by Kal Spriggs
“I’ll go first,” Eric said. Just in case they found a hostile or a trap on the other side.
“Don’t shoot anyone, they may be hurt or panicked.”
Eric chuckled, her concern seemed comical, given the mounting evidence that no one remained alive, “They’re probably dead.”
She pulled her helmet back. Her face looked angry behind her helmet.
Eric frowned suddenly and sniffed at the inside of his helmet, did he smell burning hair? He wondered if he had an issue with his environmental pack. He would have to check it as soon as they got back aboard their ship.
Eric pushed past her and tapped Rastar on the shoulder and then signaled him to cover their rear. The big alien gave him a thumbs up and spun around to point his weapons back down the corridor. Eric slipped past him and then worked the hatch. The door seemed crooked on the salvaged frame, but Eric got it open, finally. He barely fit inside the tiny space inside and when Ariadne joined him, they filled the entire space. He felt uncomfortable so close to her that he could feel her press against him. Not that she wasn’t attractive, Eric felt painfully aware of that suddenly.
No, something about Ariadne made him protective of her, even from himself. She deserved someone perfect for her. All Eric had to offer would be a night or two of sex.
That thought led down a rabbit hole that he did not want to explore while in such close proximity. Particularly because she wouldn’t need her skills as a mind reader to notice where his thoughts were headed if he did not get out of the room’s confines quickly. He found a set of air bottles strapped to the wall. From the pressure, they would probably only work the airlock thrice or at most four more times.
That would have to be enough for now, Eric knew. If they had more time, they could bring over more air bottles from their ship.
Eric opened a valve and a moment later his suit showed the pressure rise. It seemed to take forever, but the pressure finally balanced out near standard atmospheric pressure and Eric cut off the flow. He worked the wheel on the bridge hatch, and then grunted as he pushed on it. It felt jammed, and for a moment, he got nowhere. Then it lurched open and he heard a hiss as the pressure equalized between the two chambers.
The hatch swung wide, propelled by Eric’s shove, and he swung with it, drawn along by inertia. It slammed against the wall and started to bounce back. Eric grabbed hold of a handhold in time to prevent its return swing. It felt for a moment like he had jerked his shoulder out of its socket.
Eric glanced around the bridge. It looked pretty basic. A couple crash seats, some simple control panels, and hatch out the back. Eric frowned at that. That hatch must lead to another airlock behind the bridge projection. They hadn’t seen that when they came in, probably because of the angle, and the spin of the ship, he guessed. He peered through the small porthole on it and he could make out stars. The other door must lay open to space.
He looked over to see Ariadne open up her helmet. “You idiot, we don’t know if there’s some kind of poison or something in the air. Maybe plague.”
She shrugged, “It stinks, but I’m still alive so far.”
Eric grimaced. Truth to tell, in the dark bridge, his tinted helmet made it hard to see. He pulled his own off a moment later, and then wrinkled his nose at the stink. “That’s not just stale air, that’s…”
“Rotting blood,” Ariadne pointed at a broad set of black stains across the deck. Eric looked again and noticed a cooler lashed down against the bulkhead there. And a bloody combat knife with bits stuck to the blade hung from a cable tied off to the cooler. “I think I might be sick.”
Eric opened his mouth to console her, but instead he said, “Be sick in the corner away from the consoles, we don’t know which one is important yet.” Great move, jackass, he thought.
He pulled himself over to the one console with lights. “I think this is the communications console,” he said. He found a cable spliced into the panel and traced it down to a heavy box. “Probably the battery power that keeps it live.”
“Where did the survivors go?” Ariadne asked. Her voice sounded shaky, but Eric had to give her props for keeping her breakfast down.
“If I had to guess…” Eric said, “The last of them went nuts trapped in here. One of them killed the others, and then when he realized what he’d done, he took a walk out yonder airlock, probably without a suit.” Eric didn’t have much sympathy for whoever it was. That cooler and the gore around it suggested just how sick that bastard had gone.
