“That whole you’re-still-a-candidate thing is the general’s way of motivating everyone for this,” Fast said, checking the charge pack on his N-1 a third time.
“Yeah, well someone should tell him he sucks as a motivator.”
A new voice sounded from across the small, private bay. “Why don’t you tell him?”
Echo Squad turned to see a slim man wearing the same kit as them, save for a mounted camera on his shoulder. Too large to be a standard cam. Sergeant Fast figured it must be capable of taking some kind of scientific readings in addition to recording and shrugged it off. Just as long as he didn’t need to carry it.
“You’re Makaffie?” asked Fast.
“I am. And you are Echo Squad. Ready to risk life and limb in pursuit of some great cosmic secrets… Echo Squad?”
Fast nodded. “Ready when you are.”
“Why, is that…” Makaffie peered around Sergeant Fast at the big man standing with an N-1 in his arms and an imposing sniper rifle strapped to his back. “The Wild Man! It is!”
“Hey,” mumbled Wild Man.
“Anyway,” Makaffie said, turning his attention back to the rest of the squad. “You ought to just tell the general what you think.”
Kimbo scoffed. “Yeah. Right.”
Makaffie shrugged. “He’s only an asshole if you let him be. He doesn’t mind it when you push back. I say what’s on my mind around ol’ Tyrus Rechs.”
“We’ll take that under advisement,” Fast said, eyeing the airlock door that would take them outside the ship and to the aft entryway of the mini-hulk Brentwood.
“You should indeed. Life’s too short not to speak your mind. And between the general and the Savages, I’d rather risk being killed by the general. At least he’d make it quick.”
“Funny guy,” Kimbo said with a shake of his head. “You know how to use that kit you’re wearing, or is the delay for you to get instructions from the sergeant?”
Makaffie smiled. “I happen to be a veteran of the First Battle for New Vega. Wild Man will vouch for me.”
“Thank you for your service,” Sergeant Fast deadpanned. “Is there a delay, though? We’ve been ramped up for action for thirty minutes. Time to go or stand down at this point.”
“Oh, we can go. We can go. I just… wanted to get to know you all a little bit—other than Wild Man—before I activated the comm feed with the general.”
“You mean we got the old man looking over our shoulder for this op?” Big Brother said.
Makaffie smiled. “This is the lynchpin of the operation, and Echo Squad are the ones tasked with making sure it happens. I thought that much was obvious—I’m here because I’m important to the Legion. And you’re the ones Command thinks can keep me the safest.”
Echo Squad looked at one another, their bewilderment evident. At no point had anyone in command given them the feeling that they were anything special. In fact most of them felt as though they’d just barely made it through the training on Hardrock. That they were reluctantly passed only because they eked out performances on tasks meant to send them packing.
But that was probably how everyone felt.
“Command, this is package, how copy?” said Makaffie into the comm.
“Copy, package.” It was General Rechs. “Visuals confirmed. Proceed to breach point.”
“Roger. Sergeant, let’s go.”
“Echo Squad,” Sergeant Fast said, opening the airlock door, “we’re up.”
The team ushered itself into the airlock, which was magnetically sealed to the hull of the Savage mini-hulk.
Makaffie stepped up to the man-sized airlock door set into the hulk’s hull. He produced a micro-tool and popped open a panel on the door, revealing a maze of wires. Makaffie attached several metal crimps onto terminals and then plugged them into a black box he magnetically attached to the hull.
“Such old tech,” the slim science officer said. “It’s quaint. How far we’ve come… how far can we go?”
Then, into the comm, he said, “Override secure.”
“Proceed to entry,” Rechs ordered.
Makaffie looked to Echo Squad, who stacked themselves on either side of the door. “Time to see what new terrors mankind has created out amongst the stars.”
Kimbo and Junior exchanged a look before Sergeant Fast said, “Kimbo, you’re on point.”
