Brandov Station
C-3A9I/7
11 January 3040
Sabine put the coffee pouch in the hydrator and pressed the button. It was almost impossible to rest, but after nearly a week of pushing themselves to the limit to get as much cataloged as possible, they had all reached the point of exhaustion and settled on a ten hour rest cycle before the others headed out to open the main hold. So far Brandov Station was shaping up the be the find of a lifetime! At every turn they were getting more and more for their sponsor's investment. When the bag was bloated like a tick, she pulled it out and shook it to mix the hot water and coffee like substance.
Looking around, they had already explored the fore and aft sections, the rooms closest to bridge were officer’s quarters and medical suites that were fully equipped and functional. They would of course have to put in an official request to be stationed here for the foreseeable future and help research the full potential of the habitat, but that was typically a formality for the research teams that discovered finds like this one. If they were really lucky Chefong Interstellar Archeology would be granted a permanent station here! She felt giddy at the thought of possibly working in such luxuriousness instead of out of four transported crates like she’d been doing the last five years.
She checked the crude map that were formed from their previous forays into the ship over the past days. The aft sections were housing for crew as well as a very advanced Hydroponics system spanning three hundred meters on no less than four different decks. Like everyone else, she was eager to get back and report their findings, but as weak as the local solar sources were, they knew jumping so far out would mean for a long recharge. It would still be another three days before the jumpship could head back. There were few worlds in the Confederation as sparsely inhabited as Muridox and like C-3A9I/7, the system has poor light, but there was a cache of supplies and enough of an economy there to buy seeds and eggs so they could start to grow the first food on the station in over four hundred and fifty years.
She went back to looking at the massive blank spot in their map. The meat of the ship, the main hanger and the central factory that was mentioned Captain Imai’s message, was still sealed off. Sabine thought about it for a second. There was a major in the Kingston's Legionnaires, a Kotaro Imai … was it possible he was related to the Captain that left this vessel behind? While she mused, she looked over at the video from the lead member of the research team. From Professor Wan’s camera, she could see Joshua and Hwang-Soo ahead of him. The code cracker finished running it sequence two hours ago and they would finally get to fill in the biggest missing puzzle piece. “How are you guys doing?”
"Smooth sailing. It's a shame we still need these suits." said Joshua looking back at Wan's head piece. "There's still plenty of contamination out there. It's better for you not to tempt fate into giving you a staff infection." She noted the crew was in extra high spirits after the good rest and breakfast. She sipped her coffee slowly as she read the markings on the wall they past. "Were almost there, a minute more, if that." Said Wan who came to the same conclusion she did. Turning left, they reached the crate with the code breaking equipment. It was old Maskirovka gear, but that is exactly why they picked it. It was used to dealing with old codes, but this was something different. The machine took three times longer than expected to get done.
Shining the light at the heavy bulk doors it would have taken them half the time to cut though with the equipment they had, but that wasn't the goal, they wanted things in tact so which is why they had time to explore the fore and aft sections. For a bit, they thought they found a Jefferies tube that would take them into the air ventilation system, when they were replacing the enormous scrubbers when they were working on life support, but it turned out only to be one of the many tunnels that led back to the Engine room, but on the other side where they found the empty helium rings. Part of the mothballing process was obviously to remove the helium to prevent any unnecessary explosion in the K-F Drive chamber. Until then, they had some faint hope of just starting her back up and sailing the whole station back to Victoria.
The lights above the massive doors started spinning and the doors made several catching sounds as large mechanical gears pulled them apart. It was still dark inside as the only source of light was still coming from their suits but there were practically no particles in the air. "Whatever is in here, it wasn't organic." Joshua found a large switch and flipped it up, it turned over with a loud thud. The hum of electronics could be faintly heard in external microphone and slowly got louder. From the bridge, Sabine switched the image over to the holotank and stood back. It only a guess, but she figured the sensitive technology would give a better picture.
She picked up her coffee and sipped on the straw. Despite this room being pressurized and clean air being pumped back in, the drives weren't working so they didn't have gravity. She watched as they moved out of the corridor into the main Hanger, their lights were insufficient to pierce the dark, but the detail in the holotank was amazing as it's light amplification program was designed to detect distant stars. "Professor, can you ..." Sabine nearly choked on her coffee as she saw the massive round structure in the dark. She coughed to try and clear the coffee from her throat. "Sabine, are you all right!?" She took several deep breaths and there was a flash on her screen as the holotank adjusted to the first of a hundreds of lights popping on to reveal an immense circular structure. The professor panned the camera back and forth to get the full spectrum of what they were seeing, "Oh my!"
Unconsciously, Sabine dropped to her knees and began uttering a prayer she hadn't uttered since she was a child at her grandmother's funeral, "Hail Mary, full of grace ..."
