On the floor far below him were metal bars and bridges, which presumably would once sit between the different stacks of boxes, and to which the crates could be secured.
Solomon didn’t see one strap, webbing harness, or tie dangling anywhere.
“No way.” He shook his head. “This is too big. It would take a meticulous crew weeks to clear this out, if not months. And look at the sort of job they’ve done. Nothing is out of place, absolutely nothing. No packing materials left behind, no container crates, no ropes or ties that had to be cut or burned apart.” He was an idealist by nature, one of the universe’s eternal optimists in some ways, although it was very well hidden under a cynical demeanor.
But even so, even the reckless, best-thief-in-New Kowloon couldn’t believe that any gang had the skill or the audacity to perform such a feat.
“The ship must have been empty when they found it. The Kepler must have jettisoned its cargo,” he called out. The cargo that they were supposed to find, he remembered his mission parameters pretty much exactly.
“Excuse me, Commander, but that is unlikely,” Malady’s voice said in his suit’s ear. “The deep-field ships are simply too expensive to run empty. It would cripple the families who lived here, not to be paid at the end of a run. Traditionally, the deep-field ships leave with minerals and cargo, and return with their colonial equivalents to sell in Earth’s on and off-world markets.”
Then how did they achieve this? Solomon was thinking. “Malady, find a system computer. Patch yourself in and see if you can find the manifest. And the crew information.”
That was the other thing that was worrying Solomon. No crew. Anywhere. Not even body parts, or spatters of blood or signs of a firefight as far as he could see. Who wouldn’t defend their home, their livelihood?
Unless they mutinied, he considered, moving his hands in a swimming motion to descend through the gulf toward one of the gantries.
And then, of course, there was the hole that they had entered through. As his boots settled on the gantry and he held onto the railing, he looked again at the vast hole in the side of the Kepler and tried to imagine just what could have caused it.
“Some scorch marks, but not many,” he muttered to himself as Wen flew slowly around the vault room, and Malady made his laborious way to one of the bulkhead doors, sure to have some kind of computer screen access, if nothing else.
Solomon looked at the tears in the metal, the splintered and twisted girders. There was slagged and melted metal, but it appeared to be from the inner supports as far as he could make out. It was as if something had managed to rupture gas and power lines that threaded through the Kepler’s hull, further weakening it. But the inner walls were all buckled outward, twisted, and all…clean.
Just what in the name of Jupiter’s moons could cause that much of an impact that it ruptured the service cavity between the walls? Solomon wondered, slightly horrified.
And then, he saw something glinting down there, near the bottom of the opening into outer space. It was something that was out of place, a flash of reddish color in an otherwise sea of silvers, blacks, and grays.
Blood?
“Wen? On me!” Solomon called, vaulting over the gantry and propelling himself toward the small red mark, unhooking his Jackhammer and priming the cartridges as he did so.
“Ready, Commander.” Jezebel was already swimming up to rendezvous with him, not kicking with her legs but swimming like an eel or an otter through the vacuum.
As they drew nearer, Solomon saw that it wasn’t blood like he’d first thought. Instead, it was a fragment of plastic, slightly transparent, lying wedged at the bottom of the hole. It had some sort of lettering stenciled across it, and Solomon tried to read it as he swam forward.
“Near… Nova… Neo?” he hazarded a guess. “It looks to be some bit of packing container for whatever was in here, maybe?” he said.
“But why was this the only bit left behind?” Wen asked as her feet clanked on the floor and she reached down to pull at it.
“Wait!” Solomon called. It was all too obvious. What if this is a trap?
But Wen had already seized the piece of plastic that was almost as tall as she was and pulled. It shuddered where it had stuck against a twist of blackened metal, but then flew free with a scraping shriek—
Revealing an arm.
A very large arm.
“What the heck is that?” Jezzie let herself hover backward, away from the appendage.
It was a silvered arm. One that was entirely made of metal, and which clearly had servo motors, wires, and metal plates along its form. It didn’t have normal human digits, but instead just three vice-like metal claws and one clamping ‘thumb.’
