by D. M. Pruden
Limn and Garrick engaged in a subdued conversation, which I couldn’t overhear, ending with Garrick ordering her to “Check that out.” Dunn appeared concerned by their exchange.
“What is the problem?”
“We are getting a signal from another ship.”
“What? Who?”
“We are checking now, Sir.”
After several tense seconds, Limn announced, “Captain, the ship’s transponder identifies the vessel as the TSF Athena. They are on an intercept course.”
“Are they tracking us?” Garrick turned in his seat and glared at Schmaltz. “I ordered our transponder disabled.”
Barely able to suppress his panic, the chief engineer responded, “I did the job myself.”
“How the hell did they find us?” He did not wait for a reply and turned back to Limn for more hushed discussion.
“I need options, Captain.” Dunn’s relative calm contrasted strongly with the anxiety the command crew displayed.
“We’re working on it, Sir.”
Dunn turned to Hodgson, “What do you know about this ship?”
“Athena is a Terran space forces heavy battle cruiser, one of the newest additions to the fleet.”
“Mister Dunn,” interrupted Garrick, “I’ve confirmed our transponder is disabled and we can detect no signal coming from us. They might not realize we’re here. We all understood it would not take long for others to find out about our prize. It makes sense the Terrans would send a military vessel.”
“They’ll need to spend time scanning the surface for the Helios after they arrive. We still enjoy a time advantage, Captain,” said Dunn.
“That ship is nineteen hours out. Our mission parameters give us sixteen hours on the ground to secure the virus, assuming we have the right intel on the location. With one hour landing and launch time, we will be well within Athena’s firing solution when we lift off from the planet.”
His comment disturbed me. If we were on a legitimate salvage operation, why would the Terran’s even consider shooting at us? Things weren’t making any sense. I wanted to ask the question but was confident I would be shut down if I did. Shutting up and listening was my only best option.
“The ship’s location is correct, Captain. It’s time for some innovative thinking out of this highly paid crew.” He glanced around the cabin, making sure he had everyone’s attention, which wasn’t necessary since we all hung on every word.
Dunn spoke directly to Schmaltz. “I am presuming you can set up a link with this ship allowing it to be controlled remotely?”
“Yes, I believe so.” Schmaltz was as puzzled as everyone else.
“We will all proceed to the surface in the drop ship. There, we will secure the virus, and use the Helios for our escape,” said Dunn.
“What about the cruiser?” I blurted out.
Dunn gave me a self-satisfied smile and continued, “The engineer will reactivate our transponder and remotely pilot this vessel away from the planet at full burn. The Terrans will have no choice but to pursue, giving us an opportunity to launch without detection. Mister Hodgson, you will rig the munitions in the armoury to detonate when the Athena catches this ship.”
“All the fire power on this small craft won’t even dent their hull,” said Hodgson.
“I don’t want to hurt them. I only need to keep them distracted long enough for us to escape, undetected.”
I’m ignorant about military strategy, but Dunn’s plan seemed sound to me. Apparently the Captain and the others thought so as well since none of them brought up any objections.
“Mister Schmaltz, Mister Hodgson; how long do you need?” asked Garrick.
“I can build and test the remote link in about half an hour,” said Schmaltz.
“The biggest bang we will get is if we can blow up the engines and fuel reserves. I need a couple of hours to configure the munitions, rig the proximity sensors and set the fuse. One hour if I have help,” said Hodgson.
“Mister Skorupa, and Mister Dunn,” ordered the Captain, “assist Mister Hodgson. Miss Limn, help the doctor transfer the portable containment chamber to the drop ship. I will pilot us into orbit and join you to prepare for launch. Are there any questions?”
“That unit is heavy, even in lunar gravity. Our task would be easier if we could disable or reduce the grav-gen,” I said.
“Does anyone have any objections to Doctor Destin’s request?”
Nobody objected.
“Very well, Doctor. Mister Schmaltz, please set gravitation at one-quarter Lunar. We don’t need loose objects floating around. That’s it, people. We launch in one hour.”
We all scrambled out of our seats and proceeded to our assignments. The containment chamber was going to be a bitch to move even at reduced lunar G, but with Shigeko’s help we would be able to wrestle it into the hangar on time.
With the loss of the Fortuna my computer links to verify Dunn’s banking activity would be compromised; a fact he undoubtedly understood when he voiced his plan. I really didn’t believe he would go to this much trouble to screw me, but he was a devious bastard. How, for example, could Dunn know the other ship had not crashed unless his bosses arranged for it? If the Terrans were prepared to fire on us while we ran a legitimate salvage operation, they clearly did not view the Helios or its contents as anything they wanted to fall into anyone’s hands.
This whole mission was turning into something nasty.
♢♢♢
The pressure suits took longer to put on than we planned for. Already a half hour behind schedule, Hodgson finally entered the drop ship hangar. He apparently experienced a few issues around getting the detonator properly set so it could be triggered remotely. We spent another forty minutes fussing with the seals on the suits. Dunn and Garrick grew more impatient by the minute. Eventually, we all sat strapped in and ready to depart.
