THE REMNANT
BOOK ONE OF THE AWAKENING
Paul B. Spence
Asura Press
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE REMNANT
An Asura Press Book
PRINTING HISTORY
Second (Revised) Edition Trade Paperback / 2015
Copyright © 2014 by Paul B. Spence
Cover Art by: Jereme J. Peabody
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
ISBN: 978-1-929928-21-7
www.paulbspence.com
[email protected]
For all those who stood by me and helped me keep my faith.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias
Prologue
Sergeant Ling Zhou looked anywhere but at the ship growing steadily larger in the viewscreen. The biomedical package in her suit kept beeping at her; her pulse and blood pressure were high, and she was sweating too much. She kept telling herself that it was just the usual unease she felt before any search-and-rescue operation, but it was different this time. Three hours had gone by since the FSS Kirov transited from hyperspace, and it had given no answer to hails. There was no obvious sign of damage; the hull of the derelict cruiser was intact. The crew was silent. Zhou accessed her suit medsuite via her neural computer and adjusted her vitals back to normal levels.
Her nerves were still on edge, however, and she didn't want to take a tranquilizer, not just yet.
There had been rumors about ships lost, and worse; rumors of ships returning from hyperspace with their crews dead or driven insane. Zhou had always just assumed the rumors were the typical bullshit that bored naval crewmembers made up to pass the time during a long space mission. Everything that went wrong in space was blamed on alien attacks. A ship lost in hyperspace? Of course some sinister alien plot must be involved. She'd dismissed those idiots without much further thought.
Now she wished she'd listened to them more carefully.
Fleet command was certainly taking this seriously, as well they should. The Kirov was a Wolf-class cruiser with twenty-eight hundred naval personnel aboard, plus an additional two hundred marines. If something had killed them all, Fleet needed to find out what it was, and fast. Zhou's team was equipped with powered battle armor and was well armed, but then, the marines on the Kirov would have been well armed, too.
"Approaching forward portside airlock. ETA: thirty seconds," the pilot announced.
"Get ready, people," she growled.
Zhou had a good team. They were experienced and ready to get to work. A quick glance at their vitals showed they had all controlled their bodily functions, as she had. Heart rate and respiration were up, but adrenaline could save your life in a mission like this, so she let it go without comment.
The shuttle slowed, reoriented, and then backed to the airlock using only thrusters. The shuttle wouldn't be docking until Sergeant Zhou had a better idea of what they were dealing with. Her team would EVA to the airlock and through, into the ship beyond.
"We're in position, Sergeant," said the pilot.
"Let's go, people," she ordered.
The rear doors of the shuttle retracted. Beyond the opening, the dark ceramic hull of the cruiser loomed, blocking out the stars and absorbing the beams on the floodlights from the shuttle without reflection. Zhou's team was entering the ship at the back end of the forward central gun channel. The airlock there was the closest to the bridge. If there were any survivors to be found, it would be in the best-protected part of the ship, she reasoned. Somebody had piloted the ship out of hyperspace, after all.
She used her suit thrusters to leap across the three meters between the ships. Zhou landed right on target next to the airlock, her pulse plasma rifle held ready. The other nine members of her squad crossed without mishap. Not that she expected otherwise.
"Get us in, Corporal Byrne," she ordered.
"Yes, sir." The burly corporal used the keyed manual override device to open the door. A fine mist of particles blew out of the lock, but it was gone before Zhou could get a good look at it.
"Everybody in!"
As suspected, internal power was down throughout the ship. There was no gravity. The corporal had to cycle the lock closed manually. Infrared was useless; the thermal superconductor on the hull made everything the same temperature. Zhou ordered everyone to flip on their headlamps.
Frozen blood coated the walls of the airlock. At least it looked like blood.
"What in the name...?" Private Najjar exclaimed.
"Stow that shit, Private," she ordered. She wondered if her voice sounded as shaky to her team as it did to her. Probably not. "We've all seen this sort of thing before." They'd all seen worse looking for survivors after battles, but it didn't matter what she said, just as long as she kept up the semblance of command.
"Sergeant?"
"Yes, Meyers?" Corporal Meyers, the team medic, was holding a portable scanner to the wall.
"It's human blood. The spray pattern is consistent with explosive decompression, but the airlock held pressure when we first opened it. What the hell would make someone enter an airlock without a spacesuit? And where's the body?"
"Nothing left the ship after it exited hyperspace. It was tracked from the moment it came out. The body must have been jettisoned while the ship was in hyperspace," Zhou answered slowly. The thought of opening an airlock on a ship while it was in hyperspace made her skin crawl. She'd made the mistake of looking out into hyperspace once, years ago; she'd never do it again. "We're not going to discover anything by floating out here. Get that door open!"
