by Chris Hechtl
She nodded. They'd had a couple robberies, and two attempted robberies. Attempted because it wasn't wise to try to rob an off duty Marine, even if he wasn't quite sober. They'd had a couple fights, and some other petty issues. She knew the crews of the ships weren't angels, far from it. But she wanted them home when they were done with their liberty, not in some gutter or worse, a morgue.
Aierea 3 had been their longest stop so far, 8 long productive weeks, using up the remaining time they'd had from leaving Halced 6 early. The people on the planet had been intensely grateful for the leg up; they had built off of the foundation Io 11 had laid for them. It was nice to finally get into what they had intended to do all along, really dig in and help a planet rebuild. When they broke orbit, every school and medical facility had been modernized. Their communications and rescue equipment had been overhauled, and the natives were turning their attention to the roads and utility infrastructure with a gusto, making good use of the equipment they'd purchased.
Seti Alpha 4 was still better off than Aierea 3, but if the people on the planet below them stuck their noses to the grind stone and used half of what her people had passed on, they'd catch or even pass the Seti people within a decade, maybe even sooner.
“This is better than sitting, watching a jump point I admit,” Lieutenant Eddington said in an aside to Shelby. “But it sucks that we don't get the news,” he pointed out.
“No, instead we're making news,” Shelby teased, looking up from the tablet she had been reading.
He blinked in surprise. She smiled. “Looking forward to an interview when you get home?”
“Well, Ma'am, some of those reporters are hot,” he said. That earned a smile and chuckle from both bridge crews. “But again, we've got to get there first.”
“You'd rather be playing guard on some warp point? Sitting there waiting for something to come through and scare the ever loving piss out of you?”
“Um…”
She snorted. “Yeah, thought not,” she said when he hesitated. “Trust your itchy trigger finger to blow some unarmed freighter away.”
“Hey!”
“Well?” she asked sweetly. He scowled at her. Her grin widened slightly. “You have something to say?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Join the navy, see new worlds,” he finally ground out.
“Ah, shut up,” Shelby growled, then laughed. He snorted, then chuckled, good humor restored.
<====###====[=]<==
“What a waste,” Lieutenant Silverfish said, looking at the plot of Beta 443. The system was a void, barely anything there except her class F brown giant star. But it was 7.3 light years along their route to their next stop at Nightingale. It had taken them twenty-six days to get there, and it would take another twenty-eight days to travel the 7.8 light years to Nightingale, but detouring around would take them twice as long. That was one reason empty systems were still transited. Fortunately it was one system they didn't have to stay in long, just long enough to deploy the recon satellites and transit the system.
“We can't hit a home run every time, Lieutenant,” Zeb replied, clacking his jaws.
“Why didn't we bypass this system, sir?”
They'd already deployed one stealthed satellite. “It's on our route. Bypassing it would use more fuel, you know that. Besides, we're picking up some interesting ion trails,” the Veraxin replied.
That was true; the system was a cross roads. There were a dozen or so ion trails through the system, most of them old. Only three were deemed recent by the CIC sensor techs, two came from the Aierea 3 jump point with a heading across the system towards the Nightingale one, the same their group was on. A third had been recently picked up; it had come from the chain of empty systems leading to New Dublin to the system, faded out for a bit, and then it was picked up on its way to the Nightingale jump point.
New Dublin was in a cul-de-sac system off their planned route. She wasn't sure about the wisdom of ever going to the system; their intel stated it was a patriarchal space based society. Apparently half the crew of Io 11 and the ship itself had escaped from the system. Then again, it would have been…interesting to see the local authorities’ reaction to a woman in command. And it might have been interesting to run a deep scan of the system for additional derelicts. There was no telling what else they might find there.
But that was an adventure for another time. For now, they had to stick to their planned flight path. Pity about that, Shelby thought wistfully.
