The members of RED-1 left their luxurious suites within the Pargrad Council Building before the sun had risen. They dressed in their comfortable leatherine uniforms which featured red pants, a tight black cotton shirt, and a stylish red jacket. The jackets had their company’s logo emblazoned on their right shoulders in the form of a golden medallion that doubled as a datastore and emergency communication device.

  They were driven to the airport in an equally luxurious green limousine, where Srell and Prism got a few extra minutes of sleep. The city was quiet and pristine in the early morning; the blood from the Ceder attacks had been scrubbed clean from the streets days earlier. The sun began to peek over the horizon by the time they made it to the large hangar that contained their team’s ship, the Titian.

  “A shame we didn’t have enough time in Pargrad for Prism to create a teleportation circle here.” Leanna sighed and said after she got out of the limo in front of the open hangar. “It’d be a real tactical advantage to have instant access to Ruskeda’s western coast, especially since we’re also close to mainland Etrysia.”

  “I know, but we’re on a tight schedule. You heard Finisome’s message last night. The rest of Pack Command needs us back at HQ as soon as possible.” Ursun said loudly as he cracked his neck. He walked quickly towards the hangar, and his team followed after him.

  “I wonder what’s so urgent that they’d forego such a useful resource. It could be a while until we’re ever out here again, and Command won’t risk sending Prism abroad alone.” Srell scratched his fingers over his coarse, unkempt hair.

  “It would have taken me three days to make the circle. A lot can happen in three days.” Prism said with a shrug.

  Prism walked closely behind Ursun, eager to get aboard the Titian and go back to sleep. The human-looking alien carried a small black suitcase in his left hand.

  “I’m honestly surprised that they’d keep their reasoning a secret from even you, Commander Ursun.” Lorias said snidely.

  “Believe what you want. I’m just as confused as you are. Then again, we can’t be sure that our laser messages aren’t being decrypted by our enemies. That message had to travel a long way to get here, after all.” Ursun turned his head to say while he walked.

  As they all entered the hangar, RED-1 could see that their two pilots were already within the large red tiltjet plane. Ursun saw the pilots raise their right hands to salute him through the panoramic window of the cockpit. He returned their salute and smiled at the half-serious gesture.

  The Red Wolves usually used such militaristic displays as acts of irreverent humor. Their ranks and larger hierarchical roles were more for utility and efficiency than markers of forced respect. It was easy for their veneer of discipline to come off as completely genuine to outsiders, however.

  “Looks like we’re ready to go.” Ursun looked back and said to his team once they’d all entered the hangar.

  The Titian had the shape of a slender swimming penguin, with curved wings that featured pivotable engines. The twin pulsejet engines, one on each wing, hummed deep and low within the enclosed space. The red aircraft was sleek, shiny, and sophisticated. It sat on three black landing wheels that looked too small to support such a heavy-looking craft.

  The fusion-powered aircraft had undergone a number of upgrades over the past year, many of which involved its pulsejet propulsion system. The Titian was faster than it had ever been, easily reaching supersonic speeds more quickly than most ?ban ships. It also packed more of a punch with its rapid-fire plasma cannon, a weapon that was no longer in its prototype-phase.

  They all stepped inside the Titian’s spacious transport bay using its lowered rear ramp. The bay offered plenty of room for the six mercenaries to sit and move around. Padded seats lined sections of the walls while metal lockers and storage bins lined the rest. Towards the center of the bay, there was a metal tactical table with rounded edges that featured a glowing tabletop with hologram emitters.

  A comprehensive weapons control system took up a section of the wall close to the door leading to the cockpit. The system had several large screens connected to the wall, with a large console that had numerous colorful buttons, joysticks, and other forms of input. The console had two large, black leatherine chairs in front of it.

  “It’s good to be home.” Srell stretched his arms wide and said half-jokingly.

  The lowered ramp behind them quickly closed, leaving the transport bay with a sloped rear wall. The mercenaries began to feel the ship moving out of the hangar and out onto the airport’s open tarmac. The light of dawn began to shine through the round windows that lined portions of the bay’s walls.

