Wow. Well, this was longer than I thought it would be. Not that that's a bad thing, really. As usual, completely unbeta'd and I can't be arsed to proofread, so enjoy the nice flashback.
The bullet-riddled creature was clearly dead, but its corpse brought the Marines of Omega group little comfort. Gunnery Sergeant Bass couldn't hail Lieutenant Hikowa or Commander Cadigan, and Campbell's Beta team had already been wiped out alongside a group of civilians.
The Marines were clearly on edge. Two of their numbers were dead, reducing the team to ten strong. Bass would need to hold them together if he was to set up contact with the bridge, most likely meaning a trek through the darkened interior of the ship to the bow's command deck.
"Now word from bridge," Bass clicked his comm line shut, "And I doubt that it's a communications glitch. We're assuming the worst."
"The fuck does that mean?" McNeal half-laughed, half-snapped, before hastily adding a respectful, "Sir."
"It means," Bass slid a fresh clip into his pulse rifle and priming it, "That we're not out of the woods yet. We're assuming there could be more than one of these…" he gestured to the dead alien, "…things, and we're assuming contact with the bridge's been severed due to this thing getting there before it found us."
The Marines remained silent, glancing at one another, not sure how to react. They were dangerously close to the Ishimura's location, and no helm meant that there was a chance they were on a collision course with the much larger vessel.
"Sir, with respect, we're practically opposite of the bridge," Dean put in, calling up a holographic scematic on his wrist-mounted computer, "Assuming we've been keeping steady speed since we last heard from the El-Tee, we're not gonna be able to get across the ship in time fast enough to change course."
"Yeah, if we climb the stairs and hoof it the whole way," McNeal shot back, "We've got gravlifts for a reason."
"We're assuming the worst, Private," Bass placed emphasis on the Marine's inferior rank, "That means no lifts. We'll confirm on our way, but we can't put all our money on the elevators working during an incursion like this."
"Fuck, gunny," McNeal shook his head, "When's there ever been an emergency procedure for anything like this?"
McNeal had a point. And it was a point Bass found himself unable to address.
Sergeant Jon Willis, incidentally, had the fortune of missing any form of encounter with the creature. His squad was at full strength, albeit a bit jumpy with all the noise coming over the Marine channels.
There was no response from the bridge when he called in to get a sit-rep. And Campbell's team was long since gone, leaving…
"Bass, you still with us?" he clicked open his comm, astonished he'd not contacted Bass earlier.
"Good to hear your voice, Jon," Bass' relieved voice came over the line. That wasn't a good sign. You had to be nervous before you could be relieved, and if something had spooked Charlie Bass, it was bad news.
"Likewise," Willis raised a closed fist, halting the squad's movement through an empty living quarters, "What's your status? I can't raise Hikowa, and I haven't run into this thing Cadigan warned us about."
"Lucky you," Bass replied somberly, "We put it down for good. But it took DeStefano and Ripley with it. We're trying to get to the bridge by foot. Where're you?"
"You're not gonna believe this," Willis smiled, his first stroke of luck this entire time, "We're about two hundred meters off from the bridge. We'll meet you there."
"Best thing I've heard all day," Bass replied, "Just be sure to decelerate or adjust our course enough to avoid a collision with the Ishimura. Last time I was bridgeside, everything was marked so clearly you'd think the Corp thought our pilots had the memories of goldfish."
"Roger that, Gunny," Willis nodded, waving his men up, "We're on it."
"That's one less thing to worry about," Bass closed the line, looking back to his assembled men.
"Sergeant Willis is practically at the bridge already. He'll make sure we're not about to crash. All we need to worry about is getting to the bow safely." There was a chorus of clicks and snaps as weapons were primed and safeties flicked off. After seeing what had happened to two of their number, they were prepared for the worst.
Bass pressed the glowing controls of the mess-hall door, thankful that it was still online as it slid upward. He paused as the comm indicator in his HUD flickered an urgent red. Incoming from Willis.
"Problems, Sergeant?" he opened the line, bringing up Willis' image on his wrist-computer as he did.
