Prologue: The June Incident

Engineer, First Class Matthew Zibman is given an order to retrieve a mysterious package. Just what could lie inside, and why was Zibman the one to get it?

Matthew Zibman’s eyes cracked open upon hearing the harsh drone of his PDA. The device strapped to his wrist was blinking rapidly, showering the room in white light in concentrated intervals. There was a poignant buzz bouncing off the walls, the source being the piece of technology on Zibman’s side. Wiping crust and spit off of his face, Zibman rose to a seated position. He scratched his head for a few seconds, a few thoughts drifting lazily across his mind about the work he had to do. He swung his legs out over the side of his bunk and got up. The blankets and sheets gave way, resting on the ground. Zibman looked at his PDA, the flash burning his eyes, and smacked the screen a few times. After the third or fourth strike the blinking stopped. He refocused and stared at what the words on the screen said:

Retrieve the Package.

He opened his mouth for a few moments, silently protesting, but shut it soon after. Who would he speak to? No one was in the empty grey room but him. The window led to the chilled vacuum of space, stars and planets greeting the young engineer’s gaze. The isolation of the living quarters was a constant fear. No one was here to listen to him, or to collaborate with him, or to… Zibman was alone, the only human being in the entire wing. Zibman sighed, a hot puff of air fogging up the window. He cleared his throat and pressed a tiny button on the side of the device, A red light shone from the object for a split second, signalling Zibman it was time to go. He swallowed and spoke.

“Matthew Zibman, Engineer First Class, Space Station L. Current time is 0450. Command, what’s the matter?” The young man’s voice was deep and sensitive, accented with curious dips and rises as he spoke. Any stranger could notice that the man was always deep in thought, gears perpetually grinding in his head. Zibman was a smart man, no less than a genius. His voice cut through the silence like a knife through warm butter, bringing a sort of warmth into the room; as soon as he finished, it was sucked back out. Zibman released the button and waited for a few moments, anticipating a reply. As he waited, he slipped on some clothes from the floor.

Zibman was an engineer aboard his Space Station. It was his job to make sure things ran smoothly. People of his rank were low in the hierarchy of the Space Station, and weren’t granted many permissions. As such Zibman wore only what was necessary for his job, and not the more flashy and gimmicky outfits worn by bridge officers and pilots. Workers staged strikes protesting this all the time, but Zibman felt no way about it. Why should he care if his suit isn’t plated with some sparkly solution? It was practical, and that was what counted. A simple jumpsuit, form-fitting but not tight, was Zibman’s attire of choice. It had purple stripes running down the arms and legs, signifying he was a crewman aboard Space Station L. The rest was standard issue USM garb--a maroon color on the torso, mingling with the purple stripes, and on the hands. There was a funnel-like material that connect the shoulders to the chest, and it was colored a dark grey. The material ensured that the suit had a sort of vacuum on the inside should an engineer ever fly outside the Space Station. Zibman also had a helmet with him, but he never wore it. He was only working inside, anyways.

“--read you, Zibman. Command here. Something in Sub-Level F needs your immediate attention,” A shrill voice, high and penetrating, interrupted Zibman’s thoughts. Zibman recognized the voice as a bridge attendant--a glorified secretary. She was one of the more cantankerous women aboard the Station. “A package, I read. You were sent coordinates. Is anything wrong with these?” The voice asked, condescending and scolding in its tone. Zibman wiped a hand down his face, already annoyed with the day. He checked his PDA to see if there were coordinates alongside the message. Lo and behold, buried behind lines of code and official signatures, there were.

“Zibman here. Coordinates were under tons of items I didn’t care to read, didn’t see them. I’ll get on it. Deadline?” Zibman growled in reply, a tinge of irritation present in his voice. He tugged on some black combat boots and put his belt on. Tools of various purposes hung from it. Hammers, spanners, wrenches, pliers, and items Zibman didn’t even know what to call were all accounted for. Lastly, he picked up a rusty metal toolbox he had since his childhood days on Burox. He checked the insides to make sure the rest of his supplies were there.

“Deadline is now. Get down there and get it for us,” The voice replied, enunciating every single syllable. After that, there was a short tone and silence. Zibman knew this meant that Command had severed communications with him and he was back to his own business. Zibman quickly brushed his teeth and ran some water through his hair, giving it some shine and more or less tidying him up. His stubble would have to stay… there wasn’t any time to shave. First he had to deal with whatever Command wanted.

