The Six-Eyed Beast
Copyright© 2025 by BenLepp
Chapter 17: An Ill-Prepared Ship
January 25th, 2279
The supply hub had been set up to orbit the second planet, a dead rock that had been surveyed 92 years earlier and found to be devoid of anything worth mentioning. Even the Rubicon’s database only had base values and not a single sentence in the description.
Basil had the vessel stop as soon as they reached maximum visual range, which wasn’t actually the theoretical limit, but the limit of their passive instruments being able to portray a useful image for them.
Supply Hub SH-8034 was still silently orbiting MA-2, on the correct orbit. There was no visible damage to the station, which consisted of a habitat section of four decks, connected to a large storage compartment and ending in a large hangar to quickly resupply their ships or load off cargo from the freighter that came by every two months on average. The three sections, which were efficiently but unimaginatively just stuck to each other looked a bit like three dices thrown onto a table together, albeit being of different sizes. The station was indeed dark, there were no lights, no transmissions, no thrusters adjusting the orbit, no machinery working, no radiation, nothing.
Basil was leaning on his large chair’s armrest, scratching his chin with his index finger, trying to figure out the next smartest move. He had recently read a book about chess when the constant combat simulations with the sluggish vessel had tired him out. He was a horrible chess player, hoping to learn from the history of the still-revered game which was – amongst European football – the main cultural export humans could boast with. There wasn’t much in the book he could retain, except for the advice that there was always a better move than the one a player was aware of. This now sent him into a circle, coming up with scenarios and reactions to them and then looking for the next, better idea. The crew was patiently waiting, some thinking the captain looked lost, others very happy their leader was using his brain before acting.
- Nocks. I assume your new drones aren’t ready?
- They are, just not cloaked. I am lacking several components.
- Remind me of that after this mission. And ready a drone.
- Aye.
- Korolev, are you on station?
- Here, Sir.
Korolev was up in the lab, having miraculously returned to light duty, assisted by Ltd. Ellington, who was happy to have someone to assist, albeit giving her a heavy load of advice from his long experience that didn’t help her regrow her nervous systems any faster. Korolev had lost some of the spark she had had before the injury, she was down on weight, her eyes sitting deeper in her skull and her hair was dull, but she held on, for some reason still dead set on making it on a ship that offered so little to a wounded scientist with much better options.
- Listen. I need you to check out any and all data we have on this system, I know it isn’t much but whatever seems interesting, tell us.
- Ayay, Sir.
Korolev’s voice sounded weaker than she would have liked, but still went to work in a burst of activity, pulling up everything the previous survey had gathered 92 years earlier and started comparing it to what the sensors were gathering now. On the bridge, Perlas did the silent and fluid 180 degrees turn his species was known for, only his leg protectors rattling a bit.
- Sir, if I may ask ‒ why is the system of interest?
- They’re missing a shuttle.
For a while, everyone was squinting at the screen at the same time, trying to figure out how the captain knew a shuttle was missing in a closed hangar bay. Basil enjoyed the moment. He genuinely had a good feeling about this crew, but was also working on his position as their captain, so he was looking for any way to show off his experience to them, as they were on average a full 15 years younger than he was – a result of his filtering when recruiting and the fact that RND had tended to recruit only the more experienced engineers.
- The last transport dropped off a Type-13 freight shuttle. It’s in the data from command; they sent us the cargo manifest. Those shuttles are too large for that hangar; it must have been docked outside when not in use, it should be clearly visible to us already ... Helm, maneuvering speed. Nocks, send in the drone. Connect to the service access in habitation.
The drone left the minechute, slipped below the starboard QES engine and left the cloaking field, betraying their presence. There was no indication anyone would be watching them so far off the lively systems, but Basil still ordered the ship to change course, passing the station once to scan it and then settling in for a high orbit above the station. The drone quickly made its way to the station’s docking port service access that allowed for communication between docked vessels and the station’s systems. The standardization efforts of the Senatorial League’s Fleet simplified this process immensely, the drone easily unlocking system access with the corresponding codes fleet command had given them for this mission.
Both the scan as well as the drone’s data confirmed the same: The hub was devoid of life. There were supposed to be seven crew members aboard, a Sii lieutenant in command, three humans in varying roles, one Catanian logistics officer, and two Zeptorian engineers working on expanding the habitation facility. This was a large crew for a simple supply depot but there was a good reason for that. After a few incidents – that reminded Basil of what regularly happened on lighthouses on his home planet – the League decided to never go below a crew of five for long periods of time to keep people sane and prevent further outbursts of violence.
- Marines, you are up.
- Confirmed, moving out.
