Fallen Fleet (Berserker One Book 1)

by Adrien Walker

  Gil Graves himself refused the rifles, wielding a mere pistol in place of them. He figured if there were something to fear, it would be entirely unknown to any resident within the IUR, and therefore in possession of powers exceeding their weapons. A gun, then, was really only formality. Plus, he thought, the blaster rifles were too damn heavy.

  As he peered into the hallway of the cargo ship’s docking bay, its yellow lights flickered incessantly overhead. It may be functional, he thought, but it was still old. Something about that gave him comfort, that there was something normal to this situation. Though, as the yellow light shone off the walls, then receded, allowing darkness to obscure the hallway for a moment before returning, an eerie mood descended. Gil shook it off as meaningless jitters as his proximity to the sliding door at the vessel’s entrance caused it to ease open.

  He turned back to the crew before crossing the threshold. “Sensors still work.”

  “Won’t have to blast our way in,” Ian Lucas joked, poking an elbow into the side of an unreceptive Olivia McCarthy. She peered intently into the darkness of the ship before them, the entrance opening up into a room of indeterminate size and purpose.

  “What’s through there?” she inquired.

  “What’s the first room of any cargo ship,” Cameron Mills replied. “Foyer for the hold.”

  And so it was, as Gil Graves’s boot crossed the line from docking hall into foyer, and the lights there flickered into luminescence, a now familiar yellow shade instilling itself in the room around them. The light was more steady, in better working condition. The room itself was in perfect order, too, Gil noted. From the desk to the closets, the space was pristine. If he hadn’t seen the exterior, he could have assumed it was a perfect replica of such an ancient vessel, demonstrating how rim farmers would onboard military personnel at checkpoints to inspect the imports. The white tile flooring was a poor choice, though, he thought to himself. It reflected the horrendous glow of the lights, a rancid color that reminded him of urine. He holstered his pistol at his side as he rounded the desk to check the computer that would be embedded there. Sure enough, he found the flat screen flush with the upwards sloped back, loading across its dust-free surface. A line slowly snaked its way around the glossy surface until it united with itself, forming a circle. Then, in its center, the login boxes appeared. He peered down at the desk, on its surface beneath the screen where a black surface revealed a lit keyboard glowing into existence.

  “Hm,” he sounded, as he scratched the underside of his chin, fingertips playing in the tough stubble. Then they drifted down towards the keyboard and wagered a guess. He entered “Farmer” for login name, and “Password” beneath it.

  The screen flashed red with the word “INCORRECT” before returning to the login screen. “You’re right,” Gil spoke to the screen, “that was dumb.”

  As he looked up from the screen, he saw his crew hover about the foyer, examining its ancient decor, the architecture of its rounded edges, the presence of recessed lighting with bulbs behind glass, a microfiber carpet save for a rounded section before the door they had just entered, and around another door, presumably to the hold. There, Cameron Mills stood, hands against the metal door’s surface, fingertips inspecting its edges, eyes inquiring as to its faults.

  “Here and here,” he said, nodding his head.

  The moment he stepped back, crossing his arms, Ian Lucas lifted his rifle and blasted away at the two spots, lightning rounds filling the room with red glow then bursting against the door.

  “Damnit, Ian!” Cameron shouted, lifting his hands up to his eyes as he stumbled back, allowing his rifle to dangle by its shoulder strap.

  Ian chuckled, settling into a grin as he watched the doorway open up, its two sides sliding back into the wall.

  Gil hobbled his way towards the door, commenting, “Good teamwork,” as he reached the hold’s entrance. Behind him, Cameron shook his head at Ian, who merely shrugged. Sheri burst between them, rifle at the ready, reminding the two of them the threat level of the ship’s mysteries remained unknown. Behind every door, death, or something like it, might lurk.

