Harris scanned the corridor up ahead, glancing down briefly at his two dead soldiers. Louis was lying in a pool of blood, the side of his neck torn open. Carter’s face was bloodied, bruised and swollen, and from the angle his head sat on his shoulders, Harris knew that his neck had been broken.
FUCK! Two more men … two more fucking men! He struggled to breathe for a moment.
“Their weapons are gone,” McKinley noted.
Harris’s eyes shot over to McKinley and Brown. McKinley was staring down at Carter’s body, his jaw clenched tight and his eyes burning with anger. Brown was bending over Louis, closing the dead soldier’s eyes. Brown’s cheeks were flushed pale, and his face held a look that was a frightening kind of numb.
“What do you want us to do, captain?” McKinley asked through gritted teeth.
Harris stared down the corridor ahead. He suddenly felt calm and cold and numb himself.
“We keep going,” he said in a low voice. “We find these fucks and we end this!”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” McKinley said moving off down the hall.
22
Revelation
Carrie raced into Doc’s examination room. He was sitting by the autoanalyzer at the end of the room, a vial of fluid in his hand, reading an e-file intently.
“Doc! Quick!” she called frantically.
He looked up at her, startled.
“Louis and Carter are dead!” she panted.
“What?” He shot up from his seat and ran toward her. “What the fuck happened?”
“They were chasing after Grolsh. Chet and Logan ambushed them,” she said as they headed for the door.
“Fuck! Where are the others?”
“They’re going after them. McKinley took out Grolsh.”
As they stepped into the corridor, on approach to the flight deck, they suddenly saw Bolkov wrestling with someone up ahead.
Someone they didn’t recognize.
They both pulled up quickly and took out their guns.
“DON’T MOVE!” Doc yelled.
The man looked over at them, rammed Bolkov into the wall and then pulled him in front as cover. They saw Bolkov’s side was covered in blood and his gun was on the floor meters away from him. Carrie tried to take aim, but it was too difficult as Bolkov was too big. Both she and Doc moved in a careful but quickened pace toward them, guns out front.
“I SAID DON’T MOVE,” Doc yelled again.
As they passed the mess hall door, something grabbed Carrie’s ankle and she tripped over. She fell flat on her stomach, forcing the air from her lungs, and her pistol went flying. She didn’t get the chance to see what it was, but something or someone quickly grabbed her feet and pulled her backward toward the doorway. Doc turned suddenly, let off three quick shots, and Carrie felt a heavy weight collapse upon her. She rolled over and saw it was yet another man she didn’t recognize. She tried to heave the heavy body off her, and Doc quickly kicked out his leg to help, keeping his gun on Bolkov’s attacker. She flashed the lieutenant a startled look, then scrambled forward to get her gun.
As they looked back toward Bolkov and the other man, she saw that they had each other by the throat. Bolkov, roaring as he did, suddenly smashed his fists down heavily on his opponent’s arms, releasing them from his neck. He swiftly stepped aside and the second he did, several shots rang out, forcing both Carrie and Doc flat back against the walls. The attacker’s chest exploded, and he slowly fell forward to reveal Packham standing there, gun fixed firmly on the man.
Carrie quickly turned around to check the corridor behind them. No-one. They continued forward as Bolkov suddenly collapsed to his knees. Doc ran up and caught him, and sat him back against the wall between the captain’s office and the flight deck. Bolkov looked down at his side. He was bleeding profusely from his wound, a river of blood flowing onto the floor.
“Jesus, we gotta get you to the hospital, Bulk,” Doc said nervously, placing his hand over it.
“Is not good, Doc.” Bolkov winced, as the color drained from his face. “Is too deep.”
Carrie saw a large, gaping slash all the way down his side, exposing the red flesh beneath. For a moment she saw something protruding from the wound, before Doc quickly pushed whatever it was back inside and tried to close the gap. The lieutenant glanced over at the other man on the floor.
“Who did this? I don’t see a knife?” he asked quickly.
