“Aye, sir,” Taulbee said in a dead voice. Focus. Yeah, he needed to regain that. Focus on how he was going to do anything with only four healthy marines, including himself. “Please continue.”
Dunn blinked once before speaking. “You’re going to need Wendt, Murdock, and Copenhaver. You comfortable with Copenhaver as your gunner?”
Taulbee grinned. “Aye, sir. She’s damned good.”
“Thought so,” Dunn said, returning the smile. “Then Wendt and Murdock will have to perform a ride-along. I want them in rad suits in case that thing out there is too hot for our combat suits. You’ll travel to the beacon, Wendt and Murdock will retrieve it if you can’t net it. Once you get back here, we’ll load it on the sled, and tow it until we’re ready to destroy Mira.”
Not a bad idea, Taulbee thought. But something was off in the captain’s face. The easy grin that had been on Taulbee’s face slid away. “What’s the catch, sir?”
Dunn sighed again. “The catch is that we don’t exactly know where the beacon is. Black has the coordinates for the skiff, but there’s little to no guarantee the beacon is still attached. When it loosed that last blast, it could have melted the skiff into slag or broken free of its moorings. For all we know, it could be floating out there in the Kuiper, pointed directly at Sol, and ready to blast another signal.”
“Shit,” Taulbee said. He inwardly winced. “Sorry, sir.”
“No,” Dunn said. “Shit is the right response. We can send you out there by yourself to find it, but that’s going to waste more time if you can’t net it. I’d rather you have the marines aboard in case you do find it.”
“And if we don’t?” Taulbee asked.
“Then we and the rest of humanity are truly fucked,” Dunn said.
Chapter Sixty-One
Once Nobel had left the room, Kali and her squad, well, what remained of it, continued speaking to one another in quiet voices. Carb had concussion symptoms, but they were mild. Although she wanted to sleep for five days, she could probably get back in a combat suit if it came to it. Kali envied her.
Elliott was done. His combat days were over for the time being. Between the blood loss, the shock of exposure to vacuum and near absolute zero temperatures, not to mention his missing hand, Elliott was not leaving his bed. Probably not until they returned to Trident Station.
Assuming that happens, she thought. So with Elliott out, that left her and Dickerson. Dickerson was somewhere out there, his escape pod expending its fuel to accelerate him to Pluto. Until S&R Black caught up to the pod and attempted a rescue, there was no way to tell if he was alive or dead.
She tried to push that worry away again. It wasn’t going to help her focus on whatever Taulbee or Dunn had in mind for the mission, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to fix her broken ribs or remove the aches from her tortured muscles and bones. And, let’s not forget her own concussion.
You’ll lie, if you have to, she told herself. If they need another body, you’ll get in that void-damned suit and be a marine. She clenched her fists. They’d have to let her.
“At ease,” a tired voice said from the threshold.
The three marines swung their eyes to regard the speaker. Lieutenant Taulbee walked into the room, back straight, every ounce of his body propped up into his typical command posture. But damn, he looked tired.
A relieved grin lit his face. “Thank you, all of you, for what you did aboard Mira. You have no idea how much you helped us. I’m damned glad to have the three of you in my command and even happier all three of you are here and safe.”
No one said a word. The grin faded slightly and Taulbee’s face hardened. “Carbonaro? Kalimura? You two are on deck. I want you in your combat suits and ready to head to the cargo bay in ten minutes. Nobel’s setting up some goodies for you down there to help speed your recovery.”
“Aye, sir,” both she and Carb replied.
“I don’t think we’ll need you, but you’re the last two combat marines I have available, apart from the captain.” He noticed the smart-assed grin on Carb’s face. “Yes, Lance Corporal, you two are the last meat sticks I have available.”
Carb chuckled. “Sorry, sir.”
He waved the comment away and pointed at Elliott. “Your job, marine, is to rest. Black will be debriefing you shortly. I suggest block to block so you don’t have to talk.”
“Aye, sir,” Elliott said in a husky voice.
“Questions?” Taulbee asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kalimura said. “What’s the plan?”
