Variant: A science fiction thriller (The Predictive: Deep Space Fringe Wars Book 2)

by L. V. Lane

  It opened with a screech of protest from the titaliua plate, allowing the first occupants to stumble out. I moved without realizing it, went through the motions of helping people off with increasing fear and worry. A few were badly injured, but most had minor bruising.

  Finally, and after I thought he might go insane with worry, Landon stepped through the loading door with a blood splattered Eva in his arms.

  “She’s fine,” Landon said, halting me in my tracks. He sounded normal, but he always sounded fucking normal. He placed her down on the muddy ground and a medic hurried over.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t Brent.

  I knelt on Eva’s other side.

  “I’m okay,” she said. Her fingers squeezed mine without any strength.

  “She’s still suffering from an earlier sedation,” Landon said to the medic who took over, pressing the scanner to her forehead. “Painkillers are fine, but no sedation without my personal permission. The nose bleed happened before we crashed.”

  Landon turned to me, motioning me to rise. “It looks worse than it is. I promise you. Now, I need you both,” his eyes encompassed Riley and me, “to tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Landon

  ERIC LOOKED LIKE he’d been dunked in a mud bath—repeatedly. Riley wasn’t much better. Thick, cloying, mist rose from the sodden ground. From everyone’s ‘drowned’ appearance, it had been as hellish as I’d feared.

  I needed Eric and Riley to focus on the situation. Eva might be important, but she was one person. 10,000 others, or however many survived, needed their attention too. “What are our losses and casualties?”

  “We lost four transports, along with their occupants and supplies.” Eric thumbed over his shoulder. “They missed the landing site and plowed into the side of the gorge. Between the torrential rain and gusting wind, I’m amazed we didn’t lose more. We have one more transport unaccounted for. We lost contact with it not long after it launched. Most transports have some level of minor damage. We’ve got numerous injuries. But other than those who were onboard the lost transports, no other deaths, last I heard.” His focus settled on the decimated transport, which was embedded in a tree. “It’s a miracle you landed.”

  “I’m not sure I would call hitting that tree a miracle.” I studied the native trees with interest. They were colossal in a primordial sort of way. Between the oversized trees, the thick with ferns and creepers, it had a lost world feel.

  “We commandeered a transport as an operations room,” Eric said. “The key personnel are there and will have the most recent data.” Eric peered out into the trees as if trying to get his bearings and then tapped on his wrist plate before indicating the way we should proceed. “The earbuds have been useless. They aren’t meant for these conditions. When it rains here, it really rains. We lost communications immediately after you departed the ship.”

  We trudged through the mud under Eric’s direction. After a short distance, the ground turned to rock, the trees thinned, and sunshine flooded the area as we emerged onto the chasm edge. Colonists and military personnel stood or sat in clusters near to the tree line. I was surprised to find sufficient space for several transports to park side-by-side. Although at present, they had been scattered far and wide.

  “It’s the third on the right.” Eric indicated a transport with a steady stream of people moving in and out.

  “What happened to the ship?” Riley asked as we traversed the rocky ground that had begun to dry in patches.

  “It exploded,” I said evenly. “Do you have any idea why?”

  “Exploded?” Riley repeated.

  “Yes, as in it broke into thousands of tiny, and not so tiny, pieces. I’m amazed our transport got us as close as it did before it gave out given the hammering it took from the ship debris. Some of the debris burned up when we hit the atmosphere, but a lot didn’t. If not for some friendly PB fire, we—”

  “PB fire?” Riley asked. “Did you just say PB fire?” She slipped on the rocky surface and corrected herself at the last moment.

  “Yes, PB fire that can reach the edge of the atmosphere. I can only presume it came from the city or some other support network of technology. Several chunks of our former ship were obliterated. The imminent impact warning was getting a work out.”

  Riley went to ask another question. I cut her off. “Later, I need an inventory of what we have because now the ship is gone, whatever we have, is all that we have.”

  “We don’t have enough of anything,” Riley said softly. “We’re doing a tally the manual way, but I can already tell you there is nowhere near enough. Given your transport was the last and barely made it out, we were prudent to focus on personnel. We are in for some uncomfortable times, especially if the weather continues to be this challenging.”

  “We will work it out,” I said. “We don’t have a choice. It’s a year until the next ship arrives.”

  “If it arrives,” Riley said.

  I stopped. It took another step before Riley and Eric did the same. A few people had noticed my arrival and a small crowd formed a short distance away. “Whatever happened on the ship needs to be put aside.” I kept my voice low and fixed my steady gaze on Riley. “There will be plenty of scaremongers given our predicament. I expect you both to keep your areas in line.”

  “She gets it,” Eric said, coming to Riley’s defense.

  “Good, because we don’t have time for theatrics.” My eyes shifted to the left where the misty gorge was visible between the parked transports. A great rushing thrum was coming from that direction. “Did you check on the lost transports?”

  “The ones that crashed?” Eric asked. “No, we couldn’t see further than twenty paces in the height of the downpour, and it literally stopped raining seconds before you smacked into a tree.”

  “We will need to collect the supplies if it’s possible.” I changed track toward the edge. Eric and Riley followed me, along with the crowd of people.

