Derelict_Destruction

by Paul E. Cooley

  A bright flash erupted from S&R Black’s starboard-side as a rocket engine engaged. A missile streaked away from the ship and headed to the top of Mira’s hull a mere three hundred meters away. Taulbee had time to grin before the munition detonated.

  Rather than exploding into shards of debris or a bright flash of energy, a large cloud appeared above Mira’s hull. Particles danced in the whitish mass as the shockwave dissipated.

  Taulbee blinked. “What the fuck?”

  “They’re breaking off!” Copenhaver yelled.

  He flipped through the cam feeds. She was right. The starfish threatening their port-side were turning back to face the giant derelict. The wall of creatures heading toward them, as well as those crowding around the skiff, had changed their trajectories. The mass of exo-solar life-forms all headed toward the cloud as if called to it.

  “Sir?” Taulbee said. “What happened?”

  Black’s voice broke through the comms. “Lieutenant. I fired one of the Trio’s new weapons. The cloud of CO2 has distracted them, but it won’t last for long. I suggest you and Gunny retreat as quickly as possible.”

  When Dunn spoke, he sounded pissed as hell. “Taulbee. Gunny. Get back to the ship right now.”

  “Aye, sir,” Taulbee said. “Gunny?”

  “Aye, Lieutenant. Will rendezvous with the ship momentarily.”

  Taulbee watched the skiff change trajectory again and begin its journey back to S&R Black. He piloted the SV-52 in a cover pattern, making sure Gunny’s skiff didn’t get blindsided by a new threat. He needn’t have bothered. The space around them was completely empty of exo-solar life.

  “Sir?” Copenhaver asked.

  “Aye?”

  “What just happened?”

  Taulbee shook his head. “I don’t know, Private. I only know we’re going to make it back to the ship.”

  “But what about the beacon?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” he said. “Guess we’ll figure that out after we land in the cargo bay. Speaking of, keep an eye on our six. I don’t want anything sneaking up behind us.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And Private?”

  “Aye?”

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, a smile in her voice.

  He wished he could smile. They had survived another scrape with the alien things, but were no closer to retrieving the damned beacon. Based on what they’d just seen, he didn’t know how they could possibly succeed.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  When she regained consciousness, bright lights filled her HUD. She took a breath and regretted it immediately. Her chest felt broken inside, as though her ribs had inverted and the ends were jabbing into her vitals instead of protecting them. A groan escaped her lips and she shut her eyes tightly against another shock of pain.

  “Corporal?” Dickerson asked.

  “Yeah,” Kali wheezed. It hurt to talk. Hell, it hurt to think, let alone breathe.

  “Shit,” Carb said. “Boss? You alive in there? You sound like you can’t get enough air.”

  Carb was right. Her lungs didn’t seem able to hold enough oxygen. Exhaling was easier than pulling in atmosphere, but everything hurt. The urge to cough tickled at her consciousness. Fuck. She had a punctured lung. She knew it. The metallic tang of copper hit the back of her throat. A bubble of blood rose from her mouth and popped inside her helmet, smearing the inside of her faceplate.

  “Broken rib,” she whispered, doing her best not to cough. Coughing would only increase the damage, not to mention the pain. “Punctured.”

  “Goddamnit,” Dickerson said.

  She opened her eyes. The lights had moved away slightly, no longer flooding her HUD. Dickerson stood over her, while Carb knelt beside her. His shoulder still drooped to one side, the arm hanging at an odd angle. “What happened?”

  Carb’s hands dug into the pouch around her belt. “Couple of those things got in here,” she said. “Don’t worry. Elliott got ‘em.”

  Elliott? Holy shit, she thought. Despite the pain, she managed a grin. She wanted to say something witty, but was afraid she’d cough again.

  Carb held a syringe over Kali’s intake tube. “Going to shoot you up with some fresh nannies, Boss.” Kali’s HUD flashed an alert message as the injector connected to her suit tube. “Just hang on for me.”

