Fatal Boarding (9 page)

"Ah, the coffee. I'm not sure I will care
for the awareness it will bring."

"R.J., what is with you? I've never seen you
like this."

"You first, my unorthodox friend. I will
keep score to see which of us has the more chilling horror story.
Why have we not left this godforsaken place? Has Ms. Maureen
Brandon so corrupted the navigation computer network that we may be
stranded here, forever?"

"It's not the nav facility this time. That
is apparently working just find. First, they couldn't get a good
initiation test on the AmpLights, then the maneuvering thrusters
would not accept new commands. A massive effort is underway, as we
speak. Two tiger teams, one on the main engine clusters, another on
the thruster control systems."

"Well, I find that all very depressing,
indeed. But you will lose our little contest on points if that's
the best you can do."

"Okay, you want points? The rest is just
between you and I. Contingency plan number one is to fabricate
bumper fixtures and attach them to two of the scout vehicles to
push us out of here if all else fails. How'm I doing now?"

"Your point total has jumped considerably.
Is there more?" "Contingency plan number two. Equip an assault
team, and go back on board that ship out there to see if we can
secure it."

"And who would lead such an EVA?"

"Can't you guess? I'll give you a hint. As
far as I can tell, only you and I have heard about this."

"Adrian, that is disgusting."

"But is it disgusting enough to win?"

R.J. wiped one hand down his face, and
looked around as though he had forgotten where he was. He took a
drink of coffee and shook his head. "My story is so invincible, I
hereby declare you the sole judge of our contest. Your decision
will be final. Do I sound overconfident?"

"Just a bit."

"After Ms. Maureen botched the nav systems,
the work on the alien gibberish sort of ground down a bit.
Eventually they got copies of the most recent charts we made and
loaded them into the analytical groups own isolated computer system
where they could play to their hearts content and not hurt
anything. That, of course, is what should have been done in the
first place. So they get set up, and download the segment of alien
memory into their system and guess what? The same thing happens.
Their computers crash hard and won't come back up. They've been
working on them ever since.”

“So then, all the attention turns to the
films and the scans of the mysterious goop you found on the lower
level. Well, of course Life Sciences scanned that ship a dozen
times looking for life signs and found nothing, so they declared it
unoccupied. When we came back with all that neuro-radiation though,
suddenly Life Sciences was begging to get back in the game. Frank
Parker was the propulsion expert on the EVA. Nothing on the drive
systems was brought back, so nothing there for his people to look
at. Pete Langly was the power systems expert, nothing on that,
either. So, the research suddenly became a tug of war between the
two groups who were interested in the crazy putty. Nira represented
the chemical group. They felt the data was entirely their domain
since life sciences had declared the ship void of life. But Nira is
still in sick bay, despite her tendency to roam. Erin, however, was
the rep for life sciences and she was on hand to add pull to her
groups request for the data. So in the end a little sharing was
done, but the main brunt of the research focused on life sciences,
the people who had said there was no life on board."

"R.J., this is ugly beyond fairness, you're
starting to make me nervous."

"I'd like to put your mind at ease, my
friend, but you haven't heard anything yet. Do you know what 'shock
tremors' are?"

"It sounds like something I might not want
to."

"It is, believe me. We knew that the goop
was emanating intense levels of beta and mu and other stuff like
that, but it was gibberish, saturated levels on all the scopes and
pen graphs. Then one of the technicians accidentally mixed this
saturated signal with an alignment carrier wave built into one of
the scopes and found something new. He had accidentally divided the
garble into two separate new garbles. So they mixed the two new
garbles with the same wave and got four completely unique
waveforms. Then somebody got the brilliant idea of trying the mix
with different EKG carriers and that's when things started to get
really scary."

"R.J., I've got a B.S. in electronics but
you're losing me."

"Okay, okay, it's like this. You put one
person in a room alone and have him talk continuously and you've
got a nice clean, single sound source, right? So then you bring
another person in and have him talk continuously and you've got an
annoying, unintelligible confusion, right? Okay now you bring one
hundred people into the room, then a thousand, and suddenly you've
got a saturated level of unintelligible noise that sounds like one
signal, right?"

