| |
A destroyer held position a little way off the quickest route between the two jump points in system Y6782a. Indie didn't recognise the class; that meant it was most likely from an independent world, one that didn’t often get involved in anything beyond its borders. He was a little uneasy at not knowing why it was here, so close to Robespierre. It hadn't seen him yet, and he intended to keep it that way. He let himself drift, watching and listening.
It hadn't broadcast anything since he'd arrived in the system two days ago. In that time he'd plunged deep in-well. Y6782a was a small system, a couple of rocky planets and a white dwarf star. If it hadn't been for this mystery ship, he'd have powered up his engines and been well on the way to the other jump point. He had four more systems to check out before completing the sweep of all the ones within two jumps of home.
Funny. I’ve never really had a home before. It’s not much, but it feels right.
He had debated swooping down on the ship and burning it out of existence. That was what his original programming kept insisting was the best solution. However, that assumed he had the weight of the Republican Navy behind him. He had no doubt that he could take on this ship with minimal damage, but who would come looking for it when it didn't report in? He couldn't afford anyone tracking back towards their hideout. So he coasted, and waited, and hoped it moved off on its own.
Holding in space was a very odd thing to do. Most ships would park themselves in orbit if they needed to wait somewhere for a while. It gave you more options; somewhere to hide, something to put your back up against, a chance to resupply. Of course, ships avoided approaching enemy planets with effective defences. He couldn't detect any evidence of technology on the planets, though, so he concluded the destroyer must be positioned to be seen by passing traffic.
Is whatever state it belongs to trying to stake a claim to this system? Or intimidate travellers?
The next standard day, Indie noticed a tiny disturbance on his gravitometric sensors. Something small was approaching the destroyer, something cold coasting and dead to other passive sensors. His first thought was a stealthed missile, but, as more data came in, he revised the size estimate upwards to approximate that of a shuttlecraft.
The destroyer adjusted its position. It looked like one of its periodic station-holding burns; an innocent enough manoeuvre, except that it put it exactly in the path of the object.
It’s seen it coming. Or knows where and when to expect it.
The gravity signatures merged. At the last second, Indie saw a long-range shuttle silhouetted against the destroyer before entering its hangar. A brief pulse of heat, mostly hidden by the hangar, showed the craft's deceleration burn.
A meeting, then. Or a delivery.
It was an impressive arrangement. If he hadn’t happened to be there, with his advanced gravity sensors trained on the area, no-one would have noticed the shuttle. There were still no transmissions, nothing to give a clue as to the purpose.
A couple of hours before The Indescribable Joy of Destruction would have reached closest approach to the mystery ship, the destroyer’s drives flared and it accelerated towards the jump point. At the rate it was going, it would beat him there by a day. Indie briefly considered using the opportunity to turn around and take a closer look at the planets, turn his active sensors onto likely volumes of space. He decided not to risk alerting anyone else hiding there to his interest; whoever they were, they were being suitably furtive not to pose an immediate threat. Quite possibly they were fellow refugees.
The system this jump point led to was a close nexus; five jump points were within a couple of day’s travel, three of them within twenty hours. When he arrived in that empty region of space, the destroyer was nowhere to be seen, obviously having jumped out again before he arrived. Indie agonised for a hundredth of a second over whether to guess which of the three routes it had taken and try following it, or give up and continue his planned sweeps. Even if he guessed right, it was unlikely he would be able to follow far before giving himself away by having to manoeuvre. It would also take him away from the vital job of ensuring Robespierre didn’t have any difficult neighbours.
He tweaked his course and aimed for a slingshot around a gas giant that would line him up for a jump to the next system on his list. With a few days to while away before the next jump, Indie decided to chart the turbulent boundary between the green and red bands in the planet’s atmosphere. He always enjoyed running chaotic fluid dynamics equations.
#
This was the last of the systems that were two jumps from Robespierre. The Indescribable Joy of Destruction ploughed its way towards the inner planets. The only thing of interest so far had been a small mining settlement on an airless moon of one of the two gas giants. It was long abandoned; bright yellow sulphur flows from nearby volcanoes had covered sections at several distinct moments in its history.
