Chapter 19 The Derelict
01
The Lost Star lay off to port, starkly illuminated in bright yellow, red fringe and dark blue shadows. Azminn was blazing beyond her, uncomfortably big and boiling. I ran through my last systems check, synced our laser com and sensors with the ship and finished my flight program.
I glanced at Tenry beside me and he grinned, 'Rockets Away!' Captain Brilliant Pax's tag line.
I sighed and opened up the gig's plasma rockets, pushing us into the cushions of our seats.
As I mentioned, I haven't been able to fly rockets the way I'd like to since signing on, even as Captain, but now I'd a reason. I opened her up and flew flat out. It was exhilarating and a bit frightening – we were over running all but our laser radar, trusting that we didn't get really unlucky. Anything bigger than a pebble hitting the gig at anything more than a glancing blow would vaporize and likely pulverize us inside. We didn't say much – there was nothing tricky about the flight, since the shipboard computers handle much of the routine navigation, but at max power, I needed to pay close attention via my com link to keep the rocket balanced and on course. Tenry manned the array of sensors as look-out, relaying the information back to the ship as well. He chatted with the gang aboard the ship. This was just a lark for him.
We reached midpoint forty-three minutes out – the object turned out to be on a roughly parallel course, so it would be a long stern chase to catch and pass it. That was good news, since it meant that the 'Star would have the better part of eleven hours to execute any needed course adjustments. I swung the gig about and began our deceleration, intending to drift past the object along the ship's current path to search for associated meteor stream. So far we'd not picked up any sign of meteors – promising, but not conclusive.
By the time we were within six thousand kilometers of the object, we were just drifting relative to it and had a solid laser radar image of it. It appeared to be a very large ship or space station with an oval body about 4500 meters in diameter, wrapped around a 200-meter cylindrical core, some 5000 meters in length. One end of the core appeared to be hollow and extended about 100 meters from the oval hull – rocket tubes or entry port. The other end, however, sported an unruly mess of twisted beams and cables. Eight massive, two-kilometer-long articulate legs or extensions were spaced around the core like the twisted and damaged legs of a squished spider. Held in a tangled web of cables, and twisted legs were five large pods, each as big as the Lost Star. Three more pods floated some distance off, apparently tethered to the object by long cables which dragged them along with the slowly tumbling vessel.
'Any idea what we're looking at?' I asked Tenry and the ship's crew at the other end of the com link.
'Space station, drift foundry or factory... I've seen something like this but I can't quite place it...'
'Could it be alien?' Lili asked from the ship's bridge.
That was unlikely. The Outbound Survey has yet to find technical intelligent non-humans (as far as we know), much less space faring ones.
'A long voyage settlement ship perhaps?' Rafe chipped in.
More likely. It was big enough, but with our Nebula settled forty millennia ago, it seemed unlikely we'd find a settlement ship here, however long lost.
The debate continued in the background, 'Some sort of sentient machine factory'... 'What would it be doing here?' As the speculation continued over the com I ran through my options. Or rather, my obligations.
Being a ship or station, apparently in distress or derelict, we were morally, if not legally, obliged to offer assistance, though the lack of the required identifying beacons muddled the legal case. Still I'd not smudge my Guild book by cutting legal corners. More to the point, I needed to look after my owner's financial interest – which is to say, the prospect of salvage. Our charter terms would severely limit what aid we could offer, but I'd the time and the gig in position to investigate. Once again, it seemed my course was set by circumstances. Being captain didn't seem to give me a great deal of freedom. I did, however, get to make out the watch roster.
I told Tenry, 'Hold on,' and fired the steering rockets to flip the ship and alter our course to bring us closer to the object.
'I'm investigating, what do we know about salvage claims?' I asked the gallery.
'Salvage is out, it’s not in any immediate danger,' said Tenry. 'We could only take off survivors if any. However, if it’s been abandoned, as seems the case, and for more than five hundred years, it would be considered a derelict and we can claim it as our own. But I believe that usually involves manning it...'
'Which we're not going to do.'
'Let's wait and see what we have, Captain,' said Vyn. 'I'll do more research on this end.'
'Thanks.'
02
I brought the gig to within five kilometers of the object and put it into a slow polar orbit. This close, the vessel was massive, the gig's shadow a tiny dot sliding along a scarred wasteland. There are larger man-made structures in space, one or two even in the Unity backwater of Azminn, but they're usually built up over the centuries by the slow accretion of smaller structures. Something purposely built on this scale made an impression.
