The ship was Ayleean, a three–pronged hull like Neptune’s trident peppered with weapons and sensors, built for combat and little else, but there was almost nothing left of her. Clouds of debris entombed her shattered hull, across which great chasms of destruction were filled with flickering fires and trails of escaping gases.
‘What the hell happened to her?’ Olsen uttered in amazement.
***
VIII
Doctor Schmidt spoke from behind his work station, to which he was wirelessly connected and able to assimilate and analyse data and tremendous speeds.
‘No signs of life aboard, captain,’ he reported. ‘Whatever happened to her, it claimed the life of the entire crew.’
‘Any stasis capsules aboard her?’ Olsen asked.
Schmidt studied his instruments for a moment. ‘It’s possible but with all the debris and random electrical discharges I can’t get a clear reading from the ship’s interior. The only way we’ll be sure is if we…’
‘… go inside and take a look,’ Marshall finished the sentence for him.
The admiral clenched the bridge railings more tightly. The Ayleeans were fearsome in stature and temperament, and like many aboard Titan he could recall the horrifying experience of engaging them in combat at close quarters in their own ships, the corridors filled with humid air and moisture, like jungles growing within a steel dungeon. The Ayleeans were skilled and hardy warriors in any environment, but nowhere were they more dangerous than on their home world or in their own vessels.
‘Two shuttles,’ Marshall said finally, ‘one for insertion, the second for support but to remain outside the hull.’
Olsen relayed the command immediately as Marshall turned to Schmidt.
‘I will be there,’ the
Holosap
said before Marshall could make the request. ‘There is enough power to sustain my projection within the hull, but I don’t know how long the ship will last before it collapses. I would advise the Marines to maintain a watch outside the interior and only one platoon to follow me in, just in case.’
Marshall nodded. Schmidt could travel with impunity through the shattered carcass of the Ayleean ship’s hull, whereas the Marines would be in danger of being trapped should the dangerously weakened hull collapse further or, worse, the ship’s fusion cores ignite in a runaway reaction.
‘Order Gunnery Sergeant Jenson Agry and his team to deploy,’ Marshall said to Olsen. ‘I want eight Phantoms on constant patrol and I want those Marines out of there at the first sight of trouble, understood?’
‘Yes sir!’ Olsen snapped, and began issuing orders.
Schmidt vanished from his workstation without another word as Marshall stepped down from his command platform and surveyed the shattered hulk of the Ayleean warship.
‘What are you hiding?’ he whispered to himself.
*
‘Hoo rarr!’
Gunnery Sergeant Jenson Agry’s shaved head reflected the harsh white lights of the shuttle’s interior as the craft launched from Titan’s forward landing bay and rocketed out into the bleak vacuum of space.
The shuttle’s interior was lined with stereoscopic viewing panels that allowed the Marines a clear view of their target and the surrounding environment, as though they were riding in an open–top shuttle in the vacuum of space, essential to provide maximum situational awareness for the troops before they deployed into the enemy vessel.
As the shuttle drew away from Titan’s vast hull two sleek Phantom fighters slid protectively into formation either side of her, the Marines watching the heavily armed spacecraft.
‘The interior of the ship is structurally compromised!’ Agry snapped, his sandpaper–rough voice loud enough to reach every corner of the shuttle. ‘Atmosphere has been lost in most quadrants and is leaking from those not yet exposed to vacuum, so we’ll assume zero gravity conditions will be the norm. Weapons hot, and stay sharp: we all know how the Ayleeans can end up when they encounter CSS Marines!’
‘Toast, Gunny! Hoo rarr!’
The thirty Marines checked each other’s environment combat suits, ensuring that all seals were good and that oxygen levels were sufficient for a one hour deployment into the Ayleean vessel.
Twenty minutes in, twenty out,
Agry reminded himself, with
twenty spare
for the unexpected. Walking into any Ayleean warship was an endeavour neither he nor his Marines would have undertaken lightly – entering a dangerously damaged vessel was tantamount to suicide.
‘Thirty seconds.’
