We fly in silence. I stare at my console and see the diagnostics complaining about the damages it received. Nothing is in critical condition anymore thanks to the Armor Pack Cheq used, but this isn't a status I'd be comfortable fighting in.
The transmission screen displays a new signal that only appears because I've entered a close enough proximity. Planet Thucara is now in view, and I select the new frequency to see what it could be. It's only a faint ping that gets louder the more I approach the planet.
Me (Personal): "Titan, I've picked up a beacon. Maybe it's the emergency message Paxes was talking about."
Titan (Personal): "Yeah, I've got it too on my comms screen. We'll follow that on our descent, it'll make pinpointing the city much quicker."
He takes the lead and enters Thucara's atmosphere. I drift behind him as we enter a cruising speed in suborbital flight. The ping gets louder the more we approach the eastern section of the planet.
Titan hones in on some of the cities found in this area but continues to fly over them. I can feel my heart quicken as I notice his ship's nose start to take a dive for my hometown, Kroyoza.
Me (Personal): "Hey, where are you taking us?"
Titan (Perosonal): "Kroyoza. That's where the ping is coming from. Why, something the matter?"
Me (Personal): "I grew up in Kroyoza."
Titan slows his pace even more as his radio goes silent.
Titan (Personal): "Nev, I see smoke."
Me (Personal): "What? Is something on fire?"
Titan (Personal): "There's...there's hardly anything left standing. I'm landing my ship."
He lands by a clearing on the outskirts of the small town. He's out of the way and I can see the smoke he was talking about.
Kroyoza, the entire town, has been reduced to rubble and fire. I land my ship next to his and hop out of my cockpit. I burst into a full sprint, but I don't even know where I'm going.
I stop when I get close enough to one of the first house fires. If there are any bodies left they would be ash. I look on and don't count a single building, business, or residence still standing. The sky is covered in black smoke, and the only sound is the flames crackling.
"Nev," Titan says as he comes up behind me, "I found the beacon." He holds out a radio beacon marked to send a signal to any that can pick it up.
I lost contact with my family after I went to prison. The last thing they were talking about was moving away from this place. I have no idea whether or not they kept to their word and got out before this happened.
My tongue picks up the taste of ash. I bend down and grab some rubble that I imagine came from my childhood home. My head pounds as I think about how a force so apathetic could wipe away so many lives.
"Nev? We should get back to Motley. I'll call them to hover over Thucara."
"Get back to the Motley? We're doing nothing after finding out hundreds of lives have been vaporized?"
Titan only stands there and stares at the flames. I can see the bright glow in the reflection of his eyes when I get up to face him. "We'll report this back to Paxes and they'll take it from there."
"What about my family? I have to look for them."
"You haven't had contact with them for years. I had the impression you weren't close."
He glances down at my hands, both tightly clenched into a fist. "You don't know anything about that! How is it just business after a whole town got wiped off the records?"
He stands up straight, his chest puffs out, and he keeps his head leveled while casting his gaze down at me. "It wasn't my hometown."
I lunge at his face with a wild punch. My vision sees red. Red from the fire, red from the anger, I hate the entire universe. My knuckles only graze his cheek before he swings an arm sideways and throws my inertia off track. I spin around and he shoves a forearm under my neck and puts me in a chokehold.
My air runs out quickly as I thrash around trying to get out. He presses harder and I begin to really struggle with breathing and talking. "Eat shit, Titan!"
"Calm down or else you'll pass out in the dirt. I'm not dragging your dead weight back to the ship."
I rip and tear at his sleeves but he doesn't give in the slightest. I run out of air and realize how fiery my emotions are flying. I tap his arm to let him know I'm cool and he releases me instantly. I go to drop on my knees, but he catches my elbow with one arm.
After he makes sure I'm standing, he begins walking to his Ucello while activating his P.V.D to call the Motley. I rub my throat and follow. "What does this mean now for the campaign of Paxes? One of their allies has just been hit, and yet none of their forces are close enough to defend the rest of the planet."
He shrugs. "I don't know. We'll deliver our report to the commander and go from there. Maybe he'll send us another job."
I shake my head as doubts enter my mind. I hop into my ship and set a track for Motley. The mothership is on its way to enter the outside of Thucara's atmosphere. I don't wait for Titan, I just head for the sky and activate my 10X-Thrusters to get the hell out of here.
I spot Motley drifting and check my radar for the first and only time to see if Titan was close by. He's right behind me. We enter the Oxy-Gate and hop off. I race to the control room and stand at Titan's chair waiting for him to show up and make the call.
Knight and Cheq enter and take their seats, Titan finally appears and takes the main chair.
"What did you guys find?" Cheq asks.
Titan scratches his chin and shoots a quick glance at me as if to ask if it's all right to talk about the obliteration of my hometown. "Not a damn building is left standing in Kroyoza. It looks like whoever did it was looking to make sure future generations wouldn't even know it existed."
"Completely wiped from the books?"
"I'd say so."
Titan makes the call and the monitor swings down to display the commander once more.
Paxes Commander (Personal): "Lux-Roulette. That took longer than I thought. You did manage to make it to Thucara, right?"
Titan (Personal): "Yeah, we made it there and found a distress signal zoning in on the town of Kroyoza."
He shifts in his seat uncomfortably.
