Derelict: Tomb (Derelict Saga Book 2)

by Paul E. Cooley

  “Here’s the plan,” Kali said. “The medical bay is above us. There isn’t a lifter for another thirty meters to the bow and on the starboard side. That means we have four corridors to travel before we reach an ingress, and another forty to reach the actual med-bay.”

  “Shit,” Dickerson said. “If there are more of those pinecone things, we’re fucked.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” Kali said, although she’d been thinking the same thing. She reconnected to Elliott’s suit. The nannies had doped him again to kill the pain, but he was still very close to shock. They’d have to be very careful. “Carb. Dickerson. I want you two to scout the path. Go ten meters, no further. Understood?”

  “Aye, Boss,” Carb said.

  “Copy, Corporal,” Dickerson said.

  “Fire first, ask questions later. And use your stun rounds. Those seemed to work.”

  “Yes, they did,” Carb said through a giggle. “Lit those fuckers up. Wonder why?”

  “We’ll ask Black when we talk to her again,” Kali said. “For now, let’s just get Elliott to an autodoc. Get moving.”

  Carbonaro gave her a salute and turned to Dickerson. “Come on, big boy. Work to do.”

  Dickerson groaned. “I’m going to need a serious liberty after this shit show.”

  Kali watched their suit lights slowly disappear down the hall. She hoped against hope they’d find a safe passage.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Every minute lasted forever. Floating twenty meters above Gunny’s marines, Taulbee observed the cams with boredom and frustration. Watching marines mag-walk while carrying lines wasn’t exactly the most exciting air-cover task he’d ever done. But the boredom wasn’t really the problem. It was the angst threatening to tear his brain apart.

  Instead of watching them lay the lines, instead of being near in case there was an emergency, he wanted to be back at the bow. He wanted to fly the SV-52 across every square meter of the ship until he found Kalimura and her marines.

  If they’re still alive, a voice said in his mind.

  He ignored the thought and brought up Mira’s schematics. Black had sent him the last known coordinates of Kalimura’s squad. According to the AI, something had happened near the shuttle bay, but that didn’t necessarily mean her squad went into it. But if that was the area where Kalimura’s block last pinged, then it was the best place to start. Only problem was being stuck here and watching the marines.

  They still had time. The harness would take them at least another forty-five minutes to place. Once Mira was harnessed, Oakes would have to fly S&R Black above the dead ship’s hull and wait for the marines to connect the harness to the SFMC ship. That would eat up another half hour. After all that, he’d have only a few minutes to check the bow again before S&R Black fired her engines to move both ships away from the danger zone.

  Unless Gunny’s marines hurried the hell up, he might have to scrap a search-and-rescue mission until after the two ships left the area. Dunn would more than likely order Taulbee to bring the ‘52 back inside the ship while they initiated the first burn. Fine. Would give him time to refuel the SV-52, get a cup of coffee, take a piss, and get the hell back out there to find his marines.

  Besides, he thought, Mira may come apart during the tow, kill all of us, and then none of it will matter. He tried to ignore the itching goose flesh up and down his arms. That was unhealthy. He needed to stop being so fatalistic.

  “Gunny to Taulbee, over.”

  “Go, Gunny,” Taulbee said.

  “Sir, we’ve got two more lines to place. Both of these are going to be near the aft. Have we cleared the starboard side?”

  Taulbee thought for a moment. He checked his block and frowned. “No, Gunny, we haven’t. If it’s all right with you, I’ll break off and go scout.”

  “Sounds good to me, sir. Good hunting.”

  “Aye, Gunny.”

  Taulbee grinned. Finally, something to do. He changed the ‘52’s attitude and hit the thrusters. The craft rotated in the air before diving closer to the deck. He cut his altitude in half and unfocused the lights. The illumination spread, although not as brightly, across the deck. He followed Mira’s half-broken spine from the midships toward the savaged aft section.

  When Black had fired the stabilization thrusters, he’d seen a lot of debris fly from both the aft and rear midships. He wasn’t certain if it was on the port or starboard side. A few seconds later, it became pretty damned clear.

  Beyond his lights, he saw a cloud of twisted and torn metal, plas-steel, and shipboard components. One of the thrusters must have punctured the hull and plummeted to a lower deck, spraying wreckage and pieces of Mira out into space. He thought again of Kalimura’s squad trapped somewhere in the ship. He hoped like hell they hadn’t been back here.

  The cloud appeared to be moving away from the ship. In twenty minutes or so, it might not even be visible to the naked eye. He shivered. Were there bodies out there floating amidst the wreckage? Human detritus expelled to forever float in space? He fought the urge to go off target and explore the cluttered debris field. If he had enough time, he could do that later. But once we’re underway, he thought, you’ll never have another chance.

  He instructed the SV-52’s cameras to film the debris field, centimeter by centimeter. If he didn’t have a chance to explore the field himself, at least Black might be able to find something of use via the video feeds. He setup the feeds to dump to the AI and tried to focus on the task at hand.

  His HUD lit up the starboard side mount-point with a yellow diamond. Taulbee continued forward, hit the thrusters to slide the craft across the spine and starboard. The final mount-point lay toward the belly of the ship and at the junction between the midships and aft deck plates. Taulbee cut the craft’s forward momentum with a gentle thruster burn and floated over Mira’s side.

  Something appeared in the lights making him flinch. It bounced off the craft’s canopy before he managed to get a good look at it. And then another shape floated into his lights. It was a pinecone. No, dozens of pinecones.

  They floated a few meters from the hull, some of them spinning in the air while others tumbled. He frowned. If they had been disturbed by the stabilization thrusters, they should have been flying away from the ship like the debris field. Instead, they seemed to be hovering near the ship.

  “What the hell?” he said aloud. For a moment, the SV-52 hovered like the pinecones, matching Mira’s nearly imperceptible rotation with ease. The strange objects didn’t appear to be moving in any way that he could see, but they still managed to keep the same distance from the hull. Again, that should have been impossible.

  As he watched the nearest pinecone, something descended from its bottom and disappeared back into the hard shell. He blinked. He was seeing things, obviously. Those things weren’t alive. Just some strange exo-solar shit they hadn’t seen before. Probably rocks or some new mineral.

  He pushed the throttle and gently moved the vehicle further towards the mount-point. The SV-52’s hull vibrated as it touched small debris and probably a few pinecones. He navigated through them as best he could, but another pinecone slapped the canopy before disappearing over the top.

  Something glittered on the hull. Frowning, he focused the lights and slowly tilted toward the source. A crease in one of the deck plates, nearly like a trench, seemed lined with that acid shit. The crease, a meter long ragged line, might have been little more than a blemish if not for the glittering substance at its bottom.

  Taulbee moved in closer and zoomed in on the area. At 20x magnification, he sent block commands to the camera array to change the focus until the image appeared in razor sharp detail.

  The strange fluid, or whatever it was, appeared to be coming from the bottom of the trench. Through the nearly transparent substance he made out the shape of several small perforations in the metal. The stuff was oozing from beneath the deck plates.

  Well, that’s less than ideal, he thought. If that shit was coming out of
the hull, that meant the deck must be filled with it. Either that or something else was creating it. Another shiver crawled down his spine. The pinecones. The acid. What was going on down there beneath the meters thick crumbling deck plates?

  Taulbee returned the magnification to normal and slid the SV-52 closer to the target area. The ooze trench was more than six meters away from the actual mount-point. A few pinecones remained attached to the decking and then increased in number the further from the trench he flew.

  He checked the rear cams and scanned for more of them. There they were. More pinecones. In a roughly ten meter circle, the pinecones were clear of the deck. Dead center in that circle was the trench.

  “What the fuck?” he asked no one.

  No. That couldn’t be right. The pinecones weren’t alive. They couldn’t move. Could they? And even if they were, why would they move away from the glistening stuff? Was it dangerous to them?