Sub-Level F was an abandoned complex in Space Station L. It used to serve as a warehouse of sorts, housing guns, ammunition, food, medicine, drugs, and even experimental bio-weapons. Legends passed down from older bridge secretaries said that even humans were put down there at one point, frozen solid for transport from one end of the galaxy to the next. One popular myth was that there was the frozen, technically-alive head of Alexander Quincy down there--but the rebel leader was still alive and made his presence known, blowing that myth out of the water. In any case, Sub-Level F was a legendary, fabled area. Simply being in it at one point cemented your status in the coffee room as a god among men. Zibman felt a flutter in his stomach when he read the coordinates would require him to go down there. He didn’t have respect for Sub-Level F at all; he had fear. An abandoned facility that no one checked or cared about, let alone maintained… it would be falling apart.

Sub-Level F also didn’t have any entrances or exits, offering another complication. Zibman would need to pry his way down there through Sub-Level E’s floor. This would inevitably result in more work for him to do, since he would need to repair the floor after he finished. His meager paycheck wasn’t enough to justify it. He was one of the most brilliant minds in the USM’s belt and instead of being a leading battle strategist he was relegated to being an Engineer. Just a few more credits would be enough for him, a couple hundred or so. In any case, Zibman armed himself with a crowbar before he stepped out of his room.

After finally navigating to a more-or-less abandoned area of Sub-Level E, Zibman began digging. The crowbar slipped in-between the cracks of the tiling, letting him lift it easily. The glue and paste holding it down tore away immediately, and the floor was gone. Zibman repeated the process for four or five more tiles, offering a sizeable hole for him to lower himself into and raise himself out of. He placed a stake into the tile closest to him and tied a 30m length of rope to it, fastening it and making sure it would hold up well enough. He tossed the rope into the hole he had made and looked down, squinting. He couldn’t discern where it landed. There was minimal lighting in Sub-Level F, the only light source being the overhead lights in Sub-Level E filtering down into the hole.Zibman sighed.

He grabbed hold of the rope and began to lower himself down, slowly and steadily. As soon as his foot touched the border between E and F Zibman felt his blood turn to ice. He immediately returned to the surface of Sub-Level E, shaken and confused. The temperature was well below -40°C. He spat down into the hole and saw his spit immediately solidify when it passed the threshold. There was no reason for it to be so cold… heating and cooling had been cut off, yes, but that didn’t constitute such a cold temperature, especially when Sub-Level E was still at a controlled 24°. Zibman thought to himself why it might be such a radical shift. It could have been… no, that was absurd. Zibman decided he needed his helmet for once. His helmet would be necessary to create a climate-controlled vacuum around himself. He could regulate the heat inside his suit so that he would be warm even in the midst of a frozen wasteland. It seemed foolproof.

Zibman returned with a thermos full of scalding coffee and his helmet. The helmet worked as a one-way mirror, obscuring his face to people looking at him but allowing him to see everything in front of him. Zibman thought it was very counterproductive; if an Engineer were working in a warzone, wouldn’t it be a little bit useful to see who was on your squad fixing up your car? The triviality of it all bugged Zibman. The fact such an elite space-faring corporation could be so clueless made him feel like he wasn’t on the right side. At least the ELF, misguided as they were, had logical wardrobe choices. No frilly power armor with ribbons tied to them, no cumbersome arm cannons for every troop. Just plain and simple infantry, shipped out in droves… Zibman returned to the task at hand, shaking his head.

Once again he lowered himself into the hole he had made. He noticed that the coffee inside the thermos had already begun to lose warmth, and rapidly at that. Within a minute the coffee was a bitter cold, and within a minute of that the thermos was frozen beyond use. Zibman felt he was rappelling down for well over 10 minutes, fading into an inky blackness that offered no hospitality. The chill was sharp and cutting. Even with his temperature regulated suit, Zibman felt the frost forming on his fingertips. He would need to hurry and be done with this operation.

The first thing Zibman felt after he had dove into the hole was something hard and blocky beneath his foot. He turned on a flashlight on the side of his helmet and looked down. He was shocked to see that he had in fact stepped on a block of ice that made up the floor in this frigid hellscape. The ice had all sorts of declines and slopes, going down for several meters and going up for almost as many. He strained to see what the ice had overtaken to see that it was actually a mass of garbage bags. The trash inside spilled out from the seams, frozen in place by an icy prison. Zibman shivered; if industrial sludge was able to be swallowed like this, what else was? Even now Zibman noticed a faint green glow emanating from the sheet below him. If he had a Geiger counter it would be ticking.

