“Granted we can get out of here,” Ayia exclaimed.
“Speaking of that, let’s see,” Kale looked down at the screen, “We are at seven hundred and twenty three stars scanned and nothing yet. Guess that gives us more time to salvage.”
“Is there anything else here that is of value?” Gheno asked. He understood nothing about spaceships other than the basics of their construct.
“Oh, no. The Magyo may be a huge son of a bitch but it was actually a base model craft, rather old tech actually. I guarantee everything on my Oil is worth more, other than the sheer tonnage, which we’re not budging of course.”
“Ok, well, while you scan, I'm going to try another approach,” Ayia explained. She would use another terminal to scan for literature concerning the Magyo to see if she could locate the bridge, through a picture or description.
“What do I do?” Gheno was feeling left out. He hadn’t heard of this ship nor was he familiar with the Dominion’s succession laws and genetics. He was usually the smartest one in the room but at the moment he felt left out.
“Go make coffee,” Kale ordered, without even looking up from his scan.
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. Very important. Coffee.”
Gheno turned to look for Ayia’s help but she was already engrossed in her own project. Gheno looked out at the giant ship. It was dead in the sky, twisted and destroyed. He hoped to find something of value here as well but for the moment coffee was all he could get of value for the crew.
Gheno went back to working on his AI. At this point, it was a matter of simply uploading more of the sub programs into the main AI driver, checking for conflicts and bugs, running debugs, reinstalling and then moving on to the next sub program. It involved a lot of button mashing, clicking, and then waiting. In between entering commands, Gheno scanned the ship’s databases for historical articles regarding the Magyo, the Coranian War of Aggression and Dominion history, in general. He always understood that Alioth and the independent systems had a penchant for hating the Dominion but he hadn’t realized just how little of them they taught. By nature, the democratic government of Earth’s Commonwealth was friendlier to the independent systems, and Alioth in general, but the Dominion’s expansionism was automatically hostile. While the independent systems didn’t have any navy or craft fleet of their own, some within that loose confederation thought they needed to start one because they understood it was only a matter of time before the Dominion made a claim on their systems.
That expansionism was a part of their nature. It was a mixture of religion and mysticism which was really only a front for their fanatic geneticism. They created themselves as gods to be worshipped and cultured their religion to tailor their own needs. Their god was clearly a patriarchal being, militaristic and just, in their eyes. It was a god of man, an elevated man, or a mutated man if you listened to critics from outside of the Dominion. It was a divine creature that incorporated the essence of every single Dominar in their history, and therefore a god that only got stronger, wiser, and more devastating over time. It was also a god that was visibly present through their own living Dominar, a man who was said to be nearly fifteen feet tall and made of pure muscle, intellect, sexuality and sheer humanity.
The biggest question was how the early Dominars managed to fashion themselves in the image of the god they created.
Outside of the Dominion, many theories had arisen. It was apparent that the Dominion surpassed all others in genetic manipulation technology. Some speculated that as Coran was settled by the first wave of humans they adapted to this new world, incorporated some of its own bacteria, and thus altered their DNA. Others expanded on this premise and thought that maybe the earlier Dominars had found what no other humans had, extraterrestrial intelligent life. Furthermore, they had either learned from them or, in true Dominion fashion, had usurped their technology or DNA. The most extreme of theories stated that the Dominars and the noble families weren’t human at all, but completely alien in nature.
Within the Dominion, however, geneticists insisted that these theories were wrong. They stated that they discovered the God Gene. They proclaimed that the genomes used by their god in making their race had created them in his image but that it was left dormant by sin, and was awoken by holy fire. They had ‘proof’ that the line of Dominars and noble families were the de facto descendants of the Old Testament’s Adam and Eve, without the strain of sinful humanity. They were, by all means, perfect.
Gheno knew better. He understood how genetics worked and that there was no missing god gene, just as there had never been a devil gene. There were alterations, variances, which allowed for the vast diversity exhibited in human beings. With the advent of viable space flight, human technology reached the point where genes from similar DNA could be added for some benefits. These included better muscle strength, mental acuity, and eyesight. The list went on and on. There was a push to refine humanity and Earth was rapidly becoming greatly overpopulated. Simply stated, they could not allow every strain of mankind to exist.
But when space flight opened the skies to the stars there was no need for refinement. Instead, mankind could continue to spread out across the galaxy, changing ever so slowly as they always had. The study of genetics on Earth was relegated to a medicinal practice, used to treat genetic disorders. It was not utilized to create super humans.
Mankind certainly changed a great deal, however, just by the merits of its own adaptability. Many planets were similar to Earth in gravity and sunlight. Conversely, on the odd planets, those that didn’t adhere to the normative standards, but were still inhabitable, mankind had changed. On planets with different suns, man’s skin tone and texture changed. On planets with higher gravity, men became larger, bigger, and slower. Meanwhile on worlds with less gravity they became longer, leaner, and weaker, but faster. On all planets that sustained life, humanity took on the bacteria as their own, helping them digest the new food sources. They forged new bonds while breaking the old ones previously experienced on Earth. These could highly alter metabolisms, with deviations increasing and decreasing.
