Arrival: A Saluco Fleet Story Read online

  Arrival

  A Saluco Fleet Short Story

  Dominika Waclawiak

  Samantha Maguire

  Contents

  A Saluco Fleet Short Story: Arrival

  Arrival

  Extras

  About the Authors

  A Saluco Fleet Short Story: Arrival

  A mysterious SOS from deep space…and a platoon ready to answer the deadly call.

  Private Warren Hudson fit right in with the misfit, screw-up platoon of the almost derelict USS Saratoga. Being Admiral Sinclair’s stepson was the only reason he hadn’t been dishonorably discharged yet and, even though he’d fought hard against joining the ragtag group, he was happy to serve under the straight-shooting Captain Mick Rogers. But when Captain Rogers decides to disobey orders to investigate an SOS call coming from a deep space terra-forming station, Hudson and the rest of the front line come face to face with a mystery that will upend the universe as they know it.

  Caught in a space station that shows signs of a battle but no bodies, Hudson and his platoon search for survivors, drawing them deeper into the station. When part of his team goes missing, Hudson hunts for his missing colleagues all the while bringing the USS Saratoga towards a foe that can destroy them all.

  Will Hudson get off the doomed station with his team intact? Or will his actions destroy everyone aboard the USS Saratoga?

  Arrival

  The entire platoon aboard the USS Saratoga anxiously watched the captain for a signal. Thirty minutes ago, a perplexing SOS came through during a routine sweep of the outer rim. Chief Navigator Malcolm Newell pinpointed the signal to a terraforming station orbiting LV – 365. As border patrol in the outer frontier, suspicious SOS calls from non-military stations were not in their purview. But the idealistic--and some would say foolhardy--Captain Mick Rogers took SOS’s seriously and had called into command asking Admiral Sinclair for permission to investigate.

  Commander Katt Philippi, the USS Saratoga’s XO, worried about her captain’s plan, and she feared that command was going to give him an answer that he did not like. Central command at the UWDF, United Worlds Defense Force, vigilantly adhered to the rule that their specialized platoon units be only used for military and defensive operations and not to answer SOS calls coming from deep space private contracting stations. But Captain Rogers had his reasons, so she kept her cynicism to herself as her captain made the call.

  As she suspected, Admiral Sinclair forbade them to investigate the SOS even though they were the closest by millions of light-years. Commander Philippi knew that one directive was not going to stop Captain Rogers and his need to save the world. But, he had a choice to make. She knew he wouldn’t abandon whatever survivors were left on the station. They would pay the price, though.

  If Captain Rogers rejected the command’s orders, their platoon would be designated AWOL. Such an aggressive move risked a court martial, not that something as paltry as a prison sentence would make him hesitate. It was these kinds of critical decisions that isolated them on this old wreck of a boat in the first place, she thought, but she grudgingly respected the man for his ideals. His thinking was that if you couldn’t use the military might to help powerless civilians, then what were they doing there in the first place?

  Captain Rogers cleared his throat and all nine crew members stood to attention. With a dismissive nod to protocol, the captain waved his hand and the crew relaxed at their ease. Commander Philippi’s gaze scanned the crew. It was her job to keep them in line. She could see Private Drake Marcus and Private Jeannie Lee coil like two cobras ready to strike. They lived for this kind of shit. Sardonic Marcus and trigger-happy Jeannie Lee were the gung-ho team of the unit, always spoiling for a fight.

  Chief Navigator Malcolm Newell pursed his lips in a look of clear disapproval as Lieutenant Gina Franks stood off to the side with crossed arms.

  Private Warren Hudson and Private Danny Bishop also stood off to the side seemingly uncaring. She wondered what Hudson thought of Captain Rogers’ rejecting his stepfather’s orders. On second thought, his inferiority complex towards the man most likely made him gloat about disrespecting his command.

