Camp Sunrise: Excelsior
Posted on 31 Mar 2023 @ 5:23pm by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Olivia Winetrout
Edited on on 25 Apr 2024 @ 4:01pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, The Island
Timeline: MD09 ~0515, Concurrent with "Camp Sunrise: Follow the Rabbit"
1543 words - 3.1 OF Standard Post Measure
Ibis creeped closer to the gate to try and get a glimpse of what Wallace had been seeing. There was the ship, with the severely angled wings almost touching the ground. She could see just beneath it, what seemed like a shadow of legs, only they had volume to them. There was a clang and she saw Wallace scurry under the ship, forcing the Pyrryx to walk around the long way to follow him. Ibis had never seen the governor before, only heard Wallace describe it from having seen it at a distance years ago. She pressed herself and the kids flat against the wall where the Pyrryx approached from as it stormed just on the other side of the gate, the outline of it strangely breaking and reforming while the body occluded all light— ‘stealth armor’, Ibis’ reasoning mind told her while her unsettled gut screamed ‘dark magic’. Ibis and the kids instinctively held their breath as the nightmare passed over them, focused as it was on Wallace.
When it had passed, there was an explosion. That was her signal, Ibis decided, and yanked Ikemba along, Olivia keeping close behind them. They dashed across the platform and up the open ramp, disappearing within. Ibis paused inside, afraid there might be someone already manning it. But the space beyond the boarding ramp was unoccupied.
Olivia was agape, overcome by the terror of the fabled Blacker-than-night Pyrryx, the Z’ala god that she had heard so many horror tales of by her friends, and now… its spaceship. The second one tonight, and she was inside of it. Spaceships were real.
Satisfied they were alone, Ibis hiked Ikemba onto her hip and made straight for the cockpit. It was already lit, the startup of the engine already running. She dropped into the stool that looked like it served as the pilot’s seat and brought Ikemba up onto her knees, the flight recorder and letters sandwiched in her lap between them. Then she ripped a sheet of kelp from a pin on the inside of her shirt, not bothering to unfasten it and leaving a tear through her collar. She unrolled it and started making out the alien symbols according to her cheat sheet.
“Olivia- you’re my co pilot. That’s your seat—” Ibis pointed to where Wallace was supposed to have been. “There should be a double yellow triangle. A little one inside of a big one. Hit that twice.”
She climbed onto the second stool. It had a sort of give, or spring to it which she wasn’t ready for. Her hands hovered over the board full of weird, glowing lights. She’d never seen anything like it, ever before. But triangles she knew. She found it, a triangle with a second one inside of it glowing yellow, and double tapped it before immediately pulling her hand away, afraid that the light would be hot like fire. She was surprised that the light was glossy and cool.
There was a hiss behind them and Olivia jerked to look- the ramp they had come in by was sealing.
Ibis found the engine controls, switching through a sliding display until it matched the display marks on her cheat sheet. There was a yoke fitted under the console and she released the latch that locked it down. It didn’t adjust to a comfortable height, but then she was about two or three feet shorter than a Pyrryx… She held it by the bottom of the rung and Ikemba put his small hands beside hers.
“Alright, hold on!” She shouted as she brought the throttle up on the maneuvering thrusters and swung the ship in a circle hovering a few feet before picking a skyward angle over the buildings and leaning back. There was a growing thrum buzzing through the floors and walls.
As they pressed on over the complex, Ibis couldn’t help but turn her head to make him out on the ground below. Wallace was nothing but a small dark shape with a long shadow, ducking between walls for cover while the Pyrryx was picking itself up from the explosion of the bomb Wallace had dropped to provide her the cover to get aboard ship and off the ground. And then she was beyond them, over the volcano.
“Where Walla?” Ikemba started to cry. “Where Walla, where Walla?”
She kissed Ikemba on the head and put her hands over his. “He went to work, baby, he went to work.” Ibis and Ikemba pulled back on the yoke together.
The nose of the vessel responded smoothly, scooping upwards into a sky broiling with angry electric energy, the clouds spilling buckets and buckets over the viewing screen, the water forced back in wind driven rivulets, obscuring the view. Or was it her own eyes with the driving tears? She couldn’t tell the difference.
“Olivia! Listen to me! This is important!” She was shouting as she watched a flickering altitude reading, pitch and yaw, a small visual directional aid actually doing a great deal to help as she was trying her best to make out the Pyrryx numerical system and match things to the symbols on her cheat sheet. “Beneath the triangles, there’s a hash tag looking thing—”
Olivia waved her arms in frustration. “What’s a hash tag?!”
“It’s… Tic Tac Toe!”
Olivia knew tic tac toe. Wallace used to play it with her. They made up lots of bizarre versions, but she knew the basic board. Searching, her eyes lit up as she recognized the symbol. It was askew but similar.
“Do I touch it?”
“It’s the running lights. The lights on the outside of the ship.” Ibis didn’t dare to touch the alien communication system, for fear of messaging the wrong people by mistake. This was her best idea for a work around. “We're going to make them blink on and off. It’s an old way of talking called Morse code. The Pathfinder will see it and will know we’re friends.” She hoped. With any luck they wouldn’t get torpedoed before someone made out the flashing. Ibis just kept that to herself though. It wasn’t going to help Olivia to be concerned with it.
They were in the storm now and the ship was being buffeted with high winds. She adjusted as best she could to prevent being thrown into a spin. The controls were more than difficult, flickering in and out with the interference from the storm’s charge. A terrible rattle began, until it had a feverish pitch, and then– bam – something ripped off the side of the ship, and bangged nose to rear along the fusilage. For the split second it passed in the rear view imaging, it looked to Ibis like an open panel cover. Had it been important? Well. It was gone now, whatever it was.
She continued explaining to Olivia what to do with the hashmark. “When I say ‘short’, press it on and off again quickly. When I say ‘long’, press it on, let it stay a moment and then off again. So short— tap tap. Long— tap, wait, tap. Okay?”
“Short means tap tap. Long means tap, wait, tap.” She repeated, “Okay!” Olivia held her fingertips together, both hands over the hash symbol, prepared to press it.
“Short. Short. Short. Long… Long… Long… Short. Short. Short.” Ibis fed her the pattern until Olivia was calling it out together with her, recognizing it by heart, and tapping it out herself. “That’s right, keep it going, don’t stop! Don’t stop signaling!” Ibis fought the elements as hard as she could. The way the electrical interference was affecting the instrumentation, she knew it was a sensors nightmare, likely preventing them from being detected by anyone. Why did there have to be a storm, tonight of all nights?
“One problem at a time, Xeri, one at a time,” Ibis repeated to herself, stealing a sense of calm from Major Wallace’s combat demeanor.
She needed to get over the storm for the Pathfinder to see them from orbit. But climbing became nearly impossible with the buffeting cross-winds trying to drive the ship back to the ground below. All she could do was fight the controls with her teeth grit, and hope against hope to punch through, to see the stars again. To get to a transporter. To find his signal in all the noise. To rescue the man she loved.
It occurred to her she wasn’t sure she’d ever said it to him out loud. Over the years, they’d just come to love each other and know it. He’d waxed all poetic, but had she actually ever told him? He knew! He knew, of course he knew! But she was leaving him behind! Was he even still alive now? She couldn’t tell, she couldn’t reach out to sense and be sure— Struggling to keep the kite in the air, internally her heart cried out as if she could be telepathic again, as if she could reach on lightning from the sky to the ground.
I love you, I love you, I love you
