by JE Gurley
Ivers leaped into the weapons locker and sealed the door behind him. As he searched for another rocket, the creature continued to scratch at the door before going silent. He waited a few minutes to be safe and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. The creature’s last act had been to use its body to seal him in the weapons locker with a limited air supply. He was more embarrassed than angry. He sat down to wait for a rescue he was not sure would come.
3
Fortune’s Luck broke out of Skip Space in a brilliant rainbow burst of light but no sound. Like the sonic boom of a Mach 1 craft plowing through an atmosphere, the circle of bright light was the result of tachyons pushed ahead of the ship in Skip Space encountering gravity waves in real space-time. Dax breathed a sigh of relief each time the ship Skipped successfully. The idea of suddenly becoming a cloud of charged sub-atomic particles scattered through space did not appeal to him.
Technically, Skip Space was a mirror image of real space through which a ship equipped with black-hole technology could ‘Skip’ at speeds far greater than the limiting speed of light. Fortune’s Luck could Skip five light years in ten days before re-entering real space to recharge her engines and calibrate her next Skip. A Navy vessel such as the Abraxas could cover the same distance in four days.
As usual, the Skip left Dax disoriented. His feet and hands felt too big for his body, and his tongue was numb. Each tick of his watch seemed like a full minute. The sensation would pass quickly. He disdained the drugs that softened the effects of Skips as often being as bad as the disorientation. He added the latest Skip to his mental list – 106 successful Skips. He would need no list for unsuccessful ones.
The beacon signal was loud, clear, and ominous over the com, and the radar indicated an object 5,000 kilometers ahead of them, right where the signal originated. Dax leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat like a driving instructor showing a student the ropes. He longed to be in the command seat, but he trusted Andy, and the kid needed the experience.
“Take us in nice and slow. Circle the ship once. Make sure they can read our name.” He turned to Romeo, now manning the communications station. “Are we broadcasting our ID?”
“Yes, loud and clear.”
“Good. Picking up anything?”
Romeo arched his eyebrows and shook his head. “Just the beacon. Should I try a laser?”
Flashing a coded laser message at the ship was a good idea as long as they did not interpret it as an attack. Even with no ship’s com or power, someone with a handheld laser could return their signal.
“Do it.”
Romeo grabbed a laser and stood beside the starboard viewport to flash a signal. Two minutes later, he gave up. “Nothing. Looks like no one is home. Want me to keep trying?”
Dax shook his head. “No.”
As they approached visual range, the black outline of the ship was barely visible in the darkness of space. The ship was showing no running lights, but the outline matched that of a Navy frigate in Jane’s Fighting Ships recognition book. At least it was not a pirate ship. Dax’s hope of a salvage fee increased in proportion to his sixth sense of danger. His scalp crawled like a disturbed ant mound.
Andy completed his slow circumnavigation of the Abraxas and moved in closer. “Do you see that?”
Dax did, and the knot in his stomach clenched tighter. He leaned closer to the view screen and stared. The rear cargo hatch was missing, and a gash wide enough to drive the grasshopper through ran from the cargo bay deck to the deck above. A cloud of metal shards floated near the open hatch. More debris formed a halo around the vessel.
Andy’s voice took on a new tenor. “What could do that to a ship?”
“Meteor, cargo hold explosion, pirates, Space Godzilla – I don’t know. Take us in closer. Any radiation?” he asked Romeo.
“Nothing. I’m not getting any power readings at all. The ship is dead. Ambient temperature is 156 degrees Kelvin.”
“To be that cold, she’s been without power for some time, a couple of days at least. Okay, Andy, park us half a kilometer out, but keep the engines online. If you see me tearing ass back on the grasshopper, you come scoop us up.”
“Who’s going with you? Plia can take the com,” he added, eager to go.
