The Starward Exiles Entry 10: Firefight

Cinthia didn’t meet Heath’s eyes, which hovered over her as he scowled. Then he nodded to Jill and Helen, and the trio left the cockpit. Cinthia looked at me and tilted her head towards the back of the ship. She stood and began walking. I followed her into the hull, where we sat facing each other on a couple of crates, close to where I’d spent so much time writing before meeting Madulluel. Cinthia looked at her lap, then at me, her curling into a small grin as her heels mindlessly knocked against the side of her crate. She lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

“Sorry you’ve been forced into the middle of all this, Monk,” she said. “Did Mad tell you it was going to be this way?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I’m not sorry to be here.” And this was true. I may flirt with heresy in Orthodox circles, but I’m still a monk, and it’s my job to offer council and comfort whenever possible. My only regret had been not knowing what to say. But, in my experience, it’s better to remain silent and let people work out their own ideas. God places the truth in all of our hearts, and I feel everyone should at least be given a chance to find it on their own. That requires silence. If they find themselves stuck or going down the wrong path, then I can intervene with either a rebuke or guidance, but silence first, always silence first.

In this case, that seemed to be the right choice. Cinthia continued kicking at the crate with her heels. She whispered, “I had a little boy with Heath’s eyes. I wish I could’ve been his mommy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She wiped her eyes with a hand and said, “Heath’s the old-fashioned type. He probably would’ve joined your church if things were different. A lot of guys are scared of having kids, probably because they want to stay kids themselves. Not Heath. When they stole our babies, he took each loss hard, but he carried it, you know? Stayed strong for us. Then he broke.” Her gaze met mine, and for the first time, I saw a fire in her eyes, a wrath that I think would’ve caused Helen’s blood to run cold. She was showing me something that she didn’t show the others. “It’s not right that they broke him. And I want my son back.”

Once again, words failed me. I would’ve given anything to find something to say to comfort her, but before I could, Heath, Jill, and Helen entered the hull. Then I noticed the rifles slung over their shoulders and the smooth, purple crystals sticking out from the stocks. My eyes widened. I was shocked. I’m no weapons expert, but even I knew that Heath had found a unique use for a niche weapon.

Weaponry is a somewhat complicated subject in our time. Stories from the past indicate that lasers were an upgrade from bullets. This is and isn’t true. Really, different sorts of long-range weapons are needed for different purposes and environments. Lasers work well when they are on larger vessels because enough heat can be generated to offset water vapor and other such environmental conditions, although a thick overcast is enough to thwart the most powerful beam. Yet when it comes to rifles and pistols, lasers are sometimes used, but they’re not as powerful, and a variety of conditions can undermine their effectiveness. I suppose I shall have to delve into more detail about our weaponry eventually, but my point is that mankind was still able to resist the Nordics with bullets. They have advantages of their own. But there are defenses against bullets too that go beyond mere armor, so Heath, Jill, and Helen were carrying rifles that fired plasma orbs, a sort of halfway step between lasers and bullets.

Certain weapons exist that create directed forms of gravity and magnetism, and these can be used to guide the bullet or the beam away from an intended target. Plasma orbs are not affected by such weapons, and they are particularly effective against energy shields, something the Nordics prioritized after the first Nordic War. These orbs are created by special crystals housed within the stock of the rifle or pistol handle. When properly charged by sunlight and electricity, these crystals release a small batch of particles when struck by the gun’s hammer. These particles exit the barrel in the form of an elongated oval and condense into an orb a quarter the size of a fist, pulling in water, dirt, and particulate matter from the air as it does so. This creates a plasma that sticks to the intended target and burns at a temperature slightly cooler than lava. The reason these weapons were so effective against the Nordics was because every shield must have a certain amount of give so the soldier could fire his weapon while protected. To do this, the shields are made so that they can withstand the velocity of a bullet fired from a long range but are unable to protect against a bullet fired at point blank, meaning it’s possible for kinetic energy to pass through the shield. And if kinetic energy can pass through the shield, so can other forms of energy like heat. Therefore, when the orbs strike the shield, the heat they produce causes the Nordics great pain, and they are forced to drop their shield so that the plasma may fall to the ground, but this opens them up to the next shot. On top of this, the orbs are often aimed toward the head so that the plasma may obscure the Nordics’ vision.

Plasma orbs couldn’t be utilized by an entire army because the air would quickly become useless, but for three smugglers like Heath, Jill, and Helen, they were perfect. Heath stopped and looked back and forth between us. “I don’t expect this to take long. It’ll be fast, one way or the other. Go back to the cockpit and keep an eye outside. If you see men running toward the ship, but you don’t see us, take off. Leave the monk at Mary’s so he can meet up with that soldier Mad was talking about.”

