Far Space

by Jason Kent

  Ian smiled, “I’m not sure a Marine could fly this thing.”

  “Then do it for me,” Jennifer said with a lop-sided smirk.

  Ian was at her side. He reached out tentatively and let his armored hand rest against the material of the seat. He ran his gloved hand over it, taking in the texture.

  “If this is a seat,” Ian said, “then maybe this is their version of a leather interior.”

  “Ew! I wonder what they use for cowhide,” Jennifer said.

  “Don’t know.” Ian looked up at the consoles crowding the seat from the ceiling. “Like you said, perfect set up if you’re a squid.”

  The seat looked like it was made for a child. Ian figured the main body of the squids was about a meter or so long. The tentacles, arms, whatever you called them where just as long, making them nearly the equivalent mass of an adult human. But they obviously fit into the seat compactly, maybe because they lacked hard stiff bones and joints.

  Ian could not hope to fit into the seat with the combat armor. So he settled for floating over the seat, his face near the controls.

  “How’s it feel, pilot?” Jennifer teased.

  Tapping the stiff controls melded onto the platform around him and on the consoles hanging from the ceiling, Ian almost imagined he could fly this thing. He grinned back at Jennifer, now fully caught up in the moment. “Feels like I could take us to new star systems, strange new worlds, the whole nine yards.”

  “Sounds nice.” Jennifer pulled herself into the seat next to Ian, crouching, with her knees drawn up to her chest, a feat made possible thanks to her soft fabric suit. “Cozy.” She reached out and touched one of the dimpled buttons.

  Screens came to life all around Ian and Jennifer, enveloping them in a holographic display. Ian stared around at the stars and planets, easily recognizable as their solar system. Other data, unrecognizable symbols and displays crowded the rest of the space all around them.

  “Wow,” Ian said, “Now I’ll have to really take you somewhere.”

  “Well, you know how we girls are,” Jennifer laughed. She ran arm through the display surrounding her. “It’s beautiful.”

  Ian gazed around at the incomprehensible diagrams. He had to agree.

  One of the techs pushed over to their sides. “Cool!” He started pushing other buttons.

  A rumble coursed through the ship.

  Jennifer raised her hands. “I’m not sure you should be doing that…”

  “I would agree,” Ian added.

  An armored suit dove into the room from an access tunnel in the ceiling. He executed a flip and came face-to-face with Ian and Jennifer.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Murst asked.

  Ian and Jennifer looked at each other. Ian opened his mouth to speak but Jennifer got there first.

  “Our pilot was taking us to far off places.”

  Ian looked from Jennifer to the hulking Marine. He held his hands up and shrugged. “Couldn’t help myself, Gunny.”

  “Well help yourself out of those seats,” the trooper said. “And kindly refrain from touching anything else!

  Jennifer tapped the key which had activated the displays. The holograms flickered but did not disappear. Instead, more holos began to light up, spreading around the entire outer wall of the chamber. “Crud,” Jennifer said. “Now what?”

  “Well, that solves one question,” one of the techs said.

  “What’s that?” Ian asked.

  “All this stuff still works!”

  Bealeman looked up from the controls on the portable scanner. He and Taylor had been trying to find if there were any other accessible chambers they might have missed in their initial survey. “What was that?”

  Major Taylor touched the wall. “The ship’s vibrating.”

  Bealeman tapped a few keys on his sensor. “I’m reading rising temps below us.”

  “Engines?” Taylor asked.

  “Don’t know,” Bealeman said. He swung the sensor back a forth. “Looks like there’s another series of chambers beneath us.” The Marine Lance Corporal tilted his body so he could look at Taylor. “It’s got a heavy atmosphere.”

  “How heavy?” Taylor asked.

  “Looks like water slurry,” Bealeman said. “Maybe its ice breaking up.”

  “The whole ship didn’t decompress,” Taylor said. “It just froze up.”

  Both Marines started drifting back along the corridor.

  “Ship’s moving,” Bealeman noted.

