“Alright, boys,” said the Lieutenant, and Corporal Wakelin rolled her eyes. She knew he couldn’t see her, but cocked her head in the hopes he would know she was annoyed. She wished they were far enough out for gravity so she could shift a hip.
“We got about half a million meters of hallway to check, and maybe three shifts to get it done. Thomlin, shut up, I don’t need commentary or details.”
He racked his rifle. “You are still on patrol. There is still the chance that we will face boarding parties. There are still hostiles in this system and every indication that this station is their primary target. Nonetheless,” he said, and she imagined him chewing the imaginary cigar butt she suspected he was missing in the suit, “we have as yet encountered no boarders, and we know that there are in fact a lot of people dead from decompression.”
She heard several disgusted groans and gags on the channel.
“Stow that! Your opinions are not required. You will do search and rescue, and you will break up and do it in the most quick, efficient, yet thorough manner possible. AI navigation is online, but when and if it becomes unavailable you will use your little pea brains and follow the chain of command, or Sarge here will get me a chain and I will beat you with it until you figure out who is in command. Are there any questions?”
“Uhh-”
“Thomlin, shut up, that was rhetorical. Now move out!”
She racked her weapon and checked her nav, turned and triple-timed back up the corridor with a squad behind her, something totally unsafe in microgravity without this hard armored shell. It was nice to have a hardsuit.
“Course plot. Squad channel,” she ordered, and saw she’d drawn the Hydran sector with nine boys. She addressed them while they rocketed for a tube in that direction.
“Alright boys,” she said, checking to see that they all were in fact boys. “You know the drill. Spit and polish, just run down the halls and do triage. We got medical teams on standby, so if you see someone you can’t help, you keep moving, but call it. We’re on the clock.”
She heard mumbles from aight to geez, but didn’t really care. Their suit AI’s would report any significant insubordination for review, and if necessary she’d shoot one and the rest would get the idea. They collected at a drop chute as another team whizzed by headed for the Colovan delegation.
It was a long chute, an elevator that ran all the way from here in the axis out to the lower levels close to the surface. She activated the grippers on her boots and planted herself on the floor side before starting the descent. Most of the team did likewise, though several attached themselves to the walls and even a couple to the ceiling. She didn’t bother to correct them; as soon as gravity kicked in, they’d find out well enough, and maybe learn something.
Sure enough, they were proven idiots before they got as far as deck twenty. Those on the floor started hooting and catcalling those who ended up on their asses.
“Stow that. None of you clowns have more than three neurons to run together, so help ‘em up and make room. We start dropping people below deck ten, and if you’re still goofing off by then I’ll space you myself.”
They settled in a few seconds.
“Hey, Wakelin - maybe we find a pressurized closet for a little R&R time while we’re down here?”
“You don’t got enough pipe to entertain me, Clatz. I’d have to open you up and start pulling out your colon, so don’t tempt me. Now shut up.”
She resituated her armor where the growing feeling of weight was settling it uncomfortably.
“Marquez, level nine,” she said, slapping his chest and gesturing for the rest of them to start queueing for orderly exits. “Plavitz, eight. Coriatch, seven,” she called. Marquez got off on nine and the doors shut behind him.
“Belltane and Set-Truha, take six.” Plavitz got off on eight.
“Frame Nine units, you take level five. The rest of you guys are on four, and I’ve got three alone.”
She chinned the circuit off and talked to the AI. “Why are there more people as we go further out?”
“There is more corridor to search, more damage, and more terrain variety.”
What the hell? “Terrain?” Coriatch stepped out on seven.
“The Hydran sector has many flooded corridors, some filled with fluids breatheable by non-Hydrans. These sections must be checked separately, and will slow the patrols.”
Oh, no. Hydrans - water breathers. She sighed as Belltane and Set-Truha stepped out on six to fire alarms, and waited while the Frame Nine boys got off on five where there were no lights, and faced in opposite directions with guns out before the doors closed. Well, it was what it was.
At level four the door refused to open.
Uh-oh. Vacuum that far in was not a good sign. She resisted the urge to turn and make eye contact with someone - anyone - and straightened her spine.
“Override, open the doors.” The door opened with that horrible fading whoosh that indicated all the air was going, and taking all the ambient sound with it. She felt the small shift of balance as the air leapt into an empty corridor, dark like five. The last of the squad stepped into the dim passage and and signed to each other which way to go. They cast myriad beams of light that played off the walls. She watched one step on a wall painting that was in the floor and shook her head.
“Alright, Wakelin. You’re a soldier. Blowing people open is your job. Don’t get squeamish.”
But her mind kept flashing back to a decompression on a civilian transport they’d come across. She’d found a little girl swollen, burst, frozen that way. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth against the memory of burst eyeballs, her little tongue shoved so far out the stuffed doll had frozen to it.
She asked one more question. “So why do I get three alone?”
“You are of higher rank, and assumed more capable.”
“Great,” she sighed. “Proceed.” She chinned the squad channel.
“Watch the weird terrain, maintain radio silence unless you have something to request or report.”
