by J. N. Chaney
Only Rackham and I remained within ten meters of Tanner, and I wasn’t about to let anyone get an inch closer until we knew what the hell was happening. “Siggy, private line.”
“The line is now secured, sir,” said Sigmond through the comm in my ear.
“Give me an update,” I ordered as I watched the Union soldier in front of me slowly lose his mind. “Give me something. What’s happening to this guy?”
“I’m afraid the foreign liquid burning through his suit has damaged many of the sensors monitoring his vitals,” said Sigmond. “Based on the readings I can still gather, he appears to be experiencing strange fluctuations in brain activity. His breathing is accelerated, and he appears to be going into shock.”
“Tanner,” Rackham said sternly, the soothing tone long gone from his voice. “Stand down. Get ahold of yourself!”
“Pipe in Dressler,” I commanded, referring to the secured line Sigmond and I currently shared.
“Yes, sir,” said the Cognitive.
“Captain,” Dressler said, her voice tense. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
“What’s happening, Doc?” I asked.
She hesitated as Tanner screamed once more in agony, and part of me wanted to look at her to snap her out of whatever she might be experiencing. I needed her to focus, but I also needed to keep an eye on the crazy man in front of me.
“Dressler!” I shouted.
“I knew the liquid would burn on contact,” she said abruptly, as if I’d shaken her awake. “But it seems that perhaps it’s entered his blood stream as well, and it seems to be slowly dissolving his cells from within, turning his body into a kind of hydrocarbon soup.” She hesitated a moment, and I heard her gag softly at the idea. “It also seems to be affecting his brain the most immediately. Before you ask, no, there would be no coming back from that, and he poses a huge risk with that gun at his side. There’s absolutely nothing we can do for him.”
“Dandy,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t need a deranged soldier on this mission—or ever. “Siggy, pipe in Rackham.”
“Yes, sir.”
“…don’t have to do this,” Rackham said as I came in on the middle of the private conversation he was having with Tanner.
“Rackham, listen to me close,” I snapped. “You have ten seconds to either get him to stand down or put a bullet in him. This ain’t going to end well for anyone if he keeps carrying on like this, you understand me?”
“He’s injured, Captain,” Rackham snapped back. “What do you want me to—”
“That may be so, but he’s also armed and losing his godsdamn mind!”
“I’m going to make Vick proud,” Tanner cackled. His eyes were still wide, and I couldn’t see the irises to them anymore. Steam hissed from his nose and mouth, fogging the visor. The Union soldier lifted his gun and held it to Rackham’s head, crowing. “I’ll do what you couldn’t do, Rackham. I’ll be better.”
“Rackham!” I bellowed, my finger on the trigger as my rifle snapped up and I took aim on Tanner’s forehead.
“Tanner, put the gun down!” Rackham shouted.
Tanner didn’t budge. With the barrel of his pistol pressed against his lieutenant’s helmet, steam grew thicker with every passing second as the entire hand burned away.
“Or maybe…” Tanner said ominously, trailing off as his eyes scanned the faces around him. “Or maybe I’ll take you.” He aimed his gun at Bolin, his pointer finger wrapping around the trigger.
With my rifle aimed on him, I went to squeeze the trigger. Before I could fire, however, Rackham shot off a single round. The neutronium-tipped bullet sliced through Tanner’s throat before the man could get a shot off at Bolin. Blood splattered against the polished white pod behind him as he bled out on the floor, sputtering in his final breaths. Tanner’s gun slid along the floor toward Bolin, and I released the pressure from my own trigger to keep from wasting a second bullet.
It burned me, though—that Lieutenant Rackham had saved my crewman’s life, and not me. Still, I could swallow my pride enough to be grateful Bolin hadn’t been hurt. “Bolin, are you—”
“I’m fine, Captain,” he said, breathing heavily. I briefly tilted my head to check on him, never letting Rackham or Tanner out of my sight. The burly man stood nearest to me, his rifle trained on the corpse before us all. His men flanked him, all of their fingers on their triggers, ready to defend their friend and leader.