  “We need to get down there now,” Taylor stated.

  Bealeman was nodding. “The water is almost liquid again,” he said studying the sensor display. Bealeman swept the device back and forth.

  “Gunny,” Taylor called over the Ops net, “get to our position, we have a situation.”

  “Figured that sir,” Murst called back. “On my way.”

  “Rucker,” Taylor called out over the net. “Rucker do you read? If you’re getting this, get your armored butts back inside.”

  Bealeman was running his sensor over the floor of the corridor. “This is as good a spot as any.”

  Taylor reached behind Bealeman’s suit pack and pulled off a bulky package. “I wish we could figure out how to work their stupid hatches,” the Major said. “I’m getting tired of making my own doorways.”

  Bealeman took the pack from Taylor and carefully unfolded the contents.

  Murst came barreling around a corner, his weapon seeking any target. He took a moment to take in the situation. “You need MAMA?”

  “The compartments below us were frozen over,” Taylor said. “For some reason they’re now thawing out.”

  The Gunnery Sergeant hooked a thumb in the direction he had just come from. “Those yahoos in the control room managed to turn something on.”

  “That’s great, Gunny,” Taylor said. “There’s something going on down here though, too.” He pointed at the floor.

  “Better check it out,” Murst replied. “Make it happen, Hulk.”

  Bealeman activated the control board on the package he had laid out and pushed back. He tapped his wrist display ensuring MAMA was slaved to his system.

  “MAMA’s hot!” Bealeman warned. “Stand clear!” He tapped a command onto his wrist-mounted controller.

  The pack on the floor expanded with astonishing speed until it filled a better portion of the corridor’s cross-section.

  MAMA, the Marine Assault Mobile Airlock, was a tool of the trade for the highly trained Marine Space Reconnaissance Units. The mobile airlock allowed troops, tasked with taking over hostile vessels or facilities in space, to set up their own hatch. Cutting open a bulkhead and blowing out the atmosphere into space would certainly remove the threat from unsuited personnel inside the ship or structure, it also left messy repair work to be completed after the Marines moved in. MAMA gave them the option of moving in when the soft target, or squishie, needed to be brought back alive or the integrity of the structure needed to be maintained.

  The airlock anchored itself to the floor of the compartment. A few seconds later, a ring of carefully aligned shaped charges blew downward. The blast pressed into the cavity below, forcing the debris from the new door downwards, preventing possible damage to MAMA. As the pressure equalized, Bealeman watched as the super-strong fabric of the airlock rippled as liquid rose from the floor below them.

  “Bealeman, point,” Taylor said.

  Bealeman stepped into MAMA’s outer lock while Murst sealed him in. Bealeman was soon immersed in the liquid as the divide between the outer and inner lock folded away. Bealeman stepped forward and used his pack to push him downward with powerful thrusts.

  As soon as he was clear of the airlock, he knew MAMA would pump the slurry from the outer chamber to a holding bladder which handled liquid atmospheres just as easily as gaseous ones. Lord only knows what the designers thought space marines would be doing with MAMA since they were designed long before this particular alien species showed up. Someone had been thinking ah
ead and managed to over-engineer this piece of military equipment so it would be capable of handling the dense environment.

  Bealeman brought up his M-25S and turned in a quick circle, careful to keep his mag boots attached to the floor. The face plate of his armor had automatically adjusted to the new environment and was showing him a red-tinged, false-color projection of his surroundings. The sensors were sending out short sonar pulses, ensuring the Marine was not relying solely on visual cues in the murky surroundings.

  Sure there were no tentacles reaching for him from one of the many crevices, Bealeman pushed down the slurry-filled, curving corridor, making way for the next man to cycle through MAMA.

  “Heading to starboard,” Bealeman called over the net. He kept scanning in front of him. The corridor they had dropped in seemed to run across the beam of the alien ship. As had proved true in the compartments the Marines had searched above, it did not take long for the corridor to empty into an otherworldly chamber. It was filled with the coral-like protrusions the squids seemed to find so appealing.

