Except they hadn’t been spaced. Where were all the damn bodies?
And now, the hangar. Fuel storage pods, full. Missiles still in the loaders, ready for deployment. And a fine Navy dropship. All of it was worth good Republic coin, and all of it was just … sitting here. This ship had been cored by something, the crew had fought something else — which could be unrelated — and everything salvageable was still here. Hell, even the gravity was still on.
Hope would be thrilled, but it left a mystery. Time to see if there were solutions to that mystery.
“I’m going to check the breach,” said Nate.
“Suit yourself,” said Kohl.
“I’ll come,” said Grace.
Nate toggled his comm. “El?”
“Great, you’re not dead,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Ship’s clean,” said Nate. “I’ll send Kohl through it to seal the doors, give us some breathable air—”
“Hey,” said Kohl.
“—and once he’s done that, I want you to shimmy the Tyche in here. Hangar looks big enough if you can get the dropship out of the way.” Nate held his hands up against the space, measuring. “Should be.”
“Two things,” said El. “One, dropship? Two, ’should be?’”
“You’ll see,” said Nate.
“While I’m doing all the hard work,” said El, “where will you be?”
“We’re headed up to check out how all this started,” said Nate. “We’ll be in touch.”
• • •
“We should get you a decent suit,” said Nate. “Bound to be something here, in the ship’s stores. Nothing’s been taken.”
“I’ll pick something out that matches the sword,” said Grace. “Something black.”
Something black. Nate had worn black, a long time ago. He’d worn the Emperor’s black. Probably not the right time for that conversation. “Officers wear black,” he said, “but don’t go getting ideas. Doesn’t matter what color your suit is. The Tyche has just one captain.”
“Aye aye,” she said. “You worry too much.”
“About?” said Nate. They rounded a corner, the well-lit-yet-frozen interior of the Gladiator turning to a blackened corridor. The lights were out, not even emergency strips glowing. Nate crouched down, giving the floor a hard stare. He figured it was twisted a little, warped by something. That something was — it didn’t take big detective skills — impact with an asteroid. “Getting close,” he said.
“About the crew,” said Grace. “They know who their captain is.”
“They?” said Nate. “Planning on leaving us?”
There was a pause, then, “Not yet.” Grace walked by his crouched form into the darkened corridor. Her tone sounded almost wistful. “You’ve given me no reason to jump ship.”
“Aside from the trust issues?” said Nate.
“Aside from those,” she said, turning back to him. “We going further?”
“Sure,” said Nate. “Can’t leave a job half-done.” He stood, stepping into the lead again. The further he walked, the more obvious the twist in the decking was, like the Gladiator was made of something more pliable than metal and ceramic. Like she was soft, a dough still rising.
“What do you think hit this ship?” said Grace.
“Asteroid,” said Nate. “Only thing that makes sense.” He rounded another corner and stopped dead. He’d arrived at the breach, or part of it. The roof of the corridor had been deformed, pressed towards the deck by some massive force. He could see stars through gaps in the metal and shimmied closer. The metal was scorched, fragmented, cables and conduits exposed and torn like old floss. But it wasn’t melted, not like a ship-to-ship laser, and there wasn’t any evidence of plasma discharge. Just pure kinetics. Could be a railgun, but it didn’t look angry enough. The Gladiator was still in one piece, and in Nate’s experience a railgun big enough to core a ship like this wouldn’t leave anything but shrapnel behind. Spit a chunk of tungsten at a large enough percentage of C, and you’d just leave a cloud of expanding debris, nothing larger than a golf ball. “Definitely asteroid.”
Grace was fingering the edge of where the wall just … ended. “We should check the ship’s logs.”
“We should,” said Nate. “Want to try breaking into a Navy computer?”
“I’ve had worse first dates,” said Grace, flashing him a quick grin.
It felt good. Not because Grace was smiling at him, but because she was smiling. He didn’t feel like she’d done that on his ship. She was another lost soul like the rest of them, but maybe — like with Hope, and El, and even Kohl — they could find their way together.
• • •
Nate leaned back against the console, facing Grace while she worked. “You didn’t say you were an expert at cracking Navy systems,” he said.
“Well, you never asked,” she said. Her voice was distracted, her focus on the systems in front of her. “Also, I’m not an expert at cracking Navy systems. This one’s not locked. The entire ship is open. Like they were all working on it, until they weren’t.”
Nate looked around the bridge. Acceleration couches, these ones top spec, good Republic issue. More modern than Tyche’s design. He should get Kohl up here, tear a few out and install them into the Tyche while Hope was doing an overhaul in the hanger. Make a mental note, more jobs to keep Kohl out of trouble. Still no bodies. No blood. A couple plasma burns around the door they’d entered through. That door was interesting; it was torn free, the metal clipped and trimmed like it was plastic. It looked like it had been sheared away, not cut with a torch. Nate had good coin on whomever had taken the ship trying for the bridge first, taking out the command crew, and subverting the systems from here. “Found any logs?”
“Standard flight stuff,” she said. “Confirmation they passed Ravana. Broke orbit. Wait. Wait.”
“I’m waiting,” he said. “Not patiently, but I’m waiting.”
“They hit general quarters. Everything else is buried under a klick of crypto, but yeah. They sailed in here, said a how-you-doing to Ravana, settled into orbit, then went to war.” She kept at the console for a few moments. “If I had time, I might get more, but logs under general quarters are officer grade. We’ll need an officer’s creds to get in.”
Nate nodded, chewing that over, then walked to the front of the bridge. The view screens were open, and he could see out over the mauled front of the Gladiator the massive asteroid floating in front of her. “And there are no officers left on board,” he said.
“There’s nobody left on board,” said Grace. “Hell, and I know I sound like Kohl here, but we haven’t even found a severed limb. No blood. No-one frozen to the hull. Nothing, Nate. There’s no one here. Not anymore. Oh, hey now. Record of talking to ground, or trying to. No response. Give me a sec.” There was the sound of Grace working the comms, then, “Absalom, this is Gladiator. Please respond.” Click-click as she worked the systems behind him. “Absalom, this is Gladiator. Please respond.”
“Let me guess,” said Nate. “They don’t want to say hi.”
“Nothing but dead air,” she said. He could hear her footsteps as she moved away from the console.
“I wonder where they all went,” he said, still looking at the asteroid.
She had moved to stand next to him. A little closer than was usual, because when you were on a dead ship, being next to someone living was important. “So do I,” she said. “But not enough to go over there.”