by Dan Davis
“Yes, well, sadly, the damage to their cells was rather more significant that originally feared and it may take some time for them to be cured and revived. But we have months before we are home and if they ever do make it through, the intention is to form a very small special forces unit that we can use for high risk missions. At least, until they are KIA, which will perhaps not take very long. But, should their medical problems be resolved, they will do their duty for humanity until the inevitable happens. I have a feeling that we will need to draw on the services of every capable human that we can if we are going to survive two wars, on two fronts, with two advanced alien species. And we will need the support of our allies.”
Kat looked at the digital mock up on the screen of the new alien threat that awaited them in the new Orb Arena. A species that was all swirling tentacles and evil intentions.
“Alright,” she said. “When do I start?”
21.
White pain. Searing brightness flooded his eyes and a deep, rumbling humming filled his ears with a rhythmic vibration.
What is happening? Where am I?
“Everything’s alright,” a calm voice said from nearby. A cool palm pressed against his forehead. “You are experiencing severe disorientation. You are perfectly safe. Slow your breathing. Please relax.”
Ram’s throat was so dry he could not speak. It was dark and he was laying on his back. Waking from a long sleep.
“Just be patient and all will be well, soon enough,” the voice said. It was a woman. He recognized it but could not think who it belonged to. “All will be well, mate.”
“Relatively speaking,” a new voice said. That voice was also familiar, and yet different. Masculine but strange. Artificial.
“Quiet,” the woman’s voice said. “Bloody idiot.”
“Just being realistic,” the voice said. “Don’t want to get his hopes up.”
“Knock it off,” the woman said. “No one finds you amusing.”
Pain throbbed in his temples and he blinked, light stabbing into his eyes like pin pricks.
“What’s going on?” Ram said, or tried to. A straw was slipped between his lips and he drank ice cold water down. “Am I cured? The radiation? Or am I dying?”
His hands were free and he rubbed his eyes, blinking his vision back. It was incredibly bright but he could see a woman standing over him, looking down. She wore a UNOP Navy uniform.
“You are in perfect health,” she said. “Although you’ve been inactive for a long time and you need to improve your physical condition. And you need to do so pretty bloody rapidly, frankly.”
He frowned, squinting up at the face. It was familiar. He did know her but she looked different. Fuller in the face, fuller in the body. Her mouth and eyes wrinkled, deeply.
“Lieutenant Xenakis?” Ram said. “Kat? Is that you?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “It’s been a while, mate.”
“She is Captain Xenakis, now,” the other person said, unseen across the room somewhere.
“Captain?” Ram said, trying to think. Trying to remember. “Captain of the Stalwart Sentinel?”
She snorted a laugh that had no trace of humor. “We are onboard my ship, the Hereward, which is a corvette.” She looked across the room. “And my position is a captain of this vessel but my rank is Lieutenant Commander.”
“Congratulations on your promotion,” Ram said. “Where are we?”
“Heading into danger.”
He became aware of other people in the room around his bed, medical staff monitoring him. It was a medical center. Ram felt like he was always coming to in those places, always being roused by someone strange. A medicalized life.
A man began coughing near to him. Before the coughing had fully subsided, his angry voice rose above every other noise. “What the hell is going on? Why am I hooked up to all this shit?”
Ram recognized the voice. “Sergeant Stirling?” he called out. “It’s Lieutenant Seti.”
“Sir? How’s your arm, sir?”
Ram had forgotten about losing it and he looked at his hands. “Seems I grew a new one.”
“Gentlemen,” Lt. Commander Xenakis said, cutting in. “Fellas. Listen up. You’ve been asleep a long time and there is a lot to catch you up on. Very little of it is good news.”
Ram struggled to sit up and some medical staff tried to hold him down but he pushed them away. Someone huge slid up at the edge of his still-blurry vision, and for a moment Ram assumed it was Sergeant Stirling coming to help him up. But the figure approached from the wrong side.