“I’ll take Nate. We might need power for the computers. If no one’s there, I want to see the ship’s logs. If they abandoned ship, I want to know what happened. I want to know what could take out an armed frigate.” He glanced at Andy, saw the disappointment in his face, and grinned. “I need you in command, kid, to pull my balls out of the fire if necessary.” He smacked his palm down on the intercom button. “Plia, arm those missiles and be ready to fire on my command. Target the cargo hold and the engines.” To Andy’s unspoken inquiry, he pointed to the rent metal around the gaping open hatch. “That cargo hatch was blown outward, not inward, and that gash was peeled from the inside. Whatever happened over there originated in the cargo bay.”
“Do you think …?” Andy began.
“I’m trying not to think right now. I’m going to the cargo bay. If I’m not back in an hour, you take this ship back to Kinta Station. She’s yours, well, yours and the finance company.”
“You be careful out there. This doesn’t make any sense. A derelict Navy frigate that shouldn’t be within twenty light years of here and a research station gone silent – it has a bad smell.”
He patted Andy’s blond head for luck. “You’re learning, kid. I agree, but I want to see what could do that much damage to a Navy frigate.”
Five minutes later, Nate and he narrowed the gap between the two ships in the grasshopper. He throttled back on the hydrazine engine halfway across and let it coast in, waiting until the last possible moment before impact to fire the thrusters, and came to a halt just inside the open cargo bay. With no artificial gravity, everything not properly secured floated above the deck, creating a jumbled, three-dimensional maze they would have to navigate to reach the main corridor. The untidy mess sent his OCD into a nosedive. He resisted the impulse to stow everything neatly in its proper place.
The full rack of excursion suits by the wall and the shuttle still in its docking cradle only deepened the mystery. No one had left the ship through the aft cargo bay.
He reached under the seat and removed the .40 caliber HK, making sure the safety was indeed off as Plia had informed him. He pointed to a comp console. “See if there’s any power to that station.”
He floated out of the grasshopper and clicked on his magnetic boots to secure them to the deck. He didn’t know what frequency the Navy used for internal communications. He keyed his suit mic to broadcast on a wide range of frequencies. “This is Dax Wyldd, captain of the cargo vessel Fortune’s Luck answering your emergency beacon. Is anyone listening?” He waited a moment before trying again. “Anyone, please respond to my broadcast. We have boarded your ship and are in the portside aft cargo bay.” No one answered.
He walked around the bay examining the cargo, while Nate checked out the console. Most of the freight was what one would normally find on a Navy ship – foodstuffs, water, spare parts, and ammunition – nothing out of the ordinary or dangerous. Several mashed crates had spilled their contents to join the debris cloud filling the cargo bay. He brushed aside a large can of tomatoes that had frozen and burst, spilling its frozen contents like a splotch of blood into the air around it.
Because of the debris and clouds of frozen atmosphere, his helmet light penetrated only a few meters into the darkness. Still, what he saw dismayed him and brought his heart up in his throat. Frozen blood crusted one crate, and a severed leg protruded through a gap in the cargo netting as if frozen meat hung up in a meat locker. He had seen the aftermath of Zero-G accidents before. Severed and crushed limbs were common on cargo ships, but he had a gut feeling this was no accident.
“Heads up, Nate,” he called out. “We’ve got bodies here. You getting this, Andy?”
Andy, who monitored their progress through their suit camera
s, replied. “The quality’s lousy because of the shielding, but, yeah, I see it. What happened over there?”
“Unknown,” Dax replied. “We’re going deeper into the ship.”
The remains of two metal shipping bins in particular drew his attention. Both looked as if bombs had exploded inside them. The metal sides were shredded, and the tops wrenched from the heavy hinges. Oddly, both bore labels reading ‘Biological Specimens – Loki’. His scalp tingled. He reached up and tried to scratch his head but his helmet stopped him.
“This console’s dead,” Nate announced over his suit com. “No main power or auxiliary power in the cargo bay.”
“We’ll try the bridge.” He swiped his arm to indicate the mess around him. “I don’t get it. I see blood and body parts but no corpses.”
