by S. A. Lusher
“They gathered up everyone, moved us over to the mining headquarters and converted into some kind of fucking death camp. Those who resisted were shot. They wouldn't tell us anything. We were locked into cages like animals. Sometimes they'd come and take us away, and we'd rarely come back. I don't know how long this went on, days. Then all of a sudden the power went out, all the cages were unlocked. I'd been talking with some of the others whenever I could about some kind of rebellion.”
Here, Lynch hesitated. She frowned, her eyes briefly lost in the horror of cold memory. She spoke again.
“The zombies were let out, too. I gathered everyone I could. We grabbed guns and shot our way out, rescuing other survivors...eventually, we got down to a mining tunnel and came here. As you can see, we set up shop. Been here just about a day now, trying to reinforce the area, come up with some kind of plan.”
“Well, we'd love to be of help, but we'd really like to go get our friends and grab that EMP bomb,” Greg said.
“Yes, that'd be a good idea. We'll need to reevaluate all this...” Lynch heaved a sigh. “Stafford! Where the hell are you?”
A moment later, a man in a washed-out gray miner's uniform appeared. He grinned awkwardly at the group. “What's happening?”
“Take Mister Bishop here outside and help him get his ships over into Hangar Two. Powell, I gathered from the story that you're a bit of a tech whiz” Lynch fixed Powell with her gaze. To his credit, he didn't flinch.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Good, not enough of those around here. You're going to stay and help.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing. We need to make sure Erebus can't get into your systems. He could kill the power, the oxygen, or the gravity, if he did.”
“And you can safeguard us?”
“To a certain degree.”
“Well, get on it then. Stafford, hurry back.”
The man nodded. “You got it.” He glanced at Greg. “Come on.”
They turned and threaded their way back through the hectic chaos of the hangar headquarters. A few moments later they were back in the corridor, making for the airlock. Greg was relieved that this was going as well as it was.
As they reached the airlock, he paused, and offered his hand to the man. “Greg Bishop.”
Stafford shook it and offered him a simple smile. “Mike Stafford. I'm, uh, well, second in command here, I guess. I was a shift leader for the miners back before all this crap hit. Lynch tells me I'm one of the few guys left that isn't an idiot.” He laughed.
“She's good at what she does?” Greg asked, fitting his faceplate back into place and turning his oxygen on.
“Oh yes. Best administrator I've ever had. She's hard, but fair. She's got a no-bullshit attitude, which you've got to have if you're running an isolated mining installation.” Mike grabbed a pressure suit from a locker and suited up.
Once they were ready, the pair cycled through the airlock and made for the jump ships. There was still zero activity on the surface, though there were more lights over by the Dark Ops controlled compound. Greg caught Mike up to speed on the happenings of the system while they made their way over to the jump ships.
“Damn,” was all he had to say when Greg finished.
Mike went into Powell's ship and Greg crawled back into his own. Kyra and even Campbell looked worried and immensely relieved when Greg reappeared in the cockpit.
“Christ, I was panicking.” Kyra helped him up. “What happened?”
“I'll tell you in a minute. Campbell, fire this thing up, follow the other ship, we're landing in a hangar. These suits must have a terrible radio range. I didn't hear you at all once we were inside the compound.”
“I kept calling,” Kyra replied. “So what happened?”
As they lifted off the surface and headed for the hangar, Greg relayed the events that had transpired to Kyra and Campbell, who both grew more relieved as they learned that they weren't completely screwed.
A few minutes later, both ships had settled into the second hangar, which enjoyed a lot less traffic and activity. They shut down the ships and passed a few groups of techs and miners as Mike took them back to the main hangar.
Lynch was waiting for them. “I've got a job for you.”
“Oh?” Greg stopped.
“Yes. However, I understand that you may want to take a little break. You've got half an hour, so get to relaxing.”
Chapter 02
–No Rest for the Living–
Rest was a dream.
