Free On Silver Wings by Evan Currie

lot of them, we just don’t know. We were scattered when the colony was hit. Some of the ranchers and their people refused to leave their homes, maybe some of the others are with them.”

    Sorilla nodded, having expected as much. “The situation’s changed, we’re going to need to contact them.”

    Samuel shook his head as he leaned back in his roughhewn chair, “What’s going on, Sergeant?”

    “I need to contact everyone I can, locate all the people possible.”

    “That doesn’t answer the question,” Samuel said, “I thought you said that you were scouting places for a relief landing.”

    “There’s not going to be a landing,” Sorilla replied flatly, “Not any time soon.”

    Samuel stared for a moment, “What happened?”

    “I’ve been ordered to shift to long term planning, Mr. Becker. I don’t know all the details, but it’s fair to say that things have escalated somewhere.”

    “My God,” he muttered, shaking his head. “How long? I mean... We don’t have the supplies here to last long.”

    Sorilla nodded, she’d been briefed on the world before insertion. Hayden’s World was a lush jungle, but almost none of its plant or animal life was edible to humans. Even now the people here were living on ration packs and hoarded food stuffs they’d managed to save from the colony site as they were run out. Neither of those would last long, however, and when they ran out they’d starve to death, even if they tried to eat whatever wasn’t toxic to human body chemistry in the local jungle.

    Starving to death, even on a full stomach, wasn’t a pleasant way to go.

    “The ranchers were growing edible crops, right?” She asked.

    Samuel nodded, but his expression was pained. “Some of them, yes... but for their own table mostly, our food production is in the aeroponics bays we established in orbit. Production there was far higher than we could possibly have hoped to maintain Hayden side.”

    She nodded in understanding, “Well that’s going to have to change. Call your best trackers and pathfinders, Mr. Becker. We’ve got a month, maybe, before we’re in trouble here,other places may be even tighter. That’s not much time to work with, let’s make the most of it.”

    He pushed his hair back along his forehead, nodding slowly, “I... I’ll gather them.”

    “Thank you,” she said, standing up and walking to the door of the shelter.

    Outside she paused, drawing a bundle of green cloth from her vest and carefully unfolding it before setting the beret over her head.

    There was a war to fight now, not just a scout recon. All she had were the colonists as backup, but there was a reason why they sent her and her team. The silver wings she wore on her vest weren’t for show, and these people were certainly the oppressed. They’d just have to learn to help her, help them.

    De Oppresso Liber
.

    No one said it would be easy.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

Flight of the Angels

Chapter 1
    USV Los Angeles

    On Station, Outer Hayden System

    Vice Admiral Jorgen Sweet looked out on the distant world, its reflected light little more than that of a star, and wrapped his hands around the railing bolted to the observation room walls until his knuckles whitened. At fifty-three years of age, Sweet had never grown used to the waiting that was a primary responsibility of a man in uniform, and when he knew the waiting was coming to an end the time just seemed to drag even more.

    The half hiss, half grind of a deck door sliding open caused the Admiral to turn his head as Captain Richardson twisted through the door and pushed off the wall. The Captain glided over to him, hooking a grip a few feet away, and swung into an orientation that roughly matched the Admirals.

    Jorgen suppressed a smile, working in zero gravity had an interesting effect on rank and rank courtesy. Most officers and enlisted on the Los Angeles didn’t take the time to reorient with each other, the free fall environment