In a Sea of Stones

“NOMAD Prime, this is Sui on NOMAD Survey Two. I got something, you copy?” The communications console hissed for a long second with the background static of space. The Survey modules meandered a long way away from the mother ships in their eternal search for metals out here in the Asteroid Belt. Far enough that it took the radio waves an appreciable amount of time to make the roundtrip journey from one vessel to another.

Kala Sui: Pilot NOMAD Survey Two

As she waited, Kala Sui’s eyes automatically flickered over the control panel of her ship, taking in no specific detail but giving her a quick overview of the general condition of the module. The Survey ship was about the size of a school bus, One third of its bulk was taken up with engines and fuel, another third held air and water to sustain its pilot, and the rest, something less than the volume of a small office back on Earth held the pilot herself. It took a particular blend of wanderlust and mental stability, seasoned with a liberal dash of pure greed to make up the psyche of a typical Survey pilot. Jimson had been locked up inside this particular can for eight days now, and she was only just past the halfway mark of her shift. Her mind needed to cope simultaneously with the immensity of the open universe that surrounded her and the claustrophobically tiny space in which she could move.

“NOMAD Prime here, Survey Two” the reply came many seconds later. The distances out here at the edge of the Void were staggeringly large. “Initiating DLC lasers for direct link communications. What you got, Kala?”

The survey module and the mother ship had located one another. Their on-board computers could now analyze their relative positions and initiate a tight beam, line of sight communication tunnel that no one outside could eavesdrop on. Radio waves were great for broadcast messages, but you couldn’t keep them private. Using line of sight laser beams allowed the two ships to communicate in secrecy. Theoretically, another ship could take up a position directly behind one of the others and gather some of the spill-over, but in practice that kind of vector analysis and response was beyond the fuel allocations of any commercial vessels — and the pilot of the third vessel would find himself being whipsawed all over the sky as the two primaries moved incrementally in relation to one another.

Cat Shires: Engineer, NOMAD Prime

Sui waited until the telltale on her communications console glowed green, showing her that the direct link was established, and then she told them what she’d found, the excitement spilling out of her in a hoarse laugh and whoop of joy. The words spilled out in a torrent:

“I got one, Cat. A real one. I can see it right now. I got my tether line on it and I’ve tagged it with our marker. Here’s the claim,” she uploaded a set of coordinates and the time stamp of her discovery. “It’s a by-God honest to-beat-the-fucking-band alien ship, Cat. We’re rich, darlin’ . All of us. Mark my words. From this day on, my friend, we will be living in luxury!”

Aboard the Nomad Prime

Rue Di Pasqua was sitting on her bunk, reading a medical text book. It was two years out of date, but had enough information to keep her busy for a while. Things were slow, for now. Being a medic that was a good thing. After all, if things were jumping it meant people were getting hurt. Most of her recent calls had been for dehydration when one of the pilots came in after a rather long flight. They were never very good at taking care of themselves.

Ruane Di Pasqua: Medic

Rue was still young, though she felt her life slipping away. She wanted to be a full fledged doctor on the homeworld. Not a medic giving hypershots to drunk pilots after a late night binge. She pushed her braided brown hair from her shoulder as she took a few notes on the page.

When an alert came for her to report to the bridge, Rue sighed, and stood. Her room always seemed small when she stood up. Bending down, she pulled her medkit from under the bed. After stretching and doing her best not to hit her head on the low bunk, she walked down the narrow hallways. She walked onto the bridge.

“You called me, Captain?” she said as she stood on the bridge, looking out at the vastness of space. There was something frightening about looking out into nothing, and knowing only a thin sheet of metal kept all of space out. She shivered for a moment, before looking at her Captain.

Zard Anora leaned back in the acceleration couch behind the main navigation console. It was normally Havas’s place, but it was the closest thing the ship had to a throne, and the captain often appropriated it when she felt particularly in charge. She looked smug right now, curled up like a cat with an “I’ve just eaten the biggest damned canary in the world” grin on her face. She’d been waiting for Rue to arrive.

During this period of time, while the scout ships were out questing for treasure among a mountain of useless rocks, the Nomad Prime was pretty much on half crew. Only Captain Anora, Cat Shires, the engineer, Nvar Havas, who’s navigator’s console she had commandeered and Rue herself were on board. The pilots were out there, in the erormity of space, light seconds away: Kala Sui, the red-headed cowgirl, Bex Dobbs, big, blonde and surly and Julio Robles, dark and lithe, full of macho bluster, but softer than a pat of butter left in the sun.

