“One of us has to stay aboard and fly the Lining out of here if those Ravens come back.” I started for the hatch as Jase realized I would order him to leave me on the Heureux, rather than risk losing the ship. He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “And kill that navy transponder, they got the message.”
* * * *
I slipped into my pressure-suit, cycled through the airlock into the Heureux and found myself floating in zero gravity. Main power and life support were off and my head-up display told me there was vacuum outside my suit. A few feeble emergency lights threw a faint red glow into the corridor, which my helmet lamp drilled with a brilliant white beam. Ahead, a magnetic boot and a coffee cup hung motionless in the otherwise deserted corridor.
“The Heureux’s decompressed,” I said over the short range communicator. “Izin, feed some power into the Heureux and run a diagnostic. Find out what happened to their life support.”
“You’ll need to activate the umbilical link, Captain,” Izin replied.
I pulled myself to the control panel beside the inner hatch and turned the release that gave the Lining access to the Heureux’s systems. “Umbilical enabled.”
I brought my feet up, preparing to push gently away from the bulkhead when Izin’s mechanical vocalizer sounded in my ears again, this time in emergency mode, louder and faster than normal.
“Captain! Disconnect umbilical immediately!”
Izin almost never used emergency mode. Knowing something was up, I spun back to the control panel and severed the connection. “It’s done. What’s wrong?”
“Something tried to access our ship’s systems,” Izin replied, now using his vocalizer’s normal mode again. “Standby.”
Curbing my impatience to get to the lifeboat, I floated beside the airlock’s inner door while Izin implemented some technical trickery. Minutes passed and he still hadn’t given me clearance to proceed.
“Izin, I’m waiting.”
Presently, Izin said, “There’s something controlling the Heureux. It tried to spawn itself into the Silver Lining via the umbilical. I’ve isolated its embryo within our system, but it will take time to remove. Now that I know how it propagates, I can block it spawning again.”
“OK. Get rid of it,” I said, recalling the strange probing I’d felt when I’d touched the Codex. Was that what had crippled the Heureux? “Jase, any sign of the Ravens?”
“I’ve lost the two distant contacts, and the scout’s still moving away. It’s cut its engines and is just drifting, listening.”
“He wants us to chase him,” I said, “so he can get a good look at us.”
“You may reactivate the umbilical, Captain,” Izin said.
I threw the release again and waited while my tamph engineer ensured that whatever was in the Heureux didn’t spread to the Silver Lining.
“It lay dormant in Heureux’s airlock emergency system,” Izin explained, “waiting for an umbilical connection. I’ve now purged it from the Heureux’s airlock.”
“OK. Get life support and gravity back online. I’m heading for the emergency bay now.”
I pushed off from the airlock and began gliding through eerily lit corridors. The Heureux was three times the size of the Lining by tonnage, although her interior volume was considerably greater. It made getting to the lifeboat rack from the airlock quite a long float in zero gravity.
“Captain,” Izin said after several minutes, “You need to sever the connection between the Heureux’s processing core and the rest of the ship.”
“Why?”
“Whatever’s controlling the Heureux is in her processing core. It’s blocking me from accessing any of the ship’s systems.”
“Can’t you kill it from where you are?”
“No Captain. It’s highly adaptive. I’ve never seen anything like it. The processing core will have to be physically isolated – not something I can do remotely.”
If Marie and her crew were in the lifeboat, a few more minutes would make no difference. “Understood,” I said, immediately performing a zero-G roll and kicking off a bulkhead to send myself gliding down another corridor towards system control.
After several minutes of floating through corridors and dodging drifting debris, Izin said, “The aggressor embryo in the Silver Lining has been destroyed, Captain.”
I wondered if a human engineer could have dealt with the threat as effectively as Izin. Tamphs weren’t just smarter than humans, their minds were faster because their segmented brains allowed them to think in multiple simultaneous streams – a little trick evolution had so far denied Homo sapiens.