Shelby was a bit disappointed by their lack of additional ship encounters as well. Apparently none of the trails were from Mariah’s Mischief or any of the other ships they'd been on the lookout for. They must have passed the slower ships in hyper. Well, she wasn't about to wait for them, she thought with a mental snort. Besides, these new ion trails were interesting. She shook her head, listening in to the bridge from her wardroom as she worked on her never ending pile of paperwork. She set her cup down and tuned the bridge out as she hummed.
“You're sure that third ship came from New Dublin?” The XO asked. The sensor rating nodded. “And nothing else?”
“Actually, sir, we've just picked up a change in course on one of the ion plots. It seems the New Dublin trace changed course…its projected vector intersected one of the trails from Airea 3 and went off course from the Nightingale jump point. It looks like they shut their engines down at some point, coasting. But we have signs of them further ahead near the jump point. I'm tracking it down now,” the rating said.
“Interesting. But a month or so old,” the Veraxin said. He clacked his mandibles. At least it gave the crew something to do, a training exercise to keep boredom at bay, he reasoned.
“Sir,” the rating said slowly, looking up. It took a moment for the Veraxin to register the change in tone and posture in the human. Humans were so hard to read sometimes. He flicked his antenna towards the human. “Sir, we're getting something. I think the captain should be called in,” he said, voice growing grim.
The other bridge ratings looked up in surprise and over to the sensor rating. He nodded and then turned his head to the plot. After a moment he shunted his feed to the main holo board and then zoomed in. He zoomed in again to a glittering object. A third zoom in and the Veraxin clacked his jaws like a gunshot. “Prometheus, page the captain,” he said. “Now,” he ordered. “Helm, change course on a heading of three five one mark two positive. Set course for the anomaly,” he ordered.
“Aye aye, sir,” the helm rating said, sounding subdued.
"Set condition yellow. Tell our escorts to do the same."
"Aye, sir. Condition yellow."
<====###====[=]<==
Shelby settled into her chair the Veraxin had recently vacated. Her bridge crew was quiet, very sober. She couldn't blame them; any crew that found a derelict was usually sobered by the experience. The ship was tumbling slowly on all three axis a million kilometers off the jump point, only the glitter from the materials around her had attracted the attention of the bored sensor officer.
“Do we know what it is?” Captain Logan asked. “And what happened? It's obvious she was shot up, but by who? I thought the Horathians captured hulls?”
“Maybe she ran or fought back,” Conrad murmured. Shelby nodded.
“I've gone back through the ships built seven hundred and fifty years ago, Ma'am, I'm not getting anything,” Prometheus reported. An image of the ship appeared in the main view screen, and then on the holo table. The AI spun the image, filling in detail.
“Mirror the parts. Most ships had some form of symmetry,” Shelby ordered. “It's like evolution,” she said.
“But that isn't a hard and fast rule, Ma'am,” the AI replied. Still, he followed orders and mirrored parts from one side to the other.
“Eliminate the wreckage. Separate it out. See if you get anything from that,” the captain ordered. She watched as the wreckage disappeared.
“Still no match. I'm extending the database search to nine hundred years,”
the AI reported.
“Get Cynthia up here. She's a ship nut. She'll tell you what it is,” the captain ordered.
The AI nodded. “I already put the call in, Ma'am,” Prometheus stated.
Shelby smiled. “Good. In the meantime, narrow it down. Species?”
The AI nodded. “Thank you, Skipper, that did the trick. She's a Veraxin hull, Ch'chn'k class, old, very old,” the AI reported, finally finding a match in their database just as the Chief engineer entered the bridge.
“I didn't know any were in service,” Cynthia murmured, studying the alien lines. The ship looked like a Terran scarab beetle, with long sharp pointed nacelles along her flanks. Several of the nacelles were broken off and missing. “You'd think with that hull and hyperdrive they would have scrapped her long ago!”
Shelby turned her attention to her chief engineer. “How old is old?”