“Got an announcement,” she said as soon as the medic was on deck. “Kala’s found something. Says she’s got a ship, dead in space. She thinks its an alien. I don’t know. But even if its an old Chinese or Russian ship, the salvage will make us all rich. If it really is from the Void, . . . Shit! We’ll be rich and famous, guys!”

Havas looked doubtful. He was natrually morose and never really believed that anything would go well. Most of the time he was right. Cat Shires grinned from ear to ear. And Zard Anora practically purred in anticipation of their rewards.

“Just ‘cos she’s tagged it don’t mean we keep it,” intejected Havas, the natural sourpus pouring water on their enthusiasm. “Plenty of folks want to hijack a derelict, let alone a real, honest to god alien. Cripple us, leave us to die and take it. What you think we should do, Cap’n?”

“Beats the shit out of me, Havas. What do you guys think we should do?”

Swimming in Stones

“Let’s go and pick up Sui and take a look at this thing anyway,” decided Anora at last.

The bridge of the NOMAD Prime had exploded with a blizzard of suggestions and dire warnings about a nano second after she had announced Kala Sui’s discovery of a derelict space ship floating in the Asteroid Belt. Nvar Havas was convinced it was a Chinese vessel, lost in the days of the Communist Revival at the end of the 21st Century.

“They sent out ships that had no way to get back,” he assured the others. “Didn’t give a shit if they died as long as they found metal. It’ll be full of dead bodies.”

Cat Shires was equally certain that it would turn out to be a plague ship, crept off from one of the wacko religious platforms to die in the Void.
“It’ll be swarming with nanites ready to deconstruct organic material on contact,” she whispered. “If we go aboard, we’ll just dissolve.”

Dobbs and Robles were too far away for their input to mean anything. Their comments always arrived fifty seconds after the topic had already changed and they sounded like dim wits trying to keep up with something they really didn’t understand. The only thing that came through loud and clear was that they were both already plotting in courses to rendezvous at Nomad Survey 2, Sui’s module.

“Captain,” Rue started, one hand in the hidden pocket of her pants, the other still holding her medkit, “I believe it might be good to do an initial sweep of the ship. I’m happy to help. Take anything that is exceedingly valuable and easy to carry off, then head to base, and return with more men and equipment for the real salvage.”

That kicked of another heated round of arguments about whether they should board the vessel or not, and who they could trust back at their corporate base on HoJo Ring. The potential value of their find staggered their imaginations, and they all understood that as soon as word of the find got out, it would attract thieves and cheats like shit attracts flies.

Rue waited patiently for the others to talk and discuss. Everything from dragging the ship to leaving now and returning in a few months came up. She mostly stayed quiet after her piece. After all, she was just a medic, her job was to look after anyone who was sick. After much discussion, she waited for her Captain’s orders. If she was going to suit up, and head to the ship, she wanted to know. It seems overall like a good idea to do a quick sweep. Nothing to drastic, and then do something a bit more careful. If they were right, and it was a tried and true alien ship, then they would want to keep it mostly untouched.

“So, Captain, your orders?” she asked when things finally slowed down a bit.

That was when Anora announced her decision to go to the site and take a look see. Her decision made it final. All three ships would maneuver as quickly as possible towards the location beacon installed in the nose cone of Survey Module 2.

Moving through the Asteroid Belt was not a simple task. For the most part, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is empty space. The laws of gravity, however, and the mechanics of a spinning accretion ring around the sun had assembled a collection of rocky particles in a narrow band about 250,000,000 miles out from the sun. In time these objects, ranging in size from microscopic dust motes to planetoids would probably collect together and form a new planet in the solar system. At the current moment, however, the billions of tiny objects posed a huge risk to navigation. Moving from one point to another in this region of space was not a matter of travelling in a straight line. Any direct course in this seething sea of stones would inevitably intersect the path of something large enough to crush the ship, and even pebble sized objects would punch holes through the thin metal skin that protected them from the harsh environment of deep space if they hit them too hard.

To move around successfully, they had to go slowly and tack from vector to vector. The number of possible routes from one location to another ranked in the millions, though only a handful of those options would offer the combination of speed and safety they required. Havas spent an hour at his navigation consol plotting possibilities. At last he threw a suggested route up on the wide 3D display that normally mimicked a forward view panel.

“This route gets us there in twenty two hours with minimal burns,” he announced. “This one,” he toggled to a shorter but much more jagged line, “gets us there in sixteen hours, but would burn almost twice as much fuel.”

