Vastitus, Failure Planet

For a long time, the Gray Surge had stayed concealed, hiding in the shadows. It was the day that we would be known to the world. That day, little known to us, would be a turning point in the history of Vastitus.

We looked across the morning desert horizon, all Red, rocky, and filled with mesas. Most of it unknown and unexplored. My thoughts turned to how all the craziness on Vastitus had started. Vastitus has always been a planet of war and fire, since only a small time after the first settlers came here several decades ago. It was deemed the first "failure planet." By this time the war had become a slaughter. waves and waves of people killed each other for land, food, power, revenge, all the typical reasons, and probably a few other reasons too.

Eventually, colonies turned into Surges, named for the brief Surges of power that they had. I suppose Red Surge was currently the worse due to the killing of innocent people who were just trying to live. We, however, were based in the desert away from any current fighting, the sole colony in our desolate corner of the world.

I stood watching the Gray morning sunrise with Narchean (nar-key-an) and Buvin (boo-veen), the pale sun glinting off Narchean's deep purple visor and Buvin with his Gray hood on and his usual smug expression. We didn't need to talk, we were all thinking the same thing, we just stared into the rising sun hoping that we would be back soon.

We started our scouting shift, splitting ways to cover all of sector 5 in the small amount of time we have. I picked up the pace, at a jog now. [Blip!] I had received a notice on my arm data pad that Narchean had cleared his first mini-sector. "No encounters, saw a few signs of animal life but not much else."

[Blip!] another similar message from Buvin. After the next klick, I was finished with my mini-sectors. I looked around and started to walk back, reaching only a few attoparsecs when an old Viper Sierra class ship came screaming over my head, smoke billowing. It plowed into the ground not far away and proceeded to skid for a good half a klick. I sent a quick update to the others and walked over to it, unholstering one of my pistols as I approached. I could see a pilot inside struggling to get out, I wrenched the c.o.c.kpit open with one hand and reached over to pull the pilot out with the other. Suddenly the gearbox exploded, sending the shift stick flying straight through his shoulder, his arm was ripped clean off. Blood splattered the antique c.o.c.kpit. He screamed in agony managing to get out one word before passing out "Dammit."

I saw the sh.i.p.s that had been chasing him appear on the horizon, Red Surge. I grabbed the pilot and ran back to the base as fast as I could with him over my shoulder, leaving a trail of deep indents in the desert. The others were waiting for me there. We went down to the control room while Yalson took the pilot to the medbay.

"Narchean, there's a Red Surge fleet approaching"

"I guess it's time to move base then."

As we watched the sunset over the dessert for one final time, we wondered when we would return.

I walked down the stairs and back underground to prepare the launch sequence. From above ground our bunker is unimpressive but underground it is. Narchean and Buvin were walking into the room as I was just looking over the final preparations.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes Narchean," I sigh, sort of annoyed at him for asking.

I would not see this place for a while. The reason for this, Surge Red was approaching the edge of our small yet "humble" territory. The plan we had come up with is as follows, take our bunker, launch it into orbit, go around the planet once and then set it back down. Since the top was glass with a door, once we launched that would become the front bridge/lookout for our ship. There was a second and third bridge further down the ship for backup so in case it was broken into parts it could still be sealed and used, not blown up Michael Bay style, or something similar to that.

I looked up from the planning board and noticed that private Yalson had walked in and was waiting for me to look up.

"Lieutenant we can't stay much longer."

"I've been told, how is the patient doing?"

"Sir we've managed to stop the bleeding, but more importantly Surge Red's South platoon is heading directly towards us."

"Ok… how much time do we have?"

"about 20 minutes. "

"Ok, Yalson, notify the crew to buckle up and get settled for the trip. Narchean, start the timer for 10 minutes to launch."

As I sat down, I could almost sense Narchean scowling underneath his helmet as he started the timer 'it was difficult to keep from chuckling'. I knew what he wanted to say, the three of us usually do. Although Narchean was the leader of the Gray Surge, we were also good friends, which had some advantages. Some of these included rudely addressing him and asking him to do things 'this pissed him off a bit as he liked to be the leader.' We started the timer and made our way to the mess hall. This was where most people would choose to sit for the launch. People were quickly filling up the room hurrying to grab a seat and strap themselves in. We only had a few hundred people but the mess hall was big enough to support a few thousand. All we could do now was wait, as the clock slowly ticked, I could feel the engines starting to build in power as we were getting closer to takeoff. The doors and exits sealed so we would be airtight. The rumbling started along with vibrations which turned into violent shaking.

Then, over the loudspeaker came Earth-Scottish accented voice of the computer:

"takeoff in five… four… three… two… one"

I couldn't hear anything over the sound of the engines as the ship rose out of the sand, and the glass made by the heat of the engines was s.u.c.k.e.d in to be used for repairing windows and screens. It took about fifty minutes until we exit the stratosphere but it didn't matter, as we were all patient enough. I decided since the Gforce was too much to stand in, which would be dangerous anyway, to sleep until we reached the atmosphere. The noise gradually quieted to a small thrumming.

"you are now entering the outer atmosphere, you may unbuckle your seat belts."

I got up and looked out the window. While I had been perfectly fine during the trip, I looked and saw that Buvin had not. To my amus.e.m.e.nt he was currently bent over a trash can with vomit just flowing out of his mouth, 'Narchean and I would definitely not let him live this down.' I quickly turned around, not wanting to see any more of his stomach's contents 'given his diet, it could have been much worse.' After a while, I walked over to see if he was okay but was still hoping not to be grossed out. He was feeling slightly better but had come to a decision to never eat before going into orbit again 'I am not sure this mattered as we would probably not be doing this again any time soon.' Now that everyone was settled we could start system prepping and checks. I was assigned to look over the ground deployment pods while Narchean went to check the particle acceleration cannon and Buvin went to check the dimension teleporting doors still worked. We then all found our way back to our rooms which happened to be right next to each other. After discussing the state of the ship we ate a small dinner and quickly went to sleep thinking of the days to come.

As I went to sleep, I recounted the day I met Narchean, we met before we knew Buvin. It was my first day in Vastitus when I was told to pick a colony to live with. The choices were for Red and blue but I got Gray. While we're at it I should probably explain what the Surges are. There are Red, blue and Gray but originally there were only Red, Green and blue. Over the years the good and bad switched between them and there was no distinct bad side, they just had different ideas. Eventually, the Red Surge massacred the Green Surge even though they rarely picked fights with any other. The Red and blue Surges come from the color of power crystals that they use. The power crystals are probably at the center of their main bases 'why they don't just destroy each other's crystals is beyond me.' The Gray side emerged much later, and fight using our own abilities, talent, and resources rather than relying on a power crystal. mainly though, we just try to stay away from the fighting. Power crystals are what powered some old ship hyperdrives, such as the original colony sh.i.p.s.

When I got picked as Gray I could hear them whispering something. They then brought me through a teleporter door and left me to figure out what I was doing. I was in a dark hallway and so I just walked down to the end and saw Narchean bent over a device mumbling something. Narchean was the first member of the Grey Surge and was very agile and good with swords, as I found out over many painful sparring sessions. Buvin did not get selected the usual way, he just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night knocking on the bunker door to get shelter from a sandstorm. His specialties are snipers and boa staffs. My specialties are knives and pistols, not the coolest but highly effective when used properly. Unfortunately, we are just about the only people in the Gray Surge that actually know how to fight.