CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Magadan Oblast
Snap checked the schematics of the ship, which had been downloaded to the display on his forearm. Snap glanced at the massive ship; even crashed, it rose over a hundred feet into the air. Inside, the ship was dark, making it difficult to walk through the scattered debris, boxes and smashed up cargo. The Element 115 was supposed to be on Deck 12 of the superstructure. The tower was of no interest to Snap and his team; it was several hundred feet away in a separate debris field.
Snap climbed through charred rubble to reach the first level that was not destroyed in the crash. He estimated that the first seven levels have been completely obliterated under the weight of the ship. His FALOS armor made the climb easy, if not relatively safe. Inside, the broken ship was dark; he oriented himself with the schematic on his forearm display. Cargo and passenger elevators were destroyed. Snap found the nearest stairwell. He carefully moved up the stairs, scanning for signs that it may have weakened to the point of near collapse.
Once on Deck 12, He realized just how massive the ship had once been. This section of Deck 12 was over 600 feet long. It appeared to be structurally sound, except for the fact that both ends were exposed to the elements where the rest of the ship had been sheared off. At the top of the stairs, Snap looked to his left, where he saw where the ship had been ripped apart, and snow was just starting to blow onto the exposed metal decking. When he turned to his right, he saw six of his men, in FALOS suits, searching through debris. The high-powered LED beams, coming from the sides of their helmets, pierced the darkness, making of them easy to spot.
“Lightning Squad, find anything yet?” Snap asked into the COM.
“Not yet, Major.” The men did not turn around and look at him approaching; they just continued moving containers from where they had piled up along one side of the ship during the crash.
“Damn. There must be 3,000 containers on this section alone,” Snap said.
Neal West responded, “Yeah, and they are all piled up on top of one another. Even with our FALOS suits, it takes two of us to move one container. Moving three containers at a time, it will take a long time to find what we are looking for. If it is even in this section of the ship.”
“Our data link gave us a description of the containers, but without an actual picture, we don’t really know what we are looking for,” Jackson said.
“Are these containers you are moving powered?” Snap asked.
“Don’t appear to be, Major. They look like regular storage containers, dry goods, equipment, and electronics,” Williams replied.
“The description says the units we are looking for have independent power sources to maintain the integrity of the Element 115. Do you suppose those power sources are still functional?” Snap asked.
Neal said, “I don’t see why not. If they are independent of the ship, unless they were damaged in the crash they should still work.”
“Major, most of these boxes appear to be undamaged. I see no reason why the Element 115 containers would be damaged, if they are in this section of the ship,” Miller added.
“I’m thinking if they are powered, they may be emitting some type of light source, even if it is just an indicator light,” Snap said.
“We have not seen anything like that, Sir,” Williams said.
West said, “Maybe we should turn off our LED spot lights and look in the dark for a light source.”
“Everyone, turn off your helmet lights,” Snap ordered through the COM. The 600-foot section of Deck 12 went dark. It took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only thing they could see was a faint light of falling white snow through the large openings at either end of the superstructure.
“I don’t see anything,” Neal complained.
“We can’t see well enough to move containers in this darkness,” Williams said.
“We are not going to move containers. Just walk around and look for a container emitting light of any kind,” Snap said.
Twenty minutes later, they returned to the middle of the deck. None of them had seen a light being emitted from a container.
“We have to find a way to locate the Element 115 without moving 3,000 containers,” West declared.
Snap remarked, “We did not see anything with the spotlights off, but our vision is still impaired by the low-level light in our HUD.”
“Sure, but that’s a very dim, green light. It should not affect our vision that much.”
“But the glow would affect our vision a little. We should turn off our HUD and lift our visors, so we have no light competing for our eyes’ attention. In total darkness, our eyes should be able to adjust to find any light source,” Snap said.
“Yeah, but it’s not really total darkness. We do have some light coming from outside the ship,” West insisted.
“True, but that is still less than the HUD in our helmets.”
“We can’t be without helmets for long, it is minus 47 degrees outside,” Moore said.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” said West.
“Men, this is going to be a bit chilly, but I need you to turn off your HUD and lift your visors. We are going to look for any light source being emitted from the piles of containers,” directed Snap.
“Hot damn, it’s colder than a Tajuana whore’s heart!” Miller exclaimed.
“You would know, Miller,” Justin Thomas said, with a laugh.
“Holy shit, my face has never been this cold before,” Moore cried.
“Five minutes, seven minutes tops, and then you can put your visors back on,” Snap countered. “Everyone look for any container that is emitting light of some kind.”
A few minutes later, Justin Thomas yelled from 50 yards away, “Hey, I think I got something.” Everyone ran toward him.
“See, look there,” Thomas said, pointing at a container stacked up behind several other large containers, so that only a small corner of it was visible.
“Damn, you are right. I see it. Let’s move these boxes and see what we got back there,” Senior Master Sergeant Anderson said.
Visors went back down so that faces would not get frost bite and the men went to work digging out the container that was emitting a tiny light. A few minutes later, it was pulled free of the other boxes and sitting in the middle of the deck. The squad stood around it as Snap examined the container. It was roughly the size of a large coffin, with handles along the sides. The container was made of a metallic substance, and the top had what appeared to be a touch screen display, emitting a soft blue light.
“It looks like the display is showing us monitoring data from the contents,” Snap said.
“Can you read it?” Moore asked.
“No. But, if they set up their display data like we do, it appears all systems are operating within acceptable ranges,” Snap said. “Of course, it could also be a self-destruct countdown, and we have five seconds to live. How the fuck should I know? I don’t read alien.”
“Okay, let’s start digging through this section here,” West said.
An hour later the men had stacked up two dozen containers of Element 115.
“That’s 80,000 pounds of the Element. I thought there was supposed to be 100,000 pounds here,” Snap said, as he leaned up against a large pile of discarded containers.