by Tripp Ellis
“Lock’n load,” 8-Ball said with a grin.
Mitch grabbed a few thermal grenades.
“Go easy with those,” Zoey said. “We’re on a space ship. Try not to blow a hole in the hull.”
“No worries, Sugar. I’ll be careful,” Mitch winked.
“Let’s get to the airlock and ditch the treasure first,” Violet said.
They snaked through the network of passageways, sweeping and clearing the corridors with textbook precision.
The electrical system was growing more erratic. The lights were flickering at more frequent intervals.
The team climbed down the ladders and crept through the shadows.
Jaxon could have been lurking anywhere.
They finally reached the starboard side airlock. Declan’s bloodied corpse lay mangled in the corridor.
Violet’s heart stammered at the sight. She knelt down beside his body, crestfallen.
Declan’s blank eyes were staring at the ceiling.
Violet reached her hand down and gently pulled his eyelids shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
To complicate matters, the crates of trilontium were gone.
“Let’s split into two person teams and sweep the ship,” Violet said. “Mitch, you’re with me.”
He nodded.
“We’ll take the starboard side. Zoey, 8-Ball… take port. Stay in contact. We’ll meet aft, and move deck by deck.”
“What if we run into Jaxon?” Zoey asked.
“Take him prisoner. Find out where he moved the trilontium.”
“And if we can’t take him prisoner?”
“I’m not going to cry about it if he should meet with a sudden terminal condition. ”
Zoey and 8-Ball moved down the corridor. They leapfrogged their way through the labyrinth of passageways, checking compartments as they went along. It was a tedious process. Section by section, they cleared compartments, moving aft toward engineering.
In one of the crew compartments, Zoey found a hand written journal. It was lying on the deck next to a pen. It was an extremely antiquated way of keeping track of events. She flipped through the pages. The last entry was dated March 4th, 2357—25 years ago.
“I don’t think now is the time to catch up on your reading,” 8-Ball said.
“Hang on a minute.”
The pages were yellow and stained. It was the journal of Petty Officer 3rd Class Karl Burns. Zoey flipped back a few days and began reading.
Wednesday, March 1, 2357: we encountered a distress signal, and Captain Dean decided to render aid. If I were captain, I would have left the ship alone. We’re not a rescue ship. We’re not the Planetary Guard. We’ve got enough troubles of our own. But that’s probably why I’ll never be a captain. I’m just not officer material. I know it’s the law of space, and all, but it seems risky to stop and take aboard crew and cargo that you know nothing about.
Zoey flipped forward to the next entry.
Thursday, March 2, 2357: There was a sole survivor from the Mary Celeste. She was a young woman found in a state of extreme psychological distress. From what I heard, they could only get bits and pieces of the story out of her. She claimed the crew had gone mad and attacked one another. Seaman Wilson tells me a dozen crates of trilontium were brought on board with her. That can’t be true. I think it’s all bullshit. Wilson says she’s pretty good-looking. But I haven’t seen her yet.
Zoey turned the page.
Friday, March 3rd, 2357: Yesterday was really strange. The ship was stuck in some kind of quantum fluctuation. The official calculations say it only lasted a few minutes. But I swear, it felt like months. It was like the whole ship was frozen in time. When we finally emerged from slide-space, we were well outside of any charted sector. I thought this was it—I thought we were really never going to get out of slide-space. Nobody seems to know where the hell we are right now. At least, they’re not telling any of us.
Saturday, March 4th, 2357: Just when I thought shit couldn’t get any stranger in space, Petty Officer Paul Curran flipped out and stabbed six enlisted men in the 2nd deck mess hall. I’ve known Paul since Jr. High. We went through basic training together. I can’t fucking believe it. He was such a nice guy. I’m in shock. The Master-at-Arms had to shoot him to keep him from killing a seventh victim.
That was just the first part of the day. By the afternoon. Three more incidents occurred on board. I don’t know what is going on. A lot of people are saying something about a curse. I don’t buy into all that nonsense. But I’m not sure what else explains it.