Being alone in the elevator where she knew there was now no air gave her a strange sense of surrealism, like being in her armor in a market district, in a queue with shoppers and canned music. She shook the feeling off and resisted the urge to unrack her rifle just to have something in her hands.
The elevator stopped on three, and registered that the area beyond was vacuum. Wakelin rolled her eyebrows, but didn’t bother to berate the AI for reporting a danger on the other side of the doors. The same vacuum was on this side, but it wasn’t the AI’s job to tell her about the air inside the car, or lack of it.
“Override,” she said, frowning at the weak sound of her own voice.
“Come on, Jan. Get hold of yourself. You’re a big girl with a big gun and a big bad powered armor suit. What have you got to be afraid of?” But she knew it wasn’t fear for her own welfare that bothered her. It was the fear that she would be able to do nothing for the people she found. She thumbed the button again, but couldn’t help the prickling at the back of her neck when it opened. She stepped out into the corridor and stared.
Not more than twenty meters to her left the hallways flashed and sparked in silence as a loose high-voltage cable squirmed under the magnetic fields it generated as it arced against reinforcing mesh that had utterly failed. The floor had shattered, exploded upwards through the ceiling. She walked over, astonished, and stared in wonder down through the gap. Three levels below was the breached surface, a depth of nickel-iron rock that hadn’t stopped a fold-augmented impact as it blew its way into the station. She looked upward, but saw nothing useful - a lot of foam where breach systems had tried to seal the hole. Below, not even that. Just stars swinging by.
“Wow.” She had nothing else.
Jan Wakelin turned back around to see a stylus lying in the corridor, glinting in the light of her helmet lamp. Something in her mind wanted it to float and rotate in the air, but there was plenty of artificial gravity, just no atmosphere. She scrunched up her face and wished she could rub her eyes.
Such a normal thing, a pen lying there in the floor. “Focus, Jan.”
She checked the nav- she was supposed to police to the end of the hall here. She looked that way; nothing to see. “Next leg.”
It turned her back the other way, past the elevator. She walked down the hallway, turned a corner and noticed a difference. The floor at the other end was glittery. “Low light mode,” she said, but the resulting monochrome told her little. She did note that the floor at the far end of this section of hallway was irregular.
“Thermal.” Her video shifted to show a different set of boring and uninformative shadings. Everything was cold. Wakelin sighed.
“Full augment.”
The corners were filled with a foreign material. She squinted and advanced.
“Standard view.” At least she could use the head lamp. She marched forward to where the hallway turned and branched, and saw bits fly and skitter underfoot where the ridge of the boot shaved it off.
She realized the floor was iced over.
“Where’d all this water come from?”
She rolled her eyes, tapped her helmet with the heel of one gauntlet. “Duh. Hydran section, Wakelin. Use the bean.”
She stood there looking at the ice and crusted salt from some severe sloshing, and thinking out loud. “An impact that would blow through level three would cause a pretty good bit of splash, eh?”
Something moved in the corner of her vision. Lamps converged and she almost grenaded it in sudden panic.
A rescue/recovery drone puttered around the corner looking for survivors.
Geez, Jan, get a grip. “No luck, buddy?”
It stopped and inspected her briefly, determined she was not in need, headed back the way she had come.
She heard/felt through her boots the peculiar thump of a room decompressing.
Oh gods.
Jan turned and ran the hallway around the corner, but it was blocked by a blast door. She located the seal, but it was offline.
“What’s the status on the other side of this?” She checked the sally port, but would never fit through the mini-lock in this suit.
“Vacuum. System reports recent unsuccessful attempt to repressurize.”
“Open it. Get this door up, now.”
The yellow lights on the blast door went red and flashing, and it began to rise ever so slowly.
“Come on!” She beat on the door, but there wasn’t enough atmosphere for the sound to carry anywhere other than in her own suit. She grabbed the bottom to help lift, but the door far exceeded the suit’s augmented strength. She had to wait.
The squad channel squawked to life. “Corporal? I think I just heard a thump.” It was Morrell, on the floor above. She chinned the circuit open again.
“I think it’s here on three, stand by.”
The door finally got up enough for her to scoot under without getting stuck. There was a lot more ice here, and fog. A little further down her nav noted that the flooded corridor adjacent was the next phase of the search, but indicated she should finish the “dry” sections first. The HUD kept plotting where she’d been.
The ice got thicker, piling up, and she slipped onto her armored behind. “Cleats,” she demanded as she climbed to her feet again. The suit activated the metal studs on the boot soles. They helped a little.
She chinned the squad channel off again. “Any activity on this level?”
“There has been one individual here using the terminals recently. Before that, nothing for sixteen hours. Before -”
“Cut. Show me to the last access.”
Her HUD displayed a path to the terminal last accessed. She made double time, and left the iced area behind. There were more blast doors here.
“Status?”
“Vacuum. System reports recent unsuccessful attempt to repressurize.”
“Same as before. Open it!”
She unracked her weapon waited while the door rose, twitching.
Please, don’t let it be boarders.
Please, don’t let it be killing people.