"You’re saying the brain waves we picked up
were from dozens of independent sources?"

"Hundreds, but that's not all. Once they
finally were able to break through the distortion and isolate a
single source, they found even more unexplainable crap. Shock
tremors. If you've ever seen someone in a bad accident, someone in
severe shock, they get a case of the tremors real bad. They shake
so violently it's like they're sitting in a vibrating chair or
something. Well, every one of the thought patterns they have been
able to isolate, contain the same kind of shock tremors, the mental
equivalent of them anyway."

"Holy crap!”

"Oh yeah? Well here's the coup de resistant.
Life sciences was able to remove the shock tremor signatures and
analyze the individual thought patterns of a dozen of the sources.
The translations were all the same, alarm, pain, agony, distress,
pleas for help."

I sat back with a look of revulsion. I
waited for a further explanation, but R.J. did not seem to have one
prepared. "What the hell does it mean? Is there or is there not,
something alive over there?"

"No, Adrian. You mean are they, or are they
not, alive over there."

"My god!"

"You slow the data way, way down and it
sounds like a horde of a million honey bees. The whole thing gave
me the creeps so bad I had to go to sick bay to get something to
help me sleep. Of course you understand that none of this is to be
released?"

"Of course."

“I'm supposed to report back to Life
Sciences as soon as I've finished resting. Inspection is spread
pretty thin with everything that's going on. Adrian, please, let's
get out of this place, right away. Let's extend the oars, and
paddle like hell. Let's get out and push, if necessary."

"I believe that is part of the plan."

R.J. topped his mug off with coffee, pushed
his chair back and stood. He turned to leave, but stopped and
looked back at me with a worried stare. "That wasn't it, by the
way."

"What wasn't what?"

"Commanders. It didn't fit with four down. I
still think its prostitutes, but that doesn't fit either. Givers of
pain and pleasure. You got any other ideas?"

"How about 'ghostships'?"

"That's two words, my friend, but it sure as
hell fits."

Chapter 10

Leaving the mess hall, I was intercepted by
a determined Frank Parker. He caught me in the hallway, and had I
not outranked him, would have grabbed me and held on for dear life.
He was dressed in very businessfied green flight wear, freshly
pressed, collar starched up. His hair had been trimmed and neatly
combed back. A look of dire earnestly was etched into his tanned
face, the dark eyes narrowed and penetrating.

"Adrian, I've got to talk to you for a
second."

"What's up, Frank?"

"Look, I won't beat around the bush. There's
a rumor going around that they're planning another EVA. I want
in."

It caught me off guard. The ship's rumor
mill was working at its max. I looked quickly around to see if
anyone was eavesdropping and pulled him off to one side.

"Frank, where the hell did you get that? You
know that's not going to happen, not now."

"I'll go all the way to Grey, personally if
I have to."

“He's just a tad bit busy these days,
Frank."

"He can put me back on active in two
seconds. A few keystrokes on his computer. I need to be on that
EVA. You understand, don't you?"

"If the trip happens at all, they'll be
using special forces, Frank. You're a propulsion engineer, not a
soldier."

"What difference does it make? There's no
life over there. There's nobody to fight! You're not a professional
soldier either, Adrian, and I'd bet your leading the team. Am I
right?"

"I'm a level four security officer, Frank.
I've had my share of combat training. Listen, this is a dead end
for you. The only thing you'll get out of tromping around the
higher ups is more grief for yourself."

He began to protest when the emergency alert
signal on my wrist watch interrupted. We looked down at the display
as the message, 'SECURITY ALERT: MAIN ENGINEERING: CODE 7' scrolled
across the screen. At the same time a female dispatcher's voice cut
in, "Security report to main engineering immediately, code seven in
progress."

