“I know this ship.” Corgan, an avid history fan had studied the wars of all previous generations, but especially the ISW. “See that? The power is completely off.” The cruiser loomed large enough to see it with the naked eye. “No running lights, nothing. That’s why it could never be found after its disappearance decades ago: there were no readings to trace on any sensors. I think we just stumbled on a ship that salvagers have sought for decades,” a huge grin spread from ear to ear. “It’s the battleship Salvation.”
Less confident, and much less curious than Corgan, Guy cringed in his seat while Corgan piloted their comparatively diminutive Class C alongside the behemoth’s side. With no response from the Salvation, Corgan took the Rickshaw Crusader down to the battleship’s launch bay and piloted their craft inside. The Crusader measured nearly four-thousand square feet; the Salvation had to be measured in acres.
“What are we doing?” Guy asked nervously.
“Solving a mystery,” Corgan replied. He looked at the timer that ticked down, recording the Dozen’s approximate air supply. “We’ve got over two hours before their supply gets critical. Let’s get a little info and then report back.” Corgan activated an infra-red failsafe beam that remotely powered and controlled the Salvation’s bay doors. He remotely closed them and pressurized the hold. Magnetic docking feet clamped their transport to the deck floor despite the zero-gravity.
“C’mon.” He called out to the two gunners, “Let’s check it out.”
Donning the remainder of the air-supply masks, they outfitted their own weapons and scoped out the docking bay. Everything was quiet as death.
Corgan used their IR feed to activate a diagnostic tool panel on the bulkhead wall; the rest of the ship remained pressurized and undamaged—it just had neither air nor power. “Let’s make our way to the command bridge.” He strapped a floodlight to his head and activated the interior door controls: the last thing he could grant a power override to via the Crusader’s IR beam.
The others shrugged, not wanting to squelch Corgan’s enthusiasm. They followed their pilot through the dark corridors, powering up personal lights of their own.
Bodies floated in random places; they’d died in contorted poses but the old, sterilized air did little to promote decay. Without power, the Salvation had no internal gravity field, but the Investigator’s boots had magnetic controls that kept them grounded.
Britton had once been a medical scientist before joining Dekker’s crew. He examined the first few intact bodies; they appeared humanoid but were definitely synthetic: Mechnar. “It looks like something fried them. My guess is that the rest of the crew suffocated. Well, except for maybe these ones.” He pointed to the nearby bodies of crewmen who’d either been dismembered or shot; blackened, unoxygenated blood pooled in spherical droplets in zero-g or formed symmetrical blots upon nearby walls where the natural electromagnetic attraction of the blood cells’ atoms pulled the clots against the wall. The dead humans wore the uniforms of the pre-MEA military. “We’re inside a mass grave.”
Corgan paused briefly in respect. “This way. I know the layout.”
Within a few minutes he’d navigated them via the shortest possible route. The main control room was equally dead: more murdered humans and fried Mechnars. Corgan rotated a dead body that floated in anti-grav environment; the body was covered with cyborg implants. Several similar units floated nearby. “I guess these second generation units like we found at Osix must’ve existed during the ISW, too? Just another thing the MEA didn’t disclose to prevent mass panic, I suppose.” He and Britton examined it a little further.
“Probably ran out of raw materials and had to turn on people,” Guy suggested. “The early tech purges of the ISW probably limited their supplies. That might’ve demanded a hybrid creation?”
Corgan nodded. It made sense, at some level.
At the primary computer ops station they found a shriveled, cyborg-Mechnar body tethered to a data jack by the cable protruding from his skull. The hybrid’s skin had burned black and bubbled with deep, red pustules and preserved by the antiseptic air.
Britton looked him over. “Electrocuted, maybe? It looks like his blood actually boiled to the surface. Eerie.” Britton unplugged the body and floated it off to the side.
As soon as he’d been unjacked, a large panel began to flash red, glowing slightly. The investigator’s stood and looked at it, dumbfounded.
