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Praise for Ralph Ewig’s Eleuthera

  “Eleuthera is a novel of ideas ... you won't regret buying a ticket.”

  - Matt Bille, “The First Space Race”

  “Eleuthera is science fiction loaded with cool, believable, futuristic concepts ... highly recommended!”

  - Brad Blake, “Blue Third”

  “An exciting adventure with a flawed hero who is so very human … I couldn't put it down!”

  - Erin Lale, Editor of “Time Yarns”

  “Eleuthera is a great read; nicely done!”

  - Eric Bobinsky, “Terasphere”

  CHOICE

  by Ralph Ewig

  Printing History:

  1st Edition (ebook), May 2011

  Copyright 2011 by Ralph Ewig

  One Hand Publishing

  https://www.onehandpublishing.com/

  ISBN: 978-0-9832821-7-4

  OHP Ref No: 03-3-03-052011

  CHOICE

  The sky had an ugly brown-gray color, reflected in the many small methane pools strewn across the rocky landscape. Denek casually observed some strange insect-like creature cowering behind an outcrop, shivering in the cold like a dog trying to shit a herring-bone. Not even the lifeforms indigenous to this moon seemed to enjoy living here – he was certainly looking forward to finishing the job and getting off this damned mud-ball again.

  It seemed to be a repeating theme lately: Crim asking too many bothersome questions during a mission briefing, him getting distracted by it, and the brass sticking them both with the dirtiest part of the assignment as a result. Considering the consistency with which Crim seemed to get them into trouble, Denek wasn’t even sure why he had remained Crim’s teammate for so long. On the other hand, Crim had always been there to keep him upright when everybody else went tits-up in a hurry.

  Zooming his visor back to wide-angle and amping the x-ray spectrum, the hulking figure of Crim’s armor came into view, advancing rapidly over the uneven terrain, his weapons and head movements seemingly independent, always projecting maximum coverage and destructive capability; having a wingman with that level of professionalism more than made up for his annoying personality quirks. The fluorescent trace of an infrared targeting laser flashed across Denek’s enhanced vision as it stabbed out from a small embankment towards his friend. Denek reflexively released his long-range armaments, punching a satisfying hole into the hillside where the smart-mine had been. Crim immediately adjusted his advance, intentionally triggering the target mechanisms of two more of the devices, and Denek took them out just as easily. It was the fourth time this rotation that they had been assigned to mine clearing duty, and they had become very efficient at it.

  “Nice shooting,” Crim’s digitally compressed voice came over the comline, “what made you realize there was a mine there?”

  “Something wrong with your IR scanner? Damn things are lit up like an orbital banner ad,” Denek replied.

  “Obviously, but this is almost too easy. You ever wonder if they wanted us to cross these minefields, just making it hard enough to keep us interested, but not so difficult that we’d look for a different approach route?”

  “You figure it’s a setup?” Denek asked, as he shifted his own position to continue shadowing Crim’s movements.

  They continued their synchronized advance with loping strides in the moon’s sub-standard gravity, causing miniature geysers to jump into the air each time their armored boots impacted the ground. The surface temperature was a chill 45 Kelvin; at that temperature just the residual heat leaking through the insulated boots of their armor was enough to flash-vaporize the volatile elements frozen into the gravel.

  “Think about it – what made you shoot that mine just now?” Crim picked up the conversation again.

  “I shot it ‘cause otherwise you’d be doing a one-legged pogo back to base right now,” Denek replied dryly.

  “Well yeah,” Crim replied unperturbed by his friend’s usual sarcasm, “but how do you know this situation wasn’t setup exactly to achieve this result? Somebody could’ve placed the mines just so, encouraged me to irritate the sergeant just so, we’d get assigned to the job, and thus making sure you – and nobody else – would blow up the mine at exactly this point in time.”

  Like he’d need any encouraging to be irritating Denek scowled silently. Aloud he said: “Why would anybody give a fart if I personally stomp that toaster rather than someone else? You gotta have space dementia or something to be thinking we’re that important.”

  They crested a jagged rock formation in quick succession, while scanning for the next grouping of mines in their vicinity. The view from their vantage point to the nearby horizon showed nothing but more rocky formations and reflective ice patches in the harsh contrast of distant sunlight. The moon’s parental gas giant was still below the horizon, not yet visible in the dark sky above them. If it weren’t for the extensive resources captured in the frozen desert around them, only some geeky planetary scientists would ever have taken any interest in setting foot on this small world.

  “True,” Crim conceded the point. “So let’s say there wasn’t some deity or planetary puppet-master who would take that kind of personal interest in us. What if it was just an inevitable result of how the universe is set up then? You know, big bang leads to universe, leads to planetary system, leads to people, leads to conflict, leads to you and me dredging mud on this ball of frozen methane, leads to you vaporizing inert objects with your characteristic determination to blow things up.”

  “I chose to blow up that mine, ‘cause otherwise it would have spilled your guts all over this hillside, and I didn’t feel like cleaning it up,” Denek replied, his growling voice indicating his growing irritation. That was the problem with boring assignments: they gave Crim too much time to think, and since nobody else was out here, he always ended up being the one who had to hear about it.

  “And I sincerely appreciate your efforts!” Crim replied, clearly enjoying himself as he leaped in a carefully calculated arc momentarily exposing his suit’s waste heat radiators to draw the attention of another smart-mine. Denek perforated it with a hail of neutronium slugs only milliseconds after its targeting beam gave away the mine’s position.

  “Don’t get careless,” Denek warned him, “looks like the spacing is getting tighter.” Crim acknowledged his warning with a quick hand gesture. “If you’re telling me just because some ape discovered a couple million years back that he can use a twig to whack his fellow ape over the head, and now – due to some startling advances in twig-technology – we inevitably had to end up roo-hopping across this shit-ball, I’d say your armor’s internal temperature needs adjusting.”

  A faint glow had begun to spread along the curved horizon, showing swirling bands of vapor slowly moving over the ground. The almost crystalline rock formations appeared backlit by a pale-blue ghost light, their shadows dancing in the vapors like the ominous shape of some mythological creature. Looking at the alien landscape around them, Denek knew with instinctual certainty that they didn’t belong here. Maybe there truly was enough “ape” left in his subconscious just to let him know this wasn’t his rightful place to be.

  “Damned place is starting to damage my calm,” he commented dryly, “next time the flyboys can come down here to clear their LZ themselves.”

  “The planet is starting to rise,” Crim commented, “we’re still over a klick from the LZ, better get to it.”

  They continued their advance in silence, interspersed with the dull thumping of Denek’s slugs hitting the ground and brief flashes of detonating hardware. A short time later, the glowing blue crescent of the gas giant rose majestically above them, the ground fog increasing as the planetshine’s rising temperature began to drive out more of the volatiles.

  “I’
ll never get tired of watching that,” Crim said with a sense of wonder in his voice.

  “You’d be better off watching where you plant that armor plated ass of yours …,” Denek began to reply but was cut short when the comlink suddenly burst into static and then cut out. The words NO CARRIER flashed across his retina display as he immediately zoomed in on Crim’s dark silhouette ahead of him.

  With a series of quick hand motions Crim signaled him he was unharmed and his armor showed no malfunction. Their com was being jammed. Carefully maintaining a line of sight Denek initiated a laser link to Crim’s armor.

  “External interference?”

  “Yip.”

  “Environment?”

  “Nope.”

  “Copy that,” Denek replied and terminated the link. Line of sight laser com was impossible to jam, but the adaptive