“I’m going to pull up in front of him. Fire the net and we’ll slowly reel him in. I want him stable so we can get back to Black in a flash.” Taulbee checked his speed and position. “Here we go.”
Gunny’s combat suit beacon blinked white and yellow, but from the way the lights pulsed and moved, he knew the sergeant was in an uncontrolled spin. He slowed until the SV-52 nearly matched the unconscious marine’s velocity. The SV-52’s starboard floods caught sight of the suit. Gunny was in fact tumbling and spinning, just as Mira had been when they reached the derelict what felt like a thousand years ago.
He pushed the thought from his mind and focused. He nudged the thrusters, a bare puff of gas adding one more m/s, just enough to—
“Clear,” he said.
“Copy,” Copenhaver answered. The tether net shot from the support vehicle’s belly. She’d aimed perfectly; the tethered projectile opened like a flower just before it hit Gunny. The unconscious sergeant spun into the net, the skein closing in on him, spinning and tumbling with him at first before slowing him to match the SV-52s attitude. “Secure, sir.”
S&R Black had already made her turn. Oakes must have pushed the thrusters to the limit, he thought. Taulbee knew that even now, the captain and Lieutenant Nobel would be preparing the cargo bay for their arrival, and unloading Gunny wasn’t going to be fun. Not only did Taulbee have to shoot back to S&R Black as quickly as possible, but once the unconscious marine was aboard, he had to turn around with what fuel he had, and retrieve both Wendt and Murdock.
“Sir?” Copenhaver said.
“Yes, Private?”
She sounded timid, a little fearful. “What about the beacon, sir?”
Yes. What about the beacon? It was currently spinning off into the Kuiper Belt, presumably still attached to the skiff. He had another thought that chilled him. What if it had come loose from the skiff? How the hell would they even find it?
“One thing at a time,” he said with a wince. He knew that sounded ridiculous. Hell, it did even to his own ears. The more he thought about it, though, it was a good question. He was damned glad he didn’t have to answer it, though. That was Dunn’s job and Taulbee didn’t envy the captain in making that decision.
*****
While cursing about his damaged leg often and loudly, Nobel had finished pulling the emergency stretcher and putting it into place. No so long ago, Gunny’s squad had put Nobel in this very same stretcher and guided him to the infirmary. The irony was not lost on Dunn.
Dressed in full combat suits, their helmets attached and pressurized, he and the engineer waited inside the cargo bay. Dunn had decided not to waste any time in getting the sergeant offloaded. When Taulbee reached them, he and Nobel could just drag the unconscious marine into the cargo bay, pressurize it, and begin stabilizing him. If, Dunn thought with a shudder, there’s anything left to stabilize.
The beacon flash had been as destructive and powerful as the last time it had erupted, but, thankfully, the burst had once again not been aimed in their direction. The majority of the lethal radiation had gone off into the deep Kuiper Belt headed for infinity. And that was the problem.
As soon as they’d detected the beacon’s emissions, he’d watched the cam feeds to see what the creatures would do. They did nothing. The pinecones had once again stitched themselves together in a massive wall more or less cutting off Mira’s aft section from ingress. Well, that was if you considered the fractured hull an ingress.
He had seen a few starfish clusters moving around on top of Mira’s hull, but they hadn’t yet attacked. And the new arrivals? They had more or less disappeared. That fact alone was enough to unnerve him. They didn’t even know what the things were capable of. Black had been analyzing their movements and body composition the moment the insect-like things had come close enough, but they had disappeared once they flew below Mira’s hull.
Did they find another way into the ship? Or did they just decide to attach themselves like the barnacles of old? When the flocks of creatures had first passed the SV-52, it appeared they were making a bee-line for the pinecones. Another predator, Dunn assumed. Instead, they had ignored the pinecones as if they didn’t exist.
When the beacon had erupted, he’d expected the creatures to depart Mira at once and chase the photon blast. If Black’s assumptions were correct, and so far, they had been, the exo-solar lifeforms craved light. It’s what had drawn them to the Kuiper Belt to begin with. Or, did it?