He smiled. “Black will transmit the mission briefing momentarily. Just get ready.” He knocked a fist on the bulkhead. “Understood?”
“Aye, sir,” Kali and Carb said in loud voices. Elliott may have responded too, but she didn’t hear his voice.
“Good to have you home.” With that, Taulbee retreated from the infirmary, the dull clump of his footsteps receding until they disappeared.
Kali looked at Carb. “You ready for this?”
“Aye, Corporal,” she said. Her eyes hardened. “Whatever we have to do to get the fuck out of here so we can rescue Dickerson.”
Kali grinned like a shark. “Glad to see we’re on the same page.”
*****
After walking, well, limping, from the infirmary to her locker, Kali removed her sweat-drenched panties and tossed them into the recycler. If she’d had time for a shower, it would have been more than welcome. Just the thought of warm water spraying down on her tired flesh, steam lapping at her tired eyes, made her giddy. She glanced at the shower stalls with longing as she quickly dressed into a clean jumpsuit.
Someone had left her mag-boots next to her locker. She grinned as she wondered whether it was Nobel or one of the non-rates. A few lockers down, Carb was already stepping into her own boots. “Hey, Boss,” she called, “I want a shower when all this is over.”
“Tell you what,” Kali said, “you and I have dibs the moment we get back.”
“Copy that,” Carb said.
As soon as the pair had finished dressing, Carb followed Kali into the hallway. They walked in silence to the cargo bay, unspoken concern in their body language, their minds flooded with the same worries. Dickerson was still out there. The beacon was still out there. And instead of actively assisting in getting the beacon aboard so they could chase after their squad-mate, she and Carb were benched and Taulbee would only put them into service if there were no other option.
Kali understood the reasoning, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Taulbee and the captain were making sound tactical, strategic decisions, but it still burned her ass. If only we’d gotten back sooner, she thought. If only.
Black connected to her and relayed notes regarding the beacon. Gunny’s squad had retrieved it, sure, but at great cost. The skiff was no doubt destroyed and Gunny might never wake up again. And if he did, he might never be able to speak. The beacon had cost them a lot. Hell, this mission had cost them. Elliott was missing a hand, Lyke and Niro were both dead, Dickerson was still missing, they were down two skiffs, and, except for Taulbee, Dunn, and Oakes, the remaining marines had all suffered injuries of one form or another.
The cargo bay hatch was open revealing the SV-52 sitting at the far end, Copenhaver standing beside it. Wendt and Murdock had ditched their combat suits for the heavy rad suits engineers wore in case of a reactor leak; the garments could withstand much more radiation exposure than the standard-issue SFMC combat suit.
The sight gave her pause. The beacon, it seemed, was even more dangerous than she’d first considered. Not only had it called these strange creatures to hitch a ride on the derelict heading back to Sol System, but it could attract other lifeforms already inhabiting the Kuiper Belt. If they didn’t retrieve it and stop it, what would it do next? Call even more alien lifeforms? Or alert its creators that it had found a new home?
She shivered at the thought, but it was clear the exo-solar lifeforms they’d seen so far didn’t create the beacon. Unless she was ve
ry wrong, the creatures they’d encountered didn’t have the means nor intelligence to do that. So who did?
“Who” isn’t the question, she told herself. “What” is the proper question. Somewhere out there in the black of deep space, perhaps dozens or hundreds of light years away, an unknown lifeform had created the beacon and ejected it into the galaxy like a message in a bottle. Only the “message” was dangerous. Unbelievably dangerous.
If Black was right, these creatures fed on photons, at least in part. Which meant the closer they came to Sol’s light, the more they might breed, travel, and eat, and from what she’d seen thus far, the creatures certainly had a penchant for destroying other lifeforms. If they made it to Sol System’s interior, what would happen? Would they attack the fledgling colonies at Iapetus? Titan? What would they do when they found thousands of human sentients rather than a few measly morsels aboard a floating hulk?
