Have you told the captain this?
Of course, Black said. He is aware of the possible threat.
Possible threat. More like probable, Nobel thought silently. A shiver crawled down his spine. The urge to make a connection to Dunn, to ask him just what the fuck he thought he was doing, was difficult to resist.
Why don’t we just send the fucking thing back out of Sol System?
Black paused for a moment. The sled disappeared from the block connection as though it had never been there. Left in the darkness, Nobel felt as though he were floating through the emptiness of space. Stars began to appear in the distance, their twinkling light calming him, making him feel moored.
A shape appeared and he immediately recognized it. Mira, looking as new as she had the day she departed from Trident Station, floated before the stars.
The creatures have been on their way for some time, Black said. At least according to the data Kalimura’s squad recovered. Depending on how many there are, they may also be attracted to Sol’s dim light.
Nobel’s eyes blinked despite the fact he was only in a simulation. You think they could hone in on Sol’s photon emissions and enter deeper into Sol System?
That is exactly what I believe, Black said. Based on my simulations, and please forgive their accuracy and my assumptions, exo-solar life may follow the trail to inhabited systems and easily overrun them.
Void wept, Nobel said. So how is this going to fix it?
Sending the artifact to Pluto, an uninhabited and uninhabitable dwarf planet, makes the most sense if we are attempting to corral the creatures. If the beacon continues to blast its signal, the photon streams will be stronger than the photon trails emitted by Sol. Therefore, the creatures will continue to pursue the beacon and hopefully stay rooted on Pluto rather than travel in-system.
Nobel shook his head. There’s a lot of ifs here, Black.
Yes, Lieutenant, the AI agreed. If you have another suggestion, I’m interested to hear it.
Typical Black, he thought to himself. Give you the lowdown and dare you to find a better solution.
I don’t have one at this time, Nobel admitted. I guess I don’t have much time to come up with an alternative.
Black said nothing.
Nobel sighed. Okay, here’s the other question I have. Why do we have thrusters at the fore? Fine attitude adjustment?
Yes, Black said. If we have to change the sled’s trajectory or speed before it impacts with Pluto, it will be impossible without additional thruster placements.
How much juice we talking?
Enough nitrogen to spin the sled in 360° rotations a maximum of ten times.
He nodded to himself. Okay, Nobel said. I think that’s the only question. He harrumphed. Besides how we’re getting the void-damned beacon out of Mira’s engine compartment.
That, Black said, is something we are working on.
I’ll bet, he said. I’ll send the design to the printer and fine tune as we go.
Very good, Lieutenant.
Nobel disconnected from the block and found himself staring at the two marines standing at parade rest. “At ease, people,” Nobel chuckled. He looked over at the hopper. While he’d been in virtual space with Black, Copenhaver and Murdock had loaded the materials into the hopper. The printer was all but ready to go.
He activated the printer via his block and checked the design upload. As expected, the updated blueprints were in memory. “Thank you, Black,” he whispered. “Okay, marines. Here’s what’s going to happen. Since my leg is FUBAR, you’re going to follow instructions and we’re going to assemble this thing together. Understood?”
“Aye, sir!” they yelled, their voices echoing around the nearly empty cargo bay.
“Get the tools, kiddies. This is going to take time and we don’t have much.” Copenhaver and Murdock didn’t quite run to the supply cabinets, but they certainly walked fast.
Nobel ran one last check on the printer status and health report. All green. “Let’s do it,” he muttered and activated the machine.
Chapter Twenty-One
Despite the buzzing of anxiety in his stomach, Taulbee grinned. Murdock and Copenhaver were out of harm’s way. Or at least as much as they could be in the ass-end of space surrounded by exo-solar things that could kill you. Shit. Nothing was safe out here. Not even the void-damned KBOs.
“Taulbee to Gunny, over.”
“Gunny here, sir.”
He flipped to Gunny’s feed. Lyke and Gunny were walking on Mira’s surface, the two marines checking the lines. “I have good news for you.”
“Aye, sir? Well, that would be a change.”
