Metal Deep: Infinite - Metal Wing: Episode 5 (3 page)
Read Metal Deep: Infinite - Metal Wing: Episode 5 Online
Authors: GX Knight
I shot passed Star, slid through the door, and gut-tackled Snaps. I was breaking about ten officer conduct rules, but I didn’t care. Snaps was tougher than most of the elite soldiers I had been fed for combat training. There will never be a better fight instructor than growing up on the streets. Before he became a pro Laser Baller, Snaps had been the leader of the second largest gang along the coast. If anybody knew how to fight, it was him. That’s why he made such a good Shield Man out in the arena. I tried to roll off him. I needed to get in behind and put him in choke lock, but he had already sprung up, turned, and was charging to tackle me before I was set to counter.
We both crashed into a pile of “Ughs” and “Ouches.” Star was screaming for us to stop, and before I knew it, there were about a dozen hands ripping us apart.
“Come on, Prodigy, he’ll kill you,” a familiar voice said.
“No way, Prod takes down Snaps, no doubt.” I heard another recognizable voice chime in.
Once I had calmed, and my vision unfocused off Snaps’ paling face, I felt like a complete ass. I was surrounded by scattered “Welcome Home” decorations, and
all
my Boom teammates. Blue streamers were being hung from the corners of the room to the chandelier, swarms of silver balloons had already been blown up and tethered to the tables, and worst of all outside on the balcony’s pool a dance stage was half-assembled just above the water line.
“Hi guys,” I said waving, feeling my face reddening with the sad realization of what I’d done. “I’ve dropped the ball, haven’t I?”
Starshine pushed through the team, and removed all personal space between us. Her stare was piercing, and her trimmed face was unamused, “You have no idea, Rycard.” Things never went well for me when she used my last name.
Just then the doorbell rang, but the door was standing all the way open. Everyone craned their necks in unison like a family of sand gophers to stare at a cake deliveryman who looked a little frightened to be interrupting the obvious fiasco.
“We thought you were him. Otherwise we would have left you out there.” Snaps said as if I was just the biggest moron on the planet.
Star looked like she might very well ignite into the ever-burning space body for which she was named.
Snaps, and my eager-to-help teammates, used the excuse to get away from me and Star. They tripped over each other to assist the deliveryman bring the rolling cake cart inside. Starshine had a look that caused everybody to know fear,
intimately
. Even with my new kill-you-with-my-pinky training, I did not want to go up against the person standing in front of me. I smiled, looked toward the door, and asked “Outside?”
She pointed, and I went. I wasn’t entirely sure she’d follow. I heard the team behind me whistle the team’s death march. We had been known to hum it when facing an opponent we knew to be unbeatable. Never had I felt such futility. I knew this was one match I was going to lose. But then again, I always had a backup plan. I could still win this.
Things were relatively calm out on the sidewalk. Thankfully, Starshine had followed me, wet towel and all, and I had not been relegated to the outdoors to wait like some house pet. I tried to speak, but she just held up a hand of silence. After a few seconds of pinching the upper bridge of her nose and rubbing the pressure points behind her ears, she was ready.
“What are you doing here, Rayce?”
“Thought I would surprise you?” I answered. I tried to sidle in for a hug, but that advance got countered,
quick
.
“Well, you did.” She was fuming, “And now the surprise I’ve been planning for weeks has gone right out of the window. I hope your java, which is a puddled on my clean floor right now, was worth it?”
“Star, I’m sorry, baby.”
“Don’t
baby
me, Rayce.”
It was time to remaneuver and regroup. I knew I could save this, “The truth is, I wasn’t thinking clearly after everything that’s happened while I’ve been away.” Her eyes darted from drilling holes into the pavement and back up to me. “I wasn’t ready for all that they were going to have me do, and you know your dad. He wasn’t going to let them go easy on me.”
She was trying to hold back an understanding smirk.
I continued, “You were all I thought about… all day, every day. Then my first day out on leave rolls around, and you expect me to wait through almost all of it before I get to see your pretty face. How is that fair?”
“Well you have a point there,” she admitted. “I guess I’m sorry I got so mad at you.”
