Whew, I didn't think it would take that long! And I did not count on the new season of Syfy's "Being Human" being such a distraction. AND...I recently discovered that I can watch all of "24" on Netflix. Do you have any idea how long it takes to watch 24 episodes of anything? Why couldn't it have been called "12," or "18," or something? And there's eight seasons! *faints*
Many thanks to everyone for your patience with this process. Hopefully this chapter will have been worth the wait for you all. Enjoy!
Chapter 38
Tanhi was dying. Or more accurately, Kyle was dying - not that it was any more of a comfort to Tanhi.
Whatever the hell was going on, Tanhi felt powerless to stop it, and a panic unlike anything that she had ever known gripped her heart like the cold talons of some great predator. Tanhi twisted, struggled, and fought as hard as she could, but try as she might she just could not make it stop. The constriction around her chest only tightened.
"Tanhi! Tanhi, wake up!"
The trapped feeling, the sensation of death crouching only a few feet away and staring at her hungrily, fell away. But something still had her pinned.
"Tanhi!" an insistent voice said, seemingly shouting right in front of her face. Tanhi forced her eyes open - it felt like her eyelids had been glued shut, and she blinked in confusion once she managed to pry them open. Kyle's face was nose-to-nose with hers, his expression one of grave concern and worry. "Tanhi?" he asked. "Are you with me?"
He was alive! Once Tanhi had stilled, the iron grip of Kyle's arms around her began to loosen, allowing her frantic breaths to come a little easier. Reality seemed to trickle back to her, and Tanhi realized with a rush of sweet relief that she was resting safely with her mate in their nivi. It was still night. They were in Kelutral.
"Are you alright?" Kyle asked again. He nuzzled his nose against hers and murmured, "Come on, say something. You're scaring me."
Tanhi managed to wriggle one of her arms free, and she reached up to rest her hand against the side of Kyle's face. She traced the glowing pattern of tanhi on his cheek, moved up to caress his eyebrow, and slid her fingers back along the smooth skin beneath his new mohawk. "You are alive," Tanhi breathed as she traced the shell of his ear with her fingertips in wonder.
Kyle let out a breathy, nervous chuckle, and he turned his head to kiss the inside of Tanhi's palm. "Last time I checked," Kyle said. "You were having a nightmare," he observed.
Images came rushing back unbidden, and Tanhi clenched her eyes closed. The sound of a baby crying nearby broke her horrible train of thought, and she reopened her eyes and glanced around her. The baby's family was gently shushing and cooing at their child, and only now did Tanhi become aware of the way that nearby Omaticaya were peering at them with concern from their own hammocks. Suddenly Tanhi felt incredibly embarrassed.
"Was I loud?" she whispered.
Kyle simply shrugged and mumbled something, but the way his golden eyes flickered with fear for a moment seemed to indicate a "yes."
Actually, Kyle had thought that his heart might just stop right there on the spot when Tanhi had let out her first bloodcurdling cry right beside his head. He had been sound asleep, and she had started screaming and fighting so violently for a second that Kyle had simply wrapped his arms and legs tightly around her out of a sense of self-preservation. For a moment, he really had thought that she was going to flip their hammock.
"Whatever it was, it's over. Nothing's gonna get you, Tanhi, I promise," Kyle whispered as he stroked her back. Tanhi allowed him to tuck her head beneath his chin as he continued to comfort her. Tanhi smiled faintly as she felt his tail wind gently around her leg.
Then Tanhi noticed a vicious set of scratches on Kyle's skin, perfectly shaped to match her fingernails, and she gasped and leaned back from him. "Did I do that?" she asked as her ears pinned back against her head.
Kyle could not lie to her. "You were thrashing pretty hard there for a moment...," he said slowly. "It's really not that bad," he hastily added when he saw Tanhi's lower lip begin to tremble.
"Oh, Yawne, I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt you," she whimpered. On an impulse she leaned back in and lapped at scratches on his collarbone with her tongue, continuing to offer a wordless apology with tender kisses against his skin.
Kyle shivered. "Hmmm," he purred. "You can keep doing that...," he murmured. Then he yawned widely, already becoming tired again.
Tanhi smiled and gave Kyle's skin one last lick for good measure before snuggling up tighter against him. They continued to hold each other, hands lazily sliding over skin, continually reminding each other of their presence.
"Nothing's gonna get you," Tanhi heard Kyle whisper, just before he finally drifted back to sleep. It was not long before he started snoring softly again.
Tanhi bit her lower lip - she had never feared for herself during this entire event, not once. Her mate was right here, holding her and very much alive. But try as she might, Tanhi could not manage to shake the last vestiges of her nightmare. Everything had been so horribly real. She was quite sure she had dreamt that Kyle had drowned.
The first day of good weather saw Hell's Gate fairly explode with activity. There was plenty to do and not enough people to get it all done, and Colonel Barnes was not shy about cracking the proverbial whip.
"You two look like you're up to no good," Max Patel noted as he observed Norm and Amber, who were sitting across the cafeteria table from him.
Amber was staring fixedly out of the cafeteria windows, which were blessed with a beautiful view of the Hell's Gate airfield. Outside, men and women were hard at work. The base's few AMP suits were being used to haul the supplies and materials needed to repair the downed section of fence. Even inside, the angry buzz of chainsaws could be heard as Colonel Barnes' arboreal master key was being disassembled, one branch at a time.
A small convoy of trucks roared out of the main gate, heading towards the mine, on their way to repair Valkyrie 38.
Several helicopters were being towed out of the hangar as the RDA began to review and assess the resources that they had on hand. It would seem that Colonel Barnes and Dr. Dryers would not be wasting any sunlight at all.
Amber returned her attention to her plate and poked half-heartedly at her food again. "Let's just say today might be an interesting one," she murmured, speaking so softly that Max and even Norm had to strain to hear her.
Max took a casual glance around the room to verify that any RDA troopers were indeed out of earshot. "They're going to try and break Jake out? Today?" he hissed, crouching down low over his tray.
"When would you expect them to try?" Norm shot back in a low voice. His expression was hard, angry, as he said, "The Colonel did not really appreciate the Omaticaya's response."
Max glanced back and forth between Norm and Amber. Both of his friends looked utterly exhausted and stressed out. Sallow skin, dark circles under their eyes. Neither of them had really slept a wink last night. "What did you tell them, Amber?" Max asked.
Unfortunately, schedules had conspired against Max having any time to speak with Amber or Norm after the link yesterday. Colonel Barnes had slapped the big red abort button, unceremoniously yanking Amber out of link with a curt, "Time's up." Max had never seen Amber so livid before. Colonel Barnes and Major Link had marched Amber, cursing and swearing the entire time like a sailor, straight out of the lab.
Amber's gaze unfocused for a moment before she answered. "I told Barnes that if they killed Jake, Hell's Gate would be swarming with Na'vi within a week. I... I told Barnes that her head would be mounted on a spear as a trophy."
Max nearly choked to death on his breakfast pastry. "You - wait, really?" he managed to get out between his hacks and coughs. Perhaps his choking was a blessing in disguise, for Max's startled exclamation would have no doubt given them all away.
Amber's shrug appeared modest and shy. "Well, the Na'vi wouldn't really do that...but Barnes doesn't know that. And I was...angry," Amber finished, almost guiltily.
Max shot Norm an appalled look. Norm simply shrugged.
"You do realize that we're playing with Jake's life here, right?" Max said in a strangled voice.
Norm slapped his palms down on the tabletop and growled, "No shit, Max! Thanks for informing us!" When Max's wounded look finally registered, Norm sighed and let his forehead drop to the table. "I'm sorry, Max. I didn't mean that," he apologized with a muffled voice.
"It's okay, Norm," Max replied after a moment. "Everyone's on edge right now. Just keep it down, alright?" Some of the guards were giving their table nasty looks.
"The only thing that the RDA accomplished by capturing Jake was put everything into a stalemate," Amber said with a sigh. "It was like grabbing a rabid wolf by its ears. It's no fun hanging on, but you sure as hell don't want to let go. Killing Jake would really spur the Na'vi into action, but right now with him captured but alive, everything's held up in limbo."
"But from their perspective, they can't conceive of letting Jake go," Max said, completing Amber's thought. Both Norm and Amber nodded in agreement. "This is like playing with a live grenade," Max groaned.
"Hopefully we won't be the one to lose a limb when it goes off," Norm muttered morosely.
Max winced. That was not a pleasant mental image, thank you very much.
Chief Warrant Officer Randall "Rambo" Tulley could not decide whether or not he should be excited or nervous. After debating all of the pros and cons, Tully decided that excitement would be the best option. After all, it was sunny outside! This was the first time he had really had the chance to experience warm sunlight shining down through a clear sky in...well... It had been a very long time. Even if this was Pandora, rather than Earth, Tulley decided that it would be the optimistic thing to take what he could get. No matter what solar system he happened to be in.
If anything, he felt rather flattered that Momma Barnes had picked him to fly the RDA's first sortie out. That was worth something. Right?
"Hey Rambo! Get your head out of the clouds!" one of the door gunners shouted as he checked the feeds for his Hydra tri-barrel machine gun.
"Better up in the clouds than up your own ass!" Tulley shouted back.
The gunner settled for simply giving Tulley a nasty look. "So, is it fit to fly?" he asked, changing the subject as he motioned at their Samson.
Tulley nodded, having just completed his preflight. "Yeah, they maintained her well." A disgusted look flickered across his face, as if he had just smelled something rank. "I just wish we could wash off this stupid paint," he said, motioning at the blue lines and whorls that decorated the helicopter's skin. Blue monkey graffiti. Just freaking fantastic.
"Hey you two, look sharp. Boss is coming," the second door gunner said in a low voice.
Tulley glanced up. Two avatars were approaching; the always imposing Colonel Barnes in Sec-Ops fatigues and the other in civilian clothing. "Do you have everything tied down securely?" the plain-clothes avatar asked as he peered into the Samson's cargo bay. "Do you have any questions on how to run the scanners?"
"We've got everything under control, Dr. Dryers," Tulley's copilot said as he stepped around the chopper's nose.
Dr. Dryers nodded, and Tulley finally noticed how sickly the man's avatar looked. "Excellent. I wish I could go with you, but... I'm not in any condition to do that." He smiled wanly and said, "My avatar is still too weak after coming out of storage, and let's just say that Pandora probably wouldn't be kind to a one-armed man. I trust you all to do good work."
Tulley forced a smile, even as he inwardly resented the implied, "Or else."
"You are clear on your orders to avoid any conflict with the natives, correct?" Barnes asked. "We are not in a position to be starting fights that we can't finish."
Randy Tulley glanced back at his flight crew before speaking for all of them. "Crystal clear, ma'am," he said. He cast a fleeting glance toward Dr. Dryers before saying, "The site that we are investigating is abandoned, correct?"
Dr. Dryers offered them all a reassuring smile. "Of course. It was a Na'vi settlement, but the natives abandoned it once it was...destroyed. Rest assured, satellite imagery shows no activity around the site. You should be perfectly safe."
Perfectly safe. Right. "Yes, sir," Tulley said aloud. Easy for you to say.
"And this is for anything else," one of the door gunners said, patting his weapon fondly.
Barnes' golden eyes flickered in the trooper's direction, and a brief smirk revealed a sharp, inhuman canine. "Do not step in something that you cannot clean up on your own," she said wryly. "Carry on, men. Best of luck."
"Alright guys, saddle up!" Tulley said as he and the copilot pulled themselves up into the cockpit. Colonel Barnes and Dr. Dryers had retreated back to a comfortable distance, and they silently observed as the Samson powered up and its rotors began to spin.
The Samson's air handlers began to hiss and roar as the cabin purged itself of Pandora's poisonous air. Tulley sighed in relief once it was safe to pull off his exopack. "You know, the dirt-stompers give us flyboys a hard time for having little luxuries like this," Tulley commented.
The copilot paused what he was doing and leaned into the aisle so that he could look back through the clear bulkhead door into the cargo bay. "Huh," he grunted. "Sucks to be them," he said with a smile as he turned back to face forward.
Tulley grinned in response as he donned his headset and keyed his mic. "Hell's Gate tower, Samson 1-1. Request permission to taxi to the active."
"Samson 1-1, Hell's Gate tower. Hovertaxi to the active via Bravo, depart when ready," a woman's voice came back over the radio. "Have a safe flight."
"Samson 1-1," Tulley said in lazy acknowledgement as he reached up to the ceiling and pushed the throttles forward until they clicked into the cruise setting. A gentle tug on the cyclic control lofted the Samson upwards, and Tulley coaxed the chopper forward as he followed the paint on the tarmac that denoted taxiway Bravo. Once he reached the runway, Tulley worked the rudder pedals and swung the chopper left and right so that he could visually check to make sure that the runway was indeed clear. Not that he had to worry about oncoming aircraft on Pandora, but old habits do die hard, as they say.
Satisfied, Randy Tulley pulled up on the cyclic and watched with satisfaction as the world fell away below them. Both the bright, early morning light of Alpha Centauri and the wind was at their backs - it was good to fly again.
Even now, in the early morning daylight, Tanhi could not shake the feeling of dread that seemed to hover over her. She stood at the edge of the Kelutral LZ, watching as her mate and father finished readying the kunsìp for their mission. It was a little odd, watching the two men mix the elements of two very different cultures. Bows and arrows were stowed alongside the Na'vi-sized assault rifles in the Samson's cargo bay. Tanhi watched with a feeling of surreal numbness as her mate placed one of the bullpup rifles up in the cockpit, wedging the weapon carefully in the seat next to his own.
An arm slid around Tanhi's waist, making her jump. "I did not mean to startle you," Neytiri apologized as she gave Tanhi a sideways hug. Neytiri's ears flicked back and forth with uncertainty as she grasped about for the proper words. "Thank you, Tanhi..." She trailed away, unsure of how to continue.
This time Neytiri jumped a bit when Tanhi placed a hand over her swollen stomach. "There is nothing to thank for, Neytiri," Tanhi said. "Kyle and I are glad to do this for you, for Jakesully, and for your son. This is what it means to be a family." Neytiri could see Tanhi's sincerity through her own clouds of doubt and worry.
