Dawn of Procyon

  Dawn of Procyon

  Future House Publishing

  Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.

  Text © 2016 Mark Healy

  Illustration © 2016 Illustrator

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at rights@futurehousepublishing.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 1-944452-24-9 (paperbound)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-944452-24-7 (paperbound)

  Developmental editing by Mandi Diaz

  Substantive editing by Helena Steinacker

  Copy editing by Jenna Parmley

  Interior design by Emma Hoggan and Mandi Diaz

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  Chapter 1

  Procyon Standard Date

  (PSD) 29-212: 1600 hours

  Landry was having a bad day. On a scale of one to ten—one being “the cafeteria ran out of chocolate rolls” and ten being “the world just exploded”—he gave it a thirteen.

  And it was about to get worse.

  As he crouched behind the boulder, Landry considered his predicament. First, his scout ship had been reduced to nothing but wreckage. It was now strewn across the rocky, desolate wasteland of the inhospitable planet upon which he squatted in his EVA suit. That in itself would be enough to qualify this as a very bad day—but that wasn’t the end of it.

  Second, the oxygen supply that was feeding his suit was rapidly dwindling. At this rate, he would suffocate in his own stinking breath within the hour, even if the PSA system in his backpack continued to separate the CO2 from the mix. The glowing numerals on his head-up display for O2 levels were fluctuating between six and seven percent, but as he watched, he saw the seven flicker and turn into a three, then go back to six. Either the gauge or the HUD itself had been damaged during the crash landing, and he wasn’t sure he could trust either.

  Third, and perhaps this was the most terrifying reason of all, he was about to face off against a hostile alien creature that was almost twice his size. He could see the ugly critter now, sniffing about the rear portion of the scout ship that had broken off and landed among the boulders down the slope. The smoking white hull was striking amid the coppery hues of the landscape, easy to spot from a distance. The alien itself, bulky and chitinous, looked more or less at home in this world, even though it was not indigenous to the planet. Its body was like a wedge of volcanic rock, or perhaps the misshapen stump of a burnt tree, gnarled and mottled black and crimson. Its outer skin—if you could call it that—was coarse and uneven like sandpaper.

  And it stood between Landry and his only way of contacting home.

  Home, out here on planet Proc-One, was an outpost almost 300 clicks away from the crash site. It was certainly too far to walk, given Landry’s oxygen supply. That was why he needed to dig through the smoldering wreckage. The antenna, located in the comms module on the rear of the ship was his last hope. If he could somehow wire it up to the computer in the scout’s cockpit, in the portion of wreckage Landry had occupied when the ship had broken in two, there was a faint—no, ridiculously miniscule—shred of hope that he might get out of this alive.

  As he watched, the alien moved, shuffling along the edge of the scout. It probed at the hull of the ship, then ripped open a panel on its side with fingers like granite. Leaning down, it briefly inspected the innards of the panel, then moved on.

  Landry moved to keep it within view, adjusting his position behind the boulder as he tried to figure out how he was going to take the creature down.

  He’d never seen one of the Argoni up close, he realized, at least not in the flesh. In fact, few people had. He’d watched some cyber-reels released by the war department, read a few online fact sheets, but that was it. The war with the species known as Xeno-Gliese-412-01—more commonly referred to as the Argoni or derisively as “Toads”—had begun almost twenty years ago, but in that time the aliens had managed to mask most aspects of their tech and their biology. Like most of humanity, Landry was largely in the dark about the nature of man’s greatest enemy.

  Now he watched the thing’s movements worriedly, realizing that those cyber-reels hadn’t come close to accurately portraying the raw power that these creatures possessed. Landry’s stomach turned at the thought of what would happen if it spotted him cowering behind the rocks. One swing of those powerful limbs would pulverize his bones beneath the EVA suit, turning his innards to mush. And it wasn’t just the size of the thing that had him concerned. As it ducked to look inside another exposed panel of the ship, the Argoni bent and straightened with a gracefulness that belied its size, like a heavyweight boxer who specialized in ballet. It obviously possessed agility to go along with its strength, a potent mix.

  What are you looking for, you ugly critter? Landry wondered. What do you want with my ship?

  An odd thought came to Landry. The scout had been hit by something when it broke in two, some sort of Argoni artillery, a booby trap that had been left amid the terrain, Landry had guessed. But he realized that might not have been the case.

  Where exactly had this Toad come from? There had been no Argoni activity reported on Proc-One in the last week. The last base had been wiped out by the Marines stationed at the outpost, and there had been no new Toad warships detected in the system since.

  Perhaps the Argoni had been aboard a long-range surveillance craft that had struck the scout, Landry thought. A mid-air collision. If that was the case, and the Argoni’s ship had gone down as well, it would be in the same predicament as Landry. Could it be that they were both marooned in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting home?

