TO THE SHORES OF TRIPLE, LEE! - Ray Gun Revival

Jasper Squad by Paul Christian Glenn
of battle receding behind her, she staggered
on into some sort of cave with a thousand
forking tunnels. Surrounded by darkness,
she fell to her knees again, crawling blindly
through the maze of jutting stone.
Nauseous, Rey touched her head. Her
hand came away sticky and thick with blood.
The distant mêlée began to be drowned by a
rushing sound in her ears. She fell, feeling cold
stone against her cheek, and then nothing.
#
Rey awoke with a sharp pain in her
stomach. Something hard was pushing up
into her abdomen, and with great effort she
rolled over. With that motion, blazing light
burned through her eyelids and she groaned
involuntarily. With all her strength, she sat up
and blinked in the morning sun. Her head was
pounding.
It took a moment to remember where
she was, or, rather, to remember that she
didn’t know where she was. She remembered
landing, and following Stamp out on
to the surface, but everything after that was
hazy. She remembered the cave, but ... that
couldn’t be right.
She looked around and discovered that
she wasn’t in a cave after all, but an elaborate
tangle of towering stone. Giant rocky pillars
surrounded her, reaching thirty feet or more
toward the sky, their distant tips splitting out
into spiny branches, creating an elaborate web
of intermingled stone far above. It resembled
a gothic forest sculpted from solid granite.
Warm, white shafts of sunlight trickled down
through the mesh, dappling the pebbly forest
floor with tiny pools of incandescence. There
wasn’t a hint of vegetation visible.
She stretched slowly to test her legs. They
seemed trustworthy enough, so she carefully
stood and took a better survey of her surroundings.
Winding paths snaked away from
her in every direction, each ultimately disappearing
into a hazy blur of mist and granite.
Convinced that she was alone, she began
walking in the direction that her feet had
been pointing.
She had to get back to the Jasper, that
much was clear, but what would she find when
she got there? She forced herself to focus on
the previous night’s events. The Jasper had
been surrounded by enemy fire when she
last saw her. What had become of the rest
of the squad? Had they found a way to repel
Pg. 0
Cuttery’s small army, or were they barricaded
inside the ship?
A slow panic crept over her. Surely they
wouldn’t leave her here? She began to run
through the whole scenario in her mind. What
other option would they have had? Come to
think of it, no one even knew that she had left
the ship. What if, after seeing the fight erupt,
they had simply fired up the thrusters before
realizing that she was missing?
She cursed inwardly—her own bloodymindedness
had caused this. She couldn’t
think of a single good reason why she should
have followed Stamp onto that lift. She had
been trying to prove something, just like she
had been doing her entire life, only this time
she had finally brought disaster on herself.
She imagined dying on this god-forsaken rock,
a thousand light-years from home, and the
thought of dying a fool enraged her.
The stone forest was thinning enough for
her to see a clearing ahead, and she realized
she was nearly running now. As she approached
the clearing, she slowed and began
to move cautiously from one stone pillar to
the next. At last, she reached the edge, and
there, to her immense relief, sat the Jasper.
Her brand-new hull was disfigured by exploded
shell bursts and ugly black burn scars, but
she was the most welcome sight Rey could
recall. Captain Spill hadn’t abandoned his
cadet. Of course he hadn’t.
The clearing was about a hundred yards in
diameter, completely encircled by the same
treacherous terrain that she had been navigating.
Behind the Jasper was a long, jagged
scar where Melendez had skidded across the
relatively smooth surface.
No wonder we ended up on Cuttery’s doorstep,
thought Rey. It was the only place we
could land without shredding the vessel.
She wondered if the rest of the squad was
holed up inside the ship, but that question
was answered as the boarding lift lowered
from the Jasper’s belly and two of Cuttery’s
beefy lackeys casually emerged. They were
both armed, but their shooters were holstered.
If there had been a fight inside, it was
long over.
A new fear emerged. What if they were all
dead? Rey couldn’t bear that thought. Shock
runners were ruthless, yes, but they would
have to be crazy to murder an entire GPF
squad in cold blood.
Ray Gun Revival – August 1, 2006 Issue 03