The Saturnus loomed large on the monitor to our front, which switched on as soon as the engines kicked in. All it really showed was our target and range. We were several kilometers out, and closing very quickly.
Our needle-jumper hurtled toward the Saturnus, and all we could do was hold on and hope for the best. A needle-jumper insertion was hardly a sure thing. Though I had done it a few times, always successfully, insertions of this type actually had something approaching a five percent failure rate. I happened to be in a nearby troop ship the last time a needle-jumper insertion failed. I remember seeing the shattered needle-jumper tumbling past my portal, frozen bits of blood streaming out through several breaches in the hull. The medics who recovered the jumper after the battle wouldn't give us details about what they found inside. I didn't really want to know, anyway.
I didn't want to be the next untellable story, either. Five percent was a lot, all things considered, but it's not like we had a choice. Orders were orders, and ours were to board the Saturnus via needle-jumper. Sure, we could have docked. If the ship had answered our hails, we could have boarded safely. Admiral Bishop knew this, but wasn't interested in a peaceful boarding action. The fact that I had considered a peaceful entry was beside the point. That was my call because I was the commander on site, but something I hadn't really expected to work. Based on the transmissions he had received, the ones that hadn't even been sent yet, the captain wasn't going to listen to orders or perhaps even reason. Here, a needle-jumper would do more than just insert us into the ship violently; it ensured that the experiment would not go forward, by disrupting the flow of energy through the ship's structure.
The Saturnus' hull was designed specifically for the experimental equipment inside of her. A normal wormhole was created using a generator which had two prong-like antennas. The two pylons which focused the wormhole opening were shaped like those on a fork, and lined the hull along her sides. They were well protected by layers of armor. For the Saturnus, which was generating a very different sort of wormhole, the pylons generated so much more power and required so much more precision that they had to be mounted away from the rest of the ship, otherwise they would interfere with the time core amidships. I didn't really understand the details, but I didn't have to. I just had to stop it, and driving a needle-jumper into the hull would be like cutting the line on a circuit board. Afterward, we would have to ensure that the circuit board wasn't activated. Apparently, it wasn't enough to simply disrupt power flows and so forth.
The needle-jumper rattled as its engines fired fully. There was no holding back, no fuel reserve. Needle-jumpers were disposable craft, one-way rides. Everything was poured into the insertion, and we could feel it in the deck plates, and even the seats. I could do little more than do my best not to black out, keep breathing, and hope to be part of the ninety-five percent side of the survival equation. I really hated math.
"Thirty seconds to insertion," the computer intoned through my headset.
We sat in silence, with only Raj's low, rumbling profanity coming in over the comms gear. He didn't weather these rides well, the result of an injury from a couple of years back. His ribs hadn't set quite right, and the g-forces of these insertions pressed them in and aggravated the old wound. Still, he would be fine once we hit the ship. The gravity plates in the deck, along with the restraint system in the seats, would stop us from being thrown forward and crushed, when the ship breached the Saturnus' hull. Until then, Raj would just have to suck it up like the rest of us.
Suddenly, our ship lurched starboard. The violent shift rightward was unexpected, but my chair's restraints held me in place. The ship lurched again, same direction, this time more violently. The lights in the cabin flickered, and red emergency lights switched on, bathing the cabin in an ominous glow.
"What's going on?" someone yelled. It was Kyle, I think.
"Are we under fire?" Raj asked.
I looked at the monitor in front of me, but there was no indication of incoming fire. Of course, we wouldn't see a laser coming at us. In those old Hollywood movies you always saw a beam of light, but that wasn't real. If you saw the flash from the laser's origin, you were essentially looking down the barrel of the emitter, and that wasn't very healthy. Still, the monitor wasn't telling us much, other than we were off course and attempting to correct.
There was a third lurch, this one much more violent, and I heard something break. Kyle was screaming into my headset, and I was able to see in the reflection on the monitor that his pulse rifle had come loose, and was dangling from its strap. The g-forces threw it backward, as if a powerful wind were blowing. Kyle couldn't reach out and grab it. The g-forces were still way too high, pinning him down.
