“I think I’ve finally got it,” Mingo said from the consoles. “Hemingford, you look like you’re not doing anything but picking your ass. Get over here and help me with this.”
While Hemingford went over to help disable the force fields, Llewellyn paced impatiently at the base of one of the stairs. “Okay, I’m still not getting it. If you don’t think that was Murakame that we saw on the PDM, then just who the hell do you think it was?”
“How would I know?” Marsden said. “But she said Bayne was with them, and obviously he’s not. And she didn’t even bat an eyelash when Conway said that Axel felt something for him, when every single one of us knows that Axel is completely clueless about Bayne.”
Axel did in fact look confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Bayne cursed from beyond the force field. “You’re killing me over here, Axel.”
Axel cocked her head. “You look perfectly alive and healthy to me.”
“We have no idea what sort of creatures might have been in those bubble cages,” Marsden said. “For all we know, there might have been some kind of shape shifter that was pretending to be Murakame.”
“Murakame’s still alive, though,” Conway said. “The PDMs would have told us if she were dead.” As if to confirm this, she glanced down at her own PDM again. Whatever she saw there made her frown.
“What is it?” Marsden asked.
“It says that Murakame is still alive, but the life signs I’m picking up from her are weird. Irregular heartbeat, low blood-pressure, and her brainwave activity—well, I don’t even have the slightest clue how to characterize that. It’s all over the place. She may not be dead, but her body is under significant distress.”
“It couldn’t just be from her earlier injuries?” Marsden asked.
“Some of those symptoms, maybe. But not all of them. And she’s not the only one showing bodily distress.”
“Who else?” Marsden asked.
Conway paled. “It looks like all of them. Every member of Delta team who isn’t currently here with us seems to be in some kind of danger.”
As Marsden cursed, Mingo came over to him. “I think we’re all done here. I know which controls to use to deactivate the force fields, and I’ve saved as much data from the ship that I possibly can in such a short period of time. If we weren’t fighting for our lives at this point, there would probably be a treasure trove of information we could get from the ship.”
“So what’s the plan instead?” Llewellyn asked.
Mingo stood straighter and got a grim look on his face. “We go back to our original mission parameters. Clearly, the life we’ve found on the ship is hostile. Our first and foremost job now is to eliminate all threats.”
“Is that such a good idea?” Marsden asked. “Our numbers are already depleted, and just from two threats. If every single one of those bubbles had some kind of deadly creature in it, then I don’t see how we can possibly sterilize the whole ship.”
“Really?” Axel asked as she fingers a wad of plastic explosives she had pulled from a pouch. She was absent mindedly rolling it into the shape of a grenade. “Because I see how we can do it quite easily.”
“If you’re suggesting we just blow up the ship and everything on it, that would be counter to why we were sent here to begin with,” Conway said. “The first objective was to secure the site so that the Science Corps could come in and do their thing with it.”
“Since I’m currently the highest conscious member in the chain of command, the decision falls to me,” Mingo said. “And as much as we could learn from this ship and the creatures on it, I’m going to go with Axel on this one. Look at what Hairy and the crab swarm did to two teams of highly trained Recon Marines. If anything from this ship were to get off this planet and back to a human-inhabited world, the results would be devastating. We can’t run the risk. The data we managed to pull from the ship is going to satisfy the Science Corps for now.”
“Fine. I’m outvoted, not that I really had a vote anyway,” Conway said. “But that leaves the question of how we’re going to destroy the ship. One or two well placed explosive charges aren’t going to be enough to destroy the entire ship along with everything on it.”
“No, but hopefully we can find some key weak points in the data we’ve collected,” Mingo said. “As we’re on our way, I’ll have several of you marines combing through the translations as they come through. Look for anything that A, would help us take out any threats that we come across, and B, will give us some way to eliminate the entire ship.”
“And in the mean time?” Marsden asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mingo said. “We’re Recon Marines. We don’t leave our own behind if there’s still any chance at all that they could live. We’re going to go find the rest of Delta team and get them out of here.”
They had the force fields down shortly after that. Bayne, Trieloff, and the other two from Delta team joined them in the command room, where they all made sure they were properly reloaded and ready to go. Dollarhyde at this point was conscious again, but she was still in no shape to walk. Conway rigged up a makeshift stretcher and then lashed the stretcher with Dollarhyde on it to Bayne’s heavy ammo packs. He was the one most likely to be able to pull her without tiring. Once they were all ready, Mingo took the lead down the hall from which Bayne and the others had come from. Marsden poured over the still-translating data as they walked.
“It looks like we’ve got something to call our mysterious alien race that ran this ship,” Marsden said. “If this translation is correct, then they literally call themselves something to the effect of ‘The Stenani, but better.’”
“That could be a mouthful,” Mossier said. “Especially if we’re trying to curse their names and their grandmothers while we’re in the middle of battle.”
“Call them the Sten-Plus, then,” Marsden said. “I’m not seeing any specifics about their origins or their relation to the Stenani, but the translation program is listing a long list of very rude words they apparently call their non-Plus brethren. I guess there’s no love lost between the two races, if they really are two separate races at all.”
