The workers chuckled and began helping one another out of the compartment. One of them gave the “thumbs up” gesture humans and Grallt had in common for success; Peters returned it with a nod, then secured the hatch. The windshield gave back his reflection, a lanky figure in zerkre blue-and-whites, head and face indistinct in the glare of one of the mercury-vapors that lit the bay. That disturbed him. He moved a little, trying to change the reflection angle, but the laws of optics intervened to keep the face indistinct.
It should have frightened him a little. Instead he felt tension release in his forehead and the back of his neck. He straightened, and the movement changed the reflection again. Now it showed a face, with a beaky nose and dark eyes a little too close together, just above the splotch of blue-violet glare. A slow smile, thin but containing real amusement, crept up for the first time since he’d helped bag a blond young man with a hole in his chest. “He wanted to go home. I’ll see to that, if I can… I’d like to see Granpap again, but I can live a long time without West Virginia.” He popped the hatch and extended the ladder, movements deft, skilled, and stepped down onto the deck, where he exchanged salutes with Gell, then walked around for a look at what he’d helped drag in.
The ferassi ship was still under power; the undamaged part of its belly was a half-meter or so off the deck, although warped panels had scraped bright streaks as it moved forward. Its hatch seemed to be portside midships, and a dozen sailors with duty belts, helmets, and M22s were waiting there. “We can hope it’s simply a default mode,” Peters thought as he headed that way, fumbling in a pocket and coming up with the gadget Todd had taken from the nekrit. It looked like Kellman’s remote control, but projected a narrow beam of something that could punch a hole in a six-millimeter steel plate when you turned off the safety switch and pushed the button on top.
Ten Grallt, including the two bruisers from Prethuvenigis’s entourage, stood by, either with similar gadgets or larger versions that looked like carpenter’s levels. More armed sailors stood along the starboard side, and another squad of Grallt were moving into place across the stern. If ferassi were alive in there and had weapons there was some danger, but all the precautions available were being taken.
The hatch was jammed, and Senior Chief Warnocki took out a prybar and started attacking it. Nothing came to the noise, and it didn’t take long to get it open. Warnocki waved, and half the armed sailors followed him inside.
They disappeared for long enough to get everybody nervous. At long last Warnocki stuck his head out the hatch. “I’m not going to say it’s all clear, because we haven’t searched the whole thing. But everybody we’ve found so far is either dead or out of it.” He grimaced, not amused, and looked straight at Peters. “Let’s get the search parties working. Peters, you come along. If any of ‘em wakes up maybe you can talk to them.”
That wasn’t part of the plan, but it made sense. Peters grabbed a bar by the hatch and swung himself up beside Warnocki, and more sailors began following. A couple of the Grallt appointed themselves and followed.
Warnocki led the way forward, up a corridor with twisted walls and wreckage hanging down. They wormed their way past a section that had been pierced all the way to this level, catching glimpses of the bay lighting through the overhead. Bodies lay here and there, or at least people who weren’t moving. They all seemed to be Grallt, and none of them were in kathir suits.
The corridor ended at a hatch identical to the ones on Llapaaloapalla. Warnocki worked the latch, and they came out into a scene of destruction. This was the control deck, a narrow space that went almost all the way across the ship but was only a few meters deep. Padded chairs, anchored to the deck, had once faced over a control panel to the big windows in front. All the windows were gone, the controls had been lasered in numerous places, and holes went through the after bulkhead back into the rest of the structure. About half of the chairs were broken, and bodies were lying around, some of them leaking a perfectly normal bright red.
These were wearing—were they kathir suits? They were form-fitting, patterned in black and white stripes that went around like prisoners in an old cartoon, but they didn’t have belts or buckles. The one with the most stripes sat near the centerline, in a chair that was slightly elevated and set back into an alcove in the rear bulkhead. He—it?—was headless, courtesy a beam that had also punctured the structure behind him.
Peters’s eye was caught by movement. He kicked a body, eliciting a groan; Warnocki stood back, weapon held on the mover, while Peters put away his shooter, grabbed an arm, and flipped the limp figure over. “What the fuck?”
Warnocki glanced at him, keeping the rifle trained on the man on the deck. “Anybody you know?” he asked, tone a trifle ironic.
The man—ferassi?—had a nose. In fact, allowing for the cuts and scars that dripped blood down his forehead, he could’ve been Peters’s first cousin. “No, Chief, I don’t know this guy,” Peters said softly. “But I reckon we’re gonna have to make his closer acquaintance.”
“Look alive there,” came from above. “Deader coming down, type two.”
The ferassi ship was made of steel plate, about six millimeters thick in most places; the windows had been glass, as proven by shards all over the front compartment. Its stern was a sheer wall, slightly curved, originally unbroken by hatches or ports, now pierced in several places. Its interior arrangements were… peculiar.
Gilman took the front of the stretcher, and the man inside fed it out where Souvannaphong could reach it. They maneuvered it down the steps of the maintenance ladder they’d set, collapsed, against the side for easier access to the meter-high lip of the hatch. Peters stopped them and flipped the coverlet aside. Type two, all right: a male Grallt, the side of his head partly crushed. A wave, and the two bearers took the stretcher across the bay, to where Doctor Steward was going up and down the rows of casualties.
Right forward the ship had two decks and a weapons bay; aft of that section it went to three decks, which continued all the way to to the stern. Type twos apparently lived in the forward end of the three-deck section, in cramped compartments with just space for four one-man bunks, and were stewards, servants, or flunkies. If all the bunks had been occupied there were just short of fifty of them; thirty-seven bodies had been found, now thirty-eight, and three survivors, none currently conscious. None of them wore kathir suits or anything similar. All had been subjected to surgery to remove all but a centimeter or so of their ovipositors. That wasn’t the tragedy the equivalent was for human beings, but Peters had checked around; it was crippling and humiliating.
“Another of ours,” Heelinig sighed. The Executive Officer was supervising the removal of the crew, which was why Peters was there. “This is so sad.”
“Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “Did you know what we would find?”
“No.” She met his eyes. “I had never seen a ferassi before, only heard the stories. I don’t think anyone on Llapaaloapalla has ever seen a ferassi before this.” She twisted her mouth in not-amusement. “If we had, I don’t think we’d have come within two eights of light-zul of your planet by choice.”