The Bright Black Sea (21 page)

'What's up, Captain?' answered Lilm.

'We appear to have a large uncharted object with a
possible meteor field along our course...'

'This close to Azminn?'

'Aye and Rafe hasn't been able to make it go away.
I'm going to run ahead and do a little scouting,' I said. 'Would
you please cycle the gig up and see that it's fully
provisioned.'

'Can't argue with Rafe. I'll have the gig ready
inside of ten,' said Lilm.

'I'd like to volunteer for the job, Skipper,' said
Tenry as I broke connections.

'Thanks Ten, but it's just a quick survey. I'll do it
alone. It gives me a fine excuse to pilot a boat like it should be
flown, wide open. Every time I've tried in the past, the skipper or
mate came down on me with a hundred gees.'

'You've been the skipper for six months...'

'True, but habits pounded in at a hundred gees, and
reinforced over fifteen years are hard to break,' I replied
defensively.

'You should still have someone else onboard,'
insisted Tenry 'I'll tag along.'

'It's just a run up the course...'

'Not to get too out of line, Skipper, but a two
person crew is the standard minimum. It offers a much greater
margin of safety if something exciting happens, two heads and four
hands make a big difference. Plus, I'm expendable.'

I sighed. 'Ten, trust me, being expendable is not a
good selling point. You might want to stress your decades of Patrol
service in small boats investigating dicy things instead.'

'Same difference, Skipper,' he replied cheerfully.
'I'll get my gear. We should suit up before going aboard. It's a
lot easier doing it here rather than trying to do it in a small
boat – in a hurry.'

I wasn't going to win. No point being stubborn. He's
the expert and my policy is to defer to experts, 'Right. Suit
locker in ten minutes. I need to stop in the bridge and check with
Rafe.'

Tenry gave me a casual salute and headed out. I took
a calming breath and followed him out, rounding the corner to the
bridge.

It was near the change of the watch so Vyn and Riv,
the next watch, were on the bridge. All were gathered around Rafe
and Kie at the sensor station against the aft bulkhead. They made
room for me. Rafe had begun to isolate the image, building a much
clearer image by overlaying timed stills. It became apparent that
the object was almost round and surrounded by other large objects,
the smallest several times the size of the
Lost Star
.

'Have a clue?' I asked as the image slowly grew
slightly more detailed.

He shrugged. 'Well Willy, it's still too far to tease
out the fine details. It's bright, it's likely smooth ice or metal,
more likely metallic. Seems to be slowly tumbling. I'd say it's
approximately 5000 meters by 4000 meters, with several associated
satellites, 200 to 300 meters in length, but they appear to have
such an erratic movement that I can't be sure what I'm actually
seeing. I'll keep refining the image and determine its relative
course, but that will likely take an hour or more.'

'Any sign of an associated meteor stream?'

'Still too far out and too much scattered light to
pick out objects much smaller than 100 meters.'

'That's what I expected. Lilm's cycling up the gig.
Ten and I will run ahead and give you a better look.'

'Don't you have a drone you can send ahead?' asked
Vyn beside me.

'Yes, I believe it's buried behind the flier and
surface skimmer in no. 4 hold. Never had any use for it on our
regular run. Remind me to have it turned out and refurbished during
the long voyage. It'll no doubt come in handy in the drifts.'

'Well, I suppose Ten's the next best thing to a
drone,' she said with a wry smile.

'He convinced me he's the ticket for this mission.
Didn't give me much of a choice,' I replied, adding, 'Vyn, you're
in charge of this packet until I return. Alert Miclae to the
situation. She should be included in all our discussions.'

01

The
Lost Star
lay off to port, starkly
illuminated in bright yellow, red fringe and dark blue shadows.
Azminn was blazing beyond her, uncomfortably big and boiling. I ran
through my last systems check, synced our laser com and sensors
with the ship and finished my flight program.

I glanced at Tenry beside me and he grinned, 'Rockets
Away!' Captain Brilliant Pax's tag line.

I sighed and opened up the gig's plasma rockets,
pushing us into the cushions of our seats.

