The Momentum was flying cautiously through the ionised plasma field surrounding the neutron star. The energetic gases played havoc with the sensors, Selenu was relying entirely on sound queues. The lime avali had a helmet on that covered her eyes and fed the data returns from her ships systems directly into her auditory nerves.
It was much more reliable than trying to peer helplessly through the forward screen or to make random guesses based on the way the gas was moving on a screen. Aliens often forgot that for Avali their primary sense was and always had been hearing, sight was nice and useful but their eyesight secondary to their acute hearing. So here, onboard an Avali made ship it made sense to rely on her hearing. Sure the inside of the helmet had a screen if she really needed it but she could operate the Momentum on nothing but audio inputs so she was.
Moving her hands Selenu shifted their approach vector by a few degrees, turning her ship to curve around a large chunk of vacuum ablated metal. “We are entering the debris field now,” she said, “Firi, Chantelle please start documenting as much as you can, Ki how are our systems looking?”
Selenu heard her sisters' chirps of acknowledgement and a low ping indicated they were now manning the mapping and recording sensor suite. Ki however moved over, his foot-steps and the whirr of his bionic hand growing louder until he was leaning on the back of her integrated pilot seat.
“Systems are good, I am still not sure why you brought me instead of Taran, whilst I appreciate the chance to see this big alien ruin up close surely he’d be better?”
“Not really,” Selenu said matter of factly, “Taran is a software expert, you however understand mechanical engineering better than him. If we find any ancient alien software then we’ll need his skills, but until then I want your eyes keeping us safe as we approach and explore this thing.”
“Well ok,” Ki said, sounding a bit unsure, “I will do my best, but I am no archaeological expert.”
“You’ll be fine,” Firi chirped, “You know more than the rest of us when it comes to dealing with space, just take your time and scan stuff four to five times as needed.”
“I can be slow and methodical,” Ki replied, “Just no complaining, any of you about how long it takes me.”
“If they complain I will hit them,” Chantelle said, “This is an ancient ruin, Seinu spent all of last night drilling the rulebook into my head, we will get in so much trouble if we damage it because we rush.”
“There see, no one is going to complain,” Selenu said as she rolled the ship to the right, curving around a massive chunk of debris. Listening to the scanner returns it was huge with cavities, a chunk of decks ejected from the ruined spaceship, slightly curved, ragged at either end but with intact segments in the middle.
“I wonder what happened to it,” Selenu murmured, “It seems to have met quite a violent end, but how did it end up next to a neutron star in the first place.”
“Well hopefully we can learn something,” Firi replied, “We are approaching the centre of the debris field, my current estimate is it is roughly a hundred miles wide, spread out in a sphere around the four largest chunks of debris near the centre.”
Chantelle was silent for a moment, “The plasma clouds are starting to thin, what is causing that?”
“We are approaching the lagrange point between 31P-E, one of the system's solid moon-sized natural objects and the star” Selenu said, “From what I am reading the gravitational dead zone creates a pocket of clearer air in the local weather system.”
“By Valyaya in the sky,” Ki suddenly exclaimed leaning over Sel, “Look at that thing… Sel, take the helmet off, you gotta see this!”
Selenu hit the thrusters to slow their advance and then lifted the front of her helmet to look out at the nebula ahead of them. The Momentum slowed and the coiling clouds of nebula gasses whirled past the forward screen but against the dim back-light of the star there was an open space, a sparsely populated gap in the clouds surrounding 31P-E. The space outside was filled with fragments of metal, some no more than tiny glimmering shards, others hundreds of metres wide and deep but that wasn’t the thing that drew everyone's attention.
Hanging in the void were four massive structures. The central ruin was a long, ancient, battered metal cylinder. The metal had a bronze tint to it and at one end was a cluster of engine cones, the darker metal still holding shape despite its age. The surface of the cylinder had clusters of tanks just behind the engine bells and then a pitted, ancient surface that ran the length of the cylindrical vessel to a domed far end surmounted by towering spires and pock-marked dishes.
