No Man's Land Read online

  “Harris.” He shook her shoulders. “It’s not over. Finish the mission, soldier!”

  She blinked at him. “They sent me to fail. I’ve achieved my mission.”

  “Yes, they did send you to fail. After years of loyal service, you were deemed disposable. How does that make you feel, soldier?”

  “Mad as hell.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  The clicking increased in volume and speed. Kaboom come soon. Val almost giggled, but a chunk of vital information formed in the middle of her spinning thoughts. No kaboom. Why not?

  They had been near the end. Only a few connections were left, which meant the YFS-97 had to find another way to detonate.

  “Go!” She pointed to his panel. Grabbing her pliers, she shouted instructions to Gideon over the noise.

  It didn’t matter if they worked in tandem as long as they both finished the last step before the Death Star re-routed its ignition. Sweat dripped and she panted with the effort.

  “Last cut, Gideon,” she yelled. “Blue wire, snip it off before it enters the boxes on either side and pull it—” A shower of sparks arched across her wire cutters. Then a huge fireball slammed into her, knocking her off her feet.

  Kaboom. Mission accomplished. She crash landed. All thought disappeared.

  Pain and semi-consciousness returned at the same time. Every centimeter of her body hurt, and she had lost her vision and hearing. Val swore. Except it didn’t help when she couldn’t hear her own cursing. She also couldn’t move, which would be alarming if she had the energy to care.

  Real consciousness came with some serious pain, but the meds helped blur the sharp edges. And the return of both her hearing and vision aided in her recovery.

  Gideon visited. “Welcome back, Sergeant.”

  “But…the fire. What…”

  “I’ve no idea. I yanked the blue wire just as the fireball hit you. It dissipated. The clicking stopped. I’m here and not blown to bits. So I’m not complaining.”

  “How long…”

  “You’ve been out of it a couple days. Leo’s beside himself. He wants to go home, and is driving us all crazy.”

  “Pilots have…a harder time…being a POW. There’s been…studies.” And I probably won’t do much better. However, when she considered the alternative, being a POW didn’t seem so bad.

  Gideon smiled. “You’re welcome to stay—you are a hero, after all—of course, only a few people will ever know about it. However, you don’t have to stay. As soon as you’re feeling better, Leo will fly you back to your base.”

  Confused, Val asked. “What did I miss?”

  “Your ambassador made a deal. If you saved our planet, you would be allowed to leave. But there is one condition.”

  “Home, sweet home,” Leo cried as he landed the bullet.

  “Leo, it’s a barren rock with a military base. Not what I’d call home,” Val said as she tried not to get sick in his ship.

  “Better than some foul swamp with huge creatures that consider us dessert.”

  “Ugh. You’ve been to the base on Venus Five?”

  “Spent two years there.” He shuddered. “I’ll take a barren wasteland any day.”

  Her sore muscles protested as Val climbed from the bullet and entered the decontamination area. But she forgot all about her aches and pains when she spotted Captain Bachman and four MPs waiting for her on the platform.

  “Sergeant Harris, come with me,” the Captain ordered. “Lieutenant Leo, please report to your commanding officer.”

  “Yes, sir.” They both snapped a salute.

  Leo shook her hand good-bye. Grinning, he headed in the opposite direction. I’d grin, too if I could claim ignorance, telling everyone I’d hung out in the pilot’s lounge drinking the entire time.

  The captain led her to a debriefing room and gestured to a chair. Val scanned the room. The place had been rigged with video and audio sensors.

  “Report, Sergeant,” the Captain ordered.

  “I disarmed the bomb as requested, Captain. I’ve nothing else to report.”

  “You disarmed a MFG-66?”

  So she had known. “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Val feigned confusion. “Of course, sir. The explosive device was clearly labeled. There is even video footage—”

  “Sergeant Harris, I don’t care what the video showed. I want an honest report.”

  Then you shouldn’t have lied to me, bitch. Swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth, Val detailed a textbook disarming of a Godzilla bomb for the captain.

