"For crying out loud guys," Darcy mumbled, "you act like you never saw somebody get shot before."
An explosion of cheers and high-fives erupted, exhaustion forgotten in the wake of a genuine miracle. Darcy's face wrinkled in confusion before her old smile tugged tiredly at one corner of her mouth.
"Hey, I'm touched and all, but give it a rest." she motioned them back with a weak, dismissive wave, "It's not like I came back from the dead or anything."
CHAPTER 18
Four in the morning.
Ridgeway squinted at the blurry digit, a fairly meaningless distinction given their current environment save that a full twenty hours had passed since Darcy's resurrection. In that brief time, their situation had steadily improved, if only by a modest degree. Still, the change of pace was welcome.
The now-functional environmental control system had raised the once frigid temperature in Sickbay to a balmy fifty-six degrees. That alone was a huge boost to both comfort and morale. Consistent power remained an elusive goal that hampered the last stages of armor regeneration, but the overall process had gone well. Merlin and Taz were well into the internal repairs, drawing from spare parts when possible and improvising where they could.
Monster had organized a two-on, four-off watch cycle that allowed everyone to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Aside from ravenous hunger, a shortage of ammunition and a brutal stiffness in his entire body, Ridgeway's world felt a hell of a lot better.
There is that lingering problem of being buried alive, he mused gravely, but he'd take his wins where he could get them.
Ridgeway rose to his feet, giving his aching legs a chance to steady before he took on the uphill hike to Monster and Merlin. The two knelt studiously on either side of Monster's armor where it lay stretched out on the floor. They looked up in tandem as Ridgeway approached.
"Morning Major," Monster tossed out, adding with stereotypical sergeant bravado, "Great day to be a Marine."
Ridgeway grinned back, mirroring Monster's nonchalance. Morale flows from the top down. Clapping Merlin on the shoulder as he took a knee, Ridgeway spoke with feigned gusto. "Yeah, I figure we've been on vacation long enough, how about we pack our shit and go home?"
"Hell yeah, Major." Merlin replied with an energetic nod.
"'Bout damned time," Monster concurred.
Ridgeway leaned forward and looked at the largest of the armored suits. The badly dented chest plate had almost completely reformed. While the surface still carried a blackened scorch mark, only a minor depression remained. Ridgeway knew that before his eyes, carbon nanotubes slid over one another to fill in the gaps.
Monster himself was another story. A band of syntheskin encircled his massive left bicep, a dark bloodstain on the elastic material. Ridgeway shrugged toward the injury and gave Monster a reproachful look.
"Y'know, two minutes on the table would clear that up."
Monster's face wrinkled forcefully. "Bull-shit!" he said, emphasizing the syllables. "You can dump my ass in a tank of bugs when I'm dead and gone, but ain't no way in hell them little bastards gonna crawl inside me while I'm watching, that's for damn sure."
Ridgeway's lip curled up in a wicked smile. "Monster", he chided reproachfully, "I've seen you stand up to tanks. Are you telling me that you're afraid of a few little creepy-crawlers?"
A poorly suppressed chuckle burst from Merlin as his face turned up to Ridgeway. "That's pretty good Major, Gunny afraid of a bug." Still laughing, the corporal turned left and ran nose-to-nose into a crocodile smile stretched below a pair of dark eyes that looked back with anything but mirth.
"Funny huh?" the big sergeant prodded, one eyebrow arched dramatically. Then his voice dropped a full octave, the smile belying a simple question that reverberated with menace. "You wanna go first?"
Ridgeway fought the tug of his own grin as the engineer blinked rapidly, all hint of amusement evaporating.
"I'm thinking there's a repair job that can't wait," Merlin improvised, "I'm gonna go find it."
"Uh-huh," Monster affirmed, the carnivore's grin glued to his face as he nodded firmly. Merlin scooped up a pack of tools and eased down slope in obvious search of a less hazardous environment.
"Hit a nerve?" Ridgeway poked with a malevolent smile.
Monster looked Ridgeway dead in the eyes, the first trace of his own humor glinting in the dark orbs. "Yeah, go on. You may get to laugh, but he doesn't."
