They Call the Wind Muryah

by Gregory Marshall Smith

They Call the Wind Muryah

  By Gregory Marshall Smith

  Copyright 2011 Gregory Marshall Smith

  ISBN 978-1-927116-04-3

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank the following people:

  Writing.com – for providing a forum where everyday people could read, critique and comment on my writing so I could improve.

  Gail Smith – My mother who has always been there for me, even if she hasn’t been a big science fiction fan.

  Eric Smith Sr. – My father who has always encouraged my writing.

  Ryk Smith – My older brother who allowed me to stay with him for more than two years in Stone Mountain, Georgia (far past the “cold shoulder” stage).

  Sydney Jelinek and Shontrell Wade – Editors with Red Hot Publishing who took a leap of faith and edited a piece outside of their normal genre.

  Mariah Love and Muryah Simpson – two incredible beauties who gave me the idea to write something worthy of them.

  They Call the Wind Muryah

  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2011 by Gregory Marshall Smith

  Hunters

  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  They Call the Wind Muryah

  1.

  Devin Calloway grunted loudly as he reached between two high-voltage conduits to replace a circuit board in one of deep space shuttle Humboldt’s back-up monitoring systems. He felt the electrical charge lightly tickle the back of his hand and was glad the safety matting was in place around the tubing. There were days he wondered why he had to even do these repairs at all. The ship’s artificial intelligence system was more than capable, but regulations called for human interaction. And Calloway was a stickler for regulations, sometimes to his detriment.

  When he finished, he noted the repair on the electronic clipboard hanging on the nearby bulkhead. He could only smile at the fact that the International Space Exploration Agency even bothered to make clipboards anymore. Still, rules were rules and if they happened to benefit certain suppliers, who was he to question anything?

  After wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead, Calloway grabbed the ladder rung and climbed back up to the flight deck. The entire deck was empty and Calloway scowled under his breath. As usual, the rest of the crew must have been outside enjoying the wonderful sights of Planet 505-D. He sighed heavily. It seemed like he was the only one who cared about fulfilling responsibilities.

  He walked over to the nearest monitoring station and pressed a green switch. Images appeared on the five overhead screens. Each showed one of the other five members of the crew via the miniature cameras attached to their jumpsuits.

  Calloway sat down in the console chair and took stock of each screen. The first in the upper left-hand corner showed the shuttle captain, Marie Penski, up in the cockpit, taking instrument measurements. This brought a measure of satisfaction to the engineer.

  “Electrical system repaired, Captain,” he said into the console’s radio.

  “Acknowledged,” Penski’s voice replied. “Good job as usual, Mr. Calloway.”

  Calloway leaned back in his chair and sighed. Some part of him just couldn’t acknowledge Penski as captain. True, the crew had been together since training camp almost three years earlier. Yet, the Humboldt’s chief engineer found it difficult to trust Penski’s judgment.

  Actually, he knew the reasons. She just didn’t seem like a ship’s captain to him. First, she was five years younger than him. Second, her mannerisms bordered on egotistical; she was a prodigy within the ranks of the ISEA - being one of the youngest long-range mission commanders ever chosen. Her being a mere four-feet-eleven inches tall didn’t help her case either, at least in his opinion.

  Calloway closed his eyes and tried to remember what he had read in her psychological profile. She was the only child of a respected mother and father who had made it clearly known they had wanted more than one child. Thus, Penski had found herself working twice as hard to meet the expectations of both parents. In that, she more than excelled, earning two advanced degrees in electronics and computers while garnering promotions and praise in the ISEA.

  Calloway, on the other hand, was more blue-collar. He had been in the service for most of his adult life, first with the Merchant Marine space freighter line, then the Navy and, finally, the ISEA. He had weathered the long-distance outpost assignments where solo engineers helped service shuttles entering and leaving the solar system. This earned him the right to be engineer aboard the deep-space shuttle missions preparing distant worlds for colonization.

  Well, he thought, he could still claim to be the most experienced crewmember. Regulations required all but one person–usually the engineerto endure the trip in suspended animation to conserve food and water. Penski hadn’t even taken over command of the mission until the shuttle was almost in orbit around Planet 505-D.

  Calloway opened his eyes and focused back on the screens. The upper middle screen showed mission specialist Janice Boronova, in charge of testing the planet’s plant life. She was almost as tall as he was, but was very slender. She was also only a year or so younger than him, but she was reserved, very quiet. She sometimes laughed when he hit her with his offbeat sense of humor, but she didn’t talk much and he couldn’t help but wonder what inner demons she hid.

