PART 2
Deep space, between Suleiman and Easter in the Solomani Rim
O'Connor drifted gently down the black corridor, controlling his
motion with an occasional gentle touch of a nearby wall. His suit light
splashed emptily on the walls and vanished into the darkness up ahead. His
breath, loud in his ears, was deep and measured, utterly calm. The few lonely
wads of human tissue remaining in his brain idly interacted with the
efficient, smoothly functioning machines as he simultaneously scanned the
corridor ahead, kept up a running dialogue with Hector, and listened to the
voices and data inputs from his friends, elsewhere in the huge, dead ship.
*Hector, give me telemetry.*
|drift velocity point nine nine six average for the interstellar
medium in this section of space angular velocity point zero zero zero zero
zero four one nine radians per second yaw motion zero point zero pitch motion
zero point zero|
"Magnificent work. Huge, glorious in design, and utterly bereft."
*Sufficient. Where are the others?*
"Look at this! Sheared off like a giant wirecutter came through!"
|specify|
*Grant.*
"Well, it's a pretty little theoretical problem, anyway; there are no
holes in the walls, no sign of an explosion--"
|captain grant is on the bridge at his station do you wish to initiate
voice communication|
"--and no signs of tampering, but both drives and the plant are just,
well, GONE. Like they were never installed!"
*No, but thanks for asking.*
"This is thssssrreerrrkkk amazing thing I've evrrrk skkkssrrkkk...."
|my pleasure next specification|
*Jaeger.*
|mister jaeger is filming the interior of the rotating section and
offloading data to me at a high rate of speed|
*Patch my eye into the data stream, let's see what he's got.*
|executing|
Alien buttresses, rising toward a domed, black sky uncluttered with
useless stars, trestles upon trestles like a vast, obscene cathedral, the view
of the lens turning over and over, dizzied by the heights, falling....
*Okay, I've seen enough. Terminate sequence.*
|terminated|
"No neutrino emissions, no neutron flux, nothing! Helen Damnation!"
*Where's Kherk?*
|team leader kherkhoulloth is currently exploring the empty water
tanks in the forward section his signal is muffled by the heavy shielding in
that section of the ship i am experiencing intermittency difficulties do you
wish me to boost gain|
"The portskkkkkrrrk is tHE SAME OLD--"
*Negative, I can hear him well enough in here. Sanchez?*
"--STOry, no sign of any srrrrrrkkkkkkkk...."
|chief engineer sanchez is still examining the power deck|
*And I thought I had a one-track mind....*
|incorrect you are point nine one synaptic|
*No kidding.* O'Connor sighed. It was the first sound he'd made in
over three hours.
"Daryavayush? That you?"
O'Connor noted the tone of concern in Grant's voice. "Yes, sir," he
replied easily, reaching out to grasp the edge of the portal leading into the
forward section of the ship. "I'm entering the forward section."
"Keep in touch. I'd hate to be the threat that ran into you, but
regular voice contact will keep me from getting old before my time."
O'Connor smiled mirthlessly. "As you wish, sir. Should I set my
internal time system to prod me once per hour?"
Now it was Grant's turn to sigh. "Why couldn't that shell have taken
out the part of your brain that controls sarcasm?"
O'Connor's grin widened a tiny bit. "It did, sir," he said pleasantly.
"I am always literal and serious. You must have realized that by now."
"Yeah, right. Stay on the line. Sanchez?"
No answer.
"SANCHEZ!"
"YO! Uh, I mean, yessir?"
"Wake up, dammit! I'm putting together a net line. Jaeger?"
"Right here."
"How's your masterpiece coming along?"
"Impressively. The Hivers built well. I wonder what happened here?"
"I may have figured it out. Kherk?"
"Yeah, Captain, I'm here. Boosting my gain."
"Good. Listen up, people. Hector's come up with a possible correlation
between known traffic and lost ships in the area and this hulk."
*Why didn't you tell ME that?*
|you did not ask|
"Thirteen Imperial years ago, a Hiver research vessel vanished in this
section of space. It had a crew of over four hundred Hivers, and get this: It
was doing research on the Jump-6 barrier!"
"Hmm. That'd explain a lot. I've heard of Jump drives tearing through
the hull, but never just vanishing off their mounts!"
"But what happened to the crew?"
"No Hivers, living or dead. No equipment at all. Everything stripped
to the bare walls. My guess is that they cannibalized the entire ship to turn
their subsidiary craft into lifeboats. I wonder if...hey, Kherk, I'm losing
your signal!"
"Oh, don't worry, Captain! I jsssk wanted to finish chhshhh these
stupid whhhhhkkkkkkks before heading back to th--"
His voice ended abruptly.
O'Connor waited for the return of his signal. It didn't come.
|medical alert team leader kherkhoulloth's vital signs are increasing
on an exponential curve indicative of severe stress and fear i cannot maintain
his signal|
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"
*Where is he?*
"Kherk! We heard a scream, what's wrong?"
|forward section extreme starboard water tank direction map follows|
"Ca, Ca, C-C-CAP, CAPTAIN! SANCHEZ, O'CONNOR, EVERYBODY!"