Relaxation was a sin.
They did, however, bring the survivors to a shower room and hand over a few medical kits. The place was almost empty, just a few lonely, tired souls showering in their separate stalls. Greg and Kyra recovered a pair of fresh uniforms from the ranked rows of gray lockers. They were dull black uniforms with red trim. The security forces of the mining installation, at one point, had worn them. Staring at the black jumpsuit, Greg wondered if the man who had worn this was now dead. He decided it was highly likely.
He made sure to find a pair of gloves.
They didn't need to know about his arm.
“Come on, we can go grab a stall. There's enough room for two of us.” Kyra took his hand.
She led him through the maze of stalls, away from the others. Greg was grateful. His mind was laced with a haze of lethargy, making his thoughts dull and muddied. His nap on the ship seemed to have only made his sleepiness worse. They found an isolated stall, slipped in, and locked the door behind them.
“Strip.” Kyra set the medical kit, uniforms, and a pair of towels on a shelf far enough away from the shower to remain dry.
“I'd really enjoy doing sexy things right now, but I think after we get done I'd just pass out,” Greg replied.
Kyra rolled her eyes. “Me too. I need to check you over for wounds and you need a shower. It'll go a long way towards keeping you on your feet.”
“Fair enough.”
Greg stripped and tossed his clothes into the corner.
“Turn the shower on, wash up,” Kyra ordered.
Greg nodded, turned, adjusted the temperature of the water, and then turned it on. A cascade of crystal clear, liquid warmth washed over him. The sheer pleasure of a simple shower made him feel light-headed for a moment. It made him question how long it had been since he'd had a genuine shower. It seemed wrong that it had been little over a day or so ago, before he'd broken out of custody and set everything into motion.
He turned around and saw that Kyra had shed her own clothing. She caught his eyes with hers and smirked.
“Not tired of me yet?” She joined him beneath the shower.
“Not by a long shot. Don't know if I ever will.”
Kyra frowned. “Don't be the hopeless romantic guy who promises everlasting love and that he'll never get tired of seeing his girlfriend naked.”
“You already had someone promise you that?”
“Yes. It's never true. Ever. You will always get tired of your lover. Whether or not you stay with them is a matter of mutual love, respect, and complacency. Relationships last because people are lazy and it's hard to break up with someone, even if you don't love them anymore.”
“You've really had some shitty relationships, haven't you?”
“I...yes. Now let's not miss this opportunity to make out in a shower.”
She grabbed him and kissed him. He kissed her back, running his hands across her warm, smooth, wet body.
He almost, almost, forgot that he had a metal hand.
Kyra never mentioned or reacted to it.
When they were finished, they killed the shower and toweled off. When he was dry, Greg allowed Kyra to look him over, then begin cleaning and bandaging his wounds. She was at it for quite a while.
“Goddamn, Greg,” she muttered as she finished. “You sure do get into a lot of trouble.”
“Guess so,” Greg murmured. “Your turn?”
“Almost. Hold still.” She turned and grabbed a
hypo.
“What's that?”
“General anti-viral/antibiotic, to boost your system, and keep you from getting sick.”
She stuck him with the hypo and injected him. She turned and grabbed a second hypo, then hesitated.
“And that one?” he asked.
“Stimulant. I've been debating about whether or not we should take these. We're not going to get a chance to sleep, presumably, for the next forty-eight hours. And it's not like we've had the most restful past few weeks. We can't keep going on like this without some kind of boost.”
“So what's the downside?” Greg asked.
“Too many of these things put a strain on your heart,” Kyra replied.
Greg considered it, staring at the hypo for a long moment, and then suddenly shrugged. “Whatever, it doesn't matter. If we don't survive this, we won't have hearts.”
“Good point.” She injected him.
