The party had one other unforeseen result: Tera and Rom ended the night in the latter’s cabin, to their own and everyone else’s surprise. For the next day or so, they tiptoed around each other. Even their most innocent conversations were nervous and short. They didn’t have much time to explore their new relationship; the timer clicked down toward emergence.
Despite Kas’ concern the emergence went smoothly. By the time Rom got all their accelerations relative to their emergence point canceled, they were several hundred kilometers from it — perfect for placing their buoy.
“All motion canceled, sir,” Rom reported crisply.
Kas nodded. “Very well.” He thumbed his comm. “Toj, you and Lar are cleared to place the buoy. Be careful to make sure that it’s oriented correctly and stationary relative to the jump point.”
Toj’s “Aye, aye sir!” was crisp and the telltale on Kas’ station indicated that he’d triggered the lock’s outer door almost as soon as Kas had begun speaking. Since Edro was busy scanning for the Rekesh and Kas would not permit a crewmember to work outside alone, Lar Tennig had volunteered to accompany him. Lar had been making himself useful ever since they’d taken him and Lady Jane aboard. By now, everyone considered him almost a member of the crew.
It took only a few minutes to place the buoy. As soon as his station indicated that the lock was cycling for their return Kas told Rom to get them underway. He turned to Edro. “Any luck, Edro?”
The little man shook his head. “No, sir. Sensors aren’t detecting anything, and I’m not getting the plague beacon, either. ‘Course, we’re about a light-hour out. That’s a long way.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to get closer in.” Surprisingly, his tone was nearly conversational. It seemed removing Edro’s line designator had given him a dose of self-confidence.
Kas sighed. “I hope that plague beacon hasn’t gone dead. A solar system is a big thing to search. Millions of cubic kilometers.”
Rom shrugged. “That trader found her, and he wasn’t even looking. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding her, sir.”
Kas frowned. “If she’s still here, and if she’s not crawling with a reactivation crew from the Glory or one of the independents,” he added. “All right, she’ll be in the liquid water belt and certainly in the plane of the ecliptic. We’ll find her.”
“But this system doesn’t have any planets in the liquid water belt,” Rom pointed out. “What makes you think we’ll find the Rekesh there?”
“Several reasons,” Kas replied, and began counting them off on his fingers. “First, there’s the very fact that there aren’t any planets there. The Rekesh ’s Captain knew that she might drift here for centuries. Putting her into an orbit well clear of planets would minimize the chances of collision.”
“Second, he was counting on the ship being salvaged some day, and he knew that ships exploring new systems tend to examine the area around a star where water can exist as a liquid first. So it increased the chances that the ship would be detected and salvaged.”
He sighed. “Finally, there’s just plain old human nature. It’s just habit for humans to concentrate on the liquid water zone along the plane of the ecliptic. He might not have even considered the first two reasons, but I’d bet that in the absence of any reason to the contrary he’d just naturally put her there.”
Whatever her long-dead captain’s reasoning, Vir Rekesh was finally detected some twenty hours later — in the liquid water belt, along the plane of the ecliptic.
PART II
DEATH SHIP
Chapter 8
The rest of the crew cheered, but Kas was more reserved. He was pleased that the plague beacon was still running, but his tension mounted as they drew closer. It was only when Edro announced that there were no other vessels nearby that Kas relaxed with a huge sigh.
His eyes were glued to his sensor screens as they approached the derelict. With no planets nearby it was impossible to judge the scale of the ship until they began their final approach. It was then that the true size of the huge derelict became apparent. The hull, its antirad coating pitted by a century of micrometeorites, swelled until it filled the viewscreen then swelled some more, and kept swelling. The half-kilometer-diameter sphere dwarfed Starhopper. In fact, Starhopper could have simply been driven through her open cargo hatches and landed in her hangar bay, had it been empty.
Kas had no intention of docking Starhopper inside the derelict, however. The battle cruiser was a plague ship after all, and while the chance that the plague could get aboard in such circumstances was infinitesimal, Kas was unwilling to risk it. Besides, Rekeash 's hangar deck was crowdeded with nearly a hundred Strengl and Wasp fighters.
