Derelict_Destruction

by Paul E. Cooley

  “Squad. Move up,” Kali said. “Looks like the bulkhead blew out.” Except that’s not what it looked like at all. If the corridor wall had been blown out by explosive decompression, the fringes around the open wound wouldn’t be so jagged and torn. It obviously hadn’t been destroyed by explosives either. Atmo-steel would have puckered from the force of an explosion, the remaining material blown outward. Instead, the bulkhead had been torn and shredded, petals of jagged metal pointing into the corridor as well as toward the area beyond.

  Kali waited in silence as Carb took position less than a meter behind her, Elliott and Dickerson lurking little more than two meters away. Once they were close enough, she held up a fist and continued walking. The closer she approached, the more detail she could see. Her lights reflected off the savaged Atmo-steel, the broken layers shining dully back at her. Roughly four meters in diameter, the hole started at the base of the deck and rose more than halfway up the bulkhead. Whatever had done this had been big. Damned big.

  Each step toward the hole increased the buzzing sensation in her stomach and the tingles of fear washing over her skin. Her suit’s illumination seemed to disappear into the gaping wound. Another shiver crawled down her spine, so powerful it nearly paralyzed her. Something was watching them. She was sure of it.

  “S-squad?” she whispered over the comms. “Get past me. Go further down the corridor. Go slow.”

  “Aye, Boss,” Carb said.

  “Corporal?” Dickerson asked. “Something wrong?”

  “Don’t ask questions,” she hissed. “Just get past me. Dickerson? Once you’re past the perforation, put your claymore down.”

  “Um, aye, Corporal,” Dickerson said.

  He sounded concerned, even a little afraid. Well, of course he does. She hadn’t been able to keep the fear out of her voice. And no matter how hard she tried, she didn’t think it was even possible. Staring into the impenetrable darkness made her feel as though she were falling into it. A darkness deeper than space without even the twinkle of distant stars staring back at her, through her. It was watching them. And she didn’t want to know what “it” was.

  “Placed,” Dickerson said.

  Kali snapped her eyes to her HUD. With the exception of Dickerson, the squad had already passed her. She blinked in confusion. How had they gotten by her without her noticing? The darkness yawned a little wider.

  “Corporal? You hear me?”

  Dickerson’s voice sounded far away, as though he were shouting down a tunnel. There were other sounds, other voices, but they turned into an incomprehensible jumble of syllables, demented whispers from another universe.

  She nearly screamed when something grabbed her shoulder. Her body shot upright from the crouch and she swiveled toward the threat, finger gently pulling on the trigger. Dickerson’s helmet pointed at hers, his hands and rifle pointed to the ceiling.

  “Whoa, Corporal. It’s just me.”

  She ground her teeth. She’d almost shot him. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “You okay?”

  She switched to private comms and pointed at the hole. “You see anything?”

  “No,” Dickerson said. “It’s like there’s nothing there. But,” he said, his voice trailing off for a moment. “Something’s there. I can feel it.”

  She nodded to herself, wondering if he felt the same spine-crawling tingles washing across her nerve endings. All the saliva in her mouth dried up. She tried to speak, but the sound was little more than croak. After biting the inside of her mouth, she managed to get a little moisture rolling on her tongue. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Copy that,” Dickerson said. “You first. I’ll cover.” He stepped to the side, his rifle pointed to the side of the tear in the bulkhead.

  She said nothing, but moved past him at a quick pace. Once she traveled a meter, she turned and again faced the opening. “Clear and covering,” Kali said.

  Dickerson walked backward away from the darkness. After he’d cleared Kali’s sight-line, he changed direction and continued walking backward down the corridor. Somewhere back there, Carb and Elliott waited for them. Lucky them. They hadn’t stared into the abyss and felt it staring back with something akin to malevolent hunger. “You’re clear, Corporal.”

  She checked her rear cam. He had moved three meters back from her, holding his rifle with a tight angle on the far side of the mouth’s opening. Kali choked back her gorge, turned, and walked as fast as she could.