The pressure equalized as Byrne activated the manual releases. The inner airlock door slid open, and Zhou was grateful to be in a sealed suit. Bodies and parts of bodies floated in the corridor, many of them bloated and leaking dark fluids.
"Meyers?"
The medic began checking the closest bodies.
"To state the obvious first, they're all dead."
"I can see that, Corporal. Explosive decompression?"
"No. Atmospheric pressure is near-normal in here. Filled with the miasma of decay, methane, and other things you wouldn't want to breathe, but otherwise normal. The bloating is caused by normal decay. These people have been dead a week or more. I couldn't tell you what killed them, though. Not without a more thorough autopsy."
"Sergeant?"
"Yes?" She turned her attention to her other corporal. "What is it?"
"Look here." He pointed to the corridor walls and ceiling. "We've got splash cratering consistent with laser rifle fire."
"None of these people were killed with a laser," Meyers said decisively.
"Then what the hell were they shooting at?"
No one had an answer for her.
"All right, let's get to the bridge. Maybe we'll find someone who can tell us what happened," Zhou said with more optimism than she felt.
She called up a schematic of the ship on her screens. "Continue to starboard for fifty meters, then aft for twenty. There should be an access tube on the right. We need to go down two levels to M-deck. The bridge will be a hundred meters to starboard from there. Jenkins and Smith, guard the airlock. The rest of you, move!"
The signs of fighting grew more prevalent as they neared the bridge. Some of the personnel looked as if they had killed each other – with their hands and teeth in some cases. There were many more bodies, some of them more recently dead. The blood floating in the corridors was shockingly thick. Many bodies seemed to have exploded from within. Some appeared to be badly burned, although there was no sign of what weapon had caused the damage, and it was unlike anything any of Zhou's team had ever seen.
"Could it be a viral infection? Something that could overcome the immunity implants?" Zhou asked.
"I don't think so, Sergeant," said Meyers. "I'm not getting anything on my equipment. Of course, if it could overcome a whole starship, my equipment probably couldn't detect it, either."
"That's not very reassuring, Corporal."
Meyers shrugged, an odd gesture in powered armor. "I'd bet my life it isn't an infection. Those burned and burst bodies didn't die of infection, or any weapon I've ever seen."
"No," Zhou said slowly. "Me either. Let's get to the bridge and see if we can find some answers."
Her team was waiting by the bridge doors. The normal marine guards were absent. She'd expected to see them dead at their posts.
"The bridge door is unresponsive, Sergeant."
"Cut through the panel, Corporal Byrne," she ordered. "Meyers, a word."
"What can I do for you, Sergeant?"
"There's something not right about this."
"What do you mean?"
"The ship doesn't have any power. The gravity is out; doors don't work. The air isn't cycling."
"I noticed."
"Well, then how did the ship exit hyperspace without power?"
"I'm no engineer, but I'd say it couldn't have. If the ship lost power in hyperspace, the void shield would have failed, and the ship would have imploded."
"Exactly."
"I don't follow."
"The ship couldn't have. That means it lost power after it exited hyperspace."
"Okay, so?"
"So that means the power was knocked out after the ship returned to realspace. Whoever or whatever did this is still aboard."
Meyers started and raised her rifle, looking around.
Zhou nodded and switched back to the general frequency. "Everybody, listen up. Keep sharp. Whoever or whatever tore this ship apart is most likely still aboard. I want everyone on high alert from here on out." It was probably a redundant order; everyone's vitals were already elevated. They were all too aware that something could be lurking in the bowels of the ship.
Byrne cut through the control panel and used the auxiliary power feed on his suit to open the massive blast door to the bridge.
A quick glance showed even more destruction on the bridge than they'd seen elsewhere. The bodies here were burned and torn apart. All of the instrument panels were smashed. A few of the acceleration couches had been torn loose and were tumbling about the room with the bodies in an oddly graceful danse macabre. The lights from Zhou's team cast long and disturbing shadows.
"Looks like they all died fighting," said Meyers.
"Yeah, but fighting what?" Private Jenkins asked. He was holding on to the doorway and swaying slightly. Zhou thought he sounded like he was in mild shock. She felt much the same way. She used her command circuits to override his medsuite and have his suit inject him with a mild sedative.
"Any chance of survivors?" Zhou asked.
"You're joking, right?" someone muttered.
"Check everyone anyway," she ordered. "Byrne, see if you can pull the black-box recorders."
Zhou was beginning to feel helpless. This wasn't the first time her team had gone into a derelict ship and not found any survivors. Hell, normal battles could turn a ship into a charnel house quickly, but she'd never seen anything as bad as this. At least with a battle, you could understand what had happened to the crew. Here on the Kirov, nothing was clear. Whatever had killed these people had covered its tracks well.
