EliteCommander

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

The next deck that Light reached down the ladder had three doors accessible from the central corridor. All three were shut tight, and two of them were unpowered, much like on the top deck. However, the third door, which led in the direction of the bow of the ship, had an active control panel. The module was still powered. Though, investigating the status of the module through the panel revealed some rather curious contradictions right away. The module was still powered and the doors still shut, but there was no emergency lockdown. It looked like it had been ended manually; in fact, the module’s interior showed as being depressurized. There was no security or safety measures to bypass, so opening the door was as simple as pressing the button.

The door opened into what one could immediately see were the crew quarters. It was an altogether cramped space for the number of people it was meant to accommodate. Everything about it was meant to be space-efficient while keeping the center hall as free as possible for foot traffic. The floor space of the module had a rough “T” shape, with the junction being on the near side to Light. To his left and right were the bunks, four of them in total, built into the walls of the module. On the far side of the module, the hallway leading towards the front of the ship had a closed door on either side, likely a small restroom and shower.

The module was just as messy and chaotic as the others Light had seen so far and there was plenty to scrounge through, but of course, what he would see most immediately were the bodies. There were two out in the open, both Human. Although he could see a few environment suits tucked away in the corners, neither of the bodies were wearing them. The bodies were swollen and showed the usual signs that most species presented with vacuum exposure, but there was more to it. At a glance, Light could also see reddened, burned-looking patches of skin, signs of bleeding, and patches of lost hair. There was no doubt plenty to investigate, but it was a gruesome sight right away.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“We’ll be fine. Crates down here got jostled around a lot, but the ship is mostly in one piece. If you happen to find the manifest anywhere, it could speed things up, but we’ll find it eventually. There will of course be a copy on the ship’s computer, but the company would also send a copy of the manifest on a read-only drive. That would probably be with the captain.” There was a short delay from Jess. “If you actually want to find them…”

In any case, the halls on the top deck were empty, and as Light would find quickly enough both of the closed doors were sealed, but unpowered. There was a manual release that allowed him to force open one of the doors, which took him, or rather his suit, a bit of effort to slide it open. Inside, first thing that he would notice was that the small room was also unpressurized. Just as Jess had suggested it might be, it looked like it was a storage room, and unsurprisingly, the whole room was a mess. It seemed like more than one box had not been sealed tightly enough to withstand the crash, so hand tools and spare parts were scattered all over the floor. It was chaotic and hard to judge much at a glance, but one thing he did notice was that one of the drawers of a container built into the module itself was open. Its contents were some of the more important repair tools on a ship. Several of them were gone, but the drawer itself would had to have been unlatched in order to open to begin with.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Jess chimed in with whatever helpful information she could remember. “Let’s see...it’s hard to know the exact layout these kinds of ship are going to use, but if they follow a standard layout, the other rooms up on that floor should be storage. Maintenance storage for tools, equipment, that sort of thing. The mid-deck, on the floor beneath you, should have living quarters, mess hall, all the habitation modules. Oh, and cockpit access at the front. It’s going to take us a bit down here to search through these crates. I don’t have their cargo manifest, so I’ve mostly just got to guess on what their labeling system means. We’ll try to search through as quick as we can.”

“You mean I am searching while you’re sitting there ‘supervising’.” Senjen interrupted.

“Tomato, tomato.” Jess said, an idiom that the translators absolutely did not convey.

At the end of the short hallway, through the melted door, was the main vertical corridor between the decks of the ship. It was circular and comfortably wide for a Human, with a ladder in case it needed to be traversed in a gravity well. On his current floor, there was a hallway straight ahead leading to a door, along with another branching off to his right. Looking down the ladder, he could see three hallways branching away on the floor below, and two on the lowest deck. Based on its positioning, one of the doors on the lowest floor likely led into the cargo hold. Save for the melted one behind him, every door Light could see was shut tight, but if they were powered down, these types of interior doors would have a manual release.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Don’t know if I see the point, but if that’s what you want, sure.” Jess answered. “Not really a ‘meltdown’ exactly. That’s something that happens more to fission reactors. Fusion reactors tend to just shut down when something goes wrong, but if there was spacetime warping in the core, then there would have been one hell of an energy surge first.”

Jess finally got up to join in on helping Senjen get into the cargo bay. While he had actually been able to handle getting into the cargo bay on his own, it was easier to splice the power cables to his own power source with some help. Once linked in, he could power the cargo bay door. He did not even need to ask Jess for help in bypassing the lockdown to unseal the door. Since it was being activated without a central connection, the computer booted into factory settings. Senjen noted that there was no release of air when the cargo door unsealed, which meant the interior was already a vacuum.

