2217 Hours, March 12, 2543 (Military Calendar) /
UNSC Mayberry, Acheron, Zeta Reticuli System
Reardon's team of techs swarmed over the Mayberry, clad in blue environment suits and giving orders to the ODST Marines who were carrying the techs' heavy scanning equipment. The ODSTs wore their traditional gray-black suits with dark helmets and silver visors. They also had special rebreather units fitted to their backs to lengthen the time they could survive in the harsh Acheron atmosphere.
The ODSTs seemed none too pleased to have to lug around spook junk in addition to their suits, armor, and weapons. That was one thing ODSTs had in common with the Spartans: both groups disliked ONI.
But Sergeant Hurd kept her troops in line, and the grousing was kept to a minimum. It didn't matter much since Reardon seemed oblivious to it anyway, spending most of his time holed up in the laboratory.
Once the Spartans had helped the techs repair the door in the loading ramp bay and seal any remaining holes, the Master Chief made his way to the lab. He found Reardon and two ONI scientists in deep conversation near the stasis pod of the comatose Piers Batelli. Other scientists were peering at the living "larva" in the tank, which scrambled frantically at the glass as they murmured into their datapads.
As he approached, the Chief was able to pick up the scientists' discussion over the proximity COM channel. "We have to open it," one of them was saying to Reardon. "We need to confirm specimen viability."
"Are you crazy?" said another. "What if it didn't complete the infection process? It might jump right off him and come for us!"
Reardon waved a hand to silence their argument. "No, look, the logs say he had the thing on his face for an hour before they put him in stasis. There's no question infection has occurred. But we can't risk any damage to the specimen. If we have to, we'll move the entire pod into one of the Pelicans."
One of the scientists noticed the Chief looming over them and flinched, startled. Reardon looked up from the control panel. "Ah, Master Chief," he said. "How goes it out there?" Unlike the specialists, Reardon wore an ODST suit; the silver faceplate hid his face entirely.
"The airlock door on the loading ramp has been repaired and all holes sealed," said the Chief. "The techs estimate it will take about four hours to repressurize the ship using the oxygen tanks from the Pelicans."
"That's fine," said Reardon. "We'll be heading out to the derelict soon anyway." This instigated another round of argument as the two scientists-and a number of their colleagues-began jockeying for a chance get a first look at the derelict.
With an inward shrug, the Chief turned and left the lab. It was time to check in with Linda, whom he'd ordered to patrol the area around the Mayberry.
"Blue Two, report."
"Area secure, sir," said Linda. "It's quiet, if you don't count the wind. I have been getting some intermittent contacts on the motion tracker. Nothing specific, and it's never around long-could just be a rock rolling in the breeze."
"Acknowledged," said the Master Chief. He added Ollie to the COM channel. "Blue Team, be advised the lieutenant and his team intend to move on to the derelict momentarily. Blue Two, I want you to stay here with the remaining personnel. If they get attacked by whoever hit the Mayberry, I want a Spartan with them."
"Understood," said Linda.
"Blue Three, you and I will accompany the LT to the derelict."
"Aye, sir!" said Ollie, unable to hide the enthusiasm in his voice. The Chief suspected it might have bothered Ollie not to visit the derelict first, but Linda didn't care either way; for her, life was duty. And if things got dangerous at the landing site he wanted Linda, with her cool disposition and dead-eye aim, here to help the Marines.
The Master Chief headed to the airlock. The techs made room for him as he cycled through, sharing the chamber with a bored-looking ODST carrying a satchel of equipment.
Outside it was midnight on Acheron. The Chief activated his image intensifiers and the landscape flickered into his field of vision. A few ONI specialists and Marines were carrying equipment to and from the Pelican they'd landed a few dozen meters from the Mayberry. The Chief had insisted they leave the other Pelican at the original landing site with a skeleton crew. While the Mayberry seemed deserted now, something had attacked it, and until they knew what did-and where it was-the Chief wouldn't feel safe anywhere near the ONI ship.
He was certain Reardon knew more than he had told them. The LT had already reviewed the ship's logs. It was the first thing he'd done upon arriving. But so far, he'd brushed off the Chief's attempts to find out what had happened.
That bothered the Chief-a lot. His job on this mission was to keep everyone safe, and he was lacking the most important piece of information: the nature of his enemy. They weren't Covenant, he was sure of that. He was also sure that whatever had happened to the Mayberry had something to do with the alien derelict.