“They could have floated out the hatch.”
“Maybe, but I get the feeling they never made it that far.”
Andy chimed in. “A mutiny?” he suggested.
“In a mutiny, one side usually wins. I don’t think we’ll find any winners here, and the shuttle is still in the cradle. I see scorch marks on the bulkhead as if they were firing lasers at someone.” He thought of the two specimen crates. “Or something. Whatever happened here was no accident.”
It didn’t take long to find the first bodies. Fifty meters down the main corridor, they encountered a makeshift barricade of metal bunk frames, filing cabinets, and pieces of steel pipe hastily welded to the bulkhead. Something had plowed through the barricade with tremendous force, knocking aside the obstacles, and bending and twisting the pipes out of the way. A section of pipe pinned a CPO wearing pajama bottoms and his uniform jacket against the bulkhead by piercing him through his chest. His frozen eyes stared at the metal pipe in disbelief.
Nate examined the body and said, “The look on his face reminds me more of an expression of horror than of pain.”
Dax studied the frozen face. “Yeah, I guess being skewered by a water pipe would be horrible.”
Beyond, in a frozen cloud of human blood, floated enough torsos and severed limbs to Frankenstein-cobble together at least a dozen corpses. All were armed with laser rifles or heavy-caliber slug rifles. Whatever they had shot at had torn through them like a charging rhino through tall grass. After witnessing the extent of the carnage, he decided his .40 caliber pistol was too small for whatever had ripped up the ship. He clipped it to his suit and grabbed one of the laser rifles.
“Andy? You still there?”
“We’re all watching, Dax. Tish is gripping my shoulder so hard I can’t move it. What the … happened … there?”
“No clue yet.” Andy’s transmission hissed with static. “Can you boost your signal?”
“Negative. I’m at full gain. You’re going too deep inside the ship. Too much shielding. Video is breaking up as well.”
Dax didn’t like the idea of losing contact with Fortune’s Luck, but he didn’t have time to set up relays and couldn’t turn back. “Understood. We’ll be off contact. We’re continuing.”
The bridge was located two decks above them just aft of the forward missile room. On Deck 2, the crew had constructed a second barricade at the top of the stairs. Like the first, it was in a shambles. Heavy metal cargo pods stacked atop each other would have provided an effective defense against an invading army, but they had not stopped whatever had attacked the ship. Something had shredded one pod into long strips of jagged metal and folded a second almost in half. Three dead sailors, torn apart by an incredible force, lay scattered over the debris, frozen to it by their blood. A trail of frozen blood ran down the corridor.
Dax felt the deck shudder under his feet. “Are you certain all the power is out?”
“Fairly certain. Romeo said he picked up nothing on the scanner. I felt it too. Maybe it was something large banging into a bulkhead.”
Dax remembered the size of the smashed specimen crates in the cargo hold. “Yeah. That’s what worries me.”
With no power, the lift to the bridge was useless. Access was by a spiral staircase beside the lift. The metal stairs and handrails looked as if a team of jackhammers had assaulted them. Deep scratches marred the walls. Something had forced the five-centimeter-thick steel blast door at the top of the stairs inward and shattered the surrounding bulkhead, leaving dangerous jagged metal slivers. Dax carefully avoided them. A rip in his suit could prove fatal. Dax did not think the damage was from an explosion.
The bridge was at least four times as large as the bridge of the Fortune’s Luck. Science, engineering, and navigation stations filled a horseshoe-shaped upper tier. Below it, four battle stations, communications, and ship’s environmental systems stations formed a semicircle around a second tier with the captain’s command chair sitting alone in the center of the bridge. The bridge was barely recognizable. Consoles were now so much metal confetti. One of the blast shields covering the shattered forward viewport bore gouge marks in the metal deeper than his fist. He spread his hand over the three equally spaced holes and grimaced at the apparent size of the hand that had created them.
