The Belt Loop _Book One

by Robert B. Jones

  “This technology is unknown, ma’am. We could always blow the door if you think that’s a safer way in.”

  Geez. Haslip was on the bubble. She didn’t really know what to do. Start pressing random buttons or set charges to the hatch?

  “Why don’t we press a few buttons back here,” Max said. “On this ‘closet’ door. See what works over here, maybe it’ll work over there. You said it looks like a maintenance room beyond. What could be the danger in opening it up?”

  Suppressing her urge to criticize the young lieutenant, Haslip just turned away and considered. Like it or not, the lady made sense. If one of those buttons could open the broom closet, maybe a similar button would activate the forward hatch. It was worth a try. “Good point, lieutenant,” Haslip said at last. “Olson, go back and give it a try. You marines, stand ready.”

  The next few minutes were spent shuffling positions, rearranging bodies on the catwalk and adjusting firing angles should something other than an alien mop handle come flying out of that door. When Olson was satisfied that everybody was in a relatively safe position, he offered Haslip an upturned thumb.

  “Make it happen,” she said.

  Olson tried the control button nearest the blinking light. Nothing. He then systematically started pushing buttons, one at a time, from the bottom right of the panel to the upper left. After pressing a dozen controls, one finally did something. Olson’s reaction was sudden enough to almost make him loose his footing and plunge backward off the catwalk. Max Hansen reached out and grabbed his arm.

  The small door on the panel had opened with a loud pop. Inside the door was a red disc that they were all familiar with.

  “Thanks, lieutenant,” Olson breathed, “I guess now were even.”

  Max shook her head and said nothing.

  “Press it,” Haslip commanded.

  Olson complied and, sure enough, the “maintenance” hatch eased open and folded away inside the small compartment it had covered. Inside was a ganglion of wires, tubes, and pipes. Purpose? Unknown.

  “Johns, you see that? It’s the third control from the top in the second column from the right,” Olson said to the other electronics tech. Johns stepped back to the second panel, ran his finger down the rows of controls, counted to himself again, and pressed the button. Just as before, a small door opened and the red disc was visible. Johns looked at Haslip and she nodded. He reached out and curled his fingers back for a second, looked at the marine sentries, nodded to them once, and pressed the button.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  * * *

  The klaxons aboard the Christi wailed, signaling the call to General Quarters. Decks eight through twelve instantly responded and the fire control techs scurried to and fro, the masters-at-arms secured hatches and passageways, the ordnancemen checked their stores, and survival equipmentmen readied themselves for the queue of ratings that would want to receive evo suits and other protective clothing.

  Quartermaster Senior Chief Petty Officer Giles Bates briefed Captain Haad as they headed for the bridge. It seems that the worm was now fully awake! The S&R team had somehow awakened the sleeping ship.

  Haad and Bates were piped onto the bridge and Haad immediately asked Mason for an update.

  “Morning, skip,” Mason said as he relinquished the command console. “I don’t know how they did it, but apparently they found their way onto the bridge of that ship.”

  Haad returned the greeting with a perfunctory two-finger salute and sat down in the chair. “Put it on screen, Mister Pierce,” he said, not looking at the third shift science ranking. The blister exploded with light and when the image resolved the worm was centered on the convex view screen. Instead of a huge derelict ship shuddering and listing to one side, Haad now saw a well-defined spacecraft, lit up from stem to stern, pulsating rapidly, and shedding ice and debris from its hull. That central bulge that Gertz had called the clitellum was rotating counter-clockwise at about six revolutions per minute. The damn thing was powering up!

  “Give me a threat assessment, Mister Ward,” Haad said to the weapons control station, never taking his eyes off the blister.

  Lieutenant Manni Ward said, “None, so far. Sensors don’t show any energy fields from within that hull, captain. No propulsion detected, other than that pulsating back-and-forth rhythm.”

  “Mister Mason, where the hell is Lieutenant Commander Gertz?” Haad barked.

