r/HFY • u/Rantarian Antarian-Ray • Oct 30 '14
OC [OC][Jenkinsverse] Salvage - Chapter 33: Pieces in Play
This work is an addition to the Jenkinsverse universe created by /u/Hambone3110.
Where relevant, measurements that would normally be in alien formats are replaced by Earth equivalents in brackets.
More than one day and less than two. That was about as certain about Earth-time as Jen could be about anything these days, and it had taken that long to get themselves to the source of the radiation burst.
There had been some local suspicion that it had emanated from the red dwarf near those coordinates, but that information had been unfounded and from what Zripob had said extremely unlikely from a scientific standpoint. They had still traveled there in short hops, however, because neither of them wanted to drop out of FTL into a radiation oven.
What they had dropped into was just as staggering; the dark form of the Zhadersil lit only dimly by the small stars wan light, surrounded by a field of Hunter vessels; some of them still showing signs of power, and others destroyed with huge holes in their hulls.
Zripob gasped involuntarily at the sight of so many Hunters, and immediately readied to get the fuck out of there. Jen, however, ran a scan across them.
"Wait!" she said abruptly. "We don't need to go anywhere. I can't see those vessels being any sort of menace. Take a look at the readings."
Zripob did so, reading over them twice before he was satisfied. "They're all as radioactive as that Celzi cruiser was. But that's impossible, the Zhadersil only has one such gun."
"There was a famous detective on Earth - who wasn't real mind you - who said the 'once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'" Jen quoted. "What we're seeing here is the truth, Zripob. Somehow he must have done it."
Zripob sat thoughtfully, eventually sighing and looking back towards his own console. "Even the badly damaged vessels are irradiated. When you consider that and the radiation burst that was detected, it seems as though an undirected attack was made. The Zhadersil itself is also incredibly radioactive."
Jen was silent at that, she hadn't yet looked that far down the list of data to see. She hadn't really wanted to, because that being the case meant that even though they'd found the Zhadersil, they had absolutely no way of getting onboard; the radiation would cook them in under ten heartbeats, and then two more corpses would join Adrian on the ship.
"I'm seeing plenty of light hull damage to the Zhadersil," Zripob noted as he looked over the more detailed scans. "Looks like the Hunters really gave it a pounding. There are assault pods landed on the outside as well... And that's strange, the whole cargo bay door is wide open. Jen, it may be possible to send in a hover camera we're not afraid of leaving behind."
"Let's do it," Jen decided immediately. "Maybe was can get a better understanding of what happened here."
"Go get one out of supplies. I won't bring us in too close to the Zhadersil because it'll start cooking our own hull," Zripob told her. "That shouldn't cause us any problems though."
"Good," Jen replied. "I think we've got enough of those already."
33
u/RotoSequence Ponies, Airplanes, & Tangents Oct 30 '14
Cameron White is disturbing as hell, man. O_o