CHAPTER THREE

Drace and Neo snapped to attention as General Isar, the Doctor, and Rose emerged from the room. General Isar placed himself directly in front of them and assumed a commanding pose.

"New instructions regarding the prisoners, privates. I have determined them to be innocent of any treachery or CPR reconnaissance, and after deliberation they have agreed to help support the cause of the KRS," General Isar said. He cleared his throat before continuing his string of directions. "Private Drace, you will show Ms. Rose to lower flight deck C where she will be joining Flight Squadron 341. Private Neo, you are responsible for taking Mr. Doctor to the Priority Gamma strategy room in the starboard wing."

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets petulantly. "Oh, only priority gamma? I can do better than that," he grumbled. Rose elbowed him in the ribs.

With a thump, the two privates pressed their hands to their chests in salute. "Sir, yes sir!"

"Dismissed." General Isar clasped his hands behind his back as he turned to address Rose and the Doctor. "You will follow these two to your respective assignments. Any indication that you are going against orders will result in your expulsion from the ship. This is not up for debate."

Rose raised her hands in a mock surrendering pose. "We wouldn't dream of it, uh, sir." Instead of responding, the General simply narrowed his eyes then turned to stalk away down the hall with his hands still firmly locked behind his back.

The Doctor humphed. "Someone seems a bit on edge, eh?" He took his hands out of his coat pockets in order to reach for Rose's fingers. "What a fine mess you've gotten us into," he laughed, a tad bitterly.

"Hey, we'll be fine. And so will they," Rose pointed at the two guards waiting to escort them away, "as long as we're around to help."

"And here I was thinking we were finally going to get a normal vacation without running into trouble."

"It just wouldn't be right," Rose said and smiled. She squeezed the Doctor's hands before letting her hands fall to her sides. "Besides, we'll be back together in just a few hours, yeah? And maybe we can work on ending this whole civil war thing."

Sighing, the Doctor jammed his hands back into his pockets. "... Right. Of course." He sucked in a deep breath and then turned to Neo. "Well, that's enough dilly dallying, don't you think? It's past time to get going, we wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your boss, eh?" With a cheeky grin, he reached out to link his arm with the slightly perplexed guard. "Allons-y, Private Neo!" He glanced over his shoulder to give Rose a final wink, then sauntered off to the elevator with Neo in tow.

Rose grinned and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, see you soon," she laughed, confident that they would be reunited with plenty of stories to share that evening. She wrapped her arm around Private Drace's with a smile plastered on her face, making him jerk in surprise.

"Come on then, no time to waste! Take me to my new leaders." She smiled and pulled him into the other elevator.

As soon as Rose stepped onto the deck of lower flight deck C, a wrench flew past her and put a solid dent in the wall. She instinctively dove to the side, crashing into Drace and sending them both tumbling to the floor.

"What the - " Drace started to say as he pushed himself off the linoleum, but he was cut off by the sound of heated screaming coming from behind what appeared to be the remnants of a badly burnt space ship.

"How dare you!" shrieked the voice. "You crash in my hanger, with your ship in this wretched state, and your partner in critical condition, and accuse me of acting irresponsibly? I will not stand for this - this - !" A resounding clang echoed as the damaged wing of the ship clattered to the floor. The voice let out a frustrated wail, followed by the sound of someone falling to the ground.

"Hey, it's really not my fault she couldn't hold up out there! I didn't exactly have much input on the design process," said another indignant voice. "And there were way more buzzers out there than analytics predicted, and also, like, seven Shadows, instead of, I don't know, the two we're used to handling?"

Rose stood and peeked around the corner of the wreckage to see two men, both with dark skin though one was bald and the other had very long hair pulled back in a ponytail. They both seemed to be trying to glare the other to death.

"Um, this seems like it's probably a bad time, but hi! I'm Rose. I'm looking for Flight Squad 341. Any idea where they might be?" Rose tried her best to look as friendly as possible to diffuse the tension.

The bald man threw down his clipboard with an angry huff. "Well, congratulations, you've found us! Or at least what's left of us," he spat.

"Hey!" the man with the ponytail snapped. "It's hardly fair to pin this all on me, and you know it!"

"My job is to design the fighters. Your job is to keep them in one piece. Only one of those things happened today, Sion!"

