Junker Blues: Mars: Junker Blues series

by Lon E. Varnadore

  “Marcus, we should go. This doesn’t sit right,” Lash commented.

  “Even with the key?” Marcus asked, ignoring Lash.

  “Affirmative,” the AI said with a sharp chirp that irked Marcus.

  “Wonderful,” Marcus said. He turned and studied the map of the ship that Gideon had provided. “Guess I’ll try the auxiliary hatch.”

  “Damn it, why?” Lash asked. “My two cents, we leave. Now.”

  For a fleeting second, Marcus looked at the armed TSI corpse and thought about taking the rifle.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “It’s not like the DNA reader would still be functional. Or the rifle. Still…”

  He let the idea trickle through his mind a second. He knew what Lash was going to say but let her say it anyway.

  “That isn’t it. We don’t do guns. Too dangerous. You’re the one who—”

  “I know what I taught you, Lash,” Marcus interrupted. It was true. He’d never been one for trying to steal pre-Crawl weapons tech. That was one thing amateur scrappers tried for and usually got grabbed by the MDF just as fast. Marcus always knew that the easiest path to get to get to the Rift Prison Colony on Mars was to steal pre-Crawl weapons for an easy thirty-year stint. Besides, he knew that most scrappers and scavengers who took munitions didn’t keep them for long. He remembered Lackhand Bains, his left hand blown off by a rifle he tried to take without securing it properly. It blew the moment it was taken off the ship without being wiped properly. Bains still ran weapons, but he was a crazy asshole and had formed a prosthetic made from the bits of the remains of the rifle he had taken and been able to recover.

  “Alright, moving on. You know what the design is. I want to say I know, but—”

  “It’s TIS, Marcus,” Lash said, fairly shouting out the words.

  Slaggin’ Hells. “Why would they be here on a hauler?” Marcus said, feeling the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach grow worse. He gripped the multi-tool harder. “We have to keep going.”

  “Marcus,” Lash pleaded, “We—”

  “We need something, Lash. We don’t have enough.” Not for him, at least.

  “For who?”

  “Stay out of my head, Spider!” Marcus shouted.

  There was a moment of silence, and he heard Lash, in almost a whisper, “Sorry, Captain.”

  Marcus disengaged his boots and kicked off the bulkhead, flying through the empty corridor for a good twenty meters. He saw a panel by a hatch partially open and reached out to snag it to slow him down. When his hands caught the outer rim of the of the hatch, his head and torso kept moving, seeing the secondary hatch. He braced himself to arrest his movement and found himself looking into the cargo hold and letting out a cry of surprise.

  Shoving himself backwards, his right hand pulled out his multi-tool, brandishing it at the hatch. He swallowed for a second, his body shaking. Lash was screaming at him, yet all Marcus could hear the was the blood pounding in his ears and his heart pounding harder and harder. Floating a meter from the doorway was a form, unmoving. The waxy, green-hued layer of its skin marked it as a creature of nightmare, a thing that had taken over Earth and still tried to take over the rest of the solar system.

  It was a Crawl!

  “We need to get off the ship. Now,” Marcus shouted, trying to kick his legs upwards to try and make contact with the bulkhead to get away. His legs flailed with panic. Slag, slag, slag…

  “Why?” Lash asked, the robotic voice crackling. Then, a moment later, in his head, “What is wrong? I can sense—"

  Crawl, Marcus hisses back to her in his head. He spent another agonizing second with his feet seeking the bulkhead. He landed, and the magnetic boots clicked on, and he was able to stand on the deck again. He turned back, ready to square off against the thing when he took another look. And, he started to laugh.

  “Are you going to—”

  “False alarm,” Marcus said after a moment. He shook his head. “The drone is dead… or dormant at the least,” he let out a small laugh. He felt his body relax seeing that the Crawl drone spun in a lazy circle, its body curled up like it was trying to conserve heat. The thing wasn’t moving. If it were alive, the creature would be lashing out at him with talons dripping the same strange toxin that burned human flesh and helped to transfer the viral contagion that created more of the Crawl drones.

