Lost Marine

by James David Victor

  “And they took all the blue rations,” Sam said again.

  Jack climbed down from the flight deck. “Lots of reasons to catch up with him, but we won’t be going anywhere if we have no drive and a compromised outer hull. Get your head in the game, Sam. Okay?”

  Sam nodded. “Sure. Prepping a drone now. Locating the fracture. We’ll be patched up in no time.”

  Jack walked the gun deck to the rear section, toward the drive room access hatch. He needed to get the corvette going, but he suspected this was no coincidental malfunction. This was sabotage. The only person who could have done it was Chief Stone. And from what Jack knew of Stone’s ability, it might well be a clever piece of work. He began to wonder if he would ever be able to get the corvette’s main drive active, but he pushed the negative thoughts out of his mind.

  “One thing at a time, Jack,” he said to himself as he stepped up to the drive room hatch. He pressed the control panel to open the hatch. It remained shut.

  Jack bit his lip. Before he could fix whatever Stone had done to the drive, he would have to work out what he had done to the hatch opening circuits.

  “It’s a small fracture, Jack,” Sam called back from the flight deck. “The drones can handle it. Should have it patched in no time. We are losing pressure, though. It might get a bit uncomfortable, but we shouldn’t suffocate.”

  “Ahh, well,” Jack said to himself. “That is some good news.”

  Jack pulled the control panel away from the bulkhead and started to work the problem.

  “One thing at a time,” Jack repeated to himself but already in the back of his mind, he was seething and planning revenge.

  10

  The acceleration was almost too much for the frigate’s inertial buffer to overcome. Ripa felt the strain on her damaged ribcage. She bent over, clutching her broken rib as it struggled to cope with the forces pressing against it.

  Bale held on to the armrests of his chair and steadied himself. He was not going to let Ripa see him looking weak or in any way uncomfortable with the experience. He watched the star field on the central holostage. The image flickered as ship-wide power fluctuated with the extreme acceleration putting a strain on all systems. The stars projected on the holostage quivered and all were showing the blue shift effect as the frigate raced forward.

  “The superstructure can’t take it,” Ripa said. She moved uncomfortably from the navigation console to the engineering console and checked the cohesion of the hull stability field.

  “The ship can handle it, Ripa,” Bale said. “You need to handle it, or you need to get off my deck.”

  Stone walked onto the command deck. He appeared unaffected by the fluctuating strength of the inertial buffer.

  “We should have told them what we were doing,” Ripa said. “We shouldn’t have left them. What if they get back to the fleet? He’ll put in a report to Fleet Intelligence for sure. They were Marines, for krav’s sake, and he was a major.”

  “A major,” Stone laughed with a humorless grunt. “And that was his battalion, I suppose, a one-armed grunt. Not much of a force.”

  “Nevertheless, it was wrong to leave them.”

  “My responsibility is to this ship. Those Marines are only there to assist and support the fleet. Their job is to die for us. So, I’m not sorry that I asked them to stand in front of an enemy and hold them off so we could get away.”

  “But we didn’t ask them, did we? We tricked them.” Ripa held her ribs.

  Stone walked over to Ripa and grabbed her by the arm. “You need to take it easy, Lieutenant.”

  Ripa shrugged Stone off. “Get your hands off me, Chief,” she spat. “You will respect chain of command or—”

  “Or what?” Stone said, taking her arm again.

  Ripa looked up at Bale. “Commander, you need to do something.”

  “Yes,” Stone said, looking up at Bale with a threatening glare. “You need to take the lieutenant to the med-bay. I think she needs a rest.”

  Jack sat on the deck in front of the drive room door. He recognized the work of Chief Stone. It was clear that the chief had performed the sabotage and had blocked the door to prevent Jack from solving the problems quickly. The man was clearly a talented engineer, but this work had been rushed and he was able to bypass it.

  The circuits in Jack’s hand sparked and crackled as he reset the central node. The door slid open.

