Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [53]
Working in pairs, so that anything that happened to one would be documented by the other, the droids fanned out according to a search plan tailored to that class of vessel. The priorities were live weapons, known booby traps, and other possible hazards to the living, breathing search teams that were ready to follow.
The threats were not merely theoretical. The junker Selonia had been badly damaged when a poacher’s bomb disguised as a datapad went off in its hold. A year earlier, the ironically named surveyor Foresight had been destroyed by autofiring laser cannon when search teams tripped an alarm inside an abandoned Imperial cruiser.
But one rule of thumb had never failed the scavengers—if the droids found bodies aboard, there would be no bombs. Imperial guile did not extend to using the bodies of their own as bait for their enemies, and poachers—out of superstition or respect—always cleared the corridors and compartments of corpses.
Still, Norda Proi found that it made him uncomfortable to be gladdened by the sight of bodies aboard the Gnisnal.
“Did you hear about the fellow Republic Security arrested on Derra Four last month?” Proi asked, studying the images being relayed to Steadfast by SM-6. “He had eleven Imperial corpses in cryotanks in a hangar, all of them in full armor or deck uniform. Crazy.”
“I heard,” said Captain Oolas. “Crazy and sad. Apparently he was keeping them until his son was old enough to be told what happened to his mother during the occupation. Seems he planned to hand his son whatever weapon he wanted and let him take his revenge.”
“I’m glad I had a normal father,” Proi said, switching the display to the signal from SM-1.
Captain Oolas sat back and folded his hands on his lap. “I’m glad my homeworld was never occupied by the Empire.”
At that moment, SM-1 bumped against a floating body, sending it slowly cartwheeling away. But for just a moment, the face of a dead Imperial petty officer—burned by fire or explosion and blistered by decompression—seemed to hover in front of the droid’s optical scanner.
“You know, Lieutenant,” said Oolas, “even a just war doesn’t look quite so gloriously heroic to those of us who have to pick up afterward.”
“I won’t disagree,” said Proi. “I’m glad it’s over.”
The droid team of SM-3 and SM-4 found what was left of the power and propulsion decks of the Gnisnal: a jungle of scorched and twisted durasteel yawning open to space.
“The explosion was internal, all right,” Norda Proi said after studying the side-by-side images sent back by the droids. “Looks like a failure of the primary transfer coupling for the solar ionization reactor. Which is about as foolproof a piece of equipment as there is aboard a Star Destroyer.”
“Sabotage?”
“Or plain bad luck,” said Proi. “Whatever happened, it dropped the hyperspace motivator right down the pipe into the reactor core. The secondary explosion broke her back and carried away just about everything below the twenty-sixth deck. Poor sods wouldn’t have had any warning at all. Concussion alone probably killed most everyone on the upper decks.”
Proi switched to the signal from SM-5 and SM-6, which were slowly making their way to the bridge.
“Ensign, what would the normal ship’s complement be for the intact portion of the Gnisnal?”
“One moment, sir,” said the rating, leaning over his console. “At battle stations, approximately twelve thousand. At normal watch stations, approximately seven thousand, four hundred.”
“Too many to take home,” said Oolas.
Norda Proi shook his head. “Chances are half the crew or more was comprised of conscripts, most of them from what are now New Republic worlds,” he said. “I’ll put in a request to have a fleet transport diverted here to take the overflow.”
* * *
The primary operator for SM-1 sat beside data analysis droid DA-1 at a console in Steadfast’s forward hold. Together they monitored in real time the steady stream of images and sensor data from inside Gnisnal. A few steps away sat the operator for SM-2 and his analysis droid, performing the same tasks in parallel.