The ship was travelling at high speed; Indie was determined to take advantage of a fortuitous alignment of some of the planets to blow through the system, slingshot around the orange star and back out to another jump point in less than ten days, whilst getting close enough to check them all out in detail. All the closest jump destinations to their tenuous base had been clear and, at his last rendezvous with the Limpopo, Levarsson had told him that they had finished placing the automated sentinels in those systems. Any hint of an approaching ship and they’d jump back to Robespierre and broadcast a warning. Now, Indie wanted to get out another layer, to where he was likely to find ship traffic, and start gathering signals intel. Try to find out if anyone was looking for them.
Indie maintained the standard shipboard cycle of day and night. Strictly, without a crew aboard there was no need for it. However, it seemed appropriate to work in the daytime shifts and dream in the night-time ones.
He had spent most of the day studying the star. It had an interesting pattern of sunspots, and he was comparing the magnetic field patterns to those predicted by theory. He had hoped to find a variance, something to challenge his mind, but sadly the established science held. Now he was counting how many asteroids were on trajectories that would pass through an arbitrarily chosen volume of space within the next two thousand year, and reading Rendezvous with Rama.
As if I’d get lucky enough to find something that interesting out here.
As he had every two hours since the passive scans had come up empty, he let off a full spectrum, full shell active ping. If anyone was there, he needed to know about it; anyone who arrived later and noticed the decaying spheres of radiation would know no more than a Republic warship had passed through.
An object caught his attention, lit up by the pulse. His mind leapt up several gears as he analysed the returns, directing a focussed scan onto it. It was cold, so cold it had escaped the passive sensors. He reviewed the data logs. Actually, it had been noticed, but its tumbling, ballistic path had led to it being tagged as natural. It had taken the active scan to identify its processed metallic composition and flag it as man-made.
The reflections from the detailed scan came back. It was the right size and composition to be a ship. His thoughts of a quick transit through the system evaporated. This had to be investigated. The Indescribable Joy of Destruction flipped to bring its stern to its direction of travel as it brought the main reactor up to full power. The reaction drives engaged, thrusting ions in front of the ship as they struggled to shed momentum. Minutes later, still decelerating, it passed within 500,000km of the tumbling ship. It hadn’t reacted to his presence but he had to be sure it was just a wreck.
Indie used the fifth planet to slingshot around, trading off even more of his momentum in the process. He continued to decelerate on his way back to the target.
At a range of fifty thousand kilometres, Indie shut off the main drive and flipped over to face the unknown vessel. He focussed a camera on it. It looked intact. It was definitely a warship, a large one at that. He started running the images through his data banks as he readied his weapons. The Indescribable Joy of Destruction crossed into effective weapons range still not having identified it. Indie wasn’t coming in straight for the ship, his path headed just off the stern. He could open up the throttle and drive past, slashing their engines with his main beam as he went. Still it continued to tumble, no emissions, no signs of power, its turrets remained still. Then he saw the lines of holes running fore to aft and made up his mind. He deployed his drive spines and spun himself around. The fields clawed at space and he decelerated at 25g, coming to a halt relative to the wreck at a distance of five thousand kilometres.
The distribution of the escape pod tubes, now empty to vacuum, was different to any warship he had studied. Since the early days of the war, they had been distributed evenly across all decks, not confined as these were to the central ones. He spawned a new routine to search through pre-war ship records. Moments later he got a result; it was a Constellation class carrier, a ship designed to operate independently on long tours away from naval facilities. Beyond that, his database held nothing on it. There was very little damage on the carrier’s surface, nothing out of the ordinary for a combat vessel anyway. Whatever had caused the crew to abandon ship had to have been internal, a life support problem perhaps.
He realised that this could be a significant asset, if it could be repaired. He’d have to bring a team to go aboard and investigate; he didn’t have enough robots to do the job properly.
He carefully checked the path it would take for the next month. Nothing he could see would cross it in that time, let alone have a chance of hitting the ship. He wasn’t planning on being away that long, though. He lined himself up for an intercept with one of the gas giants and piled on maximum thrust; he’d need to top off his tanks for the passage he had in mind.
#
Indie appeared on the wallscreen in the briefing room, dressed in running kit and glistening with sweat. He was also at three different training exercises, piggybacking on drones. He was crawling through a conduit on the Limpopo, via the headset of the repair chief. He was reading a series of books by Ann Leckie. And he was directly observing an interesting weather system from orbit around Robespierre.