She didn’t know and not knowing terrified her. How long before the beacon’s creators decided to show up? Decades? Centuries? Or minutes? And would humankind be capable of putting up a fight? She doubted it. The technology to create the beacon had certainly seemed well beyond their grasp. Even Black was flummoxed as to how it worked. However, what it was doing, what they thought it was doing, was clear enough—it was bringing a horde of nasties into humanity’s space. That alone was reason enough to be concerned.
Now they were going to retrieve it, put it on a sled, and send it to Pluto. Was that really the right move? She didn’t know. The captain probably didn’t know. But what else could they do?
Unfortunately, she doubted they’d know that answer until they had the beacon. Maybe not even then. But destroying Mira, removing it from the equation, might give them some idea. Or maybe not.
With all these thoughts and questions spinning inside her head, it was difficult to focus when Taulbee finally appeared, his flight helmet in his hands. He yelled “at ease” before anyone had a chance to reach parade rest.
“You’ve all seen the briefing?”
Their voices shouted as one. “Aye, sir!”
“Good. Any questions?” The marines fell silent. Taulbee waited another beat before speaking. “Be ready to move like lightning. I don’t know what we’re facing, so be prepared to go off-script.” Wendt chuckled, and quickly recovered his composure. Taulbee shot him a look, but it was one of weary amusement rather than reproach. “Carbonaro and Kalimura. I want you at the airlock ready to jump out and offer assistance should we need it.”
“Aye, sir!”
“Let’s go,” Taulbee said and approached the SV-52 with brisk steps.
Kali glanced at Carb. “Locked and loaded?”
Her squad-mate pointed at the rifle rack in front of them. “Just have to mag-lock those and we’re good to go.”
“Outstanding,” Kali said and put on her helmet. Carb did the same. She activated the squad channel. “Load up.”
“Aye, Boss,” Carb said. Kali heard a grin in her voice.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Taulbee piloted the SV-52 out of the cargo bay with a few expert attitude thruster burns. The craft glided through the open hatch, rotated, and began heading into the Kuiper. A quick glance at the rear cam feed showed Mira, the huge ship kilometers away from him now, still hanging in space like a harbinger, its shadowy form nearly bereft of detail.
Black had marked the known location of the skiff on his HUD. Finding it would be easy enough, but the beacon? Unless it was spitting out radiation or some other wavelength they could detect, good luck. Taulbee chuckled with a sour expression. “Unless it goes off again.”
That would be one good way to find it. It just detonates, spews another burst of “hey, we’re over here!” to every exo-solar lifeform near Sol, and we’ll know exactly where it is.
The running monologue in his head wasn’t productive, and he knew it. They had to inspect the skiff’s remains before they even worried about the beacon. For all they knew, the damned thing was still attached to the Atmo-steel. However low the likelihood, it had to be the first check.
Wendt hung on the starboard-side like a barnacle. Murdock did the same on the port-side. The two marines, dressed in their heavily shielded anti-rad suits, wouldn’t be able to do jackshit if there was real combat. The suits didn’t have the usual HUD or block interface built into the standard-issue SFMC combat model. They had rifles mag-locked to their backs, but aiming and shooting would definitely be more difficult.
Once he was fifty meters from S&R Black, he opened the throttle and the SV-52 quickly accelerated. Black had narrowed down the skiff’s location by using multiple radiation scans. While the AI claimed the skiff had at first been lit up like a star, the radioactive decay seemed to have slowed. With each successive scan, the signal weakened.
Black? Why is it diminishing? Taulbee asked over a private channel.
The AI paused. Lieutenant, there are three probable explanations. One being the radiation is of a short half-life and it’s quickly dissipating. Another is that the beacon’s radiation is something we’ve never seen before.
And the third?
The third, Black said, is that an exo-solar lifeform is consuming the radiation as we suspected they did on Mira.
He didn’t bother responding to that. Black updated his HUD with the latest scan information and while the target was still moving at 60m/s, its trajectory had changed slightly. An unpowered object moving through space, unless affected by the gravity of other bodies or other celestial phenomena, should keep moving on the same course. Something had caused that effect, something they didn’t know about. Taulbee reflexively tightened his fingers on the controls.
