“The storm has passed, Lieutenant,” Black said. “We are ready to fire the thrusters.”
Taulbee nodded as if the AI could see him. She probably could. “Acknowledged. I’ll move out of the way.” He activated the attitude thrusters and the vehicle rose further away from the hull. With a few expert touches, the ‘52 straightened out of its tumble and floated parallel to S&R Black. According to the HUD, he was three hundred meters from Mira. Considering the ship’s tumble, it wasn’t far enough away. Gritting his teeth, he punched the thrusters and sped back toward Black. Once he was at a comfortable distance, he braked and rotated so his nose pointed back at Mira.
“Okay, Black. I’m secure.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Taulbee focused his gaze on Mira’s hull. Small blue flames of hydrazine burned in sequence. Mira’s roll slowed. The thrusters fired again. Mira continued tumbling through space in a lazy arc, but the roll had nearly dissipated. Black fired the thrusters once more and Mira stopped rolling.
“Marines. Mira’s axial movement has been stabilized,” Black said over the general comm.
Taulbee grinned. At least the first part of the mission had gone as planned. But stopping the roll was hardly the trickiest part. The two skiffs would have to travel away from one another as they headed to different portions of the ship. Kalimura’s squad would fly to the bow to place their eight thrusters while Gunny’s headed aft to engineering. Considering the damage to engineering, Gunny’s crew had the more difficult job, further complicated by having four relative newbies carry out the tasks.
Taulbee decided he’d shadow Gunny’s crew. If something happened, he wanted to be nearby to provide support. If one of Gunny’s marines had an accident, he’d be in the best position to help with lifelines and extra oxygen. Hell, if one of them ripped their suit, he could use the vehicle’s emergency cocoon to wrap them up and fly them back to S&R Black.
“Lieutenant,” Gunny’s voice said over the open comms, “we are ready to place the other thrusters.”
“Captain?” Taulbee asked.
Dunn took a long moment before answering. Taulbee imagined him having a three-way conversation with Oakes and Black to fine-tune thruster placements based on the information he’d gathered during the fly-by.
“James? We’re sending block updates. You’re a go.”
“Acknowledged, sir. All right marines, listen up. Fixing the roll was easy. The rest of the hull appears to have micro-damage. The personnel decks should be stable enough, but you’ll need to be cautious. Gunny? Engineering is a mess. I can’t determine the extent of the damage, but go as slow as you need to.”
“Aye, sir,” Gunny said. Kalimura quickly echoed him.
“Let’s do it,” Taulbee said. “Good hunting, marines.”
He nudged the thrusters and piloted the vehicle to the aft section. He hadn’t been able to perform a complete fly-by. Taulbee hoped he’d have more data for Gunny before the skiff reached the target coordinates. Every scrap of data would help. He hoped.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Once they had the all clear, Kali started the long journey to the bow. Her marines were silent as they floated through space, the skiff’s rear jets providing enough thrust to move at five meters per second. She quickly matched Mira’s tumble and increased her speed. When they reached the hull, she activated the magnetics to keep the skiff’s bottom within a meter of the ship's surface. Otherwise, the skiff would have to constantly keep the thrusters firing to match the tumble.
She wanted to join Taulbee’s video feed so she could see the rest of the ship, but knew she had to focus on thruster placement. Eight thrusters for two marines to place. At least Gunny had a full complement. He had one lookout and three marines to do the job. She cursed Wendt’s carelessness again. Once he was out of the infirmary, she was definitely going to kick his ass.
“That is one damned big ship,” Carbonaro said.
“Got that right,” Elliott murmured through the comms.
Kali said nothing. The top of the ship was scarred, the Atmo-steel dinged and dented. Her eyes constantly flicked from the view ahead to the view below. The skiff’s underside cameras filmed every centimeter the vehicle hovered over.
“Dickerson,” she said. “Look below. Are those what you saw earlier?”
Pause. “Aye, Corporal. Those are the things.”
