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Synopsis - The crew of the Recon ship Black Dragon have been assigned to safe-gaurd the most dangerous sector of space. Known as the Void, this quadrant as become the Bermuda Triangle of the Galaxy, where ships have been known to vanish and something's going on that neither sience nor sanity can explain. Not only must the crew protect the Void from the dangerous renegades known as the Mureks, they must also safegaurd themselves from the strange effects of the Void, effects that will begin to test their resolve, along with their sanity.
What I am writing is book one of a series and a WIP (work in progress). I know many usually don't like WIPs, and I don't blame them. So please be patient with updates as I will get them out when I can. I really need to learn to write a story first and post it later.
Author's Note - All right, that synopsis is way better than the one in my bio. Oh well. I please ask all those who read to also review, even if it's just a 'that was good' or 'Eh, it was okay' to let me know that people are indeed reading. I will stomach criticism (unless your going to be nasty about it) and would appreciate critiques, even spelling and grammer errors as long as you point them out. Do not simply say there's spelling and grammer errors, I need specifics. I would also appreciate (though this isn't a must) in depth critiques of character and plot. Be open, be daring, I don't mind. Such discussions are helpful in furthering and maintaining the plot and chapters, as well as ironing out inconsistencies.
Seriously, don't be afraid to point something out, whether it was something you found intriguing or something you had a problem with. I have a story in the throes of being publsihed, and it was only after all my hard work that people started pointing things out I could have easily changed. I may end up publsihing this story and it would be nice to have it all straightened out before I do.
One more tid-bit. For all you Stargate Atlantis fans, I based the main character Jace off of John Sheppard/Joe F. I do that all the time. If you're an Andromeda/Harper fan, I've got a story with a character based on Harper (except not quite as girl crazy) Not published or written yet, just plotted out.
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What I am writing is book one of a series and a WIP (work in progress). I know many usually don't like WIPs, and I don't blame them. So please be patient with updates as I will get them out when I can. I really need to learn to write a story first and post it later.
Author's Note - All right, that synopsis is way better than the one in my bio. Oh well. I please ask all those who read to also review, even if it's just a 'that was good' or 'Eh, it was okay' to let me know that people are indeed reading. I will stomach criticism (unless your going to be nasty about it) and would appreciate critiques, even spelling and grammer errors as long as you point them out. Do not simply say there's spelling and grammer errors, I need specifics. I would also appreciate (though this isn't a must) in depth critiques of character and plot. Be open, be daring, I don't mind. Such discussions are helpful in furthering and maintaining the plot and chapters, as well as ironing out inconsistencies.
Seriously, don't be afraid to point something out, whether it was something you found intriguing or something you had a problem with. I have a story in the throes of being publsihed, and it was only after all my hard work that people started pointing things out I could have easily changed. I may end up publsihing this story and it would be nice to have it all straightened out before I do.
One more tid-bit. For all you Stargate Atlantis fans, I based the main character Jace off of John Sheppard/Joe F. I do that all the time. If you're an Andromeda/Harper fan, I've got a story with a character based on Harper (except not quite as girl crazy) Not published or written yet, just plotted out.
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The Void
Field Report 771 – Attempted Rescue of the Russian cargo ship The Anastasia. Final transmissions from the emergency response flagship Jumper.
Day 3 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. We've managed to pick up a signal and are following it...
Day 5 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. We managed to filter the signal and are sending our finds to you now, and we've gotta say this is the strangest wave we've ever picked up...
Day 6 – Dallas Outpost, this is the Jumper. Sending more feed on the signal. We are also nearing the uncharted region and still no response from the Anastasia. The signal seems to be stronger this far out...
Day 7 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. we've gotta tell ya, it's been getting strange. I don't know if you've managed to make heads or tails of that signal but we'd like to know something before continuing further...
Day 9 – Dallas Outpost, there's a good chance we may be heading back. Uhhh... Jenkins must be coming down with something 'cause the guy keeps wiggin' out on us. He wants to turn back, and kept getting up in Carlyle's face. Carlyle says we should keep going...
Day 11 – Dallas Outpost, this is the Jumper. Sorry for the lack of an update but we managed to get Jenkins to chill and we've decided just to go on ahead. The signal's getting stronger...
Day 12 – Dallas this is The Jumper, Lt. Candace Georing. We have a situation. I repeat we have a situation... (static) The captain won't listen... (static) We have to turn back! (static) Help us! (static)
Day 12 four hours later – Dallas, this is the Jumper, captain Marcus speaking. Sorry for the last transmission. Lt. Georing was delusional. Fear there's a bit of a fever running rampant, but we're going to press on...
Day 13 – Dallas...? Hello...? Mayday...! (static).
After attempting to reestablish communications with Jumper, Dallas Outpost was unable to get a response. No further attempts at rescue will be forthcoming.
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Onset of the Murekta Conflict
(A Recording at the Air and Space Museum, updated monthly)
In 2084 during the first stages of planetary settlement, Eli Murekta had been a visionary searching for an ideal utopia made up of those willing to work together for each other's survival. After obtaining permission and funds, Eli and followers set out to find a world where this utopia could be built. The planet will later be known as Murekta named for its founder. Eli's dream becomes a reality until the arrival of the Sidassi. At the time, the Sidassi's interests had been in trade only – weapons trade. Weapons had no place in Eli's Utopia. Eli's son, Kysil Murekta, saw differently. Accounts of Kysil, his actions, and his personality are sketchy at best. Conclusive results gathered from those who knew him and had been witness to him, paint a picture of a man deeply paranoid. A man who feared his father's Utopia a fleeting vision should Earth or other outlying world interfere with it.
This paranoia was acted upon when an envoy from the U.S. government was destroyed by Kysil using a Sidassi weapon. The envoy had been sent to ascertain the Sidassi's presence on Murekta and to ensure the Sidassi's intentions were purely trade and not hostilities. Though Sidassi are honest in their desire for trade, they are mostly known by the other races of the Milky Way galaxy to be scavengers who strip planets of their resources then move on. They have even been known to take planets already settled by other races, and this has led to much conflict between the Sidassi and other races, especially the Oseks.
Kysil's actions – whatever his reasons for them – became the catalyst that led to the war. Murekta became his base of operations, against his aging and ailing father's will. Eli Murekta did not live to see the occupation of his world end when forces were finally able to infiltrate the planet, driving Kysil and his followers to space.
The war only escalated from there, turning from confrontational to Guerrilla. Rather than a head on battle, Murekta has found ways of infiltrating the settlements, tearing them down from the inside and taking those worlds for himself. Those willing to follow him remain free as long as they serve him. Those not willing are held as prisoners and hostages, some even turned into slaves. Most of the systems on the outer edge of the galaxy have been lost. Only through the the quick actions of the UTD (United Tactical Defense) were most of the next line of systems spared.
The Mureks, as they have come to be know, are resilient. They have allied themselves with the Sidassi, and have turned most of the occupied planets over to them. The greatest fear now is the potential invasion by Mureks of the more powerful worlds – our allies, as well as Earth itself. Measures are being taken to prevent this, such as the organization of the “ Border Patrol”; single ships assigned to certain quadrants of space, monitoring frequencies and investigating potential Murek infiltration...
Prologue
“ Sweet load of crap that thing is ugly!” Cal all but gushed.
Jace shot him a look of bored disdain, then returned his gaze to the sight filling the view screen. The structure looming closer was like the Tinman's summer home – if the Tinman was on acid. It was like a mess of rusty tinker-toys smashed and welded together, dumped, and left for dead in a sandbox of red sand.
Thank goodness for schematics. A white dot blinked on the Heads Up Display that was heads up only for Jace. In other words, it wasn't blocking the lovely view of blood red clashing with rust red. Jace handled the controls of the behemoth Carrier with the delicacy of a painter handling a brush while working the details. The Eumenides eased itself around the massive science/outpost station turned Stalag to the north side and the landing dock specially designed to handle carrier sized vessels.
“ And this place used to be an outpost?” Cal continued.