“That’s…”
“Horrible, yeah,” Eric shrugged, the galaxy had more than its fair share of horrible events. “Hey, help me get this radio to work so I can talk with Mike. He needs to know what we’ve found just to make a better decision on what we do next.”
“Sure,” Ariadne looked the console over. “I think this is the recording.” She flipped a switch. “And here, this should be transmit…” She pulled out a headset. “Simon, this is Ariadne, can you read me?”
Eric rolled his eyes, “Are you serious, have you never heard of radio discipline? That’s an open net, anyone could be listening.”
Ariadne ignored him, “Hey Simon, yeah good to hear your voice too. We’re on the bridge, looks like someone survived a while, but… well we think the last survivor killed the others up here and then… what was that? Yeah, you probably don’t want to know.”
Eric waited impatiently, “Tell him no sign of pirate activity, yet, but we need to search the ship to be sure. Ask him if there’s any threats outside. I can get down to the ship to man the weapons right away if he needs me-”
Ariadne held up a hand impatiently, “Yes. Sure thing. Are you sure about that?”
“Is he sure about what?” Eric asked. Had Mike decided to pull them out? Really need Pixel to get on personal radios, he thought, I hate not knowing what is happening. He couldn’t even tap his foot impatiently in microgravity, when he tried, it started to send him in a spin.
“We’ll do that, I’ll let them both know,” Ariadne looked over, “Mike says that there’s no sign of any hostiles so far. Simon has scanned the entire area around us, and done active sweeps of the area as well. Nothing yet.”
“So…not a trap?” Eric asked. He almost felt let down.
“Looks like we can relax,” Ariadne smiled. “He sent Crowe over, along with Mandy and Miranda. Also, when Simon finishes his last sweep, he’ll relieve Anubus at the airlock and he’ll join us. Mike wants the ship searched. Anything we can use we’ll take. Priority is food, weapons, parts, and then whatever else we need. I’ll help Crowe out up here if he needs it, then join you in searching the ship.”
Eric nodded, but he couldn’t shake the impression that they had missed something. Something important, or at least something that he should not have missed. He worried about everything that could go wrong with the crew scattered all over the ship without radios. “We need to stay in groups, at least two people…”
Ariadne nodded. “Of course. I don’t want to wander this spooky place by myself.”
“Also, let Mike know that we’ll need a couple more air tanks for the makeshift airlock in here.” Eric glanced at the rear airlock. He could suggest that they use it to move up without the passage through the ship’s interior, but they had no means to recover anyone who drifted off the hull.
He waited while Ariadne passed that information along. “Alright, I’ll go out and join Rastar. I’ll send Crowe in when he gets here and then we’ll start a search of the ship. Ask Crowe to get the ships log up first.” He paused, because he realized that he had taken charge. He felt a sudden surge of pity for Ariadne, stuck between Mike on the radio and himself. “Any suggestions?”
“Be careful,” Ariadne said. “Even if there’s no one on the ship, there could be hazards from cargo or just damage to the ship. We don’t want to lose anyone, so just use caution.”
“Right,” Eric nodded. “I’ll pass that along too.” He thought suddenly of Rastar, alone in the corridor. He hoped his impul
sive friend had not gone to find trouble while he waited.
“Shit, I need to tell Rastar that Crowe is on his way up, I wouldn’t want him to shoot him,” Eric pushed off to the hatch.
“Right, that would be… uh, really terrible,” Ariadne said with something less than total sincerity.
Eric gave her a smirk as he pulled the hatch closed. At least someone got through her cheerful nature sometimes. He would have to tell Crowe to ease off a bit, though who knew if the other man would listen.
Yet the last thing he saw as the hatch closed was the blood and the bloody knife. That blood and the callus disassembly of people chilled him. For a moment, he didn’t see the bridge or Ariadne.
He saw the ‘package’ that Andreysiak had wanted retrieved.
