Chapter 5
Planet Hell
“KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN!!! KEEP IT DOWN!!!” a loud voice fought to say over the transmitter as a loud concussion of booms ripped through the air. Ben knew he was breathing heavily in his pressurized helmet, but he couldn’t hear its echoing sounds over the powerful blasts and the chaotic radio traffic that immediately followed them. He opened his eyes and saw the red dirt of Planet Hell through his darkened visor. A drop of sweat dripped off an eyelid and splattered on the face shield right where he was looking.
He lifted his head up slightly and watched the sweat stream down the visor before he focused on a battalion’s worth of training Titans about 300 meters from him.
“Put your head back down,” he heard Kara shout through the open net. “You need to stay put until the captain reaches you. Every time you lift your head, it causes a reflective glare off of your visor that the enemy can see. Don’t become a target!”
“How much longer are you going to be?” Ben asked impatiently, referring to the captain and his team.
“About five-mikes,” he heard Gedeon reply. “Just hold tight.”
Ben reflexively squinted his eyes again as another drop of salty sweat rolled into his right one, stinging it badly.
“Some adventure,” he muttered under his breath while wishing like mad that he could lift his visor and rub his itchy eye – but to do so would mean certain death, so he had to lie there and suffer instead.
Ben tried his hardest not to think about the itch, but the more he tried not to, the more it antagonized him. He couldn’t say he wasn’t warned about Planet Hell. As he lay face down on the hot ground, itchy and sweaty in an uncomfortable pressurized suit, he thought back to how excited he was when the Zephyr landed on the planet’s orbiting dock three weeks prior —
“Welcome to Planet Hell,” a brutally buff-looking NCO of Japanese heritage had greeted them in a briefing room after they disembarked the Zephyr. He was standing in front of a large 3D holographic image of Planet Hell used to assist him with his presentation. “I understand that you’re going through a modified course. Normally, you’d spend two weeks getting acclimated to a gradually increasing gravitational pull at three different gravitational facilities orbiting the planet prior to actually going to the training facility on the planet itself. In your case, you’ll be bypassing the other facilities, and you’ll head straight down to the planet.
“Have any of you been here before?” the sergeant asked the crew. All of them shook their heads in unison. “As you can tell by looking out this bay window, it’s a red and black planet. It’s a volcanic planet. It’s hot, and it cannot sustain life.”
“The air pressure is also higher, so you’ll need to wear pressurized exosuits when you’re outside of the facilities doing your maneuvers. Let me warn you, even with the cooling systems in the exosuits, you’ll still get hot. Your bodies will be exerting a lot of energy, and the heat from that energy will be trapped in your suits. The cooling system will help, but it can only do so much, so make sure you drink a lot of water. Each suit comes equipped with a two-gallon water pack. Fill it up before every excursion and every exercise.
“The maximum amount of time the Army will allow anyone to stay on the surface is six months. Anything longer than that and people begin to experience long-term health problems, primarily related to their GI tract, as their internal organs become too big and weighty. You’re only scheduled to be here for four weeks, so you won’t experience any of these long-term problems. But do not hesitate to go to the infirmary if you have problems using the restroom after the first three days.
“When you first get down to the planet, you can expect to feel extremely heavy and groggy. Your mind might become a little cloudy, and thinking will become labored at first. This is because your heart will be working harder to pump your blood through your body, and so your brain won’t be getting oxygenated blood as quickly as it otherwise would. This will likely last for a couple of days. You won’t feel too hungry, but you must eat. Your internal organs need to learn how to work in that kind of environment.
“You’ll spend the first week doing calisthenics and firing an assortment of weapons. Calisthenics is the fastest way to acclimate your body. You’ll also be eating about six to eight small meals a day. And you’ll get no less than eight hours of downtime each night.
“In week two, we’ll start your actual training. It’s going to be rigorous and challenging, but not impossible. We’re not here to test you or to beat you up. We’re here to train you.
