Kas called a crew meeting. “I’m concerned about security,” he began. “If that alarm we set went off right now, we’d be nearly helpless. Oh, we’d have time to get the lasers on-line, but they wouldn’t be much protection against a frigate or destroyer.”
Lady Jane was frowning. “You don’t really believe that the navies of the Alliance or the independents would attack us, do you, Kas? I mean, well, maybe the Glory. They consider anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs less than human. But the others…”
Rom snorted. “I know Admirals in the Imperial Fleet who wouldn’t be above a bit of murder for a prize like the Rekesh!”
Kas nodded. “Rom is right. The skipper who brought the Rekesh back to one of the independents would be a planetary hero. Nobody would bother asking uncomfortable questions.”
“So,” he continued, “It’s essential that we get some protection. Toj, how long before that bio lab is operational?”
The big man frowned in thought. “I should have it ready by lunch tomorrow. Then we can decompress the cargo bay to test for leaks.”
Kas nodded again. “All right. As soon as you can, decompress. If there’re no leaks leave the bay in vacuum and run out the lasers. They’re not much protection, but they’re what we’ve got.”
He turned to Rom. “We’ll be going aboard the Rekesh tomorrow, Rom. If possible we want to try to get some of her weaponry on line. I also want to shut off that damned plague beacon. We homed on it, so could someone else. Gran, I’d like to have you along, but you’re going to be tied up with reviving cold-sleepers for some time. Rom, Toj and I will have to handle it.”
Rom nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem, sir. I’m sure we can rig something.”
Toj shifted uncomfortably. “It may be harder than you think, sir,” he rumbled. “The weapons systems have three independent fusactors powering them. One powers the port and one the starboard laser and particle beam weapons. The third is much larger, and provides power and plasma for the plasma cannons. And then, of course, there's the big one that powers the shields.” He shrugged. “Getting the fusactors on-line should be fairly straightforward, especially if they were properly shut down. But with the ship’s AI dead…”
Kas frowned. “I thought there were independent weapons comps that could run the weapons systems even if the AI were gone,” he said. “There are smaller comp systems all through the ship if I remember correctly. Otherwise, a hit to the AI would leave the ship helpless.”
Toj nodded. “That’s the theory. But crews get pretty lax about keeping the backup comps at top readiness. A lot of jury-rigging can take place over a century.”
Kas grinned with relief. “That should be no problem. You’re thinking of her as a hundred-year-old ship. But she was only twelve years old when she disappeared. You might say she’s been in storage since.”
The big man’s somber expression lit up with a huge grin. “Of course, sir! She’s not a hundred-year-old ship — she’s a twelve-year-old ship! If her battle comps weren’t damaged in the rioting, we should be able to get almost all her weapons systems operational.”
Toj’s assessment turned out to be correct. It took only thirty hours to get nearly all of the cruiser’s weapons systems online. Fuel and reaction mass were brought over from Starhopper. Kas didn’t want to take the time to find and activate the cruiser’s stores comp.
It was with a great sense of relief that Kas keyed the switch and saw the Gunnery Officer’s console on the battle cruiser’s bridge come alive. In the airlessness, it was impossible to hear the comp’s verbal readiness report, but the console indicator dials and lights assured Kas of the system’s readiness.
He wouldn’t pressurize the Rekesh ’s bridge, of course. There would be no atmosphere aboard Vir Rekesh until the medical staff certified her safe from contamination. He set the controls for nonverbal reporting, and reported the console’s readings to Toj. Then he muttered a prayer to any god that happened by and punched the button that should launch a practice target.
There was no sound, but after a panicked moment, a blip appeared at the bottom of the main gunnery display, driving away from the ship. At its preselected point the target’s tiny onboard comp began running it through an array of zigs, zags, and wild, unpredictable course changes. Kas keyed a trigger, and his screen showed the target narrowly dodging a laser beam made luminous by the gunnery comp. Without atmospheric particles to excite, of course, the beam itself was invisible. He keyed another, and a particle beam swept space just vacated by the target.
Kas growled. This was really just a test to see if the weapons functioned, but there was no way he was going to let that damned target get away. He was hampered by his space suit, but began playing the console as though it were a musical instrument. Gunnery had always been one of his favorite activities. Still, the target managed to evade him for nearly thirty seconds. Then he triggered a particle beam and immediately followed it with a laser bolt. The target jinked away from the particle beam and directly into the laser bolt. Kas snorted and jerked a nod as the target disintegrated. Then he breathed a huge sigh of relief. If another vessel showed up now, at least he could give them a fight. Then he chuckled and decided that he would get some refresher weapons practice as soon as the mission was completed.
He set up a weapons watch schedule on the dead ship’s bridge. There was some minor complaining, but even the most dedicated bitcher had to admit that the huge ship’s awesome weaponry was a comfort.
It was another thirty hours before Lady Jane pronounced Ro-Lecton sufficiently skilled with a suit to go over to the derelict. “And am I ever glad!” She exclaimed. “That pompous windbag isn’t stupid, but I’d swear he was purposely acting obtuse just to annoy me!”
Kas grinned. “You only got half of it. I got the rest — his incessant demands to be taken over to the Rekesh immediately if not sooner, and damn the suit training.” He sighed. “Well, I promised to take him over to the Rekesh personally and he’d probably get all insulted again if I tried to pawn him off on someone else. Unless you’d like to volunteer…” he trailed off hopefully.
“No chance!” The answer was immediate and firm. “The less I see of that little… man, the better for all concerned — including him.” She frowned and her tone turned serious. “Watch out for him, Kas. He’s been pumping all of us for information about you. He doesn’t like you — and when that kind of stredd doesn’t like someone he’ll go to any length to cause them trouble.”
The little doctor was excited as a kid about the prospect of finally going to the huge ship. His enthusiasm even overcame his pomposity, and he seemed to regard it as a great adventure.
Kas had been aware that Ro-Lecton was gathering information to use against him but there was little he could do about it. At the moment, he needed Ro-Lecton too much. He’d been planning to have a discussion with the little man, but he decided to wait until they returned from the Rekesh.
Finally, they were ready. “Now remember, Doctor,” he began for the dozenth time, “keep your safety line clipped to me at all times except when you’re jumping across.”
Ro-Lecton nodded wearily. “Yes, Commodore. And I won’t even think of jumping without it being clipped to the guide line between the ships.”
Kas started to reply, then realized that whatever he was going to say had already been said many times. He grinned and clipped his line to the guide line. “Then follow me!” He shouted. He flicked off the switch controlling his boot magnets, and jumped easily across the ten meters separating the ships. Halfway across he flipped himself so as to contact the cruiser feet first, and switched on his boot magnets.
When Kas felt his boots contact the cruiser’s hull he twisted to watch as the doctor began to jump. Ro-Lecton crouched a bit to push off but was slow to switch off his boot magnets. As a result, he didn’t have enough momentum to cross the ten meters between the ships and bobbed helplessly around the guide line at its midpoint, crying “Commodore! Help! Help!”
“Easy! Easy!” Kas tried to soothe the panicked man. “Relax, Doctor. You’re not in trouble. Calm down.”
Kas’ soothing must have worked — the suited figure stopped flailing in panic. “Well? What do I do now?” Ro-Lecton asked, an edge of panic showing under the pompous impatience in his tone.
“Take it easy, Doctor,” Kas repeated. “You’re not in trouble. Just grab your safety line at your waist. That’s it. Now pull yourself along it until you reach the big guide line. Good. Now just start pulling yourself along the guide line. That’s it. See? No problem.”
Ro-Lecton’s heavy, rasping breathing began to slow as he lost the edge of panic he’d been feeling. “Rather more excitement than I’d expected,” he commented in an almost-normal tone.
Kas coached him through reversing his position so he’d hit feet-first, and reminded him to turn on the boots’ magnets. Kas grinned at the sigh of relief that escaped the doctor as his boots stuck to the cruiser’s hull.
Ro-Lecton indicated the suited body tethered outside the airlock. “Well,” he began, “That’ll be one cadaver that won’t be hard to retrieve.”
Kas stiffened. “That’s one cadaver that you won’t be retrieving, doctor. The Emperor is anxiously awaiting Lieutenant Fan-Jertril’s arrival, so he can award him a posthumous Empire Star and a ceremonial funeral. He was one of the last three survivors, and the Rekesh ’s last Commanding Officer.”
