If all went to plan.
It was just the merest sketch of a plan, and to a point, it relied on her being dismissed as a crewmember. After that it relied on king-size cojones. She had that covered.
Suited, with her helmet on, she made her way, footfalls nearly noiseless in the suit’s gecko boots. Her goal was the boarding tube to which Jennifer had been assigned in the past. She didn’t dare stop at a terminal to pull up the current duty-roster; it would be a dead give-away, marking her as disconnected from the military ship’s data-cloud. Ensign Jennifer Scott might not even be on rotation.
It didn’t really matter; it might even be better if she wasn’t, assuring Jennifer’s non-complicity in Taylor’s insurrection.
When she arrived at the Boarding Station, the door was closed. Taylor slapped the door seal activation and stepped through. She wasn’t prepared for what she saw there.
As she blinked at the strange and puzzling scene before her, an androgynous voice announced, “Ship locations now being resecured.” Her brain skipped half-a-second; she did not compute the consequence of that announcement, but rather, heard the bulkhead hatch seal behind her.
Taylor was frozen in place, her mind trying to calculate the danger that she had just placed herself in. A rare question came up: Was this a mistake?
In front of her, the queue corridor that preceded the airlock was filled with the macabre scene that provoked her concern: EVA suits, such as she was wearing, stood in the non-existent gravity, attached to the floor by the integrated gecko boots. They gyrated in dreamlike ways, to unseen forces, air currents. Soldiers should have occupied them, yet they were clearly vacant, arms drifting about in improbable ways.
Roughly ten meters down the narrow retracted tube corridor, nearest the airlock, she made out, through the disjointed choreography in the middle distance, one crewmember confronting another. Taylor slapped her chest, as she had seen other soldiers do, activating the local connection of her suit-com; she heard no conversation between the two.
Then the bizarre happened: the crewmember facing her seemed to lose solidity within the suit, taking on the boneless appearance of the rest, drifting. As if right beside her, a noise came to her through the helmet speaker. It frightened her so badly that she launched herself backwards, careening into the wall, leaving her floating above the deck. That she was so startled said a lot about the line that she had crossed.
Taylor had never heard such a noise before, but recognized it by its description: a choked off, infantile squeal—then nothing.
She was beset by a cold sweat, fighting off a panic that was completely alien to her. The emotion built upon itself as she struggled to get her bearings, finally getting her boots in contact with the bulkhead, stepping back onto the down-deck and facing the access through which she’d entered.
When it did not open at the mash of the control, she instinctually pounded on it with her fisted glove. “OPEN, OPEN, OPEN,” she screamed. Her voice sounded ineffectual in her helmet, but she was answered. A stern, human voice came into her ear, “Identify yourself.”
She shouted back, “TJ. Taylor. Taylor Jest. Help me. That… thing is in here.” She threw a panicked look over her shoulder. The remaining crewman was slowly making its way toward her, more than half-way through the forest of swaying EVA suits, pushing them aside like tall grass in a swamp. She did not understand the mechanics of the attack she’d witnessed, but it was clear that the crewman was the source of the threat.
Then Taylor made a noise that she had never, ever heard from her own throat—she whimpered in fear.
CHAPTER 70
EVENT: DAY 18, 0135 UT
“Sir, we’ve lost interstellar drive and comm.”
The helmswoman reported the astounding and worrisome fact to Captain Jon Sparks as he sat in his Bridge chair. “Engineering is unresponsive.”
Bridge Comm then reported. “Captain, the engineer appears to be in jeopardy. I’ve just picked up her scream through the AI channel. Security is heading there now. Sir, strange audio from the boarding team.” He sent it to the speakers.
The captain’s attention was split, pulled from the immediate needs of the ship to what they now watched on the bridge screen: the horror happening to his crew in the boarding tube. They were lined up, ready to harvest the second containment from the pirate scow. Just before he received the engineering reports, a sudden attack had begun to cascade down the line of soldiers, taking mere seconds. Protocol, goddamit. He followed it, teeth grinding, fingers crossed. He still was not able to completely line up the facts he’d been given, and the event he now witnessed.
The bridge was silent as he condemned them to their fate with great angst. He gave the command for the tube’s interior door to be locked.
* * *
The attack had begun before any had known what was happening. To all appearances, the last team member in line had broken ranks to give some sort of brief, wordless signal to each crewman. He moved toward Rikker, the team leader, at the front. Odd sounds had confused the Bridge Comm tech, first assuming it was some sort of feedback. By the time he’d piped it to the Bridge speakers, the damage was nearly done.
Rikker had turned to look back along the line, trying to decipher the source of the strange sound. His out-of-place team member, Clemmens, failed to respond to his order, and Rikker observed the last, bizarre moments of two of his soldiers’ lives. At the same moment, the captain’s order to seal the doors had sounded in his ear. It was his time to die.
He backed away from his approaching comrade, seeing Clemmens’ glazed eyes through his faceplate. As his back came against the inner airlock door, the sound of the bulkhead seal opening at the opposite end of the tube came to him though his pick-up.
