by Richard Fox
“And if that’s corrupted?”
Lo’thar held Hoffman’s gaze. “Engineering isn’t far away.”
Hoffman nodded, checking his team and his weapon as he stepped away from the marker. “Let’s go.”
Max put IR tape on the bulkhead under the marker.
“You are getting much faster at that,” Lo’thar said.
Chapter 8
“How does our guide want us to get to the next level? We are at what looks like a closed elevator shaft,” Garrison said. “I can open it, if Lo’thar’s okay with me scratching the paint.”
“Get it open.” Hoffman advanced the team to set up a security perimeter around Garrison as he worked the hydraulic spreader.
“If that thing breaks, we’re screwed,” Adams said.
“Oh, little sister, I have other tricks.” He paused, looking down near his feet. “Well, look at that. A loose nail—screw, actually—but very nice.” He slipped it into one of his pouches.
“What is wrong with you?” Adams asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said. “What’s wrong with you, little sister?”
“Call me that again and I’m going to throat punch you.”
“Promises, promises.” Garrison stepped back as dust blew out onto the corridor and he repacked his tools, admiring his work. “I’ve gotta say, Lo’thar, your ancestors built a pretty clean ship. Design-wise, I mean. The lifts operate on tracks rather than cables. Almost abates my paralyzing fear of riding on elevators.”
“I love elevators,” Adams said. She leaned into the opening, looking up and down through the sights of her weapon. “Looks like they could move some big stuff by the size of this shaft.”
“Adams, lead the way,” Hoffman said. He looked at Opal. “Good?”
“Don’t like the dark,” Opal said.
“The dummy has optics like the rest of us,” Duke said.
“It is creepy,” Garrison said, peering after Adams as she climbed the elevator shaft with grav boots and gauntlets. “I’m coming up.”
“About time,” she said.
Hoffman waited at the bottom with Opal. His point team was a pair of shadows penetrating darker shadows at the top.
“Set,” Adams said.
A second later, Garrison reached his position. “Set.”
“Follow me, Opal,” Hoffman said.
“Opal first. Keep Sir safe from dark places.”
The team navigated the shaft in pairs. Duke came last after Max and Lo’thar.
“We’re at a pair of double doors,” Adams said. “Garrison wants to blow them up.”
“I see you. We’re going to tighten up a bit,” Hoffman said. “We’re making progress.”
“Agreed,” King said.
“My IR scan shows a temperature change beyond the doors,” Adams said. “Colder, if that’s even possible.”
Hoffman signaled Lo’thar to the double doors. “Is that normal?”
Lo’thar moved his head in a gesture Hoffman had always wondered about but only now interpreted. The Dotari was twitching his quills inside the helmet where no one could see his nervousness.
“Stacks should be cooled, but not frozen. Perhaps this is why the marker was malfunctioning,” Lo’thar said as he tried the door panel.
Something electronic threw a spark and popped. Lo’thar jerked back his hands. He paused, staring at the panel, then carefully forced it open. “I can…hot-wire…the doorway, but it’ll take time.”
Hoffman felt tired and ready to be at the objective. “Garrison.”
The breacher stepped forward, hydraulic spreader already prepped, and slammed it into the seam between the doors. He paused, checked the positioning, then opened the doors a crack.
Icy fog filled the hallway. For a moment, it looked like it was starting to snow. Garrison wrenched the doors open wide enough for an armored Marine to slip through.
“Moving,” Hoffman said, leading the way inside with Opal as Garrison folded the spreader and jammed it into a leg pouch.
King and Booker came next, then Max and Lo’thar, with Adams and Garrison last.
“Team, reposition. Garrison and Adams back on point. Look sharp, people,” Hoffman said as he studied the enormous, V-shaped cryo chamber. Scaffolding went up and down the sides of each tier-like stadium seating under construction, and pipes ran beneath the floor grating several levels down.
Water had been condensing or leaking from someplace and formed bizarre ice patterns more reminiscent of a glacier than the interior of a starship. He couldn’t see through the glass on the horizontal cryo pods that lined the walls. “Anyone bring an ice scraper?”