"SRD," Ridgeway intoned with mock reverence.
"Damn straight," Monster confirmed, "shit rolls downhill."
The two men shared a brief chuckle that all too quickly dwindled to silence. Ridgeway watched as his friend turned and made his way aft, doubtlessly in pursuit of the next item in a long list of duties.
While quick to jab in fun at Monster's blatant aversion to the bizarre medical system, Ridgeway could find no fault in the sergeant's logic. Given everything they had seen, there wasn't a RAT on the team who wanted to get within five meters of the steel and glass table. Darcy's reconstruction may have been a quiet miracle, but the truck driver's experience proved a different matter altogether.
Broken, frostbitten and hypothermic, Jenner had been the next to ride the table. At one level the decision was a genuine effort to save the Rimmer's life. On the other hand, the test was admittedly an experiment to see if the table worked consistently. As the only non-Marine, and a Rimmer at that, Jenner had been the obvious guinea pig.
As his injuries were largely internal, there was no significant external wound to use as a portal. Undeterred, the micro-machines simply cut a door of their own. Lasers designed to weld flesh together proved just as able to cut flesh apart. Jenner's abdomen had parted with a wet slurp of breaking suction. Cauterization had reduced blood loss to a negligible level. The slit sagged open and the bugs poured in.
The remainder, focused largely on injuries to the head and upper thorax, chose to enter through Jenner's nose and mouth. The image had been revolting enough on an unconscious figure, Ridgeway reflected, but as the oozing tide of crawling specks rippled over Jenner's lips, the Marines discovered a major wrinkle in the system. Jenner woke up.
Stitch later determined that small infusers in the table's surface should have doped the conscious Rimmer into a state of oblivion. Those infusers, it appeared, had run dry long ago. In lieu of strap and buckle restraints, the table immobilized a patient through some kind of electrical field that paralyzed voluntary muscle, but not the conscious mind. The next two hours were ugly to watch, even for Marines.
It had been really ugly for Jenner.
No one could tell if the burning skin was to blame, or an overloaded gag reflex, but the trucker snapped out of his delirium like he'd been hit with high voltage. Panic-stricken eyes bulged out of his skull, unblinking as tiny specks scuttled across glistening corneas. The trucker could only manage a constricted, high-pitched whine, but even that broke into a wet gurgle as clots of bugs passed through his windpipe.
Not for me, Ridgeway's lip curled down at the thought as he rubbed a hand unconsciously across his bruised chest. I'll heal up the old-fashioned way.
An abrasive hum reverberated through the walls and snatched Ridgeway's attention back to the present as the overhead lights fluttered for several seconds. Around the room, each Marine paused expectantly. Only Jenner, staring blankly into space, seemed oblivious to the threat of impending darkness. A thread of drool hung from the corner of his slack jaw.
As the light stabilized once more, Ridgeway wondered if the humane answer was simply to put the Rimmer out of his misery. At the moment though, he thought regretfully, humanity was a luxury he could ill afford. While Jenner's plight was pathetic, he remained their only likely source of first-hand human intelligence. Until they explored that possibility, the needs of the Marines came first. Ridgeway looked at Jenner with a callous stare.
"Tough luck, buddy. You shoulda' joined the Marines."
He gazed at the huddle figure. Technically, he may be healthier, but he
looks like shit.
Ridgeway could see that the medical system had put function ahead of aesthetics. The priorities were obvious; while broken bones were welded together, coal-black pieces of frostbitten flesh had simply been cut away. Jenner's nose was gone, along with both ears and swatches of each cheek. A missing piece of lower lip left him with a grotesque cleft that extended down through his chin.
Wide patches of Jenner's scalp had likewise succumbed to the cold. Cold-charred splotches of hairless skin had been replaced by veneers of angry pink stretched tight as a drum across the curve of his skull. Dead, frozen fingers had been excised with equal indifference, the living stumps summarily closed over. Nubbins of fresh skin dotted the digitless hand like a row of smooth, shiny gumdrops.
Stitch had offered a plausible theory for the different results. The nanites worked like ants; they could move living material around the body but they were incapable of fabricating new flesh from scratch. Repairs to one required the cannibalization of another.
