Post

Tales of the Great War

#1
The Pelican nebula took the place of constellations in the night sky. Sheila knew it intimately, she had spent lonely hours her quarters with the lights off and a bottle of Argon whisky staring up out of the hexalglass at its beauty.

Her faceplate gave her a much clearer view as she crouched a few feet down from the top of the crater rim. Around her the temperature still dropped, forcing the evac suit to use even more of its dwindling power.

There had been no message. No warning. Comms had just failed. And suddenly she was on her own. Now, technically she had been on her own for the best part of 4 Msecs but with the link to Surveyor-41 down she felt the solitude.

She had waited for half an Msec before making a move. Grady had not made contact, no flyby, no new comm-sats nothing. Something bad had happened. Rather than wait for her systems to fail slowly over the next 100 Msec she had decided to be proactive.

Now it didn't seem like such a good idea. On her readout, the external temperature dropped another degree.

Local gravity was a little less than ship standard which had made carrying the comm array up the steep slopes of the Rim a little easier but it had still taken too long. She was deep into her reserves of air and power. Too deep, it was a long was back down to the Lab Module.

Sheila pulled the case up to the top of the Rim, stirring up black dust as she made a level bed under the plasteel base, exposing a greyer rock underneath. Once the case was secure she activated its warmup routine. The top opened, a dish extracted itself and slowly scanned the horizon and the sky above.

No readings. Nothing on any wavelength, the same as the Lab Module. A least up here there should have been line of sight to some of the relay stations back towards the landing site.

Her suit had synched up with the array now. She selected transmit.

"This is Doctor Sheila Reed, from Lab 827, crater AE-78. Is there anybody out there?"

She set the message on repeat and confirmed a relay down to the Lab Module, deep in shadow down in the black dust at the bottom of the rim. She checked her suit and decided to take some power from the transmitter. It took a few seconds and made the suit readings a little healthier. It was time to start back down.

Coming up in daylight had been difficult. Heading back was another matter entirely. Even with her suit lights blazing the black dust everywhere sucked at the light. She could see the footprints she had left on the way up but not much else, especially the drop, in places it was shear. The gravity was still enough to make a mistake lethal, especially out here alone. Any damage to her suit would be terminal. In fact, she thought with a grim smile, if the Company knew she was out here on her own, she would face a severe repremand.

Heading downhill, it was tempting to rush, to jump down to that ledge there, take nice big steps down that slope. She resisted the tempation and continued her methodical passage for Ksec after Ksec, making sure to keep her breathing slow and even. Her concentration was so complete that she failed to see a small black shape move across the Pelican Nebula above her head.

The atmosphere on the planet was so thin that she didn't hear the sound of railgun rounds obliterating the rimtop. She was too far down to feel the ground shake with the impact or see small rivers of black dust that flowed down. She did notice the signal loss, though, as a large red icon appeared in her faceplate.

"Damn. I must have taken more power from the array than I thought." She said aloud, but shook her head. She didn't believe that. She had double checked before leaving. She stopped and turned looking up at the rim top. Silhouetted against the nebula in the dark there was nothing for her to see. She would have a better chance using the Module scanners when daylight returned. She continued down.

She was near the crater base when the Module AI told her the airlock had been cycled. She froze, the implication running through her mind. Someone had come to the Module, and kept silent in spite of a distress call.

Here she was, stood in an evac suit with low reserves, in four inches of dust on a dead world. The prospect of lone abandonment in the Module had frightened her but this was something else. She had to go back to the Module, there was nowhere else. Suddenly loneliness didn't look so bad.

She came down from the rim a few hundred yards from where she had started. It took here a little time to locate the quad. She sat on it and slowly went through the checklist before she started it up. Putting off the inevitable.

She saw the ship when she was halfway back to the Module. Small, an Alliance ship. Not one of the ones she was familiar with. It gave her a little reassurance, at least it wasn't marauders. She approached the airlock slowly, it was open ready for her, lights blazing in the night.

If they were inside the Module why hadn't they contacted her?