  Is that thing poring over my scout so it can salvage parts?

  Landry mulled that over. It made no sense, he decided. From what little he knew about Toad tech, it was evident that there were no similarities to human tech. Salvaging parts would be a waste of time.

  The Toad reached the comms panel and made a vicious swipe with a short, bony blade on the end of its arm, then it began to lever the entire comms module outward.

  Landry knew the design of the ship. He knew the antenna was located in that module.

  Son of a . . .

  Landry got to his feet. He had no plan, no inkling of how to stop that thing from stealing the antenna, his only chance of survival, but he knew he had to do something. His ragged breath threw ephemeral patches of fog across the inside of his helmet, obscuring his vision, and despite the panic that sent his pulse galloping, he forced himself to take smaller gulps of air.

  I need to actually see the thing in order to take it down, he thought wryly. That would definitely help.

  The O2 dropped to five
percent, then down to one, and jumped back up to seven.

  Landry scowled. Make up your mind—

  There was a cracking, wrenching sound, and Landry raised his head again. He saw the Argoni lift the comms panel clear of the scout’s fuselage, hefting the chunk of metal as if it were lightweight plastic.

  With that done, it turned back up the slope.

  It looked right at Landry.

  A chill went down his spine, and a fresh batch of sweat stained his arms and torso inside the EVA suit. The thing was fearsome, even at a distance of twenty paces. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, with two arms and two legs, but that was where the resemblance ended. In truth, it looked more like a cluster of rocks that had been glued together in the shape of a biped than an actual human.

  The chitinous outer coating extended up its neck and across its face, like ridges of blackened, lumpy bone. From within stared eyes the colour of ink, and around them Landry could see the softer flesh of its face, its reptilian skin, and a thick scar over its left eye. It did not appear to be wearing a breathing apparatus.

  He had the Toad cornered, Landry realized. Further down the slope was a high rock wall, too steep to scale. It would have to come through him if it wanted to escape.

  Right at that moment, Landry wasn’t sure if being between it and freedom was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Summoning every bit of courage he had within him, he stepped clearly into view and stood waiting for the Argoni to make its move. Landry wasn’t a big guy, not like the Marines who frequented the outpost. He was just an Optech, a lowly mechanic. He couldn’t outmuscle this thing in his wildest dreams. He didn’t have a chance.

  So how am I going to stop it?

  Landry thought back to almost twenty-five years before, when he’d been nine years old, talking to his Grandpa on the old man’s worn sofa. Grandpa had been a dockhand in his day, working twelve hour shifts at the Hawk Street pier for more years than he could remember, and he knew a thing or two about survival. He’d been a scrapper, a streetfighter, if his stories were to be believed. On that particular day, Grandpa had been giving Landry advice on how to deal with the school bully, Harry Spring, the kid who’d taken to tormenting Landry in the weeks previous. Spring had been spitting in his hat, tripping him into the dirt, and pushing him around in front of the other kids. Upon hearing this, Grandpa’s eyes had lit up.

  “I got a remedy for this!” he’d cried.

  “Huh?” Landry had replied doubtfully.

  “You want him running at you, Landry.”

  “I do? Why?”

  “‘Cos that’s when you can catch him off guard. Call him a few names, get under his skin. Get him riled up. Then, when he comes at you, kick him between the legs when he ain’t expecting it! Right in the crackers, hard as you can!”

  Grandpa had emphasized his point by lashing out savagely with his leg, hard enough to send his tartan slipper flying from his foot. It had zipped across the room and slammed into one of Grandma’s watercolors and knocked it clean off the wall. As it had clattered to the floor, Grandma had looked up sharply at them from her crossword puzzle, perturbed, but the old man had blathered on, oblivious.

  “One good kick between the legs will drop the biggest of ‘em, Landry. Mark my words.”

  Not being one to question his elders, Landry had tried out this method on Harry Spring the next week on the playground after school, but as Harry had come at him, the kick had glanced harmlessly off his inner thigh.

  As a result, Landry had gotten a blow to the eye that made it swell up for three days straight, as well as a split lip and a bruised jaw. It had been hard to eat for a week afterward. Not quite the outcome Grandpa had promised.

  Now Landry watched as the Toad drew itself up to its full height. He edged forward nervously, still not knowing exactly what he was going to do. There was nothing between the alien’s legs but rigid black plating, the same carapace that covered the rest of its body.

  Do these things even have genitalia? For all I know, there are no “crackers” to kick.

  The Toad made a garbled grating noise, like sand grinding between two stones, and then it was suddenly moving up the slope.

  It moved fast. Breathtakingly fast for something of that size.

  But it was moving to the side. It was trying to get around him.

