Survivor

[Liam's Ghost]

  The barrage of cannon shells ripped through the starboard launch bays and up along the ventral hull, cutting through battered and weakened frames, shearing away a fifteen meter stretch of the outer hull as though with a giant cleaver.

  The human equivalent of the sensation she felt might be equivalent to the tugging and pulling you feel as a particularly hasty doctor or axe murderer hacked into a numbed limb, rather than screaming agony. Damage sensors throughout the outer hull were at low priority, and flooded out by everthing else she needed to keep track of. Her point defense batteries were tracking, engaging, and cycling between mounts to keep up fire against inbound missiles from practically every bearing. Other mounts were tracking and engaging the aerofighters buzzing around her, or the Lola III currently hounding her and pounding her to scrap. Telemetry continued to filter in from the last of her own drones, swarming the enemy destroyer with all the enthusiasm and coordination of angry hornets.

  She was constantly calculating, maneuvering, trying to shake an enemy that could match her thrust on the best of days, squeezing every bit of power and delta-v she could out of her refurbished two hundred year old powerplant. If not outrunning her opponent, then at least trying to outlast their human crew. And around her, invisibly, her infosphere howled and shrieked as her electronic warfare systems fought a pitched battle to overwhelm those of her enemy.

  This wasn't supposed to happen.

  The first incursion had been a single Vincent class in the outskirts of the system. He'd probably thought he was clever coming out far enough to avoid detection, not guessing just how far she could see. She'd definitely though she'd been clever, hitting him with a cloud of drones and quickly disabling him. Turns out she'd been just as wrong as he was. He had an HPG, and he transmitted before she could finish the job.

  The next time they came in force, three months later, they knew exactly where she was.

  Run

  She ignored the prompt as she slipped below the Lola's broadside and sent another volley of fire into her tormentor. The fore starboard capital lasers were still intact and still responding to her commands, stiching a line of impacts along the enemy's ventral hull. Only a couple of her secondary battery lasers could say the same. The Lola in response slipped into roll to unmask its own starboard broadside as she desperately tried to bring the nose around. Further out, an Essex, a pair of Vincents and a small group of Mules hung back out of weapons range, continuing to lob capital missiles into the melee.

  This time, the destroyer's fire blasted through her dorsal hull, passing cleanly through the port side of the ship and out the ventral hull. If she'd been holding an atmosphere, the shock would have probably broken her back. Even so, she'd felt the screaming, tearing pain deep in her bones.

  Main power and communications busses in the port side are down, That almost grazed the core. Run!

  She began plotting shunts to bring back port thrusters and any weapons she might still have on the port side, even as missles began hammering unimpeded on the damaged areas.

  He will kill us before we can restore maneuvering. Run!

  They'd hit her dock in the asteroid belt first to try to pin her down, alongside another wave deeper insystem to deal with any defenses there. She'd already run once, making an intrasystem jump to the lunar pirate point. But they'd been waiting for her there, too. She still had a charge left, but...

  They'll be defenseless!

  More missiles and fire from the destroyer tore into her, she felt parts of her body start to die...

  Run! Now!

  She was feeling herself slipping away as she fed data into the navigation system. Even so, for a fraction of a second or an eternity, she hesitated.

  I wanted to save them...

-discontinuity-

[Giovanni Blasini]

My need to know more intensifies.

[Daryk]

Indeed!  Nice start Liam!  :thumbsup:

[monbvol]

Most interesting indeed.

[Cannonshop]

more...

[Euphonium]

#olivertwist

[Liam's Ghost]

  "What a mess."
 
  In the scopes of the shuttle, the derelict was virtually unrecognizable, beyond the conclusion that it had at one point in its life been some sort of spacecraft. There was very little of its hull that hadn't been torn open, gutted, mangled, or otherwise marred by catastrophic damage.

  "Too cold to be recent," Mister Watson, at the helm of the shuttlecraft, read off the sensors. "No emissions beyond what you'd expect from reflected light. And the way she's ripped up, I doubt any of her compartments are airtight. Based on the pitting on the undamaged sections, I'd say she's been out here for a long time."

