Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Broken Homes.

Doctor Delveccio clapped her hands together.

“Alright then boys. Let’s head up and find out what’s out there. Because it goes without saying, we are going to save those people, right Sam?”

The man in question nodded seriously, all trace of boyish glee gone from his face. I snagged several meal bars as the other two looked at me in question.

“Just in case. Using nanites is stamina intensive. That requires me to eat more often. It is best if I have a ready supply of calories.”

“You know those things taste like cardboard, right?” asked Doctor Delveccio. Her expression led me to believe that she thought I was being foolish somehow. I, of course disagreed on this point.

But it did not seem pertinent to say so out loud.

“I am aware of that, yes.” I nodded.

“So we might not be back here for a while?” asked Sam.

“Possibly. I find that it is better to plan for suboptimal occurrences when venturing out. Security Medical is the safest place I know of. But I do not take that perceived safety for granted, either.”

I also snagged an extra few bottles for the Wampus Cat along the way. It appeared to have fallen asleep.

“You know that little girl is going to start needing solid food in another week or three, right?”

“Ah. I was not aware of that, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. What’s her name?”

“Name?”

“The exotic kitten on your head. How did you come by a Wampus Cat anyway?”

“Small stasis box in the habs. I thought it might have been an infant.” I grimaced slightly, remembering the mad flight away from the mega horde in the Habitat Level.

“She still needs a name, Z.”

“I have been calling her Experiment Number One.”

“Experiment Number- No, Z. That won’t do.”

“No?”

“Of course it wont!” Doctor Delveccio exploded. “Wampus Cats are smart critters. They get very attached to their people, but they’re also built on the genetics of multiple predators.

“Wampus Cat is a catchall name for several variants, actually. Your little kitten is quite probably going to grow up to be quite large. Though most variants are omnivorous, they all need a large amount of protein when growing up.”

I nodded. That certainly made sense based on the little I’d read about them.

“So you’re going to need to give that little lady a proper name. Not ‘Experiment Number One.’”

“I see.”

“And...?” the catgirl trailed off with an expectant look on her face.

“Hm?”

“What’s her name?”

“I will have to give it careful consideration.”

“Careful consider- you’re hopeless, Z.”

Doctor Delveccio walked away, shaking her head. Meeting other people at last had gone about as well as could be expected. Neither one had run away screaming when I told them about draining the zombies. Thought they hadn’t actually seen me do it yet.

They had taken to the news that most of humanity was gone rather well, it seemed. Sam became obsessed with the combat suit and the woman who just left seemed hyper focused on keeping tabs on the other two humans that she knew existed.

I could be wrong in my assessment of either. There were human lives under threat, though, and I had to rely on them both.

That made me feel distinctly unsettled. Killing zombies was much simpler in comparison.

“Hold still a sec. Need to take this out before you go.”

The catgirl returned, wearing the space suit that I’d lent her. It was much cleaner this time. Even with gauntleted fingers, she expertly removed the IV that I had somehow forgotten was connected to me.

“In microgravity this could become a problem if you’re still hooked up when it runs out. The positive pressure from the bag compensates for the lack of gravity to drive the fluid into your body, but it is not perfectly calibrated.”

A second later, she had a sticky bandage wrapped around my forearm.

“There, all done.”

It looked much better than the ones I had applied. It also looked like she’d replaced my other bandages. The ones that had burnt when my arm started sparking before. They were opaque, but I imagined that the wounds were rather unpleasant to look at by now.

She didn’t ask and I did not tell.

Sam was already in the combat suit by the time we got to the Armory.

“Hey, I juiced up that old MHU you left here. It’s still pretty banged up, but I managed to fix a few of the problems with the asymmetrical thrust. Software’s still pretty fucked up in places, but it’ll work.”

Despite the young navy man’s words, the Material Handling Unit looked much better than I’d last seen it. All the blood had been cleaned away. There were several spots where bare metal poked through the paint. There were also a few obvious fixes where parts had been replaced.

“Thank you, Sam. I did not expect you to do that, but it will probably help with what we are attempting to do.”

“Yep!”

I could hear the grin in the man’s voice as I climbed inside. There hadn’t been any zombies in the cafeteria as the we passed. But they were still out there.

