Chapter 7

Tony

Time had passed. It was clear, I was alone. No Liam Darkson in my head. No communications from Nancy, but there was a crackling of radio frequency ripping my ear out along the journey.

Later I realized what that was when I woke up to a dropship landing close to my position. It looked like an Omega ship. I had to be ready to confront them.

“State your task!” I yelled out with my AR aimed up.

“This is Alpha 0. Dean Casey. I will be your main air support from here. I suggest not aiming that gun at my ship, if you really think that will do something,” he responded through my comms.

“Are there any other Omega Rhinos in your ship?” I asked.

“Nope just me. I was expecting you to be with the rest. Are they dead?”

“No, just missing in action,” I said.

“Alright,” he said. “Commander, Tony, right? Do me a favor and get in the ship.”

I reached closer to the ship and for an odd reason, it was getting bigger along each step I took until I finally knocked on the back. A mechanical door opened up leaving a wide amount of space. If the Spiked tank was still here, it would have definitely fit.

“What kind of ship is this?” I asked.

“It’s a multi-operations aircraft designed for attacking, dropping off troops and traveling across space at the same speed of the fleet airships.

“There’s a barrel at the front of the ship that pops in and out. It is a laser cannon that fires at 500 rounds per minute but overheats after ten rounds. One single round of the laser alone could tear through an entire Rhino tank and if I get enough rounds in, with one burst, we could take out one of those Lok airships.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Before I got here, there was a pretty hectic battle in orbit. We got an entire fleet of Omega gunships. About twenty of them, but unfortunately, the Lox have a special fleet of their own.

“They’re outnumbering us right now. I could have taken out three if I wasn’t being chased down by five aircraft at a time.”

“Where’s the rest of the dropships then?” I questioned.

“We were supposed to get here with 200 thousand Rhinos and Cobras, but we got cut in half. There is one multi-operation dropship for each ship. I was supposed come here with four other pilots, but now it’s just me. The rest are upstairs.”

A bit of warm air stepped back in my chest. Although it seemed like we were losing, it was relieving to be close to a human being again.

“Where are the rest of your combatants?” Dean asked.

“I have their coordinates,” I said. “I can give them to you and we’ll be well on our way.”

“Yeah, definitely,” he said in a saddened tone. He didn’t bother looking at me while saying that and I sent the coordinates straight to his ship. “You have any kids, Tony?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you likely to have kids?” he asked.

“Well, maybe. Not too sure.”

“Good, do me a favor, Tony,” he said. “When you get out of this bloodbath, don’t have a child in the middle of war, like I did. Nothing's scarier than thinking that if I die, my daughter back home, won’t have a father in the future.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’ll try my best.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” he said and started lifting off the dropship. “If you want to be a good passenger, don’t distract me. Stay ten feet away from my space and don’t touch anything you don’t know how to use. Just let the pilot do all the work for you. I’m sure you want to survive too.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be of best use to you, by not being of use at all. Just get me back to my team and we’ll be in good terms,” I said.

He showed me half of his smile and said, “We’re lifting off. Sit down somewhere comfortable for me.”

I did as asked. Between a back seat, I put on two seat belts and covered my chest with a latch. Once I clicked everything in, an unsettling pressure touched my chest.

Once we got completely in the sky, my heart felt like it launched to my throat. He flew incredibly fast and in seconds, I almost knocked out from my head swinging back and forth on and side to side from the flying.

“Is this your first time feeling the pressure?” he asked.

“Most likely,” I said while attempting not to die.

“Got to let you know, the Shark Jets are a lot worse,” he said. “Those machines are not for the faint hearted.”

“What’s a Shark Jet?” I asked.

“It’s the fastest human built aircraft.” He faced me while flying. “It's named the Shark Jet because of its look. If you have a good pilot for five of them, you can dominate the skies, space and even the ground. They're designed to bomb down cities, take out aircraft slower than them and even compete against airships in big groups.”

“Are there any of them in the fleet?” I questioned.