A second later Sergeant Fast’s comm chirped in his ear. It was the general. “Use your LC or squad identifiers, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” He pointed at Kimbo. “Echo Two, move.”
Kimbo nodded and pushed the door open. A light mounted to his helmet activated in the darkness beyond, shining a bright beam into an otherwise empty corridor.
Kimbo wrinkled his nose and stepped inside. The rest of the team quickly followed. The interior of the ship was dark and ominously quiet. Only the soft steps of their boots against the grating of the deck could be heard.
They were in a tubular corridor with dingy acrylic walls that were cloudy with age and condensation. On the other side of the clear acrylic, on both sides, looked to be an overgrown and wild terrarium filled with greenery. The leaves of the plants pressed up against the windows. Above was a metallic blue ceiling with hanging halogen lights hooded by long sheet-metal boxes. All the lights were dead.
“Hallway looks clear,” whispered Kimbo.
“Move up,” ordered Sergeant Fast. “Echo Five, seal the door.”
“Roger, Sergeant,” said Junior.
“Gods, what’s that stench?” asked Big Brother. “My eyes are watering.”
Makaffie sniffed and rubbed a hand beneath his nose. “Smells like these Savages ain’t been using the bathrooms for a loooong time.”
“What’re these?” Fast asked, nodding to the plants on the other side of the acrylic walls.
Makaffie shrugged. “Source of oxygen? Or maybe they just thought it was pretty when they set out.”
There was a clanging from beyond the hull. A deep rumble that seemed to travel through the corridor behind and ahead of them all at once.
“Chang has disengaged,” Rechs announced. “Proceed to secure aft bridge corridor and await further instructions.”
“Copy, Command.”
The team moved forward, creeping across the deck, lights revealing piles of dirt and filth in the curved spaces where the walls met the floor. Kimbo held up a hand and the squad killed their lights and took a knee.
Sergeant Fast switched on his IR overlay on the clear shield that extended down from his helmet. He could make out the faint glow of unit markings on the helmets as he hustled past his team and knelt beside Kimbo.
They spoke in whispers.
“What did you see?”
“Corridor has some doors on either side up ahead, Sergeant. Can’t tell if they’re open or not.”
“No signs of life?”
“Negative.”
Fast patted Kimbo on the shoulder. “Hold here.”
He moved back to the end of the dispersed squad of Legion candidates, clapping each man on the shoulder as he squat-walked past them to reach Makaffie.
“Doors on either side ahead appear to be unlocked.”
“Good,” Makaffie said, his voice just a little louder than Fast would have wished for. “That means we guessed right.”
“So you know where we are?”
“I do now.”
“I have the feeling you know a lot more than you’re saying.”
“If I told you all what I knew… everyone would be too afraid to come.” Makaffie sounded like he was smiling as he spoke. “Can’t have a Legion with no legionnaires. And this is the final test, right?”
“Sure.” Sergeant Fast stood. “Lights back on, Echo Squad. Let’s clear these rooms and move up.”
He turned to Makaffie. “Unless ther
e’s something else we gotta do.”
“No. Clear the way. We can’t make the next move until the general takes the rest of you fabled warriors into battle through the main hangar.”
“Teams of two,” Fast ordered, wondering if the old man was still listening in. “Echo Three, stick with Makaffie since you’re old buddies. Echo Two, you’re with me.”
Wild Man jogged back to his new position by Makaffie. He gripped his N-1 tightly and Sergeant Fast could see beads of perspiration forming on his face.
“Here, Sarge,” Makaffie said, unslinging the camera rig from his shoulder. “Put this on so I can see what you see in those rooms.”
Sergeant Fast stifled a sigh and held still as the slim eccentric fastened the device to his shoulder, its lens positioned beside his head so the viewer could be afforded a first-person view. He could hear the sound of miniature gears and gyros working as the camera swiveled and stabilized itself. “We good?”
“Yes,” Makaffie answered. “Visuals are being transmitted to my battle board. One more thing, though.”