“Wendt. Murdock. I’m going to start the acceleration. Make sure you’re watching for debris.”
“Aye, sir,” the two marines said.
“Sir?” Copenhaver said. “You want me watching ahead or behind?”
“Both,” Taulbee said, chuckling. “Keep that cannon cam moving. I want to know if we have any pursuers or attackers.”
“Aye, sir.”
So far, nothing from Mira had ventured away to follow S&R Black. That meant they would more than likely leave the SV-52 alone. At least for now. If the damned thing went off again, he wasn’t sure that would be the case, but the fact none of the creatures even reacted when it last fired left him wondering what was going on.
Black thought that maybe Mira contained enough residual radiation to keep the exo-solar lifeforms from leaving. Considering several large packs of creatures, different from either the pinecones or the starfish, had descended upon Mira as though the ship itself was a beacon, he thought the AI might be on to something.
The SV-52 reached 70m/s and the target slowly moved closer. As they traveled through the shadowy belt, the SV-52’s strong floodlights illuminating nothing, the comms remained silent. He felt as though the entire squad was holding their breaths. He knew he was.
When the skiff was less than 200 meters away, he alerted the squad and slowed the craft. The skiff had once more changed trajectories, but again, not by much. The speed was still constant though, which didn’t make sense. If the slab of Atmo-steel had collided with debris or a large enough object to change its heading, the speed should have at least diminished.
“Be ready for anything,” Taulbee said. The marines didn’t reply. He hadn’t expected them to.
Shards of what he thought was Atmo-steel glittered in the lights like metal rain. “Watch yourselves,” Taulbee said. “Debris up ahead.” With that in mind, he cut their speed with a hard burn and the SV-52 slowed to 61m/s, about as low as he could go if he wanted to catch up in the next aeon.
Debris pinged off the canopy and rattled against the hull. Fortunately, the debris was traveling nearly as fast as they were, or it could have shred the barely armored rad suits. Once again, the void was granting him favors. He wondered how much longer that would last.
“Sir?” Copenhaver called. “I got visual.”
He flipped his HUD t
o the cannon cam. There, in the distance, light glinting off its exposed undercarriage, the skiff, or what was left of it, tumbled through the Kuiper. He compared the target coordinates with the skiff. They didn’t match.
“Copenhaver? You see anything else?”
“No, sir. Just the skiff. Zoomed in, it looks like it suffered some major damage. Most of the finish is gone and the Atmo-steel is peeled like a banana.”
He wished he had time to switch off the forward cams and focus on the object, or anything near it. Instead, he had to rely on Copenhaver for that while he made sure he didn’t run the SV-52 into something else out here.
“Wendt? Murdock? Ready?”
“Aye, sir,” Wendt said. Murdock echoed the reply in a weak, tremulous voice.
“I’m going to slow us down and match speed. Call out if you see something else.” An excited parade of ayes replied and he grinned in spite of himself. The adrenaline was pumping now, and all those little nannies were getting ready to pounce on the gland and make sure it had everything it needed to manufacture more. The desire for those moments to last forever while at the same time wishing for them to end warred against one another, coloring every image, every sound, every action. Taulbee unconsciously drew in a deep breath as the rush injected into his veins.
The cannon feed, directed at the skiff, caught the slowly spinning and tumbling hunk of Atmo-steel. The skiff’s normally smooth deck flowered out on one end, the Atmo-steel layers separating from one another. The perfect outline of the beacon remained flash-frozen on the remaining smooth surface, making it look as though the object had disappeared into the ether.
Its meager control sections had disappeared, leaving nothing in their wake but torn and ripped layers of steel. Taulbee sucked in a breath. He’d seen this before.
In the wake of the last hours of the brief but savage onslaught of battles all across the Martian Ring, his ship had traveled through the wreckage of the first “skirmish” that kicked off the affair. Seventeen SFMC skiffs were lost, all annihilated by the nukes launched from inside the ring of detritus circling the planet. The fuckers had hidden them in the remains of the very industries they wished to destroy. Or at least cow them once and for all.
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