There came a faint clanging in the distance. Shishone raised his weapon hastily, flashing the light through the corridor. He was sweating profusely, and his heart was thumping like thunder. He stepped forward, looking around. The tissue-like substance was everywhere, growing like vines of sinew and gristle. The whole hallway was consumed by them, and everywhere his light flashed, on all the pipes and electrical boxes, there was the weed.
He swallowed and turned around. There were three of them left, him, the captain, and a sergeant named Carmichael. The three of them stuck close, raising their weapons at every sound, every hint of movement, every floating speck of dust that they kicked up. All of them were on edge, but especially Carmichael. The man was shaking and muttering nonsense to himself.
Shishone tried his radio again, but it was still jammed, spitting out gargled sputtering and static. Cursing, he threw his hand down to his side and said, "What do we do, captain?"
Captain Collers looked at him, their visors meeting. He was in his exoskeleton again, and was armed with a shotgun. The captain looked at him, then at Carmichael, and said, "We need to get to the command center. We can probably get a message off if I boot a radio up with power from the exoskeleton. Barring that there’s a hangar there. But that’s all I've got."
"Fuck, man," Carmichael said, gripping his rifle tightly, his voice wavering. "Fuck, where did the others go? How? Seven men?"
"Get a grip," the captain snapped, before turning to Shishone. "Shishone, you’re on point. I'll cover the rear, Carmichael, take the middle, watch nine and three. Hua?"
"Hua," Shishone said, swallowing his nerves.
Carmichael stammered for a minute, and then simply saluted, falling in behind Shishone. The captain took the rear, his rear camera playing in the right hand corner of his visor's display. They started heading down the dark hallway, crunching on the sinew as they walked. They kept their weapons raised at all times, and any time a slight noise spooked one of them, they all shone their lights on it, ready to blast it out of this existence.
For now, however, there was nothing. So, they walked on, through the hallway and into a large foundry, filled with large shipping containers of steel, barrels filled with potentially toxic liquids, and crates waiting to be opened. The whole place was a maze. Shishone paused, looking around. The vine, as they were calling it, was everywhere here.
He thought back to this evening, when he'd got the call to action in the first place. He'd been having dinner with Cpl. Yarns, who was telling him about how he was planning on making a move on the boy he liked. Shishone was mid sentence when his PDA lit up with a special message from Collers, telling him his team was assembling for an emergency meeting. He'd hurriedly said goodbye to Yarns, and rushed to the tram that would take him to the conference room where his squad was assembling.
Once there, they'd been told that MK2's second QPF had stopped responding. This had sent a hushed murmur amongst the men; one was strange enough, but a second one was now offline? If all four fell, what would become of the Kuiper Belt, the wondered amongst themselves. Where would the goods be produced, the paper, the ammunition? What of the people who died, both on the third QPF and now on the second? People were bound to start talking, they all agreed.
Within twenty minutes of the briefing commencing, a briefing that gave no real answers, they were rushing to an NRT gunship. The Poor Man's Merry it was called, which Shishone thought was an odd name for a ship. Still, it was heavily armed, with two manned side turrets and a front cannon. It took off from Make-Indu's hangar, and shot up and out for MK2.
Upon touchdown, the first thing they noticed was the red vine. It was everywhere, on the tanks, the pipes, the ceilings, the walls, everywhere. They crunched down on it as they rushed out of the gunship and onto a landing pad atop a small tower. They'd all stopped to examine the vine, crunching it down, pushing it around with their feet, each of them swimming in uncertainty and, for some, regret.
By the time they'd worked their way down the stairs, their boots were caked with red. They'd then hurried into a large foyer area, in what appeared to be an administrative building. Dead plants, old carpet, desks, and bleak, soulless paintings hung on the walls, it was once, for certain, a place swarming with life.
"But," Shishone remembered saying, the fear fresh, "then where are the bodies?"
They all looked around, kicking through the vines, searching for any sign of, well, anybody, yet they found none. One of the men piped up and said, "Maybe they evacuated?"
But that couldn't be right. In the briefing, the intel they'd received mentioned sudden depressurization, as with the other QPF. There had to be bodies, then. They were everywhere last time, and now, they were nowhere to be found. Uneasy, the captain ordered them forward.