Bolkov motioned into the flight deck. Carrie looked past Packham and saw yet another man lying dead on the floor.
“Fuck,” she said, “how many more are there?”
“How the hell did they get on board?” Doc asked.
Packham stepped forward, her voice trembling. “They just opened the door! Bulk saw a warning light up on the console, alerting us that someone was entering the ship. We knew it wasn’t the team. But they knew the code to get on! Bulk went to check it out and they were there … at the flight deck door!”
Bolkov grabbed at Doc’s hands that were holding his wound together. “Is not good, Doc … is okay … let go,” Bolkov said, nodding his head at Doc, the sweat shining across his pale face.
“No, Bulk. I need to stop the bleeding.” Doc stared firmly at him.
“I tell you, is no good. You’re prolonging inevitable … is no good … please.”
Doc shook his head. “I can’t do that, sergeant. I won’t do that!”
Bolkov grabbed hard at the medic’s hands, face clenched, as he mustered all his strength and tore them away. His eyes rested on Doc’s as he panted, “Even in death … I am strong.”
Doc stuck his hand on Bolkov’s shoulder and squeezed it, his eyes staring firmly into his. “Bulk, don’t do this. Let me try and help. Please, let me try …”
“I took one of them out … I am happy.” Bolkov’s eyes began to blink slowly, heavily.
Carrie looked down at the blood spilling across the floor from Bolkov’s side. Trying hard to steady the vigorous shaking that was taking over her body, the three of them remained silent, as Bolkov, slowly, quietly, died.
Doc exhaled loudly, bowing his head to the floor, eyes squeezed shut, still holding Bulk’s shoulder tightly.
“What the fuck are we going do?” Packham sounded panicked. “Even if we get the access back, who’s going to co-pilot the ship?”
Doc stood up slowly, but continued to eye Bolkov’s body. He looked devastated, disheartened, distraught.
“We’re fucked! We’re all fucked,” Packham said, shaking her head.
Doc looked at her. Somehow, he seemed to push the pain to one side. His face hardened and his jaw clenched. “Brown can do it,” he told her. “He knows this ship and how it works.”
“But he’s out there somewhere,” Packham continued, verging on hysterical. “What if he doesn’t make it back? We’re fucked!”
Doc walked over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her slightly. “He will, sergeant. We’ll call him back now. We’ll override and change the ship’s access codes, so they can’t get back on. The ship will be safe,” he said firmly, then quickly entered the flight deck.
Carrie stood at the door with her gun ready, her eyes darting between the corridor and the flight deck, trying to ignore Bulk’s dead body that sat a few feet from her. Packham followed Doc to the console. He ordered her to check the ship’s cameras and heat sensors to see if there was anyone else on the ship. Thankfully, there wasn’t. They looked at the screens and saw Harris, Brown and McKinley making their way to the end of Section Three. It looked as though Chet and Logan had disappeared again. Why?
Doc hit the comms button, taking a second to steady himself.
“Captain, this is Doc. You need to return to the ship immediately … Bolkov’s dead.”
“What?” Harris stopped walking.
“And we’ve killed three more of those guys onboard the Aurora.”
“Three more!” Harris looked around at McKinley and
Brown. “What do you mean three more? Two are dead and we only had four to begin with?”
“Well, three new ones turned up on the ship and they had our access code. We need Brown back here. He’s now Packham’s co-pilot!”
“Fuck …” Harris seemed to whisper in disbelief. He exchanged looks with McKinley and Brown, then his voice quickly hardened again. “Copy that. We’re heading back.”
*
Harris, McKinley and Brown moved swiftly back toward the dock. As they approached Carter’s and Louis’s bodies, Harris grabbed Carter by the arm and Brown grabbed Louis. They were not going to leave any of their men behind. So they dragged their bodies back to the Aurora, under McKinley’s watchful cover.
They made it back without incident. Chet and Logan were in hiding again. But why, he didn’t know. He found it odd that they’d strike then go into hiding, when they could have potentially had a good shot at the rest of them. Why are they playing with us like this?
