Whaaa! Only one week until The Fearless goes live! That means there’s only time for two more Saturday Snippets.
In this episode, Major Wright is searching the ship to try to discover what caused it to disappear from a battle a reappear millions of kilometers away in the Asteroid Belt.
If you missed last week’s snippet. You can find it here.
Chapter Three
The passageway was silent and empty. According to the figures on Wright’s HUD, the Fearless’s life support systems were functioning normally.
He lifted his visor.
Something his suit’s sensors would not register was the odor of death, but the air smelled normal. He expected he would be picking up the awful smell soon enough, but at least no nasty surprises seemed to be awaiting them in the immediate vicinity.
He wasn’t expecting an EAC or AP trap out here in the Belt. Both had fled the battle scene after the Fearless’s disappearance, so it was unlikely they had anything to do with what had happened to the ship. He decided to split the team into small groups to expedite the search.
After dividing them up, he said, “Proceed with caution. At the first sign of something suspicious, halt and comm me before going any farther. And make sure your cams stay on. Service access tunnels only. I don’t want to waste time trying to figure out how to get you out of a faulty elevator. Sergeant Elphicke, your team takes deck four.” He went on to portion out the other areas. Finally, he said, “Marks and Cole, come with me.”
“We’re searching deck six, sir?” asked Cole. It was the only deck Wright hadn’t assigned, and the site of the Fearless’s bridge, where they might be able to access the ship’s log.
“Affirmative. I want to start at the bridge and work forward.” He led them toward an aft maintenance hatch.
A blueprint of the Fearless was an overlay on his HUD, and dots signified the search teams. They were crawling steadily along the ship’s lines. His comm remained quiet.
As they passed by an elevator, it dinged. Marks jumped.
“Hey,’ Wright admonished. “Cool it, Marine.”
“Sorry, sir,” she replied, though her eyes remained wide as she stared at the elevator doors.
They opened, but it was empty.
She visibly relaxed.
The doors closed, and the elevator descended. Wright felt Marks tensing at his side. No doubt she was wondering if ghosts were operating it.
A few minutes later, they climbed out of the service hatch into an empty passage on deck six.
“Where is everyone?” Cole asked. “They just disappeared?”
Wright didn’t reply, thinking the disappearance of the Fearless’s occupants would be a better alternative than what he expected to find. A ship’s infrastructure and systems might survive being flung millions of kilometers, but the people aboard would not. It was only a matter of time before his team or another would stumble upon the smears that were all that remained of anything organic.
He stepped toward the nearest door, which led to the bridge. At the time of the battle, the former admiral, Yorkson, and many of the ship’s officers would have been here.
Partly expecting the door to not open, he approached it slowly.
As he reached it, it slid back.
The wide, semi-circular room spread out before them.
Empty.
Cole was peering over Wright’s shoulder.
“Nothing here, sir,” he said, sounding relieved.
The bridge wasn’t the kind of place people left things lying around, especially not during a battle, so it was unsurprising there were no signs of human occupation. The ranks of consoles and seats appeared as they would on any large BA starship. From long experience, Wright knew where each officer would sit: Helm, navigator, weapons officers, comms, and so on. At first glance, no damage appeared to have been inflicted, and there was no obvious explanation for the absence of people.
Perhaps whatever had moved the Fearless across the Solar System had caused everything living aboard her to vanish?
Wright walked to the captain’s seat, from where the admiral would have directed the BA fleet. The interface screen was dead. He tried to open it, but it didn’t respond.
“Check the consoles,” he told Marks and Cole. “Tell me if anything’s working.”
He went to the navigator’s station.
Here, the screen reacted to his touch. He gave it the security override code.
Instantly, a holo flashed up in the center of the room.
Marks started. “Shit!”
“Steady, Corporal,” said Wright.
She muttered something about pissing her pants, but he ignored it.
The holo was of the battle where the Fearless had been lost. They’d been on their way to attack the Bres, Ua Talman’s colony ship, when the AP and EAC had closed in on them.
From the positions of the ships, he guessed the scene was about a minute from the moment the black cloud had reached out. From the perspective of the flagship, the cloud was behind, above, and to the left.
He watched. Cole and Marks had also stopped what they were doing to witness the replay of the disaster.
The finger reached out.
It seemed so purposeful, like it wasn’t only a living thing, but also intelligent. It had targeted the Fearless and removed it for a reason.
The finger touched the ship and flowed over and around it, enveloping it.
The holo died.
“Okay,” said Wright. “Finish checking the other consoles. Then we try the mess.”
***
The bridge yielded no clues about the fate of the Fearless’s personnel, but the mess room doors opened on a scene from a horror vid.
They’d found some of the missing men and women, and they were alive…ish.
Several hundred people were crammed into the space. All were heavily emaciated. Their uniforms hung from their bones, and their faces were hollowed and fleshless. Some were lying in corners, out of the way of foot traffic, many sat listlessly at tables, and a few wandered about aimlessly. The room stank of body odor, unwashed clothes, and other smells Wright didn’t want to dwell on.
What was most remarkable was no one appeared to have registered the Marines’ arrival. No faces turned toward the door, no one said anything. In fact, aside from the sounds of movement, the mess was eerily silent.
Something very, very strange had happened. But at least some of the ship’s personnel had survived.
Wright comm’d the news to Colbourn immediately. As he was speaking to the brigadier, Elphicke tried to contact him. He asked Colbourn to please wait.
“Sir,” said the sergeant, sounding shocked, “we’ve found some of the crew.”
“Where are you?”
“Mess hall. Deck Four.”
“Don’t tell me, they’re alive but only just?”
“Yes, Major. How did you know?”
“Stand by, Sergeant.”
“We’ve located some more of the personnel,” Wright told Colbourn, “in a similar state. I’m guessing there are still more to find. They all seem to have migrated to the messes. There are so many of them, it’ll probably be easier to send the medics here.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” the brigadier replied. “Is the ship secure? I want to come and see things for myself.”
“We’re still assessing the situation, ma’am.”
“Let me know when you’re ready.” Colbourn closed the comm.
Now that he’d carried out his orders, pity for the poor souls gnawed at him. He approached one of the Fearless’s crew, a private. The man was slumped at a table, his head barely upright, gazing unfocused into the middle distance.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Wright asked.
But the man didn’t seem to even hear him. He also didn’t seem to have noticed that the person he was sitting next to was too still and turning black. Not everyone had survived.
Wright reached over the table and grabbed the private’s shoulder. It felt like pure bone under his hand. “Name, rank, and number,” he said, hoping the formality of the request might trigger a response.
His demand provoked no reaction, except perhaps the tiniest glimmer of consciousness deep in the man’s eyes.
Of all the situations Wright had imagined he might encounter on the Fearless, this one had never entered his mind. The crew were alive and present, but in body only. Whatever had happened to them had affected their minds. They must have been taking on fluids or they would all be long dead by now. But they hadn’t been eating, or only very little. Brain damage seemed the likely answer. The docs would figure it out.
Thanks for reading! The Fearless is to be released on 13th March 2021.