Skyfall Dawn

It was always the same dream.

“False target generator on, track breaker on, ECW pods set to jam-on-signal, adaptive countermeasures online. Maintain speed and heading. I’m gonna take a look.” Flt. Leader Melvin said, going down his mental checklist for both of the ships in the Skyfall formation he led. His F/A-300 sharply climbed a hundred feet higher and stabilized. There was a cluster of vehicles just over the approaching ridgeline. His threat receiver was going off like mad- search radars had found him.

“We’re beaconing.” Lt. Shannon said from Skyfall 7 as he detected her ECM and ECCM pods coming online. Their radiated signatures had just increased by several orders of magnitude. Her weapons bays were filled with wave-riding missiles designed to produce EMP effect.

So much to do- too much to keep track of. Melvin thought as he dropped altitude. His sensors had spotted three anti-air vehicles on the surface ahead. Octavia was a cold world with a thin atmosphere, covered with cratered lowlands rimmed by sharp mountains, a Mars-sized sphere bathed in the harsh glare of the binary whites, Procyon A and B.

“They got me in no-time flat with a continuous wave Doppler. There’s a mobile THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) battery camouflaged on the ridge.” Behind that topography he could see smoke pillars from a firefight drifting heavenward.

“Skyfall, can you hear me,” A voice called over tactical channel, shouting to be heard over the dull thump of explosions in the background. “This is Dagger. Come in, over.”

“This is Skyfall. We have you five-by-five, Dagger, over.” Melvin said and sipped water out of the soft tube pressing against his lips. Call sign Dagger was a special-forces outfit. He banked left and the flight ran parallel to the ridgeline.

“We walked into an ambush. We have nine men down and need a way out of this mess. The damned militia have us pinned, over.”

“That’s affirmative, Dagger. Upload your GPS coordinates, over." Melvin said and an instant later a new icon appeared on the Info-Link display projected inside his data-visor in glowing white.

“Upload complete. Say your ETA, over.” The Dagger major said as a particular loud explosion could be heard in the background followed by someone wailing grievously, then the popping sound of a small-arms weapon firing and someone near the open transmitter freaking out. Oh shit- oh shit- oh shit- oh shit.

Melvin programmed a course to give him minimal exposure to the THEL when he crossed the ridgeline. The laser it generated would burn through his F/A-300 with a minimum of resistance, but the laser was radar guided and thus was vulnerable.

“We’ll be there in five minutes. Just hang on, over.” Melvin said and keyed the voice link to Lt. Shannon. “Break off and circle around. In fifteen seconds I’m going over the ridge. Wait until I’m over and then go after that defense station. They’ll be focusing on me and you should have a clean shot.”

“Roger that.” Shannon said and fired her maneuvering thrusters to break out of formation. Melvin put the drinking tube to his lips and drew, but found that it had already been drained. His mouth suddenly seemed very dry as he turned toward the ridgeline.

He put the THEL battery out of his mind as best he could and got his thoughts into ground-attack mode. He had a cluster-bomb dispenser on the centerline hard-point, twelve attack missiles, and 8,000 pellets of HEPAC ammunition. A switch by his thumb set the mission profile from “Cruise” to “Ground Attack.” Servos whined as the F/A-300 changed shape, becoming wider and flatter to generate maximum lift, but with a corresponding loss of top speed. A familiar chime sounded in his helmet just before the data-feed coming into his visor flipped from air-to-air to air-to-ground mode.

“This is Dagger. Target designated, over.”

“Acknowledged, Dagger. Secure for EMP and keep your heads down. We’re coming in on the deck, over” Melvin said. “On the deck” was altitute near and, for the unwary pilot, often equal to surface level.

“I’m rolling hot,” Ajax said and locked the targeting piper on the largest cluster of targets ahead not squawking IFF. A militia armored vehicle had been designated as the impact point. “Seven, are you still with me?”

“Missile away,” Seven replied tersely. “Smleck! A THEL just got it but from where? Oh, God!”

His wingmate’s voice trailed off in fright. He pressed his thumb down on the payload release when the piper turned green. Chuff-chuff-chuff. Cluster-bombs ejected out from each side of the centerline dispenser. Ajax boosted to climb and banked slightly left, then turned his head to watch the ordinance land, twin rows of orange-black puffs in the garden of destruction. Back on the ridge he saw her bracketed by not one THEL battery, but a group of three, that had her caught in a kill basket of visible Laser. The transmitter clicked open once before her ship broke apart and fell to earth.