So they approached the battle cruiser’s main passenger lock gingerly. Kas canceled all relative motion, leaving only some ten meters between the ships. Then, just as carefully, he rotated Starhopper until her personnel lock faced Rekesh ’s.
After a few moments staring at his console telltales to make sure that they were absolutely motionless relative to the huge derelict, Kas breathed a huge sigh and rose.
“All right, people,” he began briskly, “Time to get to work. Gran, begin reviving the senior med tech. Toj and Edro; we have a complete portable bio lab in the cargo hold. You can begin setting that up. I expect that med tech to want it almost immediately.”
“But I want it set up with its own atmosphere supply and a full decontam airlock. Once it’s set up, we’ll decompress the hold, so no bugs can get loose aboard.” He turned to Lar. “Would you mind giving them a hand, Lar? I can’t order you, but…”
The tall man nodded. “No problem, Capt… uh… Commodore. I’d be glad to help.”
Kas nodded his thanks. “Good. Rom, you’re with me. Nobody goes outside alone, and I have a duty call to make.” He strode from the bridge, Rom following.
Standing in Starhopper ’s airlock the true scale of Vir Rekesh became obvious. Her bulk blotted out the stars. He had to twist his body to see the narrow band of starred space between the hulls. Ten meters in front of him the main passenger lock of the derelict gaped blackly. He was staring at the gaping maw when he saw the magnetic grapple shoot past him. He whirled to see Rom tug on the grapple’s cable to make sure it had solid contact then affix its end to a nearby eyebolt. He forced himself to relax. Rom was just following routine. But somehow it felt wrong — a violation of something sacred. He scowled and shook himself. Damn it, he was no superstitious barbarian from Cutler’s World!
He hooked his safety line to the grapple’s cable and pushed off toward the dead ship. With only ten meters to go, he didn’t even have to pull himself along the safety line. He simply jumped. The blackness of the airlock grew, and he reversed himself to hit feet first. The clang as his magnetic boots gripped the derelict’s hull was plain through his suit. He twisted to see Rom clipping his line onto the grapple cable.
“Rom, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a few moments before you come over,” He said.
Rom’s bulky figure remained standing on Starhopper ’s hull. If he wondered what Kas was doing, it wasn’t apparent. “Aye, Aye, sir.” was his only reply.
As Kas’ suit’s headlights swept the inside of the lock, they revealed what he’d been expecting; a suited figure drifting tethered near the lock’s inner door. He took a deep breath and approached it. The figure was frozen in a vaguely sitting position. Kas could easily imagine the man, having done all he could to preserve his ship, shutting off his suit’s air and power and simply sitting down to look at the stars until he fell “asleep”.
Frost inside the faceplate of the corpse’s helmet prevented Kas getting a look at its face; but it also indicated that the suit still held atmosphere of a sort. That indicated in turn that the body encased in the suit was probably intact. The man had died, but before decomposition could begin the body would have frozen.
Kas turned off his suit transmitter, then stiffened to attention and rendered a crisp salute to the suited figure. “Permi
ssion to come aboard, sir,” he murmured. Surely it was his imagination, but he was sure he heard a whispered “granted…”
He shivered but remained in his formal posture. “I relieve you, sir. You can stand down now,” he continued softly. After a moment he relaxed and stepped forward. He unclipped the line tethering the suited figure to the inside of the lock. He gently maneuvered the corpse out of the lock, and reclipped the tether to a ring outside the lock where the body would no longer impede access to the lock. Then he flicked his transmitter back on and waved at Rom, who jumped across.
Rom looked at Kas oddly. “What was that all about?” He asked.
Kas looked irritated. “It was about me being a sentimental old fool,” he replied. “That is, or was, Lieutenant Rog Fan-Jertril, formerly Third Lieutenant of Vir Rekesh, and her last Captain. The Emperor is looking forward to presenting him a posthumous Empire Star, unless we find evidence contradicting the Lieutenant’s account of events aboard.”
