Three Against the Stars (20 page)

Chanori charged in, his fists ready to batter Makki with a steady rain of blows.

Makki caught his breath and summoned all the strength he could muster. He managed to block both of Chanori’s oncoming fists, whack him in the throat with the side of one paw, punch him in the breastbone, and then kick him in the kneecap. Bones cracked and cartilage snapped. Chanori went down, gasping for breath and clutching his shattered knee.

Makki turned back to the laser cannon, took careful aim, and then poured on the heat at the Drakonian jet fighters that darkened the morning sky like a swarm of bees.

Two more jets exploded in mid-air. But one looped around and headed back toward the Khandra tower, effectively evading Makki’s heavy barrage. Blasts of tazer fire tore chunks of stone from the walls of the fortress and chewed pieces of tile from the rooftop.

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Cortez and O’Hara, still carrying Akira between them, emerged from the mouth of a cave in the foothills behind the fortress. From their vantage point they could see Makki high above them on the roof of the Khandra stronghold, manning the laser cannon.

“Sweet Mother Mary!” O’Hara shouted, crossing himself.

“Makki—hit them hard, my friend!” Cortez yelled with pride.

Akira, fearing for Makki’s life more than she worried about her own, cried out softly, mumbled a prayer, and then slumped in the arms of her buddies.

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Unable to get up, Chanori watched Makki work the laser cannon with expertise. Makki zeroed in on the approaching fighter jet and retaliated with a volley of shots that streaked across the morning sky. The Drakonian jet took a laser hit. Its left wing burst into flames. Then the craft flipped over and over, but maintained its course—still heading straight for the fortress.

Makki abandoned the laser cannon, hopped on the airbike, revved it up, and took off.

Chanori struggled to rise, but his shattered knee wouldn’t let him. He watched Makki’s airbike soar into the sky and away from the fortress.

“Makki!” Chanori shouted in anger and frustration.

The fighter jet belched fire and smoke, and then nose-dived with its wing-guns flashing one last time. Makki’s airbike shuddered and swayed from side to side as a tazer blast nailed its tailfin. The small craft began to lose altitude.

The burning fighter jet rolled in the air and plunged from the sky.

“No!”
Chanori screamed.

He fell to his knees as the jet fighter hurtled toward the Khandra stronghold.

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Inside the command center, Snark turned to the viewport, and then squealed in terror as a burning jet fighter drew closer and closer to the fortress. Rhajni and Drakonian personnel began to flee in panic, screaming and shouting at one another to get out of the way.

“Evacuate! Evacuate!” Snark yelled needlessly as warriors and technicians abandoned their posts. When the Drakonian agent turned to flee, he was knocked down and trampled to death by scores of frightened personnel running for their lives.

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The sky reverberated with the thunder of screeching engines as two squadrons of Comanche AEVs dropped down out of the clouds. Like majestic war eagles they locked in on their prey and zoomed in for the kill. Both squadrons flew in tight, V-shaped formations.

The first squadron hit the Khandra gun emplacements in the foothills, laying down a suppressing barrage of photon missiles and laser blasts that smashed their foes to atoms. The second squadron veered off and chased the Drakonian jet fighters, flying hot on their tails. Laser and Eddy machine gun fire crippled many a jet and sent them hurtling into the hills and the pass below. Explosions rocked the pass, belching smoke and spitting fire into the air.

A number of Drakonian jets shot upward in a graceful arc, looped over and down, and then came up behind the AEVs with guns blazing. Five Comanches exploded into flaming wreckage. But then the first squadron swooped in, blasting enemy aircraft out of the sky.

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Seated at the controls inside the cockpit of his burning fighter jet, Vash fired one last round of tazers at Makki’s airbike. But his shots went wild and completely passed over the already damaged little flier. Then he tried desperately to steer his jet out of its roll and alter its course—but the controls were unresponsive.

Vash cursed the Maker when his controls suddenly short-circuited. Sparks, smoke, and fire exploded in the cockpit. He screamed as flames crawled up his arms and toward his face.

Below him, the Khandra fortress loomed closer and closer.

The last thing Vash saw was Chanori, struggling to stand.

“Father!”

Vash screamed and threw his arms over his face as his disabled fighter jet slammed into the stronghold’s viewport.

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In the hills behind the fortress, Akira, Cortez and O’Hara saw the Khandra fortress explode in a dense mushroom cloud of smoke and flame. Chunks of stone and metal debris rained down upon the floor of Jaipur Pass.

