Derelict_Destruction

by Paul E. Cooley

  “Lyke? Lock and load with the new rounds, but I don’t want you to fire on any pinecones unless I tell you. If you see a starfish, though, I want you to fire at will.”

  “Understood, Gunny.”

  Gunny grinned. The kid sounded a little more confident now that he had something to do. Gunny didn’t blame him.

  He altered the skiff’s attitude slightly to give Wendt a clear line of fire to the hull. Gunny’s HUD lit with an alert. With the skiff canted, the magnetics struggled to keep them from losing connection with Mira’s hull. If the skiff encountered multiple impacts, they were liable to lose contact and the field of invisible energy tethering them to the ship would shatter, leaving them floating above a massive ship that still tumbled. He decreased altitude and explained the reason to both Wendt and Lyke. Wendt simply acknowledged. Lyke sounded worried again. Gunny shook his head. They’d have to toughen that kid up. Somehow.

  10 meters above the hull, Wendt had a clear firing solution. The huddled mass of pinecones seemed completely oblivious to their presence. So much the better. Once he felt the craft was stable enough, Gunny clenched the throttle until his knuckles throbbed. He checked his feeds once more, making sure no threats approached them from above, the rear, port, or starboard. Clear space.

  “Wendt? Two rounds. If they fly back at us, fill the air with chaff.”

  “Aye, Gunny.”

  “Fire at will, marine.”

  Wendt said nothing as he activated the cannon. Two rounds, pushed by a pneumatic piston, flew from the barrel over Gunny’s head. He watched them as their rocket engines kicked on and the flechette rounds accelerated to 50m/s before exploding less than a meter above the field of pinecones. Shards of Atmo-steel smashed into their shells at nearly 200m/s.

  A storm of pinecone debris exploded upward. The cloud obscured his view of the herd, and Gunny held his breath as he waited for a clear view. He didn’t have to wait long.

  Two or three seconds passed before hundreds of pinecones rose from the hull. The swarm, herd, whatever the fuck you wanted to call it, sped away from the area and into space. Gunny grinned. He could already see the harness piton placement. “Outstanding, Wendt. Just—”

  His voice broke off. The pinecone swarm slowly turned and faced the skiff. Gunny’s mouth opened in an ‘O’ of surprise as a piece of deck plate near the starboard hull’s edge erupted in flecks of gleaming metal. Arms reached out over the hole and clamped onto the metal surface. A starfish, the largest he’d seen, pulled itself from the hole. The swarm continued their retreat, heading straight for the skiff.

  “Hold on!” Gunny yelled and punched the fore thrusters to full. The skiff shot backward toward the midships, the canted attitude causing them to gain altitude. Alerts lit his HUD as the magnetics lost connection with the hull. Cursing, Gunny activated another burn and attempted to correct the skiff’s trajectory and place the magnetics back in range. The pinecone swarm continued its advance. Gunny’s HUD placed their velocity at 10m/s. Hundreds of the damned creatures flew toward the skiff like a plague.

  Gunny touched the thrusters again and the skiff plunged toward the hull. Lyke yelled out, but Gunny didn’t have the time to check his feed. Several flechette cannon rounds flew over Gunny’s head into the advancing mass of pinecones. Unlike the younger marine, Wendt made no sound over the comms. A cloud of flechettes exploded 10 meters from the skiff, creating a wall of chaff directly in the swarm’s path. It wasn’t enough. The swarm didn’t even slow.

  “Wendt! Switch rounds!”

  The cannon’s fire paused for a heartbeat before five more flechettes sailed over Gunny’s head. The tritium rounds streaked into the mass of pinecones, detonating in bright, nano-second explosions of light. Zoomed in, Gunny saw the puffs of the flechettes contacting the metal-like skin of the pinecones. Shards of exo-solar carapaces rose from the swarm, a few of the creatures exploding as the heavy water met their shells.

  The swarm broke apart into three smaller groupings. One turned tail, retreating to the other side of the hull, while the other two branched out far enough to pass by the skiff. Gunny zoomed back out and checked the other feeds. The pinecone mini-swarms continued heading toward S&R Black, but each was moving further aft or fore, far enough away to no longer be an imminent threat.