Spaced equidistantly around the central cylinder were three ancient, shattered spars, twisted metallic beams and clogged grooves for ancient, long seized bearings. Hanging in space around the core were the three pieces of what must have once been an ancient habitation wheel or cylinder. It was possible to work out how the ship had ripped itself apart, the habitation wheel must have torn itself free from the bearings and gone tumbling out into the void. Selenu could trace with her eyes how the ring end of the great support struts had failed, the twisted metal and ruined components drifting as smaller ruins between the three sections of the ring.
“Look at that,” she whispered, she glanced at the controls, ears twitching as she listened to the read-outs the ship was returning, “Based on these scans the central core is about a kilometre long, if the ring was intact and in place it would have been about three kilometres wide.”
“That is a pretty large habitation ring,” Ki said, leaning down to peer out the forward window, “Look at the central cavity in the ring ruins, if they were using both sides of that; thanks to centrifugal force they would have had quite the sizable living area inside.”
“Any estimates on what the population might have been?” Chantelle asked quietly.
Ki shook his head, “I’d need to do more examinations of the site, I can see why Seinu insisted you turn around and register the find first… this is huge.”
“I’ll say,” Selenu gripped the controls and restored power to the engines, drifting slowly and carefully inward toward the wreck, “I am bringing us into a position about twenty kilometres away, then we can launch the survey drones.”
“We’ll prep the drones for launch,” Chantelle replied as she turned to her controls, “Ki did you want to start reviewing the preliminary results?”
“Very well,” Ki moved back to his console, “I will start considering where we should focus our efforts first.”
Selenu nodded and pulled her helmet back down, focussing on flying the Momentum through the debris field toward the ancient ruin.
Peering at the data slowly filling the screens ahead of him, Ki considered what he was seeing and how best to approach the wreck. The drones they had deployed were coasting around the ruined structure, scanning and analysing everything they could see. So far there were thousands of tagged items of interest and Ki was filtering the search results through his back-pack computer to create a short list of interesting items. His bionic hand was plugged into the Momentum, receiving data directly from the shuttle’s systems as the drones reported back so he could review it all in real-time.
It wasn’t easy, but there were certain basic shapes and mechanical indicators that his computer was using to categorise the machinery and objects on the surface. Heat exchangers, solar panels, fuel pipes and other such common items could be easily categorised, there were after all only so many ways to design a device for radiating excess heat into the vacuum of space. It wasn’t a perfect analysis; the wreck had been in space for thousands of years, a lot of the surface was degraded or pock-marked by micro-impacts but there was enough shape for him to conduct a preliminary analysis of the surface structures.
“This is interesting,” Ki said out loud, drawing the attention of his sisters, “I think I have enough model data now to make a good guess on where we want to explore first.”
Placing his flesh and blood hand on the controls he instructed the system to display a hologram of the central part of the wreck, several tags illuminated various points of interest, clustered around the engines and the ancient communication systems at the end. But as he adjusted the data from one of their drones a new point of interest was tagged in the upper central quadrant of the wreck.
“I believe the command and control centre is here, there is an entirely isolated section here. There are a lot of cable transfer points, it’s a half kilometre wide cylinder that everything seems to track back to. Our initial scans also indicate the transit tubes from the bridge connections to the outer biosphere ring terminated short of this central point and you had to take a separate secure transit system to enter it so it was secured from general access.
“That sounds promising,” Chantelle chirped, peering at the hologram, “It makes sense that their command and control centre would be buried deep to protect it, the Odyssey’s primary C&C is in the centre after all.”
“Do those central transit nodes not connect to engineering either?” Firi asked as she examined the wire-frame model of the interior that the smaller drones had put together.
“No,” Ki shook his head, “Same as access to that isolated central area, you have to leave the transit tube from the biosphere cavern and board another transit system to reach the engineering section.”
Selenu walked around the holographic model and pointed at the small wire model of the ancient ship, “It makes sense, if you assume the majority of the population live in the habitat ring, you don’t want to make it easy for them to just wander into engineering or ship control.”