Meanwhile, Light did not have to widen the largest of the gaps too much in order to squeeze through into the reactor module. When the cargo ramp hit the ground under the heightened gravity, he would feel the impact reverberate through the hull.

“Ah, looks like a mess down here. Looks like some of the crates got knocked loose in the crash. Most of what they were carrying was mining gear, but what we’re looking for should be secure near the back. Just got to get through the rest of this junk.” Jess informed him.

Through the breach, Light was able to drop down into the module’s maintenance corridor. The reactor itself was roughly donut-shaped at the center of the module, with the corridor encircling it. Right away, he could see he could see a massive hole in the side of the reactor that looked to have been made with intense heat. Indeed, there were signs of what had once been molten metal re-solidifying on surfaces all around the hall. Just opposite the hole in the reactor, there was a hole in the module’s wall as well. There was a tank inside with a hole blasted out from the top, judging by the metal bent outwards around the opening. Scattered around as well, both near and far from the signs of the blast, parts of the hull were also “twisted” in a rather unnatural fashion.

At the very least, it did not look like it would be difficult to get out of the reactor module. The door to the hallway leading out was “closed”, but with a massive hole melted in its right side.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen did just as Light asked. Most ships had external maintenance access for components near the hull, in case there was damage that needed to be repaired. They also needed ways for potential rescue teams to force their way inside, in case of emergencies, so there were a few options for Senjen to search for. He was not familiar with this specific model of cargo module off-hand, but he did have enough knowledge to know roughly what he was looking for. There were quite a few panels on the exterior of such a large module, but sensibly, it was one near to the door’s mechanisms that he was looking for.

Overall, it was not a difficult task for Senjen to figure out which power conduit led to the door, and compared to powering his shield generator, operating a few motors to lower a door would be nothing. Of course, he would also need to unseal the door and disengage the internal locks, which would mean powering the locking mechanism as well and hoping it was not under a security lockdown. Though, even if it was, these modular ships had some well-known security issues. If disconnected from central computer control and forcibly shut down, entire modules could be rebooted to factory settings without authorization.

Senjen was investigating the wiring when Light questioned him. Being that Jess had known the kind of ship they were searching for, she had brought compatible cables. He would just need to splice it into his own power core, but simply transferring power was not the most complicated of tasks. “Yeah, I found a panel down here. Should be able to power it. Do you want to go in through the door down here, or the breach up there? Anything dangerous up there for you, like radiation or something? I didn’t even think fusion reactors could explode.”

“They can’t really, under any normal conditions.” Jess chimed in, though she was still very much just resting nearby. “An unstable FTL bubble can cause spacetime warping, though. In a reactor, that can mean an uptick in quantum tunneling events, which means more fusion, which means a sudden, violent burst of energy. Anyways, tritium is a radioisotope, but it releases beta particles. They can’t even penetrate skin, much less our suits. We should be fine either way, but we’ll probably need to open up the cargo door anyway if we want to get our salvage out of there.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

There might have been a moment, however brief, where Jess found Light’s offer tempting purely to get a break from having to fight her own weight on every step. The climb out of the crater had not been long, and had not been too steep, but between that and the walk to the ship, she felt like she had just climbed a mountain. As soon as they had finally arrived, she came to a stop and sat herself down in the dirt. “I can handle myself, but I am taking a break. Why don’t you two look for a way in? I’m sure you can handle it.”

Overall, the freighter seemed large from where they were standing. It was almost twice the size of Light’s ship, but for these massive corporations, even that was on the small side for their cargo haulers. It was all of Human make, with by far the largest of its components being its cargo bay. These sorts of ships were known for having the bare minimum in living space and other crew accommodations, in favor of being able to haul more cargo at once and get the best returns per trip. Each hull component of the ship was simple, blocky in shape, and all completely modular. Each room of the ship, whether it be a simple habitation module or vital ship system, was designed to be easily removed, replaced, or added on to as needed. Companies that operated across wide regions of space had need of ships that could handle a wide variety of conditions, but buying a single model of ship that could handle everything would be expensive, as would buying and maintaining many different models simultaneously. Having completely modular vessels allowed them to essentially assemble their own specialized ships while having a wide stock of standardized, interchangeable parts.

It was all very efficient, even if it did make their freighters look like flying bricks.

