f the Abyss
By Ronald Brandenburg
Copyright 2016 Ronald Brandenburg
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This short story is a sequel to The Lonely Station set in the Other Worlds universe, I recommend that you read that story first to get a firm grasp on where the protagonist, Jesse Ownsman, grew up and came from before continuing on with this story. If you finish this, or any other story that I’ve written, please leave a review online where you downloaded it from. Thank you and happy reading.
Aridia was a desert world, uninhabited except by a New Order outpost and a few corporate mining sites. A lack of local population meant that the corporations could mine in the cheapest way possible, without care for pollution. That was where Jesse Ownsman was stationed after his brief stint in a New Order Navy boot camp. Still, it wasn’t Uriah and he was fed three meals a day.
In truth, Jesse was happy. He had a purpose in life and a real job, with a steady pay check. Back on Uriah, he was cramped, hungry, and cooped up in his bunk and the hallways of the station waiting for some critical piece of equipment to fail and hoping he had the expertise and spare parts to fix it. Here, he had firm ground under his feet and breathable, if slightly polluted air to breathe.
Boot camp had been rough. It had been discovered early that Jesse couldn’t read all that well. His instructors had actually failed him out of his first attempt and sent him to an adult learning center to improve his education. That alone endeared Jesse to the New Order, his limited education aboard the Uriah had only been sufficient enough for him to do his job. Once his reading and writing was deemed acceptable, he was re-entered into boot camp.
The combat training that Jesse received was grueling, but he had lived within an extreme environment his entire life. The most difficult part was adjusting to a higher gravity on the planet where the training took place. The NOS doctors had given him a physical before and after training and remarked about how a low gravity environment and lack of exercise had left his muscles underdeveloped, but he had made up for that during training.
All that was in the past though, now Junior Trooper Jesse Ownsman was assigned to Aridia to assist in the maintenance of the New Order base located there. He didn’t realize that the assignment wasn’t a good one, but he was glad to have it. The journey from boot camp to Aridia had taken a couple weeks and a few different stops. The transport that he was placed on was old, slow and had to make stops to pick up more personnel and supplies for the station. Jesse used that time to absorb as much information as he could with his new found reading abilities.
The transport landed on one of three pads that were located around the New Order base, the other two were empty. From what Jesse could discern, the air traffic controller chose that one to minimize the amount of dust that drifted over the base from the landing. The rear hatch of the transport opened and a sergeant barked orders out for all personnel to grab their duffel bag and get off the ship. Jesse immediately complied; he had found out early that you don’t want to draw the attention of a sergeant by being the slowest to obey orders. As a result, he was among the first to exit the transport.
One look around informed Jesse that there wasn’t much at the outpost. He had expected a small town to accompany the New Order site, but all he could see were hangers, warehouses, an air traffic control tower, and mountains off in the distance. Everything was covered in a layer of fine orange dust.
“Keep moving Ownsman; get your ass to the mess hall. It’s the big building in the middle.”
“Yes, Sergeant” Jesse also had learned never to call a Sergeant ‘Sir’.
With his duffel bag still slung over his shoulder, Jesse half jogged over to the mess hall and made his way inside.
The mess hall was a simple structure separated into two rooms, a small kitchen and a large room with tables and benches. The room was occupied with the recent arrivals and a grizzled old man standing at the front that Jesse had never seen before. After Jesse had set his bag down and sat down and the last of the stragglers came in, the old man loudly cleared his throat and addressed the assembled troopers.
“Welcome to Aridia, the hottest, driest shithole that the New Order has deemed worthy of claiming. All of you are here because you have probably been deemed second rate or useless. I will do my best to utilize you, if you fail in your duties here, then there is no place in the New Order military for you. Now, I have your placement roster. I will call your name and then your assignment. You may leave for your section once you have your placement.”
Jesse sat as the old man called out names and assignment until he reached his name. Most of the assignments were troopers to defense positions. There were two pilots that had been assigned to the small air wing. One person was sent to the air traffic control tower.
“Jesse Ownsman, maintenance”
Jesse stood up, collected his bag, and left the quickly emptying room. Every building had a prominent sign stating what was located within; maintenance was on the end of the short row of warehouses. He let himself into the warehouse and let his eyes adjust to the semi darkness after the glare of the desert sun. Before he had fully adjusted, a low, soft voice called his name.
“Junior Trooper Jesse Ownsman, welcome to the maintenance department of Aridia. Our largest concern is dust buildup on damn near everything. We keep a squadron of Falcons flying and an odd assortment of trucks in working order. In addition, we have a deep space observatory located on the nearest mountain top that is under our care, but it doesn’t require much. It is ran by Dr. Ian Mojave, he is a nice enough man, few wants except to be left alone, doesn’t come down off his mountain very often. Your bunk is over there, leave your duffel bag there and we will get started.”
Jesse nodded and did as ordered. When he came back, he asked the old man what his name was.
“My name is Maintenance Sergeant Arron Fitch, but people around here call me Mr. Fix-it. From what I’ve read in your file, you’re straight out of boot camp. However, I read that you’ve been stuck aboard a near derelict mining station and managed to keep it running since you could hold a wrench. That is the kind of background I like Jesse, I would rather have an apprentice that knows the basics and can handle replacement scarcity to somebody that has to read a manual every time there is an issue. After a while with me, you’ll be up to date on fixing up our fighters, trucks, and environmental conditioning units. If you commit yourself to learning, then I will write a recommendation for you to go into your personnel file. Who knows where you will end up after that, but you won’t get stuck here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fix-it. May I ask why you’re here? It seems that this is a dead end.”
“I’m at the end of my career, but I have nowhere else to go. I asked to be sent to a quiet outpost so that they would overlook my age. If I were stationed at a core world or space station, then some overzealous quartermaster would see my age and muster me out of the New Order military. Then what would I do? I’d rather stay here and keep working until I no longer can. Come on, enough about me. Let me show you what you will be responsible for.”
Arron showed Jesse around the base and pointed out issues that he dealt with on a regular basis, like sand being pushed up against buildings and into the environmental conditioning units. Then, they headed for the hangars. Inside was a small squadr
on of eight falcons.
Falcons were old trainer craft that the base on Aridia had acquired and recommisioned as armed scout ships. The cadre of New Order pilots consisted of two elderly trainers and a slew of green pilots fresh out of basic. Their missions involved flying over the corporate mining facilities or into orbit if another force threatened the peace of Aridia’s few citizens.
“We have a few trucks around here too. The base commander uses them to shuffle supplies around the base, carry soldiers off into the hills on their training missions, or send supplies to the mines if the corporations ask for it. They aren’t fancy, pretty dependable; they won’t give you any trouble. That is about it for the tour, any questions?”
“What about the observatory that you mentioned earlier?”
“Oh yeah, Dr. Mojave’s place; he calls us if anything breaks up there, but since it’s just him and a few AIs, he doesn’t call often. He does come down to get fresh supplies; he even grabs a meal from the mess hall on occasion. He does some kind of research with his long range telescopes, but his observatory also tracks ships that approach the planet and interfaces with the satellites in orbit.”
Arron scratched his