The Six-Eyed Beast
Copyright© 2025 by BenLepp
Chapter 25: The Sprint
February 16th, 2279
Soon, the scene was set. As Basil stepped on the bridge, looking up to the viewscreen showing the grey skin of the whale destined to swallow more lives, he again looked around. Nocks was mustering him, suspecting something was going on, and to Basil’s dismay, Perlas was doing the same before remembering to smile. The tactics chair was empty, Basil now longing to find an XO on whom he could dump decisions in the future. Ka’al had closed the helm pit, praying for the medical ship to wake up and give him a fight. Korolev still had her head in maps, half a dozen holos floating around her now in an attempt to prepare for navigation in the labyrinth of hallways.
As the marines and Mellir ‒ grimly and firmly holding on to the dolphini ‒ followed the second drone towards the Argulan’s shuttlebay, Basil felt an urge to leave the bridge, unwilling to be there when Mikka Howe’s threats became reality. He found no excuse so he had to stay with the bridge crew watching the squad touch down on the dusty deck, causing a volcanic eruption of ice particles. As she disconnected from the dolphini, Mender had an idea ‒ also testing comms to the Rubicon ‒ as she wanted the whole squad to hear everything being said between the ship and the marines, in an effort to optimize her squad’s situational awareness.
- Mender to Rubicon.
- Basil receiving.
- Give us the code for the additional shuttle, just in case.
- Nocks?
- Transmitted.
The marines spread out in the vacuum of the hangar deck, pointing their rifles into every crevasse and dark corner, leaving footsteps in the fine dust, freeing further tiny ice particles from their long-held surfaces. There wasn’t much to look at they hadn’t already seen from the first drone’s footage, until Mellir stopped. He thought for a moment and then spoke into the squad channel connecting all of their helmets.
- This doesn’t make much sense.
Mender stepped around the frozen shuttle separating them.
- What do you mean?
- See these charging hoses?
- What about them?
- I don’t know ... They don’t fit the shuttles?
Mender was mostly bugged by Mellir’s stopping of movement, messing up their line. The old shuttles were of little concern to her.
- Elaborate on this, Ensign.
- See, these hoses have octagon connectors, but the shuttle’s receiving ports are round. It’s unclear to me how they clamped them into the shuttles?
Mender looked around, kicking some boxes strewn around them, further dusting up the area.
- Must have had some adapters. Hoses are multi-use, I guess. Stay on mission, ensign.
Mellir nodded, but his combat armor helmet muffled most of the movement, resulting in an almost invisible affirmation. Mender was keen to get going.
- Move out, Marines. We’ll take the same airlock the first drone used. Quickest way. And then we need to get to the stasis pods, don’t want to linger too long here.
That last bit was simply meant to signal to the team that Mender wanted a clean and quick scouting mission, as she didn’t believe anyone could be still alive in stasis after a century, but to her squad, it sounded more like she felt threatened by the ship’s eerie and desolate structure, which felt more like an empty spacedock than something that could actually move. She realized quickly what the team had likely interpreted and, in an effort to reinforce her relaxedness, she knocked her rifle butt against the side of her breastplate twice, the old sign of a marine ready for anything, basically meaning “LETS GO”.
As the line of four converged on the airlock, their lights crisscrossed through the dark hangar, tilting up and down with every step and turn of the head, the flashlights on their rifles and or helmets indicating whatever the wearer found interesting. Now, at the gate, Mender deliberated separating her squad in two to cover the rear or sticking together. In the end, she decided to keep them together and make quicker progress to their first destination ‒ the disabled first drone D1. She did, however, send the second drone in first, ordering it to always remain 5-10 meters ahead of them, unless there were bends, as it was supposed to always stay in sight. The gate closed on the drone and the team covered the hangar. Mink twitched.
- You see that?
Everyone pointed their lights at Mink’s light’s cone.
- See what private?
- Movement. Right row of shuttles, further ahead.
A quick laugh came through comms.