Mira had been traveling for 43 years, making its way back into the system, broken and derelict. The creatures aboard her had been attracted by the beacon’s blast when Mira’s scientists unlocked it. At least that was the story the data Kalimura had recovered indicated.
But the beacon had gone off while it was inside Mira, not outside of it. So how did the creatures get attracted to Mira in the first place? Surely the photon blast didn’t cause the damage to the aft section and the reactors? Or did it?
Dunn felt confused. Maybe it didn’t matter. What did matter is why the pinecones decided to cover the aft and not even care about the beacon. What was left inside Mira they were trying to protect?
And the KBOs? These things had been floating out here for centuries, but they only started moving once the beacon went off some 21 days ago? So why the hell had they been here to begin with?
Something put them here, he thought. Something else. Something more sentient? He shivered. Were they sitting in the Kuiper Belt, surrounded by ticking time bombs just waiting for some celestial event to kick off their detonations? Had the beacon always been meant to travel here? To Sol?
That was a thought he didn’t even want to consider. If it was an invasion force of alien creatures whose strange biology was only matched by their mastery of traveling across space, through vacuum and absolute zero temperatures, following photon trails through the galaxy, humanity faced extinction. Atmo-steel projectiles did little to them. Explosions could rock them, push them, even damage them. But destroy them? They needed the tritium ammo for that. And even worse? The creatures bred. They bred damned fast.
When they’d first approached Mira, the pinecones hadn’t been nearly so numerous. There hadn’t been what seemed like millions of the fucking things covering the ship. Now? They were packed densely enough to create a ten-meter-thick wall around Mira’s exposed aft section. Their predator? The starfish things? They’d all but disappeared. What were they waiting for? And what about the new creatures?
None of it made sense. None of it made any damned sense. All of them, every single one of them, should have been chasing the beacon. Instead, they remained with Mira. Something else was aboard her. Dunn didn’t even want to hazard a guess at what that might be.
He opened a connection to Black.
Yes, Captain?
Why aren’t they following the beacon? Dunn asked.
Black had obviously already been thinking about this, because the response was near instantaneous. I estimate it is due to residual radiation inside Mira that the beacon has left in its wake. It has been inside the ship for 43 years. We still don’t know how many times it has pulsed since it began its journey back to Sol System.
Residual? Wouldn’t we have picked it up?
Black paused for a few heartbeats. Captain, in light of all we have seen, all the seeming impossibilities, isn’t it possible they’re radiating energy we can’t even detect? Or in a wavelength that our hulls and suits easily reflect?
“Bullshit,” Dunn said aloud.
If she’d had the ability, he was pretty sure she would have sighed. Let’s try again—
No, Black, he thought. I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t believe it. So what the hell do we do now?
Dunn’s HUD lit with an alert. The cargo bay was about to open; Taulbee had reached the ship. He walked to the side of the cargo bay door, Nobel on the other side of him. Tethers locked, magnetics on, they were ready.
When the AI spoke again, she sounded flustered. Do what you’ve wanted to
do for hours.
He grinned. Blow it up?
Yes, Captain. After we retrieve the beacon, we destroy Mira.
Sounded like a damned good idea to him.
He killed the connection as the cargo bay doors opened. The SV-52 hovered before them, its floodlights dimmed so as not to blind Dunn or Nobel. The net shrouded a ragdoll figure inside of the mesh. He and Nobel reached forward and enabled their magnetic gloves, the bundle of netting immediately locking to their hands. Taulbee disengaged the net and moved the SV-52 away from the cargo bay at the same instant. Dunn and Nobel pulled the net in and closed the cargo bay doors.
While the cargo bay pressurized, Dunn opened the comms. “Taulbee. Can you bring back Wendt and Murdock at the same time?”
“Aye, sir. They were already locked together. Shouldn’t be any problem at all.”
“Good,” Dunn said. “Out.”
The pressure lights turned green. He connected to Gunny’s suit. The sergeant’s BP was very low and his pulse erratic. He sent a command to the suit and its seals popped. Nobel went for the helmet while Dunn went for the chest. He unfastened the suit’s armored plating as well as the environmental shielding and winced. Blood stained Gunny’s moist undershirt.