The sound of footsteps approaching made both women look up. Kyle glanced back and forth between Tanhi and Neytiri and flashed a quick, hopefully reassuring smile. Neytiri did not return the gesture, and Mal'ek remained stone-faced and solemn behind Kyle. "We're ready to go," Kyle said as he shifted nervously on his feet.
Tanhi stepped forward to give her mate a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. "Txopuluke was not too angry, was he?" she asked as she leaned back.
Kyle winced. "He...took it in stride," he hedged. That was putting it lightly. Txopuluke had not appreciated being usurped by Kyle's "flying stone." In fact, he had nearly thrown the ikran equivalent of a temper tantrum, something that had been more than a little unnerving, considering Txopuluke's great size and strength. Kyle's ikran did not like that Kyle was going into battle without him. "We'll be home before it gets dark, okay?" Kyle said.
Tanhi found herself nodding in agreement. There was a lot that could go wrong - everyone knew that. Tanhi wished that her father and mate would not be fighting alone. Well, not entirely alone - Tsaro and Sìlpey would be helping them, after all. Kyle had explained to her that more people meant more weight, which meant less speed. Kyle had already emptied the Samson of everything that was unnecessary for their trip. There had also been the unsaid, but understood, thought that more people meant more lives at risk.
"It is time," Mal'ek reminded them all in a quiet voice. They needed to get to Old Kelutral before the Tawtute did. To Neytiri, he asked, "The warriors are clear on where to meet us?"
Neytiri nodded. "They are. It will be done," she said with quiet determination.
One corner of Mal'ek's mouth turned up in a half-smile. He had no doubt that Jake's mate would see to that.
Tanhi held out a carry net that she had been holding on to. "Take this with you," she told them, before she lost the courage to do so. Kyle accepted the bag, and one of his eyebrows rose when he glanced inside. It was full of medical supplies. Kyle simply nodded.
Neytiri and Tanhi fell back to the edge of the clearing, arms wrapped comfortingly around one another, as they waited for the kunsìp to take off.
Kyle was belted into the pilot's seat and just finishing up his checklists when Mal'ek leaned in through the open bulkhead door. The Na'vi warrior's eyes darted about the cockpit's interior, taking note of the plentiful gauges, buttons, and switches. He knew nothing of their function, but then again, their function did not concern him. "Are you afraid, Kyle?" Mal'ek asked.
Kyle paused as the Samson's turbines began to spool up. He nodded.
Mal'ek thumped Kyle's shoulder once with his hand. "This is not a bad thing," the warrior said before climbing back into the cargo bay.
The waiting, the not knowing, was slowly driving Jake insane. That thought made Jake snort and roll his eyes. It had only been what, two days, if even that? And he was already losing it.
Jake kept telling himself that if it was only him on his own, he would not be in this bad of shape. But it was not just him... His thoughts drifted constantly back to Neytiri, and to Tommy. How were they doing? Were they coping alright? Jake's hands clenched into fists, and he resisted the urge to beat the stuffing out of the mattress, which had been his solitary companion throughout his ordeal. Who was he kidding - Neytiri was probably out of her mind with worry. Not that Jake could blame her.
In fact, he was almost out of his mind with worry. It was taking all of his self-control not to devolve into a raging, screaming mess right now.
With a soft snarl Jake sprung up from a seated position, flipping around so that he was balanced belly-down on his hands and feet. Time for more pushups. He automatically slid into the form that had been engrained in his mind, way back from the marines. Machine-like, he began to fire off smooth, controlled repetitions.
787, 788, 789, 790... He had kept count of every single pushup and abdominal crunch that he had done since he had been locked in the ambient room.
Other than Colonel Barnes' initial visit, the RDA had not deigned to communicate with him at all. No more negotiations, no more demands... Nothing.
804, 805, 806. Maybe not entirely nothing... What had Amber Ferris been doing, checking on him like that so early in the morning? That had probably not been a sanctioned visit. What exactly did her presence entail? Could someone possibly be planning something? Jake almost could not dare to hope.
Jake's ears flicked as they detected indistinct sounds from the ambient room. He could hear muffled speech as well as discern the whine from the electric motors of the link beds. Probably the Sec-Ops avatar team, Jake mused.
833, 834, 835, 836...
Rambo Tulley flew in a lazy circle, banking the Samson over to the right as he surveyed their target area. "Damn," one of the door gunners said, his voice crackling over the intercom. "That was one big tree."
That was an understatement. The felled tree below them was positively huge. It must have easily stretched out for a greater distance even than the huge ISV that had brought him from Earth to this alien world. The Pandoran forest was working fast to reclaim its fallen brethren, but even still...Tulley could not even begin to imagine the countless tons of mass that remained. It was as if the natural realm had been charged with dissolving a mountain. The tree's now leafless limbs still stretched many hundreds of feet up into the air in a crazy tangle of twisted branches and limbs.
"Dryers said that the Unobtanium deposit was directly below the tree, right?" Tulley asked, glancing briefly towards the copilot.
The man nodded mutely - he was still staring in awe at the view outside.
Tulley leveled out the chopper and leaned forward, eyes scanning the skies for any threats. None of Pandora's larger aerial creatures had made an appearance, for which Rambo Tulley was quite thankful. If he made it through his tour on Pandora without ever laying eyes on a Great Leonopteryx, so much more the better. "Alright, guys, the quicker we get this done the quicker we can get back home," Tulley said.
They landed in an overgrown field by the city-block sized tree stump, opposite the direction that the trunk had fallen. The door gunners dismounted with CARB rifles up and ready as Tulley powered down the Samson. Once they had radioed Hell's Gate and ensured that the ship was secure, the copilot and he donned their exopacks and climbed out of the cockpit.
The four men gazed out in wonder at the world around them. The forest was seething with life - under every leaf, every rock, something crawled, slithered, or skittered about. Tulley froze in a combination of amazement and respectful fear as a solitary wasp buzzed by his face mask less than an arm's length away. That bug's multi-segmented body was at least the size of a sparrow.
Everyone pitched in to unload the survey gear. Dr. Dryers had been specific - take measurements as close to the tree's center mass as possible. The tree had not been solid - its trunk consisted of many large columns that had all grown together over ages. It would not be a stretch to set up their gear within what was left of the charred stump.
"What happened here?" one of the door gunners asked. He knocked what looked like an old gas canister shell out of a bush with the toe of his boot. How the hell had something like this gotten here?
Tulley stared at the canister for a moment before jerking his head in the direction of their destination. "Don't think about it. Come on, let's go," he said gruffly. This place was starting to give him the creeps.
The environment around them was a bizarre kaleidoscope, a strange mix of the dead and the living. Great piles of burned, fallen wood were heaped everywhere. Yet even from the dead wood itself, new life was springing up in the form of fresh, green shoots from new generations of plants.
Something crunched under Tulley's boot. He glanced down to find that he had stepped on some kind of clay jar or pot that had been half-buried in the loamy soil.
The remaining tall walls and columns cast dark shadows within the husk of the old tree, and in contrast to the noise of forest life it was almost cathedral quiet inside. It was not difficult to set up the survey equipment - only a half-hour passed before they were ready to start sending readings back to Hell's Gate. "I'll go slave the equipment to the Samson's radio," Tulley said as he shouldered a rifle. "Be back in a second."
In that moment, everything went to hell.
A giant arrow, fired from somewhere overhead, struck the copilot squarely in the chest. He was not wearing body armor, and it punched cleanly through his torso and buried itself in the ground, leaving the stunned man pinned even though he was still standing upright as he stared in amazement and horror at the brilliantly colored fletching at the arrow's end.
"There!" one of the door gunners screamed as he raised his rifle, holding down on the trigger as he proceeded to unload on a flicker of movement on top of a woody rampart that had caught his eye.
Whatever the man was shooting at was apparently long gone - a second arrow whistled in from a different direction and struck the trooper between the shoulder blades. He was wearing body armor, but the pure kinetic energy from the massive projectile was still great enough that he was speared through, too.
Tulley was still spinning around, trying to catch a glimpse of their attacker as vitriol and a desire to fight rushed through his veins, when the last door gunner grabbed him by his collar and pulled him down behind some debris. "That's it, they're gone," the man hissed, his eyes wide with panic. "You need to get us the fuck home!" he jabbed his finger against Tulley's chest for emphasis.
Randall Tulley nodded, and then they started to run.
It felt as if some strange twist of perspective had lengthened the distance back to the Samson in their absence. Fleeting, nervous glances behind them, or above them, indicated no sign of pursuit. But certainly no ghost had fired those two arrows. Something was out there.
"Cover us with the door gun," Tulley panted as he tossed his CARB rifle on the copilot's seat and began to run through the startup procedures. Getting a chopper to fly was not like hoping into a car and simply turning the key - there were many things that needed to be done, and in a precise order. Droplets of sweat streamed down Tulley's face, dripped into his eyes, but he dared not take the time to lift up his exopack and wipe them away.
The maniacal, ripsaw buzz of one of the Hydras made Tulley flinch, and he looked up through the windshield just in time to see an indistinct blue form take cover behind a fallen limb that was as wide as a city bus. "Hurry the fuck up and get us out of here!" the gunner screamed.
Tulley ignored him as he depressed that starter button. The sound of the chopper's turbines turning over and finally catching was the sweetest thing that Tulley thought he had ever heard.
Once they were airborne Tulley climbed to several hundred feet and began to circle the dead husk of the tree. Now that he was safely back in his element and that the balance of power had shifted back to his favor, Tulley wanted blood. Hopefully they could land again and retrieve the two bodies after they vaporized the smurf. "11 o'clock!" Tulley shouted as he caught a glimpse of the native.
Tulley deftly pivoted the Samson in order to give his gunner a better line of fire, and once again the Hydra tri-barrel lit off, the impact from its massive, depleted uranium rounds kicking up rooster tails of dirt, rock, and wood. Anything that those rounds touched was shredded instantly.
"You see him?" Tulley shouted. They were now carefully circling a massive pillar of torn, scorched wood that the Na'vi had apparently disappeared behind. "Hell's Gate control, Samson 1-1, do you copy?" A response, slightly staticy but still quite understandable, came quickly back and Tulley breathlessly rattled off what had transpired.
They had completed more than a full circuit around the column and still had not detected any sign of their enemy. "I got nothing. Come on, man, let's just get home," came the gunner's voice over the intercom.
Tulley sneered silently. No way in hell was he going to run away from this! Once you had the upper hand, you never gave it up.
Still, it did seem a little odd that every trace of the native had -
Movement right in front of Tulley caught his attention, and he stared for a split second in open astonishment as a fierce, ten-foot tall blue-skinned figure pulled himself up onto the top of the column; he was level with the Samson, and Tulley felt a chill race down his spine as he locked eyes with his opponent. It was not so much the intelligence and the anger that shocked him - there was something else in those furious golden eyes, something that he could not quite place.
The answer came to Randall Tulley in the same split-second that the Na'vi nocked another massive arrow into his bow, drew it back, and fired right at his head.
The Na'vi looked smug.
"Shit!" Tulley shouted as he ducked. He threw his body across the center console as the arrow punched right through the Samson's windshield.
Tulley heard the door gunner scream as the Samson keeled over and began to spin - the fact that the man had remembered to attach his safety line was the only thing that kept him from being thrown from the chopper. Tulley swore out a litany of his own as he fought with the controls and desperately tried to keep them from colliding with the terrain. He reached up to the overhead and shoved the throttles past the cruise setting and into the detent for emergency power. He needed altitude, and he needed it now.
600 feet above the ground, Tulley finally stabilized the Samson. That fucking arrow kept hampering his movements - it had pierced through his headrest and imbedded itself in the bulkhead at the back of the cockpit. And there was still at least a few feet of arrow left protruding out through the windscreen. "You still back there?" he asked his gunner.
"Fuck you, Rambo. You still wanna try and tap that?" came back the supremely irritated response.
Tulley shook his head, and he felt inordinately grateful that he had not wet himself. "I'll pass," he said. Keying his mic, Tulley radioed, "Samson 1-1, coming home."
Colonel Samantha Barnes drew her sleeve across her face, wiping away the sweat and sawdust that had accumulated on her avatar's skin. Alpha Centauri was out and shining with a vengeance, as if making up for lost time. It was so humid after the storm that it might as well have still been raining.
Trooper Smith and Colonel Barnes were helping to disassemble the tree that they had used to knock the fence down, each wielding an impressive chainsaw as if it weighed nothing. Men in AMP suits hauled the debris from their work away, tossing massive logs easily out into the forest. Additional men, kitted out with welding torches and masks, were cutting away the damaged sections of the fence. The hard work felt good to Colonel Barnes. Progress was slower than she would have liked, but at least it was steady - the wood was still soaked from all the rain, and the chainsaws kept jamming.
If anything, the manual labor provided a welcome break from the increasingly bureaucratic mess that running Hell's Gate was turning into. Of course Barnes understood the necessity of reopening the mine as soon as possible. She could only hope that the RDA flunkies like Dryers would have the patience to wait until the base was back up to full strength. And that would take years.
Barnes' ears flicked back as she heard a small, four-wheeled dune buggy come to a screeching halt. A young, breathless trooper hopped out. "Colonel, ma'am, Major Link ordered me to send you this," the man said as he tentatively held out a data pad. "The survey team came under attack."
Suppressing a growl of annoyance, Barnes grabbed the data pad from the trooper, who promptly snatched his hand back as if he had been burned. What Barnes read caused her to let out a distinctly inhuman snarl that made everyone within earshot cringe. "Smith, take over for a moment," she snapped. "I need to find Dr. Dryers." You're gonna get it now, she silently promised.
The man in question was working alone in the avatar-sized lab at the back of the avatar cabin. He was crouched over a microscope, studying some kind of geological sample.
Barnes slammed the data pad onto the counter so hard that the device almost cracked in half. The sudden noise made Dryers flinch. "Look at this, Todd!" Barnes spat. "Here's what your little adventure netted us!"
Dryers casually skimmed the report, which was mostly a transcript of CWO Tulley's radio calls. "Only two dead," he observed. He turned around so that he could lean back against the lab counter, and he casually folded his arms across his chest. "That's what, one percent of our forces? That's acceptable. I wish we could have gotten more concrete readings from the survey instruments, though."
