7. Entebbe Emergence

"It's late, sir." said the Detection Operator.

"I know, " said the CO, who decided to take the bridge for the morning’s festivities.

"What do you want to do, sir."

"Nothing."

"Eh?"

"There's nothing we can do if it doesn't arrive. We can transition to ship mode and move it locally, but there isn't enough crap around here in space to hide the mass footprint. Any MDI* will find us in seconds, so, we wait," said the Captain

While the techs and engineers were running about making instruments of destruction and mayhem, the officers had come up with a plan. There were 4 emergence subspace buoys at galactic cardinal points 8 light minutes from the station, and while there was no real way of telling which buoy any ship might use, normally they used the closest in the 'direction' they were coming. Directions being iffy in subspace, they decided to hedge their bets. The ships counter insurgence team was at the East buoy, the most likely emergence point.

The three other teams were cobbled up from crew and officers that had combat training at some point in their careers. The XO was at the South, COB at the north and ENS Eagles was at West. The plan took the three SAR craft they had available and put them at the other three buoys, The CO basically figured that he could drop of the combat team in their 'boarding craft' a big tank that the welders had crafted an EVA module as motive and mating surface, which would put the most experience combat team at the most likely emergence point and the unarmed and unarmored SAR ships well out of harm's way. The system tug was hanging out about halfway between, and the other teams as reserve, 35 and 45 minutes away at max accel.

"Don't you think it's dangerous to have Perez out there, when we need him here. What if something happens," said Koznar.

"That's poor logic. Tell me why, and I'll give you a hint. Who are the 5 most combat capable members in the crew?" asked the Captain.

"Muschivk, Perez, you, the XO, COB," said Kosnar, right off.

"Take me off the list, because I can't leave the ship without causing some severe damage to morale, sector command would crucify me if I did and we’ll need that morale to get through the next couple of weeks."

"Couple of the enlisted guys, Rhodes and Jones, probably."

"Right, then you have the locally trained guys and some of them are okay."

"Okay, so Perez gets hurt or killed and we get the module, we got enough he's already done, that we can probably live. But if we don't get the module we die regardless."

"Gold star, Mr. Koznar."

"I can guarantee that if something happens to Perez, Sevrinofsky will swim her way over there to bail his ass out. I'm not sure why that is, because she acts like she doesn’t like him at all, but I can see it's so," said Koznar.

"That's right. That gives us a motivated ready reserve," said the CO.

The CO busied himself with housekeeping, approving maintenance, looking at work packages and training schedules for about an hour. The control watch tried to do anything but watch the clock.

* * *

Perez hated the waiting. All the little dustups and missions, the waiting was the worst. The time just dragged on by. "Sally, play the Doobie Brothers," he said.

Joe leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. "Doobie Brothers?"

"Yep."

"Put it on the speakers, " said Muschivk.

"Sure. Aren't you worried they might hear us," asked Perez

"Don't be an asshole," said Muschivk, "I know we're in space."

‘Takin it to the Streets’ started playing on the makeshift systems in the environmental tank and the SAR vehicle they called a makeshift boarding ship. The hatch to the tank was open, so he could clearly hear the strains coming up from the speakers in the tank. Perez gave up and started going over his kit again. The battlesuit armband display was green, helmet display green, weapon display connection green and comms display greens. He wondered if the designers played this old 20th century video game series, by the long time defunct Microtheft Software called Halo. The modern battlesuit bore an astonishing resemblance to that suit.

He sat back and looked at the status display, 15 minutes till go time. He shook his head. There’s no way the shuttle was gonna be on time, not with this kind of welcome. In all the missions and ops he’d done, not one had ever gone off on time. Perez decided to try and take a nap.

“Perez,” said Muschivk.

“Yeah,” said Perez.

“You gotta plan when the lock doesn’t open? Cause you know it’s not gonna,” said Muschivk.

“Yup. Several. There’s a couple of the new batteries in this tub, which is enough power that I can bring up an entire section of the ship, hopefully including the internal security network. If the thing is holed and won’t hold air, we can go in through the hole. I have magnets and cables, I have the EVA welding arm mounted to the inside of the lock, I tried to bring everything I might need. It’s got no armor. It’s just a big shipping container and a tug, like the SAR’s are.”

“Do we have any entry cameras?”

“Not real ones, but I made some last night. They aren’t as tiny, but they’ll do.”

