I wasn’t even strapped in when Dylan hit the thrusters. Fortunately, an OTV doesn’t have much thrust, so it wasn’t like I was flung off and into the void. Not that it would have mattered much since I still had the far end of the tether clipped to my utility vest. But it was just another addition to the list of reasons I disliked him.
I did have to admit that he seemed to be handling the controls well. A few thrusts had sent us moving around the Sorrow and into the sunlight. There was a brief second when I couldn’t see anything due to the dazzle of the Sun, then my faceplate compensated, and I could see the Garrison’s Pride.
It looked, well, it looked like a spaceship. A long spine with a command module at the front and an engine pod at the back. Two rings extended from it; the one forward was probably the habitation ring, and one towards the center used for docking. Then it had the standard set of remoras. These configurable modules could be attached to the spine to customize the ship to its intended purpose. The Pride was an ice miner. They were probably storage for the mining equipment and fusion thrusters that they would attach to the iceteroids before sending them to their destinations.
It was quickly apparent, even to me, that something was wrong. The ship wasn’t spinning on its axis or holding stationary. Instead, it was slowly rolling in multiple directions, tumbling end over end while also rotating at about a 30-degree angle around its center of gravity. Just looking at it almost made me sick again.
“It’s missing a remora,” said Tio. Look. She was pointing, but I had already seen it. There was a gap between the habitation and docking rings. I used my mask’s optics to zoom in.
“And I don’t think they meant to lose it,” I said. “There’s a bunch of conduits and cabling dangling from it. I think the airlock is compromised. That central corridor is probably open to vacuum. Which makes it that much harder for us.”
“Or we just get to go back home,” said Dylan. “With that damage, they must have had explosive decomp. There can’t be anyone alive over there.”
“Except that Proteus told us that there are multiple infrared signatures over there,” said Gabriella. “Someone is alive.”
I saw Dylan jerking his head as if he were saying something, but his comms were off. It was a few seconds before he was live again.
“OK, fine. But how do we get over there? With that tumble, we can’t connect to the docking ring.”
“Jump across?” That was Tio.
“To where?”
“That open airlock?”
“If anyone is still alive in there, they must have sealed that somehow. And cutting through it would only decompress them. So, where do we go in?”
I had been observing the ship. “One of the aft remoras is open,” I said. “With stuff hanging out from it. If its airlock is intact, we could get out that way.”
“You’ll still have to jump across.”
I wasn’t going to back down now. “Fine. Just get us close.”
He didn’t respond, but the OTV immediately started moving again. We closed the distance until we were only a few dozen meters from the aft remoras.
“Leave the tether,” Dylan said. “We don’t need it dragging us around.”
“I remember my micro-g training!” I said as I surreptitiously unclipped the tether from my vest and hoped no one was looking at me. “I’ll let you know when I’m over.”
I kicked off, aiming for a tangle of debris hanging from the aft end that I thought would provide enough places to grab hold of. I aimed well, hit near the center, and got a firm grip on something. I stabilized myself, then looked up to see what I held on to.
And immediately screamed and let go. I screamed louder as I flailed in microgravity, then managed to grab onto something else and clung to it, desperately hanging on to anything.
There was a chorus of voices, all asking what was happening. I was too busy getting my breath back to respond.
“Dammit, Mikel, don’t blow out my headset, then go quiet. What the Hell is going on? Crap yourself or something?”
That was enough to knock me out of the shock of what I had seen.
“It’s… a body. I think.”
“You think?”
I was trying to keep my stomach from rebelling, not something I wanted to have happen in a facemask. “Yeah, it’s definitely a pressure suit. But… Up…”
“But what!”
I took a deep breath. “The… faceplate is shot in. And the… face behind it.”
There was a pause. “What?”
Suddenly Captain Parimala was on the channel. “Indenture Alvarez, report! You said a body?”
“Um… yeah.” I forced myself to look at it again. “It’s a… male. I think. There’s a shotgun attached to the suit. I assume that is what they used. It looks like… it looks like they went out here then tried to shoot their head off. I… can’t tell anything else.”
“Anything else on the body?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are they carrying anything? Anything in or on their suit?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Have you searched?”
“What?”
“Have you searched the body?”
“What? No! I mean… why?”
There was a sigh. “To find out more about what caused them to kill themselves? Many suicides leave a note. Do they have one?”
“Um…” I tilted left and right, looking. “I don’t see anything.”
“She wants you to search the body,” I heard Dylan say. “Go over there and look.”
I really didn’t want to get any closer to it than I had to, but I didn’t want to back down after being called out by Dylan either. I pulled my way through the dangling cables until I got back to where the body was tethered. Then I pulled it to me.
I tried not to look at the face, which reminded me of nothing but a raspberry slushie. Which made me hungry. Which made me feel sick in microgravity. I forced that aside and first pulled on the cord holding the shotgun. Unclipping it, I clipped it back to my own suit then looked at it. It had a chamber feed and seemed to have several shells in it. Three had been fired. I’m not sure if they had missed a few times before finally being able to shoot themselves or if they had fired at something earlier.
I turned my attention to the figure itself, trying not to look at the head. The name tag on the pressure suit said, “Halbert.” Below it was a folded paper that had apparently been stapled to the suit. I frowned. That would compromise the integrity of the suit. They obviously hadn’t intended to stay out here very long. I pulled the paper free, unfolded it, and read it.
It took me a few seconds to process before I spoke up. “OK, yeah… they left a note.”
“What does it say?”
I took a deep breath. “Miriam, I’m sorry, but I can’t come back. You were right. I should never have done this. But I wanted to have a better life for you and Shandra. I wanted…
“I don’t have time. We took something on board. Something bad. Those stories? They’re true. And… well… one of them got me.
“Tell Shandra I love her. And… I love you. I’d give anything to be back with you. But… I can’t resist much longer. I have to do this before it is too late. I’m sorry.
“I love you.”
There was a long silence.
“What the fuck?” said Gariballa, finally.
“You need to investigate the ship,” Captain Parimala said after another long silence. “We need to make sure there are no uninfected survivors on board. Once we get an all-clear from you, we will destroy that ship.”
“What!” Dylan exclaimed. “Hell, we’ll come back now, and you can destroy it whenever you want! Fine, I’ll fail this test! I’m not going on board a ship with ‘things’ onboard.”
“This isn’t a test,” Captain Parimala said flatly. “This is… well, all of you are getting a promotion! Congratulations!”
“What?”
“Never mind. I need a full survey of that ship. And I’ll need full reports from all of you the entire time. If we lose contact with any of you? We’ll destroy that ship and leave the area.”
“What? No!” That was Mako. “You can’t leave us here! We… we’re…”
“Indentures,” Ottenbrighten said flatly. “Honestly, I’d prefer that we had a trained team over there instead of you, but… we didn’t know. But all of you are close enough that you may have been compromised. We need to know what is going on before letting you back on board. Otherwise…”
“Yeah, yeah, we get it!” I heard myself yelling. “But it sounds like y’all know a lot more than we do, so why don’t you at least let us know what is going on before you kill us!”
“Kill us?” I heard Dylan yell. “I didn’t sign up for this!”
“Yes, you did,” Ottenbrighten said in a dismissive voice. “Why do you think we need so many Indentures? But I’ll let Captain Parimala explain it to you. Since she was the one who insisted that we stop here and awaken all of you.”
There was a long silence.