This could have ended in a firefight of wasted neutronium and a lot of blood, maybe even damaged intel. I shook my head in anger and walked around the destroyed pod to find the steaming body of what was once Tanner now lying on the floor. Smoke billowed from him, faster now, and I motioned for everyone to stay back. “Leave him,” I ordered. “Get what you can, but no one touches him.”
“We don’t leave men behind, like you Renegades,” sneered one of the Union soldiers, disdain dripping from every word. “He’s our friend, and we’re not leaving him to rot on some godsforsaken metal planet!”
I turned on my heel, lowering my rifle only slightly as I glared at the other Union soldier. “You will because if you so much as touch him, you stand the very real chance of sharing the same fate as your buddy.” I took a few steps closer, never shifting my gaze from the foolhardy idiot before me. “But we both know what you really want, right? A promotion. You want to know what else he has on him. You want something to bring back to your boss. Was he really your friend? Did you even know him before this mission?”
The soldier squared his shoulders, and I saw the hand holding his rifle twitch as though he wanted to aim it toward me.
“Sir,” said Sigmond through the comm in my ear. “I apologize for the intrusion, but the Union soldier you’re speaking to experienced an erratic change in his pulse when you accused him just now. The evidence strongly suggests he’s lying to you.”
I’d figured as much. I didn’t need a suit scan to tell me that. I could read it on the asshole’s face—he thought I was some gullible and sentimental fool, and I didn’t mind righting that wrong.
“Rackham, you and your men wait in the hallway,” I ordered, never breaking eye contact with the soldier standing before me. “The rest of you, gather what you can find and return to the ships.”
“We’re taking him,” insisted the Union soldier, nodding toward the smoldering corpse at our feet with a grim frown.
“You try, you join him,” I warned, my voice dangerously low.
“Stand down, Barkley,” Rackham ordered.
“Both of you,” I added, tilting my rifle toward the other Union soldier nearby who was getting a little too close to angling his rifle toward me.
The four of us faced off, glaring each other down, daring the others to move first. I kept a careful eye on Rackham, not quite believing the Union officer would have my back should the moment call for it.
Before I could so much as give the order, Freddie and Abigail appeared on each side of me, their guns trained on the soldiers. I heard my two friends ready their rifles and pistols from behind me, and I knew without having to look that all of the barrels were trained on the idiots trying to disobey the joint orders of their commanding officer.
“Hey, had to try,” the soldier named Barkley said. He lowered his gun, admitting defeat, and the other followed suit shortly thereafter.
“Now get,” I said, gesturing toward the door with my rifle.
The soldiers walked past Tanner’s corpse without so much as looking down at his body as the remains sizzled and smoked. Rackham followed, the last to leave, his shoulders squared as he joined his soldiers in the hall. As the doors shut behind them, he shot me one last somber look.
“Siggy, do me a favor,” I said.
“Of course, sir,” said the Cognitive. “What can I do for you?”
“If I ever agree to a Union alliance again, find a way to smack me with something,” I ordered. “Hard.”
“Of course, sir,” said the Cognitive. “I’m sur
e Ms. Lucia would be happy to assist.”
13
After an hour or so of rummaging through the strange room with the pods, the walk to the ships was a quiet one. None of us spoke as we hauled what we could find back to the shuttle, though I was mostly quiet because I was keeping a close eye on the Union soldiers marching ahead of me, pretending they didn’t feel my glare on the backs of their necks.
Thanks to Dressler’s direction, we’d managed to scrounge up some useful bits of tech from among the pods. Hard drives, mostly—at least as close to them as we could figure, as Celestial tech was truly unlike anything we’d ever seen before. They had been connected to some kind of supercomputer, and while we didn’t have all the details yet, Dressler had apparently managed to scrape together and download quite a bit of what promised to be useful information. I wasn’t so confident, however. There was a time when we had banked on the scout ship having useful data, and all it did was bring us here.
