The Bright Black Sea (22 page)

'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!'

I set the gig down alongside the open lock, shooting
down two magnetic anchors to secure it.

'Nice of them to leave the door open for us...' said
Tenry as we drifted out of our seats.

'Likely to vent escaping fuel if they meant to be
gone a long time. Hydrogen leaks even from the D-matter tanks.
They'd have left the lock open so they'd not come back to a ship
filled with rocket fuel,' I said. It was the most innocent
explanation I could come up with.

'Makes sense, if they expected to be gone a very long
time. Though why they'd expect to be off the ship for that long and
return makes for an interesting question.'

'One I'm not all that curious about, but here we
are,' I said, as I cycled the gig's systems down. We swung into the
main compartment to collect our gear and finish suiting up.

Tenry took a holstered plasma darter out of his kit
bag and handed it to me.

'Do I really need this? Never used one...' (My only
experience with them was recently, from the other end.)

'Probably not,' he replied, adding with relish, 'But
if I'm wrong, you'll not have time to jet back to get it... Best to
be prepared. Remember we've not ruled out a pirate hideout or a
smuggler's rendezvous. Or if the crew left the system and food
culture vats running, the rats could have mutated to the size of
Astro by now and imagine the cats that feed upon them...'

'And as long as you're trying to frighten me, how
effective are plasma darts against ghosts?'

He laughed. 'Can't say I've any experience with
ghosts. But I wouldn't hesitate to waste a few darts to find out,
should it come to that...' He showed me the basics of darter
operation, set mine to a non-lethal charge level but high velocity
to penetrate space suits, and handed it to me. He clipped a second
one on to his suit.

We helped each other don the jet packs. I clipped on
a satchel of tools and a radio relay while Tenry added a satchel of
his special Patrol boarding boat leader tricks. Lastly we donned
our clearsteel helmets and synced our com systems with the ship. I
extended the collapsible air lock and we made our way out the upper
hatch, one by one, swinging ourselves down the derelict's hull. I
attached a third anchor line from the forward landing gear to a
ring near the lock, just to be sure, and joined Tenry at the edge
of the open cargo lock.

As I stood shining my torch down into its black
depths, it struck me just how starkly my life had changed during
the past year. Standing on a vast derelict space ship facing
possible pirates, giant rats, cats, ghosts... well, actually
nothing but fear, was not something I'd ever dreamed I'd be doing.
It seemed in that moment, a steep price for being captain of the
Lost Star
.

Tenry looked to me.

'Let's get it done,' I said and stepped over the side
and finding my footing on the airlock deck, started down.

'Rockets Away!' exclaimed Tenry following me down. It
was a small comfort to know I had someone along who was having so
much fun. Still I'd strangle him if he said it again.

The beams of our headgear lamps and our high powered
hand held torches sliced through the nearly solid blackness. Both
doors were open so we walked straight into the engine room on a
grating deck. I pulled the com-relay/beacon out of my satchel and
attached it to the grating, making certain the ship was still
reading our radio and visuals through the open lock. A ship's hull
is impervious to the full radiation spectrum so a relay and the
open lock was needed to get our signals out of the ship. I wanted
the gang along for the ride.

The platform wrapped around the massive rocket tubes
which ran straight up and down into the blackness above and below,
secured by a vast organic-like mesh of cross-beams tying the
engines to massive ribs that carried the thrust of the engines up
through the ship to its blunt pushing end, some 5000 meters above
us. Our torches revealed a series of empty grated storage decks
above and below us. To our right was a gaping opening in the decks
– a large lift shaft running along one of the massive structural
ribs.

Tenry turned and looked to me with a grin, clearly
visible through his clearsteel helmet. 'Seen enough, Skipper?'

'Yep, for all the good it will do me, ' I replied,
adding, 'You're enjoying not being in charge, aren't you?'

'It's like being a kid again.'

'Again? Since when...'

'Appoint him point man, Captain,' suggested Vyn from
the ship.

'But that'd make me the rear guard, and I don't want
that either. We'll take the lift shaft up, side by side,' I said,
attaching a beacon light to the deck to guide our return. 'Rockets
Away, Pax,' I added when I finished, jumping to break contact with
the platform and fire my jet pack rockets.

'To the stars, lads!' he replied as he jetted up
beside me. Another Pax line.

Like sparks we drifted up through the jungle of beams
and braces that appeared and disappeared into the blackness. Tenry
used luminous spray paint to make glowing arrows pointing downwards
every ten meters or so on the rib. I quickly came to see their
value, in the weightless darkness all directions looked and felt
much the same. I asked him why he used a downward arrow. He laughed
and said that in a hasty retreat you didn't have to think, you just
follow the arrows.

We quickly left the airlock platform far below us as
we drifted up though a great black hollowness. After five minutes
of steady upwards progress we came to a complex array of platforms,
a sprawling space filled with large fuel pumps, twisting fuel lines
and walkways weaving through the heads of the massive combustion
chambers and fusion piles. It seemed like the ship had been made
for giants. Above us and as far as our torch beams could reach
stretched a series of “interior” fuel tanks anchored to the wide
ribs. Lilm had us stop and give the pumps and reactor heads a good
looking over, hoping she could identify the part manufacturers.
Nothing familiar. We continued up the lift shaft.

I've lived in spaceships almost constantly for the
last two decades. The engine room should not have affected me with
the uneasiness it did. It felt both claustrophobic and vast at the
same time. The daunting scale of the compartment did not seem built
for or by humans. Though lifeless and abandoned, things moved in
the corner of my eyes – shadows cast by our torches as we swung
them about. I had to keep reminding myself of that...

