Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Crimson Heart’s Base of Operations

The definition of falling changed somewhat in zero-G. Orbits were one matter, where the constant free-fall around the curvature of a planet generated an imitation of weightlessness, but true zero-G was something different. Falling in such a case could simply be construed as moving feet-first. Usually, it was purposeful and controlled, given that one had to push themselves off in that orientation.

Zarrey quite liked falling without gravity. It made it easy for his boots to grab onto surfaces, and he never had to lower his rifle, except to push off. But usually, landing was the more dangerous part, so once he leapt from the Singularity’s airlock and sailed into the base’s, he caught the frame with one hand and reoriented himself to glide feet-first.

The airlock opened into a ‘T’ junction with one corridor directly ahead, leading deeper into the base, and two more following the outer edge of the base in opposite directions. After a moment of falling toward the center corridor, it was clear the path into the base was empty. Stretching deeply beyond his feet, Zarrey couldn’t see its end. With infrared emission so slight from the ambient temperature of the walls, the goggles he wore could only resolve their detail to a certain distance. Beyond that, the walls dissolved into a green haze with only darkness beyond.

Objects that emitted infrared passively such as the waste heat of wiring conduits or the body of a human glowed in various colors. The corridors, retaining ambient heat from the air, showed in a greenish tint. The color was lighter now than it had been passing between the Singularity’s hulls, these walls warmer than the ship’s freshly pressurized structure.

In the junction ahead of him, Blosse and Yankovich glowed oddly in the goggles’ color-toned display. Their pants and shirts were a yellow, tight enough to the skin for some warmth to bleed through, but the body armor and helmets they wore were a distinct blue, insulated and cold to the touch, as were their rifles. Their faces were orange, cut off by the goggles they wore, which covered their eyes in complex layers of hard-edged green and blue shapes. It was disconcerting to see something so mechanical where he expected to find eyes and eyebrows.

Blosse’s hair was particularly fascinating through the infrared lens. Normally it was a reddish-brown, long and wavy. Woven into one long braid, it wriggled behind her like a snake. Where it poked out from her helmet, it was orange, but ran in a gradient through yellow and into green at is end, matching the ambient temperature.

Determining they had seen enough of the corridor ahead of them, Yankovich and Blosse grabbed the mag-anchors off their belts. Yankovich tossed his to the right, and Blosse to the left. The anchors stuck to the walls with a minor thud that made Zarrey wince as everything else was so perfectly quiet. But there was no response to the noise as the Marines used the anchors to tug themselves in a new direction.

Landing softly, Blosse and Yankovich used their rifles to peer into their respective corridors. They found nothing down there sights, merely more of the same emptiness.

Zarrey had expected as much, tossed his own anchor down and pulled himself to the edge of the path that led deeper into the base. He scoped it out once more, but nothing stirred in the depths. After power had been knocked out, the pirates had no way to know when or where the Singularity might dock, even if it was an easy guess she would. By result, their forces were probably guarding objectives, not airlocks.

“Quiet as nighttime on the damn moon,” Zarrey murmured. It was a good start. The rest of his task force wouldn’t be in danger coming through the airlock. “Beta team,” he radioed, “come on over. It’s time to party.”

More armored figures came streaming through the airlock, moving in swift units They pushed into each hallway, comrades watching their back as they worked to secure the area around the airlock junction. Zarrey, Blosse and Yankovich covered the hallways until the other teams were set, then regrouped in a corner.

From here, the boarding party would spread out and clear the base, reporting what they saw as they went. From the bridge, Galhino would be listening in and mapping the base using the Singularity’s cartography programs. That way, they could mark supply targets and ensure the entire base was swept. Task Force Alpha would make similar reports, mapping the base from their entry point in the hangar. Markers would be placed at each hallway junction when the first team passed through to reveal which corridors linked back together. Those reports, coupled with the Singularity’s sensor feedback, would generate a high-fidelity map of the base for the teams to navigate with as they moved supplies.

For now, however, teams would split off at random and follow the available hallways wherever they went. Zarrey’s team would be no different, but first, Zarrey unclipped the can of chemical paint and sprayed a big ‘X’ across the nearest wall. The paint showed up a nasty yellow under visible light, but it glowed like a pink neon sign in the sight of his infrared goggles. It would dim in a few hours as the chemical effect wore off, but by then the base should be completely mapped.

Yankovich admired the mark for a moment, then turned to Zarrey, “Which way, sir?” They were free to choose any of these three hallways.

Zarrey only smiled, “Deeper.”

Yankovich sighed and straightened his posture. “Yes, sir.” He gave a single nod to Blosse and she took up position right behind Zarrey.

It was clear enough Yankovich had already instructed Blosse to escort him. Zarrey would have complained, but he knew he would have done the exact same thing and assigned his best Marine to escort the Admiral if he had been here. Luckily, it seemed the Admiral had the sense, or at least the preference, to stay on the bridge. And if the remainder of the mission went even remotely according to plan, he would stay there. There would be no need for the solo nonsense he’d pulled on Midwest Station. Stars, Zarrey’s head hurt just thinking about that fiasco. Let the Admiral deal with his ship’s malfunctions for once. Serves him right.

