Salvage Marines (Necrospace Book 1) (4 page)

“Hyst, you’re with me. Patrick and Takeda hold his position until we give the all clear,” Mag ordered as she boldly moved into the hab. “If they want to hit us from the tunnels, now is the best time, so stay sharp.”

Mag and Samuel moved into the atrium of the hab and found it to be obscured in just as much darkness as the tunnels had been.

“Talk to me, Hyst, let’s see what you can put together,” ordered Mag while her mounted light pierced the gloom to reveal that they were in the labor staging area.

Aside from engaging any hostiles encountered during a salvage, it was part of Reaper procedure to investigate the decline of any particular find. In this case, the mining facility had gone dark with little explanation or warning, and though the primary mission was to salvage the station, protocol demanded the establishment of a narrative. Not only did this aid management in their reporting of the haul, but also informed the marines on mission with any additional and perhaps critical details of what they might encounter.

Samuel had trained for this element of the job and had outscored many of the other recruits. It seemed that his time in the quality control division of the forges had given him an eye for minutiae. As Samuel followed his light he took in as much detail as he could see, and began to piece together a possible scenario.

The room had a small catwalk above them that provided access to the various panels and ducts above, presumably for repairs to the hab itself. All around the walls were empty racks where there usually would have been a plethora of mining tools, environmental suits, helmets, and safety cables. There were a few pieces of discarded equipment strewn about the floor, but the majority of the hardware that would be present in a functioning mining compound was nowhere to be seen.

“This is strange. I understand the tunnels being cut off from central power, but most of these hab units have internal generators and backup generators,” Samuel observed as he and Mag moved deeper into the building, “Circumstance can knock out the internals, like an earthquake or explosion, whatever, but those backup generators are on a self-contained grid, the only way to shut them down would be manually.”

“What about all the missing hardware?” queried Mag as she pushed deeper into the room, “I’m looking for the exit. Do a sight sweep of those catwalks, I don’t want one of those things coming down on my head.”

“The hardware being gone could mean that the bulk of the workforce were in the tunnels and on shift during the event,” said Samuel as he tracked his light over the catwalks, noticing a panel that had been ripped open to reveal the ductwork above. “So, if it was a gas pocket explosion that would explain at least the missing hardware and the internal power being down, mordite gas is rather volatile.”

“Wouldn’t we have noticed more damage to the tunnels themselves when we infiltrated? Besides, someone locked the tunnels from the inside, we had to cut our way through in the first place,” stated Mag as she gingerly checked the handle of the exit door. She nodded back to Samuel and he watched her slowly pull down the lever to open the door, “We also had to cut through the hab door.”

“It was like someone started blocking the path into the compound, closing things off behind them,” responded Samuel as he began to see where Mag was going with her line of thinking. “So you think they were trying to keep the hostiles out?”

“Or in,” said Mag swinging the door open and stepping aside to give Samuel a clear line of fire through the open door.

Gunfire erupted behind them as Ben’s voice crackled over the com-bead, “Multiple hostiles closing in on our position, all passageways are compromised!”

“Hyst, hold your position and cover this door, anything moves in there and you blast it!” shouted Mag. She turned to rush back through the atrium toward the tunnel entrance.

“Takeda, lay down suppressing fire against all avenues of approach! Patrick, get Aaron into the hab!”

By the time Mag reached the door, Patrick was assisting Aaron to the ground just on the other side of the door. The chattering sound of Ben’s machine gun reverberated through the walls and would certainly have been deafening had it not been for the audio dampeners inside the marine’s helmets. Reapers needed full access to their senses, though the helmets were designed to adjust to the environment around them. In many ways, the helmet was the most sophisticated part of the REAPER kit, especially considering that most of the rest of their gear was generic, outdated, or refurbished surplus hardware from frontline military units.

“I’m about to need a drum change, Boss!” shouted Ben as he poured hails of bullets down each of the three corridors. His attacks were answered by the screams of enough inhuman voices that their number was impossible to determine.

Mag knew that once Takeda needed a drum change he would be out of the fight for at least several seconds. Vital seconds since she could see the tangle of limbs rushing at them from the darkness.

“Patrick, get ready to seal the door! There’s scrap metal on the floor, cannibalize whatever hardware you see laying around,” she said as she stepped up to support Takeda and add her firepower to his.

Mag saw that several drill bits were embedded in the wall and Takeda was bleeding from a ragged hole in his side. The enemy apparently had projectile weapons somewhere out there in the darkness, and as if to verify her suspicion, several more drill bits shot out of the central passageway. Two of them missed and bit into the wall behind her, but one managed to tear through her already wounded arm and gouge a small furrow of flesh from her forearm.

“
Fall back! Fall back!”
shouted Mag as she heard Takeda’s gun click dry. She toggled her rifle to 3-round bursts and began to fire salvos down each of the passages to cover Takeda’s retreat. Once he was through, Mag turned to leave just as a hostile entered the red light from the flare. The skirmish in the tunnels had been too furious and chaotic for her to get a clear view of their enemies. In the dull light of the flare she was able to see the hostile from head to toe and recognized the tattered and filthy mining suit that clung to the creature’s frame. She screamed and emptied her magazine into the thing’s body and hurled herself backwards through the door even as the creature fell away in a spray of dark blood.

Mag lost her footing and fell to the ground as Ben and Patrick slammed the door shut. Patrick turned up the flame on his hand welder and began spot welding broken pieces of mining equipment into the seams of the door. Several more drill bits hit the other side of the door with a clatter, then the screams of several of the creatures filled their ears as fists and who knew what else pounded against the door. Ben and Mag held the door closed as their muscles strained against the hostiles on the other side seeking to force it open. Once Patrick had welded everything he had available to the door he joined them in holding it in place.

