by Andrew Beery
I nodded.
“Private First Class MaTok, I’m giving you the stripe I took from the Corporal here. You are now a Corporal as well. That is the first Non-Commissioned Officer rank. As an NCO you will be responsible for the lives of others under your command. You are still junior to Corporal Peters.”
“Ah… Thank you, Sir,” the big Gator said awkwardly.
“I have one other order for you two. Effective immediately, you are bunkmates and combat partners. I don’t want one of you to take a crap without the other one holding the toilet paper. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Sir,” Peters answered quickly.
“No, Sir,” MaTok answered just as quickly.
“What is it that is not clear?” Corporal.
“What is ‘toilet paper’?”
I shook my head.
“Dismissed!”
“Sir, yes, Sir,” the two Marines answered in unison. I hoped to God they did not kill each other.
Chapter 19: Bad Burritos…
When we emerged from the jump point in the Aldebra system we were about sixteen AU from our target… the partially disabled Fabricator ship. We knew this because we had established an FTL comm-link with the Aldebrans, a worm-like race that inhabited the system. They had been monitoring the aggressive vessel since it had destroyed one of their populated moons.
Since light covered a standard AU astronomical distance in about eight point three minutes, the Fabricator ship would know we had emerged from hyperspace in about two hours and some change. That’s how much time we had to work with. We were going to use our stealth systems and a series of micro-jumps to close on the Fabricator ship in just under an hour.
That would give us enough time to use our newly acquired breaching pods. These guys featured miniature hyperfield ring gates. We had acquired the tech from a race called the Nesters. It was neat stuff. Once the pod embedded itself in the hull of the ship to be breached, we could literally run our men through the ring gates into the enemy vessel. We would be using two breaching pods for this assault with a third one ready for a quick deployment if needed.
Our version of the tech had a few improvements over the version that the Nesters had used against the Yorktown several months ago. We could open and close our ring gates remotely. This meant that the gate didn’t need to be guarded once it was set up. That little oversight had cost the Nesters dearly.
I headed down to the launch bay and donned my Stark suit. This was a major improvement from the last time I had set foot on a fabricator ship. The last time, without my Stark suit… I had been, essentially, as naked as a babe in the woods. Active armor was a good thing for a Marine to have. Armor made me happy. I like being happy.
Just as I finished instructing the suit to seal itself, Hammond walked over to me. I could see his face holographically superimposed on his faceplace.
“I just got the report from the bridge,” JJ said as I finished running a self-diagnostic on my Stark. “We are three minutes out. All indications are that we have not been detected. The enemy vessel has made no course changes.
“OK, but don’t expect our luck to last. Once we launch our breaching pods, they will know we are here. Tell the men to be ready for a hot LZ.”
I don’t know why I bother giving orders like that. Every one of my Marines would have gone in expecting a hot landing zone… I think it allowed me to burn off some emotional energy.
I had to deal with one problem before we deployed. A new member of my team wanted to go with us. Now, I appreciate an eager soldier as much as the next guy, but some people are just not built to be fighters… literally. Small black barrels are a perfect case in point.
“Fred, you are too valuable both as a friend and as an intelligence asset. We are going to need your expertise and insights. I can’t allow you to join us in, what is likely to be, the most dangerous part of this operation.”
“But I can help monitor what Six-One-Nine is doing. That has to be valuable,” Fred pleaded as the upper half of his barrel shape flashed in a myriad of colors.
“I agree little buddy, but it comes down to a risk-reward decision. Once we secure the LZ and a reasonable buffer area… I promise… you will be the first guy I call over.”
I saw Fred’s lights begin to flash faster. He was looking for an argument to persuade me to relent. I decided to cut him off.
“Every one of my Marines can go through the bio-generators if they get fragged. Not so with you. WhimPy doesn’t have a handle on your engrams yet… and we don’t have a way of rebuilding your chassis,” I added. “If you take a hit with a blaster… you will be… without a question… well and truly dead. I’m sorry Fred. I just can’t risk it.”
I left the little guy with slowly blinking, very dim lights. He was obviously depressed, but I had to stand my ground on this one.
The first of the breaching pods penetrated the Fabricator vessel. At this point I expected the caca to hit the fan. Speed and surprise was going to be a powerful force multiplier. We had to move and move fast. We deployed a robotic drone immediately and it showed the breach point was empty save for a hell of a mess from our pod getting jiggy with the Fabricator’s hull.
“GO, GO, GO,” I yelled over the comms. Alpha squad raced through the ring-gate setup in our launch bay. They ran four abreast. No sooner had they made it through, then the next group deployed. Moments later the second pod hit, and the same procedures were followed.
All told, I had four squads… one hundred Marines deployed and holding defensive positions in under five minutes. I’m not sure if that’s a record but it had to be damn close.
I joined the tail end of the first squad. JJ was heading up Bravo as my second. Lieutenant Commander Bradly Hiller owned Charlie and Delta at the other breach point. Lieutenant Maktar was his second.