The Wampus Cat stirred as it woke up. I could see it yawning briefly in the reflection of the armor glass before the exosuit booted up. Fewer failure warnings this time, but they were still a some.

“Well, now I feel under dressed.”

Doctor Delveccio crossed her arms as she looked up at me. The two of us now towered over her at well over eight feet in height. She had attached a hard cased satchel to her space suit.

Probably emergency supplies, much as I had brought meal bars.

The hidden elevator was easily large enough to handle the three of us. The view of Earth above still distracted me as we passed. I noticed that of my two new acquaintances, Sam was quite obviously affected by the sun rising over the planet. The woman in the space suit gave it barely a glance.

The sensors at the entry to the executive suite did not want to let my two companions through at first. I had to convince the simple minded machine to let them through, one at a time.

“What was that about?” Doctor Delveccio asked as she stepped through last.

“Upper management being paranoid.”

“Not paranoid enough,” Sam said. “I mean, zombies are just a bit outside of most people’s disaster preparedness plans.”

I frowned at that. Surely someone had a plan that had worked. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any other humans out there.

And, of course, there was the matter of precisely where the zombie virus/nanite package had come from. That mystery had yet to be solved.

“We should be safe enough in here. Vacuum on one side, Security turrets and a barrier facing the cafeteria.

“Zombies tend to travel up and down the elevator shafts. They nest and congregate in the cafeterias mostly, because that is close to food and water. There’s a large horde at the bottom of the main maintenance shaft and several huge ones in the docks and on the lower engineering level, plus the biggest one in the habs.”

I exited the MHU on the upper level and made my way to the terminal that I’d been using last. Sam had to get out of the combat suit as well. Doctor Delveccio followed after us.

“Wait. Zombies have to eat and drink, too?”

“Yes, Sam. It was in the log files. They’re based on the human frame, so they need to take in nutrients in order to live.”

“I kind of thought they were, you know, undead?”

I glanced up from the terminal and caught the look that Doctor Delveccio giving the younger man. I pitied him, but he’d brought it on himself.

It took only a moment to bring the dockmaster’s terminal back up. The screen showing the docks was once again dark, hiding the zombies that I knew were there.

“The station’s com and sensor systems have been offline for an unknown amount of time. I do not have the knowledge to say what is wrong with them, precisely. My last communication with them was aboard the ship I told you about, the one with only one working airlock.

“As far as I can tell there are seven traders or freighters still connected to the dock, one tanker ship, and one very large freighter all the way at the end of the dock. Sam, can you tell us anything about these ships from here?”

I brought up the display for both of them to see. That I could do, even if anything related to ships, shipping, piloting, or engineering was beyond me.

Sam frowned, flicking through the information displayed rapidly.

“Do you know which of these was the one you entered before?”

“I believe it was the closest one to the warehouses.”

“Top of the stack. That would be the Angus Mole.”

He highlighted one of the files and somehow pulled up an image of the cargo bay. I had not realized that was possible with the system. It showed a familiar row of stasis container crates glowing a faint blue.

“I believe that is the correct one, yes.”

“And it is reporting several faults. Makes sense.”

After seven years, there were likely any number of issues that had cropped up without proper maintenance, and I said as much.

“Well, yes and no. A ship on a hibernate cycle will be using a minimum amount of power to keep the power core active and stable with a bit of a safety margin. Some of these ships, like the one you were on, were not shut down properly on arrival,” Sam said.

Now that we were talking ships and engines, all traces of levity and awkwardness faded. His familiarity with the terminology and the function of the dockmaster’s terminal was obvious. He continued scanning the remaining ships, occasionally breaking out more detailed information from somewhere in the system.

“I wouldn’t want to fly in anything like that without several months in a yard. Traders run on tight margins, but they don’t skimp on maintenance if they can help it. What kind of ship did you say we were rescuing?”

“I do not know for certain. They mentioned that they were transporting ice.”

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“Ice ship. That’s a smaller ship. Big engine though to push around that much water mass. Either a Douglass or a Pittman. Not a whole lot of difference between the two. You said their engines were out, right?”