“It’ll take a few minutes for the welds to cool enough to matter,” shouted Patrick as he added his strength to theirs. “We’ve got to hold this door!”

The screaming from the other side of the door suddenly ceased, individual voices began speaking, even whispering, through the door, as if trying to communicate with the marines inside. If they were speaking a language it was not one that any of the marines understood, though the simple humanistic act of communication was enough to set all of them on edge.

“Ignore it people, it might seem like a nightmare right now, but you’ll go through this and worse the longer you sail with the Reapers,” assured Mag as she held her part of the door, “This universe is full of nightmares, and as hardcore as these guys are, you will fight worse, and you will win. This is the job!”

“
This is the job!”
shouted Ben and Patrick simultaneously, joining their leader in the REAPER mantra, soon joined by Samuel through his com-bead, “
This is the job!”

After several more minutes their attackers either left or at least grew silent, and Patrick nodded.

“That should do it, these welds aren’t nearly as strong as the lock we cut, but they’ll hold, at least for a while. Assuming the main hab isn’t crawling with these things, I can seal up that other door Hyst is covering,” said Patrick as he lifted the dazed Aaron to his feet.

“Hyst, you hearing this?” said Mag as she nodded at the rest of the squad, “Let’s get behind that second door, we’ll sweep the hab and hopefully make contact with the other squads.”

“Yes, Boss, I’m hearing. Sounds like we’re following the same pattern as the folks before us, sealing ourselves in one layer at a time,” Samuel replied as he looked into the gloom of the hab in front of him. “Here’s hoping whatever we find in here isn’t worse than what’s out there.”

“Hyst and Takeda, you’re on point. Patrick help Aaron and stay on me,” Mag said as she began moving forward, her bold strides pushing Samuel and Ben into action to sweep in ahead of her, “Let’s get this done.”

The squad pushed into the main building. The hab blocks of mining compounds such as this one, were little more than giant cubes, consisting of interlocking buildings that served as living quarters. The hab blocks were mass-produced by Grotto, and were one of the company’s major exports, as the demand for cheap housing was high, especially in developing quadrants of the galaxy.

Each standard hab block was designed to house roughly one hundred adult humans. In the design schematics, two children equaled one adult, though the growth and space needs of children were deemed inconsequential to the overall design.

Samuel looked around at the cramped spaces and was reminded of his own home back on Baen 6, certain that inconsequential was Grotto’s way of saying “unprofitable”.

Each hab block was customizable with a variety of laboratories, workshops, storage lockers, and even prison units. Each of the individual units, regardless of purpose, were connected by a series of sliding doors to the adjacent units and gangplanks to those across. The entire block was a multi-dimensional layering of units and doorways, a veritable maze of gangplanks that rose into the darkness. From the briefing schematics the marines knew that this particular hab block was one of the larger models, and likely extended several more levels upwards beyond the edge of their mounted lights.

“Patrick, get us to the central command unit for block security,” ordered Mag as she joined Samuel and Patrick while they paused to take in the vastness of the darkened hab. “A compound this large is bound to have had at least one, possibly two security stations. Population oversight is a big deal on these deep space operations, never know when someone is going to lose their mind out here and need to be dealt with swiftly before they can cause any damage or hurt anyone.”

Patrick consulted his rig and found the command unit, dropping a digital pin on the map that allowed him to navigate through the maze using a waypoint. As he further checked the schematics he pointed to two areas on the large scale readout and presented his arm to Mag.

“Squad Marsters was set to enter here and Squad Ulanti here,” he said as Mag looked at the rig, “All of the mining tunnels are equidistant from the hab, so unless they got turned around and ended up going down a fabricated shaft that wasn’t part of the original compound, they should be converging on the hab bloc by now.”

“This is a big place, but sound carries in these things. It’s only because of the buzz of people and the hum of the power lines that most people don’t notice what their neighbor is saying,” added Samuel as he continued to move his light back and forth to scan the perimeter, “Back home the first thing that happens during a blackout is listening to everybody’s business.”

“You don’t realize just how loud people are until they shut up,” said Ben as he joined the group, “This place is a tomb.”

“Copy that, move out,” said Mag, giving the signal to move forward.

The squad continued down the main avenue of the hab as their lights illuminated evidence of one or more brutally violent firefights. The spent shell casings were all shotgun cartridges, the standard issue weapons provided to security forces in Grotto space. The guns and corresponding ammunition were cheap to manufacture and the weapon itself, not to mention the wounds it created, were highly effective in the execution of security operations. Samuel silently pointed out several more drill bits and even a saw blade embedded in the walls, some of which were crusty with old blood.

Patrick stepped in a pile of dung that seemed to have bits of bone and teeth in it. The squad as a whole each gave thanks for the power of their re-breathers to filter out what they imagined must have been a horrible stench permeating the hab. Ben wiped his finger across the guard rail of a gangplank once they’d ascended a flight of stairs to reach the second level and his finger came away with a fine layer of dust.

“Not to be overly creepy or anything, considering what we’ve just been through, but now that I’m looking at it, this whole place is covered in dust,” Ben observed as he looked at the rest of the group.

“So?” said Patrick as he ran his own hand over the rail to see for himself.

“The major contributing factor to dust,” Mag said, “in a sealed environment, is human skin cells. We shed more than most folks realize. Sure, it’s a mining compound, but you wouldn’t have this much of a layer after ten years of being sealed up.” She hefted her rifle into a more aggressive posture.

“I’ve seen this sort of thing on derelict ship salvages. Pretty standard story actually. Malfunction or damage sets the vessel adrift, the air filtration systems stop working even though life support stays active, since it’s on emergency backup grids. If there’s even one survivor who stays alive on the ship for more than a few months without dying of starvation, thirst, or whatever, then the ship is covered in a layer of dust.”