The dog shook his head. “Absolutely nothing, sir. We haven’t set foot in the place.”

  Quinn looked back and forth between the two of them and chuckled. “I guess that’s our job then, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, sir. You’re Red Company. We’re paid to sling torches, not rifles.”

  Lt. Quinn turned back to the squad, and I knew by the way his eyes were traveling over the group of us, he was looking for a volunteer.

  Nobody moved a muscle. Then he opened his mouth. I could see that through his faceplate, and he was about to pick a victim when we heard a new voice crackle into our headsets.

  “Wait! Halt! Do not defile that ship. Not yet.” It was a female voice, but kind of scratchy. “Lt. Quinn, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, doc,” Quinn said. “We’re standing by.”

  On our private tactical channel, a lot of chatter began. “Are we really just gonna stand here waiting after we raced all the way across the plain?”

  “That’s what I said, Tench,” Quinn answered. “We’re going to stand right here and wait.”

  There was a lot of complaining after that. Everyone seemed to need a nap or have to go to the bathroom. Quinn told everyone to shut up and take a shit in their suits. The complaints turned to muted grumblings after that. We wandered around, finding a place to sit down and rest.

  If there’s one thing a marine knows while on deployment, it’s that whenever you can take a break, you take it. You never knew how long it would be until your next one.

  We took a few sips of our precious body waters which the suits provided for us, checked our energy levels, and generally relaxed.

  When the science team approached, we saw that there were two men and a woman. The woman, named Dr. Sharaf, was in charge.

  “My marines have been given the charge of escorting you into this ship, Doc,” Quinn said.

  “So I’ve been informed, Lieutenant,” Sharaf answered. She sounded a bit snippy to me.

  Dr. Sharaf was Borag’s science officer, serving in the labs down in the ship’s bowels. She was a petite woman with short, curly hair which she kept pulled back into a tight bun. She had a sharp mind and an even sharper face, which could sometimes be intimidating to those around her.

  “As I understand it,” she said, “you uncovered something unexpected down in that cavern.”

  “Yes. A large metal surface—it has to be a ship.”

  Dr. Sharaf immediately threw up a hand. “Please, don’t embarrass yourself by jumping to premature conclusions. I will determine the nature of this anomaly—if there truly is one.”

  “I know what I saw,” Quinn said, sounding annoyed. “If you want us to take you to the spot—”

  “All in good time, Lieutenant. For now, this unresponsive ship is mysterious enough. Let’s proceed.”

  “All right, Doctor—but I would think this ship is of less importance. After all, it’s not going anywhere.”

  Dr. Sharaf tossed him a cold stare. “Opinions,” she said. “Everyone has one, don’t they? Well fortunately, in this case, your opinion does not supersede mine.”

  Lt. Quinn began to argue, she cut him off again. “In the interests of clarity, I’ll explain. You found something at the bottom of a mineshaft, something beyond your understanding. Presumably, the people in this ship, this derelict Teklutions vessel, found that same unknown entity below. It appears to have done them some damage, some kind of harm. I would rather search this ship and discover the nature of this harm before I expose myself—or anyone aboard Borag to any possible contamination.”

  “Contamination…?” Quinn said. His voice shifted from anger to concern. “Do you think they ran into a dose of radiation or maybe some kind of biotic thing—a virus or something?”

  “We really don’t know, now do we?” Dr. Sharaf said. “That’s why we’re here, to do some tests. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like you to send in a few scouts before I walk in there myself, just in case there’s something physically dangerous. I would severely doubt there is, but it’s possible.”

  Quinn nodded thoughtfully as he turned back to the squad. His eyes ran over the group, and he pointed to me. That was probably because I’d lifted my hand.

  “Are you crazy, man?” Ledbetter whispered, helmet-to-helmet.

  I shrugged. “Maybe,” I answered. “But somebody’s got to go in there, and I’m kind of curious to see what’s what.”

