“This ain’t the time for chitchat, Marines.” Gunny Max’s voice drowned out anyone else’s comments. “Power up your suits and make sure you have enough push to stay on the surface. Anyone who thinks it’s funny to free-float gets a hundred push-ups for every second they don’t have both feet planted. Understand?” The spattering of affirmative responses seemed to be enough, so Gunny said, “Move out. And somebody get a spotlight out there. I can’t see shit on the vidscreen.”
Strand strode to the front of the group and swung a high-power light into place. The harsh cone of illumination swelled then disappeared into a blackness that seemed absolutely endless. With no atmosphere, not even dust floated in front of them.
“Fail,” LCpl Horsley said. It was probably meant as a joke, but that failed, too.
“Let’s go,” Hicks ordered. “Strand, you’re with me. Trexler come up front with the radiation detector. Addison and DePerte to the left, Vernon and Hagerty to the right. The rest of you spread out and flank us. Keep it tight.”
It didn’t take long to cross the line where the lights from the ship stopped helping. What they got from the spotlight wasn’t much, and the small but powerful lights on each side of their individual helmets didn’t seem to help; to Hicks, the lifeless moon in front of them still looked gray and black through his amber-tinted solar visor. They had set down in a decent-sized flat area between small, jagged mountains. Scattered around them was evidence of meteor strikes in sizes varying from a couple of meters to a quarter mile across. It was stark and, like most uninhabitable, airless moons, coldly beautiful.
They moved forward in silence until Hicks held up his hand. “Where are we headed out here, Gunny? I don’t see anything besides dirt and hills.”
After a few seconds, Maxwell replied. “Go straight another three hundred meters. The scan says there’s metal there. If it’s been here awhile, you might have to dig to find it, but it’s definitely on the screen.”
“Roger,” he said. So the Gunny had no back info on the mission, either. Hicks gestured and the crew followed as he moved, monitoring their progress on the tactical GPS on his wrist. He’d managed to calm his hammering heartbeat but he still felt hyper-alert and edgy, ready to jump. His thoughts were spinning, not only with memories but with questions. If only he’d been able to get to the data from Rachel’s last mission, the exact location where her ship had set down. If this moon had really been a place for pirated ships to hide, there was no guarantee that the ship—assuming that’s what it was—they were coming up on was hers.
“I’m picking up trace radiation,” Trexler said. “Not much though. It seems pretty dissipated.”
“Is it safe?” Hicks asked.
“Yeah. For this amount, we’re plenty protected by our suits. It does mean we’re getting close to… whatever it is.”
“There,” Strand said suddenly. “At the base of that hill…” His voice trailed off and he slowed. “What’s behind it?”
Hicks took the spotlight from Strand, aiming it high and over the dirt-covered metal edges that rose in front of them. He kept moving, closing the distance until he was able to get a definitive visual on the object—scratch that—objects—that receded into the dark.
“Another ship,” he said. “More than one, in fact. Gunny, you hearing this?”
“Yeah. Any sign of activity?”
“Negative,” Hicks replied.
“Are the hulls damaged?”
“I can’t tell from here. We’re moving in.” Hicks motioned to the others and they advanced cautiously, knowing without being told to watch on all sides. No one broke radio silence, focusing instead on their surroundings. When they were ten meters from the first ship, Hicks stopped and the rest of them followed suit.
No doubt about it—this was Rachel’s ship, the Paradox. Hicks knew the mechanics of it by heart and what it looked like from every possible angle, including the interior. He’d had half a decade to burn the specs into his brain. It looked like it had set down properly—no crash damage—but there were darker spots at random places on the hull in starburst patterns; those could mean it had taken fire but they weren’t large enough to have come from another ship. Small arms fire?
“Hicks?”
Damn it—the vitals monitor on his suit was betraying him again. “I’m fine, Gunny.” Before Maxwell could say anything else, Hicks pointed at Vernon and Hagerty. “You two head around the stern, see if there’s any penetration damage to the hull. Addison and DePerte will check the nose and anything behind it. I want three of you to go inside with me.”