He called up a map of the area, derived from a few brief scans aboard the Tyger before they'd left. He located Linda, who was about hundred kilometers away and moving toward the ships in order to secure them, as per his orders. Ollie was in the Mayberry's engine room, helping the techs with their repairs.
Satisfied, the Master Chief began to walk away from the Mayberry, along the side of the Pelican and into the darkness of Acheron. The wind howled angrily, as it did endlessly on this desolate world. He suddenly recalled a legend he'd heard in his academic training about the banshee, a spirit whose wailing cry was said to be a harbinger of death. If the winds of Acheron were the cries of banshees, the Chief reflected, they could have been an elegy for all humanity.
The Chief quickly quashed that thought, remembering the war with the Covenant.
It was easy to forget the war out here; it was easy to forget everything out here, except the wind and the dust and the death. The image of the Mayberry's bridge, covered in blood, flashed through his mind, followed by that fleeting glimpse of whatever had attacked the Marines. A black shadow, a tail-
The Chief stopped short.
Had he just seen a blip on his motion tracker? He stood perfectly still, his eyes locked on the tracker. There it was again-a faint spot of red on the round blue field, just to the northwest. He turned and began slowly moving in the direction of the contact. He considered reporting it to Linda, then recalled her false alarms and decided to wait.
His map indicated a small depression in the landscape ahead. The image intensifiers worked to filter the weak starlight through the raging dust and provide him with some sort of view of the terrain. It was patchy at best, and his vision flickered with each strong gust of wind-a rare reminder of how much he relied upon his suit's electronics. Without the image intensifiers, he would have been nearly blind.
The contact flickered on his tracker again. This time it came from directly from the north, and seemed to be about ten meters ahead. He turned to his right and began to creep forward, one foot carefully placed before the other, his assault rifle held out before him.
The image intensifiers flickered; the wind howled outside his helmet. He couldn't see further than ten feet in front of him, but nothing seemed to be moving.
He reached the point where he'd last picked up the contact and stopped. He was in the center of the depression, an ancient crater from a meteor impact thousands or millions of years ago. His motion tracker was clear.
He took a few more steps forward. The far end of the crater seemed to have a dead spot in the image intensifiers, which meant there was some sort of hole or cave there.
The Chief switched on the flashlight attached to his rifle. The image intensifiers refreshed and provided a slighter better image of the crater. Behind his faceplate, the Chief frowned. The rock around the hole seemed odd; there were numerous small ridges and etchings that didn't quite look natural-or rather, they looked natural, but not like terrain. He took another step-
The motion tracker flashed red with a dozen contacts.
The Chief froze. He hadn't seen anything. The tracker indicated all the contacts had moved just five feet in front of him. He swept his rifle right and left and thought about pulling the trigger...perhaps it would draw the contacts out...
But the tracker had gone dark again. He stood still, thinking. There were a lot of things to consider. The wind could be kicking up rocks and dust; Acheron's weather was playing havoc with his suit's sensors; and if a dozen of the creatures that had killed the Marines were in front of him, he wasn't in any position to take them all on himself.
Slowly, the Master Chief backed away from the cave. Once he was out of the crater, he turned and headed back to the ship, forcing himself not to run.
His motion tracker remained a calm shade of blue.
#
Reardon had decided the equipment was more important than a strong troop presence at the derelict, so he wanted to take ten ODSTs, four specialists and the two Spartans in Delta 421, the Pelican with cargo container attachment.
"I have a better idea, sir," said the Master Chief. "Ollie and I will take one of the Warthogs and meet you there."
Reardon shrugged. "Fine with me," he said. "I can fit another three specialists without you hulks crowding the place."
The Chief checked in with Linda one last time; the techs were still hard at work trying to make the Mayberry inhabitable. He told her to stay inside the ship until they returned, and to report any significant contacts. The Mayberry's sensors were active now, so their range of motion detection was greatly increased.
The Chief wanted to try and contact the Tyger, but the Mayberry's comm system wasn't working yet. The Pelicans' comm systems weren't nearly as good as a Prowler's, with far less range and weaker encryption abilities, so it would be better to wait...just in case the Covenant were eavesdropping somewhere in the system.
They had no problems on their trip to the Derelict (the way everyone constantly used the word to refer to the alien ship, the Chief had started to capitalize it in his mind). He let Ollie drive and sat shotgun, his rifle on his lap, watching the fuzzy static of his image intensifiers as the terrain whizzed by. Acheron spent three-fourths of its local year in near-complete darkness, so there wouldn't be much relief from the somewhat unnatural world of image intensification until they were back on a colonized planet.