"Brace for impact! We're too late!" the sergeant shouted, his virtual head twisting quickly over his shoulder, "Charlie! We're-"
The communication abruptly cut to static, but prior to the breakup, over Willis' shoulder, Bass saw that the team had indeed reached the bridge. But what was urgently wrong was seen through the reinforced forward viewport: the looming form of the Ishimura, seconds away from impact.
"Brace! Impact coming!" Bass barked. There was a moment's hesitation, but the Marines dove for whatever tools to brace themselves they could. Perhaps a moment too late.
Willis and his team died in an instant, either by the virtue of being right at the point of impact, by secondary explosions, or being sucked out of the ship's broken hull by the ensuing vacuum.
Bass and his team fared marginally better. The loss of the bridge and the massive impact with the much-larger planet cracker had caused a massive loss of power throughout the ship, shutting down many of even the emergency lights.
The newly opened door slammed downward, crushing PFC Janick's waist under its immense weight and momentum. The room turned on its side, sending the contents of the mess hall hurtling towards the squad. A massive table, freed of its bolts on the floor, struck and crushed the ribcage of PFC Moll. The bones meant to protect his internal organs broke inward, shredding his heart and lungs. The impact dampeners of the armor were tough, but not tough enough for several tons of plasteel focused on a fairly small location.
Bass had been through the door by the time of impact, as had Sherman, Dean, Kaczynski, and Chen. Janick had been halfway through when the impact sent the door crushing downward, pinning the now screaming Marine under its multi-ton bulk.
McNeal, Wallace, and Jones remained on the other side, with the bodies of Janick and Moll. Or rather, the body of Moll. Janick was still, unfortunately for him, very much alive and conscious. His suit had already administered an autoinjection of morphine, doing some to dull the pain, but not nearly enough.
"Shit!" McNeal grabbed hold of the base of the door, suspended by Janick's torso,
"Gunny! Fuck!"
"Calm down, Private," Bass shot back, this time with none of the emphasis of his previous use of the title, "Grab hold of the door. Lift with me on three. Alright?"
The trio on McNeal's side and the five on Bass' side grabbed hold of the door, nodding a quick count of three before lifting as one, trying to raise the door off Janick. It rose just a little, but not nearly enough to remove the barrier between the two groups.
"Keep it up!" McNeal cried out, grabbing hold of Janick's legs, "Just a few seconds longer!" He pulled the wounded Marine, eliciting new screams of agony as he tore already damaged muscles. But Janick's head cleared the door just before the weight broke through the strength of the Marines, sending it crashing down to the floor.
The walls were easily soundproof, but assuming the radio sets still worked, the two groups would never be out of earshot. Bass opened his computer screen, punching in the team frequency.
"McNeal, you hear me?"
"Yeah, no problem," McNeal's helmeted head appeared onscreen, "We didn't lose anything in that door, but Doc says Janick's looking bad. If we can't get him evac soon, he might not pull through."
Bass cursed. In a way, wounded men were a worse burden on a unit than dead men. Dead men didn't require medical attention, and they didn't slow down the group.
Why was he thinking like that? He'd never been that callous with his men. He shook his head to clear it, then came out with his plan of action.
"Alright," Bass finally said, "Have Jones do what he can to keep Janick stable. We'll do what we can to get contact with the Ishimura. They're bound to have medical facilities we can use until the Corp can get us a real medivac."
"Can't we just radio for one now?" Dean asked, shifting nervously as he looked down the opposite end of the darkened hallway, "We might as well assure they're en route before we risk contact with the Ishimura."
"Unfortunately, that's impossible," Bass shook his head, "We've only got our short-range comms, and the long-range gear was all in the bridge. And unless I'm wrong, the bridge just got crushed like a tin can."
"Fuck," McNeal swore, "Gunny…just do what you can. And get back soon. I feel like we're being watched already."
Bass didn't want to admit it, but McNeal had a point. The red emergency lights had come back on, bathing them all in the eerie glow. But it wasn't just that: from the corners of his eyes, Bass felt like there was always a darting figure, eluding his gaze just before he could track it.