Captain Parimala finally came online. “We know that there are… things happening. Mostly in the home system, but in the Cypher Systems as well. This was just a distress call. We had no reason to believe that this was nothing more than a typical engineering problem. But… Well, if people are shooting their faceplates out, then we have a bigger problem.”
“No kidding,” said Gabriella.
“And you didn’t warn us!” yelled Dylan. “Look, let’s just go back to the ship, you ignore or blow up this one, and we’ll get on with… whatever.”
“I can’t do that,” the Captain said flatly. “You are there, and at least one of you has had close contact with whatever is happening. Which means you may be a vector. I need you to investigate the source and convince me that you have it contained before coming back on board.”
“What? Look, the only person over there is Mikel, and we know he’s an ass. We’ll just leave him and come back. Better to lose just one of us than all of us, right?”
“Hey!” I shouted. I looked around. The Pride‘s rotation had brought the OTV back into view, and I kicked off without thinking.
My subconscious, or survival instinct, was apparently better at jumps than conscious me was, and I hit directly on the seat I had first occupied. I grabbed the handhold and oriented myself, just in time to see Dylan aiming a plasma cutter at me.
“You’re infected,” he shouted. “Get away from us!”
I jumped away, aiming for the back of the OTV. He fired, and the plasma stream went wide. I heard various yells and a few screams over the comms, then a loud “Get off this ship!”
I snagged the back of a seat a few rows back and pulled out the shotgun I had pulled from the corpse, then aimed it towards the front of the OTV.
By this point, everyone was yelling over the comms. Dylan had released himself from the pilot’s seat and was floating several meters above it. I saw him swinging to bring the plasma cutter in my direction again.
I waited until he had almost lined up before swinging the shotgun to one side and firing. The recoil sent me back towards the Pride. He fired almost immediately, but the plasma stream went wild. And he spun away with the recoil. Plasma cutters aren’t lasers; they do have recoil.
I came up against the side of the Pride and, after scrambling for a bit, found a handhold. The rotation quickly took me out of the line of sight of the OTV. I looked at the shotgun. I had two shots left.
Then I suddenly panicked. Was Dylan really trying to kill me? Would the Sorrow leave without me?
I heard the Captain yelling over the comms. “What the Hell are all of you doing over there! Alvarez! Stilver! Stop shooting at each other! That’s an order!”
“I didn’t shoot at anyone!” I yelled in annoyance. I hadn’t. Really.
“He’s trying to infect the rest of us!” Dylan yelled in unison.
“As far as we are concerned, all of you are ‘infected’ until you can confirm otherwise. So, you need to investigate that ship and tell us what is happening. After that, we’ll decide if you come back or not.”
“We haven’t done anything!” I yelled. The rotation had brought me back into view of the OTV. I could see that Dylan was floating free a few dozen meters from it and drifting away. Someone, I assumed it was Tio, had attached a tether to the OTV and had jumped towards him but was a few meters short.
“This is your fault!” Dylan was yelling.
“You asked me to make the jump!” I responded. “Don’t blame me for what I found!”
“All of you need to shut up!” Captain Parimala yelled over the circuit. “Welcome to the Oversight Group. We deal with this kind of shit all the time. And none of you would have been selected for the Group unless we thought you could deal with it! Or, maybe we just thought you were expendable and chose this as the best way to get rid of you without denying you an Indenture, which would look bad. Yeah, that’s cynical, but that’s an advantage in this job. All of you, get your shit together and investigate that ship! Otherwise, we’ll declare it ‘infected,’ destroy it, along with all of you, and then continue on to Mars. Do you want to complain? We can always send you back to Earth with the bill for your training. If you’re still alive.”
Dylan was still drifting away. Tio had unclipped herself and was drifting towards him. I wasn’t sure she would catch up with him.
“Fine!” I shouted. I waited until the Pride‘s rotation brought me into view of the OTV, then jumped. I hit somewhere near the middle and grabbed a handhold. I may be getting the hang of the microgravity stuff I told myself as I pulled my way along the OTV until I got to the command seat. Once there, I reoriented the ship to aim at Tio, then slightly boosted.
We quickly caught up with her. Gabriella had pulled herself forward as well and flung the tether Tio had abandoned towards her.
“Here. You get back. We’ll get Dylan.”
“Will you?” Tio said, looking in my direction.
“We’re a team,” I said through clenched teeth, trying to sound more optimistic than I was. “We’re all in this together.”
The was a pause. “Fine!” she said. She grabbed the tether and started pulling herself towards the OTV.
I didn’t wait to see where she was. You play your game; I’ll play mine. I rotated the OTV and boosted towards Dylan.
Tio yelled, but I ignored it. I brought us within a few meters of Dylan. He was still tumbling uncontrollably. I noted that the plasma cutter he had been shooting at me with a few minutes before was now at the end of its tether and well outside of his reach.
“We’re here. Can you grab hold?”
“What? Where? Fuck you, Mikel. Where’s Tio?”
“On the OTV,” I replied. “Can you grab hold?”
“Tell her to grab me!”
I sighed and slowly rotated the OTV towards him. I saw that Tio had regained her seat and was looking in his direction and timing our movement. As I brought the OTV to a stop, she leaped outward.
He grabbed her. Not in a romantic grasp, but more the frantic flailing of a drowning man clutching at any lifeline. I wondered how good he really was in microgravity. He had pinned Tio enough that she couldn’t even pull herself back down the tether. Samson pulled and started reeling them in.
Tio grabbed the plasma cutter and clipped it to her suit as she passed it. I’m not sure Dylan even noticed.
When they got back, Dylan shifted his grasp from Tio to the OTV. I noted that she almost immediately pushed herself back and away. Samson took her place and put an arm around his shoulders.
“We are a team, yes?”
Dylan pushed him away and turned towards me. “What the Hell do you think you are doing!”
“Rescuing your ass,” I said flatly. “What the Hell did you think you were doing!”
“You were infected! Hell, you’ve infected all of us now! We should have left your sorry ass!”
“All of you are out of line!” I heard Ottenbrighten yell over the comms. “You all need to get your shit together, or we’ll leave your worthless asses here. We’ll just write off the credits we’ve spent on your obviously wasted training!”
Captain Parimala was calmer. Somewhat. “We need you to investigate that ship and determine what happened there. Yes, it is dangerous. What did you think? That interstellar colonization is easy? You signed up for the Lottery, and here you are. Welcome to the suck. Now, get on board that ship and find out what is going on.”
“What the fuck kind of test is this!” yelled Dylan.
“This is not a test, Indenture Stilver. This is a rescue operation. I have told you that multiple times and I won’t remind you again. I will remind you again that I am your commanding officer. And I am giving you an order. All of you are the indentures who will carry out the rescue operation. If you don’t follow my orders, we will terminate your Indenture right now and either abandon you or send you back to Earth with the bill for your training. What do you want?”
Dylan looked around, glaring at me but apparently realized that everyone else was glaring at him.
“Fine. Just tell us what to do.”
“Find out what is happening on the Pride. Outside of that… you’ve been trained as best we can. Let us know what you find.”
“Fine!” Dylan started climbing towards me. “Move! I’m driving!”
“Not at the moment!” I said with surprising intensity. “Grab a seat!” Without seeing if he had a grip or not, I boosted us toward the docking ring. I heard a yell of protest but not much else, so I assumed he had found somewhere to hang on.
