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  DERELICT: DESTRUCTION

  Book 3 of the Derelict Saga

  Paul E Cooley

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2018 by Paul E Cooley

  In Memory of Justin Macumber

  A friend to all writers.

  A friend to everyone he met.

  A friend I shall miss more than I can ever convey.

  Works by Paul E Cooley

  The Black Series

  The Black

  The Black: Arrival

  The Black: Outbreak

  Sol and Beyond

  The Derelict Saga

  Derelict: Marines

  Derelict: Tomb

  Derelict: Destruction

  Children Of Garaaga Series

  Legends of Garaaga

  Daemons of Garaaga

  The Dark Recesses Collection

  Lamashtu

  Mimes

  Closet Treats

  The Rider (with Scott Sigler)

  For information about upcoming projects, publishing news, and podcast series, please visit Shadowpublications.com or join Paul’s mailing list.

  Chapter One

  The dimly lit auxiliary bridge might as well have been a morgue. With the long-dead corpses of Mira’s command crew floating through the room, Lance Corporal Dickerson couldn’t shake the image. All they needed was a steel table and a manic doctor ready to cut them open.

  He stared at the holo display floating above the captain’s console. Corporal Kalimura, much shorter than Dickerson, clenched her fists again and again. Through the comms, he could hear her asking for someone to respond. The words “SIGNAL LOST” blinked in mid-air like a proclamation of doom.

  “Corporal?” he said.

  She didn’t turn her head to look at him. “Goddamnit, come in!”

  Nothing. No response. He fought the urge to place a gloved hand on her shoulder. “Corporal, they’re gone,” he said. “We’ll have to try and find another way to communicate with them.”

  His NCO slammed her fist down on the console, ice chips rising in the air like dust. Mira had no gravity, no life support, and no power apart from what the emergency generators supplied. The fifty-year-old ship had been in deep space for more than 43 years without any living humans. Dickerson just hoped he and his squad wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the headless, torn-apart corpses they’d seen throughout the ship.

  Somewhere out there, the Sol Federation Marine Corps (SFMC) vessel S&R Black floated parallel to the giant derelict that was Mira. It could be half a klick away, or less than 20 meters from the furthest port bulkhead. But for all the good that did his squad, S&R Black might as well be on the other side of the Kuiper Belt.

  Kalimura breathed heavily through the comms. Dickerson watched her shoulders bunch together in stress before finally releasing, finally relaxing. “Okay. Dickerson?” she said without turning around. “Refill your O2.”

  “You too, Corporal,” he replied. He didn’t wait for a response as he mag-walked off the captain’s dais to the O2 refill station. Her life-support sensors were damaged and she was left relying on the rest of the squad’s telemetry to know when she was low. If his suit was any indication, she was already well into her reserves.

  Dickerson connected a hose to his combat suit and sent a block command to the station. Fresh O2 rushed into his suit, the gauges on his HUD turning from a deep amber to green. His private comms channel lit up.

  “Hey,” Carb said, “I think she’s having a meltdown.”

  He moved his hands to disconnect the hose. Lance Corporal Carbonaro, his longtime squad-mate, stood near the hatch. LCpl Elliott, the squad’s sole casualty, was mag-locked to the wall, one of the sleeves of his suit empty from the wrist-down.

  “Give her a minute, Carb,” Dickerson said. “Think we all need one,” he said to himself, muting his mic before speaking. He turned back to face the dais. Kalimura hadn’t moved, her helmet locked on the words flashing before her. “Corporal? Your turn.”

  Her helmet twitched in something like a nod. She smacked the console again, walked off the dais, and mag-walked to him. He stepped out of the way and headed back to the dais. She needed a moment without any eyes on her. He didn’t blame her. They hadn’t been able to communicate with anyone, save for S&R Black’s AI, since their skiff crashed into Mira. And since then, it had been one disaster after another.