A massive, three-fingered hand with sharp claws appeared in front of him, the thick, knobbly alien skin a deep, mottled red. Ram recoiled away from it and looked up at a massive wheelhunter, the central hub and legs clad in a slick, dark gray environment suit. The arms and hands were bare and exposed acres of the red skin.
It was making a bizarre noise.
“Ha ha ha. I told you he would be surprised.”
Lt. Commander Xenakis, standing beside the alien, rolled her eyes as Ram sat up and swung his legs off the side. “You’re lucky he didn’t pull your bloody arm off and beat you to death with it, you idiot.”
“He wouldn’t do that. We’re old friends, aren’t we, Rama Seti? Old comrades. Such a joy to see you again.” The alien crept back a few gigantic steps, holding out its arms as best it could and bending into what Ram assumed was meant to be a formal bow. Or maybe a curtsey. Its translated voice was generated from somewhere unseen, presumably integral to its suit.
“Red?” Ram rubbed his face. “You’re the same wheeler we dragged out of that cave? Brought up to the Sentinel?”
“And with a functioning memory, how wonderful.”
Ram wondered for a moment whether he was dreaming. On the other bed in the room, Sergeant Stirling sat glaring at the alien and at the medical staff with equal hostility. He and Ram were naked but for a few draped pieces of papery cloth.
“How long?” Ram asked.
“You were both put into a coma twenty-six years ago.”
She handed over a screen and Ram yanked it from her grasp. The little date display in the corner said the year was 2228. August 12th. When he had been on Arcadia, the year was 2201.
“Twenty-six years?” Ram said, holding his hand over his eyes. “Why? What happened?”
“A great deal happened,” Kat said, her voice thick with emotion. “Your radiation damage was extensive and took a little longer to heal than anticipated but that was just a few months more than was planned.”
“I’m healed?”
“Fully. You both are.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to phrase it in this way but you were put to one side and forgotten about for a long time, as we had more important issues to deal with.”
Ram could tell from her face that she was not kidding around. “Something bad has happened.”
She nodded. “The new threat, the Hex, the hexadecapodiformes, were more than our subjects could handle. That Orb Station operates an arena combat every nine years. The first attempt was in 2210 and our subject lost. Badly. Our enemy was awarded, by the Orb Builders, rights and access to the Sol System. Just like that. We appealed to the Orb but it was as intransigent as always.”
Ram felt a deep stirring in his chest. “They invaded our home system?”
“They are technologically superior to us. They are physically superior. They had more ships, with higher power output.” She broke off, cleared her throat. “Sadly, it was not much of a battle. We had little chance. UNOP High Command decided, in order to save the fleet, that we would not contest the Earth. So, in 2212, the Earth was lost.”
Ram and Stirling exchanged a look. They each gripped the edges of their beds.
“Lost?” Ram said.
Stirling’s eyes were filled with horror. “Earth is destroyed?”
“Not destroyed,” Kat said. “The enemy occupy Earth. Millions were killed, most of them by starvation and disease following the breakdown in ord
er and in trade. Probably over a billion by now and increasing but it’s almost impossible to say for certain. The Hex have bases, cities, launch sites. They occupy our homeworld and try to convert our people to their ideology while humanity does its best to carry on in smaller and smaller enclaves all over the planet. Some small nations stayed together, most others broke up into separate states. Lawlessness. Famine. Urban areas were the worst hit, of course. The Hex don’t want to wipe us out, we’re doing that without them. What they want is to make us see reality like they do, worship the Orbs like they do. Anyone who dissents and rejects their indoctrination is killed.”
“Can we win it back?” Stirling said, nodding at Ram. “Like he did against the wheelers. Win in the arena?”
“The second combat was 2219 and we lost that, too. The enemy pushed us back from Earth and from Mars, until we’re just about holding on out there in the outer system, and in asteroids and orbital stations everywhere. We have the 55-Cancri System and a thriving economy primarily on Arcadia is helping us to maintain the war. The largest population and industrial center is Rama Seti City.” She gave him a quick smile.
