The shuttle was closing on the Aleksander's signal, but its location was still unclear. The signal appeared on the scanner as coming from an asteroid belt two light years from the Aleksander's last known position, but the asteroid belt was dense with objects-both large and small-that Dauphin had to avoid. Worse, the heavy metals in the asteroid fragments caused havok with the shuttle's sensors, creating ghosts on their radar. But then, from behind a moon-sized asteroid, emerged what looked like the bloated carcass of a dead space-faring zerg, mutilated in some way. But as it turned, adrift in space, it took on a familiar form.
"Oh shit," KD said quietly, "Is that the Aleksander?"
"What's left of it," Dauphin said. The main drive section; the long, thin, docking platform; and the forward hull were stitched together with the pulsating flesh of the zerg. In some places, the metal hull jutted out like a carapace. In others, a skin of infestation stretched out over its sides, moving in rhythm like the flanks of a living thing. It probably is alive, Dauphin thought.
"What do we do?" KD said quietly, looking at Dauphin wide-eyed.
"Sgt. Chang, you might want to come up here," Dauphin said, raising her voice so she could be heard in the shuttle's hold.
Moments later, Chang, in his bulky CMC, squeezed through the cockpit door. He looked past her, squinting into the distance at the Aleksander.
"It's not hostile?"
"Not yet."
Chang looked thoughtful for a moment. "Then move in closer. See how it reacts."
Dauphin gently nudged the throttle on the shuttle forward, firing the aft thruster. The shuttle moved slowly towards the Aleksander. The infested battlecruiser's tentacles waved in the void listlessly. The ship did not react.
"Do you think it's dead?" KD asked, hopefulness creeping into her voice.
"Looks like it," Dauphin said, trying to calm her friend.
"Stay frosty, ladies. Get ready to bail."
The shuttle inched closer—close enough to see what was left of the lettering on the hull, confirming it was indeed the Aleksander. Dauphin maneuvered the shuttle alongside it. To her amazement, part of the docking area looked clean enough—and its door was open.
"Do you think you can land on it?" Chang said.
"Uhh, I don't know..." Dauphin said cautiously.
"I've seen your record, Dauphin. That was a rhetorical question. Take us in," Chang said, annoyance creeping into his voice.
KD snapped her head around to look at Chang, "Oh god, you're not serious, right?"
"Relax, kid."
Dauphin maneuvered slowly into one of the docking bays, matching speed as the Aleksander turned in space. The bay door closed slowly behind them as they entered. KD uttered a strangled cry.
"Now what? Are we trapped in here?" KD said.
"Nah, we can blast our way out if we need to… Let's look around." Chang snapped the visor on his helmet down. "You girls get in your suits. No telling what's in the air in here." Chang roused Cpl. Hernandez, who had been snoring into his comm since halfway into the journey. Hernandez began unpacking their armaments. KD and Dauphin pulled their atmo suits out of a locker. As Dauphin put hers on, her anxiety mounted. Dauphin didn't understand the goal of the salvage mission now. They should have turned tail when they saw the ship had been infested. She had felt anger at Chang for challenging her, but that feeling was gone. Now, she was just scared, and looking at KD, she realized she was worse off than her and plainly terrified. KD could barely put her suit on for shaking.
"Should we even be here?" KD whispered. Dauphin didn't answer as she put on her helmet and stepped through the cockpit door. Dauphin confronted Chang as they waited on Hernandez to pass each one of them a weapon.
"This place is obviously overrun with zerg. What do we hope to find?"
"Data," Chang said, his voice tinny over the hiss of recycled air picked up by his comm, "If this bucket has enough power to shut the docking bay door, the main computer has to be functioning. Any data we can get from its core might help us control the sector."
"You know they lost, right?"
"Yeah, but maybe now we'll know why." Chang turned to KD. "Are there any lifesigns? We can at least know what we're walking into." KD let out a frustrated sigh as she looked at her console.
"Yes and no... the whole ship is a lifesign. Can't see shit."
"Well, we'll just have to keep our eyes open," Chang said as he hefted his rifle. "Just follow us and keep an eye out behind us."
"Y'all ready yet?" Hernandez said, his hand on the release lever for the shuttle's door now that he had given KD and Dauphin a sidearm and himself and Chang a rifle.
"Yeah, let's go," Dauphin said.
The door hissed open and the four of them stepped out onto what used to be the Aleksander's hangar bay. The ground was soft under Dauphin's feet and sucked on her boots as she walked away from the shuttle. Something from above dripped onto her helmet. She looked up. Above her, the ceiling looked like the ribcage of a massive animal, wet with fluids and covered in a thin skin. KD followed her gaze.
"Ugh, this place is going to make me hurl again."
"Wouldn't be a good idea in your helmet," Chang chimed in over the comm. "Try to ignore it."
