The red plasma barrage struck her shields dead on, almost as soon as the door opened. A glance at her hud told her that it had drained twenty percent of her personal shield in an instant. However, before she could process that, her training took over. She slipped into a covered position, and readied her weapon. A second barrage of red plasma bolts slammed into the wall with a few zipping past her into the corridor. Her trained eyes spotted the source, two plasma turrets, ceiling mounted, with an angle on the door. As she took aim she cursed the brutal brilliance of the designers. 

A single blue-green beam of phased plasma lanced from her arm to the first turret. The stream punched through the armored security turret. Melting the far more delicate internals. The melted turret fell silent as its friend fired another barrage. At the same moment, one of the others counter fired with their own shot. A second beam of phased plasma tore through the second turret while it was still firing, causing it to sputter and die.

Seeing no other threat, she commented, “You know, those turrets were brutally placed. If we didn’t have shields they might have killed us.”

Iris commented, “We would have needed to be more cautious in that case.”

Kiru nodded. Although looking around, she noted that cover around the door was generally poor, and that the controls were placed in such a way that it was impossible to open it without exposing yourself to both turrets. It was good defensive design, but that only made it annoying for them to deal with.

She took another look around the room. The smashed lockers, and the corpse she noted earlier. Nothing seemed useful, but the presence of the corpse seemed interesting. She commented on it, and then May noted, “I’m not an expert on corpses, and neither is anyone else here, but from what I understand that corpse could have very well been here since the ship crashed.”

Kiru nodded, and tried to put that in perspective. If true, that corpse was positively ancient. Old enough that Kiru knew many scientists would kill for a chance to study it. A fact that weirdly enough meant that the most valuable item in this wrecked arms locker was in fact not a weapon, but the dead body. Although there was one weapon still here, the one that the corpse was holding. None of the lockers still held weapons. Well, intact weapons anyway. She did spot a few smashed rifles in the lockers, but she presumed most of the weapons were elsewhere on the ship. Most likely distributed to the crew during the battle that led to the crash. The active defense system helped discount other possibilities.

The group then made for the maintenance hatch. While discussing their route deeper into the ship. The nearest security station was on this deck. Reaching it would be the challenge though. The deck was in shambles, and they could not rely on the schematics. They did have the recon data from the advanced probes, and drone scouting. Unfortunately the weaker scanners on those things couldn’t penetrate deeply into the hull. The ship’s hull alloys apparently absorb sensor pulses. The only sensors that could penetrate the hull, and give them a full view of the interior would have been the Constellation’s short range scanners, but those had a maximum range of one light second. Meaning that with the ship orbiting another planet, and not being near the moon, they didn’t have that scanner data. As such they were going to have to find it the old fashioned way.

Pulling herself out of the cramped maintenance crawlway, Kiru looked around. Thankfully there were no turrets shooting at them. She did notice a burned turret husk twenty meters down the hall. She knew they didn’t shoot it, but that didn’t mean someone else didn’t. Kiru turned to help May out, and pointed the turret out.

May responded, “No certain way to know for sure, but it was likely knocked out in a firefight before the crash.” She then pointed at various scorch marks on the walls, and the remains of damaged barricades. Not to mention the scattered weapons. No corpses, but there were odd piles of dust. “There was clearly a firefight in this corridor. Not too shocking though, since our goal is just past that turret there.”

Kiru sighed, “good thing too. I don’t like getting shot at.” Since they started, they had wandered half the deck, and been shot at multiple times by still functioning turret emplacements. This was the first time they had found one not functioning.

A couple moments later they were joined in the corridor by Qei and Iris. Who then looked around as well, and Qei said, “Yeah it definitely looks like a firefight happened here.”

“Makes one wonder why we didn’t find firefights elsewhere on the deck.”

“Maybe not, there should be an airlock just over there. Although by the looks of things, it has been thoroughly buried,” commented Iris while pointing at a collapsed bulkhead.

“It looks like the crew must have repelled the boarders, at least on this deck.”

“Well we can sit here all day and speculate, but I am sure we will find all the answers in the ship’s computers. Let’s push on and check out that security station. Hopefully the consoles are still working.”

They made their way down the corridor, but soon discovered that the blast door leading into the security room was sealed shut. Worse, the entire door frame was warped. The blast door would not be opening again. From the look of it, it seemed someone had tried to smash their way in, but the door never broke. 

Kiru commented, “I guess we are cutting our way in.”

Iris looked it over and agreed, “Unfortunately that does seem to be the case.”

“Qei interjected, “I could try looking for another way in.”

