by S M Wright
Straining, they pried it open and carried on to the hangar bay proper. All the way, Katya wished the lights would stop flickering. Her head ached at their constant shifts, dots clouding her vision, promising a migraine. What might as well have been an ice pick being driven through her head sent pain spiraling through her body. She clicked her tongue against her teeth and hunched over, pressing her palms against her upper legs. A hand rested on her back, causing her to stiffen.
"You all right?" Rein asked.
"Fine," she managed after the pain subsided. "The lights are bothering me. That's all." She straightened, forcing his hand from her back. A dull throbbing took residence behind her right eye. "I'm turning up my light’s intensity."
As if on cue, the area surrounding them grew inky and undefined. Rein followed her example and upped the intensity of his helmet's light. With their two beams, more of the hangar bay revealed itself.
Several fighters were missing, their vacant spaces highlighted by glowing orange lights in the bay's floor. A few had been misplaced, drifting from their designated squares, possibly when the Aletheia had listed—as would be expected in an attack. Their positioning and the scattered bits of debris all spoke to that theory; however, the lack of damage on the displaced fighters didn't match. They would have toppled, crashed into each other. No, these were all too organized. That knowledge stuck to Katya like a burr. Then there were the missing fighters—including some from the suspended levels above—and the lack of wreckage upon their approach. Had the warship jumped and left them behind, or had it been the fighters that had left?
Katya walked around one of the fighters and froze, blood rushing from her face and lips. A large area had been cleared in the middle of the hangar bay. It . . . Thud. Thud. Thud-thud. Her heartbeat echoed in her helmet. A knot in her throat blocked the cycled air from her lungs. Corpses. Lines of corpses. Her eyes darted over them, trying not to linger on any one face. She lurched backward, nearly tripping.
Curses exited Rein's mouth while his suit rustled upon his stumbling away from the scene. Katya bowed, resting her hands on her thigh as tremors overtook her legs.
Inhale. Exhale.
She staggered forward.
Remain clinical. Look without really looking.
They all shared similarities: extremely pale with black, in most cases, wavy hair—all humanoid. Katya clenched her teeth together.
Inhale.
She shifted downward, nearly falling as she hunched over one of the corpses. Female.
Exhale.
She steadied herself. This was not the first corpse she had seen in her life, nor was it the worst she had seen to date. There’d been badly decomposed bodies on Reznic, some horribly mutilated, but she had never been confronted by so much death all at once. The vastness of the hangar bay—what else it might hold—towered over her.
Focus.
An exit wound glared at Katya from the corpse's forehead. Most, if not all, bore similar wounds. Blood smeared the metal floor, pooling, darkening, and congealing in spots. It coated her suit’s feet, which conversely left imprints in it. If not for filtration, she would smell it. A blotchy blue tint had spread across the lower part of the woman's exposed neck; her blood had already begun to pool. Katya reached out and touched her arm. Stiff, almost inflexible.
"Let's . . . let's g-get out of here," Rein choked on the words. "Leave whatever devilry happened here."
Katya pressed her hands into her legs as she stood. She strode down the rows of dead, approximately one hundred in number: a good chunk of a crew. "Who could have done this? The Oneiroi . . . most would run rather than fight them or even speak with them. To be able to line them up and execute them one by one . . ."
They varied in age and sex. Some in uniform, others had probably been removed from private quarters as they wore partial uniforms, fatigues, or civvies. Not all displayed signs of rigor mortis yet, she determined after further examination. Katya, herself, had never met a member of the Oneiroi despite her long career with the Magistrate. It was always better to keep one's head down, and by following that adage, she’d minimized her brushes with Elites.
"We need to check the logs . . . their communications," she said, extracting herself from the rows. One part of her screamed: Leave the dead to the dead. Another feared they’d haunt her, their glassy, unseeing eyes never leaving her. Too many unanswered questions. Nausea spread through her body as she staggered back to Rein, who stared at her, mouth opening and closing.
