by Dan Davis
His feelings for Navi were powerful. She, more than any other in history, knew him and he knew her. They had shared everything that could be shared and their lives had been enriched because of it. The breadth and depth of their life together was far greater than the sum of their individual lives.
He wished there was some way to explain to her what was going through his mind, to express what he was feeling. Make her understand that he was exactly where he wanted to be. He tried to mutter something about it into her hair, to put into words precisely what she meant to him.
“Stop it,” she said, a faint smile in her voice. Her hand reached up, fingers brushing against his temple. She hushed him. “Stop thinking, Max. Stop thinking.”
She was right, of course.
“I love you,” he said.
He felt her smile against his neck, the warmth of her breath as she spoke, nestling further into him. “I love you, too.”
He held her hand.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
That was the first of the two prequels in the series. The main story begins in Orb Station Zero Book 1 in the Galactic Arena Series.
Grab it right now on Amazon:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KSJTPYO
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01KSJTPYO
Orb Station Zero is the story of Rama Seti and the forth mission to the Orb, which takes place over one hundred years after the events of Inhuman Contact.
The Galactic Arena Series as a whole features tons of action, space battles and infantry combat. Multiple alien civilizations fight for dominance of the galaxy through the processes imposed by the mysterious Orb Builders. Humanity can only hope to compete by utilizing genetic manipulation, advanced weapons tech and the men and women of Earth and her colonies with the greatest gifts for violence.
The second prequel in this series tells the action-packed story of the selection process for Mission Two, where the United Nations Orb Project must discover humanity’s greatest champion. Our hero is Onca, the Brazilian special forces commando who operates the most elite privately owned urban warfare unit on Earth, specializing in combating the rampant anti-AP terrorists. He would be the perfect man to fight a monstrous alien, single-handed. The only problem is, Onca has just been killed…
***
If you enjoyed Inhuman Contact, please leave a review! Even a couple of lines would help me enormously by making this book more visible to new readers.
I hope you enjoy the rest of this series.
TIMELINE
2039
First Orb signal received
2046
Hanno probe launched
2055
Hanno probe triggers Orb communications
2056
United Nations Orb Project (UNOP) Founded
2057
Construction of UNOPS Ascension begins
2060
Mission Zero launched
2061
Great Engine Burn
2063 - 2075
The Big Sleep Phase
2063
Mission Zero accident – contact lost
2079
Mission Zero arrives at Destination
2079
Hanno Probe comms system salvaged
2079
Orb boarded. Message received.
2085
Mission One - Ambassador selection
2090
Mission One launched
2095
Mission Zero returns to Earth
2096
Max’s files anonymously leaked online
CHARACTERS & SHIP
B-Crew Designation:
B-Crew Role:
Navi
Navigation & Pilot Assistant #II
Cavi
Communications Assistant #VI
Roi
Reactor Operations Assistant #I
Poi
Propulsion Operations Assistant #V
Lissa
Life Support Systems Assistant #III
Max
Medical Assistant #XIII
A-Crew Name and Rank:
A-Crew Role:
Lt. Colonel James Park
Mission Commander
Major Eava Tupaia
Pilot Navigator
Lieutenant Dani Solander
Communications Officer
Chief John Gore
Reactor Engineer
Specialist Chi Gensai
Propulsion Engineer
Doctor Jennifer Banks
Life Support Systems Officer
Doctor Herman Sporing
Medical Officer
UNOPS Ascension Compartments:
Location:
Capsule Bay, Main Airlock
Core Forward
Astronomy, Navigation
Core Forward
Bridge, Piloting, Communications
Core Forward
Hyposleep Compartment
Core Amidships
Medical Bay, Psychology
Core Amidships
Life Support Systems & Garden, Biology
Core Amidships
Propulsion & Engines
Core Aft
Reactor
Core Aft
A-Crew Quarters
Gravity Ring
B-Crew Sleep Pods
Gravity Ring
Gravity Recovery Bay & Gym
Gravity Ring
Mess, Kitchen, VR & Recreation
Gravity Ring
Gravity Gardens
Gravity Ring
ORB STATION ZERO EXCERPT
Please enjoy the following excerpt from Orb Station Zero (Galactic Arena Book 1)
Grab it right now on Amazon:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KSJTPYO
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01KSJTPYO
CHAPTER ONE – RAMA SETI’S HEAD
The first time the UNOP operatives cut off Rama Seti's head, it was for a good cause. Perhaps, the most important cause in human history. The second time, three years later, it was in order to save his life.
The Tactical Surgeon knew that his target, Rama Seti, was not expecting to be beheaded in the middle of the night. The target’s apartment was on the 37th floor of 6 Constitution Plaza, Delhi and Mr. Seti had the kind of security system that made high net worth individuals sleep soundly. Entry to the building itself was controlled and patrolled, funded by the residents’ monthly fees. Even so, from the personality profile in his file, the Tac Surgeon knew the target was not a man to trust other people to keep him safe.
