Corvus Ascending by Dale Sale

Author:Dale Sale [Sale, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Corvus prowled among the asteroids of the Ix Trojan’s. They were locked in a stable Lagrange point sharing the orbit of the ringed star Ix around the system’s primary star Iz. Their counterpart asteroids, the Greeks, lead the star in orbit. Both clusters were poorly charted and barely explored. Together, the two fields held over fifteen thousand large asteroids.

“Lenore, status report,” Gus said. Her projection stood at the Operations Console, the silvery gray shoulder length hair and slim athletic, military bearing suiting her well. She’s damn fine looking, Gus thought.

The CI smiled at the mention of her new name. “Mr. Sheridan will brief you, Skipper,” she turned to Drake and nodded.

“Umm,” the young man fumbled with the controls. Running Operations on Corvus was unfamiliar territory. Drake was far more comfortable outside a ship in the deep vacuum of the Void. However, Gus had ordered the crew to cross-train on every system. You never knew when you would be needed to step in, he insisted. “Conducting area scans?”

Gus replied, “Was there a question for me in there somewhere, Mr. Sheridan?”

“Sorry, no Boss.”

Lenore slightly smiled. The Skipper was running a tight ship, and she approved.

Drake continued, “Okay, I’ve got a ping back on what may be our shipyard. Heat signatures are slightly above background and I’m getting some EM wavelength bleed. I can’t tell what it is, but it’s not totally dead. Might finally be something!”

The Imperium had done an excellent job of hiding the shipyard. The crew had been searching for a week and everyone felt time was running out.

Gus said, “Corvus, bring us in slowly and begin broadcasting our authentication codes.”

“Fly Slow” the ship acknowledged. A gentle hum traveled through the deckplates.

The body was roughly cylindrical, with more than a few impact craters. The give-away was that it rotated on the long axis with no tumble. Soon they picked out a blinking marker and some scattered lights moving across the surface.

Gus said out loud, “Maybe this is our lucky day.”

Suddenly, an array of brilliant lights flared from the rock.

“Danger Many Guns, Fly Now?” Corvus pleaded.

“Steady there, fella,” Gus said, “Lenore response to our authentication code?”

Lenore said, “Skipper, the codes have been received but authentication is not acknowledged. The Station is broadcasting.”

A gravelly voice came through the comm. “Who are you and how did you get that ship?”

The forward display filled with a flickering black and white scene, some ancient programmers inside joke. It was styled from an old Earth vid drama, set during a global conflict unimaginatively called World War II. The character: male, indeterminate age, paunchy, and dressed in olive green fatigues, gripped a smoking cigar in his teeth. His hat rode high on his head, revealing a receding hairline. The large oak desk was piled with a haphazard stack of manila folders. The IN tray was empty, the OUT tray overflowed. A steaming coffee cup sat at his elbow. Through a window behind him; the scene looked from a second story and over an enormous warehouse stretching far into the distance.

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