"Derelict up ahead," said Ollie. "Wow, look at the size of that thing."
It was huge-at least as large as a UNSC frigate, probably even bigger, though it was hard to make an accurate estimate due to the thing's weird U-shape. They were approaching from what they were calling the "port" side, under the assumption that the midpoint of the "U" was the front of the vessel (a fairly safe bet, given the apparent crash trajectory).
As they neared the Derelict, the Chief began to make out more details. Despite thousands of years of the harsh Acheron weather, the vessel appeared to be mostly intact. There was no evident wear on the hull or the "engines," though centuries of dust seemed to have caked several parts of it. Again the Chief got that slightly uneasy feeling he'd had when he'd first seen the thing on the Tyger.
"Incredible," Ollie was saying. "And to think, just twenty years ago, we thought we were alone in the universe."
I wish we still were, thought the Master Chief, if the Covenant and those...things on the Mayberry are our only neighbors. "Where's Delta 421?" he asked.
Ollie tapped a few keys. "Looks like they parked just under that portside engine," he said. "I'll bring us around."
As the Warthog slowed to a stop next to the Pelican, the Chief kept his eyes on the Derelict. The hull appeared to be heavily lined with ropey ridges, like heavily-twined steel cable. From a distance, it looked almost organic, or at least biomechanical. The Chief glanced at the flexible black alloy that connected the green plates of his armor and felt uneasy again.
There was a large hole-or door?-in the hull. It appeared to be part of the ship, shaped like a large oval, but since the ship had crashed at an angle, part of the hole was below the ground, and centuries of wind had blown several meters' worth of dirt into the vessel. The hole was nearly ten meters high at the top.
Reardon and his troop were milling around the hole, waiting for the Spartans. Some of the specialists were eagerly inspecting the hull, while others were peering around a few steps inside the hole. The Marines, on the other hand, looked edgy.
"Finally!" said Reardon, still hidden behind his silver visor. "Let's head in."
#
0140 Hours, March 13, 2543 (Military Calendar) /
Unclassified Alien Derelict, Acheron, Zeta Reticuli System
Private Gabe Tolmie had seen a few alien ships in his time. More than a few; he'd seen countless Covenant dropships-the thing the swabbies referred to as "Spirits"-and Covenant cruisers, though most of those were on videos or, occasionally, through the window of a UNSC frigate.
But he'd never seen anything like this. From the outside, the ship was the ugliest piece of junk he'd ever seen. It was twisted and bent like a fat metal wishbone, with disgusting growths on either end that the techs were calling "engines." The damned things weren't even symmetrical, and even though some of the UNSC's own ships were asymmetrical, something about the Derelict's engines just seemed...wrong.
But as odd as the outside was, it wasn't nearly as loathsome as the inside. The walls were made from some sort of blackish metal-it reminded Tolmie of the wrought-iron fence he'd used to climb at his grandmother's house on Tantalus. The metal was criss-crossed with endless ribbed tubing and other textures that gave it an almost organic look, only adding to the feelings of discomfort he felt when he looked around.
Tolmie tried to shake it off. He was an ODST, the toughest of the Corps' toughest. He'd emptied a whole clip into the face of a Covenant Elite on their last mission and killed the thing-very few soldiers could claim such a one-on-one victory. Elites were nine feet tall and armed to the teeth. Tolmie thought of the necklace beneath his armor. One of the Elite's teeth hung from the leather strap.
He'd been terrified the whole time, of course. But it was a distant kind of terror, a screaming in the back of his head he could ignore. There was a stronger part of his mind, the part that kept him alive, the one that could remember all his training and keep that screaming in the background.
But this was different. This wasn't terror. It was dread. Something about the alien derelict felt so wrong. The young soldier felt displaced, like he was inside something that shouldn't exist.
"Stop," said Reardon, who was standing near the head of the group with the damned Spartan leader, whatever his name was. Bastards didn't even let you know their names. It was just Master Chief, or "sir," or if you were feeling cocky, "Spartan-117."
Reardon was consulting a datapad. "This way," he said, pointing to a corridor that split off to the left. "This should lead to the cockpit."
"How do you know?" the Master Chief said.