  “Yeah, we’ve spent more time on this ship than we have back at HQ for what seems like months.” Leanna said as she walked over to the team’s gear lockers. She opened each of them, revealing their lack of contents.

  “In three hours, we’ll be able to sleep in our own beds.” Ursun said as he made a tossing hand gesture to Prism.

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  “Don’t count on it.” Lorias said with a chuckle as he raised his chin and crossed his arms.

  Prism threw the small black suitcase he’d been carrying out before him. Before it hit the ground, Prism flicked his right wrist as his irises shimmered with a bluish-green light. The suitcase floated in mid-air before its contents flew out of it towards the lockers.

  The flying objects grew larger and larger as they got closer to the lockers until they returned to their normal sizes. The lockers became stocked with each member of RED-1’s combat armor, gear belts, and weapons. Even Leanna’s living dronepack flew over to hang from its specialized nerve-dock within its own locker. It interfaced with the Titian’s biocomputer to share detailed sensory information about the events of the past few days.

  “Now that that’s done, we can actually get out of here.” Leanna said while she began closing all of the lockers as the suitcase hit the ground with a quiet clack.

  “We’re ready for liftoff.” Ursun said loudly, knowing that the two pilots in the cockpit could hear him via the tiny microphones embedded throughout the bay.

  “Yes, sir. Liftoff in 30 seconds.” The main pilot’s voice echoed over the bay’s speakers.

  Prism sat on a padded seat along a wall within the wide bay of the mid-sized ship. He watched the wide, linear plasma conduits pulse on the ceiling of the bulkhead above him. Their colorful flowing plasmas glowed with gradients of purple and red.

  Any heat or radiation they emitted was safely contained within their organic reinforced cabling. The conduits could be hidden with a voice command to the ship’s biocomputer, but no one had bothered.

  The Titian began to rumble as its pulsejet engines roared to life like twin lions on both sides of the bay. The plasma conduits overhead thrummed even more intensely as high-energy plasma was injected into the engines. The Titian slowly rose from the ground until it was up higher than the air traffic control tower a few dozen meters away.

  Prism watched the wings’ engines rotate before the Titian burst forward at great speed towards the Red Wolves’ HQ over 5000 kilometers away. The ship’s passengers merely felt a slight jerk due to the cushioning nature of the semi-living aircraft’s connective tissue. The flexible organic material existed between the ship’s bulkheads.

  Prism felt his eyelids grow more and more heavy while his teammates started walking and talking around the bay. A smile formed on one side of Leanna’s mouth when she saw her youngest-looking teammate fall asleep while sitting perfectly upright.

  “He’s been working so hard lately.” Leanna said with the gentleness of a loving mother. She leaned against the tactical table that Srell, Ursun, and Lorias had begun to play cards at.

  “And I thought I was tired…” Srell sighed and shook his head. He dealt Lorias, Ursun and Leanna a hand of cards, flicking the cards onto the dimly-lit tabletop in front of them just as precisely as he shot his guns.

  Lorias chuckled while picking up the hand he’d been dealt. “Prism has always needed more sleep than us humans. I wonder how detrimental it’s been for him, only getting six hours at best during missions…” He said before looking at his cards. “Maybe that’s why he’s been so moody lately.”

  “The boy hasn’t even been asleep for five minutes, and you’re already gossiping about him.” Ursun frowned while he looked at his cards. “Prism can handle it. He’d tell me if he couldn’t.”

  “Such confidence, sir.” Leanna said.

  She threw a card out into the middle of the table to get the game started. Ursun looked at her with a raised eyebrow as Lorias tossed out a card similar to Leanna’s. It landed directly on top of her own.

  “Has he come to you with any problems?” Ursun asked Leanna with a nudge of his head in Prism’s direction.

  Srell threw out a card that let him take the other cards off the table. He put them in his hand and smirked at Lorias, who ignored him.

  “He complained about all the “pointless” killing that we’ve been doing again.” Leanna shrugged. She smugly rearranged the cards in her hand.

  “That again?” Ursun’s voice grew slightly louder when he spoke.

