“Let me here a bit about this planetary defense system. I'm curious.”
“The planetary defense system is a class 21, the highest ever conceived,” Sprite replied. Irons whistled. He'd heard of the system, a real monster. It wasn't so much a mountain top weapon as it was an entire mountain! Massive, four kilometer long barrel on the thing, massive motors and gimbles... turning the thing must be a nightmare! Insane really to park it on a vulnerable planet with a limited firing arch.
It was a hybrid energy weapon, a real monster if he remembered correctly. Gravity and Graser all rolled into one. He didn't involve himself in army ground side affairs normally so he didn't have the data on hand.
Sprite projected a map with the locations of each battery. There were three on each of the four continents and two more on polar island mountains. Each energy weapon was a combined gravity and Graser weapon, able to first tear through a ship's shield and then rip its hull apart. At full setting the Graser could break atomic bindings inducing fission. The power sources needed for each were insane.
He wondered where they got them and the funding until Sprite informed him that the planet had really been backed by the Grant mega corporation and the SCA, mostly by their richest eccentric members. “They had thought the planet would serve as a redoubt in the Federation's darkest hour. Apparently they never made it to the planet, their liner had been destroyed,” she said.
“Ouch.”
The defense system sat on top of mountains. Each was on a turret. During the war and its aftermath the planet was bombarded many times. After a while any ship or object in the system was taken out. The weapon system was so powerful it caused massive atmospheric disturbances on par with hurricanes. It could cut through any capital ship's screens like butter, peeling the energy fields back to get at the armored hull underneath. Not even a super dreadnaught could handle a shot from these monsters. One shot was all it took to annihilate a ship of that class. A monitor or larger vessel might take two shots but even he wouldn't throw away vessels of that size against those batteries.
After the war the planet was ringed with debris. Most of the large pieces were cut up by the defenses but that left the little pieces. “When they were certain the threat of nanites was over they lifted the quarantine and started letting visitors return,” Sprite said. He grunted.
“The first century they had visitors clean up their orbitals in exchange for fuel. But that sucked their fuel reserves in the process.”
“Didn't they have... wait, Victorian,” he said, nodding in understanding.
Sprite nodded in return. “Right. They were quite selective in their hardware. They tried to cling to that mindset even after the Xeno war ended. Apparently they only had one deuterium processing plant on the coast to serve the entire planet but it was destroyed in a quake three hundred and forty years ago.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes. So they have been trying to bootstrap their technology after that. They have a hydrogen processing station now which they use for their defense grid and use to fuel ships,” she said. “It's crude but it works.”
“Wait, you said that they had tech. Industry. They couldn't of lost all of it. Could they?” he asked dubiously.
She nodded grimly. “Indeed they did. It was all on their orbital factory stations. Even modern medical treatment was on a station. They had only basic triage on the planet, enough to get a patient stable to be transported.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “That's... insane.”
“On par for organics,” Sprite said with a sniff.
“I bet there were AI involved,” Irons said.
She made an uncomfortable throat clearing sound and then coughed. He smiled a little at that confirmation. “The system had some corporate sponsors who set up shop in the belt with several large factory stations of various classes. Some of the people on the planet worked on the factories during the week and retired to their rural planet on the weekend.”
“Sort of the suburbs,” Irons mused. He'd heard of the concept of course. He wouldn't want to travel a couple of AU back and forth to work every week.
“As I was saying, The stations were quite large.”
“How large is large?” Irons asked, wrinkling his nose. He knew he had taken the bait but didn't care. Let her have her fun.
“Crew of one hundred thousand. Each was the size of a small city. The largest Prime was over four hundred kilometers in diameter and could probably house over a million plus easily. Full hab by the way.”
“Oh,” his eyes flared. “That large.” The idea of what he could do with something that big... but no, Sprite had said they were all destroyed.
“Exactly. As I was saying, several of these stations were placed in the belt of this system and out beyond in the Oort cloud. The largest stations were in Lagrange points in the inner system. These stations fed the industry of the surrounding systems including Briev, Triang, and competed with Pyrax for work in Agnosta.”
“Interesting,” he said. He wasn't sure where all this was going.
“Everything on the planet was made by them. No industry allowed. Period tech was limited. Most of the steamer tech transportation was actually electric dressed to look the part. They even used holographic projectors for the smoke. That kept environmental pollution to a minimum. They had blacksmiths for show and that was it. The stations did the work. But all the stations were destroyed... I think.”
Irons sat up as that last two words registered. “You think?” he demanded.
“Well, there are stories of a ghost station on this heading,” Sprite replied with an eerie hint in her voice and tone.
He wrinkled his nose at the thought of such a thing. Spacers had been telling stories like that since they'd made the jump from wet sailors. Superstitions and ghost stories died hard. “Really.”
“From time to time visiting ships reported hearing strange broadcasts. They were weak and incoherent. Most of them were scrambled,” Sprite said, still trying to spook him. He felt something race up and down his spine, he knew it was her.