The man with the ponytail, apparently named Sion, lunged for the smaller man, who only barely managed to duck out of the way. Slightly worried, Rose jumped after him.

"Okay, no need for any of that!" she said, trying and failing to maintain a casual tone. Sion had grabbed the bald man by the front of his shirt and had his fist raised in the air like he was ready to smash his skull in. Rose shoved in front of him and smiled hesitantly. "What if you just tell me what's going on, yeah?"

Sion dropped his fist but kept a firm grip on the man's shirt. "This bastard thinks he can pin the failure of the entire KRS army on me, just because I was ambushed by seven Shadows instead of the two his lousy ship was equipped to handle."

"And… uh, that's bad, right?" Rose asked. "I mean, it looks bad." She gestured to the smoking wreck behind her.

"Bad?" the bald man scoffed, even though Sion was still holding him by his shirt collar. "It's the third ship he's destroyed in as many weeks. If everyone in the KRS burned through expensive equipment like he does, we'd have lost the war within a month!" Sion growled and shook him slightly, but Rose grabbed his hand to make him stop.

"Okay, how about putting him down now? Does that sound okay?" Rose tried to reason. "Um… well, that does sound bad, but, well… how about one of you shows me around, yeah? I'm new to your, uh, team, and I need someone to show me the ropes." Sion didn't move for a moment, but then slowly released his hand.

The bald man tsked as he bent over to pick up his clipboard. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and made a note on the paper with an exasperated sigh. "Right," he mumbled. "Because exactly what we need is another human disaster to look after in Squad 341."

Rose blinked. "Excuse me?"

"What Ansus means to say," Sion said, "is that we've got too many problems right now to train up some other random cadet. So maybe you'd better go find somewhere else to go, Miss…?"

"It's Rose." She crossed her arms over her chest a little indignantly. "And I've got direct orders from General Isar that I'm supposed to be here. Besides," she said as the ship wreckage sparked and hissed behind her, "it looks like you lot could use all the help you can get." The other wing of the ship detached from the main hull and crashed to the ground.

Ansus flinched at the reverberating sound, then sighed and wiped at his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "Sion, she's your problem now. Since you'll almost certainly be needing a new copilot, what with Meria being out of commission." Sion opened his mouth to respond angrily, but Ansus swiftly cut him off. "I'm leaving to see if there's anything in this godforsaken hanger that might put any of your equipment back together." With that, he ducked underneath the banged up ship and disappeared.

"You slagging cockroach," Sion whispered fervently in Ansus' direction. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed them forcefully before sighing and looking wearily at Rose. "So you're part of 341 now, huh?"

Rose kept her arms crossed defensively. "Yeah. I volunteered to help out, and they told me to come join your flight squadron. Even though," she hesitated for a moment, "I can't fly a spaceship."

"It's not that hard, as long as you can steer you'll be fine," Sion responded in an automatic voice. He blinked. "Um… Ansus was right, though, when he said that the last thing we need is someone else to worry about out on the field."

Rose shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Don't think of me as someone to worry about, think of me as someone who's here to help."

"I don't know…"

"Also, I wasn't kidding about that 'direct orders from General Isar' bit." Rose sniffed at the smoke-filled air. "And somehow I don't think contradicting orders is exactly the smartest thing to do right now."

Sion frowned, but seemed to acknowledge her point. "I… well, okay, I guess we do need someone else to fill in, now that Meria's down for the count…" He paused to crack his neck.

"You should probably teach me how to fly a spaceship, then," Rose said quickly.

"Oh, I won't be teaching you, that would probably be Garin or Toss's job. I should probably introduce you to them if you're joining us…"

Rose privately thought that Sion seemed a little frazzled and was a little grateful that he wouldn't be the one trying to teach her how to fly an actual spaceship. "Okay, why don't you do that?" she asked brightly, trying to force as much cheerfulness into her voice as possible.

"Yeah, Sion, introduce us!"

Sion and Rose spun around at the sound of two people approaching them from behind. One was a small woman with short, electric blue hair. The other was a young man with a pair of thick glasses balanced on a misshapen nose. Both of them had dopey grins on their faces as they sauntered over. Sion groaned and covered his face with his hands.