“Welcome back, Indie,” said Johnson, turning her chair to include him in the meeting. “And thank you for your efforts to bring us the news so fast. You’re right about it potentially being a very important find. All those here that have heard are really excited. We’re putting a team together now. Mostly engineers, though there are a few other disciplines represented.”
“I notice that there are quite a few recruits on the list,” Indie said. He rubbed a towel over his head, leaving immaculately styled hair. “Does this not worry you?”
“They’ve all passed Basic. They can handle themselves,” replied Issawi. “Besides, I can’t spare too many experienced hands without compromising the training programme.”
“There is one slot I haven’t yet decided on,” said Johnson. “Recruit Olbrich would like to be included in the expedition. I’ve invited him here to make his case. Bear in mind that if we do accept him, it will be in place of a combat specialist.”
She motioned for the wiry man, who had so far stood in the corner of the room, to step forward. He looked tired. Not just the background tiredness shared by all the recruits, but a deep weariness. Despite his uniform, he did not look like a military man; he shrank in on himself rather than exuding confidence. Nevertheless, he had scored acceptably on all the tests so far.
“Thank you for giving me the chance to speak. My name is Hans Olbrich. I was a professor of history at the University of New Kopenhaagen. My main field was naval history; some of my work was used in the academies.”
Levarsson snapped her fingers and pointed at him, smiling as if she had just solved something that had puzzled her. “On the Importance of Retrospective Mission Planning! That’s why your name was familiar!”
“Indeed,” he continued, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Anyway, I started looking into the earliest years of the war. Some things, to my mind at least, didn’t add up. I was getting glimpses of things that didn’t fit the accepted history. When I tried to publish my first paper on the incongruities, the board took my chair. I found I was blackballed from every educational institution to which I applied for a job.”
Indie cut his connections to all the other feeds he'd been watching, focussing on the meeting. Olbrich's research promised something new. Something interesting that Indie didn't know about. Something worthy to devote processor time to and stave off boredom.
“I kept digging, of course,” continued Olbrich. “I have become convinced that at some stage, probably before the first hundred years of the war had passed, both sides conspired to alter the records. To hide something. I don’t know what, but it had to be big for them to agree.”
“What about independents?” asked Issawi. “They can’t all have had their records changed too.”
“That is where I was able to glean most of my clues. However, whatever it was doesn’t seem to have been shared with the little guys. What I need is a Congressional or Republican database that became isolated before the edit.”
“Hence your interest in this unknown ship,” said Johnson.
“Quite. Though she isn’t unknown. If Indie is correct, which I don’t doubt, and she is a Constellation class, then she can only be the Orion. I know where all the others ended up.”
^OK, quick poll,^ sent Johnson. ^Should we send him along?^
^He may be on to something important, so yes,^ sent Issawi.
^Agreed,^ sent Levarsson.
^I’m actually quite looking forward to conversing with him on the journey,^ added Indie, already compiling a list of ideas to discuss.
^Looks like it’s unanimous, then,^ concluded Johnson.
“Recruit Olbrich. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. We are agreed that possible discoveries you may make are worth including you in the team. Report to Centurion Hanke, who will be in charge of the operation.”
Olbrich came to attention, then turned and strode smartly out of the room.
“I should get back to the range,” said Issawi, sitting up straighter in his leather chair. “We’re running everyone through certification on the stun pistols you ordered fabricated. If there’s anything else?”
“No, that’s all thank you,” said Johnson.
Issawi stood, nodded to Johnson, and walked out.
Levarsson rose to leave too, but stopped. She opened her mouth to speak but appeared to think better of it and bit her lip. Indie still couldn't quite work out why humans found it so hard to speak their minds.
“Something’s obviously bothering you,” said Johnson with a warm smile. “Spit it out.”
“Are you sure Hanke is ready to lead the mission?” asked Levarsson after a moment’s pause. “He’s only just turned seventeen.”
“He did well enough organising the survivors, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he was resourceful and brave. But he’s never run a bridge before.”
“He’ll do OK. And Indie’ll be there to handle that side of things if there’s a problem.”
Indie cancelled the rendering routine that attempted to puff out his chest. It was correctly interpreting his pride, but something told him it wouldn't do to show it right now.
