Violent Wonder

by Fredrick Niles

  “Well…” Byzzie said. “There’s also the other thing…”

  “What other thing?”

  “Well, ya know, look at it. How did it get here? Where did it come from? Aren’t you at least a little bit curious as to how it got here?”

  “I would pay all of my money to check that thing’s nav-log,” Hector said.

  “And if we can check the nav-log then we might be able to figure out where the hell we are,” Ritz said. “We’re boarding it.”

  Raquel ground her teeth. “I’m not getting on board that thing,” she muttered. “Who knows what’s on there. We could walk in and all get electrocuted for all we know. We could—we could—”

  “We could die if we don’t,” the captain said. “This is our best chance to get back home, or at least to another system. I don't care if it makes you nervous or scared,” he said derisively. “We’re going to find the nearest docking port and you, Nadia, Kit and Hector are all going to walk onboard and find the control room and download the navigation log. And if you don’t, then I’m going to consider it mutiny and blow you out of the goddam airlock. Got it?”

  “Whoa, hey, wait?” Hector interrupted. “Why do you I have to go?”

  “Didn’t you just say you’d give all of your money to see that nav-log?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have any money.”

  Ritz jabbed a finger at him. “You’re going.”

  Raquel couldn’t respond. Her lips trembled as she swallowed back tears. The captain had saved her and she owed him that, but sometimes he could be a real asshole. To be quite honest actually, he was often prone to little bouts of childishness and she wasn’t quite sure that made for a good leader.

  She swallowed her pride and her fury and her fear however, and less than an hour later, she was suited up with the three others and sitting in the airlock ready to board.

  7

  Boarding Party

  There was no viewing screen inside the airlock but they knew they had connected to the docking arm when the ship shuttered so hard that Raquel almost shattered a tooth. All wearing combat suits and wielding some form of energy weapon, the four of them doubled up with Nadia and Hector in front and Kit and Raquel bringing up the rear. The idea was to have a Marauder at both the front and rear so they could take point if an attack came from either direction.

  This wasn’t Raquel’s first time in a combat suit but she still wasn’t used to it. The armor was a thick titanium alloy similar to the Arc Suits that Kit and Nadia wore, but theirs were hooked into a neural network that apparently made every inch of the armor feel like a natural extension of their body. Raquel and Hector’s suits on the other hand were big and unwieldy and made her feel like she was trying to steer a boat with her knees and elbows. She felt almost claustrophobic inside and was equally unnerved by how little material separated her from the vacuum of space or whatever deadly elements were out there. She kept compulsively reaching around to check her air tank until Kit finally reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  The gesture of kindness was small but it was enough. She still felt scared and angry at Ritz but at least she wasn’t alone out here. It made her feel better that there was someone watching her back.

  “We’re docked,” came the captain’s voice over their comms. “Everyone engage your mag-boots. Atmosphere doesn’t look too bad from in here but you won’t know until you’re in it, so better to be safe than sorry. Don’t want anyone flying out into space.”

  Mag-boots. Shit, where’s the switch for mag-boots. She lifted her left arm and quickly scrolled through the data-pad affixed to her gauntlet. There. Raquel engaged the magnetic field on her boots just as the outer door to the airlock opened.

  But nothing happened. No screaming sounds of metal or venting atmosphere. Peering over Nadia and Hector’s shoulders, she could see only darkness and stillness. A beam of light snapped on in front of her and then another as the two turned on their under-barrel flashlights.

  The passageway was short and narrow and turned at a 45-degree angle ahead. Motes of dust stirred in their flashlight beams as Raquel engaged hers. The stillness was so dense it almost had its own weight to it. No sound. No movement. Nothing.

  The rifle she had chosen was a short automatic energy carbine; it fired high-density plasma bolts that wouldn’t go through a ship’s hull but would put a pretty good-sized hole through a person. The weapon’s weight was reassuring, and she had brought the Slugger as well. The big pistol wouldn’t fire in space, but if there was atmosphere on board it would work just fine.

  She put her rifle to her shoulder and the four of them stepped aboard.

  “What do you think is on there?” King said, chewing a toothpick. It was a bad habit, he knew, but it eased his nerves in tense situations. In front of him were four screens that had been pulled up on the Leopold’s viewport, each of them showing a feed from a helmet cam. The top two belonged to Nadia and Kit while the bottom two were Raquel’s and Hector’s.

  “Hell if I know,” Ritz said.

  The two of them were standing back while Byzzie worked the controls. The set-up on their viewport was standard for ground operations where the ship could just hang in orbit, but most of the time King was the one with the helmet cam, not the one watching it. And if he was honest, he’d rather be with them right now than in here. Just watching and waiting for things to happen was like torture. It had been torture when he had had to watch them fight the PUC corvettes and it was torture now. He’d have volunteered if he’d have thought it would help, but the captain seemed to know what he was talking about.

  King had to wonder about that though. His choice to send Raquel had seemed more like a disciplinary one than a strategic one. He had known Ritz for a long time, and yeah Raquel needed a swift kick in the pants sometimes, but c’mon.

