[▲] Derelict Hashemite vessel, Caminha Waypoint
"Well... shit. Let's clear them out of the way."
Keiji turned over his shoulder and motioned the rest of his team on into the bridge. The five women they had left locked on the ship just hours earlier had killed themselves. The jury-rigged computer setup that his team had managed to piece together was speckled in blood and brain matter from where they had obviously slammed their heads against the sharper corners in a suicidal frenzy. They were slumped in a pile in various stages of rigor, telling him that they hadn't all decided to kill themselves at the same time, though it was hardly much consolation.
It made him wonder how bad things would be in the subdeck if the women had killed themselves over something as stupid as a functioning computer screen. All of the explosives they had left in place to corral them were still registering as live, so they hadn't committed suicide by throwing themselves at the ordinance. That meant that when they finally got around to securing the subdeck again they at least wouldn't have to do it wading through charred bits of cloned fanatics.
"What the hell is wrong with these people," muttered Vic as he crossed the bridge with two of Tiaha's marines in tow. They began picking up the bodies one-by-one and moving them to the front of the bridge, well clear of the area where the remainder of the task force would be working.
Standing apart from the rest of the marines in his rust-red exosuit Rashid asked, "All of them have been blinded?"
"Yes," replied Keiji.
A disgusted puckered-lip look similar to the one Leo had been wearing the entire time he had been on the bridge earlier formed gradually on his face. "Interesting."
"Is that significant?"
"There is a place in Paradise reserved for the blind." Rashid shook his head. "I would not have interpreted it as meaning one willingly has their eyes... removed, but perhaps this is what they did. Asking them will be impossible now they are dead, however."
"It would have been impossible even were they still breathing," said Leo. "They were utterly mad. And I doubt the... clones in the subdeck can speak with any sort of intelligence."
"We are left to search for personal computers, then." Rashid turned to speak to the six Tiaha marines that had accompanied them. After a brief exchange with the man Keiji assumed was their leader due to the fact he was the only one in the squad with his right arm colored green instead of gray, he motioned to the rigged computer and nodded. "Hasib and his men will begin searching the bodies in the corridor. I will let you know when they find anything."
The green-armed man bowed to Rashid and five of the marines departed the bridge with him to spread out along the corridor and police the bodies. One man stayed, ostensibly to guard Rashid from Heinlein's own marines. Logically Keiji understood the reasons behind it but really didn't see the need to waste manpower on protecting a person who was clearly capable of his own self-defense, equipped with an assault-grade exosuit armed with a shotgun, assault rifle, and a pair of fixed-bladed knives as he was. Leo had said it would be because the man was a hafiz, someone who had memorized the entirety of their holy scriptures, and thus he simply never would be without his own guard while on foreign soil as he was considered an invaluable asset to the fleet. Apparently memorizing scripture went hand-in-hand with reading and writing the myriad of Arabic dialects they might come upon sifting through information on the ship.
Learning that particular bit of information was the first time it had occurred to Keiji that whatever data they could end up finding may have actually been written down instead of digitized within a computer somewhere. Tracking down something that emitted no electrical signal whatsoever in the cold of space was going to be problematic, and that was if anything like that left could have survived the psychotic crew, explosions, and atmospheric venting that had already happened on the ship.
"Red Spider to Lawman, we're at the engine room. Zero contact with anything other than corpses, none of them with anything useful. Looks like most of the engineering crew died of radiation exposure."
"Were any of the drive cores compromised?" Keiji asked, his VTI not having picked up any signs of radiation leakage.
"Two is questionable but we should be gone long before it hits fail point," assured Karda. "Looks like they got cooked with unmitigated stellar radiation. My guess is whatever they were using for an EM field wasn't working when they crossed paths with a particularly nasty gust from a star."
