IndyFront
Well-known member
Chapter 2
Murz leaned over to the microphone as she finished writing her notes down. "Suspect is cooperative, but vague. Doesn't clearly recall certain events. I'm putting this down as inconclusive. This concludes the interview at oh-nine-hundred, three-twenty-one, 'Nineteen."
Hicks, Rhodes and Murz met to discuss what they now knew from the interviewee in the observation room. Hicks immediately took this opportunity to make another cup of coffee.
"Should we really be going out there? Who knows what these things are. The Frontier has a population of around seven million. The core systems? Try fifty million. Sixty. And let's not even think about Earth."
"You heard him," said Hicks taking a sip of her coffee. "They've been visiting us for thousands of years, which would mean they've been to Earth. If they wanted to wipe us out like he says though, they could've done so thousands of times over."
"And that's if they even exist," added Murz. "My bet is on the internationalists being behind those colonies disappearing. That or a resurgent CSC, spearheaded by a synthetic insurgency, as they have done in the past."
"Those things are out there, ma'am. They exist. I've... seen... what they can do."
"But you've never actually seen one, because they're conveniently invisible. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. Nothing personal."
"I'm just saying, we should know who to sacrifice. If there's a threat as big as he says to the core worlds we should have a plan in place to defend Earth first and foremost."
"We're not barbarians, corporal," Murz nearly screamed. "If there's a threat to the outer regions there's a threat to the core regions. We shouldn't pretend a problem doesn't exist, and then do absolutely nothing about it. We head it off now we may not have to deal with it in the future. And if it is just space pirates or rogue synthetics... well, then we've just prevented a potential terrorist attack back home."
"And what if it is... 'ghosts'? Poltergeists. Furious phantoms bent on stellar vengeance and conquest? What then, captain?"
"Well," she said with a sigh and a pat of her holstered sidearm. "As long as there's an option to shoot them... I'll figure something out."
* * *
LV-2412; "Skyfire Down" – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
Picture credit – http://homeboy-sparten.deviantart.com/
The system was exactly 130,379,878,721,649 miles away, over 22 light-years or nearly 7 parsecs. It contained two stars, a brown and red dwarf – Gliese 299 B, which was approximately 3% of the Sun's mass, and Gliese 299 A, more commonly known as Ross 619.
Ross 619 was around 15.5% of Solar mass, with a spectral class of M4.5Ve; it had a right ascension of eight hours, eleven minutes and 58.733 seconds, a declination of eight degrees forty-five, and a parallax of 147.722.
Ross 619 was home to the dark world of Skyfire Down. Most of the 119,700 human residents were inmates and prisoners-of-war, with the rest being colonial administrators and staff. A garrison of around five-hundred MPs and Weyland-Yutani commandos were stationed there – along with 200 colonial marshals – primarily for security and crowd-control purposes.
The nights lasted 20 hours or more, and when the red dwarf rose at the end of the night for the fifteen minutes it lurked menacingly just over the horizon for most of the year – an entire ecosystem of mostly-hostile life forms would emerge to hunt the bacteriovorous Titanswarms that would themselves emerge to consume the photosynthetic bacteria and microflora that dispersed throughout Skyfire Down's atmosphere when the Red Sun rose.
It was considered a dead-end posting for a colonial marine, and as the Red Sun set and the marines returned to their postings in the rain coats they donned as the methane showers descended upon the surface and washed over them, one could see the fading dreams of heroic adventures if one looked deep enough into their eyes.
They stood on each side of the storm wall gate as it slid open, and the six-and-a-half meter long all-terrain tractor with its eight-by-eight wheel axis arrangement crawled out from behind the wall and across the rocky and pitted terrain beyond. Aboard were Lunnar-Welsun executive Vincent Spears, Dr. Frank Baltese and Colonel Riker, along with Captain Angel – a cyborg MAX pilot who stood a towering six-foot-four and weighed over 180 with her cybernetic augmentations and rock solid muscle.
"I just want us to get in and get out," said Spears, a retired admiral and son of the late Thomas Spears, who had taken up a role as a lobbyist for L-W and Weyland-Yutani's weapons division. His father would've called him out for giving up a life on the battlefield for "pencil-pushing," but, unlike his father, Vincent wasn't a brainwashed moron. Vincent knew how to climb.
