by S. A. Lusher
The final members of their crew, Jensen, the pilot and Amanda, their primary medic, were already on the bridge. Even in their four months together, Eric hadn't really gotten to know Jensen, though he had an idea that no one really knew the man. He was a silent, trim guy with a neat beard and a crewcut, and he rarely spoke to anyone. Amanda, on the other hand, he'd gotten to know probably about as well as he was going to. She was, in some ways, like Ronnie. Though she struck Eric as less of a pessimist and more of a grim realist.
She was of average height and weight, blonde haired and blue eyed, and he didn't think he'd ever heard her make a joke of any kind. She was always in the infirmary, always studying up on new medical techniques and discoveries. Amanda struck him as the kind of person for whom there was only the call of career.
Which was fine, he respected that. In fact, he envied her. Ever since leaving the war and his military lifestyle behind, Eric had felt adrift, uncertain of anything except for the vague notion that he liked helping people. Or, even if he didn't really like it, it was something worth doing. And that was about as close as he'd gotten to certainty.
“What's up, boss?” Seth asked.
“We've got one,” Marco replied, stepping back from the screen. Eric and the others crowded around it, studying it.
A holographic image of what appeared to an installation set into an asteroid took up most of the screen. A single, red dot was had appeared somewhere in the installation and it was pulsing slowly on and off.
“Looks like an asteroid,” Eric murmured.
“It is. Deep space truck stop, basically. It serves as a service and repair outpost for isolated shipping lanes in that sector. Pretty far out there. The distress call is generic, not details encoded in it, and they don't respond to communication attempts. We're the nearest S and R ship, or any ship really, for quite a ways. We're also three hours out. That's how long you've all got to get ready. You've got an hour to grab breakfast and whatever else you need to do, then we'll have a briefing on the mission. Then we'll do mission prep. Got it?”
There were a string of affirmative replies.
The team began to leave the bridge.
* * * * *
Breakfast, at least for Eric, was a simple classic of bacon and scrambled eggs, (with some hot sauce) and a large glass of milk. He and Autumn sat opposite of Ronnie and Amanda. Seth and Marco were the earliest risers among the crew and likely had already had breakfast at least an hour ago. And now Marco would be preparing their briefing.
“We were so close,” Ronnie said, staring unhappily into his breakfast.
“We'll be fine,” Autumn replied, rolling her eyes. “What would you have done with your vacation time anyway? All you do is hang out in your room all day doing...whatever it is you do.”
“That's because there's nothing to do on this ship,” Ronnie replied vehemently, looking up. “No entertainment save for the entertainment we bring for ourselves.”
“It's not so bad,” Autumn said, glancing over at Eric.
Ronnie rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
“It will be nice to get away from the ship for a while,” Amanda said.
“Where will you be going?” Autumn asked.
“Home,” Amanda replied. “I haven't seen my family in almost a year.”
“Ugh. If we'd just gone another five days...but no, we had to get a damned call.”
“Come on, don't be like that,” Eric said. “It's a chance to help people.”
Ronnie shook his head. “I don't know. It just seems like...I mean, there's how many people out there? Billions and billions, right?”
“Last census I heard put us at something like twenty five billion,” Autumn replied.
“Yeah. And, it's just, what can we do? We're seven people. There's always going to be people hurting, people dying, people needing help.”
“Doesn't mean we should just give the fuck up,” Autumn replied.
Eric was staring at Ronnie now, considering his words. On the one hand, he did seem to have a very valid point. With a population that large, on a galactic scale, it did seem like they were just grains of sand on a beach.
But...
Well, he wasn't sure what, except that he instinctively didn't agree with the sentiment. Or he didn't like it, anyway.
But he didn't really have a clear counter argument.
Feeling vaguely afraid and isolated, Eric returned to his breakfast.
* * * * *
When breakfast was finished, Eric still had a good forty minutes left, so he went down to the shooting range near the engine room. It was a small room, with just two alleys for shooting. He was still a good shot, though it had been quite a while since he'd had to draw his gun in self defense. The missions they usually received were typically not hostage situations. More like natural disasters and environmental instability. Meteorite strikes or decompression accidents. Only one of the missions had been a case of cabin fever.
An isolated research outpost had found itself under attack from within. Four of the ten staff had suffered some kind of breakdown. That hadn't been a pleasant one. It had only been his second mission in and he'd almost called it quits. It brought up memories of the war and hit a little too close to home. But he'd stuck it out.
So far he couldn't tell if he was happy or not with that decision.
