by Rob Dearsley
Water beaded up on the cupola as they dropped through the cloud base. On Arland’s console, the distance scrolled down to the landing site.
The landing zone was just outside the city over the intersection of shattered roads. Above, the broken skyline glinted gold in the sun. Massive trees twinning up through the buildings. A real urban jungle. At least this far out it was just regular forest rather than the jumbled mess of the city.
A growing cluster of shuttles sat in amidst a scattering of escape pods. According to Arland’s screen, no other combat craft had made it down. At least some of the shuttles should have mini armouries. They’d be able to gear up some, and as long as Niels and the others had made it, and they could reach them, they’d be able to come up with something.
“Coming in on final approach,” Lloyd announced.
The fighter dropped down between a pair of shuttles, kicking up a cloud of dust as it settled onto its landing gear. Lloyd waited until the dust had settled before popping the cupola and climbing out.
Arland followed him, down the ladder, stretching out her cramped legs. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the fighter, but it felt like an age. She stumbled, catching herself on the fighter’s access ladder.
“You okay?” Lloyd asked, supporting her with a hand on her elbow.
“Leg’s gone to sleep.” She pushed away from the fighter and Lloyd, shaking out her tingling legs.
Lloyd laughed. “Happens to the best of us.” Then he sobered. “We should see who’s made it.”
◊◊
Lloyd marched over to the formation of officers. Bloody hells they all looked so young – inexperienced? He hoped not. Surely Niels wouldn’t be taking a newbie crew on a mission like this, and Rossini was a good captain, she’d never have taken a neophyte crew to this Starlight forsaken pit. The darkness-shrouded ship flashed through his mind as it burned away from the planet. Oh crap.
“The bridge was facing away from the planet,” Arland said absently. “The Feynman’s bridge, it was facing away from the planet. All the command staff would have gone for the nearest Escape pods. They wouldn’t have made it to the surface.”
And that included Niels and Rossini, probably Valentine too. They were good people, they didn’t deserve a slow death up there.
“Damn.” Lloyd rubbed a hand over his face. Maybe there was a chance. The scout might pick some up if it got away. Or there were the shipyards, they might just be within range. “You think they’re still out there?”
“They made it into the debris field,” Arland replied. “We could send a shuttle up to scout the area, try and make contact.”
“Let’s see who’s in command first,” Lloyd replied. The longer he could put off finding more dead crewmates the better. The officers had not noticed their approach and were pivoting to face them.
A dark-haired Lieutenant, his rank bars supplemented with a navigator’s insignia, gave them a sharp salute. “Captain, glad you made it.”
Lloyd returned the salute. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Who’s the ranking officer on site?”
“Err…” The navigator shifted uncomfortably, casting an eye over his companions. “That would be you, Sir.”
“Hells.” Lloyd rubbed his hand over his face again. “Okay.” He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He could do this. “What have we got?”
“We’re still taking full stock, sir. Nearly a hundred survivors accounted for so far, eighteen walking wounded, two DOA. Escape pods are still coming down though.” As if to prove his point, the squat cylinder of an escape pod screamed overhead. “Six shuttles made it down. Two took heavy damage on the way out. We’ll be lucky if we can get them back into orbit.”
Only a hundred survivors from a ship of over nine thousand, Hells. And they were all bloody kids. He and Arland had to keep them alive, get them home. Please, Stars, let him get them home.
None of them had planned for this. No one could have. Most of the crew were technicians and scientists. Lloyd guessed most of the marines had died – Or worse, stood between their flock and this impenetrable evil.
Where do we stand?
This wasn’t the time to dwell. He walked into the middle of the small circle of shuttles, turning slowly to survey the scene. They had work to do. “Okay. We need to set up a perimeter. Do any of these shuttles have active scanner suites?”
A youngster in a pilot’s jumpsuit stepped forward. “I’ve got active scanners.”
“Good,” Lloyd replied. “Get some men together and set up a rota watching the area. What about long-range coms?”