His father did, too, but only in a close-minded and power-hungry way. There was no method to his madness. Also unlike his father, Vincent was rather connected to his life. He wouldn't so casually throw it away or put it in harm's way. Which is why he wanted the sample extraction to go according to the book. As it always was.
But Vincent was always cautious. Much unlike the rather unhinged doctor accompanying him.
"This will save humanity, Spears," explained Baltese. "It just takes some time, but we're close. We're so close."
The rest of the journey elapsed in relative silence, aside from some bickering between the two in the front seats about the weather conditions.
No matter how many times they saw it, the sight of the megalithic structure was forever awe-inspiring. Each time, they could only marvel at it for a moment as they stepped out of the crawler. It was more than 20 meters tall, and 60 meters wide between its two outward most prongs. The derelict spacecraft rested underneath a thin film of organic matter, likely collected over hundreds if not thousands of years.
It rested like a hulking dormant sentinel, guarding an untold wealth of secrets and knowledge. Although they were already privileged with annals of information unknown to the general public, this particular secret could change everything, and all four of them knew it.
They perilously climbed in through a hole in the lower prong, as the vehicle had crashed at a roughly forty-five to sixty-five-degree angle against the side of a mountain. The dull bronze of the twilight sky and drenching downpour produced an almost eternal late autumn evening – the brown dwarf offering little more than the illumination of a particularly bright full moon back on Earth.
It gave each trek out to this location an almost haunted milieu.
The interior of the spacecraft was striking no matter how many times he saw it. A gossamer weave-work of tubes and pipes of various sizes overlapping and under-lapping one another, creating a pattern within the walls, ceilings and the floor that almost pained the psyche with its fractal intricacies, an alien sacred geometrical form that came from an alien mind, unmeant to be observed by human eyes.
They followed the corridor down its length about five-hundred feet and around a corner until they came to the small fungal spores that had likely been mutated by the pathogen over the many years the craft had rested there. At first they thought the pathogen was coming from the egg sacs, but in later investigations realized that it was the inverse of this. They had collected a total of seven specimens and this was to be their eighth.
Baltese could barely see from behind the see-through plastic in his hazmat suit, but he could see just enough to place the tweezers across one of the larger egg sacs and extract it. He placed the small fungal structure in a transparent cylinder and quickly closed the lid. It was a delicate process and once inside, the cylinder had to be fastened and secured to a backpack so that the spore sac inside wouldn't rupture and release its motes.
They had made a total of ten trips, the first two ending in failure as they realized they couldn't bring more than one out of the site at a time, and the third after they accidentally dispersed the motes inside and rendered the sample useless.
* * *
LV-2412-SDMCCF3; "Peninsula" – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
The tower was roughly 300 feet tall, and skewered the blood-red horizon like a skyward sword held high after a victorious battle. Inside, the science team and Weyland-Yutani personnel got to work on their "experiments".
"The Clostridio tetani and Euniceral Dane Eforedium's panspermian behavior explains why they're found on so many worlds," explained the doctor as Spears and Angel followed him to the observation blister. He approached the cornea-scanner and the laser recognized his clearance and turned green. A box opened up in the wall, and Baltese reached in and grabbed the key.
Unlocking the door to the blister, "honestly at this point whether the pathogen originated from these organic fungal structures, or vice-versa, I think is irrelevant. They are the key to unlocking the forbidden fruit and the tree of knowledge, knowledge which will allow us to succeed."
They entered the blister and a rather large egg sac was illuminated on the other side of the glass, at least four times the size of the one they had collected. Baltese hit a button and the room on the other side began to rotate away, and another chamber was exposed. This one contained three people, two male and one female, all of them in suspended animation and restrained to the wall.
"My my aren't we all expectant parents," said Spears.
Baltese looked over at him and smiled.
"All in due time, my dear colleague. All in due time."
Out in the hallway, Dr. Baltese nearly collided with Dr. Yilmaz transporting a specimen to the observation blister cages, what appeared to be a macroscopic parasite known colloquially as a 'hammerpede'.
"Sorry, sir," he quickly apologized as he moved out of the way and continued onward. Baltese made a beeline for the control room, which he quickly entered and shut the door behind him. "Be out in a minute," he said with a quick smile. But he was unfortunately not alone.