“So are we going in ourselves?” Firi asked excitedly, “We’ve been sitting out here for two days now scanning this thing, it’s about time we made a personal foray.”
Ki glanced at Chantelle, “What do you think sis? Does this meet the standards Seinu set out for a personal exploration?”
The blue and white Avali looked up at the ceiling thinking, she lifted her goggles off her face and frowned, “Yes, I would say an in-person foray into the wreck’s command centre meets the criteria.”
“Excellent,” Firi exclaimed excitedly, “Let’s all get suited up and head on out!”
“We can’t all go,” Selenu replied sternly, “One of us needs to remain on the shuttle.”
“I’ll stay,” Ki volunteered, “I can keep examining the scan data as it comes in, you three go.”
“No,” Selenu said firmly, “They will need your mechanical expertise over there, I’ll stay, you go and Ki, you’re in charge, girls follow Ki’s orders and I will be listening so behave.”
“Fine,” Firi laughed warmly, bouncing over to hug Ki, “We’ll behave, let's go, our first real space ruin! This will be fantastic!”
Ki carefully unplugged his cybernetic hand from the controls and set the Momentum’s systems to continue analysing the incoming data, “Ok, space suits on everyone and lets get going, it’ll be interesting to see what these aliens built.”
Drifting through the void between the momentum and the wreck was an experience like no other. Wearing a spacesuit and drifting around outside in the vacuum of space wasn't anything new. Ki had spent his whole life living aboard spaceships, going outside to do maintenance work was a regular occurrence. Even Chantelle who rarely had a reason to go outside was a pretty competent spacer, his sister was drifting along on her manoeuvring jets with ease. As for Firi, she spent nearly as much time training in Zero-G as Ki did working and the suits she’d built for them all were top of the range.
But this space walk was like no other. Heck, it was a push to even claim they were in a vacuum. Despite the relatively calm zone the wreck was floating in, there were still some traces of the nebula cloud around them. There was no oxygen to breathe but the wispy gas clouds flowing past were full of a whole melange of exotic and mundane elements. As they approached the wall of ancient bronzed metal that made up the ship, Ki directed the spotlights on their suits and the small field of drones accompanying them to illuminate a section of the wreck.
“See that hole?” he queried his sisters, “That’s our entry point, according to the initial scans by the drones this should lead us to what was the central transport hub for that spar,” he pointed up at one of the ancient, mangled bits of framework that used to connect the central core to the outer rotating habitat shell.
“Why not use one of the airlocks?” Firi asked, pointing off to one side, “I am sure that is an airlock, wouldn’t that be a lot better?”
“We’d have to cut it open,” Ki explained, “The whole thing will be vacuum welded and,” he reached out with his regular, organic hand and caught a solid looking piece of metal floating past. His hand crushed it, the bronze metal puffed into powder as the whole piece just crumbled apart.
“Most of the metal on the outer shell is going to be like this,” he held up a hand full of glittering dust, “Vacuum ablation over thousands of years will have reduced the structural integrity of the wreck to dust barely holding itself together.”
“Oh,” Chantelle chirped as she reached out to grab another piece of metal, watching it melt apart in her hands, “That’s really bad, how does metal wind up like this?”
“It involves long and complicated science,” Ki said, “But if we try to cut our way inside we could reduce whole portions of the ship to dust and that would then destabilise other areas and yeah it’d be bad.”
“Yeah I don’t want to do that,” Firi said, “Selenu and Seinu will both shout at me.”
“I’ll shout at you,” Ki said with a laugh, “But yes we go in through this hole, the ship further in will be a lot more structurally sound but we need to be careful around the exterior.”
The journey inside was pretty uneventful, they drifted inside, following the cloud of small drones up the dark hallway within. Their suits were recording and documenting and the drones were collecting samples and enhancing their scans with their own sensor suites.
“I would hazard a guess this was a maintenance tunnel,” Ki said after they had been drifting along it for a few moments, he slowed his advance to scan a junction, “No doors, and these are clearly equipment panels, cabling runs and such,” he played his lights across the ceiling, “I think that was a power conduit, it is made from some very heavy duty material.”
