Transient Signal

Chapter Four: 2461 C.E.

Concordia Space Habitat, Concordia

Southern End Slums

        Jack took a moment from his story to spit another glob of blood onto the floor. By now the adrenaline had worn off and he was beginning to feel every punch and kick and floor smash the Dominion soldiers had given him. He started feeling nauseous as well; a side effect from all the blood he did not spit out.

        "Are you two going to kill me if I get a drink of water?" he asked. The two helmeted soldiers exchanged glances and one of them got up and grabbed a plastic glass from the counter. They filled it with water that had a faint green colouring--a result of the habitat's bio-filtration system. Jack took a swig of most of the chlorophyll  tasting water. He swished it in his mouth before spitting it back onto the floor. It got rid of most of the copper taste of blood.

        "It says in your file that you were awarded two medals for valour," said the Dominion soldier who had gotten him the glass of water.

        "It's actually four," corrected Jack. "Two Stars of Valour, a Cross of Gallantry and one Special Service Medal. Except one of the Stars and the Special Service Medal were awarded for two missions that never happened, and I was never involved."

        "That still makes you some kind of hero doesn't it?" continued the soldier.

        "Not in the Confederate forces," chuckled Jack dryly. For five years the Confederation had refused to even acknowledge that he existed, denying him pension and recognition. Jack was surprised that the Dominion had been able to dreg up his file considering how deep the Confederation buried it.

        "So they take one of their most highly decorated Special Forces NCO and drop him into a slum on a backwater mining colony?" asked the second soldier. "Sounds like you got shafted."

        "That, is the understatement of the year," commented Jack. "But listen here. I'm just providing information about this one thing because my life was ruined by it. Don't get any funny ideas about trying to get me to spill the beans on other Confederate operations. Before I was in the SCU, i worked for PsyOps, so your little mind tricks and good-cop, bad-cop routine is not going to work."

        "We're just interested in the events you are already describing," said the second soldier again.

        "Which reminds me, why are you so interested in it?" asked Jack, realizing there was more to this than just finding out why a nuke was detonated. "This all happened over five years ago. The Dominion inquiry ended three years ago and ruled it as a starship accident. Your Dominion council closed the book on this and voted to never re-open it."

        "Things have changed," remarked the first soldier. "You've been out here for five years, unaware of what's been going on elsewhere in the universe."

        "I still don't understand," declared Jack, starting to feel himself get frustrated. He did not expect much from Dominion Black Ops soldiers who had been sent to interrogate him but these two seemed more interested in what happened aboard the Scholar than what happened immediately afterwards. "I mean, unless...no, they couldn't have..."

        "The Confederation authorities provided samples of starship debris to provide evidence that it was an accident involving the starship's drive core," said the first soldier. "Those samples were taking to Dominion Intelligence for analysis, while a parallel analysis was undertaken by Confederate Intelligence."

        "But...no, it's impossible," rambled Jack. "It was destroyed...I destroyed it. The nuke...the vacuum of space...it died. How could it still be alive?"

        "Samples were found by and sent to various research labs for study," declared the second solider. "In the Dominion's case, our samples were sent to the Athabasca research station. The Confederates sent theirs to the military science vessel, the Ironclad."

        That rattled Jack. "The Ironclad just stopped by here about three days ago to be refueled..."

        Before Jack could finish, there was a ear shattering explosion, followed by a shock wave that shook the whole building. Jack went to the window of his apartment just in time to see a column of smoke and fire coming from one of the other habitation blocks and another object crash into a neighbouring district.

        One of the Dominion soldiers grabbed him by the shoulder. "Sergeant Jack Wells. According to Executive Order 1109-435, you are recruited into the Dominion-Confederate joint Special Operations unit, Task Force Reaver. Now, we need to go now!"

        Jack could barely get a word in before the Dominion soldiers were pulling him towards the door. "Wait!" he finally managed to shout. He ran back to his mattress and flipped it over. Underneath the old metal spring mattress was a perfectly maintained Confederate S4 assault rifle. Jack grabbed it and ejected the horizontal magazine to see if it was fully loaded. Pressing down as hard as he could on the 6.8mm bullets loaded into it revealed that the magazine was at capacity with thirty-four bullets in it.  Jack reloaded the magazine and grabbed six more that he had stashed under the bed as well. He put them into the various pockets he had on his work uniform. "Okay now we can get the hell out of here," he said, flicking the safety off his weapon.

        The Dominion soldiers led the way out of the apartment building. There were only a few tenants out in the hallways--most of the miners would have already been shipped down to the moon for their shifts. The other miners would most likely be on their way back. As such the apartment's halls were not crowded and the elevators were quick. Jack and the Dominion soldiers were on the first floor in a matter of minutes.

        The air outside the apartment was hazy and choked full of pollutants. A lot of the ore mined on the moon was refined on the habitat, and the Orion Company had definitely cut corners when it came to the air purifiers and filtration systems. Not enough to kill everyone on board, but enough that theair constantly tasted like dirt and metal. Jack was hacking like crazy by the time they only made it halfway up the trash clogged street.

        "We have to get to get to airlock six," declared one of the Dominion soldiers. Jack had since lost track of which soldier was which. One was now on point and the other was bringing up the rear, with Jack in the middle. "The shuttle is there waiting for us."

        Jack heard another explosion, this time from above. He looked up to see something crash through the upper portion of the habitat. It rocketed towards the lower portion and impacted just a few blocks up from where Jack and the Dominion soldiers were. The two soldiers started moving to take up firing positions but Jack grabbed  hold of both of them by their arms.

        "Trust me on this, if the reason I think you've come to find me is in that wreckage then our weapons are not going to be of any use here," he declared. "Follow me. i know of another way to the airlock."

        Jack led them down a side street towards a maintenance access hatch that would lead directly to the airlocks located on the other side of the habitat. Meanwhile, he tried not to focus on the feeling he was starting to get about this whole situation.