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Traveller - From The Void Part 2

Thursday, 10 November 2011 10:38 | Written by Andy Simmons |

Session 2 Played 03/11/2011

Six weeks later Lazarus was summoned to the Imperial Embassy on Wonderay to see Admiral Hamilton "Bingo" Ocade. The Admiral had been in the Five Sisters subsector for decades and the two of them knew each other quite well as he had served with the Karin planetary navy for years. Lazarus had been on Wonderay working as a private contractor and helping with the rescue and rebuilding efforts.

"Ah, Lieutenant," Bingo barked addressing Lazarus by his former rank, waving him to a chair. "Got a job you. We've got a freelance salvage team out in the void working for us. They're about three light weeks away doing a salvage operation on an old Diaspora period capital ship of some form." Lazarus' mind wandered back to his youth when he worked in salvage and spent a lot of times in space bars. "Its a bit of a hush-hush operation." Bingo continued. "We want you to go and take some black boxes and stick 'em on that hulk. You'll have a communications expert with you to set them up. You'll need to plot a good astrogation jump and I want a man on the scene I can trust.

"The woman we've recruited as communications expert was sacked from Oculus security after the disaster. Scapegoat, mind you, complete and utter scapegoat. She's from Karin like yourself. And she took over during the disaster. Someone had to be blamed so she got the chop. And, we've hired a scout ship to you over there. But you know what those scout wallahs are like? No discipline."

"Absolutely, sir." Lazarus replied. "What's the over time code?"

Bingo shrugged. He had "men" to deal with details like that. "Its all part of your retainer, old chap. Don't worry, just put your expenses forms in at the end. Make sure they're suitably, um, 'energetic' and I'll see what I can do."

"Of course." Lazarus replied. "Naturally."

Lazarus met the rest of the crew shortly afterwards. Elizabeth Dirkes, the communications specialist, was a petit woman with striking red hair that was even brighter than the normal Karin red. She was overseeing the loading of six crates that all had imperial security seals. Peter Kingston, the pilot, met them in the hold and gave them a quick tour of the ship. As the S1 Scout ship was the most common vessel in Imperial space they had all flown in numerous models so it was very familiar. Peter explained that he had served in the scout service then become a trader and he had left his last posting after reaching the rank of third officer.

Lazarus could see that the underside of the scout ship had taken some recent scrapes from a bad landing but on the whole she was solid and reliable. When he saw Lazarus looking at the scrapes he said that they were only "superficial".

After taking off from Wonderay and thrusting out the system, away from the star's gravity well, the three of them settled down and discovered that they were all well matched intellectually and enjoyed stimulating conversation. This was luxury often lacking over long interstellar voyages. They initially chatted about sports and recent but quickly moved onto more highbrow subjects.

Lazarus plotted the jump in his head and checked his calculations with the computer. Dead on. He then went back to reading his book.

Once they were far enough away from the star jumped.

A week a later they reappeared in normal space within a light minute of their destination. Despite only travelling a fraction of a parsec they still had to spend a full week in jump. Peter and Lazarus both ran a sensors scan for the hulk and the modified Xpress Boat Tender the salvage crew were using for their salvage work. They both saw that the tender boat was not next to the old hulk but Peter detected an ion trail of manoeuvre drives. "Something must have drawn it off." Lazarus commented, dismissively.

As they drew closer to the hulk they scanned it with all active sensors and saw that it had been partially stripped out over the last couple of weeks. Peter determined that the hulk had once been an ancient Solomani colony ship. They could see large score marks from battle, as if it had been sliced over by a high-energy laser; which, in fact, it had. The metal armour had melted all around the strikes. The hulk itself had an almost animalistic feel to it. There was a central spine that ran its entire length with large structural supports almost looked like ribs in the way that they curved inwards.

"We've got to put sensors on it." Peter announced staring at the wreck. He had also determined that he would leave the salvage crew's supply of 34 tons of ice and other essentials floating with the salvaged material if they could not make contact. The ice was useful as a source of hydrogen and oxygen.

Floating within five miles were large sections of the hulk that had been salvaged; modular turrets that were intact, collections of deck plating, engine compartments and more. All were placed in an orderly arrangement and tagged with navigation beacons that pulsed light and radio waves every three seconds to confirm their position. It was all arranged for easy collection.

Lazarus turned to Peter. "Well, you're the captain, old boy."

Peter flew the scout ship over to the hulk and it came to rest next to the wreck. Lazarus had examined the sensors that had been stored in two of the staterooms but they had state of the art Imperial anti tamper seals so he had left them alone. From his years serving in the navy he knew that they were sensor drones. They would be deployed in a fixed position and collect data to be either transmitted to base or collected by a passing ship. Why would someone put these highly expensive sensors in interstellar space was beyond him.

Dirkes suited up to install the sensors on the hulk at pre-set positions and Lazarus EVAed with her to assist with the installation. They both had slight issues in the zero gravity but took their time and installed the drones successfully. Peter put the scout into position and hovered nearby to assist if necessary.

