The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [49]
A lifeboat, perhaps.
Maybe I’m marooned somewhere in deep space, he thought, awed by the notion that he might be very, very far from whatever world he and his dead companion had called home. Perhaps the gravity beneath my feet is really being generated by hidden machinery and a power cell, and not by a world.
On the plus side, quite soon after awakening, he had found the uncomfortably cool, silent-as-death chamber—or lifeboat—to be well stocked with various provisions. A series of easily opened lockers beneath the wall consoles had yielded a generous supply of water containers, several changes of clothing, a quartet of what appeared to be pressurized suits, and a medical kit, as well as a large stack of sealed, metal-foil envelopes, each of them filled with a brown puttylike material that proved edible, if unappealing. He reasoned that these were emergency rations of some sort, and wondered if the supply of potables, which the death of the soldier in the other chair had effectively doubled, would outlast the hidden batteries that maintained the atmosphere and chill ambient temperature against the airless, glacial cold he sensed lying in wait for him in the star-scattered darkness outside. He knew those batteries could not last indefinitely, any more than his limited stockpiles of food and water could.
After having considered these vexing issues for perhaps the thousandth time, the man looked down at his own clothing, which was nearly as charred and distressed as the garments on the corpse.
Was I really serving in some sort of military unit? he thought, looking back over at the dead man. Could he and I have been fighting in a war before we both ended up here?
If the answer to that question proved to be “yes,” then he knew he might be vulnerable to far more immediate perils than cold, starvation, or vacuum. An armed enemy or enemies attired in distinctive uniforms of their own might even now be stalking him. Such adversaries might decide to make short work of him, were they to find him and his dead compatriot in their present attire.
Rather than be a target, he shed his uniform, replacing it with one of the unadorned olive-drab jumpsuits he had found in the locker near the food and water stockpiles. Once he had completed his wardrobe change, he placed his old garments in a neat pile on the far side of the room, away from any of the consoles.
Standing in the room’s center, he raised the pistol he had formerly kept in a hip holster and pointed it at the stack of clothing, his thumb pressing control studs as if the nerves, muscles, and tendons that drove it possessed memories of their own. Let’s see what this weapon can do, he thought just before he opened fire.
Several heartbeats later he stood stock-still, marveling at the film of fine ash on the floor that had replaced his target. Another quick blast had reduced the ashes, essentially, to their constituent atoms.
He turned toward the dead man in the chair. The corpse’s uniform had to follow the first one into oblivion. And on top of that, a dead body couldn’t simply be left where it was indefinitely.
Who was he, really? he thought, wrestling down a sense of deep regret. My best friend? A sibling?
“Rest easy, whoever you were,” he said as he raised his weapon again and took careful aim so as not to hit anything but the corpse and the chair beneath it. “And return to the cosmos.”
After four squeezes of the trigger, the grim task was done. He was alone. And as heartbeats stretched into eternities, he was slowly becoming convinced that there might be no enemy stalking him after all. He even began to entertain the notion that he might be the only sentient creature alive in the universe, and that his erstwhile corpse-companion had merely been a figment of his imagination.
THUMP.
The sound abruptly snapped him back to reality.
Not alone, he thought,