The entry camera was a spike with a fiber optic cable in it. Gave a nearly 270 spherical view and was meant for looking on the other side of a wall, door, bulkhead. The thing was really small, size of a small needle. You slapped the silly thing on the wall next to a door and it poked through enough to see what was on the other side. A special ops entry camera had some extra features, tough to replicate in a couple of hours, things to access on board systems, hosts of injection nano-surveillance robots, gases and the like.

“So, what’s your plan now?”

“Take a nap,” said Perez.

“Sounds like a good plan.” said Muschivk.

Perez closed his eyes.

“What are Perez and Muschivk doing right now, you think, ma’am,” said Rhodes, bouncing his suit helmet around from knee to knee.

“Sleeping,” said Sevrinofsky.

“You think?” said Jones.

“It’s what I’d be doing if people who should know better would stop asking me dumbass questions.”

“Sorry ma’am. I guess I’m nervous. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this,” said Rhodes.

She and Rhodes were in the control cabin of SAR Two. The pilot, an Air Wing Tech Sargeant, looked back at them and said, “We are still linked. We are getting info results from all the buoys in real time. All comms and the grid is green.”

“Do you have any music,” asked Sevrinofsky.

“Music, ma’am?” asked the pilot.

“What, you don’t know what music is? It’s a rythmic combination of noises that soothes the savage breast.”

“I know what music is, ma’am, I was sort of wondering what for,” asked the pilot.

“To soothe the savage breast, and to woo the unwary. Play some music. Classical if you have some,” said the XO.

“S2, do we have a music library,” asked the pilot.

“Yes, we do,” rolled a computery voice from the console.

“Play some, make the team lead happy,” said the pilot.

Wagner spilled from the speakers, as the team sat back and waited. Sevrinofsky closed her eyes and drifted off to a quieter place with fewer stupid questions.

* * *

“Emergence, Emergence,” said the Subspace Detection Watch.

"Contact, Emergence, East, velocity. relative, zero. No IFF from the buoy, no signal," said Mass Detection over the comm.

"Scan it, Salkauskus," said the Captain.

"In prog sir, give me about thirty... here we go, the buoy reports mass is identical to the supply ferry, shape is approx identical, energy reading is zero. No lights, sir. No anything. Temp is 290 Kelvin approx It’s the supply ferry, sir. With no power, " said Petty Officer Salkauskus.

"Not good."

"Comms sir, Muschivk reports the same, and asks permission to board. "

"Tell him to get in position and wait for my mark. I want the other combat teams moving first, and I want to see if it explodes or takes off or something and try to query the ship's AI."

"He wants to know if he can put a cable on the lock connector," said the Comms Petty Officer, Mitch Landis.

"Nope. Wait. I know he hates waiting, tell him I'm sorry, " said Cohen

"Aye, sir. Tell him you’re sorry but no, " repeated Landis.

“Sir, I have subspace verified comms to the East Bouy, but the ship does not respond.”

“Tell SAR One to do a 360 around the middle belt and see if there is any obvious damage. And make sure they get within suit radio range, 10km or so. Then tell SAR’s Two, Three and Four (such as it is) to get moving.”

“Aye, sir,“ said Landis.

“Sir, SAR’s Two, Three and Four acknowledge and are moving,” said Landis.

“What about SAR One,” said Cohen.

“No reply yet, sir”

“Put up the Bouy One on Tactical.”

“Aye, sir,” said Koznar.

“It’s up on center tactical, sir,” said Salkauskas.

“I can see that, Casey, thank you,” said Cohen.

The entire middle of control lit up into a big 3 meter oblate spheroid of graph lines. The ship in the center, it covered 16 light minutes of space and showed SAR One and the ship as one dot. The other SAR’s had short contrails attached to them, showing high acceleration. Cohen reached into the display with a stylus and touched the SAR One dot. It expanded into a sub tactical view that showed the ferry ship and SAR One moving around it. He did a little zippy Z thing over the ferry with his stylus and a 3D hologram from the SAR opened up.

“Tell Muschivk, when SAR Two is 10 minutes out, to put a line on the emergency entry lock. If he can power up the lock, it should give him a line to DCA.”

“Aye, sir,” said Landis.

As the SAR moved closer to the ferry, the tension in control ratcheted up several notches. The other SARs contrails got longer; they were ramping up the accel.

