A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

  Kin chimed in, his voice clear and cheerful, “I can help. It’ll go faster with an AI on your side. Would that be acceptable, Lizzie?”

  “Yeah,” said Boots. “Probably smart to breach as quickly as possible.”

  Boots heard Nilah groan in the background. She couldn’t blame the racer for her recalcitrance after Nilah had been slung around an icy trench on a tow line.

  “It’d be our pleasure,” said Orna. “Stand by.”

  “Prince here. I’m going to suit up and join you,” said Armin. “I can help you sift through the security access databases.”

  “Copy that,” said Orna. “Sokol out.”

  “Do you think Mother is here, sir?” asked Boots, and she noticed Aisha wince out of the corner of her eye.

  Cordell leaned onto his armrest, stroking his chin. “Let’s crack this baby open and find out.”

  A dull three hours passed waiting for Nilah, Orna, and Armin to hack into the door on the canyon wall. Ready protocols required all battle staff to remain on the bridge, with a special exception for Armin. In truth, if they were attacked, there would be almost no way to fight someone off. The battle with the satellite had exhausted Cordell, and Aisha didn’t look much better off.

  Boots was the only one fully operational aboard the bridge, and she was bored to tears. She dropped another cube of coffee into her mug and leaned against the terminal, trying not to slow blink.

  In the distance, three tiny lights bobbed by the once-hidden door: the spacesuits of the Capricious hackers taking apart an access panel. They were so small against the massive cliff face, and Boots kept her scanners trained on their position in case anything tried to sneak up on them.

  “Doesn’t seem like anybody is home, does it, Bootsie?” said Cordell, yawning. “You’d think they would’ve come out to meet us in force.”

  “Could always be a trap, sir,” said Boots, as her cube melted and splashed into hot, caffeinated goodness. “At least we know we’re in the right place.”

  Aisha lazily spun her chair to face them. She’d been watching the slow-motion breaching like a hawk, but it appeared even she couldn’t stand it anymore. “This place makes no sense at all.”

  “Legendary warship, secret underground base,” said Boots. “Perfectly reasonable, if you ask me.”

  Aisha shook her head. “No. The Harrow should’ve been all about fanfare and presence. By all accounts, it was the largest ship Taitu ever constructed. Why dock it in the darkness of a frontier world like a bunch of thieves?”

  “It was highly classified,” said Boots.

  “Every warship is highly classified,” replied Aisha. “Even a tiny marauder like the Capricious had classified systems. But states don’t hide warships from the rest of the galaxy. A navy only exists to inspire fear in an enemy. So why keep it a secret?”

  Cordell grimaced and rubbed his forehead, about to fall asleep in his chair. “I feel like that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  “What if it’s not a warship, or a weapon at all?” asked Boots. “Then hiding it becomes a little more reasonable.”

  She’d only said it as idle nonsense to pass the time, but Cordell and Aisha both stared at her as though she’d laid an egg.

  Armin’s voice buzzed over the bridge comms with a loud laugh. “We got it! Well done, ladies, well done. That was some incredible hacking.”

  “I’ve never had crypto-analytics on a hack before,” came Nilah’s radio, followed by an obnoxious amount of back-patting and self-congratulation.

  “At least the nerds were having fun,” Boots chuckled, turning back to her station. “Active scanners coming up to full.”

  Boots held focus on the dock door as it slowly ground open, shaking loose years of ice dust into long swirls. Lights flickered on inside the empty bay, illuminating maintenance gear and several dozen workstations. They’d once been able to scramble fighters from here, but those ships were long gone, even if the tools weren’t.

  “Jackpot,” radioed Orna, her tiny, distant body peering around the side of the door. “Let’s steal all of their crap.”

  “You think you can repair the Midnight Runner with that?” Boots asked, technically breaking radio priority by transmitting to an away team when it wasn’t important.

  Cordell gave her a nasty look, and she shrugged.

  “Just want to get back to what I’m best at, Captain,” Boots said with a toothy smile, hoping to avoid a reprimand. “Also, scanner contacts negative, sir. Nothing inside the bay.”

