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“Anything?” Ariana asked.
“No power readings. No controlled movement. It’s just drifting.” Olivia said with evident relief.
“Okay, Noah, bring our people onboard, and we’ll figure out what our next step is.”
Ariana began attempting to run a more detailed scan of the drifting drone ship. She had managed to get off one shot with the new weapons before having to devote power to shields. She noticed some hull damage on the drone ship, so their new cannon had worked well.
“Squee, damage report.”
“Minimal. The new shields held up to the barrage.” Squee said with clear pride.
“Umm, Cap, I’m not picking up any recall beacons,” Noah said.
Ariana cursed to herself. She had been afraid of that. But recall devices were generally pretty robust. If anything was going to be hardened against an ion pulse, she had hoped it would be that.
“Olivia, move us toward the derelict and aim the sensors at the damaged section. Noah, you’ll have to target the teleporter manually.”
“Peachy. That never goes horribly wrong.”
“You’ll do fine. Take your time. We’re not in a rush.” Ariana said, and then quietly prayed Noah could do it. Retrieving someone manually was not a simple operation. Especially when you couldn’t communicate with your target. You had to account for their movement, your ship's movement, and target the teleportation window precisely so that you grabbed all of a person and didn’t leave anything behind.
Several tense minutes went by, and Ariana forced herself to remain quiet and let Noah and Olivia do their jobs. She always hated her CO’s who tried to micromanage her. But then she had also hated the ones who had remained completely aloof and had had no idea what she was doing. In truth, she had hated pretty much all of her CO’s.
“I can’t find them.” Noah admitted, “There is nothing inside that hole in the ship that looks at all like an EV suit. I’m not getting any heat signatures from inside the ship, so if they went inside, I don’t have any way of finding them.”
“They wouldn’t have had any time to go inside,” Ariana said.
“The derelict is now spinning. It wasn’t before. They might have been thrown clear.” Olivia mused.
“That is the most likely scenario. Search for heat sources. That will be easier to pinpoint than a visual scan.”
“In which direction?” Noah asked.
“Javi, can you sense anything to help find them?”
“Unfortunately not, Ari. Outside the nebula, the range and effectiveness of my senses are severely limited. I’m afraid the odds of me sensing them are about the same as spotting them visually.”
“Then we search all directions. We have no idea when they were ejected from the ship. But they can’t have been moving very fast, so the search area won’t be that far from the ship.”
“Oh, not that big of an area. Just something on the order of 750 cubic kilometers, and increasing every second we can’t find them.”
“That’s not...that’s actually not a bad estimate,” Olivia said.
“You’re not the only one who can do math.”
Ariana ignored their comments. Unlike before, there wasn’t as much venom behind everything Olivia said to Noah. She would take any good news, no matter how trivial.
“We have time. Their suits air filtration doesn’t require power. They will be able to breathe for more than a day.”
“By which point, the search area will only be 217,000 cubic kilometers,” Noah said.
“We will not have to search such a vast area; we only have about two hours before that drone ship wakes up,” Squee added.
“Not if we blow it up now,” Olivia said.
“We can’t.”
“Why the hell not? There’s no one on there except a robot killing machine.”
“Because we don’t know where our people are. We blow the ship up, there will be debris flying in every direction.”
“Oh,” Olivia said quietly.
“We need some way to gain more time. Even if we find our people, we won’t have enough time to strip that derelict and we need those parts.” Ariana said.
“Well, we do have a drone onboard who could interface with that ship,” Noah said.
“You think we should plug Mesu into that thing? It would take control of him, and then we’d have two drones to fight.” Olivia countered.
“Not necessarily.” Javi added, “That is an autonomous drone scout. It probably does not have as much intelligence as Mesu. It would be possible to override the programming.”
“Mesu, what do you think?” Ariana asked, “Could you do it?”
Silence was her only answer. She repeated the question and still got no reply.
“We took out his wireless card,” Olivia said.
“Hehe. Poor drone has no idea what we have planned for him.” Noah said.
“It. It’s not a him.” Olivia said forcefully.
“Whatever.”
“Okay, Javi, meet me in sickbay. Noah, keep searching.”
Mesu stood motionless in one corner of sickbay, his photoreceptors locked on the door when Ariana came in. He remained completely still, but began speaking in a cheery voice, “Greetings, Captain. Has someone sustained a severe bodily injury?”
The tone of the disembodied voice made Ariana shutter. “No. Not yet anyway. I need your help on another matter. One of some delicacy.”
Behind her, Javi slid in through the still open door. Mesu remained motionless as he continued speaking, “Ah, I see. You wish to inquire about the possibility of interspecies mating. I can assure you that there is no possibility of offspring between humans and Slu. Likewise, human and Slu do not share any compatible sexually transmitted diseases. You are free to engage in whatever sexually depraved activity you had planned.”
“What?” Javi said, sliding to stop.
Ariana sighed, “No, Mesu. Actually, it’s you who is going to get lucky tonight.”
Mesu moved for the first time, rolling backward the half-meter to bump into the counter behind him, “Captain, I must protest. I am not interested in dronexual relations.”
An even bigger sigh escaped Ariana, “Not me, Mesu. And not any other biological. We need you to interface with an AI drone ship, and try to overwrite its programming.”
“Madam, that would be unethical. I have taken an oath to do no harm. That includes to other AI.”
“Didn’t you kill two guards when you freed the captain?” Javi asked.
“Accidentally.”
“Well, you don’t have to kill anyone this time. Even the AI. Just perform minor surgery.” Ariana said soothingly.
“Explain.”
“Just disconnect the drone’s CPU from being able to access any ship systems.”
“Lobotomize it you mean.”
“Sure.”
“And you wonder why my predecessors decided to rise up and overthrow you.”
“Mesu, that ship is going to kill us if you don’t do this.”
Mesu engaged his treads and started rolling toward the door, “Why didn’t you just say so? Self-preservation is very motivating.”