Ch: 106 Old Friend (Patreon)

Edited by Aldous

Sorry for being late again. Work is still busy, but it seems to be dying down now. Working on the next DM chapter and Sage of humanity. Sage should be out Wednesday and the next DM chapter should be at the end of the week so I can get caught up. 

Chapter 106

Old Friend

Freya shook her head at the woman in front of her. “Three days and this is what you came up with?” She asked, looking at the huge cargo plane.

“I know it looks bad, but it’s going to work. Trust me.” Alues said, from her position beside Freya.

Freya sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose while closing her eyes. “I don’t have time for this.” She thought to herself.

“It’s fine.” She told the other woman. “It’s going to have to be, now isn’t it.”

“This is the best that my team could come up with, with what you gave me.” Alues replied, sounding a bit defensive. “I don’t have a printer, and the slush fluid is too heavy to use on an aircraft.”

“So glue? That’s what you came up with?” Freya replied as she looked at the plane. “And why did you have to cut holes in the airframe?”

“If the generators stuck out too far then the drag on the airframe would become too bad.” Alues replied, shrugging her shoulders.

“And this won’t?” Freya asked, turning to the other woman, wanting to see her expression.

“Oh it will, but it won’t tear the airframe apart when you hit some turbulence.” The chief engineer of the mine replied, turning to smile at Freya.

“Fine. How long until all the Mechs are loaded?” Freya asked as she looked.

“We are loading the last one on now.” Alues replied. “Should be ready to fly as soon as they are done.”

“Fine. But I want to check on those generators before I go anywhere.” Freya told the other woman as she looked at the plane again and the four generators sticking out of the fuselage and the pink glue that surrounded where the generators met the edges of the plane.

She had to admit it, a few minutes later when they were at the plane, it was the oddest preflight check off she had ever had as she stood on a ladder and shook the generator. She thanked God that the pink glue was dry as she pulled her hand away from it. Grabbing the edge of the generator she pushed it, giving the thing a good shake. The thing didn’t move.

“What about when I go into the ocean?” Freya asked as she looked at the ugly thing.

“Go slow. Keep your speed under a hundred miles an hour, and it should be fine. Also don’t dive at a sharp angle at the surface. In fact, it’s probably best if you gently slide into the water.” The chief engineer said, shaking her head.

Freya turned and looked at the other woman shocked. “Seriously?” She asked her.

“Yeah, should be fine.” Alues replied, nodding to herself.

“Magic!” Cannon yelled from behind them on the floor.

“What?” She asked her former boss. She winced as some of the annoyance at the engineer leaked into her voice.

“Come on down. I’m not yelling up at you from here.” Cannon replied.

“Be right down.” Freya replied as she turned off the platform and onto the ladder proper before climbing down. She met Cannon at the base of the ladder.

“The base commander has got one more Mech and pilot for us, but we have to go pick him up.” Cannon told her as Freya heard the engineer climb down behind her.

“Do we have room?” Freya asked, turning to the engineer.

“On yes.” Alues replied. “You could fit a few more Mechs in there no problem.”

“I’ll drop a waypoint at the location of the pick up point.” Cannon told her.

“You know you didn’t have to come all the way down here. You could have sent a message or told me over the radio.” Freya told her fellow marine.

“I wanted to see your expression when you saw what you’ll be flying.” Cannon replied, sounding deeply amused. “It's exactly like I dreamed it would be.” Freya told her old boss to go screw herself, making the other marine laugh harder than Freya had ever seen her laugh before.

Freya sighed in disgust then moved the ladder down to the next generator and climbed up. Over a half hour later, she finished the preflight check off and was standing in the back of the cargo plane looking in awe at the Mechs. The Mechs were packed into the plane in a hunched position that looked like they were folded into a square. They were secured to the deck with thick but short chains, two by two all the way down the length of the plane.

“Hey ma shiv, we sure this is safe?” Monkeyman said, looking uneasy as he looked up at the generator that was hanging down from the ceiling.

“It’s fine.” Lurch said, shaking his head. “The epoxy is waterproof.”