"Of course," he nodded, "Check in every ten minutes. I don't want any more surprises. Or any more dead Marines."
Private Jared Wallace twisted a lever on the side of his M31 'Grinder' heavy machine gun, deploying the magnetic shaft on the underside, letting it bond to the deck floor with a metallic thunk. Another flip of a switch, and the safety was off. He pressed the button atop the molded grip, letting the three-barrels build in speed for a few seconds before coming to a halt. One second of windup, and the trigger under his index finger would send high-caliber shells racing at any target he chose at 3000 rounds per minute.
"Don't worry about it, Gunny," Wallace widened the range of his HUD's motion tracker, "Nothing's getting to us without the Widowmaker having a first say."
Bass's twelve-man team had been reduced to five in operation: him, Dean, Sherman Kaczynski, and Chen. That left them with three pulse rifles, a shotgun, and a Grinder. It was only a stroke of luck that they had the diversity of firepower, albeit significantly reduced from the team's original numbers.
Joseph Dean felt ill at ease with the silence that surrounded the team. He'd never quite fully appreciated the perpetual hum of machinery, life support systems, or ventilation. It always generated a white noise that overlaid all activity aboard the Valor.
Now, that noise was gone, as the Valor reverted to minimal power expenditure. The only sounds to break the near perpetual silence were the footsteps of the squad, echoing metallic taps without even squad chatter to add to it.
Occasionally they'd pass a vital system buried somewhere in the walls, still running due to whatever priority it received over the better part of the ship's functions. Dean found himself hoping for something to break up the unnerving monotony. That feeling lasted until he remembered the dead alien that had killed two of their men in a heartbeat.
Stanislaus Kaczynski and William Sherman, on the other hand, were used to warfare that was hard on the mind. They'd been in Bass' force during the outbreak on Tanith. They had been two of thirty Marines assigned to help local police forces put down a series of riots in their capitol city.
The mission was a massive coverup. And with good reason. It was the reason Bass had been demoted from Master Sergeant, and probably the reason they'd been stuck on the Valor ever since.
Tanith, three years ago
Kaczynski double-checked his compact submachine gun, ensuring that the clip he slid into the receiver was marked with a blue stripe and not a red. He'd wished he had his M31, but this mission was helping but down a riot, not creating a bloodbath. His primary tool was a six-barreled grenade launcher loaded with teargas and sonic shells. The gas had been around for ages, but the sonic rounds were something new. They put out an ultrahigh frequency that disrupted the chemical balances of the brain and inner-ear, generally resulting in sudden nausea, dizziness, and general incapacitation.
His submachine gun was a secondary weapon, loaded with stun rounds instead of live ammunition. He had a bandolier of grenade shells strung across his light body armor, four clips of stun rounds, and a single magazine of live ammunition, complete with a locking seal on the top to prevent accidental loading and firing.
Sherman was lucky in regards to weaponry. His Pancor Jackhammer autoshotgun could receive the rubber-pellet filled stunshells. Like the submachine gun, the shotgun was considered, bizarrely enough, a last resort, to be used only in the event of the tear gas or sonic grenades failed to quell the crowds.
The two soldiers sat alongside one another in the first of three armored personnel carriers that rolled into the eerily quiet streets of the Tanith capitol Uskar. There was evidence of rioting in the broken windows at streetlevel as well as the abandoned and vandalized cars that the APCs occasionally had to swerve to miss.
This was a public relations mission for the Marines more than anything else. Kaczynski and the other thirty-odd Marines were wearing just their camouflage fatigues, boots, and basic chest plates under their tactical vests. They looked like something out of the twentieth century, and all because some desk jockey thought the Grim Reaper-like visage provided by their standard Level Six Combat RIGs were a bit too 'frightening' to be inspiring when the Marines were shown helping their allies in the police force.
