A mans silouhette can be seen in the dimmed light of a hangar. Sitting on a Nyx interceptor fighter.
He lights a cigarette...
"I was born into the war. Born into mutual killing and the fight for survival...
I lost everything when I was still a child.
Well, not really. My father ran away after my mothers death... He got killed a few years later....
So yeah, You could say I lost everything....
I learned young to fly and shoot my foes before they shoot me...
I was fighting for so many years now, I can't even remember how long it's been since I had just a little flight only for the sake of flying or walk on any given moon or planet that has not seen the battles of the ones who fight for their right to live...
I forgot to count how many times I escaped death with nothing left that my life.
Each time that happened, I got stitched back together and sent into battle once again...
Most of my body is not really human anymore...
Cybernetics... Duh... "Become born anew and feel as a whole again" They say... Stupid infomercials...
If you'd ask me about a resume of my current life:
Sleep, fight, shoot then shoot even more, get out alive or get out barely alive, sleep, repeat..."
Morning rises on planet Pecos.
The hangars are full of wrecked Nyx fighters.
One of them, or rather what is left of it is tagged in red paint "Hellfire". Holes and ripped open hull segments are the proof of heavy battles. Bloodstains can be seen on the cockpits frame, reaching out to the left wing.
The wounded pilot must have been dragged out of it.
The medical station on camp New Hope West is crowded.
Doctors, nurses run all over the place to take care of the wounded pilots, crew members and civilians that got caught into the heavy battle that took place in orbit of Yuma.
In the intensive care unit, regular beeps can be heard coming from the darkened right corner of the room, from the one bed that is not empty....
Cpt. James Rascal can be read on the wounded's documents...
Suddenly, the emergency sound kicks in, heartbeat rises in an alarming rate...
Dr Rio Umeda hurries through the hallways of the medical tract of camp New Hope West, preparing for the worst since her informations were overly worrysome. While she moves on with room-taking steps she notices the nurse which needs to keep running to stay at her side. "Tell me his status, and what you have done so far! Next time I want the information of such an incident instantly! There is no way I will allow anyone of our pilots to die..." Her voice sounds harsh, while she speeds up even more- Between her panting the nurse looks at the device in her hands, reading aloud from the file of the emergency patient. "The patients name is James Rascal. Captain from one of our Nyxes, callsign Hellfire. The captain joined our forces not so long ago but there is a mark from the High Command they have higher expectations on him and set up some extra tasks..." The nurse looks up and shudders as she sees the upset face of the Kusarian doctor. "And that is something that doesn't interest you at all! He lost his left arm before he joined our forces and medical scans showed that he got some parts of his lungs replaced. His state right now is highly critical, we stopped his wounds from bleeding and took care of his broken bones. But his brain activities are rather unusual and we were not sure what would..."
The emergency sounds interrupt her words as they enter the intensive unit, now even Rio starts running, watching at the screens showing his vital signs. "He has a tachycardia! Prepare the antiarrhytmic agents!" She turns as the nurse don't start to move. "Do it NOW!" The yell was what the woman seemed to need and she swiftly hands the doctor the injector with the needed agens, with a quick look at the weight of her patient Dr Umeda adjustes the dosage before injecting it to his neck. "We need to calm his heartrate.... Luckily it still is regular, so this might be enough." Slowly the heart rate falls as the medicamentation starts and with that the vital signs stabilize. With a reliefed sigh Rio steps back. "This might be it. We shall see how his body will take this, but I think if he survives this night he should be fine..."
She turns around and looks at the nurse who was assisting her. "Arigatou for your help. Still I would like to as you to inform me the next time we have an emergency like this as soon as possible, especially when the other doctors are busy with diffrent patients. I may have been raised to the position of the Director of our Medical Services, still I will always enter a surgery if we need more people. For now I will stay the night and tomorrow in the observation room, so you can take a break for now. Well done." Without the stress her typical kusarian behaviour comes back to her and she smiles encouraging to the nurse, waving slighty as the other woman leaves the room quietly. Her smile vanishes as she takes a look at the vital sings of her patient and then the men himself. "If you hear me Rascal-san... I won't let you die like this, but alone this is more than hart. Try to help me if you can, you seem like a fighter, a desperate one if that was your Nyx I passed in the hangar. Life still holds something for you, that is what my feeling says me. Stick to it with all of your might and will." She cracks her neck and walks to the observation room, knowing the nurse which just left told someone to place a can of her black tea with a cup there.
