Author's Note

Still waiting to fix my writing laptop but couldn't wait to write a new chapter. Hope you enjoy.

Ch. 5 The Mediator part 2

The world felt wrong, it felt off in so many ways that a mere thought was a challenge up a steep sheer of a cliff with no gear. It even hurt to think of why existing seemed to be a determent at all, given the fact that there was nothing to see nor feel tangibly with wavering hands and legs. Panic immediately washed in like a surging tide from a cyclone, far worse than the many near death flights Goumann had taken part in.

He flailed wildly as he tried to get his bearings in the void of oblivion, each muscle in his body seemed to tug of their own want. Even his body desired to find ground as much as him with no sight nor sound to signal something was nearby. His flight suit was the sole thing any of his nerves detected, not that it helped his situation any better. He huffed and groaned fearing a reality in which his loyal Harbinger had been clipped by the bastard enemy, and shrapnel had blinded him somehow. In a free fall from high up it was likely his skin was overstimulated by the rushing air to the point that he was numb to anything beyond what chaffed. The theory proved enough for him to go into an all out madness as his life neared its brutal end, as a mere splat on solid ground or a broken bag of meat and bone on the hard surface of the Thanalos ocean.

"RRRrrrrrraaaaggghhhh!!!!" he shouted trying to fight the inevitable that seemed so plausible.

"NOOOOOO!!!" he cried as no thoughts of his past life came back to visit him as some pilots often said happened to a dead bird in the air.

Almost by merely believing the notion that he was indeed about to die, the air became tangible but not in the fashion he expected it to be. It grew from a mild wisp to the strength of an office air unit, not some gale force speed which should be rippling the fabric of his light armor. Everything began to feel more wrong than it was already, doubt seeped through as to if he was actually falling from his fighter. Even as his mind screamed a gruesome finality to his meager exhausted existence, to the point he felt the liquid sorrow wet the corners of his eyes. Something within him held out and as it did so had the world of nothingness become viable, a clicking sound penetrated the veil around him like a pin needle through a balloon.

"I WON'T!!" and with those words did his sight come back to him, with all else trudging along behind as if they were a convoy of fuel barges trying to keep up with the Judicator class hoverdynes.

There he was sweating in his basic uniform of the S.F.A.D. in front of his fellow pilots, who were just then turning to stare at him for his sudden outburst. They were inside the briefing room the command center had set up temporarily after the Arch Enemy had made planet fall, the entire base at the time was a hastily fabricated line of structures put together with construction scrap. The tent they currently stood in waved and undulated with the gusts outside, whipping like a loose tarp on a scrap truck passing through residential zones. Where they all were a large rectangular screen played out the damning news no one wanted to hear nor believe. It was the dire moment that marked the end of his waking conscious life outside the Harbinger and mere patrols of uneventful nature.

Right on the bright screen was the footage of the other colony worlds of his people, Bartholomew the algal world to Korthax Nine which he had seen only on pic screens ever since he was but a toddler. All eight planets including Thanalos II comprised the United Planetary Systems, now only one remained as the images kept flowing through. Nothing but burnt floating rocks remained of the once vibrant naturally lively worlds which rarely existed in the universe he was born into. They were gems and future prospects that stabilized all life with vast resources to subsist on, but evident in the scrolling characters of the news feed was the call to arms by the government.

The day that the last world was finally told of the true threat and what it had done to their brothers and sisters light years away. Labeled as the wild fire which threatened his species down to the last woman and child, locusts bent on absolute genocide from the handiwork they left behind. There had been stories that spread months ago from the time he had been posted along city borders to target black market peddlers. That some great evil was coming soon and every civilian from the slums to the towering flats of the inner city suddenly demanded illegal items out of fear. The confirmation came upon the arrival of the sweeping tide of destruction within their solar system, but also at the time when they had sent a vanguard force to begin probing their defenses.

"Goumann? You won't what? Won't die to these... der mistkerl?!" Cutburth asked as he tried to ease the already tense air.

The Madam had eyed him from the corner of her vision but paid no heed to his outburst, almost as if she understood his reaction. She was always the level headed one and had to be being the Flight's lead, but most importantly she still had empathy where others tossed it away like unwanted garbage. It helped keep the squadron together as things curtailed further down the rabbit hole over the past few months since their unit formed.

Guzman joined in, "Hijo de la chingada! I had family on Madre de Agua too, course I won' let them get away with this! We're gonna get some kills before they even land a shot on us!" he said with fervor and cursed in his language that tickled Goumann enough to bring down his shock of being taken back to the Day of Resistance.

"We're going to burn their hides for this. Each and every last one of them." said the quiet one of them all.

Riedel remained speechless at Heinrich's statement, much like Madam he too was far beyond invested in the revelations that came forth. Simply content to watch the drone captured photos of Eva's Pride, nothing but ashes and structural bones of buildings that had stood immaculate before the slaughter. The death toll fluttered across in yellow numbers but by then Goumann remained confused and still, unsure if he was really dead or perhaps he had been asleep from the drugs they began to give them by then. Experimental stuff the likes of which bordered on potions from magic folk of the poorer areas, tales and folklore crawled through the ranks when things began to grow suspicious. Now that the war had come home and the cocktails of stimulants injected into them from small doses, sleep was a godsend for pilots.