“Great drop, Skyfall! Give us another one just like that, over.” Dagger called in from planetside. His eyes followed her ship into the ground where another hate-flower blossomed.

“Skyfall to base. Seven is down,” He intoned numbly into his helmet transmitter. “I repeat, Skyfall down. I need search and rescue, over.”

“Negative Skyfall,” Base reported back. “Your area is too hot. We’ll try and contact ground units in the area, over.”

Melvin adjusted his course toward the THEL group. He marked their locations digitally as each vehicle shut down its laser in sequence. A touch called up the weapons display and he selected “attack/missile” from the list of options.

“Go to hell!” Melvin roared, not caring if his transmitter was open as he depressed the thumb trigger on the flight-control stick. The F/A-300 shuddered as a missile dropped out of the right payload bay. The rocket motor kicked off a second later and Melvin watched the plume heading for its target. A beam reached out and the missile exploded, creating an angry cloud of shrapnel pierced by a glowing ruby shaft.

“You think you’re smart, huh?” He muttered under his breath and set the rest of the missiles to “ripple-fire” on a single target. Lasers lanced into the sky again, concentrating on knocking down the swarm before they overwhelmed the lone THEL being concentrated on. All he had left were CBU’s and the HEPACs protruding from the blisters on each side of the canopy.

A THEL succumbed to a tactical missile and exploded, burning in the thin atmosphere, but Melvin was too occupied to notice. Boosting to gain airspeed, he brought the F/A-300 into the secondary line of attack, his path would take him over both remaining batteries.

“Skyfall, this is Dagger, please reply. We could use a little more of that good stuff down here, over.”

From the commo-tech’s gasping voice and the steady slap of footsteps in the background noise, Melvin guessed that the special forces group was running through the hole that he’d created with Charles Bravo. There was less ground fire then he’d heard before.

“Dagger, this is Skyfall. Just keep that designator handy,” Melvin said as the range-finder measuring the distance between him and THEL #2 closed rapidly toward 0.000 meters. “I’ll be with you again shortly, over.”

“That’s affirmative, Skyfall,” The commo-tech said without enthusiasm. “Just don’t wait too long, out.”

The air-to-ground sight turned green when he was still 1200 meters away. He thumb came down on the trigger and stayed down.

Chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff. He looked back in time to see the LASER emitter on THEL #3 tracking him before 5 CBU’s fell onto the generator vehicle and radar vehicle, destroying both.

“Skyfall, this is Dagger, come in,” A different male voice called out to him, one that sounded younger and scared. “Skyfall come in!”

“This is Skyfall. Go ahead, Dagger.”

“The Major got zapped. They’re all around us, we need support, we need it now, over.”

Melvin turned the F/A-300 on it’s stubby wingtip and boosted engine output to 87%, increasing speed, he could see the fire-fight without the aid of the fighter’s sensors. He went low, using the terrain for cover as he made his way closer. The target area was already designated by the friendly ground forces. His eyes flicked to his weapons display: 300 CBU’s and 8,000 rounds for the HEPAC. The Octavian militiamen were going to pay.

“Skyfall, where are you?”

Ajax blinked and for the briefest moment wondered where he was, then he saw other dark, human forms around him and remembered that somehow he’d found his way back to Hell.

How long he slept he did not know, but there were the sounds of commotion; the grunts of people getting to their feet and the scrape of boots sliding on loose rocks. One eye was swollen completely shut, partially blinding him, then his senses took over and the memories of what happened came back to him.

"Sully?" Ajax called out timidly. His vision still had not fully adjusted but he could see shadowy forms moving about. Voices gibbered quietly around him in what sounded like every language spoken by man, but none seem to be talking to him, it wasn’t the first time. "Sully?"

"I'm here, meat," Sully's familiar voice came from above him. "It's about feking time you woke up."

"What's going on?"

"Feeding time at the zoo, you slept through two a few already. "We got ration bars in two flavors: hard or dry."

"I'll take mine hard, please." Ajax said as he sat up, gathering his thoughts and legs beneath him, getting his mind back into the prison routine.

"Wouldn't we all," Sully said with a raspy cackle. "I'm afraid that we're out of the hard, all we got is the dry."

