Chapter 3, part 1
“How is it looking lieutenant?” Captain Asteios asked as the image on his console flickered briefly.
“Good so far, Sir.” Marine Lieutenant Josef Allerberger replied as he examined the airlock the engineers had finished setting up almost an hour ago. “I have to admit that they did a good job, for boy scouts.”
“I will pass the compliment.” Captain Asteios replied with a chuckle. “What do you think of the blast doors?”
“Not a design I have seen before, opening by sliding into the top and bottom instead of the usual left and right. There are some obvious manual switches and even a couple of handles, at the ideal height for human use as well.” The marine said as he and his team examined the blast doors up close. “If I had to wager a guess I would say that the locking mechanism is both magnetic and hydraulic in nature.”
“Do you think that you can get it open?”
“I don’t know, Sir. It looks like it doesn’t get any power, so pressing the switch won’t do anything. I think that we may be able to open up its control mechanism and see if we can get anything done through there.” The marine replied.
“Keep working at it; let me know if you make any progress.” The captain said and closed the channel. “Lieutenant Grant, do you have anything?”
“No Sir, no reply to our repeated hails and no changes on the readings from the alien ship.” The sensors officer replied.
Matveyev was parked 200 meters above the spot in the canyon where the alien ship was hid and had been there for more than 12 hours, sending repeated hails to the ship below them for as long as they had been there.
“Sir, I believe that enough time has passed without contact that we have to consider the alien ship to be abandoned. We have taken every conceivable approach to communicate with anyone who may still be alive inside, including numerous attempts to establish an interface with the ship’s systems.” His second in command, Commander Albert Summers said as he leaned over his shoulder.
“I know commander but out contact protocols are clear.”
“And we have to take into account our secondary set of orders, Sir.” The commander insisted.
“I am fully aware of those orders. The ship below us however is neither a drifting hulk nor a ‘misplaced’ piece of equipment. Furthermore the active gravity and the still pressurized parts of the ship are clear indications that survivors may still be onboard.” The captain replied.
“There are ways to make sure that there will be no living crew aboard, Sir.” The commander said with a hushed voice.
“That thought has crossed my mind commander but I won’t turn that thought into a course of action.” He replied with the same hushed tone while turning to look the commander straight in the eyes, the commander just nodded and went back to his post without saying anything.
It was the impossible scenario that their superiors had only given the vaguest of instructions. When the eight of them, the four captains of the scout ships and their XOs, were briefed about their secondary sets of orders one of them had joked about what they should do if they found something that was only ‘lightly’ guarded. ‘Do what’s best for mankind’ was the answer that no one laughed with. The orders were pretty straightforward, if any of the scout ships somehow managed to secure any piece of advanced technology then they would abandon their primary mission and return with all due haste. What were the odds that a barely armed Bennet scout ship would be in a position to overpower anyone who held advanced enough technology that would warrant their immediate return? Of all the possible scenarios they went through in their heads this was the one that all eight of them considered ridiculous.
He didn’t find the universe’s sense of irony amusing now that he was looking at a seemingly abandoned warship. Being honest with himself he couldn’t tell at first which course of action should be the one to be taken; the letter of his orders was to pursue contact with one of the two combatants of this interstellar war and attempt to come at a preliminary understanding as to their outlook towards humanity. The spirit of their orders however was to make anything humanly possible to ensure that humanity survives the coming storm. If that meant promising something to one of the two sides so that humanity would be protected then they were free to do so. However what should they do now that they had an advanced alien warship all for themselves? The letter of their orders dictated to pursue contact with any possible survivors and offer whatever aid possible; the spirit of the orders however dictated to plunder the ship and run straight back to Earth filled to the brim with advanced weapons and technology. The choice itself didn’t become easier by the fact that the ship in question was probably a Loroi vessel, part of the same war machine that destroyed everything in the star system they were currently in.
The course of action he chose was to stick with the letter of his orders, not because he was a stickler for rules but because it was the right thing to do. It was one of the old unspoken naval traditions that were still kept, to turn a blind eye to the plight of castaways was not the mark of a sailor no matter what the sea may be. The Scout Corps were a small; elite explorer group but they were still sailors and he would make sure that they would act like that.
