Mission Active – Search
and Rescue
2000 short story by Jonathan Hicks Thirteen years after Episode
IV – A New Hope The
snow covers me totally. I’ve been out in it for seven hours now and its started to soak through my combat fatigues and press
against my skin underneath. The combat tech’s said this clothing was good for
twelve hours. Lying
nerf herders. I
clutch the BP-43 closer to my chest, making sure the barrel’s facing down so
that the frozen moisture doesn’t get down the pipe, and wait for orders. Captain’s
doing another scan, trying to locate the beacon. He’s been quiet for the last
couple of hours, directing us with hand signals and sharp movements of his
head. I know he was doing it to avoid talking so that we wouldn’t detect any
nervousness in his voice because the last two beacon sweeps had been negative
and he was getting jumpy. The search and locate had taken more than the four
hours Tactical had told us it would take less. Once
again I watch Jarvi make sure that he’s fitted a pack in his TY-96 and I wink
at him. He gives me a weak smile with his bright blue eyes and then turns his
eyes back to the Cap, whose putting the scanner back
on his belt. He spends a couple of seconds rubbing his forehead and then
comes over. He’s keeping low and out of sight in the frozen Amagad jungle but
we know there’s no hostiles for at least twenty kilometres. Satellite recon
has been giving us regular reports and there have been no contacts for a
while. Jarvi
crawls in closer as he approaches. Its obvious the
Cap wants to talk as he motions Hideo over from the lip of the narrow gully
we’re using as a rest point. He quickly comes down and joins us. The
Cap takes off his tactical helmet and wipes his shaven damp head. He looks
worried now. He knows that we know that something is wrong but he probably
kept it from us until after he had a definite about mission failure. “No contact,” he says after a long sigh. “SatRec puts us in the right position but the shuttle’s
beacon is either damaged or we’ve been glitched.” Glitched. What he’s trying to say is that there’s been a screw-up
somewhere during mission creation and we’re paying the price. No one
disagrees; if it is our fault and our equipment’s faulty then there’s nothing
we can do. It makes what’s left of the mission go
easier if you can blame it on someone else for the time being. Hideo
nods to the scanner on the Cap’s belt. “Did SatRec
give us a hostile report?” he asks in his usual dark-eyed manner, foregoing
discipline and dropping the ‘sir’. The Cap knows him well and ignores
it - he can worry about protocol when there’s an officer present. “We got broad contacts coming in from the
south but they don’t think it’s an intercept. There’s no wave chatter about
searches or patterns so they surmise it’s just a patrol.” “On foot or heavy, sir?” Jarvi enquires.
He’s a stickler for protocol and keeps to the regs
at all time. “Arial. Three Evileye Attack Fliers,
probably with standard anti-personnel blasters on board. They’re not doing
any sweeps so they’re probably just out for the fresh air.” “Or looking for Mutant Rebels,” Hideo puts
in. The Cap nods. The MR Army had been fighting the scavengers and pirates,
who had come to the recovering world to take land and set up bases, for the
better part of a decade and knew the territory well. Evileye Combat Hoverfliers usually went for little jaunts over the
frozen jungle and firebombed anything that scanned as ‘bipedal’ on their
scopes. “Sir, is this mission over?” I ask. I’m
not one to beat about the bush and if I want to know something then I ask.
The Cap looks at me and frowns, not at the bluntness of my question but at
the answer he was about to give me. “Tactical want us to continue. We do a run
over the hills to the north then we quit, three hours max.” None
of us say a thing. We know the mission should be scrapped, we had been told
two hours max three hours ago, but we’ve got a job to do. “With the hostiles in the area we won’t
get evac for a while so lets
use the time we have. Jarvi, go with Travees and skirt the lower hills. I’ll
go with Hideo and we’ll rendezvous on the far side. Keep the helmet range
down to one kilometre and keep chatter to a minimum. When we meet I’ll
contact Tactical and request instructions. Sing if you find the crash site. Questions?” Nope.