“You’re kidding?” Ram said.
Stirling laughed.
Kat shook her head. “Rama is the place to be.”
“They turned the outpost into a city?” Ram asked.
“Oh, no,” Kat said. “They tried. The outpost became Sentinel Colony for a few years but it was in too poor a position on the surface to grow into much. It is a research station now. And a tourist attraction, for some reason. No, Rama Seti City is on the coast, in a sheltered bay on either side of a deep river where it flows out to the Sentinel Sea.”
The sergeant snorted. “Naming everything Sentinel, are they?” He grinned. “Should have called it the Stirling Sea.”
“Well,” Kat said, “there is a mining town called Stirling up in the central highlands.”
Stirling’s face fell. “Seriously? Oh, shit.”
Ram wondered if there was anything named after Milena Reis. A hollow sickness gripped his guts at the memory of her loss. He could not bring himself to give voice to the question, did not trust himself to speak her name aloud.
Not fully healed, after all.
“And where are we right now? Where is the corvette Hereward heading?” Ram looked at Kat. “Why did you wake us up?”
She nodded. “You got it. We need you. I obtained the both of you a few months back, along with the equipment you will need for the mission. And I found you a team, such as they are.”
“The mission is what?” Ram said. Stirling sat up straighter.
“We’re running the blockade,” Lt. Commander Xenakis said. “We need you and your team to land on Earth. There is a new weapon, a prototype, hidden underground and you will need to find it and get it off-world, away from the enemy to where it can be used.”
Ram nodded. “Do I get a few minutes to stretch my legs first?”
Kat smiled. “We’re a couple of weeks away, yet. You’ll need to train hard and use the time to get to know your team all over again.”
“Again?” He looked at Stirling, who shrugged.
“Me, for one,” the alien in the corner said. “Try to contain your excitement.”
“Is that really Red?” Ram asked. “The one from Arcadia?”
“I can assure you, sir, that I am the one and only. The original.”
“Why is it talking like that?”
Kat pinched the bridge of her nose. “He not only enjoys human comedy and humor, he thinks he’s actually funny. No, that’s not quite it. He makes himself laugh. The fact that every human he’s ever met finds him insufferable doesn’t stop him.”
“I bet the humans on Earth will be glad to see me.”
“It’s not really on my team, is it? Red is on my team? We’re letting one of them on our home planet?”
“He’s already been. Two decades ago, he was part of the team that negotiated the terms of our alliance. We recognize the legitimacy of the wheeler splinter group and support them to overthrow their central powers while they assist us in the war against the Hex.”
“I gave a speech at the United Nations,” Red said, the voice emerging from the hulking great insect-lizard that filled a quarter of the compartment. “In spite of my best efforts, I was not a diplomat for very long. I have since trained and operated as a commando. I am quite good at it. I found my calling in life.”
Ram felt like he had woken up in the middle of a dream. “You, me and Stirling are going to invade the Earth, are we?”
“Not just you, Ram. Send them in,” the Lt. Commander said, turning to the door as it opened.
A couple of soldiers in mismatching fatigues stepped in. Ram recognized them at once as older, slower versions of Cooper, Flores, and Fury. They gathered about their sergeant and all talked at once, sad smiles on their faces. Flores was not a youngster any more. She was hardened, dead-eyed. Fury was close to being an old woman, and she was even thinner, and held herself as rigid as a rifle barrel. Cooper made no attempt to joke and had extensive scar tissue now on his face and neck. No Harris. No Tseng.
Ram lowered his voice while the others were distracted. “Not that I’m ungrateful for being woken up. And I don’t want to criticize team mates. But if this mission is so important, why is it left to me? And to this team?”
