The Terran Representative by Angus Monarch Read Free Book Online Page B

us, but I still told my suit to scan for anything dangerous. “Do you know where we’re going?”
    Dell gave me a small nudge and motioned with his head. “Ahead,” he said.
    We plodded down the hallway in silence. The hallway was only wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, but Dell kept as much distance between him and me as he could. If I moved a step closer to him he moved a step away from me. “You don’t trust me?” I said after we’d walked in an awkward silence for a good ten minutes.
    “Precaution,” said Dell. “Terrans aren’t the first race to lose their minds when they get into space.”
    We arrived at a closed door. Neither one of us made a move to open the door. Dell pointed at the hatch wheel. “Open it up,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
    I sighed and gripped the wheel. No alerts came up. My suit groaned along with me as the wheel turned with hesitation, but I managed to open the door and push it inwards. My muscles ached and felt like they were on fire. I stepped across the threshold, caught my toe and stumbled.
    A beam of light grazed over my shoulder and hit the doorframe. It sparked and blackened the metal. I tried to move backwards, back through the door, but Dell pushed me forward, and I sprawled face first onto the floor. Another beam of light flashed over my head. Even through my suit I felt the heat of the laser just missing me.
    Dell fired three times from his suit’s arm cannon into a far corner. A smoldering piece of slag fell from the ceiling onto the ground. It glowed orange and lit up the walls around it.
    I had to remind myself to breathe. My palms were sweaty and my heartbeat raced. I wanted to jump up and run.
    “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
    Dell looked down at me. He took a step over the threshold and into the room. “You’re fine.”
    “Fine,” I muttered, pushing myself up and dusting myself off. “I’m fine. I bet if I checked a mirror there’d be a scorch mark on my helmet.”
    “The calibration was off,” said Dell. “If it was going to hit you it’d have hit you on the first shot. Besides, you should have checked for it in the first place.
    I muttered to myself as we continued our trek. Dell was the professional on this. He and Wards were supposed to take care of our security. I’d only been brought along to act as a liaison if we found anyone. I wasn’t trained for this type of situation.
    We encountered three more mounted lasers and five trip wires attached to explosives. None of them seemed to be particularly well placed or well maintained. Lasers, like the first one, weren’t calibrated or weren’t aimed well. The trip wires were snaked across the floor. One would have had to be dragging their feet to get caught up in them. Everything seemed to be installed by someone distracted or without know-how.
    Dell and I reached an airlock and stepped inside. A red light began to blink at us when the door closed. My suit alerted me that atmosphere began to fill the chamber. We stood in silence. I glanced over at Dell, but he concentrated on something else. Soon the red light blinked off and a green one turned on. A chime sounded, and the opposite door opened.
    We stepped into the habitable area. The lighting was less harsh, and the walls were painted a light blue. Rows of empty planters lined the walls. My suit read the atmosphere as being the same as Earth’s. I thought it was a good sign. Dell gritted his teeth and gave a throaty hiss.
    The hallway widened, and we walked without talking. In the atmosphere our boots clanked on the metal grating. It didn’t take long to forget about the lack of outside sounds when I was locked down in my suit in the vacuum. Everything came internally: radio chatter, the rasp of my breathing, the thump of my heartbeat. In atmosphere, sounds leaked through my helmet. Even filtered I could hear the going on around me: hiss of pipes, rattle of vents, pounding of boots.
    When we came to junctions, I