered it? You two keeping up somehow on comms?”

  “No, but Loray Qu knows how to find him. She contacted him to attend our ceremony, when we got the medals for surviving Dyn.”

  “Dyn,” he whispered. “Feels like it was fifty years ago for me. It’s clear in my mind, but it feels unreal, as if I just dreamed it, or someone knocked me out and planted it inside my head.”

  “It’s still real for me,” Helga said, “and even on the days when I forget it, as soon as I close my eyes and fall asleep, I’m in that camp all over again. At least I have you to discuss it with, as a fellow survivor of that hell. Can you imagine what Brise is going through, all alone? No one to hear him on that deeper level of understanding?”

  “Yeah, of course I feel sorry for the guy,” Cilas said. “We just can’t work together, though you’re right, he’d serve as a great engineer on someone’s ship. Begs to question his ambition, though, and choices in life. Why take BLAST if you’re not ready to come out here in the middle of the schtill and spill the enemy’s blood for your captain? He could have been a junior engineer on the Rendron, work his way up and become chief.”

  “Cilas, he was a Nighthawk, and he was ready to kill the way we were all ready to kill, but when Lamia turned and slaughtered everybody, it doused the fire in him. He was like a frightened little boy sometimes, and he couldn’t sleep, which kept him cranky. Those things matter, but you ignored them, being so upset with him, and he began to feel boxed in. You know what he told me once, back when the three of us were stuck inside that escape pod? He said that the maker spared him to become something great, but he wasn’t strong enough to go through with it.”

  “Sad as that is, Hel, Brise Sol is out,” Cilas said. “And as long as I am team leader, he will never be a Nighthawk again. You forget that he left his post and retired, which is not only unheard of but a slap in the face of the Alliance. Commander Lang approved his discharge, but another commander would have air-locked him instead. Wherever he is, he’s doing much better than dead, and I wish I could say the same of the Nighthawks who came before him.”

  Helga shrugged. “I know, but I had to at least try,” she said.

  “For you, I would do just about anything, Hel, and you know that,” he whispered. “But not this, not him. We need Nighthawks, and growth is our number one priority, but forget Brise for anything Alliance-related. He made his choice and he is out.”

  2

  The briefing room on the Ursula was one of the upgrades gifted by the engineers in Sanctuary. They converted a section of storage and a portion of berthing into its own sizable space for
the Nighthawks to use. Anyone new to the crew would have thought that the corvette had come with this compartment already built-in, and though the terminals were much newer than those on the bridge, nothing really stood out enough from the rest of the sizable warship.

  It was an octagonal shape, with chairs wrapped about a central table with a starmap floating above it. There was a coffee machine for sleepy spacers, and the bulkhead was fitted with a flexible display. This allowed for the facilitator to expand the starmap to every corner of the room, placing them inside of a scenario, or showcasing images on all eight surfaces.

  There was room enough about the space to accommodate twenty-four spacers, so the six people in attendance could move about quite easily. Yet, they all sat next to one another, waiting for Cilas to start. Helga was in the front, bordered by Raileo Lei and Quentin Tutt, while Sundown sat directly behind her with Cleia on his left. The chairs themselves were hard but comfortable; it was almost as if they adjusted to your weight.

  Helga rubbed at her knees. They had been summoned to do something but they didn’t know what, and she knew that earlier, Cilas had been in his cabin speaking to the captain for hours.

  He walked in looking sharp as he always did. It was as if being commander of the Ursula had somehow transformed him into a proper officer. The mud-craving, take-charge Marine had been replaced by a commander who looked ready to host guests of the Alliance council. He was in dress blacks with golden buttons, which made him seem older. They all stood up and saluted, including the doctor, and when he waved his hand passively they sat down.

  “I have lots to cover, so I’m going to do my best to be clear,” he said, powering on the screens to show a large red planet. “Approximately 32 hours ago in Arisani space, a luxury-class sloop headed to the moon of A’wfa Terracydes was stalled and boarded by what we believe to be pirates. This intel came from one of the pilots, who managed to send out a distress call. Demands were made of the Arisani Union to provide several space ships or the hostages would be killed.

  “One woman was murdered to show that they meant what they were saying, but the Union sent their Space Force instead. Now, these weren’t Alliance-trained Marines or operators, these were volunteer soldiers and armed civilians. This so-called Space Force was used to dealing with smugglers, not a hardened group of murderous thugs. They attempted negotiations but the pirates cut them down, then they murdered five more civilians to make a point.

  “They then separated out a group of Vestalians and took them to a satellite where they’ve been left to await maker knows what. As for the pirate cruiser, it jumped to Genese, where the demands have now switched to them wanting a ship no smaller than a corvette. Our mission is on that satellite. We are to approach it in stealth, rescue the Vestalians, and take one of the pirates into our custody. Now, my gut is telling me that this pirate nonsense has everything to do with the Geralos,” Cilas said.

  He looked directly at Helga, who knew exactly what he meant. The two of them had dealt with pirates after their disastrous mission on the moon of Dyn, when they learned about a slavery-ring that involved the capture of Alliance Navy personnel. Using implants and torture, the pirates were breaking in pilots and engineers to use them on their vessels as highly-skilled slaves. The spacers that didn’t break, or weren’t needed, however, were sold to the brain-eating Geralos.

  “This satellite, is it over Arisani?” Helga said.

  “Hiyt, actually, but Arisani could be close depending on the time of the year.”

  “I bet there’s a Geralos camp somewhere on the planet,” she said.

