The Gauloi

by Donald B McFarlane

  “How did they die?” Runo asked.

  “Are you taking the piss?” Blinji asked. “They’re missing their fucking head!”

  “Remain calm, miner.” Oto instructed. “You’ve seen dead bodies on digs before.”

  “Sure, I’ve seen dead bodies on digs before.” Blinji agreed. “But not mutilated bodies. This wasn’t done by some falling rockslide or machinery accident. This was murder.”

  That comment silenced the room.

  Runo’s mind started to race. What was going on on this ship?

  “We need to explore the rest of the ship.” Prub said dryly. “We need to try and find out what happened here.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Blinji asked, pointing at the decapitated body.

  “What is clear is that two crew members probably died from foul play.” Prub replied. “But that’s hardly enough information to go on.”

  “We’ve got to search the rest of the ship.” Runo said. “Compartment by compartment, and discover what happened to the rest of the crew.”

  “What’s that?” Inkana asked, pointing at a flashing light on the control consul.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Zaka replied. “I’ll call Runo. She has to know.” Zaka reached forward and activated the ship-wide comms button. “Runo.”

  It took a minute for a response. “Yeah.”

  “There’s a button flashing on the control panel.” Zaka replied.

  “Which button?” Runo asked. Her voice was coming in garbled.

  “It’s labelled CA.” Zaka replied.

  “Close anomaly.” Runo answered.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that something jumped into the system near the ship.”

  Zaka leaned forward, her eyes dancing between the two viewports on the bridge that offered a minimal view towards the front of the Gauloi.

  “I don’t see anything.” She said, her voice slightly shaky.

  “It could be a few things.” Runo replied.

  “But what if it’s those horrible people who said they were coming?”

  “Fuck.” Runo replied.

  “We might have a problem.” Runo said, looking at Dupina.

  “What about the rest of this ship?” The miner asked.

  Runo shook her head and looked at Prub, Blinji, and Oto. They were all staring back at her with a concerned look on their faces.

  “Alright.” She finally declared. “I’ll go to the bridge and find out what’s going on, you search the rest of the ship.” She turned to head off then stopped. “Just be careful.” She said before departing.

  Making her way off the research vessel, Runo hurried down J-Hold, past the rows and rows of stasis pods, reaching the hatch to Deck 3, she pounded on the open pad and waited for the massive hatch to move out of her way.

  When she reached the bridge, she found Zaka and Inkana both staring out of the small windows on the bridge.

  “Well?” Runo asked, moving towards her pilot’s seat.

  Sitting down, she quickly brought up the flight systems, then checked the close proximity detectors, and immediately spotted the massive ship that had jumped into the system.

  “Oh, no.” Runo said under her breath.

  Running a scan, her systems informed her that it was in the cruiser class, but of a style and configuration her systems didn’t recognise. Based on the scans, Runo suspected it was a ship that would have only been in Imperial service.

  Measuring in a close to six-hundred metres, the cruiser was a beast and appeared to be bristling with weapon systems. Even if the Gauloi was fully operational, it couldn’t outrun or escape from a ship like the that.

  “It’s not giving off any Imperial transponders.” Runo said to herself.

  “It looks black.” Zaka said.

  “Imperial warships are not black.” Runo replied. “They should be white or light blue.”

  “Well, this one is black.” Zaka snapped.

  “It’s black. I saw it.” Inkana confirmed.

  Runo shook her head. It might have been one hundred and ninety years since the Gauloi left AnBarn Central, but she doubted that the Imperial fleet would have gone to a black colour palate. The transmission they had received earlier from the Heresy Alignment was starting to sound more and more like a reality that she didn’t understand.

  “This is the Heresy Alignment ship Kirkko, prepare to be boarded.”

  The voice on the other end of the communicator sounded almost robotic to Runo.

  “Prepare for judgement.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” Inkana said.

  “No shit.” Zaka added.