  "She would have had to have been," Professor Willie Donovan said, feeling this strange sense of wonder seeing this ship and imagining what stories they could piece together about her. "I don't think there's been a WarShip out in this region of space in the last two centuries."

  Lingering insystem hadn't been their intention. Theta¹ Sagittarii was a bright binary system just beyond the ambiguously defined edges of Combine space. It was a good place to recharge at if you happen to be going that way. But if you weren't, systems like this didn't really have anything else to offer ships like the Foxhound or people like their current charter, themselves on a tight schedule to reach an Interstellar Expeditions dig site another two hundred lights out.

  It was blind, dumb luck that they happened to be in the right place at the right time to detect the derelict as it was slowly passing just outside the Zenith point on a trajectory that would send the object deeper into the system. The scopes managed to peg it as manmade, about five hundred meters long and maybe a hundred meters wide, and slowly rotating along its short axis, clearly out of control.

  Captain West, the Foxhound's skipper, had immediately ordered a rescue party formed when it was clear that the derelict wasn't responding to hails. His passenger, at least most of them, objected. It might have been pirates, maybe the clans, pulling some sort of ruse to bait them in. Not that the physics, practicality, or value of setting up such a ruse made any sense at all to Willie's ears. Fortunately, Captain West agreed and wouldn't hear such nonsense.

  Willie, for his part, felt no small bit of shame for his colleagues' callous cowardice, enough that he'd volunteered to join the rescue party. Okay, it wasn't just shame. Rescue operation or abandoned wreck, it was another story to learn. That was the job, after all. Either way, Captain West was hesitant to agree at first, but he came around, and a short burn in a cramped shuttlecraft had brought him here to look upon this relic with his own eyes. 

  "A WarShip, huh?" Mister Bruscoe, the man leading this expedition, responded. "Like one of those clan world killers?"
 
  Willie shrugged. "Something like that," he said. "I had a buddy in college who specialized in naval history, managed to pick up quite a bit peeking over his shoulder. What's left of the thrust nozzles and the thicker hull feels like a givaway." Plus, Willie was pretty sure you couldn't damage a jumpship this badly without turning it into a cloud of debris, and it was way too big to be a dropship.

  "Well, she's not killing any worlds now," Mister Brusco concluded. "Odds are good any survivors of whatever that ship went through are long dead. Even so, best to make sure. Worst case scenario there's still probably something somebody will want aboard," He glanced back at Willie. "You wanted in on the boarding party, better go get yourself suited up."

*****

  Information could travel fast under certain circumstances.

  In one case, that information came from the electromagnetic signature of the shuttle's radar as it bounced into some of a few panels which remained intact on the derelict's hull. Radar warning receivers activated, drawing power from emergency batteries still partly connected to the power distribution system. On battery power, without input from the rest of the ship, the simple tertiary computers could only conclude that the signature was consistent with a small craft at indeterminately close range. The warning it tried to issue through the rest of the system found itself blocked out by severed connections or a core in complete shutdown. Even so, it managed to find reception somewhere, and deeper in the ship, two other simple machine brains began waking up in response.

  In another case, that information was carried on a direct feed from the shuttle to the bridge of the Foxhound, giving Captain West, his bridge crew, and guests a good view of what was going on and what Mister Bruscoe's rescue party was planning.

  One of those guests, Leo McCarthy, watched the feed with keen interest. Only natural, of course. He was the security specialist appointed by Interstellar Expeditions to monitor their little party, and a particularly valuable IE asset had decided to impulsively join this little side quest. He had every right to worry about that.

  And he'd play that worry to the hilt, even as he sought to calculate the ramifications of the new discovery with his... more closely guarded directives.

  Not what I expected from this assignment, but fate acts in its own time I suppose. Blake's will be done.

[Cannonshop]

mmmm noice!!

[Daryk]

Chekov's ROM agent?  :D

[DOC_Agren]

Interesting

An AI warship...  taking on who WOB, Rimjobs, TH? 

and gee a WOB on board to keep an eye on IE

I want to know More

[mikecj]

Cool.  Let's see where this goes.