“That’s a robot, clearly.” Solomon almost laughed at Jezebel’s reaction. He guessed that this place was spooking everyone out. Everyone apart from Malady, anyway. “Well, it’s a bit of a robot. Not an entire one.”
“Yeah, of course.” The combat specialist shook her head at her own overreaction. “It’s probably an industrial robot, used to lift stuff in here.”
“No. I think it was being shipped,” Solomon countered. “It was with that bit of corporate packing crate, right? I reckon it was one of the things that was being transported back to Earth.” Solomon had a thought. “Malady? Any luck with that computer? Where was the Kepler bound for?”
“I’m into the mainframe, but the systems are down, Commander,” Malady stated. “But, luckily for us all, I can speak machine code. I’m reading the BIOS data-files as we speak.”
“Look at you, multitasking,” Jezzie said dryly.
“Kepler deep-field, bound for Mars Colony, then Luna Colony, and finally Earth before looping around the sun on its return journey to Proxima,” Malady intoned a moment later. “Crew complement: one hundred and fourteen. All radio and telemetries contact ceased two Earth-standard days ago. No distress beacon activated.”
“Okay, but what was it carrying?” Solomon asked.
There was a small electronic sound from Malady’s channel, which Solomon took to be the metal human-golem’s equivalent of a snort of frustration.
“It doesn’t say. Restricted Access Only.”
“Restricted Access? We’re the stars-be-damned Marine Corps!” Solomon burst out. “Don’t we get an automatic override or something?”
“No one told me if we do,” Malady said. “Still Restricted Access Only. Whatever the Kepler was carrying, only the captain of the ship knew about it.”
Instinctively, Solomon knew that meant trouble.
12
Mayday
“TZZZRK! Come in. Is anyone there? Come in! TZZRK!” The cargo hold erupted with the sudden sound of radio static coming from the overhead speaker system.
“Malady, I thought you said the computers were down?” Solomon startled, looking around.
“They were, Commander,” Malady said. “A survivor appears to have found a way to run a generator, enough to run the speaker systems.”
“TZZZK! Please, I know you’re there… Please help… I’m in… TZRK!...eighteenth floor, and…TZZZZRK!”
As fast as it had come, the survivor’s message clicked out, leaving them wondering if they had even heard it at all.
“Uh… Commander?” Wen turned to look at him.
Someone is alive in here. Someone managed to stay alive. Solomon shook his head. “Malady, get those doors open. Blow them apart if you have to. We need to get to the eighteenth floor, quickly!” He was already swimming toward Malady to see the man-golem draw the cable from his wrist back into his metal body. The mech then seized the double bulkhead doors with metal, servo-assisted fingers—very much like the weird robot arm, Somolon thought—and heaved.
CREEEEEAK! Much to Solomon’s astonishment, Malady managed to force the bulkhead doors open, releasing a sudden blast of steam and gases from the other side as what little bit of atmosphere was left in the corridor behind the door escaped.
“Remind me to never annoy yo
u, Malady,” Solomon said as he flew to the golem’s side, raising the Jackhammer to cover him.
“You’d know about it if you had annoyed me, Commander,” Malady said, which to Solomon wasn’t entirely encouraging, he had to be honest.
“Clear!” Solomon called, seeing the wide, empty corridor on the other side. The ceiling was vaulted with the heavy steel girders of the bulkhead. On both right and left, there appeared to be large service elevators. “This must be a loading hall.” Solomon pushed himself off the walls to float toward the elevators. “Malady, can you get the doors open?” he called, and the large golem-man seized the first of the lift’s doors to wrench them open, revealing a wide shaft with ladders around the outside and cables spearing down the center.
No lift, though. Solomon looked up and down until he saw industrial-plate markings stamped on the wall.