He wasn't as proficient as her, but Greg spent the next five minutes going over Kyra's body and helping to clean and bandage her wounds. The only problem was he kept getting distracted. When he finally finished up, capping it off with a pair of injections for her, the two of them got dressed. They emerged from their stall dressed, awake, and aware. They met up with Campbell and headed back out to the main hangar.
“Think we have time to eat?” Greg asked.
“We'd better. I'm not going anywhere until I get some food in me,” Campbell replied.
“Fair point,” Kyra replied.
They hurried over to the makeshift cafeteria and found that someone had been kind enough to put together an actual serving-tray line with what appeared to be real food and not just freeze-dried military rations. Greg managed to snag a steak and a heap of mashed potatoes and dark gravy, as well as a few cans of Vex. He was glad the drink was so popular. Once they'd put together their plates, the trio found a foldout table, sat down on crates that served as chairs and dug in. For several moments, there was nothing but the sound of eating.
Greg had intended for there to be at least something like a conversation, but by the time he finished and glanced up from his empty plate, he realized that Lynch was standing at the end of their table, grinning at them.
“Glad to see you’re showered and fed. Time's up. Wipe your mouths and come with me.”
Greg suppressed a sigh and abandoned his plate. Kyra and Campbell followed him as he trailed after Lynch, who led them towards what appeared to be an armory. There were more foldout tables pushed up against a wall, their surfaces covered in pistols, shotguns, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, scattered bullets, shells, and magazines. It was a sight that warmed Greg's heart. He found himself grinning as he stared at the guns.
“Load up. We've got some bulletproof vests, too. You want to prove your worth to me, you'll have to run a job. An important one, and right now.”
“What the fuck do you mean, 'prove our worth'?” Campbell asked.
Greg sighed. “Campbell, shut up.” He looked at Lynch. “What do you need done?”
“We managed to salvage a handful of drone guns from the Dark Ops research facility. We've been installing them, networking them so that we can use them to more properly secure the area. Something's gone wrong. The team I had working on it was almost done, and they just stopped reporting in,” Lynch explained.
“We'll go check it out,” Greg replied.
“Not so fast. Campbell, I want you to stay here in case we need an extra gun. Bishop, Mercer, you two will lead two separate teams. Mercer, your team will investigate a possible security breach. Bishop, your team will investigate what happened to the original team. Does anyone have any questions?”
There were none. Lynch nodded and allowed them to suit up. Greg pulled on a bulletproof vest, then secured a holster to his hip and slid a pistol in. It felt good to have real weapons on him again. He selected a rifle and a handful of spare magazines, and then went off to meet his team. He was disheartened to find only three of them.
“This is it?” he asked.
The only woman among them, a tall blonde with a sharp gaze and a mildly disturbing smile, stepped forward. “We could say the same thing.”
“I see,” Greg replied. “We should get to it. I'm Greg Bishop.”
“Linda Lawrence. I'm the technician. These two are meat-heads, they're security officers,” she replied, no malice in her voice, only a playful guile.
“Carter,” one of them said, nodding to Greg. He was bald and made of lean muscle. His eyes had a wide and nervous quality to them.
“Nash,” the other greeted. He was the larger of the two, his mouth a flat, grim line.
“Well, you know where you're going. Let's do this,” Greg replied.
The trio headed out of the hangar, threading their way through the constantly shifting crowd of survivors, all going about their own tasks. The place reminded him of the military base he'd come to back on Dis, Fort Jackson. Dis felt like a million years ago already, another lifetime. Greg was still getting used to how completely fucked time could be. When you got right down to it, the whole concept seemed too flexible to really matter.
The babble of voices fell away as they slipped out into the broad, gritty corridors of the station. Greg wished he could have had a little bit more time with Kyra, but was more than grateful for their moment in the shower. He kept having to remind himself that either one of them may die at any given moment.
He tried to bring himself to more pleasant thoughts. As they made their way through the industrial wasteland, he turned to the others.
“Anything interesting to know about this place?” he asked.
