by Skyler Grant
"We'll figure out the rest later. Do you still need that time alone out there?" Quinn asked.
"I do. That hasn't changed, although if I learn anything that I believe will impact our family I'll make sure to make a copy," Mara said.
Quinn said, "Outside of our main goal here, I still see an abandoned station and a lot of dead ships that look to have never been salvaged. Kara, I want you to look over the combat ships and see what’s worth taking."
"Stuff will be old, but you humans go backward sometimes. I'll have a look, stud," Kara said.
"Dela, you assess everything else. You're the best appraiser we've got of value. I want you to scope things out and get us everything worthwhile taking."
"Glad to do it, but I'll probably need some help," Dela said.
"I can do that," Taki said.
"Tamara is a better fit for that. Taki, I want you with me. It might not matter to why we came here, but something bad happened in this system and I want to figure out what," Quinn said.
"What about me?" Jinx asked.
"You had a big day yesterday. Get some rest and don't touch that bally thing. Last thing we need is for the ship to disappear while the rest of us are away exploring."
Nobody objected to their assignments and after breakfast finished up they all went their respective ways.
Quinn headed for the bridge.
With the station still having some power he hoped the automated docking system would work, but attempting to engage it beeped out error codes of a failed connection. It had to be the mandatory evacuation order—the station hadn't wanted any ships landing without specific approval.
It wouldn't be the first time Quinn had to land manually. One quadrant of the station had obviously suffered some weapons fire, so he avoided that for some undamaged sections and what appeared a working dock. Mechanical triggers and an umbilical locked on as the Centauri Bliss slid into place.
The air aboard the station registered as stale, and the temperatures were well outside of human survival. The beacon might have kept powering on, but life support hadn't—along with most of the other systems.
Quinn hit the comms. "We have reached our lovely and scenic destination. Taki? We’ll need environmental suits. For those using shuttles, Mara, you can make use of the Tango. Dela, that means the Foxtrot is yours. Kara, if Dela left the Whiskey with any flight control, obviously you’re free to take her out. Everyone else, you’ll just to have to be patient until we check things out."
By the time Quinn made it to the hatch the shuttles had all departed. Taki was already in her suit with a rifle slung over her shoulder.
"Don't know if we're going to need that," Quinn said.
"Spooky-ass space station where everybody died under mysterious circumstances? Oh, I'm taking the gun, sir. You're lucky I'm not kitted out like Kara," Taki said.
22
The first thing Quinn noticed in the docking bay was carts. Usually in docks they'd be filled with cargo, or parts, and supplies going back and forth to the ships, but here they contained only fuel drums. The next thing Quinn saw were the corpses, withered and wasted.
"Whatever killed them, it wasn't the life support failing," Taki said.
Quinn had to agree. With the corpses withered like these, it suggested plenty of time for breathable air and the bacteria it carried to allow such decay and decomposition. The atmosphere is these undamaged sections hadn’t abruptly vented.
"Notice the fuel?" Quinn asked.
Taki stopped by one of the drums, rapping on it with her knuckles, "Full. Would have taken them time to refill the main systems? Maybe they were fueling ships manually?"
It was as good a guess as any. At least they wouldn't have any trouble refueling the Centauri Bliss. On the carts nearby alone he saw there would be enough to refuel the ship three times over, both for the main engines and mana for the rune drive.
It felt like walking through a graveyard, the darkness lit only by their suit lamps, the beams of light piercing the gloom ahead of them.
Further along the docking bay they came to the retail ring. Normally storefronts would be hawking wares at all hours. Most of these were shuttered, although behind these Quinn could see that they were still stocked with goods.
"This purge of the Emperor’s must not have been a total surprise. Most evacuated and didn't have the money or space to take their wares with them," Quinn said.
“Weird this. Like walking through a museum and a graveyard at the same time. How long would it be?” Taki asked.
“If this happened at the end of the First Imperium. Two thousand years or thereabouts? Long time for these people to be sitting without some kind of burial,” Quinn said.
"Life support and the main reactor should be at the center of the station, sir," Taki said.
They kept heading inward. As they’d have expected, the outer torus of the station was devoted to quick trade from spacers passing through. The inner nexus would contain residences, larger businesses, and planetary administration.
Off the main corridor Quinn saw signs advertising restaurants, a nightclub, and even a small branch of the Galactic Bank. Surprisingly, it remained well lit.
"Independent power for the bank," Quinn said.
"And probably a lot more hardened against disaster than anything else here. I guess we won't be raiding the vault," Taki said.
Probably not, robbing the Galactic Bank tended to be a fool’s errand anyways. Local financial networks were one thing, if you were bold and had a good plan. The Galactic Bank employed its own espionage service, a private police force, and heavily armed response squads. If you offended the bank, it would find a way to make its displeasure perfectly clear.
Even if the bank had been offline and wide open, Quinn would have been more tempted to take the contents and return them to the next branch they encountered, rather than steal them. Just as the bank made for a powerful enemy, it could be a powerful friend.
A side corridor leading deeper into the station was sealed. Taki and Quinn put their shoulders to force it apart.
