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Cenz brought up a display in Brooks’s vision.

“I have accounted for all two hundred and forty life pods carried by the Maria’s Cog.”

Brooks saw the list.  Only ninety-seven were listed as launched.

“That’s all she carried?” Brooks asked.

“Yes, Captain.  Since being decommissioned as a generation ship, the vast majority of her pods were removed and she was equipped with surplus pods from the 2920s.  As they are capable of carrying ten individuals each, two-hundred and forty are considered more than sufficient for her typical crew of only nine-hundred and fifty-nine.  However, my preliminary data suggests that each pod that was launched is occupied by an average of 2.8 people.  I may be wrong in this, but it suggests that . . .”

He trailed off.

“Less than a third of the crew escaped,” Brooks finished softly.  “Are there any signs of survivors on the ship?”

“We are still investigating that probability,” Cenz said.  “I request permission to focus on this in lieu of the cause as our primary operation.”

“Denied,” Brooks said.  “If there’s a threat out there, it’s most vital we be aware of it, or everyone in those pods could die, along with us,” Brooks said.

“Aye, Captain.”

“What else have you found?”

“Of the ninety-seven pods that were launched, all but seven are moving towards a rendezvous location at these coordinates.  There is debris also moving that way, but if we use this course, we can avoid the majority of it – I commend the Maria Cog‘s AI in picking the best path for its pods to take, as they have made our job more manageable.”

“What of those other seven?” Brooks asked.

“Four, I am afraid to say, were destroyed.  I have not ascertained a cause yet,” Cenz said.  He brought up a magnified image.

The pod was split open, nearly in two pieces, its inside safe area completely open.  Even if the survivors had been in full space suits, it was impossible to think they could have survived the impact.

“Others show damage consistent with the theory that two of the ship’s fusion reactors ruptured, and a plasma ring tore through the vessel.”

Brooks’s stomach sank to think that two reactors had suffered full containment failures.

Fusion reactors were notoriously reliable and safe.  Even when breached, it rarely resulted in something as catastrophic as a full containment failure, their multiple safety systems and redundancies were usually capable of spinning down to a significant degree.

He would have thought that at least one of the reactors would be able to spin down, even if badly damaged.

There were many other forms of energy generation that could produce more power – miniature black holes, matter-antimatter colliders, but they were far less stable and more dangerous.

“Have we found any locations for impact sites?” Brooks asked.

“We have scanned several potential sites, but there are few likely candidates.  I suspect that both reactors were breached by a single object.”

The data logs, as concise as they were, did state clearly that both reactors had been breached in the same second.  It did not prove there was just a single impactor, but it was unlikely she got hit by two shots in less than a second – not without there being an enemy fleet out there.

“Dark, that’s an incredible shot if it was intentional,” Brooks said, his voice hollow.

“We must accept the possibility that we may never know the truth here, Captain,” Cenz said.

He felt a shroud of impotent anger settle upon him.  Sometimes there just were not answers.

“Good work, Cenz,” Brooks said.  “But what of the last pods that are not on course and not destroyed?”

“One is slightly off-course,” Cenz said.  “It will not be difficult to recover.  Another that I believe was an empty launch is firing off straight – it is broadcasting as empty and has gone cold inside.  It is normal for these actions to occur to help with search and rescue.”

“That leaves one more.  Where is it?”

“Here,” Cenz said, highlighting it.

Brooks saw that the course of the pod was opposite of the others.  Instead of curving towards the rendezvous point, it was curving away.  And accelerating still.

“It appears to be malfunctioning, or perhaps damaged,” Cenz said.  “It is moving further away.”

Brooks looked up.  “Is it occupied?”

“Yes, Captain,” Cenz told him.  “We made contact with it just before I came over.  It has at least one survivor aboard.”

< Ep 9 Part 6 | Ep 9 Part 8 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Her ears were ringing after the explosion.

She felt more than heard the sound of herself gasping, her chest heaving hard to pull air into lungs that had been deprived for . . .

She didn’t know how long.

But she was alive.

The bulkhead above her was curved, a dark utilitarian gray metal.  She looked to either side, seeing that she was in one of the escape pods.

How had she gotten here?  The last thing she remembered was the massive sound, being thrown-

She reached up an arm, pain shooting through her, but she found she could move her left.  Her right arm was stiff, immoble against her front, and she looked down to see that it was bound in a quick-cast.  It must have been broken and someone had put her into it.

