Dyson’s Game

Book 1: Salvage Claim

Chapter 3

Efraim

Nighttime on Bries is quite an enchanting sight. You get an entire view of the surrounding space, the night sky looks pretty given the sea of stars, and you can see the drive cones of ships chugging to and fro the north pole, where Bries Space Dock sat in synchronous orbit.

Of course, there’s no atmosphere this close to Kal’Dari herself, which meant nights here were freezing. A cool 95K, enough to instantly kill a poor sod that had a pressure breach in their vac suit. Fun.

Still, it was better than daytime, mostly due to the fact that we didn’t have to deal with the sweltering heat, the Darian wind, and the rare occasions wherein Bries’ magnetosphere decides to play a little prank and sends plumes of plasma smack dab at its surface.

If it were me, I’d certainly prefer nighttime Bries. The fact that nighttime here lasted for around 72 Crownworld cycles was just the tip of the iceberg.

Nonetheless, my enthusiasm was somewhat muddled. Especially since Bossman saw it fit for me to ‘join in’ on this little trip towards the crashed freighter, seeing if we could assess the state of the weapon mounts and drag them back with us for salvage.

Utter crockshit by the way, seeing as I wasn’t a technician. I took up drone command for goodness’s sake. Did Bossman really think that I could handle a remote crane without some janky issues? It takes time for these types of things. Time that I spent trying to get myself acquainted with this thing, but certainly not to the level that I could feel comfortable with moving the crane about without accidentally breaking something.

Well, it was certainly Bossman’s fault if I break something here. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

“Are we there yet?”

“You’ve been asking that for the past few days.” Shisholi snaps, her crest flaring up in agitation as she turns to glare at me, “We’re close now, so I’d appreciate you not yapping into my ear every other moment. Do it again, and I won’t hesitate to throw you out the airlock and force you to leg it back to base.”

I rear back, raising up my arms in an apology-cant with wide eyes. “Hey now, I wasn’t that annoying–”

“You are.” Klathi cuts in, his security patch glinting in the light of our little cabin while he browses through his console. “So you better shut your mouth unless it’s something important.”

“Party poopers all of you.”

“I’m on the clock.” Shisholi sighs, her MMI glowing brightly as she wills our little crane to swerve to the side, narrowly avoiding a boulder that would've toppled us over, “Not going to get distracted by any of your capricious bullshit while I’m still driving this mess of a vehicle.”

“So I can bother Klathi, then?”

“I will throw you out the airlock, Efraim.” He responds in turn, the security officer turning towards me with a stern glare. “This is your only warning.”

With a grumble and muttered curse, I leaned back into my seat, watching the outside feeds on my own console. Nothing more than loose dust and rock of course, pockmarked with craters, rifts, and valleys, and frankly I was getting bored with the same vista after two days of driving. Good driving of course – we haven’t crashed and stranded ourselves in some forsaken hole on the dark side of this little planet – but we needed something to at least take the edge off the oncoming salvage.

Then again, I was stuck with people dedicated to their job. Why did I have to be stuck with people dedicated to their job? “Tell you what Shisholi, why don’t you set the controls to manual and take it from there? We could do some light chatting that way without accidentally driving us over a cliff.”

“No.” Came the swift and immediate reply, “Besides, we’re here.”

It certainly felt like it, given how my stomach seemed to jump up to my chest.

As our little vehicle crested over the lip of the ship's little crater, my MMI whirs to life, connecting the outside sensors to my own vision as I saw what lay beyond. The crashed ship looked… well, larger. Especially since all I did with the scanned model was look at it on the holotank.

Seeing it in person however, was enough to give me pause. These things were always larger in person, but you never realize just how big they are.

“Base Command, this is Klathi from the salvage team designated ‘ASB-01’. We’ve arrived at the ship.”

I blink, watching as Klathi spoke, before moving the brackets on his console so that all three of us could see Bossman himself on the other end of the line.

I let out a wave. Bossman lets out a snort, but otherwise shakes his head and tries to hide an embarrassment-cant under the holotank.

“Let’s gets another brief done, just in case someone forgot what they were supposed to do during the journey.” My eyes glance to the side, and I could hear Klathi and Shisholi chuckle under their breaths. Traitors, the lot of them, “The techs and pad-tappers had been playing with the sensor mesh that we’ve got during preliminary scans, and they’ve determined possible entry points to the vessel that should be synced up to your sensors any moment now.”