There was a terrible sound then, like metal bending beyond its tolerance. I looked up and saw a small patch of metal hull on our starboard side start to change color, blacken, and come loose. It was like watching the inside of the cabin burn, but without flames or heat. Then the effect started to move aft, everything changing color and shape, warping. The effect reached one of the empty chairs on the starboard side of the cabin, and the material on the seat seemed to rot away right before my eyes. I had never seen anything like it before. The way the effect traveled, it was like a beam passing through the cabin.
The effect started to move from fore to aft, down the starboard side of the cabin. It was far enough away from us that it wouldn't touch us, but it was wreaking havoc with the cabin. Chairs were rotting away before our eyes, and the hull itself was buckling. The equipment in middle of the cabin were starting to warp and twist. Without atmosphere there was no sound, but the ship shuddered and lurched violently. It began to spin as our thrusters cut in and out, and began to misfire.
Then the effect reached the loose strap attached to Kyle's chair, the one holding his plasma rifle. It missed him, but just barely. The strap disintegrated, and the pulse rifle went careening into the rear of the cabin, but not before the beam grazed it. It began to spark and sputter. As soon as it struck the rear of the cabin it fired. The burst of plasma tore past my head, and struck the top of the cabin just in front of me. The hull exploded into burning shards of metal, plastic, and composites. Wiring and other bits flew in all directions, one of them bouncing off my helmet's faceplate. The sound echoed in the helmet, and my ears rang. Thankfully, it didn't break the faceplate.
The ship shuddered again, and the engines cut out. The shuddering stopped right away, but we were still spinning. I could feel the g-forces pulling us as we spun clockwise. I focused on the monitor in front of me, trying to get a fix on the direction we were moving in. After a second, I caught sight of the Saturnus as the nose of the needle-jumper swept past it, and then again, and again. Each time the Saturnus came into view, we were closer to it.
We were spinning out of control and worse still, on a collision course with the Saturnus.
"David!" I yelled.
"Yeah," he hollered back. "I see it."
I looked back over my shoulder. The g-forces had eased up, but it was still difficult to move. David was unbuckling himself from his chair, but couldn't keep his footing as we spun. He slid back toward the rear of the cabin, his hands clawing for a grip on something. Kyle, who was seated behinds him, grabbed him by the arm and held on.
"I gotta get to the launch controls!" David insisted. "I'll need help."
"You got it, man," Raj called out.
We all unbuckled ourselves, doing our best to hold on to our chairs. I slipped, but was able to hold on to my chair arm. Raj came in from behind David and grabbed hold of him. Between him and Kyle, the three of them were able to make their way toward the launch controls across from my seat, where I awaited them. As David worked the controls with both hands, the three of us held him in place, straining against the g-forces. It took all of my strength to hold him in position, and from the looks on their faces, Kyle and Raj were fighting as hard as I was.
"The engines are done," David said. "The fuel is gone, and there are a dozen different malfunctions besides."
"Whatever, man," Kyle said with a grunt. "Fuckin' stabilize the ship, or we're all gonna wind up looking like chunky salsa."
"Yeah," David muttered, his fingers dancing over the controls as best he could. "We still have a couple of working thrusters. Hold on!"
David switched the thrusters to manual control, and tapped the controls for a quick burst. We felt it immediately as the g-forces let up a bit, then a bit more as David tapped the thrusters once more. After a few moments, we were able to let go of him. I collapsed to the deck, as did Kyle and Raj. We were all breathing heavily. You never realize just how hard it is to breathe under that kind of force, until it's gone.
"Alright, we've stopped spinning," David said with a sigh of relief. "We're still moving toward the Saturnus, but much slower."
"Everybody alright?" I asked, picking myself up off the deck.
"I think I'm gonna join the navy," Kyle remarked. "I want an easy job."
