by Andrew Beery
My hope had been that the Stark suit’s superior communications suite could cut through whatever was jamming the Puller’s comm systems.
“Report!” I barked over the recruit network.
“Alpha platoon ready and accounted for,’ newly promoted acting Ensign Cochran responded.
“Beta platoon ready and accounted for,” Gretchen said.
“Delta platoon ready and accounted for,” their Ensign reported.
There was nothing from Echo platoon. I waited the barest of seconds before reaching out to their acting OIC.
“Ensign Miller. Give me a status on Echo.”
Nothing. I activated the hydraulics on my Mark Three and stepped out of its charging alcove. As I started to head over to the Echo section of the hanger I began to get dizzy. Something was wrong. Something was very very wrong.
Chapter 20: Trial by Fire…
The first thing I felt when I woke up was fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. The sound of silence was deafening. The room I was in was almost pitch black. I could see an occasional surface as a single red emergency beacon slowly rotated at the far end of the hanger. My Stark suit had three status lights in the helmet that were twinkling for my attention. My weapons and power systems where online but in a low-power mode. I ordered my AI to bring both fully up. The final status light was for my connection to the Puller’s AI. It was red indicating that the connection was down. I tried to reinitialize it but no joy.
I opened my communications diagnostics display. Nearfield communications were online and I was seeing about one hundred and fifteen active stations. Those would be my Marine recruits. They all showed positive life-signs but none of them were responding to my status pings.
Radio comms were also online but I was showing no traffic whatsoever. I tried hailing Doc… again no joy. Next I tried the bridge. Ditto. Finally I tried an all stations broadcast. This was technically dangerous as I still didn’t know what had happened to the ship but I reasoned that the chances of finding somebody with more experience handling emergencies was worth the risk.
If bad guys had taken the ship and I was all that was left… we were pretty much toast anyway. If bad guys had invaded the ship but not yet fully secured it then my guys could provide a valuable distraction while the captain marshalled his troops.
I ordered my suit’s AI to access the local hanger controls. I was relieved when I received an electronic confirmation that the connection had been successfully established.
“Lights on, fifty percent,” I commanded.
Slowly the lights in the hanger began to brighten until they hit the fifty percent mark. The scene was not one to inspire confidence. There were scorch marks on the walls where power systems had overloaded. An oily haze had filled the air. I was glad that I was wearing my Stark suit. I suspected that the air outside my suit cause my medical nanites to work overtime clearing the toxins that I suspected were floating about out there.
“Computer, why did I pass out?”
My suits AI responded immediately. “The air supply for your Tactical Combat Armor was compromised.”
“Compromised? How?”
“A foreign substance was introduced in the umbilical supply port and automated filters disabled.”
“What was this foreign substance?”
“Insufficient data to identify.”
“What is the likelihood of this or a similar substance causing me to pass out again?”
“Non-existent. Your suit is no longer attached to the tainted air supply.”
Suddenly I understood why I was awake and the rest were not. Per protocol, recruits had stayed in their charging alcoves so they could avoid drawing down their suit’s consumables for as long as possible. In a combat situation those few minutes lost while milling about could be the difference between life and death. It seemed our opponent knew how we operated.
“Computer, in your estimation was the contamination of the air supply an act of sabotage?”
“Affirmative.”
“Who in the crew and passenger list of the Puller would have the necessary access and skills to perform such an act?”
“Unable to determine an exact list.”
That was curious. I had expected a relatively short list of potential candidates.
“Computer why are you unable to supply the requested list?”
“The list would potentially include the entire crew compliment and passenger manifest on board the GCP Puller. While not every member of the crew would have the required access and training as a part of their official duties, it is reasonable to assume a saboteur would receive or otherwise acquire training sufficient to conduct the sabotage in question.”
So the short answer is… everyone is suspect. Great. One thing was clear… I was going to need help if I was going to find out what was going on and put a stop to it.
“Computer. Disconnect every Stark suit currently in an alcove from its umbilical supply and purge the contaminated air from the suits using the onboard suit supply and filters.”
***
About fifteen minutes later the recruits started waking up. I had been working with my Stark suit’s AI to get access to information on the status of the ship. I was eventually able to access some internal sensor logs that were about an hour old. I knew that most systems were offline. We had partial grav-plating in some areas. The bridge was gone. Not damaged… not breached… gone. Whatever had befallen the GCP Puller, it had hit there first. According to the sensor log there was a forty eight meter wide hole in the side of the ship that extended a full sixty meters into the ship. It was as if someone had taken a massive melon scoop and carved out a section of the ship. The chunk they carved out exactly corresponded to the bridge.
A part of me was immediately angry. I had just met Captain Mueller but he had seemed the type of man who cared more for others than the average bear. That he was in all likelihood now dead seemed grossly unfair and unjust. Whatever force or forces was behind this attack, I was committed to bringing them to justice.