No questions. There never were. We had been working as a team since the Heed
hit the planet and we knew the drill. The Cap had saved our lives more times
than I care to remember and we tried not to make his job any harder than it
already was. It was strange that our last three missions had been wastes of
time but the Cap took it well. We had a good rep in the North Territories and
the survivors in the west thought the sun shone from our holes after the
Kerok Island campaign against the pirate armour assault so he wouldn’t have
to worry about work. From what I understood he had seven other jobs lined up
for us after this one. Me
and Jarvi go crunching through the snow and I resist the temptation to trip
him up again. I knew that the Cap was going to cite me after pushing him into
a snowdrift but it was worth it. It broke the tension, too. We had been
trekking through the snow wastes for hours and I could see Hideo was getting
annoyed. We
picked Hideo up after the Kerok incident. Hanner had got herself killed
trying to defuse an unexploded proton torpedo, which had crashed through a
hospital roof and failed to detonate. We had managed to get half the people
to safety before it timed out and blew everything in the vicinity to pudu. Poor old Hanner. I liked her. Jarvi liked her so
much he got her pregnant, I know because I was there when the medical ‘droid
told her but she made me swear not to tell him. So I didn’t, and then four
days later boom, she’s dust. Jarvi
doesn’t speak for a week then he acts like the old soldier, ‘she knew the
score’ and that kind of stuff, but I know for a fact it hit him quite
bad. The mission after that was a locate and destroy
on a Janite missile battery and he wasted every funster
he clapped eyes on. The Cap said we might have well just let him go in on his
own. I
never told Jarvi about the baby. I take my promises quite seriously. Anyway,
Hideo was one of the soldiers we got out of the hospital before it fried and
unfortunately his unit was in there so he was basically up the creek. He was
walking wounded so we gave him a lift back to Tactical. Whilst we were
sub-orbital he asked the Cap if he could join, straight out, no pudu. We ran him through his paces when he was well
enough and he was good. Good enough to replace Hanner, at any rate, so we let
him in. Hideo was a bit nervous at first, not knowing how a hired fireteam was going to be regarded by the public but when
he started getting kisses and thank-yous from the
people we helped he knew it was worth it. The cash bonuses helped somewhat,
too. And
the Cap? We had this phase of calling him lanky because he was from
A-Desando. He lived just outside the Bay of Amagad area where the first
fragments of the Heed hit. He went along with the joke; I always got
the feeling he did that at first so that he could basically laugh off what
had happened to his home, some kind of screwed-up psychotherapy, but it
withered after a while. His real name’s Artunianonlipolitle. So we call him
Cap. We
had all met in a bar just outside of a western settlement, when it was still
there, and when they heard my Zelon accent we had one of those ‘go on, say
something’ conversations. I was getting Hanner to say ‘Weennicoos’ because that was where she came
from and Cap to say ‘pardner’. I had
to say ‘jolly good’ or some stuff because that was what they expected.
I remember Jarvi keeping out of that one. Amagad City had been turned to crap
after the Heed hit three months previously and he was worried about his
family because of the aid riots. And
then the Janos Executioners made a claim to the ravaged planet and tried to
invade. Screwed-up mother funsters with religious
opinions on the end of this world and their judgement day, revenge on Glann
Cipple for stealing their starship the Heed, as if the Heed
impact was a sign from their god warning us of our recklessness and
arrogance. Word had it they had built their forces around an old moon
Habstation, one of the original colonisation ecodomes,
way before the dust had settled after the impact and then made their move
after the disaster. They burnt whole cities, napalmed towns and wasted a
couple of important places then sent in shocktroops,
which they called ‘Executioners’ to scourge and purify the non-believers. So,
we make a living out of shooting the bastards. No one really knows why
they’re doing it and military psyche-types are blaming it on the sense of
Armageddon we all got when we heard the disaster was on its way. Other people
reckon it’s just displaced system wanderers getting together and trying to
get a piece of land from mother Amagad but I think they did it so that people
like us could keep our jobs. That’s thoughtful of them. Anyway,
that’s enough background. I’ll embellish as I go on. Jarvi
takes the lead and double-times it, stopping every few minutes to do a quick
sweep with his helmet binocs. I bring up the rear and watch his back and my
own, looking for telltale signs of wreckage or whatever in the snow. The
snowfall gets thicker and we start to slow down. Then
the Evileye’s arrive. Three
of the bastards, coming in low on a search vector and keeping wide and
staggered, their engines screaming and turning the frozen moisture to steam.