[Liam's Ghost]

  It hadn't been Willie's enthusiasm that had ultimately convinced Captain West to let him join the rescue team. Nobody needed a looky-loo just along to sate their own curiosity in a potentially hazardous situation. An extra hand with actual experience though was always welcome.

  "You're secured and tight," Mister Bruscoe said as he finished looking over Willie's job putting on his environmental suit. "You have any experience with EVA?"

  "Spent two years on an old freighter with a bad furling system," Willie replied. "Skipper had to send out a crew to bring the sail in manually before every jump. Anybody who wasn't learning fast enough didn't get to come back in until after the jump. The real problem crew always seemed to end up with bad tethers and didn't come back at all."

  "Jesus!" Bruscoe said. "Learn under adversity I guess."

  "You could call it that," Willie said. Of course he hadn't stayed with that ship by choice. A stowaway that got caught had to earn their keep for the passage, and some captains had a higher interest rate than others. "I'll take it as a personal favor if I don't get left behind, though."

  "Our skipper runs a classier institution than that," Bruscoe said. "If you get stranded, things will have gone horribly wrong and we'll be stranded right along with you."

  After a moment the maneuver alarm sounded. "Secure and seal up, boys and girls," Bruscoe barked. "We're going in."

  The slow tumble of the derelict meant that they couldn't access any of the ship's standard docking ports, even if those had been intact. Instead they'd have to approach the ship at the center of rotation and match its tumble for a soft landing on the outer hull. A bit risky at the best of times. After that, they'd have to walk along the hull to find a way in.

  As the shuttle jerked first in one direction, then the next, matching the derelict's movement, the sight of the wreck began to stabilize and grow in the viewport.

  "Look at that," Willie said, unable to look away from the slowly closing sight. "The damage pattern on the forward hull, just aft of the nose. That's partial jump field collapse."

  Bruscoe turned awkwardly to get his own view. "You can tell that from this far out?"

  "If you know what to look for," Willie replied. "There's nothing that looks quite like it. The jump field had to be unstable enough that sections of the hull came out transposed together, or just didn't make it through at all..." he trailed off, recalling some of those times he hadn't been fast enough bringing in the jump sail, and couldn't help but shuddering. Math told him that anybody who might have been lost to this ship's last jump probably didn't feel or experience anything, but he couldn't help imagine lost souls stranded in hyperspace screaming in terror forever.
     
  "A catastrophic misjump, then." Bruscoe said. "There may not be anything to find down there."

  Willie tried to silently calm his nerves. "There's always something to find." He turned away from the viewport and leaned back in his seat, trying not to think about the colorless all consuming void or the symphony of discordant alien whispers echoing through it.

  The sharp thud of the shuttle touching down was a welcome reprieve.

  "We're in, kids," Bruscoe announced. "Unhook, time to see what there is to see."

[Liam's Ghost]

  Impact tremor, starboard dorsal. Processing.

  The two umigumo drones were still in their cubicles, active, but on standby for additional directives or information. Between them were three other cubicles, each with their own drones, still inactive, their communication lines cut by hull damage. Where the rest of their drone bay would have been was open space, part of it smashed open by weapons fire, the rest sheared away and lost to the void of hyperspace by an unstable jump field.

  Triangulation of impact indicates Frame 48. Evaluation: position relative to observed motion consistent with possible boarding action. Inquire main system for additional oders. Error. Main system offline. Defense Condition One remains in affect. Presume hostile intent. Investigate, intercept incursion. Eliminate hostile intrusion.

The two drones shuddered to life almost simultaneously, long stationary joints struggling and grinding as they stepped out of their cubicles.

  Ship's core offline. Ship's hull integrity compromised to an unknown degree. Viable route to compartment 478s undetermined. Units are to proceed with caution.

*****

  The majesty of a view, Willie pondered, was directly proportional to the danger involved in seeing it.
 
  He'd seen a lot of space over his time. Mostly through viewports since he got out of indentured servitude. And well, it could be pretty, but after a while it was just a black field with some points of light in it. Nothing really special. Still, right now, with the whole of space stretched out before him and nothing between him and that unforgiving view but a borrowed space suit, some of the old wonder had come right back.
 