“It is fascinating,” Chantelle murmured, slowly turning in a circle as she drifted along the passage, “Ah, wait, the drones have found an access panel into a main corridor. Shall we look?”
The trio of Avali moved ahead, drifting through a hole left by several missing wall panels into a much taller and wider passage, “Eight feet tall passages,” Chantelle continued, “Five feet wide, I’d say we are looking at an alien species with an average height of about six to seven feet with a bit of extra space above their heads for comfort.”
“I wonder what they looked like,” Firi mused as she turned in a slow circle, “Look circular doors,” she drifted up to an ancient door and checked herself before laying a hand on it, “I guess this used to slide into the walls, see it would have been flat at the bottom to give access.”
“It’s all important,” Chantelle said as she ordered a drone to scan and image the door, “Everything we see tells us more about this species, their culture, it all adds up to a whole.”
Ki nodded and jetted down the corridor, there was surprisingly little debris though it was clear great violence had happened to the ship when it all went wrong. After about ten minutes they reached a partially open door and after a brief discussion they exerted some strength to widen the gap. Beyond was the transit station for this section of the ship. It was a quarter mile wide, terraced chamber; its magnificent domed ceiling supported by the massive column that rose up from the centre all the way to the roof.
“I think the roof tiles were photo-sensitive,” Firi said as she examined one of the cracked silvery panels, “I am detecting traces of a holographic net as well, I suspect it used to radiate daylight and maybe show the sky?”
“Any idea what spectrum of light the system projected?” Chantelle asked as she floated over. Ki meanwhile was floating over the tops of the terraces, scanning the giant pillar and the strange circular buildings built onto each terrace in long lines.
“This wasn’t a social space,” Ki said, “I think it’s all technical machinery and security systems and transport hubs,” he pointed at a holographic screen a drone was projecting, showing him the camera feeds from inside the massive pillar, “Looking at this the central pillar was elevators and access passages up and across the support pillar to the habitation ring.”
“Well that’s good,” Firi said as she jetted higher to get a look across the system, “I can see what looks like four transport hub stations radiating out from the base of the central pillar, which one do we follow?”
“The survey drones have mapped out clear routes,” Ki said, “We’re taking what I believe was the route to the command centre, down toward the core,” he started leading his sisters toward one of the transport stations, “The primary route is blocked, there are a lot of bulkheads sealed in place along the length of the main route but there are plenty of gaps and side passages we can follow but there is a quarter mile thick bulkhead we have to traverse to enter the central core so we need to go through the main passage to cross over.”
“Lead the way then,” Chantelle said, “This is fascinating, I wonder what we’ll find.”
“It’s a real adventure,” Firi chirped with a smile, “Much better than learning diplomatic stuff with Seinu.”
Ki smiled and shook his head in amusement before leading the way, it was going to take them at least two hours to traverse the ancient, rubble filled wreck to reach the central core; it was going to be a fascinating voyage into the unknown!
In the end it took the trio three hours to traverse the ancient wreck; not because the route Ki had mapped out wasn’t clear. The central transport shaft was blocked by a mixture of massive security bulkheads and debris so they had to leave the tunnel and weave their way around the ship to find a way past.
This led to them discovering some fascinating devices and installations, the complex, solid state machines often filled entire cavernous rooms from floor to ceiling. Blocky, ancient metal machines fed by pipes that led to who knows where or had once carried who knows what now silent and forlorn. There were filigrees of glass or crystal, woven pipes that had survived the destruction and passage of time and now stood silent and forgotten in circular chambers.
In one chamber they found what Ki thought might have been a reactor, a tier of six circular platforms wrapped in titanium wire that still had a faint residue of exotic matter filming it. They crossed a gigantic water reclamation plant, the tanks full of frozen ice, treatment pools and sewage systems mangled but recognizable after eons of neglect. It was a fascinating voyage, part archaeology, part technical guesswork as many of the hulking machines were alien with no hint as to what they used to do. But engineering principals didn’t vary that much between Ki’s technical mechanical background and the girls cross referencing archaeological files from the Odyssey they could make a best guess for some of them.
