The Nominal Dragonfly

Science fiction short story

Promotional footage from ‘Star Citizen’ - all copyrights reserved

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Ton Long Bay was blue and shimmering with fire from the orbital barrage when the crews of Delta 77th launched.

The Ganymede Protectorate ships in orbit around Freyan were pounding down with macro-munitions and carbon spikes, cratering entire islands with each hit. The sky overhead was sullen and bruised, vapour rings in orange and white dotting the heavenly dome as they delivered each ship, each strike, each falling stone.

Delta 77th was the last skimmer formation still operational after the data-hacks that had turned the info-sphere black the past two days and one night. Orbital arrays had crumbled, atmospheric batteries had gone offline, and even the phase generators out on the Mudrake Reef had gone down. Tidal storms had started sweeping in almost immediately after that as the focused radiotronics finally dissipated and allowed the creeping mega-monsoons to flood into the habitable zones.

Ton Long was dying, shaking and burning up into the last day of a 72-hour delirium. Overhead, the two moons of Freyan gazed down with helpless concern - one blue eye, one orange eye muddied by the sulphur storms that girdled it.

A detached orderly, standing aside a medi-bed, waiting for the patient to die.

The men and women of Delta 77th were not ready to die though.

“All Dragonfly units, this is Major Rankin. You have your flight paths. Your targeting packages are on the way. Weapons hot and perimeters active until we clear Mudrake, then we hit the storm and ride hard.” The major’s voice was a buzz in Kellian’s ear where he was ensconced in the weapons station of the one skimmer. “The Ganymede lander ship is out there, and we need to keep them busy for as long as we can. You all know the stakes.”

Colony bunkers, deep in the bedrock beneath Ton Long, where the Brind League settlers were preparing for a long siege. Women, children, genetic material in bio-pods and stasis racks, and endless belts of data crystals that had disappeared into the depths of the earth in the Sauva Ton caldera.

The lifeblood of the Brind League expansion, waiting for the rescue fleet - but utterly at the mercy of the ticking clock that stood between them and the Ganymede assault.

The skimmers had been designed on some world far away, with oceans and archipelagoes not unlike the ones that surrounded Ton Long. Fat bodies, blunt noses, long tails, and whisper-grav arrays on their shoulders made them look like dragonflies, and after the first units had deployed to Freyan years ago, the name had stuck solidly. Mimetic paint on their hulls allowed them to change colour in an instant - a minor trick in a galaxy where digital eyes saw better than human ones - and each successive squadron in Ton Long had adopted a different scheme as they rotated through the starport archipelago and its surrounding volcanic chain.

Delta 77th was red and orange, with black wings, and Kellian saw the neighbouring skimmers as data-haloed red blurs over the water around them as they headed east. Thrust vectors, velocity calculations, energy readings from engine vents, heat spikes as thrust vanes and pulse gun arrays warmed up.

They were going to war, for the last time.

“Starline, you still owe me for that dance out at Kippen Rai.” Blueline’s voice was casual over the skimmer’s comm net. “I’m not letting you off the hook this easily.”

“Yeah yeah, and when are you going to collect?” Kellian grinned at his consoles while his hands worked. Blueline - Corporal Jessie - was on the skimmer’s spine, above and behind him, working the two defense turrets there with equally deft hands and her permanent impish smile. “You’ve got some stiff competition up ahead, and I told you I’m flat broke until next Clansday. If we survive the next twelve days to reach Clansday, I’ll happily pay up.”

“Just watch me. I’m not letting some Ganymede commissar give you a cheap way out.” Blueline’s smile was audibly even over the net. “Your ass is mine, boyo.”

“Your asses will be in the water and swimming for Mudrake if you two clowns keep crapping on my net.” Hardline - Lieutenant Harken - was a deep growl over the net, with a static wash behind it. Kellian winced and laughed to himself, but did not transmit back. “Blueline, I want our pulse guns locked forward and set to wide dispersal. Seventy meter focal points, with inclement weather. You have about three minutes before we hit that weather, then I want those guns live.”

