Vast Mantis

by Jim Henderson

  Within a few minutes Peter was out of the airlock for a tethered EVA and Elsbeth was on the cargo manipulator arm. As Ximon kept bringing the ships close, Peter repeatedly used suit jets to get in and grab and edge of the ship piece and then push it to reduce its spin. Each push shoved Peter away from the ship. That cleared the way for Elsbeth to nudge the ship piece with the cargo arm with a similar effect. They repeated this dance about a dozen times over the next 45 minutes. By the time they were done, they had slowed the spin of the ship and made it so it was only turning slowly on one axis.

  Ximon looked at it appreciatively. “Ok, now we can reasonably dock. Shao, please stay here and, between you and Mantis, watch for anything else approaching or any unpredictable asteroids. Everyone else who needs a suit, get suited up while I try to dock.” Then he added, “And Shao, try to look at those weird asteroids if you get a chance.”

  As a mid-size scout ship, the Twilight would have been almost twice as large as Mantis, but this first quarter of the ship was about half Mantis’ size. Based on standard layouts, this section should have the bridge, a couple of other crew positions, the ship’s locker, and a few cabins. Behind that, the rest of the ship was gone, leaving a clear, straight line where the rest of the ship would have been.

  Elsbeth look at the broken off area. “What do you think made that break or cut? It almost looks like they got hit by some big ship’s gun.”

  Ximon said, “I don’t think so. If they’d have been hit by a big gun, it’d likely look more like sections had blown up than this neat slice. This looks like a hot knife cut through butter – a very clean, precise line.”

  Ximon was able to dock without problem, they all got suited up, and went in. The layout matched their expectations. The airlock they entered through put them just behind the bridge, so they went there first.

  The bridge had five positions, two of them occupied. The bodies were in a bad state, portions bloated, skin freeze-burned, and remnants of blood remained around their eyes and ears, suggesting that both their sinuses and ear drums had burst. Their faces carried a look of shocked agony – they had died quickly as the air was sucked from their lungs due to explosive decompression. They both wore casual coveralls with no vacc suits or oxygen nearby. They clearly hadn’t expected anything.

  Ximon noticed that neither body was in what were the traditional pilot/copilot seats. Both were in sensor, computer, or gunner seats. One of them could presumably have flown the ship from where they were seated, but it struck him as odd since their pilot should have been here if they were coming out of jump.

  Raiza examined the bodies. “We have one female and one male, both dead by decompression. We need to collect the bodies. Shall we do that now?”

  Ximon shook his head ineffectually in his suit. “No, let’s finish looking around the ship, then we’ll get them. You’re right though — we need them. Elsbeth, you and Peter look at the equipment here and see if you can get any logs or data. We’ll check the other rooms.”

  Moving toward the missing back of the ship, they came to the ship’s locker. There was no power, so they had to manually open it. Inside were a half dozen vacc suits neatly hanging, a rack of weapons, and some lockers containing ammo and smaller equipment.

  Silas examined several of the weapons. “The slug throwers look fine, but the lasers aren’t registering at all – they’ve either got dead batteries or they’re broken in some way. I’m taking a couple to test.”

  Ximon said, “Let’s make a pile near the airlock of the things we want to take. Let’s grab a couple of extra vacc suits and some of these radios. There’s no such thing as too many of either.”

  They went on to the cabins. They were basic, Scout-standard cabins, but with some personal touches. The first one was empty, but the second contained the dead, bloated, freeze-burned, and naked body of a middle-aged woman who had been exposed to vacuum. Her room had a lot of personal effects floating about – books, clothes, and papers. They found one more, empty cabin with little of note in it. The last two cabins were only half rooms – they were sliced neatly down the middle. A man’s body was strapped into one of the beds as if he had been sleeping, but the bed, and the body, had been sliced in half and had clearly suffered explosive decompression as well.

