Date Point: January 26, 2437

Long Kou System

Tian Gong Station

Li woke up to blaring speakers, he thumped the side of his ‘room’ “Zeng, turn that down!”

“Make me!” a muffled voice shouted back. Li pushed his door open and clambered out of the pod. He climbed up the ladder and fished out a keycard, the door unlocked with a click revealing a mostly undressed Zeng. Music blasted through his headphones.

“I’ll give you one more chance to turn it off peacefully,” he said with a grin. In response, Zeng turned the music up even louder.

“You’re not going to do any-!” he cut off as Li propelled himself towards him. They collided with a wet slap. They grappled with each other, Li attempting to grab his headset and Zeng trying to kick him out of his bed.

“Quit trying to go down on him and get your butts dressed.” Ren Zhen said, hanging her head over their bunk. Li failed to notice her gaze as she roamed over his body and licked her lips. He leaped out of the bunk and quickly dressed.

“So, what’s on the schedule today?” Zeng asked as they stood in line for breakfast.

“I believe they’re going to be fitting suits for those who haven’t been to space before.”

“Then what are we doing?”

“Do I look like Professor Gao? No? I didn’t so, go ask her yourself if you’re so curious.”

“I was just trying to make conversation.” he sniffed, “you wouldn’t have snapped at me if I was Li.”

Li’s eyes widened, “Don’t drag me into this.”

The person in front of them moved along and he walked up to the screen. “What would you guys like to eat?”

“Do they have any fish?” Ren asked hopefully.

“There’s that synthetic crap.”

“We’re on a station, it’s all synthetic and in my opinion, it tastes better.”

“What is wrong with you, real meat is so much bet-.” he cut off as the screen flashed red. The PAC national anthem played, a strange mix of three different languages.

“Good morning citizens of Tian Gong station, it is with no small amount of displeasure that I inform you that the water filtration system has been compromised. A waterborne pathogen has spread unchecked throughout eighty percent of the station. However, there is no need to worry. This pathogen has a cure and only affects children under the age of 14 standard Earth years. If you or someone you know is under that age please report to the nearest government facility where they will be sent planetside for inoculation. Thank you for your understanding.”

“That’s not suspicious or concerning at all.” Zeng frowned.

“What do you mean, I didn’t hear anything weird and it’s not like they’re secretly evacuating young people. Don’t be ridiculous.”

______________________________________________________________________

The bridge was dead silent as the Mistral made the transition from real space into the warp. For seven minutes the crew waited for some anomaly to appear. None came and the 1MC beeped, “Warp transition complete.”

Airlocks cycled open and Oscar breathed out a sigh of relief pulling off his helmet. He closed his eyes and immediately regretted it. Images of mangled corpses and men being cut down by terrifying xeno’s weapons flashed through his mind. The past twenty hours had been a frantic mess of fighting and his brain felt like it had been microwaved.

Andrew clapped his hands together, “Ahh, shit and a shower. Come on Ozzy let’s get back to the armory.”

“Yeah…”

“Oscar? You good?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“We could have died man, it could have been you or me floating in that station.”

“But we didn’t, we’re alive and there’s nothing we could have done for them. It’s like I told Malone, they knew the odds when they signed up. They knew the risks and took their chances anyway. We’re all going to die one day, so don’t dwell on it. Hell, you remember that prison break job we did.”

“Yeah, eighty percent casualties. Oscar shook his head, “and we partied all night after it as well.”

“Exactly, we were just happy to be alive back then. So what changed? Go take a shower and hit the rack. It’ll help, trust me, just don’t miss the debriefing.”

“Right.”

They walked into the armory, stored their gear, and went their separate ways. Oscar waved his holo in front of the door, it slid open with a quiet hiss. The room inside was dark and he was too tired to turn the lights on. “What a shit day.”