I pulled us up near the docking ring. I wasn’t going back to that open remora again. I set the controls to hold us in an arc matching the tumble of the ship, one that would keep us stable relative to one of the airlocks.
“This is probably our best way in that won’t expose anyone still onboard to a vacuum and won’t force us to go into… that.”
“You’re burning a lot of fuel holding this pattern,” Gabriella said flatly. “Why didn’t you just dock us?”
“Because we don’t have a docking port?” I replied. “What do you want me to do? Just tether us to the airlock?”
“It would save a lot of fuel.”
I looked at the console. “We’re good for an hour or two. If it takes us longer than that? Well, the Sorrow is right there.”
“There is a standard docking port on the lower side of the OTV,” Proteus said over the comms. “The hatch is located between seat rows three and four.”
“Thanks,” I really hadn’t known that.
“Don’t you know anything?” I heard Dylan ask.
“Did you know?”
“Of course!”
“Then why didn’t you dock us when you were here?”
“Dock with an obviously infected ship? Why the Hell should I do that?”
“Because we’ve been ordered to investigate said ship! And that’s the best way to do it! You think I wanted to jump across?”
“I didn’t want to expose all of us to a possible infection!” he shot back. “You’re the one who wanted to jump into danger!”
“I’m the one trying to do what we’re being asked to do!” I responded with equal intensity. “I don’t want to get sent back home!”
“Fine!” He immediately cut off his comms.
There was a long silence. With no other input, I started bringing the OTV into a swinging orbit around the Pride
The docking ports were on the outside of the docking ring. Which made sense since standard shuttles had their docking ports on the “top.” Unfortunately, our OTV had its docking port on the “bottom” because they were designed to dock with things in microgravity. So to dock, I would suddenly have to turn “up” into “down.” It would be awkward.
But no one had said anything. I didn’t look back to see if anyone was strapped in. “Hang on!” I yelled instead. “Things are about to get weird.”
I flipped the OTV so that the Pride was “below” us, then boosted forward. When the lower cam showed the docking ring coming into view, I slowed until the docking ring was centered below us. I then altered our turn until it was in the crosshair and boosted “down.”
We clicked into place, and the lights turned green. Then I had to concentrate on my own stomach as I was suddenly hanging upside down. I heard a yell from somewhere but couldn’t tell who it was.
“Welcome to the Garrison’s Pride!” I shouted as I released myself from my seat, grabbed it, and rotated, so the deck was “above” me. That at least satisfied my limbic system as my distress faded, even though I was hanging by one arm. I tried not to look at the stars spinning below me.
“You could have tethered us in a proper orientation,” Dylan said. I took some amusement from the gagging noises he made a few times while getting that out.
“Yeah, but someone would have had to jump over and attach us. Three or four. Easier to use the docking port on the bottom of the OTV.”
“Who the fuck puts a docking ring on the bottom!
“Right there with you. But… I assume everyone is stable?” I looked around. Almost everyone was either hanging from a handhold or dangling from the end of a tether. Samson was climbing hand-over-hand along the OTV towards the docking port.
“It will be better when we are inside, yes?” He opened the hatch and climbed inside.
There was a short ladder, only a meter or less, but he climbed into the hatch on the Pride. He spun it open and climbed inside.
One by one, the others followed him until it was only Dylan and me. We looked at each other until I finally shrugged and made my way to the hatch.
Inside, there were a series of about a dozen seats around what would have been a “floor” if we were under standard rotation. In the tumble we were in, the floor was constantly tilting in random directions but still had some semblance of “down.”
I pulled myself to a seat. “OK, I’m secure. Come on over.”
Instead of a response, the hatch suddenly closed. Before any of us could do anything, there was a “clunk” as the OTV detached.
“Hey!” I shouted. I wasn’t the only one. I heard more than a few “What the hells?” over the comms.
“I’m taking the OTV out to a safe distance!” I heard Dylan say. “When all of you have finished checking out that ship, I’ll swing back by to pick you up. Until then, I’ll keep our way home safe.”
“Fuck you!” I said without thinking.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’d like to!” he said sarcastically. “But I’ve heard how pathetic you are. Right, Tio?”
There was a pause.
“We’re trying to investigate a ship here, Dylan!” I heard Tio say, annoyance clearly audible in her voice. “Can you stop thinking about your dick for a few hours?”
“Can you?” he said with a laugh.
“Don’t tempt me.” There was a pause. “I’ve cut him off my circuit, Mikel; what are we doing?”
I was a bit surprised at suddenly having someone think I was in charge, but I paused long enough to cut Dylan out of my own circuit, then gestured upwards. “We need to go onboard. Find out what we can. If something bad has happened, the Sorrow can destroy it once we are clear. But… We have to know what is going on first.
“Exactly!” said Gabriella. “We’ll go onboard, find out what has happened, evacuate anyone who is still ‘normal,’ get what data we can, then head back. Nothing dangerous.”
Captain Parimala spoke up. “Yes, exactly. All of you over there. Find out as much as you can. We’ll scan you when you come back on board, so you won’t be infecting us. But, we need to know what is going on. Especially since we’re still in the home system.”
“What do you think we will find!” I asked a bit more loudly than I should have. I had no idea what the others around me were thinking. Samson was already climbing toward the hatch.
“We don’t know,” said Captain Parimala. “That’s why you are over there. At the first sign of infection, bug out.”
“Infection?”
“You’ll… know when you see it. We… try to keep the fact that it exists a secret. Because… otherwise we’ll be confined to Earth. And we all know how well that worked out.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The hatch won’t open!” Samson said suddenly. “I am trying the sequence, but the system is saying that the door is blocked from the inside.”
“How do you block an airlock?” Gabriella asked.
“Does anyone have a cutter?”
Tio held up the one Dylan had been using earlier. “Yeah?”
“Can you cut our way in?”
“Well, yeah. But that will compromise this airlock.”
“They have more. And the OTV isn’t here anymore anyway.” I did nothing to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“Yeah. OK.” She climbed up the ladder behind Samson, who quickly let go and allowed himself to drop outside the airlock. She braced herself, then started cutting into the door.
It was slow, airlock doors are thick for a reason, but she eventually cut out a circle about a half-meter in diameter. It promptly fell away, narrowly missing Samson, who swatted it away as it fell towards him. I was impressed. It may not have weighed much here, but mass is mass.
“You don’t expect us to climb through that hole, do you?” Mako asked.
Tio was leaning up near the hole. “No, I don’t. But I wanted to see what was in there before cutting the entire door off.”
“So, what’s in there?”
“I’m looking!”
There was a pause.
“Well?”
She had stuck her head into the hole but pulled back out and looked down at us. “Nothing in there. Seems to be empty.”
“So we can cut the rest of the way in?”
“Yeah.” She looked around. “All of you move over to this site. I’ll try to time it to drop the opening over there.”
We moved, and she started cutting again. It was even longer this time, but no one said anything. She paused at one point, then shoved the cutter into the door and cut the last few centimeters. She barely pulled back before a chunk of the door broke free and fell. Fortunately, away from any of us.
“Nice job,” I said.
“Thanks!” she replied, almost dismissively. “Let’s see what we have here.” She climbed over the edge of the opening and into the docking ring.
One by one, the rest of us followed. Mako hesitated before entering, but she climbed over the lip with no problems.
I joined her, and everyone else soon followed. I noted that Mako had acquired a plasma cutter of her own from somewhere. It had apparently been somewhere in the area.
