D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

“Clear away!” Kasha shouted.

Boon and I backed off as Kasha toggled the engine switches. The whining sound of the crystal-driven rotors coming to life was like music.

“Get in!” I shouted to Boon.

As he jumped in, I sprinted back out through the opening doors. I ran to the platform edge to see that the klees below had reached our tree. How much time did we have? Seconds? It was then that I heard another sound. Actually, what I heard was a sound that had stopped. I spun around to see that the hangar doors weren’t moving anymore. A second later, with a grinding of gears, they began to close! I sprinted back inside and looked up at the control room to see two more klees at the panel. They didn’t need to hurry after us. They knew what we were trying to do. So long as they got those doors closed, we wouldn’t be able to get the gig out, and they’d have us.

I ran for the open-cockpit gig and jumped in. There were four seats. Two in front, two in back. Boon was already in back. Kasha was in the left-hand pilot’s seat.

“This is going to be close,” I said as I buckled in.

“We are going to have to lift off inside the hangar,” she said. “Very dangerous.”

“It’s going to be a lot more dangerous if those doors close much more,” I pointed out.

The overhead rotor was now humming. I saw Kasha glance ahead to the closing doors.

“We won’t have time to get the side rotors up to speed,” she said soberly.

“Can we still fly?” I asked.

“Yes, but only straight ahead. I will not be able to maneuver much. Either we are lined up properly in the opening, or not.”

I looked back up to the control room to see that more klees had arrived. Many more. Dozens of red-shirted Ravinian guards had come through the back door to the control room and were flooding down the stairs.

“The longer we wait the smaller that opening gets,” I said.

Kasha’s response was to pull back on the control stick. With a lurch the gig lifted off the deck. I winced, as if that would have done anything if we crashed into another gig. Or flew too high. Or slammed into the hangar door. I winced anyway.

The ground-floor door burst open at the rear of the hangar. More klees were on the way in. “Now, Kasha,” Boon said calmly.

Kasha pushed the joystick forward. The nose of the gig dipped a few degrees, and we floated forward. Without lateral control, the gig felt like a puppet on a string. We swayed left, then right. Kasha couldn’t compensate. We spun a few degrees clockwise and found ourselves moving sideways toward the rapidly diminishing opening.

“We gonna make this?” I asked skeptically.

“We’ll know soon” was her obvious answer.

I felt the gig lurch. A klee had jumped up and was hanging from the skid below.

“Take him for a ride,” I ordered.

Kasha coaxed the gig forward. We got closer to the opening. I tried to gauge how much time we had and if the space was big enough, as if my calculations had any impact whatsoever on what was happening. We were in Kasha’s hands. Or her paws. The gig slid to the right. It was no longer a case of whether or not we could make it through the opening, because we weren’t headed for the opening anymore. It must have been the weight of the klee hanger-on that threw us off.

“Uh, Kasha,” I said, as if she didn’t see the exact same thing.

We were seconds from slamming into the door when Kasha said, “I have lateral control.”

The rotors to the sides had finally gotten up to speed. Kasha jammed the stick to her left. The gig swung back, maybe a little too far. I held my breath. It was like we were going around a speedway race track, making banked turns. We hung up to the left for a second, then shot down to our right and forward. I was still holding my breath when we slipped through the opening.

“Woooohhhhh!” Boon shouted with joy.

We cleared the platform and were high in the air over Leeandra. Kasha took us up very high, very fast. So fast that the g-force slammed me down into the hard seat. That was okay. I wanted to be out of range of anything the Ravinians might throw at us. I also feared that they might come after us again with the other gigs. The slow-moving hangar doors had suddenly become our friends, because by the time they opened them again, we’d be long gone. I relaxed. We had made it.

Suddenly the gig lurched and bounced. “What was that?” I asked nervously. “Are we losing power?”

“No,” Kasha answered calmly. “I believe that was the klee falling off from below.”

Oh. Yeah. Right. That guy. I hoped it was a dado.

“You remember where we’re going?” I asked.

“Like it was yesterday,” she replied.

Kasha took us up high over Leeandra into the beautiful blue skies of Eelong. Looking out of the open cockpit gave us a three-sixty view of the territory. It was just as stunning as I’d remembered it. The jungle canopy that was now below us looked like a sea of green clouds. I let myself enjoy the view. There wasn’t anything I could do just then, except to catch my breath and wonder what we would find when we hit Black Water.

Seeing the familiar jungles of Eelong made me think back to something Nevva had said. When she heard that Saint Dane was going to launch a dado attack on the exiles, she was genuinely upset. Besides not wanting to harm the exiles, she said something to the effect of “that territory was to remain untouched.” I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but thinking about it and seeing that Eelong was pretty much the same Eelong as before, I wondered if Saint Dane had told Nevva that Eelong would evolve without much interference. Earth had been devastated. The other territories were in different stages of decay and destruction. But not Eelong. I could tell that by looking over the side of the gig as we sailed overhead. Leeandra had become more modernized, but the jungles below were unspoiled. Was it possible that Nevva held on to the hope that not all of Halla would be crushed by Saint Dane in order to fulfill his vision?

Nevva bought into Saint Dane’s philosophy. That much was for sure. But I don’t believe she was evil. Misguided, maybe. A little too willing to achieve her goals at the expense of others, definitely. But she wasn’t an evil person. If Saint Dane promised not to harm Eelong, then he had broken his promise to her. Who knows? Was that one act enough to make Nevva realize that Saint Dane’s way of thinking was wrong? She was fiercely loyal, but how loyal can you be to someone who betrays you? In the end, Nevva chose to help us. To help her mother. Her natural mother. For that, she paid with her life. I still didn’t know if her help would make a difference, but if there’s some small ray of light that came from this whole mess, it’s that Nevva Winter became the person her mother always wanted her to be. She became a Traveler who tried to defend Halla. Wherever she is, assuming she is anywhere, I hope she knows that she made the right choice.

“Look there!” Boon called out.

We had been flying for a few hours. I was daydreaming, lost in my thoughts. Or maybe I was dreaming for real. Whatever. While I was out, we had left the jungle and reached the miles of wasteland that separated the vegetated regions and the majestic, rocky mountains where Black Water was hidden. Looking over the side of the gig, I was met with a frightening sight.

We had caught up with the Ravinian army. They marched below us, moving toward the mountains. It was a formidable force. There had to be thousands of klees, all marching in formation. Half the force wore the uniforms of the Ravinians guards. Many carried the red flags of Ravinia. I wondered if they were all dados. The other half wore dark green, lightweight armor. These were soldiers from Leeandra. On their backs they carried their weapons. They had staves, lassos, and bolas.