“Echo Squad, hold up,” Fast said before the brothers could make their way to the first room. “Looks like we’re prepping for this mission after it starts.”
Makaffie laughed. “No one ever accused me of being a good soldier.”
He activated a box-shaped device that hung from his belt. A black screen powered to life, showing two perpendicular lines extending out and reaching a curving wall showing max range—like the lines of a seamball field driving to the outfield wall—and the device began making a steady, rhythmic oomp, oomp, oomp.
“What’s that?”
“Motion detector, see? Much better range than the usual battlefield HUD report.”
Makaffie grabbed Fast by his shoulder pauldron and forced him to sidestep in front of the device. A blip appeared and then faded away when he went still again.
“Goes through walls, ceilings, and floors in a forty-meter radius. Three-dimensional. Anything moves inside that bubble, we should detect it.”
Fast nodded. “Good. Kimbo, you ready?”
The sergeant winced inwardly at his forgetting to use the proper identifier. But the old man didn’t say anything. Which meant he was probably busy with the next phase of the operation.
Or he was just holding back the butt-chewing until after the op. Maybe he would bring it up as an excuse to fail them. Who could say?
“Let’s do it, Sarge,” Kimbo replied.
The brothers nodded and slipped into the first doorway on the left. Fast and Kimbo did the same on the right, the sergeant moving in first so the camera on his shoulder would have an uninterrupted visual of what lay beyond the simple top-down pneumatic door. The door had been partially closed, and Kimbo had to physically push it up into its housing in order for both men to enter without ducking.
Sergeant Fast swept his light across the dark room, lighting up a desk and a pair of office chairs. After a quick visual he said, “Room looks clear.”
“Burn a chem light,” Makaffie instructed. “Need to see the room as a whole.”
Fast nodded to Kimbo, who pulled a chemically charged diode stick from his hip pouch, ripped its top to activate, and held it up. The stick bathed the room in a soft light that seemed not quite yellow or green, but a blending of the two colors that somehow made the shadows appear dark blue.
“Like something out of a museum,” mumbled Kimbo.
Fast nodded. “Echo Four, what’s your status?”
“Room’s clear, Sarge,” responded Junior over the comm. “Just an empty office. Not a big one, either.”
“Are there any nameplates in that office, Echo Four?” Makaffie asked. “Anything identifying whose it was.”
“Stand by.”
There was a tense silence as the Johnson brothers checked their room. The low clang of boots against metal decking was the only noise in the deep quiet as Fast looked over the office they’d entered. Kimbo had been right: the place did look like a museum piece. Like one of those carefully staged exhibits that showed life as it was believed to have been lived in the first years of a new colony. Or on the last years of Earth—though there was now some debate from the academic community as to whether that planet had ever truly existed. But most people took for granted that it was real.
The desk was a rectangular glass sheet with a clean, beveled edge. It was mounted on brushed chrome legs, with minimal storage, and its surface was sparse and untouched. Like it was waiting for whoever usually occupied it to return after a weekend away. A cord ran up through a hole in the desk’s surface and plugged into one of the legs.
Fast picked up a wooden frame that had a still photo of a woman with auburn hair snuggling a toy-sized dog.
“You seein’ this, Makaffie?”
“Nice dog.”
Fast frowned. “Seems a little small. This mean anything to you?”
“No. Keep looking.”
Fast obeyed, moving past concave disc-like chairs with white upholstery that, despite having what was likely a futuristic design, seemed hopelessly dated to the ancient past. “It would help if we knew what we were looking for.”
“A name. The right office.”
“What’s the name?”
“Carlson, Humberto E.”
Kimbo broke in. “This place looks like it belonged to a chick. Never heard of a girl named Humberto.”
Fast approached the coat rack Kimbo stood next to, little more than a round, metallic rod with flattened hooks that bent upward. A women’s cardigan hung on one of the hooks, its threads hanging loose and unraveled, holes bored throughout. It had been there a long time.
