Goliath, p.16
Goliath, page 16
“Changed your mind then? Maybe this ship isn’t deserted after all,” Davido said grimly.
“Yeah, maybe.” Prentice looked into the airlock again, perturbed by what may lie beyond it.
“There’s nothing alive on this ship,” Sollander insisted. “Anything could have done this. Who knows what kind of internal damage she came across? There could be all kinds of hazards in there.”
“You don’t flee from a collapsed bulkhead,” Davido said. “You don’t hide in an airlock without taking the time to collect your suit first. Something scared her. Something bad.” He turned and looked for the twins. “Marco. I think we need heavier ordnance. Go back to the shuttle and bring the big guns.”
“Can’t, Boss. They’ve taken the shuttle further down the passage.” Marco said from somewhere in the gloom behind them, he was still trying to find a means of boarding one of the vessels gathered in the landing bay. “We’ll have to wait for them to come back.”
“Didn’t I see you bring some with you?”
“No, sorry, Boss. Sollander had us bring along extra oxy and power cells. Without the shuttle we need a way to restock the short life suits.”
“Damn.” Davido looked around the darkened bay, starting to feel distinctly uneasy. This woman had suffered a violent attack, in a place where that should have been impossible.
Yet here she was.
“Maybe they did it to each other,” Payce offered his opinion. The man was standing some way back, trying to stay out of the way. Trying not to be involved. As his companions turned to him he looked somewhat embarrassed, as if the words had sprung unbidden from his mouth. “It’s a possibility.”
“It is,” Prentice agreed begrudgingly.
“What interests me,” Sollander said as she stood and walked into the lit airlock, “is what drew the air from this chamber. Both doors are sealed and I sincerely doubt she did it to herself.”
Davido joined her. It appeared some sort of emergency battery had been recharged, the lock remaining powered even after the cable was unhooked. The inner controls appeared active also. “You reckon someone on the other side killed her?”
“Someone did it. These things have failsafes. They don’t cycle by themselves.”
“Well, the only thing to do is to take a look,” Prentice said.
“The body?” Davido asked.
"She’s not going anywhere. I think we should leave her here. I have some body bags in the shuttle ... thinking ahead,” she said defensively.
“You intend shipping her to the Overtakers?” Sollander asked.
“That’s what we do isn’t it? You should know that better than anyone.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” She turned away so that her distaste could not be seen. She needn’t have worried; her face was well concealed within her helmet. She didn’t like the Overtakers, she didn’t like what they did with the dead. She particularly didn’t like what the Mentors did with the dead. It was quite ghoulish.
“What have you stopped for?” Prentice asked, looking over her shoulder at the holographic keypad on the inner door. The engineer’s hand was poised above it, as if unsure what to do.
Sollander said nothing, unwilling to trust her voice. She glanced back, ensuring no one was standing in the outer threshold. She held up a hand, stopping Davido from stepping into the lock. Two was enough of a risk. For now anyway. She instructed the outer door to close and started the repressurisation cycle.
“We should wait for the others.”
Sollander cleared her throat. “We should take a look first. Ensure it’s safe.”
“One of Davido’s goons with a gun would have been my preference. But hey ho.”
“There’s nothing alive on this ship,” Sollander insisted.
A warning light in the ceiling began flashing as air flooded the chamber, hissing through a dozen vents at knee height. ‘Maintain Suit Integrity’, blinked urgently in holographic symbols over both doors. With a click, the pressure equalised and the lettering vanished.
“Well, this is it.” Sollander stood back as the inner door hissed open.
The atmosphere within the airlock remained still as the inner door slid into the ceiling, proving that at least this part of the Goliath retained air pressure. The two edged forward, allowing their suit lamps to illuminate the space beyond the door. Neither was particularly willing to be the first out of the airlock, both haunted by the woman’s dead body. Despite Sollander’s insistence, it was hard to believe her death had been accidental. Even for Sollander herself. And if it wasn’t, something on this side of the door had killed her.
