by G J Ogden
The corruption and petty-mindedness of Wash and Griff was pervasive throughout the entire organization. This meant that anyone who turned their back on the RGF could expect constant harassment, wherever they went, for the rest of their life. Yet as much as getting kicked out would be simpler, he also didn’t want to give Griff and Wash the satisfaction of having him fired. As such, he’d made up his mind to transmit his resignation the moment Ericka was safely away through the portal, where the RGF could no longer touch her.
“Just get on-board, rook,” snapped Griff, shaking his head. “I’m going to write you up and report this incident to Chief Inspector Wash. She can deal with you. With any luck, you’ll get booted or assigned to permanent night-watch. Either way, at least I’ll finally be rid of you.”
“Do what you have to do,” said Hudson, cheerfully, “I really don’t give a shit.”
Of all the responses that Griff might have anticipated, the pained look on his face suggested that this was not one of them. It was as if Griff had just stepped in another pile of crap. Hudson breezed past him and walked up the cargo ramp into the small patrol craft. He realized that in all likelihood this was going to be his last duty shift as an RGF cop. This was assuming Griff responded as explosively as he predicted he would. That fact should have terrified him, but it didn’t; it felt liberating. It felt like he was being set free.
All through training, and every moment since graduating, he had refused to believe the horror stories about the RGF. He now realized he’d just been telling himself what he wanted to hear. Even during his training, when he saw glimpses of the corruption he’d been warned about, he still turned a blind eye. He hadn’t wanted to admit to himself that he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d never been sure of much in his life, but this he knew with absolute certainty – he had to quit the RGF, no matter what it cost. What came next, he didn’t know, but he’d rather face an unknown future than accept the depressing reality of life as a ‘clobber’.
He slid down into the pilot’s chair and began to run through the pre-flight checklist. He then heard the heavy thump of Griff’s size fourteen boots coming up the ramp behind him. Here we go… thought Hudson, preparing for the inevitable dressing down.
“I don’t believe you’d really make it that easy for me to get rid of you, so what’s your game here, rook?” asked Griff. He had moved over next to his chair and was leaning on the backrest. “I know you’re dumb, but you’re not that dumb.”
Hudson didn’t look at Griff and just continued to run through the checks. He then powered up the engines and closed the rear cargo ramp. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Hudson replied, casually, while finishing the last of the procedures. “So just accept it as a parting gift.” Then he swiveled his chair to face Griff. “That is what you wanted, right? To finally see the back of me?”
Griff huffed a laugh, “You’re up to something.”
“Nope,” replied Hudson, breezily, though he could see that Griff was now deeply distrustful of his motives.
“Then why report for duty at all?” said Griff, pulling a cigarette and bullet-shaped lighter from a black packet in his breast pocket. He placed the cigarette between his puckered lips, revealing creases all over his gaunt face. He lit the smoke, all the while keeping his eyes focused on Hudson. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” Griff added, before taking a long drag and plucking the cigarette out of his mouth with his bony fingers. Then he jabbed the smoldering stick towards Hudson, spilling ash onto the deck, and blew out the smoke in a plume above his head, like a factory tower. “If you cut some sort of deal with a scavenger crew last night, you won’t get away with freezing me out. I’ll find out and I’ll get my share, whether you like it or not.”
Now Hudson laughed, “I thought I was supposed to be a dumb rook? You really think I’ve struck up some sort of big-time deal in one night?” He swiveled his chair back to face the controls and added, “The truth is that this job sucks and I want out. But until my resignation goes through, I’m going to do my duty. Because, unlike you, I actually care about doing things properly, by the book.”
“By the book,” laughed Griff, before taking another long drag and blowing it out. “You really believe that crap, huh? Well, whatever you say, rook. If you want to leave, I’ll gladly help you out the door.” He shook his head in disbelief, then dropped down into his seat and enabled his console. Cigarette ash spilled over the switchgear as he did so. “Get us airborne; the sooner this shift is over, the sooner you can be out of my sight.”