  “Good shooting, Wendt,” Gunny said when he caught his breath. His heartbeat continued hammering in his chest, but it was slowing. “I think—”

  “Incoming!” Lyke yelled.

  Gunny switched back to his forward feed. The starfish that had gone after the pinecone swarm headed straight at them. The space around the creature’s skin shimmered, slightly blurring the starfish’s form. Gunny hit the fore thrusters again and the skiff began moving backward faster.

  “Wendt? Blast it!”

  Another salvo left the cannon and streaked toward the starfish. The creature seemed to sense the flechette rounds and flexed its arms in a blink of movement. The flechettes landed meters away from it, impacting the hull with flashes of light.

  “Shit, Gunny,” Wendt growled through the comms. “Can’t get a good bead. Fucker is fast.”

  “Lyke, get up here,” Gunny said. “Kill that fucking thing.”

  “Aye,” Lyke said.

  The starfish, somehow realizing it could avoid the hazard, moved in zig-zags toward them. The terror he felt was only matched by the wonder of watching the thing move as though it were in water, using its arms to change trajectory and speed with ease. The creature quickly ate the distance and was less than fifty meters from them when Lyke finally sighted and fired.

  Without as much distance between the skiff and the creature, it had less time to dodge the incoming rounds. Lyke, a better shot than Gunny had previously given him credit for, fired three rounds. The first was dead center, the others wide on either side. The rockets kicked in and the rounds streaked to their target. The creature tried to dance away from the first round and flew straight into the second.

  The tritium flechette collided with the base of one of the arms, exploding in a mix of shrapnel and heavy water. The limb detonated into shards of its tough flesh. The starfish cartwheeled from the impact, its arms flailing in both surprise and, Gunny assumed, pain. Wendt fired a single flechette round, leading the creature slightly. Just as Gunny was about to ask him what he was doing, the round hit the starfish in its center.

  The exo-solar lifeform exploded into debris. A single intact arm floated above the mess, trailing crumbs of shell.

  “Hot damn,” Gunny said. “Good work, marines. Now we just need to—“

  “What the fuck is that?” Lyke breathed over the comms.

  Gunny squinted at his HUD and gooseflesh tingled every centimeter of his skin. The deck plate nearest the piton point had erupted into flakes of metal. Arms, too many to count, shot out of the hole and grabbed its edges.

  “Gunny to Taulbee.”

  “Taulbee here. Go.”

  Gunny licked his lips. “We might need a little help, sir.”

  After a slight pause, Taulbee finally responded. “Hit those bastards with everything you have. Get ‘em off the hull.”

  “Aye, sir,” Gunny said, thankful Taulbee had switched to his camera feed. “You heard the LT, Wendt! Blast ‘em!”

  Wendt opened up with the cannon, saturating the giant rent in the hull with tritium flechettes. Six bright flashes lit Gunny’s HUD as a cloud of debris, fragments of both black shimmering flesh and glinting metal, rose from the target site. Gunny waited for the cloud to break apart so he could see if any more threats intended to come at them from that spot. After a moment, nothing happened. They were safe.

  “Taulbee. Condition green, here.”

  “Aye, Gunny. Good job.”

  “Thank you, sir. You can blame Wendt.”

  The lieutenant loosed a dry chuckle. “I will,” he said. “Can you get to the piton point?”

  Gunny scanned the area, his cams zoomed in as far as they would go. The line appeared to be intact, but it was
impossible to tell from both this angle and the distance. “Unknown, sir. We’re going to move in and check it out.”

  “Acknowledged,” Taulbee said. “Good hunting.”

  Good hunting indeed, Gunny thought. If those starfish had come out of the hull when they were directly over the deck plate, he wasn’t sure they’d even be alive. He imagined the starfish things locking their arms over the skiff, plucking them from the craft like pinecones, squirting their suits with acid, and finally devouring them whole. He shivered.

  “Okay, boys,” Gunny said. “We’re going back in. Lyke? You’re the lookout again. Pay attention to the deck plates to aft, port, and starboard.”

