Ethan felt the jolt of the landing harder than the previous times he had dropped, probably because of the higher gravity. The exoskeleton would make it easier to carry his heavy load and move around down here, but even so he noticed the difference from the planets and moons he had previously visited.
The hatch blew outward, and a stink of sulphur entered his nostrils, even through the facemask. The drop zone was located near the center of the former colony, in what had once been some kind of town square.
"Shit, it stinks even more than the last time," Sharon complained. He was one of the veterans who had visited this planet before, when the legion was sent to help defend the Creon colonists.
The platoon exited the dropship, which took off to return to the Hellfire, while Ethan and his legionnaires conducted the recon mission.
"Decurion Snow, you have a radiation reading?" Ethan asked.
"Oh yes, I´m sending it through now. This place was nuked thoroughly, that´s for sure."
Someone did this, Ethan thought, as he stepped through the dust and ashes. Someone killed everyone and everything on this planet. For what? Resources? That was a riddle he still couldn´t answer.
"Injecting radiation countermeasures," Malika, their medic in charge said, and Ethan felt a slight sting in his neck.
"Heads up legionnaires, report anything unusual," Ethan said.
They formed up and began moving. Ethan was glad the exoskeletons were able to take the brunt of his load. He felt sweat trickling down his back. Even breathing took a small effort.
He was amazed by the fact that he could actually breathe this air, as long as he kept his facemask on. Without it he would have passed out within a couple of minutes, but still, he could actually breathe the air of a planet, lightyears away from Earth! The air was thick though, and he appreciated the extra oxygen the mask provided. And not having to wear a pressure suit felt good as well, even though the difference wasn´t as great as he had expected, as long as he wore an exoskeleton with full combat gear. Still, it was a different experience, only dwarfed by the fact that he was walking through a nuclear wasteland that had once held living creatures that were friends to humans.
An hour later they returned to the drop zone, having found no sign of life, and no indication of who had committed this unspeakable crime. Tribune Tanner shook his head before addressing the platoon.
"I will speak to each and every one of you once we´re back on the Hellfire, and go through every helmet cam as well. But so far this mission has been a disappointment. We still have no clue who did this, and why."
A transport came five minutes later, and they boarded it. Ethan looked out before the hatch closed, wondering how this world had looked while the Creons lived here. Then he turned his back on the ruined world and found a seat as the transport took off from the ground.
41.
The transport had barely cleared the atmosphere when a klaxon went off. Red lights overhead blinked and Ethan felt the artificial gravity system failing. He tapped his wrist and the face of the pilot appeared. She was breathing hard and struggling with something.
"Ma´am, what´s happening?" he asked.
"Adjunct, something... the main thruster is out of control, and our orientation is off.” She was working on something, and ignored Ethan while speaking to the copilot. “Unless we manage to shut down the main, we´ll reenter the atmosphere. And with the heat shield pointed in the wrong direction, we only have a few seconds to fix this. Or we burn on reentry."
"What do we do?" Ethan said, and the pilot seemed to notice he was still there. Clearly, the pilot was doing everything she could to save the ship. Ethan was beginning to fear it wouldn´t be enough.
There was no reply for a few moments. Then the loadmaster came floating out from the cockpit. Green lights began flashing over the emergency exits.
"Everyone to the lifeboats," the loadmaster shouted. "We only have a few seconds."
"You all heard the man," SD Sharon shouted, pushing the release button to let himself out of his exoskeleton. The other legionnaires in exos did the same. The loadmaster pulled a lever and the emergency exits blew open, revealing four pods, two on either side of the transport. Ethan pulled another legionnaire along and entered the closest one. Within seconds, twelve others were crammed inside the tiny pod, and the loadmaster closed the hatch from the outside.
The escape pods, or lifeboats as some preferred to call them, were automated, and once they were closed they would eject from the transport. Each pod had a small rocket that could be operated remotely by operators on board the Hellfire. As the pod shot out from the transport, Ethan got a glimpse of light from the planet as the pod spiraled away. Then all he could see was distant stars.
"What the hell happened?" someone asked. Ethan wondered about the same thing. What the hell just happened?
42.
Three hours later Ethan and the others from his escape pod sat in the Hellfire´s medical bay, while medics checked them over and tended to minor injuries sustained in the hectic moments from the alarms went off to their pods escaped the damaged transport. Ethan felt lucky to be alive. Not all of them had escaped, but thanks to the swift action of the crew, and because they had trained extensively for this sort of event, most had managed to board the escape pods in time. Three pods had escaped the doomed transport, successfully saving most of Ethan´s platoon. One pod, carrying three legionnaires, the transport´s loadmaster, and Decurion Snow, had been released too late. It had been captured by the gravity of the planet, crashing somewhere on the surface. A rescue and retrieve mission was currently under way, but no one expected there to be any survivors. The same could be said for the transport, which had burned on its way down, killing the pilot and the copilot.
"You were lucky to survive this," a medic said to him. Ethan looked up, and recognized Selena, the medic. He smiled weakly.
"We lost several good legionnaires though," he replied.
"The tribune who was with you, in one of the other pods, he wants to see you right away. He said he would be in Legate Camus´ quarters." Ethan got to his feet.
