The Styx Strikers

by Thor Zollinger

  The Styx Strikers

  –––––––––––––––––––

  By Thor Zollinger

  2017

  Illustrations are available at

  http://www.JavelinArt.com/StyxStrikers_PicturePack.pdf

  Chapter 1 “Arrival” –––––––––––––––––––

  All Jake could see out the window were white clouds, as the shuttle descended towards the surface. He sat back in the cramped seat and thought back on the events that had taken him here. He felt a mixture of excitement about arriving on Wayfarer to start a new life, and sadness over the accident his parents had recently experienced. Up until a few weeks ago Jake had lived on the main habitable planet of the Lahti system at the outer edge of The Free World’s League. Now he was headed for Wayfarer, a moon orbiting one of the Lahti system’s smaller gas giants. His uncle Helmut had offered to take him in, if he could manage to actually get transportation out to the moon where his uncle lived.

  Jake’s parents lived in one of the larger cities on Lahti. His dad was… had been a machinist at one of the local manufacturing plants that supplied consumer goods to the densely populated city of New Kingsland. Jake had to keep correcting his thinking, his parents accident was just barely starting to sink in. His mom had worked as a book keeper for a small college nearby. They weren’t anyone with any notoriety, just normal people living out their lives as best as they could. All of that was interrupted when the traffic accident had occurred. A large transport vehicle had careened out of control off of an overpass side-swiping his parent’s vehicle as they drove along. Their small compact car had the usual passenger safety features, crash foam and anti-collision systems, but it just wasn’t enough to overcome the physics of being hit by a massive transport. Both of his parents had been seriously injured and were now facing months of physical therapy and rehabilitation.

  Insurance was there to cover the basics of their medical care, and the adjustors were all very polite, but it was all just a haze in Jake’s memory. Their house had a substantial mortgage, so the bank was going to take that back now that neither one of his parents could work. They would eventually move in with his grandparents after rehab. Jake had selected the things he wanted to keep out of the house and had them put into storage, the rest of his stuff the adjustors had sold off for him. He had enough credits from the sale of his dirt bike, sports equipment and from his savings to purchase tickets to get him most of the way to Wayfarer to his uncle’s place. It took all of his college money, but moving to Wayfarer would take care of that. All colonists on Wayfarer had free access to the online university courses as an incentive to move there, and one-way tickets to Wayfarer were partially subsidized by the government. Uncle Helmut had paid for the last bit, the shuttle flight down to the surface, and his uncle was sending one of his hired hands out to pick Jake up at the landing pad where he would be arriving in about a half hour.

  Jake pushed the back of his seat part way back and closed his eyes. He would miss his friends the most, he thought. At seventeen, your friends ARE your life. He had basketball games every afternoon with a few of the guys, and he had even had a girlfriend for a while this last year. He was tall, sandy curly hair and gangly, a bit awkward, but pretty sharp at mechanical things. He had inherited his dad’s skills with machinery, but that didn’t help much where girls were concerned. Now he would have to start all over again. He sighed. There weren’t many girls where he was headed. The moon had only just been colonized in the last twenty years or so and not many people lived on the moon yet. Uncle Helmut had been one of the first to help in establishing a working population there. His uncle’s plantation was out in the middle of nowhere which wouldn’t help his social life at all.

  Wayfarer was an odd anomaly in the Lahti system. Something non-human took action hundreds of thousands of years before to terraform it with plant and animal life from Lahti, the planet in the Goldilocks zone of the system. As such, it had a breathable atmosphere from all of the plants, lots of water flowing everywhere, weather, and most of the features you would expect from a habitable planet. The Lahti plants and animals were not edible, but mankind had figured that problem out a long time ago. Most alien plants and animals weren’t edible anywhere anyway. And most of them didn’t taste any good either. Mankind had figured out long ago that they needed to bring edible plants and animals with them, which was why the first colonists almost always tended to be farmers, ranchers, or both, just like Jake’s uncle. The gravity on Wayfarer was also close to Earth’s which made it perfect for humans, but the light level was a bit dim. Being further from the sun, it didn’t have quite the same amount of sunlight humans were used to. Night time was interesting as well, since the larger gas giant reflected quite a bit of light down onto Wayfarer’s surface. The day-night cycle was quite confusing due to the slower speed the moon rotated at and since the gas giant tended to dominate the sky when the sun wasn’t up. To get past the confusion, the colonists had adopted Earth’s twenty four hour clock and basically ignored the longer day-night cycles of the moon itself.

  The stewardess interrupted his thoughts. “Would you like something to drink, young man? I have a nice selection of soft drinks. Maybe you would like to try some crackers or nuts?”

  “No nuts” he said quietly. “I would like some juice, if you have some, though.” Jake felt a bit insulted by the “young man” comment, since she didn’t look like she was much older than he was. Young man my butt, he thought to himself. A bit of frustration at the world for losing all of his friends was sneaking in. I’ll have to watch that, he thought carefully. I won’t get any dates that way. She put some ice into a cup, poured some red mixed fruit juice into it and handed it to him with a napkin. He smiled cautiously. The businessman next to him requested a tonic and water and continued reading his magazine. She’s cute, Jake mused. She poured the drink, set it down, and turned to service the opposite side of the aisle. Rats. He’d missed his chance to talk to her. She probably didn’t have time to talk anyway, he told himself shyly. He had to get better at this because he couldn’t really get any worse.

  The kid in the seat in front of him started to act up again. Luckily it was going to be a short flight, compared to the trip out from Lahti to the orbital substation. Jake didn’t have much money to work with, so he had to take a slow, low-fuel economy flight out. The slower the inter-planetary flight was, the less it costed you. The fast, high-fuel flights were the ones you wanted to take, but ordinary people like Jake couldn’t afford those. Not yet, anyway. Jake kept his bony knees back away from the back of the seat in front of him to keep from getting jostled. The kid was a bit too rambunctious and kept smacking his knees with the seat back. He wanted to strangle the little devil, but that wouldn’t do.

  “Hey, cut that out!” he said sharply after getting hit in the knees again, and he glared at the boy menacingly. The little imp stuck out his tongue. Jake tried to grab it, but the kid was too quick. He jerked backwards and just about fell on the floor. Serves you right, Jake thought. The kid’s mom turned and glared at the boy too. She gave him “the look”. The boy sheepishly climbed down off his seat and went back to the toy warriors and animals he had on the floor. He had a couple of five centimeter rubber warriors and a couple of plastic mechs about twenty centimeters tall to play with, along with a couple of dinosaurs.

  The Atlas mech looks pretty cool, Jake thought. The Atlas is one of the largest mechs, weighing in at over 100 tons and is as tall as a two story building. With a round “head” where the cockpit is located, it’s shaped very much like a giant armored robot. The other toy mech looked like a Vulture, complete with spring-loaded missiles that shot out of the missile pods. The real Vulture had legs lik
e a giant armored bird, with dual missile launchers on each shoulder as it’s main armament and powerful lasers mounted in each of it’s arms. The toy’s arms had tiny red lasers mounted in them that could be activated by pushing a button on the back. The lasers shot all the way down the length of the cabin, startling the stewards until they figured out where the laser was coming from. The toy mechs made some pretty cool sounds too, when you pushed the “fire” button on the back. The Atlas had green lasers, Argon lasers, Jake recalled from school. The red ones are CO2 lasers he repeated silently to himself. The gas determined the color.

  Picture Pack: Atlas Mech, Vulture Mech http://www.JavelinArt.com/StyxStrikers_PicturePack.pdf

  Jake sat back and looked around the cabin. Everything was a variation on a shade of light gray, the overhead, the carry-on storage compartments, the walls, the floor, the faux leather seats, and even the uniforms the cabin stewards wore. You could tell the business people because they wore solid grays too. Boring, he thought as he looked around. At least some the passengers had some style and color. The latest craze for guys like himself was to wear thick black skin-tight pants and neon patterned sports jerseys like the pro athletes wore. Jake liked soccer, the Ferrari Formula-1 racing team, and the SaberCat mechwarriortm team that competed on Solaris-7. That gave him a wide variety of jerseys and colors to choose from. Today he had on his bright orange SaberCat jersey, with black saber toothed tiger skulls on the back, shoulders and front pocket. I look pretty rad, he thought to himself.

  He tried to keep up with the girl’s clothing trends, but they changed every couple of months which was pretty crazy. At least the fabrics were re-paintable so the girls could change their “look” every week for a few credits if they wanted too instead of buying all new items every time. It was still a real waste of money, in his opinion. The young girl across the aisle in front of him had on a loose wrap patterned like a speckled golden pheasant, with a black and red feathered hood. Bird feathers seemed to be the trend of the month. The brassy woman in front of her was patterned like a male peacock, and had on lots of jewelry. Another woman down the aisle was patterned like a white swan, with a large gold choker and crown. He didn’t think much of the jewelry either, most guys think it’s a waste, he stated confidently.

  He turned his attention back to the windows as the shuttle dropped below the clouds. He could see the outlines of a small town down below amid the tangle of the jungle that dominated the area. Then he noticed an odd chain of black sinkholes stretching off into the distance, winding along a pattern that looked a bit like a wandering river. The black openings were massive, large enough to accommodate a tall building inside, and were spaced at random about a kilometer or two apart. Wow, I wonder what those holes are, he thought as the shuttle descended quickly. Looking back at the town he noticed most of the buildings were only two or three stories, with only light traffic on the roads. Most of the vehicles were equipped with larger tires for off-road travel or were heavy haulers. There were only two roads leading out of town, and he could see signs of privately owned settlements here and there cut out of the countryside along the two main roadways going north. The shuttle landing strip seemed to be the focus of the town, which made sense since the town was the main hub for transporting goods on and off of Wayfarer. Hopefully his uncle’s foreman would be there to meet him on the ground. He was slightly worried no one would be there to pick him up.

  Picture Pack: Sinkholes

  The shuttle was lining up on the runway, on final approach. The jungle had been cut back on both ends of the runway to better accommodate aircraft, with amber landing lights strobing in the direction the shuttle was gliding in on. The stewards had strapped in and he had never really been allowed to unbuckle and get up and move around during the flight. Too much turbulence. Oh well, it wasn’t a very long flight anyway. I am hungry, though. Maybe I can get something to eat in the terminal before my ride gets here.

  A flock of white birds erupted from the trees as the shuttle touched down. That’s odd, Jake thought, those birds look just like the ones back home. Maybe the settlers brought them with them when they colonized the moon. The shuttle braked hard, throwing him heavily into the seat belts. “This pilot doesn’t mess around”, he said a bit surprised. The business man next to him smiled, put his magazine down, and reached under the seat to retrieve his bag. “Yup, they don’t care if you bang your head”, he commented. “They expect you to watch out for yourself on Wayfarer. They don’t tolerate any whiners out here, you have to pull your own weight or you get deported. You look fit though, you ought to fit right in.”

  “Thanks” Jake said smiling. “I can’t wait to get out of this cabin and see what Wayfarer smells like.”

  “Well” he laughed, “it smells a lot like wet dirt, with a touch of rotting jungle mixed in. I’d almost forgotten it smelled like anything at all. You get used to it pretty quickly. I’ve made the trip so many times I don’t even notice it anymore.”

  Jake smiled, and pulled his bag out from under the seat in front of him. He liked this man, it was a pity the guy had spent the entire flight reading that stupid business magazine. Jake had a million questions he wanted to ask about living on Wayfarer and no one had been available to answer them. He was just going to have to find out the hard way. The man stood up, fetched his other bag out of the overhead bin and waited for the other passengers to move forward off the shuttle. Jake was still stuck in his seat under the overhead, but he knew relief was only a few minutes away. Finally he got to straighten up and stretch his long legs. “Good luck, kid” the man said as he worked his way down the aisle. Jake smiled back. The boy in the seat in front of him was still playing in his seat as he walked past. The kid’s mom was gathering up the boy’s things and trying to find all of the toys he had stashed under the seat while he was playing on the floor. Jake was much better organized.

  Finally he was able to move down the aisle towards the open door hatch and walked through the bridgeway and into the terminal hallway. It was a bit sparse, no plants, pictures or anything on the walls, large un-tinted bay windows, a padded bench here and there, but no one seemed to notice much. Everyone off the shuttle was walking quickly down the hall towards the main terminal. The hallway opened up into a large vaulted chamber with a sculpture soaring up into the open space. It was a sweeping geometric shape covered in sheets of copper, with silver streaks increasingly towards the pinnacle, drawing the eye upwards. Jake walked down a curving white stone staircase to ground level towards the base of the sculpture.

  Past the sculpture were two exit portals made of a light colored wood formed into rounded archways. Security guards in dark grey stood on either sides of the arches, scanning the new arrivals. The guards bristled with weapons. Each carried a pulser in a holster on the right hip, and had automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Several sizes of knives were tucked away in sheaths on the legs, forearms, and on the waist belt, along with a jungle machete on the left hip. What’s that all about, he wondered. One of the guards monitored a hand-held instrument, apparently the controller for the scanners built into the archways.

  Jake passed through the arch and into the outer lobby area. Plenty of seating here, he observed. The lobby had about a dozen seating zones with about ten comfortable tan chairs each, tables in the centers of each zone, and small square end tables to put a drink on. The baggage claim carousel was on the right, and he could see small shops off down to the left. Passengers were crowding around the carousel as bags and items started to emerge randomly. Jake wandered over to the carousel to wait for his two bags to appear. He had one large suitcase and a large duffle bag to reclaim. The businessman who had sat next to him was talking to someone on his skull phone and was reaching for his custom leather luggage. The bags had a matching brown leather two-tone design and tooling that reminded Jake of the saddles he had seen in the photos his cousins had emailed him. The man obviously had connections and money, especially since he hadn’t flown in on Jake’s slow int
erplanetary flight. All they had shared was the shuttle ride down to the surface.

  Just as his bags came out of the chute onto the carousel Jake’s zipPhone rang. His phone looked like a twenty centimeter long thin silver cylinder with a pull-out thin-film screen. He had kept himself entertained on the interplanetary flight out watching movies and playing videogames on it. He’d forgotten all about it. “Hello?”, he said, answering it with one hand while grabbing one of his bags off the carousel with the other. Who in the world has my number here on Wayfarer?

  “Planetfaller, this is MoonWalker-1. We are in-transit to your location. Expect our arrival in Zero-Seven minutes at Verticopter Pad #2. Please acknowledge, Over.”

  “Hey! Bjorn, is that you?” His cousin was coming to pick him up! Nice! They had always used military lingo playing video games whenever they had met up on Lahti.

  “Dude! Good to see you made it in one piece!” Bjorn said. The whine of the rotor blades made it hard to hear him, but Jake didn’t care one bit. “We’ll see you at the pad in couple of minutes. I just wanted to make sure more than your phone made it, your location popped up on my Zip Tracker app when you landed.”

  Jake was really excited now. He hadn’t seen Bjorn or Sven for a couple years, not since their last visit to Lahti with his uncle Helmut. “Roger, MoonWalker-1. I’ll be there in five for pickup. Planetfaller out!” He had both of his bags, now all he had to do was figure out where Verticopter Pad #2 was and he was home free.

  He found the map board up high on the wall above the seating area and scanned it looking for Vertipad #2. It wasn’t too hard to find, since the aeroport wasn’t very big to start with. There were only two shuttle gates for commercial flights and two Verticopter pads. Jake took off loping down the hallway past the luggage carousel, but had to stop short at the next archway to go through a security scan again. There were only two people ahead of him, but he was anxious to get to the pad and into more friendly territory. Before long he was on his way down the hall again.