They took their time installing the sensors onto the hull. Whilst they were fixing them into place Lazarus and Dirkes saw that the ship must have once contained hundreds of thousands of cryoberths, consistent with a colony vessel, but they had all been removed. The berths had been removed a long time ago as the spaces they had once inhabited were pitted with micrometeorite impacts.

Strangely, the extremely valuable terraforming cargo was still in situ. The salvage crew had placed Imperial markers on the cargo, earmarking it for the Imperium.

Peter, whose knowledge of the law was sketchy, believed that he should not be there but Dirkes knew that as the salvage team had abandoned the hulk, the laws of salvage applied; except for those sections that had been allocated to the Imperium or had been removed already. This meant that they were free to collect souvenirs if they wished.

Lazarus was not curious about the hulk and did not want to endanger the retainer that the navy paid him and Dirkes did not want to abuse the situation. Peter, however, was curious to explore the hulk so the other two followed him.

The hulk was vast but had received substantial battle damage and subsequent impacts from meteorites. They determined that the vessel could potentially be fixed up but the economic cost would be far in excess of its value.

"Its always worth having a look around." Peter said. "Do a bit of scavenging."

"I'll stay with the ship and keep an eye on the sensors." Dirkes announced, leaving the two men to explore and scavenge.

In their wanderings Lazarus found a cybernetic arm in an area of heavy combat damage. It was metallic, armour plated and looked like it had been blown off using high explosive. Although frozen solid, the wearer’s original bone and nerve were visible at the stump. He examined the limb and, with his knowledge of robotics, determined that the arm was highly advanced; possibly surpassing even current cybernetics and robotics.

"Is it military or civilian?" Asked Peter.

Lazarus ignored him and continued to examine his find. He could tell, due to its location that it had been there since the hulk had been attacked. He knew that the Imperium was governed by corporations and had visions of dropping the arm on some executive's desk and writing his own cheque.

Nearby Peter found a heavy automatic bolt rifle that had been emptied. He took it with him.

In the next section Lazarus found some improved battle dress TL14 that was still packed in its carrying case and Peter found a portable medical scanner.

It was as they were examining their finds that the two of them determined that the medical scanner had not been on the ship since its destruction. It dated from a later age, but was still old; if very advanced. It was Vilani technology, not Solomani.

Nearby Lazarus found a grav parachute that was of Solomani construction. It was in the last locker of a row that had been melted by intense heat.

Whilst Lazarus was examining his find, Peter noticed that they were near the backup bridge. The ship's bridge had been badly damaged and the salvage team, looking for data and schematics on the ship, had already pulled out all its technology. The backup bridge, hidden behind massive blast doors, seemed untouched by either the salvage team or the original battle.

Lazarus found the manual release system for the doors and the two of them spent almost an hour fixing the damage and cranking it open.

Inside there were data storage banks, a computer system that was totally dead and controls for the massive vessel. To one side were eight cryo-containers. Five were open and empty but three were still sealed and their status indicated that they still contained occupants.

"Christ!" Whispered Lazarus. "There's actually people still in these from ancient times."

Peter suggested that they pull the power cores from the sensors they had installed and use them to power the cryounits' systems. Lazarus felt that it was not on to steal the very sensors they had been paid to install and he also knew about the anti-tamper settings on them. Also the scout ship would have more than enough power for their needs.

The cryo-containers were more advanced than the standard modern cold berths as they contained their own automatic revival systems. These were designed to automatically revive the crew prior to the revival of the colonists or anyone else without the aid of a physician or cryo technician.

They spent a few hours stripping out the computer systems and removing all eight of the cryo-containers as they were self contained units and therefore very valuable. It was awkward removing them from the backup bridge through the hatch and wrecked hull but then it was a simple task to get them into the scout ship's cargo bay.

As they were moving the last of the cryo-chambers into their cargo bay Lazarus said: "Hold on. I've just had a thought. We don't know what the Empire's interest is in this ship. And, for all I know, its these." He indicated the five cryo-chambers. "It might well be the hull of the ship, I don't know. But their interest might be in whatever's in the cryo-chambers. So lifting them off and sticking them in your cargo hold might make them a little upset."

"But they don't know about them." Peter responded.

"I appreciate that we've done nothing illegal." Lazarus replied. They discussed the issue and decided that no one could know that the chambers had been there as the backup bridge had been totally sealed shut and untouched.

Once they were back on the scout vessel Lazarus attached the old Solomani data storage devices and, after some tweaking he downloaded its contents. The recent events log showed that the ship had been attacked over two millennia ago. The initial salvos had been so devastating that the hastily revived crew had only been able put up a token defence before being killed. A few of the sensors had survived the first strikes and recorded data on the attacking ships. The smaller vessels in the attacking fleet were exact duplicates of the unknown ships that had taken refugees from Oculus.

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