I’m beat. Gotta get some shut eye. Will try to write more tomorrow, if I can. I tell you, when I get out of the Navy, I’m going to write a book about this shit. You just can’t make this stuff up.
That was the last entry in the journal. Zoey set the book down on a bunk. Her heart was filled with dread. She wondered what became of Petty Officer 3rd Class, Karl Burns?
35
WALKER
The sound of weapons fire echoed throughout the corridors. The ship was still in disarray. By this point, there were more refugees roaming the halls than there were crew. Dead bodies littered the deck, both human and Decluvain. Emperor Tyvelon had locked himself in the CIC. It was practically impenetrable. He flew into several tirades about the incompetence of his crew. He ordered a battalion of terrestrial infantry to return to the ship. Walker didn’t have long. The revolt would soon be squashed.
He crept through the maze of passageways to the berthing compartment. He opened the hatch and scanned the room. Bailey was gone. Walker’s heart sank.
A bullet ripped past his ear. It impacted the bulkhead beside him, leaving a crater 12 inches in diameter with a flaming core.
Walker spun his weapon around and released a burst of fire down the corridor.
The blast took out a Decluvian warrior. His body flopped to the deck in a slimy mess. His comrade fired back. Blue streaks flew down the hallway, crackling through the air.
Walker ducked into the compartment for cover. He whipped his weapon around the corner and fired several rounds, taking out the remaining Decluvian. Green blood painted the bulkheads.
Walker stepped back into the corridor. He screamed with frantic desperation. “Bailey?”
There was no response.
Walker pushed through the hazy passageways, calling out for Bailey. But he heard nothing.
He weaved his way through the chaos, stepping over bodies and taking out random enemies that lurked in the hallways.
Suddenly, Bailey’s faint bark filtered through.
“Bailey?” Walker yelled.
He sprinted in the direction of the dog’s bark.
A few moments later, Bailey came running through the haze and almost tackled him with joy. He was bouncing up and down and panting.
Walker chuckled and pet him. “Alright, boy. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get out of here.”
Walker took off down the corridor and Bailey followed. He scoured the passageways, but every escape portal was empty. The shuttles had all been used. The only way off this ship was to steal a vessel from the flight deck, or use the damaged vehicle they came in on. And that was going to be no easy task.
Walker found himself close to the reactor room. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. And the odds of getting off the ship were slim. If he could damage the carrier’s propulsion, that would be one less combatant in the attack against New Earth.
The hatch was sealed, and there was no getting inside the reactor room. The reactor techs had locked the compartment down.
Bailey barked at Walker, then ran away down the hall.
Walker chased after him.
Bailey led him to a compartment and pawed at the hatch. Walker peered in through the viewport—Bailey had found the armory. Row after row of weapons and munitions. Bailey had caught the scent of the explosive ordinance.
He may not have been a trained tactical explosive detection dog, but that didn’t keep him from picking up on
the odor. He had been around Walker long enough to know when he needed heavy firepower.
The hatch to the armory was sealed shut as well. Walker could slam into it all he wanted, but without the key code, it wasn’t going to budge.
UPDF ships had emergency escape hatches in all critical compartments. Walker hoped that the Decluvian military followed the same protocol.
Occasionally the emergency hatches were tack welded shut. But more often then not, they were freely accessible. Walker made particularly good use of these hatches when he was aboard the USS Vandal. The gunners mate was an obnoxious little runt who was fond of keeping his horde of beer that he had stolen locked up in the armory. There was a six week stretch in the Zeta Akunus sector where supplies ran short, and nobody could get their hands on a cold beer. Walker felt obligated to liberate the gunners mate’s stash and dispense it among the Reapers who had been doing special ops on Cronophitos. They had certainly earned it.
Walker moved to the neighboring storage compartment. The outer hatch wasn’t locked. He pushed into the compartment, and scanned the area. He found a 3’x3’ emergency hatch and crawled through into the armory. Bailey jumped through after him.
