Outpost Hell

by Jake Bible

  “Still alive,” Nordanski said. “What the hell happened?”

  “The Skrang warship was destroyed,” Rosch said. “The outpost took it out.”

  She brought up a holo replay of the event, and the three of them stared at it as enough energy to rip a planet apart obliterated the warship. Then they watched it again. And once more.

  “Okay, enough entertainment,” Rosch said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “How’s the Romper?” Nordanski asked.

  “Still workable,” Rosch said. “I’ll have to repair a few systems that I just finished repairing an hour ago, but it’s doable.”

  “We’ll get to leave this shit system?” Chann asked.

  “Yes,” Rosch said. “But it’ll take some work.”

  She looked Chann and Nordanski up and down.

  “Work neither of you are cut out for. Go get some rest. Better yet, go sleep for a few hours in a med pod. But don’t take off your helmets until you’re in the pods. It would be bad if you did.”

  “Yeah, I know how no atmosphere works,” Nordanski said and got up.

  He engaged his mag boots and walked to Chann, helping him up. The two of them looked like pure hell.

  “Give us a heads up when we’re punching through that wormhole, will ya?” Nordanski said.

  “Just go get some rest,” Rosch said. “You’ll probably be asleep, but I’ll have Teffurg let you know.”

  “Thanks,” Nordanski said.

  He got Chann off the bridge and into the lift. They both leaned against the lift’s back wall as it descended. The lift doors opened, and Nordanski struggled to get them into the med bay and over to working med pods. The med bay was a mess. Equipment was everywhere. Half the med pods were overturned and sparking.

  “Wouldn’t it be our luck to survive all this crap and get fried in a med pod?” Chann laughed.

  “It would exactly be our luck,” Nordanski replied.

  He got Chann settled into his med pod then found one for himself.

  “Your controls working?” Nordanski asked over the comm.

  “They look like it,” Chann said. “Fingers crossed they stay working.”

  “Yep,” Nordanski replied. “Sleep well, man. When we wake up, we’ll be rich and safe.”

  “I’ll settle for alive,” Chann said. “Rich and safe can come later.”

  6

  A very imposing figure took a seat across the table from where Chann was dozing. He smacked his palm on the tabletop and Chann came awake with a start.

  “I could have killed you,” Shick said. “Several times. Get your shit together, Marine.”

  “I liked you better when I couldn’t understand you,” Chann said. “Looks like the implant took.”

  “It did,” Shick said and waved at a passing waitress. “Wubloov. Four bottles.”

  “I can only serve two,” the waitress said and shrugged. “If those two don’t kill you, then I can get you two more.”

  “Two, it is,” Shick said.

  “Where’s Nordanski?” Chann asked. “Wasn’t he with you?”

  “Over there,” Shick said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “He and Rosch are finishing up the negotiations with the broker. Every piece of scum in this galaxy heard about your heist. It’s driving the price down on the items you stole.”

  “How screwed are we?” Chann asked.

  “You’ll still get plenty of chits out of it, but you will not be as rich as you had hoped for,” Shick said and shrugged. “Crime does not always pay.”

  The waitress returned with two bottles of wubloov and Shick thanked her then slid a bottle over to Chann.

  “None for me,” Chann said. “Even after two weeks in a med pod, my heart still isn’t one hundred percent. I’m hoping my cut of the loot is big enough to afford a cybernetic one. Otherwise, I’m going to get winded every time I take a crap. It hasn’t been fun.”

  “And no sex,” Shick said. “That’d kill you outright.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not thinking about that right now,” Chann said.

  Shick took a drink of his wubloov then nodded as he set the bottle down.

  “You cared for her,” he stated. “I am sorry she died. At least she died as a Marine, fighting for her teammates.”

  “She got shot in the back,” Chann said.

