Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation (13 page)

“And once we're on Earth?”

“You'll have to apply for diplomatic asylum with the UNE,” he said, driving them to the transfer station.

“I was under the impression that we must be careful of how we handle this?”

“It's a long trip. I'm sure that by the time you get there, you'll have a compelling reason for defecting.”

“What about you?”

“I won't be defecting if that's what you're asking. I can't do anything from Earth.”

Throughout the remainder of the ride, the two cohorts tolerated a blanketing silence, created out of concern over the illimitable and uncertain future.

“I resent the implication,” said Chiera Williams, as her hands moved to the small of her back, clutched into fists. “I am not a coward.”

“No need for hostilities, Lieutenant.”

“I don't appreciate your attacking my integrity.”

“That's what I'm trying to talk with you about.”

“What?”

“Your integrity,” Major Torres said.

“What about it?”

“I asked you up here because I am concerned that—”

“Don't say another word. I've had enough of your being concerned. Once and for all, I assure you that I am fine.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe what you want, but I'm fine.”

“Look at your fighter, Lieutenant Williams. That's three crashes in two months.”

“Do you really think I've dulled? At least give me credit for staying with it this time. A real coward would have bailed.”

“True, but cowards also deviate from mission directives.”

“It was suicidal!”

“The true purpose of today's training exercise was to instill courage, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, well, I didn't volunteer just to be a mindless pawn.”

“You volunteered to follow orders,” said Torres. “When the Federation returns, it just may come down to running suicidal missions.”

“The ravine was much more appropriate.”

Torres looked at Chiera. “I've flown that training mission more than a hundred times,” he said, “and yes, you're right, it does make sense to utilize the ravine, however, you disobeyed orders.”

“I thought I could make a very low altitude change, one lower than the minimum requirement.”

“What did you hope to accomplish?”

“I hoped to avoid being shot down, but my timing was off.”

“That's not you, Lieutenant. I shouldn't have let you back up so soon after—”

“I don't want to hear it,” she said, “and it's not me, but you. You shot her down, you killed her. You haven't been the same since Miranda's death.”

Torres sighed. “Perhaps,” he said.

“I'm still the same. Maybe you need some time off because I'm sick of your guilty conscience.”

“I said this was an informal debriefing. Don't overstep your bounds.”

They both were quiet, as they moved to overlook the bay floor.

“When you downed my sister, a part of me died with her, but I personally never felt you were responsible for her death.”

Torres looked at his lieutenant.

“Well, maybe at first, but Miranda made me promise not to be angry with you—or hate you. She believed hate makes people do irrational things. Still, she felt she could take you on. Besides, regulations are regulations, and she had every right to challenge you. The decision was hers, and hers alone.”

“She was not ready to challenge me. If she had only trained a little longer, she would have been good enough, and she'd be alive.”

“With all due respect, sir, you are a contemptuous bastard. I don't like you, either. Perhaps, when my fighter is repaired—”

“Don't you be foolish, too,” he said. “Challenging me is not in your best interest. The best thing you can do is follow mission directives, and like it or not, you are a pawn. Your life and the lives of others depend on your ability to follow orders. Deviate from any future missions again, and I'll ground you so hard, you'll think you were buried alive.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now assemble a crew and get your fighter repaired—ASAP.”

They saluted, looking into the other's eyes. Major Torres dropped his hand, nodded, and stepped off. He walked the level three catwalk to the south glass elevator facing Chiera. As she watched him board the lift and ascend to level five, she crossed her arms and leaned back against the tension-wire railing. She then looked over her shoulder and gained a bird's eye view of the twenty-six square kilometers of space that was the bay floor below.

A recovery rig hauled her fighter into the bay, creeping under a guide's directions so as to avoid the work areas of other mechs and vehicles stationed near the entrance. A rainbow of uniformed crews appeared around the bed of the rig to get a better look at the wrecked craft. She was sure they were taking bets on which crew would repair it and how long it would take. Fortunately, the damage was not as bad as the last crash. That time, she had bailed out and watched her fighter incinerate before it crashed into the mountainside. This time, she stayed with it.