The two security officers didn't seem too forthcoming, but Linda spoke. “Not really. I've worked here for three years. I was fairly high up on the engineering staff before all this shit went down. I know the installation was founded about a year before I showed up. Besides this incident, nothing worth mentioning has happened.”
“What's it like, living in a place like this?”
“Not too different from living on a regular colony, except that you can't go outside without a suit and you've got to be extra paranoid about power failures and holes in the wall. What about you? Where'd you come from? Dis, I imagine.”
“Yeah, I was with Security-Investigations when it happened.”
“Oh really? I was with SI before I scrubbed out five years back. I was a technician for an Investigations team.”
“What went wrong?”
“Nothing exactly...it was like a lot of little things. Bad calls, obvious favoritism, and a bit of sexism thrown in for good measure.” She shrugged. “I got fed up with it. I kept getting passed over for promotion. I'm good at my job. That's not arrogance talking, that's confidence, and fact. I know what I'm doing. I got passed over because some idiot's son wanted the position, or some higher ranking officer's slutty mistress sucked him off for a raise. After taking, and leaving, a few jobs, I finally came out here. It was like going out on a limb, but it really worked.”
“Doesn't seem like the kind of place to avoid things like sexism,” Greg murmured.
“You'd think so...and it's true, in a way. There's also a sense of...bluntness, I guess? Sure, the miners will give you the eye and the whistle if you’re a girl, but if you tell them to fuck off and really mean it, they'll respect that, too.”
They came to the end of the corridor. Greg felt a cold whispering across the back of his neck. He hesitated, and the security officers sensed it and did so as well.
“What is it?” Linda whispered picking up on their movement.
“Dunno...something bad. Feels like we're being watched,” Greg murmured back.
He studied the corridor they were in. It could be a Creeper, he realized, but that didn't quite feel right. He supposed that was because when a Creeper was on your ass, you didn't know it until the thing burst out of a vent grate.
Somebody whispered up ahead, and Greg raised his rifle. There was another corridor branching away from them to the right,
a few meters up ahead. Greg made quick hand gestures to the others, who moved with him to the right wall. He led them, at the front of the line, and crept up to the corner. He peered as cautiously as he could around the corner and snapped his head back as a shot rang out and glanced off the wall beside him.
“Dark Ops.” He yelled, flipping his rifle to full auto, sticking it around the corner and blind-firing into the soldiers.
“Cover me.” He snapped as his gun clicked empty.
Greg sprinted across the gap, rushing over to the corresponding corner, and narrowly avoided a short hail of gunfire that responded to his presence. Carter took up the place where he had been and opened fire. Greg slapped a fresh magazine in, switched the gun back to single-shot and prepared himself for combat.
He and Carter worked fast, popping out and taking quick shots at the Dark Ops troops. There were half a dozen of them, and they didn't have anywhere to go, as the hallway offered no cover. Between the two of them, they managed to fell the squad in under a minute. After a few seconds, the two emerged from their hiding places.
“I guess we know what happened to your team,” Greg said.
“Shit, this is not good. We've got teams on all the airlocks...” Carter activated a radio and talked rapidly into it.
Greg, Linda, and Nash moved forward and began policing up ammo from the corpses. Carter joined them a moment later.
“I've sent for someone to come and recover the guns. Come on, we need to get to that damned network node and secure this area.”
“How'd they get in?” Greg asked as the hurried on.
“We had to tie the drone guns into our whole security network. Cameras and sensors are currently down,” Linda explained.
“Then how'd you know about me and Powell at the airlock?”
“Kinda hard to miss a couple of guys in a ship who announce their presence. We were watching you. This place does have windows,” Linda replied.
Greg felt stupid about the question and said nothing. Several more minutes passed, the silence punctuated only by Carter's conversation with whoever was on the other end of his radio link. Greg imagined the base springing into action now that they actually knew Dark Ops troops had penetrated the structure.