"Logs of the NMV Perdix"

A little scene I wrote about a young Marine in the year 3100 and how he his life essentially ends.

*audio log playback*
Captain Alexander Ramirez, journal entry 01. The date is August the 11th in the year 3096. This is my first time doing one of these...usually its the old man...but I guess now it’s my job. Eight days ago my life ended. To give some perspective as to the goings on in our fleet, we were ordered to do combat patrols in the sector. We had entered the sector not too long ago, but we’d gotten engaged almost immediately. That wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if that hadn’t also led to several more engagements as well. We might be damn good at our jobs, but we still took a hell of a beating and two of our ships were in dire need of repairs. It seemed awfully convenient that there was a “friendly” station in our sector that we could dock at for repairs and rearming. When the higher ups told the old man, or should I say the Fleet Admiral Shultz, he gave the order for us to dock at a refueling station so we do exactly that before continuing deeper into the sector. After all, we might not get a chance later….

When we docked, a lot of us wanted to get off the stuffy ships and stretch our legs. Which was honestly, just code for getting drunk as hell since repairs were going to take days. And for the first two days, everything seemed fine, but I just couldn’t shake this feeling of uneasiness. This was a feeling I almost always had, but it was different this time. Not the usual paranoia, it was like a sense of foreboding. I would’ve said something but everyone was either drunk off their a*s, asleep, hungover or actually trying to get some work done. Long story short, they would’ve just brushed it off and called me stir crazy. At the time, I figured they were right, but now as I look back though...I can’t help but feel like I really should have tried to make them understand how “off” everything felt. If I had, maybe we would’ve been more prepared for what was to come.

What I didn’t know, what none of us knew, was that we had walked right into a trap. Flies in the web since we first docked and it seemed like I was the only one who couldn’t feel my wings beating. The analogy might seem just strange or not quite right, but if I’m being honest I dont give a damn...it’s exactly what it felt like. And I realized all this, on the third day aboard that godforsaken station...

The first warning I got was when I was walking around the docks and noticed that none of the station’s engineers were actually working on repairs, like they had been. Some would suggest, maybe they were done or they were on break, but this was not the case. It was the middle of the day and the ship repairs were far from being done. In addition to this, I also noticed that the supplies that were being loaded onboard looked nothing like the stuff we requisitioned. I left to go find our Quartermasters, if anyone could explain what was going on, it’d be them. However, when I went to look for them none of them could be located. Instead I figured, I’d go ask Chief Engineer Jackls but he said the orders came down with Admiral Hertley’s personal stamp. I found this a little strange, but I decided I’d see this little investigation all the way through. Heading to the Ship Admiral’s designated Quarters on the station, I guess he got tired of sleeping on his vessel. He didn’t answer his door but this was too important for him to just sleep through. I let myself into his room, which wasn’t easy since it was locked. And what I saw...oh god...what I saw... I found Admiral Hertley dead. His throat had been slit and a pillow shoved over his face...He was still wearing his damn pajamas and I’m almost positive he’d been attacked in his sleep. A small mercy in his fucked up death, but he didn’t deserve a cowardly assassination. No...Hertley was a hero who deserved a hero’s death… But that’s not the only thing wrong with this scene. Someone had killed one of our Ship Admirals and whoever it was, undoubtedly had bigger plans than just an assassination.

Thats when I knew something was truly wrong here. That nagging feeling that had been bugging me this whole time, was more than just paranoia indeed. Someone was dead and I knew their was more to the situation than just killing an admiral. I had no idea, who all was involved in this, but I knew that the higher ups could all have targets on their backs. I called Admiral Shultz on a private line and as it rang, I paced nervously. He picked up and I spurted out what I had found. There was dead silence on the other end, and then suddenly the line went dead. Someone else had picked up that line, and now they knew I knew.

This had trap written all over it and I knew I had to act fast or we’d all die. As I sprinted through the halls, back towards the common areas, I heard something that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was gunfire. Either this trap had been sprung or I wasn’t the only one who had discovered this treachery. By the time I made it back to the docks, I could see it was warzone. There were unarmed personnel sprinting around in panic but what really caught my attention were the groups of people armed with various firearms engaging each other. I spotted a large number of my guys in groups firing at armed station personnel on the far side of the dock bay. It seemed like they were trying to fight there way back to our ships but as I got ready to go back and help them, explosions rocked the docks and I was knocked off my feet and then dragged towards the open airlocks.

