E
Ethereal
A tiny blip on the screen. Barely registering as a two ton mass in geosync. It had been there for over a week, and no amount of debugging and recalibration would make it go away. It wasn't visible on radar, nor on thermal. But it showed up glowing like a star on gravitational and radiological. A two ton star that was driving the sensor technicians mad. The sandy haired technician on bridge duty finally gave up and investigated.
He had already asked the Captain if they could move the ship closer to get some better scans, and these revealed an active fusion reactor in idle mode, along with what looked like a cryogenic thermal control system. But both were completely unshielded, as though there was no hull to contain its emissions.
Relaying this to the Captain, it was ordered to be grabbed in a tractor beam and brought inside.
As the orders came down the chain, a small group of scientists, engineers and researchers congregated in the cargo bay - it seemed anyone who was anyone wanted to get a good look at whatever it was they were going to bring in.
Three graviton beams dragged the craft into the hangar, and one thing would be immediately apparent. It had no docking mechanisms or landing gear. The hammerhead type nacelles barely extended past the thermal glass cockpit lid, and a cargo pod bulged from below in equal distance. After that, the hull plating simply stopped, and laid bare the angry orange glow of a completely unshielded reactor, driving sharp shadows against the coils of a hyperspace fold drive meant for something far larger. Though larger still was the main engine and its iris like variable thrust housing. The craft itself was a mottled brown, and immediately, started sending radar pulses to try and find itself, before the skin quivered, and turned a sharp, light eating black.
"Is... Is it trying to hide?" One hangar technician asked, watching the color change. "I mean, if it were out in space, that'd be a damn effective way to stay out of sight, but..."
What was originally stunned silence gradually morphed into what could almost be described as an outburst of academic discussion. It seemed everyone had their own theory on what exactly this unusual craft was and why it was there. With the pitch rising, one of the many shouted up.
Her flowing ginger hair was tied in a bun, a thin pair of horn-rimmed glasses resting on her nose. "Let's stop talking and do more acting, shall we?" she suggested rather definitively, a cyan IIS emblazoned on the front pocket of her pristeen IIS jumpsuit.
Disgruntled mutterings were voiced and quickly died out, the doctors and assistants moving in, congregating at various points of interest of the craft in small groups.
"That engine is a KE-209." One assistant pointed out. "That's designed for something thousands of times this mass. Either her reactor's way more powerful than it looks or she's got some tricks up her skirt. Hand me a spanner." The young raven haired Nepleslian approached the ship, noting its skin and peering closely at it. Judging it to be not dangerous, he placed a hand on the engine support haltingly.
"We'll want to get some kind of scaffolding under it to start pulling pieces off." Another noted, giving a nod to the fact that the craft was suspended in null gravity, and not well secured.
A shorter man defly flipped a small notepad out of a back pocket, jotting down their findings. "Intriguing. Any ideas who this belongs to?" he spoke up in a timid manner. One of the assistants darted around, grabbing a toolbox from a shelf around the side of the hangar.
Another busied themselves wheeling over a small 3D fabricator, tapping away to program some sort of support structure to be built under the unique craft. "Well, I think I found an entrance..?" a Freespacer of some sort called, poking their noggin from where they crouched beneath the main body of the starship.
"What do you mean?" A redheaded woman in green overals crouched to follow the Freespacer back underneath. When she looked up, she saw the five foot by two strip of heatshield treated glass that served as a cockpit window, and she could see the softly glowing cryo bed above her.
The Freespacer pointed off to the side, and she looked between the hull panels and the module for the canopy, finding what looked to be a pull handle. The paint was nearly sanded off with age and orbital debris, but there was still some orange and white. "Good find, Jim." She patted the Freespacer, then tried to find a way to get to that release. "Anybody have a pry bar? I gotta pop a panel!"
"Uhh.. Yeah, hang on!" a rather petite engineer called from by the engines, scooping up her backpack and ducking beneath the metal underbelly - not that she needed to duck far. Coming up by Jim and the glowing window, the engineer frisked around inside the canvas pack, passing up a rather well-used crowbar to the woman.
The Freespacer accepted the bar with a nod of gratitude, running a finger along the edge of the panel to prospect the best area to try. Jamming one corner of the strong metal lever into the rim, he wiggled it to and fro to get it well-secured. The other two women had backed off slightly, allowing Jim to exercise all of his mechanical strength. With a grimace and massive pull the panel to groan under the force and finally come free with a "hiss", the metal clattering to the floor, the sound ringing and echoing loudly as it slammed into the ground.
"Hand that bit to the other teams." The technician said, passing the panel over to an engineer as it turned a dead white. She reached up and attempted to grab onto the handle and poking her head into the body of the ship as she did so. The unusually small craft started rotating slightly in the null-G pull upon it. "Guys, you gotta see this sensor array. Popping the lid now. When I'm clear, Jim, try and flip the ship over."
She pulled the release and the window unsealed with a thunk and a hiss of old pneumatics, rotating open to the left side, and internal lights started flickering on.
"We're in!" the shorter engineer shouted, waving to a group of researchers clustered around the nose of the ship. "Everyone, step back we're going to get it the right way up."