His eyes narrowed. Let her have her fun he thought. “Echoes of ships that didn't make it to the system?”
“No. Some of the signals were in a corporate encryption key. Others were broadcast in the clear. Then there is the story of the ghost station itself.”
“Oh?”
“The largest station, station five which was known as Prime, the jewel of the system disappeared just before the Xeno's arrived in system. It was last seen under tow by all its tugs before it went dark. There was a large explosion and everyone assumed it had been destroyed in some sort of accident.”
Irons grunted at that, rubbing his chin. “Accident?”
“Or intentionally faking it's death?” Sprite asked.
“Possible,” he rumbled. He could see some of the reasoning there. “Entirely possible. But without actual evidence we have only suppositions built on second and third hand reports.”
Sprite nodded. “Exactly. Most of the reports are of bar stories. Ghost stories to scar organics.”
“Really.”
“But... I think we're going to add to that. Very soon now,” she said, suddenly grinning.
“Oh?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Here it was, what she'd tried to build up to.
“I think we're going to find out for ourselves admiral. There is an anomalous object of considerable mass on this heading and there is no time to maneuver around it. The captain has ordered a crash translation. Fortunately we were about to translate out anyway but we're dropping out a little early.”
“Okay...”
As the transit energy dissipated around them their sublight sensors came online. They were dangerously close to the station, less than a million kilometers. Had they come out any closer both would have been annihilated. Fortunately Blackhawk had dropped them out just in time. The man should be congratulated. Most likely however he was weathering a storm of criticism from Chambers, Irons thought with a pang.
Sprite was giving him a feed from both the ship's bridge and the sensors. He ignored the bridge feed, focusing intently on the apparition outside the ship.
It was a ball. A ball with a ring around the circumference. The factory station was massive. A hedgehog shaped sphere, that was over 400 kilometers in diameter. The topside was a dome; the bottom was a more flattened solid surface. There was a ring of solar panels along the edges, most looked like they were hastily installed. From the looks of them they had seen better days, they were pockmarked with holes.
Along it's circumference long arms extend outward like rays. Some of these arms were quite torn up. Irons recognized them for what they were right away, they were docks. Irons studied the sensory image Sprite provided him until the captain called him to the bridge.
When he arrived on the bridge he strode directly to the sensory station. The bridge was crackling with excitement. He nodded politely to Warner and the chief engineer. Apparently the captain had called the chief up as well. That was interesting and a good sign. It showed that the captain was more interested in the station than in just logging it's position and passing it by.
Could he be thinking of dropping some of his crew here? Irons thought with a sudden flash of insight. It was distinctly possible. Even probable if the station could be brought online. And what a station! This station dwarfed all of the industry in Pyrax before he had shown up there. Hell, it probably still did if even a third of her systems were even remotely functional! Industrial replicators... dozens, possibly hundreds of them! Reactors... He practically salivated at the thought of getting his hands on that equipment. What he could do with all of that!
“Okay, that's nice,” Irons commented acidly about the living sections. He hated that they had to rely on civilian grade sensors. It was even more annoying that he'd replaced some but not enough to get the data he really wanted right now. They'd spent hours trying to get the sensors to penetrate the hull. Hours trying to map the thing. They hadn't learned much, or at least what he really wanted to know.
Taking his shuttle out had been a thought, but the little craft didn't have sensors strong enough to penetrate far enough into the hull of that monster to really do any good. No, he was stuck with what tools the Kiev had.
They had finally rotated around the station cautiously, getting a polar orbit around the thing to get a better look. Irons wasn't happy about the damage. Some of it was cosmetic of course, but some of it was heart breaking. Obviously time and meteors had not been kind to the station, nor had someone with a laser. She looked like Swiss cheese in some places. His finger drifted over the exposed buildings. He was scowling blackly. Typical civilians to do something that stupid.
“What about them?” the sensor tech asked dubiously, confused by the admiral's disgust. She looked up at him with wide uncertain eyes.
“Look.” He pointed to the pie slices exposed on the top of the station. Each slice is bracketed with beams. The beams, more like arches have antenna and blisters on them. Most of the blisters were torn apart. He zoomed into a pie slice that just came out of shadow.
“What the hell?” Quinna O'Mallory asked moving closer to see the buildings. He zoomed in more. “Is that... is that a skyscraper? In space? Seriously?” she demanded pointing at the rectangle. She looked at him in shocked disbelief. He nodded grimly. That explained what happened to a lot of the surviving crew, he thought.
Captain Chambers frowned. “What are we looking at?” The captain asked.
The admiral glanced his way. Chief O'Mallory didn't her eyes were locked on the glass structure. “You're looking at the reason most of the people on the station died probably. In the latter century of the Federation it became fashionable to use force field domes instead of real domes. They could be translucent or completely transparent. It kept the atmosphere in and looks all pretty and sparkly. It gave off a nice glow you could see from a couple AU out,” the admiral explained.
