A/N: I'm back!

For those of you who have any interest in following my original fiction, I now have a website dedicated to that. It's listed on my profile. Check it out and follow if you have any desire to do so!

Also, I will be abbreviating 'search and rescue' as SNR now instead of using an ampersand. Though it looks right on my uploaded documents and when I look at the fanfic site, when I'm not logged in and reading it removes the ampersand and the R and refers to Search and Rescue as just S.

There was only the faintest bump underfoot as the MSOT transport locked into the helm airlock of the Gaza, and sealed. In moments, seven marines were rushing almost wordlessly onto the bridge, weapons ready and clearing the area with the silent efficiency of a seasoned group.

"Clear!"

"Move through, engineering and armory," Bullfrog said, resting his rifle on his shoulder and gesturing a second squad off the transport, pointing at them. "Clear medical, then systemic. Henson, you and Gibbs are on the computer."

"Sir, overhead," Roth said, gesturing upward to where a series of micro panels had opened. Behind each glimmered a tiny black nozzle. Bullfrog moved over and looked upward.

"Looks like something set off the HEP system," he said, then touched the comm at his shoulder. "Corinth, this is Bullfrog. Helm is empty but there is no visible sign of damage or combat. The HEP system appears to have gone off but it may have been a default ship wide distribution. I see no signs of fire up here."

"Boss?" Gibbs drew his attention, and he moved over toward where he and Henson had started to set up their equipment. The computer panel looked odd, reflective where it shouldn't be, and he squinted at it as Gibbs turned around with a thin metal tool in his hand. A clear, slimy substance dripped in a thin string off the end of it.

"The hell is that?"

"Fuck if I know, Boss," Gibbs said. "It's all over the computer console."

"Look at that," Henson said, and gestured to a small patch near one of the console's access panels. The patch was slightly discolored, and only by looking very closely could Bullfrog see the tiny hole in it. It looked neatly and precisely cut, no bigger than a few millimeters. It was clogged with the clear slime.

"It doesn't appear corrosive," Gibbs said.

"Do we need hazmat?" Bullfrog asked him, and Gibbs shook his head. He seemed fascinated by the way the string of slime glimmered as he turned the tool this way and that to keep it from running off.

"I wouldn't touch it with skin or try tasting it or sniffing it until the eggheads can do an analysis, but I don't think it poses a threat to our gear so long as we keep our helmets and masks on. If I had to guess, it appears to be some kind of lubricant. Probably to facilitate whatever tool they used to cut that little hole. It's non-acidic, non-corrosive."

"Who used?"

"Your guess is as good as mine at this point, Boss," he said. "That hole is in an odd place. It doesn't coincide with any lock or catch that they would need to bypass to get the panel off."

"Could it be an explosive of some type?" Roth asked, as she eyed the slime warily. "Inject it in and then blow the computer?"

It was Bullfrog that answered. "I've dealt with every form of explosive combustion known to us. And the Cats," he said. "Never seen the like. It looks closest to nitroglycerine, but the viscosity is wrong. Liquid explosives are by nature extremely volatile."

Hooking his glove through the end of the 'drip' that Gibbs was still holding aloft, he flicked a drip of the stuff hard at the floor. Nothing happened. He grunted.

"Not an explosive. Can we get that panel off?"

Gibbs and Henson started to work on the panel as Bullfrog touched his communicator again. "Corinth, we have an unknown substance all over the main computer junction on the helm. There is a small hole drilled in the panel itself, but the substance appears to be an inert sort of lubricant. We'll bring back a sample for the eggheads to go over."

{Commander Elban; Ling. We have some signs of what looks like weapons' fire in the infirmary and laboratory. It looks like there may have been a small fire as well, perhaps caused by the weapons' fire. It set off the HEP system.}

"It looks like the HEP system up here was set off as well." There were any number of systems that would have set off a ship wide HEP response if they caught fire; the artificial gravity systems, the life support and extended environmental oxygen-recyc systems, the water distribution systems…pretty much anything that wasn't isolated to a given room or section of the vessel. "Any bodies? Weapons?"

{Negative. We've found no one alive or dead, human or otherwise. The damage caused by weapons' fire appears to be typical of our sidearms. There's no sign that whomever fired was fired back upon.}

{Sir, Maevek,} A woman's voice broke in. {We've just reached the engineering deck. We have bodies on the ground sir.}

"Crew?" he asked.