It revealed simple utilitarian halls and the accommodation for the station employees, which was small, cramped, and unremarkable.
They came across a body sprawled in a doorway, the door still half open.
"What do you make of this?" Quinn asked.
"They weren't even heading for any sort of emergency shelter," Taki said.
Another body blocked an entrance into the station core, home to the power reactor and critical systems. Here dull lights threw everything into ominous shadow. Still it was better than their suit lights.
"Emergency power still active here too," Taki said.
They headed for the power core control room. The reactor itself was sealed behind thick doors, but it didn't matter. If the problem was there, it was likely something they wouldn't be able to resolve anyways.
Three workstations overlooked a series of monitors and Taki pushed a body out of a chair to have a seat, Quinn did the same.
"Nothing is blinking at me and saying how to turn on the lights, sir," Taki said dryly.
Quinn looked over the readouts in front of him. It mostly seemed to be monitoring systems from the reactors and while a lot of them did blink, none were telling him anything useful—not a clue about anything to act on.
"Check out the third seat," Quinn said.
Another body hit the floor and Taki moved over.
A minute of perusing the readouts and Taki said, "I might have something, sir. It’s almost funny, it’s so dumb. One of these is reporting an update to the firmware has been applied and a reboot of the system is pending."
"Something like that might have finally hit some kind of time-out and shut everything down until the reboot is done," Quinn said, and got up to search the room. Under the consoles he found what he was looking for, a heavy binder.
The manual was filled with emergency procedures, and on page eighty-four were the instructions for a system restart.
It
required work on multiple consoles and between Quinn and Taki it took over half an hour, but finally the last command had been input. There was a tremor and a faint hum grew. Overhead lights flickered and came to life.
They went through a similar process in life support control. In all it needed several hours going around the control hub, pushing bodies aside and initiating restarts. It all seemed worth it when they finally could take off their helmets.
The freshly recycled air smelled perfectly natural. The stench from the bodies would have long gone and any other lingering smells the air purifiers were handling.
Quinn opened a comm to the Centauri Bliss. "You should have power back in the docks, Mel."
"Saw that, Captain. Umbilical went live a bit ago. Nothing from the refueling systems though," Melody replied.
"Lots of fuel sitting out on the docks, but it’s in barrels. You'll have to do a manual load. We can come by and help if you need it."
"I can handle it, Captain. With the dock cranes working it should be simple."
"Leaves us free to check out the command deck," Quinn said to Taki.
"I grabbed the chief engineer's security card just in case there aren't any conveniently placed corpses holding door open," Taki said.
It turned out they didn't need it, the bodies were particularly packed in station operations. The command staff had been very busy when things went bad.
Quinn turned his attention to traffic control stations while Taki went looking for internal station reports.
The majority of the stations had been directing the evacuation, arranging docking space for vessels in need of fuel to make the jump. Strangely, it didn't appear from anything that Quinn could see that a battle was being fought at the same time. The weapon damage on the station must be from a previous encounter.
Digging further into traffic control revealed some oddities. A large team was devoted to scanning outgoing ships, an unusual priority in a hasty evacuation. It took a good few minutes for Quinn to figure out what they were look for—mana. Of course, any rune drive-equipped starship would have mana aboard as fuel, but this was different.
The scans had been searching for nobles.
Taki said, "I've got something, sir, but I don't know what to make of it. One of the last messages they sent. Half an hour before the end of all logs. It looked like someone—or perhaps a ship—named Mahara escaped from a patrol on the second planet, and at the same time someone or something called Ilinar boarded the station on Deck Ten and security teams were moving to engage."
Those names didn't mean anything to Quinn. Perhaps Mara or Alexis would know. He'd have to ask them later.
They spent another few hours combing through the data, but it was simply too much. It was impossible to separate the valuable information from the everyday noise.
"Let’s go check out Deck Ten," Quinn said.
With the power restored the lifts were working. The station tapered above the docking ring, each level growing progressively smaller. Deck Ten was devoted to Medical.
The exterior lift doors wouldn't open. They looked to have been crudely welded shut. Quinn and Taki briefly tried to force them apart to no avail.
"We'll need some tools, sir. Or to get Kara or Melody in here. With their strength they could probably do it," Taki said.
"Whatever it is can wait. Let’s head back and see what the others found," Quinn said.
23
At the dinner table Kara was displaying a few new, still healing, wounds. No one asked, since she didn’t seem bothered. Melody had loaded up on pasta on Arkstone and they had long, curled noodles with a creamy sauce and chicken.
"So, how did everyone go?" Quinn asked.
"Found big-ass military ships. Found their valuable combat drones still operate just fine when an intruder comes aboard. Blew up a lot of valuable combat drones," Kara said, grabbing an enormous plate of pasta. "The big weapons aren't much use to us, but so far I've got us several cases of military-grade energy cells. They're expended with time, but there’s no reason we can’t recharge them, and they’re a lot better than anything on the civilian market even today. Exotic ammunition too."
