Jessipie-90’s crew went over a few more of their theories on what they thought was happening, each one more outrageous than the last. The most popular idea was that some pirate got onboard somehow and sabotaged the warp reactor, then waited for the ship to be disabled before they enacted their plan of wiping out the crew so they could steal the khrona crystals. Probably the most solid theory, but still fell apart under scrutiny; how could a pirate find the vessel in the vast emptiness of deep space, how did they survive and avoid detection, how did they even get inside the vessel in the first place, why would they kill people in such an erratic way (psychological warfare was the agreed upon answer for that question). Another theory was the robots were to blame, but there were so many robotics and AI safeguards it was nearly impossible for them to go rogue—and to what end anyways since most of them had been destroyed except four now. Funnily enough, the person who probably had it the closest believed when the warp gate collapsed, some evil spirit of the void broke into our dimension and possessed the vessel or crew or some nonsense. I mean yeah, obviously we weren’t in the middle of a ghost story or anything, but I was pretty sure the extra-dimensional Predazoans were the closest thing to an evil void spirit like they were talking about.

We talked round and round in circles about what all we thought was going on with the Jessipie-90 crew leading the discussion, with our team being vague without focusing on any theory too much and of course keeping the truth of the Predazoans secret.

It put us in a weirdly awkward position hiding the extra information while not really benefiting us at all; it wasn’t like the knowledge Gamma-20 was behind everything would help us, and in fact made the danger seem all the more insurmountable, especially without Eve there to protect us.

I couldn’t help but wonder what Eve was doing in the void and if she was okay; I assumed since she said she could safely travel through the void she wouldn’t have that hellish experience like we did, maybe it would all just be peaceful and empty. Still, as always, I worried.

But the craziest thing about Eve not being with us was that I was technically the strongest person there and had the best chance in a direct confrontation with Gamma-20—not a good chance of course, but I would fare better than everyone else. Naturally, that was a scary thought—really made me feel like we were up shit’s creek without a paddle.

“So, what have your daily operations been like, what all have you been doing to try and repair your vessel?” Durgo raised his voice above all the weird speculations, his voice modulator hissing with the effort of being heard.

Gadow waved his hands in a lowering gesture to reign in silence, “As I said before, we make sure everyone stays in four person groups, so that gives us four separate teams with 16 of us remaining. Unfortunately, with our automated workforce disabled, daily operations have to be done manually, and that does take quite a bit of our focus. As equally unfortunate, while we’re mostly all engineers, technicians or specialists, our communications and warp reactor specialists are gone, so we rotate through our teams doing the best we can to try and fix what we can.” Gadow sighed and shook his head, “We’re working ourselves ragged just to survive at this point, almost seems impossible we could get one of the key systems fixed that would facilitate our rescue.”

Durgo crossed his arms and nodded, “So we’ll try to lighten your burdens as best we can so you can focus on fixing one of the key systems.” He gestured over to Zyno, “And we have one on our team with a technical mind who might be able to assist you.”

Fierro looked over at Zyno, doubt clear on her face, “Have you ever worked on a deep space freighter or a warp reactor?”

Zyno smiled sheepishly, “Not exactly, but I’ve done tours on quite a few different vessels, and I’ve always had an inquisitive mind—built my first FTL engine when I was a child. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to help, but I’ll do my best to assist in any way I can.” He offered.

Plus, he built me the emulation system for all my Earth video games, so I knew he was good.

Gadow nodded, “We’ll take any help we can get at this point. Like you all said; we’re in this together.”

Roote waved a hand out briskly, “I’ve had some training on communications networks before, I’ll see if I can help there too.”

I wasn’t sure if he was being sincere since I was under the impression their comms were being blocked by our deep space probe, but maybe he wanted to lay down the groundwork for if he could get word out to The Radiance to stop suppressing the distress beacon and could take credit for it to help our team look more trustworthy before the Jessipie-90 crew. That, or he was going to try to use the opportunity to get word back to The Radiance if they were totally blocking all our communication so we could let them know what was going on with us.

Honestly, we were in a pretty tight situation now and needed to talk amongst ourselves to see how we should proceed from here, trouble was I doubted Gadow or his crew would let us have a secret powwow on our own, and it would look wildly suspicious if we asked for one. Instead, we would just have to try and piecemeal a plan together when we could get the occasional word or order across to the rest of our team.

Really, we’d just have to improvise—exactly as I fucking said we would, those dumbass Lord Generals were so out of touch it was hilarious.

“First thing’s first, it’d be great if we could go back and see our lifepod; we left our main vessel in a hurry, so we’d like to see what all gear we were able to bring along with us.” Bryx said.

“While they’re doing that, you can take Roote and I to the communications computer system and we can see if there’s anything we recognize down there.” Durgo offered.

