by S D Tanner
A noise that started as a hum now turned into a roaring sound. The shuttle was shuffling its way out of the docking bay until he felt it tip and his body lost any feeling of weight. He couldn’t hear Judge’s reply, but he read his lips.
“Yes, sir.”
Was that their relationship? His gut told him he was an officer and Judge was his first sergeant. Studying the man’s older face filled him with confidence. Not only did he know Judge, he’d fought by his side for a long time. As the shuttle left the ship, he tried to ignore the sensation of not being connected to anything and closed his eyes. Judge’s face appeared again, only this time he was wearing a white shirt with jeans. Perched crookedly on his head was a colorful, cone-shaped birthday hat. Judge’s chin was currently clean shaven, but in this memory, it was covered in a thick shadow. His usually somber expression had been replaced by a wide and open-faced smile.
Desperate to capture more of the memory he tried to find the party. On the table in front of Judge was a round white cake with an ornate pink trim of frosting. Three slim pink candles were burning brightly. The face of the child was blurry and she was sitting on a woman’s lap. Fine long fingers reached around the chubby waist and a long tendril of the woman’s dark hair spread across the child’s shoulders. Leaning into the table with the cake, the woman was helping the little girl blow out her candles. Suddenly she looked up at him, her eyes bright with joy.
Her voice was only in his head, but it echoed sweetly, bringing with it a deep contentment. “I love you, Jake.”
“On course to Ark Animax. Settle in, folks. ETA in twenty minutes.”
The memory vanished like a balloon trailing away in the wind. All he could do was watch it leave knowing he’d lost something he’d promised never to give up.
Desperate to grab at anything before it faded away completely, he said the first word that popped into his head. “Daisy.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: Enter the Dragon
He and Judge had taken the jump seats closest to Flak and Hawk at the front of the space shuttle and, holding onto their harnesses, they pulled themselves forward to see through the narrow strip of window.
“What do you think?”
It was a stupid question. From space Ark Animax looked the same as their own ship. Although from a distance the pods and hull appeared white, on closer inspection there were deep rends and dark marks. The damage was yet another sign of how long the ship had been in deep space. They were a long way from home and getting further away by the day.
Judge’s mouth was downturned in a way that highlighted his age. “She’s been in space a while.”
“That was my first observation.”
When he finally tore his eyes away from the window, Judge was giving him a worried look. “These ships aren’t built for combat.”
“What’s your point?”
“This wasn’t meant to be a military mission.”
“Probably not. So?”
“It’s a military problem now, but we’re not equipped.”
Assessing combat readiness was something he would have expected from a first sergeant, which only confirmed his suspicion about Judge’s role on the squad. Looking across at the three men in the jump seats next to them, he wondered what each of their specializations were. Rok had his head tilted back into his headrest and appeared to be singing. Ash looked bored and, with his eyes closed and his mouth slack, Joker was clearly asleep. If he were to take a guess, Rok and Ash knew one another and were grunts. Joker had described himself as the wild card and he couldn’t work out what his specialization was.
Turning his head to look through the window again, the shuttle had slowed while it entered the seemingly small entrance to the docking bay. Lit brightly, an orange light was flashing to indicate a shuttle was landing. Unlike their own bay, this one had a row of ships already parked. Their ship had capacity for up to ten shuttles, but there had only been one in the docking bay. With only seven shuttles parked side by side some were also missing on this ship.
Feeling gravity drag him back into his chair, he tapped the control on his left arm. “Cognitionis, how many shuttles does each Ark have?”
“Standard configuration for each Ark is five space shuttles.”
A solid clunk sent a vibration through his feet to his knees, meaning the shuttle had landed. Flicking his head at Judge, he said, “This ship has an extra two shuttles.”
While looking up at the lockers above his head, Judge was unclipping his harness. “It’s not good. We’re four shuttles down and this ship only has two of them. Where did the other two go?”