I cut away from him and raced down the
corridor, mentally mapping the shortest route. I could hear the
sounds of Frank's footsteps pacing me. The alert had to be a
mistake. Code seven meant assault. We hurried along through the
dark and light areas in the metallic hallway, brushing past
startled crewmembers who were unaccustomed to security alerts. At
the end of the third, most narrow access way, the elevator was
fortuitously open, and empty. We dropped down to level two and
broke back into a cautious run. As we neared the entrance to main
engineering we could hear muffled shouting. The doors were being
held open by a technician who looked ready to run.

Main engineering is a large, open section of
spacecraft that climbs three stories. There are catwalks, vertical
ladders and one-man elevators to provide access to the upper
levels. It is wider than it is deep and the forward walls are
completely covered by stacks of electronics consoles. The far wall
has a waterfall of plasma conduits, transparent fire hose-sized
tubing, tinted in rainbow colors. Mixed into the cascade are cable
harnesses which drop into the room from a distribution rack that
feeds from the tail of the ship. At floor level, the cascade flows
around an open alcove entrance to a short corridor made of chrome
tubing that leads to the radiant reactor and collector arrays, the
facility that provides all of ship's power. The reactor room is a
bubble attached to the ship's tail boom at the back of the habitat
module. It is a large, external compartment designed to be
jettisoned if necessary, in the event of catastrophic failure.

We charged into the high bay and found
everyone staring in disbelief at the struggle taking place on the
third level catwalk. Yelling and screaming echoed off the high
walls. Main engineering's entrance guard stood at the room's
center, looking up at the fight, his stun gun drawn and ready to
fire. High voltage bursts of electrical energy are generally not
recommended in a room full of active electronics consoles. Afraid
to use his weapon, he was yelling at the top of his lungs for Mr.
Bates and Mr. Dern to cease and desist their hostilities. They paid
him no attention.

They were fighting like animals at the
highest point on the right side of the room. Systems Engineer
Bates, PHD, had resourcefully broken off a thick, half-meter piece
of pipe from somewhere, and was using it like a baseball bat. He
was bleeding profusely from the left side of his head. His gray
flight suit was torn from the left shoulder to the waist. Dern had
a bloody nose and was backing away, kicking as he went. His cursing
was partly drowned out by the clanking of Bates' pipe against the
silver catwalk handrail. Dern's green-gray flight suit was covered
by splatters of blood, and a trail of it was dripping through the
catwalk gratings. I waved off the guard and ran to the vertical
ladder at the far end of the room. It would bring me up behind
Bates. As I ran, I caught sight of Frank making his way to the
access ladder on the far right. If we could get there in time the
two would be trapped between us. More security personnel raced into
the room as we started up.

The ringing cries of pipe against
superstructure continued as we scaled the ladders. I hit the second
level and looked over to see Frank matching my climb. We quickly
reached the ladder tops, keeping a close eye on the two-man war
taking place overhead, a war conducted by two of the least likely
candidates imaginable. They were locked together, exchanging
slapping blows, and as we gained our feet on the catwalk, Bates
swung his pipe and caught Dern on the upper arm. A howl of pain
rose up out of the confusion, but it did not slow either of
them.

With three lunging steps, I got close enough
to Bates to distract him. He turned on me, slinging blood from his
head wound across my face. He edged forward with club raised, and
stared like an animal. He whipped his bloodied club back and forth
between us and finally swung with a backhand from the left. I
wasn't close enough to safely catch it. I ducked forward and heard
it whistle by overhead. It slammed into a display sending an
explosion of glass and sparks raining down. I popped up inside the
swing and wrapped my left arm around him. The metal club slipped
from his red, wet hand and went clanking down from catwalk to
catwalk, finally hitting the hard metal floor and bouncing from end
to end, ringing like an oversized tuning fork. Bates jerked around
with a respectable left hook, but I wiped it down so that we ended
up in a bloody bear hug, facing each other. I was ready for the
head butt, but it never came. There was a deep, hollow sob, and
suddenly his head fell forward on my shoulder.