"Are you out of your mind?" Barnes seethed as she suppressed the urge to strangle the man. "Two men. Gone. Two days in. That was our first sortie out. The next ISV is a year away. We do not have the resources for shit like this! We're lucky we didn't lose the whole fucking crew, chopper included!"
Dr. Dryers cocked his head to the side and absent-mindedly brushed some of his avatar's long hair out of his eyes. He hated the long hair. "We can always make more helicopters, Samantha," he said. Pointing up, he added, "We've got plenty of Earth-sourced electronics aboard the Commerce Star right now."
Her tail lashed angrily behind her, and if it had been dark the angry blaze of her tanhi would have given away just how mad she really was. "You idiot, we can't make helicopters and new gas harvesting gear at the same time!" she snapped. "This is the first and last time that I do a special favor for you, Dryers."
"It's not a favor for me, Samantha. It's orders from our boss," Dryers calmly reminded her.
Colonel Barnes was not impressed. "If Corporate wants me to keep their little pet project here safe, I'm going to do it my way," she hissed. "If they don't like it, they can strap their asses to a rocket and come out here to tell me in person. I'm not risking any more lives or resources outside that fence for unnecessary crap like this, Dryers. I mean it!"
Colonel Barnes suddenly winced and swayed unsteadily on her feet. She gripped the edge of the counter for balance.
"Are you feeling alright?" Dryers asked. There was no tenderness or care in his voice, it was simply a clinically sterile inquiry, and Barnes knew it.
"Fuck off, Todd. It's just a headache." She - or at least, her avatar - had been experiencing "just" a headache all day, in fact, but that particular spike of pain almost knocked her off of her feet. Maybe it's that damned loud chainsaw, Barnes silently wondered.
"Samson 1-1, coming home."
Tulley sighed and relaxed back in his seat as they flew along the river. Or at least, he tried to relax as much as he could, considering the stupid arrow that he had to work around. He would probably never hear the end of it from the guys back at Hell's Gate. A part of him was still steamed that they had run. After all, how many arrows did that damned smurf have? They could probably still -
Before CWO Randall Tulley could finish the thought a helicopter-launched AIM-92 Stinger missile detonated inside his starboard exhaust port, instantly transforming his Samson into a fireball of debris and falling metal.
Kyle Fischer watched with grim satisfaction as the flaming pieces of Samson 11 snuffed themselves out in the water below. The river would swallow all traces of the ill-fated chopper. Not that anyone would ever look for it.
Gently pushing forward on the collective stick, Kyle eased his own Samson out of its hiding place and began to clatter back to Old Kelutral. He had been hovering beneath the canopy, hiding between the soaring trunks of the tautral trees that lined the bank of the river as he waited to ambush the RDA chopper. Letting them pound away at Mal'ek had been an exercise in patience and restraint, but it had been agreed that Kyle would not interfere until after their enemy had radioed that they were heading back to Hell's Gate.
Mal'ek was waiting for him in an open area between several massive tree limbs, bow in hand, his tail swishing calmly behind him. He looked for all the world as if he had been out for a casual stroll in the woods. Kyle could not help but smirk faintly and shake his head - Tanhi's father could be a mean son of a bitch when he wanted to be.
Then Kyle recalled the two lives that he had just ended, and thought that perhaps he could be a mean son of a bitch, too. Kyle glanced down at his transponder and typed in "1111," thereby assuming the identity of the aircraft that he had just destroyed. Appearances needed to be maintained, after all.
The skids of Kyle's Samson had barely brushed the ground before Mal'ek easily hopped up inside the cargo bay. Kyle throttled back up and aimed his chopper's nose towards Hell's Gate.
Susan was utterly terrified. Not less than an hour earlier she had heard over the radio the RDA away team being decimated by the Na'vi. While a part of her silently cheered this turn of events, a bigger part of her was scared for what this would mean. She had been conscripted back into her role of air traffic controller for Hell's Gate, and like everyone else who had decided not to endorse the slaughter of innocent people two years ago, the judgmental glances and derogatory comments that she had received were quite numerous.
She decided to keep her expression neutral, to show no emotion over the event whatsoever. That would be safest, she determined.
A glance at the holographic radar screen showed Samson 11 popping up with greater frequency as it drew closer to the base. There were less hills, giant trees, and random effects from the flux vortex now to interfere with the base's sensors. The aircraft was angling straight back home.
"Have they requested permission to land yet?" a voice asked, right over Susan's shoulder. She nearly launched out of her own skin, she had startled so badly.
Major Link smiled darkly as he watched Susan squirm. "No... No, sir, they have not radioed in at all." She swiftly rechecked her instruments to make sure that she had not missed anything.
Susan tried not to cringe and shrink away when Link placed a hand on her shoulder. His thumb brushed across the bare skin of her neck, and she had no idea whether or not the move was intentional. She imagined that in any other context the man would be quite handsome, attractive even... But his eyes were hard. Much too hard. Link leaned down and murmured close to her ear, "Well, why don't you call them back, and kindly remind them not to ignore procedure. Can you do that?"
Susan swallowed nervously and nodded. "Sure," she breathed.
"Samson 1-1, Hell's Gate tower. Call in when over the mine to verify landing instructions, please."
Kyle winced and swore to himself. Of course they would still need to call in before landing! For a brief second, Kyle thought that maybe he could impersonate the dead pilot. He discarded the idea as soon as he came up with it, though. That man had spoken with a thick Bronx accent. Kyle's SoCal inflection was probably as far from New York as one could get.
"What is wrong, 'itan?" Mal'ek asked.
The sudden voice in Kyle's earpiece surprised him, and the Samson bobbed up and down for a moment as Kyle flinched. He had forgotten that Mal'ek had donned an avatar radio set so that they could speak inside the noisy Samson. "They are asking us to call in," Kyle explained. Thinking fast, Kyle changed the code on their transponder. "They will begin to suspect something is not right. We will not have much time."
Shit, things are already starting to fall apart, and we're not even there yet. Kyle wanted to punch something, but unfortunately both of his hands were busy keeping them in the air at the current moment. A sick feeling of terror bloomed in the pit of his stomach so suddenly that he began to feel nauseous.
No, keep it together man, he silently pleaded. You can do this. We can do this.
On Susan's holoscreen the numbers under the chopper's icon changed from "1111" to "4600."
Link scowled. Their radio was out. How convenient. He cursed and took a step back, giving himself room to pace for a few steps. He was going to rip Tulley a new one when the man got back - sloppiness was not appreciated, nor tolerated.
Neither was cowardice, for that matter. It was Major Link's opinion that those men should have remained out on the battlefield until the mission was complete. The Major was definitely a, "Return with your shield, or upon it," kind of soldier.
Major Link was just about to storm out of the control room when one of the other troopers present called out to him. "Major! Sir, we're downloading another superluminal. It's tagged as a high priority, and you're cleared to read it. Do you want to wait, or would you rather I call the Colonel as soon as it's ready?"
Link paused in the doorway as he debated the options in his mind. "I'll read it," he said at last. "Send it to my data pad when it's ready."
It only took another five minutes for the communiqué from Earth to download. Link frowned as he read the message. Apparently, their RDA minders were not pleased that Jake Sully had not been executed, and they were eager to put the matter to rest. Permanently. The message that he held in his hands made this clear, in no uncertain terms.
This surprised Major Elias Link - he had not been aware of any official orders of this nature. Then his expression darkened. Colonel Barnes had been privy to this knowledge, and she had not kept him in the loop about it. That bothered him.
"Tony?" he asked, addressing the young man who was running the base's ops panel. "See if you can get the Colonel on the radio for me." As Link waited for a response he reviewed the superluminal message three more times, just to make sure that there was no misunderstanding. It read the same every time: they wanted Sully dead.
"I can't raise her," the RDA trooper reported after a moment. "I know she's out with the repair team. I'm sure things are loud, and she just can't hear the radio. Should I call for another courier?"
"No, don't bother," Link said in a distracted voice. "Get Dr. Dryers."
A few seconds later, the trooper signaled that Dryers was on the line. Link stepped over to an unused console and put on a headset. "Dr. Dryers, if you have a data pad available I would like to send you something," he said.
The sound of an exaggerated sigh came over the radio. "I'm busy, Major," Dryers said. "Can this wait?"
Link was no stranger to the political game. "I'm not sure," he hedged, sounding almost confused. "I tried to reach out to Colonel Barnes, but she is currently unavailable. I thought that perhaps you would be able to help me understand this."
There was a pause. If Dryers knew he was being buttered up, he did not let on. "Fine, send it over," he relented. Link did so, and after a brief wait Dryers asked, "Should you even be reading this, Elias?"
Link snorted and temporarily clenched his fists at his sides. "Yes, sir. I make sure to check my own security clearances before I open messages from Corporate," he said with barely veiled contempt. "My question to you is why Sully hasn't been put down yet, and what the hold up is."
There was another pause, and Link could practically hear the gears churning inside Dryers' mind. "You'll have to ask Samantha that one, Major. She has made it quite clear what the chain of command is."
"It doesn't look like there's much room for interpretation in this," Link said. What was Barnes waiting for?
Again, there was a calculating pause from Dr. Dryers. Everyone else's work in the control room continued on, oblivious to the conversation in their midst. "Major Link, I'm not sure what you're asking me, here. You are quite capable of comprehending our orders, and carrying them out. Now, is there anything further that you'd like to discuss with me? Because I have a lot of work to catch up on."
Link smiled. "No, sir. I just wanted to make sure you were reading the same thing that I was."
"I think we're both clear on what that message says. Carry on," Dryers said. "Oh, and Elias? Your work for the company is greatly appreciated. I just wanted to make sure that I told you. I realize that I don't point out the good in people enough, and I'm trying to work on that."
"Thank you, sir. That's good to hear," Link said as he rolled his eyes. Whatever. "Link out." Perhaps today could still be salvaged, Link thought to himself. "Tony, call up Thiele and Stoltz. Tell them to report to the link room. We've got an issue that needs to be addressed."
It was a few minutes later when Major Link arrived at the link room. Dr. Max Patel, Mo Ye, and a few other civilian scientists and technicians were present to help run the link beds. All under the watchful eyes of the two Sec-Ops link techs, of course. Max looked up from his data pad when he heard the door open, and his lips compressed into a tight, disapproving line when he saw who it was.
"Prep three more link beds for us, Dr. Patel," Link ordered. "Now!" he added when he felt that Max was not moving fast enough.
Max rolled his eyes before he traded a knowing look with Mo Ye. This was not looking good. "Please get seven, eight, and nine ready," he asked her after a moment. To Major Link he said, "Lose the gun."
Link gave Max a double-take. "Excuse me?" he said, his right hand brushing the butt of his pistol.
Max was not fazed. "I said, lose the gun. The links don't like excess metal. So unless you want to wake back up even more retarded than you already are...lose the gun."
Link shot a look at one of the RDA techs, and the man shrugged and nodded once.
"Fine," Link said as he unbuckled his gun belt.
Two more members of the RDA avatar team stepped into the link room. Max studied the three soldiers covertly out of the corner of his eye as he began to boot up the necessary computers and equipment for their link. He could only hear snippets of their conversation, but the key words and phrases that he managed to catch sent a chill down his spine and caused a sickening feeling of dread to set up residence in the pit of his stomach.
Their time had run out. They were going to kill Jake.
"Alright, all civilians need to clear the room immediately," Link ordered. When he glanced up at Max, who was staring at him with a barely concealed mix of horror and accusation, he could not help but grin. "Yes, that means you, too," he sneered. Link motioned for Thiele to hasten the process along.
Before the trooper could get to him Max slapped the intercom button on his console. "Jake! Jake, they're coming -" he screamed, but that was as far as he got before Thiele grabbed his arm and yanked him away.
"That's enough!" Thiele snarled as he twisted Max around to pin his wrist behind his back. He proceeded to shove Max forward towards the door, and the scientist had no choice but to comply unless he wanted his shoulder joint popped out of place.
"You can't do this!" Max yelled as he struggled futilely. "Please!"
He received no response as he was shoved roughly out into the hall, along with the rest of scientists. The door slammed shut and locked with an ominous click.
Everyone stood frozen in stunned silence for a moment. Everything had just happened so fast! "Are they... They're really going to kill him, aren't they?" Mo Ye stated, her voice quavering with fear.
Mo Ye flinched when Max slammed his fist against the door. "Fuck! Goddamnit!" She had never heard Dr. Patel swear so much before.
"Jake! Jake, they're coming -"
The sudden sound of Max's panicked warning snapped Jake out of his meditation. He felt his blood chill as he heard a brief scuffle over the intercom before the channel clicked off. Jake leapt up and peered through the observation windows just in time to watch the scientists being herded out into the hallway, and to see three more soldiers climbing into link beds.
Jake slowly stepped back into the middle of the room. His heart was thudding in his chest as his mind spun and he desperately grasped about for a means of escape. For the hundredth time his eyes darted around the room, and just like the first time he had examined his prison cell, he came up empty. There was nothing else in here with him except for the damned mattress.
His eyes narrowed when they settled on the cameras that were set up in the corners of the room's ceiling. With an angry snarl Jake reached up and yanked each camera out of the wall.
A glance back into the link room showed that the two remaining link technicians were not even looking at him. Of course they knew he was there, but they kept their eyes resolutely down on their work, never acknowledging his presence.
Jake could feel a sense of mortal dread wrapping its arms around him, and he struggled to remain calm and sound-minded. Was there anything else that he could have done? Perhaps I'd been too passive, Jake thought. If only I'd tried something when Colonel Barnes was here... "Shit, shit, oh shit," he muttered as he paced nervously back and forth.
He had no weapons, save for his own fighting skills. He was trapped, with no way out. Jake was well and truly hosed, and he knew it.
Hell's Gate could clearly be seen through the windshield. Being in plain sight like this sent a strange thrill through Kyle's body, and he could not help but let out an incredulous snicker. He fully expected to have his bluff found out, to be blasted out of the sky at any moment. Kyle eyed the defensive turrets warily, but they remained still, never moving to track his progress through the sky.
Kyle felt jittery. All of his senses were heightened. His stomach was a nervous, fluttery wreck. His heart literally felt like it had crawled up into his throat.
