The Battle for the Ringed Planet

by Richard Edmond Johnson

  Shrugging, Torian did the same with his own black box. The ‘Con’, a device that kept them connected with the vessel’s computers with a little independent computing power of its own.

  Then, all of a sudden, Chang’s face went pale. Panicking, he glanced towards Torian, dropping his Con and clutching his throat. The shorter man began to gag, and before Torian could rush to him, he stiffened and fell straight back hitting the pavement hard.

  “Crap!” Torian yelled and hurriedly knelt before the prone pilot. Chang’s eyes stared wide open to the sky and when Torian felt for a pulse, there was none. Leaning over with his cheek to the pilot’s mouth feeling for breath the young man began to unfasten the fallen pilot’s combat environmental suit. Studying his floating Con screen, he checked for life signs and grew distressed to see that all were negative. The pilot was dead!

  Chapter 2: Survivor

  Snapping on his helmet, Torian activated his HUD and navigated with a combination of eye movement, blinking, and thought pulses to the main communication link, “Callisto, this is Hawkeye 206, do you copy? Over?”

  There was only static.

  “Dammit! Callisto, come in Callisto!” the Confederation Star Ship Callisto was a state of the art military space cruiser bristling with gun turrets and a squadron of F-24 Starhawk single seat fighters as well a few auxiliary vessels including three R-26 Hawkeyes.

  Torian walked closer to the R-26 Hawkeye to verify if the static was due to the link between the vessel and his helmet, but even closer, he still had no reception. Climbing inside, he linked directly to the Hawkeye’s main communication array and tried several times.

  Finally, through the interference, he heard a reply, “Hawkeye 206, this is Callisto actual. Do you copy?”

  “Callisto, I copy!”

  “What is your sitrep Hawkeye 206?”

  “Callisto, we have one dead, unknown cause. And the Hawkeye is down with power failures, requesting a pick up.”

  “Negative Hawkeye 206, we need to verify your data first. Is this Lieutenant Chang?”

  “Callisto, Chang is dead. This is McCallum …”

  “Ok, son, this is Captain Spence, you need to upload the data from the environment suit, remove it first and then stow the body in the storage hold …”

  Static bursts began to interfere with the communications again as Torian tried to reply, “Callisto, come in Callisto.” the audio began to whine in a high-pitched tone, and the young crewman ripped off his helmet grimacing in pain.

  “Crap!” he tossed his helmet on the cockpit seat as he climbed out. Torian hated the bulky combat environmental suit, dark navy blue with an array of attachments for anything from extra oxygen packs to plasma weapons. It was warm outside and he had to remove the same suit from Chang’s body, so he stripped off his own until he was down to his lighter navy flight suit with two gold Specialist First Class chevrons on the right sleeve. Snapping on his navy blue utility belt with pistol, Con and other accessories, including a hidden earpiece, he clambered down the ladder to the prone body.

  In the irritating drizzle, soaking his already matted hair, Torian bent over the body and disconnected the fasteners to the combat suit. Though not armored like a marine’s battle suit, it had plenty of protection from projectile weapons and energy bursts, which made it cumbersome to remove from the weight of the body. Chang was a small man, but it still took Torian some effort to get the suit all off. Then he gingerly hauled it up into the Hawkeye.

  Next was the worst part; putting Chang’s body into the small storage compartment under the main fuselage. If the Hawkeye launched, the body would freeze in high altitude, but that did not matter to the docs on board. They would cut it up and examine every detail in their postmortem to determine cause of death.

  Suddenly a worried thought entered his mind, “What if I am still going to die here? Maybe I’m just taking a little longer!”

  Torian stood up, ran his hand through his wet hair, and paced back and forth in front of Chang. The pilot’s gold lieutenant bars flashed prominently on the shoulders of the dead man’s navy blue flight suit along with silver wings on his right breast pocket.

