"Survey Says" (Part 3)
Jonathan irritably waved off Miles as the radio crackled back to life. "We're coming out. I think we'll arrive in ten minutes." Anthony sounded tired, quiet. "And we need to have another meeting."
"What did you find?"
"We'll discuss it when we're all on board. Once we are, have the radio shut down entirely."
Jonathan nodded and stood up, looking to Miles. "Get the ship ready to lift, just in case." He started to compose things to say in his head, only stopping as the rest of the team climbed into the room and seeing the look on their faces. He clicked and the radio powered down, before he started making one question come to the front. "What the hell happened down there?"
"We found a base which has been quite abandoned." Anthony said, climbing to a seat slowly. "But inside it the place goes down quite a bit, built to be a landing area and a loading dock. The emergency power systems are still working, and we're reasonably sure you could turn the place back on."
"What is it?"
Ivan rummaged in one of the compartments and removed a bottle of Tharkad Schnapps. He pointed at Leonard and then opened the bottle to take a long drink, handing it over. "It's an outpost of some sort. There's BattleMechs in there, and they're old."
"Functional?" Jonathan looked around the room.
"We can't be sure. But even if not, there's some old machines in there and the spare parts could be valuable whether or not the whole thing worked." Leonard pointed out. "And if there's any data, that could be very valuable."
"That could be... interesting."
"Yeah. Interesting." Ivan sighed. "You know what would happen if we reported it? We'd be called liars, our contract terminated, and they'll sweep in to look this place up. We'll never be paid, at all."
Leonard accepted his own drink, looking into it. "And if we kept it secret and sold it to anyone else, the same result. This is too valuable, and too hot to handle. We should forget this happened at all."
"Except we'll have to doctor logs and sensor readings to show nothing was here, and make sure we leave no evidence there was anything here we would have to disclose." Belle said slowly.
"No! We should not mess with it." Jonathan winced, and waved off the bottle Leonard offered him, which caused it to go to Anthony instead. "We should just report there was nothing of value."
"It'll make them suspicious, and they would hold our payment until they investigated." Belle sighed. "I don't know, this is a bad position to be in."
"Do I get a vote?" Miles said, and Anthony passed him the bottle. There were two swallows, as the pilot sighed afterwards. "Disgusting. Anyway, we could just make a run for it."
"Oh, good, you have money for the Jumps?" Ivan rolled his eyes.
"Not exactly, but if we can barter passage we can maybe get somewhere we could offer our services. Like New Avalon?"
"I'm not liking that plan." Anthony said slowly, taking the bottle back and drinking. "We don't have anything to offer them."
"What about this location?" All of the team looked around. "Look, let's finish the system first. We'll decide once we finish." Miles set the bottle on a counter. "Can we at least agree on that?"
"Sure." Jonathan shrugged a shoulder. "I'll take some dull outer-system searches and time to get over the question. We will come up with something else soon enough, right?"
Ivan was tinkering with a part as Anthony entered the common cabin. "Morning, such as it is." He said mildly. "Two months and nothing out of the ordinary. Some valuable ore, but not enough of it to make it worth the time. A bust." He pointed the part at the wall vaguely. "And of course, a broken sensor array which wore out. Trying to figure out which of the sensitive parts decided to quit."
"So, that leaves us still having the problem of the question." Anthony settled himself on a wall, floating there. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking we agreed to decide once we finished, and this is premature." Ivan said neutrally. "Isn't it?"
"I need to know which way things are leaning. I don't want to split us up on this." Anthony admitted after a moment of thinking. "This thing could blow up very bad in our face."
"How nice of you to admit this is dangerous, and generous to think of us as a group worth keeping."
"I'm being serious about this."
Ivan returned to working on the part, silent for almost a minute until Anthony was about to return to the personal cabins. "You know Belle wants to publish? Not just admit we found it to the company, but put the data out there for anyone? And you worry about agreeing on what we want to do about the find?" He glanced up, hands stopping. "We're skirting very dangerous options here, Anthony. Even if the big fish aren't interested in the base, there's probably some little predator ready to slip in to take us apart to get to it. We're talking at least a dozen operable machines, at best. At worst, a dozen they can take and start repairing. Instantly, they have a hand at the table of any small-scale conflict."
"Ivan-"
"Leonard's mentioned that too, you know. He's all for simply getting some mining charges and collapsing the hallways and 'Mech Bays on them."