A few pictures from Karda's suit scrolled up through his helmet's screen. Each was dressed in an identical gray Though the engineers had clearly been frozen for some time the massive bubble-like lesions from radiation exposure covered nearly every part of their exposed skin. It reminded him of the sunburn he had gotten on Terra, only a thousand times worse.
"Given the static mitigation systems of this type of ship they must have passed within a few AU's to be that severely irradiated," mused Rashid as he received the image Keiji forwarded to his VTI. "We can use that assumption to narrow down routes they could have taken once we reconstruct their astronomical databases."
"If we can reconstruct their databases," clarified Keiji. "Eighty percent of everything we retrieved so far is fragmented garbage."
He thought he caught a small smirk from the man. "I agree. It would have been extremely helpful had we copies of the original databases the Hashemites started out with for comparison."
"Nobody tell Riptide, but there is a little pile of skulls back here," said Karda with a chuckle. "And score one for Heinlein! Engineer's logs are in Standard and not too badly fragmented! They're on an isolated station from the rest of the network. I think I can rip it out and bring the whole thing with me."
Keiji groaned by reflex. "No one's keeping score, Wildcard."
"Well Agamemnon is, Methuselah Lead." Valkyrie's chuckle mirrored Karda's disturbingly well. "We have hydroponics locked down. Moving on to the remaining bays to assess how much goo this ship is storing. Somebody remind Tiaha not to touch the shit if they see it please."
"They have already been informed of the safety precautions," said Rashid in a voice that clearly sounded as though he was irritated with someone else telling him what to do. "Do not worry about my men."
"Pull everything you can, just make sure they didn't rig anything to explode." Keiji switched his com to the channel everyone was currently sharing. "Anyone found anything else?"
"One more recycling bay of black ooze," replied Valkyrie. "Starboard two left to check. We're going to have to take the long way around. They welded the all the transverse corridors shut and I'm not keen on blowing the bulkheads."
As he finished throwing silver tarps over the dead women Vic said, "Maybe they were going to fill the whole ship with the stuff, compartment by compartment."
Damien laughed from the doorway where he was keeping watch over the entrance to the subdeck with his shotgun. "With all the crazy going on in this place that's about as likely as anything else we could dream up."
"Indeed." Rashid turned and consulted with one of his men as they came up from the corridor. "We have mainly found personal objects. They are being collected for return to their families should any remain. There was just one portable computer, mostly used for storing images. I am sending the contents to the storage space Lieutenant Halpern provided with my recorded translation of the notes."
Keiji wondered if he should trust Rashid's statement before he remembered that everyone involved in their search mission was sharing their suit feeds with both fleets just to eliminate that type of second-guessing. Even if someone was really good at slight-of-hand the datapoints would tell the truth in the end.
The voice of Captain Michael broke in through his VTI. "Lawman, Red Spider, Valkyrie, this Taurus and Hoplite on secure com."
"Clear read, sir."
"Tiaha is suspending sending anyone else over," said Michael. "We just received word that incursion forces will be passing within what we're assuming is their detection range sometime within the next two hours. These ships are a new configuration, unknown capabilities. Priority jump evacuations underway of ships carrying mainly wounded crew as well as the transports carrying Tiaha's civilians to Arnarson Waypoint. You have forty minutes to find what you can and then clear out."
"Valkyrie suspend your search and get to the engines with Methuselah," ordered Captain MacNamara. "See what you can do about getting them functional again."
Frowning Keiji asked, "What about the clones in the subdeck?"
There was a silent pause as the Captain considered his options. "On extrication pack them into the secondary boarding drone with the emergency CO2 scrubbers. We'll recall it and keep them under guard. If they resist you are to leave them behind."
"Clear read, Taurus."
"Good. Taurus exit channel."
"Hoplite exit channel."
"Hey Lawman." Vic sounded unusually nervous given the fact he had been assigned to guard corpses. "Check this out."