Gadow was silent for a few moments, looking at Bryx first, then over to Durgo, then he looked around at the rest of his crew who were all waiting patiently to see how he’d respond.

“Let me just say this first; all of us are now stranded out in the middle of deep space. People have already died from both teams, several of our crew members.” He gestured to us, “And the short blue man was already dead when we found him in the lifepod. We have no idea what’s out there, what might be preying on our people hidden in the depths of this vessel. The only way we’re going to get out of this is if we work together; we cannot stand divided and hope for a safe outcome, only by cooperating as one unit can we survive.” He looked around across the entire room, “I will not tolerate conflict or division from anyone, understood?”

Everyone agreed with the captain, and it was weird, but even though we were strangers on the vessel, I had a feeling Gadow had said that speech before, directed towards his own crew. Obviously, I didn’t know the history, but with how defensive Fierra got, I would bet the Jessipie-90 crew suffered through quite a bit of infighting when they were first stranded, maybe after the first couple of deaths. I assumed, despite the fact we were the new unknown factor, Gadow wanted to ensure the infighting wouldn’t start again.

Forgetting the fact we had to keep some vital information from them, I was sure everyone on my team would agree with the captain and work together; after all, knowing we were facing a dangerous Predazoan who we couldn’t even begin to guess what she was planning, we had even more reason to want to get the hell out of here.

***

When Gadow split us into different teams, they ended up a little lopsided, probably because they wouldn’t feel comfortable having the new team of mercenaries running off on their own and should have a Jessipie-90 escort at least until a proper bond of trust could be established.

Durgo and Roote went off with a few of their crew members to go assess the comms system (hopefully to see if they could sneak out a quick message to The Radiance), meanwhile, me, Zyno, Bryx and Willa, along with Fierra, Brunt, and Lummy acting as our escort were going to check out our damaged lifepod. Before we all left, I called out to Doctor Reim and asked if she would join us with the hopes I could maybe pick her brain on some of the bodies or remains that were left behind, see if I could get a clue into what Gamma-20 might be scheming.

She didn’t seem thrilled, but when Gadow ordered her to go with us, she complied without complaint.

Walking down the long hallways of Jessipie-90, there was a heavy tension of awkwardness that had everyone silent, and I wasn’t about to just start drilling the doctor with questions about her dead coworkers at least until we could get a little bit of a rapport going.

I let out a quick sigh, “Just in case anyone was thinking about it, please don’t fall in love with me while we’re stranded out here in the Derrion System.”

“For fuck’s sake Adam…” Zyno groaned, but I could see him hiding a smirk.

I held my hands up surrender, “Just needed to say it, last mission I was on a woman fell in love with me and caused all kinds of drama. Just to let everyone know, I’m in a happy, committed relationship.”

The women in our group all looked over at me like I was insane.

“Are you being serious right now?” Reim asked, looking far from amused.

I nodded, “Afraid so. Seems to happen weirdly often lately, and you wouldn’t believe the trouble it causes when the missus finds out.”

Lummy snorted a short laugh but covered it up quickly.

I pointed over to her, “See? It’s already starting; first it’s the giggles, then it’s the ‘Adam, you’re such a dumbass’—”

“You are a dumbass!” Zyno interrupted.

I ignored him and kept going, “And then I end up getting cornered by this new, vexatious paramour, only to be caught by my girlfriend in the most awkward position possible.” I sighed and shook my head, “It’s a curse, being a beautiful, exotic alien.” I said, sounding pained.

Reim glared at me, “You sound like an idiot.”

“He is an idiot.” Zyno confirmed.

I shoved Zyno into the wall, and everyone kept walking past him as he stumbled, “Just had to put the warning out there. That all said, I’m accepting friendship applications now.”

“Oh sorry, I’m afraid all my friendship slots have been filled.” Lummy said, a smile growing on her face.

I smiled too, “Damn, is there at least a waitlist?”

Lummy’s smile was really bright then, and I had to say the goth minotaur chick was surprisingly sexy, “Tell you what, if your mercenary team can help us out of this mess, I’ll consider bumping someone off to make room for you.”

“Deal.”

I felt the tension already relaxing around us, exactly what I was hoping for, and I continued to use my dumbest brand of humor while we all walked together. I wasn’t sure if it was just part of my personality or if it was more of a human trait, but I’d heard quite a few of my alien squadmates comment on how I would use humor at the most inappropriate times to diffuse a tense situation—probably a defense mechanism as much as it was a personality trait, but cracking an awkward joke or throwing out ridiculous sarcasm hadn’t burned me yet, so I wasn’t about to stop anytime soon.

We took a lift that sent us over to the far end of the ship towards the bottom where the docking station was for pod-type vessels to connect with Jessipie-90. There was a long lineup of airlocks, each one a different size or shape, surprising there would be so many since the vessel was meant to drift through deep space in severe isolation, but I suppose on the off-chance some other ship nearby was having an emergency, the freighter would easily be able to take in the survivors.