"Thank you, Adjunct," he said, and turned to walk away.
"Selena. Just Selena." Ethan smiled as he walked out of the medical bay, closing the door behind him.
Ethan walked until he found the entrance to the command deck. Two armed legionnaires stood watch, and one of them opened the door for him.
"They´re expecting you," he said.
Ethan entered and continued through the hallways until he reached Legate Camus´ quarters. He knocked carefully, twice.
"Enter," a gruff voice said. Ethan opened the door, and stepped inside.
Legate Camus sat in a lounge chair, frowning at his infopad. Tribune Tanner sat opposite from him, a bruise on his cheek and a spot of dried blood on his forehand. The escape into the pods had been rough going. By the legate´s desk stood a woman, one Ethan didn´t recognize. He recognized the sign on her shoulder though, the eye of the Legion´s Intelligence Service. One of Jeremy Tanner´s colleagues then.
"Have a seat, Adjunct," the legate said. Ethan sat down beside Tanner, and waited. This wasn´t a regular accident debriefing, he realized. Something was up.
"Your platoon did well," Camus said, his voice softer. "Still, we lost some good legionnaires, as well as most of the crew."
"Thank you Sir, we´ve trained extensively for such accidents."
"Unfortunately, it wasn´t an accident," Tribune Tanner growled. "It was sabotage." Ethan started. Sabotage?
"Who could have… Why do you think it was sabotage?"
The female Intel officer took a step forward and explained.
"In the final transmission from the pilot we detected a slight disturbance. Our techs have looked at it and the disturbance seems to be caused by interference from a power source from outside the hull. When we put that together with the fact that the pilot lost control of the ship it seems clear that something was messing with the controls. Someone put a device on the
ship that caused all this."
"But who would do such a thing?"
"That´s what I´ve asked myself too," the tribune said. "After all, it was just a transport. It wasn´t as if the starship or the Legion itself was badly hurt. We lost a small ship, one of which we still have several, and a few good men and women, of which we have thousands. So there has to be something more particular, something special about that exact flight."
"Something we saw, or discovered? But we didn´t see anything special, Sir."
"You might have seen something you just didn´t know enough about to recognize," Legate Camus speculated.
"We´ll figure it out, Sir," Tribune tanner replied. "I haven´t even begun debriefing the platoon yet. My guess is that you´re right; someone saw or discovered something, without being aware of it. A saboteur expected this and had prepared for it beforehand. Once we were on our way back to the Hellfire, he or she activated the device that caused the pilot to lose control of the transport."
Ethan listened to Tanner´s words. He still had trouble believing this had been an act of sabotage, but Intel had their ways of finding out about such things. Someone had deliberately tried to kill them, but who?
43.
The rest of the day passed slowly. He spoke with several legionnaires from the mission, but no one had any idea that they might have seen something worthwhile. He didn´t tell anyone about the sabotage though. Tanner had given him specific instructions not to, so there were limits to how deep he could probe. Thus, when it was his turn to be interviewed by Tribune Tanner, he was still in the dark about what could have caused the sabotage.
"Just give us time, Ethan," Tanner said. "We will figure it out, one way or the other."
Ethan wasn´t so sure about that, but he didn´t say that. Once the questioning ended, he had a question for the tribune.
"Sir, we were hoping to find refuge here, but that´s obviously out of the question. So, where do we go next?"
Tanner hesitated for a moment before answering.
"This isn´t exactly something we´re at liberty to discuss, but since you´re already in the know about more than most legionnaires, I guess it´s okay to tell you some of it. We were thinking about going to the Creon homeworld, and most of the Legion will do just that. It´s not that far, and with luck we´ll be received the way we were hoping for in this system. However, the Hellfire have a longer journey. We are going to Vega."
Ethan´s jaw fell open. He knew Vega was located some 25 lightyears from Sol.
"That´s one hell of a journey, Sir, even with cryo tech and the Alcubierre drive," he said. Tanner nodded.
"Which is why the Alcubierre drive is only part of the solution. We´ll be using clandestine tech for this one.
You see, the Confederacy never meant for us to roam the universe. We´re far too dangerous a species for that, apparently. So they gave us sufficient technology to carry out what has been our main task throughout the years, which is to help policing the stellar neighborhood whenever the need would arise. For that purpose, the Alcubierre was sufficient. But for greater distances, Earth´s government felt we needed something else. That´s why, a few years ago, the government made a deal with another race, to acquire a different technology. Let´s just call it wormholes, since the technical explanation is a bit complicated. Basically, with this tech we´re able to create a form of tunnels that cut through space in ways I cannot begin to explain. But the result is a combination of the Alcubierre drive and the wormhole tech, which cuts the travel time to a fraction of what the Alcubierre could manage on its own. It´s hugely expensive in terms of energy though, which is why it´s a good thing this system is now uninhabited. Using the star´s own energy, we´ll manage to make just the tunnel we need, but if the system had been inhabited we´d have devastated a large portion of it. This is why we cannot use wormhole tech anywhere near Sol, or within any other inhabited system.
"How long will it take then, Sir?"
The tribune grinned.