Waiving his hand to get Rashid's attention he walked over to where Vic had managed to clean off most of the rigged screen. The various grids of text and numbers were still showing the same corrupt information as they had been when they left the first time, lines truncated by solid rectangles and rife with useless symbols and random punctuation marks. "What's the problem?"
The Hayha pilot pointed to the corner most of the women had used to split their skulls. "This isn't astronav data."
Keiji looked over the six columns of rapidly-cycling numbers. Other than being arranged in columns instead of rows it looked as useless as the rest of the data. "What is it then?"
"No clue, but nobody stores coordinates using only ones and zeroes. Plus this wasn't here when we left. I checked the last frames we had of this place before we fell back."
"Lawman to Red Spider, you still running a cipher with your VTI?"
"Never leave Home Base without it, but it's gimped without direct access to my Athena.'s pipelines"
"Take a look at my feed and tell me what those columns are."
"Right. Give me a minute."
Turning his attention back to the immediate problem Keiji nodded at Rashid. "I trust you heard from Commander Ibrahim about what's coming our way."
"Indeed. We have still yet to find anything of meaningful use and it is doubtful we shall from the dead here." He glanced over his shoulder and Keiji noted that the rest of the Tiaha marines had returned from policing the corridor with only a small box of personal items between them. "My men and I are prepared to re-secure the medical bay and interrogate the... persons there, if that is even possible."
"All right." He switched his com over to their shared channel. "Heads up, Methuselah. Taurus has given us forty minutes to seize what we can and clear out to prep for a fight they think is imminent. We will be locking the subdeck clones in Tiaha's boarding pod on the way out if they don't try anything."
A frustrated grunt made Keiji shake his head. "Forty hours isn't enough to get these engines working after the beating they took from Minuteman. I'm not sure there's enough pieces of them left."
"Do what you can with what you have, Wildcard. Tantalus is inbound to help out."
"Clear read."
Keiji pointed towards Damien. "Mantis, you and Ifrit escort the Hafiz and his marines downstairs. They try to claw anyone to death, you shoot them."
Hopping off his perch atop an upended cargo crate Damien tossed him a quick salute as he and Leo moved to re-open the sealed door. "Clear read, Lawman."
Inclining his head slightly towards Keiji Rashid turned and gave orders to his men in a surprisingly authoritative shout. The man hadn't seemed all that commanding up front but the way he ordered the Tiaha marines about reminded him eerily of Major Navarro's swapping between a quiet mediator and a face-melting drill sergeant on a moment's notice. He felt himself about to laugh over the fact when Calli voice jarred him out of his reminiscing.
"Red Spider to Lawman, you want the good or the bad first?"
Grimacing Keiji asked, "Does the bad mean something's going to blow up?"
"Maybe. Good, it's binary and we have a copy of the whole thing from the point where the program that's producing it loaded. Bad, I haven't been able to figure out if it's just rudimentary software code or something like those messages the incursion aliens shoot off when they drop in. Whatever it is, it's repeating itself every sixteen minutes with perfection." An odd static shrill was quickly filtered out by his VTI. "Wait a—"
A series of red-text alarms flashed up on the screen of his helmet as his VTI told him in a pleasant voice, "Internal temperature climbing. Mapping thermal sources. Please stand by."
In an explosion of white halogens every dead fixture on the bridge suddenly switched on, lighting up the entire area as though nothing at all had been broken until that point. The sudden illumination made the carnage across the deck and doors remarkably difficult to ignore. Also difficult to ignore was the literal writing on the bulkheads, scrawled out by insane hands with the blood of nameless and likely countless numbers of their own people. It was disturbingly legible for having been written by a group of psychopaths. Despite the sudden resurgence of power it looked as if only the lights were working. None of the computer stations save the one Damien and Nim had rigged were functioning, evidently severed from whatever power grid was feeding the overheads.
"Somebody flipped a switch somewhere," said Keiji, taking a long 360-degree survey of the bridge to check if anything else would come jumping out into the light. "Hardcover keep your eyes open. Red Spider, what's going on back there?"