As I dived through the sensor archive, I noted that there were hull breaches on decks four, five and six. This might have explained why I had been unable to raise the Marine contingent.
According to the logs the hull breaches had all occurred within seconds of one another. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that whoever had sabotaged the Stark suit air supply had also planted charges around the ship in an effort to take out as much resistance as possible. The problem was my data was old and I didn’t know what I was facing in terms of force composition or size. Nor did I know their ultimate objective other than seizing control of a GCP starship.
“Man my head hurts,” JJ said as he made his way to my position. “Anybody get the number of the guy driving the bus that hit me?”
“Stow it soldier,” I said crisply. People had died and I was in no mood for joviality. I toggled my commlink to address all four platoons at once.
“Attention all recruits. This is Ensign Stone. As of this moment your training is done. The GCP Puller has been attacked by an unknown agent or agency. We have no idea of the nature or size of the force we will are facing. What we do know is that the ship is disabled and that lives have been lost… to include many, if not most, or all, of the command staff. The saboteurs have managed to hole the ship’s hull at key locations. The Marines on deck four are not responding nor do I expect them to. Their deck was exposed to hard vacuum at about the same time as the bridge. The reason many of you have headaches is because the umbilicals feeding air to your Stark suits were tampered with and software safety protocols overridden. This was not an accident… this was an attack. We may represent the only effectives left on the ship. I know I’m asking a lot of you. None of us were expecting to go to actual battle today but this is where we are. I’m going to need you all to grow up a little faster. I believe in you and our ship needs us. NCOs take charge of your platoons. Ensigns report to me directly. Sergeant Hammond, turn your platoon over to your Corp
oral and report to me as well. Stone out.”
I closed the channel and waved the Ensigns over to my position. I had my AI setup a new group channel with a unique encryption key. Grabbing JJ’s helmet I physically held it against mine. I wanted to be able to speak to him without anybody else hearing what I said. I knew that the sound of my voice would conduct through the metal of the helmets.
“JJ, I need you to set your nearfield comms to channel six and your decryption key to 951413. Got it?”
“Roger that Sir,” he answer immediately. A second later his nearfield radio was matched to mine. “What’s the plan Sir,” he asked.
“JJ, I’m going to level with you. I’m making this up as we go. We need to figure out what the hell is happening… and we need to control the flow of information. It seems clear that we have a rogue agent or agents onboard. The problem is we don’t know who or how many there are. This channel is our private channel from this point forward. Don’t share it with anybody. I’m going to setup channel 9 with 314159 as the command channel.”
“I understand AG. Does this mean we are it? We are on our own?”
“At the moment yes,” I confirmed. “The Drills were in a meeting when the crap hit the fan. I have no idea about them or any other member of the crew. The comms are completely fried. I need you to do your magic with the computer systems and get me access to whatever is left of the data net on this ship. In a few minutes we are going to need to break out of here and I’d like to know what we are facing.”
I looked up. The others had all arrived so I switched channels and encryption codes and passed the information on to each of the others using the same helmet to helmet protocol.
***
I divided the recruits into four teams based on platoons. It was not the most efficient use of limited personnel but I was factoring in the relative inexperience of the recruits and the fact that they had become used to working within the structure of a platoon.
Our ultimate objective was to regain control of the ship… or failing that… to deny our enemy its use. To accomplish this goal I needed to discover who or what we were fighting and what the current condition of the ship and existing crew was.
JJ was helpful in this regard. While I was still conferring with the four platoon Ensigns he managed to hack his way into the Puller’s computer net. According to him the net was a mess. Apparently one of the systems targeted was the computer core. Fortunately for us that objective had only been partially achieved.
While the primary core had been knocked offline the backup core was able to pick up the slack and begin nanite repair operations. Already sixty eight percent of the computer system was back online.
The information he was able to retrieve did not paint a pretty picture. The vast majority of the ship was open to hard vacuum. Those areas that were still pressurized were effectively isolated. In all cases, to include our hanger deck, the air supply had been tainted with desflurane which quickly rendered its victims unconscious. The only reason we were functioning was because we were breathing air supplied by our Stark suits. While the suits could filter and reprocess our air supply for days, their CO2 scrubbers would only last for so long. We would need to address the environmental situation at some point.
Surprisingly, there was no sign of continued enemy activity within the ship. It was like they had staged the attack and then left after the deed was done.
With JJ’s information in hand I addressed the Ensigns.
“I want Alpha platoon to guard this hanger. Right now it’s one of the most functional areas of the ship and it’s defendable. Gretchen, I need you to take Beta down to engineering. Keep a sharp eye out on your six. If I were the enemy, Engineering would be one of, if not the most important objectives. Since there is no longer a bridge, Engineering is going to be the only place that can control this ship. See if you can’t rig up something to allow us to access critical systems from within our Starks. These Mark Threes have some pretty clever AIs and interface software. Take JJ with you. You’re going to need his computer skills.” I paused, “Also, see if you can’t get ship to ship or FTL comms going. We need to let the GCP know what’s going on.”