They flashed over the fence. On the far side of the refinery complex Kyle could see men and equipment working on the breach. On the tarmac Kyle could see a ground crew, waiting to receive them. It looked like his claim of a radio failure had worked - no one else had tried calling them after that.
When he was still several hundred feet above the ground Kyle goosed the throttle, stomped on the rudder pedals, and suddenly angled away from main landing pads. "This is it!" he shouted to Mal'ek. The Na'vi warrior did not respond, and Kyle did not want to risk a glance behind him. Mal'ek knew what to do.
They roared over the avatar gardens, and Kyle nimbly spun the Samson until it was flying sideways while at the same time he allowed their altitude to bleed off. Kyle pressed the rudder pedals again and spun the Samson another 90 degrees so that its tail would clear the basketball hoops. As the landing skids kissed the ground Kyle twisted around in his seat to check on Mal'ek - he found that the warrior was already out and sprinting towards the ambient room, rifle held ready, crouching down low against the wind from the rotors.
Kyle kept the Samson's turbines roaring at full power. He reached over and retrieved his own rifle from the passenger seat as he leaned forward to peer around them, watching for any signs of opposition. Kyle fidgeted nervously in his chair, his right index finger brushing the rifle's trigger guard at the same time his thumb clicked the safety off - so far, so good.
While surely their deviation from normal routine had been noticed, Kyle hoped and prayed that the confusion caused by their actions would buy them enough time to get back out alive.
They had been on the ground for about three seconds now, but to Kyle it already felt like three years.
"This is it!" Kyle shouted.
Mal'ek waited until they were just above the ground before he leapt out of the cargo bay. He kept his head bowed against the maelstrom from the spinning blades of the kunsìp overhead and sprinted as fast as he could towards the dreamwalker-sized door set in the side of the human building. He focused and channeled his fear into forward motion as his eyes darted to the left and right. There was no one else present - for the moment.
Mal'ek was rather surprised to say the least when the door opened on its own, just before he was about to grasp the handle - hunter's instincts took over, and he crouched down low to the ground and threw himself against the side of the building. A warrior dreamwalker stepped out, shading his eyes with one of his hands against the wind. "What the hell...," he muttered in irritation as he looked towards the Samson that was parked on the basketball court.
The flash of movement to his left registered too late to save his life. His own rifle was only half-way up when a single, well-placed shot pierced his skull just above his left eye. The avatar soldier dropped in a boneless heap, leaving a spray of gore and bloody matter on the door behind him from where the bullet had blown out the other side of his head.
If the realization of this new, deceptively easy way of killing another person settled uncomfortably on Mal'ek's spirit, he never showed it. He simply stepped cautiously over the fallen body and into the short hallway beyond, taking care not to soil his feet with the blood of his enemy.
The man's presence here meant either that they had arrived in the nick of time...or that they were too late. He prayed that it was the former. Eywa help the Tawtute if Jakesully was already dead.
"Thiele! What the heck are you doing out there?" A different soldier stepped quickly into view up ahead. This man was much more aware than the first - his rifle was already up.
They fired at the same time. Even though Mal'ek threw himself against the side of the corridor he still felt two brilliant flashes of pain open up on his right side. His body kept working, though, so perhaps it was not that bad. Some of Mal'ek's own frantic shots hit the soldier squarely in the torso, tossing the man back against the opposite wall. The rest of his bullets hit the wall and stitched upwards until they hit one of the observation windows, turning the glass into a mosaic of thousands of shattered pieces. The safety glass held together, and so far the overpressured link room beyond was only losing atmosphere through the relatively small holes in the glass.
Now his ears were ringing from all of the gunfire, but Mal'ek could still hear what sounded like a struggle up ahead even over the sound of an alarm from within the building. The sound of a familiar voice cursing and yelling in 'Ìnglìsì caused Mal'ek's heart to soar with hope.
Jake was fighting for his life with a third warrior dreamwalker. A gun was lying discarded on the floor, perhaps lost in the initial struggle, but the avatar soldier had managed to draw his knife - Jake was unarmed, and it took all of his skills as a fighter to keep ahead of the blade. The way the two men twisted and fought made it impossible for Mal'ek to aim, not without risk of shooting Jake.
Truth be told, Jake was actually enjoying this. All of his military MCMAP training was right there at the front of his mind, and Jake relished every bit of it. He had been one of the better students in his class, after all. Jake had also had plenty of time to master the use of his newer, bigger, faster, stronger body. He moved with a fluidity and grace that Link could not yet match, and Jake thought that the presence of the RDA soldier's knife served only to level the playing field for them.
Link was unpredictable, and a dirty fighter to boot - the fact that he was now madder than hell made him an even more dangerous opponent. The Olo'eyktan had managed to parry almost every strike against him, but several bleeding gashes on his forearms were proof that he had not always been successful.
Still, that did not stop Jake's savage snarls from morphing into a fierce grin - this was simply a competition to him, one that he had no intention of losing.
Jake finally managed to catch Link's wrist, just barely intercepting a thrust that would have probably disemboweled him. The Major's retaliation was a nasty right hook that caught Jake in the temple and made stars bloom in his vision. Both men snarled and fell to the ground in a tangled heap as the combatants continued to struggle for control of the knife between them.
A clean shot was still impossible, but that did not mean that Mal'ek was powerless to help. He waited until they twisted just the right way, and when he had an opening Mal'ek flipped his rifle around and slammed its stock into the back of Link's head, knocking the man out cold.
Jake could only nod his thanks as he panted from exertion. "You're hit," he finally managed to gasp out, indicating Mal'ek's wounded side.
The pain finally registered with him, and Mal'ek glanced down to find that his right flank was streaked with blood. Each breath sent a spike of pain through the core of his body.
Then, several things happened at once.
"No!" Jake suddenly yelled, his eyes flaring wide in alarm. He had not even managed to stand back up yet when he hurled himself across the floor. Mal'ek struggled to turn around when he quickly found that his legs were not as strong as he thought - he ended up sagging against the wall with an agonized hiss. Wiya.
The second man that Mal'ek had shot was not as dead as they had all hoped. His body armor had slowed but not stopped Mal'ek's bullets, preventing the torso shots from being instantly lethal. His teeth were bared in a silent snarl, his lips flecked with his own blood, as he strained to bring his assault rifle to bear.
Jake had never really considered the impressive weaponry of the RDA's avatar soldiers. But now, almost staring down the barrel of one, he had no choice. The avatars' rifles were quite similar to the smaller CARB rifles that the human soldiers used, and their modular design meant that it was easy to add on a secondary weapon system.
The secondary option of choice for Sergeant Tanner Stoltz was an underslung grenade launcher. It was a painfully one-sided struggle, for even with the deep slashes on his arms Jake was significantly stronger than the gravely wounded man. But somehow, in the split second that it took for Jake to wrestle the gun away from Stoltz, someone hit the grenade launcher's trigger.
The 40mm grenade fired off with a loud whump! right beside Jake's head. It was fortunate indeed that Mal'ek had felled his opponent where he had - the distance between the launcher's muzzle and the wall was well within its minimum arming distance, and the grenade glanced off of the reinforced, load-bearing wall without penetrating. It ricocheted upwards, punching through the shattered observation window and detonated somewhere up in the link room's ceiling.
As the grenade passed through the window it missed the human Major Link's head by approximately six inches. Still, the shot was enough to cause the man to dive for cover and to keep him from unloading his Wasp revolver into the back of Jake's head.
The grenade's explosion did not penetrate through the ceiling into the floor above them, but it did destroy a sizable amount of that side of the room. The pressure wave drove the breath that Major Elias Link had been holding from his body, leaving him gasping and choking on the noxious Pandoran atmosphere that was flooding into the room.
"Mask!" he yelled through a coughing fit. One of the link techs, already glassy-eyed with panic, complied and tossed him an exopack before managing to fit a second one over his own head. Link spit out his rebreather and put on the exopack - he wanted the full faceplate to protect his eyes from the smoke and stinging alien atmosphere.
It was absolute pandemonium inside the link room. Dark smoke and dust filled the air while the lights and siren from the breach alarm wailed on. The explosion from the grenade left everyone's ears ringing. Against the opposite wall from where the grenade had hit, Stoltz was pulling himself weakly out of his link bed while he dug frantically through one of his pockets for a rebreather. His body was going into shock, having believed that it had just been shot.
Beside him, Thiele's link bed had ejected as well and automatically opened. Thiele made no move to get up, though - he stared with unseeing eyes up at the ceiling. His human body had died right along with his avatar's when Mal'ek had shot him through the head.
Through the smokey haze Link could faintly discern the second RDA link technician helping Dr. Dryers out of his own link bed.
Major Link ultimately ignored all of it, though. He snarled in rage and popped back up, aiming his revolver down through the shattered window into the ambient room. "Damnit!" he spat. Jake Sully and the other Na'vi were gone.
Kyle was looking the wrong way when the bullets first started entering the cockpit. He shouted in surprise and ducked, covering his head with his hands as several rounds zinged past his ears, traveling close enough to his head and neck that he felt the heat from their passing - it was a sensation that brought back very unpleasant memories for him. The shooting stopped seemingly as quickly as it had started, though. Kyle looked up and saw an avatar in civilian clothing crouched on the steps of the cabin, frantically reloading a handgun.
Before the man had a chance to finish Kyle brought his own rifle to bear and fired back, shooting right through the Samson's windshield. The forward-ejecting shells from his rifle bounced off of the ceiling and landed right back in Kyle's lap. "Shit!" he yelped in surprise as he frantically brushed the hot casings off of his bare legs. Outside Kyle caught a glimpse of the avatar take cover from his return fire and dive back into the cabin.
Someone else started shooting at him. Over the roar of the chopper's engines Kyle could hear sharp pings and pops as more bullets peppered the airframe. Small holes appeared in the glass on the left side of the cockpit as even more bullets zipped past him.
Kyle's first thought was simply oh, not again, when he felt three sharp, stinging impacts trace along his upper arm as he struggled with his seatbelt. Once free of the safety harness Kyle shoved open his door and tumbled out, all the while cradling his rifle against his chest.
He bruised his hip against the Samson's starboard missile pylon as he spilled out of the cockpit; his elbows and knees received a set of nasty scrapes as well when he finally landed belly-down on the asphalt of the basketball court. Kyle thought it odd that those minor injuries pained him more than the bullets in his arm - for the time being at least he still had full use of the limb.
On his stomach outside of the chopper, Kyle glanced beneath the Samson and spotted two Sec-Ops troopers who had appeared around the corner of the building. At the same time that they realized that the cockpit was empty, Kyle was sighting down his rifle's scope and he squeezed off two quick shots in retaliation.
Both shots hit home, striking the first soldier solidly within his center mass. The 7mm rounds from his rifle were sufficient for hunting big game back on Earth, and they easily punched through the human's body armor.
The first man was just dropping dead as Kyle shifted his aim onto the second solider, but before he could fire the trooper's head simply exploded. As Kyle stared in amazement, a third trooper rounded the corner with his gun up and was met with a similar fate - an invisible blow struck the side of his body, knocking him off of his feet and killing him instantly.
Kyle grinned humorlessly. Tsaro had found his range.
Dr. Todd Dryers was fumbling with his handgun's magazine when he felt returning fire zing past him; two of the bullets plucked at the edge of his shirt, having missed his body by mere inches. Dryers' well-developed sense of self-preservation kicked in, and with a frustrated growl he dove back into the cabin.
He pressed a hand to his throat mic and snapped, "Control room, Dryers! There are at least two hostiles on the avatar grounds. That inbound Samson is not, I repeat not friendly!" Dryers kept spouting orders before the operator up in the control room could even respond.
"Sir, do you have the authority to command something like...?" came the cautious response back over the radio.
Dryers hissed angrily as he hazarded a glance out of the cabin windows. The idling chopper had yet to take off, but that could change at any moment. "Listen," Dryers snapped, "If I have to dig out the regulations right now for this, I'll rip off your head with my bare hands and shove it so far up your ass that you'll be wearing yourself as a hat! Am I clear? Major Link will back me up, now get it done!"
A half-mile outside of Hell's Gate, resting prone on a convenient outcropping of moss-covered rock, were Tsaro and Sìlpey. The overhanging trees provided them shade from the sun and also provided the benefit of casting their hiding place in deep shadow. And in any event, when someone finally came looking for them, they would be long gone.
Beside her intended mate, Sìlpey peered through a spotting scope, calling out targets for Tsaro. "One more. Coming from the same direction as the first three," she reported.
Tsaro readjusted his aim back to that particular corner of the building. Just as Sìlpey had said, a fourth man was just rounding the corner of the building, having taken off at a dead run from the hangars were Kyle's kunsìp had been expected to land.
His first headshot had been somewhat unintentional - at the range he was shooting at, a body shot would be sufficient for a kill. "Shooting...," Tsaro murmured. Sìlpey quickly shoved her fingers into her ears.
Through his scope, Tsaro saw that his third shot was true. The .50 BMG round hit the tiny Tawtute in the side, bypassing any body armor, and passed cleanly through his body before it ultimately struck the ground on the opposite side of the target where it left a small crater in the asphalt to mark its impact.
Tsaro was grim-faced. It was true, he had initially been quite excited to learn about this new weapon. But now that he had used it against another living being, even if that being was a blind Sky Person... It held no joy for him. Tsaro's eyes flickered in the direction of Kyle's chopper and took note of the blue figure crouching beside it for cover - he only wanted to keep those he cared about safe.
"Tsaro!" Sìlpey frantically hissed. "Two uniltìranyu! Coming from the tall buildings!"
Tsaro growled softly to himself as he shifted his rifle on its bipod to the left and began to scan the tangle of passageways within the refinery complex. He instantly did not like what he saw - there was too much cover, too many obstructions, to guarantee a hit. The enemy would be in a position to shoot at Kyle within seconds. And Jakesully and Mal'ek were still nowhere to be seen.
"Shooting," Tsaro muttered anyway, making Sìlpey tense up beside him again.
He squeezed off two shots in quick succession, even though the chance of hitting anything with the second was miniscule. If he could not kill them outright, he at least wanted to keep the avatar soldiers from moving forward.
Just as he feared, both shots missed. As a small conciliation, however, both avatars instantly scrambled out of sight. "Has Mal'ek returned with Jakesully yet?" Tsaro quickly asked.
