by Jamie Sawyer
Something had happened here. That squirming in my gut kicked in again. Part of the mystery of the ship was solved. The Krell had been here for sure. Only one question remained: were they still onboard? Perhaps they had done their thing then bailed out.
Or they might still be lurking somewhere on the ship.
We approached the bridge. I checked the mission timeline. Six minutes had elapsed since we had boarded.
“Check out the door, Blake,” I ordered, moving alongside it.
The bridge door had been poorly welded shut. I grappled with one panel, digging my gauntleted fingers into the thin metal plates. Blake did the same to another panel and we pulled it open. Behind me, Kaminski changed position to provide extra firepower in the event of a surprise from inside the room. Once the door was gone, I peered in.
“Scanner reports no movement,” Blake said.
He was using a wrist-mounted bio-scanner, incorporated into his suit. It detected biological life-signs, but the range was limited. Although we all had scanners – they were the tool of choice for Krell-hunters and salvage teams up and down the Quarantine Zone – it was important not to become over-reliant on the tech. I’d learnt the hard way that it wasn’t always dependable. The Krell were smart fucks; never to be underestimated.
The bridge room was in semi-darkness, with only a few of the control consoles still illuminated.
“Moving up on bridge.”
I slowly and cautiously entered the chamber, scanning it with my rifle-mounted lamp. No motion at all. Kaminski followed me in. The place was cold, and it smelt of death and decay. Such familiar odours. I paused over the primary command console. The terminal was full of flashing warnings, untended.
“No survivors in bridge room,” I declared.
Another formality for my suit recorder. Crewmen were sprawled at their stations. The bodies were old, decomposed to the point of desiccation. The ship’s captain – probably a civilian merchant officer of some stripe – was still hunched over the command console, strapped into his seat. Something sharp and ragged had destroyed his face and upper body. Blood and bodily matter had liberally drenched the area immediately around the corpse, but had long since dried.
“What do you think happened here?” whispered Olsen.
“The ship’s artificial intelligence likely awoke essential crew when the Krell boarded,” I said. “They probably sealed themselves in, hoping that they would be able to repel the Krell.”
I scanned the area directly above the captain’s seat. The action was autonomic, as natural to me as breathing. I plotted how the scene had played out: the Krell had come in through the ceiling cavity – probably using the airshafts to get around the ship undetected – and killed the captain where he sat.
I repressed a shiver.
“Others are the same,” Blake said, inspecting the remaining crewmen.
“Best we can do for them now is a decent burial at sea. Blake – cover those shafts. Kaminski – get on the primary console and start the download.”
“Affirmative, Cap.”
Kaminski got to work, unpacking his gear and jacking devices to the ship’s mainframe. He was a good hacker; the product of a misspent youth back in Old Brooklyn.
“Let’s find out why this old hulk is drifting so far inside the Quarantine Zone,” he muttered.
“I’m quite curious,” said Olsen. “The ship should have been well within established Alliance space. Even sponsored civilian vessels have been warned not to stray outside of the demarked area.”
Shit happens, Olsen.
I paced the bridge while Kaminski worked.
The only external view-ports aboard the Haven were located on the bridge. The shutters had been fixed open, displaying the majesty of deep-space. Maybe they wanted to see the void, one last time, before the inevitable, I thought to myself. It wasn’t a view that I’d have chosen – the Maelstrom dominated the ports. At this distance, light-years from the edge of the Quarantine Zone, the malevolent cluster of stars looked like an inverted bruise – against the black of space, bright and vivid. Like the Milky Way spiral in miniature: with swirling arms, each containing a myriad of Krell worlds. The display was alluringly colourful, as though to entice unwary alien travellers to their doom; to think that the occupants of those worlds and systems were a peaceful species. Occasional white flashes indicated gravimetric storms; the inexplicable phenomenon that in turn protected but also imprisoned the worlds of the Maelstrom.
