“Lights up,” Major Burke whined helpfully and the colours came back into the room. She noticed he was shaking and sweating, his face was paler than death. He was a sick old man. How could he be the one responsible for everything?
“That’s better. Look me in the eyes. Now you’re gonna pay for Una and Squirrel’s deaths.”
“Who’s Una and Squirrel?” he asked.
“Shut up!” she snatched him by the collar and struck his head against the wall. “Now you die, Messenger.” She touched the barrel of her blaster to his forehead.
“Stop!” another voice demanded. Rhys Dreyfus had finally shown up. “There’ll be no more deaths today, Nadie. He’s gonna stand trial.”
Rhys
He found himself in inner turmoil, a conflict between taking revenge and doing what should be the right thing. Major Thomas Burke was a traitor in more ways than one. He was a liar, a thief, a murderer. And all those things were punishable by the law of the Corps. If Rhys went off-piste and disregarded the rules, would he be much better than Burke himself? Probably, but his inner compass wouldn’t let him face the mirror in the morning.
“Put down that blaster. He’s in my custody now.”
“No way. He killed my friends, he’s paying the price,” Nadie snarled.
“Rhys, thank goodness you’ve come. Get this crazy woman off me,” Major Burke pleaded and squirmed.
“Shut up, Tom,” Rhys put him down. Then he addressed Nadie with the calmest voice he could find in himself. “I know, Nadie. He killed a friend of mine too, Gunnery Sergeant Holly Welby. She was the best Space Marine I’ve ever had the pleasure to serve with and an all-around fantastic person. Courageous, diligent, loyal to a fault.”
Nadie relaxed slightly, took a step back but her stretched arm still held the blaster to Burke’s head. “Then you should understand why I have to do this.”
“I do. And I’m asking you not to. I’m appealing to your good side, Nadie. You’re not a cold-blooded killer. You’re a better person than this.”
“You obviously know nothing about me, Rhys. Sorry, but I have to do this.”
She was going to shoot Burke there and then, Rhys knew. Then the ground started shaking. The Shark was caught in a terrible tremor. The hangar trembled too as it lost structural integrity; bits and pieces of the ceiling started to fall around the battlecruiser.
The earthquake tossed all three of them to the ground.
Major Burke
What a lucky break. Tom Burke fell down so well, he felt the firmness of his own gun under the palm of his hand. He picked it up and searched for his target. The Colonial hag was already getting up when he caught her in his crosshairs. One squeeze and she’ll be history.
The shot filled the air with the scent of ozone. Major Burke looked down to his chest. The hole in his body was neat and small, and it hurt like hell.
He looked to Rhys who held a smoking blaster that dealt the killing blow, expression of fear etched deep in his features. Poor guy, he’d never killed anyone before. So young and naive. If only they had met thirty years before, they’d make fast friends for sure.
Oh well, this isn’t all so bad, Burke thought. He achieved what he had wanted: no more life in suffering and pain never-ending. Too bad he didn’t get to see those famous Procyon resorts, their mud baths and clinics. He closed his eyes and imagined himself lifted to that place. It worked. The everlasting pain vanished.
Nadie
“Thanks!” Nadie said to Rhys. He seemed rattled and shaken by what he’d just done. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. Hey, what’s that?” she pointed through the ship’s windscreen. Lights were going out at the entrance tunnel in rapid succession. She strained her eyes and she saw nothing. A swirling, unstoppable wall of blacker than black nothing which flowed toward them in a sure and steady manner, swallowing everything in its path like a vertical sinkhole, a voracious insatiate eater that was about to eat them for dinner.
“Ender,” Rhys replied gravely.
Nadie thought so. In an instant, she was sitting behind the wide dashboard in the beige leather of the pilot’s chair. A couple of quick button presses later the Shark’s mighty engines kicked in with a throb. Nadie took ownership of twin pilot sticks and persuaded the ship to jump thirty feet in the air at once.
“Wow, that’s the best take-off I’ve ever seen,” Rhys spoke over her shoulder. “Who taught you that?”
“Squirrel.”
“A squirrel? You have flying squirrels in the Colonial Army?”
“Shut up and find a seat,” she berated him while her hands worked at avoiding falling pieces of rock from the hangar’s ceiling. She punched the power to the max and the Shark shot into the ascent shaft, brightly lit and going up at a slant of about 70 degrees to the ground. That slant was the only reason the wall of nothing hadn’t gobbled them up yet. It moved in a straight line through the rock like it was marshmallows.