From the admin building, they descended into the tunnels in order to reach the command center faster. Once in the tunnels, they stopped at the parking bay and boarded a truck, like last time. This time, however, the truck wouldn't start. Collers entered the cab and tried the ignition, but it didn't rev up.
The tunnels were incredibly dark. Even their flashlights, in numbers, hardly made a dent in the inky blackness. Shishone had looked around, noticing more of the vine stretching deep into the darkness in either direction. It made his stomach churn. It was surreal. He had no earthly idea what this vine could be, and yet, it dangled before him off of pipes, covering overturned trucks, sprawling out across the floor. His lip curled as he stepped over it and, as the captain fiddled with the truck, he bent down to inspect it once more.
That was when they lost their first man.
As Shishone was bending down, he heard over the comms, "Hey, has anyone seen Kilpatrick?"
He stood, heart racing, and looked around. After doing a quick headcount, he realized that, sure enough, they were a man down. But none of them had heard anything or seen anything. The man had just vanished. They all looked up and down the tunnel, unnerved, when the captain, regaining his bearings, finally spoke.
"Jenkins, Mendoza," he said, "go right, and Franz and Heralding, you go left. Find Kilpatrick and drag his ass back here. And stay tight!"
A chorus of, "Hua!" came over the radio as the four men split into two groups and headed down either direction, rifles raised. Shishone walked over to the captain and said, "I don't like this, sir."
He stopped messing with the engine and stood up straight, looking at Shishone. "I don't either, Shishone. The sooner we are out of here, the better. That's why Kilpatrick better be dead already, otherwise I'll kill him myself. I've got a bad feeling too."
Just then, they heard chatter over the radio. "Captain!" came the voice of Mendoza, "Jenkins is gone!"
"What?" The captain looked to Shishone, and then down the tunnel. The void stared back at him, consuming his flashlight’s light in the nothing. "Alright, fuck it, regroup at the truck, double time it."
"Sir!"
"What is it, Mendoza?"
"Listen!"
With that, the whole team fell silent, listening. At first, there was nothing, just the stillness of the tunnel and a dripping water leak somewhere within it. But then, they heard Mendoza scream over the comms, and there came the rapid pop pop pop of gunfire from deep within the tunnel. The remaining men huddled up and trained their sights down the darkness, the light of their flashlights hardly making a dent on the darkness. The gunfire was brief, and it echoed through the tunnel, two three-round bursts, and then, more silence. The captain hailed to Mendoza on the radio, but received nothing in return. There was just silence.
Cursing, he turned and saw Franz rushing up to the truck. "Franz," he said, "where is Heralding?"
The man, panting, just pointed down the tunnel with a shaking finger and said, "Somewhere in there. I dunno. I lost him. He's not responding to comms either."
The captain cursed. "Alright, everyone load up, all four of you. The truck’s ready. Let's get the fuck out of here."
They all nodded and climbed into the back of the truck, the captain in the cab, and soon, the truck revved to life, and they were off. The only ones left were Sergeant Carmichael, Specialist Franz, a sergeant named Hollymaker, Captain Collers, and Shishone. And none of them spoke, save the captain.
As they drove down the tunnel, he said, "I'm gonna radio for backup. This ain't right."
The line fell silent as Collers tried to radio for help. In the back of the truck, all eyes were on Franz. Hollymaker leaned in and said, "Did you see anything?"
Franz merely shook his hanging head, silent.
"Nothing?"
He shook his head again. After that, they sat in silence, listening to the rumble of the truck. They sat for a minute, each contemplating his own life, what it meant to them, how they lived and loved and hurt. It was solemn, doleful, but Shishone felt, afraid yes, but numb all the same, thinking of Ceres, and Penelopi, and Tay, and Mars, and home. He desperately missed home.
The captain came over the radio after a while. "Comms are down. Jammed. Might be too low beneath the surface, we'll need to ascend. I'll get us close to the command center."
For a little while longer they rode through the dark tunnels, taking turns and weaving through abandoned vehicles. Nobody spoke. Shishone, shaking lightly, thought back to Ceres. To the ratatatata of the machine guns. He'd not heard in-combat gunfire since that day. Something had reawoken in him. Some primal fear.
