Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

March 16 2184, 19:37 hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard Earth Space Colony C153 "Retribution"

Henry Davis looked around at the pristine two story houses that lined the street and decided it was a good day to die. A small boy chased a pair of girls as all three of them laughed with delight. A couple approached Henry, hand in hand, and said ‘Hello' as they walked down the street. He gave them a curt nod as they passed and adjusted the heavy leather tool bag he held in his left hand.
He hated this place. Perfect green grass grew underneath the massive fluorescent lights that imitated the sun and was sustained by water that was recycled daily. Even the air smelled fake. Most of the people here had probably never even seen a real cloud before. It was enough to make him sick.
Henry turned a corner on to a smaller road and checked his watch. He was right on time, he thought, and afforded himself the faintest of smiles. Ahead was a small fenced area with a guard house at one side. Surrounded by the fencing was a metal structure that extended a hundred meters upward and connected to the ceiling.
A soldier dressed in standard UNSF fatigues stopped Henry at the gate and asked for ID. Henry reached into his pocket and handed the guard a picture ID of himself that identified him as an engineer. The man examined it carefully. Another guard walked up and looked at him warily, rifle in hand. "Extend your arms outward and spread you legs sir," the soldier ordered him. He patted Henry Davis down with one hand, gripping his rifle tightly with the other. He pulled out a scanning device from his pockets and ran it down the length of his body and his leather bag. Satisfied, he backed away and Henry lowered his arms.
The other guard finally handed his ID back and said, "Thank you Mr. Williams, have a good evening."
Henry smiled politely at the guard and said, "You too." He walked into the fenced area toward the structure. An elevator door opened and he stepped in.
The space colony looked essentially like the wheel of an ancient cart. The kilometer wide ring spun around a central hub with three spokes connecting them, creating artificial gravity. The elevator took Henry right up one of the spokes and into the central hub. As it went up, gravity weakened until he floated in the elevator car inert. He gripped a handle as the elevator began to decelerate and he checked his watch again. It was 19:52. The elevator doors opened and he entered the hub.
Dim, murky light illuminated the corridor. Both the floors and ceilings were made of the same steel grating. The monotonous thrum of machinery filled the dreary halls as Henry pushed off from the elevator into the hall. The colony's hub housed most of its life support systems. It was where the water recyclers, oxygen converters, and the majority of the electrical systems operated. The hub all contained the three separate fusion reactors that powered the colony.
The corridor was segmented by doors every few meters. As he drifted down it, blocky yellow lettering labeled them as "Rest Room", "Communications", and "Loading Zone III". The hub was noticeably warmer than the rest of the colony. It became even more so as he neared the reactors.

