Omake: All The Time, Part 1
Private Mining Vessel Ranma Maru, Deep Space Near Zenith Point, Griffon’s Roost System
“Holy shit! What the hell is that thing?”
“This,” declared Grace cheerfully, “is a Nollak FC-1 flechette rifle. It’s a recoilless semi-automatic manpack derivative of an LB-X autocannon, specifically designed for space boarding.”
“That gun is almost as big as you are, Grace, and we are ‘boarding’ an abandoned derelict with no detectable life signs. This is a simple salvage job.”
The tall redhead glared at her brother-in-law. “Matt, I have a bad feeling about this one.”
“Grace, you have a ‘bad feeling’ about every single salvage contract we take.”
“That’s because ever since you talked Julie into adding salvage hardware to the Ranma, you insist on jumping on every single half-ass recovery contract they post. Most of which barely pay for the fuel it takes to get out there and back.”
“This one’s different!” insisted Matt, thumping the long-range sensor console for emphasis. “We have absolutely hit the jackpot this time -- that’s a freaking Monolith class JumpShip and there’s no other salvage rated vessels within half a day’s burn. She’s too big for us to tow single-hand, but we’ll have undivided first salvage shares on her.”
“That’s one of the fucking Combine ships from the invasion, which means she’s out here because she misjumped. Misjumped ships are bad, bad shit.”
Julie floated through the hatch to join her twin and husband. “That’s just spacer superstition. All of our sensor reads say she’s derelict but totally intact.”
Grace sighed. “I still say I have a bad feeling about this, and I’m not going without Sasha.”
"You NAMED IT?"
“Naming guns is totally traditional!”
-----
Fortunately for the Ranma Maru, it appeared that the Combine used Star League standard docking collars and tug connections. Their salvage-and-recovery variant of the docking collar was structurally reinforced so that it could be used under limited thrust, which greatly simplified the delicate job of matching the movements of the slowly tumbling JumpShip, latching on, and then slowly zeroing out its movements relative to the system primary so that additional tugs could safely come alongside.
Actually getting inside the ship was a considerably more time-consuming challenge. The salvage collar had integrated cutting torches, but they were only civilian ones and it took a painfully long time to sear through the JumpShip’s capital-grade hatch plating.
“Okay, we’re just about through. We’ll want to head aft to the engineering compartment first to verify the status of the reactor and the K-F core, then head forward to the hab areas and bridge. Suit checks, everyone?”
“Sealed and green.”
“Sealed and green.”
“Sealed and green for me too.”
“Ah, Grace, you go first.”
“I thought I was ‘just being crazy and superstitious’?”
“You’re the one with the giant cannon!”
“You’re the one who insists there’s nothing to worry about, you go first!”
Julie rolled her eyes and preempted further argument by deftly gliding ahead to the front of the airlock. “You two bicker so much that anyone else would think you’re the married ones.”
"Sorry, dear."
"Sorry, sis."
-----
Given that the JumpShip had apparently drifted for months before SARAH’s long distance sensors found her at the outer edges of the system, the three salvagers were unsurprised to find the interior cold, dark, and eerily quiet. Their shoulder-mounted lights provided more than enough light to safely proceed through the docking area, gliding from hand-hold to hand-hold in the zero-G environment.
The layout of the ship did not diverge significantly from the standard Monolith blueprints provided by SARAH, although they did note the presence of anti-boarding security points consisting of prefabricated machine gun emplacements clamped to the deck. Those could have swept the entire entry area with a lethal cross-fire, so it was rather a relief to find them abandoned. A careful double-check verified that the emplaced weapons were in battle ready condition, loaded and cocked but with safeties engaged.
Their initial assumption from the abandoned security stations had been that the unfortunate crew had at least initially survived the misjump and then retreated to the habitation section to conserve life support resources, but things began to look different as they began making their way towards the engineering section. The docking area of the ship had been almost too clean, with the showroom sharpness of a ship that was not just perfectly maintained but brand new. The spoke corridors leading inwards to the core of the ship swiftly lost that newness, and the central corridor along the spine of the ship was weathered in the way of a ship that had seen many decades of service.
They found the remains of most of the crew at the far end of the central corridor, a collection of ship suits in Draconis Combine military colors free-floating in a loosely drifting pile near the far bulkhead. All of them were not just deceased, but visibly long dead, their suits impossibly age-worn and faces withered and dessicated like those of ancient mummies.