After a short time, the truck slowed and came to a halt, crushing a thick root of the vine as it pulled up to a set of doors. The only light came from their flashlights and the headlights of the truck, shining on the gray wall. The men in the back looked around, confused.
"Sir," Carmichael said, shakily standing up in the bed of the truck and waving his flashlight through the chamber. "This doesn't look like the entrance to a control room."
"It's not," came the reply, "the vine is too thick up ahead. The truck probably wouldn't make it. We have to continue on foot."
"What?" said Franz, seemingly snapping out of a daze. "But sir, the tunnels–"
"We aren't taking the tunnels. Everyone roll out, Shishone get behind me, the rest of you, behind Shishone. Let's move!"
At that, the captain lept from the cab and the four remaining men rushed out of the back, Shishone falling in right behind the captain and the others falling in behind him. The captain opened the door, and they found themselves rushing up a set of maintenance stairs that spat them out in a small storage room at the top. Buckets, mops, a floor buffer, chemicals, it was a custodian closet to anybody else, but to them it was safety, respite, and a chance to catch their breath.
Each of them took the opportunity. Just being out of the tunnels was a relief. They all looked at each other, Shishone leaning on the wall, the captain tinkering with his wrist computer, and the others silently collecting their thoughts.
Shishone approached the captain. "Still no luck with the radio?"
He shook his helmet. "No. Looks like our best bet is the command center."
"Well how far away is that?"
The captain clicked on his computer. "Roughly a mile in that direction," he said, pointing a finger. "But, there is a skytram that runs through the QPF. If we can get to the rail, we could make it in less time. But we need to go north, and then up."
Shishone nodded. "North and up, got it."
He checked the cardinal direction on his HUD, silently wishing he had special operator armor for the night vision.
After they’d had a chance to breath, they rolled out again, moving through a small set of empty offices overgrown with the vine. It was silent here, save for the crunching beneath their boots. The desks sat with paperwork on them, chairs were overturned, and the place gave Shishone the sense that it'd been mid shift when everyone died. Coffee cups, dropped water bottles, there was casual hand held litter and papers and such everywhere.
They stealthed through the offices, sneaking out into a large, long glass tube that connected this building with a much larger one. The vine had overgrown the outside of the tube, making it near impossible to see outside of the tunnel. There was a red glow here from their flashlights reflecting off of the vine and the glass, casting everything in an eerie crimson glow. The sickening silence encompassed them like a thick funeral blanket.
Shishone looked over his shoulder about midway through the tunnel, and noticed that they were down to three men plus the captain. Franz was gone. He stopped, and raised his weapon.
"Franz is gone, sir," he said over the shortwave radio.
The men all stopped and looked around, and sure enough Franz had silently vanished. Shaken, all of them, they began to murmur before they looked to the captain.
"Should… should we go back and look for him?" Hollymaker asked, gripping his gun in a white knuckle hold.
Carmichael was equally shaken, saying, "How did we not notice?"
The captain shook his head. "We press forward. Move out."
None of them protested.
They kept walking, making it to the end of the tunnel where they entered a foyer for a large factory section of the QPF. There was a receptionist desk here, chairs all neatly lined up in rows on either side, dead plants and dead paintings. The captain ushered them on.
"Through here, then up. There's a skytram terminal on top of this building, at the far end."
They followed him into the factory, which was a large series of stacked conveyor belts, refining machinery, manufacturing machinery, and more. They started to weave their way through the factory, guns raised, flashlights flicking around.
There came a metal clang in the distance. They each froze and pointed their weapon at the sound, but when they shone their lights in that direction, there was nothing there but crates and silent machines. Shishone swallowed dryly and gripped his rifle tighter. Breathing in, then out, he slowly scanned the room before him, his light dancing between the conveyor belts and hoses.
There was movement. His heart leapt from its place, pounding at his chest like a wild animal. He focused his light on it, and found it to be a piece of pipe lazily rolling on the floor. His breathing quickened.
Captain Collers, seeing this too, looked to them and said, "Come on. We need to go."
He started in a long sort of jump sprint, which was how they'd all been trained to run in low-g, bouncing quickly away.
"What the fuck was that?" Hollymaker asked.
Carmichael piped up, his voice wavering, "I don't know, I don't want to know, I just want to go home. I got kids, man."