Eventually, he found his tongue. "You've got to be crazy! Don't you see these bodies? We are next." He emphasized are, making it almost a bellow. "What if whoever—whatever—did this comes back? What if they're still on this ship? What if they come back, and we can't jump ship fast enough? We'll die here!"
Her chest tightened. So many what-ifs and variables. What if they were still on the ship? What if they were harvesting data from the ship? An Elite vessel would have data and tech that would mean lost lives when placed in the wrong hands.
Katya reexamined the ship's specs, following the highlighted path. This entire enterprise could really become a shot in the brown in a matter of seconds.
"Guard this area, Rein. Give me forty-five minutes tops."
"We need to leave." He waved his arms about. "Th-this doesn't concern us. It was a mistake to even come on board. If we keep digging, it’ll be our own graves. We go back, forget ever seeing this."
But she'd never forget. Not the glassy eyes, not the angry strokes of red. Katya swallowed hard. "We need to know what we've walked into. Upper Brass will want answers, especially if they took something or if Plasovern has found a way to nullify the Oneiroi. There"—she swallowed again—"might still be survivors. We need to at least make an effort."
He shook his head. Even through his specially coated visor, his face's deepened color bled through.
The lights died as if to challenge her sanity in lingering.
"We-I can't . . ." she started.
A mechanical knocking emitted from one of panels when the lights returned. Probably the result of a system surge. She was out of her mind. Katya flinched, vision in her right eye blurring as a stabbing sensation permeated her head.
"Shii—" She doubled over.
"Are you all right?"
The room righted itself. "Yeah." Katya uncurled her body. "Fine, just fine.”
“Something isn’t fine. This ship . . .”
“It needs done.” She flung a pointed finger toward the hangar bay. “Who could do this? I want an idea of what we're dealing with; the ramifications . . . could be dire for the Magistrate.” She faced her intended route. "I'll be back soon."
Katya bolted, her feet pounding against the metal floor blocking out Rein's voice. After several feet, a few scorch marks, powerful enough to dent the metal walls but not pierce them, served as silent testaments to a struggle. Some of the marks were smaller, likely service pistols. There’d been heavy weapon fire as well.
A door to her side opened and closed repeatedly. She shuddered and withdrew from the room behind it. There’d been resistance, and those who had partaken in it had been dragged and deposited there. Likely, it wasn't the only room doubling as a mausoleum. She pushed forwarded, her jaw hurting.
At the sight of a crank wheel in the wall, Katya skidded to a stop, dropping to her knees in order to operate it. Several clicks later the emergency passageway lay exposed. Her chest constricted: The shaft stretched endlessly in both directions. Forty-five minutes had been a stretch.
She activated her com, patching in both Rein and Mina. "I'll need a bit longer. Mina, boost power to the sensor array. I don't want us to be surprised."
"Boosting power now."
"How much longer?" Rein asked, probably biting his tongue.
Katya put one hand ahead of the other as she began her ascent. "A few more minutes. I'll keep you informed."
There was no answer, and she kept climbing. She was being overly generous. She wasn’t an academy student an
ymore, though she hadn’t slouched in her fitness regime in the intervening years. Gritting her teeth, she propelled herself upward.
Rein, you’d better not abandon me in this tomb.
Controlling her breaths, she buried the thought. One rung after another, she proceeded until the muscles in her arms and legs burned and pulled taut, threatening to snap. It conjured memories of academy life: the tough martial arts training, obstacle courses, midnight runs, drills. She winced as the emergency lights failed once again, obscuring her field of vision beyond the path of her helmet's light.
"Dam—" She plummeted when her hand slipped off a rung. "Damn it!"
Her suit's magnetic safety components, sensing the sudden drop, activated and clapped her to the tunnel's metal walls, rattling her bones. Katya gulped for air, her limbs shaking. Experimentally, she pressed her tongue against her teeth, expecting to find at least one chipped.
Keep going. Keep going. Just keep . . . She rested her helmeted head against the rung above her. Deep breaths, steady breaths. When her heart settled, she deactivated the suit's magnets and swung upward.