LEVEL 24 ACCESS: CARGO HOLD 1
“I guess we go up, then,” Solomon said, kicking out from the open lift door to languidly float into the elevator shaft, trying not to look down. Despite the Kepler’s current depressurized state, it was still unnerving to be floating inside a large and dark elevator shaft, with apparently a hundred meters or so of empty space under his feet.
Floating turned out to be quicker than using a lift, and Solomon had already started grabbing onto the cables and pulling himself up, ascending effortless meters with every handhold. Beneath him, Malady followed with a grace that he never had in gravity conditions. Combat Specialist Wen took up the rear.
23…
22…
21…
The floors swept by quickly, and even though Solomon kept his eyes peeled, he still couldn’t see any sign of whatever it was that had ripped a hole out of the ship. No burn marks on the walls, no signs of forced entry or exit on any of the doors.
Where did everyone go? he thought, before remembering that there had to be at least one person left alive inside here. And hopefully, they would get more information…
20…
19…
“Here we are,” Solomon whispered over the short-wave suit channel, slowing as he realized that there was something different happening at level 18.
LEVEL 18 ACCESS: ATMOPSHERIC REGULATION LABS
The lift door was open, and he saw a shaft of slightly grayer light hitting the back wall of the lift shaft, coming from the door. That meant two things. The hallway on the other side was depressurized just like he was right now, and also that someone must have tried to open them.
“Malady?” Solomon allowed himself to float upward until he was above the partially open door, keeping his Jackhammer trained on the crack of graying light as the full tactical clanked onto the inner side of the door. Malady braced his large metal boots on the frame and started to heave the door apart with his hands—
There was a sudden movement from the door. The graying light cut out, as if something on the other side had blocked it.
Slap! A metallic ringing sound as if someone had struck a bell made Solomon jump and look down.
“Unhand me!” Malady was roaring suddenly, trying to break free from the door.
A large silvered arm, just slightly longer and more prehensile than Malady’s own, had reached out through the open gap of the doors and seized the metal golem by the wrist.
“What the heck!” Solomon gasped, raising his Jackhammer. He couldn’t get a good line on it, though, without risking hitting Malady.
It’s that robot, Solomon saw. The same one who lost an arm? It’s gone haywire.
The chrome, steel, and silver arm held Malady’s wrist in the vice-clamp of its fingers. Despite the large metal man attempting to jump back from the partly-opened door, the robot arm held fast then suddenly yanked him back to smash into the lift doors with a grinding crunch.
“Malady! Get clear!” Solomon was shouting, skidding himself down the wall above his squad member as the golem was pounded against the lift doors again, making them buckle.
“Get off!” Solomon shoved the barrel of his Jackhammer into the gap between the doors, which was now almost a foot wide. He caught a glimpse of complicated steel and chrome shape on the other side, moving—a body?
BADA-DAP-DAP! The Gold Commander fired into the hole, causing an explosion of sparks as his high projectile bullets hit something on the other side and ricocheted off.
Phtock! Ping! Some of his own bullets spat past him to zigzag up the shaft as they bounced off the metal.
“TZZZRK!” Even though sound is almost nullified by a vacuum, there is still a modicum of noise as objects move, even in space, and Solomon’s suit amplifiers picked up the snarl of electric static from the other side. The lift doors were suddenly ripped inward as the robot arm dragged Malady with it.
CLANG-Klaaang! The doors rolled and bounced into the room, scattering around the giant silvered form that was even now lifting Malady and shoving him against the nearest wall.
The atmospheric regulation laboratory looked more like a factory, with large ceramic and metal pipes emerging from square, blocky units over stilled turbines, before plunging into the grated floor. It was a large space, but a complicated one as the giant pipes rolled and snaked through the room everywhere. And it was into here that Malady and the silver robot rolled as they wrestled and fought.
The thing is huge! Solomon thought as he rolled himself through the air, staying close to the ceiling to try and get an attack line on the thing. Beneath him, Jezzie was doing the same but along the floor of the laboratory, hoping to attack in a pincer movement against the beast.