  Bealeman’s external sensors pick up the sound of the second Marine joining him through MAMA.

  “Taking portside,” Murst called out.

  “Copy, Gunny,” Bealeman replied.

  Bealeman slogged forward, feeling for all the world like an early deep sea diver with one of those bell helmets. If he had a hose leading back to the upper level, the illusion would have been complete. The armored combat suit he was wearing was rated for water environments and he had even been through training ops in huge pools containing mock-up ships and stations. It was the best way to simulate zero-or low-gee environments. Still he never expected to have to deal with the resistance of liquid against his movements while on a combat mission. Bealeman had been able to deal with the distractions the water imposed against him as part of the artificial training environment. But he had assumed combat in the real world would be more like the virtual reality simulations.

  Cheaper and easier to change at will, VR had been considered a God-send by the space training folks. Bealeman now thanked God for the hands-on water training. He’d thought it had been a pain at the time to suit up, get wet, and then have to completely dry and recertify all his equipment after each session, but he was glad he had that tactile experience to fall back upon now that he was facing possibly the most hostile environment Space Marines had ever encountered to date.

  Shoving training thoughts aside, Bealeman exited the chamber after verifying it was empty of aliens and concentrated on the tee in the short corridor ahead. To the right, the corridor arced back around to the prow of the vessel. To the left, the corridor seemed to widen and open into a larger room. His sonar could not quite make out the far side. Bealeman made a note to himself to include a suggestion to upgrade the sonar and radar suites onboard the armor in his out-brief. If Marines were going to face more water-fighting, they needed more powerful units. He asked, “What do you think, Gunny?”

  Murst replied, “Big-ass room back there.”

  Over the net, Major Taylor added, “Be aware, I have been unable to raise Rucker and his team.”

  Bealeman said nothing. He just hoped the FACs had not been fried when the engines had kicked on.

  Pushing forward through the water, Bealeman noted the temperature continued to rise. He reported, “Looks like this chamber is the source of all the heat.” He tried to keep his voice even and calm. The Air Force guys prided themselves on sounding like Chuck Yeager in a tail spin, just reporting how nice the weather was. Bealeman was going to at least make checking out an alien ship sound just as easy.

  Murst’s helmet lights came into view across the murky water filling the chamber. The Gunnery Sergeant was otherwise just an outline on the false color image painted across his faceplate.

  “There’s more particulate in here,” Murst noted.

  Bealeman moved to the center of the room where a glow was issuing from a raised section of the floor.

  Murst joined him as they looked down. “Cripes, I hope that isn’t some sort of wormhole space drive piece of crap.”

  Bealeman looked up from the pulsing engine core and scanned the rest of the room. He did not know how to turn off a warp engine and was not about to try. He spotted something familiar along the rear wall. There were seven more cylinders just like the ones found upstairs.

  “Here, Gunny,” Bealeman said. He moved closer, noting three of the containers were glowing faintly while the other four remained dark.

  Bealeman swallowed.

  This could not be good.

  “They’re in there, aren’t they?” Murst asked, moving close to the Lance Corporal’s side.

  Bealeman leaned forward; the liquid filling up the sarcophagus-like cylinder was even murkier than the liquid filling the rest of this level. But, he was able to make out the darker shape of the creature inside. A tentacle slowly moved across the front of the clear material.

  Despite his earlier bravado, Bealeman stepped back and raised his weapon. “It’s alive!”

  Murst did not have a chance to respond.

  All three doors on the glowing cylinders exploded outward.

  Bealeman blocked the door by crossing an armored forearm over his faceplate. He had been told the material protecting his face was nearly as strong as the laminated armor covering the rest of his body, but now was not the time to test that particular assertion. The door slammed into him, sending him spiraling back from the hibernation modules.

