The airlock slid open, since the air was breathable it just opened fully. What awaited Isabella inside was unexpected. It was clear from the first second, that this was not a normal ship, even by non-human standards. Not at all.
That didn't include the dimensions, it was fairly obvious that the species that built this was significantly taller than humans, which wasn't weird at all in the grand scheme of things. What was weird, was the total lack of anything that allowed for longer space flight. No toilet, no kitchen, not even a bed, not really at least, there were a few alcoves that were meant for bodies, but they looked suspicious, no species would be comfortable with having their bodies stacked like this, standing, at least in current orientation, no less.
On the other hand, a LOT of things were oversized, even for the interior of this ship, which was really spacious by human standards. As big as a big room. Isabella's room at the University of Valencia was a lot smaller. Hard to judge at a glance however.
The heat sink array with the thermovoltaic elements was massive. The same went for the capacitor crystal arrays and the inertia dampeners, from what was visible at a glance. If these were standard tier one tech, then they weren't meant for a fighter like this. This was for a corvette, gunboat or some other ship category like that. If the rest of this ship was built to these standards, purely optimised for combat, Isabella could see how her uncle got so many confirmed destroyed ships. For all intents and purposes, this ship was meant to be a heavy fighter launched from a carrier or something like that. Not something that should be stalking some criminals in the asteroid belts.
Well, time to dig into these documents that the Sergeant sent her. Isabella sat down in the command chair and fired up the computers. First thing that was obvious was that the communication system was completely uncoupled from the rest of the systems. Anti electronic warfare measure, just how thorough had her uncle been ?
With a hint of dread, Isabella transferred the contents of the e-mail to the ship's computer, slightly overwhelmed by all the displays that flared up, and completely overwhelmed by the amount of documents that the mail seemed to have attached to it.
"Extensive documentation, I see, even by Teras bureaucratic standards, this is going to be fun...."
She dove in.
After sorting a bit, it became clear what she was looking and sitting in, and what exactly her uncle had done. It was ingenious really. The ship used to be a drop pod for infiltration units of some sort. That was the purpose of the spike at the front, the massively oversized heatsinks and inertia dampeners, and the standing "Beds". He had purchased the ship when it was mostly stripped of everything important or expensive. How she did not know. Where he got the money from, she couldn't see in the documents. A mystery for another day.
The remainder, little less than a wreck, was useless by galactic standards, but not to the visions of her uncle.
Isabella let out a whistle, when she read about the armour of this ship, that was beyond everything Tera ever had produced. and frankly it was probably a pain to smelt down, which probably helped with the price.
From what she understood, she was looking at a Tungsten-Niobium alloy, that somehow was stabilised by some quasi crystalline structures, interwoven with graphene sheets. And it was extremely thick too. Made sense, given that this whole thing was meant to crash into an enemy station or capital ship at breakneck speeds, through defensive fire.
In short, it was extremely unlikely that any kinetic weapon made on Tera even made a dent into this ship. And that was before she factored in, how horribly bad the angle would be for kinetic projectiles, head on.
It was entirely possible that this thing could shrug off a railgun shot from even a frigate, or something ridiculous like that.
Frontally that was, but this wasn't the last of the weirdness, because the teardrop-like armour could fully open up, forming some sort of metal starfish. And every part had its own engine that would slot into the tip, from within the armour. Fully turnable in most directions. Which meant that this ship was also capable of turning on the spot, combined with the main engines in the back, and wasn't like many fighters that took a page from atmospheric flight, reliant on turning with the help of the main engine, always pushing forward. No, the “Plan B” could rotate freely, even while already set onto a course. An object in motion stays in motion after all.
Well, that most certainly helped with the whole "Let's just ignore any and all enemy fire" mentality.
Didn't help with atmospheric flight however, the ship couldn't leave orbit, if she somehow decided to bring it down to the planet.
Not that she would be allowed to, because there was a monster of a railgun hidden at the "top" of the ship beneath the armour, and it was the latest model you could buy, the latest Tera had to offer, outside of military restricted hardware. And apparently Simon also had stocked up on a very diverse assortment of shells, just skimming through, there were standard kinetic shells, termite shells, and apparently also some that contained Mercury and Gadolinium. Damn he really hated slavers, understandably. Many metal alloys, most notably Teras good old favourite Aluminium, would be compromised when Mercury and / or Gadolinium made an amalgam out of the alloy. But it was far from the only metal that reacted that way. If memory serves right, Titanium wasn’t faring any better, for example.
The thought of being inside a starship that literally fell apart, was frankly terrifying.
Especially since the shells also had a sort of smart setting, that made them break up and go into shotgun mode, juuuust in case whatever the railgun was tracking, even with over tuned actuators and fully wired into the inertia dampeners, that made moving and firing it a breeze. Not to mention the fact that the ship itself had unparalleled mobility AND the gun was initially fairly well hidden by the expanded armour.