The pilot’s voice sounded through the fuselage and Agry readied himself, checking his plasma rifle once more and glancing into his optical display to check oxygen levels. His heart rate was elevated, but only by four beats per minute: he’d done this enough times to only get fidgety when the plasma started flying. Not recorded by the monitors was the anxiety twisting at his guts, as much now as it had done on his first combat deployment almost twenty years previously. No matter how hardened a soldier became he recalled his drill sergeant explaining to him that the day a soldier stopped feeling fear was the day they were really in trouble.
‘Ten seconds.’
The pilot’s calm voice filled the troop compartment as Agry called out.
‘All arms!’
The soldiers’ plasma rifles hummed into life as they were activated, and each man checked his neighbour’s face mask one last time for gaps in the seals and their oxygen supply via the tanks carried upon their backs. Satisfied, they sat in tense silence waiting for the ramp to drop.
They shifted as one as the shuttle swung around, and Agry heard the sound of the engine exhausts change as the pilot altered his power settings to land the craft in the landing bay he had selected on the vast hull. Schematics obtained from Titan’s logs provided a deck plan of the Ayleean ship for the pilots and the Marines to follow via their optical implants, and right now they were using the closest open bay to the bridge that they could find.
Through the panoramic viewing panels, they could see the Ayleean warship’s shattered hulk, tremendous damage throughout so that they could see deep into the vessel’s superstructure. Then, the side of the Ayleean vessel swallowed them whole as the shuttle entered the landing bay.
‘Deck Charlie, midsection, landing now!’
Agry tensed, one hand ready to punch his harness free as the other held his rifle aimed at the still–closed ramp. The shuttle shook violently as its landing struts slammed down onto the deck and with a hiss of vapor the ramp dropped under hydraulic force and the pressurized atmosphere within the shuttle blasted outward in a white whorl of instantly frozen crystals as Agry released his harness and dashed from the shuttle.
Behind him forty Marines followed in an orderly flood, running with their suits weighted at fifty per cent normal gravity to provide them with extra speed, agility and stamina.
Agry thundered down the ramp onto the darkened deck of a small landing bay, the flashlight on his rifle slicing into the gloom. The deck was slippery with ice that glistened like diamond chips in the flashlight beams. Agry ran forward and then dropped down onto one knee, his rifle pulled into his shoulder as behind him the Marines formed two groups and one giant arc of firepower pointed out into the darkness.
The shuttle’s engines flared with silent white light in the vacuum as it lifted off and pulled out of the bay, ready to return when the soldiers required an extraction. Agry watched the darkness intently but nothing loomed forth to threaten them. His eyes cast down across the ice and sought any sign of footprints, but nothing revealed itself. Behind them, the landing bay doors silently lowered and sealed themselves as the shuttle pulled away into the distance, and suddenly they were totally alone aboard the massive ship.
Agry looked over his shoulder at his corporal, Ben Hodgson, and pointed ahead with two fingers as he looked. Hodgson advanced forward, his soldiers following him as they were covered by Agry’s contingent. Agry watched as they descended cautiously into the darkness and for a few moments there was nothing but silence. Then a series of glowing lights flickered on in the bunker, visible through the observation windows.
Moments later, Hodgson’s voice crackled in Agry’s helmet.
‘Not enough energy remaining for atmospheric heating, but bleeding air into the bay now.’
Agry’s gaze flicked up to the vents high on the bay walls in time to see vapor billow out of them like dark clouds, filling the bay with bitterly cold but breathable air and allowing the Marines to conserve their oxygen supply.
Moments later the lighting in the bay flickered into life and filled it with a deceptively warm glow to reveal an empty structure with no other vessels inside. A red light high on the walls of the bay turned green, and Agry gave a thumbs–up to his men. They switched off their oxygen supplies and opened vents on their masks to allow the air in, but kept the masks on as protection against the bitter cold.
‘Let’s move,’ Agry snapped.
The Marines headed as one for a series of hatches that led into the ship’s interior, all of which were sealed. A schematic projected onto Agry’s mask visor directed him to the hatch he wanted – the one that led toward the bridge deck.
‘Delta on me,’ he ordered. ‘Charlie, maintain the perimeter here and see what you can do about the temperature. Any signs of life from the ship?’
