by Robert Culp
Outside, Jerry’s beacon appears on our visors as a dull blue icon. It’s bright enough to stand out, but dim enough to not be a distraction. We begin the walk to the wreck as I relay our findings and my intentions to Freddie. The cold, the wind, it reminds me of the trip I made that cost me Gwendolyn. I push those memories away, now is not the time. We’re able to make slightly better time as we have a beacon we can home on. I activate the tactical scanner in my visor. It paints an overhead depiction of Jerry and Drake as well as the rest of us moving towards them. The boys are stationary. I suppose they’ve taken up overwatch positions on the wreck. Satisfied, I turn the tactical view off. On the walk I start to think. Three meters of ice tells me this place has been very cold for a while. But looking around, I see there are trees here. They all look frozen, of course, but in this climate they shouldn’t be here at all.
I call Athena, “Is there any way you can tell how long the plant life has been dead?”
“Stand by,” she answers. A few minutes later she calls me back, “I estimate one year, nine months plus or minus one have passed since any photosynthetic activity has occurred in this region.”
“That’s shorter than I would have expected, thank you.” I activate the comLink channel to the SDB and share my concerns with Freddie.
“Let me get this straight, Squatter,” he says, “You’re in a toxic atmosphere, preparing to force your way into a wrecked ship and you’re concerned about the local vegetation?” The stormy atmosphere is interfering with the signal, but we can scrub it up a bit.
“Not exactly, I’m concerned about an anomaly. Something isn’t adding up. I’m not a planetologist, but for the climate to take this big a dive, something happened. I don’t know what, but my guess would be the planet got knocked off it’s axis of rotation or its distance to the star got increased. Whatever happened is unnatural and it happened recently. And it may coincide with whatever wrecked this ship, be it Gallagher or not. That’s all I’m saying, I want it noted so the smart kids back on Star Chaser can figure it out or pass it on to the smarter kids.”
“If there are any smarter kids. Those eggheads are pretty bright. Okay, we’ll add some more things to the impressive list of things we’re already scanning on this rock. Anything you need?”
“Besides a foot massage and a long bath? No, not at the moment.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. SDB out.”
We’ve arrived at the scene of the crash, so to speak. I scoop up the beacon, deactivate it and start to hand it back to Jerry. Then I realize we’ll probably need to find it again, so I turn it back on and put it back where he left it. “Did you find us a door?”
“Depends on how much work you want to do, ma’am. And whether or not you brought your climbing gear,” he points up to one of the landing skid doors, “we should be able to cut through the interior walls after we get up there.” He gestures to a part of the ship closer to the ice, “Or we can cut, maybe blast, a hole on the dorsal side and only have to worry about footing on the hull. I’d prefer blasting, as it’s faster and I don’t like being in this toxic soup any longer than absolutely necessary. But my concern there is we might jar whatever’s holding this beast where it is and it slips even further.”
“And if it slips far enough, we’ve created an access port for more water,” I add.
“If we don’t set fire to the atmosphere,” he adds. “And judging by the distance from here to where the edge of the lake is,” he points back the way we came, “it will slip down to the bottom and we all go back empty handed to face the music.”
“Not a pleasant proposition,” I activate the team channel, “Group conversation. We’ve been thinking that this ship hit the ice after it had formed. We’ll save the discussion about penetration versus obliteration for another time. The question now is, why is it still outside the ice? If it hit with enough force to penetrate the ice, it should have kept going. But it didn’t. Thoughts? Let me hear’em people.”
After a few seconds, Beebles puts out a thought, “What if it hit something that was soft enough to hold on to it? Something that would yield enough to keep it from bouncing off?”
“Like seaweed,” Jerry says. “Or a big pile of silt. That’s as good an idea as any, and it might be responsible for what we see.”
“So blowing a hole in the roof shouldn’t upset it too much,” Drake says.
