Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Yeah, it looks a lot like the inside of a Seppy hauler,” Jack replied. “If we triggered the teleport then why were they hostile toward us?”

  “Well, actually, I sort of caused that snooping around in that hangar room while I was waiting on you.” Nancy shrugged her armored shoulders. “You shouldn’t have taken so long. You gave me just enough time to piss one of the bots off.”

  “So they’re not chasing us?” DeathRay looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see an overwhelming number of bots chasing them. There were none.

  “I sure thought they would have. Don’t understand that.” Nancy shrugged her shoulders and frowned a bit.

  Jack thought for a second. There was nothing on sensors. They really just needed more information.

  “Okay, let’s try and get to the surface and figure out where we are. As far as we know we’re not even still on the same planet.” It was times like this when Jack really wished he was just in a dogfight in his mecha.

  “You’d think there’d be alarms and such going off,” Nancy pondered. “I don’t think there is anybody here other than automated AI sentries.”

  “That’s perfectly fine with me.” Jack could see a faint blue light just around the corner that didn’t look like interior cabin lighting. He cautiously moved in that direction with his HVAR at the ready. “This looks like the main troop corridor leading to the elevator on the Madira.”

  “I thought so too.” Nancy agreed with him. “Reminds me of a Seppy ship I stowed away on once.”

  “I seem to recall something about that.” Jack smirked at his wife at the memory of her talking to him on coms as she rode a Seppy ship on a collision course for Luna City. Nancy, as far as anybody had known at the time, had blown up with the ship. Somehow she’d managed to escape at the last second.

  “Wasn’t my favorite day.”

  “Let’s stay frosty.” He quickly leaned around the corner, then back behind the wall for cover just in case something was on the other side, ready to shoot at him. There was nothing. “Shit! Look at that.”

  “What is it?”

  “Come on. It’s clear,” Jack said as he stepped all the way into the corridor and around the corner, out of Nancy’s view and into the blue lighting. “Son of a—”

  “What, Jack?” He heard Nancy say as she stealthily slid in behind him.

  “That.” Jack pointed outward at the view beyond the large window.

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. We’re on a ship, alright, and that is definitely a different star.” Jack looked out the window at a distant blue star and the surrounding preplanetary debris disc stretching out in a plane. The ship was embedded in the planar debris field near a large object that in a few billion years would probably be a planet, but for now was a swirling dustball. In each direction toward what Jack guessed were the bow and stern of the ship there were several other ships spread about.

  “What is that, like thirty ships?”

  Forty-seven as best I can tell, sir, Candis replied. But, without a full QM sweep I’d be hesitant to say that is all of them.

  “Allison confirms forty-seven nearby and QM anomalies that suggest many more throughout this system,” Nancy said. “It’s a fleet, Jack.”

  “That or a graveyard.” Jack thought for moment. “Can Allison get a fix on our location at all? Candis says there isn’t enough information.”

  “No, we need a better look at the star field,” Nancy replied.

  “Okay. We’re on a ship. It might be abandoned in place. Let’s find the bridge,” Jack said. The first order of business was to gather info and on a starship the bridge was the place to do that.

  “Good plan. If we are on a ship like those then we can extrapolate about where that should be,” Nancy started, but Jack interrupted her.

  “Or, we could just look at the map.” Jack pressed a button on a display panel beside the window and the corridor lights came on. There was a flatscreen display to the right of the button with a “you are here” interactive map. “Just like on any other big ship.”

  “Yeah, but you just turned on a system. If there are watchdogs they would have certainly detected that.” Nancy smiled. “But, I guess they would have heard all the shooting and other ruckus too.”

  “Right. I think we’re alone, but let’s not get complacent. Besides, I’d prefer a straight-up fight over all this skulking around.” DeathRay kept one hand on his weapon and used the other to trace directions on the map.

  “I don’t know. I kind of like it. You, me, a fleet of unknown enemy ships all to ourselves. Kind of romantic.”