  Ledbetter shook his head. I could tell he figured he hadn’t properly trained me in the ways of a Red Company private. One of the primary rules was that you never volunteered for anything. Never.

  “Ledbetter,” Quinn said, “you go with him.”

  There was a bit of cursing in my ear after that. Ledbetter and I had been paired together many times before, and it seemed like it was becoming a thing. I got the feeling Ledbetter did not always appreciate this bonding. But as he wasn’t any more highly ranked than I was, it really didn’t matter what he thought.

  We marched together into the gaping open hole, which was essentially an airlock that had been opened with cutting torches. We stepped onto the slanted decks of the Teklution ship trying to look everywhere at once.

  Walking into the ship, we immediately realized several things. One was that there was no power. In fact, there was nothing—no oxygen, heat, or emergency lighting. All of it had been shut down or had run out some time ago.

  “I’m watching your helmet feed, Starn,” Quinn said. “But I’d appreciate some commentary on what you’re seeing along the way.”

  “So far, there’s not a whole hell of a lot to report, sir,” I said. “We’re past the airlock. It seems like both ends of it have been ruptured. Did the dogs do this?”

  “No, we sure didn’t,” the boatswain’s mate answered. “All we did was crack the entrance. Don’t blame me for anything else.”

  “All right, all right, keep going,” Quinn said.

  Ledbetter was fooling around with a side panel, and he managed to get some lights to flicker on. At least it was something.

  Dust and ice particles drifted around. Eris was pretty much airless, but when you kicked up a cloud of dust or ice, it tended to swirl and float, taking a long time to adhere to the deck again.

  This kind of dust had always been a severe problem on rocks like Eris. The Moon had permanent bases on its surface these days, and the personnel posted there had constant trouble with the dust. The problem was it was electrostatically charged and without any moisture, it adhered to almost everything. It got into base equipment, into your gear and it even made air hoses hard to plug together. Grit was always found in every connection, every joint.

  Even as far back as the original moon missions of the 1960s, the dust had plagued the first astronauts, getting into everything and damaging all kinds of equipment. Over time, however, we had developed some sophisticated means of dampening the effects of this scourge.

  Absently, I reached up and turned on my suit’s electrostatic charge-producing system, and it helped somewhat to clear my vision. The device attracted the dust to key points and was designed for this exact purpose.

  Ledbetter and I took cautious steps, shining lights into every crevice and keeping our guns unslung. The passageway was eerily motionless. There were no sounds other than the gentle hum and hiss of my life support systems in the background.

  The lack of air pressure was immediately noticeable, with any small movements causing the grit to drift up into clouds. The only source of light came from the dim glow emanating from my chest lights, which cast jagged illumination across the metallic walls and floors.

  As we moved deeper into the ship, the passageway had clearly seen recent action. There were signs of a fierce gun battle. Scorch marks and melted holes pockmarked the walls, and overturned debris littered the deck. However, there were no bodies to be seen, just the remnants of a brutal conflict. It was as if the occupants had vanished into thin air, leaving behind only the haunting evidence of their struggle.

  The emptiness of the passageway seemed to magnify the sense of danger and foreboding, making it feel as if anything could be lurking in the darkness ahead.

  “I don’t know what happened in here, sir,” I reported back to Lt. Quinn. “But it seems to me like there was a fight right here at the entrance.”

  “What’s your evidence, Starn?” Quinn asked.

  I turned and lowered my faceplate near the deck, and I showed where there were dried blood stains and gouges in the floor and the ceiling.

  “Are you getting this, sir?” I asked.

  “Yes, I am…” Quinn said. “Looks like laser bolts have been fired. Dr. Sharaf, when you go in, I want samples of all that.”

  “Of course, of course,” Dr. Sharaf replied. “We’ll do the samples. That’s what we’re here for, Lieutenant.”

  I had to grin inside my helmet. I could already tell there was no love lost between Dr. Sharaf and Lt. Quinn, nor would there be in the future. She was quite a self-important person.