  Clearly impatient, the captain banged her hands on the table. “What took you so long to return?”

  “After I disarmed the bomb, I supervised the proper dismantling and safe storage of the explosives, which required a few days.”

  “That wasn’t part of your mission, Sergeant.”

  “Sorry, sir. I misunderstood. Since you had informed me that my mission was an act of good faith, I felt it was my duty to ensure the safety of the Jups.”

  The captain kept trying to trip Val up. However, Bachman wouldn’t directly ask about the Death Star. And with the ambassador’s report, confirming Val’s statement, Captain Bachman couldn’t charge Val with treason.

  The Jups had been smart to pretend all had gone as planned. They kept Mother Earth wondering and worried about what happened to that Death Star. Good, it will keep them on the edge.

  Val tendered her resignation a few months later. Although upset, Captain Bachman couldn’t stop her. She packed her few belongings and met Leo on deck twelve.

  “Free at last?” he asked.

  “Yep. What about you?”

  “I’ll never retire. I’m a speed junkie.” He grabbed her bag and shoved it in the cargo area of his bullet. “Where to, my dear?”

  “Jupiter Nine.”

  “Oh?”

  “I hear they’re looking to hire an explosives expert.”

  “Really? Are you sure it isn’t because of a certain yummy Sergeant Gideon?”

  “I wouldn’t use the word yummy to describe the sergeant.”

  “What word would you use?”

  But Val only smiled at her friend as she settled into the passenger seat. While she waited for the bullet to fire, she thought of the perfect word for Gideon.

  Kaboom.

  Ghosts on the Battlefield

  Danielle Ackley-McPhail

  They were called the Morrigans. Raven. Crow. Corby. Jackdaw. Rook. And their unit leader, Captain Jayne Corvidae, known as Scarlet Jay. They were AeroCom’s battle-honed goddesses of war. They had more campaign ribbons across their collective chests than any other flight in the group, and more demerits on their records than their entire wing combined, mostly for fights started by greenies eager to prove themselves tougher than the dames. Still, fighting’s fighting, no matter who starts it.

  Or who finishes it.

  They held that record too, though they didn’t consider it something to brag about.

  They were the Morrigans. They had more important things to do than crow.

  Jay popped her head through the common room arch as she hurried by. “Briefing room, ten minutes.” A machine-gun series of “Ayes” followed her down the corridor, cutting off sharply as she straight-armed her office door, letting it slam behind her.

  “Damn it! I can’t believe he’s doing it to us again!” She took a swing at the old-fashioned training bag she’d had installed in the corner. If it weren’t chain-anchored to the floor it would have slammed into the wall.

  “Ten minutes isn’t going to be enough, is it?”

  Jay spun around and glared at Raven—First Lieutenant Chen Po—who had just slipped in the door. It was an effort to unclench her jaw—and her fists—to respond to her lieutenant. Breathing deep, she squared her shoulders, ran a hand over her spiked bristle of vibrant red hair, and put an arm out to steady the still-swaying bag. When she was as calm as she was likely to be, she spoke.
r />   “We’re shepherding another crop of green.”

  Raven grimaced and closed the door behind her as she moved fully into the room. “Nope…a week wouldn’t be enough.”

  Raven was right. They were a combat flight, use to taking the fight to the enemy in atmo or space, but ever since General Calloway took over command of their group two months ago they’d been on baby-sitting duty, responsible for buffing off the rough edges on each batch of fresh pilots assigned to his command. There was only one thing worse than sitting on her thumb or banging heads with airmen that hadn’t yet clued to the fact that they weren’t winged gods, and that was guilt. Calloway made sure her duty periods were all three rolled into a great big miserable ball. The two of them had a history. Back in flight school she’d made a stupid mistake, cut the wrong corner. It had resulted in the death of the General’s son, Justin. Calloway didn’t much care for her, which she could understand and respect. What she didn’t hold with was the fact that he was taking it out on her pilots as well.

