Thirteen years I’ve been stationed out here. Thirteen years
of the same monotony with no hope of getting off this rock and back to a normal
existence or to a world with opportunities and life.
My name is Lieutenant Commander Michael Johnson, more often
than not referred to as John by my colleagues and superiors who get confused by
my surname and after all of this time I’ve lost the will to keep correcting
them after all of this time. I’m in charge of the day shift security detachment
at the SE1 colony out in the Bulgarum sector and I’ve been doing this for the
last three years.
I arrived out here when the colony still had a name, New
Limberg, as an enthusiastic young sub-lieutenant with dreams of an accelerated
promotion then transfer back to the fleet. The planet was a blooming
agricultural world with around five hundred thousand farmers, a garrison of
twenty thousand or so army and navy personnel under the command of a military
governor. It all started fantastically but then around nine years ago the “blight”
set in and killed the crops and livestock. It started slowly on the outlying
farms but within six months it had taken most of them, even killed some of the colonists’s
children. It was a dark time to be here, saw so many folks just pack up and
leave, can’t say I blame them and I would have done the same if I could.
For those of us at the garrison times became wane as well
with the death of the colony. Slowly detachments were reassigned then the
regiment until there was a skeleton force of technicians and two platoons of
soldiers mostly coming up for retirement age or fresh out of the academy for
some basic training, either way they are never here for very long. My superiors
left before the ink on their transfer slips had dried and I found myself
promoted quickly as my requests to leave were quietly filed away and now I’m
stuck here on this planet which no longer has a name beyond the colloquial
moniker of “Lambdeath” after the blight’s devastation.
Every day starts much the same rising at 0500, shower,
shave, breakfast and report to duty at 0700 in the Naval security office where I
receive the handover from the night officer which is usually devoid of anything
beyond things that he could report himself but is too lazy to. I then spend the
next hour or so checking the security systems are still working, compiling the
morning reports and then supervising the duty operators all of whom have longer
experience than me and trained me when I first arrived. Ultimately my day
consists of me watching people watch people farming their sheep.
That was until this morning…
As I said, I wake up at 0500 and take a hot shower and shave
before having the same bland naval issue breakfast rations in the mess before
taking my usual soul crushing walk down to the “bunker”. When I arrived
McIntyre was in his usual form. I liked Clive, I’d always got on with him but
over the last year he’d taken a dislike to something I’d said or done and now
spent a lot of time just being abrasive to me and I had no idea what the cause
was. He’d obviously got himself worked up over the last twelve hours and was
red in the face with droplets of sweat forming on his brow as he waved a report
under my nose.
“What is this?!” he shouted. “How can you give this order?!”
I tried to shift my usual expression of disinterest to
something akin to concern. “Which order?”
“This one about the intercom system procedure….” There
followed five to ten minutes of constant shouting and waving of papers whilst I
calmly repeated that the order had come from Major Dexter, had nothing to do
with me and that I was the same rank as him and couldn’t order him in the first
place but I might as well have been talking to the wall. In the end I just
closed my mouth and let him continue his rant until he ran out of steam and
stormed out.
With a heavy sigh I collapsed into my office chair and began
sifting through the reports and issues from the night duty – most of which they
could have reported or dealt with but with yet another sigh I began filing and
answering each individual in turn. Just another day.
A flashing red light caught my eye coming from the front of
the Control room. The deep space proximity alarm had gone into alarm.
“Sergeant, what’s that?” Despite my bored lethargy that had
infected most of my working shifts suddenly I found my adrenaline spiking and
long dusty training coming out.
“Probably another comet” Sergeant Zero was leaning back in
his chair staring blankly at the monitors without seeing. To be fair he was
probably right as we had comet warnings every other week but usually we’d have
had a heads up from the Stella cartography department.
“Do you want to look into it?” I urged firmly. “Now please”
As the Sergeant sat up and started scanning through the
system and analysing the alarms I started doing the same thing but faster.
Something had tripped the outer system sensors at speeds too fast for a comet.
I tried to bring up the camera feeds but they were interrupted by static
moments before whatever it was passed through it.
Something was not right here...
I reached for the comm and dialled the only extension I thought
would be of use. Major Dexter was useless most of the time anyway, my superior
Commander Vervain was off duty so I contacted the deputy Garrison commander
Captain Celine Vesper.
“Good morning Garrison command” the familiar voice filled my
ear and I fought back a smile as I pictured my friend at her desk knowing full
well she was about to say; “what have you done now?”
“Morning Sir, we’ve got an issue that I thought I should
raise. Something has just tripped the outer system proximity alarm.”
“Its probably a comet” she began “though we had better check
it out. Anything on the cameras?”
“That’s the thing, they went dead just before the alarm went
off.” Whilst we were talking I was rocketing through the other systems to see
if I could find anything else on the inner system security systems or cameras
but one by one they were dropping off. “The rest of the system seems to be
going down quite quickly to”
“Strange” she sounded like she was disappearing into
thought. “Ok, I’ll get one of the fighter patrols to go and take a look.
Hopefully its nothing.” She paused again. “Mike, bring us to amber action
stations just to be on the safe side. We could always do with another drill,
just leave Dexter to me.”
“Thanks Celine.”
Every call to her left me reminiscing about how long we had
worked together, how many issues we had dealt with together. We had started at
the colony at the same time both fresh out of the academy with aspirations and
ambition. We’d worked together and socialised together over the years and been
close, not as close as maybe I would have liked a long time ago but it is what
it is. I watched her strive and achieve her position through hard work and
sheer strength of will against the immovable object that is the superior
officers here at SE1. Whereas I sank into bored lethargy and surrendered to the
system that ground me down she had clung on and fought it as best she could and
I admired that strength.
