A Life Once Lived Finale: The Last Ride of the Crimson Lance, Part 1
11 Dec 2018Gmanharmon
You are going home to see him tonight.Despite Sarah’s insistence on going back Out There immediately after being rescued from Ross 128, we had decided that a break was what we all needed. It wasn’t until some time in mid-November, after I had married the love of my life, that Sarah and Ashitaka reconnected with me, and we decided to finally make that trip. With Tenchi in the pilot’s seat of my Python, Wakarimasen, we found ourselves in familiar territory, just one jump away from our old home Out There. Maxamed Daahir and Hadassah van Leeuwenhoek returned from their own careers at our side, Hadassah in the Stroopwafel and Maxamed commandeering my trading Anaconda, the Arleigh Burke II; they chose to see us to safe harbor even after their side of the bargain was upheld and they were free to blaze their own trail after the prison job. Ashitaka Tenchi piloted my Python while Sarah Barker played navigator in the second seat; meantime, I paced around the cockpit nervously, still not ready to face the reality that I left behind.
We jumped into the home system, taking a lap around the F-class star for some fuel, then setting our sights to the planet we grew up on. As I came up to Tenchi’s left side to have a look out the canopy, I caught a flicker of something in the corner of my eye. A quick flash of something on the ship’s scopes.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing at the forward display. Tenchi looked down, and resolved a gray box near our destination, reading the information.
“Low-wake. Probably some flyboy on the Road To Riches trying to find his bearings.” My gut told me that wasn’t the case, but I had nothing to go on.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“We’re a hundred light-seconds out now, throttling down.” Tenchi slowed the speed of the Python and parked the throttle in the blue zone. We were close.
“Guys!” Barker said. “We got a hail from Mother Goose!” Mother Goose was our hometown air-traffic control. Sarah instantly began speaking a mile a minute, trying to cram an entire life’s story into a thirty-second handshake, until she was cut off with another unexpected message. “Armin’s on the line, gonna patch him up to you guys!” She tapped a few buttons, then rose out of her chair and eagerly came around the center console to join us. It didn’t take long until my father’s stately figure appeared before us on the projector, albeit a few years older and standing with the aid of a cane. We all held our breath as he looked into his portal and saw us all there, waiting for him to speak.
“Grayson?” he finally said, his voice coming through in a digital timbre, but still clearly recognizable, if only a bit softer with age. “Is that you, my boy?” I swallowed and took a step forward, straightening myself into the position of attention.
“Yes, Sir.”
My father smiled. “It does me good to see you again. We have much to talk about when you get back home.”
“Coming up on entry interface,” Tenchi said. “Two megameters.”
Armin nodded, then opened his mouth to speak once more, but the feed cut out. His visage flickered, then disappeared with a pop as the session terminated.
“Pa?” I said, staring blankly into the holoprojector. “Pa?”
“This is a secure line,” Barker said. “They don’t just end like that. Let me see if I can re-establish—”
“Solid contact!” Tenchi tensed up and raised his voice. “Gravity signatures due north of us, five hundred klicks from the surface! I’m dropping on them; Haddee, Max, follow us in!”
“Aye,” came the crackle through the comms link as Hadassah broke radio silence.
Wakarimasen and Stroopwafel dropped out of supercruise in the planet’s upper atmosphere. A flight of four brilliant white Gutamaya ships were arrayed before us, three Couriers surrounding an Imperial Cutter with hardpoints deployed. Its huge plasma accelerator fired, sending an oblong ball of destructive energy hurtling towards the surface, causing lightning to arc across its path through the clouds below.
“It’s a plasma bombardment!” Tenchi accelerated the Python with a deft touch as he deactivated flight assist, positioned himself underneath the Cutter, and aimed at the plasma accelerator mounted to the chin before boosting straight into it, simultaneously emptying two full volleys from the forward-mounted fragmentation cannons into the Cutter’s keel. The impact rocked us all and nearly sent Sarah to the floor, but it had achieved its intended outcome: the weapon was sheared off its mounts and consigned to the void as a pile of scrap; the salvo from the frag cannons left white-hot scars along the underside of the vessel as gases and fluids leaked from the new wounds.
With an impressive burst of speed, the Cutter lifted its nose away and turned to retreat, as one of the Couriers engaged with Hadassah. Maxamed gave chase with the Anaconda, unleashing beam lasers at the Imperial frigate, followed by a salvo of seeker missiles. The snub fighters were nimble, but rigid naval doctrine was no match for the guile of contract killers, and the Courier exploded under withering laser and rocket fire from the Stroopwafel. Tenchi was overcome with rage as he chased the Cutter, firing beam lasers at its stern with total disregard to the rising heat in my ship.
“Tenchi, that’s enough!” I shouted, pulling his hands from the controls as the three Imperial ships spooled their frame-shift drives and blinked out into hyperspace. We stood in silence as the Python sloughed off its heat and the power plant recovered from the strain of the attack, while Hadassah and Maxamed orbited around us, waiting for orders. “The damage is done. Now let’s get on the ground and see if we can save anyone.”
---
We flew into hell.
There was no telling how long the orbital bombardment lasted before we intervened, but it had been enough. Nothing was left. I could only recognize the location of the town square due to the building layouts from the air.
The air was filled with choking black smoke, while the stench of char and ozone hung in our nostrils. Sarah was beside herself, collapsed against a concrete wall and wracked with grief. Tears streamed down her face, making streaks in the layer of soot that formed from her search and rescue attempts. I stood next to Tenchi, sat on his haunches in front of the hollowed-out town hall. Three tarpaulins lay in front of the grand staircase, covering the remains of our unidentified clansmen.
“Jesus,” he muttered, head in hands. “Jesus.”
“He ain’t here anymore.” I left Ashitaka and Sarah in town while I made my way to the homestead, on a path I had traveled countless times before. My brain had proceeded so far on autopilot that I found myself reaching in my jacket pocket for the cellar key, wondering what I was doing with my Pilots Federation license instead. Then it hit me. I looked up and saw the house I grew up in, still standing in spite of the attack. All around me, the crop fields were ablaze, an impact crater from some type of munition less than two hundred meters away. The Arleigh Burke made a low orbit around the farmhouse, but I didn’t notice. It took some time to process all this information, but my mind eventually clicked.
“Pa!”
I ran up to the front door, finding it still open, and stormed inside, my mag-boots making a great noise on the hardwood floor. “Pa!” I was unaware that Hadassah and Maxamed had followed me in as I painstakingly checked every room on the ground floor, before proceeding upstairs. “Pa!” My room was exactly as I had left it, save for a layer of dust. I turned around and proceeded down the hall to my father’s study, but hesitated once my hand touched the brass doorknob, an automatic response from years of admonishment for respecting his space.
Eventually, I steeled my nerves, realized I wasn’t young anymore, and turned the knob, opening the door to his study. Shelves and shelves of books, documents, holodiscs, and dataslates lined the room, filled to the brim with all manner of trinkets and bric-a-brac. In the corner stood a seventy-inch holoscreen that was currently playing one of his old movies with a starring role. As I watched an action scene where he disarms a Western thug and makes off with his horse, Hadassah and Maxamed step into the study. Their faces were solemn.
“Grayson,” Maxamed says first. “We’ve found your father. You should come with us.”
To be concluded...