Finally, Mender had something real to do. She was more than sick of looking at the same dark walls each day and the simulation gear had long left marks on all of their faces from overuse. Her team was ready, having studied the station’s blueprints in detail. Her second was private Diop, then there was the “heavy”, a combat engineer called Mink and finally the young private Salim, who was already sweating in his combat gear, which was simply a very reinforced version of the endosuits the whole crew had to wear when entering a zone of operation (Basil often forgetting to wear it, as he never intended to leave the ship, since a captain was supposed to be in command, not in trouble). They had been promised cloak-capable suits, but the supplies needed for those were hard to come by, as Nocks had found out with her drones. As planned, they had taken the cloaking devices off two of the compact security drones they had gotten from Petumbio – after requesting six – but soon found their fields to be rather weak when trying to expand to larger objects like space-faring drones or the human body, as Perlas had also found out with the oversized Rubicon’s cloak field initially. He was able to solve the issue with more energy and more transmitters, but those were harder to fit on a suit or a drone, not to mention the short lifespan of the energy supply. Currently, the small cloaking devices were just sitting in a box in the shuttlebay, until the list of priorities aboard would reach them.
The marines boarded one of the two shuttles in the still largely unkempt shuttle bay. The heavy diagonal hull plate above the bay swung up just enough to get the shuttle out and they were underway down to the station, the Rubicon again changing course and speed afterwards, now following the station slightly offset and lower in orbit, slowing down. With the drone, Nocks was already in control of the supply station, so the double-winged gates of the loading dock swung open, revealing a neatly organized shuttlebay to land on. As the marines moved out, the drone soon joined them as their scouting unit, now no longer taking commands from the ship but from the squad leader, a setup suggested by the experienced Mender and opposed by Nocks, who reserved the right to take over in an emergency and was worried about her creations.
The station was listed as one of the smaller stations in the fleet, which didn’t mean that it seemed small to those who had just spent days staring at close walls on the Rubicon. It was, however, well-designed and initially allowed for an easy overview, the loading dock or hangar leading into a large open storage area before ending in the smaller section containing the habitat area, the only narrow part of the station forcing the marines to change their squad formation from abrest to chain. The station was largely in proper order and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, apart from the missing crew. As they reached the quarters, they went from room to room, leapfrogging forwards, the crew back on the Rubicon watching the various feeds from their suits, weapons and the drone, seeing them going door to door. They clearly had trained this layout well, as there was little communication among them, apart from hand signs and grunting noises.
As the command center at the far end of the station was secured, it too was found in perfect order. The last log entry was the very bored Sii lieutenant journalling the routine on the station like performing a prayer, obviously being in an absolute state of everyday life. There was no mention of any issues, disagreements or things to worry about. There just weren’t any log entries afterwards. The only thing the marines and their watchers on the ship noticed were some items that indicated the crew had left in a hurry, easy to recognize in the otherwise tight ship the Sii had obviously run. There was a Zeptorian-sized boot missing its counterpart in one of the hallways, some food had been left prepared but uneaten, one viewscreen still showed the end of a movie asking the viewer if they wanted to see the next iteration of the movie series and some beds had been left at speed, blankets on the floor, pointing at the door.
There just wasn’t any explanation for the hurry. No alarm had been sounded; the atmosphere was clean and breathable; all the station’s systems were humming along in good nick, and nothing had been left to indicate where they had gone. Mender and her squad did their utmost to look behind and under every nook and cranny, but apart from a secret stache of spirits one of the crew members had set up, nothing remarkable was found until they either had to give up or start ripping panels off the walls. At this suggestion by the combat engineer, Basil relented and ordered them back to their shuttle. The only thing Basil had them do on the way back was to check the two more modern shuttles the station had, clearly thinking about switching them out with their own older models, considering a victimless crime. When the marines returned to the ship, they were thoroughly scanned by Mellir and the doctor, and there was nothing on their sealed suits suggesting a reason, as said doctor had contacted the bridge and theorized an airborne virus or toxin had made the hub’s crew run.
- It’s like the Mary Celeste.
- Who?
Nocks immediately bit her dark lips in, staining her teeth. She thought the captain was talking about something important, but instantly regretted her question, as she now had to sit through the story of a brigantine, once found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean, largely intact but lacking the crew. Basil went on to explain the various theories and how none of them fit perfectly, clearly being one of the many middle-aged captains in the fleet fascinated by the Age of Sail. Finally, he interrupted his description of different types of masts long enough to order the officers to eventually get together in the briefing room or situation room – they hadn’t agreed on a term yet, as they came from different branches. Present were Captain Basil, Ltd.-Cd. Nocks, Lt.-Cd. Perlas, Ltd.-Cd. Feterni, Dr. Boddins, Ltd. Korolev, Sgt. Mender, and Ensign Mellir. They had all been given one hour to come up with theories or suggestions for the next step. Basil gave them an overview of the established facts – as little as they were – and then asked the assembled specialists for additional details. Korolev – wearing an exosuit to help her walk - had some updates, reading them off her display in a weak, unchanging voice.
- As you all know, this system was once surveyed, and nothing much found. Interesting to us right now are differences in the scans from back then to now, taking the advancements in technology into account. There are three notable changes, one is that the microflora on MA-2’s moon has progressed quickly – the atmosphere is thin but stable. 92 years ago, they were able to determine some bacteria, but now we also see evidence for microscopic fungi, at least as far as the scans from this distance let us ascertain that. I have no explanation for that spur in growth ‒ unless the hub dropped their trash there, which has happened before on other hubs. More interesting is the second change, the planet MA-2 right below us has changed orbit, slowly moving away from the sun with each orbit...
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.