“Are you sure about this?” Arland asked. “Won’t this give away our position? Or the positions of the others?”
“We’re not hiding,” Lloyd replied. He needed her not to question him. Heck, she was probably better suited to this than him. “If it’s not got active scanners then we’re in the clear, and if it has, it can find us with or without a broadcast. Our best bet right now is speed. We need to contact Niels and make a plan to get the ship back and get these guys home.”
The first Lieutenant, the oldest of the three, answered, “Transport Five has a combat control suit. If you want to get a signal into orbit, that’s your best bet.”
“Show me.” Lloyd turned to the others. “Everyone else search and rescue!”
Lloyd followed the Lieutenant into the back of a troop transport. Ranks of folding jump-seats lined the walls. Just like every other transport he’d been in, except where the seats near the cockpit had been taken out and replaced with a single chair surrounded by curved, translucent screens.
Lloyd jumped into the swivelling chair flicking through options on the screens. Until he got to the com suit. “Wish me luck.” He tapped the com-link open. Please let someone hear him. “This is Captain Lloyd transmitting in the blind, to any survivors of the Feynman. If you can hear me, please respond on this channel.” He tapped another control setting the transmission to loop and leaned back in the chair.
“What now?” Arland asked.
She was bloody relentless. He just wanted to rest. “Take stock. Get our people back together. Once we know what we have, we can work out how to take back the Feynman. Or at least get out of here.”
He had to keep a brave face on it for the others, but deep down he wondered if they’d ever get off this planet. Maybe they were doomed to die here. He’d never see his mum again.
“Contact.”
Arland rushed from the shuttle.
“Stay on the com,” Lloyd called to the Lieutenant as he followed Arland.
Outside, SDF troops rushed around in the late afternoon light. He ran into the scanner shuttle, where the shout had come from, Arland a beat behind him.
The pilot led them through into the cockpit. “Sirs, we’re picking up something on extreme scanner range, coming from the city.” At the pilot’s touch, a map of the surrounding area sprang up on the cupola. “See here.” He pointed to a cluster of red callouts on the top edge of the display.
“Any idea what they are?” Lloyd asked.
He already knew the answer. It was either the Turned or the Shadow-forms. Arland shot him a glare, clearly following his own thinking.
“Not sure, sir,” the Lieutenant said. “The scanners read them as biological and there’s no IFF. Landscape’s too cluttered to get a LIDAR or optical image.”
While they could be crew, they should have the Identification Friend-Foe beacons if they were.
“It’s got to be the Turned,” Arland said. “We need to arm up. Be ready for them.”
Lloyd nodded. “I don’t disagree. But I want to get eyes on.”
“Captain,” the scanner officer said. “We’re picking up another escape pod coming in hard. Predictions show it coming down near the contacts.”
Oh hells no. Lloyd wasn’t standing for that. Where did he stand? On the screen, the Turned, these wolves, closed on his flock. He couldn’t just sit back. Out there between wolves and the sheep was where he was meant to be.
“Arland, gear up, we’re going to get them.”
“Us?”
“Yes, bloody us? You got a problem with that?” He started out of the shuttle to one of the air-worthy craft.
Arland followed him. “Captain, you’re the ranking officer down here.”
Inside the shuttle, he grabbed a rifle from the shuttle’s armoury and shoved it into her chest. “And if we die out here someone else will have to damn-well step up.”
“Why do you need a sniper?” She followed him into the cockpit, stowing her rifle behind the co-pilot’s chair and slipping the flight helmet on.
“To shoot things.” Lloyd thumbed the com-link to the rear compartment. “Clear?”
“You’re cleared for dust off.” The voice of the officer in the combat controller transport came through the helmet’s integrated headset.
“Copy.” Lloyd hit the thrusters and they rose through a cloud of dust.
The small camp dropped away beneath them. Troopers and officers passed out guns and set up a perimeter. The shuttle swung around and the camp disappeared below the shuttle’s nose.
The scanner officer’s voice was replaced by the combat controller, “Patching scanner feeds through to your HUD.”