  The beeping of the Con in his earpiece startled him instinctively grabbing the black device from his utility belt. The proximity alert warning signal was flashing the holo display red as he studied the images of multiple creatures in the area. Using a small tracking ball, he isolated a couple of the images and then turned toward the direction they were detected.

  “Wolves.” he muttered drawing his coal black pistol with a cylindrical barrel and the letters ‘GR’ imprinted in the handle. Playfully he twirled it, slipping it back into the holster and then drawing it out again. Torian knew he could lock the creatures detected by his Con into his pistol targeting system and eliminate them all at once, but he preferred to identify each target first, unless he became overwhelmed. Besides, what was the fun in blasting them all simultaneously? He liked to practice his target shooting.

  The Con holo showed a pack of about twenty objects running towards the Hawkeye; fast. What were they after?

  Then, inside his head, he suddenly heard a voice. No, on second thought it was more like a thought, but distinct, and feminine, pleading: “Help!”

  “What the …” he studied the holo images again and noted that there was a single image in front of the charging pack: and it was human! Instantly he charged towards the pack of animals and made visual contact. Torian’s keen eyesight spied a group of grey wolves, fiercely snapping at the heels of a running figure in a blue grey patterned dress and a mess of stringy long blonde hair.

  With precision, because Torian was a good shot, he fired a burst of invisible plasma seen as only a slight visual distortion with a click as it exited the barrel. A smoking, bloody perforation the size of a baseball penetrated the wolf closest to the fleeing figure, killing it instantly. Torian fired several more times and other vicious wolves burned or flew apart in the bursts of plasma.

  A terrified young woman in a thin dull blue dress raced towards him, and Torian grabbing the sobbing, shaking figure long enough to steady her and push her safely behind. Glancing quickly down at the frightened form, he had no time to examine the poor girl as more targets raced at him thirsty for blood. In a military stance, the wiry young man crouched, extending his gun arm and firing mechanically taking out each wild beast one by one. Grimly he noted on the Con holo that more wolves and wild dogs were approaching despite the dozen or so smoking piles of burned flesh.

  “Come on inside!” he hauled the girl to her feet by the arm while the rest of the animals growled uncertain of the threat, but determined to get their prey. Torian fired a few parting plasma bursts into the closest wild dog, while the rest held their ground. The soldier pushed the hesitant girl towards the ladder and the hatch of the R-26 Hawkeye.

  “Climb up!” he urged as the pack began to recover their courage and approach with focused intent. Torian had no time to program the pistol for multiple targets and quietly cursed at his earlier foolishness and over-confidence. She climbed up while he followed her backwards into the cramped crew’s quarters, and then pushed the button to retract the ladder and seal the door, but not before the frothing jaws of one last beast snapped at his hand. Torian finished it with a plasma burst from his pistol, leaving burnt flesh fragments on the floor.

  When the hatch shut fully he crumpled to the floor panting, wiping his brow and dropping the pistol with a clatter. Then he peered over at the trembling girl curled up next to Chang’s lower bunk watching him nervously with wide azurite eyes.

  With sudden realization Torian exclaimed, “Dammit!” and jumped up to his feet. Climbing up to the cockpit he anxiously peered through the transparent steel bubble to the outside then groaned and averted his eyes as dozens of wolves and dogs tore up Chang’s body and began to gnaw on hunks of human flesh.

  Moaning, Torian slumped back down sitting on the small steps to the cramped crew section, “They’re going to dump me out an
airlock when they find out …” then he glimpsed at the girl and found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. Exhaling with a quirky, annoyed grimace, he sighed, “Aye. You have trust issues.”

  Torian studied the girl closely for the first time and he casually noted that her hand shook as she aimed the pistol. Her long stringy hair, streaked with so much dirt and grime, made it difficult to see blonde. She was a total wreck. Her dress had obviously been stylish, even lavish with circular patterns embroidered around the high neck that might once have been blue, but now everything had faded to dull grey. Old dull brown bruises and crusted bloody scrapes dotted her bare arms. Her torn sandals were no protection for cut mud caked feet. The soldier guessed the tall, thin girl to be in her late teens and felt sorry for her. Still, she determinedly aimed the pistol at him despite being near collapse, while he watched her scared blue eyes.

