"Hit a nerve?" Ridgeway poked with a malevolent smile.

Monster looked Ridgeway dead in the eyes, the first trace of his own humor glinting in the dark orbs. "Yeah, go on. You may get to laugh, but he doesn't."

"SRD," Ridgeway intoned with mock reverence.

"d.a.m.n straight," Monster confirmed, "s.h.i.t rolls downhill."

The two men shared a brief chuckle that all too quickly dwindled to silence. Ridgeway watched as his friend turned and made his way aft, doubtlessly in pursuit of the next item in a long list of duties.

While quick to jab in fun at Monster's blatant aversion to the bizarre medical system, Ridgeway could find no fault in the sergeant's logic. Given everything they had seen, there wasn't a RAT on the team who wanted to get within five meters of the steel and gla.s.s table. Darcy's reconstruction may have been a quiet miracle, but the truck driver's experience proved a different matter altogether.

Broken, frostbitten and hypothermic, Jenner had been the next to ride the table. At one level the decision was a genuine effort to save the Rimmer's life. On the other hand, the test was admittedly an experiment to see if the table worked consistently. As the only non-Marine, and a Rimmer at that, Jenner had been the obvious guinea pig.

As his injuries were largely internal, there was no significant external wound to use as a portal. Undeterred, the micro-machines simply cut a door of their own. Lasers designed to weld flesh together proved just as able to cut flesh apart. Jenner's abdomen had parted with a wet slurp of breaking suction. Cauterization had reduced blood loss to a negligible level. The slit sagged open and the bugs poured in.

The remainder, focused largely on injuries to the head and upper thorax, chose to enter through Jenner's nose and mouth. The image had been revolting enough on an unconscious figure, Ridgeway reflected, but as the oozing tide of crawling specks rippled over Jenner's lips, the Marines discovered a major wrinkle in the system. Jenner woke up.

St.i.tch later determined that small infusers in the table's surface should have doped the conscious Rimmer into a state of oblivion. Those infusers, it appeared, had run dry long ago. In lieu of strap and buckle restraints, the table immobilized a patient through some kind of electrical field that paralyzed voluntary muscle, but not the conscious mind. The next two hours were ugly to watch, even for Marines.

It had been really ugly for Jenner.

No one could tell if the burning skin was to blame, or an overloaded gag reflex, but the trucker snapped out of his delirium like he'd been hit with high voltage. Panic-stricken eyes bulged out of his skull, unblinking as tiny specks scuttled across glistening corneas. The trucker could only manage a constricted, high-pitched whine, but even that broke into a wet gurgle as clots of bugs pa.s.sed through his windpipe.

Not for me, Ridgeway's lip curled down at the thought as he rubbed a hand unconsciously across his bruised chest. I'll heal up the old-fashioned way.

An abrasive hum reverberated through the walls and s.n.a.t.c.hed Ridgeway's attention back to the present as the overhead lights fluttered for several seconds. Around the room, each Marine paused expectantly. Only Jenner, staring blankly into s.p.a.ce, seemed oblivious to the threat of impending darkness. A thread of drool hung from the corner of his slack jaw.

As the light stabilized once more, Ridgeway wondered if the humane answer was simply to put the Rimmer out of his misery. At the moment though, he thought regretfully, humanity was a luxury he could ill afford. While Jenner's plight was pathetic, he remained their only likely source of first-hand human intelligence. Until they explored that possibility, the needs of the Marines came first. Ridgeway looked at Jenner with a callous stare.

"Tough luck, buddy. You shoulda' joined the Marines."

He gazed at the huddle figure. Technically, he may be healthier, but he looks like s.h.i.t.

Ridgeway could see that the medical system had put function ahead of aesthetics. The priorities were obvious; while broken bones were welded together, coal-black pieces of frostbitten flesh had simply been cut away. Jenner's nose was gone, along with both ears and swatches of each cheek. A missing piece of lower lip left him with a grotesque cleft that extended down through his chin.

Wide patches of Jenner's scalp had likewise succ.u.mbed to the cold. Cold-charred splotches of hairless skin had been replaced by veneers of angry pink stretched tight as a drum across the curve of his skull. Dead, frozen fingers had been excised with equal indifference, the living stumps summarily closed over. Nubbins of fresh skin dotted the digitless hand like a row of smooth, shiny gumdrops.

St.i.tch had offered a plausible theory for the different results. The nanites worked like ants; they could move living material around the body but they were incapable of fabricating new flesh from scratch. Repairs to one required the cannibalization of another.

The explanation seemed sound. Darcy had a solid base of lean muscle to serve as a reservoir; the tiny bits of material stripped from muscles throughout her body would go unnoticed.

