Empire of Bones (15 page)

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she knew better than to argue. “Thank you.”

“In the meantime, I know there are a lot of things coming over for the scientists to examine. I’m sure they would love to have your help with some of the personal belongings.”

Somehow, she doubted they’d want her looking over their shoulders. Not that she’d let that stop her.

Examining the personal belongings of the dead was even more morbid, but she knew he was right to collect everything. Any bit might provide a clue to something important. A dead man’s data reader might have tech manuals on something critical. A dead woman’s knick-knacks might have incredible cultural significance. And vice versa. Nothing was too ordinary or too small for them to collect.

“I’ll stay clear of the ship,” she said, “but I want you to make me a trade.”

“Name it.”

“I don’t like being blocked by a lack of skills. Can someone train me on going into vacuum in case this comes up again? Like one of the marines?”

He considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Deal.”

They finished their last beer in silence. She wondered what they would find when they finished examining
Courageous
. Secrets she couldn’t even imagine? Or just more questions?

Jared went back over to
Courageous
the next morning. If there were any kind of trouble, he’d have plenty of time to get back to
Athena
. Graves had taken third shift to oversee things on the wreck and to explore.
Athena’s
day watch would wake him if something developed.

There still wasn’t any gravity, but without the wicked spin, he was able to make his way to engineering without problems. Baxter was already there overseeing the splice of a thick cable into the power grid.

They’d strapped the cable to the deck and out through the gash ripped into the hull. Jared floated over and held himself in place besides the engineer. “How goes it?”

“Almost ready to divert power. It won’t be enough to power the ship, but it should let us turn on some basic systems like life support.”

“I thought the life support reservoirs were trashed.”

“One holds pressure. A second looks easily reparable. I’ve had some of the reserves on
Best Deal
shipped over. We can recapture most of it when we’re ready to leave, but having a pressurized hull will make recovery operations a lot simpler.”

“Do we even know if the ship’s systems will even work?”

“Nope. We’ll be doing an old-fashioned smoke test. If it smokes, it won’t work.”

Jared shook his head. “You’re a mess. If the computer comes back online, will we be able to interface with it?”

“That’s a question for the brains. For the time being, we’ve disconnected it from the grid.” He sprayed something on the exposed connections, hiding the bare metal beneath a black, rubbery covering. “Okay. Here we go.”

He must’ve said something on a different frequency, because Jared didn’t hear a word. He did see the overhead lights flicker and come on dimly.

Jared hunted around until he found the frequency they were using and heard people chiming off about the lights coming on. From the locations given, the entire ship had lights. Of a sort.

“Are those emergency lights,” he asked after Baxter finished checking in with everyone.

“Probably. They’re too dim to be the main overheads. I’ll need to find the controls to turn on anything else. The system knows none of the fusion plants is online and it can tell the amount of power is limited. I think I can override that for specific systems.”

“Will the ship give you access?”

“Let’s find out.” He pushed off the bulkhead and led the way deeper into engineering. Away from the flip drives, the damage was less severe, but it would’ve been deadly to the men and women working here.

Baxter went to one of the consoles and found the emergency power switch. The display came to life, dim and coated in dust. It brightened almost immediately. “The console found the power bus and it’s not asking for any kind of authentication. That’s probably because it still thinks it’s in a combat situation. No authentication required when someone is shooting at you.” He tapped the screens hunting for something.

The displays the Chief Engineer examined made even less sense to Jared than the engineering displays on
Athena
. Baxter eventually found something, though. “Here we go. Let’s put the lighting on a higher priority.”

The overhead lights brightened enough to illuminate every corner. With the ship still in vacuum, the shadows were knife sharp and deep black.

“That should do it,” Baxter said with satisfaction. “I’ll add my authentication to the engineering subsystems. Another benefit of having the main computer offline.”

“What happens when the computer comes back online?”

“I’ll isolate it from the control runs if we decide to power it up. Then the authentication we give the consoles will continue to work. Adding someone to the main computer is another egghead task. It may not even be possible. I’d imagine there’s some pretty tight security coding on it.”

Jared nodded. “One problem at a time. Next, what about the life support systems?”

Baxter navigated through the screens. “The system still shows itself to be functional. It looks like Fleet designed their warships to last a long time. I’m impressed.”

Baxter switched to the all-hands channel. “Okay, everyone. If you’re near an airtight door, you need to get clear of it. Tell me now if you won’t be clear in thirty seconds.”

When no one said anything, Baxter waited and then touched the controls. “All airtight doors have sealed and show green. Life support is online. It shows some glitches, but as a critical system, it can manage. Pressure is slowly rising and the heaters are on, except for engineering and a few other areas still open to space. I’d imagine you could take off your helmet in half an hour, but it’ll still be brutally cold in there. I wouldn’t touch bare metal for at least an hour.”

The idea that an old wreck like this could come back to life boggled Jared’s mind. “I’ll want a ship’s status when you can get it. I want to know what systems could be used if we wanted to. That might help a lot in getting an idea how things work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now how do I get to the other side of the pressure doors?”

“They come in pairs so that you can open one at a time and step through like an airlock. The pressure will equalize and then the other side will open. I’ll get someone to checking the primary systems and available repair parts. Those will tell us a lot by themselves, technologically speaking.”

“This ship is full of surprises. I’ll want someone to check the weapons systems, too. Call Zia to get some of her people to help.”

He made his way forward to the first set of pressure doors. They performed exactly as Baxter had indicated. He couldn’t see a difference once he went through, but his suit informed him there was a slight increase in pressure.

Jared made his way to the bridge. It looked better with the lights on, but he couldn’t see the place without remembering
Courageous’
long dead crew strapped in at their stations. No one was up here now so he had the Captain’s console all to himself to do a little looking around.