He woke with a start, hand wrapped firmly around his revolver. His alarm rang again and he relaxed. Clambering out of the tiny bed he was met with a horrific sight. A small child stared up at him. He shook his head and tried to get back into his bed. “Nope, nope, nope, this is just a really REALLY bad dream. I used protection, that thing is not real.”

He stopped as he felt a small hand tug on his shorts, “Sir, I’m hungry.”

“Not my problem you little rugrat.”

“Please sir, I’m scared and lost,” it begged, sighing he turned around and glared at the ankle-biter.

“Get lost kid, I don’t have the patience to deal with you.” the kid sniffled twice before wrapping itself around his leg and bawling its eyes out.

“Oh for the love of god!” Oscar swore, “Fine let go of me you little shitstain, I’ll take you to the mess and give you to someone more responsible.”

The child clung to his leg, refusing to budge, “do you promise?”

“Sure.”

“Do you pinky promise?”

“What are you five?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, sure I pinky promise.”

The child looked up at him, tyrian purple eyes staring at him. Oscar flinched and backed up. “Uhh, you’ve got purple eyes there bud. Is that an unfortunate genetic deformity or is that warp taint?”

“What does that mean?” the kid asked, on closer inspection, he realized that the kid was male.

“Nevermind,” he said opening the door, “so what’s your name buddy.”

“Oswald.”

“Any last name?”

“No, I don’t know my parents, they sent me to the ward when I was little,” Oswald said dejectedly. Oscar winced, he had practically confirmed his suspicions about his eyes. It had a scientific name but no one called it anything other than warp taint. If a woman gives birth during warp transition, the child is always born with purple eyes. Some are born with disabilities, some with mutations, and some with mental disorders. Most were stillborn. The superstitious believed them to draw bad luck to those around them, and soldiers and sailors are some of the most superstitious people there are.

“Oswald, how did you get on the ship?”

“I was hiding from the monsters and a bad man shoved me into a box.”

“Probably ran into the storage room. Lucky he wasn’t cooked by the radiation.”

“Right so you being on this ship is not my fault,” he said walking to the lift. It opened and Yang’s dazzling smile lit up the enclosed space. Her eyebrows shot upwards, eyes becoming the size of dinner plates. She pointed at Oswald, “what are you doing with that?”

The little boy huffed, “I have a name woman.”

This time it was Oscar's turn to look surprised, “Oswald, you do not talk to people like that.”

“Wait. Oscar, Oswald,” Yang said furrowing her brow in concentration, “Is that your fucking child!”

“Yes!” Oswald shouted, “this is my daddy, he loves me very much.”

“WHAT! NO, YOU LITTLE SHIT I AM NOT YOUR DAD.” Oscar screamed in terror and fear, “LISTEN HERE YOU FUCKING ANKLE BITER YOU ARE NOT ROPING ME INTO Y-!”

“Oscar! That is no way to talk to your child.” she snapped before turning to Oswald, her voice softening, “oh you poor thing, does daddy treat you like this often?”

The little bastard shook his head, and Andrew walked out from his room, stretching his arms. He paused mid-stretch and looked down.

“What in the Goddamn?”

“Don’t swear in front of his kid.”

“His kid?”

“He’s not my kid!”

“You never told me you had a kid.”

“I DON’T!” he wailed, “you’re doing this on purpose. You know I don’t have a kid!

He grinned, “maybe, that’s the reason Dylan had you kicked out. He didn’t like how you knocked up his only daughter.”

“Shut up, we made well and certain that that,” Oscar said, stabbing a finger towards Oswald, “would never happen.”

The lift stopped again and a woman walked in, “Hey Ruby, you want to meet Oscar’s son?”

The girl looked down, her silver eyes flicking from Oscar down to Oswald before back up to him, “They don’t look very similar.”

“Thank you!”

“Nah, he looks more like his mother than his old man.”

“Are you going to ignore the fact that he has purple eyes?” Oscar demanded.

