Chapter 24: The Ship that Made no Sense

February 16^th, 2279

As they dropped out at 61 Virginis, the crew already knew the drill. Full stop, look around. The signal was coming from some sort of nebula that had once been a supermassive gas giant, ripped apart and strewn into a spiral by the growing sun’s gravity pull. By now, it covered half the system and somewhere inside of it, someone needed help. As their regular efforts with passive scanners yielded nothing, they entered the long cloud, the massive, proud vessel suddenly seeming tiny, like a bird disappearing in a rainsquall. The beacon’s signal lay straight ahead. Soon, a lengthy shape came into view, perpendicular to their path, silently breaching against the waves of color of the active nebula they had entered an hour earlier.

- Misettrel class, Sir.

Basil had been squinting at the screen and thought it indeed looked like one of the old medical vessels but disregarded that thought as his mind choosing the familiar shape of the vessel he often passed when transferring from Mars to the training compound on Io during the war, which was orbited by one of the many historical vessels the fleet had no idea what to do with other than dotting the core sectors with them and populating them with holograms explaining every bit of history in excruciating detail, torturing school children.

Now he was squinting back at Nocks, narrowing his right eye.

- We know where each one of them ended up – none of them should not be here. Plus, that thing’s gotta be 100 plus years old?

Nocks remained undeterred.

- Registration SFMV 109-11. Name on the hull is Argulan. She’s been damaged. No energy signature, no radiation, nothing ‒ she’s just drifting in the mist. Can’t even say how that SOS is going out.

- Helm, get us closer, stay at 3 klicks. Korolev, check the database for that name and or registration, anything.

Korolev turned to the console, unsure of what to do other than running a keyword search or maybe checking the shipyard logs for ... a prototype? An abandoned, unfinished example? A ship that was sold? But why would any of those examples get a regular registration painted on them? The computer came up with nothing, a point reinforced by a table neatly sorted by registration, name, build date, status, and then an empty list below.

- No data on either name or reg, Sir.

Of course.

- Perlas, can we adjust the cloak to this nebula?

- Well, Sir, I am already on it, but we will be detectable within visual range – or further ‒ depending on which scanners are looking for us.

Mender had been motionlessly observing the silent confusion on deck, but had now tilted her head to the left to indicate a question.

- You think this might be a setup?

- Unclear. But get the Marines ready. Nocks ‒ a probe.

Mender left the bridge, her first few steps being quite hasty until she slowed down.

Always ready for action, Sergeant.

The Rubicon was now approaching the huge medical vessel, Ka’al at the helm put her in a slow pursuit course some distance away. At times, the Rubicon’s cloak left streaks in the colorful chaos of the nebula whenever the inherent movement of the gaseous clouds collided in a manner unpredictable to the cloak’s processor. The Rubicon was clearly visible as a confused shape to the naked eye from a few kilometers away, and even further to any contemporary scanner, but at least they didn’t openly announce their presence to the many freighters following the secure trade routes in the sector, some of which passing close to the system. Sure, most of them had the cheapest scanners they could get, but exactly the ones Basil wanted to avoid showing this wreck to – the smugglers and salvagers – were known to have good eyes to avoid the law in any form.

- Probe ready.

- Send it out, Nocks.

- Probe away.

The probe launched from the mine chute, and departed towards the mystery ship. Nocks shifted the viewscreen’s lower section to the probe’s stream. She was now focused no longer on her almost encompassing interface, she had turned – as had most of the bridge crew – to follow the live data on the main screen, but exclusively the probe’s internal data – after all, she had promised to deliver the next iteration of her drones, now carrying the cloaking generators and able to interface with almost anything technological but also able to make valid decisions on its own if contact was lost – but mainly instructed to come back and ask how to proceed. She was now praying her demonstration would go well as she had quite the list of materials she needed for her next bot as she zoomed in on the old ship.

- Starboard’s been pummeled badly ... but those impacts look rather small...

