Footsteps Of Giants - 3. Chapter 3

Chapter III

September 27th, 2143 A.D.

Orbital Platform Leonidas

Low Orbit Over Neptune

Sector F: Biotech Research

“I just can’t believe it,” Crowe exclaimed after we explained what had happened on the bridge. “Admiral Lane is dead?”

“He was shot in the face. We can assume he won’t be joining us anytime soon.” I replied bluntly.

The three of us were crammed into Crowe’s quarters, which would have been a fairly spacious room if not for the boxes and paperwork strewn about. I noticed that a few of the documents were about cloning, a process that had recently been outlawed on Earth.

“I guess not,” Crowe said. He gazed at Ivy up and down. Ivy crossed his arms, eyes refusing to meet Crowe’s gaze. It seemed as if Ivy didn’t want the attention. “How’ve you been, Ivy?”

“Busy,” he grumbled. “Anyway, what’s this big development you discovered?”

Crowe slowly limped over to one of the larger boxes in the room. He rustled through some papers, throwing reports all over the place.

“Where the hell is it?” He tossed a box aside and it crashed to the floor. He tore open another box, and ruffled through it with a fine toothcomb. I looked up at Ivy, his eyes were downcast, and his shoulders slumped. A frown etched into his face, then, “Here it is!”

He held up what looked like a small disc. It was about two inches wide, square with round corners. A semi-transparent blue.

“That’s what we came here for?” I exclaimed. “What we need are weapons.”

“Give him a chance, Adam,” Ivy implored. “He might not seem like it, but the man’s a genius.”

“Ha! I knew ya still liked me!” Crowe said with a huge, toothy grin. Ivy sighed and shook his head.

Walking to the other side of the room, Crowe slid the small disc into a reader. There was a ‘BEEP’, and the sound of the disc reader warming up. A panel on the wall slid to one side, revealing a view screen with black with glowing blue text on it. A small touchscreen keyboard below it.

I stepped closer so I could see the text more clearly.

Recordings—Personal files of Gerald Crowe

Playback [Y/N]?

Crowe reached forward and pressed the ‘Y’ on the keyboard, and I leaped back in surprise as a holocam recording materialized directly where I’d been standing.

“Crowe! What the hell!” Ivy’s anger rose from the bottom of his throat.

The recording was of Ivy. Relaxing in his quarters.

In his underwear.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Crowe blushed. He nervously pressed ‘Next’ on the screen. Crow scrolled through four more recordings of Ivy before he finally found the one he was looking for. “Ah, here we are.”

It appeared to be a cargo bay, but I couldn’t be sure. Several large crates had been stacked against one wall, the type that a supply vessel delivers. Crowe tapped on the screen, and the holo sped up considerably.

Loading machines came and went, adding and removing crates. It all seemed fairly routine to me.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked, doubt in my voice.

“Here it is,” Crowe slowed the recording to normal speed at the point where a squad of soldiers entered the cargo bay.

A scientist in a lab coat entered the room after the soldiers, followed by two men wearing business suits. The scientist walked over to a control panel and put his hand flat against it. After a moment, a large section of the floor opened up, revealing a huge hidden compartment.

“Is there audio with this recording?” I asked.

“It’s all distorted,” Crowe replied. “You can’t understand a word of it.”

A crate that was at least four times larger than the standard size ascended from out of the compartment. The word ‘Restricted’ printed on it in large, bold letters. A cargo loader lifted the crate, and moved it into the freight elevator. The scientist, soldiers, and suited men followed it. The recording ended just after the doors to the cargo elevator closed.

“This recording was made two days before the initial outbreak,” Crowe spoke in a whisper, as if he expected those soldiers to burst into the room. “From the security logs, that elevator stopped on the second deck of Sector J.”

“That’s right in the middle of the quarantined zone!” Ivy said.

“And that was the first deck with which we lost communication,” Crowe explained. It all seemed to make sense. Whatever had caused all of this was in that crate, I was sure of it.

“Where did that crate come from?” I asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Crowe shrugged, shaking his head. “There’s no record of a crate that large in that cargo bay. There’s also no record of that compartment under the floor. The day before, there was a survey mission down on the planet. One of the shuttles had an engine problem and had to return.”

“What’s so strange about that?” Ivy asked.

“It wouldn’t have been strange at all,” he replied. “Except for the fact that the security files in the shuttle bay at the time it should have docked were deleted. Someone wants to keep that crate a secret.”

“So what’s our next move?” I asked.

“I would say we go after that crate,” Ivy began. “Although, vulnerable as we are, we probably wouldn’t make it to within four decks of the cargo bay. We’d be risking infection just by walking out the door.”

“By we, you mean you guys, right? I’m not leaving this room.” Crowe was spooked, and to be honest, I could understand why. But, if we didn’t do something, none of us were going to make it off this platform alive.

“Get it together, man!” I barked. “It’s our duty to-”

“…Our duty? Speak for yourself!” Crowe said. “My duty is to maintain the ship’s essential systems, a job I can do from right here. And I have access to all files, datalogs, and cameras, so I’d be most useful with my fat ass parked right in that chair.” He jabbed his finger in the direction of the chair that Ivy was sitting in. Ivy was startled for a moment to have our attention suddenly on him. I thought about pointing out that he didn’t have access to all files, because someone blocked out the info about the cargo crate. I hated to admit it, as much as I would’ve liked to have this powerhouse by my side in a fight, Crowe was more useful here.