As everyone made sure they weren't going to go flying and the green-garbed technician got clear, Jim took a good hold on the side of the passage to the inside. "Here we go.." he muttered, glancing left and right across the hull to make sure nothing would snag. With a grunt, the Freespacer jumped a few inches and on the way down used the force to swing the entire ship around. The hatch was now directly upfacing, coincidentally, there was a walkway passing right over the entrance.
With that done, the Nepleslian tinkering with the engine gave it a heave, pushing it into the scaffolding that had been built to support it. The craft, loosely claimable as a ship, slowly drifted, then the artificial zero gravity field surrounding it started gently lowering it into the supports, where it settled with a creak as though the mounting points would tear off at any instant. Resuming his duties, the man remarked, "Yeah, correction. This is no KE-209. The thruster cowling's from one, but the KE was a spacetime induction drive. This is a plasma rotor open fusion core. Not sure I've ever seen this design before. But it almost looks cobbled together from scraps."
"Agreed" someone added as they ran a hand across its hull, "held together on a wish and a prayer." They sounded impressed, tapping the smooth metal a few times with a fingernail.
Jim apparently decided that he couldn't wait to see what was inside, using his inhuman strength to grapple his way carefully up the side of the ship, pausing as his head came to a stop over the top of the accessway. The taller man stuck his head inside, bringing his arms down alongside them as he did. Scanning the inside, it was clear that someone had almost been living in this tiny area, belongings scattered around. He dreaded to think what the pilot's plan was for waste disposal.
One item caught his eye as it reflected the light, which he instinctively reached down to retrieve. Curious, he thought, the oval-shaped object was a strange addition to the patchwork tech. Retracting back out, he held it up to the silvery egg to the others. "Any idea what this is?"
In that instant, a good half of the female staff who looked to the Freespacer erupted into a furious blush. Whether that was from holding back laughter or an actual blush, it may never be known. The Nepleslian leaned over from behind the engine, a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he observed the womens' reaction and the little silver, more chrome egg. It was slow, at first. But it didn't take long for the Nep to be supporting himself on the side of the engine and clutching at his side in laughter.
"Vibrator." One of the engineers casually remarked. "Based on the girls' reactions, a good chunk of them have one." With nary a second thought, he went back to sliding the forward sensor bay out, as though it was meant to be maintained. "Now this is neat. Noncollinear phased array? Where'd she get one of these... Moreover, it looks like these are all cooled by liquid hydrogen run throughout."
"How about six quantum mirrors with a ballasting board?" Another engineer piped up from the starboard nacelle, having a cover open and pushing past deuterium lines.
While nobody was looking, Jim slipped back inside the cockpit, this time falling all the way inside to have a look at the controls. They were ad-hoc and some were nigh inoperable but the work was impressive. Almost subconciously as he scoured the inside, he pocketed the small egg, more to get it out of his hands than anything.
"Well, whoever did this liked to take some risks.." he muttered, his voice amplifying and echoing around the small area into the workspace outside. The tall engineer began opening the various compartments and examining their insides, seeing if there was any tech hidden behind their doors.
Most of the items to be found in those cabinets was an assortment of clothes and ration bars, messily stuffed into the small compartments. But the touchscreen on the inside of the canopy door blinked on, displaying a childlike, heavily scarred person shining a flashlight into the camera, speaking in a scratchy voice. "If you're watching this message, you have entered my ship in an unauthorized manner. Due to the sensitivity of many files on board, this ship is going to self destruct via a total fusion event rated at seven megatons unless a confirmation message is sent by my datapad in fifteen seconds."
Frost started to form across parts of the hull as the nuclear fuel started pumping through, and the reactor glowed an even brighter orange. The engine kicked over as the Nepleslian tech shouted to get clear. About fourteen seconds later the voice came back.
"My apologies. Entry access has been granted by my pilot. Feel free to explore my systems to your hearts' content. But do not attempt decryption of my hard drive. That will reinitiate the self destruct system." The reactor cooled down and the ship's whine died down, letting things warm up.
The warning had been heard by those outside as well as in, the voice carrying through the hangar. There was a moment when the tension in the room could have been cut with a knife and as the second sentence came a collective sigh of relief washed over the hangar.
"Soooo.. whoever owns this knows we're here..." the shorter engineer from outside stated the obvious, wiping a small bead of swear from her brow. "And I guess we shouldn't poke around the digital storage until we get this in a blast chamber..?"
"Any way we can trace that signal? Our receivers should have caught it on the way out?" one bright spark shouted down from the above walkway, where he was leaning over and taking pictures from the top down.
"I was a bit busy concerned about a thermo-nuclear explosion!" several of the technicians, especially the ones near the sensor assembly were still shaking. Some from cold, others simply refused to piss it off. It had been the Nep that had spoken.
"I don't wanna piss it off again." Another said. If anybody had caught the signal, they could cross-reference USO personnel with inbuilt datapads at a later time.
It was at this point the woman that had originally spoke out harked up again, obviously the senior researcher in the room. "A-Alright, let's continue." she spoke, trying as hard as she could to look like the imminent death hadn't fazed her. "Take a look at that panel over there.. someone.."
"I think it's biological." One technician said, carefully picking the panel up off the desk and watching how it mimicked his skin tone. "looks almost like... Someone want to send for a bioengineering team?"