Despite the captain’s order, someone was trying to save him. He saw a suited figure enter, and he made to push past his assailant. Unfortunately, the proximity was lethal.
* * *
Captain Sparks watched, razor sharp. Inaudible to his Bridge crew, he uttered a stream of curses under his breath. Despite the fact that he and his crew were facing something new and hostile, he maintained his hard line of thought and reaction. His problem: what was the appropriate reaction to his ship being cut off from all lifelines? He set it aside; more immediate was the need of his crewmen who had just been taken down by this hostile force.
“Captain Sparks, we have another problem.” The disciplined Bridge Comm officer spoke again, keeping his tone neutral, as he’d been trained. But the captain, attuned to the inflections of his closest crew, could hear an anxiety that was unlike any other.
“What is it, Erickson?”
“Security reports that Ms. Jest is trapped in the boarding tube with the infected host.” As the man spoke the words aloud, unmistakable sadness came with them.
Sparks was, at once, furious and restrained. He had brought his ship here with great apprehension, being the only person on board to have any of the facts at the mission’s outset. The meager tools he’d been given to deal with an attack had only just been sent before their arrival here, and these relied upon his crew constructing the main component.
The recent data packet amounted to weak and unsupported assurance, couched in official military language: ‘Be prepared to close bulkhead seals at the first sign of contagion. It is not known if this will completely restrain… Evacuate the immediate area of infection… Guide the subject host into the reconfigured containment… Apply 1.5 to 2 earth gravities…’
The loss of the drive came just ahead of the attack. The boarding tube was in the engineering section, so that followed. His biggest worry now was the fact that the tube with his sacrificed men had been sealed when the drive was lost. That thing had still gotten in there.
It could get out. They had to act fast to keep an upper hand.
Circumstances had collapsed just as Sparks began to feel his tension easing, his job her
e nearly complete without incident. Then the distress call from Celestial Wheel had come in. Center’s command that he respond suited him fine. After reviewing the additional data that had been sent with the schematics, he’d have felt safer on the move. They’d stayed in this place long enough. Once his crew had salvaged the second sphere that would be another containment, they would’ve been gone.
But now, Sparks had just lost fourteen of his crew to what Center called an ‘infection’. His ship was out of touch, under attack and dead in the water, but he was dutifully following the given protocol. Meanwhile, Taylor Jest, an unwanted passenger, placed on his ship, had just made things more complicated.
He addressed himself to another of the bridge crew, “Jacx, where do the preparations stand?”
“They’re moving the containment sphere into place now, sir. Regrowth and stasis facilities are operational and standing by.”
Their first experimental trap would be put to the test – Any crewmembers regressed by the effect of this invader must be immediately attended or placed in stasis, after restraint of the invader…
The Bridge crew was as tense as stressed glass. While assessing his options in the emergency, the captain partitioned a minimal awareness for the plight of the lead boarder, who, despite a valiant effort, had ultimately succumbed to the invader’s attack. He ignored the sick feeling in his stomach. Other priorities were pushed, hopefully saving all of their lives in the end.
Everything rested on that containment now. He hoped the logic of the design panned out. “Jacx, update.”
“Containment in place sir. Powering up. Twelve seconds.”
Sparks’ first team had freed Comani’s SciPod from the pirate grapples, bringing the entire small ship back into one of the Medallion’s docking bays so that they could salvage the special Gravity Rejector containment sphere. Following Center’s instructions, they’d disabled the self-destruct, cut the sphere out of the side of the pod like a tumor, and reconfigured it based on the schematics.
Silence reigned on the Bridge, broken only by the auditory cues of the control systems.
On the screen, they watched a fish-eyed cam view. Jest stood in the right of the image, backed up flat to the sealed bulkhead door, her profile visible through the tinted faceplate of her helmet. It was a mask of terror.
Movement took everyone’s attention to the left side of the display, where a suited figure moved up the narrow corridor. Its advance was slightly impeded by the row of soldiers in various stances of drifting disarrangement. To an unknowing eye, these crewmen might have appeared to be drunk, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding around them. As the single figure pushed past them, their legs bent back at impossible angles at the joint where their deck-attached boots integrated with the suit legs.
An independent movement around the middle of each seemingly vacant suit was what Center had said Sparks would see. He was relieved to have some tiny shred of evidence that what they were telling him was true. Those slight movements said that his crew might still be saved. Center had also told him this: All infected crew will be returned to their adult state, unharmed…
What things did they not say, though? It troubled him more as the drama became agonizingly real.
“Six seconds, sir.”
In the display, the last standing member of his boarding crew approached the frightened Taylor Jest. It was too close; there wasn’t enough time to get her out of there before that thing reached her—he could not chance its escape into the ship before they were ready.
Captain Sparks’ restraint broke just a bit. “Shit. Erickson, open a line to her.”
“Done, sir.”
“Ms. Jest…”
“Help meeee…”
“… Taylor, listen to me; try not to be scared. You’ll survive this, hang on to your wits here. We know we can regrow you. Just think of it as a trip back in time. You’ll be fine.” His attempt at reassurance was far from satisfactory.
