Death of the Elements

CHAPTER 14

"Regent we're reaching the camp now."

Regent Torno stepped up closer to the front of the ship, trying to calm his pounding heart. He looked around at his three new pilots; their crisp tan uniforms in pristine condition, their young faces full of duty and excitement. He would trade all three of these inexperienced whelps for Niiasha but she had fled the planet days earlier. He couldn't blame her, she had married an elemental and when the rumors had started she had taken her family and gone. His other two pilots had been killed weeks earlier by some bandit sniper. Now his lead pilot was a young man with short black hair that had been styled to one side. He had been staring back at the Regent since he had spoken, waiting for his superiors response.

"Cut the lights." Regent Torno replied, his voice stern and controlled from decades of military service.

The pilot nodded and turned back to the hundreds of controls, hitting just one to dim the ship's interior to near blackness.

Regent Torno clenched his fist, making sure his sand colored battle armor was clasped tight, even though he knew it was. The armor was worn with years of cuts and plasma burns from his shoulders down to his boots. He was the oldest man in the room but his hair was still a light blonde, a week's worth of scruff on his face and neck.

"Pull up the heat recognition." He directed to the pilot on the left, an unattractive woman with short red hair.

His green eyes watched the screen as it turned on, red specks showing up after a few seconds. A couple of the specks were much brighter than the rest but most of them were hardly visible against the blackness.

"This is going to be easier than we thought." The redhead exclaimed. "These scaly aliens hardly show up on the sensors. Should be easy to find the princess."

"Then do it." He replied, her optimism was dangerous here on the front lines.

"Picking up four, no five strong heat signatures." The main pilot reported, looking up at Regent Torno.

The Regent's always stern face told the pilot to turn right back around, the young man keeping his eyes on the screen now. He would whip these children into shape just like the hundreds of others that had passed through his command.

"There are two right below us." The redhead continued. "Two more are in a cave and the fifth looks to be in another cave with one of those things."

"Actually." The third pilot said in a soft voice, a blonde man who hardly looked to be out of his teens. "I think we can narrow it down even further. Two of these have to be elementals. One of the two in the cave is running much hotter than a normal person; the same for the one with the Diaelee."

Well at least they weren't totally incompetent.

"Our main objective is to get Princess Analie back here safely so we have to assume the other three heat signatures are her." Regent Torno directed, thinking of his short discussion with High Regent Vorza he had had a few hours earlier.

He knew that if he didn't get the princess back he might as well not return to the city. The High Regent had told him as much. Regent Torno had no problems with the elementals and had never understood the prejudice against them. Most of them had so little power they might as well have been any other Loordanian but his stance on the matter was irrelevant now. Still, if High Regent Vorza had felt the same and hadn't forcibly relocated those people than he would still have two daughters instead of none. And because of Vorza's actions Tillin found himself in a lose/lose situation. If he succeeded he would be in the same position he was in now. There was nowhere higher for him to go within the Regency but if the princess was killed or escaped again he would be stripped of his title and left as poor as the day he was born. This had to go perfectly, there was no other option.