The craneship Milo, Kayla, and Brian were riding entered quasi-normal space-time at the outskirts of the Cryne system, and Milo could see very little. The star was quite a long ways away but bright enough he could not see many other stars. It felt like being in a large empty void with only a single light that couldn't be reached.
"I guess this could take quite a while" Kayla said with a sigh.
"No" Brian said. "It won't take long to scan the system and figure out where we need to go."
"Was Dover okay with letting us take this thing all the way out here?" Milo asked, figuring this was as good a time as ever to bring up the subject.
"He's tied up in trying to do something he found in the new Alkarog book" Brian answered back. "He doesn't mind at all."
"What do you think of him?" Milo asked. Brian stared out the window for a moment, as if taking the time to carefully word his response.
"He's not the most pleasant person to be around, which you've probably discovered. He seems to carry around a bitterness over something I don't know about that he can't seem to let go of, and more so to the Royal Ministry of Science than the royal family itself. But he is the most trustworthy individual you will ever meet. If I didn't believe in him I would've left the Network a long time ago."
After flying around the outskirts of the system almost an hour and a half, Milo could finally make out the wreckage. They were quite far out from the star of the system and it looked not much brighter than a bunch of silhouettes.
"Amazing" Brian said seeming genuinely surprised to find something there. "I had never even heard of the Cryne system, let alone that there was a battle here."
"Icarus Beed and his entire flotilla basically hid an entire arsenal, but the elven Admiral Agorja found out they were hiding here, and pretty much tore the fleet into pieces" Milo explained.
"How do you know we're going to get anything useful?" Brian inquired.
"I'm banking on the idea that Agorja didn't see any point in destroying or removing the cargo from the ship, and that being in the vacuum of space far away from the star's radiation for all these many years has preserved the equipment." Suddenly, Milo could feel the crane ship slowing down.
"Why is the autopilot slowing down?" Milo asked feeling very antsy.
"The sensors have probably picked up a lot of small fragments out there. This ship doesn't have a military-grade hull and you've got to be careful with a lot of space trash floating around." They made their way into the graveyard. It seemed to more resemble a junk yard than a grave yard of ships. There were fragments of ships of all sizes just floating around. It was quite dark and was hard to see anything, especially with large pieces of junk casting shadows over everything else. The crane ship made some abrupt turns – Milo assumed to plot the safest course possible through the junk.
"There!" Milo said pointing to a large object that was partially lit by the sun's light while the rest was a shadowy silhouette. "That's the command ship. Fusion Battlestar class, just like from the war era."
"You two go ahead and get suited up and get inside the airlock" Brian ordered. "If we stay too long here I'll get hypothermia from the chills of this creepy place." Kayla and Milo did as they were told by Brian and left the cockpit area.
Brian redirected the crane ship over to the ship Milo pointed out. The light on the crane ship had a pretty short range, and they had to get right up next to it in order to get a good look at it. It looked to be intact for one that that has just been floating in space for decades. There was one obvious and big hole at the stern with some chunks floating around it. Brian found the bay doors on the craft and brought the craft to a stop relative to the wrecked vessel. He turned on the massive robotic arm which extended from its folded position on top of the crane ship. The big arm reached over and the entire ship shook a bit when the arm got its electromagnetic grip on the door. The door was torn open with relative ease. Brian steered the crane ship as close as he could to the ruined ship.
"Chris, Melinda…can you hear me?" he asked speaking into the microphone on his headset.
"Perfectly" Milo said. "We're opening the airlock"
"Okay" Brian replied. "I am turning the gravity well off and you can put your jetpack suits on" he said as he pulled a lever and turned a crank on the control panel. "Be careful not to use up your ion thrusters. You use them up and I don't know if I have any way to help you get back." Milo felt his weight disappear and he and Kayla pulled the packs over their heads down and snapped them into place. They sort of resembled a pair of wings, with two struts attached to the backpack at shoulder-level that protruded to either side with round thrusters at the end.