  Recovering quickly from the shock, Bealeman pushed the door away and brought his M-25S to bear on the inside of the cylinders. Before he could pull the trigger, the aliens flew away in different directions; a flurry of arms and tentacles.

  Murst was cursing up a storm over the Ops net. Another cylinder door had hit him and broken to pieces. Murst thrust the section away from his legs.

  Bealeman swung his 25S around the room, looking for a target.

  Murst fired a three round burst in the direction of the corridor he had entered through. “Cripes they’re fast!”

  Bealeman did not have a chance to answer before one the creatures landed on top of him. He dropped his 25 and grabbed at the thing wrapping its tentacles around his torso with one hand. With the other, he reached for his K-bar knife.

  “Little help here,” Bealeman said calmly in between breaths.

  He slashed and punched at the soft skinned alien. The feeling of his fist sinking into the flesh and the sensation of one of the tentacles ripping away at his motor-assisted fists sickened him. This was no way to fight a battle.

  “Gotcha, Corporal,” Murst called.

  Twisting around and down, Bealeman did his best to get out of the Gunnery Sergeant’s way. Through the cloudy water, Bealeman saw Murst soaring across the chamber, his M-25S held like a club. The force from the contact between Murst’s make-shift bludgeon and the squid-thing was enough to dislodge it from Bealeman’s back. As soon as the alien was knocked free, Murst twirled his weapon around and loosed his flachettes.

  The unearthly screech from the thing’s beaked mouth filled the chamber for just a moment.

  Bealeman turned from the shredded alien and immediately sought the other alien crew members. “You see where they got to, Gunny?”

  “Lost ‘em,” Murst grunted, as he pushed aside his still twitching kill. “At least one went down that corridor.”

  Bealeman was spinning about, aiming his 25 in every corner while using his other hand to work the portable scanner. “It’s not in here.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Murst said. Over the net, he called, “Sir, we could use a little back-up down here.”

  “So I heard, Gunny,” Taylor responded. “Looks like it’s just the four of us though.”

  “Copy…hope Newbie figured out how to shoot,” Murst muttered.

  Bealeman didn’t care if Langdon could shoot or not. There were real live aliens to worry about down here. “I’ll take any help at this point, Gunny.”

  “Langdon
! Get you but back here!” Taylor shouted over the Ops net.

  Ian looked from the glowing display holos to the rear of the ship. To Jennifer, he said, “Get this thing stopped.” With that, he turned and pushed off to a corridor leading aft.

  “Where are you going?” Jennifer called after Ian.

  “I’m their back-up,” Ian stated.

  “How do I stop it?”

  Ian caught himself and twisted his armored body so he could see Jennifer. She looked like some sort of magician as she sat perched atop the control console in her white soft suit. “How should I know, I’m a Marine today, not a space pilot.” Seeing the joke completely miss the mark, Ian waved his arm around the room, finally pointing back at the console. “Try pushing some buttons or something. Just make sure we don’t dive down any wormholes.”

  Jennifer cracked a smile. “Right, wormholes bad, stopping good. Thanks for the great technical advice. Go get ‘em Corps boy.” She turned to the two techs hanging on to coral-like lumps growing from the floor and walls. “You heard him guys, start hitting buttons.”

  As Ian turned to go, Jennifer and the two techs jumped into action. He pushed off; almost glad he had only hostile alien creatures to face. He certainly had no idea how to stop a run-away alien space ship.

  USS Cheyenne

  Saturn Space

  “What the blazes is going on?” Yates demanded as he floated onto the command deck. He missed the partial gravity the constant acceleration on the outbound had provided. At least then, everything had an up and down.

  “The alien ship has powered up some sort of secondary drive system and is accelerating,” Mitchell reported.

  Yates finished buckling in and pulled a control board in front of him. “We need the engines on-line.” He looked back over this shoulder. An L5 propulsion rep was in Pearl’s usual seat staring back at the commander. Yate’s asked, “Where’s Steve?”

  “He went over to the other ship on the last shuttle,” the man said. Yates thought his first name was Jack.