When they got back to the ship, the three of them quickly surveyed the scene outside the flight deck. Harris looked at the three strangers’ bodies. He recognized their faces from the Darwin’s crew files. So they were here all along … And they clearly weren’t victims like he’d thought. Those fuckers have been sitting up on that secret floor watching us this whole goddamn time …
He crouched down beside Bolkov. The Russian sat there against the wall, his head hunched over as though he were asleep, a large pool of blood beside him. It was as though Bulk was giving a final slow nod to his captain. Harris reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and gave him a slow nod back, trying to fight the crushing feeling he felt inside.
He quickly pulled himself together and ordered Welles to guard the entrance while Packham and Brown got to work overriding the entry codes. He then proceeded to help McKinley and Doc move the three bodies of the Darwin crew out onto the dock, and then Carter, Louis and Bolkov’s bodies up to the hospital. When they were finished, the three of them stood there in complete silence. Shocked.
He stared at his dead soldiers. Louis’s and Carter’s bodies lay on the two free beds, and Bolkov’s on the floor, all covered with sheets. His eyes drifted to Hunter and Colt who were in their pods, out to it. Then he thought of Smith, lying in the cool room, already on ice. He closed his eyes briefly.
Decimation, he thought. It was the only word that came to mind.
Doc was the first to move among them. He turned abruptly, left the room and returned a moment later holding a vial of the fluid.
“Command has seriously fucked us in the ass on this one,” he said angrily.
Harris eyed him and the vial of fluid he held up.
“The fluid they stole,” Doc continued, “the same fluid I was injecting them with when we first got here? I ran some tests on a few bottles I had left in the store, tucked away in another spot. They’re laced with growth hormones; all the stuff on the manifests that I couldn’t find in their blood. I had to break it down to specific amino acids to find it, but they’re in there. They’ve obviously created a new masking agent to cover it in their blood, and it must be a strong fuckin’ one to have lasted this long. These growth hormones gave them their strength and their aggression, and I’ve been feeding it to them the whole fuckin’ time!” He exhaled angrily. “Command stocked this ship, captain. They planted it. They knew I’d give it to them because they seemed dehydrated.”
Harris stared at Doc for a moment. He saw McKinley watching for his reaction out of the corner of his eye.
“You weren’t to know, Doc. It’s not your fault,” Harris assured him.
“There’s something else,” Doc began, his voice a little calmer, but not in a way that made Harris feel at all comfortable. “Welles said that Grolsh was trying to drag Colt away, and that her getting shot was an accident.”
“It was. I saw it,” McKinley said.
“Well, isn’t that a bit strange when they’re not hesitating to kill the rest of us?” Doc asked them.
“What’s your point?” Harris asked him back.
“Chet and his boys don’t seem to want to kill the women for some reason. At first, I figured that maybe they were, you know, just going for the obvious.” Doc shot him a look and Harris gave a nod, understanding. “But I decided to take another look through the women’s files,” Doc continued, “and I remembered noticing when you first gave them to me, that there’d been some extra testing done on them. I didn’t realize why, until now. I just assumed the UNF was getting a little more detailed with its enrollment procedures.”
“What testing, Doc?” Harris looked hard at his lieutenant. He knew he was about to tell him something he wasn’t going to like.
Doc stared hard back. “Fertility.”
McKinley looked back and forth between the two for a second.
“Fertility?” Harris repeated in disbelief.
Doc nodded. “There’s a brief section in their files on the health of their reproductive systems, and it clearly notes that none of them are on birth control. They’re very healthy and strangely enough, all three are due to ovulate within a few days. Their files have rough dates and everything.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” Harris asked him.
“I’m saying that Command suddenly put three women on your ship, for this particular mission, for a reason. And that’s why they wouldn’t allow you to mix the women with the survivors until they were ready. Ready to start a new phase in their experiment.”