The armory was a smorgasbord of destructive implements—plasma rifles, grenade launchers, and dehydration weapons that would turn you to ash. Walker found several magnetic grenades with timers.
They were black disk-shaped objects with a small conical point on one side, presumably to focus the blast energy. The controls and display were on the rim. They were about the size of a donut. Walker grabbed a few and stuffed them in pouches on his tactical vest. He opened the main hatch to the armory from the inside and peered into the hallway.
The chaos was settling down. Most of the refugees had evacuated from the ship via the escape shuttles.
Walker snuck through the corridors to the reactor compartment. One of these magnetic grenades would take out the hatch nicely. A few more placed on the reactor cores in this carrier would have propulsion problems, not to mention the area would be contaminated with radiation.
But Walker was going to have to hurry. The first transport of Decluvian warriors was returning to the ship. It was a massive bulky transport containing a full company of troops. It lumbered into the bay and set down on the flight deck. The back ramp lowered and Decluvian warriors streamed out like ants from a mound that had just been kicked.
36
ZOEY
The lights in the corridor flickered. Zoe and 8-Ball crept aft toward engineering. The barrels of their RK 909s swept the hallway.
At the far end of the passageway, muzzle flash illuminated the darkness. The thunderous report of gunfire echoed off the bulkheads. Zoey could hear bullets rip past her ear. She slammed her back against the bulkhead and took cover behind a support brace.
8-Ball took cover on the opposite bulkhead.
Bullets zipped down the corridor, sparking and ricocheting off the bulkheads.
Zoey angled her weapon around the support brace and squeezed the trigger. She fired a short burst into the darkness and ducked back behind the brace.
She and 8-Ball took turns blasting at the muzzle flash at the other end of the hallway. The smell of gunfire filled the air. Zoey’s ears were ringing from the deafening echo of the firefight.
Jaxon kept firing back at them.
8-Ball leaned around the support frame and blasted off several more rounds. Before he could lean back for cover, one of Jaxon's bullets ripped through his shoulder. Blood spewed from the wound. The impact twisted 8-Ball around. Two more bullets punctured his back. 8-Ball cried out in agony.
His body smacked against the deck, blood oozing from his wounds.
Zoey’s eyes went wide. The color drained from her face. She screamed out in terror. “8-Ball!”
She arched around the brace and fired down the hallway. Her finger squeezed the trigger, and she let out a primal roar. She didn’t let up until the magazine was empty and the bolt locked out.
She flung her back against the bulkhead taking cover once again. She pressed the mag release and the magazine clattered against the deck. She jammed another one into the mag well and blasted off a few more rounds.
“8-Ball, talk to me,” she screamed.
Eddie groaned.
“Hang in there.”
Eddie needed immediate medical attention, or he was going to bleed out right there on the deck.
The gunfire ceased.
Smoke wafted through the hallway.
Zoey edged her head around the support brace. Muzzle flash lit up again at the other end of the corridor. She snapped her head back out of the way.
Her heart was about to tear through her chest. She needed to get to 8-Ball—and soon.
The commotion had drawn the attention of Mitch and Violet. They came running up a connecting corridor, emerging just behind Zoey’s position.
Mitch saw that 8-Ball was down. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dashed toward 8-Ball.
Gunfire erupted, filling the hallway with bullets.
Zoey blasted back down the corridor, trying to provide cover.
Mitch swooped down and grabbed Eddie by the collar. Bullets snapped past his head. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, he pulled 8-Ball to safety in a connecting corridor. A trail of blood streaked behind him.
Zoey fell back into the corridor after Mitch. She tossed her weapon down and started first aid. With her palms, she applied pressure to Eddie’s largest wounds. Within seconds, her hands were covered in crimson blood.
“Get a med kit,” Zoey yelled. “There’s one on the bulkhead in each section.
