Dante Valderez looked with his blank, dark eyes at the crescent moon glowing in the starry sky, the cold ocean air still roaring in from the opened side door of the speeding black helicopter. Some wispy clouds drifted across the moon’s partially lit face, breaking Dante’s gaze. The black-uniformed man sitting rigidly at the back of the helicopter turned to look at the thin, young man sitting on the bench in front of him, wet and shivering under a light-grey blanket. The longer bangs of his short blonde hair was still plastered to his temples, and his eyes were downcast. 

Dante reached over to the side of the helicopter cabin and slid closed the side door, stopping the flow of rushing air and muffling the sound of the helicopter blades. He adjusted the tubes coming from his face mask and leading to the gas tanks on his back, and loosed the straps on the tanks, so that he could shift the tanks from his back to his side and sit back on the bench. He had to hold his face mask in place with one hand and steady himself with the other as the helicopter picked up speed and began to buffet from side to side.

Lucky looked up from the floor of the craft’s cabin and his blue eyes met the black eyes of Dante glaring back at him, his dark figure barely visible in the moonlight. Lucky held his gaze for a few seconds then looked back at the floor again. “What do you want with me?” he mumbled, mostly to himself.

Dante kept staring at Lucretius, and coughed, lifting the edge of his face mask and replacing it to let a ragged edge of the scarred skin of his cheek slip back behind the seal. “You have never been to the front lines of the SEA War, have you? You should count your blessings,” he said roughly and leaned forward slightly. “I had a hand in making sure your recruiters placed you with the QuadriStar project.”

Lucky looked up at Dante and quickly looked away again, saying, “I appreciate that, sir.” He looked up again and said weakly, “Was it for you to keep close to Rosa and Theo?”

Dante continued to stare at Lucky, his black eyes wide now, and he barked at him, “Look at me, Lucretius, and listen carefully!” Lucky obliged, wincing a bit at the harshness in Dante’s voice. “My allegiance is to the President, and my mission is to eradicate the California Independence Movement! You would be wise to think the same and act accordingly!”

Lucky shivered slightly, both from the cold of his wet clothes and from the sharpness of Dante’s tone of voice. “Yes, sir!” he said loudly, with a burst of confidence on his face that waned as Dante fixed his gaze on Lucky for several moments in silence. Lucky squirmed on his seat and let the grey blanket fall to his lap to run his hands nervously around the inside of his collar and pull out the gold necklace he was wearing, letting the four point star pendant on the end drop on top of his uniform jacket. 

The gold star glinted in the moonlight, and Lucky noted that Dante was now squinting to look carefully at it, and even with the noise of the helicopter blades, could hear that Dante wasn’t breathing under his ventilator mask. Lucky cupped the star pendant in his hand and dropped it under his shirt again. “A gift from Rosa,” Lucky offered, “I received it from her on our wedding night…,” his voice trailing off on seeing that Dante was no longer looking or listening to him and was putting the oxygen tanks on his back again and tightening the straps over his shoulders.

Dante got up quickly, walking across the cabin to the cockpit of the helicopter to lean in and talk to the pilot. The pilot nodded and pointed to a navigation map of the southern California coast clipped to the control panel. Lucky peered out the window next to him and could dimly see that the helicopter was flying high inland, with the ocean coast line speeding past them, far below. Dante returned to his seat and sat down, rigid and silent again, but this time with his eyes closed as if to be meditating. 

Seeing that Dante wasn’t watching him anymore, he took the opportunity to look at the imposing man before him, up and down. The only skin showing was the skin on his head, which was dark and slightly wrinkled at the forehead and eyes. He was completely bald, with the skin on his skull scarred with old cuts and burns. The bridge of his nose down to his chin was concealed by the breather of his mask that was elongated to cover his jaws and cheeks. A black tube extended from each side of the mask to bend and wrap over his shoulders to the two oxygen tanks, painted black and strapped to his back. His black uniform was crisp and typical in its generic cut, not revealing much about his body other than it was large but athletic. He wore black gloves and non-descript black army boots.

Lucky looked at the closed lids of Dante’s eyes and jumped when they suddenly opened and Dante growled at him, “What do you know about the origin of your necklace?”

“Not much, sir,” Lucky stuttered. He pulled it from under his shirt again, and flipped the star pendant over in his palm, revealing the inscribed letters, “PEPC”, one letter for each point of the star. “Pepsi Cola,” Lucretius laughed, “I never really understood that. Rosa neither.”

“Perseverance, Empathy, Positivity and Collaboration,” Dante breathed heavily with clear irritation in his voice, “All misconceptions of the California Independence Movement. You only need to know that the President has decreed that the true foundation of a just society is Punishment, Entitlement, Piety and Competition.”

“I didn’t know this was a CIM thing,” Lucretius said starting to take the necklace off.

“Keep it. You may find it useful when you encounter CIMs and need to gain their trust,” Dante said. He looked out the window at the dark mountain ranges move underneath them. “We are about to apprehend one of its leaders, Kenji Nobu, at his hideout in Joshua Tree Park. While I deal with Nobu, I want you to find Rosa and bring her to me!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***