He shrugged, though the motion wasn’t evident through his suit. “Lieutenant Fan-Jertril recorded a diary covering the last six months of the Rekesh ’s mission. I have a copy of the log crystal in my stateroom if you’re interested. It’s a long and not very pleasant story. I’ll be summarizing it at a crew meeting later. For now,” he continued, “Let’s get up to her bridge and collect her official log. Lieutenant Fan-Jertril left it untouched so he couldn’t be accused of possibly tampering with it.”
They began maneuvering through total darkness pierced only by their suit lights and the hand torches that they carried. Kas was familiar with the layout of a battle cruiser and had no difficulty threading his way through the maze of passages. The more they progressed, the more evidence of violence they found. Bulkheads were blackened or bloodstained. Weapons, tools and other impedimenta drifted lazily.
As they approached the bridge they encountered an improvised barrier of furniture and equipment. Black smudges nearly covered the bulkheads. A variety of improvised weapons were scattered about — crude knives, hatchets and even what appeared to be a spear improvised from tubing. There’d been a battle here.
Rom bent to examine the spear, but Kas said, “We’ll be investigating later, Rom. For now let’s get to the bridge.” Rom’s suited figure straightened, and they continued to the bridge, some twenty meters down the passageway.
If there had been bodies on the bridge, they’d been removed; but signs of violence remained. The black smears of dried blood on bulkheads gave mute testimony that a fight had taken place here and people had died. Blaster bolts had also blackened consoles and stations. The Astrogator’s console was completely destroyed, evidently by laser and blaster fire. The complete destruction was obviously purposeful. Other consoles and stations revealed much less damage but all had suffered to some extent.
Kas moved to the command chair and console. It was here that Vir Rekesh ’s captain had given the orders to first maroon his ship, and then defend her. Kas carefully examined the log recorder and pressed the release button. The log crystal popped free. He put it in a pouch at his waist then turned to Rom. “Let’s get out of here,” he said grimly. “I want to view this log crystal.”
Rom nodded clumsily. “Did you expect this? I mean… all this?”
Kas sighed. “Something like it. The Lieutenant described the fighting, but that’s not the same as seeing the aftermath. And I want to hear the various captains’ versions of events.”
They returned to Starhopper in silence. Kas had listened to Lieutenant Fan-Jertril’s diary several times. But hearing his dry, simple descriptions had not prepared Kas for the actuality — the damage, the black smears that proclaimed that here people had died.
Kas called a crew meeting immediately. He had to prepare them for what they would encounter aboard the Rekesh.
“We’ve been so busy trying to make it out here that we haven’t talked much about what we’d find,” he began. He told them about Lieutenant Fan-Jertril and the diary he’d recorded.
He summarized the story of the death of Vir Rekesh and her crew. He described the horror of the plague, the desperation, the mutinies, the loss of hope following the destruction of the Astrogator's station and files. He did not spare any of the captains involved, nor did he sugar-coat or soften the narrative. His crew would soon enough see for themselves the remains of the story. He told of Fan-Jertril, of his efforts to re-establish order, and his efforts to make certain that the future would know that the crew of the Rekesh "died Fleet"
"It was an amazing feat for any officer, and even more so for one only twenty years old," Kas concluded.
Rom had tilted his chair backward. Now there was a thump as the front legs hit the deck. “Twenty!” He exclaimed.
Kas nodded. “He’d been out of the academy less than three years.”
Rom shook his head. “Twenty or no, he was a helluva lot more officer than those other cretins. And that includes that fool To-Ruffin!” He paused. “I think I understand all that when you first went aboard, now.”
“All what?” Lady Jane asked. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
Kas reddened. “Nothing!” he growled.
Tears were streaming openly down Tera’s face. She made no effort to wipe them away. “I think it’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard. That poor boy! That poor, wonderful boy!”
Toj snorted. “Not ‘boy’. ‘Man’. A man by any definition.”
Kas nodded. “All right. Now I’ve told you this story to prepare you for what you’re going to encounter over there. And also to warn you. At least early on, we’ll be assisting the medical and technical teams. Once we get medical clearance, if we do, we’ll begin waking the crew that’ll actually man the Rekesh.”
