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Incident Part 1
Posted By: monitor101<wasup1989@hotmail.com>
Date: 21 March 2008, 4:15 am
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Author's note: It's been awhile for me. Enjoy.
10 August, Reach City / Case Report Lieutenant Smith Shepard (UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Office of Investigation), report: the Gladiator incident
I'm originally from Earth, the home planet. This is my first time on the big blue's doorstep. Reach isn't much different, the flora and fauna much resemble that of Earth. The city is certainly the planet's closest resemblance, its New York Metropolitan size with Southern California diversity. I got a Birdseye of the countryside when as we approached the landing strip. The Big Horn River is beautiful, an emerald ribbon cutting through green. Sunlight reflects off it like a million glittering diamonds. It stretches off into the horizon, an infinity edge. They say if your ONI you're a zombie, you've lost your soul. But I can appreciate natural beauty and it reminds me that no matter how soulless our organization may (or may not) be, we're doing it to preserve the beauty of places like this. It's all truly breathtaking, but under all those trees and along those shores I know there are dozens of military camps, missile emplacements, and beneath that canopy isn't just dirt, there's titanium.
I sit with Ensign Costa and Petty Officer Wilson. Costa is small and wiry and according to his Career Service Vitae he is somewhat of a party animal, to say the least. Wilson is burly and quiet. Today Costa joins Wilson in silence.
Costa, "This was my first assignment aboard a boat. I had just graduated from OCS, second in my class. I was a damn good engineer. I have a Captain uncle in the War Department. He got me my position on the Gladiator. I was so stoked when I learned I got it. I was headed to the front line."
Wilson, "We shipped out of here, headed for the Jericho Theater. There were reports of a Covenant insurgence. We were part of a relief element, five other ships. You knew the shit was going to be thick if they were sending that many. We were also carrying about a thousand Marines onboard. We didn't have the luxury of AI, so it was all human hands. Of course the ship's navigational systems (often referred to as the "onboard") are prerouted, but Slipspace is such a goddamn anomaly. The onboard can crunch all the numbers but there really is no way of coming out even close to the destination. I've logged over seven thousand hours and the closest I've ever come out was half a billion miles out system."
Costa, "Pathetic right, and those Covie bastards can make absolute precise jumps, even very short ones. Rumor has it your outfit has been experimenting with different ways to break into Slipspace. Like how the Covenant does it…"
Wilson, "In theory."
Costa, "Yeah, they cut it open, you know, surgically."
Where did you come out?
Costa, "We don't know where to this day. Although astronomers have suggested it was in Zeta Reticuli."
What happened?
Costa, "It certainly wasn't something wrong with the onboard. The Gladiator was a destroyer, totally contemporary. All systems were a hundred percent. The onboard is basically artificial intelligence, but it doesn't have a personality like smarter generations, even stupid ones. Just a very smart computer. Its programming is perfect, it doesn't make mistakes."
"It was a Slipspace anomaly. The onboard detected it en route and brought us to normal space, a standard precautionary procedure."
What was it?
Wilson, "A meteor, big fella too. It must have somehow followed us out of Slipspace. Which is odd, the hole between dimensions is only opened for seconds; it makes no sense how such a large object came to normal space right behind us. Then again nothing about Slipspace makes sense."
"We could see it, it was a large rock, three miles across or so. It looked like a cratered, gray potato. It had this dust cloud around it, probably stirred up from the violent change between dimensional spaces. Anyways, the dust was bluish and greenish, like a comet's tail."
Costa, "I was on the bridge tending to some equipment problems. The captain and his navigators were trying to figure where the hell we were. We were in empty space, no planets or stars nearby. They plotted a course and started heading out. The captain decided to go close to the meteor, the bastard that threw us off course. He made a ship wide call for everyone to peer out their windows, we would be within a thousand miles of it, a good view."
That close you went through the cloud?
Wilson, "Yep, right through it. We could see it as we went passed the meteor. It looked like Saturn's rings up close, a bunch of dusty, rocky particles just floating around, bumping into each other. We slowed down to prevent any collisions with larger objects."
Do you think that was it?
A pause.
Costa, "Yeah."