But Jenner was undernourished and out of shape. Worse yet for the Rimmer was the nature of his injuries. Unlike Darcy's puncture wounds, frostbite had claimed large volumes of Jenner's flesh.

What he needed, Ridgeway concluded, was the human equivalent of Carbonite paste to fill the gaps.

After watching Jenner's experience, not one of the Marines had expressed an interest in finding out for themselves. The dull ache of torn muscles were familiar friends and the RATs decided to heal as they healed, taking comfort in the infrared accelerators that helped them mend in a faster, yet quite conventional fashion.

Ridgeway turned slowly and looked upslope to Darcy. She sure looks normal, he noted. The color had returned to her skin and all signs of the jaundiced bruising had faded away. The torn flap still hung open on her blood-stained T-shirt but the skin beneath held no hint of its prior injury.

The sniper sat wedged into a corner with a gleaming rifle rail across her lap, methodically polishing a series of magnetic coils. One by one she extracted the chromium ovals and buffed their blue-mirrored surfaces to a shine with a soft cloth.

Ridgeway watched her work and took heart in the crispness of her motion. The sniper truly seemed no worse for wear. Perhaps of equally good fortune, she had no memory of her time on the table. The severity of her condition had likely suppressed her conscious mind beyond the reach of the physical world. Even after considerable thought, Darcy couldn't dredge up a recollection of the process.

Considering the alternatives, Ridgeway thought with a half glance at Jenner, a d.a.m.n good thing. Although St.i.tch was firm that he could resolve the consciousness problem with conventional anesthetics going forward, Ridgeway knew that he would have to be near-dead before he climbed onto the table.

"I really thought we'd lost her." Merlin's voice caught Ridgeway by surprise, the younger Marine's tone edged with an unusual sobriety. Ridgeway nodded in quiet a.s.sent as he turned to the engineer.

Standing almost a head shorter than Ridgeway, Merlin always struck him as something of an anachronism. Unlike most of his comrades, Jim "Merlin" Prentice had a full head of jet-black hair worn in a short but reasonably modern style. He was lean, but his body carried a kind of casual toughness that would have seemed at home out on the range in the old west of American history.

Of all his Marines, Merlin remained the hardest for Ridgeway to cla.s.sify. Too brainy for a grunt, too tough for an egghead. Merlin excelled as a combat engineer, his keen attention to detail and rabid imagination proving time and again to be an invaluable combination. Often as not, a life-saving one.

The lights shuddered once more, shadows lurching abruptly as now-recharged emergency lights snapped on momentarily. The room seemed to cough twice as the two sources of illumination wrestled for dominance. With a sharp thrum the overhead panels won out.

Ridgeway rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "That isn't going to hold out forever, is it?"

A look of frustration crossed Merlin's face. "I swear Major, it's like trying to hit a moving target. I bypa.s.s one shorted line only to have the power suddenly jump back to cables that were stone dead hours before. It's like someone else is playing with the wiring. There must be some real meltdowns going on through this beast." He shrugged, hands raised. "h.e.l.l, I'm amazed half this tub isn't on fire with all these shorts."

"So what's the fix?"

Merlin scratched at the dark stubble that bristled across his chin. "Well," he began, somewhat hesitant, "I've been thinking of just ripping the breakers out of that wall and running a hot line straight to the mains for Sickbay. That'd cut out a s.h.i.tload of variables, maybe give us a real boost in terms of stable current. If it works, armor regen would wrap up in half the time."

"How long?"

"Chainsaw bypa.s.s? s.h.i.t, maybe an hour tops. It'll be ugly but d.a.m.n sure ought to tighten things up around here."

Ridgeway nodded his a.s.sent. "A tight ship, h.e.l.l, a tight room, would be an improvement. Let's make it happen. Be sure and tell Monster."

"Roger that."

Before Merlin could turn, Ridgeway fired a second query. "How are we looking on the TAC fixes?"

Merlin fished a small brick of circuitry out of his pocket and held it aloft. A blackened furrow cut an obvious streak through the red and yellow security label and the silvery sh.e.l.l beneath. "Your transmitter took a hit. I can get tone out but it won't hold lock for more than a few minutes. I'm swapping it out for the spare, that'll get you back online. Monster's TAC is another matter. It's toast."

Ridgeway's jaw clenched noticeably as he folded his arms across his chest. "What can we do?" The question had become wearily repet.i.tive.

"Can't do much on that one Major. He's got his own sensor feeds but he can't broadcast tactical at all. Just voice."

Ridgeway nodded slowly, pausing for a moment before breaking a wan smile. "Then we'll have to make do with voice and a.s.sume that anything that gets within fifty meters of Monster is dead meat."

Merlin nodded concurrence. "Yessir, that's pretty much the way it works."

"All right," Ridgeway concluded with a slap on Merlin's shoulder, "get on it."

The engineer turned to leave, then paused indecisively. Ridgeway noted the obvious conflict. "What is it?"

Merlin chewed at the side of his lip as he looked Ridgeway in the eyes. "Something's been nagging at me since we came onboard Major, but I still can't make much sense of it."

"What's that?"

Merlin waved his hands as if presenting the room behind him. "Everything we've seen here suggests that the ship is man-made, right?"

Ridgeway swept the room in concert with Merlin's gesture, noting nothing out of the ordinary. "Yeah," he said with slight hesitation, "which infers that this is some kind of Rimmer project. So what's your point?"

"That looks like the easy answer," Merlin replied cautiously, "but we've got three major conflicts working against the theory." The engineer seemed to cross a mental point of no return, his elaboration picking up speed and emphasis.

"First, there is no record of the Rimmers ever trying to build a ship this big. Some of our old colony ships ran this size, maybe even bigger, but the Alliance never came close. The Rimmers don't have the technology to do it, and sure as h.e.l.l not to do so way the h.e.l.l down here. There is nothing in this hole that even remotely looks like a shipyard."

Ridgeway repressed any hint of expression. "Go on."

"Number two, at some point in her life, this b.i.t.c.h flew and got her a.s.s kicked in the process. You saw that severed wing Major, it looked like something grabbed it and ripped it off. I don't know about you but I've never seen a weapon that could do that. But if it wasn't a United System's weapon, whose weapon was it?"

Ridgeway's mind ran across the possibilities and came up with nothing.

"But that's not the kicker." Merlin paused once more and looked down, his eyes tracking aimlessly across the floor. "Modern English is what, maybe a thousand years old?"

Puzzled by the change in direction, Ridgeway struggled for a reply "Something like that, but what does--"

"And man has been in s.p.a.ce since, call it the 1960s, but we didn't get past the moon in any real sense till the early 2000s."

"What are you getting at, Merlin?" Ridgeway was quickly losing patience with the historical detour.

Merlin looked up, his eyes unwavering. "Just this. There's some pretty d.a.m.n big stalact.i.tes stuck right through this tub. Down in the engine room Monster and I came across one maybe twenty meters in diameter that came in through the ceiling and continued down through the floor. Geology s.h.i.t like that doesn't happen in fifty years, not in a hundred. It takes thousands of years, I dunno, maybe tens of thousands."

Merlin's voice grew increasingly somber. He looked at Ridgeway with an expression that bore no trace of guile and said, "I know how weird this sounds Major, but unless I'm missing something, this ship doesn't just predate human s.p.a.ce travel, it got stuck down here before man carved his first wooden canoe."

CHAPTER 19.

Within the concealing sh.e.l.l of Carbonite and metal alloy, Monster grimaced. He would not have allowed himself the concession if anyone was watching. Although the electroactive polymer muscles in his armor supported the bulk of his weight, Monster's flesh and blood arm still rocked through a full range of motion. As he climbed down the turbolift shaft, a sharp pain lanced reminded him of that fact. Monster snarled quietly at the burning in his side. "Just one more d.a.m.n thing to manage."

Nearing the base of the shaft, Monster pushed off the wall and dropped the last five meters. He slammed down onto the floor like a pile driver.

As he pa.s.sed through a pair of open doors, the sergeant looked down at the grid-steel catwalks radiating from the hub of the tower. His focus locked in on the number '7' stenciled boldly on the floor of the leftmost walkway. The yellow numeral remained visible beneath an uneven coating of ice.

Monster advanced carefully down catwalk 7 when he heard a resounding clang as Merlin landed behind him. The catwalk shuddered in response, vibration rolling right through Monster's magnetically-affixed boots. A section of tubular rail broke away with a brief shriek, then bounced off a lower walkway before splashing into the glowing pool below.

Monster eyed the floor warily and keyed his comm. "Bridge 7 is near failure," he transmitted on a team-wide channel. "If you're headed to engineering, take 6A or walk carefully." He looked down and imagined the course of falling wreckage should the catwalk fail completely. Another mess they didn't need.

A flicker of light below caught his attention. Distinct from the seamless blue glow of the lake, the flash was sharp, a stutter of white brilliance. The Gatling swung over the edge as its muzzle moved through a slow arc.

Merlin's voice came in from Monster's left. "What have you got Gunny?" The question caught Monster by surprise before he remembered that his TAC wasn't transmitting. Rapid developments would call for a running commentary.

"Seven o'clock low," he said clearly, emphasizing the direction with a thrust of the Gatling. "Flash of light, looked like a welder or something."

"Like a welder?" Merlin's body canted forward abruptly, his facemask peering down. "Oh, s.h.i.t!" The engineer bolted for a downward-leading staircase. "It's the engine."

Monster scarcely had time to turn before Merlin disappeared down the staircase amid a rapid clatter of magnetic boots. Setting himself in pursuit, Monster's boot skipped off a canted step. His weight lurched wildly before his gauntlet clamped down in a metal rail so forcefully that it bent. "Dammit Merlin, hold on."

The engineer did anything but decelerate. Hooking a vertical support, Merlin took a fire pole slide down yet another level before breaking aft. Monster matched the move by necessity. As he slid down the pitched I-beam, another arc-welder flash of light erupted from below. This time he could see its source.

A tendril of immense voltage thrashed out of the wall below, emerging from a blackened panel surrounded by wormlike scorch marks. With the force of a frenzied Tesla coil, the panel gave birth to writhing fingers of lightning that stretched some twenty feet or more. As Monster swung in to the walkway floor, a huge bolt rippled out, dividing like capillaries as it spread across the surface of the pool.

Monster rounded the first junction, hot on Merlin's tracks. A door to his right stood open and smoke rolled out in thick gouts. Merlin's voice echoed through the flames. "We gotta put this fire out-- NOW!"

Monster shifted his vision to infrared and the smoke faded. A brilliant glowing blob broiled just ahead, burning intensely. Quickly scanning to either side, Monster's gaze fell on a large dark cylinder hanging on the wall. He stuffed the Gatling into its holster, s.n.a.t.c.hed the extinguisher and squeezed down on the handle. The upper arm snapped like a sc.r.a.p of balsa wood.

"Dammit!" Monster snarled, his eyes flashing back to the blaze. He clutched the cylinder with both hands as though to strangle it, shoved it into the midst of the fire and squeezed. The cylinder crumpled and burst apart in a thunderous release of halon and dusty-yellow powder.

Oxygen ripped from its lungs, the fireball collapsed on itself. Monster stepped back, still clutching the crushed tank as Merlin reappeared, an extinguisher of his own in hand. Merlin pulled up short, his head leaning slowly to one side as he looked at the smoking equipment. With a chuff he tossed the unused extinguisher aside and turned back to the console, wiping soot off the display.

"s.h.i.t Gunny, this isn't good."

Monster leaned in and looked down at the panel where color-coded bar graphs bounced up and down like a stereo system at a rock concert. Clearly not the heartbeat of a machine running smoothly.

Merlin tapped a pair of dancing orange columns. "Containment field." He leaned back and turned to face Monster. "Orange and climbing. If we hit red, the fail-safes take the core offline. Then it's back to the deep freeze."

"And if they don't?"

Merlin looked up and paused for a moment. "Imagine the surface of the sun."

The imagery was clear. Monster's voice dropped even lower than normal. "How long?"

Merlin shrugged. "s.h.i.t, Gunny. Hours, days, it's hard to tell."

"Not good enough," Monster barked forcefully. "I need to know what kind of timeframe we're looking at."

Merlin looked back at the console as his fingers tapped rapidly on the plexan surface. He stared at a series of gauges before reaching up as if to scratch his jaw, armored fingers tinking off the sh.e.l.l of his facemask. The hand dropped. "I'd give it no more than seventy-two hours. If she cycles down I don't think she'll stand up to another jump-start."

Monster bristled. "Don't you ever have any GOOD news?"

"Gimme a few minutes. I'll see if I can cut some of the power running aft, maybe lighten the load. If the drive doesn't have to work so hard, it oughtta hold out longer."

Monster gave a quick thumbs-up and stepped out of the way, his mind rapidly revising their timeline.

Seventy-two hours. His brow knit behind the armor mask.

Ships don't just appear in caves, he reasoned, so there had to be some kind of tunnel leading up. It would be a h.e.l.l of a climb back to whatever remained of the Cathedral, but in seventy-two hours they could be a long way from the ship. At that point, as far as he was concerned, the ship could freeze or cook off to its heart's content. "Nothing here but dead steel anyway," he muttered.

Stepping across the black grated floor to a pair of wide double doors, Monster planted himself in the portal. The doors led into an access corridor that ran the length of the drive system, some hundred and seventy meters at least. From the doorway Monster had an un.o.bstructed view down the hallway aft, and another fifteen meters forward where the corridor dumped into the Lobby.

A good vantage point. He could watch over Merlin while the corporal struggled to keep the crippled ship alive a little longer. Monster appreciated the scope of that task. He guessed that kilometers of fiber-optic cable alone lay between here and the Sickbay. In terms of volume and complexity, the ship was literally a city in a can.