When Rayce Rycard goes in for the game winning goal, he leaves no doubt. She was down, but she definitely wasn’t out. It was time for me to go with the big gun. “The truth is,” I lowered my voice, and I gave her the brow raise she always claimed to find sexy, “I couldn’t wait to see you because of another reason. –One that’s been long overdue.”
I reached down into my pocket, found the small felt box, and dropped to a knee. Immediately, her hands cupped over her mouth in a gasp. She was so preoccupied with staring at the ring-sized box she didn’t realize she had let her towel fall to the ground, nor that she was shivering from the small biting wind that thumped against us. What can I say? I didn’t mind the no-towel part at all.
“Baby,” I tried the word again, this time to better success. “Will you marry me?”
Okay, so that was supposed to come later in the evening when I thought it was just going to be us at dinner, but all situations were fluid. I knew there was not going to be a better chance, and it was my only card left to play to get me totally out of hot water.
She nodded through happy squeals, and I placed the tri-diamond ring on her finger. She pulled me to my feet, threw her arms around me, and then she kissed me, and I mean kissed-me-good. I was going to have to try that diamond thing again next time I came home if it meant that kind of response. Somebody yelled “Get a room” from across the street, but he was just jealous he wasn’t the guy making-out with a hot girl in a bathing suit.
We broke apart just in time to almost get knocked over by the cake guy running out of the doorway to Star’s building.
He seemed nervous. He looked at us, then up to the windows of her home, and then back to his old black van. I would never have known it was his since there were no bakery markings on it. He apologized, and then said, “One of your guys was eyeing the cake,” sweat started to bead across his forehead, “you should really tell them to leave it alone until it’s time to cut it. Our cakes are…
fragile
.”
He said nothing else. He jumped in the van, and then drove away as fast as he could.
“Probably Checker,” I said as we lingered there on the sidewalk. “He’ll sneak a piece if you don’t get up there to stop him. That guys fiends for cake like a fish for water.”
Star cooed and toyed her finger around the edge of my ear as she moved in for another kiss, “Well, the guest of honor knows about the surprise, so who cares if a piece is missing.”
Like I said, the diamond tactic was going to be repeated, and often. We held each other and watched the cars drive by. I pointed at the ugliest pink truck I had ever seen. It turned onto our block, and I just laughed, but Star balked.
“That’s the Cake World truck.” She looked confused.
“Okay?”
“But that’s who I ordered your cake from.”
“Maybe they have another delivery?” I said.
“Could be?”
We watched as the pink mini-truck pulled into the vacant spot left by the black van. A rail-thin lady with short, curly blond hair, and wearing a pink Cake World uniform hopped out staring at her clipboard. Between gum smacks she managed to form some kind of coherent wording, “I’m looking for the Wyld residence. You folks know which one that is?”
“That’s mine.” Star said, still totally bewildered.
Jeena, as her name badge said, kept smacking and talking, “Look, the cancellation for your cake order came too late. We already had it made. I hate to be Little Miss Sour Frosting, but we still have to proceed with the order. That’s the thing with these custom specials. We just can’t get anyone else to buy them.”
“I didn’t cancel the order.” Star said.
“You sure did,” Jeena popped her gum. “Got the message this morning.”
Star got that annoyed look again. Thankfully it wasn’t aimed at me, “But you already delivered it.”
“No ma’am, Sugar Britches. I’ve got your order right here,” Another pop of the gum.
“If that’s your cake…” Star said to me.
I picked up here sentence, “…Then what was just delivered?”
We both turned to look at the building just as the wave of an explosion knocked us, and Jeena the cake lady, to the ground. I rolled over to shield them from the burning debris that fell on top of us.
Dead
… My God they were all dead.
I can remember ringing in my ears. The smell of sulfurous smoke and the vomit-inducing odor of burning flesh filling the air like a net you couldn’t get out of. I can somewhat recall stumbling around and seeing blood, lots of it. My dazed senses barely functioned as they were assaulted by yells, screams, sirens, and heat… more heat than I had ever felt in my entire life.