It was vaguely humanoid, but only vaguely, taller than Malady and broader too. Its arms and legs weren’t really limbs at all, Solomon saw. They each articulated from the corner of the thing’s square body, meaning that when the thing charged against Malady, it looked a little like a table or one of the mech-walkers that had become dangerously sentient.
“Gragh!” The thing used its slab-like metal body to pin Malady against one of the pipes, driving its metal legs into the grate floor as it raised its two forward arms or legs, preparing to drive them down onto—or into—the metal golem.
“Hyai!” Suddenly, a shape from the floor somersaulted up to attack the thing. Jezzie, having made her way around the pipes of the floor to spin through the air, landed on the thing’s back and drove one of her blades in the thing’s arm socket.
Clang! TZZRK! There was a shower of sparks from whatever small gap Wen had found in the thing’s sheathed carapace, and it reacted violently, spinning around and throwing her from its back. Even in zero-G, being sent head over heels still meant that when she slammed against the nearest metal pipe, she rebounded and didn’t move.
“Jezzie!” Solomon shouted in alarm, opening fire.
The Jackhammer used high-propulsion bullets, each one having a tiny explosive charge in a miniature thruster-tube at the back. In effect, they mimicked tiny rockets as they speared down at the thing.
Thtock! Ping!
Oh crap. Solomon quickly saw his mistake and ceased firing. The Jackhammer’s bullets had exploded into sparks across the robot-thing’s back, before breaking apart and spinning off around the room. He couldn’t afford to fire in here and risk the ricochet possibly hitting Malady, Wen, or himself.
But the Jackhammer had done some damage, he thought, seeing pockmarks and dark scorches across the thing as it lurched and stumbled back from the onslaught. One of its leg-arms was held out at an awkward angle, and Solomon could see Jezzie’s blade sticking from its gears and servos at the top, still sparking.
THOCK! Now freed from where he was pinned, Malady swung his heavy metal fists into the body of the thing, making it roll onto its side with the force of the blow. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to seriously damage it and the machine swept out one leg, casually batting Malady to one side. The mech-man smashed through one of the ceramic pipes, causing a cloud of crystalline dust and steam to explode into the air around him with a dull roar.
We can’t fire at it. We don’
t have any explosives. Think, Solomon! The Gold Squad Commander had a second of complete indecision as he tried to think of a way to overcome the behemoth. The escaping gases from pipes Malady had crushed were filling the laboratories with a roiling fog. Solomon only hoped that it wasn’t anything explosive. It obscured half of the room in moments, until Solomon couldn’t see the robot thing, or Jezzie, or anything apart from humped shapes in the confusion.
Think, Solomon! He forced his mind to catalogue what his options were.
Come on. That serum is supposed to make you brighter, isn’t it!?
But whichever way he looked at it, a Jackhammer, a small blade, and an emergency medical kit weren’t going to put a stop to that thing. There was nothing that they had that would injure it, he realized.
Nothing that I have, he realized, the thought forming like a seed in his mind, just as the gases rolled and leaping out came the gigantic robot-thing, straight for him, with one hand reaching to grab him. Unlike Malady inside his full tactical suit, Solomon knew that those vice fingers would easily crush his suit and the organs and bones that they protected within.
I don’t have anything that can hurt it. I’ll have to use something bigger than me then… Solomon reacted in an instant, throwing aside his arms so that he could jack-knife through the vacuum as the thing’s undamaged leg-arm shot past him.
He was rolling over the thing’s arm and body. He reached down, feeling his suit’s power gauntlets grab the handle of Wen’s hardened poly-steel blade, catch on, and he thumped onto the thing’s back, rebounding as the robot crashed into the wall after him.
“Malady!” Solomon screamed. There was nothing that he had that could hurt it. He needed something bigger.
“TZZRK!” If it was possible for robots to get enraged, then it seemed that was precisely what this thing was doing as it turned and tried to shake Solomon off of its back.
Outcast Marines Boxed Set Page 25
