Tales from the Terror Planet (Commonwealth of Planets Book 2) by Tom Noel-Morgan

Author:Tom Noel-Morgan [Noel-Morgan, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

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Tale 8

Stalkers & Shadows

Dark, dank corridors were lit only by the dimmest of flickering emergency lights. The sound of water drops falling from the elliptical ceiling of the tunnel echoed disturbingly, and puddles gathered at every other step. A gust of wind whistled in the grey old tunnel’s red conduits, to assault the pallet with a threatening musky odour.

Washington Silveira was walking down the corridors of the deep-rooted settlement of Nova Georgia only half awake, his figure standing out against the blue-grey background. The brown padded coveralls of the survival suit that he wore with coffee-coloured riding boots and body armour were already sprinkled with muck and blood. It had been a long week of endless lurking about.

Silveira wandered for a half-hour looking for an adequate spot to crash. He worried that a pack of beasts could track him down somehow by smell or another device, but he was exhausted and didn’t care. Not anymore. As soon as he found a defensible niche, the militiaman pulled himself against the wall, fumbled for his med-kit and gave himself a sizeable dose of polycillin. He then collapsed, and in his slumber, he relived the latest events as if his mind sought a way to digest them.

Silveira dreamt of the days preceding his assignment to Nova Georgia’s central settlement buildings. He first remembered the briefing by the Commonwealth official on New Hope Station, which had been extensive. He had learned then, from the mouth of Brigadier Hugo Gorpha himself, that the Nova Georgia colony was the most significant settlement in the southern hemisphere. Deep within the Great Ocean, the Nova Georgia Island was surrounded by a rocky archipelago. It was the ideal location to start a colony that’d be safe from Terra Nova’s many land and marine predators.

Indeed, it would have been, if not for the presence of the xenomorphic species now in pursuit of Washington Silveira himself. The vampiric nocturnal hunters had not always been present on the island. They appeared shortly after the colony had been established, quite spontaneously and in small numbers, to prey timidly on the settlers of Nova Georgia. When it happened, it was argued that somehow one of the local creatures had incorporated human DNA into their own, ultimately mutating the species that came to be known as papio-hematofitus, or “blood-baboon”. So said the experts on New Hope Station.

Brig. Gen. Hugo Gorpha echoed that notion when he summoned Washington, to commission him for a short-term security assignment on Nova Georgia. Silveira was to be team leader on a mission to control an unexpected surge in the baboon population. By then, most of the settlers on Nova Georgia had already been relocated, following reports of baboon attacks. The remnants still left at Nova Georgia were what Gorpha had classified as “conscripts” serving various judicial sentences. Yet Central City wasn’t willing to abandon them to their own resources. Gorpha, at least, wasn’t.

So it was that Silveira’s team of volunteers was airlifted from Central City to Nova Georgia, encumbered with assembling and training a local Militia from among the settlement conscripts.

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