“Oh over seventeen hundred years give or take a century or two, Skipper,” Cynthia replied absently. “They were popular before the founding of the Federation.” She shook her head in wonder. “Metal fatigue alone! I'd love to dive into that ship and see how they kept her running so long,” she murmured.
“Well, you'll get your chance. From the look of her she didn't go down quietly,” Shelby said, indicating the hull damage. They could see damage from weapons fire had pealed the freighter's hull in several places. Internal equipment and her holds had been vomited out like popped blisters. A cloud of it had formed around the ship. Ice was mixed in as well, most likely from the atmosphere venting, or fuel.
“You'd think all of that would have been gone by now,” Silverfish murmured.
“Not exactly. Oh, the gases yes. But that ship is the largest mass in the area, so it has its own gravitational field even with the drive and gravity plates off. So once things settled down, stuff that only leaked out slowly or froze inside the ship came out like this and formed the halo around the ship.”
“It looks pretty if you didn't know what it all was,” Conrad said. He was right, the light from the star made the mess of material sparkle and shift in a rainbow of color. Beautiful but horrifying.
“Do we know when this happened?” the captain asked.
“Recently,” the sensor rating replied immediately. “We will need a check of the damage to be certain Captain, but I've done an initial reverse time sim of the debris, it's recent. A month or less. I'll know more when we get inside, Ma'am,” he said.
Shelby nodded. Cynthia smiled. “Prep a series of probes,” the captain ordered. The Chief's face fell. “Until we know what's on that ship and what chewed her up we're not taking any chances,” the captain said. The Chief nodded.
“We've got an ion trial, Ma'am, it's less than three weeks old. It's coming from the wreckage and goes to the jump point. It matches the ion trail that came from the New Dublin jump line.”
“Great, so either someone's been by, seen it, and then kept going, or we've got the first footprints of her killer. Keep on it. See if you can work up a profile on the ship's mass based on her ion trail.”
“I can try, Ma'am, but it is a very wide field,” the sensor rating warned.
“I know, just do your best,” the captain ordered.
<====###====[=]<==
Meter sized orbs floated out from shuttles near the wreck a few hours later. Three spun around the craft, joining the debris field to map her exterior hull. Four smaller orbs darted into rips in her hull to have a peek inside.
“We've got bodies,” the tech manning the control of one of the drones reported. He watched through his implant feed as a dismembered Veraxin body drifted by his camera feed. He swallowed, now not so sure about the quality of his image feed.
“Hold one is empty,” another tech reported. “Her doors have been forced open,” he said grimly.
“Can we go on board yet?” Cynthia demanded, hands on her helmet. She'd insisted on taking a scouting team with her on the shuttle, all suited up and ready to go.
“Patience,” Shelby murmured. She watched the six feeds on the plot. They had definitely found recent signs that the ship had been picked over by pirates, she thought, that was the only explanation.
“I don't…there is something wrong with this,” a tech said. “I don't like the look of those repairs. They don't…they just don't feel right,” he said.
“What?” Cynthia asked, looking up from where she'd been fiddling with her helmet. “Show me,” she ordered curtly. He shunted the feed to her. She frowned thoughtfully as he highlighted blocks arranged around the ship's reactor core. Wiring was interconnected to them, and then off to something else. “There is a working robot here, Ma'am,” the tech said, turning the camera. He floated the probe over to see the guts of a robot probe hanging from the bulkhead. The thing drifted in the zero gravity, bouncing about.
“What do you suppose it is?” Another tech murmured.
“It's a booby trap,” Cynthia growled. “Pull the probes,” she ordered just as a red light came on. The image zoomed in to see the dangling robot move, then zero in on the robot. “Freeze!” She ordered.
“Too late!” The tech said as the image went blinding white. He cried out in pain as the explosion washed through his sensors, momentarily blinding him until his implant filters caught up and cut the feed. He was fortunate that the implants didn't transmit pain.
