When Garret left, Yamahara turned to her crew. “I want a full scan of this planet. Life signs, defenses, everything.”
“Aye sir,” Bryce said from her left. She walked closer to the center of the bridge and touched the air, her left-hand glowing from the movement. A shimmering appeared before her, allowing her to see the reports as they spilled in. She looked them over and cocked an eye. “Trevor, get your… self in here.”
She waited for the brat to show himself. He tromped in, looking like he had just woken up. She folded her arms under her breast and gave him a sharp eye. “Is that how you come to the bridge?”
“What do you want? I was taking a nap.”
Yamahara felt a bit of anger, pushed it down, and looked at the kid. “There are no life signs on this planet. How are we—”
“The Eridani figured out how to foil that.” He walked over to where Lieutenant Bryce was, pushed him aside, and started to tap away on the console. Bryce looked like he was about to say something when Yamahara held her hand up to stop him. Trevor sighed, stopped, and pulled out a small data-pad-looking thing, brought it up with one hand, and started to tap away on it faster than on the console. “It will go faster if I do this from here,” he said. He back-pedalled towards Yamahara and then turned towards the lift. “There you go.”
Yamahara was about to say something, when the feed she was receiving started to scroll with more data. She looked it over for a moment. “Wait.”
Trevor stopped. “Yeah?”
“Is that it?”
“That’s the only entry point. Everything else is below ground.”
Garret, fresh from the shower, had his head touch the small foam pillow that was, though he was loathe to say it, a perfect fit for his head. His eyes started to lose focus when his room comm-alarm went on. “PFC Garret.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah? Is that how you address a superior?”
“Sorry, Captain Yamahara, what is it, Captain?”
“Get down to the flight deck. You are needed.”
“What the hells, I—”
An alert went off in his room, and he gritted his teeth so much they hurt. “What is the mission?”
“Pilot a landing craft and lead the mission. So—”
Shit, don’t say the bug suit.
“Bring your armor.”
Fuck! “Aye, Captain,” he said. He grunted and rubbed at his eyes. He stepped out of the bed and planted his feet on the deck. Without turning, he pounded the wall beside his bed. The bed folded up, his wardrobe opened, and he reached out for the helmet. It was a rounded thing with a black visor. He always thought the thing looked like a bug head. And the rounded and stark lines on the rest of the armor didn’t help with that image.
“Captain Yamahara, I don’t think this is a good idea. PFC Garret—”
“Garret knew where we were going, found this rogue system before any of you could, and he is in charge of the party going down. Do I make myself clear?”
They all nodded as the short Yamahara scowled. “Then, get to it.”
The group scrambled away, leaving Garret and Yamahara alone.
Garret waited for them to leave before he said, “Thanks for going—”
Yamahara wheeled at him. “Do not think that for a moment you are out of the doghouse, private. You are close to being shoved back into cold storage.”
“Why?”
“Insubordinate clause,” Cerberus intoned.
“For starters,” Yamahara said. “You need to end your sentence with ‘Sir,’ private. You are truly insubordinate today.”
“Blame it on the freak attacking me on the station. And him messing with my head, sir.” Garret said, though the “sir” was a moment late.
Yamahara glared at him for a moment. “Do I need to call the medic for—”
“No, I don’t need to see the doc again. Thank you, Captain. I’ll be leaving now, sir.” Garret threw a half-hearted salute.
“Dismissed,” Yamahara said, grunting at him as he left.
Garret felt something he hadn’t for some time. In the cockpit of the small armored lander, he felt as though he was in the right position for the first time since he had gotten the jab in his neck to wake up.
“The catacombs would probably be the best place to start searching,” Cyrus said. He was sitting in the co-pilot seat, taking scans of the planet.
Garret waited for more, then turned and looked at Cyrus to see him staring back at him. “What?”
“Waiting for your confirmation, sir,” Cyrus said. The “sir” was added and there was effort put into making it sound natural.
“Before we go any further, I know you guys hate the fact I am in charge.”
“You could say that again, sir,” Cyrus said. There was a murmur of agreement from the others.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Garret said.
“Yeah, but you can complain, we can’t, sir.”
“No. You can bitch at me all you want. I can’t bitch to you. Not how it works. You bitch up the chain of command, not down.”
“Bring her in for a landing,” Garret said.
Finn started to tap in the landing sequence when the ship shook and pitched to one side. The crew rocked violently to one side. Garret reached out to try and help stabilize the lander when something hit the ship again. The landing craft started to spin violently, so much so Garret blacked out.