My crew looked antsy as we loaded the new cargo. We weren’t done here, not yet, even though everyone seemed about ready to leave. Though Freddie especially looked set to jump on the ships and bail, I wasn’t about to give the retreat order until I was sure we had something undeniably useful. We might never get another shot at getting intel off this planet, and I had to play it safe. Well, as safe as possible on a metal planet created by the enemy.
I thought of Tanner’s corpse, still smoking on the floor back in that room up above us, nothing but boiling blood and bones by the time we’d left. Truth be told, I still couldn’t believe Dressler wanted to bring back samples of that disgusting goop that had fried him. I hated the thought of the Union ever getting hold of it. Were they to weaponize the blue slime, it could easily make them unstoppable. Most of all, though, I hated the idea of that poison being on my ship, but she knew more about this stuff than me. On this, I had to just trust her word that it would be useful and hope she was right.
There was that word again—hope. I sure didn’t like how often I’d been using it lately. So much of even this mission relied on it: the hope we would find something useful; the hope we would be able to decode it; the hope we would be able to actually figure out how to use it as a weapon against the Celestials before they crushed us all to dust.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I hated being backed into a corner, but the gods help the fool who tried to keep me pinned.
We had outfitted one of our shuttles to act as a storage container, which was operated entirely by Sigmond. Once secured, no human passenger would be aboard, and the equipment and supplies would be ferried back to the Nebula Prospect at once.
I remained by the door until the last person left, careful to ensure everything Dressler had catalogued so far made it. I didn’t trust these Union soldiers and their sticky fingers, not after what we’d witnessed upstairs. Not that I trusted them before, but I liked them a hell of a lot less now, and that was saying something.
“Lock it up, Siggy,” I said, smacking my palm against the wall.
“Yes, Captain,” said the Cognitive. The door to the storage shuttle closed, and I knew I could at least rest easy that what we’d found so far was safe.
I made my way back out to the hangar, careful to check my suit locks and oxygen levels before I stepped into the Celestials’ vacant loading bay. My crew mingled about, armed and ready for my next orders. A little green light blinked on the Union device nearby as it tracked the movement—or lack thereof—around us. Rackham’s tech guy knelt beside it, reading something on a screen and ignoring the rest of us.
I surveyed my crew as they clumped in groups, somber and silent. Abigail checked the magazine on her rifle for the sixth or seventh time, clearly just trying to distract herself. Bolin’s men circled around him, debating something and gesturing now and then toward the Union soldiers, who stood off on their own on the outskirts. Freddie and Petra huddled together nearby, talking in hushed tones. I briefly debated telling Siggy to let me listen in, but I didn’t want to interrupt an intimate moment if they were having one. Not so much out of courtesy, mind you; I just didn’t care for those kinds of talks. Besides, my people would loop me in if it was something important.
Contrary to popular belief, I had a heart. I knew none of them had enjoyed watching a man dissolve alive, even if he was a former—and potential—enemy. He’d trained a gun on my crew and threatened even his own commanding officer, and that set us all on edge. We had expected the people trying to kill us would come from outside our ranks, not within, and it left everyone unsettled to say the least.
This mission came with more risk than I cared for, and I needed my people to focus. They had to be sharp, resilient, and clear on the goal or we would never make it out of here alive. One mistake could cost us everything and everyone here, and I couldn’t let them continue without knowing for sure they were clear on that.
Besides—given what they had all just endured, I figured they needed a reminder of why we were here.
“Keep in mind what’s at stake,” I said through the shared link between all the suits. Everyone’s head turned toward me as I walked into the center of the landing bay, and I could see the carefully guarded expressions on those standing nearby. “We’re here because Earth needs us to be strong. To push past the limits of everything we think we can do and be better. For them. To keep them alive and give them a real shot and a life that ain’t all blood and death.” I pointed up toward the curved glass above us. “We were reminded, up there, of just what the enemy can do. Everything about them is deadly, and we’re on this gods-forsaken metal planet for only one reason—to find a way to end them. All evidence points to that answer being somewhere on this megastructure, and dammit, I aim to find it.”