Ro-Lecton frowned. “You say one of the last three? Then there are two others. That’s all right then. You must understand, Commodore. I’m going to need to autopsy some of the earliest victims, and very importantly, the very last to die. I gather that the last three didn’t die of the plague?”
Kas frowned. “Sorry. I forgot that you don’t know the story. Yes, there should be two others, in suits, at the ships other two personnel locks. Frankly, we haven’t checked. But they’re the ones that opened the ship to space.”
Ro-Lecton sighed. “Yes. I have mixed emotions about them opening the ship to space. Oh, I understand their reasoning. Of course, they were assuming that the infection agent was airborne, which we don’t know. But it greatly complicates my job. It would be much easier if I had a sample of the live virus, or whatever it is.”
Kas shuddered. “I’d just as soon you never had a live sample, Doctor. It killed almost two thousand people in a matter of weeks.” He paused. “But if you need contaminated atmosphere, I’ll have my crew check the other locks to make sure they’ve been opened. One of the others might have lost his nerve and not opened her. Even if they did, and the entire ship is in vacuum some contaminated atmosphere should remain in the last men’s space suits — though the oxygen might be depleted.”
“Would they still be holding air after a hundred years?”
Kas shrugged and pointed. “That one is. And there’s been nothing that could degrade the suits except micrometeorites. You might say they’ve been stored in vacuum.” He started into the lock. “Prepare yourself, Doctor,” he continued. “Three thousand people don’t just lie down and die quietly. This ship saw two mutinies, riots, and even drunken orgies. The bodies were gathered up, as I mentioned — but there are bloodstains and signs of battle everywhere we’ve been aboard her.” He hesitated. “The survivors were too sick to worry about cleaning up the mess.”
Kas saw the doctor’s grim nod through his clear faceplate. “I’m an epidemiologist, Commodore,” he replied. “I’ve seen the aftermath of plagues before. I was in charge of a team on Acqueon.”
Kas shuddered. Acqueon had been a settled, populous planet — a trading hub. Somehow, a plague had broken out. The Empire sent immediate help, but the final survival rate had been just over five percent. Those few survivors had been relocated to other planets. There were simply too few keep civilization going on the planet. Acqueon was still uninhabited thirty years later, despite the fact that the plague had been identified and a cure found. The only visitors to Acqueon now were the particularly brave or particularly foolish salvagers that sneaked past the picket buoys to strip the empty cities. Maybe Ro-Lecton was more than a pompous dilettante after all.
The design of stellar class battle cruisers hadn’t changed significantly in more than two centuries. Kas didn’t need maps or schematics — she was identical to the Ka-Tora, on which Kas had served as a Lieutenant Commander. So he was able to lead Ro-Lecton straight to the sickbay and its attached bio lab.
Even in the blackness relieved only by the stark pools of their hand lights, it was obvious the sickbay was in ruins. Oh, there were signs of battle, all right, but most of the damage seemed to have come from looting and vandalism. That wasn’t surprising. More than a few of the crew would have decided that if they were going to die they’d do it in a drug-induced haze. Others would have been looking for poisons, for a quick, painless end. The vandalism would be the result of resentment of the medical personnel who’d failed them.
Ro-Lecton’s tone was businesslike. “Obviously, it could take some time to search through this for memory crystals. I hope the bio lab’s in better shape.”
There was an improvised barricade in front of the separate airlock of the bio lab, and a litter of weapons drifted in the weightlessness. Obviously, someone — probably medical personnel — had fought to defend the lab. The bio lab’s airlock doors were latched back. Kas brushed aside a crude axe whose head was covered with black stains drifting in the weightlessness.. He stepped through, followed by the doctor.
Ro-Lecton breathed a huge sigh of relief as his light revealed little damage or destruction. The light steadied on an empty rack atop a table. “This must be where your Lieutenant gathered those memory crystals,” he commented. “He just grabbed all that were in plain view.”
Kas grinned sourly. “He did have a few other things on his mind at the time, Doctor.”
Ro-Lecton’s suit bobbed slightly and Kas assumed that the doctor had nodded. “I’m sure he did.” The tone was dry. “But I’m also sure that any competent medical personnel would make sure that records of their work survived. There should be a storage… Ah!” The triumph in his tone was clear. Ro-Lecton hurried clumsily toward a small file cabinet in a corner of the lab.
