I’m not sure how long I will leave this post up, but below is the opening of the Triton Run. I am very proud of it. If anyone can help me get it back into the wild get in touch. (But no – I will not be paying anyone to publish!)

WILDING

The Dark

When her left eye started haemorrhaging, Dee Wilding knew her time was nearly up. The warm drops of blood on her cheek and a crushing headache stirred her awake, as she realised she’d lost consciousness; soon the effects of hypoxia would be irreversible.

It was almost completely dark now. The EVA suit had long since run out of power, shutting down the AI and HUD, followed by basic functions like life support and heating. Whilst well insulated, she was feeling cold, deathly cold, she noted with a perverse sense of amusement.

It would’ve been easier to remain where she was, and drift off to permanent sleep. However, this had been a journey of incredible experiences, so she might as well go out with another one. It was a pity that none of her colleagues or friends were here. Eventually, her body would be found, of course.

There was too big a prize waiting to be seized. Though there wouldn’t be too much concern for a dead war criminal. After what she’d done at Buchanan, they’d say she deserved to die alone, cold, and scared.

Before the suit’s lighting failed, Wilding decided what she was going to do. For as long as she was capable, she’d patrolled the vicinity of what felt like a tomb. As none of the corridors led anywhere, she concluded there was no chance of finding safety. She’d pressed every switch, button, or flat screen; hammered at them even, to no effect. Thankfully, she’d not attracted the attention of any unseen residents of the alien ship. Her screams and tears only served to waste vital oxygen and energy.

The suit’s exoskeleton had long since powered down, so it took all her will to pull herself up from the hard floor to her feet. She rocked, struggling to get her balance, as weakened limbs burned with the strain. She grabbed onto a guard rail for support. It would be an unfortunate end if she slipped and fell to her death in the darkness below.

Trying to take a breath reminded her there was none left to take; her air tank was depleted.

She swayed again, relieved to see some of her platoon coming out of the darkness ahead of her. Powell, Parynski, Garraway, Squire, and Dunk all looked concerned, presumably wondering why she’d not kept up. They wore the same Martian orange spacesuits, with black helmets, backpacks, and front storage pouches. That confused her. She didn’t think she was on Mars.

Dunk carried a huge rifle over his shoulder, while the others held smaller side arms. Despite their transparent visors and name badges, she’d have known them from their size and gait. She’d lived alongside these guys for years. Of course, they’d come back for her.

‘You were lagging behind, Ma’am, you ok?’ Dunk asked.

A wave of confusion. Perhaps she’d suffered a head injury during the assault. 

‘I’m ok, Dunk. SITREP.’

‘The Ambassador’s entourage are ok. Can’t say the same for the Martians. Still waiting for pickup, we’ve set up a perimeter and can exit to the surface when ready. Need anything else, Ma’am?’

She thought hard, but her mind was blank. ‘It’s ok. Proceed.’

Wilding paused before asking the question she feared would make her look stupid in front of the group. ‘Why’d you come back?’

Dunk half-turned to go, before turning back with a reply. ‘To check you’re ok? Some pretty bad shit happened back there.’

And with that, they were gone. She was about to say something else, though the thought felt muddled. That was it. Time to go. Wilding looked around and the darkness consumed her. Nothing to see bar a slight glow from the wall panel. She remembered and her heart broke once more. She’d been hallucinating. Powell was long dead and had never left that Martian base. She’d not seen Dunk for years.

With no power in the suit and little strength left, she dragged herself along the rail until she reached the illuminated glass panel. She’d seen similar panels when her torches had worked. Even then, they’d been dark with shadows inside. Struggling to separate grim reality from her imagination, she resolved to stick to the plan. As Wilding had known it would, pressing the small tab next to the glass panel caused it to slide aside.

She desperately wanted to sit down and rest, though knew she was about to take a permanent rest, well unless… it was too optimistic a thought to be serious.

Wilding pulled herself into the opening, turning to face the way she’d come in. The panel slid closed, blocking her exit. The alcove was to become her coffin. Her chest burned with pain, desperately seeking air that had long since run out.

