I was silent for a long time. I just stared at the dog tags. My dog tags. There it was, my entire life, summed up in two small pieces of metal. One was designed to remain with the body. The other was given to the Red Cross, or the military. Once a soldier died, their lives were boiled down to the few facts and figures on those imprinted tags. Name, service number, blood type. There was DNA information embedded on a chip which could be read with the proper scanners. The outer tag didn't even have my blood type. What was the point? It was only removed if I died. When I died.
"Nobody even took the second tag," I said slowly. "Either you guys didn't have the time, or," I trailed off.
"We're dead, too," Kyle finished.
We were all silent. We were all staring at the tags in my hand. I could feel the small metal chain holding my dog tags around my neck. They were still there, and yet they were also in my hands. I noticed that Raj was unconsciously touching his neck, feeling for the tags under his suit. Still, like the rest of us, he couldn't take his eyes off the tags in my hand.
"Jack?" David whispered. "Jack, we have to keep moving."
I took in a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah," I muttered.
Kyle grabbed the dog tags from my hands, and dropped them into the open collar of the suit. My suit. He grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a shake.
"Hey, man!" he barked. "Hey, listen the fuck up, Jack! Are you listening?"
I squinted, making the conscious effort to look him in the eye. "Yeah, I'm with you, Kyle. I hear you."
"Good. Now hear this," he snarled, like the meaner version of the standard start to a ship-wide announcement. "You are not dead. You are alive and looking right at me. I can see you move and hear you talk. Whatever happened to cause this," he said, glancing at my corpse, "we're going to stop it. We're going to the bridge, we're going to shut down the experiment, and change all of this. You got a pulse marine, which means you can pull a trigger."
"He's right, Jack," Raj added. "We can stop this." He looked to David. "Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? You do something different, and it changes everything after that?"
David nodded. "That's the theory, yes. However, I'm not sure how that works with all of this fragmentation. At this point," David said with a shrug, "time is so messed up, I think all bets are off. It's like one of those old pockets watches, all broken up, with the gears rattling around inside. The time on the face has more to do with how you rattle it than anything else. How do you fix that?"
"Yeah, and all of the gears in here are fuckin' nuts," Kyle added. "We're rattling around in a madman's clock."
"The symbolism here would be amusing," I mumbled, "but we don't have time for this."
"Fine," Kyle replied. "Then let's go change a few things and see if we can't sort out this fuckin' gong show. David, you got everything you need from this place?"
"Yes," David said, as he unslung his rifle.
Kyle led the way, up the ladder to the top of the chamber. We returned to the decontamination room, and exited through a door on the opposite wall, onto deck 3. We had passed this way before, near where we encountered the Edra.
Rifles in hand, we moved through the flickering passageways. If we could get up to deck 2, we could access the bridge. David, right behind me, kept checking his map. He directed us aft, and then toward the port side of the ship. Each passageway was as empty as the last, with only flickering overhead lights and the red alert lights to illuminate the emptiness. More than once we wondered what had happened to the crew. Our radiation counters had slowly grown quiet as we moved further from the core, but we kept our helmets on, anyway.
We took corners slowly, carefully, expecting the Edra to pounce on us at any moment. Once or twice we thought we heard their tell-tale hissing and clicking, but nothing came at us. It was unnerving, and I almost wished they would take a shot at us, or at least step into view. Waiting was worse, because we knew we were being stalked. They were out there somewhere, and they wouldn't be stopping to talk to us this time. Every time we peeked around a corner and saw nothing, we wondered exactly where the Edra had gone. We waited for the shrieks of their weapons.
David finally guided us through the dim passageways, some filled with smoke, others clear but dark. It took a good thirty minutes to reach a ladder to bring us up to deck two, winding around debris, and another few minutes to find the main stairwell leading up to the command deck. The entire way through deck 2, we didn't see a single member of the crew. The narrow stairs were closed off by a thick door, but as David approach it to start forcing his way through its technical defenses, it simply slid open. It was as if nothing were wrong.
We just stood there for a moment, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn't. No shooting, no shouting, no Edra, no security officers. The lights were all on, and there wasn't a sign of emergency lighting or sirens. No damage control teams or debris, no barricades or shaking madmen. Just an open door with a stairwell leading up.