* * *

“Wake up,” Perez opened his eyes to a large expanse of dirty gray metal on the viewscreens.

“Well, I guess it showed up,” said Perez.

“An hour late and without power, and it doesn’t respond to hails,” said Muschivk.

“I’m not guessing. I need a cable to the emergency entry port. That will let us talk to the DCC AI, if there’s anything left of it.”

“Skipper told us to make a loop around the ship before we attach,” said Muschivk.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Perez.

As the bloated and ungainly SAR/tank combo lumbered around the ferry ship, the ship’s AI highlighted some darkened splotches on the cargo container. It labeled them anomalies. The pilot punched a query into his keyboard. The SAR AI said, “Discolorations not present on last recorded model, 14 T-standard days ago.”

“What could cause those. They aren’t holes or dents, just dark spots,” said Perez.

“Not willing to speculate,” said the AI.

“I wasn’t asking you,” said Perez.

“Apologies. Anomaly. Temperature consistent throughout the target. This is unlikely with a normal environment,” said S1 AI.

The AI overlaid the ferry display with a colored 3d cutaway that showed the interior of the ship at a calm blue, but the outside sun side beginning to warm up. The dark spots were a little warmer than the rest of the hull. The EM drive was completely cold, the subspace drive was cooling from a higher temp.

“They dumped the air,” said Perez.

“All right everyone, wake up and get tight. It looks like the ferry ship was boarded somehow. This is gonna get interesting. Krug, call the ship and tell the captain, he probably already knows, but it’s time to get in there,” said Muschivk.

“How do you know they were boarded,” asked the SAR pilot, Krug.

“That’s the only reason they would vent the air. The only reason to keep it vented is the crew is trapped or dead and the boarders are still there. Okay folks, turn your exit velocity all the way up and your mass profile down, we want the rounds to frag on contact with the wall, not punch though.Watch out for spalling. Oh, and don’t freak out, we don’t even know the species of the baddies,” said Muschivk, “they could be very ugly indeed.”

“Any reason we can’t use the emergency lock,” asked the pilot.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“None compelling. We could go pro’s and con’s, but I think it would be a wash,” said Perez.

The SAR boarding ship made it’s slow way down the frame of the supply ship till it got to the emergency lock. It poised there and matched velocities with the lock frame. The tank was an EVA module welded on the front of a water storage vessel with most of the internal baffles removed. The SAR ship aligned the lock of the EVA with the emergency lock on the ferry ship and slowly closed the gap.

“Hold up,” said the pilot, “CO says we have to wait another 5 minutes or so. He wants the next team less than 10 minutes out before we dock.”

“Ask the ship if we can make the emergency connection,” said Perez.

“Ship says yes, but try not to set off any traps.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” said Muschivk, “Perez, don’t set off any traps.”

“Right, do my best, no traps,” said Perez.

A very small torpedo detached itself from the front of the EVA Module and swam across the void between the ships. It found a small depression next to the big lock and locked itself in place. Perez climbed down the ladder and placed his palm over the inside ship connector, “Okay Sally, see if you can raise the DCC AI. It should still have some power.”

“No response,“ came across his headset from the AI, “No power anywhere on any lines I can access. Recommend connecting the Emergency Power System.”

“Sally says nada,“ said Perez, “we need to jump it.”

Two of the team grabbed the handles on the coffin sized ‘battery’ and moved it toward the lock. Another opened a panel on the side and pulled out a cable. He looked at Perez.

“Master Chief, we’re ready for lights on.”

“Ship says no activity anywhere, and to go ahead. The other SAR teams are around 10 minutes out,” said Muschivk.

Perez looked at the three sailors, and said, “Let’s do this. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

The one with the cable bobbed his helmet and jumped the 100 meter gap. Perez followed, jumping to the side a bit. Then the two moving the battery jumped. After about 30 seconds the first sailor flipped, bent his knees and landed right next to the dock, with nary a clang (space, no air). Perez hit about 5 seconds later on the other side. The two coffin carriers hit below and to the side, pushed the battery up against the hull and whacked a panel. It settled against the ship with a “thud” felt, rather than heard. Perez said, “Light it up, Jugs”

“Aye, Chief, ” said cable guy, and he plugged the extension cord into a socket beneath the communication panel. He turned around and motioned to the on control of the battery pack and he reached into a receptacle on the coffin and turned a switch. A bunch of lights around the lock lit and started to circle. Sally said, “Accessing lock recording. Lock cameras active, IR, Visual, UV negative. Opening.”