Tio basically confirmed what I was thinking. “This airlock was welded shut. From the inside. Why would they have done that?”
“To keep people from getting in?”
“Yeah!” shouted Dylan over the comms. “I told you this was a mistake. I should just go back to the Sorrow.
“You will remain there to support the rest of your team!” Captain Parimala said, the edge in her voice clearly visible. “Since you had no desire to assist them, you will remain on-station to retrieve them.”
“Fuck that, I’m not getting infected. If the crew sealed themselves in, they must have had problems. I’m heading back.”
“Are you just leaving us!” I shouted. I heard multiple other shouts of basically the same thing.
“We aren’t abandoning you!” I heard the Captain say. “Investigate the ship. We will have transport for you when you have found out what you can.”
“Thanks, Sorrow,” I said, shaking my head. What the Hell was Dylan trying to prove?
I looked around. Everyone else had climbed into the docking ring and was now looking at me.
What do they expect me to do? I asked myself while trying to keep myself from getting sick. Again. There was a “down,” though it was only in microgravity. Moving would have been difficult even if we hadn’t been rocking like a boat on the open ocean.
I jumped upwards and grabbed the edge of the opening, then pulled myself into the docking ring with the others.
It was evident that something had been going on. Half the emergency lockers were open, and equipment slid back and forth on the floor. Mako had picked up a plasma cutter of her own from somewhere and was brandishing it in front of herself as if it could keep anything at bay. Samson was looking inside one of the storage lockers, and Gabriella was nowhere to be seen.
Standing and swaying to the erratic tumble of the ship, I pointed to the edges of the airlock. “Welded. See? They were trying to keep something out.”
“Or something in?”
“They left the cutter lying here. Anyone here could have gotten out as easily as we got in.”
“Then why?”
Gabriella came kicking around the curve and braked herself in front of us. “All of the other airlocks are sealed the same way. Well, except for the one where that shuttle is docked. That one is also covered with breach-foam. They really wanted that one closed.”
Breach-foam, aka “spray-and-pray,” is a substance designed to seal hull breaches in ships. You spray it at the opening, and it expands and hardens into an incredibly durable substance that keeps your air from leaving. It’s so durable that we were actually taught not to use it except in an absolute emergency as it is apparently tough to remove. We were instead taught to use the far-easier to remove “tear-and-swear” patches, which I’m pretty sure were just sections of duct tape.
If the Pride had sealed an entire airlock with it, they really didn’t want that opened again. Ever.
“Well… that isn’t encouraging.”
“But whatever they were worried about is sealed out, yes?” Samson had come up, holding what looked like a rifle of some kind. It took me a few seconds to recognize it as a harpoon gun; used to fire a metal spike at high speeds at an asteroid while trailing a tether to allow someone to cross. He seemed to have removed the tether.
“Then what were they sealing in?”
That seemed to discourage him a bit.
“Rescue team, report!” That was Captain Parimala. I was sure she and Ottenbrighten had been listening, but I quickly described the interior of the docking ring to her.
“Obviously, they were worried about that shuttle, but it doesn’t sound like any of you can access it right now. Proteus will be on his way over to you in the OTV in a few minutes; I’ll have him survey the shuttle from the outside to see if there is any need for you to EVA to it. In the meantime, we need to know what happened over there. Get their logs, at least, and confirm the status of survivors. We still have those three IR sources in the spine.”
“Have they done anything since we came on board?” I asked.
“Still moving up and down the spine as before. Have you done anything to let any survivors know you are there?”
“No, we haven’t. Fair enough. I’ll let you know when we’ve found… something.” I turned to Gabriella. “How about the airlocks leading into the ship. Are they sealed as well?”
She shook her head. “Not that I saw. They’re locked, but we can probably override them from out here. Assuming we can either get or figure out the codes. Or we can just cut our way in. I was mainly checking the other external airlocks.”
“Fine.” I looked around. “So, I guess we… go in?”
No one seemed to want to respond, so I weaved my way to the nearest internal airlock, a meter or so above me. It was a trivial distance in the microgravity we were under, but the shifting floor would make the jump difficult. I could see the access panel was showing red from where I was.
“Hey, Sorrow,” I asked. Do you happen to have any codes we could use to override an airlock?
“Sending,” I heard Ottenbrighten say as my nexus beeped. “There you go.”
“Thanks,” I replied. I looked at my nexus and pulled up the code, then jumped to the hatch overhead.
I got a grip on a handhold and punched in the code. The hatch swung inward almost immediately.
“Pattern change,” I heard Proteus say. “The infrared signatures in the spine are converging on your location.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s get them out, and we’ll all get out of here.”
Yeah, like it was going to be that simple.
—-
I pulled myself up and into the spine. It was dim, lit only by red emergency lighting. I saw two shapes rushing toward me. It took me a few seconds to realize that they were wearing ripped pressure suits. And that they weren’t human.
I screamed and flung myself back down the hatch, scrambling for a hold on the far bulkhead. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”.
“What is it?” I heard someone shout. What is…”
“Get away from the hatch! They’re…!”
I cut off as the first of the… things… launched itself into the docking ring. In the better light here, it reminded me of nothing more than a racing greyhound. Long and lean, with long legs that had ripped the gloves and boots off of the pressure suit it was incongruously wearing. The helmet was missing, and I saw a long, narrow head with a long jaw full of teeth.
The thing kept a hold onto the edge of the hatch and looked around. It saw Gabriella and launched itself towards her.
I fired the shotgun, the recoil thrusting me down the ring. I saw the splatter of shot into the far wall and heard Samson yell as he got hit by the ricochet.
Mako was more determined. She kicked forward toward the thing and fired with her plasma cutter. The thing’s head was suddenly no longer attached to its body, and Gabriella winced as gore splattered over her suit.
A second thing appeared in the hatch, looking around. Tio had been watching and immediately fired her cutter at it. It ducked back into the hatch with a screech.
Samson was yelling something in Russian and advancing toward me. “Watch where you are aiming!” he said as he switched back to English. “You could have shot…”
He cut off, his eyes widening. “Shit!”
I spun to see what he was looking at and barely had time to bring the shotgun up before another of the things slammed into me. The shotgun fired directly into its chest more from the impact than from actual planning. Both of us slammed into the far bulkhead, and I scrambled for a handhold to pull myself away from it, but it simply rebounded and drifted away. I kept an eye on it as I regained my orientation, but it appeared as dead as the headless one down the ring.
Then I heard hissing from overhead. There was at least one still around.
I looked at the shotgun. Two rounds left. I turned to the others. “I’m low. Does anyone else have anything?”
Tio positioned herself under the hatch. “I’m ready.”
“That code must have opened all three hatches. It could come through one of the others. That has to be how that one got down here.”
She groaned but kept her cutter aimed at the hatch. “So… what do we do?”
I was still looking at the thing that had attacked me, drifting slowly away. “Everyone, check your suits!”
“What?” someone asked.
“Check your suits! Make sure you’re still sealed!” I looked at my readouts and relaxed slightly as everything still showed green. Fortunately, I hadn’t taken it off since getting inside.
“What do you think is going on?” asked Mako.
Gabriella answered. “These were… people.” She was looking at the body of the thing that had almost attacked her earlier. “They’re… still in their suits! They were… mutated! Somehow. Into these… things!”
A pulse from a cutter interrupted us as Tio fired into the hatch. “It really wants to get down here! What do we do?”
“Sorrow?” I asked. “You still with us?”