“Your people ever get an answer on what those storms are?” I absently asked Olsen, as Kaminski worked. Olsen was Science Division, a specialised limb of the Alliance complex, not military.
“Now that is an interesting question,” Olsen started, shuffling over to my position on the bridge. “Research is ongoing. The entire Maelstrom Region is still an enigma. Did you know that there are more black hole stars in that area of space than in the rest of the Orion Arm? Professor Robins, out of Maru Prime, thinks that the storms might be connected – perhaps the result of magnetic stellar tides—”
“There we go,” Kaminski said, interrupting Olsen. He started to noisily unplug his gear, and the sudden sound made the science officer jump. “I’ve got commissioning data, notable service history, and personnel records. Looks like the Haven was on a colony run – a settlement programme. Had orders to report to Torfis Star …” He paused, reading something from the terminal. Torfis Star was a long way from our current galactic position, and no right-minded starship captain would’ve deviated so far off-course without a damned good reason. “I see where things went wrong. The navigation module malfunctioned and the AI tried to compensate.”
“The ship’s artificial intelligence would be responsible for all automated navigational decisions,” Olsen said. “But surely safety protocols would have prevented the ship from making such a catastrophic mistake?”
Kaminski continued working but shrugged noncommittally. “It happens more often than you might think. Looks like the Haven’s AI developed a system fault. Caused the ship to overshoot her destination by several light-years. That explains how she ended up in the QZ.”
“Just work quickly,” I said. The faster we worked, the more quickly we could bail out to the APS. If the Krell were still onboard, we might be able to extract before contact. I activated my communicator: “Jenkins – you copy?”
“Jenkins here.”
“We’re on the bridge, downloading the black box now. What’s your location?”
“We’re in the hypersleep chamber.”
“Give me a sitrep.”
“No survivors. It isn’t pretty down here. No remains in enough pieces to identify. Looks like they were caught in hypersleep, mostly. Still frozen when they bought it.”
“No surprises there. Don’t bother IDing them; we have the ship’s manifest. Proceed to the Q-drive. Over.”
“Solid copy. ETA three minutes.”
The black box data took another minute to download, and the same to transmit back to the Liberty Point. Mission timeline: ten minutes. Then we were up again, moving down the central corridor and plotting our way to the Q-drive – into the ugly strip-lit passage. The drive chamber was right at the aft of the ship, so the entire length of the vessel. Olsen skulked closely behind me.
“Do you wish you’d brought along a gun now, Mr Olsen?” asked Blake.
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Olsen said, defensively. “I wouldn’t know how to.”
“I can’t think of a better time to learn,” Kaminski replied. “You know—”
The overhead lights went out, corridor section by corridor section, until we were plunged into total darkness. Simultaneously, the humming generated by the life-support module died. The sudden silence was thunderous, stretching out for long seconds.
“How did they do that?” Olsen started. His voice echoed off through the empty corridor like a gunshot, making me flinch. On a dead ship like the Haven, noise travelled. “Surely that wasn’t caused by the Krell?”
<
br /> Our shoulder lamps popped on. I held up a hand for silence.
Something creaked elsewhere in the ship.
“Scanners!” I whispered.
That slow, pitched beeping: a lone signal somewhere nearby …
“Contact!” Blake yelled.
In the jittery pool of light created by my shoulder-lamp, I saw something spring above us: just a flash of light, wet, fast—
Blake fired a volley of shots from his plasma rifle. Orange light bathed the corridor. Kaminski was up, covering the approach—
“Cease fire!” I shouted. “It’s just a blown maintenance pipe.”
My team froze, running on adrenaline, eyes wide. Four shoulder-lamps illuminated the shadowy ceiling, tracked the damage done by Blake’s plasma shots. True enough, a bundle of ribbed plastic pipes dangled from the suspended ceiling: accompanied by the lethargic drip-drip of leaking water.
“You silly bastard, Kid!” Kaminski laughed. “Your trigger finger is itchier than my nuts!”