Now however they were floating in the main transport tunnel, ahead of them was a massive security bulkhead, “This is it,” said Ki, “The only way to cross to the central cylinder where I believe the command centre is located.”
“That,” said Firi as she leant back, “Is a very big door, are you sure this is the only way across?”
“There are linkages out of the cylinder,” Ki said, “But they are like cable and conduit channels, they are stuffed full of debris or just the original conduits and wires, none of them are big enough for us or any of the drones we have.”
Ki lifted one hand and touched the bulkhead, “The other three access points are blocked by rubble, this is the only clear one, so we need to either open the door or cut our way through it.”
“Can we open it?” Chantelle asked, “I’d rather not damage it if we can avoid it… I suspect the forms we have to fill out if we need to damage a ruin like this are horrendous.”
“We can lift it,” Firi landed on the tunnel wall, her boots glowing as she activated the maglocks and rested a hand against the door, “There is not much vacuum damage this deep, it’s been exposed to the elements of course but,” she bent down and gripped the bottom of the door in her gauntlet fists and then lifted. Ki could feel the vibrations in the metal as the ancient door lifted up, it rose about three feet before juddering to a stop. Firi stopped lifting, her armour maintaining its positioning as two drones flew under and wrapped themselves in a forcefield, cushioning the ancient door atop their shields to keep it open.
“Just as I suspected,” Firi chirped, “Whatever locking mechanism they used probably relied mostly on the weight of the door to keep it down, maybe some electromagnets too.”
“Firi!” Ki yelled at his sister, “That was incredibly reckless what if you damaged something or broke it!”
“It was fine,” Firi dismissed Ki’s concerns as she dropped down onto her belly and peered under the door, “I mean if it didn’t work we were going to have to burn a hole in it anyway.” Firi rolled under the door and with a sigh Ki followed along with Chantelle and they travelled through the empty tunnel on the other side. The tracks for the transport system were embedded in the wall but otherwise the tunnel was empty and at the far side another massive bulkhead.
Firi tried the same trick on this door and was able to shift it up by about five feet before it jammed in its tracks this time. On the other side the walls of the transport shaft opened up onto what was clearly a platform before the tunnel expanded out into a circular section where several ancient, dilapidated spherical and oblong shaped transport cars rested, dead and forgotten like the rest of the ship. Climbing up onto the platform Chantelle ran her suit lights across the forgotten platform before starting toward the door, “Another security checkpoint but this one at least is open, they really didn’t want to make it easy for people to get in here.”
“I guess it depends on what their society was like,” Firi said, “Hierarchical societies often have different strata, or it could have been a caste based society I guess we’ll never know unless we can find some surviving data systems.”
Ki moved forward, bringing the drones with him and the three of them headed into the command cylinder as he had started calling it. The station led down a long corridor that emerged into what must have once been a habitation section. The central floor had a long open channel that must have once held water or some other liquid and open park spaces still filled with frozen, dead earth. Rising up on either side of it were tiers of small chambers, each one open to the terrace outside and the higher up the tiers you went the bigger the rooms got.
“So this feels like some sort of executive or officer level habitation system,” Ki said as he looked around, “There is a lot of machinery buried under this, I’d guess it had its own life support system,” he pointed forwards along the empty canal, “The drones have detected what I think might be the way to the bridge this way.”
They had to traverse the entire length of the empty cylinder, as they went the drones detected broken furniture, ruined composites and metal but no bodies, “It looks like the habitation ring was empty when the final disaster struck Ki said as he looked up at the far wall, “But the drones have found what looks like a hibernation vault several levels below us.”
“What’s it look like?” Chantelle asked with interest, “Or can’t you tell yet?”
“There is a sealed door,” Ki replied, “But there is a viewport, it looks like it is full of some sort of hibernation pods,” Ki dismissed the screen, “We’ll have to explore that later but first the bridge.”