Reardon ignored him and started walking. Tolmie smirked. He didn't like spooks any more than he liked Spartans, but Reardon's careless treatment of the super-soldiers had been a source of constant amusement among his comrades.
The corridor looked the same as others. How long had they been walking? Tolmie wondered. The ship seemed huge. And yet it was thousands of years old, supposedly. It was confusing. Was this built by ancestors of the Covenant? Or just some other alien race? If so, were they still around, and more importantly, were they part of the Covenant?
Tolmie blinked. His motion tracker had gone off. He looked down at the tracker, which was attached to his forearm. There were no red dots on the screen, but he could have sworn he'd felt the gauntlet vibrate in warning.
He slowed down a bit and glanced into the darkness around him. The walls looked the same as they did everywhere else on the ship-black, ugly, and etched with strange ridges and holes and spines. Some of them looked downright creepy...like they were sculpture, or art. Heck, look at that one, Tolmie thought. Almost looks like it has legs...and arms...?
Just as he started to move in for a closer look, his helmet crackled. "Delta-Four, form up," said his team leader, Corporal Perlman. "Unless you've got a contact?"
Tolmie hesitated. He wasn't getting a heat signature from the thing. "No, sir," he said. "Forming up."
#
The Master Chief's nerves were on edge as he and Ollie followed Reardon. The ONI officer was practically running ahead of them, surrounded by a crowd of chattering scientists who alternated between gawking at the architecture and arguing with one another. The Chief had tried to take point when they had entered the Derelict, but after a few minutes Reardon had started walking ahead.
He obviously had a map of some sort, the Chief realized. It must have been in the Mayberry's logs. The Mayberry's crew had been here before. It bothered the Chief that Reardon wasn't sharing information. ONI's penchant for secrecy was well-known, but the Chief was certain their lives were being endangered.
All these concerns vanished from his mind when they entered the cockpit.
Like everything else on the Derelict, it was enormous—even cyclopean. The ceiling vaulted sixty meters above their heads. The walls were made from the strange black metal, ribbed with colossal ridges and other ornamentation.
The room was dominated by a gigantic machine. It reminded the Master Chief of a huge gunner's seat, complete with a mounted cannon.
The "cannon" was about fifteen meters long and angled upward, away from the bow of the vessel. At the base of the cannon was a rounded chair, and on the seat-
"Wow," said Ollie.
The scientists had already crowded around the "gunner's seat," and were talking excitedly. Reardon himself seemed uninterested in the thing and was looking at something in another corner of the room.
The two Spartans walked up to the chair, where the scientists reluctantly made room for the emerald giants.
The Master Chief gazed at the long-dead alien. It didn't look anything like any Covenant race he'd ever seen. This creature was at least twelve feet tall, larger than an Elite. Its flesh was a pinkish-white, though whether that had been its natural color or the result of thousands of years of frozen decay, the Chief didn't know. The head was elephantine, while the eyes were small and baleful.
"That is one ugly space jockey," Ollie commented.
A long tube ran from where the creature's "nose" seemed to be. "Is that a trunk?" the Chief asked.
"No," said a scientist dismissively. "It's a hose. He had a helmet on, though it's mostly disintegrated. No doubt it was some sort of rebreather. Or maybe just an environment suit. And those 'ribs' you see there are actually straps-he must have been strapped into this thing."
"What is this thing?" Ollie asked, gazing at the machine.
"Probably the flight controls," said another scientist.
"What's this?" said the Master Chief, fingering a hole in the mummy's lower torso. "It looks like he was shot in the back and the shell came out his stomach..."
One of the scientists was nodding and muttering; the Master Chief caught the phrase "embryo eruption" before another scientist jabbed the mumbler with an elbow.
The Chief frowned. It wasn't just Reardon, then. They were all keeping him in the dark.
He walked over to the LT, who was bent over what appeared to be a kind of console on the cockpit wall. He was rapidly working on something that looked vaguely familiar...
"That's UNSC equipment," said the Chief.
Reardon glanced up, his face unreadable behind the mirrored faceplate. "I see the legendary Spartan powers of observation are no myth," he said sardonically. "Yes, it was left by the previous team. Looks like they were making progress. We should be able to recover their work and continue it. They were close to getting the ship's computer system operating, I think."
"How?" said the Chief. "This thing's a thousand years old, isn't it?"
"Yes, but it's well preserved," said Reardon. "No alien microbes to eat away at the wiring-if there is any; very little water vapor to rust the metal. No, I think we'll be able to get this thing going. And then perhaps we can get some information from its databanks."
