Operation Chimera (19 page)

He clung to the surface, shifting to put his visor over the tiny window. More objects floated in the hallway inside, among an unknown number of ghosts. Michael closed his eyes, trying to ignore the urge to wipe at the sweat trickling down the side of his head.
If I go, please let it be in a fighter.

“You ok, Dragon?” Zavex put a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. I just have this thing about being on an aluminum can hurtling through space. If something goes wrong, really wrong, there’s nowhere to go.”

“Let us honor the spirits of this place by preventing at least one more death.”

Michael glanced at him. “You believe in ghosts?”

The gold sheen on Zavex’s visor hid whatever face he made, but his smile was audible in his voice. “My sister is one of the Ra’ala”―the translator said
priests
―“she calls upon the spirits for aid.”

“Yeah.” He looked back at the door and pounded the open button. “Maybe she’ll say a prayer for us.”

Sensing impending disaster, Zavex seized Michael by the arm and hauled him out of the way an instant before the door opened. The air trapped in the hallway blasted forth; a shotgun of office furniture, e-tablets, and random small objects flew into space. Michael hit the wall hard, grunting.

“Damn, I gotta stay focused. Thanks.”

Zavex nodded.

With microbursts from their RCS maneuvering jets guiding them along, they entered the hallway. A roaring screech came in intermittent gasps, the sound waves rode gusts of escaping air―audible only when they stood in a large enough pocket of it. Zavex closed the door behind them, and the noise became weaker and less sporadic. Michael grabbed at the gleaming metal walls, pulling himself forward in short jumps from bulkhead to bulkhead.

“Betty? Where’s that map?”

An amber wireframe stretched out in front of him, then shrank into a five by seven inch mini-display drawn on his visor. A green line traced through the image, leading the way to a dot. Two blue triangles showed their estimated position.

“Share this with the Wing, Betty.”

“Done, Lieutenant.”

“Looks like you got about a hundred sixty or so yards to go,” said Liam.

Michael pulled hard on the next bulkhead, throwing himself forward. “Yeah. I’m tryin’ not to dawdle.”

While Aaron and Liam hovered at a relative standstill compared to the
Lewis & Clark
, Emma accelerated. She dove toward the low end of the nose, swinging around to get a look inside.

“Where are you going, Sylph? Don’t break formation.”

“Bother that, Hunter.” Emma flew around the broken end to the far side. “If there are more Draxx out here, I can outrun them. He said to keep our eyes open, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t want to get surprised again.”

“Gonna change your name to Rabbit,” said Liam. “You g’won, get ‘em to chase ya back ta me and Abner here, we’ll shoot ‘em up real good.”

Keg rotated to face Liam. “Abner? Was that a reference to me? Clearly, your attempt to recreate an antiquated Earth dialect has failed.”

Liam cracked up laughing.

Emma steered around the edge, gliding distant to get a wider-angle view of the ship. From here, a strange biological-looking mass became evident on the port side. Dark green and lumpy, it looked as though some manner of mold had grown out of the immense engines. Curious, she throttled down and let momentum drift her closer.

Ladder shafts were fun. Michael paused for just a moment to cancel all sideways motion and then flung himself down. The navigation line pulled an S curve: straight, then down two levels, then straight again. He caught himself on the ladder at the desired floor, and kicked off the wall to glide through a pair of sliding doors.

“It’s amazing this thing still has power, given the extent of the damage.”

“Yeah, no feces,” said Zavex.

Michael laughed. Zavex’s opaque gold visor wasted another facial expression.

This hallway was darker and wider than the first; shaped like an inverted trapezoid, the walls sloped inward from the ceiling, becoming narrower at the floor. Rather than solid ground, they walked over hundreds of removable gratings above wire-runs and other pipes.

“Looks like we’re in an engineer’s duct.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” said Betty. “The normal route of approach to the infirmary is blocked off by a malfunctioning tube lift as well as unidentified debris.”

Just about fifty meters later, the green line swerved to the right. The hallway kept going, likely the entire length of the ship, but they followed the guide down a short offshoot to a heavy blast door. Michael floated up to it, elbowing the button.

The Mosquito glided to within twenty meters of the strange mass. Emma tapped at her console, cycling through one scanning mode after another. Each time, the system spat back “unknown composition.” She grumbled, flying in close enough to throw a ball and hit it. Forty meters of it clung to the side of the
Lewis & Clark
, a tumor of glistening green and brown, alive―or at least secreted from something that was. Every so often, at intervals too regular to be chanced, translucent amber dots were arranged in a neat row. She jumped at a dark blur that moved inside of one of the dots.

“Dragon, do you copy?”

Michael stepped through the dark gunmetal-blue doors as Emma’s voice came over the comm. “Copy, Sylph. Status?”

He rounded a left corner a few meters later, and came face to face with six Draxx warriors attempting to operate some manner of holographic communicator. The illusionary head of an elder Draxx, scarred and burned, snarled as it regarded him. Michael glanced left, at Zavex, as the translator torc murmured something inaudible through the helmet.

“He wants to know if you fancy Earl Grey or English Breakfast,” said Zavex.

The Draxx blinked at the two men; surprise mutual.

“There’s some kind of bio-matter growing on the outside of the hull.” Emma gasped. “I think there are Draxx inside it.”

Michael reached for his sidearm. “Let me confirm that.”

mma was close enough to make eye contact with the alien looking at her through what she now realized was a window. The Draxx had built―perhaps grown―an outpost here. She swung the nose of the Mosquito toward the window, strafing the region with pulse laser fire. Black pockmarks tracked over it, inflicting little more than cosmetic damage. She reversed, gliding backwards while arming the dumb-fire rocket pods.

“Tell, Hunter, need you at my location sharpish, we have a problem.”

She squeezed the triggers on both flight sticks, launching a flurry of three-inch diameter rockets into the organic mass. The first several explosions launched great irregular pieces of six-inch thick matter away in slabs. The tail end of the barrage went inside.