Trouble on HighGard
Ryan S. Fortney
Published by Ryan S. Fortney at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2012
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Dedicated to the one who plagues me.
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1
The State of Things
Planet HighGard was never supposed to be terraformed for human occupancy. Originally, it was just another dot on a map of the Milky Way and our brothers and sisters of the Galactic Board (Human, Kaluik and Mitashue) wanted to strip it of its resources and leave it barren and forgotten.
That’s what we should’ve done if you ask me.
One thousand, two hundred and thirty some-odd years ago, we were just a race of naive animals living on a single planet bent on destruction .Who’d have thought it would all eventually lead to this.
But Earth, we haven’t seen Earth. We don’t want to see Earth.
A dead reminder of what became of our species and the almost-extinction we avoided, by chance and chance alone.
Documents hidden away in vast digital libraries depict the events that followed our escape to the further reaches of Space. I’ve never read them myself, nor do I believe what people have told me of them.
An apocalypse, they say. The dead rose and fed on the living. A large group of terrorists banded together and murdered people indiscriminately. And finally, a wormhole blew open in the middle of some heavily populated city and let loose a wave of even more destruction.
Bullshit, if you ask me, but it makes for a good bedtime story.
I mean, would you believe me if I told you that nearly fifty people, the only remaining population on Earth, left in a single ship and set out into the Universe, without any sense of real direction?
Didn’t think so.
But who am I to judge? Sounds more interesting than a nuclear war, at least.
Although, I digress.
2
The Problem
The planet of HighGard is a beautiful one, don’t get me wrong. Summer lasts twice as long compared to other planets that we occupy and the Winter seasons are never unbearably cold. The entire thing is made up of one gigantic continent, surrounded by a vast ocean of blue and, for the most part, it’s like a spinning vacation resort.
You can probably start to figure out what kind of people actually visit and/or live there.
You know, the high-rollers, people with money and power. People unconcerned with the daily strife of the average Human, Kaluik or Mitashue, alike. So, of course it’d be the perfect planet to stage an attack and create the largest hostage situation in the history of the Galaxy.
That’s right.
To get there, you have to jump through twelve different security gates. Gates that utilize a technology which enables the galaxies population to travel between star systems and otherwise large distances you wouldn’t be able to traverse, at least not with our current technology.
This, alone, takes about thirteen and a half hours.
We did, at one point in time, have the ability to make long-distance jumps with only a ship and its engine. But that technology proved to be more of a nuisance than a convenience. We haven’t been able to construct anything close to it since.
“We are approaching gate number twelve, Commander Fly. The pilot has asked that you report to the bridge.” The on-board system, with its soothingly female voice, speaks through the implants within my ears.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a min,” I sigh, readjusting myself, securing my light-combat suit and waving a hand at the urinal. “Tell him he better not fuck up this time.”
Last time we made a series of jumps this large, Maddock, our pilot, had gone without a single wink of sleep and almost sheered the vessel in half, after miscalculating our jump trajectory and planted us nearly on top of a mineral freighter.
Let’s just say our emergency systems are functioning properly, but the cost to replace escape pods is a bitch.
“Maddock wanted me to let you know that he enjoys the intimate evenings your mother and him share.”
“Nice,” striding through the auto-magnetic doorway that leads three different directions -- The stairwell to the living quarters, the round-about to the cafeteria and labs and the elevator to the bridge. An elevator which functions at a painfully slow speed.
“Send the elevator down Jenny.” I glance around, everyone’s busy preparing or eating on-the-go. We all hope for a quick and clean operation, but none of us have ever dealt with a situation on this large a scale.
My lucky twenty-first century quarter piece slides around my knuckles and I flick it into the air, watching it land tails down.
Sincade, a member of my unit, passes by, “Ouch, never a good sign...”
I flash him a glance of disapproval, slide my palm across the bristles atop my head and quickly pocket the coin as the elevator doors finally open. Its blue, dim lighting is quite relaxing for the eternity it takes to get to the top of the ship.
When the doors open again, I’m greeted by the narrow corridor that leads to the pilot’s bay, surrounded by gigantic windows fit with a heads-up display that reads all pertinent information.
Maddock sits directly front and center of all of this, waving his hands around and bouncing his legs up and down.
