Colony Lost

by Chris Philbrook

  “Watch my shit!”

  Dustin danced and ducked and dove around the passengers and crew preparing for the launch of the ship. They scolded him as he brushed past them. When he reached the end of the lower level of the cavernous cargo bay, he grabbed the twin rails of the steep stairs that led up to the second-floor command cabin and flew up them.

  He reached the small mezzanine that overlooked the bay and dove down the narrow hall that led to the secure cockpit door. He laughed when he saw it was open. Security protocol on a late-night shuttle launch was lax, especially on Sota when the crew and passenger lists were filled with military and professional names.

  Dustin slowed as he approached the cockpit entrance. He looked with awe at the expansive cockpit windows and the holographic displays that covered them. Almost every bit of information the pilot or co-pilot could need was displayed in their field of vision. He paused as the crew prepared for launch.

  “You about ready?” The captain asked his co-pilot.

  “Yep. All checked off over here. Andy should be checking in the last few passengers in back. Once he gets done, we can go.” She sounded confident, intelligent, and professional. Dustin knew that voice intimately.

  “Lieutenant Courser?” Dustin said.

  The woman sitting in the right-hand seat turned and faced him. She wore a headset that wrapped around the back of her head just below the tight bun into which she’d tied back her brown hair. The harsh hairstyle made her forehead look just too large and severe, but Dustin liked how it made her brown eyes look bottomless and huge.

  “Sergeant Cline. Flight crew on the deck only, please.”

  Dustin pointed down at the exact spot where he stood. His boots were just outside the hatch of the cockpit.

  “Technically, Lieutenant, I am not on the flight deck.”

  “And this guy is . . .?” The captain asked.

  “This is Dustin, Dan,” Melody said with a grin,.

  “The Dustin? No shit.”

  “I’m the Dustin I guess that’s good right? Better than Dustin 1B or 7C, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. Dustin 14W took it badly when he heard how far down the line he was,” Melody said.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Captain. Melody’s said good things.”

  Dustin stepped forward to shake the captain’s hand. Then turned to Melody with a scowl.

  “How come you haven’t come back to say hi?”

  “We had to do preflight. I figured once we were in transit to Phoenix I’d come back and visit. The moons are very close so it’s just a hop really. We’ll land just outside of Eden on Phoenix at noon Sota-time. It’ll be about midnight, local.”

  “That’s not bad. Hey have you given the expedition idea we were talking about any more thought?”

  “Yeah. Can we talk about it later? Now’s not the time. Dan and I still have some things to finish. I’ll come back and talk about it when I take my break.”

  “It’s a good idea though, right?”

  “It has merit. Go take your seat, young man, before I pull rank and order you to.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Dustin gave her a crisp salute before turning away.

  A loud clang suddenly reverberated through the ship. Dustin turned back to the pilots, who were sitting up and looking out the clear canopy windows of the cockpit.

  “What was that?” Dustin asked.

  “There’s some asshole banging on the port landing gear with a crowbar,” Dan said. “Melody, can you get the White Bay Port Authority on the horn? Get some guards to arrest that asshole before he does any damage?”

  “On it.”

  “Don’t bother. Fucking drunks most likely. I’ll grab Waren and deal with it. Give us two minutes and we’ll have it handled.”

  “Thank you, sergeant. It’s nice to have some First Expeds aboard.”

  “Move smooth, move fast.”

  Dustin left the cockpit with the same haste he had when he headed to it.

  Lieutenant Hauptman, Sergeant Waren Dillon, and Sergeant Dustin Cline approached the crowbar-wielding man, arrayed in a semi-circle with the lieutenant at the center. The men neared to within five meters before the maniac spun to face them.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Marines,” The lieutenant replied.

  Hauptman’s hand rested on the grip of his service sidearm. His gun had live rounds in it but, if needed, Waren’s stun pistol would be the first weapon brought to bear. Hauptman hoped nothing would be needed, but with idiots, anything was possible.

  “Leave me alone,” he slurred.

  The man swung the crowbar in an arc.