Hudson was banking on Griff’s desperately low opinion of him to ultimately dispel any further doubts he may have had. However, the truth was Hudson did have a motive for pulling one final shift. That motive was Ericka. He couldn’t help her escape if he was already stripped of his duties and unable to fly. He knew there was still a possibility that her sob story about her brother was a lie. If that was true then she’d only invited him to her bed to gain his trust. Deep down he didn’t believe that, though, and he didn’t care either way. He was going to help her get off world, because he liked her, and he hated the RGF; Griff most of all. Whether Ericka was a scoundrel or not, he’d still rather she kept the alien artefact than allow Griff to line his pockets at her expense.
Hudson radioed the tower and quickly received clearance to take off from a bored-sounding air traffic controller. He increased power to the vertical thrusters and eased the patrol craft into the warm blue sky. When he was clear of the base and scavenger town, he reviewed their orders on his console. Their first port of call was to deliver essential supplies to the RGF guard station on the alien wreck. He checked aft and saw the boxes had already been loaded before his tardy arrival. “Looks like we’re doing the sandwich run first,” said Hudson, pointing to the boxes.
Griff craned his narrow neck aft, cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, and then flopped back into his seat. “Great, as if today couldn’t get any worse.”
Hudson shook his head and then swung the nose of the patrol craft out towards the wreck. Already, the great alien hulk dominated the horizon in front of the ship. It lay at rest in the dusty soil like the fossilized remains of a monstrous prehistoric centipede. Hudson was immediately transfixed by its epic size and the beauty of its symmetrical design. Knowing it might be his last chance to see a wreck up close, he stepped harder on the throttle pedal in order to speed up their arrival. Outside of the RGF personnel and registered relic hunters, few others were ever allowed inside the hulks. Hudson had only ever set foot on the outer hull once before. And since this was going to be his last mission before quitting the RGF, he welcomed the chance to get up close. Perhaps he’d even venture inside, while he still could.
Hudson’s giddy anticipation was in stark contrast to Griff’s reluctant tolerance of their ‘sandwich run’. Strangely, for an officer in the Relic Guardian Force, Griff detested being made to visit the alien wrecks, and he considered the task of delivering food and water to the guards stationed there as beneath him. Griff’s sole interest in the ancient alien vessels was how much money he could make from them. Specifically, by extorting the relic hunters out of their scores.
“ETA, ten minutes,” said Hudson, though Griff just ignored him. He glanced across, noting that Griff had now put his feet up on the console and was resting back with his eyes closed. The cigarette, still hanging off his bottom lip, had burnt down to a stub. “Seeing as you’re obviously so tired, I’ll take in the supplies.”
“The only thing I’m tired of is dealing with your crap,” replied Griff, folding his arms and sliding down further in his seat. “But, the job’s all yours, rook. After today, you’ll be lucky to even get a job delivering sandwiches, so you may as well get in some practice.”
CHAPTER 9
Despite being partially buried in the dusty soil of Brahms Three, the alien wreck still stretched out for kilometers. When viewed from the air it already looked immense, but seen up close and personal it was truly awe inspiring. And Hudson
couldn’t have been any closer than he was at that moment. He was standing on the landing pad outside the RGF guard station on the highest point of the dorsal hull.
The surface of the ship had the smooth, but slightly glassy appearance of igneous rock. It felt like he was standing on the site of an ancient volcanic eruption that would have put Vesuvius to shame. However, unlike the chaotic result of a volcanic eruption, there was order and symmetry to the landscape. It was clearly artificial, and not forged through any natural process. Hudson was in reverence of whatever species had accomplished such a titanic feat of engineering. Yet at the same time he was also baffled at how such a majestic invention could have come to such an inglorious end, on a sterile, barren planet like Brahms Three. Most of humanity had stopped asking questions such as these decades ago. And if he was honest, Hudson rarely gave them a second thought either. However, with the ship now consuming his view in every direction, it was impossible not to be swept up in the mystery.
“Hey, are you the courier run?”