Space always looks the same. Dark, bleak. Little white dots here, there and maybe some colorful nebulae you’d normally see on one of those galactic tourist cruises. And then there’re the gates. Big, metallic, electric, nuclear and very square shaped. Like pipes and tubes all connected together that form a ball of glowing dust in its center.
The pilot’s job is to pinpoint the exact location the ship needs to be, while simultaneously approaching the gate and preparing for the jump. When you’re close enough, the “dust” grabs hold and throws you through. If calculations are correct, with the help of your ship’s systems, you’re safe and sound on the flip-side, hundreds, thousands or sometimes even millions of light years from your last location.
In this case, it’s millions.
“Bout time,” Maddock grunts, “we got a problem with this gate.”
“I know,” hand on his shoulder, “you’re attempting to interface with it.”
“No, I mean,” scratching at his goatee, “it wants a pass-code.”
Swirling around, I press a finger to my ear, “Jenny, get me in touch with Zero.”
Zero, the leader of the planetary defense group that issued this mission to my crew.
“Z here, what can I do ya for?” His voice crackles with spacial interference.
“You didn’t say anything about the last gate being locked.”
“Oh, right, right,” He sniffles for a moment, clears his throat and recites a riddle, “You sit on it, but you can’t take it with you.”
“Maddock,” I turn around, “the code is ‘chair.’”
The transmission ends and the gate whirls with glorious light.
“That’s an interesting password.” Gripping the manual accelerator, he shifts the ship into a coasting speed and we approach the unlocked gate at a comfortable thirty-seven clicks a second.
“I could’ve guessed that in my damn sleep.”
“Sir.” Jenny speaks, “your unit is ready for briefing.”
“Right, Maddock, get us through there safely, I’ll be in the briefing room down the hall.”
“Aye, aye cap’n,” he snaps his fingers and goes about his business, you know, being the clumsiest pilot in the Galaxy.
3
All According to Plan
Gathered ‘round the briefing table, with its holographic planetary map and intricately drawn out action plan, is Sincade, Mia, Acadia and She’arie.
Sin and Mia are both human, male and female. Together they lend themselves to marriage and my unit, best couple of covert foot soldiers a commander could ask for.
Sin has hair all around his shoulders, a face with a square chin and a scar the stretches down the side of his left cheek.
Mia, on the other hand, dons a Mohawk, died purple, with absolutely perfect skin and your typical thirty-third century perfect female figure. She also looks great with an assault rifle in her hands.
Then you have Acadia and She’arie, two Kaluik members of my team, “Team Sixty-Six,” that is. Blue haired, green eyed and gray skinned. They’re like bugs, but mixed with human attributes and the most attractive race in the galaxy, strangely enough.
Maddock wanted them here ‘cause he thinks they’re hot, and I suppose he’d planned on laying one of them, or maybe both of them.
I wanted them here because this particular couple ranks highest among most of the Galaxies top hand-to-hand combat experts. And they know how to use their weapons most efficiently as well.
“So...” Mia rests her hands on the edge of the table, “what’s the plan?”
“Alright,” passing a glance at each of them individually, “We already know about the planet-wide hostage situation, but here’s how we’ll diffuse it.”
Index finger on a swivel-pad, I position the planet map dead-center on our target -- the big red reactor tower that lends its energy to the population and its continued life support systems.
“What we do is...”
She’arie interrupts me, with her clicking little accent, “You’re going to zuggezt we, what? Black-out the entire planet?”
“If you’d give me a chance to speak...” I continue with a twitching eyebrow, “Yes, we infiltrate the tower to the fourth floor basement, the main reactor control room, and shut the damn thing down. We do that and the bastards will lose control of the situation. Then we send in the fleets and clean up after them. Easy as pie.”
“Yeah, on paper.” Sin adds, “But the fuckin’ place is heavily guarded, it’s gotta be.”
“That’s why we’re going in from the rooftop. You see...” Zooming out a bit to show the top of the building and it’s correlation with the low-atmosphere. “Once we breach the atmosphere, we drop out of the back of the ship in our buggy and park safely right smack-dab in the middle of it.”
“Oh!” Acadia slaps her hands together excitedly, “thiz will be fun!”
