Lea shook her head. “You’re so full of shit sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” Her impish smirk didn’t help Lea’s mood. “No… I’m serious. After we listened in on you-know-who, I did some digging. None of the old-timers I talked to would speak of the place. I only found a few vague references to the station from the ship’s computer.”
“Listen, there are few old-timers in space. Second, anyone who qualifies as old, or might know about this damned place, is knocked out because of the gravity.” Lea took a sip of her coffee. “Don’t buy into the hype. Baal would never risk his family on a dangerous run. Besides, there is no such thing as ghosts. Someone, probably your toy boy, is pulling your leg.”
Tian shook her head. “People are afraid of something out there… Someone has been tracking my hacks, shutting down sensors. You need to take this seriously… It isn’t just DiSanto. I spoke to several—”
Out of frustration, Lea slapped her hands on the table. “You need to stop before you get carried away. This is only a rescue mission.”
The disembodied voice of the ever-present number two came over the MC. “Standby for maneuvers in ten minutes. People, find a place to hold on. Time to start decelerating.” Lea had never met the woman. It seemed like she was always on the bridge, taking care of the ship.
There was no time to coast. Tian was right, they were burning higher than one gravity. She didn’t imagine the extra weight. Now they would need to burn hard to slow down and match the speed of a haunted rock hurtling through space. A game of billiards where all the balls moved about the felt at blistering speeds.
“Stay here.” Lea gave Tian the order without thinking. It would have been much safer to stay with her coffee in the mess rather than taking an urgent trip to the bridge. The anchored tables provided the needed security so none floated off the deck during maneuvers. The urge to find out what was going on overwhelmed her better judgment. There was plenty of time to reach the bridge.
She hadn’t made the locked blast door that segregated the bridge from the rest of the ship when the main engines shut off. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
Without the thrust of the massive engines, the ship lost the perception of gravity. Lea lost contact with the deck. A quicker person might have pushed off the deck to reach some safety. Lea’s body froze when her toes left the deck.
Indeed, the ship did maneuver, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. The small anteroom twisted around her body, turning her stomach sour in the process. The liquid in her standard cup floated free. Reflexively, she covered the hot liquid with her hand. The scalding liquid soaked into her blue jumpsuit. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to not scream at the pain. Rather, she contorted her body in a vain struggle to reach any handhold before the gravity returned with deceleration. The cup emptied in the process.
The engines never fired. Gravity didn’t return. Chances were high she would have continued to float in the space between bulkheads if the pressure door hadn’t opened.
There was the bridge crew stretched out before her, strapped into acceleration couches. The scene was nothing like she expected.
“What the hell?” Lea twisted in the air, trying to save some amount of her dignity.
Number two’s disembodied voice called out, “Baal, we have a visitor.”
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
Now that he’d escaped the three women and their constant nagging, Reo sort of missed the company. Despite the fact he knew the three were only projections of his mind, they gave him other voices to listen to.
Despite his fear and loneliness, he pressed on. What choice did he have?
He knew now he’d been drugged. For a split second he woke. Someone drugged him before fully gaining consciousness. If he’d completely awoke, he might have done something to stop his captivity. Now he was trapped in this damned drug-induced dream state.
The dress, wall, gate, the spiders… they must represent something. Damned if he could figure it out. The rhyming riddle made no sense, either.
The problem with seeing the future was many people didn’t know what the signs meant until after life ran its course.
Now looming before him stood a Japanese castle, a shiro. In a way, it only made sense, given the nature of his dreams. It was going to be this or a dungeon. Chances were high he would finally find the big bad inside in the shape of a dragon. His youth of playing too many games came back to haunt him.
The spiders moved much quicker than he dared. They had disappeared up the path and made their way into the castle. Reo followed the herd, like a piper called to him.
Hunger and exhaustion overrode the fear he might normally feel. Tired of the bullshit his mind forced him through, he trudged to the bridge that led to the castle gate. The view into the courtyard was clear. No gate or portcullis stood ready to stop him. All he needed to do was stroll right in.
“Well, this sucks,” Reo whispered to himself before taking the next few tentative steps into the dark castle. He just knew some monster was going to jump out of the dark. They only waited for the right time to scare the shit out of him.
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
“What the hell is going on?” Lea’s voice shrieked in her own ears. It must have sounded crazed to the crewmembers waking up from their drug-induced slumber. Only a few sat at terminals now.
Doctor Dragon Lady floated from around the corner and pushed Lea into the far wall.
The added thrust wasn’t huge, but the action surprised the hell out of Lea.
“Will you shut up and leave the bridge? You have no business here,” Doctor Abe growled.
“Bullshit.” Lea launched herself from the bulkhead at Mindy’s midriff.
If Lea hadn’t overreacted, she might have seen the diminutive woman still held onto a rail over the hatch. With the dexterity of a gymnast, the young doctor pulled her body into a ball before kicking her legs out into Lea’s face.