"Good luck," Hernandez said, "place is like walking through a slaughter house."
"Yeah, but at least my onboard computer is saying the air in here is clean. Put your suits' air systems on filter. We may need our tanks later."
Dauphin obediently turned off her tank and switched her suit to filter the outside air. The smell hit her immediately. It was like wet dog, sweat, and dried blood. She could hear KD retching over her comm.
"Fuck. My eyes are watering," Hernandez said, choking, "I thought you said this air was clean."
"It is. Damn ship's not though."
Dauphin was relieved to find that the inner parts of the ship were less penetrated by the zerg. There were patches of skin and tendrils on the walls and in corners, but the floor and ceiling were mostly clear. If the ship had survived a crash or an external beating, Dauphin realized, it would make sense that the outer parts were more infested. The four of them walked through the ship in silence. KD and Dauphin walked backwards behind the two marines, the lights from their pistols shining down the hallway. Hernandez and Chang looked ahead, the lights on their rifles trained into the darkness. To their surprise, they saw nothing. No zerglings, drones, or even any of the small, fast-moving zerg that accompanied infestations. And, Dauphin thought, No infested humans, thank god. That's would scare the shit out of me.
They reached an elevator.
"I think its wishful thinking that the lifts work," Chang said, but he jammed the button with his fist anyway. To all of their surprise, the mechanism inside whirred to life albeit in a wet, rattling way. The door opened in front of them with a strangled, off-note chime.
"Hell no. I'm not going in there," Hernandez said.
"Do you really want to crawl through a bunch of zerg-slimed access tubes?" Chang was not impressed by his colleagues' bravery.
"I'm not going in there either," KD said shakily.
"All right," Chang said, dislodging the flashlight from his rifle and tossing it into the elevator, "let's test it." Chang reached in and pressed a button on its interior control panel. The door chimed again and slid haltingly closed. The inner workings came to life again. The noise it made sounded to Dauphin like someone sucking thick liquid through a straw or breathing with a respiratory ailment. It was disgusting, just like everything else on the ship.
Chang hit the call button again after a few seconds. The noises inside continued then stopped. After a few moments they started again and came closer. The door chimed and opened again. Chang's flashlight was inside undisturbed.
"Right. Come on, let's go." Chang motioned the group onto the elevator and activated the control panel. "This ship is just like the Cortez. I served on that ship my last tour. If we go up to the officer's deck, we should be able to take another elevator to the bridge. There should be a way to access its databanks there." Dauphin couldn't believe her luck. They would walk right past the Admiral and Vice Admiral's quarters. She had been afraid that they would have to either ditch Chang and Hernandez or forget about Greg's request, but now it might be feasible to duck away and find something for him.
The color ran from KD's face as the elevator started moving. It shuddered and scraped the sides of the elevator shaft as it made its way upwards. Despite the noise, it stopped at the right floor and opened its doors. Chang and Hernandez cautiously stepped out into the hallway, their guns drawn. Dauphin watched as the lights on their rifles swept the hallway, finding nothing but more infestation.
"The lift to the bridge is at the end of this hallway. Move slowly and let us take the lead."
Hernandez and Chang made their way down the hall. Dauphin and KD listened to their comm chatter; Hernandez complained about how large the officer's quarters were in comparison to his own berth and Chang waxed philosophically about how the hierarchy of benefits like admiralty apartments in the UED's military was hypocritical in the scope of current UED political discourse. Hernandez was clearly not interested. Dauphin changed her comm frequency and counted it out for KD with her hand. KD switched her frequency as well.
"Stukov's quarters should be on this floor. Keep an eye out."
"What are we going to do if we find it?"
"The ID is expired, but it should still get us into the room. It has his thumbprint recorded on it."
"But what about Chang and Hernandez?"
"We'll lag behind. They won't notice if we duck in somewhere if we do it quickly."
KD and Dauphin walked slowly, gaining more distance between themselves and the marines. There was a nameplate beside each door, though some were covered in infestation that they had to peel it away. Some of the doors were encased in infestation. Dauphin realized she didn't know what they would if Vice Admiral Stukov's door was similarly inoperable. KD grabbed Dauphin's hand, startling her.
"Carolyn, look!"
And there it was; his name was readily visible and the door was free of infestation. Dauphin looked down the hall. Hernandez and Chang were having an animated conversation that she could not now hear. They had not noticed that they were not still behind them. Dauphin pulled the ID card out of a compartment on her suit. Taking one last look at the marines, she held it against the keypad... And nothing happened.
KD sighed. "I guess it was too..." The mechanism of the lock made an audible click and the door slid noiselessly open. The two of them ducked inside and the door closed behind them.