  “As of 0600 tomorrow we’ll be patrolling the DMZ in two-hour shifts. One Morrigan, one newbie,” Jay said as evenly as she could, with a hard-knuckled grip on her temper. Her deep brown eyes narrowed with annoyance as she handed Raven a stack of personnel jackets. “There’s one clear problem child in the bunch. He’s with me on first patrol. The rest I’ll let you sort out.”

  Raven nodded, sending her short, straight black hair swaying around her face. Then, with a knowing glance, said, “Okay. Take one more swing.”

  The training bag was still rattling its chain as they left the office, expressions neutral, backs straight, and eyes hard-edged.

  It was 0Dark00 on the planet Demeter. Jay was running the preflight on her bird, an AC-360PH—AeroCom-360 PlasmaHawk—straddling a single hybrid aerospike engine. The fighter wasn’t the latest or—some would say—the best, but even the most skeptical admitted that Scarlet Jay could work magic behind the stick. She didn’t know if it was magic precisely but she knew the old girl the way a cowboy knew his horse, every trick and habit and the fine nuances of each little shimmy. Up in the atmo they were one and they got along just fine, even if the Hawk did have a tendency to argue.

  Her checklist done, Jay slid her digital pad in her flight suit pocket and reached up past her jumpseat into the dead space between the jet’s skin and its frame. The tinkle of a small bell ringing reached her ears and she smiled faintly as the sound of the biker bell she’d tucked up there faded. It had been a gift from her Granddad when she’d gotten her wings; to keep the gremlins away, he said. Granddad had been both a pilot and a biker and understood such things. He was long gone, but that bell went on every bird she flew. It was like having him at her shoulder, looking out for her, reminding her she had a right to be there. In the tough spots, she’d even dare say she almost heard his voice in her ear.

  “Man…whose bad side are you on to get saddled with that?” said a voice from behind her, way too informal, she might even say insubordinate. She turned, and her suspicion was confirmed. It was her greenie. And he was bad-mouthing her fighter. There was no reason to point out that if he were permanently assigned to the squadron, he’d be flying the same thing.

  She looked at him over her shoulder as she slid down the rails she’d climbed to the cockpit. What she saw was a golden boy: from his burnished hair, to his light brown eyes, and straight on to his attitude. “Get your preflight done, Pilot Panski. We lift off in thirty.”

  “Already done,” he answered.

  He piloted an AC-010 NovaStream; the absolute newest craft in the division. It was a couple rows over up the line. Not exactly line-of-sight from her location, but Panski would have had to have walked by her PlasmaHawk to get to there.

  “Really? Must have been awful early. I’ve been here an hour and I can’t say I saw you come in.” She spied the outline of a familiar hand-held device in his flight suit pocket.

  Technically, the NovaStream was capable of remote preflight. She didn’t know whose bright idea that was, but it resulted in enough deaths in the testing phase that the remotes had been banned, and yet every once in a while a newbie tried to get away with using one. But, as she herself had learned long ago, there were some things only eyes-on could tell you and there wasn’t a seasoned pilot in the ranks that wouldn’t stand hard on those skirting the rules.

  As she hit the tarmac, Jay pivoted and took three long strides to where he stood.

  “Hand over the preflight remote,” she ordered.

  With a sullen look buried deep in his eyes, he pulled it from his pocket.

  She plucked the non-issue gadget from his hand, her eyes hooded as they locked with his. “Did you happen to notice the bars on my collar, Panski?”

  His face went expressionless and he instantly snapped to attention, belatedly saluting.

  She continued, “Regulations state on-site, manual preflight is required before going airborne, is that understood, pilot?” Her tone and demeanor would have made Granddad proud. She didn’t usually stand on ceremony, but she could pull rank with the best of them when it was called for. This was a lesson he definitely needed to learn.

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” She almost couldn’t even see the way his jaw muscles tightened in protest as he responded.

  “Now go do your walk-around. And be sure to double-check the navigational array. Maintenance warned that there’s been a problem with drift on some of the flights.”