With the overheads on, he finally got a good look at the bridge. The floor plan appeared similar to the one on
Athena
, only larger. Significantly larger. The Captain’s console was on a raised dais overlooking double the number of crew stations. Four forward in square formation. Three each on the right and left sides facing the bulkheads. Two consoles at the rear flanked the lift.

He’d identified a dozen stations, not counting the Captain’s. Significantly more than on the largest cruiser he’d ever been on. The compartment was also quite roomy meaning there was no feeling of being crowded here.

One hatch on the left side of the compartment led to the Captain’s day cabin, complete with conference room, another opened to a large head for the crew. He’d missed the closed hatches on his first visit. Admiral Yeats’ flag bridge on
Orbital One
was less luxurious.

He strapped himself in to the Captain’s chair and brought the console to life. It connected to the power grid and glowed brightly under the smeared dust. He’d left the systems on the life support screen so he could see an array of amber dots all over the ship. A number of red one’s told him engineering was still in a vacuum. No surprise there. Most remaining areas had noticeable pressure. The temperature was coming up, too.

The log had the last commands entered on this console. He could see where he re-enabled the safeties on the fusion reactor. The logged time was wrong, of course. The console had been without power too long to keep any internal chronometer running.

The previous instructions were there, too. He saw where the Captain had disabled the safeties. He also saw where he’d entered a complex set of instructions for the reactor. Then he’d vented the ship to space. All within the space of a minute. The First Officer had countersigned the orders.

Why the hell did the ship’s designers even have a method to vent the atmosphere to space and scuttle the ship? He couldn’t do something that crazy on
Athena
even if Graves helped him cut holes all over the ship. What kind of maniac thought the system needed to account for that possibility?

He tried to make sense of the instructions sent to the fusion reactor and failed. He opened a communications link to Baxter. “Dennis, I’m looking at the console logs from the bridge.
Courageous’
Captain sent some commands to the fusion plant that make no sense to me. Hook up to my helmet feed and tell me what they look like to you.”

The other man was silent for a moment. “Are you kidding me? That isn’t even funny. How did you even manage to program that? I’d never have figured you had that kind of engineering theory.”

“I’m not pulling anyone’s leg. That’s what the Captain sent from this station. What does it mean?”

“It means that the Captain was a suicidal maniac,” Baxter said. “Those instructions should’ve sent the fusion reactor into overload in less than twenty minutes. It would’ve gone off like a nova. The only guess I can make is that a systems failure on this end disrupted the command.”

“It sure looks like they were determined not to fall into the hands of the rebels,” Jared said.

“I can see that. He set the fusion plant to explode and vented the atmosphere. Two very thorough deaths. I’m surprised he didn’t set any of the ship to ship missiles to explode.”

Jared’s eyes widened and he switched to the all hands frequency. “All weapons technicians to the ship’s missile tubes! I want to be sure that no one has tampered with the warheads. Make it fast.”

Baxter whistled. “What the hell is going on here, Jared?”

“Something really disturbing. Does this ship have more than one fusion plant?”

“Yes, but they all went down at some point. They probably deteriorated until the safeties shut them down.”

Jared thought furiously. “I want you to go over every system on this ship that might destroy it. Isolate them if you find any evidence of tampering. I don’t want the long dead hand of
Courageous’
Captain to take us with him.”

“Aye, sir.”

He sat there for a while thinking. No obvious explanations jumped out at him. After a bit, he shook himself out of his revere. The command logs might tell him a bit more of the final timeline. He brought it up and studied it more closely. Unfortunately, the console only logged commands sent from it.

He wondered why someone activated the distress beacon in the first place. It seemed counterintuitive. Perhaps it activated on its own after some predetermined period without instructions from the main computer.

He made his way around the other stations and brought them online. The tactical console had the times when they’d activated the screens and fired the weapons. It looked like the final battle lasted about an hour. It seemed as though that fight had taken place three weeks before they apparently killed themselves. There was a second battle a week earlier.

Helm indicated two activations of the flip drive between those battles. It also logged the tactical officer’s attempts to shift power to reactivate the screens when they failed.

Jared stared at the dead main screen for a while. Too bad the computer was offline. It probably logged both the battles in their entirety.

He needed to get the main computer online.

Or did he? This had happened half a millennium ago. The information locked away wasn’t relevant to their current situation. Yes, they needed to know. They just didn’t need to know this second. It wasn’t as though the rebels would come pouring through the flip point while he feverishly searched for the answers.

Baxter reported in shortly with the all clear. That removed the danger for now. Jared checked the air readings and popped his helmet. The icy atmosphere smelled musty, but breathable. He’d let the ship warm up and then send for the brains. Maybe they could shed some light on the situation.

He returned to the Captain’s console and explored for a while longer. He wanted to find any personal log, but there didn’t seem to be one. It was probably on the main computer.

What he did find was an icon on the main screen marked ‘play me’. He tapped it and the main screen at the front of the compartment flickered and came to life. A chill ran up Jared’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold. He was looking at the bridge of this ship as it had been. Only, live men and women filled the crew stations. All wore the strange headsets.

The Captain had dark hair with a hint a grey. He looked to be about Jared’s age.

“If you’re watching this message,” the dead man said, “then our attempts to destroy this ship have failed. I beseech you, stranger, to inter our dead as if they were your own brothers in arms. I commend them to you. I couldn’t have wished for braver companions in this terrible time.”

The dead Captain gestured around himself. “
Courageous
has served us well, and defended the Empire with honor. We drew off the remaining rebel battlecruisers so that our task force could escape without detection. We disabled one of the enemy ships two systems back and destroyed the other here.