Nods. “All right. Let’s do it.”
Floating through the ship, the nine engineers split into two groups, Tobey leading her group aft, one of the leytenants leading the other group forward. The ship was dead, completely without power. The reactors, if they were still even in the ship, were either out of fuel or power or otherwise completely wrecked. Any emergency batteries would be long since depleted. So, the teams were forced to bring their own batteries, which would be interfaced with the various computer consoles, to try and vacuum out any and all bits of information.
The going was slow, for no one wanted to risk getting trapped. Debris littered the corridors and compartments and more than once, the teams were forced to detour around blocked corridors. The ship was not large, which meant that there were not many ways to get through the various areas of the ship and each team was forced to cut through the bulkheads of nearby compartments to make it through past the barricades.
Bodies were everywhere. The ship had originally carried a crew of around fifty, comparable to Maitland, though this ship was a dozen meters longer than the FP vessel. The teams tried to avoid the shredded starboard side, where no doubt there would have been a plethora of dead. Most of those in that area might have been torn apart or blasted out into the void when the ship’s hull was breached. One of the techs came around a corner and found a dead woman floating right there, her face grotesque and her chin bumped against the faceplate of his helmet.
He screamed in terror and revulsion but Tobey grabbed his arm. “Don’t you do it!” she shouted over the comms. “Don’t throw up! You’ll choke to death!”
The man was hyperventilating and his own eyes were bulging, fixed on the dead woman. Tobey hissed, reached up and grabbed hold of the dead woman’s coveralls. She wasn’t wearing a suit, the cat noted, her own mind very carefully avoiding looking at her face. With a strong yank, she dragged the woman down the corridor and out of the sight of her panicked technician. Tobey reached over to him, as he was now almost catatonic with fear and according to the suit diagnostic, the man was about to pass out. Pressing a few controls on his arm, she dialed up the pure O2, and after a moment, he calmed.
“You’re all right, Wiggins,” she said, putting some compassion into her voice. “I know it’s bad but you’re all right. Feeling any better?”
He took a few deep, shuddering breaths. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, I’m all right. Thanks, Chief.”
She patted him on the helmet. “Fix your O2, Wiggins. Then get moving. We’re wasting time.”
Much of the database in the ship’s mainframe was damaged or corrupted. All of it was encrypted, but that didn’t bother the engineers. They downloaded any and everything. They pulled data units and storage devices out of all of the consoles. Tobey’s team stripped the computer core bare of everything even resembling a data module. There would be plenty to do once they got back to the ship; some of it might not be recoverable, more’s the pity. And of course some of it would have to wait until they got back to Seylonique where the code monkeys and AIs could tear into it.
Before long, their twelve hours were up. With a speedy efficiency, Tobey reported back to the ship (she made reports every three hours) and stated that they had everything they were going to get from the vessel. As she’d feared, the pirates had stripped the ship bare of anything that was the least bit valuable, even going so far as to strip the platinum from a number of the conduit housings. They policed up their swag, data modules and storage units all, and retreated back to the shuttle. Another twenty minutes and they were back aboard Maitland.
“Mission accomplished, Captain,” she told Vikashev, blinking with pride as she reported in.
“Very good work, Chief,” the lupusan replied, nodding in approval. “Hopefully, your team’s hard work will pay off with some sort of useful intel.”
The cat raised her hands in a shrug. “I hope so, sir. Though, I’d be satisfied with blueprints for a new ship. Newer Republic designs? I’m sure there are a few innovations that we could bring home to improve performance on ours and the Navy ships.”
Alexsei grinned. “I think that would be something that Captains Samair and Eamonn could get behind. Not as juicy as intelligence reports or things like that, but in the long run, it might be more useful.” He gestured to the hatch. “Go get yourself cleaned up and down to the mess. Cook’s got pork for supper. Dismissed.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice, Captain,” Tobey replied, blinking in happiness. She braced to attention for an instant and then hustled out of the Captain’s cabin.
