Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  "Huh." Gretchen slumped back in her shockchair, biting her lower lip. "Then where's the carbon scoring, the fire-suppression foam residue?"

  Neither Bandao nor Parker had an answer. After a moment's pause, they pressed on.

  ―—―

  Gretchen watched in silence, her frown steadily lengthening, as the four men moved forward along the main access passageway. Hatches revealing half-seen rooms drifted by. Everywhere, power was out, the ship dark and silent. When they entered what the ship schematic described as a crew common area just forward of the main lab ring, she opened the suit channel again.

  "Parker, turn slowly. I want to see the whole room."

  The camera view panned, and Gretchen doubled the size of the v-pane and dialed up feed magnification. Parker's camera slid across tables, chairs, countertops, drink dispensers, refrigerator and synthesizer doors. "Stop. Stop right there. Parker, do you see the door of the refrigerator?"

  "Sure____What about it?" Parker's pistol could be seen on the bottom left of the screen, steady on the suspicious door. "Looks like a refrigerator door. Must be the snacks locker."

  "Have you ever seen a ship fridge door that wasn't covered with stickers, leaflets, announcements, photos from home?"

  Parker didn't answer for a moment, and his camera flicked back across the rest of the common area. "There's nothing here," he said, surprised. "It's like they cleaned up the place and left or ... or there was a fire and it burned up everything."

  "Made a very clean job of it then," Gretchen said in a dry voice.

  "More than that, look at this," Bandao said, and his camera view drifted over to a food prep counter set into one bulkhead. Gretchen turned her attention to his display. There was a rack of chef's knives pinned to the surface on a heavy magnetic strip. She hissed in alarm.

  The muzzle of Bandao's rifle touched the hilt of one of the knives. Where a heavy rubber or wooden grip should have enclosed the steel tang, there was nothing, only bare gleaming metal. "This was a set of Hotchkiss cooking knives from New France, on Anáhuac. These models have walnut handles and surgical-quality blades. Very expensive."

  "Check the rest of the room," Gretchen said, feeling suddenly cold. "Check for anything organic, anything at all."

  ―—―

  "Nothing here either," Parker said in a dead voice. He was standing on the bridge of the Palenque, one hand pushing the commander's chair back and forth. There was only a bare metal frame, lacking any plastic, leather or fiberfill. "Everything's just... gone. This is creepy."

  Bandao's camera shifted, looking across the display panels of the command station. Like everything else, they were dark and mottled by heat. The gunner rapped the knuckles of his z-suit on the glassy plate. "Aren't these touch-panels plastic? What about the corridor walls, the doors—aren't they plastic of some kind? Why were they just melted a little, and not destroyed completely?"

  Gretchen and Magdalena looked up. They had been poring over the shipyard diagrams and materials lists used in the construction documents on file for the Palenque. Gretchen rubbed her face. The maze of ship documents was giving her a headache. "I—"

  "Command panels are made with an electrically active composite, which is not a long chain polymer, Mister Bandao." Lieutenant Koshō's cool, correct voice intruded on the circuit "The range of materials removed from the ship is rather distinct."

  Gretchen's glasses flickered and Hadeishi's private channel glyph was winking again.

  "Yes?" she said, turning away from Magdalena. She was starting to feel sick.

  "We think the ship was attacked by a 'cleaner' agent of some kind." Mitsuharu's voice was very calm and steadying. "Only certain molecules and sets of longer-chain compounds were affected Particularly, those which form organic life. Paper, glue, bed-sheets ... all those things were swept up in the general criteria."

  "A weapon." Gretchen felt a band of tension release from her chest. Vague fears crystallized and she felt relieved. See, she thought, the universe is filled with reason. "Something from at planet?"

  "Perhaps." Hadeishi sounded thoughtful. "There have been reports of illegal activity in this region, but no human miners would have access to this kind of a nanoweapon. You should continue searching the ship. Perhaps something survived in one of the lab habitats."

  "Of course," Gretchen turned back to Magdalena. The Hesht was talking Bandao and Parker through the removal of an access panel under the command display. "Maggie?"

  "Just a moment. Yes, Mister Parker, use some muscle. You won't break anything. There! Now look inside."