  The drive room of the corvette covered the entire aft section of the boat, from the upper hull to the lower hull. The reactor housing began just a step inside the access hatch and filled the space back to the drive assembly faceplate. A narrow walkway along each side of the housing gave access to the drive systems. It was cramped and dark, but Jack could see—from the light on the gun deck behind him—that a side panel was missing from the reactor housing. It was the access panel to the main power distributer.

  Jack moved along the narrow walkway alongside the reactor housing. The faintest hum from the reactor vibrating through the floor. As he approached the missing panel, he saw something pressed into the housing at the power distributer node. Jack activated the flashlight embedded on his jacket and took another cautious step forward.

  “Sam,” Jack called out as he saw what was lying there. “Sam, get down here, and bring a pulse rifle.”

  Jack kneeled and looked at the body lying next to the distributer. It was propped up against the machinery, strapped to it to prevent it from toppling forward. Jack didn’t like to make assumptions, but he was pretty sure that this was a Mech.

  The head was large and oval, like a sideways football, and completely free of any features or surface marks. It was a uniform dull gray. The head sat atop a small central mass that appeared mechanical in nature. It was coated with a thick, fleshy slime and appeared to be leaking a small dribble of thick, white fluid.

  Attached to the small central mass were three upper limbs. The left limb was large and bulky. It looked like a length of knotted metal cables. At the end, the hand was a club-like fist with many fine gray threads protruding in all directions. The threads were fifty centimeters long and hung like hair from the club-fist.

  The right arm was the same knotted metal cables on the upper section, but the lower section was a large barrel-type structure. It had block-like attachments around it and a small oval plate that was the same gray as the head. It was angled back toward the head and appeared to be some sort of visual interface, a view screen of some kind. It looked to Jack as if the right arm was weaponized.

  A third smaller limb hung underneath the right, weaponized arm. It was smooth and gray like the head and splayed out into three strands at the end. It appeared to be a kind of gripping hand, and it looked to be organic.

  The two legs that splayed out underneath the Mech were long, multi-jointed, and symmetrical. They were made of the same knotted cable-like material as the arms, and in places were coated with cover plates of a gray metallic material.

  A light flashed on the weapon arm of the Mech and a dribble of white slime pulsed out of the central mass. Jack was sure he heard a clicking noise from the head.

  “Sam,” Jack called out, stepping away.

  “I’m here, Jack.” Sam handed Jack a pulse pistol. “The weapons locker was empty. Bale must have taken... What the krav is that?”

  Jack stepped back. “It’s a Mech, I think.”

  “What’s it doing here?” Sam said,

  “A present, from Stone no doubt.”

  Sam moved forward, lighting the way with the flashlight on the end of his pulse pistol. He pressed past Jack to get a better look.

  “Take it easy, Sam,” Jack said. “Don’t get too close. It’s probably dangerous.”

  “It looks dead,” Sam said, studying the strange creature.

  “I don’t think it is dead. It’s not healthy, though.”

  “So, let’s get it off the boat and get out of here. Hey, do you think that’s why their attack ships were firing at us, because of this thing?”

>   Jack nodded. The thought had occurred to him.

  “It’s possible, Sam. It looks like Bale had this planted here knowing it would draw their fire when they attacked. It gave him the opportunity to escape.”

  Sam squatted in front of the Mech. He picked up the left upper limb with the muzzle of his pistol and looked at the fine threads extending from the club-fist.

  “Don’t touch it, Sam. We don’t know anything about it.”

  At that moment, the fibers hanging from the club-fist moved suddenly and shot out toward the cap covering the end of Sam’s vestigial right limb. The Mech’s fibers touched the black flexible composite rods that used to connect Sam’s prosthetic arm to his nervous system.

  Sam collapsed to a sitting position on the deck.

  “I can hear it,” he said with an exhausted tone.

  Jack looked in shock. He reached out and grabbed Sam, pulling him back.