“Oh Christo!” Olsen screamed.
A Krell primary-form nimbly – far too nimbly for something so big – unwound itself from somewhere above. It landed on the deck, barely ten metres ahead of us.
A barb ran through me. Not physical, but mental – although the reaction was strong enough for my med-suite to issue another compensatory drug. I was suddenly hyperaware, in combat-mode. This was no longer a recon or salvage op.
The team immediately dispersed, taking up positions around the xeno. No prospect of a false alarm this time.
The creature paused, wriggling its six limbs. It wasn’t armed, but that made it no less dangerous. There was something so immensely wrong about the Krell. I could still remember the first time I saw one and the sensation of complete wrongness that overcame me. Over the years, the emotion had settled to a balls-deep paralysis.
This was a primary-form, the lowest strata of the Krell Collective, but it was still bigger than any of us. Encased in the Krell equivalent of battle-armour: hardened carapace plates, fused to the xeno’s grey-green skin. It was impossible to say where technology finished and biology began. The thing’s back was awash with antennae – those could be used as both weapons and communicators with the rest of the Collective.
The Krell turned its head to acknowledge us. It had a vaguely fish-like face, with a pair of deep bituminous eyes, barbels drooping from its mouth. Beneath the head, a pair of gills rhythmically flexed, puffing out noxious fumes. Those sharkish features had earned them the moniker “fish heads”. Two pairs of arms sprouted from the shoulders – one atrophied, with clawed hands; the other tipped with bony, serrated protrusions – raptorial forearms.
The xeno reared up, and in a split second it was stomping down the corridor.
I fired my plasma rifle. The first shot exploded the xeno’s chest, but it kept coming. The second shot connected with one of the bladed forearms, blowing the limb clean off. Then Blake and Kaminski were firing too – and the corridor was alight with brilliant plasma pulses. The creature collapsed into an incandescent mess.
“You like that much, Olsen?” Kaminski asked. “They’re pretty friendly for a species that we’re supposed to be at peace with.”
At some point during the attack, Olsen had collapsed to his knees. He sat there for a second, looking down at his gloved hands. His eyes were haunted, his jowls heavy and he was suddenly much older. He shook his head, stumbling to his feet. From the safety of a laboratory, it was easy to think of the Krell as another intelligent species, just made in the image of a different god. But seeing them up close, and witnessing their innate need to extinguish the human race, showed them for what they really were.
“This is a live situation now, troopers. Keep together and do this by the drill. Haven is awake.”
“Solid copy,” Kaminski muttered.
“We move to secondary objective. Once the generator has been tagged, we retreat down the primary corridor to the APS. Now double-time it and move out.”
There was no pause to relay our contact with Jenkins and Martinez. The Krell had a unique ability to sense radio transmissions, even encrypted communications like those we used on the suits, and now that the Collective had awoken all comms were locked down.
As I started off, I activated the wrist-mounted computer incorporated into my suit. Ah, shit. The starship corridors brimmed with motion and bio-signs. The place became swathed in shadow and death – every pool of blackness a possible Krell nest.
Mission timeline: twelve minutes.
We reached the quantum-drive chamber. The huge reinforced doors were emblazoned with warning signs and a red emergency light flashed overhead.
The floor exploded as three more Krell appeared – all chitin shells and claws. Blake went down first, the largest of the Krell dragging him into a service tunnel. He brought his rifle up to fire, but there was too little room for him to manoeuvre in a full combat-suit, and he couldn’t bring the weapon to bear.
“Hold on, Kid!” I hollered, firing at the advancing Krell, trying to get him free.
The other two xenos clambered over him in desperation to get to me. I kicked at several of them, reaching a hand into the mass of bodies to try to grapple Blake. He lost his rifle, and let rip an agonised shout as the creatures dragged him down. It was no good – he was either dead now, or he would be soon. Even in his reinforced ablative plate, those things would take him apart. I lost the grip on his hand, just as the other Krell broke free of the tunnel mouth.