Yet, for the first time, it occurred to Zarrey that their grand plan to map the base might be ruined if the ship was stuck on automated controls. But almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, the radio in his helmet crackled with an incoming transmission. “All personnel, this is Actual. Be advised of Hydrian technology on Crimson Heart’s base. All foreign technology should be treated as hostile and quarantined immediately. Additionally, there is a high probability that at least one Hydra is present on the base. I repeat, there is likely at least one Hydra present on the base. Proceed with extreme caution.”

The transmission faded to an airlock that had gone perfectly silent once more. Yankovich looked around to orange faces he could only assume were going pale. “Still want to go deeper in, sir?”

Zarrey grinned even wider than he had before. “Hell yeah.” No one had seen a living, breathing Hydra in nearly fifty years. If it wanted a fight, Zarrey would be happy to give it the old Marine hello.

Yankovich reached up to hit the push-to-talk button for the wide radio band that would reach the ship and called it in. “Base, this is Unit Beta-One. Airlock opens to a ‘T’ junction with three paths. We’ll be taking the middle one.”

“Then I guess I’ll be joining you.”

Zarrey turned to find Sergeant Cortana drifting by behind them. She was easy enough to recognize by the way her curly hair escaped the containment of her helmet. She landed opposite his orientation, but staggered a bit on the impact, the attachment of her mag-boots to the wall too sudden. “No, Sergeant,” Zarrey reminded, “you were assigned a different role.” Thank the stars. Zarrey had not wanted her trailing his unit any longer than necessary.

“I’m not staying here.” That was a stupid assignment for someone with her skillset.

“Those were the Admiral’s orders,” and likely, for her, a sort of obedience test. Zarrey wasn’t keen to find out what happened if she failed it. Sergeant Cortana had given them enough trouble as it was.

“For fuck’s sake,” Cortana insisted. “I’m the Marine Sergeant on this ship. I’m supposed to be leading the away missions.” That was her entire purpose being on the ship. “This isn’t even the first time I’ve hunted pirates!”

“The first being when you were a Corporal and smoked out the media piracy ring selling illegally copied news broadcasts on Tribune?” Yeah, Zarrey thought, watching her recoil, I read your file. He wasn’t a clueless brute. He’d been the Steel Prince’s second-in-command for fifteen years. “I don’t care if there was a gunfight or not. That was planet-side.” She had served planet-side her entire career. She wasn’t comfortable moving in zero-G and it showed. “This may not be your first time hunting pirates, but it's our fiftieth.” If one counted every gang that stole goods as a pirate, then there were a lot of them in the worlds. “Crimson Heart isn’t the biggest we’ve smashed.”

“I’m a great shot, Colonel.” This was unfair. “Just leave him in my place,” she said. “He’ll do just as well.” How was she supposed to become one of the crew if she kept getting singled out?

Zarrey followed her outstretched finger to Santino, the rookie of Yankoich’s unit. Cortana had proven her skills against him when she’d knocked him out to show Command’s inspector the damaged support in the Singularity’s starboard bow. Still, Zarrey trusted Santino over her any day. The kid was young, and he wasn’t the best in the sparring ring, but he was loyal. “Sergeant, you may not see it, or like it, but you are being given a chance to prove your loyalty.” She had been assigned to guard the airlock. With Task Force Beta spreading out from this point and sweeping the base, nothing should reach the airlock, but if something did, she would be the single line of defense.

It was a sacrificial position. If the pirates counter-attacked, then she would be the canary in the coal mine. Her single purpose in that instance was to get out a warning to the ship so those on the bridge knew to break the airlock connection before the pirates could board. Anyone could fill that position, but the Admiral had assigned it to her – an offering of trust for her to earn. Any Marine might feel nervous about that assignment, but most would also be honored. That position singularly allowed them to protect their ship, their home.

But it figured Cortana did not see it that way. “You’re staying here, Sergeant. And if you want to have a ride out of here, don’t fuck it up.” With that, Zarrey returned his attention to Yankovich. “Let’s go.”

Yankovich and Santino leapt off into the waiting corridor without another word. Zarrey followed, Blosse right behind him. They landed together further down the hall, Cortana wise enough not to follow. The multicolored figures of another unit sailed by above them, weapons at the ready. Leaping and tugging with mag-anchors was far quieter than the stomping of mag-boots, so that was how teams chose to move. “I almost feel bad for her,” Yankovich said, watching them go. “She didn’t choose to be here.”

“But she did choose to stay,” Zarrey reminded. Admiral Gives had offered the entire crew the chance to leave before he split from Command, Cortana included. That had been her chance to return to her home, to Command. Perhaps to prove her bravery, Sergeant Cortana hadn’t taken it. Maybe she hadn’t known the reasoning behind such an offer. Maybe she hadn’t thought it would be permanent. Or maybe she had been afraid to come forward. Whatever the reason, she was now stuck aboard the Singularity. The rest of them had chosen that fate, wanting and willing to stay aboard the ship that was their home.

For many of the crew, the old Singularity was the first place that had truly been a home to them, the first place they had felt safe. Drafting his crew the way he had – through voluntary transfers – Admiral Gives had created one of the most loyal crews in the entire fleet, if not to him, then to his ship. Cortana, who neither liked, nor wanted to be on the ship was an odd exception.

“I just hope she does her job,” Zarrey said. On this mission, Cortana held a critical position, whether she believed it or not. If pirates somehow made it past the airlock she was guarding in mass, they had a substantial chance of taking the ship. And with so many of the crew gone, they would have a hard time taking it back.