  And the way that space was slowly rotating around him as the derelict he was standing on continued its tumble was only a little disorienting.

  "Keep up, kids," Bruscoe prodded over the radio as they slowly picked their way across the hull. "Air's wasting."

  Their initial goal was what looked like a maintenance access hatch about twenty meters further up the hull. Not the closest possible point of access, given just how much damage the derelict had taken, but going through an actual hatch seemed like a better idea than trying to work their way around the ragged edges of a breached compartment or a shell hole. Not to mention, an intact hatch had a much better chance of leading to a compartment that still held air.

  Once at their destination, one of Bruscoe's men took the lead. Using a gripper glove to keep himself in place, he set an object, something like a gel cushion with an adhesive bottom, against the hull about three meters up from the hatch, then pressed his own helmet against it. Once the guy was in position, Bruscoe gave the spot several whacks with the large crowbar he'd been carrying fastened to his belt.

  They waited for a good five minutes before the first guy got back up. Willie could see him shaking his head through the visor.

  "It was a hell of a longshot, anyway," Bruscoe said as he turned his attention to the hatch itself. The powered controls were out, and even the manual lever seemed frozen in place at first.

  "Everybody take a step back," Bruscoe said as he slid his crowbar into position to wedge the lever up. "If there's air on the other side of this I don't want any of you getting launched because you weren't paying attention." He then gave his bar a mighty heave. At first, nothing happened, but abruptly, Willie felt something like a crack through his boots, followed by the tremble of gears moving. The hatch began to move, without a sign of escaping atmosphere, and another member of the rescue party slid their own crowbar into that gap and added their own strength to Bruscoe's. With a bit more heaving, the hatch came open, revealing the airlock chamber within.

  They repeated the song and dance with the cushion and the crowbar with the hatch on the other side, which was when Willie realized that the cushion was the spacer equivalent of putting an ear against a door, trying to hear if there was anybody on the other side to respond. Once again, there was no response, and they instead went to work on the inner door, first manhandling the outer door shut again, just in case.

  They needn't have bothered. As the inner door came open, no rush of atmosphere came with it. The corridor the stepped into was as much a hard vacuum as the space outside, despite being almost pristine. A few labels on the corridor walls showed Japanese script.

  "Dracs," Bruscoe said with a degree of contempt. "Suddenly I don't feel so bad for them. Anyone able to read that garbage?"

  For a moment, Willie wasn't sure he wanted to respond. "I can," he said. "A bit."

  Bruscoe looked back, but seemed to swallow his first thoughts. "Keep your eyes out for directions to the bridge, then. Probably the best place to start. Meanwhile, let's all start working our way forward."

[Daryk]

Interesting developments!  :thumbsup:

[Lazarus Sinn]

Tag

[Liam's Ghost]

  Contact with the boarding party was lost as soon as they put hullmetal between them and the shuttle. Entirely expected, of course, but still an unsettling prospect for Captain Jaime West. He'd spent most of his life aboard ship, specifically the Foxhound, and this wasn't the first time in his near thirty years of command sending a party out to assist another ship.

  First time they'd ever come across a ship that was so clearly a grave, however. Possibly even the first time anybody for a good five hundred lights had sent a party out to inspect a dead WarShip. They'd managed to stumble on something truly dark, mysterious, and menacing, and all the unknowns inherent in that seemed to settle like a lump in the pit of his stomach.

  He knew he wasn't the only one, either. The bridge crew was dead silent, their attention fixed on the feeds from the shuttle, even though they'd be waiting a while for further updates. Chief Watson, towards the starboard side of the command deck, was observing the situation with his typical unflappable expression. A good show for a nervous crew, but Jaime had known the old spacer long enough to see under that mask. His grandkid was flying the shuttle, and if the Chief was really okay with that, he'd be putting his mind to doing something "useful" instead of waiting on the bridge for something to happen.

  "What's your over/under, Chief?" Jaime decided to ask. Just something to break the silence.

  Chief Watson thought for a moment. "I think that old girl has been dead since before any of our grampas came into the world," he said. "Might be there's something valuable aboard. Tech or data. But I can't see how she'd move under her own power ever again. Grabbing anything but some information from the computer or a few shiny bits is probably beyond anything we can do alone."

