Jia frowned. “They have the same gray uniforms as the other body.”
“They were on the same side,” Erik concluded. “They were probably crew on this ship.”
“But they killed each other?” Jia shook her head. “Something doesn’t make sense.”
“This is Osei,” transmitted the captain. “We’re seeing similar things over here. Got a couple of gunshot victims here, and another stabbing. One bastard got his face caved in against a console, but everyone has the same uniforms.”
“They all killed each other,” Jia whispered. “But why?” She tapped her PNIU. “From what I can tell, oxygen levels can support life.”
“You planning on taking off your helmet?” Erik raised an eyebrow in worried challenge.
“No, but that means this wasn’t them losing control and becoming desperate as they fought for air.”
Erik headed out of the room. “There could be something in the air, some sort of toxin that got released during the fight that made them go nuts.”
“Maybe,” Jia replied quietly.
Even as Erik said it, he didn’t believe it. He’d never shown up at a raid to find an entire group of people on the same side who had violently killed one another. Mass suicides, yes, but not mass murder-suicides. His heart might not be thundering at the sight, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving.
“Whatever you do, keep your damned helmets on,” Erik muttered. “It could be just like the prison. There could be some sort of new version of the nano-weapons they used there. It could be airborne and make them just as crazy but not zombies. Emma, can you tell?”
“I need direct access to internal sensors or for you to bring better handheld sensors,” she replied. “The basic information I can derive from your PNIU and suit sensors suggest normal gravity, temperature, and radiation, with no obvious contamination by known pathogens, but as you pointed out, that’s rather limited in the scope of things the conspiracy might use. They could have invented all manner of delightfully devious ways of killing people, even their own gun goblins.”
“For now, we’ll just be careful and treat this as a hostile environment.” Erik slowed as he ran across another body in the hallway. This body had been shot multiple times in the chest. “And we don’t contaminate the jumpship until we’re sure that there’s no weird nanite shit in the air. For now, let’s finish sweeping the ship and find that boarding tube.”
Thirty minutes later, Erik stood in front of another sealed airlock hatch, this one leading to the boarding tube the conspiracy ship had connected to the comet. The squads had joined back up.
“I can’t open this yet,” Emma explained, irritation lining her voice. “It’s secured surprisingly well compared to the other doors.”
“We could use the torches,” Captain Osei suggested.
“Not in a hurry to go over there until we make sure we’re not contaminated,” Erik muttered. “Are you?”
“I can’t say I am, but we’ve only seen ten bodies total.” Captain Osei inclined his head toward the door. “This ship is decent-sized. That means there are probably more on the other side of this airlock door.”
“I suggest we back off for now,” Jia replied. “We can insert Emma directly into this ship and have her take control so she can better access internal sensors.”
“I’m detecting unusual x-ray emissions from the comet,” Emma reported. “They aren’t at high enough levels to threaten you in your suits, let alone if you’re inside the ships, but it might make sense to retreat to ensure you don’t experience negative health effects.”
“You sure it’s not about to blow up?” Erik asked.
“I can’t be a hundred percent certain, no, but keep in mind that if it explodes, there is a good chance I’ll be destroyed as well. This isn’t me being imprecise out of a lack of concern for fleshbags.”
Captain Osei made a face, looking at Erik. “And you trust her?”
“With my life,” he replied.
Erik surveyed the soldiers around him and Captain Osei. No one looked worried or scared despite the conversation. Several of them looked bored. He could work with that.
“I agree with Jia,” Erik offered. “Let’s pull back for now. Keep your suits on in the Argo until Emma can verify we’re not contaminated. We’re not going to let ourselves end up like these bastards.”
Jia frowned at the sealed door. “I can’t say this mission is turning out how I expected.”
Erik turned to Jia with a grin. “We’ve got a pile of dead bodies, strange X-rays, and a sealed-off comet that might contain ancient alien tech. And you were worried about jiangshi.”
“We haven’t done a single scenario involving boarding comets that are actually alien ships,” Jia retorted. “So much for the training precognition.”
“Funny.”
“I thought so.”
“I just thought of something. Maybe there’s nothing inside but a big pile of ice and rock.” Erik stared at the airlock door. “They might have run there to get away from the massacre.”
“That’s unlikely, given what the sensors are indicating,” Emma replied. “It’s also not consistent with what we were detecting earlier.”
“Life would be easier if it was.” Erik backed away from the door. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Forty-One
Hours later, a smaller team stood on the bridge of the damaged ship. Emma’s checks had verified no unusual contamination, nanite or otherwise, on their suits.
After the x-ray emissions ceased, Erik had returned with Jia, Captain Osei, and a single squad. They headed to the bridge of the ship and inserted Emma directly into an IO port. Erik, Jia, and the captain agreed it’d be better to figure out what had happened to the crew before they opened the airlock and proceeded into the likely alien ship on the other side, especially since there might be insane humans looking to kill whoever they encountered.
“Partial control of the ship’s systems has been achieved,” Emma declared with obvious pride in her voice. “I’m working on gaining access to that door.”
