The elevator doors slid open to a shadowy level three corridor with dirty green carpet and Japanese graffiti spray-painted on the wall. Wilson held up a hand scanner, squeezed a button with his gloved thumb and proclaimed, “Keep out.”
Weapon raised, Doc pushed out first and scanned the area as we awkwardly took turns rocking our way through the door. The ever-changing mixture of dark and light kept casting bizarre reflections on our visors. Overhead, a row of tubular lights on either side had only every other tube partially lit. There were many more white conduit runs along the walls on this level. It was a much wider passage than the level one and the doors along the way were all open and large. In the distance to our right the hall branched off into three more corridors.
“It’s to the right,” said Wilson.
Doc led the way, weapon first. The three of us trundled along and tried to keep up. We came to the first open door. It was a staging area full of transfer containers and silver sacks of equipment and supplies. The next door ahead on the left was brightly lit. There was a faint musical humming coming from within. Inside, we found only the second living person we had seen. The score was now two to two.
It was a laboratory of some sort test equipment scattered around the gray metallic room, a small forest of flexible lights attached to workbenches with meters and scopes. Coiled power lines hung from the ceiling providing test probes and accessories to the workbenches. In the center of the room, one industrious young crew woman had used the coiled lines to make a swing. She had attached a broken broom handle to them and sat atop it swinging and singing something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. She wore striped bobby socks with no shoes, and a very short pink ruffled skirt with no top. Her lipstick was applied so poorly it could have been clown makeup. Her dark hair was tied back in a failed attempt at a ponytail.
We stood in the doorway gawking, and she smiled at us and continued to sing and swing.
“We can’t leave her like this,” said Erin and she looked at me in fear and dismay.
“Yes, yes we can. There are dozens more somewhere. Our main concern is that reactor core. Let’s get going.”
The next three adjoining chambers were empty offices or laboratories. The fourth was a large meeting room with many chairs parted at a central isle. As we looked in, movement stopped us. It took a moment to focus on the eerie setting. A bride in a full, white wedding gown holding a bouquet stood before an alter waiting to be married. Her husband to-be was seated in a chair beside her, his back to us. As we paused in the doorway, she looked back, gave us a sheepish smile, and turned back to the altar waiting for the ceremony to begin. There was no one else in the room. The setting would almost have been believable except for the knife handle protruding from the groom’s back. That made it three to three.
Erin gasped and grasped one hand over her visor as though to cover her mouth.
“This place is a fucking house of horrors,” said Wilson.
We began to head on when more movement ahead again startled us. Something had darted across the hall from one chamber to the next. It was so fast it was a blur. I held up a hand.
“You see that, Doc?”
“Yes. Too fast.”
“Wilson, take the right wall and cover us. Erin, stay behind on this side and watch. Doc, I’ll take the right, you can have the left.”
Wilson protested, “But...”
“You’re in a spacesuit, Wilson. Doc’s not. Cover us. Let’s go.”
Doc and I moved cautiously along, weapons ready. As we neared the next door I held back while Doc pressed his back against the wall. He slid along until he was alongside the door, and gave me a ready-sign. I took careful aim.
He leaned in as little as possible but it was enough. A ball of fur came bursting out of the room into the corridor, jumping and spinning in front of us. It was all I could do not to fire.
A dog dragging a leash. He was medium haired, tan and white, medium sized. Looked like some sort of wolf breed. He went to Doc and sat wagging his tail, looking up hopefully. Doc glanced back in relief.
“Do I look any older? Because I just aged a few years.”
“Erin, Wilson; you guys can move up.”
Doc knelt and stroked the dog’s head. The animal seemed overjoyed that there were humans who cared. Erin came up and pushed by me. She knelt beside Doc and looked at the dog’s collar.
“His name is Areno. He’s an Akita. They’re wonderful pets, very loving.”
The dog took an immediate like to her and did not seem fazed by space suits. It put a paw on her knee and barked.
“Erin, you must not do that. Do not take chances with your suit integrity. You understand what I’m saying?” said Doc.
Erin grabbed the dog’s leash and held it.
“We can’t take him along, Erin. We’ve got to move out.”
Doc interrupted. “Adrian, this dog does not appear to be affected. He must have been drinking the water. I’ll take him with me.”
Doc reached out and Erin gave up the leash. I looked ahead. We had almost reached the three-way intersection. I looked back at the team. It struck me as another moment of life’s highlights in lunacy. Our group, a doctor, three characters in spacesuits, and a dog had just passed the farmer’s daughter on a swing, along with an expectant bride with fiancé deceased. We were approaching a point where the road forked off in three different directions. It was straight out of The Wizard of Oz. I almost expected to see a scarecrow up ahead. I tried to shake off the fear that things were really out of control, but quickly realized it was the truth. The Wicked Witch of the West was waiting for us in Engineering. Reality was a bad dream with a countdown timer ticking down.
Wilson held up his tablet. “That center corridor leads to Engineering and the core. The right-hand corridor goes to the science section and sickbay. What do you want to do, Adrian?”