The lock door recessed into the ship and slid sideways. All 30 feet of it.

“Sally, why didn’t you use the personnel access.”

“Faster speed of ingress determined more important. Ships air not present so the size of the hole and the refilling of the lock not at issue.”

“You are right. Sorry.”

“Apology unnecessary.”

“Sally, can you access to DCC from here,” asked Perez.

“No. DCC AI is not responding to query, in fact, no equipment appears to be on this network at all.”

“Joe are you still on the line,” said Perez.

“Yeah,” said Muschivk.

“We need to get to Aux Con on this tub and access the data replication. Something really bad happened here. Tell the pilot to pull away once we board. I want my ride. If we have to run,”

“Good idea.”

The rest of the team, 20 sailors jumped along the cable for the ferry ship and landed above the lock. Muschivk swarmed down the ladder and jumped, landing next to Perez. He brought a sounding box and mag clamped it to the hull next to the comm cable, and swapped the cable with one from the little radio. The cable zipped on back to the SAR, and the SAR moved back away about 500 meters.

“Sally can you open the inner and out lock doors. There’s no air so the interlocks shouldn’t be active,” said Perez.

“Yes, now,” and the inner door slid open and out of the way.

“Let’s go,” said Muschivk.

They entered the ship, and Perez turned to the side of the lock, opened a breaker panel, “Every one of these is tripped. What the hell happened here,” he asked.

He shut the master and started shutting the auxiliary breakers one by one. The lights came on in the corridor and along the local section. “The emergency lock is on the same level as AuxCon and one level above Engineering. The mating ring is right below us,” said Perez.

“We turned the lights on and some power. Something’s gonna come look for us,” said Muschivk.

“Is that your Spidey sense,” asked Perez.

“Yes, and are you gonna tell me why you call it that one day,” asked Muschivk.

“One day, maybe, but probably not.”

“It’s a way off, but something’s coming this way. Let’s move,” said Muschivk.

They couldn’t run with no gravity but moved in leaps. It took them about 90 seconds to move along the inward corridor to Auxiliary Control. The corridor curved slightly to the right, and the cascade of lights stopped just before the hatch. Perez said,” Sally where’s the power to this hatch.”

A green mesh overlay popped up as Sally accessed the ferry ships electrical systems. A emergency jumper connector symbol appeared in his HMD right below the entry control for the hatch. “Well, that makes sense,” said Perez, “My suit can power the door for right now.”

Perez pulled a power connector out of his kit and jumpered into the power pack on his suit. He pushed the breaker on the plug and the hatch entry panel lit up in red. “It’s locked down. Sally open it with the ship’s override code.”

“Get us in there now Perez,” said Muschivk.

“On it,” said Perez.

The door slid aside and the only light in the mid-sized circular room was the helmet lights on the suits and the glow from the hatch entry. All the equipment and displays were dark.

“Get in there and shut the door,“ said Muschivk, “Then set up an entry camera in the hatch portal.”

“Yes, Master Chief.”

The team took about 10 seconds to get into the circular room and when the last one was through Perez said, “Shut the door, Sally,” and the door slid shut.

“We need to get the power on here and get the Auxiliary Shields up as soon as we can. Now would be good, sixty seconds ago would be better,“ said Muschivk.

Perez grabbed one of the suited behemoths and said, “Let’s find the emergency donkey generator, Tailles.”

“It’s over here, Chief,” said Tailles. His helmet light played over the panel as he walked towards it, his small suit gravity field making him look like a dancer in the night, then he stood over it and flipped open a panel cover. “Here we go. This should bring everything up in the room when the procedure is finished. Do we have time for diagnostics?”

“No. Get it up, now,” said Muschivk.

“Okay, Master Chief, “ and he hit some buttons and turned a key switch.

Small thump, then a rythmic pulsing came from the floor beneath the panel. About ten seconds went by, and the generator control panel lit up. Tailles hit the breaker connection to bring up the control room, and all the lights came on.

“Shields, Tailles, where are they.” said Muschivk.

“Over there,” pointing at a panel in the center ring. Perez strode over as the gravity came up to near to 1g, and looked at the shield panel, hit the start button to charge them up and equalized them. The whole process took about 15 seconds.