*Received. On my way.*
O'Connor shut his cybernetic eye, allowing the mapped route through
the twisting corridors to play out inside his skull. He kicked in the
thrusters on his suit, and rocketed across the open expanse of the forward
section at a dangerously high speed for such an enclosed space.
"HELP! FIRE! MURDER!"
"O'CONNOR! Kherk's in trouble!"
"On my way, sir." O'Connor executed a neat turn and braked to a halt
by the corridor leading to the water tanks, in what once had been the belly of
the ship. He saw a frantically weaving headlamp rushing toward him at
breakneck speed, and quickly reached out a restraining arm, grabbing hold of
the edge of the portal with the other.
"HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--OOF!" The metal arm caught Kherkhoulloth hard in
the chest, dragging him roughly to a halt. Through the silvered glass of his
helmet O'Connor could see the frantic stare of the screeching Vargr, the foam
on his chops. He took a half second to review what little he knew about battle
hysteria in Vargr, decided he had insufficient data for a suitable response,
and shrugged. With a mighty heave, he slammed Kherkhoulloth hard against the
nearest wall.
The clang reverberated through the walls of the ship and could be
heard through the micorphone in Kherkhoulloth's helmet. After a moment, his
struggles ceased, and he drew a long, shuddering breath.
"Thanks. I'm okay now," he managed shakily. "Let go of me!"
*Hector?*
|vital signs returning to normal limits albeit slowly|
"What's going on over there, dammit! O'Connor?"
"I have Kherk, sir. He's badly frightened but not hurt."
"Tell that to my ribs, you walking rust heap!"
"What the hell made him scream like that?"
"Unknown. No immediate threat in evidence."
"No, no! It's okay, I'm sorry I scared everyone, I was just really
startled out of my wits. You'd better come and see this, Daryavayush...."
He led the way back to an open, black hole in the deck, O'Connor following
with gun drawn. Kherkhoulloth pointed down into the hole.
"Down there. It's horrible!"
*Patch my eye to Jaeger's camera. I want this recorded.*
|executing|
"O'Connor, this is Jaeger. Is that your view I'm seeing now?"
"Yes. Keep it recording, Iscin." O'Connor knelt by the hole, reached
down, and gently propelled himself down into the opening. Every member of the
crew heard his sudden intake of breath.
"What the hell can scare O'Connor?"
"I don't want to know."
"No, you don't." Kherkhoulloth shivered. "You really don't."
O'Connor stepped forward, regarding the corpse carefully. It was a
human, adult, probably female, and any information beyond that wouldn't be
easy to ascertain. The body had been nailed spreadeagled to the inside of the
tank wall, upside down, and had been systematically flayed apart inch by inch.
It must have taken her days to die, he thought grimly. And as to how it had
felt... he gently touched the jaw, felt it move slackly even in rigor mortis.
She had screamed so loudly she'd dislocated her jaw right out of its socket.
The dead eyes hung from their sockets, exploded in the vacuum. The flesh was
utterly frozen, but before it had chilled her lifeblood had flowed over the
deck and dried in a sickening brown pool.
It was then that O'Connor saw the next corpse. It was an Aslan male,
his fur torn out in fistfuls, tail half sawn away, bowels raked out. The man's
eyes were shut tight, his jaw frozen shut: even in his agony he wouldn't cry
out. Beside him there was another human. And another. And another....
His eyes flicked around the inside of the tank, counting. Ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen-- wait a minute! The last corpse was that of a Droyne, its
wings carefully shredded into bloody ribbons and tied into knots, its scales
pulled out one by one, every joint bent backward and broken. A single spar of
metal was driven through its skull, and its mouth was bound bulgingly shut
with a tangle of computer cable. O'Connor gently undid the cable and pried the
mouth open, suddenly curious. The others were allowed to scream; this one...?
Slowly, floating eerily in the zero gravity, a stream of gold disks
floated out of the stretched, bloody mouth, one, two, three dozen of them.
O'Connor gently gathered them out of the air and put them away in a
pocket. The one blank spot on the wall, right behind the ladder, came aglow
under the light of his headlamp: a series of lines of text, scrawled crudely
in blood.
"O'Connor? Are you all right?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he looked closer, trying to make out the
words. As his eyes followed the text, he heard Jaeger reading aloud....
"Here they lie, victims of his sense of humor
They thought they had all the answers
What they got wasn't what they expected
He is alone and yet with each and all of us
He is strong, angry, mighty in triumph
He was human once, and still is, mostly--
What's left, we're working on.
Hi ho."
O'Connor straightened up. "We're going to need coldsleep capsules to
preserve the bodies," he said coolly. "Back away from the opening, Kherk, I'm
coming out."
"Bodies? WHAT bodies?"
"Uh, 'Hi ho'?"
"Would somebody please tell me WHAT'S GOING ON?"
O'Connor drifted up into the hallway, and met Kherkhoulloth's troubled
eyes. "We're coming back, sir," he said softly. "We'll have visuals to show
you, and a full report. But you aren't going to like it."
And as he turned to seek the way out, Kherkhoulloth leading the way,
O'Connor wondered idly if he still had the part of his brain that could have
nightmares.
*And if I do,* he added, *Could I shut it off?*
|insufficient data|
TO BE CONTINUED
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