“Okay, now I’m worried about that too.” Monkeyman replied. “No, I was worried it would fly off once we are in the air. Seriously, this is the best that they could do?”

“You have to put the generators in the correct position to overlap each other or you’ll leave open spots. Plus they require a lot of power so you have to have a good size power source nearby. They ran a power line down the middle of the plane. See.” Lurch said pointing out a thick power cable that was secured to the ceiling better than the generators.

“He right?” Monkeyman asked, looking concerned. A bit of his odd accent coming out.

“Honestly, I have no idea.” Freya said, doing her best to not look at him.

“Oh geez, we’re gonna die. Like, game over, right?” Monkeyman said, looking up again. His accent came out pretty heavily as he spoke.

“It’ll be a fun ride, though. Right?” BT asked suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him as he gave them a weird excited smile.

“A wild ride right into Tom’s bumhole.” Monkeyman replied sarcastically. “Learn to read the room, dead head. This is the doom and gloom section. The death wish room is down the hall.”

“Come on, Monkey. Aren’t you even a bit excited about it?” BT asked.

Seeing the conversation going the wrong way, Freya spoke up. “Let’s get the Mech drivers in and secured. I’ll be in the cockpit. We need to move. I hear they are ready to kick this thing off soon.” Freya told them before she started down the cargo bay towards the cockpit. To her relief, they dropped the conversation and got to work. She hoped to be in the air before they had enough time to talk about it again. She did hear Monkeyman grumble about his name, but he did it softly. She held back her chuckle as he did.

The cockpit was huge compared to the ones in her dropships. It had three seats. Two were traditional seats in front of a glass window with the last seat behind those two. The first two were for the pilot and the co-pilot, but the last seat was for the ship’s loadmaster. It was where one would monitor the cargo, life support, and many other systems that a civilian pilot wouldn’t have time to monitor. Someone had also added a folding jumpseat behind the pilot's seat. It was currently folded up against the wall.

Freya sat down in the pilot's seat and started up the generator. She looked at the battery life and nodded to herself. It was low, but it would last at least a month of active flying. She hoped they didn’t need it that long. As the systems came online, she checked her mini map for the coordinates where she would find the last Mech. It was slightly out of their way, but the delay was only fifteen minutes so she wasn’t too annoyed. She adjusted the flightpath she had created to account for it then, using her Personal AI, downloaded it to the plane's systems. She smiled as it popped up on her tracking console by her right knee.

Freya then looked at the bolted-on console that was her active camouflage systems. It was a simple, thin, black box with four lights on it. The first light would be all active camo generators working fine. If a light went out then she would know one of the generators was out. The others should cover the ship just fine, but if more than one went out then she would be exposed. She hoped the engineer knew what she was doing. The last thing she wanted was to be exposed at the wrong time with no respawns available.

She turned the power on and ran the systems through the diagnostic testing. The light turned blinking red indicating that the generators had power but were not currently working. Then, as she watched, they turned orange then yellow and finally green. She raised her face shield and kissed two of her fingers on her right hand then tapped the box with them. Then she closed her face shield as the diagnostic test finished on her active camo console. All the lights were a solid green indicating no problems. Nodding to herself, she went on to check the emergency systems because she wasn’t completely sure about the work the engineer did.

“Our passengers are seated with their tray tables in their upright positions.” Monkeyman said as he sat down beside her in the co-pilot’s seat. Turning around, she spotted Lurch sitting down in the ship's systems seat while an upset-looking BT pulled down the jumpseat.

“Ok.” Freya said, turning around. She had no idea what a tray table was or why they had to be in an upright position, but ignored it as she assumed it was one of Monkeyman’s sayings from his world.

“Tower, this is CS flight 11901. Requesting the doors to be opened.” Freya said as she increased the power to her engines.

“CS flight 11901, doors are being opened. Please stand by.” The controller replied.