“Nooooo…” Her fearful reply was staccato, as she had begun to shake inside her suit. Possessed Crewman Clemmens was close enough now for a view to his face; it was dead, a blank mask that gave away nothing of the high emotion that the imprisoned man was feeling, trapped somewhere inside a strange reality. Some of those who watched knew the man personally; they could not remain professionally removed from their emotions; restrained sounds of stress escaped their throats. And everyone knew Taylor, despite her short stay and non-crew status.
Sparks cut off the audio transmission. Jest had unknowingly stalled for the time that they needed to set the trap, but it ate at him anyway. “GODDAMIT, GET THAT CONTAINMENT FIRED UP.” It was tearing him up.
He could do nothing but just sit and watch while his crew and Taylor were attacked by this thing. It was right on her.
“Capture team, this is the captain. When you open the hatch, you will immediately remove the first suited figure, and you will capture the second for containment. On my command…”
“Ready NOW, sir!” Jacx nearly shouted.
But, as desperately as the captain wanted to save Taylor, it was too late; Jest had frozen in place, and he didn’t dare interrupt the regression process, not knowing how that would turn out for the young woman. “Hold,” he said as he and the rest of the Bridge crew looked on impotently, waiting for a repeat of the same gruesome events just past.
Then, something odd happened. At first, the captain thought their luck had changed, for better or worse. The hosting crewman had come to a halt in front of Taylor. He paused, but did not reach out like he had with the rest of the unfortunates. Before Sparks could even think of taking any reflexive action, without warning, a piercing scream howled out of the Bridge speakers. It came from the comm that was still open to the attacking crewman’s suit.
“What’s going on?” Sparks expressed his frustration to no one in particular. And then it all switched around.
Clemmens, no longer possessed, screamed and stumbled backwards, and Taylor’s demeanor shifted 180-degrees.
She began shambling forward in the direction of the retreating man.
“Oh, my God.” The captain figured out what had happened. Everybody on the Bridge gasped, making various sounds of extreme anxiety. They saw that their comrade was free of the effect, and attempting to elude the fate of the rest.
His doom was sealed as he backed up against the nearest of the seemingly vacant suits, which were still glued to the deck in the null gravity. The drifting suit arms wrapped around him as he moved into it. Confused and startled, he let out another earsplitting scream.
As he fought with his entanglement, Taylor caught up to him, arm outstretched. Clemmens froze. The Bridge crew made pathetic, sad noises of despair; a sob escaped someone’s throat, their momentary hopes crashing. The man’s eyes, slightly visible past the reflections on his faceplate, went wide, before strange movements obscured his face.
Sparks watched in sick horror, identifying the gesticulations to be the man’s hair, as it moved wildly inside the helmet. With a lurch in his stomach he said, “Kill the image, Erickson.”
CHAPTER 71
EVENT: DAY 18, 0200 UT
Swan was in a cold sweat.
Things continued to disintegrate.
Shortly after the attack report from the Wheel, a further, nearly crushing blow came: the comm loss with the Medallion.
The Medallion was his lifeline. At this point, it was his only way to find the QB1.
His first concern was that his urgent communiqué to Captain Sparks had been sent. Amio did not immediately respond to a summons, so Swan got the news from Center Comm: His adjutant had failed him. Amio had not yet been there to send the message. He was furious. Nearly an hour had passed since he had given that command. Failure could not be tolerated.
Sparks was one of his best non-made captains, and driving one of the most valuable battle-class vessels. The last curt
ailed transmission from the Medallion, their report of the attack, contrasted starkly with how Swan felt at this moment. The transmission showed extreme discipline. So unruffled. It pained Swan to lose that quality of crew. The almost-routine tone was typical Sparks. Far less drama than the Pirate Patrol One fiasco. No less disturbing, though.
Since that first Pirate Patrol incident, Center Comm was the funneling point of all interstellar comm chatter. The reduced staff, with the highest clearances, would clamp down on anymore nasty rumors.
He’d received messages from the Brass, threatening to hold him responsible for these unfolding developments. Just as he had feared, he would be left to the wolves. His higher-ups were well insulated. Mysterious, in fact. He was their severable link to these events, expecting him to do his duty, as they saw it, and keep his mouth shut. As angry as Swan was, he could not find it within himself to focus any of that on those who sent down the directives that he obeyed without question. Yet, neither was it in his nature to be a scapegoat.
His thoughts turned away from this line of reasoning.
Swan might somehow survive this if he could just stop the bleeding. As he thought about ‘bleeding’, Major Amio came back to mind. He stewed on how to punish the insubordination. A simple busting down was completely insufficient to meet the need Swan had: the man must pay for denying him his safe ride out of danger.
He pondered the losses so far: A station, two ships and the crews. Could be worse. He tried to dismiss the mounting burden. He subconsciously discounted the pirates and the SciPod.
He wasn’t counting Bartell and Astra either, but his Brass would be. The admiral didn’t trust the comm loss with the QB1; Bartell and Astra were on to him—they had cut off transmission deliberately. Their frequency loss didn’t fit the profile of the other attacks. He tried vainly to assure his military peers of that fact, without giving away too much.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 37
