Conflagration

Captain O'Connell

Maj. Tolbert let Erin land the plane.

When they got back to Sanctuary, Tolbert took them not to the service platform in the middle of the lake, but to Third Law's main headquarters. The mercenary company had chosen for their headquarters a converted terraforming rig. The rig had been left floating in the middle of the planet's only major ocean when Safe Harbor had left. Anchored to the seafloor many kilometers below, the rig was well outside of the planet's tenebricite shadow. It had a small power generating station and even a small runway. This was the offshore terraforming rig Erin had seen on her initial scans of the planet before being shot down that first day. It was here, at this very rig, where she'd originally intended to land the hardpointer. Now, many days later and in a different plane, Erin finally landed here.

By the time that Erin and Tolbert landed on the rig, it was midafternoon. Erin estimated that it must be nearly sundown where Lyssa and the hardpointer were, as that was several time zones to the east. Yet, to Erin and Tolbert, only about two-and-a-half hours had passed since they'd taken off that morning. To the two pilots, it was only midmorning. They'd flown so fast, as much as 2.6% the speed of light, that time had measurably slowed down for them.

Transtachyonic flight created a bubble universe which insulated travelers from the effects of time dilation, but normal, sublight flight was prone to the time dilation effects of extreme speeds. Time was weird, but Erin didn't really care about all of that. All Erin was thinking about was how badly she needed to pee.

Erin was mostly ignored by the pirates as she climbed down from the fighter's cockpit to the rig's deck and went off looking for a restroom. Everybody's attention was on Maj. Tolbert. Word of their flyby on the Ready Sophia had preceded their arrival. The Third Law Mercenaries cheered Tolbert and hailed her a hero. They chanted Tolbert's callsign, "Lefty." As Erin ducked into the first lav she found, she was pretty sure she caught a glimpse of the crowd carrying Tolbert on their shoulders.

A few minutes later, Erin emerged from the filthy lav feeling much relieved. She was surprised that no one seemed to care to keep an eye on her. Out on the ramp, Tolbert was standing on a munitions crate telling the story of their flyby and her "Darklands Sunrise" maneuver. The older pilot's long, black-and-gray hair drifted majestically upon the ocean breeze and her insectile, prosthetic eye seemed to look in all directions at once. In spite of herself, Erin stood at the back of the crowd and listened to the retelling of the tale, even though she'd been there. The crowd of mercenaries cheered Tolbert as she recounted it.

Erin heard a vaguely familiar male voice from behind her. "She's really popular," the voice said quietly. Erin had no doubt the speaker was addressing her.

She turned to see the tattooed face of Col. Landon Raith, the commander of the mercenaries and man who'd taken she and Lyssa captive. "She's a good pilot," Erin said.

"That she is," Raith sighed. He seemed resigned to something unpleasant, but Erin knew not what it could be. "Step into my office, Private Beanpole. I want to talk to you." And with that, the colonel turned and stepped through a hatchway into the rig's superstructure.

She hesitated for a moment, but ultimately decided that if he wished her harm, then refusing to follow him into his office wouldn't save her. Nervously, she followed.

Inside, she found a corridor leading deeper into the sprawling rig and a narrow, steep staircase leading upwards. Raith had gone up the stairs, so Erin followed. He stopped at the next level and entered a door which looked to have once read "SUPERINTENDENT" but had been sloppily crossed out and painted over with the letters "C.O."

Erin followed the colonel into the room but stopped just inside the door, subconsciously calculating her chances of making a hasty escape. She made no effort to shut the door as she took in the room. It was a messy office. It looked like it had previously belonged to someone deeply involved in the planetary terraforming project. Charts of the planet detailing everything from topography to rainfall, to temperature zones, to biomes hung from almost every square centimeter of wall space. More charts were piled in rolled-up stacks or crushed flat beneath stacks of heavier objects. Most of those heavier objects were highly technical-looking binders with names like Freshwater Phytoplankton: Introducing, Balancing, and Monitoring Procedures or Atmospheric Oxygen: Generation, Purification, and Isotope Mixing Manual.