Proteus responded. “It sounded as if you were in a conflict situation, and we felt it best not to intrude. What is your situation?”
“We’ve got… ‘things.'”
“Could you elaborate, please?”
“Creatures. Mutants. Things that look like… a dog crossed with a crocodile. They aren’t friendly.”
“Are you in danger?” Captain Parimala came on the circuit.
“We’re a bit under-armed here!” I said a bit too quickly. “We really weren’t expecting to be attacked here! We aren’t CorpSec!”
“I know,” she said, and I heard the faint sigh. “We thought this was a rescue. We didn’t…” she cut off.
“Didn’t what?”
There was a pause. “I’ll explain when you’re back on board. For now, continue with your exploration of the Pride. We need to know where those ‘things’ as you call them came from.”
“What? Look, there’s still one of those things here!” As if to underscore my comment, I heard another plasma burst behind me.
“Understood, but you seem to have the situation under control. We will continue to monitor from here.”
I cut my comms long enough to let out a few choice expletives, then opened them again. “Tio! Is that thing just staying around the hatch?”
“Yeah, it keeps sticking its head out to see if we are still here. Too fast to get a clear shot, but every now and then, it tries to come out, and I have to discourage it.”
“Why don’t we just leave, yes?” Samson asked, any annoyance at my earlier wild shot apparently forgotten. “We just go out and let them pick us up, then just destroy the ship, yes?”
“You heard what the Captain said. We need to find out what happened.”
He mumbled to himself in Russian while I stared at the overhead hatch. I saw the thing dip its head past the opening, but Tio was right; it was moving too fast for anyone to get a shot at. I thought.
“Mako! Can I have that cutter?”
She frowned and clutched it to herself. “Why! You’ve got a gun!”
“Yeah, fine,” I said, waving it in her direction. “One that apparently only works if I’m right up next to them. I have an idea, but it will be dangerous.”
“What?”
“There are three other hatches, all leading into the spine. And apparently, all of them opened when I entered that override code since that third one of them got in somehow. So, all of us but one stay here to keep that last one’s attention while one of us goes around to another hatch. They’ll come out above it and can shoot it before it realizes someone is there.”
“What? I’m not going to…”
“I will do it,” said Samson. “Allow me?” He held out a hand.
She took a deep breath but shook her head. “No. That sounds like a good plan. Keep it focused on you, OK?”
Samson shrugged. “Good hunting, my friend.”
She kicked off down the ring. I had been watching the hatch and had seen the thing duck out and back once or twice while we had been talking. I flipped on the external speaker on my suit.
“Hey! Asshole!”
The head almost immediately appeared and glared long enough for Tio to fire off another shot, but it pulled back in time.
She was looking at her cutter. “I’ve only got another few bursts on this thing. They apparently used it on continuous for a while.”
“Probably used it to weld the external hatches shut,” said Gabriella.
“Save them,” I said. “Don’t fire unless it is actually coming through the hatch.”
I paused, a thought occurring to me. “Hey! Belter scum!”
There was a loud hiss, and the thing came halfway out of the hatch, frantically looking around. Tio fired and hit it square in the face, and it pulled back, screeching into the hatch.
Barely a second later, I heard and saw the discharge of a plasma bolt from the hatch. There was silence.
“I think…” I heard Mako say. “I think I got it!”
I lept upward to the hatch and pulled myself into the spine. The thing indeed seemed to be dead. Its face was a mess of burns, and Mako’s shot had torn it almost in half.
“OK!” I shouted. “Looks like we’re clear.”
“Find out what happened over there,” Captain Parimala came online. “We don’t see any other IR signatures beyond yours. See what you can find out.”
I almost yelled a few choice expletives back but cut myself off. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I looked around.
The others were all now in the spine with us, and I saw they were all looking at me. Well, everyone but Gabriella. She was closely examining the thing Mako had killed.
“Yeah. This was… human,” she said, shaking her head. “It was altered into this.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
I shrugged and looked around. The spine, obviously, ran the length of the ship. Aft was the cargo ring and engineering while forward was the habitation ring and the bridge.”
“Forward,” I said almost immediately. “If there are any logs as to what happened, then it will be there.”
No one said anything, but no one did anything either. With a sigh, I grabbed a handhold and propelled myself forward. I passed the habitation ring and continued to the forward airlock.
It had been welded shut from this side.
“Does anyone want to cut our way in?”
“Should we?” asked Tio.
“Status?” Captain Parimala asked.
“We’re at the hatch to the bridge, but someone has welded it shut from the outside.”
“Do you have any idea what is on the other side?”
“No? Do you ?”
Proteus spoke up. “There are indistinct IR readings on the bridge, but no sign of any life forms. It appears to be safe.”
I shrugged and looked around. “Does anyone have a cutter that we can use to get in?”
Tio looked at hers and shrugged. “I can probably cut through it, then I’ll be out.”
“It doesn’t look like anything else is here beyond us. It should be safe.”
She immediately braced herself and started cutting a circle out of the center of the hatch. She dodged aside as it fell away.
We looked at each other, and I finally moved forward and stuck my head inside.
It was a standard bridge. Two acceleration couches facing forward with a full console and a canopy overhead. That was normal. The occupants of the couches were not.
They had probably been people. Once. But now they were just human-shaped figures with dozens of… tentacles? With dozens of tendrils extending from them and into the consoles in front of them. As I watched, several of the tendrils started moving and reaching toward me.
I yelled and quickly pushed myself away from the hatch. Several tendrils emerged into the corridor, trying to follow me. Tio yelled as well and fired a blast from her cutter. The tendrils almost immediately pulled away.
“I’m empty!” she said, holding up the cutter. “Someone else needs to go upfront.”
“Status!” asked Captain Parimala.
I was still trying to process what I had seen. “It looks like, well, something has taken over the crew and has connected them to the ship.”
“What?”
“I’m… not sure. There were what looked like bodies in both acceleration couches, but…” I trailed off as I again tried to get my stomach under control.
“Alverez! Report!”
I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and continued. “Yeah, there were suits, but all of these… tentacles, I guess they looked like. These tentacles extended from what was left of them and reached inside the consoles. Like they were connected to the ship. Somehow.”
As I was talking, I heard another plasma burst. Mako had moved forward and had fired at another cluster of tendrils that had emerged from the hole we had cut.
“And yeah, it looks like the rest of the crew had sealed the bridge off before things went really off-plan. And now we’ve let it out.” A second plasma punctuated my statement.
“There are more of them!” I heard Mako shout. “They know we’re here!”
“Back to the docking ring!” I said over the comms. Sorrow? We could use a pickup here!”
“I need you to check engineering first,” Captain Parimala said.
“What?”
“We need to know what happened. If you can’t get into the bridge, maybe we can get into engineering. You should be able to get access to the main computer from there and try to get the logs.”
I sighed. “Fine!” I shrugged helplessly at the others and kicked off down the spine. The others fell in behind me without saying anything. I was a bit surprised; I had expected at least some pushback. And I suddenly realized that I hadn’t heard from someone for a while.
I switched back to the open circuit. “Sorrow? I haven’t heard anything from Dylan… Stilver lately. Do you have anything?”
There was a slight pause, then Ottenbrighten came on the circuit. “Indenture Stilver returned to the Sorrow and was urging us to destroy the Pride while all of you were still on-board. He is being placed back into cryosleep. We will deal with him once we arrive at Mars. For now, you do not need to be concerned with his safety; focus on your own mission.”
