Last Stand: GALCOM Universe, #4

By Linda Maye Adams

A deadly attack cripples a space station. The officers are dead. The environmental systems failing.

Colonel Eric Graul might be the crew's last chance. But in quarantine and sick from a contagious disease, the odds are stacked against him.

Facing threats from all quarters, he must make a last stand with time running out.

A pulse-pounding new adventure in the GALCOM Universe series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Maye Adams
• Release date: Jan 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386152620

Linda Maye Adams

Linda Maye Adams is published in Kevin J. Anderson’s anthology Monsters, Movies, & Mayhem.  She is the author of the military-based GALCOM Universe series, including the novel Crying Planet, featured in the 2018 Military Science Fiction StoryBundle, and is working on a superhero novel. 

Book preview

Book Description

A deadly attack cripples a space station. The officers are dead. The environmental systems failing.

Colonel Eric Graul might be the crew’s last chance. But in quarantine and sick from a contagious disease, the odds are stacked against him.

Facing threats from all quarters, he must make a last stand with time running out.

A pulse-pounding new adventure in the GALCOM Universe series.

Praise for Linda Maye Adams

Linda Maye Adams’s especially delightful ‘Alien Pizza’ features friendly aliens so enamored with low-budget monster movies that they make one of their own.–Publisher’s Weekly

Mask Pretty: Writers of the Future Silver Honorable Mention

Teddy Bear Man: Writers of the Future Silver Honorable Mention

Magic of Her Heart, Writers of the Future Honorable Mention.

Ticket to a Spaceship, Writers of the Future Honorable Mention.

Family Places: Writers of the Future Honorable Mention

Vagabond of Blood: Writers of the Future Honorable Mention

Map-Mage: Writers of the Future Honorable Mention

Watcher Ghost: Writers of the Future Honorable Mention

A Quartet of Clowns: Writers of the Future Honorable Mention

LAST STAND

LINDA MAYE ADAMS

Copyright Page

LAST STAND — BOOK #4

Copyright ©2020 by LINDA MAYE ADAMS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

Cover artwork and design by Linda Adams, Graphics Designer

Space Station © tiziano.cremonini | DepositPhotos

Published by

Bad Gnome Press

LAST STAND / LINDA MAYE ADAMS — 1st ed.

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License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Chapter 1

No human stayed on Dexmar 14 very long. Oh, the Dexmarians tried. They put out stores with open fronts, advertising the latest trends for sale. They even had their fluid dancers out in the town square to draw passersby over.

Now Colonel Eric Graul understood why.

He stood outside the newly constructed space terminal. Because Dexmar 14 was difficult for humans to tolerate during the day, he’d departed his ship, S.C. Kangjun, at 0100 hours, so he’d arrive in full darkness. The sun had yet to come up and the world was already unbearable.

His escort was forty-five minutes late, and probably by design. No one wanted GALCOM’s first Army skipper around.

The Dexmarian town square was an assault on Graul’s senses. They perceived color differently from humans.

It clashed. Violently.

Even his camo tech uniform was having trouble figuring out what color to change to.

Graul was in his thirties, hair sandy. Since his wife had been with him for the past month, he wondered if she still liked how he looked. He wasn’t young. Not anymore. Everything was different from when they first met. And he had scars, some of them visible.

This was the first of two office calls he was making in this system as sector commander. This visit was to the command overseeing the space station construction. The second visit was to Space Station 75, which was being decommissioned in seven days.

How GALCOM would make this new location work, he didn’t know.

Nausea made his stomach grumble. He thought about how eager he’d been to hit dirtside and get away from his wife for a few hours. That wish was coming back with a hard bite.

One of the Dexmarians stopped, humming sympathetically. They were vaguely humanoid, in that they had arms and legs in the right places, but shaggy black hairs hung in long strands all over them.

A translator stone on the Dexmarian’s wrist glowed. Are you in need of gray room?

Graul had to work to lift his head to meet the Dexmarian’s eyes. A what?

For humans. I show you.

There had been nothing about gray rooms in the package the local command had sent Graul for this office call. And he wasn’t about to go with a person he didn’t know on a strange planet.

Thank you, he said. I’m waiting’ on someone.

If you need one before your person arrives, all stores have one. The Dexmarian started to walk away, then turned back. We sorry. We know this hard on humans.

Graul was about to head back into the terminal when the beep of a horn made him look up. The color made his vision spin away from him and bitterness rose in his throat.

Then he was on his knees, and the color raced through his brain, screaming.

Colonel.

A pair of hands clumsily gripped his shoulders. Helped him up. Propelled him somewhere. His eyes were squeezed shut. But the color was pressing through his eyeballs.

That same voice: Here.

The hands guided him to sit.

Put your head between your knees. You’ll be okay.

The pressure of the color receded.

He could breathe.

Graul opened his eyes. He was in a narrow room. It might have been a closet in another life. A crude bench was against one wall. Everything was painted gray and smelled of oil paint.

Graul’s rescuer extended a hand. Compared to the man’s, Graul’s hands were icy.

I’m Commander Briggs, the man said.

Briggs was too bland after all that color. Brown hair fading to gray, cut short like a mowed lawn. Friendly face, but forgettable. His eyes seemed strange, like he wasn’t looking at anything.

Why didn’t you follow the instructions we sent and wait in the terminal, Colonel? Briggs said.

What instructions? Graul snapped. And you’re forty-five minutes late.

I’m not late—

The realization played out on Briggs’ face. Someone had deleted the instructions and changed the time. From Briggs’s expression, he knew who it was.

I’m sorry, Briggs said, and the apology seemed genuine. "We always meet visitors in the terminal. Everything in the