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Nods of approval from the squad. This was standard operating procedure:
get onboard the target ship, hit the key locations and get back out as soon as possible.

“And the quantum-drive?” Jenkins asked. She had powered up her flamethrower, and the glow from the pilot-light danced over her face. Her expression looked positively malicious.

“We’ll converge on the location in fifteen minutes. Let’s get some recon on the place before we check out.”

“Solid copy, Captain.”

The troopers began a steady jog into the gloomy aft of the starship, their heavy armour and weapons clanking noisily as they went.

It wasn’t fear that I felt in my gut. Not trepidation, either; this was something worse. It was excitement – polluting my thought process, strong enough that it was almost intoxicating. This was what I was made for. I steadied my pulse and concentrated on the mission
at hand.

Something
stirred in the ship – I felt it.

Kaminski, Blake and I made quick time towards the bridge. Olsen struggled to keep up with us and was quiet for most of the way, but Kaminski couldn’t help goading him.

“I take it you aren’t used to running in combat-armour?” Kaminski asked. “Just say if you want a rest.”

The tone of Kaminski’s voice made clear that wasn’t a statement of concern,
but rather an insult.

“It’s quite something,” Olsen said, shaking his head. He ignored Kaminski’s last remark. “A real marvel of modern technology. The suit feels like it is running me, rather than the other way around.”

“You get used to it,” I said. “Two and a half tonnes of machinery goes into every unit.”

The Trident Class IV combat-suit was equipped with everything a soldier needed. It
had a full sensory and tactical data-suite built into the helmet, all fed into the HUD. Reinforced ablative plating protected the wearer from small-arms fire. It had full EVA-capability – atmospherically sealed, with an oxygen recycling pack for survival in deep-space. A plethora of gadgets and added extras were crammed onboard, and Research and Development supplied something new every mission. These
versions were in a constantly shifting urban-camouflage pattern, to blur the wearer’s outline and make us harder targets to hit. Best of all, the mechanical musculature amplified the strength of the wearer ten-fold.

“You can crush a xeno skull with one hand,” Kaminski said, absently flexing a glove by way of example. “I’ve done it.”

“Stay focused,” I ordered, and Kaminski fell silent.

We were
moving through a poorly lit area of the ship – Krell were friends of the dark. I flicked on my shoulder-lamp again, taking in the detail.

The starship interior was a state. It had been smashed to pieces by the invaders. We passed cabins sealed up with makeshift barricades. Walls scrawled with bloody handprints, or marked by the discharge of energy weapons. I guessed that the crew and civilian
complement had put up a fight, but not much of one. They had probably been armed with basic self-defence weapons – a few slug-throwers, a shock-rifle or so to deal with the occasional unruly crewman, but nothing capable of handling a full-on boarding party. They certainly wouldn’t have been prepared for what had come for them.

Something
had happened here. That squirming in my gut kicked in again.
Part of the mystery of the ship was solved. The Krell had been here for sure. Only one question remained: were they still onboard? Perhaps they had done their thing then bailed out.

Or they might still be lurking somewhere on the ship
.

We approached the bridge. I checked the mission timeline. Six minutes had elapsed since we had boarded.

“Check out the door, Blake,” I ordered, moving alongside
it.

The bridge door had been poorly welded shut. I grappled with one panel, digging my gauntleted fingers into the thin metal plates. Blake did the same to another panel and we pulled it open. Behind me, Kaminski changed position to provide extra firepower in the event of a surprise from inside the room. Once the door was gone, I peered in.

“Scanner reports no movement,” Blake said.

He was
using a wrist-mounted bio-scanner, incorporated into his suit. It detected biological life-signs, but the range was limited. Although we all had scanners – they were the tool of choice for Krell-hunters and salvage teams up and down the Quarantine Zone – it was important not to become over-reliant on the tech. I’d learnt the hard way that it wasn’t always dependable. The Krell were smart fucks; never
to be underestimated.

The bridge room was in semi-darkness, with only a few of the control consoles still illuminated.

“Moving up on bridge.”