“Ten minutes until we reach approach vector one.” Jenny announces via a ship-wide p.a. system.
“One more thing,” finger pointing toward them with a serious look across my face, “We’ve got to be discreet. We don’t know what they’ll do if their leaders find out we’re here. Hell, they could crumble the entire planet with a single blast. We just don’t know.”
“Yeah.” Sin nods, “last thing we need is a planet full of dead people on our rap sheet.”
“Maybe we could stay for a while, afterward?” Mia suggests, hands on her hips, eyeing the planet map inquisitively, “it’s been on my bucket list to spend a holiday here.”
“Right,” her husband laughs, “we don’t make nearly enough to afford even the cheapest condos available.”
“Five minutes until we descend.”
And on that note, we’re all off to the cargo bay, bottom-most section of the ship. Strapping on weapon charges, extra bits and pieces of armor -- Hell, we’re ready for our own personal war.
The confines of the buggy are tight. I strap myself into the driver seat and nearly have both Acadia and She sitting in my lap.
“Strapped in and good to go!” Sin shouts into my ear, as if a hundred meters away.
“OKAY! GOTCHA!” Palming his face backward with my right hand as I watch through the windshield, the ship’s cargo-hold doors open to reveal a gleaming yellow sky and clouds that pass by like thin-as-air marshmallows.
Haven’t had a marshmallow in a decade or so, I think to myself.
“Jenny, power on Luka’s systems please.” Named after a Mitashuin whore with whom I’d spent a lonely night a few years back aboard Serenity Station -- A brothel of addicts, sex-slaves and the like, orbiting a dead star and accented by a gas giant that emits a vermilion haze.
Our vehicle begins to shake violently as it creeps to the edge of the opening, veering downward toward our quickly approaching landing zone.
“There it iz!” She’arie bends forward with her behind hitting me in the face.
“Watch it!” Giving her a good slap, “I have to be able to maneuver this thing!”
Frowning, arms crossed, she plops back down and hugs her weapon tight.
Strange girl.
Jenny begins the countdown and Maddock wishes us luck, “Five, four, three, two...”
My right foot slams against the floorboards and almost obliterates the accelerator. We dive into the air and I immediately switch on the low-powered thrusters. Like a fat guy jumping into a swimming pool, belly first, we crunch down against the pavement of the roof, shaking a bit and then stabilizing.
Everyone looks around for a moment before giving each other the go-ahead to exit the vehicle.
“Think I broke a rib...” Sin complains, hand against his chest as he’s the last to climb out to the heat-scorched rooftop.
“Fucking hot,” Acadia comments on the wonderful weather conditions of HighGard’s thirteenth calender summer -- thirteen years since it began sustaining Human life.
And I begin to wonder, for a moment, if that language was something learned from our species.
“Right, you are...” Sin shoots her a sly grin.
Mia slaps him upside the face.
“Hey!”
“Weapons ready.” Positioning our blast-rifles straight ahead, we march for the only doorway leading into the bowels of the reactor building. “From this point forward, all communication should be no more than a whisper.”
4
Quick and Clean
Getting into the building was easy, as if that particular doorway had been left unguarded on purpose. Although, the tough part still lies ahead -- traversing ninety-three floors and then, after all of that, four separate basement levels.
I feel as though we’ll be in for a few surprises, considering none of us have ever been here before.
The architecture within the building is old-school. Plaster-wooden walls painted off-white and a ceiling that runs for miles lit with buzzing panels.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Acadia stops me with her silky-smooth, grey hand against the breast of my rubber-alloy armor, “93 floorz iz a bitch. But I checked the zchematicz before we left...”
“Go on...” My eyes fight to keep her clothing on.
“Therez a maintenance elevator juzt two floorz down.”
“No, no, no...” Sin stops, “No elevators.”
“Quiet.” I raise a hand to both of them and draw a pulse-blade from the sheath on my thigh.
Arm back, hand clutched. The heat of the pulse passes my ear and a body falls limp to the steel grated floor.
“Well that’s clever...”
We approach the dead man, dressed entirely in civilian-guard uniform and I kneel down to remove my blade from the side of his head.
