Jason Halstead - The Colony

“ They had a transport ship — No way they could land that on a planet!” The brown haired man talking was soft spoken in spite of his derisive tone. The woman at the radar station looked at the speaker and chewed on the piercing in her lip. It was one of many piercings adorning her face and shaven scalp.

“ Something you want to add, Lizzie?”

She jerked and spun to look at the new speaker, the captain of the Black Hole. She nodded. “Klous…yes, I mean, yes Sir, that is. I found the Rented Mule, it crashed. In the water, but less than a couple hundred feet deep.”

“ Is that all?” Klous snorted. He ran his fingers through his spiked blond hair and stared at Lizzie until she turned away. “The Hole isn’t much better than that transport was for planetary operations.”

“ I can set us down nearby. Lizzie’s coordinates are just off a shore.” The speaker was Aran Black, the pilot of the Black Hole.

“ It’d be a shame to come all this way and go with nothing.” The unassuming man’s eyes were wide with what the Captain knew to be excitement. He’d known the man far too long to misjudge it, and far too long to repress the shudder at what it meant.

“ Don’t go freaking out, Cooper, I’ll have your ass confined,” Klous growled at him.

“ Any survivors?”

Klous craned his neck to see the only survivor from the failed boarding attempt of the Rented Mule standing there. The Captain’s eyes narrowed dangerously but before he could rebuke the man for his uninvited interruption Lizzie spoke up.

“ I think so.” She still stared at the display in front of her while her hands were pressed firmly against the data induction pad on her station. She nodded a moment later, the rings in her ears jangling against one another. “Yes, I’ve got more wreckage on the shore.”

“ More wreckage?”

“ Not a crash site, but it looks like they used a smaller craft to evacuate the transport.”

“ No signs of life though?”

“ Oh, lots! The entire planet is alive,” Lizzie paused to look at them. She shrugged, causing more jangles. “I’ve never seen readings like this. I think maybe Earth would have looked like this thousands of years ago. Huge forests, warm temperatures, and incredible numbers of animals or other life forms moving.”

“ Humans? Or…”

“ Too big for people. No signs of cities or building either.”

Klous grunted. “I don’t like it. We were supposed to board the damn ship in space! We get the cargo and split the bounty on the target. This is a pile of rat shit is what it is!”

“ Klous, this system isn’t on any charts. This planet — it don’t exist.”

“ What’s that mean?” The Captain growled back at Aran.

“ Means this place hasn’t been discovered yet. We’re outside the core worlds. Shit, we’re outside the rim systems by light years! Salvage in space is claimed by whoever finds it…”

“ This is a planet, not salvage.”

“ All the other planets humans have settled and terraformed they knew about beforehand. Settlers and engineers were sent with that in mind. This place is ready!”

“ No shipping lanes this far out and I don’t like a few years of cold sleep between our hideout and civilized space!”

“ Klous, not a hideout — we can run this world! That much green down there, it’s a fucking paradise! People will flock to it and pay whatever we demand.”

Klous stared at the excited pilot. His suspicious eyes widened as he digested the words and realized what the man meant.

“ One problem,” Brand interrupted — again — from behind the Captain. “People that discover it first are the ones that got the rights to it.”

Klous chuckled. “What problem? It’s just another salvage run. Sometimes the salvage needs a little help.”

Brand nodded. “You might still split that bounty.”

“ Two point five million in core script is nothing compared to this!”

Cooper leaned forward, his teeth emerging in a smile. “We going hunting?”

Klous stared at him, shaking his head in mild disapproval. “One of these days your hobby is going to get you killed.”

Cooper shrugged, clearly unconcerned. “So?”

Klous sighed. “Aran, take us down. Lizzie, find the best spot and see if you can get anything on where the survivors went.”

“ It’s been nine months, there’s no telling how far they got or if they’re even still alive,” her final words sounded almost hopeful.

Klous shrugged. “Easier for us then.”

“ Do you want me to send out a salvage beacon marking this as our find?” Lizzie asked.

Klous ran his hand through his hair again, then nodded. “Yeah, let’s make this official.”

She focused on her display again as diagrams and words flashed across it. A few moments later she said, “The beacon’s ready. Instead of a derelict ship name we need a name for the planet.”

Klous glanced at the others on the bridge. The returned his stare, each openly curious but offering nothing. Finally he grinned. “Vitalis. Let’s call it Vitalis.”

“ You sure it’s only been nine months?” Ling Soon, the Black Hole’s engineer, asked. He stood up, stretching to his full towering height, and shook his head. “This thing’s been gutted and the rust on it has it falling apart. I don’t know much about air and water wearing metal down, but I’d say this has been here for years.”

Aran shook his head. “Lizzie and I checked and checked again, they’ve been here nine months, give or take a few days.”

Ling whistled, then wiped the sweat off his forehead back into his short dark hair. “Breeze is nice but it sure is hot.”

“ Wait until you get in the jungle,” Cooper said. The others glanced at him but looked away. The excitement was evident in his voice. “No wind,” he continued, unaware of their discomfort, “just the heat making you sweat and the insects and predators smelling you and wanting to taste-”

“ Cooper!” Klous snarled, stopping him. Cooper looked at the Captain and shrugged, then turned to stare back into the forest. Klous glared at him a minute longer then shook his head and turned to the others. “Lizzie, Ling, stay with the Hole. Last thing we need is them circling back and stealing our ship while we’re looking for them.”

“ Go inside and lock it down,” Brand advised. “These aren’t just drifters running a transport, they had military experience.”

Klous grunted. The last run-in with the Rented Mule had cost him several of his crew. Nobody important to him, other than how a couple of the girls had been trying to impress him and earn a better share. He did miss Talya’s lips…

“ Captain?”

Klous glanced over and up at Ling. Everyone was staring at him and he realized he’d been daydreaming about Talya. Or rather the last time she’d spent some quality time in his cabin. He pushed it aside and grunted, “Yeah.”

“ We won’t activate it unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Ling said, taking Klous’s terse statement to be agreement.

He dug deep and realized Ling was talking about JimBob, the modified sentinel robot he’d picked up a few years back. Relative years, considering the amount of time spent in hibernation units while traveling outside of the jump stations. The JB-1203 unit had been decommissioned and little more than scrap, but he’d picked it up off a fence who had salvaged it and had it retrofitted with pulse lasers. The radioactive isotope that powered the robot still had a half life of nearly 11,000 years. The robot’s programming on the other hand, had always been a little quirky.