  Commander Philippi could never tell what the poker-faced Bishop was thinking, and Hudson was mostly an asshole, so any facial expression he made tended to be one of derision. Hudson leaned back against a console and chewed a toothpick. His eyes stared back into Commander Philippi’s in a wordless challenge.

  “I won’t do this without your full support,” Captain Rogers said to his team.

  “You’re going against command again,” Commander Philippi reminded him.

  “That’s why I’m asking you. Do we heed the call? I won’t make the decision unless we are all in agreement.” The platoon hadn’t seen action in months and all of them knew that they had been dumped onto the USS Saratoga to be pushed out and forgotten. Philippi carried her own transgressions, and she along with half of the sector had heard about the shitstorm that landed Bishop and Marcus with the troubled 56th Interstellar platoon on the USS Saratoga.

  They fit right in with the discarded misfits led by Captain Mick Rogers, a hero of the first Interstellar war, and its convenient scapegoat. Captain Rogers had pissed off enough of the high command that Admiral Sinclair had posted him away, as far into the galaxy as he possibly could. The captain had accepted the post indifferently as far as Katt could tell.

  Rogers’ presence was toxic to anyone wanting to move up in command. A brilliant tactician but a loose cannon, the UWDF was happy enough to dispose of him once his costs outweighed his reputation. His kind didn’t play well in peacetime. Sometimes, though, the emptiness in his eyes worried her but her aversion to prying kept her from asking him what he really thought.

  “We need to be useful,” Private Lee growled loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Useful can get you killed,” Private Hudson said while picking his teeth with his toothpick. His disapproval was obvious.

  “Sounds to me like you’re a bit of a coward, Hudson,” Private Marcus jumped to Lee’s defense. Philippi resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at the two of them. Those two were thick as thieves and always had each other’s back. But to their credit, on the skirmish they had with the Russian Reconnaissance vessel about seven months ago, they were the first ones in and the last ones to leave, guns blazing. Their courage was admirable.

  “What do you think, XO? Do we have a case to check out what happened to those poor people down there?” Captain Rogers bright blue eyes focused on hers and she gulped. In any other post, on any other ship, a captain asking his XO’s opinion in front of the crew would have been a trap. But Philippi knew that when Captain Rogers asked what she thought, that he wanted an honest opinion.

  And the truth was that she didn’t want to go AWOL, but she also knew what answer he wanted. Philippi took a deep breath. One more mark against her record, Admiral Sinclair had warned, and there would be no going back. This was without a doubt exactly the kind of situation the man had been warning her about. But Rogers had walked with her into the fires of hell, and he stared at her expectantly.

  Ah hell, she’d always have his back. She chose to stay under his command knowing full well what that meant. She believed in the man, idealism and all. He’d kept his promise to her through their entire tour together. She was alive because of him.

  “I’m behind you, Captain. When we save a bunch of people down there, they can come and thank us for being proactive.”

  Captain Rogers grinned and his shoulders eased. Not enough for the rest of the crew to notice, but Commander Philippi missed nothing.

  “It’s going against command,” sh
e continued, “but it’s not like any of us haven’t done that before,” she said and checked in with the rest of the platoon for signs of revolt. Instead, a few nodded. Marcus and Lee grinned at one another. Hudson chewed on his toothpick. They were going to acquiesce. She already felt the excitement in the air like a faint electric buzz. After months of inaction and soul-sucking boredom, they were going into action. They were going to do something. They were going to help people.

  Captain Rogers’ face was drawn, his eyes empty. His apathy didn’t alarm her, though, he didn’t make this kind of decision without thought. That was the kind of man he was. He’d never knowingly put them in the crosshairs of the UWDF command without their full support.

  “Set the course for LV – 365, Newell,” Captian Rogers commanded and the USS Saratoga shuddered as Newell punched in the coordinates. After they made the q-jump, the USS Saratoga would arrive nearby the station in three hours. Commander Philippi buckled in and closed her eyes. Warp speed always made her nauseous and she dreaded the jump. The boat made a high-pitched whine and Philippi was thrown back into her seat.

  Everyone on the USS Saratoga had jumped into action the moment they saw LV – 365 and the dark station orbiting it. The United World Federation had taken to terraforming planets close enough to Earth’s atmosphere to deposit their ever-growing population. Philippi saw the move for what it really was: a pissing contest between the United States and Russia about who settled the most available planets. She loathed politics.

  The Russians had started planting their flags on whatever planet they got to first. The United States jumped in and before anyone in the United World Federation could protest, the states had planted UWF’s flags on whatever new piece of rock they encountered and the planetary race had begun.

  Commander Philippi stared down at LV – 365. At least the terraforming operation on the surface was still active, she thought as she watched the billowing clouds form in the atmosphere. She abandoned Earth years ago to adventures in space and hadn’t realized how isolated she felt sometimes. Being on the USS Saratoga highlighted the isolation and worse, made her feel powerless. But she loathed playing the victim. There was no one else to blame but herself. She’d earned the disappointment and the disapproval all on her own, eyes wide open. She shook her head in disgust at the judgment she placed on herself. Enough already Katt, she thought and focused back on the planet.

  Terraforming was a year long process and this plant was close enough to Earth that it could be a plausible solution for some of their population. The Orbiting station, on the other hand, loomed completely dark. Even the emergency lights, which should have been scattered around the exterior plating, were off. Either the reactor had been turned off or had malfunctioned. If the station had suffered an attack and the reactor had blown, there would only be pieces of it scattered around space.

  The SOS call had been traveling through space for at least four or five days. Philippi doubted anyone could survive that long.

  Captain Rogers issued his orders. “Chief Newell, you’re piloting the shuttle down. Hudson, Bishop, Marcus, and Lee, you all are on deck. Once we have some idea of what happened down there, we can call into headquarters with a plan. I’m banking on having someone breathing down there that can tell us what happened.”

  Newell left the console and headed below deck to check on the shuttle. Head mechanic Becca Morris kept the USS Saratoga and its ancillary fighters and shuttles battle ready, but he needed to run the shuttle through a setup phase that would take at least thirty minutes.

  By sending the gunners in, Captain Rogers was under the assumption that the station had been taken over by the Russians. The thought had crossed Philippa’s mind as well. It would be just like them to try to sabotage the terraforming effort here and then claim it for their own. They were such land grabbers. She turned to the captain and didn’t like what she was seeing. He sat in the middle of the bridge, his eyes scanning the mapping displays in front of him. But his brow furrowed just a touch and his jaw had set.

  “What are you not telling me?” Philippi made sure to keep her voice low to not alert the crew.

  His hesitation worried her. Their platoon spooked easily and by the look on Rogers’ face, this mission was not starting off well. And something told Philippi that there was more behind the captain’s hesitancy and tension than disobeying orders.

  “You sure about this, Mick?” she asked.

  “We’re here. Something’s wrong and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m missing an important clue,” her captain said.

  “Should we abandon the mission?” She asked, and for the first time in months, fear coiled in her stomach. Rogers didn’t scare easily. Neither did she. They’d seen enough carnage between them to deal with battle stress. To ignore this kind of feeling would make the entire team vulnerable.

  “There could be people on there that are hurt. They took the time to send out the SOS and they could be out there just praying for somebody to hear and come and save them. We gotta at least try,” he said. He turned to Lieutenant Gina Franks who’d taken over navigation while Newell got the shuttle ready.

  “Franks, do you see any other activity around this planet?” he asked.

  “I’ve been scanning since we got here and I’m not seeing any movement, heat signature, or any other sign that another ship is nearby. In fact, I’m not seeing any life out here at all except for us.” She said.

  “Well, the Russians have some amazing cloaking measures,” Philippi said.

  “If they were out here, we’d see them. The Saratoga is equipped with scanners that can pick up that kind of technology. If there’s something out there, she would see it.” Franks said.

  “We’re all ready to go, Captain,” Hudson’s voice cackled over the intercom.

  “Newell, how’s the shuttle looking?” Captain Rogers asked.

  “Another ten minutes to launch but come on in gents,” Newell replied. “I’ll get everyone back. Don’t worry, Captain.”

  Philippi took a deep breath and hoped he was right.

  Lieutenant Malcolm Newell piloted the ship to the docking bay of the station, startling Private Warren Hudson out of his guilty thoughts. Admiral Sinclair was lost to him now. The man might have ignored him up to now, but this mission, Hudson feared, would alienate his stepfather from him completely. He felt the man’s disapproval engulfing his mind, and he shut down the awful feeling before it paralyzed him.

  Hudson turned back to the present, dismayed. His eagerness to stick it to the old man had sapped his energy. All he felt now was trepidation and fear. Not a good way to go into a potential battle. He blinked several times, attempting to get his mind back into the mission.

  They’d arrived faster than he’d expected. Gravity was shut down and the docking equipment wouldn’t work. They’d have to dock the old fashioned way, Hudson thought and watched Newell push the anchor button. Bungee cords unspooled from the hull and Newell nodded to Private Bishop. Everybody had their full gear on and the voices cackled through the headsets of their helmets.

  “I got this,” Bishop said and stalked to the door. The inner door opened with a swoosh and they all trooped out of the loading bay. The inner door closed and Newell activated the cameras on each one of the privates’ helmets. Bishop jumped out and anchored the shuttle to the loading dock.

  “We need to get this reactor back online,” Hudson said as he got out of the shuttle followed by Marcus and Jeannie Lee, big ass guns at the ready. Hudson took the lead and popped open the door leading into the heart of the station.

  “The core will be at the center with all hallways leading to it. I’m familiar with the layout of this kind of station and the reactor is two stories down from where we're standing right now.”

  “Why don’t we split up and each takes one of the gunners in case there are hostiles in here still,” Bishop said and Hudson nodded.

  “Which one of these action boys you want?” Hudson asked and Bishop grinned back at him.
r />   “You ain’t splittin us apart,” Marcus drawled. He was ready for any sort of provocation. Marcus was a gunner who fed off resentment and anger. Hudson found the man more irritating than threatening but wouldn’t want anyone else covering his back.

  Hudson ignored him just for laughs.

  “I’m not sure if we can fight separate. He’s too vulnerable without me,” Jeannie Lee said. Drake thrust his big ass gun towards her and laughed.

  “Come on, honey. What you scared of? Some big guns going to come get you?” Drake said as he sidled up to her.

  “Big guns, I don’t know what fool thing you’re talking about, honey.” Jeannie Lee shot back.

  “Enough already,” Newell’s voice came in through their headsets. “The time it’s taken you guys to figure this out, we could have found the damn reactor already,” he said and the pairs split up. Hudson got Jeannie Lee, and Bishop got Marcus.

  “We’ll head down to the reactor while you all find us some survivors on this boat,” Hudson instructed. He feared they’d find dead bodies but wasn’t too interested in disrespecting another commanding officer.

  Bishop nodded and they all activated their gravitational boots. Hudson motioned to Jeannie Lee and they started down the left hallway. Despite the outward curvature of the walls, the undecorated dark metal pressed in. Hudson glanced back at Jeannie Lee, worried. She tended to get antsy in tight spaces, and a jumpy gunner at his back felt like carrying a coiled snake in his pocket. Jeannie Lee nodded, her anxiety showing in the wideness of her eyes.

  Water droplets hung in the air as forks and knives floated by their heads. The galley must be open somewhere.

  The clink clank of the boots on the metal grate set Hudson’s teeth on edge. By the looks of the gun blasts on the walls and the strange holes going from ceiling to floor, there had been a gunfight here.