Transient Signal

Chapter Eight: 2461 C.E.

Concordia Space Habitat, Concordia

Maintenance Shaft, 7-XD-N

        The shaft was cramped and filled with jagged edges and jutting pipes. While the Dominion soldiers had their combat armour, Jack had nothing more than just his civilian work clothes, making every brush with a piece of jagged metal or angled pipe a new cut or bruise that just caused him pain as they moved. They still had a ways to go before they reached the ship the soldiers came in.

        "You know, Jack," said the Dominion soldier ahead of him. "You mentioned how marines from the Morrison were supposed to board with your platoon and secure some of the empty space between you guys. What happened to them?"

        "You know, to this day I have no idea," replied Jack. "They never showed up. Miller never thought to ask, and he was the only one with a COM channel to Riley. To be honest, the way the whole mission was going, I'm not surprised."

        "He seems to have been a shitty commander," commented the other Dominion soldier behind him. "To go from being solid to spinning that hard in that short of a period of time..."

        "He was a solid guy," replied Jack. "But this was just not his kind of mission. And having that Nishi bitch muttering in his ear was not helping either."

        "You seemed to have been pretty far away from his end to know something like that," said the soldier in front.

        "Oh don't worry, if we get out of here alive, I'll tell you how that situation happened," replied Jack, avoiding another jutting pipe corner. "But here's something, you guys apparently know everything about me and I don't even know your names. I don't know about you, but I kind of like to know the people I'm working with."

        There was a slight pause as Jack could only imagine they were probably talking on private COMs. Finally the one in front said, "Jamie."

        "Daniel" said the one in back.

        "Now was that so hard?" said Jack. "No it wasn't."

        "You've certainly changed from the person you describe yourself as five years ago," commented Jamie, clearly beginning to feel the strain of moving in the cramped shaft.

        "Well after what happened and being dumped into the ass end of the galaxy," declared Jack, "you tend to change quite a bit from the person you used to be."

        The next ten minutes was spent in relative silence as they continued through the shaft. Finally Jack asked the one thing that had been bugging him since the two Dominion soldiers grabbed him.

        "So how long has this thing been a problem?"

        "What do you mean?" replied Daniel.

        "You said I had been out of touch with the rest of the universe," Jack answered, "so how long had this been a problem before you guys decided to come and get me?"

        "The Scourge, which is what we call it," said Jamie, "has been an identified threat to the Dominion for the past three years, after a sample we had got out of containment."

        "How bad is it?"

        "In those three years we've lost three colonies," said Jaime. "Terra Nova, Celestin, and Heart's World. Combined casualties: almost ten billion."

        "Three whole years?" Jack could not believe that ten billion people and three whole colony worlds could be wiped out that fast.

        "Yup, three years, three colonies," answered Daniel. "When Celestin fell, that was when the Dominion decided that something needed to be done. By the time we lost Heart's World, Taskforce Reaver was green lit."

        "Speaking of which, what the hell is Taskforce Reaver?"

        "Taskforce Reaver is a multi-branch, multi-leveled joint Taskforce consisting of elements of both the Confederate Armed Forces and the Dominion Army, specifically special forces components," answered Jaime. "It's purpose is to hunt down any and all traces of the Scourge life-form and located its origin point, at which case the origin point will be terminated."

        That sounded like the instruction manual Jack had been and personally taught from; meaning it had a lot of big words to hide the simplicity of what it was. "What in the fuck does that mean"

        "Basically, we and several others, both Confederate and Dominion special forces and researchers, hunt down the Scourge and find out where it comes from and kill it permanently," clarified Daniel.

        "Sounds like the Confederation and Dominion are finally seeing eye to eye on something," remarked Jack. As he continued forward, he felt one of his pockets get snagged on a piece of piping and rip. He kept going forward but shortly thereafter Daniel said, "Hey hold up. You dropped something."

        For a split second Jack thought he had lost a magazine. However when he went to look, he found all four of his magazines--minus the one loaded already into his rifle--he found all of them were secure. So what did he drop?

        He paused long enough for Daniel to catch up to him. Daniel reached forward and passed the item up to Jack. Jack took it and saw that it was a old photograph. Jack took a moment to look at it. He had seen it hundreds of times before and could remember almost every detail of it, but he still always liked to gaze upon it. On it was three soldiers out in the field of some desert,  in the uniform of the SCU, holding their rifles in the air, trying their best to look menacing--which was hard given that they were all about twenty-one in the picture.

        "Who are they?" asked Daniel.

        "That one on the right is me," said Jack. "The other two are my best friends. We all joined the same day, same unit and all got into the SCU at the same time. This was one of our first missions."

        "How come you keep it? You don't seem to care much for the Confederation anymore."

        Jack thought about his response for a moment. "I need to remind myself sometimes that it wasn't always bad, that I didn't always wake up hung over and hating what I did. Even when I was still in, I had to--I needed to remember that there were good times and that I had something to fight for. After the Scholar, this was the only thing that helped me sleep at night."

        "You were pretty torn up afterwards?" asked Daniel.

        "Those three months between getting back and being kicked out  and sold to Orion where the worst," Jack said. "Night terrors, flashbacks, the works. PTSD, anxiety, depression--there wasn't anything they didn't diagnose me with. But that picture...It's weird, no matter how bad it got, no matter how much I was fucked around, when I looked at that picture and remembered the memories I had, it helped. It didn't make anything stop or go away but it made them bearable."

        "What happened to them?" asked Daniel, "your friends in the picture."

        "That guy in the centre, Willis, he died about three months after this picture was taken," answered Jack. "Rebel sniper took half his head off with a large calibre rifle. Mickey, the other guy? He was heavily wounded in a operation we did a year later. He basically had his legs melted by plasma fire and his face burned off as well. He died a few days later."

        "Oh shit," said Daniel.

        "It's okay, I made peace with that years ago," said Jack, "but everyday I woke up was one more day I lived for them. Every promotion, every mission, everything became doing something in their memory. I can't describe it but the thought of letting them down somehow kept me going."

        Jaime interrupted. "We're here. Airlock six." Jaime started going through a access hatch that lead into the airlock.

        "But once you guys came and told me about what was gong on," Jack said, "I think I've found something else to live for."

        "What's that?" asked Daniel.

        "Vengeance," declared Jack as he exited the shaft.