Jace gave him a shrug in response. Jason Quincy had been to a lot of outposts since the moment he took to space as an Asp fighter pilot, but they'd never held enough interest for him to memorize each and everyone one. Still, one would think a planet this red, dusty, and desolate to make Mars look like an over-sized beach would have stuck more firmly in his mind. By the more run-down quality of the station, it was probably safe to assume this place had been before his time as a pilot.
Cal shifted in his seat and leaned forward, squinting. Landing procedures were the chief concern of the chief pilot, so Cal was pretty much free to gawk and comment all he wanted. Jace didn't mind. He was a multi-tasker, and Cal knew better than to expect a response from him as landing went under way. Not that it would have been any skin of Jace's back if he talked and docked at the same time. His perfectionist nature wouldn't let him. He liked nice and neat landings. They tended to make a resume and record look nifty.
“ Approaching North platform,” Jace drawled over the com to let the commander in on the procedures. The carrier slowed to a snail's crawl as it lowered. Coordinates flashed up on Jace's personal HUD, and he nudged the controls a little here and a little there until the ship got the hint, recognized the docking platform signals, and made the connection. There came a high-toned beep signaling everything as being hunky-dory, and Jace released the controls to raise his arms, arch his back, and pull his long, lean (though most preferred 'wiry') body in a stretch until his vertebrae popped. He snapped out of the stretch with a contented sigh, then flashed the shorter, more thickly built Cal a smirk.
Cal rolled his eyes and wagged his head. “ Yeah yeah, not a bump, I know.”
Jace wasn't normally one to give way to pride, but damn if he didn't love the fact that he could make a smooth landing. Not so much because it was something to brag about, but more confirmation that all those years of training and putting up with bull had been worth it.
Cal stretched as well, without lifting his arms. The man reminded Jace of those old G.I. Joe dolls – cropped blond hair, square features, and a bulky body. He was so much Jace's antithesis in appearance that most of the crew had taken to referring to them as Laurel and Hardy. Jace and Cal had taken offense – Cal for the most part since no one likes being compared to a pudgy guy when they weren't pudgy. Jace had to grudgingly admit to certain similarities to his character simile. Tall – yes. Slender – yes. Even the hair wasn't all that different. Jace's was spiked, and a little unkept since he didn't really care for maintaining looks. The only difference was that his hair was dark, verging on being nearly black.
Jace was also a hell of a lot smarter than Laurel. He never said this about himself. Plenty of people did it for him, and it was just a given. It took brains to fly and make ten point connections to the docking platforms.
“ We are docked and ready to roll,” Jace announced. He switched off the ship-wide com before turning his head to give Cal a lazy smirk. “ Time to go play hide and seek.”
Cal snorted and shook his head. “ You do that, buddy. I'll hold down the fort for you... Again.”
Jace leaned sideways to clasp Cal on his brawny shoulder. “ And I appreciate it... Again.” then bolted from his seat to head at a trot to the locker room.
It wasn't unheard of for carrier crew members to double as ground troops during the less dangerous recon missions, such as this one; establishing that 'supposedly' abandoned stations/former Stalags were still abandoned before being recommissioned into active use. To the chagrin of the science unit of the UTD, reactivation was to involve using this rust heap as a base of operations for this sector, rather than for science.
The aqua tinted locker room – uncomfortably reminiscent of Jace's Highschool years – was huge and endless with row after row of metal, aqua colored lockers. All that was missing were the communal showers and a bunch of foul smelling jocks. Jace jogged to his locker at the fifth to the last row and right smack in the center. The place was barely occupied by the last minute crew turned ground-walkers gearing up. Jace fiddled with the combination, yanked the locker open with a clang, and pulled out the dark olive green shielded vest and jacket, threw the jacket on first then the vest, then rushed out into the metallic blue corridors toward the bay where everyone would be gathered.
The bay was a sea of olive-green clad bodies surrounding the sleek, black islands of Asp fighters that would remain dormant this time around. The massive bay doors were already sliding open, the warning lights flashing red but the alarms silent. No need for alarms when there was no risk of anyone getting sucked out into the vacuum of space. Gusty winds puffed clouds of red sand into the bay that were immediately sucked up by the vents before the dust could reach any of the Asps. The doors stopped opening when wide enough to allow twelve men to go through at a time shoulder to shoulder.
Jace couldn't see who headed out first, not that he needed to. He pictured the 'Haz-boys' (Hazard recon contingent) stepping onto the sand-blasted platform in their HazMat and bomb proof gear, holding out scanners that checked for deadly gases and explosive related materials.
Jace was handed an automatic, double round rifle and a smaller handgun before making his way around the masses toward the front. It took special clearance and special training just to enter the armory, and the UTD found it less eventful to have these specially trained gun-monkeys hand out the goodies rather than allowing the armory doors to remain open for all.
Jace slung the rifle over his shoulder by the strap and tucked the black automatic into the holster at his hip. He smiled. It couldn't be helped. Being armed made him feel positively bad-ass, and feeling positively bad-ass didn't allow room for second guessing one's self. It wasn't some primitive, macho, male-only state of mind. Women became overcome by it just as bad. It was also, oddly enough, crucial to survival. As Jace's old drill Sargent had once said - ' If you don't feel it, you're dead. So you'd better be all smiles when you pick up that gun.'
In other words, confidence was the key. You go in feeling confident – not smug, not cocky, just confident – and you come back out thanking the heavens you're alive. You go in doubtful, thinking the gun too heavy, you're aim possibly slightly off, and your limbs shaking, you won't have much time to thank anything before you're bleeding out the back of your skull.
This confidence wasn't an act of blatantly ignoring fear. You don't ignore fear. It's more of a moment of delusion, a fleeting enjoyment of the adrenaline rush of having a gun and about to do something bad-ass just to get you through the door and get you firing – again, and again, and again. So, basically, it's a high to keep survival instincts from getting you to go screaming in the other direction – again and again and again.
It was Jace's opinion that all wars tended to be circular in that way. And one either became jaded to it – separating battle as a whole other realm from the everyday to be pushed away like a bad dream – or go insane. Normally, it ended up being a little bit of both, according to his old drill Sargent.
Jace pulled out his com – permanently tuned to the appropriate frequency - and placed it in his ear. He joined and pretty much melded within the row of those lined up at the front – the team leaders. Anyone could be deployed as a ground-walker, but team-leadership was earned. Although Jace wouldn't call it a hop, skip, and a jump into something better. Jace's past position as an Asp Squadron team leader had given him experience, and it was being milked by the higher ups.
In front of the team leaders was another row of tense, eager Oseks dressed in their midnight blue fatigues and metal plate, anti-magnetic arm, thigh, and chest guards. Strange creatures, Oseks. Long bodied like weasels, long limbed like monkeys, with even longer prehensile tails and heads like ear-less dogs though the snouts were longer and the teeth sharper. Their bodies were covered in a thin, blue to be almost black fur, their eyes were large black orbs with reflective slitted green pupils, and females were a few inches smaller than the males (other than that they tended to be hard to tell apart).
Oseks were a little creepy in appearance, and a lot vicious in a battle. The best kind of allies anyone could ask for. A company of Oseks always followed the Haz-boys once the all clear was given. they would take to the nooks and crannies of a structure, and sniff out any lingering bad guys way before the bad guys were able to find them.
Commander Arlan – tall, broad shouldered, with premature iron gray hair (the man was only two years away from being fifty), and ice blue eyes – paced to one side out on the platform with one hand cupped to his ear to hear over the pushy winds.
Jace shifted his weight from one foot to the next as the minutes crawled by. Twenty minutes later, Jace saw Arlan nod, then raise a finger in the air and twirl it. The Osek team leader gave a curt nod, and with a shrill trilling, the Oseks scampered off on all fours into the complex. Twenty minutes – give or take – was the usual time it took to scan a facility for nasty surprises, depending on how good the scanners were, of course.
