Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

“Marsden,” Bayne said in his typical deep rumble of a voice. “Did she…”

“No,” Marsden said with a sigh.

“I didn’t even finish the question. How would you know what I was going to ask?”

“Because it’s the same damned question you always ask. No, Axel didn’t ask or say anything about you.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Bayne, when are you going to give this up? Axel’s not into you.”

“You think she’s into someone else?” Bayne asked. For such a huge, intimidating man, he somehow managed to look very much like a scolded puppy.

“As far as I can tell, she’s not into anyone. I’ve never, ever seen her show any sort of romantic or sexual interest in anyone of any gender. I don’t even get why you’re so into her. There are plenty of women in the Recon Marines who would be more than happy to hook up with you.”

“I don’t want someone to hook up with. I want someone to connect with.”

“You have the body of a steel pillar,” Marsden said. He refrained from adding that Bayne also had the brains of one. “She has the body of a petite gymnast. She has the brain of a calculator. You, uh, don’t. What do you possibly think the two of you could connect over?”

“We both like explosions.”

Marsden had to shrug at that. They did indeed both like explosions. The difference was that for Bayne, it was an occasional diverting fling, while for Axel, it was a passionate love affair for the ages. There was a reason Axel was the explosive expert on the ship. Bayne was more of the heavy artillery type.

Once they had both finished their prep for the pods, Marsden got into his, pressed the button to close and seal it, then took a deep whiff of the fast-acting sleeping gas that flooded the chamber. He lost all consciousness for what felt like a mere five seconds for him, then a second gas pumped into the pod to wake him up. The pod opened and he carefully got out. Bayne did the same beside him, although the enormous man stumbled and almost fell.

“I hate that,” Bayne said. “Remind me again why we have to do that every single time the ship makes a jump?”

“Maybe because we don’t want to die or go insane?” Marsden asked.

“Right,” Bayne said. “There is that, I guess.”

Personally, Marsden had to wonder if Bayne’s abnormally sized sleep pod didn’t pump in enough gas each time, and it caused light brain damage on each jump, because he always asked that question every time. Marsden always gave the exact same answer, and Bayne always acted like he was hearing Marsden’s smartass remark for the first time.

The pods existed for two reasons. The first was to protect their bodies from the harsh and unusual forces working on the ship during a light jump. The second was to keep them from losing their minds from the jump’s weird time effects.

To everyone now leaving their pods and starting to suit up for the mission, it felt like only a matter of seconds had passed since they’d gotten in their pods. The actual time that would have passed according to the Dixon ’s ship-board computer would have been anywhere between ten and fifteen minutes. And yet, the time that would have passed outside the ship, according to the standard Earth calendar, would be anywhere from two to three weeks, depending on how far exactly they had traveled. The light-jump caused time dilation effects, thanks to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. It was why Recon Marines were encouraged not to have too many friends and loved ones outside the service: to anyone back on the core planets, the people on these ships were barely aging, while to the people on the Dixon , everyone else aged slightly faster.

Marsden went to his equipment locker to get his gear. As he did, his PDM chirped right along with everyone else’s. Marsden didn’t bother to unclip his and look at it, as enough people around him were doing it that he could hear everything their incoming message said.

“Good day, marines,” a gruff voice said from multiple PDMs. If Marsden had actually been looking at his instead of inspecting his helmet and light armor, he knew he would see an extreme close-up of a mustachioed man’s face looking out at him through a static-filled blue screen. The Recon Marines tended to simply call the man Mister, although there was plenty of debate as to whether Mister existed at all or was just some computer program that sent them their orders for each mission.

“As you receive this message, the current time is”—Mister’s voice was completely replaced for a second by a different, more obviously computer-generated voice—“1647 Greenwich Mean Time, August 2nd, 2147 Earth calendar.”

Marsden paused in shrugging into his light armor, unsure that he had heard the date correctly. He almost thought it was just him, but the woman who had a locker next to his, Murakame, spoke up.

“Almost two months? Just how far exactly did we travel?”

It was a rhetorical question that no one bothered to answer. If they’d lost nearly two months instead of the standard two weeks, either something had gone wrong with the engines to make them go slower, or else they had travelled farther into the galaxy than any of them had ever been before. The first possibility was extremely unlikely, given how paranoid the Recon Marine techs were about making sure everything on the ship ran smoothly, so it was probably the second option.

A murmur passed through the marines as they registered this. A few sounded audibly nervous, while most of the others were excited. This was the kind of thing they’d signed up with the Recon Marines for, after all. If they’d wanted easy, safe jobs, they would have signed up for one of the core planet military branches or militias.

“You are all here because the Recon Marines have enacted the Elliot Contingency.”

Marsden whistled. Wow, this was a big one. It was a good thing he hadn’t bet Axel where they were going after all. He would have lost this one big time.

“What’s the Elliot Contingency?” Bayne asked, a little too loudly, from his own locker. While Mister’s speech had been pre-recorded before they’d even been sent out, Marsden smiled at the way Mister seemed to anticipate Bayne’s question.

“For those of you too lazy or illiterate to read your damned manuals,” Mister said. “The Elliot Contingency is for when first contact is anticipated with a potentially hostile alien race.”

“Wow, really?” a grunt named Nunez said from a few lockers down. “What does that put us at now?”

“If we confirm their presence,” Axel called out from somewhere, “this would be the sixth sentient and intelligent non-human species we have made contact with.” What she didn’t say was that only two of them, so far, had been anything close to friendly toward humans. Although it might not be the best politics, the Recon Marines pretty much assumed by this point that they needed to be ready for hostile.

Mister continued while everyone finished gearing up. “On Earth Calendar May 28th, an automated deep-galactic probe returned to the outpost on Charon with data on several planets possibly capable of supporting human life. Before that information could be passed on to the Colonization Council, an anomaly was detected on the surface of a rocky and arid planet with the current temporary designation of Bullfinch-2.

“Further study of the data revealed the anomaly to be some kind of non-naturally occurring object suggestive of a ship design, although it is one that doesn’t match any known design used by the known sentient species. Further data suggests energy patterns consistent with advanced weapon systems, although at this point that is mostly speculation. Command has determined that you marines are to use Pattern 37 in starting to approach the possible vessel, with pattern changes to be determined by M. Dollarhyde and R. Popkess at their discretion. Thus ends the briefing. Good luck, marines.” The message ceased, and the image of the man with the mustache disappeared from all their PDMs.