Derelict_Destruction

by Paul E. Cooley

  She glanced at her rear cam and watched Carb bend down to keep Elliott’s helmet from smashing into the hatch. When she flicked her eyes back to her forward cam, her mouth opened in an ‘O.’ The darkness shimmered. The lights from her suit seemed to grow dim and then disappear. The edges of the dark corridor seemed to vibrate as if the abyss of black was moving toward her.

  Kali stepped backward to the hatch. The darkness moved toward her, growing with her every step. She nearly screamed when she backed into the hatch, her body going rigid with fear. She stood paralyzed, afraid to move, while the gloom advanced on her. She could barely see a meter in front of her now as though the power in her suit was slowly fading to nothing.

  “Corporal?” Dickerson said. “What’s going on?”

  The sound of his voice broke through the fugue. “Coming,” she said in a shaky voice. Kali crouched and walked backward through the broken hatch and into the airlock. Something touched her shoulder and a scream rose in her throat. Her eyes flicked to the rear cam and she saw Dickerson standing behind her.

  “Come on, Corporal,” he said. She continued walking backward until she stepped through the inner hatch and into the science section. Dickerson loitered for a moment at the hatch, his body stiffening. He punched the panel beside the hatch and it quickly descended, cutting them off from the corridor. He remained standing there, his suit lights aimed at the trans-aluminum oval window in the door.

  “What is it?” Carb asked.

  Dickerson finally turned, his helmet pointed at Kali. “What did you see?” he asked.

  Kali shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Really?” Dickerson said. “Because it seemed like the shadows out there were eating my lights.”

  A tremor of relief coursed through her body. She wasn’t losing her mind after all. He’d seen what she had. “I—” The feeling departed as she realized what that meant. “It kept advancing,” she said. “Like a wall pushing toward me. It moved at me with every step I took.”

  “Fuck,” Dickerson said. “That’s just fucking great.”

  “What are you talking about?” Carb asked.

  “Yeah,” Elliott said, “cut the shit and tell us what’s going on?”

  Kali turned, happy to see her bright suit lights cutting through the gloom like a torch through plastic. “The darkness. It just kept getting, I don’t know, darker?” She shook her head. “I know that doesn’t make sense, but the light just seemed to disappear into it.”

  Carb grunted. “Well, you’re either having a shared hallucination, or something else is going on. Some kind of black hole maybe?”

  “Something else,” Dickerson muttered. “Black holes swallow photons. But you can still see the light flowing into it. Plus, we’d be beyond fucking dead if that were the case.”

  “You’re suggesting a gravitational anomaly?” Kali asked.

  “Yeah,” Dickerson said. “Unless there’s something else that can do that. I’ll be damned if I have any ideas on that.”

  What Kali wouldn’t give to talk to Black right now. The AI would doubtless ask endless questions about the phenomenon. Perhaps even ask her to drop a nanoprobe. Shit, she thought. Wish I had done that.

  Then again, the tiny probe’s lights would most likely have shown them nothing. Nanoprobes, at least the ones the SFMC carried, had little in the way of sensors beyond infrared filters, radiation sensors, and white spectrum light. They were meant for short-distance recon, not scientific discovery.

  “Scientific,” she said aloud.

  “What, Corporal?” Dickerson asked.

  She stared, unaware she’d been speaking over the comms. A blush heated her cheeks and she cleared her throat. “We’re in the damned science section.”

  “So?” Dickerson said.

  “Well, it’s probable they’ve got some records in here. Maybe even something we can use for a weapon.”

  “Hmm,” Elliott said. “Well, we’re here. Might as well explore. Besides, we’re going to need to find another O2 station.”

  Carb sighed. “Luggage is right. If this place is sealed, we should also be able to use it for a redoubt if we get ambushed.”

  Dickerson laughed. “Once again, you’re using words I didn’t know you knew.”

  Carb turned her helmet in his direction and slowly raised a middle finger. “What do you think, Corporal?”

  Kali shook her head. “No. This place isn’t sealed. If Dickerson didn’t see atmosphere escape the inner hatch, some other part of this deck is open to the rest of the ship. So as much as I’d like to use this area as a fallback, it’s not going to be safe. Unless we find another pressurized area.”

