The gunship rattled a little as it shifted course. Shishone, sitting in one of the side seats, adjusted his helmet and shifted his rifle on his lap. He was clad head to toe in thick black infantry armor, as were most of the people aboard the ship, save the pilots. His helmet covered his whole head like a motorcycle helmet, and had a blue visor that cut across it that acted both as a shield against the vacuum of space and as a HUD that linked directly to his spare ammunition and oxygen supplies. Across from him, the captain of the squad sat in an exoskeleton, fiddling with his rifle.
“Captain,” Shishone said, as the troops conversed amongst each other.
The man across from him looked up from his weapon, and nodded, his face unreadable behind the visor. Shishone searched for his words for a moment, and then said, “The briefing was really vague. What really happened?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out, Shishone,” the man, Captain Coller, said. “Powers out on MK2’s third QPF, we’re here to either turn the lights on or find out why they turned off. Simple as that.”
MK2 the orange spectre of Makemake – her moon – and it was comprised of four “quadrants” where Production Facilities were. These were massive factories on the surface that constructed most of what was used in the Kuiper Belt, from PDA’s to recycled paper. The third QPF, near the moon’s south pole, was the one that went dark apparently. Surely they had to know why and just weren’t telling him. Sending scouts to find out what happened was how cavemen operated. So something about this made him uneasy.
“I don’t like it,” he mumbled, looking away.
Just then, over the wire came, “Touchdown in ten.”
The ship twisted and fanned its thrusters down, and Shishone could feel it when its feet hit the deck. The dark red lights of the inside turned green, and after the air was sucked out of the cabin and the pressure was dropped, the back of the ship began to open like a jaw. Captain Coller looked to Shishone and nodded, and Shishone nodded back before he stood up and rushed out of the cabin with the rest of his squad.
They poured out like ants, seven in total, raising their rifles and flicking on their flashlights as they fanned out. Shishone, one of the last few off, hurried to the front. They were on a dark landing pad on top of a tall tower that stretched down into an abyss. It was hard to see anything below, being that they were on the dark side of the moon, and the Kuiper Belt was dark to begin with. Shishone spotted where lights should’ve been flickering on poles and around the pad’s floor, but instead remained dead. He lowered his weapon a bit, but not much. It was quiet here.
The captain hurried to the front as well, and looked to Shishone.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
“Come on. This way.”
Carefully, the squad began to move out. The captain took the lead with his exoskeleton, and Shishone fell in behind him, as the group tightened up and headed toward a building on top of the tower. There were pipes everywhere here, overhead and running alongside them. The landing pad was like a clearing in a forest on the edge of a cliff.
The artificial gravity was off, and so every step felt like a small bounce. This was no problem for most of them, of course - infantry and pilots were always trained in low-g movement - and so they made their way with ease to the structure. The captain motioned for his squad to line up along the wall, and they did so, as he leaned in and opened the door with a key card.
Immediately a small poof of red dust shot out from the door like a hazy fog rolling over a city. It must’ve been sitting on the floor waiting for movement to kick it up. The captain went in, and Shishone peered in behind him. The room was basically a guard booth, an elevator, and a door leading to a set of stairs.
“There,” the captain said, motioning to the door.
The small group moved into the room like a thick, viscous liquid flowing into a jar. The captain opened the door to the stairs, and they started their way down. The thing that struck Shishone the most - apart from all the pipes and wiring - was the red dust on the ground. In some places, it was thick and caked on, and in others, it was light and barely noticeable.
The squad came to the base of the stairs after a time, and entered into a large room filled with machinery, massive cylinders and spheres on metal legs and pipes and tubing and conveyors everywhere, and the dust, the dust was here too.
So were the bodies.
They were strewn along the floor, the belts, the control centers. It was as though they had died doing their jobs in seconds, almost unaware, even, that anything had gone wrong moments before. Shishone swallowed, shining his flashlight around the room with the rest of the men, their beams hopping from body to orange-jumpsuit clad body. Shishone was starting to sweat as his grip on his rifle tightened.
There was a path that ran down the center of the production facility, with nodules for lights that refused to blink. The captain moved up in his exosuit and lowered his rifle, looking around. He reached up and clicked a button on his helmet, and his helmet’s exterior flashlight kicked on.
“Sudden depressurization, most likely,” he said. “Sucked the air out of the facility and killed these poor bastards before they even knew what hit them.”
“But captain,” said another member of the squad, “What about the bulkhead doors? There’s no way they all malfunctioned.”
The captain looked around, spotting several large bulkhead doors on the wall, all of which were open. “Looks like they did.”
“That’s not possible,” said the man. “There are fail-safes, right? Things meant to keep this from happening?”
Shishone looked at the man, then Captain Collers, who, motioning his hand forward, said, “Yes, there are. Now move out, we’re going this way.”