The shout startled Hudson, and he spun around to see an RGF officer standing outside a fissure in the outer hull. This opening served as the entrance into the inner portions of the ship, where the guard station had been established. Other than the landing pad, the only other hint at the guard station’s location was a small observation tower placed on the external hull. This was purely for communicating with the RGF base and vessels, since signals couldn’t penetrate inside the alien ship.
Similarly, no tool of human design had been able to penetrate the strange rock-like exterior of the hulks. This meant that the only ways in or out were through existing fissures and cracks in the hull. Scientists had speculated that many of the more regular-shaped openings in the hull could have been the result of weapons fire or powerful, blunt-force impacts. However, since there was no weapon, real or theorized, that could do the damage necessary to pierce the alien hulk’s armor, these theories had never gained credibility.
“Yes, that’s me,” Hudson called back, a little embarrassed at being caught daydreaming. “I have a few boxes of supplies. Where do you want them?”
“Bring them through, will ya?” shouted the guard, who hadn’t seemed to notice Hudson’s blushes. “I’d give you a hand, but all hell’s breaking loose inside. These damn scavengers don’t miss any opportunity to try to kill each other, but they’re damaging the relics in the process. Hell, I’m sure these bastards would rob and murder their own grandmothers if it got them a better score.” And with that the guard disappeared back inside the fissure-like doorway, drawing his sidearm as he went.
Rob and murder their own grandmothers? Sounds like someone I know… thought Hudson. He actually contemplated checking the cockpit to make sure Griff wasn’t moonlighting inside the wreck as a relic hunter. Instead, he walked around to the cargo hold to collect the first box of supplies. As he approached, he was greeted with a resonant, nasal drone of snoring floating out from the cockpit. Hudson considered dropping the box accidentally-on-purpose to give the bone-idle asshole a rude awakening, but instead he chose to let him snooze. A sleeping Logan Griff was far less obnoxious than an awake one.
Hudson hoisted the box onto his shoulder – it was heavier than it looked – and struggled on towards the crack in the hull. His pulse started to quicken, realizing that this would be the first time he would actually get to set foot inside an alien wreck.
Navigating through the crack while carrying the heavy box was harder than he anticipated. The outer layer of armor was about five meters thick and slippery as hell underfoot. Hudson stumbled several times before reaching the first of the ship’s ‘ribs’. These were essentially structural frames on which the outer layer of armor was grafted, like flesh on bone. Hudson puffed out his cheeks while he rested for a moment against the frame of the titanic metal beast. He then lowered the box to his hip and continued on, until he reached the alien hulk’s last line of defense.
This final layer of armor was something Hudson had read about, but never actually seen. It was a layer of fluid that flowed beneath the outer armor like a lake. When exposed, it seemed to harden, turning into a glassy, rock-like substance an order of magnitude harder than any Earth-based metal. In liquid form, it was one of the more valuable scores a relic hunter could find, assuming they were fortunate enough to discover a method to siphon it off. Even small amounts circulated through a ship’s outer hull, like blood flowing through veins, could provide a significant boost to the vessel’s armor rating. As such, it was especially prized by the military. Unfortunately, it was also near impossible to get at. In its hardened form, this substance was virtually impenetrable to even the strongest drill bits. Hudson ran his hand along the smooth, obsidian-like surface as he passed through. He shuddered to think what sort of weapon or impact could have cracked open a section of the hardened fluid two meters thick.
Eventually, sweating and more than a little out of breath from his alien crag-hopping, Hudson reached a strange hexagonal hallway. It was strange because there didn’t appear to be any particular floor or ceiling; each surface seemed identical to the other. He continued along the corridor until it widened into a vast open space. Hudson reckoned it was easily the size of a football field, and perhaps three storeys tall. Placed at regular intervals in the room were huge hexagonal towers that had no purpose that Hudson could understand, except perhaps to support the ceiling. The RGF guard station had been set up just inside this space, with partitions and desks and all the furniture that would be common to an RGF base in a scavenger town. Except that in the alien setting of the wreck, everything looked out-of-place and completely perverse. Even more baffling was how they managed to carry all of the gear down in the first place, given how much of a struggle it had been for him to carry one box.