"Wait, biotech? This thing looks like it was slapped together by a nineteen year old girl with no education. What's it doing with advanced biotech?" The nepleslian had finally pulled the core of the engine out and was taking a look to identify the top speed. "If I'm looking at this plasma rotor right, and understanding what she did to it, this thing could maybe hit 65% lightspeed in about thirty seconds. Who wants to look for an inertial damper?"
"It's uhm.. rather unique.. isn't it?" one of the scientists muttered to his peer, to which he then added "It's like it's half trash half gold, go figure. I'd love to get her on side, pick her brains."
Jim was all over the ship, literally, having finished with the cockpit he clambered up to the top of the craft with ease. "I'll see what I can find up here!" he called down, the Freespacer glancing around with those digital eyes of his.
"What the hell is this thing." Jack said as he entered the cargo bay, "I got a damn message about some kinda of weird craft. Now start explaining, I'm missing time with my family."
"I got a hull number!" One technician called as he managed to get the ship to return to its normal mottled brown. Jim would see scrambled lines of liquid hydrogen throughout the ship, clustered around heatsinks for electronics. "Juliett, Romeo Two dash Alpha Alpha Fiver Two Delta. Someone look up the registration?"
"We found a ship. We're trying to figure out what it was. Took us nearly twenty minutes to figure out it was a ship." The Nepleslian man looking over the engine components scattered in front of him barely looked up as he started reassembling the rotor core and responded to Jack.
"Running it now!" one of the more bulky researchers called over, tapping away at a datapad resting in his palms. "Hang on.. We got one-" the buzz-cut man paused, letting the info bleed onto the screen. "Lisa Ironhart.. Nepleslian.. Merc? A merc built this?" he announced, to the hushed mutterings of several others.
"I want the this looked over thoroughly, here let me see if I can access the database." Jack said before walking towards the small vessel and placing his hand on what might count as a hull. He tried to synchronize with it. It gave a sharp beep as though trying to get him to back off. He could get in, just far enough to see three layers of military grade encryption with no onboard keys and several guardian programs that would quite happily cripple any networks that tried to get through them. He could see the sensor systems, and the system maintenence alerts that said it was falling apart at the seams, and a connection with a datapad built into someone's arm, or the computer thought so because it was logged as a biometric device, and a full uplink, with location. If he looked hard enough through the sensors, he would just be able to make out the small figure curled up under a work bench in the Section 6 main lab.
"It did say the ship would overload the reactor and go boom with seven megatons if anyone tries cracking the encryption. I would seriously reccomend against trying."
"I think we got something here.." one of the more grizzled techies hoarsely called, as if he'd been smoking 50 a day. "Looks like some time of thermal regulator."
"Define some kind of?" One of the seemingly countless redheaded female technicians moved over. "Are we talking mass based thermal seperator or are we talking another heatsink crammed with liquid hydrogen lines?"
"Looks like some sort of control unit from where I'm looking..?" the croaky reply came, the older man poking and prodding the device. Another technician sided up beside Jack, leaning forwards with her bust brushing against his arm. "Hey, I think the signal controller for the craft is nearby..?"
When the technician asking about the thermal unit leaned in for a closer look, she found an interesting little device. "Well, that explains why the fuel lines are all through the ship. Looks like it draws off waste heat and recycles it into the reactor. That's pretty neat. But this reactor's way undersized for this kind of ship. How's she getting power without an overload?"
"With that much thermal recycling, surely she doesn't need that much reactor power itself? The amount of energy saving must offset for how larger reacts need to account for waste power.?" the other thermal unit tech suggested.
"Funny thing. They don't. If I'm looking at this right, she's literally using the thermal mass of the ship and waste heat to prewarm her reactor fuel, thus negating the need to run it through the outer shield as a reactor coolant. But considering the rest of this ship, I'm surprised. There's no way a merc put this together herself. Not without help, or a stroke of three different kinds of mad genius and six iterations. We should have seen a ship like this before." The technician pulled away from the thermal control unit. "Here's the control valve. Reactor's going offline, someone want to drain the fuel and we can actually pull this thing apart?"
As she closed the valve, another technician pulled a main power umbilical from the wall and spliced it into the reactor's output, keeping the ship's systems active enough for repairs and refits as neccessary. Another tech hooked up a fuel line and started letting the deuterium fuel bleed off and into the ship's tanks, and a third pulled up the mercenary network profile for Lisa Ironhart.
"Name of Lisa Ironhart ties back to merc profile of Thorn, same last name. Lists her as stationed here at the moment, working with the USO."
"I'll run it through the database.." the woman beside Jack commented, her nails tapping on the console as she did so. "I.. hmm.. I think she works here?" she added, turning the screen around so the others could see.
"Huh." The blonde brute who had been elbow deep in the engine bay looked over the scarred face on the profile. "If she's one of ours, should we do some upgrades? I mean, she's kinda cute. How tall is she?"
"Hmm.. About.." the sound of fingers flying across a keypad rang out. "Four foot three. Wow, I wish I had eyes like those.."
"Explains the small cockpit." Jim commented as the sandy Nepleslian flushed, and a few of his friends started laughing.
"She's a bit short for me. Alright. The main structure's more welds than original metal, and it looks like aluminum, to boot. Does anybody see any kind of barrier on this piece of junk?"
"Hrm, I'm not reading one from where I'm stood. Just some sort of basic anti-radiation field. This thing probably depends on speed and stealth rather than shields and armor."
