Corpses, at least five of them, had been lashed to the engine with an assortment of cables and wires. Each of the bodies was encased in a void suit, ravaged by wounds from a combination of bullets, shot, and bladed objects.
As Rhett stood in silence, looking at the bodies with a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity, he noticed that he could actually see the faces of two of the former crew members. They were the two bodies hanging the lowest, making him remember that without the mag-clamps on his boots the tallness of the engine would not have mattered and someone could have easily moved the bodies where they pleased. He shined his light directly into the faceplate of one and stifled a gasp, one that Quinn finished for him as she followed his light with her own.
“He’s smiling,” breathed Quinn, seemingly blissfully unaware that Rhett could see the same thing.
Through the faceplate, Rhett could see that the corpse was indeed, smiling, though upon further observation the man’s smile had the rictus angle to it, as if he’d died in the midst of a powerful muscle contraction or seizure. Rhett moved to the next corpse, also a man, and he, too, was smiling wildly despite the obvious trauma of his violent death. The trooper noticed that both individuals had sickening white and green flecks around their noses, eyes, and mouth.
“Quinn, get your diagnostic, set it for organics, I want to know what that is growing on their faces,” ordered Rhett, shaking his head and steeling himself for the mission once more, “Sparks, take an electrical bit and drill out this guy’s faceplate. Everybody double check your filters, I know we’re in vacuum, but just do it.”
As the two women moved to follow his orders the team’s comm-bead suddenly erupted with noise.
“Contact! Contact!” came the voice of Vader, “Drago’s hit and he’s not moving!”
“Steady now, Vulture. Hold your position,” said Rhett with some authority, suddenly feeling calmer now that the shooting had started, as if a flood of tension resulting from this silent tomb of a ship had been released, “Pull Drago into cover wherever you can find it and return fire. We are on our way.”
Rhett turned and started moving out of the chamber, several steps behind Dante, who had already broken ranks, no doubt his eagerness to come to the aid of his twin overwhelming his mercenary’s sense of squad cohesion.
“Quinn, get me an answer on those bodies then form up and hold this room until I give you the all clear,” ordered Rhett as he picked up the pace, not wanting to fall too far behind Dante as the former cultist rushed headlong through the maze of darkened corridors. “Doak, you’re on overwatch. This whole ship is hostile, so if anyone approaches that isn’t us, you shoot first.”
Rhett could feel the dull thud of Vader’s pistol as the force of the weapon reverberated through the walls of the dead ship, something it would not have done had the vessel been fully functional. Something about gunshots in dead space had always felt rather ominous to Rhett, as if they were a stark reminder that silence and freezing cold were the natural state, and all warmth, life, and light were anomalies upon the face of hard vacuum.
“Vader, sitrep!” shouted Rhett as he saw Dante leap through the dark hatch and rush down the passageway towards the fray, his weapon at the ready.
“Multiple hostiles, sir, they’ve got guns,” responded Vader, inadvertently reminding Rhett that other than the twins he was the only other scrapper with legitimate combat experience.
“What’s the visual?” snapped Rhett, his frustration mounting as he lost sight of Dante. “Who is out there?”
“It’s the ship’s crew, I think,” said Vader, his voice shaking, “They’re wearing Aegis void suits.”
Rhett hurled himself out of the hatch and looked down the passageway just in time to see Dante unleash several blasts from his weapon, presumably at a target out of Rhett’s sight, further down a side passage. Suddenly the multitude of passages in the cross-section chamber were much more menacing, and Rhett imagined that a determined foe with intimate knowledge of the ship could move through not only the usual corridors, but also the various access tunnels, air shafts, and utility tubes that served as the ship’s circulatory and respiratory system.
As if to confirm his musings, Rhett watched in shock as an attacker in a void suit emerged from a utility tube and started firing its pistol at where Vader and the wounded form of Drago had attempted to take cover. Dante had plunged further into the network and the former cultist was expertly toggling back and forth between his assault rifle component and his shotgun component as he sent withering amounts of fire in multiple directions. By the time Rhett, no slouch when it came to swift and decisive action himself, got his rifle to his shoulder, Dante had already drilled the new attacker with several deadly rounds and moved onto other targets.
Rhett felt more than heard the hatch open above and behind him. He threw himself to the deck, twisting as he fell, and raised his rifle.
A smiling crew member looked out at him from behind the grimy faceplate, the green and white growths on her face making her look hideous and less than human. His swift maneuver saved his life, as the attacker squeezed the trigger of her weapon and sent a focused beam of energy slicing through the space where Rhett had stood only a moment before. The beam cut into the metal wall of the passageway and down into the deck plating, the smiler tracking the trooper with her weapon as he scampered backwards. Rhett pulled the bull-pup stock of his compact rifle into the crook of his arm and fired wildly as he reached out with this free hand and grasped for purchase.
The smiler did not flinch as several rounds bit into the edge of the hatch in addition to one punching through her upper chest. She continued to move her beam across the floor to chase the trooper.
Rhett’s hand found a depression in the floor, a maintenance panel that had either been torn open or left open. He managed to get his gloved fingers around the lip of the panel and heaved himself across the floor, cursing the mag-clamps on his boots for preventing him from just kicking off and sailing away from danger. There had been no time to shut them off and had he not reacted so swiftly the beam would have been the end of him. As it was, the smiler kept moving the beam towards him, though now that he had a split second to adjust his aim Rhett drew a solid bead on the attacker.
Rhett squeezed the trigger five times in rapid succession, missing only the first time, before three rounds put holes in her chest and the last shattered her faceplate.
The smiler’s grip on her weapon tightened as the nerves in her dying body caused all her muscles to constrict, worse than Rhett had ever seen in combat. It was as if she had been struggling against convulsions before he had ever shot her, and death made it all the worse. The beam went off track, scorching a deep cut through the far wall of the passageway before mercifully sputtering out as the power supply was drained. Finally, the smiler stopped contorting, and her corpse just bobbed gently in the extremely low gravity, the crystalized blood from her wounds creating a sort of macabre asteroid field around her.
Rhett ignored the sounds of Dante continuing to battle the unknown number of assailants as he got to his feet and took a moment to look at the woman’s body more closely. The beam weapon was actually just a standard ship’s maintenance tool that appeared to have been modified for handheld use.
Normally, beam tools like this were used for cutting away massive sections of heavy material. It was for emergencies, when a ship’s crew needed to decouple from something, was tangled with a large piece of debris, or needed to drop one of the tremendous cargo containers in the event of a catastrophe or toxic spill event. To use such a tool as a combat weapon, especially in the void, was evidence of desperation or insanity. Rhett was beginning to suspect the latter.