"It's not a good idea to do that."
"Why not? We could say we found them that way. It'd be fine, nobody would think differently." Ivan looked back at the part. "But of course, you and Jonathan are too busy thinking about following the rules. He wants to maintain the integrity of the data, you want to maintain the integrity of the team, and the rest of us just want to get out of this paid and alive."
Anthony sighed slowly. "You have a point, but-" He stopped as something started to beep over the sensor scan. "Miles, are you getting this?"
"Some kind of beacon." The pilot called back down. "It looks like an automated distress call. Pretty weak though. I'm going to follow it."
"Is that wise?"
"Do you know what the charges are for ignoring a distress call? I could lose my ship and my right to pilot." Miles shot back. "I'll have more data soon, this faint means it can't be far."
"Something's up with the signal." Ivan frowned, and turned to listen in. "Anthony, come over here and-"
Anthony nodded, listening, and hesitated. That was standard Star League code, same as every ship uses for centuries now. Everyone uses it, there's no sense getting excited. Or to have your stomach open up into an empty pit of gnawing dread. "It's what you think it is." He said instead. "Distress call, SLDF Standard code."
"It's not just that, check this out." He plotted some data points, and showed Anthony. "It's being directed back towards the planet with the base. Directed as though it expects someone to pick up."
"You're misinterpreting the data, based on the information you want to find." Anthony said sharply. "There's no way that is the case. It is simply the only inhabited planet in the system, so it's directed where it's most likely someone will hear."
"Go get the others."
Anthony hesitated, then climbed to the cabins to rouse them from their rest. Belle seemed quieter as she guessed something had happened, and Leonard was more upset he was pulled out of a dream. Jonathan was the only one looking more interested than invested in their own world. Once there, Miles had already reported in, and they climbed to check the video feed.
Sitting out there was a long cylindrical ship, with a few sections built outwards from the central cylinder at the fore, aft, and middle. At the fore, an adjoined pod had a glassy dome shattered open, stripped bare it looked like. At the aft were several spiky limbs spread out, one of them damaged and a few holes punched through the front. But all of them knew what it was before the image fully resolved. "God damn it." Leonard pushed from the console. "This can't be happening."
"Calm down." Anthony turned his head.
"Oh no. Not yet. Do we have any registry signal on it? Do we know who owns it?"
Miles' voice came through, more distracted. "It's not broadcasting it. I don't think there's any crew on board. I'd need to get closer to tell about much. Though if you check, an impact has shattered the dome on the side there. Combined with other hits I can track down and guessing by the density of what's out here? I'd say it's been out here for more than a year, probably more than three. If anyone lost it recently, they'd have found it."
"No." Leonard muttered, and put a hand over his mouth.
"This changes things." Jonathan said softly.
"Yeah? Better or worse?" Ivan asked bitterly.
"I will have to get back to you on that. But this? We need to report this. This can't go unreported."
"Yeah." Anthony finally said. "We need to report this for sure. Someone lost an Invader-class JumpShip out here. and lost it very well."
"I'm going to be sick."
"Leonard, not now!" Belle snapped, turning her head, then looking back at the image. "Do you know if it has drive functions? Is the KF Drive intact? If it's not, then the thing is worthless."
Miles spoke back, half-annoyed and half-shaken. "It's worthless anyway. We can't get someone out here to fix this without tipping our hand, and if you all were worried about BattleMechs, a JumpShip is going to be exponentially worse for us. We're not capable of fighting anyone off, and everyone will want this thing, and cheerfully put is in nice unmarked graves for a chance at making it here first."
Jonathan spoke up, coughing into a hand. "To be fair, it is more probable they will just space us."
"Thank you, Jonathan, that's just going to settle my worries."
"I live to serve."
"Knock it off." Anthony sighed, and rubbed at his eyes, wincing. "We need a plan here."
"Hopefully you can come up with one soon, because I'm at the limit now for my fuel. I got enough to make it back to civilization safely, but if we don't leave now then we'll be chancing it." Miles spoke very slowly. "Your time starts now, I've dropped a mark I can clear within the next four hours. Someone record it off the system so I can erase it and make it look like we were never here."
"I will get on that." Jonathan swung into a console seat. "What after that?"
"Not something I can solve, I can just get you back to ground under your feet. So get started."
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