“There a reason these guys are dressed up like civilians?” Mia crosses her arms, confused; bewildered.
“Of courze,” She’arie stalks the surrounding hallway, “what better way to take hoztagez than to create a falze zenze of zecurity.”
“Shit! Move!” I grab Acadia by the arm and burst into a dash.
Just behind follows an armed sentry drone, lights gleaming red and flashing. One shot and its uranium tipped rounds’ll ensure you’re quick on your way to enjoying a dirt-nap, six feet under.
It fires off a few rounds as we spin around into a stairwell. The ricochet echoes like the hollow beating of a drum and we slam the door behind us, all wide-eyed, checking every inch of our bodies for bullet-holes.
“Okay, that was a little bit too fucking close,” Sin points an angry finger at me, “where was the intel on those things? Huh? Fly?”
Arms up in surrender, “I guess they left a few things out of the manifest. Trust me, I’ll be mentioning this.”
Mercenaries like to have all of the details.
“Mia!” He panics, “the fuck, man! WHERE’S MIA?!”
She’arie bows her head, silent.
Through the glass-plated hole in the door, you can clearly see she’s riddled full of holes. Dead.
“No...NO!” Slamming a fist against the door, “Fly, this is YOUR fucking fault!”
“Don’t look at me!”
“You KNOW we don’t do SHIT unless we’re absolutely sure we have ALL of the details!” Grabbing me by the vest, a tear streaks down the side of his face.
“Look...look, I’m sorry...”
“FUCKIN’
SORRY?!” Pulling back his fist, “that ain’t garddamm good
enough!”
Acadia grabs him by the hand, “Ztop. Thiz izn’t
Fly’z fault.”
“You’re only saying that ‘cause he saved your life. But what about Mia. My love. My...”
She’arie bends over the railing to the stairs, ignoring the three of us, gazing down into a dark chasm.
“We’re mercenaries,” I put my hands on his shoulders, “you knew this was bound to happen. She’s with Gard now.”
“I don’t believe in that shit,” Acadia releases him and he wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “When this is over... You and me are gonna have a few words.”
“Fine,” pressing my weapon against the inside of my arm and starting for the stairs, “we’ll talk when we’re back aboard the Osiris.”
Osiris, a name taken from those thousand year old stories. The ark that, apparently, brought us here.
We hustle down two floors, the one which Acadia had mentioned that gives access to the maintenance elevator -- hopefully not linked into the building’s monitoring systems.
Through an identical door, I charge with everyone behind. Snap left, then right. A burst of energy from the tip of my weapon and two more terrorists go down at once, one losing half of his arm at the blast of plasma that strikes him.
“You know, Sin,” We come up to a pair of steel panels, which we assume is the lift we’re searching for, “I lost a love once too.”
“Yeah, you go on about it all the fuckin’ time.” Mocking me, “Boohoo, my wife committed suicide...”
“Alright, just shut your face, okay?”
“No, you wouldn’t have lost her. You wouldn’t have lost the ‘love of your life’ if you actually acted with some fuckin’ emotion.”
“Sin, I swear to G...”
She’arie stands with her nose up to mine, “Ztop.”
None of them know the whole story. It wasn’t that I was unemotional. It was the exact opposite. She took her life because she couldn’t bear to hurt me anymore than she had already. And because she loved me so much, she couldn’t stand to live with herself, for whatever reasons. Whatever she did which she thought would hurt so badly.
Pieces of this could be read in the note that she left me -- bedside table, next to a bottle of empty stims.
So, instead of confronting me. Instead of giving in to a little communication, she chose death. It didn’t make all that much sense, but at the time, I wasn’t worried about how much sense her suicide made. I was a wreck, regardless.
“Acadia, get that door open.” I command.
“On it.” She fiddles with an arm-strap multi-tool and after a few flashes of light, our entrance to the lift glides open naturally.
“Inside.” My eyes forward only, concentrating -- ignoring everything around me.
We descend at a speed unfamiliar, at least, to anyone who’s taken a ride aboard the Osiris.
5
Tribulation
Acadia jams the elevator’s control systems and brings it to a halt just before we reach level one of the underground section of the monstrously tall building, which will inevitably lead to the reactor core.
