Blood Impulse

Part 22.2 - SEARCH AND RESCUE

Wilkerson Sector, Warhawk S-212

The broken metal bones of the honorable Battleship Gargantia no longer truly resembled a ship at all. Subspace had taken its toll, and there was no hope of repair, the hulk clawed and torn into an ugly jagged mess. Even still, an observation of the atmosphere and temperature aboard the Gargantia's remains revealed the possibility of life.

The rescue team consisted of two ships, a pilot to each, then three Marines, two engineers and a medic divided between them. The Warhawks flew side by side as they examined the Gargantia's gray corpse. Her landing bay had been crushed out of existence by an undeterminable force. One of the engines had been torn away – nowhere within sight – and another's armor had been sheared off, exposing its ruined internal mechanics. Fuel and engine coolant drifted about in droplets, glittering as the reconships' running lights flew by.

Only a few airlocks had been left intact, forcing the rescue team to dock at what was left of the Gargantia's amidships. Given the deformations that plagued the ship, it took considerable effort to force the airlocks open.

Every member of the away team had donned an environmental suit, concealing them all in tasteless gray. The Marines were armed with rifles and sidearms while the engineers hefted plasma torches and the medic carried a field kit of medical supplies. The team was well equipped, even if none of them felt that way.

Stepping aboard dead ships always felt like walking on one's grave. Given their situation, at odds with Command, to the Singularity's crew, it felt like an unwilling look into an inevitable future.

Sighing, Chief Ty tried to banish those thoughts. Hopelessness and surrender were as dangerous as fear. "I suggest we head aft first. Base will want the main computer's records, and the longer we wait, the more corrupted they'll be." He knew these Keeper-class ships, and in such sorry condition, the remaining power fluctuations of the emergency batteries would begin destabilize the computer's memory banks.

"Lead the way," Corporal Yankovich answered. He checked the safety on his rifle as they started to move, but knew they were unlikely to encounter any hostiles. Most of the crew was long dead, and any remaining survivors would likely welcome them with open arms, desperate to escape a slow death aboard the Gargantia's wreck.

The crisp white lights of the boarding party's electric torches raked along the corridor as they moved. Uneven, the floor was ridged and buckled while the ceiling – if such terms had real meaning without gravity – dipped at random intervals, the leftovers of major structural damage. The decks above and below had been folded up onto each other, and the eerily empty hallways were smeared with color, even as the rescue party tried to ignore the rusty hues and oily textures.

"Reminds me of the starboard bow," Ezcurra said absently, eyeing the wasteland of material that entombed them. The cascade collapse in the Aragonian Sector had dealt similar damage to the Singularity, but this damage was deeper and more complete – a snapshot of what had almost been. Still, it was differences, not the similarities that struck him most vividly. The Singularity had been noisy, groaning with protest against further collapse, but the Gargantia was silent, dead.

The corridor was cold and uninviting. In the long hours it had taken the Singularity to arrive, the emergency batteries had run out, leaving the away team's bright flashlights to cleave through perfect darkness.

It didn't take long for the team to be met by an immovable wall of steel wreckage. Ty swung his flashlight down the other hallways that branched off from the junction. One simply pinched closed and another was lined twisted tears in the enclosing metal. Aiming his flashlight down one of the rifts, the beam didn't reach the bottom. "Don't fall in," he advised, moving on to study the most intact wall. It wasn't smooth, the metal rippled and torn to a degree that he knew the ship's death throes must have been deafening.