A New Mission: Ash to Fire

Rainy Night

[Flashback to a cold and rainy night when the recoms and Spider were together]

Pandora had monsoons and the rain typically brought reduced temperatures, especially at night. The recoms, after a day of learning how to be Na'vi with help from Spider, found themselves resting under a massive raised tree trunk for shelter on this cold, rainy evening. At night, they rotated guard watches, and Miles, despite being the commanding officer, was happy to take a shift to alleviate his six remaining recoms and let them rest. It was a time for thinking, the peace and quiet allowing him to go to war with the intrusive thoughts about his existence, undisturbed.

Miles was sitting on a boulder with his rifle on his lap under the entrance of the tree trunk, just inside from the rain. The sounds of the rapidly falling water droplets hitting the plant life and the ground of the forest rattled out in the air, intermixed with animal noises ringing out in the night. Miles looked out into the bioluminescent forest, its intensity almost magnified by the rain, the glow standing out even more under the darker sky with cloud covering partially obscuring the reflected light of Polyphemus. He stared out, breathed in deep, and let the air out through his nose.

This evening he was thinking about how he would never see Earth again. As Head of Security at Hell's Gate, not once over the course of fifteen years did he ever express interest in rotating back to Earth. He had pride in his position and had goals that perhaps after a few decades of taming Pandora he would return to Earth for a hero's welcome. He would fantasize at least. Truth is though he didn't really have much back on Earth. Like so many before him, he joined the military to escape a life that was close to poverty, the Marine Corps offering him opportunity, travel, and freedom. Freedom from overcrowded, unbreathable cities.

Miles was from Kansas City, Missouri, a booming, crowded, economically disparate place and the third-largest metropolitan area in the country. His parents passed when he was sixteen from pollution-induced lung cancer. There was a cure, but being cured of cancer and respiratory diseases was for the wealthy, which his family was not.

Miles enlisted in the Marines as soon as he was legally able to at seventeen, and with his tenacity, loyalty, intelligence, and cunning nature—traits that he recognized in Spider—he was invited to attend the Naval Academy (the new one, not the old sea level rise flooded one) to commission as an officer in the Marines, an education he couldn't even dream of as a child.

After he graduated and advanced through the officer ranks he developed a reputation for his tactical skill as well as his cold, calculating, and sometimes brutal nature in his three illustrious tours in Nigeria during the War as a Major and then Lieutenant Colonel. When he reached the rank of Colonel at thirty-six, which was fairly young, the RDA reached out to him. Offering him great financial opportunity and the task of protecting people and taming a new world. Miles didn't care much for the former, but taming a new world and keeping people safe piqued his interest.

Now Miles had heard about Pandora and the famed RDA base of Hell's Gate, not to mention the blue humanoid aliens that inhabited the moon called "Na'vi." Everyone had. For the first few years after its discovery, the world was captivated by Pandora, its life, and knowing that they weren't alone in the universe. But as the world choked, became overcrowded, and war and death spread, interest in this faraway alien moon started to wane in favor of more proximal issues— except for the RDA of course. Pandora was the proximal opportunity.

It took some time for him to make his choice, but Miles decided to take the RDA up on their offer to be Head of Security, the current one being ready to rotate back to Earth in six years when he arrived. Miles was ready to embrace the life of private security, a path that many of his peers had taken before, though none on Pandora. Miles didn't have much of anything on Earth. No wife. No kids. No other close family. He was deeply dedicated to his country and being a Marine, but he realized his career skills could be used elsewhere—for the betterment of mankind, not in petty, world-destroying wars.

He didn't view it as becoming some money-chasing corporate mercenary, but a calling to do something better. Plus, it presented him with the opportunity to escape a choking planet. Human Miles Quaritch truly did not have a lot to stay for, but he had a lot of reasons to leave.

Miles sat with these reflective thoughts, the memories from his past life. He realized that technically as a recombinant he didn't have much to be worried about not seeing again, having never actually physically seen anything on Earth himself, only starting there in a lab. Not to mention his past life's chapter on Earth probably closed for him fifteen years ago after the battle of the Hallelujah Mountains and the eviction of the RDA.

He could envision the headlines. "Indigenous Attack on Pandora, Head of Security Dead, RDA evicted." In the public eye, he was a dead man and a failure. Miles grew frustrated and shamed at the thought and pinched the wide bridge of his nose, clenching his teeth, and closing his eyes tight. However, when he thought about his new recom body, which was perfectly suited to life on Pandora, even fleeting, unserious thoughts of leaving the moon in his current form sent surprise waves of vexation throughout the pit of his stomach making his tail flick around from the strong emotion which he barely noticed. It was a strange thought, but... this hellacious place was his home now.

Miles, pulling himself out of his storming thoughts, looked inward under the tree trunk, toward his Marines and Spider who were fast asleep. He could hear Lyle's snoring and Ja's light sleep murmurings. He saw that Mansk was sleeping about as far away from the others as he could without being in the rain, and Lopez was sleeping quite restlessly, turning over every few minutes. He noticed something else though. Something worth him getting up to investigate.

He got off his boulder, leaving his rifle against it, and quietly approached Spider to see that he was curled up in a fetal position. He was cold, despite being covered in an RDA-issued blanket. These blankets were thin and made for the typical Pandoran climate in these latitudes which, for the most part, was quite warm. This was an atypical cold night though thanks to the rain.

Miles wasn't cold at all, he was like a furnace in fact, letting off a ton of heat due to his muscular form. As such, he didn't need his blanket. He quietly went over to his unoccupied sleeping area, being sure not to wake his Marines, stealthily tiptoeing with his bare blue feet, to grab his blanket out of his small survival pack. He noted that Prager was on a sleeping pad that was curiously close to Z-Dog. Interesting, Miles thought to himself. Certainly, something to log away for a potential later conversation.

Miles, after grabbing his blanket, quietly went back over to Spider to cover him, but he stopped himself. He tightened his lips together with a slightly regretful expression. One that said he didn't want Spider to be cold any longer, but he then decided to wrap the blanket around his shoulders and went to go sit back on his rock for a moment. He was warming the blanket.

After a few minutes of staring out into the rain to think about his past and life decisions, he glanced down at his analog watch and then went to cover Spider, the blanket now warmed from Miles' body heat. He bent down and gently covered the cold, sleeping teenager with it, but after he did this he caught something bright ahead of him. The yellow glowing eyes of Z-Dog. She was lying down on her sleeping pad, head on her hands and staring at him sideways.

Miles locked his gaze with hers and he honestly looked like he got caught stealing from a cookie jar. His tail was still and his ears were back. Z-Dog was lightly smiling. Miles simply returned a lightly guilty smile, biting his pulled-in lower lip with the upper arch of his teeth, and gave her a wink. Z-Dog just smiled bigger and rolled over to sleep, facing the nearby Prager, who was funnily enough sleeping with his headband on still.

Miles then walked back and sat on his sentry boulder and peered at his watch again. He had a good two hours still before he'd rotate off to Lyle. He then looked over his shoulder at Spider who seemed to loosen his fetal position. Miles gently grinned, took a deep content breath through his nose, but let out a big sigh as he looked back out at the rainy, glowing forest,

[Flashforward back to Miles and the recoms after their first night in the village of the Ash People.]