“That one, just left of the middle.”  Brunt pointed out gruffly.

They opened the airlock for us, and I could see the inside of our lifepod looked like it was in pretty bad shape, but when Zyno, Bryx and Willa went inside, I hung back with Reim and Lummy.

Reim let out a long sigh, “And now we get to the point of why you wanted me to tag along with your team.” She looked over at me, not quite glowering, but close, “I assume you have some questions about our dead crewmates?”

“Bingo.” I said, then waved her off quickly before she could respond, “Sorry, that’s a phrase based on a game from my home planet; it means you guessed right.” I nodded, “Yeah, I wanted to hear more about what all happened with the bodies before they disappeared.”

“Do you have any medical training?” Lummy asked mildly.

I shrugged, “Some. I was a medic back on my home planet before I joined up with the Empire and became a mercenary. That meant I would respond to medical or traumatic emergencies and treat patients at the scene of the incident.”

“Like a combat medic?” Reim inquired, seeming a little confused.

I tilted my head back and forth, “Yeah sort of, just without the combat.” I smirked, “My planet was pretty far behind technologically compared to the rest of the Empire, so we didn’t have much in the way of mobile medical resources.”

Reim nodded like she understood then, “Very well, I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m not a generalized medical doctor like Doctor Fenx; I was his assistant, my specialty is nutrition.”

I figured it was something like that and wasn’t surprised the 20-year long tour would need a nutritionist to ensure the crew would be eating right, even if most of their food would be synthesized. It also wasn’t my medical training that would give me insight into what happened with the victims, I would of course be relying on what I knew about the Predazoans and see if I could piece together a theory on what Gamma-20 was planning, although I was sure that would be a longshot.

“Right,” I leaned in and held my hands out to try and illustrate my point, “Your captain said the doctor’s body looked like it was ripped open with all his internal organs removed; was that the same for the other bodies you discovered.”

Reim looked like she was turning green while thinking about it—well, more green for a green-skinned alien, “Yes, they were all pretty much the same.”

I nodded, “All of them with organs missing and blood pooled around them? Any sign of a struggle or anything?”

Reim shook her head, “No, no blood on the walls or ceiling, just around the body, almost as though they died instantly, fell down there, and then bled out while something…removed their organs.”

I scratched at my beard as I thought that over; it seemed like Gamma-20 killed her victims instantly somehow, then started feasting on the organs. But why was it all so neat? Was that due to her trying to be careful and quiet with her kills? But then why would she leave the bodies out to find?

“And the victim’s bones, Gadow said they were ripped open and frayed; did it look like something ripped into them, or did something burst out from within?” I asked.

Reim looked really horrified then, “You think there was something implanted inside the victims, like what, a low-yield bomb?” She pressed.

More like Gamma-20 was imitating the Xenomorphs and acting like the face-hugger/chest-burster combo.

A derelict space freighter, stranded in deep space with a dangerous monster, it was like we were actually in one of the fucking Alien movies.

“Maybe, what do you think?” I pressed.

Reim looked like she wouldn’t be able to picture the scene without fainting, so Lummy stepped forward instead.

“Honestly, from the one I saw, it did kind of look like that.” She confirmed.

I looked back to Reim, “And all the bodies you saw, they were more or less the same?”

She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“What does that mean?” Lummy pressed, seeming like she could handle the gory details better than the surviving doctor.

It meant I was working on a theory for what Gamma-20 had done, but it didn’t solve the issue of figuring out what she was planning next.

I shook my head slowly, “I’m not completely sure.” I looked back and forth between the alien women, “And now this next question is going to sound really weird.”

Reim rolled her eyes, “Like none of this has been weird.”

Lummy nodded along, “What is it?” She asked, sounding quite interested.

I paused a moment, wondering how I should phrase it so I wouldn’t give too much away.

“Has anyone reported seeing someone they thought was dead or missing, like, moving around? Did anyone say they saw a supposedly dead body move at any point—anything crazy like that?” I asked.

Lummy nearly jumped back from my question, “What the fuck?”

“Why—how is that your next question?” Reim asked, sounding horrified.

I let out a quick sigh, thinking up a lie to alleviate their suspicions, “Ever heard of the cordyceps fungus?” I asked, and they both shook their heads, “It’s known as the zombie fungus on my home planet. Basically, once someone gets infected with its spores, their body and mind are controlled by the fungus that drastically limits their actions, usually leading to them spreading the fungus to more people, spreading it as far as it can go. I’ve heard it’s been weaponized before, just wanted to make sure that hasn’t happened here.”

Both Reim and Lummy looked horrified.

“Are you saying we’re infected?” Lummy demanded.

“Will those spores burst out of us like our dead crewmates?” Reim pressed, looking like she was about to cry.

