Woke Up One Morning... Part 47
By the massive hatch doors leading out to space, Zechs, my team and a line of Taurus suits are waiting for my arrival when I float into the scene. Already, my heart is beginning to pound in my chest in anticipation of the fight that is about to come.
The unknown of exactly what is waiting for us doesn't have me worried in the least. In fact, I'm only more excited by it. Hopefully I'll get to see a few faces of our enemies when they see that they've not only been discovered but that hell is coming for them.
I'll be fighting for Heero as well as for myself today. He may not be with us in person, but he'll sure as hell be with me in spirit, pushing me through whatever may come.
With a firm nod when he has our attention, our leader informs, "We have ten minutes to clear out the resistance that first shows up before Noin's group will be moving in past us. Keep spread as far apart from each other as you can to take out as much of our threat as you can. You're some of the best pilots the organization has to offer because of your backgrounds, so you'll be fine flying on your own."
As he stops to look up at the control tower in the middle of the room, we all look up to watch as Howard moves to the massive window facing us and announces into the microphone, "We're ready to open the doors as soon as you are, Zechs."
Merquise gives a thumbs-up to him and places his helmet on along with the rest of us, though it takes a little more time for adjusting for me with my braid.
Confirming that I'm getting oxygen just fine, I climb up one of the Taurus suits and buckle myself in.
One hit of a button closes the front of the mobile suit as I turn on the monitors and prepare the engines. "You be careful out there, kid," Howard's voice pipes in. "I'd hate to have to be the one left back here to calm that hubby of yours if anything happens."
I laugh, "Thanks, Howie. Nothing to worry about. If you must, I'm sure 'Ro could use a friend to wear a dent in one of the floors around here. We'll all be back before either of you know it." His warm chuckle is the last thing I hear before he cuts our connection off.
Zechs' voice carries over to inform, "Howard, ready for the hatch doors."
There is an affirmative answers and the wall ahead of me slowly opens up to the millions of stars of space while a rush or 'air' flows in.
As soon as the opening is wide enough for us to fly through, I grip either hand control and hunch forward. "Here we go," I hear myself smirk. After our team leader flies off first, I am off right behind him as the engines of my Taurus roar to life with a bit of a shake to the cockpit.
Zooming forward, I let out a loud, howling laugh and watch the Earth as it nears. I maneuver my suit to fly alongside Zechs and grin over our connection, "Hey, try and leave a few targets for the rest of us, lesser experienced pilots out there would ya? I'm still getting my sea legs back here."
For a rarity, he actually laughs a bit as he turns his suit to face mine and responds, "I'll see what I can do. Somehow, I don't think you'll have much trouble. One thing about you I do remember from the wars, you're one who is able to adapt quickly to any situation."
I blink widely in surprise at the compliment and grin, "Well, thanks, man. You know, you're not half as bad as I had thought you were back in those days." Zechs snickers a bit again and shifts his suit back to gaze forward as I do the same, focusing myself for the last few minutes we'll have before reaching the Earth.
Punching in the coordinates for the site of the base, I turn and twist around the planet along with the rest of my team until we're locked on to fly straight on. My grip on the hand bars tightens when we near the ozone and the jolt of entry hits. Everything below from lakes to mountains and trees grow larger as we near by the minute.
Old training kicks in for all of us as I check to see our blips and find that we are forming a wide circle that is spreading out larger and larger until not one of the other suits is in plain sight of me. Funny how some things come back as easy as breathing without thinking.
"Target approaching in five minutes," Zechs warns through the patch. It's enough time for me to remove my helmet and secure it aside so that I can move more freely while the cockpit's air filter pulls back at the first signs of natural air to mix in.
Eyes narrowed, I stare at the same sight of the Alps that had been displayed on the satellite image. Moving in closer and closer, there are more details that show in just how wide the break in them actually is- like the mouth of a great monster took a chunk out of the rock to reveal the gully many miles below.
Suddenly, my alarms come on in the form of a an on and off buzz and red flashing lights. Quickly looking to the side monitor to see what is wrong, I gasp and shout over the line, "Heat seeking missile!" And the bastard is heading right for me.
Simply reacting on instinct, I twist my suit and take aim to shoot it from the sky in a massive explosion only feet away from me.
Panting from the jolt of surprise, I chuckle nervously, "Guess they know we're here. Everyone be on the lookout." Already, I'm punching in commands to zero in on the source of the missile somewhere in the rock bed below.
A digital ring locks onto a tiny door that is opening in the top of one snow-capped peak. When it opens further, I can just make out the red tip of another missile ready to fly.
"Got'cha," I sneer and send a rocket of my own right into the opening. There is a massive eruption of light, flame and noise as the top of the peak bursts out for dozens of feet.
Well, if the friends of whoever was inside of that hatch were not aware they had company before, they do now.
All around, more doors begin to open. And there are far too many for me to get to all of them on my own. "Shit!" I shout just before the skies around light up with the exhaust of rockets and smoke trails in their wake as they fire upward.