“We ztop here. Zhe’arie will cut an entrance below uz.” She kneels to the floor of the lift with her Kaluik friend and watches as the beam from She’s hand slices through metal.
“We done with this?” My eyes focus on Sin.
“Yeah,” he sneers, “you an’ me, we’re done.”
The tone in his voice suggests something more than a simple truce.
“Fly,” She’arie looks up, “watch your head and proceed with caution. The door below iz open.”
A special alloy cord keeps me dangling from the newly cut hole in the bottom of the lift and I lower myself slowly, blaster in one arm, pointed for the opening to level one.
“Clear.”
The first of the four underground levels differ from the above drastically. Directly in front of us is a hallway lined with black-metal arches that circle from the ceiling to the floor and white lights blink from every crevice. At the end is another opening which leads to something unseen, but blue in its glow.
“That’z mozt likely the panel that will give uz accezz to the firzt layer of zecurity that protectz the reactor.” She’arie hangs, upside down, beside my head -- whispering.
“Let’s get a move on people.” Sin insists impatiently.
And in we go, hunting like predators for our next hostage-taking, son of a bitch target.
“Iz that guy zleeping?” She’arie points at a man slumped against the wall, in a chair, quizzically eyeing him.
“Somethin’ ain’t right about this.” My angered ex-friend walks right up to him.
“What’re you thinking?”
“I mean, look at this...” turning to me, eyes not totally focused on mine, “the dude’s upstairs, they didn’t even really put up a fight or show any real signs of aggression and here we have some guy just taking a nap? Seriously? And they’re holding an entire planet hostage?”
He’s right. As much as I don’t want to admit it, something’s fishy about our assignment here. I consider a revaluation of our contract with the S.H.A.R.K.S., the group whom had originally issued us what was, apparently, to be a quick in and out sort of deal.
“I’ll have a talk with Z when we’re back topside, but let’s just get this done.”
Acadia takes control of the console and begins her magic, shredding through the first layer of security.
I examine the sleeping man. He wears a name badge that reads “Robert Reynolds, HighGard security.”
I imagine him as a man that enjoys fishing on one of the outer-system worlds and watches the evening Galactic report with special-news guest John Letharg’ickson -- an important, charismatic man that takes more pride in his image than he does his career reporting stories on the happenings of the Galaxy.
This man is no terrorist.
“Maybe they didn’t intend on coming down here?” She’arie suggests, “Perhapz thiz man iz juzt lucky.”
“Perhaps,” arms crossed, forehead wrinkled, “Acadia, how long?”
“Now.”
The default lighting system fails and for a split second everything goes black, before emergency generators kick on and we’re awash in orange and yellow hazard lights.
“Well, if that doezn’t ztir up the hive, I don’t know what will.”
Our path to the second floor opens up in a gateway just a few meters from our position, with a slanted bridge that assembles itself with what I would guess is some mixture of magnetic force and gravity.
At the other end, just a bit downward, is a spinning centrifuge that looks like some sort of passage. Not one any of us are too terribly interested in walking through.
“Now how in the hell?” Sin starts down the levitating bridge, “I’m not going in there,” chattering with nervousness.
“It’z nothing to be afraid of,” Acadia assures us. “It iz zimply one of the many power zourcez that route directly into the reactor core.”
“And we’re walking right through it?” Scratching my head with a free hand.
“Yez.”
“If you say so...” Hesitating for a moment, “I’ll take point... I guess?”
“Fly,” She’arie breathes against my neck as we move forward, “what did you zay they did with your loverz body when zhe ended her life?”
“The medical units of Elysium,” My home planet, “harvested her organs. Why?”
“Curiouz.”
The spinning was enough, alone, to make you dizzy. The heat, though, let’s just say none of us have had anything to eat in the past twelve hours, but if we did, it’d be on the floor.
“Umph” Sincade covers his mouth, about to heave dry, and pushes by the rest of us into the first corridor of level two.
“Acadia,” I follow behind Sin, “You’re sure we didn’t just walk through a wave of radiation?”
“Abzolutely.” She smiles, unaffected.
Kaluik naturally have a much stronger sense of equilibrium than us humans.
“Gaaahhfff,” still choking with nausea, “I’ll take care of the second layer of security,” aiming his weapon at a simple panel, he fires and its circuitry spills to the ground.