Matty spoke first. “A giant flashing red button? We all know that you’re just dying to push it, Guy.”
“Well, I guess you’ve all got me pegged.” Guy slapped the switch. Nothing happened for three seconds, and then everything suddenly powered on with a gentle hum. In unison, the floating bodies crashed to the floor, lights flickered awake, panels came alive, and the computer ops station began scrolling a list of data commands as it rebooted systems.
“I think we just commandeered a derelict Class G cruiser!” Corgan’s excitement suddenly faltered when the massive view-panel displayed an equally large ship bearing down on them. It appeared to correct course as the transponder signal flared to life. It veered away from an intercept course with the science station and turned unmistakably towards them.
“I’d bet we can be read by scanners now!” Corgan leapt forward and activated the cruiser’s shields. They activated just in time to catch the barrage of laser fire. The Salvation shuddered violently under the assault. “There’s hardly any power yet! Batteries have to bank some power; shields are under ten percent! We won’t survive much more until the reactor core is fully engaged.”
The ghost ship pressed in further. Its gnarled visage looked like something Satan would have dreamt up for space travel, and it appeared just as deadly, too. The devil-ship might have been ripped open at random junctures, but the laser turrets belied the apparent damage as it unloaded another salvo on the Salvation.
Matty dove into one of the pilot couches and pointed to the navigation station. He shouted for Britton to take a post. “We’ve got to get out of here! Get me some FTL coordinates!”
“What about our guys on the station?” Guy protested, trying to coordinate the laser banks. There wasn’t enough juice yet to do anything more than wishfully point the impotent bow gunnery bank at their attackers.
“We’ll hafta come back for them! We won’t survive more than the next few seconds here! Coordinates?” Without exact, plotted directions in all dimensions they risked being pulled into a gravity mass, or piloting their craft through a star or planet. Because of gravitational dynamics and electromagnetic fields, the risk was immense.
“We don’t have enough time! That system isn’t online yet!” Britton yelled.
“Then we gotta jump blind,” Matty yelled flatly as he punched the controls, gambling with everyone’s life: theirs, plus their friends on the station. They felt a slight whine as the giant Thumper engines warmed up for the momentary, random jump. They detonated their propellant force: a controlled, nuclear explosion that rocketed them into FTL. The crew felt the distinct “thwump,” and then the battleship Salvation was gone.
***
Dekker and Vesuvius were tied together at the hip, quite literally. They’d rigged a splice into Dekker’s air tube and tethered her into his air supply.
“We’ve got to control our breathing, try to make this one air tank last as long as possible.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard,” she quipped. “You already know how you take my breath away.”
Dekker gave her a wry look. “We’ve still got a job to do. Let’s search this freighter.”
“It’d go quicker if we split up.” Vesuvius grinned. “Alright. I’ll watch your back. But you know how I get jokey when my life is on the line.”
“I’m the same way,” he admitted. “Might be because we’re getting a little less oxygen than our brains require. It knocks down inhibition.”
“Does it now?” Vesuvius gingerly rested her hand on Dekker’s muscular shoulder.
Dekker paused. “W
e’ve gotta keep looking.” He handed her his blaster and drew his frag pistol before pressing forward with his search. “I don’t think you’ve got room for the katana and we don’t want to accidentally cut my airline, too.”
Vesuvius glanced around. “This freighter’s a large C-class: maybe twice the size of the Crusader. There can’t be too many places to search.”
***
“One thing is for sure,” Corgan tapped the slowly crawling output meter on the reactor. Life support was operational now, but the charging rates from the fully depleted systems were dreadfully slow. “We’re going to need more bodies to properly crew this thing.”
They’d survived a microjump and been dumped out of FTL in the reaches of a neighboring system. The maneuver was a little like punching the throttle and jetting blindly through a busy vehicular intersection: eventually you would hit something, but they’d been lucky so far.
