Chapter 17: Secundus

There was very little gravity on the small moon, so Dane spend most of the time floating around the passenger transit area. For a few hours he was the only person waiting for the next elevator, which was on its way up. There were much more activity on the level below the passenger transit lounge. A few commercial shuttles arrived and unloaded cargo on the lower level.

Then the regular navy shuttle arrived, and half a dozen navy personnel floated into the lounge area, among them some nobleman and his assistant. Dane figured out it was a nobleman because of a medallion hanging very prominently on a three-colored ribbon around his neck and the assistant was carrying all their hand luggage.

It was mid-morning, local time when the elevator finally arrived. A group of four men, who looked like miners, got out and left. The passenger lounge on the elevator was empty and with the pressure doors standing wide open, so they went aboard. The only other passengers were two businessmen and a family consisting of a man, three females aged between sixteen and thirty, and four younger kids. They could feel and also see a lot of activity below them, one floor down, as large quantities of cargo got loaded into the lower level of the elevator. Half an hour later, the pressure doors closed, and they started down the cable.

The elevator started very slowly. The four kids were playing around in the middle of the lounge when they found themselves drifting up to the ceiling. They didn’t really panic but quickly pushed off in an attempt to get back to their parents. That didn’t quite work out, so they made their way to the nearest hand bar, a pipe connecting the floor and ceiling. Then they could pull themselves down the pipe. From the way the kids worked their way down to the floor, he got the impression that they felt as if they had to climb up to the floor.

The trip down to the planet took eight hours. The lower the elevator got, the higher the gravity, as their orbital speed decreased. It was actually a very gentle way of slowing down from orbiting the planet at thirty thousand kilometers an hour to zero. They finally were low enough to make out the features of the lower station, where the bottom of the cable was anchored to valley on the highest mountain at the equator, at three thousand meters above the planet’s sea level. Unsurprising, the bottom terminal was called Table Bottom.

They walked out of the elevator into a large, covered hallway/arrivals/departure terminal with a number of small food and curio stalls around. Outside the high windows they could see the mountains around the terminal was under a layer of snow. The nobleman and his assistant headed straight for a transit counter, with the family and Dane following. At least it seemed as if the others knew where to go.

“Baron Tindale, your party has been booked into a suite in the Majestic hotel in Dawson City,” the girl behind the counter said after she sent the family on their way. “A monorail shuttle, with number 1121 will arrive shortly. It will take you straight to the Dawson central terminal which is across the plaza from the hotel.”

“Can I help you sergeant?” The girl asked when he came to the front.

“I have been ordered to report to the Second Imperial Marine Battalion outside Dawson City.” Dane said.

“You can take the same shuttle that the family of eight is taking,” the girl said as she started typing on her keyboard. “Shuttle number 4249. It will drop you off at the base entrance. The marine base will be the second stop.”

Dane again followed the others as they made their way down a level to the monorail terminal. Two other shuttles arrived with different numbers with both having passengers getting off. Then number 4349 pulled in, followed on its tail by shuttle 1121.

Dane kept to himself, and, while the four kids seemed quite curious about him, the three older females kept the kids under control. The man seemed to hover around the three females in a very protective manner, even glaring at the two younger females when they ogled Dane and started whispering to each other. Dane was watching them in the reflection in the window so to not embarrass them.

Once the shuttle was off the mountain, they zipped through short tunnels and large forests. Dane didn’t see any human habitation for a long time, until the shuttle raced at high speed past a large bay with long sandy beaches towards another headland several kilometers ahead of them. The shuttle didn’t slow down as they passed a few small settlements on the beach.

Many hours after leaving the elevator terminal, the shuttle entered a tunnel. For the next half hour, it was pitch-black outside the shuttle, until it suddenly entered a rail terminal with large numbers of people rushing around. There were a number of other rail lines with other shuttles arriving, departing, or being loaded or unloaded.