  “Can’t do that, sir. We’re trying to take off to go home in this here vessel, and you’re preventing that. We came down to have a chat with you.”

  The man stared with eyes so wide, Hauptman wondered if he might be on something. He cocked his head at an angle and twisted sharply at the waist, banging the crowbar off the Beagle’s front landing strut in defiance. The blow did no damage, but made a terrible clanging noise that made the marines wince.

  “Waren,” The lieutenant said.

  The sergeant drew his stun pistol and moved to get a better angle on the man. He kept the barrel of the pistol aimed down at the metal grate of the landing pad, but moved with unmistakable malice. He had changed. Turned a switch that never got flipped unless they were in danger. This situation called for a more physical response than most and, for Waren, there was only one way to be when the danger came.

  The man caught Waren’s movement and he pointed the crowbar at him.

  “Stay away!”

  Waren lifted the muzzle of the stun pistol and leveled it at the man’s chest. He moved calmly, and with intent.

  “Drop the bar or I’ll fire. You have three seconds,” Waren warned.

  “Fuck you!” The man swung the crowbar in a chopping motion down on the strut.

  “Three!”

  The bar hit so hard, the noise reverberating through the night air, Dustin wondered how the man could hold onto it.

  “Two!”

  The man didn’t notice Dustin moving closer to a spot clear of Waren’s line of fire, yet near enough that he could tackle the man after the shot.

  “One!”

  The man pointed the crowbar at them.

  “Your planetary expansionist ways will cost lives. The Selva colonization! You’re going there, I bet. It’ll cost us untold lives. And it’ll hurt our economies and damage our dwindling resources!”

  “He’s a fucking protestor,” Hauptman spat. “All right, asshat, drop the crowbar, and get off the soapbox. This is not the place for your speech, and we are not the audience.”

  “I disagree.” He threw the crowbar at the marines and broke into a sprint.

  The crack of a gunshot broke the stillness of the night. In less time than it took to hear the shot, Hauptman and Dustin watched as Waren went down in a heap, first to his knees, and then to his face on the harsh metal surface. His stun pistol clattered impotently across the diamond-patterned steel.

  Hauptman dropped down to a knee, drew his pistol, and put a pair of rounds into the fleeing protester, who fell to the ground in a heap. The man had obviously been a distraction intended to allow the shooter or shooters to get into position. He had gone from annoyance to threat in seconds and had become a battlefield variable that needed solving. Hauptman had the split-second thought that he hoped the man lived, so he could be interrogated.

  While the crack of Hauptman’s pistol echoed off the surrounding buildings and snow banks Dustin dove to the ground, his entire body flat on the steel.

  “Get your rifle, this is an anti-expansionist attack. I’ll cover you, then check Waren.”

  “Roger that.”

  Hauptman tried to spot the most likely location for the shooter. The landing pad sat as far away from two buildings on two corners as it was wide. Fifty meters. Maybe sixty. Waren had taken the round to his chest from the front, which meant the shot
had come from Hauptman’s right-hand side, and the shooter couldn’t have been on the roof of the building; the ship they were under would’ve obscured the angle of the shot. As Hauptman searched, Waren began to grunt and wheeze in pain.

  The shooter had to be at ground level, between them and the building. Hauptman eyed a slight valley in the snow bank that looked manmade and put the sights of his pistol on the spot.

  “Go when I fire!”

  Hauptman pulled the trigger. As the Sotan snow exploded up into the green and blue light, Dustin leapt to his feet and sprinted as fast as he could to Beagle’s rear ramp.

  Military personnel and civilians alike were at the edge of the plane’s fuselage, peering around at the area where Waren lay and where Hauptman continued to fire. Dustin ran around them, ignoring their questions as he rushed to get to his gear.

  He unzipped the waterproof bag, revealing a black interior case that was almost the size of the outer bag. Dustin removed that harder plastic container and toggled the combination lock on it. A faint hiss emanated from the sealed container, and the lid popped open.

  His heavy-barreled rail gun revealed itself.