Taulbee laughed. “Get back in the skiff. The captain’s 86’d the tow.”
After a momentary pause, Gunny growled into the mic. “Outstanding, sir.”
“Yeah, thought you’d like that,” he said. “I’m about sixty seconds from your position at present speed. As soon as you’re loaded up, fire up that skiff and get to Black at best speed possible.”
“Acknowledged, sir.”
“I’ll shadow you on the way back. Cover your ass.”
“Very good, sir,” Gunny said. “Cartwright, out.”
He shut off Gunny’s feed and returned his attention to his surroundings. The seconds ticked off while he cycled through the feeds. According to his sensors, the skiff had begun moving away from her position and back to Black. Good. All he had to do was follow their new trajectory, turn the ‘52 around when he reached their path, and follow—
“Proximity Alert,” flashed on his HUD. Next, a radiation symbol glowed bright red. “Radiation Alert. Rad levels rising.”
Taulbee cursed and checked the radar. Nothing.
“You kidding me?” he yelled. “360° radar and you can’t fucking see it?”
A cold chill ran down his spine. Radiation. Hadn’t he had a radiation spike just before the starfish—?
Something crashed into the hull and sent the SV-52 into a biaxial spin. Taulbee cried out as his HUD flashed yellow and red. Whatever had hit him had damaged the SV-52’s bilge. Atmosphere drained from a puncture in the Atmo-steel and he found himself on suit life support. Taulbee’s HUD status glowed with the words “Radiation Warning.” If whatever irradiating the ship didn’t move soon, rads would break through the radiation shielding. After that? All he’d have to combat it would be his suit and he wouldn’t last long at those levels.
He hit the thrusters to get the roll under control. It took five micro-burns to have an effect. He waited for the craft to stabilize before hitting the thrusters again. Two seconds later, something smacked the hull directly beneath the cabin. Taulbee cursed. Void, but he wanted to look at the cam feeds. Unfortunately, he was too busy trying to get the craft under control.
Another set of thruster bursts and he finally got the roll under control, but the SV-52 was still tumbling end over end. Another bang on the hull. The pilot seat thumped and jumped from the impact. The rad levels were nearly through the shield.
Can’t even eject, he thought. If whatever that is doesn’t kill me first, my suit is going to fry. Taulbee touched the thrusters again and managed to get the tumble under control. The SV-52 was nearly stable again, but the vibrations from the hull beneath him continued. The structural integrity was at less than 50%. In a moment or two, the SV-52’s bilge would split open like a rotten fruit.
“Black! I’m in big trouble,” he shouted through the comms.
The few milliseconds it took for the AI to reply seemed like an eternity. “A creature has attached itself to your hull, Lieutenant.”
“Tell me something I don’t know!” Taulbee shouted.
Something tinged off the hull followed by a storm of vibrations beneath him and on the port-side. Shards of flechettes bounced harmless off the canopy.
“Black! What the—?”
“Gunny Cartwright’s squad is providing cover fire,” Black said, her voice maddeningly calm and level. “I’m sending you a flight path.”
An instruction set appeared on his block. He pushed away the panic, ignored the screaming alerts, and focused. The AI’s orders included thruster numbers and amounts of fuel to release for each. Taulbee began running through the list, hitting the thrusters in sequence, pausing when instructed. The SV-52 bucked as it swiveled in space, then rolled, and flipped again.
As another round of flechettes exploded in the dizzying tumble of space, he wondered dimly why he’d even bothered to get the craft stable if they were now trying to send him completely out of control. But he wasn’t out of control and some part of him knew it. Black would keep him alive. At least he hoped so.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Gunny,” Black said through the comms, “Lieutenant Taulbee is under attack.”
He froze just as he was about to pour on the thrusters to reach the ship. A new feed popped up on his HUD. The camera view from S&R Black focused in on the SV-52. It was no longer above him or even attempting to intersect with their flight path. Instead, the support vehicle tumbled through space, heading further and further from both Mira and S&R Black. Gunny slowed the skiff, his mouth open in a wide ‘O’ of surprise and horror. Something black and blurred had attached itself to the craft’s bilge. Long arms, or tentacles, radiated outward from its center. A pair of the arms pulled back before striking at the SV-52’s armor. Through the magnified view, he saw flakes of Atmo-steel falling away from the hull, tumbling and dancing in the z-g.