“Ok, let’s take a look.” Prentice leaned forward, peering into the darkness that surrounded them. She couldn’t see much. The space beyond the airlock was a large one, a transit area of some description, the deck marked with coloured lines and inscriptions. The bulkheads were lost in the gloom; her helmet lamp couldn't reach that far.
“Oh, come on.” Sollander stepped past her, clicking her lamp to high beam.
Shadows fled, bleached from the monochrome chamber by Sollander’s lamp. Her boots thumped on the rubber deck as she scanned around them, casting her light about the space. “It’s a loading area. Quite deserted.”
“Not quite.” Prentice joined her, casting her light to the left of the airlock. An assortment of equipment was collected alongside the lock, aluminium trunks pushed up against the bulkhead. Two of the lids were popped off, the contents strewn on the deck about them.
“Ah, you see. This is interesting,” Sollander commented, noticing a pressure suit dumped over one of the trunks like a shed skin.
“Yeah. She left her suit out here. Why would she do that?” Prentice studied the suit. It appeared in functional order, the helmet was propped up against the crate next to it.
“There appears to be blood on the controls here too.” Sollander noticed a bloody handprint partially obscured by the glowing holographics. “So, you’re going to say she was in too much of a rush to take her suit with her. That she was being chased?”
“And you’re still going to insist there’s nothing to be worried about.”
Sollander said nothing. She noticed a footprint on the deck. It was human and unshod. The shape of the foot perfectly inscribed in blood. She aimed her light to the other side of the lock, following its back trail. “Ah,” was all she said.
“What?” Prentice followed her lamp light. “Ah,” she echoed the engineer.
The bloody footprints led to a swirling, congealed mass half a dozen metres from the airlock. It was clearly blood.
“Lovely,” Prentice said, approaching the mark gingerly. “Ok, so something bled out here.” She kneeled to inspect it, picking some grisly remnant from it.
“What is it?”
Prentice held up the knotted clump of hair. She didn’t comment. She didn’t need to. “Ugh.” She dropped it back onto the stain. “There’s a lot of blood here.”
“But no body.”
Prentice rocked back on her heels to look into the darkness. There were more footprints scattered around the pool, leading back and forth, trampling through the blood and then disappearing into the gloom. There was no sign of what had happened to the body.
“Yeah. I’m starting to feel right positive about this,” Prentice said.
“We have to think about this logically,” Sollander said. “We don’t know what happened here. We don’t know what this means. It could be anything. We need to keep our minds open.”
“No, we know exactly what happened here,” Prentice said. She stood, her knees creaking. “I've seen this before. A hundred ... a thousand times. The Parking Lot is full of marks like this.”
“What, blood on the deck?”
“Exactly that. And this scares me.” She pointed a gloved finger at the swirling mass. “I don’t mind admitting it. This scares me shitless. I’ll tell you why: it’s because this is new. This happened no more than a few days ago. Those other marks, they happened eighty years and more ago.”
Sollander began feeling impatient. “This ship was abandoned eighty years ago. In all that time there have been no indications there’s been anything amiss aboard. The Mentors certainly never picked anything up. And they were careful, believe me, I've seen the reports.” She paused. “We were at war with the Syat and these ships were our primary offensive and defensive weaponry. They went to great pains ensuring they were decommissioned. There’s nothing alive on this ship. Nothing at all. The AI itself was shut down. There’s nothing here.”
“Are you sure of that? You’ve actually seen the Syat report where they searched every single centimetre of this ship?”
“Well, not as such... I've seen an abridged version.”
“Abridged? What does that mean?”
“They left certain things out. Details of weapons systems, AI schematics and instructions that would allow us to bring it back on line. That sort of thing.” She refrained from continuing. From mentioning the Syat had never actually boarded the warship. There had never been any need to. Whatever happened here happened long before they chanced upon the derelict vessel. There were no survivors, the AI systems themselves had been trashed by the Goliath’s own crew.
