The Bridge was silent for several seconds.
Ulga was the first to speak up.
“I like this guy.”
“I thought all engineers were bloodless, tearless monsters.”
Gorgon didn’t reply. He rewound the recording to the date logged.
Universal Calendar 2835.13.6. Eight months had passed since then.
An engineer vessel that had already been wrecked for eight months. The first to find it usually wouldn’t be pirates, unless the ship had been completely abandoned by the Association for some reason.
And the reason for that was obvious.
“Pull up the Weapons Deck structural schematics.”
“Pulling them up,” Selin answered quickly.
A few seconds later, three overlapping structural schematics appeared on the Bridge’s main screen.
“The first is the original structural schematic. Then there are overlay layers from maintenance and additions, and after that local repair annotations…”
“Damn, why is this one such a mess?”
Selin swore. It was rare for her.
“How are we supposed to read this?”
Ulga took one look and frowned deeply.
“What’s this?”
Gorgon didn’t answer her. He just raised a hand and pointed at the main weapon console’s position.
In the original schematic, a standard master control frame and maintenance layer sat beneath that spot. But the later overlay layers had thickened the entire base.
The outer shape hadn’t changed much, but inside there was an added ring of buffer and reinforcement structure.
The problem was that this reinforcement hadn’t been fully written back into the schematic. Only a few scattered construction annotations remained.
“It was modified during maintenance. To adapt to a weapon link with higher recoil, they thickened the base’s load-bearing structure and damping layer.”
Selin overlaid the two schematics and compared them once.
“In other words,” Gorgon said, staring at the tangle of lines, “the original schematic isn’t enough anymore.”
“Unfortunately, yes. If that thing is still on the ship, it definitely won’t be in any place shown on this schematic.”
Jasmine, who had been staring blankly at the two corpses behind them, seemed to snap back to her senses just then and stepped closer.
She ignored the schematics and looked at the live scene on another screen. It was the real-time surveillance feed Selin had just pulled up.
In front of and to the right of the main weapon console was a large pool of blackened blood. A short drag mark ran across the floor and ended at the edge of the console base’s outer casing.
Along that edge was a seam. It was rough, not like something left by normal maintenance.
Her gaze lingered on that seam for a moment, but she said nothing.
Selin saw the problem too and frowned.
“Wait…” She zoomed the layers in a little more.
“If he didn’t put that black box back in the maintenance bay and instead forced it into the later-reinforced structural layer… there’s no way you’d find it with normal scans and standard schematics.”
“Then we have to take it apart,” Ulga said.
“Do you know how big the main weapon console base is?”
Selin’s voice rose a few degrees in irritation.
“You’ve only got two guns and a cutter, and you’re carrying ship repair spares. If you want to tear apart a whole master control base right here on the Weapons Deck, you’ll be turned into spare parts by security before you’re halfway done.”
Ulga fell silent and said nothing more.
‘Their original goal was just to board the ship and grab spare parts.’
‘Now they had the parts—control valves, bridge isolation blocks, three-way inertial components—all in their hands.’
‘According to the original plan, the operation was already complete. All they had to do now was go back the way they came…’
Her thoughts had only gotten that far before she cut them off.
Selin had just blown the Clearance Runner’s docking connection apart with her own hands. Now they couldn’t even grab the parts and leave.
“Selin,” Gorgon said after a few seconds of silence. “Can you pull up the Weapons Deck surveillance footage from eight months ago?”
There was no immediate reply. From the other side of the comm, only the clatter of keys came through, followed by a muttered curse.
“No can do. The Ordnance Officer deleted it. How afraid of this thing was he, to delete the surveillance even before he died?”
“Tch…” Ulga clicked her tongue. “So what now? Try to pull back?”
Gorgon didn’t answer immediately and just kept his eyes on the screen.
He weighed the module case holding the spare parts. It was heavy.
What was inside was enough to bring the Clearance Runner a little back to life. That alone had already been worth the risk of this trip.
If matters had ended there, they should have been figuring out how to withdraw right now.
They shouldn’t dig any deeper. They shouldn’t keep wrestling with a black box that could turn the entire ship into a slaughterhouse.
But the problem was that the thing was watching them. If they didn’t deal with it, the second they stepped out of the Bridge, they might see a dozen or so robots gathered at the door and get riddled with holes.
Even putting that aside, even if they managed to withdraw, as long as that thing remained, the ship would never stop. The Clearance Runner would still be attacked.
And now they knew the mine was still here.
Walking around it when you didn’t know was caution. But knowing and still doing nothing would be stupidity.
Gorgon raised his eyes and looked at them.
“As long as that thing is still there, this ship will keep being a threat.”
“And since it’s valuable enough that the Ordnance Officer left this recording before he died…”
Gorgon paused for a brief moment before continuing.
“Leaving it for someone else would be a waste.”
Ulga actually laughed this time, a genuine laugh.
“I love hearing that.”
Selin was quiet on the comm for half a second before she spoke.
“I’ll remind you of one thing. Even if you know it’s on the Weapons Deck, you can’t find it through normal means.”
A small figure squeezed past Gorgon and walked up to the Master Control Console.
“Isn’t… the space below here empty?” It was Jasmine. The girl rose on her toes and pointed at the area beneath the weapons master control base on the schematic.
“Tch…” Ulga clicked her tongue and started to raise a hand to move Jasmine aside, but Gorgon waved her off, signaling for her not to.
“No,” Gorgon said. He lowered his head and studied the small thing seriously.
“The base has a buffer layer, damping layer, load-bearing frame, and wiring channels. The problem is this schematic is too old. We don’t know what it was changed into inside after the later reinforcement.”
Jasmine nodded thoughtfully, her expression turning serious.
‘Not empty. That makes even more sense.’
“Zoom in on… here…” Jasmine turned toward the secondary screen showing the real-time surveillance of the weapons console.
Aside from a pool of blood, there was nothing in the feed. No robots, and no corpses.
Selin didn’t move right away and said nothing.
“Do what she says,” Gorgon said in a low voice.
On the other side of the comm, Selin took a deep breath and enlarged the close-up photo of the weapons console.
Jasmine pressed a finger to her lips and turned her gaze back to the pool of blood. The blood wasn’t scattered. There was no spatter, and it didn’t look like signs of a struggle or dragging.
The blood trail dragged out from below, but it formed a whole pool near the base’s outer casing. The man had stayed here for a while.
If he did anything, his final action definitely wasn’t setting the thing down. It was pushing it in.
The girl’s gaze shifted to the console beside it. The casing wasn’t new. Fine, dense wear marks were visible, and there were two kinds of pry marks along the edge.
One was shallow, with even force and intact corners. It had been left by normal maintenance.
The other was deeper, with a lower leverage point. It couldn’t have been an attempt to remove the whole panel. It was only meant to pry open a gap between it and the main body wide enough to fit an arm through.
She stared at that mark for a long time.
What could a person who was bleeding out and knew he didn’t have much time do last?
With his strength fading and his movements rushed, he wouldn’t have spent time removing the whole casing. He could only pry open a gap big enough, push the thing inside, and let the structure clamp it in place.
“I… have to go look here to know for sure.” Jasmine raised her head and looked at the two of them.