I paused, wondering if I needed to go on, but there was a distinct shift in the energy buzzing through my crew. Bolin and his men all stood a little taller as I spoke, adjusting their grips on their rifles. Freddie squared his shoulders as I finished my pretty little speech. One by one, my people stood taller, and I knew they’d recovered well enough to continue.
Good. I needed them to focus because the most difficult parts still lay ahead.
“We can’t search this place as one unit,” I continued. “Not with so many branching hallways. Just like we experienced on the stairs, we’re sitting ducks in a group this big. That’s why we’re splitting into squads. Thanks to Siggy’s map scans, we’ve discovered there are three hallways branching off from this hangar, which in turn branch again at deeper points. First, I want Lucia—”
“Babysitting,” she said curtly, interrupting as she gripped her staff tighter. “I figured.”
“Yeah, sure,” I groaned inwardly, choosing to just move on instead of engaging the irritable old woman. “Leif, take Tunnel One. It’s the one we’ve best mapped thus far, and our scans show it has three other tunnels branching off after a short distance. Split your soldiers into three groups to accommodate that. I’ll leave assignments to you.”
“Yes, Captain,” the Eternal leader said, turning away from me so he could address his soldiers. With a few taps on his helmet, he switched over to another comm line so that he and his people wouldn’t talk over me.
“Abby, Freddie, Petra, and Dressler, you’re with me in Tunnel Two,” I said, pointing to each person as I spoke. “Bolin, you and your guys come with me for now. There are a few forks in the road, and I may have you branch off later should the need arise.”
“You got it,” said Bolin, nodding as he adjusted the slew of weapons strung over his back. I had to admit—having a walking armory on my team was a nice bonus in a place like this.
“And us?” Rackham said, arms crossed as he once more studied me with that unreadable expression of his. “Tunnel three, I take it?”
I let out a slow breath as I debated what to do with them. Part of me wanted to tie them to something in the hangar to make sure they didn’t wander off, collecting more goo and boiling alive. The smarter bit of me knew we needed the boots on the ground to e
xplore the planet and continue mapping the tunnels. Even if they did steal something, I could always make sure Sigmond gave them the special treatment before they left my boat. I could make sure he scanned every cavity they had in the most unpleasant ways possible to ensure they weren’t taking anything with them that didn’t need to enter Union control.
I briefly debated sending Bolin’s men to keep an eye on them, but I didn’t want to send any of my people with the folks who had just considered leveling their weapons at my face. After that one soldier’s little stunt upstairs, I wouldn’t put it past any of these guys to orchestrate a little accident involving any of my crew.
“Yeah, you lot take Tunnel Three,” I said after a brief pause, gesturing between Rackham’s remaining men. “Since you all get along so well and everything.”
The soldiers behind Rackham shifted uneasily, none of them looking at me now that they’d been properly put in their places. Only Rackham held my gaze.
I gestured over my shoulder in the vague direction of their scanner. “With your tech guy monitoring the device, that leaves you with a team of five, including yourself,” I pointed out. “Think you can handle it with a team that small, Rackham?”
“Of course,” the Union man said coolly, shrugging as if we weren’t about to enter impossibly dangerous territory.
“Peachy,” I said, forcing a thin smile, but I was no idiot. “Siggy, private line,” I added quietly, tilting my body away from them so Rackham wouldn’t be able to guess what I was talking about.
“Yes, sir,” answered the Cognitive.
“Watch their every move, you understand me? If they deviate or so much as look at something valuable, you tell me right away. Don’t interrupt me with the lesser stuff, but keep your body cams going and record everything,” I added. “If they so much as scratch their asses, I want to know once I get back.”
“Of course, Captain, though I assume that would be a very unpleasant thing to watch.”
“Not now, Siggy,” I chastised, hardly in the mood for jokes.