Looking down took a lot out of her, her head swimming.  She probably had a concussion, which meant she had to stay awake . . .

But even as she thought that she felt herself drifting out of consciousness.

A beeping sound awoke her.  It was a shrill, demanding noise, and she groaned, reaching for the console.  Pain shot through her right arm as she tried to move it, and she suddenly remembered.

Sitting up suddenly, her head spun, but it settled after a few moments.

She looked down and saw two small plastic discs stuck to her midriff.  One was an antibiotic and painkiller, the other was one of the precious medical nanos – machines as small as a cell that could be pumped into a person.  They could repair damage, spur healing, even specialize into specific roles to keep vital organs functioning.

Someone had really worked hard to save her.

The painkiller might be why she didn’t remember much.  That, or she’d suffered brain damage.  In which case she could only hope that the medical nanos were up to the task.

Her limbs still felt like they weighed ten times more than usual as she got up, crawling towards the console that was still beeping at her.  They must still be moving at more than one G, she thought.

“On,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“Maria’s Cog Pod #57, this is the Craton!  Are you there?  Give us a signal.  Repeat, Maria’s Cog Pod #57 . . .”

It was an automated call, and she swallowed nervously as she activated the transmit button.  A list of errors appeared in her HUD, only a few of which she understood.  The transmitter had suffered some kind of damage, but as she swiped them away, she found that she still had a signal.  It wasn’t that strong, but it was enough.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan . . .  Drone Repair Tech second class . . .  I’m here!  I’m alive.”

She didn’t know what else to say.  She gotten emergency training, done a hundred drills, there were things she had to do.

She wracked her brain.  She was in the pod and they’d launched . . .

Wait, they had, hadn’t they?  She looked at the console, sweeping aside warnings and looking for course.

There!  Bringing up the screen, she saw that they had launched away from the Maria’s Cog, a dashed line showing their course.

It was a dotted, flashing line through a three-dimensional space.

This was her forte; she worked with drones in space all the time, and her long experience made the image make sense.  They were still accelerating, the pod’s fuel still burning.  So it hadn’t been that long since they’d launched, the pod didn’t have fuel or reaction mass for more than ten hours of burn.

She began to search for more data to overlay, the work helping her understand what happened but also giving her something to do while she waited for an answer.

The pod had only rudimentary sensors, and most weren’t working, but she was able to overlay the position of the Craton; they were broadcasting their locational data and she could triangulate it with the Maria’s Cog itself, which was still broadcasting – even if just gibberish.  If they had continued on their course it meant she’d be getting a reply soon.

Placing the Maria’s Cog, she zoomed out.  There had to be other pods near them, but something was off.  She had been nearest to the port pod bay, but her location did not match that launch.  It didn’t match any launch location for pods on the Maria’s Cog at all.

The locations of other pods was not a priority for any individual pod to track, though they did note other fast-moving objects for purposes of avoiding collisions.  So if she filtered based on their likely velocities . . .

A series of dots began to glow.  Some were debris whose velocity just fell into the right ranges, but others had to be the pods.

A pattern was clear.  The pods had launched in droves from port and starboard.

But she was off-course.  Nowhere near the others, which were on curved courses, designed to meet up a distance from their mothership, so that they could be picked up by rescuers easier.

Her course was curving the other way.

She scanned the data again, double checking, then triple-checking it.

But it seemed consistent.

She sat back, taking a breath.  Fear was powerful, but this wasn’t a death sentence.  The Craton had its own zerodrive, that was the only way it could even have been here to help them so quickly.  Even if it took time to charge again, and her pod continued to fly off-course, they could collect her.  It just meant she’d be out here for awhile . . .

But escape pods had survival rations and the basic facilities of life.  A small medical drone, rations for ten for two weeks, air recyclers . . .  She could survive.

Sniffing and wiping her face, she sat back.  She just had to wait.

Her head was swimming again, and she felt like – no, she knew – she was forgetting something.

But she could not remember what.

< Ep 9 Part 4 | Ep 9 Part 6 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“We have surfaced in normal space,” Ji-min Bin called.

Brooks rose from his chair, taking in the view of space around them as reality coalesced on the screens.

“Scanning for krahteon emissions . . .” Cenz said.  “No krahteons detected.”

