Taking Space 2

TRANSACTION

Michael finished using a droid to weld the hunk of armor and bulkhead they had removed in the Myrmidons cargo hold back in place. He walked the droid over to the control panel by the door he had also just finished repairing and pushed pressurize. The cargo bay hissed as it re-pressurized.

He smiled to himself and took off the droid control hat as he said, "I'm done how are you guys doing?"

"Not so great," Steven moped. "While we do have control over the Myrmidons basic systems like movement, shields, and weapons everything else is up in the air. Blast it all! No ship was ever designed to be controlled off a standard operating system," he declared in frustration. "What's worse, every file on this guy's OS is encrypted using a different password so I still have no clue what the intended use of the cargo was or what happened here."

"What about the black box how are things coming on that?" Michael asked.

Steven shook his head. "Not much better. It's heavily encrypted so I doubt we will ever gain access to all of it, though Alf is trying to activate its emergency relay protocols, so we can at least find out who, or what killed these people."

"Steph how are you doing?" He asked Stephanie.

His younger sister curled her upper lip and looked down at the floor as if she was picking through a pile of poo. "It's coming along, though I still don't see why I have to fix this mess."

"Well maybe because you made it?" Daniel teased.

Stephanie's head snapped up and she glared at him. "Well, I like to see you storm a ship with a single unit and not do any damage to it."

Daniel threw up his hands. "Hey, don't turn this on me I was not the one waving a beam cannon around in the middle of the Myrmidon."

"No, you were too worried about the well-being of your precious Maddog while your little sister all on her lonesome assaulted an imperial destroyer.

"All right you two give it a rest," Michael scolded and before other than to continue he said, "Dan did you do as I asked?"

"Yeah, I gathered up whatever was salvageable of the Myrmidon escort and pulled it into the Savage Razor's cargo hold and what wasn't I pushed off the Starway and into deep space."

Michael nodded. "Any survivors?"

Daniel shook his head.

"Any clue what destroyed them?"

"Yeah, the Myrmidon."

Steven frowned and turned to look over at Daniel. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely," Daniel declared with a surety. "In fact, after seeing the damage the Myrmidons beam cannons do up close I think it's what got the Savage Razor, not some stupid solar flare."

"Interesting theory," Catherine said. "And that would sort of make sense however the Myrmidon shooting down its own escort doesn't make any sense."

Daniel shrugged. "Hey, don't look at me I'm just saying what I see. In fact, if you asked me none of this make sense."

"True that," Michael agreed.

"There could've been a traitor on board," Stephanie offered.

Steven took his control hat off and rubbed his eyes. "No, the facts just don't add up for that," he said and glanced over at Catherine. "How is the body analysis going?"

"I had identified all of them except for the one that was burned to a crisp and the commander Alf is using to try to gain access to the black box," Catherine answered.