Zhou wasn't sure when she'd begun to think of the unknown enemy as something singular, and that worried her.
"Sergeant?"
"What have you got, Byrne?"
"There's a body over here in armor. Looks like commando armor."
"There a name on the suit?"
"Scraped off," Byrne replied. "The suit is pretty badly beat up, but intact. Quite a bit of thermal damage, but the guy could still be alive."
"Meyers."
"On my way."
Zhou pulled up the personnel roster for the Kirov. None of the regular marines or crew would've had access to commando armor. She pulled up the transfer manifest. "Got it. It must be Lt. Commander Hrothgar Tebrey, Special Operations."
Byrne whistled. "Those guys are real bad-asses. What the hell was he doing aboard?"
"Didn't do him much good, did it?" Private Jenkins muttered. "And if he's Special Operations, where's his companion?"
Meyers motioned to her. "Sergeant! He's alive! I've got life signs!"
Zhou kicked over to them. "Commander! Can you hear me?"
"Sergeant, his life signs are very erratic. The reactor on his suit has shut down; he's running on batteries. Looks like whatever drained the ship got him, too. I've plugged my suit into his to provide power, but we need to get him out of the suit as soon as we can."
"Is he injured?"
"Well, according to the medsuite in his suit," Meyers said, sounding reluctant, "he's suffering from multiple fractures and third-degree burns to his entire body. It reports that he's charred to the bone in some places. I don't know how he could have sustained injuries like that and still be alive, or how it could happen and leave his suit intact."
"What the hell happened here?" Zhou whispered. No one had an answer.
They all recoiled as the man suddenly moved.
Zhou calmed her nerves and moved into contact with him. "Commander! What happened?"
"Kill me," came the whispered reply. "Please... Kill me... before it comes back."
She pulled away from him. There was something in his voice that sent chills down her spine. She broke out in a cold sweat.
"Sergeant?"
"Get him to the shuttle, Meyers. Immediate evac! Everyone fall back! We're leaving."
"Sergeant? What about the rest of the ship?"
"We're going to need more people to search this ship. Whatever did this will have to wait. We're going to need more firepower."
They started moving back toward the shuttle, dragging the wounded man with them.
"Please...," he kept whispering.
Zhou knew it would haunt her dreams.
Chapter One
Lt. Commander Hrothgar Tebrey swayed slightly as the shuttle settled to the deck and the internal gravity of the FSS Loridell, matched to that of the planet below, took over. He was glad to be away from the confines of the FSS Griffin. The courier frigate had been cramped, and the crew hadn't been very happy to have him aboard. They hadn't said or done anything overt, of course, but he'd felt their animosity.
"It should only be a few minutes now, Commander."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Tebrey answered mechanically. He smoothed down the lines of his black uniform and waited for the boarding tube to mate and cycle. This was his first mission since being cleared to return to duty, and he didn't even know what he was supposed to be doing.
"Sir? If you don't mind me asking, we've all heard about the Kirov, and that you were there. Scuttlebutt is that Fleet Command is lying about it being internal explosions. What…?" He traile
d off as Tebrey met the lieutenant's eyes with a cold stare.
He was saved from saying anything by the cycling of the airlock. Tebrey strode out of the shuttle and passed through the second airlock into the Loridell. Two armed marines waited for him there. They saluted as he stepped to the threshold. It was just a line painted on the deck, but it was an important protocol.
"Lt. Commander Tebrey?" said the older marine, saluting.
"Permission to come aboard, Sergeant," Tebrey said, returning the salute.
The sergeant held out the security wand, and Tebrey dutifully placed his thumb on it and gave a sample of his blood. "Permission granted, sir," the sergeant said crisply as soon as the wand verified Tebrey's identity.
"I'm Sergeant McGee. Welcome aboard, sir."
Tebrey carefully took a step forward to cross the line. "Thank you, Sergeant. Can you make sure that my personal effects are transferred properly?" He could see cargo handlers unloading the shuttle from the FSS Griffin. His armor and weapons would be part of that cargo. There were several other shuttles in the hold, no doubt belonging to the science vessel itself.
"Of course, sir. Johnson, take care of it," McGee ordered. "This way, sir. The captain wanted to speak with you as soon as you came aboard."
I'll bet, Tebrey thought to himself. The captain is probably just overjoyed to have me aboard. He was used to less than cordial receptions; captains didn't like having people aboard who weren't directly under their command. Special Operations had its own chain of command. It was a necessary evil in order to maintain secrecy.
"I'd show to your quarters to let you freshen up, but the captain was adamant…"
"No need to apologize, Sergeant. I wouldn't want to keep the captain waiting. Can you fill me in on what the tactical situation is here? My orders, as usual, didn't include a brief on that."
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