Wasteland of flint

amplification.

A huge space sprang into view, curving walls looming overhead and the heavy, blunt-nosed shape of a shuttle filling the darkness to the right, a pale light gleaming in the cockpit windows. Directly ahead of the two Marines, three crumpled shapes in z-suits were sprawled on the decking only a meter or two from some kind of an access hatch. Gretchen felt a creeping chill at the loose, floppy limbs of the suited bodies.

'Maggie, what is behind that hatch?' Gretchen was whispering again.

'The starboard power, data and environmental venting lines.' The Hesht was distracted, staring at her displays. 'Wait one, wait one…'

Gretchen ignored her, watching in sick fascination as Fitzsimmons advanced on the bodies, the glare of his suit light throwing them in sharp relief against the corrugated decking. The Marine paused, gun high, and gave the side of one of the helmets a soft kick with his boot. There was no sound, but the glassine helmet rolled over, revealing emptiness. The suit tag read PГ‚TECATL.

'The chief engineer,' Magdalena said after a moment. 'PГўtecatl, Susan Alexandra. Company employee, six years. Master's chief certification and engineer aboard the Palenque for three years.'

'Sergeant, check all the suit seals.' Hadeishi's voice was very calm and even over the channel. 'Sho-sa Kosho, please halt the movement of the engineering team toward the Palenque.'

Fitzsimmons's gloved fingertips slid back the metal plate covering the environmental controls on the empty z- suit. A row of faint green lights appeared. 'Suit integrity intact, sir.'

Gretchen sat back in her seat, a tiny bead of blood oozing from her lip. Damn.

'Check the other two,' Hadeishi said in a conversational tone. 'Deckard, advance to the power panel door and open the accessway. Isoroku-san, please observe heicho Deckard's suit camera.'

A distant Hai! echoed in the silence on the bridge.

Fitzsimmons stood up, his camera view swinging to check the rest of the boat bay. Though his shipgun was still at high port, Gretchen thought the man had ceased to worry about something leaping out of the darkness at him.

'Captain Hadeishi…' She started to say, but the commander met her eye and shook his head slightly.

'The Palenque is now under level-two quarantine, Anderssen- tzin.' He said quietly. 'Something consumed the men inside those z-suits after they had a sealed environment. We must presume everyone aboard is in the same danger – indeed, they may already be exposed – and we cannot risk the Cornuelle as well.'

'How long -' Gretchen was almost immediately interrupted by Magdalena sinking a claw into her shoulder, and Isoroku's voice grumbling over the engineering channel.

'Hadeishi-san, look at the feed from Deckard's suit.' The engineer's voice sounded both depressed and filled with righteous anger. 'Sloppy civilian contractors…' He muttered.

Deckard's v-feed showed the inside of the utility run, a circular space filled with the heavy blue shapes of air and water returns, the darker reddish channels of data feeds and the charred black traces of power conduit.

'What happened to this stuff?' Deckard snorted, poking at the ruin inside the utility tunnel with the tip of his rifle. 'It's all burned up!'

'Stay alert, Heicho.' Fitzsimmons's voice was very sharp on the comm, and the sergeant was almost immediately in the accessway, shining his lamp up and down the shaft. 'Back up and cover the boat bay. Thai-i Isoroku, are you getting a good feed from my camera?'

The sergeant panned his lamps slowly over the tangled mess, letting the engineer get a good look.

On the bridge of the Cornuelle, the captain leaned on the arm of his chair, watching Isoroku's face twist in thought on the v-feed from engineering. 'Well?'

The engineer scowled into the pickup. His bald head was shining with a faint, fine sheen of sweat. 'Poor materials, Captain.' A thick finger stabbed at a screen out of the field of view. 'We'll need a sample, but I'll say now the material used to insulate and EM-screen the power conduits was substandard – using some kind of organic in the composite. Something the weapon attacked and stripped away.' Isoroku shrugged his heavy shoulders. 'The conduit temperature spiked from all the waste heat, and then the superconductors failed and power went out.'

