Holly and her team had been monitoring from the lower deck of Command near the accessway to Propulsion One while Patterson forayed into Aux Two. She was already armed and had expected Pazuzu to attack Patterson, and then she raced with Moussa toward Sci-Med when it became apparent that Pazuzu had. TURING opened all the doors ahead of them and so they quickly made it to the accessway between Propulsion Four and Farm Gate, and then TURING informed them that Patterson’s team had returned to Sci-Med and Pazuzu was still contained.
They paused. “We got lucky,” Moussa said. He let out a long sigh and smiled in relief.
“Yeah, it could have been worse.” She said it casually but then thought more about what she had said. It could have been so much worse, and he clearly knew it too. If Pazuzu had overcome Patterson’s group before they had got to Sci-Med then they would probably have been killed too. And although Samoylova and Nieves had sealed Command per her own orders, they wouldn’t last long with Pazuzu controlling the rest of the ship.
Patterson’s actions had been reckless. But Patterson was desperate. She couldn’t fault her for that. Indeed, she herself may have pushed her to that by breaking the unity of the crew.
She leaned against the bulkhead and caught her breath while her own guilt weighed on her. And her inadequacy did too. One was supposed to join a starship and spend years learning from senior officers before gaining command. She hadn’t been afforded that time and she had only half a crew. She wasn’t fit for this level of responsibility. She underwent a fit of coughing from the stress.
“Should we keep going and check in with them?” Moussa asked.
She thought about it while catching her breath. Although saying hello and asking if everything was okay might help thaw relations between herself and Patterson, the fact was that Sci-Med was designed to be hard to break into. Command was more vulnerable. And the crewmates she had left in Command were more vulnerable than Patterson and Stocky.
“No, let’s go back and make sure we’re ready for a protracted standoff with Pazuzu.” In the end, Pazuzu hadn’t attacked Patterson. That meant that it may want to attack them instead. Pazuzu certainly understood that if it gained control of Command its victory was assured. It would be able to do whatever it was that it wanted to do with the Nineveh.
The memory of the earlier security drill came afresh in her mind. Just like then, no matter how bad things were elsewhere on the ship, she couldn’t leave Command Gate undefended. And this time she had to think of a way to keep the enemy from getting there.
Moussa looked straight in her eyes for a silent minute. She recognized his look – disagreement. But it soon changed to acceptance.
“I guess we shouldn’t leave Nieves and Samoylova alone,” he said.
She nodded and started back with him toward Command. She collapsed the barrel and stock of her laser pulse weapon, transforming it into a pistol, and stuck it in her belt. It was somewhat uncomfortable but she didn’t want to have to hold it in her hand. She pulled her tablet out of its cargo pocket and texted Nieves that they were coming back.
Nieves met them in the accessway to Command and sighed with relief. “TURING said they made it back safe. They’ve restored the quarantine.”
“Yeah, they’re good. And they have an airlock separating them from Pazuzu whereas we don’t.” She patted each of them on the shoulder. “Let’s quickly get ready.”
She took Moussa and Nieves to the Workshops for gathering material. Going to one of the worktables, she turned on the display and began writing down all the things they needed to do using the available stylus: sentry duty, eating, preparing meals, cleaning dinnerware and cookware, sleeping, personal hygiene activities, reviewing reports, maintenance, forage for supplies in the other Gates, recreation, and physical activity.
“There’s probably more,” she said, “but this gets to the point. There aren’t enough of us to always have a dedicated sentry watching the accessway to Habitation, day after day.”
“What are you thinking?” Moussa asked. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked rather relaxed.
“We’ll mount one of the .338 MLTs in each accessway using overheads brackets. We’ll network their controllers into TURING, and it will act as our permanent sentry. And then I want to have one of us always armed and ready on the lower deck to immediately respond to an attack. That person will be able to do personal activities while on watch so long as they can immediately go to the breach and fight. The rest of us will join the fight as soon as we can get ready.”
“Sounds good,” Moussa said.
She looked at Nieves and got an affirmative nod. “Then I’ll get the forklift and you two gather what we need to take back.”
They split up and quickly but carefully stacked the equipment they needed to make heavy barricades and set up the machine guns. And then Holly drove the equipment to the accessway to Habitation, and then they got to work. They had finished mounting the gun, but not connecting it to TURING, when a series of knocks came on the doorway to Habitation.
Moussa picked up his shotgun and crouched behind the forklift. “It’s here. Call the others.”
“No, we keep working.”
“What if it attacks?” Nieves whispered.
“It won’t.”
“We can’t know that,” Moussa said.
