Ravens of Eternity

169 Throttling Up, Pt Eva, Miko, and Amal sat in a rented hangar and stared at the broken down old corvette parked in it. Its design was clearly outdated, and almost from another era. It was probably loved long ago, but was now clearly forgotten and neglected and probably even cursed.

The thing was practically falling apart just sitting there. Its landing gear looked frail and could hardly hold the ship’s own weight. Paint was peeling all over its surface, which did little to hide the dents and scrapes all around.

It was even missing entire sections of armor – how it wasn’t completely stripped down was a total mystery.

And the design itself... not particularly the most attractive thing. It was a bit like a long oval, but slightly boxy around the edges. Although the front smoothed down nicely, the rear was bulky and looked a little out of place.

It had a relatively long and wide body that tapered out towards the rear into short, stubby wings. At the rear were all of the main thrusters – one large one in the center, and circled by a half dozen elongated ones.

There were numerous maneuvering thrusters set into the body of the ship, though they looked dusty and worn. Eva even found an old bird’s nest in one of them.

The cockpit was up top, and to the rear, very much unlike more modern designs, where the cockpit was right up front. Instead, what sat at the nose was an integrated turret dome, though its guns had been taken out and salvaged long ago.

This was clearly designed for utilitarian purposes, and was a working example of function over form. If there was such a thing as a space camper van, or a space utility truck, then this was it.

It looked kind of like a long submarine with a short space shuttle strapped on top of it, all told.

.....

According to its specifications, the corvette was much smaller than the frigate they saw in the dealer’s showroom. In comparison, this ship sat at 60 meters long, nearly 35 meters wide, and just over 18 meters tall.

Although it was merely half the size, it was luckily a fraction of the cost. Given its current condition, it was easy to understand why. How it was still in one piece was a bit of a mystery, and all three sighed deeply as they shared that thought.

“Well at least the guy gave us a deal,” said Eva. “Four mil for this thing isn’t too bad, right?”

“He should have paid us to take this from his hands,” retorted Miko.

“At least this ship survived this long, you know?” said Amal. “Looks like she took some serious abuse and hard use throughout her life, and yet she’s still standing...”

As they looked at it, one of its armor pads fell right out of its structural housing, and crumpled on the ground. It even cracked slightly from the impact.

“Barely standing,” said Eva.

“That still counts!” Amal exclaimed.

“Nn,” added Miko. “Perhaps it is better than not having a ship at all.”

“And, and, and,” said Amal, “he even gave us the original manuals. That’s helpful!”

“Yep, great,” said Eva, sarcasm deep in her voice. “We got a buncha huge ass operational and repair manuals that I don’t understand and can barely read.”

Tiamat’s Transcendence had virtually nullified manuals for Eva. To her, it was like reading a book in a strange alien language. She couldn’t even enjoy any accompanying illustrations or pictures.

Ever since she was subjected to the Admiral’s Prometheus Core operator’s manual, which held over a thousand pages, she vowed to never open one ever again.

“Let’s just take a tour and see what we’re working with,” she continued.

The three of them walked up to its side, where its main door was opened up into a ramp configuration. As they passed, they noted the gunk and debris in the door’s motor joints, and realized it was probably stuck in that position. And for who knows how long, to boot.

At the top, there was a rather small airlock – it was just large enough to fit the three of them comfortably. Four would be doable, but a bit cramped.

Not that they even needed to squeeze in – the ship wasn’t even running and nothing was pressurized.

The airlock door itself was partially ajar, and was open just enough for someone to squeeze an elbow in, but not much more. Since Eva was technically the most physically capable of the three, she had the honor of cracking open the door.

She stepped up to it and tried to simply slide it open, but it was seriously stuck. Then Eva cracked her knuckles, found some hand-holds, then poured as much energy as she could into moving the thing.

And with a great heave, the door moved a few centimeters. It felt like it had been practically glued into place, and slid extremely slowly. She surmised there was probably decades-old gunk all along its magnetic slide.

Because it was barely moving, Eva stopped pushing on it and caught her breath a bit.

“This is way tougher than I thought,” she said. “Come help me out.”

The three then went up to it, grabbed where they could, and steadied their footholds.

“On three,” said Amal. “One... two... and three!”

The three of them yelled out as they pushed on the door with all their combined might, and slowly slid it open. It was an excruciating few seconds as they pushed the door into a fully open position. But the effort was well worth it – they now had full access to their own ship.

As they recovered, they walked into the rather large cargo area. Unlike the frigate they had toured, this one only had 320 cubic meters – it was still a great amount of space. And also unlike the frigate, the corvette had the ability to lower the cargo area under the ship itself, which allowed for easy loading and unloading.