“They’ve only been recently built,” he said. “They first came in use about three months ago. Right now, there’s only two groups of Shark Jets in the fleet. About five Shark Jets for each group. We're only supposed to use them when we clear out orbit from the Lox because they’re expensive.

“But in about three or more years, Earth, Planet X and if Orson is saved, we’re going to have the strongest air force in the universe. At least we think we will. Earth is planning to build around five thousand Shark Jets by the year 2763. And seven thousand more across the other human colonized planets.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because soon, plenty of Rhinos like you will be trained to fly aircraft like Shark Jets. Prepare for the insanity of flying, Tony,” he said.

“Prepare for the insanity of flying,” I whispered. “I always wondered what it would feel like to fly in the skies.”

“So do I,” Liam’s voice returned. “Like he said, when you learn to fly. You can dominate the skies and the ground. I got plenty to tell you about flying. It's a murderous powerful feeling and once you get it into your system, you’ll never be the same.”

I attempted to ignore his voice but now that I was around another person, I needed to look sane for a second, so I whispered, “How long are you going to be in my head for?”

“I’ll be around for your toughest times and I’ll be there when you’re closest to them. I’ll be the closest man to your head, but if you want me to leave you alone, all you have to do is ask,” he said.

“Okay, then leave now.”

“As you wish, but just remember,” his voice breathed closer into my left ear. “I’ll be back when you reach despair once more and the other times after.”

Even though I couldn’t see Liam, I felt his presence completely disappear like he was a strong nasty wind and pressure wrapped around my body. All the pain and the headache bothering me, washed away too.

My soul felt clean for the first time and I didn’t question it. Something about Liam was definitely making me feel horrible and I never knew it.

“You doing, okay?” Dean asked.

“Yeah,” I had a deep breath. “For some reason I am.”

***

After thirty minutes of flying, we reached our destination. I felt relieved but the first step I took, I nearly vomited in my helmet.

“Tony!” Nancy shouted and quickly hugged me. “Thank god you’re okay.”

“Can we save the hugs for later?” I said. “I’m a bit motion sick from the flight.”

“That’s fine.” She let go. “The Omega Rhinos are here. We don’t know what to do with them.”

“I’ll take them out, don’t worry.”

“No!” She raised a finger and stopped me from arming my weapons. “Um, I don’t know how to tell you, but these are not the Rhinos we were expecting to be fighting.”

“What do you mean?” I questioned.

“I’ll just say this. They’re only seventeen and both Maurice and Patrick have been punching them around like rag dolls,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Let me show you.” She pulled my arm and made me enter a collapsed building where I saw Maurice and Patrick pushing one of them back and forth. They were tiny. They had no muscles and they looked like snowflakes as Romeo would describe. They were literally kids.

“What’s going on?!” I yelled.

“Omega sent these children here, that’s what,” Maurice said. “The Omega Cobras I killed back then were tougher than these delinquents.”

Patrick then grabbed one of them by the head and shoved him into me. He looked over my chest and looked just as scared as the woman crying back at the town we rescued.

“You’re supposed to be a Rhino?” I asked.

“No, I’m Jones,” he said. “I just want to be Jones and go back home.”

“Uh huh? And why are you here, Jones?” I questioned.

“I don’t know,” he stuttered. “I just wanted to help my family and buy my girlfriend a nice house and now I’m here.”

“You became a Rhino.” I grabbed his shoulder and crushed it. “You became a Rhino for money?”

“Yes,” he cried.

“You’re going to regret that.” I let go of his shoulder and poked his chest. “You're regretting that now and you’re going to regret that more later, but right now you better hope you go back home and buy your girlfriend a house. Here, your job is to kill and nothing else.”

Maurice then began laughing. “That’s funny. The Omega division I hated my whole life, was just a bunch of rats sneaking amongst snakes and cats. It’s going to be fun meeting your leader soon.”

“Their leader is probably a mole hiding against snakes and cats you’re saying,” Jacob said. “I’ll be happy enough to kill him as soon as we see him.”