"That explains the open hull design and this monster goddamn engine." One of the redheads piped up. "But other than thermal control, maybe a radar scatter, and that skin, I see no stealth systems. Just scanning equipment and an old Yamataian flag, with the Star Army Sciences division emblem on the side of a panel, looks like it was built around an old survey sat."
"Yeah I know her. Don't freak out, I'm gonna do something." Jack said before connecting to the ship on a deeper level, his body going stiff as it went into standby. one moment Jack was in his body, the next the ship was his body. He scanned the room with the optic sensors before linking to Thorn's datapad.
"HEY THORN WAKE YOUR ASS UP NOW!" Jack yelled at max volume through Thorn's lab PA system.
"Fuggoff." was the response into her pad as her cochlear speaker and the PA roared in Jack's voice. She curled deeper into the cot and into the deep, dark corner of the bench. The Eye's internal speakers would relay that up to the chagrin and amusmement of several technicians.
"Reminds me of myself, not going to lie." Jim piped up from one corner of the room, to some snickers and chuckles. "Damn right, lazy sod." the husky-voiced man replied heartily, a big grin gracing his wrinkled face. "Swear to the Empress you sleep like twenty hours a day, old man." the Freespacer quipped in return, smirking.
"Thorn if you don't wake up, i'm gonna space this ship, or sell it off. Now get the fuck up for like five minutes!" Jack blared again. Though now as he still possessed the craft there had been a building buzz from the ship's data processing systems.
"This ship... What? OH, GOD, YOU'RE IN MY SHIP!" She rocketed up, knocking her head on the underside of the bench with a loud clang, an "Ahow!" and a string of incomprehensible cursing. "Where's my ship?!"
Several more technicians chuckled as they started testing contact points and scribbling up a plan to overhaul. If it was to be under the USO for as long as the owner worked there, it may as well not be dangerously unreliable as half of the conclusions had been so far. Mutterings of new parts to be ordered started floating around, including one in particular balking and stepping back from the reactor when he saw the state of the core, half fused and overclocked to the point that an errant handgun might cause it to explode.
"By the Empress, uhhh.. Should we like.. put this in a blast room before we start actually upgrading it?" the IIS jumpsuit-clad guy suggested haltingly, pointing to the newly revealed core. "Looks like something a Freespacer would fire as a weapon." Then he glanced Jim, adding "No offense."
"You have access to our stock database but I wouldn't mess with Thorn's stuff. [directed towards Thorn] More like I am using it as a host, as I was trying to figure out who's ship this was. I told our staff to back off, and it was pulled aboard one of the broadsword frigates. Man I am feeling weird like buzzed, high, hyper, and OCD all at the same time." Jack was starting to have a hard time focusing as a tsunami of data in the amount of terabytes filling his senses.
"None taken. But this reactor's perfectly serviceable... If it's only got a few thousand hours left in it... Hey, Jack, you wouldn't happen to have any spare fusion reactor cores lying around?" Jim replied, backing off at Jack's suggestion.
"Not surprised." Thorn grinned, knowing he wouldn't see it. "You didn't run a spec check on that thing first? It's got more processing power than three human brains and can scan so hard it will literally take a 3D model of someone's soul. From orbit. But I'm not using it right now, so take the refit bill outta my paycheck and have fun. Also if you find a chrome egg in the cockpit, hide it. I want it back, but hide it. Also, I retain full right to the ship. All tech onboard is proprietary to me and my mercenary network profile." She didn't say that none of it was patented, but she could bluff a bit.
The engineers milled around, inspecting and noting every part of the craft inside the cockpit and on the outside that could possibly be replaced - at least, in a conventional sense. There were a few blushes as her - rather personal - toy was brough up again. "Hey guys, it ain't in here.." someone muttered inaudibly, then realised it wasn't their issue and shut up.
The IIS researchers glanced meaningfully at each other as rights were mentioned. Even if it was the case she had right to the ship, likelihood was they could set the vast sector-spanning network that was IIS R&D to work creating branch technology based off what was seen here. She only presently held the tech in the form it currently was, not what it was in every application and permutation. Nothing was said, but they all knew it - they were a corporate body after all.
"And checking the patents... No one by the name of Thorn or Lisa Ironhart holds any patents. Ship's fair game!" Several of the technicians grinned, renewing their disassembly of the ship and the scribbled lists of upgrades and repairs with renewed vigor. At least until several of them started realizing it would be easier to just build a new one and swap over some components. The frame, for example, was a complete wreck. "Hey, she's one of ours, so let's just rebuild from the ground up. Maybe she won't be able to tell the difference or we'll tell her when she asks."
"She might notice but will she care? It'll be a total upgrade." spoke a young man reassuringly, poking at the chromataphore plating with the tip of his pen. "Let's get legal on the line, they can jot down the paperwork while we figure out what we're interested in."
"Someone call fabrication and get a decent frame in the works, let's set to stripping it down and laying everything out for when they wheel it up here. Scan as you go, deep 3D - remember protocol for new tech."
"Roger! Probing scanners coming online." Another technician responded, flipping a series of switches to take high resolution scans of the ship for fab. The little square nuggets in the scan display were starting to bug him, squirreled away in hard to get to places within the hull. "Goddamn it, there are ration bars everywhere!"