Lt. Commander Xenakis nodded. “Resources are stretched to breaking point. In fact, breaking point was so many years ago now I can barely remember it. UNOP Navy, humans all over the system, everyone has been falling back into using whatever we can find and bring to bear. UNOP uses old ships, uses fission over fusion power generation. Calling on people who retired. It’s total war, now. Every living human is dedicated to the war, in some way or other.”
“We’re all you could get,” Ram said, nodding.
“No, not at all,” the Lt. Commander said. “I have complete faith in you. I know what you can do. All of you. I’ve seen it.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Ram said to Lt. Commander Xenakis. “We really lost the Earth, Kat?”
“We’ve got a chance to win it back again at the next Orb Station combat,” she said. “But only if you and your team can retrieve the weapon from the surface and bring it back to this ship.”
“Alright,” Ram said, standing on shaking legs, towering over everyone and feeling his body to make sure it was the same one he went to sleep in. “I guess it’s time to go to work.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Rama Seti’s story continues in Outpost Omega: Galactic Arena Book 3.
Read on…
OUTPOST OMEGA
Galactic Arena
Book 3
Rama Seti
and Orb Station Alpha
AD 2228
Dan Davis
Copyright © 2019 Dan Davis
All rights reserved.
1.
The impact of the deceleration pounded Rama Seti into his gravity chair with such crushing force that he was certain for a moment that something had gone terribly wrong. His combat suit whirred in his ears, injecting him with drugs to help him resist the massive g-forces and the dropship shook violently as the massive engines fired.
Ram could see nothing but swirling lights of hallucinations as his eyeballs were squeezed out of shape and as his brain and optic nerves lost blood flow. He could hear nothing but the rumbles of the ship as it strained to resist the forces of the roaring engines and the clicking and whirring of his combat suit servos and pressure membrane squeezing his limbs. And he could do nothing but squeeze his eyes shut and wait to die.
He knew that if the dropship descent was off target, they would hit Earth’s atmosphere at too steep an angle and would be incinerated instead of pushing their way into it. Likewise, if the Hex’s planetary defense systems intercepted them, they would be blasted into pieces.
At least he would know nothing about it, should either eventuality come to pass, he thought. One moment he would be terrified and
crushed to twelve times his already-gigantic bodyweight and the next he would be vaporized. Nothing more than his constituent physical pieces traveling away from each other in fragments no larger than a mote of dust, his most volatile molecules shredded into elemental atoms.
Rama tried to feel comforted by this knowledge and yet he felt only existential dread.
Though the systems supporting his oversized body worked at the peak of their performance range to keep him alive through the brutal change in velocity required for reentry, Ram felt his mind drifting into something like a waking dream. Shaking off the threating unconsciousness, Ram dredged up a recent memory, of the mission briefing back on the Hereward almost two weeks before their dropship had been ejected from the corvette as it streaked by the Earth at incredible speed.
“So, in summary,” Lt. Commander Kat Xenakis had said, “your mission is to land in central Alaska, avoid any enemy ground and air forces, make your way to Outpost Omega, gain entry, extract the weapon, and make your way to the extraction point. You must make it in time to launch during the one and only launch window, otherwise you will not make the rendezvous and you will be destroyed or captured by the Hex in orbit. Any questions?”
Sitting beside Ram, Sergeant Stirling had raised his hand. “Are we allowed to use the weapon ourselves?”
“Any serious questions?” Lt. Commander Xenakis stood with her hands on her hips after she finished speaking and looked right at Rama.
Her ship, the Hereward, was enormous but devoted most of its mass to its engines and power generation and so the briefing room was also the mess hall. Beside her, Kat had a handful of her crew, ready to provide detailed mission information.
Only Ram and Sergeant Stirling had been unfamiliar with the mission because they had only recently woken from their prolonged stasis. The other members of Ram’s team were Cooper, Flores, and Fury and they sat around on the benches, their expressions neutral, having had months to become familiar with the mission parameters.