Captain Zard Anora

Anora leaned against his station, hitching her butt on the edge of his consol.

“We’ll take the long road,” she said. “Six hours is a small price to pay at this point.”

Havas nodded and started clicking buttons and dragging icons on his touch screen display. The ship started to alter course and everyone aboard could feel the change in direction as the orientation of up and down slowly settled on the ship. Out here there were no objects large enough to create any perceptible gravity. Only acceleration could provide the sense of up and down. Any ship that stopped accelerating would be in zero gravity with everything floating, including your innards. Since very early in the process of space exploration, the micro-gravity environment in space had been recognized as dangerous to living things. Humans could spend days, even weeks in weightlessness and remain healthy. But if that time stretched out into months, the damage done to bones and internal organs became noticeable and permanent.

To compensate for the lack of gravity, ships could accelerate, providing a sense of down that was in the opposite direction to that in which they were moving. But this only lasted as long as the ship continued to go faster and faster. Once the ship stopped accelerating, the down went away. For journeys from one place to another, this was not an issue. Accelerate to the mid-point, flip over and decelerate the rest of the way. Down stayed in the same orientation for the whole trip.

For space stations and ships that wanted to stay in place or coast along at the same speed, the solution was spin. Spin an object around and everything in it wants to fly away from the center of spin. Out becomes down.

On the NOMAD Prime, the spin option for the entire ship really did not exist. There were sections of the ship, mounted internally on axles that could spin and provide a localized gravity effect – enough for the crew to exercise in for several hours a day and avoid the hazards of prolonged micro-gravity exposure, but the main part of the ship lacked any gravity at all during most of its mission as it cruised the edges of the Asteroid Belt, waiting for the Survey modules to report back.

Now that they were underway again, speeding up, the ship seemed to slowly right itself and the cross sectional decks became the floor again as everying inside the vessel took on weight as well as mass again.

Anora keyed a private channel from her cabin to Di Pasqua.

“Step up the exercise routines for us all, doc, while we’ve got plenty of push. I hate getting flabby while we drift. And find out what you can about Cat’s nanites. Did they ever exist outside of the horror movies. And if they did, what can we do to keep them off my ship.”

The comm. went dead for a moment and then the Captain keyed open the line again.

“If this is an alien ship, Rue, I’m going to need you at the top of your game. Get some sleep and then start thinking about how we should approach a potentially toxic environment. Even if there are no nanites, there may be poisonous gasses on board – or alien bugs that’ll crawl up yer crack and take root.

“I need you thinking biohazard, honey.

“Anora out.”

An Alien Vessel

“Lovely,” Rue said to herself as she rubbed her temples. Maybe they would get rich, and if they did, that meant she could go back to school and be more than just a medic on a god forsaken boat out in the middle of no where. She’d be a real doctor on a planet with a nice house, and maybe even a tree.

With a sign, she turned on the comm. “This is a report from Medic Di Disqua. Everyone is going to have to double the exercise routine over the next few days. We will had an extra hour now, and two more after the mission to the ship. You will find a schedule on the central net. For all those who will be part of the away team, be sure to drink as much fluid as possible. You will also find a schedule of the physicals.”

Rue turned off the comm, and then sat at the small consol in her room. Nanites had to be listed in the central database, though she could also send a subspace call to headquarters for more information. It was going to take a couple hours for the signal to get there, and then get back with the information she requested.

Researching the possibility of nanites on the NOMAD Prime’s core database, Rue found the following entry:

Nanite

“A nanomachine, also called a nanite, is a mechanical or electromechanical device whose dimensions are measured in nanometers (millionths of a millimeter, or units of 10 -9 meter).

A nanite is built by manipulating atoms and contains gigabytes of computer memory. It is small enough to enter living cells and can be programmed to do numerous tasks. Nanites are used for medical purposes and are designed to work inside nucleii during cellular surgery. When they are not used, nanites are stored in a non-functional state. When necessary nanites can be destroyed with a burst of high-level gamma radiation.

The microscopic size of nanomachines translates into high operational speed. This is a result of the natural tendency of all machines and systems to work faster as their size decreases. Nanomachines may be programmed to replicate themselves, or to work synergistically to build larger machines or to construct nanochips. Specialized nanomachines called nanorobots might be designed not only to diagnose, but to treat, disease conditions, perhaps by seeking out invading bacteria and viruses and destroying them.