  She said nothing, but scanned the hallway. Dozens of small, black shards floated in the air along with coiled ropes of liquid. Misshapen blisters covered the Atmo-steel outer airlock door. The things were moving so fast they dented the damned door? How the hell was that possible?

  The injection started its push and 30 ml of nannies shot into her system. She knew she’d taken too much damage over too long a period of time for her existing nannies to help. They needed a boost. The only problem was they were now down another nannie injector. How many did they have left? Two? None? She couldn’t remember.

  A status window appeared on her HUD as the nannie swarm connected to her block for a vitals report. With any luck, the nannies would head straight for the punctured lung. It would take them time to perform a patch and move the broken rib so it no longer threatened her chest, but they didn’t have that kind of time. The best she could hope for was some temporary relief. One thing for sure, she couldn’t take another impact like that. Not if she ever wanted to breathe again.

  She felt a tickle in her chest cavity and the urge to cough subsided. She didn’t know if the nannies had simply blocked off the lung entirely, or if they’d somehow managed to already repair her. The latter was all but impossible.

  Kali took an experimental breath and held it. Her lung capacity had been cut in half, but that was better than having to take shallow breaths. “Thank you,” she managed.

  “Welcome, Boss,” Carb said.

  Dickerson stepped away, his helmet pointed at something she couldn’t see. “Well, Corporal. I got good news and some bad,” he said.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Kali said.

  “Yeah,” Elliott said. “And trust me, Dickerson likes to give bad news.”

  “Shut up, luggage.”

  Elliott chuckled. “Ain’t no luggage ‘round here anymore,” the marine said in a mock drawl. “Just remember who saved your ass.”

  Dickerson paused. “Well, there is that.”

  “Shut it, you two, and tell me what’s going on,” Kali said.

  “Right. Sorry, Corporal,” Elliott said. Her HUD lit up with his forward cam feed. The main deck and bulkhead column stood a mere 10 meters away. Beside it? Five escape pods.

  “Holy shit,” Kali said. “Do they work?”

  “That’s the bad news,” Dickerson said. “We don’t know.”

  Kali started to move her legs, but Carb leaned on her. “Stay still, Corporal. Give those little fuckers some time to get you stable.”

  She sighed in frustration. “Okay. Fine. Did you try powering them up?”

  “Yeah,” Dickerson said. “Right after we got you in here and made sure you were still alive.” She couldn’t see him, but knew he was taking a breath because of his own pain. “Looks like the power cells are drained. Going to have to cycle them up, and that’s going to take a few minutes.”

  “We in any danger?”

  “Not so we know, Boss,” Carb said. “Elliott did a quick scout. We’re behind a half-meter of Atmo-steel and there don’t seem to be many ingress points.”

  “Don’t seem to be,” Kali said to herself. That didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. “Is this more bad news?”

  She could almost feel the three of them looking at one another. After a moment, Dickerson sighed. “Besides my arm being completely fucked, there’s a hatch to the cargo bay. Looks somewhat damaged.”

  “Damaged? I thought you said we were safe.”

  “Well, we are.” Dickerson paused. “But if something bashes it, we’re in trouble.”

  “Great.” Kali tried to push away the image of a million pinecon
es struggling to fit through the hatch and flood the room. It wasn’t something she wanted to experience. “Okay. Dickerson and Elliott? Get on those escape pods. See if you can find a way to get the power cells back up. Might even be a manual charger inside.”

  “Copy,” the two men said.

  “And I’m standing right here to make sure you don’t get up,” Carb said.

  Kali grinned. “Give me a couple more minutes, and I’ll try and move.”

  “Affirmative, Boss.” Carb squeezed her ankle. “We’re almost out of here.”

  Almost. They’d almost been killed a dozen times since they’d entered this wreck. Kali checked her recordings. Even while unconscious, the suit’s cams recorded data to her block so she could review it later. SFMC had added that little perk half a century ago, reasoning that temporarily incapacitated marines could get back in the fight without getting killed if they knew just what the hell was going on. A window on her HUD filled with a video feed from when she lost consciousness.