"Through here," said the captain as they came up on a side door next to a massive sliding bay door in the wall. He dug his fingers into its threshold and slowly pried it open. He seemed to be having a hard time with it. "Come on. Its hydraulics are stuck, so I can't hold it open forever. Move!"
Shishone was the first in, and then Carmichael after him. The captain looked back for Hollymaker, but found that he'd fallen in a pile of the red root-like vine, and was struggling to get up. Shishone, peering through the door, saw this too.
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"Hurry up, Hollymaker!" the captain said, urgency in his voice. Hollymaker was jerking his leg in the root which clung to him like glue.
"I can't!" he cried. "My boot is stuck!"
"God, dammit. Shishone! Get back in there and help him out," the captain said, grunting, clearly struggling to keep the door open.
But, another clanging sound came from within the room, louder this time, too loud to be a mere pipe that fell. Something big had fallen. The captain looked at Hollymaker, who was crying for help over the radio, then to the two men within the room, and then, with a sick stomach and gritted teeth, he stepped into the room and let the door close and seal behind him.
Hollymaker could still be heard over the radio, in tears. "Y’all would really do this to me?" he asked. "Just leave me here? I have kids, a wife. Please. Please! Don't leave me, please, oh God, oh please oh no–"
The line went dead, and the captain looked to Shishone and Carmichael, clearly having closed Hollymaker's channel for them all. Shishone thought he might vomit. If he weren't in a spacesuit, he might've.
That left them where they were now. Through the hallway and into the storage foundry, the three of them stood silently, before the Collers began to move.
"Shishone!" the captain called, snapping him out of his daze. "Come on. The station is at the top of this building."
"Sorry, sir!" he called, rushing up to his side with Carmichael. The captain nodded at them, and then started making his, and their, way through the maze of containers. They wove through them as fast as they could, bouncing and sometimes falling as they ran. Carmichael was slowing down.
He tried to keep up, but kept tripping over the vine, bumping into cargo containers, and at one point, almost dropping his weapon. Shishone looked back at him as he tripped again, staggering forward, and rushed back to help him stabilize, before the two began chasing after the captain. They made their way to the wall, where a metal staircase ran all the way up to the scaffolding high above them. Here, they made their way up, one step at a time.
Halfway up, they heard something shift below them, like rumbling sand falling down a giant dune. Shishone looked down as he ran, seeing yet again, nothing. The captain looked back at him, noticed him slowing down, and yelled for him to keep up. He snapped out of it and started back at a run.
Soon they were at the grated landing that let them onto the scaffolding high above the foundry floor. The vine was even here, though it hung off the edges like moss. The captain waved them on, and they crossed over the foundry, so high above it that in the darkness, Shishone could barely make out the floor. But, just by chance, he shone his light to the right, off the side, and between a row of large crates.
He froze.
There was a person standing there in a white spacesuit and helmet. And that’s all they were doing, too. Standing there. Staring off into the distance. Shishone’s blood ran cold and his heart went from a roaring thud to a quiet murmur. This couldn’t have been a survivor, there was no way. This was something else. This was fear, he thought, shaking. This was what it meant to be afraid. The only other time he’d felt that…
…was on Ceres.
He blinked, and looked around. There was fire. Smoke. Debris and metal detritus. He hurt, somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. Maybe everywhere. Was he dead? He felt like he might be, or maybe that was just a concussion. With his free arm, he reached down to his left arm and pushed a chunk of metal off of it, and then the pain really came. He looked down, and saw that the metal had burned – no, seared – his armor onto his flesh from his elbow to his shoulder.
He tried to scream, but it came out weak, defeated. Like a groan more than a scream, really, and he felt breathless. Trying to regain his bearings, he saw that he was in a room of some sort. A dayroom maybe. There were dozens dead here. Children. Women. Men. Some penetrated by sharp shrapnel, some burnt, some asphyxiated. All dead. He stared into the blue, pale faces of the children, and winced. He could feel the image searing itself into his brain.
He wanted to cry, but couldn’t. There was too much to absorb, too much to comprehend. He heard something, something far away. It was… his radio. Someone was calling for him.
“Shishone!”
He blinked. Where was he?
“Shishone, dammit!”
He blinked again, his vision starting to clear.