"Using the Alcubierre drive in conjunction with the wormhole gets us to Vega in six months."
Ethan was still stunned when he left the room. He´d already been further out into deep space than he´d expected, and now he was about to go even further. In six months! He wondered if any other humans had been that far from Earth before, and realized there was a possibility, even though he´d never heard of it. After all, this was a technology humans were never meant to have.
He almost stumbled into another legionnaire when crossing a corner.
"Hey, watch where you´re going..." he began. Then he stopped, and just looked at the tired-looking legionnaire in front of him. The legionnaire seemed to force a smile, but he didn´t say anything either.
"Decurion Snow!" Ethan said. "But... I thought you died."
"I did," the decurion said quietly. "The rescue squad picked up what was left of us a few hours ago. It seems I was the only one that was possible to revive."
"Optio Cervaille´s box... It works!" Ethan exclaimed. "This is... This is..."
"It´s a fucking miracle Sir," Snow said quietly. Ethan looked at him. He looked more than tired.
"How long ago did they revive you?" he asked sharply.
"About an hour Sir."
"So what are you doing out here? You should be in bed or something. Remember how that monkey needed days to recover? Well, so do you."
"Yeah, I´m sorry. I just had to see my squad, let them know I´m fine."
"Well, you´re not. Not yet anyhow. Look, I´ll let them know as soon as I see them. You get yourself back to sickbay, that´s an order."
Ethan waited until he was sure Decurion Snow was out of sight until he leaned toward a wall and exhaled. It worked! Optio Cervaille had outdone himself this time. This would change everything.
He began walking toward where he knew the rest of the platoon would be, but before he had taken ten steps he heard a purring voice behind him.
"I was wondering where I´d find you," Centurion Bothwin purred, and stepped close. Very close.
"I have to speak to my platoon..." Ethan said, but she ignored him.
"You can do that afterward. I have a room nearby."
"I really should..." Ethan began, but her lips connecting with his interrupted him. He felt his resolve dissipate.
"You really should... After..." she whispered in between kisses.
Once again, he knew he´d lost. He resigned himself to his fate, and let her lead him to her room.
44.
A few weeks later Ethan found himself back in the cryo chamber, naked and strapped into his couch. This time he didn´t worry so much about the actual cryo sleep, only about what to expect once they arrived in the Vega system. A part of him wished he could stay awake during transit, since travel at the speed they were planning was groundbreaking. But the Hellfire would only have the crew and a small security detachment awake, and Ethan´s platoon was not selected this time. Once again he noticed Adjunct Selena Vickers, checking on very legionnaire who was to be put under. She looked as stunning as he remembered. As soon as she saw him her face lit up and she immediately came over.
"You ready for this one Adjunct Wang?" she asked. Ethan almost gave a straight answer, but caught himself just in time. Of course, she was just pulling his chain. He felt himself flushing when he thought about the last time they had met. That had been most embarrassing, although both times he must have given a lousy impression. He suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. She must have noticed.
"I´m sorry Ethan," she said, and laid a hand on his naked shoulder. "I shouldn´t make jokes like that. It´s unprofessional. It´s just that you´re... funny." Ethan suddenly became hyper aware of his own nakedness, and had to concentrate hard on not letting it show.
"Don´t worry about it," he said. "In fact, I deserve it. So, six months this time," he said, trying desperately to change the subject. Luckily, Selena played along.
"Yeah, that´s... Fast," she replied. "Okay, Ethan, there are about a thousand legionnaire
s yet who needs to be put under, so I´m swamped. But perhaps we´ll talk on the other side?" If that wasn´t an invitation, Ethan had never head one. He grinned.
"Let´s do that, Selena." She hurried off, but not before giving him a big smile and a look that held a promise of good times to come. Ethan let another medic give him his shots, and then lay back in his couch. As he drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep, he still grinned, thinking of Selena. She sure was a beauty...
45.
"Get up Sir, we haven´t got much time."
Ethan´s eyes opened, and he almost closed them again because of the harsh light. He squinted, trying to make out the face in front of him. Male, about his age, dark skin.
"Selena," he said. "I thought she would be here... when I woke up." He forced the words out. Speaking hurt, his throat was sore.
"She´s busy, Sir. We all are. You need to get up on your feet as soon as possible. No time, Sir. There has been an accident." With that the medic hurried on to another couch, leaving Ethan with a million questions, but one standing out before everything else; what the hell was happening?
He stood, legs shaking visibly. His balance was off, and it wasn´t just the after effects of cryo sleep. Gravity was noticeably less than usual; a common emergency feature. With less energy needed to maintain artificial gravity more could be diverted to other tasks.
As he got dressed he tried to take stock of the situation. Clearly, there had been an incident. Now they were apparently waking everyone up, getting them ready for... Evacuation? Fighting? He didn´t know, but he intended to find out. He looked around. Most of those from his platoon were only now being awoken, but there had to be someone already up and working, someone like... Tribune Tanner. Ethan zipped up his suit and hurried out of the cryo chamber. A few minutes later he got where he wanted to be; command deck. The guards outside were armed and looked serious enough, so he spread his arms in a friendly gesture.
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