Chapter 51 #2
There were shards of glass. He saw a bed pod, the top completely broken and its contents empty.
He was pretty sure that twisted, lump of metal was from the Humility, but it had been crashed into and fuzed with a cleaner wall from Kldyn’s ship.
Well, it was white, but it wasn’t clean.
It had been smudged and dirtied by something when it exploded outward.
And thanks to the sun shining brightly in the far distance, just a distance dot slightly bigger than the stars beyond, he could see most of the debris field. It was still a black void, but the shine of the metal reflecting off the light at least gave him an idea of what he was looking at.
“Come on,” Vytln said, looking at Haven who had climbed up after him and was looking around with a wide-eyed look of wonder.
He couldn’t imagine what was so interesting.
The was nothing so fascinating about the void.
But he showed her how to use the pulsers and, once she had the basic movements down, the two of them set off into the debris.
He made sure to keep a strict mental map of where the evac pod was as they went from one clump to another, searching for the shelter room.
It took the better part of a mark to find it.
They hopped from one large piece to another, eliminating them as possibilities, then making their way back to the evac pod each time.
They made sure to move in straight lines only.
To always go back to the pod. It easily doubled their search time, but he wouldn’t risk losing the pod’s location.
When they finally came upon the shelter, it was buried under a shell of warped, twisted, and broken metal.
There was a wall that had been wrapped around it from the force of one of the explosions.
Vytln genuinely couldn’t tell if it was a wall from their ship or his brother’s.
Either way, it was now concealing the familiar square room from his gaze.
However, as he peered underneath it, he caught sight of the shelter he had helped build and he motioned to Haven.
“Here! This is it.”
Haven swung around and came to his side as he grunted and pushed, trying to move the metal out of the way.
The cold of space had frozen it, even after the explosion had heated it up, so it was well and truly stuck in place.
But it was also warped and weakened and, as Haven added her strength to his, finally began to move out of the way.
The hatch of the shelter room was still there.
The floor tile that had once concealed it was half broken and the pieces were fragmenting away.
Haven pushed them aside and put her hand on the top.
She cocked her head then, to his surprise, she knocked on the top.
It wasn’t just random knocking either. It was five knocks in a pattern that he couldn’t help but note as being musical.
He could barely hear it through the comms, but it was clearly deliberate.
Haven waited. But nothing happened. She pulled herself closer and put her head right on the side of the shelter hatch. She did it again, this time with the side of her fist. The same five knocks in the exact same pattern. He heard it through the comms better this time.
And he heard the two knocks that returned as well.
Haven gasped, pushing herself up.
“They’re okay!” She declared, beaming.
“What was that?” Vytln asked as she pushed herself up.
“Shave and a haircut!”
“What?”
“Two bits!” She yelled, singing the last part.
He had no idea what that meant, but she was laughing with obvious delight and joy. It must be a human thing, and the important thing was that his crew inside had responded. That meant that, at least, there was someone alive in there.
“Alright. Let’s get back to the evac pod. We’ll tie it to the back and haul it away.”
“Wait,” Haven stopped him before he could turn away. “Where’s the upper bridge?”
The upper bridge? Oh, right.
It was easier to find the remnants of the upper bridge.
It wasn’t as small as the shelter room, though it was shattered into more pieces.
However, it had been thrown further from the bulk of the debris field, so it wasn’t as concealed as the rest of it.
In their search for it, they managed to find Spot, Garnet’s cleaning robot, and, for some reason, Vytln found himself hauling the stupid thing with him back to their evac pod before they continued searching.
He had no connection to the simple, busted robot, but his captain’s mate considered the thing practically a pet. It felt right, therefore, to push it into the evac pod before they continued on their way to the broken remains of the upper bridge.
There was a lot of broken glass here, but it wasn’t much of a threat as it just moved out of their way as they pushed through.
All the consoles were dark and broken into pieces.
Dented, warped, and outright ripped in shreds.
It wasn’t possible to determine which consoles were the functional ones and which were the non-functional ones that were behind the hatch.
However, since they were all so broken and warped, it was easy to pull them apart.
Haven was the one who found Alred’s core. She pulled the top of one of the dark consoles away then let out a cry of victory. Vytln turned from the console he was breaking open and floated over to her.
He’d only seen Alred’s core once. Way back on Rik-Vane, when Tanin had taken the core from the space station into the Humility, their new spaceship that they’d bought secondhand.
At that moment of transfer, Alred was at his most vulnerable.
His core could be put into nearly any machine with a proper port for it, and he’d have all the power of that machine.
However, that core itself was not capable of anything except maintaining Alred’s code.
Unattached, it was completely inert, totally helpless, and completely isolated from the world.
The gray metal was egg shaped; the slightly tapered top had a panel that could be pushed down to plug into the ship. It was still plugged in, though there was no ship anymore. As Haven grabbed the egg and pulled it out, the broken wires fell away, and the top of the egg closed again.
“Is it okay?” Haven asked, frowning as she ran her finger across the small screen at the front of the egg. But the screen remained dark.
It had still moved though. It closed back up when the wires fell away.
It could have just been an automatic movement, one that would occur without power, but it moved meaning that the mechanism was still intact.
He knocked against the side. The core felt hollow against his fist, but unlike when Haven knocked, he didn’t hear or feel anything knock back.
“I don’t know,” he finally said.
Haven’s face fell, but she clutched the egg to her chest. It was big, larger than his head, so it was an armful for her. She cradled it like a youngling, however, as she nodded to him.
“Okay. Let’s getting it back to the evac pod. We’ll getting the others and… figure out where we’re going to going once we have them.”
Vytln nodded once and took hold of her hand.
He pulled her along as they flew back towards the evac pod.
He searched inside for a place to plug in Alred’s core.
It would be very helpful to have him inside the small starship.
However, the wire type that they needed simply wasn’t there, and the old one was shattered pieces. They couldn’t plug him in anywhere.
So, they instead stored his core on one of the seats. Once Haven had him safely strapped in, they went back to the supply storage so he could get towing cords, hooks, and nylon ropes that were very thin but also very strong.
Out here in space, it didn’t need to be super tough to pull the shelter. They were weightless, after all. He could probably push the shelter by hand for a short while. It depended on how much force his boots could output.
No, what he was thinking about was where they were going to be taking the shelter. And after checking the navigation data Haven had taken, he was pretty sure it was going to be have to be planetary re-entry.
It was going to be a rough day for all of them. He needed strong rope.