“With chameleon overalls?” Corporal Chan asked.
“Yes,” he said. There was no telling who or what they might find aboard the derelict. The invisibility provided by chameleons could prove to be vital.
“Armored suits, sir? Are we expecting trouble, Corporal Claypoole?” asked PFC Berry, one of the two new men in the squad.
There were vacuum suits, and there were armored vacuum suits. One protected the wearer from the vacuum of outer space, and the micrometeorites that swarmed through it. Armored vacuum suits protected the wearer from the flechettes that could shred an unarmored suit, and almost all other known projectiles as well as plasma weapons such as the Marines’ own blasters.
Claypoole snorted. “We’re Marines boarding an unknown starship in interstellar space. We don’t have an invitation. No shit, we’re expecting trouble.”
It took more than two hours for the Hull Breecher to travel the 200 klicks between the Dayzee Mae and the derelict. The Marines stood quietly during that time, sweating into their armored suits, doing their best to ignore itches, thinking—or trying not to think—about what might meet them on board the SS Runstable.
It’s odd, Kerr thought, that she’s here. And nobody noticed her when the Grandar Bay came through when we were on our way to Ishtar. He struggled to quell the knot that tightened in his stomach at the wrongness of the situation.
The pilot, EM3 Mark Resort, brought the THB into contact with rear of the Runstable’s tower as smoothly as any first class could have, and it touched the starship’s hull with barely a bump. He grappled the THB to the hull with its magnets, and fired up the cutters. Everything went smoothly, and in mere moments he had an opening cut through the rear of the outer hull of the Runstable’s bridge deck. It only took a few more seconds for him to cut through the inner hull.
“First fire team, go!” Kerr snapped. He briefly touched helmets with Resort before leaving the THB. “Good landing, squid. You can drive me anytime.”
Corporal Chan showed no lingering effects of his wound when he darted into the bridge and led his men toward the port side of the bridge. Corporal Claypoole and his men ran to the starboard as soon as Chan and his fire team cleared the breach. The six Marines spread out and covered all directions with their plasma blasters.
Kerr entered the bridge more slowly, walking without using his boots’ magnets to hold him to the deck—the Runstable’s artificial gravity was still on—and stood between the first two fire teams. Using his helmet’s light gatherer screen, he looked around; it showed him everything in stark black and white, with a few shades of gray, and negatively affected his depth perception. The bridge was about ten meters deep and thirty wide. Centered on the side the Marines had entered was the captain’s chair, flanked by the navigator’s and helmsman’s stations. They faced large displays on the opposite bulkhead. The displays were blank. Consoles were lined up below the blank displays—probably crew stations. What looked like an airlock hatch was at either end of the bridge compartment.
Kerr couldn’t discern any damage in the odd view through his light gatherer. The knot in his stomach tightened further. Something was very wrong here; this wasn’t a simple derelict starship. He looked to his rear. Corporal Doyle and his men stood stolidly just inside the bridge. But Kerr knew that was an illusion; they had to be shifting their weight, even jittering, inside their armored vacuum suits. His motion detector didn’t pick up anything other than his Marines.
Kerr advanced to the captain’s station. Keypads on the armrests of the chair were clearly labeled, and he found the keys to open the airlocks at each end of the bridge. “Heads up,” he said, and opened the airlocks. He quickly found the Runstable’s log. He scanned though it, beginning with the most recent entry, while copying its contents to his comp.
“Find anything interesting, Honcho?” Claypoole asked.
Kerr shook his head, not caring that the gesture wasn’t visible. “Everything looks normal, right up to the last entry, dated about two years ago. The last entry is interrupted in mid-word.” His comp beeped, signaling that the download was finished. Finished with the log, he checked the starship’s systems. As near as he could tell, none of them were damaged, just offline—including nearly all life support—with one exception.
“The ship’s gravity seems to be on throughout the ship,” he announced over his comm’s squad circuit. Then, “Check out the compartments beyond the airlocks. First fire team, left, second to the right.”
“Aye-aye,” Chan and Claypoole answered.
