Drifting to an Alien Planet for a Slow Life After a Mutual Kill with the Enemy - Chapter 1

The tactical clock on the ship chimed for the third and final time, and the Constant Regulator Light bled from a stark white into a deep, unsettling blue. That blue glow spread rapidly, chasing itself down the maintenance grooves of the bulkhead, casting cold reflections across the polished metal. With a slight jolt, the lift platform stopped, its door snapping open like a sudden, mechanical pupil.
Reflected in the platform’s surface was the face of the man who stepped out: young, but harshly defined, his features carved clean, as if measured with a straightedge. His short hair was pasted to his skull, and a fine line of sweat beaded at his hairline. His grey-blue eyes looked even colder under the spectral blue light.
He wasn’t old enough to be shunted to a desk job, nor was he the soft, green recruit type; he was perfectly positioned to be pushed straight to the front. A technician once joked he looked exactly like the ideal soldier on the recruitment posters. He just smiled, keeping the bitter truth to himself: (The posters don’t show the ones who die out here.)
The technician threw him a casual salute as he exited: “LYS-23, the main hangar vent is quiet today. That’s a good sign. Your luck’s got to turn around.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it, my dear MNT-042,” LYS-23 replied with a polite, flat nod. His voice was steady, like a recording. He knew he sounded like he was reciting procedure, but that neutral tone was the one that worried people the least.
He paused just off the platform for one last moment, letting his gaze settle on the ANTA-UR-N-07 Humanoid Combat Unit—its frame a gleaming silver-white, etched with blue energy markings like frozen lightning. The E-core in its chest pulsed steadily between the metallic ribs. It was the most familiar, constant heartbeat he knew in this whole vessel.
The medic approached, the scanner wand tracing a line across his neck. “Heart rate stable. Stress levels… three percent lower than last time. That’s a personal best.”
“Come on, Sir, saying things like that before a deployment makes it sound like I’m trying to shirk off,” LYS-23 managed a wry smile. “It’s a fight, not a holiday.”
The medic chuckled, stepping back beyond the safety barrier.
He ran a final check of his seal suit, his fingers snagging momentarily on the old scar etching his palm—not a trophy, just a reminder of one moment when his reaction had lagged. Every scar was a merit badge, at least for those servicemen who managed to crawl out alive.
Somehow, he had become the last one left from his entire cohort. He felt his ultimate goal drawing nearer, but every muster call was a brutal reminder that death, a constant shadow, was closing in faster.
“Pilot LYS-23.” The ANTA-UR-N-07’s synthetic voice, a cool, stable baritone designed to statistically minimize panic, cut into the comms. “External checks complete. Cockpit environment ready.”
“Confirmed.” He clasped the Neural Resonance Interface behind his head, and a familiar stream of data parameters flooded the edge of his visor.
“What’s on the docket today?” he asked.
“Target zone U–13. Parameters locked. Operational window 300 seconds. Threat Level: Red,” Uranus responded.
Three hundred seconds now, he thought, the number of a sour pill held under his tongue, neither swallowed nor spat out. Three hundred seconds sounded promising, like a guarantee; the only trouble was that it kept shrinking.
The technicians cleared the bay, and the safety lights switched sequentially to blue. A blast of wind surged in from the pressure seal, carrying the smell of chilled metal and fresh fireproofing. Someone gave him a quick thumbs-up; he answered with the brief, ritualistic salute of a fist to his breastplate. He’d trained himself not to worry about others, and he rarely let himself have the time to worry about himself. Tune the body to the right frequency, keep the mind focused only on the job—that was his secret to surviving this long.
The moment the hatch slammed shut, the world became a perfectly rounded darkness, and the blue glyphs of power flared up around him.
“Pilot, initiating synchronization.”
“Initiate.”
A cold, needle-sharp jolt swept through the back of his neck as he became one with the cockpit of ANTA-UR-N-07—the power spine’s thrust curve, the dampening of the arm servos, the phase of the anti-gravity nodes at the ankles, and even his own slightly rebellious heart, were all pulled into one single, regular rhythm.
The ship’s launch bay doors split open, and the ink-black void of the battlefield waited. Lysander forced his breathing back into the practiced frequency, his voice perfectly even: “ANTA-UR-N-07, lock down the target.”
“Target locked.”
“Then let’s go finish the job.”
The unit was blasted forward by its thrusters. He, too, locked away the very last thought of anything personal behind the quickly sealing door seams behind him. He needed to believe that his doubts were wrong—and if they weren’t, then the blue light would prove it. At least for today, he was still aligned with the mission, and still loyal to the Federation.
Humanoid Combat Unit ANTA-UR-N-07 stepped out into space, detaching from the mother ship’s hull alongside a host of other various combat units. The fleet’s massive outline was like a circling fortress, its array lights burning steadily; he knew that behind every one of those lights was a serviceman just like him—fighting for the continued survival of humanity.