- Nocks to marines. I just pulled the dolphini out behind the ship. Just making sure it’s out of reach for unwelcome guests, also checking a small malfunction.
- Affirmative. But I don’t appreciate changes like this without prior warning.
- Apologies. Nocks out.
The comms signal fizzled out in white noise and the helmet lights of everyone in the squad quickly converged on each other since no one had ever heard Nocks apologize before. Behind them, the drone left the airlock and made its way into the hallway, dodging the opened hatches left by its missing predecessor. As the drone sent a clear feed from behind the airlock, it was time to move. Mender whirled her hand in the air, annoyed that Mellir was standing further away, not aware of their usual line.
- Well then, let’s get going. Mellir, come on through.
The squad transferred through the hissing airlock and started moving into the dark vessel. It looked different from the feed they had seen before, darker and narrower for the most part, since a full-clad marine was much wider than a drone, and most of them still had their first pair of eyes, unlike Salim, who was using them to stare down the pirates a ship over. They were forced to drop into line formation behind the drone, Mender in front, Diop behind her, Mink and Mellir bringing up the rear. There was much more debris to step over and around, not having been an issue for the hovering drone before, but Mender wondered why she hadn’t noticed this before.
It didn’t take too long for them to come across and pass the crushed skeleton, the beam that had come down onto the unlucky crew member blocking their way. They all had to duck and crawl over it, locking eyes with the ever-smiling skull. Mellir wondered what his implants would look like in that state, being fused with his bones in several places. He smiled as he realized he would make for an especially disturbing skeleton. He was still the last in line as they got up from their crawl, bumping into Mink imminently. He had missed the Sergeant’s hand sign to stop. His helmet audio crackled.
- Where is the drone?
Everyone stuck their head out, looking past the stocky Mender left, right, and over her, making a cartoonish figure with four helmeted heads looking around. Ahead of them, the corridor continued like nothing had happened. There just was no drone. Mender gestured everyone against the walls, two to the left and two to the right. She used every single image enhancer and mobile scan she had, but to no avail. Neither was there a drone further ahead or to the side, nor was there a reason for a drone to disappear. Or any signal.
- Mender to Rubicon, come in.
- Rubicon here.
- Do you have a signal from D2?
- Affirmative. Further ahead.
- I don’t have it on my scanners.
- It’s out of reach. Further ahead.
- Why didn’t it stay in visual range?
- Malfunction. Rubicon out.
Mender hesitated for a while, unsure of what this meant. Apparently, the Rubicon also had no idea why the drone had gone on without them, likely, Nocks was feverishly working through code right now, hopefully able to fix their scout. The connection had also been weak, showing a lot of interference in the audio, making whoever just spoke to her from the Rubicon sound like an echo of an echo. She signaled the rest of the team to start moving again, carefully stepping forward on eight heavy legs. As they reached the section with the medical bays, they did a short sweep on every room, sometimes stepping on splintered bones and shining their rifle lights onto the carnage. None of them said a word, not only because they had been extensively trained in comms discipline – in Mellir’s case this was Mink just telling him to shut up before they originally had launched - but also because each one of them had their own thoughts on what they saw. Mellir was reminded of the aftermath of an attack by pirates on one of their more isolated stations back home, when his father had helped to pull people out of a destroyed section of the rock the pirates had torpedoed to reinforce their demands. They had made two piles, one for body parts and one for complete bodies. Although what Mellir now looked at had happened almost a century earlier, he could somehow feel and smell the events imagined to have led to this picture. Mink thought the bones looked strange, often, two neighboring arms or legs had different lengths and he wondered how decomposition would affect that. Diop was silently reciting a prayer for each room, not fully a believer, but feeling the need to acknowledge the loss of life. Mender was counting and trying to extrapolate how many people she was looking at room after room. She concluded that there had to be at least 150 bodies in this level of medical bays alone, which made little sense, as this ship was supposed to have three decks of medical bays ‒ if the other decks looked like this, almost everyone who had been aboard had died in this small area of three decks alone. It was like someone had copy-pasted the same skeleton over and over without much thought on how people usually spread out on ships, engineers for example were usually found...
