by Greg Dragon
“CIC, huh? Who else was there?”
“Nobody special, though there were more officers in attendance than I am used to seeing there, but I assumed it was due to the explosion. They all seemed pretty spun up. All of them except the commander, who seemed off somehow, or… distracted. Yeah, let’s go with that. The thing is though, Cilas, it seemed intentional, which is why I wanted to ask you if it’s normal.”
“If you think the captain is calculating, just wait until you’ve learned more of Jit Nam. He doesn’t get distracted, he’s as icy as they come, and is several moves ahead of everyone. If he seemed scatterbrained then it was an act, possibly to throw off someone in attendance. Ate, this is bad. The commander thinks we have a mole, and whomever it is knows the Nighthawks are involved.”
“Ah, I can see that, since he asked me about the investigation. The same investigation that was supposed to be classified.”
“Did anyone leave once you started your report?” Cilas said.
“I didn’t pay attention—”
“Ate!”
“What!? It’s the thyping XO. I was standing at attention to receive my orders. Unless I grow another set of eyes in the back of my head, I wouldn’t be able to stand to receive while monitoring a compartment with over twenty officers.”
“That’s fair. I assumed you were standing where you could see them. Well, I am thinking the suspects left, or gave him the evidence he was looking for. See, his first question wasn’t for you to answer, it was for him to loudly proclaim that we, Nighthawks, are not currently involved.
“If a spy from The Collective were in your midst, he or she would report that to their fellow traitors. Without being there I’m just guessing, of course, but from what I know of the commander, he’s a strategic genius. That explosion is real enough, but the commander may be worried that there is an intelligence breach. Grab Tutt and Lei, then head down to Aurora. Learn for yourself what is truly behind this thing.”
“Thanks, Cilas, that’s exactly what I thought he meant, but I needed to hear from you, since this is normally your command.”
“Show and Prove, Nighthawk,” he said. “I want more than anything else to be out of this bed, but they have so much of this junk pumping into my veins that I wouldn’t be much use to you out there. Helga, you have what it takes. Do not doubt yourself, and when you have questions, you have a veteran in Tutt. Trust your instincts and look into this thing, then find the thypes behind it and deliver them to the XO.”
8
When the transport’s doors opened, it was hard to believe they were still on the Rendron. The passageway that stretched out in front of Helga was barren, and the flickering lights made for an eerie, dreamlike experience. It felt as if she had fallen asleep and woken up inside an alternate reality.
The explosion had dislodged several storage units from the bulkhead and their cargo lay strewn about all over the deck. Thin tendrils of smoke still hung inside of the atmosphere, and there was a strong smell of burnt plastic doing a number on Helga’s nose. She pulled on her helmet and stepped out of the transport, touching her thigh to feel for her pistol, which she immediately pulled and held at the ready.
Quentin Tutt stepped past her, not saying anything, and she knew from his silence that he too was in awe. The devastation was surreal, but they could see no dead bodies or wounded engineers. It was as if everyone had vanished into thin air, taking the deceased with them.
Aurora had always been the engineer’s deck; they worked and lived here with their families.
Helga could count on one hand the number of times she had been on this level, and now she wondered at how it used to look. There were burn marks everywhere, even the overhead, and contradicted the report that this was the result of a bomb. It seemed to her that there had actually been several explosions, all strategically placed to knock down doors and blow holes in the bulkheads, granting access to the ship’s core.
The passage they were in descended into a ramp, then leveled off into a series of berthing for the crew. This hospice was now a compartment of twisted metal and collapsed bunks, with live wires everywhere, showering the darkness with sparks.
From the devastation that she now witnessed, Helga wondered if anyone survived. That is, if anyone was present, she thought. Did one of the engineers do this, after sending the rest topside?
“Whoever did this had better be dead or I swear to the maker, he is going to wish that he was,” Quentin grumbled, as he stepped clumsily over a chunk of metal that looked to be a piece of a door. She realized that the Nighthawk wasn’t used to wearing his Powered Armor Suit, since as a Marine doing recon, he would have been made to wear something of lighter material.
She wanted to ask him if he liked the PAS better, but this was neither the time nor place, and he seemed to be thirsty for blood. Helga wasn’t as optimistic about their chances; whoever was behind the explosion would have been long gone by now. Not to mention, he’d taken the time to collect bodies, so he likely would have executed the survivors.
Helga had expected to see the master-at-arms accompanied by a team of Marines, but they were alone, and the mysterious silence continued as they walked down a burned-out passageway.
The sabotage was as well thought out as it was deliberate, and if they knew that the Nighthawks were helping the XO, they would have made doubly sure to be gone before they were there. No wonder the commander was speaking in riddles, she thought. One of our spacers is involved in this.
Helga suddenly felt frightened. The implications were grave considering the current state of their ship. She hoped that Jit Nam had a suspect in mind so that they could make an arrest and force them to give up their co-conspirators.
“Lei, stand guard, here, just in case they try to corner us inside this passage,” she said.
Her mind was working overtime, since she now believed they were walking into a trap. What if Jit Nam was the one involved? He would have known that with the cycles of downtime, they would leap at a chance for action. This would have prompted him to send them here, where they could be subjected to whatever weapon had caused the explosions.