But, of course, that assumed the old battleship would allow it, and in Zarrey’s experience, she didn’t have much patience for strangers, especially those that meant ill toward her crew. The Singularity had a stronger personality than one expected from a ship. Zarrey always figured it was age. She’d seen a lot, and had many scars and stories. It made her cantankerous, sometimes problematic, but toward crew, ultimately protective. In all her years, none of the Singularity’s crew had died in an accident.

Malfunctions and equipment failures had injured a few, but had never taken a life. However, that protection extended only to the crew. People had been found dead aboard the Singularity. Often, investigation revealed that they were assassins, saboteurs and sometimes radical separatists. Their causes of death varied, but tended toward asphyxiation, as if they had become trapped when their plan went awry. A few of Command’s boarders in the Wilkerson Sector had been found dead the same way. The crew had blamed it on battle damage trapping them, but hadn’t bothered with an investigation. Not even they liked to acknowledge the vicious air the ship sometimes held, nor the rumors of her curse – the evil spirit that haunted the corridors as an omen of death.

That part of the machine was perhaps more real than her protective aura. Zarrey had recently seen that ghost, as had others. As sightings became more common, there was a growing sense of foreboding amongst the crew, but Cortana had fared the worst. She’d seen the ghost multiple times, and allegedly become its victim during her failed repair training. Hopefully, that wasn’t a sign of what awaited the Sergeant today.

Zarrey bent over. “Let’s get moving.” Contemplating the Sergeant’s destiny would get them nowhere. As he made ready to push off, his hand brushed the rectangular casing of a device built into the wall. No, he realized, recognizing the tubular shapes that ran along the rectangle’s length. They were a yellowish color, slowly cooling to ambient temperature. The casing, thin and shallow was warm against his fingertips. It was a light fixture, one of many that formed a dashed line running in front of and behind him. That made this the ceiling, not a wall, though it hardly mattered without gravity.

Yankovich and Santino leapt again into the darkness, knowing the path had already been swept by the team ahead of them. Zarrey disconnected his boots and pushed off with his hands, falling feet-first into the void. Blosse followed behind, pushing off the same way.

They fell for a minute, moving slowly, before the hallway ended. Zarrey rode it out until the end, and gently landing with Blosse. They sighted their rifles and checked for movement, Yankovich and Santino doing the same from another surface above. Still, nothing shifted, unsurprising considering the bright pink ‘X’ resting beneath Zarrey’s feet.

“This is Unit Beta-One. We’ve reached the next junction. Two corridors.” He pulled the compass from his pocket, calibrated to the same navigational standard used aboard ship. South was toward the galactic center, North away. “One path East. One path West.”

“10-4, Beta-One. Beta-Three took the West path. Recommend you take the East,” Robinson answered.

“Understood, Base. Proceeding East,” Zarrey confirmed.

With no further prompting, Santino and Yankovich pushed off, rifles held tense and at the ready. Still, it was several long minutes of the same, empty, prefabricated surroundings before they found anything interesting. And even that was just a door – a little, narrow door in a stretch of hallway that had no other entrances or exits.

“I swear, if this turns out to be a supply closet…” Zarrey muttered under his breath as the team took up positions to cover the door and the hallway. When Santino yanked door open to reveal a set of jostling emergency suits, Zarrey barely withheld his frustration. “This shit isn’t even worth stealing.”

Yankovich shoved the suits aside, but the closet was shallow, no signs of a hollow back or hidden door. There was only the suits. There were four of them, all the rubbery and ill-fitting standard that were stored upon many habitats. They had probably come with the pre-built modules the base was built from. The four, round helmets were sitting on a shelf above where the body of the suits hung. The matching boots were on the ground, resting atop the metal case of a survival kit that would contain rations, repair patches and other necessary emergency items. This wasn’t the massive food store they had come expecting to find. So far, Zarrey had seen no sign of that, but perhaps the teams that had gone in other directions were having better luck.

“If there are suits like that stored here, that means we’re nearing the edge of the base again,” Blosse observed, voice quiet. “Perhaps that’s why these hallways are so long and sparse.” She’d been on space habitats before. These pre-built mining modules were plenty familiar. It wasn’t normal for the larger units that would have living spaces, working spaces or storage spaces to be so spread out. This Western path seemed to be an isolated off-shoot of the main structure.

“Maybe,” Zarrey supposed. All the same, he reached up and called it in. “Base, Unit Beta-One. We’ve found a storage closet for emergency suits. No other junctions off this hallway so far.”

“10-4, Beta-One,” Robinson answered from the ship. She sounded hurried, but then, taking reports from this many teams would strain anyone’s capability, no matter how organized the venture, or how good the radio discipline.

Santino put his hand on the edge of the storage locker and began to close it. The hinges let out a slow, agonizing screech. Zarrey winced at the noise, the tone of it desperately making him want to cover his ears, though his protective helmet already muted some of the sound. “At least Singularity knows when to be quiet,” he grumbled and saw Yankovich nod a slight agreement.

This corridor had been so empty that it did not immediately occur to Zarrey that someone else may have heard the noise until a solitary voice echoed down the hallway in reply. “H-hello?” it called out timidly. “Is anyone there?”

Shit. Zarrey snapped his head around and sighted his rifle toward the sound of the voice. The other team members did the same, but nothing approached. The voice came once more, no closer than it had before. “Hello?”