  Rarer than religious artifacts from old Earth, the rail guns the marines used were long-distance, high-velocity, magnetically driven weapons that had been state-of-the-art when the Pioneer vessels had departed Earth. No science had been developed since that could exceed the miniaturization and power of the rail guns, and each was a relic no longer replicable. The guns could be fixed with the few spare parts that could be made, but year over year some had to be broken down from wear and tear. But right now, it worked perfectly, and he needed the weapon to do what it had been designed for so long ago.

  He slapped a magazine of dart-shaped fléchette rounds into the bottom of the bullpup-style weapon and secured the cylindrical power source into the base of the fore grip. The weapon hummed to life as he slipped his under-helmet visor down.

  The clear screen in front of his right eye linked to the weapon as he trotted to the back of the ship. The other passengers noticed the weapon, and they hurried to get out of his way. Through the visor, he watched as a spectral version of his weapon’s computer-assisted optic sight appeared, and assessed the situation using a vast library of stored information. The gun told him the materials of everything it looked at, down to expected densities, angle of attack, and the percentage of power required out of the energy source for the magnets inside the weapon to fire a projectile with lethal accuracy through it. A red circle appeared in the corner, telling him that the helmet camera was recording the gun’s data feed.

  Right now, all Dustin wanted was to get his weapon’s optics pointed at the snow bank behind which the shooter hid.

  “Dustin!” a female voice called out behind him.

  Melody. He turned quickly, his heart pounding. She stood holding the railing of the mezzanine deck at the opposite end of the cargo bay, her expression filled with dread. “We called the Port Authority. Security forces should be here any minute.”

  “Make sure they’re sending paramedics. Waren is shot. Thank you.”

  Dustin ran. He only needed a few steps to reach the now-empty edge of the open ramp door. He dropped to a knee and peered around the edge. He could hear Hauptman firing periodic rounds into the snow bank, trying to keep the attackers’ heads down.

  Dustin pointed the weapon at Hauptman near the forward landing gear. In his visor screen, he saw the officer with the long face and square jaw lying atop Waren’s body. Through his enhanced optics, Dustin could see that his lieutenant was applying pressure to Waren’s chest with his support hand as he shot with his weapon hand. Waren’s head turned side to side and his arms flailed as his whole body writhed.

  At least he’s alive. Dustin moved his weapon’s sights to the snow bank. Initially he saw nothing but snow. Dustin however, wasn’t limited to the human eye’s failings. He had better technology at his disposal. The best tech. Old Earth tech.

  A few twitches of his eye, coupled with a well-timed blink, toggled his weapon to a thermally sensitive setting. The blue and green light of Ghara disappeared into a garish, colored view. The colors ranged from dark blues to bright reds and oranges, matching the cold and heat respectively. He ignored the thermal blooms on the edge of his vision coming from the ship’s enormous idling thrusters and focused on the warm patches of color that hid behind the large piles of snow. He could see two prone people colored in reds and oranges on the opposite slope of the snow, near the building. Each held something long and blue that to Dustin could only be a firearm. A rifle or shotgun.

  He set the crosshairs of the rail gun on the first person’s head and exhaled, calming his heart. When the person hiding behind the snow stopped moving, he thumbed the safety of the rail gun off, and depressed the electronic trigger.

  With a faint click, the weapon kicked against his shoulder with a buzz and sent the pinky-sized projectile out of the barrel at four thousand kilometers per hour. The friction of the cold Sotan air against the incredibly fast missile generated enough heat to turn the deadly shard of metal cherry-red, assuming anyone’s eyes could perceive its motion in the air.

  The near laser-fast projectile bored through the cold snow, finding the man beyond. In the harshly dissected spectrum of color his visor displayed, Dustin watched the shooter’s head explode into a warm red cloud. Even in the vague outlines of the thermal images, he could tell the man beside the shooter recoiled in horror.

  Before the other man could roll or run away, Dustin adjusted the aim of his rail gun and depressed the trigger. Almost instantaneously, the man’s head turned into a red cloud that slowly settled to the Sotan snow below.