After some time on the range, he'd spent some more time sitting and talking with Autumn in their bedroom. The conversation was light and distracted. They both were a little on edge and in that mode of being where you didn't really want to start doing anything because something big was coming up and you were just killing time. The fact that each mission they received was basically a roll of the dice would put anyone on edge, Eric often told himself. You could get anything from a malfunctioning comm unit to an all-out bloodbath.
So far he'd come out of it clean, they all had, with a few exceptions where they had to spend some time in the infirmary, recovering.
Eventually, they were all called to the briefing room.
It was a small room, standard issue for most small military operations. Just a simple rectangle of a room taken up mostly by a table surrounded by swivel chairs. In the middle of the table was a holographic projection unit.
Marco took his position at the head of the table and began.
Although the briefing lasted for close to an hour, Eric thought that it was a bit light. There just wasn't much to go off of and he felt that Marco was trying to compensate for that by really drilling in the few facts they did know. He talked mainly about the facility itself, why and how it had been built and then they'd gone into a detailed examination of the installation's layout. It was a fairly large facility. It could hold easily a thousand personnel, though Eric very much doubted that there was even half that given its isolation and poor turnout rate.
Finally, Marco laid out how the mission would play out and the likeliest situations they would find themselves in.
He figured that, chances were, there had been some kind of natural disaster. Eric's money was on a meteorite collision, though he didn't feel he could rule out mishandling of fuel. A lot of these old installations still used cheap but unstable liquid fuel. In the end, with about an hour left in transit, Marco asked them if they had any questions and, when no one did, told them to go suit up and prep for the mission.
* * * * *
“Maybe it'll be nothing,” Seth said. “I've been doing this for ten years now and every time we get a false alarm, it's these old bases.”
“Doubt it,” Ronnie replied unhappily. “It's probably going to be some godforsaken nightmare. Blood and death everywhere-”
“You must really be a blast at parties,” Autumn said, interrupting him.
“I can't remember the last party I went to,” Ronnie replied.
“Gee, I can't imagine why,” Autumn muttered.
They were in the armory, gearing up with pressurized suits meant to stand up to all sorts of stuff. They were basically suits of power armor, tho
ugh not quite as good as the stuff the military typically got their hands on. They'd do fine in the vacuum of space and they could stand up to extreme temperatures, some explosions and most gunfire. At least, to a point. They were all a light green color, the color of the Search & Rescue branch. They were also prepping their own personal loadouts, determined by their jobs.
Eric and Ronnie had tools and spare parts, Seth had guns and ammo, and Amanda was packing all sorts of emergency medical gear. Although technically Autumn was second in command under Marco, she was also kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Eric knew that she had extensive combat training, and she'd gained at least some technical knowledge in her thirty-one years, but her main secondary role was to be the backup medic.
And, on top of their regular gear, they all ended up with some kind of sidearm. Eric had found a pretty solid pistol to tote around with him. It had a nice kick to it and a decent magazine size, as well as a silencer and a built-in flashlight. Although they'd be relying largely on Seth to handle any kind of combat-related issues, it was prudent (and comforting) to be able to rely on themselves in case something really serious came up.
While the others continued to chat in the background, Eric focused on getting his own gear ready. It was a ritual that normally soothed him before a mission, but this time it wasn't helping abate the feelings of anxiety and subversive dread that were welling slowly within him. As he finished putting the last of his gear into place, Autumn came over.
“You doing okay? You look...scared,” she said.
Eric laughed softly. Autumn had never really been anything but very blunt. He liked that about her. “I'm okay. I mean...I'm nervous,” he replied. “But it's not just nerves, it's...I don't know what it is. Just something about this mission. About that asteroid...”
Autumn smiled and kissed him. “You're just being paranoid,” she said.
He nodded and shrugged, hoping she was right. Despite this hope, as he pulled on and secured his helmet, then began to run a system check on his suit, the feeling didn't go away. If anything, it got worse. He jumped slightly as a chime inside his helmet sounded, informing him that the suit check came back positive.
All systems go.
Eric took a deep breath and let it out slowly, telling himself that it'd be fine.
He didn't believe it.
STARCK'S LAMENT is the eleventh novel in
THE SHADOW WARS.
Out now. Purchase HERE.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean A. Lusher was born in the Midwest. Raised on a diet of Goosebumps and YA Horror, he eventually graduated to mature fiction and began cutting his teeth on the likes of Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series and Bob Mayer's Area 51 novels.
Lusher has been writing seriously for over a decade now, though he only began to get any good at it over the past few years. (And there's still some debate over that...)
Currently, he lives in Columbia, MO with his wife and two cats.
-Official Facebook Page
-My Blog
-Contact: [email protected]
NECROPOLIS 4 – TERMINAL. SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS. Copyright © by S. A. Lusher. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entire coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