“Sir” Zero waved at me to pull me out of my daydream. “I’ve
spotted something on the inner most sensors before they went offline. The image
is blurry but on the IR it looks like a vessel of some sort.” He brought up the
images for me to look at and I could immediately see what he meant.
“Right.” I walked over to the alarm panel and hit the Amber
action stations alarm which began playing the repetitive message that should
bring the armed forces to alert and warn the colonist to stay in their homes. I
hurried back to my desk and dialled Dexter’s number to report the intruder and
that’s when the first explosion erupted.
I’m not certain where the rocket struck or even what size it
was. I only knew that the force of the blast caused the bunker ceiling to
collapse and I was thrown across the room and against the wall. I managed to
pull myself up briefly before my legs gave way and I fell back amongst the
rubble. My ears were ringing and my vision blurred from the white flash of the
explosion, my legs and chest ached from the force of the impact and I was
struggling to breathe. In the distance I could hear shouting but I couldn’t
tell you who it was or what they were saying all I could think of was the pain
and getting my breathing under control.
Suddenly a face filled my vision and a pair of gloved hands
gripped my uniform hard pulling me up by my chest. I recognised the eyes but my
brain still felt like wet bread and able to comprehend anything. He shouted at
me and I barely heard the voice over the ringing and I blinked vacantly at him
until I felt a gloved hand slap me across the cheek.
“I said, are you alright sir?”
I shook my head to try and clear my brain and I felt that
spike of consciousness return. “yes, I’m fine” I mumbled slowly pulling myself
to my feet. I realised it was Corporal Bettesworth the Control guard. “thank
you Corp.” He steadied me and ran down the room to check on Zero but it was
clear even with my impaired vision that he was dead. I heard other explosions
erupting around the facility but I had no idea where or what was going on.
Another pair of hands grabbed me and pulled me out of the door and into the
corridor which was usually lit with harsh bright white halogen but now glowed
soft green with the emergency lights. The trooper pulled me along through the
security doors deeper underground to a cavernous storage silo that had been set
up as an emergency triage. All around me lay the wounded and the dying and the
smell of blood and death filled my nose.
I kept muttering that
I was fine but the trooper ignored me roughly putting me down onto a canvas
fold up bed and handing over to an orderly before dashing out. I continued to
remonstrate that there was nothing wrong with me but the harassed orderly didn’t
take any more notice than the trooper had and was doing something to my arm. I
couldn’t see what he was doing but I could feel something abnormal and a quick
stabbing pain that came and went fairly quickly. I laid where I was for listening to the
screams and moans grow louder as my hearing returned slowly. After what seemed
like an eternity a nurse stooped over me and began checking my vitals.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She shushed me.
“I need to know”
“Not now Commander, rest.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’ve got a six inch gash in your left arm that barely missed the main artery,
between Trooper Flood and Orderly Baxter they stemmed the bleeding and resealed
the wound. You need to rest.”
I looked at her in confusion. Surely I would have felt such an injury? Surely
there would have been blood… I glanced down at my uniform and saw the dark
stains all over my jacket and the ripped and torn sleeve, the blue stitches and
angry purple wound. I just couldn’t process it, why had I not felt it.
“You’re in shock but you’ll be ok. We’ve given you an
injection of suppressant and we’ll get the knitting gel up to you as soon as we’ve
done the priority cases.”
I mumbled my thanks and laid back on the canvas bed and
closed my eyes. Beyond the repetitive question of “what the hell is going on?”
the only thing I could think of was Celine, where she was and was she alright?
It seemed strange that of all the things that I could or should have been
thinking all I could think of was her.
I must have fallen asleep for a while whether it was due to
the shock or maybe I had a concussion from the impact, I don’t know, but when I
came to there was another medic administering a smelly purple gel to my wound
and removing the stitches.
“Sorry if this stings sir.” He muttered rather unconvincingly “but Command has
ordered us to treat the walking wounded quickly and get them topside for
action. We don’t have enough gel to go around so I can only give you a cursory
amount to stop it bursting open again. This will be tender for some time so be
careful.”
“Thank you.”
He didn’t seem to register my words and just kept talking. “Give it ten minutes
then head back up that hall way and you’ll find Major Dexter’s briefing room
where you’ll be given your assignment.”
I looked across the silo to where he was pointing and saw a
well lit corridor
I lay on the canvas bed for what seemed an eternity but when
I looked at my watch it was only about ten minutes before an orderly came up
and looked me over with a rougher bedside manager than the trooper who carried
me down.
“You’re fine.” He barked “Why are you here?”
I looked at him blankly for a second as I reworded my original thoughts. “I was
brought.”
“Well you can go. Head up to Level 7.”
“Level 7 is a large place” I muttered absently
“Just go, make space for those who need to be here.”
I knew there was no point arguing with this man so I just stood up as best I
could, ignoring the aches and pains that wracked my body from the impact,
mainly around my rib cage and left arm but at least I was moving. I looked
around the room at some of the others who looked like they would be lucky if
they ever moved again.
I kept asking myself “what is going on here?” but couldn’t get past that we
were under attack some how. I watched soldiers streaming past and the busy
medical orderlies and knew there would be no answers there the only thing I
could do was head up to level 7 and see if I could get answers there.
Suddenly a thought struck me and I was filled with nervous panic. Where was
Celine? She