“But remember what I said. Drink plenty of water…”
That last sentence rang through Ben’s mind as he felt another concussion from a simulated mortar exploding 20 meters from him. More sweat rolled down his face, and he felt the backsplash of another drop as it hit his visor. Give me a break! he thought to himself as he moved his head over to the side slightly and wrapped his mouth around a clear tube and drank. The water was cool and refreshing, and he could feel it coursing its way through his insides.
“I hope I don’t have to pee,” he said to himself a little louder than he thought.
“You have to pee?” Kara asked over the open net. She was with Rangi on a nearby hill.
“Oh, no…sorry. I was just talking to myself.”
“They’re almost there, Ben,” Rangi said. “They’re in that wadi about fifty meters behind you.”
“Are we parallel to him yet, Rangi?” Gedeon asked.
“Almost…about another twenty meters or so.”
“What’s the terrain like above this wadi we’re in?”
“More of the same sharp, rocky stalagmite-like crud that you’re used to. There’s not a lot of protection.”
“Copy that.”
“Okay, you guys are about there. If you head up the wall, you’ll see him about thirty meters in front of you.”
“Where’s the enemy?”
“About three-hundred meters in front of Ben at his two o’clock.”
“Should we backtrack a little so that we’re in line with them both?”
“Negative. That curve in the wadi behind you will put you further back and you’ll be exposed longer.”
“So basically, we’re going to have to run to him under fire and then carry him back to the wadi while still under fire? We should have come up with a better plan than this.”
“It wasn’t our plan,” Cadence reminded him. “It was our instructions.”
“That explains why it sucks!” Gedeon whined. “Rangi, do you still have a good vantage point from that hill, or do you and Kara need to move in order to get a better firing solution?”
“We’re good right here,” Rangi replied.
“Are you just saying that because you don’t want to move your fat butt?” Gedeon scolded.
“It ain’t my fat butt that doesn’t wanna move, Capt’n,” Rangi retorted mockingly. “It’s Kara’s.”
“Hey!” Kara shouted.
“I should’ve known,” Gedeon quipped. “If it means anything to you Kara, I don’t think you have a fat butt.” Though they couldn’t see it, everyone could tell Gedeon was grinning. “Okay, count of three,” he told Cadence, Jedrek and Warrina who were sitting on the embankment next to him. “One, two, three…weapons free!”
The four of them scrambled up over the wadi’s wall and into the open. They’d gone no more than a couple of steps when loud explosions began to rock the ground around them.
“Oh, my hell this is life-like!” Jedrek shouted as he started to go down to his knees.
“Hurry!” Gedeon said. “Forget the rush and roll, just run! Those rocks down there are too sharp.”
Jedrek popped back up and continued his sluggish charge. “I wouldn’t call this running,” he heaved. “It barely qualifies as jogging in place!”
“All the more reason to keep going.”
“The Titans are on the move!” Rangi warned as he saw a half dozen of them roll forward.
“Are they airborne?” Gedeon asked. He was too busy trying to navigate his way around the sharp rocks to look for himself.
“Not yet, they’re just rolling,” Rangi replied as he and Kara shot a volley of laser fire at the mechanical beasts. Their weapons were modified to stun the Titans rather than destroy them. Each direct hit would disable it for sixty seconds.
“Nice shooting, Kara,” Ben heard Rangi say over the intercom. Boy, was he jealous. Once again, she got to be Rangi’s spotter while he had to be the dolt needing rescue.
Ben felt a hand press against his back, and then he rolled over roughly. “Get up, boy,” he heard Gedeon say.
“Aren’t I supposed to be injured this time?” Ben asked.
“Your rectum will be after I put my boot in it. Get moving, Lanky.” Ben didn’t have to be told twice. He got up as fast as he could in the heavy gravity. It reminded him of moving in a dream.
“They’re air…” Rangi started before he was interrupted by an ear-splitting burst of static. Their signal was being jammed.
