“Murdock,” Wendt said, “just get it done. I’ve got your back.”
“Gee,” Murdock grunted as he struggled with the controls, “I feel so much better now.”
“Fuck you,” Wendt said, chuckling.
Gunny relaxed. A little. He only had to worry about them for a few more minutes. They’d be back aboard and Oakes could move S&R Black out of the spindle and away from this cursed wreck. Gunny clenched his fingers tighter around the rifle. “Just get it done,” he said at last. Neither of the marines replied.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Instead of sitting behind Oakes on an elevated command chair, instead of a cup of coffee in his hands, and instead of analyzing block data from the sensors, he stood just outside the cargo bay wearing a combat suit. With his helmet on, he had access to all the cam feeds and didn’t have to view them through his block. That made the speed and clarity much better, and he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Taulbee’s feed showed 30° moving slices of the ship and the area around it. He and Copenhaver were essentially orbiting S&R Black while the ship still sat atop Mira. Wendt’s feed, on the other hand, displayed a constantly moving 80° view of Mira’s surface. And Murdock’s?
Dunn studied the feed and quickly decided Murdock was either very stupid, very clumsy, or panicked. He made a mental note to check with Gunny as to which of the three it was. The young marine’s hands might as well have been hooves for all their dexterity.
“Maybe his gloves are damaged,” Dunn said aloud.
Murdock had spent the better part of five minutes attempting to decouple the reinforced lines from the spindle. Rather than risk any more marines to properly remove the harness, he’d decided it was best just to take apart the spindle connections. Then they could decouple S&R Black from the spindle and they’d have a fighting chance of getting out of this mess.
“Murdock?” Wendt asked over the comms. “You going to take all void-damned day, or what?”
Murdock huffed and puffed through his mic. “This one is stuck!” he yelled. “Can’t get the fucking thing to move.”
Wendt growled. His cam feed swiveled from a view of Mira’s hull to that of the spindle. “Get your ass on cover duty, Murdock,” Wendt growled as he made his way to the controls. “And try not to shoot me in the back.”
Murdock smacked his armored glove against the spindle, pulled his rifle, and walked past Wendt to take up a sentry position. Wendt went to the last connection on the spindle, stowed his rifle, and began working on the coupling.
Dunn switched to Murdock’s feed. The young marine was turning too fast and not spending enough time actually clearing the area. Just as Dunn was about to activate his mic and yell at Murdock, Gunny’s voice, harsh and growling, filled the comms.
“Murdock! Slow and steady, damnit.”
Murdock’s cam view flinched. The marine slowed his pacing, although the cam view continued to move in jerky, unsteady swings. Wendt huffed and puffed through the mic. Apparently, Murdock hadn’t been exaggerating that the coupling was stuck.
The seconds ticked off and Dunn felt as though time, something they didn’t have much of to begin with, was flowing faster and faster. How many minutes did they have before the first KBO entered their immediate space? How many seconds did they have until they were once again under attack?
Dunn gritted his teeth. He was about to ask Wendt for a status when the large marine sighed into the comms. “Got it,” he said.
A block alert flashed across Dunn’s HUD. The spindle was disconnected.
“Sir?” Gunny said. “He got it.”
“Copy,” Dunn said. “Wendt and Murdock. Gather your gear and get back in the ship ASAP.”
“Aye, sir,” Wendt said.
Dunn exhaled a long stream of air. “Oakes?”
“Aye, sir?”
“Get ready to move us. As soon as Gunny’s squad is back on board, I want us off the spindle and clear of Mira.”
“Aye, sir,” Oakes said.
Dunn grinned. Oakes sounded even more relieved than he felt. The worst part about being coupled while knowing the enemy was all around you was the helpless feeling of being trapped. While attached to the spindle, S&R Black was at its most vulnerable. If you couldn’t move, you couldn’t escape, and if you couldn’t escape, the only option was to fight. Sitting this close to Mira’s hull, most of S&R Black’s onboard weaponry was all but useless. Unless, of course, the enemy was kind enough to float into the direct arcs of the mounted guns.
