It took a moment for Parvi to realize what was happening.
“The lifeboats,” Parvi said to Wahid.
“What?”
“The drive failure caused enough damage to trigger the emergency systems to abandon ship.” Another distant hammer blow. “The Eclipse is launching the lifeboats. Everyone locked in the cabins is being evacuated.”
That meant everyone except Bill and the people on the bridge.
Tsoravitch sucked in a ragged breath and asked. “What could make that happen?”
“A catastrophic failure,” Mosasa said quietly. “Complete loss of shipwide life support, imminent structural failure, fire, explosion—”
Another hammer blow, and a slight lurch felt through the floor.
Mosasa pushed away from the bridge console and pulled himself toward the wall. Once there, he began pulling open access panels.
“What are you doing?” Tsoravitch asked.
“A failure in the data lines to the main console,” Mosasa said, “We shouldn’t have lost the feed from the rest of the Eclipse.”
He’s assuming there’s still something out there to get a feed from.
“Tsoravitch,” he shouted, “get over here. I’m going to need your help.”
Another hammer blow, and another lurch.
Parvi could picture the lifeboats bursting from the skin of the Eclipse, like parasitic larvae burrowing out of the flesh of their host.
Tsoravitch pulled herself over to Mosasa, and the two of them began digging into the guts of the bridge’s data network.
Wahid turned to look at Parvi. “Think our boss saw this one coming in his AI crystal ball?”
Parvi shook her head as another hammer blow echoed through the bridge. This one seemed farther away, and the lurch that followed weaker. “No,” she told him. “I don’t think he had any idea.”
Parvi saw strands of optical cable and electronic components floating between Mosasa and Tsoravitch. She wondered if they did get the bridge reconnected to any external sensors whether she would want to know what it showed.
The central holo fuzzed a moment, then came to life. She looked up and found herself staring down a surreal view of one of the Eclipse’s central corridors. For a moment it felt as if she were suddenly floating down somewhere else in the ship.
“They got the security cameras on-line,” Wahid said. He slid over to the comm station and started trying to control the display. The view panned as Wahid manipulated the controls.
The corridor appeared undamaged at first, just dully lit by the emergency lights. Then Parvi noticed the debris floating in the air, shiny flecks of silver. “Ice,” she whispered. Faint clouds of ice crystals floated in the corridor. Something bad had happened to the life-support systems.
The camera panned past one of the emergency lamps and Parvi saw that some dull particulate matter floated alongside the ice crystals—soot, or ash. Then the camera panned to one of the cabin doors.
“Holy fuck,” Wahid whispered.
The cabins were all behind two doors sandwiched together. The outer door was supposed to remain sealed when the lifeboats ejected, but this one had failed, completely. Either the outer door had never closed at all, or the force of the lifeboat ejecting opened it again. The cabin door looked out on empty space.
Wahid cycled through other security cameras, showing more empty corridors. He found the open cargo bay, and Parvi saw the Paralian in his massive life-support equipment, his manipulator arms buried deep in an open control panel.
“Probably trying to do the same thing we are,” Wahid said.
“Can you contact him?” Parvi asked.
He shook his head. “All I got here are the cameras. I don’t even have the PA system yet.”
He cycled though some more cameras until he found a view of the engines. Of what used to be the engines. It took several moments for Parvi to recognize what she saw, only partly because the camera itself was damaged and giving everything blurry rainbow halos and fuzzy unstable outlines.
The tach-drive had torn itself apart. Parvi could only see the anchorages where the massive coils used to be. Nothing recognizable remained of the drive itself. Metal twisted in on itself and melted into odd, puttylike forms. The skin of the Eclipse had peeled back from the engine compartment, exposing everything to the stars.
Parvi stared at the wreckage openmouthed. The tach-drive had completely consumed itself; it was miraculous that they were still alive.
Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 2,250,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
The bridge of the Voice had become less crowded in the past fifteen minutes. Shortly after seeing the Eclipse, Admiral Hussein had given the order, “Every command officer must return to his ship, and I want each vessel in the fleet crewed, powered, and ready to disengage within the next hour.”
His staff had nodded, a few with widened eyes. Those were the younger men who had not held command long enough to take to heart the old truism, “Battle plans never survive contact with the enemy.”
The more experienced staff had seen immediately what Admiral Hussein had seen. The presence of the Eclipse in the space around HD 101534 changed the entire tenor of their mission here. There was a good chance that they were not making first contact, and that they might face forces from Indi, or Centauri, or even Sirius. Only God Himself knew what might be waiting for them on this planet.
They needed to be ready for it, whatever it was.
The main display on the Prophet’s Voice was dominated by tactical holos. On the main holo, two million kilometers from the green triangle representing the Voice, glowed a dotted yellow line representing the orbital path of the inhabited planet that the Voice was supposed to bring into the Caliphate’s fold. On that yellow line was a small blue sphere representing the planet’s current location.
A little past and above the midpoint between the green triangle and the blue sphere flashed a bright red triangle. Fortunately, there was no sign of any other craft in orbit.
“Any contact with the Eclipse yet?” Captain Rasheed asked the NCO at the communications station.
“No, just the transponder and six distress beacons leaving the ship.”
“Lifeboats?” Hussein asked the captain. “Can we intercept them?”
Captain Rasheed ordered the lifeboats highlighted on the main screen. Six red dotted trails sprang up between the Eclipse and the planet. He stared at the display a moment, as velocity and bearings started to appear next to the six contacts. “No, we can’t ready an intercept craft and get it there before they reach the planet.”
Admiral Hussein rubbed his temple. “The ship itself, can we intercept it?”
The captain nodded, “If we launch a salvage team within the next thirty minutes, we might reach them in two hours.”
“Do it.”
The captain ordered a pair of ships, the Jeddah and the Jizan, to launch on an intercept course. The Jizan was an engineering vessel, capable of repairs and salvage. The Jeddah was a fully-armed drop-ship capable of planetside engagements.
Within half an hour, the tactical display showed a pair of green triangles departing from the Voice and speeding toward the new ship.