Salvage (2 page)

So?”

“So, the procedure is not
automated. It has to be done manually.”

Jensen let the significance of
the words filter through. Someone must have been performing the
alignment. “Well, that’s good news. There must still be some crew
alive, right?”

“Well, that’s the thing chief. I
can access the main control comp system from here. There’s a
secondary interface in engineering as a backup. I requested a head
count.”

Each person aboard a colony ship
had a tiny sub dermal implant, which allowed the CCS to track their
location as well as the individuals’ bio readings. It would also
provide a running census on how many people were aboard.

“I may regret asking this. How
many are there?”

“Zero chief. There are no
crewmen currently registered.”

“But you said that the alignment
was done manually.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmm. Okay, thanks Finn.”

The implants were inserted into
the gluteus maximus of all new-borns. This was protocol. Everyone
had one. If there were people aboard that did not have the bio
tracker, then that could only mean one thing. He turned to his
team. “There may be a break in the social structure. It could be
they had a mutiny. Keep on your toes.”

The group nodded in response.
They continued along the corridor, coming upon more of the hapless
crew that had died suddenly, killed by a flash radiation burst,
most likely from the ship’s own reactor.

When they reached the junction
to the Control Centre Pod, the most forward part of the ship,
Jensen felt a sense of relief. He opened the connecting portal. It
was an airlock, since the control pod was effectively a separate
system to the rest of the ship. Although cramped, the Bitter Sea
personnel squeezed into the small chamber. They cycled through and
as the adjoining portal opened, they got their first glimpse of the
ship’s control centre, the bridge.

A dozen of the Argoss crew were
arrayed around the room, some still at their workstations, others
haphazardly fallen, or sitting slumped against a bulkhead. The
blast of radiation that had killed them had been over in a second.
They probably did not even feel a thing.

But the gen-pop sphere would
have better shielding. Sure, it was closer to the reaction core,
but its hull was meters thick. Still, if there had been any
survivors, the engineers would have reported it by now.

Jensen went to the nearest
computer terminal and punched a few keys at random. Nothing.

“Alright. Let’s get to work. We
need these systems up and running.”

His team spread out, carefully
moving the bags of bones that had once been people. They stacked
them in a corner of the control room, then began to pull apart the
panelling to get at the computer’s inner systems, looking for the
fault that had put the control centre offline.

Engineer first class Markus Han
was first to get his terminal running. He turned to his partner.
“Li, look at this.” He pointed to a digital readout that displayed
a set of numbers. Li narrowed his eyes.

“That looks like the containment
field was taken offline.”

“Yeah, that’s what I
thought.”

“But . . . that would kill
everyone. Why would they do that?”

“No idea. But it looks like
someone wanted to pull the plug on the whole crew.”

“Sir! Over here please.”

Jensen hurried over to the
techs, who were still staring in shock at the data on the
screen.

“It was sabotage, Sir. The drive
failure. Someone did it deliberately.”

Jensen swore, shaking his head.
“What in hell would possess someone to do that?”

Markus Han peered closer at the
data, and he visibly paled. “Sir . . . it was here. They did it
from here.” He pointed to a section of the screen displaying an
array of numbers. “They overrode the safety protocols. That’s the
captain’s own authorisation code.”

“What?” Jensen stared in
puzzlement at the data on the screen. Drive tech was not his field,
and he could not make out anything from the lines of scrolling
data. “The command crew caused a deliberate drive containment field
failure? Why the hell would they do that? It would kill everyone on
the whole ship!”

Markus nodded. “Yeah. Everyone.
And everything.”

Jensen activated his comm unit.
“Finn, report in please.”

There was no answer.

“Lieutenant Cho, please
respond.”

The technicians in the control
room looked to their leader, whose hand had automatically gone to
the holstered weapon on his right hip. Something was very
wrong.

* * *

Lieutenant Cho levered the panel
away from the wall, exposing an intricate array of wires and tubes.
He reached in and pulled a breaker from its panel, examining it
carefully before reinserting it. Then he keyed the reset and pulled
his arm out. Immediately there was a hum, and lights on instrument
panels around the room illuminated.

“Nice,” said Finn. “Just a
tripped breaker. Good call.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Cho
replied.

“Your first what?”

“I dunno. I saw it in one of the
movie archives. Seemed appropriate.”

They both laughed. Movies were a
major source of entertainment for the crew of the Bitter Sea and
Endurance, and since no new films had been made in the hundreds of
years since leaving Earth, they were stuck with watching films from
a time and a place that hardly made any sense.

With the computer systems
running, they began preliminary checks. It was not long before they
discovered the recent maintenance performed on the drive, which
they related to Jensen, along with the fact that there were no
registered crew remaining.

“Somebody must have done the
alignment though,” said Cho thoughtfully. “Or maybe they died after
completing it? Can we run a filter and find out when the last crew
died?”

Finn typed rapidly, feeding
instructions into the computer. The answer was quick in coming.

“Says here that the last crew
registered was 2192. That was when the ship went silent.”

“So everyone was killed two
hundred and eighty years ago?”

“Looks like.”

“Okay. Then who realigned the
coil?”

The door hissed as it opened.
Cho and Finn whirled around. It was not one of the other salvage
team members. What came through the door may have been distantly
related to humanity, but it was not human. They had barely enough
time to scream.

* * *

With no answer from the drive
technicians, Jensen was clearly worried. “Get the systems online.
We need to find out what the hell we are dealing with.”

Markus looked up from the
computer terminal he was working on. “No response from Cho or
Finn?”

“No.”

“Want me to check on their
vitals?”

“You can get their bio
data?”

“I think so. Shouldn’t be any
problem to use the system to check on our chips. Just need to
change the scanning frequency.”