Five minutes after the Oseks took off, Arlan nodded his head again and lifted his hand for another signal to go. The plans for entering had been put in place long before landing. The first team headed up stepping out into the windy blood-red world, ten in all including the team leader. Team two followed, then team three. Jace's team went last since they weren't much more than the back up for those who went on ahead.
Jace turned his head slightly when he stepped from the Eumenides into the buffeting, scouring winds that tried to sand the flesh off his face. He kept his mouth clamped shut and tried not to breathe until he crossed the open space of the platform and entered the cavernous hanger of the facility.
Sand flowed like red water across the naturally polished floor and crunched under Jace's feet. The teams were already spreading left and right, casual in the hanger, but tense as they approached the many doors that would take them inside. Two teams milled around the hanger to keep watch over the docking bay. Jace and his team stood idly by in the center until told otherwise.
“ Ever been to Stalag before, Captain?”
Jace glanced over his shoulder to watch Command Arlan step up beside him, followed by his second Katherine Arnold – a slender, straight back, by the book woman close to Jace's age with an oval face, pointed chin, and sun-blond hair pulled back tight in a severe ponytail. She was pretty enough but had the personality of a robot who liked residing on ice-burgs. The woman was scary at the best of times and a literal harpy during a crisis. She actually decked a guy twice her size for going against her orders.
Jace shrugged in answer to Arlan's question. “ Sort of. Flew past one smaller than this when the Mureks were trying to make a run for it. Saw a few of the prisoners they were trying to take off with. Not pretty.”
“ Been to three after the fact,” Arlan said. “ Picked up the ones left behind but never the whole mess.”
Jace stifled a grimace. The 'stranded' were always the less pretty of the Stalag POWs. The Mureks used their prisoners of war as slaves to maintain the outposts. When an outpost – termed a Stalag when used by the Mureks – is discovered, the Mureks take what they can and hightail it off the rock, usually leaving a few behind. Those few either end up in a mental hospital, kill themselves, or kill themselves and those around them using bombs the Mureks surgically implant within them. It was why most who rescue the stragglers never consider the rescue much of an accomplishment.
“ Think any might be around on this heap, sir?” Jace asked.
“ As a corpse, maybe. Although I've heard rumor than one or two tend to be forgotten and still manage to find a way to survive. Some of these places have food storage that can last for months, sometimes even years...” Arlan turned his head away to talk into his com for a moment, then turned back. “ Tell me truthfully, Quincy. Which do you prefer. Life in an Asp fighter or life in a Carrier?”
Jace twisted his mouth wryly. “ Truthfully... I don't see much of a difference.”
Arlan cocked both eyebrows at Jace but said nothing. Jace took the cue and continued.
“ I'll admit I miss the adrenaline rush of flying an Asp, but either way you look at it, I still have a crap-load of lives in my hands. I screw up and that's a crap load of lives I'm responsible for.
Arlan nodded. “ Good attitude to have. Keeps you careful.”
“ Yeah, well... no offense, sir, but it also tends to keep me up at night.” It came out more bitterly than he had meant it to, but he didn't care. Jace knew Arlan understood – to an extent. The commander had a lot of lives he was responsible for.
Arlan just had yet to be used as a scapegoat. Leadership takes on a whole new meaning when you become the one everyone wants to hang.
Jace had made himself a hollow promise that he wouldn't go there. But three years still wasn't long enough to get over it.
Commander Arlan whittled the time away with idle chit-chat concerning these old science stations and there use as Stalags. This one had been liberated about five months ago, and now that this sector was Murek free, had been deemed safe for UTD use.
Only when half the facility had been announced as clear did Arlan, his officers, and Jace's team enter the place. Someone had been considerate enough to flip on a light switch that didn't do squat in illuminating the place. Most of the lights – no matter the promised lifespan – were either burnt out or broken. And the section entered wasn't any measly room or hallway. It was huge, probably as big as the hanger, and full of catwalks and tangled piping. Footfalls rang and resounded over the metal surfaces that were mottle silver, tarnished silver, and rust red.
Jace had to crane his neck to the aching point trying to get the whole room in at a glance. Walls heavy with networks of pipes would open up at dispersed points into massive corridors with more catwalks and more piping. This place was a maze in the worst kind of way, making Jace feel less like a rat and more like a pigmy mouse.
It smelled nasty too – like stale water, body oder, a hint of rotten eggs (sulfur) and just a dash of decay. Some Stalags were said to have hidden sections where bodies were stashed. compartments, pits, empty water tanks. Maybe this Stalag's stash hadn't been found yet.
Since most of the structure had been cleared, the remaining three teams were free to roam so long as they stayed together as a team. There was no one hundred percent certainty that a cleared sector was really all that clear. There were plenty of places for a single, stranded loner to hide, not really much of a threat, just a reason for everyone to stay on guard.
Jace took his team to the nearest hallway and headed in. The men and women following him spread out, making for the nearest door, pressing against the wall to one side, then opening it and peering in. Jace kept on going. No one was to enter any room until he said so, or if he entered one himself.
Jace's radio crackled. Of all the years he's had to use the dumb things, the sound always sent an uncomfortable thrill down his spine.
“ All units be on guard. Robot remains. Repeat, we've found robot remains.”
Jace frowned uncomfortably. He was tolerant of those walking (or rolling, or magnetic, or whatever) talking miniature mechanics that ranged from the size of a mouse to the size of a dog. Those were a necessity, and a docile one at that. Those guard machines, no matter whose side they were on, tended to freak Jace out. Big, bladed, and vicious looking. They weren't meant to be cute, friendly, or remotely human. Security machines, built to defend outposts such as this one when in use, and to maintain the safety of carrier ships and larger, were designed by those with too many bad dreams and the know-how to utilize those bad dreams.
The machines the Mureks normally left behind after an outpost occupation created bad dreams – if you happened to survive to ever dream again. Jace had known a guy who'd ended up in a psyche ward after witnessing the bloody butchering-spree of a Murek reprogrammed monster. Like Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets the Terminator, he'd said, then started sobbing like an infant.
The corridor was long, like one of those bad dreams where the hallway stretches further the faster you run. This one, however, did end in a way by opening up into another hanger-sized room full of scaffolding, metal catwalks, piping, and also debris. Lots and lots of debris. Scrap metal, machine parts, things broken, things in the throes of repair, and things beyond repair. It was like walking through a junkyard.
Jace was able to peer over most of the junk piles to see the other teams emerging from their perspective corridors and spreading out. Jace turned his attention from the teams to the junk pile, and nudged a snouted robotic head missing a body.
“ This place is starting to look like my brothers bedroom.”
Jace grinned but didn't look up as he nudged the severed head around as though he were turning over rocks.
“ He's the tech-head, right?” Jace asked. Finally he did look up. Lt. Calloway – twenty something, five-something, with brown hair tied back and an aim that always hit true even in the most intense situations, peered tentatively into a gap within a large hill of scrap.
“ Yes sir,” she said. “ Give him a few pieces of metal, wires, and a circuit bored, and he'll build you a coffee machine in five hours.”
Jace kicked the head away to send it clattering across the floor. “ Sounds like my kind of tech.”
“ You don't think anyone is still around, do you sir?” Calloway asked.
Jace shrugged indifferently and began kicking at a new piece of junk. “ It's in my nature never to assume. I've always believed the impossible to be more a statement of mind rather than of fact.”
“ Very Zen of you sir.”
Jace grinned. “ Why thank you Lieutenant.”
The com crackled making the skin along Jace's back prickle.
“ All units, be on alert. Movement, spotted. Repeat, movement spotted. Bogey unknown.”
Jace looked at Calloway, who looked back at him nervously. Jace gave her a helpless shrug.
“ I've also yet to ever learn when to keep my mouth shut.”
He and Calloway lifted their rifles at sight range and proceeded down their section of dump toward the other end of the chamber at a snail's pace, pivoting their bodies with the same methodicalness to cast the beam of the rifle's light into shadows and nooks.
The com crackled again. “ Where was the bogey spotted?”
“ Four clicks at eight o'clock.”