When I awoke in a hospital I tried to replay the horrific scene over in my mind, but the images were all mashed up into swirls of incognizance. The only thing I could actively recall was the smell, and as I laid in the hospital bed, I wretched into a large plastic bucket the nurses had left for me. The scent of my own vomit was the only thing that was potent enough to push the other awful odor of my burnt, dead teammates away. The nurse tried to take my bucket to clean it. I threatened to kill her if she tried.
The longer I laid there, the more images blinked through my mind like a blurry slideshow. Unfortunately, none of it cropped up in the corresponding order. To add to my frustration, every question I asked was deflected. Every time I started to wake up I was given something to make me sleep. The only things I was sure of was that I had been in some kind of bombing, and that most of my friends were dead.
I learned to quit asking questions because they wouldn’t answered, so I sat and watched as the nurses and doctors moved around me during treatment. I felt as if they were afraid of me, but more than that, they all seemed sad. I’ve spent my fair share of time in hospitals with sprained parts and broken pieces. The obnoxious fake optimism the staff always feeds you when you’re writhing in pain was absent. These nurses were somber, sedate, and silent.
I could only take so much. I had no idea where I was exactly, or how long I had been there. It was time for me to go. Before they could give me more sedatives, I yanked out the monitoring wires, both of my I.V. lines, and I walked past a gaggle of protesting nurses. They were all too afraid to discuss what happened, and I wasn’t willing to wait until the head-shrink could walk me down a recovery road of daisies and donuts. I had to have answers, and nobody was offering any. I had a choice: I could wait there, or I could leave. I chose to leave.
One poor security guard tried to stop me, but I had been a natural when it came to my personal combat training. In fact it had become so ingrained, combat was all I seemed to be sure of at the time. The middle-aged pudgy man fell to the ground holding his windpipe. I left him there gasping. He just had to be still. He’d be fine in a few minutes.
The air was cold, and there was nobody out on the street outside of Mt. Haven Hospital. That was one question answered. Ice pricked at my toes, and wind cut through my hospital scrubs, but the cold dulled upon the realization that the entire city had been put on lock down for the evening. I remembered my reading for military protocols in case of a terror attack. There would be a curfew enforced. There were still so many questions to answer. I had to keep moving and just take in the new facts a piece at a time. I didn’t want to stop, because when I did, I felt more pain from the bandaged burns on my left arm and upper chest. The movement seemed to help. I just wished the movement had kept the stitches that ran down my face, just beside my right eye, from itching as well. That was worse than the sharp ache of my burns.
A couple of blocks passed quickly enough for barefoot burn patient. It was odd to see a city that never shutdown feel like a ghost town. Every cold step was taken with apprehension. I passed alleys and doors expecting someone to jump out at me. Even the thieves were in hiding. Just how bad had things gotten?
Two patrol units approached from a side road I had already passed. They moved at a slow deliberate crawl. I ducked out of sight inside a closed newspaper kiosk as their search lights crept across every inch of every building. I wasn’t sure if they were looking for me, or just looking. Either choice had me nervous. While waiting for them to pass, I took the liberty of helping myself to that day’s paper. I also found some old copies of the previous editions inside a recycle bin.
I had been in the hospital for almost a month. The bombings had happened in more than a dozen locations, and all of them had been at the homes of prominent government and military leadership. I breathed a relieved sigh as I read an old article that reported General Wyld’s daughter was alive despite unnamed serious injuries. In response, the general had been appointed to lead a newly waged war against the Calvarians, who had been blamed for the attack.
There was no telling where Wyld would have Star stashed away. I had to find her, and I had to unleash a reckoning on those bastard Calvarians. Star first though. Going to any of the Wyld “safe” houses would be useless since they obviously weren’t that safe. My private home was too far away. The bomb sites had no doubt been combed-over meticulously by now, so that wasn’t going to help me find the Calvarian responsible. I needed to get back to base, but it was too far to walk. I would need transportation, but with no I.D. and a curfew on, the only place I’d get taken is the clink. I poked my head from the kiosk, saw the two patrol units down at the end of the street, and came up with a very naughty plan for catching a ride.