Operation Arrakis: In Passing

by Durandir and Majick

The ground team can't hear the explosions outside, as they run through the tunnels and begin to infiltrate the shield complex, but they know that Hope Flight is busy shooting missiles down.

Sci didn't mention the odds.

In passing a monitor in a deserted control room in the shield complex, Becki glimpses the battle above. An explosion flares as one of the missiles finds its target. Was that an X-wing that got hit? She pauses, alarmed at the implication. But the X-wings are our people...

She turns on the comm to ask Sci what's going on. Hears a voice -- Arrek's:

"Thayer! Oh, no..."

The name hits her with the force of the missile itself. She doesn't notice dropping the comm.

Kristy turns back to her. She heard the name, too. "Becki?"

Sci's voice crackles over the forgotten comm. "...Thayer's been shot down. No idea if he ejected...."

The major's voice, regretful but direct, forces her to believe it. She stands still, frozen, cheeks wet now with unregarded tears.

Kristy reaches for her arm. "Oh Becki, I'm so sorry...."

One long night. No - weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the Morning.

Oh, but who can think of Morning, before the Mourning has run its course? Who can think of joy when a life so loved is cut so short?

There's a mission still to finish, all around her. Cheriss looks sympathetic but impatient. Fes looks grim. Vartan and Crowe look confused. Kristy offers a shoulder to cry on, but Becki can't move enough to give in to the tears. There's a mission still to finish.

She blinks. Tears still flow. Cheriss speaks; she doesn't hear. She hears only her own thoughts; and a still, small voice.

In desperation she reaches through tears for this hope: beyond herself, beyond fears for the fallen.

For the moment it is enough. She takes hold. The world refocuses. "...make it?" Kristy finishes asking. Becki blinks. The world swims; she reaches up and scatters the tears with a sleeve.

She bends and retrieves the comlink, relieved to find her muscles again moving at will.

"Let's finish this," she whispers. And then, I can go find him.

Imagine dying, lost and alone in a foreign land.

Imagine dying, only a few miles away from those you call friends.

Imagine dying, half a world away from your native land.

Imagine dying, the first of your line to die outside your country's borders.

Imagine dying, your line and name expiring with your last, fractured breath.

Imagine for yourself what it is to be Thayer Atner, Dictator of Mendellia, starfighter crash victim and the man for whom, only a few short hours ago, everything seemed so very right.

We've met Thayer before, of course. When last we saw him, heartbroken and alone, he was in Paris. Now, injured and alone, he is in Iraq.

The man gets about, but travel certainly doesn't seem to agree with him.

In truth, the Atners fear travel as a line. Thayer was one of very few members of his family to leave Mendellia, and the first to do so after his succession to the throne of the island, in position if not in name.

And yet Thayer left without a second thought, for he was - is - in love, and against that, what price four centuries of tradition and careful travel?

We've met Becki as well. Lieutenant Rebecca Bush, betrothed of the Dictator, American, teacher, secret agent and occasional kitten farmer.

But for now, we must set Becki aside. Although her love lies injured and in peril, abandoned on the desert sands of the Middle East, it is to a colleague of hers we must now turn.

Your Majesty-to-be, forgive me.

Look down the Terra Group roster. And then look up again, for our concern at this time is Lieutnenant Josh Cochran, Terra Seven, 6'5" and friend to the future Royal family.

At least, he was...

Pilot, patriot, thief, agent, Jedi, spy, love cheat. Murderer?

For Josh has been all these things, maybe even the last. For as Thayer lies in his craft, broken ankle twisted sickeningly around jammed rudder pedal, fuel-fed flames licking ever closer to the heat-sensitive proton torpedo he didn't fire, 'just in case', he wonders whether Josh might have meant for him to die. It was Josh's laser fire, after all, that chewed into Thayer's shields, and left him easy prey for the incoming missiles.

So: Murderer?

It's a valid question, if not the most valid time to be asking it. Still, Thayer in his excusable delirium is thinking of Josh rather than Becki or, indeed, escape.

So, here we are, with Thayer, watching the flames slowly growing closer, and watching too the memories of the year and more that he and Josh spent as friends, flying, arguing, talking and laughing.

For Thayer would turn from his duties and seek out Josh often, for companionship and for forgetfulness. When duty to his nation threatened to overwhelm him, when his feelings for Becki threatened to overrun his sense of duty to his nation...

Then he would seek out Josh.

Josh, too, needed help. A stranger forsaken by the country he'd sworn allegiance to, Josh had seemed very familiar to the Dictator of Mendellia. Years before, he had been forced to flee his homeland and escape the clutches of his insane, megalomaniacal uncle Eugor. For much of the next several years, Thayer had been lost, adrift on the European continent, contributing what he could to safeguard the future of his beloved country while never once able to look on it with his own eyes.