Once she was gone, Alexsei turned to the display that suddenly appeared at his desk. “Bridge, Captain. Report.”
“The sensor drones are sending back information, Captain,” the sensor operator replied. “We’re getting telemetry and we found something interesting about twelve light minutes from our position, deeper into the system.”
“Interesting how?” he asked, lightly scratching at his arm.
“Another ship.”
He leaned forward, fight instincts kicking into gear. “Are they active?”
The man blushed. “Oh, no, sir. Sorry, sir. I should have said. It’s another derelict. But we’ve seen this kind of ship before.”
“Another Republic ship?”
The sensor watch shook his head. “No, sir. It’s a pirate ship. One of those big light cruisers that came to Seylonique. I can send you the information.”
“Do so,” he ordered. “What about other ships? Anything?”
“No, sir,” the sensor watch said. “Not so much as a peep. So far, at least, we’ve not detected any drive or power signatures anywhere within our sensor range. Should I send the drones out further?”
He considered that. The further out they went, the more light speed lag. But, if they could detect an enemy ship a few more hours out… The answer was obvious. “Yes, send them out. But keep the one nearest to the derelict cruiser within five light seconds of that ship.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Alexsei cut the connection. He began to pour over the data and felt himself nodding the more he saw. After a few minutes he opened a channel to the bridge. “Bridge, Captain. Set a course for the derelict pirate cruiser.”
“Understood, Captain,” the bridge watch replied.
“Make sure to keep the ship’s sensors on passives and maintain the telemetry links to the drones.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“I’ll be up in a while, but maintain the standard watch rotation.” While the away team had been aboard the derelict, the crew in engineering had needed to stretch their shifts to compensate for the missing people. Now that the team was back, the entire engineering gang was feeling the strain, but there would be a few days before Maitland got within shuttle range of the cruiser. There would be plenty of time for everyone to get some rest, but no one was going to complain about being a little tired. This was a new star system with ships to explore, the dangerous potential for pirates to show up; this trip was excitement beyond measure. There would be time enough to catch up on sleep when they were back in hyperspace making the jump for home. Now, there was work to do.
Kaspar Bhavanian ran the last check of the systems on the Sparhawk and then smiled in satisfaction. Weeks of work, an extra ten days over deadline due to a shortage of certain critical materials (which thankfully the Yard Supervisor didn’t blame him for) and then the usual teething issues for a new craft, but it had been worth it. It was done, ready. He ran a hand on the underside of the fuselage, staring up at his baby.
Hobres was there, standing just behind the engines, just waiting and watching. He was always nearby waiting and watching. Sometimes he would be there to chase away the other Republic workers, who would come by to either gawk at the new construction or glower at its builder. But mostly he just watched Kaspar work. The man couldn’t help but feel creeped out by the attention for the lupusan wasn’t simply keeping an eye on his charge. There were times when Kaspar saw Hobres activ
ely staring at him, other times the wolf would wink or smile. Was the predator flirting with him? Or was he just playing with his food? Kaspar would shudder and return to work.
Now though, even the nerve-wracking presence of his watchdog couldn’t diminish this moment. The Sparhawk was done, put through its paces and it had performed well. It wasn’t as nimble as the egg-shaped Muons, but the ship could accelerate and dance in such a way to make a Muon truly work to get a kill. Of course, the Sparhawk had decent shields, quad lasers and a missile magazine of that would hold ten weapons, compared to the puny arsenal of the unshielded Muons. Of course, a skilled pilot could overcome the inherent weaknesses of the Muon spaceframe; Commander Sokann had proven that. But put that same skilled pilot into a superior machine and he’d cut a swath through the enemy fighters and be able to land a serious punch on larger vessels as well.