"Where am I? Is this how death feels? Is this the end?"
He looks around and sees nothing, only darkness. No light, no sound, nobody around.
He tries to walk.
With each footstep he goes deeper and deeper into the darkness, gets surrounded by it.
He walks faster, starts to run even. The dark place he seems to be in is endless.
As he keeps running further, suddenly he is thrown back into past battles. He can feel them, lives them once again
with all it's pain, anger, stress and violence. He hears the shots hitting and burning through his ships hull,
reaching further and further into it's guts.
He feels them burning his skin as they reach the inside of the cockpit. Going through his body.
He witnesses once more his wingmen getting shot down one by one.
Sees how their ships get ripped open by enemy fire as they were mere tin cans.
"No!!! Not this again!!! I've seen it!!! I've seen enough of this!!! Why do I have to see this???"
He runs further into the darkness as the pictures fade.
Suddenly he finds himself in a familiar ships interior. It's the carrier where he grew up.
He can hear shots, screams. He runs across the corridors to reach the location they come from.
As he reaches the shot sounds origin, he sees his mother, holding a child, holding his younger self.
She hides him inside a locker.
"Don't go out, no matter what happens, you understand?
I will come to get you once it's all finished!"
Then, she runs off as the enemy soldiers board the Zephyr, leaving the young, innocent and crying James inside the sheltering locker.
"Mom!! Don't run away!!! You won't make it!!!
Don't leave me alone inside this steely thing!!! Stay with me!!! Hide yourself too!!! Mom!!!"
He tries in vain to warn her, to tell her that he knows how it's gonna end,
but his voice doesn't seem to reach and he can only watch her running into her already settled fate.
And as he tries to go after her, suddenly the floor goes black,
all the memories melt into a indescribable mess of abstract pictures, sounds and feelings.
He begins to feel the soil weakening, fading and he begins to fall.
Falling faster, deeper into the dark, into the nowhere.
And as the fall slows down, finally coming to a full stop,
he can hear a voice speaking to him, Somehow he only catches up small parts of it, but still recognizes a familiar voice.
"If you hear me... ---- I won't let you die...---- fight...---- Life...---"
"Who's voice is that? I can't seem to... Wait, I remember... I know this voice..."
The voice slowly fades away and footsteps can be heard going further away until disappearing as well.
"Wait! Don't go! Where...? How...? Please!!!"
Suddenly, James breathes in as deep as he can, and opens his eyes.
"Where am I? What happened...?"
He looks around, tries to find some objects that reminds him a familiar place. And he does remember.
He remembers everything.
"Wait... I remember this place... The medical unit... New Hope... The battle around Yuma..."
He sits up, Looks down at his body. All those stitches, all those wires and cables going right into his flesh.
He was badly wounded, this time more than ever.
He takes a deep breath and starts to remove the wires one by one.
Finally done with ripping out the last one, he checks the mechanical prosthetic on his broken leg
and tries to stand up. Still weakened due to his wounds and his recent near death experience.
He stumbles across the room, heading to the bathroom. As he reaches the sink,
he looks at himself into the mirror.
"Hello Mister Rascal... Damn... Pretty messed up, huh?... Like a roasted potato...
All burnt, bruised and swollen... Well... Not the first time..."
He coughs hard and spits some blood into the sink. As he looks at the blood going down the sewer,
He spits once more and raises his head again, washes his face with some cold water,
takes a sip from the tap and heads back into the room he came from.
On a shelf, he finds his belongings. His datapad, credit cards, the dogtag, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
He takes the cigarettes and his lighter, heads to the only window in the dimmed room,
opens it, and as he thoughtfully looks up into the clear nightsky, clenches his left fist,
making the burnt and molten synthetic skin crackle and burst, revealing the bland bluish titanium alloy
his cybernetic arm is made of.