Cannons hang from their weapons pylons and the ground search scanners are
scoping for unfriendlies. One swings left on the
Cap’s route and at first I think they’ve zeroed us, but then I see that
they’re low enough to be below the tops of the hills and are just skirting.
The cannons are pointing straight ahead and don’t appear to be active. Jarvi
panics and hits the snow. I do the same, my stomach tightening as I eat ice
and wait for a blaster bolt to tear me up. I know they’ll be on thermal but I
hope the damp fatigues I’m wearing will cover my heat bleed. I press my face
in the snow so hard it goes numb. The
snow all around me whips about as they fly over, turning on their sides to
bank around the hill. Then they’re gone. I
keep comm silence for a minute to allow them to get
out of range of our kilometre radius and then call the Cap. “Travees to lead, Travees to lead.
Respond.” “Lead.
Give me a sit-rep.” “Three Evileyes
on a search pattern,” I report, “No discovery on our part.” “We’re
clean here,” says the Cap. “The one
over us was pulling off a couple of fancy spins so I don’t think they’re
doing anything but going for a drive. Get on with it.” I
tap the side of my helmet to cease the communication and start to crawl over
to Jarvi. He’s dived headfirst into a drift and is struggling to get out and
I laugh loud enough for him to hear me through his snow-filled ears. “Mother funster,
that’s twice!” he moans, trying in vain to brush the encrusted snow from his
body. It’s just a show for the joke and I shake my head. “Get your behind out
of that stuff, Jarv, we’re moving.” He
takes point again, I follow, trying to listen for the Evileyes
but they’re history. Just a rumble in the distance as they go supersonic for
whatever reason. An
hour later we’re at the other side of the hill and Jarvi holds up his arm,
not bothering to look behind to see if I noticed because he knows I’m already
down on one knee and weapon-ready. He stays like that for a minute whilst he
scopes the ground in front of him and then waves me up. Ahead
of us are three figures dressed in similar white combats to our own. They’re
digging their way out of small drifts they probably made to avoid Evileye
detection and are scanning the area with what look like Bee-Two’s. Mutant
Rebels, the more intelligent caste of Cipple’s escaped genetic experiments. The
Cap’s already approaching them and it’s obvious he’s contacted friendlies. Jarvi pats me on the shoulder and we move in.
As we get nearer my boot hits something under the snow at the same time I
notice that the ground here is unnaturally higher than the rest of the
tundra. The crashed shuttle? Doubtful. It was only supposed to have gone down
sixteen hours ago and this snowfall had been on the go for eight. I couldn’t
conceive it could have been totally covered in that time. Then
I see there’s a partially hidden furrow leading up to the base of the hill
and the snow on the side has cascaded down. Likely the craft hit the snow,
slid into the side of the mound and created a small avalanche, which buried
it. The snowfall finished the work. Convenient. As
we get closer the Cap is taking his unit off his belt to contact Tactical and
trying to listen to what the MR creature has got to say. These guys are not
pretty. They’ve all got growths and strange insect-like additions to their
bodies. Glann was fond of genetics and these poor saps are the result. There
are some who are a lot more bestial than these. I don’t think about them.
We’ve got Coryarthanax infestations everywhere as well. It
appears they had a couple of spotters out here looking for possible safe
sites for their people and watched the shuttle come down. It flipped over on
its back and the tail fin was ripped clean off as it connected with the
frozen trees. It slid up to this hill and got buried. They skinned out back
to base and reported and these three guys came here to look for survivors. Whilst
the MR man’s explaining this Hideo’s demanding to know why SatRec never warned us about the Evileyes.