  The old vessel’s lighting system hummed and flipped on, yellow slowly filling the massive space, piece by piece revealing itself to the Berserker One crew as they entered. Gil craned his neck to estimate the size of the space, its height some two hundred feet, its width roughly three. While it was notable, the sheer enormity of the ancient ship was impressive for such primitive technology, it wasn’t what amazed him. As he strode some five feet in front of his crew, Sheri the only lieutenant near to him off to his right, it was a pair of observations that caught him off guard. The first was the fact that the massive hold was empty. Side to side, front to back, top to bottom, there was zero cargo to hold. Gil assumed a lost vessel such as this one would have some remnant of its product, some broken containers, a littering of trampled goods. When pirates raided ships like this, they were careless, often rushing with as much as they could gather in an effort to avoid conflict from transport rescue dispatches. Instead, it was clean, as though nothing had been loaded into her to begin with.

  The second was that the hold wasn’t entirely empty, but that there were benches, collected at the far end, facing away and lined up alongside one another to fill the full width with their wooden construction. They sat in the final space to come into view, the light making its way slowly out from the door they had entered through. When the light finally banished the shadows from the last section of the hold, Gil’s eyes locked with the benches, not understanding them at first, seeing only lines. Then, with some squinting, they became obvious, though their inhabitants remained uncertain.

  “Whoa, what’s that?” Cameron Mills asked, taking a single step backwards.

  Sheri McBride had already stepped forth alongside Gil, upholding her rifle, aligning its sights with her vision, her face scrunched into a vicious snarl.

  “Identify yourselves!” she shouted, throwing her voice as an echo down the hold.

  Gil lifted his hand to his side, holding her back in command, though partly the gesture was parental. He cared for his crew, and whenever they disembarked, always felt like his children were in harm’s way. He only referred to them as his children within the confines of his own mind, where the notion intermingled with a host of other private thoughts from his history. Some of them came rushing back for a moment as he watched one of four mysterious figures rise from the benches in the distance. It was a memory of violence, and loss, one he had to choke back, but nevertheless held his arm out to bar Sheri from provocation.

  “I’m Captain Gil Graves of the Interplanetary United Republic Fleet’s Berserker One,” Gil struggled to lift his voice enough to carry across the space. “We’re here on an exploratory mission, investigating the undocumented presence of this ship in hostile territory.” He could feel a sideways glance coming from Sheri, one he ignored to retain believability. “Please, identify yourselves, we are armed only for our protection.”

  As he watched the standing figure turn, it became clear it was human, of meager size and posture, hunched and seemingly unsure of itself. Slowly, another three rose from their places on the benches, each equally uncertain in their motions, cautiously rising from their seats.

  Gil turned to Sheri, “Put that thing down.” Reluctantly, she obliged, and resumed a stiff, but upright posture, with her weapon hanging from her shoulder, never far from her hands.

  Gil turned back to the rest of the crew. “Alright, stay behind me,” he said, and proceeded slowly across the empty hold. His footsteps echoed, his left louder than his right, his boots clanging against the metal flooring. Each stride drew him closer to the four occupants of the ship, bringing greater detail. They were plain, pale, and fearful, it seemed, their gaunt expressions watching the approaching crew with a hint of trepidation, like rabbits, Gil considered. They were two men and two women, all wearing identical manilla outfits, zipped up jackets without emblems and plain khaki pants. The man that
had stood first was tallest, though even he failed in reaching over six feet, in Gil’s estimation. The others seemed to huddle behind him, as though he were their leader, despite little in the way of leadership displayed.

  “We’ve come to inspect this vessel,” Gil spoke now in a normal volume, his throat no longer strained for speech. “Can I ask, what are you doing here?” Gil decided to get right to it.

  The man at the head, with his short brown hair frizzled out at its perimeter, his dark brown eyes shadowed in the valley beneath his brow, and his quivering bottom lip nearly hidden beneath the protruding upper, shook a moment in place before pulling himself together, a process Gil permitted with patience, though not without examination evident in his expression. Then, with mustered poise, the man spoke, “What are we doing here?” In uneven tone, nearly cracking on each word, and with such quiet delivery Cameron Mills in the back failed to distinguish words, the man merely repeated Gil. Despite the man’s reserved and frightened demeanor, his eyes were wide and absorbing the stature of Gil before him. It unnerved the captain, but nevertheless he persisted, “That’s right, what brought your vessel out to this belt?”