And that was just the main gun. 90 degrees to the left and right of it, on the "side" of the ship, were laser point defence units, with top notch cooling, capable of using UV lasers, wouldn't surprise her if these also were the latest tech developed on Tera. She had no clue however, Asteroid defence was done with rail-guns primarily. That was what she trained with.
Didn't matter in the end, point defence that had nearly no mass and worked with lightspeed, effectively a "hitscan" weapon, would be controlled by the computer anyways, it was simply too fast.
If Isabella thought she couldn't be surprised anymore, she was proven wrong, when it was revealed to her that the "bottom" of the ship actually contained a hybrid torpedo and rocket launcher, with way to high payloads.
Theoretically, the supported payloads were big enough for nuclear fission weapons. These were base destroyers, not meant for fighters.
That was only the upper limit though, currently the launcher was filled with hundreds of swarm missiles and enough counter measures to distract half a fleet. Much more sensible. Didn't explain the capabilities though, or where exactly Simon had gotten it from. Or rather it didn't explain where the trader on Neptun main station had gotten it from. The paperwork hinted at the fact that this was a custom modification of a much less lethal system. And this system was freely tradable. And a scan from a teran system would only show something was off, when it actually carried nuclear weapons.
"Innocent until carrying nukes I guess...Interesting...Who exactly did you want to blow out of the asteroid belts Simon? Is this a hint why you are missing?"
Come to think of it, he was missing along with the OTHER ship he apparently owned, the "Plan A", documentation said it was a teran made mining ship, nothing special. But the documents from the alien recycling facility showed he'd also bought a number of mining drones, also extremely cheap, apparently broken. Given what the Sergeant had said about his tax returns, it was likely, that Simon had found an asteroid rich in ore, and managed to repair the mining drones, had them accrue wealth while he was jumping around the asteroid belts, chasing the leads from his informants, paid in untraceable gold from the mining, and then he paid the slavers with high grade rail gun fire. Must have been a terrifying stalker, to them.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The reason for this?
All in all the "Plan B" was a very passive ship. No huge engines, no huge fuel tanks, no reactor, just tier one tech capacitor crystals, albeit massively oversized ones. The equally massive heat sinks meant that she could also run "silent" for a long time, meaning she didn't have to vent heat through any mechanism into space. If she was just waiting there, she was essentially just a small asteroid, for most scanners. Just a hunk of metal, but not giving any indication that there was actually a ship there, until she was ready to pounce.
And pounce she did. Her engines ? All of them were meant for maximum acceleration, but had terrible long term efficiency. terrible enough, she couldn't hope to fly interplanetary courses or patrols in the asteroid belts without running out of fuel. Then again, there was a reason she didn't have a bed, toilet or kitchen.
It all boiled down to even more modifications and special quirks of this modified drop pod.
It didn't need a long range engine in its original configuration after all, it was shot from magnetic rails into space, from its carrier, and then relied entirely on manoeuvrability,
Simon seemed to have agreed with this way to build ships, and just added a jump drive, after all the compartments of the boarding units were removed. A bog standard tier one tech jump drive. Sure, a bit oversized like everything on this ship, but not any more advanced than any other jump drive humanity had received from the galactic community, along with other tier one technologies.
And that was the important part.
Simon was a "jumper", somebody that wasn't really affected by the effects of the unshielded faster than light drive, that was deemed safe, for species that were still evaluated, seen if they were trustworthy. Isabella happened to be a jumper too, it apparently ran in the family. Which was lucky, because otherwise this ship would have been rather useless for her. Jumpers made up about 5% of the population. Another 10-15% could be trained to shake off the effects of the jump effects reasonably fast. But a quick check needed to be done to make sure after a few jumps they wouldn't just collapse. The other 80+% of humanity had to wait a few hours between every jump, or would otherwise collapse. Apparently brute forcing your way through space wasn't that easy to stomach. Well, not like evolution prepared most species for it.
More advanced drives didn't have this issue, but humanity didn't get access to them just yet. The reason was that shielding was regarded as a tier three technology. Shielding was needed to build advanced weaponry, like capital ship class plasma lances. It also vastly improved heatsinks by being able to channel heated plasma freely around, and was used in countless other bits and pieces.
Among them happened to be the tier three technology of shielded jump drives, and the tier five technology that allowed continuous faster than light flight, while also being able to manoeuvre, translators had just given up and called it warp drive for now, because the explanation was too complex.
Damn, that education in galactic customs was coming in handy already, and she didn't even have her degree yet. The damn tests this week seemed so far away, it was unreasonable. To think she was one signature away from owning technology that was capable of firing nuclear torpedoes. Reality was a strange beast, that much was clear.