It was with that last sentence that the jumpsuit and labcoat clad professionals knuckled down to work, rations or no. Now, this would be a real feat of engineering, a proper chance for the scientists from all backgrounds to come together.
He had already asked the Captain if they could move the ship closer to get some better scans, and these revealed an active fusion reactor in idle mode, along with what looked like a cryogenic thermal control system. But both were completely unshielded, as though there was no hull to contain its emissions.
Relaying this to the Captain, it was ordered to be grabbed in a tractor beam and brought inside.
As the orders came down the chain, a small group of scientists, engineers and researchers congregated in the cargo bay - it seemed anyone who was anyone wanted to get a good look at whatever it was they were going to bring in.
Three graviton beams dragged the craft into the hangar, and one thing would be immediately apparent. It had no docking mechanisms or landing gear. The hammerhead type nacelles barely extended past the thermal glass cockpit lid, and a cargo pod bulged from below in equal distance. After that, the hull plating simply stopped, and laid bare the angry orange glow of a completely unshielded reactor, driving sharp shadows against the coils of a hyperspace fold drive meant for something far larger. Though larger still was the main engine and its iris like variable thrust housing. The craft itself was a mottled brown, and immediately, started sending radar pulses to try and find itself, before the skin quivered, and turned a sharp, light eating black.
"Is... Is it trying to hide?" One hangar technician asked, watching the color change. "I mean, if it were out in space, that'd be a damn effective way to stay out of sight, but..."
What was originally stunned silence gradually morphed into what could almost be described as an outburst of academic discussion. It seemed everyone had their own theory on what exactly this unusual craft was and why it was there. With the pitch rising, one of the many shouted up.
Her flowing ginger hair was tied in a bun, a thin pair of horn-rimmed glasses resting on her nose. "Let's stop talking and do more acting, shall we?" she suggested rather definitively, a cyan IIS emblazoned on the front pocket of her pristeen IIS jumpsuit.
Disgruntled mutterings were voiced and quickly died out, the doctors and assistants moving in, congregating at various points of interest of the craft in small groups.
"That engine is a KE-209." One assistant pointed out. "That's designed for something thousands of times this mass. Either her reactor's way more powerful than it looks or she's got some tricks up her skirt. Hand me a spanner." The young raven haired Nepleslian approached the ship, noting its skin and peering closely at it. Judging it to be not dangerous, he placed a hand on the engine support haltingly.
"We'll want to get some kind of scaffolding under it to start pulling pieces off." Another noted, giving a nod to the fact that the craft was suspended in null gravity, and not well secured.
A shorter man defly flipped a small notepad out of a back pocket, jotting down their findings. "Intriguing. Any ideas who this belongs to?" he spoke up in a timid manner. One of the assistants darted around, grabbing a toolbox from a shelf around the side of the hangar.
Another busied themselves wheeling over a small 3D fabricator, tapping away to program some sort of support structure to be built under the unique craft. "Well, I think I found an entrance..?" a Freespacer of some sort called, poking their noggin from where they crouched beneath the main body of the starship.
"What do you mean?" A redheaded woman in green overals crouched to follow the Freespacer back underneath. When she looked up, she saw the five foot by two strip of heatshield treated glass that served as a cockpit window, and she could see the softly glowing cryo bed above her.
The Freespacer pointed off to the side, and she looked between the hull panels and the module for the canopy, finding what looked to be a pull handle. The paint was nearly sanded off with age and orbital debris, but there was still some orange and white. "Good find, Jim." She patted the Freespacer, then tried to find a way to get to that release. "Anybody have a pry bar? I gotta pop a panel!"
"Uhh.. Yeah, hang on!" a rather petite engineer called from by the engines, scooping up her backpack and ducking beneath the metal underbelly - not that she needed to duck far. Coming up by Jim and the glowing window, the engineer frisked around inside the canvas pack, passing up a rather well-used crowbar to the woman.
The Freespacer accepted the bar with a nod of gratitude, running a finger along the edge of the panel to prospect the best area to try. Jamming one corner of the strong metal lever into the rim, he wiggled it to and fro to get it well-secured. The other two women had backed off slightly, allowing Jim to exercise all of his mechanical strength. With a grimace and massive pull the panel to groan under the force and finally come free with a "hiss", the metal clattering to the floor, the sound ringing and echoing loudly as it slammed into the ground.
"Hand that bit to the other teams." The technician said, passing the panel over to an engineer as it turned a dead white. She reached up and attempted to grab onto the handle and poking her head into the body of the ship as she did so. The unusually small craft started rotating slightly in the null-G pull upon it. "Guys, you gotta see this sensor array. Popping the lid now. When I'm clear, Jim, try and flip the ship over."
She pulled the release and the window unsealed with a thunk and a hiss of old pneumatics, rotating open to the left side, and internal lights started flickering on.
"We're in!" the shorter engineer shouted, waving to a group of researchers clustered around the nose of the ship. "Everyone, step back we're going to get it the right way up."
As everyone made sure they weren't going to go flying and the green-garbed technician got clear, Jim took a good hold on the side of the passage to the inside. "Here we go.." he muttered, glancing left and right across the hull to make sure nothing would snag. With a grunt, the Freespacer jumped a few inches and on the way down used the force to swing the entire ship around. The hatch was now directly upfacing, coincidentally, there was a walkway passing right over the entrance.