  The man’s eyes continued to survey for another several moments, while the rest of his body seemed content to shrivel into itself, as though seeking a turtle’s shell to take shelter in. Then, in the length of a paused breath, the man changed. His body corrected in posture, protruding his chest and lifting his chin, his face scrunching in a near mirror image of Gil’s expression. “Sorry,” he replied, his voice gaining depth and volume. “It’s been such a long time.”

  Gil cleared his throat, at a loss. “Been such a long time for what?”

  The man turned to his fellow passengers, the other man and two women gathered behind him. They remained fearful, their postures still curled into themselves, their eyes seeking guidance from their apparent leader. He nodded back to them and they seemed to calm, though hesitation held them back from full acceptance, side glances thrown towards Berserker One’s crew with suspicion behind them.

  “We’ve been stuck in this hold for such a very long time, you see, without any sight of another human being,” his eyes now began to pan across those of Gil’s crew standing behind him, “it comes at first as quite a shock, you understand.” He smiled, which further unnerved Gil. It seemed less genuine than it did an act. Though, for the life of him, Gil couldn’t muster a single theory explaining what was going on here.

  “How long is that?” Gil asked.

  The man’s head rolled around, his eyes tracing a line from floor to ceiling and back, as though watching a clock’s arms swing past the tip of his nose. “It’s hard to say.”

  “Estimate,” Gil said, growing impatient.

  The man took a breath and released it slowly through his nostrils. “One, two hundred years?” the man wagered.

  Gil’s brow furrowed as deeply as it could before his head hung to shake a moment, digesting the dialogue. “I’m sorry, centuries?”

  “Like I said,” the man spoke, “it’s hard to say.” He shrugged mildly, then added, “You lose track.”

  “Certainly,” Gil replied, allowing himself to roll with the absurdity. “Can I ask if you have names? If, by chance, you remember them?”

  Another sideways glance from Sheri seeked to scold, but he was unrepentant. “Certainly,” the man replied. He looked back into the eyes of the other strangers, nodding towards each of them, then returned to Gil. “My name is Evan,” he reached back, laying a hand on the shoulder of the nearer woman, a shorter, thicker, slightly more feminine version of himself, “Teri,” then his hand shifted to the right and landed upon the second man, a nearly frail and yet infantile looking fellow with blue eyes and a wisp of black hair, “Benji,” his arm shifted again, indicating the final member, a shy woman with averted gaze and a nervous tick about scratching her forearms, “and Gloria.”

  “Evan, Teri, Benji, and Gloria, pleasure to meet you,” Gil spoke with rushed tone, attempting to correct the speed of speech in his new acquaintance. “This is Lieutenants Sheri McBride, Ian Lucas, Olivia McCarthy, and Cameron Mills.” Each, as their name was spoken, offered a polite nod to the odd passengers, masking their judgments with cordial smiles. “And again, I am Captain Gil Graves of IURF’s Berserker One. We have boarded your ship--”

  “Our?” questioned Evan.

  Gil gritted his teeth. He hated interruptions. “Am I incorrect in assuming this vessel belongs in some part to the four of you? I presume a story is in order regarding the history of your being stranded in this hold for an unknown number of centuries which involves absent crew, however it appears at some point you were part of a working group of individuals that were responsible for the missions of this ship.”

  The man considered Gil’s words, chewing on each of them as he watched them leave Gil’s lips. When Gil had finished, the man nodded to himself. “Certainly,” he replied. “I’m sorry, it’s all just a little hazy.”

  Gil turned to Sheri, who looked back with the same idea. “Well, Evan, I’m going to leave you here with my capable and warm crew for a little while while myself and Lt. Sheri McBride conduct a search of the bridge and surrounding facilities.”

  With nothing more, Gil turned away from the odd strangers and three of his crew to exit through the hold’s back door. Cameron and Ian both threw bewildered glances at their captain lost for what to do, but Olivia had already begun engaging the strangers in conversation, putting her wealth of cultural knowledge to work, deducing where their origins may lie. Gil strode through the two doors as they opened, a pair of silver metal slabs receding into the walls just as the two that had led them in. Once Sheri behind him had passed through, the doors closed again, and the lights before them hummed into life. In the space before Gil a long hallway appeared, a metal grating floor suspended above a series of pipes racing along the basin of the cylindrical pathway towards the bridge. When they had placed a distance between them and the door, enough to ensure their whispers wouldn’t seep through, Sheri hurried alongside Gil to speak, “Centuries?”