We all chuckled. At least we were all okay. It was when we stopped complaining that I would start to worry. We checked each other for suit damage. Raj was looking over a slight crack in David's faceplate, but a quick application of sealant sorted that out. Other than that, we were in one piece. The same could not be said for the needle-jumper or its cargo.
I looked around the cabin. It was a wreck. Our equipment was mostly in place, though most of the bags looked like they had been sitting in a cave for a hundred years. They were discolored and warped. Kyle opened the bag holding Leo the gun drone, and looked over his favorite toy. It looked more like scrap than a gun. The rest of the equipment was much the same. The engineering gear, the beacons, the trizene gas canisters, even the captain's pad. All of it was scrap. The only gear that survived was whatever was on us. That meant comms gear, rifles, and other basic field kit. Of course, Kyle didn't even have his rifle. That lay in broken at the rear of the cabin. Thankfully, he had a sidearm.
"Check the detonators," I said, but Raj was already on it.
"Garbage," he said with a sigh. "I was worried they'd go off, but it's like leaving a charge sitting around for two long. It just degrades. The explosives, too. The shelf life on this stuff is short, and these packs look like they've been sitting on a shelf for way too long."
"Didn't you check them before we left?" David asked.
"I pulled the freshest stuff the quartermaster had," Raj replied. "Besides, this stuff lasts years, not days. This stuff looks ancient."
"Well," Kyle said as he dropped an unidentifiable bit of Leo, "at least this will be a challenge."
"Great," Raj sighed.
"What happened?" Kyle asked.
David shrugged. "This equipment looks old, like it's been sitting here for a century or more."
"How's that possible?" Raj asked.
David shook his head. "I have no idea. Maybe it has something to do with the Saturnus. If they're tinkering with time, they might have created anomalies in the area, something we passed through. I'm guessing, of course, but the computer does record all of the engine fuel being spent over the course of twenty minutes, even though we were only using it for five."
"That makes zero sense, man." Kyle was not one for deep, technical thinking. He wasn't dumb, not by any means. He already had a several years of college under his belt when he joined up, and Special Forces soldiers like us were well educated by the military, but theoretical science wasn't his thing. It mostly just frustrated him.
"I'm guessing, like I said," David reminded us. "I'm thinking of something from an old science fiction movie I once saw. A time traveler puts his hand outside of the machine he's using, and it ages faster than he does. His fingernails grow long, and his skin gets wrinkled and mottled."
"We're going with science fiction novels, now?" Raj asked dryly. "Really? My five year old niece loves those new kiddy books about fairies. Should I call her up for a second opinion?"
David smirked and gave Raj the finger, shaking his head in frustration. "Look, we're being asked to shut down a time machine. I'm still not sold on that point, but if it is what Admiral Bishop says it is, that's as good a guess as I can make. Hopefully the crew of the Saturnus can explain things."
"Alright, whatever. Let's get this done," I ordered. "David, try to stop us short of the Saturnus. One hundred meters will do. We'll use our suit thrusters to move the rest of the way. As for the mission, it still has to get done, so let's make it happen."
It took David about five minutes to get us into position. We were moving fast enough that he didn't have to use the thrusters to push us closer. When he stopped the needle-jumper's forward movement, there was a slight lurch, and then everything was still. He turned off the gravity plating, and we began to float freely in the cabin.
I opened one of the emergency hatches at the front of the cabin. The view was, as always, humbling. The stars shone brightly in space, without atmosphere or city lights to get in the way. A nearby nebula left a slight blue-yellow streak, set against the pitch blackness of space. It was the sort of black that seemed endlessly deep, and as always, I felt as though it was pulling me toward it. It was an odd sensation, an illusion of course, but a powerful one.
"Everyone ready to move?" I asked. Everyone was. "Alright, I'll take point. Kyle, take up the rear."
