by S. A. Lusher
Dark Nexus Fiction
Presents
NECROPOLIS 3
–a novel of sci-fi action–
written by
–S. A. Lusher–
cover by
–M. Knepper–
editing by
–Cassi Reed–
Dedicated to M. Knepper,
for playing a large part in shaping
the person I am today.
Chapter 01
–Onyx–
“This is Corporal John Powell of Security-Investigations to Deep Nova Mining Installation Onyx Control. I repeat this is Corporal Powell to Onyx Control, does anyone read me? We are in need of assistance. I repeat we are in need of assistance.”
Greg felt as though he'd heard that specific phrase many times over. The repeated message had speared his consciousness, buried deep within the dark depths of exhaustion and lethargy. It had begun to relentlessly drag him towards the thin gray light of awareness. He became aware of pain, lots of it, spread through his body. He was uncomfortable, lying against something hard and unyielding, and it was cold. He was tired, so very tired.
He kept his eyes closed.
“I repeat this is John Powell...”
The message was persistent, urgent even in its droning monotone. Greg didn't want to be awake. It would lead to things like misery and suffering. The pain grew. Everything seemed to hurt, his head, his arm, his chest, his lower lip. His legs ached as if he'd been running for a hundred years. His muscles burned from overuse. A thousand different tiny hurts were spread liberally across the topography of his flesh.
No, there was still time to sleep, if he could just get comfort-
A half-second clip of a bone saw meeting flesh and spraying blood flashed across his mind's eye.
Greg gasped and his eyes snapped open. Everything slowly slid into focus. Memories, hazy and confused, hovered at the edge of his consciousness. He felt like there was a lot he should be worried about, a lot he had been through lately. All he thought of was blood and death, screaming and gunfire. Smokey corridors and bloodied walls.
“Greg.” Kyra was suddenly at his side, sliding into the seat next to him. He instantly relaxed at the sight of her. “How do you feel?”
“A million years old,” Greg muttered as reality asserted itself more firmly.
He remembered it all. Dis. The Anubis. Erebus. The Undead. The Augmented. Williams. Graves. Billings. The sun.
“You look it.” Kyra grinned.
“Thanks.” Greg sat up straighter in his chair, groaned and popped his neck.
“You could really use a shower, too.”
“My God, you are amazing at this.”
Kyra laughed easily and kissed him.
“How long was I out?” He massaged his temples.
“Six hours. We've been making our way towards the mining colony,” Kyra replied.
Greg slipped into silence for a moment. He remembered. After destroying the Anubis and linking up with Powell, the tech had dropped another bomb on them: the local star was going to go supernova in two days' time. Powell had done more thorough scans of the system while he was onboard the other ship, making his EMP bomb to stop Erebus and Dark Ops. It seemed that there were two areas of refuge. One was a mining colony on a moon orbiting the fourth planet. The moon was called Onyx. Not far from the moon was an abandoned space station. The obvious choice was the colony. The only problem was it was about seven hours away.
That and well, no one answered their call.
Greg listened to Powell's voice drift back to him via the cockpit radio where Campbell sat, piloting them across dead space.
“Has anyone given chase?” Greg asked, finally.
After almost an hour of waiting they'd left the Anubis, he'd finally given in and decided to try and take a nap.
“There's a small army of ships ahead of us. Dark Ops. They're going to beat us there. They've left us alone. The four surviving carriers, which I assume now all belong to the Augmented, are following us, too.” Kyra stared at him intently.
“Fantastic,” Greg muttered.
Kyra passed him something. “Here.”
He realized it was a trio of painkillers. He dry-swallowed them and stood up, popping his back and shoulders. He'd slept wrong and now everything hurt.
“Hope they have a fully-stocked infirmary,” he said.
“Doubt they have a fully-stocked anything,” Kyra replied.
“I really feel like shit,” he said after a long moment.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then abruptly froze as he caught sight of his hand again. He'd been awake for ten minutes now and the thought of it hadn't once crossed his mind. He blinked several times, staring at it. Kyra sat silent beside him. He closed the metal hand into a fist. His mind really didn't want him thinking about it. With more than a little trepidation, Greg tried to set the issue aside.
The hand worked and he could get his job done, that's all that mattered. Everything else could come later.
“You okay?” Kyra asked.
“Yeah...I guess,” he murmured.
Greg stood. He felt the need to do something. All this waiting around had him riddled with nervous tension. He marched forward to the cockpit where Campbell still sat. Powell's voice droned on over the radio, trying to raise someone down on the moon. Greg looked out the window. The surface of Onyx, which, going against the grain of its name, was an ashy gray color, nearly filled the view. Several dozen tiny dots, showed up like motes in contrast against some titanic, dim eye. Dark Ops' ships.
Greg could vaguely make out a trio of structures down on the surface.
“So, what's the plan?” He turned away from the window.
“Thought you were the boss,” Campbell replied.
Greg grabbed the radio. “Powell? Plan?”
Powell interrupted his bland litany. “We land in one of those structures, keep building the bomb, find a way out of this system.”
“That's long term. What about short term?”
“All I got for now.”