They headed down the central path, between the machinery and refinery equipment, heading for a door on the far wall. As they walked, Shishone accidentally kicked a corpse, and it lazily folded over in the low gravity. The man’s face was blue and pale and swollen. Shishone recoiled.
He walked forward, falling in line behind the captain. The dust here was thicker, if still a little sparse, and it kicked up from the floor with every step in little crimson plumes as the group headed through the large, toothed bulkhead door. Here was a long highway where trucks sat parked - mostly, at least, considering the one or two with a dead driver still on the road - and the captain motioned to them. “We’ll take a truck from here to the central command chamber, where we should be able to find the source of the breach. From there, we’ll have our answers. Load up!”
“Yes sir!” came a chorus over the radios. Shishone fell into the crowd as they loaded up on a green truck with side rails and an empty bed, large black wheels and an angular cab, one by one. They sat on the bed and leaned on the rails as the captain took the driver’s seat, and within moments, the truck rumbled to life, and lurched off.
Shishone righted himself and his weapon, accidentally bumping into the person sitting next to him. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright,” he said, looking up as they entered the dark black tunnel. The only lights here came from the truck’s headlights and the flashlights of the men’s helmets, as they’d shut off the ones on their weapons. Wires hung from the ceiling, pipes ran along the walls, and the arched tunnel was filled with other trucks, forklifts, and carts all staffed with dead bodies. Shishone watched them as they passed, feeling a strange sickness in his gut.
As the truck rumbled down the tunnel, the wire in Shishone’s headset kicked on. It was the man next to him. “You’re Joshua Shishone, right? The once Lieutenant, from Ceres?”
Shishone’s jaw locked. He would’ve stared at the man, but the flashlights would’ve blinded them both, and so he simply sat back and sighed. “Yeah.”
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“Whoa.” The man tapped his friend to the right, and nodded to Shishone. “It’s Lt. Shishone. From Ceres.”
The other man leaned forward and looked at Shishone for a moment. Then, over the line, he said, “Whoa. Hey, uh, Shishone, is it true? What they say about your mission?”
Shishone looked at him from the corner of his eye, and grit his teeth, saying nothing.
After a moment, the man said, “Wow, you did. That’s wild. Why?”
“I don’t think he wants to talk about it, homes,” said another man sitting across from Shishone.
“Nah man,” said the first, “I wanna know. He’s one of us now right? He can answer for himself. Is it true? Why’d you do it?”
All eyes were on Shishone now. The truck rumbled for a moment, before turning left down another corridor. Shishone swallowed, and looked at the men, before clearing his throat and saying, “Fuck off.”
Then, he turned away.
“Ah, no, come on. Tell us,” the man next to him said. “You’re kind of infamous in the Corps.”
The truck swayed a bit, but the weight helped keep it stable. Shishone thought for a moment, thoughts he didn’t want to think - thoughts of the lasers piercing the spacescape, thoughts of missiles and plasma, thoughts of fire and debris - and he shuddered. “I said no.”
“I heard he did it because his girlfriend was on Ceres.”
“Ah,” said the man across from him, nodding, “I heard it was head trauma and confusion.”
Shishone grunted and stared at him, and then the man beside him, and said, “How many of you boys have seen real action? You?” He pointed to the man across from him, who shook his head. Then, pointing at the man beside him, said, “You?”
He, too, shook his head.
“Then shut up.”
“Alright, alright,” the man said, patting the air placatingly. “He doesn’t wanna talk, guys.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay.”
With that, the ride fell to silence. The truck continued along a long stretch of corridor, until it hooked a slow right and came to a small outcropping in the tunnel. There, it stopped, and over the comms, the captain said, “Alright, move out. Shishone, you’re on point.”
“Yes sir,” he said, along with the rest of them, as they started to pour out of the truck. They worked their way around it in two columns, and Shishone took point as they gathered in the front of the truck. The captain motioned to a door in the wall.
“That way.”
Shishone nodded, and rushed up to the door, then leaned on the wall. His peers followed behind him. “Sir some of these seem jammed. This one is. How will we get it open?”
“Leave that to me.” The captain walked up to the door and with his exoskeleton, began to pry the door open. The gears on the suit began to whir, and soon, he had slowly pried apart the two halves of the door, and stepped back. “Alright, move in Shishone.”
He nodded, and flipped on the flashlight on his rifle, before rushing into the room. It was a long maintenance hallway with bare walls, save for the occasional pipe or outcrop for a fire extinguisher box. Shishone started his way down the hall, looking up and around for any signs of movement. He wasn’t concerned - if anything, he was a little bored - but protocol was to be followed at all times in the Corps.
Soon they came to a four way intersection, and the captain guided him to the right. So, right he went, and soon he found himself at a small set of stairs that lead up to a door. “Sir, another door,” he said.
