XVIII
"You sure you want to do this?"
Evelyn looked into the eyes of the young Marine strapped into the pilot seat of the dropship; with the pupil of one eye dilated so the blackness hid almost all of the colour in one eye and the other the size of a pinhead, it was debateable if he knew anything that was going on around him, but the grin and determined look set in his face indicated he knew enough to understand the truth of his situation: with his left forearm melted down to a shredded, acid-soaked stump and a trio of deep cuts gouged into his chest, the only thing keeping him alive were a handful of rags soaked in alcohol to staunch the flow of blood and the triple shot of pain killers and adrenaline rushing through his system. He nodded lazily.
"Yeah," he finally managed to slur, his brow and cheeks covered in a fine sheen of sweat. "Always… always wanted to be a… a vom-com. How hard… hard cannit be?"
"Be your best, that's what they keep telling us, right?" Stevens returned the grim smile as he worked around Evelyn in the confines of the cockpit, tightening the straps that held the Marine strapped into the seat and making sure the improvised controls were ready to be used. Using a number of wires and data relays donated by Dawes from the com-tech pouch she still carried, the two pilots had managed to strip down the operations of the vehicle into three basic buttons on a small ovoid that sat snugly in the palm of a his hand: release, launch and fire, three basic principles that he needed the vehicle to be able to do in order to escape the situation they were in.
Outside the craft, the atmosphere had returned to the hangar, or almost all of it had, but the gravity still remained inactive, the environment controls overridden by the operations terminal in the rear of the shuttle: the creatures could survive in vacuum, but they still struggled to move in zero gravity, just like most other animals. It hadn't stopped a handful of the aliens from attacking the dropship, their raking talons almost breaching the hull of the craft where they concentrated their attempts at penetration in the same area. It would only be a matter of time, which was why Steven's plan seemed like the actions of a mad man, and why the preparations had been rushed.
With the modified controls completed, all he needed was one volunteer. There was no guarantee that the plan would work, but regardless of the outcome, the sole pilot that needed to hit those three magic buttons would certainly come out of it worse off. If they even came out of it at all.
The young Marine strapped into the seat had been that volunteer, aware that he would more than likely perish, but it would only be a matter of time before the grievous wounds inflicted on him took his life. Better to give it in trying to help others, especially fellow Marines. Semper fidelis.
"Okay, one last time," Stevens pointed to each button as he spoke, making sure the volunteer was aware of what needed to be done. As he spoke, another alien creature skittered over the canopy of the cockpit, the reinforced glass chipping and cracking slightly where the bony spur on the heel of the creature gouged the window. By now, everyone in the cockpit was used to this, and paid it no attention. "Activate the cannon, release the docking clamps, and hit the thrust button. The flight path's already programmed in, it should be carry out the rest."
The Marine nodded, the motion making his eyes roll and bringing a taste of copper to his mouth. He sputtered, coughing out a wad of bloody phlegm, then slowly nodded. "Fire it, free it… forget it. I follow."
"You're a good soldier, Macmillian," Stevens nodded. He'd made a note of getting the name of the soldier that was, hopefully, going to save them and committing it to memory. When they got out of this, he was going to make sure he got the biggest damn commission he could arrange for the private. He'd already removed the holotag from the soldier when they'd helped carry him into the cockpit and sat him down, but he'd kept his weapon by him. Every Marine deserved to die with his weapon.
"Make sure… tell my mama…"
"Tell her yourself when we pull out of this," Stevens said softly, but his face bore the same strained expression of the pilot he'd talked to. The sound of metal bending and ripping echoed through the ship, and Stevens looked at his watch, as if he had an appointment to attend to.
"We're going to strap down in the rear," he quickly announced, pushing Evelyn out the cockpit and following her, then pausing at the door and turning back to see Macmillian. "You sure you can do this? Last chance."
"Get out," Macmillian managed with a grin that quickly turned into a grimace. The painkillers the doctor had given him were quickly wearing off, his rapid heartbeat thumping in his head as he tried to block out the pain. Three buttons, that was all he had to do. "I can do this."
"Good luck," Stevens saluted slowly. Macmililan turned to face the front of the cockpit, but he could still see the shape of the lieutenant in the doorway, could see the reflection of him in window like a spectral warrior. His face seemed softened, not like the war face he'd displayed in the midst of combat.He'll make a good officer, Macmillian thought to himself, waiting for Stevens to leave the cockpit and announce that he, and every one else, had strapped themselves down using whatever they could to secure themselves. He actually seems to give a shit.