“Are we in scope range of the cruiser yet?” asked Dunn.
“I have put the planet between us which should delay being sighted for another hour,” Garrick replied.
Without any preamble, he sealed the door and depressurized the hangar. Fortuna’s doors opened and the small shuttle maneuvered its way out to descend to the cratered face of Mercury below. The usual operational radio chatter filled the speaker in my helmet as we accelerated. The ship was too small to have a grav-gen, so I endured the temporary discomfort of weightlessness stoically. Thankfully, the Captain didn’t want to waste any time and before too long, I enjoyed the familiar tug of my own weight as we descended, which soon grew to be uncomfortable as the full force of Mercury’s pull became noticeable. Suddenly jumping to almost two times lunar gravity did not strike me as a good idea. I wondered if Dunn took that factor into his plan? We would all tire very quickly and likely not be as efficient as he and Garrick wanted.
With no atmosphere to slow us down, the descent was fast and smooth and we soon cruised thirty kilometres above the ground en route to the designated coordinates of Helios. We passed the terminator into the Mercury’s nightside.
We had no windows, so I watched the passing surface on the screen in front of me. Just as well, as the enhanced image showed a landscape that would have been nothing but inky blackness to the naked eye. The crater-pitted ground was indistinguishable from the terrain of Luna, and I soon became bored with the monotony and drifted off to sleep.
The deceleration of the drop ship woke me and I noted I had been out for a little under an hour. I realized my microphone was active and prayed I hadn’t snored. Nobody paid any attention to me, so I assumed I had not embarrassed myself.
The practice of running cargo ships at ninety percent of Terran normal gravity now seemed like a good idea, in hindsight. At least the amount of time I’d spent on them meant my muscles weren’t as atrophied as a permanent Lunar resident’s would be. Still, I seemed to weigh a tonne. The chatter in the cabin was minimal, which told me most of the others felt just as shitty at the moment.
Garrick set us down on th
e surface more roughly than I expected of him. His voice crackled in my helmet, “All right people, there she is.” He indicated the enhanced view from the monitor camera to the side of the ship revealing the sleek form of Helios. It was about a hundred metres away and glowed eerily in the infrared spectrum displayed on the screen.
“Engineers, Hodgson and Doctor, proceed with me to the Helios first,” said Dunn. “Captain, secure and seal this vessel and follow us in. Schmaltz, you and your assistant restart the power but hold off on life support until ordered. Doctor I, need you to scan for bio-contamination and check the integrity of the ship’s containment chamber. Once all is cleared, we will establish living conditions and complete our transfer.”
“What about our bio-containment unit?”
“That is a last resort in the event the one on Helios has failed.”
“What are we going to find, over there, Dunn? What happened to the crew?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to hear his answer.
“We should find nothing alive. Well, nothing human.” The emotionless way he said it sent a chill up my spine.
Chapter 16
We trudged our way across the rocky regolith that passes for ground on Mercury. We all laboured to walk in the higher gravity. The weight of the pressure suits did nothing but add to our workload. The one-hundred metres between the ships felt like a ten-kilometre hike with a full pack. I wanted to ask Garrick if he parked so far away because he worried about getting a scratch on the paint. I decided to keep my mouth shut and continue walking.
My heavy breathing was all I heard as we arrived to stand under the belly of the huge vessel. The landing apparatus supported the hull some ten metres above us and no way presented itself for us to enter. Dunn removed a pad from the pocket of his suit and activated the controls with the clumsy gloves he wore.
An access ramp descended and he climbed up, followed by the rest of us. At the top, we were met by a closed doorway. He accessed a panel beside the door and keyed in a very long code. A small opening appeared on the wall and he inserted his left arm up to the elbow. He winced as the security system fired a needle probe through the fabric to sample his blood. I held my breath while the computer decided if the DNA matched its records. Suddenly, I did not feel as confident in my database hacking skills as I had been a few hours earlier.
The security system withdrew the needle and sealed his suit. The door slid open revealing the black interior of the lifeless ship.
I followed Dunn into the derelict’s airlock and shone my helmet lights into the darkness. I removed the bio-scanner from my utility belt and interlinked it to my helmet’s HUD. The typical readouts jumped up before me. With my CI, I adjusted the settings to scan for viral contamination.
When Dunn provided me with the strange detection code of the contagion, I reviewed the specifications closely. What I saw scared the shit out of me. The detector was calibrated to look for a variant of an old Terran virus, related to ebola, but a thousand times more infectious. Even wearing a space suit, this was nothing I wanted to be exposed to. Thankfully, nothing came up on the scanner. Dunn didn’t need a doctor for this; if the contagion was present we were screwed. We wouldn’t be able to return to the shuttle because even attempting to remove the contaminated suits in anything but a vacuum would result in immediate infection and death within hours. A functioning decontamination chamber might be of help, but only if programmed with a specialized nanite population designed for the specific microbe. I could only pray nothing escaped the containment field in the bio-lab, otherwise, we were all dead.