  Dustin used the thermal sights to scan the surrounding area for movement. The tops of the flat buildings had no anomalies or threats. His thermal sensors showed no one moving behind the snow banks or trying to hide.

  Sirens wailed in the approaching distance, and he sent the visor and weapon he held into a low-energy idle mode. He slung the rail gun over his back to keep it handy just in case and ran back to Waren’s bag. Waren was the fire-team medic and his bag’s contents would save his own life.

  Hauptman and Dustin worked with trained but frantic skill on their friend in the brightly cold air of the small moon. Warm snap or not, their fingers were numb, and they fumbled the bandages and syringes filled with medicine their friend needed badly. Waren had begun the slide into shock and they had little time.

  Hauptman used a compressed-air canister to blast a cleansing solution into the wound Waren had below his right collarbone. Once the wound was clean of debris, Dustin used a thick syringe to inject a creamy white material that reacted to the air and blood, turning into a dense yet pliable foam that filled and sealed the wound. The blood pouring from Waren’s wound stopped immediately.

  As Dustin worked to ensure the wound wouldn’t bleed more, Hauptman slapped a thin black sheet of plastic on Waren’s wrist. Once in contact with the dying man’s skin, a network of blood vessels appeared as if the material x-rayed him on the spot. The screening device allowed the officer to slip a needle through Waren’s skin and start an IV with no delay.

  As the paramedics arrived, Dustin and Hauptman’s work began to show results; Waren’s heart rate and blood pressure started to stabilize. The men and women rushing in to help asked the marines to step away so they could work. It gave them a moment to catch their breath.

  Hauptman and Dustin visibly sagged, the adrenaline finally draining away.

  “Looks like the trip out of town might need to wait a few days.”

  Hauptman looked down at their friend. Judging by the way the Sotan medics were working, Waren would survive. “Nice shooting. Quick thinking.”

  “Thank you.”

  Melody approached, and put a hand on Dustin’s shoulder. “Will he be okay?”

  “Think so,” Dustin said with some worry. “We stabilized him. It’s a through and through. Nicked the top of a lung maybe.”

 
“That’s terrible. Who did this? Why?”

  Melody slid up against Dustin in a way that showed her affection, but didn’t cross the line into PDA. Decorum had to be maintained, after all.

  “Anti-Expansionists,” Hauptman said and looked over at the crowbar-wielding bait that drew them into the attack. The man had bled out and died during the fight. Hauptman regretted he wouldn’t be able to interrogate him.

  “Fucking terrorists,” Melody spat. “Idiots think that by killing people on the moons, they’ll prevent us from going to the new planet and having people die there. So much for us being the children of Ghara, one and all. Why do people never change?”

  “Because we’re people,” Dustin said. People who kill each other, thought Dustin. People like me, apparently. Guess that’s a part of what I signed up for.

  “Well, look at the bright side,” Melody said, looking down at the man Hauptman shot.

  “What bright side?” Hauptman asked her.

  “There won’t be anything on the new world worse than us, right?”

  Dustin hoped she was right.

  Chapter One

  A remote northern island, moon of Pacifica

  7 August 162 GA

  The night sky over the oceanic moon of Pacifica shone down brighter than the marines had hoped. In all the years of scientific development, predicting the weather hadn’t gotten any easier and what should’ve been a cloudy sky with light rain was instead a crystal-clear field of stars, moons, and one glowing gas giant above.

  The mission couldn’t be delayed though. Time wasn’t something they had in abundance. The marine intelligence told them they had to act immediately, and so they did.

  Sergeant Remy Lemieux’s gray-green eyes flashed over his faceplate, vertically and horizontally reviewing data. He rode in a small boat with his two teammates, all wearing sealed environmental carapace armor. He watched as a tiny, unmanned aerial vehicle flew high above the island that was their destination.

  The tiny cameras mounted on the autonomous surveillance plane fed streams of video and information into the visor just in front of his eyes, overlaid by data that gave him a near-holographic picture of his surroundings in real time.