Pain

Liu screamed. A red and black thing plunged down from above, clawing its way violently out of a ventilation shaft and tore into the captain’s empty maneuvering pack. He crumpled to the ground, or seemed to, but managed to slam his attacker powerfully into a nearby console. It crashed to the deck leaking a dark green fluid as the captain rolled away. The two managed to get up at nearly the same time. Everts barely managed to rip his boarding pistol out before the monster lunged at him again. His shot only grazed the creature, but his left fist connected solidly, knocking the snapping jaws away. The beast’s claws scrabbled at his hardsuit but seemed unable to penetrate the tough plates. The softer joints wouldn’t nearly hold up so well.

Meanwhile, the ensign shrank back in terror. Everts barely noticed.

The creature kept trying to lunge at the captain, keeping the range close with manic swipes with its front claws. The taller man gave as good as he got, fading back and taking a shot when an opening presented itself, blocking and punching with his left arm, but the bullets just seemed to sink in to the creature as it kept coming. Nothing seemed to faze it as he attacked it with fist and pistol. It finally managed to grip is arm with its toothy mouth and attempted to savage the man in the metal shell. In its single minded focus it missed the bullet that finally ended its life tearing through the softer tissue at its throat and through its spine. Its grip slackened in death, falling off his arm and leaving only scratches and alien blood behind.

Everts leaned against the bulkhead in pain for a moment, shaking with adrenaline no longer needed to fight or flee. The brief battle had taken a toll on his wounded ribs, and the bruising force of the creature’s attacks hit like an angry bouncer at a seedy station bar. He chuckled lightly, wincing at the pain it caused. He’d managed to remain standing after that fight, too. He stood, searching for Ensign Liu. She stood nearby, staring down at the creature that had ambushed them.

It was smaller than he’d thought, narrow chested with shorter limbs than a man. A narrow snout held more teeth than seemed plausible and its claws were wickedly hard and sharp. It had even dug furrows in the thick metal of is suit, not that it had been pristine before.

“Are you all right Captain?” She tugged gently at his arm, standing on her toes so he wouldn’t have to lean down as far to touch his helmet to hers.

* * *

“Perfectly fine ensign! Ready to get out of this ship though. The crew is like to worry themselves sick over us if we dawdle.” There was a tightness to the corners of his eyes. Liu knew what hidden pain looked like. It was her natural reserve that stilled her protest that he was not fine, not at all, she told herself. Not cowardice.

“There’s a maintenance hatch two decks up on the port side sir. We should be able to reach it as long as the damage isn’t catastrophic between here and there.”

“And if it is, we’ll just crawl out through the holes. Well done!” His smile may have looked a bit strained, but it was a smile nonetheless. She couldn’t help wanting to smile back, but it was still too hard. She feared that it always would be.

They turned left out of the CIC, and the deck plates got more buckled and the way more torturous as they went. Even with magboots it was necessary to keep one hand on the bulkheads as they went. Mercifully they came upon no more bodies. That is until the first companionway.

“Spirits…” It was packed solid with bodies- and pieces of bodies. They were clad in softsuits, most long since torn to rags, but a few bodies were clothed in hard plates. Internal security forces, she supposed. Hasty barricades were placed around the intersection to the fore and aft spaces. Terran blue stripes showed here and there beneath deep piles of silvery green suit limbs. Withered hands in torn suit gloves clutched everything from boarding pistols to light machine guns and everything in between. Shiny yellow cases of various calibers littered the deck like sand, making drifts against the inner bulkheads and spilling further out into the shattered corridors.

“Which way should we go now? I hope it’s not up,” he said, bringing his helmet gently in contact with hers.

“To the forward section, sir. There’s a maintenance access closer that way.” His face looked a bit paler now.

“Sir! You’re injured. Is there anything I can do to help?” Help. It sounded inane to her ears, as if she could have him shuck his hard suit right here in the corridor. As if she knew how to fix broken bodies herself. The captain was already shaking his head gently, though.

“No need. Just some bruised ribs that want an ice pack, ensign. The quicker we get back to the ship, the better though, eh? I’m sure a hot tea would not go awry.” No, indeed it would not. She did enjoy a good hot blueberry tea. It soothed her nerves. She also enjoyed being back where she belonged, on her own ship. At the conn, preferably. And with a healthy, undamaged captain who most certainly didn’t need to worry her by going and getting himself hurt on her account. Please, please be okay.