“Monitor the monster,” she told Rhys and put galloping Ender on a back-oriented navigational screen. “Is it speeding up?”
“Black holes suck up matter to expand. The more it eats, the faster it gets,” Rhys shared his insight of the astrophysical aspect.
“You’re a scientist too?”
“No, just something I picked up at the canteen, so it might be totally wrong. Does it help?”
“Not really.” Nadie didn’t want to admit she was in awe of his cool. The last thing she needed now was a kicking and screaming chicken who wouldn’t allow her to focus. Rhys was something else.
The Space Marine focused his sights on Ender. The event horizon was approaching. “It’s coming in fast. I’m not sure we’re gonna make it.”
“Keep those black thoughts to yourself, jarhead.” Nadie finally saw the exit of the shaft in the distance. She glanced at the nav screen and ascertained Rhys’ worries weren’t without their grounds. Ender was so close she could almost imagine it as an enormous mouth ready to snap its jet-black teeth over them. She focused on the instruments and worked her magic. The Shark shook slightly with a boost of speed and rapidly gained some ground before the kick died down. This baby had some serious thrust, she had to agree. With Danny Pendersohn they would have been caught by now.
“Holy smokes, what did you just do?” Rhys asked, impressed.
“Just a trick I picked up.”
“That bought us ten seconds maybe? The monster’s coming back. Do your miracle again.”
“I can’t,” Nadie admitted.
“Why?”
“I busted the deflector. Next one is either engine or life support.”
“OK. Don’t do it then.”
“Wise choice.”
They shot up and out of the well then. The outside was still embraced by the storm, but the blizzard seemed to quieten of a sudden, like nature itself had stopped to inspect the powerful man-created black hole. Ender raced after them in all its glory; with the tunnel gone, it took up the entire screen and it was almost knocking on their hull.
“I’m spent. Got any bright ideas?” with nothing else to do she looked at Rhys.
“Hail Mary, full of grace?” he eyed her with a mirthless smirk.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she burst out.
“You shouldn’t dismiss the supernatural out of hand, you know.”
“Look at the screen, you silly goose!” she pointed. The feed showed Ender transform from the merciless black hole into a shower of endless grey ash falling down to earth.
* 15 *
The Shark floated through space in the low orbit of Proxima D. Solar activity of the planetoid’s red star was dwindling. Things were coming back to normal. Except they weren’t for Rhys.
His hand touched the glass of a large window which partitioned him from the small world. Even from thousands of miles above he could see a grey blemish on its white surface; Ender had left a lasting scar there, and a mark on the Captain’s soul.
226 people
were dead. He had failed them. Colonel Duke and Major Burke were responsible for this, and maybe Major Remorra and her Colonial shock troops to some extent. But he had been in a position to warn those people and perhaps he could have saved them all if he had made different choices. Then again, he could have died in Ender’s blast as others did. Future life would hold this unsolvable riddle, but Rhys knew one thing. He was partly responsible for those deaths as well.
A clatter of boots prompted him to turn around. Corporal Nadie came up to him. “I made contact with my mothership. They’ll be here in two hours. Wanna stay around?”
Rhys shuddered at the thought. “And be a Colonial POW again? Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I’m serious. My name is Corporal Nadine Chu.” She held out her hand. He took it and she held it as she spoke further. “I can put in a good word for you. We could use a good man in our army.”
Well, that was an unexpected, slightly flattering and totally misguided recruitment effort. Rhys couldn’t see himself as a rebel. He was still a loyal Captain in the USSMC.
“Ain’t Widows female-exclusive?”
“I’m not saying Widows. You could ladle soup.”
“You’d die of food poisoning.”
“Obviously I didn’t think this through.” They laughed a genuine-but-strained kind of laughter. “Seriously though, if you reconsider, go to Flora Junction and ask for me. Someone will put you in touch. But don’t wear your uniform when you do it.” She took a risk in telling him that; she exposed one of their cells to the enemy with nothing but the hope he wouldn’t use the intel against them.
“Flora Junction. The resistance fights with flowers?”
“We fight with everything we have. What are you gonna do?”
“You want a reply now?”
“No, I mean NOW now. Where are you gonna go? The base is gone. Your people are light-years away.” She locked her dark eyes with his grey ones. Did he notice a hint of concern in that gaze?
“I’m going back down,” he decided at just that moment.
