MissionSRX: Ephemeral Solace

by Matthew D. White

  Forcing the thick blade into the seam by the handle, Grant pressed down on the handle, breaking off the locking bolt with a resounding pop. The door swung freely open and more black smoke billowed out. As the air cleared, he could see the remains of the crew. Two soldiers were burned beyond recognition, still strapped in their seats. Grant grimaced and turned away.

  He shook his head and continued checking other vehicles. Many were in similar condition: disabled with their occupants suffering third degree burns or total incineration. An armored transport another hundred yards or so farther away held more promise. From what he remembered from the morning’s briefing, a squad consisting of thirty soldiers had been riding in it and had at least been given a chance.

  Grant got to the rear hatch, saw it was opened, and looked around the far side. What was left of the squad had been thrown about on that far side. They had been using the vehicle as cover with marginal success, given that there were dozens of empty magazines littering the ground. Most were still clutching their weapons and all had died fighting.

  He checked them over for wounds and found a mixture of signs of explosive blasts, shrapnel, projectiles, and burns as if from industrial cutting lasers. Something caught Grant’s attention and he moved back to the APC’s interior. In the shadows to the side, two soldiers had crumpled. One was still and obviously deceased, given the blood pooling on the floor but the other was still breathing.

  The man was covered with blood and multiple lacerations but his eyes were still open and tracking him as he entered.

  “Space Corps. Friendly!” Grant announced as he approached before the other soldier could draw a weapon. He pulled a medical bag off the wall and spread its contents on the floor, looking for anything that could help the injured soldier.

  “Hold on, I’m gonna fix you up!” Grant shouted, digging through the pile.

  He found a red smoke grenade, popped it, and tossed it out the door to call the medics. He sprayed a clotting agent on the man’s arms to seal the cuts and placed a large bandage over his stomach wound. The soldier barely struggled. He was deep enough into shock that Grant could have performed dental surgery on him without much objection.

  His eyes were large and darting all about as if he expected an attack from an unseen enemy. Grant cursed out loud when the first bandage began to bleed through and he stuck another one on top.

  “Keep pressure here,” he ordered and clamped the soldier’s hand above it. “Hold on,” he said again and ducked out the hatch, back into the burning sunlight.

  Grant picked up the flare, still billowing deep red smoke and waved it above his head. “Hey, down there!” he screamed. “Hurry up, we’ve still got survivors!”

  The hazy air cleared briefly and he saw a few vehicles moving towards him. “About time,” he muttered and went back to tend to the soldier. He was still in shock and couldn’t focus on Grant’s approach.

  Thankfully, the bleeding had subsided so he went back to the med bag. The outer pouch held three color coded needles: a high-strength painkiller, an adrenaline based stimulant, and a relaxant. He pulled the relaxant, put the full contents into the soldier’s arm, and clipped the empty syringe to his collar.

  The soldier’s breathing slowed and his pupils began to close. “You’ll be ok. The medics are coming.” Grant reassured him. “Relax; take deep breaths.” His eyes stopped darting about and came to rest on Grant’s.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “W-w-we never saw it coming,” he said, trembling.

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. We were driving along and the sky went black. Our vehicles died and we started getting hit from the air. We unloaded from the truck and kept taking fire from the air and ground. They moved just like shadows. I know I hit some of them but they didn’t drop. I took a round; it freakin’ burned like hell. I kept shooting as Urban pulled me in here,” he said, gesturing to the other fallen soldier. “One of them floated past the door and shot him in the back.”

  Grant considered what the soldier reported until two medics rushed in. He backed up and gave them their space. “He got hit in the stomach. I gave him a Black Shot about two minutes ago.” Grant reported and walked back outside.

  He thought about the soldier’s report as he checked for other survivors. If he was right, they were attacked by shadows. It was not a promising diagnosis. Grant’s face turned to disgust as he checked another five-ton truck, only to find the twisted remains of several more soldiers beneath it. Their faces bore expressions of pain and twisted fear. He shook his head and pulled them out. They had severe chemical burns over most of their bodies and smelled like an industrial solvent.

  Grant found another dozen survivors and more than a hundred casualties before he reached the end of the line. All the alien cargo was gone as well as half of the human arms. It might have well have been done by ghosts. They didn’t leave a single trace; no footprints, no blood, no remains. And the other survivors were just as confused as the first.

  “Private Grant!” he heard the sergeant exclaim.

  “What? I’m over here,” Grant shouted back. The sergeant was about three vehicles away on the far side judging from the echo.

  “Get over here. You’re going back to base. The CO wants to see you right away.”

  Grant jogged over to the NCO’s position. “What does he want?”

  “Shit, I don’t know; he’s trying to get whatever intel he can, and you’re the only survivor who can talk straight,” he said, pointing to a waiting Humvee. “Take a seat.”

  Shaking his head, Grant hopped into the rear of the truck. Two of the survivors were on stretchers beside him, with a medic attending to them seated on the center console. The trip to the base took only a few minutes.