"Quick! Find something we can take!" KD said, darting past Dauphin. Dauphin surveyed the room. His quarters were quite large, befitting a man of the Vice Admiral's station—more like an apartment than the cramped quarters Dauphin and KD shared with two other women on the Kuznetsov. There was a living room with a bar that appeared fully stocked. There were several large windows in the room, but they were shattered and covered with a thin, clear layer of infestation. To the left was a door, presumably to a bedroom. Other than the bar, there was nothing fancy about the room. There was a couch and a chair—both in black leather. A non-descript end table sat next to the couch, and in the corner was a large desk with a computer console set into it. The most elaborate piece of furniture was the high, wingback chair that sat behind it. KD was already rifling through the desk. She opened the small humidor beside the computer but quickly closed it. She opened all the drawers.
"Anything?"
"I found a photograph," she said, holding up a small, dark picture.
"Who's in it?"
"Kids. Four of them."
KD showed it to Dauphin. The four children were lined up on a hearth dressed in fancy holiday clothing. Christmas maybe? Nobody celebrates like that anymore... The oldest was a tiny, dark-haired girl holding the youngest, a fair-haired infant, in her lap. She was the only one looking at the camera. The two other boys, both toddlers and maybe twins, were sitting on the other side of the hearth. They looked like they had been fighting and were on the verge of tears—it was a typical family portrait. She gave it back to KD.
"Leave it. He's not in it."
Dauphin wandered into the bedroom. It was then she was struck by how clean—not just of infestation, but of dust or other detritus that would normally have settled in an unused room—the bedroom was. The bed was made and looked undisturbed, but there was something hanging in the air that seeped through her helmet's ventilator. Is that cologne? Maybe hot soap? She walked into the bathroom. It was again cleaner than she would have expected but worn. The white tiles that covered the room from floor to ceiling had fallen off in some places, but it looked like it was being maintained. Then she noticed there was condensation on the sink. The air was even humid, like someone had recently showered. She opened the shower door. The inside of the door was wet. The hair on her neck stood up.
There's no fucking way someone is living here, right?
"Jackpot!" KD said over the comm. Dauphin walked back into the bedroom. KD had tossed a long, thin box onto the bed, but was still digging in the closet. Dauphin walked over and inspected it. The box had Stukov's name and rank engraved on a metal plate set in the lid. Unlatching the lid and opening it, she found an officer's ceremonial sabre and an ornate revolver inside. Both of them looked as if they had not been taken out of the box very often.
"And look at this shit." KD threw a haphazardly folded jacket onto the bed and then a hat. A faint whiff of cigar smoke drifted through her air filter as the hat hit the bed. She had never seen a high-ranking officer's dress uniform up close before. Both the hat and jacket were trimmed and lined in red with elaborate gold-stitched scrollwork and piping. The hat had a red band just above the brim under the insignia. The breast of the uniform was covered in medals, which struck Dauphin as odd. Most officers would keep their medals in a box somewhere for safe keeping, but it appeared Stukov wasn't one to care about medals—or ceremonial garb. But his name was on a tag on the jacket and his initials were on the inside of the hat; this was something that Greg would definitely want. KD pulled out the pants that had a matching red stripe down the side and some dress boots that needed to be shined. She also dug out a duffel bag and began carefully placing it all inside. As Dauphin watched, she imagined the man who must have owned all this regalia standing in it, his four children around him, the infant in his arms. Now all that was left of him were a few pieces of clothing and some trinkets. It made her sick to her stomach.
What a fucking waste.
Thinking better of it, she went to the desk and retrieved the photograph, tucking it in the bag as KD tried to figure out how to get everything inside it.
"Dauphin! KD!" Chang suddenly cut in, "Where are you?" The marine had switched to all frequencies in an attempt to find them. She changed her frequency back to the standard one.
"Uh, right here?" KD and Dauphin threw everything else into the bag and hastily exited Stukov's quarters. Hernandez rounded on them, startled.
"Jesus, are you okay?"
"We're fine. We saw a door open and walked in," Dauphin said evenly.
"Are you crazy? You had no idea what could have been..." Chang saw the duffel in KD's hand. "What's all that?"
"Nothing. Just... stuff..." She put it behind her. Hernandez snatched it away and opened it.
"Why you got all this dead guy's crap?"
"We know a... collector. He was going to give us some money for it," Dauphin said. KD gave her a look that meant "shut up."
"And you weren't gonna cut us in?"
"I just thought you'd rather have the booze in the bar in there," KD said quickly.
Hernandez dropped the duffel. "Booze? What?" He walked into Stukov's quarters and Chang followed. Dauphin had always admired KD's ability to read people. She was a hot mess otherwise, but it was definitely a strength that Dauphin lacked. They could hear Hernandez and Chang arguing over who was going to take what and the clinking of glass. Hernandez and Chang both came out of Stukov's quarters with armfuls of bottles. KD opened the bag and they carefully put them inside. The bag was heavy now, and Hernandez took it from her.
"All right, back to the mission," Chang said, "Let's go."