“Obvious, isn’t it?” Jarvi points out. “If
they had called us whilst they were in range of the uplink they’d have picked
up the transmission and traced it to the source. We’d have been do...” “This has sucked from the start,” Hideo
snaps. He wasn’t known for his long fuse. “Cap?” “Leave it.” That was enough to shut Hideo
up but he went into a sulk. So did Jarvi. Kids, I tell you. The
MR man tells us that they’ve only been here an hour and haven’t found an
opening because they’re unsure of the design. We know it well. It was a
Bantha, orbit to surface no-frills utility dropship used for special
missions. I’d been in one of these things before. They were built from sturdy
stuff so it stood a good chance there might be someone alive in there. Actually,
I hoped there was. That was, after all, our mission parameter. Find the
crashed Bantha and get it’s one and only passenger out alive, then blow it. The
blow it part of the mission wasn’t actually communicated to us until after
our ship had dropped us at the landing zone. We didn’t want to destroy it
because an explosion would have lit up the Janite sensor net like a laserworks display. We reluctantly agreed after bonuses
were discussed. There
was a niggling doubt at the back of my limited mind, which grew after Hideo’s
‘from the start’ comment. It was true that the search area was wide, I
mean really wide, and the SatRec couldn’t pinpoint
the shuttle, which I thought was a little odd. The reactor core on the Bantha
would have appeared on the SatRec scans as a heat
bloom, even under all that snow, and it amazed me they didn’t have better
intelligence on the area. Jarvi just said it was usual Tactical crap and
dropping troops, especially hired troops and into potentially hazardous zones
had tuned into a routine. Hideo
mentioned something about stealth shielding on the Bantha but these craft
aren’t built that way. He then said something about modifications for
undercover use but Cap shut him up. He didn’t want our thoughts going
off-mission and feelings of distrust towards Tactical but I could tell that
Hideo’s words had spooked him. The mission was a little lacking in detail and
hurriedly pushed on us. If it was a secret then why didn’t they use their own
men? Thing is, when you start thinking that way then you go down that ‘need
to know’ and ‘expendable’ road. The truth is, the Impact Survivors
Coalition just doesn’t have the resources on Amagad to pull off this kind of
job and they needed a result, fast. We
knew the passenger we needed was the one and only female on board and she was
to be returned, dead or alive although alive would be a bonus. All we had to
do was get her to the extraction point and we’d catch a lift off a Screamer.
We’d be sub-orbital and away before Janite intercept sensors could react. Cap
thanks the MR’s and sends Hideo and Jarvi in -
they’re in charge of securing the passenger whilst I play the lookout and Cap
call Tactical with a situation report. I head over to a part of the furrow
where I can get a good view of the immediate area and drop the binocs from
under my helmet rim. The Cap keys in the uplink code and waits for the SatRec to respond. Jarvi and Hideo start digging snow
with help from the MR’s and we start the clock. What
I mean by that is that as soon as the Cap calls Tactical they’ll send a
Screamer to our position. Janite sensor nets will detect the ariel descent and send intercept and with three Evileyes hanging around we’d have to get extracted pretty
quickly. The Screamer is built for speed not combat and even though we’d get
the drop as far as running away goes the Evileyes
would drop us out of the sky with a three second burst. Cap
makes the call. The SatRec patches us through and
Tactical is literally going crazy. What’s taking so long, were we spotted by
the Evileye patrol, have we located the Bantha, all kinds of real soothing
crap a commander wants to hear when a mission suddenly starts to get hairy.