Her thoughts weren’t finished when her head was violently thrown back by a sudden impact. As she stumbled for cover in a doorway to her left, she could see the man behind her ‒ Diop, the largest target ‒ lose all control over his limbs and spine, falling down like a dropped wet towel, awkwardly coming to rest semi-upright in the heavy armor. Mink and Mellir were now falling back and taking cover in the medbays’ doors to their left and right. Mender’s helmet was leaking air, the first enemy shot having been targeted at her head, come in high and hit Diop, whose body was still in the center of the hallway, illuminated by the flashes of light of the intensifying gunfight. Splashes were hitting the walls and doorways, which pitted them but they always seemed to fill up a little again, as if made from rubber. Mender knew from the angle of the first shot the enemy had likely knelt in a doorway further ahead, taking careful aim at the approaching group. She pulled a grenade from her suit and threw it into the wall opposite of her with great force, the grenade bouncing off and rolling into the next doorway over before going off. Now, Mender had to rely on the two men behind her to cease fire as she sprinted past Diop and forward through the debris and smoke, entered the suspected doorway and put several shots into the attacker, who was already on his back, missing a leg. Mink sprinted past the doorway behind her, covering the area ahead whilst Mellir was still holding the rear and his rifle tightly.
- Clear ahead.
- Clear behind.
Mender felt the shock creeping in but also her years and years of training pulling on her to keep moving.
- Clear in here. Check on Diop.
It was Mellir’s voice confirming the inevitable.
- No chance. Brain’s hit.
Mender put another shot into the attacker’s head, a brain for a brain.
- Mender to Rubicon. Rubicon, come in!
- Rubicon here.
- We’ve been ambushed. Diop is dead. One attacker, dead. Further hostiles possible.
- Affirmative. Stay on mission. Get to the stasis pods.
- Did you receive me fully?
- Affirmative.
- Aye ... Mender out.
Mender wasn’t even sure who on the bridge was giving her orders since she didn’t recognize the voice through all the static that had been getting worse, the latest factor likely being the damage to her helmet. Whoever it was, they were apparently not at all interested in the ambush ‒ or the Rubicon was having problems of her own. Or it was just Nocks, not interested in biological entities. Mender knelt down, looking at her would-be killer. He was also clad in armor, albeit more of an improvised kind. His helmet had originally been fleet issue and then been padded with slaps of ballistic weave on the outside. His space suit – now riddled with holes from both splinters and Mender’s shots reminded her of the Diral ‒ whatever durable but malleable material they had stuck over a frame. It wasn’t all cheap, though, having full life support and scanners attached ‒ and whatever those materials were, they had been good enough to dupe the small scanners the marines were wearing, usually giving them advance notice of movement ahead. When Mender pulled the helmet off the limp body, she saw an unknown alien race, strangely grinning at her through yellow-brown blood due to some facial features having been blasted off by her last shot. His weapon was also interesting, visually different from his suit and other technology, a heavy, long weapon with a broad stock and improvised power sources sticking out on either side. He had clearly overcharged his first shot, easily penetrating Diop’s helmet at the viewport, where it was weakest. Mender tried downloading whatever data was on the wearables, but her suit was hit by several dozen coding attacks, this race clearly being prepared to lose people. Mender decided to scan whatever she could and move on, even leaving the weapon behind, as it might also have been rigged to blow.
Mellir and Mink had been silently standing behind her, taking turns in peeking out into the corridor. Mender noticed them, ordering herself to remain focused.
- Let’s get moving. D1 should be close.
Mink rested his arm on her shoulder but could not find anything to say, so he just pulled her up from her kneeling position.
- We’re ready, Sergeant. Rubicon doesn’t seem to give a crap, though?
- We don’t know what’s going on over there. Did you take any damage?
- No penetration. You?
- Helmet. Sealed itself.
- Mellir here, no penetration.
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