Greg sighed. There'd been no luck raising anyone down on the surface. Was anyone left alive down there? Dark Ops had obviously been following the same thought processes as Greg and the other survivors. And they had a head start. What chance did they have with two jump ships against more than ten times their number? What if there was nothing down there but Undead and Dark Ops? It had been one thing when it was them against the galaxy onboard the Anubis, but they'd actually been onboard, they had that advantage.
Greg made himself focus. No need to keep this up or he'd just give up right then and there. He cleared his throat and roused himself.
“Okay, can we do scans?”
The trio of structures, situated roughly in a triangle, was more visible now. Greg noticed the cluster of Dark Ops survivors seemed to be heading only to one of them. He felt relief tremble tentatively through him.
“Yep,” Campbell said.
“Run them. Tell me what you can. Powell, any luck?”
“If there was, you'd have heard it. I've stopped trying. We're getting too close to Dark Ops for comfort. They may overhear.”
A few moments passed in silence, followed by a chirp. Greg leaned forward and studied the readout.. A wave of terror rolled through him as he saw that one of the structures and what must have been mining tunnels beneath the surface showed an extensive infestation of Undead. The other two structures showed several dozen human life signs each.
Dark Ops was only heading to one of them.
Could there be friends, or at least allies, other survivors, in that third building? There was only one way to find out.
“Head for the structure on the left,” he said.
“What? Why?” Campbell replied.
“No Undead. Dark Ops isn't interested in it. Might be good guys.”
“Yeah, and it might be psychopaths.”
“We don't have a choice,” Powell said. “I've studied the schematics on the installation on the way over. That structure houses hangars and storage. It's likely the only place we'll find a ship that has FTL capabilities.”
“Fine, fine,” Campbell muttered.
He shifted the controls and both ships headed towards the airless surface of the desolate moon Onyx.
* * * * *
They still had no contact with whoever was inside the hangars by the time they touched down. The pair of jump ships settled on an ashen, crater-ridden surface a dozen meters away from one of the airlocks. They shut down their engines, attempted contact again, and waited.
After fifteen minutes, Greg decided they were going to have to go in themselves.
“How many pressure suits do we have?” he asked.
“There's only one emergency suit per ship,” Powell replied.
Greg sighed. “Fine. Powell, suit up, we'll head for the hangar, try to make contact.”
“And if they aren't friendly?”
“Like you said, no choice.”
“...very well.”
Greg found the suit tucked away in one of the lockers in the floor, next to the gun compartment. He pulled it out and crawled painfully into it.
“Be careful,” Kyra said.
“Always am,” Greg replied, zipping the suit up.
“That thing is meant to hold out against the vacuum of space?” Campbell stared back at Greg from the cockpit. “It's got a zipper for Christ's sake.”
“It'll be fine.” Greg retrieved a faceplate from the locker. He pulled the hood up over his head and began fitting the faceplate into the seal, but Kyra stopped him. She kissed him once more, and then helped him fit the faceplate into place.
“Man, this thing really is flimsy.” He knelt and pried open another locker that held a small oxygen backpack.
He slipped it onto his shoulders and hooked the tube into the suit, then, after a moment of searching, found a keypad with a screen built into the right wrist. He fired it up and navigated the tiny menu. Eventually, he found the pressure check, ran it, and was satisfied the suit worked as meant to. He grabbed his pistol and slipped a few spare magazines into one of the pockets, then made sure the pistol was loaded and ready to go.
“Don't get into a firefight out there.” Kyra’s voice was muted by the suit.
Greg activated the communication suite, so the built in mike and speakers would allow him to speak and hear. “I'll be fine.”
“You always say that.”
“And I always am.”
“Can you hear me?” Powell asked over the radio.
“Yep.”
“Good. Can we get a move on?”
“Yes.”
Greg wished both Kyra and Campbell farewell for now, then went into the cockpit, opened the hatch in the floor and crawled down into the narrow airlock. He closed the hatch behind him, ran the airlock through its cycle and then opened the other end. Beneath him was a thin light and nothing but gray dust.
Greg lowered himself to the ground and immediately felt his stomach do a roll. Panic ignited his system, but he quickly realized the problem: low gravity. Every ship, even the basic jump ships, had grav-enablers built in. He took a deep breath, let it out, and then closed the hatch behind him. Crawling out from beneath the ship, he spied Powell's vessel not far away and crossed the distance between the two.
Being out in cold, dead, exposed space was a strange experience. Greg felt the cold seep into him and knew that the suit wasn't meant for extended periods of time. He had little under half an hour of oxygen and the thermal units meant to ward off the chill of damn near absolute zero could only do so much. Up ahead, he spied another suited figure.
“Suit checks out?” Greg asked as he approached.
“I wouldn't be out here if it didn't,” Powell replied.
Greg supposed that was a fair enough answer. The two faced the large structure looming over them, and set off towards it. They made their way in silence, eager to cross the distance and be somewhere with oxygen and power again. The structure grew closer. There was nothing out there on the surface with them. Greg looked into the sky and stifled a gasp as he saw the fourth planet of the system, whatever it was called, hanging over them.
