Red Survivor Mission Chronicles Box Set 2

  Red Survivor Short Stories #4 - 6

  Dan Decker

  Published by Grim Archer Media, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  RED SURVIVOR SHORT STORIES #4 - 6

  First edition. April 3, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Dan Decker.

  Written by Dan Decker.

  Contents

  THE McCLELLAN COLONY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  THE PHANTOM TORPEDOES

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  THE AMBUSH ON KURAL 2

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  DEAD MAN’S GAME

  Author’s Note

  Books by Dan Decker

  About the Author

  For my family.

  THE McCLELLAN COLONY

  1

  I looked at the screen in front of me and shook my head, wondering what I was going to do as we came into orbit around the planet Neptune 4. Captain Marchant had been in rare form since we had found that assassin in the hold of our ship.

  “Ensign Redding, give me a full site report,” Marchant said, the tone of his voice was enough to set anybody on edge.

  We had been heading towards Alpha Haracort when we had received orders to undertake an emergency rescue mission.

  The planet in front of us was home to the McClellan colony, a recently established outpost that had not been in place for more than a decade. It had been two days since the distress call had gone out and the FEDE had not heard from them since. Nobody had said this out loud, but we all assumed that the colony was destroyed and what had started as a rescue mission had now turned into an investigation.

  “I found a few signs of human life on the planet,” Ensign Jane Redding said, “only five people when we expected hundreds.”

  Captain Marchant was on his feet now, walking towards the screen. “Can you give us a view of the colony?”

  “Not a very good one, sir. We would have to send down a drone—”

  “I know that, just give me what you can.”

  While Ensign Redding was working on that, I moved as if to get out of my seat and drew a warning glance from Captain Marchant. I held his glare, returning it with one of my own, before he broke away to stare at the screen instead.

  He knew that I knew the truth about what had happened to his son, because I had, in a moment of weakness, asked him if there was anything I could do. I had hoped that this could be an opportunity for us to repair and rebuild our relationship, but it had been a mistake to even bring it up, because he had yelled, ordering me to get out of his office and then afterward had also been worse towards the crew, assuming that I had told everybody about his son’s death.

  I had waited several weeks until after the incident to bring it up, but after what happened in our hold with the assassin, I had decided to confront the issue. I had thought he would respond to my effort to reach out to him, despite our differences, but I had been wrong.

  I hadn’t told a soul about his son, not even Ensign Redding, who still asked me about the whole situation.

  “It’s on the screen now, sir,” Ensign Redding’s voice was cold and I could tell that the next time we got together I was going to get an earful. We were back on again after being off again. I didn’t have anything to complain about, I was glad to have a little bit of companionship every now and again.

  “Thank you, was that so hard?” Marchant asked.

  Ensign Redding didn’t respond.

  Marchant looked at me as if expecting me to challenge him, but I just stared on past at the screen, wondering what was going on with the colony below.

  We did not know much, other than that they had issued a request for assistance and had not responded since then.

  Our view was not very good, as Ensign Redding had predicted.

  “Magnify it,” Marchant said, “I don’t care if there’s pixelation.”

  Ensign Redding looked like she was suppressing a sigh as she obeyed Marchant’s orders. We were soon looking at a blown-up version of the colony, there were rectangles that I presumed represented homes or other places, and it even appeared that there was a wall. This was not unusual, a lot of outposts found that the native animal life posed a threat.

  The FEDE had a policy of never inhabiting a planet unless all the inhabitants were non-sentient but some of the most dangerous creatures weren’t that smart.

  “Ensign Redding, have you continued to reach out to them as I instructed you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Redding said, “we have received no response from them. It has been more than seventy-two hours since the last anybody heard from them.”

  “I’m going to need more information than this.” He looked at me. “Commander Williams, how about you take a team down to the planet and see what you can find?”

  He was already turning away from me, as if to keep me from registering any complaints or concerns I might have about the assignment.

  “Yes, sir.” I stood and looked at our security officer. “Watts, you are with me.”

  2

  As we got onto the lift, Senior Security Officer Charles Watts gave me a knowing glance, but refrained from saying anything until the doors had shut.

  “Captain is in one of his moods again,” Watts said.

  “Yup, he sure is.”

  “You don’t know what it is?”

  “I’m not gonna comment on anything.”

  Watts gave me a smile. “Don’t try to pretend that you know something more than you do, it is an open secret that he hates you. I’ve even heard him talk about you....” He trailed off without finishing the thought, apparently thinking better of what he had been about to say.

  “Was there a question in there?”