If anything were a greater testament to the PR-heavy nature of this mission, it was the suit that the Marines were forced to babysit for the duration of the trip. He was a short, nervous man named Mr. Lee, wearing a pale suit with an integrated RIG. Most of the Marines treated him with polite indifference or…hostile indifference.
Mr. Lee spent the better part of the trip sweating in the climate controlled APC, wiping his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. He asked questions. Far too many questions for any of the Marines' liking. The ones with audio players were already putting in wireless earbuds to avoid questioning. Those that didn't either tried to talk with one another, pretend to sleep, or feign a war-related deafness.
Master Sergeant Charlie Bass was given command over the Marine strike force, but it wasn't meant to be anything. Command was just giving the job to Bass to pad his already impressive record. Not that Bass needed any of that. He'd proved his worth countless times before.
Bass sat just behind the driver, pulling the intercom from the wall of the APC. It was a line wired to the other two troops carriers, ensuring that he could give orders to his men without having to rely on the communications setup normally found in their combat RIGs.
"Alright, boys and girls, the Uskar PD has been spamming us with a distress signal for about a week now," Bass spoke into the receiver, "They're having trouble dealing with some civil unrest, and we're the fixer for that problem."
"Top, if we're here for the riots, why's this place a ghost town?" one Marine put in.
"No idea, soldier," he shrugged, "We're nearly police headquarters. I can only assume this is the eye of the storm. Speaking of which…" He glanced out one of the viewports, finally seeing the battered exterior of the Uskar PD. It was pockmarked with holes of varying sources, and had a few broken windows, not to mention a good few burns from what were probably Molotov cocktails.
"Looks like there was rioting after all," Bass muttered to himself, then raised his voice again, "Alright, we're good to go. Set up a watch around the area. I don't want any surprises until we know the situation from the branch chief."
The rear hatches of the APCs swung down as the multi-ton vehicles ground to a halt outside the department building. The Marines were still largely at ease. Not only were there no visible threats, there were no visible anything. There wasn't even a stereotypical tumbleweed to blow down the street.
Three men in dusty police uniforms walked through the sliding doors on the station's front. They'd been invisible behind the polarized glass before stepping out. Remarkably, the impact-resistant glass had been able to hold up during whatever siege the station had undergone.
"I'll handle this," Mr. Lee slunk past Bass before the Master Sergeant had a chance to voice an objection. He extended a hand towards the man in the middle of the formation, who'd stepped ahead of the other two.
"My name is Edmund Lee, Captain," he put on an industry-honed grin as the police captain raised his own hand, "It's a pleasure to mee-"
Concealed almost entirely in the captain's hand was a small handgun, and archaic slug-thrower that still used cased rounds. The round entered through Lee's right eye, by the bridge of his nose, scrambling his brains as the small-caliber bullet ricocheted around in his skull.
"Whoa!" the nearest Marine cried out, reaching for his sidearm in lieu of his slung primary weapon. One of the other two officers lashed out, catching the Marine's throat in a flash of silver.
The razor-edged knife cut open the Marine's windpipe, eliciting a choked gurgle as the wound spurted blood. He staggered backward, only for the officer to swing his arm again, this time punching through the Marine's left temple. The blade came away slick with blood and gray matter just as Kaczynski fired his grenade launcher, loaded with a tear-gas round.
He was only five meters away, firing in a straight line with a weapon intended to deliver its ammunition nearly three hundred meters away. The forty-millimeter round struck the man's forehead squarely in the center, whipping his head back with a sickening snap.
A veritable swarm of stun rounds blasted the captain off his feet, probably breaking ribs and covering him with a tapestry of bruises. But even under the sustained barrage, he still tried to force himself to his feet. Bass contributed to the volley himself, close enough now to see the madness in the captain's eyes, like a rabid animal.
One of those eyes caught a stun round. It was one of the few places on the human body that the rounds could prove lethal even at medium range. He dropped as if he'd been cold-cocked with one of the impact-absorbing rounds imbedded in his brain.