I pulled myself through the hatch, into open space. The rear of the needle-jumper stretched out before me, and I maneuvered myself, hand over hand, out of the way. I looked toward the Saturnus. Its massive form loomed over us. I felt like a tourist in a big city, craning my neck back to look up toward the top of a skyscraper. The Saturnus was big, we knew that already. Still, to see it up close was another matter. We were a hundred meters away, level with the ship's keel. From our position, aligned with the very bottom of the ship, the ten decks of her made for an intimidating sight. I suddenly felt very small.
Raj came through the hatch and David after him. Kyle was the last one out. We all held still for a moment, taking in the sight of the Saturnus. Looking at schematics or through a flight camera from a distance, the Saturnus looked ugly, awkward. She seemed more like a piece of equipment than a proud naval vessel. To see it now was a different story. She seemed majestic, even graceful. There was something about the way the entire ship bent like a slight V at the midpoint, where the experimental equipment was housed. The great bulge in the hull was covered in sensors, bristling like a bed of nails. The rest of the ship was armored like a great battleship. The plates were of varying geometric shapes, mostly rectangular, L or C shaped, each fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The two forward pylons reached out from the front of the ship to our right. I was reminded of just how different this ship was from anything else in the fleet, and just how dangerous that difference had turned out to be.
"She's beautiful," David whispered. I could hear his awe through the headset.
"She's dangerous," Kyle replied. "We didn't come here to admire her."
"Alright, here we go," I commanded.
Raj maneuvered hand over hand, using the grips in the needle-jumper's hull, until he was behind me. David came in behind him and Kyle stayed at the rear. I felt Raj grab the retractable lifeline from the back of my suit. Without looking, I knew he was attaching it to his belt, as David would do with his lifeline and Kyle with his. Once we were all attached and ready, we gently nudged ourselves up and away from the ship, careful not to push too hard.
Floating in space was an odd feeling. When you maneuvered in space but held onto something, it was a bit like playing in a pool and holding onto the side or the ladder. However, once you took that first step into nothingness, floating freely without anything to hold onto, everything changed. I always felt the slightest bit of panic before my training kicked in. I was careful with my movements. We all were. Sudden movements could send us spinning. We had thrusters built into our CEVA suits, but four spinning bodies could be a terrible mess to stabilize, and though that was part of our training, the better option was not to get into that predicament at all.
I pulled the small thruster control from its housing on my left glove and held it firmly. We pulled our lifelines taught between us, otherwise when I fired my thrusters it would jerk Raj forward, and then David, and then Kyle. They would all come crashing into me, and we would lose control.
"Two second forward burst," I said calmly. "In three, two, one, burst."
I pressed the thruster control, and counted two seconds before releasing it. The thrusters, mounted on small packs on our backs, pushed us forward. Our movement was smooth, controlled, careful. Other than the sound of my own breathing, there was no sound at all. Space is airless, and so soundless. Our comms gear was designed to filter out the sound of our breathing. It was upsetting the first time you experienced it, like being on the end of a dead phone, but my 'first' was years past. Still, I didn't care for the silence.
"Everyone still with me?" I asked, mostly to break the hated silence.
"Still here, man," Kyle said from the rear.
"Fifty meters," I called out. "I can see the forward airlock. Lights on, guys."
The Saturnus, like any ship in the fleet, had airlocks along the hull. Our shoulder lights illuminated one of them, just above our heads. These were there for repair crews, or for escape if needed. We had planned to insert our needle-jumper right through one of them, where there would be less armor. Our needle-jumper might be a no-go, but the airlock was still our way in, assuming we could get the damn door open.
"Twenty meters," I called out. "One second burst, backward."
This second burst would have to be timed perfectly, and all four of us need to fire at the same time in order to remain stable. I counted down slowly, and with perfect timing, we all tapped our thrusters, slowing our forward momentum. We covered the final distance at a crawl. As soon as I reached the Saturnus' hull and took hold of a hand grip, Raj used his thrusters to push himself to my left, and then David did the same, and then Kyle. We ended up in a line along the hull, with the airlock just above us.
