by James Rosone
“One issue at a time, folks,” said Royce. “Let’s get on the planet first. Then we’ll solve the next problem.”
*******
Two Days Later
“Captain Royce, we’re approaching the stargate now. Let your people know we’re about to jump,” the pilot announced.
Royce turned to his people. “OK, folks, this is it—the moment of truth. When we come out the other side of that gate, we’ll either be able to make a break for it or be dusted by whatever Zodark ship is waiting for us.”
One of the sergeants laughed. “A great attempt to boost morale,” he joked.
Moments later, they jumped. It took them a moment to travel through the wormhole connecting one gate to another, but once they were through, the pilot let them know it was clear. Their luck had held out once again. The two Nighthawks set course for the nearest asteroid belt to begin their initial intelligence gather of the system.
For the next five days, they’d float in a mostly listening mode as their suite of electronic equipment soaked up everything that was happening in the system. Once they had a better sense of who was in system, then they’d begin their approach to the planet Sumer and look to identify a suitable landing site.
Captain Royce walked over to the copilot, who was sitting at a station with a headset on while looking at a computer monitor. “What do you have for us, Lieutenant?”
Pausing what he was doing, the officer took his headphones off. “It’s strange, sir. When the Viper came through this system nearly ten years ago, the electronic traffic was practically off the charts. We had communications being sent between the mining colonies, starbases, and Sumer. Right now, I’m hardly showing anything. It’s almost like it’s all disappeared.”
Royce didn’t like the sound of that one bit. This wasn’t matching the profile they should be seeing.
“Do you think we’ll start to get more data in another day once some of the other signals start to return?”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, it’s possible. But regardless of what electronic pings we shot across the system, we should still be picking up their own traffic. By any standard, this system should be hopping with radio chatter and ship traffic. It’s the main reason the Nighthawk has been painted with the specially designed material it has—so we wouldn’t get detected if they started scanning in our direction. But right now, it doesn’t appear there’s anyone out there to scan us.”
Leaning in closer so no one else could hear, Royce asked, “Is it possible something happened on the planet or with these colonies?”
“That’s exactly what I’m starting to think,” the lieutenant whispered back. “I recommend we head towards the two known colonies on Hortuna and Tallanis. We should detect something there. If not, then maybe we’ll find signs of what might have happened.”
Royce nodded. The two of them spoke with the pilot, who concurred and set a new course. They’d head towards the first colony on Tallanis; it was closest to their position.
Not wanting to rattle everyone, Royce kept the information they’d discovered to himself and told the flight crew to do the same for the time being. Once they approached Tallanis, they’d hopefully start to find some answers.
It took their ship nearly a day to get within sensor range of the first colony, Tallanis. From everything they knew about the place, it had been a deep-space mining colony the Sumerians had settled nearly two hundred years ago. Hadad had told them that at the time of his exile, the colony had had a population of around twenty-nine million.
It wasn’t a hospitable planet. The colonists mostly lived underground or in domes on the surface. Because of these factors, the colony had never taken off like the one on Hortuna, which had closer to a hundred million people.
Royce walked up into the flight deck. “Have we found any additional signs of life?” he asked.
The lieutenant operating their suite of electronic equipment turned to look at him. “On the contrary—we’re starting to find more details about what may have happened, but I’m afraid it’s not looking very good.”
Royce closed the door behind him, walked the rest of the way in and took a seat.
“OK, why don’t you explain what you’ve found and what you think it means?”
The pilot turned around in his seat to join the conversation. “Captain, at this point, we don’t know a lot as we’ll need to get closer for some of our more detailed sensors to give us a better assessment. But what we can tell you with confidence is it appears some sort of battle happened. I can’t tell you exactly when, but it likely wasn’t recently. The sensors are detecting a lot of debris floating in orbit of Tallanis, and we’re detecting ship fragments indicative of a space battle. As we get closer to the planet, we’ll likely find more fragments and maybe some additional information. With your permission, Captain, I’d like to take us in closer. I’d also like to have our sister ship, the O’Brien, stay behind, just in case it’s a trap. Once we discover a bit more of what’s going on, we should probably send our first com drone back to the fleet.”
Royce nodded in agreement. It was a sound plan. If something had happened to the Sumerian home world, then they needed to send that intelligence to the fleet ASAP. If the system was open to the taking, then General McGinnis and Admiral McKee would likely want to grab it before it was reinforced by the Zodarks.
The closer they got to the planet, the more debris they detected. The planet was still silent. It was unclear if there was life on it anymore. They’d know more as they moved into orbit themselves. What was clear was that something tragic had happened, and a lot of people appeared to have died.
What exactly happened here? Royce asked himself in horror.
Finally, Royce broke the news to everyone else. Hadad probably took the news the hardest. Everyone he had known and loved was in this system, and right now, it appeared they all might have died.
