Stone lead the way, having picked out a safe route through the destruction. The ship had taken a critical hit to its guts when whatever had failed in this section blew the hell up. It was a miracle of good design that the entire ship hadn’t broke in half, she acknowledged reluctantly. The Merki might not go for efficiency as the Alliance did, but none could say their stuff wasn’t rugged. An Alliance ship receiving this kind of blow would probably have suicided with all aboard, but then again, the navy had no ships like this. Maybe the failure wouldn’t have occurred in the first place or it might have been averted by automated safeties. Who could say?
“There’s an emergency access lock just up ahead. Intact,” Stone announced.
She could see it now, dimly lit. All ships had to have them in case of decompression. Warships especially needed such safeguards in battle, but they tended to have entire sealable blast-doors and partitions too. That wasn’t what they had here. It was an emergency airlock sized for Merkiaari and plenty big enough for a squad of marines. It had power so they wouldn’t need the portable airlock they’d brought.
“Lieutenant Cook, have the men park the portalock somewhere out of the way for later pickup.”
“Aye ma’am,” Cook replied.
“It’s Lieutenant, or Richmond. Not ma’am. I prefer Richmond.”
“Aye, aye Lieutenant.”
She didn’t quite sigh. She still wasn’t used to being treated like some kind of celebrity. Cook’s reaction probably had more to do with her being a woman and an officer than a viper anyway. Marines like Cook took the whole officer and a gentlemen thing way seriously. Marines were very old school in their training. Just ask Gina.
Stone reached the airlock and peered inside. “Clear. Richmond, take a squad and secure us a perimeter on the far side. Push it out a few hundred meters but keep line of sight with the lock and your furthest elements. Cook, assign her a squad.”
“Sergeant Wu, you and yours with the Lieutenant.”
“Aye, aye,” Sergeant Wu Chan-juan said. There was no inflection in her voice. She gave nothing away of her feelings about being first up. “You heard the order! Move your butts into that lock. Move move move!”
Kate made it inside first, but barely. She wanted to be first through and in control of matters, especially the opening moments of what could turn into an engagement with unknown numbers of Merki. Not that her sensors were reporting any nearby, but still. As soon as everyone was inside and the door sealed, she activated the entry cycle and the lock pressurised to equal that in the ship. The inner door shot open and she was out the lock and scanning for hostiles.
Her sensors had better resolution than before, but still not as good as she would have hoped. Still, she had the beginnings of the ship’s interior layout coming in now. She had a few corridors and junctions solidly mapped in blue, and tentative position marked in amber that her processor thought were compartments. Open spaces and other details began populating her display. Lighting was low level, but adequate; it was about the same intensity as that used by the Alliance for emergency lighting, but she didn’t know if this was normal for Merkiaari. It was subtly red-shifted, so it might be their form of emergency light.
“No hostiles detected,” she announced as her marines spread out and covered all approaches from kneeling positions. “Wu, take half the men to the left. You’ll find a junction about three hundred meters along. Deploy your remotes to cover each corridor and hold the junction. I’ll do the same to the right. Sing out if you find anything interesting. Go.”
“Aye,” Wu said and pointed to four of her people to stick with Kate. The rest moved out covering each other.
Kate made a fan out gesture with her free hand and lead her half of the squad carefully along her chosen route as her processor continued to fill in the blanks on the schematic it was building. She checked that she had a solid connection to Stone and was satisfied. TacNet was updating him in real time as it should. She had been concerned that some property of the ship’s construction might prevent it, but no, all was fine. She quickly updated him via viper comm, but just to say they were on mission and proceeding as outlined.
“Hold here,” she said before reaching the branch that her sensors indicated was coming up. She retrieved a sensor ball from its clip on her suit and rolled it along the deck so that it would give a brief look around the corner. “Okay, move up,” she said when the visual came in of another empty corridor. “Hold the junction and get your warning net up.”