I slowly and cautiously entered the chamber, scanning it with my rifle-mounted lamp. No motion at all. Kaminski followed me in. The place was cold, and it smelt of death and decay. Such familiar odours. I paused over the primary command console. The terminal
was full of flashing warnings, untended.

“No survivors in bridge room,” I declared.

Another formality for my suit recorder. Crewmen were sprawled at their stations. The bodies were old, decomposed to the point of desiccation. The ship’s captain – probably a civilian merchant officer of some stripe – was still hunched over the command console, strapped into his seat. Something sharp and ragged
had destroyed his face and upper body. Blood and bodily matter had liberally drenched the area immediately around the corpse, but had long since dried.

“What do you think happened here?” whispered Olsen.

“The ship’s artificial intelligence likely awoke essential crew when the Krell boarded,” I said. “They probably sealed themselves in, hoping that they would be able to repel the Krell.”

I scanned
the area directly above the captain’s seat. The action was autonomic, as natural to me as breathing. I plotted how the scene had played out: the Krell had come in through the ceiling cavity – probably using the airshafts to get around the ship undetected – and killed the captain where he sat.

I repressed a shiver.

“Others are the same,” Blake said, inspecting the remaining crewmen.

“Best we
can do for them now is a decent burial at sea. Blake – cover those shafts. Kaminski – get on the primary console and start the download.”

“Affirmative, Cap.”

Kaminski got to work, unpacking his gear and jacking devices to the ship’s mainframe. He was a good hacker; the product of a misspent youth back in Old Brooklyn.

“Let’s find out why this old hulk is drifting so far inside the Quarantine
Zone,” he muttered.

“I’m quite curious,” said Olsen. “The ship should have been well within established Alliance space. Even sponsored civilian vessels have been warned not to stray outside of the demarked area.”

Shit happens, Olsen
.

I paced the bridge while Kaminski worked.

The only external view-ports aboard the
Haven
were located on the bridge. The shutters had been fixed open, displaying
the majesty of deep-space.
Maybe they wanted to see the void, one last time, before the inevitable
, I thought to myself. It wasn’t a view that I’d have chosen – the Maelstrom dominated the ports. At this distance, light-years from the edge of the Quarantine Zone, the malevolent cluster of stars looked like an inverted bruise – against the black of space, bright and vivid. Like the Milky Way spiral
in miniature: with swirling arms, each containing a myriad of Krell worlds. The display was alluringly colourful, as though to entice unwary alien travellers to their doom; to think that the occupants of those worlds and systems were a peaceful species. Occasional white flashes indicated gravimetric storms; the inexplicable phenomenon that in turn protected but also imprisoned the worlds of the
Maelstrom.

“Your people ever get an answer on what those storms are?” I absently asked Olsen, as Kaminski worked. Olsen was Science Division, a specialised limb of the Alliance complex, not military.

“Now
that
is an interesting question,” Olsen started, shuffling over to my position on the bridge. “Research is ongoing. The entire Maelstrom Region is still an enigma. Did you know that there are
more black hole stars in that area of space than in the rest of the Orion Arm? Professor Robins, out of Maru Prime, thinks that the storms might be connected – perhaps the result of magnetic stellar tides—”

“There we go,” Kaminski said, interrupting Olsen. He started to noisily unplug his gear, and the sudden sound made the science officer jump. “I’ve got commissioning data, notable service history,
and personnel records. Looks like the
Haven
was on a colony run – a settlement programme. Had orders to report to Torfis Star …” He paused, reading something from the terminal. Torfis Star was a long way from our current galactic position, and no right-minded starship captain would’ve deviated so far off-course without a damned good reason. “I see where things went wrong. The navigation module
malfunctioned and the AI tried to compensate.”

“The ship’s artificial intelligence would be responsible for all automated navigational decisions,” Olsen said. “But surely safety protocols would have prevented the ship from making such a catastrophic mistake?”

Kaminski continued working but shrugged noncommittally. “It happens more often than you might think. Looks like the
Haven
’s AI developed
a system fault. Caused the ship to overshoot her destination by several light-years. That explains how she ended up in the QZ.”