Cap listens with his usual calm disposition and answers as only a trained,
disciplined military man can. “Freck
you, Tactical, you freckin’
idiots! This area crawls and your screwing me around
with demands. I repeat, we have located the Bantha and are securing the
target. Send the freckin’ Screamer
before we’re compromised!” Tactical
starts to have a go back. Shouting something about following orders and that
they don’t pay him to be insubordinate. “And I don’t work with idiots who’re
sitting on their useless behinds halfway round the freckin’ planet! I’m leaving my global positioner
open so despatch the Screamer. Out.” I
quickly turn my head as Cap looks over to see if I was listening. He knows
I’ve got a smirk on my face and I also don’t want him to think I wasn’t
keeping watch. Jarvi
appears from a small snow hole and shouts. “We got her, sir! She’s alive! I don’t
believe it. Alive and mobile!” He clambers from the hole over the access
hatch and then reaches back in. A naked hand comes out and grabs him by the
wrist and he pulls the woman free with Hideo behind. She’s
quite pretty, I guess, but she’s pretty banged up. She’s got blood across her
forehead and down her left temple but she seems to be well aware of herself.
She’s not exactly dressed for sub-zero conditions but it’ll have to do whilst
we wait for extraction. She wipes her head and mingles the blood with her
black bobbed hair, as if suddenly realising she’s hurt. Jarvi leaves her with
Hideo and heads over to Cap. “Superficial head wound and bruising but
she’s fine, sir. Pilot’s dead, the window shattered and buried him. The
co-pilot’s alive, though, broken leg by the looks of it. There’s also...” Cap
waved him silent as his communicator buzzed. He unclipped it and held it up.
“Receiving.” “Tactical.
Screamer ETA seven minutes. Do you have a definite on the target, over?” “Target is secured. We also have the
co-pilot, alive but immobile. Request secondary vehicle for extraction.” The
Cap knew the Screamer was only large enough accommodate the pilot and
co-pilot that flew it and five others. That’s why we were selected for this
search and rescue, there was only four of us. “Tactical,
request denied. Secure primary target and wait for extraction.” I
looked back at the Cap in shock. Request denied? The man was one of theirs.
What did they mean request denied? “Repeat request for additional
vehicle....” “Sir, there’s something else...” Jarvi
began to say but then he was cut off by the communicator squealing loudly and
then going to white noise. I jumped to my feet. “We’re being jammed!” Cap shouted.
“Travees, scope for incoming, Hideo, get her over here!” he turned to the MR
men. “I suggest you and your men make yourselves scarce, Major.” The Mutant
Rebel nodded and turned to his men, calling them over in their own language.
Quickly they headed for the frozen jungle. “What was it, Jarvi?” Cap said, unslinging his rifle and powering it up. “There was another body in there, sir.
Suited up with top-range equipment and no ID. New Republic Security, if I’ve
ever seen one. The woman says it was her bodyguard.” “Great. Mutants, Janites, pirates and now
the New Republic. Has this planet turned into a vid-soap, or what? Well, she
must be an important woman,” Cap says, but then forgets it. He turns to the
lady as Hideo approaches with her in tow. “Lady, things have gone jurifruit-shaped. It might get hot.” “Give me a weapon,” she says, her eyes are
hard and her jaw is firm. “I know the drill.” Cap
nods and points for Hideo to get a weapon from the Bantha. We
hear a sonic boom and then a high-pitched whining and the Screamer drops from
the low cloud cover. It’s thin and long with sweep-wing configuration and its
engines swivel to accommodate a landing. I’m as surprised as the rest of us
as the thing suddenly erupts into nothing. The
Evileyes were back. I
don’t know if it was by chance or if the Janites have ways to scan even
during jamming but they tear the Screamer to little pieces. Heavy armour
piercing blaster bolts rip into the fuselage and the canopy, destroying the
craft totally. It’s not as if that was enough; even as the craft starts to
tumble they pop a couple of torpedoes into it and it blows utterly, the
minimal weapons and fuel pods blowing bits of it all over the snow. We hit
the deck and wait for our turn. Cap
shouts. “We’re compromised!” But,
honestly, you’d have thought we’d have figured that out for ourselves by now,