  Runo checked her systems. “We’re moving.” Runo rechecked her systems. “They must have a tractor beam on that ship.” She looked up from her panel. “Fuck.” An idiotic grin coming onto her face. “Well, I guess we don’t need to worry about being dragged into that planet anymore.”

  The remark drew stares from the other two women.

  Zaka moved away from the window and tried to move her hair into place. “I suppose the only course of action now is to talk with these people. Negotiate.”

  Runo looked at Inkana, then back to Zaka. “They didn’t sound very friendly.”

  “What do you have as an alternative?”

  “Hide.” Inkana suggested.

  “That won’t work.” Zaka said sharply. “They’ll find us eventually.”

  “But what if we can hide for long enough for them to travel back to the Core?” Runo suggested. “Then maybe we could make our escape.”

  “Escape to where?” Zaka asked. “And there are no guarantees they’ll go back to the Core.”

  “Anywhere away from these loonies.” Runo replied.

  There was silence for a moment on the bridge as the three of them considered the two proposals, but it was Inkana that broke that dead-lock.

  “I think we should hide.” The prostitute said.

  “And what happens if they just blast the ship?” Zaka asked. “If we hide, we may antagonise them, and that could be mean our doom.”

  “Look.” Runo got up from her flight station. “If you want to try and talk to them, fine, but I’m going to J-Hold, I’m going to find the others, and I’m going to hide on that ship that’s stuck into the side of our hull.”

  Zaka shook her head. “You’re crazy. You don’t know anything about that ship.”

  “Yeah.” Runo said dryly. She looked at Inkana. “Alright, let’s go.”

  Runo started to walk off the crowded bridge, Inkana hot on her heels.

  “You’re making a mistake!” Zaka yelled as the two women walked away.

  Runo looked over her shoulder at Inkana. “We need to get to the other ship, and find a place to wait this out.”

  “You think it’ll be that easy?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like the sound of these Heresy people.”

  Before Runo could add to her case, the Gauloi shuddered massively.

  “We must have stopped.” Runo said, bracing herself against the corridor.

  “Where?”

  “Inside that beast that just arrived.” Runo replied.

  She looked back down the corridor from where they had come. It was dark, just like the direction they were headed. The motion sensor lights ahead of them yet to be triggered. There was a faint smell of chemicals and stale air wafting down the narrow passageway.

  “What’s going to happen?” Inkana asked, her hand gripping the arm of Runo’s survival suit.

  Runo looked at her. She was stunning, albeit a little dim. “If we’re in their hangar-bay, they’ll wait until the bay re-pressurises, then probably try to open the main airlock.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Just behind the bridge.” Runo started walking again towards the rear of the ship and 3-Deck. “We need to keep moving. We need to get you a hazard suit.”

  When the pair reached the crew stasis compartment, Runo stopped and stepped inside. The room was just as s
he had left it with the other four pods still powered on, and the reading all within acceptable parameters.

  Walking over to the control panel, Runo double-checked that all was in order, then walked back towards Inkana who was standing in the doorway. “Watch out.” Runo said, taking out her access card and slotting in the exterior control pad. Punching a few buttons, the door slid closed, followed by a heavy clank. “Locked.” She said. She wasn’t confident that the door would hold against a determined party, but it was better than nothing.

  When they reached Deck 3, Runo quickly outfitted Inkana in an emergency suit, put a helmet on her, then activated the power supply. When the air started to flow correctly, Runo put her own helmet on, and just as she was turned to move towards J deck, the ship-wide broadcast came to life.

  “This is the Heresy Alignment. You are found in violation of the Heresy Alignment territorial restrictions. The sentence for this crime is death. How do you plead?”

  Runo’s eyes were wide open in her helmet as she listened to the heavy panting in the background.

  “Fuck you.” She heard Zaka yell out.

  “Defence noted.” The almost robotic voice replied.

  “No!”

  Screams drowned out any other noise over the intercom.

  When the screaming stopped, the robotic voice breathed heavily into the intercom system.