"Dammit... It's never gonna end, does it?"
He lifts his left arm letting the lights from outside shine on it. And as he sits down on the windowsill,
he looks at his arm and his numerous scars, remembering a sentence, words from an ancient and maybe
long forgotten philosopher
"Whoever fights monsters better sees that, in the process, he does not become a monster himself"
Those words seem to pack more of a meaning to him as the battles go on and on.
"Is it this what he was talking about? Does the constant fighting make us less and less human?
Is this how the constant fights change people?"
And as the night deepens, He sits there, smoking his cigarettes, listening to the nearby spaceport's nocturnal
activity and stares into the dark blue sky as if he is drawn to it, to this endless, empty, but yet so hostile environment.
Waiting for the day he will be out there again, sitting aboard his Nyx, ready to fight, live, survive,
and give the people of Crayter a better place to live, grow and prosper...
Rio returns from her short break to the intensive care and stops as she sees the empty bed with the cables and wires lying around in a mess. Shock gets replaced by slight anger as she notices her patient next to the open window, smoking in her intensive care unit. "So Captain.... I see I worried for nothing and also my experience as a doctor is less than yours since you got the competence to know what is the best for a person who was at the brink of death.... Besides that you pester smoke in the unit where it is most important to keep it clear from anything that might harm emergency patients. Just like... well just like you some hours ago!"
She notices the sharp tune in her voice but isn't willing to ease it up before she knows that her message went through this thickhead her patient seems to have. "So Captain Rascal... you better have a damn good explanation for this or I will sedate you for the next days to give your body the time it needs to recover so that those flying with you don't need to risk their life while they try to protect a baka." With a light relief she sees that his wounds haven't opened again and his face colour returned more or less to normal. Still he won't go away that easily, even though she makes a mental note to move him to the regular medical units. "Unless you wish for your comrades to die. But then you are in the wrong place for such idiocy. So your choice if you want to die but then do it alone, hai?"
As soon as Dr.Umeda enters the room, James quickly throws out his not yet finished cigarette.
He stand up from the windowsill as if he want's to show that he's fine and ready to leave the medical station as soon as possible.
"I guess I should apologize... But I just can't stay in bed like that..."
He walks in her direction, stumbles, nearly falls, catches himself on the bed's frame. After a quick break, he tries to stands up straight. Breathes in.
"I know it's not the best thing to do in the condition I'm in, but I know what is the right thing to do. And it's not laying in bed to wait for my wounds to heal. I am not the kind of being that crouches, hides and licks his wounds after the fight, This is not..."
He notices getting a bit too eager in his speech and marks a break. He sighs and continues to speak, with a calm and quite voice, which is a bit unusual for him.
"This is not what I am...Who I am..."
He takes a deep breath, as if it is hard for him to speak out loud. Still holding on to the bed's frame to avoid falling over.
"I have seen and witnessed so many things in the past twenty-eight years following, well... the death of my mother and the disparition of my father...
I spent my whole life in chasing after the people I owe this kind of life... I have seen my mother die as she saved my life in exchange for her own... And this..."
As if he has already said too much, he stops speaking. Having a hard time to hide his grief and anger,
he tries get back to his usual way of speaking.
"I am a pilot, a fighter, who has lost everything... Who has survived that long for only this one small feeling of hope that one day, I can avenge my mothers death, our peoples death, make our small world a better place...
This is what I am... Who I am...
Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to die and I don't want to put in peril the current missions by going out there, half dead and at the limit of passing out...
I am just trying to say... Well... I need you're help... Please let me go out there... Whatever it may take, will do..."
He sits down on the bed, looks up to Rio as if he is waiting for her to answer his call to let him go despite his condition, to help him get back to what he's used, what he feels he has to do.