  While Panski strolled toward his jet, Jay turned and headed for flight control, the contraband remote in hand. Her mind was still on the pilot, though. Even if she hadn’t read his jacket she would have known all about him. This guy came not just from a career military family, but from presidential stock. That combination went one of two ways; they either produced a next generation of soldiers that was squeaky clean and by-the-books, or ones that walked around with a sense of entitlement and felt their connections lifted them above military protocol and deportment. There was no having to guess which side Panski came down on. She only wished she couldn’t see so much of her younger self in him.

  And it’s my job to readjust his perspective, she thought. Joy.

  “Hey, Deeley.” As she entered flight control she tossed the remote to the sergeant behind the desk. “Add that to the contraband lockbox, please.” While he took care of that, she pulled out her digital pad and slid it into its port on the mainframe—a safeguard against wireless interception—logging in their flight plan and officially beginning their duty shift. “See you in two hours,” she called as she again pocketed her pad and left control.

  There were sounds of life rising around the flight line; jets being maintenanced and fueled, pilots coming off patrol, and Panski trying to chat up Raven, who was waiting with Jay’s helmet in hand. He had so picked the wrong Morrigan. He was also done with his PF awful quick.

  She ran her hand over her right arm, where the flight suit hid an old scar from her cadet days. For a moment she considered going over and running the check herself, but if they were on the ground much longer they would be late for patrol. And Calloway was just looking for reasons to add another black mark to her jacket. They just didn’t have the time. She was going to have to give Panksi the benefit of the doubt.

  Jay accepted her helmet with a nod and a, “Thanks,” before turning on Panski. “Get it in gear, pilot.” She nodded him toward his bird, then turned back to Raven.

  “We’re patrolling the east leg of the DMZ. Intelligence indicates some isolated Dominion activity along that stretch, but otherwise it’s been quiet.” As she briefed her second, she tugged her comm hood, with its integrated earpiece, into place and settled the helmet—emblazoned with a stylized diving scarlet jay—overtop. She tightened the chin strap as she continued, “Run some flight exercises, get the Morrigans and the new pilots use to operating together. Anything comes up, you know the drill.”

  In response, Raven reached out and knuckled her helmet, the Morrigans’ private ritual for luck. “See you back
in two, SJ. And don’t worry…I’ll keep them in line for you.” She then stepped back behind the red safety lines and saluted as Scarlet Jay climbed into the cockpit.

  One of the ground crew scampered up the rails to lock her harness into place. When he was done and slid back down to the flight line, Jay powered up.

  “How you doing today, Hawk?”

  “All systems optimal,” the flight computer responded; the vocal tones not quite neutral, though by no means mistakable for human.

  Jay affectionately rubbed her hand along the control panel then began warm-up procedures, activating her comm, starting the engines, and, as a back-up, running internal diagnostics before signaling flight control they were ready to taxi. As she waited for confirmation, she commed Panski, “Pilot, you have my wing. Once we are informed of our runway you will follow my lead, heading 03-niner, climbing to seven thousand feet, and maintaining patrol altitude. Acknowledge?”

  “Acknowledged, Captain,” the pilot responded, his voice expressionless over the communications system. “Heading 03-niner, climb to seven thousand feet, and maintain patrol position.”

  Tension crept along her limbs as Jay powered up the rest of her systems in habitual sequence, flipping toggles and pressing buttons until the control panel was fully engaged. Her eyes trailed across the gauges and displays. No warnings flashed, no alarms sounded. She let the rumble of the Hawk’s engines sooth her. Found comfort in the sharp scent of aviation fuel and oil that always lingered over the hanger bay before settling her respirator into place. As the engines warmed up, Jay closed her eyes a moment, waiting for Deeley’s voice to sound in her earpiece. By the time they were given clearance to taxi out to the runway she had gotten her balance. She reached back with her left hand and tapped Granddad’s bell, then toggled her comm.

  “You set?”

  Silence. What was he doing, napping?

  “Panski? Are your systems green to go?”

  “Green to go, Captain.”

  “Okay, roll her out nice and easy. We’re slated for runway ten-alpha.”