He typed several commands into
his terminal, then input the frequency range of their own bio
sensor implants. Each ship used a different frequency, and it was
easily updated with the new data. He keyed a final command. The
number on the screen showing current crew headcount made him
visibly pale.

Jensen looked over his shoulder.
He swore. There were five signals, all in the CC. “Okay, that’s it.
We’re leaving. Get your gear. Something is clearly wrong and we are
not equipped to deal with it. We’re going back to the shuttle.”

He tapped his comm device.
“Shuttle Heimdal, this is First Officer Jensen. Do you copy?”

“This is Chu. We hear you.
Everything okay?”

“No. We’re coming back.
Something killed two of my team, and we are not prepared for this
contingency. Recommend immediate evac.”

“Roger that, we’re ready to go.
Just get back here safe.”

Jensen pulled his gun from his
holster. Only one other of his team carried a sidearm, and she
quickly pulled her weapon. Jensen looked at her. “Heat it up,
Leoni.”

Leoni Hansen thumbed the safety
off, and the power quickly starting to build with an audible hum.
Within seconds it was ready to fire a charge powerful enough to
kill a man.

“I’ll take point, you take the
rear. Everyone else in the middle and move quick. Whatever killed
Finn and Cho may well be coming for us.”

Markus had been typing into the
data console and finished the input with a final decisive tap. He
shook his head in wonder. Jensen moved over to stare at the
screen.

“What is that?”

“I reconfigured the internal
sensors to pick up any bio readings, regardless if they were
chipped.”

“I didn’t know it could do
that.”

“Yeah. Well, we had to figure
out how to reduce the rat population a few years back, so we worked
out a method to use the sensors to track heat signatures.”

Jensen nodded. There was a
number on the screen. He could hardly believe it. “So, there are
currently over a dozen bio organisms on the ship.”

Markus swallowed. “No. Those are
the ones in the passages between us and the central pod.” He tapped
a few keys, and entered a new command. The screen showed a
different value now. “This is for the entire ship.”

Nine hundred and eighty five bio
signatures.

“Are they human?” Jensen asked,
as he thumbed the safety off his pistol.

“No. Their core temperature is
too hot. If they were human, they’d be dead.”

“Then what the hell are
they?”

“I don’t know,” Markus replied.
“But we’re gonna find out.”

The screen clearly indicated
that several of the bio signatures were converging on the command
centre.

* * *

Captain Pål Knutsen flipped a
series of switches, engaging the drive initiation sequence. His
First officer, Stephanie Chu floated horizontally behind him. He
punched a series of commands on the terminal to his side. Internal
cameras and sensors were now recording everything.

“I have to go in, Pål,” she
said.

“I know.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Fuck careful. Be lethal.”

She nodded, then pulled herself
towards him. She wrapped arms around him in a brief hug before
jackknifing and pushing off his chair towards the hatch. She went
through, barely touching the sides, and at the last second she
grabbed a handle and pulled herself into a vertical standing
position, relative to the floor. She opened a locker, and removed a
heavy multigun. Designed to be used in any situation, the multigun
could be configured for a variety of lethal and non lethal
payloads. She flicked off the safety, and set the weapon to rapid
fire, heavy charge. It whined as the power started to climb.

Turning to the airlock, she
punched in the code. The door opened and she stepped through.

* * *

First Officer Jensen tensed as
the airlock doors opened. He moved cautiously into the corridor,
expecting . . . he did not know what. The six members of his team
followed close behind him.

“Okay, let’s go.”

He moved briskly, each foot
carefully placed. It was still a zero g environment, which meant
that an attack could come, literally, from any direction. He eyed
the ceiling and was reassured by the fact that there appeared to be
no ducts, or other access points. At least here.

They had been making quick
progress for almost ten minutes when they entered a dark section,
and even though they all used their light beams, there were too
many dancing shadows. They did not even see the attack. A muffled
yell, which quickly became a gurgling and the salvage team clumped
together, eyes wide with fear, their light beams randomly
illuminating their own faces, trying to see who was missing. Li,
the Chinese kid. Markus let out a groan. They had been friends
since they were children.

“Goddamn and to hell,” he
screamed.

“Keep moving,” Jensen commanded,
and the group moved forward again, this time noticeably closer to
each other. Not that that would matter. Li had been in the middle
of the pack.

They passed a junction, where
tubes led out to service points on the central pod. That was when
they lost Leoni. She had time enough to scream, and fire her
weapon. A blue flash indicated that she had been pulled into the
service duct, but if she hit whatever had attacked her it made no
difference. She did not come back out and their light beams
revealed no sign of her.

“We’re moving too slowly,” said
Jensen. “Run.”

* * *

Stephanie stood waiting for
whatever was coming. She slowed her heart, willing herself into a
calm mental state. She had never been in combat before. None of
them had. And yet they had trained. Simulations of all kinds, in
case the planet they arrived at had hostile fauna, or intelligent
and unfriendly natives. No one had believed in the latter
possibility, but here she was, standing outside the airlock on the
Argoss, waiting to engage an unknown enemy with unknown
capabilities.

She could feel her heart rate
increasing, and a bead of sweat appeared on her forehead. She took
a deep breath, then dropped into combat stance, going to one knee,
steadying the heavy weapon, using her arm like a support, braced
against her thigh. She aimed down the corridor, her finger lightly
touching the firing stud.

Markus Han appeared first,
running with the clumsy, almost comical look that people had in
zero gee. He was followed by a man she did not recognise, then came
Jensen. He was stopping to fire at whatever was behind them.

The three made their way towards
her, and then she saw it. Her breath came in a gasp, but her hands
moved of their own accord, tracking the
thing
, aiming,
firing. Her first blast missed, but the second took it in the
torso, and it stopped in its tracks, a tumbled mass of red ruin,
with stick like arms and legs.