She tried to find the source of the glow. It seemed to be all around her, inside the cubicle. Her vision blurred further; the other eye now started to bleed Sensing movement, she noticed a slime starting to fill the chamber, sloshing initially over her boots, rising rapidly. As it went past her eye-line, she clamped down on the fear that embraced her. She was a tough bitch in battle, and she’d die one too. But the Butcher of Buchanan wouldn’t survive this one.

When the chamber was full, Wilding leaned against the back wall and fought away another blackout. She yearned to see her mother, the memories now so vague nothing materialised. The platoon had become her family. She’d do anything to protect them and in doing so had done something that most thought unthinkable to protect them.

Wilding’s final act was to release the helmet. The liquid flooded her suit. She tried to keep her eyes open, dropping the helmet onto the floor beside her. It filled her ears and nose. Unable to resist, she gave in and opened her mouth, letting the fluid engulf her. Everything went black.

2

SQUIRE

Onboard the BSV, Neptune Orbit

Chris Squire listened to the message twice, skimmed the supporting text files, and slumped back, resigned in his chair. Not again.

The traumas that haunted him never really went away. He waited for the inevitable wave of intrusive flashbacks and anguish to wash over him. He could suppress the memories with medication, at least temporarily, after assessing what he needed to do. He shook his head, trying to shake away the guilt that accompanied him.

He’d arrived too late to save anyone on the Trike habitat. They were dead, all of them. Thousands of bodies strung out before him, like a macabre necklace.

Scanners revealed a long trail of frozen corpses, some wearing their day-to-day attire, some helmeted in EVA suits, some without. Many of the suits had holes torn in them. Squire thought they were the lucky ones. A few had been forced out of the airlock in fully functional suits. They suffered worse, facing the horror of seeing their hopes of survival dashed. A couple of bodies appeared naked, layers of frost enveloping them. Despite the distance he could make out large patches of frozen and congealed blood.

His shipboard AI, Paisley, tried to break him out of his reverie, but Squire angrily chided it to leave him alone. This pain was his alone. Most who died in space that day, trailing away from a triple ring habitat, were women and children, but the corpses of the men who had died in the doomed fight to stop the massacre were also in orbit. They had died earlier, cut to pieces in the rear-guard action, their bodies expelled in bulk from the docking bay. Millions were escaping Earth to avoid the horrors of war, starvation, and dictatorships, only to suffer a worse fate in space.

Squire had engaged the scoop and sent out drones to hunt for survivors in vain. He hadn’t expected the scale of the carnage he discovered. The BSV wasn’t equipped in terms of storage, despite using the expandable trailer and nets he carried to collect the human ejecta strung out across tens of thousands of miles.

So there the dead remained, while the murderers had managed to escape. The owners of the habitat had immediately filed for protected bankruptcy before vanishing. Nobody was willing to put up the funds to retrieve the bodies, though Orbital Security had later sold the structure and, though damaged, it had been delivered to Jupiter.

Even during waking hours, it didn’t take much for his mind to return to those events. He was reminded of the hour or so he’d spent in the cargo bay; examining and imaging the collected corpses before depressurising the bay and returning them to their icy tomb. He’d concluded, regretfully, that it had been better not to recover a single body than just a few.

In his nightmares, the corpses spoke. The little girl in the pink coveralls begged him not to send her back to the cold, her frozen pigtails jutting from her head like frayed ropes. The woman in her gym gear asked him where her husband was. He couldn’t see her face behind the visored helmet of her space suit, but the woman inside spoke to him, nonetheless. Squire couldn’t bring himself to remove the helmet, torn open at the back. She begged him to find a sealant pack and repair the puncture.

Trying to chase the ghosts away, he raised the cockpit lighting. Only Zefyrex cleared his mind, which he was working with Paisley to reduce his reliance on. It was risky, if not suicidal, to heavily sedate a ship’s only pilot. The night before he’d skipped it and struggled to sleep, disturbed with visions of the events from a decade earlier and a million leagues away, every time he drifted off. He’d given up on sleep and had patrolled the ship listlessly, reviewing system updates, before finally slumping into his command chair and turning off the artificial gravity to save power. He’d dozed off just before the urgent instructions had arrived. On waking, the flashbacks subsided, retreating to return another day, leaving him exhausted and sweating. His new mission brought it all back.