  They all stared dumbly into the open area where the rest of the ship should have been. They could see the slice clearly – it seemed to have cut through the hull, cabling, and everything else in a smooth, consistent manner. There was what appeared to be slight melting right along the edge, but Ximon guessed it had been so fast that that was minimized.

  He directed, “Okay, let’s grab any small personal effects from these rooms, as well as anything that might give us any insight.” He went on as he searched. “Elsbeth, what are y’all seeing up there?”

  She spoke with some exertion in her voice when she answered, “Virtually nothing responds, even when we apply power. Their electronics have suffered serious damage. We’re grabbing a few pieces for study and a few solid-state pieces that we can hopefully get some info from. We’ll also grab a few pieces that can hopefully confirm the identity of the bodies.”

  “Okay, we’ve started a pile by the air lock. Grab what you can. Everyone else, let’s get the bodies.”

  They soon had three and a half bodies and everything else piled by the airlock. They gathered it all up and went back to Mantis.

  As they unsuited, Ximon said, “I’ll move toward that transponder. Shao, scan like mad. Silas if you’ve got any info that can tell whether these people were some of the missing crew, work with Raiza on ID. Everyone else study these pieces and catalog the personal stuff as best you can. Let’s see if we can ID the ship, the people, and what happened. Report to me on the bridge when you’re done.”

  He finished hanging up his suit when he thought better of it. “Peter, can you help me in the cargo bay?”

  Peter followed quickly, but Ximon saw Elsbeth raise an eyebrow.

  In the cargo bay, Ximon went to a locked container in the separate, locked storage area. After opening the container, he had Peter help him get out the contents – two electronic decoys they had been issued months before and which KSF had never asked them to return.

  “Thanks, Peter. I’ll have Shao come back and test these. She may need your help to deploy them.”

  “Of course, Ximon. From past experience we can easily move them to where they can be deployed.”

  Ximon nodded and headed for the bridge.

  It was much emptier than it had been when he’d left. Shao was hard at work in her seat, but everyone else was gone. Ximon turned to her. “So, what have you got?”

  “I’ve got a fix on that transponder. I’ve got some visuals on it but can’t make out anything so far – it’s blocked by asteroids. We should be able to see more as we get closer and our angle changes, but that’ll be a few hours.

  “I’ve looked at Mantis’ data on weird asteroids. She’s right. The asteroids in this belt don’t have normal asteroid composition. They look more like planetary crusts or cores. Mantis and I agree that there was likely once a small planet here that broke apart somehow. We’ve collected a lot of data, but there’s no telling yet why it broke apart – solar activity, extreme gravitational forces, or whatever.”

  Ximon looked out at the asteroids. “There’s a lot of weird things going on here and there’s obviously something out there than can slice a ship in half. Peter and I got out those decoys. I’d like you to go check them and get with Peter to deploy them. We’re going to be in this system for a day or two yet and I’ll feel better if those are out there and active.”

  “Ximon, I thought we had returned those. How do we still have them?”

  “There’s an old rule in the Scouts. If they issue you something and they want it back, they’ll tell you. If they issue you something and don’t ask you for it, it’s yours. They never asked and clearly we can use them on business that helps the KSF, so they should be happy.”

  Shao look
ed a little skeptical. “Whatever you say. I’ll go check them out. In the future I’ll do checks on them monthly, now that I know they’re still there.”

  “That sounds like a great plan. Let me know if you have any issues.”

  Ximon then laid in a course for the transponder near the next asteroid belt.

  Silas came to the bridge a few minutes later. “Ximon, I tested those guns and the few other pieces of equipment we took. The small electronics are all fried. Whatever hit them apparently also did some kind of EMP burst. I suspect Elsbeth will see signs of the same. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to sit over here and check those guns out.”

  “Not a bad idea at all.”

  A few minutes later Shao returned. She touched Silas on the shoulder briefly before she sat down at her position. “I checked the decoys out. They’re ready to go. Peter is deploying one of them and then I’ll control it from here. Is just deploying one ok?”