Dane stayed seated as the family exited the shuttle, with the one preteen girl giving Dane a cute wave before she followed her parents. One of the other ladies also glanced at him and then blushed before she followed the man.

Once the family was out of the shuttle, the door closed, and it moved off again, back into the dark tunnel. When it again surfaces, about twenty minutes later, it slowed down and came to a stop at a small terminal in the countryside. Dane grabbed his duffel bag and go off.

In front of the terminal was a paved plaza with a large imposing stone-arch gate on the far side of the plaza. Dane instantly knew where he was because of the name cut into the stone above the huge gate. ‘Second Imperial Marine Battalion’ and below it, ‘Home of the Imperial Guard’. The gate was standing open, with a corporal in a small shelter and two PFCs on either side of the gate. All three of them looked very bored.

“Sergeant Dane Galan, reporting to the XO of the Second Imperial Marine Battalion,” Dane announced when the corporal stood and looked at him expectantly.

“Welcome to the Second, sergeant,” the corporal said as his eyes lingered for a while on Dane’s ranger badge. “Grant, come here!” the corporal shouted towards an open doorway nearby. Seconds later another PFC came out. “Escort the sergeant to Major Thompson’s office.”

“Yes, Corporal,” the PFC said as he tried to examine Dane without staring.

The XO’s office was quite close by, but Dane still had a glimpse of the base. All the buildings were stone and consisted of single-story structures with patios. The headquarters building was the only double-story building around and that was where Dane was escorted. After leaving Dane in the care of an older, as in around his thirties, corporal, the PFC left while the corporal told Dane to have a seat.

“Galan, we received notification that you are coming but nothing was said about why,” the major said when Dane finally got shown into his office. “There is a new ranger class currently in progress. I assume ranger command would have told you if you are to join their instructor group. Other than what I just told you, we know nothing more, nor do I have any idea what to do with you now.”

“I was told to get to Secundus, major,” Dane said. “I received no other notification.”

“I guess you can get in contact with the other rangers, in case they have something for you to do,” the major said. “In the meantime, you can grab a bunk in the NCO barracks. Come show your face here once a week, let the corporal know you are still around. If you have civilian clothes with you, you can wear that to go explore the city. When you do that, stay away from brawls and don’t get drunk.”

Dane went back to the corporal and was fetched by a sergeant of the quartermaster’s section who took Dane to the NCOs barracks. The barracks was a large single-story structure built in a hollow square with a well-kept garden in the middle. Dane also got a small room with a single bed and a hand basin. He still had to use the communal showers and toilets down the hallway. The mess hall was in the front of the building with meals being delivered from a central kitchen a few steps away. The sergeant showed Dane where to do his laundry and also where the base pool was located. Then Dane was left alone.

After supper, and with nothing else to do, Dane retrieved any messages addressed to him. There were a bunch of them. A quick scan told him that all the females back in the Kuiper system have written to him. They all said basically the same thing, that they miss him, they were settling down somewhat, and that he had better come back, or at least come and fetch them if he is sent somewhere else. Those messages were all written within a couple of weeks of Dane leaving the Kuiper system.

Dina’s first message was basically the same, but she wrote more recently as well saying that they are still missing him, but the females started going on with their lives. The entire group has been moved to the planet’s surface where they lived in a dome. While the men mostly left them alone, the females started working with various work teams. As they settled in, some women started getting attention from the men. From the way they reacted to the men, Dina was expecting to have her group grow smaller as the women overcome their fear started attaching themselves to those men. Dina didn’t say it outright, but Dane got the idea that she and Katy have formed a new core family and was still hoping that he could come back and claim them.

The real surprise was two short messages from Tina and Erin, hoping they got to meet up with him again even if they would most likely never be more than friends. Dane spent the rest of the evening replying to all the females in his life, and promising to write more about his travels.

Dane was woken up by a bugle calling Reveille. Since he was used to getting up at the crack of dawn, he got up and found a platoon of marines getting ready for morning exercises. Dane kept his distance but ran with them once their instructors arrived.

