Ravens of Eternity

165 Rising Horizons, Pt Five jets screamed at maximum throttle eastwards over the Atlantic Ocean, and left the North American coastline far behind. The thrust from their engines caused the water to jet up in the air violently, yet beautifully.

The deep blue sky above them turned a deep red the closer it got to the horizon. And as they sped, Sol peeked up and broke the sky into dawn. And even though Helios surrounded it, its light was still bright, and its heat was still felt.

The sun unceasingly rose skyward, lit up the sky with brilliant shades of blues and reds, and caused the grey-blue waters of the North Atlantic ocean to sparkle.

The pilots watched as Gaea witnessed yet another dawn. Just one more, after billions of them one after the other. Nothing new, but still amazing.

Pio was utterly stunned at the light blues and salmon-pinks that stretched across the sky. Of course, he had seen many beautiful sunrises in his life. To him, nothing could beat a springtime sunrise in Paris.

But this was entirely different. He felt truly small. Small amidst a planet. Small amidst a solar system. Small amids an entire galaxy.

As they all looked on in wonder, Amal’s voice came through their Comms Display.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said. “I haven’t seen it like this ever before.”

“Me neither,” said Eva. “Most of the time, I never even bothered to look. I guess I missed out all those days. I did get a lot of sunsets over the water though, which I’m kinda realizing is the bonus you get from living on a western coast. Eastern coasts get the good sunrises.”

.....

“Lucky either way. I lived in Damascus most of my life. I only really experienced sunrises or sunsets in the middle of a city. It’s... different. It was still beautiful, but it kind of felt stifled, you know? Or maybe filtered.”

“Let’s go up high. I wanna see what it looks like above the clouds.”

The rest of them agreed, and quickly angled their noses up. Even though they were in relatively simple single-seater civilian aircraft, they were still incredibly agile. Eva was able to pull back on the stick far enough so they ascended steeply, but with maximum velocity.

The wind buffeted around her wings, and beat the little craft around a bit. But its aerodynamic frame held strong, and Eva hardly had to fight against it to stay steady.

The others followed right behind, all of them with huge smiles on their faces as they climbed higher and higher.

Thanks to their speed, it took little over five minutes for them to break through the layer of clouds, and up a short distance above them. Once they were happy with their altitude, they evened out their craft, and glided serenely towards the rising sun.

They all sat there and absorbed the sight before them. All five were at a complete loss for words.

More than half of Sol peeked out over the cloud layer, and its bright light bathed the area in an ethereal orange glow. The clouds themselves looked like gargantuan tufts of dark cotton, their edges illuminated in hues of red, orange, and gold.

A sense of peace and tranquility fell on all of them. And in that moment, they all felt one with the universe. Time flew and the sun rose as they absorbed this moment completely, and enjoyed the pure freedom that flight had offered them.

Once she had her fill, Eva tipped her nose down, then rolled her plane away and back down through the clouds. As she did so, she banked around until she faced the direction of New York City, then leveled out her craft after she broke the cloud layer.

The others came in right behind her.

All still held some degree of euphoria from their experience. But the closer they reached civilization, the faster the feeling disappeared. By the time the city started coming back into view, their minds became more grounded and lost their previous loftiness.

“By the way,” said Amal, “what kind of contracts do we Ravens usually take? I mean, other than taking down rapists and murderers. Not that I mind doing that at all, but, you know, variety is the spice of life and all that.”

Pelli immediately scoffed in astonishment, and guffawed.

“You haven’t watched their ‘Cast?!” he said. “I find it doubly unfair that you can join up even though you haven’t even seen it! Ugh!”

“Sorry!” said Amal. “Haven’t had a whole lot of time, honestly!”

“Hey, don’t apologize to me. It’s the system that did this.”

Eva couldn’t help but laugh at their banter. She was taking his jokes a little too seriously, and the naivete was refreshingly cute.

“Quit teasing her,” she said. “She’s gone through quite a lot.”

“No no, I should’ve been watching,” said Amal. “I mean, I did agree to join after all. You’d think I’d at least know what we do.”

“You’ve already been a part of what we do,” Eva countered. “Besides, you don’t have to be in front of the camera if you don’t want to. We just do it for fun and profit. Though it would be really cool to see you in action. I bet guys would love it.”

Amal giggled.

“Yeah, I’ll bet suturing a laceration is the sexiest thing ever,” she said. “Or stitching up gunshot wounds.”

“Hey,” said Eva. “Nurses and doctors are sexy.”

Her tone was resolute.

“Speaking of gunshot wounds, we usually go for conflict resolution contracts,” added Miko. “Military and corporate have the best pay, but are the riskiest. Freya takes the Bounty Hunting contracts so she can beat up bad men. She does not usually pick them due to the Coin.”

“I knew it,” muttered Pelli.

“Some contracts are rewards in and of themselves,” said Eva. “But, I’m not so sure about the conflict resolution ones now. Especially the corp ones. I just don’t know if they’ve got civilians involved, you know? After what we went through with the Drogar, I’m not keen on messing with normal people’s lives.”