"Power's not coming from back here," replied Calli. "An insane spike in heat, though. Got the locations pinned down as where we found the alien tar."
"Methuselah Lead, Valkyrie. The alien goo just started... bubbling. I swear the shit looks like a stew pot."
As Valkyrie spoke his VTI confirmed the source of the sudden heat spikes as being from the hydroponics bay as well as the three storage bays on the ventral side of the ship. Cold metal decking started to groan as it expanded, a noise which his suit automatically filtered out as irrelevant due to its distance and familiarity. According to its calculations the temperature wouldn't rise high enough to be deadly, even to a person without an exosuit, but that was proving to be the least of his worries. Along with the temperature the mass of the stuff was somehow increasing. With the rudimentary analysis from his VTI the things were on target to double the ship's original mass in under half an hour.
"Well I think we just half-figured out how they managed to make this ship jump a stable bridge," he muttered. "Red Spider, give me an analysis of how this is going to screw things up. I would love to know how we now have power. Everyone else, pick up the pace on whatever you're doing."
"Not going to have time for that!" Valkyrie shouted. "Cusith just confirmed long-range inbound. We've ten minutes maybe before two incursion ships hit the extended perimeter. Tantalus has orders to bail for first wave engagement. See you guys in the black, Methuselah."
Taking a deep breath Keiji quickly shuffled his priorities. "Mantis, Ifrit, have the Hafiz and his men haul everyone up here. Wildcard, if this wreck has power it's got propulsion. Find it and point this POS away from the fleet. Hardcover, help them herd the clones. Red Spider, take off and prep to coordinate between us and whatever's left of Tiaha's fighter wing."
"Clear read, Lawman."
"Methuselah Lead to Heinlein Control, request objective change to extrication and enemy engagement confirm."
Painful seconds ticked by as the bridge crew relayed his request to the Captain and back. Finally Armstrong's voice replied, "Methuselah Lead, objective change confirmed. You are GO to disengage and rejoin battlesphere. VTI update for IFF tags inbound. Prioritize all migrant fleet ships as civilian friendlies until further notice."
Roughly two dozen of the blinded, branded clones came shambling out of the door down to the subdeck, escorted at shotgun point by the Tiaha marines with Rashid and Leo bringing up the rear. Leo signaled they were heading to stuff the men into the secondary pod. A few seconds after Damien came bounding up the stairs two at a time, four separate data storage trays tucked away beneath his arms. He passed two to Vic and the two jogged after the column of clones towards where they would be dumping everything the had found.
"Lawman to Wildcard, what's your status?"
"Lights and that's it," muttered Karda. "Everything's been cut, smashed, or just melted. At this point I'm going to be guessing which wires to cross a dozen different harnesses hoping I don't blow something up."
"Shit." Keiji moved over to the console Nim had originally used to change the direction of the ship, trying to make sense of all the switches where there should have been a holographic interface labeled in nice, neat Standard text. "All right, Wildcard, take off and run guard for Red Spider. I'll see what I can do from here."
"Clear read, Lawman. I'm out."
Bringing up the only translation program he had in his VTI Keiji was given an overlay of the odd text with a half-decent translation into language he could understand. "Ifrit, Mantis, let me know when you have the clones secured. I'm going to have to pump and dump all the atmosphere on this ship to move it." Glaring at the console he added, "Once I figure out what switch does what."
"Com Riptide," said Leo. "I guarantee you she'll have memorized the procedure."
Feeling as though he needed to slap himself for being so stupid as to not have thought of it on his own he opened a channel back to the Heinlein. "Methuselah Lead to Heinlein Control, I need a line to Riptide ASAP."
Another few uneasy seconds went by before Armstrong replied, "Clear read, Methuselah Lead. Patching you through on secure com."
"Riptide this is Lawman. I need you to talk me through the procedure you used to reorient this POS."