“Understood, Sorrow.” I shut my comms off for a few seconds as I let out a loud laugh. Dylan had apparently lived the good life for too long. I was glad to see him taken down a ranking or two.
By this point, we had reached the aft end of the spine. I looked around. Everyone was looking at me for some reason. Most of them had what I read as an expectant expression, while Tio was holding what I could tell was the best poker face she could. She was upset but didn’t want to show it.
I turned to look at the hatch. It was closed, with a red “sealed” logo showing on the panel. Someone had tried to cut it open and had gotten about a third of the way around. The laser cutter they had been using was floating nearby.
Samson had been maneuvering closer and grabbed the cutter. He started to pull on the harness, then stopped and looked at it.
“These straps, they are ripped open! How did this happen?”
Gabriella was shaking her head. “I told you those things used to be human.”
“Yes?”
“Someone in the engine room sealed it off, and the rest of the crew were trying to cut their way in. Then… they turned into… what we saw earlier. And probably forgot what they were doing.”
“So someone may still be alive and ‘normal’ in the engine room?”
Tio was shaking her head. “No. No other IR signatures on board. Remember?”
I sighed. “Well, let’s look inside anyway. Then we can get the Hell out of here.”
Samson tried to hold the power pack under one arm while getting a grip on the cutter. “Just a moment. Let me…”
“I’ve got it,” Mako said, kicking forward. She found a handhold and activated her cutter, continuing the earlier arc. It was barely a minute before she finished and kicked the disc inward.
We all paused for a moment, looking between each other and the opening, but nothing emerged. When no one else made a move forward, I finally sighed and stuck my head in.
The engine room looked normal. Well, beyond the two bodies floating in it.
I sighed. “OK, this one looks clear. Let’s see what we got.” I sighed again, tensed, and pulled myself through the opening when there was no response.
There were two bodies in the room. One was strapped into a seat while the other was floating free in the currents. I had aimed in their direction and caught them, my momentum carrying us back against the rear bulkhead.
I found a handhold and turned to see who I had encountered and immediately regretted it. Again.
It was, or had been, a man. The nametag said “Haralson,” and I kept my eyes on it instead of his head. He had been holding a spike driver, still tethered to him. Spike drivers were used by asteroid miners to fire pitons into asteroids while trailing a cable so that the person using it could pull themselves to a distant rock.
He had fired one through his head. Yet again, I found myself trying to convince my stomach not to rebel in a pressure suit.
What the Hell happened here! Needing to distract myself, somehow, I opened comms again.
“OK Sorrow, we’re in the engine room. It looks like… well.. some of the crew sealed themselves in here and killed themselves.”
“Rescue team, repeat?”
“The people in here have killed themselves!” I said, the composure I had been holding onto slowly fraying. “I’m looking at someone who fired a spike driver through their head!”
“What? Are you sure?”
I tugged on the tether still attached to Haralson and grabbed what was on the end of it. “Yeah. I’m holding the damn thing!”
“They may not have both killed themselves,” Gabriella said. I turned to see her near the other body.
“The other occupant of the room was shot through the back of the head. Crew woman Davaron, based on her nametag. She is… well, she is showing signs of mutation.”
There was a long pause. I noticed that the others had entered the room and spread out. Tio was frantically typing at the central console while Mako and Samson were staying near the hatch and looking nervously out.
“Whatever was going on, the two here shut down the fusion drive then jettisoned the triggers. They couldn’t start the engines again. Which means that we can’t either.”
“Can you get the logs?” asked Captain Parimala.
Tio typed a bit. “Yeah, I think so.” She tapped a bit more, then pulled out her nexus. A few more taps, and she nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got the last few weeks. Is that enough?”
“Probably,” said Captain Parimala. “Are you ready for extraction?”
“Yes!” I said, more loudly than I had planned. “We need to get the hell out of here?”
“We have a problem, friends,” Samson said. “Those tendrils from the bridge are continuing to extend. They are now near the docking ring. I am not confident of going forward.”
“Then we’ll leave through the aft cargo ring!” I said. I was irritated. Angry even. But I was somehow also focused. I had seen a bag of spikes on Haralson and had pulled it free, grabbing one spike to reload the driver I was still holding. I pulled his nexus free from his wrist and stuck it in a thigh pocket, almost as an afterthought.
“We need to take this one with us!” Gabriella was saying. “She was in mid-mutation. We can probably…”
“No!” shouted Mako, still looking up the spine. “They’re past the docking ring now. We need to get out! Now!”
“But…”
“But nothing!” I shouted, kicking toward the hatch. “Proteus, there’s an open remora on the aft section. Can you pick us up from there?”
“Certainly,” he said. “I am maneuvering to there now.”
“OK, everyone, go!” I gestured through the hatch. “Find the open port!”
“How?” someone asked.
“The one with a vacuum inside the remora!”
Tio pushed ahead and grabbed a handhold near the remora ring. She looked around, selected the one showing red, and cycled the hatch.
“It’s a fucking one-person airlock!”
“How many if we’re ‘really’ friendly!” I asked without thinking.
“One! I could barely get inside this thing!”
“Go!” I shouted. “Get back to the Sorrow.” I looked at the others. Let’s keep those things away from us as long as we can!”
I fired a spike in their general direction, but it didn’t seem to dissuade them. A plasma burst from Mako did, and they pulled back.
The airlock had cycled, and I pointed at Gabriella. “You next! You aren’t… what the Hell is that!”
She was holding a… severed head? “We need to figure out what was happening here! I got this…”
“Forget it! Get out!” She climbed into the airlock as I loaded another spike and fired it, this time being rewarded by seeing a tendril sever. Unfortunately, several more took their place.
The airlock cycled again. “OK!” I shouted. “One of you, go!”
“No! You go!” Samson shouted in return.
“What? No, you…”
“We have weapons that can keep it back easily. You do not! Go!”
I hesitated, but survival instinct kicked in. I launched myself at the airlock and pulled myself into it.
It was a cramped cylinder, barely big enough for me to be in. I almost immediately hit the cycle button.
The airlock didn’t have a hatch. It simply rotated halfway, depressurized, then turned the rest of the way. I kicked out into the remora.
“Cycle it back!” Tio yelled. I realized what she was saying and tried to find a handhold to pull back, then it cycled on its own.
“Done!” I said. I wasn’t going to argue with fate. I instead adjusted myself, aimed at the OTV now hovering above me, and kicked off.
I landed way away from where I was aiming but still grabbed hold of something. I strapped myself into the nearest seat.
“Samson is out,” I heard Gabriella say.
I looked up, trying to ignore the stars wheeling past as we maintained a steady orbit above the remora. I saw Samson jump outside and grab the same tangle of cables that I had grabbed… was it only an hour or so ago? He reoriented himself and jumped toward the OTV.
“Where’s Mako!” I yelled.
“She said that she had the best weapon to keep them away! She is right behind me!” There was a slight pause. “I hope,” he said in a quieter voice.
Before I could react, I heard Mako. “Let’s get the fucking hells out of here!” She suddenly came into view. She hadn’t aimed at anything; she had just jumped into the void.
“Get rid of that thing! Get rid of it now!”
“Maneuvering to pick you up,” I heard Proteus say. The OTV shifted, and we started moving toward Mako, who was already further from the Pride than we were.
“Rendevouz in approximately one minute, Indenture Takamura.” We will pick you up.
