Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (5-8) Read online

  More than 500 meters long, the cargo ship was of the ‘pizza cutter’ variety with a large gravity disc up front trailed by four cargo pods along the ‘tail.’ As Paul watched the slowly growing ship on the screen he noted that the pods had each been breached, which would account for the dust cloud. The Taiwanese ship had been carrying crushed magnetite, and it appeared that nearly all of it had been expelled into space.

  Worse though was the disc which was missing several large chunks. More than a third of the structure had been cut out, leaving large jagged edges that belied its original, smooth aesthetic design…and made the likelihood of there being any survivors nil.

  “Find an airlock if one’s still intact,” Paul ordered over the comm. “If not go EVA. I want a computer interface if possible.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Borsk acknowledged, then turned to the crewman on his left. “Get the team prepped.”

  “On it,” Markinson said, hopping up out of his seat and heading aft. When he walked outside the bridge he turned right and headed up the curved walkway that angled up into the ceiling, but he didn’t feel the climb as he was only traveling around the artificial gravity arc until he got to the main spine that ran the length of the gravity cylinder. Halfway down he came to the crew quarters and walked inside, banging his hand on the wall three times to get everyone’s attention.

  “Harry, Andy, Kara…get suited up. We’re going for a walk outside,” he said before ducking back out into the hall. He headed up a level into a lesser gravity section and into the prep room, letting the others catch up on their own time. He had his locker open and the bottom half of his vacuum armor pulled out when they got there.

  “How bad’s it look?” Kara asked, walking over to her own equipment locker and pulling out the chest piece of her armor.

  “Like half the ship is missing,” Markinson said direly. “I have no idea what could cause that much damage, but the Archons want a computer download so we get to go inside.”

  “Decompressed?” Andy asked.

  “Most likely. Chunks of the saucer section are visibly missing.”

  “Damn,” Kara whispered, pulling the chest piece over her head. “How far out are we?”

  “A few klicks, but there’s a lot of debris so the Captain’s taking her in slow. If we’re lucky we might find a useable airlock, otherwise we’re using the thruster packs and grapple lines.”

  “Lovely,” Harry commented, realizing that this wasn’t going to be the typical patch job. “Any other fun surprises?”

  “We’ll find out when we get there,” Markinson said, pulling on his chest piece and latching it in place. After that he attached the arms and helmet, then vacuum-locked the armor, hearing the reassuring crescendo of clicks as the separate pieces merged into one airtight unit. A reverse overpressure surge tested for leaks, and after thirty seconds of stability signaled the suit was ready for space via a small green dot on the left forearm panel.

  When the other three were similarly suited up the quartet walked/climbed up into the center of the gravity cylinder and headed forward into the hammerhead portion of the ship that bracketed the linear pair of cylinders opposite the engine bank. In the head of the ship was a large bay that contained several recovery craft, but they skipped past that and headed up above it to a series of airlock ports spread out across the hammer, capable of extending and docking with a variety of craft, as well as cutting an emergency entrance and installing a makeshift airlock if needed.

  Once at the third of five airlocks, situated just above the midline of the ship and the hammer, Markinson and the others waited for the 375m long ship to inch its way closer to the Leo. Once in position the Captain radioed that there wasn’t a viable airlock to connect with, but that they were as close as they dared get considering the list of the ship, which Markinson knew would make for a hazardous crossing.

  Using interior controls, the team extended an umbilical around the airlock then transitioned through two by two, leaving them standing in the cup-like cubical open to space held in place only by magnetic latches on their boots and a few small handholds. Kara moved to the front and aimed a large gun attached to the umbilical at the slowly moving ship stretching out before them. The Leo was so massive that it blocked out almost the entire starfield, but it gave them an up-close view of the damage to the saucer section.

  Kara aimed for one of the holes and fired the magnetic grapple, which silently puffed out trailing a stretchable cable. It disappeared into the dark, gaping hole where the sunlight couldn’t reach, then stretched taught when Kara retracted the cable, indicating that they had a good attachment.

  “Let’s move,” Markinson said over the comm, reaching up and attaching his zip-line hook. “We don’t have long before the ship rotates around and snaps the line, so make this quick,” he said, running forward and off the umbilical, ‘sliding’ down the line with his momentum carrying him along and the tether ensuring he stayed on course.

  Andy and Harry followed him, with Kara bringing up the rear a good stagger back. When she crossed the gap and flew into the dark zone her eyesight quickly adjusted and she saw the large bulkhead ahead of her where the grapple had attached. She brought her feet up in front of her, grabbing the line with her hands for leverage and caught herself on the wall.

  Markinson helped pull her down to the ‘floor’ and get her boots attached, then they manually disconnected the basketball-sized magnet and let the line slowly retract back to the ship before it stretched too far. Looking back out the hole the bottom side of the SR was visible and moving upward, revealing more stars as the Leo rotated downward.

  “This way,” Andy said, pointing into a more or less intact portion of the ship further in from the breach zone.