{Yes sir, human. All our people. They were firing at something, but there is no sign they were fired back upon, and no evidence of what they were firing at. I…yes. Yes, ok. Sir, we have survivors. It looks like at least two sealed themselves in engineering. We're going to need medical evac.}

"Understood! Have you secured your grid?"

{Ten-Four. No lifeboats were launched.}

"Ling?"

{We're secured and cleared, sir. The ship is ours. No sign of hostiles or any ongoing threat. Lifeboat complement is fully intact, no lifeboats were launched.}

"Thank you. Corinth, we may have some survivors in engineering, we are working on extracting them now. We have the ship secured."

{Acknowledged, we are sending the second SNR shuttle in to the secondary aft-side lock. You should have medics on board in two minutes for evac. Other survivors? There were over a hundred men and women on that ship.}

"Negative, Corinth. Wherever the rest of the crew is, I couldn't say, but it's not here."

{Is the ship navigable?}

"Stand by."

He looked at Henson and Gibbs, who had gotten the panel off. The inside of the computer system was clogged thick with the same clear slime. Roth made a disgusted sound as it dripped and puddled on the floor.

Gibbs, still apparently fascinated, had leaned in until his nose was nearly touching the stuff. "From here, I can't see any corrosion to connections or circuitry, but whatever this substance is will likely disrupt signal processing. Unless the computer accesses down in engineering or systems support are in similar condition, I see no reason that we can't reroute navigation and engine control."

"Corinth, the ship may still be navigable but we need to confirm. I'm heading down to engineering to oversee the medical evac and get my eyes on the wounded."

{Understood. Corinth standing by.}

Grim-faced, Bullfrog and Roth left the helm and moved down into the ship, weapons loose but ready. They had to pass medical in order to reach engineering, and here the commander paused, taking in the scene.

Impact marks lined the walls near the door, clearly indicating someone had shot at someone entering, but as Ling had reported, there was no sign of bodies or counter-fire. The fire damage he had mentioned looked limited to an environmental balance relay that linked to a solid-state grid throughout the Gaza, which explained why the HEP systems ship wide had gone off.

As they stepped away from the infirmary and headed down to engineering, Roth asked, "Maevek said we had bodies but no sign they were fired upon. If they weren't shot, what the hell killed them?"

"I don't know," he said grimly. "We've got no sign the ship was actually boarded by a hostile force. All we've got is a small hull breach at the helm, and a tiny hole drilled in the computer panel."

"And that slime shit," she said. "Our people were firing at something, Boss."

"Hopefully the survivors are in shape to be able to tell us what the fuck happened. If not, well. They're going to pull black box surveillance regardless. Our answers will be there."

"I hope so," she said, and he didn't have to look at her to know she was scowling. "You and I were both in the war, Boss. You know it was the end of the goddamn world, but even fighting corridor by corridor through the Houston to cover evac didn't make me feel half as hinky as this shit."

"Maybe you're getting old," he said, with a bitter half-smirk. "Maybe I am too."

Ling and his squad had joined Maevek in engineering by the time Roth and Bullfrog reached it. A pair of Wolverines stood guard over a trio of bodies on the ground, and saluted as they came up. Dried blood had sprayed along the wall. Bullfrog ignored the salute, crouching and eyeing the first body with a grim-faced calculation.

"That answers your question, Roth," he said, as she joined him. He touched the ragged wound across the man's neck, no doubt the source of the spray. "This wasn't made by a bullet. They look gouged."

"Cat claws?" she said, more than asked, and shook her head. "Gotta be."

"If it was the Cats they've come up with some new shit in the last ten years," he said.

"There's this too, sir," one of the guards' said, and gestured at the wall. Bullfrog straightened and looked. The blood spray along the wall was thick and even, save where the guard was indicating. A clean void of unusual shape had interrupted the spray. He eyed it critically.

"Something was here when his throat was torn," he said, mostly to himself as his fingers outlined the clean patch a good inch or two away from actually touching it. "Unusual curve…about a meter high? Too short for a standing or crouching Cat. Could be the edge of a helmet?"

"Medivac," Roth said, as forms appeared down the hall. Bullfrog straightened again and stepped out of their way as they hurried past into engineering, and then followed them.