When I reached the Heureux’s processing core, in the dim red light it seemed even more spacious than I remembered. Although larger than the Lining’s compact equivalent, it was less sophisticated. Marie’s old freighter was equipped with the bare minimum of what it needed to get the job done and almost every system was overdue for replacement. By contrast, my EIS background had given me a taste for sophisticated tech, which was why the Silver Lining was a technological treasure trove with a tinkering tamph engineer constantly making improvements.
My helmet beam revealed the central processor’s access panels had been removed and were now adrift in the compartment. The loose panels weren’t the result of sloppy maintenance, but an attempt by the crew to stop whatever had commandeered their ship’s processing core. Considering the state of the Heureux, they’d clearly failed.
I glided into the compartment towards the octagonal control console in the center of the room. As I neared it, the form of a man floating face down, close to the deck beyond the console, came into view. He wore a pressure-suit and his head and arms were wedged inside the console where he’d been working when he died. A magnetic shifter, a long wrench-like tool to remove panels, floated close to his body. I pulled myself down to him, then eased him away from the panel, turning him so I could see his transparent faceplate. His skin was swollen and purple from decompression and trickles of freeze-dried blood had crystallized around his nose and eyes.
“I’m in the processing core,” I reported. “Marie’s engineer’s here. He’s dead.”
He’d been trying to do exactly what Izin had asked me to do, sever the central computer’s connection to the rest of the ship. I checked his suit, finding a tear in the right leg below the knee. It wasn’t the ragged tear symptomatic of accidentally snagging the suit, but a straight line, blackened at the edges as if a cutting torch had sliced it open. Inside the tear, the engineer’s leg was burnt, seared to the bone.
Decompression may have killed him, but it was no accident.
I grabbed the magnetic shifter out of the air and kicked away from the processing core, spinning in mid flight to angle my boots towards the wall, cursing myself for not having brought my P-50. While I drifted towards the bulkhead, I swept the compartment with my helmet light. An eight legged hull crawler was creeping across the ceiling towards me like a predatory spider stalking its prey. It had been almost overhead when I’d kicked away from the central console. The crawler was an older model than the type Izin used, but just as impervious to hard vacuum. It carried a plasma torch in one of its leading arms which suddenly glowed to life, adding a harsh, flickering yellow tint to the compartment’s dim red emergency light.
I switched on my boot’s magnetic clamps moments before they touched the bulkhead and stuck fast. Holding the mag shifter like a club, I was acutely aware that as a weapon, it was greatly inferior to a burning plasma torch.
“Ah . . . Izin, how good are hull crawlers at zero-G combat?”
“Hull crawlers are not designed to operate unanchored to fixed surfaces, Captain,” Izin replied, “however, they are programmed with basic Newtonian physics in case they become separated from an anchoring surface.”
The crawler picked its way carefully across the ceiling towards me. It seemed to be sizing me up, preparing to attack. But that was stupid! Hull crawlers were dumb maintenance machines, not tactically aware battle bots.
“Could a hull crawler beat a human in zero-G combat?”
“Of course, Captain, with the proper programming.”
How about an ultra-reflexed human with a mag shifter?
“Humans are not well adapted to zero gravity,” Izin continued, “whereas hull crawlers are able to coordinate their extremities with a precision impossible for biological entities. Why do you ask?”
“I’m facing an octo with a hot plasma torch!” I replied. “It killed Marie’s engineer and I’m next.”
“I’ll be right there, Skipper!” Jase yelled.
“Stay on the sensors, Jase. If those Ravens come back, take the Lining and get out of here fast!”
“But I can get there in–”
“No! If the Lining’s destroyed, we’re all dead.”
Jase fell silent, then Izin said, “I will come, Captain. I can restore the Heureux’s systems faster over there.”
It would take Izin at least five to six minutes to suit up and reach me, but I didn’t have that long.
“OK Izin, you come,” I said, watching the meter long machine creep towards me.