Zechs shouts, "Evasive maneuvers, everyone, now!" Much as the smartass in me wants to snap a 'Really?! You think?!' but I'm far too busy trying to dodge, weave and shoot to do that.
I manage to take out one. Then a second and third quickly followed by a forth. A couple of times, I pull off tricking two missiles into flying into each other to take more pressure off my back.
"There is another coming from your right!" Jose yells in my ear just when I thought I had a second to breathe. Spinning my suit while I begin a hard descent, I manage to take out the last of the birdies on me.
Pulling fresh air and sweating pretty hard from that workout, I begin to climb back up and find Hernandez's suit a little over a mile away. "Thanks, man," I smile sincerely.
Overhead, I catch the first sign of another cluster of Taurus suits that would belong to Noin's pack moving in. Fuck! That was already ten minutes?! Time certainly does fly when you're having fun! As I wipe my brow, I sigh, "Looks like we cleared out the first bit of threat just in time. Here comes the Calvary."
Again, the mountains below come to life as manned machines and laser guns appear from seemingly nowhere and take fire.
Growling deeply, I turn and fly in the opposite direction of Jose so we can cover as much turf as possible. I take out a few stations, sending them up in balls of fire and smoke as I carefully fly through the rounds being shot at me.
From the corner of my eye, I catch Noin and her team shoot straight down past me, heading right for the massive crevice in the mountainside. "Get 'em, gang!" I holler while watching their backs at the same time. During their head-first fall, they come up against more resistance that they manage to handle fine.
One good thing from facing all of this artillery, we know we have to be in the right place. With any luck, the others will be able to find where the lab is hidden in the maze of rock below soon. I can already see the thick, dark blanket of clouds moving in to cover the clear sky over us. In about an hour, it'll be on top of us.
The next ten minutes are much of the same- rising, falling, twisting, turning, shooting. And I am far away enough from anyone that I can only go off of the sounds of explosions to guess where they are. Still, there is little slowing of the attack against us.
Then, Tyce and his group fly down and past in the same direction where Noin's bunch disappeared.
It's not long before voices of reported casualties on our side begin to ring in when the fight becomes its thickest down below.
Hernandez's voice screams in pain, "I'm hit!" Crying out for a long duration, his voice is abruptly cut off when a sickening blast echoes around. I spin my suit in time to catch the view of an explosion in the side of the mountain miles away from me.
Oh, God. No.
Panic-stricken, I shout along with my teammates, "Jose!" Gripped in rage, I let out a primal roar and shoot myself back downward into the fray to level out another station that appeared out of the blue. "Take this, you sons of bitches!" I yell at the top of my lungs when the threat is taken out.
Curving myself back up through the flames that shoot up, I can feel myself begin to struggle to keep my emotions in check. "Deep breath, Duo," a more than welcomed voice urges gently in my ear.
"Heero," I whisper almost brokenly when a lump of frustration forms in my throat. Damn. Even when he's not with me, he knows when I need him. "He... he's gone..." I shake my head, unable to continue unless I want to make the shimmer in my eyes worse than it already is.
There's a deep frown in my husband's tone as he replies, "I know. But you're not out of the woods yet, yourself. You need to stay focused."
Right. Gripping the hand bars tightly again, I turn myself around to cover twice the ground I had to work with before. More people call in reports of being hit from our teammates that are out of our view, but I do my best to not pay any mind while doing what I have to on my end.
I have no idea how long it's been into the fight, but finally... after a long wait Tyce's voice shouts, "We have discovered the lab! I repeat, we have discovered the lab! We are moving in now!"
"Thank God," I breathe. Feeling more of the effects of my exerting routine, I can tell that my body is starting to wear thin. Back in the wars, I could have lasted for over a day like this without tiring. I must be getting to old for this shit any more as well as being out of practice.
Several voices come over cheering in response, none of them belonging to my team as we're still in some pretty thick action from automated machinery.
However, I do see a light at the end of the tunnel from my end of things. I have less dodging and ducking that I need to do and the machines that I am targeting seem to be losing speed now that the people controlling them inside the mountain are coming under siege.
I'm finally able to breathe a little... when my alarms go off to warn of another oncoming rocket. I catch a sharp gasp when my radar shows that there are actually two heat seekers on me, one from the left and one from the right...
...and they're closing in fast. It's too late to dodge them, so I have to make a tough split-second decision and take out the one at my left where my gun is and turn down as best I can to avoid the other.
The jolt from being struck by the missile that I could not take out shakes me violently in my harness and I strike my head a couple of times.
I'm spiraling down, out of control and without any way of getting out of the spin no matter how hard I am pulling back on the controls. Whenever the view of what is below comes into sight, it's getting closer and closer every time it reappears.
Jesus, this is bad!