  Dickerson pulled her through the airlock threshold, dozens of the creatures swirling around them like a tornado. Elliott’s voice yelled for Dickerson to drop. He did, his body carefully curling around hers, wrapping her in his bulk. The moment they dropped, Elliott fired a stun round.

  The flechette detonated in the midst of the swirling creatures, blue arcs of electricity striking the black forms. They lit up like lightning rods, some of them disintegrating into particles while others blew apart. A few stragglers, moving much more slowly than before, flew together to create a much smaller tornado. Elliott fired again and destroyed the stragglers.

  Kali stopped the playback and turned her head to scan the room. Several shapes of utter black floated above her, some of them gathered near one of the bulkheads in a cloud of alien dust. “Wow,” Kali said. “Anyone actually get a good idea of what those things looked like?”

  “Not really,” Dickerson said. “Reminded me of something, but I can’t remember what. Man, I must be losing it,” he said. “Damned near all this stuff reminds me of the animals I saw in the aquarium.”

  Kali blinked. She remembered the words drawn in blood. “The tide is coming in!” Was that lunatic merely being metaphorical, or did he actually mean it literally?

  She switched to Dickerson’s cam and watched as he stepped inside one of the escape pods. As expected, the escape pods were spartan, and the controls very rudimentary. Even fifty years ago, pods had been designed to weather EMP strikes as well as block communication failures. If both the pod and the escapee had block connections available, the pod could be controlled via block commands. If either were damaged, however, the manual controls allowed the occupant to control thrust, attitude, and even set an automatic course. By default, the AI was supposed to update the most desirable coordinates before jettisoning. SFMC ships were designed to update their escape pods’ computers every few minutes or so. That way if something happened to the AI, the human still had an educated guess of where best to escape.

  Somehow, she doubted the Mira AI had had the opportunity to do the same. Kali grinned. Not that it mattered. The data would be just a tad out of date considering the ship had been cartwheeling through space for more than forty years.

  Dickerson left the pod and walked to the nearest bulkhead. He touched a colored rectangle and the manual energy cell popped out. He breathed a sigh of relief through the comms. “Found the generator. Let’s see if it works.”

  The entire squad held their breaths as Dickerson charged it. A red status light appeared. He continued pushing the lever. The status light went yellow and after a few more pumps turned green.

  “Hell, yes,” Elliott said. Kali switched to his cam. The marine was staring into one of the escape pods, its lights flickering for a moment before staying steady. He stepped back and panned across the others. Three powered on. Two did not. “Fuck!” Elliott yelled.

  “Calm down,” Kali said, but even she was on the verge of losing her cool. They needed four escape pods. Just four fucking escape pods. One for each squad member. But all they had was three. Christ. Was it too much to ask for one goddamned piece of luck?

  “Well, what do you want to do, Corporal?” Dickerson asked.

  She tried to think. The pain in her chest had abated, but her skull still felt as though it were filled with clouds of buzzing gnats. “Let’s try something easy, first. Check the couplings on the two that didn’t come back to life. After that, step in them and make sure they are really completely dead. Maybe one of them is just damaged.”

  “Aye, Corporal,” Dickerson said.

  “Boss?” Carb asked. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said. In truth, it was still difficult to breathe. She was more and more convinced the nannies had blocked her damaged lung, meaning she was trying to breathe with a single undamaged one. Undamaged. What a joke. Bottom line, she was going to be easily winded. If they had another firefight, it wouldn’t take long before she found herself gasping for air. While she could up her suit’s O2 levels, that meant she’d burn through her life support faster than normal. With damaged sensors, that wasn’t exactly a good plan either. “I might even try and stand up in a minute.”

  “A minute,” Carb said. She sounded pleased. “I’ll give you another minute. Two if you want ‘em.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Kali said.