  “Can’t say their not without their oddities,” Gil replied.

  “Captain,” Sheri lowered her voice in response, appealing to rationality in place of humor.

  Gil sighed, listening to the echo of his heavy left foot’s clanging throughout the dimly lit hallway. “This is what space offers us, Sheri. Mystery.”

  Gil slowed as he neared the far end, where another set of metal doors eased back to reveal an untouched bridge, or so it seemed. The chairs appeared brand new, the captain’s lifted above the rest in the rear of the semi-circle that faced outward, towards the pane of glass overlooking the dust at the edge of the belt. It was as though a collection of perfectly transparent ghosts resided in the chairs, ensuring the cleanliness and functionality of their respective controls, but remained otherwise silent and inattentive to the passage of time. Gil strode into the room, passing on the captain’s chair to take a seat in the front left seat. Sheri came in behind, standing on edge to his right.

  Gil lifted a hand towards the seat beside him, center right. Reluctantly, she obliged, seating herself and cradling her blaster rifle in her lap. She watched as his hands swept along the surface of the ancient controls, then as his fingers rubbed against one another seeking the dust that should have been caked onto their tips. Instead, perfectly clean. In the completion of the motion, Gil leaned back and scoffed in disbelief and awe, but tinged with flippant acceptance. Precisely the sort of response Sheri anticipated, and in some way, was relieved by.

  Gil felt the fabric of the seat beneath him at its edges, ran along its stitching, unbroken, and tight. His mind transposed a scene in the room, of some ancient farmers setting a course from the rim to the bustling galactic center planets, eager to move their crop. He could see them smiling on the expanse of space much the way he had, in admiration for its idiosyncrasies. Then, as he turned his head, imagining the crew and their various hired hands assisting with the maintenan
ce of the massive vessel’s operations, he could see the room abuzz with personnel. But as he took in a deep breath, in through his nostrils, he paused at peak lung capacity when a shiver raced through him. He felt then, amidst his imagined recreations, that no such history existed where he was. That, for all its convincing presentation, this ship, floating as it was in the most unlikely of places, was merely mirage. It felt distinctly alien, and anything other than ancient. It felt strikingly new, even futuristic, and then, suddenly, as old as anything. He quivered his bottom jaw back and forth seeking words to describe the feeling to his most trusted lieutenant, but found his vocabulary lacking. He pushed the breath out through his nose quickly, crossed his arms, and shook his hung head.

  “What is it, Captain?” Sheri inquired, watching him intently, as she always did in their moments alone together.

  “Feels wrong, Sheri,” he said, deciding on the single word in the moment. “Wrong.”

  Sheri leaned back into her chair and stared through the rectangle into space. The window was smaller than on Berserker One, or any modern ship, another sign of its alleged age. Her eyes sought out some answer in the space before her, finding only further mystery. “It does, doesn’t it?” she replied. “But I can’t put my finger on it.” She nibbled at the end of her thumb’s nail. “I mean, of course, I can say the ship’s age is uncanny, it’s location more so, it’s cargo…”

  “Infinitely more so,” Gil completed.

  “But none of that’s it, it’s like there’s something else going on. Something else, underneath all of this, this strangeness, which is really just here for--”

  “Distraction.”

  They exchanged equivalent looks.

  Gil stretched out his left leg with a wince and allowed himself to sink a bit in the lieutenant chair. “Back in my lieutenant days, we used to patrol the Third Arm region, have you ever been out in those parts?” Gil eyed Sheri for a possible in to her secret backstory. She offered a meager shrug, and Gil relented his stare in favor of his initial point, the story. “Well, the thing about the Third Spiral Arm is that the planets out there are shit. Just, planet after planet, absolutely nothing. They’re uninhabitable. Nobody goes there save for a few mining corporations on the occasional xergoyan-rich planetoid, which, of course, need protecting, don’t they? So, there we went, IURF, trollicking through the most vacant space in the galaxy, ensuring bandits were kept at bay. All that time, just floating endlessly along your path, loads of black space before you, warpholes so few and far between you feel like you’re really crawling along every inch between checkpoints.”