yeah? Jarvi is already firing, his blaster belching death light at the Evileyes. They spark and bounce off the fuselage of the
lead craft but do little to stop it. Then
the firing stops and the sides of the Evileyes are
opening, wires dropping to the snow and Janos Executioners in their blue
body- armour sliding down. They’re
toting Tollecks, not as powerful as our weapons but
accurate in the right hands. They hit the snow. We
should have sprayed them as they were descending but the situation was
confusing. Standard procedures for the Janites is to
destroy air support then firebomb the site but these guys seemed to be after
something. They were even taking the time to scope the scene before they
opened fire. I kind of got the feeling that the girl was a little more
important than we realised. The
Tollecks are ripping up the snow and turning the
landscape to Trefnarian cheese so we hit the ice and return fire. They’re
obviously checking their fire so they can mark their targets but we don’t
have that disadvantage. We flick off the safeties and give them a burst. The
lead Executioners are struck several times by mine and Hideo’s precision fire
and bits of armour fly off, along with bits of flesh. Blood turns the snow
into Zelonberry ice cream. My
barrels steaming and my weapon bleeps to indicate low charge. My heart is
pounding, the cold suddenly an old memory, my hand finding newfound strength
as they fight against the cold. I try to suppress the feeling of urgency and
will time to slow down. My mouth suddenly goes dry and I’m trying to get a
tactical picture in my mind but it’s no good. All I can see is what’s
directly ahead of me. Hideo has flicked from spray to single shot and he’s
popping bolts into the Executioners as they advance. The second Evileye has
swung in low behind us and the doors pop open. I’ve
always been an admirer of the Mutant Rebels and they don’t let us down. A
thin line of smoke appears as a rocket flies from the snow bank to the east
and inserts itself right up the exhaust of the Evileye. Tail engine goes and
it nose-dives, some of the Executioners jumping clean but landing hard. It’s
exploding before it hits the ground. The third Evileye swings and the cannons
train on the location the smoke trail leads to. The cannons burp a two second
assault and the frozen trees are obliterated. The area is saturated with fire
and the snow turns to steam. The Evileye starts dropping countermeasures in
the form of sensor buoys and a couple of flares in case the launcher’s got
any buddies in the vicinity but there’s no other rockets.
The doors slide open and the Executioners start their descent. The
exploded Evileye has given us the escape route we need now that that area
isn’t covered. The Cap is giving the newcomers a burst when he shouts, “Evac east, cover fire!” The woman has a smaller pistol
but she’s giving the Executioners some trouble. She looks as though she
almost enjoys it. Jarvi is up on his feet; he was pretty close to the Evileye
eruption, and firing blind into the Executioner ranks. I
count eight on my vector, with one of them armed with a
heavy support cannon. Me and Hideo have dropped five
but the Evileyes are obviously larger inside than
they look. Again the Cap calls for an evac and we
head for the east hole. Cap and Jarvi keep them down and when me and Hideo have gone ten leaps we drop to the snow and
turn. We open up and they start their retreat with the woman in tow shouting,
“Coming through! Coming through!” It’s a risky retreat tactic at the best of
times but at this juncture we didn’t give a damn. Cap has to grab her and
give her a yank to stop her from firing and she seems to be reluctant to
leave the slaughter. They run past us and do their ten then hit the ground
and open up. Me and Hideo are on our feet as they
cover our retreat. “Coming through! Coming through!” The
Executioners are doing their usual stuff. They’re crying out for salvation to
their leader and are just rushing in. At first we thought they did it because
they were suicidal but that’s just a ploy; they want you to think that.
Whilst you think they’re just religious freaks they’re actually engaging in
proper assault tactics so things get a little confusing. I mean, you don’t
expect a soldier to scream out a prayer whilst he’s capping the enemy, now,
do you? We
do our ten and start to turn but it seems the Executioners have new problems.
The MR men have started a laser rain from the tree line and now the Janites
are under fire from two fronts. We take advantage of the new assault and run.