  I stopped a pace away from the edge. “Spectacular and deadly.” The gorge sliced the region in two. Perhaps half-mile wide, and of similar depth. The land on either side was flat, while the chasm sides were sheer rock banded with shades of bluish gray. Plants clung in mottled pockets of vibrant green. Within the immediate area, at least a dozen substantive rivers exploded into waterfalls. They burst out from the chasm edge, turning to spray, then mist, before cascading down the chasm sides before meeting a churning river far below. Peering over, I could see the scattered remnants of a transport. “Do we know how long this break in the weather will last?”

  “No idea. Lai had her monitoring kit with her, but given what happened—” Eric left it hanging.

  I looked each way along the edge-line. “No easy way down there… and it’s a long way. If the weather holds, we should take a transport.”

  A cry came from our right. “We’ve got movement in the gorge!”

  We edged forward as one.

  “Fuck,” Eric said inadequately.

  “Fuck,” Riley agreed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eric

  I HAD TO give credit to Landon, he was the only one who didn’t swear. Although Riley sounded kind of cute muttering ‘fuck’.

  Landon turned to Riley. “Any drones?”

  “It’s possible some were brought, but I don’t know where they might be.”

  Landon turned to me.

  “We’re just reacting here.” I rubbed fingers through my damp hair. If this were any other military operation, I’d have loaded myself with stimulant hours ago. There weren’t any fake boosts available today, and I’d been running on reserves for a while. “There hasn’t been time to complete an inventory.”

  “What about field sights?”

  I glanced down at myself meaningfully. I hadn’t stopped to change before heading down here and still wore the standard ship-side, black military fatigues, now sodden and plastered in mud. They weren’t close to appropriate for the conditions on
Serenity. The only bit of tech I had on that remained functioning was my wrist plate. I patted myself down as if searching for the requested field sights in a highly sarcastic way before my face went deadpan. “Not a chance.” I nudged my head at Landon. “Looks like we both dressed for ‘Serenity’. You should have named the planet ‘Hellish as fuck’ and then we might have got the dress code right.”

  Riley coughed out a laugh and then pulled herself up in a ‘this-is-too-serious-for-jokes’ kind of way. I’d been through some character building experiences and I took my fleeting moments of joy wherever I could.

  “Now your sense of humor returns,” Landon muttered as he turned and immediately began assessing the people in the vicinity. His eyes settled the tree line just as Jax emerged.

  The single look Landon leveled at Jax was enough, and the Marine headed over at a jog. It had been a long and exhausting period since we’d left the ship, but Jax still had an annoying bounce to his step that set my teeth on edge. Although, I was begrudgingly impressed that he still had his team with him, and would make a bet he also knew where his other two teams were, or at least that they had a scheduled check in.

  Jax had barely reached us when Landon demanded, “Field sights?”

  Of course, Jax, who was fully kitted out in shell armor and weapons, whipped a set out and presented them to Landon. “I had five minutes downtime before my scheduled launch, so I grabbed everything I thought might be useful.” He grinned. “Then grabbed anything else that was near.”

  Landon took the sights while giving me a pointed look. “Good work, Jax.”

  Asshole.

  I wished I’d had five minutes downtime to get shell armor. The black suit had gained that nickname after it was first introduced several decades ago. The matte black armor resembled the overlapping shell of a beetle. Several models had been developed. It looked bulky but it was lightweight, and almost as flexible as cloth. It could take a lot of hits, both projectile and energy, before its integrity was compromised.

  Pivoting, Landon crouched down at the edge and lifted the sights to his eyes. “Yes, we have movement. Definitely people. I can see three… no, four.” He tracked to his left, and then lay down on the ground so he could get closer to the edge. “I can see two transports. There should be more people.”

  Jax immediately followed suit.

  I looked down at myself, regarded my damp, mud splattered fatigues with a grimace, then got down on the ground too. “Where are the other two?” I squinted, impatient to have my turn with the sights. Watery interference ranged from light mist to heavy spray. It was impossible to make out much other than a vague impression of movement.

  “Another transport….” Landon pointed to the right, and then handed the sights to Jax.

  Jax scoped from the nearby crash to the distant one just visible before a turn in the gorge. “Yeah, that one’s broken up, though. The river is wild.” He passed the sights back to Landon, who took another look.

  “Yes, not much we can do about that and we need to prioritize.” Landon passed the sights to me, finally, before he stood. Jax also jumped to his feet.

  I adjusted the sight. Between the pounding waterfalls and river, it was possible the fourth transport had broken up and been carried away. Debris lay scattered across the riverbanks. The two nearest transports were close together. One was upside down but still largely intact. The other had gone down onto a huge boulder and rested at a precarious angle.

  “We’re going down,” Landon said. “Organize a transport. Pilot, tech, nav, and a couple of medics. We should collect whatever we can down there, so bring a couple of colonists with engineering or basic ER or preferably both. Plus one of your units, and that’s it. I’ll be in the ops transport. I want to see if they have any info on this weather before we leave. Fetch me as soon as you’re ready.”