The Master Chief realized he'd forgotten something important. "That's right, the ship's distress signal is working."
Reardon nodded. "Though we think it was only activated recently, when a colonial survey ship happened by." He stood up and gestured toward a tech. "Steinmann, bring that power cell over here. This one's burned out."
A tech brought over a large rectangular box, about a half-meter in height. "Get Leporov and the two of you swap the old one out. Then try to get some data out of this thing. And find out where that distress beacon is getting its power from."
He turned to the Master Chief. "There's another room I want to check. Grab the other Spartan and come with me."
#
Reardon led them to a small hole in the floor on the other side of the cockpit. It was only about half a meter wide, and it had been blocked off with UNSC barriers.
The Master Chief peered down the hole. He could see nothing but darkness. Activating his image intensifiers, he saw what looked like a thirty-meter drop to the floor below.
"Let's go down and have a look, shall we?" said Reardon. There was a tether anchored just outside the edge of the hole. Reardon hooked it onto his belt, then dropped into the darkness, rappelling down to the chamber below.
"Damn, it's hot down here," Reardon said over the COM channel. "Hold on and I'll send the hook back-"
But the Spartans had already jumped in the hole and were deftly climbing down the ridged wall, grabbing small handholds and moving almost as fast as Reardon had on the tether.
The room was enormous-far larger than anything they'd seen on the Derelict so far. It appeared to go all the way to the hull of the ship, as the entire space was vaguely cylindrical and curved off in both directions. A quick check of his sensors confirmed the Lieutenant's claim about the temperature: it was eighty degrees in the chamber, with a precipitation level close to that of a rainforest.
The Chief started to analyze the atmosphere content...it looked different than that of Acheron, which suggested there might be atmospheric processors operating somewhere on the ship...
...and then he noticed the floor.
"What the hell?" said Ollie. "What are these things? They look like-"
"Eggs," said Reardon. "Thousands of them."
The "eggs" were about a half-meter tall and dark green in color, with a puckered, cross-shaped indentation on top. The nearest ones were wet-or rather slimy, the Chief thought. Looking out over the sea of eggs, he could see the ones farther back were gray, and many looked as if they'd rotted and fallen apart.
Even more odd was the fine blue mist that hovered near the top of the eggs. Without going near the eggs, the Chief passed a hand through the mist and caught a band of bright blue light. More evidence that there was a power source operating somewhere on the ship.
"Sir," said Ollie-he was speaking to the Master Chief, but left it ambiguous so as not to slight Reardon, "look at this. This cluster of eggs has hatched."
The Chief walked over. Nearly a dozen of the eggs closest to the entrance were empty. Ollie was prodding something on the ground with his rifle. He lifted it into the light.
It was one of the crab-creatures from the Mayberry's lab—and it was dead. Its slender legs dangled sullenly from the barrel of the gun.
"There are more of them on the ground," said Ollie. "Not a dozen, though. I count seven."
The Master Chief looked at Reardon. The Lieutenant was standing off to the side, head down. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but the Chief was starting to get an idea of what had happened here.
"Lieutenant," said the Chief, "we should-"
The thing leaped through the air as fast as a striking snake. Ollie's superhuman reflexes acted without thought as he sent a dozen rounds through the creature before it could reach Reardon's helmet. It flew backward, shredded, but a few drops of its blood spattered on the Lieutenant's armor.
Reardon quickly detached his vest and tossed it on the ground, where it bubbled and hissed. He backed away from the unopened eggs, toward the tether.
"Are you all right, sir?" asked the Master Chief.
It was a moment before the Lieutenant's COM channel clicked on. "I'm fine, Chief," Reardon said, panting. His voice was high. "My own damned fault really."
"Sir," said Ollie, "these creatures have acid for blood?"
"Yes, though not in large quantities," said Reardon. "Not in the larvae, anyway."
"Sir," said the Master Chief, "if these are just the larval stage, what do they turn into?"
Reardon was still breathing hard. "With any luck, you'll never need to know." He looked around. "These eggs seem to be able to sense our presence. We need to figure out how, then see if we can pack some of them up without them opening."
"Maybe you could freeze them," said Ollie.
