Chapter 13: Picking Up Space Trash

Messenger of the Gods was a utilitarian shuttle about the size of an old Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar fuselage (R4Q to naval historians). Just the pod—no wings, no booms, no tail. I guess I thought of that because of my work scanning the artifacts at the Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah. The old Flying Boxcar was designed to haul cargo—and rated for 65 troops. Messenger of the Gods could only handle about a third of that—and then the troops had to be very friendly and the mission of limited duration. Baby Huey, the artificial intelligence running the ship, was a new AI and the ship was old, so old that it had been built without AI. I didn't want to offend Baby Huey, but Messenger of the Gods had come to EartAt from somebody's bone yard. I was glad to have the refurbished bit of pre-Confederacy history.

So what if it were non-standard? The little shuttle was even jump capable, had a pair of light-weight point defense weapon mounts, and a medical tube and TWO sleep learners. Cargo was limited, and if we did hyperspace jumps the crew and passenger manifest had to be clipped to seven because of life support limitation. Messenger of the Gods wasn't even assigned to a class.

There were two shuttle pilots and four Marines—and me—on board. Our mission was to investigate something that had dropped out of hyperspace and report back. Why not send a drone? Ask DECO or Central Command. We drew the assignment. It may have been an indication of how important Colonel Mary Popov was in the grand scheme of things. Why sent a valuable drone when you can sent seven unimportant humans?

No matter. My week was bad. Three children and their mother died shortly after I had adopted the children. I interrogated the surviving person who had participated in the orgy and murder—and he was still alive, in cold storage waiting for final disposition. No doubt about it, the man was going to die! And then I wound up disappointing Candi, a new member of the kennel staff. Just as I was inserting Tab A into Slot B, General Quarters sounded and I was dispatched with a landing party to investigate some debris that dropped out of hyperspace. We didn't have a lot of information other than it was artificial and outside of the planetary plane. The trip was uneventful. Of course, the various headquarters were screaming for information. Don't ask me how I managed to keep my cool. It wasn't fair for the shuttle crew or the Marines to field the demands from various brass hats for information that I lacked. A certain Colonel Dorman was especially insistent, and personally so.

"Colonel, if you are trying to scoop the other newspapers on an exclusive, I can't help you sir," I was irritated. "I am sending raw data feeds as I collect the data."

"I'll court martial you!" Dorman thundered.

"Sir, you can prefer charges," I countered, "but you are not in my chain of command and do not have the command authority to court martial me. It is poor leadership to make empty promises. Now if you'll excuse me, sir, I need this channel for requesting additional information from the AI network."

TEMPORARY COMMUNICATION OUTAGE read the trouble flag on my panel. That was a convenient relief! I did have questions. The respite was long enough to compose and send those messages. What I wanted from the AI was a comparison between the debris and known space craft. It was a puzzle solution program, a crude image matching algorithm I made up on the spur of the moment, something I had played with as a kid. Did that turret hatch come from a Russian T-34 tank or a German Tiger? Was that wing from an American P-38 Lightning or a Japanese Betty bomber? Standardized equipment was easy to identify and as Messenger of the Gods drew closer, our imagery clarified. At the very least we'd eliminate what the debris was NOT.

There was one expandable medical treatment "tube" that was currently in human-sized mode aboard the Messenger of the Gods and two sleep learners. The medical tube was expandable so that I could put a large biological inside for treatment—Messenger of the Gods was equipped to evacuate an elephant. Any evacuated whales would have to be small whales. Both sleep learners were in use because I had my off-duty Marines practice zero gravity operations in armored space suits—including hand-to-hand combat against Sa'arm using the limited known Sa'arm parameters. I didn't know that we were going to find Sa'arm but I had a hunch. As it was, we were on a 50% duty cycle with one shuttle pilot on duty and two Marines monitoring sensors and comms and go-fer tasks. The landing party would be three Marines and myself, and one Marine and both shuttle pilots would stay aboard the Messenger of the Gods. Perhaps this plan would survive first contact with the enemy.

Carrying out that plan meant forcing a sleep/work cycle so that when the Messenger of the Gods was close enough we could go 100% on duty with all of us rested enough to work a full 40 hour shift. Yeah, pipe dream—the actual work plan would include a 90-minute boarding procedure IF the scans indicated that the risk was acceptable. I know that doesn't make much sense—but the plan was to run a cycle of continuous operations until relieved—if we found something worth sending a relief expedition. Otherwise, we should be complete in under six hours, well within human limits. If we found something really important we'd be busy for the forty hours it would take for Central Command to send a relief expedition. The Messenger of the Gods would check out the wreckage, pull initial rescue operations if necessary, and report. We didn't expect survivors.

Preliminary data indicated that there were explosions and radioactive hot spots in the debris. Starships are not quite made of Explodium but components may be unstable. There was also the problem of how hyperspace damaged starship componets. Hyperspace also killed biologicals. We didn't expect to find anything living, but had to be ready in case we did.

Other than incessant demands for updates (automatically provided) we settled into a grueling routine of sleep and work-work-work. I made myself sleep too—and just sleep. Six nubile females and I worked like a field hand! Because we were at General Quarters I had ordered that all personnel on duty be in their environmental suits and that all hatches were secured, and only opened when coordinated from the bridge. I slept in my suit, ready to button up in the event of environmental failure. Nothing new for me—I slept in my chemical warfare over garments many a night—or day, rather. I would automatically mask and seal when I heard the alarm and wouldn't even have to wake up.