Cinthia didn’t reply, so Heath and the others walked to the end of the hull. Heath pressed a button, and a large door lowered to the sidewalk, forming a ramp. The trio left the ship. Cinthia and I watched them leave, then stared at the vacant sky.

After a minute, Cinthia looked at me and said, “They want to keep me sweet.” She stood. “They don’t know me at all.” She turned and started walking.

“Where are you going?” I asked, standing as well.

“I won’t ask you to come with me, Monk,” Cinthia said. “But I’m not staying.”

I started walking after her. “Well, what kind of man would I be if I let you go alone?”

“A smart one,” Cinthia said. “How long has it been since you’ve held a gun?”

The last time I’d held a gun was at the start of the Second Nordic War some twenty years before, so I said, “Too long.”

Cinthia stopped, turned, and gave me a sly smile. “That’s a good answer.” She tilted her head to a doorway to our right. “Let’s go make ourselves useful.”

We turned, passing through the doorway and entering a short, narrow hall. “How are we going to do that?”

We entered a small room where countless guns were hanging from a wire mesh mounted to the wall. Cinthia answered my question as she took two of the rifles and began disassembling the stocks, checking the crystals. “The building outside is a Nordic military brothel. You know how perverted they and the Reptilians are. When they capture foreign soldiers, they’ll have them do strip teases and perform tricks in the back. It’s a humiliation ritual, part of their de-evolution thing. But we’ve been using that against them.” Cinthia grabbed four wires connected to a hole in the wall and a roll of black electrical tape. The ends of the wires were frayed copper. Cinthia ripped off four strips of the tape, pressed them against the frayed ends, then connected the four wires to the crystals inside the rifle stocks. She turned and faced me. “The lower-ranking Nordics watch the strip tease, and the brass gets the tricks. But prisoners are guarded by Greys, and they’re not too bright. We’ve been sneaking weapons into the ventilation shafts and telling the prisoners where to find them. The prisoners take the weapons and kill the brass during a trick, then they make a prison break. We’ve done this five times. Twice we’ve had to shoot our way out, which is one of the many reasons Heath’s been getting a reputation.” Cinthia smiled and lifted her chin a little. “They can’t de-evolve us. Those prisoners are still soldiers, no matter how much they’ve been put through. They know how to use those guns, and so far, there haven’t been enough Nordics left for their leaders to figure out what we’re doing.”

“So, Heath and the others are going to sneak into the ventilation shaft and pull Jeena and Silby out.”

Cinthia nodded. “If things go well, they’ll leave two of the guns where the prisoners will find them. That won’t be enough for a frontal attack, but they might manage a late-night escape. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Jeena and Silby hate Heath.”

“Why?”

Cinthia shrugged. “I don’t know. When we were in the zoo, we hated the Nordics. When we were with Mad, we hated her, although that became harder over time. But when Mad let us go, I guess there was nobody left to hate, so they hated Heath. They said he’d taken advantage of us, but he was in the same boat that we were. If he didn’t do what the Nordics said, they would’ve killed him. Mary would’ve lost her husband, and we would’ve been paired with someone else. But when the whole thing was over, that didn’t seem to matter.”

“What do you think they’re going to do? Surely, they don’t believe they’re in a better place.”

“I don’t know,” Cinthia said. “They’re not exactly logical. They might shout for the Nordics once they think they can get away, let Heath die shooting while they run. They might shoot Heath once we’re in space. I’m not sure. I just want to make sure I’m behind them.”

She turned, removed the tape, threw it in the trash, and reassembled the stocks. She then handed me one of the guns. The rifle felt heavy in my arms. It really had been a long time. As I adjusted my hold on the rifle, trying to remember the proper way to carry such weapons, Cinthia began walking again. I turned and followed her.

We passed through the hallway, crossed the hull, and walked down the large door serving as a ramp for the ship. Once on the parking lot, Cinthia turned and started toward the building. We began passing through the various ships, and I realized that Cinthia was trying to hide us from the large pair of doors in the middle of the building. As we hunched over, running from ship to ship, Cinthia said, “We usually enter the vents through the left- or right-hand sides of the building. The Nordics won’t follow them, so we’re going to guard the front doors.”