  Paul and the others watched the images from the SR and the helmet cams of the boarding crew, trying to piece together the source of the damage, sorting and cataloging both stills and vids until they had a wall-sized display screen filled with images that the junior naval Archons were busy tagging. Paul and Roger exchanged knowing glances after the first few images came through, but they didn’t say anything to bias the analysis, but the more and more specifics that came in indicated, as they already knew, that the damage was not internal combustion or asteroid impact…but weapons damage.

  “Missiles,” Roger whispered to Paul.

  He nodded, still watching the live feeds. The recovery team was inside the disc now, working their way through the relatively intact decks headed for the bridge, but they soon came upon a sealed door leading into the bridge hub on the opposite side of the saucer section. Seeing their hesitation, Paul walked forward and keyed the mic.

  “Don’t risk further decompression until we’re sure of the status of the crew,” he warned. “Try and tap into the internal sensors. There should be a redundancy hub two doors back on your left.”

  “Copy that,” Markinson said, and the helmet cam spun about, showing his three armored teammates standing in the glare of his helmet lights. Their orange armor stood out in stark contrast to the soft-white interior of the ship, making them easily recognizable against almost any backdrop.

  An arm shot out into the camera’s arc and pointed back the way they had come, with Markinson following the others back to a side door which was also shut.

  “The panel to the right, just above the floor. Pull it off. There should be a latch upper left near the rim.

  Markinson’s hand reached out and felt along the nearly invisible seam and, after some fumbling with the thick plated gloves he wore, he found the release hatch and pried the meter-wide panel off and floated it back to Andy, who dragged it out of his way. Inside was a series of cables and boxes, all of which were completely dark.

  “Do you have a portable power charge?” Paul asked.

  “Yes,” Markinson answered, reaching back over his shoulder.

  “Plug in to the box upper left, then connect your interface line to the main cable hub in the center.”

  “I see it,” Markinson
said, pulling the small fuel cell off the equipment rack on his back. He dragged out a power cord from an internal spool and connected it to the small box. When he flipped on the power switch over two dozen indicator lights across the panel lit up as power was restored to the hub and the surrounding systems.

  “Good,” Paul said as Markinson proceeded to plug in the interface cord from the forearm module on his armor. “See if you can access internal telemetry.”

  “Hang on one second,” Markinson said slowly, working through the small touch screen using a tiny extendable ‘pen’ on his opposite hand’s index finger to precisely tap the screen. “I’ve only got part of the gravity disc…and nothing in the rest of the ship. The lines must have been severed.”

  “Start there then,” Paul said. “Route power to any cameras you can find, as well as the lights. We need to see what’s on the other side. What’s the atmosphere reading?”

  “One section is depressurized, but the rest still has air. Temperature is -5 to -20.”

  “CO2 level?”

  “High…the scrubbers are down too. If I had to guess I’d say the primary power conduits were cut along with the regional backups…or maybe the backups only recently ran out of juice. I think they’re only rated for 12 hours of moderate usage.”

  “14,” Paul corrected him. “And if the CO2 levels are up then that probably means the crew didn’t die immediately, so there’s still a chance we might have survivors. Can you power up the scrubbers?”

  “I don’t have a lot of power to work with here, but I think I can get one running. Is there another junction box nearby that I can have one of my team members plug into to boost the power levels?”

  “There’s four each level around the disc. I’m guessing the hole ate up the nearest one on your level, you’ll have to climb up the stairwell to get to the next.”

  “I think the stairwell was in the hole too,” Andy said over the open comm. “We can go back and see if we can jump the gap.”

  “Let’s try and make this work first,” Markinson decided. “Cameras first.”

  On his tiny display two icons winked alive…out of 34.

  “We’ve got eyes,” he said, bringing up the first view. It showed total black until he also diverted power to the lights in that section. Half of them didn’t work, but there were enough to show a myriad of debris floating about against a wall, but nothing more. Apparently the camera had tilted during the damage.

  The second one was more revealing, showing what appeared to be the galley and two bodies wrapped in sheets of synthetic material.

  “Can you see this?” Markinson asked.

  “Barely,” Paul answered.

  “Looks like two bodies…no visible decompression damage, but they’re not responding to the lights.”

  “Can you get the CO2 scrubbers going in that section?”

  “Working on it,” Markinson said, switching off the camera view and going back into the system commands. “Yes. I’ll have to divert the flow from an auxiliary area, but it should gradually eat up the bad air.”

  “Captain?” Paul asked.

  “Here,” Borsk answered.

  “Do you have a soft seal portable airlock onboard?”

  “We have 8 last I checked.”

  “Get one over there. I want those bodies recovered intact, dead or alive.”

  “We’ll have to stabilize the ship first, but we’ll get it done,” the Captain promised, then turned to his three man bridge crew. “Get the tethers ready and move us into position. She’s heavier than us so we’re going to have our hands full.”

  “I’m going to have my hands full,” the helmsman corrected him.

  “Sorry,” Borsk mock-apologized. “You’re going to have your hands full. The rest of us are just going to watch and poke fun.”

  “Whoever is going to catch that ship make it fast,” Paul interrupted. “If there’s any chance of survivors we don’t know their condition and the minutes could prove vital, so make it quick.”