"Kehe," Sìlpey softly answered.
Tsaro merely grunted in response; his attention remained riveted on the place where the two dreamwalkers had taken cover. This process was taking entirely too long, in his opinion.
The unmistakable snap-hiss of a high-velocity bullet just barely missing its target sent Colonel Barnes diving for cover. Smith crouched down behind a low retaining wall as a second shot zinged close by, piercing a section of piping behind them that began to spout out steam. Smith swore violently. "Who the hell is shooting at us?" he hissed, his avatar's ears flattening back with anger. "And with a fucking AMR, no less! I thought we were the ones with the guns here!" He jabbed his chest with his thumb for emphasis.
Barnes' tail lashed furiously behind her. "I don't know. But somehow I think we've been had," she growled. She touched her throat mic and said, "Any progress on getting to that chopper? Smith and I are pinned down in the refinery!"
The response from the control room was not encouraging. "No, ma'am! We're getting reports of sniper fire. It looks like four men are down already. We're also sending a squad down to the -"
Colonel Barnes fought back a most unprofessional explanation. Thank you, so much, for that timely heads-up. "Where the hell is Major Link?" she snarled, interrupting the trooper's irritating blather. Screw him, Barnes decided - before she even got a response from the control room she reached out and grabbed Smith by the collar of his fatigues. "Come on, we don't have time for this! We'll go around!"
"What about -" Smith objected as he was towed bodily along. He had no desire to go anywhere until he knew exactly where he was being shot at from.
"I caught a glimpse of the muzzle flash from the first shot! We'll be fine as long as we stay in this cover, now move your ass!" Barnes snapped.
The frantic reports from the control room had reached Colonel Barnes less than a minute ago - the survey chopper had flown straight towards the avatar compound instead of landing where it should, and now there were reports of some kind of fight in the ambient room. It looked for all the world like someone was trying to break out her prisoner, and Colonel Barnes did not appreciate this one bit. Smith and she had taken off at a dead run back to the base, which in their avatar bodies was quite fast, all the while trying to figure out from anyone what the hell was going on. Someone was going to get their ass returned to them on a platter for this breakdown in the command structure.
Moving swiftly, the two avatars were able to navigate through the tangle of refinery machinery until they came out just beside some storage sheds that were next to the avatar cabin. When she finally got a clear view of the rouge Samson, Colonel Barnes frowned. Since when had the Na'vi learned to operate human machinery, and how had they appropriated an RDA helicopter? Then she noticed that the native crouched beside the chopper was holding an assault rifle that was perfectly fitted to his large frame.
It was the way he held the rifle that did it, that finally gave the man's identity away to her. He was not Na'vi - Barnes was looking at an avatar. And that meant that the man before her was none other than Kyle Fischer.
Barnes grinned fiercely. "Give me the launcher," she demanded, and Smith instantly complied. Some had thought it overkill that Barnes had insisted that the repair crew keep a few shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets close by. Barnes had reasoned, and not inappropriately, that the men would probably no longer feel that way if a thanator came out of the woods. "Drive him to cover. Feel free to wing him, but do not land any lethal hits."
Smith grinned as well; he knew instantly what the Colonel was planning - she intended to capture Sully's would-be rescuers as well, and the first step was to destroy their means of escape. "With pleasure," he growled as he readjusted his hold on his rifle.
So far Tsaro had been quite effective at keeping all opposition suppressed. Save for his initial gunfight, Kyle had remained relatively unharmed. His left arm was starting to ache, though... A few rivulets of blood streaked his blue skin and had started to run down the back of his arm.
"Come on, guys...," Kyle gritted out as he cast a glance over his shoulder towards the ambient room entrance. He tried not to dwell too much on the bloody smear on the doorway, or on the body of the fallen avatar soldier. There had only been one more smattering of gunfire that Kyle had heard, and he recognized the sound of Mal'ek's weapon. Hopefully that meant that the warrior had won.
Two more reports from Tsaro's rifle rang out - Kyle could just barely make out the sound over the noise of the idling chopper. A quick scan of the avatar cabin through the sights of Kyle's rifle revealed no sign of Dr. Dryers. The man was still lying low.
Kyle debated in his mind whether or not to go in after Mal'ek. He growled in frustration - he knew he was supposed to wait outside, to guard the means of their escape. It was not as if Mal'ek was incapable of taking care of himself...
Something tweaked Kyle's sense of danger. It was a sensitivity that had flourished under Kyle's hunter training, and now it shouted at him that something was not right. Kyle whipped around, gun up, to face in the general direction of the cabin. Two more avatar soldiers were crouching beside a low structure, keeping themselves out of Tsaro's line of fire.
The man had his rifle trained on Kyle's chest. It took Kyle a fraction of a second to recognize what Colonel Barnes was holding - the tube balanced on her shoulder had seemed almost insignificantly small.
Shit, Kyle thought as the presence of the human-sized rocket launcher registered with him. He was dead to rights, and everyone knew it.
Then, the oddest thing happened. A dull thump could be heard from inside the base as both avatars fell limply to the ground, slumping like puppets whose strings had just been cut. Barnes shot off a rocket as she fell over backwards, whether accidentally or on purpose Kyle did not know, and he ducked reflexively as the projectile howled by overhead.
Where the hell were Mal'ek and Jake? He glanced back towards the ambient room just in time to see the two Na'vi in question come sprinting out, and Kyle sagged in relief. A movement behind them caught his attention, though, and Kyle snarled and aimed his rifle at the human mercenary that had appeared behind his family.
Both Jake and Mal'ek saw the warning in Kyle's eyes; both dove to the side as Kyle popped off almost half a dozen shots. Kyle missed - he had started shooting before he could really aim, and the trooper stayed back within the cover of the building where he could only fire several rounds around the corner.
Jake had to help Mal'ek back up, and Kyle's heart seized in his chest when he saw the blood on his father-in-law's side. "Move your ass, Kyle!" Jake snarled.
The harsh command snapped Kyle out of his daze. One corner of his consciousness was mildly irritated at Jake. The almost-amusing thought of, I'm not the one that took forever and a day, flickered through Kyle's mind as he threw himself back into the cockpit. Even still, despite everything he suddenly felt almost giddy - they had done it!
Well, almost...
Several warning lights were illuminated on the Samson's dashboard. Before Kyle could begin to assess the damage, yet more shots began to hit the chopper, this time coming from the direction of the building. Kyle automatically reached for his weapon.
"I got it!" Jake shouted as he helped - more like shoved - Mal'ek up into the cargo bay. He had appropriated Major Link's rifle, and he fired back from the hip in retaliation, causing the soldier to duck a second time. "Go, go!" he yelled.
Kyle glanced back over his shoulder once just to make sure that Jake or Mal'ek would not slip out. Then he yanked up on the controls - the Samson's engines were still making full power, and the aircraft leapt into the sky like a startled bird.
The Samson shuddered as it was struck by shots from something markedly more powerful than small arms fire. One of the AMP suits that had been helping to repair the fence had made it to the fight.
But within seconds they were clear from even this threat. Staying low, Kyle just barely cleared the fence and the treetops beyond. A helicopter could fly fast or gain altitude - but not do both at the same time. The defensive turrets that ringed the perimeter around Hell's Gate remained still. No one had yet figured out how to remove Kyle's aircraft from the friendlies list on the computers, and Kyle silently thanked Collins for the shortcut that he had taught him.
"Everyone alright back there?" Kyle shouted over his shoulder. "Check the carry net on the forward bulkhead! There should be stuff in there to stop the bleeding!"
Jake's eyes had landed on the carry sack just as Kyle was speaking. He swiftly dug through it and pulled out several moss compresses that he knew possessed coagulative properties. Once again, he was amazed at how seemingly everything on Pandora was useful in one way or another. "It hurts, but the injury is not grave," Mal'ek grunted. He hissed in pain when Jake pressed the compress against his side.
Jake was about to respond but stopped short when something caught his attention. Ignoring his friend's glare, Jake grasped the edge of Mal'ek's loincloth in order to stop the garment from flapping in the wind. Both men's gaze settled on a small, neat hole in the leather. "Good thing that wasn't any higher, Mal'ek," Jake said with a wry grin as he took note of the bullet hole's location.
Mal'ek suppressed a shiver of dread even as a faint grin flickered across his expression. "Indeed," he deadpanned. Mal'ek shifted his position on the floor and moved his left hand up to his side. "I can do this. Attend to your own injuries, Olo'eyktan," he said.
Jake examined the slashes on his forearms that he had earned during his brief fight with Major Link. They hurt like hell, but Jake was no stranger to pain. His injuries could be attended to back at Kelutral - "Wait, Kyle, we're not flying back to Hometree, are we?" he suddenly asked.
"What? Put on a headset!" Kyle shouted back over the cacophony from the engines and rotors.
Jake cursed as he slipped on an avatar headset and said again, "Are we flying straight back to Hometree? If we're followed -"
"No, we're not heading straight home for that very reason," Kyle interrupted. "We'll be meeting a group of warriors at another location, and then head home together from there on the ground. And please, keep an eye out behind us. I do want to know if something's following us."
Jake nodded and tried to force himself to relax, at least a little bit. He was still all amped up on adrenaline, still jittery and itching for a fight after the rush of their escape. Everything had happened fast - there had been no time for thought, only for action. Now that there was somewhat of a lull his mind was able to catch up to current events. "Guys...," he began. "I -"
"Yes, Jake, you're welcome," Kyle interrupted. "If you feel like you 'owe' us, then fine, we'll collect later. And no, you don't have to berate us on the risks that we took, oh fearless leader. Trust me, we are all aware of what could have happened if things went bad. And besides, deep down inside I'm quite sure you would have probably pulled something similar, had situations been reversed."
Jake cast a wry glance at Mal'ek who simply rolled his eyes. "Excitement can sometimes make my son speak what is on his mind, perhaps too freely," he said simply.
Up in the cockpit, Kyle felt himself flush with embarrassment. Perhaps the excitement was getting to him, at least a little bit.
Jake sighed and shook his head. "I was just going to say, 'thank you,' but if that's how you really feel...," he chuckled. Jake looked up to the cockpit; he was about to say something else, but then he frowned when he noticed the blood dripping from Kyle's elbow. "Damnit, Kyle, if you're hit you should have said something!" Jake scolded as he scooted forward in the cramped cargo bay to have a look at Kyle's injury.
The gunshot wounds appeared deceptively small on such a large figure. "It's fine," Kyle excused as he tried to wave Jake away. "It's only my arm. It hurts, but honestly I'm more afraid of what Tanhi'll do to me when we get back."
Jake grunted noncommittally in response. He motioned towards the warning lights on the dashboard. "Will we make it to where we're going?" he asked in a dry tone of voice.
Kyle shrugged as his eyes hardened briefly. "Well, we've had zero oil pressure ever since we took off," he said. Kyle had already pulled the fuses for the audible alarms. "The engines haven't exactly seized up yet, so I'm going to have to assume that a sensor took a hit. We should be fine."
Both men traded a look. "Should be" was entirely different from "definitely."
"Kyle," Mal'ek said as he carefully leaned out to check behind them. "You wished to know if we are being followed. It would appear that this is the case," he calmly reported.
Jake swore again and leaned out the other side of the Samson. Squinting against the rotor's downdraft, his sharp eyes could just make out the sleek form of a single Scorpion gunship in the distance.
Yes! Tsaro subdued any boisterous outward display of elation even as his heart leapt with joy and relief within his chest when Kyle's Samson thundered by overhead. Everyone had made it out!
"They did it!" Sìlpey gleefully blurted, only just barely remembering not to shout out her own enthusiasm. Beside her, Tsaro allowed himself to go limp and his eyes to drift shut with relief; he rested his head against the stock of his rifle as a small smile flickered across his face. She observed him out of the corner of her eye, and Sìlpey could not resist the urge to slide over a little until their bodies were touching. Tsaro's eyes reopened and settled on her face. His smile remained. "You did it," Sìlpey murmured before pressing her lips softly against his cheek.
One of the things that Sìlpey loved about Tsaro, despite often teasing him about it, was that the young man did not have to constantly speak out of his mouth what was on his mind. In fact, she was discovering that Tsaro seldom used words to express what he was feeling. Now, for example, the answers for any questions that Sìlpey might need to ask were readily available within Tsaro's piercing gaze.
Sìlpey shivered as she felt something brush against her tail. Then she laughed softly when she looked back to see what it was. It was Tsaro's own tail, wagging happily about with a boisterousness that the stoic hunter rarely ever displayed.
A new noise from Hell's Gate caught the attention of both Na'vi at the same time. In an instant the smile was gone from Tsaro's face; he was all business as he sighted down the riflescope again. "Do you see anything?" he quietly asked, his ears perking forward to attention.
Sìlpey was peering through her own spotting scope, frantically searching about for the source of the steady noise. "Not yet," she replied.
The noise grew in intensity, and to Tsaro it sounded like it was coming from behind one of the larger buildings beside the flat, hard, unnatural field where the Tawtute kunsìps rested. A growing feeling of unease began to form in the pit of Tsaro's stomach. This noise was familiar to him...
Two kunsìps rose into view from the other side of the structure. They were not like the one that Kyle flew - no, these two looked predatory as they beat their way through the air with no doubt sinister intent. The pair of Scorpion helicopters reminded Tsaro of two angry zize' that were hunting around for someone to sting.
"Cover your ears," Tsaro ordered as he swung his rifle about. He had no idea if this would work, but he knew he had to try something...
Crack, crack, crack! The noise from his gunshots was horrendous, but Tsaro bore down on the discomfort and kept shooting at a measured pace. Anxiety kept clawing at him as if a nantang was perched upon his back, digging its talons into his shoulder blades; it took all of Tsaro's concentration to recenter the scope's reticle on his target after each shot. It felt like he was going to have an impressive bruise on his skin from where the rifle's stock was braced against his shoulder.
Would his gun even work against a kunsìp? That was a question that Tsaro was sorely wishing he had asked Jakesully.