They were back in moments. Each had the same report: The compartments were smaller than the bridge and had storage lockers that all seemed to be empty, with airlocks at the far end that opened to space. Claypoole added that there was a ladder heading below in the compartment to the bridge’s starboard end.
Kerr thought for a moment, then said, “Listen up, second squad. We’re going to check this girl out, top to bottom. Rock, is Wolfman up to running point?” Kerr looked at the reddish blur that was Lance Corporal MacIlargie. It had to be his imagination, but he could have sworn that MacIlargie’s armored vacuum suit gave an eager twitch at the question.
On order, third fire team joined the squad at the head of the ladder, a shaft with a hand rail on each side that descended into the bowels of the tower.
Kerr gave the route order. “Second fire team, me, third, first. Go.”
“Aye-aye,” Claypoole said. He pointed at MacIlargie and said, “You heard the man. Go.”
“Right.” MacIlargie gripped one of the handrails, pointed the muzzle of his blaster between his feet, and stepped into the shaft. The rail drew him down.
Claypoole let MacIlargie’s helmet clear the level of the deck, then followed. Another deck appeared seven meters down.
“Into it, Wolfman,” Claypoole said.
All of the spaces on this level were open to the corridor.
The level was surprisingly smaller than the bridge level. By examining the Runstable’s schematics stored on their comps, the Marines saw that the difference was conduit space behind the bulkheads, allowing the power, life support, and other commands to flow between the bridge and all other areas of the starship. When they located the well-concealed access panels, everything looked to be in order behind them; there wasn’t enough room inside to hide a body, alive or dead.
It was at the third level below the bridge that they finally ran into a closed compartment.
Kerr signaled Claypoole, who banged his armored fist on the hatch. His armor augmented his strength so that he hit the hatch almost hard enough to dent its plasteel. He pressed the “announce” button, hoping there were lights inside that would flash to alert any occupants who might not be able to hear the banging that indicated someone was at the hatch.
When there was no response, Kerr motioned Claypoole aside and stepped to the hatch himself—if a frightened civilian might die because of what he was about to do, he wanted the death to be on him, not on one of his men. He slapped the “open” plate, and the hatch slid aside.
MacIlargie leaped through the hatch before it was fully open and spun to one side. Claypoole was on his heels, and spun to the other side.
“Dammit!” Kerr swore. He didn’t wait for Berry to complete the fire team’s maneuver before he darted through and joined Claypoole and MacIlargie. “I told you to wait for me.”
“Sorry, Honcho,” MacIlargie said. “I didn’t get the word.”
They found a corpse huddled in a storage closet of the otherwise empty room. The lack of atmosphere had kept any bacteria or mold from living and taking root anywhere in the starship, so the corpse hadn’t rotted. Instead, its own intestinal flora had grown and burst it from the inside, spattering gore around the interior of the closet.
Berry gagged—a strictly reflexive action, as the remains gave off no stench since there was no atmosphere in the compartment.
“You upchuck in that helmet, you’ll be in trouble, Marine,” Claypoole snarled, choking down his own
gorge.
“Right. Trouble,” Berry gasped, turning away from the sight.
Kerr’s stomach was stronger, or he was better prepared for the sight when he looked into the closet.
“How do you think he died?” Claypoole asked.
Kerr’s shrug went unseen inside his chameleoned armor. “Starved. Maybe dehydrated. Do you see any sign of violence?”
“No,” Claypoole said softly. “He doesn’t look like sudden decompression killed him, either.”
Kerr noted the compartment the corpse was in on his comp, then ordered, “Move out.”
They found three more desiccated corpses before they reached the lowest deck of the tower. One, they assumed, was the ship’s surgeon, as the otherwise unidentifiable corpse was in the infirmary.
“Where are the rest of them?” Claypoole wondered out loud.
“In the subdeck,” Kerr said. “Maybe ejected into space. Maybe sold as slaves somewhere. Maybe set free on some out-world.” Disgust came into his voice as he added, “Maybe nobody will ever know.” He shook his head, unseen inside his chameleoned armor.