  “That’s a Glock-Ruger 27 plasma pistol, military issue. One shot and you fry my guts all over the cockpit.” He shot her a serious glare, but she did not bite eying him suspiciously, slowly easing back a little.

  “I just saved your ass. Doesn’t that grant me some sort of warm puppy dog smile of appreciation?”

  Then she mocked him with a smirk, “How is that?”

  “Cute, so you can talk.”

  Swallowing, with cold eyes, she placed her other hand on the pistol grip to steady her aim.

  Narrowing his own chestnut eyes, he locked them with hers, “This was to be my last mission before I went home. Now I’m stuck in this cursed city.”

  With a stony glower followed by some coughing, she replied evenly, “Looks like you’re going to die here, Sky Demon.”

  With a melancholy sigh, “Well, I suppose my time was due,” he lowered himself down to the console chair, “So I got some stuff to do, so shoot away if you must.” In silence, she just continued to watch him.

  “Callisto, this is Hawkeye 206, come in, over?”

  There was only static so he tried again receiving a beep code and he glanced up at the screens in alarm, muttering to himself, “They’re running silent…why?”

  Torian began to manipulate more controls switching on more screens and a couple of holos that showed the planet, all its moons and the colorful rings. Reading the data on the screens, he played with a few more controls and one of the holos began to flicker with static.

  Mumbling, “All right, what’s going on up there? Enemy ships? Are they going to tunnel out and leave me?”, but the screens and holos showed nothing.

  Turning his attention back to the girl, Torian lowered his voice, “Look, I have no intention of hurting you.” He gradually stood up to a slight crouch and inched towards her. In response, she raised the pistol and clenched her teeth.

  “You’re in bad shape… I have a first aid kit here, why don’t you let me scan you?”

  She gave him no response.

  “The kit is right above you. Look!” Pointing to a white box with a red cross, he began to reach for it above her. The young woman made no move as he unfastened the box from the wall. However, when he pulled out his Con to scan her she stiffened and gripped the pistol tighter with both hands.

  “Easy … this won’t hurt,” he tried a soothing voice; “it just scans you, please relax.”

  A small holographic image of a female form appeared above the box with flashing sections and words appearing. Torian studied the image and data.

  “Well, you appear to be a normal human female, 19 earth standard years. Got a bit of a virus going, and malnutrition … and, wait a minute...” he flicked the track ball on the device, “Do you have implants?”

  She shot him a puzzled glance, “No.”

  “Let’s see …” then suddenly the holograph flashed red, “Aye … classified. You got something special in your head, and its top secret!”

  This time she slowly lowered the pistol and spoke up, “What does it mean?”

  Torian detected a familiar dialect in her nervous yet soft voice, with words heavy on the T’s and long on the S’s, “I don’t know. It’s higher than my security classification rating, which is pretty high.”

  The young woman coughed again and sniffed up the mucus dripping from her nose, but her eyes remained glued on him.

  “I can give you something for that cold …” he pulled out a small green tube from the medical kit, “Have you seen one of these before?”

  “I know what a hypo syringe is, evil Sky Demon who will shortly be dead.”

  “Yeah…” he sighed, “You remind me of one of Tristan’s ex-girlfriends.”

  “How do I know that won’t knock me out, and then you’ll have your way with me?”

  The young brown haired man shrugged, but now he knew where he had heard the accent in her speech before. “If I was going to rape you, I’d make you have a bath first. A really, really long one, with lots and lots of soap.” Then he took the hypo syringe, rolled up his sleeve and shot it in his arm, “There.”

  His words stung and she stammered, “I’ve been through a lot…” then a longer pause as she gathered herself and very quietly spoke, “I’ll take one of those.”

  Reaching in the first aid kit, he pulled out another green hypo syringe and held it out. She took it without lowering her eyes, placed it on one of her dirty legs, and pushed the small button on the end shooting liquid inside without breaking the skin.