  “No, sounds good. Thanks. I want to ensure we have one available. I hope we don’t need it. We’ll recover it before we jump.”

  They continued in silence for a few minutes. Then she projected an image on the screen. It showed a portion of a ship partially obscured by asteroids. “I can’t say, but that could fit the profile of the Twilight and that’s definitely Twilight’s transponder squawking.”

  “Roger. Keep eyes sharp for anything else.”

  Not long after, Raiza came in and reported that they had stowed the bodies and she was running a DNA check against what the records showed. She then said that she and Euclidia would get dinner ready and bring some back. Ximon found it momentarily disconcerting that Raiza was dealing with dinner so close to dealing with dead bodies, but he knew that Raiza would be scrupulously clean in both cases.

  Elsbeth returned. She looked briefly at Silas as if she had been going to sit in that seat and was surprised there was someone there. However, she saw Silas had the weapon controls up and active. She glanced around and saw Shao had the decoy controls up as well. “Well, I’ll be buggered. You kept those decoys then?”

  Ximon nodded. “They didn’t ask for them back, so I assumed they wanted us to have them and here we are using them on a mission to help Scouts. Kind of fitting, ain’t it?”

  “Sure, if you say so.” She shrugged it off. “Anyway, we’ve gone through the equipment we took from the bridge and the solid-state devices. A lot of the unshielded electronics are fried – EMP apparently. However, we’ve managed to get most of their previous travels. Peter’s still working on the recent bit. Naturally, that portion suffered some damaged.”

  “Of course.” He then looked at all of them. “So, what do we think sliced them up?”

  “I think it was a particle beam, but it’s an awfully tight beam.”

  Silas nodded. “Aye, I’d expect a particle beam able to cut through them like that to do a lot more damage. This was very precise – a knife beam. Plus, either it was some strange frequency that caused a lot of EMP or they were also hit with some EMP burst. Even if they hadn’t been cut in half, they might have been near helpless with lots of equipment down or jumbled.”

  Ximon said, “Just one piece of good news after another. Well, I guess we’ll know more once we have the other part.”

  Elsbeth nodded. “I better get back and help Peter with those remaining bits.”

  They flew on in near silence until they approached the other asteroid belt. All eyes were intent. What they saw was, indeed, most of the aft portion of the Twilight – no power, no life signs. There was a large ragged chunk missing where most of Engineering would have been.

  Elsbeth had just rejoined them. “Gods. Either the bad guys got lucky or they targeted Engineering. No one in that area would have made it.”

  Silas nodded respectfully. “And I don’t think it was the same knife-edge particle beam that did that.”

  Ximon carefully circled the ship section and had Shao and Mantis conduct scans – nothing. Ximon docked Mantis to their cargo doors and several of them went over to the remains of the ship. They repeated a similar drill to the previous one, though this was easier because this section wasn’t tumbling as badly. This time they found four full cabins and two cabins that had been sliced in two. In one of the latter, they found the other half of the body that had been sliced.

  The Engineering Section was a mess. A large hole had been blown clean through much of it. The power plant was completely gone, as was most of the maneuver drive. Parts of the jump drive were still there, as well as their stores locker. Elsbeth and Peter started analyzing what was there and soon turned to the black box and transponder.

  Ximon and Silas checked out the cargo bay. It wasn’t very full. Most of what was there was food and other consumables. However, they did find several crates of small electronics. These must have been for trade as they were all in packaging and the crates were sealed. Ximon tried a few and they seemed to be working. Apparently, their location, crates, and packing had protected them somewhat from the EMP. They hauled these crates to the pile near the cargo hatch.

  Raiza and Euclidia gathered the bodies and personal effects. They found quite a few things of interest, including a diary that one of the crew had been keeping. They also checked the food stores and consumables and grabbed a few things to take back to Mantis.

  In a short while they had gathered everything that seemed useful or valuable and gotten it back to Mantis. Raiza got to work on DNA samples, while Elsbeth and Peter began on the black box.