The hollow sound of her skull impacting with the wall was the last thing Lea heard.
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
Reo opened his eyes.
From instinct, he flinched and covered his eyes. There was no dragon waiting for him, only the unthinkable. An image of a humongous brain burned into his memory.
He expected to be strapped to a med couch, instead, he floated free. Drops of blood floated alongside him. A quick survey of the area proved his fear: he was alone.
His hands did a quick search of his body. He found no signs he’d been damaged enough to bleed. The drops of blood must not be his.
What was that brain… What does it all mean?
Odd to find himself alone and free, he didn’t want to waste the opportunity. Something bad happened, he knew it. Rolling over, he was able to reach the rail of the med couch. That was when he spotted the pale hand that protruded from under the frame.
With a pull, he came to fully view below the bedding. He didn’t need to check. From the odd angles the body was bent and the blood, he knew the person crammed under him must be dead.
Besides, unblinking dead eyes stared back at him.
Morbid curiosity tugged at his heart. Reo pulled himself lower. Anything to understand what happened to the body. The orange coveralls were stained dark red with blood.
Reo nearly barfed. The man had been folded and stacked under the table. Bones crushed to make him fit.
The lighting began to flicker. The compartment was in danger of losing electricity. If the ship lost power, he might never escape this place and the body it held. What other horrors might be lurking in the sealed rooms around him?
“What the hell did I sleep through?” He pushed off towards the door.
It didn’t respond to the wave of his hand.
He was trapped.
Locked in.
Now, only the thought of escape came to mind. One after another, he tore open lockers, searching for anything to h
elp. The thought he might be safer inside the med bay never crossed his mind.
Something or someone murdered the man under the table while Reo slept. He didn’t want to still be in the compartment if it came back to finish the job.
The last locker he opened held a wicked-looking Halligan tool used for emergency extraction, basically, a fancy pry bar. Reo hefted the weight of the meter-long bar of steel. In a pinch, the fork and spikes projecting from either end would make an effective weapon.
For now, he attacked the door.
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
Something was wrong.
The lights went out.
A small flashing light over the exit was the only guide to freedom.
By the time he forced the door wide enough to escape, sweat poured into his eyes. Jacob pulled himself from the quarters he’d been assigned. Only the blue emergency lighting remained in the corridor outside.
The miner wasn’t alone. Down the hall crawled the silhouette he knew too well. Someone had taken control of a suit, his four-armed mining rig. The tail swished as it took out sensors and lights that littered the hall walls.
It was tearing the hell out of the ship from the inside. Jacob knew the power the rig carried. It would be child’s play for the unit to burst through the hull and decompress the ship. Something needed to be done ASAP, or the family ship was dead.
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
“Something has infected the ship…” Baal’s voice echoed over the bridge. “Damn it! Get me control of my ship!”
It was strange for Lea to hear those words with her eyes closed. Risking a peek, she found herself floating on the bridge. Where she had hoped to find answers, she only found chaos. Four crewmembers worked at terminals, feverishly clicking away on keys.
“Number two, status report,” Baal shouted.
“I’m sorry, sir, it seems my files have become corrupted. I have no control… over the ship.”
It was the female voice Lea had come to trust as being in charge. Her brain wasn’t working. The voice didn’t come from a human.
“Just stay there. We are all right for now,” Doctor Dragon Lady whispered in her ear.
Lea tried to turn, but Mindy held her shoulders from behind.
With a deep growl in his voice, Baal said, “Number two, open a ship-wide call.”
“I can’t do that, sir…” The woman’s voice broke down into electronic interference. “Something is attacking me…” She went dead.
“The second in command is a computer?” Lea hissed.
“Not just a computer, the highest level of AI FlyRight has to offer. Long ago, it was installed on the Virgil as part of the payment for services rendered.”
“And you never thought to tell anyone?” Lea was shocked. Sentiment on Earth concerning AI was all over the place, but a great deal of the population feared what an intelligent computer might bring to humanity, namely their destruction.
After several failed attempts at creating a smart ship and the loss of life most attached to the AI and PITA programs, human-enhanced computers and most AI research on Earth ended. More like the Earth’s governments passed laws making the research illegal. There was a reason Gonzo had been coined as space sickness. It all stemmed from a space-sick PITA computer. Few trusted what might happen if the computers ever got too smart.
Lea should have known the corporations would never let something like the law get in the way of profits. What she thought was ancient history came back in this horror show.
Pacing and shouting, Master Baal spit a string of obscenities at the crew who fought to gain control of his ship. He shifted from one station to another, searching for any relief from the attack before continuing.
Lea spotted the unthinkable. Her attention was grabbed by what could only be described as a metal insect making its way over the clear panels that allowed the expansive view of space.
Lea’s right hand shook as she pointed at the mechanical monstrosity. “Look! What is that?” She screamed in horror.