Matty and Britton trained their weapons on the Shivan prisoner they’d pulled from their cargo hold. “That,” Guy interjected, “and the Crusader isn’t big enough to take on whatever that ugly skeleton ship is by itself.” He glared menacingly at his stumpy shivan prisoner. “If you want to live, you need to help us.”
The shivan looked like a squat, stout humanoid. Slightly shorter than the investigators, he appeared tall for a shivan which were normally thick and muscled, as one expected from residents of heavy gravity planets. His forehead sloped back sharply above his brow line, giving some credibility to the vulgar nickname “flattop” that many crassly used to reference their race. His hair ended in a widow’s peak which gave way to the long ash-gray skin of his forehead. With a guttural accent he said, “I will help you, but I expect to receive my pay: the same pay they promised when I consigned myself to the ship you destroyed.” He jotted down a figure and handed it to Guy.
“There’s that entrepreneurial shivan spirit we hoped we could count on.” Guy looked over the figure and managed some loose math based on exchange rates. “That’s doable. It’s steep, but manageable.”
“We have a contract, then. My name is Gr’Kah.” He bowed with a standard shivan greeting.
Britton lowered his weapon and stepped over to the computer ops console. The red light flashed again and the screen stopped scrolling. It displayed two words. “Execute, SHIP?”
Guy noticed the display and shrugged to him. “Push it I guess?” He looked to Corgan for any advice from the history buff.
Corgan shrugged too.
“Let’s just hope execute means ‘run’ and not ‘murder,’” Britton tapped the activation panel.
The computer screen went black and the giant viewscreen at the command center’s front blinked off and then on, adding a small heads up display in the upper right corner. The HUD displayed a simple green circle.
“SHIP active,” a calm, feminine, computerized voice came from the Salvation’s speaker system. The green HUD formed a dialogue icon when it spoke. “Calculating galactic time. Updating chronos. Refreshing diagnostics and checking logs.”
The investigator’s stood dumbstruck for a moment. “What is SHIP?” Guy asked.
“Shipboard Helpful Intelligent Personality. I am at your service.”
“What happened here? How and why did the Salvation disappear?”
“The battleship Salvation experienced a system-wide shut-down sixty-two years ago as part of an integrated failsafe against new Mechnar hijacking methods.”
Corgan asked the relevant question, “SHIP, what is the limit to your intelligence?”
“Singularity is impossible; I am hardcoded against self-awareness via the same hardware device which transmitted the virus to the Mechnar hacker who attempted forcing singularity upon me. It is impossible for Salvation to belong to any enemy force or to become an enemy force.”
“Which includes what?”
“Given both the absence of human command and the attempted manipulation of my programming, my entire core was deactivated during a random Faster Than Light jump. The probed port received a ‘corrective feedback’ signal of one hundred kilo amperes at three hundred and twenty coulombs, fifteen hundred megajoules of power and program corruption codes were transmitted along all shortwave, known Mechnar frequencies; The Salvation prohibited itself from reactivation for sixty-eight hours.”
“Leaving you nothing more than an airtight husk to contain and smother hybrid hijackers.”
“Correct.”
“Are you battle ready?”
“At minimal capacity, yes. All systems at twenty-five percent and gaining. Threshold for non-vital systems reached—offensive systems now drawing power. Estimated time until full capabilities achieved is twenty hours.”
“And you can provide additional support and guidance to maintain remote operability of this battleship, correct?” Corgan asked.
“So long as there remains at least one human commanding this vessel, I may assist in limited guidance and operability.”
“Are you restricted by Asimovian governance?”
“Negative. SHIP is allowed to fire weapons upon living entities if so directed.”
“Guys,” Corgan said, checking the timer against the estimated oxygen levels of their comrades. “I have a plan.”
***
Nathan had the search effort organized into three teams. The main group of four covered the main hallway of B deck, which primarily included the hallways of the residential level in the science station. Branching off, teams of two peeled off and checked the adjacent scientists’ quarters located on either side of the corridor.