Three Marines had managed to subdue and zip-strip the third officer after wrestling the box-cutter from his iron grip. But even the riotcuffs were having trouble holding his wrists together. He foamed at the mouth as he thrashed under the weight of two of the Marines, finally dropping into unconsciousness as one slammed the butt of his gun into the back of the officer's head.
Kaczynski was still trying to make sense of the of the sudden turn of events as a electronic chirp sounded from his computer. All around him, similar sounds sounded from soldier after soldier. Kaczynski was the first to check for the origin, finding it to stem from the motion tracker.
"Jesus Christ!" one of the perimeter guards shouted as he made a grab for his submachine gun, "Master Sergeant, we've got-" The whine of a high-energy weapon cut through the air, followed by a concentrated blast of energy that tore off the unfortunate Marine's head and one of his shoulders.
"Hostile fire!" Bass roared over the ensuing din, "Cover!" The blast had emanated from the second floor of the office building beside the police station. The Marine response sent a storm of stun rounds to the point of origin, breaking what windows remained but failing to produce any substantial results.
At least a dozen of the Marines cursed the stun rounds in their weapons, reaching for the red-labeled clips. Bass noticed the movement with a growing sense of alarm.
"No live rounds!" Bass shouted, "We need to-"
"Top!" Kaczynski grabbed Bass' attention, "Tracker's are going crazy. It's the buildings. They're swarming with movement."
This was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission, geared to deal with civil disobedience by unorganized civilians, at best. How was an ambush by men armed with energy weapons possible?
Another blast of energy struck one of the three APCs. If Bass had to wager a guess, he'd think it was some kind of anti-tank weapon. Not much else could cut through the reactive armor to breach the fuel cell within.
The blast that ensued as a result of the ruptured fuel cell claimed the six Marines who'd taken cover behind it, wounding another two with shrapnel.
A line of energy blasts rippled from the surrounding buildings, this time on the ground floor, mixed in with a larger number of ballistic firearms. Several more Marines went down, most of whom stood back up thanks to their body armor.
"Fall back to the station!" Bass spoke into his radio gear, reaching all his remaining Marines, "The Bradley's aren't safe! Get inside the HQ!" The Marines, to their credit, responded immediately with the swiftness that spoke volumes of their professionalism. But even as the Marines moved to the comparative safety of the police station, the ground levels of the surrounding buildings began to swarm with newly emerged men and women, wearing a mixture of plainclothes and civilian RIGs.
Worse than the swarms was the hodge-podge of weaponry that bristled from their ranks. Even worse than that was the look of madness in the eyes of each and every member of the mob. And there had to be hundreds of them, in the first wave alone.
Bass fired his sidearm into the controls of the lobby door, sealing them with a pneumatic hiss of the reinforced glass. Chips flew off as the front of the building held against the firestorm of small arms. Bass hoped that it would hold out long enough for command to get their distress signal.
Once inside, the Marines found the better part of the ground floor stripped of its contents, save for interspersed desks and broken cubicle walls. The men went swiftly about overturning desks and propping up walls, making as much makeshift cover as they could in what little time they had.
Kaczynski made certain that his grenade launcher was loaded with three tear gas shells and three sonics. He had no idea what was going on, but he was beginning to doubt their ability to qwell the crowd. He crouched behind a flipped desk, alongside Sherman, who was in the process of feeding live shells into his Jackhammer. Kaczynski decided to follow suite with his submachine gun, slipping in his one clip of live ammunition. Damned mission had left him with no extra clips. The same was true for most of the other Marines. A prolonged firefight would spell death against the hundreds opening fire on front of the building.
"Command, operation's become a complete Charlie Foxtrot. We've taken multiple casualties, to a foe with access to energy-based ordinence, and we're dramatically outnumbered. Requesting immediate reinforcements and evac." Bass waited for a response, but none came.
"Command, can you read me?" At least this time there was static, but still no response.
"Command, we can't-" His last attempt at contact was disrupted by another screaming blast of energy, this time sweeping across the reinforced glass front of the police HQ. The glass was rated against blunt force, flames, and even small arms fire. But amongst the crowd, there was at least one C99 Supercollider Contact Beam mining laser. A weapon that could shatter stone like glass had no trouble breaking through the APC's armor, and it had no problem at all breaking the glass.
Bass shielded his eyes from the exploding glass, with his men following suite. But their forearms weren't anything near sufficient to stop the flood of handgun and rifle fire that followed in the wake of the removal of the protecting barrier.
Kaczynski fired off a teargas shell, as did the other launcher-equipped Marines. The 40mm rounds hit pavement, pouring out gouts of white gas. Any other crowd would have been incapacitated or forced to flee in the face of the burning gas. This crowd was far beyond normality.
They charged straight through the cloud, into the headquarters atrium. Staggered by stun rounds or blinded by the gas, they stumbled onward, forming a new wall from their own fallen numbers.
Sherman was firing live ammo, as were several other Marines. His shotgun shells blew bloody holes in charging rioters, but each shot brought him closer to the bottom of his limited supply of magnum shells. The rubber pellets practically worthless at anything other than point-blank range, and by that point, he might as well use his knife and not have to load his gun with useless shells.
Kaczynski switched from the grenade launcher to his submachine gun, firing it as effectively in small bursts as he could. He missed his Grinder more than ever, particularly the automatic fire and copious ammunition it provided.
Bass' Divot handgun boomed, putting a hole between a charging civilian's eyes. By this point, the lives of his men mattered more than those of a crowd of Mogadishu imitators. Except the Rangers in Somalia knew what they were getting into. They certainly didn't end up fighting against enemies better equipped than they were.
"Gunny, we can't hold out here!" Private Batista fired off a pair of shots from his own handgun before returning to his cover beside Bass, "They've got more bodies than we've got bullets!"
Bass hated to admit it, but Batista was right. The Marines may have been holding their own for the time being, but their makeshift cover was only useful against very small-caliber ballistic weapons. One of the men made it far enough to raise his weapon and fire off a blast of white-hot plasma at Lance Corporal Phelps, burning a hole through his chest and neck, instantly bypassing his body armor.
That was a plasma cutter, Bass realized, They've got goddamn mining tools. The city must have either had a stockpile somewhere, or a shipment had been passing through the city at the time of the riot's commencement.
"Mas…Bass, we've receiv…einforcements on their way…one hour," the radio cracked to life, but rife with static. If Bass understood properly, reinforcements were nearly an hour off.
"Negative, HQ!" Bass shouted over the gunfire, "That's an hour we don't have! We need support, and we need it fast!"
"Rog…Bass. Raptor flight is inbo…rike coordinates Xray, Tw..two, Niner. Confirm?"
The N99 Raptor was the primary attack aircraft of the Marine Corp, capable of supersonic flight, air-to-air combat, and strafing runs of both static and mobile ground targets. Their four plasma cannons could slag rock and burn through the toughest of armor.
Of course, an obvious problem, as with any air support, was the need for coordinates before a successful strike. And with this bizarre interference playing hell with their electronics…it might be causing similar problems with the Raptors.
"Command, confirm attack coordinates!" panic crept into Bass voice as the idea dawned on him. The Raptors would be delivering their ordinance over the course of less than a second. The pilots relied heavily on the coordinates they were fed. And in close-quarters like these, what had initially seemed to be a Broken Arrow airstrike could drop attack right on his men's heads.
The scream of the Raptors filled the air, covering even the noise of gunfire and laser blasts. Bass shouted an order to find better cover, but the sun-bright flash already filled the streets, and there was little cover to be had, regardless.
The blast turned the better part of the teeming mob into ash in an instant. The strike hadn't been called in right on the Marine's location, but it was close enough to still yield disastrous results.
As it was, there were sixteen Marines still fighting, with an additional three incapacitated from injuries. The superheated air blasted through the station, catching those who were unfortunate enough to be close enough to the lethal plasma discharge.
Batista had popped back up to fire again even as Bass gave the order to stay down. He stared in awe as a supernova of white-hot plasma exploded before him. The blast's was more than enough to cook the unfortunate Marine's brain in his skull, splitting his cranium like an eggshell as gray matter bubbled out.
