Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Masanori Bata


The red strobe light blinked as sparks fountained from the control panel and bounced off of my visor. Air sucked out of a fist sized hole in the cabin into the void of space. Pushing aside my fear, my mind raced back and forth at all the buttons and dials that displayed the status of my craft. I had to think fast. It’s possible my pursuer shot a hole in the canopy, but that didn’t mean the aircraft stopped working.
I pulled back on both throttles and slammed the right foot pedal as my craft took a hard turn and pointed toward the craft chasing me. As I rotated, the enormous blue moon of Jupiter, Europa, slid into my peripheral. My craft continued hurling backward through the vacuum of space as I proceeded to hurl a barrage of silent projectiles at the enemy, punching holes in it, sending glass and debris in all directions, eventually slowing it down to a halt. The lights within the enemy vessel turned off except for the single red light glowing from inside the robotic pilot’s metal bullet shaped cranium; after feverishly working at his console, the pilot’s head turned toward me to catch one last glimpse of his destroyer. I squeezed both triggers sending two red comets colliding with his craft disintegrating it after a blinding flash of light.
Then my heart skipped a beat as my wing mate, Shoji, radioed a cry for help.
“Mayday Mayday. Bata one do you read?” Shoji’s voice was fast and agitated.
“Shoji where are you?” I called back.
“They got me. I’m hit, the moon is gonna take me, man. Do something. Do something god dammit!” He started to lose his self control and panic.
 I rolled my head in all directions searching for his ship eventually spotting it hurling toward the soft blue atmosphere of Europa. I watched, and I followed, as that was all I could do.
In as soft and calm a voice as I could muster, I spoke to him over the radio, “Shoji I see ya. You’re gonna be ok, but I need you to keep your cool alright?”
There was silence, followed by a sniffle over the radio.
“I have you Shoji. Do you remember your training?”
We were trained, back on Mars, how to survive a re-entry and planetary crash landing. So I watched, and I trusted him to remember his training. Shortly after I spotted him, I saw him eject through the canopy. The breaching weight hurled into space while his still body regained consciousness after a couple seconds. His space suit decelerated him with small thrusters on his shoulders. He was going to have to land on the surface of Europa and survive. Martians never sent rescue missions to the enemy home planet.
Visions of the past shot through my mind. We were the two senior most pilots in our wing of seventy other pilots. This wasn’t our first encounter with a crash landing. At the age of Forty two Earth years old, both Shoji and I survived two previous crashes. The first time, we landed in the terraformed jungles of Shalbatana Vallis. We spent three days trudging through the tall Ceibal tree forests. We found a suitable cave to sleep in through the night, and during the day we’d wander out into the meadows to wait for rescue. After wading through dense vegetation, we sat in a small patch we stomped flat.
While relaxing and enjoying peace and quiet in the wilderness, Mio, one of the other four soldiers with us, ventured out of sight to take a leak while the rest of us sat around a small fire.
I broke the silence with my usual untimely optimism, “Well, at least we can become reacquainted with nature.”
Shoji snorted, “Ha, right, wanna come pick flowers with me?”
“I’d say yes, but that might hint that I enjoy your company.”
“What the hell are you!” he shouted at me with a confrontational look in his eye. I laughed at his insecurity.
Shortly after that, Shoji raised a finger in the air commanding silence, “Did you just hear something? Sounded like Mio.” He twisted around and his eyes scanned the tall grass.
That was the last we heard from Mio. One by one, hour by hour, we wandered out to search for one another, and one by one we disappeared. Paralyzed with fear, the remaining four of us listened to the rustle of leaves around us as the twilight sun descended ever so slowly on the horizon.
Shoji spoke up again, “This is fucked up. Everyone get back to the cave for the night, if they’re still out there they know the drill. We’ll look again in the morning.”
I stood up and turned around to begin the trek toward the cave, but froze with terror as a seven foot tall faceless black stone being stood in my path. I gulped at the air in paralyzing terror as the faceless statue glared down at me. The being wrapped its long witch fingers around my arm and Umeko immediately assisted in forcing the monster off of me. The monster plunged its entire free hand deep into the top of Umeko’s skull, but immediately let go of me. Junko gave a war cry as he pointed his weapon at the monster. Curse words and muzzle flashes filled the night air in a brief moment of utter confusion.
Suddenly a hand grabbed my collar and yanked me onto my feet, shattering my horrified trance. It was Shoji. After quickly yelling, “Run you asshole!” He grabbed me, and he ran for his life. Without looking back, I followed him. We ran. We panted. The leaves crunched beneath our feet. Behind us was a single pop from his rifle and a subdued yelp.
We found the cave, and we hid.
After moment of stark silence, Shoji spoke, his voice hoarse with fear, “Oh my god what just happened why did he, he took out the men, he took them all out, what the hell man, who was that.”
I wrapped a fingerless glove around Shoji’s mouth to silence him, “shh!”
Completely agitated he bit my glove nearly missing my hand underneath, I ripped it out of his mouth and elbowed him in the back of his head, “Get a grip, it's me, man.”
His eyes sparkled in the blue twilight wide with fear, his mouth stuttered for a minute, and then he wrapped an arm around my cold shoulders pulling me in close to him.
Through the night and into the morning, we huddled silently in a dark corner wide eyed with fear. Whatever attacked us, it left us alone, and it didn’t give us trouble when we ventured to a meadow on the other side of the forest for rescue.
Floating in space, I had to make a decision as I watched my friend drift toward the moon. There was no way I’d sleep well for the rest of my life knowing my best friend crash landed and wandered the icy plains of Europa by himself with Soulless Robots hunting him through the night, when I had full capacity to help him. My orders were to stay in orbit and protect the Dreadnought from enemy Mech fighters, but I just couldn’t leave him alone. Once I strayed from my objective, the Martian fleet wouldn’t attempt to save me. If I went down to help him, there would be no rescue. I unfolded a photograph of my family from an air tight compartment next to my foot. All of them were gone; passed away. I was the youngest in the family, at an age of one hundred twenty five. I had nothing left to lose except my best friend.
My heart raced and my hands trembled as I squeezed both throttles and pressed forward toward my friend. Whatever destiny we faced on Europa, we’d share it together.

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