EliteCommander

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“They could, but I’m pretty sure subtlety is the point.” Jess remarked. Once the crate was back closed, she put in the code to seal it up again. “They’re meant to be hidden. They can blend with other electronics, or just get tucked somewhere out of the way where no one can see ‘em.”

Senjen was nearby, between their crates and the exit, looking for a good way to clear their path. In this gravity, it would be a massive hassle to try and move their prize over the other crates blocking their path. “I still don’t really get why these things are even here. I mean, they’re obviously for smuggling, but this freighter belongs to an actual, big company, right? Was it an employee that sneaked them on, or did the actual company send them?”

“Almost certainly the company.” Jess answered. “These are top-of-the-line. Expensive, and effective. If they’re sending them out to the frontier, that means they’re bringing back something they’d rather keep quiet.”

Senjen still appeared somewhat confused. “I wouldn’t have thought big, proper companies like this would get involved in smuggling.”

This time, Jess laughed. “Oh please, after centuries of optimizing efficiency, they’ll take any scrap of profit they can get their hands on. If they find something restricted, they’ll sell it where its legal. Sometimes, what they’re smuggling is legal, but they don’t want their competitors to catch wind of what they found or where it came from. Out at the edge of settled space, it can be hard to enforce property claims. Almost all the companies push beyond the bounds of the territory in their charters when they’re prospecting, so they take secrecy as a first choice.”

“Well, as long as they never learn we took them. “Senjen shrugged. Once he had scoped out a path he was satisfied with, he turned back to Light. “I think what we do is push aside the crates over here and make space. It’s a bit longer of a path, but there’s less in the way.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

From a bit of investigation, it seemed clear that no medical records, nor any other ship records Light could access, had been manually updated since the disaster that crippled the ship. Automated logs were still being made, but with the number of damaged systems and sensors, those were scarce too. It was possible that he might be able to glean more information from them, but not from a cursory glance. He could make a copy of the ship logs, at least.

The personnel files did give Light more context for what he could see in the crew quarters. Now that he knew what their rank insignias meant, he could tell that the man who had been stabbed in the back had been the captain. Nothing in the medical records of the crew showed anything particularly unusual that would be related to the disaster. The only preexisting condition listed was a shellfish allergy for the engineer, and there was no report of disease or other contamination on the ship. What happened to them seemed to have come exclusively from after the disaster.

---

Jess motioned for Light to come to her as soon as he opened up the door into the cargo hold. She and Senjen were near the back of the hold, opposite from the loading ramp and near to the door Light had entered through. As he approached, she typed a code into the crate’s keypad. Its lights flashed green for a moment, and it unsealed. “Yeah, take a look at this.”

“Where’d you get the code?” Senjen asked.

“Looks like the captain appended it at the bottom of the manifest. They’re definitely not supposed to do that, but I’m gettin’ the feeling they might have been a bit careless.” She shrugged. “Whatever. Saves me needing to bypass it.”

Jess pushed the crate’s top partially aside so she could retrieve one of the tightly-packed rectangular cases from inside. “At least they’re properly packed. A solid crate, with individual protective cases for each device. All of that should have shielded them from the radiation and impact both.” Opening up the case, it contained a simple, unmarked polymer disk that could fit in a Human’s palm. “And here they are. This crate here, and the one next to it, have what we’re looking for. They’re more valuable than all the rest of ‘em in the hold combined.”

Turning her head, Jess looked out in the direction of the cargo ramp. Between here and there, they had the whole, disorganized mess of crates that had been knocked around the hold in the crash. “We just need to clear the way to get our prize out of here.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

In trying to get the console to work, Light would be able to get a sense for how inspired some of the repairs really were. Cosmic radiation had caused severe damage to may of the electronics, and the fact that the Human had managed to cobble together something that could even access the system was impressive enough. Not only that, but she had managed to use it to bring in the ship to a relatively safe crash landing.