  At that moment, Boronova stood at the bottom of the ramp extending from the cargo bay. She was just staring straight ahead. She didn’t even hear Calloway come down the ramp to stand beside her. As usual, though, she knew he was there. It took little more than a slight movement of her head to look at him before returning her gaze straight ahead.

  “Everything okay?’’ Calloway inquired, looking at the seemingly endless forest a quarter of a mile beyond the clearing where the shuttle had landed.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?’’ she said simply.

  “Yeah,’’ Calloway agreed. “Lots of trees.’’

  Janice smirked.

  “Don’t mess with me, man,’’ she said, almost in a whisper. “You know what I mean. I’ve never seen such green forests before. I’ve always dreamed of them, though. I knew they had to exist somewhere in the universe. That’s why I signed up for this mission.’’

  Janice had always wanted to be a naturalist and had grown up reading about the amazing flora and fauna of the Earth’s rainforests. Alas, overcrowding and pollution took most of those away from her. Add in that she’d raised her siblings almost single-handedly after her parents died and she never could
find a way to do what she always loved.

  Her job with a government contractor in Prague, Czech Republic exposed her to the ISEA. ISEA needed civilian specialists and Janice wanted to find worlds where nature still ruled so after her youngest sibling graduated high school, she leapt at the chance to join the space agency.

  “Have you seen Harrigan, Martine or Lee?’’ Calloway asked, breaking Boronova’s concentration. “I need to calibrate the ATV’s.’’

  Janice shrugged her shoulders. Finally, she shot him a slight grin, walking off the ramp, headed for the rear of the shuttle. She had more important things to occupy her time than dealing with Calloway.

  Watching Boronova walk away, Calloway frowned. Three years training with her and he still couldn’t figure her out. He shunted thoughts of her aside for the moment and glanced around quickly, looking for signs of Max Harrigan, Veronica Martine and Nguyen Lee, the mission’s other specialists. None of them had their uniform cameras on, which frustrated him to no end.

  He could see clear to the forest and spotted nothing. To the west, he spied the massive mountain range, capped by a snow-covered peak that rivaled Mount Everest in height. Harrigan, an avid mountain climber when not being a zoologist, had vowed to climb it before the shuttle left for Earth. Calloway hoped the man wasn’t on that peak, as he had no intention of going after him.

  The engineer looked northward and scanned the long sloping horizon from where the mountain range tapered down to a broad plain. When the shuttle had set down, Calloway had noted the plains and, beyond them, the vast Earth-like ocean just over the horizon. That would be Martine’s area of exploration.

  As for Nguyen Lee, the whole world was his laboratory. Calloway could easily believe that the meteorologist would cover every square inch of 505-D to examine every little thing that might affect the weather. Calloway had no interest in being out in the wind and rain to find out why it blew and stormed.

  Calloway glanced at his chronometer and cursed mildly. He turned around and strode swiftly up the ramp. Penski was still in the cockpit when he arrived there. To his consternation, he saw that she had finished her readings and was sitting in her command chair with her feet propped up on the console, humming. Calloway had to politely clear his throat to get her attention, but that only caused her to raise an eyebrow at him.

  “Oh, I thought you’d finished the engineering checks,” she noted, casually. “Why aren’t you outside enjoying the fresh air?”

  Calloway stifled his consternation. He already began to regret signing up for the mission aboard Humboldt as the crew was sixty percent civilian. Military discipline factored little in such a scenario. However, he expected his captain to, at least, be on top of things.

  “I was trying to decide if I should enjoy the scenery or kick my feet up on my console,’’ he retorted, in his usual sarcastic tone.

  He expected her to take the bait, but she didn’t. Her smile disappeared at his cutting remark, but, to her credit, she let it slip. She inquired about the status of the day’s workload instead.

  “We’re even further behind than yesterday,’’ Calloway shot back, leaning against the nearest bulkhead. “Not that it matters. We’ve been here for five days and haven’t done a damn thing for the mission. This is the first manned mission since the Tomahawk ten years ago and the fifth mission overall. We’re supposed to make final tests and preparations.

  “Of course, since the first manned visit gave us nothing, there’s nothing final about it. Why ISEA decided to send the colonists anyway is beyond me, but I don’t make policy. Point is, we’ve got a ship full of colonists following two weeks behind us ready to set up a habitat. If we say everything’s okay.’’

  Pulling her feet off the console, Penski took a deep breath. She was trying hard to contain herself because of Calloway’s attitude. In all her years of hard work, she had encountered few personalities as grating as that of her engineer.