“Um... Sounds okay.”
“No it doesn't,” Quinna said shaking her head firmly.
“It doesn't?” The captain asked, arching an eyebrow. He'd been patiently watching as the crew gathered information.
“Think it through. I'm betting it's an energy hog right?” O'Mallory asked, turning to Irons. Irons nodded. She nodded back. “Sure, and I'm betting you've got a population that's exposed to vacuum and radiation if something fails. It's a classic problem in engineering. The weakest link.”
The admiral's face twisted in a bleak grimace. He could just imagine that failure, what it had meant to the thousands of people in the buildings at the time. Hopefully some had managed to get to shelter beforehand. But then it hadn't done them any good had it? Apparently not, the station was dead after all, or at least appeared to be. “Which you can see. Oh it was sold as a great thing, protection and dome all in one. Trapping air inside while shrugging off meteors and radiation.”
“But...” the captain said slowly. He felt a little sick as he finally understood what they had been explaining to him. Irons nodded, eyes sad. “You're telling me that...”
The admiral nodded again. “Without power it shuts off. Either stepping down or all at once. And everything inside is exposed to vacuum. Rapid decompression. Most of the buildings aren't protected or sealed either. Some of the damage we're seeing is explosive decompression when the hull integrity failed.” He winced at their expressions and shudders.
“That's if the power is interrupted. Lose fuel, or have a glitch, a short, or in this case some nut job with a death wish coming along with a blaster.”
“Or a virus,” Warner said softly.
The admiral glanced at him and nodded. “A virus killed a lot of people in colonies like that. It was in the news all the times. People started to abandon them or tack them over. Mostly abandon.”
As they watched the station drifted, slowly spinning in place. It finally exposed a pie section that had been covered over with what looked like hastily welded metal plates. It was patched too.
“We're... we're getting atmo readings in that.” the sensor tech said looking confused and amazed. She looked up to the captain and then the admiral in excitement.
“Seriously?” O'Mallory asked as the captain opened his mouth.
The tech nodded. “Yes. There are trace elements from the spectrograph. Oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. It's thin though. We're getting some heat signatures there. The most for the entire station. I think... I think the stations solar panels on the perimeter are keeping it breathable.”
“Or it's all poison gas. I wonder though,” Irons mused. He was definitely going over, that was it, he had to know.
“Oxygen and nitrogen? Carbon dioxide? Highly doubtful anyone would live this long,” Sprite said sounding doubtful but knowing what he was planning. He nodded. It would be next to impossible for anyone to have survived in that cold dark station for the past seven centuries.... but then there were those weird life readings... Too nebulous to make out with the dratted civilian piece of crap.
“Could people still be in there?” The captain asked quietly.
The admiral stared at the holo image. “Doubtful. But it does bear investigating,” Irons replied firmly. The captain stared at him.
Irons turned to face him directly. “We can only learn so much here captain. I'm volunteering to head over in my shuttle. It has military grade sensors.”
“I'll go,” Warner said, raising his hand.
“No, you're needed here. As are you chief,” the captain said before O'Mallory could finish opening her mouth. She bridled under the order, silently mouthing swear words. “We need you to continue your program of repairs and upgrades remember?” The captain said, reminding her.
“Aye aye captain,” O'Mallory said, sounding nettled but resigned to
her fate. Irons saw her grind her teeth together as she turned away.
“You'll have your hands full putting those emitters back in place chief,” Irons said, touching her shoulder as she started to walk past him. She slowed and then nodded.
“I'll have Petunia's crew lend me a hand. She's experienced,” she said gruffly. Irons nodded as she walked out. He turned to the captain. The captain continued to study the central plot, staring at the station.
“She'll get over it,” the captain said softly after a moment. Irons nodded slowly. Sometimes being the boss wasn't about pleasing people. It was about making sure the right people were where they were supposed to be and on task. You couldn't please everyone.
Sometimes being in charge was also about reining people in, checking their impulsive spirits before they did something stupid or dangerous that put themselves or the ship in danger. And it was about watching someone go out, follow your orders, do something you think is okay and find out that it was dangerous and they paid the penalty... and then having to live with it and move on. Sometimes it sucked to be the captain.
Technically first away missions really weren't a place for a Fleet admiral either. Especially ones going into the unknown like this. Derelicts were a dangerous place to explore even for experienced crews. Taking greenhorns in there... He hid a mental wince.
“Captain,” Esmay said holding up her hand.
“No. And before anyone else asked, no. No bridge officers,” the captain said with a firm shake of her head. Esmay deflated, dropping her raised hand. “Admiral, you are in charge of the mission. I'll give you Barry in a shuttle and the Scarab. Take a crew in your shuttle and Barry will take a group in one of ours he will select. He'll hold the docks while you have a look.”
Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) Page 35