Nim sounded surprised that he would be asking her anything at all. "There's no extra air to dump unless you're planning to kill off the crazies. I already told you that, Lawman."
"The crazies are in a boarding pod so we're dumping everything. I need this ship as far away from the fleet as possible as fast as possible."
"What, seriously?"
"Riptide!" he shouted as he slammed his fist down on the console, "quit fucking around and talk me through what you did!"
An all-too-familiar mocking snicker was followed quickly by, "I rigged it to go for emergency. Hit the blue one, it's in the middle. That'll start pressurization. Wait until there's an orange light on the board, then flip the one I marked with an 'X'. That vents the compartments in ten second intervals. That's it."
"Secondary pod is locked down, Lawman," said Damien. "Sending it on the return trip to Home Base as soon as the corridor hits full vacuum."
"All right, pressurizing compartments."
Running his hands over the console he located the switches Nim spoke of, including an insignificant-looking toggle switch over which she had etched an 'X' with her knife. Striking the middle one with his thumb he heard nor saw any significant changes until his VTI informed him that the oxygen levels were dropping rapidly throughout the ship.
He watched the console attentively, waiting for some orange light to appear somewhere so he could hit the next switch. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing to do, waiting for a little LED to flash on while an unknown number of enemies was headed straight for where he really needed to be.
"Lawman."
"What?"
"I don't know if the Captain'll clear me to fly or not yet." An eerie silence descended as vacuum overtook the ship and the sporadic popping and groaning of the vessel's bones ceased to register on his suit's audio pickups. "So you'd better keep your fucking word until I get there."
"Venting now," he said as several orange lights popped up along the top of the console. He flipped the required switch with his thumb and watched his VTI start ticking off his distance from the boundary of the Tiaha fleet in ever-increasing kilometers. Leaving the console behind he headed for the boarding pod where Damien and Leo stood waiting with two of Tiaha's marines. "What was that, Riptide?"
"You make what you did to him mean something."
Climbing straight out of the tunnel through the hull, the boarding pod thrown open now that there was no need to keep the ship pressurized, Keiji hastily made his way back to his Abrams and locked himself back in his cockpit. Rashid and the Tiaha marines rapidly made their way back to their own marauders, all of them vividly painted Proteus variants situated on the opposite side of the boarding pod from their own ships. They launched one-by-one without any sort of military order, but once they were away from the ship they fell into a comet-like formation with Rashid's silver-striped fighter roughly at its center. Within a few seconds he lost sight of the ships in the chaos of the fleet's silent evacuation overhead.
Within his own cockpit nothing looked different from the day he had loaded out in their first encounter with the incursion aliens. Everything functioned just like it had then, had the same look, the same colors, the same sounds. Except for the massive influx of data he was getting on the locations and dispositions of the Tiaha fleet it all seemed exactly the same.
He wasn't.
Rapidly going through his pre-flight checks he made sure he still had the secure line open to Nim. "I won't let them down."
Something that sounded like a snort of approval came over the com. "Catch you on the dark side, Lawman."
"Catch you on the dark side, Riptide. Lawman exit channel." He grinned in spite of himself. This time things would turn out differently. "Flight Methuselah, call back green for disengage."
"Hardcover green for disengage."
"Mantis green for disengage."
"Ifrit green for disengage."
"Lawman green for disengage." He glanced over his readouts and sighted Calli and Karda hovering high above most of the clustered ships in the sphere. While it seemed odd to see Calli flying without her white-bellied Athena marauder he had no doubt she had come up with some way to coordinate enough information with her backup Proteus that no one would be at much risk of flying headlong into a friendly ship. Athena variants were more suited to enemy territory recon than straight-up skirmishes, anyway. "Heinlein Grandmaster, Flight Methuselah is green for disengage."
"Methuselah you are GO for disengage," replied Calli.
"Let's see if we can't get some payback for the Brahe and Home Base, Methuselah."
"Oorah!"