Ben looked down at the display screen on his forearm so that he could change frequencies while he ran, but just as his opposite hand touched the screen, his foot kicked a large rock, and he fell forward, smashing his visor against a sharp, jagged rock before he rolled head over heels. His head whipped back, causing a streaking pain in his neck, and then he heard the sounds of an alarm as he felt a wicked pressure collapse in on his chest. His lungs started to burn, and his eyes began to bulge.
“SAFETY, SAFTEY, SAFETY – PAUSEX!” he heard a fading female voice scream over the intercom. “We need to stick him!”
Blackness began to tunnel around his vision almost instantaneously. Just before the blackness overtook him, he felt a sharp pain enter the side of his thigh, and he saw himself being pulled out of the tunnel. As the light in the tunnel expanded, he felt a warming sensation spread in his nether region. The warmth contrasted weirdly with the patches of cool that seemed to touch various spots on his leg and the backside of his neck.
“Put the plasti-mold over his face shield,” an unrecognizable male voice said in a huff as though he’d been running.
“His suit’s torn, too,” Warrina said as a black tarlike substance was smeared over his cracked face shield.
“Crap!” the unrecognized voice said. “How many places?”
“Including the injection site, four. His right knee and calf and the back of his neck. The one on his knee is a jagged tear. The plasti-mold won’t last for very long if he starts to move.”
“Well, tell him not to move then,” the odd voice said.
“Really?” Warrina countered firmly. “How still do you think a sixteen-year-old with a shot of adrenaline running through his veins is going to be?”
“He will if he wants to live,” was the sardonic reply. After hearing this, Ben did his level best to stay still. He felt the warmth in his crotch creeping, and he was fearful of what it meant, especially when it started to itch.
“The medic’s ship is overhead,” Rangi said a minute later.
“That was fast!” Warrina replied gratefully.
“We always have one close by during field exercises,” said the unrecognized voice. “You’re doing good, kid, just stay still.”
Ben couldn’t see what was going on around him because of the black goop over his face shield, but he could feel all the hands attending to him. His heart was racing because of the adrenaline shot. He wanted to jump up and sprint ten miles.
He eventually felt himself being lifted into the air and carried onto the medic’s ship. About a minute later, he heard the sound of air rushing into his helmet as it was removed. He saw Warrina’s big brown eyes staring back at him in grateful relief.
“You’re going to have a massive headache,” she said as she rubbed his cheek.
“My heart feels like it’s going to explode, and I think I pissed myself,” Ben told her speedily.
“It happens. Hey,” she said, turning to another medic who was assigned to the ship, “do you have a phentolamine cocktail?” The medic nodded and handed her a syringe. She removed the safety cap and stuck him in the thigh again.
“Oh my Lord, does everything have to hurt so badly?” Ben nearly cried out as he tightened his face in pain.
“It’ll be worth it,” Warrina told him. Seconds later, he felt his heart begin to slow down.
Ben shifted slightly in the gurney and then said, “Yeah, I definitely pissed myself. That really sucks.”
“You’re an odd one, Ben,” Warrina told him with a shifted smile. “You nearly died, and all you can think about is being embarrassed because you peed your pants.”
“Well, had I have died I wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Ben said with a shrug. Warrina shook her head, unable to come up with a witty response.
The flight to the medical wing of the main complex only took about five minutes. Ben was immediately offloaded and rushed into the ER, where a crotchety old doctor with salt and pepper hair was waiting to evaluate him.
“All of your vitals are normal…relatively speaking,” the doctor told him. “But you’re going to have a massive headache. I’ll give you something for it. I’d say you’re a pretty lucky kid having someone so close by who knew what she was doing.”
Ben looked over at Warrina, who was half sitting on a counter, still in her suit, her arms wrapped around her helmet. Her hair was a sweaty mess, but it didn’t dampen the warm smile she gave him. “Yeah,” Ben started, “I am lucky.”
“I’m going to keep you overnight for observations, just to be on the safe side,” the doctor told Ben. “You can go back to your training tomorrow.”
“I’ll get you a change of clothes, Ben,” Warrina told him in turn as she lifted herself off the counter.
