Farside Base: Part Six

     “Aw, come on!” called Fere Autrei from the other side of the dormitory. “Everyone else is probably there already, and the Commander won’t be happy!”

     It worked. For exactly three seconds, I stopped paying attention to the uneven battle on the computer screen, and in those three seconds, my ship was hit by the laser beam from Sloth’s huge battleship, promptly exploding. “Look what you’ve done!” I shouted at my comrades. “I was practicing!”

     This was greeted by a pair of snorts. “Practicing for what?” Fere demanded, to which Kent added “Farside Patrol just doesn’t get involved in battles, Explorer. This little pirate-scaring trip is likely to be the most action you’ll ever see, and that’s not much. Now come on! That’s an order!”

     We were off on a mission to restore our faltering coffee supplies by reassuring Orange Central that pirates wouldn’t waylay our deliveries. Kent might be cool about it, but I was viewing the situation with a mix of excitement and dread. Adding to this was the fact that in the loose wedge formation we were flying in, designed to make as much of a frightening impression as possible, Kent and I were the Commander’s wing flyers. One on each side, we flew directly behind her, with all the others fanned out behind us.

     It wasn’t a bad flight, all the same. We roared low over the daylit Neopia-side pass where the pirates were suspected of having their ambush, and were gratified to see a horde of disreputable-looking Neopets rush out of a cave mouth. “Let’s impress them some more, shall we?” the Commander called over the radio. “Hmm, they’re a safe distance away from that cave now... let’s make those rocks glow. Fire at will!”

     Red laser beams flashed from the tiny cannons on the wings of the Commander’s fighter. “Try stealing our coffee again, dungheaps!” shouted Farside Seven, opening fire on the rock face as well, and the others, myself included, instantly joined in, laughing and shouting. The Commander called us off when the rocks started to melt, and to the tune of a few grumbles, the pilots stopped firing and we turned for home. Except that one didn’t exactly stop firing, or at least not for good.

     We were flying over a flat plain near Farside Base when my fighter jerked wildly and several alarms filled the cockpit. Holding back a rush of panic, I saw a wing’s worth of lights go red on my control panel, felt one engine and its backup sputter out, heard a rush of incoherent shouts over the radio, and, in some small and calm part of my mind, went over the emergency landing checklist. In gravity well and atmosphere? Yes to both. Flying ability? Failing fast, and seriously lopsided. Terrain? Very good, nearly as flat as a runway. Ability to glide if necessary? Probably there. Fire? Thankfully not. “Permission to land immediately, Commander?” I said in a voice so calm it astonished me. The question was mere formality, and I was already dropping out of the formation.

     “Permission granted, Farside Three,” the Commander said, sounding worried. “Are you...”

     “Karl Devilaris, you will pay for this!” Farside Eleven shouted. Zarug Ultrai was normally quite unassuming, but he sounded furious at the moment. “How dare you shoot down a girl?”

     I was busy enough to not immediately comprehend what had been said, although I heard it well enough. Karmapa couldn’t have shot me down, I knew that. After all, he was my little brother! Zarug must have meant something different... But the Commander was shouting now, and Karmapa was yelling something that sounded like an excuse... I decided to ignore the input of my ears entirely.

     Things could have been much, much worse. The landing was as easy as a dead-stick landing at night could be, and I was extremely grateful for the smoothness of the plain. I wasn’t so grateful for the sight of another fighter descending from the sky directly behind me as I popped the cockpit open. Squinting upwards at the lights, I hoped it wasn’t Karmapa.

     It wasn’t... but I certainly wouldn’t have expected Kent to come down after me! “You ok?” he asked as soon as he’d opened his own cockpit, “The Commander sent me to check on you...”

     I unfastened my harness and did a small cartwheel to the ground. “Fine,” I assured him. “What happened?” In the glare of his lights, I could see that my right wing was twisted and blackened, the cannon on the end drooping rather gloomily. “Did the cannon overheat and catch fire?” Even as I asked, I knew it wasn’t what had happened. This looked much more like the results of a laser blast...

     Kent coughed gently and reached a paw down from his cockpit. “There is a jump seat in here, you know,” he said. “Would you ride back to Farside with me? It’s rather a long way to walk, and the Commander wants to explain matters herself... when she has finished interrogating your brother.”

