Colony Lost

by Chris Philbrook

  She was ripped in half two steps from safety.

  Tucked beside the science habitat the hunched form of a rock bug had waited for their return. Phillip watched–unable to help–as the titanic monster struck Lima with the force of a lightning bolt.

  Her body tore apart, ribs snapping and caving in, spine split in half. Her soft innards parted with no resistance. She hung off the monster’s arm like a skewered piece of meat. Her lifeless hands dropped the rifle and armor to the ground as the monster lifted her twitching body to its maw.

  Inside the habitat, screams came quick, and loud.

  Phillip barged past his fallen friend,, tossing Dustin through the door.

  The monster never stopped chewing on Lima. It watched with lifeless eyes as Phillip grabbed Dustin’s rifle and gear and ran into the habitat. He slammed a hand onto the emergency button and the thick airlock door hummed shut.

  “They were herbivores. The rock bugs,” Micah said, incredulous. “Why did it . . . ?”

  “Everyone shut up. Shut up. Bite a towel, be quiet,” Phillip said after he ripped off the stifling plastic hood he hadn’t needed.

  Margaret sobbed, and Micah went to her, taking her into his arms.

  A loud bang came, shaking the hab Everyone stood still, and the sobbing stopped.

  Another bang came. Then a third, louder. Phillip lifted the rail gun to his shoulder and walked into the center hall of the laboratory, following the noises as they repeated again, and again, louder and more violent each time.

  He stopped when he saw the floor moving. He pointed Dustin’s weapon and flicked the safety off. The monsters may have found a way in, but they’d pay a steep toll to come inside for their meal.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Science habitat, town of Stahl, planet of Selva

  20 October 163 GA

  Phillip shoved the door shut that led from the main lab room into the hall where he stood. The interior door would be flimsy protection against any monsters, but it might buy them a few seconds, and save lives. He backpedaled until he stood beside a storage room that he could duck inside before he was overrun..

  Then, the floor plate tipped and lifted on one side, exposing a black opening that led into the depths of the ground below. Phillip saw a smooth, glossy pair of eyes appear out of the darkness. He sighted the crosshairs of Dustin’s rifle between them and started to depress the trigger.

  “DON’T SHOOT!”

  A pair of very human hands emerged from the darkness, dirty white palms extended.

  “Hands! Show me hands!”

  Phillip’s finger came off the trigger as his hands began to shake. The eyes were goggles. The wearer human.

  Two more sets of human hands popped out.

  “We’re from the medical habitat! We dug a tunnel to get to you guys! B-Squad marines!”

  “You’re not mutated right? You’re healthy?”

  “As oxes,” a different marine said. “We’re a little thirsty but we’ve got the Doc back over at home taking care of us. You guys okay?”

  Phillip couldn’t get past the vision of Lima being killed and eaten. He saw tattered bits of her skin and red pieces of her flesh in the gnawing mandibles of the creature.

  “Sir?” One of the marines asked as he lifted his goggles off of his eyes. Clean round spots appeared below, brightening his face.

  “No, we’re not okay. Is it safe to get the doctor over here? Under to here?”

  “Yeah, we can get her over here. Someone hurt?”

  “Sergeant Cline took a point blank rail gun round to the leg a few days ago. It’s infected badly.”

  The three marines grasped the implications of Phillip’s statement. Not because of what he said, but what he didn’t say. Dustin didn’t take an accidental, or errant round to the leg.

  “Go get the captain,” the darkest skinned marine said to the man beside him. One of the marines ducked down and under, disappearing. He turned back to Phillip. “Can we . . . come in?”

  Phillip forced a laugh, and stepped forward to pull the guests up into the science habitat.

  The marines rushed Dr. Anna Castellano through the underground passage.

  Half a dozen marines, who had labored for weeks to dig and shore up the tunnel, came with her. Phillip sat on a stool in the largest laboratory room with them and the rest of the relieved inhabitants of the science facility. Outside, the monsters of Selva feasted on the meager meal of Lima, and everyone who knew what happened did their best not to think about it.