Though Tsaro did not know it, a .50 caliber rifle would do a fine job of disabling a helicopter - that is, if you hit it in the right spot. Seemingly half of his shots missed the first Scorpion entirely. The rest mostly landed on armored or otherwise non-vital parts of the mechanical beast. But as happenstance would have it, one of the bullets managed to pierce a weak spot in the coverings around the gearbox for the left rotor assembly. Tsaro stared in mute surprise for a split second as the kunsìp suddenly lurched and wobbled once in the air, smoke pouring from its side, before it turned and made an ungraceful landing back on the ground. It would take a significant overhaul before that chopper would ever fly again.
Tsaro knew that there was little time to celebrate this victory; he swiftly sighted in on the second kunsìp, which was angling ominously in their own direction.
Crack! Crack! Snick. The bolt cycled open after only two more shots. Empty clip.
Now there was no mistaking the purposeful way that the Scorpion was aiming straight at them, and Tsaro's split-second decision ultimately saved Sìlpey and his life. "Jump!" he shouted as he leapt up from his prone position, yanking on Sìlpey's arm as he did so to reinforce the command.
It did not matter to Tsaro whether or not Sìlpey was ready - he none too gently shoved her off of the rocky outcropping just as the Scorpion let loose with a salvo of rockets. Their sniping post was pulverized into a cloud of small rocks, dust, and debris only seconds after they had vacated it, and Tsaro felt the sharp stinging impacts of stone chips against his skin as he fell.
The rifle's extra weight caused Tsaro to land wrong; he started to tumble down the hillside, only to come to stop in a cloud of spores by smashing ungracefully into a torukspxam. Tsaro, now finely coated in an orange-brown dusting of mushroom spores, shakily regained his footing. He was coughing and sneezing violently, but was otherwise unharmed. "Sìlpey!" he shouted in a hoarse voice. He sneezed again. Oh, if something had happened to her... "Sìlpey!" he frantically yelled again.
A quick scan of the sky through the treetops revealed no sign of the Tawtute kunsìp. Tsaro's ears strained for any sign of it, but all he could hear was ringing. For better or for worse, it had apparently flown on. Even so, Tsaro smoothly ejected the rifle's magazine and replaced it with a full clip from a pouch hung around his waist.
"Stop screaming, I am right here," came back the acerbic response that just barely managed to register over all of the white noise.
Tsaro turned around so fast that he almost lost his footing again on the slope, and he smiled and slumped in relief when he caught sight of the young woman, who appeared mildly shaken but thankfully unharmed. "I was afraid that... That...," he trailed off.
Sìlpey cracked a small, wry smile. Tsaro was amazed that she could manage to hold herself with such dignity and poise, despite being tossed down a hillside and nearly being blown up. "I am safe, thanks to your quick action, Tsaro," she replied. Sìlpey reached forward and gently rubbed the tip of her finger against Tsaro's cheek, scrubbing away the mushroom dust to reveal the blue skin beneath.
Both of them smiled when Sìlpey sneezed, too.
Chaos reigned at Hell's Gate. The radio waves were jammed full of voices shouting questions and orders back and forth, but for a moment Major Elias Link was deaf to it all. He stood on the grass just outside of the avatar prep room, his eyes smoldering with silent rage as he watched the Samson clatter off over the fence and disappear from sight.
Link holstered his sidearm and went back inside, calmly stepping over Thiele's fallen avatar. His only regret concerning that particular matter was the loss of an asset, and of an able-bodied fighter. Ultimately, it was Thiele's lack of awareness that had gotten him killed, and Link refused to feel even remotely sorry for that.
The Major's boots crunched across shattered glass, and spent shell casings clinked about as he kicked them out of the way. He knelt beside the supine form of his own avatar and set his hand against the skin beside its throat. He could feel the avatar's heartbeat thumping steadily along. It was strange, seeing his own face on this alien body. In a way, he almost resented the avatar's presence - he felt insulted somehow that he needed its help to do his job here.
A familiar voice finally registered with him over the radio - Tanya Keyes came out swinging, making demands and issuing threats that were more than likely genuine if she did not get answers. She was doing her job well, all things considered. Given the lack of a command structure above her, Tanya Keyes was managing the crisis exceptionally well, actually.
It was time to remedy that, however; Link reached up to key his throat mic. "Commander Keyes, this is Major Link," he said.
"Major! Sir, with all due respect, where the hell is Colonel Barnes?" Tanya asked. She sounded positively livid, and quite frankly Link did not blame her if the chaotic background noise was any indication of how events were unfolding up in the control room.
"Samantha Barnes is dead, Commander," Major Link reported in a completely emotionless voice. He looked up at the smoke that hung in the air up by the ceiling. He had seen exactly where that grenade had detonated inside the link room. Oh, yes, Colonel Samantha Barnes was unfortunately quite dead. "I am assuming command at this time."
It took several beats for Keyes to respond. "Understood, sir," she replied in a flat voice. "We scrambled our two Scorpions to pursue whoever broke Sully out. One was disabled by the sniper, but the second chopper was able to neutralize that threat and resume pursuit. They are within missile range now - we are just waiting on the techs to remove the enemy chopper's IFF indicator from the friendlies list. Dryers has authorized these actions, sir."
While that would be the by-the-book approach, to be brutally honest Link had no desire to follow the rules at this time. "That's fine," Link growled. "To hasten the process, take down all of the Samsons from the list. We'll sort it out later, after we've confirmed the kill. And have damage control teams and medical personnel report to the link room as soon as possible. We have a sizable leak that needs to be sealed. Remember, the room is locked down - they will need to approach from outside. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Keyes replied.
"And Tanya?" Link said. His face contorted into a rageful mask, and it took all of Elias Link's effort to remain calm. The day had not turned out the way he had planned it, but perhaps it could still be ended well. "Call me the instant that our pilot brings that chopper down. You tell him not to come back until it's done."
"You wished to know if we are being followed. It would appear that this is the case," Mal'ek stated in a deceptively calm voice.
Jake leaned out of the other cargo door, grasping an overhead rail for support. "Shit," he muttered. This was unfortunate.
"Jake. How close?" Kyle asked as he turned on the targeting system for their own missiles.
"Too close. They should have fired by now," the Olo'eyktan replied. It felt like it was less than 2,000 yards away. He never looked away from the pursuing Scorpion.
Kyle felt oddly detached, like he was listening to anyone other than himself speak. "Then it won't be long before they're able to," he said. Kyle ran the calculations in his head - with clinical detachment, he came up with a negative response. "We aren't going to make it to the rendezvous point," he declared. The young Kelutral that pushed up above the horizon up ahead was simply too far away. Even as he spoke, Kyle was scanning the terrain for any kind of clearing that they could land in. They needed to get out of the air right now - there would be no way that the Scorpion could track them on the ground, once they were under the cover of the trees.
"You do have flares, right?" Jake asked.
Mal'ek remained quiet, content to sit back against the rear bulkhead and nurse his wounds. Things were out of his hands, now. Jake and Kyle were speaking about things of which he had no knowledge. There was no fear of the unknown for Mal'ek to hide - the simple fact was that he trusted his friends to take care of things.
Kyle snorted derisively from up in the cockpit at Jake's question. His first thought was simply, Hell no, but then a memory piped up from way back in his mind. It was something that Collins had said, all the way back when they had first built this Samson for him. Something about the fact that all of the choppers retained their infrared countermeasures... Collins had made a joke about how a face-full of burning magnesium could be quite the deterrent against an overly eager banshee or Great Leonopteryx. "Yeah, we -"
"Launch, launch, launch!" Jake screamed. "Flares, Kyle!"
Kyle prayed to whomever might be listening that his passengers were holding on. As Kyle popped flares he pulled back on the throttle, dropped the aircraft's nose to maintain speed, and jammed them into a 90 degree turn.
He never heard or even saw the pair of missiles that Jake had warned him about, but Kyle surmised that since they were still alive, his evasive maneuvers had been successful.
Now it was time to bite back. Kyle completed his turn - now they were flying backwards, and as soon as he was able Kyle launched off their return fire.
The Scorpion pilot was good, though. He waited until the last possible moment before deploying his own flares, fooling both of Kyle's oncoming missiles.
Their position was not good, Kyle knew. Even if they were not already damaged, Kyle's Samson was slower and not as heavily armed as their opponent. They only had five missiles left, and their simple transport chopper would run out of both ammunition and decoys before the Scorpion ever did.
Then, to compound their problems, some unknown part deep within the Samson's innards gave out after succumbing to the stress of their most recent quick turn. A new set alarms and lights populated the dashboard, telling of more bad news - they had obviously taken more damage on the ground than Kyle had first thought. The controls in Kyle's hands became markedly sluggish, as if the chopper were flying with a massive bucket of water suspended below its belly.
"Guys, we're gonna have to bail sooner rather than later, here!" Kyle shouted. They had only seconds before their enemy would be able to fire again.
"Can we set it down?" Jake asked.
Kyle was grim-faced. Oh, how he would like to be able to do that... "I doubt it, Jake. We may have to make a jump for the treetops. You and Mal'ek get ready!" Other than a small lake that was nearby, there were no clear landing places, anyway. Against Kyle's better judgement, he decided to unfasten his seatbelt.
Jake's mind was spinning from the recent turn of events. Having anticipated Kyle's evasive maneuver, he had been able to throw his body across Mal'ek's and hold on tightly to the cargo netting against the back wall, keeping the both of them inside the chopper as Kyle dodged the missiles. "Looks like we're jumping, brother," Jake said to Mal'ek. He was sympathetic to Mal'ek's wounds, but they had no choice.
The fierce warrior, himself holding on for dear life, could only nod grimly. "I heard," he said through gritted teeth. Already, Kyle was beginning to slow over the trees - with a sick sense of déjà vu Jake recognized the same broad, springy leaves of the same kind of tree that had saved him after falling from Quaritch's Dragon. That memory already felt like it was from another lifetime for Jake.
Jake opened his mouth to speak, but his words were stolen when the Samson tilted viciously to the side with no warning, propelling both Jake and Mal'ek and anything else that was not tied down right out of the cargo bay so quickly that they did not even have time to yell. Jake's stomach lurched up into his throat as he spun and fell, and in one of the split seconds that he was facing the sky Jake caught a glimpse of another missile scream by. It almost looked like it had flown right through their Samson, but before Jake could ponder this, or anything else for that matter he was facing the ground again.
Neytiri might just save my ass again, Jake thought morosely as he instinctively twisted his body into the proper orientation. And not a moment too soon! The next thing Jake knew was that he was falling down through the canopy as giant leaves slapped and tugged at him. He reached out, trying to grasp with his arms and legs and take some sort of control over his descent. At the very least Jake wished to avoid impaling himself on some ill-placed branch.
It was not a pointy branch but rather a fortunate tangle of vines and jungle creepers that caught Jake only 30 feet above the ground, or at least slowed him enough that when he finally landed with a pained grunt it was only because the wind was knocked out of him. It was times like this that Jake felt inordinately grateful to Pandora's thicker atmosphere, cushy plants, and less-than-Earth gravity.
Fucking hell, that still really hurt...
A loud commotion in the bushes a short distance away accompanied by vile cursing in Na'vi marked the landing of Mal'ek, who was no doubt in great pain but at least alive.
Jake climbed shakily to his feet as he searched around them. Where the hell was Kyle? He could not have fallen too far away...
The roar of aircraft turbines and missiles flying by overhead finally registered with Jake's addled mind. "Oh, God no...," Jake breathed as he craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of something...anything through the canopy overhead.
A deafening explosion followed by the sound of something heavy crashing down through the trees a short distance away made Jake's ears pin back, and he instinctively crouched down low to the ground. Over the noise of one helicopter's death throes Jake could still hear the frantic whine of another aircraft's engines, and from his time in the marines Jake could easily pick out the sound of a second helicopter going down. Another massive explosion, much further away, made Jake wince. But he could still hear the second chopper...
Mal'ek was carefully picking himself up off the ground, left hand clasped protectively over his wounded side, as he followed the helicopter's sound with his ears. From the way the noise was growing softer Mal'ek could tell that it was angling away from them.
Then the noise simply snuffed out. No crash, no flaming explosion, no throttling-down noise that signaled a landing - the sound simply ended off in the distance, as if a speaker had been unplugged.
"Can you move?" Jake quickly asked.
Mal'ek nodded. His blue skin was noticeably paled, and Jake suspected it did not have anything to do with his pain. "I have no choice in the matter," he replied. He could indeed move, but not quickly. "Go, run ahead. I will catch up!" he told Jake.
Jake nodded and sprinted forward. It only took him a few minutes of beating his way through thick jungle to reach the first wreck, with the noise of flames and the stench of burning fuel easily leading the way. Jake grimaced - it was hard to tell what was what, since there were seemingly hundreds of exploded bits of scorched metal everywhere. As Jake carefully searched about the wreckage he silently dreaded finding certain other...mangled parts.
Mal'ek appeared just as Jake found a piece of evidence that made him slump in relief. It was a section of a helicopter's tail, dangling from a tree branch 20 feet above the ground. The unique design definitely came from a Scorpion attack chopper, and it was just the positive sign he had needed.
There were undoubtedly pieces of the pilot lying around here somewhere, if one looked hard enough, and Jake was quite relieved to have not yet come across any. Fine, then let the forest claim him, Jake thought bitterly.
"Kyle got 'em," Jake breathed out with a relieved sigh.
Mal'ek nodded slowly. "Then where is he?" he asked.
Jake's expression hardened. "I don't know, Mal'ek. Let's keep moving." Though Jake never said anything, he was quite disturbed by the way that the battle had ended. He never heard Kyle's Samson land, or even crash for that matter. What the hell had happened to him?
"You and Mal'ek get ready!"
As he spoke these words Kyle was already eyeing the door handle. He at least wanted to unlatch the damn thing, but with the way the Samson was behaving he did not dare to remove his hands from the controls until the last possible second. He glanced briefly back over his shoulder - Jake was helping Mal'ek.
In the instant that Kyle's gaze returned to his opponent, he caught a glimpse of sunlight glinting off of sleek metal skin.
Kyle had felt time slow down once before in his life. He had been riding his motorcycle, a beautiful 900cc Kawasaki sportbike, up Highway 1 along the coast. That marvelous piece of machinery was the fastest thing that money could buy, at least ever since the damned government had outlawed engines bigger than a liter. Up ahead, Kyle watched in utter amazement as a car on a side road came up to the highway - the driver had seemingly looked right at Kyle - then proceeded to pull right out on the road anyway.
