The crisp air of the cabin soothed her senses; its plush seats. Its steam-vacuumed carpets. Despite the cramped legroom of economy class, here, Vera did not feel like a prisoner. She never felt freer in what she saw as an aluminium coffin made by the lowest bidder. Indeed, she hated flying, but her desire to roam Aarde triumphed over this fear. Her work demanded her to travel all across Ussea; to Peninsula, Garuda, Archipelago, Echelon, Northland and then back home to Pixel. Seven states in seven days, every week, for three hundred and seventy-seven days. Seven years—and still stuck as a mere parapriestess; a dead-end job.
For two-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-nine days, she stared out that same round window, seeing the same airports and runway signages to the point she began pulling down the shutters. In her deep dreams mid-flight brought about by her nocturnal behaviour, she often hallucinated about landing at Rondella Airport in Kanata; visiting the world-famous Triagra Falls, tasting the cool misty air brought about by the roaring waters with the sun kissing her tanned skin; the mask she was forced to wear—thrown away; crushed, destroyed.
She always wanted to become a priestess. To wield light in her hand; to heal and help those in need; to make the world a better place. That dream was now within her grasp. Today, on the 32nd of September, 2249, she was defecting to Royal United Kanata. Also known as high treason against the United States of South Eastern Asiatica.
Her fate had been sealed in red wax, upon the dotted line in black ink; safekept in her briefcase—bulletproof. The immigration officers and gate agents asked no questions. If they did however, all she had to say was she was going on vacation. She still had ninety-eight days of annual leave left unused; a shame, for it could not be encashed unless she resigned.
“Cabin crew, take-off stations. Leaving position one. Standby for departure.”
The runway’s bright lights lit up the straight path ahead.
“Here we go, Vera… You’ve finally made it… Screw you, Ussea. Good riddance.”
She gripped the armrests and closed her eyes as the plane began to vibrate and roar.
“Crew, take-off clearance cancelled, exiting runway. Standby.”
Vera’s lunch came up as the plane decelerated to a slow crawl, making a sharp left onto the taxiway. The other passengers began to raise their voices in frustration, asking the flight attendants who knew as much as them: “What’s the hold-up…? I didn’t buy travel insurance for this! Is it an engine failure…? What’s going on…? I want a refund!”
The uproar in the cabin was soon dwarfed by the louder screams of eight fighter jets taking off from runways left and right, shaking the civilian plane and its passengers silent.
Vera watched as they performed a near-vertical climb with white-hot cones spewing out their rear-ends; full-afterburners. “Live munitions…?” She squinted at the silhouettes of the now tiny jets overhead, but could not confirm if she saw blue or yellow rings on their missiles.
“Passengers, this is the captain speaking, on behalf of Thanatos Heavy Airlines, I apologise for the inconvenience caused. Mermaid Bay Control has grounded all civilian flights at this time and has ordered all planes to return to their terminals. No official reasonings have been provided, but I will inform you as soon as the information is disbursed to me. In the meantime, please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened.”
“Heh, a mock scramble? Maybe the Allfather is checking to make sure the Air Force isn’t slacking off and letting the Armada do all the work… as usual…” One of the passengers murmured with a laugh, slouching down in his seat and fumbling about on his uPhone.
“Tch, they should just build a separate airbase away from here! Why the heck does the international airport have to share runways with the UDF in the year of our Lord 2249? What are they poor? Are we not the greatest nation on Aarde?” Another passenger yelled.
“Pretty much… Aerial Battleships beat Strike Fighters any day…”
“Mommy look, there’s more of them! There’s so many!” A boy no more than ten years old in tapped the glass window front of Vera, pointing to the main runways.
He planted his nose upon the glass and squinted at the Goshawks once more.
Vera’s heart stopped. She blinked slowly and hoped she was merely seeing things.
No. She was not. She saw them. Bright as day in the darkest night.
Yellow rings. Live munitions.
A cold tingle ran down her spine, taking her breath away.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and jumped forward, shielding the child to the child, yelling: “EVERYBODY DOWN!” Bright blue light spewed from the windows.