The two men in engineering uniforms were in remarkably good shape, all things considered. One of them had a cut on his face that he had made a cursory attempt to clean up and looked as if it might be in the first stages of infection, but beyond looking dehydrated and a bit glassy eyed – as if they couldn't quite believe the Wolverines and medics were exactly real- they looked pretty ok to Bullfrog.

The man that didn't have the wound on his face spotted the commander's insignia on Bullfrog's hardsuit and immediately pushed past the medics, giving a shaky salute. "Sir, Engineer McKinley, sir, I'm ready to give a full debrief."

"Calm down, McKinley," Bullfrog said. "That's for Captain Silva and the Brass. Take it easy, man, and let the medics do their job."

"I'm fine sir. Just thirsty and exhausted. The rest of the crew, sir? Are they alive?"

"We were hoping you could tell us, son," Bullfrog said, but the engineer shook his head.

"First thing we knew, the alarms went off, then the HEP system. I was working to shut it off and pin down what caused it when I heard gunfire, then Jax - " here he gestured at the man with the gash in his face, " – screamed and ran in, sealed the door."

"No communication from anywhere else on the ship?" Roth asked with a frown. "No surveillance? You should have full access to everything from here in engineering- damage reports, systems malfunctions, all of it."

McKinley shook his head. "I don't know what happened," he said. "Just before the gunfire went off, I was in the system as I said. Trying to shut the HEP system off, get a damage report. The computer went funny."

"Funny?" Bullfrog asked, irritated as he walked over to the console. "You're a damned engineer. Is that your technical take on the malfunction? 'It went funny?'"

"Sir, I don't know how else to explain it," he said. "I've been an engineer for twenty-three damned years and I've never seen the like. Systems started rebooting, failsafe procedures started to initialize, as if we were going into a full core breach but the core itself and its independent secondaries were all fine. The alarm was shut off from quadrant 937 which is a secondary sub-junction of the oxygen recyc system. Shouldn't even be possible to shut the alarm off from there. Surveillance was closed down from 839 on B-deck."

"What area is that?" Bullfrog asked.

"It's a lavatory. Like, literally the stall in the lavatory. There are some power switch transfer subcenters to the surveillance system about two feet behind that wall but there's no access. If you ask me, the closest I can come to describing what I was seeing is either a massively quick and extremely sophisticated virus introduced into the computer system, or some kind of ship-wide energy burst similar to an EMP that literally scrambled the shit out of the computer's systems. That shouldn't be possible. The systems are shielded against that sort of thing."

Bullfrog frowned, his mind on that tiny hole drilled in the helm computer panel, and that damned slime. He tried to access the engineering panel but it was behaving as if it had been wiped to default.

"What do you know about the Black Eye?" he asked, but McKinley was already shaking his head.

"I know what you're thinking, but no. We found the Black Eye and it exploded. From what I understand it took out a full Wing of our fighters right along with it, and a complement of marines who'd just touched deck. There was no warning. But that was a good thirty minutes before this mess happened. The explosion on the Black Eye did cause a decent EMP and played further hell with our communications, what we still had up in this goddamn nebula, but the rest of our systems didn't so much as flicker. Whatever did this was not the Black Eye. It wasn't any kind of core explosion or even cosmic phenomenon I'm familiar with at all."

Bullfrog fixed him with a look. "Are our estimates off? From what I was briefed, the Black Eye appears to have been destroyed nearly three days ago. You're saying that, whatever happened here, happened only half an hour after that event?"

"Yes, sir," the engineer said. "And I know what you're thinking. Whatever it was that happened screwed with the doors, sir. In case of a fire or a lockdown the doors should unlock. The only exception is if the computer detects a severe core breakdown or a hull breach in this room. Then and only then will the doors actually seal and lock. But when Jax ran in and shut the door, it locked down. We've been working to get it open again. We haven't been able to leave this room."

"That fits with what we found, Boss," Maevek said. "We had to manually release the door from the exterior and force it open."

"Ok. All right, McKinley. Let's get you and Jax evaced and a full debrief back aboard the Corinth. Roth, I'll escort, you stay here and see if Gibbs and Henson can get the computer systems back online- if not at helmside, then down here at this panel. We need to get this boat moving and navigable. Start the men going over this ship inch by bloody inch. Have them look in crawlspaces if they have to. I want to know what happened to the rest of the damned crew, and so will Silva. I refuse to believe they all just vanished like ashes in the wind."