Paisley filtered the news feed to Squire’s pad, prioritising a message from Scott Arden. Shocked, Squire did what he often did to calm himself. After telling Paisley to restore artificial

gravity, the wraparound screen facing him lit up, showing live footage from exterior cameras and sensors. Beautiful Neptune rose before him, her pale globe shimmering a slight greenish-blue hue as clouds tore around it at thousands of miles per hour. His attention was initially drawn to the great storm, a darker shadow dominating its equator. Squire personalised the image, working to zoom in and enhance the view, identifying some of the pale sets of rings, small icons appearing to name the moons that were visible.

Despite their distance, he could see several dark flecks against the blue, small spider shaped habitats hanging in low orbit at the top of the clouds. He queried the lack of activity around them with Paisley. Some had been evacuated overnight, their mining operations suspended whilst the storms subsided to safer levels.

After a few minutes and some deep breaths, Squire reconsidered the instructions. It was to be a major excursion, to intercept a vehicle in distress, the Kuiper Scout. It would take months. He assessed the mission whilst releasing the straps across his legs and chest. No other ships currently in Neptune-space had the range, besides automated kites and a supply ship on its way to Pluto and Charon which had developed a serious fault and was now limping home for repairs.

In addition, no one this far from Earth had the extreme rescue and repair experience Squire had for such a mission. Had Arden known, or cared, about Squire’s struggles, he’d have not been sent. However, Squire was never going to publicly admit to his internal battles.

The casualty had sent out a weak automated collision detection signal, which was abruptly cut off. No further communications had been received since, despite hailing. The exact collision location was uncertain, such were the distances involved, and more accurate co-ordinates would follow once he was en route.

Squire went to the galley to collect some fresh coffee and returned to his seat. He could predict how this was going to go, and it wouldn’t be beneficial for his mental health. Though he’d not yet received a crew manifest, a U-net search made him fear the worst. He was certain that Dee Wilding, his old platoon leader, was on-board. She’d suggested she had taken a position on-board the last time they’d exchanged messages.

Wilding had taken on the role without fanfare, getting as far away from what had happened on Mars as possible, relieved she could even get work. The appointment was to look after the researchers, scientists, and officials on board the Kuiper Scout.

Despite being overqualified, Wilding was not on-board as the pilot, rather in an advisory capacity, to ensure the scientific mission ran smoothly. The Scout was to navigate close to some of the objects at the near edge of the Oort Cloud without putting themselves in danger. He wondered what the public reaction would be when it was revealed that Wilding was on board.

He felt the slight vibration of the engines coming back online, slowing the ship down for a course change. They were headed away from Triton One and beyond the end of the line. With a friend out beyond the edge of the system, there was no way Squire would refuse Arden’s request; he wouldn’t even wait for their conversation. Arden would leave the finer details of the salvage mission to him anyway.

Squire double checked the pre-flight routines which Paisley had started, as well as the capacity of the hold. It remained full of debris from a collision clearing near Neso between a

reckless pleasure cruiser and a satellite. His external scoops had gathered large chunks of flotsam and jetsam, while the AI operated lasers incinerated other remains. He’d have to transfer the job to one of the other Scoopers. Whilst the remaining debris presented a risk to local traffic, their simulations suggested that standard shields would cope with most of it.

He set a course to loop away from Neptune, where he could empty his hold beyond the no-fly zones surrounding the planet’s rings. They’d then shift into a slingshot orbit using the planet’s gravity to provide a speed boost as he powered towards his new target. Paisley had already requested a supply ship intercept them before they accelerated and left the Neptune system.

He called up an image of Dee and himself from the last time they had been together. As usual, they both looked drunk. Back during Marine training she’d saved him plenty of times, usually from catching a stray bullet in the war games. Squire doubted he’d be able to save her life, but he felt a duty to bring her body home.

‘I’m coming, buddy. I’m coming.’