Lo and behold, bright orange splotches appeared on our vehicle’s sensor feeds, a stark contrast to the pitch-black rock of our surroundings. There was a worrying amount of orange splotches on the ship, which meant that we had to do this little salvage delicately.

“Get inside, determine if those Ci’roles-pattern mass drivers are doing fine, and haul them back to base.” I elaborate on a hand, causing Bossman to raise an eyebrow at me in response. “… And pull back if we see something weird.”

“Well get on with it, then.” Bossman drawls in a joking manner, a grin on his weathered face, “I’ll be waiting for the good news. Don’t keep us waiting.”

The feed to the base cuts off with that, and Shisholi turns towards me with a thin frown on her lips. “Efraim, you on the clock?”

“I am now.”

“Good.”

Shisholi turns back towards her own console, her MMI lighting up as our vehicle begins to amble forward, eventually coming to a stop just shy of the orange mesh on the sensors. My eyes narrow, gripping my own console and pulling it closer to my face, before bringing up the crashed ship’s sensor mesh and comparing the two.

“That’s a gash.” I call out a second later, watching as Klathi freezes in place. “Get Bossman on the line.”

It only takes a few seconds of Klathi poking at his console before the call is patched through, and our boss appears on the other end of the line. “That was quick.”

“This spot here”, I point to the part of the ship that we were currently at, “Is a gash. Fool’s bet that this wasn’t caused by a micro-meteoroid impact.”

“Can concur.” Shisholi pipes in, leaning forward while stroking a hand underneath her chin, “That looks disturbingly artificial. Might be the reason why this ship went dark in the first place.”

“That’s why Klathi’s with you. We don't know what's there, so a best bet is to just stick someone on security with you and hope that it works out alright.” Bossman sighs, his arms twitching towards an irritation-cant, only for him to stop a second later. “Well, when you go in, stick close to him. Otherwise, things proceed according to plan. Base command out.”

With that, Bossman’s image winks out of Klathi’s console again. I share a look with Shisholi, sending a quick worry-cant in her direction that she quickly reciprocates with her own. Too fast for Klathi to tell. Hopefully, at least.

“… I don’t like this.” Klathi mutters, letting out a sigh before turning towards me. “Bossman didn’t pay us to have second thoughts this far in, though. How big’s the gash?”

“Big enough to fit us in.” I reply, tapping a finger on my own console as I moved the outside cameras to get a better look. "... Might need to use the crane to jank the opening a little wider, though. Would make it easier for you guys to go in."

“Do that while we disembark.” He nods, and my blood turns cold. “Don’t worry – I’ll be taking point, just as Bossman said. Shisholi, strap on your vac suit and take a ladar gun with you. Efraim, you watch and monitor through our suit cams, keep in contact with base command – try and harry the pad-tappers and other techs on base to cross-reference the internal structure. We’re going to need a map.”

I nod in a distracted manner, watching as Klathi and Shisholi unbuckle themselves from their seats and make their way towards the airlock. I follow after them a few seconds later, though not before untangling myself from my own straps, watching the pair put on their vac suits behind a door.

Klathi stops once he sees me peeking through the airlock door, the external speakers on his helmet letting out a sigh as he turns towards me with a non-plussed look on his face. “You wanna join in?”

I make a show of thinking about it for a second. “No.”

“Expected as much.” He grumbles, winding the last wrap of his vac suit all over his body before his MMI thrums, and he shakes in relief. “... Oh, that’s warm and toasty. Anyways, keep an eye on us, will you? This might be a bit more dangerous than usual, but we’ll take the necessary precautions.”

“That’s what I’m worried about, really.” I mutter in response, watching as Klathi pressed a finger against a divot in the wall. The wall beeped back, before withdrawing a sleek-looking gun that purrs and lights up at Klathi’s touch. “… If you need a gun as ‘necessary precautions’, maybe we shouldn’t be here at all.”

“Look, I’ll give you the right to say ‘I told you so’ if we find something that’s out of our pay grade. That alright with you?”

“Can we please stop talking about this?” Shisholi cuts in, two arms stuck in worry-cant while using her last arm to put on her helmet. “I’ve already got enough jitters as it is. This isn’t helping.”

Klathi presses the side of his gun, causing it to whir in his grip as he points it downward. His brows furrow, before slinging the gun across his back as an indicator flicked to purple. “Should’ve topped off on ammo before we got here.”

“Not helping!”

“Cycling.” Klathi cackles, the door on my end immediately puffing out with pressure seals as the airlock started depressurizing, leaving the pair to their work.