In the next second, glass flew everywhere as the plane shook violently. Babies were crying and the kid in her grasp was screaming uncontrollably. There was a slight ringing in her ears, but she could still hear. An air raid siren was already blaring loudly across the airport. The fresh cabin air was gone, replaced with humid and dirty air that choked everyone in the plane. With an aching back, Vera looked through the shattered window to see eight flaming hulks of twisted metal lighting up both runways, cratered and broken.
A textbook runway-disabling attack…? She cursed. But from who…?
“Oh my god, get us off this plane!” A woman wailed. “We’re all gonna die!”
“I’ve got shrapnel in my eyes!” A man groaned. “I need a medic—a priestess!”
“Passengers, this is the captain speaking, our plane has been disabled from a missile strike that occurred just off our port—left wing. We will be evacuating onto the taxiway via the emergency slides. You are advised to run to the airport immediately when you touch the ground. Abandon all belongings except your uPhones. Those who in active national guard units will be receiving a wartime emergency mobilisation order shortly. As of now, the UDF has declared a shift to DEFCON-ONE. Cabin crew, deploy slides now. Evacuate.”
“Defcon-One? War? What the hell happened to Two, Three and Four?” The discord amongst the passengers grew louder and louder as the doors opened even as the loud hisses of the inflatable slides deploying assured them of their swift escape.
“Everyone, to the nearest exits immediately!” The flight attendants shouted as people began to shuffle and push. Any second now, another missile could be headed their way.
The ground began to rumble and shake unnaturally, rattling the cabin. Pixel was not on any tectonic plates. Earthquakes were impossible here. Vera grabbed her briefcase full of documents against the wishes of the flight attendants and slid off onto the taxiway, expecting the worst. For a moment the passengers stopped running and pointed as they watched in awe as a seven-hundred-and-twenty-seven-metre-long, flying battleship roared in just off the coast, parallel to the cratered runways eclipsing the light-polluted night sky.
Painted upon its dark grey bow was its namesake and hull number:
ABBS-01 ABRAHAM S. UTAMA MK. II
“Holy crap, it’s the Utama! We’re saved!”
“Everyone, into the airport now! There’s a second wave of missiles incoming!” The loudspeakers on the aerial battleship blared louder than the air raid siren, the echoes rebounding across the ground and surrounding terminals, echoing ten times.
The warship did not wait. Dozens of its onboard anti-missile rotary cannons from bow to stern lit up the moonless night. Thousands of bullets poured and criss-crossed into the abyss before dozens of distant micro-explosions hinted at the looming, but unseen threat. The people on the ground began cheering and fist-bumping in the air as they jogged slowly to the terminal, some with kids in their arms, but that ecstasy turned to dread as the Utama launched multiple flares upwards before one of its rear turrets exploded into a giant fireball.
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Everyone then began sprinting, screaming as pieces of hot trinitanium and lithium began to rain down upon them. The airport police, the baggage handlers, even the pilots who had come fresh off the slides, caught up to the flight attendants who were barefoot, high heels tossed aside. Only Vera stood there on the taxiway in shock.
“Today was supposed to be it… it’s not fair…” Her briefcase dropped to the ground, falling on its side as she fell to her knees. “I don’t want to go back… I’m tired… I’m done…”
Four more Goshawks screamed out from their underground bunkers, taking off on the taxiway, blowing Vera off her knees and almost hitting the damaged airliner in the process. She looked up, deafened. For a second, she saw four red beams skirt across the sky. She blinked and then they were gone. In their place were four orange fireballs falling into the sea.
“Hello!? Hello! I need help!” A voice from the plane cried out. “You! The one with the briefcase? I need you! She’s wounded! I need you to catch her!” The voice continued to plead with her. “Hey! I’m talking to you! Please help! We need to get her out of here!”
Vera inhaled her sorrow, and swallowed her anger and stood up with a blank face, sprinting over the inflatable slide with her briefcase in tow. “Drop down with her backwards. Place her on top of you.” The lady and the pregnant one slid down precariously. Vera caught them three-quarters down, slowing them down safely. Maroon stained the bright orange slide. There were multiple shrapnel wounds on her neck, and one where her jugular vein lay.
“They just freaking left her! How could they! She’s pregnant!” The one in a fancy white dress said. She had white hair with black pants and boots to contrast the colours. She looked rich—important, which Vera found weird. She knew only a handful of people in the Upper Strata that would stay to save strangers, and this person did not look like one of them.
