After Boss Marsters left the room the three marines were grimly silent, each lost in their own thoughts, until George Tuck emerged from the interior waiting room.
“Hey guys, glad you came to check in. I figure you heard what Marsters did?” asked George as he joined the small group.
“Just told us, crazy stuff man, but he’s got a point,” said Virginia as she put an arm around George to comfort him. “She’s going to pull through just fine, and so what if there will be a ton more credits hanging over her head. We could all die tomorrow.”
“You have a weird way of trying to comfort people,” laughed Ben as he started walking towards the door. “Tuck, we’re gonna hit the cantina, you should come.”
“Seriously, George, this is going to be our one night of leisure before that space hulk consumes our very existence,” grumbled Virginia amiably as George nodded his head and let the marines lead him away from med-bay.
Samuel hung back, staying a few paces behind the rest of the marines, lost in thought. Mag had warned him about the medical risks one took when getting wounded on the battlefield, though he couldn’t fault Boss Marsters for wanting the best for his wounded marine.
Jada had not been the only casualty of Tango Platoon in the last twenty-four hours. The new guy to Squad Taggart, whom Samuel had found out from Mag was named Kristoph, had bought it along with Oliver during the fight for the landing zone. He’d watched Andrea Baen gunned down right before his eyes, while both Lucinda Ulanti and Spencer Green had been sent to med-bay with various cuts, bruises, and bullet holes. He tried to solace himself with the knowledge that it would take some time, but Jada, Spencer, and Boss Ulanti would all be back on duty soon enough, he thought to himself as he followed his friends.
He understood the desire to have a few strong drinks, especially after the harrowing twenty-four hours he had just experienced. It wasn’t until the debriefing that it had really sunk into his mind just how incredibly lucky he, or any of them for that matter, had been to survive.
While the salvage marines had been fighting their way through the Praxis Mundi ship, one of the concealed pirate cruisers had fired up its engines and launched a counter-attack on the Reaper tug. The pirate vessel was not sufficiently armed to do any crippling damage to the heavily armored tug ship, though it certainly could have prevented the second wave of assault craft that were ramping up to launch. Without the second wave for support, the first boarding force of marines would most certainly have run out of ammunition, suffered horrible casualties, and likely have been swallowed by the hulk.
If the hulk was not taken in a boarding action, the Reaper fleet would have had to pull back and wait for a Grotto warship to arrive with artillery capable of simply blasting the hulk to pieces. Doing so might preserve the lives of hundreds of marines, but a boarding action was the only way to secure the hulk for proper salvage.
During the artillery exchange between the pirate cruiser and the Reaper security frigate that moved to intercept it, there was an explosion. At the time of the debriefing it was not known whether the explosion was caused by ordinance from the nearby void battle between the cruiser and the frigate. It might have been charges placed by the pirates to intentionally render the Praxis Mundi unsalvageable, or perhaps simply a mechanical accident. Regardless of the cause, the ship was ripped from its moorings by the explosion and had tumbled through space, losing its artificial gravity, followed only minutes later by power, and thus life support.
The furious zero gravity combat had raged on for several more minutes. When the lights went out the fight was done in sickeningly close quarters. Samuel, even many hours later, still found his hands shaking at the thought of what it had been like fighting the last pirate, out of ammunition and his combat rifle forgotten somewhere in the darkness of the ship. Spears of light shining through the viewports of the central deck, in addition to the sporadic flashes and lights from the receding void battle offered the only occasional glimpses of the battle.
Samuel still had his light in one hand and his boarding knife in the other when a pirate barreled into him from behind. The two men had careened through the deck as each slashed and stabbed at the other with his respective blade. After a few intense moments, Samuel was able to score a deep gouge through the man’s inner thigh. The pirate’s arterial wound had sprayed blood that that instantly crystallized and it was the sight of scarlet crystals shattering against his helmet’s faceplate that had chilled Samuel to the core.
Mag had always warned him that it was the little details that would drive a man crazy if he didn’t deal with them. So that night Samuel was determined to tell his friends the story and get it out into the open. By the time he did, everyone was drunk enough to laugh about it. There were more psychologically responsible ways to cope with such things, Samuel had found himself thinking, but this was certainly more fun.
The marines enjoyed their time in the cantina, knowing that at the start of the next day cycle the salvage of the space hulk would begin.
Rough tonnage estimates, not accounting for unknown factors or additional resource discoveries, placed the salvage time at six standard months. The marines would be swapping out their battle armor and combat rifles for hazard suits, welders, and lifters. There would still be security patrols, since the massive structure no doubt still housed pockets of pirates and squatters who were not killed in the fighting, or had chosen not to turn themselves in.
Samuel knew that most of the pirates and squatters would end up being shipped to one of the many penal colonies operated by Grotto. Even the humans who called the space hulk home were considered revenue-generating resources to be salvaged, tallied, and redistributed.
At the end of six months, where the impossibly large space hulk had once drifted through space, there was little more than a small cloud of debris.
6. TETRA PRIME
Samuel was jostled in his seat as the combat speeder wove its way through the ravine; a jagged furrow torn through the land by eons of flowing currents. The waters of the planet known as Tetra Prime had long since been siphoned away, leaving the former sea beds to bake in the punishing light of the triple suns that illuminated the Tetra star system.
From his seat Samuel could see through a small viewport and his breath caught in his throat as the combat speeder exited the ravine to reveal hundreds of miles of sandy valley floor below. The mission briefing had educated him on the history of the planet and current military objectives, but the sheer power of humanity’s ability to change a planet had not been presented to him so dramatically as it was in that moment.
As Samuel looked out at the valley it was hard to believe that only one hundred twenty-seven standard years ago this planet was a single vast ocean, the only surface land being a handful of wave-battered islands.
According to the briefing, Grotto purchased the planet, along with half of the rest of the Tetra system, from Rubicon Enterprises at a bargain price. Rubicon had liquidated the entire system to fund a distant trade war and expansion campaign several galaxies away. Rubicon had been using Tetra Prime as an untapped water reserve, and though they had leased fishing rights to several small operations, the impact on the marine population was minimal considering the size of the planet.