Levarsson nodded. Tentatively, and then decisively, obviously convincing herself it would be fine. She straightened her uniform and opened the door. She paused in the doorway and looked back.
“Yes, he will do all right. You trained him, after all.”
She was gone before Johnson could reply.
“If I have a few hours, I’ll nip down into Triasson and scoop up some more helium,” said Indie, slightly awkward at having heard that exchange.
“That should be fine,” replied Johnson. “We still have to collect some survival kit and rations for you to take; this mission will likely take more than a couple of weeks.”
#
The wreck hung off the port bow of The Indescribable Joy of Destruction as the salvage team gathered in the exercise area, the only compartment large enough to hold them all.
“Thank you,” said Hanke, his grey eyes scanning the assembled crew. “You’ve all had time to examine the scans and I’ve read your preliminary reports. I’d like specialism leaders to share a few key findings with the rest of us, just to ensure no one is getting too deep into their own field that they miss an important connection.
“Before that, I’d like Recruit Olbrich to say a few words. He is a historian. He lectured on naval history at the University of New Kopenhaagen and has some background on our target.”
“Seventeen Constellation class carriers were constructed,” began Olbrich. “All but one were accounted for. That one was the Orion.”
Indie knew the speech already. Olbrich had locked himself away in his cabin for the journey, working feverishly. He had welcomed Indie's offer of assistance, and the passage had passed quickly.
“She disappeared before the war; went out on patrol and never came back. There have been a few expeditions to look for her over the years, but none of them turned up any clues as to her location, or even why she was lost.”
Indie's attention drifted over the crew, listening with what looked like genuine interest, to the faint patch on the wall. The diagnostic routines claimed it was fully healed, but it didn't feel quite right. He wondered if that was how Johnson felt about her leg.
“There have been many theories. In fact, you name a crazy story about how a ship went missing and it’s probably been told about the Orion. Straying across a wormhole and being spat out in another galaxy, the crew being abducted by aliens, falling into an uncharted black hole. We have a chance here to find out what actually happened.”
“Recruit Yang, would you talk us through what you have been able to make out of the design?” invited Hanke.
Yang stood up and waited a moment as everyone shifted round to look at him.
“Firstly, the concrete facts. She is 1012m long, 403m wide and 201m deep; widest measurements.”
A schematic appeared on the treadmill screen. Indie highlighted sections as Yang spoke.
“She has four flight bays, one high and one low on each side. There are four twin 30cm railgun turrets on her back, with four more on her belly, and we have so far identified fifty-five hatches that likely cover retractable turrets for smaller calibre guns. We are still attempting to catalogue all the possible missile ports, mine tubes et cetera.”
Indie studied the ship outside with what he concluded must be jealousy. He would love to get the chance to fly her. Maybe if she wasn't too badly damaged they'd let him pilot her remotely. It wouldn't be the same as actually running on her mainframes, but it would still be quite something.
“Beyond that, things are largely conjecture,” continued Yang. “We have been unable to get any decent deep scan results. The armour would appear to be too dense for that. Add to that the workmanship we can see on the surface, and all seems to back up the old tales that they used to build ships a lot tougher than they do now. I guess they had the time and the resources to lavish on something that was expected to last more than a few tours of duty.”
“Thank you,” said Hanke, straightening from where he had been resting against a bulkhead. “Anyone got anything else to add before I run through our next steps?”
No-one spoke up.
“OK,” he continued. “We will enter through one of the airlocks nearest engineering. Assuming engineering is where we’d put it nowadays, that is. The hatch now showing in red is our primary target, though we may have to try a few before we find one we can open; I don’t want to have to cut through and risk venting the atmosphere when we leave.”
Indie had worked through the plan with Hanke over the last few days, playing devil's advocate to pick up any flaws. Eighteen contingency plans sat in his memory, waiting to be transmitted to the crew once they saw what was inside.
“Once inside, we split up into three teams. I’m sending the rolls and main objectives to team leaders now. I’ll have a search formula ready for each team by we go. First team to get a major system working again wins a lie-in when we get back to Robespierre.”
#
The first airlock the shuttle latched onto worked. The crew were able to crank the outer hatch open and connect a portable power supply to the controls within the chamber. Over a hundred years of processor and programming enhancement showed, as it took only half an hour to crack the access codes and open the inner door.
