“Which would probably mean that somebody on board did survive the battle,” Trevor pointed out. “What you’re describing is not an automated emergency backup system. It would need someone to activate and integrate all those functions.” Trevor put a hand on one of the three small knobs. “So, assuming we have an enemy to meet, let’s get moving. Stand to the side and cover the door.”
Caine crunched himself into the nearest corner, took the gun in both hands, extended it out in front of himself. The first knob that Trevor manipulated activated a series of dim red lighting bars that outlined the inner airlock door. The lights flashed rapidly. Probably the knob for opening the inner airlock door, the alarm signifying that the airlock itself was still unpressurized. “I’m no linguist, but I think red is their color for danger, too.”
Caine nodded his agreement and re-centered the handgun’s laser sight on the interior door.
The next knob Trevor tried had no immediately observable effect, but after several seconds, they noticed a faint external sound: the rush of air. Trevor squeezed himself to the other side of the interior airlock door, drew a pry-bar from his tool-kit, and hefted it. Caine heard his voice over the helmet speakers. “We’ll need to use radio, now. Shift to secure channel four.”
Caine made the appropriate choice on his HUD display with an eye-directed cursor, bit down with his left molars to confirm the selection. “Radio check. Are you receiving?”
“Loud and clear.” The inrushing of air had already crescendoed and was now diminishing rapidly. “Ready to dance?”
Caine nodded, focused on the intense red dot that his weapon was projecting upon the interior door. Trevor manipulated the first knob again. This time, the door slid aside.
A passage, side-lights receding away vanishing-point style. No blast of out- or in-rushing air, either; the craft still had an atmosphere. No sign of fog or fine snow drifting in midair; the humidity hadn’t frozen out, meaning that the internal heating hadn’t failed.
Trevor stopped turning the knob. “Fresh life-support means the probability of survivors just got a lot higher. Cover high; I’m going in low.”
“Understood. Go.”
Trevor jackknifed around the edge of the doorway, swam aggressively into the passage beyond. He swooped low, hugged the floor tightly as he followed along the wall to his left.
“What do you see?” Caine asked.
“Doors up ahead, two on either side. Two rows of handles—the four-flanged variety—run the length of the walls.”
“For zero-gee movement?”
“That’s my guess. Can’t make out the end of the hall. Looks like a dark opening, but I can’t be sure. Damn. What I’d give for thermal imaging goggles right about now.”
“Should I advance past you?”
“No, just join me here. This space is too tight for a leapfrog advance.”
And I’m not good enough in zero-gee to make it feasible, anyhow. Holding the gun in his right hand, Caine pushed with his feet and let his body straighten into a slow forward glide.
Trevor hadn’t exaggerated. The corridor was not well-suited to human physiognomy. Only one and a half meters wide by two meters high, it felt cramped, vaguely reminiscent of the engineering access spaces aboard the Auxiliary Command module. The lights that receded toward the dark at the end of the corridor were more amber in color than white.
“Caine, watch how you’re handling that gun. Don’t point the laser down the hall. We don’t want to announce ourselves.”
Caine nodded his understanding and pushed himself down to a prone position alongside Trevor. “Now what?”
“We go room by room. You cover, I enter.”
Which seemed a wise plan. Trevor was ensuring that they would not leave any uncleared spaces behind them. But there was one problem with its execution. As they began low-drifting toward the first of the four doors, Caine secured the handgun’s safety and offered it back to Trevor, butt first. “Give me the pry-bar. I’ll enter the rooms. You cover.”
“Nope. We’ve got the right resources in the right hands.”
“Trevor, you’re much more qualified with this weapon than I am.”
“And even more qualified in zero-gee maneuver. Did you have any classes in zero-gee hand-to-hand combat?”
“One.”
“Then you should know what I’m talking about. Every time you take a swing, you’re propelling yourself in a new direction. Same thing every time you block a blow or duck; every movement is acceleration. Two sudden moves and you’ll be too disoriented to do anything other than try to steady yourself.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s get on with it, then.”
The first door—which was almost perfectly square—did not respond to physical manipulation. Trevor tried the buttons on the panel alongside it. On the second try, the door slid aside.
The room, illuminated by Caine’s helmet lights, was a hollow cube. Clutched in metal beams at the center was a radially symmetric collection of metal spheres, translucent tanks, and conduits.
Trevor dove in, brought himself to a halt, peered in between the tanks and tubes, drifted back out. “I’m guessing that’s life support. No one home.”
The next squarish door had irregular black smudges along two adjoined edges. Trevor ran a finger over the smudge, which erased but deposited itself on the tip of his glove. Carbon. Probably from an interior fire that had tried to lick around the door seal. The buttons on that entry refused to work and Trevor’s attempts to budge it were futile. His movements were hurried and annoyed as he drifted toward the next door.
This opened onto what seemed to be a private room of some sort. However, just beyond the doorway, the ceiling and floor pinched closer to each other, so that an individual entering the room had less than one and a half meters of vertical space in which to operate. An apparent sleeping nook that sheltered a pair of berths that looked like a mix of mechanical cocoon and fluffy sleeping bag stood out from the far wall. Other objects—furniture and implements, Caine guessed—seemed to be secured for zero-gee.
The structure and trappings of the fourth and final room were almost identical to the previous one. But here, there were telltale signs of use. A large object, akin to a narrow-necked inkwell with four radially symmetric depressions, had drifted into a corner of the room and floated there, unsecured. One cocoon-sleeping bag was neither fully open or closed, its lid hanging at an angle.
“This doesn’t look like any warship I’ve ever seen,” muttered Trevor as they moved back to the doorway.
Caine nodded. For a small craft, the design was too—well, indulgent: spacious sleeping compartments, sophisticated long-duration life-support recycling facilities, a comparatively roomy corridor, and of course, the tremendous fuel tankage capacity amidships. “No, I’d guess it was a recon vessel or a command nexus for drones on long-duration duty.”
“Recon,” Trevor asserted. “Otherwise, some of the drones which pranged the cutter should have gone offline when Hazawa knocked this hull out of action. Unfortunately, that doesn’t answer the most important question: how many crew were on board for the battle?”
“More important still, how many are left alive?”
Trevor shrugged. “No way to know that, but it has enough accommodations for four—which doesn’t make sense. Two crewpersons are enough to handle any of the missions this ship might undertake.”
“Military missions, yes. But what about paramilitary or civilian missions?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“What if your first comment was correct, that this ship wasn’t designed to be a military ship at all?”