He reached to take off his helmet and stopped, his arms slowly lowering. “Not until they’re inside,” he said to himself. Murdock and Wendt had already finished gathering the tools and Wendt motioned for Murdock to head back to the airlock. While the young marine awkwardly mag-walked back to Gunny, Wendt took up a covering position, slowly walking backward in a crouch, his flechette rifle searching for targets.
The moments following a successful breach, device sabotage, or mission objective were always the most tense. It was one thing to be in a firefight where your nerves sizzled with energy and your training kicked in, allowing you to make snap-second decisions without noticing the fear. It was something else entirely to creep away while knowing you were at your most vulnerable. Dunn could almost feel Wendt’s concern as the LCpl cleared the area surrounding the airlock.
He needn’t have bothered. Murdock reached the airlock and disappeared inside. A moment later, Wendt did the same. Dunn loosed another sigh as the airlock closed.
“Oakes. We’re clear.”
“Aye, sir. Make sure you’re mag-locked, marines. We are moving.”
Dunn reached up and pulled off his helmet. The ship’s recycled air immediately filled his lungs and he smiled. At least something had gone right today. He only hoped the next part of this plan worked as well.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The tunnel was even darker than he’d feared. Dickerson had seen the damage to the hatch assemblies through Carb’s cam feed, but until he was able to swing his own cam around, study each scar and mar in the metal, he couldn’t believe the damage.
“Something was sure pissed off,” he said over the private comms to Carb.
“No shit,” Carb said. “Give me a meter of space. Just in case I need to get the fuck out of here in a hurry.”
“Copy that,” Dickerson said. “Just make sure you fire a few rounds in there if something so much as twitches.”
She giggled. “You’re usually the one who storms through hatches and takes on whatever comes at you. Now you’re being cautious?”
“Well,” he said, “after you’ve seen darkness try and swallow you, not to mention starfish and fucking pinecones trying to kill you, you get a little skittish.”
Carb crept another step forward. “Okay, I guess I understand that.”
Dickerson kept her forward cam feed on the HUD’s right side. Her helmet lamps slashed through the gloom with pure white light, the far bulkhead suddenly visible in the illumination. He waited while she took another few steps further into the tunnel. When she finally reached the inner hatch’s edge, she took up a position to the tunnel’s right, her lights and rifle pointed to the left. “Left,” she said.
He quickly walked to her, stood to his full height, and took position on the left side, rifle pointed to the right. “Right,” he said.
The two marines paused for a moment, Dickerson daring something in the room to move. But there was nothing. Her suit lights easily illuminated the back of the room while his own did the same on the other end. Whatever this room was, they at least didn’t have to worry about a creeping darkness swallowing the light. For now.
“Clear?”
Dickerson nodded to himself. “Clear.”
Carb took another few steps forward and entered the room beyond the hatch lip. Dickerson held his breath as her camera feed panned left, her suit lights illuminating a number of lab tables similar to the ones they’d found earlier. More equipment, more workstations, more dead holo
displays. It looked like just another room literally frozen in time. And then he saw the corpses.
Three figures floated near the rear bulkhead, their forms nearly lost in the shadows. Carb unfocused her lights to provide a wider range of light and he heard her draw in a deep breath. A flotsam of shredded clothing, bloody ice crystals, and chunks of flesh floated like dust. “Well,” Carb said after a moment, “I guess we know what happened in here.”
“No, we don’t,” Dickerson said. “Not a goddamned clue.”
“Okay, yeah, you’re right.” She panned again, her lights dancing over the back wall. “Shit, you see that?”
He did. The rear bulkhead had a number of dark shapes attached to it, the light seeming to slide off their surface like water beading on oil. “Five of them,” he said. “What the fuck are they?”
“Don’t know,” Carb said. “Going further in.”