Josh has entered into Jedi training with an enthusiasm that seemed to border on mania, but Thayer had felt that the young American needed the structure that the training would bring to his life. Now, perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, it appeared more akin to handing a gun to a lunatic, and then showing him how to shoot.

But, with hindsight, it is easier to see these things, and before now no one would have thought of Josh as unstable. It is easy, with hindsight, to think of aggressive acts, such as fights with team-mates and shooting civilians, as obvious hallmarks of a man on the edge, even a man far over the edge and plummeting downwards.

But Thayer can't think of his friend like that.

So Josh kissed Thayer's fiancée.

So Josh shot Lenka Leannan.

So Josh and Mike were always at one another's throats.

So Josh had nearly killed Vickie in a sparring session.

So?

Josh, Thayer thinks, is redeemable. And if that gives the man another reason to escape his burning, combustible wreck of a starfighter, who are we to argue?

Josh, Thayer thinks, was his responsibility. His friend. He must be there to bring him back, to give him the rudder he so desperately sought in his adopted country, in his work with Terra Group, even, Thayer acknowledges, in Thayer's own fiancée.

Josh was a man without a country. Thayer had known that.

Josh was a man seeking love. Thayer had felt that.

Josh was a man in need of guidance. Thayer had seen that.

Thayer had done nothing about it; save provide his friend with an outlet for his feelings. Had he been wise, perhaps, he might have seen his friend drifting. What they had taken for contentment was anything but. They thought he had found safe harbour on Mendellia, but instead he had merely been tethered, a ship held by a single, fraying rope.

Then, of course, the rope snapped. Now Josh is adrift, in need of a firm hand on the rudder to guide him back to port.

Who might provide the guidance in Thayer's absence? Not Vickie, for she has been taken, and is maybe dead. Not Sci, for he has a team to tend to, and millions of lives hanging on his word. Not Becki, for she is taken too, and is maybe...

Thayer screws his eyes closed, and takes a deep shuddering breath.

He draws his blaster, and holds the muzzle to the canopy. What Thayer knows is that Incom only coat the outside of a starfighter's canopy. A canopy will be coated in a hard resin to withstand flight in vacuum, as well as glancing hits from enemy weaponry. But, from inside, a few blaster bolts will shatter it.

And, in this case, it takes three.

So he sits, the sun beating down on him, no longer shielded by the polarised canopy, but still with his foot twisted painfully around his rudder pedal. Slowly, carefully, he slides his pistol back into its holster.

He may, he thinks, as he stares in muted disgust at the twisted wreckage of his foot, need it later.

Time passes.

Thayer passes in and out of consciousness, his brow beaded with the sweat of a man in a baking desert, in a heavy flight suit, fearing for his life, suffering serious injuries and trying to pry his shattered foot free from the twisted interior of his vessel. A few seconds effort is rewarded by a few seconds of blackness, over and over again.

There is no radio, no power, no flight, little fight.

There is only pain.

In his ankle, where bone has splintered and something white now protrudes from the leather of his boot.

In his chest, where heart strains against ribs and common sense, which tells him to lie back and rest.

In his mind, where fevered images of his craft exploding segue neatly into images of Josh, fighting, living, falling, dying.

With a scream, he twists his ankle, sickeningly. A man with no broken ankle could not have made the move, so lucky for him, right?

Once consciousness is regained, he may appreciate how lucky he is.

Perhaps.

Or the licking flames that now surround what is left of the nose of the X-Wing may overheat the sole remaining proton torpedo and vaporise the craft, its pilot, and a few dozen metres of desert real estate.

Perhaps.

This, Thayer's mother would no doubt claim, is what happens to those who ignore the traditions of their forefathers. Did Thayer's own father leave their country, once he had succeeded to the throne?

He did not.

And his father before him?

He did not.

Did any Atner ever leave Mendellia once the throne was his?

They did not.

Why, then, has Thayer done so?

Thayer's eyes open, and he smiles.

Did his father ever walk away from a challenge?

He did not.

And his father before him, was he found wanting when people needed him?

He was not.

And his forefathers beyond that, were they prepared to give their all for love, for friendship, for the sake of another, whosoever that other might be?

They were.

And so is he.

Atner born, Atner raised, the father and forefather of Atners yet to be, he is all that has gone before and all that is still to come. He is an Atner; he does the right thing.

As he grasps the edge of the cockpit, and hauls himself slowly, painfully, free of the wreckage, falling crashingly to the ground and lying, momentarily, achingly, on the desert sand, there is one thought on his mind.

Do the right thing.

Find Becki, and make her safe.

Find Josh, and guide him home.

He is an Atner.

What more need be said?