The explosive decompression had blown much of the loose material out through the broken view port, but several mangled corpses floated in a cloud of frozen blood. The captain, identifiable only by the gold braid on his bloody uniform, lay pinned beneath a folded rail, a pistol in his hand where he had bravely fought to the last.
“I won’t get any logs from this pile of junk,” Nate said, slamming his gloved hand down on a smashed console.
“Look for a handheld pad or something.”
As Nate rummaged through the debris scattered around the bridge, Dax felt a rhythmic tapping reverberate through the soles of his boots. He looked around but saw nothing moving. It was not as strong as the earlier thud.
“Do you feel that?” he asked Nate.
Nate stopped moving; then, after a few moments, glanced down at the deck. “It’s coming from below, in the missile compartment. Do we investigate?”
As much as Dax wanted to turn tail and run, he needed answers. What he had seen so far had only generated more questions. He nodded.
They climbed down the forward stairwell to the deck below. Dax kept the laser rifle pointed forward, his finger on the trigger, although he realized it had done its previous owner little good. Their magnetic boots made no noise on the metal steps in the airless ship, but he could not help feeling they were nevertheless announcing their presence to whatever had caused all the damage. They passed more mangled corpses, more damage to the ship.
A crew of thirty-five – all dead. Even if some of them had died from decompression, what could kill thirty-five armed men? A decapitated body bumped into him. He jumped aside so quickly he slammed into the bulkhead.
“Jesus! Are there no whole corpses on this ship?”
Long, deep gouges along one corridor bulkhead penetrated into the rooms beyond, severing electrical conduits and water lines. Pools of ice covered one area of the floor, indicating the ship had gravity when the water lines were cut. Graceful icicle arches lancing across the corridor formed after the gravity generator failed.
“Whatever did this was pissed.”
“You think some creature did all this?” Nate asked.
Math, except in determining profit/loss figures, had never been Dax’s strong point, but he could add two and two and get four. The two smashed specimen crates and a destroyed Navy frigate added up to danger. “Do you think space-sick Navy swabbies rip people apart and punch holes in bulkheads?”
The forward missile compartment was sealed. He pressed his helmet against the metal trying to detect any sounds beyond it. “Nothing,” he reported to Nate. Using brute force, they cranked the manual wheel to open it. It slid slowly into its recess, revealing a dark, cavernous space beyond. Rows of vertical and horizontal missile tubes lined the room like a forest. His mind quickly counted the sixteen tubes. Two elevators for delivering missiles from the armament locker below dominated most of the open space. There were
no crewmen at their battle stations and no missiles in the tubes.
Dax noted the absence to Nate. “There was no outside threat, or they would have at least loaded the missile tubes.”
The tapping began again. He walked around the compartment, finally locating the source near the portside hull below the deck.
“What’s down there?” he asked.
“Should be the port forward cargo bay.”
Dax listened to the tapping for a moment. “Is that Morse code?”
“Could be. The echo makes it difficult to read. I don’t remember much Morse code. It’s been over thirty years since I’ve used it.”
“I think I recognize the word ‘danger’, though it could be ‘anger’. It’s hard to jump into the middle of a sentence. Well, at least it’s human. I hope.” The irregular tapping meant someone was still alive. He needed answers. He couldn’t leave without knowing what had happened. “Let’s check it out.”
Two cargo bays located forward near the bow on the lowest deck were smaller than the main rear cargo bay, and when equipped with cradles for drop shuttles, used for rapid ground deployment of troops in Marine operations. The smashed-in, four-meter-wide cargo door at the end of the main corridor was the first indication that the ills that had befallen the Abraxas had reached the forward cargo bay.
He entered the dark space warily. When his suit lights illuminated the obscene creature floating at the edge of the room, he fired his laser without thinking. After three shots, he realized the creature wasn’t moving. Chagrined, he noticed the gaping wound in its head that his rifle had not produced.
“Somebody beat me to it.” He paused a moment to let his heart rate return to something near normal. “What the hell is that thing?”