  Elliott was stable, but he needed an extended stay in a modern autodoc and a lot of rest. Shit, they all needed rest. Dickerson knew his bio-nannies were barely keeping up with dispensing stored chemicals to both alleviate pain and relax his stressed-out muscles. Kalimura had a broken rib. He probably had two bruised ones, as well as a torn rotator cuff. Carb was in the best shape of the squad, but her concussion symptoms were a constant worry.

  Dickerson grunted. They all needed extended shore leaves, getting laid and vaping copious amounts of THC. But until they found a way off Mira, there was nothing to be done. Just keep mag-walking, keep floating, and find a way to stay alive.

  He reached the console and stared. The holo display had turned off when Kalimura left the station. Dickerson instructed his block to initiate a connection. The console didn’t bother challenging him for authentication. That was good. If they were lucky, most of the consoles in the dead ship would follow suit.

  The display flickered to life with a logo which quickly dissolved into a list of menus. His lips moved as he read the different choices. He reached out his gloved hand and stabbed the icon for “LOG.” The floating image immediately snapped into a long list of Captain’s Log entries. He knew he didn’t have time to read them now, but this was part of what he wanted. Another block command and the logs began streaming into his block storage array.

  When they finished downloading, he returned the display to the menu, traveling down the tree until he found the Science and Engineering data store. He attempted another download, but the documents were missing. When Mira lost power, the main storage arrays had shut down as well. Without ship-wide power, there was no way to bring them back to life.

  He shook his head. “Knew it was too good to be true.”

  “What?” Kalimura asked.

  He started at the voice. “Sorry, Corporal. Forgot to mute my mic.” A feed on his HUD showed him Kalimura had finished filling her suit. “All finished?”

  “Yes,” the corporal said curtly. “What were you looking for?”

  “Ship’s logs,” he said and gestured to the seat behind him. The captain, A. Kovacs, still sat in her command chair, belted in against the z-g, and frozen like an iceberg. “Found her logs. I think they may be important.”

  “Good thinking,” she said, her voice a little lighter than before. “You able to download anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Carb said, “like a plan for getting us the hell out of here?”

  “No,” Dickerson said, ignoring Carb. “Unless we find a way to get Mira’s storage arrays back online, we’re not going to get anything else. Only reason I was able to download the logs is they were mirrored.”

  Kalimura stood still as a statue, her helmet pointed at the command dais. Dickerson tried to imagine the maelstrom of thoughts roaring through her mind. The captain had ordered them to find the nearest escape pods and report back. But now that they’d lost communications, was there any point? If S&R Black was expecting them to jettison, the crew would no doubt be watching for pods leaving the ship. Now all they had to do was make their way to the vehicles and hope they still functioned.

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” he said to himself.

  The corporal finally left the dais and headed to the oxygen station. She walked with her helmet pointed at the floor, shoulders frozen in a shrug of defeat. He knew how she felt. Jus
t hearing the captain’s voice had wiped away the fear and anxiety. Although they’d only been trapped on the derelict ship for a few hours, it felt like days. The brief moments of communication with their commanding officer wiped away the idea they’d be stranded here forever, constantly scanning the pitch darkness for threats, struggling to find oxygen resupplies, and worrying about what happened when their suits finally expended their power cells. As long as they could communicate, there was hope. Of the four of them, Kalimura, as inexperienced as she was, had staked everything on that hope. And now it was gone.

  Dickerson watched her closely, examining her posture. Yup. She looked as though she’d been beaten. He ground his teeth. She was in charge, but if he didn’t get her to snap out of it, he might have to practice a little insubordination. And he knew that would only sap her morale even more.

  At least Carb hadn’t started to try and take over. His longtime squad-mate had a penchant for doing just that when the officers or non-comms started fucking up or waffling on their decisions. Hell, so did he. It was one of the many reasons they’d both been busted down in rank and exiled to Trident Station to begin with.