When he woke up, pulling himself from the crash webbing, he did a mental check and found himself bruised but in one piece. As was everyone else. “We need to get out of here.”
“How are we going to get back?”
“One problem at a time,” Garret said. Pushed and kicking their way out of the ship.
The planet was hot, even through the bug suits, it was hot. It didn’t make sense until Trevor said something about heat shields. Garret took a sip of the tepid water from the small straw. Looking over at the others, garret saw through the helmets at the right angle. All of them were pondering this mission. And all of them were thinking why Garret was in charge.
Even Garret had no idea why. Yamahara wasn’t thinking clearly. Because he had the map to this place shunted into his head didn’t mean he knew anything about this place. As that thought echoed through his head, he knew it was wrong. He knew that there would be sentinels that would shoot anything that was not recognized as a friend.
The sentinels were worse than he thought. They were large rotating things that looked like a cross between an Eridani and some kind of large gorilla. It wasn’t a statue, these things are alive! And, they were moving somehow. Garret ducked down below a stone wall before the thing turned towards him.
“We need to get the catacombs.”
“How, sir?” Justin asked.
He was silent a moment, accessing the maps in his head. “There is another access to the complex on the other side of that hill,” Garret said while pointing to a hill on the far side of their crash site. “There should be a hatch or something.”
“And, do we want to know how you know this, sir?” Finn asked.
“Probably not,” Garret said. “Come on, move out.”
The small four man team moved across the crash site with ease. Covering each other in two hundred yard bursts until they made it to a small wall that denoted the edge of their crash site. On the other side of the wall, there was a long swatch of knee high yellow grass that swayed in the breeze. A few moments later, they found the hatch that Garret had said would be there. It was locked. Explosives took the thing off. Garret snapped on the headlamp of the suit and was the first one in before the rest of the men could say anything.
Inside were tunnels, tunnels made from the stone. They were smooth to the touch and one long continuous tube that stretched on in various directions. Garret blinked back the ghosts that he saw of himself and others walking through the tunnels.
“Problem, sir?” Finn asked, coming up behind him.
“No, just a touch of vertigo. Keeping m
oving,” he said while he moved forward in front of them.
“Sir, maybe if you were behind—”
There was a loud and sudden clang clang clang that came from in front of them. Garret knelt, as did Finn, the other two poised ready to fire on whatever came around the sloping curve of the tunnel.
Closer and closer it came to them. Garret tightened his grip on the hilt of the rifle. His pulse spiked for a moment. His training took over and he took a deep breath, slowing his heart rate.
From around the corner came an Eridani in armor. Garret and his men unloaded on the thing. The armor of the mech took a beating, yet the concentrated firepower of the four men firing was able to rip it open and dropped the Eridani in a matter of moments.
Garret was the first one upon the creature. He set his rifle aside and looked over the creature. The creature had been torn up badly from the bullets. It’s unfocused eyes tried to look at Garret. He felt a sick twist in his stomach looking down at the Eridani. Something in the back of his head recognized the creature.
“Sir, why didn’t it fire?” Finn asked.
“No idea,” Garret said. He looked at the weapons systems and knew that they had been deactivated based on the lights that came from the dying exo-frame.
The exit from the tunnels lead to where Garret had thought. Close enough to the next section that a good sprint would get them past the sentinels. Taking a deep breath, Garret moved closer and closer to the edge of the clearing. He didn’t pick up anything on the HUD. He took a step forward and felt something strange, an icy set of fingers touching his face and scalp. He didn’t know how, but something was able to get inside the helmet and caress him with frozen digits. He was about to say something, when he looked behind him and saw the rest of the men had stopped as well. Their features slackened.
“Hey, Cyrus, Justin, Finn, sound off.”
There was nothing. He checked the HUD. His three teammates were where he left them. Their helmets turned towards the three pillars that held the strange napping creatures. Garret saw one of the creatures start to stir.
“Cyrus, what the hell is wrong with you, MP Bitch! Move!” Garret shouted into the mic, rushing towards his three crewmates. He shoulder-checked Cyrus and knocked him down. His momentum rolled him towards Justin. Garret let himself roll into Justin’s legs, taking him down. Before he could move, there was a spray of plasma weaponry, and he saw Finn cut down.
Still feeling the icy fingers along his scalp, he kicked at Cyrus and slapped Justin to get them to move. They started to sluggishly move away, following him.