  Mason turned away from the screen. “She’s down on deck eight, sir, down in her lab. They ferried one of those creatures back an hour ago. She’s doing the exam in her containment locker as we speak.”

  Haad nodded and slapped at the comm stack with his right hand. “Attention all hands, this is the Captain speaking. It seems that our friend over there is waking up from its hibernation. I can’t begin to quantify what this means at this point, but there are no immediate threats evident. Stay prepped for any contingency and report to your duty stations until further orders. Captain out.”

  “Should we go to Battle Stations, sir?” Mister Ward asked.

  Haad rubbed his hands over the scars on his face. “Negative. Kill the GQ alarms and let’s see what develops, Mister Ward.”

  The quartermaster went to the weapons console and looked over the readouts. “Update from the worm, sir. Commander Haslip on the command freq.”

  “Patch it through, Mister Bates. Bridge only,” Uri Haad said.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  * * *

  Making the rounds was lonely work for Davi Yorn. After only three hours’ sleep he was not feeling in his best frame of mind, but his call to duty superseded his personal needs. He checked the weapons bay, the adjoining magazine lockers, chatted with a few of the chiefs in electronic warfare, studied the readiness logs and, satisfied, made his way toward the bridge.

  He had over fifty persons aboard that worm. Considering that it took roughly seventy-five sailors to get the ship on battle footing and handle the logistics of a ship-wide emergency, he knew that the Christi’s resources were on the thin side right now. He would engage the captain with the thought of pulling his troops off the worm should the situation demand it. For now, Yorn was sure the Higgs Field would be sufficient enough to keep the derelict in place but there was no telling what the ancient ship was capable of.

  If it was indeed powering up, and the away team had managed to spark it back into operational viability, only the passage of time would dictate what the next move would have to be. Something in the back of his head fluttered to the front and he paused at the ladder-well before him.

  What had Lieutenant Hansen said? She had seen something like this before? She thought the worm was some kind of slave ship? If that assessment was accurate, where were the slaves?

  Yorn decided to detour to the exobiology lab and have a talk with Milli Gertz. Something was not adding up.

  * * *

  Chief Eddie Rich felt no animosity directed at Davi Yorn. As a matter of fact, he silently applauded the quickness with which the XO had made the rounds after the GQ alert. Yorn was old-school and Rich appreciated his no-nonsense approach when it came to ship preparedness.

  He had experienced a brief moment of panic when the XO had suddenly appeared in the weapons bay. Yorn had walked through the aft hatch unnoticed and was sighting down the long line of electro-pulse weapon stations. Ratings were running through the bay and removing tarps and fairings and popping covers from the big guns. Rich had intercepted Yorn as he was walking towards the last gun emplacement on the port side of the ship. Yorn was walking right up to the tarp that concealed his baby.

  “Hey, Davi, sir,” Rich sputtered, “everything look ship-shape?” He spoke in a friendly, familiar tone, one practiced over long years of service, a voice that did not betray his hidden feelings about the Navy.

  “Looks good, chief,” Yorn said. His eyes passed over the last firing position. “Problem with that weapon?”

  Rich quickly walked around the XO and partially blocked
his view. “The targeting module showed a fault when we ran it up, sir. Nothing that I can’t fix, though. Got the board on my bench right now.”

  Yorn turned and headed for the forward hatch and the rest of his rounds. “Good. Carry on, chief,” he said without looking back.

  Chapter 18

  As soon as that hatch popped open Haslip knew something was wrong. A high-pitched shriek escaped the hatch along with a pressurized explosion of ice crystals and particulate debris. But no bodies came flying out. Then the ship shuddered. Lights came on all around the huge compartment and the pumping sounds increased to the point of pain. Her first reaction to the sudden change was to let out a little yelp and stagger back. The ET rating that had operated the hatch had been blown off the catwalk by the sudden outgassing. Only his safety line had saved him.