Kyle distinctly remembered feeling surprise, and then outright anger at the driver. Was he really that invisible? This was one of the few times that Kyle was actually not riding extralegally on that damn bike, and he was about to die anyway! Then his mind processed the fact that, yes, he did indeed have to slam on the brakes. So he did - Kyle jammed on the brakes, right up to the point where they were about to lock up. But the analytical Kyle's mind reasoned that this was still not enough - he would never stop in time, not without risk of going off the road himself. He need to honk, to do something to inform the idiot up ahead that he was about to pull right out in front of someone.
It felt like it had taken a minute for Kyle to come to the conclusion that he had to use his horn, look down, find the button, and then move his left thumb over to hit said button.
The other driver stopped half-way out into the road, a shocked and surprised expression clear on his face, as Kyle flashed by at 50 miles per hour less than two feet in front of his bumper.
That same kind of strange time dilation happened now, as Kyle caught sight of the two missiles flying right at him. He seemingly had all the time in the world to ruminate over his own imminent demise. As for Jake and Mal'ek, it was really no more than a desperate ploy to save them that guided Kyle's next actions. Even if it was already a foregone conclusion that he was dead, that did not mean that his friends had to go now, too.
No more than mere fractions of a second had probably passed between Kyle catching sight of the oncoming missile and his decision to dump Jake and Mal'ek out the back in a frantic bid to save their lives, but to Kyle it felt almost like hours. He could only hope that Jake and Mal'ek would be able to pull off a survivable landing, that he had not condemned them to simply a different death.
Actually, Kyle had saved all of their lives by doing this. Suddenly emptied of almost a thousand pounds of Na'vi bodies, the Samson bobbled upwards a few feet. That distance was enough that the first missile, already locked on and angling towards the hot turbine exhaust vents, missed and instead soared straight through the Samson's open cargo bay without ever impacting. Suddenly finding itself a hundred yards past what it thought was its intended target, the missile's primitive electronic brain self-destructed lest it should loop backwards and lock onto the parent aircraft by mistake.
Through providential blessing, the second missile had never managed to lock onto Kyle's Samson owing to the short distance from which it was launched.
Kyle's mind was still being fueled by pure adrenaline. He reached up to advance the throttles in a frantic attempt to keep his chopper out of the trees; the tough Samson obligingly began to gain altitude, but several nasty vibrations from the engines told him he would not have much time before his bird finally gave out.
Kyle fired two more air-to-air missiles without even bothering to aim. His actions had the desired effect, though - the Scorpion pilot retaliated with a fast snapshot of his own and deployed flares for a second time. Kyle snarled triumphantly as he fired a second salvo - this time taking great care to aim. His enemy had been caught flat-footed, still cycling his flares, and could only turn away in an attempt to dodge the oncoming missile.
A glaring flash outside would seem to indicate a successful hit, but Kyle was too busy avoiding his own troubles to see for certain - besides, there would be no second chance, anyway, so what did it ultimately really matter? Carefully juggling the flight controls and throttle, Kyle allowed his Samson to slip sideways and downwards, dirty smoke trailing in its wake, as the final enemy missile, launched just before the Scorpion's own demise, scythed down through the air after him. Kyle glanced back over his left shoulder, trying to gauge his path through the air - there would only be one chance at this...
The projectile burrowed into the treetops and detonated only 50 yards away; as for Kyle, he had managed to avoid destruction by dropping down towards the lake that he had seen, fooling the missile into hitting the trees on the lakeshore. "Just a little longer, oh please," Kyle pleaded with his chopper as its landing skids all but grazed the water's surface.
His Samson stubbornly refused to gain altitude now, and it felt like its engines wanted to shake the whole aircraft apart. Up ahead Kyle could see the opposite shore; a wide, inviting stretch of sandy beach awaited him if he could only just make it there. He let a frantic, incredulous laugh - I'll just land right over there, he thought giddily. I'll relax in the sun, maybe work on my tan, and sip a margarita while I wait for Jake and Mal'ek. Yeah, that'd be just perfect!
Unfortunately, a margarita on the beach was not in Kyle's cards. Seemingly a stone's throw away from shore and safety, the Samson's bullet-riddled driveline finally shredded itself. The left rotor assembly seized up, and all Kyle could do was frantically brace a hand against the ceiling as the Samson pitched over and slammed into the water.
The last thing Kyle remembered, besides the cockpit windows blowing in, was inhaling cold lake water instead of the breath of fresh air that he really wanted.
"Kyle! Kyle, wake up!"
Tanhi sobbed, then screamed angrily as she shook Kyle's limp form by the shoulders. He could not just leave her like this! "Wake up!" she shrieked. Kyle seemed to ignore her. His head lolled listlessly, and his eyes remained closed as if he were slumbering.
Forcing herself to maintain some shred of rational thought, Tanhi leaned down and rested her head against her mate's chest. Tanhi sobbed again, but this time with joy - she could still hear his heartbeat!
Next she leaned down over his face, her cheek turned to his lips as if she hoped that he would kiss her. He did not do so - and for that matter, Tanhi could not even feel his breath.
Of course! How could she have been so stupid? Using her healer training as a shield against her growing panic, Tanhi went back to Kyle's face and pried open his slack jaws. She swiftly shoved her finger into his mouth, making sure that his tongue was down, then sealed her lips over his own, and blew. He had not spent much time in the water before she had managed to pull him out, Tanhi desperately reasoned. If she could only jump-start his body -
That one breath did it. His eyes fluttered open, and Tanhi jerked back when Kyle's body convulsed as he began to cough and heave, his body seeking to force out the water that he had unintentionally swallowed.
Tanhi grunted as she grasped Kyle by his arm and hip and shoved him over on his side, lest he should re-drown himself on the very water he was trying to get rid of. Her mate continued to hack and spit violently, and Tanhi winced when she felt him reflexively try to curl up. For the moment she simply knelt down, wearily resting her forehead against Kyle's side as he continued to cough and catch his breath. At the moment Tanhi was so emotionally exhausted that she did not know if she could even cry, and only now did she begin to tremble as she realized how close she had come to losing the man that she loved.
Tanhi gently stroked Kyle's arm in an effort to comfort him, but then frowned when her fingers traced over broken, marred skin. Her head snapped up as her eyes settled on the injury - he had been shot. Three times, apparently. And judging from the placement of the wounds in his tricep, the bullets were still in there.
"Tanhi...?" Kyle croaked. He began to stir, groaning in pain as he tried to orientate himself again.
"Mawey, Yawne, mawey," Tanhi murmured as she stroked Kyle's head, lovingly tracing his ears that were pinned back against his head from the pain. He tried to roll onto his back to face her, but then he started to cough again. Tanhi made sure to keep him on his side. "You are safe, now, my Kyle," she whispered in his ear, as much a reassurance to him as it was to her.
He managed to turn his head to peer at her with pain-filled eyes. "How are you here?" he whispered, his voice cracking. Kyle winced as he tried to move. "My hand...," he moaned, cradling his right arm against his stomach.
Tanhi cooed comfortingly to him as she leaned over his body to take a look, and she sucked in a sharp breath when she saw what the problem was. She had been so preoccupied before that she had never noticed that the fourth and fifth fingers of Kyle's right hand were bent out at an angle that they were clearly not meant to be in. She hoped they were not broken - if they were, they would take a long time to heal, and it would be quite the inconvenience to the Na'vi lifestyle. But if they were only disjointed it would be at least an easier, though no less painful thing to correct.
Either way, Kyle would need to be treated fast. If left unattended, that relatively simple injury could turn him into a walking cripple, unable to provide for his family or clan in any useful way.
Tanhi tried to hide her growing unease. It was Kyle's fifth finger... What if it was different somehow than the other four? Than her own four? Fortunately, Kyle was still in too much of a state of confusion and pain to notice her own consternation. "Give me your hand, Yawne," Tanhi gently commanded. Kyle did not respond - he gave no indication that he even heard her. "Kyle? Let me see your hand," she repeated in English.
Kyle began to offer her his right hand, but Tanhi smiled and shook her head. Instead she grasped his uninjured left hand, gently stroking his skin like he did so many times for her, and knelt down to kiss his knuckles. Kyle silently watched, sucking in shallow breaths, as she seemed to explore the limb. She gently pressed this way and that, lifting and kneading each finger, taking note of exactly how the muscles, tendons, and bones were all perfectly interconnected. Kyle focused on that feeling, perhaps the one part of him that did not hurt at the moment, and he smiled faintly.
After what seemed like much too short a time Tanhi released Kyle's good hand and reached for the injured one. "I am sorry," Tanhi murmured when her mate hissed in pained objection. "You are being very brave," she gently encouraged as she examined his twisted fingers.
"Fucking hurts," he said through gritted teeth.
"This is good," Tanhi replied softly after she had looked closer at his injury. "Your fingers are only out of joint, not broken. The bones are merely misplaced. Yawne...it would be best if I fix this now. If we wait, the injury will swell, and it will be much more difficult to correct. Can you understand this?"
Kyle closed his eyes, swallowed stiffly, and nodded.
"I will count to four," Tanhi solemnly informed him.
Kyle huffed out a short, incredulous laugh. "Four?" he wheezed. "Why not three? It's always been three."
Tanhi was quite sure that she did not understand this train of thought. "It has always been four. But would three be easier?"
Kyle wheezed again in what Tanhi reasoned was supposed to be another laugh. "Fine, four. Whatever. Just do it, please." Even with his eyes closed he turned his head away - he did not particularly like revealing to anyone, even Tanhi, exactly how much pain he was in right now. Tanhi's gentle grip on his injured hand became agonizingly firm, and he fought back some kind of pained outburst.
Eywa forgive me, Tanhi silently prayed. "'Aw, mune...," At only the count of two, before Kyle could reflexively tense up, Tanhi applied a precise twist and push to his two dislocated fingers. The pop-pop of the bones sliding back into place was clearly audible.
A second passed and Tanhi winced, closing her eyes as Kyle sucked in a breath and then let out a heart-wrenching scream. After that the only noise he made was the rhythmic hiss of his rapid breaths through clenched teeth.
"You t-tease," he finally gasped in an almost-accusing voice. He coughed and managed a weak smile as he shook his head. "I'll g-get you back f-for that."
Tanhi laughed too, and only now did she realize that she was crying. She leaned over his body to kiss him, and she smiled at Kyle's weak but sincere attempt to return the gesture. "As you say, Yawne," she murmured against his lips. "As you say."
The two of them rested there for a while. Kyle did not think he could move, even if he tried - his arm was throbbing, his hand still hurt like hell, and overall his entire body felt like it was one big bruise. Every breath was a struggle in and of itself, and his stomach was still screwed up into a quivering knot after having unwillingly ingested all of that lake water. Kyle essentially felt like a truck had run him over - and then reversed back over him again for good measure.
It was so relaxing for Kyle to rest there on the warm sand with his mate that he nearly forgot to ask a very pressing question: where the heck had she come from? Kyle's eyes snapped open and he sucked in a quick breath.
"Yawne? What is it?" Tanhi asked when she felt her mate tense up. She was still draped over his body, both protecting and comforting.
As Kyle finally summoned the energy to take into perspective the world around them, he became aware of the fact that it was not just Tanhi who was looking after him.
Txopuluke, along with a second ikran, rested on the sand a short distance away; both creatures stared intently at the two Na'vi, and Txopuluke snorted in greeting when Kyle offered him a weak smile. Even though he was no doubt uncomfortably hot, Kyle's ikran refused to leave. The second ikran was a strikingly beautiful creature, with green skin that was interlaced with almost iridescent stripes of blue and purple.
"How -" Kyle coughed again. "How did you get here? How did you know...?"
Tanhi was silent for a long time, and Kyle did not have the energy to ask again. Truth be told, Tanhi was still shaken to the core at how realistic last night's dream had been...and at how close that dream had been to becoming reality. It was literally a supernatural strength that kept her from locking up in absolute horror when she saw Kyle's kunsìp crash into the lake. At last, Tanhi replied in a shaky voice, "Eywa knew that I needed to be at this place, that you would need me." Eywa, among other people...
Tanhi's answer did little to satisfy Kyle. He slowly shook his head. "But how...? You weren't supposed to be here... You were supposed to wait at Hometree for us." There was something afoot, something that Tanhi was not telling him. It would not be unreasonable or inaccurate for Kyle to believe that Tanhi's anxiety had been caused by his near-death experience. It would also not be the entire truth, either.
Tanhi leaned over to kiss the bare skin above Kyle's ear. "I am ikran makto now, my Kyle. Like you are," she whispered into his ear.
Kyle glanced quickly back towards the ikran that rested beside Txopuluke, his eyes widening with realization. "Txopuluke's mate?" he gasped. This raised just as many questions as it answered!
Despite all of the stress of the day, Tanhi could not help but smile. She also knew that it would be in Kyle's best interest to answer his questions before he asked them, lest he mentally strain himself further as he tried to figure things out on his own. It had been a miraculous occurrence, after all, one that would be worthy of being enshrined within the songs of the People.
The memory of her dream with Kyle after their first mating welled back up, and she gasped in surprise. Kyle looked up at her with concern - he asked her a question, but she did not hear him. In the dream they had been flying together, each with their own ikran! Tears anew began to well up in Tanhi's beautiful golden eyes. It all made sense to her, now! The dream, not only back then, but this morning as well... Everything nested perfectly into place.
"Tanhi? What's wrong?" Kyle asked again as he brought his injured hand up to her face, gently caressing her cheek with his knuckles.
"Hufwetsyìp chose me as her hunter," Tanhi sobbed. Her mate's expression clearly showed confusion - how could this be a bad thing? Kyle nodded slowly in acknowledgement, and Tanhi sniffed and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand before continuing. "Oh, Yawne... Hufwetsyìp was Keoni's ikran."
Kyle felt a chill race down his spine, all the way through to his tail, and to be brutally honest he had no idea how to respond to this news. The implications from this revelation began to unfold in his mind almost faster than Kyle could keep up with them.