"Where's the controller for the thruster?" Milo said over the communication system.
"It's a brain-to-computer interface" he heard Brian's voice reply. "Try to think about moving forward and you will." Milo did as he was told and sure enough, the pack pushed him forward with a slight thrust. He found he could control the turning of the thrusters will relative ease. It almost felt natural, as if the suit and jetpack were part of his body. The distance between the airlock of the crane ship and the nuclear frigate seemed much larger than it was. Milo summed up his courage and rocketed himself into the chasm of vacuum in between the two vessels and got inside the door with no problem. Milo shined the light around the bay. Luckily, there wasn't much debris that he could see.
"Over there" Kayla said pointing. Milo could barely make out Kayla pointing to the wall opposite the door that they entered where a sliding door was cracked open. Milo and Kayla both thrusted over to where the door was. Milo grabbed hold of the two doors and attempted to pull them apart, but they wouldn't budge.
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"Arm strength amplification activated" Milo heard a female, computerized voice inside his helmet. Milo grabbed the doors again and pulled and they came open quite easily. Milo and Kayla went inside the door and into the corridor inside.
"Do you know where we are going, Milo?" Milo heard Kayla's voice over the communicator in his ear.
"We need to get to the missile deck. It's on the upper part of the stern, I think" Milo replied. The corridor was very eerie and no noise could be heard except for the pump circulating air throughout his suit. There wasn't many signs of decay aside from some damage probably caused from the battle. Milo pulled the door to the stairs out of the way. The stairs and the walls around the stairwell were completely mangled.
"We can't go up the stairs" Milo said.
"Find the elevator shaft" Brian replied. Milo and Kayla kept thrusting themselves down the corridor. Sure enough, there was a couple of large, metal, sliding doors. Milo grabbed the doors and pulled them apart again with the artificial strength amplification.
"I think I might could live in this thing a while" Milo said as the doors came apart.
"Oh my God!" Kayla shrieked. The elevator was at their level, and inside was the body of a Union Naval officer, his clothes and body pale white but otherwise seemingly completely preserved in the vacuum with no radiation. Milo's entire body felt like its temperature had dropped to near freezing.
"What's the matter?!" Brian asked loudly sounding concerned.
"A body" Kayla answered forcing herself to look at it so that Brian could see it on the camera. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised here."
"Chris" Milo could hear Brian's voice say. "Say 'activate hacksaw' and tear a hole in the top of the elevator and just go straight up the shaft."
"Activate Hacksaw!" Milo said feeling almost like he was giving some kind of magical incantation. A long, metal bar with a circular blade extended from the compartment on the forearm of his hand. The blade easily tore through the roof of the elevator. It felt very strange for there to not be any noise or sparks as this was being done. Milo cut a large section of the elevator and gave a push. The piece that he had cut out went spinning upward through the shaft. Milo and Kayla ascended the shaft for about 15 feet before reaching another door. Milo once again pried the door open.
There were several more bodies floating around in the corridor in the upper level. The macabre sightings chilled Milo to the bone. Milo figured that they sealed off the upper level of the ship when the hull was breached and eventually exhausted their oxygen supply. After thrusting down the corridor about 40 feet, they came to a large door with a large yellow and black symbol on it.
"What is that?" Brian asked.
"It's the old terrestrial-age symbol for ionizing radiation safety" Milo informed them. "This must be the missile bay." Milo tried to open the door, but even with the assistance from the strength augmentation system, he couldn't get it completely open.
"Help me, Kayla" Milo said. I think I can get it open but I will need your help. Kayla grabbed the lower part of the door while Milo grabbed the upper part. With both of their suits pulling the door finally opened with an abrupt movement. Inside was a very narrow passage way going off to the right – almost too narrow for the protrusions on their suits. They made their way through the narrow passage and came to a staircase that went downwards into a control room. Near the front of the room was a large computer terminal.