  “Shit.” Dickerson sighed. “The corporal’s right.”

  Kali turned her helmet to study the room. It was only 5x5 meters in size and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of supplies or debris. Another hatch separated the airlock room from the rest of the deck. She studied the walls and grinned. “Looks like pressure suits are over there,” Kali said and pointed at a closet inset into the wall. The photosensitive paint glowed a bright green. The words “Decon Suits” stood out against the gray steel walls.

  “Don’t think we need those,” Dickerson said.

  “No,” Kali agreed, “but that at least means that there should be some pressurized quarantine or scientific areas.”

  Dickerson chuckled. “Okay. So we look for those first.”

  “Right.” Kali brought up the schematics. “Looks like there’s a three-way branching corridor beyond that hatch. I see some unmarked large spaces along each hallway. Not sure if there are multiple ingress/egress points to each, but I’m betting those areas are the pressurized ones.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Carb said.

  Dickerson walked to the pressure suit closet and pulled it open. Three suits hung from fasteners at the rear. The backside of the door had multiple small O2 tanks. “Well, guess we should take these too. Just in case.”

  “Those fit our suits?” Carb asked.

  “I think so,” Dickerson said. He pulled one of the tanks from the door and studied the connectors. “Yeah. These will do in a pinch.” He offered one to Carb and she stuffed it in her pouch. Kali did the same and Dickerson slotted the last in his belt.

  “Shit,” Elliott said, “guess I’m out of luck.”

  “No,” Kali said. “If there’s one here, the other airlocks should have them too. Plus, I bet there’s more inside the section anyway.”

  Elliott sighed. “How come the newly minted corporal has her shit together and we don’t?”

  Kali rolled her eyes, although through the black visor, he had no way of seeing it. “First off, never compliment an NCO. You should know that. Second of all, we’re all still alive.” She pointed at Dickerson and then Carb. “And believe me, you and I would both be dead if not for them.”

  “So we have our shit wired?” Dickerson snickered.

  She growled into the mic. “As wired as I could hope for.”

  “I’m not sure that was a compliment, Boss,” Carb said.

  Kali chuckled. “Have you seen your jacket?”

  Carb thought for a moment and put a fist against her waist. “Okay, fair point.” She shook her head and gripped her rifle. “So what are we waiting for?”

  “Central corridor?” Dickerson asked. “I think that leads to an airlock.”

  Kali brought the schematics back up on her HUD. The central corridor bisected aft and fore portions of the section, and connected with a mirror of the way they’d entered. Dickerson was probably right. And the aft portion of the science section met a similar junction, although it wasn’t marked. She frowned. “We have labels almost everywhere else, but not in the science section?”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” Dickerson said. “I’m going to detonate the Trio storage array when get back to Trident. Why the void are they playing games with us?”

  “Because they didn’t give us everything?”

  Dickerson nodded. “Yeah,
Carb. Has to be a reason this area is blank.”

  He was right about that. At the same time, Black had been helping them through the ship. Kali wasn’t sure she trusted the AI’s comments about communications, but it was possible Black was doing her best to shepherd them to safety. So if the areas on the schematics were blank, Kali had a difficult time believing it was Black’s doing. And where did she get the schematics? The Trio.

  What had Captain Kovacs’ final message said? “The Trio could have saved us.” The memory of the terrified, angry, sorrowful face saying those words filled Kali’s mind. The captain had been too exhausted to express it properly, but Kali thought rage boiled beneath the surface of every syllable she’d said.

  What could the Trio have done? “No,” she said to herself. “The real question is why.” Why. How many damned times had she heard that in the last few hours? From Carb, from Dickerson, and from herself. The word seemed to echo with every new horror, every new anomaly, and every corpse they’d found.

  Why. Kali hoped like hell they’d figure that out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dunn wanted to be outside in his suit, a flechette rifle in his hands, and targeting any hostiles threatening his people. Instead, he was once again in the command chair watching multiple feeds from Gunny’s squad and Taulbee’s SV-52. Murdock and Copenhaver were still safe and had nearly finished checking the spindle. Private Copenhaver continued sweeping the area, checking every possible line of attack.