I switched off my boot magnetics and kicked off, gliding away from the crawler. Seeing I was about to escape, it scurried across the ceiling and down the wall, slashing at me with the torch, scalding the metal base of my boots. It could have caught me if it had jumped, but it chose not to lose contact with the wall. The crawler might have had better zero-G moves than me, but it clearly didn’t like to use them. Having failed to cut open my pressure-suit, it ran down to the floor and scuttled after me as I glided away.
I tumbled, then using my legs like springs, bounced off the bulkhead and glided diagonally across the room away from the octo. It ran up onto the central console and stabbed after me with the glowing torch. I rolled again, this time activating my boots long enough to clamp onto the bulkhead and swing towards the entrance.
The octo anticipated my move and tried to cut me off as I launched myself at the hatchway. It reared up on its back four legs, lunging at me with the torch, but I swatted it away with the mag shifter, sending myself spinning out of control. My helmet crashed into the ceiling, then I reverse tucked to offset the spin and caught the edge of the hatchway with my free hand. My body slammed clumsily into the wall, almost knocking the air out of my lungs, then I pushed off with my knees, pivoted around my hand and flew backwards through the hatch. The eight legged killer-bot rushed after me as I floundered across the corridor until a toe of one boot caught the ceiling. I pushed sideways, out of the crawler’s sight, then walked across the ceiling to the wall near the hatch.
The octo scuttled into the corridor, lifting a leg to climb the wall as I swung the shifter down onto its fragile sensor dome. The transparent hemisphere and the fragile optics within shattered, blinding the murderous bot. I pushed off the wall, tumbling clear as the crawler swept the torch wildly over its head, then performed a fast, zero-G somersault followed by a rebound off the opposite wall that sent me hurtling back at the crawler. I crushed its body with a ferocious, two handed hammer blow that sent me careening away, leaving the octo shorting out behind me. By the time I got a magnetized boot to a metal surface, the octo was drifting lifelessly in the corridor, eerily lit by its burning torch.
It hadn’t been pretty, but I still remembered enough of my zero-G training to be dangerous. I made a mental note to start practicing again, as soon as possible.
“So much for Newtonian physics,” I said. “The crawler’s dead.”
“Good job, Skipper!” Jase exclaimed with relief.
“I’m entering the airlock now, Captain,” Izin informed me.
I floated to the dead octo, switched off the torch, then returned to the systems control console. It didn’t take long to find the dead engineer had been close to disconnecting the processing core from the rest of the ship. Whatever had infected the Heureux must have summoned the crawler to protect it. I quickly finished what the engineer had started, then as I floated up from the control console, I saw a second crawler standing in the corridor, watching me through the hatchway. It lifted one of its legs to reveal an electro welder, which burst to life.
“Not another one,” I muttered.
I lifted the mag shifter like a club, ready to do battle, then the crawler’s central torso exploded. Legs and bits of its body casing drifted apart. One leg tumbled end over end into the compartment past my helmet. Presently, Izin appeared carrying his six millimeter shredder. It looked like a toy pistol with a disproportionately long barrel, but in his inhumanly steady hands, it was a weapon of lethal accuracy.
Izin floated into the compartment carrying a small tool box and my P-50 slung over his shoulder. He holstered his gun and threw mine to me.
“Thanks,” I said, strapping it on, glad to be rid of the shifter.
“There are other hull crawlers inside the ship, Captain. I destroyed one near the airlock and another in the corridor.” He turned towards the central computer. “I’ll clean their computer’s hardware, then reinitialize the system. It’ll get them to Axon, but they’ll need to do a full rebuild later.”
“Getting atmo back is the priority.” I’d feel better once the ship was pressurized again and the crawlers couldn’t kill me just by puncturing my p-suit.
I left Izin to clean house and started towards the lifeboat bay. I saw no more crawlers as I glided through gloomy corridors, then as I approached the lifeboat compartment, Izin announced he’d scrubbed the Heureux’s processing core back to clean metal, and was beginning the emergency rebuild.