  “It’s on the moon of Argan-10, which orbits Arisani. There is supposedly a Geralos ship flying to the satellite from there. Our mission is the rescue; we are to avoid engagement as much as possible. The Alliance wants to break the ring, but they want to inflict as much damage to the Geralos as they can. For now, we get them and squeeze the traitors for information. If we can get the location of the camp, we are to evaluate the opposition and report back to Rendron.”

  “How thyped up is this?” Raileo said hoarsely. “Our people are selling their own to the very enemy that massacred our planet. Rescue operations, Commander? I want to kill every last one of them. Can’t the Marines pull the taxi routine? We should be sent to Genese to take those thypes out.”

  Cilas stopped and stared at him, his flat features a grave mask of disappointment.

  “Sorry for the outburst, Commander. Please finish your brief,” Raileo said.

  “As I was saying, this is a rescue operation. We are to pull out those civilians and take them back home to Arisani. Now, we are required to capture one of these pirates, but the rest can be yours to do as you will, Mr. Lei. Lieutenant Ate, we need to set a course and be at that satellite as fast as we can muster. Nighthawks, get prepared. We’re donning PAS suits and rifles for this expedition.”

  They made to get up but the commander stopped them with a wave of his hand. “Let me remind you that this is what we signed up for. Helping the people of Anstractor. You’re going to get your chance at punishment, Ray, maybe not this mission but when we’re given clearance to root these pirates out. So get locked and loaded, we’ve got action, and stow the comments when it’s time to listen. Are we clear?”

  “Yes sir,” he said with no sign of offense, but Helga noticed that he kept his eyes forward.

  “Alright, let’s get moving,” Cilas said, and walked to the doorway as they stood up.

  Sundown was quiet, and Raileo still seemed distracted, but she saw Quentin stop before the commander and give him a stiff salute. Cilas returned it, and joined him in exiting the compartment. Helga made to follow them out but a squeaking sound made her stop and look over at Cleia.

  “We have barely been on board and now everyone is off to go get themselves killed,” she muttered. “What are we to do with no commander, and I haven’t even started my examinations.”

  “Chin up, doc,” Helga said, urging her up and out of her seat. “We’re hard to kill, so don’t you worry, we’ll be back in time for you to run your checks and put us on your calendar or whatever.” She pulled up short when she saw the waiting Cel-toc, and motioned her over with a summoning gesture. “Zan, I want you to plot a course to Arisani space, bringing us in near the satellite, Maahes. When you have it ready, alert me on my comms, then wait for my command.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” the Cel-toc said in an effeminate, synthesized voice. It always reminded Helga of the breeze that blew through the trees back when they were on Meluvia in the jungle. It was a pleasant voice, smooth but for its tinny quality, and she loved giving orders to the android just to hear her talk.

  “You will want to dress in a 3B-XO, Doctor Rai’to. There should be a suit in your office, next to your berthing inside of the storage locker. Have you worn one before?”

  “I have but I don’t see the need for one now. You don’t intend for me to join you out there with the Geralos, do you?” she said, her mottled blue skin visibly lightening a shade as her eyes grew large.

  “No, you won’t be leaving the ship this time, but you will still need to be prepared in case we manage to get boarded. The 3B suit will protect you, so wear it beneath your uniform and strap on a sidearm. You’re on a Nighthawk ship, Dr. Rai’to. This is going to be your life from now on. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “I have been through disasters before,” the woman stated proudly, raising her chin up at Helga. “I was one of the first to volunteer for the starport disaster on Sanctuary, and I assisted in administering care to the wounded, all while there was still an imminent threat. I am just shocked at the timing. I thought for sure we’d have more time before anything major.”

  “Yeah, well, you better get used to this. The Alliance is one needy cruta, and she doesn’t understand the word no.”

  With that Helga left her and took the lift down to the dock, where she made her way to the passageway that held the compartments where she, Quentin, and Raileo berthed. At the door to
her compartment she stood, taking it all in. This was a ritual that she had started doing before their trip to Sanctuary.

  A Nighthawk’s life was unpredictable, dangerous, and short, so she never knew when she’d be captured again, or end up in a recovery room fighting for her life. With her career being so eventful, she had begun collecting souvenirs from the happier moments. One was an old PAS helmet that had saved her life from a bullet, and the other was a Revenant pilot’s helmet that had come from her friend, Joy Valance.

  She should have been hurrying, but the thought of Joy stopped her in her tracks. Like the commander, her relationship with the lieutenant was a complicated mix of personal and professional. The woman was her best friend, her big sister, mentor in certain aspects, and possibly a rival, now that she had crossed the line with Cilas.

  This was all in her head. Guilt had a way of creating forks on paths that were straight and narrow, but she would never know until they returned to the Rendron, and the three of them could face-off in all that awkwardness.

  “There’s no time for this,” she reminded herself and stepped over to the mannequin that held her PAS. Next to it was a terminal with a diagram of her shape, along with a readout on maintenance that the armor required to be at its optimum state. She scanned these items quickly, noting that they were all superficial or cosmetic. It didn’t matter either way. Time was not on their side, and there were civilian lives at stake, all dependent on their egress and the timing of the Geralos invaders.

  Helga removed her clothes and moisturized her skin before sliding into her 3B XO-suit. The alien leotard slid on easily, already acclimated to her shape, and once she was fully dressed it adjusted, becoming tighter like a second skin. First it felt suffocating but before long she didn’t notice and had to glance in the mirror to make sure that she was clothed.

  She walked around the mannequin, letting her fingers caress its smooth black surface. “Here we go,” she whispered. “Back into the schtill.” She forced a smile and for some reason it worked, lightening her mood.