Chapter 4 – Signs of Disturbance
“More sealant here,” Kaylee said from the front of the line. She had only gone about fifty feet down the corridor leading from the stairs that had led away from the corridor outside the airlock, toward the first of the bulkhead transitions into the cargo area of the ship. “Looks like a canister of the stuff or something exploded against the blast doors, but I don’t see anything like that laying around. It’s got the door just about fully covered.”
Murissa’s low growl followed a moment later. “Someone was here, got the stuff on them. Looks like…something dragged them through the doors.”
“You can actually tell that?” Kaylee asked, sounding skeptical.
“It’s what I do,” Murissa replied with a grumbling growl, crouching near Kaylee as Shi and the others approached. Her big hand motioned along the floor, starting at the door and moving back toward Shi. “Look…this patch here, it’s got a clear channel through it leading from there to the pressure door, about the width of an average-sized humanoid. These smaller channels here to the sides of the main channel, see how they have been smeared and have four or five smaller channels in this repeating way. And here, how these smears are more noticeable around the exposed grating? This was someone’s attempt to stop from being pulled away. It’s clearly leading over the lip of the door.”
“Huh…yeah, I guess that could be what that is…” Kaylee said slowly.
Murissa’s tail twitched with annoyance. “Try stalking prey in the real world, you’d learn a lot more than you do sitting in that soft chair all the time looking at the stars.”
By this time, Shi and the others had come to a stop near the edge of the sealant, and she could clearly see the details Murissa had pointed out. Before Kaylee could respond to Murissa’s not-exactly-veiled insult, Shi spoke up. “Like a trail through blood. But you’re certain that whatever was dragged through here was humanoid?”
Murissa nodded, rising from her crouch. “Yes, commander. Shape is wrong for a quadruped or other type of animal. No signs of fur in the sealant, no claw marks anywhere either, so probably not a ferian of any breed.” Ferians were either ferakatians, like Murissa, or feradogians, more wolf-life bestial humanoids. Curiously the two races native to Feria were sexually dimorphic, just in opposite ways. Ferakatian women were larger and more aggressive than their males, who were usually on the tall side of average humanoid height, while it was just the opposite with the feradogians. To say the two species didn’t get along would be an understatement.
“Maybe they were using the sealant like some kind of improvised capture device?” Briar offered. “It’s…not exactly unheard of to have someone go mad on long journeys and start threatening the ship with their behavior. Maybe they were just trying to be merciful and not really hurt them?”
“That’s what stun sticks are for; even the worst supplied ship should have some basic defensive armaments onboard,” Kaylee said. “To repel pirates if nothing else, not that pirates would be likely to attack a DSM ship since a company ship should have a lot nastier defenses.”
Shi turned her attention to the far end of the sealant trail, and walked over to the doorway it led to, the sliding door only closed a few inches. Closer inspection told her that the sealant had gotten inside the track and stopped the door before it could fully close. Inside, the room seemed to be used for tool storage, several lockers lining the walls labeled in elvish and common. A couple of the lockers were open, some drills and bits laying scattered on the floor, along with a plasma torch and a few power cells for it.
“I don’t think it was used as a restraint. This stuff gets super hot for a few seconds when it’s activated,” Hilde said as she readied another comm relay. “If you’re trying to catch someone with it, that’s gonna be some severe chemical burns, so expect a trip to the med-bay immediately after for some serious surgery.”
More of the sealant was splattered around the room and on the tools. Shi’s arcane sight still picked up lingering magical auras in here, but nothing strong enough to actually get a good idea of what the magic did. The trail clearly led to the open locker. Shi crouched and picked up the plasma torch gingerly; there was a smear of the sealant upon it that looked rather like fingers and the palm of someone’s hand on the grip. Her eyes went from the tool to the splattering of black sealant on the floor, then she noticed a few particular circular splotches on the deckplate. Eyebrow raising, she looked up. Sure enough, through the vent grate, there were some strands of the sealant where it had…no, not splattered, it was like it had flowed through the grate!