After what he thought was sure to be his last moment, Garret got to the edge of the wall. He turned to see Justin crawling along a little faster, but Cyrus was starting to slow down. He then started to stand up. Each of the creatures turned their weapons on Cyrus as he stood. Garret popped out of his spot near the wall and started to lay down cover fire.
“Dammit, Cyrus, get over here!”
Cyrus turned and started to walk with the stiff-legged movement of a puppet. Then, a shot of plasma took his leg off at the hip. He cried out.
Garret kept firing, striking one of the creatures, moving forward enough to pull Cyrus back to safety. He looked at Justin, who was of no help.
Yamahara stalked across the command deck, clutching her hands behind her back so the crew didn’t see her fidget with her uniform or the chair. For a moment, she would touch the stiff-uncomfortable command chair, yet she pulled them away before she started to tap away. “Status?”
“Nothing, Captain.”
She let out a small curse, gripping her hands tighter behind her. She unlocked her jaw to bark something, when the proximity alarm went off.
“Unidentified ship off the starboard! They are threatening to—”
“Shields!”
The ensign punched the button as three beams of plasma shot from the Eridani-looking cruiser. The shields held up, barely. Yamahara felt the deck growl. She grabbed at the chair to keep up. “Return fire.”
The command crew shifted into operation. They were able to fill in for Finn, but their reactions were slow. The screen showed that the plasma and missiles that were fired hit the shield in a manner similar to the way they had on the Starkiller.
“Captain, I suggest we run,” Cerberus said in his calming irritating voice.
“Why?”
“There are two more ships de-cloaking, and we are close to defenseless.”
“What are you—”
Trevor piped up. “Cerberus is right, the first barrage took out most of our shields. We are not—”
“I am not…” she stopped and took a look around. The faces of the men and women turned towards her. Damn it, they planned this. “Plug in standby coordinates. Fast-track the FTL spooling.”
“Captain, that’ll—”
“It’s an order.”
Yamahara looked at the screen with the rogue planet on it. “Fuck!” She took a deep breath and whispered, “Sorry, Garret. We will be back,” before the ship’s FTL cocooned the ship in a coruscating bubble, and the void of the FTL shifted into view for a moment before the standby point appeared. It wasn’t that far from the rogue plant. A fall back spot really.
Plasma arced through the air as Garret and his team were pinned down. He looked at the HUD on his helmet and cursed. “Fuck, we are pinned, and Starkiller isn’t able to move yet. Justin, you still there, you bitch?”
“Fuck you, private.”
Garret smiled. “Good, glad to know you are alive. Get your half-dead carcass out here.”
“I have one leg, asshole.”
“Then use it to hop up here if you have to.”
“Fu—”
There was a hiss that replaced the words of Justin as the small cavern he was in steamed, and a gout of flame spewed from it. Garret shook his head and looked at Cyrus. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”
“Great, and I bet you think you are the one in control here.”
“I am the one who knows what the fuck we are dealing with. I know that I am the only one immune to their shit. If you want to try and fight your way through as a half dead—”
“Save it PFC Garret. Go, I’ll try and cover your back before the—”
Garret slapped the helm of Cyrus. “I’ll be back to get you, you mook.”
Cyrus nodded, shouldered his rifle, and nodded at Garret.
Garret took a deep breath of the recycled air in his suit. It was the same stale crap as always. He pushed forward and rushed past the gap. There were bolts of plasma that hounded his heels, then there was returning fire from Cyrus as the man fired at the quasi-drones of the Eridani.
As before, he felt the icy fingers of the field slide across his head while he ran. This time, there was something that stopped it. He wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something there that blocked the weird shit. He didn’t question it, he simply ran as fast as he could and shoulder-slammed the door. It popped open, and two stunned Eridani mutants stared at him. Their faces showing actual fear made Garret smile for a moment. He raised his pistol and fired off two shots. Both hit their marks, grounded the two Eridani, and made them crawl away from him. Their odd staccato language was trying to work its way into his translator, but the computer wasn’t working. It gave the garbled response of “Garbage broccoli tuna butterfly.”
The word salad was enough to make Garret smile. He had no idea what was being said, but he was sure of one thing. They were scared, and he was the one causing it. He grinned.
To be continued…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lon Varnadore is an emerging author of sci-fi and fantasy. This is a bundle of the first three parts of the I.S.S. Starkiller Chronicle.
Support on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=287421
lonvarnadoreauthor.com
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
PART ONE
PART TW
O
PART THREE
About the Author
I.S.S. Starkiller Chronicle Bundle: Parts 1-3 Page 5