With that done, the Nepleslian tinkering with the engine gave it a heave, pushing it into the scaffolding that had been built to support it. The craft, loosely claimable as a ship, slowly drifted, then the artificial zero gravity field surrounding it started gently lowering it into the supports, where it settled with a creak as though the mounting points would tear off at any instant. Resuming his duties, the man remarked, "Yeah, correction. This is no KE-209. The thruster cowling's from one, but the KE was a spacetime induction drive. This is a plasma rotor open fusion core. Not sure I've ever seen this design before. But it almost looks cobbled together from scraps."
"Agreed" someone added as they ran a hand across its hull, "held together on a wish and a prayer." They sounded impressed, tapping the smooth metal a few times with a fingernail.
Jim apparently decided that he couldn't wait to see what was inside, using his inhuman strength to grapple his way carefully up the side of the ship, pausing as his head came to a stop over the top of the accessway. The taller man stuck his head inside, bringing his arms down alongside them as he did. Scanning the inside, it was clear that someone had almost been living in this tiny area, belongings scattered around. He dreaded to think what the pilot's plan was for waste disposal.
One item caught his eye as it reflected the light, which he instinctively reached down to retrieve. Curious, he thought, the oval-shaped object was a strange addition to the patchwork tech. Retracting back out, he held it up to the silvery egg to the others. "Any idea what this is?"
In that instant, a good half of the female staff who looked to the Freespacer erupted into a furious blush. Whether that was from holding back laughter or an actual blush, it may never be known. The Nepleslian leaned over from behind the engine, a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he observed the womens' reaction and the little silver, more chrome egg. It was slow, at first. But it didn't take long for the Nep to be supporting himself on the side of the engine and clutching at his side in laughter.
"Vibrator." One of the engineers casually remarked. "Based on the girls' reactions, a good chunk of them have one." With nary a second thought, he went back to sliding the forward sensor bay out, as though it was meant to be maintained. "Now this is neat. Noncollinear phased array? Where'd she get one of these... Moreover, it looks like these are all cooled by liquid hydrogen run throughout."
"How about six quantum mirrors with a ballasting board?" Another engineer piped up from the starboard nacelle, having a cover open and pushing past deuterium lines.
While nobody was looking, Jim slipped back inside the cockpit, this time falling all the way inside to have a look at the controls. They were ad-hoc and some were nigh inoperable but the work was impressive. Almost subconciously as he scoured the inside, he pocketed the small egg, more to get it out of his hands than anything.
"Well, whoever did this liked to take some risks.." he muttered, his voice amplifying and echoing around the small area into the workspace outside. The tall engineer began opening the various compartments and examining their insides, seeing if there was any tech hidden behind their doors.
Most of the items to be found in those cabinets was an assortment of clothes and ration bars, messily stuffed into the small compartments. But the touchscreen on the inside of the canopy door blinked on, displaying a childlike, heavily scarred person shining a flashlight into the camera, speaking in a scratchy voice. "If you're watching this message, you have entered my ship in an unauthorized manner. Due to the sensitivity of many files on board, this ship is going to self destruct via a total fusion event rated at seven megatons unless a confirmation message is sent by my datapad in fifteen seconds."
Frost started to form across parts of the hull as the nuclear fuel started pumping through, and the reactor glowed an even brighter orange. The engine kicked over as the Nepleslian tech shouted to get clear. About fourteen seconds later the voice came back.
"My apologies. Entry access has been granted by my pilot. Feel free to explore my systems to your hearts' content. But do not attempt decryption of my hard drive. That will reinitiate the self destruct system." The reactor cooled down and the ship's whine died down, letting things warm up.
The warning had been heard by those outside as well as in, the voice carrying through the hangar. There was a moment when the tension in the room could have been cut with a knife and as the second sentence came a collective sigh of relief washed over the hangar.
"Soooo.. whoever owns this knows we're here..." the shorter engineer from outside stated the obvious, wiping a small bead of swear from her brow. "And I guess we shouldn't poke around the digital storage until we get this in a blast chamber..?"
"Any way we can trace that signal? Our receivers should have caught it on the way out?" one bright spark shouted down from the above walkway, where he was leaning over and taking pictures from the top down.
"I was a bit busy concerned about a thermo-nuclear explosion!" several of the technicians, especially the ones near the sensor assembly were still shaking. Some from cold, others simply refused to piss it off. It had been the Nep that had spoken.
"I don't wanna piss it off again." Another said. If anybody had caught the signal, they could cross-reference USO personnel with inbuilt datapads at a later time.
It was at this point the woman that had originally spoke out harked up again, obviously the senior researcher in the room. "A-Alright, let's continue." she spoke, trying as hard as she could to look like the imminent death hadn't fazed her. "Take a look at that panel over there.. someone.."
"I think it's biological." One technician said, carefully picking the panel up off the desk and watching how it mimicked his skin tone. "looks almost like... Someone want to send for a bioengineering team?"
"Wait, biotech? This thing looks like it was slapped together by a nineteen year old girl with no education. What's it doing with advanced biotech?" The nepleslian had finally pulled the core of the engine out and was taking a look to identify the top speed. "If I'm looking at this plasma rotor right, and understanding what she did to it, this thing could maybe hit 65% lightspeed in about thirty seconds. Who wants to look for an inertial damper?"