Ajax groaned and put his hand against the coarse wall for balance as he got to his feet. His face throbbed and dust had caked in his throat as he slept. "I need some water."

"You'll get some with your ration." Sully said and snagged him by the front of the shirt, leading him to the end of the queue, which advanced at an even pace.

At the conjunction of several main-line tunnels was a dispenser island illuminated by overhead lights set to a dim level. It had three faces, each a long pane of thick plexi with a hopper set waist high. As each convict stepped up and leaned forward against the plexi, a barcode scanner underneath the window swept their pattern and a ration pack dropped into the hopper.

Ke-shunk. Sully stepped forward to collect his ration. Ajax stood next in line. Then the howling starts again.

Prisoners milled around the dispenser as the howling got closer. Once they identified which tunnel the noise echoed from, everyone cleared away from it, even the trustee. From that same tunnel came the sound of bone scraping on rock, bone being smacked on bone, and always the howling.

Lupus laughed as he and his gang moved out of the darkness of the tunnel into the light. He was a giant. Ajax estimated that the top of his head was six inches lower than the top of the tunnel and his shoulders wide enough that, walking down the center-line of a tunnel, there would be for only a child to squeeze by him.

The hair that grew from his head and face was tangled and filthy. He looked down on the other convicts clustered in the mouths of the other tunnels and smiled. His face was filled with black cavities; filth was lodged in the pores in his skin, there was an empty socket where an eye should have been. His feral mouth was a gap-filled mess, his teeth had been ground down to points but there were not many left.

"I spy piggies with my one good eye." Lupus said, his words twisted by a torn lip. He gave out a baritone chuckle and swaggered toward the dispenser. His henchmen were just as ugly, but not quite as big, and all of them started laughing when their leader did. Lupus and his boys carried weapons, long bones sharpened to a point against coarse stone.

"Get ready to rush them if they make a move." Sully whispered as the laughter died away.

"We're gonna rush them?" Ajax said. He was beyond incredulous.

"If we have to," Sully said and balled his narrow fingers into fists. "Remember, we got them outnumbered."

Lupus turned in a slow circle, looking for the places where others were hiding. He clenched a bundle of ragged strips of the same synthetic material everyone wore. Removing a strip from the bundle, Lupus laid one side flat against the scanner.

Beep! Ke-shunk! The dispenser chimed and a large plastic envelope fell into the hopper. Lupus handed off the ration pack to one of his boys and removed another strip. Ajax balled his fists in anger when he realized what the strips are… barcodes torn away from prisoner's coveralls.

Beep! Ke-shunk! Another chime sounded and another ration dropped in, another meal the rightful owner would never see. Lupus carried enough stolen barcodes to get each of his crew double-rations. The third barcode laid against the scanner triggered an angry honk.

"So they finally figured out that this piggy is dead," Lupus laughed and offhandedly tossed the useless strip to the ground. Ajax chilled and felt goose-pimples raise on his skin. The DeepCore was still being quarried for raw materials, living people now instead of ore. "Which one of you piggies will take his stead?"

"Take your rations and go." The trustee said. He was smaller than Lupus, but not by much.

"Watch yourselves, little piggies, Lupus has a taste for little piggy meat," Lupus said as he scanned another purloined barcode and was rewarded with another ration-pack. He removed the ration from the hopper and shook the few remaining strips in his fist. "And like these piggies found out, Lupus always gets what he needs."

Beep! Ke-shunk! As Lupus scanned the last of his foul strips, the overhead lamps snapped on. They were painfully bright, almost blinding.

Ajax cried out like most others do and brought his hands to his face, blotting out the glaring intensity. Tears dribbled out from beneath his eyelids as his body attempted to minimize the trauma of the sudden shock. Light-balls still exploded in his brain.

"Quickly! Everyone up against the wall!" He heard the trustee bellow out, an order he could hear the people around him obeying. "Line up! Line up!"

One arm over his eyes, Ajax staggered forward until his outstretched hand touched bare rock, then he turned and leaned back. Where Sully was he had no idea and where Lupus had gone he did not care, but he felt other prisoners jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder on each side. Though still blinded by the harsh light, the noise of guards entering from a tunnel to his left filled the chamber, more than one guard. Some of the convicts yelped as they were prodded into position with shock-rods.

"Attention scum!" A burly voice called out. "The convict known as Kinkaid, Melvin, will sound off presently!"