Speaking of translation, the galactic community had a nice way to deal with talking about technology, without actually disclosing anything. The idea was to only teach new species one of a few specific languages that were only spoken by their diplomats, and not spoken at all by the general public. Rumour had it even, they designed a new language for every first contact.
Once they had enough knowledge from these interactions, they programmed a translation AI with the language from the newly discovered species, and supplemented all mentions of certain technologies, with their theoretical constructs, mostly from fiction. This way there was no way to know if jump drive or warp drive or any technology actually meant a specific physical theorem or not. Nobody knew if things were based on Einstein-Rosen Bridge, or on the Alcubierre Drive, although the latter was quite possibly the "Warp" drive. Would explain what the shielding was for, otherwise, how would you arrive at your target and not just irrideate it ?
Ah well, that particular way to communicate was a problem for Physicists and Engineers, not for Isabella. For her it was just annoying that there was a standing order to disclose any languages to newly discovered species. Having to rely on a translator AI that manipulated everything that was said to you didn't quite sit right with her.
Then again, the extensive logs of her uncle, indicating who exactly was an absolute stain on the galaxy, spoke for themselves. Obviously there were enough species out there that would happily abuse these technologies, humanity apparently included. Damn it.
When she actually accessed these files, the computer provided a pop up, saying there was more stored in the ship's system that belonged to these files.
Isabella opened the popup. A warning blinked at her.
"Law enforcement override detected. Ship hasn't been moved in a long time. It is assumed that Simon Banks has been declared dead, is this correct?"
She acknowledged this.
"It is presumed that the person accessing the ship and the files is the heir of Simon Banks, in accordance with his will, is this correct ? If so, please provide identification."
Isabella did so. Another warning, very surprising at this point.
"Welcome Isabella Ortega, to access the more sensible data on this computer, you will have to answer the following question, please be aware that you only have ONE try. Otherwise the data will be lost. Are you ready?"
Well, was she? How would she know? Then again, this was uncle Simons doing, and Isabella knew his style quite well.
"Yes I am ready" Safer to use voice commands, much less likely to misclick, compared to using flight control sticks for a cursor.
"What kind of tree did you plant together with Simon Banks ?"
A multiple choice field with hundreds of possible answers showed up. Isabella had to stop herself from laughing out loud, Simon had used an absolute troll question, not only was this not traceable electronically, but even then it was a trick question, because they had, for a laugh, used the traditional agricultural knowledge of her family, to create a frankenstein tree like no other.
Isabella managed to name the various plants from the genus Prunus. And it was quite a list. On the root stock, they grafted almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties. Her family was absolutely disgusted by the abomination, but Isabella and Simon had a good laugh. She had to search her private files for a second, because she had been in charge of researching the compatible plants, while Simon bought them. They spoke about this, but never communicated about it online, so all was just saved on her personal computer. And it was clear Simon accounted for it. There was no time limit on the answer, and she was sure, she could have just walked out on the computer and come back months later, if she had to observe the tree to remember, and give the answer then. It was also just one tree among hundreds of thousands her family owned. And it wasn't just conveniently planted in front of the house or something like that. She had to go there eventually, it seemed like the perfect place to think a bit about Uncle Simon.
In any case, the computer had unlocked the files now.
There was a voice recording whose name just said "For Isabella, download this, listen to it away from technology, you know how to keep data safe" and after that a file for a nav computer. Followed by a load of normal files. Files on organisations and people, and it was much more extensive than the files of the people he had officially caught. Not very surprising, not every intel drop had a 100% chance of success after all.
Then Isabella saw a name that made her stop, this was on another level entirely, because the name was not teran. More checking revealed that there were a few more files with alien names.
"Simon, what exactly did you find out here? What will I find in these files? Did these make you vanish ? or are you just laying low?"
The amount of extraterrestrial visitors to the Sol system was low, very low. There was an embassy, regular patrols, a few teachers, and not much else, when things boiled down to it. Trade was facilitated through a station outside of the Oort cloud, that was staffed by galactic law enforcement, and Teran and Alien traders had access to it on different days, minimising contact, to keep the language barrier in place. And it was only possible for jumpers to reach other systems, in less than a few months travel time. While that didn't stop everybody, not by a long shot, humans or rather tier one tech races were restricted to special orbital stations, when visiting other systems. And said stations were policed very very thoroughly, there were no contacts there, that would result in a file here.
So, what was it? Corrupt officials? Smugglers?
She had to find out, this might hold the clues to Simon's disappearance. First she had to stop being a civilian though, to get rid of the law enforcement override, so she could copy the files.
Isabella left the ship, mind set, it was time for some danger, she couldn't really forsake Simon, could she?
And as long as she didn't have a full check on the hundreds of names among the files, she couldn't know if she could trust anybody around here. It sucked, but what could she do ?
For now she had to accept the inheritance, then stay on Tera, probably finish her degree, while she worked through the files, which might actually take months.
Well, no time like the present to start.