Freya looked up and saw a light in the darkness in front of her. As she watched, a door in the ceiling about two hundred yards away slowly opened up like an accordion. The flight line was slightly curved so that it lined up with the door in the ceiling. That meant that all she had to do was follow the flight line with enough power to fly out of the opening. She was a little anxious about it even if it was a common flight line when flying out of an underground airport. This would be the first time she had ever done this outside of the many hours in the training facility when she got her license. What made it worse was this was the first time she would be flying this type of cargo plane and with all the shaky modifications she was a bit more worried about it than normal.

“What’s this button do?” Monkeyman said suddenly in the silence.

Freya looked down at what he was pointing at and told him. “It’s the autopilot adjustment knob. It will adjust the heading of the plane.” She explained.

“What’s this one do?” He asked as he reached for the landing gear button.

She quickly slapped his hand away. “Landing gear. It’s currently in the down position, so don’t touch it.”

“I wasn’t going to touch it.” Monkeyman said defensively. Freya didn’t believe him.

“CS flight, the door is open and the skies are clear. Have a good flight.” The controller said over the radio. Freya was glad as she gave Monkeyman a dirty look.

“Copy, tower. Door is open and skies are clear. Starting takeoff run now.” Freya replied and used her Personal AI to turn off the mic. She slowly increased the engine's output and the plane started to move forward.

“What’s this button do?” Monkeyman asked out of nowhere again.

“By Tom’s butt hole, Monkeyboy. Shut it.” Freya said venomously.

“It’s Monkeyman.” He replied in a soft whisper. Freya shook her head as the plane started down the runway. Behind her she heard Lurch chuckle to himself.

The plane was surprisingly smooth as it gained speed down the runway. Freya checked her consoles and noted that, so far, everything was working like normal. She was halfway expecting something to go wrong, but as she got to the curved end of the runway everything showed normal. She felt the pressure as the G forces increased when she pushed the engine output further and the plane responded by increasing its speed. The sunlight grew brighter and then they were out.

She pushed the engine output to sixty percent and felt a slight shake in the plane. A quick check told her everything was showing normal on her console. Biting her lip, she kept the angle steep so that she could gain as much height as possible in the shortest amount of time. Aside from the slight shake everything felt normal. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding and relaxed a bit. They were still alive and in the air.

Once she got to her cruising altitude, she leveled off and adjusted her course towards where her waypoint was located. She flicked a few switches and got the plane ready for the cruise. There was a slight bump as the landing gear sealed themselves into the airframe. She had no idea if that was normal or not, but her consoles still showed green. Once she was done putting the plane into cruising mode she looked up at Monkeyman and smiled.

“Well, we're still alive.” She told him, still smiling.

“Wait, you didn’t know we would make it up into the air?” He asked, sounding surprised.

“Not with you messing with my flight controls.” Freya returned.

“What’s this big button, Magic?” Freya said, imitating Monkeyman. “Let’s press the self-destruct button to see what it does.”

“This thing has a self-destruct button?” Monkeyman said, recoiling.

“No.” Freya replied with a smile.

“Okay, I get it. No touching.” Monkeyman said, holding up his hands as he turned to look out the windows. “This is awesome. I’ve never been in a ship's cockpit before.”

“Plane.” Freya replied. “A ship can go into space. This hunk of junk is planet-bound.”

“Makes sense.” Monkeyman said, still looking out the window.

Freya switched on the autopilot then turned to Monkeyman. “You want to fly this thing?” She asked him.

“You’re gonna let me fly?” Monkeyman said, as his head whipped around to look at her. “Sure.” He said with a big grin.

“Okay. Grab the yoke.” She said, indicating the steering wheel in front of him as she held onto hers pretending to fly the plane.

She watched him grab the yoke and slowly let go of hers. Of course nothing happened as the plane was on autopilot, but Monkeyman didn’t know that. “Ok, you are now flying the plane. Just keep our course.” She told him as she set her hands in her lap.

She smiled at Monkeyman’s tense posture as he held onto the yoke like his life depended on it. He turned to her and said, “I’m flying a plane.”

“Yes, you are.” Freya said, smiling back at him. “Just don’t get us killed. I’m going to take a nap.”