  “Okay,” said Cordell, shaking his head. “How about you take us in, Missus Jan?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The Capricious passed from the shadow of the canyon into the harsh lights of the docking bay, easily able to fit where the Harrow couldn’t. They drifted through the blue bubble of the atmos shield, and Aisha made course corrections, accounting for the addition of breathable air. The ship settled onto a set of docking pylons, and Orna, Nilah, and Armin came following inside with their maneuvering thrusters.

  “Air samples look breathable, Captain,” came Armin’s voice over the comm. “No NRBC hazards detected.”

  “Does that mean I can get out of this suit, please?” asked Nilah. “I’ve been in here for hours, and it smells like an armpit.”

  “Not until we’re sure we have control of the atmos shield,” said Cordell, standing. “It wouldn’t do to take off your suit and have someone vent the docking bay into space. No one takes off their suit unless we know the status of power and security.”

  “You heard the man,” radioed Orna. “If you want to get out of the suit, we’ve got more hacking to do.”

  Cordell fished out his cigarette case and lit up. His inscrutable eyes surveyed the bay through the canopy. He took a long drag and sighed. “Missus Jan, I’m going to need you to keep the ship hot and his main gun trained on any entrances. We may need to beat a hasty retreat.”

  “Captain, I’m the best shot with a slinger,” said Aisha. “I should be part of an away team.”

  “That’s true, but you and Malik are the closest thing we have to an insurance policy. If something happens, I need you to take the ship and go public with everything we know.”

  Aisha gave him a grim nod.

  Cordell turned to Boots and smiled. “Miss Elsworth, time to go earn our shares.”

  The bay was the typical setup to support a wing of starfighters, very similar to many that Boots had seen during her days as a pilot. The fighters were long gone, and a layer of dust covered all of the tool chests and equipment cages. Whoever had left here never closed it out, never liquidated their gear, as though they planned to return.

  Boots walked from station to station, inspecting the belongings and looking through drawers, keying on consoles and testing commands. It all powered up and attempted to connect to the missing fighters. She supposed that they must be with the Harrow, wherever it was. She might’ve already shot them down with Mother’s battlegroup.

  With direct physical access to shield security and power generators, Orna, Nilah, and Armin were able to quickly take control of the bay systems and lock them down, guaranteeing emergency power and shield coverage. Everyone happily removed their spacesuits, and Nilah looked as though she might faint.

  “Not used to long EVAs?” asked Boots, slapping her on the back.

  “After all this is over,” she coughed, “I’m buying you people some new suits.”

  “If we can salvage the Harrow,” said Boots, “we can afford our own.”

  “Here’s the plan,” called Cordell, and everyone snapped to attention. “There is no element of surprise. If there was someone home, that satellite already warned them when we didn’t take it out on the first shot. For all we know, a distress call has already gone out and there’s a ship in jump headed straight for us. That’s why we need to be in and out. We can’t hang around for Mother to get here.”

  Boots looked behind her at the open door and the icy trench, imagining the Harrow descending
over them, cornering them inside the base.

  Cordell gestured at the Capricious’s open cargo bay, where the Runner hung from its scaffold. “To that end, we need two teams. Miss Sokol, I want you to use anything you can to get the Midnight Runner working. I know you won’t find factory originals here, but I think it’s time we gave up on an authentic MRX-20. Miss Brio, if you’re willing to help, that would be appreciated.”

  “Absolutely,” said Nilah.

  “Mister Vandevere and Miss Elsworth, you’ll take Kin and join me on a sweep of the rest of the base. We need to get whatever information this place has and get the hell out of here.”

  Nilah and Orna immediately set to work, inventorying the docking bay for assets to repair the Runner. Boots, Cordell, and Armin gathered at the interior door at the far end of the docking bay. They drew their slinger pistols and stepped behind Cordell, who cast his shield. It was a healthy cast; he’d had some time to recover since battling the satellite. They keyed the panel, and the door slid aside as lights came to life beyond.