  Stop it, he told himself. You’re jumping to conclusions.

  He thought about contacting Black to confirm his suspicions, but didn’t bother. The AI would no doubt tell him any meaningful analysis was impossible without a sample. To be honest, he was tired of Black’s refusal to postulate.

  “Gunny,” he called over the comms, “you’re going to need to ferry using the skiff on this side. Some of that acid shit is near the mount-point. I don’t think it poses a hazard, but you’ll need to be careful.”

  “Copy, sir,” Gunny said. “We’re placing the last line on this side now. I’ll let you know when we start moving to starboard. Over.”

  “Copy,” Taulbee said.

  The comms went silent. Taulbee replayed the feeds from the debris field, searching the wreckage for anything important. Moments passed as he magnified the images and played them again and again at a slower FPS setting. A set of broken command chairs, maybe an autodoc pod, and some other ship-board components spun like broken toys in the middle of deck plate shards and fragments.

  As he continued looking, he saw a few pinecones in the debris. At least he thought they were pinecones. They looked as though they’d been split in half or opened, but their knobby surfaces were clearly visible.

  He continued scanning through the wreckage, the tingle of excitement resonating through his flesh. At the back of the cloud, he saw several familiar-looking objects. Taulbee focused on the closest, but there was hardly enough light out there to be certain what it was. Still, there was a chance it was a stasis coffin. Maybe they all were.

  “Taulbee to Dunn.”

  There was a slight pause. “Dunn. Go.”

  “Sir, some of the junk that exploded out from the hull during the thruster burns? Well, I think a few stasis coffins are in that mess.”

  The pause was longer this time. Taulbee imagined Dunn staring at a holo-terminal, quickly calculating the time lost in searching the debris and towing at least one of the coffins back to S&R Black. Not to mention the danger the SV-52 would face flying into the debris field.

  “Gunny?” Dunn’s voice said over the general comms. “What’s your ETA for placing the last mount-point?”

  “Sir, we’re nearly done with the second to last line. The lieutenant tells me we’re going to have fun with the last one.”

  “Taulbee,” Dunn said, “you have five minutes. No more. Understood?”

  “Aye, sir. Gunny? You can make your way over here. By the time you reach the mount-point, I should be back.”

  “Aye, sir,” Gunny said.

  The general comms went silent, but Dunn’s voice sounded in his ears over the private comms. “James? Make damned sure you don’t damage the SV-52. If that field is too dense to safely pilot through it, I want you to turn around. Immediately. That’s an order.”

  “Copy, sir.”

  “Good hunting, Lieutenant.”

  The comms went dark. Taulbee rotated the SV-52 and jetted away from the hull as fast as he dared. Forty meters separated him from the debris field edge. The coffins, or whatever they were, were more than 100 meters away. He grinned. He’d been right--this was going to be a fun flight.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The coffee had turned to acid in his stomach. Nobel wished he hadn’t had the last mag-mug. Maybe the bio-nannies would do their jobs and clear it up for him. Then again, they might be a little busy helping stifle any tissue damage he sustained while fixing the radiation leak.

  He’d already donned an engineering suit. Unlike its marine combat sibling, the engineering suit had a simplified HUD and an inferior cooling system. His jumpsuit felt moist and uncomfortable beneath the heavy fabric and lead lining. Even his fingers felt sweaty beneath the relatively thin gloves.

  S&R Black’s engineering bay was home. Whenever he wasn’t at his diagnostic station near the bridge, in his coffin, or in the bunks he shared with Oakes, he was here.

  Before the SF Navy personnel finally performed the upgrades and the maintenance Portunes ordered, the bay had smelled like ancient oil, the tang of steel, and a hint of burned plastic. Since their ministrations, though, the only scent in the bay was that of “new.” He couldn’t describe it, just knew it smelled like heaven to his nostrils.

  He walked clumsily in the heavy boots both cursing and praising gravity. He hadn’t used mag-boots in a while, but if his memory was correct, they were less awkward than stepping with these damned things. Then again, he was proceeding three times faster than he would with mag-boots.