"Got this," Katya said as she pressed on.
Her fingers trembled along with the rest of her body by the time she reached the bridge level’s hatch. She wrapped one of her arms through a rung and worked the lever with her free hand, maneuvering it just right until it hissed open.
Katya fell through the hatch onto her stomach, huffing as her lungs struggled to satisfy her body's need for oxygen. She rested like that for a few minutes until her trembling muscles relaxed and her breathing grew more controlled. Only then did Katya stagger to her feet, using the wall as a brace. It'd be a long way back down. She shuddered, feeling clammy.
Her hand, as she stumbled on, brushed against a divot in the wall. A larger firefight had occurred on this level. Burns scored the walls in greater groups. Meters down, Katya came across more grime and bodies, left where they had fallen. All of them bore uniforms with higher ranking insignias. The elites of the Elites.
She stepped past a pool of congealing blood and other matter. Teetering to the side, she avoided stepping on a man whose head tilted up at an unnatural angle toward her, dried blood exiting the corners of his mouth. He and the rest had attempted a last stand here, to keep their attackers from the bridge.
Removing her weapon, she left him and dodged other bodies along her way. She tilted away from an open door, likely to private quarters, expecting more carnage. Her tongue clicked against her front teeth as another tinge of pain echoed from her right temple. The lights, while dimmed, remained a steady presence, the power proving more stable on this level. Katya lowered her hand. With her helmet on, it was pointless to try and massage the ache away. Still, it burrowed into her, spotting her vision.
Ahead, her destination's entrance beckoned, pried haphazardly open by force; the panel to it hissed and emitted sparks. The intruders had made it all the way, eroding any prospect of survivors. Finger on the trigger, Katya pressed on to the bridge, only to pivot out again, slamming her back against the nearest wall for cover from the burly figure at one console.
It was anything but Oneiroi.
Silence. No movement even. Use the lapse. Act now.
Charging in, Katya fired a blast into the back of the large, hirsute creature. It jerked, only not in the manner of something living.
Slinking forward—satisfied that the other three of its kind were equally as dead—she lugged the creature from the panel it had been draped over. She relinquished her grip, recoiling from the creature's pinched and pulled face filled with sharp teeth that poked out at odd angles. Fresh. The blood coming out around those teeth and down its flat, barely present nose was fresh. Her eyes darted to the deceased Oneiroi scattered across the bridge. Too fresh. The other three creatures exhibited the same type of damage. And they all bore Magistrate insignias. Had they been investigating, much like she was now?
She approached an Oneiroi crew member who bore a weapon's burn, large caliber, through her back and turned her stiff body over, revealing the woman's blotchy face, purpling in death. Her uniform bore the insignia of an admiral. A woman admiral. Katya blinked.
"Are you there yet?" Rein's voice boomed over their shared line.
Katya cursed in old Riautus, a phrase her father had been fond of using. "Yes. There are four others up here—they're not Oneiroi. Sharp teeth, angularly placed. Their faces are somewhat narrow with furrows around their jaws, flat noses. A large amount of body hair. Freshly killed—I'm not sure what did it; it's silent up here. They appear to be able to stand vertically, or largely vertically."
"You need to get out of there now. Those sound like Breks. They'll tear you limb from limb if there are more on broad."
She didn't doubt that. They harbored a massive amount of muscle. She’d never seen the species before but knew their reputations—particularly the one they'd garnered during the Re'alle Conflict. Conflict perhaps too polite a word to describe it.
"I'm going to get what I can from the system. It should take less time for me to climb down." Katya paused. "Mina, are we still clear?"
"Yes."
"Katya," Rein said with an edge to his tone.
"A few minutes more."
Katya freed the connector to her wrist device and plugged in to the console. No passcode screen popped up, allowing her to transfer what data could be salvaged. As she waited for it to finish, she noted that the other system consoles had been met with weapon's fire. Spying a bulky, high-tech device called a breaker, Katya realized the Breks had been in the process of clearing the ship's systems. Her skin prickled. Had it been their mission, or their only recourse to finding the ship’s inhabitants slaughtered?