“Oscar there is nothing to be ashamed of, I am sure you had a good reason as to why your wife was on a ship in warp.”

“I don’t have a wife!”

“Daddy I’m hungry,” Oswald whined.

“I’m not your dad! Come on Andrew, you’ve got to help me here. This is a serious matter, there’s a little warp baby on our ship.”

“Fine,” he sighed, “we’ll talk about it later.”

“Eh? So he isn’t your kid?” Yang blinked looking rather surprised.

“No, he is not,” Oscar confirmed.

“That means you’re still on the market right?”

“Yang!” Ruby exclaimed, “now is not the time.”

The doors slid open and Oscar sighed with relief, quickly walking towards the mess. He grabbed two BNA bars and two bottles of orange juice. Oswald looked up hopefully and he handed one of each to the kid.

“Thank you, dad!”

“Please stop calling me that, people are going to start believing it.”

A mischievous look flashed across his purple eyes, “exactly, then you’ll look like a bad person if you leave me.”

“You are way too smart to be five.” he groaned. Michael walked over with a very concerned look on his face. He stopped right in front of them.

“Irons, in my office. Now.”

Oscar groaned for a second time, “see what you’ve done?”

“Have fun daddy!” Oswald said with a wave. Oscar stood up and followed Michael. They walked into his office and he poured both of them a drink.

“So Oscar, I’ve been hearing an outlandish rumor about you.”

“Yeah? Does it have anything to do with short and squeaky?”

“It does, now I’ll give you one chance to explain yourself before I really get pissed.”

“Right, so I’d just like to start by saying that Oswald is not related to me in any way whatsoever. I woke up for my shift and he just appeared in front of me, I don’t remember seeing him before I fell asleep and I don’t know how he got into my room.”

“Well, that is both a relief and annoyance. Especially with the child's affliction. This does not bode well for morale amongst the crew.” he sighed, “Warp taint is something soldiers take rather seriously, especially after that excursion a few days back. But there is no way I’m going to murder a child.”

Oscar kept his mouth shut, nodding along. He didn’t really care what happened to the child as long as it wasn’t his problem. “Why don’t you take him under your wing for a few days before we find the closest port to dump him.”

Michael was silent for several heartbeats, “know that I think about it, this might be a good way to finally stop Halley from bugging me for children.”

“Exactly, this way she realizes how awful they are and she’ll quit asking.” he agreed quickly. It sounded like a horrible plan but he couldn’t have cared less. Michael poured another drink.

“This is just between you and me though,” he said, raising his glass, “no one else needs to hear about this, especially not Halley.”

Oscar knocked his glass against Michael’s and they downed them together. “Right, I’ll be going then. Bryce still wants me for debriefing.”

“Then I’ll be going as well, running a mercenary crew is not as easy as I’d imagined it ten years ago.”

They exited Michael’s office and he walked to the designated area. Inside, around fifty marines from Bravo company sat around a large holo. Quite a few less than the number that had first entered Outlook station. Andrew waved him over and patted the empty seat next to him. “So how’s the kid?”

“He’s going to be staying with the Captain for the next few days.”

“Yang’s not going to like that, she’s taken a very strong liking to Oswald.”

“Then she can have him for all I care.” he shrugged, “as long as I don’t have to worry about it.”

“Officer on deck!” Sergeant Varus belted out and the assembled marines snapped to attention. Bryce chuckled, waving them down.

“At ease, Ryan what have I said about doing that? We’re not in the army anymore.”

“Sorry, old habits die hard.”

“Well then let’s get down to business,” he said, the holo flashing to life. It was a miniaturized model of the station. Around two hundred blue dots placed themselves around the outskirts. Eight hundred green ones followed, forming groups of about twenty-five.

“We’ll start with the basics, then go on to what went well and what we can work on and end off on the insurance.” The view changed to several statistics and graphs.