  “You and I have completely different ideas about what romantic means.” Jack shook his head back and forth slowly and raised an eyebrow at his wife.

  “Don’t knock it, flyboy. Me turned on in any situation is still me turned on.”

  “Good point. I’ll remember that.” Jack smiled at his wife and thought briefly how hot she looked in an armored suit.

  “Damn right it is,” Nancy laughed. “You should be so lucky.”

  But then the professional soldier in him kicked back in. “We need to go there,” he said, and pointed and tapped a spot on the map.

  “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here, sir!” First Sergeant Rondi Howser did the best diving-for-cover maneuver she could while underwater and moving against a flowing current. With every release of HVAR rounds, the hypervelocity bullets tore a bow wave through the water that flung the weapon radically in all directions from the recoil. “I’m seeing nothing on QMs and can’t hit shit underwater!”

  “Understood, First Sergeant, but we literally have our backs up against a Goddamned wall.” The lieutenant sounded more perplexed than Rondi had heard him since they had begun fighting the bots over eighteen months prior. Rondi didn’t like their situation and she was certain the lieutenant understood just how screwed they were.

  “Orders, L.T.?” Rondi hoped to press him for something, anything.

  “If I may, Lieutenant,” ET1 Amari interjected while doing her best to keep her head buried in the river-bottom muck, “I say we follow DeathRay and Mrs. Penzington.”

  “Thanks for the input, tech, but our orders were to snap back to the shuttle and get it back to the Madira,” Lieutenant Franks said.

  Rondi could see him backpedaling and falling backwards as a swimming toothy bot with a flailing, tentaclelike appendage snapped at him. The thing looked like a cross between an octopus and a radial arm circular saw with shark teeth. Each shark tooth was more like a saw blade from a reciprocating saw cutting back and forth rapidly with each snap of the mandibles. She fired a couple rounds in its general direction.

  From the motion just behind and to the left of the lieutenant, Rondi could tell that Corporal Simms seemed to be handling himself a little better. The kid had a bot by the tail and was whirling it, creating a stir of river muck around him, which gave him cover and disoriented the bot. The bot ruptured at a joint where the tail connected to the torso and spun off from the centrifugal force.

  “Sir,” Rondi started, “we can’t get anywhere here and our time is past being up. I suggest we either snap back to the shuttle or go forward and try to help DeathRay on the other side of this wall or whatever it is.”

  “Agreed, First Sergeant!” The lieutenant rolled over onto his hands and knees and pushed himself up to just miss another tentacle swipe by the octosaw bot. “Everyone, snap back to the shuttle . . . now, now, now!”

  Rondi tapped the control on her wrist panel, and with a flash of lightning and the sound of frying bacon, she was floating in space in what appeared to be the middle of a debris field. It was a debris field that suddenly came to life and seemed to be really pissed off. The pieces of the field that didn’t come to life were clearly what was left of the shuttle.

  “Holy shit!” she screamed as small bots like the ones they had encountered on the planetoid where the shuttle had been liberated buzzed all around. “They’re everywhere!”

  “Shit, sir,
” Corporal Simms shouted. “We’re surrounded and no place to stand. We were better off underwater.”

  Rondi fired her HVAR at an incoming bot. The recoil of the rifle acted like a rocket thruster, spinning her wildly in the opposite direction.

  Full sensor suite targeting, she thought to her AIC.

  DTM targeting on, The AIC replied in her mind. Targeting reticles popped up all around her in every direction. The yellow Xes flashed, and most of them turned red, meaning that they were a threat, they were in range, and they ought to be killed.

  Great, now, take over suit controls and shoot these goddamned things! Puking deathblossom like the pilots do! she thought.

  Understood.