Yankovich signaled for the team to form up, then pushed off toward the voice. It took them even further down the sparse hallway they had been traveling. The voice fell silent as they moved, but its owner wasn’t hard to find. He stood in the nodule at the end of the hallway. It was a prefab part meant to be a junction between three other units. The ports for the attaching hallways were evenly spaced, splitting off at oblique angles. However, one of the ports had nothing attached to it. It was sealed off – the edge of the base. A window beside that port clearly showed that there was only asteroid beyond.

A man stood in the light of that window. It was the only natural light that Zarrey and his team had seen enter the base, a bright glowing spot in his infrared goggles. He was shivering, not cold, but in terrified shudders. He looked young, his gangly body still that of a teen. A patchy mustache of wiry dark hair graced his upper lip, a clear attempt to appear more mature than he was.

Zarrey wasn’t much in the business of pitying his adversaries, especially pirates, but this one… He felt too young. Yet, every member of Crimson Heart was here willingly. They would not have tolerated disloyalty amongst their ranks. Perhaps the kid stole to live, or perhaps he was greedy. It mattered not.

Yankovich reached back to place his rifle onto the magnet of his back armor. It stuck there, freeing his hands to draw his side arm. He raised it and primed it to deal a nonlethal electric charge. The man ahead of them might be a pirate, but he was alone. The base’s sudden and complete darkness had obviously terrified him. He had crawled his way into the natural light of the window and stayed there. He didn’t look to be a threat, and the Singularity’s boarding party had not been ordered to execute the pirates on sight.

Yankovich felt his sidearm charge up, but before he could fire, Blosse stopped him. “Wait. Look at what he’s holding.”

In the hands of that figure, there was a briefcase. A white rectangular case with a big handle. It meant nothing to Yankovich. It certainly didn’t look like a threat. “I don’t recognize it.”

He prepared to take aim once more. But Blosse reached out, her arms long and gangly, a sign of being raised on a low-grav colony. “No,” she said more forcefully. “He’s carrying a medical kit.”

“A medic.” Zarrey realized. Most soldiers considered it a form of bad karma to shoot a medic, pirate or not. Only this man, really a kid by the look of him, didn’t look old enough to have formal training. Though, perhaps, that was what Crimson Heart had offered him: service in exchange for the money to go to medical school. It hardly mattered at this point, but it still struck Zarrey as odd. This seemed to be a very isolated section of the base. “Why in the hell is there a medic out here?” he wondered, a little too loudly.

The medic beyond whipped his head around. “Who’s there?” he called, squinting into the darkness. But, standing in the sunlight filtering in through the viewport left his eyes poorly adjusted. He still couldn’t see anything, so he raised his voice. “I know someone’s there!”

“Fuck.” Medic or not, they couldn’t have this man shouting. The team may have swept everything in the corridor behind them, but they had no idea what lay ahead. Flicking the safety on, Zarrey slammed his rifle onto the magnet on his back armor and drew his sidearm. The augmented vision of the infrared goggles made it easy to see the medic drawing in another intake of breath to shout. Zarrey didn’t give him the chance. The nonlethal shock of his sidearm took less than a second to charge, and then he fired.

The medic collapsed, or would have, had there been gravity. One moment he was cowering against the wall, and the next drifting limply through the air. There was no beam to trace. The stun attack of the gun had moved at the speed of light, effectively invisible at this range. The only indication the weapon had discharged was the noise: strange electronic fizzle, and then the briefest whiff of ozone that came from the plasma round superheating the air.

Zarrey didn’t waste another moment. He shoved himself off the nearest surface and sailed to the medic’s side, Yankovich moving with him. They checked the entrance of the only other corridor attached to the junction, but there was little to see. Unlike the previous corridors, this one wasn’t level. It sloped steeply down into the asteroid, cutting off the view down its length.

Unable to see and secure it, Zarrey and Yankovich grabbed the medic and his kit, then dragged him back out of the junction into safer territory. Yankovich patted him down and inspected him for injuries. “He’s unarmed. Doesn’t seem injured.” He was just very soundly knocked out. His shirt had a slightly singed spot from the impact of the sidearm’s plasma discharge. The thumbnail-sized area of skin below that might have a slight burn, but that was generally considered to be less harmful than a bullet wound.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Good.” Zarrey said. “Bad luck to hurt a medic.” Pulling a plastic tie from his pockets, Zarrey grabbed the man’s hands and bound them together. Then he grabbed the man’s shirt, and ripped a long piece of the hem, quickly tying it around his mouth to mute any screaming that might occur when he woke.

“Uh…” Santino’s voice came from behind, uncertain. “I’m not so sure this guy was a medic after all.”

Zarrey turned to see Santino had popped open the medical kit. The case was standard, but its contents were not. “What the fuck?”

Santino held the syringes up. They were enormous. Glass, too. Yet, they were empty. And the needle on the end… It clearly wasn’t meant for a person, too long and too wide. There were gloves, thick enough to belong to a pressurized environmental suit, though they lacked the sealing rings on their ends and were long enough to reach the wearer’s elbows. There was a gun in there too, not a real one, but a dart gun. Zarrey picked it up, eyeing what it was loaded with. “Tranquilizers. Enough to knock out a damned herd of buffalo.” He looked back to the so-called medic, all pity lost for knocking the kid out. “Bind him up in the closet, it’ll mute the noise. Radio in his position, then we’ll move deeper in.” A team would come in behind them and collect the pirate.