I waved them off quickly, “No, no not at all, just trying to work out some theories.” I sighed and shook my head, “Just working through eliminating every possibility I can at this point.”

Lummy seemed a little relieved, but Reim was clearly still terrified over the idea.

“Adam, over here, we’ve got some goodies.” Bryx called out.

I joined the rest of my crew at the lifepod airlock to see Bryx and Willa had a small crate of weapons and gear.

Brunt was beside them, only armed with the small plasma pistol at his hip that seemed too small for him, looking at the new weapons with obvious interest.

“I think we should tell the captain about all this.” He confirmed.

Bryx nodded along, “Don’t worry, we’re all in this together, we certainly aren’t going to hide it.”  He looked over at the large sorrendelm man, “But considering we’re the mercenaries with actual combat training, I think it’s more than reasonable to make sure we’re geared up first.”

Brunt shrugged, “Fair enough.”

Bryx turned back to me, “So, what do you need?”

It was crazy to think, but I realized Bryx was arming me first because he knew I would be their strongest soldier; he was down there with us on Vyrane and saw me and Eve fighting in the tunnels against all those drone-forms—hell, he saw me join the fight against Beta-09. My genetic modifications were on record now for The Radiance’s crew to see, so there was no hiding the fact I’d gotten a significant power-up.

That was definitely something I never would’ve thought would happen to me, but there I was as the first and last line of defense against the Predazoan threat.

Almost made me sick thinking about all that responsibility.

“You have any proton blades?” I asked.

Willa nodded and handed me one, a little black handle that looked almost like a flashlight, “We’ve got 12 of those, 12 plasma pistols as well.”

“Give me two proton blades and a pistol and I should be good.” I confirmed.

“We also have some deployable repulser shields, you should probably take at least one of those.” Willa reasoned.

I nodded along and she handed me a small silver and black disc about the size of my hand. In the center was a dial and a digital display; to activate it, you would turn the dial to increase the size of the shield, and then once you threw the disc down it would activate and deploy the shield.

“Hang on Adam, you should probably take one of the heavy carbine rifles too.” Bryx reasoned, holding up a big ass black gun that was a few feet long and quite bulky, looking like it was several corded cylinders arranged around a blocky core.

I quirked up an eyebrow, “Really, why? I’ve never used one of those before.”

Bryx handed me the heavy gun anyways, “We’ve only got two, but they’re loaded up with the destabilizing acid rounds.” He gave me a meaningful look, “I figure our strongest fighter should have our best weapons.”

The only way us regular folk could kill a Predazoan would be with the destabilizing acid rounds, so Bryx clearly thought I was our best hope in destroying Gamma-20 and was gearing me up with the only weapon that could do lethal damage against her.

I took the gun and strapped it over my back, and now that I was all loaded up with the combat gear, I suddenly missed having the battle armor I wore on Vyrane.

“I don’t suppose you packed any armor?” I asked.

Bryx shook his head as he put the other heavy carbine rifle on his back, “Sorry, this is all we were able to bring into the lifepod.”

12 plasma pistols, 12 proton blades, six repulser shields and two heavy carbine rifles with destabilizing acid rounds, we certainly weren’t properly equipped to fight or defend against a Predazoan assault.

“I’m sorry, but why exactly is Mister Funnyman getting all your best combat gear?” Lummy asked.

Zyno chuckled as he set down some small pack beside the box of weapons, “Despite being such a dumbass, Adam is by far our strongest fighter and your best hope for defense in case there really is some deranged, psychotic stowaway trying to pick apart your crew and steal your cargo.”

The Jessipie-90 crew all looked at me with obvious surprise and maybe a little disbelief, but I just shrugged.

“I’ve had significant genetic modifications performed on my body, enhanced my strength and speed beyond the limits of what should be possible.” I said offhandedly.

Reim narrowed her gaze at me, “That doesn’t really sound legal.”

I smiled brightly, “Oh it’s definitely not, but if you want to rely on my protection, I suggest you keep any reservations on secret genetic enhancements to yourself.”

Lummy held her hands up quickly, “Works for me.”

Brunt crossed his arms and nodded, “So long as it gets us out of this damned system, you won’t hear any complaints from me.”

I laughed once, “Great.” I turned to the rest of my crew, “So, should we return to the captain and divvy up the rest of the spoils?”

Zyno nodded, looking around the airlock bay with obvious caution, “Yeah, and I know Gadow and his crew said we’d be safer moving around in groups of at least four, but I’d feel much more comfortable once we regroup with the others.”

I knew exactly how Zyno felt, but considering we were dealing with a Predazoan, it didn’t matter how many of us there were, we would all be fodder before her might.

Even though Gamma-20 could kill everyone onboard without slowing down, I had to wonder what kind of game she was playing to keep us alive for now, and the mystery itself was more unsettling than the immediate danger.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep