Chapter 89

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Once inside the airlock, the smell became unmistakable: the rot of human flesh. Connor tossed another glow stick out of the airlock, revealing a stunted cargo hold and steps leading up.

Except “up” was to his right, with the wreck’s starboard side dug into the ground.

He listened, but the only noise was the dull clomp of booted feet on the hull and his own boots scraping along the tilted airlock wall.

In the cargo bay, crates were still held in place in the cargo hold, although the restraining straps looked frayed and rotted. Long, silvery strands crisscrossed the open space. It reminded Connor of the strange spiderwebs Earth bugs had created in zero gravity in their first days in space.

A chilling shudder of revulsion ran through him, despite the heat.

On this twisted planet, he didn’t want to know what created such strands.

The light of the glow stick didn’t quite reach the forward section of the cargo bay, but what he saw was still promising: ammunition, munitions, and other supplies that should still be intact.

Connor tossed another stick through the strands, putting a little extra on the throw to get through.

To his surprise, the stick bounced off the strands rather than tearing them, thudding to the deck and sliding to starboard.

But the glow was enough to reveal something surprising.

He edged into the cargo hold to be sure of what he was seeing, then smiled. “You guys hear me up there?”

“Loud and clear.” Kalpana’s voice sounded like she was smiling.

“Maybe we’ve already justified this trip.”

“How’s that?”

“There’s a vehicle down here in the cargo hold. Looks like it has light armor and it’s built for speed, but it’s in a lot better shape than the ship.”

“We’ve got a ride home?”

“I’ll leave that to Yemi to determine. It’s still latched in place. And we’ll have to clean an infestation out before we go near it.”

“Got our own infestation out here.”

A fourth red dot on the visor showed that the big bugs hadn’t given up.

Connor pulled his computer and started the stopwatch, then shifted along the wall until he had an idea of how to climb the ladder up. “I’m heading to the top deck now.”

He flicked on his flashlight and climbed, coming out of the cargo hold next to the hatch into engineering. It was closed, but he had the sense that it was a big “u”-shaped compartment that occupied the rear of the ship.

His light caught an open area that must be the galley, and another across from it that looked like the bathroom. A few more open hatches must have been crew quarters.

The ship was meant to operate lean and for short periods of time. People would go crazy in such tight quarters before long.

Something echoed through the hull.

After a second, Connor realized it was the sniper rifle. Kalpana must be lying prone, bracing the weapon.

He hurried forward, listening, watching for anything threatening.

But it was an abandoned ship.

Something in the galley got his attention, and he climbed up to get a better look inside but slowed when the smell of rotten flesh grew stronger.

Dark streaks ran across the port-side wall.

When he followed those streaks to the passageway-facing wall, he spotted a body. It was crumpled and the skull was cracked.

They must have had an impact that threw the ship to the left before it ended up on the right. That impact would have thrown the man—it was too big to have been a woman—against the wall, cracked his skull, and then…

Connor edged over. The skull was barely connected.

If the cracked bone hadn’t been enough to kill the man, the broken neck would’ve finished him.

Whoever it had been knew style. Dark cargo pants, combat boots, and a leather jacket had mostly survived the years. Desiccated brown-gold skin stretched over the bones, and black hair hung from the broken scalp.

There was a patch on the jacket: a laughing, horned devil.

It had to be a mercenary, then. Although Connor had never heard of another mercenary team with any variation of devil in their name, no military or security unit would touch a name so provocative.

People wanted to feel protected, not threatened.

Unless they hired mercenaries.

Connor cut the patch off and tossed that in his backpack, then checked the jacket and found a dead pocket computer, a broken locket hanging from a silver necklace, and a pistol. It was the same pistol he carried, which was troubling.

The pistol Connor carried hadn’t gone into production until about twenty years ago, and the one he now held was in good shape.

He shoved the weapon, locket, and computer into his backpack and headed forward.

Another corpse had suffered a similar fate in one of the crew cabins: blood and broken bones.

It took some effort to squeeze through the cockpit hatch. There was another corpse strapped into the pilot’s seat. Long, wispy, yellow hair hung from the skull.

Connor turned the seat around: a woman. Her neck had been snapped on impact.

Something seemed wrong with her eye sockets—

A black shape slithered out, long and sinuous, and dropped to the floor. Connor backed away, and the thing twisted around, baring sharp, white teeth and an eyeless, pointy head.

He reached for one of his swords, but the thing sped out of the open hatch.

If the thing had been at the corpses, it could have sped along their decomposition.

Just like Mosiah had said might have happened.

What did the old man really know? Was this all a game for him?

Connor checked his stopwatch: a little over five minutes.

Time was running out.

He searched the other two stations, but the co-pilot and commander had apparently made it off the ship.

Or they’d died at Mosiah’s abandoned ships.

How many corpses had they come across so far? Eight? Ten?

A decent-sized operation, certainly.

But the real answers Connor needed would be in the engineering section.

He headed back, careful that the ugly snake-thing wasn’t still around, and pried the engineering hatch open.

The place was a wreck, and it seemed likely at least some radiation had escaped, so he moved as quickly as caution allowed. The thing he wanted would be in a secure room…

Someone had left the secure room hatch open. The data cores he’d come looking for were gone.

All that remained was a long-dead pocket computer with a shattered display.

Connor tossed the device into his backpack and slipped out, shaking his head.

He’d come for answers but found none. Would the vehicle and ammunition be enough to save him from Selen’s wrath?

He would find out soon enough.