Although they would forever deny it afterwards, the sudden transition from creepy silence to graphic horror made all three salvagers panic. Matt screamed like a little girl and threw himself backwards, colliding with an equally-terrified Julie. Grace shrieked and whipped Sasha up, but overbalanced as she fired, sending a blast of flechettes past the drifting mummies to rake down the side of the corridor like great metallic claws while she somersaulted helplessly in midair.
The only reason they didn’t flee the ship entirely at this point was that by the time all three of them managed to physically stabilize themselves, it was clear that the mummies were simply dead and not any sort of undead. They had to pick their way past the bodies to reach the hatch into the engineering section, but fortunately did not have to actually touch them.
----
Unlike the docking section of the ship, the engineering section actually did still have power. The dim red emergency lighting would have felt completely mundane under any other circumstances, but in the wake of the mummy encounter it couldn’t be taken as anything but sinister. But no actual threat materialized, and they made their way to the reactor without further incident.
They found two more dead crew members in the reactor room, seated at the control stations. These appeared to be even more terribly aged than those in the access shaft, their suits decayed to fragments to reveal skeletal remains. Unwilling to come any closer than they had to, the salvagers made only a hasty examination of the control panels, which appeared to indicate that the reactor had been automatically shut down after the misjump and had not been restarted.
There was an immediate, silent agreement that since restarting the reactor would require moving the bodies and a JumpShip didn’t have much in the way of transit drives anyway, they were going to leave this alone. All they needed to know was that the reactor was in a safe and stable configuration, and “shut down” certainly qualified. And if that conclusion was a little rushed, who could blame them?
----
Despite the pucker factor of having to squeeze past the floating pile of corpses again, the trio were able to make their way back to the Ranma Maru without further incident. Their trip through the aft section of the ship had taken much longer than they expected, so they needed to rest and recharge their life support before proceeding forward.
No one argued with Grace when she insisted on stopping to unclamp the two closest security hardpoints and turn them around to cover the corridor leading up to the docking collar. They still had no idea what had actually happened to the JumpShip’s crew, after all.
Once safely back on board their own ship (and glad as never before to be in their lovingly maintained but slightly run down, well-used home in the stars), they took the time to replay their video logs. The sight of the dead Combine crew was almost as horrific as it had been in person, but what caught their attention now that they had more time to examine was the reactor shutdown.
"I hate to say this,” commented Grace in a tone that was entirely too tense to contain even a hint of her usual I told you so, “but there’s even more disturbing shit going on. I grabbed a copy of the reactor logs while we were down there, and they’re saying the reactor didn’t shut down from the misjump because all of the safety systems were manually overridden. The reactor shut down because it ran out of fuel."
“A JumpShip fusion reactor ran out of fuel?!?!?!?”
“Like I said, more disturbing shit. The log shows that they disengaged the safeties in order to force a fast charge of the Kearny-Fuchida core, and they triggered a jump as soon as the core reached minimum adequate charge. But the reactor never spooled down after that -- it just kept running at emergency maximum output until fuel exhaustion.”
“On a reactor design that regenerates its fuel?”
“Hydrogen fuel regeneration is 'only' about 99.99% efficient. At least in theory, a reactor *does* slowly run down its core bunkerage even if you're not bleeding off plasma for the transit drive or main maneuvering thrusters. It would just take a really, really long time. Like, hundreds of years even running flat out.”
“Hundreds of years on a ship that’s been out here for three months?”
Grace gave a helpless shrug. “It's probably a glitch in the sensors, but all the bodies we found didn’t look three months old either. The ship’s main logs might tell us more; we should look for them when we’re on the bridge. Unless you want to check the reactor directly?”
"Ah, no. Definitely not, unless we've checked the main logs and it's still an issue."
“I don’t know if I want to go back out there at all.” sighed Julie. “I am definitely all of the creeped out.”
“Oh come on! We lose our first salvage rights if we can’t confirm that the ship is cleared and safe.” complained Matt, who was perhaps a little too eager to make up for (totally not) losing his nerve earlier. “The bridge is a lot closer than engineering was, anyway. What could...”
“Don’t you DARE say it!” snapped Grace. “That damn phrase is challenging Murphy and that is the last thing in the universe we need right now!”
TO BE CONTINUED. . .
