The aircraft was taking off, both the armored watchers could see it on camera three, the only camera that pointed at the airfield.

  Neither would know what happened, they would both stay at their station until relieved.

  A moving van; no a delivery van, blocked their view.

  A natural born delivery worker got out.

  “What’s he doing”

  “He’s delivering a package squire.”

  “In these trying times? Is it a bomb?”

  “Just because we are on edge doesn’t mean everyone is.”

  Jason moved forward, the little electrical cord automatically disconnected. He was detached from the chapel.

  “I’m going to go accept his package.”

  “Should not I?”

  “I’m older than you, trust me when I say my experience isn’t worth as much as you think.”

  Jason disobeyed one of the orders, he left the church and accepted the package from the natural born delivery man.

  The light outside was a deep blue. It gave the impression of the inside of a warehouse. Without corrective screens in the helmet Jason would have blinked painfully as if the world around was unreal.

  Certainly the delivery driver blinked before staring up at the armored and armed man who had let the automatic grenade launcher dangle. Not limply, but rather on a suspended swiveling rail system connected to the “kidney” of the armored suit.

  “This package for ZMB-3 Chapel of Ludd? You are the recipient?”

  It was silly to imagine but Jason briefly dreaded the bomb that the squire had feared.

  “Can you sign for this?” The delivery man said. It was a man right?

  Jason frowned inside his armor, he always assumed people with makeup were men, it was pretty awkward normally. Quirk of a home planet…

  “No” Jason’s voice modulator replied.

  He genuinely could not. It would take three minutes to get out of the armor properly. And if he rushed the process the machine would click off in a paranoid security protocol assuming it was an emergency.

  Or at least it would today, they planned on action today.

  Jason had not predicted this problem.

  “Tell them…”

  It was against basic opsec to share names when armored.

  “Callsign JJ has accepted the package… what is it?”

  “No sir I really need a signature.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Nobody is here but me.”

  Lying was part of war sadly. Not that the church was at war with Tempest Postal. The little delivery van only said “TP” with a lightning bolt and a puffed cloud of speed. The meaning was universal.

  The postal worker would have sighed and asked for the package back. But a glint of light caught their eye, a laser, nearly as bright as the unmarred sun.

  At the end of the light was that odd tundra craft, heavy and naval yet airborne. It was almost distant by now. Only moments away from the raw rocky tundra beyond civilized care. It would have done a great big circle around the base and tried to land again if it wasn’t so rudely assaulted.

  The light was gone by the time anyone had looked. But then a glow from one of the engines. Then a second laser shone upon the massive tail. The great big crucifix of control that balanced the craft buckled. Jason was briefly aware that his digital filters designed to protect his eyes from such massive energetic emissions gave him one of the the best views of disaster in the base.

  The delivery driver looked away instinctively.

  An engine sputtered, the craft wheeled to the right, briefly stalling before flopping back down to earth. The leviathan was only a handful of meters above the brittle flat earth.

  The fuselage of the craft tore before impact on the ground. Was the craft really so fragile? The front of the craft exploded in a gratuitous fireball that scorched forward death upon the lichens and mice and insects of the tundra. The tail tumbled through the flames. And skidded gently beyond the wreckage. A sled that promised a modicum of safety.

  Perhaps the skinkling lived.

  Jason stood in silence for about ten seconds.

  Jason thumbed the “save” button that designated the last 30 seconds of helm cam worth keeping on the hard drives.

  The view was worth a month or two of penance.

  The worry now was that the next thirty would be as well.

  The civilian, the delivery worker began to ask questions, for thirty seconds Jason ignored them.

  The civilian got bored and began to yap on their company communicator.

  The lizard didn’t appear to be emerging from the wreck, Jason’s weak ten times magnified helmet binoculars would have seen movement out there surely.

  “Hummf” Jason grunted.

  Nobody could hear him.

  He opened the package that was delivered to the chapel. The delivery worker made no complaint. They were already getting back in the delivery van.

  To make sure the package wasn’t a bomb naturally.

  It was easy to open with an armored exoskeleton.

  At first it seemed a bomb with an authoritative computer print out.

  Then Jason recognized a knight’s helmet, Charles’s helmet. The gnarly gash in the face looked up at him judgmentally.

  He examined the thin slip of yellow paper in a plastic laminate.

  Metallurgical analysis: not performed

  Structural analysis: failure

  Failure analysis: not performed

  Electrical analysis: not performed

  Cybersecurity audit: not performed

  QA review: not applicable

  Reliability assessment : failure

  A pair of stickers were appended in the “notes section” both on a standard off white background with black text.

  “Terrestrial origin” and “ no serial number”

  With one clumsy but expertly operated finger Jason rolled the helmet in the box. Judgmentally he considered it’s unprotected, unbubblewrapped state. Only a cardboard frame to prevent it from the abusive hands of the underpaid warehouse worker.

  The inside of the helmet yielded no ordinance, not that it would have. Such a plan would have been silly. The helmet did yield a little stainless steel tag (number four) and a shipping barcode.

  The van drove away, the package was unsigned, or perhaps signed by the driver, hopefully signed “JJ.” Either way it was in the right place. Jason carried the package and entered the chapel double doors; automatic grenade launcher carefully maneuvered out of the way of the wooden gate.

  He placed the package among the wooden statues that decorated this chapel, and returned back to his corner.

  “Squire we gave Charles's helmet to a scrapyard didn’t we?”

  “That sounds right.”

  The little cord plugged back in. Jason checked all the camera feeds anxiously, as if checking now would make up for his unsanctioned curiosity.

  “You saw the explosion?” Squire asked.

  “Yes”

  “I can’t see the lizard”

  “Seems rather too good to be true if it’s dead.”

  “Well the craft took off, that means we ID’ed it in the vessel?”

  Jason ran a script to search for the last minute or so of footage, then remembered that this chapel didn’t have such a basic feature.

  Languidly, hiding his anxiety he responded.

  “So it seems… so it seems.”