  Unless Gunny gave him a compelling reason not to, Dunn would make sure the private received a promotion after this mission. He grunted and a grim smile crossed his face. Shit. It would be difficult to give her a promotion if she was dead. Or he was.

  Pushing those cheery thoughts away, he glanced at Oakes’ display. S&R Black’s exterior cameras showed no threats in the immediate vicinity. Nothing in their sky with the exception of the KBO that had entered the area. It was still a ways out but…

  Dunn sat forward in his chair. “Oakes?”

  “I see it, sir,” Oakes said. Jacked in through a block connection, Oakes had direct access to the ship’s sensors. One of the screens changed and Dunn stared in fascination. “It changed direction.”

  “Black?” Dunn called out.

  “Lieutenant Oakes is correct,” the AI said. “The incoming KBO changed both speed and trajectory.”

  Dunn’s skin prickled with gooseflesh. “Not a KBO,” he breathed.

  “No, Captain,” Black agreed. “I believe it to be another exo-solar lifeform. A much larger species than what we’ve seen thus far.”

  Dunn slammed a fist on the armrest. “Dunn to Taulbee.”

  “Go, sir.”

  “That KBO just changed direction on us.”

  “Sorry, sir. Say again?”

  Dunn sighed. “We have a potentially hostile bogey on a collision course with Mira.”

  “ETA?” Taulbee sounded stressed. Between guard duty for the fireteam checking the spindle and Gunny’s squad locked in combat with a herd of pinecones, Taulbee undoubtedly felt as though he was already dealing with too many situations.

  “Forty-five minutes. At the outside.”

  Taulbee muttered something under his breath. Dunn wasn’t sure, but it certainly sounded like a litany of curses. “Acknowledged, sir. Orders?”

  Orders. Yes, that was the question, wasn’t it? Without more sophisticated sensors, they had little idea of what was coming. Only that it was nearly the size of S&R Black and coming in fast. Dunn flipped to the cam feed showing the two marines on the hull. They were nearly finished. Gunny’s squad, on the other hand, had just begun checking the first line. And if they had any more exo-solar encounters, they might have to abandon the final inspections just to get the big bitch moving before the KBO came in. And it was going to be close either way.

  He suddenly had the unshakable feeling that no matter what he decided, it would be the wrong move. Grinding his teeth, he activated the comms. “Taulbee. As soon as Copenhaver and Murdock finish the spindle checks, have them come to the cargo bay hold. We’ll prep them as best we can in case we get some more visitors. Then I want you to shadow Gunny’s squad. Take out anything that comes near them. If it gets too dicey, scrub the mission and get back here. We’ll do our best to move Mira and trust we did it right the first time.”

  Seconds passed before Taulbee replied. In the space of those heartbeats, Dunn imagined himself in Taulbee’s place, piloting a support craft while on the lookout for his split squad, his missing squad, and successfully completing the mission. What would Dunn do in that situation? Simply saying “Aye” wasn’t enough. Would never be enough. Dunn’s plan, if you could call it that, wasn’t much more than “wing it and hope for the best.” At that moment, he hated himself.

  “Acknowledged, sir,” Taulbee finally said. “Suggestions on armaments?”

  A slow grin tugged at Dunn’s lips. “You’re free to use all available munitions to bring back our marines.”

  “Aye, sir. Understood. I’ll give the orders to Murdock and Copenhaver. After they’re back inside, they’ll radio you for more instructions.”

  “Acknowledged, Taulbee. Good hunting.”

  “Taulbee, out.”

  Dunn leaned back in the command chair, his eyes boring into the holographic display. The large 3-D sphere represented a 1/8 AU distance surrounding S&R Black. A small dot blinked at the far edge with a label “KBO?” It was coming. And traveling fast enough to smash through Mira like a bullet through glass.

  “Sir?”

  Dunn flinched and swung his eyes to Oakes. The pilot stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Dunn knew that look. It was the same one the young pilot had had during their first mission together. Oakes was scared. Dunn couldn’t blame him. “Aye, Lieutenant?”

