A New Mission: Ash to Fire

Mission Issue

Miles woke up in a cold sweat in the early hours of the morning. He was dreaming. A nightmare really. All of the worst memories of his life leading into one another like a movie reel. Scene after scene.

The horrors his past life saw in his Nigerian tours during the War. The men and women he couldn't succeed in protecting as Head of Security on Pandora. The shock, terror, and confusion of waking up in a Na'vi body and finding out his human self died on Pandora. Coming across his past life's human skeleton and AMP suit in the forest, and witnessing his past life's death by the arrows of Jake Sully's wife on the recording. Jake's underwater grip around his neck and the blackness that followed. Then, like the final dagger of this cruel series of memories, his son Spider, forsaking him on that rock for the family of his enemy.

Miles sat up on his sleeping pad and put his hand on his forehead. He let out a massive sigh. Damn dreams must have been caused by that food last night, he thought to himself. Still though, that meal was the best thing he's had in a long while. Potentially even better than the meals he, or rather his past life could recall having had in Hell's Gate.

Miles could see the light coming through the curtain's exposed opening, though the canyon was still mostly in shadow as Alpha Centauri B rose. Miles again didn't really have a plan for the day. There was not a lot of structure to this mission, and in all honesty that frustrated him. Hunting down and killing Sully? That was easy. Straightforward. Learning about these Ash People and how a relationship could benefit the RDA? That was much more fluid and ambiguous.

Further, he just didn't understand how this mission could possibly last three months. In just two days he already learned a significant amount about these people. Their aversion to Eywa's laws, proclivity for mining and technology, and their infatuation with human advancement. This was already good, useable intel. He was hopeful that when Bob and Mike came to get his report at the two-week mark he could share what he had and make a compelling case for the early completion of the mission.

But that was at two weeks. He had to spend two weeks with this village of strangers. Most of them seemed alright at least. He was grateful to Zu and he liked her parents, the clan leaders, enough. But then of course there was Ta'zem, the unnecessarily aggressive clan warrior. Miles was intrigued that Ta'zem sat to the right side of the Olo'eyktan at the dinner and that he had some limited gemmed regalia, his hair clip. He figured he must be of a decently high rank in the village... Did they have ranks? Well, something similar. Best warrior? Some type of war leader? Last night as the dinner went on, he additionally noticed Zu and Ta'zem speaking very casually. Miles came to suspect a possible affianced scenario between these two, though he certainly wasn't going to ask. Not like he cared about the personal life of his village translator.

Zu also didn't walk the Marines back to their huts last night. As the dinner came to a close, she went about the seated and chatting villagers to engage with them. Miles could see she was very well-liked by everyone. A good princess, he amusingly thought. When the three of them were tired they just headed back to their huts themselves. They knew the way. But so Zu did not formulate a plan for the visiting Marines today, at least not one she shared. As of right now, he was a free agent.

Miles decided to get up and out and go for an early walk around the village. Get to know these people more in their day-to-day. Maybe take a ride on Cupcake and do some personal surveying of the region. He put his tank on and grabbed the belt for his knife only, not his firearm holster. He decided to leave that. He didn't feel great about such, but he hasn't seen much threat yet to justify having it. And it wasn't worth putting the villagers on edge... if they even knew what a gun was. He also grabbed an empty canteen for water that connected to his belt which he planned to fill up at the spring.