Pulling his pack from the locker, he struggled to get it over his shoulders inside the cramped shuttle. Turning and thumping Judge with his pack, he said, “Hawk, keep the door closed until we’re geared up. When he twisted around, Judge pulled away to avoid being hit by his pack again. “I want to see full battle rattle before that door opens.”
Pushing past him, Judge asked, “Do you think we’ll need suits?”
Holding up one hand, he said, “Cognitionis, can you give me a ship’s status for Animax?”
“Linking to onboard knowledge database.”
While Cogless worked, his squad was struggling into their helmets and packs. Flak and Hawk had joined the squad and Judge was roughly checking each man’s gear. Pushing Rok toward the rear door, Judge said, “Rok, you’re on point.” Turning, he then shoved Ash to the back. “Ash, cover our six.”
It was the formation he would have set up, and his confidence in Judge grew. They’d known one another so well that Judge had been at his daughter’s birthday party. He couldn’t remember the name of the woman holding Daisy, but the way she’d looked at him told him who she was. They were Daisy’s mother and father. Thinking of them made his chest hurt in a way he didn’t know how to fix. The best he could do was set the memories aside. He would ask Judge if he remembered being at the party later, assuming they survived whatever was on the Animax.
While he stood back peering through the windows of the shuttle, he could hear Judge ordering the squad to check guns, any spare ammunition and communications.
“Ark Animax is operating within safe parameters. Sufficient oxygen, gravity and nutrients to sustain all life onboard.”
“Cognitionis, what else do you know?”
“Specify information required.”
“Are the squads from Animax on board?”
“That information is not available.”
“Did the squads dock on this ship?”
“That information is not available.”
“Are the sleepers…alive and well?”
“That information is not available.”
“Who is the Servator on Animax?
“Doctor Jessica Everton is the Servator on all Arks.”
How was that possible if she was human? He hadn’t tried to cut her, as he had Robert, so perhaps she wasn’t. “Who is the Medicus for Animax?”
“Doctor Robert Langus is the Medicus on all Arks.”
Judge was still organizing the squad, making sure they would exit the shuttle in formation. He wanted to ask him how Robert and Jessica could be on all three Arks, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Robert couldn’t be human, despite bleeding when cut, which meant he was possibly a bio machine. Shaking his head in frustration, he tried to remember what a bio machine was. He knew the term and not the meaning.
Catching Judge’s eye, he asked, “Are we good to go?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jessica, open the shuttle door.”
Judge looked back at him in surprise. “Jessica?”
As the door on the shuttle slowly opened, he nodded. “She’s on every Ark along with Robert.”
The door was halfway open and Judge turned to face it. “Look lively. Stay alert.”
With guns aimed outside the shuttle, each squad member stepped down the short ramp to the docking bay. Aside from the still flashing orange light nothing
was moving around them. The shuttle bay was a replica of the one on board the Prognatus, except this one contained seven shuttles. Judge was driving the squad forward toward the door that he knew would be at the end of the docking bay. They crab-walked toward the exit, aiming their guns around the shuttles as they passed them. The door on every shuttle was closed and none appeared to be damaged. Part of him wanted to look inside, but he doubted they contained any answers.
“Judge, head to the armory. We can assess the pod chamber from there.”
They’d reached the door to the corridor that led from the docking bay. Joker opened the door while Rok and Flak had their guns trained on it. Like a worried mother hen Judge was watching their every move.
Without looking at him, Judge asked, “Not the Bridge?”
“Jessica was less helpful than I’d hoped. I think she might only be an uplink.”
Behind the door was a corridor identical to the one on their ship. He already knew it led to metal stairs. Allowing the squad to file past him, Judge asked, “Uplink?”
“Yeah, I think she’s an interface to the ship’s computer.”
Judge, now moving in single file along the corridor, asked, “So, what’s the Bridge for?”
It was a good question and to his surprise he had a ready answer. “It’s only used for takeoff and landing, otherwise the ship runs itself.”