On this arrangement of modules, there looked to be exactly one normal entrance into the ship, which was the cargo ramp. There was also a secondary escape hatch on top of the cockpit module, but both were still locked down tight. Peering in through the cockpit windows was awkward from ground level, but at a cursory glance, it seemed empty and unpowered. The main reactor was certainly offline, and no module they could access from the outside seemed to be receiving any backup power, though if an internal module was being powered, they would not necessarily be able to tell from outside. There were no active atmosphere leaks in any module, which of course meant that either there were no hull breaches, or the affected modules were already fully depressurized. The cargo bay comprised the largest amount of the hull by area, so it was the most likely to be breached, but a breach was also most likely to be on the underside, which they could not currently reach.

Given that the freighter did not have airlocks, for safety, there was also no easy external manual release on either entrance, so either they needed power, or to break their way in. So far, there had been no attempts to contact them, so either their arrival had not been noticed, or there was no one to notice them.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

The three met up in the cargo bay after making their preparations. Senjen had been the first to make it there, and he felt like he had been waiting for half an hour before Jess finally came staggering in. She was suited up for a vacuum, but it did not provide any assistance to movement, and it looked like every step was a workout for her in double gravity. The suit was not overly bulky, as instead of air pressure, it dynamically constricted around the body to counter low pressure. Only the helmet created a rigid, sealed environment.

Senjen was going to tease Jess for being late, but seeing how she was already showing signs of struggling against gravity, he decided to go easy on her. Meanwhile, he looked to be moving around almost normally by comparison. His frame could handle the extra resistance without any real sign of difficulty. After a moment, he eyed the sack of equipment Jess was lugging around. Hey, uh...why don’t you let me carry that?”

Jess was normally someone who did not rely on others for assistance, but even this short walk was going to feel like a hike in this place. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” She sighed before taking a look up at Light. “Park all the way out here if you want, but you’re gonna be the one dragging the crates back to the crater. Let’s get to it.”

The cargo hold depressurized, and the whole world went silent. The cargo ramp lowered, and they felt the thud of its impact vibrating through their feet, or equivalent appendages. They stepped out onto the dull grey dust of the planet’s surface, and made an immediate right turn towards the shallowest incline they could spot to exit the crater.

To natural eyesight, this side of the planet was in near complete darkness, save from what light came from the, admittedly brilliant, night sky above. But, that bit of light was enough for the visual filters in both Senjen’s eyes and Jess’ helmet to give them adequate night vision.

“Radio check. All good, Light? All good, Jess?” Senjen spoke up.

Jess answered back quickly. “All good, Sen.” She stopped at the foot of the crater’s edge, looking up at the long climb ahead of her she was going to have to make at 2G. “Hate you, Light.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Senjen gave a quick look at what their sensors were telling them about the environment below. “Let’s see...temperature on the dark side is not too far above absolute zero, but no atmosphere, so the vacuum will be a fine insulator for you. Initial scans show the planet’s crust is rich in heavy elements and metals. Very dense, overall. It’s gravitational pull is a little under twice that of Korit, so be ready to deal with that. Radiation on the daylight side is intense, as expected, but the planet shields the far side pretty well. Your suits should be more than enough for the background radiation, and it’s not nearly enough to fry my electronics.” He spun his body around to face Jess. “You do have a suit, right?”

“Obviously. I was expecting this job to be EVA salvage; I packed it with my things.” Jess moved past Senjen, then braced herself against the nearest wall before shoving Senjen out of the way. Since he was unsupported, she was actually able to push his relatively massive body away. On his part, he simply accepted his new, slowly spinning trajectory. “Damn, don’t like that gravity, though. Those crates ain’t exactly lightweight. Would’ve been easy to push ‘em through space, but now they’re going to be twice as heavy.”

“Then I guess it’s good you brought a friend with more muscle than a Tindrel and unlimited stamina.” Senjen answered. He made a motion as if flexing, despite the fact that his plating was rigid.

This time, Jess did not mirror his levity. “Maybe, depending on the state of the ship. Could still be hard to get it out if it’s a wreck. Though if it’s too much of a wreck, then the cargo probably wouldn’t even be intact to begin with.”

“Well, let’s not think like that. Like Light said, it might even end up as a rescue mission. If not...do we even need the crates? Could we just unpack them and move over the cargo like that?” He asked.