When they finally slipped into orbit, they saw the ruins of the space elevator, an important piece of infrastructure for a mining colony as it allowed the Sumerians to move refined materials from the surface to orbit to be transported back to Sumer. It had sustained a lot of battle damage. Part of the station’s outer rings had been destroyed, and the inner ring was torn open in several places. The center part of the station had sustained a lot of damage, given the scorched markings on the hull.
“How’s it staying in orbit if it’s lost its ground tether and power?” asked Royce. He was a soldier, not a fleeter, and space operations were out of his domain.
“I don’t think they’ve lost all power,” said the copilot, pointing to something. “Do you see those lights on in some of those windows? I mean, the rest of the station looks dark and dead, but that’s clearly light coming from those areas.”
“Good eye, Tom. I completely missed that,” the pilot said. He then turned to face Royce. “It’s possible some people survived on the station, and if they were able to maintain any sort of power, they were probably able to keep the station from falling out of orbit.”
The pilot paused for a second. “Sir, I know this would break all our protocols and give away our position. But if there is life still on that station, then I recommend we try to make contact with them. Perhaps we can be of assistance to them. Maybe they’ll be able to tell us what happened.”
The two other crewmen nodded in agreement. “Sir, I think we should hold off,” the copilot countered. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t contact them, but we should wait until we’ve explored Hortuna or even Sumer. We should gather more information before we alert anyone to our presence in the system.”
Royce turned to the pilot. “How far away are we from Hortuna and Sumer?”
“We’re three days’ travel from Hortuna, then we’re just eighteen hours to Sumer. Those two are much closer together. But this would also mean lighting up our MPD engines and not going with the stealth system. If we use the stealth system, you can multiply those travel times by three.”
Royce
hadn’t thought about the engines. That was a new feature the Nighthawks had. They had a dual thruster system. One was the traditional MPD thrusters the other warships and transports had. The other was significantly slower, but it was essentially undetectable, at least by anyone other than the Altairians.
Royce blew some air out of his lips. “What’s the likelihood anyone’s alive in this system? I mean, if we light up the MPD thrusters, is there actually anyone out there with the capability to detect us?”
The two pilots looked at each other and shrugged. They couldn’t offer him any information on that front.
As much as Royce wanted to maintain their radio silence, they also needed answers. Then an idea dawned on him. “Bring us in closer to the station. Let’s try and find a hatch or a way we can gain entry to it. Perhaps there’s a way we can maintain radio silence and still get the answers we need.”
For the next couple of hours, they maneuvered themselves in close to the station. Even in its damaged state, it was still a large structure—maybe not as large as the John Glenn back on Earth, but it wasn’t far off. It took them the better part of a day, but eventually they found what was likely a service hatch on a section of the station that looked like it was connected to the part that appeared to still have power.
Fortunately, the Nighthawk still had the same undercarriage docking hatch and the ability to conduct a hostile boarding if necessary. This would allow them to anchor themselves over top of the hatch to create a seal and then cut their way in. While the pilots were getting them into position, Royce had his guys suiting up and getting their gear ready.
Twenty minutes later, the Nighthawk was properly positioned. Royce turned to his senior NCO, Sergeant Peterson. “Why don’t you cut us a path in?” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready to kick the door in, and I’ll help you clear the area before we let the others in.”
Peterson nodded. He and Royce had served together for coming up on fourteen years, since their first foray onto New Eden. Peterson had been a private back then and Royce a master sergeant. “On it, sir,” he replied with a smile.
He grabbed his cutting equipment and went to work. It took Peterson just five minutes to cut the seals on the service hatch free. He sent a message through Royce’s neurolink that he was ready. Royce told Corporal Wells to follow him. The three of them would move in and clear whatever lay on the other end of this service door.
They readied their new M1 rifles and prepared for whatever might be on the opposite side of the door. Peterson nodded to Royce that he was ready. When Royce nodded back, Peterson pushed the cut-out door inwards and to his left, using it almost like a shield as he pushed into the room.
Royce was hot on his heels, his HUD scanning what was in front of him and then the rest of the room. It was empty. There was no one there waiting to greet them. Better yet, they appeared to be in some sort of sealed chamber. If this truly was a service door, it made sense that it would be connected to a sealed chamber to allow for pressurization and depressurization.
Peterson moved to the next door. He looked at the keypad—it was still lit up. If it had power, then there was a possibility people were still alive on this thing.
Peterson held a hand up as Royce started to move closer to it. “I’m going to see if our locksmith can gain entry for us. If it can, we won’t need to cut our way through.”
He pulled out an eight-centimeter-by-thirteen-centimeter black device and placed it over the keypad. He hit a couple of buttons on the device, bringing it to life. His HUD then sent instructions to the device. It synced up with the keypad and began the process of crunching the numbers to find them the right code that would open the door.
It took the tool all of two minutes to pop the lock. When it did, they heard a slight hissing noise as the seal between the two rooms was broken. Readying themselves, they prepared to venture into the station, not knowing if they’d be welcomed as rescuers or attacked as hostile invaders.
“Breaching,” Peterson said over their secured coms net.