"We're ready," Stevens finally said.
Macmillian paused for a brief moment, taking in the surroundings of the vehicle. He had always wanted to be a pilot, it had been the only reason he'd joined the Marines, but he knew that he'd have to work his way up to the training and rank needed to be in charge of a dropship. Yet here he was, two years into his military career, in charge of a fully armed UD4L dropship and about to embark on his maiden voyage. He drank in the details of the cockpit one last time, the vast array of controls and monitors he could only hope to understand, and muttered a final prayer to himself, aware all the time of the hideous creatures trying to eat into the metallic hide of the craft as a tick or flea would if they were on the flank of a dog.
Time to shake the parasites off.
Taking a deep breath, Macmillian thumbed the first button on his handheld control, watching as the fixed cannon beneath the cockpit erupted into life, a constant stream of twenty five millimetre rounds slamming into the wall of the hangar directly in front of the craft, punching holes in the wall, weakening it and leaving it buckled in the wake of the destructive and explosive rounds. A thick cloud of dark grey smoke lingered around the cockpit in a halo from the discharged weapon, obscuring the view from the window. The wall had certainly weakened, just as Stevens had planned, and with everything in motion all Macmillian had to do was press the second then third buttons. With the activation of the second button, the docking clamp holding the ship disengaged with a deep clunk, and the ship bobbed slightly as it became as weightless as the creatures around it, the power feeding the faux gravity generator cutting off as the clamp was removed. Macmillian felt the familiar flutter of weightlessness in his stomach, and he savoured it before finally activating the third and final stage of the plan.
While the first two buttons had been straightforward rewiring, the third involved a number of different sub-routines and programs that had been hastily slapped together. Autopilot coordinates, engines engaging and the flooding of the engines with fuel all had to be done at just the right moment, and everything was automated, leaving little room for error in the whole process. Gritting his teeth, he pressed the third button, listening as the powerful engines at the rear of the craft growled to life, churned to life, then the afterburners burst to life as fuel was dumped into the reservoir. The vehicle shuddered before exploding to life, bolting forwards in a straight line, following the short flight path predetermined by the flight computer, overriding the safety measures and protocol for the craft, and streaking towards the wall weakened by the large calibre machinegun. Macmillian gritted his teeth, kept his eyes wide open and greeted the wall that rushed forwards to meet him a fierce and wordless bellow that rushed from the pit of his stomach as his heart hammered against his ribcage. His finger tensed over the first button again, activating a second barrage of gunfire in the short journey that took less than a second.
The cockpit plunged into the bullet-pocked wall of the hangar, and Macmillian knew nothing more.
XXX
Stevens had braced for the impact of the craft, not entirely trusting the straps around him, but still found that the sudden movements of the craft were enough to knock him around. The power of the vehicle as the engines kicked into life and pushed the craft on like a bullet leaving a gun had been enough to rattle the fillings, but the impact of the vehicle as it struck the wall was enough rip one of them completely loose.
The sound of stationary metal yielding to the armoured hull of the rocket-propelled ship was deafening, and the force of the impact sent men less prepared for the jolt, as well as equipment not securely fastened down, sprawling across the vehicle.
The dropship lay almost silent for several seconds while everyone tried to pull themselves together, but Stevens was already to his feet, pulling together as many weapons and supplies as he could, listening to the tick-tick-ticking of the cooling engines and the oh-so-subtle sound of twisted metal settling and slowly bending while the crashed vehicle found its perfect resting point. He stumbled over groggy Marines scattered across the floor and took up a seat at the operations console once more, activating the one remaining screen – the one that hadn't been shattered by a loose ammo box or crushed by a crate filled with rations – and tried to pull the feed from the camera hangar again.
Aliens floated in the middle of the zero gravity chamber, a handful of them blackened and burned where they had come in contact with the searing flames of the engines, smoke lingering around them in thick acrid clouds. They tried to right themselves and move in the direction of the craft, but without anything to push off, they remained stranded and stunned from the blast of the engines. He panned the camera around, and saw what he wanted to check: the rear two thirds of the vehicle protruded from the hangar wall, crumpled and mangled in parts, engines smouldering, with the front of the vehicle securely embedded in the wall. His plan had worked so far, but Stevens needed to follow through with it to make sure it remained in place. Already, he could see the nightmare creatures with their glistening exoskeletons and elongated head scuttling carefully across the grated floor.