Schmid, Nezuh, and Knight formed up next to him, and Hicks led the way to the ship’s closed entry door. “Max, the ship’s name is Paradox, and the main entrance door is sealed. There’s a keypad to the right of the door. Can you find the code?”
“Give me thirty seconds,” Max replied, but he had it in under fifteen. Hicks punched it in and they brought their weapons up automatically when the door slid to the side. There was no sound of air releasing and inside the ship was as black as a pool of tar—no console or equipment lights, no backups. There was obviously still power but someone had purposely killed the lights.
Strand was there with the portable spotlight before Hicks had to ask for it. Hicks took it and lowered the intensity so it didn’t overpower everything, then shined it around the entrance and into the space beyond. There wasn’t much to see; no bodies, no weapons. Except—
“Is that blood?”
Hicks swung the light back in the direction that Schmid was pointing, at another hatchway, also closed. The glow ran across a black stain that started at the simple toggle switch on the right side of the hatch and ended in an elongated dripping pattern on the floor. “I want a check-in from both exterior teams right now,” Hicks barked into his mic.
Addison’s distinctive voice came back immediately. “We’re good.”
“Roger that.” Vernon’s voice was cut a little by static but he sounded calm and confident.
“I want both recon teams back to the entrance,” Hicks ordered.
“What’s your status?” Maxwell asked.
“We’re on high alert,” Hicks replied, switching the channel so everyone heard. “It’s hard to tell in this light, but it looks like there’s blood inside.” He felt the jump in his pulse but his voice was level and strong, and Hicks was proud of himself as he said the words. After five years he knew he wouldn’t find Rachel alive, but hope was a hard thing to completely extinguish.
“We’re moving in,” he said. “Switch to night optics. I’m going to leave the spotlight at the door. Spread out and keep your weapons ready, but no one moves out of sight of another team member. Recon teams, what’s your position?”
“We got your back,” Hagerty replied. “Addison and DePerte are in sight. When they get here, we’ll all come in behind you.”
“Let’s go.” Hicks put the spotlight down next to the open door, positioned so that most of its light shone outside, then he switched his view to night and moved forward. When he got to the stained switch by the hatchway, he checked to make sure the rest of his team was ready, then pushed it. Although no green light came on to indicate it was responding, the door opened.
More blackness, not a single glow from anything to break the fuzzy green vista in front of them. There were, however, darker splotches here and there along the floor and walls, some splattering, others trailing. Hicks looked down and saw that he was standing in the center of a particularly large patch of it. The others probably didn’t need to be told that there was no longer any doubt that it was blood.
“Sir?” Knight was whispering, as if there was something in here that could hear them.
“Let’s go,” Hicks said. “And stay frosty.”
Without being told, Schmid took point, crouching slightly, her pulse rifle forward and ready. The area in front of them fanned out into a command center that looked virtually destroyed—no wonder the ship had never gotten off the ground again.
“Barely discernible levels of radiation,” Trexler told them quietly. “But I think there’s a body—check that—more than one, under that smashed console.”
Schmid and Laff angled toward it. Hicks followed, his heart suddenly banging inside his ribs. There was nothing he could do to slow it; he expected Maxwell to say something about his vitals at any second but Gunny didn’t break their focus. With night vision green washing over everything there was no way Hicks could match what was in front of him to his memory of the grainy black and white vid-messages that Rachel had sent him, and besides, his gaze had always been on his wife’s face.
One of the Marines said something and Hicks realized he hadn’t heard the words over his own rapid breathing. “Come again,” he managed, fighting not to stutter. Inside the temperature-controlled suit, stress was making him sweat and beads rolled into his eyes.
“There’s not much left of the corpses,” Laff repeated. “Freeze-dried skin over bones. But there are names sewn into the uniforms so we can ID them that way.” Hicks felt each word like a hammer blow in the center of his chest. Laff glanced at him, then continued. “They went down fighting, but we just don’t know who.”
