“Breathable air inside, thousands of small power supplies, one large one at the back. No interior bulkheads for the first two kilometres then there's a hardened partition. I can't get through it.”
Jake felt nausea wash over him and straightened up for a moment, hoping it would pass. It was the radiation poisoning, it must have been much worse than he thought. He was glad the power supply and high powered circuitry for the cloaking field were both deactivated, if he could medicate through the sickness and counter the cellular degradation he would be home free. Jake took a few deep breaths and finished patching into the control panel. “Any more information?” He asked Price
“Can't be sure, sixteen degrees inside, good pressure, equal to this room.”
“Good, let's go,” Jake said as he pressed a button on his arm control and the doors opened. He stepped inside first, it was pitch black. He looked to his arm command console. There were no lights to control through the door console hack he had just made. The cargo cars were just massive spaces with nothing but a temporary life support system. “Light it up for us.”
Ramirez took a small round cylinder out of his pocket and rolled it straight in front of him. The boarding team could hear it rolling further and further away until Ramirez turned it on.
Several hundred meters ahead were illuminated and Captain Valance gasped at the sight. Hanging in racks above and below the catwalk, as far as the eye could see in front of them were thousands of pods exactly like the one he emerged from years before.
Nausea washed over him once more. This time he couldn't hold it back. He pulled his vacsuit headpiece off and stepped back inside the smaller compartment, opened a disposal drawer and heaved his lunch and dinner inside.
“Captain!” Called out Stephanie, she was behind him in seconds.
“Cloaksuit, radiation-” he was able to get out before another set of heaves. As soon as he stopped vomiting he switched to the medical controls on his arm command unit and injected himself with anti nausea medication. The exposure reading he glimpsed was well beyond lethal, he hoped it could be countered.
“Are you all right sir?” Stephanie asked.
“I'll know in a moment,” he replied, checking his status. “I was exposed to a bit more radiation from the suit's power supply than I expected, I'll be fine in a few days,” he said as he raised the dosage of radiation treatment medication. “If not, you'll have to fight Frost for command.” The remnants of nausea were gone and he took a deep, slow breath then let it out.
“I'll never question what you're willing to sacrifice for our safety, sir,” commented Ramirez.
“Sacrifice? I'll be fine, I don't know about you though.”
“Why's that sir?”
Jake put his headpiece back on. “You're taking point.”
Ramirez chuckled and took up the forward position with Price and his scanner behind. They moved slowly down the catwalk made to fit two side by side. None of them could shake the eerie feeling as they passed thousands of silent sleepers, all in stasis tubes filled with yellow or blue fluid. Captain Valance buried any visible sign of the sympathy he felt for those people, concentrating on safely exploring the massive space.
“Are they alive?” Asked Stephanie.
“According to this there have only been two failed pods so far out of a couple thousand. The entire first three kilometres of the cargo containers are filled with them. There have to be more than what we expected here, more like thirty.”
“Weren't there only supposed to be ten sir?” Asked Ramirez.
“Anything not in stasis coming up?” Asked Jake, ignoring the point man's question.
“Nothing in this compartment so far.”
They kept walking in silence, after a while Ramirez dropped another light cylinder and they could almost see the other end of the compartment.
The Captain tried to run a decryption program on the files he had downloaded from the Vesuvius but it estimated that it may take approximately six years. He shook his head and opened a channel to the bridge of the Samson. “Have Frost pay a visit to Burke. Tell him he'll get a fair share if he decrypts something for me. I'm sending the files now, make sure he gets them.”
“Yes sir,” Cynthia replied.
“And tell him he's got two hours,” Captain Valance added before closing the channel.
“There's active life past the next bulkhead sir,” reported Price. “Various conditions as far as I can tell, not many humans.”
“How many?”
“I can only scan about two hundred meters deep right now, but as far as I can tell there are at least a thousand on eight decks.”
“In just a couple hundred meters? Are you reading that right?” Stephanie asked quietly.
Price checked again, resetting the scanner and performing a fresh cycle. “I wish I weren't, but I am.”
They arrived at the doorway and Captain Valance put a hand on Ramirez's shoulder. “I'll go first, don't point your stunners at anyone unless we're charged by a group.”
He stood in front of everyone else and opened the double doors. The darkness inside was like a wall. At first they couldn't see much of anything. Then there were only rough shapes and Ramirez was just taking another light cylinder out of his pocket and Jake took it from him. He turned it up just enough to cast a little light on the surrounding ten meters.
Ramirez choked at what he saw and turned away.
“Oh my God,” Stephanie whispered.
Agameg Price was silent as he lowered his scanner.
There was a pile of non-human corpses in various states of decomposition. Jake raised his hands and said something that no one expected. “We're here to help.”
He stepped around the pile of bodies, at least thirty, and started to see frightened faces. There were issyrians, some of whom looked mostly human and nafalli, their big round eyes looking out from furred faces. Most of them were holding their flat noses with both hands or were leaning forward, putting weight on their large, furred hands.
“It's all right, we'll try to transport you somewhere you can get some help. I need you to know we don't have any doctors on board and we are a very small ship. We don't have room for you, but we can get you somewhere that might have the facilities to take care of you,” he said calmly as he got a little closer to the semicircle of fearful onlookers. A couple of them started to move towards them.
The issyrians stepped forward slowly and lightly touched Jake at first, but then they touched Agameg Price instead. He had reverted to his native state, and his thin, delicate features with short strands of skin covering his narrow face and long, thin neck were plain for all to see. “We'll do our best to help you, spread the word and tell everyone to stay very calm. We are not equipped to handle emergencies,” he whispered to them quietly. Several touched him or another member of the party and then walked off into the darkness.
“Why are they reaching out to us like that?” Ramirez asked quietly.
“My race enters a dream state when we're near death and we touch objects nearby to keep us focused on reality in order to prolong life.”
“Valance to bridge,” Jacob said, verbally opening a channel instead of moving to touch his arm control. “We need the rest of the boarding crew here with all the medical supplies we have and the instructions that go with them. Be efficient, but don't rush so you'll forget anything on your way. It's important that they bring everything that we can teach others to use. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir, I'll tell them right away,” Cynthia replied.
“Confirm through repetition.”
“Sorry sir. The boarding staff are to gather all the medical supplies and equipment they can. They have to bring the instructions and be prepared to teach others how to use it all. They are not to rush, but to efficiently make sure they bring it all.”