Mudrake Reef crept up on them, green jungles and blue volcanic stone already frosted in storm greys, and then they were over the island reef itself. Massive pylon towers reached into the heavens above them, silent and inert now that the phased arrays were down. Emitters which had pushed back the perpetual storms of Freyan now hung like so much dead weight around the towers, watching mutely as their erstwhile foes now engulfed them with shaking winds and torrents of tropical rainfall.

The worst still lay ahead.

Coriolis storms that rose fifteen to twenty kilometers into the atmosphere prowled the outer perimeters of Ton Long, looking for the first chance to roll in and obliterate - with tidal waves and hurricane winds - what humans had struggled so long and hard to build here. They pushed mega-monsoons ahead of them like a broom, sweeping away everything that stood in their path. The first colonies on Freyan had relied on deep bunkers and mountain redoubts initially, and only in the last three decades, after the construction of the phased arrays, had they been able to start building near the shorelines. Ton Long was one of those places.

“Starline, I want our missiles set for airburst mode and magnetic fuzes. Max sensitivity, max dispersal.” Hardline’s voice continued from the cockpit. “Stack the reloads for explosives and chaff after that. If we have to fight in this weather, at least we can fight dirty.”

Kellian felt his eyebrows rising as the pilot explained, and just sent a mic click back as confirmation afterwards. His hands shifted to different areas of his console, and machinery inside the skimmer began to shift ordnance around. Warheads got new codes, shifted subtly, reconfigured themselves internally to match the new parameters.

Hardline’s weapon choices were right from the last page of the manual.

The part where they talked about one-way missions.

“Some fights cannot be won, nor can they be avoided. In those cases, it is the duty of the Brind League to exact a toll which our enemies, should they outlive us, will regret having to pay.”

“Redline, I want engine reserves set and ready to buffer those surges we’re going to get in the storm.” Hardline’s voice continued, addressing the flight engineer - the fourth and final member of their crew - and Kellian listened with half an ear as he watched the flyer’s weapon pods rearrange on the diagnostic screens. Redline - Sergeant Valerie - had to keep them powered and moving forward while everything else was going down. She was the proverbial red line which, if they crossed it, would send the skimmer on its final trip to the surface. “I know we’re short on time, but see if you can spin up some of the anti-grav buffers with the spare capacity. Flux willing, we might get an extra kick out of that when the time comes.”

“Roger that. I’ve been buffering since we lifted, the grav is already sitting on fifteen percent.” Redline’s voice was soft over the net. Kellian thought she sounded sad, but of all his pod siblings, Valerie had always been the most difficult to read. “Everything else my side is nominal.”

Nominal.

Such a mundane little word, Kellian thought, and watched the missile indicators tick into the blues and finally stop. Nominal - theoretically fine, no visible issues, and rolling forward.

Going as planned - or ‘growing as planned’, as the cloners from the Labour Division Corps always said.

Kellian thought of the past two days at Ton Long, and wondered if anything had ever gone as planned.

“Storm impact in sixty stans. Brace for turbulence.” Hardline’s voice rolled Kellian back to the present, and he looked up in time to see the first storm tendrils starting to flank them. “Last harness checks. Make sure those asses are strapped down, people.”

Kellian checked his own harness again, making sure the ejector arrays were lined up and the big exit button was cleared, then clicked his affirmation on the net. Blueline and Redline clicked their own affirmations moments later, and Hardline was the last one to acknowledge. Each of the four crew positions on the skimmer ejected in a different direction, with semi-intelligent guidance that usually tried to take you up and away from the craft once you were outside. They had all gone through it several times in training, and it was a punishing ride from start to end every time you slapped that exit button.

Of course, in a monsoon, the wind would probably not be playing along the way it did during training.

Everything nominal, Kellian thought.

Rain spattered against the outside of the skimmer, visual sensors suddenly dimming, and then they were in the storm. Hull vibrations competed with shuddering kicks and abrupt shakes that shoved them from side to side, and Kellian had to grit his teeth to keep his jaw from hammering into his skull with every blast. The engine noises shifted upwards, whining into a new pitch, and he had to dial his own external audio feed down twice before it settled at a manageable level. Missile sensors whined as their aiming bands dropped from kilometers to spitting distances virtually instantaneously, and entire swathes of the control board lit up as secondary and even auxiliary sensor arrays came online to compensate for the atmospheric interference now blasting into their skimmer.