“Can you get hold of the ship and the other SAR teams,” said Muschivk.

“I think so, who’s comms in this motley crew?” said Perez.

“Me, Chief, “said a suit with Lin on the front.

“You heard that, get to it,” said Perez.

“Aye, Chief.”

“We got a portable cannon with us, “asked Muschivk.

“Yeah, but it’s on the ship,” said Perez.

“That was stupid.” said Muschivk.

“Not really, unless we knew we could defend this, we had no reason to bring it along. Would of slowed us down. Joe, what the hell is out there. You seem pretty nervous,” said Perez.

“Got the ship, and SAR Two, Chief,” said Lin.

“Perez, I don’t know what’s out there, but I can feel them. They’re right outside the door, and above the control room,” said Muschivk, putting his gauntlet on the door frame. “They feel... hungry.”

“Well, we’re not going to find any bodies then, I wouldn’t think,” said Berg, another power tech standing next to Tailles.

“Entry camera, Perez, “ said Muschivk, “Lin tell the SAR Two to wait on entering. I want to get them all bunched up so the XO can hit them from behind. That’s why we played this little game.”

“You’re using us as bait,” said Perez.

“Literally.” said Muschivk.

“Just call me Judas Perez,” said Perez.

“Wish I had a dead goat,“ said Muschivk, “the things out there don’t feel smart, just hungry. The shields seem to really diminish their ability to sense us. If the secondary team has a shield wall to work with, we might be able to make them ignore us altogether.”

“Don’t think they do. We don’t have a complete Interdiction team, just the odds and ends you were able to make OutSystem give us,” said Perez.

“Turn the shield on the door off for 10 seconds then back on,” said Muschivk.

“Okay, here goes,” said Perez. He made some gestures over the diagram and pushed down on the door shield. The AI overlay showed the shield down over the door by reducing the glow on the hatch. Several seconds later the whole room shook when something hit the hatch. Something big.

“Well shit,” said Perez as he turned the shield back on.

“We really need that entry camera now, “ said Muschivk.

“What the hell are we dealing with here,” said Lin.

“No clue,” said Muschivk, “it sorts of feels like bugs, but bigger.”

“Space bugs? That’s just awesome,” said another suit.

“Now all we need is a huge can of Raid,” said Tailles.

A sizzling sound came through the floor as the room shook again and the shield came up. “Or maybe a bug-zapper,” said Perez.

Muschivk said, “We are going to exterminate these things. I don’t intend on losing any sailors to any damn, bugs. I don’t care how big they are. Is the bridge defense system still operational?”

Perez said, “Nope, something happened to the bridge AI. It looks like it’s wiped. All the support code and backups, too. We would have to either rebuild it from scratch, or copy another AI, and I’m not sure one would volunteer. Something really bad happened up there. Sally, are you willing to slot up here and see what you can figure out?”

Perez’s helmet display lit up, and Sally said in his headset, “I’ve been trying to reboot the central programming for the Auxiliary Control Room for about 2 minutes, Randy. The central code and memory storage aren’t just wiped, it’s been zeroed. I can talk to all the systems, but there is no supporting expert system anymore. I can’t find a backup, at least not in the storage library. The whole ship database is wiped.”

“Can we control the whole thing manually? The ship, I mean. Can we move it,” asked Perez.

“Sure, Randy. We can move it. Those calculations are fairly simple. It’s the rest of the systems that make this difficult. It’s as if your autonomous nervous system got wiped and you had to remember to breathe and make your heart beat as well as run, talk and chew gum,” said Sally.

“Can you control the defensive system? Cameras, ship’s security should have a separate backup somewhere. The defensive program isn’t an AI. It can’t be,” asked Perez.

“Hey Perez,” said Lin, “Doesn’t the EVA module have most of those routines? And no AI, right? “

“Hey Lin, you get a bonus. I think it’s pretty close to the ferry base code setup as well. Let’s see,” said Perez.

“Hurry this up,” said Muschivk, “SAR Two is almost here. We need to get those things attention, so they don’t notice that team.”

“Sally can you copy the EVA OS as a base for AuxCon to get some basic functions up and running?”

“I can, Randy, it will take some time. I am currently trying to access the security systems computer, but it is powered off, and I cannot determine its physical location,” said Sally.

“No dice, Master Chief,” said Perez.