Gun fire rattled briefly like rapid fire thunder. “ Whoa! The thing just whipped past me.”
“ That was a rat!”
“ Didn't know they had rats here.”
“ They hitch rides on the cargo ship. This thing is bigger than a rat.”
“ That was a freakin' huge rat, man!”
Jace rolled his eyes. The problem with relying on tech's as backup is that one out of every three was going to be trigger happy from nerves and inexperience.
Jace flicked his hand from his gun to his com to switch over to response.
“ You people need to chill before you end up shooting each other in unpleasant places. You also need to shut up unless you see something worth mentioning.” Jace was quite tempted to take out his com. Silence had merit when sight alone wasn't enough. Each step – both from Jace and Calloway – was careful and concentrated on to prevent any sound. Both their breathing was shallow and slow, though Jace's heart-rate was a little up.
Because of their struggle to uphold the silence, Jace heard it.
A cough; a small insubstantial, barely audible, and timid cough sounding on his left. He turned and moved through a small gap between two large piles of metal and parts all the singular color of storm gray. Jace searched the piles, separating metal bits from parts bits – wires, circuit boards, gears, robot body parts, engines, pipes, cable bundles and bits of cloth. Jace noticed each separately rather than seeing it as a whole, and even noted parts that could still be useful.
He learned long ago to see beyond the immediate, to go deeper and search longer for what the naked eye always missed. His sister had taught him that as a means to get him to become more appreciative of the smaller joys of life. Sometimes, the small things were all they had, all that there was to look forward to. It also made him more appreciative of what they had, and less whiny about what they didn't have.
Hey, when money gets tight and your gut's crying for a meal, a bowl of rice becomes a four course meal at Red Lobster.
So Jace appreciated, noticed, and always grinned over how handy a habit it was. He spotted what didn't belong with the rest of the junk. A flash of pale to be almost white skin, trying to hide beneath a mound of dirty gray cloth. Jace glanced over his shoulder at Calloway, put his fingers to his lips, then pointed down at the mound.
Jace crouched beside the mound, inched forward, and touched the tip of the rifle to the cloth.
The instantaneous reaction was explosive and brief. The mound uncurled into a body that jerked back slamming into the rubble. Jace jerked back himself but kept his trigger finger locked. Then eased it away from the trigger, and his eye from the eye-piece to stare gaping at the 'bogey'.
Said bogey was just a kid – teenager, sixteen, maybe seventeen years old, and male. A very sickly, terrified male trying to press his shivering body into the rubble. He was dressed in a plain long-sleeved shirt and trousers of solid gray. No shoes and no socks. His possibly brown hair was a greasy, scraggly matted rat's nest, his watery and vacant eyes the same color, and his face was all angles just like the rest of his body, pinched with starvation and white as a corpse.
Jace didn't know whether to cry or be sick, pity the kid or admire him. The boy was so thin Jace didn't know how it was possible for the kid to be alive. Dirt splotched the white skin, and scabs marred it. The shirt was too many sizes too big for that meatless frame and slid down the sharp shoulder.
It was as though the kid's skin were transparent. Jace could count the individual ribs in the boy's chest alone. Emaciation – that was the word for this level of starvation.
Crap, he's just a kid!
Jace stared at the kid, and the kid stared back at him. It was a moment, but one that felt like it could have stretched into eternity. Despite the terror and confusion, the boy met Jace's gaze and locked on. It was said of the 'stranded' – the ones purposefully left behind as a visual of the Mureks laughing in the UTD's face – that there usually wasn't enough left of the person's mind for them to be considered a real rescue. Sure, the family of that person were grateful, up until that person either killed themselves or killed themselves and everyone within a quarter mile radius.
There was no really saving the stranded, because there wasn't anything left to save.
Jace had seen a stranded – well, pictures of them to keep the shock of finding one from becoming a hindrance. Male, female, young or old, they were all the same. Vacant, empty, showing no response or acting alike automatons. Poor freakin' bodies without a soul, dead long before the body had yet to shut down.
Not this kid. Hell no.
As Jace regarded the kid, the kid regarded Jace. He regarded with calculation, caution, sizing Jace up and assessing every minor movement if it came. It was a look Jace knew well since every soldier basically expressed it, no matter the circumstances. There was actually someone home in that wasted body.
Jace slowly, carefully, slid the strap of his gun from his shoulder, then set the gun on the floor.
“ Hey there,” he said, and held up both empty hands. “ I'm not gonna hurt you. It's all right.” He saw Calloway out of the corner of his eye, standing out of sight but at the ready. Behind her was Lt. Davis and Shale.
Jace lowered his hands to the floor and moved out of his crouch to sit on his folded legs. He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward slightly.
“ My name's Jason, but most people call me Jace,” he said as though talking to someone he'd just met on the street. “ My sister's fault. One way or another she was going to give me a nickname. Term of affection kind of thing. What's your name?”
The kid didn't reply. He looked Jace up and down, uncertain and wary.
“ Been here long?” Jace went on, then shrugged. “ Kind of a stupid question. You look like you've been here too long. How about we take you out of here? Get you some better clothes, some food, a warm bed. How's that sound?”
The kid didn't budge or respond. Yet, for a moment, almost a heart beat, the wariness and caution were gone, like something being wiped away. Beneath, Jace saw painful desperation. A longing, a need, so deep it actually seemed to hurt the kid, and it made Jace's chest ache.
Then it was gone when the shutters of caution slapped back over it all.
Jace sighed heavily. “ It really is okay, kid. I'm not really a good liar. Although I have been told I'm wicked with the sarcasm, which I can't tell whether to be proud of or offended by. What about you, kid? you got any funny talents?”
Jace didn't expect an answer – never had from the start. He was just making conversation, and giving the terrified kid something other than sugar-coated placations that were a load of crap.
Since the kid had yet to move or respond, and since this wasn't really getting anywhere as far as Jace could tell, Jace decided to go for being a little daring. He slowly reached one hand out toward the kid, little by little, letting the kid see and become gradually accustomed to the proximity of another human hand.
The kid jolted, and shrank back deeper against the rubble pile.
“ You're gonna hurt yourself doing that, kid,” Jace said. His finger lightly touched the bony shoulder. The kid flinched, cringed shivering, but did not bolt. Jace smiled warmly at him.
“ See? I'm not hurting you, right? And you'd let me know if I was because I have no idea if you're injured and where.”
Jace moved his hand a little further to have it entirely on the thin shoulder. “It's all good, kid.” He patted the boy's shoulder softly, then moved his hand to carefully grip the boy's arm and gently tug. The boy gradually, hesitantly, complied, moving away from the rubble and a little closer to Jace. Jace released the boy's arm so he could remove his jacket, and placed it over the kid's twitching back.
The boy's meager movement's left him winded, and he was struggling just to stay upright on his knees. Jace moved in closer to the boy and put his arm around the kid's shoulders. Jace pulled the kid to have him resting against his own side.
Jace still felt the kid shaking. Yet the wariness and the fear slipped from his eyes that became distant and heavy with utter exhaustion. Jace wouldn't have been surprised if the kid fell asleep right then and there. Even when the three Lieutenants stepped into view with Calloway reporting an all clear on the bogey, the kid barely reacted except to cling to Jace's shirt with one hand. Jace felt him tense some when several other soldiers from the other units arrive to see this bogey and gape slack-jawed at what they saw. A med unit was called, and arrived along with Commander Arlan.
Arlan's eyes rounded over at seeing the corpse-like teenager clinging like a child to the pilot. It confirmed something for Kace. Arlan had seen some of the 'stranded', had looked into their eyes personally instead of witnessing them over some video feed. Arlan didn't have to say it. Jace knew this was the first time he'd ever seen a stranded actually react to someone.
React with blatant, undeniable trust, which continued to surprise even Jace.
Maybe too much trust. When the medics tried to pull the boy away as gently as possible, the kid would attempt to weakly scoot back to Jace, keeping as tight a grip as he could on the pilot's shirt until his bony knuckles dug into Jace's ribs. Jace finally held up his hand before the medics decided to get a little more forceful.
