Empire of Bones

by Terry Mixon

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jared went back over to Courageous the next morning. If there were any kind of trouble, he’d have plenty of time to get back to Athena. Graves had taken third shift to oversee things on the wreck and to explore. Athena’s day watch would wake him if something developed.

  There still wasn’t any gravity, but without the wicked spin, he was able to make his way to engineering without problems. Baxter was already there overseeing the splice of a thick cable into the power grid.

  They’d strapped the cable to the deck and out through the gash ripped into the hull. Jared floated over and held himself in place besides the engineer. “How goes it?”

  “Almost ready to divert power. It won’t be enough to power the ship, but it should let us turn on some basic systems like life support.”

  “I thought the life support reservoirs were trashed.”

  “One holds pressure. A second looks easily reparable. I’ve had some of the reserves on Best Deal shipped over. We can recapture most of it when we’re ready to leave, but having a pressurized hull will make recovery operations a lot simpler.”

  “Do we even know if the ship’s systems will even work?”

  “Nope. We’ll be doing an old-fashioned smoke test. If it smokes, it won’t work.”

  Jared shook his head. “You’re a mess. If the computer comes back online, will we be able to interface with it?”

  “That’s a question for the brains. For the time being, we’ve disconnected it from the grid.” He sprayed something on the exposed connections, hiding the bare metal beneath a black, rubbery covering. “Okay. Here we go.”

  He must’ve said something on a different frequency, because Jared didn’t hear a word. He did see the overhead lights flicker and come on dimly.

  Jared hunted around until he found the frequency they were using and heard people chiming off about the lights coming on. From the locations given, the entire ship had lights. Of a sort.

  “Are those emergency lights,” he asked after Baxter finished checking in with everyone.

  “Probably. They’re too dim to be the main overheads. I’ll need to find the controls to turn on anything else. The system knows none of the fusion plants is online and it can tell the amount of power is limited. I think I can override that for specific systems.”

  “Will the ship give you access?”

  “Let’s find out.” He pushed off the bulkhead and led the way deeper into engineering. Away from the flip drives, the damage was less severe, but it would’ve been deadly to the men and women working here.

  Baxter went to one of the consoles and found the emergency power switch. The display came to life, dim and coated in dust. It brightened almost immediately. “The console found the power bus and it’s not asking for any kind of authentication. That’s probably because it still thinks it’s in a combat situation. No authentication required when someone is shooting at you.” He tapped the screens hunting for something.

  The displays the Chief Engineer examined made even less sense to Jared than the engineering displays on Athena. Baxter eventually found something, though. “Here we go. Let’s put the lighting on a higher priority.”

  The overhead lights brightened enough to illuminate every corner. With the ship still in vacuum, the shadows were knife sharp and deep black.

  “That should do it,” Baxter said with satisfaction. “I’ll add my authentication to the engineering subsystems. Another benefit of having the main computer offline.”

  “What happens when the computer comes back online?”

  “I’ll isolate it from the control runs if we decide to power it up. Then the authentication we give the consoles will continue to work. Adding someone to the main computer is another egghead task. It may not even be possible. I’d imagine there’s some pretty tight security coding on it.”

  Jared nodded. “One problem at a time. Next, what about the life support systems?”

  Baxter navigated through the screens. “The system still shows itself to be functional. It looks like Fleet designed their warships to last a long time. I’m impressed.”

  Baxter switched to the all-hands channel. “Okay, everyone. If you’re near an airtight door, you need to get clear of it. Tell me now if you won’t be clear in thirty seconds.”

  When no one said anything, Baxter waited and then touched the controls. “All airtight doors have sealed and show green. Life support is online. It shows some glitches, but as a critical system, it can manage. Pressure is slowly rising and the heaters are on, except for engineering and a few other areas still open to space. I’d imagine you could take off your helmet in half an hour, but it’ll still be brutally cold in there. I wouldn’t touch bare metal for at least an hour.”

  The idea that an old wreck like this could come back to life boggled Jared’s mind. “I’ll want a ship’s status when you can get it. I want to know what systems could be used if we wanted to. That might help a lot in getting an idea how things work.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now how do I get to the other side of the pressure doors?”

  “They come in pairs so that you can open one at a time and step through like an airlock. The pressure will equalize and then the other side will open. I’ll get someone to checking the primary systems and available repair parts. Those will tell us a lot by themselves, technologically speaking.”

  “This ship is full of surprises. I’ll want someone to check the weapons systems, too. Call Zia to get some of her people to help.”

  He made his way forward to the first set of pressure doors. They performed exactly as Baxter had indicated. He couldn’t see a difference once he went through, but his suit informed him there was a slight increase in pressure.

  Jared made his way to the bridge. It looked better with the lights on, but he couldn’t see the place without remembering Courageous’ long dead crew strapped in at their stations. No one was up here now so he had the Captain’s console all to himself to do a little looking around.