“All of that is well and good,” Mingo said, “but considering all of the Sten-Plus on this ship appear to be dead, I’m not too worried about them quite yet.”
“Not yet, no, but a lot of this information looks very worrying,” Marsden said.
“Worrying in what way?” Conway asked. Marsden held up a hand for her to give him a moment as he read the data scrolling across his PDM. They continued to slink carefully down the corridor as he did, with everyone very careful to check corners and listen for any incoming threat.
“Okay,” Marsden finally said. “If the translation is right, and I don’t see any reason to doubt that it is at this point, it’s very important that someone among us survives and makes it back to Command.”
“That sounds like an omelet,” Bayne said.
“Wait, it sounds like what?” Chunda asked him.
“An omelet. You know, that thing where it sounds like something bad is about to happen.”
They all paused as they tried to translate what Bayne was trying to say. Apparently he could sometimes be tougher to understand than the previously unknown alien language currently decoding itself on their PDMs.
“Uh, I think he means it sounds ominous,” Marsden said. “And yes, it is.”
“Don’t leave us in suspense, Marsden,” Mingo said.
“Wait, does anybody smell something?” Zhou asked.
“Seriously guys, just stop it,” Bayne said. “I know I don’t smell like violets, but I don’t smell as bad as…” He sniffed the air. “I don’t smell as bad as that.”
“Smells like a skunk,” Zhou said.
After a second to process that, Mingo screamed. “Everyone, take cover! Defensive…”
Something moved down the corridor ahead of them with a flash of speed that turned it into little more than a blur. Most of th
e marines managed to jump to either side of the corridor in time, leaving an open path down the center, and Dollarhyde protested incoherently as her stretcher was upended in the process. The only two who didn’t manage to get out of the way in time were Mingo and Zhou.
Marsden hadn’t known what to think of Bayne’s and Trieloff’s description of the creature when they had first mentioned it, but with the brief glimpse he got in those first few seconds, Marsden realized there couldn’t have possibly been any other way to describe it. It was tall. It seemed to be hairy. And whatever it did to Mingo and Zhou, it accomplished it with a brutal, bloody efficiency that Marsden would have never thought possible from a living creature. The thing hit Mingo head on, and the impression Marsden got was that Mingo was ripped neatly in half. Zhou wasn’t in exactly the middle of the hallway, so he fared slightly better. Everything from his left shoulder down exploded in a gory mess that splattered all the other marines. Unable to support himself as the creature vanished down the corridor behind them, Zhou fell over to his side, causing several unidentifiable organs to leak out through the massive gaping wound.
They were all still for several seconds before the situation caught up to them. Most of the marines quickly turned around in the direction the hairy creature had gone, all of them training their weapons that way and keeping a tight hold on the triggers in case the thing suddenly came back. The smell had subsided, so Marsden didn’t think it was coming back this way.
Conway was the only one who rushed to get back into the middle of the corridor. She took a quick glance at the remains of Mingo and, with the calm that only a combat medic ever seemed to possess, immediately dismissed Mingo as a complete lost cause. Zhou, on the other hand, still appeared to be breathing. Marsden joined her, taking Conway’s med kit from her and preparing to hand her anything she needed.
“If Zhou’s going to have any chance of surviving at all,” Conway said, “then the first thing we need to do is cauterize the wound.”
Marsden looked down at the gaping mass of gore where Zhou’s left arm, leg, and parts of his rib cage were missing, and he immediately knew that there really wasn’t any chance for Zhou to live at all. Not that he was going to tell Conway that. He’d learned in the past that there was no way to stop a Recon Marines combat medic from tending to someone if they believed there was even the slightest chance the victim could live. Rather than try to stop her and get her to conserve their medical supplies, it was best to just let Conway do her thing.
“Hand me the CV5 canister,” Conway said to Marsden. He quickly rooted through her pack and found the can of medicated gel. It was similar to what she had used on Dollarhyde, as far as Marsden’s limited combat medicine knowledge could tell him, but it was for far more extreme situations like amputations.
Zhou’s eyes rolled back in his head and he looked like he was trying to say something, but before he could he spit up a gout of dark blood. Before Conway deployed the med gel, Zhou’s chest stopped moving and a last few bubbles of bloody spittle came out of the side of his mouth with his death rattle.
“Conway, stop,” Marsden said.
“No, I can still…” Conway paused, as though seeing the severity of the ruined man before her for the first time. All of their PDMs had already declared Zhou dead. She was simply the last one to acknowledge it.
August 2, 2147 (Earth Calendar)
1956 Greenwich Mean Time
Location: Corridor of Sten-Plus Spacecraft, Bullfinch-2
Marine Heartbeats Detected on Planet: 34
“We need to get out of this main hallway,” Marsden said. With Mingo dead, that made him the highest ranking marine here except for Dollarhyde, who was still too out of it at the moment to give commands, and Arizona, wherever she might be. “Hairy might come back.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Llewellyn asked. “So far we don’t have any map data on anything other than the two main corridors, and so far the layout of this place doesn’t exactly look intuitive.”
