THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

eight

Southern Ute Reservation, en route to the Nevada Desert
2039

━━━━

THE SILENCE was damning once he'd put on the headphones, the rumbling of the choppers's rotors fading into his skin than deep inside his head.

Honestly, Lale had too many thoughts in there for much noise to penetrate, but he reckoned it was important to keep a level head in such a situation. He was abandoning all he had ever known for an opportunity that would probably get him killed.

He made a mental note to try and be more optimistic in future.

Lale flinched as the pilot's voice echoed in his ears. "We're heading out to Nevada now, Staff Sergeant. Any last-minute requests?" Blaming his twitchiness on his nerves, he replied with a mutter, his fingers brushing against the intercom button while grit swirled around them in outside the window. Beyond the dirt, Sergeant Major Fereldson had lifted one solitary hand up; a final good-bye. He doubted he'd ever see her again, and a pang of sadness struck his sensitive conscience.

"Remind me why I'm doing this again, please, sir."

The pilot chuckled as they lifted from the ground, and the shaking of Lale's bones intensified. "No need to worry, Staff Sergeant. ERAA takes good care of its adventurers, and you'll be settled in at the base in no time." There was silence for a moment as the pilot fiddled with the controls. Lale eyed him from his own seat, having chosen the one opposite the door and making it unmistakably clear that he did not trust his only other companion. He could see everything the other man was doing — not that that would help much, in the case that the chopper would suddenly go down and go boom.

He didn't know how to fly a helicopter.

"Yeah, about that," Lale responded when the pilot leant back in his seat, apparently satisfied with their course. The mountains loomed beside the metallic hull, and he paused for a moment to marvel the dusty giants.

"Where exactly is the base?"

The pilot chuckled again, sparing a glance back at the marine. His face was pale and hairless with youth, and he was perhaps younger than Lale himself. "Ever heard of Area 51, Staff Sergeant?"

━━━━

Lale honestly wouldn't have been surprised if a pixie had popped into existence beside him, screaming in his ear: "Welcome to nutzoid land!", while he clutched onto the seat below him as the helicopter dipped to land.

After nearly fifteen hours being tossed about in that sardine can, he would not have minded being deployed back onto the Caribbeans' Conquest. And he hated being in the navy. But it also felt like nothing could surprise him anymore.

Lale did a mental checklist of what things he had thought would be impossible the day before (which were now very possible). First off, time travel existed. Secondly, that he'd be recruited to be a part of the armed military services that would eventually time travel. And, the thing that shocked him to his core, even hours later; that Fereldson could back out of a mission.

And don't forget about the Area 51 part, he thought, as if he could. There was no doubt it was a real place, not after the show that went down by the time he was two — riots that ripped down the security-guard fencing and only contributed to America's decline. How could the public trust a government that hid secrets that were worth killing for? And kill the military officers did. A hundred and three casualties, if he remembered correctly. And more than fifty percent of those were fatalities.