“Aye, aye,” the marines chorused.
She really should get to know their names. She bet Stone knew them all already. She would query him and get a quick download when he arrived. If she had to play officer today, she would do a good job of it, and knowing who she was leading was a basic first step.
She contacted him on viper comm. “You can come ahead. Nothing is cooking here yet. The ship seems deserted. I have the marines covering the access to the lock, and we have a warning net up. Are you still receiving my updates okay?”
“Yeah, TacNet is good. I’m coming in.”
She smiled and changed to helmet comm. “The rest are coming in. Keep doing what you’re doing until we get new orders.”
The marines acknowledged and waited for their comrades. It didn’t take Stone long to cycle everyone through the lock by squads and soon they were consolidated as one group once more. They left the remotes to guard their backs and as a single unit moved out to explore the ship. Kate suggested that they each take half the men and continue as she had begun, but he wasn’t easy with the idea.
“You really want to split up in a ship this size with God knows how many hostiles aboard? When does that get fun?”
She grinned at his sour tone. “Just a thought.”
Stone snorted and kept up the careful pace they were setting.
It made sense for the only two vipers to take point; their sensors and reactions were superior to that of the marines despite the encumbrance of the hard suits, but that didn’t let the marines off easy. Stone had them drop a sensor every now and then to extend their warning net, and detailed some of the men to monitor the take from them. That freed up his own attention for what lay ahead of them.
Kate kept an eye on the marines making sure they didn’t get strung out or bunch up, but it was wasted effort; they knew their jobs. She did it anyway. They had been aboard more than an hour clearing one compartment after another and finding nothing when Stone called a halt. He ordered remotes sent ahead this time, unwilling to proceed deeper into the ship without better intel. He was looking back the way they had come, obviously unhappy with their lack of any answers. Kate was feeling it too. The whole damn ship felt like it was watching her, but with no evidence to back that up, or proof that it had ever had a crew, she couldn’t put a finger on why.
“We’re getting nowhere,” Stone growled over viper comm. “We could spend all day on this one deck alone and never find anything.”
“Actually we can’t,” she pointed out. “Not unless you want to come off suit air and chance whatever the ship holds for us?”
“Hell no.”
“Then we need to hold back a reserve to get back to Shannon.”
“Yeah. We have a few more hours before that will be an issue, but yeah I’m watching it. We need to access somewhere more interesting. Another deck, or someplace with more chance that we’ll gain some answers. Franks must be chewing rocks about now.”
She laughed. “See that feature at grid G4? You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Before Stone could answer one of the marines running the remotes attracted their attention. It was Wu.
“What have we got?” Stone asked the sergeant.
“Dead Merkiaari, sir!”
Kate exchanged a look with Stone. Here we go, she thought, the shit was about to hit the fan. A dead Merki on a Merkiaari ship couldn’t be good, could it? Maybe they had all gone stir crazy and turned cannibal. Yeah, and being castaways they had to kill each other to survive, like
that episode of Zelda where her crew went rabid because of the alien microbe they picked up on a planet and... She grinned at her whimsy. The silly bugger probably just fell and broke his neck or something.
“What channel you running that thing on?” Stone asked Wu, and she flashed her wristcomp for him.
“Eleven Beta, sir. My lucky channel.”
Kate grinned. “You have a lucky channel, sergeant?”
“Yeah, it saved my arse when I went Dutchman one time. That sucked dinoballs, I can tell you.”
She winced. Dutchman was a term spacers used for an out of control situation, usually it meant some poor sap had gone on a spacewalk and had a suit thruster malfunction sending them out of control and into the deep, but it could be applied to any serious emergency requiring rescue. If Wu had lost comms as well, she was lucky to be alive. She must have used 11B somehow to get help.
“Luck is not a factor,” Kate said automatically, but calm competence in adversity was. Wu had that on her side.
“Maybe not for vipers, but us mere mortals count on it,” Wu muttered.