We slowly made our way up the stairs to deck 1, rifles pressed into our shoulders and ready to fire. We expected the hatch at the top of the stairs to burst open, followed by a hail of fire. The stairs could manage two people side by side, tightly, and Raj and I led the way. My own heavy breathing filled my ears as it echoed in my helmet. The walls that seemed to close in around us were bare, cold. The railings were metal, polished to such a fine sheen that, as a young crewman aboard another ship had once complained about his own polishing duties, you could see yourself and the future in those surfaces. I had laughed, then. Right now that joke seemed a lot less funny.
When we reached the top of the stairs, we stopped and readied ourselves.
"Remember," I said, "the Chief Engineer thinks this place will be pre-accident. Hopefully she's not lying about that, too. Sling your rifles, and remember that these people think everything is running like clockwork."
As we slung our rifles, David checked his radiation counter. "It's been quiet since we left the core," he said. "We should take off our helmets, conserve our air."
I felt the fresh air wash over my face as the helmet retracted back over my head, folding up neatly just behind my neck. The CEVA suits could keep air clean, but after a while all you could smell was a slight tinge of disinfectant, mixed with body odor. It was nice to breathe fresh air, and by the sounds of it, the guys were just as happy to pull back their helmets as I was.
The door slid open and we passed through it, onto the command deck. The busy deck was setup like a very long, wide corridor, extending from the stairwell, forward toward the bridge. Along the way, other compartments provided space for security, auxiliary control, and a number of other functions that meant very little to me at the moment. The crewmen, dozens of them in their standard blue jumpsuits, and officers in pants, dress shirts and ties, moved about the deck, carrying on with their duties as though nothing was wrong. There was a slight rush to their movement, and countdown timers displayed on the bulkhead displays explained why. Stage three was set to start in just under thirty minutes.
Crewmen started to notice us, though nobody made much of a fuss. A few looked at us oddly, though they just carried on with whatever it was they were doing. A female ensign, reviewing something off of a hand-pad, stopped as she passed us.
"Seal that hatch," she ordered.
"Excuse me?" I asked.
"Seal the hatch," she repeated, though she seemed more inconvenienced than annoyed. "It was supposed to be sealed already. Nobody on or off the command deck after t-minus thirty. You know that. Captain's orders."
"Right," I said with a nod. "Sorry."
She nodded as we stepped forward, letting the hatch close behind us. David secured it while the rest of us surveyed the scene. The command deck of the Saturnus looked much like that of any other ship I had been on. The crew moved about at a quick pace. The bulkheads were covered with displays, and there was a low hum of activity, kept low by the efficiency of a navy crew and in spite of the sheer number of people moving around, all talking and working. The only difference was the countdown timer, like some sort of doomsday clock, ticking down the minutes and seconds until all hell broke loose.
"This is almost creepy," Kyle commented quietly.
"You said it was creepy when the passages were empty," David replied, "and now it's creepy that they're busy. Make up your mind."
"They're both creepy," Raj added. "It's like seeing pictures of the Titanic before she sailed."
I was about to say something when someone bumped into me. I turned to see a short woman, maybe twenty or twenty-one years old. She wore a petty officer's rank, third class, and the green badge of a weapons officer. Considering that the Saturnus had minimal weapons, she was probably tasked to help somewhere else.
"Oh, sorry!" she said with a slight giggle. "I didn't know they put a wall here."
I smirked at her, pretending to be amused by her joke. "It's fine, Petty Officer." I nodded. "Carry on."
Despite not having rank on my CEVA suit, the tone of my voice, let alone the words, should have been enough to let her know that I outranked her. Unfortunately, she didn't take the hint.
"Hey," she said curiously, "I didn't know we had marines aboard."
"It was a last minute thing," I replied quickly, trying to get her on her way. I pointed to the nearest countdown display. "We're getting down the wire, so I don't want to keep you."
She nodded slowly, and headed off toward the bridge. I grumbled, looking to David.
"She didn't buy it," I said quietly.
"No," he said with sigh. "The bridge is ahead. Let's go."
We all started moving through the crowd, doing our best not to look out of place. That was hard to do, considering we were wearing CEVA suits and carrying pulse rifles. David had a bandage on his face, Raj and Kyle still had blood on their boots, though they had managed to wipe off the smears of it from their legs at some point. We all looked like we had been through a fire, which of course we had. We looked like fifty miles of bad road, and smelled like we had just walked in out of the field, which wasn't far from the truth.
"Take a look," David said, nodding toward one of the larger displays.