“Thanks, Doc,” Ben replied to her. “Hey, ah, can you please not mention to the others that I pissed myself?” Ben asked, embarrassed.
“Ben, I’m afraid the word has already gotten out. The instructors stopped jamming the frequency once the emergency started. Everyone heard you while we were in the shuttle.”
“Oh, fap,” Ben shamefully said with a squint of his face.
“Don’t worry about it. Kara’s the only one who’ll tease you.”
“Yeah, and so will that prankster, Jedrek.”
Warrina canted another smile at him and said, “I’ll be back in a bit with the others,” then left him alone with the doctor and a nurse who had walked into the emergency room as she was leaving.
“We’ll get you wheeled over to another room with a little more privacy where you’ll be staying the night,” the doctor told him. “There’s a shower in there and a clean robe.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ben replied wearily. He could already feel his head starting to hurt.
************
“You’ve got visitors, Ben,” a female voice said over an intercom, waking him up from a drug-induced sleep.
“Let ‘em in,” Ben groggily replied. The door to his room slid open, and Kara and the entire Jack crew walked in. Three hours had passed since the incident, giving them all more than enough time to clean up before visiting. Kara let the others shuffle past her, and it didn’t go unnoticed to Ben.
“How’re you feeling?” Warrina asked spritely as she set a bag of clothes on his bed beside him.
“I have a headache,” Ben replied, confirming her earlier prediction.
“They didn’t give you anything for it?”
“They gave me something, but all it did was make me sleepy.”
“I’ll get you something better, hold on,” she said, and then she walked back out of the door.
“You had us scared for a bit there, Ben,” Gedeon said to him.
“Guess I should watch where I’m going next time, eh?” Ben replied. “The terrain out there’s kind of brutal. I should’ve taken a knee before messing with my display screen.”
“It’s an easy mistake to make. That’s why we train. It’s better to make those mistakes here than out there on the battlefield when it counts.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true. So, who’s going to be the first one to pop a crack at me for pissing myself?”
“Ben, as much as we’d all love to do it, it ain’t gonna happen,” Jedrek told him, surprisingly. Ben quirked his aching head and squinted an eye in response. “For the exception of Kara here, there’s not a one of us who hasn’t done the same thing at one point or another during combat. It happens.” Ben recalled that that was the same statement Warrina had made to him earlier – It happens.
Kara seemed to be hiding behind Rangi, but Ben wasn’t sure why. He didn’t know whether he should say something to her.
“Are they going to keep you here overnight then?” Cadence asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ben confirmed.
“That’s good. Thanks to you, we all get the rest of the day off, too.”
“We could all use a break,” Rangi admitted. “We’ve only got a week left, but this place takes a toll. Weapons firing was the only fun thing we’ve done since we’ve been here.” He turned and looked at Gedeon. “What do you say, Capt’n? Think this’ll be the last time we take a mission that requires training?”
“Normally I’d cuss you for whining,” Gedeon began, “but in this case, I’ll say here, here!”
“Oh, good grief, you’re both wimps,” Cadence chastised them. “What happened to ‘that’s why we train?’ Ben, don’t listen to a word these blokes are saying. This is Army life. This is exactly the kind of stuff you can expect if you want to make it a career.”
“Exactly my point,” Rangi protested. “Hence the reason we left! Who wants this when you can do what we do, training free? Not to mention it’s more profitable.”
“Well, you got me there. It certainly is more profitable.”
Just as Cadence finished her sentence, the door slid open, and a distressed-looking Warrina came flashing in. “We need to leave now!” she exclaimed.
“Leave? Ben’s okay, Doc,” Gedeon said, thinking that she meant they needed to leave the room for Ben’s sake.
“No,” Warrina pressed, “not leave the room, leave this planet! Someone’s here for us.”
“What!?” Gedeon nearly shouted.
“Sergeant Akihiro just pulled me aside and said that a government ship was about to make orbit. It’s thirty minutes out, give or take.”
