Then, the sounds died off. It went silent.
Minutes went by without a sound. No hissing, no screams, not even the scratch of claws against the door.
Cold sweat ran down the side of Alan’s face. He shrugged it away with his shoulder. He was intensely thirsty, chilled from the evaporation of sweat, and his muscles ached from the exertion and tension of the last hour. The fiery sensation in his leg was waning, quickly replaced by an unnerving stiff, wooden feeling.
They remained ready, but Alan felt silly about it.
“What just happened?” Gibbs asked nervously, adjusting his stance and aim.
Alan rolled his eyes. “Is that a rhetorical question? What makes you think we have more information than you do, Gibbs?”
Walsh shot him a dirty look and lowered his weapon. “Stand down.”
They broke apart and stood motionless, listening. Ajaya went to the door and put her ear to it. Walsh sidled up to her and she moved out of his way, shaking her head. He listened for long minutes.
Walsh stepped back and motioned Ajaya to the door control, then gestured for Alan and Gibbs to flank him. “Cover me,” he said gruffly. Once they were in place, he nodded at Ajaya. She tapped the control and took up a defensive stance.
The door slid up. A pile of animals that had been leaning against the door fell toward them. Walsh stepped back, cursing, but didn’t fire into the carnage.
They were all dead. As far as Alan could see, the floor was littered with contorted corpses. Many had a painful, twisted look to them—eyes bulging, hinged-maw yawning, winged mouth-flaps extended, scaled-tongues stiffly erect. In death, they were even more grotesque than in life. No small feat, that.
“What the hell?” Walsh muttered.
Ajaya moved forward and stooped, turning one of the specimens over with the business end of her weapon.
“Any theories, Varma?” Walsh grunted.
She replied, “If I had to guess, I’d say asphyxiation.”
Walsh huffed and poked one with the toe of his boot.
Gibbs’ actively avoided looking at the animals. “That’s insane. How could that happen?”
No one knew. No one answered him.
Walsh eased through the door, stepping over and around the corpses. He scanned up and down the hallway, looking unsettled.
Alan could see the wheels turning. Without conscious thought, he followed Walsh into the hallway, bellowing, “We’re going for Jane, you bastard!”
Walsh inhaled slowly, raising his head a fraction. He turned a questioning gaze on Ajaya.
Ajaya squared her shoulders and nodded. “We should, yes.” She turned to Gibbs.
Gibbs couldn’t seem to find a comfortable place to rest his eyes; he closed them. “Johnson’s got no idea what’s going on here. We owe it to them—at the very least—to get a message back home. I think that should be our priority.”
“Jane just saved our fucking lives, Gibbs!” Alan blurted out in disbelief.
Gibbs screwed up his mouth and leveled his gaze on Alan. “Yeah. But how can we possibly find her in here? We have to be realistic, Berg.”
Walsh said, “It’s split. Fifty-fifty.”
Alan’s hands clenched at his sides. “No, it’s not. Jane’s the deciding vote. She wants to be found, goddamn you.”
Walsh cleared his throat. “How long can she survive with an injury like that?”
Ajaya’s expression was thoughtful. “It was a compound fracture. That’s very serious. She’ll have lost a lot of blood. I can’t imagine her lasting more than three days. Even without taking blood loss into consideration, she wasn’t carrying water, and sepsis is inevitable with an injury such as that. It’s dire.”
Walsh nodded slowly. “Can you treat that injury with the supplies in the Providence?”
Ajaya’s chin came up. “Affirmative, Commander.”
A bit of bravado, then, from Ajaya. If that worked on Walsh, it was all to the good.
Alan watched Walsh, willing him to make the right call. Regardless of Walsh’s decision, he’d already chosen for himself. He wasn’t leaving this ship without her. Whatever that meant—he’d do it.
Walsh scratched absently at his beard, then jerked his head toward the deck transport. “Let’s go, then.”
But it wasn’t that simple.
They threaded through the carnage, weapons at the ready. Alan kept to the rear so the others wouldn’t feel compelled to comment on the growing difficulty he was having with his leg.
When they picked their way over the spot where Jane had fallen, Alan swallowed hard. She’d lost a lot of blood. There was a large, dark pool, a smaller one nearby, with a long smear between them, from when she’d dragged herself, trying to save herself.
He’d failed her. They all had.
Ajaya stopped to survey the area before stepping around it. Her voice remained clinical. “It always looks worse than it is. Liquids…volume looks like more when it’s spread out, Alan.”
He nodded and turned away. He couldn’t bear her sympathetic expression.
The contrast, once they’d cleared that area, was sobering. The hallway near the deck transport was virtually untouched, like a life or death struggle on a monstrous scale hadn’t just taken place a few meters away. If he didn’t turn around, he could almost believe it’d been a terrible dream.
The slimy pupa on the floor in front of the deck transport lay limp and broken open, its contents unleashed at some point since they’d last seen it. Inside the chamber were the remains of several creatures, smashed to shell and jelly by Compton, apparently.
They stepped inside. Bergen leaned against the wall, grateful for a break from dragging a stiff, tingling foot at the end of a leg that was starting to resist moving at all.
Walsh radiated disgruntlement. “Where do we start?”
“Let’s assume a best case scenario.” Ajaya reached out and touched the symbol for the level with the infirmary. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. The door didn’t close. They went nowhere.
Alan edged her out of the way, pressing the button himself, then trying various other keys. Pressing all the keys. Pounding the keys with his fists.
They were locked out.
The three of them silently watched him gimp-marching up and down the hall, swearing, until he finally fell on his ass. No one said a thing. They just sat down in a defensive cluster around him to share a meager meal and some water.
Ajaya didn’t say a word, but efficiently slit his pant leg to the knee, examined the wound, smeared an ointment on it, and bandaged it. He knew he should thank her, but all he could manage was a nod. He immediately started theorizing about where the nearest deck transport might be, from an engineering standpoint.
Walsh kept his eyes on his food. His voice was flat. “It’s locked us out, Berg. I think you’d better come to terms with that. It doesn’t want us going after her.”
“The deck transport could be malfunctioning,” Bergen said quietly, every muscle in his body tensing.
“That would be some coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Not if weapons had been discharged inside.”
“We saw no evidence of that.”
Alan stood, hopping on one foot, hands clenching at his sides. “She’s one of us.”
Ajaya rose too and laid a hand on his arm, subtly supporting him. “We have to talk this through, Alan. You must remain calm.”
Walsh stayed put. “This isn’t the movies, Berg. We lose people. It’s a fact of life. Every one of us knew that when we signed up. We all knew we probably wouldn’t be going home.”
“You’re giving up on her too fast. There have to be service ladders in here somewhere. I’ll find them.”
Walsh leaned back and grimaced. “That could take days to find. She hasn’t got long.”
Ajaya’s hand tightened on his arm.