There was a slight exhalation of breath from many, Brooks included.  “Keep up low-intensity scans – carefully.  Just in case we have another sleeping giant.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Recording twelve minor impacts upon the frontal cone,” Bin called.  “Very small pieces, likely debris.”

“Just a few new dents for the frontal armor,” Urle commented.  “Nothing serious.”

“Automatic interception lasers are firing,” Jaya commented.

On the screen, brief, bright red lines appeared, the navigational lasers on the ship’s towers incinerating small objects flying at them.

“Filter infrared and find me our ship,” Brooks ordered.

A small speck highlighted on the screen, then magnified.  It was the Maria’s Cog.

Glints of light from a million pieces of debris danced, glittering like fireflies on a summer’s night.

But the ship herself was a wreck.

She had broken up into at least three major pieces.  Areas of the hull showed jagged damage, but other cuts appeared relatively straight, sliced cleanly.

“She definitely got hit by something with a lotta joules,” Ham Sulp messaged.  He was not on the bridge, but he was observing all they saw.  “Something deep into her.”

“It appears the impact came in through her nose shield and pierced at least seven kilometers through her superstructure,” Jaya said.

“If it pierced the nose cone then it was highly energetic, as Commander Sulp suggests,” Cenz said thoughtfully.  “This would be consistent with a projectile launched from a heavy coilgun.”

“High-temperature plasma burns,” Urle noted, highlighting marks on the hull.  “The reactor breaches released plasma rings and those are what ripped the ship apart.  If not for that, she would have survived the impact, I bet.”

“But who attacked them?” Jaya said.  “At the moment that is the most important thing to know.  Every weapon leaves traces, and we must find them here.  Other than directly IDing an enemy ship, that is our best bet to finding out who did this.”

“Do not jump to conclusions before further assessment of data,” Cutter said.  “Deeper scans will reveal true cause of damage.”

Brooks found his eyes following the lines of the ship, feeling a hurt to see her so broken.  Brooks knew her type well – the Maria’s Cog had never been a beautiful vessel in the traditional sense.  But ships like her were the lifeblood of distant worlds and stations, the unrecognized heroes of a star-faring civilization.

Now cut apart like a carcass on a chopping block.

The glints of light from the debris hinted at the dangers lurking around her.  They could be a piece of hull, radioactive waste, food, someone’s tablet.  Or even a body itself, frozen solid in space.  At high enough speed any one of those could cause catastrophic damage if it hit the right place.

They had to proceed with caution.

“What are our sensor sweeps finding?” Brooks asked.

“We are detecting no other large vessels,” Cenz said.

“Find all likely locations they could be hiding from our sensors,” Jaya said.  “Behind astronomical objects, even in a star’s light.”

“This area contains seven long-term monitoring probes,” Cenz said.  “I am querying them all, but the nearest two report that they have had no view of any vessel besides the Maria’s Cog in the last 248 days.  Their view, while not complete, covers many nearby plausible objects that could be screening an enemy vessel.  And to be quite honest; we are in interstellar space.  There is not much around that could serve as cover.”

Jaya looked even more displeased by that; she did not speak, thinking.

Brooks understood why she’d be so disquieted.  She had to view situations through the lens of how they might threaten the ship and her crew, and it did seem obvious that this was an intentional attack.

But the lack of enemy was strong evidence against.  To hide from the sensors of the monitoring probes was not something that could be done easily; with the multiple reactors any zerospace-capable vessel must possess, the amount of IR they put out was like a beacon.

“Captain,” Cenz said.  “There are nearly one hundred lifepods with active signals.”

“We need to begin recovery operations,” Kai said, turning her chair to face Brooks.  “I have all Response Teams on standby.  We await your orders, Captain.”

“Stars and rads, it’s going to be hard to extract them from that mess,” Sulp messaged.

“Begin deploying rescue drones first,” Brooks ordered.

Jaya frowned, but did not object.  Prioritizing the rescue drones meant the Craton had much less protection or ability to detect incoming threats for a time.  If an enemy had caused the destruction of the Maria’s Cog, they would be vulnerable.

But the evidence was still unclear, no enemy was near.  If somehow they had learned to hide themselves so completely that they were not detectable by the probes or the Craton, then it hardly mattered what precautions they took.  They would be outclassed to such a degree that resistance would be impossible.