“Nice.” Acadia sighs, “violence izn’t alwayz the bezt zolution, but...”
“Hey, it worked.” I shrug.
A voice erupts from somewhere above -- automated.
Self-destruct sequence initiated. Emergency protocol zero one three activated.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” My feet almost move without me, “We’ve got one more floor to cover before we’ve reached the reactor, that’s probably the only way to stop this!”
The four of us shoulder our weapons, sensing we’ve no need for them at this point. The next floor is accessed by ladder, through a tight hole in the ground which leads to just a room, a gigantic panel numbering the countdown to our demise and indestructible glass panels that reveal the mile long suspended bridge to the core.
In its center you can see something almost human in shape. Pieces of metal and electronics spin like a tornado around it and, like the rest of the technology we’ve seen here, it emanates a powerful cobalt blue.
Acadia places a hand on Sin’s ready-to-fire weapon.
“Don’t zhoot. Thiz glazz iz blazt proof and it will mozt likely bounce and kill the four of uz.”
“Right,” lowering his blaster, “So now what?”
“I’ll call Z,” finger to my ear.
“Don’t bother,” She’arie approaches, “You won’t be able to make a tranzmizzion down here.”
“Acadia, since you’re the technical expert, any bright ideas?” You can hear the urgency in my voice. I do not want to die, underground, on some planet for rich assholes.
She moves across the tiny room and places her hand against a palm-reader. Its shape suggests that it was made for Kaluik, but I’d always been under the impression that these types of things only work for one or two different people.
“How?” Confused, a bit relieved.
“Our people are naturally pacifizt. No one expectz one of our kind to take a building by force az a mercenary and dizable all of itz zecurity.”
“Of course, the entire building was designed with Human and Mitashuin attackers in mind, considering our violent past.”
“That’s useful,” Sin waits for the panels to open so that he may burst through and be the first to destroy the core.
“Hold your zixes, Sinny.”
Zixes, the other-worldly equivalent to what a twenty-first century man would know as horses.
“Acadia and She’arie will go about the procedure of shutting this thing down. They don’t need your expertise here.”
“But we will need you, Fly.” The two of them pass through onto the bridge, “You’ve got the codez, remember?”
Stored within my own temporal implants. Not even I know exactly what they are. The only way to utilize them is to “interface” with the corresponding unit, structure or, in this case, nuclear reactor.
“Right,” the bridge seems to wobble as vertigo threatens to overcome, “Sincade...”
I catch myself for a moment.
“Stay where you are.”
It seems bigger than it did from afar. Standing over us, humongous, like the giants of Tovabohu.
You can feel its energy pulsing right through you.
Almost... almost like a heartbeat.
“Here,” She’arie hands an extended cord that snaps into the side of my neck, connecting to the proper section of my brain which holds the codes we need in order to shut the thing down. “Might zting a bit.”
A tingly buzz crawls up and down my body and I see flashes before my eyes.
Shanna’el, my late Kaluik wife, calls out to me. Her body and her hands scratch at my eyes. I can feel her presence as if she’s right here with me.
“A few more zecondz,” one of them announce.
Don’t do it, Fly.
And I hear her voice again, begging me, pleading. But why?
A loud hum erupts and then fizzles away. The light surrounding the room fades and the reactor shuts down, along with the impending self destruct sequence.
I return to normality.
A new voice, stern and angry sounding, echoes within the chamber.
“This is Lieutenant Brock of Division Nine, you are hereby ordered to release your weapons and come to the surface immediately.”
“What?!” She gasps, “what are they talking about?!”
“Oh no...” It dawns on me.
“You have sixty seconds to respond.”
“Why?” I demand.
“You and your group of mercenaries are being charged with murder, terrorist acts of violence, breach of planetary security and...” He stops for a moment, “your attempt to liberate your dead wife -- which is a crime -- anyone who has donated their body to the better of mankind, to serve as a power source for the people, may and will not be removed, deactivated or destroyed. Section 2 of Rights After Death.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me...”
That shape I had noticed earlier in the center of the reactor.
Shanna’el.
Sincade rushes up behind, “FLY I FUCKING TOLD YOU!”