The captain stepped up and pried it open, before stepping into the room into which it led himself. Shishone followed, and so did the rest of the group, finding themselves in a large room filled with screens and monitors and computers and control boards and switches and nozzles and more. Huge flatscreen monitors ran along the circular wall, which was massive, both tall and wide. In the room were several desks and computer terminals, and in the center of the room was a tall tower with a panopticon on it, much like that of an air traffic control tower.
“There,” said the captain, pointing to the tower. “That’s where we need to get.”
Shishone flashed his lights at the windows, and found them completely shattered. But, looking at the ground, he noticed there was no glass to be found. He found this strange, but kept moving in.
Following the captain, through the maze of dead bodies and wires, Shishone found himself walking up a long circular staircase to the panopticon. There were windows in the wall, and as he went higher, he got a better sense for the vastness of the room. It was massive, but, of course it was; it was the heart of the QPF, the control center for everything and everyone within its walls. Still, it was awe inspiring.
As they walked, Shishone noticed that the dust here was thick. Thicker than anywhere else they’d been in the facility. The stairs were caked with it, and it was on the floors. Everything was tinted red here with the dust, and with the way they were kicking it up, they would be too.
Soon, they came to a door, but this one didn’t need to be pried open - actually, it was already blasted open, the two halves sucked into the room and lodged against the side wall. As the captain and Shishone stepped inside, it was immediately apparent what was wrong. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, twelve inch thick steel had a hole in it. Shishone’s eyes widened as he looked around.
The hole itself was clearly made from inside the room. The way the metal was flayed upward, there was no way that something had, say, hit the metal and caused this, like an asteroid Something inside of him sunk. Secondly, he noticed, the bodies here were covered in the red dust, and in various states of decomposition. He swallowed.
The captain walked in and looked around, cursing under his breath. “Shishone, Marcus, guard the doors. I need to download the data we need, and then,” he said, looking up at the hole, “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Shishone looked back up at the hole, then to the captain, and saluted, before rushing to the door to cover the entryway. The captain walked over to a console near one of the busted out windows - there were shards of glass in here and they crunched beneath his feet - and he put a wire tether from his wrist into the machine. With a little jump of power from his suit, the circuits kicked on, and within moments, he had downloaded the data he needed. His wrist computer blinked when it was finished, and he tapped it a few times, sending the date via lightlink to command, before turning and saying, "Alright, we're done here."
He looked down at the corpses, their flesh rotting away despite the lack of oxygen, their teeth exposed, their bones sticking out, and he grimaced. Shishone watched him for a moment, before saying, "Captain."
The captain looked up to him, and said, "Right. Let's go."
With that, they started to roll out, one by one, down the stairs, back to the truck and eventually, back to the landing pad, where a black gunship swooped in to pick them up.
----------------------------------------
“And that’s what happened,” Shishone said, leaning forward on the desk before him. He was in a small room with one-way windows, their mirrored surfaces reflecting himself back to him. He looked gaunt - he hadn’t slept since he’d gotten back, as they’d all gone right into individual briefing rooms for debriefing upon arriving back on Makemake. He stared at himself in the mirror, his short black hair disheveled and sticky from dried sweat, and his eyes were tired, with dark circles underneath them.
Across from him, a man in black armor wearing a blue and white-gold tabard sat, arms folded and sitting back in his chair. “Tell me more about the bodies. You said most were in tact?”
Shishone swallowed and nodded, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Most of them. The ones in the control room weren’t. The ones covered in the dust, I mean.”
“I see.” The man looked down to a small tablet on the table before him and typed something in on it. “And the hole you all found, it looked like it was caused internally? How could you tell?”
“The metal was splayed upward. If a meteor or something had hit it, the metal would’ve splayed inward.” Shishone made a motion with his hands, as if to demonstrate his point about the hole. “So it definitely came from inside the facility.”
“Noted,” said the man from within his helmet, typing more on the tablet. “And this dust, what was it like?”
“Thick, in some places,” Shishone said, looking down at his hands. “Thin in others. It looked like blood at first, until we started kicking it up.”
The man typed that in, and said, “Very well. Good, thank you Corporal Shishone. That’s all we really needed from you. You’re free to head to your bunk and get some rest, you probably need it. In the meantime, we will be sealing off the QPF.”
“Sealing it off?”
“Yes,” said the man, “Until we know more. But that’s all we need from you. Thank you, Corporal.”
He swallowed, but nodded, and said, “Of course.”
The man stood, and so did Shishone, and they shook hands. “Oh, and Shishone?”
Shishone blinked, and cocked his head. “Yeah?”
“Keep this all between us, okay? We aren’t going to make you sign an NDA, but try and keep things on the low. For your own sake.”
Shishone’s jaw locked; it sounded like a threat. “Yes sir,” he said, letting go of the man’s hand.
With that, the man nodded and opened the door for him, letting him out of the bright white room and back into the halls of the administrative sector of TGFB Make-Indu, so that he may go back to his bunk, and have another sleepless night.