She ignored the comment, Wu didn’t mean anything by it and anyway she was busy accessing the feed from the remote. A window on her internal display opened, flickered a couple of times, and the image steadied down. She was suddenly viewing the scene from a half meter above the deck staring at a body, or what was left of one. It was definitely a Merki corpse going by the clothing and size, but there wasn’t much left of it. It must have died long ago to decompose to almost nothing this way.
“Take us there, Wu,” Stone ordered and everyone moved out quicker than before, eager to finally learn something.
They found the corpse lying on the deck before one of the armoured section seals. Stone knelt beside the thing to investigate, while Kate stood guard. She gestured marines to take positions to watch the approaches and they moved out, efficient and quiet. She scanned the area, but found nothing but friendlies. She eyed the section seal thoughtfully and tried to probe beyond it. She got nothing and frowned. That wasn’t right. It didn’t appear to be shielded, yet according to sensors there were no corridors or compartments on the other side. That was all kinds of wrong; they were deep within the ship not near the hull where this kind of data might make sense if she was reading the outside.
Stone got back to his feet. “I can’t tell what killed it. There isn’t much left; some fur and bones is all, but its uniform is intact. No plasma burns, no blood stains. Its weapon is still set on safe... drained of power, but it’s been there for years so that makes sense.”
“I don’t get that part,” Lieutenant Cook said. “Not even Merki would leave their dead to rot would they?”
“Aliens could do anything,” Wu muttered and gained her superior’s unwanted attention. “Sorry sirs.”
Stone waved the apology away. “It’s good to remember that we’re dealing with aliens, but I know Merki. They don’t do this. We don’t actually know if they have religion, but we do know that they police up their dead. Whether they cremate them or use some sort of burial in space we don’t know, but they don’t leave them to rot.”
“And that means?” Kate prompted.
“I don’t know, but it could mean there isn’t anyone left aboard to do whatever they do with their dead... maybe.”
“Yeah maybe,” she muttered. It was that maybe that made this visit such fun. She eyed that intriguing section seal again. “I want to open that.”
Everyone turned to regard the huge doors doubtfully.
Stone asked the question. “Why this one?”
“I can’t scan beyond it.”
“Oh really?” Stone said, suddenly very intent. He grunted when his scans revealed the same result. “Interesting. Cooky?”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Cook said not taking umbrage at the use of his nickname.
“What have we got that can open that?”
Cook marched up to the huge doors and punched random controls. Nothing happened. “Plasma torch?”
“You brought one?” Stone said looking around for the unlucky marine tasked with carrying such a thing.
“Just the one, sir. I thought there might be damage and debris to clear for entry. I left it back with the portalock.”
“Send a couple of men to fetch it... no a squad. Just in case.”
“Wu!” Cook said.
“Why me?” Wu muttered. “It’s always me.”
“It’s the price of being indispensable, Wu,” Cook said cheerfully. “When you get the big pay, you get the big jobs. Get gone.”
“Aye, aye!”
Kate smiled as Wu double-timed it back the way they’d come, leading her squad using the sensor net they’d left to retrace the quickest route back to their entry point. It had taken hours to clear that route and map it, but they had that data on their wristcomps now and should be back relatively quickly. In the meantime, Stone had their remaining three squads checking out the area they were in, but as before they found no hostiles. More and more the Leviathan was giving up its secrets, but they were empty ones. They had found nothing that explained its use, or why the Merki felt such a monster was necessary to build in the first place.
Wu returned and set her people to opening the section seal. They couldn’t burn through such an armoured monster, not in anything like a reasonable amount of time, but they could cut through the locking mechanism. No one seemed to find it strange that the Merki had locked it, or why. Kate had briefly wondered about it, but with no way to gain an answer other than opening it, she dismissed the thought. She watched the progress along with the others, and kept her sensors focused beyond the seal. It was like a tongue probing a rotten tooth; she just couldn’t ignore it, despite getting no new data from the effort.