Sharply, I cry, "I'm hit! And I'm going down fast! Can't get control of the suit back!" I take in the reading of the damage to the Taurus amid the flashing red lights around me. "Thrusters are out! Appendages ripped off! I can't pull up!"
"Eject, Duo! Hit the ejection control!" Heero screams and it's so loud it's as if he was right in front of me.
Of course, he doesn't know until I shout back, "I am and it's jammed!"
Pulling again on the ripcord below my seat, it doesn't give in the slightest. "The fucking thing is jammed!" Again and again, I pull to no avail. My stomach is threatening to spill out its contents as I continue to spiral forward and over on myself, but I keep pulling.
Somehow, I've managed to fall through the fighting that had been taking place below and around me and now I am spinning down to the valley floor with its tree tops nearing enough that I can make out the pine bristles. This is it. I'm not going to make it out this time.
"Heero!" I half-sob and give one last pull with all I have. "Heero, I love-"
Those words are stopped short when the cockpit door busts opened and I am launched out into the cold air, still strapped into my seat. I am jolted again when the parachute is deployed and catches the wind to have me hover only a few hundred feet up above the ground.
Panting and wide-eyed, I stare at the tree tops that I am now slowly closing in on. "Holy... fuck," is all I can manage right now, shocked beyond belief that I'm still alive after all of that.
My heart's pounding slows only the slightest bit as I take in the tree-covered valley. Here and there, smoke clouds from small fires left from the fight high above can be seen. The smell of those flames carries on the wind that is rocking me from side-to-side.
One of those crash sites is what remains of the Taurus suit that I had been thrown from.
When my ears pop clear after the pressure from my ejection had sealed them, the sounds of the battle above can be heard with little straining on my part.
Bracing myself when I am about to collide into an evergreen, I wince and close my eyes tightly just before the rough impact. A few rough grunts escape me as I a slam down from branch to branch and I feel my harness come undone when it snags on a jagged limb.
Free-falling along with my chair plummeting ahead of me, I scream out in pain when my leg crashes hard enough against a thick branch for me to feel and hear a snap of bone. And as rough as my crash to the not-so-soft ground is, I'm so fucking grateful to have reached it alive that my eyes tear up from relief...
...that along with the absolutely mind-numbing, excruciating pain that is coursing through every damned inch of my body after feeling like I had been put through a few rounds of being used as a punching bag.
Lying on my right side on the frozen earth that's littered with twigs and branches that had been pulled down along with me, I just take a moment to let the cold set in to let that be another sign that I really am still alive. The crisp air is burning my lungs and coming out of my opened mouth in long vapor trails.
I can feel a thin, warm trickle of blood rolling down the side of my face and I gather myself to sit up at my waist and assess myself. And I nearly retch at the awkward bend in my right lower half of my leg. Running my hands over it with a hiss of pain, the damage is enough that I could set the bone back in place.
Certainly not because I want to, but I can't be lying here with a broken leg in unknown territory when my enemy could be looming anywhere around right now.
Removing the belt from my waist, I bite down on the rubber and decide to just do the job before I second-guess myself. With all of the downward pressure I can apply and a couple of attempts, I feel the break snap back with a shock of pain that has me letting out a muffled howl of hurt.
"Fuck me!" I snap as I pull the belt from my mouth to reveal the deep teeth marks I have left in it. Giving the rest of myself the once over, I seem to be in fair enough shape aside from cuts that broke through my suit in different places at varying lengths. But they're nothing that I need to worry about losing too much blood over.
So, I use one of the thicker branches that is within crawling distance to make a brace against my leg with the support of the belt. Getting clumsily to my feet, I hobble over to where my chair came to rest several feet away from me and release a deep sigh in finding the bag I had hoped to locate hooked to the bottom of it.
Leave it to Howie and the Sweepers to make sure that they covered all the bases for any scenario. Just as they would do for me when we worked together, they made sure to secure a large duffle bag of emergency items should an emergency ejection be needed.
Collapsing from exhaustion, I roughly unhook the kit and open it to reveal a thick blanket, flint, a pistol with three clips of bullets, three bottles of water, a small first-aid pack, food rations and a radio that will tap directly to Peacemillion.
I frown deeply at seeing how badly damaged the transmitter is from the crash. As it is right now, there is no way that it would be able to produce a signal that would get out to the people I need to hear it.
There is only one option right now- I have to find one of the suits and use that to try and get word out to Heero and the others...
Heero... oh, Jesus. That message I was about to leave him when I got cut off... He must think I'm... God, he must be going out of his mind right now.
But if anything, I know that he'll come look for me. Heero will find me. He'll move Heaven and Hell to do it if he has to.
The cold really begins to set in and I shiver violently while pulling the deep blue blanket around me. I just have to hang on and get word out to the others... before hypothermia sets in with these dropping temperatures.
Looking up, however, I can't help but sigh at the sight I'm catching. The storm's caught up. And it's just now beginning to snow.
Just... fucking beautiful.
TBC...
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