Dane quickly settled down in a predictable routine. He kept exercising with whatever platoon was around each morning, and even became acquainted with the instructors since he shared the NCO barracks with them.

Dane always had tutors, not because he was special, but because the viscount’s other kids had the same tutors. It was just not done to have the children of a viscount attend normal school. Being tutor-taught meant they studied at their own pace. Dane only figured out that he was ahead of his peer group by age fourteen when the viscount called him in and told him to slow down, he was too young to finish high school. He assumed the tutors told the viscount. After that he kept his studied to himself while officially did what the tutors told him to do. By the time he got exiled, he already wrote the final exams to complete high school but have not received the final results yet.

Being on Secundus, where all study material were instantly available, meant Dane was reading and studying all kinds of stuff he could not do in the past. In the past he had to request material on a topic and then wait weeks for the material to work its way across the cluster net to Sagan. He spent most of his mornings after breakfast in the base library reading up various topics such as space flight, general science and math, military history, engineering. All topics he would have liked to study if he didn’t get exiled.

For the first few afternoons Dane goofed off, but then he got bored and decided to buy himself some civilian clothes. There were no clothing stores on the base, but he found out where to go, a small town within five minutes with the rail shuttle where they didn’t mind a bunch of marines wandering around the streets.

With two sets of civilian clothing, extra shirts, and a new pair of shoes, Dane started taking the shuttle to the city once a week. He could go more often but that involved scheduling a shuttle, and getting tangled up in the system since he was not on official duty where he needed transport. It was easier to tag along on the scheduled midweek noon shuttle, taken by anybody going to the city, and bring them back again that evening. That happened three times a week, except on weekends the shuttle did the same trip on both days. The marines could either return that evening after supper, or stay the night in the city and return at noon the next day.

On Dane’s first excursion to the city, he spent a few hours wandering around the seaside city, admiring the scenery and the people. That afternoon, he was on the beach, admiring the circular pyramid structure built from lime stone and reaching ten stories high. The structure was not quite on the beach but set back a few hundred yards with public gardens and walkways between the high ring wall and beach. Dane noticed a lot of security cameras. Being the most imposing building in Dawson City even if there were other regular structures of the same height around, Dane assumed it was the famed Imperial Palace.

The day before the weekend, Dane reported to the XO’s clerk, the old corporal, who make note of Dane reporting in. He asked the corporal about the whereabouts of the supposed ranger training class, but the corporal had no idea. He later got a message from the corporal stating that the ranger class were in space getting certified in advanced jetpack training.

For another week nothing more happened. Dane followed his usual pattern of activities and explored the city when he could, or the nearby countryside on other days. He knew that the base was being used for a variety of different types of marine training, mostly boot camp and specialist training for the Pleiades Prime system and other nearby systems like the Saturn system.

It was the Day-Five, the day before the weekend, and Dane had gone for a walk in the nearby forest. He initially headed towards the town and then decided to explore the forest. After wandering around for a while, he realized that his presence resulted in the birds and small wildlife in the forest to go quiet when he got close.

On the spur of the moment, he tried to move in such a way that he didn’t disturb the wildlife. Moving careful was an important part of a ranger’s abilities, but was not something learned from books or a classroom. What Dane knew about stealthy movement he learned from Gunny Gusto.

Once Dane started moving ‘with the forest’, as Gunny Gusto kept saying, he noticed he could get quite close to some birds with them ignoring him. They were aware of his presence but seemed less alarmed as they started making their regular noises again. He was practicing moving quietly when he again became aware of an area of silence which was not centered around him, so he stopped and waited a while. The silence persisted, and seemed to be located in front of him. He decided to locate the source of the disturbance.

Since it was daytime, Dane had to move much slower. He was wearing his fatigues which provided a fair amount of camouflage but only when he was not moving. It took a while to find the source of the silence. He encountered five marines forming a cone-shaped ambush. They were facing away from him and seemed to be waiting for somebody.