Chris Pourteau - Valhalla Station

The SynCorp Saga: Empire Earth

Book 1

by

David Bruns and Chris Pourteau

First Kindle Edition: March 2019

This e-book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

Copyright 2019 by David Bruns and Chris Pourteau.

All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of Hip Phoenix Publishing, LLC.

Cover design 2018 by Tom Edwards. http://tomedwardsdesign.com/. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Cover lettering by Steve Beaulieu.

Editing by Michelle Benoit.

Formatting by Polgarus Studios. http://polgarusstudios.com.

Many thanks to our beta readers Jason Anspach, Jon Frater, and Alison Pourteau. Their input helped make Valhalla Station a better novel.

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I pledge allegiance to the star

Of the Syndicate Corporation of Sol.

And to the bylaws for which it stands,

One compact under law,

Irrevocable,

With service and security for all.

Kwazi Jabari Mineral Extraction and Processing Facility 12, Mars

The explosion ripped through the refinery.

A sudden, hot eruption of sound overwhelmed Kwazi Jabari, drowning the white noise of tools and machines and the small talk of routine. The regolith walls of Marss underground tunnels shook; the artificial gravity hiccupped. Rock and metal and human flesh smashed together. Bone, as always, surrendered to physics.

The first shockwaves passed. It was like a giant was running through the tunnels, smaller blasts like footsteps rumbling away deeper, ancient cannons firing in quick succession, one after the other against an enemy battle line. Dust and twisted metal rained down around Kwazi. He wrapped his arms around his head for protection. Stunned oblivion wrapped around him. The dull thud of the giants footsteps echoed in the dusty rock beneath his cheek.

Kwazis awareness began to return. The red emergency lights flashed, casting the familiar lines of Extraction Station 16 in the foreign shadows and broken angles of wrecked machinery. Dust floated everywhere, visible currents of ruddy air stirred by the atmo recyclers.

Blinking hard, Kwazi tried to raise himself from the ground. The artificial gravity was unstable, making his stomach heave. His heart thudded like one of the sluice pumps, swelling and receding in his head. A single, piercing note stabbed inward from his ears. His right arm hurt from a long, red gash along his forearm. Blood flowed freely. A familiar thing among chaos, it was sort of hypnotizing, his own blood. His eyelids felt lazy, heavy.

Kwazi shook his head to clear it, grabbing on to the pain that followed, a lifeline to awareness. He ripped the torn sleeve free of his uniform, wrapped it twice just below his elbow, and tied it off. The triage had come from muscle memory, something taught to him by a grandfather whod had little patience for a grandson whod rather be doing anything else than learning first aid. The pain in his forearm faded to a dull throb, and Kwazi wiped the grit from his eyes. He could hear sounds beyond his own skull again.

Deeper inside the facility, past a score of extraction stations like his, the giants footsteps were awkward, the stumbling destruction of a drunken goliath. There was the screech of machinery bent and broken, still trying to work, thrashing itself to pieces. And there were other sounds now.

Grunting. Screaming.

The sounds of people dying.

Amy!

Kwazi dragged himself into a kneeling position. He ignored the Martian rock biting into his knees. Shed been working right next to him. Theyd been talking about nothing at all and everything, the way future lovers do when they know thats what theyll be. Conversation as intimacy, an aphrodisiac of words, the beginnings of mutual exploration.

I dont know, shed said once shed accepted his offer for dinner together after shift. Maybe we could try Polynesian?

I hate Polynesian, hed thought. What hed said was: That sounds wonderful.

The facility shook again, the gravity hiccupped again, and Kwazi let the quake pass before attempting his feet. His knees felt made of jelly. Placing one hand against the control panel hed been working on, Kwazi steadied himself.

He traced his way along the panel. Everything seemed to be where it shouldnt be. Hed been talking with Amy, checking the chemical composition levels for the leaching process. Optimizing the liquefaction of the metals extracted by his team from Shaft 16. A process hed done with Amy a hundred times while the rest of Team 16 pulled the rocks from the tunnel. Aika and Mikel on the laser drills, Max and Beren moving the cuts from the holes to the conveyor belts. And he and Amy, the crews exochemists, keeping everything tweaked to peak performance.

The air processors had made progress. The red haze was thinning, the fog clearing as Kwazis mind had started to clear. A harsh Klaxon sounded. The hole in the refinerys protective dome was breached. Atmosphere was leaking to the Martian surface.

Amy!

Kwazis heart began to race again. Where was she? Theyd been standing together at the control panel. How much farther could

A low moan stopped him breathing. He followed it, straining to hear through the noise.

Amy!

She lay on her side on the rough ground, one hand grasping at nothing. The top knot of her blonde hair hung loose. Kwazi knelt beside her, took her hand in his. He should evacuate her, get her to safety. And the rest of the team

The strident Klaxon flooded the tunnels. Particulate matter in the air funneled upward with a reddish tail toward the surface.

Next to Kwazi, Amanda Topulos groaned. Ignorance of the right thing to do paralyzed him, wrestling with the certain knowledge that doing nothing was the worst of bad choices. He needed to act, to do something, or Amy might die. He might die. The other four members of their crew-family might die.

Vac-suits. The voice of Qinlao Manufacturings safety trainer told Kwazi to help himself first, then help others. You cant help anyone else if youre dead.

He needed to get into a vac-suit, then get Amy into one. And then hed find the others.

Kwazi forced himself to release Amys hand, which flicked at the air again, a reflex. She seemed to be begging him to stay.

Leaving a silent prayer behind, a ward to watch over her, Kwazi staggered against the shifting gravity toward Station 16s emergency locker. Thunder roiled from farther down the line, thrumming the ground. He stumbled over something solida human arm holding a tool, a wrench he recognized, stamped T16. The fingers gripping it were African like his.

Jesus.

Kwazi traced the arm to the torso and the primary crushing machine lying over the body. Stepping carefully, he found Max Okafors head twisted, his neck hyperextended. Kwazi swallowed hard, pushing down the quick bile of loss in his throat. There was a hard place behind his breastbone, a desire to stop, to process, to mourn.

On Mars, your crew was your familythats what QM taught its workers. The safety chief had emphasized it during training, over and over again, along with the meme meant to make it stick: Family Is Safety at QM.