  Max Hansen watched as the other members of her group sprung into action. Two men pulled the stunned Johns back up to the platform. Her gaze moved past the hand-over-hand rescue and settled on the deck below, the deck littered with thousands of alien body parts. She shook her head as if the sudden movement would erase the after image from her thoughts. The two MA guys produced weapons and pushed their way inside the tunnel as soon as the blast of pressurized gas subsided. She looked up at the new lighting and put a gloved hand over her visor to counteract some of the glare. The overhead of the compartment was alive with activity. The tubes and pipes that had looked pretty quiet and stable a few moments ago were now pulsing and contracting in a syncopated rhythm, each pulse accompanied with a basso boom that shook her to the core. It was like being inside a beating heart, she imagined.

  “God, what was that?” Haslip said.

  “I don’t know, commander. Whatever it was, looks like the worm is waking up. Look,” Hansen said, pointing up. “This thing’s looking like it’s starting to pump some kind of shit aft.”

  Haslip spent a moment talking to the men still in the cargo bay behind them. Then she called the bridge.

  “Commander Mason, Haslip here.”

  Nothing. She started to repeat the call. “Commander Mason —”

  “Captain Haad here, Gena. What do you know? What just happened?”

  “Right, captain. Ahh, we think, that is, it looks like we found the hatch to the bow of the ship, sir.” Haslip went on and explained in halting terms what had just transpired on the little catwalk.

  “Was that man injured?” Haad wanted to know.

  “Negative, sir. We’re all okay for now.”

  “What’s that noise, that beating sound?”

  Haslip looked up. “Remember that diagram we saw from Gertz? I think this cavern we’re in is equivalent to that chambered ‘heart’ thing she was telling us about. These huge tubes or pipes on the overhead are starting to pump, captain. From the looks of it, from the way those tubes constrict then relax, they’re pushing some kind of alien liquid or gas back to the rest of the ship. Some alien peristalsis,” she explained.

  Haad was silent for a few beats. “Pan your suit camera up to the overhead, Gena. I want a better look. As a matter of fact, get one of those guys back in the hold to come up front and digitize the whole place.”

  “Roger, that,” Haslip said. She switched freqs and gave the appropriate commands.

  “Commander Haslip, your time on mission is growing short. See if you can get into the forward compartments of that ship soonest. Exercise extreme caution, commander, we don’t know if that thing’s powering up for some kind of run at our Higgs Field or what. If I detect any, and I mean ANY kind of lateral movement in that worm, I’m going to pull you out. Pass that word back to the men as well. Everyone aboard should be prepared for instant exfil.”

  “Loud and clear, sir,” Haslip acknowledged.

  “Oh, and Gena,” Captain Haad added, “when you get forward, get Hansen on the stick as soon as possible. If it’s electric, if you find a communications stack of some kind, she should try to talk to that ship without any delay. That’s a priority, commander.”

  Haslip looked at Max and wiggled her shoulders defiantly, a move clearly visible in her evo suit. “Aye, aye, sir,” she said and broke the connection.

  * * *

  The GQ alert caught Har Hansen off guard. He had been working his way steadily up and forward, and even though his progress had been very slow and not too steady, he kept at it.

  Now this. He stopped dead in the air vent and listened. He heard hundreds of foot steps and other sounds of a ship in motion: hatches opening and closing, comm stacks squawking, orders being issued, equipment lockers being assaulted by quick hands, and the general noise of hyper-activity below and above him.

  This wasn’t the first time he had sat through an alert like this and he waited patiently for the “This Is Not A Drill” announcement from the bridge. He’d read enough spacefaring adventure novels to know what to expect.

  “Weapons on-line, captain.”

  “Mister Yorn, bring the ship into firing position!”

  “Helm, give me AM pulse, heading two six three, up angle six degrees!”

  “Maximum shields, sir!”

  “Batteries two, six, eight, open fire!”