“You got it ma’am,” Raileo said, tapping his helmet. “Should have thought to bring a tracker drone, but I didn’t know what we would be seeing.”
“It’s alright, Ray, we’ll be on comms, and I’ll call you as soon as we have something,” she said.
Quentin Tutt was already moving, like a hound on a scent, and Helga followed him to the end of the passageway, where a door was cracked with smoke pouring out. He turned and waited for her to catch up and they took up positions on each side of the door. On the count of three, he nudged it open, and they both stepped in simultaneously, with him moving to the left as she secured the right.
The smoke was thick here, almost blinding, and she understood why the master-at-arms hadn’t been ordered here first. This was beyond their means of securing the ship, and there was bound to be an ambush or some sort of trap. That decision of keeping the MA at bay, and calling her to CIC to speak in code, meant that Jit Nam was aware that this was no accident, and someone in his circle was involved.
“We’ve got movement,” Quentin whispered and started forward through the smoke. Helga tried to stay close, but he was a panther on the prowl and her legs were just too short. When he led her into another compartment, she could no longer see where he was, so she pressed on slowly, checking her shadows and corners, but this place too was empty—it was reminding her of the dreadnought.
Helga considered that the saboteurs had waited for the deck to be clear, but that was near impossible for a ship the Rendron’s size. There was an open door at the end that she hadn’t seen because of the smoke. Outside was another mangled passageway, with a gaping hole in the center of one of the bulkheads.
Ducking through it, Helga pulled up short. There was a young Meluvian girl, slumped against the bulkhead. Her cadet’s uniform was shredded to the point of rags, and the burn marks on her skin sent a shiver down Helga�
�s spine.
“Ray, do you copy?” she said, as she squatted near the girl. “Oh, you poor baby,” she whispered, as she fought against the urge to touch her face. Helga reached below the young girl’s sleeve to feel if she had a pulse. She thanked the maker; the girl was surprisingly alive, but her breathing was very shallow and her eyes remained closed.
“This is Ray,” Raileo said, sounding out of breath
“Change of plans with watching our exit. I have an injured cadet, and she doesn’t look good. I’m going to need you to get her to medbay, then get back as quickly as you can.”
“On it, ma’am. I’m on my way,” he said, and Helga thanked him silently, then slid down next to the girl.
“Whoever did this is going to pay,” she promised. “You’re too young to have to be dealing with injuries and pain like this. At least not here, Maker, not on the Rendron. This is disgraceful, this is home.” She saw that the girl’s left hand was unmarked, so she reached out and took it as she sat and waited for Raileo.
“I somehow lost you, Ate. Where’s this girl?” Quentin said.
“We’re in the big hole that you walked by,” she said. “Did you not come this way? I could’ve sworn I followed you in.”
“I did, but I was pursuing what I thought was someone running off. Either my mind is playing tricks on me or this thype really disappeared.”
Helga got to her feet and touched her helmet, then pulled up the PAS’s radar to see if he was close. She saw Raileo’s dot hurrying towards her, but Quentin was much further away, working his way back to her location.
“On second thought, Tutt, keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. “Let me come to you.” She reached down and gathered the girl, surprised that she didn’t wake up from the pain. When she had her cradled in her arms, Helga backed out slowly into the passageway.
“Someone has to answer for this,” Raileo said as Helga handed her over carefully, then watched him take her out of the smoke and twisted metal. Her radar showed that despite what she said, Quentin Tutt was moving towards her location. She wanted to be upset with him for disobeying her command, but she didn’t have the energy at the moment with the injured girl still on her mind.
The big man emerged from a door near the end then walked over and stooped to examine the hole. Helga saw where she could squeeze in and out, even with the girl in her hands, Quentin would have to really work to squeeze his shoulders through. No wonder he bypassed it, she thought. That girl would have been left here if I wasn’t so small.
He stood up and pointed to the black residue around the hole. “Look familiar?” he said.
“Yes, I recognize it from when we were down on Meluvia. That’s from an incendiary round.” She brought her hand up to her mask for effect. “What in the worlds, Tutt? They shot that in here? Not only is it stupid but it means—”
“That whoever did it is still here,” Quentin said.
“Good,” Helga said. “Now let us find this thype and get some answers for the XO.”
“Ma’am, that far passage ends in a door that’s melted shut. Unless we have a torch, we’re not getting in there anytime soon. I tried to scan for life signs earlier, but I’m still new to using this suit. It does weird things, as if it has a mind of its own.”
“It sort of does,” Helga said. It felt good to have something that she could teach the hulking veteran. “It’s very sophisticated,” she said, demonstrating a move that had her hover off the deck. “It reads into your movement, but you have to train it to obey. With a little more practice, you can make yourself fly just from jumping, glide instead of running, and slide when you crouch. May as well embrace it, Tutt, it’s the only thing keeping us alive in all of this sweltering heat and smoke. Now, as to this door.” She touched her helmet and pulled up a map. “It looks like it leads to a storage compartment, and—thype me, scratch that mess. It actually leads to one of the generator rooms. Tutt, we need to get in there. If he has hostages, who knows what he plans to do with them.”