I glanced at it as I passed, not wanting to be seen taking too much interest in it. It was a damage control panel, a cross section of the Saturnus. The entire panel was green. It wasn't reading the hellish conditions in engineering, or the dead space in the central core, or the ruins of the forward sections. According to this panel, the Saturnus was as good as new.
"I'm going to guess that they see the entire ship as pre-accident," Kyle said quietly. "Engineering probably sees it post-accident."
"So how you perceive the ship is based on where you are?" Raj asked.
"Seems so," David replied. "That probably explains why nobody seems worried."
As we passed the security station, a small workstation divided off the main passageway by large windowed bulkhead, I looked in to see a security officer, wearing the same white uniform as Lieutenant Aisin, speaking into his headset. He made eye contact with me, and I knew instantly that whoever he was talking with over his comm gear, we were the subject of their conversation. Still, I smiled and confidently nodded like I belonged there, trying to buy enough time to reach the bridge. If we tried to run, or if I averted my gaze, he might trigger a security alert.
The hatch to the bridge was closed, but opened every so often to allow someone in or out. Two white-clad security officers stood guard, and they watched everything, including us. We couldn't fight our way past them. Sure, we could knock these two down, but on the other side of that hatch was a small passageway connecting to the bridge. By the time we reach the inner hatch, we'd be locked in. We had to bluff our way in.
The two guards watched us approach, and gave each other odd looks. The sailors here weren't about to bother with us, partly because they were so busy, but partly because marines this well armed didn't walk the command deck without a good reason that probably wasn't their business. For the security officers, it was a different story. Besides knowing damned well that we were out of place, there was that security officer's tendency to dislike marines. As soon as we reached their position, one of them subtly hit the lock switch behind him on the bulkhead. The other one not so subtly looked behind him to what I could only assume were one or more additional officers coming toward us.
"Marines," the man on the left, an ensign, said as a sort of half-greeting, half-accusation, "what can I do for you?"
I knew we were compromised, but I had to play this out, keep things calm. A shoot-out might very well stop the experiment, but these people were still on my side. This was not an enemy ship. I stopped and nodded, hoping my "officer's tone" would keep us moving, or at least stop us from being shot at.
"That's Captain, Ensign," I said, emphasizing my rank. "We have to report to Captain Paetkau."
His eyebrows raised in mock-surprise. "Is that so?"
"I don't care for your tone, sailor," I replied sternly. "Now open that hatch and step aside."
"I have a better idea," someone said from behind me, to my right. I turned to see two more security officers standing an arm's reach away. Both had their hands on their pistols.
One of them stepped in front of me. "Let's quietly take a walk back to security, and you can tell me what you're doing aboard my ship." The officer's tone made it clear that saying 'no' was not an option.
I nodded, and we were escorted back to the security station. The crew made a point of not looking at us, averting their gazes as they moved about their own business. The four guards, all walking behind us with their hands on their pistols, escorted us into the security office. That same security officer was waiting for us. He reached under his desk, and the door slid open. We were ordered in, and the door closed behind us all.
It was a small room for so many people. The four security officer behind us, and the security desk and man in front of us. The man behind the desk sat quietly, watching us. His name tag read 'McGowan." He brushed his hands through his longer-than-regulation salt and pepper hair, and squinted at us. His irises were a very dark brown, so dark it was hard to gauge his mood. He certainly wasn't smiling. His eyes dissected us, and he made sure we saw him do it. Our CEVA suits, our weapons, our faces, everything.
He slowly leaned forward in his chair, and interlocked his fingers in front of him, elbows on the desk. He slowly breathed in and out.
"And you are?" he asked evenly.
"Captain Jack Mallory, Marines," I responded. "This is my recon squad, operating out of Port 25 on orders from Admiral Bishop. I have priority one orders, coded red-five."
He raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. His eyes wandered to the bandage on David's face, then to the rifle held close to my chest by my sling. He gazed down to the computer screen in front of him, and then back to me. There was a tension in the air, but not from us. The officers behind us were worried, waiting for something to happen.
"Would you care to explain why you are aboard the Saturnus?" he said, each word spoken clearly, softly, but with an unmistakable edge that made answering a demand, not a request. "Telling me how and when you came aboard would be a good place to start."
"Senior Chief," I started, before being cut off.
"Captain," he said just as calmly as before, "I never ask the same question twice. My orders, which come from Captain Paetkau and it so happens from Admiral Bishop, are to shoot intruders on sight. The only reason you and your men are not currently bleeding out on the deck is because I recognize you from Port 25. So," he said, not finishing.