  “Why did you guys smash and beat on the bottom like that?”

  “We knocked, if that’s what you’re getting at. No response from you guys, so we forced the hatch lever to get inside. There’s a secondary environmental barrier that needed to be opened and we had to force that, too. Pioneer 3’s technicians will never forgive us for the damage we did to this unit, but we’re here now.”

  “Trust me, the techs will get over it. People are more important than old gear. Fuck what the politicians in the Senate say. The other nerds probably didn’t hear you as we were coming back with Cline.”

  “Yep, no harm, no foul.” He took a sip of tepid but pure water from a glass beaker. “Fresh water is a big deal. This will improve morale. We were getting low digging the tunnel. So what happened to Dustin? He took a round to the leg you said. How?”

  “Ugly truth is that one of the FEM dudes plugged him intentionally. Waren. Bad guy and Dustin were doing a supply run here in Stahl and they were being chased by whatever the fuck passes for normal. Waren wheeled on him and put a round in his leg. Steve, their teammate, filled us in on some of the radio traffic, but we’re hoping to get more out of Dustin when he comes to.”

  “Why did Waren do it? Was he just trying to save his own skin?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to save his own skin? In the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s a dead man. He’s on the lam now. Out in the wild..”

  “Our guys will hunt him down and kill him if we’re given the chance. No mercy. No joke. You don’t turn on your own like that. Marines don’t do that. Not for nothing.”

  “No, you don’t. Not yet. Enjoy the company, I’m going to check on the doctor and Dustin. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” Phillip said as he stood. He shook the angry marine’s hand and left.

  As he walked past the smiles and embraces of those around him Phillip felt buoyed a tiny bit. Hope had gotten inside them, and it showed on their faces, and in the way they held their heads high. Hope manifested in the ways they talked with their hands, and in the way they gave what little they had to near-strangers, just to share. Just to watch someone else smile.

  After walking a short distance down the central corridor of the hab, Phillip turned into the lab they’d commandeered for Dustin. He lay unconscious, surrounded by an attentive team treating him with the finest medical training.

  Phillip immediately picked Anna out. Her blonde hair gleamed in the harsh light cast by the overhead lights. She had it pulled back into a long ponytail. She wore a translucent face shield and a red surgical apron over a sweat-stained uniform. She’d opened up Dustin’s leg with a scalpel and had laid bare his infected muscle tissues. She worked a debriding tool, scraping away the dead and poisonous tissue. A nurse held a metal bowl at Anna’s elbow and in it were several small bits of shrapnel and a large pile of dead flesh.

  “This is what passes for a sterile environment now, Mr. Eckstein. As good as it is to see you, please stay where you are,” she asked after looking at him through her face shield with gentle eyes.

  “You got it. How is he?” Phillip asked. He looked at the IV line running into Dustin’s wrist and the four bags of fluids running together into it. Dustin’s chest rose and fell, fog forming inside the plastic oxygen mask over his mouth. His condition looked serious.

  “He needs heavy debridement–which I’m doing now–and he needs a strong course of multiple antibiotics to fights what’s killing him. Of course, this is Selvan bacteria, not exactl
y the stuff we’ve experienced before, so who knows how the meds will work. Once his wound is clean of the infection and shows signs of improvement, we’ll get him on a muscle growth stimulant.”

  “That sounds like good news,” Phillip said. “Full recovery?”

  “Hard to say,” she said and shrugged. “He is in terrific shape, and was healthy before this. Most of the damage looks bad, but is superficial, really. He could be up and at it again in just a few days. I think he’ll always have issues. A limp later in life, soreness when the weather changes. You know. Old people shit. I wanted you to know you and Lima saved him. A few more hours of the infection in his system and he might’ve been too far gone to save.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m sorry about Lima. She was a good person.”

