Honor - Kevin Killiany [26]
As if in answer, a column of blinding light descended from the sky.
Chapter
12
“It looks like weapons damage,” Corsi said, eyeing the warped access panel beneath her gloves.
“I would love to disagree with you,” Pattie’s musical notes sounded in the helmet of her EVA suit. “The thought of someone shooting a cloaked anthropological satellite is disturbing. Especially one orbiting a preindustrial world. But armor damage is consistent with a barrage by several very large lasers.”
Corsi nodded to herself as she keyed the release sequence on the access panel. She could have done this from the Shuttlecraft Shirley hanging a few dozen meters away, its rear hatch gaping toward them, but where was the fun in that? She enjoyed the EVA work.
Not as much as Pattie seemed to be enjoying Waldo Egg. The Nasat was delighted with what she called her demi-Work Bee.
Resembling an upright egg with four manipulative arms, the Nasat-specific design had been the brainchild—and personal project—of Louisa Weldon, an engineer with the S.C.E. team on the Khwarizmi. Her special interest was adaptive technologies to enable nonhumanoids to interact effectively aboard admittedly humanoid-centric Federation vessels. She’d known Pattie for years, Corsi had learned, and had designed Pattie’s special chairs aboard the da Vinci.
Her latest invention was allowing Pattie to be the main muscle as they uncased the anthropological satellite. An unaccustomed role she was clearly enjoying as she easily manipulated the massive sections of shielding.
For her part, Corsi was finding it a little tougher going than she would have liked.
When working this close to an atmosphere, Starfleet SOP required her to wear an emergency jump harness over the standard EVA suit. Little more than an ablative heat sheath that gloved over the suit proper with a rear-mounted chute harness, it was designed to get a spacewalker safely to the surface in an emergency.
She had jumped in an emergency rig before, of course, in training. Though it was nowhere near as maneuverable or versatile as an orbital jumpsuit, it got the job done. She also understood the logic behind using safety equipment, especially in such a hostile environment. What she hated about it was the fact that it was piggybacked on her regular EVA suit, adding stiffness and bulk she did not enjoy working against.
And this was the first of twelve satellites, though—if things went according to mission specs—it was the only one they were going to have to field strip.
The Zhatyra system was unusual in that it had two class-M planets, both of which had developed sentient life. Corsi wasn’t up on the details, but knew Zhatyra II, floating directly behind her, had a preindustrial culture while the most advanced nations on Zhatyra III were analogous to mid-twentieth-century Europe. The orbits of the two worlds were such that twice a year they were close enough to affect each other’s tides.
The effect was small, only detectable with sophisticated seismic scans. And it was twice during one of the planet’s years, but not the other’s.
Corsi shook her head, clearing the cobwebs.
“What have you got there, Pattie?” she asked, realizing her partner had been silent for several minutes.
“I’m changing my assessment from one heavy laser barrage to several individual laser hits,” the structural specialist said. “The damage indicates remarkably consistent and massive bolts, but metal fatigue and decay around the hits varies from two years to a few weeks.”
“So whoever’s been shooting our satellite has been coming by every few weeks, firing one shot and then going away again over the last couple of years? That makes no sense.”
“Even more interesting to me is how they were able to detect one, and apparently only one out of a dozen, cloaked anthropological satellites to shoot at in the first place.”
“Might be a—”
The satellite exploded.
After the fact, Corsi’s mind had replayed the vision of a massive column of coherent light coming