Every damn night I got a comm from my father, after he read the day's intelligence reports. He said he was tired of seeing my sector losing ground in this war. Fuck that.
If the uptight bastard commed me tonight, it better be to congratulate me on taking back this section of space.
My gaze shifted to the tracking monitor to my left as I turned my small fighter back toward the battleship, toward home. Yeah, the hulking metal spaceship was home. The small blasts on the screen and whooping battle cries in my ears assured me that the remaining Hive ships were being hunted down and destroyed.
I gave the command for the Seventh Battle Wing to return with me while the other two battle wings remained to track and eliminate the rest of our enemies. Taking prisoners was not an option. Once the Hive took a man's life, we never got them back. Those who survived the Hive Integration Centers intact were lost forever, sent to The Colony to live out their final days as contaminated warriors, dead to the rest our people.
No. I preferred not to take prisoners. Death was a kindness I was more than willing to offer.
"Commander, look out!" The warning came just as the proximity alarms on my scout ship sounded. The blast of sound had barely registered when my ship was torn out from beneath me.
In a flash of bright light, the ship exploded. My body was jettisoned into the blackness of space, the flight suit I wore the only thing keeping me alive. The intensity of the explosion, the force of my ejection into deep space was worse than any whiplash, any wild ride I'd ever taken.
"Commander? Can you hear me?"
I was spinning, too fast to get my bearings, too fast to track the large, orange-and-red star that anchored this planetary system. I had no way to regain control, to stop. The pressure on my organs was painful, had me struggling to breathe, groaning as I fought to remain conscious.
"Get him out of there!"
"Another ship!"
I lost track of the number of voices as an explosion of light and heat rushed over me from my left side. Debris raced past, traveling faster than my eyes could track as the Hive ship exploded around me.
A sharp, stinging pain erupted in my thigh and I gritted my teeth as the hissing sound of my flight suit losing pressure, and precious air chilled my blood. The suit's self-repairing system began working immediately to close the seal, to maintain life status. But I was afraid it wasn't working fast enough.
Still spinning, I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything but the rapid-fire chatter going on in my helmet. Nausea hit me, bile rose into my throat.
"He's hit, Captain. His suit is losing integrity."
"How long?"
"Less than a minute."
"Transport, can you get a lock?" Trisk asked.
"No, Sir. The explosion damaged his transport beacon."
"Who's close? Captain Wyle, what's your status?"
"Six new Hive fighters detected, heading straight for him."
"Cut them off." That was Trist.
"On it," Captain Wyle said.
"No." I groaned as Wyle then ordered the Fourth Battle Wing on a suicide run with the approaching Hive fighters.
"Damn it! Get him the fuck out of there. Now!" Trist's bellow made my head ache.
The warning alarms of my body sensors were beeping, as if I didn't fucking know my blood pressure was dangerously high and my heart rate was too fucking fast.
"Let me take a medical cruiser." That was Rav.
"No time. Wyle, get a traction beam on him."
"His suit might disintegrate under the stress." Rav again.
"It's that or let the Hive have him," Trist argued.
I decided to chime in on that one. "Fuck that," I hissed. "Wyle, do it." I'd rather explode into a million tiny pieces than end up part of the Hive's cyborg collective.
"Yes, Sir."
The energy of Captain Wyle's traction beam hit me like a brick wall, the force slamming my forehead into my helmet. Hard.
Stars danced before my eyes and I couldn't stop the scream of agony as it felt like my entire left leg was being ripped off at the knee. Explosions sounded all around, I used counting them as a means to hold on to consciousness.
When I reached five, everything went black.
Doctor Conrav Zakar, Battleship Zakar, Medical Station
"Is he dead?" The new medical officer's voice trembled and I didn't have time to ask his name. Nor did I care.
"Shut the fuck up and help me get him out of his flight suit." The standard Coalition flight suit was made of nearly indestructible black armor, generated by our ship's spontaneous matter generators, or MGs, as we called them. I used a laser scalpel to cut away one sleeve before the young officer's next suggestion slammed me back to reality.
"Why don't we put him on the MG pad and ask the ship to get rid of it?"