He turned his attention back to the alien ship and brought back the first pictures that they had taken of it. It looked nothing like the Umiak ships he had seen in what little footage the Orgus refugees had of them. It had a green paint job, with silver lines crisscrossing across the hull; and if someone looked at it from below they would clearly see ‘Silverspear’ written in trade in the port and starboard front sections of the ship. Much like the way humans wrote the names on their ship’s bows. It was also obvious that the ship had seen some heavy fighting, the damage was extensive and some parts of the hull had clearly been blown away. With its size and numerous weapon mounts it was at the very least a heavy destroyer and if the crew complement was anything like a TCA ship then it must have had at least 200 crew members.
At first the ship looked abandoned, no one replied to their hails and other attempts at communication. Nothing even happened when they were installing an airlock at one of the damaged compartments that was right next to the still pressurized part of the ship. It still had some power however, artificial gravity was still on and if that system was on, then odds were that life support would also be on as well.
That’s where things didn’t make any sense, if they had even a minimal amount of power why didn’t they reply to their hails?
The Orgus had shown them the basic emergency systems that were standard on all of their trading partners and basic radio capabilities was among them. Even if the emergency radio system was damaged wouldn’t the surviving crew of the ship attempt to fix it?
Some speculated that if the ship was indeed a Loroi vessel then their telepathic capabilities would make radio redundant since they would immediately be able to talk directly to the heads of those they wanted to. If that was the case then why didn’t they do it already?
In the end everyone had to concede that there were too many unknowns and the only thing that they were left with was to board the ship and look for any survivors the hard way; a course of action that presented a whole other range of problems.
The first thing that they had to do was to build an airlock around the point of entry so that any atmosphere inside the ship wouldn’t be vented the moment they entered the still pressurized parts of the ship. Thankfully their emergency supplies had the necessary equipment and parts to build an airlock and it only took them a few hours to find a suitable point of entry and have the makeshift airlock installed.
The boarding team itself would also be a problem in any other situation. Thankfully the marine detachments on all scout vessels for this mission were carefully selected and trained for first contact situations, much like everyone else on the ship. The problem was that they were boarding to investigate a warship that had seen heavy combat recently. There was not telling how the survivors would react if unknown aliens suddenly boarded the ship.
The possibility that the marines would be attacked the moment they would make contact with someone was very real. Their standing orders were to show restraint and attempt to defuse the situation but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have the means to defend themselves if their position became attenable. The problem was that if they were armed and armored then the survivors would certainly see it as a hostile act. The marines themselves volunteered to wear standard space suits and carry only light weapons that would be holstered and at ease unless they were attacked.
“Sir, I believe that we have found a way to open the blast doors.” Marine lieutenant Allerberger said bringing him back to the here and now.
“What have you got lieutenant?”
“We think that we have identified the locking mechanism; isolating it and powering it up with what we have should be simple enough.” The marine replied.
“Do it.”
After a few minutes of work the blast doors opened a couple of centimeters without making a sound and the ship’s internal atmosphere rushed into the small compartment that they had sealed and installed the airlock at.
“No leak, the boy scouts really did a good job.” One of the marines commented.
“Weird…” Another one said out loud as he checked his equipment.
“What is it Gomez?” Lieutenant Allerberger asked.
“The atmosphere sir, we can breath it.”
“First the Orgus, now whoever these guys are. The universe must really like our type of atmosphere.” Lieutenant Allerberger joked as he peeked through the narrow opening the open blast doors offered. “Still, don’t even think about opening your suit to take a breath, no telling what’s in the air.”
“Can you see anything lieutenant?” Captain Asteios asked.
“It looks like a corridor sir and a wide one at that. There are also some faint red lights lit, much like our own emergency lighting.” The lieutenant replied.
“Can you get those doors open?”
“Hood and Westwood, grab a hold and push the bottom half downwards, Gomez and Venkov push the top upwards.” It was surprisingly easy for the four of them to open the blast doors the rest of the way, without even making much of a ruckus.
“It’s a corridor sir.” Lieutenant Alleberger confirmed as he and his team went past the door.
“One side is closed off by another blast door but the other turns inward.” The lieutenant said as he looked at both ends of the corridor, the suit's camera transmitting everything that he show with the few expected flickers here and there due to interference.
“Any sign of the crew?”
“No sir.”
Captain Asteios sighed. He had hoped that the survivors, if there were any, would make contact the moment the marines would step inside the ship. Now it looked like they would have to go looking for them.
Chapter 3, Part 2:
http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 611#p18611