A green light flickered, showing the rate of transfer. She scowled at the size of the download. Little remained, and it'd likely finish in matter of minutes. She could take the breaker, but the thought of trying to lug it down the maintenance tubes curdled her stomach.
Her gaze landed on the woman, the admiral. Her eyes were open, staring into the ether. Above her left breast, an engraved metal tag remained in place: K. Sarris.
Her device beeped, signaling the end of the transfers. Disconnecting from the computer, she headed toward the exit, only to stop and approach the woman. Katya bent over her and, despite her gloved hands, closed the admiral's eyes. There'd be one less set to haunt her.
"Go in peace."
She implemented that saying, jogging from the bridge. Rendezvousing took priority—well, second priority. Her first remained not meeting whatever had done in the Breks. Fabric rustled. Katya swung around, leveling her AVI-13 as she did so. The service pistol, however, clattered to the floor.
A child. She'd almost shot a child. Her limbs shook.
The little boy, just a toddler, blinked at her, altogether unperturbed. Grasping the doorframe—the very one she'd passed over, expecting nothing but the dead—he stood on wobbly legs as if they couldn't support his weight. But his eyes . . . they stood out the most, a pale blue, with practically nonexistent pupils. Far too big for his small face. The rest resembled the dead in appearance, pale skin tone, black, wavy hair.
"Be grateful you've never run into them, Cassius. Given the order, they'd turn you into a comatose husk, shivering on the floor, just from looking them in the eye." Her previous commanding officer, Valens, had said that of the Oneiroi, for once all humor vacant from his face.
Katya backed into the wall, flinching as their eyes met. She knew nothing about the Oneiroi beyond secondhand stories . . . but he was only a child. She edged toward him, as not to frighten him or trigger any abilities he might have.
"I'm here to help." She stretched a hand out to him.
His legs gave when he tried to grab it.
"Whoa!" She caught him.
In her arms, he tilted his head at an odd angle, his eyes wide. She winced while pressing his head into her bosom, hiding the blood and bodies he’d already seen. Entering the stateroom he'd come from, Katya decided
it had belonged to the admiral given its proximity to the bridge. She freed one of her hands and grabbed a motion-photo from a nightstand. Sure enough, the woman from the bridge returned her gaze, this time with life. In the photo, she held the boy, who slept, while a man—the one in the hallway—stood to her left, his arm draped around her shoulders.
Setting the photo aside, Katya grabbed a bag that rested not far from a table. She opened it and shuffled items in: the motion-picture, a toy that had been left on the floor, wipes from the table, a couple of blankets, another toy, and a few other easily accessible items.
She rested the boy on the floor, patting his hands as he tried to cling to her. His chest moved up and down at an erratic pace. His breathing combined with his unsteady legs made her wonder if he'd been wounded during the chaos. No time to check now. She'd already wasted enough time. Pulling the bag across her front, she strapped the toddler into a nearby carrier and attached him to her back. As a finishing touch, she draped a blanket over him. He didn't need to see more.
Satisfied, Katya and her tagalong set off, arriving at the maintenance hatch within minutes. The added weight and awkward shape of the child created a challenge going down. Katya found herself panting after a few rungs. At least, he was still. Being familiar with the shaft, she skipped over rungs until her hands trembled again, forcing her to slow her pace.
The lights went out. She hitched her breath at the sudden plunge into blackness. Breathe. Calm yourself. Gritting her teeth, she pressed on, reading the door hatch numbers with her helmet's light.
Her com beeped. Draping her arm through a rung, Katya answered. "I'm not far. What's wrong?"
"Checking your whereabouts," Rein said. "The power's almost out. The energy shields here in the hangar bay won’t last much longer."
"Damn it." Katya hissed when her shoulder reverberated with pain. "I'll be there. Don’t do anything until then."
Have to hurry. She and Rein would be fine; they had suits. The boy, however . . .