I nodded. "As I said, my name is Captain Mallory, here on orders from Admiral Bishop. I need to speak with Captain Paetkau."
"The Captain is busy," he said, "but I will forward your request in due time. For the moment, I'd like you to set your weapons on the desk, and go with my men. First though, I would like you to answer my question."
I paused for a moment, trying to read the man behind the desk. He wielded his position well. He was radiating a subtle authority, commanding everything from behind his desk, like the spider at the center of a web. Lieutenant Aisin might be the Chief of Security, but it was pretty obvious who was truly in control of security. I had no doubt that things could go very badly if I didn't play my hand just right.
"You're being very polite about this," I said, "considering we're intruders."
He nodded, that slow nod that was partly deep thinking, and partly to keep things calm. "Armed intruders," he said flatly.
"My men and I didn't come here to get into a fight with your people," I explained. "We're on the same side, Senior Chief."
He looked my men and I over again. "That's an odd thing to say, Captain, considering what you look like. Also, your rifles have been fired very recently. I can smell the ozone coming off them."
I nodded. "Senior Chief, I'm willing to explain everything, but first," I started to say, but he cut me off.
Another nod. "Alright," he said, "then set your weapons down on the desk and go with my men. Someone will be along to talk with you shortly. If you're on our side, that shouldn't pose a problem for you."
"Two things," I started.
He raised his eyebrow again, giving me that 'here it comes' look security officers get when they expected to be fed a line of bullshit. "Go ahead, Captain."
"First off, I'm prepared to prove who I am. I have my dog tags, and you can authenticate them," I said, nodding toward the small scanner on the shelf behind him. "You need to do that, right now."
"And second?" he prompted me, still keeping his tone calm and paced.
"Second," I continued, trying not to sound too threatening, but just enough to make sure he knew I was serious, "if you recognize me, you know we're with Special Forces. We're aboard on orders, and you know very well that we won't relinquish our weapons. You don't have the authority to make that happen. Not even the Captain of this ship can ask that. I'm not interested in a fight, but we're not giving them up."
He leaned forward ever so slightly. "That's a rather impressive set of orders you must have, Captain, to override the commanding officer of the United Earth Navy. Do those orders also authorize you to play cat and mouse with my men?"
He stood up slowly, his fit and muscular frame standing at my height. His hand slowly slid to the pistol on his hip. His eyes looked down toward his gun, and then back to me.
"You see, Captain, I find your presence here very suspicious. Not long after we finish scouring the engineering decks looking for, of all things, Edra commandos, you walk right up to the command deck and try to enter the bridge."
"If we were Edra commandos," I said, keeping their very real presence aboard ship to myself, "we would have shot our way in here."
The Senior Chief smirked. It was unnerving, more so than his calm, even demeanor. I felt the tension in the room rise considerably. Behind us, the officers quietly drew their pistols. I glanced at Kyle on my left. The corner of his mouth rose slightly.
"Ah, well, you'd be surprised at the sort of things the Edra can do," McGowan said. "I've been in the Navy for a long time, and I've seen a lot."
I leaned forward, gently placing the fingertips of my left hand on the desk. I tried to drive my point home with a glare. "You need to check my ID, Senior Chief. I really don't have the time or the patience to dance with you. Just check my ID, and then I'll show you my orders."
"And if I don't?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. "What then?"
"Check the tags, Senior Chief," I repeated.
He slowly held out his hand. He knew his job, that was obvious. I wondered how I would have dealt with intruders, especially ones with enough balls to walk right up to the bridge. I suddenly had a new appreciation for naval security, or at least the competent ones like this man.
I slowly reached down into my suit, and pulled out my dog tags. Unlike the 'other' pair, these tags were in perfect condition. I set them in the security man's hand. He reached behind him, and slid one of the two tags into the scanner. The tags had a small microdot embedded in the metal. It had pretty much the same information on it as what was physically printed on the metal tags, but it was almost impossible to duplicate. It also had my genetic print on it, which the Senior Chief matched to mine. He held out the scanner and I placed the tip of my left index finger on the proper spot. I felt the jab as the scanner took a drop of blood for analysis.
He read the results on the scanner, and handed back my tags. As I replaced them around my neck, there was a sudden flash of movement, and the Senior Chief swung at me with a small blade I hadn't even noticed in his hand. Before I could move out of the way, he caught me on the cheek.
My guys all reached for their weapons, but the officers behind us grabbed us, and I felt a pistol jabbed into my back. McGowan had his pistol out, and though lowered, it was pointed right at me.