Liu led the way, carefully sweeping the spent brass aside as well as she could. Sometimes the drifts uncovered bodies. Once she thought she saw one move and nearly fell in down panic. She didn’t tell the captain that, though. She had to get back to the ship, and nothing and no one was going to stop her.

She hoped.

* * *

“Gear up S&R, men. Brown, load the C-line. Three minutes. Go!” Sergeant Andrew Osterman Woods did not bellow at his men, as some noncoms did. He did not angrily dress them down when they failed. This was not some secret training that the service gave him, but the example of the most terrifyingly competent person he knew. One Mama Woods, whom all wise men feared to cross.

Sergeant Woods suited up in his rig in under a minute, boots to helmet. S&R carried a standard combat load with the addition of an expanded medical kit, communications kit (hard line, not wireless just in case), and survival gear. The total load was a good chunk of mass, but it wasn’t as heavy as the assault load they trained with.

Private First Class Fox finished his preparations a moment later as Woods was heading out and followed. PFC Fox was not as large as the other three marines, but still bigger than the average naval rating. He was here mostly out of bureaucratic stupidity in the sergeant’s considered opinion. Fox wanted to be a scout, had the temperament and basic skills to be trained as a scout, and was originally supposed to be sent for further training- as a scout. So of course he ended up sent to a small scout-class ship with no land in sight.

The remaining three practical jokers were privates Brown, “Prettyboy” Sykes, and Duval. They finished up with less ribbing and shit talking that usual. The captain and the ensign both missing put everyone on the crew under stress.

“Make a hole, people,” PFC Fox called as he hustled through the narrow corridor. Ratings ducked into side passages and maintenance access areas when they could and otherwise hugged the bulkheads. On a small ship like this, everyone got in everyone else’s business. The marines stayed out of the way as much as they could while the ship was under weigh. They were trained in damage control and general maintenance just like the rest of the crew. But when it was time for the marines to deploy it was the ratings that stepped aside. Inter-service rivalries were more prevalent on larger ships, and Woods had seen and been part of his share. The Cellies were decent enough, for Navy.

Fox, Prettyboy,and Brown cycled through the lock first. PO3 Lasceau showed up before the lock cleared. He was still wearing his hardsuit.

“Got something for you.” He held up a drum can about about half the size of a standard beer keg.

“What is it?”

“Armored line. There’s still some drifting scrap out there traveling fast enough to score a hardsuit. You can connect it to the ship access we use in port. You can chain your own coms to it and give yourself more reach inside the wreck.” Woods accepted it with a twitch of his lips.

“Good thinking, Petty Officer. Thanks.”

Bob smiled back faintly before heading off to yell a bit. The Navy crew seemed to respond better to yelling for some reason.

Out on the hull the three marines stood facing out. The sergeant gathered them up for a quick briefing.

“Alright men. Captain is MIA, condition unknown. Survey says he may have made it into the wreck. We’re going in after him.” The faces that looked back at him through their visors were determined and eager. The Captain was respected on this ship, and if he was still alive, they would get him back. No other outcome would be acceptable.

“Fox on point. Brown, you’re hauling the commo reel. Use this,” Woods proffered the drum that the PO had given him, “to connect to the ship access. We will hook in once the line runs out inside the ship. Prettyboy, me, Duval, Brown. Fox, find me an entry near where the ship crashed into the wreck. Let’s move.”

* * *

The huge ship before them lay silent as the grave. Exposed deck plates and bulkheads were fused and twisted by the violence of the mortal wound it had taken. Weak thermal returns showed where the Celerity had briefly punched its way in to the mess. Debris from the collision still drifted but much of their velocity had been stolen as they ricocheted off the two ships. The PO had been right to suggest armored line.

A flash of IR light drew his attention. PFC Fox had anchored himself to the wreck and was waving them closer. Once they had all reached him, he indicated the closed blast door in front of them. The telltale indicated positive pressure on the other side. The bulkheads surrounding it appeared solid enough.

“Break out the emergency airlock.”

