by Dan Worth
Exiles
By Dan Worth
Prologue
The flea-like form of the salvage vessel Mary-Lou moved awkwardly as its navigation systems attempted to match velocity and rotation with the gigantic tumbling derelict. Small thrusters clustered on her outer hull vented sporadically to align the small, boxy, yellow craft with the dark looming shadow of its intended mate. Velocities matched, the Mary-Lou began to move cautiously toward the derelict’s surface as spidery legs unfolded from their stowed positions beneath the belly of the salvage ship and magnetically clamped it in place against the pock-marked hull.
Now secured in place, a telescopic breaching umbilical extended from the Mary-Lou’s belly. Upon contact with the skin of the derelict’s hull the plasma cutting torches mounted upon the flat circular tip of the umbilical began to burn their way through the material. Its work complete, hydraulic rams forced the tube deeper into the newly cut wound, forcing a plug of hull composite ahead of it into the interior of the vessel. Once the umbilical was in place, thick sealant foam sprayed onto the join between the derelict’s hull and its newly mounted airlock from nozzles positioned on the Mary-Lou where it quickly hardened to form a secure and airtight seal.
The grimy interior of the Mary-Lou was even more cramped than usual. The ship’s hull, barely a hundred metres in length, was largely given over to the pair of oversized engines the ship required for towing larger vessels and debris, whilst the hold was filled with a bewildering assortment of heavy salvage gear. This left very little room for home comforts for its usual crew of four engineers and one pilot. In addition to its usual complement, its cramped confines now had to accommodate a team of four archaeologists along with all their equipment.
The academics and the bluff, blue collar engineers had at first regarded one another with a suspicion bordering upon hostility, but as the mission progressed the barrier between the two camps had lifted. This was partly as a result of working together and partly due to the fact that the small size of the Mary-Lou’s interior made it impossible to ignore anyone for long.
Archaeologists were an unusual addition to the small salvage craft’s complement, since her usual duties were generally concerned with towing stranded ships back to Arcturus and collecting potentially valuable debris or that which posed a hazard to shipping. This trip provided its crew with a little interest in what had been a dull period for some months now.
The hulk had originally been found a week earlier after it had drifted across the principal shipping lane between Barnard’s Star and Arcturus. A courier vessel, the Dragonfly, had been travelling between the two systems and had detected the drifting gravitational signature of the derelict with its hyperspace sensors. Thinking that they had stumbled upon a ship in distress, the craft had dropped out of its jump and had looped back toward the gently tumbling shape to see if they could offer any assistance to an obviously stricken vessel. However, upon approaching the wreck the Dragonfly found it to be lifeless, of an unknown type and carrying no recognised insignia.
The mysterious vessel consisted of a thousand metre long hull which tapered steadily to a point at both ends. At its mid-point however, it smoothly branched into four thick, roughly conical pylons which swept back along the vessel and which appeared to contain the ship’s weapons systems. At the base of each pylon, nestled against the main hull, were four fusion drives for powering the vessel through space. The vessel’s jump drive appeared to have been mounted inside the rear tapered section of the main hull, but this had been badly smashed and buckled by enormous force and the smooth, dark blue-grey, dully shining skin was blackened and contorted. Most unusual of all however was the vessel’s apparent age; a crude analysis provided by the Dragonfly’s instruments placed it at around a million years old.
The Dragonfly reported its remarkable find back to the Arcturus Shipping Authority within whose jurisdiction the wreck lay, marked it with a navigation buoy to enable the vessel to be located again, and then proceeded on its way. The ASA contacted the relevant government authorities on Earth who declared the find a Protected Archaeological Treasure pending further investigations and promptly got in touch with the Archaeology Department at Cambridge University. A small team departed the following day to investigate with the help of an ASA salvage crew aboard the Mary-Lou to conduct preliminary examinations of the wreck and tow it to a place of safety.
