Last Banquet

     The three suns burned down upon sand and dust, the wind stirring dust devils along the leeward sides of ever moving dunes.  The brick red sand being pushed around so that the ripples moved like ripples on water.  The heat was more like an oven, it wasn’t even the hottest part of the day and it was already 311 Kelvin and would top out at 328 Kelvin in a few hours, much like summer in Death Valley except Death Valley at least had 19% humidity where as here one was lucky to see 5% at this time of year, but it beat the winter when the average would be 183 Kelvin and air so damp it becomes an ice fog.

    And into this Hellscape’s thin atmosphere a lone figure is launched out of a space ship and into an orbital level HALO jump from two kilometers above the planet’s atmosphere.  The launcher is calibrated and aimed to put the jumper into the correct insertion point of the atmosphere so the jumper is reasonably close to where they should be on landing.  The jumper is standing on an ablative disk designed to keep them upright through the thin atmosphere as they plummet through yet protect them from the friction of the air.  At terminal velocity of 160 meters per second the ground was coming up fast and suddenly their parachute opened.  Touch down was never fun but having to unstrap the scorched and still hot ablative disk after it sunk into the soft sand made it even worse.  They cut the straps holding them to the disk, then shed the parachute.

    Through this Hellscape walks the jumper, now a kilometer away from the landing site, a lone figure two meters tall, covered from head to toe in an environment suit closely matching the planet's own color through active digital camouflage.  Each step they take sinks halfway to their knees and yet they keep trudging along, their footsteps almost instantly back filled by the wind, causing their path to almost immediately be swept away leaving no trace from whence they came.

    Step after step, they drag their feet out of the sand, over and over, hour after hour, until two of the suns set in the east.  Near exhaustion, the jumper sits down, leaning against their back pack like a chair.  They set a proximity alarm, and quickly drift off to sleep.  In their dreams they walk along the shore near their home, they feel the cool sea mist, smell the salty air, feel the wet sand beneath their bare feet, and sit in the shade reading a book by their favorite author while sipping on Saki.  Several hours have passed, the third sun is now setting and the planet is quickly passing into darkness and the jumper’s wake up alarm goes off.

    The jumper begins walking again guided through the now inky blackness by the nightvision display inside their helmet visor.  Several hours pass and a few more kilometers before they spot their destination another five kilometers away.  By the time they reach their target the temperature has dropped to 260 kelvin and the dark silhouette of the building is looming before them.  A door with two guards stationed beside it is a hundred meters to their left.  They slip off their backpack, and pull out a compressed air riffle, then an ammo pack; inside the ammo pack they find a small dart marked “Devil’s breath”, one in the chamber and one in the magazine tube, a quick rack of the lever action and from a prone position pulls the first shot.  The further guard knows nothing and the dart penetrates its breathing tube leading to its helmet, no alarm, no drop, but the dart has done its job and the devil’s breath is now inside their airline as the second dart finds the nearer guard’s airline.  The jumper lies still, waiting and in ten minutes the two guards fall unconscious at almost the same time.  The jumper moves to a crouched position, and quickly pulls out several other weapons, straps them to themself, swings the pack back on, and approaches the guards.  It doesn’t take long to find the key, and even less time to enter the airlock.  The digital camouflage quickly converts their clothing to match the surrounding walls, and they enter the main building with no alarms being sounded.
    The going is slow from here as every intersecting passageway has to be carefully checked before either crossing it or entering it.  Another pair of guards can be seen at the end of the fourth passage, their backs to the jumper and about twenty meters away.  The jumper pulls another dart gun from their belt the compressed nitrogen in the tank shoots the darts with nary a sound and in two quick shots each guard is injected with cyanide causing them to drop in seconds.  She checks her location on the map in her helmet visor display and continues toward the kitchen.