  We kept going, but there wasn’t really all that much to see until I got to the second intersection. There, I discovered what could only be described as a makeshift barricade.

  “Take a look at this, sir. Someone strung up crisscrossing wires and hung furniture on the web-like result. And look… are these spot-welds? They seem to have taken some benches, chairs, anything they could find, and stacked it all up right here and welded everything into place.”

  “Are you able to get through?” Quinn asked.

  “Yes, sir, I think so. All I’ve got to do is reach up, pull, heave, and finally snap off one of the dangling cables,” I replied.

  It seemed to me that it was an odd type of barricade, more the sort of thing that would be expected to stop a dog than a thinking human. A human, after all, could just reach up and unhook some of these wires and shift aside these steel struts and benches—but an animal either wouldn’t think of it or wouldn’t have the hands to manipulate objects in such a fine manner. Overall, I found the whole thing baffling.

  I unhooked some of the wire loops that were strung up with hooks on the walls and scooted past the barricade.

  “Careful there’s not a landmine in there or something,” Ledbetter said following me.

  “Boom,” I said, laughing at him.

  “Very funny,” Dr. Sharaf complained, “extremely funny. Are your men comedians, Lt. Quinn, or are they soldiers?”

  “It’s honestly a little bit of both, I think, Doc. Are you ready to go in the ship now, or should I send my men all the way to the bridge first?” Quinn asked.

  I heard a bit of muttering and grumbling. Apparently, the woman and her sidekicks were discussing the matter.

  Finally, she released an angry puff of air. “We’ll go in. Let’s all go in.”

  “Starn, Ledbetter,” Quinn said, “you two standdown. Hold your position and wait for us.”

  It was with some relief that we did as he ordered. The whole ship was giving me a creepy feeling, sort of a dark vibe. It was like walking through a funeral parlor, but one that was low-gravity, airless, freezing, and mysteriously unpowered. If you’ve ever been inside a derelict spacecraft, you’ll know what I mean.

  “Hey. Hey, Starn!” Ledbetter called. “Come over here, I found something.”

  He hadn’t listened to Lt. Quinn and had wandered off down one of the side passages. He was standing in a doorway, gesturing wildly toward the deck. His laser carbine was unslung in his arms and pointing downward.

  Frowning, I followed after him. “What have you got, Ledbetter?”

  “Look, just take a look.”

  I walked up, and I did look. He’d found a frozen corpse.

  “Is that a marine?” I asked.

  “No, I think it’s one of their Green Company types. A shore patrolman. See, he’s got nothing but a pistol. And that armor is different than ours, different colored, a little bit bulkier, but essentially the same idea.”

  “Right, right,” I said, bending down and checking on the man. Ledbetter hadn’t gotten any closer to him and had done nothing but aim his gun at the body. The poor bastard seemed quite dead and harmless to me. So, I knelt, flipped him over, and took a look.

  The moment that freaked me out a little came when I saw the man’s face inside his helmet. There were two things wrong. First of all, the helmet’s interior light inside was on. It was illuminating his face. But that wasn’t the freaky part.

  What I really didn’t like was what I saw on that face. A look of sheer terror, a jaw that was open and twisted at such an angle that it seemed like the man’s jawbone had been broken and slid to one side. On top of all that, he was frozen solid.

  His eyes were open and staring, his lips were retracted, exposing his teeth. Even his popsicle-like tongue was extruded in that moment of terror and horror in which he had finally died.

  “Whoa,” I said, standing up and backing off. Ledbetter laughed and walked forward, giving the corpse a gentle nudge with his boot. “Never seen an asphyxiation case, have you? This is what happens to you when you get exposed to pure vacuum. Don’t forget it, Starn. You don’t die instantly, and it’s far from painless.”

  I stared, not liking what I’d seen.

  “First off,” Ledbetter said, warming to the topic He seemed to enjoy my concern. “Did you know the temperature at which liquids boils is directly related to the air pressure and temperature you’re exposed to?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. I was too fascinated by this frozen-faced dead man.

