Tasha Altihkova lurched upright in the hospital bed as she screamed, waking from a restless sleep. It was a few moments before she was able to stop, before she was able to realize she was no longer floating in frozen space, watching through the porthole of her own life pod as the black ship’s lasers impaled the life pods of her friends and other crewmates. Slowly, her surroundings sank in. Steel floors painted a cold white shown in the dim light of the room, and she remembered that she was in the Naval Medical Ward on the space station orbiting Jingashi. The room was cool, but she scarcely noticed as a thin film of sweat covered her body, making her tank top cling to her. Panic forced her breath to come to her in ragged gasps. Pulling herself upright the rest of the way in the hospital bed, Tasha swung her feet to the floor to sit on the edge of her hospital bed with head bowed. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on slowing her breathing. She both needed and hated her nightmares. Though it robbed her of sleep, Tasha tried to hang on to that fear, if only to feel something for a little while longer. They had found her in her life pod with the power set to low, which meant that the onboard environmental control systems did little to keep out the black coldness of space. Since then, she had felt as if she were just going through the motions of life. She ate when she was hungry, spoke when spoken to, and collapsed into a restless sleep when exhausted, but she found it difficult to care about anything, or to feel anything. It was as if all the destruction she had seen was a distant event instead of a mere week or two ago.

She still remembered the screams of those around her as the ship began breaking apart while she ran towards the escape pods. She remembered one poor soul, so panicked and afraid, unable to move, and then kicking and screaming at anyone who came too close to her. It took Tasha a moment, as she ran past, to realize that it was the ship’s XO, and that something seemed to have simply broken inside her mind, transforming her into a raving lunatic as the Pripyat broke apart around her. Tasha didn’t stop. Oh, she wanted to, but her will to survive wouldn’t let her. Her legs continued to carry her past the screaming XO, burning lungs not even sparing a breath to say anything as she passed. She remembered reaching her designated life pod and leaping inside, frantically closing it, and latching it shut. The sound seemed so final, and it was strangely quiet inside the pod, save for the muffled explosions aboard the ship, but that lasted only a brief moment, perhaps only existed in her imagination as she powered up her pod. She remembered fists beating a desperate drumbeat on the hatch, a staccato of desperation, but there was only room for one. Fate favored her, and so she greedily took the hand she was dealt. She paused, closed eyes brimming with tears, hesitated for all of two seconds, and then pressed the button that flung her quickly into space, and away from the dying ship. She could remember everything, but only as if it were someone else, and she was merely an unwilling passenger forced to watch the horrific episode replay in her mind again and again without end.

She still wasn’t sure how long she had been in that life pod before she had been found by Vice Admiral Reardon and his battleship. Much of what happened immediately after being rescued remained a blur, moments of faint lucidity punctuated by unconsciousness. The most prominent thing she remembered was screaming wildly as they lifted her out of the life pod. She thought for sure she was being sucked out of her life pod and into space, and it finally took a medic pumping her full of sedatives to get her to the point that they could finally carry her to one of the ship’s med bays, or so she was told. She was also told that she had improved the past few days. Huh, if only they knew.

Tasha took a deep breath, pushing away the memories by force of will, and found that she was finally able to breathe normally again. As sweat soaked clothes cooled to the chilly room temperature that all hospital rooms seem to be, they gave her goose bumps and she felt a shiver work its way up her spine. She hated hospitals. They were always too cold, and none of the furniture was ever the least bit comfortable, but she was required to stay here until she had ’recovered’. They had told her she had ’acute stress disorder’. Yeah, seeing everyone you ever cared about being picked off in their life pods, or sucked out into space through breaches in the ship’s hull had a way of doing that. Tasha massaged the back of her neck and sighed wearily before standing and walking to the bathroom, intent on taking a hot shower to rinse away the sweat and memories.

Twenty minutes later, Tasha emerged from the bathroom in clean clothes feeling renewed, refreshed, and running a comb through her short brown hair. It was, perhaps, the best she had felt in awhile. A part of her still felt as if she was just going through the motions, but she did not want to let herself go, either. The nightmares had come a few days after her rescue. At first, it was a welcome change from the numb, disconnected feeling that followed her wherever she went, but the novelty of it quickly wore off when exhaustion set in. Night after night she would dream she was back in her life pod, watching the black ship destroy the other life pods, saving her life pod for last. She would always wake up screaming, convinced she was floating, unprotected, in the vacuum of space. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever sleep peacefully again.