Bass's mind locked up as the mutilated corpse toppled over. He'd wanted standard gear, on-site medivac, a secure op zone. Anything that would have planned for the worst. Instead, his caution was deemed 'costly and unnecessary.' But Bass'd be damned if he could ever put a price on any of the men that he'd lost.
Obviously, Bass made it out alive. Kaczynski and Sherman, too. They lived to face their current predicament, but they were among the few that did. The blast was far too close, and too many of the Marines hadn't gotten the word to take cover.
Eight other men made it out alive. Of them, two died shortly thereafter of their injuries from the deadly mining tools-turned weapons. Private Morris had lost his sight when the blast went off directly in his line of sight, burning his retinas and ending his military career. Two more suffered burns sufficient to require skin grafts.
The political fallout would have been disastrous. Mass civilian fatalities, an ensuing investigation of all involved, and the usual protests. It seemed like no one cared about honoring the dead Marines. They only cared about crucifying the live ones.
Bass was summarily demoted to Gunnery Sergeant, and a few spooks from Naval Intelligence had implied an additional mountain of red tape for him and the survivors should Bass do anything less than complete cooperation with the investigation.
But at least the men in black came to Bass behind closed doors. The media didn't have that same courtesy. Gunnery Sergeant Bass became the face of looming military fascism, a neo-Gestapo who dropped an airstrike on civilian protesters. Their descriptions were not that specific, of course, but the hundreds of deaths were all blamed on his negligence.
His assignment to the USM Valor was meant to take him out of the public eye. It was little more than damage control, a sleepy assignment for him and his remaining men to placate them. It had worked, too, at least for a time. The Valor's crew patrolled a system outside of legal space. The only ships they ran into had malfunctioning navigation systems, or were small-time smuggling operations trying to escape government eye.
Tanith was a disaster, but Bass was encouraged to put it behind him, at least as well as he could. It was easy to forget something that seemed so unbelievable. Billions of credits in damage, nearly an entire platoon dead, and…mass insanity. There was no other way to explain the bloodlust that gripped the thousands of dead civilians. It could have been a cover up for some sort of chemical leak, a biological agent that had gotten out into the general populace.
But in all honesty, any cloak and dagger explanation would have done. Something to justify men and women turning into animals. And something to justify all the men he left behind in Tanith.
"Gunny?" Dean spoke up, "What're we doing?" Bass reentered the present, calling up a three dimensional image of the Valor lit by red, yellow, and green lights. The image should have been all green, or at least it would be when the destroyer was undamaged. Yellow indicated minimal to moderate damage, while red was reserved for critical or completely crippling states. Bass took somewhat morbid comfort in the fact that not every section was lit a deep red.
"Alright, we're here," he blew up the corridor on the schematic, "Collision took out most of the bow, with heavy breaches in the hull. Some areas are too crushed to transverse, and most have lost atmosphere."
Chen, meanwhile, was idly spinning a morphine syringe in the fingers of his left hand. It was a nervous habit that characterized the medic, but Bass knew he could count on him in a pinch. He and Jones were good at their jobs, and it was pure luck that the surviving members of Omega team had a medic on each side of the door. Å
"We can't count on continued life support," Kaczynski noted, "What's the status of the lifeboats?"
"No good," Bass shook his head, "One, three, and four are disabled."
"Two and five?" Kaczynski followed up.
"No idea, really," Bass shifted the schematic again, "Looks like they broke off on impact."
"Up the creek, then, Gunny?" Sherman propped his Jackhammer against his shoulder, "No way off, and clock's ticking on the air supply."
"Not true," Bass raised his index finger, "We've got one way out, but I doubt you're gonna like it."
"Anything's better than here, Gunny," McNeal's voice came over the radio, "What's the call?"
"Simple enough," Bass took a moment to highlight a largely undamaged route, then open a new ship hologram, "We're going ahead as planned, and going to board the Ishimura."
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