“84 KIA and 22 WIA from the Mistral. The Evergreen contracting company took almost four times that and ET took double our combined count. Horrific casualty figures but there was a reason for that. Normally, this crew takes on low-intensity and low-risk missions. Where the biggest threat is a few starving pirates. Yesterday we fought nearly eight hours against a well-trained and well-equipped professional army.”

“Not to mention the suspiciously advanced equipment that they used,” Varus muttered. Bryce nodded, “Intel strongly believes that this attack was in part funded by a more advanced single-digit race.”

Oscar’s brain started to fuze as the talking became more and more technical. The others seemed to understand what Bryce was saying but he couldn’t and his thoughts began to drift. The holo started to move, playing a sped-up version of what had happened on a macro scale. Orange dots peeked out from the airlocks and in several places, a few of the green and blue dots winked out. The friendly dots withdrew from the outskirts with the Dawlish hot on their tails. As they passed the traps, dozens of orange dots disappeared and their movement became much slower. They hit the second line of defense before stopping to regroup. For more than three hours, they gathered in numbers before making a new push. Around twenty percent of their forces made EVA entries, blasting holes through the bulkheads and dropping in. Slowly the first few groups retreated, backing up to the large bunkers in the intersections. Oscar noted with a hint of pride that theirs was one of the last to withdraw.

“Now, most of the casualties were taken during these withdrawals. When companies were caught out in the open or cut off by multiple groups.” the bunkers held till the end when Bryce had called a general retreat all the way back to the hangers. On the way back one of the large blobs of marines began to disappear at an alarming rate. Several red dots flashing around them before the entire area went dark.

“Ninety-four marines killed by four Class 17 deathworlders in less than five minutes,” he said, ignoring the low muttering from the gathered crew. “That is a problem, people.”

“No shit.” Malone called, “Oscar and I managed to hold one off for longer than that. What the hell happened?”

“That was fast, I’d thought he’d be out of it for longer.” Oscar thought, looking at him. There was a metal cap over the stump where his arm once had been. “Ah, so he’s getting it grown first.”

“We believe that the deathworlders ambushed the company using advanced cloaking technology provided to them by their patrons. By the time their suits were able to detect the deathworlder presence, it was already too late.”

Oscar nodded along, there was a technological hierarchy to the senate with the most advanced at the top, slowly filtering to the low tech and insignificant at the bottom. Most double-digit aliens had single-digit sponsors or patrons who raised them from their homeworlds, giving them tech and resources in exchange for manpower and labor.

“After that, the withdrawal was almost textbook with the one exception of Oscar and Tanner holding off a class 18 almost single-handedly,” Bryce said and the marines around him clapped and patted the two on the back.

“Not exactly the best word choice, chief,” Tanner grunted looking down at his stump.

Varus snorted and Bryce pointedly ignored the comment, “let us move onto the insurance. For those of you out of the loop, looking at you Oscar. Insurance is a policy on this ship, where if one were to fall fulfilling their end of the contract. All of their remaining gear and equipment is to be redistributed to the surviving crew based off of battlefield performance.”

“Sounds like grim work.”

“With that being said, there is an awful lot of gear to redistribute this time around. To make this easier for everyone involved, the Captain decided to give everyone a pick from the pile. Starting with the person with the highest performance."

Oscar's holo dinged and he looked down at it, a message had appeared reading, "You have the 3rd pick." with a huge catalog of equipment to choose from. Guns, gadgets, armor packages, and even a remote-operated drone were all up for grabs. He felt horrible as he scrolled through the gear. Just a few days ago, that had been someone he might have knowns stuff. By the end, he had picked a rather expensive-looking armor package. Thick blocks of composite and ERA covered the suit, drastically increasing its protection value. Along with a wrist-mounted energy blade capable of slicing through even the most advanced armor, there was. There was not going to be a repeat of his encounter with the Class 18.

"That's it, debriefing finished. Go get your new gear checked out and be prepared for anything. The next stop is New Boise station."