  3

  If the scene at the convoy was disorderly, then B-3 was a disaster. The facility consisted of several hangars carved into mountainsides, a small vehicle yard, and enough pavement to serve as a runway and landing platform for a few squadrons of Space Recon Series One fighters. It didn’t look like much, but it consumed half of the Space Corps’ research budget in its sprawling underground complex.

  All transport vehicles that were not being used for the convoy’s recovery had been pulled back into the mountain with every serviceable weapon mounted outside. The small contingent of Earth Corps soldiers on guard looked about as scared as they came. Grant would have been too if he was told to defend the base from alien attack with dusty old SAMs and powder rifles. He shook his head. At least they were reliable.

  Grant caught one of the men running by. “Where’s the commander?” he asked.

  The soldier looked between Grant’s face and his rank. “He’s in the command center. Take the service elevator to level four, but what do you need from him?”

  “You’ve got that backwards,” he answered and left the stunned man standing alone.

  The commander’s bunker was easy to find; it took up the entire floor. The elevator opened and Grant absorbed the flurry of activity around him. The commander himself was unmistakable. One officer was standing at the center giving orders. His uniform was perfect, and he was sweating bullets despite the temperature being in what had to have been the low 60’s.

  “I need to see the commander.” Grant told the nearest body, slightly louder than necessary. As he hoped, the CO heard him.

  The leading officer looked over and pointed at him. “Are you the survivor?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.” Grant replied.

  The colonel turned to a major beside him. “Take over. I’ll be back shortly,” he ordered and quickly stepped over to Grant. He offered his hand. “Lieutenant Colonel James Reese. Come with me. I want to know what you saw.”

  Grant introduced himself as well and followed the officer into a vacant briefing room behind the command center. They each took a seat. “I’ve only seen a few varying reports from the convoy’s encounter. What did you see?”

  Grant relayed the experienc
e as best he could remember it without taking too much time with the details unless Colonel Reese asked about them.

  “Thank you for the report.” Reese stated when he had finished. “This is an unfortunate turn of events but we’ll prevail,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. Have you checked in with your squadron yet? Do they know you’re alive?”

  “I don’t have one.” Grant replied.

  “How’s that?” Reese asked quizzically. “Who’s your commander?”

  “I’m in the service of the Corps. My last commanding officer was Captain Martin but he’s burning in a Humvee out in the desert.”

  “What was your last position? I know I’ve heard your name before.”

  “I was a Commander Prime and leader of the Crimson Elite Fighter Squadron.”

  The silence was deafening as Reese connected the dots. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? You should be the one telling me how to handle this bullshit!”

  “No, I shouldn’t,” Grant said, shaking his head. “That’s done with. I’m right where I should be, so use me as you need me.”

  The colonel shook his head again. “I can’t do that in good conscience. I don’t need you to be a rifleman. Dammit, you’re an effing hero!” he said, and then he thought for a second. “Go talk to the intel shop down in the south wing. They might be able to use your insight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you need it, the barracks, DFAC, and med center take up the whole west side behind hangars two and three. We’re done here.”

  Grant could feel himself getting some strange looks as he made his way back through the command center and back to the elevator. It wasn’t every day someone like him came in off the field covered with lord-knew-what.

  The polished steel of the elevator’s walls confirmed it. Grant hadn’t noticed on the way down but he looked like pure hell. His uniform was covered with dirt, blood, oil, and sand. His face was burned, covered with more grime and he was sporting a nasty shadow of a beard. He needed a fire hose more than a shower.

  It didn’t faze him as much as it would have some other soldiers; he’d looked worse in front of more important audiences. The elevator came to rest at the ground floor and Grant made his way down the hall to the intelligence squadron’s office. Their front office was empty so he continued on through back to their lab marked by signs on the wall out front.

  The intel shop was nearly as busy as the commander’s staff. Stacks of equipment were perched all around with seemingly kilometers of cable connecting them together. Most of the people there were staring intently at computer screens and talking faster than they could keep up.

  One of them turned and looked over, obviously surprised to have a visitor. “Who are you? We haven’t found anything new!”

  “You’ve got it wrong. I survived the assault. Colonel Reese wanted me to come give you guys a hand.”

  The analyst looked relieved. “Good, we’ve gotten no peace for the last two days. I don’t know how much you can help but you’re welcome to see what we’ve found,” he said, waving Grant over to the monitor.

  Grant kneeled down beside him. “What do you have?”

  “Well, this all started back during the final battle six months ago,” he said, bringing up a waveform from their spectrum analyzer on the screen. “This was broadcast as the last ship was destroyed. It contained enormous power and blew out half the collection systems on the moon base. Are you familiar with it?”

  “I think you could say that.”

  “Well, we didn’t see anything like it again until yesterday.”

  The operator changed the display. “We thought there was an incoming asteroid at first but it was rebroadcasting the signal at a slightly different frequency. It was transmitting until it hit the atmosphere, and then we lost track.”

  “Did you get any pictures? Any eyes on at all?” Grant asked.