“Son of a bitch,” Captain Levinson said over the open com line as the derelict exploded. Debris flew out, slamming into the field around the derelict and then sending a spray towards the shuttle and ships.
“Back us off, shields to full!” Captain Logan growled, eyes flashing. She checked the status of the shuttle. It had darted away the moment Cynthia had recognized the trap. Shrapnel pinged against her rear shields, but she held together long enough to duck around the larger ship.
“Frack, that was close,” Captain Yu said as all four ships turned bow on to weather the storm of unexpected debris. When it finally dissipated he grunted. “Well! I for one will take our “babysitting roll” a little more seriously,” he said. Shelby snorted.
Shelby dispatched tugs and robots to gather the wreckage to pick over what they could. “There won't be much left, Ma'am,” Conrad warned.
“You never know,” she said. “And we can use the material. I think the people who died here won't begrudge us that. Not if we use it to catch their killers,” she said. He nodded, eyes cold.
“We need to go after whoever did this. The trail is getting colder by the minute,” Captain Levinson growled over the open channel.
“No,” Captain Yu said slowly. “As much as I would like to avenge these poor people, we have a job to do. Just consider what would happen to Prometheus if a sufficient force fell upon them?” he asked. Levinson frowned but then grudgingly nodded. “Besides, we've lost four, no, six probes and taken some light damage. Doing a more thorough assessment is the wise choice of action, not charging off into the unknown.”
“We may also pick up something. A computer, a tablet, anything,” Shelby said. She shrugged at their disbelief. “I know, I know, it's a long shot I realize, but it's something. And right now, it's all we've got,” she said. They nodded.
<====###====[=]<==
“Skip, any idea when we're going to meet up again?” Cynthia asked as they digested a nice dinner.
“Meet up?” Shelby asked, cocking her head. “Aren't we doing that already?” she asked. Cynthia had been a bit busy digesting the material they'd picked up from the derelict. So busy she hadn't had time to dine with her captain until after their ships had jumped to Nightingale.
“No I mean the ships,” the chief said, then took a sip of her beer.
“Oh? Got something to trade?” Shelby asked then took a pull of her own beer.
“More like someone to screw senseless,” Cynthia said, timing it just right so her captain sputtered wildly. She grinned.
“You…” Shelby coughed for a moment then brushed at the beer on her day uniform. “You did that on purpose!” She a
ccused.
“Guilty,” Cynthia said smugly. She took a pull of her own beer, eyes twinkling. Shelby reached out to tip it into her face but she dodged it and kept drinking.
“So, who's the lucky stiff?”
“Stiffy,” Cynthia said, grinning again. “Or he will be. Vlad Contenov on Descartes,” she said. “Vlad the Impaler,” she said wickedly.
“The chief engineer? Isn't he, well, a bit young for you?” Shelby asked. Cynthia licked her lips suggestively. Shelby took a pillow and smacked her upside the head, making both women laugh.
It felt good, Shelby admitted, and Zeb was right. She did bond better with her chief engineer, largely because she was a woman near her age. They were friends as well as colleagues and shipmates.
“You know what they say about youth and vigor,” Cynthia grinned again. Shelby snorted. “I'm curious if he can really go as long as he brags about,” she said with another leer. “I intend to find out soon.”
“Right,” Shelby drawled. “Troll the trollop, I should have known,” she said, shaking her head mockingly.
Cynthia stuck her tongue out at her. “You're just jealous,” she teased.
“Damn right I am,” Shelby admitted, making her chief engineer laugh. “Well, the good news is you'll be ending your lackalooney condition when we get to Nightingale…if we don't find the pirates there, and if you two love birds can arrange your liberty to coincide with each other’s,” she said.
Cynthia nodded, now sobered. “Think we'll find them?”
“If they are smart, they will be long gone,” Shelby growled. “I know we're not supposed to endanger Bertha or Prometheus, but I'm hoping they either stuck around or are slow and we passed them. I'd love to catch them and pound the crap out of them,” she growled.
