The Silent Planet: A Space Opera (Cosmic Cyclone Series, Book 1) by Holmes G.H

Author:Holmes, G.H. [Holmes, G.H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Invisible like a ghost, Ben Harrow hovered by the giant howitzer in the middle of the domed Armory and scanned the room. Below him in the dust lay no less than two platoons of Marines, motionless like stone-cold corpses.

The dust around them was undisturbed, as if they'd never walked into this room earlier today, as if they'd lain here forever.

Ben descended and floated above the sturdy form of Pere Gruzka. The captain lay on his side, half of his face sunk in the dust. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open. The dust had flowed into it like water and now it sat there like it belonged.

Gruzka wasn't breathing.

Fearing the worst, Ben slowly filtered into the man's tissue—but found it still warm, though cooler than was normal even in humans from ice planets. Gruzka's lungs weren't moving, but there was oxygen in them, as if they were in a state of perpetual inhalation. His heart was beating, but much slower than normal. Through the spinal cord Ben flowed into Gruzka's brain, where he found the blood to contain enough oxygen to keep the man from sustaining damage from sanguinary asphyxiation. All this was very peculiar. Ben marveled. He'd never seen anything like it.

Gruzka was hibernating.

No doubt the other Marines were in the same state.

Somebody was conserving them until further notice.

Until they could be retrieved.

Ben felt sick to his stomach when he pondered what caliber intelligence he was up against.

Sooner or later somebody would come to collect these troops. Mindful of the beacon he'd interrupted back in the command center, that somebody might already be on his, her or its way.

He needed to wake the troops!

But how?

Maybe it was the contact with the dust that kept them in this… vegetative state. That was Ben's best guess.

Ben materialized until there was enough of him to lift Pere Gruzka into the elevated bucket seat of the howitzer, which was completely free of powder. The man was heavy, but Ben managed. Tilted back, the captain sat like a marionette whose cords had been snipped. He was fast asleep.

After turning ethereal again, Ben went through the man and pushed all foreign particles—except those on his eyes—into Gruzka's mouth. It wasn't very much really. Then he waited.

After what seemed an eternity, Gruzka started and began to cough. He sat up, rolled his shoulders and began to wipe his eyes with thumb and index finger.

"Don't move," Ben meant to say. But because he wasn't fully materialized, his voice sounded more like the wind in the trees on a warm summer night than a Marine general giving an order.

"Who's speaking?" Gruzka croaked and turned his head.

"Doesn't matter," the rustling voice replied. "You are sitting in the bucket seat of the howitzer you've surely seen when you came in here. If you don't watch it, you will fall down two meters and sustain a sprained ankle."

With wide-open eyes Gruzka stared into the void.

The man was blind.

Just the way Ben wanted it. For the moment.

"Who put me in it?" the captain asked.

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