Eventually the lift shaft ended on a deck that
spanned the entire 200 meter diameter of the core. Our torch beams
found a bank of control panels and equipment in the center core of
the deck, an isolated oasis in great expanse of empty blackness.
From its location it was clearly the engine control center.

We crossed the wide deck to inspect it. The controls
were familiar looking, but unfamiliar in the details and the dead
dials and screens told us nothing. We moved slowly from one set of
controls to another, recording the scene and giving our viewers on
the ship and any other subsequent vid viewers a chance to study
them. Radio contact was spotty, so it took awhile.

'That looks to be the standby generator station just
off to Tenry's right side,' directed Myes over the radio link. 'It
should have its own micro reactor that you can start manually.'

Tenry turned and found the standby station. I joined
him.

'Right. Micro reactor, attached thermo-generator is
just below deck,' said Tenry as he knelt to examine the small
casing mounted just below the controls. 'It looks as good as new.
Nice thing about hard vacuum – nothing decays. This button should
activate the pile and kick the generator on line...'

'And if it doesn't?'

'Then we should probably be someplace else in a hour
or two. But these things are designed to be foolproof, just for
situations like this. Right Myes?'

'Not much to get flakey or go wrong, Even a couple of
thousand years shouldn't make any difference, the pile wouldn't
have decayed too much for it not to work. From where I'm sitting,
I'd say go ahead and fire it up.'

'Yah, fire it up, Tenny old boy,' said Riv over the
link. 'I'm very comfortable with it myself.'

Tenry and I exchanged a grin, 'Thanks guys. With my
engineers in agreement, what can I say but “fire it up”. I'd like
to get some light about this place... Or an excuse to get the Neb
out of here.'

'Right,' Tenry replied and jammed the button down. He
reached down and put his gloved hand on the generator since we'd
not be able to hear it operating in the vacuum.

It took almost a half a minute before he nodded,
'It's beginning to purr... and I see lights on the control
panel.'

Section by section the stand-by lights in the vast
engine room and presumably, throughout the ship came on. With power
the control panel came to life with lights indicating that all the
piles were cold, all systems off line and the fuel tanks were
empty. The more sophisticated data screens needed authorizations to
be accessible, which we, and likely no one alive, had.

'The ship seems to have been powered down,
systematically secured and taken out of commission. Perhaps to be
scrapped... ' said Tenry as he finished looking over the various
control panels.

'From the inside it doesn't look ready for the scrap
yards. Everything looks new. Have you seen equipment or control
panels you recognize? My familiarity with engine room equipment
doesn't extend beyond the
Lost Star
's engine room.'

'Don't recognize the names, may well be custom work.
Being such a specialized ship, that wouldn't be surprising. Maybe
we'll have more luck in the crew quarters. The crew always leaves
junk behind.' said Tenry, pointing his torch across the deck to the
access well and circling stair way that was set about one third of
the way in from the hull on the far side of the central core.

Judging from the total lack of anything left from the
ship's original crew so far, I wasn't confident, 'I'm not betting
on it. But I'd like to find the bridge.'

We jetted over to the access well. 'Crew quarters are
in vacuum too,' I said, as I flashed my torch up the unblocked
access well.

'After you, Skipper.' Tenry said with a wave of his
hand. 'Remember to say “Rockets Away!” It inspires me.'

'I'm thinking of ordering you to rocket away up the
shaft and report back to me what you see. I'm getting more bloody
Patrol minded all the time...' I replied, as we drifted up on our
jet pack rockets. I added to our shipboard observers, 'We'll likely
be out of radio contact in a moment, once we leave the engine room.
I'm going to allow a maximum of an hour to explore the rest of the
ship. If we need more time, we'll check in and let you know.'

'Right, Captain. Don't loose track of time and scare
us.'

'Trust me, I won't,' I replied. With the lights on,
the ship was a little less dead, but even more empty. The sooner I
was back aboard my ship, the happier I'd be.

We lost contact with the ship as we passed beyond
shielded engine room bulkhead. It got very quiet without the
background chatter.

The access well lead to a single level, opening on a
wide passageway that followed the curve of the hull. Most, but not
all of the light panels were glowing, some off color or dim. It had
apparently been eons since they were powered on. door-panels were
open on both sides of the passageway. The door-panels in the
outside bulkhead opened to large, multi-roomed compartments – crew
quarters on a pretty lavish scale. All stripped bare to the
built-ins. No trash left behind. The interior door-panels opened to
an archipelago of large empty spaces and smaller rooms, all bare,
but obviously meant to be lounges, gyms, rec rooms, plus a galley,
storage areas and perhaps a moss garden.

'They didn't leave a clue,' said Tenry .

'You know Ten, I beginning to think there was nothing
in here to begin with. This damn ship was never finished.'

'Now that you mention it...'

'There's no wear and tear. What is missing may well
have never been installed.

'But you'd think even construction crews would leave
more behind than this...'

'Aye,' I admitted, adding, 'Unless the buyer was
going to do the final fitting out and something happened between
the time the ship builder finished and the buyer took possession.
Say the market for hollow asteroids crashed and didn't come back
until the owners or builders went bankrupt. This could be just a
big white elephant, too expensive to do anything with!'

'I'm willing to buy that Skipper, though it's strayed
pretty far away from the First Systems. How long would you think
it's taken to find its way here?'

'They've been moving asteroids for tens of thousands
of years... I don't think that would be a problem, assuming you can
imagine someone just sending something like this adrift in the
first place.'