Part 5

Koltor is having a bad day.

The scouting flyers that always hummed around the flying behemoth that was the Arboretum flitted and darted in and out of view like so many fireflies as Koltor stared out the glass viewing dome. He had once flown with the best of them, and now his beloved magnacoil military flyer wouldn't even start for him. It had been repaired since the explosion that had taken his right side, but to prevent theft he had had it engineered to react to his finger prints only. He still had at least two viable prints, but they were both on his left hand.

It had to register prints on both hands.

Metal didn't have fingerprints. 

There had been a massive dent in the wall of the hanger, almost identical to the shape of his metallic fist, taking weeks to repair after he had found out that the last thing that been pulling him through the trenches of Hell's war was lost from him.

Just like everything else.

Closing his left eye, an act which sent a single electrical pulse to his steel right and shut off the optical nerve momentarily and dimmed the red external glow, he remembered better times. 

Times when he could hold Karina's hand, when he could look at her and not see her cringe. 

Times when he could get on his flyer and race Alyx, Martin, and Timothy across the open fields, watching the tall grass ripple out behind them.

Times when he could look at people and not know they hated him.

Why couldn't he have just died in that explosion?

He fell back into memories. They had been closing in on the main war engines of the army of the airship Insuperable for months by then. Why couldn't someone else have found it?

Author's Note

It took me a while to come up with the name for the alternate airship. "Insuperable" means something unbeatable or indomitable. Dictionary.com is a wonderful thing. Also, the flyers were an interesting concept to come up with. I got to kind of go nuts with them in the next section. Gave them gun turrets and everything.