Rok was already climbing the metal stairs. At each bend, he looked up the stairwell with his gun trained on anything that might be above him. He was sure-footed and confident; this clearly wasn’t his first shoot and scoot.
Still following Rok, Judge kept glancing back at Ash to make sure he was still with them. “So, who woke us up? Jessica?”
“I think so. She said there was an infestation that needs to be eradicated.”
“So, why did she wake up the squads before us? Same infestation or another problem?”
The next door led to the wide corridor that would take them to the armory. Once again, Joker opened it while Flak and Rok kept their guns at the ready. “I don’t know, Judge. If the ships can communicate then maybe she sent them to the Animax because it was infested.”
“Then how did the squids get on board the Prognatus?”
“Maybe one of the shuttles made it back to the Prognatus and it was infested.”
This time, the long arterial corridor traveling the length of the ship was silent. Joker reached the door to the armory and opened it. Inside was another set of lockers and a wide viewing window showing the pod chamber. The room was well lit and the lockers were closed. Long benches bolted to the floor sat between the lockers and the wide window.
Judge stopped asking questions and walked to the window. Following him, he stood with the squad in a line looking across the vast chamber. This time the difference between their ships was enough to make him feel sick. Not a single pod was lit. The entire chamber was a graveyard.
CHAPTER NINE: Not Quite Human
Every ship had half a million sleepers, meaning he was looking at a massacre. Trying to the keep the horror from his voice, he asked, “What happened here?”
“We need more light,” Judge replied sounding grim.
“Jessica, light up the pod chamber.”
On his orders, lights began brightening until the fate of the sleepers became obvious. The pods immediately in front of them had been torn open with blood seeping down the broken edges. Long drip lines created a vertical pattern down the sheer white sides. Without a flat floor to pool on to, the blood must have drained through the metal grill floor to the bottom of the chamber. What struck him was the black lines mixed with the bright red ones. As if the occupant had been bled more than once. Dry and still moist blood overlapped, creating a latticework of red and black against the white background.
Judge asked, “Are they dead?”
He hoped so, but he couldn’t be sure. No one could lose so much blood and still be well enough to survive in space. The squids they’d killed on the Prognatus had been filled with blood, making him wonder if the sleepers were being used as food by whatever had infested the ship. Being in stasis was like being dead. Sleepers didn’t dream or have any awareness they existed. Utterly dependent on others monitoring the pods, a sleeper could die without ever having woken. Their vulnerability angered him. Who had decided to put half a million lives at risk this way? Why had they agreed? Why had he? Seeing the blood on the pods only highlighted how stupid they’d all been. Just who had they trusted with their lives?
“We need to go inside,” he replied, but Judge had already turned away from the window and was walking toward the lockers. Following him, he asked, “What are you looking for?”
“Better weapons. More ammo.”
Although they hadn’t examined the locker room closely on their own ship Jessica called it the armory. The lockers had contained personal weapons, but Judge was right. Maybe the armory contained more weapons. Reaching the lockers, he ran his hand over the name on it. Like the ones in their armory, it had been blacked out. When he opened the locker, there was nothing left inside, meaning the owner had been and gone. Locker doors were creaking open, being slammed and closing again. The sight of the murdered sleepers had galvanized his squad. The harsh sounds of doors being wrenched open, and hammered closed again, spoke louder than any words. They were angry, and so was he.
“Check it out. One of these lockers is a door,” Ash called from across the room.
Rok, Joker and Ash were already opening the door when he reached them. “Jessica, light up the room next to the armory.”
Inside the room were empty racks, meaning they would have held more weapons. Rok was running his hands over one of the empty ledges. “Damn,” he cursed quietly. “That’s the rack for a KLAW.”