The outside viewports showed nothing except grey - light greys streaking from the fluttering wingtips, dark greys overhead that wanted to become blacks as the sun disappeared, runny medium grays washing over everything - and their recognition transponder lost track of the surrounding Delta 77th skimmers within seconds. Data trails and infographics blinked off as the craft around them disappeared, and they were alone in the storm.

Hardline was a good pilot though. Their kata aptitudes had placed him well ahead of the others in the pod, and when they matured into their first posting, he got the pilot slot they had all been expecting him to get. Kellian could not see what his brother was doing up in the cockpit, but the skimmer stayed on course as far as he could tell, bucking and twisting one moment, sliding gracefully the next as Hardline winkled out a smooth pocket of atmosphere to stutter through before hitting the next wall of air. He was good at his job.

They had been bred that way, after all.

“I’m getting poor dispersals on the pulse guns, across all bands. Max range is fifty and dropping.” Blueline’s smile was gone, and there was a background hiss on her line. It took Kellian a moment to realise it was the roar of rain hitting the defense turret canopies above her, and bleeding over into the mic pickup. “I’m negative on that seventy-meter focal point for now.”

“Copy copy.” Hardline’s voice was calm. His clenched jaw turned the sentence into a clipped betrayal of that same calmness. “I’ll guess we’re hitting them up close and personal then. Starline, what’s the status on the missiles?”

“Also negative on range, we’re down to the A-band and proximity magnetics at this point.” Kellian scrolled down the list of flashing red indicators, and found the few that were still blue - or at least amber, and not fully red. The long-range targeting bands, from B up to F, were red across the board. “Anything we launch is going to spend most of its fuel fighting the storm first before it gets to the target. I’d recommend we keep that storm fight as short as possible.”

“Lovely. Keep me posted if that changes. Same for you, Blueline.”

Kellian and Blueline clicked their mics, and the ceaseless shaking continued for many minutes of silence after that. Something flared white and hot off their port wing after a while, but aside from the visuals there were no readings. Whatever had happened had not even managed to reach the sensors of the bucking skimmer, and Kellian wondered who had gone down. A collision, a malfunctioning reactor, a failed ammunition bay suddenly exposed to the wrong pressure spike - there were many ways to die in a storm like this.

Ton Long - the bay of storms.

What did the Ganymede Protectorate want with this place anyway? They usually went for forest worlds, places with biomes and land masses where their war-dogs and genetic monsters could roam and break anyone who stood against them. Freyan was a water world, with barely anything dry enough to walk on, and yet the Protectorate was in orbit.

“Reactor nominal. We have green across the board.” Redline’s update broke Kellian’s reverie and brought him back to the flashing control boards. “Gravity reserves at thirty and slowing down.”

Hardline’s reply was washed away by the brilliance of the sunlight that suddenly struck the skimmer. One moment they were still bucking and shuddering under the blows of the storm, and the next they were leaping free into golden sunlight and blue waves beneath them. The shaking and abuse subsided in an instant, washed away by the calm air, and Kellian felt himself breathing a sigh of relief from stomach muscles he had not even realised he had been clenching. The eye of the storm - finally. A wave of blue was racing through his control board as the skimmer’s sensor pods reached out and began to explore the seas and airspace ahead of them.

“Enemy lander sighted.” Hardline’s jaw had unclenched at some point, but his words were still clipped. “Get those weapon ranges up and outwards, people, I want target info before…”

“This is Major Rankin to all units - get back into the storm!” Their commanding officer’s broadcast cut through their individual net in a red-hot blast, screeching over the buffers without any filters.

The skimmer on their eleven o’clock was suddenly limned in green, and jinxed away desperately before something detonated in its weapon bays. One moment it was intact, the next it was a roiling fireball that slammed into the rest of the formation with fists of shrapnel and hot air.