The annoying buzz of the doorbell interrupted her thoughts as she threw her comb into the bathroom sink and walked over to look at the display screen in the console next to the door. She immediately recognized Commander Spears and almost decided not to answer the door, but then caught sight of his companion. The man was tall, at least a good three inches taller than the Commander, and looked to be in very good shape in spite of his salt-and-pepper, crew cut hair. He also wore simple olive fatigues, a sharp contrast to Commander Spear’s Navy dress uniform he always seemed so fond of wearing, the affectation making him look more like a preening peacock than a Naval Officer. She wondered if the man had any other kind of clothes. Tasha’s gaze was drawn to the circular shoulder patch on the olive uniformed man. It was a golden hawk that looked as if it were diving for its prey with talons extended, on a field of black, with a gold border. She couldn’t help but feel a brief moment of puzzlement and surprise as she stared at that unit patch. Everyone in the known galaxy knew that unit insignia. Some felt a sense of awe, while others were filled with dread, but everyone respected the legend that was Hawke’s Talons. If this man was a Talon, then he was the best at whatever he did, and judging from his size, and a face that carried its fair share of scars, she could venture a guess at what this man’s specialty might be. Maybe it was some of her Russian superstition at work, but she felt as if death hung on the man like a cloak. Curious, Tasha pushed the button that opened the door, then sauntered over to one of the chairs sitting by the table and settled into it.

“Good morning, Tasha. How are you?” Commander Spears asked as he entered in from the corridor. His voice was cheery and light-hearted. Fake. Behind him, his companion took a couple of steps inside the room and then leaned against the wall by the door folding his arms, content with not saying or doing anything other than giving Tasha a nod of greeting.

“I am alive.” She replied in her thick Russian accent. It was a gift from her heritage, back before old earth was lost, her family originated from a nation called Russia. Tasha watched the Commander as he made himself comfortable in the chair across the table from her, and waited. She didn’t like Commander Spears very much. She felt as if he were trying to control her every movement ever since Vice Admiral Reardon deposited her here like a sack of potatoes being delivered. Vice Admiral Reardon had spoken with Spears just outside of her hospital room, little realizing that she could hear every word they had said. The fact that they discussed her as if she were a problem to be solved rather than a human being bothered her. She may have been a lowly mercenary, but it hardly warranted such cold treatment.

“Of course you are!” Commander Spears replied with a grin. “What I meant to ask was, are you well on the road to recovery?” Tasha stared at the Commander blankly, thinking that was just about the dumbest question she had heard, though he seemed oblivious to it. She resisted the urge to slap him, if only just.

“I still have nightmares, if that is what you mean.” She answered with a shrug. Spears nodded perfunctorily. It was clear he was just observing the niceties, and was anxious to get to the matter at hand.

“I have contracted someone else to complete the investigation The Regulars were contracted to complete. As the last surviving member of The Regulars, you are its Colonel by default. I need you to sign this document stating your acceptance of the termination of your contract.” Commander Spears slid a data pad across the table towards Tasha, and then held up a hand to forestall any comment, though Tasha had no intent on saying anything just yet. “Not to worry, the Navy will pay out the contract in full, including the cost of your lost ship. Under such extreme and unexpected circumstances, it is the least we can do.” 

Looking at the big man leaning against the wall, Tasha had a feeling she knew who Spears had contracted to finish the job. It must be a bigger deal than she thought if he had turned to the Talons. The rumor was that they were retiring. Not just one or two of them, which was typical of a PMC, but rather the entire company. How Spears managed to get them involved was beyond her ability to comprehend. Tasha glanced at the data pad. The electronic document looked standard enough, and true to his word, Commander spears made sure that she was to receive the full amount of the contract, which was more credits than she had ever seen in her life. Since she did not have to split it, and there were no costs associated with rearming and repairing the Pripyat, it would have made for a nice pay day, and yet…

“Why else are you here?” Tasha asked. Commander Spears blinked, and then cleared his throat buying a moment or two to recover from the unexpected question.

“Colonel Bakore wanted to talk to you about your experiences, if you were willing.” Spears replied, waving a hand in the direction of the man leaning against the wall. This time it was Tasha’s turn to be surprised. She had expected him to be a Talon marine, not the Colonel himself! No wonder why she felt as if death draped over the man! This was the Butcher of New Bombay, the man who single handedly stopped a coalition of four PMC fleets under the command of the Rejai Imperial Navy with a battleship, two cruisers, two battlecruisers, and three covert ops frigates! There were also the bad things, the accidental destruction of innocent cities - and just how does one accidentally destroy entire cities - and of course there was that one time the Talons had been accused of poisoning an entire planet, making its atmosphere toxic. For every four valiant tales surrounding Colonel Bakore and the Talons, there was at least one tale so horrible it would make anyone want to weep.

No one knew what had happened that had brought them to the point of committing these atrocities, at least, no one that was willing to talk, but there were rumors that Colonel Bakore had to be restrained by his own Marines after returning from one such mission. The story goes that he had single handedly stormed the Naval intelligence offices and nearly killed the officer in charge with his bare hands, while screaming the name of one of his men killed in action for each blow that he landed on the officer. When he ran out of the names of his own men, he started on the names of those innocents that had been killed. He was still screaming names when they dragged him off the beaten and bloody form of the intelligence officer. As it was, he escaped a court martial only because the officer in question was too afraid to bring Colonel Bakore up on charges, and the Republic Navy didn’t want the embarrassment of having their intelligence failures put into the spotlight. A year later, after the officer was finally released from the hospital from recuperating from his injuries, he was quietly dishonorably discharged, though the reasons why were never known. Few blamed the Talons for their actions, save the Talons themselves.

