MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  Feeling lost, he unlocked the shot-up cabinet below his command console and removed a thick, blue, hardbound book from the side shelf. The first edition had taken some damage in the firefight, which Fox lamented, but he opened the cover and nearly dropped it. Wedged inside the first two hundred pages was one of the black projectiles from a Cygnan rifle. That was another issue to broach. He reached for the pair of pliers on his belt. They still didn’t have a clue how the weapons worked. Not wanting to melt his own skin off, Fox carefully removed the black metal shard and set it to the side. They hadn’t figured out how to dispose of the residue, much less how to counteract the effects.

  Did a paper book hastily left in his station save his life as he cowered behind it? The question brought him more unease and Fox refused to contemplate it. Paging through the damaged tome, he looked for any reference as to how to handle the situation. He didn’t remember the admiral approaching the subject of alliances with alien nations or how to account for the strengths and weaknesses of alien ships being thrown into the mix. The entire premise had never been conceived until his lowly battleship strayed out of line.

  ***

  The distress probe launcher looked akin to a large cannon attached to the hull of the ship and fed with a conveyer belt holding a line of at least fifty additional devices in reserve. An interface system of some kind amounting to a blank, moderately-sized screen was mounted to the left side of the machine and Scott wheeled his prize up alongside it.

  Touching the side of the panel made the screen light up and show a series of commands, loosely translated from the Lyran script on one side to English on the other. It must have been designed with the port to an alien script built in, he thought. One more way they anticipated the humans’ arrival.

  He opened the active chamber of the cannon and peered inside to see the active probe attached to the ship by a single thin, fibrous wire. Scott looked back at his sample. Upon closer examination, he could see a small port at the rear of the article, out of line with the engine but which still looked to be a sealed quick-release mechanism.

  A similar cable was coiled behind the screen so Scott pulled it out and plugged it in. The screen changed as the probe became recognized and he began to dig through the logs.

  ***

  Othello opened his eyes to see a floor bathed in red light below his face. Another soldier lay sprawled out a meter or so away while he waited for feeling to return to his extremities. What had happened? He was still in his heavy combat armor and from the discomfort below him; he was also laying on his rifle. He rolled to the side and sat up to see the rest of his squad still spread all over the floor. A suit-shaped dent on the forward wall jogged his memory.

  They were on their way to the landing bay after their brief reprieve once the last battle wrapped up. They had rummaged through the armory then taken the elevator to the flight deck. He had led the team down the side hall when the ship stopped without warning and slammed them into the wall.

  He got to standing and started checking on the rest of his soldiers. “Anyone awake?” he shouted out and kicked at their feet. With a chorus of groans and curses from the majority, they started to come around. Othello pulled a number to their feet until he found one that hadn’t stirred. He didn’t need to look too close before he realized the man’s neck was broken from the strike against a hardened bulkhead.

  Something serious had happened to the ship and Othello didn’t know what was still waiting for them. “Stay here,” he ordered and jogged the rest of the distance to the entrance to the main landing bay, carefully peering around the corner before making himself a target.

  The space was dark like the hallway. The doorways were surrounded with more glowing red emergency lights but the rest was inky black. Two shuttles parked on the deck had been tossed about but being this deep in shadow, Othello couldn’t tell the extent of the damage. Without any sign of additional distress, he returned to the rest of his team.

  “What happened?” one of the soldiers asked dazedly as he approached.

  “I don’t know” Othello replied. “The hangar is beat to shit but is still intact.”

  “The bridge radio channel is dead too.”

  Othello shook his head. “I don’t know what’s happened. Can you guys spread out on this floor and see if can find any other survivors?”

  “Of course. Where are you going?”

  “I want to get to the bridge and see if they need any help. If you find anyone, stage them in the bay and we’ll go from there.”

  He tried two lifts without success before searching out one of the auxiliary ramps and climbing a wide, circular set of stairs out of the depths of the ship. Othello made it about halfway up before the dim red lights gave way to total darkness and then to random reflections of white light. He rounded a final corner and stopped dead.

  Othello knew he should have had another fifty levels to go before he expected to hit the main entrance to the command bridge. Instead of another dull wall, he was greeted by an endless expanse of stars. Half of the Lyran battleship was missing.

  Like a massive excavation, a semicircular divot had been carved out of the alien vessel, leaving Othello standing alone at the bottom of a wide basin of utter and complete devastation. In every direction, shredded metal jutted up from the internal superstructure of the Patriot while plumes of glowing plasma burned from innumerable broken lines.

  “Mystery solved,” he radioed back. “Half the gaddamn ship is gone.” A random flurry of responses came back. “That’s exactly what I’m seeing,” he clarified. “The entire tower to the bridge is not here; it looks like they hit a planet or took a nuclear strike.”

  As he continued to stand in awe at the edge, Othello couldn’t help but wonder about the systems that were still working on board. They had a shred of atmosphere left; whether it was still being recycled, he didn’t know but at least some sort of shields were still active and keeping the air from escaping into space. On top of that, they still had something resembling gravity.