She understood their concern. But she knew, she just knew while listening to the knocking. A low-pitched rhythm which was loud enough to be heard all through the deck but didn’t have the force to dent or puncture the metal accessway door. “Pazuzu is a machine. It doesn’t get depressed or exhausted, but it knows that we do.”
She looked at them sternly to drive her point. “It will take its time and try to wear us down. It’s not attacking us now; it just wants to keep us freaked out.”
“Okay, let’s finish the gun,” Moussa said.
“Yes, let’s do that.” She pointed at Nieves, “go get the rest of our weapons.”
“What for?” she asked with frightened eyes.
“We don’t know it’s physiology. We don’t know what weapons will be most effective. The sentry should always have multiple types of weaponry, and we are all sentries right now.”
Nieves at first just stared as if she didn’t understand, but then she slowly got up and darted back into Command Gate to get their other firearms. Moussa was already back at the machine gun, stepping through the verification procedure. They had a belt of blanks loaded in for that, and they soon verified that it tracked and shot at a moving target (Holly was that target). And then they loaded in a live belt and gave control to TURING.
Holly was so frightened she could hear her own heartbeat. She had thought having the gun available would calm her down but it didn’t. Pazuzu kept knocking, and although she knew that it was because it didn’t know about the gun, a part of her mind wouldn’t let go of the idea that it had no reason to fear the gun.
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She didn’t want to get closer to the accessway door, and she could see the hesitancy in Moussa as well. And having the turret behind them didn’t make them feel safer. But they drew confidence from one another and pushed the first crate (filled with metal sheets) forward till it was just a few feet from the door. The horror on the other side kept knocking and scratching, and with it came a creeping fear that something was wrong.
She had reasoned that Pazuzu was trying to get on their nerves – to wear them down for an attack later. But Pazuzu was clever in unpredictable ways. It had guessed correctly that they had tried to secure the separating accessway before, and it found another way in.
It could try that again. Maybe it knew one of her party (or Patterson’s) was infected. She thought they could manage that threat. Her small group was easy to keep in sight, and they could always meet Patterson’s team when they were all together. The growing fear within her was that it had thought of another way. Something they had failed to identify. (And she had failed at so much.)
She shook uncontrollably while the two of them positioned more crates, and Nieves returned to help them. They soon had a barrier that would slow down the creature. It had to either climb over them, push them out of the way, or squeeze through the small gap they intentionally left. And the turret and sentry wouldn’t make any of those feasible.
She felt safer when constructing the second barrier just behind the turret and from which they could shoot from. And she also felt safer because the knocking and scratching finally ceased. And even though the inner conviction that Pazuzu was working toward something else remained in her mind, she was just glad for the silence. The others were too.
She stepped back in Command Gate and then turned back to survey the whole accessway once they had finished. It looked good, and any other day she felt she would have believed that they were ready for the fight that Pazuzu would bring. But there was still the creeping feeling that they had missed something and their fortifications were all for naught.
Was it just the memory of horror stories mixing with her fear. The cast thinks they have boarded themselves up safe but the killer found another way into the cabin because of plot? But there was no “fantasy plot” to their mission. They were on a very real starship with very real design specifications. And TURING had all of them in memory.
“TURING, report all possible access points for the creature getting into Command Gate.”“The possible access points for the creature to use are as follows:
One: enter through the accessway between Habitation and Command, either using the personnel walkway or the service duct.
Two: pass through Sci-Med and the other Gates and then enter through the accessway between Propulsion One and Command, either using the personnel walkway or the service duct.
Three:”
Holly’s mind began to wonder right there. She had already considered the previous possibilities but now would come the options that maybe she had not properly considered.
TURING continued explaining the possibilities. “Exit the Nineveh using the airlock in Aux Sys Two and then reenter the ship using the airlock in Aux Sys One. Then proceed to the accessway between Propulsion One and Command.
Four: Exit the Nineveh using the airlock in Aux Sys Two and then reenter the ship using the airlock on the Piloting Module. From there it can enter the Bridge through the service tunnel.
Five: Infect or compromise living organisms on the ship which either are in Command or have free access to it.
No remaining possibilities.”
Holly pondered TURING’s information. Getting in through an airlock didn’t seem feasible. They should get an airlock warning alarm if Pazuzu tried to use the one in Aux Sys Two. But even if it had somehow disabled it, they would get it when it tried to use one of the others and they could just remotely lock down the airlock.
It seemed like Pazuzu really was trying to play the same card again. Her gut feeling was just panic. She focused on Moussa since he had the greatest knowledge and experience. “What do you think?”
He shook his head. “I don’t really think it is going to try to enter another section of the ship using an airlock.”
“That would actually help us,” Nieves added. “We would already have it off the ship and would just need to keep it out.”
“So it will either try to force its way through our guns or corrupt someone from the inside.”