  “So many of us do,” Shick said. “Lighten up.” He held up a hand as Chann started to protest. “I do not mean that in a rude way. I mean that we have all watched our friends and fellow Marines die before us. More than I can count. You made a choice to go outside your duty and pull something that ended up chain-reacting into a nightmare. Live with it. It’s all you can do.”

  He took another drink and laughed.

  “What? What is so funny?” Chann asked, but he didn’t sound mad.

  “You’re getting a new heart,” Shick said. “Irony.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Chann replied. “Trade a broken one for an artificial one. Maybe the new one won’t hurt so much.”

  “Maybe,” Shick said.

  “What are you going to do now?” Chann asked. “You going back to destroy the outpost? It was still standing when we got the hell out of there.”

  “No need,” Shick said. “I have already been hearing of a massive Skrang movement towards that system. I believe the problem will solve itself.”

  “You don’t want in on that?” Chann asked. “It was your personal Hell for a long time, right?”

  “I can let it go,” Shick said. “I have my voice back and there is plenty of work for people like me and my men. The galaxy needs things done that only we can do.”

  “I hear that,” Chann said. “Good luck, man.” He nodded past Shick. “Here they come.”

  Rosch and Nordanski took seats at the table. Neither looked happy.

  “Ten percent of what they’re worth,” Nordanski said. “That’s the best we could get.”

  “If we want to wait a year, then things will cool down and we might get more,” Rosch added.

  “Might,” Nordanski said.

  “My ticker won’t wait a year,” Chann said.

  “Then now it is,” Nordanski said and reached for the unopened wubloov bottle. “May I?”

  “Yes,” Shick said. “When will payment happen?”

  “The guy is heading to the hangar now,” Nordanski said. “Teffurg is waiting there with the rest of your men. They’ll make the transfer and take payment. Once that’s done then we split it evenly amongst us all and go our separate ways.”

  “That works,” Chann said. He eyed the bottle in Nordanski’s hand. “Okay, maybe one drink.”

  “Hold on,” Nordanski said and he leaned over to another table and snagged two empty glasses that were sitting there.

  He sniffed the glasses, shrugged, then poured shots into them. He slid one glass to Chann and one to Rosch then lifted his bottle.

  “To a shitty job done poorly,” Nordanski said.

  “To Kay,” Chann said.

  “To Manheim and Ma’ha and the rest,” Rosch said.

  “To all the Marines lost through folly and failure over the centuries,” Shick added.

  They toasted and drank.

  A beep at Rosch’s wrist got their attention.

  “It’s done,” she said. “Time to go.”

  None of them moved.

  “One more,” Nordanski said and poured again.

  “One more,” Chann responded.

  They drank another.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  It was a long while before they made it down to the hangar and the Romper’s waiting drop ship where the rest of their lives would begin.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Siege

  Chapter 1

  Maybe, just maybe, we’d have been better off not knowing.

  Kan looked through the scout craft’s visor. The heavily tinted and shielded crystal revealed a sky out of the worst nightmares of a hyperactiv
e stak addict. Purple dust clouds warred and lost with the dark edges of the accretion disk, with only a few stars dimly visible through the murk. But these were the only skies available to humanity now.

  She tore her eyes away from the view. She’d seen it before, more times than she could count, and from all the angles available. Her instruments were showing her something much more interesting, and much more portentous. Something that might signify the end of human civilization in that sector of the galaxy, and, unless there were remnants the high command on Crystallia was unaware of, probably everywhere else as well.

  There was nothing for her to do but watch. Even tightly focused laser communication was forbidden – a lesson that had been painfully learned. So she watched.

  It seemed innocent enough: just some random piece of space debris, about a cubic meter in size, radiating nothing, just moving through space on a trajectory that it had followed since the early days of the galaxy.

  But there was nothing innocent about it. The very fact that it was drifting along in this part of space was a dead giveaway. There was no way a random piece of debris would have been able to navigate the maze between the accretion disk and multiple black holes that would soon join the supermassive one at the center of the Milky Way. But even if this had, against all odds, been overlooked by earlier surveying missions, there was no way to account for the fact that it had, within the past four hours, corrected its flight path twice – neither change due to any natural phenomenon.