“Oh crap, that’s cutting it close. Throw your clothes on kid,” Gedeon told Ben while pointing a finger at the bag on his bed.
“He’s got a shuttle waiting for us,” Warrina continued. “It’ll take us about fifteen minutes to get to the orbiting dock and at least another five to prep the ship. We’ll need to…” She trailed the sentence off and stared at Ben, who was standing in front of them all stark naked, trying to put on his boxers. He was so involved with the new emergency that he didn’t think to go to the bathroom to change. Instead, he’d disrobed right there.
Everyone stood in silence, staring curiously at the oblivious Ben Taylor. Kara’s jaw was slightly ajar as she was consumed by his nakedness. She’d never had such a close visual of a nude boy before. Ben finally realized what was happening while putting a foot into his boxers, and his eyes locked onto Kara’s face, only to see that her eyes were locked onto something else.
His body froze for an instant, and he looked around at everyone and then back to a bright, red-faced Kara, and then he looked down at his business.
“And this is awkward,” he said as he slowly pulled his blue boxers up to his hips.
“Wow,” Jedrek offered, expressing everyone’s feelings perfectly, “you’ve got some balls, kid. Bravo!”
“Boy, I’d say,” Rangi said with a teasing grin and a quirky nod of his big head.
“Err…as you were saying, Doc?” Gedeon injected, trying to shake himself back into focus now that Ben’s manhood was covered appropriately. Kara couldn’t stop looking at him, and now Ben couldn’t bear to look at her.
“We’ll need to hurry to our bunks and get our stuff, that or we’ll need to leave it behind.”
“We can’t leave it behind. We all have Simpads and other important stuff there. Let’s move,” Gedeon told them with a sense of urgency.
“Ben, stick out your arm,” Warrina said as she walked up to him with something in her hand. Ben did as instructed, and she gave him a shot from a small device that looked like a gun. “This will get rid of your headache.”
The medication Warrina gave him was fast-acting. His headache was completely gone by the time he reached his room and started throwing his clothes and gear into a duffel bag. The rest of the crew was already waiting for him in the hallway when he stepped back into it.
They all sprinted through the facility until they reached the shuttle bay, where Sergeant Akihiro was waiting for them. “Lieutenant Price is inside waiting for you,” he said over the sounds of the Hermes loud engines.
“Can you tell us who’s after us?” Gedeon asked as the others climbed into the ship.
“I don’t know for sure,” Akihiro replied. “All I know is they’re not military. Their authentication codes came up as Federation Protection Agents, and they’ve asked us to detain you.”
“FPA’s? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Be as it may, you really need to go!”
“Thanks, Sergeant,” Gedeon said as he grabbed Akihiro’s shoulder and then climbed into the Hermes. They took off into the atmosphere a few seconds later.
The ride up to the multilevel orbiting dock was rough with turbulence – enough so that Ben started to feel a little nauseated, and little wonder with all of the different drugs he had coursing through his veins. Fifteen minutes after they left the surface, they finally docked, and a few minutes after that, they were all on the Zephyr, with Cadence prepping her for takeoff. Every one of them had an extra spring in their step as the artificial gravity on the dock and in the Zephyr wasn’t close to the gravitational pull of the planet.
The crew strapped themselves into their seats in the crew lounge area while Gedeon joined Cadence on the bridge.
“They just came into orbit, Gedeon,” Cadence said to him. “It’s a Dagan Class Two.
“Have they zeroed in on us yet?” Gedeon asked her hastily.
“Not so far as…wait…yep, they just did. Hold on!”
Cadence pressed a button on the screen in front of her, disconnecting the ship from the dock, and then she slammed the throttle forward while simultaneously pitching the ship to the starboard side, barely missing another ship that was trying to dock in front of them. All of the levels around the dock were busy with large and small incoming and outgoing ships, making it difficult for her to cogently pilot the Zephyr.
“They’re going for a weapon’s lock!” Cadence yelled in surprise as a high-pitched alarm sounded. “There’s too many other ships around. I don’t believe this!”