Titan (Personal): "It was nothing short of horrendous, commander. The whole town is gone, blasted to bits, the only things left are fire and rubble."
The commander nods his head and looks away. He beckons for someone to come close to him. A uniformed soldier appears and leans into the commander's mouth as he receives information from his whispers. After the commander leans back and nods, the soldier salutes and hurries off.
Paxes Commander (Personal): "That's unfortunate news. I'll let the sector's sentry know what the distress signal was about. Your credits will be transferred to you momentarily. Thank you for your help, Lux-Roulette."
"Wait!" I yell and approach Titan's chair.
Me (Personal ): "Aren't you going to find out who did this!? An entire town and its people are destroyed! You're not going to just kick that under the fridge, are you?"
Titan is taken back but doesn't stop me. The commander raises a brow.
Paxes Commander (Personal): "While the loss is a great tragedy, we simply do not hold the numbers to put an investigation on the matter. We're barely holding off the Angel Vanguard as is, placing troops further away from the frontline will weaken our defenses."
I get closer to the screen, my head splits trying to contain the amount of annoyance it's experiencing.
Me (Personal): "Bullshit! Those people put faith in the Paxes Defense Force to keep them safe, and they died with the last thoughts of hoping the army they pay for was coming from the sky to save them! I'm not---"
Suddenly my arm gets pulled as Knight drags me off camera kicking and screaming; screaming until he puts a hand over my mouth.
Titan (Personal): "Sorry, commander, he's a little fired up from the recent missions. Thanks for the credits, we'll be on our way now."
He ends the transmission and waits for the monitor to swing back up before leaning back in his chair.
Knight finally lets me go and I stomp up to Titan. "This is messed up. All of it! I'm leaving right now to see what I can find, and I'm taking the Ucello with me!"
He squeezes the bridge of his nose and slumps his shoulders. "You're not leaving, Nev, and we're not letting this go."
I back off. "Huh?"
"Paxes might not have the numbers, or even necessarily care, but we're not tied down to orders."
Cheq gets out of his chair and joins the circle. "We taking a mission that doesn't promise pay?"
"We are. I understand if you don't want to work for free."
Cheq wraps an arm around me and squeezes my bicep. "For Nev? I suppose this could be a labor of love."
Knight walks up and pats my hair. "Don't worry, child, we'll catch who did this. We'll make them pay severely."
Titan looks at me, never getting up from his chair. "Well, kid, you got a full crew. What do you think of that? Now if nobody has anything to do right now, let's meet up in the briefing room and come up with a plan."
I shake my head and breathe out the breath I was holding. "Wow, thank you. I don't know what to say."
"The thank you is good enough for now. I'll send the bill for any excess charges later."
Given the nature of our job, I'm stumped on whether or not this is a joke.
We head to the briefing room together; a smaller part of the ship that holds various physical and digital documents about everything we've done and everyone we've met. We've been doing this for several years, so the collection has grown to a grand one.
A long table sits in the middle surrounded by computers and filing cabinets stacked against every wall. Titan leans on the middle of the table and we gather around him.
"Now, who do we know that has the power to wipe out an entire town without leaving a trace?"
Cheq grabs a folder and lays it out on the table. "The Angel Vanguard is the obvious choice, but my question is why they'd do it and how would they pull it off without tripping Paxes' alarms. Kroyoza is such a small place, and I doubt they'd send their own troops to wipe out civilian lives. And, technically, Paxes Defense Force could do it, but friendly fire doesn't suit their style."
Knight opens the folder. "Does that mean that the Angels could've hired some mercs to do it for them? Paxes hires us for their military operations, it's not that uncommon for armies to look for outside sources."
Titan grabs a few files himself and lays them down next to the Angel Vanguard folder. "If that's the case, we've got a lot of mercenary groups to consider." He looks at the Beta-Ray file and tosses it to the side. "Maybe not them. The only thing Bouncer is capable of wiping out is his lunch in less than ten seconds."
I sift through the folders that Titan laid out. They're all mercenary groups with the members listed below:
Gauss Beam
Light Year
Heat Wave
Beta-Ray
N-TCK
Lux-Roulette
Sky Chasers
"We've got a file on ourselves? Since when?" I ask.
Titan slides the folder to himself and opens it. "Oh, since I continuously hire and lose crew members. I wanted to keep track of that and the missions we've done." He clears his throat. "Everyone grab a file and see if something catches your eye. We're looking for mercenary groups with the firepower to level towns."
We do and spend some quiet time reading to ourselves. Cheq puts his file on the table. "What about Sky Chasers? That crew is ruthless and filled with ace pilots."
"Can you imagine catching one though? That's a lot of ammo spent, a lot of armor damaged. Maybe we can sneak up on them?" Knight says.
Cheq wags his finger. "Actually we don't have to work at all. One of their members, Semper, has been arrested and is held at the space colony, Central."
"How do you know that?" I ask.
"Easy. We're the ones who turned him in, remember?"
"I don't."
"You don't have to. The final result is that he's there and we're clear to go pick him up whenever we like. As the law of mercenaries goes, we can remove another merc from prison if we hand them back within twenty-four hours with no permanent damage."
Titan rubs his chin. "Right. The Rat Pack Treaty between the mercs and the governments. It sounds like we have our start, what do you say, Nev?"
"I'll, uh, help Cheq fix my ship before leaving again."
He nods. "Good call."