The hull had overlaying scars, dents and even gashes, speaking of many centuries in space, likely in the drifts. Any markings were long since sanded off by dust and rocks.
'No thermal anomalies suggesting engine heat or exchangers. Everything looks like reflected solar heat,' Tenry said, watching the sensor displays. 'No radio signals, completely dead, at least from the outside.'
I glanced across to Tenry, 'At least from the outside?'
'It could be a pirate base,' he said with a straight face. 'They'd keep everything well shielded, heat exchangers inside the outer hull, ships would enter at far end. This would make a perfect base, a pirate's secret city.'
'I'm going to assume that's your excuse for humor, Ten. You may dream of being Captain Brilliant Pax of the Space Ways, but I don't.'
He just grinned and said, 'Arr, Skipper, just doing my job.'
'Quit teasing the Skipper, Ten. Has it come to you what we're looking at yet?' asked Vyn over the com.
'As a matter of fact, it has. I'm just waiting to see what the spider legs look like before venturing my opinion. I want to make sure they're not some sort of cranes.'
'They're coming up now,' I said as we rounded the great bulge of the hull.
'Ah, as I suspected,' crowed Tenry as he focused the gig's viewer on the vast twisted wreckage of the articulated legs. 'Notice the large pads at the ends of the legs, we're looking at stabilizing struts. What we have here is a super-tug for moving large asteroids. This is the head of the tug. It would be anchored and secured to the asteroid by the array of articulated struts. Those battered pods are the balancing and steering rockets. They'd be set up on the asteroid. A super-tug is basically a massive fuel tank attached to very powerful rocket engines.'
In the background I could hear the bridge crew chattering, they all knew, just didn't get a chance to say it before Tenry. It was that obvious, now. Here in the backwaters of the nebula, we don't have many hollowed asteroids, but they're common enough in the First Settled systems. In those systems they're used as private worlds, resorts, cities, ports, factories and even as massive cruise ships/resorts that circle the First Settled systems, passengers being shuttled to and fro as they pass by each planet in turn. They're formed by flash heating the entire metal asteroid with thermal reactors to its melting point and using deeply planted explosives to inflate the molten metal into a hollow sphere or long cigar shaped vessel, similar to blowing glass bottles.
'So what's it doing here?'
'Good question, Skipper. I don't think we'll find any answers just orbiting her...'
'Just wondering out loud. I could live with the mystery...' I said hastily. 'Anyone looked up Patrol records to identify this ship?'
'We've come up blank,' replied Vyn. 'I've also been researching our salvage options.
Ten was right – if it’s been abandoned for five hundred years, we can claim it. And he's right about establishing an airtight claim, we'd have to take possession. Sighting establishes no claim. Boarding it might, or might not. However, our owner would probably need as much information as possible to decide whether it's worth the expense of sending a crew out to take possession of it.'
'So you're suggesting we board it,' I said warily.
'You have the time, and if you can find an easily opened access port, it could make a difference in determining the validity of any claim and whether or not we'd want to make a claim.'
'You think it's even worth the effort? It's pretty far from anywhere.'
'Can't say. That would be for the experts to determine, which is why we'd want to make as complete a survey as we can. Very large engines are expensive to produce, and if these are in good shape, they could well be worth it. Mere scrap metal might not be. Once we file a claim, it would become our responsibility. I think we need to look into it for the White Bird Line to make an informed decision.'
I glanced at Tenry, who gave me a cheerful grin. 'Expendable...'
I sighed. 'Yah.' I'd realized that already.
'Right. Least we should do is buoy it and chart its course for the Patrol. Have Myes and Lilm rig up some beacons. They can bring them out in the long boat when you get close enough. How many hours do we have to do this survey?'
'We're still nine hours and 17 minutes from our nearest approach.'
'That gives us at least seven hours. We'll search for an unblocked way in. We should've packed a lunch,' I said, fingers crossed that we'd not be that lucky...
No luck. After rounding the stern of the vessel with its four gaping 70-meter-wide rocket tubes we got lucky. Tenry said, 'There – that small black square just under the bulge of the fuel tanks...' He zoomed in the display to show a black hollow rectangle just visible in the nebula lit dimness of the shadowed side of the wreck. While it looked small on the ship, it was an open freight airlock, I could just make out in the faint light of the nebula illuminating its hollowness.
'Blast.' I muttered. Tenry laughed and to the Lost Star audience, 'You heard him. We're going down to check this blasted air lock out...Rockets Away!'