Dr. York was sitting in the sliding and elevating chair attached to a wall of monitors, each containing a surveillance feed of a different area of the complex.
"Morning, Dr. Baltese."
"Mornin," he replied curtly as he flicked the syringe.
Dr. York would annoy him once again with a rather stupid question, "what're you up to?"
Baltese quickly inserted the syringe into his cephalic vein before York could say anything further or protest.
"Just bringing a hypodermic needle to a stethoscope fight," he replied.
This would catch up to him in the end, however. He tried to play it off, as he almost always was alone during injections. But, as he approached Spears, Riker and Angel as they were leaving that floor, Yilmaz ran full-speed around the corner.
"Spears! Baltese is lying about taking samples from containment! I have proo–" what Baltese correctly assumed was a soft drive containing footage of him inside the surveillance room shooting up the xeno-zip went flying out of his hand as he collided with another doctor, this time York, and sent the specimen containers crashing onto the floor.
"Baltese," shouted Spears. He hurried to the elevator right as containment protocols went into effect. The flashing red lights betrayed the immediate sense of danger, as they watched as the doors closed, and frightened screaming could be heard on the other side followed by a sickening squelching sound as the creature found a warm place to call home.
* * *
USCSS Rubicon – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
Heavy industrial metal echoed throughout the corridor as Supply Tech William Vidmar worked away on the ship-wide plumbing electronics that had been faulty ever since emerging from stasis a few hours ago. The old boombox from the 1990's had been passed down throughout his family ever since, and he'd inherited it. Not everyone aboard was happy about this, as practically no one liked his style of music, and some of the crew outright hated it.
One of these people was Junior Analyst Cassandra Kayser, who stood beside the device as Vidmar lay on his back waist-deep in the wall and wiring. She had shouted his name twice now, yet he had failed to hear her. She reached down and angrily turned off the boombox.
Vidmar slid out with a quickness and sat up in the span of roughly a second.
"Hey!"
"Captain wants all the crew in Bay 6 for a briefing, thirty minutes," Kayser sighed and stepped over him, continuing down the corridor likely to tell more people. Vidmar grunted and stood up, grabbing his coat and his phone and heading down after her.
* * *
Hicks was one of the first to wake, on her way down the corridor to the mess hall she encountered Chief Warrant Officer Harold Pallo.
"I'm the Quartermaster aboard here," he said, after introducing himself. Before Hicks could respond, a booming, disembodied voice echoed throughout the ship.
"And I am SCI-ON, welcome aboard the USCSS Rubicon."
"He gets a kick out of scaring the newcomers, don't ya SCI-ON?"
"I apologize, I did not mean to scare you, miss..."
"Hicks," she replied. "Alice Hicks."
Pallo leaned in and whispered to her, "he's lying." He then gave her the tour and introduced her to some more of the crew in the mess hall.
* * *
The fitness dojo was adjacent to Bay 6, so a lot of practice took place in the rather cavernous room. The marines and sailors were deeply engaged in their routines when Captain Murz, First Officer Richter and the new passengers arrived. Gunnery Sergeant Nicolas Santiago and Hicks were in a marksmanship competition with their M41A3 burst rifles, and it was getting difficult to determine a winner. Santiago suggested a tie-breaker.
"Knives now."
"Knives, hmm," she inquired.
"Knives," he repeated, holding it up, he then looked to the side and flung his combat knife into the target.
The sound that emanated from the target was not what he expected, a metallic clinking. He scrunched his face up in confusion and looked over to see Hicks had already deployed her own knife into his target.
"You've gotten slow in your old age, Gunney," said the combat engineer, Second Lt. J.D. Muller. This drew a frustrated look from the communications technician, Sergeant Jacob Kelly. Meanwhile, despite his best efforts, Senior Chief Petty Officer Jaden Richter had succeeded only in getting the attention of the half dozen or so on the floor above them in the short-range bunk rooms. Hicks saw the trio of gunners in the back.
"What're you three too good for us or somethin," the Sergeant said to them, as if reading her mind. It was at this moment she realized Corporal Rhodes was nowhere in sight.
Finally, succeeding where her first officer had failed, the Captain booms, "I don't care if a fly lands on your eyeball and takes a shit, you will not move one more muscle! HA-TEEEEENSHUN!"