  “Already on it, sir,” Borsk said respectfully. “We just have a habit of talking while we work.”

  True to his word one of the heavy magnetic tethers shot out from the hammer-shaped bow and connected with the front of the saucer casing on the Leo. Soon three more attached to strategic points, followed by backups in relatively the same positions to reduce the torsion on the connection points, then they reeled them in taut and the ship suddenly jerked at an odd angle, felt from inside the rotating cylinder.

  The pilot responded with bursts from the stabilization engines that served as the SR’s supersized thrusters when it was pressed into ‘tug’ mode. The pilot was savvy enough to not fight the list too hard, letting the SR be yanked around a bit as he slowly ate into the cargo ship’s list without overstressing the tethers, which would either snap or disconnect if the magnetic lock was broken, and it was a guess as to which would happen first, both were designed for high stress applications.

  It took more than twenty minutes to get the Taiwanese ship stabilized, then another ten to get the soft seal airlock ferried over to the hull breach by a support craft and dragged inside manually by the boarding team. Markinson continued to play with the interface port while the other three hauled the compact cylinder down the hallway up to where he was standing/floating.

  “Two meters back,” he said, pointing behind him. “I want this junction inside.”

  “Will do,” Kara acknowledged, floating the heavy casing backwards while Andy and Harry stood on the opposite side.

  Andy activated the first stage deployment and the casing split, expanding out like a popup tent into a phone booth-sized box. They floated it up off the floor a few centimeters and held it in place as they deployed the second stage, with a ring of expandable material spreading out from the box’s center and forming itself to the shape of the hallway, connected by several hard spokes to maintain the shape and structural integrity.

  Once the liner was in place Kara went around the inside edge and pushed the ring up against the walls by hand, smooshing the clay-like material in place and closing the tiny gaps that formed at the intersection of floor/wall and ceiling/wall. Likewise Harry worked around the outside edge making sure everything was secure before activating the third stage with the press of a button on the hard booth in the center, activating the chemical reaction in the ‘clay’ that turned it into a super-adhesive bonding agent.

  The ring smoked a bit as the outer edge liquefied in the presence of an electric current, then hardened again when it cut out, leaving what should have been a physically hard, airtight seal.

  Andy triggered the fourth stage, which had the flexible material inflate and expand a few inches, drawing it tight and forming a ‘hard’ wall around the booth, giving them a workable airlock to pass through.

  “Ok, ready for the air,” Kara said, with Harry heading back to the docked support craft at the breach point. He pulled a canister off the rig and slowly walked back, making sure his magnetic boots didn’t slip. He wore a small thruster harness on his armor, but he’d learned from past experience that it was better to go slow walking than to fight the erratic flight of the thrusters.

  When he returned to the makeshift airlock he attached the specially designed canister into a slot on the outside of the central box, with it halfway fitting into the slot. Once connected Kara triggered the slow oxygen release into her side.

  “How’s it look?” she asked half a minute later.

  “Slight bulge, but the material is holding. No visible cracking,” Andy said, deactivating the magnetization of his boots with a flip of a switch. He let himself float up off the floor as an experiment.

  “No movement,” Harry reported, “and your side reads at 18% and climbing.”

  “Yours is still zero,” Kara said, reading the mounted atmospheric display. “Better grab another canister. I don’t think one is going to be enough.”

  “I’ll get it,” Andy volunteered, pushing off the ceiling with his hands and getting
a grip back on the floor with his boots several meters down the hallway.

  When he returned they replaced the empty canister and released the oxygen gas into the pressurized side of the airlock, bringing the count up to 52% of Earth sea level, which they deemed adequate for mixture with the ship’s remaining atmosphere. Andy went through the small airlock first, shutting himself inside the booth and letting the air flow in and fill it up before exiting out on Kara’s side.

  Harry came through next, after the airlock vented most of the atmosphere back into the chamber, with a tiny amount lost pushing out against his armor when the door opened. He sealed himself inside and cycled through.

  “Brace yourselves,” Markinson said once Harry was on his side of the airlock.

  The three team members latched onto various door jams with their armored fingertips and stuffed the corners of the their boots into others as Markinson gripped the inside corner of the open junction box for support, then keyed for the door release, already having overridden the safety protocols for an inadequate atmospheric match.

  The double door split horizontally, powered through the linkup from Markinson’s backpack unit, with a strong gust of wind rushing through as the higher pressure of the ship quickly mixed with the lower pressure of the rescue annex. It subsided after a few seconds and Markinson signaled the others to move forward as he pulled off the connecting cable to his forearm computer module and let it retract. He left the power cell floating in place and followed the others inside.

  3

  The lights on the other side were still out so the team only had their helmet mounted-beams to navigate by as they walked into the surviving portion of the ship’s gravity disc. They were on the outermost level of the dorsal disc, with the bridge being located on the ventral, so their first priority was to get to the central access corridor at spin center and cross over. Markinson led the way with Harry while leaving Kara and Andy to do a room by room search for survivors.