Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

Regardless of what the scopes said or what story the intel told, every marine knew that one of the most dangerous parts of an operation was opening a door.

After a tense minute where the pair were fully prepared to get shot at, they relaxed.

“All clear.”

“We’re clear Skipper!”

The others filed out of the pod and onto the ground, Kyle and Bunny taking a second to orient themselves on the very real planet with its very real gravity while the marines with the inner-ear implants didn’t even notice the difference.

The ground was an unhealthy looking yellowy-green, with an equally unhealthy looking yellow haze hanging over everything; assorted piles of garbage were piled as far as the eye could see. The drone-operated waste haulers weren’t picky; they swooped down on designated planets and dropped their hatches without even landing.

Gone were the days of local landfills and recycling campaigns. With the whole galaxy open to them humanity had theoretically unlimited resources, with consumption and commerce driving the push into the unknown.

But coming out of slipspace in a busy sector only to smack into someone else’s junk got old quick, so extremely stringent laws were enacted to prevent illegal dumping into the vacuum of space within so-called civilized sectors. Kentis IV was one of many designated trash planets.

“Okay, you know your jobs people.” Donnie gestured sharply in two different directions for the other two teams, and once they were on their way she looked to Bunny; “Come on frisky kitty, you’re with me. You do the sniffing, I do the shooting. Got it?”

The poor girl was all but vibrating out of her suit at the exhilaration of the rapid drop and the excitement of being given orders.

“Yup! I mean, Skipper! Wait, no that’s not right. Aye! Clear! Kyle’s baby! Army! Aaah!”

Donnie chuckled through the coms at the overly-stimulated girl.

Back in the service there would be no way she would ever be allowed off the ship, or on it in the first place really. But that was another life, and the fact was she had more experience as a scrapper than Donnie, even if she did tend to see the best in people that the cynical marine would sooner shoot between the ears.

When you’re wielding a gun as big as hers, it’s between the ears, the eyes would just be in the way.

She indicated a direction opposite the other teams with the tip of her shotgun.

“This is us, unless that thing is beeping to go somewhere else?”

Bunny took a moment to examine the readings on her sniffer.

The device looked like nothing more than a ceramic coated metal rod with a handle and a little screen, Donnie didn’t know the science behind it, but the ingenious little gizmos could detect radioactive particles like iridium with more accuracy than even the ship’s sensors could.

“Nope, not getting anything but our Pixie yet, sorry.”

“Okay, I’m in front. You follow behind me doing your thing.”

“Okee-dokee!”

For the next hour they picked their way carefully through the piles of scrap and garbage, until they were several hundred metres out from the ship. They had since lost coms with the other teams, though they could still hear Eniella on the ship loud and clear.

“Bunny? Have you gotten any readings at all?”

The cat-girl swept her device back and forth, her eyes flicking from the screen to the junk at her feet to be sure of her footing.

“Nope! Sorry army-lady!” She chirped.

Donnie groaned.

“Do me a favour kitty, stop calling me army, it’s insulting.”

“What? Why? I thought you were all in the army!”

“The army? What army?” The captain chuckled; “We were zero-G marines, sweety.”

She could almost hear Bunny thinking over the coms.

“Okay, so what’s the difference?” She finally asked.

“Armies are made up of fat idiots that live dirtside. They fight on the surface of planets against other fat idiots on planets, usually over who owns what part of said planet. Might as well be a two dimensional field they’re farting around on compared to what we do. Zero-G marines are trained to fight wherever we need to: on planets, off planets, or skipping from one micro-asteroid to another while the wreckage of enemy ships rains down all around you. We don’t have the luxury of two dimensional fields. We have to fight in every dimension, usually while spinning around in vacuum and bleeding internally.”

All the while as she spoke she was scanning their surroundings, her shotgun lowered, but at the ready.

“If you say so I suppose.”

Bunny still sounded uncertain so Donnie elaborated.

“The main difference is situational awareness baby. Kind of like how I’ve been keeping my eye on that ugly ass scrap-hawk that’s been eyeballing that rotten diaper to your nine o’clock.”

The veteran marine was looking in the opposite direction of what she was describing.

Bunny’s tail puffed up in the confines of her suit and she meowed in panic while her head snapped to her left.

Once she spotted the bird in question though she relaxed quickly.

“You scared me! That’s not a scrap-hawk silly! That’s just a cute little birdy!”

“Oh?” Donnie puzzled as she sized up the ugly-ass bird again, thing looked like a plucked turkey had a baby with a rat; “I thought Kyle called them scrap-hawks? He said they were dangerous.”

Bunny nodded emphatically, though it looked a bit odd as her suit was too big and her helmet didn’t move along with the face inside.

“Scrap-hawks are super dangerous! But they’re also enormous. Don’t worry, I know what they look like!”

“Good to know. Still nothing on the sniffer?”

“Nope!” Bunny said cheerfully; “It’s all part of the scrap heap adventure! We could look for weeks without finding anything! Then bam! Big shiny starship part and hubby is buying me salmon steaks!”

Donnie’s coms crackled to life