The second thing Zibman noticed were all manners of ice crystals floating in mid-air around him. Gravity was spotty--sometimes Zibman would be flat on his feet, but other times he would rise a few inches off the ground before abruptly slamming into the ground. This meant that the countless crystals of ice, dislocated from the sheets below his feet and from pipes above him, were constantly floating around, drifting aimlessly. Overdue for a cleaning, Zibman thought bitterly. It was sort of fascinating to see his flashlight reflecting off of millions of tiny dots all around him, broadcasting the lazy white light onto the walls and floors. A couple bumped into his helmet lazily and bounded off, heading for the next collision. Any water that was down here at one point had obviously frozen over; Zibman still needed to find out why, though.

At last, Zibman saw the source of his confusion: The walls of Sub-Level F were broken. The walls had been punctured or torn apart or broken aside, revealing the frigid void of space. A couple of frozen meats and sacks tried to block out the holes, constantly being sucked by the vacuum outside but to no avail. However, even with this makeshift barrier the gravity and temperature could not hold up. Zibman saw it all clearly in his mind. It was rather fascinating from a scientific aspect. How did it manage to contain itself only in this Sub-Level and not spread to the ones above it? Zibman would need to talk to Command about this. A hazard like this, while interesting and unique, did not comply federation guidelines and must be either brought down entirely or fixed up. Zibman breathed a heavy sigh, fogging up the front of his helmet.

He checked his PDA, looking at the coordinates to see how far he was. Roughly four or five hundred yards away, which wasn’t too bad considering the odds. He would rather trudge through that much than a kilometer or two. Zibman hooked up the PDA display to his helmet so he would have a compass to follow as he made his way through the abandoned Sub-Level. With that completed he set off to find this mysterious package. The first step he took he fell down and slid a couple of meters away from where he needed to go. He could tell this was going to be a long trip.

After a long hour of trudging around in the icy landscape before him, guided only by the light from his helmet, he found something that looked a bit out-of-place. His PDA assured him that the coordinates led to this object. Unlike the other piles of refuse around him, this relic was surprisingly clean and, dare he say, pretty. It reeked of USM design. It was sleek and functional, and would fit right in at an art exhibit.

It was a large sphere, roughly 10  feet in diameter. It had 12 segments cut into it, all equidistant from one another. The image was reminiscent of a large orange that had been cut into pieces. The light from Zibman’s flashlight reflected off of the milky ceramic surface, lighting up the surrounding area as the ice crystals reflected the light back. It took Zibman’s breath for a moment, but before too long he was sliding down to the relic. The sooner he got out of that Sub-Level, the sooner he could feel the blood in his hands.

Zibman strode around the outside of the sphere, trying to find some sort of button or lever he could pull to do… well, something. He had no idea what he was trying to do here, but the coordinates led him here and he couldn’t just carry a huge sphere back to Command. As he circled it, he noticed there was something stencilled on the side: JUNE 2696. He had no idea what that meant, of course, so he just let it be. It wasn’t doing any harm, after all!

Finally, Zibman noticed that there was a small terminal just beside the sphere. The machine was offline, no doubt rendered comatose by the intense cold and unstable conditions of the Sub-Level. Sighing, Zibman reached into his toolbelt and grabbed ahold of his nano-wrench. He shot a burst of energy into the screen, electricity crackling through the air. The burst traveled across the surface of the monitor and into all the nooks and crannies present on the machine. After a few moments, Zibman heard the familiar buzz of the monitor coming to life and was bathed in a pale blue light.

There was a single word on the screen which flashed in regular intervals. “DEPRESSURIZE.” Zibman tried to touch the screen, but all the feeling was lost from his fingers. After a few seconds, he finally touched it hard enough to cause the sphere to hiss and emit some smoke… or steam… or something gaseous and white. Zibman turned to face it, awestruck.

After the hissing came to a stop, the 12 segments began to fall away from the center. With heavy thuds, they all landed on the frozen ground to reveal what was hiding inside. A harsh white light flooded the chamber, so intense Zibman had to shield his eyes even while he was inside of his engineer suit. After the light had stopped, Zibman peeled his hands from his helmet--they had been frozen there--and saw the contents of the package.

Zibman was breathless when the smoke cleared. He was expecting a weapon, or maybe some experimental vehicle. He was fully prepared for a foldable hoverbike… but instead, there was a human inside the sphere. A fully armored and armed human. A soldier. Cryogenically preserved in Sub-Level F for who knows how long.

She was a woman, and rather strong-looking, too. She had to be if she was going to be frozen like that. Her armor was unlike anything Zibman had ever seen before. She had two tiny strips of metal on her breasts which barely covered her delicate bits. It didn’t help that she was ridiculously well-endowed, either. There was one more rounded piece of metal on her groin, just between her legs. She was virtually naked. She had a helmet that covered half of her head, a metal half-circle that only exposed the bottom part of her nose and her mouth. He saw glossy purple hair trying to poke out of the helmet, but it was held in place by the cold stasis. Her skin was fair, like Zibman’s, and ice crystals were still melting off of it.