“Goddamnit,” Gunny yelled. He sent the coordinates to the squad. “Wendt! Get that cannon pointed toward the SV-52.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
“Lyke! You’re the spotter. Keep looking for more threats and update us if anything twitches!”
“Aye, Gunny.”
“Black, how much damage will the new flechette rounds cause?”
“To the hull?” the AI asked and then answered. “These are not armor-piercing rounds,” she said. “Fire at will.”
“You heard the lady,” Gunny said. “Wendt. Put out some chaff but try not to hit the canopy.”
“Aye, Gunny.”
He turned the skiff away from his previously plotted course and upped the speed. Instead of traveling across the midships, he was now moving toward Mira’s bow. As they traveled over the damaged hull, Gunny fought to keep his eyes focused on the skiff’s fore and bilge cam feeds. He wanted to know what was happening to the SV-52, but he had to make sure he didn’t pilot them into a damaged deck plate or a field of pinecones.
The skiff vibrated again and again as Wendt fired the cannon, rounds of flechettes streaking over Gunny’s head toward their target. He glanced quickly at Black’s zoomed-in cam feed of the SV-52. The creature had completely enveloped the SV-52 in a death grip, two of its arms striking the hull while the rest gripped the craft as if it were trying to pry open a shell. A flechette round detonated near the creature and its two free arms spun wildly as if to grab the flechette shards out of the air.
“Gunny!” Wendt said. “It’s not letting go!”
“Keep firing,” Gunny yelled, his eyes once more fixed on the fore screens. They’d reach the bow’s edge in a few moments, but the SV-52 continued spinning off into space. Gunny increased the magnetics and slowed the skiff. “Wendt? We’re losing time here.”
Wendt said nothing in return, but a fresh salvo of flechettes erupted, their rocket engines igniting and streaking through the twilight darkness before peppering the SV-52 with shards of Atmo-steel and heavy water. Gunny didn’t see the first one strike the creature. Nor the second. Wendt had tightened his pattern, focusing on the craft’s damaged fuselage. With the SV-52 tumbling and spinning through space, there was little else Wendt could do. Gunny just hoped one of the flechette rounds didn’t break through the canopy and strike Taulbee. The armor should make that impossible, but this was Mira and anything was possible. Especially the worst-case scenario.
“Oh, shit!” Wendt said. “Gunny, it’s breaking through the hull.”
“Keep at it,” Gunny yelled. “Keep firing until I tell you to stop.”
Wendt followed orders. The skiff had reached the edge of Mira’s bow. He’d taken the craft as far as he could without flying off into space after the SV-52. He checked the fuel status and grimaced. They had more than enough fuel to get back to S&R Black, and more than enough to reach Taulbee. The problem was that if Taulbee had to eject, Gunny wouldn’t know the direction, trajectory, or speed of the escaping pilot. Getting too close to the SV-52 was also dangerous. The creature could let go of it and charge the skiff, or they could get caught in its radiation field. The skiff didn’t have the same armor or radiation protection the SV-52 did. And without that, they would be boiled alive in their suits.
With the skiff halted, he brought the feed of the SV-52 to main HUD display. The creature looked different from the other starfish. Larger, certainly, but the creature’s shell, or skin, or whatever the fuck it was, was so black it practically made a hole in the dark sky. A black hole, Gunny thought, couldn’t possibly be darker than that. The creature’s outline vibrated, sparkled at the edges, but had no definition to it. And Sol’s bare, dim light did little to illuminate the thing’s surface. It just sucked in the light as though it was absorbing it, feeding off it.
Five more flechette rounds exploded in twinkles of light, the SV-52’s hull lighting up in sparks with secondary detonations of heavy water and metallic shards. The creature bucked and pumped, its arms sliding across the craft’s surface as it fought for purchase.