  Landry bounded into action, swinging his legs into a gallop as best he could in the confines of the EVA suit. The Toad changed course, and Landry adjusted, and then it was coming right at him.

  Landry realized he was screaming; half in challenge, half in terror (More the latter, actually, he thought distantly), and the sound was bouncing around inside his helmet deafeningly.

  Then the thing was upon him.

  Landry lashed out awkwardly with his foot, but the blow never came close to reaching its target.

  The Toad hit Landry like a linebacker wearing pads made of solid granite.

  Landry’s bones jarred as if he’d been hit by a locomotive, and he saw the red sky of Proc-One spin and whirl around him as he pitched over.

  Then his visor smacked facedown into the dirt, and he saw nothing but blackness.

  Chapter 2

  Nine hours earlier

  PSD 29-212: 0708 hours

  Landry was the first one into the workshop that morning, and that was business as usual. Landry was always the first one in the workshop. That was because Landry didn’t have a life outside of work. On the desolate rock that orbited the binary stars Procyon A and B, the planet they called Proc-One (or Proc-Rock, or Proc-Vegas, depending on who you asked) there was not much to do beyond Landry’s four walls. Outside the incessant whir of pneumatic drills and the clatter of wrenches, there was just a ten minute walk to his tiny dormitory, then dinner and sleep.

  That was the way he liked it.

  Of course, there were diversions at the outpost if you looked hard enough. Down at the Cross, there were bars and a nightclub—although that was a pretty loose term, given its state—even a worn basketball court over near the entrance to Outpost Control for those looking to get sweaty. There were cybergames and television shows piped in from Earth, reruns, for the most part. There were groups who got together and played bridge, chess or board games. There were things to do, no question about that. The lifestyle out here was what you made of it, and he knew that.

  But Landry preferred to stick to himself. He worked long hours in the workshop among the broken machines, hammering and welding and replacing, and reviewing the tasks completed by the Optechs who worked under him.

  And when he was done, he went back home to eat and wait out the night.

  Then he came back and did it all again.

  That was his routine, and it had been for several years now.

  That morning, when Gus came clattering through the workshop door with an odd expression on his face, Landry somehow knew that his carefully constructed regimen was about to be thrown into chaos.

  “Hey, Landry!” Gus called, stuffing his wrinkled uniform shirt into his cargo pants. He was one of the civilian pilots who worked the outpost, flying scout-class aircraft around the planet for any number of day-to-day activities such as array tower maintenance or geological surveys. “Thought I’d find you here.”

  “Where else would I be?” Landry said as he plugged a cable into the diagnostic port of the mudhopper on which he’d been working.

  “Who knows? Thought you might have been hosting one of those all-night dance parties again back at your place,” Gus said with a wry smile as he approached.

  “Funny guy. You should get up early more often.” Landry tapped the diagnostic card as he attempted to bring it online. “Looks like it sharpens your wit.”

  Gus gave him a pat on the shoulder. “No, that’s the bucket of coffee I just drank.” He widened his eyes and waggled his fingers beside his head. “I’m buzzing.”

  Landry gave him a lopsided grin. “You’re always buzzing.”

  “Hey,” Gus said, glancing about,
“I have something to ask you, but you need to listen until the end before you say yes or no.”

  Landry lifted a screwdriver and began to unscrew the diag card. “Judging by the way you phrased that, I’m gonna go ahead and say no, right up front.”

  “No, come on, man,” Gus said, his frivolity gone. “This is for real.”

  Landry stopped what he was doing and turned to look at him. Gus seemed edgy about something, Landry thought. If it had been anyone else, Landry would have told them to go away, but he had to admit that Gus wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was a good friend, the only one Landry had on this whole planet. He was genuine and honest, and Landry had grown fond of him in spite of the fact that Landry was happy being by himself most of the time.

  “Yeah, okay. I’m listening.”

  Gus took a moment, considering his words. “You know that array tower that went down last week? A few hundred clicks east of here?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “You’re certified to fix those, aren’t you? You could repair it?”

  “Hey, you know me,” Landry said. “I can fix anything. Apparently.”

  “So, all I’m asking is that you come out with me and patch it up. I’ll pilot the scout, you fix the array. We can get it done in a few hours.”

  Landry considered for a moment, then turned and pulled the diag card free of its slot. He ran his eye over the capacitors that jutted from the printed circuit board.

  “We can’t do that, Gus,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t play dumb. Because fixing that array tower is a low priority task.”

  “Low priority? That array is the only thing keeping us safe, man! Pinging the cosmos, combing the airwaves for any Argoni warships that might enter the system—”

  “And there are over two hundred other towers just like it spread out across the planet. There’s an overlap of fifteen or twenty arcminutes between each. One dead array doesn’t amount to much.”