by
A remote resource planet. A mysterious illness. And a rescue team frighteningly out of their depth.
It was supposed to have been an easy job: go in, kidnap or kill his mark, get out. Shine's done plenty of jobs like this before, no problem. But when it all goes suddenly wrong, he has only one option left to save his skin.
He finds himself an unwilling volunteer on a medical mission to a remote resource planet. It sent in a distress call a week earlier, and then promptly went silent. No one knows why, and no one can contact them to find out. And, Shine is increasingly beginning to realize, every person on this mission is politically unimportant--a perfect crew of disposables. Their mission is to go in and figure out what happened, and save whoever they can. But he's smart enough to realize that anything that could cause an entire mining colony to go silent is probably not something accustomed to leaving its victims alive. And after meeting the rest of the crew, he's not sure that they're any safer than what's waiting for him out on the planet ...
Set in the world of The Devil and the Dark, Inhuman is the first book in R.M. Olson's gripping new space-horror series, The Dark Between Stars.
- 1 To Be Read list
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Tropes: Band of Misfits, Becoming a Monster, Enemy to Ally, Found Family, FTL, Hunted, Interstellar Travel, Person in Distress, Reluctant Hero, Space Medicine
Word Count: 89000
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Continuous / Same Characters
Tropes: Band of Misfits, Becoming a Monster, Enemy to Ally, Found Family, FTL, Hunted, Interstellar Travel, Person in Distress, Reluctant Hero, Space Medicine
Word Count: 89000
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Continuous / Same Characters
Prologue
The shadows from the trees outside the dark room caused the brilliant white light from the small artificial candle to jump and sway oddly, frail and feeble. Cyril Robbesen glanced quickly around the room, trying to slow his pounding heart, then turned back to the message he was painstakingly copying out at his small worktable. From the rows of cots behind him, he could hear the harsh, laboured breathing of the sick.
There were so many sick. That’s why he’d called back two days earlier to ask for assistance. He was only a general practitioner, accustomed to dealing with the normal injuries one saw on a resource planet—broken bones from falls in the mine, fever from bad air, scurvy if someone hadn’t been diligent in taking their vitamin rations.
But this…Whatever they’d unearthed from the latest mining operation was something entirely new.
READ MOREIt had only been three weeks, and already there were so many sick that the mine was struggling to function. The cots in the clinic had filled up, and more cots were lining the hallways. The afflicted all showed similar symptoms, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t seem to find anything that would help.
It wasn’t unusual for something to go wrong on a new resource planet—for some odd zoonotic or atmospheric disease to run through a camp, leaving death in its wake. But he’d never seen something move quite as fast as this. And so, he’d called in with the desperate hope that someone, somewhere, would know more than he did. That he wouldn’t be doomed to watch his patients die one after another after another.
The shadows flickered again, and again, Cyril’s head jerked up. The wind outside had picked up, and it rattled eerily along the roof, knocking a thin piece of a broken-off eave against the walls of the clinic.
A week ago, he’d have already been home in his small, cozy hut, tucked into his cot, perhaps reading a novel on his comms pad. Maybe if he was feeling particularly diligent, he’d be going over the latest infectious disease reports.
Now, he didn’t dare leave the clinic for more than a couple of hours of stolen rest.
At least they didn’t have to deal with ghosts. At least there was that. The mining corporation had thoroughly vetted the workers, and the planet was close enough from the Level that they could be sent here on a ship that travelled carefully just under the speed of light. The corporation had reason to be thorough; one person turning ghost could wipe out an entire colony, and he, as the doctor to the dying, would be the first killed.
No, this wasn’t ghosts, thank God.
This was something else.
Possibly, something worse.
He rubbed his hands across his face, closing his eyes for just a moment. He was so tired. A week with no sleep would do that to someone, even with the amphetamine tablets, meant for use in emergencies only, that he was taking every few hours now.
He managed a small, rueful smile. Back in the Medical Academy, they would have been horrified. They would have sat him down and explained that taking amphetamine tablets for more than three days consecutively would put an unhealthy amount of strain on his body, affect his judgement. They’d have been exactly right.
But in the Medical Academy, they’d never told him that sometimes, you took the chance on affected judgement, or you let your patients die.
Still, he would have much preferred to have the clarity of mind to be certain, without a doubt, that what he was about to do was the right thing. He would have much preferred to have at least one full night of sleep before making a decision that could mean the lives of everyone in the mining colony. But…
He glanced down at his half-drafted note, unease tightening his stomach.
He’d scrawled it out in his own messy handwriting on a sheet of paper—a quaint, old-fashioned type of communication, he would have thought once, back at home on the Level. Now, handwriting on paper was almost as natural as breathing. And above the handwritten note, halfway finished, the translation into the series of dots and dashes that would convey his message in spacer’s code.
“Rescind previous message stop. Do not send medical assistance until we have further information stop. Potential to put lives at risk stop. Send military backup stop.”
His head ached dully from exhaustion, and his hands were shaking a little as he copied the next word of the note into dots and dashes.
COLLAPSE