  Parker hesitated, heart rate spiking on the monitor, and his pistol and a detached lamp went first. In the dark cavity, ranks of crystalline system modules sat quietly, without showing any sign of activity.

  "Still no power," Maggie grumbled to herself. "Yausheer Bandao, please take out a v-pad, if you have one. I will send a detailed ship schematic to you. I want you to go down to engineering and start checking the power-runs out from the batteries and fusion plant."

  Parker muttered something obscene and crawled out of the access panel. Bandao said nothing. Both men kicked down the long central access passageway, gliding expertly from stanchion to stanchion, their suit lamps flaring on the white panels and dark openings onto surrounding decks.

  "Koshō-san?" Gretchen looked across the dim, softly glowing command deck of the Cornuelle. "Could your Marines search the rest of the ship?"

  "Hai," the exec answered. "I will send another pair across to secure the bridge while Deckard and Fitzsimmons search deck by deck."

  Parker grunted, putting his shoulder into a length of hexsteel pipe. The pipe extended the manual locking release on a masive pressure hatch marked with radiation warning symbols. Bandao had his helmet pressed against the metal surface, listening. The pipe squealed, the sound tinny and faint after echoing through the pilot's gloves and suit.

  "Nothing," Bandao said over the open channel. "The bolts arn't backing out."

  "Is there another way in?" Parker spoke to the air.

  On the Cornuelle, Gretchen shook her head. Magdalena's entire control panel was covered with schematics showing the engineering space, the reactor cores and every crawl space, access tunnel and passage in the aft half of the Palenque. The Hesht's ears were twitching in frustration.

  "No, Mister Parker," Gretchen said wearily, only half-listening to the men on the ship. "Lieutenant Isoroku says the reactor has gone through an emergency shutdown procedure. That hatch is the only access, and the manual lock mechanism should work."

  "Sorry chief, there's no joy here." Parker worked the pipe free from the locking bar, and then slammed the length of metal into the hatch in frustration. There was another tinny echo. The pilot swore again, and this time he did not bother to keep his voice down. "We'll have to burn through this door to get to the other side. How thick is the damned thing?"

  Gretchen listened to the other channel for a moment, chewing on her lip. 'Too thick, Mister Parker. It's supposed to restrain the core in case of a failure."

  "What do we do, then?" Bandao stood up, the pilot's lamp throwing a huge shadow behind him. "Run the ship from the batteries? We can't get at them either. Everything's through this door."

  Gretchen sat up straight in her chair, a vague thought trying to worm free of her tired brain. "Maggie, show me the electrical connections for the hatch mechanism."

  The Hesht nodded sharply and a tap-tap of her foreclaw zoomed a section of the schematic into full view. Gretchen hunched over the panel, fingertips brushing over the band at her wrist. A tickling feeling of clarity welled up, banishing her fatigue. She punched the schematic onto the v-channel shared by the team on the Palenque and the watchers on the Cornuelle. "Isoroku-san, do you see the display on your three?"

  A muttered acknowledgement echoed over the Cornuelle-side channel from Engineering. The thai-i was down in his engine room, watching a duplicate of the video feeds in front of Gretchen. "I do. Yes, I believe such an approach would succee
d. Sho-sa Koshō?"

  "I agree," the exec said. She had her own echo of the schematics. Koshō turned to look inquiringly at the captain. Mitsuharu frowned.

  "Hayes-tzin, threat status?" The commander was very slowly stroking his beard.

  "No change, Hadeishi-san." The armaments officer made a sketchy bow from his position on the bridge.

  "Two ratings and a work carrel," Hadeishi said, nodding to his exec. "They'll need the cargo space for the power cell."

  Gretchen turned back to her panel and toggled to Parker and Bandao's channel. "Parker, an engineering crew from the Cornuelle will be joining you shortly with a portable fuel-cell unit." She glanced down at the diagrams. Maggie's long, claw-tipped finger slid under her arm, indicating a section of corridor. "You can speed things up, I think, if you move—ah, about five meters back down the corridor—there will be an access plate—ah, from your current vantage, overhead—marked with an engineering glyph. Remove the plate and you'll find a pair of power-runs which lead to the hatch motor—"

  "Understood," Parker cut in, already moving with his length of pipe. He kicked away from the blast door and tumbled gently to fetch up near the panel. "I see it—"

  Beep beep beep!

