“Chief, where would a self-destruct mechanism be on that K’Rang ship?”
“The simplest place would be in the engine room. Frankly, sir, that thing is practically self-destructing now. It's leaking so much radiation that I wonder if the crew isn’t already radiation poisoned.”
“Is there any way to put the self-destruct out of commission from here?”
“We could target the engine room and try to destroy the engines before they can be overloaded, but it might just kill the crew if they don’t have good interior hatches.”
“Bridge, Sensors, we’re picking up a power surge over there.”
“Helm, back us out of here! Full reverse now! Forward shields on full.”
The Vigilant went into reverse. The K’Rang ship shrank in the monitors.
“All stop! Exec, if this guy is going to blow himself up, I’m not so worried about damaging him. Do you think you could cut the engines from the rest of his hull. I don’t care if he has good interior hatches or not.”
Kelly took over helm and aligned the turrets and fixed guns. He moved the ship forward, pointed the Vigilant at the K’Rang ship, and opened fire, attempting to use the plasma and particle cannons like a saw to cut the K’Rang ship in half. The nine cannons made short work of the K’Rang ship’s hull. In seconds the ruined engine compartment was drifting away in space.
“Bridge this is sensors, the power surge has ended. The engine area is without power. There are bodies floating free in space. The forward part of the K’Rang ship has lost all life support. We are detecting atmosphere vented into space. Captain, we read no life signs on the K’Rang ship.”
“Thank you, Sensors. Damn, Exec, I hoped to take some of them alive.”
“Don’t lose any sleep over these guys, Captain. If we hadn’t done anything they‘d all be vapor right now. We should see what we can glean from this ship and the shuttle.”
“ Let’s go for the shuttle first. Chief Miller, break out that gear stowed in Engineering. Exec, you, Chief Miller, and Chief Blankenship get suited up in those EVA suits. See what you can find. Make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises. Once you give me a thumbs up, we’ll bring the shuttle alongside and magnetically lock it to the hull. Then we’ll do the same with the K’Rang ship. We’ll haul them both back to Antares’ orbiting dock. That will give the tech intel boys something to salivate over.”
Kelly went back to Engineering, to be fitted into the EVA suit. After he was suited up, he and the two chiefs went to the airlock. Chief Miller keyed open the airlock and they all stepped in. Chief Miller had a portable work light and Chief Blankenship had a pulsar pistol. The door closed behind them. Kelly looked out the hatch at the shuttle. It had three large holes seared open by a volley of hot plasma. He felt the suit expand slightly as the atmosphere was pumped out of the airlock.
“Ready to open the airlock when you are, LT.”
“Let’s get out there, Chief.”
The airlock opened and the three lunged out into the blackness of space toward the silent shuttle. They reached the shuttle’s hull simultaneously. Once activated, their magnetic gloves attached themselves to the hull. They alternately activated and deactivated their gloves to crawl across the hull to the plasma blast holes.
Kelly came to the smallest hole first. He had Chief Blankenship use her pocket scanner to make a scan of the interior. Nothing hazardous was found. He poked his head in and used his helmet light to illuminate the interior. He couldn’t see much. The plasma had burned through the hull and charred everything in its path. All he could see was burnt wire and blackened panels.
Kelly moved to the next blast hole. This hole was much larger and appeared to hit an open area of the inner cabin. Kelly was able to pull himself in. He was half way into the hole when a burnt, naked corpse floated into his path. Kelly let out a yell.
“LT Blake, are you all right?” said Chief Blankenship with alarm in her voice. Chief Miller grabbed Kelly by the legs and braced himself to pull him out.
“I’m okay. One of the crew just came over to say hello. Scared me a bit, that’s all.”
Kelly pushed the body out of the way and keyed his mike. “Captain, you’d better send about six body bags over here. The whole crew was fried by the plasma.”
“We’ll put them in the airlock. Send one of your team over.”
Chief Blankenship spoke up. “I’ll go get them, Exec. If the crew is all dead, you don’t need me covering you.”
Kelly pulled himself all the way in. Chief Miller followed. Once they were both inside, Chief Miller turned on the portable light. The rear of the compartment where the plasma bursts hit was blackened and melted. The front of the compartment was relatively unharmed. Kelly activated his mag boots and was able to walk around. His first finding was that the ship’s log was intact. Kelly pulled the log file and put it in the pouch on his belt, then continued his search.
“Hey LT, I think I found something here.”
Kelly went over to where Chief Miller was standing. Chief Blankenship pushed a pack of body bags through the blast hole and followed it in.
“Chief B, start packaging the crew. We’ll take them out when we leave. What did you find, Chief M?”
“There’s a case here. It has K’Rang markings on it.”
“Let’s not open it just yet. Chief Blankenship, bring the scanner here.”
Chief Blankenship pulled out her pocket scanner and scanned the box. “I get a mineral reading only. No explosives or hazardous materials that the scanner can pick up. I say open it. Better here than on the Vigilant. This ship is already screwed.”
“Yeah, but we aren’t. Chief Miller, can you rig a line to that thing to open it from across the cabin?”
“Sure LT, just give me a minute.”
Chief Miller played out a length of line, secured the box to the bulkhead, rigged a line to the latch, and backed off.
“You want to do the honors, sir?”
“No, Chief, you rigged it, go ahead.”
Chief Miller gave a tug on the line. He must have been a little nervous, because he forgot to activate his mag boots. He managed to pull himself halfway across the cabin. He sheepishly pulled himself back to where they were behind a console, activated his boots, and gave the line another yank. The lid popped open and nothing happened.
As they walked over to check the contents, Chief Miller mumbled, “Not a word about that last thing, please.” Both Kelly and Chief Blankenship chuckled in their suits, with the mikes turned off.
The reached the box and found the inside suffused with a red glow.
Chief Blankenship spoke first, ”Flame stones! Hundreds of millions credits worth.”
Flame stones were very rare and very valuable. Kelly had never heard of more than a handful in any one place in all of the Galactic Republic. Here were ten liters or more in a box.
“Seal the box, Chief B, but first scan it to make sure there isn’t something more in there.”
Chief Blankenship used her pocket scanner on the case, confirmed it contained only flame stones, and sealed the case shut with suit repair tape.
“I think we have enough for now. We’ll seal up the blast holes so nothing floats out on the trip back. Let’s get the bodies and jewels over to the Vigilant. We have another ship to inspect.”
They took time to have some lunch, before they suited back up and went out to the K’Rang ship. The three made the short leap to the remains of the K’Rang crew compartment, and used their mag boots to walk to where the engines had been cut away. They reached the open end of the crew compartment and flipped around to the interior. Chief B had her pistol ready as she came around.
Chief Blankenship put her pistol away immediately upon seeing the inside of the crew compartment. The explosive decompression literally tore the bodies of the K’Rang apart. It looked like a particularly gruesome way to go.
Chief Miller set the light up, then they split up to search the compartment. Kelly looked at the control panel and tried to make sense of it. The K’Rang were feline bipeds without opposable thumbs, and he couldn’t figure out how the controls worked. There was a trackball in the middle of the control panel. Above that were three buttons, one red, one green, and one blue. Below the trackball was a slot about big enough to fit his hand minus the thumb. He didn’t know what anything did.