The target had invested in an automated body scanner, fingerprint and retinal scans combined with a password combination lock with a timer that didn’t allow the door to be opened outside of 1400 to 1700, when the target took his deliveries. The apartment door was high carbon steel reinforced with six locking rods that bolted through the door and into the frame.
Yet the best civilian security on Earth would not stop United Nations Orb Project (UNOP) Tactical/Surgical Team 8 from breaking through.
It was 0300, local time. Suitable bribes had turned the heads and cameras of building security and the UNOP T/S Team 8 electronic specialist rendered the alarm system inert, gave a nod and the lock breaker stepped up and started work. While he drilled into the door by the main lock, the rest of the UNOP Marines covered him. The non-surgical team members carried assault rifles, armed with non-lethal electroshock rounds to take out unarmed civilians but also a selection of AP and hollow point magazines for local law enforcement and enthusiastic security guards if it came to it.
The locksmith put down his drill and turned to the Tac Surgeon.
“Five minutes,” he whispered.
“Surgical team,” the Tac Surgeon said into his internal mic. “Come on up.”
There were only twelve hours and thirty-four minutes until wheels up on the orbital shuttle and UNOP were remarkably keen to get the target’s central nervous system onboard. So much so that they had offered a bonus big enoug
h to upgrade the Tac Surgeon’s already-booked Mars colony cabin to first class. Why they wanted this particular target so badly, he could not fathom.
The Tac Surgeon waited in the hall, half-heartedly reviewing the target’s file while he waited. He had broken into dozens of homes in the last couple of years to perform tactical surgery and he knew that some people invested in security to keep their family safe. Yet the target, 28-year-old Rama Seti, had no family. None that counted, anyway. His parents lived on the other side of Delhi, he never saw them and had no other relatives. He had no children and the surveillance notes said all his sexual partners in the previous decade had been visiting prostitutes. The target must have paid them well, or perhaps they were just financially desperate enough to engage in intercourse with a man as morbidly obese as Mr. Seti.
The UNOP Marines locksmith carried on with his work, inserting a self-guiding wire into the hollow part of the door up toward the internal computer that controlled the time lock.
Previous targets had installed layers of high-tech security to protect their precious gold, jewelry, works of art or gemstones that they would not trust to bank vaults. But the valuable content of Rama Seti’s apartment was cutting-edge technology for online virtual reality competitive gaming. The target was the founder and Chief Executive of Rubicon, a gaming cooperative with one-hundred members. The gaming system was known as the Avar and it was the ubiquitous online system the world over. None of the other Rubicon members was even based in India. Avar brought players the world over together seamlessly to compete in virtual worlds. Spectators and fans would join the players and watch in real time from the sidelines or even down amongst the players, unseen by them and each other and unable to affect the outcome.
It all sounded incredibly tedious to the Tactical Surgeon. Spending your life playing make believe when humanity’s very existence was on the line.
“These virtual reality people are disgusting,” he muttered.
“Sir?” The Marine next to him asked.
The Tac Surgeon did not bother to respond.
The target’s most prized possession, the file said, was his custom Avar Chair. It cost more than the Surgeon’s annual salary had back when he had been a junior resident in Austin. The headset, gloves and shoes of the device were engineered to the micrometer and the seat itself was designed to reduce the risk of bedsores. It aerated and cooled, massaged and moved so that blood flow was unrestricted. Vital for the target as he was recorded as being in the chair anywhere from eight to eighteen hours every day.
“Remarkable,” the Surgeon muttered as he flicked through his screen. “Goddamned waste.”
“I’m through,” the locksmith said. “Ready to open.”
“Initiate entry,” the Tac Surgeon said, yawning, and the locksmith heaved open the door. It swung out into the hallway without a sound.
The team members held their breath. They had experienced more than one night when unplanned alarms sounded, ruining their carefully laid plans and earning the Tac Surgeon a mauling from his UNOP commissioners.
But not tonight. The Marines swept inside with their weapons up, leaving one man to watch the hall and another to descend to cover the lobby and their exfil. The elevator door chimed and the surgical team trundled their equipment after the Marines.
The target slept on in his bedroom, oblivious, snoring like a broken air conditioning unit.
“That is not a healthy sound,” the Tac Surgeon said, to no one in particular.
In the main living area, almost empty other than the obscenely expensive Avar chair, his surgical team laid plastic sheeting on every surface. Walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in layers of clear plastic. More team members rolled the heavily-reinforced and extra-large gurney into the target’s bedroom.
The Tac Surgeon had personally performed thirty-four corporectomies and only the first half a dozen had been in a proper medical facility. And yet, even after so much experience in the field, performing the most complicated tissue removal procedure in medical history inside an unsanitary apartment made him deeply unhappy. It was sordid. Disrespectful to the medical profession. But UNOP paid better than anyone and they didn’t care about his past run-ins with uptight Research and Ethics Boards with morals stuck back in the 21st Century.