Rio listens to his plea with an expressionless face. "Your will to fight honors you. But you also have to see that right now, where you can barely walk and your Nyx still being under reconstruation, that is nothhing I can approve now. I will get you moved to the regular station, there the the nanites can finish their work within the next two days. Be grateful we still had some left to get them modified to speed up the healing of your bones. In I think three days you might be able to walk painless again and more or less without falling over your feet. Then we can talk again about your rejoinment with our military forces." She takes his right hand and checks his blood pressure, since he ripped of the sensor watching over them. "Also don't overdo it for today. Medicine increaded this past hundred years so we were able to keep you alive. Human bodies still are not made last for ever and endure everything." With a short nod she releases his wrist and steps back. "I will ask a nurse to bring you to the new room. Try to walk, but don't overdo it, when your body tells you to stop do so. Still we will talk once more before I allow you to jump or rather... crawl in your current state, into your Nyx. Excuse me now, I need to look if I am needed elsewhere. Sayonara for today Captain." She smiles gently before she turns around. Stopping only at the door to hear his answer.
Rio chuckles quietly. "I have no mercy with you right now. That is the procedure either if you had said that or not. And it is my job to take care of our pilots. Listen to the nurses and focus on healing, with you artificial arm you will have to consult someone who is more used to that. But since it doesn't inflict your healing I guess you can take care of that later." She gives him a small smile, nods and leaves.
As she walks through the hallways she tells one of the nurses to prepare a regular unit for the patient and once that is done moving the captain to his new room. Smiling as she knows the nurse will do exactly what she was told Dr Umeda moves to her office to finish the paperwork she neglected the past days.
After a while, a nurse come in to announce James he's being transferred to the regular medical unit.
Feeling that he can stand, he gently refuses the help to stand up the nurse offered him.
"All good, thanks... I think I can do it."
He stands up and feels a slight stinging in his legs. But not enough to crumble.
Picks up his stuff, and follows the nurse into his new room.
He thanks her in a very formal manner, sits down before getting back up, taking a cigarette and walks over to the smoker area.
"I wonder what my guys are doing right now..."
Lights his cigarette and looks over to the hangars.
A few minutes later, a familiar person comes running all the way from hangar 5B. This is where His Nyx last was seen.
The one coming to the medical unit in a hurry is Toolbox, the mechanic and good friend of James.
"Rascal! Hey!"... pants ..."You're not dead man!!! Good!Marks a break and takes his breath "Damn... How do you guys run and breath on this ice cold planet?... Anyways! I came to you Just to see if you're alright! Ah yes, and to tell you that your bird is only waiting for you!!!
As soon as he said that, he runs off again, in the same direction he came from.
"Keep it up dude! Get well soon! I still have some job to finish!
As usual, James just winks as Toolbox runs back to the hangars.
Good ol' Toolbox... huh... Already done with my wreck.
Throws his finished cigarette into the ashtray and heads back to his room to take a rest
The Night has fallen on New Hope West.
But James is still wide awake. Counting the hours that passes. He cannot sleep, the images he has seen recently still haunt his mind.
He fears to fall asleep and that he gets to see them again.
Although Dr. Umeda told him not to overdo it, he walks to the smokers area, outside, and back inside his room, smoke after smoke.
After a while, he resigns to lay down and soon falls asleep.
An other day goes by. James Is not used to wait and do nothing. He tries to keep himself occupied. He reads, watches the news.
"Dammit! Is there nothing about us? Nothing about what happened recently?"
He switches off the TV as one of the nurses comes in. She brings some equipment he knows very well. The thing from the advertisements, synth-skin
"Let's take care about that arm shall we? It might be better to put back a little something to make you feel at ease with this cybernetic prosthesis."
She holds out here hand for James to let her take care of his metal arm.
"At ease? What do you mean, at ease?... Nah, leave it like that, I don't need a rubber glove to feel at ease."
She doesn't insist and leaves the room.
"At ease... How could you feel at ease with a piece of metal attached to you body... Only hidden by a rubber glove like thing they dare to call skin..."
He stands up, walks around, back and forth. Keeps walking in and out of the smokers area.
Not saying a word to anyone. Thinking to himself only, stocking up more and more anger towards the enemies of the republic