“Covering,” Dickerson said. He unfocused his own lights and shined them to the right of her position. He waited until she’d walked another meter inside before following in her wake. Keeping his lights pointed to her blind side, his eyes flicking from his cam view to hers, he looked for movement, for anything that might pose a hazard.
No corpses awaited them on the other side of the lab. Just more equipment, more dark holo displays and terminals. Carb crouch-walked until she was two meters from the far wall.
“I’m not dreaming this, right?” Carb asked.
Dickerson focused his eyes on her cam feed. His mouth opened wide, but no words came out. The shapes in the back of the room were nearly two meters in length, a meter wide, and tapered at either end. Whatever material they were made of had split open in the middle like a misshapen flower. Or a seed pod, he said to himself.
Once he was sure they were clear on all sides of threats, he walked behind Carb until he was beside her. With their combined suit lights, the shapes became more clear and he realized he’d been wrong. The shapes were practically embedded in the wall’s steel as though they’d eaten through the metal. And they were larger too. The material stretched out in grisly layers from the center of the wall toward the ceiling and the deck.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Carb asked.
He shook his head without even realizing he was doing it. “Looks organic, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Also, look at the spacing. It’s like someone placed them there.”
Dickerson turned and stared at the corpses floating at the far end of the room. “You think they were growing this shit?”
“Maybe,” Carb said. “Let’s see if we can find an emergency generator.”
“Aye,” he said. “I’ll take right.”
“Copy,” Carb said. She fluidly turned and walked to the lab tables and the corpses.
Dickerson turned the opposite direction and moved with slow steps. Several pieces of large lab equipment were smashed, the metal casings fractured and splintered as if bashed by something blunt. If there had been gravity when the attack happened, whatever had crashed through the tunnels had been damned heavy. Of course, considering it had ripped the hatches from the Atmo-steel hinges, it stood to reason it had been powerful, massive.
Deep dents covered the bulkhead nearest the pods as well as the tables. Shards of plastic and steel floated and seemed to move, although he knew that was most likely an optical illusion. Dickerson practically jumped when Kalimura spoke through the comms.
“How we doing?”
He couldn’t find his voice, but Carb responded for him. He wasn’t surprised to hear the jangle of stress in her words. “Good, I guess. You see our feeds?”
“Aye,” Kalimura said. “Would be better if we had some real light in there.”
“No shit,” Dickerson said. But in truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted a better look at the room. Something had broken in here, killed whatever crew had been inside, and smashed equipment and tables. Was it the same thing that had tracked them? Or maybe one of those starfish things? And why the hell were the pods split open and spread apart?
“Look for an emergency generator,” Kalimura said.
“We are,” Carb said. Dickerson thought he heard a touch of annoyance in her voice. Not that he could blame her; Kalimura was telling them shit they already knew.
Dickerson tried to clear the questions from his mind and searched the room. There had to be a recessed panel hiding an emergency power source. There had been one in every other room they’d explored, so it stood to reason this one did too.
The more he studied the walls, the more they looked, well, wrong. Fissures ran down the metal between the bulkheads, looking like jags of forked lightning. Something had cracked the walls as though they were plastic. Whatever had been powerful enough to rip apart the quarantine hatches had obviously decided the room itself needed the same treatment. Dickerson took in a shuddering breath. If that thing was still here, still moving around the ship, and they found it, there was no way they’d be able to stop it. Shit. What would an explosive or stun flechette round possibly do to something that powerful?
“Probably fucking nothing,” he said to himself.
He continued searching and finally found a rectangular inset in the wall. “Pay dirt,” he said.
“Found it?” Carb asked.
The panel popped out the moment he pressed a finger to it, the crank assembly sliding from the wall in a puff of shattered ice crystals. Grinning, he turned the crank until the indicator lights turned green. “Here goes nothing,” he said and pressed the power button.
A quarter of the overheads flickered to life, bathing the room in a shadowy twilight. He turned and faced the room’s interior. That’s when he saw them.