The woman whistled at the sparking wreckage. "Wow, Sion, that's the third Raptor you've trashed this month!" She would have seemed impressed if not for the condescending grin she pulled.

"That's Captain Sion to you, Toss."

Toss waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Whatever. Who's she?"

"I'm Rose, I'm joining your… squadron. I think."

"That's nice. What are your qualifications?" asked the young man.

Rose bit her lip. "Uh… well, none, I guess. I can't even fly a spaceship."

Toss and the young man started laughing, but Sion planted himself in front of them and assumed a stern expression. "This isn't a joke. You two are in charge of teaching her how to fly so that she can take over Meria's position."

"Ooh, I love it when you use your commander voice," the young man said. He reached up to pat Sion's shoulder. "Maybe one of these days you'll actually be promoted! Ha ha!"

Sion shoved the man's hand away. "Knock if off, Garin. Maybe the real reason I'm trying to get promoted is to get away from annoying little idiots like you two."

"Idiots!" Garin gasped dramatically. "Did you hear that, Toss?"

"The horror!" Toss pretended to faint into Garin's arms. Sion humphed in frustration as the two dissolved into giggles.

"Garin, Garin, listen, if Sion fell from his ego level to his IQ level, he'd break all the bones in his body," Toss laughed, disregarding how red Sion's face was turning.

"Oo-kay," Rose said, once again pushing herself in front of Sion to try and get everyone to calm down. She was now in full accordance with General Isar's statement that Squadron 341 definitely needed a voice of reason to keep them from killing each other. "How about instead of being rude, one of you shows me how to fly a spaceship?"

Toss and Garin jumped on the idea. "We can do that!" they said simultaneously, then laughed again.

"Take one of the Mark III Raptors and one of the Mark IVs," Sion directed, trying to regain control of the situation. "Garin, you fly the IV and Toss can help Rose in the III."

"But I don't want to fly the IV!"

"Fine, you go in the III. I don't care." Sion rubbed his temples in aggravation. "I swear it's like I'm your babysitter," he muttered.

"Come on, Rose!" Garin said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her in the direction he and Toss had come from. "Mr. Commander General doesn't want us around while he broods over another scrapped Raptor."

Rose opened her mouth to respond, but then shut it without saying anything and just sighed instead. The two pilots dragged her around a corner and ran the distance to the other side of the hangar, where there were several spaceships waiting, all of them in much better condition than the one they had left Sion standing by. Their sleek designs only differed in their sizes. Half of them seemed to be double the height and length of the others.

Garin reached up to pat one of the larger ships. "So this is the Mark III Raptor. It's equipped with seven different high-energy blasters, three up top and two under each wing, and four heat-seeking missiles. Also designed for two pilots."

"The Mark IVs are basically the same, but for just one pilot," Toss said as she banged on the wing of one of the small ships. She pulled a ladder out from underneath the space ship so she could climb up and into the cockpit.

"What are you doing?" Rose asked as she moved closer.

"Getting ready to fly out? Duh," Toss said and rolled her eyes. "Come on, go get in the III!"

Rose blinked. "What? I don't even know how to fly a regular plane, much less a space ship!"

"That's why we're teaching you." Garin pushed her over to the Mark III. "Get in! We're using the III so that I can tell you what to do while we're out there."

Rose wanted to protest, but Garin forced her up into the cramped cockpit of the spaceship. While Garin climbed in, she looked over the array of buttons and levers that meant absolutely nothing to her. Red lights lit up the area around her, and she found the flashing of one button above her very distracting. She reached up to touch it and saw that it was labeled 'seatbelt'. When she pressed it, two straps pushed out of the chair she was sitting in and locked over her shoulders. The dashboard extended forward with a hiss so that she could reach the different controls without any difficulty.

"There, see? Not that hard," Garin said as he pressed the same button over his head.

"We haven't done anything yet," Rose answered nervously. A small screen lit up in front of her when she brushed her fingers over the surface. The message "NO TARGETS ACQUIRED" blinked up in red letters overtop the shape of a crosshairs.

Garin gestured towards a ray of blue switches. "Those control the lift off sequence. Go ahead and flip the first three down."