Kali had never seen a pine tree outside of holos. Mars’ arboretum was filled with deciduous trees for production of fruit. Coniferous trees had been saved on Earth, but as far as she knew, no Sol Federation facility had room for them. Regardless, the objects embedded in Mira’s hull looked like large, metallic pinecone analogs. “Where the hell did those come from?” she wondered aloud.
“Good question,” Dickerson said.
Great, she thought to herself, why don’t you just pour all your thoughts into the open comms? She marked the video with a timestamp and hoped the dozens of cones were some new exo-solar material. It would be exciting to bring back samples that no scientist had seen before. They might even be a missing link in their understanding of the universe. Okay, that’s a bit much.
She checked her block. The adjustments the command crew had made to their original plans weren’t drastic, but they did have to place four thrusters on top of the personnel section as well as four beneath. The coordinates had changed, but not the relative locations. She had estimated thirty minutes to place the thrusters and hoped once again she’d given her team enough time to accomplish their task.
The silence of space was unnerving. The skiff vibrated every time she nudged the attitude thrusters, but without sound, it was merely a feeling that rattled her bones. The toughest part of z-g training had been the vacuum and the lack of sound. During drills and rescue missions at Titan Station, the utter silence of the universe, leaving only the sound of her breath and her heartbeat, had always left her goose-fleshed and giddy. At least in the rings she could focus on the beauty of Saturn. Here, out in the Kuiper Belt’s frozen, desolate, deserted wastes, the silence was a death shroud creeping over her.
The skiff’s edges, as well as its underbelly, contained powerful floodlights. The dull Atmo-steel hull seemed to swallow the illumination, providing no reflection or glare. At the same time, however, the lights revealed burn marks and pockmarked metal. After they passed a few more cones, the hull was clean. The entire ship hadn’t been hit by the metallic objects, but there were no doubt hundreds of them along the ship’s spine. She wondered if there were any on its belly.
Mira was wider than any ship she’d seen before. Even the transport ships traveling between Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were small by comparison. It made sense considering Mira had to keep over 200 humans alive for a twenty-year journey to Proxima Centauri b. With the exception of a rotating command crew, her occupants would have been in stasis for the entire trip, but once there, Mira would be their city, their home. She wondered how far they’d made it before—Well, before whatever happened.
Questions. Questions. Like what were the pinecones? Were there any survivors? And most importantly, what did happen?
“Boss,” Carbonaro said, “we starting on the top or bottom?” Dickerson snickered.
“Shut it, Dickerson,” Kali said, on the verge of laughter. “Top, Carbonaro.”
“Aye, Corporal. Looked like you hadn’t decided.”
No, she thought. I was thinking about shit I shouldn’t be. She checked the coordinates and the map on her HUD. The first two were coming up. She fired the fore thrusters and slowed their pace from five meters per second to one. “Elliott? You watch my marines. I’m going to be busy driving. Carbonaro, you’re up first.”
“Got it,” she said. “On my HUD.”
Kali slowed the skiff, brought it down to the hull, and increased the magnetics. She turned and watched Carbonaro spider crawl over the edge of the skiff and onto the thruster sled. Carbonaro removed a thruster and parked it on the hull. “You have to walk two meters to this one, and
then ten to the next. I’ll drop Dickerson and come back for you.”
Carbonaro pulled another thruster off the sled and put it next to the first. She raised a finger in salute. “Aye, Boss. Good hunting, Dickerson.” Kali returned the salute. Dickerson did too, but his middle finger was extended.
Shaking her head, Kali turned around, deactivated the magnetics, and jetted the skiff forward. In an instant, the skiff was three meters above a seemingly endless hull and zooming to the very front of the personnel decks. If Elliott wasn’t watching Carbonaro and her progress, she’d kick his ass. Or worse, let Carbonaro do it for her.
She returned her eyes to the holo-display. The next target glowed at the edge of the screen, but it was moving back to center at a fast clip. She cut the speed to half and brought the skiff a little closer to the deck. Just another ten seconds, she thought. Seven seconds later, she halved the speed again and used the thrusters to push the skiff to the right. Another touch and she eliminated the forward motion, leaving the skiff drifting at a meter per second to starboard.
