The Goddess of the Hunt. Part 1
31 Jul 2018Ouberos
There are people who think that history should remain where it lies. So strong is this conviction, they erect barriers in their minds and for these people, terms such as “desecration” and “sacred” create a restraining taboo. I am not one of those people. I am an avowed free thinker. If I can conceive of a thing I will carry it through to conclusion. My actions upon the universe are my own and not the aggregation of superstitious fears and compromise. If these actions occur to the detriment of others then so be it and If consequence comes my way I will resolve it or I will suffer it. Science tells me that once I have died I will have escaped any future consequence and so my actions are not softened by the need to placate the Fates, Karma or any mythical ancestors who might otherwise enforce judgement on my final rest. Kara, my associate says I think this way because I am an unsociable loner with a personality disorder.
But what does she know? She kills people by accident and makes movies about it.
My belief in my own certainty is the reason we had come to Mu Cassiopea. It was the reason we were camped outside the enormous hulk of a dead Generation ship. The travellers onboard the Artemis were long dead. Murdered in fact. For some people this meant that the ship was now off limits. For some people the ship was now a sacred site that should be left unmolested. A mausoleum to the brave souls who had set out on their doomed wagon train to the stars.
For me it was nearly three million cubic tons of salvageable antiques and scrap.
I had brought my T9, “Nothing to Declare” and set it down on the superstructure. Harpoon bolts held us in place. We had cut a way in and attached a hard seal to the ship so we could navigate between the cargo bay and the Artemis. We were well hidden and the T9 was powered down so if anyone did come looking my ship would only show up when they got close enough to use their mark one eyeball scanners. We had been salvaging for almost four days and the cargo bay was half filled with good stuff. There was radiation pollution but nothing the scrubbers couldn’t reverse. Things were going well.
Which in hindsight should have been the signal to quit but maybe that personality disorder of mine was playing up.
Kara had just screamed and with a knife in both hands had leaped out of yet another dark room, pretending to be the serial killer who wiped out the crew. She made me jump every time she did it and she was in hysterics again. Her mag boots weren’t attached and she curled up in a floating ball of laughter. I pushed her down the corridor and told her I hoped her suit punctured on something. Then I shone my illumination into the room and something small and golden glinted back at me from one corner.
Whatever it was had fallen into a service channel. There was a fixed grill over the top of it and I had to get my wrecking bar out to widen the gaps. Fixing my mag boots down I put my weight behind it and felt the channel give. The glinting thing came out and revealed itself to be a golden device of some kind. It looked like a curled shell on a wide band. My first guess was that it was a necklace. I twisted it in the light and took in the fine detailing. The shell was made of rotating sections. I turned one and the haptic sensors in my gloves picked up subtle clicks as it went around.
“Ooh shiny,” Kara said from the doorway but I made a point of dropping it into the collection net tied to my waist.
“Could have been your shiny if you hadn’t been so busy trying to put the willies up me,” I replied and instantly regretted my poor choice of words.
After a few minutes of innuendo’s and lurid details of how she would love to put willies up me I decided we were done for the day. I could tell she was getting bored with grave robbing and things would only get worse the longer we stayed.
We left the Artemis to her brooding silence and went back to the T9 to make sandwiches.
By the time we had got onboard and removed our EVA suits I had decided the only way to get any peace was to let Kara play with the shell thing while I made food. She cackled in delight and took it off to the cabin she kept her engineering equipment in. I made us both sandwiches with the current stock of mystery meat slices and made sure to put plenty of ketchup on hers and squirt it all over the plate just the way she liked it. Then I sliced a tomato neatly and arranged it on my plate next to my perfectly triangular sandwiches. Seeing the two meals side by side made me realise how different we were.
Then I poured myself a glass of the remaining Azure milk and turned out the lights before taking my meal back to my cabin to enjoy while I checked the markets for movements in the prices of antiquities. After that I decided to turn in for the night.
When I awoke a few hours later I went to make a pot of tea and discovered Kara’s messy sandwich was where I had left it and the bread had gone stale.
I knocked on her door before sliding it open and discovered it wasn’t locked. It was hard to tell if her cot had been slept in. It always looked more like a nest than a bed to me. I figured she must have stayed up to play with the shell thing so I tried her lab. Again the door was unlocked. The occasional flashing light indicated some of her equipment was still operational but the room was empty. I called her name but got nothing so I opened the shipwide comm and asked her to report but the answering silence gave me a bad feeling.
I started to make my way to the helm and passed the airlock. Her EVA suit was gone. She was no longer aboard.
I used the implanted mic and asked for a sitrep but got nothing back which meant she was likely out of range or maybe the radiation was confusing the string. Either way I was going to have to suit up and go look for her. The Artemis was no place to go alone. Empty hulks are a dangerous place. Kara could look out for herself but the ship was heavily irradiated in places. In others it was collapsing in on itself. It was void dark and full of menace.
As I was leaving the ship I noticed the gun locker was also open. I looked at the empty space where a blaster should have been for a time while I got my head round it. There was nothing in that ship which would require a blaster. In fact it was the long dead memories of unhappy death which kept the living away. The superstitious fears of weak minded people were the very reasons we could rob the place with as much leisure as we liked. The only living soul on board that ship was Kara Walden.
I took the other weapon and secured it to my EVA suit.
I hadn’t gone far into the Artemis before I found something illuminated in one of our work lights which made me pull the gun and charge it up. On the wall was fresh blaster damage. I tried the mic again but got nothing. I moved forward more carefully now though and disengaged my mag boots so I could float silently down the hallway. I followed the trail of our lights and occasionally came across more evidence of a firefight. I deactivated my suits telemetry lights and switched on my visors imaging. Then I cautiously headed towards the shattered biodome we had been exploring.
The great domes of the Artemis had at one time been the biological lifeforce of the Generation ship. When the ship left Old Earth the domes had been filled with specimens of everything the colonists would need to sustain their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. Now all that blossoming life giving growth had been stilled forever. Flash frozen by the absolute zero of the Black which found its way inside the domes the moment the reactors had blown.
Despite myself, the first time I had found my way inside and looked through the broken frame of the dome at the blanketing infinity beyond I must admit I did feel the insignificance of our lives weigh on my mind a little. For a few moments I felt something like remorse for the people who had trusted in all of this, who carried it with them and nurtured it so it could sustain them on their slow crawl towards uncertainty. Only for their struggles to be so effectively wiped out by the actions of one of their own. Like a ghost passing through me the feelings left as quickly as they came and I decided that the story of the Artemis was further proof that my own outlook on life was correct. Life isn't a rehearsal. It’s an opportunity.
When I looked up at the broken Biodome this time though I felt no remorse for the dead. All I felt was unease. I couldn’t help thinking that for the second time in its history the Artemis was host to a Sociopathic killer.
A flash of light above the dome caught my eye and if my unease had been sour before it quickly went to the next level. Another ship had dropped in. It was a big one too. Looked to be an Anaconda or something. As I watched it deployed a fighter and turned on its lights. Then it slowed right down and moved out of sight, nose down as it searched the Artemis for something. The Federal Fighter boosted around the roof of the dome a few times and looked to be sizing up the holes.
By the light cast from its thrusters I caught sight of a shadow from something behind me which hadn’t been there a second ago.
“Do you know anything about this?” I asked her and pointed at the Fighter. From the way the shadow shrugged I knew she did.
“You will never guess what that Shell does,” she replied and even through the mechanical voiced EVA comms I could tell she was excited.
Which only added to my problems.
“Can you tell me in less time than it takes that fighter to squeeze through that hole?” I asked her and she replied.
“Oh sure,” she said