Nadie shook her head dismissively. “That’s crazy. No one’s survived.”
“You can’t know that for sure. There’s a backup station in the southern hemisphere, filled with emergency rations and a radio station. If anyone’s alive, they will go there. Headquarters will send someone to check Why we’re not sending reports. They’ll come in three days at most, and I’ll pick up with them.”
“Suit yourself, jarhead. I guess this is a goodbye then. At least until we win the war.”
“You mean WE win the war.” Rhys stuck a thumb in his chest and gave her his most cocksure smile.
Nadie didn’t take that bait. She looked away through the glass, and they both observed the small planet in silence. Proxima D finally earned its place in history; the scar Ender gave her would remain as the visible sign of humanity’s never-stopping effort to destroy itself. Would they succeed in this senseless goal? Quite probably. But not today.
A good long while later she put down Major Burke’s case on the floor. She had been holding all along. “There’s the little matter of some Marine property I found in the cockpit. Wanna have it?” she teased him slightly. Rhys was already back in the land of doubt and viewed her comment as inadequate for the circumstances. Was she made of tungsten? Did doom on Prox D, the loss of her fellow few freedom fighters not touch her at all?
“No, I definitely don’t wanna have it,” he stressed. “Ender must be buried once and for all. No one should have a weapon like it. Your mothership must not find it.”
“I agree,” she said solemnly. She had found in herself the compassion of human spirit.
“Then there’s only one thing we can do.”
Together they knelt before the case and opened it. The eerie glow of Ender was bitter with experience they had gone through in the vaults below the Marine base. Their hands reached out as one for the arming switch and without hesitation, they flipped it on.
Nadie and Rhys will return in SIGMA PROTOCOL.
A FEW WORDS FROM MICHAEL
SHARE YOUR OPINION ABOUT THIS BOOK
Thank you for reading PROX DOOM. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. One of the greatest things in my career as an author is the ability to connect directly with my readers. I would love to hear what you think of PROX DOOM. Your opinion matters and helps me make my books even better. You would make me very happy if you could let me know by writing a quick email to [email protected]
ALSO IN THE JANE POOLE GENESIS
The story above introduces the characters of Nadie and Rhys who are part of the cast of my series, Jane Poole Genesis. If you would like to know what they will be up to in their later voyages, I wholeheartedly invite you to take a look at the books of the series. Here they are in chronological order with links to buy or borrow them on Amazon:
SIGMA PROTOCOL (PART ONE OF JANE POOLE GENESIS)
A failing starship. A killer on the loose. A woman without memory. Can she escape with her life - and answers?
Disoriented and alone, Sigma wakes up in a storage pod. As she shakes off vestiges of the enforced sleep, there are questions that need to be answered. Who is she? Where is she? How did she end up in this place? With only a cryptic message from the ship’s AI to guide her, the determined survivor sets out on a race against time to uncover a story of betrayal and murder. Will she be able to reach starship Copernicus’ bridge before it’s too late?
Buy Sigma Protocol on Amazon
BOUNTY BOTHER (PART THREE OF JANE POOLE GENESIS)
Would you risk everything to save a machine?
Whisked away from the peril of Copernicus, Sigma continues the restless quest for her true identity aboard the Anvil. But her rule-breaking approach sets her on collision course with her rescuers.
Captain Dreyfus has a bigger problem on his hands than the wayward hitchhiker. A trigger-happy bounty hunter comes looking for one of his own. Will Rhys obey the law, or will he keep the word given to an android?
Buy Bounty Bother on Amazon
NEW CAIRO FANDANGO (PART THREE OF JANE POOLE GENESIS)
Things are heating up as the pasts catch up with Sigma and the Anvil crew when they visit ‘the steelworks of the galaxy’ that is New Cairo Space Station.
Coming out in August!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Penmore lives in Scotland with his beautiful wife, adorable son, and addictive PS4 which gets in the way of his writing much too frequently. He is the author of the Jane Poole Genesis, a space opera with AI’s, droids and conspiracies more tangled than wet Wookiee’s hair.
For more information:
http://michaelpenmore.com
[email protected]
Connect with Michael on social media:
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A MICHAEL PENMORE ebook.
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by MICHAEL PENMORE
Ebook first published in 2018 by MICHAEL PENMORE
This ebook published in 2018 by MICHAEL PENMORE
Copyright @ MICHAEL PENMORE 2018
Cover image by Studio Photo Blue
The moral right of Michael Penmore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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