Reardon looked at Ollie. "That's an excellent idea...Spartan," he said, obviously unsure how to refer to Ollie. Technically Ollie was a Special Warfare Operator Second Class, but "Spartan" served as the unofficial designation for all of them except the Master Chief. And with a few rare exceptions, no non-Spartan ever used their real names. "We'll have to reconfigure some of the equipment on the Mayberry," Reardon continued, "but yes, cryogenic stasis is probably the easiest method."
"Sir," said the Master Chief, "maybe we should get out of this chamber before any more of these things hatch."
"Good idea," said Reardon, and he quickly hooked his belt gear to the tether and hit the mini-winch on his belt. The Lieutenant shot up to the ceiling.
"Sir," said Ollie over a private COM channel when Reardon was out of sight, "what do you think happened here?"
The Master Chief had been wondering the same thing. "I'm guessing the previous team were attacked by the larvae-like the one in stasis on the Mayberry."
"Yeah..." said Ollie. "And the larva feeds off the host, like a parasite, then leaves it to make a cocoon and turn into...something else."
The Chief nodded. "Probably those things we saw in the video log."
"Nasty," said Ollie. "So where are the adult creatures now?"
"I don't know," the Chief said. "But the sooner we get off this rock, the better."
#
When they got back to the Derelict's cockpit room, Reardon told them to set up camp there. It would take at least a day to complete the work of the previous team and, with any luck, harvest the data from the alien computer.
The Master Chief pulled Reardon aside and opened a private channel. "Permission to speak freely, sir."
Reardon hesitated, then nodded. Once again, the Master Chief felt frustrated by his inability to read the Lieutenant's face behind the silver visor. He was beginning to understand why so many people found Spartans, with their impenetrable gold visors, so unnerving. "We haven't figured out what happened to the previous team. Whatever killed those troops on the Mayberry is almost certainly still in the area."
"I'm aware of the danger, Master Chief," said Reardon, "but you'll have to trust me on this. The potential knowledge to be gained by studying this new life form far outweighs the risk to any or all of us."
"Could you at least give me some idea of what we're facing? How to fight them?"
Reardon chuckled. "How to fight them? These things are animals, Chief. We're not dealing with life forms like our friend the pilot there." He gestured at the long-dead corpse sitting in the "gunner's seat." "They're some sort of pet that got loose, that's all."
"With acid for blood," said the Chief. "And they killed thirty well-armed officers. That's not a pet, or an animal. That's an enemy."
Reardon waved a hand dismissively. "I trust you and your troops to keep us safe, Master Chief. Just be alert. In the meantime, the sooner we get to work here, the sooner we can leave. We need to get the Mayberry launch-ready. If we can get it into orbit, the Tyger can tow it back."
"That's another thing," said the Chief. "We need to check in with the Tyger."
"Tomorrow," said Reardon. "It'll take hours to get communications working on the Mayberry, and I can't afford to spare any techs to set up the field equipment right now. In the meantime, I'd like you to secure both this site and the Mayberry."
The Chief shouldered his rifle as the Lieutenant walked away. With a last uneasy glance around the chamber, he opened a COM channel to Sergeant Hurd to begin preparations for an extended stay as guests of the Pilot.
#
The Master Chief knew Ollie wasn't happy about being sent back to the Mayberry, though no Spartan would ever utter anything resembling a complaint. But they both knew Ollie's tech skills would be much more valuable in getting the Prowler spaceworthy again. The Chief ordered Linda to come to the Derelict with another fireteam of ODSTs. That left only two teams with Ollie and the techs, but the Chief thought the Derelict was the more dangerous site. He gave Ollie orders to retreat to the Derelict at the first confirmed hostile contact.
It was relatively easy to seal off the cockpit from the rest of the ship and make it airtight, then pump out the dangerous atmosphere and replace it with something more breathable. Two of the three main entrances to the room were sealed with nanotube plates (NTPs), while a plastic airlock had been installed over the third entrance as well as a smaller one over the hole that led to the egg chamber. The Chief had wanted to seal that off, but Reardon was adamant the specialists be able to access it.
The Chief asked Sergeant Hurd to have a team of ODSTs make regular rounds of the corridors just outside the cockpit. He also had Linda place motion trackers near each entrance. After seeing how quickly the specialists on the Mayberry had been killed, he wasn't taking any chances.
Hurd was standoffish as usual. While the Chief understood where the ODSTs' hostility came from, he sometimes thought it seemed a bit crazy during such a desperate war. But then, the ODSTs were an all-volunteer force who risked fiery doom every time they squeezed themselves into their drop pods. You had to be a bit crazy to do that.