  The next question was more pivotal: How long did they have left? Obviously the engines were down so it was only a matter of time before the rest of the systems started to fail. If they had to evacuate, maybe they could pile into a shuttle or two. There were still a few others spread around the ship for contingencies but in the moment Othello didn’t want to assume they’d still have the pilots to operate them. How many other survivors would they find?

  He had an epiphany. “Have you found the company of Spec Ops guys yet?”

  “Negative.”

  Othello still remained transfixed. “They took some to surgery before we launched. Get a fire team together and make a run over to the clinic to find them.” He started cycling his radio through all of the ship’s communication channels. “Patriot command, this is Othello Harris, United Space Corps. Anyone alive, please respond...”

  ***

  “Want to try it again?”

  O’Hare’s words bounced off Sergeant Allen’s mind as he continued to stare at the blank wall. It was supposed to be a door, but thirty seconds ago the control panel went completely dead. “I don’t think it’ll do any good,” he warned, but touched the key anyway. The door did not respond.

  He pulled back his face shield and looked back at the rest of his assembled team. A minute ago they were completing their final preparations for the upcoming skirmish but the ship dropped out of warp early with seconds still on the clock. The shock had thrown them to the ground and overturned their tables of equipment, a cause of concern by itself, but the door to the main hallway also activated, sealing the group away.

  The ceiling light glowed dimly red, which painted the room like a seedy back-alley shack and not the billion-dollar facility on board a trillion-dollar starship that it was. Allen’s other soldiers were still reassembling the remaining equipment that went flying when he discovered the door. It apparently wasn’t enough that they were on the last of their ammunition rations and were facing the need to switch to L
yran equipment with minimal training; now they were buried alive too.

  “Can you radio the bridge and find out what happened?”

  “Negative. The line is nothing but static.” The operator turned the small screen on his arm to show the sergeant. As he did, a profile of white noise filled the scope.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to jam those,” one of the soldiers added.

  “I don’t think we’re in the position to tell the Lyrans or anything else out here what they are or are not able to do,” O’Hare returned.

  Even though certain elements of the room were obviously straightforward and militaristic, everything had the flowing feel that was characteristic of the Lyran facilities. Multiple racks and lockers were built into the flowing walls without clear corners or edges and, the prep stations that ran down the center were level without being squared in any sense of the term. It was impossible to tell what was built in and what, if anything, was installed separately.

  “Keep trying to raise them,” Allen ordered. “What we’re going to do is find another way out. Pull everything out of the cabinets, the racks, all of it. Find any way you can to access something behind the walls. Look for service panels, doors, I don’t care; pipe fittings, conduits. Move the tables too.”

  They started at the front and began to scour the floor, looking for anything of interest. Even though they had a significant arsenal at their disposal, he wasn’t about to be the first human to find out what happened when plastic explosive met an alien force field.

  17

  “What’s your plan, sir?” Lieutenant Parks stood on the bridge beside the commander with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “I’m not too sure yet,” Grant admitted. “I need to get on to our prodigal Patriot, figure out what the hell happened, get it back under control and get back to Earth before the show gets over with.”

  “And stop Major Kael?”

  The words stung. The commander paused. Grant didn’t want to believe Kael had been responsible for the accident, but he also didn’t have the evidence to discount it. Seeing him plant a round in Rans’ back before executing her pilot was enough to haunt his mind for a good long while. Frustration and anger bit at his psyche and he fought to keep it at bay. “If it comes to that, yes.”

  They watched the darkness swirl beyond the towering shielded glass slab on the leading edge of the bridge. “Well, sir, whatever you decide, let us know and we’ll make it happen.”

  “Good. I need to run a plan by my engineer and get my ship running again. If I have to fly there, I’d rather do it myself and not risk another pilot. Are your guns active?”

  “About a quarter of them, sir, plus the mass driver. We’ve held our own so far today.”

  “That’ll have to be enough. Hopefully we won’t need them, but I might need you to kill his shields. How much longer until we get there?”

  “Twenty-two minutes,” the pilot offered.

  “Why’s it taking so long? I thought they were only five minutes away,” Grant demanded.

  “It’s all in the calculation, probably because of the precision we required. I’m not about to guess at how a Lyran gate works.”

  From the bridge, Grant left quickly to check on his ship and finalize a plan with Scott before they ran out of time. He checked over all of the external systems and ran the battery of built-in tests to convince himself he wouldn’t have any problems in the battle he was sure was coming. At some level, Grant regretted not having his maintenance crew along with them, but it was something he’d have to live without.

  “Mr. Ryan, have you found anything yet? We’re getting short on time.” The radio was silent for a second before Scott answered.

  “Yes, sir! I’m starting to dig through some of the commands they’ve got built in to the system.”

  “How so?”

  “Apparently all of the Lyran ships use a general series of commands to control every system on the ship that’ll activate or deactivate themselves based on which vessel you’re targeting.”

  “Targeting?”