“‘Shouldn’t’,” I agree, “but that doesn’t mean it won’t. Okay, we’ll accept the vegetation as a working theory. Drake, put some boom clay on the dorsal area, ideally over an existing hatch, the plating may be a little bit thinner there. I’ll put you in for a bonus if you can blow the locking mechanism with minimal damage to the hull.”
“Wilco,” he says and sets to the task of placing the explosive charge.
Once he announces he has the charge set we all move off 200 meters in every direction, thereby minimizing jeopardy to the team if the ice shatters. “Boss?”
“Blow it,” I tell Drake.
“Fire in the hole!” he yells and triggers the detonator. The charge detonates with a satisfying boom. There is a brief flash and a cloud of smoke. And what looks like steam venting from the new hole. We wait, but do not hear the telltale sign of cracking ice or metal sliding on ice.
“Everyone stay where you are,” I broadcast over the net, “until I tell you otherwise.” I walk back to the ship and up the spine to the hole the charge made. The hatch cover has been blown inwards. There is nothing moving inside the corridor, but the frost is rapidly growing on the walls. “All clear,” I say on the team net, “approach.” Wait a minute! It was heated? I know it’s against the rules and I’m going to catch ninety credits worth of hell for it, but I drop into the hatch and activate my bioscanner. The emergency lights are on. The danger lights should be burning scarlet, but they’re down to a dull red.
Thirty seconds later, my headphones almost explode. “Squatter, what in the nine hells are you doing?” Freddie yells in my ear.
“Ratted me out, didn’t they?” I ask.
“As well they should have! When I see you again, I’m going to turn you over my knee.”
“And probably not in the good way,” if I can make him laugh maybe he’ll not be so mad at me.
“Definitely.” Nope, he’s still mad. “We have protocols and rules for a reason. Even engineers should realize that.”
No time to suck up, I’ll hit him with my best shot. “Boss, I’m picking up life signs, at least thirty.” The money spent on this ship went into the hull and the labs, not the interior walls. The bioscanner sees through them like they aren’t there. “And if we just blew away the insulation, they’re going to start freezing to death pretty soon.” I hear a pair of boots running up the hull and Jerry looks through the blasted airlock door. I wave at him and step to one side looking at the walls. It’s typical for a data plate to be installed at every entrance to a ship identifying it. The one on the bridge will be gold. The rest are brass. And there it is, “Good news, Freddie, I’ve found the data plate and this is Gallagher. We’ve found it.”
“That will make the Captain happy, but you’re still on my shit list for doing stupid shit. Get to the labs, secure the data drives, and get back here most rikki tik.”
“Wilco, landing party out.” The team has been entering behind us, Jerry dropped down as soon as he saw I was okay. Drake stays on the hull by the hole. We have no reason to expect there are any other life forms on this planet. He’ll watch our backs and make sure we aren’t surprised. Even if our warning is his dying scream.
We all have the internal diagrams for Gallagher on our forearm computers. The data will be uploaded to our visor navigational systems, but we’ve spent so much time tracing the taped out paths while in quarantine we should each be able to find our way to any compartment on this tub. But the slope is—absent. I look at Jerry. He’s standing upright, not leaning. “Guys, is the gravity field on?”
“I have an idea,” Beebles draws a stylus from a s
leeve pocket and drops it. The implement falls to the floor at her feet. “It would seem we have artificial gravity, Boss.” She stoops to retrieve the stylus and returns it to its holder.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I muse. “Enough wool gathering, let’s go to the bridge and then the labs. But we treat the ship as occupied, not abandoned. So we’re moving in traveling overwatch, if we encounter resistance we’ll transition to bounding overwatch.” They all nod. We’re still standing in more or less a circle. I point at Jerry who is standing opposite of me. “Jerry is Team Bravo leader, I am Team Alpha leader. If you’re on my left you are with me on Team Alpha. The rest of you are with Jerry on Bravo. Got it? Good, let’s move out, Alpha has the lead.” Freddie would have given more thought to personal tactical abilities such as who has which weapon, balancing firepower between teams and such. I just want us moving because the clock is ticking. I want an equal number of people going in each direction. The corridor we are standing in has a sign pointing to the cargo bay, so we go the other way until we come to a closed iris valve. Alpha takes up position to cover whatever is behind the iris valve. Beebles moves up to the control panel, “Never hurts to try,” she mutters as her fingers move over the buttons. The iris valve dilates open. I give her a thumbs up, but I’m getting concerned. Heat, gravity and electricity are all functioning, how and why? The tactical situation—moving through a ship not knowing who’s here, their equipment or disposition—takes a higher priority, but those questions stay in my mind. For now.