Basil had gotten up from his throne, bursting the bubble of telemetry displayed around the armrests and was now standing beside Ka’al who just ever so slightly leaned in the opposite direction, staring down at his helm screen displaying his – confusing to the others – setup of viewing range, vectors, speeds, as well the targeting info he was longing to try in anger. Basil felt tiny under the giant viewscreen showing the weighty-looking medical vessel.

- See, their shuttlebay is stuck open. Nocks, circle the ship once and then enter there.

- Far from the bridge, though, Sir. We only have 30 minutes of cloak. Let’s drill into the bridge.

- Let’s keep this on the hush for now ... Didn’t you say you had 2 drones ready?

- Affirmative, Probe 2 charged and ready to go. We can also try accessing their systems from any node we come across.

Korolev had been looking for exactly that in her blueprints.

- There should be one right after the hangar deck.

Nocks had actually hoped to be able to update the second bot against whatever might go wrong with the first bot, but now quickly released it into the mine chute, ready to go.

- Port shows damage, too.

The probebot was on its descent into the shuttlebay and slowing down which allowed for a closer look at the details of this seemingly derelict vessel. The Misettrels had never been an elegant design, not even in their time. Brought about by pressing necessity, they were simply a mishmash of contemporary designs hurriedly thrown together when several planet-scale medical emergencies like the Alinofric pest made it abundantly clear the fleet needed more specialized hospital ships. The giant cylindrical ship with its widening bow looked more like an industrial facility than a ship that was constructed to be there when lifeforms were at their most vulnerable. This was not helped by the thin connecting frames for the quantum plates, making it look fragile and weak.

Ludacris, these poor souls went into space on ships advertising to any opponent where to hit them. And then they put the goddamn bridge on top of those deathtraps in case any officers were still alive after the first salvo. All because some brassy romantics wanted a real window to look out of and none of them realizing they’d use the viewscreen overlay most of the time anyways or else any object they’d come across would have been tiny and easily missed. The amount of time wasted in this fleet by officers saying “magnify”, delaying reactions, must really make the other powers laugh.

- This isn’t one of our shuttles.

Korolev’s remark ended Basil’s internal grand speech abruptly, and he was, for a brief moment, embarrassed that he found it irritating to be pulled back into the situation ‒and his actual duty ‒ by a very valid observation. The viewscreen now showed two rows of old shuttles and another, different-looking one parked in-between them, seemingly in a hurry, as it had smashed some equipment on the ground.

- Give us a look around the hangar and then clinch into that shuttle.

Korolev at her station was turning and rotating the 3D scan of the strange shuttle, inspecting it like she found an interesting rock.

- Not in the database, neither are those markings. Tech looks modern, though. Must have landed much later.

Basil nodded, he’d seen such ships before.

- Possibly scavs, they build their own craft from whatever they have...

- Nah, the alloys are all the same. This wasn’t built in a rock.

Ka’al had joined the conversation but his helm pit didn’t exactly allow for him to turn towards the others – so he simply spoke into his headrest which entertained Basil. The probe was now hovering above the neatly parked shuttles in the hangar, a picture that might be shown in a classroom at fleet primary, were it not for the iced-up windows and the strange diamond-shaped, reddish-brown shuttle parked in front of the fleet shuttlepods. The latter were nothing more than thinly-walled boxes with ion engines welded to them and less than trust-inspiring to the modern eye.

Shittlepods.

- All of their shuttles are still there ... Anyone spot anything out of the ordinary?

All eyes on the bridge were peeled on the various screens, holos, or displays. Noone spoke, hoping one of the others would point them in some direction that would start to make sense of a ship their fleet had never launched.

- Right, then ... Clinch that shuttle.

The drone, promptly following the order, smoothly swooped down next to the unknown shuttle and got to work on a panel that looked like a service access. The limited cloaking abilities became apparent when the thin beams popping out the rivets of the panel tainted the surrounding floor in soft orange light, reflected in the ice particles disturbed by the sudden movement.