Authors: Michael E. Marks
Not for me, Ridgeway's lip curled down at the thought as he rubbed a hand unconsciously across his bruised chest. I'll heal up the old-fashioned way.
An abrasive hum reverberated through the walls and snatched Ridgeway's attention back to the present as the overhead lights fluttered for several seconds. Around the room, each Marine paused expectantly. Only Jenner, staring blankly into space, seemed oblivious to the threat of impending darkness. A thread of drool hung from the corner of his slack jaw.
As the light stabilized once more, Ridgeway wondered if the humane answer was simply to put the Rimmer out of his misery. At the moment though, he thought regretfully, humanity was a luxury he could ill afford. While Jenner's plight was pathetic, he remained their only likely source of first-hand human intelligence. Until they explored that possibility, the needs of the Marines came first. Ridgeway looked at Jenner with a callous stare.
"Tough luck, buddy. You shoulda' joined the Marines."
He gazed at the huddle figure. Technically, he may be healthier, but he looks like shit.
Ridgeway could see that the medical system had put function ahead of aesthetics. The priorities were obvious; while broken bones were welded together, coal-black pieces of frostbitten flesh had simply been cut away. Jenner's nose was gone, along with both ears and swatches of each cheek. A missing piece of lower lip left him with a grotesque cleft that extended down through his chin.
Wide patches of Jenner's scalp had likewise succumbed to the cold. Cold-charred splotches of hairless skin had been replaced by veneers of angry pink stretched tight as a drum across the curve of his skull. Dead, frozen fingers had been excised with equal indifference, the living stumps summarily closed over. Nubbins of fresh skin dotted the digitless hand like a row of smooth, shiny gumdrops.
Stitch had offered a plausible theory for the different results. The nanites worked like ants; they could move living material around the body but they were incapable of fabricating new flesh from scratch. Repairs to one required the cannibalization of another.
The explanation seemed sound. Darcy had a solid base of lean muscle to serve as a reservoir; the tiny bits of material stripped from muscles throughout her body would go unnoticed.
But Jenner was undernourished and out of shape. Worse yet for the Rimmer was the nature of his injuries. Unlike Darcy's puncture wounds, frostbite had claimed large volumes of Jenner's flesh.
What he needed, Ridgeway concluded, was the human equivalent of Carbonite paste to fill the gaps.
After watching Jenner's experience, not one of the Marines had expressed an interest in finding out for themselves. The dull ache of torn muscles were familiar friends and the RATs decided to heal as they healed, taking comfort in the infrared accelerators that helped them mend in a faster, yet quite conventional fashion.
Ridgeway turned slowly and looked upslope to Darcy. She sure looks normal, he noted. The color had returned to her skin and all signs of the jaundiced bruising had faded away. The torn flap still hung open on her blood-stained T-shirt but the skin beneath held no hint of its prior injury.
The sniper sat wedged into a corner with a gleaming rifle rail across her lap, methodically polishing a series of magnetic coils. One by one she extracted the chromium ovals and buffed their blue-mirrored surfaces to a shine with a soft cloth.
Ridgeway watched her work and took heart in the crispness of her motion. The sniper truly seemed no worse for wear. Perhaps of equally good fortune, she had no memory of her time on the table. The severity of her condition had likely suppressed her conscious mind beyond the reach of the physical world. Even after considerable thought, Darcy couldn't dredge up a recollection of the process.
Considering the alternatives, Ridgeway thought with a half glance at Jenner, a damn good thing. Although Stitch was firm that he could resolve the consciousness problem with conventional anesthetics going forward, Ridgeway knew that he would have to be near-dead before he climbed onto the table.
"I really thought we'd lost her." Merlin's voice caught Ridgeway by surprise, the younger Marine's tone edged with an unusual sobriety. Ridgeway nodded in quiet assent as he turned to the engineer.
Standing almost a head shorter than Ridgeway, Merlin always struck him as something of an anachronism. Unlike most of his comrades, Jim "Merlin" Prentice had a full head of jet-black hair worn in a short but reasonably modern style. He was lean, but his body carried a kind of casual toughness that would have seemed at home out on the range in the old west of American history.
