Empire of Bones (16 page)

“Unfortunately, the bastards took out our flip drives and most of our life support reserves in the fight, damn the luck. Rather than wait for the air to grow foul and prolong our suffering, we’ve decided to end things swiftly. I’d prefer to overload one of the fusion plants, but the Chief Engineer and most of his staff are dead. I’ll make an effort to do so, but I have little confidence in my ability to do so. With some justification, since you’re seeing this message.”

The black humor made Jared shake his head.

Courageous’
Captain continued. “The backup plan is to vent the ship’s atmosphere. It isn’t the most desirable way to die, but it will be graciously quick.” The man rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I dearly hope you’re Fleet yourself, but that seems hard to imagine in these dark times. Whoever you are, if
Courageous
can serve your needs, please take her with of my blessing. Treat her like a Lady.”

The horror of the long ago situation again washed over Jared. This crew had known their end was inescapable. They’d chosen to die by their own hands rather than suffer. Most had gathered in the mess compartments for one last time, to be with their friends at the end. Others like the woman he’d found in her cabin had chosen to die alone.

The captain and his command crew had met their end at their stations.

He’d been through emergency decompression drills, including an actual loss of atmosphere. Unlike the common misconception, you didn’t swell up and explode like a balloon. Fleet trained them to open their mouths and let the air rush out so that their lungs survived undamaged. Then you suffocated if you couldn’t find the air.

The long dead captain straightened in his chair. “Well, our time is up. I apologize for leaving our home in such a mess. I again beseech you to take our remains home with you. Bury us with whatever ritual and honor you hold dear and accept my gratitude for your kindness.”

The long dead Fleet officer sat up straighter and brought his right fist to his chest. “I hope you’ll forgive the paraphrase, or at least understand it. Go tell the Empire, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to Imperial law, we lie.
Courageous
out.”

The screen blinked out and Jared brought his own fist up to return the salute. Much of Terran history had been lost to the ages, but he knew the story of Sparta and the 300. He couldn’t imagine a more fitting epitaph for these heroes.

Watching an autopsy wasn’t very high on Kelsey’s list of things to do, but somehow Doctor Stone convinced her to do exactly that. She promised herself she wouldn’t lose her lunch and that she’d get out of there as fast as she could. The very real appointment she had on
Best Deal
to look over some of the artifacts would make an outstanding excuse.

Stone had a man laid out before her on the diagnostic table. He had a sheet pulled up to his chin, but he still looked painfully vulnerable. He also looked like a long-dead corpse. The faint scent of decay hung in the air.

The doctor looked up at Kelsey. “You look a little queasy. If you’re afraid I’m going to cut this poor soul up you can rest easy. My scanners are more than capable of getting me all the data I need without violating him.”

The princess relaxed a little. “I suppose I was thinking exactly that.”

“I’ve been present when an old fashioned autopsy was conducted on a body donated to science, but unless something looks wildly out of place that won’t be necessary. If it were, I wouldn’t subject you to that.”

“Can you tell what killed him without going inside him?”

“I can tell you what killed him right now. He died from asphyxiation. The burst capillaries in his eyes are a dead giveaway, if you’ll pardon the unintended and wholly inappropriate pun. Really, I’m not looking for cause of death. I’m looking to see if there are any oddities.”

Kelsey felt herself frowning. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, but if we don’t scan some people we won’t know for sure. This, by the way, is the commanding officer of
Courageous
. I’d tell you his name, but we don’t have any idea what it is. Fleet uniforms didn’t have nametags back then, apparently. I can’t imagine how that worked.”

Kelsey examined the dead man’s face. Thankfully, someone had closed his eyes. She didn’t want to see any burst blood vessels. Judging his age wasn’t easy. With his body mummified as it was, he could’ve been any age at all. He did have a full head of dark hair that seemed to be only a little grey. Maybe in his late thirties or early forties?

Doctor Stone initialized the diagnostic bed and turned to face the large screen. It lit up with the outline of a human body. It began filling in with bones and internal organs almost immediately. Then the head began flashing yellow.