Jess paused a moment, staring at the console. “Eh, could work. Our cargo hold has enough radiation shielding for the components. And it’s not like we’ll be sticking around long after we have them. I guess we’ll just see what it looks like on the ground.”

---

Heading down to the planet’s surface, they could see that the freighter had at least been in a position to choose a sensible landing site. They had set down in a wide, flat, open field that was more dusty than rocky. That said, it still looked to have been a hard landing. There was some debris from the ship scattered in a short line behind it where it had slid across the ground, but it was mostly intact.

“Okay, not...the worst.” Jess remarked. “Ship doesn’t look like it’s powered, though. No distress signal, nothing.”

Now that they were under the rather substantial pull of gravity, Senjen kept himself on the floor. He could still climb even under these circumstances, but his falling body would be about twice as dangerous now if he made a mistake. “We probably wouldn’t be able to detect it if they were rationing power to a safe room. Not from here, anyway. If we’re going in to investigate, we should probably be careful not to crack them open to the vacuum.”

It was up to Light where to land and what other precautions to take. The area around the crash site was all open and flat, while the nearest surface feature was a crater about half a kilometer away. Although they had not detected any yet, they did need to be cautious about other potential scavengers or pirates in the system.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Jess blinked in near-disbelief as she looked over what Light had uncovered. “Yeah, that’s...traces of tritium, deuterium, a bit of helium. That’s a reactor leak, alright.” She had helped him pour through the sensor data, but even she had to admit it had been mostly him. Even though they had the flight path of their target to narrow their search, it had still been a lot of empty space for them to cover. Jess clearly had not expected results nearly this quickly. “Damn, Light, just snatch the needle right out of that haystack, why don’t ya?”

Jess leaned back from the console she was at and just looked out of the window into the void. Without any spectrum filters to show light outside the visible spectrum, the neutron star was hardly even visible at this distance. With no significant sources of light to drown them out, their view of the stars was spectacular. “I think you’re right, and I think we’ve got the story of what happened here. The freighter pilot’s course brought them just a bit too close to the pulsar at just the wrong time. Something hit the star, asteroid maybe. And with a neutron star, an impact on that superdense degenerate matter causes some violent backlash. They pass through a huge burst of high-energy radiation that pulls them out of FTL and overloads some of their systems. Uncontrolled deceleration from FTL can be accompanied by unpredictable spacetime warping that can cause internal and external hull damage, so...probably more than a few, really. At minimum, they get a reactor leak. Might have even been operating purely on backup power, with the amounts I’m seeing here. They headed for that planet, which might suggest their radiation shielding was compromised. I think you’re right; they probably headed for the far side of the planet to shield them from the cosmic rays.”

There was a moment of pause from Jess, accompanied by a look of concern. “Honestly, I expected the freighter to be dead in space. That’s usually what happens when you’re ripped out of a warp bubble. They got lucky to be able to go anywhere after that. Or maybe unlucky depending on your perspective. It would make their deaths take longer. Their only sanctuary here is still a dead rock in space, I...doubt they could have survived this long.”

There was worry in Jess’ voice, but one could not say if she was afraid that the freighter crew might have had long, painful deaths, or if she was actually worried they may be alive.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Jess was certainly not a bad pilot herself. Above average, by any definition, but that just meant she had a better appreciation for what it took to make it look as easy as Light did. She probably could have handled getting a ship into position close to the star herself, but there was a world where she could have made a mistake. With Light, she had a feeling that would never have happened even on his worst day.

Now that the ship was out of FTL and heading steady, Jess unstrapped herself from her seat so she could move around the cockpit. Already, she floated around behind Light so she could get a better look at the sensor readouts. The mechanics of FTL meant that inertia was not too much of a problem while traveling in it, but when moving at sublight speeds, a ship’s crew had to be ready to handle acceleration. When moving at anything other than a steady motion, loose objects had to be contained, and any crew members could not be far from somewhere they could be strapped down if the pilot was planning any maneuvers.

“Okay, we’re looking for any trace of the ship. If it was damaged here, then there’s plenty it could have left behind. Debris, radiation trails, whatever we can find. Also need to keep watch for any other scavengers in the system. I know they frequent this place for the same reason we are, but hopefully the fact that we know our target’s exact flight path means we’ll still get to it first. The star’s radiation beams are pretty and impressive, but also very predictable. I doubt even our freighter’s pilot would have been stupid enough to plot their course through them. No, it probably wandered close enough to get clipped by some other emission, or maybe it’s magnetic field. Neutron stars can put out a lot of energy.” Jess said.