“Oh, void wept,” Nobel said.
Dunn turned to him and shuddered. Nobel had removed the visor and helmet revealing the slack-faced marine and an eyeball dangling down in a dried river of blood on the left cheek.
“Do the best you can,” he said and split the undershirt with his knife. He couldn’t help but wince again. One of Gunny’s ribs had broken through the skin. Well, broken was the wrong word. Shattered was more like it. Chips of bone perforated the flesh like teeth. “Autodoc. Now.”
“Aye, sir.”
He and Nobel stood from their crouches. Now they’d made sure he wasn’t going to bleed out, it was time to get him to the doc. But Dunn wasn’t sure it’d be enough. Not this time.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The universe seemed to stand still. Every muscle in Kali’s body froze in both wonder and horror as the impossibly dark shape broke through the hatch’s remains. At first, she thought it was a cable dislodged by the ship quakes. Until, that was, it began swaying back and forth almost as if tasting the vacuum. The tapered end slammed down on the deck, layers of nearly imperceptible cilia rippling on its surface. Another appendage appeared, a strange glow radiating around it.
“Starfish!” Carb yelled.
The sound of her voice broke Kali’s fugue. “Get in the pods! Now!”
Kali raised her rifle and fired at the creature as it dragged itself through the large rectangular hatch. The flechette round had little time to engage its propellant before striking the alien flesh. She immediately turned and leaped from the deck in the direction of the escape pods.
Elliott and Carb had already dived into two of them. Dickerson stood by the damaged, but still functional pod, his rifle aimed down the corridor at the broken hatch.
Kali growled over the comms. “Get moving, Dickerson! Now!”
As she reached the pods, Dickerson grabbed her left arm and swung her into the remaining, undamaged pod. Kali yelled in surprise and banged into the pod’s rear, her visor crunching into the Atmo-steel. She turned to try and get out of the pod, but its door had already descended, trapping her inside.
The escape pod’s HUD came to life, a view of the corridor appearing before her. She couldn’t see Dickerson, but she could see what was coming out of the vent. She activated the pod’s magnetic harness and stuck fast to the acceleration couch, but that didn’t stop her from shaking.
A flechette round screamed across her view heading toward the hatch. The starfish thing had nearly released itself from the broken hatch, five of its limbs dragging its bulk into the corridor. Arcs of electricity turned into a cloud around the thing. It began to shake, its arms instinctively slashing and smashing through the empty vacuum.
“Dickerson! Get in your pod!” she yelled.
He didn’t respond. Kali had time to take a breath before the HUD flashed green. Her broken rib screamed in pain as the escape pod latches released and then the g-forces had her.
A mechanical launcher catapulted the pod, flinging it away from the ship’s superstructure and into space. Mira’s corridor disappeared, leaving her with a view of the damaged, pinecone-encrusted outer hull. The pod spun, giving her vertigo. She called out to her team, but there was nothing. She was all alone.
Before she lost sight of the midships, she saw a puff of gas and another pod flying into space. She didn’t know if that was Dickerson, Carb, or Elliott. Kali interfaced with the pod’s comm system.
“S&R Black. This is Corporal Kalimura. We have ejected in escape pods from Mira’s port-side.” She waited a few heartbeats, panic slowly creeping across her mind. “Black! Come in, Black!” No response. “Goddamnit, Black! Come in!”
Nothing.
Kali changed the HUD to a 360° panorama, looking for the ship. But all she saw was Mira and empty space. The ship was no longer on the port-side. In fact, it had disappeared.
*****
Dickerson watched the thing free itself from the hatch. Flashing red radiation alerts lit his HUD as it entered the corridor. He fired three more flechette rounds at the thing, turned, and pushed himself into the escape pod. He hit the “CLOSE” button on the console and the door slid down, blocking his view of the corridor beyond. The HUD, dimly lit and streaked with static, presented a shattered view of the corridor beyond. He reached to buckle into the acceleration couch and froze.