I admit I let out a chuckle as Shisholi started having her little freakout, but well… I had my own job to do, which entailed getting back into our little cabin and pulling up my console.

My MMI whirs to life as I connect to the vehicle’s systems, before setting up a handshake with Shisholi and Klathi’s suits. It takes a few seconds for them to accept the request, but once it’s done, I got first-hand access to their suit cams.

I sent the feeds to one of the two empty consoles in the cabin, and contacted them right away. No use cramming all the info on just one console when there's two empty ones in the cabin right now. “Sholi, Klathi, it’s Efraim. Say something if you hear me.”

“Loud and clear.”

“Best we get this over with.” Shisholi replies back, her voice nervous as the grip on her ladar gun shook, “Efraim, if you would?”

I focus on my console, quickly navigating through the vehicle’s various menus with a thought as my MMI spooled up once more. My nape grows warm as I connect my arm to the vehicle’s crane, and as I reach out with my hand… The crane itself follows my movements, quickly peeling off the errant metal to the side and allowing both Shisholi and Klathi a wider entrance into the crashed ship.

“All yours”, I announce, my MMI winding down as I click off the crane controls and went back to watching their suit feeds.

“Roger that.” Klathi replies, raising their gun up to level as they stepped into the breach, “Taking point. Sholi, start mapping.”

Compiling mapping data was… well, I wasn’t exactly versed in it, but I could certainly do the basics. You kind of need it if you want to do a decent job at drone command, especially when you're stationed on a survey base. It certainly helps that I could just think of the pair as drones doing a survey of an area of interest, which certainly helped me along in setting up a rough sensor mesh of the area that they had arrived on.

With a grunt, I move my chair to the center of the little cabin, pulling Klathi and Shisholi’s consoles closer to my own so that I could get a clearer picture. It wasn’t exactly as intuitive as the holotank back at base… but it’ll do.

“Boscha here.” Bossman pipes up at Klathi's console a few seconds later, “You got another problem down there, Efraim?”

“Shisholi’s sending ladar data of the ship’s interior. Relaying it to you now.” My MMI thrums once more, and the progress of the data transfer pops in at the bottom of Klathi’s screen. “I’m going to need some of the techs and pad-tappers that aren’t doing anything important to take a look at this, see if they could match the interior to any existing ship patterns out there.”

“That’s a time-consuming request.” He sighs, "Some of the techs are still working on Marrsha'nai to get her out on the field again."

“Maybe, but it’d certainly make it a hell of a lot easier if Shisholi and Klathi had a map to go on. In fact, I’ll share their feed with you…”

I take a glance back towards the suit feeds, only for me to blink at the blood staining the ship’s bulkhead.

I retch a second later, spilling my most recent meal on the cabin floor as my MMI instinctively shared the feed to Bossman. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him take a sharp breath, his eyes widening for a split-second before his posture turns rigid and clasps his arms behind his back.

No doubt they’re locked in worry-cant. My arms were doing the same.

“Efraim, you…” Shisholi trails off, her voice turning faint as Klathi shined his gun’s light on the corpse. “Are you seeing this…?”

“Yes…”

And I don’t think I can’t unsee this again.

“Female.” Klathi cuts in, his voice blank as he turns the corpse over with a foot. “Had her cloaca torn apart, looks like whoever stitched it up did so without a care in the world. Outwardly cybernetic arm, translucent pumps all over their arm and spine that feeds into some kind of power pack on their back. They’re covered in blood and guts, that’s for sure, but–”

Shisholi’s feed turns away, as do I. Klathi’s voice fills the air a second later however, a hopeful tinge to his voice. “–Pressure seals on their suit is airtight. I’m running diagnostics on their suit, and it seems to be working just fine. I, I think they might still be alive.”

My eyes widen, turning back to look at Klathi’s feed as my arms folded into relief-cant. Bossman however, didn’t seem to share our optimism, given that he had placed all four of his arms on the holodeck and leaned forward. His hands didn’t even twitch, despite the fact that I was sure he was making a cant behind his back a few moments ago.

“Get them on the cargo hold.” He orders. “For the meantime, sit tight. This whole salvaging operation’s on hold until we can find out what happened to that ship.”

“Oh thank fuck.” Shisholi breathes, “E-Efraim, prep that airlock, will you? I-I think I got puke on the inside of my suit.”

I glance down on the cabin floor, finding my last meal staring back at me.

“Sure.”

I didn’t get out of my seat.