A KLAW was a heavy machine gun with short and long-range modes. Only having automatic fire meant it used a bucket load of bullets. A heavy gunner wore a belt-fed backpack with three thousand rounds and it was so heavy it came with its own hydraulic support harness. The weapon was clipped to the wearer to help with stabilization and linked to a viewer over their right eye. Seeing Rok’s disappointment, he wasn’t surprised to learn he was a KLAW gunner. Short, with a thick neck and solidly muscled arms and thighs, Rok was a perfect build for the heavy gun.
Large and filled with cupboards and shelves with hooks on the walls, the armory should have contained far more weapons than five squads needed, much less one. The racks and ammunition shelves were empty. Every gun and bullet was gone, making him wonder why. There must have been a considerable battle somewhere on board, otherwise why was every scrap of weaponry missing?
“We need to find the eye of battle,” he said.
Judge nodded. “It must have been a hell of a fight.”
Jumping back in surprise so that he landed on his butt, Flak shouted, “Shit! I’ve got a body over here.”
Inside the cupboard Flak had just opened was a slumped soldier dressed in full battle gear. Dropping to his haunches, he reached a hand across the man. With flesh so dry his face was little more than the outline of a skull, the man’s hands still clutched an EMC-8 carbine across his chest. Like them, he wore no insignia other than a nameplate that read ‘Jackson’. Almost as if the soldier were looking to heaven for an answer, his face was tilted upward so his helmet tipped away from his head. His dry lips had peeled away from his teeth, turning his face into a featureless skull. The lower jaw had dropped so that his mouth hung open in an eternal howl.
Crouching next to him, Judge said, “He’s been dead a long time.”
As he took the gun from the soldier’s hands, the left forearm came away. After handing the gun to Judge, he picked up the limb with the hand still attached. It weighed no more than one made of flesh, but it was mechanical. Gear adrift was always a gift, but he didn’t like what he’d scored.
“We’ve been modified,” he said. Still holding the black forearm in his hand, he rose to his feet. Tapping the metal over his
right eye, he sighed unhappily. “I’m betting this isn’t just a cover either. I wonder what they did to our brains.”
Judge shook his head. “We don’t have time to worry about what we are.” Patting his shoulder as he turned to face the squad crowded around the cupboard, he added, “One problem at a time.”
“We need to get into the chamber.”
“Top down or bottom up?”
It was a fair question. If a battle had taken place then it must have happened inside the chamber, otherwise the ship wouldn’t be operational. They hadn’t seen any sign of weapons fire from the viewing window, so it had probably taken place on the lower levels, or somewhere deep inside the chamber.
“We’ll take the entrance from the armory, head to the top and work our way down. I want to do a sweep of each level.”
“I don’t like that idea. If we get caught on the walkways we could fall,” Judge replied.
“We can’t assume all the pods are dead.”
Judge shook his head. “We can’t check half a million pods.”
“We don’t need to. Jessica can take the lights down and we’ll see any that are still active.” When Judge looked at him skeptically, he added sharply, “I’m not leaving any survivors on this ship.”
Straightening slightly, Judge nodded, “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER TEN: Flea Bombs
Walking through the door to the chamber the first thing to hit him was the stench of rotting flesh. The soldier they’d found in the armory had been dead for so long, his flesh had dried to a leathery shell. Inside the chamber, the odor of active decay hung heavy in the air.
Trying to pull his collar over his nose, Flak said, “This stink is fresh.”
Walking along the walkway to the stairs his stomach did a disgusted backflip. The fresh blood should have been a hint as to the condition of the chamber. Unlike the one on their ship, this chamber had to be a feeding ground for the squids. They might not have seen them yet, but he was sure they were onboard. If they didn’t eradicate the squids, then the fate of the Animax would be repeated on the Prognatus. Although the squids were easy enough to kill he needed more troops, but he didn’t expect to find any. The soldier in the armory had been dead a long time. Knowing what happened on the Animax made him want to rush back to the Prognatus, but he couldn’t leave the sleepers to die in stasis. Something about their vulnerability raised his hackles. Death shouldn’t creep up on a man, sight unseen. No life should ever be taken without a fight.