Genius. Didn't mean I had to like the little shit. "Let's move him."
I grabbed my cousin and best friend beneath the shoulders and lifted with all my Prillon warrior's strength. I could have carried him myself, but my assistant stepped forward and lifted Grigg under his knees.
He wasn't dying now. He'd done his fucking job out there in battle and it was my turn to do mine. It wasn't the time to realize if he hadn't left his command post, I'd be celebrating with the others instead of bringing him back from the fucking brink. Stupid, hardheaded fucker.
We moved him as carefully as we could to pitch-black pad where the faint green grid-lines of the MG's scanning sensors quickly went to work examining Grigg's armor, so we could remove it in stages. The outer layer of Grigg's armor had so many micro-cuts it looked fuzzy, instead of smooth and hard. Blood dripped from his left boot to hit the floor with a spattering sound that made me grind my teeth. His helmet had been warped to the point that I could not release the locks and remove it. The helmet's visor was shattered, a thousand tiny cracks obscuring my view of Grigg's face.
If the bio monitors hadn't insisted he was still alive in there, his heart still beating, I would never have believed anyone inside this destroyed armor had survived.
I placed my hand on the activation panel and ordered the ship to remove Grigg's armor. Impatient, I didn't look away as the faint green light glowed around his body.
When the light faded at last, leaving Grigg naked and bleeding on the pad and my heart stuttered.
"Fuck, Grigg. You're a mess." Grigg was covered in blood, his normally dark, golden skin a strange smear of orange and red almost everywhere. His left leg was cut through to the bone halfway between his knee and thigh, blood rushing to the floor with each beat of his heart.
Dropping to my knees I placed a bleed blocker over the wound. It wouldn't heal him, but it would stop him from bleeding out while I carried his stubborn ass to the ReGen pod.
"I need more help over here!" I shouted. Aids and other techs came running.
"Help me. Careful of his leg." I lifted him, once more under the shoulders, trying to keep his head from flopping like a loose doll's. Other hands joined mine and he was quickly lifted from the table.
"ReGen pod?"
"Yes. Immediately."
We moved as a unit, shuffling quickly to the large, full-body submersion unit used for the most critical wounds.
"Shouldn't we sedate him first?"
"Shut up or get out," I growled.
"Yes, Sir."
The door to the medical station slid open and Captain Trist strode into the room, took one look at Grigg and came to a dead stop. "Is he dead?"
"No. But he will be if we don't get him into ReGen."
Trist stepped forward between two techs and helped lift Grigg under his hips. If Grigg had been an average Prillon warrior, we wouldn't have needed five of us to move him, but he was a fucking seven-foot giant. Grigg, like all members of the warrior class on Prillon Prime, was a big motherfucker at close to three hundred pounds of hard, lean muscle. Built for war, the Prillon race was bigger and stronger than almost any other race in the Coalition. And the Zakar family? Well, Grigg and I belonged to one of the oldest warrior clans on the planet. He was genetically predisposed to be one big motherfucker.
I exhaled in relief as we lowered the commander's body into the bright blue light of the Regen Pod. The clear cover slid over Grigg's bruised and battered body automatically, the sensors beginning to work immediately. We stood back and inspected the raw burns and lacerations on his face that were clearly visible.
"He's lucky he didn't lost his right eye." The medical officer who'd assisted me moved by rote over the control panel, adjusting the settings to ensure Grigg would heal at the maximum speed his body would allow.
"He's lucky he's not dead." Trist slammed a blood-covered palm down on top of the clear casing.
He turned to me and I shook my head. "Don't look at me."
"You're his second. Family. Can't you fucking control him? He can't keep doing this." Trist's rage colored his pale yellow skin a dark gold. "He's the commander of this battle group, not infantry or a fighter pilot. We can't afford to lose him."
"He inspires the men." The medical officer on the other side of the ReGen pod spoke reverently, awe in his tone. "They talk about him in the cafeteria. Hell, everywhere. They talk about him everywhere."
"Do you need to be here?" Trist asked.
The medical officer looked at the monitoring panel. "The commander is healing properly. All protocols for his regeneration have been set."