Sample From Chapter 6 - "Ghost Ship"

The scout ship “U.W.S.S. Speed of Deliverance” was the smallest spacecraft that it was possible to build which could still travel through Watters’ space. Having said that, it was still huge. Most of the ship was a massive engine core that wrapped around the central intake and exhaust pipe. There were only two, small, one-gee habitation pods, at the end of rotating arms which held the relatively tiny crew of rescue specialists. This ship was built for speed rather than war. Its aim was to get to where it was needed throughout the United Worlds as quickly as possible, to provide rescue and medical aid whenever disaster struck.

The ship burst out from a whirling vortex amidst arcs of purple lightning, riding a wave of contracted space and then came to rest beside the dark and still corpse of the ghost ship Scales of Justice. Within moments, a group of shuttles launched from the Speed of Deliverance. They quickly headed towards the four habitation pods of the stricken vessel.

Inside the leading shuttle, the rescue team peered eagerly over the shoulders of the two pilots, trying to get their first glimpse of their destination. Each wore a white painted E.V.A. suit with full armour and a bright red cross painted across their helmet and chest. They carried a Vicar rifle, but their kit was also augmented with medical supplies, tools and portable scanning equipment. A dark-haired woman who bore the ranking of Lieutenant, squinted in confusion at the looming hull of the Scales of Justice.

‘There’s no damage to the outer hull,’ she observed. ‘No blast holes, scorching or marks of any kind.’

‘That’s really odd, Sir,’ said a man next to her who was ranked as Midshipman.

‘It’s very odd, Rodriguez,’ she confirmed. ‘In fact, it’s highly suspicious. Something’s not right here.’

There was a moment of silence as the dark leviathan drew closer.

‘Lieutenant Stanley. What could have done this to a ship that big?’ a younger trooper to Stanley’s left asked in a frightened voice.

‘I haven’t the first clue,’ said Lieutenant Stanley with a worried tone entering her own voice. ‘Everyone be mindful. Stay in the moment. Remember your E.O.P.s. Whatever did this could still be hanging around. Suit up and get ready for de-bark in five.’

All around her, the troopers placed their helmets over their heads and clicked them into place with a loud snap. Rifles were primed and the portable scanners were switched on. As the shuttle drew close to one of the hangar bays of the Scales of Justice, her passengers began to hear impact noises on the outside of the hull.

‘What the hell is that?’ asked Rodriguez in alarm as he stared towards the roof of the shuttle.

When the power had failed, so had the magnetic shield that kept the atmosphere within the hangar bay. Everything that hadn’t been tied down had shot into space in the explosive decompression. That included the unfortunate crewmembers who had been on the hangar deck. The area outside the hangar bay doors was littered with equipment and bodies. The poor souls that had shot, unprotected into space, had just enough time to suffer from being exposed to the vacuum before their life force had been sucked from their bodies and into the sphere. As the shuttles coasted into the hangar bay, they were buffeted by the grisly debris, before making clear space once more inside the airless hangar bay itself.

Lieutenant Stanley and Midshipman Rodriguez were the first to exit their shuttle. As the squad fanned out behind them, Stanley stared around at the deserted hangar bay.

‘They didn’t even have the time to close the emergency hatch,’ she said over the Comms of her E.V.A. suit. ‘They must have lost power completely, even the backup systems. There should have been enough battery backup to close the hangar doors in an emergency and protect the atmosphere in here. I don’t understand, what could have caused such a massive power failure in such a short space of time.’

Rodriguez stared about.

‘There’s no blast marks or damage of any kind in here either. Whatever happened, did so quick enough to take out every crewmember almost instantaneously, the poor bastards!’ he said.

Stanley stared at a nearby technician. The man had had enough time to grab a pair of mag-boots when he realised what was happening and put them on, but hadn’t enough time to fit himself with a breathing mask. He was rooted to the deck by the boots, his eyes wide and staring towards something terrifying that had been just outside the hangar bay doors.

‘Come on,’ said Stanley as she gathered herself together. ‘Fan out from here in teams. Release the omni-bots. Check the ship’s vital areas for signs of life or power. I’m taking my team straight up to the bridge.’

‘Roger that. F.A.B.’ said Rodriguez in reply.