“No, I’m not sure at all,” Marsden said. “But I do know that Hairy has managed to take out three of us so far without anyone even being able to get a shot off at it. Judging from its size, it shouldn’t be able to travel as quickly down smaller corridors. Or at least I hope.”
Essentia, a younger recruit who had taken over going over the translation data now that Mingo was gone and Marsden was busy trying to keep them all alive, chimed in. “It looks like the information the Sten-Plus had on that creature supports that idea,” she said. “There’s a note in its file that, in the event that it were to escape on the ship, tighter corridors were the best way to defend against it. Apparently it can fit, but it doesn’t like being slowed down.”
“That’s good to know,” Marsden said as he led all them down the nearest side hallway. “Is there anything else in there that would be able to help us?”
“Loads,” Essentia said. “Too much of it for me to just rattle off right now.”
“Keep digging through it,” Marsden said. “Any tiny detail could be the difference between life and death.”
As they cautiously proceeded down the new corridor, Conway asked, “Do we even know where we’re trying to go? The ten remaining members of Delta team could be anywhere, and if you still want to keep radio silence, it’s not exactly like we can ping them and ask them all where they are.”
“The only option that I see is to head back in the direction of the bubble cage room,” Marsden said. “It’s the last place anyone saw them, so it has to be the first place where we look.”
“It’s also where we’re probably going to find a whole bunch of things that want to rip us apart,” Bayne said. Marsden simply nodded. Bayne was right, but there was no way around that without considering leaving their fellow marines behind. That wasn’t an option.
“Marsden, you started to say something right before Hairy attacked us,” Axel said. “Something about how it was important for us to get out of here and warn Command about what we saw here. What were you talking about?”
“While I was going through the translated files, I came across something like—I don’t know. It was some kind of manifesto or mission statement for the Sten-Plus regarding the purpose of this ship,” Marsden said. “It seems that while humans might not have been aware of the existence of the Sten-Plus before now, they have certainly been aware of us.”
“What do you mean?” Mossier asked.
“I mean they’ve been watching us. Humanity in general, but the Recon Marines in particular. The statement said that whoever was in charge of the Sten-Plus has been watching our skirmishes and interactions with other alien races, especially the Stenani. And they’ve decided that we’re a threat.”
“What does that have to do with this ship?” Conway asked.
“The best the translation program could come up with is calling this ship a biological weapons research facility. Top secret, as far as I could tell. It’s been going to a wide variety of planets we haven’t found yet, and it’s been gathering any alien life that the Sten-Plus could use against us in the event that they decide they need to go to war with us. The creatures on this ship were apparently hand selected to be the weapons that would cause humanity the most damage.”
“Shit,” Laughingmoon said. “So far I would definitely say that their plan is working.”
“There were also a few vague references to ‘other measures’ that the Sten-Plus might be preparing to use against humans,” Marsden said. “So yeah, we need to get this information to Command. A lot more lives than just our own are riding on it.”
“Marsden, I wasn’t kidding when I said there was a lot of data on the creatures that are loose on this ship,” Essentia said. “Is there anything specific I should be looking for at first?”
“Yeah,” Marsden said. “Specifically look for anything that might explain what we saw earlier with Murakame. Make that your top priority.”
“Looks like there’s some kind of larger room up ahead,” Trieloff said.
“It might be a good place for something to try ambushing us.”
“Agreed,” Marsden said. “Everyone, stay focused and ready.”
The room they came to was larger than the command room, yet it didn’t appear to be as large as the room with the bubble cages. Like everything else on the ship, this room had a peculiar organic look. In the center of the room, with irregular stairs and catwalks leading all around it, there was a single large structure that appeared to pulse weakly with blue light. Something about the multi-chambered structure of it made Marsden think of a heart, but for some reason there were no lights on in the ceiling like there had been in other rooms, leaving most of the room cast in shadow.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but this place looks like some kind of power core,” Conway said.
“I don’t think I will correct you,” Marsden said. “Essentia? Anything you can find on this place in the data files.”
“Give me a second,” she said as she scrolled through the massive amount of data crowding her PDM screen. “Right. Here’s a reference to a secondary power room. Or is it a third? Hold on… okay. Three. Apparently there are three power cores that supply power to the entire ship.”
“How does that thing even work?” Hemingford asked.
One of the other marines sniffed. “I don’t know, but it smells a hell of a lot better than Hairy did. It’s almost pleasant. Like flowers.”
“Marsden,” Axel said. “This would probably be the perfect place to set some charges. It’s kind of difficult to tell with the technology we’ve seen so far, but maybe if we destroyed all three of the power cores at once, that would be enough to destroy the whole ship.”
Marsden nodded. “Sounds like a better plan than anything else we’ve been able to come up with so far. Would you be able to set it up to remote detonate all three cores at the same time?”
“Affirmative. Just let me rig this room, and all we would have to do from there is find the other two.”
“Great,” Marsden said. “Then we find the rest of our people, get a safe distance from the ship, and blow this entire place sky high. Essentia, see if you can find anything to support the idea that this would work.”
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