The Yard Supervisor, implacable as always, marched over to where Bhavanian was standing. Upon seeing the zheen approach, Kaspar snapped to attention, keeping his gaze on the far bulkhead. The zheen ignored the man’s posture (though he certainly would have berated him for not standing to attention) and gazed at the ship.
“This vessel is impressive,” the zheen’s monotone translated voice was calm and steady, belying the excited chittering.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I have passed my report on this vessel to the warlord,” the supervisor went on and Kaspar steeled himself. “He also is impressed by the ship’s performance. He now requires more.”
“Sir?” Kaspar asked, almost despairing. The Sparhawk was an excellent design, it had performed superbly under tests, everyone loved it and now the warlord was demanding more from it? From him?
“You heard,” the zheen replied, the monotone delivery, somehow conveying a sense of irritation. “A solitary fighter can do damage, but a full fighter wing of thirty-six can do so much more.” Comprehension dawned on Kaspar’s face and the zheen flicked his antennae. “I see you finally understand. You will provide these ships.”
Kaspar forced himself to suppress a sigh of relief. Yes, there was a lot of work in his future, but someone was finally appreciating him. He wasn’t deluded enough to start thinking that he was liked by his superiors or even well-respected, but it was a start. He might still be a worker in the warlord’s labor force, but if he could continue to prove his value then perhaps he might be able to move up in the ranks, maybe secure a position that did command some respect.
“I will increase your workforce and continue funneling materials and fabricators to you. You will provide the ships I want.” It was not a question.
He straightened fractionally. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Do not thank me. You have proven your worth; you will continue to do so. That is why I raised you from the general labor pool. Continue to impress me and you will be rewarded. Fail, and I will strip away your protection and cast you back down with your former Republic comrades.” His mandibles clacked ominously. “They already consider you a traitor. I imagine you will not be popular among them if you were to return. You would be lucky to survive the week upon your return.”
He couldn’t help responding. “No, sir. I understand, sir.”
“Good.” The supervisor flicked his fingers. “Carry on. I will have new workers assigned to you tomorrow.”
Kaspar straightened even more, almost quivering at attention. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Hobres sketched a sloppy salute and the zheen nodded in reply, then turned and walked away. The lupusan turned to the human, reached out one clawed hand and patted Kaspar on the shoulder. “Good job,” Hobres rumbled, his touch surprisingly, if disturbingly, gentle. Kaspar did his best not to flinch, but Hobres’s smile clearly stated that the man wasn’t fooling the lupusan.
“Right,” Kaspar said, relaxing after the lupusan removed his hand. “We have a lot of work to do.” The other techs were milling around, not paying attention. He growled, then put two fingers in his mouth and blew and shrill, piercing whistle. Hobres snarled and flattened his ears, but he didn’t otherwise react. The zheen workers all turned to face Kaspar, their antennae standing erect, their mouthparts writhing.
“All right lads! The boss passed his report on to the warlord and they like what they see. You all did exceptional work.” The zheen all chattered at the praise. All of them knew what tough critics both of those zheen could be. “But the warlord decided that he likes the Sparhawk so much he’s going to reward our hard work with more hard work. The warlord has just put in an order for a full wing of Sparhawks and I don’t have to tell you all that we’d better deliver.” More chitters. They understood. “The yard supervisor has already said we’ll be getting additional fabricator support, which will help a great deal. But we need to get organized and then get started.” He clapped his hands together and they all moved to gather up their tools and datapads. A lot of the bugs had been worked out on the prototype so individual units would build faster now. With the fabricators and extra hands, they might be able to get a fully functional fighter wing built in two weeks to eighteen days. And a short time after that, if Kaspar guessed right, his Sparhawks would be put into action.
He found he relished the idea of his new designs taking on the best the Argos Cluster could throw at them. And he couldn’t wait to start hearing about their victories.