Baal stopped his rant and followed her finger toward the glass. The last operator he’d parked behind followed the creature as it tested the glass with two front legs. Sound might not travel in the abyss of space, but the clicking sound of metal on glass was obvious on the bridge.
Baal whispered, “Evac the bridge. We can’t control the ship from here.” He pulled the woman from her console, pushing her toward the exit. “Make for engineering.”
Mindy used Lea’s body to push off. Doctor Dragon Lady headed for the safety past the pressure door. Lea floated towards the spider.
With nothing to stop her advance, her eyes became transfixed on the unthinkable. That was when she spotted the FlyRight emblem on the bottom side of the damned creature.
<=OO=>
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
Indecision froze Jacob. If there were gravity, and his legs worked, he should have run for his life. Rather, he floated there, the gears of his brain locked up while he debated the next course of action.
As with most times, the failure to act caused a situation where he had no choice. The lock that separated this section of the ship from the umbilical beyond opened behind him with a clank. The lumbering suit turned toward the sound.
Jacob was literally caught between the unknown in both directions. However, he couldn’t take his eyes off his familiar suit. The faceplate, which normally protected him from the hazards of space, was missing. It was plain to see no one was inside the suit.
All four arms and the two legs worked perfectly now. The tail of the suit hung overhead like a scorpion, ready to strike.
Jacob thought of only one sentence: dum spiro spero. He closed his eyes, the end unavoidable.
Before he died, Ava and Sweets flew past him. He knew it was the two women because they shouted all manner of words in their attack, screaming like Valkyries as they headed into battle.
The sound forced him to open his eyes. In their hands, they held improvised bludgeons. The pair didn’t have a chance against the armored suit. They still attacked with fearless abandon.
Before they reached the target, the tail lashed out and slapped Ava in the face. The woman’s head snapped back. A bloody spray splashed from the wounds.
Like a ragdoll, her lifeless body flew at Jacob, knocking the wind out of him and carrying them both to the pressure door down the hall. They hit the bulkhead door with enough force to cross his eyes in pain.
From behind the suit, there was a flash of movement. It was the stranger from the sickbay. He’d thrust his body toward the back of the suit, a long prybar held out like a lance.
Sweets screamed when the top pair of arms gripped her wrists and pulled hard. If not for the attack from behind, she would have lost an arm, or maybe both, pulled from the sockets.
Sparks flew from the communication module at the base of the skull. The suit went limp, holding Sweets’s arms spread in a death grip. If the suit had moved a fraction more, Sweets would be dead, torn asunder.
Recovering slightly, Jacob checked Ava for a pulse. He found none. The man who attacked the suit continued to smash the helmet until the sparks stopped flying. Sweets had lost consciousness.
“I… I think it’s dead now.” Jacob wanted to help Sweets, but the man with the prybar carried an insane manner about him.
His eyes flashed Jacob’s direction. “They’re here…” He raised the bar high, ready to attack.
Jacob cringed. Logic escaped his thinking. “Look… I’m not one of them. I’m pretty sure that woman isn’t one of them.” The miner displayed his empty palms. “I’m pretty sure she isn’t one of them… Can I help her?” Jacob didn’t know who “them” was, but Sweets hanging there was too easy a target for the maniac.
Slowly, the man let the prybar drop and whispered. “Not human…”
“Who isn’t?” Jacob floated next to Sweets. The actuators had locked when the coms unit was destroyed. He n
eeded to drain the hydraulics to free her. It would take time. Time, he feared, was not on their side.
“They aren’t,” the stranger said.
Jacob started on the right maintenance panel. “Listen, buddy, I need to get this woman free… Please don’t brain me while I work.”
“Reo…” The man cleared his throat. Sanity briefly returned to his eyes. “My name is Reo Ng… From Manila… I come from Manila.”
“Great.” Jacob went back to work. He didn’t need all the information, but who was he to question a crazy person. “Call me Jacob.”
It only took pulling one wire, and the clamp grip latched tight on Sweets’s right arm released. One problem at a time…
Chapter 23:
AD 2100 Inner Belt – Virgil
Throughout history, the mess decks on Earthbound oceangoing ships provided a location for auxiliary medical services. The added space was used in times of strife to provide an open area to treat the wounded. A place where doctors made the hard decisions about who lived or died. Battlefield triage, it was called. Another example of man playing at being God.
When humankind made the leap into space, the thought of treating mass casualties never crossed the early astronauts’ minds. There was never a crew large enough to warrant the need for triage. As the ships grew in size and complexity, larger crews were taken into the dark. Family ships not only carried crew but the whole clan, including children. Never built for fighting, the ships still needed a place of last refuge.
The mess decks returned to their original purpose. The Virgil’s mess was no different. Not only was it the place medical personal reported to during an accident, but it was also the section of the ship most protected by shielding near the core of the grid, the spine, that held the whole of the ship together. It was the last place defended in times of emergency. Now that control of the ship had been lost, the survivors staggered into the refuge.
Belters Page 24