Doctor Katherine O’Reilly shifted uneasily inside her borrowed EVA suit. She tried to suppress the claustrophobia welling up inside her and ignore the stench of stale sweat assailing her nostrils from the suit’s well worn lining. Composed of multiple insulating layers and with the addition of protective light armour plates and life support systems, the suit was bulky and made it difficult to move, even with the addition of powered joints.
A hand rapped on the face-plate.
‘You ever worn one of these things before, love?’ said a voice muffled by the suit’s layers. It was Bob Freeman, the Mary-Lou’s chief engineer. His broad unshaven face peered through the glass.
‘Well, once before, but it was…’
‘You’ll have to turn your comm. on. I can’t hear you properly,’ he yelled.
‘Shit, sorry,’ she replied, fiddling for the button on her wrist band. ‘Sorry Chief. As I was saying, I’ve worn a suit once before but it was a bit more basic than this, just a fabric emergency one. It was quite a while ago too.’
‘Right well, this thing may look complicated but actually there’s nothing to worry about. It’s all automated and there’s powered joints to help your mobility. The armour plates will protect you from most bumps and scratches but just watch that the elbow and knee joints don’t catch on anything and mind your faceplate, alright? If you do break it, a metal shutter will come down immediately to seal you off from the vacuum. You’ll be able to see bugger all but someone will come and get you.’
Katherine shuddered inwardly; the claustrophobia of the suit was bad enough without the thought of being trapped in total darkness inside it to contend with.
‘Never mind, hardly ever happens,’ said Freeman and slapped her companionably on the shoulder pauldron. ‘I’ll just see to your boss and then you two can get going. Any problems you just yell for me on the radio, okay.’
Katherine nodded then looked over at figure of her senior colleague and friend, Professor Rekkid Cor. The Arkari looked distinctly uncomfortable in his suit: his slim humanoid frame was wrongly proportioned to fit comfortably into the human garment, but it was all that they could find and he had insisted on going on the expedition. He grimaced at Katherine as the Chief tightened the straps around his suit’s waist.
There was a voice in her ear mic.
‘Prof, Doc, this is Captain McKinley. We’ve secured the ship, breached the hull and sealed the airlock in place. There is an atmosphere inside but to be honest given the state of the wreck you should really keep your suits on and your visors down just in case as we can’t guarantee the integrity of the ship. Your two students have got all their gear hooked up to your suits’ telemetry transmissions. We’ll keep a close eye on you whilst you’re in there and if anything happens we’ll get you out as fast as possible.’
‘Thank you Captain,’ said Katherine and turned to her colleague. ‘Rekkid is your suit alright now?’
‘It’ll have to do, I doubt I’ll ever walk again after this little jaunt though,’ he replied irritably. ‘Mr Falkirk and Miss Okuda if you could keep an eye out on the data read-outs and video feeds for anything you think we’ve missed whilst we’re in there.’ He gestured toward the open hatch in the floor. ‘Well Katherine,’ he said. ‘Let’s get in there and have a look around’
Crawling through the umbilical in bulky suits proved difficult for the two novice users. It was also rather a disorientating experience, since the umbilical descended through the floor of the Mary-Lou leaving its artificial gravity field and emerged through the wall of a corridor inside the derelict.
Katherine and Rekkid descended the steps from the warmth and light of the Mary-Lou’s cabin then paused in the middle of the tube. They hung from grab handles in total weightlessness whilst the hatch behind them sealed shut and the one in front of them opened - a precaution to prevent any compromising of the Mary-Lou’s atmosphere. Katherine could see Rekkid fighting the urge to retch from the nauseating effects of sudden weightlessness. It was something which thankfully never bothered her, though free from the gravity field of the Mary-Lou she was uncomfortably aware of the dizzying effects caused by the odd tumbling motion of the two linked vessels. She spoke into the intercom.