Rose did what he said, and the top of the cockpit slid closed with a click. The rest of the dashboard lit up brightly. Beneath her feet she could feel the rumbling of the engine engaging. Garin tossed a headpiece with a microphone towards her, which she pulled snugly around her ears.

"This is Squad 341, Red 3, asking for clearance to depart," Garin said into the microphone. There was nothing but static relayed through the headphones for a moment, before another grainy voice answered.

"This is Hangar C to Red 3, state your reason for departure."

"Training exercise for Red, um, 5, I guess."

"...Clearance granted. Opening hangar doors in five."

Garin flipped the rest of the blue switches down. Rose jerked as the ground shifted beneath her feet and grabbed at two curved bars in front of her that seemed to be the ship's steering mechanism. Above her, she could hear the muffled sound of the hangar doors sliding open.

"Press that red button in the center to get us out of here," Garin instructed. Rose hesitantly pressed it down, and let out a small gasp of surprise as the spaceship lifted off the ground and rose up into the flat black expanse of space she could see through the window above her.

Another voice crackled in over the headpiece. "Come on, Red 3, let's blow this joint!"

"Right behind you, Red 4," Garin laughed. "Rose, pull up on the steering bars!"

"Uh… okay?" Rose pulled up on the bars forcefully, and the ship rocketed incredibly fast directly up and out of the hangar.

Garin grabbed her hands and pulled them off the bars. "Woah! What are you trying to do, kill us? This is sensitive equipment!"

"Sorry," Rose said. She looked out of the window in front of her. The hangar had almost disappeared beneath them, and now they were floating in the middle of space. Below her, she could see the blue and green surface of Nikaro. To her right, she could see Toss in the Mark IV giving her a wave. She slowly waved back before turning her attention back to the flashing controls in front of her. "So...now what do I press?"

"Okay, first you're supposed to check that the reactor core is stable, which it is, see that green bar on the screen? And then you check that your weapon supplies are full, which they are, that's the other green bar. After that, there's not that much else to do. The only tricky part is landing, I guess."

"And we're not doing that yet," Rose said.

"Right."

"How do I move forward?"

"Right now, you're in charge of weapon deployment, not steering, that yellow lever there toggles the flying and firing between the two pilots." Garin pushed the lever from side to side to demonstrate, and left it facing towards him. "I took over steering when you tried to kill us coming out of the hangar just a second ago."

Rose nodded. "So how do I fire then?"

Garin indicated the two red buttons on top of the steering bars. "Press them together at the same time. Don't try to fire a missile just yet."

When Rose pressed down on the buttons, she expected to just see two red bolts of light fly out of the cannons above her. What she didn't expect was the explosion as they hit something just a hundred meters away. Beside her, Garin gasped and flew into a flurry of action, jerking up on the bars and peeling away from where they had just been. He spun a dial on the ceiling, and instantly Rose's side of the dashboard went dark.

"What's happening?" Rose asked worriedly. Garin didn't answer as the ship shot away. She glanced out the window just in time to see a volley of green bolts fly just inches away from the Mark III's wingtips. "Is someone shooting at us?"

"Two shadows at three o'clock!" crackled Toss's voice over the headphones. "Garin, get out of there!"

"What's going on?" Rose tried to ask, but she was cut off as a black ship appeared seemingly out of nowhere directly in front of them. Garin shouted in alarm and tried to swerve out of the way, but there was nothing he could do as the ship fired two lasers directly at them.

Instantly, the Mark III went from shooting forward to spinning down in a deadly spiral. Rose yelled as the gravitational force pinned her back to her chair.

"We're hit, we're hit, Red 3 is down!" She could hear Garin yelling into the microphone as she struggled to understand what was going on. "Two cloaked Shadows waiting around the flagship…" He was cut off as a red siren and lights started flashing in warning around them.

There was a loud jolt as the ship plummeted towards the blue planet below. The entire ship shuddered as it passed through the atmosphere. Rose could hear her heart hammering in her ears, or maybe that was the sound of the ship breaking apart - ?

Garin was frantically trying to level out the ship's descent, but was clearly failing. The ground was rushing up closer and closer every second. Finally, he called out for Rose to brace herself, as if she wasn't already gripping her seat as tightly as she could.

Rose screamed as the Mark III slammed into the ground with a horrifying crunch, and everything went black.