  With the overheads on, he finally got a good look at the bridge. The floor plan appeared similar to the one on Athena, only larger. Significantly larger. The Captain’s console was on a raised dais overlooking double the number of crew stations. Four forward in square formation. Three each on the right and left sides facing the bulkheads. Two consoles at the rear flanked the lift.

  He’d identified a dozen stations, not counting the Captain’s. Significantly more than on the largest cruiser he’d ever been on. The compartment was also quite roomy meaning there was no feeling of being crowded here.

  One hatch on the left side of the compartment led to the Captain’s day cabin, complete with conference room, another opened to a large head for the crew. He’d missed the closed hatches on his first visit. Admiral Yeats’ flag bridge on Orbital One was less luxurious.

  He strapped himself in to the Captain’s chair and brought the console to life. It connected to the power grid and glowed brightly under the smeared dust. He’d left the systems on the life support screen so he could see an array of amber dots all over the ship. A number of red one’s told him engineering was still in a vacuum. No surprise there. Most remaining areas had noticeable pressure. The temperature was coming up, too.

  The log had the last commands entered on this console. He could see where he re-enabled the safeties on the fusion reactor. The logged time was wrong, of course. The console had been without power too long to keep any internal chronometer running.

  The previous instructions were there, too. He saw where the Captain had disabled the safeties. He also saw where he’d entered a complex set of instructions for the reactor. Then he’d vented the ship to space. All within the space of a minute. The First Officer had countersigned the orders.

  Why the hell did the ship’s designers even have a method to vent the atmosphere to space and scuttle the ship? He couldn’t do something that crazy on Athena even if Graves helped him cut holes all over the ship. What kind of maniac thought the syste
m needed to account for that possibility?

  He tried to make sense of the instructions sent to the fusion reactor and failed. He opened a communications link to Baxter. “Dennis, I’m looking at the console logs from the bridge. Courageous’ Captain sent some commands to the fusion plant that make no sense to me. Hook up to my helmet feed and tell me what they look like to you.”

  The other man was silent for a moment. “Are you kidding me? That isn’t even funny. How did you even manage to program that? I’d never have figured you had that kind of engineering theory.”

  “I’m not pulling anyone’s leg. That’s what the Captain sent from this station. What does it mean?”

  “It means that the Captain was a suicidal maniac,” Baxter said. “Those instructions should’ve sent the fusion reactor into overload in less than twenty minutes. It would’ve gone off like a nova. The only guess I can make is that a systems failure on this end disrupted the command.”

  “It sure looks like they were determined not to fall into the hands of the rebels,” Jared said.

  “I can see that. He set the fusion plant to explode and vented the atmosphere. Two very thorough deaths. I’m surprised he didn’t set any of the ship to ship missiles to explode.”

  Jared’s eyes widened and he switched to the all hands frequency. “All weapons technicians to the ship’s missile tubes! I want to be sure that no one has tampered with the warheads. Make it fast.”

  Baxter whistled. “What the hell is going on here, Jared?”

  “Something really disturbing. Does this ship have more than one fusion plant?”

  “Yes, but they all went down at some point. They probably deteriorated until the safeties shut them down.”

  Jared thought furiously. “I want you to go over every system on this ship that might destroy it. Isolate them if you find any evidence of tampering. I don’t want the long dead hand of Courageous’ Captain to take us with him.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He sat there for a while thinking. No obvious explanations jumped out at him. After a bit, he shook himself out of his revere. The command logs might tell him a bit more of the final timeline. He brought it up and studied it more closely. Unfortunately, the console only logged commands sent from it.

  He wondered why someone activated the distress beacon in the first place. It seemed counterintuitive. Perhaps it activated on its own after some predetermined period without instructions from the main computer.

  He made his way around the other stations and brought them online. The tactical console had the times when they’d activated the screens and fired the weapons. It looked like the final battle lasted about an hour. It seemed as though that fight had taken place three weeks before they apparently killed themselves. There was a second battle a week earlier.

  Helm indicated two activations of the flip drive between those battles. It also logged the tactical officer’s attempts to shift power to reactivate the screens when they failed.

  Jared stared at the dead main screen for a while. Too bad the computer was offline. It probably logged both the battles in their entirety.

  He needed to get the main computer online.

  Or did he? This had happened half a millennium ago. The information locked away wasn’t relevant to their current situation. Yes, they needed to know. They just didn’t need to know this second. It wasn’t as though the rebels would come pouring through the flip point while he feverishly searched for the answers.

  Baxter reported in shortly with the all clear. That removed the danger for now. Jared checked the air readings and popped his helmet. The icy atmosphere smelled musty, but breathable. He’d let the ship warm up and then send for the brains. Maybe they could shed some light on the situation.

  He returned to the Captain’s console and explored for a while longer. He wanted to find any personal log, but there didn’t seem to be one. It was probably on the main computer.

  What he did find was an icon on the main screen marked ‘play me’. He tapped it and the main screen at the front of the compartment flickered and came to life. A chill ran up Jared’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold. He was looking at the bridge of this ship as it had been. Only, live men and women filled the crew stations. All wore the strange headsets.