I thought for a moment, opened my mouth and stupid came out. “RJ, are you still monitoring?”
“For God’s sake, are you kidding? We’re all here following all three cams.”
“We’re going to need to split up. Wilson and Erin will head for Engineering. I’ll take Doc to sickbay and then catch up. Keep your recorders running. If anything goes wrong, we’ll want them to know what happened.”
“You think?”
“I looked over the team. “Everybody okay with that?”
No objections. Wilson said, “By the way, Adrian, as Erin and I were leaving Denard tried to declare that if we went he would be ranking officer and would assume command.”
“Oh, Jesus, that’s all we need.”
“Shelly asked him how he would command if he was unconscious, and he shut right up.”
“Well, that puts my mind at ease. Let’s get to it, guys. Erin, follow Wilson’s lead. He’s an expert in all kinds of trouble.”
Wilson scoffed and handed me two tablets from his case. I packed them and watched as the two engineers headed down the middle corridor. They looked back with a half wave, and disappeared into the shadows.
Holding to Areno’s leash, Doc led the way to the right. The passageway changed in nature as we progressed. There was a bit more light coming from behind soft green acoustic panels on the walls. Conduit trails ran between them. The floor was still scattered with occasional chairs and debris, but the graffiti was becoming less frequent. Adjoining rooms bore more research equipment or discussion areas.
My spacesuit had become heavy. I was sweating a touch and the suit temperature controller was whining too often trying to compensate. Batteries were holding, but were down. As we approached more open doors, Doc raised his hand and stopped to listen. Just ahead, the next adjoining room was locked open. Flickering colored light came from within. There was a strange kind of crowd noise. Something was discordant about it. There was music playing and someone singing completely out of key.
Bell Standards come with small mirrors Velcro’d to the sleeves to help with angles not accessible in a spacesuit helmet. I peeled one off and handed it t
o Doc. Next to the doorway, he held it out just enough to see. After a few seconds he looked at me, rolled his eyes, and handed me the mirror, shifting out of the way so I could look.
It was an absurd karaoke party. They were all in costumes, but did not seem to be pretending. There was a Batman standing atop crates in one corner, his fists firmly planted against his hips. Jesse James was parked at a makeshift bar with a glass of something in one hand, watching a Geisha girl making all the motions of singing, yet not achieving that by any true definition. There were at least twenty or thirty of them, not one in a duty uniform or flight suit. Two were dancing near the middle of the room completely naked. Another, in a rough-looking Star Trek uniform, was leaning against his samurai sword, swaying as though intoxicated.
I turned back to Doc. It was understood we did not want the attention of these people. Doc pointed to himself and the dog and motioned that he was going to dash past the open door. I nodded. He gathered up the loose leash, made sure Areno understood, and jumped-stepped by. I looked with the mirror. No one had noticed.
The maneuver was not so easy in a spacesuit. I wondered if they might just think I was one of them. I gathered myself and tried to lurch my way across. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell at least a couple of them had seen me and stopped what they were doing. On the other side, I took another look with the mirror. There was no reaction. They had shrugged it off, unimpressed by someone as conspicuous and unoriginal as a spaceman. With a sigh of relief, Doc nodded and as briskly as possible we left there.
It was easy to tell we were getting close. Ahead, a Gurney was turned on its side, trailing sheets. Beyond it, more sheets and blankets. There began to be broken test tubes and vials, medicines scattered everywhere, resources that were probably badly needed. By the time the open doors to Sickbay appeared, we had to work our way around too much clutter. Areno jumped most of it.
At the Med-Lab entrance, the sight was atrocious. One body on the floor in a Johnny-type robe, another passed away on a Gurney in a corner. There was another that looked as though he could still be alive, held to a bed by restrains, starving in place, an empty IV bag hanging from the stand next to him. Most of the computer and medical terminals had their service doors open with circuit cards missing or hanging out, a testimony to the crew’s efforts to repair the EMI pulse damage. Two or three stations appeared to be intact.
“God, I hope there’s at least a medical hand scanner,” mumbled Doc. He looked at me like a man assigned a kamikaze mission. “I’ll need to set up a link to the Griffin’s medical computer, and I may need them to shove some equipment out the airlock for us.”
“Whatever you need, Doc.”
“The biggest thing will be their logs, if I can get into them. It’s for sure they were doing DNA testing and brain scans to see which part of the brain was most affected. If any of them died they’d have done biopsies. I need to know what they knew and then pick up where they left off.”
“Tarn to Wilson.”
Erin responded. “He’s moving a console out of the way, Adrian. Hang on.”
“Where are you?”
“We’ve reached the entrance to Engineering. It’s been deliberately blocked. We should be in momentarily.”
“How much trouble have you had?”
“Not a soul. Just garbage.”
“Keep going. I’ll be headed your way in just a minute.”
“Copy.”
“Doc, I’ll help you set up and make sure we can lock you in, then I’m out of here.”
“I think you should.”
