The first time out, we fooled the Mogats with a cat-and-mouse chase and a single body. We didn’t need luck that time, the SEALs were more skilled at playing that kind of game than my Marines.
I stood on that scaffold with the torn section of hull above me and the vastness of space as a backdrop. I watched the explorer pick its way out of the space graveyard, nudging the ruins of fighter craft out of its way. Ten men had stayed behind with me. Some of the men waited beside me on the scaffold. We watched the explorer, none of us saying a word. It was a small ship, and it soon vanished out of sight. A moment later, I saw the flash of a distant anomaly and knew that the ship had broadcasted.
Watching the anomaly fade, I realized that the silence in my helmet had a profoundly sobering effect on me.
Marines generally chatter over an open interLink. This time they stood silent and still. I wanted to tell them that everything would work out. I wanted to tell them that they would be back on the
“Okay, ladies. Switch on those Stealth kits, we have work to do,” I said. “The first man I catch slacking gets a particle-beam enema.” For the average Marine clone, hearing a sergeant growl offered more comfort than a glass of mother’s milk.
Last time out, I rode up the gash in a sled. This time we kicked off the scaffolding and leaped up three floors. We did not take spotlights or laser torches. We took satchels with clothing, oversized stealth kits, and particle- beam pistols.
Our props for this delicate performance included empty suits of soft-shelled armor. The combat armor used by Marines was not bulletproof, but it was rigid. Engineers, firemen, and other noncombat personnel wore flexible armor. It was not as pliable as cloth, but it was a lot softer than the metal-resin alloy used in our armor.
“You boys ready for the cadaver roundup?” I asked. We split up in groups and searched the ship.
The next task on the agenda was morbid but necessary. We went scouting for bodies.
When the U.A. sank this boat, the bodies in the open areas were flushed into space. We would need to scour closed rooms and compartments now. I started my search in a latrine on the third deck, just behind the birthing area.
The entire ship would have been pitch-black had I not used the night-for-day lens, but the latrine seemed particularly dark. Maybe it was the small size of the room and the way the stalls reached out like fingers. The darkness just seemed to close in around me. There was something eerie about the empty latrine. It reminded me of walking across the barracks late at night. Stainless-steel urinals hung from the walls, the sinks were pristine, and the floor was clean, but no one moved. I went to look in the toilet stalls.
I found the first of my corpses wedged into a stall. The man hovered an inch or two above the seat. When the lasers struck the ship, he had probably just finished his business. His pants were up and sealed. His neck was broken. Depending on his luck, that might have killed him. Otherwise, he might have suffocated, or died as his own blood pressure caused his body to explode, or froze to death. Death in space came in many flavors, all of them fast.
The man’s blood hung frozen just above the floor like an icy web of beads. Walking in on the scene, you might have thought he’d vomited up glass.
I unpacked the top half of a soft-shell suit and used it like a net to scoop up the blood. The brittle strands snapped and shattered into beads inside the armor.
Then I pulled the dead sailor out of the stall and dressed him, and his blood, in the armor. The man’s body was frozen as stiff as stone in the absolute chill of space. Had I hit him against the wall with enough force, he might have shattered into tiny pieces like a pane of glass. As I tried to force him into the suit, flaps of his skin kept snapping like crackers between my fingers, and I eventually had to break his arms off and shove them into the sleeves of the armor separated from his torso. Once I finished dressing the sailor, I sealed his armor. It pressurized, read his body temperature, and heated itself automatically. It would take this boy a long time to thaw.
“How is it going out there?” I called out over the interLink.
“I feel like a ghoul,” one of my men responded.
“Are you eating them or dressing them, Marine?” I asked.
“Dressing them.”
“Ghouls don’t dress bodies, they eat them,” I said.
“Then I feel like a specking grave robber,” the Marine returned.
“You’re not fleecing them, are you?” I asked.
That Marine did not answer.
“They’re so frigging stiff,” another Marine commented. “I keep snapping off this guy’s fingers.”
“I had to break my guy’s arms off,” another Marine said.
“This seems kind of disrespectful,” another Marine added.
“They’re not going to fool anybody. No one is going to believe that these stiffs are alive.” It was the one who said he felt like a ghoul. “Maybe we could paint them white and sell them as marble statues.”
“The Mogats won’t be watching for flexibility,” I said.
I checked my first puppet. Some of the skin from his face had thawed, but his face was no longer attached to his skull. I had broken his legs and arms at the joints so that they would fold in the right places. I shook his helmet and saw liquid blood.
I found two more bodies in the halls beyond the birthing area and dressed them. It was unpleasant work.
“Okay, report. How many puppets do we have?” I called over the interLink.
“I have four ready,” one team called in.
“We have five and a half stiffies,” Private Philips, always the joker, reported. He had partnered up with Sergeant Thomer. I would not have trusted him on this mission without Thomer looking after him.
“Thomer, what does he mean by a half?” I asked.
“Don’t ask,” said Thomer.
“I’m asking,” I said.
“Philips thought it would be funny to kick one of the sti…puppets while I was loading him in his armor. He went flying backward and snapped in half.”
“He was an officer,” Philips explained in his own defense.
“Just shove the legs into some pants and seal him up,” I said.
“That might be a problem,” Thomer said. “His ass hit a bulkhead and shattered.” I heard the other men laughing over the interLink.
“We have nine,” the last team radioed in.
“Ass kiss,” one of the men muttered. I was pretty sure it was Philips.
“We need this puppet show to happen just the way we discussed. Any questions?” I asked.
“How many Mogats do we get to off?” Private Philips asked.
“Our puppets are supposed to be Navy engineers,” I said. “We have to keep this simple.”
“Ten of them?” Philips asked.
“None if we can help it,” I said.
“Philips is right. We have to kill some of them,” another Marine complained.
“Not a one,” I said.
“Ahhh, c’mon, Master Sergeant, how about just one?” Philips pled.
“Well, yeah, maybe one,” I said. “But open your speck receptacle one more time, Philips, and I’ll load you in a puppet suit,” I growled. “Any more smart questions, assholes?”
No one said anything. I liked their attitude.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