A moment later, Makki’s airbike hurtled from the sky, trailing smoke. He leapt free, curled himself into a ball, and hit the ground as the airbike crashed and burned. The three sergeants raced toward the crash site. Makki landed on his paws and ran to greet his friends.

Akira was the first to see Corporal Flix emerge from a cave in the hills behind the burning fortress, holding a zapgun as he snuck up on Makki. 

“Makki—behind you!” she shouted.

Akira tried to free herself from Cortez’s and O’Hara’s supportive embrace. At the same time, the two men brought their tazer rifles into play—a second too late.

Makki turned around just as Flix fired his zapgun.

“Flix—ya bloody swine!” Makki said as a burst of zapper bolts knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling to the ground.

Cortez and O’Hara fired their weapons.

Flix screamed as green tracers cut him in half.

Akira broke free of her two buddies and limped toward Makki. Cortez and O’Hara joined her and knelt at the corpsman’s side. Akira scratched her friend behind his ears. Cortez held onto his paw. O’Hara choked back tears as he cradled Makki’s head in his lap.

“You okay?” Akira asked Makki, struggling to hold back her tears.

“As right—as rain,” he replied in a whisper.

“Easy now, lad,” O’Hara said. “You’re gonna be all right.”

Akira knew the truth of it. She exchanged glances with O’Hara. He shook his head.

Makki smiled at his friends. “Was the—” He coughed up blood. “Was the Colonel warned in time? Was the—regiment saved?”

“Yes, Makki,” Akira said. “You did it. You saved the regiment.”

With a surprised look on his face, Makki said, “Did this mewling,” he stopped, swallowed, and then continued. “Did
I
do this thing?”

“You and no one else,” O’Hara told him.

“
Si
. A most excellent job, Corpsman Doon,” Cortez said.

“Tell Sheel . . .
Semper fi
,” Makki said.

Then he drew his last breath and his eyes glazed over.

“
Semper fi
, Makki-
san
,” Akira said, burying her face in her hands.

O’Hara closed Makki’s eyes and made the Sign of the Cross over his body.

“
Vaya con Dios,
my friend,” Cortez said, his voice choked with grief.

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Standing at half-mast, the three flags over Camp Corregidor danced under a warm and gentle breeze. Saigon Jack, the robot bugler, stood silent and motionless. Company E and the entire Third Regiment stood at attention as a funeral procession of Marine guards and pallbearers, decked out in full dress blues, provided a grim and silent escort to a sad parade of over three hundred coffins.

Sergeant Fernando Cortez blew
Taps
on an ancient bugle as tears ran down his cheeks.

On the viewing stand, Akira and O’Hara openly wept as they saluted the procession. Behind them, Cooper Preston, Colonel Dakota, Major Helm, and a number of Rhajni government officials snapped reverential salutes.

Last in line among that procession of fallen warriors passing in review was the bier holding Makki’s body, supported by Marine pallbearers in full dress uniform.

Makki’s still and silent body had been dressed in the uniform of a Marine.

Behind his bier walked three Felisian priests, each wearing a long, black and scarlet robe.

Sheel Pham, wearing a traditional Rhajni mourning gown of purple and gray, walked behind them. Tears dampened the soft down of her cheeks. Her hands were cupped in front of her, and in her delicate palms rested the origami starship Akira had made.

Chapter Twenty

To Beyond the Farthest Star

Five years later . . .

T
he Heinlein Space Station maintained a steady orbit high above the Earth. Docked in one of it numerous maintenance bays, a three-hundred ton, gleaming white starship of the latest design floated in space like a sailing ship on a gentle sea. This massive vessel resembled a sleek submarine, with two laser turrets, four wings mounted with laser cannons and photon missiles, and a graceful tailfin.

A tiny shuttlecraft cruised alongside the starship.

Inside the shuttle, O’Hara, a little heavier and more space-worn, wore the additional stripe of a gunnery sergeant. Standing next to him, Gunnery Sergeant Cortez, his hair salted with gray at his temples, smoothed his mustache and flicked a speck of lint from his uniform. Together they observed the magnificent starship through the shuttle’s viewport.

Off to the side, Akira, still looking young and pretty, also wore the stripes of a gunny sergeant. Beside her, Cooper Preston looked as handsome and as dapper as ever. He cradled a sleeping baby in his arms. They, too, gazed in awe at the starship.

Sheel Pham stood all alone at another viewport, gazing out into space. No longer a nurse, she now wore the white dress uniform of a doctor in the Imperial Fleet of the Terran Empire.

