The Messenger: A Military Scifi Epic by J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert

Author:J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2019-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

13

There was darkness, a long tunnel of it, enormously far away, and at its end, a faint point of light.

He started clawing his way toward it, climbing the tunnel as though scaling a vertical shaft. That light, he had to reach that light. Otherwise, he’d fall backward, deeper into the tunnel. He’d lose sight of the light, and that would be it. There would be no more light.

The faint glow suddenly swelled, enveloping him.

Dash opened his eyes.

There was silence. Darkness.

His breath rumbled in his ears. Something enclosed him, tightly. What?

Wait. He’d been aboard the Slipwing, with Leira and Viktor and Conover—

No.

There’d been more. The Halfwing. A chase. By Echoes. Then there was a missile.

After a thunderous roar, the cabin filled with fog, which was instantly swept into space by the explosive decompression, the alternating midnight black and dazzling silver white of a comet.

He’d hit the comet. Crashed into it.

How was he still even alive?

Dash considered his body, his limbs. Everything still seemed to be there. And although there was pain, there wasn’t too much pain. Mostly some specific, bright spots of hurt, and an ache that seemed to involve his whole body, like he was one, continuous bruise.

But why was everything so dark?

It took Dash a moment to realize that it was literally dark, as in, no light. He switched on his vac suit lamp and the world erupted into control panels, components, and structural members, but everything was lifeless and tilted askew. He lifted a hand and poked experimentally at some controls. But there was nothing. Not even a spark. He glanced at the master power panel, but it was as dead as anything else.

The Halfwing was dead. And, judging from the distortion of her hull, no longer even a spacecraft. She was just wreckage now.

That realization kickstarted a whole, new line of thinking. He had to evacuate. To where, well, that was something to worry about later. He reached under the seat and yanked out the crash bag, a kit containing things of immediate usefulness—suit patches, extra power cells, a distress beacon—before he levered himself out of his harness, wincing, groaning, and clambering to his feet. Then he floated up and banged his helmet on an overhead. Right. There was no gravity to speak of. He’d have to be careful.

A sudden rush of alarm slammed through him, washing away the last of the fuzz clouding his brain. If the fusion core was breached, there could be radiation, and a lot of it.

But the rad counter in his suit just showed a little above normal background. And the anti-deuterium storage had obviously stayed intact, too, or he wouldn’t even be here to wonder about it…he’d just be an expanding cloud of ionized gas mixed in with the rest of the Halfwing, and probably most of the comet, too.

It took Dash a while to exit the remains of the Halfwing. When he finally had, and was standing on what had been her prow, he looked around, his suit lamp revealing his new surroundings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.