Condition Black Read online

  Condition Black

  By

  Tom Barber

  *****

  Condition Black

  Copyright: Archway Productions

  Published: 3rd August 2013

  The right of Tom Barber to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by he in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  ONE

  The alarms brought him back to consciousness.

  They sliced through the blackness, the sirens wailing and howling like banshees in torment, forcing themselves into his brain, taking hold of the power and shunting it back on.

  He opened his eyes and winced instantly from pain.

  He had an intense headache that thumped in time with the sirens. The right side of his face was hot and wet, blood stinging his right eye. His whole body hurt, as if he’d been hit by a Mack truck or been kicked and stamped on by a group of thugs wearing thick steel-capped boots.

  He blinked and coughed, acrid dark smoke stinging his eyes and throat as the harsh sound of the alarms continued to shrill around him.

  He realised he was suspended, locked into his seat by two straps, his lower legs and arms hanging down as if he was on a rollercoaster poised for sudden face-down descent. The belts were holding him in place, but he was facing the floor, meaning the military transport had landed on its side.

  Coughing again, he tried to piece together what the hell had happened and what he could remember before he blacked out.

  He’d been in his seat, his eyes closed, thinking of getting home. He remembered a huge impact followed by a fireball, all the alarms going off in response to the transport being hit.

  His stomach had lurched as they’d started to plummet, dropping at terrifying speed, Sergeant Sullivan shouting orders at his squad as the pilots battled to regain control.

  Then something had hit his head hard and everything had gone black.

  He was sitting on the starboard side, facing port, his usual spot. Around him was a scene of complete and utter devastation. The fuselage and parts of the interior of the transport had been critically damaged, sparks flying, split-wiring and interior machinery spilling out of the vessel as if it was losing it guts. The place stank of fuel from a ruptured tank.

  All of the combat team’s weapons had been stowed before they began their journey, but ammunition boxes and equipment cases had spilled everywhere, joining the general carnage inside the cabin. He glanced to his left and through the smoke saw a jagged hole in the rear of the vessel.

  He remembered seeing that part of the cabin ripping away as they descended, the two guys sitting down there getting blown out through the gap.

  The other remaining members of the squad were strapped in beside and across from him.

  The bodies on his side hung from their straps like rag dolls, the life smashed out of them from the impact.

  Several had been hit by stray shrapnel, thick pieces of metal jutting from their flesh, impaling them in their seats. None of them had been wearing helmets, although they were unlikely to have made much difference given the force of impact.

  From what he could see, everyone else was dead.

  They’d been following standard protocol and had been secured in their combat seating save for Sarge. He’d been up front when they took the hit and had made it into his seat just before the back of the cabin ripped open, but hadn’t had time to strap in.

  His body was lying across Baker’s beneath the conscious man to the left, smashed and broken, his neck twisted, dead just like everyone else.

  Hanging from his straps, the soldier looked down at his chest. He was dressed in US Army combat fatigues that had faded considerably over time and was wearing a black bulletproof vest over his torso. There was a piece of metal shrapnel jutting from the front of the Kevlar that should have gone straight through his heart.

  He gripped it and pulled it out, tossing it to the deck with a clank.

  Then he unclipped himself and fell hard, grunting with pain as he hit the port side and just avoided landing on his opposite number, Grant.

  He looked around while still on his hands and knees and coughed, which intensified the throbbing pain on the side of his head. The alarms continued to wail and the emergency lights to flash around him.

  He was the only thing moving, the only sign of life.

  Staggering to his feet and stumbling from disorientation and nausea, he stepped over the debris and checked his team one by one, pushing damaged sparking circuitry out of the way, the wires fizzing and giving him a quick shock as he brushed them to one side like small vines in the jungle.

  Grant, Wright, Zutic, Rickman, Baker, Sarge.

  They were all dead.

  He worked his way awkwardly across the cabin towards a computer terminal and swivelled it around, hitting the power switch. Every member of the team was implanted with a chip that monitored their pulse rate and would tell him for sure if anyone else was still alive.

  He tried tapping a few keys, but the terminal didn’t respond. He spun it all the way round and saw the back of the screen had been damaged in the crash, half of the inner mechanism ripped out and lying smashed on the deck.

  Turning away, the soldier stumbled to his right through the cabin and stepped into the cockpit.

  Both pilots were dead. They were also strapped into their seats but their necks had been broken from the impact of the crash landing. The windshield was still in place but it was badly damaged, only the specially reinforced material holding it together as the ship crashed and ploughed to a halt on its side.

  Outside it was dark as far as the soldier could see, and barren.

  Some kind of moon or desert.

  He tried to identify where they were, but couldn’t see much in the darkness.

  Moving between the two dead pilots, he flicked on the main radio and tested the frequency with a cut-up hand.

  ‘MC1, do you read me?’ he said, loud enough to be heard over the alarms. ‘I repeat, MC1, do you read me? This is USSS Ford, Corporal Will Miller, 101st Airborne, Spartan Company.’