  Through the hatch, the creature’s face looked like a human male, the skin having a waxy, green coloration in the lights of Marcus’ headlamp. There was a sunken quality to the creature. The eyes were bigger and, when open, held a reflective black. The teeth, though not exposed, would be jagged and harder than most composites around, even in a pre-Crawl ship. The pre-Crawl humans had found a way to build tougher things, and they were all over the system. Half of New Tharsis City was built of the composite that was much like that which made up the Shelby. It would have been a rich find if a scavenger ever came across a few meters of the stuff in its raw form. The Crawl drone could eat through it given enough time. He felt his heart rate rising, and he did his best to calm it. Still not good. What is a drone doing here?

  “It’s a pre-Crawl ship,” Lash’s tinny voice crackled in his ear. “How would—"

  “I thought you researched this place more. It’s why I hired you,” Marcus growled under his breath.

  “Do you need help?” Lash asked.

  “No. It’s dead. I think.” Marcus moved along the floor of the corridor and started to walk towards the hatch and the dormant drone. The creature was rimmed with the same frost as the crew. It had been here a long, long time. Whatever made the thing a raging monster was gone. He poked at it with the tip of his pry bar. It caused the Crawl drone to get pushed further into the cargo bay, giving him an opening.

  “Well, it’s definitely dormant. Damn, I thought these things were all on Earth or at least hadn’t breached The Line.”

  “Mars can’t keep track of every seed pod they send out,” Lash said. “Even with the Eridani enhancements. Bound to have some come through the cracks.”

  “This guy looks like he’s been here as long as the rest of the crew,” Marcus said as he pushed forward, turning his grav-boots off. He pushed off to float through the cargo bay, seeing a few more forms than he expected, all of them having the TSI logo. The cargo bay was filled with long, metallic crates. More than half were older, rectangular, box crates. The rest were hexagonal ones that Marcus had noticed popped up every once and again on various ships, pre-Crawl. He wasn’t sure what they were, but usually had more cutting-edge pre-Crawl tech in them. All had the TSI triskelion stenciled on it. Terrific, if that is some kind of weapon, this was a wasted trip.

  “How is it looking?” Lash asked, bringing Marcus out of his thoughts.

  “Looks like we have potential here,” he said, hoping to sound sincere. He then noticed a cluster of three crew huddled, or clustered, around a hexagonal cargo container. While he moved closer, Marcus spotted zip ties and rope. They tied themselves to the crate. Each of them had what had to be combat armor and rifles with the triskelion. Though someone else had stripped the rifles since their arms were broken off and spinning in a cloud of red flecks of frozen blood in a haze around the group. So, it’s been hit before. Even the armor looked like someone had tried to remove it and gave up on it. “Wow, someone else beat us here.” He looked at the main door and saw a thick package planted onto the door. “Slaggin’ Hells. Bains was here.”

  Marcus recognized the package on the door without getting closer. When he’d run with Lackland Bains, he’d had to put up more than one of those things up himself, given the “honor” of sealing off hatches with Lackland’s own unique electromagnetic combo lock. They came with a pound of explosive, so if triggered and the combo was not input correctly by other scavengers or salvagers, the poor individual or group would be blown up. Some, like Bains, came back to a site to pick it over again to see if they missed anything. It explained why the three around the crate looked like they’
d only recently been disturbed.

  “How long ago, you think?”

  “No way to say.” Marcus tried the sensors on his suit towards the door and the package. The readings didn’t make any kind of sense. He then swept his sensors towards the three broken limbs of the TSI. He cocked his head, his sensors still giving back odd results. Marcus ordered Gideon to feed it to Lash. “Hey, check to see if my suit’s still working.”

  There was a momentary pause. Then, “Everything’s green. Why?” She then gave a small cough and muttered an, “Oh.”

  She must have seen the data. “Doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Marcus asked.

  “None.”

  “Why would someone come here fifty years ago and not claim more? There is a ton of tech we can take. They could have done it, but they didn’t. Why?” Marcus asked. And looks like Bains learned the explosive lock from whoever put this one up.