“ I'll take him,” he said. He maneuvered himself and the kid around enough to gather the kid into his arms and lift him. It was like carrying a rag doll that weighed next to nothing, but Jace made sure to handle the kid like he was carrying a small, fragile child – though the fragile part was pretty much fact. Kace was aware of the fact that he wasn't all bulging biceps (and didn't really care), and yet he still felt as though one too-tight squeeze would crush this kid into oblivion. With Calloway's help, he adjusted the kid's head to rest on his shoulder, then carried the kid from the junkyard toward the hanger bay.
“ Warm food, warm clothes, warm bed and even a warm bath,” Jace said. “ Kid you are heading toward the high life here.”
“ Matt.”
Jace had barely heard it. He looked down at the kid, into his tired face and slowly closing eyelids.
“ What?”
“ Matt.”
Jace arched an eyebrow. “ That your name?”
The boy nodded weakly, then pulled in a quiet, shuddering breath. “ They took... My... Mom.”
Matt's eyes closed. The medic walking alongside Jace reached out, checked for a pulse and nodded reassuringly. Jace nodded back his understanding without looking away from the kid.
“ That's the most a stranded has ever said,” the medic commented. “ You've got a gift there, Quince.”
Jace snorted. “ Maybe this kid just isn't a complete whack job.”
Or at least had the potential not to be. Jace could only hope. Didn't matter, though. Either way, he still felt the kid worth saving.
TBC...
Field Report 771 – Attempted Rescue of the Russian cargo ship The Anastasia. Final transmissions from the emergency response flagship Jumper.
Day 3 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. We've managed to pick up a signal and are following it...
Day 5 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. We managed to filter the signal and are sending our finds to you now, and we've gotta say this is the strangest wave we've ever picked up...
Day 6 – Dallas Outpost, this is the Jumper. Sending more feed on the signal. We are also nearing the uncharted region and still no response from the Anastasia. The signal seems to be stronger this far out...
Day 7 – Dallas Outpost, this is The Jumper. we've gotta tell ya, it's been getting strange. I don't know if you've managed to make heads or tails of that signal but we'd like to know something before continuing further...
Day 9 – Dallas Outpost, there's a good chance we may be heading back. Uhhh... Jenkins must be coming down with something 'cause the guy keeps wiggin' out on us. He wants to turn back, and kept getting up in Carlyle's face. Carlyle says we should keep going...
Day 11 – Dallas Outpost, this is the Jumper. Sorry for the lack of an update but we managed to get Jenkins to chill and we've decided just to go on ahead. The signal's getting stronger...
Day 12 – Dallas this is The Jumper, Lt. Candace Georing. We have a situation. I repeat we have a situation... (static) The captain won't listen... (static) We have to turn back! (static) Help us! (static)
Day 12 four hours later – Dallas, this is the Jumper, captain Marcus speaking. Sorry for the last transmission. Lt. Georing was delusional. Fear there's a bit of a fever running rampant, but we're going to press on...
Day 13 – Dallas...? Hello...? Mayday...! (static).
After attempting to reestablish communications with Jumper, Dallas Outpost was unable to get a response. No further attempts at rescue will be forthcoming.
....................
Onset of the Murekta Conflict
(A Recording at the Air and Space Museum, updated monthly)
In 2084 during the first stages of planetary settlement, Eli Murekta had been a visionary searching for an ideal utopia made up of those willing to work together for each other's survival. After obtaining permission and funds, Eli and followers set out to find a world where this utopia could be built. The planet will later be known as Murekta named for its founder. Eli's dream becomes a reality until the arrival of the Sidassi. At the time, the Sidassi's interests had been in trade only – weapons trade. Weapons had no place in Eli's Utopia. Eli's son, Kysil Murekta, saw differently. Accounts of Kysil, his actions, and his personality are sketchy at best. Conclusive results gathered from those who knew him and had been witness to him, paint a picture of a man deeply paranoid. A man who feared his father's Utopia a fleeting vision should Earth or other outlying world interfere with it.
This paranoia was acted upon when an envoy from the U.S. government was destroyed by Kysil using a Sidassi weapon. The envoy had been sent to ascertain the Sidassi's presence on Murekta and to ensure the Sidassi's intentions were purely trade and not hostilities. Though Sidassi are honest in their desire for trade, they are mostly known by the other races of the Milky Way galaxy to be scavengers who strip planets of their resources then move on. They have even been known to take planets already settled by other races, and this has led to much conflict between the Sidassi and other races, especially the Oseks.
Kysil's actions – whatever his reasons for them – became the catalyst that led to the war. Murekta became his base of operations, against his aging and ailing father's will. Eli Murekta did not live to see the occupation of his world end when forces were finally able to infiltrate the planet, driving Kysil and his followers to space.
The war only escalated from there, turning from confrontational to Guerrilla. Rather than a head on battle, Murekta has found ways of infiltrating the settlements, tearing them down from the inside and taking those worlds for himself. Those willing to follow him remain free as long as they serve him. Those not willing are held as prisoners and hostages, some even turned into slaves. Most of the systems on the outer edge of the galaxy have been lost. Only through the the quick actions of the UTD (United Tactical Defense) were most of the next line of systems spared.
The Mureks, as they have come to be know, are resilient. They have allied themselves with the Sidassi, and have turned most of the occupied planets over to them. The greatest fear now is the potential invasion by Mureks of the more powerful worlds – our allies, as well as Earth itself. Measures are being taken to prevent this, such as the organization of the “ Border Patrol”; single ships assigned to certain quadrants of space, monitoring frequencies and investigating potential Murek infiltration...
Prologue
“ Sweet load of crap that thing is ugly!” Cal all but gushed.
Jace shot him a look of bored disdain, then returned his gaze to the sight filling the view screen. The structure looming closer was like the Tinman's summer home – if the Tinman was on acid. It was like a mess of rusty tinker-toys smashed and welded together, dumped, and left for dead in a sandbox of red sand.
Thank goodness for schematics. A white dot blinked on the Heads Up Display that was heads up only for Jace. In other words, it wasn't blocking the lovely view of blood red clashing with rust red. Jace handled the controls of the behemoth Carrier with the delicacy of a painter handling a brush while working the details. The Eumenides eased itself around the massive science/outpost station turned Stalag to the north side and the landing dock specially designed to handle carrier sized vessels.
“ And this place used to be an outpost?” Cal continued.
Jace gave him a shrug in response. Jason Quincy had been to a lot of outposts since the moment he took to space as an Asp fighter pilot, but they'd never held enough interest for him to memorize each and everyone one. Still, one would think a planet this red, dusty, and desolate to make Mars look like an over-sized beach would have stuck more firmly in his mind. By the more run-down quality of the station, it was probably safe to assume this place had been before his time as a pilot.
Cal shifted in his seat and leaned forward, squinting. Landing procedures were the chief concern of the chief pilot, so Cal was pretty much free to gawk and comment all he wanted. Jace didn't mind. He was a multi-tasker, and Cal knew better than to expect a response from him as landing went under way. Not that it would have been any skin of Jace's back if he talked and docked at the same time. His perfectionist nature wouldn't let him. He liked nice and neat landings. They tended to make a resume and record look nifty.
“ Approaching North platform,” Jace drawled over the com to let the commander in on the procedures. The carrier slowed to a snail's crawl as it lowered. Coordinates flashed up on Jace's personal HUD, and he nudged the controls a little here and a little there until the ship got the hint, recognized the docking platform signals, and made the connection. There came a high-toned beep signaling everything as being hunky-dory, and Jace released the controls to raise his arms, arch his back, and pull his long, lean (though most preferred 'wiry') body in a stretch until his vertebrae popped. He snapped out of the stretch with a contented sigh, then flashed the shorter, more thickly built Cal a smirk.
Cal rolled his eyes and wagged his head. “ Yeah yeah, not a bump, I know.”
Jace wasn't normally one to give way to pride, but damn if he didn't love the fact that he could make a smooth landing. Not so much because it was something to brag about, but more confirmation that all those years of training and putting up with bull had been worth it.
Cal stretched as well, without lifting his arms. The man reminded Jace of those old G.I. Joe dolls – cropped blond hair, square features, and a bulky body. He was so much Jace's antithesis in appearance that most of the crew had taken to referring to them as Laurel and Hardy. Jace and Cal had taken offense – Cal for the most part since no one likes being compared to a pudgy guy when they weren't pudgy. Jace had to grudgingly admit to certain similarities to his character simile. Tall – yes. Slender – yes. Even the hair wasn't all that different. Jace's was spiked, and a little unkept since he didn't really care for maintaining looks. The only difference was that his hair was dark, verging on being nearly black.
Jace was also a hell of a lot smarter than Laurel. He never said this about himself. Plenty of people did it for him, and it was just a given. It took brains to fly and make ten point connections to the docking platforms.
“ We are docked and ready to roll,” Jace announced. He switched off the ship-wide com before turning his head to give Cal a lazy smirk. “ Time to go play hide and seek.”
Cal snorted and shook his head. “ You do that, buddy. I'll hold down the fort for you... Again.”
Jace leaned sideways to clasp Cal on his brawny shoulder. “ And I appreciate it... Again.” then bolted from his seat to head at a trot to the locker room.
It wasn't unheard of for carrier crew members to double as ground troops during the less dangerous recon missions, such as this one; establishing that 'supposedly' abandoned stations/former Stalags were still abandoned before being recommissioned into active use. To the chagrin of the science unit of the UTD, reactivation was to involve using this rust heap as a base of operations for this sector, rather than for science.
The aqua tinted locker room – uncomfortably reminiscent of Jace's Highschool years – was huge and endless with row after row of metal, aqua colored lockers. All that was missing were the communal showers and a bunch of foul smelling jocks. Jace jogged to his locker at the fifth to the last row and right smack in the center. The place was barely occupied by the last minute crew turned ground-walkers gearing up. Jace fiddled with the combination, yanked the locker open with a clang, and pulled out the dark olive green shielded vest and jacket, threw the jacket on first then the vest, then rushed out into the metallic blue corridors toward the bay where everyone would be gathered.
The bay was a sea of olive-green clad bodies surrounding the sleek, black islands of Asp fighters that would remain dormant this time around. The massive bay doors were already sliding open, the warning lights flashing red but the alarms silent. No need for alarms when there was no risk of anyone getting sucked out into the vacuum of space. Gusty winds puffed clouds of red sand into the bay that were immediately sucked up by the vents before the dust could reach any of the Asps. The doors stopped opening when wide enough to allow twelve men to go through at a time shoulder to shoulder.
Jace couldn't see who headed out first, not that he needed to. He pictured the 'Haz-boys' (Hazard recon contingent) stepping onto the sand-blasted platform in their HazMat and bomb proof gear, holding out scanners that checked for deadly gases and explosive related materials.
Jace was handed an automatic, double round rifle and a smaller handgun before making his way around the masses toward the front. It took special clearance and special training just to enter the armory, and the UTD found it less eventful to have these specially trained gun-monkeys hand out the goodies rather than allowing the armory doors to remain open for all.
Jace slung the rifle over his shoulder by the strap and tucked the black automatic into the holster at his hip. He smiled. It couldn't be helped. Being armed made him feel positively bad-ass, and feeling positively bad-ass didn't allow room for second guessing one's self. It wasn't some primitive, macho, male-only state of mind. Women became overcome by it just as bad. It was also, oddly enough, crucial to survival. As Jace's old drill Sargent had once said - ' If you don't feel it, you're dead. So you'd better be all smiles when you pick up that gun.'
In other words, confidence was the key. You go in feeling confident – not smug, not cocky, just confident – and you come back out thanking the heavens you're alive. You go in doubtful, thinking the gun too heavy, you're aim possibly slightly off, and your limbs shaking, you won't have much time to thank anything before you're bleeding out the back of your skull.
This confidence wasn't an act of blatantly ignoring fear. You don't ignore fear. It's more of a moment of delusion, a fleeting enjoyment of the adrenaline rush of having a gun and about to do something bad-ass just to get you through the door and get you firing – again, and again, and again. So, basically, it's a high to keep survival instincts from getting you to go screaming in the other direction – again and again and again.
It was Jace's opinion that all wars tended to be circular in that way. And one either became jaded to it – separating battle as a whole other realm from the everyday to be pushed away like a bad dream – or go insane. Normally, it ended up being a little bit of both, according to his old drill Sargent.
Jace pulled out his com – permanently tuned to the appropriate frequency - and placed it in his ear. He joined and pretty much melded within the row of those lined up at the front – the team leaders. Anyone could be deployed as a ground-walker, but team-leadership was earned. Although Jace wouldn't call it a hop, skip, and a jump into something better. Jace's past position as an Asp Squadron team leader had given him experience, and it was being milked by the higher ups.
In front of the team leaders was another row of tense, eager Oseks dressed in their midnight blue fatigues and metal plate, anti-magnetic arm, thigh, and chest guards. Strange creatures, Oseks. Long bodied like weasels, long limbed like monkeys, with even longer prehensile tails and heads like ear-less dogs though the snouts were longer and the teeth sharper. Their bodies were covered in a thin, blue to be almost black fur, their eyes were large black orbs with reflective slitted green pupils, and females were a few inches smaller than the males (other than that they tended to be hard to tell apart).
Oseks were a little creepy in appearance, and a lot vicious in a battle. The best kind of allies anyone could ask for. A company of Oseks always followed the Haz-boys once the all clear was given. they would take to the nooks and crannies of a structure, and sniff out any lingering bad guys way before the bad guys were able to find them.
Commander Arlan – tall, broad shouldered, with premature iron gray hair (the man was only two years away from being fifty), and ice blue eyes – paced to one side out on the platform with one hand cupped to his ear to hear over the pushy winds.
Jace shifted his weight from one foot to the next as the minutes crawled by. Twenty minutes later, Jace saw Arlan nod, then raise a finger in the air and twirl it. The Osek team leader gave a curt nod, and with a shrill trilling, the Oseks scampered off on all fours into the complex. Twenty minutes – give or take – was the usual time it took to scan a facility for nasty surprises, depending on how good the scanners were, of course.
Five minutes after the Oseks took off, Arlan nodded his head again and lifted his hand for another signal to go. The plans for entering had been put in place long before landing. The first team headed up stepping out into the windy blood-red world, ten in all including the team leader. Team two followed, then team three. Jace's team went last since they weren't much more than the back up for those who went on ahead.
Jace turned his head slightly when he stepped from the Eumenides into the buffeting, scouring winds that tried to sand the flesh off his face. He kept his mouth clamped shut and tried not to breathe until he crossed the open space of the platform and entered the cavernous hanger of the facility.
Sand flowed like red water across the naturally polished floor and crunched under Jace's feet. The teams were already spreading left and right, casual in the hanger, but tense as they approached the many doors that would take them inside. Two teams milled around the hanger to keep watch over the docking bay. Jace and his team stood idly by in the center until told otherwise.
“ Ever been to Stalag before, Captain?”
Jace glanced over his shoulder to watch Command Arlan step up beside him, followed by his second Katherine Arnold – a slender, straight back, by the book woman close to Jace's age with an oval face, pointed chin, and sun-blond hair pulled back tight in a severe ponytail. She was pretty enough but had the personality of a robot who liked residing on ice-burgs. The woman was scary at the best of times and a literal harpy during a crisis. She actually decked a guy twice her size for going against her orders.
Jace shrugged in answer to Arlan's question. “ Sort of. Flew past one smaller than this when the Mureks were trying to make a run for it. Saw a few of the prisoners they were trying to take off with. Not pretty.”
“ Been to three after the fact,” Arlan said. “ Picked up the ones left behind but never the whole mess.”