  He shook his head. “Not a one,” he said, glancing back and eyeing Grant’s name tape. He thought for a moment. “Did you know the Prime?”

  Grant looked back. “That’s me.”

  He immediately recharged. “Sir, it’s an honor. I wish we had more for you.”

  Grant shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Just keep at it. We need everything we can get our hands on. So far it sounds like either our enemy has returned or something else has responded to the transmission. It’s not enough for a battle plan but it’s better than nothing.”

  “A-a-actually, you may be interested in something else.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, somewhat preparing to let the man down gently.

  “You’re ship’s here.”

  “What? Are you sure?” Grant’s jaw nearly dropped.

  “The SR, X-Class, right? It was delivered two months ago and put into storage.”

  “Really? Can you get me access to it?”

  “Of course.” The analyst switched to the warehouse’s database program and wrote a few numbers on a scrap of paper. “Have the operator pull these crates. They contain everything that was delivered with it.”

  “Crates? Plural?” Grant asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” he reported, reading from a computer monitor. “It came ‘demilitarized and disassembled’ according to the manifest. They tried to sneak it in but it’s not an easy thing to hide.”

  Grant briefly regained a small spark. “Thanks. I’ve got to try and find it. That ship was my world. Let me know if you find out anything else,” he replied before leaving back the way he had come.

  Grant took the same hallway back north to the main section of the base. Every passage had been tunneled out of solid rock and polished to a shine showing the infinite variations of the stone’s composition. There were several different sizes depending on the size of the facility they serviced but all had the floors squared off in a similar pattern and all had a metal cage hanging from the ceiling above to corral the thousands of wires that connected the multitude of stations.

  Large bundles of electrical wires, network lines, water, and air ducts were installed within the containment cages. Light sources were installed on the brackets every several meters and gave an even glow all around. Switches, outlets and emergency boxes were mounted on the rounded walls with conformal control lines reaching back to the bus above.

  The largest hall in the mountain went straight through from west to east and connected the hangars to the warehouse on the far side. It was easily large enough to move a small spacecraft or the fuselage of any aircraft through and was certainly capable of handling the entire convoy before it was destroyed. Signs were posted in the hangar for each of the trucks as well as loading equipment to pull their cargo. All of it now sat idle. Grant spotted a manifest by the entrance and flipped through the screens, looking for any other useful information before he paid the warehouse a visit. The alien systems that would have been delivered had names he had never seen before and could barely pronounce. Also included was a projected maintenance schedule and recovery protocol.

  Space Research had been involved with it after all. They were requesting one system every few months to avoid overwhelming their staff. Grant smiled; at least they were still in business. There was nothing else of interest so he headed over to the warehouse’s entrance.

  The storage wing was outfitted to be very well defended if needed, but at the moment anyone could have walked out with whatever they wanted. A pneumatic safe door secured the room, but it was wide open. Behind it there were three moveable fighting positions with no one manning a post. In fact, Grant did not see anyone at all. All he saw were the racks of crates.

  Everything was palletized, from plastic cases the size of briefcases to spacecraft parts chained down to their platforms. The racks were easily eight stories high, built of steel I-beams and bolted top and bottom to the mountain itself. Looking up, Grant nearly gave himself vertigo.

  He shook it off and approached a lone terminal to the left. It had a large display and showed the same database the in
telligence analyst had used before. Grant took a guess, typed in the number series and depressed the button marked “retrieve.” A warning sounded at the terminal as well as a fire bell behind him and a message popped up on the screen.

  “Clear Staging Area Alpha,” it simply exclaimed and gave a countdown of a few minutes. From somewhere in the room Grant heard an electric motor spin up and seconds later a large robotic forklift slid by carrying the tarp-covered body of his fighter. It dropped it in the center of an open area to Grant’s right, and he got a look at the device.

  The forklift had the range to reach all the way to the top of the racks and was mounted on a large platform that was locked into specialized tracks buried in the floor. Small panels opened to each side of the geared wheels as it passed to prevent personnel injuries. It brought at least another dozen more pallets containing parts of the ship before delivering the maintainer’s equipment and servicing workstations.

  Grant immediately began to look through all of the parts before him. His hope faded with each crate and panel he opened. Nearly every wire bundle he found had been pulled from the chassis or had been roughly severed to prevent reassembly. Hours nothing; this was a job that could take an entire crew weeks to complete.

  Memorizing the service documentation helped a little. Grant could identify nearly every part on sight and lay it out as required for assembly. When he had torn through all the boxes and had accounted for every part, he began assembling the significant mess that was now taking up the whole staging area. All of the larger sections like the wings, engines, and weapon pods were all attached to wheeled cradles that made their movement a breeze.

  Grant’s main concern was not in the assembly of the pieces but in getting them in the right order. When he began on the wings he found nearly two hundred cables that had been chopped as well as broken fuel lines leading to the wing pods. Once he reattached the skeleton, he spent what felt like the next few hours lying on the top with the service kit’s wire repair tools.