There were IV supplies in a cooler closet. Doc replaced the empty one next to his only living patient. Together we dragged the other body out into the hall and covered it with a sheet. When the remaining corpse was wheeled out and the medical lab reasonably back in order, I waited outside the door while he closed and locked it. Satisfied it was secure, I headed for Engineering.
“Tarn to Wilson”
“We’re in, Adrian. What a fucking mess.”
“What do you see?”
“They were operating the valve transfer system manually. I guess they all became sick and eventually just stopped doing it. We do have one tiny problem. Some of the key valves are in service crawlways and they’re not big enough to get into with a spacesuit. What do you want to do?”
“Can you wait until I get there?”
“Oh yeah, I see where this is going. How is Doc?”
“Unaffected. Hold on a second. I have to sneak by a door.”
The party was still in full swing. Batman had apparently tried to fly down from his perch above the crowd. He was lying on the floor face down, spread-eagled, his cape draped out in full glory. No one seemed to mind. I stepped deliberately past and stopped to check. Once again, I was of no interest.
“Okay, listen up. You guys are the engineers. I am not. It would be stupid to chance you getting infected. I’m beginning repress right now. I’ll be the one to get unsuited and do the work in the crawlways. Can you wait until I get there?”
Erin answered. “We can wait, but not long.”
“I’m on my way. I’ve been in this damn suit too long anyway. What about power? We need it to stay up.”
Wilson answered. “It’s the same situation. It’s a smaller containment vessel. It would make a lot smaller hole in the hull.”
“Wilson, you’re such a comfort.”
“There are people down here, Adrian, but we haven’t seen them,” said Erin.
“How do you know?”
“Tools are getting moved around or disappear when we’re not looking. We never see it happen, but we know it does. I have the feeling whoever they are they’re not dangerous; more like timid.”
“Damn it. You guys keep your guard up. Someone always has a weapon in his hand, right?”
I reached the corridor junction and turned down the center pathway. My suit pressure was already up to 10.7. Ahead, I could see the equipment Wilson had moved to clear the way. It was a just few dozen more feet of traversing dark and light and I could escape the burden of spacesuit. My helmet beam was set on automatic, so it kept switching on and off with the changes in ambient glow. Conduit and beam guides became dense along the walls, supplying data transfer and energy translation to and from the heart of the ship. The collage of tubing and panel finally opened up to an expanded exit with a widening gray carpeted ramp that led down to the open expanse of Main Engineering and its radiant central engine core and surrounding control consoles. The chamber was at least three stories high. The semitransparent containment vessel was the familiar circular-shaped tube dropping from the ceiling into a recess in the floor. Most of the monitoring view ports at various points up and down it were closed, but two or three were open and through the lenses, sparkling explosions of light continuously erupted within. The two space-suited figures of Erin and Wilson were on the opposite side of the room, bent over a rectangular table display of engine and power components. I came up alongside and traded stares. Each of us looked like we were hoping for good news. There was none.
“I began recompression as soon as you mentioned the service crawlways. It’ll be another ten minutes. How are we doing on time?”
Erin pointed a gloved finger at a main coolant line on the lighted table display. “If we can get this line open, the danger will be past. But it’s two valves at two different junctions. If you get to them and we get the coolant flowing, then we’ll just need to work out a new rotation plan so each of the three independent systems has enough re-cool time. That’s not how it was designed to work, of course, but that’s the way it will work from now on.”
“Any sign of your ghosts?”
“No, but someone is watching us, that’s for sure.”
“Tarn to Griffin.”
“Go ahead.”
“Danica, it’s time for you and Shelly to switch off to single pilot, twelve hour shifts. We can’t keep both of you up front. We don’t know when or if we’ll get back to Griffin. Do you co
py that?”
Danica’s voice came back. “Griffin copies.”
“RJ, you’re about to drop to two helmet cams. Have we gotten anything else from Ground?”
RJ sounded unsettled. “They have acknowledged everything we sent. There seems to be some hold up with the JSA link. JSA is with us, but the company operating the Akuma seems to be holding back information. There is some kind of confusion going on there.”
“Okay. Keep us posted. Tarn out. Okay, you guys. My suit's coming up. Help me out.”
They both came around to help when a little alarm bell went off in my head. I held up one hand. “Wilson, stand watch with your weapon. Erin will help me de-suit.”
Through the glass of his visor, I could see a look of agreement. He nodded as I began the unlocking procedure for my helmet.
We just had the torso up and over when a clinking, crashing sound made us jump and freeze. Something from overhead clanked and rang its way down the conduit and walkways as it fell. It bounced on a portion of metal floor grating and came to rest still ringing. We looked everywhere, but saw no one. There, on the floor on the south side of the room, lay a shiny silver, closed-ended wrench.
Erin looked at me. “See what I mean? And, you know what? See where that came from up near the highest gangway? That’s where your first crawlway is located. I’d hate to think that’s the wrench that was being used to operate the valve we need.”
I sat on the floor and pushed at the suit pants. “I’ll let you know shortly.”
Chapter 22