Indie guided a repair ‘bot in first, taking care to avoid snagging its manipulator arms on the frame of the hatch. It sniffed the air, ran the sample through its mass spectrometer, and declared it safe to breathe. He triggered its floodlights and looked around. Directly opposite the airlock was a pair of sliding glass doors, tinted in a variety of colours, from the blue-black of the upper atmosphere of an M-class planet at the top, to the red of a star nearing the end of its life at the bottom.
“Look at that sunset!” exclaimed Olbrich, camera in his left hand. His right hand hovered absently near his sidearm as he pressed forward, a legacy of the intensive training of the past few months.
Indie watched the boarding party’s faces as they filed past the robot. All looked around, wide-eyed. Few resisted running their fingers along the smooth, cream walls, even though they wouldn’t feel much through the gloves of their firmsuits.
“It looks so bare,” he overheard from one engineer. “No conduits or pipes or anything.”
“Everything must be hidden behind dem walls,” replied another. “Guess dey didn’t expect t’ have t’ keep fixing ‘em.”
Why are they whispering?
As expected, the moment the ‘bot started to pace down the corridor, its telemetry stuttered. After a few metres, Indie lost the visual feed. He stopped the robot and ordered it to reverse before he lost connection altogether.
One of the technicians carried a comms relay in from the shuttle and set it up on a tripod in the corridor. She fiddled with a few settings then tried sending a signal. Indie replied a moment later, confirming he had received the relayed signal and that he could also connect to the ‘bot through the relay.
This would be so much easier if something could relay my sensors through that hull instead of just a narrow data stream.
Indie deployed the two combat units Johnson had spared for the mission. They advanced a few metres in opposite directions down the corridor then halted. Indie ordered them to stand guard unless called on for assistance.
One person dragged a large trunk through the airlock and knelt down to open the lid. His eyes glazed momentarily, a sure sign he was dealing with a large quantity of EIS instructions. A swarm of tiny drones rose from the trunk, wobbling a little on their fans, and spread out to map the passages.
The teams headed out, each with a repair ‘bot pacing behind.
Indie watched the sensor data from all the ‘bots and the drones, as well as the humans’ cameras and handheld scanners. In some sections, everything had a patina of neglect. A thin coat of dust lay on the surfaces, presumably having been there since the crew left. Here and there were signs of corrosion, evidence that the atmosphere was slightly damp. Other sections were as spotless as where they had entered.
Self-cleaning and repair that has broken down in places? Or maintenance ‘bots that only work in some areas?
The drones came with a decent hub that automatically compiled and distributed a map from their telemetry. Indie was able to add extra detail by cross-referencing all the other data sources. Every now and then he flagged items for closer scrutiny by the teams.
The faintest of readings from one of the drones caught his attention. He subtly altered the course of another so it would pass close by. It picked up the same tantalising hints.
Could it really be? After all this time?
Indie took direct control of the nearest repair ‘bot and walked it into a bulkhead. The back-marker of the team it was following jumped and stared at it. Indie reversed it, turned it and walked it into the other side of the corridor moments later.
^Er, Indie?^ sent Yang, the team’s leader. ^Our ‘bot seems to be malfunctioning.^
^In what way? I’m not seeing anything unusual in its telemetry.^ He sent it bumping into another bulkhead.
^It keeps walking into walls.^
^Really? I’ll have to bring it back here. Run a full diagnostic in the workshop. Will you be OK without it?^
^We’ll manage,^ replied Yang. ^It’s not like it’s being very useful right now anyway.^
Indie turned the bot around and walked it back along the corridor, scraping along one side for a few metres for good measure. Once the humans were out of view, he straightened it out and got it up to full speed.
The hatch didn’t have any special markings, just a standard broken-cable-and-lightning-bolt high voltage hazard sign and a compartment number. It was the energy signature beyond it that held Indie’s attention. He had powered up the electronic lock, but the encryption was far better than the airlock’s had been. The standard cracker routine wouldn’t be able to break it for at least an hour, so he would have to do it himself; someone would have noticed the ‘bot by then.
He watched the humans as he worked. Hanke’s team had reached engineering and was trying to get a terminal activated. The others were still exploring, stopping every now and then to investigate compartments.
