Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2) (44 page)

“
Interesting. We have a ghost ship...” The Lieutenant removed his helmet and rubbed the short cropped hair on the top of his head.

The Sergeant pointed to a small four man shuttle on the other side of the ship. “There's something else. That shuttle belongs to her... But there should be two of them.”

Zorvano pointed to a small fighter parked near the four man shuttle, “What about that thing?”

“
As far as I can tell, it's a two-seat Remora fighter. It mounts to the bottom of the Halceón's hull. It can drop free and return at will, but momma can't land if it's attached, so somebody had to fly it down. So it begs the question, where is everybody?”

“
That's what I'd like to know,” said Lieutenant Zorvano.

■ ■ ■

“This used to be my room,” said Alité wistfully. Much of the outer wall was missing and looking up, the blue sky was visible through the blackened, jagged holes in the roof.

The room was easily half the size of Jack's beach house. He just rested his hand on her armored shoulder, not speaking. After all, what could he possibly say that might have any affect at all? It appeared much of the palace had been severely damaged in the revolution and no room had escaped ruinous carnage. Little of value had been left behind by looters and those trying to survive on this damaged and suffering planet.

“Skipper...
Skipper, you reading me?”

Steele keyed his mic, “I'm here, go ahead, Bri...”

“We have company...”

“
OK,” said Jack casually, “gimme a sec, I'll be right down...” Brian's next transmission was garbled and seemed hurried. “You want to repeat that, Bri? I didn't catch that...”

“
I said they don't look friendly! Hurry your ass up!”

“
Everybody to the bird!” Jack ordered,
“Double-time it!”
Jack and Alité sprinted as best they could through the rubble, winding their way down the long corridors. “How many are there, Bri?”

“
About f ve-h   r  d...”

Damn, not this static again...
“Repeat, that!” yelled Jack.

“
Five-hundred! Five-hundred!”

Holy shit!
Thought Jack

“
Invader One, taking fire! Taking fire..!”

■ ■ ■

Santine was the first one off the ground, the Cyclone's anti-grav shooting him upward as he snap-rotated the control handle. “Delta formation, on me,
let's move it!”
He nudged the throttle, the entire flight screaming past the control tower at window height, just below the sound barrier. A mile away they punched their throttles hard and the atmosphere thundered explosively, rolling through the hills.

“
OK guys, we've got friendlies on the ground so confirm your targets...” He began, already sliding his throttle back toward the zero indent. The flight to the city was all of sixty seconds, and they passed over the palace, the compressed air thundering around them as they decelerated hard, looping back over the Invader and the Marines' defensive positions along the walls. The hill below them crawled with people pouring out of the city like rampaging ants. Blaster fire crisscrossed the open hillside below, the Marines picking and choosing their targets from protected positions.

“
Drop to a hundred foot hover, line-abreast,” ordered Santine. “Guns only, over their heads. Let's see if that get's their attention.” The four Cyclones pulled abreast of each other, mere feet between their wingtips. “Firing...” Santine squeezed the trigger and fired, the others following suit, a flat plane of magenta streaks passing over the advancing army and destroying what was left of a ten-story building on the edge of the city. The massive crowd stopped and looked back as the structure collapsed in on itself with a roar. “I think we've got their attention... let's drop to twenty-five feet.”

The building dropped in slow motion and all human movement stopped, frozen in place. Though they temporarily held fire, the Marines hadn't given an inch and with this turn of events, weren't about to. The Cyclones eased forward of their position and dropped to a firing position of twenty-five feet above the ground, the hum of their anti-grav generators and low growl of their engines at idle, the only sounds. Cutting loose with their weapons at that height would have the same effect as a chainsaw on a bunch of bananas. Messy.

Steele keyed his mic, “Cyclones, hold fire, hold fire. Looks like they're trying to decide what to do.”

“
Copy, Skipper. Holding. You've got another wave coming from the streets between the buildings... gotta be a thousand more people at least...”

“
Crap. Did we just open Pandora's Box?” Jack looked back over his shoulder. Brian had taken the opportunity the cease-fire provided to move the Invader over the wall into the palace compound, its side door still open.

“
Wait! Stop!” said the voices in Steele's earpiece.

“
What the hellion is she doing?!” said another.
“Get down from there!”

Steele whipped around to see what the Marines were talking about, scanning their positions, almost missing the fact that Alité was standing atop the broken wall, weapon slung to her side, completely exposed to the swelling crush of people below. She was waving her arms over her head, and proceeded to remove her helmet, dropping it off the wall behind her.

“Get off that wall!”
he screamed, lunging into a run. She was all alone up there, no one near her to pull her down and bring her to her senses.
What the hell is she thinking?
She was holding something above her head that she had dug out of her backpack and Jack was trying to focus enough to see what it was while pounding across the compound. It unfurled and she let it fall open, shaking it hard enough to catch the breeze...
a flag?

Alité held the Velorian national flag by the corners, letting it flutter in the breeze, looking down at the motionless wall of people below her. They glanced up occasionally, uneasily, at the row of heavily armed Cyclones hovering above them. “Citizens of Veloria,” she called. “These are UFW Marines. They are not invaders. They are not pirates or thugs... But if you attack them, they will defend themselves. And as you can see, they are extremely well equipped.”

“Why are they here?” came a voice from the crowd. They moved closer, slowly, walking, constantly growing in number. Those with weapons carried them at ease.

