The Battle for the Ringed Planet (2 page)

“And the atmosphere?”

Shaking his head, Torian replied, “Normal readings …”

“Contagions?”

“None detected, but other crews scanned nothing before they died …”

“They didn’t have a Hawkeye, the best survey vessel in the Confederation’s inventory.”

Under his breath Torian groaned, “They must have uploaded blind loyalty in your sleep.” Unstrapping his seat harness, he climbed out and down a small set of steps from the cockpit into the crew quarters, a cramped space with a chair and larger console screens to one side and a bunk on the other. A trap door lay on the floor a couple of feet from the steps up to the cockpit. The R-26 Hawkeye, designed to last weeks in space, had enough food supplies for a couple months. Chang checked his utility belt on his navy blue combat environmental suit complete with a pistol.

“I am not going out there. No one told me I had to go outside. We can scan from in here.”

“You’re going outside, and that’s an order.”

“That’s an unlawful order. You cannot order me to go out into an unknown hazardous area without adequate protection. I read the Fleet Regulations.”

“Is it hazardous? What did your scans say?”

Torian grimaced, Chang had him, the scans reported the atmosphere safe, “There’s something, otherwise all those people wouldn’t have died …”

The shorter man pressed the lock on the side of the crew’s quarters and the trap door opened down revealing a small ladder, “Ok, coward, I’ll go first, and if you don’t follow you’ll be up for refusing a direct order. Hopefully they’ll shoot you when we get back, or worse, extend your tour!”

Glaring at the Lieutenant, Torian checked his utility belt, “Fine!”

“You do realize this mission is recorded on holo?”

“Including your fabulous piloting?”

“Shut up!”

When they were outside, the temperature from Torian’s HUD read 28 degrees Celsius and a slight drizzle produced an annoying film on his visor. Chang walked around the Hawkeye with its landing gear extended, crumpled in the front so that the vessel angled down slightly.

“Wow, is that a kid’s play structure you crushed?” Torian folded his arms.

Chang raised his brows inside his helmet as he studied the wooden and metal mashed up mess under the R-26 Hawkeye. They were in a small courtyard connecting residential apartment units surrounded by several benches on playground sand that overflowed with weeds.

“That’s symbolic.” Torian grinned.

“How?” Chang shot him a frustrated look.

“Well the protestors call us baby killers.”

“We didn’t kill any babies.”

“We bombed New Persia to dust.”

“They deserved it, the home world of the Immortal Fleet.” Annoyed, Chang sighed and marched in front of Torian, “Ok, now remove your helmet.”

“What?”

“You heard me, take it off.”

“Nothing doing, I’ll die.”

“You don’t know that …”

“Hey, I read the briefings and searched the Holonet on this place …”

“That’s a direct order, take it off!”

Torian narrowed his eyes, “What did that hot blonde intelligence lady tell you?”

“I know a whole lot more than you do.”

“What did she promise you besides her bed?”

“Nothing, I’m a loyal officer …”

“I’ll wager a place in a Starhawk squadron!”

Chang was quiet.

“Yeah, that was it. If you finished this mission, she will put you in a fighter squadron. Well, good luck!  You can’t even fly straight, so there’s no way you can do formation …”

“Shut up!” Chang shouted and drew his coal black pistol, “Take off your helmet or I’ll be justified to shoot!”

“Don’t you get it? We die and they can upload the data from our suits! No drone ever could report why humans die here, so they need a live test!”

“They would never sacrifice good troops that way …”

“They do …,” he thought about Tristan.

“Take off your helmet or I’ll fry your insides …”

“Ok, I get it.” Torian seethed. Both off-worlders glared at each other through their helmets. Chang motioned with the pistol one more time and Torian stuck out his hand in a stopping motion.

“All right!” the taller man slowly unsnapped the fasteners and there was a rush of air as he lifted the navy colored space helmet from his head, letting loose his chocolate colored hair, damp with sweat and rapidly matting with the drizzle.

“Breath!” Chang ordered with the pistol still pointing at the crewman. Torian inhaled slowly and then exhaled. He repeated breathing deeply for another moment.

Laughing Chang lowered the pistol, “See, she was right, there is no plague anymore.”