“Just work quickly,” I said. The faster we worked, the more quickly we could bail out to the APS. If the Krell were still onboard, we might be able to extract before contact. I activated my communicator: “Jenkins – you copy?”

“Jenkins here.”

“We’re on the bridge, downloading
the black box now. What’s your location?”

“We’re in the hypersleep chamber.”

“Give me a sitrep.”

“No survivors. It isn’t pretty down here. No remains in enough pieces to identify. Looks like they were caught in hypersleep, mostly. Still frozen when they bought it.”

“No surprises there. Don’t bother IDing them; we have the ship’s manifest. Proceed to the Q-drive. Over.”

“Solid copy. ETA three
minutes.”

The black box data took another minute to download, and the same to transmit back to the
Liberty Point
. Mission timeline: ten minutes. Then we were up again, moving down the central corridor and plotting our way to the Q-drive – into the ugly strip-lit passage. The drive chamber was right at the aft of the ship, so the entire length of the vessel. Olsen skulked closely behind me.

“Do you wish you’d brought along a gun now, Mr Olsen?” asked Blake.

“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” Olsen said, defensively. “I wouldn’t know how to.”

“I can’t think of a better time to learn,” Kaminski replied. “You know—”

The overhead lights went out, corridor section by corridor section, until we were plunged into total darkness. Simultaneously, the humming generated by the life-support
module died. The sudden silence was thunderous, stretching out for long seconds.

“How did they do that?” Olsen started. His voice echoed off through the empty corridor like a gunshot, making me flinch. On a dead ship like the
Haven
, noise travelled. “Surely that wasn’t caused by the Krell?”

Our shoulder lamps popped on. I held up a hand for silence.

Something creaked elsewhere in the ship.

“Scanners!” I whispered.

That slow, pitched beeping: a lone signal somewhere nearby …

“Contact!” Blake yelled.

In the jittery pool of light created by my shoulder-lamp, I saw
something
spring above us: just a flash of light, wet, fast—

Blake fired a volley of shots from his plasma rifle. Orange light bathed the corridor. Kaminski was up, covering the approach—

“Cease fire!” I shouted. “It’s
just a blown maintenance pipe.”

My team froze, running on adrenaline, eyes wide. Four shoulder-lamps illuminated the shadowy ceiling, tracked the damage done by Blake’s plasma shots. True enough, a bundle of ribbed plastic pipes dangled from the suspended ceiling: accompanied by the lethargic
drip-drip
of leaking water.

“You silly bastard, Kid!” Kaminski laughed. “Your trigger finger is itchier
than my nuts!”

“Oh Christo!” Olsen screamed.

A Krell primary-form nimbly – far too nimbly for something so big – unwound itself from somewhere above. It landed on the deck, barely ten metres ahead of us.

A barb ran through me. Not physical, but mental – although the reaction was strong enough for my med-suite to issue another compensatory drug. I was suddenly hyperaware, in combat-mode. This
was no longer a recon or salvage op.

The team immediately dispersed, taking up positions around the xeno. No prospect of a false alarm this time.

The creature paused, wriggling its six limbs. It wasn’t armed, but that made it no less dangerous. There was something so immensely
wrong
about the Krell. I could still remember the first time I saw one and the sensation of complete wrongness that
overcame me. Over the years, the emotion had settled to a balls-deep paralysis.

This was a primary-form, the lowest strata of the Krell Collective, but it was still bigger than any of us. Encased in the Krell equivalent of battle-armour: hardened carapace plates, fused to the xeno’s grey-green skin. It was impossible to say where technology finished and biology began. The thing’s back was awash
with antennae – those could be used as both weapons and communicators with the rest of the Collective.

The Krell turned its head to acknowledge us. It had a vaguely fish-like face, with a pair of deep bituminous eyes, barbels drooping from its mouth. Beneath the head, a pair of gills rhythmically flexed, puffing out noxious fumes. Those sharkish features had earned them the moniker “fish heads”.
Two pairs of arms sprouted from the shoulders – one atrophied, with clawed hands; the other tipped with bony, serrated protrusions – raptorial forearms.

The xeno reared up, and in a split second it was stomping down the corridor.