“Okay, so it will take about 90 seconds for Team Two to get onboard with the cannon and move in behind the whatevers. As soon as they are ready, we open the door and do our best to kill them and not be killed, for about two minutes. Then we shut the door, and Team Two lets them have it with the cannon.”

“Can we bring up the shield with the door open,” asked another suited figure with Rey’marr on his chest.

“Nope,” said Perez, “but you gave me an idea for later.”

“Worry about later, later,” said Muschivk.

“Yes, Master Chief,” said Perez.

“Okay, here’s what we are gonna do. We’re gonna deactivate the shield and wait for them to hit the door. Ten seconds later we are going to open the door and fire through it. After that, it’s anybody’s game. We wait two minutes then we shut the door and reestablish the shield. Team Two will fire the semi-portable, and then we repeat. Everybody understand?”

A bunch of grunts, nods and the occasional, “Yes Master Chief.”

“Lin, tell the Skipper what we got planned,” said Muschivk.

Pause, “Response: Skipper says, don’t be stupid and good luck. Try to find survivors, “ said Lin.

“Acknowledge that,” said Muschivk.

“Did, Master Chief.”

Perez knelt by the hatch and put the jerry-rigged entry camera spike against it. It started to slide slowly through the wall like a hot knife through butter. After about a minute the base of the thing was pressed firmly against the wall.

“Put it up on the monitor, Perez,” said Muschivk.

The monitor darkened then displayed a picture of the empty hallway.

“Where are they,” asked Perez.

“They’re there. Not sure why we can’t see them,” said Muschivk.

“Lin, drop the shield, see what happens,” said Perez.

“Okay, Chief.”

The door stopped glowing. A couple of seconds later a big long shape appeared in the hallway. It swung a big foreleg at the door, and the door and frame shook and flexed.

“Put the shield back up.” said Perez.

Sparks flew as the foreleg smoked, then the creature disappeared. “Well, that’s something you just don’t see every day,” said Perez, ”Smoke in a vacuum. I think our penetrators will work just fine on these boys.”

“Turn the gravity down in here and two guys on the ceiling, one on the side and two on the floor in front of the hatch, and don’t any of you bleepin shoot each other,” said Muschivk.

“First contact. We meet the aliens and shoot them. My kind of day,” said Perez.

“Shut up, Perez. Drop the shield, Lin. Open the door, Perez on my mark,” said Muschivk

The praying mantis shape appeared in the hallway and swung at the door. Another appeared behind it. “Now.”

The door sprung open, and a bug shape outline disappeared in a hail of tiny high-speed projectiles, as the sailors opened fire splashing ichor all around the hallway when it exploded. The sound was silent, but the deck and walls shook with the impacts. The shape behind didn’t fare much better. The brightly lit hallway was splattered with green and yellow gunk and chunks of bug looking pieces.

“Wait, said Muschivk, “there’s more of them.”

“How many,” asked Lin.

“Can’t tell.” said Muschivk.

“They coming?” Perez asked.

“Yeah,” said Muschivk.

“I think we need to shut the door and bring the shield up. They must be jumping through subspace and the EM shield interferes with that. I have no clue how they do it, but it makes tactics impossible,” said Perez.

“Not impossible, just difficult,” said Muschivk.

Perez shut the door, and Lin brought the shield up.

“Team Two is next to SAR One. They can be here in about two minutes,” said Lin.

“Tell them to hold for a couple of minutes, we’re setting up another trap.”

“XO says she wants in,” says Lin.

“Drop the shield and tell her to move now,” said Muschivk.

They waited about thirty seconds and there was another thud on the outside of the door. The entry camera showed another fuzzy praying mantis shape. It swung at the door again. Thud. The outline started to get fuzzy.

“Open the door, but be careful and stay out of direct lines,” shouted Muschivk.

The door slid open and the thing outlines firmed up and it turned towards Perez, who stepped forward and kicked it back into the hallway. Everyone on the comm link heard the suit servos whine as he turned the amplification up. The bug bounced off the ceiling of the passage and exploded into tiny pieces. Perez jumped back as high velocity rounds spanged through the door. There was some more firing in short bursts.

“Anybody hurt,” asked Muschivk.

“Perez, Muschivk, everybody okay,” asked the XO over the comm.

“Yep.”

“What the hell were those things,” asked the XO.

“No clue, but we think they ate the crew,” said Muschivk.