The starfish thing that had emerged from the hatch moved toward him through the vacuum, its arms spreading like a blossoming flower before retracting and starting the process again. Behind it, hundreds of smaller creatures followed in its wake.
Dickerson reached forward and pounded his fist on the “LAUNCH” button. The HUD disappeared completely as the g-force knocked him backward. Cursing, he punched the manual control switch and a portion of metal slid aside, providing him a small porthole. Dickerson’s mouth dropped open in awe as he hurtled away from Mira. The five escape pod berths crumbled into shreds of metal as a swarm of the starfish things punched through the hull and into space.
The HUD flickered back into existence, most of the icons showing systems offline. He tried to activate the radar and navigational systems. No go. The diagnostics had told him that was the case, but he’d still held out hope.
He turned his attention back to the tiny viewport. The monstrous Mira seemed to move further and further away as the pod accelerated. Without the automated systems, he’d have little warning before smashing into S&R Black or debris. He kept waiting for one of the alarms to pop up on the damaged HUD, but there was nothing. S&R Black was no longer in position.
Dickerson brought up the diagnostics, checking to ensure the pod’s beacon was operational. “At least that’s working,” he said. The viewport window darkened. Dickerson flipped his attention away from the HUD, eyes growing wide.
The swarm of creatures escaping Mira’s hull were following the pod. No, not following. Pursuing. The largest of the starfish creatures streaked toward him, its arms pointed at the pod like teeth.
The pod had no weapons, no evasive maneuvering, nothing. Dickerson braced himself for impact and watched in helpless fascination as the multi-armed thing approached at suicidal speed.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The pair of marines floated in space, hands locked to one another. Wendt and Murdock each had their rifles on their backs, and were more or less completely defenseless. Fortunately for them, Taulbee thought, none of the exo-solar lifeforms seemed to have noticed them. Instead, the damned things were still all over Mira.
He tried to focus on netting the two marines, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Gunny. Thinking? No, that wasn’t the word. “You’re worried,” he said aloud. “Worried he’s dead.”
After Dunn and Nobel had removed Gunny from the tether net, Taulbee had lit out for t
he two stranded marines even before the cargo bay finished closing. Neither he nor Copenhaver said a word, but he could feel the tension in her silence. Copenhaver was just as concerned about Gunny as he was.
“We’re running out of marines,” he said with a chuckle. It sounded more like a sob than a laugh to his own ears. He’d been thinking that if they still had a functional skiff, he could send someone else to pick up Wendt and Murdock. But really, who the hell was left? Apart from the command crew, Taulbee was down to just Copenhaver, Murdock, and Wendt. And the latter two were floating out here in space like flotsam ejected from a garbage chute.
“Sir?” Copenhaver said.
“Yes, Private?”
“Our sky is clear, sir. No hostiles in our space.”
“Thank you, Private,” he said. She had told him something he already knew, but he wasn’t going to call her on it. Hell, she probably knew she didn’t have to say it, but was struggling to find something to say. Sometimes talking to yourself just wasn’t enough. The thoughts and fears could pile up until they strangled you. And after you’d seen one of your leaders carted off unconscious and probably dying, the last place you wanted to stay was inside your head.
Forty meters. He cut the speed a notch and continued his approach. Both S&R Black and Mira receded further and further behind and below them. If one could equate up and down in 3-D space, that was.
“Taulbee to Wendt.”
“Aye, sir,” Wendt said. “Good to hear from you.”
He couldn’t help grinning at the forced joviality in Wendt’s voice. “Well, I thought I’d make a personal visit, since you guys decided to take a stroll.”
Wendt chuckled. “Well, we’ve been dancing out here for a few minutes and I have to say, the music sucks and it’s damned cold.”
Taulbee rolled his eyes. “Coming in. Copenhaver will net you and then we’re bringing you back to Black. Copy?”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
He continued his approach, gently hitting the thruster controls to both slow their speed and adjust the attitude. Since the two men were relatively stable instead of tumbling and twirling, netting them would be easy. Hell, the two men could use their suit thrusters to approach the craft and mag-lock themselves to it if they—
Derelict: Destruction (Derelict Saga Book 3) Page 30