“Destroy that thing!” she kept shouting.
“We will take care of the Garrison’s Pride once all of you are clear of any possible blast radius,” said Captain Parimala. “Once all of you are back on board, we will have a full debriefing. Until then, I can assure you that all of you have performed admirably under completely unexpected circumstances. All of you will be getting an unexpected promotion.”
“You knew about this crap!” I shouted.
“I will explain at the debriefing. Until then, please maintain radio silence. We aren’t the only ship out here.”
I wanted to ask more but understood what she was saying and kept quiet. Everyone else apparently understood as well, and we were silent as we picked up Mako and started our return. I noticed that the Sorrow had been pulling away from the Pride, and had deployed its turrets. As we entered the docking bay, I saw them open fire on the Pride.
We dumped our pressure suits and got back into regular clothing. Gabriella was still hanging onto the head she had retrieved. I stuck the shotgun and spike launcher I was still carrying into my locker. I noticed that Tio had stuck the plasma cutter into hers as well. She also looked away whenever I looked at her.
Mako, meanwhile, had put her gear away but was hanging on to her cutter.
Captain Parimala came on the internal comms. “Rescue team. As soon as you are settled, please report to operations for debriefing.”
I sighed. What now?
—-
We made our way up the spine. As we did, I heard Proteus announce, “We are firing.” The ship shifted slightly from recoil, which made our journey a bit more complicated, but we all made it back to operations. Parimala and Ottenbrighten were both there. I assumed that Proteus was still on the bridge as the Sorry continued to shift slightly from time to time.
Parimala gestured to seats, and we strapped ourselves in. We weren’t spinning, so we still had no gravity.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Now, report.”
We looked at each other.
She sighed. “What happened. And don’t skip the details. I know this was a mess, but we need to know everything we can.”
“There were… strange creatures on the ship,” Samson said. “They were hostile. We had to kill them.”
“That’s fine,” she responded. “We aren’t blaming you for defending yourself. But, what were they, and where did they come from?”
“They were… they were the crew. I think,” said Gabriella. “I did scans. Several. Their DNA was… human. Barely. I think something turned the crew into those… things.”
“How? How were they infected?”
“That shuttle attached to them,” I said. “The crew had sealed it off as best as they could, but it was apparently too late. Whatever was on that shuttle was already on board.”
“I concur,” said Proteus over the comms. “I examined the shuttle. The cockpit contained nothing but a tangle of biomatter tendrils.”
“Just like what we found on the bridge of the Pride,” I said. And those things were definitely aggressive.”
“Do we know where they came from?”
Tio held up her arm, showing her nexus. “I downloaded as many of the logs as I could. I haven’t had a chance to look at them.”
Parimala nodded. “Good. Transfer them to our systems, and we’ll examine them. No, wait!” She paused, thinking. “We’ll spin up an isolated instance, and you can upload to it. In case this is digital as well as biological. Anyone else?”
I waved. “Yeah, I grabbed the data from the guy in engineering. The guy who killed his coworker then himself. I haven’t looked at it either.”
“Great. Transfer it when we’re ready.” She paused. “OK, a secure link is up. Go now.”
I glanced at my nexus long enough to see a new node appear. I flicked the data I had pulled over to it.
“So, tell me what happened,” Parimala asked. “Everyone. Start at the beginning.”
I started first, but everyone eventually joined in. We went through everything that had happened since we had left the Sorrow. I winced a bit as we went through mine and Dylan’s conflict, but everyone else apparently had seen things the way I had. I think the fact that Dylan had abandoned us may have influenced them a bit.
Ottenbrighten and Paramila had asked a few questions along the way, but eventually, we were up-to-date. We looked at each other in silence as the two of them appeared deep in thought.
“This shouldn’t have happened in the inner system,” Ottenbrigten said, finally. “We’ve had encounters like this in the past, but mostly outside the Belt.”
“The Pride was an ice miner. From the Belt,” I said.
“Actually, they weren’t.” She was shaking her head. “They are registered out of Ceres, but their last report had them operating in the Saturnian rings. They were sending iceteroids to Venus. We have no idea why they were inside of the Belt.”
“And you didn’t think to mention that earlier!”
She sighed and looked away. “OK… yeah. All of this is new to all of you. Well, this particular situation is new to me too. I mean, I’ve heard stories, but I make the Earth-Mars run. Simple, right?” She laughed in a way that I knew wasn’t from amusement. “You know, you hear things, but you never… You never really believe them, right?”
Ottenbrighten was looking at her with concern. “Captain? Are you…”
“I’m fine!’ she replied, pulling herself up and trying to compose herself. “I’m fine,” she repeated.
“The Garrison’s Pride has lost all structural integrity,” Proteus announced over the comms. “Are there further orders?”
“Any life signs?” asked Parimala, suddenly back in control.
“Negative,” Proteus replied. “There are multiple locations of raised IR signatures, but none of them appear active.”
“Fire a few more rounds into them anyway!” she said. “We don’t want anything that was on that ship to be able to go anywhere.”
“Confirm,” it replied. The ship shifted a few seconds later as another round fired from the mass drivers.
Captain Parimala took a deep breath, then turned to face us. “OK. I’ll tell you what I know. I hadn’t seen this personally until today, but… yeah, we know about it.”
“What?” I shouted. Basically, everyone was yelling the same thing, so I wasn’t too much out of line.
Ottenbrighten was looking at the Captain. “Wait. That’s Aleph-level intel. Are you sure…”
Parimala turned to her in anger. “Do you want to try to explain away what they saw! They went over there and survived! The Contingency Group needs to know about them!”
“What! Look, we need to talk about…”
“No! They went there, and all of them came back. And we’ve seen what they encountered. They’re exactly what the group needs!”
I spoke up. “Um.. ‘Contingency Group’?” What is going on?
She turned back to me. “OK. I guess all of you need to know. There are… things happening. We didn’t expect those ‘things’ to be involved in this case, so we sent you instead of a trained team. But… all of you did well! So… welcome to the Contingency Group.”
“What?”
She sighed. “I don’t know all of the details myself. Just what I’ve been briefed on. There are… things out there. Dangerous things.”
“And… you… never thought to tell anyone about this?” asked Tio.
“Would you have signed up for the Lottery if you had known that there was an alien lifeform in the solar system that apparently only wanted to keep us on Earth? Look, once we learned it was there, we defeated it. And you defeated it today. Which means I have to refer you to the contingency group. Which also means I’ll have to pick up a new load of Indentures on our next cycle.”
“I’m sorry we are causing you problems,” I said, trying to keep my annoyance to a minimum. “But do you think you might have warned us of what we might be encountering before we went over there!”
“We… didn’t expect you to encounter anything. Yes, Mr. Alvarez, we knew those things existed, but we never saw them. In fact, this is literally the first time that I know about that they have appeared inside the life-zone of a system. Any system. So I had no idea that we would encounter them between Luna and Mars.”
“Well, we did.”
She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m going to spend so much time in meetings on Deimos.”
“Yeah? And what about us?”
“I’ll have to file a report of what you encountered. And the group won’t ignore it.”
“Fine. So… what about now?”
“We have your report. The Garrison’s Pride has been destroyed and is no longer a threat. So… we all get to go back into cryosleep and hope we don’t have any more interruptions between here and Mars.”
“No! Not yet!” Tio yelled. “What happened to Dylan?”