At the end of the Cylinder there was a layered building, an Administration complex, offices, security checkpoints and rooms filled with various dead and forgotten machines. At the back of the building was a set of doors and then a long corridor, a lift shaft that ascended up away from the main cylinder and deposited the trio of Avali in a massive, vaulted chamber. The walls and ceiling were held up by arching pillars of bronze metal and the huge circular door set into the far wall was open and led into an equally amazing chamber. There were two tiers connected by a spiral ramp and banks of machines lining the walls. In the centre was a domed circular console surrounded by several throne-like chairs. The chamber was impressive, the domed ceiling and far wall were covered in photo-holographic panels like the station had been.
“I’d say this is the bridge,” Ki said looking around and jetting off toward the central console, “I’ve been examining the scans of the various machines we made on the way down, I think I know what their data storage systems looked like, the bridge will most likely have the most relevant data, shall we see what we can find?”
“Show us what we are looking for,” Chantelle chirped happily as she followed her brother, “I want to learn as much as we can about this ship and what happened to it as we can.”
Firi joined her siblings, drifting around the wide, impressive chamber slowly, documenting what she was seeing with her suit scanners. It was massive, ancient and dead, this great chamber had once controlled the even larger ship, something truly catastrophic must have happened to bring it to ruin like this.
It had been nearly six months since they had first discovered the ruined Ark-Ship hidden in the nebula clouds, listed in their survey documentation as Soopee-31P-F. Their ongoing preliminary survey of the great wreck had been consuming most of their exploration time. Selenu had to put on her pack-leader face and chase the rest of their family into exploring the rest of the solar system and cataloguing other items of interest.
Still the wreck was fascinating, Seinu had even been aboard it a couple of times whilst accompanying one member of his family or the other on one of their survey trips. Even the twins had been out to see it, Cri and Cal had also dragged Seinu out for a four day vacation to just look at the ancient wreck and spend some time together. Now however they were gathered in one of the Odyssey’s conference rooms up on the command level; its technical designation was the “Ward Room” for bridge officer briefings.
The whole pack and the twins were present, everyone waiting on Selenu who was reading something on a tablet before she looked up and activated the holo-matrix built into the conference table. It projected an image of Soopee-31P and the various galactic bodies and points of interest they had discovered. Once the image finished solidifying the lime feathered Avai turned her attention to her siblings and the vampire bunnies and smiled.
“Thanks for coming everyone,” Selenu said in her soft voice, “I want you all to hear Ki’s final report on the ark-ship then announce our plans for the next week or so.”
“Final!” Chantelle thumped the table, “Sel, no, we still have so much to discover, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the ark-ship.”
“I know,” Selenu said softly, “But that isn’t our job, we aren’t archaeologists or ancient material scientists; we are to compile our final report then resume preparations for our departure to Earth.”
Chantelle sighed and slumped back in her chair with a grumpy chirp, “No fair.”
“Sorry sis,” Seinu chirped, “But we knew we’d only have six months for this.”
“Yeah I know,” she pouted and wiggled her ears, “Just it’s been fascinating to get to see and discover about a whole new culture.”
“Ki if you would,” Selenu interrupted, “Your report?”
“Sure sis,” Ki sat up and plugged his cybernetic hand into a port on the table and the hologram changed to show the wreck; “Since our discovery we’ve been analysing the wreck with the help of Ifelse and I am pretty confident the ship was a hibernation ark, the majority of the decks in the outer habitation ring were dedicated to hibernation pods.”
He glanced around the room as the hologram focused on the three chunks of ring orbiting the central core, “Their data-storage system was alien when we compared it to our crystal storage medium but we were able to read the molecular polymer system they use,” he reached out a paw to point at the engines, “The ship was loaded with passengers in cryo-stasis and set off to find a new home-world; after departing the Oort cloud of their home system the crew also went into stasis and autonomic systems began operating the ship.”