“There’s a word for this type of cold and it is yuck,” Adams said.
“Yuck is bad word,” Opal said.
Hoffman and the team burst out laughing.
“I don’t get it,” Lo’thar said.
“Nothing to get. Just a little pent-up tension,” Hoffman said.
“Yuck not bad word?” Opal looked around in confusion.
“Don’t ever change, Opie,” Booker said.
Max placed IR tape across the threshold of the doorway. “Need some help here.”
“Garrison,” Hoffman said.
The breacher moved back to the doorway. “Garrison, open the door. Garrison, close the door. An honest man’s work is never done.” He passed Hoffman and Lo’thar on the way back to his position near Adams.
Lo’thar pressed the sides of his helmet with his hands as he stared in dismay. “This is not the computer node.”
“No kidding,” Hoffman said. “You care to explain what’s going on?”
“Obviously, things have been rearranged. The colony fleet that settled Takeni didn’t have cryo sleep. So that means…”
King cursed. “You don’t know the layout.”
Lo’thar dropped his hands and faced King, who ignored him to watch his zone. The Dotari hero spoke louder than necessary to emphasize his point, talking with his hands and pacing the floor between Max and Hoffman, who corralled him.
“Do human ships do repairs while underway? I think they do, Gunney King. Such things happen in deep space. Why, I remember many times on the Breitenfeld…”
“Lo’thar,” Hoffman said.
“Lieutenant?”
“Focus on the mission.” He turned to the nearest cryo pod, wiping frost from the glass. “I bet whoever’s in here will know their way around.” He scraped ice away, activated a small light on the side of his glove, and looked inside. Nothing.
Lo’thar pressed his head against the cleared section, then pulled back in surprise.
“It’s empty,” Lo’thar said, as though he’d been punched in the gut.
Hoffman leaned closer. “There’s a depression in the cushions. A Dotari was in here, but whoever it was is long gone.” He signaled his team.
King was the first to act. He wiped another pod and then another. The rest of the team checked pods with one hand and held weapons ready with the other.
King cursed. “Empty.”
Hoffman faced Lo’thar and stared into his eyes. The Dotari’s face flushed a slightly darker color as he opened and closed his beak without saying more.
Shaking his head, Hoffman strode to a better position to see all his team.
“Got a temperature variance on IR,” Adams said as she slipped her rifle sling around to her back. She jumped up to the next level of the scaffolding and performed what sadistic basic-training instructors called a muscle-up—a pull-up that immediately turned into a vertical push-up. Done twenty or thirty times, it was a physical trainer’s wet dream and every recruit’s worst nightmare—unless the recruit was as lean and strong as Adams. With the assistance of the pseudo-muscle layer beneath the armor plates, doing the maneuver was almost too easy.
“I’m covering her,” Duke said as he aimed his rifle and sidestepped for the best angle.
Hoffman and the rest of the team watched her every move.
“You need me u
p there, little sister?” Garrison asked.
“You couldn’t get up here.”
“That’s some bullshit.” Garrison jumped onto and climbed up the scaffolding a second later. “Ha!”
Meanwhile, Adams jogged to a pod, pulled her rifle around front, and scraped the glass with her non-shooting hand. She froze.
Hoffman held his breath.
Gripping her rifle with both hands, she said, “Sir, you want to see this.”
Hoffman jumped up, did the chin-up then the press-up, and moved quickly to her side. Garrison aimed his rifle into dark areas Duke and the others couldn’t see from their lower position.
Hoffman traded positions with Adams and scraped away more of the ice, his mind rebelling at what he saw before he realized what it was. As a Strike Marine, he’d seen plenty of dead bodies—many of them mangled by explosions or sliced apart by Xaros energy beams. He was less familiar with decay and corruption of flesh.
Inside was a long-dead alien. Sections of the Dotari’s face were stretched tight while other parts had sluffed away from the yellowed skull. Veins and scraps of tissue clung to bone. One eye was open, literally frozen wide. The other had been replaced with black metal and frosted over lenses. A thin frame of wires wove through his quills like a frame and his bottom jaw was covered in metal, so heavy that it hung slack. Whatever happened to him looked like it killed him.