I have to admit, I was surprised as I stepped through the ring-gate. The corridors were basically the same as the ones I saw on Two-One-Eight-Eight… and at the same time they were remarkably different. Whereas Two-One-Eight-Eight was pristine, this ship was anything but. Dust covered everything.
I had thought that our breaching pod had caused the mess we were seeing when the drone first started sending images but as the drone got deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship… the dust was everywhere. What we didn’t see, was any sign of an armed response.
“Where’s our welcome party?” JJ asked over the comms. “You’d think there would be something coming our way… ya know like a neighbor with a tuna casserole or a Girl Scout selling cookies.”
“I agree,” I said as I ordered more drones deployed. This was damn strange.
“A real shame,” JJ continued. “I was hoping for the Girl Scout at least. I like those thin mints. You know the ones I mean… chocolate with a wafer and just a hint of mint.”
“Enough with thin mints,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” JJ soldiered on where brave men feared to tread, “It seems like every year the size and number of cookies in the packages gets smaller.”
“JJ”
“Right… DXing the cookie comments.”
***
The condition of Zero-One-Six kept getting stranger and stranger as we moved deeper into the ship. There were entire corridors where the lighting either flickered or was out. The environmental sensors showed the air was breathable… but barely. CO2 levels were at the high end of what humans could tolerate. You could breathe it, but you would end up with one hell of a headache. The temperature was also at the high end of the scale.
Most people don’t realize it but heat… not cold… is the biggest problem for environmental systems in space. The vacuum of space is a great insulator and so heat tends to accumulate in any system generating even a minor amount of waste heat. Larger ships often used glorified Stirling engines to convert excess heat into electricity… which in turn was used to drive infrared lasers. The lasers would beam the excess energy, that could not be stored in batteries, off into space.
It almost seemed
like the environmental systems were on the fritz. That would not be a problem for Zero-One-Six, but it seemed odd that Zero-One-Six’s version of Fred didn’t address the situation. I mean it’s not like the guy had a lot to do.
I toggled my comms. It was time to get an expert opinion on the situation. “Fred, you got your ears on?”
“If by that you mean am I receiving your transmission… the answer is yes.”
“I think I need ya buddy and the way seems to be clear. Why don’t you pop through the gate and make your way to my…”
I stopped talking. A barrel shape materialized in front of me. It was Fred.
“You have the ability to teleport point to point?” I asked in an astonished voice. “And you didn’t think this was worth sharing?”
Fred’s lights positively flashed with pride. “I knew you could not and I didn’t want to brag.”
“Fred, let’s be clear. Anything you can do that can impact our ability to accomplish our objectives should be shared.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” I confirmed. “For example, what is the range and limitations of your ability to teleport?”
Fred shimmered again and became a four-foot tall humanoid female. She could have been human except that her size was that of a child but proportioned like an adult. In addition, her skin… if that’s what it was, remained absolute carbon black.
This was getting freaky. I had known Fred for weeks now and I was just beginning to realize I barely knew anything about him or her… I was struggling to apply a gender. I know that was anthropomorphizing on my part but that is how we humans are wired.
This young lady that was standing in front of me looked nothing like Fred the small black barrel. Like an idiot I had accepted on face value what I saw before. Now, I began to wonder if trusting him had been a mistake.
“I can reconfigure my structure within limits,” Fred said in the same voice I had come to expect. “From what I can tell, I’m not as adept at reconfiguring myself as your Heshe nanites allow Commander First or Admiral Kimbridge to reconfigure themselves. For example, I can’t easily absorb outside material to grow bigger.”
I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak yet. You have to understand, I like surprises as much as the next guy… I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before. But this… this was something else entirely.
Fred continued. “My ability to transform was intended to make interactions with biologics more natural. As far as my teleportation abilities go… I’m only able to do that inside of a Fabricator ship. I don’t actually have the ability to teleport. That is a Fabricator technology. As I told your Admiral, Fabricator technology is much more advanced then the Ashtoreth technology you are used to dealing with. She is aware of many of my extended abilities. I’m surprised she did not share this with you.”
That makes two of us, I thought.
“OK,” I said while pausing to think. “I don’t suppose you have personnel shields or built-in rays-guns, do you?”
“Sadly, no,” the little female Fred said with a realistic pout. “Maybe Commander Thais could retrofit my systems with some type of blaster. There is a sport called Skeet shooting that I would like to try.”
“So, no shields either?”
Fred shook her or his head. I was really going to have to sort this gender thing out.
“My extended abilities all revolve around my duties as a Primary Crew Interface Module. I can cook, fix a toaster and sing lullabies in several hundred languages.”
I shook my head. The teleportation function might be useful. I wasn’t sure about any of the rest.
Fred shimmered and was back to his barrel shape. I breathed a sigh of relief. I hated to admit it, but the little guy was hot in his female form… I wasn’t sure how I felt about that and I sure as hell was not going to be talking to Janice about it.