Once again, she held the origami starship in her delicate hands.

O’Hara turned to Cortez. “You’re a bloody idiot,” he whispered. “Here you win all that money in the Solar Lottery, and what do you do? You up and re-enlist!”

“
Semper fi
,” Cortez said with a smile.

“I heard you were wounded during the final battle with the Drakonians,” Preston said to O’Hara. “How’s the new leg?”

“Works so good, I’m thinking of havin’ the other one cut off so’s I can have me a matching set,” O’Hara said with a big grin.

Pulling up one leg of his pants, he showed Preston the realistic prosthetic leg bearing the traditional Globe and Anchor insignia of the Marine Corps. O’Hara then pressed the sides of his kneecap, and a panel in his calf popped open, revealing a small storage compartment. He reached inside and took out five packets of space rations.

Akira wrapped an arm around Preston’s shoulders. “Mister Preston, by any chance do you know what today’s date is?”

“Yes, Mrs. Preston,” he said. “I believe it’s the tenth of November.”

“Happy birthday, Marines!” Akira said.

“Say, Coop. Would you be wanting to share space rations with us?” O’Hara asked.

Preston smiled and nodded. “I’d be honored, Gunny.”

Keeping one packet for himself, O’Hara handed space rations to Preston and Akira, and placed two in Cortez’s hands. He nudged the Spaniard in the ribs.

“Go on, ya bloody pirate, she’s one of us now,” said O’Hara.

Cortez walked over to Sheel and handed her a packet of space rations. Together, they looked through the viewport at the starship and the vast splendor of outer space.

“Magnifico!”
Cortez said. “What do you think, Captain Pham? She is a real beauty, no?”

Sheel smiled wistfully. “Makki would be so proud.”

“It is indeed a wonderful honor,” said Cortez.

“Aye, that it is, mate. That it is,” O’Hara agreed.

“The Corps’ first starship,” Preston said.

“The first of many,” Akira said, her heart swelling with pride.

Everyone moved closer to the viewports, to get a better glimpse as the shuttlecraft cruised along the port bow of the great starship.

O’Hara wiped his eyes. “I cursed him and insulted him every chance I got,” he said. “But Makki was a bigger man than this one could ever hope to be.”

Emblazoned in blue and gold across the gleaming hull of the newly-constructed starship were the words,
Corporal Makki Doon, U.S.M.C.

The End

ABOUT OUR CREATORS

THE AUTHOR

JOE BONADONNA- started writing in 1970. Since then he’s published a few short stories and one novel. He’s the author of three screenplays, and has co-authored two others with novelist David C. Smith. One of their screenplays,
Magicians,
was a semi-finalist in the 7
th
Annual Writer’s Network Screenplay Competition back in 2000, and is currently in the hands of a young director. Joe is a former board member of the Chicago Screenwriter’s Network, where he lectured on the history of science fiction, horror, and fantasy in films, and discussed the art of writing screenplays.

      A former guitarist and songwriter, Joe was born and bred in Chicago, IL. You can find him on Facebook under
Joe Bonadonna.
He’s also one of the administrators for the Swords and Sorcery League, and the Swords and Planet League; both are Facebook community pages. Most recently he sold a novella,
The Order of the Serpent,
to Weird Tales Magazine.
Three Against the Stars
is his second novel.

      Joe’s picaresque novel of swords and sorcery,
Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser
can be purchased from
www.iuniverse.com
,
www.amazon.com
, and
www.barnesandnoble.com
. It’s also available as an eBook for Kindle.

      Check out his blog at
www.dorgoland.blogspot.com
, or visit him on Google+. Follow him on Twitter!

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COVER ARTIST

LAURA GIVENS  is a Denver-based author and artist.  Her art has graced the covers of numerous publishers’ books and magazines.  She has provided illustrations for Orson
Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Jim Baen’s Universe, Talebones, Science Fiction Trails and Tales of the Talisman
.  Her work may be viewed at
www.lauragivens-artist.com
.

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INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS

PEDRO CRUZ - is a portuguese artist and teacher. His work for Airship 27 includes interior illustrations for
Jim Anthony Super Detective volume one , Jim Anthony Super Detective: The Hunters, Season of Madness and Dr. Watson’s American Adventure
. He writes and draws his webcomic T
he Mighty Enlil
, which can be read weekly at www.pedro-cruz.blogspot.com or www.comicrelated.com.

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