* * *
Eric lost Simulak and Miku in the tunnels below the building. Most of Andreysiak’s security team died in the same firefight. Eric led the counterattack and rolled the enemy back, but by then the damage was done. They lost immediate pursuit after the first kilometer, but Eric knew it would only take a few minutes for the enemy to widen their search area and localize them again.
The lack of resistance meant that they moved fast. They came back out to street level as they drew within a hundred meters of the target. Andreysiak had pointed at a parked van, which lay parked off the street just past a police barricade.
“Jenkins, take down the police, everyone else, establish a perimeter,” Eric said over his squad net. “Colonel Andreysiak, you and your security team are up.”
“Yee-haw!” Jenkins shouted over the net. His CKY pistol made little noise with its integral suppressor and had minimal visual signature. Both police at the barricade dropped before they had time to call for help. With any luck, the squad jammers would prevent any panic signals from the dead men’s equipment which monitored their life-signs.
Two more security men piled out of the front doors of the van at Andreysiak’s signal and moved to the back. More out of random curiosity than anything else, Eric positioned himself where he could see the contents of the van. Which was why he had to bite back a swear when they dragged the bloody woman out. Seams of scar tissue ran along her arms and legs and parallel to her spine. They had her secured to a gurney and Eric saw bloody welts around her wrists and ankles where she’d fought those restraints.
“What the hell is this?” Eric asked.
“This is none of your business, Sergeant Striker,” Andreysiak said. “Leave it be.”
Eric looked back at the woman, and for a moment, he met her gaze. Her eyes seemed to open as two twin pits of hell. What the hell is Blackthorn, he thought, and how can I make these bastards pay for what they did to her?
For a second, he considered a quick order to take down Andreysiak and the remainder of his security team. Without direct supervision, his command would have no way to verify what had happened. Certainly, he trusted his people to keep their mouths shut. The story could go easy enough, ‘ran into an ambush when we proceeded to a secondary site on Blackthorn Five’s orders.’
But Eric knew they would have a long push to get to LZ Bravo. How many of his people would die along the way? He would save more of them at this point if he went along with Andreysiak’s plan, so long as the bastard had some means for extraction as he had stated.
It all made so much sense at the time, but when he looked back, Eric figured the prisoner showed exactly what level of trust he should have given Andreysiak.
* * *
Eric hung from the top of the lift shaft as Rastar moved into the second deck of the crew quarters. Mandy and Miranda had gone towards engineering already, laden down with tools and cables.
Eric followed Rastar into the corridor beyond. They found another pair of dead crew, these two cold and still in an emergency atmospheric pack. The oversized plastic bag had a small re-breather attached, but evidently the pair had died before help could reach them.
Or maybe the pack malfunctioned. The bag still had pressure, but they might have suffocated within minutes if the re-breather had failed to siphon out the toxins. Either way, both had died. Eric forced himself to pull his eyes away. That kind of death made him feel sick to his stomach. He could face death by violence, but a lingering death like that…
Rastar tapped him on the shoulder and pointed ahead. They passed a couple of rooms, the hatches open wide. Eric wondered at that. He had not thought even a tramp freighter like this would get so sloppy with safety to leave so many hatches open. A quick glance inside the first pair showed what looked like officers cabins, narrow, but a single bunk with more room than a space-hand might have.
They came up to the far end, and Rastar pointed at the open hatch first. Eric nodded, and Rastar led the way in while Eric covered him. A moment later, Rastar signaled the all clear.
Eric followed him in. The room clearly had more space than the others on the level. A large bed took up a good deal of the floor space, and dressers and actual furnishings occupied a lot as well. An open safe lay empty on the wall of the room, and a mauled body in an environmental suit drifted near it, a pistol clenched in one hand. The name-tag on her breast read ‘Maria.’
Eric frowned at that and played his flashlight over the body. He saw the extended pistol first, a Samsonov PRK nine millimeter. The pistol looked locked back, either empty or jammed. What he saw of what had happened to the woman’s body made him hiss in shock though. Three parallel gashes had opened up her suit and her flesh from sternum to her throat. The horrific wound had caused her to bleed out, hopefully before decompression killed her. Either way, Eric could see her face twisted in pain behind her helmet visor. This woman had died after the ship had lost pressure, and she had died fighting.