“Can you interface with this ship’s systems…” I stopped mid-sentence. “Forget it,” I said. “Of course, you can because you used the teleportation services. Can you figure out why we haven’t seen any type of opposition and why this ship looks so much different than yours?”
“I have already queried the ship’s internal logs. The ship is unaware that you have boarded it. I’m being asked by the Primary Processing Unit why I have been offline for so long. I believe the unit is under the false belief that I am the PCIM assigned to this ship. I am reluctant to correct the misunderstanding because I calculate such a response will provoke an aggressive response. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No,” I said. “It makes you a sentient being with a sense of right and wrong. I find it hard to believe that a society as advanced as the Fabricators could have wanted what’s happening to happen. Your help in ending this will potentially save billions of lives. If that takes an occasional white lie… well the Creator will have to forgive us or help us find another way.”
I looked around. There was dust and what might have been organic debris everywhere. “Can you explain this,” I asked. “Why is…”
The lights on Fred paused in a way I had never seen before. I had no idea what it meant but I had that queasy feeling that usually followed a bad burrito… I was pretty sure that one way or another… a crap storm was coming.
“We must go!” Fred yelled.
“Go? Go where?” I checked for the hundredth time to make sure the safety was off on my weapons systems… it can never hurt to make sure you’re ready when a crap storm is coming.
“I have detected an overload building in the fusion core powering the engines. I believe there is a malfunction that is preventing the system from scramming.”
I toggled my tac-com. “Attention all hands. Protocol Quebec-Romeo is in effect. We have a potential core breach. I repeat… all hands… quick retreat.”
I turned to the squad with me. “Sergeant, get the men to safety. I’ll be along shortly.”
“Sir?” Sergeant Nichols said. It was obvious that he was not keen on leaving his commanding officer behind.
“Don’t worry Sergeant. I have a plan.”
“Beg’n the Commander’s pardon sir… but that’s what worries me.”
Chapter 20: An Unexpected Encounter with the Past…
“Fred, can you teleport the two of us to the engine room where that core is about to overload?”
“Negative, but I can get us close. There will be an armored door you will need to breach in order to gain access.”
“OK. Here’s the plan. You and I are going to attempt to scram that reactor. We need to know more about the Fabricators and their ships. The only way to accomplish that is to keep this ship from blowing up.”
“And if we fail to get the door open in time?” Fred asked with just a hint of concern in his voice.
“If you detect the breach is absolutely imminent, you teleport yourself to the ring-gate and step through… sealing it behind you. I will continue to try and scram the system. If I fail, I’ll just wake up again on the Yorktown.”
Fred’s lights raced for a few minutes. I had never seen them do that and I had no idea what it meant. Finally, they slowed, and he said simply, “Very well, Commander.”
***
Two minutes later Fred and I were outside of a massive armored door. The process of teleporting involved a locally generated hyperfield corridor. It wasn’t so much a portal like the ring-gates as it was a tunnel you walked down. The trip took me three or four steps, but I essentially crossed more than half the width of the ship. I could see everything I was passing by. The experience was not for the faint of heart. I instructed my Stark to inject me with an antiemetic.
There was another surprise waiting for us at the door. About forty furry little creatures. They were Ollies… a race that had once been native to Olanda Prime.
Olanda Prime had been a pleasant little world… it was, or at least had been, filled with omnivores that appeared to be an oversized muskrat-ferret hybrid. They were called the Ollies.
They were friendly, curious and ge
nerally good company… until you fed them meat. The meat was addictive and made them uncontrollably aggressive. Pirates had discovered the planet and the Ollies.
They took advantage of their easy addiction to enslave them. My first assignment as a young lieutenant had been put the pirates out of business and save the Ollies. I succeeded with the first part and failed horribly with the second.
To my knowledge the entire race had been wiped out when I failed to save the planet from destruction. To see them here and now was… well I don’t know what it was. I was relieved that I had not presided over the complete genocide of a sentient race. At the same time, these Ollies were in bad shape.
Many had open and festering sores. They were emaciated and quite obviously suffering.
“Well this would explain the condition of the ship,” Fred said quietly.
“Explain yourself,” I prompted. The Ollies were backing away from us and making a mewing sound I had never heard from them before. Those furthest away seemed to be laying prostrate on the ground. If it weren’t for the fact that their heads were all pointed in our direction, I might have been tempted to believe they were dead.
“There is a deceased biologic laying half in and out of that ventilation shaft.” Fred used a low-power laser to indicate where he wanted me to look. The mewing increased in volume.
I spotted the carcass Fred was trying to point out. The creature, which had probably been an Ollie, had been dead for quite a while. It was little more than a mummy at this point. Around its shriveled neck was a black ornament of some type.
“I see him,” I said, but I still didn’t connect the dots here. “How does this explain the condition of the ship?”
“The item the biologic is wearing is a component from one of the environmental regeneration facilities. It would not simply be laying around, so it is logical that this creature or one of his brethren disassembled the unit in order to retrieve this piece. There are likely many such systems that have been likewise compromised.”