Finding Darkness

Chapter 7 Protector

He stood his fighter on its nose and cut his thrusters to nothing, watching the tiny pinpricks of light streak past his canopy on all sides. In the vacuum of space, it matters little what direction his craft faced? His control surfaces meant little to nothing here. With no atmosphere to work against his ailerons and stabilizers could not steer his craft. Tiny maneuvering jets spaced across the fighter sleek surface served to move the fighter in the desired direction. He moved his control stick to starboard; jets fired on the port nose of the craft and swung the nose to the right.

Maneuverability of this kind was unheard of within a planet's atmosphere. He could disengage main thrusters, spin his fighter one hundred and eighty degrees to his rear, and he could maintain his speed at his original course. With nothing to act against his craft, it would stay on the same course, at the same speed, until acted upon by an outside force.

With only six months of practice, the controls were still new to him. But with all the years he'd had in terrestrial aircraft, he could fly the new fighter as well as could be expected, so he brought it into final approach for landing very slowly.

"This is Falcon, zero, zero, one. I am on final approach to hangar bay three forty-six. Requesting permission to come aboard." Joshua Caleb Prey asked through his communication system.

"Permission granted. Just get into the grove and we'll have you aboard in no time." The voice of Flight deck control officer Mike Jensen came over the comms.

"Nice to be back Chief," then under his breath. "How's the Captain?"

"Pissed, he wants to know where you've been."

"I was afraid of that. Well, he's going to blow a fuse when I tell him what happened." Joshua said with a sigh.

"Your brother didn't come back, did he?"

"How did you guess? Something about wanting to check out a contact he was tracking."

"Oh yeah, the Captain's going to love that."

Bringing his fighter into alignment with the mouth of the gigantic hanger bay opening, Joshua felt his fighter's control go slack in his hands. He was now a passenger in his own fighter. The ship's main computer now controlled the craft he was in. In this way, the entire landing process took a matter of seconds. With the precision that only a computer could pull off, the fighter was maneuvered through the atmospheric containment field and into its assigned spot on the fight deck.

The instant the wheels hit the deck, Joshua popped his canopy and lept out of his cockpit seat. Hitting the deck, he looked for Chief Jensen. He found him standing near the flight deck control center.

"Chief, where is he?" He called.

"Inside, and he's not happy."

"Who told him?"

"No one on my line." Jensen shot back, looking hurt. "But it wasn't very hard to figure out what happened when he sent two fighters down to the planet and only one came back."

"Point taken," he grasp Jensen by the shoulder. "Wish me luck."

"Oh, come on, he's not going to eat you for breakfast."

"With that thing he's got on now, sometimes I wonder." Chief Jensen poked Joshua in the arm.

"You're wearing one of them too, aren't you?"

"Good point. But a little extra luck never hurt."

"Are you coming or what?" Tamar heard Malachi call from up ahead of her and growled low to herself, hoping he wouldn't hear her.

How was he able to keep up this kind of pace? It had been two days since her unfortunate escapades at the water's edge. Since then, it was as if he was trying to run her into the ground. They would move for seven, maybe eight hours at a stretch, rest for maybe an hour, then hit the trail again. During the daylight hours, their movements were slow and deliberate as to not attract attention. At night, on the other hand, at night Malachi set a pace that Tamar thought would burn her legs and feet off. She was in top physical shape, her body honed to the razor's edge of perfection, yet after six hours of running beside, or most of the time behind him, she was like a rung out rag.