Zibman noticed something else that stopped him dead in his tracks: the woman had a nano-cannon. It was exactly the same as the one that Zibman’s automaton wore so proudly, except scaled down so she could fit her arm into it. After he had gotten over the initial shock, he still had no clue what to do. This Sub-Level was bitterly cold, and it could be ages for her to thaw out of her stasis. He was startled by a sharp crunching noise which came from… her.

Her body shuddered, and sheets of ice slid off of her. Another crunch and her head twisted towards Zibman. He noticed there were three slits on her helmet, all equidistant from one another. Lime-green light filtered out from them, and he felt them focus on him. Another crunch. She rose slowly, the ice and other liquids rolling off of her. She took a small step. Crunch. She raised her nano-cannon slowly, still suffering from the effects of the containment. Crunch. Zibman, horrified, backed away, his legs losing all feeling. He slipped over something--damn it all--and tried to crawl away as the woman came closer.

She bent down. Crunch. Her nano-cannon was online, humming dangerously closely to Zibman’s face. He felt the heat from the supercharged plasma inside. He felt the hatred and anger. Crunch. The woman hoisted him in the air with one hand. She was larger than him even when he was off the ground. Crunch. She tried to move her mouth, but it was still frozen. She brushed her nano-cannon across it, tearing the ice off of her face. Crunch. She exhaled heavily, her breath clouding Zibman’s helmet. Finally, she spoke.

“Who…” She groaned, her voice cracking and rough, “... are you?” She raised the nano-cannon again and opened it slightly, allowing Zibman to see what kinds of danger he was facing. Breathing heavily, Zibman shook his head and struggled to find his words. The woman, angry, slammed him into the ground. Zibman felt all of the air whooshing out of his lungs, the wind knocked out of him. The woman hoisted him even higher this time, his face bumping against the maxiglass in his helmet.

“E--Engineer, First Class, Matthew T. Zibman at your service--” Zibman stammered. “--registry n--number 450-7507-04316!” He placed both of his hands on the woman’s forearm, trying to loosen up her grip. He kicked a bit, but his squirming only served to tire him out.

“... I don’t recognize that number,” the woman spat, “But… now that I think of it…” She put Zibman down, shutting off her nano-cannon. She looked him over again, the young Engineer unsure of what to do. He cowered a bit, trying to look unassuming and non-threatening.

“Wh--what did you think of?” He asked, his teeth clattering.

“You’re dressed in USM gear… I can tell! No one else has such s****y tastes in colors!” The woman let out a laugh, slapping her nano-cannon on the side of her stasis pod. Zibman chuckled weakly, still shaken from the ordeal. “You’re a good sport, you know that?” She slugged Zibman in the arm, sending the young man flying into a nearby wall of ice. He groaned softly as his elbow took the brunt of the impact. The woman looked moderately concerned, but once she saw Zibman squirming around on the floor, she realized everything was okay.

“Okay, first thing’s first--what year is it?” She asked, pulling the Engineer up by the back of his jumpsuit. He dangled in midair, tilting lazily.

“Um… it’s, uh, 2983… right now, it’s August 29th, and the time is 5:07 PM SBT,” Zibman answered. “Why did you need to know?” The woman set him down onto his feet again and brushed him down. Her hands had incredible power and strength to them. It felt unreal…

“Oh, that soon? I’ve been in stasis for a little bit. You could probably tell, since you busted me out of there. Gotta get a grip on my surroundings before anything else, right?” She wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “That leads me to my second question: why’d you open up my pod?” Zibman could hear whirring coming from her helmet, and he realized her eyes were refocusing. Just who was this woman?

“I got orders from Command… come on, let’s get you up there. It’s freezing here and I’m, uh, sure you’re cold there. Why are you dressed--”

“Alright, let’s get going!” The woman slapped Zibman’s back. Before he knew it, he was stuck in another sheet of ice.

After a few hours warming himself back up and showing the strange soldier around the Station, Zibman finally got to Command on Sub-Level A. Along the way, Zibman learned a few things about her.

First of all, she had a staggering taste for alcohol. Along the way, she had stopped at seven different bars to snatch up some cheap booze with her scant credits. Even though she had seven full bottles of beer, she was still completely fine. In fact, Zibman noted that she opened up a bit more and slapped him a lot less. He found it very strange; in all his years, he’d noted that alcohol had the exact opposite effect on his peers.

