Cenz brought up a display in Brooks’s vision.
“I have accounted for all two hundred and forty life pods carried by the Maria’s Cog.”
Brooks saw the list. Only ninety-seven were listed as launched.
“That’s all she carried?” Brooks asked.
“Yes, Captain. Since being decommissioned as a generation ship, the vast majority of her pods were removed and she was equipped with surplus pods from the 2920s. As they are capable of carrying ten individuals each, two-hundred and forty are considered more than sufficient for her typical crew of only nine-hundred and fifty-nine. However, my preliminary data suggests that each pod that was launched is occupied by an average of 2.8 people. I may be wrong in this, but it suggests that . . .”
He trailed off.
“Less than a third of the crew escaped,” Brooks finished softly. “Are there any signs of survivors on the ship?”
“We are still investigating that probability,” Cenz said. “I request permission to focus on this in lieu of the cause as our primary operation.”
“Denied,” Brooks said. “If there’s a threat out there, it’s most vital we be aware of it, or everyone in those pods could die, along with us,” Brooks said.
“Aye, Captain.”
“What else have you found?”
“Of the ninety-seven pods that were launched, all but seven are moving towards a rendezvous location at these coordinates. There is debris also moving that way, but if we use this course, we can avoid the majority of it – I commend the Maria Cog‘s AI in picking the best path for its pods to take, as they have made our job more manageable.”
“What of those other seven?” Brooks asked.
“Four, I am afraid to say, were destroyed. I have not ascertained a cause yet,” Cenz said. He brought up a magnified image.
The pod was split open, nearly in two pieces, its inside safe area completely open. Even if the survivors had been in full space suits, it was impossible to think they could have survived the impact.
“Others show damage consistent with the theory that two of the ship’s fusion reactors ruptured, and a plasma ring tore through the vessel.”
Brooks’s stomach sank to think that two reactors had suffered full containment failures.
Fusion reactors were notoriously reliable and safe. Even when breached, it rarely resulted in something as catastrophic as a full containment failure, their multiple safety systems and redundancies were usually capable of spinning down to a significant degree.
He would have thought that at least one of the reactors would be able to spin down, even if badly damaged.
There were many other forms of energy generation that could produce more power – miniature black holes, matter-antimatter colliders, but they were far less stable and more dangerous.
“Have we found any locations for impact sites?” Brooks asked.
“We have scanned several potential sites, but there are few likely candidates. I suspect that both reactors were breached by a single object.”
The data logs, as concise as they were, did state clearly that both reactors had been breached in the same second. It did not prove there was just a single impactor, but it was unlikely she got hit by two shots in less than a second – not without there being an enemy fleet out there.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Dark, that’s an incredible shot if it was intentional,” Brooks said, his voice hollow.
“We must accept the possibility that we may never know the truth here, Captain,” Cenz said.
He felt a shroud of impotent anger settle upon him. Sometimes there just were not answers.
“Good work, Cenz,” Brooks said. “But what of the last pods that are not on course and not destroyed?”
“One is slightly off-course,” Cenz said. “It will not be difficult to recover. Another that I believe was an empty launch is firing off straight – it is broadcasting as empty and has gone cold inside. It is normal for these actions to occur to help with search and rescue.”
“That leaves one more. Where is it?”
“Here,” Cenz said, highlighting it.
Brooks saw that the course of the pod was opposite of the others. Instead of curving towards the rendezvous point, it was curving away. And accelerating still.
“It appears to be malfunctioning, or perhaps damaged,” Cenz said. “It is moving further away.”
Brooks looked up. “Is it occupied?”
“Yes, Captain,” Cenz told him. “We made contact with it just before I came over. It has at least one survivor aboard.”
----------------------------------------
Kai Yong Fan sat down to be closer to the level of Cutter. Beetle slugs, even when standing at their tallest, reached just barely a meter in height.
“What do you need, Chief Engineer?” she asked.
She kept the impatience out of her voice – she knew Cutter would never waste time.
“The errant pod is accelerating still. Remote signal to slow it is not working – likely from damage. Require skilled intercession to speak to survivors, see if damage can be repaired. Must stop pod’s acceleration.”
It was practically a novel from the being, and Kai understood the significance immediately. With the current velocity of the pod it’d be hard to catch as it was; if it contined to burn its engine it would only get harder. A jump to go catch it was possible, but they could not possibly do that for another ten hours.
“I have some specialists who can handle this,” Kai told Cutter. “I’ll get them on it right away.”
“Good. Will continue to monitor communications. Must learn extent of damage.”
Cutter dashed away, and Kai brought up her list of Response communicators. Technically many of them were under Eboh’s command in Communications, but they were specialists for Response situations.
All of them were busy at the moment, in the midst of talking to others. She looked to see if she could slip this pod in sooner, but it was impossible to predict with any accuracy how long they might be on their current calls.
She checked her own itinerary.
As head of Response, she had a lot to do behind the scenes; it was not as directly active a role as most expected, at her current level she was largely a bureaucrat. She did not issue direct commands once the Response forces were deployed unless there was a major shift in tact. The numerous Coordination Dispatchers handled direct comms, and their commander handled moment-by-moment decisions with only occasional input from her.
She had the time. And she still was rated to do this.
“Pod number 57, this is the Craton. Please respond with your status – of yourselves and your pod.”
There was three seconds of light lag to the pod – which meant they were already nearly a million kilometers away.
Six seconds later, the reply came.
“Craton, this is Lily Brogan,” the call came back. “I’m not in great shape, but I’ve got some nano meds so I guess I’ll survive until pickup. When will that be? As for the pod, uh . . . I don’t see any signs of damage in here. But I know I’m off-course. What can I do to help you help me?”
“Ms. Brogan, we’re trying to get help to you as soon as possible. I need you to activate the medical drone on your pod and have it scan you and any other passengers so we can understand your medical situation. Tell it to connect to your radio to send us that data. I also need you to use the pod’s internal check-up system on the console to tell me its status. It doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with us, so if there are any errors, please tell me exactly what they say.”
She sent the message, and as she did so she saw Cutter scurrying over to her again.
“Abnormal signal structure in last message from Ms. Brogan,” the being said. Their voices rarely carried intonation, but something about the beetle-slug seemed alarmed.
“I noticed some dropped packets – it’s not distance or interference from debris?”
“Ruled out. It is an issue with pod modulator.” Cutter considered. “Physical damage to pod is a logical conclusion.”
“I have instructed her to tell us of any errors on the console,” Kai said. “Since we cannot talk to the pod itself, she can at least tell us what it knows internally.”
Cutter leaned back onto his slug-like tail, lifting all of his sets of limbs off the deck and running them together in a wave.
He was clearly lost in thought.
“Something not right. Learn all you can of pod status,” he asked. “I must study signal further. Structural aberrations. . . are disturbing.”
Lowering himself back onto his full set of legs, he scurried off.
Kai could only wait now, for Lily Brogan to follow the orders and report back.
In the meantime, she looked into the personnel logs, to learn everything she could about Lily Brogan. She was a drone tech, but Kai hoped she had more training. Whether she lived or not might depend on it.