  “She was.”

  “Phillip–you two did a good thing here. It’s sad she died in the process, but not every hero has a happy ending. You can count the number of heroes standing around and you can count the number of heroes buried in graves and I know which number will be higher. Be thankful the hero she turned out to be was during our time with her.”

  “I know. It sucks. I just want Dustin to pull through. We need to make a plan to deal with the fucker who shot him, too.”

  “We will figure it out. We have plenty of safety and security, you have water, we have food, and my team and I are going to see to it this guy pulls through.”

  “Good. Thank you for working so hard on him.” Phillip had a hand on the doorknob, ready to leave.

  “Hey, there’s something that just occurred to me.”

  “What?”

  “You’re now the ranking officer on Selva. Might want to start thinking about that.”

  Anna chuckled. “How about you get me a weather report then?”

  Phillip smiled.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Pioneer 3 transorbital vessel hangar in Gharian orbit

  21 October 163 GA

  Dr. Maine returned to the council with data supporting the early departure. With Daron’s support the decision was pushed through to launch an early rescue. The fleet would depart Pioneer 3 and head to the dead zone between planets 20 days early, on January 20th of the following year. Melody and her clandestine operation to rescue her husband moved forward, hiding underneath the preparations of the larger, later journey.

  Melody walked upright, her chest pushed out and her back straight. Her pale gray flight suit hid her growing baby bump as she walked the length of the cavernous flight hangar aboard Pioneer 3. She strode toward the colossal airlock doors that led to the endless expanse of space beyond. She looked to both sides at the trans-orbital vessels arranged in a chevron pattern and the flight crews and the teams of technicians that surrounded them.

  She wound her way past tables covered with tools and parts, surrounded by sweaty, greasy technicians who labored in the hive of Ghara space travel. She took a final corner past a marine standing guard and nodded to him. The warrior with the short hair winked at her, and she entered the secretive enclave beyond. The preparations for the unauthorized return to Selva had begun.

  Andy and Dan worked together on two short ladders in the center of the room, welding together the upper scaffolding of a rigid hull. Sparks flew as they affixed tubular steel supports. The rectangular container they made to Doctor Maine’s specifications would either be their salvation, or their coffin. End to end, it would be eight meters long, big enough to house the twenty crewmembers who had secretly agreed to come along. Several of Titan’s crew clustered off to the side, running wiring through frames that would be placed inside the structure. In the rear of the workshop a couple of marines soldered, and a communications tech calibrated gear.

  Dan and Andy stopped their welding when Melody approached.

  “Hola, lieutenant. How goes the battle?” Andy asked her after lifting his welding glasses up. “You find any of that ceramic shielding we need?”

  Melody went to parade rest, hands on her hips. The position helped her lower back.

  “I found two panels of it. Someone had them stashed in an old storage unit. They’re going to be heavy.”

  “We can get three or four guys to help. Just say when,” one of the marines nearby said.

  “That’d be great,” Melody said, nodding at him. “Zero one hundred tonight? Meet at the heavy lifts on this deck?”

  “Done,” the marine said.

  “How about another engineer? Flying that boat is going to be awful hard if we can’t find another qualified thrust engineer.”

  “Nothing yet. I’ve got some feelers out but . . . It’s a challenge. There aren’t many engineers, period. And to do this without pay to boot is asking a lot.”

  “To hell with that. We’re all doing this without pay, and happily. Our people are in a bad spot and we’re the only ones who know how to get them out of it. It’s not a task, it’s our duty to do this. You’ll find someone. It won’t take long,” Dan said.

  “Worst case, just start giving little orders to one of them until they’re so far involved with it they feel uncomfortable backing out,” Andy suggested. “Include them without them knowing about it.”

  “That could work,” a different female voice said.