'Easy!" he said. "Easy there. It's over. I just needed the blood. That's it. Everyone take a breath."
I was about to reach up to check the cut, but he stopped me.
"Don't touch it, Captain," he said sternly. "Just let it bleed."
"What are you doing?" I demanded, straining against the grip of the officer behind me.
McGowan reached behind him, and found a small vial with paper strips in it. He took one and leaned over the desk to me.
"I just needed this," he said, swiping the blood from my wound. "This will just take a moment."
He set the strip into the scanner, and ran the same analysis as before. When the results came up, he set down the scanner, and reached for the first aid kit on the wall behind him. He handed me a small dressing.
When the scanner beeped, he relaxed. "They're clean," he said, and the officers released us.
"Sorry, Captain," he said, sitting back down. "I've heard of some very clever ways around these scanners. I needed a blood sample from somewhere you wouldn't expect it. No offense, but you're not exactly welcome guests here. I had to be sure."
"You could've just asked," I said.
He ignored that. "I'll read those orders, now."
I reached into my hip pocket, and pulled out a small hand-pad. He took it, opened the scroll-like device and entered in his security codes. With his code the pad would only provide him with an abbreviated version of the orders. It wouldn't be much more than 'give these marines whatever they ask for, and do as they say.' He read them through, connected the pad to his console, and punched their authentication code into his computer. Obviously, it came up as authentic, just like my ID. At the same time, those orders would be sent through the ship's comm system to Captain Paetkau.
"We're good?" I asked.
Without responding, he held his finger to the ear piece of his headset. "This is McGowan. I need to speak to the Captain."
There was a pause, and McGowan used it to replace his pistol in its holster. After a second, his head picked up slightly.
"Yes, ma'am, I will," he said. "I have four marines standing in my security station. Yes ma'am, I checked, and they are who they say they are. Yes, ma'am, I'm sure. They're carrying priority orders, and they're asking for you."
There was a long pause, and the Senior Chief nodded several times, looking at us out of the corner of his eye. His eyes found our slung weapons several times, as well as the four officers behind us.
"No, ma'am, I haven't heard from Lieutenant Aisin since he went to check the lower pylon. Correct ma'am, still no communications outside of the command deck. Right away, ma'am." He stood up. "We're on the way, ma'am."
He tapped off the connection, and instinctively straightened his collar and smoothed out his uniform tunic. It was so well pressed to start with, there wasn't much more he could do. Still, reporting to the Captain was the same on every ship in the fleet. He looked to me.
"The Captain is asking for you," he explained. "My men and I will escort you to the bridge."
I waved him off. "Not necessary, Senior Chief."
He leaned in, his calm face suddenly taking on a very threatening look. "Wrong, Captain. You may have all the ID confirmations and high priority orders in the galaxy, but you've walked onto my ship looking like this, and you expect me to let you onto the bridge unsupervised? Would you care to tell me about his wound," he said, looking at David's cheek, "or the blood on their boots? No? How about where you've been firing your weapons? Or how about we go back to my original question, and you tell me how and when you boarded this ship?"
"No," I replied flatly. "You've read my orders, you've authenticated them, and you know you can't ask me anything."
He nodded. "Which is why you insisted on me checking your ID before you answered those questions. You knew you wouldn't have to. I didn't think marines were issued brains."
I smirked. He wasn't really thick-headed enough to toss out a random insult without thinking it through. It was obvious that he was very good at his job, and despite the professional contempt that naval security and marines tended to have for each other, this officer obviously did his job without prejudice. No, he was just goading me, hoping I would lose my cool and say something.
"Senior Chief, you have your orders, and I have mine." I reached over and took back my hand-pad off his desk, and replaced it in my pocket. "Now, my men and I are going to see your Captain."
He regarded me again, those eyes of his picking me apart so expertly. He leaned in closer, his eyes locking onto mine with an unsettling ferocity.
"And we are escorting you," he repeated sternly. "Let's be clear, marine. Once we're on the bridge, if you or your men reach for your weapons, or take a step closer to the Captain than I'm happy with, or you do anything other than stand very still, we will put you down. I will shoot you, I will kill you, and I will not give a damn about your priority orders. You are on my ship. Is that clear?"
I nodded. "I hear you, Senior Chief."
"Good," he replied, resting his hand back on his pistol and gesturing to the door. "Let's go see Captain Paetkau."