“We’ll act as a flank if the Nordics try to go after them,” I said, nodding. Memories of the war came flooding back to me. I remembered countless conversations just like this in the dead of night, and they were always followed by screams. I missed my monastery. I wanted nothing more than to return to my small room, to my simple cot, where I’d sit and try to forget those screams all over again. But that was a cowardly longing, and I knew it. I closed my eyes and tried to take on that focused frame of mind I’d learned during those few terrible years. Hopefully, Cinthia was wrong, letting her suspicions about Jeena and Silby get the better of her. However, the truth was, I shared her suspicions. I couldn’t say why. But Cinthia wasn’t as naive as she let on. She had a natural intuition about people.

We slowly moved right until we reached the ship closest to the building. It was a small, red thing, slightly larger than a hover car, and Cinthia and I crouched together under the wing. There we waited. Before long, I saw two Nordics walking toward the door.

This was the first time I’d seen them in years, and I’d forgotten how intimidating they were. They stood eight feet tall, with eyes slightly larger than a human’s. Their long blonde hair fell halfway down their backs. Both the men and the women wore their hair long, but the males always tied a purple strap of cloth around their foreheads. These men wore long white robes with an open, sleeveless, purple outer garment. Both the outer garment and the robe were cinched at the waist with a golden rope. They were also decorated with an inordinate number of golden necklaces and rings. They would’ve looked like ancient monarchs were it not for the rifles slung over their shoulders and the metal utility belts hanging just below their golden ropes. However, armed or not, the robes were not the official military garb of the alien race, so these men were off duty. They weren’t expecting a fight.

I heard Cinthia’s knuckles popping, and turning, I saw that her face was red, although her knuckles were white. She noticed me and tried to smile. “I want to kill them. Is that a sin?”

It probably was, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, so I said, “We’re doing the right thing.”

Cinthia snorted. “Right. Probably shouldn’t ruin it with revenge.”

We smiled at one another and waited. More Nordics passed through the doors until finally we heard footsteps to our right. I turned and saw Heath and the others. Sure enough, Heath was the only one carrying a rifle. Jill and Helen were carrying two women covered in blankets. The wounded pair shambled more than ran alongside the building, and I could tell that Jill and Helen were struggling to keep the two women moving quickly. The group passed by without noticing us. They rounded the building and began running even faster down the parking lot, between the two clusters of scattered ships on either side of the brothel, opting for speed rather than stealth. The Eagle Seven was directly in front of them, and there was a straight path. Cinthia and I stood, peering over the wing to take one last look at the doors. Then we moved around the wing, crossing in front of the small, red ship, intending to follow them, but before we’d taken five steps, one of the wounded women looked over her shoulder. I knew what she was going to do before she opened her mouth. Cinthia had been right.

“Hey! Hey! Here!” the woman screamed.

I looked toward the doors to see two Nordic soldiers staring stupidly at the group as they struggled to the ship. I then looked back at the group. Heath was in the middle of spinning around on one heel. He finished his turn, saw the men at the doors, and began moving around Jill and Helen, raising his rifle.

“Get them to the ship!” he cried.

The traitorous woman was trying to break away from the group. Helen only held her by one hand. Apparently, she hadn’t been as wounded as she’d let on. The other woman began begging for her companion to stop.

“Are you kidding me!” Helen roared.

“Do it!” Heath shouted.

I didn’t wait to see how Helen would respond. I turned back to the Nordics, who were raising their rifles as well. It was a close draw, but Heath fired first, then Cinthia, then me. Before the men could fire a shot, one of our plasma orbs, I wasn’t sure who’s, struck the man closest to the red ship. He hadn’t turned on his energy shield and immediately burst into flames. Then the second Nordic fired as his partner screamed and flailed beside him. A solid red beam shot from the barrel, forming a glowing line between Cinthia, me, and Heath before striking a ship further down the parking lot. He didn’t turn off the beam, and an orange glow began illuminating from the ship’s metal. The Nordic then moved the laser toward Heath, intending to slice him in half. We all fired at the Nordic, but when the first orb struck, it stuck to the energy shield surrounding his body. That one orb was certainly causing him pain. I got a glance of his teeth grinding, but the whole thing was over too quickly for me to say more than that. Several more orbs struck him, and his finger let go of the trigger as he screamed in pain. I didn’t look to see if the beam had managed to strike Heath or not. At that point, I wasn’t sure, but I knew it had been close. Instead, I kept my eyes on the man, my frightening focus truly returning to me in an instant, and waited for what I knew would come next.