“Aye.” Yankovich and Santino grabbed the unconscious man by the arms, and dragged him off into the darkness. They returned a few minutes later empty handed, and without another word, Yankovich took point and pushed onward.

The only path ahead curved left and then sloped steeply downward. The pre-fabricated walls of the base went through a few gaskets and sealing materials before it settled on rock – the natural grayish tan rock of the asteroid. There were stairs chiseled out of the material, but it wasn’t magnetic. The team’s mag-boots became useless, so they began bouncing, pushing off the floor and ceiling of this tunnel in oscillating movements.

They moved quickly, a little too quickly. From the rear, Blosse saw something. “Wait!” she called, but it was too late. They had already tripped the sensor on the ground, and a shielded, battery powered turret swung out of an alcove on the ceiling, its barrel spinning up to firing speed. It was anchored to aim down the corridor ahead, to stop people from exiting rather than entering, but none of the Marines were given time to contemplate that. Everyone except Blosse had already stepped into its firing window, and it had taken aim at the nearest target, the last to cross unwittingly into its threshold: Zarrey.

Instinct kicked in almost immediately. Fight or flight. And, Zarrey had never been much good flying. He grabbed his rifle, swinging it upward to take aim, to fire back at the thing that would be firing at him in the next millisecond.

A heavy weight slammed into his side the instant the turret began to fire, sending him crashing into the wall. The rigid armor of his pauldron absorbed none of the impact, jarring his shoulder with every pound of force. Hands wrapped around his torso and a helmet bashed into his ribs, but Zarrey could only watch in horror as Santino shuddered under the impacts of the turret rounds in his place.

One, two, three times his body bucked, before Zarrey could get a hold on his body armor and yank him clear. Robbed of its nearest targets, the auto-turret turned to Yankovich, but by then, he’d had time to draw his weapon and take aim. He fired a triple-burst from his rifle, deafening in the small stairwell, and the turret fell dead, limp on its mount.

“Beezlenac,” Zarrey found it in him to curse. Desperately rolling Santino over he was relieved to feel that the gloves on his hands were not yet sticky. “You alright?” he asked, finding Santino’s face. The young Marine’s goggles had been knocked ajar and his eyes looked distinctly unfocused as he heaved in uneven breaths.

“I’m alright,” he managed to say, voice breathy. “Armor caught it.” The impact still struck like a freight train, and would leave a nasty bruise, but it kept his innards inside.

Thank fuck, Zarrey thought. “That was damn stupid, kid.”

“All due respect, Colonel,” Yankovich said, returning to help Santino right himself, “none of us want to inherit your job.”

“Fair enough,” Zarrey told him. Being the Steel Prince’s second-in-command wasn’t exactly fun. Or easy. In fact, Zarrey sometimes wondered if Admiral Gives purposefully made it difficult.

Santino’s breathing began to steady, and he pulled his goggles back into place. “Sorry about the shove, Colonel.”

“Do you really think I care?” Santino may very well have saved his life. There was never a guarantee the armor would hold against an attack. “Now,” Zarrey said, turning his attention to the remains of the turret, “What the hell was that about?” It didn’t surprise him to find that Crimson Heart had lain traps, but he’d expected mines and trip wires, hell, alarms. Not a damned auto-turret guarding things leaving this part of the base.

“No idea,” Yankovich said unhelpfully as he stepped back into position as the front of the group. He had barely made it there before he saw something start bounding up the stairs. “Safe to say they heard us though!” He raised his voice to be heard over his rifle as he fired off a shot.

It missed. That should have been Zarrey’s first clue that something wasn’t right. All the Singularity’s Marines were crack shots. They had practice, and not just on the firing range. But, sure as the sun, he heard the shot hit the stone of the stairwell’s walls.

It was in the way it moved, twitches so quick and odd, it was hard for Yankovich to get a bead on it. He fired three more times, all misses, as Zarrey raised his own rifle. He cracked off his own shot, but the quivers and twitching of the shape, just seemed to bend around the attack. He was so focused on it that he didn’t see the moment where five more similarly sized shadows emerged behind it. “What the fuck?” Zarrey said, watching them undulate and twist down the hallway, moving far faster than the Marines ever had.

Blosse fired, her rifle emitting a thunderous clap. Zarrey could almost feel the pressure wave washing out of the barrel. She didn’t miss. The bullet hit dead center on the undulating shape as it darted between the walls, emitting a definitive clang that every spacer knew to be metal on metal. The force of the impact pushed the shape back, but didn’t dislodge its grip on the stairwell’s stone walls.

The shape quickly righted itself. “That almost hurt,” it said, hissing and crackling as it turned the nub on its center mass toward Yankovich, who was closest.

“Augs,” Yankovich realized, seeing the warmth of flesh and the coldness of mechanics grafted together on what had once been a face. With four spiderlike appendages, and that nub on the central body mass, he should have realized it sooner. No matter how those limbs moved, that was still the right number to have once been human.

Augs, or augmented human, was the nice blanket term. It wasn’t the one Zarrey would have picked. “Fucking cyborgs.” Six of them, at that.

The speakers of the lead cyborg hissed and cracked, its implanted voice box failing to replicate a laugh. Then it lunged, moving far faster than any of the Marines could react and wrapped itself around Yankovich, and sending them both spinning and crashing into the wall.