“Welcome to Ussea,” Vera hissed regardless, desensitised, falling back into her ‘trained’ personality. She surmised that this person was probably a foreigner—a tourist.
“Forget about me… save…my baby…” The pregnant woman murmured with a pale face, choking on her blood. “Please save—” Her words dropped off as she closed her eyes.
Vera immediately checked her carotid pulse. It was faint, but present. Nonetheless, she shook her head, swallowing, forcing down her emotions into the prison of her belly.
“That gash is deep on her jugular. She needs a medivac with an archpriestess—”
“I can heal her! But we need to get her to the terminal—and then the hospital!” The lady in white hissed. “Help me dig the bigger shard out. I’ll do the rest with both hands.”
“No, you won’t. Don’t waste your energy. You’re not getting promoted either way.”
“Don’t give me that bullcrap!” The lady in white barked in great anger, disgusted. “If she’s already dead, then at least let me try to buy her time to have the baby extracted! Do it!”
“Fine. On three.” Vera said calmly. Another zealot gunning for a promotion… Even in Kanata, rich kids want their medals… “One, two, three!” She dug into the wound with her thumb and index finger and pulled out a black piece of metal, tossing it aside.
“Divine Intervention.” The lady’s eyes glowed white as she placed her hand over the gaping hole on the woman’s neck. Trace amounts of maroon leaked from her tear ducts and then steamed, evaporating. “Done. Help me lift her to that tug. I saw the keys still in it.”
“W-w-what the hell…?” Vera was flabbergasted. The pregnant woman’s wounds were gone. It was as though she had never been injured. She touched her neck to make sure.
“Hey! Stop staring, help me load her! The wound is fixed, but she still lost a lot of blood! We need her to get a transfusion, otherwise it’ll be all for naught!”
Vera grabbed her by the feet. The one in white grabbed under the armpits, loading the women into the tug’s bed. “You drive. I need to make sure both of them are stable.”
“I can’t drive.” Vera remarked, placing her briefcase in the passenger seat.
“It’s automatic—pretend it’s a video game. Be useful, please.”
Vera did not reply and pushed down on the closest pedal.
“That’s the brake pedal.” The voice said from behind.
Vera tried the other one. Nothing.
“Parking brake. Pull that lever.” The voice from behind said patiently.
“Sorry. I really don’t know.” Vera pulled the stick up and stepped on the accelerator.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry too. They weren’t supposed to hit this clo—you’re doing fine; doing what you can. Keep your eyes on the road. I’ll worry about these two in the back.”
As Vera focused on the road ahead, the earth began to rumble once more. More intensely this time. Two more aerial warships flew overhead, rotary cannons and flares shooting off in every direction. Vera looked up at their bows and barely saw their namesakes:
ABB-2005 JOHN O. CRAWFURD
ABB-2004 DAVID T. MARSHALL
They took positions just ahead of the Utama, now covering the whole length of the twin runways. Blue lightning from all three ships spewed tungsten into the moonless night. Eight more Goshawks tried their luck and roared off the taxiway, this time, not turning into melted wrecks. Vera could not see what the Armada were shooting at, but it was working.
“Hey stop, no vehicles through here! We’re on lockdown!” The airport security trooper with a submachine gun stopped her. Red tape was wrapped around the magazine.
“I have pregnant casualty in the back, I need a priority medivac!”
“Take her to the taxi stand at terminal five! Lady Fiona and the priestesses from the Pixel Grand Church are triaging and treating casualties. If she’s important, they’ll put her on the first Mynah out of here.”
“The Queen of Prophets?” Vera remarked.
“Yeah. Her. Now get moving! This place is going to be a FOB in mikes! Godspeed!”
The gantry went up, allowing Vera and her passengers through.
Dozens of wounded lay across the taxi stand of terminal five. Veiled women in robes placed their glowing hands over the severely wounded and prayed, while medics nursed those with minor injuries. Groans and wails echoed across the scene.
“Hey! No vehicles in here! Who let you—Miss Sindile?! What the hell are you doing here? We called you three hours ago! No one was at your apartment—it was burned down!”