“What the hell! So much for having stealth technology.”
“It doesn’t help at this close range,” she countered. “They’re not responding to my hails, and they’re ordering the transit gate near the moon to shut down.”
“Something’s not right. Can we outrun them?”
“Unless they’ve got a supped-up engine in that crap Dagan, we can,” she said as she pitched the ship back portside, trying to avoid another ship that was passing in front of them. “Wait a second. They’re telling all other ships in the area to move out of their way. And they’re jamming us. We can’t talk to anyone.”
“Get us out of here, now! Move away from the brightness of the planet. Try to camouflage us in the darkness of space.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. Cadence tapped her screen three times in different places and then tapped the throttle forward to gain a little more speed. After being free from the cluster of ships around them, she shoved the throttle forward, which flashed the ship forward at lightning speed away from the planet, but the Dagan was hot on its tail.
“This is when jump technology would be good to have,” Gedeon dutifully observed.
“Yeah, and then you’d end up with a space rock in your brain. They’re firing! Hold on!” Cadence shouted as she rolled the ship to the starboard side in order to miss the laser fire. A bright green hue lit up the area around them.
“They’re firing EMPS – they’re trying to disable us,” Cadence said.
“That means they want captives. Let’s not give them any.”
Gedeon moved back to his chair in the middle of the bridge and pulled the display screen attached to a pivoting arm on his chair closer to him. He tapped an icon that looked like a star, and then a screen appeared with a list of coordinates and names. He tapped one that said “Rona.” Just as he did, Cadence banked them to the portside and then pitched them into a roll as another volley of laser fire blasted towards them.
“Stay straight, I’m opening a gate!” he shouted over the sounds of more blaring alarms.
“You might not be able to if they keep firing like that,” Cadence yelled.
Gedeon tapped another button to confirm an in-flight gate at the calculated speeds. As soon as he did, four swiveling electrified balls of blue energy lifted halfway out of the top and bottom of both Zephyr’s wings. An energy-focusing funnel emerged in front of each energy ball, pulling the energy forward and then shooting it out like a laser ahead of the fast-moving ship. Each energy bolt marked a point on a square, and each point was connected by a bright electric-blue line, creating an electric field in the center of the square. The electrical field contracted and then expanded, creating an odd, wavy-like disturbance in the square that almost looked like liquid. The energy from the balls forced the gate to move in sync with the ship until it was fully formed, after which the balls stopped producing energy. At that point, the gate was standalone, and the ship went through it. The gate collapsed as soon as the ship successfully passed. The entire event from start to finish took mere seconds.
“Anything on radar?” the captain asked with a hint of strain still in his voice.
“We’re clear,” Cadence responded. “Home sweet home, I see.”
“Probably not the best idea, but I doubt they’ll be able to follow us.”
“They won’t,” Cadence said as she turned the ship towards a large space rock about the size of a mountain. After a couple of minutes, she angled the ship down 30 degrees, putting it in line with a large angular building complex that was about 4 times the size of the ship. The building had the same color scheme as the dark grey space rock.
“We’re back at Rona, folks,” Gedeon said over the intercom, alerting the rest of the crew to their destination.
“Rona?” Kara asked, still strapped into her seat in the crew lounge.
“It’s our refuge, our home,” Rangi told her as he unstrapped himself and leaned over to twist something on his mechanical leg.
“I thought you all lived on this ship.”
“Live on this ship?” Rangi replied as he stood up. “How could anyone live on this ship?”
“I don’t know. It’s just…you’re a Jack Crew; I figured you spent all your time on the ship doing jobs or looking for jobs.”
“We’re not your typical Jack Crew.”
“Yeah, I’ve been piecing that together the past few weeks.”
“Where exactly is Rona?” Ben asked.
“It’s deep in the DL,” Rangi told him. “We’re pretty close to the Alliance’s side. Rona’s not only our home, it’s our staging point for running refugees.” Rangi looked at the other crew members who were busy readying the ship for docking. “Well, time to get to work.”