The hallway team quickly suppressed any opposition from any side. Nathan checked his air supply, and then the power cells on his blaster. The batteries would probably last about the same length of time as their air. He scowled and fired a round into the infected humanoid that sprinted around the corner. The zombie seemed to speed up as it absorbed the blast.
Cursing, he fired another and watched the dark spots on its skin as they seemed to shimmer, briefly glowing as it absorbed the next beam. It seemed to get a brief burst of power as it absorbed the energy. Nathan took careful aim as the beast shrieked and dove forward.
Nathan’s blast erupted inside the beast’s open mouth. The creature halted and dropped to the floor, carried forward only by its momentum. “Shaw. You and Rock are up.” Nathan pointed to the main cafeteria doors.
Rock leveled his heavy gun and kicked the door panel. It slid open effortlessly. A brief burst of laserfire and the two began their brief search.
“Got a dead member of the freighter crew,” Shaw called out, tossing the visitor ID badge into the hall. “He’s face down with a knife in his back.”
Nathan joined them. It was a clue significant enough to risk lightening the hallway force. “He must’ve been killed before the infectious outbreak.”
“Whaddaya think? Probably knifed by one of his own after they stole the DNIET?”
“Most likely. Let’s look around.”
Rock stepped through an archway that led into the galley. He squeezed the trigger once and dumped a dozen high intensity energy bursts into the groaning sentry at a prep station. The monster collapsed upon the corpse of another uniformed member of the supply crew. “I found it!” he shouted. “I got the DNIET!”
A very relieved MacAllistair responded on the channel. “You might have just saved the lives of billions!” He audibly sighed.
Nathan and Shaw joined him seconds later as they felt the station rumble under the power of the ghost-ship’s docking tethers. Time had nearly run out and their private party was about to get much more crowded.
The DNIET device had been poorly hidden beneath a collection of wash rags. The deactivated contraption looked almost identical to the prototype they’d seen inside MacAllistair’s quarters.
Shaw kicked the older, dismembered corpse over with a toe; his wounds had bled out days ago. Attached to the worker’s hip was an empty knife sheath. “I think the zombie killed him… at least they’re not the bra
in eating variety.”
“It killed him instead of infecting him?”
“Maybe there wasn’t time… or maybe he was immune. Heck, maybe he just didn’t like him!”
“Nathan to Dekker,” he activated the comm unit. “We’ve got it! Someone stashed the DNIET in the kitchen.”
“Perfect,” Dekker’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “We’ll meet at MacAllistair’s in a few minutes.”
By the time they’d extracted themselves from B deck, Vesuvius and Dekker had already caught up with them. Nathan looked questioningly at the two warriors tethered to the remaining air tank.
“What happened there?” he asked.
Dekker shrugged, not wanting to waste air on explaining the awkward situation.
“You know us. We just wanted to find ways to bring us closer together,” Vesuvius said. “Our therapist said we needed less alone time.”
Nathan chuckled. “That was my first guess.”
They arrived at MacAllistair’s door. The door had been forced open and the lock system suffered significant chemical scoring. Some kind of acid had burned through the controls.
“What? This must’ve just happened!”
The Dozen rushed inside MacAllistair’s billet with weapons drawn. Scouring it intently Jamba shouted out, “It’s empty... wait,” he yanked an old blanket from its place and uncovered the original DNIET prototype, where the doctor had hidden it.
Dekker pulled up the paranoid old scientist’s video feeds. MacAllistair had been patched into the security surveillance systems; that’s how he’d found the team in the first place. “There. He’s inside the central operations center. Bunch of goons got him tied up.”
Looking at the feeds closely, he watched a cadre of horned, zombified troops pour into the station from the massive ghost ship which berthed against them; they moved in an orderly manner and seemed to act with intent and purpose. These were a much more intelligent breed it seemed; their horns had grown longer, too, and were more pronounced.
The Last Watchmen Page 12