“Milady, I don’t have time for this, the one in the back needs a transfusion, she lost a lot of blood. If we don’t give her it, or an evac, she’s gonna lose her child!”
“Ah, Christe’Emman, medic! Test her blood type and prep for transfusion— get volunteers for a stretcher party! She needs to be airlifted ASAP!” The Queen of Prophets was not in her ceremonial dress. She was in simple office attire. It was hard to tell she was a person of importance, unless you saw anyone and everyone sprint on over to her as though their careers were at stake. “Where’s the wound?” Her eyes glowed turquoise as she examined the mother from head to toe. “I don’t see anything.”
Vera jumped out from the tug to help. “She was wounded from —” She stood there stunned. The lady in white was not in the back. “Where… is she…?”
“Miss Sindile, you are wasting my time! You think this is funny?” Lady Fiona yelled.
“No, Milady!” Vera replied immediately. “There was a lady with me, I yanked out the shard near her jugular and she healed her… she was in the back…” She looked around. She knew she was not dreaming—not this time. Not now. “I don’t know where she went…”
“This is… Divine Intervention?” Lady Fiona glared at the pregnant lady’s neck with her glowing eyes. While most people gawked at the sight of such a miracle, The Queen of Prophet’s eyebrows did not reflect this admiration for the healing arts. She pulled Vera by the collar of her black hoodie and hissed at her softly. “Where was she from? What was her name? I need to know who the hell was with you, Parapriestess Six? I damn well know this is not your freaking magic, so who was it?! Spit it out now!”
“I don’t know, Milady! She was a foreigner dressed in white, she was on the plane with me!” Vera replied immediately without hesitation, her heart beginning to beat rapidly.
“On the plane? What were you doing on a plane?” The Queen of Prophets began setting up the blood transfusion assisted by the medics. “You’re not on COIN Duty this week—and you’re not scheduled for any vacation days as far as I am concerned…”
Vera refused to answer. She stared at the tug and her heart skipped a beat.
Her briefcase was missing as well. She cursed in her head, but calmed down.
At least it was out of sight from her direct superior.
“I’ll wring that answer out from you later, Miss Sindile, upside down into a tub of holy water if I have to. Medic, have this lady loaded on the first medevac out, priority one—she still has smaller fragments in her neck; she needs a surgeon or it won’t heal properly.”
“This is an order. You’ve been mobilised. Follow the medics. The second Mynah will be yours to take to the GHQ. I need you there ASAP. Lord Vega is trapped in the chapel.”
“Activated, Milady? Are we in a civil war with Archipelago?”
“Heavens, no—not yet. We engaged with the remnants of the GRNA fleet.”
“My contract of service only covers domestic threats, Milady. I can’t do that.”
“Well, the threat is here— and it’s bloody domestic! Now get on that chopper, or it will be the Allfather ordering you into the fight under Vanguard’s reserves!”
“Fine, but I’ll need my gear—and additional compensation.”
“That Mynah has your standard gear. As for the latter, we’ll discuss this afterwards. Now go. Meryl and Jessalyn requested help half-an-hour ago and they’ve gone radio silent.”
“Understood.” Vera replied, cursing in her head. Roped into another impossible task yet again… She thought as she followed the medics hauling the stretcher into the open car park. So long as she stayed in Ussea, she would be worked till her blood ran dry.
“Godspeed, Miss Sindile—and God bless this nation today…” Lady Fiona prayed.
A bright yellow Mynah helicopter swopped in and the medics loaded the woman in. As it took off, Vera leaned against the lamppost, thinking about the lady in white. Who the hell was she…? As though on cue, Vera was pulled into a warm embrace from behind.
“I’m sorry, Demon of Bakkanal. I know you want out of the game, but I am going to need you to play the pawn for just a little while longer…”
And then the embrace was gone.
Vera turned, fists raised, only to find no one there.
“Just what the hell have I gotten myself into?” She muttered to herself as an olive-green Black Mynah landed, the crew chief motioning her to come in. She hesitated. Were it her choice, she would walk away. But it wasn’t. There was never a choice to begin with.
She nodded and jogged into the cabin, bending down and covering her eyes from the debris kicked up from the rotor wash. “God, I freaking hate my job.” She hissed.
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