The distant Ganymede lander had been waiting for them all along.

Kellian caught a glimpse of a squat, frog-like ship, grey and crusted with weapon carbuncles that were throwing green lights and radiation beams at them, and the next they were back into the storm again. Clouds boiled and flashed into steam around them as the Ganymede beam weapons raked the inside edges of the storm, and for once Kellian was glad for the tons of airborne water that swirled around them with renewed vigour.

Silver linings to dark clouds, and all that.

“Starline, did you get any readings on that ship?” Hardline’s voice cut through the after-blast of the major’s orders even as Kellian worked the screens in front of him. Ship profiles were blinking across the target screens as the onboard computers searched for a match, and diagnostics began to roll down the secondary monitors moments later. “Tell me what we’re up against, Kell.”

The breach of name protocol caught Kellian’s attention just as the ship profile locked down in front of him.

Hardline - Harken - was slipping.

“Got it. Protectorate Havana Cortez class, a troop lander rated for amphibious operations.” Kellain scanned the battle summary and relayed it to the rest of the crew even as they dipped and shook through the storm again, circling around the eye’s interior to approach the enemy lander from the side. Silver and green strobed against the clouds on their port wing as the enemy lander pounded the storm with its beam weapons. “Landing capacity is around seven kilotons over their beta rating, and they carry - ah merde…”

Something tan and triangular screamed through the storm clouds in front of them, kicking out violent contrails which the storm and their own passage tore apart moments later. Kellian got a partial sensor lock, and the computers spat out more information even as Hardline pulled their nose straight up and set the skimmer jinxing and corkscrewing up into the black clouds above.

“They carry a lot of aircraft. Sub-orbital ramjets, rating unknown, but at least two dozen or more.” Kellian heard the dorsal turrets open fire even as he frantically scanned the new infographics. Green-blue lights strobed through the clouds around them as the pulse turrets spat and hissed their own violence at the atmosphere that clung to them. “I have a partial match for a Mojave III but it’s thin. I need more…”

“Firing one. Firing two,” Hardline’s voice rolled over Kellian’s, flat and hard, and the missile pods on the starboard side cycled fresh rounds up to replace the darts that disappeared into the storm. Kellian’s control board noted everything, even as the port pod unleashed a second flurry of follow-up missiles. “Redline, I need that gravity dump on hot standby, stat.”

“Gravity dump standing by at thirty-five percent, roger.”

Something kicked Kellian in the stomach then, the skimmer leaping straight up as the gravity arrays dumped their charged flux ions out of the belly of the craft, and the sensor board screamed yellows and blacks as a trio of Ganymede missiles blurred through the space where they had been moments before. The skimmer was already rolling as they kept climbing, dorsal turrets flipping around to point at the space they had just vacated. Something fast and angry blurred through the same space seconds later, already spinning and banking to pull away, and Blueline’s turrets brought their beams around and bisected the Ganymede jet from neck to tail. Molten pseudo-metals spattered off in the storm, a black puff bloomed for an instant, and then they were falling past it, Hardline riding the electronic death-echo of the enemy jet down for cover.

Gravity was suddenly no longer working the way it used to, or so it felt to Kellian - and then Hardline slammed the skimmer back over, wingtips chopping wavetops, and the gunnery cockpit returned to the normal realms of sanity. Something hot and liquid rose in Kellian’s stomach, threatening to climb out and spread itself over the control boards, but he swallowed hard - once, twice, a third time - and it subsided. Outside, water spray rose from below them to challenge the buckets still pouring down from above, their passage ripping up the ocean surface in jagged streaks as Hardline kept them low.

The control boards stayed clean, and red, and upset.

“Reactor at ninety-five. We are bleeding on the gravity lines.” Redline’s voice, still sad. “Gravity buffers are offline. I say again, gravity buffers are offline.”

“Section Three said it was good for two uses, and we got one. Go figure.” Hardline’s chuckle surprised Kellian, and he found himself grinning along moments later. “Good shooting, Blueline.”