  “Understood, Gunny,” Lyke said. He sounded icy. That was a damned good thing.

  “Ready, Wendt?”

  “Aye, Gunny. Locked and loaded.”

  Gunny took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  He could swear the darkness was getting worse. After so many hours traveling through Mira’s endless corridors filled with bodies and alien creatures that wanted to kill him, Dickerson was surprised he felt anything at all, let alone fear. But the place was getting to him.

  The slip-point tunnel seemed to be closing in, as if its walls and ceiling were being slowly crushed by a compactor. He kept telling himself it was the concussion, and not reality, but it didn’t help. The illusion continued until his skin prickled with phantom pressure from the squeeze before his vision snapped back to normal like an elastic band. Might as well be on hallucinogenics, he thought.

  The constant push and pull made him weary, even more exhausted than he already was. He wondered if his other three squad-mates were having the same issue, or if it was just him. Kalimura was still walking point, her rifle swaying uneasily between the walls. The closer they got to the slip-point egress, the more she crouched. He smiled to himself. She would have been a hell of a soldier to have during the Satellite War, let alone the Schiaparelli Rebellion. Carb and the corporal might have even ended up friends.

  At least Carb had decided to settle into an uneasy truce. She was following Kalimura’s orders, not complaining, and only occasionally questioning her decisions. That was something new. Their last NCO who rotated out a few months back had constantly threatened to put Carb in the brig. He didn’t understand how to lead and Carb did her best to let him know it. Whether or not Gunny and the officers suspected it, the remaining non-rates had been happy to see him get the fuck out of the company and head back to Mars where he belonged.

  Dickerson tried to imagine how Sergeant J. Brazier would have reacted to this mission. The man would probably have suffered a severe mental collapse the moment they were stranded on Mira. At least with Kalimura, he didn’t have to worry about that.

  The egress point was coming up. Kalimura hadn’t said anything over the comms, but he could read the schematic as well as she could. Carb did too. They both knew the slip-point was no more than five meters away. He studied the way Carb held herself. Yup. She knew. Despite Elliott’s additional mass and the way he was attached to her left shoulder, she crouched lower and lower to the deck with every meter they traveled. That and her silence were tell-tale signs she was prepped for a fight. Dickerson realized he was doing the same.

  The corporal raised a fist in the air, but said nothing. Carb and Dickerson both came to a stop. Over Carb and Kalimura’s shoulders, he saw the six-way junction. They could continue down the tunnel, head port or starboard, or travel to decks above or below. With his progress halted, the illusion of the bulkheads closing in snapped back, the walls returning to their positions in reality. He waited for the illusion to repeat, but the tunnel width remained constant.

  Kalimura crept to the port-side corner and covered the starboard-side. “Dickerson? Get up here.”

  “Copy, Corporal,” Dickerson said. “Carb, watch your six.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  He grav-walked past Carb and crept along the starboard bulkhead until he reached the corner, his rifle covering the port-side. “Covering port.”

  “Acknowledged.” The corporal took two steps forward and leaned out into the adjoining hallway. She stiffened and slowly relaxed. “My six is clear,” she said. “Nothing to port, nothing to starboard.”

  Dickerson gulped. What about above or below, he wondered. Dickerson walked to the slip-tunnel edge and looked up. The darkness seemed to swallow his helmet lights, making the tunnel ahead appear as a cavernous mouth. He warily pulled his eyes away from the sight and swiveled his helmet to look downward. His lights penetrated the gloom and reflected off the Atmo-steel corridor bulkhead.

  “Corporal?”

  “Yes?”

  “Something strange about the tunnel above us.”

  Kalimura’s breath hitched. “What?”

  “Well, my lights—” He trailed off. His suit lights illuminated the upper tunnel walls just as it did everywhere else.

  “What about your lights?” Kalimura said, her voice marred with a slight tremor.

  “Nothing,” Dickerson said. “Clear above and below, Corporal. Or as clear as it can get.”

  “All right,” she said and turned to face the port-side. “Schematics say this way.”

