Crisis Memes - 7 - Thu 07 Aug 2256 10:10

Two days back in uniform and Bruce felt that he had never been away. He’d spent an hour in Allason’s office, studying the printed map of the Delta Destiny on the wall: the twenty two decks divided into eight rings and hundreds of sectors were all marked with red and green pins, the latter spreading across the plan as runners brought back reports from Will Chiton’s teams hammering their way through the middle of the ship.

Bruce had also worked out how he could be most useful to the Major – having guessed that she preferred to lead from the rear, he volunteered to lead a recon mission to the lower decks. Allason readily agreed. Word that the new Lieutenant was a veteran of the Beta Geminorum campaign had spread through the ranks, and there was a queue of volunteers to join his team.

Of the two thousand and eighty Royal Space Marines on the ship, thirty were currently unaccounted for. Most of the soldiers were young and inexperienced - duty on an emigration ship was little more than a training exercise in normal circumstances. But now circumstances had changed.

Military authority had been established along the length of the ship as far down as Deck 12 and in all the forward Rings of the eight decks below that. Major Allason’s latest strategy was to secure the whole of Ring A all the way down to Deck 22 and then sweep along all the lower levels simultaneously towards the rear. This would inevitably lead them into contact and possible confrontation with the Terraform Taurs.

***

Dressed in biohazard suits, the Marines descended the stairwell as far as Deck 20. Here they found smashed sewage pipes and rivulets of rank water mixed with raw excrement creeping along the corridors and cascading down the lift shafts. The emergency lighting and the patrol’s torches illuminated a living landscape of fungi, algae, and bacteria thriving in the filth.

All of the airtight doors on this deck had been forced open, though a sweep along the corridors revealed no sign of life in any of the sectors. Bruce assembled his team in one of the dryer communal rooms and took off his protective headgear. The room was completely bare - no chairs, tables or furniture of any sort.

“Is anyone familiar with this area of the ship?” he asked. “Were there many passengers berthed down here?”

Lance-corporal Madras spoke up. “I’ve been down here a few times, sir. There’s not much accommodation, but there was usually a good crowd of people – mostly History Planet staff. There are some bars and nightclubs further along, and some gambling tables and strip joints if you know where to look. People came down here to let off some steam, and it could get a little rough sometimes. All fairly normal on a ship of this size, and the Majors orders were to keep surveillance, and only intervene if things got out of hand.”

“Alright, thanks,” Bruce said. “Well, if the rest of this level is in the same shitty state I can’t see us finding anyone here today. I don’t know where all the furniture has gone though. It’s all bio-plaz so you can’t burn it - or eat it for that matter. Let’s get the blast doors on the main corridors barricaded and the rest of these sectors secured. After that I want a volunteer to go down with me for a look at Deck-21.”