Grace brushed her finger across the label, removing the top layer of dust, and blew on it. The date was that of a century ago. No wonder there were no obvious signs of the vineyard; it hadn’t lasted as long as the rest of the colony. She placed the bottle back with a loud clink that echoed around the room for a moment. Reminding herself she was trying to be subtle, she made a point to be stealthy going forward.
The bar had a pack of cards that also appeared to have been manufactured locally. The characters representing the jack, king, and queen appeared to be familiar faces from her research as crew members of the Trafalgar, but not anyone she could immediately name.
She pocketed the pack and took another look at the wine bottles. There were half a dozen here. The wine was probably not valuable, but she would be able to tell the story of this place and how it wound up here. Stowaway wine from Earth’s most famous lost ship. Someone would pay good money for that. Not quite a mythical engine parts money, but a step in the right direction.
Grace pondered ways she might get some back to her ship. She would have to be sneaky. It was doable, but not easy when her sensor pinged, and it was not a wine bottle or anything obvious. She ran a short-range scan to see what she could find. It was a very weak signal. She powered down the light on her tablet and let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the bar. And then she spotted it.
It was not at all obvious and though it had been hiding in plain sight. A tiny LED light was shining right in front of her. She fired up the slate and pointed it at the small red light in the corner. The end of the room was suddenly illuminated, and Grace looked at a jukebox. She walked over to it, hitting the power button. It jumped to life, music blaring at a volume that hadn’t been heard on this world in decades. Grace jumped out of her skin in fright at the sudden noise, but then hit another button, silencing it again. That must have been heard by everyone within five klicks.
She looked at the machine. It would have been retro, even when the crew of the Trafalgar installed it here. It must have been in one of the warship’s recreation rooms. There’s no way they could not manufacture it out here, but she was amazed it was still working. Somehow, it was drawing power.
Grace spotted some sort of vinyl discs within it and chided herself as a historian for not recognising them. She’d read something about Beetles, about Stones, what had they been called? They’d been called records; that was it. Of course, the Trafalgar’s on-board systems would have had most pieces of music in its database as a file size taking up less than a per cent of the ship’s storage and not much more for every movie and entertainment series, not to mention novels and the entire art humanity has ever created. She had half of it on her slate, although she mainly used it for reading books.
The jukebox was certainly a novelty, although not something she’d be able to take back and sell, even if she could get it on the Navy’s shuttle unnoticed.
She turned around, the light on her slate still on full beam, she spotted something else she hadn’t realised was here until now: a door to the basement. She walked over and opened it and peered down. There was no light except that of her tablet, which was pointing down, the wooden stairs had various cracks, and they made a racket as Grace ventured into the basement. Initially she walked down confidently, but felt the third stair almost give out under her weight, making her pause.
The stairs were made of wood and handcrafted. She doubted even two hundred and fifty years ago that an Earth battleship would have had a skilled carpenter on its crew. Taking a deep breath to slow her heartbeat. The slip had given her an adrenaline rush. Gripping the wooden handrail, she slowly put her weight on the next step down and tested it before putting all of her weight on it. The rest of the stairs were fine, but she was relieved to make it past the last step to the basement floor.
Grace shone her light around the room, Picking out several more crates of wine. Walking over, she leaned down and picked one up. The labels had been written by hand, and by someone who made an effort with pretty decent calligraphy. even then, it had been decades since anyone used pens with any regularity and handwriting had become a lost skill.
The basement also contained a large table, and Grace suspected it must have been constructed down there to fit through the door. At the end of it was a bottle opener. She picked it up and screwed it into the cork of the wine bottle. The cork came out with that satisfying “funk” sound, and cautiously, she took a sip. Actually, it was not too bad. It certainly hadn’t gone off since it had been down here. It was really good. She was surprised. If she could find a way to get these back to the cluster, some people would pay through their wine-smelling noses for this stuff, and that was just the wine guys. The military history buffs would also go crazy for it, especially if she could prove her connection to one of the well-known Trafalgar officers. Something about this place suggested it was a late addition, built not by the officers but their descendants.