The Nordic’s hands scrambled toward his belt until he found the right button, and the energy shield shut off. The plasma from the splattered orbs fell around him. Tiny flames flickered on the metal parking lot. But this did him little good. I fired a well-aimed shot, and I know the orb that killed him was mine.

“Back toward the ship slowly,” Cinthia shouted. “We can’t run for it! Keep shooting! We have to blind them!”

Sure enough, the doors burst open. I couldn’t tell how many Nordics there were, but there were enough to fill the doorway. They looked down at the fallen soldiers, then back up at us. We didn’t give them time for anything else. As we backed away, Cinthia and I hit them with a barrage of orbs, and whether we’d hit shields or not, the cumulative heat was enough to force the Nordics back. Heath, who I was happy to see alive, was much smarter than us. He aimed his rifle upward and fired his orbs over the top of the doorway. Smoke began billowing into the sky as the plasma burned the metal above the Nordic’s heads. The three of us continued firing until Heath’s gun suddenly stopped.

“I told her to charge it!” Heath screamed.

Cinthia and I were almost beside him then, and figuring he was a better shot than I was, I shouted, “Take mine,” and tossed my rifle to him. Heath caught it and gave me a nod. Then he continued firing above the doorway.

“Go back!” Cinthia shouted as she tried to keep the Nordics from firing at Heath.

“I’m with you,” I told her.

A small grin curled up her lip. “Crazy old man,” she muttered. Then she raised her voice. “Thanks.”

We kept backing away, but gradually, we moved past Heath, who had slowed his pace. A few feet from the ship, something changed in his demeanor. He stiffened, then lowered his rifle and fired directly at the Nordics. Then he began moving toward them, screaming. Cinthia and I reached the ramp of the Eagle Seven. We ran to the top of it and turned to see Heath still moving toward the doorway.

“Heath! What are you doing?” Cinthia shouted. She began firing again.

I couldn’t see what the Nordics were doing through all the smoke, but they must’ve figured out something because a laser beam fired diagonally from the doorway and struck a ship. The beam then quickly turned off, and another shot closer to Heath. It was straight enough to shoot all the way to the Eagle Seven, and only the lip of the ramp prevented the beam from removing my feet. The beam began cutting across the row between the ships, but it was low enough for Heath to jump over, which he did. Then another beam fired, striking above the landing gear of the Eagle Seven, but it was slightly high, and Heath was able to duck under it as it cut at an angle across the parking lot. For myself, I had to hop over it as it traveled across the body of the ship. I peered over the side of the ramp and saw a glowing orange streak across the legs of the landing gear. I knew rifle lasers were weaker than the lasers used on ships, so I hoped the damage was superficial.

I looked back at Heath, who was still advancing toward the Nordics. In fact, he’d nearly reached the doors. I thought the least he could do was lay on his stomach because the Nordics appeared to be shooting blind. Then another beam shot out, once again striking the landing gear and nicking Heath’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice, but the moment that laser moved, it would be over for him. Then the frame above the doorway gave out. Molten and twisted metal spilled over the cloud of smoke as the front of the brothel collapsed on top of the Nordics. The final laser beam went out. I didn’t realize the Nordics had still been screaming until there was silence.

Heath gave a final nod to the brothel, then sprinted back for the ship.

“Thank you,” Cinthia whispered.

I turned to her. She was looking at me and smiling with tears in her eyes. “That’s the first prayer I’ve said in a long time.”

I nodded, then I lifted my hand, offering to take the rifle. She gave it to me and rushed to Heath. She examined his arm as he ran back to the ramp, and once they were on board the ship, I took one last look at the brothel. I heard the fire of more plasma rifles and realized the prisoners had taken their chance. I pray they made it.

I returned to the ship and had enough time to realize Jill was not inside the hull. Then the ship lurched, and Helen let out a curse. She moved past me and pressed a button. Then the door began to rise, sealing us inside the ship.

When the door was closed, I turned and saw the two women huddled up against the wall. The traitorous woman’s head lay in the other woman’s lap. There was a bright red spot on her cheek, and I knew Helen had helped her the only way she could.

Heath passed by me, holding his arm. He approached Cynthia, looking at her sheepishly. “Thank you,” he muttered. He turned to me. “You, too.”

Before I could say anything, Cynthia grabbed Heath by his shoulders, threw her arms around him, and squeezed. Heath winced but did his best to hug her back. Then she took his head in both her hands and forced him to look into her eyes.

“Don’t ever underestimate me again,” she said.

Heath nodded.

I’ll describe what happened then in the next entry, Lord willing.

May God grant you peace.

Hieromonk Nicholas Petrov