And then all hell broke loose, and it was her fault; all of it.
The last cut was made and the section seal split in half rolling back like huge hangar doors. Kate’s sensors suddenly lit up with hundreds of hostiles and TRS went nuts! She was targeting and firing before she knew what was happening. TRS threw her into melee mode and the world slowed around her as her perceptions sped up. Her hard suit groaned at the abuse to its joints, but it held together and she didn’t lose suit integrity. Her rifle was firing in short controlled and extremely accurate three round bursts, and suddenly the marines caught her madness and added their fire. Plasma flashes lit the darkness beyond the seal and revealed Merki corpses piled on the deck, but it wasn’t at them she was firing. It was at the hundreds... thousands? standing in the darkness.
Stone was yelling orders, but in her heightened awareness and speed, his voice sounded like a slurred drone. He wasn’t firing, the only one who wasn’t. That should have been a clue, but she was lost to the madness and the marines were following her lead. TRS threw her forward, into the new section, and she blasted more Merkiaari. Equipment she had no name for blew apart, shattering under her fire. The lighting was low level here too, but the plasma discharges lit up rows and rows of glass fronted cabinets marching into the distance glowing with azure light; there was no end to them or the Merkiaari they contained.
“Cease fire, cease fire dammit!” Stone was shouting. He switched to viper comm. “For fuck sake, Richmond, disengage TRS!”
Was he nuts? She continued firing, but she trusted him didn’t she? He must have a reason. She disengaged TRS and melee mode too. She reloaded her rifle, still panting for breath and juiced with adrenalin. The world sped back up and she took stock as the marines gradually responded to orders and discipline. Cook was screaming over the comm to cease fire too. What the hell?
Stone came on over the all units channel. “They’re not a threat, repeat not a threat! All units cease firing! The Merki are no threat!”
Not a threat? She reached out toward them with sensors. They weren’t moving at all! What the fuck? She swept sensors over the pile of dead Merki on the deck near the section seal, but they were like the first one. Long dead and decomposed. Stone was still speaking. She forced herse
lf to pay attention to his words, but she couldn’t lower her rifle from all those silent Merki standing there like silent sentinels. Her rifle moved from one to the next, almost daring them to twitch, but they didn’t; couldn’t if Stone was right in what he was saying.
“... seen it before. They’re in hibernation. They’re asleep! Ease down, marines, ease down! Set up a perimeter, but take no further offensive action. They’re no threat to us as long as they’re in cryonic suspension. If the glow cuts off, blast them, but not for any other reason.”
Kate felt her humiliation keenly. She had screwed this up royally. No one accused her of starting the panic, if anything the marines sounded awed by her reaction time and speed, but she knew and Stone knew that she had messed up big time. He was good enough to get the others settled before taking her aside. They stood before one of the still working cryo units and stared up at the sleeping giant bathed in the blue light of its cryonic magic.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I just reacted.”
“TRS does that,” Stone muttered. “I would love to gun every one of these stinking bastards down myself, but I don’t think we have enough time or ammo.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You’re not pissed at me? Why aren’t you pissed at me?” she finished suspiciously.
“Why would I be? They’re fucking Merkiaari, Kate! You reacted to protect yourself and the rest of us. It’s what we do. It’s what vipers were built to do. I would prefer a million dead Merki over a single Human killed, two million before you.”
She blinked.
“I mean... well, you’re a viper see?”
“I love you too,” she said quietly.
Stone glared. “Did I say... well, anyway. Yeah. So we need to figure out what to do. I think the only living Merki on this ship are in hibernation. That means the rest are dead or on the planet.”
“Gina!”
Stone nodded. “Nothing we can do for her now.”
She nodded. “I think at this point all we can do is call in the big brains.”
“Yeah,” Stone sighed. “Cooky!”
Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Page 36