Big Brother reported in over the comm. “Found something in a closet. Looks like a… diploma. Name on it is Kyle McCarley.”
“That’s one of his assistants,” Makaffie said. Clearly the man knew something of the history of this ship. “C’mon back out and regroup. One of the next two offices should be Humberto’s.”
“Copy.”
As Fast and Kimbo moved back toward the corridor, Kimbo bent down and picked up a frame that had fallen from the wall at some point, shaking off the broken glass before reading it. “Ivellisse Mateo. PhD, Molecular Biology. University of California, San Francisco. Dude. This scrap of paper is gotta be worth a fortune. I’m takin’ it.”
The Legion candidate pulled it from its frame and folded into quarters before stuffing it into his pocket.
Fast gave a half smile. “You’re not wrong about that.” He turned and focused his camera on a pot that was knocked on its side. Barren, dry soil still lay spread out against the metal decking near the pot’s broken rim. Next to it was an interior door, sleek and white—a pocket door that slid inside the wall itself. It was marred by long, ragged scratches, all the way from chest level down to the deck.
“You seein’ this?”
Makaffie swallowed and said, “Oh, yes. Open the door.”
Fast positioned himself in front of the door, N-1 up and aiming for whatever was on the other side as Kimbo stood to the side and dug his fingers into the manual open. Fast nodded and Kimbo pulled hard, forcing the door into its pocket inside the wall with a grunt that seemed to be absorbed by the room itself.
The sergeant sucked in a deep breath and then exhaled. A mummified body wearing a tattered white lab coat and shredded black trousers hung in the air, long black hair partially covering a skeletal face with taut patches of desiccated flesh stretched in a silent, open-mouthed scream.
“Think I found Ivellisse.”
Kimbo peered around the open door and did a shake. “She hung herself?”
“Looks like it.”
“And then somethin’ sniffed her out and tried scratching the door open?”
Sergeant Fast frowned. That was the part that bothered him. “What now, Makaffie?”
“Insid
e the closet… do you see anything resembling an access or electrical panel?”
“Stand by.” Fast took a step toward the darkened closet, shining his light in the corners and to the ceiling that the scientist had hanged herself from. His boot bumped into a footstool she’d been standing on during those last minutes of her life.
“Check behind her,” offered Kimbo.
Fast pushed the swinging corpse to the side. It felt as though it weighed nothing at all. Like it was constructed of paper. A macabre piñata. The movement, after so many years of stationary existence, caused some long-decayed fiber in the belt or whatever she’d hanged herself from to snap, and the corpse tumbled to the floor. A cloud of dust billowed up into the faces of the two Legion candidates.
“Oh, sick,” coughed Kimbo, fanning the cloud away.
Fast likewise coughed and blinked the dust from his eyes, looking through watery eyes at the panel. “Found it.”
“Pop it open,” Makaffie said, his voice revealing an edge of excitement. “But don’t touch anything inside.”
Fast pulled the panel open and stepped back, shining his light on two columns of round, glossy buttons. They were a variety of colors, and none of them were labeled.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Left side. Third button from the top. Should be yellow. Press it.”
Fast stepped back up to the panel, looking down as he stepped over the corpse. He pushed the legs away to better be able to stand, mumbling his apologies to the body.
He found the yellow button where Makaffie said it ought to be, and pressed it. There was a series of clanks, then the room lit up with soft red emergency lighting.
“Okay, don’t press anything else. Come on back out here.”
“Copy.” Fast nodded to Kimbo, who took point and led the way out of the office and back to the newly illuminated corridor.
The brothers were waiting with Wild Man and Makaffie.
“One more room up ahead and then the hall splits at a T-shaped intersection a ways further down,” said Big.
“Tried the door before we came back,” added Junior. “Locked.”
“Electrical locks are tied into the emergency system,” Makaffie said, watching his motion scanner as he got up from a knee. “Should be unlocked now. Can we move up, Sergeant?”
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 39