The explanation seemed sound. Darcy had a solid base of lean muscle to serve as a reservoir; the tiny bits of material stripped from muscles throughout her body would go unnoticed.
But Jenner was undernourished and out of shape. Worse yet for the Rimmer was the nature of his injuries. Unlike Darcy's puncture wounds, frostbite had claimed large volumes of Jenner's flesh.
What he needed, Ridgeway concluded, was the human equivalent of Carbonite paste to fill the gaps.
After watching Jenner's experience, not one of the Marines had expressed an interest in finding out for themselves. The dull ache of torn muscles were familiar friends and the RATs decided to heal as they healed, taking comfort in the infrared accelerators that helped them mend in a faster, yet quite conventional fashion.
Ridgeway turned slowly and looked upslope to Darcy. She sure looks normal, he noted. The color had returned to her skin and all signs of the jaundiced bruising had faded away. The torn flap still hung open on her blood-stained T-shirt but the skin beneath held no hint of its prior injury.
The sniper sat wedged into a corner with a gleaming rifle rail across her lap, methodically polishing a series of magnetic coils. One by one she extracted the chromium ovals and buffed their blue-mirrored surfaces to a shine with a soft cloth.
Ridgeway watched her work and took heart in the crispness of her motion. The sniper truly seemed no worse for wear. Perhaps of equally good fortune, she had no memory of her time on the table. The severity of her condition had likely suppressed her conscious mind beyond the reach of the physical world. Even after considerable thought, Darcy couldn't dredge up a recollection of the process.
Considering the alternatives, Ridgeway thought with a half glance at Jenner, a damn good thing. Although Stitch was firm that he could resolve the consciousness problem with conventional anesthetics going forward, Ridgeway knew that he would have to be near-dead before he climbed onto the table.
"I really thought we'd lost her." Merlin's voice caught Ridgeway by surprise, the younger Marine's tone edged with an unusual sobriety. Ridgeway nodded in quiet assent as he turned to the engineer.
Standing almost a head shorter than Ridgeway, Merlin always struck him as something of an anachronism. Unlike most of his comrades, Jim "Merlin" Prentice had a full head of jet-black hair worn in a short but reasonably modern style. He was lean, but his body carried a kind of casual toughness that would have seemed at home out on the range in the old west of American history.
Of all his Marines, Merlin remained the hardest for Ridgeway to classify. Too brainy for a grunt, too tough for an egghead. Merlin excelled as a combat engineer, his keen attention to detail and rabid imagination proving time and again to be an invaluable combination. Often as not, a life-saving one.
The lights shuddered once more, shadows lurching abruptly as now-recharged emergency lights snapped on momentarily. The room seemed to cough twice as the two sources of illumination wrestled for dominance. With a sharp thrum the overhead panels won out.
Ridgeway rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "That isn't going to hold out forever, is it?"
A look of frustration crossed Merlin's face. "I swear Major, it's like trying to hit a moving target. I bypass one shorted line only to have the power suddenly jump back to cables that were stone dead hours before. It's like someone else is playing with the wiring. There must be some real meltdowns going on through this beast." He shrugged, hands raised. "Hell, I'm amazed half this tub isn't on fire with all these shorts."
"So what's the fix?"
Merlin scratched at the dark stubble that bristled across his chin. "Well," he began, somewhat hesitant, "I've been thinking of just ripping the breakers out of that wall and running a hot line straight to the mains for Sickbay. That'd cut out a shitload of variables, maybe give us a real boost in terms of stable current. If it works, armor regen would wrap up in half the time."
"How long?"
"Chainsaw bypass? Shit, maybe an hour tops. It'll be ugly but damn sure ought to tighten things up around here."
Ridgeway nodded his assent. "A tight ship, hell, a tight room, would be an improvement. Let's make it happen. Be sure and tell Monster."
"Roger that."
Before Merlin could turn, Ridgeway fired a second query. "How are we looking on the TAC fixes?"