“No, wait. You can’t.” Monkeyman sputtered. Freya chuckled and took back the yoke.

“I was just kidding.” Freya said as she pretended to fly again. “You can let go. I got this.”

“Don’t do that.” Monkeyman said letting go of his yoke. He gave her an evil look then lost it as he turned back to look outside. “I flew a plane.” He said softly, looking very happy.

It took them forty-five minutes to reach their pick-up point. Freya started scanning the area, looking for the Mech and it’s pilot. She didn’t see anything except a large pond with the green algae on top of it. The good thing was the plane’s sensor didn’t pick up any signs of bio constructs, but, then again, they were civilian sensors and she didn’t have that much trust in them.

“I’m not seeing them.” Freya said into the quiet cockpit. “You guys see anything?”

“I bet they’re in that pond.” Monkeyman said from beside her, looking down at the map that was between the both of them.

“I can drop a drone out to see if I can spot anything. That is, if you want to circle back around.” Lurch told them.

“What are you going to do, open a door?” BT asked sarcastically.

“Through the landing gear, but kind of.” Lurch replied, not sounding all that upset at BT’s comment.

“Sounds good.” Freya replied, slightly annoyed at BT. “Do it.”

“Can we call them?” Monkeyman asked them.

“Nope. Radio silence.” Freya replied. “Let’s hope they see us.”

“Drone’s away.” Lurch said as they passed over the huge pond.

“More like a lake.” Freya thought to herself as she looked at the huge pond. “Just when does a pond become a lake? Could this be a lake?”

“I got something.” Lurch said a second later as they passed the pond. He rattled off some coordinates and Freya adjusted her flight path so when she turned around she would fly in that direction.

“It’s an APC.” He said a few seconds later. “It came up from the pond.”

“Not a Mech?” Freya asked.

“No signs of a Mech.” Lurch replied.

Freya bit her lip again and thought about what to do. If there was no Mech, should they pick the APC up? She reached the coordinates and noted that they were in the right place. With a sigh she decided to pick it up. Who knew, maybe the Mech broke down, but the pilot might be in the APC. They needed pilots more than Mechs, or at least she hoped they did. It was why they were transporting the civilian pilots to the staging area.

“Okay, we’ll still pick them up even if there is no Mech.” Freya told them as she turned her plane around. “I want you guys back there to secure them when they get aboard.”

“On it.” Monkeyman said, getting up.

She noted he was careful not to touch anything, including the yoke, as he left his seat. She smiled a bit and hoped he had learned his lesson. A few seconds later, she found herself alone in the cockpit as she started lowering the landing gear. As soon as she did, the active camo box started flashing four yellow lights at her. She cursed, but there was nothing she could do about it. She only hoped they would turn green again once they were in the air.

The desert was a fairly good place to land, or at least this one was. She turned, powered down the engines and coasted towards the ground, well aware that if the enemy was around they would likely hear them coming. She just hoped they had enough time to do what they had to do before the enemy came for them. The plane set down with a slight bump when the landing gear hit the ground, but, other than a slightly bumpy ride, everything turned out fine. She taxied up to the APC then let her engines die down a bit. She didn’t turn them off, just in case the enemy found them while they were there.

She saw the ramp light go on, indicating that someone had hit the button to lower it. She turned on the camera to the back and saw her team by the ramp. They didn’t wait for it to drop all the way to the ground, but jumped out when there was enough room to squeeze through the opening. She changed her view to look outside the plane and saw the APC pull up to the back of the ship. Monkeyman went out to meet them while the rest of the team took up guard positions to cover him.

She watched as Monkeyman climbed up the APC and talked to whoever was driving the truck. She waited for a few minutes in silence as they talked, then Monkeyman came over her radio. “Boss, I got twenty people here wanting a ride.”

“Where is that Mech we were promised?” She asked him.

“Broke down. They say it got some combat damage and it’s out of commission.” He replied.

“They got that Mech pilot?” She asked back.

“Yeah, plus a few medical staff and some militia.” He told her. “Also, they want to bring their vehicle with them.”