  A thin blanket of dust covered the gleaming white marble slab floors beyond. The corridor yawned before them, dotted with fluted columns on either side. Every five meters, a crystal chandelier descended, each fixture a masterwork of curving glass tendrils and faceted drops. Intricate copper latticework crisscrossed the path before them, the work of skilled artisans.

  “Uh …” said Boots.

  “My thoughts exactly,” added Armin.

  “I mean,” Boots began, “I always joked that the Taitutians had nice stuff, but this might be overkill.”

  “Keep your eyes open for valuables,” said Cordell. “I think it’s only fair that we take what we can find, don’t you?”

  “We’re going to need a bigger ship to loot this place,” said Boots.

  They crossed the threshold, and Boots marveled at the walls: flat, clear glass molded to the mottled shape of the ice beyond. Sparklamps danced through the ice like will-o’-the-wisps in the darkness. The team came to the first offshoot from the main hall—a pair of black oak doors set into the wall. Cordell brought up his shield to guard his chest and tapped the door handle.

  The door motors swung them open to reveal a room full of data cubes. They’d been arranged on intricately carved wooden shelves, each cube resting atop a red velvet cushion. A high-backed leather chair sat before a terminal of milled gold. The same patina of dust from the hallway had crept into here.

  “What the …” the captain’s voice drifted off.

  “It’s like we got stuck in the dream of some Origin-obsessed whack job,” said Boots.

  Armin strode past them, slinger lowered in awe. “Look at all of this data … what do you think is on all of it?”

  “If we don’t find the location of the Harrow, Mister Vandevere, you’ll be sifting through these,” said Cordell. “Now come on. We can’t get stuck in here gawking. Need to keep moving.”

  “Captain, why don’t we connect up Kin,” said Boots. “He can try some analytics while we search?”

  “Good call,” said Cordell.

  Boots stepped to the terminal and seated Kin’s crystalline cube down into the mount. He lit with an eerie green glow before a chime echoed across unseen speakers.

  “What a lovely repository this is,” said Kin, his voice more faithfully reproduced than Boots had heard it in a long time. The audio setup made it sound as though the human Kinnard was in the room with them.

  “What are we looking at?” asked Boots.

  “Too early to tell, just based upon indexing 8 percent of one of these crystals,” said Kin, “but I should have an answer soon.”

  “Can you access the systems outside of this room?” asked Boots. “Central control and all that?”

  A brief pause. “No. This room is a completely air-gapped network with no external data connections.”

  Boots, Armin, and Cordell exchanged glances.

  “What have you seen so far?” asked Boots.

  “Paintings,” answered Kin. “This first cube is a database of tens of thousands of perfect analog scans of paintings. Most of the classics from Taitu are in here.”

  “Not what I was expecting to hear,” said Boots, turning to her companions.

  “This whole place ain’t what I expected,” said Cordell. “Why don’t we let old Kin cook on this for a bit while we check the rest of the base out?”

  They followed Cordell back into the corridor, where he led them to the next door. They swung it wide to reveal a long, grand hall, arched buttresses meeting in the center like an ancient cathedral. Rings of golden light rotated slowly overhead, creating mesmerizing orbital patterns. In the center of the room, a long onyx slab floated motionless, ringed on all sides by high-backed, gilded chairs—four seats on each side, one larger one at the head of the table.

  “Okay,” sighed Cordell, shaking his head, “secret base or no, none of that is military-issue. I don’t give a damn how rich your planet is—”

  A telltale hum was the only warning they received before an autoturret popped out of the ceiling, pounding Cordell’s shield with corrosion spells. Any one of those rounds could’ve melted the flesh from his bones. He hunkered down behind his shield, providing cover for Boots and Armin, who ducked out to return fire.

  On the fifth shot, Boots finally nailed the turret, leaving a smoking hole in the ceiling.

  “Traps,” sighed Boots, checking her mag. “Always with the traps.”

  They fanned out into the room, ears pricked for the sounds of machines, but heard nothing. Boots reached the head of the table first, and a luminous inscription flickered to life above the mirrored black surface.

