Collective Hindsight (Book 1) - Aaron Rosenberg [11]
Doors opened off the corridor, leading to small sleeping chambers, possible offices, and even what resembled a medical bay. Several of the rooms contained bodies, and a few were found farther along the hall as well. All of them matched the first corpse in general shape and in cause of death. Judging from Duffy’s intermittent reports, the rest of the ship was much the same, which suggested a force not only powerful enough to char a body to the bone in an instant, but also one fast enough to sweep the entire ship in that same brief moment.
The corridor finally ended in a wide archway. Salek paused just beyond it, to take in the sight before him. It was a single vast chamber, easily large enough to contain the da Vinci itself. Lining the two side walls and the ceiling were flat panels covered in a slight sheen. More panels rested in flat racks that ran the depth of the room in neat rows. Conduits from the panels led to a fat column in the center, whose sides were inset with crystals. The crystals, for their part, were visibly throbbing, and the glow radiating from them lit the entire room easily. They also provided noticeable warmth that could be felt even through the cooling systems of the suits, making this room even hotter than the corridors beyond. Salek, who came from Vulcan’s desert environment, actually found it comfortable, though he suspected the humans were not having as easy a time of it.
“The engine room, without a doubt,” Salek commented, stepping inside and examining the objects all around him. He had begun to form a theory on how this vessel worked, after the initial scans, and now he applied the evidence against his theory to see if it held. It did.
“It would seem that Duffy’s conjecture was correct,” he announced. “This ship does use solar radiation for its power source. These are the storage units, and undoubtedly the larger panels we noticed along the hull, which we initially suspected were nacelles, are in fact the collectors.”
“An entire ship powered by solar energy? Amazing.” Stevens spoke in an awed whisper. Salek understood the sentiment. It was an impressive feat. But right now that was of no concern.
“I’m on the bridge,” Duffy announced. “We’ve got more dead aliens here, most of them sitting in what look a lot like our own command chairs. I’ve yet to find anyone who wasn’t killed the same way.”
“Nor will you,” Salek replied. “I believe the entire ship’s crew died simultaneously as the result of an internal energy release.”
“The ship vented excess solar radiation?” Stevens asked, and he nodded. “That would account for the burns and the lack of air, definitely, and if it had enough pressure built up the release would have flooded the entire ship in seconds. It fits.”
“We will reconvene on the ship’s bridge,” Salek informed him and the others. “Now that we have more information, we can make sense of the larger picture.”
Stevens followed as they left the engine room and moved down the hall, trying not to notice the charred corpses littering their path.
“Okay, so the ship runs on solar radiation, as your brilliant second officer deduced.” Duffy smiled wryly from his perch on the edge of a console. He had not touched any of the corpses yet, and had no desire to move one just to gain a proper seat. No one else did, either. “It takes in too much energy, vents it internally, and kills its own crew. Anyone else see any problems with that?”
“Of course,” Salek replied. “This ship was designed to handle such radiation—hence the conductivity of its hull and the shielding just behind that. A ship made to use stellar energies would have safeties preventing such an overload. Yet the cause of death and the internal damage”—for they had found some evidence of charring in side rooms, where anything not metal had been burnt away—“confirms that the energy was released in this manner.”
“I don