Ottenbrighten spoke up. “He abandoned all of you on the Pride and came back here demanding that we destroy the ship, even while all of you were still on board. He was placed into cryosleep. We plan to keep him there until we complete our circuit back to Luna. Then, he’ll be sent back to Earth. We have no need for Indentures who won’t follow instruction.”
“He thought this was a test of some kind!”
“If he hadn’t passed his basic training, then he would never have been on my ship!” Captain Parimala said with hostility. “Trust me, we have far more Indenture candidates than we have slots for. But I can’t have someone who disobeys orders either. So we’re sending him home.” She smiled tightly. “Sorry.”
“He didn’t know!”
“He knew he was abandoning all of you against orders. And he knew that he was going against my orders. That’s all I need.”
There was silence.
“The Garrison’s Pride has lost all structural integrity,” said Proteus over the comms. “There is nothing more to attack.”
“Fine,” said Ottenbrighten. “Retract all turrets and prepare for acceleration.”
“Understood.”
She turned to us. “That applies to all of you as well. Proceed back to your cryo-berths. We will resume transit shortly.”
“Wait, no! We need to know what all of this was about!” I yelled.
“Everything will be explained when we dock at Deimos,” said the Captain. “But for now… we’re behind schedule, and we need to make it up. So… return to your berths.”
We looked at each other, but apparently, none of us wanted to disagree. We got up and started moving toward the exit.
“Mr. Alvarez, please remain for a few moments, if you will?” asked Parimala.
I stopped, grabbed the back of a chair, and held on. Most of the others left without question, but Tio found a handhold and looked from me to Parimala and back. When neither of us said anything, she finally pulled herself through the iris. Once it closed, Captain Parimala spoke up.
“You did very well over there.”
“Thanks?” I said. I wasn’t quite sure what she was saying.
“I’m going to be recommending you as a team lead.”
“What?”
“When you got over there, you took charge. You started making the big decisions, and almost everyone on your team started following you without question.”
“Dylan tried to kill me!”
“And we’re sending Dylan home. Don’t worry about him. We don’t need people with egos. We need people who will do what needs to be done. Which you did.” She shook her head. “I’ve never encountered a situation quite like this before, but I’ve never had a novice Indenture take control of a situation as easily as you did before either.”
I was embarrassed. What had I done? I shrugged. “Thanks?”
“I just wanted to let you know before we hit Deimos. You’ll be questioned there. More than everyone else. I think you can handle it. Do you?”
I wasn’t quite sure what she was saying but nodded. “Yeah, sure. Thanks!”
“I’m not sure ‘thanks’ is the best response, but… fine. I just wanted you to know.”
“Thank you for trusting me.”
She nodded. “We’re accelerating soon. You need to get to your berth.”
I nodded in response then kicked toward the exit. She and Ottenbrighten immediately went into a conference. While I would have loved to hear what they were saying, I thought it more prudent to head for my bunk.
—-
Back in the cryosleep chamber, the others all turned to look at me as the hatch cycled to let me in. I could tell they had been in a conversation that they had suddenly cut off.
There was a brief, awkward silence.
“So what was that all about?” asked Tio.
“What?”
“What was so important that the Captain had to talk to you in private?”
I sighed. “She was asking about what happened when Dylan started shooting at me. And if that had anything to do with his leaving us over there.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“What all of you saw! I went over to the ship, then tried to come back, and he tried to keep me from coming back. Then we all went over, and he left all of us! What else should I say?”
“You shot at him!” she shouted.
I was shaking my head. “No. I didn’t. Look at the logs. I fired that shotgun to push myself out of the line-of-fire when he was trying to shoot me. That’s all on record. Look it up!” I was angry. They had all been there, had they not seen what was going on?
“You might have been contaminated with… something,” she said. “You were over there. We didn’t know.”
“Neither did he,” I retorted. “The Captain said we had to find out what happened on the Pride and I was trying to find out what happened on the Pride. I was following orders!”
“And maybe endangering all of us!”
I sighed. “All of you went on board the Pride with me. Why?”
She grimaced. “Because we were ordered to! None of us wanted to be on that ship!”
“Yeah, and I didn’t want to go over there either. But, as you said, we were ordered to. For better or worse, this is what we signed up for! I don’t want to go back. Do you?”
There was a brief silence.
“I have been trying to explain this,” said Samson. “It is not good, but we must do what we have agreed to do. Yes?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Trust me, I really didn’t want to be there either. But… this is our life now. We just have to deal with it.”
When no one said anything, I pushed off toward my cryobank. “The Captain said that we’re going to be starting acceleration soon. I’m going back to sleep. I’ll see all of you at Deimos.”
I got to my pod and started stripping down to my skinsuit. Samson almost immediately followed suit, as did Mako, after carefully putting the plasma cutter into her locker before beginning to strip down herself.
“What about Dylan?” Tio asked, finally. Gabriella had kicked off around the curve of the module, leaving her alone.
“They’re going to deal with him at Deimos.”
“What do you mean, ‘deal with him?’ What did she say?”
I sighed. “He disobeyed orders, attacked a teammate, then abandoned all of them. He’s being dropped from the Indenture program and sent back to Earth once we hit Deimos.”
“What!”
Samson, now stripped down to his skinsuit, looked back at us. “He did leave while we were on that ship, yes? And did not try to help us?”
She turned her anger to him. “We should never have been sent over there! The Captain admitted that they knew that things like this happened. Why did they send us?”
“Is our job. Yes?”
“No! They knew things like this were happening! Why did they send us over?”
“They didn’t!” I said flatly. “One of the things the Captain told me was that they had seen things like this before but never inside the Belt. They had no idea what we were walking into. Which means we’re now considered ‘important to some corporate group.”
“The Hell? What are you talking about?”
“I honestly have no better idea either. I’ve told you everything that she told me. Look, we can’t change anything now. Let’s just go back into cryo and see what happens at Deimos. There’s nothing else we can do right now.”
As if on-cue, Proteus came over the speakers. “We need all Indentures back in their cryoberths. We will resume acceleration to Deimos once all of you are safe.”
“See?”
“No!” shouted Tio. “You can’t just run away from this!”
“From what?” I pivoted to look at her. “If you disagree with me about what happened, then feel free to talk to the Captain. For right now? We’re heading on to Deimos. And the sooner we’re all asleep, the sooner we’re back on course.”
I was angry. And upset. And a bit sad that she was so worried about Dylan. But… it had been a really bad day. I just wanted it behind me. I turned away from her and finished putting everything into my locker.
“Fuck you!” she shouted, then kicked off down the ring to her pod.
“You wish,” I said under my breath. I pulled myself into the pod and started the sequence.
“Are you OK?” I looked to see Mako sitting up in her own pod and looking at me.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
I turned away. “We spent some time together. She had other plans. I can’t tell her what to do.”
Why the Hell had I said that to her?
She smiled slightly. “Well, she isn’t the only one here.”
“What?”
“Just… never mind.” She started tapping on the console inside her own pod. “See you at Deimos. Goodnight.” She lay back as the cover started swinging shut.
I looked around. All of the other pods were closed except for Samson’s, and he was looking at me. “Good luck, my friend!” he said with a smile as he punched in a final command. His pod started swinging shut as he lay day.
What have I done this time? I asked myself. I entered my code and lay back as my own pod closed. I had time to wonder what Dylan had that I didn’t as my pod shut, and I felt the sting as the life-support systems reconnected.
I was asleep within seconds.
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