Raelor
Page 8
“Let's not worry about the plains people and just worry about the maps. Do you even think that they would be on paper?” Nash assumed that they be on their mainframe. Many navigational systems were part of the overall screens.
Aevar shrugged. “You think that piece of junk is gonna start up? There hasn't been power to the station in years. Besides, the noise from our attempt would be enough to draw in any Pirates that are on this planet. I don't know that I want to take that risk.”
He had a point. Nash wasn't sure he was willing to take the risk either, but the commander had given orders. And Nash always did as he was told.
“We have to try. Looking through these papers will take us too much time and we don't even know that they were printed.” Nash walked over to the far wall, stepping over overturned chairs and a couple tables. The floor was also littered with papers, almost six inches thick, with another four or five inches of dust on top. He was glad that his oxygen mask was on; even if he could breathe here, he didn't think he would want to.
Plains people had special lungs, kind of like gills almost. They were located underneath their ribs and they pushed out all the dirt from the air. Their body was its own perfect filtration system, but when the plague came, their lungs couldn’t handle it. Green sludge would spill out of the openings between their ribs and most of them drowned to death. What a horrible way to die.
That was before the cure. Now, nobody died from the plague. That was part of what the Galactic Alliance did—create vaccines and inject any planets they could. They were still finding out about the planets on the exterior rim; some of them had never been touched by the plague but they wanted to be safe. They were looking for the navigational maps in order to find a couple of them, give them the vaccine, and move on. It was busywork, really. But Nash was happy to have busywork instead of some crazy war. He had seen live action before—blasters shooting past his head, his men getting blown of out the sky—and he’d be okay not seeing that again in his lifetime. That mess could be for somebody else to clean up.
The hum of the machines filled the room. One of the screens off to Nash’s left sparked and he pulled the plug on it before a fire began. Just what they needed, a smoke signal to every Pirate or rebel on this side of the galaxy. Another screen flickered to life and Nash began pounding on the keys trying to find the navigational maps. Aevar was right, the servers were too loud. If anyone was on this side of the planet, they’d find them, and quick.
He entered some code as quickly as his fingers would go, but it was hard to see through the oxygen mask and he kept wiping the dust off of the screen in order to make sure he was pressing the right keys. But no navigational maps came up. Whatever was out here on the plains, they didn’t know anything about the outer rim.
“Aevar, did you find anything?”
He slammed his fist down on the table as dust floated up around him. “No, it’s useless!”
Raelor looked back at both of them. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, boss, but someone’s got a beacon on us. They’ll be here within minutes.”
Swuya. Pirates. “Can you hear them yet? Any idea of how many?”
Raelor tilted his head toward the sky. His expert hearing gave them an advantage other teams from the ship would never have. “I hear a ship, a small searcher, probably no more than ten men on it.”
“Ten? That’s six more than what we have. I mean, I’ve got two other scouts out on the ground, but they’ll be fried before that ship makes landfall. Raelor, call into the pod pilot, tell them to get the engine started. We’re abandoning this mission.”
Nash was just about to blast the screens when he saw a restricted file located on the bottom left corner. He hadn’t noticed it before. He used the back of his gloved hand to wipe it off further so he could get a better visual. “Raelor, you said that this was just a regular colony, right? Then why the hell would they have classified information?”
Raelor shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, sir. Their military operation had probably less than fifteen men. Unless someone retired here that we’re not aware of.”
That must’ve been it. Occasionally an Alliance officer would retire on one of the smaller planets. He became somewhat of a hometown hero even if he had done nothing in the military. People praised them, gave them land and lodging. They could live for free, pretty much. They must’ve had one of those officers on this planet; it was the only reason that they would have any sort of classified information in their war room.
Nash directed the code to open the file and immediately used his camera through his goggles to start snapping images of what he was seeing before him. Whatever they had here was a lot more than navigational maps. Nash moved through the screens as fast as possible, taking over a dozen images without really realizing what he was seeing. Only a minute later, Raelor put his hand on Nash’s shoulder. “Boss, we have to go. They’re landing in about fifteen seconds.”
He nodded to Raelor and then pointed his blaster at the screen. Whatever he had found, it wasn’t meant to fall into the wrong hands. The Alliance would know what to do with it. It only took a single shot for his blaster to completely melt the screen. He watched as the old polymer melted onto the desk. Aevar did the same with the table, the papers lighting up like kindling.
“Is the pilot ready?” Nash asked one of the new recruits through the communicator.
“Yes, sir. And he says we have company.”
Nash nodded to Raelor, Aevar, and the other newbie who was standing at the door. “Blasters up. Things are about to get interesting.”
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The End
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Terra Wolf
I love to write about all things paranormal and scifi! I am so excited to be getting back into the world of alien adventures after a long hiatus. I will still be writing shifters as well, just sometimes in space. As long as there’s a big burly man and a woman who loves him, I’ll be writing about it.
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