It took her some time to work up the courage to enter the airlock. Once she started the cycling process there would be no going back. She had no weapon. She stepped forward and activated the switch. It door irised shut behind her. The status panel lights on the interior door flashed green and it opened. This was it.

There was a man standing there next to some cargo crates, in a military flightsuit. Short with cropped black hair and silver neural implace laced over his skull.

"Doctor Reed?" He briefly raised his hand in a half heated wave. "I'm Cadet Colby."

"Cadet?"

"Senior year, N... Northwood Academy. Sorry for radio silence but there is a situation."

"I thought as much, any news of Grady, I feared the worst?"

He paused for a second, looking down at the ground. "They..." His voice faltered. "They're all dead. Everything is gone."

Sheila was stunned. "Surveyor-41 is gone? How?"

He shook his head. "No ma'am." He made eye contact. "Northwood. It's all gone. Dead."

Sheila was stunned. "What are you talking about there's a billion people, the twin moons alone are..."

"All dead."

No! "But Neal and Ashley are..."

"Everyone is dead."

"What are you talking about?"

"We were on a training exercise, the seek and destroy exercise from... it doesn't matter. They came from nowhere. One minute nothing and then hundreds of ships. The fleet defences didn't have time to scramble... gone."

Sheila interrupted. "The Orbital Forts?"

"They sent in planet busters, bombarded the planet, the forts, the moons, took out anything in system. It was so easy I don't think were got off a shot, they were too far away. The Agamemnon andCourageous gone, just like that. We jumped." He paused for a moment and continued. "You need to get your things together. We have to leave."

"What do you mean?"

"We jumped back in to Northwood after an Msec. The system was still full of distress calls. We made our way through to pick up of few survivors that type of thing and transfer them on to the Olsen's Pride a cargo scull being used as a medical ship. There were no Alliance ships in system. They came back to finish the job."

"Who?"

"I still don't know, but they didn't want cargo, ships or real estate. They wanted blood. Just big ships, hundreds of them full of lasers and missiles. They just wanted to kill any living thing. And they did."

"But the Alliance..." Sheila began to say.

"They'd sent no ships, maybe they were already gone. But they came back and targetted radio transmissions. We need to go."

By the time Sheila had got a few bits and pieces together the lights had begun to dim inside the Module. Colby explained that he was taking all available power for his ship. They went through the airlock and walked the short distance across the dust to the Alliance craft dragging two small cargo crates with them.

Inside, dimly illuminated with emergency lighting the ship was full. Sad figures lay down in the main corridor some of them gently moaning. Colby walked past them towards the cockpit. "They were for the Olsen's Pride. We never made it. Some of them are in a bad way. Don't suppose you know any medicine?"

"I'm a geologist by trade but I've done some courses, where are your supplies?"

Colby had reached the cockpit. He poked his head in, "start her up, Ted." and then turned to her. "I took everything from the medical bay on your Module, that's it."

Sheila arrived at the cockpit door. Sat in the pilot chair was a boy. Maybe twelve or thirteen standard, she felt the ship lift and through the viewer saw the walls of the crater rim pass by.

"Ted, take us over the wreckage so she can see." said Colby.

As the ship gained altitude it swept across the planet's surface into the dawn until it revealed a twisted and blackened sea of wreckage spread over the prime landing site. There was nothing left, no hab modules, nothing. The ship banked heading straight up into space. Grady, and all the men and women that made up the crew were gone.

"They never even managed to broadcast a distress call." She said.

"Jump engines online." Ted's voice cracked as he was talking. "Ready to set course."

Colby looked at her. "I don't know where we can go. This isn't the first system we've been to."

"We need to get out of Alliance space. Have we got enough fuel to get us to Haven?"

"Haven? The Pirate King... are you mad?"

"If we can't go towards the Alliance, where else can we go? Red Rackhamis the only thing out here this side of the Farthingdale Cluster."

"Check on the wounded, ma'am. I'll get us there."

Online Now

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests

cron