Chapter Eighty-Four - Condor
The drone latched onto the station’s side, opened its flanks and four repair drones moved out of it. They were flight-capable, but mostly moved via a set of long, articulated limbs that came out of their central chassis which held a number of tools and utilities.
These were similar to the repair drones within Day--and her shipster’s--bodies. They were agile and quick enough to get to any critically endangered place within their hulls and small enough to squeeze through the maintenance passages they had, which were clearly too small for human access. At the same time, each repair drone had a number of tools at their disposal and a rudimentary AI, which made them decent conversions into scout drones for exploring a derelict station.
As long as they could keep in contact with the larger drone fixed to the outside, then Day would be able to control them all directly. The delay was small enough that it basically didn’t factor, not as long as the station was on the Metis-side of Jupiter.
Unfortunately, that wouldn’t always be the case, and Day didn’t feel like boosting around Jupiter at a speed to match it.
“Alright, looking for an entrance,” she said.
The four drones started to walk across the surface of the station, moving slowly and carefully and avoiding the sides where the wind risked ripping them right off the surface.
It didn’t take too long to find an entrance-way.
The station was narrow and long, with a monowing-like design that actually gave Dawn’s theory about it being an aircraft some credence. The rear, however, had some very station-like design elements, including, she discovered, a pair of small landing pads.
“Spacecraft can have landing pads,” Candle said.
“Sure they can,” Day replied. “But I think... hmm, let me refresh my memory banks, but I think those are more common on stations, no?”
“Ah, but this ship clearly has some sort of thruster system.”
“Stations can have those too, especially if they’re not anchored to anything,” Day said.
“Sure they can,” Candle replied. “But I think... hmm, let me refresh my memory banks, but I think those are more common on ships, no?”
Day sighed. They weren’t getting anywhere with their little argument. Not that she really minded. The bet was kind of silly to begin with and it wasn’t like she was worried about losing. Though winning would be nice, if only for all the fodder she’d have for teasing Candle with.
One of the repair drones reached the landing pad and found a door hidden within a recess that shielded it from the wind. It had clamps around it which she immediately connected with the kind of clamp system that humanity had once standardised for extendable airlock systems used for ship-to-ship and ship-to-station connections.
The door had faded paint across it. CONDOR RESEARCH AIRSHIP STATION.
Day stared at the image for a while. “I don’t know who wins,” she said.
“It... technically calls it a ship first,” Candle said.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“A tie?” Day proposed.
“Fine, a tie,” Candle said. “Wanna bet on what we’ll find within?”
“What do you expect to find?” Day asked. “I bet an AI.”
“That’s a sucker’s bet. I bet... humans.”
Day was impressed. “Humans? Really? They would have had to survive for a long time on this station, and while it’s big, it’s not huge. I... suppose you could fit most of what a colony would need to survive in this much space, but it would be tight.”
“Yeah, but this is a top-secret base, so it would all be cutting-edge stuff, and I doubt it had a huge staff,’ Candle said.
Day couldn’t fault that logic, but she figured that this was a bet that she was almost certainly going to win.
Her repair drones made it to the door, and she set one of them to figuring out the airlock’s unlocking system while the Condor slipped around the planet and out of her control range.
A few quick hours later and it was back on the opposite horizon and Day discovered that the drones had unlocked the door leading into a small service airlock. She slid the drones in and shut the exterior door. An automatic system kicked in, repressurizing the room.
“That’s 1.013 bar, ship standard atmosphere,” Candle said.
“It could be held at that level as a standard, it doesn’t mean that there’s a human crew,” Day said.
She waited for the airlock to fill, then sent one of her drones to the control panel to enter the ship proper.
And in that same moment, the exterior door exploded open.
Day barely had time to react that her repair drones were ripped back. Three of them had time to latch onto the station, but one was flying up towards the nearest console and was pulled out and into Jupiter’s violent winds. She fired up its propellers to fly it back, but it was far too late, and soon the drone was crashing down through the planet’s stormy atmosphere.
“Did that look like an accident to you?” Candle asked.
“No, no it didn’t,” Day said. She reached the console, more carefully this time, and shut the door once more. This time she locked it shut properly, then disconnected it from the rest of the station’s systems. Even as she did that, she noticed all the controls in that airlock rapidly being disconnected from the rest of the station. Too quickly to be human action.
“Okay, so maybe it’s an AI, but that wasn’t proof-positive that there are no humans on board,” Candle said.
“Maybe, maybe not. In any case, someone’s home,” Day said.
“Do we break in?” Candle asked.
Day considered it. Her other drones were clamped on already. She had more repair drones to spare, the loss of one was pretty much insignificant, and besides, the single lost drone was feeding her some interesting meteorological data even as it was crushed by Jupiter’s pressure. She refocused. They could break in. They had infinitely more resources than this one station had.
But that would send the wrong message.
“How about we knock and say hello first?” Day asked.
***