Marko Kloos: Terms of Enlistment

“Go, before one of us goes UA and ends up in the brig for missing deployment.”

“Stay safe,” I tell her, and she laughs her cheerful, dark laugh.

“You’ve been there, Andrew. You can’t be careful in the left seat of a Wasp, don’t you know?”

“Later, pilot babe,” I say.

“Later, computer jock,” she replies.

“Last one,” the crew chief of the shuttle Wasp tells me when I walk up the ramp without much enthusiasm. “Get strapped in, we’re running behind already.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” I reply, and take a seat near the tail hatch. The crew chief steps back into the ship, and pushes the control button for the cargo ramp. I fish for the worn safety straps on my seat, and slip into the harness.

“Sorry to hear about your ship,” the crew chief says against the noise of the raising ramp. I merely nod in acknowledgement.

“Well, you’ll be at Gateway in a week. This one’s over for you guys.”

The ship’s engines come to life, and I sit back and close my eyes, forcing myself to look away from the ever-narrowing gap of the rear hatch, toward the spot where Halley disappeared into the corridor a few moments ago.

I doubt that very much , I think. This one’s just begun.

Copyright © 2013 by Marko Kloos

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Frostbite Publishing

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Marko Kloos

Visit my website at www.munchkinwrangler.com

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: March 2013

Frostbite Publishing LLC