The
Executioner with the support cannon flicks on his rangefinder and leans into
it. The long-barrelled weapon on the giromount
flares with a bass rumble and we see fountains of sparks from the ZR men. It
jerks me off that I never got the chance to say thanks. I’ve been in
situations before when we’ve been given covering fire on the run and I never
said thanks. I imagine the soldiers go back to their barracks, peppered with
holes and low on ammo, and think ‘ungrateful
bastards’. Once
we hit the frozen tree line we’re history. Legs pumping, forgetting the
retreat action cover fire and just going for it. We go past the destroyed area
where the Evileye fired but there are no bodies. The MR men are better than
that. Behind us we hear another whoosh
of a rocket and the biggest explosion yet as the ammo of an Evileye goes
critical. I can feel the hand of Janos on my back as the shock wave sweeps
over us like a heat wave and I stagger. It’s embarrassing, now I think about,
that I was the only one who nearly lost my footing. Even the woman kept going
and she had a gash in her head like a canyon. The
last Evileye pilot sounds like he doesn’t give a freck about checking targets as he opens up with his cannons on
the tree line where the MR’s are shooting from. It
sounds like a drum roll, a two hundred decibel drum roll, as the cannons do
their work. It kind of gives me the incentive to work my tired legs faster.
The adrenaline kicks in late these days. Fire-and-forgets
pepper the position now as the pilot really goes over the top. Somewhere in
the noise I can hear the loudspeaker under the nose of the flyer reciting a
prayer or some such stuff. The gunners literally screaming out something
about salvation and blessed be and the Janites are real nice dudes and
they’re really hard and so on. That’s fine. I’m sorry for the MR guys but
it’s keeping the Evileye man occupied. The
running minute is up and we all stop and spin, guns-ready, watching for
pursuit but there is none. The MR’s have obviously
kicked some Janite heads in and the ground troops were history. There’s
another line of smoke as another rocket narrowly misses the Evileye.
Whoever’s firing that launcher must be hopping about like mad to avoid fire.
A hopping mutant with a shoulder-launched surface-to-air independent
targeting warhead. Now that I picture that it strikes me as funny and I laugh
to relieve the tension. The adrenaline is making its presence known and my
laughter seems forced. Hideo gives me a funny look
and tells me to stow it. Then
we’re running again. The Evileye obviously can’t get a bead on the shooter
and bugs out. Its taking hits from the ground from
small arms fire and even something as heavily armoured as that can’t take the
punishment. We’re in the clear for the moment. I
know I got a funny look from my compatriots but I couldn’t help but stop for
a second and shout ‘thanks’ at the
top of my lungs towards the battle site. Cap
checks the recovered target and we keep moving. He’s obviously decided
against blowing the Bantha; we should have done it but I can hardly blame
him. There was no way on this frozen planet I was going back there, because
if we did blow it the heat would be visible for miles. Fair enough, the
blown-up Evileyes were already giving off more heat
than the average furnace but we didn’t want to make things worse, did we?
Anyway, the jamming was still in effect even though we had to assume that the
white noise could be cut through by the Janite. After all, they were using
some technology none of us had seen before and we didn’t know what they were
going to pull out of the bag next. That’s why they’re so difficult to beat. The
woman signals she’s good to go and we start out. We head west, towards the
frozen coast, knowing that we stood a better chance getting a pick-up because
Tactical had more ground vessels than it did starships. Now that the area was
hot there was no way they were going to send in an evac
transport. Not that we could ask for it anyway, what with the jamming. Jarvi,
who knows more about the area than us, says that we’ll probably hit the sea
rink in about a day. The
journey’s a long and boring one so let me tell you what’s going on. It’s
very simple. Big battle in space over the planet, thanks to Glann Cipple. He
got hold of this huge powerful warship called the Heed and tried to
trade it to what was left of the Empire in the Setnin Sector for control over
what they left behind. He sold everyone out to them for power. There’s a huge
fight back and the Heed is bought down by the hero of the day, a woman
named Luschia Arkensaw. There’s a lot of dispute at how she did it, but
whilst the battle raged on she got inside the Heed and stole the Janos
Jewel that powered it. The ship, devoid of power, falls out of the sky.
Everyone cheers. Luschia’s a hero! The war is won! Glann has been defeated!