Another advantage of nanomachines is that the individual units require only a tiny amount of energy to operate. Durability is another potential asset; nanites might last for centuries before breaking down. The main challenge lies in the methods of manufacture. It has been suggested that some nanomachines might be grown in a manner similar to the way plants evolve from seeds.”

Before she has a chance to send out more detailed research requests to the large data arrays on HoJo Ring, Captain Anora places a blanket Silence order on all unneccessary communications outside the ship and the survey modules.

“I don’t want to go dark,” she explains over the comm, “that would attract attention as well. But I don’t want any out of the ordinary communication with the Ring, or any other point outside our little universe. No calling your mother to tell her what we’ve found. no promising you’ll be able to pay of those gambling debts when we get home. Nothing but minimal comm traffic. Capiche?”

Her next duty was to go and check all the biosuits herself. If there was even a loose thread she was going to reject the suit. It took her a good couple of hours to make note of each suit. There was also a plan to write up regarding the Vaccines against various possible bio-terror materials. No one was going to be happy with the 8 different shots she had mixed, but it was better than having them becoming mummies.

The suits, one for each crew member on the ship and clearly marked with their names, are in good shape. Asteroid drifters tend to look after their gear. Even a pinhole leak during an extra vehicular activity would be certain death, and all of them work outside the steel cocoons of their vessels from time to time. It’s nature of being a rock jockey.

It took another hour to mix the vaccines. This was far above her pay grade, but then there wasn’t exactly a real doctor on the ship. She sent all the mixes through the tests, then decided to call Havas first. He tended to be good at complaining, and probably had the toughest system of anyone on board. After putting in a comm to him, she waited.

Injection

“Don’t worry, it will only hurt a bit, and I ran every test possible. So don’t act like I’m trying to poison you,” she muttered as she started the first shot.

It didn’t take long before she was done with her first victim. Just a few more to go.

“See that wasn’t so bad. I’d give you a lollipop, but I’m afraid the Captain said that would be demeaning.”

She gave a good natured smile. Havas might have been a sourpuss, but he wasn’t a bad guy. And when they girls outnumbered the guys 4 to one, it wasn’t like there was date night often or ever. And well, he was fun to get stirred up.

Havas is predictably grumpy about the vaccine she has prepared and the increased exercise routines she wants him to undertake, though he powers through them like an animal. He is very strong and fit. He’s ten or fifteen years older than Rue, but in the peak of health, and very active. From time to time he makes eye contact with her and she is certain she can see a smouldering lust in his eyes that could light up the Ring itself with its intensity, but he has never made an inappropriate comment or pass at her. Maybe he’s just waiting for her to let the floodgates open, just a little?

Robles, on the other hand, is always coming on — to her, to Cat, to Kala — but never to Dobbs or the Captain. he is quite happy to chatter and flirt on the laser comm as long as she would like, telling her things he wants to do to her that make her laugh and blush. Things that creep into her dreams and wake her up in a hot lather.

Next she called on the Captain, then the others on board. There were still the other pilots, but she could carry enough to give them what they needed before they suited up. Everything was in order, and Rue was pretty sure she had thought of at least 80% of the things that could kill them, and blocked 70%. There was still the unknown and the 10% sure she could do nothing about, but she was going to give anyone those numbers, not even the captain unless she was ordered.

When everything was done, she had just enough time to do her own exercise, before a quick dinner, and straight to bed. She needed rest just in case. Hopefully, everything was going to be a cakewalk, and all she was going to do was get to watch Kala jumping around like a jumping bean about her find. That and maybe get a few words into to Julio. It had been a long time since they had talked.

The 8 hour rest felt nice, but when she awoke, they were all but there. After a quick shower, she got the rest of the vaccines ready. She just kept reminding herself exactly how easy this mission was going to be despite the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Reporting for duty, Captain,” she said as she entered the bridge to see the ship’s viewer showing the find. “Looks like an interesting ship. Hope it has fun stuff. Any orders before we depart?” she asked.

Keeping busy made the time fly and it seemed like only a few hours had passed when Havas announced that Survey One was alongside, ready to dock. Dobbs had set an course that intersected with the main ship a thousand kilometers before it reached the location of Kala Sui’s module. She matched vectors with Havas reading out a string of numbers and angles to her all the time, and they all felt the clang of her hatch dogging on to the outside ring assigned for her module.

Several moment later, having passed through the protocols for matching pressures and screening for toxins, the big blond woman strode onto the bridge. She stank. Twelve days in the module with no shower can leave its mark on you.