Ben and Kara found themselves alone together. The excitement of fleeing Planet Hell didn’t ease the awkward tension between them. To make matters worse, they were sitting right next to each other, their legs touching due to the closeness of their chairs. Ben unbuckled himself and stood up.
“Well,” he began without looking at her, “I guess we can try and help them.”
Kara reached up a hand and grabbed Ben’s from behind. “Ben,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
Ben stiffened his neck upon hearing her apology. “Sorry about what?” he asked without turning back to look at her. A hot flash of embarrassment seared through him, making his skin burn.
She lightly tugged on his hand, trying to turn him, but he didn’t turn. “Please look at me,” she pleaded, her Irish accent strained in pitch. Ben canted his head to the side so that he could see her through his peripheral vision, but he didn’t turn his body. She shook her head, unsatisfied with this.
“Kara, I’m embarrassed enough as it is,” Ben told her, trying to discourage her from saying anything about the accident, his peeing all over himself, or his stripping down naked in front of everyone. But then he felt her tighten her grip and sensed that she’d done it unconsciously. There was something wrong.
Ben turned his body to face her, unsure of where this was going. Tears were welling up in Kara’s eyes, and after a reflexive blink, they began to roll down her beautiful face.
“Oh, no,” Ben sympathetically said under his breath as he knelt down in front of her, putting a hand on her knee. “Kara, what’s…what is it?”
“You almost died because of me,” her strained voice told him.
“What? That’s nonsense,” Ben said to her, as softly and tenderly as he could. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t push me down or anything. It was my own clumsiness that did it.”
“You don’t get it, Ben.” Kara’s voice was strained. She looked at him with pleading eyes. “You’re here because of me. You’re here because I’m going after my father.”
“Yeah, but I volunteered for this. I had a choice. I didn’t have to come.”
“But you did come,” Kara exclaimed as her voice cracked.
“Yes, I did, and I don’t regret it. And if I happen to die, I still won’t regret it.”
“Don’t say that, Ben. How can you say that?”
“It’s just words, Kara. It’s just a reflection of how I feel. You can’t possibly understand what my life was like before this. I mean something now. I have a purpose. I didn’t before.”
“But if you die…”
“If I die, then my life will have been given for a greater cause.”
“And what cause is that? Fodder for a man you’ve never met before?”
“Giving your life for another human being isn’t fodder. There is nothing more noble.” Ben looked deeply into her eyes. “That he’s your father makes it all the more important to me.”
“But you’ve never met him, Ben. You’re risking your life for someone that you don’t even know.”
“Yeah, but I do know you. Granted, I don’t know you very well, but I do know that you’re a good person. You have a good heart. Besides, I know what it’s like not to have a father, and I think you deserve to have yours.”
Tears continued to stream out of Kara’s eyes and down her cheeks as she pulled Ben in for a tight hug. This took him by surprise – but he accepted the hug genially. He’d never really hugged a girl before. Her touch was soft and warm.
“Ooohhh, be careful, Kara,” Jedrek said, surprising them both. “We don’t want poor Ben here to spring another leak because you got him all excited! He tends to do that, you know.”
Both Ben and Kara snorted a laugh as they separated from each other. “He’s got me there,” Ben confessed as he tightened his hand around Kara’s before releasing it. “Let’s a…let’s go see if we can help them. What do you say?” Kara nodded her head yes, and they walked in the direction that Jedrek had just vacated.
Ben’s feelings for Kara took a frustratingly sharp turn – a turn he wanted desperately to correct. She could love him as a friend and nothing more – a poor stray who had nothing to offer her…except for help finding her father.
And so it was, right then and there, he decided to suppress his budding feelings for her. There was no point in pursuing something that could never be, but that didn’t mean there weren’t risks involved. His feelings would probably haunt him from within. Still, it was better to go through remedial heartache now rather than complete heartbreak later after his feelings for her matured.
But heartache in any form is painful, and it was an emotion he’d never felt before…and he hoped he’d never feel again.