Empire's Legacy

Chapter 9: Broken and Stolen

The three stared at each other for a moment.

"Grey," Amy said slowly. "You remember when we first came aboard, how the ship pressurized automatically?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Remember how I said it shouldn't have done that?"

"Yeah."

Amy leaned forward and braced her arms on the edge of the counter. "And the Welcome Programs automatically activated."

"What does that signify?" Ramina asked.

"The ship should have powered down two hundred years ago," Amy said. "And stayed that way."

"The crew was sick," Grey said. "Dying. You said she should have powered down when the crew abandoned ship, but they never abandoned ship—they just died off. Maybe no one was left to power her down."

Amy shook her head. "The Waratah is a Mark IV Isis computer system. She was top of the line then, which means we don't really have a hope in hell now of understanding how the system actually functions, but it's an incredibly clever system. It will power down and seal itself if and when the crew abandons ship, but following the same logic, it will also power down and seal itself when there are no longer any life signs aboard. Basically, she becomes a sealed tomb, floating through space. Even partial derelicts have that protocol in effect. Oh." She turned around abruptly, her eyes wide. "That's what's been bothering me." She stared at de Sara.

"Oh," de Sara said, her eyes flickering from Amy's face to the door and back. "Oh."

"Yeah," said Amy. "You see it too."

"Someone want to give me a hint?"

"It's the bodies," said Ramina. "It's the state of the bodies."

Grey looked blank. "So?"

"Decomposition on a ship like this would probably be fairly slow," de Sara said. "There's no insects or heat to speed up the process, no animals to consume the flesh and organs, and the ship's water and air filtration and purification systems would reduce the amount of bacteria that, dirtside, would move things along more quickly. The body will decompose regardless; it's a natural process once death occurs and it can't be stopped." She took a deep breath. "The disease spread quickly once Monaco was infected; the further it spread, the less detailed the doctors' notes become, but extrapolating outwards I'd estimate the entire crew was probably dead in about a month. If we autopsied everyone, we'd likely find that not everyone died of Warnao fever; in every population you have people who are immune or resistant or those whose systems are strong enough for them to fight through and recover. With a disease like this, however, those few probably had no time to recover before they were trying to care for those who were ill, and we'd likely find they died of exhaustion or starvation."

"You're getting sidetracked," Amy said. "Decomp."

"Oh," de Sara said. "Yes. If the ship sealed after the entire crew was dead, as Amy says, then the earliest deaths would show more advanced decomposition than the later deaths, as is the nature of such things—"

Impatient, Amy interrupted, saying, "The thing is, once the ship sealed, all those corpses should have been frozen. Not literally frozen, but—uh—put in stasis. They wouldn't have continued to decompose. That's the thing with tomb ships. They keep bodies preserved until someone can find them and put them to rest. Something to do with religious beliefs." She shrugged. "Not my field. Anyway. You see the problem."

Grey still looked confused. "Not really."

"Wha—really?" Amy stared at him. "Right. Bodies dead, anywhere from three weeks to a day. The Waratah powers down and seals herself when the last lifesign is extinguished. We come along and the ship is already powered up and pressurizing, the Welcome Programs are activating, and the bodies are in a state of decomposition more consistent with—" She looked at Ramina.

"Two to three months," de Sara said. "Roughly. It could be more; as I said before, the conditions on the ship are likely to promote slow decomposition. Like Dr. Jones, this is not my particular field of expertise."

"Something broke the stasis seal," Grey said.

"He finally gets it," Amy exclaimed. "Gold star to you."

He shot her a look. "Don't be an ass. What could do that?"

"Oh, dammit, I don't know!" Amy cried, throwing up her hands and turning her back. She leaned on the counter again, nibbling her lower lip. "Although...there is one thing," she said after a moment. "And it would probably answer all of our questions." She pushed herself upright and faced Grey and de Sara.

Grey crossed his arms. "Out with it, Jones."

Amy hoisted herself up onto the edge of the counter and sat with her legs dangling. "If someone else arrived here after my scout first located the ship but before we got back with the Sophia, and had entered the ship, it would have broken the stasis seal. Decomp would have started back up again. Unless they were in a hurry, the natural course of action would be to hit up the bridge first; it's the easiest place to access the main computer and, if looking for something specific, to determine where it is. The Welcome Program subroutines were probably activated accidentally."

"You think someone came on board to steal the vaccine and antiviral?" Grey asked.

De Sara stirred. "There would be no point. Neither has any purpose if there is no Warnao fever."

"So someone came for the virus."

"Well, I'd be whoever broke the stasis field is the same person who's responsible for the disappearance of the virus et al.," Amy said. "I think ship's manifest is a matter of public record, although 'public record' is a relative phrase, since the number of people with access to those records is limited—graduate students and students with special permission at the University, members of the government, and upper-level military could all have access, but that's still a pretty limited number, and the list gets even shorter when you consider who'd even be looking at Empire-era ships in the first place. Especially if they knew enough to look for an extinct virus on a ship that might or might not still exist." She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs, hands dangling loosely between her knees. "Empire history gets covered in entry-level courses at the University, but it's pretty cursory and so there's only a few students who do much with it past their first and second years."

"I don't think I've ever run across anyone in the Commissioner Corps with much of an interest in the Empire," Grey said. "Not to say there's not someone out there."

"I'd guess we're looking at someone in the government. Probably upper level." As the words left her mouth an unnerving thought twisted its way out of her core, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. Of course. Made sense.

"I think we are overlooking the most important question," Ramina said from Amy's left. "If someone did come aboard this ship and take the items related to Warnao fever, then what we really ought to be asking ourselves is what have they taken it for?"