“If I were a med tech and I knew that rioters might get in here and vandalize the place, I’d put the memory crystals in a plain box and stuff them into the back of the bottom drawer of a cabinet full of papers where nobody looking for drugs or poisons would bother with them,” the little man continued. He jerked open the bottom drawer of the cabinet and shifted the file folders it contained. Behind the file folders was a stack of papers lying flat. Ro-Lecton cursed as his clumsy gloved hands lifted the papers, which began to drift away. A small box lay on the bottom of the drawer. The doctor pounced on the box. “Ha! I was sure…”
Kas chuckled. “You might want to look inside the box before you congratulate yourself, Doctor. You might be getting all excited about a box of rubber bands.”
But the box was nearly full of memory crystals as Ro-Lecton had predicted. It was all Kas could do to get the little man to contain his enthusiasm and concentrate on working his way back out of the dead ship.
Ro-Lecton almost assaulted him when he told the little doctor that he would not be able to take the box of crystals to his stateroom for study but Kas was adamant. “You’ll take them to your bio lab. Nothing from that ship goes anywhere else aboard Starhopper,” he insisted. Then he found himself trapped into escorting Ro-Lecton to the bio lab, since he himself had decreed that no one aboard was to work in vacuum alone.
Kas decided it was a good thing the lasers Starhopper mounted were on tracks. Only with them in their deployed position near the open cargo doors was there room for the portable bio lab. The lab formed a flat cylinder some twenty meters in diameter and three high. It consisted of pie-shaped sections that had been bolted together and sealed. A cylindrical airlock protruded from the main cylinder, its exterior festooned with the components of the decontam system.
They entered the airlock and Kas secured the outer hatch. As soon as the hatch was secured the decontam routine began. Both men stood with legs apart and arms stretched outward from their shoulders as their suited forms were bathed in rays that would be lethal to an unsuited man. Finally, a cloud of gas appeared, designed to penetrate the tiniest crack or crevice in their suits. As the gas was sucked into vents near the nozzles Kas took two deep breaths, held his breath and unsealed his helmet.
The lock was now pressurized, but with an inert gas. Kas grabbed for the breathing mask that dangled from the ceiling of the lock, and looked to make sure that Ro-Lecton was following his lead. He cursed himself silently as he realized that the little doctor would be much more familiar with decontam procedures than Kas was.
With the breathing mask secured to his face, he unsuited. Any contaminants that had survived the earlier treatments should be destroyed by the lack of oxygen. He hoped.
They hung the space suits on a rack near the lock’s outer door. Ro-Lecton handed Kas an isolation suit that resembled an oversized, thin space suit made of clear plas. In place of the self-contained air tanks on the back, these had a large umbilical hose that slid along a track in the ceiling. They also had gloves that were much more useful than those of a space suit. These had to be pulled on, stretching into place and gave the wearer the ability to easily handle delicate tasks. The isolation suit’s air was fresh but had that definite but indefinable taste that marked air from tanks.
Ro-Lecton keyed the button that would pump the inert gas into holding tanks, and release the same breathing mixture that filled the lab itself. If their air supply was interrupted somehow, they’d be able to unseal and breathe the mixture that pressurized the lab. Of course, the risk of biological contamination in such a case was very high despite the fact that the air was continually cycled through the most effective scrubbers available.
A light above the inner door turned green, and Ro-Lecton released the inner door and hurried into the lab itself.
Kas looked around the lab. The overhead tracks that supported the umbilicals crisscrossed the ceiling, permitting the suited med techs access to all areas of the lab. The lab itself seemed spartan and cluttered. There were no windows or ports, of course. Tables seemed to be everywhere, and packed between and on top of them, seemingly haphazardly, were crates and boxes. Obviously, Toj had the foresight to put the boxes and crates containing the lab’s equipment and supplies inside as he assembled the lab and before sealing it. Ro-Lecton’s crew were going to spend their first several days in the lab unpacking and setting up, but at least they wouldn’t have to change in and out of space suits to carry the lab’s equipment inside.
Ro-Lecton scrambled over crates, examining labels. After a few minutes, he crowed in triumph and dragged a smallish box to a clear place on a table, where he unpacked a new crystal reader. The eyepieces on the reader were oversized and oddly shaped. It took Kas a moment to realize that the reader was designed for use with the isolation suits.