I felt my lifeline retract into the suit, as Raj released it from his belt. The others did the same, so we were no longer connected. We all slowly, carefully climbed up the side of the hull. David latched himself onto a grip beside the airlock door, just in case the airlock didn't work properly and vented its atmosphere before opening.
"The Airlock doesn't seem to have any power," David commented as he slid aside a small panel beside the airlock door. "No, nothing. I'll have to open it manually. Everyone hold on tight."
David reached into the small tool pack on his leg, loosening his rifle sling to get at it. As the rifle floated leisurely beside him, he pulled a small gun-like tool from his belt. We called that tool a 'can opener' but it was really just a wrench designed for space. A regular wrench required you to push against it. In space, that just meant that you got pushed, not the tightened bolt, since you had nothing to brace against like gravity. Torque was an odd thing, in space. The can opener could turn a bolt without moving the person operating it. It was old tech, going back to the twentieth century's astronauts. Old, but effective. In a matter of minutes, he had all of the bolts to the airlock door off, and it was ready to be opened manually.
"Ready for entry, Jack," David said to me.
"Do it," I responded.
David grabbed hold of the airlock door and pulled. It took some effort and a few choice words, but eventually the door came loose. As soon as the door started to come away, we braced for the sudden rush of venting atmosphere. None came. The airlock had already been vented. The door swung open slowly.
"Enter when ready," I ordered.
David pulled himself into the airlock, and I followed. As soon as I entered the ship, my feet hit the deck. The gravity plating was still working. I moved aside, allowing Raj and Kyle to enter. The airlock was small, but big enough for the four of us. I leveled my rifle and watched for signs of movement through the large windows that divided the airlock from the cargo hold on the other side. Once we were all inside, we stood still for a moment, looking around, saying nothing. We waited. Nothing moved.
"Clear," I whispered out of habit. Nobody could hear us without comms gear, since the airlock was vented.
"Clear," came the response from the guys, also whispering.
"David," I looked to our combat tech, "can you seal us up and get some air flow?"
David slung his rifle, and looked to the controls. They were as dead as the ones on the outside of the ship. He fiddled around for a second, and attaching a small device of his own to the console, tinkered about for a minute, before looking my way.
"It looks like everything works," he said, gesturing to the console. "Just no power. I can fix that, but I only have two small portable batteries. The rest were with my gear on the ship, all messed up."
I nodded. "Do it. Power up the airlock. I want a quick escape route if we need it."
"You got it," David said with a nod.
While we stood watch, David pulled a small battery from one of his pockets, not much bigger than a water bottle. He attached the leads to the airlock console, and the whole system lit up. Red "vented" lights illuminated the room, reflecting off the windows and making it hard to see beyond them. Having removed the bolts outside to open the door manually, we had to close it manually as well. At least the airlock system worked. The door closed silently. David worked the console, and we felt the push of air being pumped into the room. After a moment, the red lights turned green. We had atmosphere.
"Alright, helmets off," I said. "Let's conserve oxygen, just in case."
My helmet retracted backward, folding into place behind my neck. I breathed in the air. It smelled stale, damp, and heavy. It was as if the recyclers had stopped working properly. I picked up the strong scent of body odor, like a locker room after a game. There was also a hint of burning circuitry, that pungent stench of plastics and rubber and melted silicon. The ship had obviously seen a fire, the single greatest threat to any ship, but by the smell of it, it had happened some time ago.
We opened the inner airlock door quickly, and swept out into the cargo bay. The cargo bay's overhead lights were out, but our shoulder lights lit up the room well enough to see. The room was not particularly large, perhaps ten meters across and five meters deep. It was mostly empty, with a few containers set against the far bulkhead. Since the ship was only scheduled to be out for a couple of weeks, they were not given a full supply load. Several of the small, square containers had been opened and left that way. That seemed odd for a naval ship, where everything was supposed to be perfectly ordered.
The light gray paint on the bulkheads gave the place an odd, sickly pallor. The paint was bubbled from heat in places, though there was no sign of scorch marks. Whatever had burned here was gone. Raj examined the deck at his feet. He called us over.