She continued around the basement and looked to see what else was down here. There were two dozen sets of binders with paper printouts in them. She pulled the first one out and started looking over it. There were lists of transactions and stock information. Whoever owned this bar was running the business from down here. They had supplier information and costs and expenses. She ran her index finger down the handwritten records, looking over what the profits and losses had been on a small isolated colony. Initially, she was surprised at just how high the profit margin had been, but when thinking about it, this was the only entertainment venue on the planet, well, the solar system. They certainly had a captive audience, and the place was certainly popular, but that wasn’t telling her much more about the history of this place. Why had the colony failed? Had they just burnt out after a few years? Had there been some kind of external disaster?
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There was a large set of drawers in the far corner. Grace moved over to it and pulled open the top one. There were stationary and basic supplies, nothing particularly enlightening, and continued down to the next one. Rolled-up pieces of paper. She pulled one out and unfolded it and found herself reading cocktail recipes.
A creek came from the ceiling above, and Grace felt an unexpected sense of dread. Having assumed that she was alone, she was suddenly terrified. There were muffled sounds of voices, and her immediate panic that either the ghosts of long-dead colonists or Man-eating lizard aliens had found her poking about in a dark basement was quickly gone. When she heard the footsteps accompanying voices, she realised she recognised them.
Holding her breath to listen more clearly as she dropped the paper back in the drawer, Grace made out a bit of conversation, and realised it was Wokoma with that bastard Dryden. Chase must have sent them to look for her. Had she closed the basement door before coming downstairs? She wasn’t sure. She had hoped to get at least some of this wine in her bag before anyone found her.
Moving Slowly and carefully in the darkness, Grace walked around the large table, using her hands to guide her way around it as she tried to get a better view of the door. She clicked off her light, so if it was open, the last thing she wanted to do was shine a light straight up to give herself away. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but she couldn’t see any light coming down the stairs, and that meant it was shut. She also assumed that since she had almost missed this door, they may as well. That might have been a mistake, since the footsteps now appeared to be moving in her direction with a bit more haste. She retreated to the far corner below the stairs so as not to be the first sight once the doors opened.
The basement offered so much for her to discover. It wasn’t valuable, not to buyers in the Cluster, but Wokoma would be delighted. It was too bad; any moment, her ex-boyfriend was about to barge down there and then she heard the exterior door open, and it sounded like they moved off. She waited for a few minutes, and when no further sound came, and she allowed herself to click her light back on. As she did so, she stepped back against the wall, knocking into something that fell nosily to the floor, making her jump. Turning around, she could see it was some sort of star chart. She picked it up and laid it on the table as flat as she could, pulling out her slate and ran a detailed scan allowing her a detailed analysis of exactly what it was she was looking at, which was more than she could get from staring at it in a dark basement.
It showed several planetary systems. She was pretty sure it was the system they were currently in. There was a large desert planet with its moon, but there was another planet indicated. She wasn’t sure what the indications meant, but she folded up the map to bring along. As it might be useful later on. Looking back at the slate, she had the software see if it could come up with its own opinion of what was represented. There were several symbols, but no legend explaining what they meant. Similarly, lines drawn between the destinations could mean any number of things. The slate, however, assumed it was a trade route. Since it had been found in one of the colony’s largest places of business. Grace looked over the image on her slate, and while a trade route would make sense, perhaps these were regularly scheduled trade runs or deliveries, but who had the Trafalgar or its descendants been trading with exactly? The desert world had been uninhabited for centuries. As far as they had been able to tell, the Mary Rose had detected nothing on the outer planets that they had told Grace about, and her escape pod had certainly not attempted to land there. So it had not picked up any signs of civilization either.
Whatever was there, that world would have to be her next port of call. But how was she going to tell that to Lieutenant Commander Chase? That was the question?
She carefully folded the map up, a small tear forming on the join as she did so.
Damnit she thought, and made her way out of the creaky basement.
The bar was still dark, and she was very cautious in opening the main entrance. She took a quick sweep but could make no sign of the search parties looking for her and felt content to run out the front and head back towards the primary landing site.