  “Who knows?” Lash said. “Is it really the time to ask? Let’s strip what we can and go.”

  “But the armor looks pre-Crawl,” Marcus said. “Yet, those people aren’t.”

  “Let’s just take what we can and go. Remember, kinda on a clock here,” Lash said.

  Marcus nodded to himself. Though he wanted to look a little closer at what the three men were all trying to guard. He pushed himself closer and leaned down, and then he activated his boots to settle himself. Squatting down, he reached between frozen legs of two men to hit the cargo box activation button. It popped open without a sound detected on his suit. Marcus stood and looked into the box and cocked an eyebrow.

  Inside was a small, squat metal cylinder with a dull, green color. The top and bottom both had what he thought were lids having lips that extended out from the skin of the cylinder a few centimeters.

  “Just a strange canister thing. Maybe it will give some information.” He reached down to pluck it from the cargo box. It was weightless in the null gravity, but there was something odd about the canister. It felt strange in his hands, and that bothered him.

  “Alright, heading back. You can get ready to come over and start your search once I get back. Remember, I’m looking for—”

  “Ordinum. I know. I wish you’d look for it yourself while you’re there.”

  Marcus felt his thumb itch a moment. Stop it. You have time. “I have other things to do. Besides, you want to get over here as much, if not more so, than I did.”

  He turned around. Right into the face of the Crawl drone. Marcus felt his skin prickle a second before its eyes opened, a feral intensity of life flaring. The eyes swiveled towards him, its mouth gaped opened to expose broken yellow-and-green coated teeth. The creature’s limbs started to flail, before digging into the composite deck below it, starting to lumber towards Marcus.

  Chapter Four

  “Lash, the drone’s awake,” Marcus shouted as the drone launched itself towards him.

  Marcus swallowed, holding onto the canister under his left arm, his multitool useless. With the drone awake, he’d have to stab the thing in just the right spot, at best, aiming for the head or eye. Instead, he pushed off towards the collection of bins, sliding through the spread legs of one of the dead crewmembers. The drone barreled into the frozen corpse, and both went skipping off the stack of bins. Without looking, Marcus threw himself into one of the open cargo bins and pulled the latch closed. Not all the way, but enough for the bin to appear closed.

  Lash sent, “What is—"

  There’s a slaggin’ drone awake here. It’s active, Lash!”

  “I still can’t sense anything?”

  I’m not imagining it, Lash! Marcus bit down hard on his lip. He heard the scraping of claws along the cargo boxes come through his helm. He quickly triggered the controls to turn up any sound that his helm detected and then wished he hadn’t when he heard the sound of sniffing coming closer and closer. A sudden thud and clash of metal screaming on metal caused him to almost cry out, but he stopped himself by biting down on his lip so hard he tasted blood.

  There was a narrow gap between the cargo lid and the rest of the cargo boxes, and he was able to see that the drone was clawing into one of the cargo boxes, then seeing nothing was in there, grabbed another one and started to tear into it.

  Marcus gulped and realized he wasn’t hearing anything except the blood pounding in his ears. He then whispered into his comm, hoping to get Lash out of his head, “I’ll be fine, as long as it doesn’t—”

  He clamped his jaws shut as there was a thud of something hitting the side of the cargo pod. Marcus felt his body freeze for a moment, the thudding grew louder and louder. There was a creak of groaning metal as the drone’s head came into view when the top of the cargo bin was torn off its hinges.

  Shit.

  “Run to the ship, Marcus!” Lash shouted in his head.

  Marcus swung the multitool hard, connecting with the right cheek of the Crawl drone. It let out a mewling cry and pulled itself away. Not waiting, he launched himself forward towards the door of the cargo bay. The kick out of the cargo bin launched it backwards, further entangling the creature for a precious second. Marcus was close to the useless deck plating of the cargo, drew his feet as close to his chest as his suit allowed him, and kicked towards the deck. He was launched towards the entry hatch.

  “Gravity restored,” Gideon chirped in the comms.