‘Captain, it’s Doctor O’Reilly here, do you think you could use the Mary-Lou’s engines to stop us tumbling? It’s going to make it difficult to work otherwise; we’re not really used to this.’
‘Certainly, though it could take a while with a ship this size. Give us fifteen minutes?’
‘That’s fine,’ she replied.
‘Okay, firing engines. McKinley out.’
Katherine looked at Rekkid: his tawny skin had acquired a distinctly unhealthy tinge. Starting along the umbilical again she felt the metal vibrate as the Mary-Lou began its stabilising burn. Though struggling a little with the bulky suit, she reached the end of the umbilical ahead of Rekkid, worked the airlock door and helped to pull the struggling Arkari free of the tunnel exit. Floating over the circular composite plug cut free by the breaching operation they then magnetically attached their boots to the floor of the corridor. The rotation of the vessel was pronounced. Though noticeably lessened than before, it still made Katherine’s head swim. Rekkid was leaning drunkenly forward in his suit and, moaning softly into his intercom, she heard him contact the ship.
‘Okay we’re inside. No problems really, once this infernal tumbling stops.’ He said and groaned.
He switched on his suit lights and Katherine followed his example. The corridor was surprisingly mundane. It had an oblong cross section with curving corners, a floor coated in something akin to carpet and had grab handles and emergency bulkheads spaced at regular intervals along the walls. Everything was rimed with a fine layer of frost, which sparkled softly in the glare of the suit lights.
They had entered the vessel at a junction of three corridors which curved gradually away to their left and right and dove straight ahead toward the interior of the ship ahead of them. Katherine felt a twinge of disappointment.
‘I’d expected something a bit more, well alien I suppose’ she said to Rekkid. ‘Given some of the things we find on digs this is fairly normal looking.’
‘I’m sure,’ Rekkid began then swallowed carefully before continuing. ‘I’m sure we’ll find something of interest, just remember how old this vessel is supposed to be.’
‘Are we sure about that though, just how accurate was the survey made by the Dragonfly?’ said Katherine. ‘Could this be just a recently constructed vessel, a one off custom or experimental model maybe that ran into trouble and that’s why no-one recognised it? It certainly might explain the destruction of its jump engines if it was a new and untested design.’
‘You have a point there Katherine,’ said Rekkid. He appeared to be pondering something for a moment then stamped off awkwardly down the darkened corridor ahead of them. He stopped by a door and began brushing at the frost on the wall with his gauntlet. ‘Have a look at this though,’ he said, pointing at the wall.
Katherine set her suit’s boot clamps to ‘walk’ and set off down the corridor towards Rekkid. Upon reaching his position she saw what he was pointing at: a printed wall sign, presumably denoting the function or the occupant of the room behind the door next to which it was placed. The characters were small and regular, composed of combinations of circles and a few short vertical and horizontal lines. They were utterly indecipherable.
‘I don’t recognise the characters Rekkid,’ she said, puzzled.
‘Me neither. Which considering my experience of languages is quite unusual. It is what I teach after all.’
‘I suggest we try and date the wreck again. Let’s use some of those instruments we fitted to the Mary-Lou’s manipulator arms before we set off.’ Katherine suggested. ‘We can get a sample of the hull and we can also see if we can get some organic matter from inside the ship.’
‘I agree,’ replied Rekkid. He spoke to the ship. ‘Could we scrape a sample from the surface of the hull and date it please? I want to verify the Dragonfly’s results. I and Doctor O’Reilly are going to try and find some organic samples inside the ship and date them with the instruments we have with us. Maybe some of the crew are still aboard, or perhaps we can find a food locker or something.’
‘Mike’s deploying the cutting tools now,’ said Kim Okuda, one of the post-graduate students. ‘Also, we found something ourselves that might help you. We started deep scanning the vessel using the sensors on the Mary-Lou. We found a large compartment in the forward section of the vessel that appears to have been sealed off. We suspect that this might be the ship’s bridge. If there are any bodies it’s a good place to start looking.’