Those were good things all. Nobody on the ship used energy weapons except for Mara and Kara. They were expensive and difficult to maintain—and to find energy cells for—but it sounded like that supply should keep them both equipped for awhile.
"I helped Melody. It was uninteresting and not nearly as exciting as exploring the station," Alexis said.
"You didn’t miss much. A lot of dead bodies. A truly spooky amount of dead bodies,” Taki said.
"You seem very invested in finding this cargo. Why?" Tamara asked.
"Mistress Delcoro has been of great aid to the Royal Astrographical Society's efforts in this part of space. In return she asked our help in the location and return to her of the cargo from the Redeemer. Her objectives aren’t mine but I welcomed any chance to get a look at the Divide," Alexis said.
"And looking for that led you all the way here," Taki said. “I give you this. You might be crazy and a bit too obsessed with ships but you’re determined.”
"A long way to travel, to be sure, but also of interest to the Society. While he was alive the Emperor frowned upon travel beyond the boundaries of the Runestone network, even by astrographical science teams, but now ..." Alexis said.
"Now you saw the opportunity to pay off your debt and have a look where you aren't supposed to. Have you had a chance to review the logs they brought back? Found anything?" Tamara asked.
"Not yet, but there are a lot of ships out there. I'll continue the search in the morning when not being coerced into playing assistant engineer," Alexis said.
Melody said, "I’m really grateful! You’re fantastic. As for our report, uh.. that transponder? Since you two got the dock up and running I decided to go in from the outside. I've almost got the thruster out. I should be able to get rid of it tomorrow."
"And about time. I hope you aren’t planning on leaving at once?" Alexis asked.
"Nothing says we have to leave, but at least we'll have the option. Can we take off with the thruster out?" Quinn asked.
"Wouldn't recommend it, but if I started working into the main power conduit we'd have the same problem. This way we have two days downtime instead of three," Melody said.
Dela told them, "In terms of salvage there’s a lot out there. People were fleeing with their possessions and their savings. Today we put together two thousand in hard currency alone. Feels a lot like grave robbing though."
"Because it is,” Tamara said. “That said, on salvaging material this old the law is clear. We've claim rights unless it is actively defended.”
"That going to cause us any legal problem with the military salvage?" Quinn asked.
"Will, if you let an Imperium vessel catch you using Imperium energy cells, and they decide to take you to court instead of shoot you," Tamara said.
"Fair point. We'll rule that one as a don't-get-caught. There’s a Galactic Bank branch on the station. We'll be avoiding it, but anything that doesn't shoot at you is fair game," Quinn said.
Jinx announced, "I did nothing. I got really bored doing nothing. I hope you've got something for me to do tomorrow?"
"She can help us out with looking for salvage. The more hands the better," Dela said.
"I got quite a bit of information off the systems of various craft. I've got charts of the local ley-lines and the old Runestone network," Mara said.
"Not very useful," Quinn said.
"Fascinating from a historical context. The Emperor did a lot to suppress knowledge of the size of the First Imperium although it has been speculated it was a fair bit larger. According to this it was almost twice as large."
That was large. The entire Imperium, traversed from its furthest point to the opposite side, took one hundred and thirty jumps and spanned thousands of systems. The thought of the bureaucracy that must have once governed a space twice that size was dizzying.
"So those worlds are still out there?" Quinn asked.
"Almost certainly, beyond the Divide," Tamara said with a nod.
"So, they’re just living their life? They never tried to get past the Divide? Do they have their own Emperor" Quinn asked.
"Possibly, although there are good reasons to think tragedy may have befallen them. Did you find out anything?” Mara asked.
"We did, but we didn't find much about what happened here. Do you or Alexis recognize the names Mahara or Ilinar?" Quinn asked.
They both did. Quinn could see it immediately, the guarded expression that flickered across Alexis' features and the recognition in Mara’s eyes.
"Context?" Mara asked, leaning forward.
"The last message the station sent. That Mahara had escaped and Ilinar was aboard the station," Taki said.
Mara pushed back from the table and rose to her feet. "I see. Is that all?"
"Do you have anything you need to tell us?" Quinn asked.
"Old names. Old problems, and probably dead. I sincerely hope they are dead. Also likely the reason for the purge. The Emperor would have killed a lot more to kill two of the Unshackled. Did it say where Ilinar was aboard the station?"
"Deck Ten, but we tried to investigate and it was sealed. We're going back tomorrow to force the door."
"I'm going now," Mara said, and after a pause added, "I'd appreciate backup. Kara in full armor. Anyone else who goes should at least have a gun."
"Can it wait to morning?" Quinn asked, surprised.
"It cannot. Believe me, if there is even a chance one of those two is somehow still alive we must find out.” Mara stopped and shook her head. "And there is that chance, even with the passage of two thousand years."
"The only things I like better than eating are shooting things and screwing things," Kara said, rushing away from the table.
"I'm not going to miss something that sounds this exciting," Dela said.
"Me either," Jinx said.
"You are definitely staying here," Mara said with a stern look at Jinx. "I know you're bored. But trust me," she glanced at Alexis. "You should remain behind as well, to be safe."