  Hating the sound of the heavy boots on the Atmo-steel, he clomped to the starboard side. The three octagonal fusion reactors, each three meters tall and two meters wide, hummed with energy. The three on the port side were most likely humming too, keeping the drives warm and powering life support. The six fusion reactors, plus the two backups in the far aft, were his responsibility. Each member of the command crew, along with Gunny and Kalimura, knew how to operate and perform simple troubleshooting on them, but any real maintenance required Nobel’s expertise. Black could help walk someone through the process of replacing magnetic coils, repairing a broken shield, or shutting down and restarting a reactor, but no AI could substitute for a pair of knowing hands.

  Engineering skills would be the last thing ever automated. Nobel had seen some of the Trans Orbital papers regarding their new completely automated freighters. Supposedly their new AI technology allowed a single computer to control everything on board. Including fixing components during flight. Nobel thought that was insane.

  No matter how intelligent the AI, shit happened. Multiple component failures occurred, and when they did, an AI would make decisions based on triage priority rather than instinct. Nobel put his instincts above any AI, and that included Portunes. Now it was time to see if his instincts were right.

  “Black? You with me?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Nobel,” the AI said.

  He walked to the first fusion reactor, pulled a rad tool from his belt, and began his analysis. The tool sent telemetry to his block. Three real-time graphs appeared in the left-hand side of his vision. The radiation levels were well within expected tolerances. The second and third reactors showed the same. He frowned.

  The reactors were in great shape, just as Black and his own diagnostics had said. “Okay, Black. Everything looks good on the reactors.”

  “Agreed, Lieutenant,” the AI said.

  Nobel sighed and moved past the reactors to the shielding assemblies. S&R Black was built on a very old design and the ship itself wasn’t exactly new. The SFMC had only built ten of them and of the original number, only three were still in use. No matter how many times they changed out the ship’s guts, they couldn’t get around the flawed design. Radiation shielding, the reactor couplings, and the external heat fins were all relatively new. He sincerely doubted any of the components had failed, exactly, but the heat fins might have suffered too much damage during the trip from Neptune to Pluto. Because of the “navigational anomalies” Black experienced during the journey, it was very possible she’d hit enough debris to damage one of th
e fins. And if a fin was damaged, chances were the radiation shielding had been too.

  The shielding assemblies covered the backside of the reactors before joining the hull. The inner assemblies looked intact and his rad count didn’t rise when he tested them. He rose to his full height, stretched in the uncomfortable suit, and descended into a crouch. He ran the rad tool across the floor near the back of the first assembly. The graphs on his HUD rose in radioactivity, but only slightly. He slipped between the first and second reactor and tried again. A bit higher. The third? That’s when the radiation sensor spiked.

  “Looks like number 3, Black,” he said.

  Black paused. “Agreed, Lieutenant. With your permission, I will turn off reactor 3 now.”

  Nobel chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “because that’s how it works.” He switched to private comms. “Captain?”

  “G-go ahead, Nobel,” Dunn said, sounding as though he was lost in thought.

  “Permission to kill reactor 3 while I perform a structure test, sir.” He thought he heard the captain drop an f-bomb, but he wasn’t sure. “Sorry, sir?”

  “Is it the reactor itself?”

  “No, sir,” Nobel replied. “The reactor is fine. I need to check the shielding and for that, we’re going to have to shut her down. I’ll vent the excess heat through the other fins for now. Going to get a little warm in here for a while, sir.”

  “Okay. Shut it down and let me know if you find something. Pronto. That’s going to really hurt our chances of getting the hell out of here with the Mira.”

  “Understood, sir. Out.”

  When Dunn didn’t reply, he frowned. The captain hadn’t sounded right. All the confidence in his normal voice seemed to have drained away.

  “Black?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” the AI said immediately.

  “Take her out of the array, spin her down, and vent the excess heat through the other fins. Is that clear?” Nobel said.