“What’s that?” Kelsey asked.

“An anomaly.” Stone tapped the head on the screen. It expanded to show more detail. Kelsey had a vague idea of what a human brain looked like, and she was fairly certain that one didn’t usually have a web of filaments running through it and several small discs implanted under the skull.

“Wow,” Stone said. “He’s got some kind of artificial implant in his brain. Three processors of some kind attached to the skull itself and ultra-thin wires branching throughout the brain matter.”

“What do they do? Why would anyone do that to themselves? And how could they do it without killing themselves?”

“I have no idea.” Stone expanded the view on his head until the filaments loomed large. “It looks like some kind of graphene derivative.”

“Graphene?”

Stone nodded. “It’s an old material, discovered on pre-spaceflight Terra. An engineer could tell you more, but it’s a crystalline allotrope of carbon that has 2-dimensional properties. It’s basically an atom thick lattice of carbon. Conductive and twenty times stronger than steel.

“They used it in all kinds of equipment, and so do we. That’s what makes communicator screens so thin and flexible. It’s a lot more useful than silicon electronics.”

The doctor examined the thin strand on the screen. “I never imagined it could be used inside someone’s brain, though. I don’t think this is exactly the same material, either. How did they even get it in there?”

She shook her head. “There’ll be time enough to research that. The rest of his body looks normal enough. Let’s look at a few more people before I call in some of the scientists to help explain this.”

Stone had her orderlies take the man’s body out and they brought a woman to replace him. Kelsey saw that the woman had the brain implants, but she also had extensive modification to the rest of her body. Her arms and legs especially. It looked like she had thick bands running through the muscles of her limbs. She had a cylinder behind her lungs, and inserts under the lenses in her eyes. There were things inside her ears and nose, too.

The doctor expanded the view on one of the woman’s legs. The bones also had a thin coating of something that seemed impermeable to the scanners.

“This is a lot more invasive,” Stone said. “These look like artificial muscles woven into her real musculature. Her bones have some kind of coating. Probably to reinforce them. I’ll wager she could kick like a grav lifter.” Stone checked her notes. “This woman was found wearing an armored body suit. Maybe she was a marine.”

Kelsey shuddered. “That’s awful. She was like a machine.”

“More like a cyborg—part machine-part human. Enhanced. These brain implants might allow for a better interface with something. Maybe each other, if there’s some kind of transmitter in there. I’d better call in the science teams before I open one of them up.”

“They can come back in the cutter I’m taking over to
Best Deal
, if it’s all the same to you. I’d rather not see the inside of someone.”

Stone nodded and smiled. “No problem. We’ll need to examine more of them to be sure exactly what we’re seeing. It’s not a pretty sight. Do you want the final report?”

“Please. This might tell us a lot about them. Thanks for the invitation to come down.”

Kelsey thought about what the brain implants meant all the way over to
Best Deal
. They almost had to be interfaces of some kind. Why they needed them was something of a mystery, though that probably explained the lack of nametags. They could recognize one another, even if they’d never met. They might even have been able to access some kind of biography on the fly. She’d have to think about the implications of that on a society for a while.

A number of Fleet crewmembers got off the cutter with her and an equal number of scientists waited to board. They chatted enthusiastically about how they were going to look into the brain implants.

Kelsey resisted another shudder and made her way to the labs. She only got lost three times. What she found was a huge room with lots of tables. Each had an assortment of objects covering it and there were a few dozen lab coated men and women examining things and making notes on their tablets.

Doctor Cartwright was among them, so she wandered over to his side. “Thanks for inviting me over, Doctor.”

The older man looked up and blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry, Ambassador. The time got away from me. I’d meant to meet you in the docking bay.”

“No need to apologize. I came over a little early. I couldn’t wait to see what sort of things you’re finding. And call me Kelsey.”

He looked as though he didn’t think that was a good idea, but he nodded. “As you wish. Please, call me Zephram. What we have here are many ordinary items and a few mysteries. They haven’t removed any of the larger artifacts from
Courageous
yet. The half-dozen small fighter craft in a bay amidships has the Fleet people quite excited.”