  “No, Jack,” Sam said. “It’s okay. I can hear it. The connections for my prosthetic arm are linked directly to my nervous system. It’s how I am able to control my prosthetic arm. The Mech is using them to interface directly with my mind. It’s bizarre. I know what it’s like to be a Mech. This unit is close to total power depletion. Stone was experimenting on it. He has another. The Mechs were trying to free us. Stone realized we must have a location beacon and that was how we were able to find him. Stone thinks he has deactivated the beacon from the Mech he has on his craft. We will find him.”

  “What do you mean, we?” Jack asked. “Sam, is that you?”

  Sam looked at Jack, tears in his eyes. “He experimented on me. It was torture. I must free the other. We must help, Jack.”

  Sam was staring at the smooth, gray head of the Mech. “It needs power, Jack. Its people will be back soon, and it will rejoin them.”

  Jack hesitated.

  “The pulse pistol power cell,” Sam said. “Place it on its head.”

  Jack shook his head. “I am not powering up this thing. They were just attacking us.”

  “It won’t be enough power to fully restore it, Jack,” Sam said. He was speaking in a monotone that was strange to Jack.

  “Good,” Jack said. “I don’t want it at full strength.”

  “But the only power it’s getting is from this human. Sam will expire soon.”

  Jack looked at Sam. His eyes were rolling back in his head and he was turning a dangerous shade of pale.

  “Quick, Jack. Sam is dying. Just place a power cell on the head. I’ll do the rest.”

  Jack tucked his pistol in his waistband and picked up Sam’s pistol off the deck. He unclipped the power cell. He drew his pistol and then held the power cell against the Mech’s gray head.

  The power cell was pulled from Jack’s grip and absorbed into the head. The gray head was suddenly alive with color, ripples of light deep within the dull gray. And then the Mech stood up. It stood over two meters tall and loomed over Jack. Moving backward swiftly and swinging up the pulse pistol just as swiftly, Jack made ready to fire. The Mech brought up its huge weaponized arm and pointed it at Jack.

  “Don’t shoot,” Sam shouted, suddenly alert. He stood up, still attached to the Mech’s left arm.

  Jack and the Mech hesitated. Then a large dribble of white pus spluttered out of the Mech’s central mass. The Mech collapsed to the deck.

  Sam stood over the Mech. “Its people will know what to do for it.”

  “People?” Jack said.

  “I don’t know. Mech people. It is speaking to me, Jack, but I can only understand it in my own language. I can’t understand its language. ‘People’ is the closest I can come up with.”

  “Does it mean us harm? Will it try and kill us?”

  “No. It thinks I am Mech. They won’t attack me. They do want Stone, though. He’s been torturing them for weeks, dissecting them. He found the location beacon just before we turned up. He ripped it out. He’s a butcher, Jack. They want their Mech back. They want Stone too. Mech revenge is just like any other type of revenge, Jack. It’s horrible, single-minded, and deadly. We don’t want to be in their way.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Jack looked at the collapsed Mech.

  “Thank you, Jack,” Sam said in that dull monotone. “Return me when my people come and you will be unharmed. Then we will deal with Stone.”

  11

  Moving the Mech out of the drive room was easier than Jack thought it would be. It was light, given its size. Jack realized that Stone could have easily moved the creature by himself. He laid the Mech out in the gun deck, and Sam sat next to it, the pair still joined by the enmeshed fibers protruding from each other’s arms.

  Jack looked down at Sam. “Can you detach yourself?”

  Sam looked up at Jack in a dreamlike state. “I’ll release him when my people come.”

  Jack tapped his wrist panel and sent instructions to the flight console. He sent an instruction for a silent alert when the Mechs returned. They would release Sam or many more of these Mechs would experience total power depletion before Jack had finished with them.

  He returned to the drive room. There was still the job of reconnecting and reconfiguring the drive systems. The corvette had been functioning perfectly well before Stone had messed things up. Jack knew he could restore full power to the drive, given enough time. He would need to work quickly, though, if he was going to deal with the Mechs when they returned.

  “Hang tough, Sam,” Jack said, and he left the pair lying in the middle of the gun deck.