  He put his card-holding hand on the table and rubbed the forehead of his shiny bald head with his free hand. The other players could see that Ursun was grimacing.

  “Your turn, sir.” Lorias said calmly.

  Ursun tossed out a low-value card that slid a bit too far past the center of the table towards Leanna. She quickly picked up the card and threw it to the middle where the rest of the cards had been.

  “He can leave at any time.” Ursun said quiet and low. He rubbed his face and glanced over at the sleeping elementeitan. “But if he does, then we’re properly screwed.”

  The other players looked at the table without speaking for several seconds. It was as if they’d suddenly entered a temple to solemnly pray. Not everyone agreed with Ursun’s assessment, but they took a moment to give weight and respect to his concerns.

  “The fact that the Queen still hasn’t tried to get him herself gives me hope.” Srell was the first to speak. “She’s been letting him undermine her underlings for the better part of a year. The whole world knows how powerful Prism is, and yet she still hasn’t made a move on him.”

  “We keep having this conversation.” Lorias said. “It’s simple. We can’t know what the Queen is thinking or what she might do until she does it.” He said with an especially flashy hair flip.

  “The same is true of Prism.” Leanna said as she tossed out a bright-colored card.

  The four mercenaries went around the table for a few minutes throwing cards out and collecting them at the end of each round. Again they sat in silence, playing with the cards at the same speed at which their thoughts danced through their minds. As the rounds went on, the mood of the table became harder to ascertain.

  When Ursun had the most cards, he sighed and put all of his cards on the table.

  “I trust Prism. He’s a Red Wolf. He follows my orders, even when he doesn’t like it. He’s killed many, like the rest of us, but he continues to work alongside us.”

  Lorias, Srell, and Leanna watched their leader closely, listening as intently as they could. They recognized his tone of voice; it was the way he spoke when he was being definitive about an issue. His was the final word on such issues.

  “He knows how much we’ve come to rely on him. He promised us that he’d help us end this war. He isn’t going to abandon us. You of all people should know that, Leanna.”

  Ursun fixed his gaze on Leanna. She stiffened in her seat for a moment, but started to relax when she saw the smirk appear on Ursun’s pink lips. His anger had been something to fear in the past, but he’d done a great deal to rein it in where it wasn’t useful.

  “You’re right, sir. It’s the analyst in me. I can’t help but bring attention to the worst-case scenarios, even when their possibility of occurring is remote.” Leanna said while she nodded more to herself than to Ursun.

  Her eyes focused on Prism. She couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t aware of their conversation.

  “Turns out I’m tired after all.” Srell yawned. “Hopefully I can sleep the whole way there.”

  He tossed his small hand of cards onto the table, pulled out a foldable bed from the wall near the back of the bay, and climbed in. He started to lightly snore only a few seconds later.

  “Didn’t even bother to take his boots off…” Lorias said with so much contempt that Ursun and Leanna felt bad for Srell.

  “I wonder about you two…” Leanna said to Lorias after laying her own cards on the table.

  “I do too.” Lorias said without even a hint of sarcasm.

  “As long as it doesn’t affect mission performance, I don’t care what the two of you do.” Ursun sighed as he got up from the table.

  “I know, sir, I know.” Lorias nodded and said with a quick grin as he looked up at Ursun.

  Ursun let out a quiet chuckle at the Rvljsan he knew so well. Ursun then walked over to his locker to work on one of his guns. As his hand touched the metal latch of the locker door, a subtle noise from the opposite wall made him pause.

  “Father…”

  Ursun turned around fast enough to see Prism’s lips forming the last syllable of the word. The leader tilted his head; sure that he’d misheard Prism. The rest of his team had heard Prism’s strange sleep-talking before, but it had nearly always been nonsensical.

  “I’m sorry…Father…”

  Ursun watched Prism’s small, bald head turn to its side while the elementeitan spoke in his sleep. Prism’s bottom lip quivered as his facial features contorted into a look of severe pain. Ursun had only seen such anguish on the faces of the wounded and the dying.

  “What on ?ba did you do, kid?” Ursun said quietly before turning back to his locker. “Or whatever world you come from…”