“A-Are we checking the subdeck?” Corporal Doyle asked nervously.
“We’re checking the whole damn ship,” Kerr said flat-voiced. “Doyle, you asked, you lead the way.”
Doyle audibly swallowed. “Aye-aye, Sergeant Kerr. Summers, me, Johnson,” he gave his fire team’s order of movement. In infra, Kerr saw Doyle’s armored suit turn as he looked side to side along the passageway for access to the subdeck that ran below the container deck.
“It’s to the right,” Kerr said, glancing at his schematic of the Runstable.
“To the right, Summers,” Doyle repeated. He followed in Summers’s wake.
The subdeck was one continuous cavern, interrupted at regular intervals by evenly spaced pillars that kept the decking and overhead from flexing away from—or into—each other. Despite the breadth and length of the hold, it felt claustrophobic; the overhead was less than five meters above the deck. The machines that kept the Runstable and all its systems operating were arranged on the deck. Cargo-moving cranes and lighters were drawn below deck and battened down. Ship’s stores were stowed and marked as such near access shafts from above.
Kerr turned his helmet’s ears all the way up and listened. He didn’t expect to hear any sounds, not in vacuum, but he thought that vibrations through the deck might register through his boots as subsonics, and straining his ears might help him “hear” the vibrations. All he felt was the faint thrumming of the gravity generators.
“Fire team leaders,” Kerr ordered, “use your motion detectors. Have one man use his light gatherer, the other his infra. Leaders, use both. I want to know immediately if anybody detects anything. Do it now.” Kerr himself used his light gatherer and infrared screens in conjunction. He compared what he could see with the schematic on his comp and found that six aisles cut between the machinery and stacks of other containers that ran the length of the subdeck. He climbed to the top of the nearest machine housing and looked as far as he could, which wasn’t much more than fifty meters—there wasn’t enough light for the light gatherer to see any farther, and what he could see was dim. Still, he saw what looked like cross-passages between groups of machine housings and other equipment.
“Listen up. We’re going the length of this hold. First fire team, take the starboard-most aisle. One Marine in the aisle, one on top of the machinery on each flank of the aisle. Second, the next, third, the next. Same top-bottom-top spacing. When we reach the far end, everybody move over three aisles. That’ll put third fire team on the outer side. If you see anything that looks like it’s been opened, let me know and check it out. Questions?”
“Is ‘do we gotta’ an appropriate question?” MacIlargie asked.
“Stand by for a head smack when we get back to the Dayzee Mae,” Claypoole snapped before Kerr could respond.
“Dumb question, huh?” MacIlargie said.
“Dumb as they come,” Claypoole confirmed.
“That’s enough,” Kerr barked. “Get into your positions and move out.”
Kerr kept an eye on his men and saw that they didn’t rush, but looked into everything that might have been opened, and checked behind everything that could be checked behind, just as he told them to. It took more than an hour to cover the three hundred meters to the bow, but the only thing they discovered that seemed out of the ordinary was almost none of the machinery was operating—just what was needed to provide gravity and to power the near-space running lights.
Kerr checked his men visually to make sure all were present, and verified that with the display on his comp.
“All right,” he said, “shift over three aisles.” The fire teams were in their new positions within two minutes. Kerr made one more visual check, and ordered, “Move out.”
Fifty meters on, Fisher’s icon on Kerr’s display suddenly began blinking red.
“Chan, report!” Kerr snapped.
“Fisher’s down,” Chan came back. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Hold your position, I’ll be right there.” Kerr was in the central of the three aisles along which the Marines were moving. He clambered to the top of the machinery between him and his first fire team and began crossing it toward first fire team’s position as fast as he could.
He was halfway there when something too fast to make out flashed past his vision, barely above foot-level. His head jerked in the direction the blur seemed to come from, and thought he saw a faint blip of red, but it was gone from his sight before he could be sure.