“We don’t need it immediately,” Erik replied.
The AI had remained invisible during her mission to the ship. Something about that unsettled Jia, but she didn’t mention it. Emma had demonstrated concern over being damaged before, but Jia was uncertain if she felt fear in the same way as a human, despite her heritage.
Erik ran his finger over a cracked, inactive virtual console. Blood splatters covered it, along with chunks of what might have been bone.
“It’d be nice if we could see the internal camera footage,” Erik explained. “We might have seen someone use a weapon or say something.”
“Indeed, that would be nice,” Emma replied. “But there’s a problem with that, a rather serious problem.”
“And what’s that?” Erik chuckled. “Don’t tell me you can’t take control?”
Emma scoffed. “This isn’t a matter of my capabilities, it’s about possibilities. There are no internal cameras anywhere on this ship.”
“No cameras?” Jia looked around. “Anywhere?”
“No.”
It didn’t make sense. Internal cameras were critical for safety and emergency purposes. Just because this ship was used by an evil conspiracy, it didn’t mean eschewing best practices would help them.
A holographic three-dimensional display of the ship’s layout appeared and rotated in front of them. A blue dot marked their position, and a red dot marked the position of the comet tunnel.
“There are individual door access records and that sort of data, but no clear footage,” Emma continued. “It isn’t as if the system couldn’t accommodate cameras, but they’ve either never installed them, or they removed them all for whatever inscrutable reasons those creeping conspirators have.”
“Plausible deniability,” Erik suggested. “The conspiracy couldn’t be sure this ship wouldn’t be taken. If they could evacuate, there would be no evidence of the crew left behind.
We might learn all sorts of things by looking through a year’s worth of footage.”
Jia pointed to a body blocking a door. They hadn’t moved any of the corpses.
“No evidence after an evacuation? I wouldn’t call that an evacuation.” She shook her head with a faint look of disgust. “It wasn’t much of a victory if they lost a lot of their crew.”
“Not saying everything went according to plan,” Erik replied. “Obviously they didn’t plan on that other ship, let alone us jumping out here after them. They had to adapt on the fly.”
“It’s really intriguing,” Emma interrupted. “I might not be able to find footage from nonexistent cameras, but I can tell you that someone went through that airlock about ten hours before I opened the airlock door that granted you entry.”
“It could just be that the door opened.” Erik frowned. “We can’t be sure people went through.”
Captain Osei nodded. “We need to be careful about what we assume, so we don’t let ourselves get taken by surprise.”
“No,” Emma replied forcefully. “Despite the lack of cameras, there were internal sensors. The thermal signatures clearly indicate multiple people went through. Ten. Unless someone or something went out of their way to fake those signatures, it couldn’t be anything other than humans.”
Jia’s breath caught in a sudden inspiration. “Can you use those sensors to indirectly reconstruct what happened here? We don’t need the camera feeds.”
“Not as much as you’d think.” Emma sounded apologetic. “Not every room has the same internal sensor coverage, and there was considerable damage to many of the sensors from the battle.”
Captain Osei finished murmuring something to a nearby soldier before stepping toward the hologram. “They fought that other ship, and from what I understand, there are factions in this conspiracy that don’t get along.”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like,” Erik replied with a frown. “There’s no way it’s just a coincidence that other ship flew out here, especially when it was obviously heavily armed.”
Jia nodded. She’d gotten so used to running around in a heavily armed ship that she’d forgotten the average non-military vessel had minimal weapons if any. It wasn’t like the UTC wanted everyone wandering through space with firepower. People might be able to justify it on the frontier, but not in the core systems.
“Then we’re overthinking this,” Captain Osei continued. “That other ship was probably another faction, but there was a double agent aboard this ship, too. They did something. Put something in the air, something temporary that caused the rest of them to kill each other, and then they extended the boarding tube.”
Jia wrinkled her nose, fighting an itch on the side she couldn’t get to because of her helmet. “That’s all supposition based on not a lot of evidence, and it clashes with what Emma reported. It wasn’t one man who went through, but ten.”
“What do you think happened?” Captain Osei asked. “They all decided to up and kill each other because they couldn’t handle it? If they were the kind of crew who could handle being on a ship for a year, they weren’t going to lose it at the last second.”
“Maybe they couldn’t escape.” Erik tapped the cracked console. “The ship did look pretty shot up from the outside. They could have flown here and then realized they wouldn’t be able to survive the trip back. The stress sent them over the edge.”
“That isn’t consistent with what I can see from the system status reports,” Emma explained. “There is damage all over the ship, but there’s no significant damage to the reactor, engines or thrusters. Grav fields are stable. Life support is stable. Food printers and ingredient storage are working. The defensive and offensive systems appear to be the main casualties. Hmm…”
“What?”
“I’ve just broken through the encryption on some log entries. They were recorded shortly before the boarding party entered the comet, and shed some light.”
“Play them,” Jia ordered. “Send them just to me, Erik and Captain Osei.”
An unfamiliar woman’s voice filtered through the comm.