Callouts popped up on the heads-up in front of them. A cluster of red indicated the “hostile” contacts – the Turned – while a blue callout tracked the streak of the out of control escape pod as it rushed toward the surface.
Lloyd winced as the pod slammed into the ground raising a cloud of earth and rock. Damn, that had to hurt. Was it even survivable?
“Lloyd?”
“I know,” he replied and gunned the engines, sending them surging forward toward the mingling clouds of dust and smoke.
◊◊
Dannage blinked awake and looked around the expansive bridge. Concentric rings of consoles faced him – all currently off. His head tingled and the metallic taste stung his throat, but his head was clearer than it had felt for months now.
Vaughn passed a portable scanner wand over his head. “Captain, I’d like to get you back to the ship, run some proper scans.”
“I feel fine.” Dannage brushed the other man off.
“Could just be a placebo,” Vaughn suggested. “It might be tricking you.”
Dannage didn’t think so. Loki felt genuine. Or at least genuinely scared of the darkness. If the story was anything to go by, he had good reason to be scared.
“What now?” he asked, looking up. It felt oddly similar to talking to Jax.
I have begun the process to undock from the station and bring primary systems online. There are people on the station.
“People? You mean Turned?” Dannage asked. Luc and Vaughn gave him concerned looks.
No. Your people. Survivors from your ship.
“Wait. Survivors? They lost the Feynman?” Stars, how were they going to get home without the capital ship?
“Cap’n? What’s going on?” Luc asked, hopping off the console he’d been sat on and walking over to Dannage.
“They’ve lost the Feynman. Apparently, survivors are on the station,” Dannage said. “Take the Doc and find them, they might need medical attention.”
“What about you?” Luc asked.
“I’ll be fine. Loki is prepping to launch. I’ll hook up with you after this is done.” He placed a hand on Luc’s shoulder, meeting the older man’s eyes. “I’m good.”
Luc frowned, not quite believing Dannage. And to be fair, he’d used those words before to get Luc out of the way when he was going to do something crazy.
Was this another crazy-person plan? Was he stupid to trust this ship? Did he have a choice?
We need each other if you want to save them. Arland’s face flashed through his mind, screaming as she fell, the shadows enveloping her. Maybe she’d gotten off the Feynman. Stars, he hoped she had.
Damn-it. He couldn’t lose her, not if there was a way.
“Cap’n, be safe,” Luc said as he and Vaughn stepped into the lift, the doors hushing closed behind them.
“Always,” Dannage said to the, now empty, bridge. At least he hoped so.
◊◊
Arland held her breath as the troop shuttle shot through the treetops at breakneck speed, turbulence from the forest buffeting them. Next to her, Lloyd’s attention remained fixated on the controls.
She leaned forward to look through the shuttle’s front windows. HUD enhancements picked out the Turned, rushing through the forest toward the smoking remains of the escape pod. Pack animals rushing in for the kill.
“This is Captain Lloyd to escape pod seven-five-zero, please respond.” Lloyd had been trying to raise them on the short-range com ever since the pair of them had lifted off from the camp.
“Captain. Please tell me you’re nearby. I’ve got wounded.” The panicked voice was barely audible over the sea of static.
“We’re two minutes out.” Lloyd muted the com. “Where are the Turned?”
Arland checked her screen. “Turned are heading for the escape pod. Computer estimates seventy seconds until contact.”
“Damn it.” Lloyd struck the control panel in frustration. “Can you take them out before they get to the escape pod?”
Arland looked between Lloyd’s frantic – almost maniacal – expression and the stricken escape pod. “I can make the shot.”
Lloyd met her eyes for a moment. “I’ll drop the ramp. Go.”
Arland ducked into the rear compartment and started unhooking the anti-materiel rifle. The rush of wind through the opening ramp whipped at her hair and shirt. She grabbed the rifle and started toward the rear hatch.