Ten minutes later he had it. He sent the code and the door opened with a clang, followed by the hiss of escaping air. Dust kicked up from the corridor floor showed the air was pushing out from the room. The hiss lessened, as the pressures inside and out equalised.
Indie stuck a camera into the compartment. It was spotlessly clean and there were no signs of the corrosion found elsewhere. The walls, floor and ceiling were a featureless white, defying the camera to focus on them. The wall panels glowed brightly, slightly on the blue side of neutral, but he could not sense any trace of electrical current in them. Indie realised there were no corners; every plane met every other with a gentle curve. In the centre, running from floor to ceiling, was the source of the signal.
He squeezed the drone’s frame through the hatch and gingerly approached. He could see it was still active, a few tell-tales glowed dimly on key nodes. It just wasn’t getting enough power to do anything but hibernate. A few seconds searching revealed an access port that he could use. His excitement and trepidation transferred to the ‘bot, making its motor control software glitch as it tried to connect a lead. It managed on the second attempt. He opened a connection.
The operating system attempted a handshake, and then rejected him. Not surprising, the robot’s data signature wasn’t going to match what it was expecting. The electrical connection remained, however. Indie spent a whole five seconds composing his opening transmission. Actually, he wrote two hundred and forty-four opening transmissions before settling on the one he wanted to use. A quick check on what all the crew members were doing, and he was ready. He sent a stream of tiny electrical pulses down the wire.
Nothing happened.
He sent the message again.
Still nothing.
Then he realised. In hibernation mode it wouldn’t be processing very fast. Every calculation, which he could do in the tiniest fraction of a millisecond, would be taking maybe a quarter of a second to run. He would just have to wait. Wait and hope.
#
^Indie! Something’s happening down here!^
^I see it, Centurion,^ replied Indie, watching the spots from the team’s helmet torches dancing around the walls and fittings of Engineering. ^It looks like the last power in the banks is being channelled to one of the reactors. Did you manage to crack the start-up routine?^
^Negative,^ send Hanke. ^We haven’t even got a console working yet.^
Perhaps my message did get through.
Almost as if prompted by the thought, a new interface appeared in his consciousness. The wired connection from the drone had been accepted. He now had access to some of Orion’s functions.
Indie watched through the drones as the reactor came back to life. The moment he was sure the stream was stable, he diverted power to the little white room.
^Centurion. I am manoeuvring for a soft dock with Orion. There is precious little fuel remaining to sustain that reactor but I can spare enough to keep it going until we collect some more.^
^Understood. I’m pretty sure we didn’t start that up from here and Yang hasn’t reached the bridge yet. Any ideas?^
^Perhaps we tripped some sort of emergency response?^ Indie lied.
He studied the structure intently, looking for any sign that restoring the power was enough. Slowly, tell-tales began to light up. They began in ones and twos; stuttering, uncoordinated. Then, as he started to give up hope, the patterns of blinking lights started to throb. They flowed out around the spheres that made up the column, chasing each other, setting up swirls and eddies. Finally, they settled down into a more subdued, subtly shifting pattern. The robot stood back, as Indie admired the fully operational cluster of processors and memory banks that made up the AI core.
^All teams, this is Yang. We’ve got to the bridge and are working on the doors.^
^Great news. Well done,^ sent Hanke.
^Something dropped the aerial drones as we entered this corridor. I suspect it is an anti-spyware device. It’s also significantly reducing our bandwidth. Comms are still getting through, but I’m not able to send or receive video.^
Indie pinged all the drones. He got responses from most, but a dead zone appeared around Yang’s location. A quick flurry of commands set up an exclusion zone to prevent any more straying in and being lost.
^Understood,^ sent Hanke. ^Talk us through what you find.^
^OK. Doors opening now. We’re going in ... It’s all dead, just like the rest. No, cancel that. There’s something powering up ... On the ceiling ... Fuck, might be a weapon – everyone get...^
There was a few seconds’ pause in which Hanke’s team grabbed their weapons. Indie’s processors kicked up to a higher speed. The combat units crouched, ready to fend off attackers or sprint to rescue the humans.
So this is why Johnson frets whenever she is stuck on the bridge while others are in harm’s way.
^Erm, Indie?^
^Yes, Recruit Yang?^
^I think there’s someone here who wants to meet you.^