Zarrey fingered the safety on and threw his rifle onto the magnetic backplate of his armor, freeing his hands to help pry the aug off Yankovich. However, before he could even push off in that direction, another aug hit him in his side, sending him rolling toward the stairs. A muffled cry told him Santino had been hit on his left, and another aug sailed past above, clearly intent on attacking Blosse.

“One of these soldiers is a Colonel,” the lead aug said. “Find out which. Kill the rest. The Baron will want a bartering chip.” The aug’s electronic voice box completely unstrained by wrestling with Yankovich. It was a voice of prerecorded sounds, not dissimilar from the voice of the Singularity’s automated protocols, which never changed its tone, regardless of the situation.

The cyborg on him moved fast, almost faster than Zarrey could track it, and certainly faster than he could respond. It wrapped its spidery arms tighter around him and flung him into the stairs with a force and angle that would have cracked his skull, had it not been for his helmet. Even with that dulling the impact, Zarrey saw stars, body slow to respond.

Distantly, he saw the warm colors of one of the other Marines entangled with the veiny appearance of one of the cyborgs. Warm body fluids pumped through cool mechanics, presenting the cyborgs as twisted creatures of red and indigo in the tones of his infrared goggles.

Head lolling, Zarrey could only imagine how fleshy and bulbous he looked in comparison. He could feel the flush of shock and pain rising to his cheeks, probably lighting him up like a firefly in the infrared spectrum. The augs were probably looking in that spectrum too, which meant the rank markings stamped on his armor wouldn’t be seen – they were designed to be read in the visible light range. If the cyborgs hadn’t been looking, they may never have noticed such a high-ranking soldier, but likely, the Marines had been overheard.

Augmented humans were renowned for their heightened senses. Sight, hearing, even smell could be vastly improved through implants, as could traits such as strength and reaction time. There were reasons people chose to receive implants, but it wasn’t always a choice. Sometimes circumstances forced it, but the reception of cyborgs varied greatly throughout the worlds. In some nations they were worshipped, in others feared, and in more, shunned.

These cyborgs, the way they moved, the number of implants they had, they were likely victims of accidents or genetics, people who adopted augments to gain or regain independence. Their level of augmentation did not always take well on a voluntary basis, but those with no other option adapted. In such cases, the line between man and machine blurred.

There was very little human left in the one pinning Zarrey down. A band of optics covered the eyes, not goggles like the Marines’, but a block of implanted sensors and scopes tied to the optic nerve. A box was grafted where the mouth would have been, lips erased by its presence as it was cradled, caught in perpetual half-emergence by a jaw forced slack. The implants were high-quality. They were fitted to the remaining contours of the face they’d been grafted to, and there was no sign of machine rot – the festering infection that occurred when implants were rejected by the host body.

Those observances came to Zarrey in something like a daze, relevant but not urgent. He laid sprawled beneath the cyborg as it raised a hand, or what should have been a hand. An artificial limb took over below the shoulder, a mechanical apparatus affixed to its end. Intricate gearing enabled the manipulator to be swapped out and stored, but the affixed one wasn’t something easily recognizable. It was narrow and long, a spike attached to a piston. As the aug slammed it towards him, he recognized it to be a climbing piton, one that hammered into its surfaces with the fluid pressure of the piston driving it. Hammering in for purchase on nonmagnetic material… That was how the cyborgs had moved so quickly. All their limbs had a perfect grip, even on the smoothest stone.

Abruptly recognizing the aim of the spike coming down onto his forehead, Zarrey jerked his head out of the way and the piton carved across the curve of his helmet and punched into the stone. The hiss of pneumatics sounded alongside the impact, driving it in. Splinters of rock flew out, embedding themselves into Zarrey’s neck. He couldn’t help but groan.

The aug yanked the piton out. “Thought I’d knocked you out, Pretty… Boy.” There was an awkward pause between those words, as if the producer of the cyborg’s voicebox had never anticipated they be strung together.

“Not quite,” Zarrey ground out, finding the fresh pain of rock scratching along his neck had brought clarity back to his thoughts. “And, sorry,” he told the aug, a woman, by the feminine sound selected for its voicebox, “you’re really not my type.”

Zarrey’s rifle was pinned below him, and his hands crushed against his chest, unable to reach the sidearm on his hip. One of the aug’s long, winding arms had wrapped clear around him, adding more and more pressure. Without his armor, he was certain the force would be straining his ribs.

Above him, the aug, leaned down, not breathing, but mechanically respirating a stale air onto his face. It seemed to scan him, studying every contour of his face, no doubt sharing that data amongst its colleagues. “Those goggles are in the way, Pretty… Boy.” The aug brought her manipulator forward, the mechanics of its limb storing the piton away and clicking a tri-fingered grappler into its place.

The grappler’s fingers were long and narrow, clearly meant for delicate work, though perhaps it was the most human limb the aug maintained. Its metal glinted a dark icy blue as it reached toward Zarrey.

“Again,” Zarrey told her, “you’re really not my type.” He punctuated that by using the only movement he had: bringing his head forward with all his strength and bashing his helmet into the aug’s face.

Impact brought a satisfying thud, and the aug pulled back a little, perhaps surprised, but immediately tightened her grip once more. The manipulator of the limb wrapped around Zarrey grabbed onto his helmet and yanked it back, straining his neck and exposing his throat. Clicking its free manipulator, the aug reached forward once more. “Did you really think that would hurt me more than you?”

“One could hope,” Zarrey replied, inwardly cursing. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If his goggles went, it would be clear who he was. Age was a strong indicator of rank, and he was clearly the oldest Marine here.