“Nothing is in here. I’m transferring the protocol to each of your HUD’s in case we are separated. If the bio-alert goes off in your ear, it means you’ve encountered a released virus and you should alert me without delay. Until we clear this ship, we won’t turn on life support and absolutely nobody cracks open their suit after that without my final clearance.”
Everyone voiced understanding and we exited the airlock.
The Helios had been parked here for some time. The interior temperature read as a cozy minus 150 Celsius, only ten degrees warmer than the year long planetary night time outside.
A startled cry crackled in my speaker. It sounded like the young engineer, Bogdan.
“What is it?” asked Dunn.
“A body! A dead body!” Bogdan called out.
We made our way as fast as our clumsy suits allowed to where he and Schmidt stood. Their helmet lights illuminated a frozen corpse slumped in a chair, head lying on a table. The man appeared to be napping at his desk when he died. I ran a detailed scan of the body and the surrounding area but found no trace of any contagion. The dead crewman was a solid block of ice, so I couldn’t turn it to examine the face.
“What happened to him?” asked Bogdan.
“You mean aside from the obvious? I don’t know. Seems he succumbed before the environmental systems failed. There is some blood on the desk under his head, so it may have been an injury.” I didn’t want to mention the hemorrhagic virus. The kid was freaked out enough.
“I’m surprised there is even a body here after this long. Why isn’t it cremated?” asked Schmaltz.
“We’re near the North pole. It never gets too hot,” answered Dunn.
“The perfect conditions to preserve something, if you wanted to,” I said.
Dunn turned towards me and his helmet lights shone in my face so I did not see his expression, but I imagine he didn’t like my editorial comment. I addressed the entire group, changing the topic.
“For the moment, we should finish our survey; see if we find anyone else. Touch nothing. Just record what you find. And, Schmaltz, under no circumstances do I want the life support activated until we can determine how this poor fellow was killed, understand?”
I counted the number of space suits standing around.
“Where’s Hodgson?”
Everyone shone their lights about cabin looking for him. A voice crackled over the comm, “I’m headed for the bridge.”
“Umm, okay,” I said.
Dunn broke in, “Good call, Hodgson. Find out what you can. We can make better time if we split up. You all have the ship’s schematics uploaded and available on your HUD. You two,” he indicated Schmaltz and his assistant, “go to engineering and search every cabin and hallway on the way. Remember what you’ve just been told. Hodgson, check out the command decks, one and two. Doctor, proceed to the medical facilities. I’ll examine the lower deck and cargo areas.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Dunn had the schematics for the ship. It was pretty clear by now who was responsible for it being here. But he certainly seemed as shocked as the rest of us by the discovery of the dead body.
It took about an hour of room by room searching before I finally reached the med bay. On the way, I encountered five more bodies in posed variations of a pain filled death. One, a woman, lay curled in a fetal position in her bed, a sheet pulled up over her shoulders, frozen blood covering the pillow, eyes, nostrils and mouth. Despite her horrific appearance, she appeared peaceful, as if resigned to her fate.
Medical held the real horror. Inside strapped down on examination tables were a half dozen corpses, all in the same painful death rigour. I moved into the facility and found another body restrained to the table in the isolation chamber; patient zero.
In the far corner, the only light other than my own blinked amber at me from across the darkened room. The bio-containment unit still drew some power.
Beside the lit panel, on a table, lay four innocent looking silver tubes, closed on both ends. I recognized them as secure medical transport containers for biologically hazardous samples. Someone was in the process of moving some very dangerous stuff around in the lab. Three of them remained sealed and locked and had a steady green light indicating their contents safely contained. The fourth lay opened and empty.
Panic seized me as I searched for the missing sample cartridge that should have been inside the container. After a few anxious
minutes, I located it behind the glass of the lab’s containment chamber. Similar in principle to the cylinders, its design provided a secure, isolated environment to manipulate and experiment on dangerous materials. Modern lab standards required that such a chamber’s structure, windows and seals all have a security field net woven through them. When full power flowed, nothing could move between the molecules of the walls. It was overkill for most biological samples, but the technology was common in nanotech research.
I looked again at the amber LED that first caught my attention. The containment was running on emergency backup, but the light indicated a dangerously low charge. A normal virus shouldn’t be able to move through a wall, let alone these ones, but whatever these guys worked on prompted the need for this level of security. They were anxious about something dangerous getting out. Based on what we found their fears were justified, and the failing power did not bode well for us.
“Schmaltz, where are you?”
“We’re in engineering. Everything is a hell of a mess. Looks like some kind of explosion disabled the ship before it set down here. There are bodies everywhere.”
“That’s interesting, but we might have a bigger problem in medical. The reserve battery for the bio-containment chamber is almost exhausted. Is there another one down there?”
“I haven’t see one yet. How much juice is left?”
“I dunno, maybe an hour or more. The indicator is amber and blinking.”