He was in a foundry, on MK2, staring down at the floor from high above, at nothing. There was nothing there. And what had he been looking at anyway? He wasn’t sure. Dazed, he turned to the captain, who had rushed back up to him and grabbed his arm, pulling him along.
“Come on, Shishone!” the captain cried, yanking him forward.
Shishone shook his head and blinked some more, remembering now where he was, and what the stakes were. Cursing himself in his head, he nodded to the captain and started running on his own. “Sorry, sir! I’m with you.”
“Good,” said the captain. “Come on!”
“Yes, sir,” said Shishone, taking one look over his shoulder, before turning back around and moving out. They made their way, the three of them, to a ladder on the wall across from the stairs, and the captain climbed it to a hatch that he punched open. Then, they were on the roof.
The top of the building was flat, with some boxy greeble such as coolant units and tanks atop it, but nothing of note, really. However, beside the building, a little below them, ran a monorail track.
They headed over to the side and looked down. There was the top of the station, sticking out from the side of the building and supported by huge metal beams dug into the distant ground. The captain motioned for them to follow, and then he leapt over the side and fell eight feet to the roof. Then, Shishone did the same, falling gracefully and landing on his feet. They both looked up for Carmichael. He was nowhere to be seen.
Dread fell over Shishone.
But then, he poked his head over the side, peering down at the fall, before launching himself over the edge and joining them, if a little less balanced than Shishone. Shishone’s heart almost stopped, the relief was too much.
“Come on,” said Collers, “follow me.”
They walked to the side of the structure, where the rail was, and carefully, bending down and throwing themselves over the edge while hanging onto the roof, they slipped into the station proper. It was dim here, but the light of the distant sun helped a little. They stood in the airlock of the station. Here, the monorail car would seal with the building, before any doors would open. On their right and left were massive rubber seals with magnets in them. If only, Shishone thought, there was a monorail connected to them.
It seemed they’d be walking.
But then, the captain said, “The exosuit should be able to power a monorail car’s magnets. Let me go inside, I’ll see if I can call with the suit.”
“How much power does that thing have, sir?” Carmichael asked.
The captain tapped the slightly bulky back of the suit. “Fusion core.”
“That must be a mark-four,” said Carmicheal.
The captain nodded, turned, and rushed into the station, leaving Carmicheal and Shishone alone.
“It’s fuckin’ spooky, right?” Carmichael eventually said, looking out over the dark factory. “This whole place scares the shit out of me.”
Shishone looked out at the factory with him. It was a massive jumble of scaffolding and piping, of tanks and foundries. And death, apparently. Or, perhaps, he thought, worse. A chill ran through him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Spooky as shit.”
They stood there for a bit, neither knowing what to say, before the captain soon joined them, and said, “I set up a call for a car.”
He bent down, and pulled a wire out from the wrist of the exoskeleton, placing it on the track directly. “This should power it up.”
“How is that gonna get a car here?” Carmicheal asked.
Collers looked up at him. “The rail is what powers the car, if I’m right. Should be able to pull the car to us, but I’ll have to keep the wire attached.”
Within moments, sure enough, a monorail car, boxy and dark, pulled up to the station, sealing with the giant rubber seals on either side of them. The captain retracted the wire, and they boarded the car. It was empty, even devoid of the vine. There were seats on either side, and windows, and a cab for a driver, in case of emergencies.
“Shishone,” said the captain, “you’re driving. Carmichael, on point. I need to keep the wire connected to the track. Shishone, there’s a wire you can pull out of my back. Plug that into a CVB port on the tram’s control console. Then, get us to the control room. It should be a straight shot.”
“Yes sir,” Shishone said, reaching on the back of the captain’s suit and finding the spooled wire. He took it and pulled it with him into the cab, where he found the port - a rhombus - and stuck it in. The tram’s lights came on, the only lights in the whole factory, casting a muted golden glow out of its windows. Shishone sat at the conductor’s seat and looked at the controls. There were a few switches and levers he didn’t understand, but he found the throttle, and when he pushed it, the cab started to move.