I sent the Deltas to environmental. I was not optimistic but if we could get the air cleaned up and some of the hull breaches sealed we could double our manpower and potentially get some experienced personnel into the fight that might be better equipped to handle this situation than I was. It was wishful thinking but hey… I still believed in Santa Claus.
The last group, the Echoes, I sent on deck by deck sweep of the ship. Their orders were to locate and contain the enemy until support could arrive. All we had access to at the moment were pointers which were next to useless in a vacuum but even knowing were the enemy was and what they were up to would be a major victory.
As for myself, I grabbed one person from each platoon and I headed out for Marine country. I had to know if any of the others survived. If there was a fight to be had I knew two things beyond any doubt… I wanted Commander ‘Doc’ Savage on my side and I wanted a few of those weapons in his office.
Chapter 21: Fire Fight…
The corridors outside of the hanger deck where in a hard vacuum. This presented a bit of a problem because the hanger itself was at a very comfortable 0.95 Earth normal atmosphere. We resolved the issue by using a screwdriver to slightly crack open the hanger doors and simply let the hanger vacate its tainted air supply. It took a few minutes because we did not want to be in the middle of an explosive decompression event if we could avoid it.
As soon as the hanger was depressurized I ordered the Alpha team to setup a standard B-TOC. The Bigelows had their own air filtration system so I wasn’t worried about their air supply being tainted.
On the way to Marine country we spotted the first of many bodies. To say it was gruesome was an understatement. One corporal we ran across had half of his left shoulder removed. The size and type of wound led me to believe our enemy was using some type of plasma weapon. I sent a microburst to all four platoons sharing with them the bad news. When I was done I opened a private channel to Ensign Cochran.
“Tommy, this is AG.”
“Go ahead AG,” Tommy answered.
“I’m beginning to have second thoughts about that B-TOC you guys are setting up.”
“Yeah I did too,” Tommy agreed, “but I told the gang to go ahead and finish it. My plan is to power up its comm-array. It won’t reach far but it will reach a darn sight farther than our nearfields and combat radios.”
“That’s great Tommy except that the bad guys are carrying plasma cannons. They’ll make mincemeat of that B-TOC and any radio operator inside of it.”
“That’s true sir but you don’t have an exclusive patent on devious behavior…”
I laughed as I suddenly saw where he was going. “You don’t plan on having the equipment in the B660… or the operator… it’s just the bait. You are devious!”
“AG, you take all the fun out of these things. You should have let me tell you about the brilliance of my plan.”
“I apologize Tommy. Please tell me about the brilliance of your plan.”
“Never mind,” he mumbled.
***
Marine country was unnerving. Everywhere I looked dead bodies, frozen by the vacuum of space, floated in the weightlessness of a deck with no power and thus no grav-plating. I led Privates Hansen and Judy Jansen as I inched forward. Corporal Myers from Delta and Private O’Brian from Echo guarded our backs. As I moved passed the men and women I had worked with just a scant twenty four hours earlier I said a silent prayer.
The Captain, who was very likely dead as well, had said to me… “Life is a very rare and precious gift. As an officer in the Marine Corps you will be charged with protecting, preserving and upon occasion… taking life. You need to take seriously your responsibility to know which of the three is paramount at any given time.” I wondered if he knew how deeply his words said then… were affecting me now.
; The lack of gravity was becoming a problem. I ordered our group to activate the magnetics on our Starks so we could walk more easily. One of the things I liked about the Mark Three Starks was they had a much more powerful AI built into them. The effect of this was a host of minor system enhancements that, by themselves meant little, but in the aggregate, made a big difference.
On a Mark Two, activating the magnetics on your boots was a simple on/off affair. It worked but it made your feet feel ‘sticky’. As you walked along, if your foot was close to the metal deck plating the magnetic attraction was much greater than if your foot was even a few inches further away. On the Mark Three the AI changed the power level to the magnetics on our feet so that the feel of ‘down’ was much more uniform and therefore much more normal.
This meant I could run in a Mark Three whereas in a Mark Two I tended to fast shuffle. I bring all of this up because the AI in my Mark Three was acting up. This had me more than a little concerned. I would start to run and it would take the system a few seconds to get in sync with me. It was most disconcerting. As soon as the emergency was over I was going to order the suit to do a full diagnostic. The reality was however that I could not afford the time to deal with a minor glitch in my Tactical Combat Armor at this point. My only worry was that whatever the problem was, it could get worse and leave me up a creek without a paddle. Did I mention, there are times I hate it when I’m right?
As I turned the final corner I saw a sight that caused me to burn with unadulterated anger. Kitty was one of the victims. The look of abject terror in her frozen eyes as she realized she was dying was almost too much to bear. This miniature dynamo who had been such a font of strength and vitality just a day before was now dead. A victim of a, as yet, nameless enemy. I felt my blood boil. There would be a reckoning.