Bathford Hotel
I'm sitting with Tech Officer Javier RothRock in the lobby. He's a jittery fellow with his dark hair in a crew cut, a neatly pressed uniform, and a camel back of water strapped around his waist. He drinks from it as if he's in a desert.
RothRock, "I like to stay hydrated, especially after what happened. Before I hated the stale ozone taste of recycled water on ships. After seeing so much dried out skin and nearly drying out myself in that engineering room I'll always drink water. Always."
"I was a techie, a lot of us hate that term, feel its degrading. I embrace it, cause that's what we are. However I do share the feeling with everyone else that we are the unsung heroes. We're the ship crews, our job is to maintain the vessel, keep it sea worthy and battle ready. (Laughs). Keep it 'battle hot' as we like to call it. We're not Marines, we're not Helljumpers, and we're not bridge crews, or pilots, we're the pale figures in the ship corridors in a jumpsuit with a laptop running a diagnostic. No one notices us, like the quiet kid in school. But our presence is certainly felt. The navy hasn't won a lot of victories in this war, but of the ones we have won, how many of those were because a good ship crew? How many of us have died in ship to ship engagements? Lots. Statistically speaking more navy crewman die than Marines. We are unsung, but I know we make a difference."
Did you see the meteor?
RothRock, "Yeah, I was on my way to engineering when the captain made the call. I looked out through a nearby veiwport. It was amazing, beautiful. The blue dust clouds and the rock itself, massive, silent, just awe striking. Reminded me of the Large Megellanic Cloud. I took a picture and sent it to all those poor bastards below decks who didn't have a window nearby. I got a free meal from the chef for that one."
You were the first?
RothRock, "Um, yeah…I was in engineering, the massive, extremely hot room that houses the engines, its close to the reactor and the Shaw Fujikawa. There's a big risk of radiation poisoning down there. But we're all drilled on the hazards."
"I was with a guy named Seth. He was cool, a little quiet, level headed. He was one of the best Techs I've ever served with. He could fix anything, talk about a do everything man, we called him Mr. Multimedia Man."
"We got a report of a screwy circuit. The thing is a part of a backup coolant pump. The backup systems are always fucking up more than the primaries. The circuit was in far corner of engineering, and this is no little room. Me and Seth threw our equipment up on a tracked dolly. We walk over there, this dolly trudging along behind us. The circuit is in a damn jungle of circuits. They're stored in this really narrow tunnel, something that I don't want to go in. This is in a small hallway in the far corner, right. Its cramped and little, the dolly can't access so we took some stuff off it and hauled back into there. It was dark and sweaty and hot. I hated it, kept on complaining. Seth always kept a cool head and told me to chill, it would be over before I knew it. He opened up his laptop and connected it to the rack. He ran through the systems and found the problem. A circuit that had to be replaced. The Thing was, this particular circuit was in an even more remote part of engineering. A little tunnel that you have to crawl into to gain access to the circuits."
(Takes a large gulp from the camel back.)
"We walked to a dusted little door in the floor. You know this thing hadn't been used for ages when there was dust on it. We opened it and a cloud came off. We climbed down this narrow ass ladder, its dark as hell. Here its extremely cold cause we're so close to the outside of the ship, I mean right next to the inner armor. Seth and I did rock paper scissors and I lost, bastard always won at that game. I shimmied into this little tunnel, which goes on for about fifty feet. I found the right circuit, replaced it, and started making my way back."
(He clears his throat. Takes a drink.)
"I heard something. A thrash or, uh, a thud, I don't know. It wasn't loud or anything, just really quick."
(RockRock looks sweaty. He loosens his collar. I think I hear a sniffle.)
"I was in the shaft maybe five minutes. I got out…"
(He stands.)
"I'm sorry."
UNSC Camp Ettrick Alpha Blue, Naval School of Engineering
Lt. Commander Anderson is a fast talker; I struggle to keep up with her.
Anderson, "I'm one of the designers of our ventilation systems on frigates, destroyers, cruisers, civilian models, even old Halcyon class cruisers. I helped manufacture ships like the Gladiator on Mars."
"I do not know the particulars of what happened. I was only asked to explain how the expel ducts work. These are shafts that connect to the vacuum. If anyone on a ship smokes or if there are any types of gases or carcinogens detected in the ships ventilation system, the ship takes these aerosols or anything less than breathable oxygen, separates it and transfers it into expel ducts, which expel it into space. In the engineering decks, there are several types of gases being vented into the air from the numerous machines. There are five expel ducts around engineering. They are circular, about as big as the circumference of a car tire."