“Murissa! Come in here,” Shi said, replacing the cutter on the floor before she stood. The ferakatian came to the door with remarkably silent steps for someone of her size wearing magnetic boots and an armored space suit, pausing at the door, but leaned in to peer around the room. Shi pointed at the floor, then the ceiling. “Am I right in my assumption that this stuff came from up there?”
Murissa gave a low rumble, her eyes going to the floor again, then to the ceiling, and then her tail thrashed anxiously. “Yessir,” she said after a moment spent staring at the ventilation grate. “This isn’t normal sealant…” she growled through clenched fangs.
Hilde had come up and squeezed herself beneath Murissa and looked around the room. “It’s…not out of the realm of possibility that there was a breach somewhere and it got carried by the vents in its liquid state…” Even she didn’t sound convinced of that, though, and her eyes lingered on the plasma cutter for a few moments. “Um, I set up another relay out here…”
“Thanks,” Shi said. There were far too many unknowns here, the sealant, or whatever it was, foremost amongst them. She tapped her comm connection back to the scout ship. “Captain, Sukimori here.” There was no response. Shi checked the signal level, which looked good. “Captain, are you there?”
“Commander, please hold a moment,” said another man’s voice, Dergwin, the dwarven comm officer. “Captain Maerrill is speaking with someone in his ready room about that ship. Transmission just came through a minute ago.”
“Copy that, I’ll wait,” Shi replied, releasing her link as she looked at Hilde and Murissa. “Well, looks like the Captain may have reached someone who knows something about this ship. We’ll have to wait and see, but I’m not moving any further just yet. Briar! Can you pick up anything else about this sealant here? Any other strange properties? Are you getting any life readings around us?”
Briar unslung his scanner again, plucked the probe out, and went to the bulkhead door to stick it into the dried goop, lips curved into a doubtful frown. Murissa and Hilde moved out of the way for Shi to exit the tool room, though Murissa lingered by the door, looking a little nervous. Briar shook his head slowly as he moved up to Shi. “It reads as the same composition that we’ve seen elsewhere. Nothing different, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you much else without a dedicated scanning setup like in the medbay on our ship. Only difference here is that it’s warmer than at the airlock and bridge. I’m reading a better atmosphere beyond this door, and a very faint power signature. Someone might have a portable generator running in there, keeping a little air recycling more than the rest of the ship.”
“Hmmm…” Shi drew one of her revolvers from her hip, flipped the gun in hand, and tapped the butt of the grip several times on the surface of the sealed door, the metallic thumps muted through her helmet. She waited a few moments, then repeated the knocks, a little harder this time. Still no response after a good thirty seconds. Frowning, she spun her revolver around and holstered it in a single motion. “No lifesigns in there, though?”
Briar shook his head. “No, sir, still nothing. But I’m still only limited to about thirty feet; beyond that everything is drowned out by interference.”
“If I may be so bold, commander,” Kaylee said, still staring at the doors, her big gun held at low-ready, “I would bet on there being some kind of messed up experiments going on here. If this is a DSM black ship, and it sure looks like what one would look like to me, then there’s probably some pretty nasty stuff hiding down there. I’m not so sure we should open those doors to find out.”
Murissa growled softly, crossing her arms over her broad chest. “Agree.” She said nothing else, but the fact that she had agreed with Kaylee about keeping the doors shut said a lot more. Shi had never known Murissa to hesitate to go into a dangerous situation in the slightest.
“Hilde? Briar? Your thoughts?” Shi asked, looking at each of them in turn.
Hilde leaned against the wall by the tool room door. “I’m curious what’s down there, yeah, but…we don’t have much information at all, and something about that sealant isn’t normal for sure.”
“I’m more worried about whether anyone is alive or not, and if they need our help,” Briar said, finally plucking his probe from the stuff on the door and replacing it in the slot on the scanner. He shifted, adjusting the med pack. “Hopefully they’re still alive, but…I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about this whole thing.”