The large hatch to the lifeboat compartment was open, but the space door was still closed. It could be chemically blown from the hull in an emergency, but either the crew hadn’t wanted to leave, or hadn’t been able to.
The Heureux’s lifeboat was a rugged, stretched egg-shaped craft with no capacity for superluminal flight and enough supplies and power for months adrift in space. It was equipped with a small cockpit window for the pilot to eyeball surrounding space, although the underpowered thrusters were only useful for docking. Highly sensor reflective material coated its thin hull, complementing two long range emergency beacons, although the chances of rescue if no one was looking for you were virtually zero.
Light from the small cockpit window spilled into the bare metal compartment. I was about to push myself towards it when a spindly shadow charged out of the darkness. I fired once, shattering the hull crawler into a dozen pieces and discovering Izin had loaded my gun with explosive slugs. I caught one of the crawler’s legs as it tumbled past, examining it for a moment, then floated towards the front of the lifeboat.
My heart was beating as I approached the window, worried at what I might find inside. Or not find. At the window, I relaxed when I saw Marie floating inside, talking with her barrel chested copilot, Gadron Ugo, and several other men and one woman wearing crew suits.
I holstered my gun and rapped on the window.
Marie and her crewmen looked up surprised, then she kicked off a chair and came gliding towards me with a fearful look. She started motioning with her fingers, miming spider movements, warning me about homicidal hull crawlers and pointing frantically into the darkness behind me.
I was delighted to see she was genuinely worried about me, so I played dumb. I smiled and pretended I thought her spider miming was a wave, so I waved back, grinning like a Cheshire cat. She shook her head and gestured even more frantically into the dark, growing rapidly alarmed and frustrated that I didn’t understand I was about to be torn apart by a murderous hull crawler.
Finally, I held up the leg of the destroyed hull crawler. Surprise flashed across her face, then I showed her my P-50 with a knowing look.
She relaxed, giving me a relieved smile and blew me a kiss.
* * * *
By the time Izin had restored life to the Heureux, the Raven scout had begun edging back towards us, probing the Shroud with powerful long range scanners making me anxious to get underway. Finally atmosph
ere returned, allowing me to remove my helmet and the lifeboat’s hatch to be cracked open.
“I knew you’d find us!” Marie said as she jumped out, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me with gusto.
When I came up for air, I said, “Just business my love?”
She smiled coyly. “You know how it is Sirius, a girl’s got to make a living!”
“So where’d you hide the Codex after you stunned Jase back on Icetop?”
“Under the bed.” The same bed we’d put to more pleasurable pursuits only hours before! She saw the look on my face, adding apologetically. “I didn’t have time for anything else! I was going to tell you Vargis stole it, but when he walked in, I had to blame Bo.”
“Anything to get me out of the way!”
She shrugged helplessly. “Ugo was waiting. He’d been circling since midnight.”
“Nice stunt. It nearly got you killed.”
She looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think crippled your ship?”
“Mannie said it was a system problem.”
“He was . . . wrong.”
She sobered. “You’ve seen him?”
I nodded somberly, telling her with a look that he was dead.
Tears clouded her eyes. “We knew his air supply must have run out, but I hoped –.”
“It wasn’t his air supply.” When she gave me a puzzled look, I added, “It was a crawler.”
“Another one?” she said puzzled, thinking only the crawler in the emergency bay had malfunctioned.
“They were all taken over by whatever crippled the Heureux.”
Gadron Ugo, the bald headed man mountain who doubled as Marie’s de facto guardian, stepped forward and put a big arm comfortingly around her shoulders. “I’ll take care of Mannie.” He gave me a nod, the nearest I’d get to a ‘thank you’, then he left with the surviving crew members.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“The helm just stopped responding and our engines shut down. Mannie cooled the energy plant as a safety precaution, then we decompressed for no reason. After we got to the lifeboat, he went off to do repairs. That was the last we saw of him. A few hours later, a hull crawler tried to force open the hatch. It nearly killed us, but we managed to lock it out.”
Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex Page 19