Most of the damage ran along the underside, from the nose of the fuselage to the main vector thrusters in the rear. Sections of the airframe had been ripped open, exposing the interior structure, radar electronics, and both primary fiber optics and secondary hydraulic flight control systems. However, the wings took the brunt of the crash landing. The ailerons and flaps were twisted and bent, jutting out in just about every direction. It looked as if a giant staple remover had mangled them free. A tree pierced the right wing like a toothpick had punctured aluminum foil. Chiera sighed. There was a lot of work to be done. She rotated such that her pelvic bones supported her weight on the thick gauge pole that ran along the top of the railing, and better surveyed the commotion and work centered on her fighter.

Feeling pleased with the crew's recovery efforts, as they prepped the fighter to be lifted from the back of the rig and moved into its designated lot, Chiera walked to the freight lift at the north side. The ominous elevator doors grew taller and wider as she neared. Despite the thoracic flight armor she wore that built out her physique, the lift dwarfed her. She pressed the down button on the control panel perched on a thin podium off to the right. Waiting for the lift, she realized the pauldron of the flight vest was heavy on her shoulders and removed the shell, relieved of not donning it for a while.

“What the hell am I thinking?” she said. The hours spent repairing her fighter meant a loss of flight hours, time that could be spent training. “Damn it.”

Quiet, the lift ascended to level three, and the doors retracted in a fluid, mechanical motion, revealing a spacious interior. So big was the lift that it had two levels, designed to move all three battalions of the Morrillian Civil Defense Force from the bay to the level-one ground entrance in a matter of minutes. Only the top half opened at level three, and Chiera stepped aboard and nodded at the three-man crew atop their K-12 Saint Bernard Support Tank. She remembered when she was crew chief of a K-12, about three years ago near the end of the first revolution. She looked over the stout track and wheeled vehicle with a smile as the elevator doors closed. The lift descended to the bay.

The idle chat between Chiera and the K-12 crew sped up the controlled forty-six meter fall to the bottom level. Elevator rides seemed long, as there were no even-numbered stratums. Levels two and four were dedicated to the structural and mechanical support of the six-level east wing, with the bay floor at its core. Chiera found herself tickled by some of the crew's experiences with the tank, as hilarity filled the elevator to capacity.

“Lieutenant, hop on,” the crew chief said as the lift came to a stop. She climbed aboard while the horizontal doors of the cubical hoist opened. The K-12's engine revved a couple of times, adding to the noise of the bay that flooded into the lift, and then it lurched forward. The tank rolled out into the commotion and clatter of crews toiling and hustling about. The reconstruction effort seemed to be going well, as the bay floor sustained a great deal of structural damage from the initial uprising against the Federation.

Chiera looked up to the web of viaducts on level three, thinking that it was much more peaceful up there. She visualized how the view from there revealed the geometric layout of the bay floor and its pathways, which resembled a snowflake under a microscope. From the turret of the K-12, it was chaos. It was easy to get lost among the disorder.

Despite the busy nature of the bay floor, her fighter was the day's main attraction. The tank headed in the direction of the crowd, but then turned down another pathway. Chiera scooted and sprung off, waving with a smile to the K-12 crew as they rolled on. She looked about for a while, at some of the variable fighters being worked on in their Sentry mode, and then wielded her gear and equipment over onto her left shoulder and began to walk back toward the crowd.

Before heading off to the showers, she gaited pass the rank and file gathered at her fighter's work area to look at her aerial dance partner once more. She noticed some pointing their fingers at it, as though they were witnesses to a rarity in a freak show. Nevertheless, she smiled after seeing that not a scratch marred the black painted letters of her rank and name below the canopy. Even more, the wrecked machine maintained its dignity; its towering stance on its undamaged landing gear amazed the onlookers.

“What?” she said, and stopped, surprised to see the white uniforms of R and D at the fighter. Two men tinkered with opening a panel near the main landing gear. The younger, standing in front of his comrade with both arms raised, squatted, yanking out the contents behind the panel, and in the process revealed the face of his associate, Dr. Thaddeus Williams.