"I think this is it!" Milo said excitedly. "Brian, I will make the scan and send the data to you." Milo hit the button on the helmet.
"I think I can get the missiles into the cargo of the crane ship" Brian said. "There's just one problem, it could take us too long to crack the launch codes. Those things can be pretty sophisticated, even for our technology."
"I've got a plan for that" Milo said. He took the rod from the side of his leg and held the glowing, blueish-white orb over his head. "Captain Beed, if you can hear this, we desperately need your help."
"Milo, there's no air here! Me and Brian are the only people that can hear you!" Kayla scolded him. Milo ignored her.
"Captain Beed, anyone, if you can hear us, please answer." Milo could see or hear nothing, but the orb continued to blue bright blue.
"Look Chris" Brian said. "This was an idea worth trying but it looks like it's just not going to work out. You guys can just come on back to the crane ship."
"No, I'm not done yet!" Milo said unwilling to yield a single inch to Brian or Kayla's request. "Captain Beed, if you can hear us, the Goddess Gaia is resuming her assault on humanity. Your atomic fission weapons may have been scorned as barbaric and ancient, but they once ushered in an era of unprecedented peace on Earth in the terrestrial era, and I feel they do that for this entire portion of the galaxy. I am pleading with you from the bottom of my heart to show yourself and help us." Kayla and Brian said nothing. A few seconds after, a transparent, white-hued apparition of a man appearing to be in his late 50s appeared in front of him and Kayla. The apparition walked right up next to Milo and placed his hand on the orb and pointed at Kayla and then at the orb. Kayla activated her jets, almost knocking Milo back, and put her arm on the orb.
"Who are you?" Milo could hear the ghost say inside his helmet. Milo got a chill down his spine as the words were spoken to him. "Have you come to resurrect me and my men?"
"I can't do that, I am sorry" Milo replied, feeling uneasy of what kind of quid pro quo he might end up with. "I'm here just to seek your help, and if there's anything we can do for you, let me know."
"I will help you, but I will have one request of you" the apparition said. "I don't know who you are or why I feel more awake than I have since I died, but I need to tell you my story and I need you to promise me that it gets out to the world. We were betrayed. When President Henry Alamore surrendered to the royal armada, he gave away our hiding place here in exchange for retaining sovereignty of the Earth sector planet Ariguar, which his family owns much of. He was credited for his great negotiations in the surrender but he had the leverage because he sold us out and allowed Admiral Agorja and Queen Tarissa to destroy our fleet."
"Are you sure about that?" Milo asked.
"Absolutely. We asked Agorja if we could get immunity from the charges of using radiation-producing atomic weapons and he uncompromisingly refused to do it. He told us that Alamore had given us away and that we needed to surrender to face justice. Most of us refused to do so."
"I'll tell it to whoever might listen, but Henry's grandson Griffin might sue me on his behalf" Milo said jokingly.
"I'm not surprised that his grandson is president" the ghost said. "I strongly suspect the Goddess has played a hand in the genetic lineage of that family and has played a part in helping them keep power."
"I will do it" Milo promised. "Can you help us with the launch codes?"
The ghost said nothing, but disappeared. For a minute, Milo wondered if Beed was not going to do it, but then, something truly amazing happened. The computer terminal they were standing next to came to life and the words "ready for launch" on the display.
"Wow, that really didn't just happen did it?" Brian said. "There's not even any power on these ships. Those things are armed now. I think I can tear open the hull and put all of the missiles In the cargo bay of the crane ship. I'm just going to take a quick look at what we're dealing with, first." Milo and Kayla began to move back the way they came.
"Bad news, Chris" Brian said a brief moment later. "I don't know if there's going to be enough of these things to bring down the reptilian fleet."
"No, these will do fine" Milo answered.
"Chris, most of these things will be shot before they can hit any ship. I just don't know how effective they will be if you can't fire a barrage of them."
"These warheads won't be used to fight ships." Milo said. "Trust me here."