  “We leaving the claymore?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kali said. She quickened her pace until she moved past him, feeling as though phantom teeth snapped at her back. She turned and faced the area again. “Clear. Keep retreating. We’ll stagger,” she said.

  “Copy,” Dickerson said.

  She couldn’t decide if his responses were so clipped because he was focused, or he was as afraid as she was. When they finally caught up to Carb and Elliott, the sensation had dampened. Whatever had been staring at them from the void, its presence had receded. Whether from their distance or because it had departed, she didn’t know. She hoped it was still there, staying put, locked in some prison of its own making and unable to follow them. Then again, hadn’t the darkness swallowed their lights at the junction behind them? Hadn’t a wall seemed to follow them?

  “What was it?” Carb asked.

  “Not sure,” Dickerson said. “Did you feel it when you walked by?”

  “Sure as hell felt something,” Elliott said. “Thought I was going to shit myself.”

  A moment of silence lingered over the comms, as if her squad-mates wanted to agree, but couldn’t bring themselves to. “Okay, marines. We’re going to take the same positions and keep moving.” Kali checked the schematics. “Another forty meters and we’ll exit the science section.”

  Carb grunted. “Not sure which is worse, Boss. Being trapped in here knowing something nasty is behind us, or walking into another unexplored area.”

  Kali knew how she felt. At least here, they knew where to retreat. The corridors were easily defensible, having only to worry about threats from behind or in front of them. Unless they found another “artificial” junction, they were safe behind the meters of Atmo-steel making up the bulkheads. She hoped.

  Carb began leading again, her steps methodical but faster than before. Kali wanted to tell her to slow down, to take her time, but couldn’t help the feeling that the faster they moved, the better. Their O2 reserves were still in the green, but she wanted out of the science section. Something was in here with them. Maybe several somethings.

  She brought up Dickerson’s rear cam feed and added it to her HUD. The pair of lights pointing behind them illuminated a full seven or eight meters. Good. The darkness hadn’t yet found them. Or maybe it was trapped in that first junction, the real junction, near the science section entrance point they’d first come through.

  Kali flicked her eyes to the bulkheads in front of them. Nothing. No signs of damage, no debris. The science section, with its large rooms secured behind two hatches, was the cleanest, most pristine part of Mira they’d explored. And why was that, exactly? Why hadn’t the hatches been blown open? Why weren’t the hallways filled with the frozen corpses of scientists and support personnel? Where had they gone? Even after Mira was catastrophically damaged, she had a difficult time believing the science section had simply been shut down. It seemed like an area easily secured, pressurized, and powered.

  As they approached another hatch, Carb held up a fist and the squad halted. She took another two steps forward and turned her head to the hatch. “Shit,” she said. “Boss? This one’s open.”

  “Open?”

  “Yeah,” Carb said. “As in the goddamned outer hatch is missing. So is the inner one.”

  Kali maximized Carb’s cam feed. The LCpl hadn’t been kidding. The hatch hinges were little more than torn and ripped jags of metal. Dents and cracks spiderwebbed the airlock tunnel, as if something large had
struggled to get inside, bowing out the steel in the process.

  “Go in?” Carb asked.

  Good question, Kali thought. Something had ripped through the hatches. Why? And more importantly, was there maybe something in there that they needed to see?

  “We can’t seal the room,” Dickerson said, “so it’s not much good to us as a redoubt.”

  “Might have O2,” Carb said. “Shit, it might have a functional terminal.”

  Kali ground her teeth. God, she was tired. She could think more clearly if fatigue wasn’t settling into every fiber of her being. Stimulants weren’t going to help that. The stim crash she and her squad would ultimately experience was going to be epic as it was.

  Dickerson sighed over the comms. “Might also have the fucking boogeyman.”

  Kali chuckled in spite of herself. “Our six is clear. Nothing in front, and our lights are actually splitting the darkness. Might want to take a peek.”

