Chapter 2: |2| – Abandoned

We made our way past mid-ship, if my estimate for the corvette’s length was accurate, before Noma put a fist up to signal me to halt. One of the few military signs even I understood, although I think she did it more out of instinct than actually intending to. “The bridge should be around this level. I don’t really expect any resistance by what we have found so far, but I’ll go in first again.”

“Ok, should I peek again?”

“No, if this really is the bridge, there should only be a single file corridor down for about 3 meters. If we are to meet any resistance, it would be there or when entering the bridge proper. You’ll wait here until I call you in. If I don’t call in after 60 seconds maximum, you’ll make your way back to the Seal and... I don’t really know.” Huh? That was rare. Usually, Noma always had a plan or at least acted like she had it all planned out. But before I could reply, she already continued. “If the computer says I’m dead, you fly towards the closest system and point them here. If I’m still alive, you activate the distress beacon, unless you see the ship doing something, understood?”

That caused me to swallow hard. I mean, I had said that I would treat this situation with the seriousness it deserved, but... Noma actually thinks she could... die here? This was like our second job together. Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, call for backup or something? But before I could voice that suggestion. She looked at me and put her helmet’s reflective layer up so I could see her face. She still had that confident grin, bordering on smug, that she had had when we were putting our suits on. I know it wasn’t really rational, but seeing her like that also got my own nerves to calm down. “Don’t worry so much. I promise you, even if there was an enemy on the bridge in 9 out of 10 cases, I’ll still come out unscathed.”

“Okay. Just be careful, okay?” All she said in response was a single “Always.” and put her helmet’s protection against radiation back in place and turned towards the door. At that moment, I realized she didn’t have a crowbar on her and thought she had forgotten that she couldn’t open the door. Noma, however, had other ideas.

Now the rational part of my brain realized, that it were probably the motors installed in her ex-military suit doing most of the heavy work, but seeing the woman that was over a head shorter than me pushing open the metal doors with seemingly nothing but the power of her thighs, had my head thinking about a lot of other things. Mainly, what else she could do with her thighs. But before I could interpret why exactly these thoughts had suddenly sprung into my head, Noma released her boots from the doors and went feet first into what lay beyond. A few agonizing moments later - though my clock told me only about 25 seconds had passed - she gave the all-clear and I released a breath, I hadn’t even realised I was holding in.

Walking through the door, I first saw the corridor Noma had mentioned. It honestly looked more like a funnel for any intruders brave enough to walk in. If there had been any form of defensive armaments installed, it could put an end to all but the most determined breaching attempts. Luckily, I couldn’t see any turrets or towers installed, though that didn’t mean they could just be powered down and hidden. Entering the bridge proper, as Noma had called it, however, showed me a view that was both familiar and alien to me. Military ships had apparently a similar bridge structure to some of the larger freighters I had been on. A semi-circle of consoles and chairs were placed along the far side of the room. What was new, however, was the raised platform in the middle, with a few large transparent screens that could be accessed from either side and one smaller console and chair positioned between the screens and other consoles. I'd say the captain’s chair, if I had to guess.

Much like the rest of what I had seen of the ship, the bridge was powered down. All but a single one of the screens or consoles were turned off. I made my way towards the captain’s position, where Noma was already looking at the dimly glowing console. “Anything interesting?” I asked just as I reached her side. “Nah, it’s still booting up in low energy mode. Hopefully, there are some logs to shine some light on what happened to the ship.” Normally, the computers should boot up in a few seconds, but the long inactivity probably meant it could take a few minutes. Instead of waiting by the console, however, I decided to have a look around. The bridge - or cockpit for smaller vessels - could often reveal a surprising amount about the people who worked and sometimes even lived there. Decorations or souvenirs are obvious, but even often overlooked things, like how deep the coffee stains were, could show some character quirks of the crew. More often than not, it also hinted at a caffeine addiction.

The bridge this time, however, was in pristine condition. No personal items anywhere and, except for some dust, most surfaces looked as if they had been cleaned regularly. I’m not really sure if that was normal for military vessels, or if the captain was just strict. Or maybe they had cleaned the ship before abandoning it. That would at least mean they weren’t in a hurry. “The computer’s up.” At that, I made my way back to Noma.

Reaching the captain’s seat, I pushed myself down onto the chair, only to bounce a few centimeters back up. In the corner of my eye, I could see Noma looking at me, though thanks to the helmet I couldn’t see her facial expression. “Alright, let’s see... Most systems have been powered down... including life support... Ah, the distress beacon has been activated and the radio systems are still powered and set to transmit a message.”

Noma looked at the console before her head tilted a few degrees to the side. “That’s weird. I don’t remember picking up any transmissions. In fact, if you hadn’t found the anomaly, we would have just flown by.” Hmmm, she was right about that. If the ship had been sending a distress call, it should have been found a long time ago, even if it was a bit out of the way.

A few clicks through the menu revealed the problem, however. “The transmitters are burned through. Probably from transmitting non-stop without maintenance... Also, the reactor isn’t actually out of fuel. If my estimates are right, they should have enough for 3 light-years at flux point-five. Strange.”

“It is... can you see what message they were trying to send?” Clicking through the menus again, I found the answer pretty quickly. “I can’t. At least not in emergency mode. The main data core should have it though, as well as the logs.”

“Agreed. It should be in a safe near the door. Hopefully, the override codes haven’t changed in 70 years.”

“There isn’t really much more I can do from here, unless we restore full power,” I said, while pushing myself off the chair again. Noma just nodded once and made her way back to the door. Instead of going through, however, she went towards the right and headed for a small embedded numpad, similar to the one on I saw on the locker in the airlock. This one seemed to be powered down as well, but most suits had a few power cords that could connect to the standard sockets.