As man continuously spread out, more and more varieties of humans were beginning to emerge. These new species were all still very human, with the same flexible DNA. The greatest debate in scientific and theological circles, was whether or not this evident suppleness was created at all, or a mere product of evolution. That mankind could adapt to nearly every planet it could live on, despite the wild differences between that planet and Earth, was proof to many priests and preachers that the universe was created specifically for man.
On the contrary, for many others the biggest disappointment with space travel was that no other intelligent life was found.
Gheno spent the next six hours working diligently on the new programs. He did not realize how much time had actually passed. He only realized this because his stomach grumbled. He set the next program to upload and then walked out into the ‘Hall’ to get something to eat. There, he found the other two in the room, already eating. Kale cooked something up. It was a dish of noodles tossed in a brown sauce. It smelled wonderful. Gheno asked if he could have some and poured himself a bowl. He sat down with them at the table.
“So, that scan, the stars, it’s going rather slow,” Kale pointed at a tablet he was looking at. It had a number displayed on it, nine hundred and seventy. It was, of course, out of a possible ten thousand stars. Gheno expected that to be the case.
“More time to find your hidden treasure right?” Ayia appeared to be in a better mood than when Gheno left. “Kale and I think we have some ideas as to where the bridge might be. Maybe you could take a look at them with us?”
Gheno was surprised. “I don’t know anything about ships.”
“Yeah, but you have a good eye,” held Kale.
Gheno agreed mainly because it was something new to do. He snarled at the notion that a great deal of space travel involved simply waiting to arrive at your destination. He recently realized, j
ust more than a week after leaving Alioth, that he was generally bored while in-flight on the Midnight Oil.
Gheno looked at the two locations Kale and Ayia had picked out. He could see no basis as to why they chose those two locations, at least not visually. The Magyo was so thoroughly disfigured, a piece of twisted metal, that there was no visible point indicative of a captain’s bridge. It really did not matter where the bridge was located on a large capital ship constructed for intergalactic travel. Arrogant builders kept their minds-eye tuned to designs catered for travel in atmospheres and oceans, where the bridge needed to have a visual point to see, but in space seeing was unnecessary. Logically, the bridge would be somewhere deep inside, protected. This was a Dominion ship; arrogance was their motto.
Gheno could only shrug his shoulders after looking at the two spots.
“I have no idea what to say. None of them seem like anything to me. Again, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well, we can always just pick one and start cutting in to see what we get.” Kale asserted his direct approach.
“And how long will that take?” Ayia sneered, cautiously.
“Yeah, you're right. Probably days of cutting.”
“And if the captain isn’t there?” Gheno asked.
“Well, then we try to download the logs or any data we can get our hands on and sell them back to the Dominion. They will still pay loads of cash for this ship’s location,” Kale maintained an alternative that still made him money. “Besides, we have plenty of time. We are still nowhere near scanning all the stars.”
“Why can’t we find a better way to locate this bridge?” Gheno suggested.
“Ok kid, solve the problem,” Kale was confident that Gheno would find a solution and eager to see its outcome.
“Scanning the ship in hopes that we will ‘see’ the bridge will not work. We need to find something we can trace. There may be an outlying structure that will lead us to the bridge. I’d suggest radar or echoing, but I bet that ship is mangled mess inside too.”
“That and it’s just too big. We wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of the inside without being ship engineers ourselves,” Ayia said, being the careful one again.
“Well, short of the reactor and weapons, the bridge would have the largest requirements for power right?” Gheno asked, not really knowing if it was or not.
“Not really. Bridge power requirements aren’t actually that high, but you did give me another idea. Can your AI tunnel?”
Gheno realized what Kale wanted. They would use the AI to follow the data conduits of the ship to locate the largest clusters. One of them would most likely be the bridge. Depending on the data storage type used, the AI could read its contents and better identify it. This would require making contact with the Magyo and hooking into it to arrange for enough power to channel the date throughout the structure.
They checked their stock of hydrogen fuel and found that they had enough for nearly twenty hours of maneuvering. Ayia also reminded everyone that they were in proximity of a gas giant, in case they needed to get more.
Kale flew the Midnight Oil manually because Gheno could not guarantee that his AI was capable of guiding the vessel through the Magyo’s floating debris. It took him nearly three hours of precise flying to avoid impacts with the wreckage. In a reversal of roles, Kale was the overly cautious one while Ayia egged him on to go faster. Gheno prepared his AI to tunnel through the data conduits as he wondered why the two of them seemed to argue so much.
Gheno would use a program like this to hack into buildings, banks, or prestigious academies. It was actually a very basic data echo program. It sent data packets through cables waiting for return pings. Those returns enabled it to determine what it had hit. Then, it would move on from there. If a node or hub was found, a connection was made and the hub could then be manipulated via software to allow access further on, continuing the echo. He had done it many times before, quite successfully, even to locations with firewalls and blackwalls.
