Free Syberian Sunrise by S. A. Lusher Page A

We were thrown in a big transport vessel and shipped halfway across the galaxy. We got here. It doesn't look like much from the surface...” Ramirez paused.
    Enzo did as well. They both stopped climbing. A sound came echoing up to them...or was it down? Enzo looked in both directions, but could see nothing. Of course, the light inside the shaft was emergency red, hazy and offered little in the way of actual visibility. Could any of those things climb? He didn't rule it out.
    “Guess it was nothing,” Ramirez murmured, resuming his climb.
    “What is it on the surface? I imagine they didn't make it too obvious,” Enzo replied.
    “They didn't. There's a weather station on top, converted from an old mining complex. That's how they found it. The miners dug into on accident. The operation was shut down when the Galactic Alliance stepped in. This is all stuff I've pieced together myself from rumors and the occasional actual report I've managed to dig up. The planet, Syberia, was originally colonized by the Russians. But the Americans wanted it, too, and they made a deal. Set up the mine and a few other settlements. So, naturally, they find fucking Cyr tech on the planet.”
    Enzo knew that talk of Russian and Americans might confuse the younger generations, or even the less investigative civilians, because technically, every nation and country had been united into the Galactic Alliance almost a hundred years ago, and most colonies tended to be very multicultural. But he also knew that, to a certain degree, the larger countries, (the ones that hadn't been absorbed by other, more powerful nations down the centuries), still remained intact and independent. Maybe he was just sensitive to the fact because of what had happened to him in his own military career. He turned bitterly from that thought.
    “So they closed down the mine?” Enzo asked.
    “Yeah, shut it down, created false documents saying that the original scans of the planet had been incorrect due to faulty equipment and that the operation was a bust. They set up a basic weather station over it as a cover, slipped in all the parts and pieces to build this facility over the next month,” Ramirez continued.
    “This is a big facility.”
    “It is. Dark Ops works fast. There could be more to it, but that's all I know. We pulled a lot of guard duty, just patrolling around. Not in Level Six or Five, though. They wouldn't let us down there. What I think was going on was Dark Ops was put in charge of figuring out how to work the spacecraft, and found the things inside of it and started doing experiments. The GA sent the Marines for 'extra protection' because they didn't fully trust Dark Ops. And what we ended up with was one gigantic clusterfuck,” Ramirez explained.
    He stopped as they finally came to the top of the shaft. Enzo watched the young soldier disappear up over the lip of the holding area where the elevator normally would have resided. Ramirez turned and offered Enzo a hand, he stared at it for a moment, then reluctantly took it and allowed himself to be hauled up.
    “Who's left?” Enzo asked.
    “I don't really know. The girl in the command center, me and my CO and two other soldiers, and some Dark Ops guys, I think. Other than that...” he shrugged.
    “What actually happened?” Enzo asked.
    They moved carefully along the metal outcropping that lined the interior of the elevator shaft, over to the doors that would admit them access. They were open, having been previously forced that way by Ramirez on the way down.
    “I'm not sure I'm the guy to tell you that. There was an explosion, something fell over, hit me on the head, knocked me out. By the time I woke up, everything had kind of already happened,” Ramirez replied, stepping through the door.
    “Do you at least know how long you were out?”
    “About a day.”
    “This all happened in a day ?”
    “I guess so, come on.”
    Enzo stepped through as well. They'd come to a small reception area, bare