“Do you even know the combination?” I asked.

“No, but one of the overrides should work. If not, it will just destroy the data core, although I don’t know if that will even work without power.” And with that, she started typing in a combination on the safe. At first, I tried to keep up with the amount of numbers she put in, but I kind of lost track around digit number 30 or so. “How do you even remember that?”

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“You don’t. Or that’s what the top brass hopes at least. Your suit would normally do the actual override part. The manual codes are intended strictly for emergencies. Also, the code I put in is the time unrestricted version that only captains and above get access to.”

“Okaaay...” that raised a bigger question, however, namely “Why do you have them then?”

“Hey, a girl’s got to have her secrets, you know?” with that she opened the thick door of the wall safe."Otherwise, you lose that all-important mystique." The inside of the safe was dominated by what looked like a black suitcase with the words ‘SCV Fuchsbau - Main data core’ printed in white alongside an emblem of the USS Navy. “Fuchsbau? Huh, I wonder what that means,” I muttered, more to myself, but Noma answered anyway: “Corvettes are loosely named after animals. Maybe some kind of fox thing.”

Besides the core was a service pistol similar to the one Noma carried and 2 magazines. Noma simply grabbed the data core and, with no fanfare, pulled it out of its socket. After that, she looked at the pistol and seemed to be lost in thoughts for a few seconds, before turning towards me.

“I never really asked, but you know how to shoot a gun?”

“Only in theory. I never held one myself.” Nonetheless, she turned back towards the safe and grabbed the gun. After checking the inserted magazine, she held the gun towards me, grip first. I tentatively grabbed onto it, but Noma didn’t let go of the barrel before her other hand pointed towards a small lever on the left side of the gun. “That’s the safety. Right now, it’s engaged. If you push the lever up, you’ll first go into single-shot, then 3-round-burst. Don’t do that unless I tell you to. You should have 15 bullets, including the one in the chamber. Don’t put your finger anywhere near the trigger unless you intend to shoot and don’t point the barrel at anything you don’t want shot. Understood?”

“...Understood,” I said a lot more timidly than Noma’s explanation had been. I had never really been a fan of guns or conflict in general, for that matter. Heck, even when playing games, I preferred the pacifist route and honestly never thought I would hold anything more dangerous than a kitchen knife in my own hands... Work tools not included. Hopefully, the rest of the ship would be as empty as the bridge.

Hearing my response, Noma simply let go of the gun and grabbed the data core out of the air, where she had left it floating, and made her way to the door. Giving one last glance at my hand now holding the gun, I followed her.

Going down the elevator shaft to the reactor in silence, I realized one very awkward fact. I didn’t have a gun holster. Now, obviously, normal scrapyard equipment also didn’t include a gun to, you know, holster, so it had never been a problem before. But right now I was awkwardly holding the gun only on the grip part, fingers as far away from the trigger as I could. Maybe I should just store the gun in a pocket? But then I might accidentally fire it, if we actually do get attacked and I inevitably panic. Before I could try if my suit pockets would even be big enough for it, though, Noma stopped in front of a door.

“This should either be the reactor or the engines. After you open the door, we will enter together similar to the airlock. Now, I don’t really know the standard layout well enough to know where someone could take cover, so keep your eyes open.”

I gave a small nod and decided to just trust that the gun wouldn’t misfire while inside my pocket. So I unhooked my crowbar from my belt and kneeled down near what would be the top of the door, if the ship were accelerating. Noma took position on the opposite side of the door and aimed her gun towards where the doors would slide open. Getting the beak of the crowbar between the doors was easy and giving one last glance at Noma, who was still looking at the door. I put my suit-enhanced strength behind the longer lever and met the expected amount of resistance. Getting my hands in between the now opened doors, I could easily push them open wide enough for a person to enter. Without the door motors giving resistance, they were basically just big metal plates and while they may have a substantial amount of mass, in the weightless environments I usually worked in, that meant very little.

When the doors were opened to about half their maximum, Nora spoke up. “Okay, get ready. You’ll take your right and I’ll take the left. And remember to disengage the safety before going in.”

I attached my crowbar back to my belt and pulled out the gun. With an almost comical amount of nervousness, I slid the safety lever up, while making 1000% sure the barrel was pointing to an empty wall. As I felt the lever click into position, I looked back at Noma. Thankfully, she didn’t tease me for being so nervous. It was probably better than the opposite, especially if it came to guns, even in her eyes. “Ready?” I gave a small nod. “Okay on three, remember: you take the right. One, two, THREE!”

Similar to when we left the airlock, I whipped around the corner, scanning the room as best as I could. This was definitely the reactor. On the far side of the room, I could see big injector tubes that would pump coolant between the reactor and the outside radiators. On the wall, nearest to me was a row of lockers and closed compartments mounted on the wall. Also similar to the airlock breach, was the lack of any movement from anything bigger than a dust bunny.

“Clear.” This time it was Noma who called out first, and I followed suit a moment later. Letting out a small sigh of relief as I lowered the gun and reengaged the safety. The reactor room was also powered down and the emergency lighting had been turned off. As I flipped around and landed on the ground, I had a look at Noma’s side of the room. It was similar to mine with the tubes on the far side, but a big workbench took up most of the wall nearest to the elevator. The tools were all magnetically affixed to the walls or the table.

The centerpiece of the room, however, was the reactor. A large cylinder with a radius of at least 7 meters and measuring at least the five meters of the room in height. Thankfully, a properly shut down reactor was pretty harmless. The almost-cool fusion reaction used inert fuel pellets, so the bigger danger was usually the energy source that was required to kick-start the reaction. More often than not, they used small nuclear fission bombs, at least in the bigger civilian vessel. How it was in the military, I had no idea.

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