Ro-Lecton snapped a power cell into place on the unit, then, eyes glued to the eyepieces, adjusted the machine’s parameters for initial use. Trembling with excitement, he slipped a crystal from the box he’d been clutching into the socket.
“Hah!” He crowed. “This is it! Oh, they’re all jumbled together, of course, and we’ll have to put them in order. But that’s no problem.” He turned to Kas with a huge grin. “I imagine that nearly all of the ship’s medical staff’s research is here!” The grin faded. “But really, Commodore. We have to come up with a way for me to study this information in my stateroom. Neither of us wants to wait until my whole team is awake and the lab is operational.”
Kas frowned. Though he’d never admit it he agreed with the doctor. They couldn’t afford the time. “We’ll talk with my comm tech,” he said finally. He broke into a grin. “If there’s a way in the universe that it can be done, Edro’s the man to do it.”
It was the best answer he could have made, he realized a few moments later. It was probably the only way Ro-Lecton could have been convinced to leave the box of crystals he’d been clutching and let himself be led back through the airlock, into his space suit and back to the habitable part of Starhopper.
A shrug and a “No problem, sir,” was Edro’s only response when the question was put to him. “A reader is basically an electronic decoder, changing the alignment of the crystal’s matrix into readable text. Toj and I can breadboard a transmitter that’ll just intercept the signal on its way to the screen and transmit it to wherever you want. How about to another reader in your stateroom, Doctor?”
Ro-Lecton nodded excitedly. “That’d be wonderful, Lieutenant,” he enthused.
Kas cleared his throat. “Uh, Doctor, wouldn’t it be more useful to copy the contents of the Rekesh ’s crystals to some of our own? I mean, transmit the signal to some sort of recorder? That way you’d have a permanent copy.” He paused. “In fact, we could just have someone run each crystal through the reader/transmitter without bothering to read it. Then you could sort through the copies later.” He shrugged. “It’d get you working much sooner. Sheol, by the time your entire team is suit-qualified, you could know just about everything the Rekesh ’s medical staff had done. You wouldn’t be covering ground that’s been covered before.”
Ro-Lecton bounced to his feet. “Yes! Do you think we can really do that, Lieutenant?” Kas struggled to suppress a smile. Gone was the superior, supercilious air the little med tech had displayed since his awakening. This Ro-Lecton was pure scientist. His tone had been plaintive, almost pleading.
Edro flushed with embarrassed pleasure and nodded. “Y-Yes sir. That should be no problem at all!”
And it wasn’t. It took Toj and Edro less than three hours to rig a transmitter to be fitted to the reader in the bio lab and turn another reader into a combination receiver/recorder.
Ro-Lecton’s thanks were so heartfelt and effusive that even the stolid Engineer flushed with embarrassment.
Kas shook his head. He realized that he was seeing the real, the original Ro-Lecton — Ro-Lecton as he’d been before he’d been tricked into an administrative and political position. This Ro-Lecton was pure scientist — intrigued by a professional problem and totally focused on its solution. Dignity, pecking orders and lines of authority were no longer important to the little man — he had a real problem to solve, and could hardly wait to get started.
Kas wondered what Ro-Lecton’s team would think of the Mark II version of the little doctor.
Tera volunteered to suit up and run the crystals through the reader/transmitter in the bio lab. Ro-Lecton refused to let anyone else tend the receiving/recording unit.
In the meantime, the rest of the crew was equally busy. Gran was awakening the medical team as quickly as possible and shuttling them to Jane and Lar for suit training. Toj was busy bringing space suits from storage and preparing them for use. Edro was helping Toj whenever he wasn’t busy with communication or comp work. That left Kas and Rom to begin exploring the Vir Rekesh. Kas had realized when speaking to Ro-Lecton that they really didn’t know whether or not the entire ship was open to space. Fan-Jertril’s companions may not have shared his idealistic heroism. So, as soon as possible, he and Rom suited up and each took one of the remaining two personnel locks.
He needn’t have worried. Both locks were open, and contained a suited corpse.