Safety lines were fitted to the upper bulkhead half way along the crew compartment. She shrugged into a harness and tethered herself to one of the lines, before stepping out onto the lowered ramp. The wind tore at her clothes, lashing loose strands of hair across her face. Treetops whipped past just below the shuttle. Lloyd was crazy, flying this fast this low.
The shuttle spun around fast enough to send her stumbling across the platform, toward the perilous drop. She managed to keep hold of the rifle but ended up on her knees. Below her, ruddy sandstone flashed between the trees- the Turned. Lloyd was flying backwards to give her the shot.
Staying on her knees – she was safer that way – Arland brought the rifle’s scope up to her eye and flicked the thermal view on.
The Turned sprinted through the underbrush, their four arms pumping. She sighted up on one, waiting for the moment when it would pass between trees.
Now.
She fired. There was a momentary flash of blood and the Turned crumpling, then it was out of view below the shuttle. She sighted up on the next Turned.
Crack.
The rifle bucked hard against her shoulder and another creature went down.
Lloyd’s voice filtered through her earpiece. “We’re coming in for landing.”
She didn’t bother to reply, just sighted up on the next Turned and fired again. The creature spun half around into a boneless sprawl.
Three down, two left.
As the shuttle settled next to a great trench of earth, she reached around and unhooked her harness. Around them, splintered trees smouldered interspersed with wreckage from the out-of-control escape pod. At least the newly created clearing gave them good sight-lines.
“We clear?” Lloyd asked, joining her. His own assault-rifle held at low ready.
“For now, sir.”
“On me.” Lloyd tapped her shoulder and moved down the ramp and toward the escape pod.
Arland stayed with him scanning the tree-line, her feet sinking into the broken earth kicked up by the escape pod’s crash. Her every sense was tense and ready. There were two Turned still out there, coming for them. They should have been here already. Maybe her shots had given them pause.
Arland heard scrabbling footsteps in the loose earth around the escape pod, followed by a young sounding voice. “Captain, thank goodness you made it.”
The scream of a Turned ripped through the clearing, somewhere to Arland’s left, behind the escape pod.
“Back inside,” Lloyd snapped. “Arland, switch around.”
A moment later he banged on her right shoulder and she pivoted toward the escape pod. An older enlisted man in a grubby, orange jumpsuit clambered toward the open hatch. The pod itself was a squat cylinder, little more than a flying tin-can, half buried in the dirt.
The Turned leapt over the escape pod and the enlisted man froze in terror.
“Move,” Arland shouted already sighting on the Turned.
The creature lunged for the enlisted man. Arland fired, the gunshot deafening. The Turned twisted around losing two of its arms in a wash of blood. It thumped into the freshly tilled earth and lunged for Arland.
Lloyd pulled her aside, firing his own rifle on full auto. The assault rifle’s lower calibre rounds glanced off the Turned’s hide harmlessly. It was close enough Arland barely needed to aim her high-powered rifle and the creature’s head disappeared in a cloud of gore.
One left.
“Get them to the shuttle,” Arland said, reloading the rifle. “I’ll cover you.” The sooner they got this done and got back to camp the better. It shouldn’t have been them out here in the first place.
A quick glance over her shoulder showed a pair of orange-jumpsuited engineers carrying an unconscious officer on a make-shift litter. Through the overturned earth toward the shuttle. If they were lucky, he’d outrank them.
Where was that last Turned? Maybe it had retreated, run back to the city. No way could they be that lucky. They’d burned all their luck making it down here alive.
Lloyd patted her on the shoulder. “Back to the shuttle. Nice and easy.”
Easy. Right.
Lloyd kept a hand on her back, guiding her toward the shuttle.
Another high warbling scream echoed through the clearing. The final Turned.
Lloyd’s footsteps clattered up the ramp. “Covering. Move.”
Arland hurried up the ramp and into the shuttle as another scream came from behind her. Crap, if it got into the shuttle it would kill them all before, they could do anything. She lunged for the emergency close leaver. Lloyd’s rifle let out a rattling chatter. Not enough.