“Blake’s down!” I yelled. “’Ski – grenade.”
“Solid copy – on it.”
Kaminski armed an incendiary grenade and tossed it into the nest. The grenade skittered down the tunnel, flashing an amber warning-strobe as it went. In the split second before it went off, as I brought my M95 up to fire, I saw that the tunnel was now filled with xenos. Many, many more than we could hope to kill with just our squad.
“Be careful – you could blow a hole in the hull with those explosives!” Olsen wailed.
Holing the hull was the least of my worries. The grenade went off, sending Krell in every direction. I turned away from the blast at the last moment, and felt hot shrapnel penetrate my combat-armour – frag lodging itself in my lower back. The suit compensated for the wall of white noise, momentarily dampening my audio.
The M95 auto-sighted prone Krell and I fired without even thinking. Pulse after pulse went into the tunnel, splitting armoured heads and tearing off clawed limbs. Blake was down there, somewhere among the tangle of bodies and debris; but it took a good few seconds before my suit informed me that his bio-signs had finally extinguished.
Good journey, Blake.
Kaminski moved behind me. His technical kit was already hooked up to the drive chamber access terminal, running code-cracking algorithms to get us in.
The rest of the team jogged into view. More Krell were now clambering out of the hole in the floor. Martinez and Jenkins added their own rifles to the volley, and assembled outside the drive chamber.
“Glad you could finally make it. Not exactly going to plan down here.”
“Yeah, well, we met some friends on the way,” Jenkins muttered.
“We lost the Kid. Blake’s gone.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Jenkins said, shaking her head. She and Blake were close, but she didn’t dwell on his death. No time for grieving, the expression on her face said, because we might be next.
The access doors creaked open. There was another set of double-doors inside; endorsed QUANTUM-DRIVE CHAMBER – AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.
A calm electronic voice began a looped message: “Warning. Warning. Breach doors to drive chamber are now open. This presents an extreme radiation hazard. Warning. Warning.”
A second too late, my suit bio-sensors began to trill; detecting massive radiation levels. I couldn’t let it concern me. Radiation on an op like this was always a danger, but being killed by the Krell was a more immediate risk. I rattled off a few shots into the shadows, and h
eard the impact against hard chitin. The things screamed, their voices creating a discordant racket with the alarm system.
Kaminski cracked the inner door, and he and Martinez moved inside. I laid down suppressing fire with Jenkins, falling back slowly as the things tested our defences. It was difficult to make much out in the intermittent light: flashes of a claw, an alien head, then the explosion of plasma as another went down. My suit counted ten, twenty, thirty targets.
“Into the airlock!” Kaminski shouted, and we were all suddenly inside, drenched in sweat and blood.
The drive chamber housed the most complex piece of technology on the ship – the energy core. Once, this might’ve been called the engine room. Now, the device contained within the chamber was so far advanced that it was no longer mechanical. The drive energy core sat in the centre of the room – an ugly-looking metal box, so big that it filled the place, adorned with even more warning signs. This was our objective.
Olsen stole a glance at the chamber, but stuck close to me as we assembled around the machine. Kaminski paused at the control terminal near the door, and sealed the inner lock. Despite the reinforced metal doors, the squealing and shrieking of the Krell was still audible. I knew that they would be through those doors in less than a minute. Then there was the scuttling and scraping overhead. The chamber was supposed to be secure, but these things had probably been on-ship for long enough to know every access corridor and every room. They had the advantage.
They’ll find a way in here soon enough, I thought. A mental image of the dead merchant captain – still strapped to his seat back on the bridge – suddenly came to mind.
The possibility that I would die out here abruptly dawned on me. The thought triggered a burst of anger – not directed at the Alliance military for sending us, nor at the idiot colonists who had flown their ship into the Quarantine Zone, but at the Krell.
