Herschel
March 2227
Kuiper belt, Delta Pavonis
Neil and I moved slowly between the drifting hulks, SURGE drives on lowest power. The two Others’ cargo vessels lood huge around us. Ten kiloters in length and a kiloter in diater, they felt more like planetoids than sothing constructed by intelligent beings.
They even ca with their own debris field. The derelicts had taken so pretty severe hits from the looks of it. Pieces of cargo vessel drifted lazily in complicated orbits around the two ships. The effect was eerie, like floating through an underwater graveyard.
I ssaged Neil. “I’m not picking up anything. You?”
“Nope. Temps are down around thermal equilibrium. These things haven’t done anything but drift in a long ti.”
“I’ve been going over the video record from the battle, and I think I’ve identified these units. They were taken out in the second attack wave.” I thought for a mont. “Radioactivity shouldn’t be an issue. Although the insides might be pretty trashed.”
“Oh?”
“We were targeting essential systems. I think the attacks will have taken out power cores, and you know how that always ends up…”
“Yeah. Kablooie.”
We separated and completed individual circumnavigations of the wrecks. No surprises. By unspoken agreent, we deployed drones carrying squads of roars. The drones had orders to do close-up scans, while the roars would offload and poke around anything interesting.
Finding a way in wasn’t really a problem. One of the hulks had been almost cut in two. The two halves were more disconnected than connected—only in free fall could such a small ribbon of tal hold together such massive segnts.
The second hulk was in much better shape. A hole literally big enough to drive a battleship into, on a ship this size, barely qualified as a ding. But it’s not the size of the damage, it’s the quality. We must have taken out sothing critical.
The ships had been drifting for ten years now. We didn’t really expect any kind of activity. But we’d learned caution from previous encounters with the Others, and from a generation of B-movies.
The opportunity to examine the interior of an Others’ cargo vessel was too tempting to pass up, of course. We spent several hours, real-ti, planning for every contingency we could think of. Then, leaving a couple of drones on look-out, we cautiously entered the cargo vessel through the rent in its side.
Right away, things got complicated. The ship wasn’t, it turned out, just a big cavern. We found ourselves in a large bay or hold or sothing, forming a pie-shaped section of the interior. That might have been the end of the exploration, except that whatever had taken out the cargo vessel had apparently continued right through the ship, taking out a lot of equipnt in the process.
At the other end of the cavernous space, we exited into what appeared to be a central corridor. About a hundred ters in diater, it extended from one end of the ship to the other. This certainly explained the large armored doors at either end of the cargo vessels.
“This thing is mostly intact,” Neil said in a near-whisper. “You don’t think it could still activate, do you?”
“You saw the equipnt back there, Neil.” I noticed I was whispering as well, but I couldn’t help it. This had the feel of exploring a haunted castle. “Not sure what we took out exactly, but it must have been critical.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
“Sure, no problem. Bend over, and I’ll get my felt pen.”
“Oh, hah hah. If we get eaten by ants, you’ll look pretty stupid.”
“Well, that’s why we agreed not to do any SUDDAR sweeps. You were listening, right?”
Neil snorted but didn’t respond directly. “I’ll head that way, toward the end with the reinforced ring.”
“No prob. Be careful.”
We drifted off in opposite directions, doing a visual-only inspection.
It took less than a day to reach the ends of the ship. I received a call from Neil. “Hey, uh, Herschel…”
“Umm?”
“I’m looking at this huge thingamajig, and I think it’s the power core.”
“Wait, you an in one piece? And what are you doing in one of the bays?”
“It was open. I went in. Sue .”
I sighed. I’d have done the sa. “So, what did the attack take out, if that’s the power core?”
“Maybe a fluke shot through the A.l. or sothing. But this is definitely the power core. The size of the conduits kind of gives it away.”
“Fusion reaction shut down gracefully?”
There was a mont of silence. “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t think this is a fusion reactor.”
Suddenly, this was more than just a scavenging mission. “Have you found any indications of ants?”
Neil responded in the negative. I took a mont to double-check my train of thought, then said, “Okay, we can’t put that off any more. We have to know if we’re going to have a problem, so let’s move all our equipnt out of the hulks. We’ll do a low-power SUDDAR sweep to see if we activate any ants. Once we’re sure it’s clean, let’s take a couple of high-resolution scans of this mystery equipnt, and see if we can figure it out.” 𝐫ἈΝỘ𝐁Ęŝ
“Affirmative.” Telltales showed Neil’s devices vacating the hulks. I ordered mine out as well.
Within an hour, we had our scans. But no answers. Not really.
Neil popped over so we could review the results. I gestured at a hologram that slowly rotated in the air.
“Well, you’re right. It’s not fusion-based. But it’s definitely the power-generation facility.” I looked at Neil and grinned. “We may have just found so new tech!”
“Cool,” Neil replied. “We should call Bill, I guess.”
“Are you kidding ? Just hand it over, and let soone else get all the glory? No friggin’ way.”
“Aw, jeez, Hersch, I’m getting that bad-idea feeling again.”
“Again? You’re usually the source.”
“? Since when?”
I grinned, but didn’t bother to reply. The traditional exchange, as always, made us both feel better. But Neil wasn’t necessarily wrong. I hoped I hadn’t just taken the first steps toward kissing my ass goodbye.
Reviews
All reviews (0)