Second, she had been in stasis for over 200 years. She was placed in the pod in 2696, like the side of the container said. She described that she was in there because the USM no longer had need of her services. She didn’t elaborate on what those services were, but judging from her outfit he had a few ideas…

Speaking of her outfit, Zibman noticed that no one seemed to care that she was a hair’s breadth away from being naked. In fact, whenever anyone would see her, it would seem like she was fully armored. No one pointed out that fact. Zibman thought he might be going crazy, or having a weird dream, but that certainly wasn’t the case. He kept telling June that he had to keep tucking his nano-wrench into its belt since it kept falling out. She saw right through it, but thought it was a good laugh so she let him continue.

Lastly, no matter how hard he would pry, she wouldn’t reveal her name or rank. She would say that Command would let him know once they both got up there. With that, she’d segue into another topic, like how difficult it is to keep track of time when you’re frozen solid.

At last, Zibman opened the vacuum-sealed doors into Command. Sub-Level A was where the bigwigs all sat, typing away at computers and reading endless monitors’ worth of statistics. The first thing Zibman saw when he opened the doors was the reception area. The smooth, grey walls had some paintings and posters on them here and there--all propaganda, of course. USM soldiers liberating alien slaves. Rusted, abandoned power armor on the side of the road. He had seen them so many times he was sick of them. There was a light-blue alien woman behind the counter. No one else was in the reception area; the chairs were all dormant, and it was so quiet Zibman could swear he heard a pin dropping. The tile floor reflected the hazy blue light above them all. The entire scene was a bit depressing.

Once the receptionist noticed Zibman and his friend, she gasped. She got up immediately and came from behind the counter, her antennae shaking around wildly. Her green eyes were fixated on the woman behind Zibman. She pressed a few buttons on her wrist PDA, all the while her gaze stuck on the woman. Zibman noticed that there was a flush of dark blue on her face. She began to breathe somewhat heavily.

“Hello, dear,” the soldier began, “Could you please point me to the Director? I need to have a word with him.” There was a small smile on her lips as she spoke. Her voice put Zibman at ease somehow… even though she had just tried to smack the daylights out of him a few hours earlier. Some sort of strange property…

“O--of course! H--he’s just o--over there!” This sentence was accentuated with a hand pointing to the left, and then quickly shifting to the right. “I’m so sorry… He’s, uh, the first door to the r--right… I’m so sorry…” The receptionist looked down, shaking. What the hell? Zibman thought, putting a hand on his chin.

“Thank you so much, dear!” The soldier gave the alien a wide smile and opened the door to the Director’s office without so much as a knock. A vacuum seal appeared on the doorway, muffling all sound from inside the office. Zibman was left alone with an incredibly-nervous alien receptionist. Trying to make some sense of the situation, Zibman read her nametag--Sharda--and tried his hand at what the woman did.

“Hello, dear,” Zibman started, then abruptly stopped. His voice wasn’t nearly as reassuring as the other woman’s. He put a hand on his forehead, shaking it softly, then started again, “Hello, Sharda. I’m Matthew Zibman, Engineer First Class. I’d like to know just what in the world is going on here?” He stuck out his hand in a display of standard USM etiquette. Sharda grabbed his hand weakly and gave it a tiny shake.

“I… oh goodness, by Xor, I’ve never… Zibman, do you know who that is?” Sharda’s voice quivered here and there. It sounded as if she was going to cry. Zibman narrowed his eyes and shook his head. To make sure his point got to her, he crossed his arms in front of his chest, awaiting a response. “That’s… she--”

Before Sharda could finish her response, the door to the Director’s office busted open. There stood the woman, grinning ear-to-ear. She had some new gear: some purple boots, standard issue USM models; a newer model of nano-cannon, humming ominously; and lastly a new helmet. This helmet had some prongs on the sides which served to protect her head more, but her mouth and chin were still just as visible. Her body armor--or lack thereof--was still the same. She took a step towards Zibman, opening her mouth to tell Zibman something, but she was interrupted by an intercom that had the Director’s distinctly wet, gravelly voice.

“Matthew Zibman, the soldier in front of you is June. You are to introduce her to the Space Station and reintegrate her into the USM society. She will be receiving her own fireteam in two weeks. Until then, she is your responsibility.” Just as quickly as it began, it cut out.

“Matthew Zibman…” The soldier stuck out her hand, “... my name is Agent June, and I am a Calendar Operative.”

Author's Note

Since this is the prologue, I wanted to leave some things unexplained for later. What did you think of the story? Was the dialogue okay?
Thank you for reading!