“Seems that way,” Moussa said, “and we have a plan either way. I’ll get monitoring systems in the service ducts.”
She nodded in approval of his work plan. “We have to monitor one another carefully. I want everyone to be inspected upon waking and going to sleep. We’ll look for any previously displayed symptoms and check temperature. And we’ll watch someone more carefully if they appear sick.”
She saw their agreement and then changed the subject to the other team. They were outside of their view most of the time. “Now let’s talk about Patterson, Chandna, and Stocky. I’m know that they are human for now, but we can’t keep track of them with how things are. What kind of weapon would reliably kill Stocky if he was corrupted by Pazuzu?”
“I’m pretty sure the .338 is the best option,” Moussa said. “It’s proven on the battlefield and at taking big game.”
“And if it jammed? What is available for us to carry?”
“We have the one EM rifle,” Moussa said. “I’m sure it will put a hole straight through him, but it’s dangerous to use it inside of a starship. It’s long rail is unwieldy too.”
Holly absolutely agreed that it was dangerous. The EM rifle was designed to shoot through military grade hardsuits and the armor of top-of-the-line combat droids. It was a weapon to be used only when facing a threat which could not be stopped by anything else. Because the primary hull and critical systems were only protected from small arms fire. However, the danger of Pazuzu warranted its use. “It’s dangerous to place explosives too. I want to know our last resort options. Is that our best weapon?”
Moussa bobbed his head around for a second while thinking. “The twelve gauges are probably the best options.”
Nieves shook her head. “The hostiles on the Marco Polo tried using shotguns against Stocky and Patterson. It didn’t work.”
“We don’t know how proficient they were with them. And they were using number two buck. We’ll load ours with double aught.”
She remembered them after the confrontation. They covered themselves with gauze in the Marco Polo’s medical bay. They had even received head wounds. But they were still able to walk and work. They were a terrifying sight. Especially Patterson – because no human should be able to do that.
She remembered the blinding speed of Patterson when fighting the Fuller-creature, and how she had incapacitated Samoylova so easily. She was even more enhanced than De Silva – some kind of hypersplicer.
And Stocky was even better engineered. Fallen Angels. “Are you sure? They were pretty bandaged up when I saw them afterwards. But they weren’t hurt. We need to be able to kill them fast if they become controlled by Pazuzu.”
Moussa explained his reasoning with apparent certainty. “Number two is a good mankiller. That’s why we use it too. But if you try to take a distance shot at someone crouching behind cover then it might not have enough energy left to be lethal after passing through that and clothing. I suspect their crew tried a lot of shots like that. There were many large rooms and long corridors on that ship. And maybe Stocky took a few straight on, but he’s rugged enough to handle it.
Double aught will be a whole different story. And the baddie won’t have any cover when it’s coming through either of those accessways. We should try to kill it with shotguns and only use the turret or the railgun if that don’t stop it.”
It also can’t be a danger to us. “A twelve gauge won’t punch a hole through the pressure hull like the EM rifle?”
“Definitely not unless if you shot it point blank. And the pressure hull is behind the plating of the hab volume and a couple inches of insulation. It’s not like you can get a direct shot at it.”
“That seems like our best bet then. And we will inspect them before they set foot in Command Gate.” She looked at Moussa. “I want you to be the next one to get sleep, after Samoylova wakes. Rest and refresh your mind and then think of any engineering improvements for our defenses. My mind is forced to conclude that we’re in a good position, but I have a weird feeling that something is off. Regardless, we can always get better.”
He gave his agreement and then she asked, “Are there any last suggestions?”
At first it looked like everyone was in agreement to end it there, but then Nieves spoke. “What about Ghost? We have to find him too, since we will be monitoring everyone.”
Moussa covered his face with his hand. “I haven’t seen him for hours!”
“Same here,” Holly said. “He was in Habitation Gate with us hours ago. We can’t go there and get him.”
“But he might be here,” Nieves pleaded.
“Yeah, that’s possible. He could have followed us when we went to the Workshops earlier.” Moussa stuck his hands in his pockets while letting out a long sigh. “He likes to eat. He’ll come around soon if he’s still with us.”
That lingering feeling that something was off crept up Holly’s spine again. Was that what we’re forgetting, or is there something more? She looked at her companions. “Call me if you see him. We need get him in a pet carrier.”
Holly walked over to the other side of Command Gate and had TURING open all of the accessway doors to the Workshops to make it easier for Ghost to show himself. She pondered about what else she could do. They discussed a path that seemed best to all of them, and so maybe she was just needlessly doubting herself again. But then again, she had felt secure with the defenses erected in the accessway to Aux Two.
She so wished De Silva was still with her.