  “No, sir.”

  I hated pulling rank like that, but I was getting tired of the treatment that I had been getting from some members of the crew, Captain Marchant made no attempt to hide his dislike for me, it was generous to describe it as an open secret.

  We rode down the three levels in silence, until we stepped out onto the shuttle bay.

  “I am sorry, sir. I spoke out of hand.” Watts gave me an apologetic look, but I just nodded in response. “Are you aware of what animal life is like on the planet down there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’re gonna need rifles,” I said. “Big ones.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll go fetch us a couple.”

  “Four. Please summon two more personnel to come with us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  3

  In a normal situation I might have decided to fly the ship myself, but I had passed this task over to Ensign Tonya Marchant—no relation to the Captain—so that I could keep my mind on the situation at hand. I wanted to observe the colony as we came in for a landing without the distraction of having to make sure we didn’t crash.

  In addition to Ensign Marchant, Watts had also called
in Ensign Scott Johnson. The man was the size of the tank and while he wasn’t the brightest recruit we had, he was loyal, and always did what I told him without question.

  My instincts told me I would need a man like him along on today’s mission.

  “I have a message from the Captain,” Ensign Marchant said.

  “Put him through.”

  Marchant’s face appeared on the screen in front of me.

  “Commander Williams, I was just taking a closer look at the distress call, and it appears there was some information and I neglected to mention to you before, I want to make sure you have it before you go down.” Captain Marchant paused for what I could only assume was dramatic effect. “Apparently the colony was overrun by vicious rodents.” He paused to let that sink in, apparently expecting that I was going to say something to him, but I bit my tongue. I already knew the planet was home to large rodents, I had not known they had invaded the colony. I avoided looking around at the others and did my best to hide my consternation. It would not look good to balk at the Captain in front of them, which was probably why he had waited to tell me this tidbit until I was in a place where I could not push back. “Find out what’s going on down there and get back to me.”

  4

  “Vicious rodents?” Ensign Marchant turned to look at me. “Sir?”

  “You heard him,” I said without looking over, not wanting to accidentally betray my frustration with Marchant, “better get moving.”

  “Is this really such a good idea?” Watts asked.

  I gave him a look, that made him back down, and didn’t answer the question.

  “Ensign Marchant, are you ready to take us out of here?”

  There was only the briefest of pauses.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You may proceed when you have clearance from the bridge.”

  I settled back in my chair, making sure that my belt was secure, while avoiding looking at Marchant, Watts, or Johnson, hoping I could trust them to at least follow my orders.

  I suppose it’s a good thing that they ask questions when an order does not make sense. Unlike Captain Marchant, I thought this was a virtue rather than a problem.

  So why are you giving Watts a lousy time?

  I cringed at the private admonition and decided that I needed to do far better, making a mental note to not glare at him the next time he challenged me. Watts was one of the smartest in our fleet, he was great at security and also had a quick mind.

  “We have permission to leave, sir,” Ensign Marchant said a moment later, engaging the ship’s propulsion system and letting us out of the shuttle bay, propelling us toward the open hatch.

  “Thank you, Ensign.”

  Everybody remained silent as we left the ship and made our way down to the planet. The entry went without any problems and we soon hovered over the colony.

  The sun was setting in the far west of the sky as Ensign Marchant landed half a mile away.

  “How much daylight do we have left Ensign Marchant?”

  Marchant looked at her tablet for several moments. “Less than a couple hours.”

  “Well we had better hurry then.” I unstrapped my seatbelt and walked to the back of the ship where I opened the hatch. “Rifles up and at the ready, if you see anything large and furry, shoot first.”

  5

  I took in a deep breath as soon as I stepped out of the ship and was glad for the fresh air. While the Red Survivor was no worse than other ships, there was just something about fresh planet air that did something for a person.

  The only problem is I’m expecting a vicious rodent to attack the moment I turn my back.

  Even though Watts moved as if to go out first, I went ahead of him with my rifle at the ready, flipping the safety off as soon as I was down the ramp. I scanned our surrounding area and saw that it was much like the deserts back on earth. There were plants that I thought at first in the failing light could be sagebrush, but upon closer examination revealed them to be something else entirely.

  The sand underneath my feet was coarse and I wondered why the colony had been put here instead of somewhere else.

  What does Neptune 4 export? I wondered to myself, thinking I should have done a little bit more homework.

  When we had received the distress call, I should’ve taken the opportunity to learn something about the planet we were going to visit. That was a mistake I would not repeat in the future. All this tension between Captain Marchant and myself had me on edge, every time I turned around the man looked like he was ready to bite my head off.