“Slick move, Corporal,” Dickerson said. “Learn that in the rings?”
“Learned more than that in the rings,” she said. Her cheeks blushed beneath her helmet and she was damned glad he couldn’t see her face. After another twenty meters, she brought them to a stop. “Okay, Dickerson. You’re up.”
By the time she turned around, he had already crawled to the thruster sled and removed one of them. He held it with a single magnetized finger.
“Dickerson!”
He didn’t respond except to pull out another thruster, hold it in one hand, and then secure the other thruster with the rest of his fingers. He turned slightly so he faced her. “What?”
Kali pointed a finger at him and stabbed at the emptiness between them. “You do that shit again and I’ll have you pushing the floor for the rest of the damned mission. You understand me?”
“Sorry, Corporal,” he said. “I’ll get started.”
“Good. We’ll be back. Elliott,” she said and turned to face him. “How’s Carbonaro?”
“First thruster placed. She should have the second one done by the time we get there, Corporal.”
“Excellent.” She turned and watched Dickerson. He held the thrusters tightly by the handles and trudged guiltily down the hull to his spot. “Let’s go,” she said.
Halfway to pick up Carbonaro, her private comm buzzed. “Gunny here. Status?”
“Two thrusters down. Two more in progress, Gunny.”
“Acknowledged. Let me know when you’re done on top.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
She’d wanted to ask how his team was doing, but he’d only yell at her rather than answer the question. Focus on your tasks, she said to herself.
Her comms were silent. She wished there was more chatter. Elliott was behind her, but inside a suit, it was impossible to feel his presence much less feel as though she wasn’t alone. She glanced upward and saw only black space punctured by glittering distant stars and shadowy KBOs. In the asteroid belt and Saturn’s rings, she never felt alone. There were always mining, transport, and refining ships moving in the distance, or the lights of the many stations orbiting the planet and its moons.
She hit the attitude thrusters and brought the skiff into a perpendicular slide above Mira’s hull. Carbonaro’s suit lights looked like a beacon in the darkness. “Carbonaro,” she said into the comms, “we see you and we’re coming in.”
“Aye, Boss,” the marine responded.
When the skiff was ten meters away, she brought the craft in slow. The skiff still had plenty of fuel, but she wanted to make sure they had enough reserves in case placing the additional four thrusters required more effort. One last touch of the attitude thrusters, and the skiff stopped a mere two meters from Carbonaro. As soon as Kali activated the magnetics and the craft stabilized, the lance corporal grav-walked to the skiff, placed her mag-gloves on the gunwale, climbed in, and quickly took her seat.
“Ready, Boss,” she said.
Kali smiled beneath her helmet. Before she engaged the skiff to return to Dickerson, she brought up his feed on the holo-display. She watched in silence as he walked with a single thruster gripped in his hands. The motion of the camera would have made her nauseous if not for the bio-nannies. Each step required him to lift the mag-boot to break the field, and then use the anchored foot to move forward. The movements resulted in an unsettling jerky motion. Combine that with Dickerson’s tendency to look around the hull while moving, and it became an exercise in disorientation.
He was nearing the target and would definitely be finished by the time they picked him up. She cut the feed and used the thrusters to get the skiff going again. In a few moments, she was nearing his spot.
“Corporal? Second thruster placed,” Dickerson said over the comms.
“Good. Be there shortly.”
“Aye,” he said.
She could already make out the lights of his suit and then they disappeared. Frowning, she hit the comms again. “Dickerson? Where’d you go?”
No response.
“Dickerson? Where are you?”
No response again.
“Elliott?”
“I’ve got him, Corporal. He’s bending down and looking at—”
The marine went silent.
“Looking at what? What the hell is going on?”
“Sorry, Corporal. He’s looking at something on the hull.”
She growled inside her helmet. His suit’s tag glowed brightly on her HUD, so she was still able to find him. But why the hell was he staring down at Mira’s Atmo-steel?
“Corporal,” Dickerson said. “I have a sample Black needs to take a look at.”