     Kent refused to speak all the way back to Farside, and only said, “We need to go to the command room,” after we landed. It was clear something was going on: the civilian residents of Farside Base were congregating in the corridors, talking excitedly, but hastily quieted as we walked past. A group of overdressed young Kougras were standing at the very door of the command room, apparently trying to listen in on whatever was going on inside. The oldest had the grace to look shamefaced as we brushed past them, while the youngest stared unabashedly inside. As for what was going on inside... well, that was a very strange scene indeed.

     The room practically reeked of coffee, and the Commander was glaring at Karmapa, who glared right back. His hair had come partly out of its coif and fell in a rather attractively dishevelled way around his face. “I did not mean to harm her,” he said loudly, ignoring our entry. “I was merely testing her.”

     “Testing what?” the Commander snapped. “I don’t care what you thought you were doing, you shot down a comrade, who just happens to be your sister. Do you know what the other pilots would do if I weren’t here?” The looks on the faces of the other members of Farside Patrol told me that they would probably punch him a few times, then make him clean every toilet in Farside Base.

     “Well, she’s fine, isn’t she?” Karmapa said crossly, waving a hoof at me. He pulled a tiny container of lip gloss out of a pocket and began applying it, ignoring the situation entirely.

     “You’re out of Farside Patrol!” the Commander shouted furiously. “I don’t care who you are, Mr Karl Devilaris, I will not have you in my squadron! Kent, take Mr Devilaris to Orange Central and put him on the next ship out of here.” Glancing at me, she said, “My dear, you’re free to stay, and so are your friends. I highly doubt you’d want to be around your brother after this...”

     “Who’s my replacement?” Karmapa asked, cutting the Commander off. “You don’t want to have too few pilots, do you?”

     “Better too few than one a traitorous... snobbish... idiotic... vain... git of a newspaper reporter!” the Commander snapped.

     “Even at this pressing moment?” Karmapa asked, raising a well-groomed eyebrow.

     “What pressing moment?” the Commander growled.

     “This,” Karmapa said, and with a flourish, removed a disk from another of his many pockets. Holding it in the air so that it twinkled green and silver, he said quietly, “These are what I accidentally uncovered while helping Kent discover how much damage his bug had caused. I had to keep them to myself until I got a report off to Neopia, of course... I was going to give them to you before we went off on our little trip, but I thought it might be better to teach Explorer a little lesson first.” He tossed the disk into the air, where it revolved and slowly fell into the Commander’s icy hoofs. “They look like battle plans; you might be interested.”

     “Battle plans?” the Commander repeated, catching the disk.

     “Oh yes,” Karmapa said blandly. “And when you see what they reveal about dear Kent, you might decide to fire him instead of me.”

      ******

     I jumped at the feel of hoofs in my hair. “Don’t jump, dear,” Geena said vaguely, “you’ll mess up the hold. This mousse should keep your hair partly under control, at least.” I felt two pins being inserted in the neat bun behind my head, which Geena must have constructed from my unruly braid. A pink ribbon brushed in front of my eyes for a moment, and I heard the snap of a large barrette closing. “Fit for a ball or a battle,” Geena said, coming around in front of me. Her own mane straggled limply, and she was chewing franticly on something orange-smelling. “Chocolate?” she asked, handing me a White Chocolate Kacheek. “Lipstick?”

     “If you’ve got black, it would be fitting,” I said rather glumly. I stuffed the chocolate in my mouth, wondering where she had found something so civilized out here. At the taste of Neopia Central, I felt tears welling in my eyes. Home... Freefall, who must be back from her vacation by now... petpets... lazy days wandering around Neopia Central, eating cheap sweets... jumping in puddles...

     “You don’t have to go, Explorer,” Karl said. I hadn’t noticed he was beside me. “In fact, you shouldn’t... your fighter’s wing’s still damaged; you shouldn’t be flying in it.”

     “Thanks to you, Mr Devilaris!” I snapped. I hadn’t called or thought of him as Karmapa since that moment two days ago, when he had tossed the disk in the air. “Besides, it’s been patched up, it’ll do.” I turned back to Geena, who was now holding an open tube of black lipstick out to me. How much time did we have? “Geena,” I said, “I...”

     The air shivered with a low moan that permeated the room and made my fur stand on end. As the moan rose in pitch to a wailing shriek, I took one last look at Geena’s tear-filled eyes, squeezed her hoof, and spun round and ran for the door, feeling my ears pull back, my claws springing out, joining the rest of Farside Patrol as we raced for the hanger, half a flight of stairs down. The battle had started.

To be continued...