He wasn’t sure what to expect in the ship though, or if they would even have enough power to send the echoes through. From everything Kale had told him the technology on the ship was very basic so the data cables wouldn’t require much power of their own. They had enough power on the ship to facilitate hundreds of miles, if necessary. If the data cables were higher tech, like optical or letinous fibres, or even the more impressive gravity tunnels, then things would get difficult. Each of those technologies had power requirements, one higher than the previous one. They cut down the length they had power for and made the process that much slower.
Once the Midnight Oil reached the capital ship they had to find somewhere to latch onto the wreckage and hope the cabling wasn’t as mangled as the rest appeared to be. After flying through the first series of fragmented metal they began colliding with objects floating in the second layer, between them and the ship. As their approach brought them closer they could tell that this new layer of rubble consisted of the many frayed parts of the outer hull. It was torn apart.
“Look at that. It really does look like it was attacked by a giant claw,” Kale pointed out.
As they flew across the giant ship canyons formed below. They opened up the mess to reveal the internal structure. The hull was either peeled apart or ripped clean off of its connected parts. Along the exterior these canyons and rivets were stretched out in random directions.
“How are we going to find anything in that?” Ayia asked.
“I think it will work for us. Let’s just find the biggest hole and drop into it. Save us having to cut through.” Kale was now flying just a few hundred feet off the body of the ship with a giant spotlight shining into the tattered dark metal.
“Better yet, didn’t we find some power left? Probably the old capacitors still with some charge, huh?” Gheno asked.
“Hold on, let me bring them back up,” Kale continued to steer the ship while he typed up another command. The main screen opened up ahead of them on the window and expanded quickly to full screen display, superimposing its own image onto mess of wreckage. A few more commands were given and several pulsing beacons appeared on the window. These were showing where the power charges were. Kale settled back into his seat and angled the Midnight Oil up further away from the large ship.
“Need a better view,” he explained.
Angling up, the ship went out of sight. After a minute of flying away from it Kale brought the ship to a stop and angled it back down. This brought the Magyo back into view. The beacons resumed their pulsing glow on the window.
“There,” Kale pointed, “there are three spots right along that rather deep cut there.”
“We can fit in there?” Ayia asked.
“No problem.”
The Midnight Oil began to descend. It was flying at the lacerated body of the Magyo. He was engaging one of the larger tears in the hull. It appeared to cut deep into the internal structure of the ship. Kale brought his ship just over the tear, pointed the ship straight down, and started lowering themselves into it. The view displayed on their window screen was the destroyed internal beams and structure of the largest ship ever built by man.
“Look, there's no floating wreckage, no beams floating around. What kind of weapon makes such a clean and precise cut like this?” Kale asked.
“Especially at this scale?” Gheno added.
“Exactly,” Kale had never seen anything like it, “At least it makes flying in here easier. I’ve done some salvaging of large ships. It’s always a mess.”
“Ok, right over there,” Ayia said as Gheno pointed at one of the beacons closest to them.
They brought the ship to a stop and Kale guided it over to point directly at the beacon on the window. The scan led to nearly another one hundred twenty feet into the structure itself. Kale reached down next to him and pretended to pull something up. Both Gheno and Ayia looked at him. They appeared confused.
“Parking break,” Kale started, “Old joke.”
/> The other two followed Kale back into the ‘Hall’. He reached into a small hatch in the wall directly in the rear of the room and slid it open. He reached inside, pulled out a small bag, set it on the table and opened it up. He pulled out a suit. It was neatly folded. The material was crumpled and soiled.
“Now what?” Ayia asked.
“Now I suit up and get out there to find a place to plug the ship in and see what the kid’s AI can do,” he began unfolding the suit.
“I’ll go with you,” Ayia started, looking around for another suit.
“Nope. Just one suit. And this size does not fit all.”
“Do you have enough cable to run all the way there?” Gheno asked.
“Seven hundred feet of the best stuff ever made. Just don’t ask me what it is because I can’t explain it to you. Now turn around.”
Ayia and Gheno turned around.
“What now?” she asked.
“No peeking.”
Ayia sighed and Gheno chuckled. She turned around and Kale was putting the suit straight over his clothes.
“You're not funny,” she said.
“He thought so,” Kale pointed at Gheno and nearly stumbled as he put one of his legs into the pantsuit.
Ayia and Gheno remained in the ‘Hall’ while the doors sealed shut between the main room and the pilots cabin. This allowed Kale to exit the ship into airless space. He sealed the hatch back up behind him and began walking on his ship’s outer hull towards the rear.
His space suit was actually too big for him. It hung loosely on him. The domed helmet was not part of the suit’s ensemble. It was purchased, or found, separately. He rigged the two pieces together to work. The domed helmet was far newer, with a built in HUD that allowed him to remain tied into his ship’s AI. With FEI he was able to simply speak to the ship through an intercom and get all the data he needed. Now, he would need to either type in commands on a tablet affixed to the suit arm on his left wrist or speak into the intercom and have someone on the ship type in the commands for him.
The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1) Page 14