  If he hadn’t slugged a superior officer, he would probably be back at Schiaparelli teaching recruits combat tactics, how to mag-walk, and how to survive in both z-g and hostile environments such as the Martian surface. Carb would probably be doing the same. Instead, they’d been given the choice of leaving the corps altogether, or finding a unit dumb enough to take them. Fortunately, Captain Dunn and Lieutenant Taulbee, not to mention Gunny, thought they were both worth saving. He grunted. He hoped they still felt that way.

  Hope. That was the problem. Hope was a cruel bastard. One moment it filled you with optimism, purpose in the face of losing odds, and the drive to keep going no matter how exhausted you were. But the fickle son of a bitch was all too likely to disappear, leaving you forlorn and heartbroken. And then its shadow twin, hopelessness, filled every particle of your soul.

  The twin had obviously crept into Kalimura. If she didn’t find a way to purge it, he’d have to find a way to purge it for her. No, he told himself, you’ll help her purge it. Yeah, that. If he or Carb took control of the situation, essentially removing Kalimura from her leadership position, she might never recover. Worse, she might even die here. He clenched his fingers into fists.

  “Okay,” Kalimura said over the squad channel. “Everyone has fresh O2.” She turned slowly to face him and Carb. “We’re not going to get relief from S&R Black anytime soon. That’s a given. So we follow the plan. We head for the port-side escape pods and see what we can find.”

  Dickerson heaved a sigh of relief. She still sounded shaken, but there was an air of confidence beneath it. Just enough steel to keep her in control. Good. He knew from experience that was sometimes all it took to keep from freezing up. “Orders, Corporal?”

  “Let’s get Elliott ready to move.” She pointed at the hatch leading from the auxiliary bridge back into the corridors. “Carb? You still good lugging Elliott?”

  “Lugging,” Elliott groaned. “So I’m just luggage now?”

  Carb snorted. “You were never anything but a meat bag,” she said. “Now it’s just confirmed.”

  “Shit,” Elliott said. “I get no respect.”

  Kalimura shook her head in either frustration or disbelief. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Carb. “And?”

  “Yes, Boss,” Carb said. “I’m happy to lug him around.”

  “Good,” the corporal said. “Because Dickerson’s too damned big to carry him easily through the corridors, especially if we get into a tight space.”

  Dickerson nodded to himself. He’d been wondering why Kalimura had never tried to give him that task. He was glad to know it wasn’t out of spite for all of Carb’s sass. “Point or rear?” he asked.

  “Rear guard,” she said. “Again, size. You can see over the group and pick out targets without shooting one of us by accident.”

  “Yeah,” Carb said. “Bad enough those little bastards want to eat us. Would be worse to get shot by my own damned squad.”

  Kalimura ignored the comment. “Agreed?”

  Dickerson smiled. “Agreed. I’ll shut any hatches behind us, unless you tell me not to,” he said.

  “Good.” Kalimura inhaled deeply, her helmet swinging back to regard the dais. “Wonder how long they survived in here before the end.” No one said a word and the silence stretched for a few seconds. The corporal seemed to snap out of a fugue. “Let’s get moving.”

  Carb walked to Elliott, taking care not to bump his injured extremity, and once again mag-locked him to her back. Dickerson made sure he had a full magazine in his rifle and noted Kalimura doing the same. They had to be ready this time. No more fucking around.

  “Goodbye, Captain,” she said to the dais. With a salute, she turned from the dais and stepped to the hatch. “All right, people. Let’s move like we have a purpose.”

  Dickerson watched her clear the corridor beyond the hatch. He sighed inside his helmet and took up position behind Carb. Time to find out what was on the port-side of this deck. He knew this wasn’t going to be as easy as the captain had made it sound. He was right.

  Chapter Two

  Nobel was a fucking genius. At least in Taulbee’s books. The armor for the SV-52 hadn’t modified the craft’s flight characteristics at all. He’d had to reset the on-board AI’s damage sensor protocols to properly account for the new armor, but that had only taken a few seconds. With Gunny’s marines prepping themselves for the last stage of harness duty, he’d had little trouble getting permission from Dunn to retrieve the stasis coffin.

