Reality Zero

Chapter 14

  As Major Auryn Truran and his team of ten marines approached the Cornishman in their shuttle, they realised that it was unlikely there would be anyone alive on board.

  There was a large hole on the starboard side visible from some distance away, with jagged pieces of bent metalwork reaching out into space around much of its perimeter. At this distance, they could see debris floating around the hole but couldn’t tell what it was. However, it was beholden upon them to investigate the ship thoroughly in case they were wrong. It was always possible that someone on board had managed to find somewhere to hide out but Auryn didn’t hold out much hope for this to be the case. When the Captain had first visited this reality only a month or so ago, there was no sign of life. Had the ship been active, they would almost certainly have expected to see some evidence of its presence, either in the way of lights or radio traffic, at the very least.

  One kilometre away from the ship, they turned on their spotlights to see whether there was any debris around the ship they needed to avoid. Although there was a certain amount, it would be easy to avoid. Once inside the ship, they split into pairs to explore. Despite seeing a lot of corpses, they were unable to find anyone left alive. When Sarah Hirst and her partner arrived at the area damaged the most by the blast, they discovered that one of the main engines had exploded. What had caused the explosion would take far more time than they had available, however, so they merely noted the damage. A more thorough investigation would require a level of expertise the marines didn’t possess. She radioed Auryn and informed him of what they had found. Even though their head-cams were sending images back to the Dark Horse, they weren’t shared amongst the exploration team.

  ‘Thanks, Sarah. Once we’ve finished our sweep of the ship, I’ll join you there. I need to take a look myself. Any signs of life so far?’

  ‘Afraid not, Major. Lots of bodies but no signs of anyone alive.’

  ‘OK. I’ll see you there as soon as we’ve finished our sweep.’

  Having seen the engines, he agreed with Sarah’s assessment of the situation.

  Auryn radioed the Dark Horse. ‘Captain, bad news I’m afraid.’

  ‘What’s your assessment, Major?’ asked Captain VanDelden.

  ‘As you’ll have seen from our head-cam views, we’ve searched the ship and haven’t found anyone alive, Captain. Those on board look to have died pretty much instantly. None were in ‘suits.’

  ‘Can you tell what happened?’

  ‘It looks like one of the engines blew, flooding the ship with radiation and breaching the ship’s hull. The air would have gone in minutes near to the explosion. Although most of the security doors were closed, they wouldn’t have been enough to stop the radiation killing everyone on board. Hard to say exactly how or when it happened without a more thorough look but there’s no sign of the radiation now.’

  ‘OK. Make sure there’s no-one floating around nearby, so we can collect the bodies later and deal with them properly. They’re not going anywhere. We’ll need to try to contact their government anyway if some of the people we rescued from the planet want to get back to their own system rather than staying here.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Will do. We didn’t see anyone in the neighbourhood on our approach but we’ll check again, just to make sure. If we don’t find anyone, we’ll be back within the hour.’

  ‘Good luck, Auryn. VanDelden out.’