Henry heard a thud up ahead and distant voices echoing down the corridor. He checked his watch again and cursed. The second shift workers should have been on break by now. A door labeled "Utility" to his left was one of the few that didn't require a key code to enter. He grabbed the railing on his left side and guided himself to the door. He hit the glowing green button next to it and the door slid open with a hiss. Henry slipped inside as the door slid shut behind him.
A pair of lights flickered to life automatically. He looked around at the room as he waited for the workers to pass by. A wide assortment of tools and cleaning supplies were strapped to the walls and shelves. There was a white cabinet that said "First Aid" and another that said "Radiation Treatment".
Henry pressed his ear up to the cold metal hydraulic door in hopes of hearing those passing by. It was no use however. The pressure door was four inches thick and could be vacuum sealed in case of an emergency. Instead, he waited exactly three minutes before he left the utility closet. The corridor outside was empty and he could hear no more voices. He followed the hall taking several turns and finally another elevator. He had studied the way from virtual maps on his datapad and had memorized it over the last three days.
At last he reached his destination. Henry noted that his pulse increased as he read "Main Control Center" written on the sealed double doors. A key pad was set into the metal wall beside it. The seven digit combination was changed once every four days for security. Henry's informant had sent the most recent code to his datapad last night. He had written it down on a piece of paper that was in his pants pocket. Instead however, he reached into his brown leather bag and withdrew a silenced Koslov pistol. The firearm was nearly an antique, using a mechanical hammer to fire the round. It had one important advantage: it had no electronic markers that could be picked up by weapon scanners.
He ejected the clip to ensure it was loaded, knowing full well that it was. This was his time however, the most important thing he would ever do. There was no room for foul ups. He slammed it back in, cocked it, and disengaged the safety. Henry punched in the seven digit code into the pad from memory. The keypad chimed and the double doors it controlled slid into the adjoining walls.
Henry Davis took the scene in a glance. The room was markedly better lit than the rest of the facility. It was a relatively small room but filled wall-to-wall with computer terminals. Statistics and readouts scrolled across the screens of some while others were direct camera observations of the reactors. For all of the terminals, there were only two people in the room to monitor them; a woman with long blond hair and a large man with dark eyes. They were strapped into chairs around the largest of the monitors.
The man swiveled his chair to look at who had just entered the control room. Henry leveled off his pistol at the man's head and squeezed off two rounds. The technician's head snapped back and a monitor behind him exploded into a shower of sparks.
The Koslov pistol didn't have a very high recoil, but it was enough to send Henry reeling backward and spinning in the zero gravity. The woman that had been the dead man's coworker let out a terrible scream as Henry tried to stop his disorientating trajectory. He caught himself on the far wall and kicked off into the control room. The blond woman had unbuckled herself from the chair and was typing away furiously at one of the terminals. Henry grabbed onto a chair to brace himself before firing again. The Koslov sent two rounds into her skull, ending the typing and her life.
Henry sighed, relieved that the worst part was over. Suddenly the over head lights went out. A split second later they were replaced by emergency red lights that cast a bloody haze over the room. The sharp shrill of an alarm began to sound as well. Henry cursed once more and went to door. He hit the glowing orange button but the door remained open. He pushed the button again but it refused to shut.
He went to the closest terminal and strapped himself into the seat in front of it. From his leather bag he pulled out his datapad and connected it directly to the terminal. He typed with urgency, loading the intrusion software and within 30 seconds the alarm stopped and the lights snapped back on. Henry became aware of the blobs of blood that floated and danced around the room.
He entered the security logs and found an emergency had been logged from the Main Control Room. He overrode the colony's lockdown procedures and the doors to the room shut. Next he tapped into the systems surveillance systems. A feed came up showing a security team equipped with thrusterpacks and automatic weapons racing down the corridors. He scrambled the key code to the door and ensured he'd be left in peace.
He set his software to work and began to break through the colony's firewalls, security measures, and encrypted routines that protected operations of the main reactors. Before long the security team reached the door to the control room. Henry only became aware of them through the dull thuds that reverberated through the sealed door. Their efforts to gain entry to the room were in vain however. The doors were made of titanium plate and made to be vacuum sealed. He turned back to his console. A minute passed before the software redirected the reactor's controls directly to his terminal. He studied them for a moment. Henry entered a series of commands and turned off the fail safes. A new series of commands came up on screen. Henry glanced through them until he found the one he wanted and closed his eyes.

He was back on Mars in his home kneeling beside a bed. His mother and sister had died of the plague and he sobbed as he gripped his father's hand fiercely. His fathers own grip was weak and his breath was shallow. His head turned toward Henry but he couldn't tell if his watery eyes really saw him or not. His mouth opened slowly and Henry could tell he wanted to tell him something. "What is it father?" he asked, his voice strained with sorrow. His father's lips moved and formed voiceless words. All that came out of was a bloody froth and his dying breath.
Henry's family had all died when he was nine years old because medicine from Earth had arrived too late. It could have arrived sooner but the U.N. had deemed his Mar's colony to be ‘low-demand' and was redirected to a higher population colony. Henry and a handful of others were the sole survivors of that colony's plague.
He clicked the command marked ‘Reactor Self-Destruct'. A series of warnings came up but he ignored them all. A countdown came up on the screen that started at five minutes and began to tick down.
Next he hacked into the colonies communications routines with ease. Henry adjusted the antennae arrays of the colony Retribution, and uploaded the files from his data pad. As they loaded he checked his watch. He was right on time. Precisely at 20:00 SST, Henry sent the transmission that would change the course of human history. He leaned back in his chair and watched the broadcast.
A new window popped up onto his screen. It showed a poorly lit room with the shadowy image of what seemed to be a man near the camera. He had close cropped hair but besides that, no other details could be seen. He cleared his throat and began. "Good evening fellow inhabitants of the Sol System. I am Phaeton and am the leader of the organization known as The Fist of Jupiter. In time you will know my true face and name but for now, this will suffice. For one and a half centuries, the children of Earth have left their homes and colonized this system. Planets have flourished, moons have prospered, and artificial manmade space colonies ensure overpopulation will never again be a concern." As Phaeton cleared his throat again, Henry noticed how warm it had become. Coolant had stopped cycling through the reactor and now it was beginning to overheat. He wiped away the sweat that beaded his forehead with the back of his hand and continued to listen.
"However, despite these great successes, there has been failure. The Earth holds an iron firm grip on all the colonies. They are ruled by a tyrant millions of kilometers away. No more. From this great act, we of The Fist of Jupiter show our power and declare that all colonies, planetary or artificial, are independent from the Earth and United Nations. The Fist of Jupiter will keep order among the colonies, and Earth will be one of them, no greater or lesser in power than Venus, Luna, or even Europa." Phaeton nodded his concealed face to the camera and said simply, "Farewell."
A red flashing screen came up on his terminal that said "Meltdown Imminent!" He closed his eyes and thought how incredibly hot it had become. Then he thought no more.