  Marcus crashed to the deck, as did the drone. The canister that Marcus held onto went spinning out of reach. Without thinking, Marcus skittered after it and caught it as it was about to roll into the bloody pool of a TSI broken body and bolted for the hatch.

  Marcus shot through the hatch, slamming into the bulkhead before running without looking back. “Gideon, close the—”

  Before Marcus finished, the hiss of the hatch closing behind him filtered through his helmet. The drone was stuck inside, and he heard the scraping and clawing of the thing, as well as the roar of outrage from the other side in an ear-wrecking din. He dialed down his helm’s exterior audio when he realized the corridor was starting to spin noticeably. “What’s going on?”

  “I told him to,” Lash said. “The drones will need to acclimate to the sudden spin, but it won’t take them long.”

  “Drones? There’s more than one of these—”

  “Yes. I don’t know how I missed them before, but now I can detect at least three. One is trapped in the cargo hold. The other two are starting to move towards their captured fellow. I’d—”

  “I am!” Marcus shouted, already making his way towards the umbilicus, pumping his legs as best he could with the mag-boots catching foot holes on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the spinning corridor. His legs pounded harder and harder, imagining he heard the footsteps of the drones coming closer and closer.

  His mark started to burn on his hand, and he swore as his boots started to clang against the metal of the bulkheads and the floor. Whatever surface he could run on, he did it as the ship rotated. “Not now, damn it!” He cursed, gripping his hand hard. He saw the umbilicus and the form of Lash about to step foot onto the plastic and steel.

  Stay there! He shouted in his head before he realized what he was doing. “Wait at the—”

  “You need—”

  “Stay on the ship!” He shouted, still running towards her. Making it inside the airlock, he frantically hammered the button to start the cycling. When it did, he turned to see through the airlock window, not two, but three drones launching themselves towards him and the airlock. They used the same bulkheads, dead crewmembers, and ceiling to land and launch off towards Marcus as he had, they arrived as the door slammed shut. They moved as a group, sometimes even leaping off each other to get closer. Each drone started lashing out at the airlock door, their black eyes pinning him with a feral hunger that made Marcus’ throat dry up.

  Finally, the door cycled to the umbilicus, and Marcus sprawled onto the steel-and-plastic walkway for a second until he started to float. He pushed a command on his right gauntlet, turning the skeleton key off. Th
e outer hull airlock snapped closed. He didn’t stop to wait, instead, he pushed himself down the umbilicus towards Junker. Once inside the ship, he closed the airlock door.

  “We need to get away from the ship.”

  “We are safe for now,” Lash said as the umbilicus retracted from the Shelby. She looked down at him. “We should do some kind of recon, even with drones.”

  “Why?” Marcus asked, standing and looking at her. “We got something, let’s just get out of—”

  Lash held out a long, spindly arm. “Call it a way to soften any potential crime. If we state that we did some reconnaissance and show them the drones being active, it could help soften any crimes we have committed.”

  Marcus looked at her, not wanting to. He wanted to get out of the sector and burn hard for the Belt at least, but he did see her point. And then his own conscience hit him. “Plus, we need to mark it somehow with a warning for the other scavengers. Give then a warning that its infested.”

  Lash nodded and then turned to a box she was going to bring aboard the Shelby. Opening it, she plucked out three small lozenge drones and after a moment, sent them through the airlock and over to the Shelby. The little dark blue shapes flitted here and there.

  Marcus had already programed them with the skeleton key for other reasons, mostly to give Lash piece of mind if they came to a derelict that she really didn’t like or got a ping of Crawl, they could check out the derelict with just the drones.

  As she was moving them with the portable rig, her hands floated in front of her with a harness-like device around her arms and a visor over her face. Marcus realized something. “I thought you said you didn’t feel any Crawl around here?”

  She gave a shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t until after you woke up that first one. It woke the other two who were outside of that bay, which had some kind of shielding. Once they were awake, I sensed them and told you about them.”

  “Yeah, as I was escaping one.”

  “If you had been heading for the others, I would have warned you.”