'Did conduit failure shut down the fusion plant?' Hadeishi was smoothing his beard again.

'Unlikely, kyo.' The engineer looked off-screen. 'All three of those suits have engineering cert badges on them. Perhaps the attack started on the starboard side, power started to fail unexpectedly and they started a reactor shutdown, then moved to see what was happening.'

Hadeishi nodded to himself, sighing. 'And fell dead on the way, consumed.'

'Captain?' Gretchen had risen up in her seat, tucking one leg under. 'We've found something interesting.'

'Yes?'

'There are higher levels of waste products in the hangar bay,' Magdalena said, her throaty voice rolling and rumbling. 'Complex carbon chains, waste gases, long chain organics. The sensors on the Marines' suits are starting to pick them up. And…'

Hadeishi raised one eyebrow and leaned forward. 'And what?'

Gretchen tapped a control on the display panel and a section of video doubled, then trebled in size. A window, glowing with light, and a shadow against a bulkhead were plain to see. 'There's someone alive inside the shuttle.'

'Clip on.' Gunso Fitzsimmons tossed Deckard a monofil line tab. The corporal caught the metal hook deftly and snugged the line to his belt with the ease of long practice. Both Marines had dialed down the audio on their comm sets, so the argument on the bridge of the Cornuelle was reduced to a dull thunder in the background.

'Clipped,' Deckard replied after testing the line. He slung the angular black shape of his shipgun over one shoulder, and adjusted his gloves, bringing magnetic surfaces around to the palms. Fitzsimmons removed the little winch from his belt and adhered the metal box to the doorframe of the power conduit accessway. 'Anchored.'

'Anchors away, then.' Deckard grinned, white teeth visible through the faceplate of his suit. He kicked off from the wall and sailed across the boat bay. As he approached the nose of the shuttle, the Marine tucked in his feet and rolled. Now feet first, he slipped past the window and reached out with both hands. The gloves slipped along the pitted, rusted surface of the shuttle, then slid to a halt.

'Quietly now,' Fitzsimmons breathed over the combat channel. 'Show me what's inside.' Deckard spidered up to the forward window of the shuttle and paused just out of sight of anyone inside. Tugging one of his shoulder cameras free, the marine eased the filament up to the edge of the window. The sergeant, watching the spyeye view on a tiny, postage-stamp sized popup inside his helmet, made a scooting motion with his hand. 'Just a hair more…'

Then he could see inside the cluttered, dirty cockpit of the shuttle, and – through the pressure door into the main cabin – two people sitting on facing piles of bedding. As he watched, the man tossed a playing card onto a pile between himself and the woman. Moisture was dripping from the walls of the shuttle, and the sergeant made a face. Mold? They're certainly alive. Not disintegrated at all…

Taking a breath, Fitzsimmons dialed up the volume on his comm.

'…the ship is entirely safe,' Gretchen said, again, her voice rising slightly. 'We've had men aboard for two hours and no one has been affected, there are waste gases loose in the boat bay, and they have not been destroyed -'

Hadeishi, his patience fraying – though only the sergeant or one of the crew would have been able to tell – interrupted. 'Doctor Anderssen, I will not put my men, or my ship, at risk. Until we know exactly what happened and why, I will not put another man or woman aboard the Palenque.'

'Ah, sir? Hadeishi-san?' Fitzsimmons made a face in the privacy of his suit. Luckily, the cameras only pointed forward, not at his grinning mug. 'Chu-sa?'

'Hai, Gunso?'

'There are at least two people alive inside the shuttle, sir. They've been there quite awhile. Shall I go aboard and see what they know?'

'No,' Hadeishi said, a slight edge in his voice. 'If the contaminant is still loose on the Palenque, you'll only place them in danger. Hook up your exterior comm to the shuttle's