I, along with every other person in the docking pay was suddenly being dragged towards the airlocks that had been blown open. Within seconds, the emergency airlocks closed and sealed the breaches. I hit the ground hard and as I struggled to catch my breath, I found myself looking out the large bay windows. What I saw horrified me...Our ships had been blown apart and now they were little more than floating hulls, with charred peices drifting into space. I also saw the bodies of those, who’d still been aboard and the bodies of those, who’d been sucked out the airlock before it sealed. As I tried to register what I was seeing,my thoughts were immediately on getting off this station and back to the rest of the fleet. I knew that if we sat around trying to analyze what was happening, we’d be overwhelmed and killed. If I was gonna die, I was gonna die fighting.

Jumping to my feet, I raced over to where the rest of the marines were gathering there bearings and shouted for them to follow me. I picked up a c20r and ignored a complaint about that being someone’s weapon, next time don’t drop your damn gun. You wouldn’t drop your arm in a fist fight would you? I sped off away from the docks with the rest of my guys in tow. I tried to check our coms, but all I was getting was perpetual static and white noise. They were jamming our communications, which was just all too great for us (not really). The sounds of firefights echoed through the halls and as I led this ragtag team of somewhere around a dozen marines, I tried to quickly think of a plan. We needed to get off this damn station and back to the remainder of the fleet. I knew they were out there, just as confused as us on what was going on here. Either they’d blow this station away or they’d try and mount a rescue. Rescue was /not/ an option here and neither was blowing this place away...but we couldn’t tell them that.

I figured we could take the station’s supply shuttle or one of the many other shuttles if we could reach them. But we had a lot of good men who would be stuck on this station if they didn’t get a chance to escape as well. Comms needed to be cleared up or we needed a new set of comms. Thats when I figured, we could just use the station’s PA or general announcement systems. Sure it would alert everyone, good and bad, to my idea but it was a risk that would save more lives than it would damn. It was a risk we needed to take and I planned to risk it all.

We began making our way around seeking out the Bridge of this cursed station. Once we found it, we had stumbled into another firefight. It seemed a group of our guys had actually seized the Bridge and were defending it against some assaulting crew members. Quickly we joined the fray and dispatched of the hostiles. Once into the Bridge, Cpl. Terrance and Pvt. Peters began hacking the consoles. We were gonna need access into the console’s more restricted functions if this was going to work. While they were working, I finally took the chance to catch my breath and think about the damned situation we were all caught in. The odds were stacked against us and the chances that we would die here in this hellhole were rapidly growing.

I was ripped out of my thoughts by more gunfire, as bullets slammed into the reinforced windows of the Bridge. I took cover as they kept firing at us, and as soon as they stopped to reload, we returned fire. We picked them off easily, a little too easily to be honest. As I think back to the actions and tactics used by those people, I doubt they were trained in any sort of real way other than just aiming and pulling the trigger. This worked well in our favor, seeing as how we were trained marines, but no amount of training can stop a bullet from killing you.

Peters told me they were finished, and I began preparing the console for my announcement when I heard a loud burst of static in my ear. Judging by the reactions of everyone else, they must have heard it too. The static quickly cleared up and was replaced by a frantic voice I knew all too well. Major Kenan, called out over ours comms, asking if anyone could hear him. Immediately the comms were flooded with voices, most if not all belonging to our fellow marines. I shouted loudly into my headset and somehow managed to get some peace and quiet. I relayed my idea of stealing shuttles for E&E and got shouts of approval from a lot of voices in response. I turned down my headset and ordered everyone there with me to move out.

The nearest shuttle to us would be the Cargo Bay shuttle and that’s where we headed. Surprisingly, we must have arrived just after another group of marines, because there were dead bodies scattered, freshly spent rounds on the ground and the doors had been forced open. Entering the Supply Dock, I saw I was indeed right my assumption. I saw about two dozen guys huddled in a circle around something and I called out to them. I had a smile on my face. We were actually going to make it and there was my friend too. My best-friend Kevin, or Sgt. Howe to everyone else, approached me with that look on his face. I’d seen it before, whenever something bad had happened and he didn’t want me to overreact. I had a really bad feeling in my gut and it made the smile fall right off my face. I ignored Howe, pushing through the group to the center.

What I saw…
broke me…
I died then and there…
in that dingy Supply Dock, huddled around men I’d grown up with.
What I saw…
was..
Admiral Shultz...
my father...
lying on the floor and he was dead…
*end audio playback*

Author's Note

I did not actually check this for grammatical and spelling errors. I will read over it after posting but Don't be afraid to point them out.