  “All who do not renounce their crimes and swear allegiance to the Heresy Alignment will be purged of life.”

  “What was that?” Inkana asked, a look of terror on her face.

  Runo reached out and grabbed her wrist and started to move towards J-Hold. “Let’s go.”

  She was trembling slightly as they continued on their way. Runo had never come across a threat like this before, and it was the unknown that scared her.

  When they crossed the threshold into J-Hold, Runo immediately closed and locked the hatch behind them, and rapidly moved towards the hulk of the spaceship that was lodged in the side of the Gauloi. As they passed row after row of stasis pods, Runo could see that some of them were open, and groggy miners and other passengers were starting to come to their senses.

  Why some pods had decided to open was beyond her. She could even see some unfortunate victims of pods suspended on the ceiling that had unceremoniously dumped their passenger out, letting their drowsy bodies fall to their deaths.

  Inkana also noticed the figures starting to move, naked and silent inside their stasis pods. “What about them?” She asked, almost being dragged down the deck.

  “If we stop and help them, it might get us killed.” Runo said.

  Reaching the research ship, now glowing bluer than before, Runo quickly entered the ship, and closed the hatch they passed through behind.

  The group searching the ghost ship must have heard the commotion because they came running to the main hatch, startled looks on their faces.

  “You won’t believe it.” Prub said. “The whole ship, everyone is dead.”

  “Murdered.” Dupina added. “All of them. And the storage area is filled with plant pods. That’s where all these vines came from.”

  “Okay.” Runo nodded. “That’s strange, but we might have a more pressing problem.” She looked at Inkana, then back at Prub, Blinji, Dupina and Oto. “I’m pretty sure the Gauloi has been boarded, and I think that Zaka is dead.”

  “Dead?” Blinji asked. “This isn’t good.”

  “Are you sure?” Oto asked. “Did you see her die?”

  “I think we heard her.” Inkana replied.

  “Start from the top.” Oto suggested.

  “Another ship jumped into the system.” Runo started. “And then I think it brought us into its hangar bay.”

  “That’s got to be a big fucking ship.” Dupina said dryly.

  “What happened next?” Oto pushed.

  “We left the bridge.” Inkana replied.

  “Why didn’t Zaka come with you?” Prub asked.

  “She wanted to stick around and chat.” Runo said sarcastically. “We left her there and came straight here.”

  “What’s your plan?” Dupina asked, a worried look on her aged face.

  “I don’t really have a plan.” Runo admitted. “Hide.” She suggested nervously.

  “Hide.” Dupina shot back. “That’s your plan?”

  “If they killed Zaka, they’re going to kill us.” Runo said.

  “Are you sure?” Blinji asked. “What if Zaka isn’t dead? What if you’ve got your facts wrong?”

  Runo’s eyes went wide and stared at the young miner. “Do you really want to go out there and ask?”

  “Perhaps the best option is to err on the side of caution.” Prub said. “If we stay here and they find us, then that’s that, but if we go out there now, they’ll have us. Best to see how things unravel.”

  “And you want to do that from here?” Blinji asked, waving his arms around the cramped entry room the six figures were stood in. “This ship is a mortuary.”

  “And I’m telling you that there are some dangerous characters out there.” Runo said, pointing at the open hatch.

  “Do we have any remote cameras?” Prub asked.

  Everyone stopped and looked at the engineer.

  “What for?” Runo asked.

  “If we could put some remote cameras in the Gauloi and see what’s going on there, or at least on J-Hold, we might have an idea what whoever boarded the ship is up to before they get here.” Prub answered.

  Runo’s eyes darted to the deck. “There are cameras on the Gauloi, but I don’t think that they’re all working, and I’m not sure how we could get access to the ship’s systems from here.”

  “Is there an access port to the ship’s data-net at the hatch?”

  It took a moment for Runo to reply. “Yes, but I still don’t know how you’d access this ship’s systems.”