The noises in the room ceased and the marine drop crew formed up. Sailors here and there were present on the periphery of the Bay, and the rest of the crew observed from a railing above.
"So, this was initially just supposed to be a routine stop on our way to the Frontier, but something's come up."
"Because of fucking course it has," shouted a man Hicks would come to know as Chief Cook Lucas Attard.
"Look, we all appreciate you and understand you're stressed, but don't interrupt me, Attard."
"In like Flynn, ma'am," said Senior Electrician Matthew Grech. Supply Tech Julian Reid, one of the few Brits in the Outer Rim Defense Fleet, leaned over and whispered something to Grech. From her vantage point, if her lip-reading skills were adept enough, it looked as though he'd said, "would you dare look a heavily-armed horse in the mouth?"
Assistant Engineer Oscar Evers leaned in and said something from behind the two which resulted in an annoyed reaction from Reid.
"Chewing the fat with Matt," he said, repeating Evers's question in a newly-elevated tone. "Chewing the fat with Matt? Your ceaseless palinoia and objurgating inculcated obloquy is multiloquous macrology, yet acerebral."
"Your captain is speaking!" Shouted Richter.
"Thanks, but I can speak for myself, Officer."
Richter then leaned in and spoke just above a whisper, saying, "Pallo and I warned you extensively about this group of marines. They were under the command of the late General Spears, the terrorist."
"They aren't terrorists," said Murz. "Just idiots, mostly. Let me handle this."
"So you're saying some of them are terrorists?"
Most of them had gone back to bickering and idle chattering.
"Again, your captain is SPEAKING!"
"How can anyone possibly hear the horse over this ass," said Muller.
"Care to repeat that little comment, lieutenant?"
"Oh! So, now what you're saying is, you can't even hear anything over the sound of your own–"
"THIS WILL BE YOUR MOST DANGEROUS MISSION," Murz shouted!
Silence consumed Bay 6.
Evers snickered a bit.
"Oh, you think I'm joking? Well, I'm not," she said, looking over the faces in the room. "A lot of you are here because you're A) suicidal, B) stupid, or C) here against your will," she said, casting a sideways glance at Grant who was kept under surveillance by science officer Armas and Donald Rutherford in the back-left corner of the room.
"As most of you know by now, in light of our transporting of a prisoner, we have with us today a W-Y representative, Mr. Rutherford?" She said, motioning to him to approach. He was a taller man, with well-kept physical features and dark eyes.
He briefly explained that the prisoner they were escorting would be reinstated into the corps at one rank lower than he was when he deserted, much to the chagrin of the present marine drop crew. "He will be escorting you to the planet below, as he has information on what we may be facing, and how to overcome it."
"Thank you, Mr. Rutherford. Now," the captain tapped her bracelet a few times and the room darkened, a holographic screen projected against the back wall, bathing the room in red.
"Meet LV-2412's binary star parents, the one on the right is Gliese 299 B, and the first one you noticed is Gliese 299 A – more commonly known as 'Ross-619' – one of the brightest and reddest dwarf stars in the known universe."
The red star blazed brilliantly in contrast to its dull and dark brown dwarf compatriot in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The planet – LV-2412, colloquially known as 'Skyfire Down' – sat insignificant against the blazing glory of Ross-619, its small moon Wormwood just barely visible.
"Skyfire Down and its moon Wormwood are just far enough away that it's safe from the rays. But, the entirety of the planet itself is considered the most hostile environment known. Because the planet's biosphere itself evolved from a kill-or-be-killed environment, everything that breathes down there is geared to kill you as quickly and efficiently as possible. Some say even the ground you walk on watches you."
In orbit around LV-2412, the Rubicon pulled up next to a hulking and inert mass floating idly around the planet. As its searchlight passed over the hull, its name was revealed. HMCSS 'Grey Stripe,' a civilian-rated deep space vessel.
"We split into two teams. Rutherford, you're with us. We'll board the Grey Stripe and see what we can find out from there. Santiago and Hicks will lead the marine drop crew to the planet below. We'll get twice the ground covered and twice the work done that way. Let's get the hardest part done, boys."
"Hardest part? And what would that be, captain," inquired Pallo.
"Why, getting started of course. This isn't going to be easy, Pallo, nothing ever is."
