The trooper looked down the passageway towards the rest of his team. Dante stood with his back to the wall next to a small, open chamber door leading into the room where he’d seen Vader dragging Drago only moments before. Rhett started making his way to them, taking care to check every corner, vent, and hatch as he went, determined not to be the victim of another bushwhack attempt. No further attacks came, and as Rhett reached the trio he could see the bodies of three more smilers floating lazily in the low gravity.
“I’m getting a lot of shooting and not nearly enough reporting!” snapped the voice of Captain Estrada in everyone’s comm-beads, “Get your people online, Calibos!”
“Drago is down, but alive, med update to follow. Four hostiles in the hurt locker, equipped with assorted small arms and converted ship’s tools. Aegis void suits on all of them, something not right about them, possibly a shipboard disease,” said Rhett as he took Dante’s overwatch position so that the twin could care for his brother. “Quinn, give us a sitrep on the engine room.”
“Chamber is secure, Sparks has done a sweep and we’re clear,” responded Quinn over the comm-bead, “Samples of those growths on the corpses are being worked now, this diagnostic kit is a little outdated so it will take a few more minutes to get a reading.”
“There you have it, Captain,” said Rhett as he watched Dante crimp the feed line on Drago’s tanks before tinkering with the output mixture. From the looks of it a bullet or bit of shot had damaged the regulator on the twin’s atmosphere supply, disrupting the delicate balance of breathable chemicals. As Rhett watched, Dante adjusted the chemicals. He could see that Drago was already beginning to come around. The former cultist might have some brain damage to cope with after being out cold for several minutes, but Rhett supposed that beat getting shot and freezing to death from the inside out.
It was standard training for soldiers who experienced void combat to learn how to rapidly apply void patches over exposed wounds, though Rhett had to admit that even he had not received more than a few hours of training in that regard. Cor-sec troopers weren’t scrappers, and most maintenance crews only wore void suits so weren’t accustomed to wearing modified body armor in hard vacuum. Rhett made a mental note to bring that up with the Captain once they finished this scrap job, as this could have been a needlessly fatal encounter for Drago had the bullet impacted just a few inches differently.
“Noted,” responded Estrada, “Proceed with the mission, Calibos, at least now you have some idea of what you’re up against.”
Rhett wanted to say something pithy, but restrained himself. Captain Estrada was not a man to antagonize, and not only because he was the captain. Both Captain Edmond Estrada and pilot Vitrian Holt, were debt-free Aegis corporate citizens, and had a vested interest in the bounties collected by Vulture Six. Their percentages were tiny compared to the employer, more so as they were off-set by the salary they both drew, but it was enough that neither man had much of a sense of humor when it came to the Bottom Line. Rhett kept his mouth shut and waited for Dante to get Drago to his feet.
“Okay, team, we rally here and press onwards. We can’t be sure of the enemy’s numbers, but we’ve just had a confirmation about their disposition with regards to our interest here,” said Rhett as he swapped out magazines, “We can assume they’ll attempt another ambush, but I’d rather fight them here than out on the hull.”
Minutes later Drago was back online and insistent that he was ready for action. Quinn, Doak, and Sparks joined the group and as a team the bounty scrappers moved out. Rhett took point, having decided that if there were any kind of IEDs or booby traps set in their path, he was most qualified to notice them. Pirates in the Tardis sector were notorious for their judicious use of such tactics, something that had made them particularly difficult to engage. More than once Rhett remembered wiping the remains of a comrade off of his helmet’s visor before finally running the last of the pirates to ground.
They moved slowly and carefully, each of them keeping an eye on the various hatches and corridors. Rhett mused to himself that while the team had encountered a few hostile salvages in the years they’d been together, this one was easily the most disturbing. It was one thing to shoot it out with a gang of low rent space pirates or to drive off a clutch of desperate scavengers, but this mission had become something out of a nightmare.
“Calibos, heads up, I’ve got your analysis, this old thing finally crunched the data,” said Quinn, taking Dante’s place behind Rhett as the trooper picked his way down the main corridor of the ship, the team having reached the midway point. “It’s organic, of course, a rapidly self-propagating fungal body. The kit can’t lock down an identification, which I hope you realize is disconcerting, but the closest thing it can pin it to is ergot. That’s a kind of grain mold.”
“Could be something happened to the food stores,” observed Dante from behind Quinn, “If a seal was broken, maybe.”
“Possibly, or the contaminant was present in the mess hall stores, then it...” Quinn nodded.
“Quinn, reset your kit, I see something,” interrupted Rhett as he shone his light down the corridor. All their lights were bouncing off something hanging in the passageway, like a thick fog held in place by the freezing cold and the lack of gravity.
“That’s Bay 7, according to the ship schematic,” added Vader as the team got closer.
“I want to focus on getting to the bridge. We know we have a fight coming our way, but grab a sample as we pass through,” said Rhett, “the ship is our bounty, not the cargo, but I don’t want the folks at the yard dealing with any surprises.”
The corridor widened to where the team could walk several abreast. As they moved through they could see that many of the cargo hatches were open. More blood crystals hung in the air through the compartment hub, and as the team moved across the gangplank that led over the interior staging area Rhett could see more stains on the floor. A small skid loader looked to have been intentionally rammed into the hatch of one cargo container, pinning the hatch closed with its loading spars. Judging from the amount of blood and debris, not to mention bullet holes and blast scoring throughout the hub, this had been where the serious business had happened.
The sight of so much implied violence kept the group silent, even Quinn, who stopped to take a sample of the fog coming from Bay 7 before following the rest of the group.
There were no bodies visible, yet something about what he’d seen in the engine room was causing Rhett’s imagination to run wild with images of what might be waiting behind the blocked hatch or what lurked menacingly ahead of them. This was a true death ship, the sort of salvage that gave rise to myths and cautionary tales. There was no doubt in his mind that the fate of the AG16 was going to be the talk of taverns and tugs for years to come, he and his team just had to survive the scrap first.
“Take a good look, team,” growled Rhett, tapping his finger against the metal of his weapon, “Whatever happened here, there were no survivors, even the ones who are still walking around. Anything you kill here consider it a mercy.”
They carried onwards for what seemed like an eternity in the dark tomb of a ship, though Rhett’s mission clock only reflected ten standard minutes before they reached the crew deck.
Rhett moved his helmet back and forth and sucked in his breath as he took in the sight of the main recreational chamber. The windows that connected it to the crew barracks had been broken or shot out, and the hatches leading into the various bedrooms and bathrooms were all either open or haphazardly barricaded. It looked as if the entire second deck had been rapidly transformed by an outbreak of violence. It was a battlefield much like the cargo hub, only added to the chaos was a sea of floating debris consisting of what would be considered non-threatening items. Playing cards, bedding, sporting equipment, clothes, electronics, and many other such items drifted silently alongside clouds of frozen blood and spent shell casings. So much death and destruction had befallen this ship.