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Milk Run
A Seraphic side-story
By Pochi
"Eden control, this is the Ssu Ling. Requesting permission to depart."
"Permission granted, Ssu Ling. Your departure heading is two-zero-niner."
"Roger control, coming about to two-zero-niner. See you again soon."
"Have a good flight, Jim. Watch your six."
"I always do. Ssu Ling out."
The small aircraft slipped out of the Eden's docking bay into the cloudy sky. As its distance from the large airship increased, cylindrical thrusters extended outward from each side of the ship forming wings. After reaching full extension, the inside of the thrusters began to glow and the aircraft shot off toward the horizon.
The pilot put his boots up on the console. "Nothing but clear skies as far as the eye can see. Looks like we'll have clear sailing all the way to Elysium, eh Kara?"
"You're gonna jinx us, you know that, right?"
"Bah. This is a milk run. Nobody's seen any trouble out here for years."
"Always the optimistic, Jim."
"I like to think of myself as lucky too," Jim said as he fiddled with the controls. The aircraft's autopilot did most of the work, but Jim liked to make himself feel useful.
The aircraft shot out of a cloudbank into open sky. A brown haze covered the mountains below. It was the miasma. Kara looked down, saddened by the bleak landscape. "Look at all that miasma...as far as the eye can see. It's a shame we can't go down there."
"Not without environmental suits. What fun is that?"
"Jim, even if we manage to eliminate the threat of the tods, then what?"
"Let's worry about that later, we've got tods!"
"Mother of crap! Tiger types!" Kara shouted as her attention returned to the front of the aircraft. She jumped up from her seat, ran to the back of the cockpit, and strapped herself into a seat hanging from the ceiling. Pulling down a scope from above the seat, she now had a perfect view outside the ship. "Guns are ready!"
On top of the aircraft, a double-barrel cannon came to life and swung around to face the oncoming tods.
"Let's rock and roll!" shouted Jim.
The aircraft banked hard to port and turned 180 degrees from its original heading, leaving the approaching tods in its wake. As the aircraft turned, the cannon remained positioned toward the tods.
Kara looked intently into her scope. "Oh, yes, my pretties. Come get us...one-by-one...all in a very...straight...line."
With all of the tods streaming behind the speedy little airship, the glowing creatures became a much easier target than they normally would be when they surround one of the bulky, slow-moving airships.
"Suck on this, toddies!" Kara squeezed her turret's triggers and sent out a roaring stream of plasma. Although she had intentionally aimed too high to hit any, it only seemed to enrage the tods more.
The aircraft dove down into the brown miasma cloud. "We're flying IFR now," Jim stated. "How's it going back there?"
"We've got a six-pack of tods who want nothing more than to chew the meat off of our tender little bones. How much longer should I keep this up?"
"Send them a love tap. Let them know we still care."
Kara couldn't see the tods through the miasma, but the instrumentation could still detect them following the aircraft. She fired closer to them this time. The plasma made the miasma glow as it shot back toward the tods. Kara nicked one of them on the side of the head. The wound wasn't deep enough to destroy the tod and immediately cauterized.
The aircraft descended into a canyon at breakneck speed. Jim confidently swerved through the narrow passageway. As the canyon walls grew closer, the aircraft's thrusters retracted closer to the fuselage.
"Here we go," warned Jim as he swung the aircraft around a corner and quickly landed out of sight of the tods. "We're down! Cut the power!"
Kara reached out to a console on the back wall and flipped several switches, each causing more of the aircraft to go dark.
Moments passed, but it seemed like hours to Kara and Jim. If their plan failed, they knew the tods would be on them in seconds. They could hear their own heartbeats in the eerie silence.
Looking out the front of the aircraft, Jim saw the miasma swirling around. He knew it must be the tods. He whispered back to Kara. "Ready?
Without saying a word, Kara flipped the power back on. The aircraft roared to life as she swung her turret toward the high canyon walls and opened fire.
Like a carefully choreographed dance, Jim extended the wings, lifted the aircraft skyward, and made the difficult transition from hovering horizontally to thrusting upward vertically as fast as possible. As they soared skyward, Kara continued to fire. Through the miasma, she could barely make out the canyon walls as they crumbled down on top of the tods.
Shooting out of the miasma clouds that hugged the ground, Jim pulled back on the yoke, causing the aircraft to fly inverted. A twist to the yoke and they had rolled back to normal flight.
"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do that," Jim said smugly.
Kara pushed the scope back into place and pulled the hair from her eyes. "Well, that was fun."
"Nothing like a little excitement in the morning to get the blood pumping. I bet even the Seraphic couldn't pull off such thrilling heroics."
Kara just stared at Jim. "Milk run, huh?"
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