Murz leaned over to the microphone as she finished writing her notes down. "Suspect is cooperative, but vague. Doesn't clearly recall certain events. I'm putting this down as inconclusive. This concludes the interview at oh-nine-hundred, three-twenty-one, 'Nineteen."
Hicks, Rhodes and Murz met to discuss what they now knew from the interviewee in the observation room. Hicks immediately took this opportunity to make another cup of coffee.
"Should we really be going out there? Who knows what these things are. The Frontier has a population of around seven million. The core systems? Try fifty million. Sixty. And let's not even think about Earth."
"You heard him," said Hicks taking a sip of her coffee. "They've been visiting us for thousands of years, which would mean they've been to Earth. If they wanted to wipe us out like he says though, they could've done so thousands of times over."
"And that's if they even exist," added Murz. "My bet is on the internationalists being behind those colonies disappearing. That or a resurgent CSC, spearheaded by a synthetic insurgency, as they have done in the past."
"Those things are out there, ma'am. They exist. I've... seen... what they can do."
"But you've never actually seen one, because they're conveniently invisible. I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. Nothing personal."
"I'm just saying, we should know who to sacrifice. If there's a threat as big as he says to the core worlds we should have a plan in place to defend Earth first and foremost."
"We're not barbarians, corporal," Murz nearly screamed. "If there's a threat to the outer regions there's a threat to the core regions. We shouldn't pretend a problem doesn't exist, and then do absolutely nothing about it. We head it off now we may not have to deal with it in the future. And if it is just space pirates or rogue synthetics... well, then we've just prevented a potential terrorist attack back home."
"And what if it is... 'ghosts'? Poltergeists. Furious phantoms bent on stellar vengeance and conquest? What then, captain?"
"Well," she said with a sigh and a pat of her holstered sidearm. "As long as there's an option to shoot them... I'll figure something out."
* * *
LV-2412; "Skyfire Down" – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
Picture credit – http://homeboy-sparten.deviantart.com/
The system was exactly 130,379,878,721,649 miles away, over 22 light-years or nearly 7 parsecs. It contained two stars, a brown and red dwarf – Gliese 299 B, which was approximately 3% of the Sun's mass, and Gliese 299 A, more commonly known as Ross 619.
Ross 619 was around 15.5% of Solar mass, with a spectral class of M4.5Ve; it had a right ascension of eight hours, eleven minutes and 58.733 seconds, a declination of eight degrees forty-five, and a parallax of 147.722.
Ross 619 was home to the dark world of Skyfire Down. Most of the 119,700 human residents were inmates and prisoners-of-war, with the rest being colonial administrators and staff. A garrison of around five-hundred MPs and Weyland-Yutani commandos were stationed there – along with 200 colonial marshals – primarily for security and crowd-control purposes.
The nights lasted 20 hours or more, and when the red dwarf rose at the end of the night for the fifteen minutes it lurked menacingly just over the horizon for most of the year – an entire ecosystem of mostly-hostile life forms would emerge to hunt the bacteriovorous Titanswarms that would themselves emerge to consume the photosynthetic bacteria and microflora that dispersed throughout Skyfire Down's atmosphere when the Red Sun rose.
It was considered a dead-end posting for a colonial marine, and as the Red Sun set and the marines returned to their postings in the rain coats they donned as the methane showers descended upon the surface and washed over them, one could see the fading dreams of heroic adventures if one looked deep enough into their eyes.
They stood on each side of the storm wall gate as it slid open, and the six-and-a-half meter long all-terrain tractor with its eight-by-eight wheel axis arrangement crawled out from behind the wall and across the rocky and pitted terrain beyond. Aboard were Lunnar-Welsun executive Vincent Spears, Dr. Frank Baltese and Colonel Riker, along with Captain Angel – a cyborg MAX pilot who stood a towering six-foot-four and weighed over 180 with her cybernetic augmentations and rock solid muscle.
"I just want us to get in and get out," said Spears, a retired admiral and son of the late Thomas Spears, who had taken up a role as a lobbyist for L-W and Weyland-Yutani's weapons division. His father would've called him out for giving up a life on the battlefield for "pencil-pushing," but, unlike his father, Vincent wasn't a brainwashed moron. Vincent knew how to climb.
His father did, too, but only in a close-minded and power-hungry way. There was no method to his madness. Also unlike his father, Vincent was rather connected to his life. He wouldn't so casually throw it away or put it in harm's way. Which is why he wanted the sample extraction to go according to the book. As it always was.
