Archive for August, 2015

August 30, 2015: 11:41 am: Gallian System, writing

Mia gave up. She had reached the bottom of the thing without a trace of what it was. She sat down against a bulkhead to listen to Zay’s response and stare at a glare of light on the opposite wall above a ventilation shaft that sat on what to Mia was the floor.

“You have to keep investigating even if it means bringing in guest salvagers to help. The fact that you haven’t found anything is confirmation that this find is significant beyond its metal value. Who would go to such lengths to remove all identifying marks on a ship unless it was important. There has top be something there,” Zay kept talking.

Mia just kept staring at the glare. She had stopped listening. Then she stood.

“… you have to realize that in the salvager scheme of things, a find like that..” Zay’s message continued.

Why was there a light? It didn’t move when Mia’s light did. What was the source. She leaned over and peered into the end of the ventilation shaft opposite. Was it a ventilation shaft? The metal at it’s end wasn’t a grill but badly folded solid pieces. Through a gap she saw an LED. She pulled out some tools and pried it apart. Below was a control bank. It must be auxilliary control she thought!

“… so don’t give up. Keep moving. Keep pushing….”

Mia resisted the urge to message back right away interrupting Zay before she had finished. Most people might not notice the timing. Zay would.

“..let us know what else we can do. Zay out,” she finally finished.

Mia immediately messaged back. “I found an auxiliary control room. Dropping down to investigate. You were right Zay!” Why not let her feel like she’d had an effect.

The auxilliary control room was a a narrow chamber with a bank of screens and input devices running down the center. That was where the LED had come from. Whatever long-life batteries still existed on the ship still had enough charge to light them.

At one end of the chamber were three dessicated bodies. They were almost skeletons but bits of cloth and tissue clung to them and littered the floor around them. They were all three lying face first into the wall. If Mia had to guess, they must not have been strapped in when the collision happened, which implied an accident of some sort. Or all three bodies restraints had failed.

One screen was still active with a logging program active. She tried to call up previous logs but the screen could not access storage. Likely it was destroyed in the crash. She was about to give up when she noticed that one log entry showed as still in composition. She chose it ad the last log entry, still in the process of being written appeared, stored in the local systems memory for hundreds of years, waiting to be saved to oblivion.

“Gamelt and Stallion have joined me in auxilliary control. The bridge is destroyed in the impact but engines are still active. No idea what caused attitiude to go haywire like that. Suspect foul play. No other explanation. Hold— Stallion reports an incoming airwave. From where? No ship on what scopes we have left but could be missed. Why? Not much time. Trying to fortify shields but little hope. We won’t make it no matter what. This is the ship Gallian signing off. Gallium control—“ And it stopped.

“Leonard you were right,” Mia messaged, sending an image of the screen. “This is the original Gallian Colony Ship. It looks like they were trying to set it down here for some reason and lost attitude control. They suspected sabotage. Poor suckers They had no idea of the early corporate politics. Likely their executive sponsor was just on the wrong side of a dispute. But to wreck the original colony ship because of it. There’s a story there for sure. Mia out.”

August 20, 2015: 7:34 pm: Gallian System

Mya sent three survey drones flying on complex flight paths orthogonal to one another. Most salvagers used one drone at a time and just had it cover all the ground. They might have more than one drone in case of large areas or just to have backup in case of damage but they would only use one of them at a time but Mya had discovered over the years that different drones might often report different information about the same area. So she had developed a system— she called it her algorithm, though it was not technically mathematical. The ‘algorithm’ flew the drones in a way designed to bring out those kinds of discrepancies and resolve them. It led to a huge boost in accuracy for her.

The drones reported data back to her but she just let it carry on back to Zactus and SHOE House for Zay to look over. Zay’s report didn’t take long.

“You’ve got a huge amount of metal down there but it’s thinner in the place I marked. That looks very much like a door. Leonard thinks you should try sending a traditional unlock signal to it once you’ve uncovered it. Just in case it has some kind of passive reciever that still works.”

Mya acknowledged and got to work uncovering the metal. It was corroded and dirty but it definitely resembled a hatch of some kind. Faded black and white stripes vaguely suggested a typical hatch warning flag. Mya sent a traditional unlock signal. She cycled through all the major frequencies and then through the rare but known ones. She was about to take the time to have it cycle through all possible frequencies when a mesage from Leonard arrived.

“Try frequency 1120. That’s the one for the Gallian Colonial ship. It won’t prove anything but I have a gut feeling. Zay bet me a sandwich it doesn’t work.”

Mya tried the extremely unlikely frequency. The door made screeching sounds and tried valiantly to open itself. Mya heard gears whining and stripping themselves. She shoved a hand in a small gap that had opened and gave it a push. The hatch slid to the side quickly tearing quite a bit of skin off in the process. Mya knew better but a combination of excitement and impatient had made her risk it.

“The signal worked though the door was so corroded, that it didn’t open. I had to give it a nudge. Don’t know who wins the sandwich.”

Mya was still pulling out light exploratory gear and making the rest of her equipment safe when a message from Leonard came in.

“I win the sandwich.”

It was followed quickly by Zay saying “Belay that sandwich. We need a third party ruling.”

Mya laughed and sighed and sent back, “I vote Leonard. Heading into the structure to explore. May lose messaging.”

Then she walked through the hatch.