Towards the front of the ship, between the turret dome and cargo bay was the Ancillary. In it were a number of systems and components, such as the ship’s sensor suites, atmospheric control, environmental regulator, emergency life support, and a small datacenter.

This datacenter was only large enough for a couple of racks, which was plenty of space for the necessary intelligences required by the ship. It was, of course, empty.

To the rear of the cargo bay was Engineering, which spanned two floors. One one side of the room was a ramp leading upwards, while the other had a small lift.

Like many other Federation ships, it held the ship’s engines, power plant, cooling, repairs, teleport drive, and the graviton generator. Miko noted the outdated designs on all of the components, and realized how much work was needed to get them into top shape.

Since the ship had no power, the lift was practically useless, and they had to use the side ramps up to the second floor. Right at the top was a cozy suit-up room which had a great amount of closet space for flightsuits, armor, weapons, tools, and other equipment.

At the other end was the unpowered lift with its gate up, which had a makeshift sign attached to it. Eva frowned when she read it.

–

Out of order

–

Beyond that room was a wide hallway that was flanked by two large rooms, one on each side. At the end of the hallway was the Bridge itself.

Down one side was a decent Kitchenette, although its cooking stations had been scavenged, and there was a fetid smell coming from out of one of the food storage bins. Opposite the prep wall was a four-person booth where they could enjoy their food.

On the other side of the hallway from the Kitchenette was Habitation. Its four beds were inset into the thick walls, each one with plenty of personal storage space. Although each bed didn’t have its own terminal, there was a communal one in the corner.

Or, at least, that’s where it should have been.

Besides that, the far end of the room was where all of the communal resources sat – the (scavenged) terminal, a shower with a changing room, and space for a larger screen. Whatever was there before had long since been taken as well.

The only reason they even realized there was a screen was the layer of dust surrounding a relatively cleaner stretch of wall.

Having seen all that they needed, they moved to the final room in the ship – the Bridge.

And it was as cozy as the rest of the ship. Up front were the two seats for the pilot and copilot. Each had their own yoke and yaw, but shared the throttle in the center. Directly behind them were seats and terminals meant for engineering or navigational officers.

Each seat had one main screen and four smaller MFDs to operate their ship with, though many had been stripped away and scrapped. Or perhaps they were broken and tossed. Judging from their age, it was likely they needed to replace all of them anyway.

“It’s a bit janky,” said Eva. “But she works for what we need, right? Crew of four, lots of cargo, big engines...”

“Question is,” said Amal, “is she even gonna turn on?”

Without saying a word, Miko sat down in the engineer’s seat and powered on its terminal. It blinked to life after a few seconds.

“The ship is running on minimal power,” she said. “One moment please.”

She blew dust off the terminal, then wiped off the rest with a sleeve. When it was clean enough, she tapped on the screen and woke the power plant out of standby.

Lights blinked on all over the ship, and the hum of electricity could be heard within its walls.

“Its power cells are drained down to four percent,” continued Miko. “We will need to replace them. In the meantime, I am running a full systems diagnostic. Because of its age, it will take some time to complete.”

“How long?” asked Eva.

“Eight hours, fifteen minutes, and eighty-six seconds.”

“Ookay, what’ll we do until then?”

Amal scoffed playfully.

“We got lots to do, honestly,” she said. “Like cleaning the whole thing up. I mean you all saw the gunk all over the walls. I don’t even wanna know what that is, or how long it’s been there.”

“And definitely all that trash,” added Eva. “Like that moldy pile of clothes – or at least I think those are clothes – in the shower. And also, don’t forget whatever it was that died in the Kitchenette.”

“I do not believe I can forget that,” said Miko.

All three gagged a little as they imagined whatever thing was in there: dead critter, pulsing toxic sludge, severed head, space hobo. Could be anything.

Miko quickly activated her cottonball drones – even the third one, which she had rebuilt. They rose lazily out of her hair, hovered in front of her, and waited for her orders.

“Eradicate any and all pests you find,” she ordered them in strict Japanese. “Show no mercy!”

The drones quickly snapped to attention, then flew off dutifully. They took no time in scouring through every centimeter of the ship. They poked and prodded in every corner and every cubby. As per Raijin’s demands, they located every bug and unwanted pest on the ship.

One of the cottonball drones zapped a bug cowering under a shelf, picked it up with its antigrav, and tossed the smoldering carcass out the door.

But that was just the beginning. There were loads more that had found a home in the derelict. Many different kinds of little critters lived in every corner of the ship – mangy old rats, gnarly bugs with huge pincers, gross little maggots, and more.

By the time the drones were done, there was a veritable pile of zapped corpses out on the hangar floor. A few still wriggled, even after death.

Amal suddenly found herself itchy beyond belief.

“Um. I’m gonna go and rent us a flamethrower,” she said. “Any objections?”

There were none.