  "Not sure we'd want the politics of a salvage claim anywhere near us," Jaime said. The Foxhound was a civilian vessel with a homeport in the Federated Suns, and technically this star system was currently regarded as unclaimed space. However, it was still within the historical borders of the Draconis Combine. A legally grey enough distinction to make a fight over. An actual capital WarShip, even if she was a wreck, could potentially be a "buy a planet and retire" type find, or she could get you caught between two states looking for a game of violent tug of war.

  Still though, Jaime did have a few friends from their time working with the AFFS naval auxiliary. Might still be worth passing a note along the next time they were in the Suns...

*****
 
  The next three decks below (above?) their access point were pretty thoroughly and spectacularly compromised by a four meter hole that ran straight through from the dorsal to the ventral sides of the hull, ringed by twisted and fused hullmetal from whatever unholy weaponry one WarShip used to kill another. To Willie it looked pretty damned impressive and terrifying, but as Bruscoe crouched down next to the edge of the hole, looking down into the empty space beyond, he seemed more curious than anything.

  "No blast effects," he said. "Straight through and through." He turned to scan the full length of the damage. "The compartment was already at zero pressure when it got hit."

  "Maybe another breach somewhere else on the hull had already vented the atmo," another crewman suggested.

  "Maybe," Bruscoe said. "I heartell some of the wilder spacer crews practice running at zero pressure sometimes. Might be worthwhile in a fight if the crew's trained for it."

  Willie wasn't sure about any of that. Hell, for that matter they hadn't found any crew yet, suited or unsuited. They had only just started moving through what was a very big ship, but that still kinda bothered him.

  Bruscoe stood back up. "Anybody up for a shortcut?" he asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "No? then lets keep looking for a safe way further down."

  Willie was just glad he was joking. The ship's tumble meant that it was creating a degree of spin gravity, which got more pronounced the closer you got to one end or the other. That meant that by the time they made it to the forward end of the ship, they'd be able to basically walk around in something close to normal gravity, even if they were technically walking on the ceiling while doing it.

  In the more immediate concern, it meant that the decks further from the axis of rotation were moving faster than the decks closer to it. Even jumping down a hole ten meters as a shortcut would be a good way to get yourself hurt trying to land on a moving target.

  Instead, Bruscoe led them further in, towards the ship's central keel. Willie tried as best as he could to help guide them, but he had to quickly admit that his conversational understanding of New Kyoto Japanese wasn't as helpful as he hoped.

  "I..." Willie said when they stopped at a label on the wall. "I think..." He was comically leaning sideways, trying to make sense of unfamiliar characters that were upside down from his perspective.  "Let's see. Perishable storage and...Person...shape... storage..."

  "Pardon?" Bruscoe asked.

  Willie thought for a moment before the meaning came to him. "Doll," he said. "Doll storage." He wasn't sure that really helped. It sure as hell didn't clarify anything for him.

  There was a pregnant pause before anybody spoke up.

  "Well," Bruscoe decided, "It's in the right direction, and storage tends to have easy access to multiple decks. Let's give it a try." Through the visor, Willie could see Bruscoe shaking his head. "Weird assed snakes..."

  They followed the arrows down the corridor, finding themselves stopped by a bulkhead hatch after about ten meters, with another hatch to the side, helpfully labeled with the same incongruous title. "Doll Storage."

  "Are you sure that's what that label says?" Bruscoe asked.

  "I... honestly don't know how I could be about a name like that," Willie replied.

  Bruscoe audibly sighed loud enough for his mic to pick it up. "I can't be the only one who needs to know," he said as he moved over to start working on the manual release. To everyone's surprise, the door controls lit up as he started pulling, and the door slid open with only some resistance in its long unmaintained gears. At least some parts of the ship still had some sort of power.

  On the other side was a storage room, slowly illuminated as a series of blue emergency lights, maybe one in three, began switching on.

  Pods lined either side of the long, narrow compartment, each secured to the deck, with about a meter's clearance between the top of the pod and the ceiling currently below them. Through the transparent front panel of each pod was a girl. Vaguely teenaged, eyes closed, short red hair, maybe a meter and a half in height, and completely naked.