  I shook my head to clear away the thoughts, and reached over and closed the door to our shuttle once the rest of my team was on the ground.

  “Rifles up, look sharp.”

  I headed towards the colony, trusting that the others would fall in behind me with two to either side and one in back.

  We came to a small river. Just as I was about to push through it, I saw a bridge down that had been hidden by some local planet vegetation.

  “Ensign Marchant, please send out a general radio signal, letting them know that we are here.”

  In response, she pulled out her tablet. “Neptune 4, colonists of McClellan colony, we are from the ship Red Survivor, please respond.”

  There was no response, but that was not surprising, we had expected nothing less.

  “Settlement first, and then the surrounding territory?” I said this is a suggestion, inviting anybody else to give me their take on the situation if they thought we ought to do something different. I looked at Watts who shrugged, Johnson looked like he didn’t care, and Ensign Marchant was glancing around, clearly expecting one of the vicious rodents to come out of nowhere.

  “Colony it is.”

  6

  The gate in the wall hung open, one door wholly torn off and flung to the side. As we approached I noticed a corpse on the ground that appeared to be the remains of a furry creature.

  “Hold up.” I took a step forward, peering to the side while trying to get a clear look at it. “I think that’s one of them.”

  “The vicious rodents?”

  I nodded as I marveled at how well it camouflaged with the ground. When we had started out it had looked like it was just part of the land, yet it was now distinguishable as a dead creature.

  Hopefully it’s dead, I thought, as I took another step forward.

  “Don’t you think we ought to shoot it?” Ensign Marchant asked.

  I shook my head. “No, it’s dead. I’m sure of it.” I took several more steps forward before turning back. “Let’s go.”

  I walked purposefully forward, making a wide berth around the creature just in case, and as I got closer I saw a stain on the ground that I assumed had formed when it had bled out. Surely this had been killed and left to die.

  It had been described as a large rodent, but the only thing that made me think of a rodent was the size of its front teeth. The ears were long and pulled down the back of its head, it did not have the typical shape you might expect from a rodent back on earth, it was leaner, and had longer legs. If anything, it reminded me more of an antelope.

  An antelope with big buck teeth.

  It was difficult to imagine the creature being so vicious, but as we passed by I aimed my gun at it just in case I was wrong.

  Once we got to the gate, I let out a small sigh of relief, turning back to the others. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  There was a scuffling sound and I turned just in time to see a living creature jump on top of me.

  7

  It must have hidden right behind the wall because it came from nowhere. I brought up my rifle, and fired, but the shot went wild, instead I found myself grabbing the other side of my gun to keep its head at bay. Its claws scratched my chest and arms and legs.

  “Shoot it.”

  None of them responded, apparently afraid that they might hit me in the process.

  “Shoot it!”

  I kicked it, trying to knock it off of me b
ut was unable to move it away. Finally, using my rifle and my feet together I rolled to the side and flung it back and shot it, the creature fell back.

  “You’re lucky it was a small one,” Johnson said.

  As I got back to my feet, I put another round into its head just for good measure.

  “That is one vicious rodent,” Watts said.

  I frowned. “I’d say it’s more like an antelope.”

  Johnson snorted. “Yeah, an antelope the tries to eat you.” I looked down at my hands and legs and was surprised to see I was not bleeding; I was sure that it would have drawn blood with the way it was scratching at me.

  With a final look at the dead rodent, I stalked into the compound.

  Considering how big and dangerous these vicious rodents were, I was surprised that the compound walls were not twice as high with guard towers.

  No wonder why they had trouble with these things, they weren’t prepared.

  If I would’ve been in charge here I would’ve had manned guard posts at all hours of the day. As it was it looked like the rodents could just jump right over the wall.

  Much of the space inside the compound was used for multilevel greenhouses to grow food. Again, I looked at those greenhouses and thought the security was not adequate. Several windows of the nearest greenhouse were broken, and it was clear that the creatures had been inside.

  After we passed the greenhouses—there were two right by each other—we came to the dwellings. These dwellings were far better built. Perhaps this was the reason why they had not fortified the colony as well as they could have, because these homes were all miniature bunkers.

  “You guys take the one on the left,” I said to Watts and Johnson, “Marchant and I will take the one on the right.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Watts asked.

  “Knock on the door, see if anybody is inside, Ensign Redding said there were survivors in the Colony. We have to find them. Those homes are practically bunkers, I imagine that they’re in there somewhere.”