“Nice roll there, brother.” Blueline’s smile was back. “The gun camera is going to look good on that one.”

Something stuttered and clattered against the fuselage overhead, and Blueline screamed - just once. Kellian had an instant of sensors flaring on the control panel, and then another tan triangular blurred past overhead, nosing up and disappearing into the storm in the blink of an eye. The skimmer wobbled around them, Hardline fighting the sudden sashaying of added energy, and Kellian saw weapon systems winking off along the port and dorsal flanks of the skimmer.

Both dorsal turrets showed black lights.

“Blueline, report!” Kellian punched up diagnostics, rerouting energy systems where black lights now sucked up light on the board, but the skimmer’s port side remained dark. “Jessie, damnit, are you hit?”

“Reactor at eighty and falling. We have two sinks down, I say again - we have two sinks down.” Redline’s voice, from the belly of the skimmer, felt like it was coming from miles away. “We are losing integrity on both power circuits.”

“Jessie!”

“She’s gone. Bio-signs are flat.” Kellian heard the words over the net, and recognised Hardline’s voice - but the words did not want to make sense in his head. “Switching to pilot overrides. A-turret is offline, B-turret at sixty.”

Jessie was his sister. Two boys, two girls, four to a pod. That’s how they were grown, that’s how they grew up, that’s how they lived and fought together. Four was a good number, according to the Labour Division Corps, and that’s all they had known since they had first awoken in the creche together. The Brind League knew cloning better than anyone else, and the teams they grew were specialised for combat cohesion down to the genetic level.

Jessie had been his sister.

Kellian felt something on his face, wiped at eyes that did not want to focus, and came away with glove-tips smeared in wetness.

Jessie was still right there, above him - but Jessie was gone now.

“Starline, report.”

Kellian looked at his wet gloves, and the black turret lights behind them blinked and stayed black.

“Damnit Kellian, snap out of it! Report!” Hardline’s voice grated over the comms, jaw clenched again, the skimmer struggling to maintain a straight course with a port wing that wanted to drag. “I need a weapon status check, now!”

“Port missile bays one and two are offline.” A wooden voice spoke from Kellian’s mouth, and wooden hands moved over the control board in front of him. He did not recognise any of it. “Dorsal turrets at zero and sixty respectively. Ventral bay at ninety, one of the racks has jammed. Remaining systems nominal.”

Nominal.

Insignificant, too small and meaningless to mention.

Kellian watched rain streak past the viewport beside him, and wondered what Jessie’s blood looked like in her gunnery station.

“I need maximum dumb guidance on all torpedo units. We can’t take chances with interference now.” Hardline’s voice was soft, and faded for a moment before coming back. “We have one chance when we get out of the storm to get all the fish in the water, and I don’t want them interfering with anything.”

“Reactor at seventy and falling.” Redline’s voice, calm and detached.

“Roger that. Setting torpedoes for dumb guidance.” Kellian watched his hands send new orders to the fat tubes that hung in their belly, in the ventral bay with its one jammed rack. “Warheads should be ready in thirty stans.”

Outside, the storm thinned, and Hardline peeked them out of the clouds for a second before pulling back in. Rain chased them back and forth, grey canyons yawning beneath them as the ocean tossed, and the control boards updated with fresh info after the peek out.

They were almost behind the Ganymede lander, and the enemy air cover had peeled off, or been shot down, or something - but they were nowhere to be seen. Kellian wanted to find the tan triangle that had shot them, wanted to dig his hands into the pasty white skin of the Ganymede organoid pilot that was grown and fused into the cockpit, and wanted to rip it out bone by bone. It was a thinking machine without feeling, nerve endings and muscle clusters fused into control points deep inside the ramjet it inhabited, and was about as far from human as you could get while still having a human heart and brain.

It was a monster that had taken Jessie from him. It only knew two things: flying, and killing.

Jessie had known many things.

“This is Delta 77th Foxtrot, calling any Delta 77th units out there. Does anyone copy?”

Static hissed back at them. Kellian listened to Hardline repeat the call twice more, but only the storm answered. Whatever had happened to the rest of the dragonflies, they were alone now.