Brooks continued.  “Get signals on all lifepods and search for any that may have gone dark, just in case.  Have secondary comm centers one and two begin actively pinging those that are signaling, I want to know their status so we can start rescue triage.  And find out everything you can from them about what happened to the ship.”

He frowned, studying the separating parts of the Maria’s Cog again, still slowly drifting away from each other.

“I want Science using secondary sensors to find those pods – without an obvious current danger we want to close our window of vulnerability and get them out of there as soon as possible.  Engineering, you have primary sensor arrays.  Start your own investigation, see if you can ascertain what destroyed the vessel.  Even more than rescue, we need to know if this was an attack or an accident – if there’s a threat, it goes beyond the fates of the Maria’s Cog‘s crew and even our ship.  The Union needs to know if we’ve got an enemy in our midst.  I want your preliminary answer in twenty minutes.”

He sighed.  “And until we can rule out an attack, get the combat drones launching as soon as the rescue ones are out.  At the very least we’ll need them to intercept that debris.  Just . . .”

He hesitated, staring again.

“Try not to shoot the bodies unless you have to.  I want to recover everyone we can.  The living and the dead.”

< Ep 9 Part 3 | Ep 9 Part 5 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Captain Ian Brooks accepted the cup of tea from the drone with a nod.

It floated off silently, and he took a sip.  The tea was still too hot for his liking, and he blew on it.

“Really, Captain?” Jaya said quietly.  “That’s barely tepid.”

“Yes, I know you drink boiling water each day to toughen up,” he replied, amused.  “But I’ll take my tea at the temperature I prefer.”

“I imagine you’d be able to even drink it cold,” she commented.

“Why yes, I can,” he retorted.  “That’s how everything is in Antarctica.  What most people call room temperature we call too hot.”

“Captain,” Shomari Eboh called out.  “We are receiving a priority distress signal!”

Brooks sat up, the humor dropping from him.  “Who sent it?”

“The long-range cargo carrier Maria’s Cog.  Timestamp indicates that it was sent only thirty-two minutes ago, bounced off a repeater, and came to us.”

“Are we the closest vessel with a zerodrive?” Jaya asked.

“Aye,” Eboh confirmed.  “Two other vessels have been alerted, the long-range scout Huntington and a deep-space science vessel the Inquisitive Eye.”

“We’re the only real help for them, then,” Brooks said.  “Begin charging the zerodrive.  Prepare for a dive.”

“Do we know the nature of their emergency?” Jaya asked.

“Not yet,” Eboh replied.  “We are still unpacking the detailed data.  Give me a moment.”

Jaya and Brooks exchanged glances.

The feed connected to their systems, sending the decrypted data.  It was brief.

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – UNKNOWN IMPACT EVENT

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – REACTOR 8 CRITICAL FAILURE

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – REACTOR 3 CRITICAL FAILURE

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 14 – REACTOR 8 BREACH

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 14 – REACTOR 3 BREACH

Brooks checked if there was any more on the first point, elaboration upon this impactor.

But there was nothing.

“They were attacked,” Jaya said.

Brooks was quiet a moment longer, going over the data again, as sparse as it was.

The ship took a hit that pierced two fusion reactors.  It was unknown, which means it was moving so fast that they didn’t see it coming.

The hit was precise.  Surgical.

The Maria’s Cog was not a military vessel.  Without good reason they would not be blaring out active sensors and utilizing dense screens of high-quality drones.

Jaya had to be right.  As much as he did not want to think that someone had just launched an unprovoked attack against a ship deep in Union space, it was the most likely explanation.

“It may be,” he said.  “We’ll be prepared for all eventualities.”  He raised his voice.  “Awaken all command staff, prepare Response Teams and rescue drones.  How soon until we can jump?”

“Capacitors were already near full,” Cutter said.  “Enough power for jump in ten minutes.”

“I recommend we also prepare all combat drones, load the missile racks, and charge the coilguns, Captain,” Jaya said.

“Do it,” he ordered.  “It’ll take us three hours to reach them.  We have until then to prepare.”

Hopefully there would still be someone left alive to save by then.

Captain’s Log:

The Craton is an hour away from the last location of the Maria’s Cog.  We do not know what to expect when we surface.  Who would want to attack a cargo carrier?