"I'm... back?" he asked in a near whisper before another gust of wind rattled the tent, only it wasn't the wind which caused it.

Something big swooped overhead which was followed by a deafening sound, one which forced everyone to the ground and knocked down the display screen. It was as if a wall of air nearly pushed the hastily erected tarp right of its anchors, sending dust through the flaps of the door along with the screams of others outside. Goumann slammed himself into the bare dirt below him and covered his head as he closed his eyes in hopes that any wayward debris didn't hit him. His ears were sullied once more by a ringing sound this time, it squealed to the point nothing else came through.

"NO! Not again... not again!" he shouted as his words were muffled by the soil pressed against his mouth, his forehead beginning to hurt from the pressure he put on his skull out of safety.

He waited and waited for another detonation or even a sign that another enemy bomber was making a second go. That eventuality never came however, snorting out the dust particles he inadvertently breathed in being in the position that he was he began to relax if slightly. Still the ringing persisted if only degrading slowly that he could hear only the clip clop of hooves, his hands released his head and he lifted himself just enough to scan around him. Gone was the tent and his comrades who had hit the ground as well, just a vast expanse of white in every direction completely the opposite to when he awoke. His throat no longer felt racked by the soil that he sucked in accidentally nor was he even smelling the clay. It was as if it hadn't ever happened.

"Creature? Thou art not harmed, you may relax your fears." a woman beckoned from afar, an echo fading away into the endless horizon.

"Oh please Luna! After that short movie trailer I'm certain he's scared out of his wits. But I must say such chaos of the likes just tickles my funny bone." a man soon joined with a laugh.

Goumann continued to look further and further up until he saw before him floating down from the white sky two beings which threw him for a loop. A four legged Troikillican and some nightmare mish mosh of a thing as long as a Devil's Tongue. The sight of which froze the pilot in place while his heart rate jumped, he could feel the beats in his throat that nearly sickened him. Fear once more embraced him in its bosom upon the landing of the deep indigo hued mammal with wings, the horn that could gore him caught his attention even more.

"I must be having a long death's dream... or I'm zapping out on chems. Please... please let it be death soon!" he whispered quietly while failing for force movement in his legs.

The chimeric creature vanished with a pop and suddenly reappeared in front of his face, reforming into the height of an ammo canister. Goumann finally moved and backwards he collapsed over his scrambling feet, he was too dumbfounded to go further as the nightmare continued.

"Be careful with the foreign creature Discord! I don't think I can keep the link..." the mythical beast started to explain before being loudly interrupted.

A sharp gasp escaped the fighter pilots mouth as if a sharp stab had punctured his chest, and in that instant he blinked. Opening his eyes his body convulsed in tandem with the cold feel of a metal surface below his skin where cloth hadn't covered. There above his prone form was a wooden planked ceiling with an oil lamp flickering overhead above his feet. Something kept him strapped down as his limbs met resistance, he let his body continue fighting while he devoted his jostled mind make heads or tails of where he was.

He let a loose sentence bounce around his head in the terror that devoured his ever action, 'I'm dead! This is death! Never ending... never ending!!'

Then from the left side of his sight an alabaster mutant troikill with a coral pink mane popped up and held a flash light to his eyes using its mouth to hold it. His eyes were uncoordinated as the zipped every which way to assess the next freakishly new thing that sought to torment him.

The light stung the back of the socket as both pupils were seemingly checked, but there was more to come as he heard other voices coming to like the volume level of a stereo had been lowered. The thing came back with a syringe which freaked him out even more as he saw the pointed tip glimmer in the meager light of the room. His struggling ceased but his chest rose and shrank as fast as the old engine blocks of junkers, something in his mouth kept him from speaking much less move his jaws. He bit into it repeatedly to try and stop the injection of whatever was in the glass tube, but the fabric as it felt to be resisted any attempts to break the obstruction.

In seconds the man felt something enter his blood stream, the pinch was nothing compared to the distress of the nightmare. Everything began to feel like the world was slowing down though he was not tired in the least, letting him have the chance to ponder even if for a half a minute.

'A depressant? A truth serum? Cyanide?! What's in me!!?' he asked himself sensing his pulsing heart lose momentum.

His nose had been the loudest of his presence having been inhaling air at a prodigious rate when he came to, it too joined the rest of the situation as his lungs calmed into normal repetitions. Though the burning muscles associated with his fight to escape came at his alert mind with a punishment like going on a forty-two hour mission, in addition to a lack of sleep on top of it.

"Pilot?" Alice's familiar robotic voice asked, shattering what was left of his understanding of the reality if it was anything at all.

"Pilot?" the A.I. inquired again, no answer still.