  “Well, Mr. Calloway, it does matter,’’ she said. “We’ve got a fine crew and we’ve been given a window in which to do our tests. As long as those tests get done, we’re all right.’’

  “Doesn’t it bother you that none of these civilians take this mission seriously, Captain?’’

  Penski spun around in her chair and stood up. Despite being much shorter than Calloway, her demeanor told him he had slipped up and gone too far with her. He straightened up, trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered.

  “No,’’ she replied, matter-of-factly. “What bothers me, is that I have an engineer officer who thinks his rank of commander will let him talk anyway he pleases to someone with the rank of captain. I don’t care if you’re older than I am. I don’t care if you have more service experience. I am in command and I will run this mission. Get it?’’

  Calloway didn’t show it, but the captain’s dressing down stung. He had disrespected her. Normally one to use humor to avoid confrontations, he had lost his cool. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why this mission was getting to him. Penski still stood before him, a stern look on her face, waiting for him to act.

  “Yes, ma’am,’’ Calloway finally acknowledged. “I get it. Is that all?’’

  “No, that’s not all,’’ Penski snapped, perhaps harsher than she should have. “Ever since we landed, you have yet to go more than fifty feet beyond the ship. I want you to get out and explore the planet. I’m sure you’ve noticed the therapeutic effect it’s had on the others, even after their long hibernation. I don’t want you keeling over from exhaustion.’’

  “Yes, ma’am,’’ Calloway politely replied, before turning and strolling out of the cockpit.

  Penski watched him leave, then went back to her command console. After punching in a couple of commands, she viewed one of her monitor screens. A little perturbed, she hit another button and, suddenly, the screen came alive. Foliage appeared, then a small stream of clear water. Beside the stream, Nguyen Lee and Max Harrigan took samples, her view of them coming from Veronica Martine’s camera.

  “I shouldn’t have to buzz you to keep your uniform cameras on,” the captain chided.

  “Yes, Captain,’’ Martine’s disembodied voice stated off-camera. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “How are your tests going?" Penski asked. “We’re still on the timetable, right?’’

  On screen, Harrigan, a brusque, well-built man with a full beard and a thick Scottish brogue, stood up and turned towards the camera. Harrigan, who had a reputation on Earth as a man used to getting his own way, as well as for speaking his mind, gave the camera a shrug.

  “I am sure that timetable question comes courtesy of our favorite engineer, aye, Captain?” he asked, though he didn’t expect an answer. “Well, I’m sure you know where Mr. Calloway can put his timetable. The man never leaves the damn ship. What does he know of what we’re doing out here?’’

  “I’ve ordered him off the ship tomorrow,’’ Penski replied. “I’d like him to go with you and Janice to the mountains.’’

  Harrigan’s eyes went wide in alarm. Behind him, Lee stood up, laughing. Harrigan took a half-hearted swipe at the man, but Lee easily dodged it.

  “Och, one day with Calloway, and Harrigan will be passing over the new,’’ Lee quipped, doing his best imitation of the Scotsman.

  “Calloway may be dying, but not me,’’ Harrigan shot back, obviously not amused. “Why can’t he go with Veronica?’’

  “Oh, no, Maxwell, he’s not going with me,’’ Martine objected. “You heard the captain. Maybe she wants him to see an avalanche up close and personal.’’

  “Okay, guys,’’ Penski chortled. “Let’s try to be serious for a moment. What is your status?’’

  “Well, I’ve found a lot of flora and fauna in this forest, enough to keep Janice wide-eyed for months,’’ Martine answered. “This place is amazing. I can’t imagine the colonists not succeeding here. The water is basically potable. It’s like Earth before we screwed it up. This more than confirms the findings of the earli
er unmanned missions.’’

  Penski liked what she heard. Her crew - with the possible exception of Calloway - was happy. They were doing their jobs with enthusiasm. She knew her mission would be completed on time and she would have another feather in her cap, which was good. She had a reputation at ISEA to uphold. Maybe then she could take a well-deserved vacation and some time for herself. Lord knew she really needed it.

  “Sounds good,’’ Penski finally replied. “It’s getting late. Wrap it up and let’s go over what we’ve learned today. I have to send a report probe tonight on our progress.’’

  On screen, Martine acknowledged the order. Switching off the screen, Penski stood up and headed towards the cargo bay. She wanted to get outside and soak up some of the planet’s therapeutic aura before the twin suns went down.