“Abridged, my ass. We don’t know anything then, do we?” Prentice followed the bulkhead away from the airlock. Apart from a horizontal red line at about shoulder height, it was featureless military grey. The bulkhead curved inwards slowly until it met a wide passage, another heavy door set just within it. It was open, vague racks and equipment visible in her lamplight beyond.
"We do know this wasn't Syat," Sollander said. "This mark isn't the same as all those others. You and I both know the Eaters didn't feed on humans for nourishment. That was never what they were after. They were always interested in what made us unique. Our memories. Our personalities. Our bodies never interested them."
"Yeah. The Parking Lot is certainly full of a load of decapitated bodies. I've seen enough of those." She knew that wasn't always true. Caught in a feeding frenzy the Eaters would just take the head, cleanly severing it from the body before pursuing their next victim. But if they had the time to savour their conquest they took everything. Their victim would be kept alive for a while, terrorised as they suffered a slow agonising death. Like a chocolate savoured in the mouth. Terror was tastier. There would be no blood left over. There would be nothing.
“We need to set up a base camp here,” Sollander said, changing the subject. “We can start sending teams out to find signs of the original mission.”
“I don’t think you’re paying attention. Something happened to them. Something bad. If we rush in the same thing’s going to happen to us.”
“Well, we’re fortunate your client brought a lot of guns with him, aren’t we? We came here to do a job, let’s get it done.”
“You know, I’m not altogether sure why you’re here,” Prentice retorted. “What was the reason again?”
Sollander ignored her, turning her attention back to the airlock. She cycled it quickly. “Davido, can you hear me?”
His voice was faint, the armour of the door blocking the radio signal. “Yeah. What’s taking so long?”
“You’ll see when you get here. Start passing the equipment through the lock. I recommend everyone come through. Leave one person to get in touch with the shuttle when it returns. Someone with a long life suit and—“
“Yeah, let’s talk about it once we’re on the other side of this fucking door.”
Leaving Sash behind to await the shuttle the rest of the crew squeezed into the airlock, their equipment slung over shoulders and squeezed between their booted feet. Within minutes they had joined Sollander and Prentice in the transit area. The bloody mark drew their attention straight away.
“Well, this is pretty conclusive,” Davido commented.
“Yeah, Boss. It’s blood all right. I reckon I know what happened too,” Marco said.
“I can see it’s fucking blood, genius.”
“How many were there? In the first mission?” Marco turned to Sollander, ignoring the jibe.
“Six.”
“I reckon two are accounted for. That leaves four out there somewhere.”
“Great deduction,” Sollander muttered.
“No, that’s not my point. Look.” He pointed at the bloody footprints, his lamp sweeping over them. “How many do you reckon there are? How many pairs I mean?”
“Oh, fuck. I know what you’re getting at.” Prentice followed the tracks back towards the darkness.
“Well, someone let me in on the secret, then,” Davido complained.
“There’s more than four,” Sollander said.
"How can you tell?" Davido studied the marks. The activity had clearly been frenetic, the footprints were smeared, mixed in with handprints, splashes and congealed puddles. There was a lot of blood. It was difficult to believe that all that blood came from just one person.
“Deduction,” Marco said icily. “Also, they’re clearly not wearing shoes.”
“Uh uh, no way. Let me stop you right there,” Sollander said. “You’re going to suggest there are people alive on this ship. After eighty years? And that those people attacked the first crew.”
“They more than attacked them. They ate one of them.”
“Shit, no way. Why did you bring me up here, man? I don’t want to be eaten by some maniac,” Payce said, backing up against the still glowing holographic on the airlock door.
“I’m with you there,” Ferena, one of Prentice’s crew, joined him. “I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”
“Shut up. Just shut up!” Prentice waved impatiently at Sparky as he signalled her sharply, not wanting to take the time to decipher his hand signals. “Let’s not lose it completely here. We don’t know what happened.”