"How're we doing?" Dawes muttered, pulling herself to her feet and gripping to the back of Stevens' seat to keep her upright. He hadn't noticed, until he pulled the crashed dropship into view, how much of an obtuse angle the vehicle was, and how it listed to one side. It looked like either the autopilot had been slightly off, or some of the safety features had managed to elude the slapdash programming installed by the pilots. Either way, they're been lucky, but Stevens didn't want to push his luck any more than necessary. He pulled himself up, motioned for Dawes to take his place at the console and pointed to the keyboards beneath the monitor.
"Set up a repeating distress beacon and hack into The Vengeance's communication network. They may not want be willing to talk to us, but I damn well want them to know what the fuck we've gotten ourselves into here. Establish a link, feed all our com signals and operational cameras through to them, make sure secure a channel and flood it with whatever information you can spam them with. If we get something pinging back from them, let me know."
Dawes took the helm and started to hammer away at the keys, tuning into her work and zoning out while she worked. Stevens nodded, pleased with her work, and caught the eyes of Evelyn, who was tending to another of the wounded Marines. She instructed JT on what to do with the wound, then stood and slowly made her way across to him.
"Did it work?" she asked, wide-eyed as she peered over his shoulder at the active monitor. He nodded his head.
"For now, but it's still just a matter of time before they break through. We've got our ass stuck in the air waiting to be buttfucked by those bastards, if you pardon the expression, and we need to move. How're the men doing?"
"Four died on impact," Evelyn murmured, wiping her hands on the stained labcoat she wore. "Another three aren't that far behind them."
"Can they be moved?"
Evelyn looked glumly at the ground, shook her head.
"Fuck," he spat, kicking the floor. "We can't leave them…"
"Their lives are in danger regardless of the situation," Knight came forwards and put his own thoughts into the conversation. Stevens hadn't asked for his opinion, and turned to scowl at him, before noticing he cradled his left forearm, his fingers soaked in creamy white lubricants and hydraulic fluids.
"I am fine," Knight offered, noticing the flicker in Steven's eyes from his face to the wound. "Combat models are designed to absorb a significant amount of damage before being unable to proceed with their duties. Repairs are underway, and I can arrange for a temporary replacement to be installed under combat situations until a qualified technician can attend to my wound."
"I'm not worried about the physical damage," Stevens muttered, turning his back on the synthetic, then thinking better of it. "You've got two minutes to sort something out, then we're leaving."
"Where?" JT looked up from the Marine he knelt beside, shaking his head to Evelyn to indicate that another injured soldier had passed on. "You want to fill in the rest of the details? You've got a shuttle wedged in the wall, where can we go?"
"I'm already on that," he said, storming past JT and into the cockpit, hoping against hope that Macmillian had survived the impact. He hadn't, the impact had jarred him more than anyone else. He still remained strapped to the pilot's chair, the harness keeping his torso upright and preventing it from toppling onto the flight console that had almost crushed him with the impact. A set of flight controls had burst through his stomach, skewering him and pinning him to the seat. Organs oozed steadily from the ragged wound that had tunnelled through his midriff, slick with blood and bile, while his dead fingers remained coiled around the miniature controls he had been given. Glazed eyes stared blankly at the crumpled cockpit and the darkness that lingered before the crashed ship, and Stevens tentatively reached across the sagging corpse, hitting one of the few buttons he knew in the cockpit and activated the floodlights on the front of the craft. One had been rendered inoperable by the impact, but one light on the right cast long, lazy shadows when it kicked to life, illuminating the boundaries of a maze made from packing crates and storage tanks before them.
"Lower cargo decks," he said with a grim grin. "They're dark, but they're not infested with the creatures: at least not yet. I hope."
"You don't know for sure they're not," JT countered, looking at the dead pilot and blessing him silently for the sacrifice he'd made for their survival. He just hoped it hadn't been a waste. "What if they are?"
"The whole ship's probably infested," Stevens shrugged, looking over the controls still operational: looking for a specific button or lever to aid his escape plan. "We had to go somewhere, and we knew that Engineering was teeming with the fuckers from experience. I took a chance. Hopefully, it'll pay off."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then we'll be dead," Stevens said, a mater-of-fact tone to his voice. "Get a vom-com jockey in here, I need to find the loud handle."