Of all his Marines, Merlin remained the hardest for Ridgeway to classify. Too brainy for a grunt, too tough for an egghead. Merlin excelled as a combat engineer, his keen attention to detail and rabid imagination proving time and again to be an invaluable combination. Often as not, a life-saving one.
The lights shuddered once more, shadows lurching abruptly as now-recharged emergency lights snapped on momentarily. The room seemed to cough twice as the two sources of illumination wrestled for dominance. With a sharp thrum the overhead panels won out.
Ridgeway rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "That isn't going to hold out forever, is it?"
A look of frustration crossed Merlin's face. "I swear Major, it's like trying to hit a moving target. I bypass one shorted line only to have the power suddenly jump back to cables that were stone dead hours before. It's like someone else is playing with the wiring. There must be some real meltdowns going on through this beast." He shrugged, hands raised. "Hell, I'm amazed half this tub isn't on fire with all these shorts."
"So what's the fix?"
Merlin scratched at the dark stubble that bristled across his chin. "Well," he began, somewhat hesitant, "I've been thinking of just ripping the breakers out of that wall and running a hot line straight to the mains for Sickbay. That'd cut out a shitload of variables, maybe give us a real boost in terms of stable current. If it works, armor regen would wrap up in half the time."
"How long?"
"Chainsaw bypass? Shit, maybe an hour tops. It'll be ugly but damn sure ought to tighten things up around here."
Ridgeway nodded his assent. "A tight ship, hell, a tight room, would be an improvement. Let's make it happen. Be sure and tell Monster."
"Roger that."
Before Merlin could turn, Ridgeway fired a second query. "How are we looking on the TAC fixes?"
Merlin fished a small brick of circuitry out of his pocket and held it aloft. A blackened furrow cut an obvious streak through the red and yellow security label and the silvery shell beneath. "Your transmitter took a hit. I can get tone out but it won't hold lock for more than a few minutes. I'm swapping it out for the spare, that'll get you back online. Monster's TAC is another matter. It's toast."
Ridgeway's jaw clenched noticeably as he folded his arms across his chest. "What can we do?" The question had become wearily repetitive.
"Can't do much on that one Major. He's got his own sensor feeds but he can't broadcast tactical at all. Just voice."
Ridgeway nodded slowly, pausing for a moment before breaking a wan smile. "Then we'll have to make do with voice and assume that anything that gets within fifty meters of Monster is dead meat."
Merlin nodded concurrence. "Yessir, that's pretty much the way it works."
"All right," Ridgeway concluded with a slap on Merlin's shoulder, "get on it."
The engineer turned to leave, then paused indecisively. Ridgeway noted the obvious conflict. "What is it?"
Merlin chewed at the side of his lip as he looked Ridgeway in the eyes. "Something's been nagging at me since we came onboard Major, but I still can't make much sense of it."
"What's that?"
Merlin waved his hands as if presenting the room behind him. "Everything we've seen here suggests that the ship is man-made, right?"
Ridgeway swept the room in concert with Merlin's gesture, noting nothing out of the ordinary. "Yeah," he said with slight hesitation, "which infers that this is some kind of Rimmer project. So what's your point?"
"That looks like the easy answer," Merlin replied cautiously, "but we've got three major conflicts working against the theory." The engineer seemed to cross a mental point of no return, his elaboration picking up speed and emphasis.
"First, there is no record of the Rimmers ever trying to build a ship this big. Some of our old colony ships ran this size, maybe even bigger, but the Alliance never came close. The Rimmers don't have the technology to do it, and sure as hell not to do so way the hell down here. There is nothing in this hole that even remotely looks like a shipyard."
Ridgeway repressed any hint of expression. "Go on."
"Number two, at some point in her life, this bitch flew and got her ass kicked in the process. You saw that severed wing Major, it looked like something grabbed it and ripped it off. I don't know about you but I've never seen a weapon that could do that. But if it wasn't a United System's weapon, whose weapon was it?"