  Melody turned and looked at the entrance of their hidden workshop. Everyone working dropped what they were doing and did the same. The marine who stood guard had left his unofficial post and now stood just inside the room, a sheepish look on his face. Just behind him and walking deeper into their sanctum was Captain Leah Kingsman. Commanding officer of Titan, the ship they planned on commandeering for the return trip to Selva.

  “You are planning on stealing my ship,” she said, staring at Melody.

  “The thought had crossed our minds,” Melody said, matching her intensity.

  “For some illegal, half-assed rescue mission?” Leah said, looking at the menagerie of strange manufacturing projects happening all about.

  “Something like that,” Melody said. Behind her Andy and Dan somehow managed to shrink behind her. The gig was up.

  “Through the magnetic flux, without power. Just a fat slingshot stone soaring through space. Am I right?”

  “It’s notably more complex than that, but you have the general gist of it,” Melody said. “We won’t make them wait another day if we don’t have to. If Waren wanted to kill us with those bombs, then he’ll want to kill them or at least do shit to make their lives at risk. We have no idea what he or whoever else he has working with him are doing back on Selva. I won’t leave fellow marines behind at his mercy.”

  “She’s not alone in that,” her captain, Dan, said.

  Leah walked with a menacing pace around the room, ignoring Melody. The ranking captain touched things, judging their assembly. She looked at each and every person. She made eye contact with them, then looked at their uniform name tag, branding her memory with the identities of each and every conspirator that wanted to take her ship from her. Leah walked around the life support unit in construction and shook her head, picking at her teeth with tongue.

  “You people are fucking morons,” Leah said. “And criminals to boot.”

  “Respecting the rank, ma’am, but you can go fuck yourself.”

  Leah’s face split into a grin. “That’s the spirit. My kind of people. Look, this can work, but you need to think bigger and bolder. You’re skulking around stealing shit like magpies stocking their nest. Going after coins and baubles. Requisition parts. Fill out paperwork. You think these bureaucratic idiots pay a single iota of attention to a single line item slapped into an otherwise legitimate parts order? Come on. Hide what you’re doing in a mountain of official paperwork. Skulking around cloak and dagger style like this is the easiest way for people to realize you’re messing around.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m saying you need some help, and I want to help. I know an engineer, too. My main guy on Titan. We can fast-track this shit. Do it better than this. How
many days do we have left before your plan has Titan depart for Selva?”

  Melody felt a surge of relief. “We want to depart Pioneer 3 on the first of December. Thirty day transit if all goes well. Skids down on Selva give or take on the thirty-first. It won’t be easy, but that’s the plan.”

  “You’ll never make the launch window in time without better supply habits, and more people involved. There’s no way. You’ve got to get exo-loaders to get this life support unit out of the airlock to load it into Titan. Do you have an exo operator, or hangar crew shift on board to help with that?” Leah paced around. She stopped, staring at Andy in his gummed up tech sergeant suit.

  “No ma’am,” Andy said back to her.

  “Well, you’re fucked. You’ll be pinched the moment you try and load this unit into Titan. That or you’ll smash this piece into a wall and bust it apart.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Melody asked her.

  Leah laughed. “I’m trying to say I’m going to help, and I know a few others who are already doing something similar. You think you’re the only marines on this hulk that want to go back to Selva and save our people?”

  Melody sighed and grinned, while the others in the room clapped and laughed. The joy of triumph. The feeling of security.

  “Thank you,” Dan said to his fellow captain.

  “My pleasure. This is actually a great surprise. You’ve got some advantages over what we’ve got. If we work together, and keep our mouths shut . . . this can happen.”

  Leah gave the structure they had been working on a sturdy shake.

  “Excellent. Can we sit down and talk?” Melody asked.

  “Only if we start by talking about how you dicks were going to steal my ship. You could’ve asked me, you know.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Science habitat, town of Stahl, planet of Selva

  25 October 163 GA

  “Dustin, stop. Your leg isn’t ready enough. You need to rest at least another day or two.”