  As Miller waited for a response, he looked down and saw the system had been badly damaged in the impact.

  He was talking to himself.

  Cursing, he turned and checked the backup portables stowed behind the co-pilot, all three of which had been smashed up. It seemed as if he was the only thing in the entire damn vessel that was still in one piece. Miller took the radio that looked the least damaged and swung the strap over his shoulders across his torso, then moved back into the cabin.

  As his senses started to return and the fog in his brain cleared, he realised that stink of fuel was something to be concerned about; he needed to get outside before the spilt fluid caught a spark.

  But then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Near the cockpit the team medic, Lieutenant Bailey, was locked in her seat by her straps.

  Her head was hanging down so he couldn’t see her face but she was stirring, which was a damn sight more than anyone else was.

  Miller moved in close and examined her in the flashing alarm lights.

  She had severe wounding on her leg, blood staining the left thigh of her BDUs; it looked as if her leg was broken. He also saw there was blood i
n her hair, a harsh crimson against the strawberry blonde. She’d taken a severe blow to the head, just like him.

  Moving up even closer so he was supporting her, he unclipped her straps and took her weight, then lowered her to the deck and took a closer look.

  She was half-conscious, murmuring, trying to say something but too quietly and indistinctly to make any sense.

  ‘Hang on, Doc,’ he told her, his words lost in the sirens. ‘Keep talking. Stay awake.’

  A fire suddenly erupted inside the cockpit behind him.

  Miller swung round and swore. With all of that fuel leaking out of the transport like a bucket full of holes, the entire thing could blow at any second.

  As he turned back to Bailey, someone else down the cabin suddenly stirred. Miller looked ahead and saw another member of the team on the port side, Keller, partially regain consciousness.

  Without a second’s hesitation, Miller picked Bailey up and carried her towards the rear of the cabin, staggering through the damaged interior on unsteady legs which was made harder by the fact that the ship was on its side. The crash had dislodged the locks securing the rear doors, so after a few attempts he managed to kick them open and stumbled outside into the dark landscape.

  He saw they were on some kind of empty plain, the dark sky above littered with a sea of stars.

  He carried Bailey for about thirty five dusty yards then laid her on the ground harder than he meant to. Swinging the radio off his shoulder and leaving it beside her, he turned and ran back for Keller, ducking back inside the transport.

  The fire was now starting to take hold in the front of the military vessel. It had taken over the cockpit, the flames crackling and already licking out into the rear of the cabin, the heat intense and the danger even more so.

  Covering his face, Miller grabbed an M16 203 assault rifle from the stowed rack, slinging the strap for the weapon over his shoulder then stuffing several magazines and grenades into his fatigues. He knelt down by Keller, undoing his straps. The injured man was bleeding heavily and had passed out again in the time it had taken Miller to get Bailey outside.

  Once he was free, Miller dragged him towards the doors, over debris and dead bodies; he manoeuvred him outside and then hoisted him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, two hundred pounds of dead weight.

  He started moving as fast as he could across the dark plain towards Bailey, who was lying where he’d left her beside the damaged radio. Behind him, the flames were quickly spreading into the cabin, gathering strength and ferocity as Miller desperately tried to put as much distance between himself and the transport as possible.

  He wasn’t a moment too soon.

  The vessel suddenly exploded behind him. The shockwave threw Miller to the ground, both he and Keller hitting the dust hard, Miller flinching as he felt the intense ball of heat in his back.

  Rolling over onto his side, he covered his face as he watched the vessel burn, all but he and two of the squad inside, flames and smoke billowing up, the fuel from the transport making it burn with a ferocious intensity.

  The fire provided a source of light and he scanned the desert around them as he lay there on the ground.

  It looked almost like the American Midwest, or Arizona, but they were a damn long way from there, that was for sure.

  Climbing back to his feet, Miller grabbed Keller by the shoulders then dragged him back another fifteen yards until they reached Bailey, the heels of the injured man’s boots leaving a trail in the dust, illuminated by the roaring flames.

  Now thirty five yards from the burning vessel, Miller knelt to check Keller’s condition, sweating from exertion and the heat. Bailey was unconscious again, but her breathing seemed regular and she didn’t appear to be bleeding heavily. However, Keller was a different matter, losing blood and losing it fast. It was pumping from the wound to his thigh, the harsh red staining his combat fatigues and leaking out onto the ground beneath him.

  Miller looked around for anything he could use as a tourniquet, but he wasn’t carrying any medical supplies and Doc Bailey’s kit had been inside the vessel. Pulling a knife from a sheath on his thigh, Miller rolled down the sleeve of Keller’s BDUs on his right arm. He cut a strip of fabric free, watching the blood continuing to pulse to the dusty grey ground from the wounded man’s leg and pooling in the dirt.

