Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
JETT
The hallway stretched beyond Jett’s vision, darkness only broken by the flickering of amber emergency lights. He stepped forward into the inky gloom and switched his helmet’s flashlight on.
One shallow breath later, Jett opened comms.
“I have low power on the ship, Shibuya. Only the emergency lights are on.”
“Confirmed,” Eddie responded immediately.
Turning left and then right, Jett surveyed his surroundings.
Down one stretch of hallway was a sign, but there wasn’t any power to show him where it led.
Nothing else marked the hall, either walls or floors; nothing to show him what happened, or to impede his progress.
It was probably a crew hallway, without the decorations and luxury that Eddie claimed were integral to the ship.
Flicking through the stats inside his helmet’s visor, Jett noted that the ambient temperature was frigid: negative twenty degrees Celsius.
“I’m reading temperatures below zero, so temp control is probably offline.”
Jett found it easy to slip back into the shell of his former life.
He had his armor, his rifle, and a mission to complete.
He didn’t know if anyone remained alive—it seemed unlikely given the temperatures—and he didn’t know what had happened to the ship.
Whether that something was mechanical failure or had a human element, Jett and his teams would do their best to uncover the truth.
His orders were to secure the Bridge and retrieve the black box. His teams would check Engineering, the Residential corridors, and the Lifeboats.
“Noted.” Eddie’s calm, authoritative voice hummed in Jett’s helmet.
He always admired that Eddie could appear impassive, collected, in command.
It earned him a reputation for coldness, but Jett knew the truth.
Eddie’s calm was a mask behind which he hid himself when vulnerable.
He could slip it on and off at will; he could be the loving, sweet man Jett knew he was in one second, and Captain Stone in the next.
Jett wasn’t like that. He wore his heart open for the System to see, but rarely let anyone close enough to touch it. That distance made him a good leader. He did his job and did it well. It didn’t matter how emotional he was.
“Which way to the Bridge?”
“Go right down this hallway. At the end there will be a T-junction, and you will go right there and take the stairs all the way up.”
“Confirmed.” Jett turned toward the group of six waiting near the airlock and held up his hand, signaling them to join him.
“Kepler, take point. Hash, you’re in the rear.”
John Kepler was a large Centaurian and former Emergency Response soldier.
He knew the job almost as well as Jett, and was the best person for point.
Jade Hash, Marko Fall, Tal Rot, Sirena Petra, and Edwin Smith were less experienced, but still former CDF members.
Albert Auguste was the medic assigned to his team should they encounter any survivors or be injured.
Settling into their places, Jett held his hand aloft and pointed down the hall. Everyone started forward without a word.
They passed a few doors on their way, but one of the teams behind them would clear the rooms and halls. Jett’s team was focused on the Bridge, captain, and black box.
At the junction they turned right and entered the stairwell. Each clunk of boots on metal echoed back and forth, creating a cacophony. Within it, Jett thought he heard the Song, that crunch of glass and shatter of stars, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Kepler signed the all-clear before Jett reached the top of the stairs, and they smoothly emerged into another hallway, this one very different from the one several levels below.
Thick carpet a shade of deep red muffled their movements while pale wood paneling graced the lower half of cream-colored walls; gold-painted trim and ornate paintings dotted the space above.
To their right, the hallway ended in an immense door.
“Is that real wood?” The words slipped out of him as Jett worked his way toward the door. It was pale wood, carved in relief, and depicted a large tree with sinuous limbs and dainty leaves. It towered over him, over all of them.
Trees grew in abundance aboard ships and stations, but they were highly prized for their ability to purify the air. Few people would ever consider chopping one down for mere decorative purposes.
“Yes. All the wood on this ship was grown on Terra.” Eddie’s voice was clear in his headset.
Jett whistled low; it was worse than he thought. Terran wood was worth more than the lives of his whole team. “What a waste of money.”
Several people chuckled, including Eddie. “You will see worse than that before you are done.”
As Jett stepped up to push the door open, glass shattered above him. Stars sparkled. And somewhere a wail echoed, pulsing to the beat of his heart. High pitched and eerie, Jett couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Only that it was on a different deck from this one.
On the main channel, Jett asked. “Did anyone hear something just now?”
The wail pulsed once more and Jett felt his heart rate spike.
Silence from his team; no one else had heard the Song.
“You okay, boss?” Kepler’s heavy voice asked the question they were probably all thinking, and Jett couldn’t blame them for that. But he had to know.
“Fine. Must have been something in the signal from the ship.”
It was a plausible answer, and no one was likely to question him further.
Jett flicked over to his private channel with Eddie. “Did you hear that?” He whispered the question, afraid that something on the ship would perceive him. He didn’t want the others knowing that he could hear something they couldn’t. Only Eddie could know, because he understood.
“Yes,” came the response, distant. “It’s the Song.”
Jett signed in relief, but was soon filled with a curious kind of dread. What was this Song? This wail? The shattering glass and sparkling stars? And how was it connected to what happened here?
“All teams have cycled through the airlocks and are en route to their objectives.” Eddie’s mask was firmly back in place.
“Take a breather,” he told his team, then flipped to the channel with the other team leaders.
“Report.”
A second passed as his team loitered together, stood alert, or took a closer look at the luxury that surrounded him. Jett stared beyond the walls, waiting for a response.
“Caine here.” Cosma’s voice crackled to life in his headset. “Heading for the lifeboats. From the drones we know that several have already launched, but about half remain. I’ve seen signs of human activity, but no signs of violence.”
An unspoken “yet” lingered at the end of her statement. There was always the chance that any violence had been contained, kept behind locked doors so panic wouldn’t spread throughout the crew. But an absence of both? That was suspicious.
“Confirmed. Check in when you’ve reached your destination.”
“Same story on the residential decks, so far.” Jack was always concise with his reporting, never letting a stray word escape. He’d always been that way.
“No signs of people or violence?”
“Confirmed.”
Ollie’s voice picked up right after Jack’s, as if he was waiting to go last. “We’re on our way to Engineering. Some machinery has been fucked with, and clearly some systems are offline. I won’t know more until we reach the Hub.”
Jett let out a heavy breath. Everything was going fine.
So far.
“Good work. Keep me posted.”
Jett flipped back to his team channel and addressed Eddie. “How many crew members were aboard the ship?”
“Some four thousand crew members were onboard at the time of launch.”
Jett whistled. “With only half the lifeboats launched, we are looking at somewhere between one and three thousand souls still onboard.”
“That seems likely, Lieutenant.” Eddie spoke as if through gritted teeth, and Jett wondered if he was starting to understand the gravity of the situation.
“What can we expect in the Atrium?”
He’d already reviewed the map and layout of the ship, but he wanted to hear it from Eddie.
“There is a large, central staircase. You will ascend four levels and exit through a set of double doors. The hall beyond them leads directly to the Bridge and Command Center.”
“Understood. Time to move out.”
A wail resurged as Jett lay a hand upon the door. His team flanked him and a star exploded beyond the wooden barrier.
Jett opened the door enough to poke his head through and shine his flashlight around.
And in his helmet, Eddie gasped.