“I’m breaking procedure to record this message,” explained the weary voice. “But there’s increasing instability among the crew. I don’t know why, and it’s threatening the mission. We suffered moderate damage when we repulsed the other ship, but no serious injuries.” A deep sigh followed. “I’m preparing to take a team into the prize. We can’t wait much longer. I don’t know how to explain it, but we’re fairly certain another ship is following us. The only thing we can’t figure out is where it came from. We’ve been doing our best ever since we were warned about the first ship. We’ll do what we need to seize the prize before their arrival. If our background information is right, we’ll be able to use it against this other ship.”
Erik chuckled and shook his head. “They did notice us.”
Emma appeared in a completely unnecessary pressure suit. “The x-ray emissions are back. Now that I have full access to this ship’s sensors, I’m noticing low levels of an extremely odd multi-frequency EMF field whose source appears to be in the comet. This thing is…”
“What?” Jia pressed.
Emma looked at her with worry on her face. The tone of her words was uncharacteristically quiet and unsure. “At the broadest level, there are certain aspects to that signal that resemble the influence of neuronal excitation experiments performed by both the civilian and military sectors some decades back and allegedly abandoned. I don’t know how the x-rays are related, but the signals began at the same time as the x-ray emissions, and upon initial analysis, patterns in the signals would appear unlikely to be the result of natural variation.”
“Meaning?” Erik’s brow furrowed, a deepening scowl spreading across his face.
“I’m saying it’s not impossible those signals can affect the human brain,” Emma explained.
Jia grimaced. “Wait. You’re saying this crew ran into a Navigator mind-control field?”
Captain Osei frowned. “And that shit is on right now?” He glanced at his squad. “Then we need to get the hell out of here before we start blowing each other’s brains out. That’s not the way I’m going out.”
“Agreed,” Jia replied, edging toward the door.
With a wave of his arm to his soldiers, Captain Osei headed off the bridge, muttering under his breath. A pensive-looking Erik followed the captain and his squad, and Jia brought up the rear, sparing a final look at the body.
The first step to surviving an attack was knowing it was coming.
After bringing Raphael and Cutter up to date with a quick transmission, Jia, Erik, and Captain Osei settled around a table in the galley to discuss their options. Emma stood near the door in her major’s uniform.
Captain Osei tapped a rather emphatic finger on the table. “Whether it’s Navigator or conspiracy tech, we can’t go marching in there with that field up.”
“Won’t the suits protect us?” Erik asked.
“That’s uncertain,” Emma reported. “Your pressure suits aren’t designed to protect you from every possible EM frequency. Now that I’ve identified it, though, I can work with Lanara and your PNIUs to generate something that will disrupt most of the signals, particularly things in the lower ranges that are more likely to have an impact. Given the complexity of the signal, disrupting the key components should be sufficient to eliminate any significant risks.”
Captain Osei frowned. “I’d normally say you were full of crap about all this, AI, but we’ve got a lot of dead bodies on that ship that support what you’re saying. However, your solution has a lot of ifs.”
“Emma’s not going to bullshit us,” Erik replied. “Nor is Lanara. If they tell us it’ll work, I trust them. But yeah, it doesn’t do us any good to march in there without protection and then go nuts. I’m guessing that whoever else went in there already killed themselves.”
“Or they’re gibbering on the floor, waiting for new people to show up so they can try to bite our
heads off?”
Jia shook her head. “It’s the prison all over again.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to develop a countermeasure, Emma?” Erik asked.
Emma’s hologram vanished. “I’m unsure, but based on what Lanara told me, it’ll take at least another day, maybe two.”
“Well, then if the boarding party survived, they get at least a one-day head start.”
Chapter Forty-Two
May 20, 2230, Solar System, Cargo Bay of the Argo
Jia stared at the small metal bracelet in Lanara’s palm. “That’s it?”
Erik and Jia had come to the cargo bay to look at the key to exploring the prize, as the other ship called it. He wasn’t sure if he was more surprised that they were worrying about potential insanity fields or that Lanara and Emma had come up with a countermeasure so quickly.
There were definite advantages to having the cranky engineer and the AI on his team.
Lanara nodded, a triumphant smirk on her face. “Emma did the bulk of the analysis work and Raphael helped from the jumpship, some physics bullshit.” She shrugged breezily. “I had a lot of parts lying around here, and we borrowed some from the other ship with the help of cargo drones.” She tossed the bracelet into the air and snatched it before it fell. “Between this, the PNIU and Emma, it’ll cancel out the signals likely to affect your brain. Now, the power efficiency on these things isn’t the best, and it’d be great if I could spend more time.” Her voice sped up. “Right now, it’s easy to link into the suits, but it’d be nice if—”
“How long?” Erik interrupted.
“Oh, as long as you have the PNIUs and your suits, you should be fine.” Lanara lifted the bracelet to her face and squinted. “You try to use these without that equipment and you’ll only have hours, but I figure in that case, you’ll probably be dead anyway.”
“Probably,” Erik admitted.
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