As they sped westwards back towards the city, the sky above them lightened up greatly. And the city itself became larger and larger by the moment.

They could even see some of the city’s traffic, even that far away.

“We also take data procurement contracts as well,” said Miko. “Also courier ones, digital or physical. However, they are not always legal, depending on jurisdictions between colonial territories. It is all very confusing without a 3D nodemap.”

“Yeah, and the grey jobs pay so well, too,” added Eva. “We don’t really record those. Or at least, we record them slyly. But we haven’t published a single one. Not in Federation space, anyway. Or anywhere where we can get in trouble.”

“Hmm. That’s a bit weird,” said Amal. “So you’re not okay with killing or messing with regular people, which I’m totally with you on that. I definitely don’t want to kill or hurt anyone at all. But you’re okay with doing those semi-legal jobs? Don’t you think they’ve got the potential to hurt people too?”

Eva let Amal’s words sink into her a little. She certainly wasn’t foolish enough to take jobs with clearly dangerous packages. She did her best to filter out jobs that required contraband to be transported. At least, as far as she knew she didn’t move any drugs or guns. It’s not as though the contents of said packages were disclosed the majority of the time.

And even if they were declared, it didn’t mean it was necessarily true.

“I’m not naive enough to think they’re totally harmless,” said Eva. “But I haven’t transported anything larger than I can handle, to be honest. A few small packages here, a couple people there.”

“Have you considered that some of those packages could’ve been bombs?” countered Amal. “Or those people could have been killers?”

“Well, I...”

The thought of delivering terrorists or their bombs suddenly rocked through Eva. She began to recall all of her old jobs and wondered – which ones? She thought of a few that could have been shady, that she felt might not have been all the way right. But accepted them anyway.

She shook away the thought, then laughed nervously.

“Shit,” she said. “So what jobs can we do now? Or should we get used to the idea that anyone we work for could turn out to be super goddamned crooked?”

“Ah, I didn’t mean to alarm you,” said Amal. “I doubt they were bombs. Probably. Right? Otherwise you would’ve heard about them in InfoCasts or something. You would’ve been questioned by Federation Peacekeepers. Those packages were probably way less harmful or at least more legal. Like stims or corporate secrets or something.”

Despite Amal’s comforting tone, Eva was hardly relieved.

“Nothing stops them from being books or datapads either,” piped in Miko. “Or food, medicine, music, letters, research. If we are going to speculate, we should do so even-handedly. And in a way, I agree. No matter what we do, or what our intentions are, there will always be repercussions. We should prepare to accept that.”

“Seriously, you’re not 13,” muttered Pio. Not that anyone paid him any mind.

“Okay okay,” said Eva. “So what now? Do we choose to go for well-intentioned jobs first, is that what you mean? What if we, say, got into a contract where we helped to free people from an evil regime somewhere out in the galaxy. Sounds good to do, right?”

“Yeah, but what if those same people don’t see it the same way you do?” asked Amal. “Where I lived, there were at least three different armies telling my people they wanted to free us from the tyranny of the other armies. I watched as we died in their crossfire. I ran when they burned up everything in between them. They told us they were fighting for us, but the truth was they were only fighting for themselves. To get ownership of the President’s mansion.”

Her words sunk down deep into them. By this time, they had reached the city once again, so they slowed down and descended to rejoin regular city traffic.

The skies between the buildings were inundated with all manner of flying craft. Some were leisure craft like theirs, but most were commercial vehicles – hovervans, hoppers, cargo drones.

“Such a buzzkill,” teased Eva. “But I’m with you. I don’t want to be a part of any of that. Last thing I wanna do is cause strife for regular people. I’m fine sticking it to those who cause it, though. As long as we’ve got jobs doing those, I’m happy.”

“I don’t have any preferences,” said Miko. “Although I wish to continue doing data-type contracts, regardless of its legality or morality.”

Amal thought deeply about all of it, what they were capable of and what she could contribute. How they all could do something better. Or, at the very least, not cause harm.

All she could think of was her own family, what they faced as they fled their home, and what could have helped them survive. She imagined all the times when a little extra food would have helped.

Or shelter. Bandages. Shoes. Water.

The simple things.

Many times, they were the difference between life and death.

“How ’bout this,” she said. “What if we took contracts to help people like, in the wild colonial territories or outer edges or conflict zones, or whatever they’re called? The kind of people who need guns, or food, or medicine, or tech, or info... Just to make it to tomorrow. And we bring it to them, no matter who says we can’t. Would that satisfy everyone?”

Eva’s mind raced as she thought of the possibilities, and each one widened the smile on her face more and more. She talked about heart in their trailer, and now with Amal, the Ravens finally had it.

“I like this very much,” said Miko. “I vote yes.”

“Oh, shit,” said Eva. “I guess we’re voting now. Hell yeah. I’ll also vote yes. Very yes.”