Several troopers released the small triangular omni-bots from pouches attached to their E.V.A. suits. The hovering robots floated over the heads of the troopers and followed their every movement. As the teams moved off, Stanley took one last look at the frozen grimace of the technician. A shudder ran down her spine. She had to force herself to look away and get her mind back onto the job at hand.

Rodriguez and his team found only floating corpses as they wound their way deeper into the bowels of the ship. When the power had failed, so too had the rotary motion of the habitation pods and therefore the gravity. It was like swimming through a sea of corpses. Unlike many of the rescue situations that Rodriguez had found himself in since he joined the Speed of Deliverance, there was one thing that singled this mission out from the others. There was no blood. There was no damage of any kind, no bullet holes, explosive damage, no wounded or survivors. Nothing. Just floating corpses everywhere, with their eyes fixed open, staring as if pleading for help as the rescue team’s torches played off the deadly grimaces on their rigor mortis frozen faces.

As the troopers walked along the corridor, their mag-boots made resounding clunking sounds which echoed around the metal passageways in the silent ship. Apart from that, there were no other noises to be heard. To troopers who were used to the constant background hum of a large ship like this, it was most unnerving.

Abruptly, Rodriguez held his hand in the air to halt and silence the others. There it was; a noise. The first noise that they had heard since coming aboard this ghost ship. He turned towards a team member who was holding a small scanner device and studying the screen intently.

‘Any life signs nearby?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, Sir,’ the woman replied. ‘No heat signatures, no electrical activity. Not a peep.’

‘Safeties off,’ Rodriguez ordered grimly. ‘Follow me.’

He led the team towards a nearby hatch. The noise was coming from behind the hatch which led into a bathroom. Without power the hatch mechanism had frozen shut. Rodriguez grabbed a manual emergency handle from a clip on the wall and inserted it into a square recess next to the hatch. With difficulty and a hideous squealing sound, he wound the handle and the hatch began to inch slowly open. After a few moments, the hatch had opened up enough for the bulky E.V.A. suits to pass through and Rodriguez entered the bathroom.

Floating debris was abundant in here too. Some water from a basin had lifted into the middle of the room, forming an undulating reflective pool that rippled as the troopers passed nearby. A few paper towels drifted like kelp fronds, flapping in the ocean currents. From the space above one of the cubicles a few pieces of recently expelled human excrement had floated up out of the toilet bowl and were gently spinning around the room like tiny asteroids.

‘Holy shit!’ said one of the team with a grin.

‘Knock it off!’ Rodriguez ordered as he moved stealthily towards the cubicle from which the noise emitted.

Moving carefully, Rodriguez grabbed the latch on the door to the cubicle. Navy toilets on a ship like this had doors for privacy but the lock could be operated from both sides in case of emergency. Rodriguez slid the lock back and gently pushed the door open. It swung back to reveal a deceased crewmember who had been in the process of emptying his bowels when the sphere had struck.

His pants were around his ankles and a data reader was gripped in his fingers. The automatic flushing mechanism operated as the poor man’s bottom floated off the seat, the water spray acting like a jet without any gravity, to propel his body away. Then his trousers caught underneath the bowl and yanked his body back down onto the seat again, only for the process to repeat. That was the noise they had heard. The cistern was operated mechanically and therefore required no electrical power. Rodriguez gently grabbed the man, lowered the toilet seat top to prevent the automatic flush and sat the man reverentially back down again.

‘Poor sod,’ he said quietly. ‘Caught in the act. What a way to go.’ Then he turned to the others. ‘Come on. We’re getting nowhere. Let’s head to engineering and see if there’s any signs of life down there.’

Lieutenant Stanley and her team entered the bridge via the lift shaft. They had to bypass the lift mechanism and cut their way through the metal roof of the lift capsule with a plasma torch to gain access. They dropped down the shaft and fanned out into the dome-floored area, with rifles primed and ready. The only light in here came from the distant sun of Arkhangelsk, which shone dimly through the plexi-glass forward view slit. Stanley and the others immediately reached in a pocket on their webbing for their glow spheres. As they threw the spheres up towards the overhead, they exploded into a multitude of smaller particles which glowed in a sickly yellowy green colour as the chemicals within them reacted with each other. The light was dim, but it was enough to work by.