“Wait a minute,” McKinley interrupted. “Command ordered you to keep them away from the Darwin team?”
Harris nodded at him, almost ashamed. “They were not allowed off the Aurora.”
McKinley nodded to himself, as though suddenly the pieces fell into place.
Harris turned back to Doc. “Packham said before, when the fluid was stolen, that they were at the flight deck door trying to get to her. But they didn’t know I had Hunter change the access code for the flight deck, just to be sure.”
Doc nodded. “Command had access to our codes before we left. That’s how they stocked the ship.”
“It explains how they got aboard and into Doc’s rooms, but not the flight deck.” McKinley agreed.
Doc looked at Harris and clenched his jaw. “They’re trying to create the perfect soldiers,” he continued, “so why not start from scratch? Get the DNA right from day one. Imagine what good soldiers they’d be after a lifetime of mind-fucking, growth hormones, animal senses and UNF training.”
The three of them stood in silence for a few moments, soaking it in.
“You think the women knew what they signed up for?” McKinley asked. “Maybe they volunteered for those tests.”
Doc shook his head. “No. I think they just thought they were joining Space Duty, and I think it was our job to deliver them to the survivors. We were expendable. We were just the delivery boys.”
Harris stared hard at Doc for a moment. He felt a blaze of anger lick up inside him more swiftly than he’d ever felt before. He exhaled forcefully and brought his hand to his jaw and began rubbing it. He moved to rub the back of his neck, as he stared at the floor, trying hard to remove the image of Sibbie and Etta that had suddenly thrust itself inside his mind, like the blade of sharpened knife. A stab of realization, perhaps? He swore he could see their reflection in that blade, clear as day, staring at him. Had they tried to warn him of this?
“So what does this mean, then?” McKinley broke the silence.
Harris looked at him. “It means that we’re alone. We’re down five men, plus Colt, of course … and they’ll stop at nothing until they get their hands on the women.”
McKinley put his hands on his hips. “Why didn’t the UNF just bring them here themselves and do their experiments straightaway? Why bring us into it? Why risk their current stock of soldiers? It doesn’t make sense.”
Harris ground his teeth. “Who the fuck knows what the UNF was thinking … I knew there was something a
bout Martin.”
The three of them stood in silence again for a moment longer.
“Unless we were a test …” Doc suddenly offered, his eyes narrowing in thought.
“A test?” McKinley asked, furrowing his brow.
Harris looked over at Doc.
“Yeah …” Doc nodded. “Maybe it was a test to see how the new breed of soldier went against the current breed?”
Harris, hit by another realization, nodded slowly. “The third test. The first test was the Stella Maris, just a stock standard cargo crew. The second test was the Belgo, a crew of hardened ex-cons, and we’re the third. UNF soldiers. UNF soldiers flying under the radar, that not too many people will miss.”
“And the women are just the next phase of their experiment,” Doc added. “They kill us to get to them.”
Harris, McKinley and Doc all looked at each other for a moment.
“Captain, we have to tell them,” Doc said. “Welles and Packham need to know.”
Harris nodded, albeit reluctantly. “Call everyone into my office.” He went to leave, then suddenly stopped as the device he’d picked up on the Darwin moved inside his shirt. “I forgot this,” he said, pulling it out and showing it to Doc.
Doc looked at him confused.
“I took it off the Darwin just now,” Harris told him. “They left it for me. Let’s find out what they have to say.”
*
Carrie stood guard by the Aurora’s main entrance, trying hard not to think about the world of shit they were in. Three more dead in a matter of minutes … Jesus fucking Christ!
She heard Doc call her name and turned to see him standing just down the corridor.
“Captain wants everyone in his office,” he told her.
She motioned toward the entrance and went to speak, but he cut her off.
“Packham and Brown have overridden the access code. It’s safe.”
She nodded and they started down the corridor. Doc was slightly in front, but she quickened her pace to walk alongside him. He seemed anxious.
“What’s going on?” she asked, searching his face.
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