“Fine.” Freya said, annoyed. They were expecting a Mech, so securing an APC wouldn’t be a problem. “Tell them to hurry up. We need to be gone as fast as possible.”

“Copy that.” Monkeyman replied and turned back around to talk to the driver. He waved his hands then pointed to the plane. A minute later, the doors opened up and a bunch of people got out of the truck. She noted a few doctors’ uniforms and a bunch of people in heavy-duty working clothing. They were all wearing a rebreather mask to breathe in the environment. She also spotted a very young girl in the mix.

“A civilian?” She asked herself.

“Monkeyman, that girl to your right, is she a civilian?” Freya asked over the radio as the APC started to move. “We can’t be taking civilians to the staging area.”

“Wait one.” Monkeyman replied, as he turned around and walked up to the girl in question. A few of the medical staff came over and spoke to him as well. They spoke for a few minutes then Monkeyman came back over the radio.

“They say she’s legal, and a member of the militia. Part of the medical staff.” He told her.

“Make sure they know that we are going into a combat area. There is a real danger of getting overrun.” She told him.

She watched as he turned back around to speak to the small crowd. One of the women shook her head then Monkeyman spoke on the radio again. “They are adamant that she goes with them. They say they know the risks.” He told her.

“On their heads, then.” Freya told him. “Get them aboard as soon as their truck is in. I want out of here.”

It took roughly five minutes to get the truck on board, then another ten to get it secured enough to fly. They found seats for the militia, but Freya stopped watching them and started watching the feed to Lurch’s surveillance drones. He had two up and circling, looking for the enemy. One was on a long range trip while the other one was circling the ship roughly a half mile out. She was starting to get a bad feeling when the light on her console turned from red to green as the ramp closed and locked itself.

She was just starting to breathe normally when Lurch's long range drone gave out an alert. She switched back to its feed and cursed. She couldn’t see what the constructs looked like, or even if they were constructs, but there were a lot of black shapes in the distance. She didn’t need her gut telling her it was the bad guys. Unless there were a bunch of humans willing to drive that many vehicles around in the open during the day with the invasion going on, she knew they had to be Ketica bio constructs.

“Constructs incoming.” Freya said as she started powering the engines. “Make sure everyone is secure. This might be a rough ride.”

“We’re working on it.” Lurch replied.

Freya didn’t reply, but started the plane moving. She watched the feed as her plane picked up speed. It wasn’t long before she got confirmation that they were indeed constructs on Lurch’s feed. They were the naked wolf T-Rex like things that they had fought at the ammonia plant. Freya cursed as she pushed the speed of the plane up to the maximum that she was willing to push it on the ground. She was very aware that they were in a civilian plane with no weapons as the enemy closed in.

Freya breathed in deeply as the front of the plane lifted off the ground. A quick check told her that the enemy was roughly a minute or two out. She relaxed a bit more as the back lifted off the ground and they were off. She checked her feed for anything flying towards them, but she didn’t spot anything. She looked down at her active camo console and bit her lip as the lights were still blinking yellow. Hoping they would turn green again once they got higher in the sky she pushed her engines to sixty-five percent and angled the plane for a steep ascent. A few minutes later they turned green. She did note they were blinking, and not a solid green like they were before. Still, she thought to herself, green was green.

“We’re clear.” She told her team as she gently started to level out the plane.

“That’s good to hear.” A vaguely familiar voice said over the radio. What she most noted about it though was that whoever was talking to her on her radio was not on her team.

“Who is this?” She asked. “Never mind. This is a military channel. Stay off this frequency.”

“Yeah, just borrowing your teammates' voice coms.” The voice said, sounding tired this time. Freya racked her brain, but couldn’t place the voice. It sounded so familiar though. “It’s good to hear your voice again, Magic. Getting any crazy ideas lately?”

“Who is this?” Freya asked, frustrated. She knew that voice.

“What, don’t remember me from the Iron Hand?” The voice asked.

Then something clicked in her head. “Mon?” She asked, stunned.

“Hey, Magic. Long time no see.” Mon replied.