"On occasion they do suck in vacuum to eliminate anything lingering in the pipes by decompressing the atmesphere. I do not know for sure if anything can gain access through the expel ducts. Maybe."
The following is an excerpt from a UNSC Naval HIGHCOM Panel of Inquiry's inquest on the Gladiator incident. The subject of questioning is Tech Officer Samuel Clark. CLASSIFIED, ALPHA PRIORITY, BGX DIRECTIVE.
Admiral Gerov, "On file are more than one account of surviving tech staff–your colleagues and ship mates–who claim the most probable way was through one of the expel ducts. How else could it have first been on the engineering levels?"
Clark, "Yes sir, there are no missile shafts or other external openings near the main engineering decks. The expel ducts are the only openings around engineering. The fact that they periodically suck in vacuum to decompress, this cleans the vents and pipes of any foreign bodies, and makes it seem the most likely way onto the ship."
Admiral Gerov, "Are you saying you think it was through the expel shaft?"
Clark, "Yes sir I am."
United Nations Space Command Medical Research Institute For Infectious Research (UNSC MRIIR, pronounced for short, "Mur-eye)", 45 minutes outside Reach City
Dr. Shi Kai was the chief medical officer on the Gladiator and is considered a hero of the incident. Since, he has gained wide knowledge of highly infectious agents and now heads MRIIR's Lethal Pathogens branch. He has extensive experience working with Biosafety Level four
agents. With a deeply lined face, tired eyes that have a lively glint, and a beard flecked with gray, Dr. Kai prefers to wear old fashioned glasses rather than have his aging eyes surgically returned to 20/20.
Dr. Kai, "Virulent. That's what I called it. That's what the captain didn't believe. He didn't like the term 'biological anomaly'."
You were the only medical officer at hand?
Dr. Kai, "The only. I have two assistants. Two. That's three medical staff for a ship of fifteen hundred crew and another one thousand Marines. Doctors and even medics are in very short supply these days. We had just gotten out of Slipspace; the other two were still in cryo and would be thawing within the hour along with everyone else. The engineering and bridge crew were the first to thaw."
"There was no call. Three Techs from engineering ran him in to the infirmary. They said something had happened…something bad. A bigger man was carrying him; he was covered with his friend's blood. They set him down on a table on his chest and I went right to it, didn't have time to glove up. He was of medium size, they said his name was Seth. He had a wound on his upper back, near the middle. It was deep, the skin around it was jagged and looked as if he had been stabbed. Something was protruding from the wound, it looked like a yellowish stick. Yet when I touched it, it was soft and moist and produced a smell so foul I nearly vomited. I knew it was organic, the end sticking out was mangled and green ooze dripped from it, it looked like it had been ripped off something, it was an appendage."
"Everyone was screaming, it was chaos, I tried to keep them all calm. Seth's appearance was unlike anything I had ever seen. His skin had turned yellow and seemed to sag, like there was no more collagen. His head was leaning to one side, his pupils were very dilated, I thought this meant that there was no more brain activity. I had to literally pull the appendage out of the wound, it was latched on unnaturally tight. After this I gloved up and went into the wound. I parted the cloth, the mangled flesh, and then the torn muscle. The blood was, well, green and slimy. Thick, like it was all clotting. The appendage had latched onto his spinal column, the upper Thoracic vertebrae had something all over it, and it was covered."
With what?
Dr. Kai, "I have no idea. They were reddish lines. The surrounding tissue seemed to be liquefying. His skin was blotted, yellow, turning moist. What looked like a goiter had bulged from his left shoulder, causing his entire head to lean to one side. It was huge, abnormally so. A massive lump the size of a grapefruit. What made me step back was it pulsated."
Pulsated?
Dr. Kai, "Yes, it pulsated and oscillated, up and down, like a heartbeat. We all were on the other side of the room when this started to move. I took a step closer, the three Techs slowly followed behind me. Curiosity killed the cat, right. Then three appendages burst out of it. I mean burst, just shot out. They looked exactly like the one that I had cut off."
"Then he reanimated."
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