Jace stifled a grimace. The 'stranded' were always the less pretty of the Stalag POWs. The Mureks used their prisoners of war as slaves to maintain the outposts. When an outpost – termed a Stalag when used by the Mureks – is discovered, the Mureks take what they can and hightail it off the rock, usually leaving a few behind. Those few either end up in a mental hospital, kill themselves, or kill themselves and those around them using bombs the Mureks surgically implant within them. It was why most who rescue the stragglers never consider the rescue much of an accomplishment.
“ Think any might be around on this heap, sir?” Jace asked.
“ As a corpse, maybe. Although I've heard rumor than one or two tend to be forgotten and still manage to find a way to survive. Some of these places have food storage that can last for months, sometimes even years...” Arlan turned his head away to talk into his com for a moment, then turned back. “ Tell me truthfully, Quincy. Which do you prefer. Life in an Asp fighter or life in a Carrier?”
Jace twisted his mouth wryly. “ Truthfully... I don't see much of a difference.”
Arlan cocked both eyebrows at Jace but said nothing. Jace took the cue and continued.
“ I'll admit I miss the adrenaline rush of flying an Asp, but either way you look at it, I still have a crap-load of lives in my hands. I screw up and that's a crap load of lives I'm responsible for.
Arlan nodded. “ Good attitude to have. Keeps you careful.”
“ Yeah, well... no offense, sir, but it also tends to keep me up at night.” It came out more bitterly than he had meant it to, but he didn't care. Jace knew Arlan understood – to an extent. The commander had a lot of lives he was responsible for.
Arlan just had yet to be used as a scapegoat. Leadership takes on a whole new meaning when you become the one everyone wants to hang.
Jace had made himself a hollow promise that he wouldn't go there. But three years still wasn't long enough to get over it.
Commander Arlan whittled the time away with idle chit-chat concerning these old science stations and there use as Stalags. This one had been liberated about five months ago, and now that this sector was Murek free, had been deemed safe for UTD use.
Only when half the facility had been announced as clear did Arlan, his officers, and Jace's team enter the place. Someone had been considerate enough to flip on a light switch that didn't do squat in illuminating the place. Most of the lights – no matter the promised lifespan – were either burnt out or broken. And the section entered wasn't any measly room or hallway. It was huge, probably as big as the hanger, and full of catwalks and tangled piping. Footfalls rang and resounded over the metal surfaces that were mottle silver, tarnished silver, and rust red.
Jace had to crane his neck to the aching point trying to get the whole room in at a glance. Walls heavy with networks of pipes would open up at dispersed points into massive corridors with more catwalks and more piping. This place was a maze in the worst kind of way, making Jace feel less like a rat and more like a pigmy mouse.
It smelled nasty too – like stale water, body oder, a hint of rotten eggs (sulfur) and just a dash of decay. Some Stalags were said to have hidden sections where bodies were stashed. compartments, pits, empty water tanks. Maybe this Stalag's stash hadn't been found yet.
Since most of the structure had been cleared, the remaining three teams were free to roam so long as they stayed together as a team. There was no one hundred percent certainty that a cleared sector was really all that clear. There were plenty of places for a single, stranded loner to hide, not really much of a threat, just a reason for everyone to stay on guard.
Jace took his team to the nearest hallway and headed in. The men and women following him spread out, making for the nearest door, pressing against the wall to one side, then opening it and peering in. Jace kept on going. No one was to enter any room until he said so, or if he entered one himself.
Jace's radio crackled. Of all the years he's had to use the dumb things, the sound always sent an uncomfortable thrill down his spine.
“ All units be on guard. Robot remains. Repeat, we've found robot remains.”
Jace frowned uncomfortably. He was tolerant of those walking (or rolling, or magnetic, or whatever) talking miniature mechanics that ranged from the size of a mouse to the size of a dog. Those were a necessity, and a docile one at that. Those guard machines, no matter whose side they were on, tended to freak Jace out. Big, bladed, and vicious looking. They weren't meant to be cute, friendly, or remotely human. Security machines, built to defend outposts such as this one when in use, and to maintain the safety of carrier ships and larger, were designed by those with too many bad dreams and the know-how to utilize those bad dreams.
The machines the Mureks normally left behind after an outpost occupation created bad dreams – if you happened to survive to ever dream again. Jace had known a guy who'd ended up in a psyche ward after witnessing the bloody butchering-spree of a Murek reprogrammed monster. Like Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets the Terminator, he'd said, then started sobbing like an infant.
The corridor was long, like one of those bad dreams where the hallway stretches further the faster you run. This one, however, did end in a way by opening up into another hanger-sized room full of scaffolding, metal catwalks, piping, and also debris. Lots and lots of debris. Scrap metal, machine parts, things broken, things in the throes of repair, and things beyond repair. It was like walking through a junkyard.
Jace was able to peer over most of the junk piles to see the other teams emerging from their perspective corridors and spreading out. Jace turned his attention from the teams to the junk pile, and nudged a snouted robotic head missing a body.
“ This place is starting to look like my brothers bedroom.”
Jace grinned but didn't look up as he nudged the severed head around as though he were turning over rocks.
“ He's the tech-head, right?” Jace asked. Finally he did look up. Lt. Calloway – twenty something, five-something, with brown hair tied back and an aim that always hit true even in the most intense situations, peered tentatively into a gap within a large hill of scrap.
“ Yes sir,” she said. “ Give him a few pieces of metal, wires, and a circuit bored, and he'll build you a coffee machine in five hours.”
Jace kicked the head away to send it clattering across the floor. “ Sounds like my kind of tech.”
“ You don't think anyone is still around, do you sir?” Calloway asked.
Jace shrugged indifferently and began kicking at a new piece of junk. “ It's in my nature never to assume. I've always believed the impossible to be more a statement of mind rather than of fact.”
“ Very Zen of you sir.”
Jace grinned. “ Why thank you Lieutenant.”
The com crackled making the skin along Jace's back prickle.
“ All units, be on alert. Movement, spotted. Repeat, movement spotted. Bogey unknown.”
Jace looked at Calloway, who looked back at him nervously. Jace gave her a helpless shrug.
“ I've also yet to ever learn when to keep my mouth shut.”
He and Calloway lifted their rifles at sight range and proceeded down their section of dump toward the other end of the chamber at a snail's pace, pivoting their bodies with the same methodicalness to cast the beam of the rifle's light into shadows and nooks.
The com crackled again. “ Where was the bogey spotted?”
“ Four clicks at eight o'clock.”
Gun fire rattled briefly like rapid fire thunder. “ Whoa! The thing just whipped past me.”
“ That was a rat!”
“ Didn't know they had rats here.”
“ They hitch rides on the cargo ship. This thing is bigger than a rat.”
“ That was a freakin' huge rat, man!”
Jace rolled his eyes. The problem with relying on tech's as backup is that one out of every three was going to be trigger happy from nerves and inexperience.
Jace flicked his hand from his gun to his com to switch over to response.
“ You people need to chill before you end up shooting each other in unpleasant places. You also need to shut up unless you see something worth mentioning.” Jace was quite tempted to take out his com. Silence had merit when sight alone wasn't enough. Each step – both from Jace and Calloway – was careful and concentrated on to prevent any sound. Both their breathing was shallow and slow, though Jace's heart-rate was a little up.
Because of their struggle to uphold the silence, Jace heard it.
A cough; a small insubstantial, barely audible, and timid cough sounding on his left. He turned and moved through a small gap between two large piles of metal and parts all the singular color of storm gray. Jace searched the piles, separating metal bits from parts bits – wires, circuit boards, gears, robot body parts, engines, pipes, cable bundles and bits of cloth. Jace noticed each separately rather than seeing it as a whole, and even noted parts that could still be useful.
He learned long ago to see beyond the immediate, to go deeper and search longer for what the naked eye always missed. His sister had taught him that as a means to get him to become more appreciative of the smaller joys of life. Sometimes, the small things were all they had, all that there was to look forward to. It also made him more appreciative of what they had, and less whiny about what they didn't have.