  “Well, what happens when you’re exposed to open space is your blood boils in your veins. Can you imagine how fun that feels? This guy can.” Ledbetter laughed again and nudged the man with his boot.

  This kind of pissed me off. It was disrespectful to the dead. I pushed his foot away.

  “Knock it off,” I said. “He’s suffered enough already.”

  Ledbetter scowled and wandered off, but at least he left the dead man alone.

  Chapter 26: The Missing Crew

  The interior of the abandoned Teklution ship was a haunting sight. The passages were dark and silent, with only the occasional flicker of emergency lighting to break the oppressive gloom. According to our biohazard detectors, what little air the ship had left was contaminated by toxic vapors, mostly oxidized metal.

  The ship’s interior was littered with debris. Rusty tools, mining equipment, and scraps of metal were scattered haphazardly throughout the ship, giving the appearance of the vessel having been abandoned in a hurry. The walls and floors were streaked with dirt and grime, and the once-pristine insulation was now chipped and peeling.

  As we made our way deeper into the ship, we discovered many of the rooms and compartments had been sealed shut or barricaded. Those that were accessible revealed signs of a chaotic struggle. Furniture was overturned, screens were smashed, and equipment lay scattered on the decks. It was as if the crew had been desperately searching for something before they disappeared.

  In one of the ship’s storage bays, we discovered a disturbing sight. Dozens of mining drones lay strewn about the room, their metallic bodies twisted and torn as if they had been attacked by some unknown force. The walls and ceiling were scored with deep gouges, and the air was thick with the acrid scent of burnt metal.

  As we delved deeper into the ship, we encountered more signs of violence and destruction. Blood stains decorated the walls and floors. There were odd gouges in the doors, and ominous blinking displays spoke of emergencies. Everything hinted at a dark and terrifying past. It was evident that something had gone horribly wrong on the mining ship, and the crew had paid a terrible price for it.

  Despite the oppressive sense of foreboding that lurked in every shadowy corner, we pressed on, driven by our mission. We’d been charged with the task of uncovering the truth about what had happened aboard the Teklution ship, and we weren’t going to be scared away by a few bloodstains.

  As we explored deeper, I felt a growing sense of dread. However, it wasn’t until we reached the lower deck crew quarters that things went from grim to fantastic.

  “Hey, Starn,” Ledbetter called out. “Look over here, through this porthole.”

  Many of the doorways in the ship had small, thick-glassed windows. I floated over to where Ledbetter was waving. My boots barely touched the slanted deck as I moved. I crowded my helmet into the limited space and peered through to see what he was looking at.

  Then, I spotted a figure. “Is that someone’s back?” I asked. “Someone’s standing over there against that wall?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Ledbetter replied. “Either that, or the guy froze to death in a really weird place.” He laughed.

  I glanced at him in mild disgust. It seemed to me that many of the Red Company regular marines had a callous attitude toward death. Perhaps that just came with the territory, so I was going to have to get used to it.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I think I just saw him move.”

  As we watched, he moved again. One of his arms drifted up and then down again.

  Ledbetter pushed me aside, crowding to look through. “Nah,” he said. “That’s just some kind of air current or something. I think that room is fully pressurized.”

  “Yeah,” I said, checking the gauges. “I think it is. Good thing we didn’t just pop this open on him. We might have killed him with the explosive decompression.”

  “He’s not alive, man. He can’t be.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We reported back to Lt. Quinn, and soon the entire group rushed to our location. “We’ve got a possible survivor,” Quinn said, talking into his headset. The message was relayed back to Borag.

  “Get away from that door,” Dr. Sharaf said. “Before you kill the poor man.”

  We backed off and let her examine the doorway. “We have to pressurize this passageway, so we can open the chamber. Let’s close down either end of this area then pump air in. We’re reading about a two percent oxygen levels in the ship’s tanks—that’s enough.”

  Ledbetter and I looked at one another in alarm. Two percent? That wasn’t much. Most of the ship had to be uninhabitable.