  Armored E-suit Marines were badasses in or out of their suits, and they were awesome violent works of art when in control of the situation. Seldom did a Marine ever give over control of the suit’s functions. That typically only occurred when the Marine was badly wounded, unconscious, or being overridden by some command protocol—and even then the suit control was usually involving life support or communications functions. While an AIC could drive a suit, it was just never done. But this was an extreme circumstance and Marines adapt and improvise to overcome. And Rondi and the others were in one hell of a situation.

  The HVAR fired rapidly, releasing vast amounts of kinetic energy with each round. The rounds came out spinning also, which only added to the reaction forces acting on the suit and the Marine within. Rondi could do nothing but hang on for the ride and do her best not to fight against the suit actions. The weapon whipped left, right, up, and down, firing several rounds with each movement. Her full battlescape view in the direct-to-mind view was a ball with three blue dots besides herself and a shitload of red dots covered with targeting Xes. The dots whirled and whipped around in the view as she spun madly in every direction. The angular motion and the centrifugal force of her spinning forced the blood to her head and feet and made her stomach lurch.

  Spitap, spitap, spitap continued ringing through her suit with each round. Several times a bot came very close to her position but her suit would flex, spread her limbs akimbo, or tuck her into a ball to avoid contact. The speed of the AIC-controlled motions stretched and forced her muscles and joints through motions at the very limit of the Marine’s physical abilities. Rondi thought to herself that if she survived the fight she would be sore for days. She’d definitely need some immunoboost and pain meds—a shitload of pain meds.

  One of the bots burst into a ball of orange and white sparks inches from her faceplate, and the barrel of the rifle zipped through the debris cloud to the next target. Shrapnel pinged her suit all over, making it ring inside like a bell. Rondi’s ears felt as if they would explode with each ping and with each heartbeat that forced more blood into her already full brain bucket. The red targets in her mindview were down from over a hundred to only a handful, and after nearly thirty seconds or more of the spinning, it was all her body could take. Rondi’s stomach convulsed and her head spun so badly that closing her eyes only made it worse. With her eyes open, she saw stars and it made her dizzy. With her eyes closed, she saw stars and it made her more dizzy. The view from the faceplate visor was wild. The planet below would roll by, then the star, then the lieutenant, or was it Simms, then an exploding bot, then the planet, then the QMT gate orbital facility, then the tech, then . . . then vomit.

  The fluid from her stomach filled her nose and mouth and had little place to go inside the suit’s helmet. Rondi was certain she was going to drown in her own vomit, and the retching didn’t seem to want to stop.

  “Override control!” she gurgled. “Goddammit, give me back suit function!” Rondi panicked and screamed and did her best to spit and blow the fluids and solid matter from her face and air passages. The smell filled the helmet to a point that led her to heave again.

  First Sergeant Rondi Piaya Howser, you are okay. Do your best to calm down and breathe as best you can. Take control of yourself, First Sergeant! Howser! Settle down, Marine! The suit will absorb the matter in the helmet soon. In the meantime, I have administered anxiety medication to calm you. Once you are in control of your faculties I will return suit control, her AIC said sternly but calmly into her mindvoice. AICs’ programming had evolved to create a strong emotional attachment to their counterparts, and in all cases they would do what they had to in order to maintain their host’s safety. Many times when a host was killed it would take years for an AIC to take another host.

  Whether it was the voice of reason in her mind or the drugs the suit was pumping into her system, Rondi began to calm down and feel more in control. The stench was still so bad that she was on the edge of throwing up again, but she could manage. She choked back what bile was left in her stomach. She was a Marine, after all.

  Rondi focused on her DTM view of the battlescape as she became more aware of herself and less panicked. She could see that the lieutenant, the corporal, and the ET1 were finishing off the remaining couple of bots. Her suit fired a few rounds off in various directions to slow her spin and bring her to a comfortable orientation.

  “First Sergeant, I sure would like to know what the hell you just did,” the lieutenant asked over the com channel.