“Ate,” said the XO.

“Yep,” said Perez.

“XO, I think that was the last of those things around here... I’m gonna take my team down to Engineering and get this tub moving toward the ship. I suggest you head on up to the Bridge and we power this thing all the way up. Team Three will be here in about half an hour, and that will give us almost a full crew,” said Muschivk.

“Sounds good to me. I can take the bridge and release your techs to help,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Not a chance. You can go up there, but the AI is wiped. I’m going to beg you to use your computer genius and figure out what the hell happened. You can’t run the ship from there,” said Perez, “Pretty please.”

“Wiped? What do you mean, wiped. Somebody murdered the AI?” asked Sevrinofsky. She was still in shock from the previous exchange.

“Sally, transmit your collected data to the XO’s PIM please, and no I don’t think so... but I’m not the computer expert here, you are,” said Perez.

“What do you think happened,” asked Sevrinofsky.

“I think it suicided,” said Perez.

“The data is consistent with your hypothesis, Randy,” said Sally on his private channel.

“This is crazy, but I’ll take these boyos up top and see what we can see. Let me know if your Spidey sense tingles,” said Sevrinofsky her blank helmet looking straight into Muschivk’s blank helmet.

Muschivk said, “Am I the only one not in on that joke? Let’s get this ship searched. It’s possible someone in a shielded engineering suit might have survived. No smaller than groups of four. I’ll try to warn everyone if anything comes up. Lin, Tallies, and you two, man AuxCon and try and get the internal systems up if you can. You probably won’t accomplish anything till we get the ships plants up.”

“Yes, Master Chief,” said Lin.

Globules of goo and junk were drifting around making visibility difficult for the first hundred meters, then they got to the side shafts and it all cleared up.

“Man, cleaning my suit is going to take hours,” said PO1 Dribble.

“Quit whining, Dribbles, think about what it would look like if you weren’t wearing a suit,” said Perez.

“Sorry, Chief.”

They traversed the tube and opened the door into propulsion control. The subspace control panel had a few lights on it, but the room was otherwise dark. Their helmet lights threw off a light glow that illuminated but didn’t glare, and the suit display drew in the rest giving the control room a video gamish display look.

“Perez, get the lights on in here,” said Muschivk.

His AI illuminated the emergency power control panel, and he walked over and hit the status display. It lit up green. A fusion reactor needed power to start up. The standard emergency system had a stack of cold fusion batteries specifically designated for reactor restart.

“Do you want to scan for life signs before I start this thing up? It’s gonna take about 30 minutes from cold start.” asked Perez.

“Oh, right.” said Muschivk, ”Dribbles, take three guys and head aft, look for heat sources and life signs.”

“Yes, Master Chief,” said PO1 Dribble. He motioned and 3 guys left the room heading aft in long low leaps.

Perez put the battery on the hotel load bus and the lights came on in the Engineering Control room. He put the instrumentation bus on the battery and said, “Shit.”

“What.”

“No AI here either. But there’s a set of computers that can run the plants, it’s just a pain.”

“I know that. I’m just as qualified as you are,” said Muschivk.

“Sorry, must be a little tense,” said Perez.

“Sally, is the diagnostic program for the Fusion plants intact,” asked Perez.

“Wireless network not available, Randy. I can’t connect.”

“Oh, right,” said Perez. He opened a panel in his suit and took out a cable and walked over to the combined control panel and plugged it in the diagnostic port. The port lit up.

“Connected,” said Sally. ”Commencing power plant diagnostics. Applying power to control systems.”

“Wait, are you running them?” asked Perez, "Can you run the diagnostics yourself?"

“Yes. The command program is not running. I am running the diagnostics before I start the emergency modules. The Emergency Module control program is pretty stupid,” said Sally, "It assumes the ship is intact. Who wrote this crap?"

“Somehow I feel redundant,” said Perez.

“Statement: It’s okay, Meatbag. You’ll get over it,” said Sally.

“I knew I never should have let Barb program your irony parameters,” said Perez.

“By the command program not running, do you mean it’s gone too?”

“Yes, Randy. It’s been destroyed. Which is odd, because it’s not self-aware. But I surmise the same thing that you must, that the crews PIM were either slotted or connected when the aliens emerged on board.”

“Yeah, Sally, I think they struck out blindly.”

“Agreed.”

“Let’s get this plant up and get this tub moving.”