“Hit the showers, Dobbs,” grinned Anora. “No one wants you near them right now.”

The broad-shouldered pilot grimaced, but padded away in the direction of the fresher.

“Robles’ll join us at Kala’s location” reported Havas, checking his readings for the ten thousandth time.

“We’ll be there in forty seven minutes.”

“Got it!” called Cat from a sensor console at the rear of the bridge area. “It’s not much of a picture, but I can see it. Holy shit, she’s right. That’s a fucking alien ship, my darlin’s.”

An Alien Ship Adrift in the Asteroid Belt

The engineer threw the image she had obtained from the long range scanners up on the main screen. Fuzzy and blobby, shifting in and out of focus at this extreme range, they could all see, nevertheless, that this was a ship unlike any they were familiar with. As they watched in awe, the image grew and became more detailed as they moved closer and closer towards it.

Rue decided she would wait for Dobbs to take a shower before she gave her the shots. They really did smell after being stuck in those ships. The ship would be disinfected later. Right now there were other things to deal with. Rue had Dobbs report to the medical bay before she could go on the away mission. The thought of going over to the other ship made Rue nervous, it was bad enough being stuck in a bucket of metal that she trusted, she had no idea what was in that other ship.

Bex Dobbs in the Shower

Bex Dobbs took a long time in the shower, not unusual for someone denied cleanliness for days on end. Rue jabbed her full of antibodies and vitamins as she was toweling off, and the brawny woman yelped, then laughed out loud at the medic’s expression.
 
“Should see your face, doc!” she grinned as she paraded around the ship  without a stitch of clothing on. “S’alright. I don’t bite –less you want me to!” The Amazon leered suggestively at the young woman, and Rue retreated quickly,  unsure how much of the encounter had been rough humor and how much might have been poorly executed flirting. She was pretty sure that the Captain and Dobbs had a thing going, but even in these close quarters they managed to be discrete about it.
After shots were given, she reported back on the bridge. There was discussion about the best way to go into the ship. Rue walked up to listen, it was only when everyone turned to look at her did she realize there was a question.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

“What do you think?” Cat said impatiently. “How do you think we should get on the ship?”

Rue gave a cough into her hand. “I’m not really qualified to make any suggestions about engineering. I would suggest whatever we do, we should suit up. Keeps any bugs that might be living in the ship at bay until we can detoxic the place. Besides that, I’m really not eager for a space walk, so if we can pull the ship up and just command the other ship to open up, I think that would be nice.”

The others just started at her for a moment, before they all started to laugh. Rue gave a fake smile, before she moved on to try and find the Captain. She wanted to finish giving her report in person, then suit up. If the team was really going to need her over there, then she needed to be ready for anything. This really wasn’t what she signed up to do, but you couldn’t exactly tell your Captain no when you were in the middle of space with no where to go.

“Captain,” she said when she entered the briefing room where the Captain was working on her plan. “Here’s my report on the nanonites. Overall, I think they aren’t likely to be either on the ship nor a problem for us, but I think the suits should mostly protect against most of them. Though they can slip through the lining. I am ready if you really think I should join the away team, though I’m happy to stay behind as well.”

“This ship is not a human designed ship,” Captain Anora said. “There seems to be very little in the way of a propulsion unit, while our deep space vessels are almost fifty percent engines. Which makes me think there are technologies we don’t understand at play here. Stands to reason there will be no breathable air on board, so we’ll only be able to go aboard in suits.
 
“In case there is something out there that might contaminate our ship, I plan to approach with one of the modules before we bring the Prime alongside. Sui and Robles will be back on board in about an hour or so, but they are not part of the team I’m going to send over.
 
“Cat. I need you over there to even have a chance of understanding their technology. And Doc, you need to go too — we’ll be looking at alien life forms, at least the bodies of them, and I need to know as quickly as possible if there is any bio-hazard over there. Bex will fly you over and she will provide the strong arm backup. I think she’s got a couple of illegal weapons hidden away somewhere, right, bruiser?”
 
Dobbs chuckled and nodded.
 
“Yeah. Couple of pop guns hidden under my bunk.”
 
“I know this is dangerous, ladies, and I’m prepared to double your stakes for being the ones to take the greatest risk. Normal crew share is two point five percent of salvage for derelicts. I’m going to up your share to five percent a piece, out of my own cut. And, of course, you’ll go down in the history books. They’ll know your names a thousand years from now. The first humans to board an alien vessel.
 
“Suit up, girls. I want you in Survey One within the hour.
 