"It's uhm.. rather unique.. isn't it?" one of the scientists muttered to his peer, to which he then added "It's like it's half trash half gold, go figure. I'd love to get her on side, pick her brains."
Jim was all over the ship, literally, having finished with the cockpit he clambered up to the top of the craft with ease. "I'll see what I can find up here!" he called down, the Freespacer glancing around with those digital eyes of his.
"What the hell is this thing." Jack said as he entered the cargo bay, "I got a damn message about some kinda of weird craft. Now start explaining, I'm missing time with my family."
"I got a hull number!" One technician called as he managed to get the ship to return to its normal mottled brown. Jim would see scrambled lines of liquid hydrogen throughout the ship, clustered around heatsinks for electronics. "Juliett, Romeo Two dash Alpha Alpha Fiver Two Delta. Someone look up the registration?"
"We found a ship. We're trying to figure out what it was. Took us nearly twenty minutes to figure out it was a ship." The Nepleslian man looking over the engine components scattered in front of him barely looked up as he started reassembling the rotor core and responded to Jack.
"Running it now!" one of the more bulky researchers called over, tapping away at a datapad resting in his palms. "Hang on.. We got one-" the buzz-cut man paused, letting the info bleed onto the screen. "Lisa Ironhart.. Nepleslian.. Merc? A merc built this?" he announced, to the hushed mutterings of several others.
"I want the this looked over thoroughly, here let me see if I can access the database." Jack said before walking towards the small vessel and placing his hand on what might count as a hull. He tried to synchronize with it. It gave a sharp beep as though trying to get him to back off. He could get in, just far enough to see three layers of military grade encryption with no onboard keys and several guardian programs that would quite happily cripple any networks that tried to get through them. He could see the sensor systems, and the system maintenence alerts that said it was falling apart at the seams, and a connection with a datapad built into someone's arm, or the computer thought so because it was logged as a biometric device, and a full uplink, with location. If he looked hard enough through the sensors, he would just be able to make out the small figure curled up under a work bench in the Section 6 main lab.
"It did say the ship would overload the reactor and go boom with seven megatons if anyone tries cracking the encryption. I would seriously reccomend against trying."
"I think we got something here.." one of the more grizzled techies hoarsely called, as if he'd been smoking 50 a day. "Looks like some time of thermal regulator."
"Define some kind of?" One of the seemingly countless redheaded female technicians moved over. "Are we talking mass based thermal seperator or are we talking another heatsink crammed with liquid hydrogen lines?"
"Looks like some sort of control unit from where I'm looking..?" the croaky reply came, the older man poking and prodding the device. Another technician sided up beside Jack, leaning forwards with her bust brushing against his arm. "Hey, I think the signal controller for the craft is nearby..?"
When the technician asking about the thermal unit leaned in for a closer look, she found an interesting little device. "Well, that explains why the fuel lines are all through the ship. Looks like it draws off waste heat and recycles it into the reactor. That's pretty neat. But this reactor's way undersized for this kind of ship. How's she getting power without an overload?"
"With that much thermal recycling, surely she doesn't need that much reactor power itself? The amount of energy saving must offset for how larger reacts need to account for waste power.?" the other thermal unit tech suggested.
"Funny thing. They don't. If I'm looking at this right, she's literally using the thermal mass of the ship and waste heat to prewarm her reactor fuel, thus negating the need to run it through the outer shield as a reactor coolant. But considering the rest of this ship, I'm surprised. There's no way a merc put this together herself. Not without help, or a stroke of three different kinds of mad genius and six iterations. We should have seen a ship like this before." The technician pulled away from the thermal control unit. "Here's the control valve. Reactor's going offline, someone want to drain the fuel and we can actually pull this thing apart?"
As she closed the valve, another technician pulled a main power umbilical from the wall and spliced it into the reactor's output, keeping the ship's systems active enough for repairs and refits as neccessary. Another tech hooked up a fuel line and started letting the deuterium fuel bleed off and into the ship's tanks, and a third pulled up the mercenary network profile for Lisa Ironhart.
"Name of Lisa Ironhart ties back to merc profile of Thorn, same last name. Lists her as stationed here at the moment, working with the USO."
"I'll run it through the database.." the woman beside Jack commented, her nails tapping on the console as she did so. "I.. hmm.. I think she works here?" she added, turning the screen around so the others could see.
"Huh." The blonde brute who had been elbow deep in the engine bay looked over the scarred face on the profile. "If she's one of ours, should we do some upgrades? I mean, she's kinda cute. How tall is she?"
"Hmm.. About.." the sound of fingers flying across a keypad rang out. "Four foot three. Wow, I wish I had eyes like those.."
"Explains the small cockpit." Jim commented as the sandy Nepleslian flushed, and a few of his friends started laughing.
"She's a bit short for me. Alright. The main structure's more welds than original metal, and it looks like aluminum, to boot. Does anybody see any kind of barrier on this piece of junk?"
"Hrm, I'm not reading one from where I'm stood. Just some sort of basic anti-radiation field. This thing probably depends on speed and stealth rather than shields and armor."
"That explains the open hull design and this monster goddamn engine." One of the redheads piped up. "But other than thermal control, maybe a radar scatter, and that skin, I see no stealth systems. Just scanning equipment and an old Yamataian flag, with the Star Army Sciences division emblem on the side of a panel, looks like it was built around an old survey sat."