Light would be able to hear that Jess was a bit winded when she replied. Despite Senjen’s teasing, it did seem that she was helping in the search. “Great, that’ll cut down a bit on the search. Send it here and I’ll comb through it. We’ve already searched through the crates closest to the door and, unfortunately, it’s none of those. No matter where it is, we’re probably gonna have to push a lot of crates out of the way just to get the damn things out of here. Might need your help with that.”

Aside from the cargo manifest, the ship’s database had also revealed some extra information, especially about the crew. None of it was of any immediate, practical use to their salvage operation, but it did give some additional context about the ship and crew. He knew their names now, at least, and it did tell him the meanings of the symbols on their uniforms. Notably, despite his initial assumptions, the Human in the cockpit was not the captain, nor the pilot for that matter. According to her rank, she was the ship’s engineer. As well, there had been a security warning he had to close when he accessed the system about a safety protocol having been bypassed about three days ago. It implied that the crew quarters had been depressurized manually.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

The door leading out of the crew quarters was powered, though the cockpit module beyond was not. Just like the other door, there was no lockdown, so he was able to head through without issue. The cockpit was large enough to have some room to walk around, with multiple seats and consoles. The pilot’s seat was front-and-center. It was blocky and mostly metal, with just a few thin cushions for some comfort when flying in a gravity well. Though, since ships like this spent most of their time in space, one could easily strap themselves down into it. As such, everything the pilot would need was easily in arms’ reach. All of the controls and consoles were either built into the chair, or adjustable screens just in front of it. A ship of this size was designed to be possible to fly solo, but was ideally aided by other crew members at the similar, smaller workstations to the left and right.

The question of who owned the last bunk in the crew quarters was quickly answered, as there was a corpse slumped over next to the pilot’s station: a Human woman in a full environment suit. It was easy to see why, as there was also a rather sizable hole in the floor of the cockpit off to the right. It was surrounded by twisted metal, likely from the spacetime warping of their uncontrolled drop out of FTL, and went straight through the hull into space. As it was on the bottom of the ship, they had not seen it from the outside. As soon as the ship had dropped to sublight speeds, the cockpit would have been depressurized, and bathed in an even greater doses of radiation than the rest of the ship.

Light had already recognized the signs of radiation poisoning in the other Humans, and just from what he could see through the visor of this last corpse, her case had been even more severe. It could be hard for one to even stand to look at. Her suit was not compromised, so she had almost certainly died of the radiation exposure. Yet, from the look of the work she had been doing before her death, it had not been immediate. The pilot’s station had multiple panels removed to expose the internals. High energy cosmic radiation could fry electronics, and it seemed the Human had pieced together so many haphazard, jury-rigged repairs to get the station working that it was hard for Light to even make sense of them. Wiring and cables were strewn about, disorganized, connecting to three different tablet devices scattered around on the floor. It looked like some components had been stripped out and replaced with others taken from the copilot’s station. While the cockpit module was not powered, the pilot’s station itself was hooked into a portable power cell that was still active. Since the station was mostly shut down, it had not been drawing much power.

It was easy for Light to recognize the systems that the Human had been working on before death, which was communications. The ship was not broadcasting any sort of distress beacon, and it looked like she had been trying to get it working. It was hard to say from first impressions if it had been a doomed effort or not, but in any case, it would take some time to try and make sense of the repairs if Light wanted to try and use the console.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

There was a bit of a delay and some hesitancy in Jess’ voice when she replied. “Shit, that’s…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “Look, if you don’t want to go digging around corpses, I understand. We’ll figure it out down here eventually.”

It was hard to say how long the bodies had been here, exactly, as being in a vacuum would prevent any decay from taking place, and indeed there were no signs of it on either of the bodies on the floor. Although, Light could spot some early hints of decomposition on the covered body with the stab wounds. The clothes they wore were company-issued, and they had symbols on them that likely denoted position or rank, but as they were symbols instead of translatable words, Light did not know which was which. In any case, the manifest was not on any of the three bodies.

Aside from the bodies themselves, there were compartments near each of the four bunks with space for belongings. There were also stacks of boxes in one corner of the room, though based on the opened ones he could see, it was likely they contained rations and medical supplies. He could spend some time searching the room, or move through the door on the far side of the module to the cockpit.

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.”