‘Nothing,’
Corporal Hodgson replied.
‘No incoming data so the computers are down.’
‘The Ayleeans are not aboard,’ Agry reassured the corporal, knowing that he and his men would be cautious of encountering Ayleean warriors. ‘But stay sharp.’
Hodgson nodded at the sergeant as he passed by the bunker, the twenty Marines of his platoon following as they approached the hatches and two soldiers eased forward of the rest without command. As Agry watched the two men worked efficiently to set small plasma charges against the hatch’s locking mechanisms and hinges, designed to burn through rather than blast off. The two soldiers hurried away from the charges and moments later the hinges flared brightly with a fearsome blue–white light, drops of liquid metal spilling away from the hatch onto the deck.
‘Rams, go!’ Agry whispered.
Two Marines hefted a metallic ram between them and rushed the door, and with a dull boom that echoed around the landing bay the ram slammed into the smoldering door and it broke free of its mountings and flew away down the corridor, the heavy metal hatch flashing dimly as it rotated in mid–air.
Agry rushed past the ram and into the corridor, his rifle’s flashlight illuminating the passage as several more soldiers thundered fearlessly in behind him, their footfalls echoing away into the distant, darkened ship. Their flashlights scanned the darkness like laser beams, but nothing moved but for the faint haze of moisture and ice clinging to the walls and to dense foliage and twisting vines coated in ice, the limbs frozen in position by the frigid cold.
Agry edged forward, keeping an eye open for opportunities for cover amid the frozen foliage in case something unexpected leaped out at them. The schematic on his visor guided him, overlaying vector lines across the corridor deck with arrows pointing to the bridge. The general turned left at the end of the corridor, glancing right briefly to see another corridor of endless bulkhead hatches stretching away far beyond the reach of his flashlight.
‘Deck Charlie,’ he whispered to his men. ‘We’ll ascend to deck Alpha at the first opportunity and then move for the bridge. Jesson, Miller, you wait here and guard the corridor entrance in case we need to retreat. I don’t want anything sneaking up behind us.’
A whispered
Aye, Gunny
reached Agry’s ears as the two men peeled off and took up firing positions at the entrance to the landing bay corridor. Agry moved on with the same deliberate, cautious gait. The corridor was long, one of the main arterial routes that stretched from bow to stern through the massive ship. .
He posted two more sentries, leaving him with eight men to ascend to the bridge, and then as one they moved into the stairwells and began to climb. The darkness was still bitterly cold, barely above freezing according to Agry’s sensor readings.
The troops climbed up without incident and reached A–Deck, Agry maintaining the lead as he opened the hatches and stepped out onto the deck.
Hexagonal in shape and as dark as the rest of the ship, the bridge deck was dominated by two massive hatches that were sealed. Agry crept forward as his men silently fanned out and formed a defensive ring, alternating men aiming inward toward the bridge doors and outward toward various access points from A–Deck.
Agry placed a charge on the bridge doors, set the timer for five seconds and then activated the charge before retreating to a safe distance. The charge lit and burned with ferocious intensity for several seconds as it seared through the doors’ locking mechanism, illuminating the deck with a flickering white light. Moments later, the mechanism glowed like magma in the darkness and dropped fat globules of glowing molten metal onto the deck as Agry advanced and waved his men forward. Together, Agry and two troopers leaned their weight into the doors. The general raised three fingers, then two, then one and then with a combined burst of effort the Marines slammed into the doors and they burst open.
Agry lunged onto the bridge as his rifle swept around for any sign of a target.
The bridge was darkened, none of the instrument panels aglow and the main viewing panel black and featureless. The flashlights of his men illuminated a series of control panels frosted with ice crystals as Agry moved forward and his light beam caught on what looked like a cylindrical panel, one of three mounted against the far wall of the bridge.
The sergeant eased his way toward the panel, his weapon pointed at it as the Marines behind him saw his path and target and silently formed up into firing teams, ready to blast whatever might come out of the capsules. Agry reached the nearest of the three capsules and took a final cautious step forward, unable to tear his gaze from the sight before him.