“Or what,” Trexler said.
Hicks scowled and turned toward the PFC. “Where’s that coming from?”
Trexler lifted his hand. “Look at that, sir.”
They all looked to where his gloved finger was pointing, at another hatchway on the other side of the room. It was far enough so they could barely make it out, but the doors didn’t look like they were completely closed. There was no halfway position, so it must have malfunctioned.
“We’ll check that in a minute,” Hicks said hoarsely. He inhaled deeply then made himself step forward so that when PFC Laff stood, he could see the dead Marines on the floor. His eyes focused and for a minute everything—the Paradox, his crew, his life, spun away. Then it all came back into dreadful reality.
“Rachel,” he whispered. His voice was just low enough to not be clear.
The right half of his wife’s skull was caved in. There was no way to tell if she’d been bludgeoned with something or shot, although both hands still clenched her pulse rifle. Her dried face bore no expression but death—tightly drawn skin, deep holes instead of eyes, lips shriveled to nothing over a still-beautiful set of teeth. Hicks knelt and smoothed out the dust-laden nametag on her chest.
R. MILLER-HICKS
“Oh, God,” Schmid said. “Are you related to him?”
“Her,” Hicks said automatically. His gloved hands were clunky as he eased her fingers, so dry and thin, away from the barrel of the rifle, then slipped off the wedding ring.
“Sir?” Schmid’s tone clearly conveyed she had no idea what he was doing.
“She was my wife,” Hicks said as he unzipped a pocket and tucked the gold band inside. He touched Rachel’s dust-laden hair a final time, then got back to his feet.
“Hicks, how the hell did you get pegged for this mission?” Gunny Maxwell demanded in his ear.
“No idea, sir, but I’m glad I did. At least I can put an end to the waiting.”
No one said anything for a long moment, then someone—Hicks couldn’t tell who because his head seemed temporarily full of fuzzy white noise—asked, “How long has she been gone?”
The noise fell away and Hicks answered in a wooden voice, “She and her crew went missing five years ago.”
“Jesus,” Addison said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
Hicks cleared his throat before the others could chime in. “Let’s go,” he ordered. “Right now we need to check out the rest of this ship and make sure we’re all safe.” He forced himself to turn his back on his wife’s body and strode toward the hatch on the other side of the room. “We’ll start in here.”
His crew followed, and although they’d never been on a mission together, everyone moved exactly as they should. The hatch was jammed with only about four inches open, just enough so they couldn’t see a damned thing, even with night vision.
“I got this,” said LCpl Horsley. He went back across the room and after a minute returned with a piece of metal long enough to use as a pry bar. Fifteen seconds later the door grudgingly slid aside.
Schmid eased forward, taking point again. Hicks and the others followed her into the part of the ship that contained the hypersleep pods partially recessed into one wall in a long line. “There’s damage in here, too,” Schmid said. “Looks like a firefight, but I don’t see any bodies.”
The pods were empty but most of the transparent covers were shattered or speckled with the blast patterns of bullets. “Gunny,” Hicks said, “you reading me?”
“Roger.”
“Can you do an infrared scan of the ship?”
“Already initiated it. Not showing any signs of life.”
“I think whatever caused this is long gone,” Horsley said.
“Maybe,” Hicks said. “But keep your guard up, just in case.”
PFC Nezuh, followed by a couple more Marines, had moved down the pods, inspecting each one. Now they were at the end, where the walls held upright storage units that were spaced evenly apart. They lined the walls farther than the night phase of their visors could penetrate. “There’s some kind of… stuff on the floor back here,” she said. “It’s sticky.”
Hicks and the others joined them, staring downward. LCpl Horsley still had the makeshift pry bar, and he ran it across the flooring. “On the surface, yeah, but it’s hardened beneath it. And it’s not even. It’s rounded, like coils.”
“It’s not just on the floor,” said Addison. “Look overhead. It’s everywhere.”