  But that’s not what he’d heard. Instead he heard a lame-assed speech from a sleepy captain talking about contingencies and stuff. Not what he had wanted to hear at all. Some junk about quantifying threat levels and other space-talk jargon. Even though he was disappointed with the old man, Har was extremely pleased with himself. At least he had the situation assessed correctly in spite of what the captain had said. Despite him not really having a duty station to report to, he was continuing with his self-appointed rounds. He now knew that the safety of the Corpus Christi was entirely in his hands and he was going to make sure he was in place to defend it from the alien hordes just waiting for an opportunity to launch their monstrous attack.

  Boy, didn’t the captain ever read? This stuff should have been easy for him to figure out, being all captain of the boat and all of that stuff. He should issue the right orders, arm the crew, get prepared for the alien boarding party.

  Har’s next decision was not hard coming. Now he knew he had to get his hands on a weapon. Maybe one of those electronic blasters everybody was wearing around the ship. Yeah, he thought, that was the right thing to do.

  * * *

  Milli Gertz shooed the corpsman away and looked at the body bag on her lab table. She was in the containment locker of the exobiology lab and once she had sealed herself inside, and got rid of the looky-loos, she checked her gear. Gertz was in her containment suit, a modified evo suit with none of the belts and straps and heavy back packs needed for activities outside the ship. Her suit allowed her maximum protection from contamination and the thin flourographine gloves gave her the manual dexterity necessary to manipulate the probes and dissection equipment at her disposal.

  She checked the readouts near the hatch and adjusted the pressure in her locker, making it a few thousand newtons per square meter less than the surrounding rooms. The negative pressure in the containment locker assured that no airborne agents could be released into the general population should an accident occur in the room or something breached the hatch. A double-check of the isolated air supply showed both displays in the green. She was all set.

  She voiced on the cameras and finally stepped up to the table and carefully released the mag seals on the bag. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Doctor Isaacs enter the outer room. He just stared at her, his hairy arms folded casually across his chest, a vacant look on his face. A fuzzy green cloud of fine dust hissed out of the top of the containment bag and brought her attention back to her task. As she worked the bag open her fingers shook slightly with anticipation. A quick pause to adjust the overhead lights interrupted her progress.

  After what seemed like an eternity to her, but only a few seconds to an outside observer, she had the bag open. She recoiled at what she saw. The alien bird-like creature was curled into a tightly-wound ball, reminiscent of the fetal positions sh
e had seen on human burn victims. The creature had been trying to protect its core.

  Under the harsh lighting the thing looked gruesome. Its head was covered with fine feathers that flattened out the further they receded from its brow. Beneath that bony ridge was a pair of unseeing golden eyes surrounded by darker, thicker feathers. The feathers on the face were very flat and the tiny central veins curved away from the thing’s skin in sickly gray webs. Gertz put her face close to the alien’s head and voiced the magnification plate to 10x. Nothing to be revealed at high resolution, she decided, and so continued her examination at standard optics.

  Central to the front of the head was a wide beak-like structure that resembled a lobster claw turned to the side. The beak only projected about two centimeters from the ovoid face. She palpated the jaw and rotated the thing’s long neck. Next she reached for a pair of tongs and slowly worked the beak open. Two tiny slits on the side of the top part of the beak suggested breathing holes. By opening the handles of her tongs she was able to ratchet the mouth open revealing twin rows of serrated teeth. Small and sharp, those teeth were meant to tear and rend. No larger molars in the back for chewing. Just flesh-ripping choppers that could have served as a fine-toothed razor-saw blade.

  Her cursory examination of the head finished, noting nothing that even remotely passed for ears or aural canals, she worked her way down. The garment the alien wore served as a little field generator and she quickly disconnected the small putty-like battery pack from its hem. Something to pass along to the electronic tech guys later; a battery that had held its charge for thousands of years? Now that was something to wonder about. Once she removed the metallic mesh clothing covering the thing’s torso, easily manipulating the fine mechanical closures on the front of the “jacket” for lack of a better word, she turned the body to one side then the other to remove the chainmail from the cadaver. She was totally surprised at how little this almost man-sized creature weighed. Of course. It had to have hollow bones if it was some kind of bird. Lots of mass for strength but not a lot of weight to create any drag during flight.