He wandered after his anesthetists into the subject’s bedroom where the rumbling and snorting echoed from the walls. It smelled of sickly-sweet sweat and the kind of rank feculence particular to the morbidly obese.
The anesthetic dosages had been prepared well in advance. All his team had to do was inject the patient and heave the disgusting fat son of a bitch onto the gurney, which was wheeled in next to the bed.
“What are you idiots waiting for?” he said in the internal comms system. “Get on with it.”
“He’s too fat,” one replied, gesturing. “Adipose tissue at the neck too thick for the needles to penetrate. We are changing them now.”
The Surgeon drew a deep breath but he stopped himself from shouting abuse at the morons. He would just kick them from the team after they got the target’s nervous system safely back to the UNOP shuttle at the spaceport. While his morons changed needles, he peered closely at the young man’s snoring face. The neck was indeed horrendously thick, perhaps ten centimeters of adipose tissue that he would have to cut away before even beginning the surgery proper. It would be a long procedure and he silently cursed all obese people the world over for being such pathetic slaves to their urges.
His anesthetists came back and injected their first round of sedatives while the others prepared to lift the huge mass of blubber onto the gurney.
Leaning over the target’s body, he looked over his shoulder at the security team leader. “This will be the worst one yet. How anyone can allow themselves to reach a state like this is beyond me. And for a prospective subject, with his genetic potential, the waste of it is offensive to me.”
“Tall guy, too,” the Marines Lieutenant said. “Six-five, right? Taller than most of the others. That’s weird, right? I thought they were identical.”
“Environmental factors create the individual variation,” the Surgeon explained, sighing at the ignorance of the military mind. “This one ingested more calories from a very early—”
The patient groaned and waved a fat hand up in the air. The surgeon jumped back, the slab of a fist whooshing past his face.
“What the hell?” the Surgeon shouted. “What did you give him?”
Both anesthetists approached to examine the groaning patient. “Just an involuntary—”
The target opened his eyes, took one look around, shouted in fear and threw himself out of his bed in a mass of quivering flesh.
The Tac Surgeon ducked aside as his surgical team scattered, crying out as the man threw them aside as if they were children. The Lieutenant shouted to his Marines, drew his electroshock pistol and shot the man in his quivering, flabby back. It seemed to only drive the man into a wilder frenzy. He was a head taller than anyone in the infiltration team, even the Marines, and three times the weight. The target tossed the gurney over as if it was nothing.
The Surgeon fell into a stack of computer equipment, the cases of the machines tumbled down onto his head, slicing open his scalp.
In the end, despite the Marines’ attempts to wrestle the stumbling, wild, half-drugged and stunned man, it was his own size that brought him down. The sedatives and panic helped to wear him out and within a few seconds, he was wheezing and slowing. He fell quite suddenly, falling across the upended gurney, buckling and snapping the steel tube frame.
Everyone stood looking at each other, breathing deeply.
“Help me up, you fools,” the Surgeon commanded the anesthetists, who cleared the pile of fallen cases from him and heaved him up to his feet. “When we’re done here today, you two incompetent fools will be finished.”
“Men as overweight as this one are difficult to judge—”
“Save your excuses or I’ll operate on you next. I’ll ta
ke your legs and leave you in India, how would you like that? Just get him up and onto the gurney.”
The gurney was beyond repair.
“Can’t you operate on his bed?” the Lieutenant said.
The Surgeon did not bother to hide his contempt. “I need a completely stable platform for the procedure. Do you have any idea how precise you have to be when you sever a man’s spinal cord? No, we’ll have to call this off.”
The Lieutenant scratched his jaw. “What about that giant-ass Avar Chair?”
The Surgeon hesitated. Then laughed. Perhaps the military mind was not so useless after all.
“Get your Marines to help heave him into it,” the Tac Surgeon commanded the Lieutenant. “And hurry. We have a long set of procedures ahead of us and the shuttle launches in twelve hours.”
While the target’s mind was downloading, the Surgeon removed great chunks of body fat. The bio-waste bins filled up right away and the blood suction pumps kept clogging up. After a while, the Surgeon just started flinging globs of adipose tissue onto the floor. Most of the UNOP Marines found excuses to leave the room at that point but the Lieutenant stayed, seemingly unconcerned. Hours later, he woke the target up.
“What’s happening?” Rama Seti mumbled.
The patient no longer had control of most of his body but the Surgeon had not yet severed the connection to his diaphragm. It was unlikely that the patient’s eyes worked but he knew the young man could hear and probably retained a sense of smell, that most primal of senses. Machines beeped, plastic crinkled as the people around him walked here and there. A machine sucked and gurgled. Despite the apartment’s expensive air-conditioning system, the room reeked of the hot metallic stink of surgery. It must have been really quite disorienting for the patient and the Surgeon felt a momentary, faint pang of empathy.