  “Yes! From what I’m gathering from the system, Lyran ships are set up to be remotely controlled, probably in case of dangerous operations or as a result of combat damage.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s limited by relativistic effects, but we might be able to use it to our advantage somewhere. I can use the console to cycle the door and lights down here. Take a look.”

  Instantly the lights dimmed to the dull emergency red before coming back to full brightness. Grant shook his head and looked around the bay above his head. “You might want to be careful; we can’t risk losing another Patriot. If you’re right, it sounds like the fleet is ripe for compromise.”

  “I agree but that’s how it is. There are some security functions but maybe they were bypassed. I think I saw Major Kael drop a hardware key on the deck which gave someone else access to the systems on it.”

  “Could it be executing a script; a series of commands?”

  “Without input? Absolutely.”

  “That might be more likely. We’ve got four minutes on the clock. I’m getting ready to launch so once we drop, I’m going to need you to get me a way in.”

  “Can do. I’ve got the commands to send an exception to their shields and control the doors. What I’ll have it do is open the bay door and set it to emergency disable so they won’t be able to operate it without an in-person reset.”

  ***

  Grant slipped the flight helmet over his cranium and waited for the time to count down. “Lieutenant Parks, once we drop and locate Rans’ ship, open the front door so I can get out.”

  “Copy, Sir.”

  “Scott, ready for this?”

  “Ready and waiting.”

  “Here we go,” Parks reported in. With a gentle rumble, the Patriot dropped out of the warp and slipped again into real space. He watched from the bridge while a field of stars appeared before him, with a tiny white ship illuminated against the black far in the distance. “Target ahead. Dropping the main hatch.”

  “Scott, we’re here. Get me a way in,” Grant ordered as he fired up his engines. An unexpected rain of curses erupted through the radio.

  “Dammit! It’s not accepting anything!”

  “What?”

  “I got their landing hatch opened, but I think they know we’re here.”

  “They’re turning to run!” Parks broke in.

  “Shoot them! Slow them down!” Grant yelled. “Scott, what the hell is the problem?”

  “I don’t know. They must have seen my first command and disabled the remote connection. If you need me to do anything else, it might have to be locally.”

  An audible silence filled the channel. “THEN GRAB YOUR SHIT AND GET UP HERE! YOU’RE GOING WITH ME!”

  Scott froze, then looked from his terminal to his helmet and rifle, leaning against the table. Fear crept in but he forced it aside with action. “On my way!” Quickly he ripped the control pad from the main unit, shoved the helmet over his head, grabbed his rifle and picked up a service kit from the floor as he sprinted out of the room and back towards the landing bay.

  Down the long hallway he ran, cutting up a corkscrew of a staircase and out onto the deck of the ship. He saw Grant’s red fighter only a short distance away, flames and smoke forcing their way from the engine outlets while the commander waved him on from the top.

  Grant’s voice grew in the radio, sounded angrier with every passing second and Scott charged up to the fuselage and wedged himself into the jump seat with his equipment as fast as he could. They were already off the ground before he closed the buckle across his chest.

  “Where do you need to go? Do you need to get to the probe bay again?” Grant asked as they surged out from Parks’ alien battleship. Light flashed above the fighter as the lieutenant repeatedly struck the facing ship, trying to keep it from conserving the power required to execute another jump.

>   The flashes grew close and Scott tried not to pay attention. “Probably. Can you drop me there?”

  “Yes.” Grant cut hard to the side and lined up for an approach on the landing bay. “Almost there. Hold on.”

  The Patriot expanded quickly outside the cockpit window to the point where Scott could see the open bay doors still holding in place. Grant drove the ship hard into the hold, cut to the side and dropped the triggers on both control arms. Inside the atmosphere and enclosed space, the fighter’s three leading guns lit up and blanketed the side wall with hundreds of hardened uranium bullets, tearing effortlessly through the metal surface. “Here you go,” Grant said and dropped the SR-X to the ground while releasing the canopy above. “Find that sonofabitch.”

  Scott hopped out of his seat, ran to the edge of the ship and jumped to the ground, landing in a crouch before rushing through the blown-out hole. He got his bearing; Grant had blown out the hole a handful of meters from the closest stairwell. Scott ran towards it, pausing only to fumble his rifle up and check the corners before he continued. He nearly forgot that they were now in harm’s way.

  He ran down the ramp and sprinted back towards the probe launcher. To check himself, he typed the security command into the service console. The system defaulted to a high-resolution, wide angle camera feed of the landing bay. As it came into focus, the commander’s fighter roared in hot and dropped fast with the canopy still open. Scott watched as Grant checked each side with his rifle before standing. He got to his feet then dug into the sides of the cockpit. From somewhere he produced two moderate-sized hatchets with sharp barbs milled into the trailing edges.

  The commander stumbled as the ship shuddered and Scott quickly dove back into the console. The system was gearing up for a jump. He saw the virus access the computer, drop the coordinates and run a sequence to start the engines. “They’re jumping!”