Failure in Naval intelligence is one of the things every empire in the known galaxy had in common. The problem is, the Navy didn’t care. They weren’t the ones in the trenches. They didn’t have to see the horrors their failures resulted in, and that suited them just fine. It was one of the unforeseen results of the PMC Accord. War was now fought by proxy, which was just another way of saying that governments didn’t get their hands dirty, but rather paid to have someone else fight their battles for them. Tasha gave Colonel Bakore a respectful nod, who in turn used his foot to push himself off the wall he had been leaning on and walked towards her, offering his hand. Swallowing nervously, Tasha accepted it with a firm handshake.

“Hello, Tasha.” Colonel Bakore said quietly. Favoring the Colonel with a reserved expression, she motioned towards where Commander Spears was sitting.

“Please, have a seat Colonel.” Tasha offered. Tasha caught a quickly suppressed grin on the Colonel’s face while the Commander blinked a couple of times before the meaning of her words sank in. Embarrassed, and more than a little offended, the Commander cleared his throat and jumped out of his chair.

“Of course! Where are my manners?” the Commander said, trying to salvage the situation with some measure of grace. “I’ll wait in the lobby, Colonel. Let me know when you are done.” Turning towards Tasha, he said, “Don’t forget to sign that document before we leave.” Then he walked out. Colonel Bakore settled into the metal chair just vacated by the Commander, which squeaked plaintively at having to support a man of his stature. The silence seemed to drag on as the man studied her with grey eyes. His gaze made her nervous, and the tension in the room grew before Colonel Bakore finally broke the silence.

“The navy sent you and your crew to investigate the destruction of several vessels in the Deramaar system. Why don’t you begin your story there?” Hawke stated. It was not a question, Tasha realized, but a simple matter of fact. She would start there, and she would talk. She idly wondered, for just a moment, what would have happened had she no intention of doing so, but then set aside that curious thought as she began her story.

“Our ship was the Pripyat, a standard Gadari Hound class cruiser. I was the coms officer.” Tasha began, “When we arrived in the Perolsi system, our sensor sweeps detected trace energy readings of weapons fire.” Tasha paused, then shook her head.

“No, that’s not right. We assumed the energy readings were weapons fire, but in truth we only knew that they were trace energy readings found in the vicinity of the debris of a recently destroyed ship, or what was left of it.” Colonel Bakore nodded, understanding her meaning. Ship debris was typically propelled through space by the force of the explosion that caused it. That meant that the debris tended to keep moving unless another force stopped it or changed its direction. Over time, a debris field could cover quite a large distance, and eventually become nothing more than errant pieces of floating space junk. By that time, the only thing left at the point of origin for the debris field would be trace energy readings, primarily from weapons fire.

“We spent two days studying the debris field, trying to determine what kind of ship it was so that we could compare it against ships known to operate in that region. We were hoping to identify the name of the ship, her crew, and perhaps even identify her cargo. On the second day, we-“ Tasha broke off her story as a sudden upwelling of emotion, the first she had felt since that horrible event, threatened to make her begin weeping openly. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head to hide her face from Colonel Bakore as she struggled valiantly to control her wild emotions. Now was not the time. Not like this, not in front of someone she barely knew.

“Take your time.” The Colonel rumbled from across the table. For long moments Tasha struggled, teeth gritted against the sobs that threatened to escape her, even going so far as to hold her breath. The torrent of emotions, anger and sorrow, were a sudden change from the numbness she had been feeling for quite some time now. It was as if talking about what happened reawakened something inside of her that had somehow been detached or disconnected all this time. As she struggled, she did not hear the Colonel stand and walk around the table, nor did she see the knowing look on his face, but when he placed a hand on her shoulder, it was as if the floodgates were opened, and the battle lost. A great wail escaped Tasha’s throat as she sat there, wrapping her arms around herself as he doubled over and great, wracking sobs shook her. All the while, Hawke merely stood there, his hand awkwardly resting her on the shoulder, and squeezing gently, offering what support he could to this bereaved stranger, knowing all too well the kind of pain and grief she felt.

It was some time later when Hawke emerged from Tasha’s hospital room and walked to the lobby carrying the datapad Commander Spears had left for Tasha to sign. Sitting in one of the uncomfortable chairs that seem to plague medical wards, hospitals, and doctors offices throughout the galaxy, Commander Spears did not look very happy. Well, Hawke thought, he’s about to become even more unhappy. Handing Spears the datapad, Hawke just said, “Discharge her.” before walking out of the medical ward. Commander Spears stared after the departing Hawke with a puzzled expression on his face, then looked at his datapad. Sure enough, Tasha had signed the document, but what was this? Another document? Tapping the screen to open the new document, the Commander read it, and his face turned red as he hurled his datapad viciously across the room to slam in into the wall. Hawke had signed Tasha on to become a Talon!

Next Chapter: Chapter 3