“We aren’t alone down here!” he shouted. He snapped off three rapid fire plasma bolts from his blaster. The first two bolts of star-stuff slagged a hole through the thin metal casing of a container that projected higher than the rest of the machinery. The third bolt went all the way through and ended in a brilliant flash of light from behind it. He dashed to the edge of the machinery he was standing on and leapt down from it to join Chan. Along the way he wondered, Are there Skinks here? He didn’t know anything else that would flash like that after being hit by a blaster bolt.
To Chan on the fire team circuit, “What’s Fisher’s status?”
“Something blew right through him!” Chan said. “Through and through. His body suit sealed his wound and sedated him. I slapped patches on his armor, so he’s not losing air.” His voice grew haunted. “But what the hell hit him?”
Kerr remembered the blur that was too fast to see, and shuddered. The only thing he could think of that went that fast and could punch a hole right through an armored vacuum suit was a railgun. But railguns were only used by Skinks, and were crew-served weapons. This seemed to have been a personal weapon. He remembered the flash of light that met his third shot; the Skinks vaporized in a flash of light when they were hit by a plasma bolt—nobody knew why—but that was in the atmosphere of a planet, and how could they be flaring in the vacuum of the abandoned freighter? These Skinks—if that’s what they were—were also somehow able to detect where a chameleoned Marine was, and get close enough to shoot him. What is happening here?
“Railgun, I think,” Kerr said, answering Chan’s question. Now I know why the gravity is turned on, he thought. The Skinks, or whoever, need it for themselves.
“Does anybody have anything?” Kerr shouted into his comm. “Motion detector, infra, anything?”
“No,” “Negative,” “Nothing,” the answers came back.
“All right,” he said, knowing that nothing was actually all right. “I got one. Probably the one that shot Fisher. But it doesn’t matter if that’s the one—you know there are more.”
“D-Do you think this was a trap?” Doyle asked.
“That’s damn likely. Maybe more than just inside the ship.” Kerr not only thought there were more Skinks in the Runstable’s subdeck, he was afraid they also had a warship near enough to jump here and destroy the Dayzee Mae.
He toggled to the long range comm. If the comm could get through
the bulkhead of the subdeck and make it to the distant starship, he could give them warning. He climbed to the top of the machinery he was taking cover behind and found something to hunker down behind while he used his comm.
“Dayzee Mae, Dayzee Mae, this is Hellhound. Over.” Nobody had expected the Marines to have to contact the Dayzee Mae except over the THB’s ship-to-ship comm, so they hadn’t assigned comm call signs. But he was certain that Petty Officer Craven would realize who was calling—who but a Marine would call himself Hellhound?—and that the call meant trouble.
“…ll Hou… ae. How do …ou read m…” came the reply.
Kerr swore before toggling his comm to transmit. “You’re badly broken, Dayzee Mae. How you me? Over.”
It took a moment for a reply to come. It was as broken as the first.
“…ell Houn… …Mae. Yo… br…en. Say …gin…las… Ove.…”
Damn, Kerr muttered. He could make out enough to know that the Dayzee Mae couldn’t hear him any more clearly than he could hear them. Well, you do what you can with what you’ve got. “Dayzee Mae, we’ve got Skinks. I say again, we’ve got Skinks. Over.”
“He… …nd, Dayz… Inks. I do… un…and. Ov…” It sounded like McPherson’s voice.
“Skinks. I say again, Skinks are on the Runstable. Over.” Kerr heard the CRACK-sizzle of blaster fire behind him, and hoped his comm picked it up—that would let McPherson know that the Marines were in a firefight, even if he didn’t realize they were fighting Skinks.
Then: “…inks! Ski…! …ere are Sk…ks…Rus…ble?”
“That’s affirmative, Dayzee Mae. We’ve got Skinks. Over.”
“I …stan… Skin… affir…? …ver.”
“You got it, Dayzee Mae. We’ve got Skinks big time. You best watch for a Skink starship coming in. I gotta get back to the fight. Hellhound Out.” He turned off his comm, sure that the Dayzee Mae had gotten the basic message, and looked around the side of his cover in time to see a dim spot of red. He snapped off a bolt of plasma at it, and was rewarded by the sight of a flash of light that could only be a dying Skink.
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