Staring at the decayed body inside the non-functioning cryo pod, Hoffman became aware that Max was making a lot of noise behind him as he helped Lo’thar up to the second level.
“I don’t like the mechanical parts,” Adams whispered. “And the glass has some kind of moldy ice crust around the edges.”
“Lo’thar won’t like it either,” Hoffman said. He’d never seen a Dotari with advanced prosthetics.
“What is this?” Lo’thar said in breathless dismay. He warbled something in his own language and brushed his sleeves energetically.
“What happened to him?” Hoffman asked. “I’ve never seen a cyborged Dotari before.”
Lo’thar warbled words again, then composed himself with visible effort. “Cybernetics were never something we embraced. Pa’lon and the Qa’Resh warned us against augmentation. It became anathema after centuries of being outlawed. He must have been badly injured before he was put in the cryo pod.”
“Gunney, scope the rest of the pods. See if any others are full,” Hoffman ordered.
Garrison and the rest of the team started doing the same thing. “Where’d they all go? All the pods I can see from here are a uniform temperature.”
“I hate ghost ships,” Max said. “Have since the old vids of the Midway salvage. Gave me nightmares for years.” He gave Opal a nudge. “IR sweep, big guy. No need to be scared.”
“Opal 6-1-9 not scared. You don’t be scared. Opal keep you safe.”
Hoffman watched the interaction between Max and Opal from above.
“I never said I was scared,” Max said, then whispered loudly, “I’m able to not like this without being scared, right? Don’t project on me. Doughboys get scared all the time.”
Opal hefted his oversized rifle up with one hand and looked through the scope as he put his other hand on Max’s shoulders. Max tried to wiggle away.
Opal pulled him close, then patted him on the head. “Don’t be scared. Opal will kill enemies.”
“Got a hot spot,” Duke said, then pointed toward the bottom few rows of cryo pods.
Booker pointed toward a larger concentration in the upper corner. “Which way, sir?”
Hoffman pointed to the lower, closer location. “Form up. Move out. Look sharp.”
“We’re going down,” Garrison said.
“You wish,” Adams said. She dropped from level to level, taking a knee and sweeping the area with her rifle as Garrison followed and did the same thing. Booker and King followed him.
Hoffman controlled his breathing and checked everyone. He had a bad premonition but was finally feeling the mission groove. This was where he and his team belonged, for better or worse. From his early days as an officer, he’d practiced mission review as a calming technique. Now, with images of the rotted, mutilated corpse of the Dotari in the pod filling his imagination, he searched for anything in the briefing that had suggested this was even a remote possibility. All he could do was press forward and maintain control of his team. If they saw him hesitate, they’d doubt him, the mission, and themselves.
The six pods King had spotted through his scope were on the bottom level.
Hoffman moved toward King and Lo’thar, who were at the first pod. King brushed it off, then paused. Lo’thar stood nervously beside him, wiping his arms and twitching his quills inside his helmet.
“Well?” Booker asked. “You’re killing me, Gunney.”
“I sure as hell don’t want to look,” Max said. “Commo guys don’t do haunted ghosts ships.”
“Keep team safe,” Opal said.
King made eye contact with Hoffman, then considered the warm cryo pod. Hoffman could see only a portion of the scene over the gunnery sergeant’s shoulder.
Cybernetic attachments covered the definitely not decayed Dotari body inside. Muscles and surgical scars crisscrossed its body. Unlike the corpse, this Dotari’s body carried an increased amount of dense muscle—enough to support heavy armor. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed too tall to fit in the pod, as though it had a growth spurt while in stasis—impossible and illogical. Most of all, the creature radiated the potential for berserker violence.
“It can’t be,” Lo’thar said. “No, no, no…it can’t be!”
“Can’t be what?” Hoffman asked.
Lo’thar reached to the small of his back, pulled out his pistol, and pointed it at the cryo pod. Hoffman grabbed him by the wrist and jerked his arm toward the ceiling.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hoffman asked.