  “I’m the engineer, so leave that to me.” Prub moved to the door and looked down J-Hold towards 3-Deck. “We need a high capacity data-cable.” He turned and looked at Oto and Dupina. “Go to the bridge. You can probably get a cable from under the consul panelling.”

  The pair nodded and promptly moved off.

  “Depending on what the boarders are using to search the ship, they could be through that hatch in a few minutes or hours.” Prub said. “We need to get eyes on the inside of the Gauloi, then hold out in here as long as we can.”

  “What about the people coming out of stasis?” Inkana asked.

  “We can’t help them.” Runo replied. “We need to focus on ourselves.” She shook her head. “Everyone who is waking now will still need time to come around, and in that time, we could easily be discovered. And we don’t have any more environmental suits.”

  It took Oto and Dupina five minutes to find a long enough cable. Inspecting it, Prub nodded. “We can wire this into the Gauloi, and once it’s hooked up, it’ll take a few keystrokes, and we should be able to access most of the unsecured systems on your ship.” He said, looking at Runo.

  “Give it to me.” Runo instructed, taking the rolled-up cable. “I’ll go and hook it up to the hatch.” She looked at the others. “In the meantime, look for something to defend yourselves with.”

  Looking out of the ship, Runo scanned for movement, spotting a few drowsy looking figures moving slowly in their stasis pods. She couldn’t recall the recovery time for the standard civilian stasis pods, but she knew that sooner or later, the figures that were coming to from inside the pods would get to their feet and pose a different kind of problem.

  Stepping out of the research ship, Runo moved quickly towards the J-Hold hatch, staying as far away from the stasis pods as she could. As she passed the pods, she made a mental note of the figures that were starting to stir. Whatever was causing the pods to fail was doing so in a random pattern. The skeletons at the exit of the deck meant that some pods had been open for several years. In that time, the loneliness and desperation of those alone in the dark must have been a monumental hardship to endure
. Runo knew that all the dead would have succumbed to a lack of water long before any other ailments would have killed them. A horrible way to go.

  Reaching the hatch, Runo quickly pulled the panel above the open pad off, exposing a manual release for the hatch, a data-cable access point, and a scanner displaying the environmental conditions on both sides of the hatch. Plugging the cable in, Runo checked that the connection was secured, then started backing away from the hatch, allowing the cable to run along the ground.

  Walking backwards as quickly as she could, Runo kept her eyes locked on the large hatch at the end of the deck. She knew that if it opened with her exposed in the middle of the deck, she’d have to dive behind the closest stasis pod and hope she wasn’t spotted. All the while, she couldn’t help but notice the increase in the blue glow that was drifting through the hold. It was coming from the research ship and looked like mist as it swept slowly through the hold.

  When she reached the research ship, Prub was waiting, and took the cable from her and plugged it into the mini-datapad that came with all the hazardous suits that the six were wearing.

  “Luckily the systems on the Gauloi aren’t swanky.” He said with a smile on his face.

  “What do you mean?” Runo asked, feeling insulted slightly.

  “I wasn’t trying to offend.” Prub offered, but his attention focused on the device in his hands. “This ship is almost completely functional, even if its drive systems and several other critical systems are down.” He looked up, back into J-Hold. “The most high-tech kit on the Gauloi is the stasis pods. The rest of the ship is made up of components common to dozens of other ships, making it rather easy to interface with.”

  “Right.” Runo said.

  “How’s it coming along?” Dupina asked, looking over the engineer’s shoulder.

  “Fine.” Prub replied. “I can access the internal cameras, but only one at a time.”

  “Seeing anything?” Blinji asked.

  “I’ve only just pulled up camera one, so hold on.” He replied sharply. “Nothing.”

  “Is the camera operating?” Runo asked. “And what section is it in?”

  “It doesn’t say.” Prub replied. “It just says camera one.”

  “Try the next one.” Oto suggested.

  “Obviously.” Dupina shot out.