"Take a look," he said, kneeling down. His CEVA suit creaked, as they always did following the extreme cold of space. It always took a good five minutes for their internal heaters to normalize the suit's skin.
I knelt down beside him, while David and Kyle covered us. The floor had a small, red, dried puddle on it. There were several of them, and they looked like boot prints, as though someone had tracked the stuff for several steps.
"Blood?" I asked.
Raj shook his head. "I don't think so. The red is too bright. Looks more like coolant." He slung his rifle and reached into one of his pockets, producing a small torch. "One way to find out."
He ignited the tiny cutting torch and held the flame to the dried puddle. The substance burned off quickly, leaving a small puff of black smoke. Raj sniffed the air, and nodded.
"Lubricant," he said. "Reminds me of the stuff navy guys use to grease parts for storage."
"Lubricant on the ground, and containers left open," I thought aloud. "Anyone else thinks that's a little sloppy for a fleet ship?"
"Especially for a captain like this ship has," Kyle added. "What's her name, again?"
"Paetkau," I replied.
"Right," Kyle said. "If she's the obsessive tight-ass that Bishop says she is, how does this happen without someone getting keel-hauled?"
"Good question," Raj said as he and I stood back up. "A better question is why would she go ahead with the scheduled experiments if there was a fire aboard?"
"Because in the end," came the voice to our left, "she was as mad as a hatter."
We all turned toward the male voice, training our weapons on the aft door to the cargo bay. On instinct, we all turned on the lights mounted on our rifles. This was as much about blinding the target as it was illuminating it. It worked. The speaker froze.
"United Earth Marines!" I yelled aggressively. "Do not move!"
We all spread out, with Kyle turning to watch our rear. Raj and I started moving toward the frozen figure which held as still as a deer in headlights. He held his hand up, blinded by our lights.
"Drop your weapon!" Raj barked. "Drop it, or I'll shoot!"
I stopped my approach, my rifle aimed at the man's head. Raj kept moving in on him, not giving him time to think. The man was wearing a naval uniform, but the blue jumpsuit, which identified him as a low ranking engineer, was filthy and torn. His entire right sleeve was in tatters, and his hand and the flashlight in it shook.
Raj reached him, and grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, threw him to the ground. I kept my rifle aimed and ready, while Raj sorted out the crewman. Once we were certain it really was just a flashlight, we backed off. David moved past him, looking through the hatch into the next compartment. He signaled the all-clear.
The crewman looked tired, thin, and very scared. He looked older, maybe forty-five, but maybe that was just the state he was in. His blonde hair was matted, greasy. His blue eyes darted back and forth between my men and I, squinting in the bright lights. I turned off my rifle light, and lowered the barrel. This man was in no position to hurt anyone.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, as Raj pulled him to his feet. "I'm not the enemy, here."
"We're marines, crewman," I said as I approached him.
"I can see that," he said, dusting himself off. "It's good to see you. What the hell took so long?"
"Excuse me?" Raj asked with grumble.
The crewmen looked at Raj oddly, and then to me. "We've been waiting for a rescue ship. The briefing said we could expect a rescue ship once we were two days overdue. What happened? Why did you wait so long?"
I moved closer to the crewman. His body odor kept me at bay, the sort of stench you get after a long time away from a shower. Still, at this distance, I could see the true condition of his uniform. It wasn't just that it was dirty and torn. A navy crewman could get dirty fast, especially working in some of the nastier areas of a big ship. This was different. He looked like he had been living in his uniform for a very long time.
"I'm not sure I follow you, crewman," I responded. "We're here to shut your experiment down. I need to speak with Captain Paetkau immediately."
"Paetkau?" he said with a look of shock. "Paetkau's been dead for months. She died in the accident. We said as much in the mayday, before the communication array went dead."
"Months?" Raj asked. "What the hell are you talking about, sailor? How could she be dead for months? You only left port a few days ago."
The crewman shook his head. "What? We've been stranded here for four months."