  There were maybe twenty pods in this chamber. Willie did not know what to make of it. He didn't even know where to begin to make anything of it.

  "Weird Assed snakes!" Bruscoe barked.

  As though in direct response to him, the compartment's lighting shifted from blue to red, and in the pods twenty pairs of eyes suddenly snapped open.

[DOC_Agren]

I believe the proper answer at this point Close and Lock the door and E&E back to the shuttle ASAP  :thumbsup:

[mikecj]

And then push the hull into a star

[Daryk]

Heh.  They couldn't possibly E&E fast enough...  8)

[Lazarus Sinn]

Run away! Run away!

[DOC_Agren]

Heh.  They couldn't possibly E&E fast enough...  8)

Maybe with music???

[Daryk]

As hilarious as that is, I was thinking more Benny Hill, really...  :D

[Liam's Ghost]

  "What the hell..." one of the other crewmen started to say as pod doors began popping open with a rush of released gas. As each door fully opened, whatever was holding the girls in their pods released, causing each to tumble out and onto the ceiling under the influence of the low spin gravity.

  Willie's first instinct was to move forward to offer assistance, but he felt a hand grab his arm and he turned back to see Bruscoe, shaking his head behind his visor while his other hand rested on the crowbar attached to his belt.

  "Everybody out," he ordered.

  "But they're..." Willie began to protest before getting cut of.

  "Not human," Bruscoe said. "Red means danger, everybody out!"

  The rest of the crew began moving immediately on Bruscoe's order, but Willie couldn't help but look back to see the girls picking themselves up off the deck, their eyes randomly shifting colors between red, amber, green, and blue and, he realized, actually glowing with an internal luminescence.
 
  That was enough for Willie to finally take the hint and turn to follow the others, but before he took his first step, he was knocked over by something heavy crashing into his back. As he struggled to rise, others piled onto him, clawing at his suit, forcing him over onto his back.
 
  Through his visor he could see the emotionless face of a teenage girl, one inhuman eye blood red, the other vibrant blue, staring back at him as her hands began reaching for his helmet. He could feel the weight of two others pinning down his arms. The first girl had just gotten her hands on one of the release latches when the pointy end of a crowbar suddenly embedded itself in the top of her head.
     
  As though completely unaffected, the girl then pulled the first release latch on Willie's helmet. The crowbar was yanked free and swung again in an upward arc, knocking her head violently backwards. He felt one of his arms pulled free, and then, someone bodily dragging him out from under his attackers. As he was being pulled back towards the door, he caught sight of Bruscoe, crowbar in hand, as maybe half a dozen girls launched themselves at him, swarming him and pulling him down through shear weight of numbers.

  "We can't..." Willie began to protest.

  "Not the time!" a crewman shouted in response and practically threw him through the hatch, just in time for another one of the girls to bodily crash into his legs, with another two, including one who's head hung at an almost right angle relative to her body, following behind.

  Another crewmember strained to pull the hatch level closed, and as the door slowly grinded shut, Willie could see the three girls just on the other side successfully pull the helmet off the crewman who'd thrown him through the door. Further back, in the dim red light he could see one of the girls in the mass holding down Bruscoe raise his crowbar up, and then violently bring it back down.
 
  Again. And again. And again.

  Then the door was closed, and they were alone in the dark corridor. 

  "Shuttle!" One of the crewmen barked.

  Shaking in shock and terror, Willie followed the three survivors.

[Cannonshop]

yeah, they're in trouble.

[DOC_Agren]

time to tell the shuttle to be ready to leave post haste..

[Daryk]

It's good thing they DON'T have comms right now, or the shuttle would leave them.  :o

[Sir Chaos]

Wow... those Star League girl scouts are pretty hardcore...

[DOC_Agren]

Wow... those Star League girl scouts are pretty hardcore...

Buy our Cookies now or Else

[Liam's Ghost]

Wow... those Star League girl scouts are pretty hardcore...

Excuse me sir. Do YoU WaNT SoMe ThIN MiNtS?

[Daryk]

 :o

:toofunny: