PREVIEW: INSURGENCY
LEGIONNAIRE #2
INSURGENCY
The universe whirled around Logan McCoy’s head. A silent universe, other than the constant wheezing of his own lungs struggling to suck in another breath.
His eyes adjusted to the dark a few hours ago, and now the space between the brightly-glowing stars no longer looked black, but had grown into a faint grey illuminated by the glow of billions of galaxies, and trillions of suns.
Yet few of them traced out familiar constellations.
He was light-years from the world where he was born just twenty years ago, living a life he’d never imagined as a kid.
And even the stars were wrong.
He lay as motionless as he could in the cramped confines of the vac suit, the only thing that was keeping him alive in the cold and vacuum of deep space. His chest pressed against the hard frame of the suit as the stars seemed to pull him toward them, compressing his ribs against his lungs under his own weight. His nose was squashed against the transparent plasteel visor, forcing him to breathe through his mouth.
A black, skeletal shape slid past the stars above his forehead then on down, blocking the light as it moved lower and lower in front of him, like a monster eating the universe.
The Robespierre, one of the destroyers escorting the Foreign Legion Assault Ship Marine LePen to Saint-Simon as part of Taskforce Richelieau.
As it crept across his field of view by a few degrees every second, anti-collision lights flashed, casting a brief red and white glow across the hard, rutted surface of the ship’s spherical bridge, and the missile launchers and guns hanging from a thin frame around it.
The destroyer slid past his nose, and continued moving down until it disappeared below the bottom of his visor, leaving him alone with the stars again.
But more ships replaced it. The other destroyers in the task force, the cruiser Jeanne d’Arc, and the Army assault ship Denis Diderot, waiting patiently in deep space until they were cleared to enter the final wormhole to Saint-Simon.
Logan willed his body to slow down, to use less air, and keep him alive a little longer. The oxygen level on the vac suit’s HUD glowed red, now down to two percent.
He had a few minutes left. Ten, maybe twenty at most.
Every breath he took brought him closer to zero, then he’d only have whatever oxygen was left in the suit to breathe before he died. The air already stank of rubber, plastic and his own sweat, and it was growing warmer, more stuffy and humid with every moment that passed.
Bungie cords clasped his outstretched arms and legs to the side of the Marine LePen, and they strained under the centrifugal force as the ship’s rotation tried to toss him away into space. All it would take was for the clips on the end of the cords to give way, and he’d be left to die a lonely death as he floated away from the fleet, never to be seen again.
He twisted his head to the right, sliding his nose across the inside of the visor until his cheek pressed against it instead. As his eyes turned toward the edge of the visor, he could just see the rim of the airlock about three metres away.
The outer hatch was still closed. Despite the low oxygen level in his tanks, no-one was coming out to save him.
It was so close. Yet impossible to reach from where he lay.
Even if he could escape from the cords, he’d never be able to clamber across those few metres of the ship’s hull without a safety line to hold him in place. If he tried to crawl without one, the rotation of the ship would throw him off into space well before he got there.
He turned his face back, scraping his cheek across the inside of the cold plasteel visor until he could see space again. He twitched his nose, trying to return it to its normal shape after it had been squashed against the visor for so long.
Though perhaps that was a blessing, because he couldn’t breathe so fast with his nostrils squashed. So the air in the suit would last a little longer.
He checked the HUD again.
One percent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward M. Grant is a physicist and software developer turned SF and horror writer. He lives in the frozen wastes of Canada, but was born in England, where he wrote for a science and technology magazine and worked on numerous indie movies in and around London. He has travelled the world, been a VIP at space shuttle launches, survived earthquakes and a tsunami, climbed Mt Fuji, assisted the search for the MH370 airliner, and visits nuclear explosion sites for a hobby.
Find more of his his books at:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0073B3QKA
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