"Yeah I know her. Don't freak out, I'm gonna do something." Jack said before connecting to the ship on a deeper level, his body going stiff as it went into standby. one moment Jack was in his body, the next the ship was his body. He scanned the room with the optic sensors before linking to Thorn's datapad.
"HEY THORN WAKE YOUR ASS UP NOW!" Jack yelled at max volume through Thorn's lab PA system.
"Fuggoff." was the response into her pad as her cochlear speaker and the PA roared in Jack's voice. She curled deeper into the cot and into the deep, dark corner of the bench. The Eye's internal speakers would relay that up to the chagrin and amusmement of several technicians.
"Reminds me of myself, not going to lie." Jim piped up from one corner of the room, to some snickers and chuckles. "Damn right, lazy sod." the husky-voiced man replied heartily, a big grin gracing his wrinkled face. "Swear to the Empress you sleep like twenty hours a day, old man." the Freespacer quipped in return, smirking.
"Thorn if you don't wake up, i'm gonna space this ship, or sell it off. Now get the fuck up for like five minutes!" Jack blared again. Though now as he still possessed the craft there had been a building buzz from the ship's data processing systems.
"This ship... What? OH, GOD, YOU'RE IN MY SHIP!" She rocketed up, knocking her head on the underside of the bench with a loud clang, an "Ahow!" and a string of incomprehensible cursing. "Where's my ship?!"
Several more technicians chuckled as they started testing contact points and scribbling up a plan to overhaul. If it was to be under the USO for as long as the owner worked there, it may as well not be dangerously unreliable as half of the conclusions had been so far. Mutterings of new parts to be ordered started floating around, including one in particular balking and stepping back from the reactor when he saw the state of the core, half fused and overclocked to the point that an errant handgun might cause it to explode.
"By the Empress, uhhh.. Should we like.. put this in a blast room before we start actually upgrading it?" the IIS jumpsuit-clad guy suggested haltingly, pointing to the newly revealed core. "Looks like something a Freespacer would fire as a weapon." Then he glanced Jim, adding "No offense."
"You have access to our stock database but I wouldn't mess with Thorn's stuff. [directed towards Thorn] More like I am using it as a host, as I was trying to figure out who's ship this was. I told our staff to back off, and it was pulled aboard one of the broadsword frigates. Man I am feeling weird like buzzed, high, hyper, and OCD all at the same time." Jack was starting to have a hard time focusing as a tsunami of data in the amount of terabytes filling his senses.
"None taken. But this reactor's perfectly serviceable... If it's only got a few thousand hours left in it... Hey, Jack, you wouldn't happen to have any spare fusion reactor cores lying around?" Jim replied, backing off at Jack's suggestion.
"Not surprised." Thorn grinned, knowing he wouldn't see it. "You didn't run a spec check on that thing first? It's got more processing power than three human brains and can scan so hard it will literally take a 3D model of someone's soul. From orbit. But I'm not using it right now, so take the refit bill outta my paycheck and have fun. Also if you find a chrome egg in the cockpit, hide it. I want it back, but hide it. Also, I retain full right to the ship. All tech onboard is proprietary to me and my mercenary network profile." She didn't say that none of it was patented, but she could bluff a bit.
The engineers milled around, inspecting and noting every part of the craft inside the cockpit and on the outside that could possibly be replaced - at least, in a conventional sense. There were a few blushes as her - rather personal - toy was brough up again. "Hey guys, it ain't in here.." someone muttered inaudibly, then realised it wasn't their issue and shut up.
The IIS researchers glanced meaningfully at each other as rights were mentioned. Even if it was the case she had right to the ship, likelihood was they could set the vast sector-spanning network that was IIS R&D to work creating branch technology based off what was seen here. She only presently held the tech in the form it currently was, not what it was in every application and permutation. Nothing was said, but they all knew it - they were a corporate body after all.
"And checking the patents... No one by the name of Thorn or Lisa Ironhart holds any patents. Ship's fair game!" Several of the technicians grinned, renewing their disassembly of the ship and the scribbled lists of upgrades and repairs with renewed vigor. At least until several of them started realizing it would be easier to just build a new one and swap over some components. The frame, for example, was a complete wreck. "Hey, she's one of ours, so let's just rebuild from the ground up. Maybe she won't be able to tell the difference or we'll tell her when she asks."
"She might notice but will she care? It'll be a total upgrade." spoke a young man reassuringly, poking at the chromataphore plating with the tip of his pen. "Let's get legal on the line, they can jot down the paperwork while we figure out what we're interested in."
"Someone call fabrication and get a decent frame in the works, let's set to stripping it down and laying everything out for when they wheel it up here. Scan as you go, deep 3D - remember protocol for new tech."
"Roger! Probing scanners coming online." Another technician responded, flipping a series of switches to take high resolution scans of the ship for fab. The little square nuggets in the scan display were starting to bug him, squirreled away in hard to get to places within the hull. "Goddamn it, there are ration bars everywhere!"
It was with that last sentence that the jumpsuit and labcoat clad professionals knuckled down to work, rations or no. Now, this would be a real feat of engineering, a proper chance for the scientists from all backgrounds to come together.