“Good job Shishone,” the captain said. With that, they were off. The car sped its way down the track, casting a glow on its surroundings like a lantern. There was vine on the track, and the car, levitating, hovered right over most of it. As they passed the vine, Captain Collers pulled up on the wire and let the car coast for a bit, before setting the line back on the tracks. Shishone accelerated a little faster. He wanted to be home an hour ago.
Within minutes, the captain came over the radio and said, “We’re almost there! The doors should open automatically. They’re connected with the track. Keep going, don’t slow down.”
Shishone looked forward. As he’d said, they were almost there, a large circular building coming up on them fast. Shishone slowed a bit as they approached a set of huge airlock doors on the side of the darkened building, staring up at its massive construction with awe. This was the control room.
The doors opened as he approached, and at considerable speed too, letting them into the airlock chamber. But, when the doors opened, Shishone saw on the rail a huge sinewy vine wrapped around the track. It had to have been as thick as a tree trunk. And there was no way to stop in time. The shock of it froze him for a moment, but he pulled from within him every ounce of courage he could. Bracing himself, he yanked down on the throttle to try and halt their momentum, and prayed.
The monorail car hit the vine at full speed.
The car flipped forward, the cab crumpling in, the top caving down as it landed against the other door, which failed to open. There was a huge, cacophonous boom as the cap set down from its flip, and then, silence as the tram came to a rest in a crumpled heap, red dust scattering everywhere.
It took him a minute to regain awareness of his surroundings, bleary eyed and dazed.
Shishone felt woozy.
Looking around, he found himself upside down, laying on the roof of the cab. The floor above him was crinkled in; he’d barely managed to jump when the car hit the vine, which had proven to be a smart move. Carefully, he inspected himself. It seemed he had come out of it without too many scratches, just a few knicks to his armor here or there, and of course, the mental trauma. Good, then. At least, better than the alternative.
He pulled his way through to the cabin of the tram, where he discovered that his was not the fate of Sergeant Carmichael. The man laid in the center of the tram with a broken neck, his head twisted unnaturally from his shoulders. Shishone stared for a moment, coldly, before looking around for the captain.
He found the man ejected from the tram and thrown to the floor of the chamber, but alive and on his feet. He looked up to Shishone.
“Are you alright?”
Shishone nodded. “Yes. But Carmicheal…”
The captain’s gaze fell. For a moment, neither spoke. Shishone looked over his shoulder to the dead man behind him. “He’s gone, sir.”
The captain clenched his fists, and then unclenched them. “I see. Well come on. We need to get out of here.”
“What are we gonna do sir?”
“First off,” he said, “Fuck the mission. We’re out of here. Comms are jammed, my men are gone, fuck. Come on, Shishone. There’s a hangar on the other side of the control center, and you just so happen to be a pilot. I’m calling the mission off.”
“Yes sir,” Shishone said, mentally thanking fate itself.
He hopped down from the tram, and he and the captain walked up to a side door in the chamber. The captain pried it open, and let Shishone through before stepping through himself. The two of them were in a long hallway, and they hurried through it, before being spat out into a long circular corridor that ringed the control room.
“Other side, Shishone, double time it.”
“Roger,” said Shishone, quickening his pace.
They hurried their way around the corridor and into an outcropping in the building, much like the tram station. Only here, there were two small patrol crafts docked in a large rectangular structure. They weren’t large crafts by any means, and one of them looked under maintenance. Shishone looked up at the blue ship, and hurried his way aboard, to the cockpit.
“Captain!”
“I’m aboard!”
“Sealing her up.”
He flipped on the lights to the ship, and thankfully, it hummed to life. Then, he sealed the back door up, keeping himself and the captain safe. Then, he fired up the thrusters, testing them. They were fueled and ready to go. Once more he offered a silent thanks to the universe. He pushed the buttons to release them from their park, the engines humming. The ship hovered for a moment as the feet sucked themselves back into the body, and then, he turned her to face the massive hangar door.
It was closed, but this wouldn’t be too much of an issue.
“Hang on!”
He fired up the thrusters, backed the ship up, and then body slammed it against the doors. They busted open and the ship wobbled for a moment out in the open space, righting itself under Shishone’s expert control. It stabilized, and then, started skyward, up and up and away from the hell below them. For a moment, they were free. For a moment, they had made it.
Shishone even let himself take a real breath.