“Torpedo warheads ready.” The amber light turned blue, flickered, then settled. Kellian wiped the last of the wetness from his cheeks, and felt the sensation returning to his hands. “Hardline, you are clear to launch when ready.”

Their skimmer banked to the side, and clear skies met them a handful of seconds later. Hardline had them skimming the wavetops, the whisper-grav wings spread wide, and the Ganymede lander was ahead of them in the distance, vast and grey and lumpy. Smoke rose from its hull at several points, and green-white beams lanced into the air above it, but it was still alive and fighting. Fat black tadpole shapes were streaming out of its prow, heading for the storm bank that had by now covered Mudrake Reef, and Kellian suddenly understood what that seven kiloton landing capacity meant.

War-dogs, and slavers, and machines that would dig and tunnel and crawl into Ton Long like lice. Nothing would be safe before them.

“Torpedoes away.” Calm voice from Hardline, with clunks from the belly of the skimmer. Kellian watched the lights flicker on his board, until all nine of the fish were out. “Let’s see what they do.”

They banked, hard, and the lander was behind them again, rear cameras watching the foaming streaks racing towards it while they themselves raced for the safety of the storm front again. Something agitated the clouds above and to their right, steam boiling as an emitter weapon somewhere behind them tried to lock onto their shape - and then they were back in the storm again, and the steam behind them turned green and disappeared.

“Reactor at sixty-one and falling.” Redline still sounded calm. Kellian wondered what Valerie was thinking, but she had never really been open with her feelings. At least not to him. Harken knew her best, and he could probably tell, but Kellian had always been closer to Jessie.

Jessie, who was still in the gunnery pit above him, yet beyond all reach now.

Rage twisted in his chest, and Kellian felt his hands curling into fists, but the Ganymede ramjet pilot was far away, or maybe even dead already - and even that thought did not help.

They looped in a lazy curve, heading back to the storm’s edge, and Kellian watched the ticker on his control board run down. Their torpedoes would be impacting the Ganymede lander once the ticker reached zero, and Hardline pulled them out of the storm a full three seconds after the countdown finished.

Fire was blooming around the rear quadrant of the grey lander, ocean spray climbing into the air amidst the fireballs, but even at this distance Kellian could see that they were not fatal. Zero-gravity armour plates buckled and warped under the detonations, and the lander wobbled from the kicks to its rear - but it was too massive, and the torpedoes too small, and the green emitters chased their skimmer back into the storm even before the last of the explosions had stopped climbing into the sky.

“Reactor at fifty-five and falling. If we want to turn around, we have to do it soon.”

“There’s a data-burst from Command. Standby while it decodes.” Hardline’s voice was grim now, and Kellian looked at his weapons board and wished he had answers. Their dragonfly, alone, was too lightly armed against the monster that faced them here.

There was a pop over the net, and Major Rankin’s voice recording spoke to them, clipped and calm and utterly resigned.

“We have just received word that the Ton Long airbase has been hit. Casualty estimates are unknown at this time. Satellite views show the primary and secondary islands are gone. I say again: both airbase islands are gone. We have zero landing capabilities left at this point. To all units still flying - this is it. We have nowhere to reload or refuel. Do what you can, and make it count. Good luck.”

Wind and rain beat against the skimmer as they prowled along the edge of the storm, digesting the news. Kellian could feel the damage on the port fuselage dragging the wings back on that side, slowing them down. Redline’s update came and went, the reactor falling below fifty percent.

They were bleeding, just like Jessie had bled out.

“I have a plan, but… I don’t want to make the decision for you.” Hardline’s voice was bleak when he eventually spoke up. Kellian watched the rain on his viewport, watched the droplets streak and stutter, and knew what his brother was going to say.

“If we overload the reactor, we can use the skimmer itself as our last shot.”

“Better do it soon then. Once we drop below forty percent, the overload safeties will kill the reactor instead of letting it spike out. If I keep my thumb on the control, it should stay open until then.” Redline sounded sad again, and Kellian finally realised what his sister had been sad about all along.