"Front-right corner of the chair," one of the pilots announced: he'd clearly been listening to the conversation, had been eager to see the outcome of the plan to see which side of the fine line between genius and insanity Steven's idea had fallen on. The jury was still out on that.
"Loud handle?" JT was puzzled as he watched Stevens attach something to the front of the vacant chair. It was clear that the lieutenant wasn't going to answer him while he tried to complete this task, so he turned to the pilot behind him.
"Eject," the pilot simply replied, but the dumb look on JT's face implied he didn't see the link. "When an enemy gets a lock on one of these things, an alarm goes off. When they open fire, another alarm. If all decoys fail, and those rockets get closer to you, even more alarms go off. When it gets that loud, you just have to pull on the eject lever to get out of the noise."
"Loud handle," JT nodded to himself. "Makes sense."
"Okay, get back," Stevens warned, shuffling backwards out the cockpit and motioning for everyone to back up. He pulled hard on the nylon rope he'd attached to the eject handle, shielded his face as the explosive bolts attaching the canopy to the cockpit blew out and knocked the windscreen out, then the seat jolted and erupted out the cockpit in a stuttering flare of shot-lived retro rockets, arcing and tumbling into the darkness of the cargo bay beyond. With the flare from the explosive ejection still burned into his retinas, Stevens stumbled back into the cockpit, ignoring as best he could the stench of seared flesh and scorched ozone, before clambering out the popped canopy. The air of the cargo was as canned and as stale as the rest ofThe Eden, but after spending such a short time in an enclosed dropship with as many hot and injured Marines, any air unmarred by sweat, blood and death was a breath of fresh air. The opening was more than wide enough to allow easy egress from the dropship, large enough for the men to leave in pairs.
Two by two, just like Noah, he thought to himself as he grudgingly returned to confines of the dropship and the expectant faces of the Marines left alive.
"It worked," he reported with a curt nod of his head, then motioned towards the men lying on the ground: those that hadn't expired in the crash or the bloody aftermath of the battle. "I need the walking wounded to help with those that can't walk. Buddy up, carry what you can and hustle through the canopy. There's quite a drop to the ground – if those of you who are less seriously injured get out first and help where you can."
"No need for that," muttered one of the savaged Marines on the ground as he hauled himself up from the floor and propped himself up in the corner. "We'll cover your escape."
"I can't let you do that," Stevens shook his head, but he could tell by the defiant look on the soldier he had made his mind up, as had the other prone troopers who were gathering their weapons, preparing for the last stand.
"The doc says we're as good as dead," he shook his head. "Some of us have a couple of hours: others not as long. Get out while you can, we'll cause as much trouble for those fuckers as we can."
As if to punctuate the point that the soldier was pressing, a deafening screech of metal pierced the cramped interior of the craft, and the craft started to rock as the creatures outside renewed their assault on the crashed vehicle. Dull thumps and muted squeals of anger and rage accompanied the attack, and Stevens looked towards Evelyn, as if she could magically heal the wounds of the brave and stubborn men.
"We still got our wits and our rifles," the soldier on the ground looked around his friends, most of them giving affirming nods of their heads. "And as long as we've got those, then we're still Marines, and we got a job to do. Besides, we still got these for close encounters," he grinned, lifting an anti-armour high explosive grenade, enough to rip apart the dropship from the inside out. He noted that other men clutched similar devices in their hands.
"A fuckin' suicide squad," Stevens shook his head.
"It's not suicide if you're already dead," the private argued, gritting his teeth as a fresh wave of pain washed through his body. Evelyn opened her medic pouch, looking for a fresh dose of painkiller, but he shook his head as he motioned to the grenade he held. "Save it for someone who needs it, doc. I got all the painkillers I need right here. Get out of here."
"Sir,' Knight decided to finally get involved in the conversation. Stevens had wondered when the psychotic killing machine would decided to get in on the conversation. The repairs he'd executed on himself were quick and ugly, though more practical in the combat environment they faced: the droid had quickly removed the useless stump of his damaged arm and replaced it with a squat metallic cylinder with a crude claw at its tip. "The private is correct, the wounds of all the men willing to stay behind are certainly mortal: life threatening. Leaving them would offer some level of resistance to the creatures, as well as expedite our escape. To carry each injured man would slow us by approximately thirty-nine percent within the first hour: for each hour after that, our speed would decrease by a further ten percent. The extra energy required…"
"Shut up," Stevens snapped, barely looking at the android. "Shouldn't there be something buried deep in your programming, somewhere, about compassion and saving human lives? Are any of the laws of robotics ingrained in the microchips in your head?"