  After ripping the cloth into the right length, he wrapped it hard a couple of inches further up Keller’s leg, warm blood staining his hands, applying the tourniquet to try and stop the bleeding. Despite his best efforts, it continued to leak out, soaking Keller’s fatigues, the dust under his leg absorbing some of the moisture and turning a maroon-brown.

  However, the flow seemed to slow a bit.

  ‘Hang on, Dave,’ Miller said, cinching the tourniquet tight. ‘Don’t you die, you son of a bitch.’

  With that done, Miller grabbed the radio, looking around at the dark plains around him.

  There was nothing else out there that he could see, no sign of life.

  He adjusted the frequency on the damaged portable as he attempted to get some sort of connection, but it had been badly damaged from the impact of the crash, much like Keller and Bailey beside him.

  He picked up the small receiver, the heat from the burning ship making him squint and sweat, and squeezed the buttons either side.

  ‘MC1, do you copy?’

  Nothing.

  There was a signal, but it was static.

  No one responded.

  Miller played with the frequency, ignoring the throbbing pain on the right side of his head, willing someone to answer.

  ‘MC1, come in. Do you copy?’

  Still nothing but static.

  He hit the radio in frustration and tried again.

  ‘C’mon, you son of a bitch,’ he said. ‘MC1, do you copy?

  ‘USSS Ford…what…your position?’

  Miller’s eyes widened. The voice was crackly and cutting in and out, but it was a response.

  ‘MC1, this is USSS Ford, Corporal Will Miller,’ he shouted into the receiver. ‘Do you copy?’

  ‘…again?’

  The radio fizzed and then died.

  Miller hit the box, but the light didn’t come back on.

  ‘Shit!’

  Cursing, Miller quickly tapped in a brief SOS message using buttons on the receiver, even though he knew the message most likely wouldn’t get through. Then he swung his rifle over his shoulder and rose, trying to gauge where the hell they were.

  He glanced up and saw the large red shape of Mars in the night sky, which gave him instant hope. MC1 was Mars Colony 1, their main base, and also the Forward Operating Base of the United States 101st Airborne Space Division, for all battalions and including Miller’s Company, the 101st Spartans. He needed to make contact and let them know they’d gone down, but his first priority was to stabilise Keller and Bailey. Keller in particular was in deep shit; if Miller didn’t so something soon, he was going to die.

  With their transport continuing to burn beside them, Miller looked at the shadowy barren landscape surrounding him, feeling totally alone and with no idea what to do next.

  Then he spotted something in the distance.

  Two lights.

  Unslinging his M16 203, he quickly checked the magazine was loaded then pushed it back inside and loaded a round, clicking off the safety.

  Lifting the assault rifle to his shoulder, Miller stepped forward, blinking sweat out of his eyes as he peered into the distance.

  The lights looked like the headlights of a vehicle.

  And they were coming straight towards him.

  TWO

  Two hundred yards from the burning wreckage, the 4x4 truck raced forward across the plain.

  It was a Dodge Ram 2800. Weighing in at three quarters of a ton, the Dodge was a heavy-duty vehicle and tailor-made for off-road environments like the desert, its mammoth wheels biting down into the dusty ground and propelling it forward at top speed. It was travelling fast, rattl
ing along and easily negotiating the unevenness of the landscape, heading towards the burning wreckage that stood out in the dark like a beacon.

  The truck eventually pulled to a sharp halt fifty yards or so to the left of the crashed transport.

  The doors opened and two people stepped out, a man and a woman.

  Both of them were dressed in dark blue overalls that had seen better days, the tops rolled down to reveal old t-shirts. The man had light-brown hair and more than a few days’ worth of stubble, his skin leathery and tanned from exposure to the elements. His t-shirt was white with red lining the sleeves and collar, the faded logo of the Arizona Cardinals on the front.

  The woman was wearing a white slim-fit t-shirt and was similarly tanned, her hair blonde and half-tied behind her head. Both of them looked in their mid-thirties.

  Both were unarmed.

  They shielded their faces from the intense heat, checking out the wreckage before turning to look at some dark shapes lying thirty yards or so from the burning ship, lit up by the dancing flames.

  As they moved closer, they saw two unconscious soldiers laid out on the ground.

  One of them, a man, was missing the sleeve of the fatigues on his right arm and had a strip of fabric wrapped around his thigh which was soaked red with blood.

  The other person was a blonde woman and she was also out cold, her eyes closed.

  The woman in the overalls stepped closer and could just about make out their names in the flickering light, printed on the breast of their black vests.

  She knelt down to take a closer look.

  The man’s said Keller.

  The woman’s Bailey.

  As the bearded man joined her, he saw some kind of portable radio lying in the dust beside the two soldiers, the receiver off the cradle.

  Looking at the ground, he also noticed a set of footprints leading to and from the burning wreckage.

  Someone else was here.

  ‘Hands up!’

  They both turned to see a brown-haired soldier appear out of the darkness, a large assault rifle aimed straight at them.