The captain joined him in the cockpit, taking the copilot seat, before sitting back and starting to cry, holding his helmet-shielded head in his hands. Shishone still felt a mixture of numbness and terror, and so, didn’t emote. Instead, he stared blankly to the sky above, to the stars, admiring their beauty in a calm, dissociative way.
But just then, on the radar, a light appeared.
Shishone snapped his attention down, and then looked to the captain. “We have company.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Shishone said, flipping some switches. “I’m going to try and hail them.”
He picked up the radio, and turned it on. “This is Corporal Shishone, of the thirty-first armored infantry brigade,” he said into it. “Requesting immediate aid. Our team is gone, possibly dead but MIA at the moment. There are two of us left. Copy, over?”
He watched the dot on his radar screen. Whoever they were, they were right behind him.
Again he tried the radio. “Copy, over?”
Still there was silence.
Then, klaxons began to cry out in the ship. The captain looked to Shishone, truly panicked, fear deep in his wide eyes, as Shishone assessed the situation. From the blip on the radar, a smaller blip had appeared. A missile. And it was moving fast.
It was too fast for him to maneuver. But that didn’t stop him from trying. He pulled to the right hard, and the ship jerked, pulling them with it. It was too late, of course. The missile was already upon them, already right up their rear thruster. A boom rocked the ship as it jerked violently, before beginning to tailspin. Shishone did his best to right it, flipping thruster control switches and varying the load, but it was of no use. They spun out, and somewhere in the distance he could hear Captain Marks’ voice calling to him, cursing him. The ground was quick upon them. He pulled up on the stick, anything, anything to avoid this, but there was no avoiding this, it was their turn.
The ship collided with the ground harshly, violently, rolling over and over and throwing both Shishone and the captain into a whirlwind of metal and fire. Fire. More fire.
There was so much fire here, mainly where the fuel was. Shishone looked around at the dead bodies in the room, dazed. He was on Ceres again, crawling his way out of the wreckage of his dropship. There was someone calling his name over the radio, but it barely registered.
He crawled, one hand over the other, into the room and out from the wreckage. There, he laid on his back and looked behind him, to see the dropship completely ruined, jagged metal spitting out of it, flames on the fuel tanks, and a man, standing beside it, looking at him.
The man marched up to Shishone and bent down to look at him.
“Shishone,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“I… I don’t know.”
The man pulled out a flashlight and shone it in his eyes, blinding him. He squinted, and shied away, before blinking out the light.
“Where am I?”
“Shishone?”
He blinked some more. It was the captain, staring down at him. He had survived too. “Shishone, we need to leave.”
He pulled Shishone to his feet, and though he was a little wobbly, he righted himself after a moment. Then, adjusting his helmet, Shishone searched around, but couldn’t find his rifle. Captain Collers noticed what he was doing. He grabbed his arm and said, “No time for that. We need to move.”
He pulled Shishone out to the back of the ship, and through the door, which had swung open upon landing. They were on the surface of MK2, gray dust kicking up with every step. Everything was dark. They looked around, but couldn’t see their assailants in the black night. Shishone felt angry, but it was a cold anger, a stillness within him that wanted blood and was willing to wait to get it.
Before them, though, the hostile ship appeared, swinging down and kicking up a huge cloud of dust at them with its VTOL thrusters. Like an omen, it slowly parked itself on the moon’s surface, back facing them, and lowered its back doors. Out poured soldiers clad in blue and white tabards and helmets, waving their weapons and flashlights at Shishone and the captain, who both put their hands up.
A man in black armor stepped forward amongst their ranks and walked right up to Collers, pulling up a pistol, and shot the man in the head. Blood blasted out of the back of his skull like a rose in the low-g, raining down onto the darkened ground. His head kicked back and his body fell like a ragdoll, falling to the ground and bouncing. Shishone’s eyes went wide.
The man in black then looked at Shishone, who was sweating profusely, and said something over his radio, before walking back to the ship. The elite guard then moved in on Shishone, pointing weapons at him, before forcing him to the ground and cuffing him behind his back as he protested. Then, they forced him to walk onto the ship, all the while having a gun at his back.
Shishone got one last look at the captain’s body as the door of the ship closed. It lay there, unceremoniously. Then, the ship rose into the inky night, and flew off into the blackness, and all was still.