“Dickerson,” she said, not bothering to disguise her annoyance, “I told you we’d take care of that after the mission.”
“I know,” he said, “but this is important.”
His suit lights suddenly popped up from the hull. Once she saw him, she cut the skiff’s speed and brought the vehicle within two meters of him. He had something in one of his gloves as he walked to the skiff and climbed in.
She nodded to him. “What the hell do you have?”
He grav-walked to her chair and opened his glove. A rough-hewn cylinder made of a mineral she didn’t recognize lay across his fingers. It was only a few dozen centimeters in length and showed no seams or welds. Its dimpled surface had no pattern, the divots seemingly placed in the object at random. The cylinder made her nervous, but she’d no idea why. She suddenly wanted to get off the hull and back to S&R Black. None of this was good.
“It’s partially magnetized,” he said. “Took a little force to remove it from the hull.”
“Get it in a sample container,” she said, “and don’t you dare open it. I want that thing quarantined.”
Dickerson looked up at her in surprise. She couldn’t see his face through the visor, but his body language told her everything she needed to know. “It’s just some mineral shard,” he said. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
“I don’t care,” she said, “lock it in a sample container and put it in the cargo area.”
“Aye, Corporal.” He sounded like a petulant child, but followed her orders. He opened a large rectangular box made of thick Atmo-steel, placed the cylinder in one of the sample sleeves, and locked the container. A moment later, he was back in his seat and staring up into space.
Kali opened a channel. “Gunny, we’re finished up top. Permission to start on the bottom.”
“Granted, Corporal. Good work.”
She stopped herself from saying “thank you.” “Acknowledged.” She switched back to the squad channel. “Marines, ready for another flight?” After receiving affirmatives from her crew, she powered up the thrusters and began the long trip off the side of the hull and into the space between S&R Black and Mira.
Chapter Thirty-Four
FUBAR was the only word he could think of. Well, that and an endless stream of curses.
He should have saddled Kalimura with at least one of the newbies. Maybe the LCpls could teach them something when they returned to Trident Station. But for now, he had to take on that duty, and he wasn’t happy about it.
He’d drilled these marines for well over a month after Black Company lost several members to new assignments or end of tours. Shame, too. Some of those marines had been with Black Company for over a year. They’d had to replenish from the lowest non-rates because no one else wanted the assignment. Hell, even the personnel Dunn and Taulbee had managed to procure were less than excited about being in the ass-end of space and living a banal existence while orbiting Neptune.
SF Gov and the Corps had long ago decided that inner Sol, densely populated with stations and mining colonies, was much more important than guarding the outer reaches where few ships dared travel and even fewer actually engaged in mining or surveying. Most of the traffic was between Saturn and Neptune and any of the S&R ships on patrol could reach a commercial or SF Gov vessel in a day or two. Once in the Kuiper Belt, however, those ships were at real risk from shatter storms and KBOs. The kinds of damage those phenomena could wreak was both devastating, and at times, fatal.
S&R Black had saved dozens of lives over the past two standard years, but that didn’t mean every mission had been successful. Sometimes, they arrived just in time to see empty escape pods fire out of the ship before it came apart. Sometimes, they only found bodies floating inside a perforated hull, all hands dead. S&R missions were tough both mentally and physically, but the real damage came when you bumped into a floating commercial suit and saw a pale, dead face literally frozen in a scream. Those were the ones you saw in your nightmares.
Was it any wonder Dunn and Taulbee had difficulty recruiting new talent? No one sane wanted this duty. Well, unless they wanted a chance for quick promotion and letters of commendation. Or they were just plain crazy and no one else would take them. Dickerson, Carbonaro, Wendt, and Elliott were all of the latter strain. Dickerson and Carbonaro had served during the uprising on Mars and apart from Taulbee, Dunn, and himself, were the only ones that had seen extensive z-g combat. Oakes and Nobel had both been there too, but flying a ship was different than floating between damaged craft, hiding in wreckage to ambush an enemy, or watching your mates get blown apart in the vacuum of space.
Derelict: Marines (Derelict Saga Book 1) Page 21