Relentless training meant the flexible barrier went up in bare moments. Prettyboy overrode the door controls allowing them to wrench it open. Fox darted through and the rest followed, weapons up. Not that they expected-

Woods was barely able to make it through the door and glance at the corridor before he noticed three things. One, the air movement had stirred the debris that had lain quiescent for untold decades. Two, there was a body, obviously dead, that slightly stirred as well due to the pressure change of opening the blast door to the emergency airlock. And three, one of his marines had fired at something. In an empty corridor. The sergeant took a moment to ensure that there were no threats present. There were none.

Prettyboy looked back sheepishly, his discharged weapon making clear precisely who had fucked up. Woods took two steps and snatched the carbine from his unresisting hands. It had been carried charged and ready to fire. He looked back up at the large and unreasonably handsome private.

“We will discuss this later.”

The younger man looked for a moment as if he would protest the decision but missed his chance as his sergeant shoved the weapon back to him. Minus the magazine. The other marines surreptitiously made eye contact with the doomed marine, their gazes communicating a simple message. Dumbass. Sucks to be you.

They continued forward. The bulkheads remained clear of side rooms and intersecting passages, looming off into the distance and making a sharp right towards the bow of the ship. The farther they went the cleaner the passage became, until they made the turn and came to a stop. The ceiling pinched down to the deck here, cutting off the corridor they were following but revealing access to the deck above. PFC Fox sent a small drone up to check the area. The search party followed once given the all clear.

The corridor above was in far worse condition than the one they’d left. The metal bulkheads had bubbled and ran, bits of machinery and pipes stuck out randomly creating a jungle they had to pick their way carefully through. They shifted the debris as they could to get by, working swiftly and in silence. Woods wondered at the lack of bodies. A ship this size had to have had a truly massive crew to maintain it in peak fighting shape back at the height of old Earth’s power. Yet there hadn’t been a single one that he’d seen yet. Where did they all go?

He had served on bigger ships before. His last shipside rotation was a heavy cruiser, the Escutcheon, and he knew less about ships even then, save how to assault and defend one. He knew the colored pipes that you did not want to shoot, and never throw a grenade in the engine room. Or the bridge. But beyond that, the tangled mess he and his men made their way through was alien to him. He knew that there had have been crew, but not where they would have been at action stations.

An increasingly choked passage forward forced them to detour through the shattered remains of a bulkhead and into a larger interior space. A large machine shop, by the look of things. The actual deck was at least twenty feet below them. Bits of scrap ranging in size from as small as a cartridge case to twice as tall as an armorer marine. Woods called a halt to call in their progress and drop a waypoint.

“S&R team to Celerity. S&R team to Celerity. Do you copy?”

“Celerity copies, S&R team. Make your report.” Lasceau, apparently, had the com.

“No sign of our people yet. We entered the derelict waypointed here,” he tapped the location of the emergency airlock. “There is an existing blast door there with a temporary airlock. Location had positive pressure when we entered. We are now in a machine shop. Path is choked with debris. Continuing mission.”

“Roger that, S&R. Waypoints logged, continuing mission. Repairs continuing on the ship. Let us know when you find our captain, you hear? Celerity out.”

Woods disconnected and gave the signal to move out. Fox and Prettyboy had just pushed off when Duval fired a short burst into something that flashed a glistening dark red and black on visual and a hot yellow on thermal. Then another appeared. Bipedal. Claws on the forelimbs. He shot that one before Duval or Brown could. Fox and Prettyboy were in mid fall, Prettyboy frantically scrabbling for his spare magazine. Neither had fired yet. The sergeant then noticed the one he shot still moving as a trail of dark droplets dribbled slowly out of its body. His second shot sent it tumbling, but it managed to twist around and launch itself off the far wall. His third shot caused the head to literally explode in a rain of black blood and viscera. Now it was still.

“Headshots only! Control your fire!” Woods was not gentle when he slammed his helmet into the two with him. Brown took a swing at him before realizing who it was, and Duval tried to twist himself away. Probably thought he was being attacked. Oh well. In a way, he’s right. Woods snapped his gaze upwards to see more of the things squeezing through gaps in the bulkheads.

Woods steadied himself against a corner and began systematically picking off every single one of the ugly things with trained regularity and precision. Snap. Snap. Snap. Heads exploded and the enemy died. For long moments that was all he did, fire, acquire new target, and fire again. During a brief lull, he managed to check on Duval and Brown- still firing- and look below.

All he could see was a churning, bounding mass of red and black. He couldn’t see Fox or Prettyboy.