  Shuffling back from the edge, I dragged my weary body up. My clothes were starting to dry in the heat, and the mud crust presented a new impediment to movement.

  “T-32 is close and in good repair.” Riley indicated the transport a hundred paces to our right.

  “I’ll organize that one,” Jax said.

  At Landon’s nod, Jax took off, accompanied by his team.

  I lifted the sight to study the nearby cliff edge. “Want me to get a team to scope the area?”

  Landon lifted his face skyward. “Looks clear, but how long that will last is anybody’s guess. We need to get down fast and work fast. While I’m gone, I need you to focus on organizing the people here.”

  “Sir!”

  We all looked up. From the far side of the clearing, a man headed toward us at a break-neck run. “We’ve had an animal attack!” He skidded to a halt, nearly colliding with Riley in the process. I snatched Riley out of the way just in time. If I hadn’t, they would be scraping the Technologist off the bottom of the chasm!

  “And?” Landon’s expression smoothed out.

  I mentally cringed.

  “Three people are injured,” the man said, losing steam under Landon’s steady regard. He cast a look my way. “I… We sent medics to attend!”

  “Weapons?” Landon wore that overly patient air he sometimes did.

  “Weapons?” the man repeated back.

  “Do you not have weapons?” Landon stared pointedly to the man’s holstered gun.

  I cringed for real this time. I didn’t know every member of the military, but I knew every unit leader and this man’s leader was sure to get a roasting later.

  “Erm… Yes, sir, we do.”

  “The next time an animal attacks, shoot it.”

  The man started to bluster again.

  “It’s very simple,” Landon said. “You shoot it, or I shoot you. We’re in a crisis situation. I expect no more casualties due to an animal attack.” Landon stared beyond the man at the chaotic scene before them. “Where is the rest of your unit?”

  I could sense where this was going. Jax and his team were rounding up the necessary people for the rescue. A few others nearby were busy. But far too many were busy gawking over the edge of the chasm at the crashed transports, and many more were doing absolutely nothing.

  “I’m not military,” the man stammered. “They asked me to help.” He turned toward me for support again. “We became separated.”

  I squinted at the man’s clothing, realizing it was the engineering team’s dark brown and not black of military under the mud.

  When I glanced back toward Landon, I found him staring at me expectantly.

  I sighed. “I’m on it.”

  “Good. I want a perimeter established with competent personnel on duty. I want a count of people and supplies. Whatever shelters we have need to be set up. And rations locked down before people begin to hide them. Transports can be used as temporary shelters for the injured. The rest can work it out. Then I want an update—assuming we can find functioning earbuds.”

  “I’m on it,” I repeated. I motioned the hapless man to accompany me and left Landon and Riley to it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Landon

  MY BOOTS ECHOED against the rocky surface of the chasm edge as I made my way to the temporary operations transport with Riley in tow. Perhaps not so temporary, I reflected. We still had another year of this, whatever this was.

  “We barely got through the landing.” Riley kept pace at my side. While not mud-splattered to the same degree as Eric, she ran a close second. “None of us have had a chance to catch our breath, and now this?”

  “I know,” I said, because I did know. “But however bad you think it is now, and however tired we might be, and however much we might want to stop and take a moment to rest, we can’t. If we don’t bring this chaos to order, it’s going to get a whole lot worse.”

  “It could have been a lot worse,” Riley said simply.

  Yes, it could, and I was disinclined to ponder what might have happened had Riley not been on the ship, and had she not had the skills to plug the ship system failures for long eno
ugh for everyone to get off. Despite this, Riley was going to be viewed with greater suspicion when everyone figured out the ship, and therefore additional supplies, were gone. I would need to tell Eric to watch her, lest anyone get notions of delivering justice the old-fashioned way.

  “Can we do anything about the comms?”

  “I’ll look into it,” she said. “The transports should have short wave capability. It will be problematic if another storm arrives. I’m not convinced anything will work while you’re in the gorge, with or without rain. There are people down there with communication earbuds. Even if the transport comms were damaged, we should have received a message. I left the operations transport about ten minutes before you landed and there had been no communication. We must presume whatever the survivors in the gorge have, it either won’t reach because of rock or distance.”

  “What can we do about communication going forward if the earbuds aren’t working? This is like going back to the dark ages.” I had no idea what the elusive dark ages were like, but it seemed the kind of place not to have communication.

  “It’s possible I can hack the wrist plates into a crude comms device of sorts. It’s not their intended purpose, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  I nodded before squinting up at the sky. It had been brilliant blue when we first emerged from the trees. But on the horizon, I could see a wall of clouds approaching. “I hope that isn’t coming our way.”

  “My time on Serenity has been short,” Riley said with a despondent air that Eric was always teasing her about. “But I would suggest hoping won’t serve any of us well on this planet.”

  “Yes, I’m getting the idea.” I knew better than to discount the barrage of negative insights. Serenity turned out to be a farcical choice of name. Our colony benefactor was due on the next ship. I could just imagine Victor Loire’s reaction to the name when he arrived. The business mogul had a cutting sense of humor and was sure to find the irony amusing… assuming we survived that long. Maybe the weather was seasonal?