Wasteland of flint

Gretchen and Magdalena looked up. They had been poring over the shipyard diagrams and materials lists used in the construction documents on file for the Palenque. Gretchen rubbed her face. The maze of ship documents was giving her a headache. 'I -'

'Command panels are made with an electrically active composite, which is not a long chain polymer, Mister Bandao.' Lieutenant Kosho's cool, correct voice intruded on the circuit. 'The range of materials removed from the ship is rather distinct.'

Gretchen's glasses flickered and Hadeishi's private channel glyph was winking again.

'Yes?' she said, turning away from Magdalena. She was starting to feel sick.

'We think the ship was attacked by a 'cleaner' agent of some kind.' Mitsuharu's voice was very calm and steadying. 'Only certain molecules and sets of longer-chain compounds were affected. Particularly, those which form organic life. Paper, glue, bedsheets…all those things were swept up in the general criteria.'

'A weapon.' Gretchen felt a band of tension release from her chest. Vague fears crystallized and she felt relieved. See, she thought, the universe is filled with reason. 'Something from the planet?'

'Perhaps.' Hadeishi sounded thoughtful. 'There have been reports of illegal activity in this region, but no human miners would have access to this kind of a nanoweapon. You should continue searching the ship. Perhaps something survived in one of the lab habitats.'

'Of course,' Gretchen turned back to Magdalena. The Hesht was talking Bandao and Parker through the removal of an access panel under the command display. 'Maggie?'

'Just a moment. Yes, Mister Parker, use some muscle. You won't break anything. There! Now look inside.'

Parker hesitated, heart rate spiking on the monitor, and his pistol and a detached lamp went first. In the dark cavity, ranks of crystalline system modules sat quietly, without showing any sign of activity.

'Still no power,' Maggie grumbled to herself. 'Yausheer Bandao, please take out a v- pad, if you have one. I will send a detailed ship schematic to you. I want you to go down to engineering and start checking the power-runs out from the batteries and fusion plant.'

Parker muttered something obscene and crawled out of the access panel. Bandao said nothing. Both men kicked down the long central access passageway, gliding expertly from stanchion to stanchion, their suit lamps flaring on the white panels and dark openings onto surrounding decks.

'Kosho-san?' Gretchen looked across the dim, softly glowing command deck of the Cornuelle. 'Could your Marines search the rest of the ship?'

'Hai,' the exec answered. 'I will send another pair across to secure the bridge while Deckard and Fitzsimmons search deck by deck.'

Parker grunted, putting his shoulder into a length of hexsteel pipe. The pipe extended the manual locking release on a massive pressure hatch marked with radiation warning symbols. Bandao had his helmet pressed against the metal surface, listening. The pipe squealed, the sound tinny and faint after echoing through the pilot's gloves and suit.

'Nothing,' Bandao said over the open channel. 'The bolts aren't backing out.'

'Is there another way in?' Parker spoke to the air.

On the Cornuelle, Gretchen shook her head. Magdalena's entire control panel was covered with schematics showing the engineering space, the reactor cores and every crawl space, access tunnel and passage in the aft half of the Palenque. The Hesht's ears were twitching in frustration.

'No, Mister Parker,' Gretchen said wearily, only half-listening to the men on the ship. 'Lieutenant Isoroku says the reactor has gone through an emergency shutdown procedure. That hatch is the only access, and the manual lock mechanism should work.'

'Sorry chief, there's no joy here.' Parker worked the pipe free from the locking bar, and then slammed the length of metal into the hatch in frustration. There was another tinny echo. The pilot swore again, and this time he did not bother to keep his voice down. 'We'll have to burn through this door to get to the other side. How thick is the damned thing?'

Gretchen listened to the other channel for a moment, chewing on her lip. 'Too thick, Mister Parker. It's supposed to restrain the core in case of a failure.'

'What do we do, then?' Bandao stood up, the pilot's lamp throwing a huge shadow behind him. 'Run the ship from the batteries? We can't get at them either. Everything's through this door.'

Gretchen sat up straight in her chair, a vague thought trying to worm free of her tired brain. 'Maggie, show me the electrical connections for the hatch mechanism.'

The Hesht nodded sharply and a tap-tap of her foreclaw zoomed a section of the schematic into full view. Gretchen hunched over the panel, fingertips brushing over the band at her wrist. A tickling feeling of clarity welled up, banishing her fatigue. She punched the schematic onto the v-channel shared by the team on the Palenque and the watchers on the Cornuelle. 'Isoroku-san, do you see the display on your three?'

A muttered acknowledgement echoed over the Cornuelle-side channel from Engineering. The thai-i was down in his engine room, watching a duplicate of the video feeds in front of Gretchen. 'I do. Yes, I believe such an approach would succeed. Sho-sa Kosho?'

'I agree,' the exec said. She had her own echo of the schematics. Kosho turned to look inquiringly at the captain. Mitsuharu frowned.

'Hayes-tzin, threat status?' The commander was very slowly stroking his beard.

'No change, Hadeishi-san.' The armaments officer made a sketchy bow from his position on the bridge.

'Two ratings and a work carrel,' Hadeishi said, nodding to his exec. 'They'll need the cargo space for the power cell.'

Gretchen turned back to her panel and toggled to Parker and Bandao's channel. 'Parker, an engineering crew from the Cornuelle will be joining you shortly with a portable fuel-cell unit.' She glanced down at the diagrams. Maggie's long, claw-tipped finger slid under her arm, indicating a section of corridor. 'You can speed things up, I think, if you move – ah, about five meters back down the corridor – there will be an access plate – ah, from your current vantage, overhead – marked with an engineering glyph. Remove the plate and you'll find a pair of power-runs which lead to the hatch motor -'

'Understood,' Parker cut in, already moving with his length of pipe. He kicked away from the blast door and tumbled gently to fetch up near the panel. 'I see it -'

Beep beep beep!

'All units, hold position!' A raspy voice barked across the shipside channel, overriding Parker's comment. Gretchen flinched back from the panel as a series of warning glyphs flashed on her display. An audible tone silenced the quiet chatter on the bridge of the Cornuelle. 'We've found someone.'

'Who is this?' Gretchen hissed at Magdalena, waving her hand at the display board. The Hesht bared her teeth in response, almost spitting, but white claws flashed and the video feeds of all the men aboard the Palenque leapt into view on the panel.

'This is Sergeant Fitzsimmons, Anderssen-tzin.' The Marine's Skawts accent was very dry and controlled. On the medical feed, his heartbeat had ticked up a little, but his respiration was holding steady. 'V-channel six.'

'I have it,' Gretchen snapped, then she froze, grasping the image being projected from the Marine's suit camera. In comparison to the quality of the video thrown by the Company suits, Fitzsimmon's transmission was as sharp as a 3v broadcast at home. 'What -'

'Three bodies, ma'am,' the Marine said, gliding forward, his boots making a shhhhh- thup sound on the deck as he moved. The muzzle of his shipgun was not pointed at the sprawled gray-and-tan shapes on the open decking in front of him, but on the dark recesses of some enormous open space. At the very edge of his camera's field of view, Gretchen caught sight of the second Marine also making a slow advance, gun at the ready. 'They're wearing Company tags.'

'Where are they?' Gretchen muted her throat mike, whispering to Magdalena.

'The main shuttle bay, sister.' Maggie zoomed both Marine camera feeds and jacked up the ambient light