Our records indicate a long service record for the vessel, extending back before zerodrives.  Almost thirty kilometers long, she once carried millions of people at sublight speed – dropping off sufficient people and supplies in a system before moving on and letting natural growth replenish her numbers.

Now she operates with a skeleton crew of less than a thousand, serving to bring massive quantities of supplies to distant colonies and outposts.

What could threaten a vessel so large?  Even a heavy battleship would have difficulty knocking out such a ship quickly.

The fear of a Leviathan is in many people’s minds, but I remain skeptical, until we arrive and see for ourselves.

< Ep 9 Part 2 | Ep 9 Part 4 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

A screaming sound was the first thing she heard.

Pain was the next sensation, her entire body feeling like a mass of pain, and the screaming continued.

Only it wasn’t screaming, because it was still going on, a constant droning that no living being could have kept up without pausing for breath.

Everything was a blur; dark red lighting dominated, and as she sat upright she joined the strange endless scream as she felt the pain in her side.

It only got worse as something grabbed her, yanking her to her feet.

Davyyd’s face was there, in front of hers.  She could barely see him through the darkness and her own tears, but she recognized something about him.

“Can you move?” he was shouting.

She nodded or must have said something to that effect, because suddenly they were moving.  She had no idea if she could really move, the pain in her side was almost blinding.

Adrenaline was helping, as she stumbled along with him.  The lights were out; even most of the emergency lights were out, and the reddish glow she was seeing were from fires.

Black smoke poured from an open door as they stumbled past, and she wondered why the bulkhead had not automatically shut if there was a fire.  As she glanced in, saw the raging inferno, with a handful of drones and Response Officers battling it, she realized that the bulkhead door had been completely torn off.

“What happened?” she yelled.

“Don’t know!” Davyyd yelled back.  “We’re hit, that’s all I know.”

“How bad?” she asked.  It seemed a dumb question, really, given what she was seeing.  But the Maria’s Cog was a big ship.

“Bad,” he said.

“What’s that noise?” she yelled.

“Fusion reactor warning,” he yelled back.

That wasn’t a fusion reactor warning sound, she thought.  Fusion reactor warnings weren’t continuous-

The sound was growing.

“Faster!” Davyyd cried.  They were running now, she was panting for breath and crying out with each step, pain shooting through her that even the adrenaline couldn’t fully cover.

The screaming sound reached a crescendo – and kept rising.  She could practically feel it now, and she saw that a bulkhead door ahead was closing.

The air was growing hot.

“Through!” Davyyd yelled, throwing her – and himself – through.

She looked back, down the long hall, and saw a light glowing.  It was not directly in sight, but down along the hall as it curved, so bright that all simply seemed to be turning white.

She saw other people down the hall, she couldn’t tell who.  They were running towards the door, but then they were simply gone.

“Don’t look!” Davyyd yelled, pulling her away.

The security hatch closed, sealing.

And she realized that it was the light of a fusion reactor breach.

The transparent titanium window was nearby, and she staggered over, looking out into space.

A loop of pure white light ripped out of the ship, and the block dimmed.  For a moment she thought it was the interior dimming to protect her eyes.

But no; it was the outside darkening as it began to burn.

“What are you thinking?” Davyyd cried.  “Get away from there, we have to keep going!”

She looked back at him, and saw that the heavy door was already warping, the air near it distorting from the heat contained behind it.

They ran.

It was only snippets, moments after that.

She staggered, falling, but Davyyd dragged her back to her feet.

Another door shutting behind them, held until the last moment by another Response Officer who was burned over half his body, but still doing his job.

Davyyd tried to help him, but he waved them on, yelling something.  Lily did not catch what, but she understood the gist.

With his rad exposure, he was dead already.

The escape pod area was rumbling by the time they got there, and Davyyd kept shoving her onward, though she was gasping.  The air was too hot; something else terrible was happening, but she did not even know what.

“Get in!” he yelled, opening the pod bay door and shoving her inside.

“You too!” she cried.

He shook his head.  “I have to help others!”

She grabbed his arm, but he pulled it away.  “There’s another reactor, it’s going critical!  They need-“

Something behind him exploded, staggering him forward into the pod.

She grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the way of the sealing door.

The pod was screeching an alert about a high-g maneuver, and she wasn’t even sure if she was fully strapped in before it crescendoed.

Everything jerked, and she lost consciousness once again.

< Ep 9 Part 1 | Ep 9 Part 3 >