  “Witts,” she read aloud. “This must be the admiral that Marie Prejean was talking about. So these other chairs are … other ship commanders maybe?”

  “Fulsom,” answered Cordell, approaching the table at the third seat down.

  “Jean Prejean sat here,” said Armin. That seat was almost at the end of the table. Boots was no expert on weird, secret paramilitary base decorum, but Prejean didn’t seem all that important by the measure of his placement.

  They read all of the names: Witts, Gweder, Hopkins, Vraba, Novak, Owusu, Slatkin, Jeon.

  “Do you know who any of these people are?” asked Cordell. “Like, are any of these names associated with a secret banking cult that runs the galaxy, or …”

  “Not a clue, sir,” said Boots. “I’ve never heard the names before. It’d be nice to have some pictures or something.”

  “Henrick Witts was supposed to be an admiral in the Taitutian command, right? We could index these people against the records on the Link when we get back to the Capricious. It’d be a good place to start.”

  Boots made her way to the back of the hall, where she found another set of doors. “There are more rooms this way, sir.” She listened against them for any movement, but heard nothing on the other side. Again her team re-formed in a vanguard behind Cordell, and they pushed open the doors.

  Beyond was an advanced comms center and listening post. Boots recognized the layout from dozens of joint missions.

  “Finally,” said Cordell, cautiously stepping into the room. “Something reasonable around here. They had to be using this area to route communications between all of those bigwigs who sat at the table.”

  “If we assume this is the Harrow’s home base,” said Armin, walking over to tap one of the dead screens, “this would be the operations center where they’d get their intelligence from Taitu. They could probably coordinate a lot of ships out of here.”

  “Look at this,” said Cordell, powering on one of the stations. “No signal. It’s expecting to link up to fifty satellites. Did you folks see fifty sats out there?”

  “No, sir,” said Boots. “I doubt we could’ve survived fifty of what we faced.”

  Cordell smiled. “Aw, Bootsie, don’t sell us short. Anyway, my point is that those sats are either gone or downed. This place is off the grid.”

 
“Sir,” said Armin, “this is a substantial installation. I can think of dozens of states and private interests who’d have a use for this. Why just shut it down and forget it?”

  “Maybe it already served its purpose,” said Boots.

  Cordell nodded. “I don’t know why yet, but I hope you’re wrong. This place is giving me the creeps.”

  “If they’d followed any kind of comsec standard operating procedures,” said Armin, “none of this stuff should’ve booted. I’m guessing a lot of the data here is intact.”

  “Why would they leave it like that, sir?” asked Boots.

  “Look at the chairs,” said Armin, “arranged precisely at each station. The holomarks are all where they should be. The screens aren’t scrambled all to hell.” He shook his head. “This preservation is deliberate.”

  They filed out into the central hall, where they made their way in silence.

  “Let’s see how deep this goes and double back,” said Cordell. “Boots, watch our phase.”

  They crept, shield forward and Boots facing behind, until they were out of the corridor. At the end of the long hallway, they found a secured hatch with a heavy blast door. Unlike the other walls, it was solid regraded steel, and even a skilled fire mage with a focused spell would’ve had trouble cutting through. To the right of it was a guard station where a few soldiers could’ve sat ready—if anyone had been home.

  Cordell took point, leading the trio into the enclosed space of the guards’ office. Lights powered on at his approach, and Armin keyed on a few of the projectors. As three-dimensional images of the corridors spun into life all around them, Boots noted a small, red warning.

  She motioned Armin to it. “‘Sat cluster down,’ it says.”

  “Let’s hope this system is the only one that got the memo,” he muttered in reply. Then the image of the corridors outside snapped into focus. “Okay, now this is interesting.”

  To say there were no eidolon crystals on Wartenberg would’ve been an understatement. There was no mining equipment, construction gear, processing facility, or crew quarters, either. The entire Wartenberg Mining Colony was essentially a deadly decoy. Tiny green dots appeared all over the upper levels of the mining colony: explosive traps, tripwires, springflies, hidden glyph launchers, and another copy of the satellite drone swarm from before. All of the traps reported in, online and ready to kill.