//------------------------------// // Chapter 17 // Story: Until Fairer Skies Beckon // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// The alarms shook Rainbow awake.  Two danger calls in two days?  She debated the safest place to be, but ultimately decided the hangar would at least get her closer to taking off if she needed to. Rainbow usually slept a little later than most.  This was despite sleep being one of the few respites from life indentured at a paramilitary base in Africa. She hadn’t seen or heard any more missile launches by the time she got to the hangar.  Was it not an air attack?  Did that mean it was a ground attack?  Somehow, that frightened her more. And for good reason.  Rainbow turned, trying to keep watch for any invading troops, but instead found herself staring at a pair of lions. Quick as her name, she dashed straight up the MiG’s ladder and into the cockpit, slamming the canopy closed. The lions, both of them female Rainbow saw, regarded her for a moment and then moved on.  She breathed a sigh of relief.  Yes, that was probably a good enough reason to call a base alert. She heard pops of gunfire in the distance.  Rainbow felt a little sorry for the lions, but, well, she wasn’t sitting here in her plane for no reason. The gunfire kept going, and was getting closer. Two more lions, one of them a male with a full mane, ran by.  He had blood on his mouth. Rainbow decided to sit still a while longer. A few minutes passed and the alarm stopped.  Still cautious, Rainbow climbed down and left the hangar. She spotted a lump on the runway.  The poor thing had probably had no cover out in the open and made easy pickings.  Over near the kitchen she saw another.  Soldiers stood around it.  One of them was already skinning the beast.  Of course, when it came to warlord mercenaries, what was one count of poaching a protected species? Rainbow turned, spotting human bodies for the first time.  Soldiers near the gate had been killed first, not surprisingly.  The lions had apparently made their way in from there. Rainbow walked by a group of soldiers, passing parallel to the hangar and headed for the Flyers Club.  There was the creak of metal, drawing Rainbow’s attention upwards.  The male lion perched on the peaked roof of the hangar, where it came down to the corner.  He was fifteen feet over her head, streaked with blood, and looking right at her. Rainbow started to move just as the lion leaped.  She saw the claws and teeth coming at her in slow motion.  Her attention was so focused that she didn’t even notice that the soldiers had been watching the whole thing. Bullets streaked by.  The distinctive crack as they broke the sound barrier in front of Rainbow’s face was louder than the distant muzzle blast.  It wasn’t easy hitting a target like a lion while it was falling through the air, but enough AK-47’s could solve problems like that. The lion didn’t land on Rainbow, but its blood did.  The big cat was dead before it hit the ground. She skidded to a halt a few feet away, legs still tense for action.  The lion was still.  Rainbow raised her hands, flecked in blood.  It felt like some had gotten on her face. The soldiers laughed at her.  Rainbow realized she must have been played, just like the lion.  Sure, the initial incursion by the pride probably had been real, but they must have cornered the last one on the roof and just waited for someone to come along and bait it down. The skinner came over and pulled out a rusty set of pliers.  He yanked the lion’s claws and gave them to Rainbow, grinning. “What the hell am I supposed to do with these?” Rainbow demanded. Rainbow sat in the Flyers Club.  She’d cleaned herself up, or as clean as anyone could ever get around here. The others seemed excited somehow, talking a lot.  Granted, lions killing a few of the UTA soldiers was exciting.  None of them had gotten as good of a look at the action as Rainbow, and she definitely noticed the difference in their attitudes. Rainbow remembered the attitudes of the soldiers that had shot the lion in front of her.  Well, technically in the air above her.  They hadn’t been afraid at all.  In fact, they’d made a game out of it.  A lion could kill a man with the element of surprise.  But a lot of men with guns had such an advantage they thought the hunt was sport. Rainbow shook her head.  The lesson she should take from that was strength in numbers.  She looked around at the rest of the room. Sky was talking to Pug.  The two of them had such a similar personality that it was slightly amazing they could exist in the room together.  Vapor had been left behind, sitting near Rainbow.  Vapor kept stealing glances at her. “Is there something on my face?” Rainbow asked. “You, uh…”  Vapor pointed to her own cheek. Rainbow felt, finding a drop of crusty dried blood that she quickly scraped off.  Her face flushed, but she wasn’t sure why.  There hadn’t been a mirror available to ensure her face was perfectly washed.  “Thanks.” “I can’t believe that happened to you,” said Vapor. Rainbow gestured to the room.  “After all this, I kind of stopped keeping score about what karma owed me.”  It was true, she realized.  And Rainbow was someone who kept scores. Vapor nodded.  Even with the conversation, it was slightly amazing how withdrawn she was. “So you two were at flight school together?” said Rainbow.  She knew the answer, but it was the first topic she seized to keep the conversation going. “That’s right.  We’ve been friends forever.”  Vapor actually smiled.  Not a real smile, but her lips turned up enough to count for it.  None of them really smiled much here. “Friends are good,” Rainbow agreed, happy to be on the topic.  She came up short, though.  What else could she say?  Speeches weren’t really her thing. She didn’t need to, though.  She saw the look Vapor gave Sky.  There was a pause in the conversation across the room.  Sky glanced around, saw Vapor, and sent a genuine smile her away before turning around to start talking again. The two of them weren’t good for each other, the mouse and the loudmouth, but that didn’t mean they weren’t friends with an honest appreciation for each other.  Even Rainbow could see that. Seeing it was the best part of her day so far.  Friendship could exist, even in a place like this. Of course, Rainbow’s day swung like a pendulum back to being terrible.  She and the others were thrown into a last-minute mission that afternoon.  They were riding off to rescue some UTA unit that was outgunned. Pantera led.  Lightning, Striker, Rainbow, Sky, and Vapor filled out the rest.  The mission was a relatively short hop to the north.  As they flew, Rainbow saw smoke clouds gathering on the horizon. A ground controller named Puma was literally screaming for help.  Unfortunately, what he said didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Rainbow caught the word “monsters.” They arrived overhead a bush fire.  Only occasionally could they see the ground through billowing clouds of smoke.  Rainbow could barely make out the remains of a village.  The fire seemed to have spread downwind of it. Buildings had been destroyed and debris littered the ground.  The swath of destruction looked like a cone shape, starting from a sharp point just outside the village and smearing into a wider arc, nearly bisecting the settlement.  Whatever had happened, it flattened buildings and scorched the savannah.  The wind had carried the fire beyond that. Rainbow frowned.  She was reminded of another, earlier incident.  That one hadn’t spread to a full-on fire.  What could have caused it? No time to ponder, there was a mission.  Pantera managed to glean enough about Puma’s position to not bomb them, but that didn’t provide a lot of information about what else was going on. “Forget it,” Pantera muttered.  There wasn’t fuel to hang around much longer.  She started calling out targets in a circle around Puma.  They could say they tried. Rainbow hit her target.  Weapons off, she returned to altitude and circled until the others formed up to head back. They left the smoke behind.  Puma called for help again, but there was nothing to give.  Bombing was one thing, strafing through smoke was a good way to run straight into the ground.  Besides, if he was really up against monsters, what were the pilots supposed to do?  Rainbow snorted.  Like they were actually monsters.  The soldiers were still alive, weren’t they? “A whole platoon on khat, or something worse,” Pantera grumbled. Rainbow had heard of khat.  It was some kind of plant that some of the guards chewed.  It was apparently amphetamine-like and easy to get in Africa. As they headed back for base, Rainbow looked down and did a double-take.  “Two o’clock low.”  The ScanEagle was back. “On it!” said Sky, immediately putting his Hunter into a dive. “Hang on,” said Lightning. “If you can even hit it,” said Pantera.  Rainbow didn’t think Sky could, either.  Even a good pilot would have trouble. They watched from altitude.  Sure enough, Sky’s first pass went wide.  He turned, pulling the Hunter for as many g’s as it would give him. A missile suddenly leaped out of the grass, smoke trail reaching for the low-flying jet like a snake strike.  It slammed into the Hunter’s tail, and in the middle of a turn there was nothing that could be done. Sky might have been able to eject, but a second was all he had, and he missed his opportunity.  The jet slammed into the ground, cartwheeling and disintegrating into a fireball. “Sky!” Vapor screamed. As the shock wore off, Rainbow belatedly realized what must have happened.  It stood to reason that any force well-equipped enough to have modern drones also probably had MANPADS.  Maybe they had even been intentionally using the ScanEagle as bait. No, probably unlikely, she decided.  They’d waited to fire until the jet had already attacked the drone.  That didn’t make them less dangerous, but might imply they followed rules of engagement, which automatically made whoever they were a lot more trustworthy than the UTA. “There’s nothing we can do now,” said Pantera, quietly.  She led the vector back towards base. Rainbow throttled back and flew on Vapor’s wing.  Her head was down.  Rainbow looked over, wondering if she could see outside to see where she was going. As Rainbow watched, Vapor raised her head.  She seemed surprised that Rainbow was so close. “Let’s go back,” said Rainbow. She almost said, “You need to rest.”  She almost said, “You’ll feel better.”  She wanted to say anything, but she knew nothing she could say would actually help Vapor.  They were just words.  But Rainbow wanted Vapor to know that she was there for her. Vapor looked at her.  She looked over her other shoulder, towards the open sky. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You can’t go,” said Rainbow.  “We...we’re in this together!” “I’m sorry,” Vapor repeated, and banked away. “Is she leaving?” called Pantera. Rainbow stared as the Tucano broke from the formation.  “You can’t do that!” Vapor did not reply. “You’re closest, Four,” said Lightning. Rainbow glanced over her shoulder at the rest of them. “If you don’t stop her, it’ll be on you!” Pantera warned.  “If the UTA hears you just let her go!” “We could say…”  Rainbow swallowed.  “We could say they were both shot down.” Her words were hollow.  She couldn’t trust that one of them wouldn’t go straight to the UTA.  Pantera, despite her attitude turnaround, might.  Lightning definitely might.  Would Striker? Rainbow considered the two missiles under her wings and the loaded cannon ready to go.  Three opponents.  Could she do it?  Would all three of them fight her? She looked at Vapor’s plane shrinking in the distance.  The life of one versus the life of three.  Even if those three hadn’t chosen to try for freedom. “We could go with her,” said Rainbow. “We don’t have the fuel to go anywhere,” said Striker, after a long moment. He was right.  The gauge on Rainbow’s instrument panel was nearly empty already. She pushed the stick over and turned after Vapor. “Come back,” she called.  “You can’t do this!” Vapor didn’t reply.  Rainbow already knew that nothing she could say would change that. She blinked, the reticle in her jet’s HUD difficult to see through the tears in her eyes.  But the steady tone of the missiles growling in her ear meant she didn’t have to. If Rainbow had thought about it, she chose the missile because it was less personal than guns.  But she didn’t think about it.  She couldn’t. Her thumb rested on the button, applying pressure slowly until it suddenly became too much.  With a noise Rainbow could hear over her own jet engine, the missile reached out on a trail of white smoke.  It was too close to miss.  The explosion tore Vapor’s aircraft from the sky.  Rainbow couldn’t look. The radio remained silent. Rainbow landed badly.  The sturdy Soviet MiG was unaffected, but she could have easily killed herself if she’d been any rougher.  She wiped her eyes, strangely unfazed by the thought. She stopped at the hangar and climbed down from the jet as if on autopilot herself.  Jubi was at the foot of the ladder. “Don’t,” she said.  “Not this one.” He glanced briefly at the crosses painted under the cockpit, but said nothing. Rainbow walked towards the bunkhouse.  She wanted to do anything that wasn’t thinking.  She walked by the empty spot in the hangar.  Soarin’ stood there, arms crossed.  Their eyes didn’t meet.  It hadn’t been his first plane.  It hadn’t been his first pilot. She closed her eyes and swallowed.  Her gaze didn’t reach up much past her feet all the way to her bed, where she lay down on her face. Rainbow had stopped crying, even though that seemed like it might feel better.  She rolled over.  Her eyes didn’t want to close.  Was she going to suffer through this? Why did she have to?  What else could she have done?  How could it be that killing a friend had been her best option? She sat up, uncomfortable in any position.  She sat at the edge of the bed, hands clasped and head down.  Her breath hitched, as if she were going to cry again. Rainbow got up.  She sucked in a breath, now recognizing the surging anger overcoming the grief.  How could this happen?  How had no one ever realized the UTA was kidnapping people? She paced, teeth together and lips parted.  How had she become ensnared in this sick game of a war?  How could evil like Lion Heart be allowed to exist? Rainbow stopped, breathing hard and shoulders heaving.  Her fists clenched.  Heat seemed to sweep through her body.  If Lion Heart were here, no matter what Rainbow might be up against - bodyguards, guns - she would take her fist and- An electric streak of magenta shot forward, slamming into the wall hard enough to rattle the entire building.  The punch went straight through the particle board, plywood, and tin siding, fragments of each exploding outwards. Rainbow jerked her hand back, the iridescence fading from her skin as her surprise overrrode her emotion. Her eyes went wide.  How did that happen?