  "All units, hold position!" A raspy voice barked across the shipside channel, overriding Parker's comment. Gretchen flinched back from the panel as a series of warning glyphs flashed on her display. An audible tone silenced the quiet chatter on the bridge of the Cornuelle. "We've found someone."

  "Who is this?" Gretchen hissed at Magdalena, waving her hand at the display board. The Hesht bared her teeth in response, almost spitting, but white claws flashed and the video feeds of all the men aboard the Palenque leapt into view on the panel.

  "This is Sergeant Fitzsimmons, Anderssen-tzin." The Marine's Skawts accent was very dry and controlled. On the medical feed, his heartbeat had ticked up a little, but his respiration was holding steady. "V-channel six."

  "I have it," Gretchen snapped, then she froze, grasping the image being projected from the Marine's suit camera. In comparison to the quality of the video thrown by the Company suits, Fitzsimmon's transmission was as sharp as a 3v broadcast at home. "What—"

  "Three bodies, ma'am," the Marine said, gliding forward, his boots making a shhhhh-thup sound on the deck as he moved. The muzzle of his shipgun was not pointed at the sprawled gray-and-tan shapes on the open decking in front of him, but on the dark recesses of some enormous open space. At the very edge of his camera's field of view, Gretchen caught sight of the second Marine also making a slow advance, gun at the ready. "They're wearing Company tags."

  "Where are they?" Gretchen muted her throat mike, whispering to Magdalena.

  "The main shuttle bay, sister." Maggie zoomed both Marine camera feeds and jacked up the ambient light amplification.

  A huge space sprang into view, curving walls looming overhead and the heavy, blunt-nosed shape of a shuttle filling the darkness to the right, a pale light gleaming in the cockpit windows. Directly ahead of the two Marines, three crumpled shapes in z-suits were sprawled on the decking only a meter or two from some kind of an access hatch. Gretchen felt a creeping chill at the loose, floppy limbs of the suited bodies.

  "Maggie, what is behind that hatch?" Gretchen was whispering again.

  "The starboard power, data and environmental venting lines." The Hesht was distracted, staring at her displays. "Wait one, wait one ..."

  Gretchen ignored her, watching in sick fascination as Fitzsimmons advanced on the bodies, the glare of his suit light throwing them in sharp relief against the corrugated decking. The Marine paused, gun high, and gave the side of one of the helmets a soft kick with his boot. There was no sound, but the glassine helmet rolled over, revealing emptiness. The suit tag read PȂTECATL.

  "The chief engineer," Magdalena said after a moment. "Pȃtecatl, Susan Alexandra. Company employee, six years. Master's chief certification and engineer aboard the Palenque for three years."

  "Sergeant, check all the suit seals." Hadeishi's voice was very calm and even over the channel. "Sho-sa Koshō, please halt the movement of the engineering team toward the Palenque."

  Fitzsimmons's gloved fingertips slid back the metal plate covering the environmental controls on the empty z-suit. A row of faint green lights appeared. "Suit integrity intact, sir."

  Gretchen sat back in her seat, a tiny bead of blood oozing from her lip. Damn.

  "Check the other two," Hadeishi said in a conversational tone. "Deckard, advance to the power panel door and open the accessway. Isoroku-san, please observe heicho Deckard's suit camera."

  A distant Hai! echoed in the silence on the bridge.

  Fitzsimmons stood up, his camera view swinging to check the rest of the boat bay. Though his shipgun was still at high port, Gretchen thought the man had ceased to worry about something leaping out of the darkness at him.

  "Captain Hadeishi..." She started to say, but the commander met her eye and shook his head slightly.

  "The Palenque is now under level-two quarantine, Anderssen-tzin." He said quietly. "Something consumed the men inside those z-suits after they had a sealed environment. We must presume everyone aboard is in the same danger—indeed, they may already be exposed—and we cannot risk the Cornuelle as well."

  "How long—" Gretchen was almost immediately interrupted by Magdalena sinking a claw into her shoulder, and Isoroku's voice grumbling over the engineering channel.

  "Hadeishi-san, look at the feed from Deckard's suit." The engineer's voice sounded both depressed and filled with righteous anger. "Sloppy civilian contractors ..." He muttered.