  The drive reactor wasn’t difficult to put right. Jack could see how Chief Stone had bypassed the power distribution. It was relatively easy for Jack to restore full power.

  Jack was impressed by Stone’s work, reprehensible as it was. The chief had a real talent for his job. Pity, Jack thought, that he was missing any ethical boundaries.

  The silent alert on Jack’s communicator informed him that Mech attack ships were approaching. Jack tapped the wrist-mounted control panel and accessed an image of the incoming boats. Again, there were five Mech attack ships in the familiar formation. They would be in weapons range in moments.

  Jack climbed out of the drive room and sealed the door. He sent instructions to the flight deck to power the drive. Walking across the gun deck to the steps up to the flight deck, he kicked Sam’s boot.

  “Sam. Wake up. Mechs incoming.”

  Sam looked up at Jack with a distant expression. He still spoke in the strange monotone.

  “I will leave through the airlock,” he said.

  “You are not going anywhere,” Jack said, then, wondering if he was in fact talking to the Mech itself, he corrected, “Sam is not going anywhere. You are free to go.” Jack pointed to the ladder down to the airlock hatch.

  The Mech stood up and dragged Sam to his feet. It moved with a lurching gait. It stumbled and steadied itself against the side of the gun deck before taking another stride to the airlock access, dragging Sam like a limp doll.

  Jack stood his ground. “Let Sam go.” Jack drew his pistol and pointed it at the large, shimmering head. The colors in the head changed to a shimmering red, and the Mech took a lunging step forward. Jack withdrew a step but kept the weapon trained at the center of the head.

  “Once I am aboard my ship, you can have Sam Torent back,” Sam said.

  “Just dock and walk across. No need for Sam to go anywhere.”

  “We will not dock with your boat. I will travel across the space between our vessels and enter my own ship. Then I will send Sam Torent back.”

  The realization of what the Mech was saying stunned Jack.

  “No,” Jack said. “You’ll kill him. He can’t go out into deep space like this.”

  The Mech pulled Sam to him and picked him up off the deck. The tendrils held Sam by the stump of his right arm. Sam dangled, his eyes moving around in a strange, wide-eyed gaze.

  “Sam Torent will die. Humans are weak. But you will go free for saving me.”

  “Sam will not die
. He’s helping you. Release him and I will get you back to your ship.”

  “I will go now.”

  The Mech reached out to the airlock panel with its small secondary arm, the jelly-like fingers reaching to the panel.

  Jack knew he needed to act fast. He sent a signal from his communicator with a thought and instructed the flight deck to uncouple the interior door servos. As the Mech touched the panel, the display turned red, indicating the airlock was locked shut.

  “Open the door, Jack.” The voice came from Sam, but it was not Jack’s old friend.

  “How long will that power cell in your fat, gray head last?” Jack said, taking a step forward, pistol aimed. “Not as long as it will take you to get that airlock open, I bet.”

  “It is likely that you will die too.”

  “It is certain that you will die if you don’t release Sam now.”

  Sam fell to the floor as the Mech released its grip on him. Sam lay unconscious. Jack looked at the large oval head of the Mech. The dull gray flickered with a sparkling red and purple. Jack sent a message from his communicator to the flight deck to reinstate servo control. The panel lit up green. The Mech’s fingers on its small left arm ran over the panel. The inner hatch slid open. Jack took a step back, pistol still aimed.

  “Go,” Jack said.

  The Mech dropped into the airlock. Jack stepped forward and touched the panel, the inner hatch sliding shut.

  Jack kneeled next to Sam and checked his breathing. It was shallow but steady. He ran to the flight deck, jumping up the few steps, and dropped into his seat. With a few swift moves, Jack set the corvette moving.

  As the corvette accelerated away, he called up an image of the Mech attack ships on the flight deck holostage. They came to a halt around the Mech floating in space. One of the ships maneuvered over the Mech and took it inside. Then all five fell into formation and moved off at high speed before disappearing in a flash.

  Jack heard noise from the gun deck. Sam was staggering along toward the flight deck.