But Vincent was always cautious. Much unlike the rather unhinged doctor accompanying him.
"This will save humanity, Spears," explained Baltese. "It just takes some time, but we're close. We're so close."
The rest of the journey elapsed in relative silence, aside from some bickering between the two in the front seats about the weather conditions.
No matter how many times they saw it, the sight of the megalithic structure was forever awe-inspiring. Each time, they could only marvel at it for a moment as they stepped out of the crawler. It was more than 20 meters tall, and 60 meters wide between its two outward most prongs. The derelict spacecraft rested underneath a thin film of organic matter, likely collected over hundreds if not thousands of years.
It rested like a hulking dormant sentinel, guarding an untold wealth of secrets and knowledge. Although they were already privileged with annals of information unknown to the general public, this particular secret could change everything, and all four of them knew it.
They perilously climbed in through a hole in the lower prong, as the vehicle had crashed at a roughly forty-five to sixty-five-degree angle against the side of a mountain. The dull bronze of the twilight sky and drenching downpour produced an almost eternal late autumn evening – the brown dwarf offering little more than the illumination of a particularly bright full moon back on Earth.
It gave each trek out to this location an almost haunted milieu.
The interior of the spacecraft was striking no matter how many times he saw it. A gossamer weave-work of tubes and pipes of various sizes overlapping and under-lapping one another, creating a pattern within the walls, ceilings and the floor that almost pained the psyche with its fractal intricacies, an alien sacred geometrical form that came from an alien mind, unmeant to be observed by human eyes.
They followed the corridor down its length about five-hundred feet and around a corner until they came to the small fungal spores that had likely been mutated by the pathogen over the many years the craft had rested there. At first they thought the pathogen was coming from the egg sacs, but in later investigations realized that it was the inverse of this. They had collected a total of seven specimens and this was to be their eighth.
Baltese could barely see from behind the see-through plastic in his hazmat suit, but he could see just enough to place the tweezers across one of the larger egg sacs and extract it. He placed the small fungal structure in a transparent cylinder and quickly closed the lid. It was a delicate process and once inside, the cylinder had to be fastened and secured to a backpack so that the spore sac inside wouldn't rupture and release its motes.
They had made a total of ten trips, the first two ending in failure as they realized they couldn't bring more than one out of the site at a time, and the third after they accidentally dispersed the motes inside and rendered the sample useless.
* * *
LV-2412-SDMCCF3; "Peninsula" – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
- Colonists: 79
- Science officers: 33
- Employed personnel: 25
The tower was roughly 300 feet tall, and skewered the blood-red horizon like a skyward sword held high after a victorious battle. Inside, the science team and Weyland-Yutani personnel got to work on their "experiments".
"The Clostridio tetani and Euniceral Dane Eforedium's panspermian behavior explains why they're found on so many worlds," explained the doctor as Spears and Angel followed him to the observation blister. He approached the cornea-scanner and the laser recognized his clearance and turned green. A box opened up in the wall, and Baltese reached in and grabbed the key.
Unlocking the door to the blister, "honestly at this point whether the pathogen originated from these organic fungal structures, or vice-versa, I think is irrelevant. They are the key to unlocking the forbidden fruit and the tree of knowledge, knowledge which will allow us to succeed."
They entered the blister and a rather large egg sac was illuminated on the other side of the glass, at least four times the size of the one they had collected. Baltese hit a button and the room on the other side began to rotate away, and another chamber was exposed. This one contained three people, two male and one female, all of them in suspended animation and restrained to the wall.
"My my aren't we all expectant parents," said Spears.
Baltese looked over at him and smiled.
"All in due time, my dear colleague. All in due time."
Out in the hallway, Dr. Baltese nearly collided with Dr. Yilmaz transporting a specimen to the observation blister cages, what appeared to be a macroscopic parasite known colloquially as a 'hammerpede'.
"Sorry, sir," he quickly apologized as he moved out of the way and continued onward. Baltese made a beeline for the control room, which he quickly entered and shut the door behind him. "Be out in a minute," he said with a quick smile. But he was unfortunately not alone.
Dr. York was sitting in the sliding and elevating chair attached to a wall of monitors, each containing a surveillance feed of a different area of the complex.