  “Learned it from watching DeathRay, sir. Called a puking deathblossom. I don’t recommend it at all.” Rondi choked back the taste of bile in her throat as the feeling of microgravity kicked in. She was, after all, floating in space. Had there been anything left in her stomach she would have lost it.

  “That’s all of them for now, as far as my sensors can tell, sir,” ET1 Amari said.

  “Great, now what?” Simms asked.

  “We snap back to the Madira and hope that DeathRay and Penzington did the same,” The lieutenant ordered.

  “Yes, sir!” Rondi liked that plan. The fluids and matter from her stomach were quickly being dissolved from her visor by the suit’s housekeeping functions. She could see out of the faceplate now without the use of DTM and sensors. She watched as her team members each reached for their wrist panels’ and then she followed suit. She depressed the QMT snap-back codes and waited for the flashing light and frying bacon. Nothing happened. She tried it again, thinking she had fat-fingered the panel. Again, nothing happened. Then again and again. Rondi looked at the planet below and at the star off in the distance. She did her best not to think of the smell in her suit. “Fuck.”

  Chapter 13

  November 7, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 4:57 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  Alexander Moore sat upright against the headboard of the bed, enjoying the view. He had been working for what seemed like days without a break. So, when he had a few hours he could take for himself, he found Sehera and the two of them hid themselves away in their quarters.

  His wife lay fast asleep against his chest, her long, dark, flowing hair tickling him slightly each time she breathed out. Her naked breasts heaved gently against him with each exhale. He gently pulled the cover up over her.

  The viewport window on the wall opposite the headboard was over two meters in height and at least twice that in length. In the distance was the star, a good twenty-five or more astronomical units away, and beneath them was the little planetoid they’d taken the shuttle from.

  Moore needed the rest but he couldn’t sleep. DeathRay, Nancy, and some of his crew were off God only knew where, out of contact, and he always was concerned about his people when they were on a mission. At least Dee was off duty for a few days and he didn’t need to worry about her.

  Moore took the moment to take in the view and enjoy the serenity of their quarters. When he had taken the Madira he let Sehera choose where they would quarter. His wife had taken one look at the captain’s lounge and conference area and decided they would renovate it for their living quarters. They knocked out a wall of the storage unit next door and created the “presidential suite,” as he thought of it. It was four, maybe five times the space that a ship
’s captain usually had, but he also had his wife in there with him. Besides, this was a decommissioned ship. It was his ship. He didn’t have to follow the Navy fleet standards. He’d given the crew a similar carte blanche. The ship was big and they were at a fraction of capacity. His orders had been that space was mission priority first and then it was first come, first served if nobody was claiming it. Any arguments over a particular bit of real estate were delegated to the COB to solve. The crew knew better than to get the COB involved, because the one time he did, he had the area in question commandeered for storage. So, the crew always managed to figure things out for themselves. Moore had picked a smart crew.

  A glint moving across the bottom of the viewport downward toward the planetoid caught his eye. Several more were behind it, making a V formation.

  Mecha? he thought to Abigail.

  Yes. That is the Maniacs FM-12 squadron.

  Jawbone?

  Yes, sir, Lieutenant Col. Delilah “Jawbone” Strong.

  He had kept an eye on the Marine fighter pilot since she had almost single-handedly saved his family at the attack on Disney World back when Dee was only twelve or so. Moore had made certain that when it came time for promotions, Strong had always been “promotable.” And when the time came for the deep-space expedition, he had DeathRay offer her a squadron.

  Moore brought up the duty roster in his DTM mindview and saw that the Maniacs were conducting routine security flights over the planetoid. Since the tankheads and the AEMs had mopped up the facility, it was secure. Moore was considering using it as an outpost at some point, but they had to find Copernicus first and figure what the hell that batshit crazy AIC was up to.

  “Dee!” Sehera jumped up immediately from her sleep, nearly making Alexander jump out of his skin. Her breathing was erratic and her eyes wide with fear. “Where’s Dee? Alexander! Where is Dee?”