Kas breathed a huge sigh of relief when Rom reported that the last personnel lock was open to space. “All right, Rom. Meet me at the hangar bay. According to Fan-Jertril, that’s where they put the rest of the bodies; and Ro-Lecton’s going to start screaming for bodies to autopsy as soon as his team is ready.”
The huge black maw of the hangar deck opening was large enough to easily swallow Starhopper. The hangar deck occupied almost an entire level at the ship’s widest point. In effect it nearly split her in half and created an open area of nearly 200,000 square meters. “Open” was a relative term, of course. The Rekesh ’s hangar deck was occupied by nearly a hundred Wasp and Strengl fighters. It also contained an assortment of other craft — from the Admiral’s barge and Captain’s gig to atmosphere craft, some designed for combat and others merely as transports of various types.
But Kas wasn’t interested in the Rekesh ’s cargo of lethality. He was looking for a cargo net, probably stretched near a personnel airlock leading from the hangar bay. Sick men and women moving sometimes dismembered and often decomposing corpses were unlikely to be choosy. They’d rig the cargo net as near the lock as possible.
It was there, of course. In the inky blackness the pools of light from their helmet lights revealed a huge net stretched against the hangar bulkhead. The net bulged with its grisly cargo. Arms, legs, and even heads protruded grotesquely through the net’s mesh.
Familiar as he was with death, the ghastly contents of the net made Kas shudder. The bodies were frozen, perfectly preserved as they were when Captain Fan-Jertril decompressed the hangar deck. Some were still contorted in the agony their wounds had inflicted. Others appeared to be merely sleeping peacefully. Quite a number were missing limbs, but plas bags were tied to a number of the bodies. Kas assumed the bags contained body parts.
There was little blood, though there was much bloodstained clothing and skin. When the bodies had been brought here life support had been functioning. They’d been carried or dragged here. What bleeding there had been was only a result of moving the bodies. Kas was sure that the passages leading to that nearby hatch would be black with dried blood stains. But there were none of the large globules of drifting, frozen blood that he’d half expected.
Kas saw Rom turn away with a sick expression visible even through his helmet. He, himself was struggling to suppress a strong urge to throw up. He reminded himself that vomiting in space suits is not recommended.
He turned and shuddered again. “Let’s get out of here, Rom. If Ro-Lecton wants any of these cadavers he can come get them himself.”
Rom obviously agreed, though he made no reply. He merely kicked hard off the bulkhead, sailing across the cavernous hangar deck as though speed could relieve the horror. Kas knew that the action was irrational — but he kicked off just as hard. He’d seen death before, of course. As a junior officer he’d more than once had to gather bodies and body parts after accidents or skirmishes. But three thousand bodies, many of them scarred or dismembered, and most decomposed to at least some extent, was simply too much.
Rom was silent for a long time as they made their way back to Starhopper. Finally he said in a dull voice, “Commodore, I request to be assigned to Starhopper for the return trip.”
Kas frowned. “Why? You’re a Fleet officer; you’ve seen death before.”
Rom shook his head. “I’ve seen death,” he agreed. “And I’ve done my share of killing. But this… this is a death ship, sir. There’s evil here!”
“Nonsense!” Kas roared. “There’s no evil here. Evil requires purpose. A plague is purposeless — a natural disaster. It just is.”
He paused. “Certainly bad things happened here. There was mutiny and riot and cowardice and horror. But it was the all-too-human result of three thousand frightened people facing certain death. I will not tolerate talk that undermines discipline and panders to rank superstition. You will keep any such opinions to yourself. Is that clear?”
Rom’s face looked strained behind his suit’s faceplate. “Yes, sir. But I still request assignment to Starhopper for the return trip.”
Kas shrugged. “And you may be assigned to Starhopper, if that’s where I decide to put you. But you are a Fleet officer. You will serve where you are needed.” He glowered at the other man. “Damn it Rom, I didn’t expect this kind of nonsense from you! I need you too badly to have you go into some kind of funk just because you’ve seen some bodies. I don’t have time to pamper a prima donna. Now, get hold of yourself!”
Rom flushed. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But that…” he shook his head before resuming. “I’m afraid I’m going to have nightmares about that.”
Kas relaxed. “I doubt I’ll sleep well myself for a while. But we’ve got a job to do, and by all the weird gods of the galaxy, we’re going to do it.”