  Deckard's v-feed showed the inside of the utility run, a circular space filled with the heavy blue shapes of air and water returns, the darker reddish channels of data feeds and the charred black traces of power conduit.

  "What happened to this stuff?" Deckard snorted, poking at the ruin inside the utility tunnel with the tip of his rifle. "It's all burned up!"

  "Stay alert, Heicho." Fitzsimmons's voice was very sharp on the comm, and the sergeant was almost immediately in the accessway, shining his lamp up and down the shaft. "Back up and cover the boat bay. Thai-i Isoroku, are you getting a good feed from my camera?"

  The sergeant panned his lamps slowly over the tangled mess, letting the engineer get a good look.

  On the bridge of the Cornuelle, the captain leaned on the arm of his chair, watching Isoroku's face twist in thought on the v-feed from engineering. "Well?"

  The engineer scowled into the pickup. His bald head was shining with a faint, fine sheen of sweat. "Poor materials, Captain." A thick finger stabbed at a screen out of the field of view. "We'll need a sample, but I'll say now the material used to insulate and EM-screen the power conduits was substandard—using some kind of organic in the composite. Something the weapon attacked and stripped away." Isoroku shrugged his heavy shoulders. "The conduit temperature spiked from all the waste heat, and then the superconductors failed and power went out."

  "Did conduit failure shut down the fusion plant?" Hadeishi was smoothing his beard again.

  "Unlikely, kyo." The engineer looked off-screen. "All three of those suits have engineering cert badges on them. Perhaps the attack started on the starboard side, power started to fail unexpectedly and they started a reactor shutdown, then moved to see what was happening."

  Hadeishi nodded to himself, sighing. "And fell dead on the way, consumed."

  "Captain?" Gretchen had risen up in her seat, tucking one leg under. "We've found something interesting."

  "Yes?"

  "There are higher levels of waste products in the hangar bay," Magdalena said, her throaty voice rolling and rumbling. "Complex carbon chains, waste gases, long chain organics. The sensors on the Marines' suits are starting to pick them up. And..."

  Hadeishi raised one eyebrow and leaned forward. "And what?"

  Gretchen tapped a control on the display panel and a section of video doubled, then trebled in size. A window, glowing w
ith light, and a shadow against a bulkhead were plain to see. "There's someone alive inside the shuttle."

  "Clip on." Gunso Fitzsimmons tossed Deckard a monofil line tab. The corporal caught the metal hook deftly and snugged the line to his belt with the ease of long practice. Both Marines had dialed down the audio on their comm sets, so the argument on the bridge of the Cornuelle was reduced to a dull thunder in the background.

  "Clipped," Deckard replied after testing the line. He slung the angular black shape of his shipgun over one shoulder, and adjusted his gloves, bringing magnetic surfaces around to the palms. Fitzsimmons removed the little winch from his belt and adhered the metal box to the doorframe of the power conduit accessway. "Anchored."

  "Anchors away, then." Deckard grinned, white teeth visible through the faceplate of his suit. He kicked off from the wall and sailed across the boat bay. As he approached the nose of the shuttle, the Marine tucked in his feet and rolled. Now feet first, he slipped past the window and reached out with both hands. The gloves slipped along the pitted, rusted surface of the shuttle, then slid to a halt.

  "Quietly now," Fitzsimmons breathed over the combat channel. "Show me what's inside." Deckard spidered up to the forward window of the shuttle and paused just out of sight of anyone inside. Tugging one of his shoulder cameras free, the marine eased the filament up to the edge of the window. The sergeant, watching the spyeye view on a tiny, postage-stamp sized popup inside his helmet, made a scooting motion with his land. "Just a hair more ..."

  Then he could see inside the cluttered, dirty cockpit of the shuttle, and—through the pressure door into the main cabin—two people sitting on facing piles of bedding. As he watched, the man tossed a playing card onto a pile between himself and the woman. Moisture was dripping from the walls of the shuttle, and the sergeant made a face. Mold? They're certainly alive. Not disintegrated at all. . . .

  Taking a breath, Fitzsimmons dialed up the volume on his comm.

  "... the ship is entirely safe," Gretchen said, again, her voice rising slightly. "We've had men aboard for two hours and no one has been affected, there are waste gases loose in the boat bay, and they have not been destroyed—"