He pushed the door open and swung his M1 and body in a sweeping motion from the front to the left as he moved to clear his sector. Following directly behind was Royce as he swept from directly in front of him to the right. Following Royce was Corporal Wells, who advanced forward.
“I got bodies!” shouted Sergeant Peterson as he moved to clear his sector.
“I’ve got them on my side as well,” shouted Royce in reply.
“All clear,” Wells said. Her path wasn’t as long, essentially the fifteen feet directly opposite the service hatch.
“What the hell happened here?” Peterson said in a soft voice as he looked down at the dead bodies. Some were slumped against the wall; others were strewn about on the floor.
“There’s so many of them,” Wells added as she too began to look around in shock.
Something isn’t right, he thought in horror. Dropping down to a knee, he examined the body of a woman on the ground. Her skin was bluish, her eyes glazed over.
“They look frozen,” commented Wells.
“That’s because the ambient temperature of this place is around zero degrees,” said Sergeant Peterson.
Royce shined a light over the woman’s body and saw her abdomen and chest area had been shot by a blaster. Moving to another nearby body, a man, Royce saw this person had several large gashes across his chest, frozen blood surrounding his body.
“Peterson, Wells, what do these wounds look like?” Royce asked as he saw them examining bodies themselves.
Wells was the first to speak. “If I had to guess, the gashes or slashing wounds look like what I’ve seen those Zodark short swords do. I still have nightmares about what I saw them do to some of the RA guys we were helping out during the Rass campaign.”
“I was going to say the same thing. The burn marks look like blaster wounds, probably from one of their blasters,” Peterson added.
“How much you want to bet the drones will show us more of the same across the rest of the station?” Royce asked. “Oh, Wells—get those drones launched. I want to see what else we can find before I tell Lieutenant Hosni to bring the others.” He stood up and walked toward a sign mounted on the wall.
Corporal Wells stood up and pulled a couple of Dragonfly drones from her vest and tossed them in the air. They came to life instantly, speeding off in different directions. Once they took off, she detached four more of the little speed demons and released them as well. They needed to figure out what part of the station still appeared to have power. Not knowing how long ago this attack had happened, they had no way of knowing if anyone was still alive.
As the little drones zipped down their paths, their radar and video feeds were transmitted back to their HUDs, giving a real-time picture of what they were seeing. Right now, the only images they were receiving were of a lot of dead bodies.
“Sir, look at Dragon Two. I think we found our proof of what happened here,” Wells explained.
She pulled up the image of the drone that was loitering over the dead body of a large figure. Sure enough, it was a Zodark corpse. Its large frame, four arms, jet black hair, and bluish skin told them all they needed to know. For whatever reason, the Zodarks had gone on a killing spree in this station.
Peterson walked up to Royce. “Sir, you think the colony on the surface is going to be the same as up here?”
Royce just shrugged. He honestly had no idea. He hoped not, but it was appearing more and more likely that this entire system might be just like this station.
“Here, sir. I think we found something,” said Corporal Wells.
Royce pulled up the images of the drones on his HUD. “What am I looking for, Wells?”
“Pull up the video for Dragon Four,” she indicated. “Using the thermals, I detected a heat source. It appears we have some survivors cooped up in this section. I’ve told the rest of the Dragonflies to switch to thermals. It’ll be the fastest way to find more survivors. No one could survive in this cold without a
n EVA suit or a compartment with climate control.”
Royce saw exactly what she was pointing to, so he sent a quick message to Lieutenant Hosni to bring the rest of the team into the station. He also told them to expect bodies—lots of frozen bodies.
“Wells, see if you can have Dragon Four switch over to X-ray. I want to see beyond the heat of that wall and know if we do in fact have people in that room. We need to start figuring out who is still alive and where they are.”
“Yes, sir. On it.”
When Lieutenant Hosni arrived with Hadad and Private Chandler, Royce told Sergeant Peterson and Private Chandler to stay put. “You’re going to guard the path leading to the Nighthawk, just in case there’s a Zodark still alive on this place, or a band of survivors decide they want our ship,” he explained.
“The rest of you, follow me,” Royce announced. “We’re going to see if there are survivors, and if we can get them to talk with us and tell us what happened here.” He began advancing towards Dragon Four’s position.
The further they walked into the station, the more dead humans and Zodarks they found. There were scorch marks on the walls of the corridors and side rooms, and most of the doors had been either left open or blown open. An intense battle had been fought here.
When they reached the room that appeared to house survivors, the ambient temperature outside the closed doors was significantly warmer than anywhere else in the station. They also observed that the bodies nearby had been carefully moved and placed along the sides of the hallways. It was clear someone had left the room after the battle.
As he walked up to the door, Royce observed a camera mounted above the center of it. A small red light was on, letting him know it had power. Royce signaled for the others to stage on either side of the door while he attempted to make contact with whoever might be inside.
Extending his hand as he balled it up, Royce pounded three times loudly on the metal door. His loud banging echoed throughout the hallway.
At first, they didn’t hear anything. Then, the drone’s X-ray camera spotted action on the opposite side of the door.