  “Anyone have a map of this damn place,” Hector said, his voice crackling over the comms. On his camera feed, they could see dark and deserted corridors. Tipped chairs and tables knocked askew.

  Ritz keyed his mic. “Head north.”

  “Haha, very funny.” Seeing as there were no poles on a ship, North generally meant the nose which was where the bridge was. They had been heading there anyway.

  “We got what looks like a struggle here, captain,” Nadia said, her flashlight sweeping over a wrecked dining area. “Either that or this place was shaken like a tin can.”

  Ritz: “Any signs of a firefight?”

  Nadia: “Not that I can see. No shell casings or bullet holes. Just a lot of flipped furniture.”

  Ritz: “Keep an eye out. If there’s hostiles onboard we pull out and reassess. Got it?”

  Nadia: “Got it, captain.”

  “You really think they’d pull out?” King asked after a second.

  “Raquel would,” Ritz said, and Byzzie turned in her seat.

  “Man, why you gotta be so hard on that girl? She’s just trying to stay alive, just like the rest of us.”

  “I’m not quite sure she’s long for this crew,” Ritz said

  King turned to look at him. “Why do you say that, sir?”

  “She’s the only one who voted to stay put. I’m not sure she has the right spirit for what we’re doing.”

  “How do you know that she—”

  “Oh please,” Ritz cut in. “You think I don’t know my own crew’s handwriting by now? I’d have pegged her for it anyway. She’s too wary. Too cautious. I just think she’d be better off on some planet teaching kids or something.”

  “Maybe we need a little wariness, captain,” King said. “Plus, she seemed pretty decisive down on Kilo Base.” Ritz turned toward him and he knew the look. It said the only reason I’m letting you get away with that is because we’ve known each other for so long.

  “I don’t think so,” Ritz said. Then ignoring the second part of King’s comment: “Wariness doesn’t get you anywhere in this life. If you want something you have to take it. I learned that a long time ago.”

  King
knew Ritz’s story and knew what he was talking about, but was he honestly implying that what had been done to the people in his village was the way the world worked? Okay, so maybe that was the way the world worked, but should it? King knew he could be a bit of a hard ass at times but at least he wasn’t that cynical, geez.

  Come to think of it, it had been a while since he and the captain had had a real heart-to-heart. Maybe it was time to change that.

  “Shit,” came Hector’s voice over the comm as all four camera feeds snapped up toward the ceiling. “What the fuck was that?”

  “What was what?” Ritz said frantically into his mic. “Talk to me guys, what’s going on?”

  The comms were silent for a moment as everyone listened, then came Nadia’s voice: “We heard something. It’s a little hard to explain but-”

  Hector cut her off: “It sounded like a bunch of fucking fingernails went rattling over the ceiling.”

  “Stay cool guys,” said Kit. “Could have just been a heating duct or air vent with some dirt in it.”

  No one said anything, but everyone’s eyes were glued to the screens now. The cameras returned to their swiveling motions as the boarding party swept their flashlights from side to side, scanning the area. King observed that Nadia’s and Kit’s motions were smooth and fluid while Raquel’s and Hector’s were both jerky and haphazard.

  “We’re entering a kitchen now,” Nadia said, her light glinting off of pots and pans. “Something definitely happened here. We’ve got drawers and cabinets thrown open all over the place. Still no blood or bullet casings though.”

  The four moved slowly passed ovens and grills and large walk-in freezers. The ship must have held a lot of people to warrant a kitchen this size, King thought to himself, and his intuition was confirmed when Kit stepped out into the dining hall and shone his light across a wide spacious room.

  The place was huge; it probably had more square footage in this one room than all of the Leopold combined. Big four-person tables were spread throughout the area with a scattering of chairs, most of which were still upright. The ceilings were high, shot through with open ductwork.

  Just then, King caught something out of the corner of his eye. He scrabbled for his microphone. “Guys. Hey guys. I just saw something move.”

  “Where?” Hector said, his camera becoming even more jerky.

  “It was on your screen Hector,” King said. He saw Ritz tense and lean in to watch. “I didn’t even catch what it was. I just saw a flash of white.”

  “Shit, where at?”

  “I saw it too,” Nadia added. Her camera was steady now as she moved forward. King had seen the way that she walked when she was hunting something. Her gun out and forward, she looked something like a giant upright leopard in that Arc Suit. “Moving in on the far-left room.”

  King watched as the others fell in behind her, making a diamond formation. Could that have been it? He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he had seen something.

  The four cameras moved forward, looking over their gun-barrels. They were moving so slowly that at one point King had to remember to breathe. He was chewing on his toothpick frantically now, the wood a wet pulp in his mouth.

  “Easy now guys,” Ritz said. “Watch those trigger fingers. Let’s not have any unwanted casualties on our hands now.”

  Everyone watched with white knuckles as they walked through the doorway.

  The room looked to be a large storage space, shelves of cans and sacks of flour and corn rising up along each of the walls. An assortment of brooms and mops leaning up in the corner. All of that created an absurdly mundane backdrop considering what laid in the middle of the floor.