"Morning, Dr. Baltese."
"Mornin," he replied curtly as he flicked the syringe.
Dr. York would annoy him once again with a rather stupid question, "what're you up to?"
Baltese quickly inserted the syringe into his cephalic vein before York could say anything further or protest.
"Just bringing a hypodermic needle to a stethoscope fight," he replied.
This would catch up to him in the end, however. He tried to play it off, as he almost always was alone during injections. But, as he approached Spears, Riker and Angel as they were leaving that floor, Yilmaz ran full-speed around the corner.
"Spears! Baltese is lying about taking samples from containment! I have proo–" what Baltese correctly assumed was a soft drive containing footage of him inside the surveillance room shooting up the xeno-zip went flying out of his hand as he collided with another doctor, this time York, and sent the specimen containers crashing onto the floor.
"Baltese," shouted Spears. He hurried to the elevator right as containment protocols went into effect. The flashing red lights betrayed the immediate sense of danger, as they watched as the doors closed, and frightened screaming could be heard on the other side followed by a sickening squelching sound as the creature found a warm place to call home.
* * *
USCSS Rubicon – Tartarus Sector, Outer Rim – 130.4 trillion miles from Sol
- Standing Crew: 27
- Passengers: 1
- POWs: 1
- Marine Drop Crew: 11
Heavy industrial metal echoed throughout the corridor as Supply Tech William Vidmar worked away on the ship-wide plumbing electronics that had been faulty ever since emerging from stasis a few hours ago. The old boombox from the 1990's had been passed down throughout his family ever since, and he'd inherited it. Not everyone aboard was happy about this, as practically no one liked his style of music, and some of the crew outright hated it.
One of these people was Junior Analyst Cassandra Kayser, who stood beside the device as Vidmar lay on his back waist-deep in the wall and wiring. She had shouted his name twice now, yet he had failed to hear her. She reached down and angrily turned off the boombox.
Vidmar slid out with a quickness and sat up in the span of roughly a second.
"Hey!"
"Captain wants all the crew in Bay 6 for a briefing, thirty minutes," Kayser sighed and stepped over him, continuing down the corridor likely to tell more people. Vidmar grunted and stood up, grabbing his coat and his phone and heading down after her.
* * *
Hicks was one of the first to wake, on her way down the corridor to the mess hall she encountered Chief Warrant Officer Harold Pallo.
"I'm the Quartermaster aboard here," he said, after introducing himself. Before Hicks could respond, a booming, disembodied voice echoed throughout the ship.
"And I am SCI-ON, welcome aboard the USCSS Rubicon."
"He gets a kick out of scaring the newcomers, don't ya SCI-ON?"
"I apologize, I did not mean to scare you, miss..."
"Hicks," she replied. "Alice Hicks."
Pallo leaned in and whispered to her, "he's lying." He then gave her the tour and introduced her to some more of the crew in the mess hall.
* * *
The fitness dojo was adjacent to Bay 6, so a lot of practice took place in the rather cavernous room. The marines and sailors were deeply engaged in their routines when Captain Murz, First Officer Richter and the new passengers arrived. Gunnery Sergeant Nicolas Santiago and Hicks were in a marksmanship competition with their M41A3 burst rifles, and it was getting difficult to determine a winner. Santiago suggested a tie-breaker.
"Knives now."
"Knives, hmm," she inquired.
"Knives," he repeated, holding it up, he then looked to the side and flung his combat knife into the target.
The sound that emanated from the target was not what he expected, a metallic clinking. He scrunched his face up in confusion and looked over to see Hicks had already deployed her own knife into his target.
"You've gotten slow in your old age, Gunney," said the combat engineer, Second Lt. J.D. Muller. This drew a frustrated look from the communications technician, Sergeant Jacob Kelly. Meanwhile, despite his best efforts, Senior Chief Petty Officer Jaden Richter had succeeded only in getting the attention of the half dozen or so on the floor above them in the short-range bunk rooms. Hicks saw the trio of gunners in the back.
"What're you three too good for us or somethin," the Sergeant said to them, as if reading her mind. It was at this moment she realized Corporal Rhodes was nowhere in sight.
Finally, succeeding where her first officer had failed, the Captain booms, "I don't care if a fly lands on your eyeball and takes a shit, you will not move one more muscle! HA-TEEEEENSHUN!"