“Yes.”

“How many on the ship?”

“They said a family. Grandparents on down to children. I do not know the total, but it would appear to be more than five. Likely several more than that. They were talking about putting the kids in the pods so they, at least, would live.”

Both of them hissed at that, faces tight with emotion.

“That’s a bad way to go, Z.”

“Yeah. No sailor leaves another to starve or suicide out in the deep dark. Not if we can help it.”

Sam skimmed past several other ships before coming to a stop on the largest one.

“Going to have to be this one, then.”

“The largest one? May I ask why?”

Sam expanded the view of the ship, extended out several windows. Nothing in any of them made any sense to me, but Doctor Delveccio began to nod in approval.

“Several reasons. That right there is a rarity, Z, probably especially now. It’s probably one of the few HZ551’s left in the solar system- maybe the only one.”

“My apologies, but I do not understand.”

“It’s a beast of a ship. The HZ series have been the workhorses of the system for fifty years. They’re big, reliable, extremely redundant frames wrapped around one of the better engines on the market for its day. The 551 frame is a modular design that can carry internal cargo in pressurized holds, exterior pods mounted on racks, and push segmented cargo trains.

“I was planning on buying one once I retired from the navy in another few decades. They’re not pretty ships, but they’re enormously flexible. You can do pretty much anything you want with them.”

“Like rescue an ice ship that’s drifting by as we speak?” Doctor Delveccio asked.

“Yeah. It looks like the Hog Mauler was actually shut down correctly. That’ll take a bit to warm the old girl back up, but she should be in excellent shape based on the maintenance logs listed here.”

That made me sit back and think for a moment. There could well be an opportunity here.

“How much internal cargo can the Hog Mauler was it? How much can it hold?”

“Easily enough room in the crew bunks for even a large family. The ship can run with five people, but there’s bunks for fifty. More if you convert some of the secure storage to bunk areas, and it won’t strain the environmental unit.

“That reminds me,” he stopped himself, digging through the screens for a moment.

“Ah. Yes, the algae trays will be okay. They’re locked down in their own stasis field. Environmental shouldn’t be a problem. Even if that family packs the bunks to the limit, it won’t strain the ship’s systems. Assuming we keep them maintained, of course.”

“Alright.” I nodded. “Would it be able to support a large number of stasis containers? Such as the ones on the other ships here and the ones in the Hospital pods?”

“Sure it could. Why do you ask?”

“Because Walker’s power system is failing. You already know that the gravity generators are offline. It is only a matter of time before the power fails completely. Or a brownout kills off the Oxygen Farms. Or any number of other critical things that keep us alive here.”

“It won’t be easy moving those stasis pods from the Hospital. You have a limited amount of time for the field to remain powered while you move them, and they’re not designed to absorb much in the way of damage if we get into a fight.”

Doctor Delveccio’s words made me think of the small stasis box that I’d transported the Wampus Cat in. I may have been more fortunate than I realized that it had not failed until the very last moment.

“And that begs the question. Where is there to go once we leave the station? You mentioned the ice ship. Are there other places out there that survived the fall?”

“There are. At least, there are a few that I believe are out there in the asteroid belt and around the Mars settlements, and at least one in Jupiter orbit. But I do not think that they will welcome us.”

“Jupiter orbit will be either the Europa science base or the fleet base near Ganymede, most likely,” Sam said.

“Why would they not? We’re human. From what all I can tell, humanity needs to stick together now more than ever.”

“I agree Doctor Delveccio. But the man I spoke to from the Durandal made mention of a policy of not allowing contact between ships or stations that had been exposed to the zombies and those that had not.”

The woman’s feline ears flattened as she frowned.

“With the knowledge that they have, this makes sense. It’s a quarantine measure, as it is not yet clear just how the zombies spread.”

“But we know that it is a combination of the biological virus and the nanites suppressing the body’s immune response. And whatever else the zombie nanites do,” she said. “Your own log notes are clear in the implication.”

“I would still like to perform tests under controlled conditions, but yes, that is my current theory. There are other factors that I have yet to record, such as the presence of rogue nanites that I discovered near the reactor when I was on the Angus Mole, I believe it was.”