It filled the sky, glowing a deep purple.
He wanted to stare at it longer, maybe try to catch sight of a storm or something, or maybe look around the edges at the unfiltered blanket of stars, like inner-lit diamonds on black velvet, but they were there, at the airlock, suddenly.
Powell worked at the control panel for a little while, muttering quietly to himself. Over the radio, he suddenly heard, “Everything okay?”
It was Kyra. Greg smiled. “Yep. We're at the airlock.”
“Okay, I'll let you get to it.”
The outer airlock doors suddenly opened. Nothing and nobody inside. Greg kept his pistol out, safety off, finger inside the trigger guard. There might be friends inside...but there might not. The pair slipped into the airlock and let it run its cycle. Greg was in the middle of wondering about what might be on the other side when the inner doors opened and a trio of grim-faced men in bloodied, burnt, and torn uniforms appeared, pointing rifles at them.
“Drop 'em,” one of them said.
Greg hesitated for just a moment, then dropped the pistol. Powell did as well. The men weren't wearing Dark Ops uniforms.
“Come on. Get out here,” the same man said, gesturing with his rifle.
The three men backed up to allow Greg and Powell to come out of the airlock and into a maintenance bay that was also part locker room.
“Who are you?” Greg asked.
“No questions for now. Come with us. Straight ahead, no sudden movements,” the man replied tersely.
Greg suppressed a sigh and did as he was told. He and Powell moved ahead of them, out of the bay and into a corridor. The three grim men trailed behind them, rifles never lowered, marching them deeper in the facility.
He studied the area as he was marched through it. Everything was gray, drab, and bleak. The lighting was bright and harsh. The floors were dusty, and, in some cases, bloody, the walls made of bare steel. The whole area had an industrial wasteland feel. It was the kind of place where burly men carved out a grim existence one day at a time, likely with heavy tools and huge pieces of machinery.
They came at last to a huge room. The door at the end of the corridor opened before them and Greg hesitated briefly, stopped by the sheer size of the room. It was, he realized, a hangar. All manner of activity occurred around them. A couple dozen men and women in miner suits, tech jumpsuits, and security uniforms moved about. Some carried guns, boxes of supplies, crates of ammo, or those who had been wounded.
Others hunched over tables and makeshift machine shops, fixing guns and tools, or bleeding sparks onto the ground, welder's masks fastened to their heads. Over in one corner, occupied by a handful of sleepers, was a makeshift camp of bedrolls. One area had obviously been converted into a kitchen. A dozen men and women sat around a table eating.
“Boss!” one of the trio escorting Greg and Powell called. “Boss! They came inside. We got them.”
Greg realized they were walking towards a ship in the center of the area. It was three times the size of a regular jump ship, likely able to hold a couple dozen people and some cargo. It was being worked on by a small army of technicians. Panels were open, the guts of the ship exposed, and people crawled across its gunmetal gray hull. One of the people standing around it broke away and walked towards them.
“What have I told you about calling me boss?” she asked.
“Sorry Miss Lynch,” the leader of the trio replied awkwardly.
“Were they armed?” the woman asked.
“Yes, with pistols.”
The woman studied them. Greg studied her back. Sh
e was built like a miner: tall, sturdy, muscular. Her hair was short and black, pulled back into a rough, functional ponytail. She looked to be around Holt's age and her eyes held the hard gleam of authority. There was an intense air about her and the way she stood indicated strict control and the fact that she seemed comfortable springing into physical combat at any moment.
She fixed Greg with her intense gaze. “Who are you?”
It never occurred to him to lie. “Corporal Greg Bishop, Security-Investigations.”
“You aren't with the assholes in black suits?”
“Dark Ops? No, not at all. We're from Dis.”
“And you?”
“Corporal John Powell,” Powell replied.
“Ah. You must be the ones we heard going on and on as you came in. We couldn't respond back, comms are down, we can only receive. Anyone else with you?”
“Just two more, back with our ships. We need-”
The woman held up her hand, cutting Greg off. “We all need things, but right now my needs trump yours. I don't get bad vibes from either of you, so I'm probably not going to kill you. How about you start by telling me your stories?”
Greg took out his faceplate and turned off his oxygen, conserving it, and then spent ten minutes going over a rough version of the events that had befallen him over the past few weeks, covering Dark Ops, the Undead, and especially, the Augmented.
“Goddamn,” the woman said. “That's a hell of a story. And those Augmented...hell, like the zombies weren't bad enough. And now we've got a fucking sun going supernova to worry about on top of everything else.”
“So you believe us?” Greg asked.
“Yep. I've got a good nose for bullshit. I guess it's only fair I catch you up to speed on the situation here. First of all, my name is Melissa Lynch. I was, guess I still am, the administrator of this mining complex. Based on what you've told me, time is an issue, so I'll keep it short. A few weeks ago we picked up a few strange transmissions out of Dis, and then everything went dark. By the time we were done dithering around, trying to figure out what was wrong, realized it wasn't on our end, and decided to go check the whole thing out, a bunch of guys in suits of black armor showed up and locked the whole place down.
