Mitchell's Revenge

Snatch completed a thorough external check of the command module. His instruments and sensors located nothing living, no life form residue, diseases or pests. He peered in through the heat damaged windscreen and could see nothing human or animal, living or dead. He decided they were safe to bring the module back to the Guardian Angel and strip it for parts.

The coms unit crackled to life inside the salvage pod. “I’m coming back up,” said Snatch. “Close scans have found nothing, a visual check has found nothing, so we’re good to go. Let me get back on board and we can stow this for transport.”

He carefully made his way back up the grappling cables to the pod. Once safely inside, Grabb began the complicated manoeuvres necessary to get the command module into the storage tray for transport. This took some time due to the size of it, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was safely stowed. They made their way slowly back towards the Guardian Angels’ docking bay.

Bolter guided the pod into position when they reached the Angel. Once they were secure and the U.S.E. command module was unloaded, Snatch and Grabb began to take it apart, bit by bit. Most of the navigation instrumentation was in one piece, as was the FTL drive that jumped the ship from place to place. These parts were recyclable and they could use them in the Guardian Angel.

Flex was relieved. He knew their FTL drive was failing and had tried hard not to think about what they would do when it finally did. A properly functioning FTL drive was the only thing that kept them clear of the system police, the intergalactic mafia, and other pirates. Without it they would not last long in deep space because their weapons capacity was limited and finding ammunition was even harder.

Bolter was excited by the discovery of the cruisers’ primary chip. It would give them the details of the U.S.E. ship, where it had come from, what had happened on board to cause the crash, and a plethora of other details that would be useful to them. He plugged it into his command board and watched the data pouring down his vid screen.

Several hours later he had a reasonable picture of what had happened to Ripley’s Revenge, the first of the sophisticated intergalactic passenger cruisers built for Tigerline by Universal Starship Enterprises. It had come from Standing Point refuelling hub in the Runalong System, which was adjacent to the Karhu system. Their nav charts showed the ship had made one almighty jump to reach Ambleby.

According to the data stream there were three crew on board when it undocked and jumped to where the crew of the Angel had first seen it hurtling past. Its crew, however, had not been located in the command module. The data indicated that one had been in the galley, making coffee, the other was in his own cabin, and the third was in a san unit, when the ship undocked and jumped.

Bolter’s mind began to do cartwheels. How had the ship undocked without the crew to guide it he wondered. Even more puzzling, how had it jumped without command protocols?

Something was very wrong if the data he was reading was correct. He wondered if it was a computer malfunction, or a stowaway pilot taking command of the ship. He knew full well what stowaways could do after their experience with Rufus. He pinged Flick and asked her to come and study the data with him. It always paid to cast two pairs of eyes over new data. She might pick up something he had missed.

“The weird just gets weirder,” Bolter said as Flick settled into the seat next to him, clutching a cup of coffee. She sipped it as she watched the data stream.

“Something must have happened that caused the ship to undock and jump,” she said thoughtfully. “Looking at this, it does appear that there was no one in the command module when the ship undocked. Did it cause damage at Standing Point when it disengaged?”

“The data doesn’t support damage on exit,” said Bolter. “I know that U.S.E. have been experimenting with remote docking software for some of its freighters, but those ports are largely automated anyway, and it’s a different kind of operation to passenger vessel refuelling stops. Judging from this information, I think the crew were already dead when we encountered the runaway.”

“Nasty,” said Flick, finishing the last of her coffee. “Going into FTL flight unprepared could knock you out for a time. It depends on how experienced you are. There was hardly any time between the ship jumping in and the crash we witnessed. If the crew were unconscious, they would have died down there.”

They continued to study the data with little result. The chip refused to reveal any more information. Meanwhile, Snatch and Grabb had dismantled the command module and were running their own tests on the navigation equipment, which they would use to upgrade their own, and the FTL drive, which they were anxious for Bolter to install in the Angel at the earliest opportunity.

It was time to move to a safe port where they could perform the re-fit and stock up their supplies. Flex and Bolter thought they had one or two jumps left in the existing FTL drive before it finally gave up the ghost.

“We need to get to a bootleg shipyard in two jumps or less,” said Flex. “What are we nearest to, Rufus?” He turned to the pilot.

Rufus had been poring over the nav charts since the command module was unloaded. He decided that Cirrius Minor was the nearest system with a bootleg shipyard that had a reasonable reputation. They didn’t want to have to watch their backs every second of the refit.

“Set the course,” said Flex. “Let’s be off.”