  “Yeah,” Elliott said. “Not like we’re ever coming back here. Might as well see the sights.”

  “Oh, hush, luggage,” Carb said. “Adults are talking.”

  “Fuck off,” Elliott said with a yawn. “Besides, I’m not luggage anymore.”

  “For now,” Carb said.

  “All right,” Kali said, “knock it off.” She stared into the darkness, that feeling of being watched, as though something was in there, something waiting for them, crawled over her skin. A tired grin spread across her face. It wasn’t just this room, she thought. Every nook and cranny in the entire void-forsaken ship felt as though it was watching them, waiting for them to drop their guard, just waiting as if it had been waiting for nearly half a century for them to arrive. For someone to arrive. “Carb? Your turn to explore. I’ll go with you.”

  Dickerson groaned. “Forgive me, Corporal. But I think we need you out here with Elliott. Just in case.”

  Just in case. She knew what Dickerson meant. Kali had the most rescue training, the most medical training, and furthermore, she was in charge. Since Elliott was no longer clamped to Carb’s shoulder and walking on his own, there was no longer an excuse for her to take point. She knew all of that, and yet she still wanted to walk through the short tunnel and see what was in the room. The pull was palpable, almost physical.

  “Okay, Carb. You and Dickerson take the room. I want full cam feeds and take it slow.”

  “Aye, Boss,” Carb said. She walked further into the tunnel entrance to give Dickerson some room. “All right, big boy. Take my six.”

  “Aye,” Dickerson said.

  Kali stepped back to make more space and walked backward until she had a view of both ends of the corridor, Elliott, and the room’s entrance. “Slow and careful,” she said. Carb said something that might have been “yes, Mom,” but Kali wasn’t sure.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Oakes stared at the holo display. Still attached to the spindle, S&R Black wasn’t going anywhere until he uncoupled them from the spindle. While he’d normally be able to accomplish that task with a simple block command, nothing about this mission was “normal.”

  Because of the stress fractures and weakened deck plates, Copenhaver and Murdock had added additional support cables to the spindle in an attempt to keep S&R Black from pulling completely free of Mira once they began to accelerate. That meant someone had to go outside and remove the supports.

  Oakes didn’t envy the marines tasked with that duty. Private Lyke had been killed during the last trip out and the Company’s numbers were dwindling. Void, but he wished Kalimura and her squad were back. If you included Gunny, they were left with a single squad of marines. Taulbee would certainly don a combat suit and join any fight, but they needed him in the support vehicle providing cover for both S&R Black and whatever marines they sent outside.

  Officer training school had had a lot of courses on surviving with short supplies of munitions, food, water, and air, but he didn’t remember any advice on dealing with an actual shortage of marines to carry out a mission. Pretty soon, they’d have to start tapping the command crew for these little excursions. He shuddered. The last thing he wanted in the whole damned universe was to see Mira through a suit’s cam feeds. Fuck that. Here in the cockpit was where he belonged.

  “But I’ll do it,” he told himself. Yes. He’d go out there if he had to. To save another marine, the ship, or to keep the human race from extinction, he’d don a combat suit and float into battle. He just hoped like hell it didn’t come to that.

  He’d been staring at the holo display for several minutes now as he crunched the numbers to put S&R Black far enough away from Mira to keep her safe while at the same time positioning the ship to provide cover fire for Taulbee and Copenhaver when the time came. It was maddening. Mira’s slight spin was barely noticeable, but it still complicated matters more than he liked.

  Both fortunately and unfortunately, S&R Black’s main weapon arrays pointed fore and aft. With the exception of a single, recessed burst cannon, those weapons only had 45° of lateral movement and the same in the vertical range. No matter how he positioned the ship, it would be impossible to cover the entire sky. That left missiles.