Mitch took off down the corridor. Violet stood guard at the corner. The gunfire had ceased, but Jaxon was still out there, somewhere.
Mitch returned a few moments later with the med kit.
Zoey dug into it and grabbed a pair of scissors. She cut away the layers of Eddie’s SK-2. The material was thick, and cutting through multiple layers was time-consuming. Every second counted.
“Just hang in there, Eddie,” Zoey said. “I’m not giving you permission to die yet.”
Once the wounds were exposed, Zoey scrounged for the GS gel in the med kit. It was an expandable biopolymer foam that was extremely useful in plugging gunshot wounds and other punctures. It contained advanced regenerative compounds as well as an analgesic.
She put the nozzle into his wounds and squeezed out the gel. Within moments, it expanded and filled the gaping wounds. It stopped the bleeding. But Eddie had already lost a lot of blood. His pulse was weak.
“We’ve got to get him to the med center,” Zoey said.
Mitch and Zoey hefted Eddie off the ground and carried him to the nearest elevator. It wasn’t the most ideal way to transport a wounded victim, but there was no time to waste. They raced him to the med center and set him atop a gurney.
Zoey wasn’t sure what condition the center was going to be in. The rest of the ship had been so dodgy, there was no telling if anything was going to work in the med center. But the facility had its own backup power supply that would take over in the event of a failure of the ship’s emergency power. Dual redundancy.
She ran a diagnostic imaging scan on 8-Ball. It was a miracle he was still alive. He had major trauma and was going to need extensive surgery. Far beyond basic field care. Eddie had a punctured lung, and a ruptured spleen. His shoulder had been turned to hamburger meat.
He was going to die without the assistance of an experienced surgeon. The robotic assisted med pod would guide the operator through most procedures. But this was way beyond Zoey’s skill level.
Zoey squeezed Eddie’s hand. He lightly squeezed back. Her eyes were brimming. “You’re living up to your name.”
“Always behind the eight ball,” he murmured.
“I’m going to put you into quantum stasis. It’s the only thing I can do.”
“Don’t forget about me in there,” he mumbled.
Zoey wheeled him over to the device. Mitch and
Violet helped transfer him to the stasis chamber. It was a large apparatus with a central enclosure. It looked like a magnetic resonance imaging unit. The stasis chamber was a narrow tube.
The device was similar in concept to the slide-space drives. It had its own field generator. But its function was vastly different. Zoey really didn’t know how, exactly, it worked. Something about suspending the subject in a quantum superposition. It was like hitting the pause button on life. Once in stasis, Eddie would stay exactly as he was, until removed from stasis. Then time would progress normally for him.
The devices were obscenely expensive. There was usually only one aboard each ship. You’d find them in hospitals, major trauma centers, and sometimes in the homes of the ultra rich.
It was hard to say what the long-term effects were from an extended time and quantum stasis. Alteration in cognitive functioning, mood, and memory loss were all possible side effects. But in a life or death situation, it would buy you some time.
Zoey sealed the pod and activated the device.
It was a long shot, but if they could get the Revenant functioning and avoid disintegrating upon entering the planet’s atmosphere, maybe Eddie had a shot. She’d have to find a qualified surgeon and get him aboard the ship somehow.
It seemed like a pipe dream.
37
ZOEY
“3 hours remaining until X2997365 becomes our permanent home,” Violet said.
“You mean, our grave,” Mitch replied.
Violet frowned at him.
“I say we hunt that son-of-a-bitch down and kill him,” Zoey said.
“What’s that really going to accomplish?” Violet said. “We’re all going to be dead in 3 hours anyway.”
“At least I’ll have the satisfaction of pulling the trigger,” Zoey said. “I figured you’d be the first person who’d want to put a bullet in that bastard.”
“I’m trying to disconnect my emotions.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Emotions are clouding my judgment,” Violet said. “I’m going to check the reactors, see if I can find any logical explanation why they are not functioning. Keep looking for the trilontium.”