Free Devon's Blade by Ken McConnell Page A

bottle. It looked to me like he wanted to talk about something but wasn’t sure how to breach it.
    “What’s on your mind?” I asked.
    He stared out at the waves and sighed.
    “My rotation’s about up. Be going back to Selene soon.”
    “Congrats!”
    He didn’t seem too enthused about it. Not like a normal person would be. Hell, if I were a month short I’d be hard pressed to concentrate on anything.
    He continued to stare at the beach and remained silent. I decided not to press him and did the same. Finally, after a few more minutes of silence he spoke.
    “The boys at Ops have been hearing rumors that the Red Ace is back on station.”
    I didn’t expect that. I waited for him to continue.
    “Mainly a bunch of scattered Intel about a new shipment of KiVs from the homeland. Sounds like they are just replacing the ones you guys have been taking out. But every time the enemy even so much as farts our Intel guys get all jittery. You weren’t here the last time the Blue Bastard was flying, but it was not fun. I lost almost as many people to his attacks as we lost pilots. Probably more.”
    I took it all in and acted like he was just talking about home or something. I refused to be intimidated by enemy movements or legends.
    “I know you’re not the type of person to be intimidated by the enemy, but I’m here to tell you that you should be.”
    He looked right at me and his eyes bored into my soul. I felt a chill even though the temperature was in the nineties.
    “Look, Chief. My folks can handle one hot-shot enemy pilot. We’re better trained and better equipped now than we’ve ever been. If the Red Ace is back, bring him on. My people can take him out.”
    He shook his head in resignation and took another drink of his water.
    “I wish I had your confidence, ma'am.”
    I stood up and brushed the sand off my legs. The afternoon sortie would be returning soon and I had to get back and change. I offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. Still holding his rough textured hand in mine I looked up into his gray eyes.
    “You just keep those birds flying and we’ll protect the base. Okay?”
    He gradually let out a grin and shook his head as he let go of my hand and we walked back to the main base. As we came along the edge of the tarmac on the wooden sidewalk I could see several Swift's approaching from the sea. One of them was trailing smoke. I glanced at Chief who grunted and trotted off towards the maintenance hangar.
    The base alarm went off indicating possible air raid. I started to jog to the Ops shack as I saw the alert pilots scrambling. Inside Ops Karvuk was standing before the alert board, listening to air traffic control. She motioned for me to come over and pointed at the board.
    “Bravo Flight returning all shot up. Lost two with a third coming in on fire.”
    “Who’s Lead?”
    “Sweetness.”
    “Who’d we lose?” I asked.
    “Unknown, I think it’s Stoker on fire,” Karvuk guessed.
    I rushed into my office and quickly threw on my flight suit. Karvuk shouted so I could hear. “It’s Hilltop on fire, we lost Stoker and Skip!”
    I swore as I zipped up and headed back outside to watch the approach. Karvuk joined me, shielding her eyes with her hand.
    Hilltop’s Swift was charred on one side with multiple holes in the fuselage and wing. It came in low and feathered back for a hard touch down that snapped one of his skids. The heavy starfighter hit the tarmac and the landing struts crushed under the weight. Rescue crews directed foam on the fire as his canopy was blown off. In seconds they had him out of the cockpit and dragged away from the burning wreck. Sweetness circled wide and came down closer to the flight line. She pushed up her canopy and scrambled to the tarmac just as two enemy KiV’s buzzed the base.
    Everyone dove for cover except for me. I stood there staring at the enemy fighters as they thundered over my head.
Those were not KiVs
. In seconds the Alert birds attacked on the