"They have been modified to suite combat scenarios, sir, as you are well aware. The greater will always outweigh the fewer. We have a greater chance of surviving if all members of our team are upwardly mobile. Moving these men will antagonise their wounds and bring death quicker. I estimate the average survival percentage of these men to be fifteen percent if they are left here to fend for themselves. That will drop to five percent if we attempt to move them."
"Like talking to a fucking statistics computer," Stevens snapped. "There's still a chance they'll survive, what the fuck is your problem?"
"By your flawed logic," Knight spoke in the same monotonous voice, emotionless and impartial to the whole situation, "Any percent of survival is a viable risk. From current combat information held on file, I estimate you would stand a zero point seven percent chance of surviving an attack from an alien with only a knife to defend yourself."
In one smooth move, Knight drew his combat blade, flipped it into the air, then caught it by the blade in his good hand, pointing the hilt of the weapon to Stevens as he offered him the weapon. "Does that mean that you would be willing to engage the creatures in melee?"
Stevens didn't answer, fuming inside that Knight was right. The fact the wounded men were willing to voluntarily lay their lives down for them made the decision easier to make, but far from easy to carry out.
"Move out," he finally muttered to those that could move. "Grab what you can, what you need, and get out the cockpit. Hurry."
The cramped confines of the dropship became a buzz of activity as men rushed to grab weapons and supplies, said final farewells to friends, and exchanged promises: tell my parents this or that, kill one of those things for me. Not a tear was shed, nor any epitaph dictated. Mourning would come as sure as it did after any loss, but these men weren't dead just yet, and the time for grieving would come once this alien threat had been eliminated, and the survivors were free to organise a memorial service for the few, the brave.
"You have made the right decision," Knight nodded his acknowledgement as he grabbed a canvas bag he had filled with supplies they would need and hefted it onto his shoulder, then grabbed pulse rifle and made for the cockpit. "Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader."
"I didn't decide to be a leader, I didn't decide you should be sent over here from The Vengeance, and I didn't decide that these men should stay here to die a senseless death," Stevens snapped.
"The decision doesn't have to be logical," Knight said, barely a glance over his shoulder as he entered the cockpit. "It was unanimous."
"I'm going to kill that fucking droid," Stevens muttered the Dawes as soon as he saw the combat unit clamber out the cockpit and descend to the floor of the cargo deck below. "Any ideas how I can do that?"
"Feed him to the aliens," she suggested, then paused as if thinking of another method of disposal. A smirk played across her lips. "Of course, the chances of him surviving that are probably significantly higher than you going up against them with a knife."
"Fucking unreal," Stevens spat. "Everything falls down to calculations or percentages… I bet it was Cray's idea to send the fucking machine over. I'll have a couple of choice words to say to him when we meet up again."
"If you meet up again," Dawes nonchalantly threw the comment into the conversation, then immediately regretted it the moment it had left her lips. She looked apologetically at him, but he didn't seem to have taken any affront to it.
"You're just saying what we're all thinking," he said in a low voice. "Just try not to say it too much, yeah? Get out there," he jerked a thumb towards the open canopy. "Make sure they get far away from the craft. If the grenades set off the missiles this bird's carrying, I want to be as far away as possible. "
Dawes nodded, muttered an apology under her breath, then grabbed her gear and vanished through the improvised escape hatch. Stevens turned to face the Marines left in the ship, the handful that had elected to give cover fire and hinder the creatures as much as possible. They were all in bad shape, a couple of them barely conscious but their hands still gripping their rifles, as if defying Death the claim it had on their souls.
"I don't know what to say," he muttered, holding his arms out.
"Don't say anything, just go," the self-elected speaker of the group of martyrs waving him away. "You make a shit lieutenant, you know that?"
"That so?"
"Yeah," the response came with a grin. "People genuinely like you."
"Go figure," Stevens returned the grin. "I'll work on that. Semper fi."
The Marines each nodded in agreement, saluted weakly as they watching him turn his back on them and leave the cabin that rocked from the relentless pounding outside.