The split seed pods on the wall were the least interesting objects in the room. What hung from the ceiling made his mouth open in unfocused terror and surprise. For a moment, Dickerson wasn’t sure what he was looking at, only that they were oblong shapes that seemed embedded in the steel. But the shapes looked, well, familiar. His mind tried to find another analog to replace them with, but failed. The shapes were human, outlines burned into the steel like flash-fried shades. Three. Three outlines of human beings etched into the Atmo-steel ceiling like the ancient chalk outlines of crime victims. No flesh, no tatters of clothing, only the discolored lines. Except for one. A single rib, bleached white, jutted out from the steel.
“The fuck?” he finally said.
“What?” Carb asked. He didn’t see her turn to follow his gaze, but knew she had. “Okay. That’s bad,” she said.
“No shit.” Dickerson tore his eyes from the sight to look at her. “That make any goddamned sense to you?’
She shook her head. “Only if it’s in a fucking horror holo.”
“Copy that,” Dickerson said.
She slowly turned her head to gaze at the other pods hanging from the walls. “You don’t think—” Her words trailed off into silence.
Dickerson slowly stepped toward the strange objects in the wall. They were split open. Or appeared to be. But, were they? “I think we need to get the fuck out of here.”
“Not yet,” Carb said. She turned back to the workstation she’d been inspecting. “I want to get the data off this.”
“Well, hurry the fuck up,” Dickerson said. He opened the comms to Kalimura. “Corporal?”
“Talk to me.”
He swallowed an acidic burp. “We found something new,” he said. “I think we need to get to the escape pods ASAP.”
Kalimura paused before responding. “Shit,” she said. “Just looked at the feed. Get out of there. Now.”
“Hang on, Boss,” Carb said. “I’m—”
“No,” Kalimura said. “Now.”
Dickerson glanced at Carb. She was still fighting to extract a memory chip from the holo display. “Aye, Boss.”
“Fuck,” Dickerson whispered after switching to the private comms. He mag-walked as quickly as he could to join her by the table. “Carb? We need to go.”
“Yeah, yeah. F
uck off already. I’ve almost got it.”
Dickerson saw movement on his HUD and flicked his eyes to the HUD’s tiled window display. Something had twitched in the rear cam. Dickerson narrowed his eyes and zoomed in. The rear suit lights cast just enough light to illuminate the ceiling and the open pods at the back of the room. One of them shuddered as if in a seizure. His mouth opened as the embedded edges of the pod seemed to slide down.
“C-carb?”
“What?” she yelled in annoyance.
He tried to speak, but his voice locked in his throat. The other pods began shaking too. The first pod’s edges had opened like a yawning mouth. A few fluttering black triangular shapes dropped from the ceiling, pushed by some unknown force toward the deck.
Dickerson lunged forward at Carb. She looked up just as he floated to her and locked his arm around her shoulder. “Move! Now!”
Her head pointed back to where he’d been. An airy scream broke across the comms. Dickerson saw it too now. The mouths were vomiting clouds of the shapes to the floor. “Unlock!” She cut her mag-boots just as he fired his jets.
The pair of marines flew through hundreds of the shapes, the objects bouncing off their suits like micrometeorites. He focused on using the attitude thrusters to push them to the door. From what seemed like a million kilometers away, Carb’s voice screamed into the headset to the corporal, telling she and Elliott to start moving.
Just as they floated to the broken airlock doors, he reached out with his free hand and swung both he and Carb through the entrance. His shoulder shrieked with pain, but he barely noticed. As they flew back into the main hallway, he reached the outer airlock ring and swung them again. Something gave in his shoulder and bright stars of pain lit his mind.
Carb was screaming, Kalimura was yelling, and Elliott was asking what the hell was going on. Dickerson ignored it all and hit his jets again. A critical warning flashed across his HUD. He was out of fuel, but the momentum carried him past Kalimura and Elliott, Carb floating behind him, her shoulder still attached to his good arm.
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