“That ship is a piece of crap, Z.”

We both looked at him.

“I’m just saying: I wouldn’t fly on that thing so long as I could walk. And I’d probably get there faster.”

“Well I hope that at least it can remain powered and pressurized long enough to save the refugees in those stasis pods.”

Sam nodded soberly at that. “Yeah. Me too.”

“To your earlier comment, Doctor Delveccio, I hope to be able to continue my investigation into the zombie virus later on. It is possible that there are facilities that survived on Earth, a hospital or laboratory perhaps, where I could continue my research-”

“Why not stay here, though?”

I paused, looking between Sam and Doctor Delveccio. She looked as perplexed as I felt.

“Did you not hear him, Sam? The power is failing.”

“Well, why not just fix it then?” My face apparently showed my doubt, because he continued.

“I am serious. The reason Walker continues to operate now, even seven years without any maintenance and with whatever damage the zombies have been doing is at least twofold.

“One, the station was designed to be extremely redundant. I know because Walker was originally based on a military design that I am very familiar with. It is the same one that the out system fleet uses- used- or maybe still uses?

“Anyway, Walker was made to last. Second, the core functions of the station are not only redundant, they include a lot of high quality automation. You guys have those little cleaner bots, right?”

I nodded, motioning for him to continue.

“Well, there are also maintenance drones that carry out a lot of basic tasks that are simple, routine, and necessary for the continued function of the station.

“Your power issue, from what I can tell here, is somewhat complicated, but fixable. It isn’t that you are losing power. It is that you have too much power in some places, which is burning out the infrastructure. You have too little power in places on the other side of those burnt out circuits.

“The power regulators are getting overworked and that is causing issues downstream of the stressed components. All of this will be using up your spares and component stock at a blistering pace, since the dumb machines don’t know how to prioritize. But all of those issues are fixable.”

He paused.

“I know how to fix them. It will be a massively huge job. But, if we can’t go anywhere else, why not just stay here?”

That was not something that had occurred to me. Of course, this information was completely outside my field of study- which it seemed had grown to include zombie killing. But the idea had merit, presented as it was.

“All of that is fine and good, but let’s not get sidetracked. What will it take to get that monster of a ship up and running? How are we getting to the ship? And once we get there, and get it running, how can we get in contact with the ship in distress?”

The younger man grinned, highlighting a section of the ship that I’d missed before.

“Easy. We go outside, missing all the zombies that Doc Z told us about in the elevators and the docks and stuff. The Hog Mauler has airlocks that work, according to the reports it has been giving to the dockmaster for the last few years.”

“What about inside?” I asked. The last ship I’d been on had been infested

“Well, let’s see here.” Sam fiddled with the terminal for a moment before bringing up several camera options.

The first thing I noticed was the floating trash. By now it was as familiar to me as I imagined tracks and spoor were to hunters.

“There are zombies on that ship.”

I took control of the camera, panning it around to view the corridor that had caught my eye. The ship was in microgravity. Probably a result of the ship being mostly powered down at the moment. No zombies jumped out at me in the corridor.

The next camera showed the cargo hold. Sam had already panned the camera around, but nothing was in view.

“Doctor Z. You might want to take a look at this.”

Doctor Delveccio had control of another camera. This one showed a cargo crate that had been broken open. I recognized the shredded crates as the same sort that held meal bars.

Then I saw the nests. Dozens of them. Several were occupied. Beyond the nests wedged into various crevices I found the horde.

They clustered together, floating limp and silent in the camera view. The cargo hold appeared to be mostly empty. Nearly all of the times I’d fought zombies before, the environment had been at least a little bit in my favor.

Taking on that many zombies in the open would be difficult.

“That might be a problem.”

“Problem? That combat suit’s got a lot of guns, you know. And grenades. And spikes and blades, too. And from the looks of things, they might already be dead.”

“I know. But they’re not dead. They’re hibernating.”

“How can you tell?” the doctor asked.

“Food. Water. You can see the water droplets glisten slightly in the light. You have zombies plus food and water, they’re still alive.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We are going to kill them, of course.”

“How?”

“Get your combat suit. I’ll explain on the way.”

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