The last word was delivered with hard emphasis. Ajax waffled as he tried to figure why they wanted him.

"I will not repeat myself!" The leader said as Ajax picked up his head and filled his lungs with fetid air.

"Here!" He yelled out. Within moments he was forcibly pinned to the wall by a pair of strong hands. He felt the rounded point of something hard like a light-pen traverse his breast and heard something chime electronically.

"This is him, Kinkaid." One of the two guards restraining him said.

"Right." The other replied. The two were different than the ones who delivered him to the DeepCore.

"What's going on?" Ajax said uneasily. He was sure that things were about to get worse.

"There's been an administrative error in your favor convict," The leader said. "The computer logs of your arrest were corrupted during transmission. Without evidence we can’t hold you. We're here to take you back."

"Back to general population?" Ajax said. The guards guffawed and pulled him out of the line of prisoners, then cuffed his hands behind his back.

"Bring him," The leader ordered. "The stench down here makes me want to put in for hazard pay."

The guards pulled his arms and he stumbled forward- then fell to his knees.

"Wait," Ajax said as he caught his breath. "You're forgetting someone."

"We only got orders for you." One of them growled as they lifted him to his feet. Ajax resisted when they pulled forward again.

"Those aren't the rules," Ajax said, protesting a breach of what he had come to understand, he had remembered his deal. "If you miss your lift date, you get left until the next man, right?"

"You try my patience."

"Sully was the last one to miss his lift," He said. "The rules say he should go up with me."

The guards stopped pulling on him to consider his request.

"The convict known as Sully will sound off!" The sergeant barked. The guards were bound by the rules they made as well as those in the volumes-thick Terran Charter.

"Here!" Sully shouted from his place against the wall. He yipped as his barcode was swept and the reader chimed.

"Bring him then!" The leader ordered. Several convicts wished Sully luck in quiet voices, others murmured that it should be them going up instead of him.

"Adios, you filthy melvins!" Sully cackled as they led him down the corridor toward the lifts.

“Where are you taking me.” Ajax said once they were well away from the others in the group. The nearest guards face split into a cruel grin but he gave no reply.

They were going up, which gave Ajax some small measure of relief. Sully and his guards got off at the minimum-security level. Ajax, the captain of the guard, and the rest rode the lift to the top. Once the doors opened, one gave Ajax a shrug and sent him stumbling out. When he caught his balance, he realized that he was at the center of a circle of large men, all in SOLMAX uniforms. The administrator that had processed him into the facility was with them.

“Melvin Kinkaid, I have happy news and sad news,” The administrator said with a frown. “The sensor logs taken of your ship and the contraband in your hold have somehow been, misplaced. You’re to be released immediately.”

Ajax felt his heart leap, as if the chains it had been wrapped in had suddenly fallen off, a smile began to form at the corners of his mouth.

“But,” The administrator continued as Brawny led the circle closing around the ex-convict at its center. “You’re not leaving here without a reminder of your visit, and absolute certainty of what will happen if you ever set foot in this facility again, that’s the bad news.”

Ajax cried out as a shock-baton was rammed into the flesh over his kidneys, his hands tightening into fists and his hair standing on end. He sank to his knees as shadows closed over him. A boot slammed into his ribs, then others from opposite sides. He put his hands up to protect his face and counted the seconds until his torment ended, a count that went on for some time.

***

He was prone on a multi-function medical slab, one of several in the infirmary, all supporting the infirm or injured. A medical technician wearing a headset data-monocle treated his injuries: setting several cracked ribs with a Calcium bond treatment and swabbing his abrasions with a purple antiseptic that stung as it was applied.

“I don’t know who you pissed off, Melvin Kinkaid,” The med-tech said and shook his head at Ajax’s sorry condition. “But I suggest you apologize or find a way to get off this rock.”

“Any suggestions?” Ajax said and winced in pain. The tech lifted an auto-injector and plunged the tip into his deltoid. He felt his body relax as the pain disappeared.

“I used to know a Kinkaid,” The tech said as he capped the antiseptic spray and replaced it on a shelf at his elbow. “I was a Marine medic once. This admiral who was in charge of the fleet at the time, his name was Kinkaid. Any relation?”

“Never heard of him.” Ajax said as he closed his eyes and laid his head back on the pallet. The sedative analgesic was beginning to take full effect.