As I mentioned, I haven't been able to fly rockets
the way I'd like to since signing on, even as Captain, but now I'd
a reason. I opened her up and flew flat out. It was exhilarating
and a bit frightening – we were over running all but our laser
radar, trusting that we didn't get really unlucky. Anything bigger
than a pebble hitting the gig at anything more than a glancing blow
would vaporize and likely pulverize us inside. We didn't say much –
there was nothing tricky about the flight, since the shipboard
computers handle much of the routine navigation, but at max power,
I needed to pay close attention via my com link to keep the rocket
balanced and on course. Tenry manned the array of sensors as
look-out, relaying the information back to the ship as well. He
chatted with the gang aboard the ship. This was a lark for him.

We reached midpoint forty-three minutes out – the
object turned out to be on a roughly parallel course, so it would
be a long stern chase to catch and pass it. That was good news,
since it meant that the 'Star would have the better part of eleven
hours to execute any needed course adjustments. I swung the gig
about and began our deceleration, intending to drift past the
object along the ship's current path to search for associated
meteor stream. So far we'd not picked up any sign of meteors –
promising, but not conclusive.

By the time we were within six thousand kilometers of
the object, we were just drifting relative to it and had a solid
laser radar image of it. It appeared to be a very large ship or
space station with an oval body about 4500 meters in diameter,
wrapped around a 200 meter cylindrical core, some 5000 meters in
length. One end of the core appeared to be hollow and extended
about 100 meters from the oval hull – rocket tubes or entry port.
The other end, however, sported an unruly mess of twisted beams and
cables. Eight massive, two kilometer long articulate legs or
extensions were spaced around the core like the twisted and damaged
legs of a squished spider. Held in a tangled web of cables, the
twisted legs were five large pods, each as big as the
Lost
Star
. Three more pods floated some distance off, apparently
tethered to the object by long cables which dragged them along with
the slowly tumbling vessel.

'Any idea what we're looking at?' I asked Tenry and
the ship's crew at the other end of the com link.

'Space station, drift foundry or factory... I've seen
something like this but I can't quite place it...'

'Could it be alien?' Lili asked from the ship's
bridge.

That was unlikely. The Outbound Survey has yet to
find technical intelligent non-humans (as far as we know), much
less space faring ones.

'A long voyage settlement ship perhaps?' Rafe chipped
in.

More likely. It was big enough, but with our Nebula
settled forty millennium ago, it seemed unlikely we'd find a
settlement ship here, however long lost.

The debate continued in the background, 'Some sort of
sentient machine factory'... 'What would it be doing here?' As the
speculation continued over the com I ran through my options. Or
rather, my obligations.

Being a ship or station, apparently in distress or
derelict, we were morally, if not legally, obliged to offer
assistance, though the lack of the required identifying beacons
muddled the legal case. Still I'd not smudge my Guild book by
cutting legal corners. More to the point, I needed to look after my
owner's financial interest – which is to say, the prospect of
salvage. Our charter terms would severely limit what aid we could
offer, but I'd the time and the gig in position to investigate.
Once again, it seemed my course was set by circumstances. Being
captain didn't seem to give me a great deal of freedom. I did,
however, get to make out the watch roster.

I told Tenry, 'Hold on,' and fired the steering
rockets to flip the ship and alter our course to bring us closer to
the object.

'I'm investigating, what do we know about salvage
claims?' I asked the gallery.

'Salvage is out, It's not in any immediate danger,'
said Tenry. 'We could only take off survivors if any. However, if
its been abandoned, as seems the case, and for more than five
hundred years, it would be considered a derelict and we can claim
it as our own. But I believe that usually involves manning
it...'

'Which we're not going to do.'

'Let's wait and see what we have, Captain,' said Vyn.
'I'll do more research on this end.'

'Thanks,'

02

I brought the gig to within five kilometers of the
object and put it into a slow polar orbit. This close, the vessel
was massive, the gig's shadow a tiny dot sliding along a scarred
wasteland. There are larger man-made structures in space, one or
two even in the Unity backwater of Azminn, but they're usually
built up over the centuries by the slow accretion of smaller
structures. Something purposely built on this scale made an
impression.