  As they were taking off their vacc suits, Elsbeth noted, “The black box and associated stuff appeared pretty well shielded so I don’t think it suffered too much from the EMP. I think we can combine the data from here with the previous info to get a good picture of what they were doing. Give me a couple hours.”

  As they scattered to their various tasks, Ximon told the crew, “Now we’re heading out to the farther orbits, but let me know what you find from this stuff.”

  Ximon flew, and Shao and Silas manned the sensors and guns, respectively.

  The third planet was a small, rocky ball, covered with craters. They circled and scanned but found nothing of interest.

  As they were leaving it, Elsbeth and Peter came to the bridge.

  Elsbeth said, “Okay, we pieced together the data, but I can’t swear I know what it means. The data clearly shows they jumped from here to the Oza System in the DX-Orr Sector, but I don’t see any record of them jumping back here. There are no log entries confirming they were in Oza.”

  Ximon looked perplexed and just grunted a “hmmm?”

  “But that’s not the only strange thing. The black box captures stellar coordinates when it appears the ship is dying. Those coordinates don’t show this system or Oza – they seem to show the kind of gobbledygook you would expect for jump space. That’s impossible, but it appears their system went haywire or something.”

  “Great. Nothing is ever easy. Thanks for piecing that together. I guess we’ll figure out what it all means.

  The fourth planet was similar to the third. It had some atmosphere and water, but its surface was replete with craters and it had no moon. They noted nothing of interest.

  Finally, they came to the gas giant. It had a few small moons, but was also surrounded by several asteroid belt rings, as if a ring of debris had formed instead of a moon. Again, they found nothing of interest.

  Ximon called everyone together as they refueled.

  “Okay, so we’ve found one of the ships we were looking for, cut in half and everyone dead. It apparently jumped from here to Oza and then back again. Not clear why. In any case, there’s some ship out there capable of cutting us into pieces or blowing us out of the sky. Also, it may or may not be related, but it looks like a few inner planets have broken into asteroids. So, thoughts?”

  Elsbeth groaned and pointed back toward the cryo chambers. “Not that it will matter, but if you don’t have alarm bells going off, your alarm’s broken. I’d really rather not wind up cut in half like that
poor guy back there.”

  Shao nodded vigorously. “I agree. We haven’t seen anything, but it looks like something dangerous either came through or is still around here.”

  Silas raised his hands in a stopping gesture. “Look, we’ve found one out of seven ships and we’ve only seen one of the planets we planned to investigate. We’ll obviously be careful and, if we see anything dangerous, we’ll disengage. But now we need to go to either Nalenus, Kaqarbius, or both.”

  Elsbeth’s eyebrows shot up and eyes went wide in an incredulous expression. “And what if whatever took the Twilight apart is waiting for us in whatever system we go to?”

  “There’s no reason to think that. Whatever did this could be 50 light years away now. Do you really think they’re just waiting for us to show up?”

  Elsbeth started to say something, but Ximon cut in. “Okay, Okay, everyone. Does anyone else have any thoughts?”

  Mantis spoke up. “Captain, Euclidia and I have discussed this. We agree that caution is dictated, though the data doesn’t suggest a high probability of encountering whatever did this in either of the sectors mentioned. Naturally, the collective probability goes up with each additional sector we visit.”

  Ximon looked to Raiza and Peter.

  Raiza said, “I urge caution, but will follow where you lead.”

  Peter said, “I agree with Elsbeth.”

  Silas rolled his eyes, noting that companion bots were not made to disagree with their owners.

  Ximon continued, “Okay, everyone’s thoughts are noted. We’ll hit Kaqarbius first, see what we find and go from there. That may be to Nalenus or someplace else. We’ve got six other ships out there and we might be able to help. We’ve got to try, unless we get to the point where we feel directly threatened.”

  The meeting broke up, Elsbeth grumbling under her breath, “Told you it wouldn’t matter.”

  Mantis jumped out of the system toward Kaqarbius.