  “Thank the void,” Carb said. “Can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Damned tunnel feels like a vise waiting to crush us.”

  It took a moment for him to absorb her words. A cautious smile crept across his face as he realized he wasn’t the only one seeing the illusion.

  “Ready to move out?” Kalimura asked.

  “Aye, Corporal,” Dickerson said. “I’ll hang back and cover.”

  “Let’s go,” she said and walked into the adjoining tunnel.

  Dickerson cast his helmet lights upward again. Nothing had changed. Whatever hallucination had caused the light to disappear had evaporated. Void, but he needed to get his shit together. If he had an episode like that while they were jetting for their lives, or in a firefight, he could get himself killed. Or one of his squad-mates.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head until a bolt of pain split across his brain, and opened them. The pain throbbed in his skull, but at least he felt awake now. Awake and alert. Pain, he thought, even better than caffeine.

  Kalimura was nearly 10 meters ahead, Carb walking a few meters behind. Dickerson took a deep breath and began tracing their steps. He once again kept an eye on his rear cam. With every step, he expected something to drop down from the upper part of the tunnel and fly at them with malevolent speed. At one point, he thought he saw a starfish arm reaching down from the upper tunnel, the arm curling, looking for something to scoop up and spray with its silvery spit.

  “Shit,” Kalimura said.

  Dickerson immediately flicked his eyes to the forward cam. The corporal hadn’t stopped walking, but her lights illuminated one of the bulkheads up ahead. “What is it, Corporal?”

  The lights danced across the metal. He saw something darker than the steel clinging to the wall. “Remember those hives?”

  “Yeah,” Dickerson said. “Found more?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Carb. Get up here. Dickerson, you too. Just keep an eye on our six.”

  “Aye, Corporal,” Dickerson said.

  He quickly caught up to Carb and stayed a meter behind her. With each step, the shape caught in the lights gained solidity. By the time they reached Kalimura, he’d slowed his steps, mouth open.

  She’d been right to mention the hives, but the shapes on the wall were two meters long and shaped like eggs. He couldn’t tell if they were embedded in the steel, or merely attached. They seemed to shimmer beneath the light as if seen through heated air.

  “Now what?” Carb groaned through the mic. “Just what the hell are those?”

  “Dickerson?” Kalimura asked. “Any ideas?”

  He shook his head. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. Irregular bumps and dimples marred their incredibly black surfaces. They’re not eggs, he thought. C
an’t be. Can they?

  “I got nothing,” he drawled. “That’s way above my pay rate.”

  “Whoa,” Carb said. “Hey. Switch to infrared.”

  Dickerson sent the command to his HUD and a sense of wonder suddenly replaced the confusion. The shapes glowed a fiery red under the filters. The strange protrusions emitted heat in a temperature range between 40°C and 48°C. And the strangest part? They didn’t seem to be losing any heat at all in the near absolute zero temperature of Mira’s corridors.

  “Void wept,” he said. “How in the ever loving fuck—?” The sentence trailed off into an eerie silence broken only by the sound of Elliott’s breathing. Beneath the infrared filters, his squad looked like dim blue outlines, the heat inside their suits barely registering. But these things? They were pumping out enough heat to not only show up, but blazed like furnaces.

  Dickerson moved forward a few steps until he stood directly in front of the nearest shape.

  “Don’t get too close,” Kalimura said, “and don’t you dare touch it.”

  “No worries on either, Corporal,” Dickerson said. He waved a hand a half a meter away from it and his rad counter slowly rose. A grim smile touched his lips. “Well, look at that.”

  “What?” Carb asked.

  He gestured to the wall. “These things are radioactive,” he said. “Not terribly so, but they are definitely putting off some sieverts.”

  “Shit,” Kalimura said. “How the hell are they doing that?”

  Carb giggled, but it sounded more like a sob. “How the fuck are these things doing any of the things they’re doing?”

  Dickerson stepped away from the wall. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Not one damned bit.”

  “Agreed,” Kalimura said. “If these things are putting out radiation like this, how long before we find something that can fry us through our suits?”