The Rendezvous 2 (Patreon)

I wrote some more on this. Why not?

Rendezvous 1

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Captain Ori waited while the first search crew filed into the observatory and took seats at the workstations before he cleared his throat. He said, “As you know, we are now two weeks away from arriving at the system where Planetary Acquisitions lost contact with the Golden Steppe I.”

“Lost contact with the Golden Steppe I” was a ridiculous euphemism, but he greatly preferred it over “when the officers of the Golden Steppe I pissed off our employer who then pulled the plug on them and let them freeze to death”.

Half of the scientists—the older half, namely—listened politely to their captain with paws folded in their laps. The other half—still looking young enough to be in school—fiddled with the terminals in front of them. Only their pointed ears gave any indication that they were actually listening.

“We should be close enough now to start scanning the system,” said Ori. “Although we know the ship’s location at the time she lost power…”

“Lost power” was another euphemism he’d chosen to live with.

“...we don’t know her precise velocity, so it’s impossible for us to predict where she drifted. Hopefully, she had enough momentum to drop her into an elliptical orbit, and she didn’t just fall into the star at the system’s center nor smack into one of the seven planets that orbit it,” he explained. “But it’s been a hundred and fifteen years, so if it’s still out there, it’ll be as cold as any of the lifeless asteroids in the outer belt.”

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “This will not be an easy task,” he admitted. “You’ll be scanning and cataloging every object you find, but pay careful attention to any that are the right size to be the ship, to any that are perfectly spherical. Also look for aluminum debris. If she’s collided with an asteroid, then she’s liable to be unsalvageable, but at least we could give up the search and go back about our original mission of searching for habitable planets.”

Captain Orin pointed a finger at the rafters overhead. “The good news is that after waiting more than a century for us to get here, I don’t think the commissioner will expect success overnight. If it takes us six months to scan the entire system, then so be it,” he said. “It’s more important that we do this job right than we do it quickly. We’ll only know if she’s been lost by scanning the entire—”

“Found it,” said what had to be the youngest researcher in the bunch. She had a golden pelt and pale blue eyes. Though she had to be at least twenty, to Orin’s old eyes, she looked fresh out of the pouch.

The captain blinked. “You what?” When no one said a word, he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Gue, sir,” said the golden female.

Everyone in the room turned to face her, but it was Captain Orin who demanded an explanation. “Gue, you found a … two-kilometer-wide sphere … in a volume ten light minutes on a side … and it only took you two minutes?”

A pause. She looked around at how everyone stared at her, and her ears slowly lowered. Her voice dropped nearly to a whisper, but the room had fallen so silent that everyone could hear her just fine. “No,” she admitted.

Everyone breathed a quiet sigh of relief, and their tensed postures relaxed slightly.

The young gal continued, “I found it right away, but it took a minute to turn one of the ship’s telescopes to these coordinates, so I could get a good look at it.”

The captain blinked. Then blinked again. “H-how did you find a ship that’s cooled down to three Kelvin so quickly?”

“Well, because it didn’t. I mean, it isn’t. It’s still online,” said Gue. “At least, I presume that’s the Golden Steppe I. It’s surrounded by other ships, and scanners show at least a dozen different simultaneous radio conversations.”

No one said a word, and time slowed. Eventually, the junior researcher said, “It really wasn’t hard, guys. This is the astronomical equivalent of finding someone who’s shouting in an empty room.” With a couple keypresses, the big screen at the front of the room lit up and a false-color infrared image appeared.

Everyone stared at it. They were still a long way off, so there wasn’t much detail, but the scan clearly showed several hot objects—smaller ships—a short distance away from a warm sphere.

All six of the room’s other occupants stared in silence a long while before Gue spoke once more. “Send this to the company, Captain?”

“No!” he shouted, spinning toward her. “No. No. No. No.”

“But it’s procedure—”

“No,” he repeated more calmly. When everyone looked to him for an explanation, Ori explained, “Well, we don’t know what the heck is going on out there! Why is it surrounded by ships? Whose ships are those? The commissioner is going to expect answers, and we don’t have any!”

The young gal looked perplexed. “But procedure—”

“Do you want to meet with the commissioner, show him that photo, and tell him that we don’t understand what we’re seeing?”

Gue shrunk down as small as she could without hiding under her desk.

“Yeah, me neither,” admitted the captain. He began to pace. “Okay, if we radio the Golden Steppe I, how long before we get a reply?”

Looking relieved that no one was paying attention to her now, the golden female sat up straighter. “Well, at this distance, speed of light delay is about a week,” she said. “If we halt here, and they send an immediate reply, two weeks before we receive it.”

“And if we head directly toward them?” asked Ori. “How long then?”

“If they respond immediately, we’ll be two thirds of the way there when we receive the reply,” said Gue. “About nine days from now and still five days before we arrive.”

“Ugh, that’s no way to hold a conversation,” he grumbled as he paced. For several long moments, the captain walked back and forth in front of the screen displaying the IR photograph. At last, he stopped and stared at the researchers. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do… We’re going to keep this a secret.”

“What?” gasped Gue.

“You heard me,” said the captain with a glare. “This is now top secret, and if anyone breathes even a word about this, there will be dire consequences … dire like me pulling your guts out with my bare paws and tossing them out an airlock so they can’t sew them back in kinda dire…”

Everyone stared at him with wide ears and eyes.

“Not even a whisper to your mate,” Ori added with a glare. He made a vicious jerking motion with one fist, like he was yanking out someone’s guts. “Same thing for them, understood?”

Six heads nodded slowly. A couple of the older geroo whispered, “Yes, sir.”

“I’m canceling second and third shifts for searching, but you guys already know, so you’re gonna keep working here for the next two weeks,” the captain said. “You’re going to find out everything you can by watching and listening. And you’re not gonna log any of this in the system. Delete that damn photo and anything else you logged. Keep data only on memory sticks—nothing the commissioner can access when he visits. Understood?”

Six heads nodded once again.

“Well, get to work,” Ori grunted as he walked from the observatory, but he didn’t get far before Gue caught up with him and grabbed his arm.

“Sir?” she whispered, taking a moment to look around the corridor and verify that they were alone. “You’re not really going to lie to the commissioner, are you? You wouldn’t hide this discovery from the krakun, would you?”

Ori took a moment to look around the empty corridor as well. His eyes changed, and his expression shifted from that of a frightening commanding officer to that of a kindly grandfather. He cupped her cheek and looked in her blue eyes. He whispered, “If the Golden Steppe I figured out a way to survive even after the company pulls the plug, then I want that secret.”

He smiled wider. “For all of our sakes, Gue.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VBZZozmKbcsxEVmZNqMwNPGMC3yjD-lgVoPjbKHfPXs/edit?usp=sharing

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