Empyrean Iris

Chapter 33

Sunny's ears were overcome with the roaring of an overly crowded launch field as four marines and one Drev staggered down the rusted shuttle ramp and onto sweet solid tarmac. One of the marines rested his hands on his knees as he leaned over the rusted metal ground beneath his feet breathing heavily.

Sunny had her head lifted towards the sky forcing her vision to stabilize from the flight.

The marine gagged as the others groaned.

Sunny was not like the humans, she couldn't throw up. But she was capable of passing out, an event that was quickly becoming an inevitability.

Behind them, boots rattled on the ramp, and they turned to watch captain Vir walk down the cold metal, each step measured and sure where the others had barely been able to walk. He had his head turned over his shoulder looking back up the ramp, "Yeah and your driving is shit."

He barely looked inconvenienced.

The Tesraki gave him a rude gesture.

"Yeah you are definitely not getting a tip from me, asshole." As soon as he stepped from the ramp, there was a sharp hiss as the doors began to close.

Sunny was almost envious of how sure-footed he was looking around at the rest of the marines with his hands on his hips, one corner of his mouth pulled up into a smile. She was beginning to learn that this particular human was not very good at holding onto anger, despite the way he had behaved in those first couple of days.

"Guy drives like he had the joystick up his ass."

"Is that why it's called a joystick?" Ramirez wondered, still leaning heavily on his knees.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you say that." Captain Vir frowned, "Seriously, I've flown paper airplanes better than that."

The marine, named Maverick, tilted her head back towards the sky, "Would it kill you to look even a little bit sick?" She wondered motioning to his perfectly quaffed self as the others rumbled about their faces taken on a very strange shade of green.

Captain Vir just smiled, "Nope."

Sunny's head was getting a little less dizzy, and she was finally able to raise her eyes to her surroundings, quickly running a critical eye over the small launch field, scanning for any incoming danger.

It was hard to see anything at all past hundreds of shuttles packed together in disorganized rows under the darkened night sky large next to small, rusting and rickety next to sleek black machines resembling predatory beasts more than they did machines

There was no organization, only chaos. And bodies hurried through the open rows of ships weaving in and out through shadow as engines ignited –to close for comfort—next to their heads.

By all rights the field should have only been able to manage twenty shuttles at a time for proper regulation.

There must have been over a hundred.

The field was lit from all directions and angles with thousands of different lights from thousands of different locations. Incandescent yellow bulbs set into sockets next to bright blue spirit lights clashed with each other until the world around them was mismatched, like a jumble of multicolored moss stuffed into a ball.

Sunny had never seen anything like it.

She turned in a slow circle keeping her eyes out for danger even as she wondered at the strangeness of it all. Since her trip from home she had never seen anything like it separated so vastly from the rolling hills and open planes of her planet with its distant volcanoes spilling smoke into the sky.