The Empire thwarted! Unfortunately,
the Heed is being held in orbit by huge tractor projectors in Amagad
city and it comes down virtually on top of them. You’d have thought someone
would have shouted ‘quick, turn them off’ but they were probably a bit
concerned at how the Star Destroyer in orbit was dropping bombs on them. You
see, from what we know it was Glann’s own people who started the fight back
and the Imperial in charge thought Glann had double-crossed him. Bad news for
everyone. It
hits the bay off Amagad City and creates a huge ecological disaster. The
resulting crap that’s thrown into the air from the impact creates a permanent
winter, freezing the surface and basically starting a new ice age. It was a
real upset, too, because we had more or less made the planet green and
habitable with decades of eco-building. Millions are killed, animal and plant
life is practically wiped out. On the equator, right by ground zero, nothing
survives. Not even bacteria. Species are gone, people are gone and
everything’s just gone. We’ve
got loads of support from the Zelon and Leogard so we get help straight away
but most Southern Hemisphere land is totalled. The equator suffers the worse
with firestorms and tidal variations. And
if you think that was bad, then you listen up. Some other mid-planet
settlements are peppered with heavy meteor showers before the big one hits. The
land is laid waste but people have a decent way of coping and start to
rebuild virtually straight away. The north is holed and the south is slammed
to freck. The biggest impact, other
than the Amagad hit, landed smack-bang on a little town called Hillfin, just
south of Amagad. My home. Gone. Just like that. No small craters, no
peppering, just one big slab of starship, one huge firestorm and the whole of
Hillfin and the northern parts of our direct neighbours over the channel and
are roasted. I was out of the town at the time, on manoeuvres with my
regiment, but I watched the glow on the horizon. Watching the light and
thinking ‘damn, someone’s got it bad’. The
others never, ever talk to me about my home. Theirs are in a bad state along
with the rest of the world but mine simply doesn’t exist anymore. We laugh
and joke about their homes but mine doesn’t even get a mention and I’ve been
in one or two fights with others who don’t know any better. I’m
Amagadian, but that doesn’t seem true to me anymore. There isn’t an Amagad to
be patriotic about. Then along come the Janites on the tail of the disaster.
They start out, wanting to help with both supplies and spiritual stuff but we
look on them with scepticism, the same way any new cult is frowned upon. The
Eastern Mutant Alliance, bless their little tentacles, tell them to go spin
on it, in so many diplomatic words, because their troubles are more than
enough. So the Janite do the most anti-social thing
imaginable; they waste them. That kind of gets our back up and a small war
starts. I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a fire fight with
people like the Eastern Alliance. They fight with such a passion it’s both
admirable and scary at the same time. Heavy action required? Just pick up the
comm and ask for the ‘EA Revengers’. We
do a ten-kilometre hike and then rest up. Our limited packs are light, we
didn’t expect a long stay so we dispensed with burgens,
but they seem a lot heavier with the moisture and the rough trail. We take a
break and check communications. Still jammed. The woman’s complaining now,
about the cold and her wound, and so I’m given the duty. I take off my
overcoat and put it on her and check the wound. Then
I recognise her. It’s only the Tactical commanding officer’s daughter! We’ve been
sent around the planet and been shot at and blown up to rescue the daughter
of the freckin’ command officer!
Talk about abusing your command. I hope to freck she’s worth it. This
world is so screwed up. No one really knows why they’re fighting anymore.
There’s nothing left of the Heed, I don’t know why the Janites are
still here. Or the pirates who think they can salvage something. Or the
scavengers, slavers, mercenaries... I
take a long hard look at the frozen world that used to be my home. Thank
you very freckin’ much, Luschia
Arkensaw. Mission Active – Search
and Rescue
2000 short story by Jonathan Hicks Thirteen years after Episode
IV – A New Hope Histories – Set four years after the destruction of Amagad City by the Heed explosion, this tight Jonathan Hicks short story
shows the repercussions of that devastating explosion and the effects it took
on the planet. Told from the
point-of-view of a soldier defending his world from constant attack, the
trail of devastation that the Heed’s destruction left is evident to see.
Cast of Characters Travees Cap Hideo Jarvi Hanner
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