Chiera's free hand went to her waist. As she lowered her head with a few shakes, the thumb and index finger of her right hand then found and massaged the upper bridge of her nose, between the eyes and brows. She was tired and did not expect to see him so soon after crashing. Her hand fell away as she looked back up, a deep breath inflating her lungs, and then being expelled with force. Determined that his appearance on the bay floor was not going to get to her, she took another deep breath and exhaled while proceeding into the work area.

“Excuse me!” Chiera said, pushing her way through the rainbow of personnel. “It's not like you've never seen a wrecked fighter before! Back to work, people! Let's go! Move it!” She emerged ahead of the crowd, catching a glimpse of her father as she turned around to face the small company. They all looked at her. “All right, then, I need a crew to help repair my fighter!”

The crowd dispersed.

“Yeah, that's what I thought!” she said. “Bastards.”

“You can hardly blame them!”

Chiera turned around.

“Your fighter is so badly damaged that it'll take more than the allotted time of two months to repair it!” said Dr. Williams.

“What are you doing here?” Chiera said.

Dr. Williams tilted his head toward his assistant, who stood next to him, and the young man then lifted up the flight recorder in his right hand. Dr. Williams then said, “Since I am Director of Research and Development, I must—”

“Yes, I know!” she said. “You don't normally come here!”

“True! The last time I was here was when they recovered Miranda's body and fighter!”

“Don't start!”

“Pardon me! Where are my manners? Mr. Peterson, this is my youngest daughter, Lieutenant Chiera Williams! My assistant, Phil Peterson!”

“It's a pleasure to finally meet you!” Peterson said, transferring the recorder to his left hand and extending the right.

Maintaining eye contact with her father, Chiera gripped the assistant's hand and said, “Finally?”

“Your father and I—”

“If you don't mind!” Dr. Williams said. “Let's return to my office where we don't have to shout over this noise!”

Walking through the pandemonium of the bay, they exited counterclockwise along the innermost path as designated by yellow lines. With no further official business on the floor, they were pedestrians, and as such, they had to be in one of two areas adjacent to the bay for safety and security reasons. They passed The Deck, an outdoor lounge that provided a spectacular view of the open valley range beyond the confines of the base, and headed to The Landing. The spacious low-level platform, approximately fourteen by six meters, connected the bay floor to a derelict mining shaft that had been renovated to serve as the main artery to the west wing, deep within the mountain. They climbed a flight of grated steps and crossed the landing to the wide mouth of the tunnel. Traffic was moderate. Mostly lifters and runners zipped to and from supply depots in the west wing. Occasionally, a personnel transport appeared. They waited a couple of minutes before a PT emerged from the murky corridor, its headlights shining upon them. As the incoming driver and passengers dismounted, Chiera, her father and his assistant loaded their equipment and gear and boarded the small six-wheeled landau, and began their journey down the obscure 3.2-kilometer stretch.

The lighting, meager at best, made wires dangling from holes from missing ceiling tiles look as though snakes were about to drop down on them. The walls of unfinished cinder blocks were cold and gray and perforated with bullet holes that testified to the past conflict. In fact, most of the mountain base, some twenty-one kilometers outside of the initial colony of Kilshun, was in grim condition. It was the last great stronghold for the Federation before they retreated either to space or to distant offshore islands. Many on both sides had died in the tunnel, fighting for the strategic importance of the base.

“Do you need to stop by medical?” said Dr. Williams, sitting behind Peterson, who drove the PT.

“No, they checked me out at the crash site.” Chiera sat to her father's left.

“Well, I must say that you're getting better at piloting a variable fighter. Perhaps next time…”

“Next time?” she said. “At this rate, I'll be lucky if Command Central doesn't ground me.”

“Don't worry. It'll take some time, but you can't push a VF too hard, or yourself for that matter.”

“I am neither pushing myself or my fighter. I flew that exercise as I have always flown it.”

“As you and Miranda have always flown it,” he said. “There's only one of you now.”