“Two people are dead, that’s what happened,” Marco said.
“We’re going to end up dead too,” Payce muttered. “Can I go back to the shuttle now?”
“No!” Davido turned his back on the man in disgust. “Listen, the first team didn’t have guns. We do. If anyone tries this with us, we’ll blast their asses to hell.”
“Damn right, boss,” Marco agreed.
“Shoot the fuckers,” Duncan agreed.
“Shut it, Dunc,” Marco told him.
“We’ve not come all this way to turn around now. We have to find out what happened to the rest of the first crew,” Davido said.
“We have to consider the possibility there’re all dead already, Davido,” Prentice said quietly.
“Yeah, well I aint presuming nothing until I've seen Sissy’s dead body.”
“Then we go looking for whoever did it and kill them dead,” Marco agreed.
“That’s my plan,” Davido said. “She’s my sister. If anyone’s harmed her they’re mine. I’ll let Marco loose on them.”
“Yes, boss!”
“Let’s reel our machismo in here a bit shall we?” Sollander snapped. “We have no information. We have two bodies. Well, we know two people are dead. That’s it. Everything else is conjecture. Davido here has some nice shiny guns he’d like to use, so we’re safe. There’s nothing to worry about. So, why don’t we just get on with what we’re here to do?”
“Well put,” Davido agreed.
“We still need to be cautious,” Prentice said. “The first team clearly came unprepared. We don’t want to make the same mistakes they did.”
“How many guns do you have?” Sollander asked Davido.
The man shrugged, the gesture lost in his suit. “Marco and Dunc here are tooled up. Pistols, shotguns, machine guns. I have a shotgun. There’s more on the shuttle,” he chuckled, “a few grenades.”
“Well, the shuttle isn’t here now, which is actually for the best. We don’t need no grenades going off in here,” Prentice said. “My guys are not armed, so we’ll have to depend on your team.”
“No problem,” Davido agreed. “They know what they’re doing.”
“I’m sure they do,” Sollander said curtly. She lifted an arm to her visor, clicking a control set into her wrist tab. “Oxy’s good in here. A bit cold. We can shed these suits.”
“Define cold,” Davido said.
“About ten degrees Celsius. Which is actually warmer than I would have thought,” Sollander said. “There must be a heat source in here somewhere.”
“I think we should leave the suits on, boss,” Marco said. “These things are virtually bullet proof. They will give us a lot of protection if we do run into something we can’t handle. We can leave the helmets here. And take off your life support unit if you can ... there’s no point carrying the weight.”
“Um,” Davido agreed. “Sash, you on line?”
Her response was faint. “Yeah, boss. Nothing happening here. Shit it’s dark. Hey man, you’re lucky I’m not afraid of the dark.”
“You aint afraid of nothing, Sash,” Marco chuckled.
“Cut the crap,” Davido interrupted. “Sash, you got sight of the shuttle?”
“Nah. Nothing here but me and the ghosties. Hey, one of these spaceplanes is open. There’s someone inside.”
“Alive?” That sparked his interest.
“No. Long dead. Looks like one of the original crew. She’s in a navy jumpsuit. No pressure suit, so this bay must have been under pressure before they opened the doors. I think I might be able to fire up the spaceplane, there’s residual power in the flight systems.”
“Yeah, great. Let Prentice have it, it’s not what we’re here for. Can you get the shuttle on the line? We need them back here.”
“Give it a try.”
Davido turned to Prentice. “Looks like we have some salvage for you. I thought your comms system would hold up under these conditions.”
Sollander chuckled. “Aboard a civilian ship, maybe. Not a warship. They’re built differently.”
“Yeah, so it seems. According to your abridged report, right?” Prentice muttered.
“At least I came prepared.”
“What else did your report tell you?”