‘The air is stale in here too, just like the rest of the ship,’ said Lieutenant Stanley. ‘There’s been no decompression, so there is an atmosphere, but the air units aren’t recycling. There’s no power to the CO² scrubbers. Odd…’

‘Sir, I have movement!’ said a trooper, indicating with his rifle across the bridge.

All the team’s rifles were aimed but then Stanley held her arm up to stay them. The movement was coming from a small robot that was moving slowly around on a predetermined path across the deck of the bridge. It was a simple cleaning robot, vacuuming and polishing the deck.

‘How is that still working?’ asked the trooper. ‘Shouldn’t that have been drained of power too, like everything else on this ship?’

Stanley shrugged. ‘Its power cells are charged by on board solar collectors. It must have re-charged itself after the power drain, by the light from the view slit.’

Stanley snapped her head around to stare at the engineering and life support control station which was just to her left.

‘If that thing managed to charge up, then maybe the ship’s batteries have been able to do the same via the solar panels on the hull?’ she postulated.

She swiftly moved over to the engineering control station and scanned the panel. Then her face brightened and she spoke into the Comms.

‘This is Lieutenant Stanley to all units. I’m going to attempt to bring the power back on line. If I’m successful we should have life support back and the gravity should reinstate. Be on the lookout for falling objects,’ she announced.

Stanley tapped at a couple of controls and then said, ‘…and power coming back online in three, two, one!’

She hit a final control and a deep hum throbbed through the metal deck. The lights flickered back on and the noise of the air conditioning units hissing back into life sounded on every deck. Slowly, the habitation pods began to resume their rotary motion about the hull and the troopers all felt gravity take hold of their bodies once more. The floating corpses of the bridge crew fell out of the air and hit the deck with a heavy thud. As the environment returned to a more habitable status, Stanley nodded to the other troopers and each began to remove their helmets with a click and a hiss.

‘Somebody try to restart the reactor and get the engines on line. I want damage assessment reports and analysis from each watch station in ten minutes,’ Stanley ordered.

‘Aye, aye Sir!’ came back the replies from the busying troopers.

Stanley stared for a moment at the inert body of Captain Stevenson. His body had hit the deck next to some scrawled writing. On closer inspection Stanley saw that the single word had been written in blood. As she glanced back at Stevenson’s body, she noticed the blood that was covering the end of his index finger. She stared back as the writing and puzzled at the single word for a moment.

Ghosts…

Then she shook her head and moved over towards the scanner control station. Deciphering the meaning of writing would have to wait. She had more important things to do. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to check that the omni-bot was busy elsewhere and then deliberately put her body between its scanners and the console in front of her. Next, she tapped at a few controls as she attempted to retrieve the ship’s scanner data and visual recordings from just before the disaster that claimed the lives of the crew.

The data was frustratingly patchy and heavily degraded. Lieutenant Stanley was able to recover a few brief glimpses of some kind of glowing sphere as it approached the Scales of Justice and then nothing more. She glanced cautiously around again as she reached into a pouch on her belt and took out a small, black data cube. She inserted the cube into a slot on the console and then copied the fragments of data across. Then with a final check around her, she highlighted all the remaining files on the ship’s computer and hovered her hand above the “delete” control.

At that second, the bridge elevator reactivated and Rodriguez stepped out. He saw the Lieutenant working at the scanner station and made a bee line for her.

‘Hey, Lieutenant!’ Rodriguez called. ‘The rest of the ship seems clear. Just dead bodies but no damage. I’ve left the search teams making a sweep to make sure. Any luck here?’

Stanley glanced at Rodriguez.

‘No,’ she said as she hit the delete control and permanently erased the files that showed evidence of the glowing sphere. ‘Nothing to report.

Rodriguez sighed deeply, tired and frustrated.

‘It’s a mystery alright. Every system on the ship has been wiped back to factory settings. There was nothing in the scans or the ship’s video log?’

‘No. Absolutely nothing,’ Stanley confirmed. ‘It will just have to remain a mystery for the time being,’ she said with a nervous smile. ‘Let’s get to work preparing her for the journey back to Cairn. We have a lot to do.’