When the infantry developed the technique of bounding overwatch, it was outdoors and usually dependent on some terrain feature or distance. If we have to use it, we’ll adapt the principle to our needs here. But instead of terrain features, we’ll use architectural features. A doorway, an intersection, whatever crops up. Traveling overwatch is faster in that the unit in front stays in front. But it still takes a while, especially as we don’t leave any closed doors unopened. We all want to see what’s on the other side. Eventually we do arrive at the bridge.
We make a controlled, tactical entry of the bridge. We don’t cowboy in, like I did topside, but we go in slowly and deliberately, prepared to kill anything we find. And caution pays off. As soon as Parker enters the bridge he is pounced on by a humanoid in ragged clothing. Beebles screams, the troopers push her to the rear and explode onto the bridge. The creature on Parker looks like it used to be human, but it isn’t anymore. Its skin has a greenish pallor. Its nails are black and conical. I’m happy we can’t smell it because I’m certain it reeks. It claws and bites at Parker’s armor but of course does nothing but make the big man angry. He throws the thing off of him and shoots it. Thankfully he keeps the presence of mind to use his pistol rather than his Squad Support Weapon. The large bore pistol sends a round into the thing’s head, which explodes like a melon hit with a sledgehammer. The model 945 would have sent several hundred rounds at the thing, turning it into several piles of what I can only call rotting meat. In the back of my mind, I know that the man the thing used to be has been gone for a very long time. The other troopers take up positions on the bridge behind Parker, eager for something to kill. But there’s nothing else moving. A few rounds are loosed into the shadows, a practice I learn later is called “recon by fire,” it’s essentially shooting at the shadows to see if the shadows scream or shoot back. The bridge is a mess. Dried blood is smeared on the walls and furniture. Gnawed bones and piles of what is probably fecal matter litter the floor. The computer panels and monitors all look like a Rison’s Beast was practicing Flamenco dancing on them.
“Beebles, you’re up. Access the computer and find the physical location of those drives we want, download any and all logs you can identify.” I point to the heavy weapons trooper. “Parker, you’ll stay here and cover her. Jerry, take Bravo to the laboratory level. Identify life signs and eliminate threats. Alpha minus Parker and Beebles, we’re going to Engineering. Everyone stay on the team net. Any questions?”
“What do we do when we’re finished here?” Parker asks.
Beebles isn’t listening. She pries up the cover of the computer panel, attaching a cable inside the unit. Gods bless those Golean manufacturers for their use of strong materials. The other end of the cable she attaches to her portable access unit.
“Call me,” I tell him. “I’m likely to tell you to stay put, but I may also tell you to meet us somewhere else. Anybody else?”
Jerry raises his hand, “One question and one observation. First the observation: according to our scanners, the air in here is not the same as it is outside. You may be tempted to crack the seal and save the bottled air. Do not do that. Your armor is still contaminated and you will start turning green and shit. That’s bad for business. My question: Parker put the model 945 aside and used his pistol on the…I’m calling it a ‘zombie’ because I don’t know what else to call it. If we encounter any more, and we probably will, are bigger weapons authorized?”
“Of course,” I say. “Use whatever you have and whatever it takes.”
“That being the case, I’d rather Corinne stay here with Beebles. I want the 945 handy if we make contact. Corinne has an assault rifle and I’m pretty sure she can handle anything that comes this way.”
“No argument from me.” I say as the troopers change places while Beebles’ gloved fingers dance across the keyboard of the field computer she brought. “Anybody else? A side mission: When you get to the labs, I want you to get a sample container and get a sample of any zombie you kill. Should you not find anymore, we’ll come back here and cut off a chunk of this one. We’ll take it back to Star Chaser for analysis. Let’s get it done.”
We encounter two zombies on the way to Engineering. Rifle fire makes short work of them. We hear Bravo encounter four of them. Inside Engineering we kill another zombie. We all know they aren’t “undead” but are diseased humans, but calling them “zombies” makes killing them a lot easier. And anyway, I can’t help believing that they all would thank us if they were able. I know if that were my future, I’d welcome a bullet to my brain housing group.
Drake’s voice is in my headset, “Sergeant Major is calling you for a SITREP, Boss. I’m guessing you can’t hear him. What should I relay?” I give Drake my report to pass on to Freddie, one sentence at a time. I hear his side of the conversation with Freddie. “Stand by, SarMajor, I’ll ask her. Boss, he wants to know if you’re coming up with some cockamamie scheme for getting this wreck flying. His words, ma’am.”
They would be. “Tell him I’m going to see if the engines will start, I’d like to have it in a dry dock. But since that’s not an option I’ll settle for getting it into orbit. If we can get it off the surface, we can prop the doors open. The vacuum will take out any zombies we miss.”
He relays that to Freddie then tells me, “Only if it will move of its own power. The SDB doesn’t have the tackle to pull it out.”
“Fair enough,” I tell Drake. I then turn to the assistant engineer. “Our new secondary mission is to get the maneuver drive functional. If we can get this pig in orbit we can find and fix the rest of the leaks.”
“I beg your pardon, Chief,” my mechanic asks. “But how do you plan to do that? She’s surrounded by three meters of ice and these engines probably haven’t been warm to the touch since the crash.”
“One miracle at a time, Abrams, one miracle at a time. First, we’ll get power flowing the way it should then get the engines running. After that we’ll look at redirecting power to the hull to heat it or use some more of Drake’s demo to crack the ice around the ship. The good news is that with the gravity and heat on, the reactor is working. Or at least it was until very recently. I’m guessing some circuit breakers got popped.” I check the time, I should have heard from Jerry by now. “Team Bravo, Alpha actual. Say your status, please.”
I get another report before he can answer. “Sonia, this is Beebles, I’ve downloaded the logs, and so we don’t need the physical drives which are in the science labs. It’s pro
bably no big deal to take them if it’s important to you though. Do you want us to stay here?”
“No, I want you two to get to Engineering so you can help Abrams get the engines purring. You’ll be passing him tools, not working independently. Once you’re here, Corinne and I are going to find out why Bravo decided to go quiet.”
I give Abrams and the other mechanics a list of instructions then supervise from the corridor until Corinne and Beebles arrive. As they approach we hear Abrams announces over the comnet, “Prepare for ship’s power.” The main lights flicker on. They are very dim, but they are on. The emergency lights pulse a bright red and then stop.
“Did you find out anything doing the data transfer?” I ask Beebles.
“Not much detail,” she replies, “I didn’t take the time to read all the log entries, as far as I can tell they had encountered a pretty nasty pathogen and were carrying some sort of telepathic animal.”
I start to begin a discussion when Corinne raises her hand, “Excuse me, ladies. But it’s been a while since we’ve heard from team Bravo. Can we maybe go find out why and play twenty questions later?”
A weak voice breaks squelch in our headsets. “This is Blake Daniels, I am the sole survivor of Team B. Do not go into the labs, something in here is killing everyone it sees. I have a sample of the virus. I’m in the corridor outside the bio lab.” That changes things.
“All personnel, drop whatever you’re doing and make your way back to Drake at the entry point. Drake, relay to the SDB that we are ceasing efforts to recover this bucket, we have a sample of the pathogen and will return post haste.”