Stevens quickly made his way back into the cockpit and had his leg slung over the canopy when the creatures broke in to the dropship: he could see the back wall of the craft as it peeled open and living darkness crawled into the room in a deadly wave. Stevens went for his weapon, paused as the men and women left alive in the craft opened fire, then reluctantly retreated. Already, he knew that there would be too many to hold off, and he knew that the Marines holding grenades would follow through with their final act if it meant their comrades survived a little longer.
He dropped from the open canopy, his legs buckling under him from the drop, and he quickly pulled himself to his feet, shrugging off the hand of Knight as he tried to aid him.
"Move," he grunted, barely recognisable as a word, lurching into a sprint as he waved to the handful of survivors to clear the crash site. A heavy staccato of gunfire sounded from within the crashed shell of a vehicle, a cacophonous din of automatic weapons punctuated by inhuman screeches, then the agonising, all-too human screams of Marines falling at the deadly hands of the aliens. The battle fell silent for half a second, then erupted into a deep and rumbling growl as the ship shuddered and rocked violently, spewing flames and debris from the opened cockpit and showering the ground with blackened and charred remains: they could have been either organic or inorganic, but the high powered explosion had left little of them as identifiable. Thick smoke rolled out from the shattered husk of the vehicle, crawling up the wall like a creeping ethereal vine. The vehicle had, surprisingly enough, remained mostly intact, and still blocked the hole made between the hangar and the cargo bay: the heat from the explosion had actually welded part of the craft to the wall, making for a more secure seal, while the inside was, doubtless, a raging inferno of fire, molten slag and caustic inhuman remains boiling in their own fetid blood.
It would be enough to hold back the tide of creatures for a while, but not forever.
Stevens had been knocked to the ground from the proximity of the blast, and he slowly pulled himself up from the ground, gathering his senses and kicking aside a piece of debris that could have been a control panel from the craft at one point, then looked around the men he had still with him. His party numbered ten, including his three friends and the loathsome android: there would have been twelve, but one had been killed by the smouldering chunk of debris that had pierced him through his body armour and pinned him to the ground, his body twitching. Another had clearly had as much as he could take, and gripped a smoking weapon in one hand, the back of his head smeared across a packing crate he'd been resting against in his final moments. To say the death of the suicidal Marine wouldn't be loss would be incorrect, Stevens needed as many men and women as he could keep to survive this, but if he'd been that quick to take his own life, would he really have contributed that much to the rest of the mission?
"How are we doing?" He finally asked as he managed to rejoin the group proper, who had amassed around a large packing crate almost as large as the dropship itself. His ears rang, his head pounded, and he could taste his own blood, but he knew that he could move on. He would have to.
"The main cargo bay does indeed seem to be unpopulated by the creatures," Knight replied, his voice as monosyllabic as normal. "It would appear the creatures have been using the crawl spaces within the wall to move, and not the rooms themselves. That being said…"
"I need an outlay of this bay, straight away," Stevens cut of Knight with a dismissive gesture, looking to Dawes. "Schematics, floor plans, anything that shows ways in and out. We need to find somewhere to hold up until help comes, some kind of bottleneck where we can limit access and give ourselves a fighting chance."
"We could boot up a couple of powerloaders," JT nodded towards the wall where the dropship had crashed. A pair of the toughened exoskeletons had been left to charge their batteries while not in use, and though one had been destroyed by the impact of the craft, one remained upright if not slightly battered from the rain of debris. "Move some of the cargo pods around, set up a new base…"
"Too much to cover," Stevens shook his head as he leaned over Dawes and her portable terminal. She'd found a data port near the cargo pod they hid by, and had managed to access the manifest for the deck and a three dimensional map of the cargo bay. "Too long to organise, too, especially with only one working suit. There's too many doors in and out of here, too, we couldn't possibly cover everything we need to stay alive: barely one man to each lift or door, and that's only on this floor. Four floors, a network of catwalks and balconies, we couldn't pick a worse place to… wait, what the hell's that?"
Dawes followed his guiding finger and panned the map, rolling it to get a better view of where he pointed: a hatch in the ground, twenty foot wide, surrounded on all sides by towering water tanks that were almost three stories tall. Accessible only via a thirty meters tunnel barely large enough to accommodate a fully-grown adult, it seemed like the only secure area the cargo bay could offer them.
"Water tanks," Dawes nodded. "Hatch leads to the aquatorium beneath us."
