Which is what it looked like. Not a soul.
Except … Tyche chattered to herself for, then the holo cleared, replaced with a system view. There, all those rocks orbiting their binary star. And drifting in the chunky soup, a transponder code. Tyche made the necessary inquiries, came back with some details.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Nate. “There’s another ship here.”
Helium-class ship. A lot bigger than Tyche, more of a boxy cargo freighter. Something the size of that could resupply a colony. Not atmosphere capable, kind of like a big brick floating through space. The transponder said her name was Ravana, which was a curious name to give a ship that hauled other people’s luggage for a living. You might be able to park the Tyche inside, but unless they’d done exactly that there wouldn’t be a bunch of spare parts inside. The Ravana was big enough she’d have a crew, some supplies they could barter or beg for, and — with any luck — send a message for help. Hope’d know what parts they needed, the Tyche had plenty of supplies, and things would be just fine.
The comm clicked. “Cap,” said Hope. “Cap, we’ve got a problem.”
Nate sighed, rubbed his face with a hand. Why can’t anything just go smooth? “What’s up, Engineer?”
“Reactor’s more unhappy than I’d like.”
“What do you mean by, ’unhappy?’”
“Well, the laser’s not firing right. It’s distorting the yields from the fuel pellets. We want a nice clean compressed pellet in there, and we’re not getting that. We’re getting a … well, hell. How much do you know about ICF reactors, Cap?”
Nate sighed. “Hope? Hope, we’ve talked about this. I know nothing about reactors. That’s why you’re here. What I need to know is whether we’re at the ’Oh God, we’re all going to die,’ phase, or whether we’re at the, ’This is inconvenient but we can shore up for repairs at the next spaceport.’”
“You want a summary?”
“I want a summary,” agreed Nate.
“We’re all going to die,” said Hope, “in about three days.”
“Shit,” said Kohl, voice behind Nate. “Three days? I guess I’ve got some whisky.”
Nate turned, saw the big man at the door to the flight deck, hand on the sill, frown on his face. “Kohl, we’re not going to die.”
“We’re all going to die,” said Kohl, “eventually. For us? Three days, she said. Although I guess if she could fuck up her life so bad she has to fly with us, she could get this wrong too.”
“You’re making noises again,” said Nate, “and those noises don’t sound good. Why don’t you go check on your cabin? See if the Navy took anything.”
“Already checked,” said Kohl. “I think I scared the skinny one. He was looking under my bunk.”
“Check again,” said Nate. “Keep checking until your mouth stops making noises.”
Kohl gave him a glare. “One day, she’ll bring the hellfire of the Republic down on all of us.”
“One day, she might,” said Nate. “Until then, she’s on my crew. Just like you.”
Kohl grunted, shrugged, and walked away.
“I don’t know why you keep him on the ship,” said El, her voice quiet, but hard.
“He serves a useful purpose,” said Nate. “That purpose might get exercised soon. Hope, you still with us?”
There was a pause from the comm, then, “Yeah, Cap. Look, about what he said—”
“Three days, Hope. Until then, how we looking?”
“Worse and worse as the time rolls on. You’ve got power for a bit of maneuvering, life support will keep us alive until we explode, we can still make coffee. Don’t use the Endless Drive, because nothing good will happen. Bad things are almost certain to happen. Like exploding.” The comm clicked off.
“Want me to fly us there?” El pointed at the Ravana’s icon on the holo. Her hands were already moving on the controls, the gentle hand of thrust pushing Nate back in his chair. The Tyche shifted in space, the usual rumble of her sounding regular, ordinary. Not like she would explode in three days.
“Yeah,” said Nate. “At least she’s not moving. We’ll cosy on alongside, try and beg some help.” Three days. That wasn’t a lot of time. He could offload the crew to the Ravana, ask for a ride, but the thought of the Tyche drifting out here, just waiting for someone to claim salvage rights didn’t sit well with him. So he’d stay, ask them to get help. It’d work. He toggled the comm. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are en route to your location, seeking assistance. Please respond.”
Nothing.
He tried again. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are facing main reactor failure, seeking assistance. Please respond.”
“That sounds like a lot of dead air,” said El.
It made little sense. Ravana’s transponder was operating fine, ship’s computers were online, nothing in the automated comm negotiation from the Tyche suggested anything was wrong. And while pirates might be out here, there was no place for them to hide and this wasn’t a popular route — it wasn’t likely to be a trap.
“I’ve got nothing on scans,” said El. “There’s nothing else out there.”
“It’s not pirates,” said Nate.
“Didn’t say it was,” she said. “I said it was nothing.” After a moment she said, “But why would it be pirates?”
“It’s not pirates,” said Nate, again. He clicked the comm again. “Ravana, this is the Tyche. We are approaching and will dock with your vessel in,” and here, he checked the display, “about thirteen minutes. Please do not shoot us all when we come through your airlock. Please respond.”
Nothing. Not even the courtesy of static.
He tapped on the console, coaxing the Tyche’s imaging systems into life. High-detail cameras gave a visual shadow, but it was so damn dark out here that they got nothing but a silhouette, the backwash of light near worthless. But the Tyche, she had military in her family tree, sass right to the core, and she saw with more than human eyes. LIDAR reached out across the void, painting the Ravana in detail. “C’mon girl, show me what’s in front of us.” The lasers painted the Ravana’s location, building up a picture up in the holo. The outline of the Ravana took shape, details filled in fast and smooth as the Tyche touched the other ship with light as gentle as a lover’s hand.
Yep: Helium-class freighter. No obvious damage. Floating there, like a leaf on a pond. Slight spin, nothing that would make docking difficult. Hell, even Nate could do that; he could give El the night off. Under better circumstances, he might have.
“She’s just … floating,” said El. “What kind of Helm lets their ship drift like that?”
“One that’s dead,” said Grace, her voice behind them. Nate and El turned to face her.
Like Kohl before her, she was at the door to the flight deck, hand on the sill. She had none of Kohl’s attitude; if Nate was any judge, he reckoned her to be concerned. “Uh,” said Nate. “That’s a little fatalistic.”
“Don’t dock with that ship,” said Grace. “Everyone on it is dead already.” She looked down at the deck, then back at Nate. She held his gaze. “What would kill an entire ship full of people?”