“Keep it up,” Gunny said. It was working, or at least he thought it was. The creature seemed to be twisting the SV-52 in a new trajectory. And then it let go, one arm slashing across the hull in a final gouge. The starfish-like thing loosed itself from the SV-52, turned in the void, and suddenly faced the skiff. The thing knew what had hurt it. And now it was coming for payback.
Gunny watched it for a second in horrified wonder as he tried to imagine how the thing could move like that in the frozen z-g of deep space. And then it was streaking toward the skiff, its body so black it made the distant stars wink out one by one. He hit the throttle and gas erupted from the fore thrusters, pushing the skiff backward. Midships, he thought. Have to get back to the midships, make it come lower.
With the magnetics near full strength, the skiff hovered above Mira’s hull at less than half a meter. If he went too fast, he risked the skiff getting caught on fractured hull plates or other debris. Gunny cursed and adjusted the mags. The skiff rose another half meter. It was going to be tight once he reached the intersection of the bow and midships. As he looked through the skiff’s rear cam feed and saw the massive rent in a rapidly approaching deck plate, he could do nothing but yell at Wendt to keep firing at the creature and pray to the void they could stop it before it ran into them like a missile.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The corridor was empty. No corpses. No signs of creature infestation or damage. If the ship had power, Dickerson wasn’t sure anyone would know the section was over 50 years old. Kalimura’s lights shined from one wall to the other, checking for hatches, O2 stations, and supplies. Dickerson tried to keep his focus on the rear cam, but the darkness wasn’t growing like it had at the section entrance.
Dickerson shivered at the thought. He didn’t know if he’d live through this, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to sleep without dreaming of that approaching wall of, well, what? Darkness wasn’t a strong enough word. It just seemed to absorb the light as though it was consuming every photon his suit lights emitted.
Just another little mystery to add to the perpetually growing list. If they could find data stores or holo recorders, maybe they could solve a few of them. Why don’t you focus on staying alive first, he thought. Solving mysteries ain’t gonna be much use if you’re dead and can’t tell anyone what you discovered. He grinned.
“Whoa,” Kalimura said.
The squad immediately halted. Dickerson stood to his full height and saw her suit lights focused on a
recessed hatch. From Dickerson’s position three meters behind them, he couldn’t exactly make out many details, but the hatch looked to be similar to the outer airlock hatch.
“You strike pay dirt, Corporal?” Dickerson asked.
“Maybe,” Kalimura said.
Dickerson added her front suit cam feed to his HUD. Kalimura leaned close to a small, trans-aluminum window embedded in the hatch, attempting to shine her lights through it. Beyond the hatch, a two-meter-long tunnel ended in another hatch.
“Looks like an airlock to me,” Dickerson said. “Quarantine area?”
“Think so,” Kalimura said. “Let me see if I can get it open.”
While Kalimura hunted for a manual release, Dickerson minimized her feed and focused on the rear cam. Nothing. The darkness behind them was normal, although “normal” was relative. Since they’d landed on the ship, their lights had been unable to penetrate far into the gloom. But compared to what they’d experienced outside the science section, the darkness was somewhat comforting. At least he didn’t feel as though he were being buried alive.
“Found it,” Kalimura said. She swung a panel from the wall and began pumping the lever. Dickerson watched as the status light on the panel changed from red to green.
“Is it open?” Carb asked.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Kalimura said. She hit the panel control and the hatch swung open. A cloud of dust flew out from the airlock and swirled in the vacuum before quickly dissipating. “There we go,” she said.
“Pressurized, no less,” Dickerson said. Kalimura walked through the hatch. “Careful, Corporal.”
“No shit,” Carb whispered. “No telling what’s in there.”
“Actually,” Kalimura said, “I can see through the inner hatch window.”
Her forward cam feed popped up on his HUD. It was difficult making out many details in the large room, but what he could see was enough. A corpse sat at a lab table with several pieces of scientific equipment. Dickerson felt an icy chill run down his spine. The corpse’s preserved face was set in a manic smile, its eyes wide and sparkling with ice crystals.
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