  The tall weary soldier leaned forward meeting her eyes, “So what, are you from another ship that landed here? How did you get on this planet?”

  Hesitantly, she shied away from his gaze, “I live here.” Then she swallowed and fleetingly glanced back at him, “The others said Sky Demons would come because of me.”

  “You think I’m a demon? Fire runs through my veins and horns stick out of my forehead?”

  “Some think that. Though I know that you are human, but it does not matter because of what you will do to us. Murder, rape, cut us to pieces …”

  In the realm of inhabited planets, there were pirates, slavers, raiders, and worse. He knew even in the Confederation fleets atrocities had been committed by rogue elements.

  “I could see how you would be suspicious. There are Sky Demons out there that would do that, but not me. But I probably can’t convince you otherwise.” Watching her finger itch on the trigger, he knew that he had to act. Generally, not an impulsive person, Torian knew that if he did not do something, in her weakened or hallucinogenic state, the girl might just shoot him. So basic military training kicked in and before she could react, he slapped the cylindrical barrel of the black pistol away and in the same movement, pulled it out of her hand.

  While Torian holstered the pistol, the girl shrunk back onto Chang’s bed and curled up in a ball pulling her dress down over knees. As her wide round blue eyes watched him with fear, Torian realized she was genuinely terrified of him. Guessing at her background, and that survivors of this hellish city must have had it tough, he felt a wave of sympathy for her.

  “My name is Torian,” as he extended his hand to her he received a blank frightened stare in response.

  “So, you live here? I was told everyone died.”

  Slowly she shook her head and replied, “Not everyone.”

  “Well, that explains something. When we were descending, I scanned the valley. You farm there?”

  The head of the dirty tangled blonde hair nodded, “We live outside the city.”

  “Then did you get lost?”

  Glancing away sadly, she softly replied, “I didn’t. I was cast out.”

  “Thrown to the wolves?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nasty way to go.” The young man went to the far back of the crew area and opened a cabinet door to reveal a small fold out sink, some metal shelves and cupboards with fasteners to keep them shut tight. In the bottom section was a toilet, a small fold out bowl with tubes used in weightlessness or gravity.

  Inside a cupboard, he unsnapped a mug from a cup-holder, lowered the sink, and ran some wa
ter. The mug was blue and white with the logo of a military spacecraft circled by stars and the caption, ‘C.S.S Callisto, CHF’.

  Crouching next to Chang’s bunk where the girl had squeezed as far as she could against the wall, he took a sip of water. “I’ll bet you’re thirsty; it’s just water.” Then he held the cup out for her.

  Hesitating at first, eyeing the cup, she snatched it with both hands and gulped the water down. Torian turned away and reached inside the cupboard for a colorful orange box.

  “Cheese squares,” he pulled out a small cracker with a thick cheese coating on one side and popped it in his mouth. “I guess I have to try everything first.” She watched him with those round blue eyes.

  “Take them,” he offered her the box and girl with the once pretty dress wolfed down the small crackers handfuls at a time. Refilling the mug, he offered it to her again while she finished the rest of the cheese crackers. Most of the food in the vessel was standard rations, little synthesized cubes of various meals converted with a food processor in the cabinet. When Torian and Tristan had been a team, they had always brought snacks and fruit drinks along on their missions.

  “So…” Torian leaned back in the chair by the computer consoles and after a while, the girl handed him back the empty box and began to examine the interior of the vessel, “I told you my name.”

  Studying him with a little more confidence she replied, “Siiri.”

  Then he grinned, “Finnish,” which confirmed her slight accent.

  “What is that?”

  “Your name, it’s a Finnish name from a place in old earth called Scandinavia. My mother is Finnish. Her name is Anna.”

  “I think I remember that from school.”

  “Why don’t you use the sink and clean up a bit. I have a fresh washcloth…” then he pulled out a small cylinder, “…and I have this tooth brush, brand new, still sealed.”