"The what?" Stevens shook his head. "I thought we were on the bottom of the ship, the lowest we could go without having to go on a skin-crawl."
"Considering you're serving on this ship, you don't know much about its layout, do you?" JT asked, an incredulous tone in his voice. Stevens fixed him with a stern glare.
"Marines don't have time to sit on their ass and read the ship manual cover to cover while drinking coffee. I don't expect you to pull a gun on those bastards and cut them down."
"Yet I do just that."
"Yeah, you do," the slightest of a smirk crossed his lips, but he fought it back. "Okay, what's the deal with this mystery basement you say we've got, then?"
"Aquatorium," he nodded, motioning for Dawes to access what files she could on it from the data jack she was accessing. Everyone huddled around her as she worked, fingers dancing a tattoo on the keypads. "You know that The Eden's a hydroponics ship, that normally means growing plants without soil: liquid-based farming, aquaculture. The ship does more than that, though, you know that we also have livestock in a number of different holding domes around the hull of the craft. They can be removed, replaced, moved around when we're in drydock. Each dome can hold anything: more cargo, livestock, vegetation, or even a combination of the three. I'm sure everyone here's been to the Garden, or even took a stroll through one of the arboretums: if not, you'll have at least heard about them."
Blank looks greeted JT, forgetting for a moment that none of the Marines other than Dawes and Stevens had been stationed aboard the craft.
"The aquatorium is on the underside of us, filled with water and a selection of fish. One small section's devoted to kelp farming, but the rest is filled with an abundance of marine life, coral, stuff like that. I think we're currently carrying some livestock to drop off on some oceanic moon research facility. I don't know what it is, but I know that the dome under there's one of the largest on the ship: maybe even in the fleet. Almost five hundred meters in diameter, half as deep, there's only the one way in, which is through that access hatch in the middle of the water tanks. There's you bottle neck, right there."
"It's no good," Stevens shook his head. "That bottleneck works both ways: they can't get in, but we can't get out. We need something that gives us a chance for escape in case they break through."
"Emergency airlock," JT tapped the screen where the swell of the dome ended with a small nipple-like protrusion. "We can get out onto the hull from there. There should be suits down there for… most of us."
"So we find these water tanks, and hide out in the aquarium surrounded by the fish and the water, and the only way they can break through is that hatch? For certain?"
"Like I say, the domes are interchangeable, so there's always as few links up to the craft as possible. Easier to detach and reseal. That's definitely the only way in."
"Protect it with a clutch of grenades at intervals down the access chute, we should have ourselves a reasonably secure place to hold out for the rest of the journey," muttered one of the Marines, accepting the plan before it had even been vocalised. "We held out in the hangar for a week, holding them off, and that had two doors. One entrance should be a cakewalk to hold."
"Don't get cocky, kid," Stevens shook his head, eyeing the private with uncertainty. "We didn't hold them off for a week, they just didn't bother us for a week. As soon as they tried to get in, they broke through the defences we had in place. Remember that. What about you, Frankenstein, what do you think?"
"Frankenstein was the creator," Knight responded to the jibe with as much indifference as he did any other snide comment. "I assume you're trying allude to the fact that, as a man made construct, I am equally as instable as the monster in question. I assure you, Lieutenant, my neural and synaptic systems are fully functional. And in response to your question, while not ideal, the entryway to the aquatorium would be easier to defend than any other location in the cargo bay. However, if possible, escape to another part of the ship would be more beneficial, either through freight lift or the air ducts.
"However, we don't know what the rest of the ship is like, as far as the population of these creatures is concerned. We do know that ship-wide communication has been dead for close to a week now, and all efforts from the com-tech to reroute any security feeds continue to be less than fruitful. While our sensors do pick up masses of life forms, they don't differentiate between human and alien. If the aquatorium is free of creatures, it may be the lesser of two evils."
"Metal Mickey says it's a sound plan," Stevens cast a glance over his shoulder, at the smouldering dropship and the burning conflagration that continued to keep the creatures at bay. If the fire continued to burn with such ferocity, then it wouldn't be long before the heat cooked off any ammunition left on the craft: that also meant any ordinance still intact on the vehicles missile racks. He didn't fancy being around if that happened: if it didn't blast through the hull, it would certainly open a gap in the wall big enough for the creatures to pour through. "Lets move before that thing blows."