“Bex, open the hatches on the module for now, right? We don’t have time to clean it properly, but that will get the stink out in a hurry.”
 
Anora looked at the others.
 
“Any questions?”

Aboard the Alien Vessel

“No questions, Captain,” Rue replied.

There wasn’t really anything to question other than her own fears. Her stomach was in knots. Rue really didn’t like the idea of being a part of a 3 person team on a new ship, but doubling her take was too good to pass up. It was nice of the Captain to do that. She after all, could have just ordered them to do so. Checking her bag, she gave a nod and looked at the others.

She waited to speak until the Captain answered any questions. Once the Captain left them alone, she gave a little smile. It was just going to be the three of them going into complete unknown.

“I guess we’ll be the first women to go where no man has gone before. About time,” she said with a shrug. “Let’s get suited up.”

Kala Sui raged and fumed that she was not to be one of the first aboard the ship she had found. She wept and she pleaded, but Anora stood firm.
“I can clearly see weapons installed on that ship,” the captain said over the tight beam laser comm. “You ever see any weapons on our ships, honey? No. Just not done. We don’t fight in space. But whoever these guys were, they did. They’re armed, and they may or may not still be dangerous.

“I won’t risk two modules on our initial approach, and Dobbs has real combat experience, honey. She’s armed for frickin’ bear. She goes in first with the engineer and the medic on her team. End of story.

“Anora out!”

Dobbs arrived on the bridge a few seconds later wearing a small armory of highly illegal weapons strapped to her suit. Rue identified a taser, an antique automatic pistol, a riot gun and what could only be a cluster of grenades strapped in a bandolier across her torso. The big blonde was grinning from ear to ear as she dogged her helmet in place and swung up through the hatch into her survey module.

“Gonna have some fun, now, Doc,” she winked at Rue.

It was 45 minutes later, and they were prepared to head out. Rue had as many antidotes that she could make of just about anything the ship could throw at them. Horrible alien diseases was just not the way she wanted to die. Her bag was held tightly in the gloved hand. Dobbs would pilot then go in first, she would go next, and then Cat. The engineer was very good with all equipment. Which Rue found useful when the food processor decided to spit out multi covered protein. It usually meant that the spinach flavored protein was being mixed with the blueberry or something even more awful.

Rue and Cat put their own helmets on and slid through the hatch into the survey module, strapping themselves into secondary couches. The main hatch clanged shut and a lurch ran through the tiny ship as it separated from the mother vessel. Pressure pushed them back in their couches as Dobbs accelerated easily away from the Nomad Prime, squirting streams of pulverized stone behind them for reaction mass.

As they got on the ship, Rue was pretty happy for the filtering system in the suit. It was able to filter out 99.9% of the particles in the air, and the place still smelled bad. She didn’t want to think about how it might smell had they got in right away.

Rue waited on board, mostly trying not to look out the window. That only reminded her that space was very high up. Very, very high up. It was a fall that would never stop.

“So, what’s everyone’s plan to do with their cut?” she asked trying to pass the time as they rode to the ship.

Anora has stopped 5,000 meters away from the drifting alien ship. Under Bex’s expert controls, the survey module covered the distance in less than ten minutes, starting to slow down as they passed the half way mark. In total silence, they slid across the black face of the void and came to a halt approximately fifteen meters from the drifting hulk.

Close up it looked ancient and dead. Dobbs threw her lights on and started a slow spiral traversal the length of the alien ship. The three women inspected the hull closely. At this range they could see many dents and dings in the surface from impacts with other objects in the asteroid belt. In two locations they could see real craters where something large had plowed into the deserted vessel hard enough to punch a hole in the outer hull.

“Been here a long time,” said Cat at last. “Thousands of years? Millions? Takes a while to get banged up like that. And no sign of repairs. I think this thing is long dead.”

“Pick the biggest hole and use that to get inside,” Anora’s voice echoed from the comm on the tight beam laser. She and the rest of the crew were watching as closely as those actually on the module.

Dobbs eased her ship to within five meters of the rim of the largest impact site. The hole looked to be about two meters in diameter, like a great round mouth with jagged teeth of metallic shards. Bex shone a powerful searchlight directly into the gaping opening but it remained black as if nothing but an open space existed inside.

“Better watch out for those sharp edges,” warned Cat, quite unnecessarily. “Not a problem getting in, but they’ll act like a fly trap coming out. Especially if you’re in a hurry.”