“Hey, commander, can’t you do some kind of magic to see what’s ahead? What’s that called?” Kaylee said, sounding more hopeful. “You know, where you can see far away places?”
“Scrying,” Shi said with a shake of her head. “Divination has never been my strong suit, beyond some combat applications, anyway, and that’ll only give me a few seconds of foresight at best. I’m more of what you’d call an evoker…meaning I tend to blow stuff up. Good thought though. Briar, how about you? Is Erisaya willing to offer any insights for us?”
“Well…” Briar said, looking a little anxious behind his faceplate. “I would have to pray and perform a ritual for that kind of guidance; I can offer an augury relating to our actions…but I can already tell that something is very dangerous beyond those doors even without that. I think we all can, right?”
Shi nodded, as did Kaylee and Hilde; Murissa stood unmoving aside from a twitch of her tail. “Yeah, there’s something janky here for certain, but we won’t know what it is unless we go for a look…though I do wonder if it’s actually worth it or not.”
“Heck of a bonus for the salvage if nobody’s alive, though. Ship like this would go for a lot…even if DSM pays up to keep it quiet,” Hilde said, shifting her gear on her harness. “I bet we’d get a few months worth of pay for it, and I’m talking everyone on board our ship.”
“Yeah, right,” Kaylee replied with a snort. “Or more likely, DSM would make certain to send other ships here and blow us to pieces along with this thing if they didn’t want their secrets known.”
“When you say it like that, it just makes me want to delve into their core and see if it’s been wiped, or pull any kind of data or anything else we can from the ship and broadcast it to all corners of the net just to stick it in their eye,” Hilde said. “Hate that company…”
Shi was about to respond when her comm beeped. “Hang on, transmission incoming,” she said, tapping her comm. “Sukimori here.”
“Commander, anything to report?” asked Maerill, his voice clear, but sounding a little more strained than it had been the last time they’d spoken.
“We’re in the main corridor, just outside the bulkhead doors into the next section of the ship. More of that sealant is spread around, but we’ve not gone any further yet. We see signs of…something potentially hostile, like someone was dragged through this stuff before the doors were sealed.”
“Copy that. Proceed with caution, commander. I’ve contacted a source that is trying to dig up more information for us, but that’s all I can say right now. Keep me advised of your location and any major updates, but stick to the main route to the engineering section if possible. Just so you’re aware…I’ve not officially told command that your team is onboard yet; As far as they know, we’re shadowing the ship and keeping an eye on it. Some of the brass have ties to DSM and would likely pull us out the moment they found out we’ve entered it, so I want something solid about what’s going on over there before I fill them in on that little detail.”
Shi felt her own tail twitch, but she nodded. “Understood captain. We’ll make for engineering with as much speed as we can safely manage, and hopefully find something left in the core, or something physical we can retrieve.”
“Copy. Good hunting, commander. Maerill out.”
Shi cut the transmission and blew out her breath. “Sounds like things are about to get political. We’ve not got much time before someone pulls the plug here, so we need to find something that’ll make it worth our effort. Kaylee, you’re still on point, Murissa will back you up. Hilde, keep us on the most direct course to engineering; no detours if we don’t have to. I want to see if there’s anything at all we can pull from that core, or find something else to prove what’s going on here. I’m not against holding DSM by the balls.”
“Yessir!” the team said, though Shi could see the wariness on their faces. Once politics, especially those involving the megacorps like DSM, started up, things always devolved into a migraine-inducing mess.
Oh my, seems that things are getting stranger as the team delves deeper!
I was really starting to get into the swing of the story at this point. I’m honestly just a little surprised I hadn’t gotten into anything particularly kinky after four chapters, lol.
What is up with all that strange sealant everywhere? Did it…eat someone? Drag them off to a horrible fate? What lies beyond the bulkhead door?
Stay tuned for Chapter 5 next week to find out what lies beyond!
Until then, Urban out!
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