  There was no doubt that it was an artificial artifact. And that meant that it was an enemy artifact. All that remained now was to see what it would do next, and to keep hiding. It seemed almost impossible that the artifact was there by chance.

  Kan waited and watched, and waited and watched. Her tiny reconnaissance ship might be nearly invisible among the rocklets that made up the rings, but it wasn’t completely invisible. She would only be allowed to move when the planet came between her craft and the anomaly, four days hence.

  Being a Recon Leader was lonely work.

  ***

  As she neared Crystallia, Kan felt her heart in her throat. Had she been seen? Was some unseen, unimaginably advanced enemy following her at that very moment? Would she be the one to bring death to the colony? She’d taken every possible precaution, of course, but it would be impossible to know for certain before it was much too late.

  There was still one last trick she could use, however. The world on which Crystallia was located had not been chosen at random. It was a medium-sized rocky planet with an atmosphere consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, with perhaps five percent oxygen. The beauty of the world was that it was still extremely active geologically, and dust from the constant eruptions made the sky opaque enough that all flying had to be done by instruments. To any outside observer, the evasive path programmed into her Recon craft would be impossible to follow under normal conditions.

  Crystallia base itself was also well concealed, lying under a kilometer of rock in one of the few geographically inert areas of the planet. A perfect forward base for humanity’s colonies at the center of the galaxy.

  Kan concentrated on her breathing, trying to get her heart rate under control. There would be no time to relax, not even time to shower, before her presentation before the Council. Even before she landed, the ground crew would ask her whether all was well. Her answer would see her whisked straight to the conference room, where the colony’s leaders – many pulled unceremoniously from other activities – would be waiting to hear her report. She consoled herself with the thought that the military leaders of Crystallia were accustomed to encountering disheveled military pilots.

  What they weren’t used to was the kind of dire, desperate news she brought with her.

  After what seemed like an endless series of evasive maneuvers in the atmosphere, her ship finally darted straight down. The ground came up to meet her, and then she was through the camouflaged blast doors. Once they closed behind her, radio silence could be broken.

  “Welcome back, Recon Tau Osella. Is all well?”

  “No,” she replied grimly. “Not at all.” It was all she was allowed to say, all they would expect.

  “I see.” The voice on the other end of the communication had changed, the tone going from welcoming to flat. “Engaging debrief protocol.”

  “Thank you.”

  She sat in silence as the ship negotiated the winding tunnel, designed with defensibility in mind more than with ease of entry and exit. Eventually, her little Recon ship entered a huge hangar, and parked beside a cluster of enormous, heavily armored evacuation shuttles – long tubes built for speed that would barely clear the tunnel with a meter to each side in the curves.

  As she landed, a group of black-clad techs swarmed over her ship like ants. The crew leader, a Recon lieutenant himself, opened the hatch and helped her out of the cockpit.

  “Did you bring a bag?” he asked.

  “In the lounge,” she replied, pointing towards the back of the ship, where a tiny cot and shielded entertainment system allowed a crewman to stretch out after a long day’s scouting. The space was so small that some unnamed Recon wag had taken one look and immediately christened it the lounge – a name which had stuck.

  He nodded. “I’ve left orders for everything to be taken to your rooms. Please come with me.” Only then did she notice his eyes, cold and hard, with none of the ‘welcome back’ warmth usually reserved for pilots returning from the unfriendly depths of space. He knew where she was going.

  She motioned for him to wait a moment, and pulled the recording memory chip from the control panel. He noticed the movement, and his eyes fell, but he said nothing.

  They walked through a long white corridor. It was well-lit, and the walls were smooth stone, offering no concealment in case of an invasion. A shiver ran through her, thinking that, pretty soon, all the arguments about the absolute invulnerability of the Crystallia stronghold would be put to the test.