Dobbs parked the module and opened the ceiling hatch. In the weightless environment of deep space, she eeled gracefully up through the opening and out onto the hull of the survey vessel. Pausing for only a second she pushed off very gently and drifted across the short distance between the two ships, flipping in mid flight to land with her boots against the outer skin of the other vessel. Looking around she found a protruding piece of mechanism and tied off the tether she had dragged behind her. The two ships were now anchored together.

“There’s steel in the hull,” she spoke through the local channel with a rasp of fast breathing. Even the daredevil was on edge. “My boots stick enough to walk. I’m going inside.”

The pilot played a powerful flashlight over the out hull of the alien and walked slowly and awkwardly down the slope to the gaping dark hole. She shone the light inside.

“Looks like an engineering compartment,” she said. And then she pushed herself head forward into the hole, swimming into the other ship like a fish entering a nest.

“Holy shit! What the . . .” A bright flash of light outlined her legs still sticking out of the hole, and then her body slid all of the way in.

“Bex! Bex!” called Anora over the comm from the mother ship. “Quit fucking around you stupid slut. Bex?”

Nothing but silence returned.

Rue scrambled across the alien vessel’s outer hull and shone her own portable lamp inside the gaping black tear. The space inside defied her understanding for a moment until she realized that she was looking into a single large compartment that filled the entire ship and that the compartment was more than 80 percent full of something huge and mirrored. Her lamp flashed back light in her face from the surface, so perfect were the reflections that it was almost invisible. As she looked around, she could see Dobbs, floating a meter or two inside the open space, between the object and the inner skin of the hull.

Dobbs’ tether was still connected to her suit and pulling on the line gently, Rue managed to drag the big pilot within her grip. The Amazon sized woman was hard for the tiny medic to move around and her suit kept on bumping into objects on the interior, but by being patient, Rue managed to get her through the ragged tear in the hull without piercing her suit. From there it took only another few minutes to get her back into the survey module.

The pilot’s life signs read steady through the medcom inputs on her suit and she seemed to be asleep rather than injured. After a few moments under Rue’s attention, her eyes fluttered open. She looked around the tiny cabin of her own module and realized where she was.

“Dumb!” she said. “Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! I saw something coming at me out of the ship and I fired my stun gun. Must have knocked myself out.”

Piecing it together with what Rue had seen, it quickly became apparent that Dobbs had seen herself reflected in the mirrored surface and fired at herself.

Rue had never been more relieved when Dobbs was ok. At least she used a stun gun instead of something more lethal. The woman did have far worse weapons.

“Well, at least I hit what I was aiming at,” she laughed sheepishly. “let’s get back over there, doc. You’d better come too, Cat, see what you can make of it.”

Once she was sure she was alive, Rue did her best to patch up the suit, and they started back. Never once did she drop her guard, spending all her time looking around though the darkness kept her from seeing very much.

After all, it was more Dobbs job than her own to look out for problems. Instead, she was watching out for any signs of life. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be. Even as the forcefield was being lowered, she was determined to believe everything was very dead. All they needed was a few trinkets, then they could come back later to get the rest.

“How are things going?” she asked Cat, as she watched.

The three women dogged down their helmets and followed the tether across to the other ship. It was perhaps fifty meters in diameter, swelling to twenty meters thick in the middle. As Rue had observed, the entire interior of the ship seemed to contain a single object that only just fit inside. By moving carefully, they managed to squeeze into the space between the hull and the object and slither around the outer edges, exploring.

Cat pointed out that along a wide point of contact, the silvery object was attached to the hull, and there seemed to be a control panel at one point, with a set of controls designed for something much larger than any human being.

By this time the risk to the main ship looked to be minimal and Captain Anora had brought the vessel in close.

Anora summoned the away team back to the Nomad Prime and asked for opinions.

“Whoever they are, they’re big,” said Cat, throwing holograms of the control panel and other interfaces up on the main view screen. “I think that the entire ship is built for only a handful of them. I think it might be a life raft of some kind. And that mirrored thing taking up most of the interior space — I think that may be a protective force field of some kind –like an air bag but wrapped around the passengers to protect them inside until they get rescued.

“There’s no power in the circuits that I can tell. I think it’s been floating out here for tens of thousands of years. So I don’t think anyone is on their way to rescue them.

“We could try hooking up power from one of the modules to the control panel, see if we can lower the force field. But I have no idea what’s inside.”