  The Captain had dark hair with a hint a grey. He looked to be about Jared’s age.

  “If you’re watching this message,” the dead man said, “then our attempts to destroy this ship have failed. I beseech you, stranger, to inter our dead as if they were your own brothers in arms. I commend them to you. I couldn’t have wished for braver companions in this terrible time.”

  The dead Captain gestured around himself. “Courageous has served us well, and defended the Empire with honor. We drew off the remaining rebel battlecruisers so that our task force could escape without detection. We disabled one of the enemy ships two systems back and destroyed the other here.

  “Unfortunately, the bastards took out our flip drives and most of our life support reserves in the fight, damn the luck. Rather than wait for the air to grow foul and prolong our suffering, we’ve decided to end things swiftly. I’d prefer to overload one of the fusion plants, but the Chief Engineer and most of his staff are dead. I’ll make an effort to do so, but I have little confidence in my ability to do so. With some justification, since you’re seeing this message.”

  The black humor made Jared shake his head.

  Courageous’ Captain continued. “The backup plan is to vent the ship’s atmosphere. It isn’t the most desirable way to die, but it will be graciously quick.” The man rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I dearly hope you’re Fleet yourself, but that seems hard to imagine in these dark times. Whoever you are, if Courageous can serve your needs, please take her with of my blessing. Treat her like a Lady.”

  The horror of the long ago situation again washed over Jared. This crew had known their end was inescapable. They’d chosen to die by their own hands rather than suffer. Most had gathered in the mess compartments for one last time, to be with their friends at the end. Others like the woman he’d found in her cabin had chosen to die alone.

  The captain and his command crew had met their end at their stations.

  He’d been through emergency decompression drills, including an actual loss of atmosphere. Unlike the common misconception, you didn’t swell up and explode like a balloon. Fleet trained them to open their mouths and let the air rush out so that their lungs survived undamaged. Then you suffocated if you couldn’t find the air.

  The long dead captain straightened in his chair. “Well, our time is up. I apologize for leaving our home in such a mess. I again beseech you to take our remains home with you. Bury us with whatever ritual and honor you hold dear and accept my gratitude for your kindness.”

  The long dead Fleet officer sat up straighter and brought his right fist to his chest. “I hope you’ll forgive the paraphrase, or at least understand it. Go tell the Empire, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to Imperial law, we lie. Courageous out.”

  The screen blinked out and Jared brought his own fist up to return the salute. Much of Terran history had been lost to the ages, but he knew the story of Sparta and the 300. He couldn’t imagine a more fitting epitaph for these heroes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Watching an autopsy wasn’t very high on Kelsey’s list of things to do, but somehow Doctor Stone convinced her to do exactly that. She promised herself she wouldn’t lose her lunch and that she’d get out of there as fast as she could. The very real appointment she had on Best Deal to look over some of the artifacts would make an outstanding excuse.

  Stone had a man laid out before her on the diagnostic table. He had a sheet pulled up to his chin, but he still looked painfully vulnerable. He also looked like a long-dead corpse. The faint scent of decay hung in the air.

  The doctor looked up at Kelsey. “You look a little queasy. If you’re afraid I’m going to cut this poor soul up you can rest easy. My scanners are more than capabl
e of getting me all the data I need without violating him.”

  The princess relaxed a little. “I suppose I was thinking exactly that.”

  “I’ve been present when an old fashioned autopsy was conducted on a body donated to science, but unless something looks wildly out of place that won’t be necessary. If it were, I wouldn’t subject you to that.”

  “Can you tell what killed him without going inside him?”

  “I can tell you what killed him right now. He died from asphyxiation. The burst capillaries in his eyes are a dead giveaway, if you’ll pardon the unintended and wholly inappropriate pun. Really, I’m not looking for cause of death. I’m looking to see if there are any oddities.”

  Kelsey felt herself frowning. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but if we don’t scan some people we won’t know for sure. This, by the way, is the commanding officer of Courageous. I’d tell you his name, but we don’t have any idea what it is. Fleet uniforms didn’t have nametags back then, apparently. I can’t imagine how that worked.”

  Kelsey examined the dead man’s face. Thankfully, someone had closed his eyes. She didn’t want to see any burst blood vessels. Judging his age wasn’t easy. With his body mummified as it was, he could’ve been any age at all. He did have a full head of dark hair that seemed to be only a little grey. Maybe in his late thirties or early forties?

  Doctor Stone initialized the diagnostic bed and turned to face the large screen. It lit up with the outline of a human body. It began filling in with bones and internal organs almost immediately. Then the head began flashing yellow.

  “What’s that?” Kelsey asked.

  “An anomaly.” Stone tapped the head on the screen. It expanded to show more detail. Kelsey had a vague idea of what a human brain looked like, and she was fairly certain that one didn’t usually have a web of filaments running through it and several small discs implanted under the skull.