Once the cockpit had been transformed into a camp, the Chief checked in with Ollie, then decided to grab a few brief hours of sleep.
He dreamed of dark claws and silver teeth.
#
0900 Hours, March 13, 2543 (Military Calendar) /
Unclassified Alien Derelict, Acheron, Zeta Reticuli System
A gloved hand banged sharply against the reflective visor. "We're up, chief."
Tolmie jerked awake and instinctively grabbed his rifle. He heard a deep-voiced chuckle over the proximity COM channel.
"Dammit," Tolmie muttered. "Do you have to do that every time you wake me up, sir?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." His team leader reached down and yanked Tolmie to his feet. While Tolmie wasn't short, Corporal Perlman was over two meters tall, with a wrestler's build to match. When not wearing his helmet, Perlman's shaved head and ubiquitous sunglasses made him even more imposing. Hell, Perlman probably had sunglasses on underneath his helmet right now.
Someday, Tolmie planned to swipe Perlman's helmet and draw a pair of sunglasses on the visor with a marker.
"And don't call me 'chief,'" Tolmie said. "The only chief around here is that turtle freak." 'Turtle' was one of the ODSTs' many nicknames for Spartans; this particular one referred to their trademark green body armor.
"I'd love to see you say that to his face," said Perlman. "He'd punch you on top of the head and sink you halfway into the ground, like in one of those kids' vids."
"You a big fan of kiddie shows?" Tolmie asked, smirking, as he checked his rifle.
"Nah," said Perlman, shouldering his own weapon. "But my nephew is."
Perlman had been an ODST for more than five years. Since the average survival rate of an ODST was about three years, that made him a grizzled veteran. Tolmie had been an ODST for about ten months; even Sergeant Hurd had just finished her third year.
Perlman should have been at least a sergeant by now but had refused promotion several times, saying he was a born grunt. He was certainly one of the most capable members of their platoon and had a dozen medals (which he hauled around carelessly in an old MRE box).
"C'mon," Perlman said. "Let's grab Makan and get on patrol."
"Where's Greer?"
"Some spook dropped a hundred-kilo console on her foot," Perlman chuckled. "Woman let out the loudest curse I've ever heard. Anyway, they sent her back to the Mayberry to get patched up in the infirmary."
Tolmie followed Perlman to the other side of the room, where the ONI techs were swarming over the Pilot's chair and what they were certain was the main computer interface, which was mounted at a slant into the wall. After some initial arguing, they had decided to pull the Pilot off the seat. It took the strength of three ODSTs and the Spartan MCPO to detach the thing and get it on the floor. Makan was helping some techs pull a panel off the wall-or what passed for a panel on the centuries-old ship. There were no obvious seams but there were vague oval shapes with what seemed like sockets on them.
PFC Amil Makan had been in the ODSTs about five months longer than Tolmie. If Perlman was the grizzled veteran type, and Greer the typical ODST (a walking ball of aggression), Makan fell somewhere in the middle. Tolmie didn't know much about him, except that he'd grown up on Mars and that his father had been a Marine who was killed in action during one of the earliest battles with the Covenant.
Makan was happy to get away from the techs. Perlman led them to the makeshift airlock. They looked out at the cockpit through the plastic window as the airlock depressurized.
"Look at that," said Makan, pointing to the Spartan MCPO, who was laying on the floor on the other side of the cockpit. "I guess even freaks need to sleep sometimes, eh?"
Tolmie laughed; Perlman didn't say anything. The airlock cycled out and the other door opened.
"Watch your trackers," said Perlman. "Everyone's been picking up intermittent blips. The spooks say it's just interference from the ship, but I'm not buying it. If anything moves near you-except one of us-shoot it. And keep together. No wandering off."
They moved forward down the tunnel, which soon linked up to the gigantic main corridor that ran the length of the Derelict. Their orders were to stay within the smaller network of tunnels that ran near the cockpit. Perlman took the point; Tolmie and Makan spread out behind him in a triangle formation.
"Anyone getting anything?" asked Perlman over the COM channel.
"Quiet as a mouse," said Tolmie.
"Nothing here," said Makan.
"What are we watching for, sir?" said Tolmie. "What attacked the Mayberry?"
"Don't know," said Perlman. "The spooks aren't saying. I don't think even the Sergeant knows."
"Aren't we looking for those big pink crabs?" asked Makan.