“I know.” My voice sounds dead.
“WHO’D YOU GET THIS ASSIGNMENT FROM?!”
“The S.H.A.R.K.S.”
“Fly...” She’arie faces me, hand to her mouth, “the S.H.A.R.K.S. defected months ago.”
“Whoops.”
##
And now, an excerpt from the sequel to my very first novel, PaxCorpus.
(the following is subject to change)
Chapter2:Lucid
Darkness surrounds me, it suffocates.
I feel the irritation, aggravation. My temples tremble and buzz with prickly needles.
Then my hands smack against something solid. I struggle, pushing against a metal enclosure that is my prison.
It’s cold, the shivers rumble through me and my lungs depress slowly.
I can’t speak and nothing makes sense.
The piercing sound of a beep pulses into the silence and I almost shoot upright before my reflexes stop me.
Just above, the lid of my tiny cell slides downward and all of a sudden I’m blinded by white, the polar opposite. Black creases run horizontal and vertical. And then a voice speaks.
“Remaining oxygen sixteen percent. Power failure in main reactor, t-minus thirty-seven minutes until shutdown begins. Cryo-stasis interrupted, life support failure in fifteen minutes and nineteen seconds. Distress signal away, please enter voice command.”
Fuck.
It’s all I can say.
“The fuck is going on?”
“Unrecognized command, please repeat.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“J.E.N.N.I.F.E.R. version one point six, automated robotic system and computerized vessel maintenance program, at your service.”
“Where is this?”
“Unknown location. Last known location, one point two million light-years past the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. Last known significant marker, Perseus Arm, Crab Nebula.”
Fucking space?!
Then I realize I’m only a few minutes from death.
“I need to know why I’m here and how to avoid my imminent death.”
My eyes search the vicinity, nothing but walls and some grating that suggest windows.
“You left Earth two-hundred and twenty three years ago. Reason unknown. Life support failure is unavoidable. No power source available.”
HOW many years?!
“What powers this ship?” Assuming this is some sort of spaceship, “and open the windows.”
“All power is drawn from a light source. Opening all window panels. No current light source available. CMB not detected (Cosmic Microwave Background left behind by the Big Bang).”
That can’t be. Where would I have to be, in Space, to be completely clear of any light source?
And again, there’s nothing but black. I throw my arms against the nearest, largest window.
“WHY AM I HERE?! TWO HUNDRED SOME ODD GODDAMN YEARS INTO THE FUTURE?!”
“Unknown.”
My forehead squeaks against clear untouched panels of glass. This is a bad dream. That’s all it is. It can’t be real.
We don’t have the technology to travel THAT fast.
“Unknown object approaching, attempting avoidance maneuver.”
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About the Author
Thinking, always thinking. Every time his fingers hit the keyboard or pen hits paper, something new bleeds out.
There’s no stopping the monster machine that is Ryan S. Fortney, author of books like PaxCorpus and hilariously short stories such as White Night.
But the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania born author wasn’t always this way.
For a long time there was a power struggle between his mind; his creativity and the outlet through which it would seethe.
Growing up, he had been extremely fond of illustration and cartoons. He’d sit around watching his favorite shows and with a pencil and a little tablet, he’d mimic that particular artist’s style.
In his teenage years, his sketching continued, yet he could never reach the greatness that he believed to be all around him. It just never felt right.
The very last thing he drew was a strange work of sorts – The face of a woman and two characters that he thought might star in a comic book series. These very characters ended up being the start of something bigger and greater, when he’d turn 23 and finally discover what outlet he would settle into, finally, after many grueling, painstaking years.
Ryan S. Fortney graduated High School with a diploma and exceptionally high grades in English and literature. Later, he would attend a few college level creative writing courses and begin his descent into writer madness.
Ryan enjoys long walks on the beach, eating enormous amounts of pizza and/or chicken and kicking people in the face with extreme prejudice.
Follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/PaxCorpus
Find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/paxcorpus
Find everything about my work at http://www.paxcorpus.com
Other work:
My published works can be found primarily at the Smashwords page where this originated.
For $2.99, you can jump into the psyche of an amnesia plagued cop as he trembles and crawls through the devastated ruins of the world we all know - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43441