“
To find out what happened here. To help us. To give us the tools to rebuild. To help us restore our way of life...”

“
Where were they when we called for them? When we asked for help?
Why now?”

“
You are angry,” she shouted, “but the United Federation of Worlds never received those calls. There were other forces at work here, I'm sure you know that. People whose job it was to disrupt our way of life and ensure our failure. These Marines were sent to investigate when Veloria was no longer reachable on the UFW network. The pirate clashes continue. It took months for them to get here, but they are here to help us...”

“
Why do you say
us? We?
Who are
you
to assume you are part of
us..?
” The army had swelled to a sea of people almost five-thousand strong, stopping less than twenty feet from the wall.

Still holding up the flag, one-handed, she reached back and slid the sword, still in its scabbard off her back and held it aloft for all to see. “I am Alité, daughter of Veloria, Princess of the House of Magistrate...”

“Liar!”
shouted an agitator in the front row.
“The royal family is all dead... Killed during the revolution!”

She stared at him, unslinging her carbine and laying it on the top of the wall, wrapping the flag around her neck like a scarf. Jack stood behind her, calling her off the wall and she stayed him with her hand, dropping to the grass six feet below on the other side of the wall, facing the sea of people, her sword grasped in her left hand by its scabbard. “And who are
you
to question me?” she hissed. “And how do you know this to be true... unless you were there?” Behind her, Jack climbed to the top of the wall and nudged the safety off on his carbine.

“
The King was the ruination of us all; he got what he deserved...”

Alité's eyes narrowed, flicking to other people in the crowd that surrounded him, a wall of humanity standing almost shoulder to shoulder. “I'll ask you again,” she said slowly, darkly,
“were you there?”
She watched his facial expression but did not tunnel her vision, she saw all of him. “And
who
are you?” she demanded. “Where do you come from? It occurs to me you
aren't Velorian...”
His eyes shifted, and for a split second it seemed she could read his thoughts, saw the micro-twitch in his body as the synapses fired, bringing his muscles into motion to raise the handgun in his right hand, up to bear. The grace at which she moved was like fine ballet, her speed, deceiving.

Her right foot swept wide to broaden her stance with the scabbard still in her left hand, the sword's hilt in her right, coming cleanly out, sweeping across, producing a musical
zwing
as it sliced him across the abdomen, cutting cleanly, diagonally, through his arm, muscles, organs and spine in one swift movement. He collapsed to the grass, cut in two, his life's blood gurgling out, his organs spilling out onto the grass. She recovered, dropping the scabbard and stood ready to strike again, both hands wrapped tightly on the grip, scanning the astounded faces. The people closest to him were spattered with blood, eyes wide, mouths agape, motionless.

Never taking her eyes off the wall of humanity, she dropped to one knee and wiped the blood off her blade with his shirt before straightening up. Having retrieved the scabbard, she re-sheathed the sword, holding it in her left hand as before.

“He deserves neither your pity nor your prayers,” she announced loudly. “Traitors and outside instigators were the ruination of our society, and will not be tolerated.” Her eyes scanned the crowd. “You know who you are. And everyone else knows who you are...” she pointed at the crowd. “If you are not satisfied on Veloria, you are free to leave, unfettered. But do not cause the good people of this beautiful planet any further grief... or
I promise,”
she growled,
“
I will hunt you down
myself
and plant your worthless carcass in the ground.”

Like an outward moving ripple of water, the mass of humanity dropped to a knee, the movement spreading out through the crowd like a growing wave until they had all silently bowed to her.

“Princess,” pleaded a woman near the front, “we've lost everything, what are we supposed to do?”

“
Rebuild it, for God's sake!” the Princess snapped angrily. “You're not children; I shouldn't have to explain the obvious to you. But here it is... Whether you participated in the revolution, or you did nothing to prevent it,
you are equally responsible!
You
created
this mess, so now it's time to clean it up!” She waved her arms expressively. “When I left here four years ago, this was a living, breathing metropolis. Now it's a festering, decaying slum. I didn't have anything to do with it,
you did.
You listened to the disillusioned, the trouble makers, the instigators, and by everything I've seen, acted like angry little children who didn't get the dessert they wanted, throwing a temper tantrum.” She rubbed her forehead in frustration, “If you're happy living in abject squalor, then don't do anything... Look, you allowed somebody to convince you things needed to change. But you never asked or considered what that change might look like.” She waved her arms expressively to take in the wide spectacle of the city behind them.
“Welcome to change.”

■ ■ ■

Sitting around the table in Boney's kitchen, Alité sipped on a glass of his famous spiced wine, letting it warm her. “I can't stop shaking.”

“
Adrenalin will do that,” said Jack before sipping.

“
I never killed anyone b-b-before,” she stammered, sipping.

Steele raised an eyebrow, “Hmm, well, the first one's the hardest, it gets easier.”

“That's
not
comforting,” she retorted.

“
Sorry. But woman, you scared the crap outta me today...”

“
Scared the crap out of myself.”

“
It's like I didn't even recognize you,” said Jack. “Who
was
that out there?”

Alité shook her head, “I don't know. It just came over me... I knew what I was doing, but it was like someone was directing me and I was watching it from outside myself.”

Jack smirked, knowing the tricks that the mind played with memory and how it recorded events, often playing them back at odd angles, out of order and with strange details. “That's just the way you're remembering it now. Later, things will fall back into place and it will be less surreal. It takes time for the brain to categorize and file all the video it recorded.”