  But Kan knew that she still had to do her duty, still had one last briefing before everyone was put on a war footing. The thought made her smile – the Recon team was always on a war footing, and the millions of civilians in the lower levels of the colony would, probably, be less than useless if they were discovered by hostile forces. Still, every effort would be made, every chink in the armor repaired.

  They came to a blast door set in the corridor wall, and the lieutenant stopped in front of it. “This is as far as I go,” he informed her. His eyes searched her face for any trace of the information she brought with her. If not the actual data, then at least some inkling about how serious it was. She returned his gaze, impassive. He swallowed and nodded towards the door. “Good luck in there.” What he really meant, Kan knew, was ‘try not to give us any news we can’t survive in there.’

  She returned the nod, and he moved off. The door slid towards her right, the foot thick layer of reinforced steel and concrete swishing silently, ending flush with the wall itself. Beyond the door was nothing but a large meeting room with no other exits, but an invading enemy wouldn’t know that, and would have to take the time to knock down the door and investigate. They couldn’t risk having the colony launch a counter-strike out of a hidden corridor. This far into the complex, many of the blast doors hid precisely that kind of corridor.

  “Well met, Recon Leader Tau Osella.”

  Since her eyes were unaccustomed to the sudden gloom of the meeting room, Kan couldn’t tell which of the men seated at the table had spoken. It seemed to her that the voice belonged to a white-haired Recon general near the end of the table opposite her, but it didn’t matter. She knew she was in a place no one wanted to be – hell, no one wanted anyone to be here.

  “Well met,” she replied, the formula serving to calm her down as well as allowing her to have a look at the other people seated around the table. Military uniforms mixed with civilian dress approximately evenly – it had been decided that the council would be a joint enterprise, ostensibly to keep the milit
ary from taking unnecessary risks with civilian lives. In reality, the Recon Force often spoke with the voice of caution, never forgetting that the first priority was to avoid detection, and that the soldiers would be the first to suffer if this wasn’t achieved.

  A wrinkled woman with steel-colored hair wearing a brown dress spoke next. Kan identified her as Rima Centauri Han, the elected spokesperson for the civilian contingent. Her voice showed that she was used to command – Kan could almost feel the centuries of Han family history in that imperious tone. “Sit down, Tau Osella,” the woman said. “Please report your findings.”

  Kan sat and, trying to keep all emotion from her voice, began her report. “On the second day of my patrol, my instruments picked up a small unidentified mass, approaching from above the ecliptic. Both its speed and its direction led my instruments to classify it as possibly artificial. A pair of course corrections confirmed that it was self-powered.”

  Many of the silent, elderly faces in the room turned pale when they heard this, but Rima nodded for her to continue, as if she’d heard nothing she wasn’t expecting.

  “I continued to observe its passage until my movement brought the planet between it and my sensors.”

  “Is there any chance you might have been observed?” The question came from a blocky man in uniform who should have known better. But she supposed it was understandable – everyone was on edge, and his days flying Recon ships were long gone. He probably didn’t remember the endless protocols, the determination to keep the colony safe, no matter what.

  “No, sir,” she replied. “I followed the manual to the letter. Passive observation only and my ship was powered down the whole time. The only thing I did was drift with the rocks in Crystallia’s rings. There was no way I could have been detected unless the object was using some kind of active surveillance we are unaware of. My sensors picked up nothing out of the ordinary on any of the quantum or electromagnetic bands.”

  A few heads nodded around the table, but everyone knew that the fact that her instruments hadn’t picked anything up was meaningless. The reason the colony was hidden there, in the most inhospitable wastelands of the galaxy and under a kilometer of rock, was precisely because they knew that their technology could never measure up against that employed by any of the enemies they knew about – and likely those they were unaware of as well. For all they knew, incredibly advanced scanners had located her ship, the hidden colony, and the colonies at Tonswell and Hammersmith 214. Hell, there was no reason that they wouldn’t have found the cloud colonies as well.