    She passes the main hall where she can hear the Anti-Gian congregation meeting and discussing the glassing of Earth.  The jumper begins to move even more carefully to ensure their suit's camouflage can mimic fast enough without distortion.  At the kitchen she finds that she doesn’t even have to enter as the main course is sitting in the passage outside in warming trays waiting to be served while the staff are inside waiting on the signal to start.  The jumper pulls a bottle from their belt, pops the lid and begins sprinkling tetrodotoxin on every main and side dish sitting in the passageway.  Now the Jumper just has to find a quiet spot to watch and wait from.

    About five minutes after securing an unused door that allowed them to see the hall clearly the signal goes out and the food begins making its way to the tables.  They make themselves comfortable and about twenty minutes after the group begins eating the effects start to show as the diners appear to be having trouble with their lips and tongues appearing to have started to go numb.  Another ten minutes and they begin to stop moving as their limbs also begin going numb.  The jumper can hear plates crashing from the kitchen now as they have eaten the leftover food from the party.  Another hour passes and now everyone in the hall has fallen from their chairs to the floor.

    The jumper enters the hall and begins studying the carnage, all of the attendees are showing the various signs of hypoxia for their species; some have turned blue, some green, some brown, and a few have turned as red as a boiled lobster.  A few get poked with the toe of the jumper’s boot, but all are gone with rigor already settling in on a few.  They make their way to the kitchen, the same scene is repeated in their and the jumper makes their way to the environmental control room.  They shut down the life support, the security systems, wipe the security drives, and remotely opened all the doors to the building, venting its atmosphere to the planet and making it impossible for most anything but the native species of the planet to survive–which was no one in the building.  The jumper leaves the building and walks to the landing pad nearby.

    “Sakujo, calling for pick up coordinates zero, zero.”

    “Sakujo, five by five, Warthog on the way, Donaldson out.”

    Ten minutes later an A-50 was landing on the pad and the pilot opened the canopy.

    “Someone call for a ride?”

    Sakujo climbs in and is buckling up as the pilot closes the canopy.

    “Pig Pen, Sakujo on board, mission closed.”

    Back on the Nimitz they exit the Warthog and Sakujo removes her helmet, her pilot looks like he has seen a ghost and she gives him a puzzled look.

    “Valkyrie?  I thought your hair was white?”

    In that moment he hears a voice from behind him.

    “Because it is, this is my grand-daughter battle name Sakujo which means Delete.”

    His eyes go wide. “OH!  You’re a Memento Mori!”

    “Just call me Eve and you know nothing of me, or where you picked me up from.  As far as anyone is concerned you have been on leave this entire time.  I do NOT want to see any reports on this pick up, understand.”

    “I need to get to medical, I’m hearing things like someone is talking to me, but I am totally alone in here, and how did I get here?  I'm supposed to be in Miami with my husband right now.”

     The pilot walks away shaking his head and acting very confused.
     “Ya know grandma, I think he understands.  Shame he’s married, I could have spent a few days on a beach with him with very little convincing.”

    “I would rather hear the gory details of your missions than the details of your free time.”

    “My free time is no worse than you and grandpa’s.”
    “That’s part of the problem, now go write your report that I cannot transmit back to command since we aren’t here.”

    A week later Eve was reading the news feeds and the reports of a conclave of rogue council members had gathered on the desert world Krull four for a secretive meeting.  How only two guards were found alive but experiencing vivid hallucinations the rest of the guards and attendees where all dead due to an unfortunate system failure that apparently vented all of the meeting halls atmosphere killing all in attendance.  Meeting notes show that the agenda of the meeting was the discussions of genocide though the council refuses to say against what race, we can confirm though that their were no Gians at the event leading us to believe they were the intended targets.

    Internal reports leaked from inside the Grand Inquisitor's chambers suggest that the remaining council members are planning to begin an in-depth investigation into all organizations to weed out how many others appear to be harboring genocidal and racist beliefs so they can be given proper counseling and treatment.  The two surviving guards are being sent for mandatory substance abuse rehabilitation.

Maura Out