Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“Well, that looks flat enough,” she says. “Hang on, I’m putting down in that spot over there.”

We coast in at a low angle and touch down on the surface less than a hundred yards from the stranded escape pod. As soon as the Wasp has come to a rest on all three skids, Halley cuts the throttle and punches a button on her console. Behind us, I hear the familiar whine of an opening cargo hatch. A few moments later, we hear several pairs of boots running up the ramp and into the cargo bay.

“Don’t bother unstrapping, pilot,” an out-of-breath voice says over the emergency channel. “You get airborne and close that hatch as soon as I say, you hear?”

“Copy that,” Halley replies.

There’s more tromping behind us as more crewmembers thunder up the cargo ramp.

“Dustoff,” the out-of-breath voice shouts into the comms. “Get us the hell off the ground, now.”

Halley hits the cargo door switch with her palm, seizes the stick and throttle again, and gooses the engines. “Hang on to something back there,” she shouts into the intercom, and pulls the Wasp into a vertical climb. She swings the tail of the ship around and points the nose back the way we came. Then we pick up speed again and climb back into the cloud cover. Not even thirty seconds have elapsed since our ship’s skids touched down on the planet’s surface.

Back in the cargo hold, the XO claims the jump seat of the crew chief and plugs himself into the ship’s intercom circuit. The armored hatch between the cockpit and the cargo hold is open, and I can see crew members opening the arms locker and distributing small arms, even though the drop ship is once again getting bounced around by turbulence.

“Talk to me, sir,” Halley says. “What’s going on down there?”

“We have a non-native species down there, that’s what,” the XO replies.

Halley and I share an incredulous look. The spacefaring nations of Earth have close to a hundred colony planets and moons as far out as Zeta Reticuli, and nobody has ever encountered any life on those that could be observed without a microscope.

“Non-native species?” Halley repeats. “What, like fucking aliens ?”

“Yes, like fucking aliens,” the XO says. “Unless the colonists brought along livestock that’s eighty fucking feet tall. Now find us some better weather, and stay the hell away from the ground, you copy?”

Halley takes the ship back up through the clouds. The ride up isn’t quite as bone-jarring as the descent had been, but I still breathe a sigh of relief when we break through the cloud ceiling, and the skies are blue once more.

“We’re clear of the chop,” Halley tells the XO over the intercom. “Where do you want me to take this thing? I have forty-five minutes of fuel left.”

Behind us, Commander Campbell unbuckles from the crew chief’s jump seat, and walks up to the cockpit, where he crouches between our high-backed pilot seats.

“Ensign, how far is the nearest colony settlement from our current datum?” he asks Halley. She checks her nav screen and shrugs her shoulders.

“I have no idea, sir. This is the spare bird, remember? All the databanks are blank. We didn’t get to upload any nav data before we left. I can get a satellite fix and tell you our coordinates, but I have nothing else on my map.”

“I can probably pull that off the admin deck,” I say. The Commander looks at me, and I raise the eye shield of my flight helmet to show my face.

“Mister Grayson,” he says. “Glad to see you made it off the ship. Get back here and fire up your toy, please.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” I unbuckle my seat harness and climb over the armored sidewall of my chair.

“Will do, sir,” Halley replies.

I am still in a state of shocked disbelief. Since the invention of the Alcubierre drive, we’ve been expanding into other star systems, but nobody’s ever picked up so much as a stray radio signal from another civilization. I remember the ongoing debates on the science channels in school, the Rare Earthers arguing that we’re probably the only sentient species in the galaxy, and the Saganites and Copernicans arguing that the universe is probably chock full of spacefaring species like ourselves. Until now, that particular discussion wasn’t settled. We’re only forty-two light years from home, which means that we’re still playing in our front yard, astronomically speaking. If we’ve already bumped into another species capable of space travel, the galaxy must be lousy with them.

“What do they look like?” I ask the XO. “Are they hostile?”

“Are they hostile? Shit, I hope not. The one we saw was fucking huge. Passed our pod in the rain, a few hundred yards off. Shook the fucking ground.”

“I’m picking up beacons from two more pods,” Halley says from the right seat. “They’re both down in the soup. You guys got scattered all over this rock.”

“Can you get there with the fuel you have?” the XO asks her. Halley considers his question briefly and shrugs.

“Sure, but we won’t be flying anywhere else. One’s three hundred fifty klicks east, the other’s three hundred northwest. Plus, I won’t be able to see shit all the way down.”

“Forget it, then,” the XO says. “Let’s just take a look at the map, and we’ll try to get them on the comms later.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Halley replies.

There are three of the Versailles’ officers in the cargo bay, all junior watch officers from CIC, and four anxious-looking Marines in fatigues.

“Where’s the skipper, sir? Wasn’t he in CIC when we got hit?”

“The skipper took a different pod,” Lieutenant Commander Campbell replies. “As per regs. One of the pods burns up or crashes, it won’t take out both senior officers at once. Now crack that thing open, and let’s see if we can figure out where the hell we are.”

My admin deck holds the other half of the location puzzle. I can bring up the complete data set for Willoughby, including the locations of every structure on the planet, and the trajectories of every satellite in orbit, but I have no way of telling where we are.

“Halley, can you give me a nav fix?” I ask her over the intercom.

“Sure thing. Stand by.”

She consults her screen, and then rattles off a string of coordinates. I plug the numbers into the satellite map of Willoughby, and my admin deck pinpoints our position with a neat crosshair that looks disturbingly like an aiming reticle.

“Here we are,” I say to the XO, and turn the screen toward him. He studies the display for a few moments, and frowns.

“Figures. We’re in the wrong fucking place. Main settlement’s on the other hemisphere.”

He hands the admin deck back to me, and rubs the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger.

“Well, that’s just special. Our ride’s got no ordnance and almost no fuel, we’re three thousand klicks from the only refueller on this rock, and the place is under new management, from the looks of it.”

I pan and zoom the satellite map to check the radius Halley estimated earlier as the maximum range of the ship with the remaining fuel. We’re on a peninsula that’s hundreds of miles long and wide, and most of it is absolutely barren, but there’s a base marker directly south of us. I check the range to find that it’s less than two hundred miles away.

“Here’s something, but I have no idea what that map symbol means.”

I fold the display over, and hand the deck to the Commander. He looks at the map for a moment, and pokes a finger at the symbol.

“That’s one of the terraforming units. Big-ass atmospheric exchanger, with a fusion reactor underneath.”

“They got any food and water?”

“Yes,” he says. “They have maintenance crews on site. Chow, hot water, showers, and cots to sleep on. They even have comms gear. Hell, they may even have fuel. Good find, Mister Grayson.”