As the crew of the survey module searched the alien vessel, Rue di Pasqua made some observations and applied a bit of logic. She couldn’t be certain, but the vessel did not seem quite as simple as Cat’s engineering analysis would have suggested. The craft was certainly probably built for something quite large in its primary functions, but there were hints that some of the on-board systems were designed for smaller creatures. Much smaller. Perhaps the size of dogs or monkeys.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she found a husk — the dried out remains of a creature, hidden in crevice. It was ancient and dessicated, even to touch it, she was certain, would destroy it, so she photographed it in situ as best she could. It seemed to be six legged with small versatile limbs and an insectile head bearing faceted eyes and mandibles. Perhaps one meter in length, she judged the original creature might have weighed 20 – 30 kilos, though by now it was almost entirely wasted away. It was too large to be vermin, and the presence of a tool harness of some kind indicated that it had been sentient in some way. An engineering sub class of the primary passengers? There was not nearly enough evidence to extrapolate any meaningful interpretations.

“How are things going?” she asked Cat, as she watched the engineer examining the console she though might control the force field. Cat shrugged at her question. “Seems pretty dead to me,” she said.

During their investigations, Anora had maneuvered the main ship closer to the alien vessel until it was less than 1000 meters away, an easy transit. As the evidence mounted that the dead ship posed little threat to the Nomad Prime, the rest of the crew clamored to be allowed to put on their own suits and explore.

“What do you say, Doc?” asked Anora through the com. “Is it safe for the rest of us to come on over?”

“I want to do a bit more research, Captain,” she said looking at the shell still wrapped in the special casing. “Honestly, I think that hauling it back would be more practical than trying to start it up here. We do that, and we might attract far more than we bargain for.”

Rue examined and photographed the body of the long dead alien from every angle she could without actually touching it, afraid that it would shatter or crumble on contact. Six limbed and distinctly insectile in form, the remains of a tool harness and what might be clothing or perhaps a layer of molting outer skin covered the desiccated husk.

Eventually, with infinite care, she used a large pair of forceps to pry the carcass free from the crevice into which it was wedged. The body was more solid than it had looked and held up in one piece to the extraction process. She could not tell if had crept in the tiny space to die, or had been forced in their post-mortem.

As the body came free, floating in the vacuum of space inside the ancient ship, she wrapped it in a sterile sealant sheet, basically a medical form of kitchen cling wrap, and then secured the specimen in a biohazard chest roughly the size of a large cooler.

Finished with her immediate task she focused again on what the others were saying. Cat and Bex wanted to run power cables from the Nomad Prime and try bringing the alien control panels online, perhaps even wake up the entire ship. Kal Sui and Navar Havas were dead set against it, pointing out that they had no idea about the technologies involved. As the argument moved around the group, Rue was amazed to realize that Robles was offering to cast his vote with whichever side offered him the most sexual favors. Captain Anora shook her head in disbelief.

“What do you think, doc?” she turned to Rue, looking at the young medic through the clear faceplate of her space suit. “Should we give the old bucket of bolts a goose – see if we can jump start the bitch? Or should we just put a line on her and tow her back to HoJo Ring just the way she is?”

She wanted to get this thing in a sterilized room and run more tests. If they could figure out what kind of organism it was, it was more likely that they would be able to figure out if the ship would harm them or not. They might breathe poison after all.

“If you are willing Captain, I’d like to bring this specimen aboard the Nomad Prime, and do a full autopsy. It will help me know more about the ship before we start her up.”

She waited for the Captain’s response ignoring Robles, though she did roll her eyes. It was very tempting to mess with his head a little, but then it couldn’t be easy being the only guy among so many girls. Of course, he probably got enough sexual favors without having to barter for them. Though no one would actually admit to anything.

“If you’d rather not, I can set up a make shift autopsy room here.”

Anora glanced over at the specimen crate Rue had prepared.

“No way, doc. Not on my ship. I’ve seen way too many ick movies where the long dead thing comes back to life when it gets warm, or the foolish researcher drips a bit of human blood on it by mistake. You can slice it up here if you want. Or you can store it in an ore chamber on one of the scout modules. But it does not come aboard the Nomad Prime. Direct orders.”

In general the argument about trying to power up the alien ship was dying down. Only the truly foolish saw it as an option, and Anora made a command decision to switch their attention from exploration to recovery.

“Let’s get a strong tether on this thing and get it started towards HoJo Ring,” she said. “We’ll use Module One to get it moving while Prime and the other two modules stand off a few klicks. Dobbs, Cat, rig the line and then get ready to tow this sucker home.

“Doc, you can stay on board and cut up your creep crawly or come back to the Prime with us. Your choice.”