There was so much more that she needed to say, but Tanhi shoved all of it back for the moment. This was not the time or place. She sniffed back her tears again and forced herself to calm down - after all, this was supposed to be a joyful time! Her mate was alive and well after having helped rescue the sixth Toruk Makto. This was not something to be taken lightly! "I saw Jakesully and my father jump from the kunsìp," Tanhi stated. She cracked a wry smile and added, "I suppose that I should inform them that you are still among the living."
Kyle's eyes widened with alarm as he remembered Jake and Mal'ek. He attempted to sit up and he began to say something, but Tanhi hushed him and told him in no uncertain terms not to move his txìm from its current location. The spike of pain that shot through Kyle's left arm and stole his breath away served as confirmation of Tanhi's words.
"I said I would get them!" Tanhi repeated firmly. "The only place you should travel to is back to the healers' alcoves! Do not make me tie your tail to a tree!" She spoke with such conviction that Kyle suspected she was being entirely serious. Tanhi gave Kyle another quick kiss on the lips before standing. "You have more than earned a respite from your work, Brave One," she said in a softer voice, her eyes twinkling warmly.
Kyle called out to his mate just before she was about to climb onto her ikran's back. "Wait!" Kyle blurted. Tanhi paused to glance back over his shoulder. "Our dream, when we were flying together... When we first mated. This is it, isn't it? It came true."
"Srane, Yawne," Tanhi said simply before swinging herself up onto Hufwetsyìp's back. A small smile formed over her features. All of it was true.
Neytiri had been coping with it all by going numb. Since her unborn child seemed to react based off of her own feelings, Neytiri purposed to have no feelings on the matter whatsoever. Through pure mental force of will, Neytiri kept all of her anxiety, nervousness, fear, and loneliness contained within herself. She kept it shoved up into whatever corners of her psyche that she could separate from Tommy.
The trouble with this plan was that it was a terribly near-sighted solution to her current problem. Neytiri could not bear to wallow in her pain, or to let Tommy feel how torn up she was. Neither could she indefinitely keep all of what was going on separate from her son. She knew that eventually the dam would break, and that the ensuing flood might just drown them both.
It was not unheard of for a Na'vi mother to miscarry due to severe emotional trauma. Two had done so, back when their original Hometree had been razed by Quaritch and his ilk. The intimate tie between mother and child was absolutely tight enough that a painful enough mental blow could cause the mother to lose her child.
Neytiri suspected that Tommy was far enough along in his development that this worst-case scenario would not happen to her. But if the unimaginable had happened... Neytiri could not begin to fathom the effects it might have on Tommy and her.
The Omaticaya were carrying on with their normal clan life with a strange facsimile of normalcy, as if their own Olo'eyktan had not been taken captive by the enemy. There were some among the council of elders that had pressed for an immediate response, or at least some kind of plan of action. The Omaticaya's fighting numbers were still depleted after the Great Battle. If they were to attack the Tawtute, they would need help.
Moat had ruthlessly crushed this train of thought.
The Omaticaya's Tsahìk had generally led from a place of quiet strength when Jake had become Olo'eyktan after Tsu'tey. It was not because she did not get along with her son-in-law...it was simply that she had taken a natural step back as the end of her time serving the Omaticaya grew nearer. Her own mate was no longer Olo'eyktan, and a great deal of Moat's time had been spent working with Neytiri, so that she would be an able partner to Jake's own leadership.
So suffice it to say that it came as a bit of a shock when Moat gave the overeager elders a verbal dressing-down that would surely be worthy of recording in song. Her words had been sharper than any knife or spear or arrow.
There would be no duality within the Omaticaya. To be sure, Moat fully realized the necessity of planning for war, but she refused to plan for battle while there was still a chance that their Olo'eyktan could be returned to them. She would not allow Kylefischer's plan to be subverted in any way. Of the many reasons that Moat had for doing this, at the top of the list was her own daughter's - and grandchild's - wellbeing. Moat would not stand to have the Omaticaya act as if their Olo'eyktan had already gone to be with Eywa.
So for now, they would wait, and pray.
Late in the day, Moat found her daughter in the clan's nursery, assisting the child-watchers there in the minding of some of the Omaticaya's youngest members. The Tsahìk smiled faintly as she observed her daughter play with and entertain a young toddler. The young, tiny Na'vi would laugh and happily wave her still-pudgy hands about as Neytiri played peek-a-boo with a large leaf frond. Neytiri would hide her face behind the leaf, causing the baby to go completely still in wonder as she contemplated how Neytiri could possibly have disappeared so fast.
Then Neytiri would peek out from around the leaf, and the baby would laugh and squeal as if Neytiri had just told the best joke that she had ever heard.
Neytiri glanced up upon sensing her mother's appearance, and though the warm, beautiful smile remained on her face for the toddler's sake, Moat could plainly see the pain in Neytiri's golden eyes.
At an unspoken signal, one of the child-watchers came over to Neytiri and gently relieved her of her young burden. As if by magic, a small island of privacy appeared around Moat and Neytiri in the midst of Kelutral's nursery.
Before Neytiri could stand, Moat crouched down so that she was level with her daughter. She had not come to the nursery empty-handed, and now she offered Neytiri the drinking gourd that she had been carrying. Neytiri waved her off. "I am fine, sa'nok," she said. The way her ears lowered was evidence that this was not the case.
Moat gently shook her head. "It is not water, my Neytiri," Moat said. "It is broth. You need to eat. You and your son need the strength." Moat did not remind Neytiri that she had not really consumed anything in over a day.
Neytiri's nostrils flared when the warm smell from the gourd's contents wafted by her nose, and her mouth began to water. She nodded and accepted Moat's offering. Even though the soup was positively delicious, Neytiri could only manage small sips. "I have been feeling ill," Neytiri admitted with downcast eyes.
Moat's expression crumpled briefly, and the Tsahìk was glad that her daughter did not see it. "I will have Tanhi prepare some medicine for you, then," she offered.
"Tanhi left a long time ago, to seek solitude along the river path," Neytiri said after she managed another tiny drink. "She has not returned."
Neither woman spoke for a spell after that. Neytiri silently loathed the fact that Kyle was risking his life. What if Tanhi ended up landing in the same position that she was in? Neytiri did not think that she could handle guilt, along with the grief. For once in her life, Moat found herself without the right words to say.
The sound of the sentry horn cut through the late afternoon air, and it struck Neytiri like an electric current. She jolted as though stung and the gourd slipped from her fingers and dropped to the ground; neither mother nor daughter paid attention to the spilled soup. A gasp was dragged unwillingly from her lips.
Moat helped Neytiri regain her feet, and she watched as hope waged a fierce war with despair across the battlefield of her daughter's features. "They are returning," Neytiri observed in a numb voice. The horn could only signal that news was coming, and gave no indication as to whether or not it was good or bad.
Moat wrapped an arm around Neytiri's waist and lovingly rubbed her swollen belly. "They are, Neytiri. Come, let us see what word they bring."
The gentle murmur of dozens and dozens of hushed conversations could be heard, like the wind whispering through the trees, as nearly every member of the Omaticaya clan stopped what they were doing. Moat and Neytiri carefully made their way through Kelutral's den, slowly navigating through a rapidly growing crowd of people.
The staccato beat of pa'li hooves upon the earth reached Neytiri's ears, and Neytiri fought to keep herself calm. The party could well be returning with bad news, just as easily as good news. The feeling of Tommy turning within her belly made Neytiri briefly nauseous.
Triumphant whoops and hollers sounded out as the returning warriors vigorously pumped their bows in the air, creating a visual ripple through the crowd. Neytiri's knees weakened, and Moat held tighter to her daughter's waist.
Neytiri gently but insistently shrugged out of her mother's supportive grip, and she began to stumble forward. "Jake?" she whispered, her eyes searching each face before her. She just had to see... A growing roar, a joyful ululating cry from her clan mates was lost on her and simply faded away into the background.
When her eyes finally landed on the familiar, handsome features of her life mate, she almost did not believe them. Neytiri had been so stone-cold these last few days that she had seemingly forgotten how to feel joyful. The apparition of her mate before her was fidgeting nervously as his pa'li slowed down from its trot. The horselike creature nickered and tossed its head as it shifted back and forth on its six legs, no doubt sensing its rider's anxious thoughts.
Then Jake's searching eyes found her face in the sea of their brethren, and Neytiri knew joy again.
"Neytiri!" Jake yelled, shouting himself hoarse with that one word as he broke tsaheylu with his pa'li and threw his braid back behind him. Jake practically flung himself from his mount's back, tumbling gracelessly to the ground and nearly tripping over his own tail in the process. Neytiri laughed and cried at the same time - her Jake had never, ever become as proficient at riding pa'li as he had ikran.
"Jake!" she tried to shout his name, but the word only came out as a happy squeak. Neytiri took a single step on unsteady legs before her strength gave out and she fell to the ground on her knees.
He was probably shouting her name again, but Neytiri did not hear him - all the noise around her had mixed into one undistinguishable, unintelligible roar. Jake sprinted full bore towards his mate as fast as his legs would move. He dropped to his own knees in front of her, skidding to a halt in the last few feet before throwing his arms around her in a tight embrace.
Neytiri gladly reciprocated, hugging him in return and weeping freely as Jake gently rocked her back and forth and cradled her head beside his own. "Neytiri, Neytiri, oh Neytiri...," he kept repeating over and over in her ear, acting for all the world like he would never ever stop saying her name.
And she loved it! Oh, how Neytiri missed his voice saying her name. She missed his accent and how he said her name wrong. She missed his touch, his scent - Neytiri buried her face against the side of his neck and took in a huge breath, inhaling as if she had been suffocating for days. She tightly gripped his back, her fingernails digging almost painfully into his blue skin. But Jake did not mind. No, he appreciated every vivid reminder of Neytiri's presence that he could get.
Jake pulled back just long enough to kiss her ear, her cheek, and her nose. He landed a sloppy kiss right on Neytiri's lips that made both of them laugh giddily before tucking her head back underneath his chin. "Oh God, I've missed you both so much! I'm so sorry, so sorry...," he began. "Daddy's back, and he's not ever going anywhere again, I promise."
Major Link was finding that his desire for revenge was being gradually strangled by the necessity of taking charge over a complete and utter disaster. It felt completely humiliating. To compound things, the Scorpion pilot had not reported back after radioing in that he was engaging the enemy.
Eleven men were dead, including Colonel Barnes. That number should probably be moved up to twelve, considering the absent Scorpion gunship. Barnes and Smith had been killed by nothing more than bad luck when that errant grenade had shot into the link room and destroyed their human bodies. Stoltz was hung up in the infirmary after nearly going into cardiac arrest from having his avatar shot. As for his avatar...it was probably as good as dead. Two invaluable mechanical assets, a Scorpion and Samson, had each been destroyed. The only other Scorpion that Hell's Gate had would need a serious mechanical overhaul before it could ever fly again, and its pilot was confined to the infirmary with several compressed disks in his spine after being injured by his rough landing.
Their prisoner, their biggest lever against the Na'vi, was gone.
The link room was a wreck and would need major repairs before it would be operational again, which meant that if RDA avatar team wanted to link up anytime soon they would have to use the link beds aboard Valkyrie 38.
Their fighting force had taken a severe hit, and now they only had five working transport helicopters and one gunship. These were the resources that Major Link had to work with in order to defend Hell's Gate for at least another year. It was them against an entire planet.
To say that Major Elias Link was upset would be a vast, vast understatement.
Link had taken over in the control room while Keyes supervised the emergency repairs on the link room. They needed to get that room repressurized with Earth atmosphere quickly so that they could begin repairs and...recovery.
It took three attempts for the poor radio operator to gain Link's attention. "What?" he finally snarled.
The young man cringed as though struck. "Sir, David Faison is on the line." The man gingerly offered Link a radio headset with all the enthusiasm of one who was holding a chunk of meat before a starving lion.
Link snatched the headset out of the man's hand without a word and set it over his ears. "What the hell do you want, Dave?" Link snapped.
Faison sighed. He really wished that Tanya Keyes was out here with him, and not just because she was his smoking-hot girlfriend. While Faison was not opposed to going head-to-head with the Major, the process would have been considerably easier if he were actually a ranking officer. He had not made it into the RDA's Sec-Ops avatar program because of his rank, but because of his skill. "Sir, I am requesting your presence at our location. We have a situation that needs your direct attention."
Link suppressed his rage, instead pinching the bridge of his nose as he fought for some semblance of self-control. "David, I'm sure that whatever it is, you can handle it. My hands are full up here," Link gritted out.
"Major Link, come outside," Faison said curtly. Then the radio clicked off.
Link stood there, stunned for a moment before he ripped his headset off and threw it onto a console. Damn right he would come outside, now. There was no one within four lightyears of this place that could give orders to him.
"Tobias, you're driving up here for the moment. I've got to step outside and hold Faison's hand," Major Link said.
Tobias Foucault watched as Link stormed out of the room. "Yes, sir," he said to no one in particular as he shook his head in exasperation.
It took Link ten minutes to get outside and make it out to the refinery. Faison and three other Sec-Ops troopers had been assigned the undesirable task of disposing of the now useless avatar bodies of Thiele, Smith, and Barnes.
"What the fuck is so important?" Link snapped. The three other troopers all looked nervous and scared, as if they had seen a ghost, and would not meet Link's gaze. Then Major Link frowned as he looked around - he could only see Smith's avatar resting on a collapsable gurney. The second gurney was empty. "Where the hell is Barnes' avatar?" he demanded.
David Faison's arms were folded over his chest, and Link instantly resented the man's obstinate posture. "Follow me please, Major," he said.
Faison led Link a short distance away down a tight passageway between the Unobtanium refinery's unknowable tangle of pipings, girders, buildings, and catwalks. "Faison, you'd better -" Link began.
"Shhh, keep your voice down, sir," Faison interrupted. "She doesn't like loud noises, and I think she's in a state of shock or something." They stopped at a corner beneath some condensing equipment, and Faison motioned for Link to continue. "Don't make any sudden moves," he advised.
Something about Faison's demeanor indicated that this was no joke. Link took the man up on his advise and crept carefully around the final corner. His blood ran cold when he caught sight of the giant figure that was curled up in the corner in a fetal position, knees clasped tightly against her chest, and was watching him with terrified, golden eyes.
Link finally found his voice. "Colonel Barnes?" he whispered incredulously.