  He’d been forced to drop it from the SV-52 to tow the remaining skiff into the ship after the confrontation with the starfish creature. Fortunately, the coffin was floating less than a hundred meters from S&R Black. Finding it took a few moments, but not nearly as long as he’d feared. He didn’t even know what he was expecting it to contain, but it felt important for some reason. Dunn thought Taulbee was mainly interested in clearing the area of any possible threats before the skiff exited the ship, and while that was true, it was just an excuse to retrieve the coffin.

  Once he saw the rectangular shadow, he pushed the craft into a negative vector and gently applied the thrusters. The SV-52 quickly ate the distance until he was no more than five meters above the coffin. He activated the tow line, aimed, and fired. The magnetic harpoon struck the coffin and held fast. The line reeled in the object until it stuck firmly to the hull. Smiling, he rotated the SV-52 until it pointed back at S&R Black, the derelict hulk lurking in the distance.

  Oakes would begin firing S&R Black’s attitude thrusters in a few moments to shorten the distance between the two craft. Once he started that process, they would have to wait until he positioned S&R Black above the spindle before they loosed the skiff of marines. Taulbee would make damned sure they had no hazards to deal with. At least he hoped.

  So far, they’d only seen two of the starfish creatures and they’d managed to destroy one with the new weapons. The other? The one he’d originally skirmished with on the far side of Mira? It hadn’t made another appearance. He could only hope it wouldn’t. His lips twitched into a smirk. Then again, he’d love to try out the new weapons. And, more importantly, he had a score to settle with that thing.

  His HUD flashed. Taulbee frowned as he looked at the warning. “INBOUND SHIP DETECTED.” He blinked at it. “Captain?”

  “We see it,” Dunn said. “Black says it’s an error, but a KBO is entering our space. She thinks it’s triggering the sensors.”

  Taulbee noted the position and checked his cams. Far out in the distance, he made out a black dot that obscured the starlight. If that was the KBO, it was huge. “Aye, sir,” he said. “I have the coffin. Heading back to the ship.”

  “Copy,” Dunn said. “We need to get a move on. As soon as you offload the coffin, I want you back out there while Oakes moves us into position.”

  “Ac
knowledged, sir,” Taulbee said.

  Offload the coffin, he echoed. Right. Gunny’s squad had already created a temporary quarantine area for it. All he had to do was get the damned thing back in the ship. “Easy enough,” he said aloud.

  He activated the thrusters, but kept an eye on the feed targeting the shadow. The object heading toward them glowed in pulsing patches of color far too bright to simply be a prism reflection from Sol’s distant light. Far too bright. Hell, Mira was less than a half a klick away and it was clothed in shadow. That couldn’t be the sun or Pluto’s light reflecting off it. That simply wasn’t possible.

  Taulbee focused on getting the ‘52 back to the cargo bay and tried to push thoughts of the object out of his mind. It didn’t work. He told the combat AI to track the object and take high-resolution stills. Once he dropped off the coffin, he’d have time to wait while Oakes positioned the ship. Then he could take a look.

  *****

  Gunny stood astride the cargo bay door and watched as Taulbee brought in the support vehicle. Rather than landing, the lieutenant hovered just above the deck. “Ready to detach,” Taulbee said.

  “Aye, sir,” Gunny said. He gestured to Wendt and Copenhaver. “Get in there and unload that thing. And take it to the quarantine area.”

  “Aye, Gunny,” the two marines said.

  Wendt and Copenhaver approached the ‘52 undercarriage. The stasis coffin, a large rectangular piece of Atmo-steel, hung beneath the support vehicle like a bomb. Gunny harrumphed. He hoped like hell that wasn’t a prophetic thought.

  The two marines detached the coffin from the harpoon and mag-walked it to the aft-end of the cargo bay. Before Taulbee had even left the ship, Gunny’s squad had printed and erected a blast-proof, air-proof shelter large enough to house the coffin. Once they pressurized the cargo bay, the shelter area would remain both in z-g and in vacuum. At least until they had a chance to investigate what it contained.