“Now, they’ve been hand-picked for this mission. The problem is that they were picked for their technical expertise, not their military attributes.”
Rom snorted. “You mean innerworld airheads.”
Kas shook his head. “Not exactly. Airheads wouldn’t be technically competent enough to be selected. But a man can be an outstanding gunner, say, and still be an innerworld bigot.” He shifted his gaze to Tera. “Or a chauvinist pig. After seeing Rekesh I’m concerned. Oh, we won’t be telling them the whole story. But there’ll be no concealing the blaster marks on the bulkheads or the blood stains.”
He shrugged. “Mutiny can breed mutiny. Don’t let your guard down. Remember, Fan-Jertril and his people didn’t bother picking up weapons — they’re probably scattered all over that ship. And also remember that Fan-Jertril reported at least two dozen stills over there, and he hints that there may have been drug labs. Alcohol, drugs and weapons are a deadly combination.”
Rom shrugged. “So we search her for stills and labs and pick up loose weapons. Even if we have to wait a bit to begin reviving the crew it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Kas grinned sourly. “What’s the volume of a sphere five hundred meters in diameter?”
Edro chimed in immediately. “Sixty five and a half million cubic meters.”
Kas nodded. “How long do you think it would take you to search that volume, Rom? Think it might take more than a few hours?”
Rom grinned sheepishly. “I keep forgetting what a big bitch she is.”
Kas answered his grin before resuming. “All right. Now to the nuts and bolts. That ship is dead. Completely dead. No atmosphere, no lights, no gravs. Any work that gets done over there will have to be done in suits. Only Rom, Toj and I have current suit quals. You others will have to begin practicing immediately. You've all been using suits recently, but I want you to complete the formal qualifications.
“Once Toj gets that portable bio lab set up we’ll be depressurizing Starhopper ’s hold and we can use it for practice. Rom will oversee the training, and Toj will help once the bio lab’s set up. Since this is just a refresher, it shouldn’t take long to get you all back up to speed — and I want you to hurry, because as soon as your suit quals are current you can expect to begin trainin
g a bunch of med techs with little or no suit experience. They’re going to have to be suit-qualified. If nothing else they’ll have to be able to get to and from the bio lab.”
He turned to Gran. “How long before the head med tech is thawed?”
Gran smiled and glanced at his ring watch. “He should be regaining consciousness in about an hour, sir.”
Kas nodded. “Good. Let me know as soon as he’s conscious. I’ll need to talk with him as soon as possible.”
Gran nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Kas dismissed the group. Lady Jane and Lar approached him. “You forgot to give us jobs, Commodore,” she said with a grin.
He answered her grin. “No, I didn’t. You don’t work for me. You’ve kept your part of our bargain. From here on out you’re passengers.”
Lar snorted, and Lady Jane got a dangerous expression. “You mean you just want us to sit around on our hands? Don’t tell me you’re going to pull that ‘military business’ crap on me!” A flush began creeping up her neck.
Kas could see trouble coming. “No, no! That isn’t what I meant, at all! Uh, I just meant that you’re not under my command. You don’t have to do anything. No, I’d be delighted to have your help!”
The flush began to recede. Lar, standing behind Lady Jane, was struggling to suppress laughter. Her eyes suddenly narrowed, and she whirled to confront him, hands on hips. “And what are you grinning at, you elongated slith?” She demanded.
Lar raised his hands in front of his face. “Nothing, Lady, nothing at all! Uh, Commodore,” he continued in a desperate attempt to sidestep her anger. “Both of us have current suit quals. I’d be happy to help Toj get that bio lab set up.” Kas nodded, and Lar fled. Now Kas was the one struggling to suppress a grin.
Lady Jane turned back to Kas, and her expression relaxed into a smile. “All right. What do you want me to do?”
Kas shrugged. “You could help Rom run that refresher. Based on what I've seen so far on this mission, I suspect that Edro and Tera, at least, are pretty rusty.” He relaxed. “I’m really going to need them shortly. And once their quals are up to date, you can help teach a bunch of civilian med techs.”
Deagth ship quest Page 13