Project Maigo(28)

Thought? Meaning? I have no idea, though part of me really wants to know.

Her furrowed eyebrows come up. The rage and tension gripping her body melts away. And suddenly, in my mind, she’s no longer Nemesis.

Woodstock sees it, too. “There she is,” he says, his voice something between awe and surprise. “Maigo.”

Knowing Woodstock has seen what I have felt all along sets my resolve, and when I hear the words, “Target locked! Clear to engage?” in my ears, I react quickly, toggling Devine to transmit openly. “Negative! Do not engage! I repeat, do not engage! Scrion is down. Maigo is not the target!”

As those few words replay in my mind, I inwardly cringe, knowing that just one of them is going to land me in hot water. I called her ‘Maigo.’ And while Woodstock might agree with me now, the opinion of a sixty-two year old retired Marine Corp pilot re-hired for the FC-P against the advisement of my superiors, is probably not going to help my case.

“I repeat, Nemesis is not the target.” My order lacks its previous conviction, and I hope using her true designation will help people miss my foible, but I know it won’t. I’ve just put the express shit-train on full speed and sent it toward my doorstep.

The jets fly past overhead. There are nine of them now, converging from the airbases to the north and south. In another ten minutes, there would have been thirty. A line of ten Apache helicopters takes up position along the shore, three hundred feet up, boldly hovering close enough to unleash their payloads.

Nemesis pays them no attention.

“Take us closer,” I say.

Woodstock lowers his head at me to peer over his aviator glasses. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“I need to test a theory.”

“I can save you the trouble and just say you have the biggest balls in the world, how ’bout that?”

“Any sign of trouble, we can bug out, and I’ll give the order to fire.”

Woodstock twitches his mustache back and forth for a moment and then throttles us forward.

“Bring us up to eye level,” I say.

“Roger that, Cap’n Ahab.”

As we rise up, growing closer to Nemesis, her brown eyes track us, still oblivious to the helicopters and jets swirling around her like black flies in the summer.

“That’s as close as I get,” Woodstock says, when we’re a hundred feet away. Just out of arms reach. Unless she decides to step forward when she swats us down. They we’re just screwed. But I don’t think she’s going to do that.

Betty rises up until we’re at eye level. The chopper is about the size of Nemesis’s eye, but at a hundred feet away, her face is about the size of someone standing a few feet away. And there is no doubt she’s looking straight at me.

“I’ll be damned,” Woodstock says. He sees it, too.

Then I do something stupid. I reach out a hand and wave, saying, “I’m okay,” quickly adding, “We’re okay,” mostly so I don’t feel so weird.

And then, I’ll be damned, she turns away and starts trudging out to sea.

I go to toggle Devine and find the system still set to broadcast.

Damnit. I hate myself. Everyone heard our little Kodak moment.

“All units, stand down,” I say, trying to sound more authoritative than embarrassed. “Begin tracking protocols. Follow her for as long as you can.”

I switch off Devine and lean back, watching Nemesis retreat peacefully back into the depths, leaving a trail of Scrion’s brown blood in her wake.

“Sooo,” Woodstock says, turning to me. “Wanna tell me what just happened?”

I really don’t want to, but seeing as how I’m going to be asked the same question by just about every damned person on the planet, I decide to answer truthfully, or at least what I believe is the truth. “Nemesis wasn’t here to kill me. Or anyone.”

“But Scrion was,” he says, starting to understand. “It was after us. After you.”

I nod. “But Nemesis...she was here to protect me.”





15



The flight back to the Crow’s Nest is made in silence, both Woodstock and I processing the things we just experienced. I feel shaky, mentally and physically, thanks to a now dissipating adrenaline rush. Were I on the ground, I’d take my mother’s frequent advice to me as a child and run around the house a few times. Stuck in a chopper, all this nervous energy has nowhere to go, so I’m bouncing my legs like I’m Lars Ulrich playing Enter Sandman double time.

As we descend toward the landing pad atop the FC-P headquarters roof, Woodstock speaks up. “You gotta plan?”

“For what?” I ask, knowing exactly for what, but trying to downplay the whole thing.