The older man gestured to the tables around them. “We have items ranging from tablets to toothbrushes. All appear slightly different from those we use. Oh, and weapons. The vacuum has preserved everything in an almost pristine state.”

“What kind of weapons?” The marines had taken her to their shooting range. She wasn’t anywhere close to being an expert, but she at least knew the general classes of weapons.

“A number of projectile weapons and some that defy a precise explanation. Come take a look.”

He moved to a table across the room where they’d laid out a number of pistols in neat rows. At a glance, Kelsey could see two models. One had an opening for a projectile and an exceptionally thick barrel. The second had no opening at all. The barrel looked like a thick canister half again longer than the projectile weapons and a little thicker than the weapons themselves.

“Are they safe to pick up?”

“Yes. Both kinds used power packs that have completely discharged over the years. Still, do an old man a favor and don’t pull the trigger. Just in case.”

She picked up one of the projectile weapons and searched for the release to the magazine. There was no slide on the barrel, so it didn’t look like it ejected a casing. That alone made it different from the marine weapons.

Once she had the release identified, she pointed the weapon at the floor and pressed the catch. The magazine resisted, but finally came free. The bullets inside weren’t bullets at all. They were metallic darts with fins in a clear gel-like blob. The blobs seemed all melted together, but Kelsey wagered they were once separate.

“Do you have a knife?”

“There are some on one of the other tables, but I have a plastic pick. That should do.” He stepped away and came back with little tool that would do the job.

“Thanks.” She used the pointed end to pry out one of the bullets. Doctor Cartwright had put thin gloves on and held them cupped to catch it.

He held it up after it came free. “Interesting. No propellant. It looks like a tungsten alloy. With a power pack and this thick barrel, the weapon may use electromagnetic propulsion. I’d imagine it discards this gel sabot in flight almost at once. The small fins would provide admirable stabilization for the projectile.”

“Wow! That sounds very high tech. How fast do you think it could go?”

He shrugged. “We’ll be able to make an educated guess once we disassemble one of these. Certainly fast enough to be effective. Perhaps five time the speed of sound. Maybe more. This metal almost certainly armor piercing as well.”

“You might want to have one of the marines consult. Their armorer has quite an extensive knowledge of projectile weapons.”

“An excellent idea.” He put the bullet into a small bag and set it on the table. He then picked up one of the other pistols. “This has no way for a projectile to be expelled. The thick barrel suggests some kind of electromagnetic force, but it isn’t a laser. We use those in our labs and this is not the magical hand-held laser pistol. Whatever it does can’t be good, though. Otherwise, why make it into a weapon?”

“True enough. Did they have larger weapons?”

“Certainly. We have some on the next table. The projectile weapons look similar to the pistols here, but there is something new.”

He led her to the next table and showed her examples of the two rifles. One looked like the projectile pistol, but the other had an exceptionally wide barrel. Almost a like a rocket nozzle from the early space program.

She found the magazine and ejected it. The bullets looked more like metal pellets rather than projectiles. There was no way they could be aerodynamic enough to do much damage, especially with a barrel as open as this was.

Cartwright picked the pellet up and examined it closely. “Tritium. We use small pellets of a similar nature to conduct plasma experiments. It’s put into a chamber and converted to a high energy state by lasers.”

She wasn’t about to stare down the barrel of an unknown weapon, but she looked inside the bell from an angle. “If it converted to plasma, what would happen to the barrel?”

“It would be destroyed. So would anything within a few meters of the unfortunate soul.”

Kelsey whistled soundlessly. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the makers of this weapon wanted to keep the person firing it from being turned into a cinder.”

The older man felt the bell. “This might be resistant, but it can’t survive direct exposure to plasma.” He then made her heart shoot into her throat by staring directly into the barrel. “There are some projectors in here. Half are lasers and the other half are unknown to me. The interior of the weapon appears coated in iridium. That would help.”