‘Why is it sealed off?’ said Rekkid.
‘We don’t know. The engineers reckon that if the ship is anything like our own the emergency systems on board would have sealed the ship around the hull breach automatically. Presumably the crew didn’t trust them to work a second time if they’d lost power so they isolated themselves. Better to be safe than sorry. There are actually two sealed doors between the bridge and the rest of the ship. They seem to have created a makeshift airlock for themselves.’
‘How can we get through them?’
There was some background murmuring over the intercom.
‘The Chief reckons the cutting gear on your suits should be enough. Failing that, see if there are any working manual overrides you can use.’
‘Manual overrides?’
‘Well, a handle.’
Katherine snorted with amusement. ‘How far is it to the bridge?’ she said.
‘Not far,’ replied Kim. ‘About three hundred metres. I’m downloading the schematic of the ship we’ve created so far and the location of the bridge with the quickest route to it. Follow the arrow on your helmet display and you can’t go wrong. If you encounter any obstacles we didn’t tell you about let us know, we’ll try and work out an alternative route.’
‘Thanks Kim nice job. We’ll get in touch again in a few minutes, Katherine out,’ she replied and cut her mic.
The ship had now stopped rotating and Rekkid appeared to be coping better with the effects of weightlessness. They made good progress through the corridors of the deserted vessel following the guidance provided by Kim. The chill and darkness, save for the cones of their suit lights, gave the dead vessel a distinctly crypt like quality.
Katherine found her primitive instincts kicking in, she began to jump at shadows and found that her imagination was populating every dark corner with nameless lurking horrors, none of which materialised. The ship was empty of anything living save herself and Rekkid, and it was strangely barren, as though every cabin had been stripped of its contents.
After several minutes of stamping through the dark, and leaving large, oval prints in the frost, they arrived at the first sealed bulkhead. There was indeed a manual override, a crank handle set into the wall at the side of the door frame. It looked worn and well used. Closer inspection, however, revealed it to be frozen in place. Rekkid set his cutting torch to its lowest setting and fired it around the gears to melt the ice. He then gave the handle a tug, it turned.
After several minutes of strenuous effort with the handle, the door was opened wide enough for them to squeeze through. They now found themselves in a short corridor with an
other bulkhead door in front of them. The intercom crackled into life, the sound distorted slightly by their depth inside the wreck. It was Mike Falkirk, the other post graduate student.
‘I’ve analysed the sample we scraped from the hull skin,’ he reported. ‘No doubt about it, the Dragonfly’s estimate was right on the money. This ship is a million years old, give or take a few millennia. Personally I’d feel happier about my results if we had an organic sample to compare them with since I’m not too sure about the exact composition of the ship’s hull. The spectroscopic analysis I carried out has found some exotic metals I’ve yet to identify. Have you found anything yet?’
‘Not yet,’ replied Rekkid. ‘We’re approaching the bridge area now as you can see. The rest of the ship is oddly empty. There’s nothing left to analyse. Hopefully we’ll find something behind this door. Good work by the way. Rekkid out.’
Once again they heated the door winch with their cutting torches and this time Katherine wound it around to edge the door open. They moved inside and there they found all the organic samples they could want. The room did indeed appear to be the bridge, and it contained a number of mummified corpses, desiccated by the cold, sterile environment. They were humanoid, with delicate curving features, elongated heads that possessed small crests along their centreline and large forward facing eyes. Some were slumped in chairs, held in place by retaining straps. Some floated in mid air at odd angles in the weightless conditions. A number of them faced the door, their sunken sockets staring at the intruders.
‘Oh m-my God,’ Katherine stuttered. ‘Rekkid they look just like you, they’re Arkari. But that’s impossible; this ship is far too old. I mean, your species is much more advanced than ours, but you’ve only had interstellar craft for what, fifty thousand years? This ship is a million years old,’ she looked at Rekkid. His face was pale.