As the aug’s limb moved, it opened up more space between them, just enough to shimmy his hand down to the pocket on his chest armor where he’d stored his melee weapons. They were small, maybe an odd choice where most Marines favored swords, spears or axes. But Zarrey was a simple man. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

He slipped the trench spike on, wriggling his fingers into the holes, then began to feel out the body pinning him down. The aug felt it and let out something resembling a purr. “Find something you like, Pretty… Boy?”

Fucking gross. It figured someone with a body so augmented might take exceptional pride in it, but Zarrey had never liked women and never understood machines, so this might as well be his nightmare bride. Still, he smiled. “Just checking out my options.”

Inching his hand upward, he found it, something soft and squishy. It was vaguely round. For all he knew it may have been her breast, but he couldn’t see, nor did he care. All that mattered was that it felt organic.

The aug tilted her head downward, pinching his goggles between its manipulator’s claws. “How naughty.”

He imagined that voice was meant to be sultry, but the voicebox never fluctuated its tone. “Yep,” Zarrey agreed, then rotated his hand and dug the trench spike in. It slid into the flesh with a sickening ease, and he shoved it down the aug’s chest until it met the metal of one of her implants, then yanked it across her front. Rip and tear, his training told him, and he rotated and twisted, mangling what pieces of flesh he could.

The aug screamed, a deafening, wordless screech of static from her voicebox and peeled herself off of him, ripping his goggles off in the process.

“Shit,” Zarrey said, now floating free, but fumbling in the darkness. He spiraled through the air, completely and utterly blind without his goggles. His other senses compensated, but not nearly enough. He could hear the grunts and struggles of his fellows elsewhere in the stairwell. He could smell the tangy funk of the blood-substitute slicking his hands, warm, but cooler than real blood.

The clack of something hammering into stone greeted him on the left. He whirled that way, catching a glimpse of a dim red light, not something the Marines would have on their goggles. There. He stuck out, but caught only air.

Another clack of metal piercing stone sounded above, but before he could react, six knife-like fingers wrapped around his arms. They dragged him backward and pinned him up against the wall before the faint red light descended to hover in front of his face. “Colonel Zarrey, is it?” the aug asked. “Your wanted photo looks younger.”

Zarrey gathered the liquid in his mouth and spat. “Fuck you.” He was pleased to note the sound of a large raindrop hitting metal a moment later.

“You fought well, but you had no chance in the dark, Colonel.” A new manipulator made itself known, sliding its thin blade-like finger across his throat. Perhaps it was attached to what should have been the foot, though that held little meaning to someone so heavily augmented. All four limbs had equal capability. “After all,” it crooned, “you’re only human.”

“Fight me in the daylight, bitch,” Zarrey challenged.

“No thanks,” she said. “You did a fair number with that knife, but I was careless. It should surprise no one the Steel Prince drilled his crew on how to engage cyborgs.” The points where their implants met their organics were their weakness.

Zarrey strained, pouring all his strength into breaking free, but it wasn’t enough. The aug didn’t even budge. He stopped for a moment, if only to gather his breath. “Don’t touch my team.” He could hear the sounds of struggle dying down elsewhere in the hallway. “Admiral Gives will negotiate for their return.”

“We only need one prisoner.” The Admiral’s second-in-command would be plenty enough leverage.

“If you execute them, he will execute you,” Zarrey warned. “He will not spare your lives for mine alone.” That would not grant them salvation.

“He’ll have to.” The aug reached up once more and pressed a set of goggles to his eyes. It took a moment for his vision to adjust, but then he could see the mottled, bruised and bloodied faces of Yankovich and Santino splayed up against the wall opposite him. Two augs hung in front of them, one limb holding each of their arms, a third prying off their helmets. The fourth limb pinned down their legs in the same way Zarrey had been immobilized. A third cyborg hung behind with one of their rifles in hand, preparing for an execution.

The goggles were yanked from Zarrey’s eyes once more, tossing him back into darkness as he shook his head. “I’m telling you, don’t do this,” Zarrey said. “Spare-” His plea was cut off by the deafening crack of a rifle.

No. He heard a cry leave his lips, but that was the only sound. He’d seen people executed in zero-G. There would be no more sound. No body would hit the floor. It would just float there, limp until rigor mortis set in.

The rifle fired again.

Then it was quiet. The aug gripping him needlessly tightened its grip, cutting into his arms. Then the rifle fired again, its sound so loud Zarrey felt it echoing between his ears, and the head in front of him exploded.

Gore splashed onto him, sticky and warm. Pieces of implants plinked off the stone beside him, cutting his face with the shrapnel. Dimly aware, he registered the rifle firing a fourth time. Then a fifth.

And it all went silent after that.

Zarrey was left staring straight ahead, unable to see, deafened by the sound, and utterly covered in cyborg brains. The aug’s manipulators were still pinning him down, left in their tightened position as her head had been so suddenly and completely removed.

There was a ringing in his ears as he hung there, pinned. It drowned out everything until he felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. “Colonel, can you hear me?” someone asked. “Are you alright?”

Blosse. He tried to open his mouth and acknowledge, but that only allowed a trickle of viscera in. The taste made him gag.

“Hold on, sir,” she patted his shoulder. “I’ll get you free.”