“You keep saying, ‘he’ as if we know there’s only one,” Quentin said. “Chances are we have a team of traitors in there, and judging by the damage done to the doors, they’re armed to the teeth with weapons that should only be accessible to Marines and ESOs.”
Helga thought on his words as he led her through the smoke. She pulsed her rocket boots to keep up this time as they walked past doors that the sergeant assured her had already been checked. Weapons accessible to Marines or ESOs, she thought, repeating it over and over in her head. It hinted at much more than simple unrest. This meant that the Rendron had rebels from The Collective amongst the crew.
How could they let this happen when everyone was accounted for? If you weren’t born on this ship, you were recruited as a child, too young to hold outside allegiances. She tried to think of a time in the past when they would’ve housed outsiders, and she recalled that they had docked for a time with the starship Aqnaqak.
The Nighthawk’s last mission had taken them to Meluvia to extract a rogue ESO from the Aqnaqak. Though he was one of them, a Special Forces operator, he had stolen Alliance weapons to sell to the rebels on Meluvia’s surface. The whole time they searched for him, they had expressed disbelief at one of their own turning traitor.
For one to become an ESO, one had to get through BLAST, which programmed you to commit your life to the Alliance. To go against that programming seemed absurd, yet this man stole assets and ordnance from his mothership. This had made Helga question the leadership of Aqnaqak, but now she felt foolish, since one of their own was now trying to bring the Rendron down.
She pulled up the ship’s blueprints on her HUD, panning out to see where they were in relation to the enemy. The sealed compartment was near the hull, and was one of those spaces that was near an airlock.
“Tutt, they’re dumping the bodies,” she said. “There’s an airlock in that compartment, and whoever did this sealed the door to allow them time to push them out. That little girl escaped by crawling through that blast hole.”
“Wouldn’t we see if an airlock is opened?” Quentin said, staring at the door in disbelief.
“Command would’ve missed it because it’s meant for trash, and if the enemy times it perfectly, no one will suspect a thing.”
Again it dawned on Helga just how well thought out this was. They knew when the deck cleared to minimize the chance of someone tripping an alarm, and knew where to take the hostages to hold for whatever they planned to do. Not only that, but they had stashed high-powered weapons, which would have taken some time, since engineers were never armed.
Too many traitors, she thought. Will we be able to survive this?
“What’s your orders, ma’am?” Quentin said.
“Contact the MA’s office and tell them to get some Marines on this door. I’m going outside to reach the airlock. Tutt, no one but Lei can know that I’m out there. We’ve been compromised, and I don’t know who’s reporting to the enemy. I’m going to grab some mag-boots, then slip through an airlock on the bridge deck, then I’m going to spacewalk and have a peek from the outside. I will report back what I find to help coordinate the rescue.”
Quentin seemed to hesitate as he stood in front of her, his cold eyes locked on hers as if he struggled against his instincts. “Ma’am, you’re our leader, remember? I cannot let you take a risk like that. Solo reconnaissance was what I was trained for, so you should let me go out there and pop that airlock.”
“I knew you would say that,” Helga said softly, reaching out to rest her hand on his shoulder. “You are wired to protect me, but in this instance, we have to rely on my small size and experience. I don’t have time for a full explanation, Tutt, but as a cadet I used to go out there just for fun. Plus, I know my PAS, and how to maneuver it. I will be careful. You have my word.”
9
It was a terrible situation that required a high amount of risk, but Helga would be lying if she said that she wasn’t excited to take her PAS suit outside the shi
p. She had walked through several spacers on her way to the galley, so any attempt at secrecy was doomed.
Crouched inside a trash compactor, covered in slop and maker-knew-what, she watched the timer counting down, trying to keep the doubt out of her head. There was chatter on the comms, and she listened in as Quentin and Raileo coordinated efforts to get through the door. Suddenly, they were interrupted by a new voice chiming in, and they were all surprised to hear Cilas Mec.
“Lieutenant,” Helga said, as the timer ticked below three minutes.
“Ate,” he said, excitedly. “I’ve been talking to command, and someone reported seeing you fully armored and heading towards the galley. They have a unit coming. They suspect you’re going after someone. What are you doing? Should I be concerned?”
“Negative, Rend, but I have less than two minutes, so all I can ask is that you trust me,” she said.
“I’ve been cleared for release, but I’m still groggy from whatever’s been dripping inside of my veins,” he said, and then he started rambling about his procedures, so Helga clicked off her comms. She would deal with his ire once she was back inside and this whole ordeal was over.
The timer went off and the airlock came open, sucking her out into the black. Helga pumped her legs and stiffened her muscles, activating her rockets against the trajectory that sent her towards the shields. Things were happening so fast, but she was able to gain control, and she flew below several bay windows using her HUD to find the Aurora deck.
It was harder than she’d imagined, manipulating her body as she scanned the map, all while keeping her rockets at full thrust to keep herself close to the Rendron. Even with her gifts, this was proving difficult, so she took hold of a portion of the hull, then reached inside her pack.