Alexsei Vikashev ran a hand across the arm of his chair and resisted the urge to scrape his claws along the metal. The screeching noise hurt his ears and distracted the bridge crew. He’d found that out during the battle for the Outer System when his claws had dug deep furrows in the arms of the chair, dropping curlicues of steel to the deck and causing his bridge crew to look around in alarm, thinking that further damage was being caused. Embarrassed, he’d withdrawn his hands to his lap and tried to ignore the looks.
The information gathering mission on the pirate light cruiser was going slowly. This made sense as the cruiser was much larger than the Republic corvette and just as damaged. This ship, however, showed obvious signs of a boarding action: bullet holes, internal damage, twisted metal and scorching from plasma grenades. Some effort had been made to clear the debris from the corridors, undone somewhat by the microgravity environment pervading the dead ship. The ship had been stripped of anything of interest, which was no surprise and it was clear that whoever had done the job was bound and determined that no one would salvage anything of value from this ship except the raw materials. The fusion reactors had been jettisoned, the fuel tanks breached, the spare parts lockers and cargo bays emptied. And aside from various holes in the armor, the attackers had unloaded their own ship’s weapons on the cruiser’s engines, turning the whole back quarter into slag and floating particulate debris.
That mattered little to the torte cat and her scavenging team. Ten engineers entered the cruiser’s dark interior and began scouring for data. And while whoever had killed this ship certainly had done a good job of hauling out the valuables, they’d done a rather poor job of information retrieval. This turned out to be a blessing for the scavenging teams, as all of the data modules and drives were still connected to the ship’s computer core. That made the retrieval operation much easier, though Chief Lexington made sure that her teams went over ever inch of the ship they could reach without putting themselves in danger. There was no drama this time, however, no bodies hovering in the corridors.
A day later, the teams were back aboard Maitland. The chief had squawked at pulling her teams off the ship early, but Alexsei was adamant. He didn’t like sitting around just waiting in a system that just months ago had been overrun by pirates. In the week since the corvette had arrived in the system, they hadn’t detected so much as a photon out of place, at least not from a living being anyway. But the lupusan captain was getting nervous. He didn’t like this dead system, with its dead ships. So he recalled the scavenging teams after only twenty-four hours of work. They’d cleared out the computer cores and even the data modules on the bridge and in
engineering. After that, the teams scoured the rest of the ship, but whoever had been here before had done an excellent job of removing anything else of interest. The teams honestly didn’t need any more time, but Lexington was loathe to leave the ship.
“Captain, that ship is just a… well, it’s a mess,” Tobey said, sitting on the chair in the very compact officer’s mess. Alexsei sat across from her, a bowl of tea at his elbow.
“Well, of course it is, Chief,” Alexsei replied with a smile. “It’s been destroyed in a battle.”
But the cat shook her head, ignoring the plate of fish in front of her. “No, that’s what I meant, sir. The ship is kind of a hodgepodge of components. It’s as though there were a dozen companies working on the internal components of the ship but none of the components were designed to work together. So from what I can tell, there were a lot of workarounds put in place to make the parts function. It’s as though all those companies didn’t know what it was they were building for and were contracted just to build the parts. Then someone collected everything up and installed it all inside the hull.”
“Have you started analyzing the data modules?”
Tobey nodded, pulling her plate back toward her. Picking up a piece of fish, she tore into it for a moment before swallowing. “I’ve got a couple of my techs working on it. The encryption on the pirate modules is less impressive than the ones from the Republic, so I think we could be in and have them decrypted within a few hours. I think the Republic data modules will have to wait until we get back home. Let the AIs tear into those ones.”
“But the cruiser is a good find?” He tried to keep the concern out of his voice. If he’d wasted time and effort securing information on a lemon, he wouldn’t swing for it, but he might get a good bollocking from his bosses. Alexsei was a lupusan; he was tough and had been through combat against a stronger and implacable foe. But it didn’t mean he was thrilled about the idea of being told he was lingering in a dangerous system indulging a desire to explore a nifty piece of dead and useless hardware.
A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4 Page 39