  Missiles were tricky. If you had marines attached to the hull of a ship, the last thing you wanted was an explosion. Although space was devoid of air, that didn’t mean the shockwave from a detonation didn’t have the force to push. An explosion in the wrong place could be enough force to detach marines from a ship and blow them right out into space. At that point, if they survived, someone would have to go out and retrieve them. Considering the hostile lifeforms they’d already encountered, any marines in that position would likely be dinner for one of the creatures.

  Yes, missiles were definitely a last resort. Maybe when it came time to blow Mira the fuck up, they’d be the perfect weapon. But not now. “Not now,” he muttered.

  Black checked his calculations, provided a few suggestions, and Oakes adjusted. The AI had bristled at his insistence on manually determining their ultimate position. He couldn’t blame her. He was essentially saying he knew best, which was utter bullshit. She could do the math in a pico-second while it had taken him better than four minutes just to come up with the equations.

  The numbers looked good. Good enough, anyway, until Taulbee actually began his recon run. Once the SV-52 finished its first survey, they’d have a better idea of where to put S&R Black. He hoped.

  Before receiving a block message from the captain asking him to coordinate with Black, Oakes had been studying the scans and radar. The KBO was closer. Before much longer, they’d be able to see some detail using the onboard telescopes. Not being a science ship, S&R Black’s instruments weren’t designed to ferret out minuscule details for small objects. Small being a relative term, of course.

  When you tracked a ship, getting those details was usually just a matter of plugging in the ship model and voilà, you had schematics and blueprints and etc. that were mostly dead on. Very few ship-building companies provided full customization to their designs. The engine array, life support, and basic maneuvering details were almost always the same. Inside? That was a different matter. But even so, Atmo and Trans-Orbital were required to file plans for a ship with the SF Gov regulation board. The SF Military had access to that database. If an S&R ship headed out to Sol System’s wastes to assist a ship in trouble, they almost always knew what they would face from a schematic’s point of view.

  The telescopes and other visual sensors were just good enough to get the job done. At that moment, however, Oakes wished they had better instruments. Much better. If he could see the object in greater detail before it was close enough to be a threat, he could better prepare for it, and the captain could alter his battle plans for a more successful engagement. At this point, any information could help stave off disaster.

  Dunn’s block message had been very simple: “Oakes, we’re moving the ship. Black has your briefing.”

  And that was all. As soon as the message came in, he’d connected
to Black, received the briefing, and began astrogation duties. While he figured out the calculations and put together an evasion strategy, he couldn’t help glancing at the active scans. The object would be in visual range in ten minutes. Then it would be more than a shape out there in the Kuiper Belt’s twilight gloom. It would be something tangible. He hoped like hell it was just a ball of ice, but something told him they weren’t going to get that lucky.

  Black’s briefing had made his balls turn to ice. The scans from Mickey indicated there were more KBOs, or exo-solar objects, headed toward them. The sky was going to be very crowded in less than thirty minutes. At this moment, Gunny’s marines, except for Copenhaver, were busily checking weapons arrays, handling load outs, and preparing S&R Black for war. The only question was whether or not they could turn the space around Mira into a shooting gallery without having to worry about killing Kalimura’s squad aboard the giant derelict.

  Better question, he thought, is whether or not we’ll even be able to put up a fight. Too many bogies incoming. Too many unknowns.

  The holo display flashed. He leaned back in the chair and blew a sigh through parted lips. There. It was done. The board was green. Black hadn’t found any problems with the calculations or Oakes’ assumptions. They were good to go. For what it was worth, anyway.

  He initiated a block connection. “Captain. We have a solution plotted. Sending you the details.”

  Dunn answered immediately. “I won’t have a chance to look at them, Oakes,” he said. “You have my trust. Let’s get this done.”

  “Aye,” Oakes said. “All we need is to decouple.”

  “Wendt and Murdock will leave the cargo bay momentarily,” Dunn said. “Should have that done in five minutes at most.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Dunn, out.”

  Oakes wiped the display and put the scanner readings back up. A 3-D spherical model 1/8 of an AU in area floated before him. A few red dots appeared at the edges of the sphere, all moving on a course for Mira.