“Fine, stay here,” I said. “That doesn’t change the fact that Ivy and I won’t get far on our own.”

“Give me a second,” Crowe grumbled. He lumbered to the touchscreen keyboard. His fingers a fury of motion, filling the viewscreen with the text of what looked like highly complicated coding. It could’ve been gibberish, for all I knew.

After a few moments, the holocam recording transformed into a 3D layout of the deck we were on. A red line traced from the room we were in, down the main elevator a few decks, through a few halls, and ending in a large room I didn’t recognize.

“Here, look at this,” Crowe said. “This is the most direct route to the hover-tram.”

“I know how to get to the tram, Crowe,” Ivy retorted angrily. “Why the hell would we go to the tram? We’d have to go through part of the quarantined area!”

“You know of a better way to get to the armory?” Crowe pressed another button, and the red line shot straight down what I had to assume was the track. It stopped only a short distance from the Sector J armory.

“That’s great,” I quipped sarcastically. “So we descend down the elevator to Hell, make a mad dash down the terrifying hallways of death, to the tram which may or may not be crawling with the infected, to try to reach the one place everyone would want to go when the shit hits the fan. Stellar plan. Afterward, let’s jump out the airlock for kicks.”

“I don’t hear you offering any other ideas,” Crowe grumbled.

“Maintenance storage,” I said. Ivy’s eyes brightened. “No one would think to look there, and inside there’s bound to be a few SynthTech suits at the very least.”

Ivy considered the suggestion. “That might work,” he said. “Crowe, can you alter the route to the closest maintenance storage room?”

Crowe tapped furiously on the keyboard, and the route altered. It now led to the room next to the armory.

“Looks like there’s no easy way out of this,” he grunted. “Here, it’s not much, but take this.”

Crowe handed me a compact plasma riveter. It was a device used to patch breaches in a ship’s hull.

“You want us to fix the ship?”

“If you set it to the highest setting, the plasma rivets act like high velocity plasma bolts.”

“So it’s essentially a plasma pistol?”

“It doesn’t have the range of a pistol, but it should be pretty powerful.”

“Alright then,” I checked the charge on my makeshift weapon, saw that it was at eighty-seven percent, and stuck it into the waistband of my pants. “Ivy, let’s go.”

“We should have a secret knock.” Crowe suggested. “So I know that it’s you when you return.”

“Yeah, I’ll knock, and then yell, ‘Crowe, open the fucking door!’”.

Crowe grimaced, but didn’t say anything. He gripped the large handle on the door, turned it, and heaved it open. I thought it was strange that this door wasn’t computerized, but then Crowe was an eccentric man.

The door slammed shut behind us and the locking mechanism engaged with a series of muffled clicks. The corridor outside felt eerily calm and I couldn’t help but imagine monsters around every corner.

“Where the hell did you find that guy?” I asked Ivy. “He gives me the creeps on an epic scale.”

“Things with Crowe,” he said, then looked away from me. “They’re complicated, to say the least.”

“And why does he have videos of you in your underwear?”

“I’ll explain later,” he said, visibly uncomfortable.

“Fine. But I’m going to hold you to that.”

We made our way toward the main elevator. I pulled out the riveter and held it tightly. It was heavy in my hand, but the quiet was doing nothing for the uneasy feeling in my head.

We made it back to the elevator without any trouble. The only incident worth noting was when we passed a vent and the air recycler kicked in. I may or may not have squeaked and almost shot the vent, before Ivy stopped me. There seemed to be less people in the halls now, and I vaguely wondered where they all went.

Ivy pressed the open button on the elevator. The light on the button turned red and made a negative tone.

“That’s odd,” Ivy furrowed his brow. He pressed the button again. “Damn!”

“Why are you leaving us?” someone croaked from behind me. I spun around to find a middle aged man wearing a thick, warm coat. Something seemed off about him, but I figured it was just my nerves.

“We’re just going for some supplies,” Ivy said.

A boy of about sixteen joined the man, followed by an elderly woman.

“You don’t…” the elderly woman started.

“Have to…” the boy continued.

“Leave us…” the man finished.

I raised the riveter and aimed it at the closest one’s head. It was the first man who had approached us.

“Stay back!” I yelled.

Gasps from among the gathered people in the hall. At least some of them were not infected. “Ivy, get that door open!”

Ivy removed a panel from the wall, and threw it onto the deck.

The infected shambled closer.

“I said stay back!” my voice quivered, betraying my primal fear. The infected man took another step. I decided to give him a warning shot and aimed at his arm.

POP!

The riveter blew a hole in his arm, straight through the bone, and into the sternum of the infected elderly woman. The man staggered back a few steps, and the elderly woman fell to the ground. She twitched for a moment, then lay still.

“Shit, Adam! A warning next time?” Ivy complained.

‘ZAP’, a spark exploded where Ivy was working. “Ow!”

“Is it open yet?” I asked.

“No, I just electrocuted myself!” he yelled, frantically. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if -”

The elevator chimed, and slid open.

“- It’s open.”

We rushed inside. Ivy punched the button for the deck in Sector J. The doors started to close but were moving too slow and the boy and man rushed forward. I aimed the riveter.

POP!

The man’s head blew clean off his shoulders and he collapsed. To my horror, he continued to crawl forward.

I remembered that the old woman fell when she was struck in the sternum. I took aim, and fired at the spot where the man’s heart would be, killing him. The boy was at the door. I kicked him in the chest, then shot him in the heart. The door finally closed, and the elevator plunged downward.