Knight had put a hand on the wall as he walked. Now he pulled it away and watched as long strands of the substance came with it, clinging tenaciously to his gloves. “What the hell is this stuff?”
Hicks frowned. “Let’s—” His voice dropped away as something moved in the blackness behind Nezuh. Something big.
And fast.
Her sudden shriek cut into their speakers like a blast of feedback, loud enough to make some of them clap their hands against their helmets. Even so they surged toward her, but before they could get anywhere close, Nezuh’s pulse rifle fired. The discharges arced left across the ceiling then came back to the right, this time at chest level. The chamber erupted in smoke, shouts of surprise and fear, and blasts of blinding white in their vision.
“Get down!” Hicks shouted as he hit the floor and rolled. “It’s reflex!” His back thudded hard against one wall and he grunted, then tried to focus on the far end. Nothing in front of him made sense—it looked like giant, dark worms were coming out of the spaces between the storage units. Everything was happening fast and he couldn’t stop on any one thing; they were in the midst of a full-on battle but Hicks had no idea what they were fighting.
“Report!” Max was screaming in his ear. “I’m losing vitals on team members! Damn it, Hicks—report!”
Almost in response to Maxwell’s orders, another sound scissored into Hicks’s ears, a monstrous combination of a hyena’s scream and an elephant’s roar. He screamed and scuttled backward, instinctively trying to get away; his hand slapped against someone’s sleeve and he grabbed at it, dragging the unidentified Marine with him. His team was retreating, fighting for their lives, but from his position on the floor Hicks couldn’t fire at anything without shooting his own crew members.
“Pull out!” he yelled. “Marines, get out now!”
The Marine closest to him—Hagerty—turned to flee, but before she could take a single step something yanked her into the air and slammed her against the ceiling. Her rifle discharged as she tried to hold onto it, and two more of his team jerked as rounds tore through their suits and into flesh.
“Hicks, are you there?” Maxwell’s voice bellowed into his earpiece, mingling with the screams of something unknown and Marines dying. “What’s going on down there? Your numbers are dropping!”
“Under attack by unknown combatant,” Hicks
managed to respond. He sucked in oxygen, then yelled as loud as he could, “Marines, retreat now!” He tried to scramble backward on his butt but the person he was holding didn’t move. Hicks flipped onto his side and got enough of a hand on the other’s suit to turn it to face him. The smudged nametag on the suit read TREXLER but there was no protective visor in the helmet anymore—just a black, wet hole.
Another hideous, animalistic scream shot through his earpiece. Hicks let go of Trexler’s body and low-crawled forward. He wanted to go back and fight, see if he could get any more of his team out, but a fast look over his shoulder made him realize that was impossible. Pulse rounds were zigzagging through the chamber, but the rounds were decreasing and the origin directions were all wrong—upward from the floor, ricocheting dangerously off the ceiling. Only one Marine was still upright, legs wide, rifle spitting defiantly into the darkness.
Hicks struggled to rise and a bright knot of pain shot through his left calf; something, a round, a sharp piece of metal, who knew—had penetrated the muscle. The suit had auto-sealed around it but there was no way he was putting weight on that leg. One hand reached and found the edge of a sleeping pod; he grunted and rose, bringing up his rifle and aiming it at the smoke and tracers to the right of the other Marine—the size and stance registered in his brain as PFC Addison. Before he could squeeze the trigger, something too fast for him to identify lunged at her; her rifle went flying into the shadows and her long, lean body bent backwards almost in half as whatever now owned this ship dragged her away.
“Hicks, get out now,” Maxwell screamed in his ear. “There’s no one to save—you’re the only one left! GET OUT!”
For a precious second Hicks was so shocked he couldn’t move. His whole team was gone? Then instinct kicked in and he swung around and lurched toward the broken hatch door. The line of hypersleep pods made the way seem impossibly long and he lost track of how many times he fell, until he finally just stayed down and dragged himself along the floor. When he made it through, he saw something move in the far side of the chamber, something oversized and black rapidly sliding toward him.