CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

~
Corinn Roderick stepped on to the flight deck, her stomach still fluttering in anxious
anticipation. The deck crew were still busy bringing subfighters in from the recovery ramp as
ordnance was unloaded refuelling was completed. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw the
line of three bodybags at the side of the hangar, and she whispered a prayer again as the
corpsmen did the rounds and marked the dead. After two and a half years of war, one could
sometimes think she‟d get used to it, but the truth was that it never got easier, and she was
finally beginning to understand why so many pilots chose to quietly enter retirement before
their time was really up.
Every day, new names were added to the list of lost comrades, and today was no
exception. Roderick moved forward and her heart sank as she saw one particular husk of an
SF-38 Raptor on the other side of the deck. The craft was a complete ruin, its wings an
unrecognisable mess of shredded metal, and its fuselage broken in two like a shattered
spine. Its markings were unmistakeable. The black fuselage, razor-wings and crooked halo
identified it as one of her own – the Dark Angels. She looked around hurriedly, and finally
saw Commander Dustin Coyle signing off his own fighter not far away. He‟d already seen
her, and walked over slowly, his helmet in-hand as if it were a ball and chain that he had to
drag across the deck. His shoulders, normally broad and imposing, were slumped and
depressed, and the dark rings around his eyes spoke clearly to his anguish.
“Dustin... Who?”
“We lost five, including three Angels,” he rasped. “Three others wounded.”
He looked back at the line of bodybags and then shook his head. “Seabury, Pickford
and Anderson,” he said grimly. “SAR is still searching for any sign of Shalders‟ or Harker‟s
bodies.”
Roderick slumped. “Shit... Do the rest of the Griffons know?”
Coyle huffed and turned around to look at the mass-gathering of pilots in the corner
at the other end of the hangar deck. “What do you think?”
“Bouncer, they just lost their squadron commander. Where the hell‟s Richards?”
“Fucked if I know. Haven‟t seen him since yesterday.”
Roderick fumed quietly for a moment. “What about Roberts?”
Coyle smiled weakly. “Relax, she‟s doing what she can for the rest of them. She
couldn‟t find the Wing Commander. She got here a few minutes ago.”
Roderick saw the younger Rapier commander, Jane Roberts, amongst the crowd of
Griffons. Like wounded eagles, not one of them held themselves up with any pride. Morale
was already waning, and several more days like this could finish them.
“Fuck it,” Roderick said, turning quickly and storming from the hangar. Something in
the back of her mind told her exactly where to go...
...Edward Richards lay on his back practically swimming in his own sweat as he
strained to push up on the weight above him. His feet ached, and it annoyed him that six
months before, this would have been a simple, run-of-the-mill exercise.
Foot, he corrected to himself silently. After so many weeks in bed, the muscles in his
good leg had atrophied, and his other, aided by the metal shaft they called a “replacement”,
couldn‟t really do anything except provide balance, with the pain of it pressing against the
stump of his knee being too much to hold much at all to begin with.
The ship‟s gymnasium was empty, of course, and he virtually screamed as he tried to
push the seventy-pound, steel block back in to place on the slide for the last time. His knee
trembled under the strain. Inches were all that it would take...
His knee gave way, and the weight came back, pushing his legs down with it.
He cursed as he straddled the press and closed his eyes. His lungs burned with
every breath he took – a sensation that he now hated with a very particular and unique
passion.
“And how many was that, then?” said the familiar, scolding voice from the door.
- 65 -