“It stinks here, like death.” the odor was of something rotting and the slight drizzly breeze carried other unpleasant smells. Torian walked around a little sniffing the air some more. Chang holstered his pistol and then began to fiddle with his helmet. A moment later, he held it under his arm and took a deep breath.

“Yes, you’re right, it sure stinks here.” reaching into his utility belt he pulled out a small black rectangular item with a screen and removed his heavy navy gloves. He began fussing with the tiny buttons and examined the screen.

Shrugging, Torian did the same with his own black box. The ‘Con’, a device that kept them connected with the vessel’s computers with a little independent computing power of its own.

Then, all of a sudden, Chang’s face went pale. Panicking, he glanced towards Torian, dropping his Con and clutching his throat. The shorter man began to gag, and before Torian could rush to him, he stiffened and fell straight back hitting the pavement hard.

“Crap!” Torian yelled and hurriedly knelt before the prone pilot. Chang’s eyes stared wide open to the sky and when Torian felt for a pulse, there was none. Leaning over with his cheek to the pilot’s mouth feeling for breath the young man began to unfasten the fallen pilot’s combat environmental suit. Studying his floating Con screen, he checked for life signs and grew distressed to see that all were negative. The pilot was dead! 

Chapter 2: Survivor

Snapping on his helmet, Torian activated his HUD and navigated with a combination of eye movement, blinking, and thought pulses to the main communication link, “Callisto, this is Hawkeye 206, do you copy? Over?”

There was only static.

“Dammit! Callisto, come in Callisto!” the Confederation Star Ship Callisto was a state of the art military space cruiser bristling with gun turrets and a squadron of F-24 Starhawk single seat fighters as well a few auxiliary vessels including three R-26 Hawkeyes.

Torian walked closer to the R-26 Hawkeye to verify if the static was due to the link between the vessel and his helmet, but even closer, he still had no reception. Climbing inside, he linked directly to the Hawkeye’s main communication array and tried several times.

Finally, through the interference, he heard a reply, “Hawkeye 206, this is Callisto actual. Do you copy?”

“Callisto, I copy!”

“What is your sitrep Hawkeye 206?”

“Callisto, we have one dead, unknown cause. And the Hawkeye is down with power failures, requesting a pick up.”

“Negative Hawkeye 206, we need to verify your data first. Is this Lieutenant Chang?”

“Callisto, Chang is dead. This is McCallum …”

“Ok, son, this is Captain Spence, you need to upload the data from the environment suit, remove it first and then stow the body in the storage hold …”

Static bursts began to interfere with the communications again as Torian tried to reply, “Callisto, come in Callisto.” the audio began to whine in a high-pitched tone, and the young crewman ripped off his helmet grimacing in pain.

“Crap!” he tossed his helmet on the cockpit seat as he climbed out. Torian hated the bulky combat environmental suit, dark navy blue with an array of attachments for anything from extra oxygen packs to plasma weapons. It was warm outside and he had to remove the same suit from Chang’s body, so he stripped off his own until he was down to his lighter navy flight suit with two gold Specialist First Class chevrons on the right sleeve. Snapping on his navy blue utility belt with pistol, Con and other accessories, including a hidden earpiece, he clambered down the ladder to the prone body. 

In the irritating drizzle, soaking his already matted hair, Torian bent over the body and disconnected the fasteners to the combat suit. Though not armored like a marine’s battle suit, it had plenty of protection from projectile weapons and energy bursts, which made it cumbersome to remove from the weight of the body. Chang was a small man, but it still took Torian some effort to get the suit all off. Then he gingerly hauled it up into the Hawkeye.

Next was the worst part; putting Chang’s body into the small storage compartment under the main fuselage. If the Hawkeye launched, the body would freeze in high altitude, but that did not matter to the docs on board. They would cut it up and examine every detail in their postmortem to determine cause of death.

Suddenly a worried thought entered his mind, “What if I am still going to die here? Maybe I’m just taking a little longer!”

Torian stood up, ran his hand through his wet hair, and paced back and forth in front of Chang. The pilot’s gold lieutenant bars flashed prominently on the shoulders of the dead man’s navy blue flight suit along with silver wings on his right breast pocket.