Hey, when money gets tight and your gut's crying for a meal, a bowl of rice becomes a four course meal at Red Lobster.
So Jace appreciated, noticed, and always grinned over how handy a habit it was. He spotted what didn't belong with the rest of the junk. A flash of pale to be almost white skin, trying to hide beneath a mound of dirty gray cloth. Jace glanced over his shoulder at Calloway, put his fingers to his lips, then pointed down at the mound.
Jace crouched beside the mound, inched forward, and touched the tip of the rifle to the cloth.
The instantaneous reaction was explosive and brief. The mound uncurled into a body that jerked back slamming into the rubble. Jace jerked back himself but kept his trigger finger locked. Then eased it away from the trigger, and his eye from the eye-piece to stare gaping at the 'bogey'.
Said bogey was just a kid – teenager, sixteen, maybe seventeen years old, and male. A very sickly, terrified male trying to press his shivering body into the rubble. He was dressed in a plain long-sleeved shirt and trousers of solid gray. No shoes and no socks. His possibly brown hair was a greasy, scraggly matted rat's nest, his watery and vacant eyes the same color, and his face was all angles just like the rest of his body, pinched with starvation and white as a corpse.
Jace didn't know whether to cry or be sick, pity the kid or admire him. The boy was so thin Jace didn't know how it was possible for the kid to be alive. Dirt splotched the white skin, and scabs marred it. The shirt was too many sizes too big for that meatless frame and slid down the sharp shoulder.
It was as though the kid's skin were transparent. Jace could count the individual ribs in the boy's chest alone. Emaciation – that was the word for this level of starvation.
Crap, he's just a kid!
Jace stared at the kid, and the kid stared back at him. It was a moment, but one that felt like it could have stretched into eternity. Despite the terror and confusion, the boy met Jace's gaze and locked on. It was said of the 'stranded' – the ones purposefully left behind as a visual of the Mureks laughing in the UTD's face – that there usually wasn't enough left of the person's mind for them to be considered a real rescue. Sure, the family of that person were grateful, up until that person either killed themselves or killed themselves and everyone within a quarter mile radius.
There was no really saving the stranded, because there wasn't anything left to save.
Jace had seen a stranded – well, pictures of them to keep the shock of finding one from becoming a hindrance. Male, female, young or old, they were all the same. Vacant, empty, showing no response or acting alike automatons. Poor freakin' bodies without a soul, dead long before the body had yet to shut down.
Not this kid. Hell no.
As Jace regarded the kid, the kid regarded Jace. He regarded with calculation, caution, sizing Jace up and assessing every minor movement if it came. It was a look Jace knew well since every soldier basically expressed it, no matter the circumstances. There was actually someone home in that wasted body.
Jace slowly, carefully, slid the strap of his gun from his shoulder, then set the gun on the floor.
“ Hey there,” he said, and held up both empty hands. “ I'm not gonna hurt you. It's all right.” He saw Calloway out of the corner of his eye, standing out of sight but at the ready. Behind her was Lt. Davis and Shale.
Jace lowered his hands to the floor and moved out of his crouch to sit on his folded legs. He placed his hands on his knees and leaned forward slightly.
“ My name's Jason, but most people call me Jace,” he said as though talking to someone he'd just met on the street. “ My sister's fault. One way or another she was going to give me a nickname. Term of affection kind of thing. What's your name?”
The kid didn't reply. He looked Jace up and down, uncertain and wary.
“ Been here long?” Jace went on, then shrugged. “ Kind of a stupid question. You look like you've been here too long. How about we take you out of here? Get you some better clothes, some food, a warm bed. How's that sound?”
The kid didn't budge or respond. Yet, for a moment, almost a heart beat, the wariness and caution were gone, like something being wiped away. Beneath, Jace saw painful desperation. A longing, a need, so deep it actually seemed to hurt the kid, and it made Jace's chest ache.
Then it was gone when the shutters of caution slapped back over it all.
Jace sighed heavily. “ It really is okay, kid. I'm not really a good liar. Although I have been told I'm wicked with the sarcasm, which I can't tell whether to be proud of or offended by. What about you, kid? you got any funny talents?”
Jace didn't expect an answer – never had from the start. He was just making conversation, and giving the terrified kid something other than sugar-coated placations that were a load of crap.
Since the kid had yet to move or respond, and since this wasn't really getting anywhere as far as Jace could tell, Jace decided to go for being a little daring. He slowly reached one hand out toward the kid, little by little, letting the kid see and become gradually accustomed to the proximity of another human hand.
The kid jolted, and shrank back deeper against the rubble pile.
“ You're gonna hurt yourself doing that, kid,” Jace said. His finger lightly touched the bony shoulder. The kid flinched, cringed shivering, but did not bolt. Jace smiled warmly at him.
“ See? I'm not hurting you, right? And you'd let me know if I was because I have no idea if you're injured and where.”
Jace moved his hand a little further to have it entirely on the thin shoulder. “It's all good, kid.” He patted the boy's shoulder softly, then moved his hand to carefully grip the boy's arm and gently tug. The boy gradually, hesitantly, complied, moving away from the rubble and a little closer to Jace. Jace released the boy's arm so he could remove his jacket, and placed it over the kid's twitching back.
The boy's meager movement's left him winded, and he was struggling just to stay upright on his knees. Jace moved in closer to the boy and put his arm around the kid's shoulders. Jace pulled the kid to have him resting against his own side.
Jace still felt the kid shaking. Yet the wariness and the fear slipped from his eyes that became distant and heavy with utter exhaustion. Jace wouldn't have been surprised if the kid fell asleep right then and there. Even when the three Lieutenants stepped into view with Calloway reporting an all clear on the bogey, the kid barely reacted except to cling to Jace's shirt with one hand. Jace felt him tense some when several other soldiers from the other units arrive to see this bogey and gape slack-jawed at what they saw. A med unit was called, and arrived along with Commander Arlan.
Arlan's eyes rounded over at seeing the corpse-like teenager clinging like a child to the pilot. It confirmed something for Kace. Arlan had seen some of the 'stranded', had looked into their eyes personally instead of witnessing them over some video feed. Arlan didn't have to say it. Jace knew this was the first time he'd ever seen a stranded actually react to someone.
React with blatant, undeniable trust, which continued to surprise even Jace.
Maybe too much trust. When the medics tried to pull the boy away as gently as possible, the kid would attempt to weakly scoot back to Jace, keeping as tight a grip as he could on the pilot's shirt until his bony knuckles dug into Jace's ribs. Jace finally held up his hand before the medics decided to get a little more forceful.
“ I'll take him,” he said. He maneuvered himself and the kid around enough to gather the kid into his arms and lift him. It was like carrying a rag doll that weighed next to nothing, but Jace made sure to handle the kid like he was carrying a small, fragile child – though the fragile part was pretty much fact. Kace was aware of the fact that he wasn't all bulging biceps (and didn't really care), and yet he still felt as though one too-tight squeeze would crush this kid into oblivion. With Calloway's help, he adjusted the kid's head to rest on his shoulder, then carried the kid from the junkyard toward the hanger bay.
“ Warm food, warm clothes, warm bed and even a warm bath,” Jace said. “ Kid you are heading toward the high life here.”
“ Matt.”
Jace had barely heard it. He looked down at the kid, into his tired face and slowly closing eyelids.
“ What?”
“ Matt.”
Jace arched an eyebrow. “ That your name?”
The boy nodded weakly, then pulled in a quiet, shuddering breath. “ They took... My... Mom.”
Matt's eyes closed. The medic walking alongside Jace reached out, checked for a pulse and nodded reassuringly. Jace nodded back his understanding without looking away from the kid.
“ That's the most a stranded has ever said,” the medic commented. “ You've got a gift there, Quince.”
Jace snorted. “ Maybe this kid just isn't a complete whack job.”
Or at least had the potential not to be. Jace could only hope. Didn't matter, though. Either way, he still felt the kid worth saving.
TBC...