Hudson hauled the supplies over to the nearest desk and set the box down on top. The guard who had called him in from outside appeared to be the only one in the entire stadium-sized room.
“There’s fine, thanks,” said the guard, who seemed anxious. “You can just put the others next to it.”
“What are these towers?” asked Hudson, marveling at the scale and precision of the structures.
“Towers?” queried the guard, who appeared to be distracted by a row of monitors on a desk to his side. He looked up, followed the direction of Hudson’s gaze, and then stared back at the monitors again. “Oh, cooling conduits, apparently. More than half the ship is one giant engine and reactor. Or that’s what the techs say, anyway.”
“Everything okay?” asked Hudson, noticing the beads of sweat on the guard’s brow. “Where are the others?”
“They’re six levels down, trying to stop two rival relic hunter crews from killing each other,” said the guard. “Bloody idiots; they know that if they damage any valuable relics, they’ll have to pay for them, but some of these crews hold long grudges.”
“Do they often fight each other inside?” wondered Hudson, genuinely curious about the day-to-day life of a relic hunter.
“Yeah, well, no…” said the guard, unhelpfully. “I mean, they’re always trying to do each other in, but they’re usually more subtle about it. Running gun battles just end up with them either dead or being handed a bill for all the items they wrecked along the way.”
Hudson remembered that the insides of alien wrecks were considered neutral territory. As such the regular laws of the planet’s controlling faction – in this case the CET – didn’t apply. There was only one rule, which was, ‘all breakages must be paid for’, as if the alien ship was a giant china shop. The relic hunter guild had its own code of conduct, of sorts. At a base level this was, ‘Please don’t rob or murder other guild members.’. However, as Hudson was now seeing first hand, it seemed that at least some of the scavenger crews didn’t really take this pledge all that seriously.
“So, what’s up with this lot?” asked Hudson, trying to look at what was being shown on the various monitors. “What’s made them all so crazy?”
“I do
n’t know, there’s talk of someone maybe having found something new,” said the guard, starting to look increasingly flustered. “It’s driving them all nuts trying to work out who has it, or even if anyone has it at all.”
“Something new?” The image of Ericka’s curious crystal relic immediately flashed into Hudson’s head. “Like a new relic?”
The guard didn’t answer, because just then the sound of gunfire echoed into the space. It seemed to have emanated from one of the dozens of hexagonal corridors leading off into the ship. Many of these plummeted deeper into its guts at forty-five-degree angles.
“Shit, it looks like we have another group headed this way,” said the guard, grabbing his radio and clicking open the transmitter. “All units, this is base. I need a team back here now!” He released the button but the speaker produced only the harsh crackle of white noise. “Damn it, this ship is like one giant radio shield; I need to get a cleaner line of sight.” The guard started running towards the corridor where the gunfire was coming from. Without really thinking why, Hudson followed, forgetting the reason he was actually there in the first place. “Echo and Delta, do you copy?” the guard called into the radio, while trying to aim its antenna into the sloping corridor. Another ripple of gunfire popped along the corridor. “Backup needed at base, do you read, over? Get back here, damn it!”
Hudson peered down the sloping corridor, which descended maybe twenty or thirty meters to a lower level. Two parallel flights of ladders stretched all the way down, but they looked to have been added on, rather than being part of the original ship. Hudson wondered how anything got around inside the hulk, considering the smooth surfaces and apparent lack of sensible ways to navigate the steep corridors.
While the guard continued to shout increasingly harassed requests into the radio, Hudson was distracted by something moving in the corner of his eye. He stepped a few paces to the side to get a better look beyond the nearest cooling tower. He saw three men running out of one of the other hexagonal corridors, heading towards the RGF guard station. The hairs on the back of Hudson’s neck prickled. He reached down and unclipped his sidearm, realizing that none of these new arrivals were wearing RGF uniforms.