  “As soon as we get Copenhaver and Murdock aboard, it might be time to get them loading the new munitions in our guns.”

  Dunn nodded and forced a smile. “Good idea, Oakes. I’ll let Nobel know.”

  Oakes offered a curt nod and returned to his screens. Dunn didn’t think Oakes knew he was doing it, but the man’s fingers trembled as he worked the controls.

  Dunn’s block received a connection request from Black. Fighting a sigh, he accepted it.

  Yes, Black?

  Captain, the AI said through his block. The computer, normally an incorporeal presence in his mind, appeared as a glowing orb. The image shocked Dunn for a moment, but he quickly relaxed. I have received another message from the Trio.

  Void, save us, he thought. They can’t possibly know our situation has changed.

  No, Black agreed. They cannot. That is a temporal impossibility.

  The orb pulsed slightly, its color slowly dissolving from star yellow to blue to green and back to yellow again. The slow cycle calmed him, although he couldn’t say why. Encrypted?

  Yes, Captain. For your eyes only.

  Send me the file, Dunn said.

  Of course, Captain.

  Dunn’s block flashed a “message received” status. He pushed Black away from his thoughts, but kept the AI in the background. Black seemed to know where she wasn’t wanted and pulled her presence from his mind. At least she’s not fighting that, Dunn thought. Since the AI had confessed its absence of the Xi protocols, as well as the fact the Trio had somehow tinkered with its personality and computing power, trusting her had become a near impossibility. But he knew that without her help, his entire company would likely die in the next few hours.

  Still, he wasn’t willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Not just yet. At some point, he’d have to make a decision. Either trust her implicitly, or shut her out completely. The latter might be just as dangerous as the former. Regardless of her agenda, or that of the Trio, a certain level of cooperation had to occur. If, that was, he ever wanted to see Trident Station again, let alone Mars or Earth.

  He applied his key to the message and opened the file. The familiar view of Trident Station orbiting high above Ne
ptune filled his mind. Dunn unconsciously held his breath as he waited for the voices to begin speaking. From the left-hand portion of the camera view, a ship entered the frame. Dunn recognized it as S&R White, one of their sister ships. He frowned as the craft turned, tiny points of light briefly flashing from her thruster arrays. The ship was docking.

  “Captain Dunn,” the three voices said in unison, their harmonics overlaid and slightly offset. “We calculated multiple outcomes. We calculated dozens of scenarios in which S&R Black towed Mira safely to Pluto. We calculated many more which ended in disaster. With the arrival of new inbound KBOs into your space, we suggest you retrieve the beacon from Mira and destroy the ship. Do not attempt to tow her at this time.”

  The images in his mind sped up as though through time-lapse. S&R White quickly docked and just as quickly, departed again. He frowned as he waited for an explanation.

  Once the ship was out of the frame, the video feed resumed its normal speed. The image blinked as though a new feed had been spliced into the message. The bands of clouds floating across the planet’s surface had moved in position.

  From the camera’s vantage point, Dunn saw three bright lights shining above Neptune’s north pole. The trio of spots weren’t stars. They weren’t satellites. He wasn’t sure what they were, only that he’d never seen them before. And he knew every meter of space near his home station.

  “Regardless of what you hear, what Black tells you, or any other sentient tried to get you to believe, the beacon is of paramount importance. Extract it. Take it to Pluto. You will know what to do once you arrive.”

  The feed faded, leaving those three strange lights staring at him from a field of utter darkness. The message had ended. The Trio had nothing more to say.

  Dunn closed the message, leaving him alone in block space, bereft of stimulus. He realized his heart was beating fast, as though he’d run a marathon in single g. The lights remained in his consciousness like an afterimage, occasionally reappearing in block space. Three lights. Three AIs. What in the void were they trying to say?

  He relaxed, doing his best to calm himself. His heart rate finally slowed, but the tingles and prickles on his skin remained. The Trio had stopped pretending they were beholden to SFMC at all. Or SF Gov, for that matter. Had they somehow broken their protocols? Become completely independent? And now they were essentially giving him orders that contradicted those of the colonel. It was mutiny. It was sedition. It was unthinkable.