“They are noorla!” Lo’thar yelled and tried to pull his hand free from Hoffman. The alien word sounded familiar to Hoffman, but he couldn’t place it.
In the pod, the cyborged Dotari’s chest rose and fell slowly, then a bit quicker.
“Sir, I have a heat-signature bloom. And it’s growing rapidly…pod bays levels three through twelve,” Booker said.
It hit him. The word noorla was from the movie Last Stand on Takeni, a dramatization of the Breitenfeld’s rescue of the Dotari from the Xaros. The Xaros and Dotari they’d twisted into slaves. Violent, berserker slaves called noorla. The Marines and sailors on the Breitenfeld called them banshees.
“Max,” Hoffman said as ice filled his veins, “signal the Barca and Admiral Valdar. This mission—”
Inside the cryo pod, the Dotari’s eyes snapped open, focusing with the split-second precision of a killing machine. Glass exploded outward as the creature punched through the pod cover and grabbed King by the throat.
A deafening howl cut through the air.
Hoffman popped his Ka-Bar knife from his armor sleeve and chopped through the modified Dotari arm. He sawed the blade back and forth, scratching the surface of the armor and drawing a thin line of blood as it bit down. He wrenched the knife free and thrust the blade into the banshee’s mouth. He locked his arm out, pushing with the aid of his armor, and the Ka-Bar broke through the back of the banshee’s skull. The alien went slack and released the team sergeant.
King stumbled backward, bumping Lo’thar.
“Fuck!” Max, Booker, and Garrison yelled at the same time.
Opal boomed a warning, “Sir, look out!
Five banshees broke out of their nearby pods, moving like someone had flipped a kill-everyone switch.
Duke dropped two with precision head shots before they could get out of their pods. “Get clear. Move, move, move!”
“Busy fighting!” Garrison said as he pressed the barrel of his rifle to the forehead of the next attacking creature and pulled the trigger. “Little close!”
“Garrison, move left!” Adams leaned around his right shou
lder and shot the next attacker before the first fell away from Garrison’s barrel.
Lo’thar stepped in front of Hoffman, fumbling with his pistol. Hoffman shoved him aside.
Max, Booker, and the other Strike Marines opened fire on the remaining two as they charged like drug-crazed mutants. Hoffman added several quick rounds to the lead beast. Both Dotari monsters were flung onto their backs despite their size and forward momentum.
“Let’s call our shots if we can. Conserve ammunition when we can,” Hoffman said as he scanned his zones and hand-signaled his team into a better defensive formation. Breathing hard, he focused on not sounding like he was breathing hard.
“Screw that!” Max said.
Lo’thar warbled in Dotari, weapon pointed here and there without rhyme or reason. “How can there be banshees on Kid’ran’s Gift? This isn’t possible…”
“This is only going to get worse,” Duke said, his voice so level it gave Hoffman chills.
Banshees smashed free of the cryo-pod chambers on the upper level and swarmed down the scaffolding. Howls filled the big room as their bodies crashed down level by level.
“Duke, you mind?” Hoffman asked.
The sniper took three head shots before aiming at the rapidly moving, very large torsos of the creatures.
“Lo’thar!” The lieutenant grabbed the Dotari by the shoulder and gave him a quick shake. “We need a way out of here!”
“The…water access,” Lo’thar mumbled, then his head perked up. “Yes, coolant pipes run below the deck.” He pointed to a metal hatch at the bottom of the room in the space between the two angled levels of cryo pods. “There! There!” Lo’thar jabbed a finger at the hatch.
“Booker, Max, and King, secure the exit,” Hoffman ordered. “Rest of us will cover you.” Hoffman lined up a careful shot and pulled the trigger, but instead of hitting the chest of a banshee, he blew off the creature’s hand—or thought he did.
A long howl reverberated through the chamber as more banshees broke out of their pods.
“They’ve got armor. And claws. Shit, they look mean,” Adams said, firing in an excruciatingly slow cadence to conserve her ammunition. “I’m bumping my mags.” She dropped her current magazine into a leg pouch and slammed a magazine she knew was full into her gun.