The hull had overlaying scars, dents and even gashes,
speaking of many long centuries in space, likely in the drifts. Any
markings were long since sanded off by dust and rocks.

'No thermal anomalies suggesting engine heat or
exchangers. Everything looks like reflected solar heat,' Tenry
said, watching the sensor displays. 'No radio signals, completely
dead, at least from the outside.'

I glanced across to Tenry, 'At least from the
outside?'

'It could be a pirate base,' he said with a straight
face. 'They'd keep everything well shielded, heat exchangers inside
the outer hull, ships would enter at far end. This would make a
perfect base, a pirate's secret city.'

'I'm going to assume that's your excuse for humor,
Ten. You may dream of being Captain Brilliant Pax of the Space
Ways, but I don't.'

He just grinned and said, 'Arr, Skipper, just doing
my job.'

'Quit teasing the Skipper, Ten. Has it come to you
what we're looking at yet?' asked Vyn over the com.

'As a matter of fact, it has. I'm just waiting to see
what the spider legs look like before venturing my opinion. I want
to make sure they're not some sort of cranes.'

'They're coming up now,' I said as we rounded the
great bulge of the hull.

'Ah, as I suspected,' crowed Tenry as he focused the
gig's viewer on the vast twisted wreckage of the articulated legs.
'Notice the large pads at the ends of the legs, we're looking at
stabilizing struts. What we have here is a super-tug for moving
large asteroids. This is the head of the tug. It would be anchored
and secured to the asteroid by the array of articulated struts.
Those battered pods are the balancing and steering rockets. They'd
be set up on the asteroid. A super-tug is basically a massive fuel
tank attached to very powerful rocket engines.'

In the background I could hear the bridge crew
chattering, they all knew, just didn't get a chance to say it
before Tenry. It was that obvious, now. Here in the backwaters of
the nebula, we don't have many hollowed asteroids, but they're
common enough in the First Settled systems. In those systems
they're used as private worlds, resorts, cities, ports, factories
and even as massive cruise ships/resorts that circle the First
Settled systems, passengers being shuttled to and fro as they pass
by each planet in turn. They're formed by flash heating the entire
metal asteroid with thermal reactors to its melting point and using
deeply planted explosives to inflate the molten metal into a hollow
sphere or long cigar shaped vessel, similar to blowing glass
bottles.

'So what's it doing here?'

'Good question, Skipper. I don't think we'll find any
answers just orbiting her...'

'Just wondering out loud. I could live with the
mystery...' I said hastily. 'Anyone looked up Patrol records to
identify this ship?'

'We've come up blank,' replied Vyn. 'I've also been
researching our salvage options. Ten was right – if its been
abandoned for five hundred years, we can claim it. And he's right
about establishing an airtight claim, we'd have to take possession.
Sighting establishes no claim. Boarding it might, or might not.
However, our owner would probably need as much information as
possible to decide whether it's worth the expense of sending a crew
out to take possession of it.'

'So you're suggesting we board it,' I said
warily.

'You have the time, and if you can find an easily
opened access port, it could make a difference in both determining
the validity of any claim and whether or not we'd want to.'

'You think it's even worth the effort? It's pretty
far from anywhere.'

'Can't say. That would be for the experts to
determine, which is why we'd want to make as complete a survey as
we can. Very large engines are expensive to produce, and if these
are in good shape, they could well be worth it. Mere scrap metal
might not be. Once we file a claim, it would become our
responsibility. I think we need to look into it for the White Bird
Line to make an informed decision.'

I glanced at Tenry, who gave me a cheerful grin.
'Expendable...'

I sighed. 'Yah.' I'd realized that already.

'Right. Least we should do is buoy it and chart its
course for the Patrol. Have Myes and Lilm rig up some beacons. They
can bring them out in the long boat when you get close enough. How
many hours do we have to do this survey?'