"Nah," said Perlman. "Whatever killed those spooks on the Mayberry, they weren't crabs. Those things just glom onto your face. Or so I heard one of the eggheads say."
"Gross," said Makan.
"Might be an improvement on you, Makan," said Tolmie. The PFC responded with a polite suggestion that the private do something that would have required him to be hermaphroditic and double-jointed. Perlman's deep-throated laughter made their helmets vibrate.
They spent an hour patrolling the corridors. None of them saw so much as a hint of red on their motion trackers. They spent a lot of time looking at the weird ridged walls.
"What the hell is with this ship?" Tolmie said. "Did these aliens not understand how to make a regular damned wall? Everything has to be bumpy or ridged or something."
"Well I guess next time, they can hire you to be their interior decorator," said Perlman. He checked his watch. "We're due for a shift change in fifteen. Let's do a quick sweep of these last few corridors and head back."
They were now in a section that wound slightly below the cockpit deck. As they moved down the corridor, Tolmie noticed a brief flash of static on his visor as it automatically wicked away condensation.
"It's warm down here," he said, the sentence coming out more like a question.
"Downright humid," said Perlman. "I've got 290K on my HUD. That's a lot warmer than the cockpit."
"Sir," said Makan, "look at the walls."
They all stopped and moved toward the walls. They were still black and ridged, but were shiny, rather than dusty, and there seemed to be spots of green and gray.
Tolmie reached out a hand and touched a green spot. When he pulled it away, a slimy substance stuck to his fingers.
"Okay, now that's gross," said Makan.
"What the hell is it?" said Tolmie, fingering it between his gloves. "It rolls like...like warm resin."
"It's probably a slime mold," said Makan. "Remember what happened to that colony on Ross II? You're done for. We should quarantine you right now."
"Shut the hell up-"
"Both of you shut up." Perlman was quiet for a moment. "Maybe the spooks have been down here," he said. "Or maybe the Mayberry team was earlier..."
"I doubt it," said Makan. "And why is it warmer here?"
"Let's get back to the cockpit and report this," said Perlman. "Our watch is over anyway."
Hefting his rifle, Perlman again took the point. Makan moved up behind him, and Tolmie took the rear. Suddenly that creepy feeling the private had when they'd arrived at the Derelict was back. Tolmie found himself glancing behind him as they made their way through the winding corridors.
He was looking over his shoulder when dark claws grabbed him from above.
#
Makan and Perlman both stopped and spun at the sound of Tolmie's scream.
"Tolmie?" Makan said. He couldn't see the private anywhere, but his screams blared over the proximity COM channel.
"What the hell-?" Perlman pushed past Makan, his rifle out before him.
"Help me! They're everywhere!" Tolmie was screaming.
"Where are you?" Perlman shouted.
Tolmie's screams were getting fainter; the proximity COM channel was fading. "Switch to the general channel, Tolmie!" Perlman shouted. "Where are you, dammit? Try and get a location from him, Makan."
Perlman switched off the proximity channel opened one to Hurd. "Sergeant, we've got hostiles. Something just took Tolmie."
There was a brief pause on the other end. "Roger, Corporal. Can you visually confirm hostiles?"
"No-he's just gone! He keeps screaming and he says they're everywhere-hold on." Perlman switched back to the proximity channel. The screams were very faint now. "Makan?"
"Nothing, sir," he said. "But I think I know how they got him." He pointed with his rifle at a large hole in the ceiling.
Perlman cursed and switched back to the sergeant's channel. "Hostiles appear to have taken Tolmie through a hole in the corridor ceiling," he said. "Do we pursue?"
"Hold on." Another pause. When Hurd came back, she sounded angry. "Negative, Corporal. You are to return to base immediately."
"Sir?"
"Return to base immediately, Corporal."
Perlman clenched his jaw. "Yes, sir," he said, and switched back to the proximity channel. Tolmie's screams were very faint now.
"Well?" said Makan.
"We're heading back," said Perlman.
"What?"
"Our orders are to return to base," said Perlman. "Let's go, Private."
"I can't believe Hurd would abandon-"
"She didn't want to," said Perlman. "It's that damned spook."
"Or the turtle," Makan muttered.
"No, not him," said Perlman.
"Well, screw Reardon, then," said Makan, hefting his rifle. "Let's go after Tolmie."
"I think it's too late," said Perlman.
The COM channel was silent.