The beeping of the Con in his earpiece startled him instinctively grabbing the black device from his utility belt. The proximity alert warning signal was flashing the holo display red as he studied the images of multiple creatures in the area. Using a small tracking ball, he isolated a couple of the images and then turned toward the direction they were detected.

“Wolves.” he muttered drawing his coal black pistol with a cylindrical barrel and the letters ‘GR’ imprinted in the handle. Playfully he twirled it, slipping it back into the holster and then drawing it out again. Torian knew he could lock the creatures detected by his Con into his pistol targeting system and eliminate them all at once, but he preferred to identify each target first, unless he became overwhelmed. Besides, what was the fun in blasting them all simultaneously? He liked to practice his target shooting.

The Con holo showed a pack of about twenty objects running towards the Hawkeye; fast. What were they after?

Then, inside his head, he suddenly heard a voice. No, on second thought it was more like a thought, but distinct, and feminine, pleading: “Help!”

“What the …” he studied the holo images again and noted that there was a single image in front of the charging pack: and it was human! Instantly he charged towards the pack of animals and made visual contact. Torian’s keen eyesight spied a group of grey wolves, fiercely snapping at the heels of a running figure in a blue grey patterned dress and a mess of stringy long blonde hair.

With precision, because Torian was a good shot, he fired a burst of invisible plasma seen as only a slight visual distortion with a click as it exited the barrel. A smoking, bloody perforation the size of a baseball penetrated the wolf closest to the fleeing figure, killing it instantly. Torian fired several more times and other vicious wolves burned or flew apart in the bursts of plasma.    

A terrified young woman in a thin dull blue dress raced towards him, and Torian grabbing the sobbing, shaking figure long enough to steady her and push her safely behind. Glancing quickly down at the frightened form, he had no time to examine the poor girl as more targets raced at him thirsty for blood. In a military stance, the wiry young man crouched, extending his gun arm and firing mechanically taking out each wild beast one by one. Grimly he noted on the Con holo that more wolves and wild dogs were approaching despite the dozen or so smoking piles of burned flesh.

“Come on inside!” he hauled the girl to her feet by the arm while the rest of the animals growled uncertain of the threat, but determined to get their prey. Torian fired a few parting plasma bursts into the closest wild dog, while the rest held their ground. The soldier pushed the hesitant girl towards the ladder and the hatch of the R-26 Hawkeye.

“Climb up!” he urged as the pack began to recover their courage and approach with focused intent. Torian had no time to program the pistol for multiple targets and quietly cursed at his earlier foolishness and over-confidence. She climbed up while he followed her backwards into the cramped crew’s quarters, and then pushed the button to retract the ladder and seal the door, but not before the frothing jaws of one last beast snapped at his hand. Torian finished it with a plasma burst from his pistol, leaving burnt flesh fragments on the floor.   

 When the hatch shut fully he crumpled to the floor panting, wiping his brow and dropping the pistol with a clatter. Then he peered over at the trembling girl curled up next to Chang’s lower bunk watching him nervously with wide azurite eyes.

With sudden realization Torian exclaimed, “Dammit!” and jumped up to his feet. Climbing up to the cockpit he anxiously peered through the transparent steel bubble to the outside then groaned and averted his eyes as dozens of wolves and dogs tore up Chang’s body and began to gnaw on hunks of human flesh.

Moaning, Torian slumped back down sitting on the small steps to the cramped crew section, “They’re going to dump me out an airlock when they find out …” then he glimpsed at the girl and found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. Exhaling with a quirky, annoyed grimace, he sighed, “Aye. You have trust issues.”

Torian studied the girl closely for the first time and he casually noted that her hand shook as she aimed the pistol. Her long stringy hair, streaked with so much dirt and grime, made it difficult to see blonde. She was a total wreck. Her dress had obviously been stylish, even lavish with circular patterns embroidered around the high neck that might once have been blue, but now everything had faded to dull grey. Old dull brown bruises and crusted bloody scrapes dotted her bare arms. Her torn sandals were no protection for cut mud caked feet. The soldier guessed the tall, thin girl to be in her late teens and felt sorry for her. Still, she determinedly aimed the pistol at him despite being near collapse, while he watched her scared blue eyes.