Ridgeway's mind ran across the possibilities and came up with nothing.
"But that's not the kicker." Merlin paused once more and looked down, his eyes tracking aimlessly across the floor. "Modern English is what, maybe a thousand years old?"
Puzzled by the change in direction, Ridgeway struggled for a reply "Something like that, but what does--"
"And man has been in space since, call it the 1960s, but we didn't get past the moon in any real sense till the early 2000s."
"What are you getting at, Merlin?" Ridgeway was quickly losing patience with the historical detour.
Merlin looked up, his eyes unwavering. "Just this. There's some pretty damn big stalactites stuck right through this tub. Down in the engine room Monster and I came across one maybe twenty meters in diameter that came in through the ceiling and continued down through the floor. Geology shit like that doesn't happen in fifty years, not in a hundred. It takes thousands of years, I dunno, maybe tens of thousands."
Merlin's voice grew increasingly somber. He looked at Ridgeway with an expression that bore no trace of guile and said, "I know how weird this sounds Major, but unless I'm missing something, this ship doesn't just predate human space travel, it got stuck down here before man carved his first wooden canoe."
CHAPTER 19
Within the concealing shell of Carbonite and metal alloy, Monster grimaced. He would not have allowed himself the concession if anyone was watching. Although the electroactive polymer muscles in his armor supported the bulk of his weight, Monster's flesh and blood arm still rocked through a full range of motion. As he climbed down the turbolift shaft, a sharp pain lanced reminded him of that fact. Monster snarled quietly at the burning in his side. "Just one more damn thing to manage."
Nearing the base of the shaft, Monster pushed off the wall and dropped the last five meters. He slammed down onto the floor like a pile driver.
As he passed through a pair of open doors, the sergeant looked down at the grid-steel catwalks radiating from the hub of the tower. His focus locked in on the number ‘7' stenciled boldly on the floor of the leftmost walkway. The yellow numeral remained visible beneath an uneven coating of ice.
Monster advanced carefully down catwalk 7 when he heard a resounding clang as Merlin landed behind him. The catwalk shuddered in response, vibration rolling right through Monster's magnetically-affixed boots. A section of tubular rail broke away with a brief shriek, then bounced off a lower walkway before splashing into the glowing pool below.
Monster eyed the floor warily and keyed his comm. "Bridge 7 is near failure," he transmitted on a team-wide channel. "If you're headed to engineering, take 6A or walk carefully." He looked down and imagined the course of falling wreckage should the catwalk fail completely. Another mess they didn't need.
A flicker of light below caught his attention. Distinct from the seamless blue glow of the lake, the flash was sharp, a stutter of white brilliance. The Gatling swung over the edge as its muzzle moved through a slow arc.
Merlin's voice came in from Monster's left. "What have you got Gunny?" The question caught Monster by surprise before he remembered that his TAC wasn't transmitting. Rapid developments would call for a running commentary.
"Seven o'clock low," he said clearly, emphasizing the direction with a thrust of the Gatling. "Flash of light, looked like a welder or something."
"Like a welder?" Merlin's body canted forward abruptly, his facemask peering down. "Oh, shit!" The engineer bolted for a downward-leading staircase. "It's the engine."
Monster scarcely had time to turn before Merlin disappeared down the staircase amid a rapid clatter of magnetic boots. Setting himself in pursuit, Monster's boot skipped off a canted step. His weight lurched wildly before his gauntlet clamped down in a metal rail so forcefully that it bent. "Dammit Merlin, hold on."
The engineer did anything but decelerate. Hooking a vertical support, Merlin took a fire pole slide down yet another level before breaking aft. Monster matched the move by necessity. As he slid down the pitched I-beam, another arc-welder flash of light erupted from below. This time he could see its source.
A tendril of immense voltage thrashed out of the wall below, emerging from a blackened panel surrounded by wormlike scorch marks. With the force of a frenzied Tesla coil, the panel gave birth to writhing fingers of lightning that stretched some twenty feet or more. As Monster swung in to the walkway floor, a huge bolt rippled out, dividing like capillaries as it spread across the surface of the pool.