He sighed, “At some point during the voyage something went wrong with their navigational array, it was not a sentient or adaptive program, drift in its positioning system saw the ship fly off target. It latched onto Soopee-31P as the new destination star, the heuristic system it was using wasn’t smart enough to realise it was now aimed at the wrong star.”
“Oh dear,” Seinu said, “That doesn’t sound great what happened?”
“It ploughed on through the intergalactic medium for an extra thousand years before beginning its deceleration. At this point the ship started to revive the command crew but it was too late for them to do anything. In fact from what I can tell by the time the crew were awake and ready to do anything the ship was flying directly into Soopee-31Ps radiation plume. The Captain and his command crew were able to redirect their breaking manoeuvre and wound up in orbit, pretty much where we found it.”
“I take it things didn’t go well?” Firi asked curiously.
“Aye,” Ki sighed, “The breaking manoeuvre alone would have been fine but shedding that much speed and passing through the radiation plume something broke, the ship shattered into four pieces. Thousands of people died when their hibernation pods failed or got doused in enough radiation to kill them instantly.”
“Oh no,” Chantelle chirped, “That’s awful, what happened next?”
“The ship was a ruin, the crew rescued as many hibernation pods as they could and abandoned the ship. They built a new station at the heart of Soopee-31P-G, which is a ball of frozen gasses and liquids. Sadly this also did not make it, their materials science could not cope with the radiation coming off the star, they also did not have the materials needed to bring lots of people out of hibernation at once. A lot of the technology and supplies they needed for undoing their hibernation process were destroyed when the ship shattered. Across the course of about forty years they all succumbed to the radiation and failing systems.”
The room was silent for a moment, everyone lowered their ears and after a long moment Selenu let out a deep sigh, “It’s tragic,” she chirped, “I am sorry their grand adventure into space ended like this.”
“It is heartbreaking,” Ki sighed, “But we are coming to the end of what we can learn on our own, I’ve written everything up and am ready to hand it over.”
“Good,” Selenu sat up, “Now the Director wants us to stop our exploration work and get ready for Earth, Seinu informs me that none of you are ready for our arrival there.”
“They are not,” Seinu said softly, “No one has passed any of these required classes.”
“So it’s study time,” Selenu said softly, “We’ll leave the drones on automatic and we are waiting for the arrival of a military task force. The Director says she is sending someone out here to relieve us and take over security of the system so we can leave.”
“We aren’t handing it over to an archaeology team?” Chantelle asked in surprise.
“No, the military will do that, it takes time to assemble an Expeditionary fleet, a full fleet equipped for proper archaeology will take about four months to arrive” Selenu explained, “The military will be securing the system and they should arrive sometime in the next two to three weeks and then we’ll set off for Earth once they have secured the system for us.”
“As some of you know,” Firi added, “There are ships watching us, ships whose transponder codes are fake or unusual,” she said softly, “Ships who refuse to acknowledge signals and are all just far enough out of range to keep us on their scanners but avoid us being able to get indepth scans of them.”
“Pirates?” Chantelle asked with a frown.
“Probably or scavengers,” she waved a hand toward open space vaguely, “All waiting for us to leave, clearly they’ve seen the Odyssey and decided we must be here for something important or valuable but they don’t want to tangle with me or the ship.”
“Ah yeah that would be bad,” Chantelle frowned, “Pirates or unscrupulous scavengers would destroy the ark ship grabbing whatever they can.”
“Exactly,” Selenu said firmly, “Which is why we are waiting for the military to get here, so for now it is lesson time,” she glanced across the table at Seinu, “How awful is this going to be?”
“Not awful,” Seinu said with a smile as he took control of the holographic table, “Alien and interesting, but you all need to pass or I won’t be able to let any of you go down to Earth.”
“Well then,” Firi sat up, “Get on with it bro, no way I am not going down to see the birthplace of Rock and Roll!”
Seinu laughed and turned his packs attention to the learning materials he had spent the past six months absorbing. It had been fun to be intergalactic explorers but now they had to get back to work.
To be continued…