  Carb had been serious. The marine wasn’t letting her corporal up until they were both sure she could handle it. When all this was over, Kali would make damned sure to talk to Gunny and Taulbee. She still didn’t know about Elliott, but Dickerson and Carb definitely earned back their NCO statuses. And then some.

  The ship shuddered. Everyone froze as if time had stopped. It shuddered again, the deck vibrating beneath her. Dust, detritus, and ice particles swirled from the ceiling, darting in all directions in the z-g.

  “What the hell was that?” Elliott asked.

  Another vibration rocked the ship, this one powerful enough to strain Kali’s magnetics, her body trying to rise off the deck. Carb lost her balance, but her boots kept her from flying upward.

  “Christ,” Dickerson said. “You think they’re trying the tow?”

  “I don’t know,” Kali said. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t think it’s good.”

  The ship quaked again. Kali watched a ceiling panel come unhinged and cant slightly. Mira wasn’t going to survive a tow. She was sure of it. Too much damage. Too many years of exposure to whatever had chewed through Atmo-steel and left acid in its wake.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  If Black had been human, Dunn would have locked her in the brig. Or maybe even vented her into space. Well, not really. But he would have threatened both. She hadn’t asked permission to fire munitions. She hadn’t warned him she was going to do it. She just had. A normal ship’s AI wouldn’t have taken the initiative. Instead, it would have informed him and suggested a course of action.

  While he waited for the skiff and the SV-52 to return to the cargo bay, he leaned against the outer bulkhead. He connected with Black through his block and the AI’s presence immediately filled his mind. Once again, she appeared as a slowly pulsing rainbow of colors.

  Yes, Captain?

  What did you do? he snarled.

  She pulled back from him slightly as if jarred by the anger in his thoughts. Captain, I fired one of the Trio’s experimental munitions in an effort to stave off more casualties.

  Right, he replied. And who told you you could do that?

  Black paused. The swirling colors froze for an instant before continuing their slow dance. The crew is my priority, sir. The crew and my own well-being. I have—

  You didn’t know what it would do, did you?

  No, she admitted. Not exactly. However, I chose that munition based on the information included in the crates. It was the only non-lethal option available.

  Non-lethal, he said. You could have sprayed them down with more tritium flechette.

  Yes, Captain. I could have. Howe
ver, I would have quickly exhausted our supply. My calculations indicated such a barrage would only eliminate 15-20% of the creatures and leave the ship, and the crew, at great risk. I chose the only option available.

  The other option, Black, the captain said dryly, was to talk to me about it first.

  Black said nothing for a moment. The colors dissolved into a single white halo which cycled through every hue until it reached black. The colors then reversed themselves. Yes, Captain. I shall not make the same mistake again.

  Dunn grunted. Why don’t I believe you?

  Black said nothing.

  A new block message appeared. Gunny and Taulbee were at the cargo bay doors. In a minute or two, they would be inside and he could start sorting through this mess.

  How long is that cloud going to keep them busy?

  Unknown, Black said. The CO2 is rapidly dissipating. The molecules will continue to spread and lose cohesion. I’m uncertain how the creatures will react to the change. According to the ship’s outer cam feeds, the creatures are feasting on the CO2 in a frenzy. After consuming the available CO2, they may search for other sources.

  Dunn frowned. Other sources, he echoed in a dead voice. You mean us.

  Quite possibly, Black said. I believe the creatures are drawn to the combat suits when they vent excess gas. This may explain their behavior in attacking Lieutenant Nobel. It may also explain their current activity.

  What do you mean by that?

  Black paused. Dunn imagined the AI was composing the right words to say so he could understand the situation. Or maybe she just wanted to keep from scaring the hell out of him.

  The creatures were somewhat dormant upon our arrival. That has changed. An image appeared through the block connection. Mira’s hull, the area they’d first surveyed, loomed as large as a horizon. When we first arrived, the pinecones, as you call them, did not move. Did not react to our presence. Neither did the starfish. In some way, our presence brought the creatures out of their hibernation.