  At first, King thought it was a big pile of clothes. The image was grainy and the screens weren’t all that big, so details were sort of hard to make out. The boarding party obviously recognized it for what it was though, because as soon as they saw it, Kit whirled around to cover the door they had just walked through while Nadia swept the room, her weapon up. Hector and Raquel just stared.

  Finally, the three on board the Leopold were able to make out what the pile was and Byzzie raised a hand to her mouth. What gave it away were the bones.

  They were bodies. Shriveled and mummified, each one appeared to be missing an assortment of pieces. arms, spinal columns, chest plates, and skulls could all be accounted for but that was about it. The more King looked at the screen, alternating between Raquel’s and Hector’s who seemed to be frozen in place, the more he was able to discern the pattern.

  No ribs. No innards. No legs. No pelvises. No eyes.

  Everybody that had been piled in the center of the room had had half of everything removed.

  8

  Encounter

  “Keep moving guys,” Ritz’s voice was a rasp over the comms. “Chances are good that whoever did this is long-dead. Keep your head on a swivel though.”

  Raquel almost couldn’t hear it over her breathing. She could deal with combat synths. She could deal with raids-gone-sideways. She didn’t love it but over the last three years, she had grown used to engaging and outmaneuvering bots. She knew how to do it. What she was not used to however was walking blindly into a situation where no one had any clue what was going on.

  Because something like this could happen.

  The mountain of bodies loomed up almost to the ceiling, random bones and mummified flesh sticking out in every direction. A monument to the things they had never expected to find on a ship they had never expected to find. They may have expected to find bodies, sure, but the way these were mutilated was something else. This didn’t look like bodies that were disposed of after a mysterious illness or ship insurrection. This looked like they had been butchered and pulled apart. This seemed to exude malice rather than practicality or indifference.

  “On me guys,” Kit said from the doorway. “You heard the captain, let’s move out and let’s not take our time.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” Hector said, his voice wavering.

  The squad backed quickly out of the room and then rotated to put Nadia back at the front. The room was still empty. Hopefully, whoever had done this was dead. The scene had been horrifying, but it had also been ancient. Chances were that it had happened over two-hundred years ago.

  Moving a bit quicker now, they made their way out of the room to a junction that connected them to a hall of living quarters. Doors were thrown wide, blocking any consistent line of sight down the hallway. Some clothes lay rumpled on the floor along with a few miscellaneous items such as pens and folders and the occasional coffee cup or plate.

  “Guys,” Hector said. “Do you notice anything weird about these clothes?”

  Raquel looked down and it hit her immediately.

  After lightly nudging one of the piles apart, Nadia got to it first. “Yeah, they’re piled shoes-to-shirt.”

  She was right. The way the clothes were piled on the floor looked as if they had been placed there as a mockery of a human being. They would consistently go in order of shoes at the bottom followed by pants and then a shirt. Some were dresses with necklaces laying where the neck should have been, and as Raquel looked around she started noticing the odd ring or earring dug into the carpet.

  “I’m not liking this,” Kit said.

  “Me neither,” Nadia responded, “But let’s keep moving. The sooner we can get to the bridge, the sooner we can—”

  Just then, something skittered across the wall above them and their barrels shot up.

  “Look,” Hector said, pointing his flashlight, “an air duct.”

  The vent cover was hanging down and when they approached it slowly from beneath they saw that its opening was about a foot wide.

  Hector turned his head to look back down the hall. “I think we sh-”

  But he never got that far. Suddenly, what looked like a massive spider dropped down from the ceiling and onto Raquel’s head. Screaming into her helmet, she snatched for it but it was too fast. With white, bony legs, th
e thing jumped and scrabbled down the side of the wall.

  Kit lunged and smashed a powerful elbow through its midsection, crushing it and putting a massive dent into the wall behind it. Chunky crimson blood oozed out and down to the floor.

  There was no time to speak. The attack came from all sides and the hallway exploded in gunfire. The sheer amount of light and sound was almost more devastating than the actual attack. Ritz was yelling over the comms but Raquel tuned it out.

  The giant pale spiders came rattling out of doorways and vents and from anywhere and everywhere they could squeeze through, their bony legs tack-tack-tacking across the hard surfaces.

  Raquel aimed and fired. Aimed and fired. The little creatures blew apart in red and white chunks but they were coming too fast. For every one of them that died, three more took its place.

  Their legs, she thought to herself as she blew another one away. They’re bones.

  They didn’t just look like bones, she realized. They were bones. What looked like human digits that had been stripped of flesh were attached to longer bones that could have been ribs. All of the ribs then converged in the center where an indistinct mass of flesh held it all together. Her stomach churned as she remembered the bones the bodies had been missing.

  After getting the jump on them, Nadia and Kit quickly turned the tide and pushed the spiders back. They had come in a swarm, and Raquel was overwhelmed by the sight of the sheer number of them, but if three spiders replaced every one that she killed, then both of the Marauders killed five more. Before Raquel could even come to terms with what was happening, the spiders began to turn and flee, their skinny legs moving in a blur.

  “Fall back,” Nadia said in a voice that invited no argument. But as soon as they started to move, Kit’s flashlight illuminated a figure at the end of the hall.