Merlin fished a small brick of circuitry out of his pocket and held it aloft. A blackened furrow cut an obvious streak through the red and yellow security label and the silvery shell beneath. "Your transmitter took a hit. I can get tone out but it won't hold lock for more than a few minutes. I'm swapping it out for the spare, that'll get you back online. Monster's TAC is another matter. It's toast."
Ridgeway's jaw clenched noticeably as he folded his arms across his chest. "What can we do?" The question had become wearily repetitive.
"Can't do much on that one Major. He's got his own sensor feeds but he can't broadcast tactical at all. Just voice."
Ridgeway nodded slowly, pausing for a moment before breaking a wan smile. "Then we'll have to make do with voice and assume that anything that gets within fifty meters of Monster is dead meat."
Merlin nodded concurrence. "Yessir, that's pretty much the way it works."
"All right," Ridgeway concluded with a slap on Merlin's shoulder, "get on it."
The engineer turned to leave, then paused indecisively. Ridgeway noted the obvious conflict. "What is it?"
Merlin chewed at the side of his lip as he looked Ridgeway in the eyes. "Something's been nagging at me since we came onboard Major, but I still can't make much sense of it."
"What's that?"
Merlin waved his hands as if presenting the room behind him. "Everything we've seen here suggests that the ship is man-made, right?"
Ridgeway swept the room in concert with Merlin's gesture, noting nothing out of the ordinary. "Yeah," he said with slight hesitation, "which infers that this is some kind of Rimmer project. So what's your point?"
"That looks like the easy answer," Merlin replied cautiously, "but we've got three major conflicts working against the theory." The engineer seemed to cross a mental point of no return, his elaboration picking up speed and emphasis.
"First, there is no record of the Rimmers ever trying to build a ship this big. Some of our old colony ships ran this size, maybe even bigger, but the Alliance never came close. The Rimmers don't have the technology to do it, and sure as hell not to do so way the hell down here. There is nothing in this hole that even remotely looks like a shipyard."
Ridgeway repressed any hint of expression. "Go on."
"Number two, at some point in her life, this bitch flew and got her ass kicked in the process. You saw that severed wing Major, it looked like something grabbed it and ripped it off. I don't know about you but I've never seen a weapon that could do that. But if it wasn't a United System's weapon, whose weapon was it?"
Ridgeway's mind ran across the possibilities and came up with nothing.
"But that's not the kicker." Merli
n paused once more and looked down, his eyes tracking aimlessly across the floor. "Modern English is what, maybe a thousand years old?"
Puzzled by the change in direction, Ridgeway struggled for a reply "Something like that, but what does--"
"And man has been in space since, call it the 1960s, but we didn't get past the moon in any real sense till the early 2000s."
"What are you getting at, Merlin?" Ridgeway was quickly losing patience with the historical detour.
Merlin looked up, his eyes unwavering. "Just this. There's some pretty damn big stalactites stuck right through this tub. Down in the engine room Monster and I came across one maybe twenty meters in diameter that came in through the ceiling and continued down through the floor. Geology shit like that doesn't happen in fifty years, not in a hundred. It takes thousands of years, I dunno, maybe tens of thousands."
Merlin's voice grew increasingly somber. He looked at Ridgeway with an expression that bore no trace of guile and said, "I know how weird this sounds Major, but unless I'm missing something, this ship doesn't just predate human space travel, it got stuck down here before man carved his first wooden canoe."
CHAPTER 19
Within the concealing shell of Carbonite and metal alloy, Monster grimaced. He would not have allowed himself the concession if anyone was watching. Although the electroactive polymer muscles in his armor supported the bulk of his weight, Monster's flesh and blood arm still rocked through a full range of motion. As he climbed down the turbolift shaft, a sharp pain lanced reminded him of that fact. Monster snarled quietly at the burning in his side. "Just one more damn thing to manage."
Nearing the base of the shaft, Monster pushed off the wall and dropped the last five meters. He slammed down onto the floor like a pile driver.
As he passed through a pair of open doors, the sergeant looked down at the grid-steel catwalks radiating from the hub of the tower. His focus locked in on the number ‘7' stenciled boldly on the floor of the leftmost walkway. The yellow numeral remained visible beneath an uneven coating of ice.
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