Zarrey felt her move. She pried off one of the manipulators, then moved to get the one pinning his feet. With his free hand, Zarrey wiped his mouth clear of the gore. “The others?”

“They’re alright, sir. Just pinned like you are.” Blosse answered, pressing a pair of goggles into his free hand.

“Aye,” Yankovich confirmed.

“Thank fuck,” Zarrey breathed, wiping the splatter from his eyes and pulling on the goggles. “Good save, Blosse.”

Blosse moved on to help free the others in the time it took Zarrey’s eyes to adjust. He shoved the aug’s corpse away and straightened up, comforted to see his team moving about, slowly getting free. Amid that relief, it took him a moment to realize that Blosse’s goggles were hanging around her neck, broken.

It took him another moment as she freed the others and handed them working pairs of goggles, to realize the implications of that. “Cadet,” he said sharply, “how in the hell are you seeing?”

Blosse’s hands twitched as they fell to her sides, but she made no move for the sniper rifle on her back. Discomfort crossed her expression.

“You just shot five augs through the head in pitch black darkness with broken infrared goggles.” Presumably, she’d killed the sixth to manage that. “How?”

She hesitated for a moment, but eventually spoke in her soft voice. “I’m an aug, sir. I have an artificial eye and the associated implants.”

Zarrey had already suspected that, but the admission was the confession of a crime. “Cyborgs are not permitted to serve in the battle fleet.” Command had banned their service, fearing the Hydra or separatists would corrupt them.

“I know, sir.” Her very existence aboard the Singularity was tantamount to treason, punishable by execution.

“Then why, for the sake of the stars, are you here?” he demanded. “Not to sound ungrateful, of course.”

She flicked her eyes to him, and Zarrey, for the first time, noticed that one was a different temperature than the other, tinted differently by his infrared goggles. “I was born on Rigel III. I didn’t choose to receive the implant. Everyone on Rigel III is a cyborg. Children have their first parts replaced at sixteen.”

“You didn’t want the implant?”

“No. I never wanted to be an aug.” She reached over to one of the dead cyborgs and picked up one of their limbs. “Rigel III is a mining colony. Most of the implants are low-quality. Machine rot is common. When you grow up seeing that and what it does to people… You don’t want to become one of them.” Observing the manipulator in her hands, Blosse continued, “Someone invested heavily in these augs, Colonel. Their implants are worth a fortune, and a specialist with exceptional computer knowledge would have integrated them. There’s too many for them to feasibly use standard settings. They must have been joined and calibrated.”

That was good information, and Zarrey liked Blosse. He trusted her. Hell, she had just saved his life, but her being here was treason on multiple levels. “How in the hell did you survive training, Blosse?” There were physical and eye examinations to be had. “You should have been caught.”

“I paid off the doctor.” She’d poured her entire life savings into sneaking into the fleet. “My family owned some of the mines. I was not born destitute, but I was also not spared Rigel III’s expectations.” Like the rest, she’d received her first implant at sixteen years of age.

He wanted to ask why, but really, that wasn’t the issue at hand. It didn’t matter why she’d joined the fleet. She was a hell of a sniper. “Base fell under cyberattack, Blosse. I need to know, could that implant of yours cause problems?”

“No, sir.” She’d done her research, learned to blend and isolate herself amongst un-augmented humans. “This isn’t the place to explain technicalities, but on the basics, my implant does not have wireless network capability and the Singularity does not have a wireless network. In that sense we are doubly isolated from one another. I pose no danger to her, if corrupted, and she poses no danger to me.”

Given what he knew of the ship’s systems, Zarrey could find no flaw in her logic. “Mighty convenient.”

“I imagine the Admiral planned it that way,” Blosse said.

Planned it that way? Zarrey wondered, then remembered. Admiral Gives had drafted Blosse to the crew straight out of training. “He knows?”

“Yes, sir.” She had feared that revelation at first, uncertain how he had found out or if the famed Steel Prince would execute her for that deception. She would not have been the first member of the crew to die by his hand. “He allowed me to stay, told me I was not the first cyborg to serve on the Singularity’s crew. She flew with some in the War, before it was banned.”

“Works for me,” Zarrey shrugged. In his book, as long as the Admiral knew, it was his problem, not Zarrey’s. “With that in mind, I think we can keep this between us. Right, boys?”

Santino and Yankovich nodded. “Then let’s go see what the fuck Crimson Heart is protecting down here,” Zarrey told them. Between the not-medic they’d found at the top of the stairwell in this isolated part of the base, the battery-powered auto-turret, and the six heavily augmented pirates, there had to be something of value down here.

“Aye,” the Marines around him said.

Bruised and battered, they formed up and continued down the stairs. They moved slowly, cautiously, peering into the darkness. Zarrey was comforted to have Blosse’s artificial eye on the lookout. Clearly, her vision was sharper than an eagle hunting for prey.

Still, nothing else attacked them. The stairs ended, flattening out onto a little landing just large enough for a break area. Tables and chairs had been set up below a light-fixture. A tube of nutrient paste was sitting out, odorless sustenance for the augs left dead midway up the stairs. Beyond the landing was a single door. Heavy, steel, it had a porthole with bars across it, clearly not airtight.

Zarrey stared at it through his infrared goggles for a moment, then let out a perplexed huff. “Huh.” It’s just a door. Since it wasn’t airtight, there likely wasn’t a large space beyond, so this wouldn’t be the treasury, a store room, or even the command center. “That’s weird.”