She had known.

She had known right from the start.

“That gives us less than five minutes flying time.” Hardline paused before continuing. “Starline, you don’t need to be a part of this. If you set our remaining payload to contact fuses, we can…”

“Bullshit. I’m in.” Kellian was already sending new commands to the remaining missiles and munitions aboard the skimmer. “We fight together, we die together. That’s why we are here.”

Hardline’s sigh was audible over the net, but he did not argue. Kellian was glad, for he felt his throat tensing up and his cheeks getting wet again. He did not want to explain to them that he could not leave Jessie behind. He did not know how to.

Munitions lights flickered and changed across the board in a slow wave, and when Redline gave her all-clear, Hardline turned them towards the storm’s edge one last time. Freyan, in all her fury, did not concern herself with the humans that were there. Her storms did not notice, nor did they care, and Kellian watched the last rain blur away from them before seeing the sunlight again for the last time.

They were going to make that Ganymede lander sit up and notice though.

Smoke was still rising from where their torpedo barrage had impacted the stern of the enemy ship, and there were fewer green lights lancing from its top and flanks - but it was still very much in the game. Hardline kept them low again, streaking in from a different angle but aiming for the same hull point where the smoke still rose. The tadpole landers were well away from the big lander at this point, heading towards Mudrake. Kellian wondered if they would appreciate the blue volcanoes, or the submerged reefs that would rip the bottom out of any watercraft trying to pass their flanks.

They would learn, soon enough.

“Weapons check.”

“Everything green and set for contact.” Kellian tapped the last command and sat back in his seat, hands on the restraining harness that crossed his chest. The wavetops outside were a handspan away, frothing white as they blurred past. The Ganymede lander ahead was growing larger by the moment.

“Reactor check.”

“Forty-two percent and primed.” Redline sniffed, and Kellian heard tears. “I’ll see you on the other side, brothers.”

“I’ll be there for sure, sis.” Hardline’s voice was clipped again, and Kellian opened his mouth just as the skimmer suddenly pulled up. Gravity punched him down and sideways as the dragonfly rolled over, belly pointing at the sun, and the ejector seat roared and threw him backwards into the cold, wet air behind them.

Kellian screamed, wordless and terrified and unheard, and something on the seat reached around and socked him on the side of his flight helmet.

Darkness.

He came to when his seat hit the water. Cold water rushed over him, the weight of the seat pulling him under, and he flailed at the controls for a long moment before his training kicked in and his fingers found the release tabs. Muted pops surrounded him, dull through the water that was threatening to drown him, and then he was kicking free and rising to the surface in a storm of bubbles. The safety vest was inflating, taking him upwards, and he surfaced in a bout of coughing and the burn of salt in his eyes. The water was choppy, waves running in every direction, and his first deep pull of air smelled of soot and burning plastics.

The Ganymede lander was gone.

In its place was a ribbed carcass, half-eaten, gutted by fire, and sending a funeral pyre of black smoke into the sky. The mushroom cloud was thin, and wobbly, and the trailing edges of the eye of the storm were already eating away at its canopy. Kellian cast around and saw patches of burning chemicals and who knows what else surrounding him, falling from the sky in plops and hisses. Grey swirls of ash were coming down around him too, heavy and clumpy from the surrounding moisture in the air. His life vest had started releasing marker chems into the water, staining the waves around him red and orange, and he was a little black insect struggling and kicking in the middle.

Their plan had worked.

Kellian watched the ocean around him, and the burning lander, and thought of his brother Harken, and his sisters Jessie and Valerie. The currents were pulling him to the west, slowly but gradually, and the edge of the storm eventually moved over the burning lander and hid it from view.

Kellian pulled his boots off, tied them to the back of his floating vest, and began to swim in the direction of Mudrake. Ahead of him, capsized shapes drifted and bobbed on the reefs that girdled the distant volcanic island chain, victims of the wall of water that had engulfed them from behind.

He was the last dragonfly now.

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More tales from the “Shades of Vaulta” universe: Spark-head , The Ghosts of Morena-5

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