The noises in the room ceased and the marine drop crew formed up. Sailors here and there were present on the periphery of the Bay, and the rest of the crew observed from a railing above.
"So, this was initially just supposed to be a routine stop on our way to the Frontier, but something's come up."
"Because of fucking course it has," shouted a man Hicks would come to know as Chief Cook Lucas Attard.
"Look, we all appreciate you and understand you're stressed, but don't interrupt me, Attard."
"In like Flynn, ma'am," said Senior Electrician Matthew Grech. Supply Tech Julian Reid, one of the few Brits in the Outer Rim Defense Fleet, leaned over and whispered something to Grech. From her vantage point, if her lip-reading skills were adept enough, it looked as though he'd said, "would you dare look a heavily-armed horse in the mouth?"
Assistant Engineer Oscar Evers leaned in and said something from behind the two which resulted in an annoyed reaction from Reid.
"Chewing the fat with Matt," he said, repeating Evers's question in a newly-elevated tone. "Chewing the fat with Matt? Your ceaseless palinoia and objurgating inculcated obloquy is multiloquous macrology, yet acerebral."
"Your captain is speaking!" Shouted Richter.
"Thanks, but I can speak for myself, Officer."
Richter then leaned in and spoke just above a whisper, saying, "Pallo and I warned you extensively about this group of marines. They were under the command of the late General Spears, the terrorist."
"They aren't terrorists," said Murz. "Just idiots, mostly. Let me handle this."
"So you're saying some of them are terrorists?"
Most of them had gone back to bickering and idle chattering.
"Again, your captain is SPEAKING!"
"How can anyone possibly hear the horse over this ass," said Muller.
"Care to repeat that little comment, lieutenant?"
"Oh! So, now what you're saying is, you can't even hear anything over the sound of your own–"
"THIS WILL BE YOUR MOST DANGEROUS MISSION," Murz shouted!
Silence consumed Bay 6.
Evers snickered a bit.
"Oh, you think I'm joking? Well, I'm not," she said, looking over the faces in the room. "A lot of you are here because you're A) suicidal, B) stupid, or C) here against your will," she said, casting a sideways glance at Grant who was kept under surveillance by science officer Armas and Donald Rutherford in the back-left corner of the room.
"As most of you know by now, in light of our transporting of a prisoner, we have with us today a W-Y representative, Mr. Rutherford?" She said, motioning to him to approach. He was a taller man, with well-kept physical features and dark eyes.
He briefly explained that the prisoner they were escorting would be reinstated into the corps at one rank lower than he was when he deserted, much to the chagrin of the present marine drop crew. "He will be escorting you to the planet below, as he has information on what we may be facing, and how to overcome it."
"Thank you, Mr. Rutherford. Now," the captain tapped her bracelet a few times and the room darkened, a holographic screen projected against the back wall, bathing the room in red.
"Meet LV-2412's binary star parents, the one on the right is Gliese 299 B, and the first one you noticed is Gliese 299 A – more commonly known as 'Ross-619' – one of the brightest and reddest dwarf stars in the known universe."
The red star blazed brilliantly in contrast to its dull and dark brown dwarf compatriot in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The planet – LV-2412, colloquially known as 'Skyfire Down' – sat insignificant against the blazing glory of Ross-619, its small moon Wormwood just barely visible.
"Skyfire Down and its moon Wormwood are just far enough away that it's safe from the rays. But, the entirety of the planet itself is considered the most hostile environment known. Because the planet's biosphere itself evolved from a kill-or-be-killed environment, everything that breathes down there is geared to kill you as quickly and efficiently as possible. Some say even the ground you walk on watches you."
In orbit around LV-2412, the Rubicon pulled up next to a hulking and inert mass floating idly around the planet. As its searchlight passed over the hull, its name was revealed. HMCSS 'Grey Stripe,' a civilian-rated deep space vessel.
"We split into two teams. Rutherford, you're with us. We'll board the Grey Stripe and see what we can find out from there. Santiago and Hicks will lead the marine drop crew to the planet below. We'll get twice the ground covered and twice the work done that way. Let's get the hardest part done, boys."
"Hardest part? And what would that be, captain," inquired Pallo.
"Why, getting started of course. This isn't going to be easy, Pallo, nothing ever is."