And from the wounds: a Wrethe had killed her.
Rastar touched his helmet to Eric’s. “Dude, we have a problem.”
* * *
They ran into Ariadne as she came out of the bridge. Eric pulled her to the side and put his helmet against hers, “We have issues, there was a Wrethe aboard. I’m pretty certain that last survivor, the one who killed the others, was a Wrethe.”
“But why would a freighter have a Wrethe crewman?” Ariadne asked.
“It shouldn’t. Which means we’ve missed something,” Eric said. “I’ve got to talk with Mike, and Crowe needs to get that ship’s log up.”
He pushed past her and cycled the makeshift airlock.
The door seemed heavier than before and it took three or four hard pushes, braced against the bulkhead to get it open. He found Crowe on the other side, “What’s the problem? I heard you banging on the hatch.”
Eric tugged his helmet off, “One of the crew died from what looks like a claw attack, I’d guess Wrethe from the looks. Which means we’ve got a problem.”
“A Wrethe?” Crowe went pale. “Here, are you sure? I mean I would think we’d have seen one of them around here.” Crowe glanced around the bridge and for a moment, Eric thought the other man’s eyes lingered on the rear airlock hatch.
Eric glanced at that hatch, but he saw no sign of anything on the inside, it still lay open to space on the outside. “Maybe… or maybe it’s playing with us or its a sneaky one like Anubus,” Eric grimaced. “We need him over here. He’ll know how the bastard will think. And we need to know what happened with the ship. I need you to get the ship’s log up.”
“I’ve got a battery pack for it, but it’ll still take some time,” Crowe said. “It might be easier for me to pull drives out and plug them into my new computer,” Crowe waved at a canister that floated nearby. “Pixel just finished it last night.”
“Whatever you need to do, get it done,” he looked over at a partially disassembled panel, “What’s that mess?”
Crowe bounced over to it and gave a laugh, “It’s my labor to get the star-maps out. Those things are expensive, so the folks that map them tend to bind them to the hardware. I’ll have to disassemble the entire panel to get the memory drive out, and then I may not be able to copy it. We mi
ght have to do a hardware installation on our ship…”
“Huh, well do you need help up here?” Eric asked, even as he pulled on the headset for the radio.
“Nope,” Crowe said quickly. “Just time. Give me that and we’ll be good.”
“That I don’t know if we have…” Eric muttered. He toggled the transmission switch. Shit, we haven’t got call signs yet, he thought. So much for his criticism of Ariadne. “Mike this is Eric, open net, but we’ve got some potential problems.”
Mike answered a moment later. “Go.”
“We found one of the crew, killed by what looks like a Wrethe, after the ship lost pressure. We haven’t seen any sign of a dead Wrethe, so far, which suggests there might be a live one somewhere aboard.”
“That’s bad,” Mike said. He seemed distracted, Eric thought. “Keep me informed.”
Just that, Eric thought, keep me informed? He had a sudden urge to go over and yell at their new Captain, yet he restrained himself. He bet that one or more of their crew might have caused a distraction aboard. And truthfully, Eric had little evidence of the threat beyond the conviction that something just felt wrong about the situation. They needed the star-maps and any supplies they could get. They couldn’t pull clear until they got the star-maps at least.
“Right, will do, and stay frosty over there,” Eric said. He pulled the headset off and looked at Crowe, “Mike says to keep working.”
“Right,” Crowe grinned. “I’ll try to get the logs up.”
“Pull the star-map first,” Eric said. “We need those more than anything else right now.”
“Sure thing,” Crowe grimaced. “But that’ll take me a lot of time, so try to keep other interruptions to a minimum.”
“Well, if a Wrethe comes up here and starts gutting you, try to scream loud enough for us to hear, alright?” Eric said. “Oh, and leave Ariadne alone, she’s under enough strain as it is, she doesn’t need your shit.”