“I mean who does this?!” Patrick intervened. “Who sends unexperienced kids into a war?! If that’s Omega, they are a lot lower than I thought!”

“Yeah,” Maurice approached Patrick. “What’s your deal with them?”

“Couldn’t tell even if I wanted to,” Patrick said and poked Maurice chest. “It’d be nice if you didn’t close in on me like that, considering I was getting shot at for you and Tony back there.”

“That was your decision, not mine,” Maurice said.

Quickly tension was building up and I needed to get these children out of here. There was no reason we should let them fight this war.

“Nancy, help me get these kids, in the ship,” I said.

“You’re sending them off?” she asked.

“Yeah, they can’t be here.” I pulled Jones’ arm. “They’re just going to die.”

Nancy then grabbed the arms of the other two child Rhinos and began scolding them.

“Tell me, why you thought it was a good idea to become a Rhino, right now Jones.”

“Look man, we all need money, don’t we?” he said.

“Not this money, kid. This money you’re making is not worth it. Why would you make the decision?”

“I saw how much money Rhinos would make in a year and I needed that. My girlfriend literally told me she was going to leave me if I didn’t get my life straight,” he started crying.

“Mhm, and you thought by joining a war, it would make things better,” I said.

“I mean yeah, it’s good money but I had no other option!” he said. “Every other job would reject me and the only jobs I worked at were factories and they were terrible places to work at and you made very little money. Being a Rhino, you get paid just for training up to two five thousand dollars a month.

“With that much money, you could pay off rent for two months, maybe even three! I probably have 30 thousand dollars in my bank account at home where my girlfriend can use it on whatever she wants!”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “But unfortunately, you’re going to die in the process.”

I threw him into the ship and he ran back out. “I can’t go back! If I go back and don’t finish this war, my girlfriend will leave me and I’ll lose all my money in an instant!”

“Okay.” I shoved him back in. “If you don’t go back, not only are you going to die but you’re going to keep me and the others distracted. You will get us killed, and that will be your fault.”

Now that I thought about it, that was probably Omega’s intention. They must have other better Rhinos than these kids, but they sent these three so they could keep us busy or even killed.

“What did they send you here for?” I asked.

“They just told us to follow your orders. Nothing else,” Jones said.

I got closer to Nancy and whispered to her, “Omega probably wants us killed by sending these kids to distract us. We can put them in the dropship but they’ll probably keep the pilot busy.”

“Jones, looks like the only who would be trouble for us,” she said. “The other two aren’t exactly being a problem. It's hard to say this but we need the air support more than anything so we’ll keep the other two in the dropship and we take Jones for the ground.”

“Alright, but those two shouldn’t go alone with the pilot,” I said. “Patrick can watch them for us.”

I waved at Patrick. Jones attempted to run around Maurice only to get shoved into the snow.

“Keep him out here, Maurice,” I said. “We’re going to need him with us.”

Then I pointed at Patrick, “You’re getting in the dropship with the other two kids. Watch them for Alpha 0.”

Patrick pumped his shotgun and directed the two teenage Rhinos into the ship. Patrick then said, “If there’s trouble, I’ll let you know.”

“We’ll do the same,” I said.

The door closed shut and the ship began lifting off. Dean spoke in my comms, “Just to let you know, while I was flying down, I saw a few armored trucks. You can use that to drive yourselves to the next few cities ahead.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“To your west. I’ll keep a close watch on you guys. Remember I’m your main air support so do your best to serve me too.”

Snow shot into my helmet and prevented me seeing as his ship set in the sky. I pulled Jones into my possession and asked him, “Do you know how to shoot?”

“A little bit,” he said.

“Okay, do me a favor and keep your gun’s aim away from us. Don't step out of cover until the scene is clear.”

I looked at Jacob’s direction, “Jacob. Since you’re behind us, make sure Jones, doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“You have my word,” he said.

“Alright, Jones. Follow us from here.”

All we needed was that truck. That will work in our favor for then.