May said, “You do that, While Kiru and I get started on the cutting. This might take awhile.”

“I’ll take a quick look around as well. See if I can’t find some computer access.” said Iris.

As Kiru and May started on cutting open the door, Qei and Iris started looking around. Each one had differing goals though.

As it turned out, it took hours to cut through the door. No surprise there, it was a blast door afterall. It was designed to be hard to breach, and the only cutting tool they brought along was their own wrist cannons. Technically the pistol could do it too, but it was decidedly less powerful, and therefore didn’t count. Not in Kiru’s mind anyway. Qei was unable to find a second way into the room. Qei did find a maintenance path that came close. Unfortunately at some point, part of that crawl space had collapsed. If there had been a second entrance there, it was out of their reach. Much easier and safer to just keep cutting through the door, than to risk trying to unbury that path.

Iris on the other hand, did manage to find a local computer node, in an office several doors down to the aft. Unfortunately it didn’t have access to the main database or anything important. What it did have was a cargo manifest, and quite a few records on past cargo runs. Apparently, it was the office of the ship’s chief logistics officer, who kept meticulous records on a secure non-networked computer protected by multiple layers of security. Including a memory wipe protocol. Iris had just finished telling Kiru how she managed to get past that one, when the door finally fell open. 

Kiru, hoping for something more interesting, asked, “About that manifest you found, anything interesting on it?”

Iris frowned, “for the most part no. At least until I gave it a second look. Most of the cargo they carried was typical organic cargo for planet seeding. There is, however, mention of an artifact being stowed in the secure bay. Apparently at their last stop they picked up a Hisharri Artifact, but other than being Hisharri there is no mention of what it was. In fact the lack of detail is what makes that line item stand out.”

Kiru cocked her head to the side, one ear rising, “Hisharri? Who in the cursed Abyss are they?”

Iris sighed, “Can’t really tell you. I don’t know much more myself.”

Qei interjected, “Just open a downlink with the Constellation. The ship’s library likely has full info on them.”

Iris shifted, her eyes seemed to flash, and then her face widened, “Interesting. Alright, it seems the Hisarri were the oldest race known to the Empire. The Solean people made first contact with them in the year 8882 SDE, when one of their scouts was found spying on the Cityship, Berlin, and was promptly engaged by the cruiser Columbia’s Vengeance. The ship was destroyed with all hands, despite being significantly more advanced than Alliance vessels of the age.

“Three weeks later that same fleet encountered one of their capital ships for the first time, a massive ship in its own right, and fairly powerful as well. Communications were actually exchanged then, but so were hostilities. In the ensuing battle the Hisarri vessel was disabled and boarded, but not before she sank twelve cruisers, and a battleship. The Alliance pilfered quite a bit of advanced technology from that ship, and learned that the Hisarri had thought the one ship sufficient to sink their entire fleet, if need be. However, they had underestimated Solean abilities because the Solean power signatures were quite low, and Solean armor is very unique. In addition, it had been a very long time since they had encountered anyone with powers that rivaled their own. That loss must have scared them as well, since there were no further encounters. For the Alliance anyway.

“The Solean Empire would later encounter them when they returned to the region first charted by the Berlin and her escorts. That third encounter was also where hostilities resumed.”

Iris paused, and headed into the security room. Kiru took a look around. There was damage everywhere, but the consoles appeared to be mostly intact. Thankfully there weren’t any turrets shooting at them. There was a turret in the room, but it was apparently dead. Not damaged, just dead. Iris cursed when she reached the console.

“Powers dead,” she reported. 

Qei said, “It might be a severed power conduit. I’ll take a look, and see if I can’t fix it.”

Kiru looked towards Iris, “Guess we have time. What happened with that third encounter?”

“When the Soleans entered the region of space for the second time, they sent the cityships, Tokyo, Washington, Empress, and Paris as their vanguard. The first cityship to arrive was Tokyo escorted by the Superdreadnoughts ISS Bane of Fools, and ISS Columbia’s Crusader. She had been in that galaxy for barely a week, when twelve Hisarri capital ships with escorts arrived. The Hisarri apparently remembered the Solean people and weren’t happy to see them back. They tried, and failed to drive the Tokyo off. Their ships while more powerful than the ones encountered all those millennia ago by the Berlin, but were no match for either Imperial dreadnought.

“As it would later be learned, the Hisarri Empire was in decline. That time they knew their ships might not be enough, but they had no more to spare. The rest of their fleet was busy protecting key worlds from encroaching vultures local to their own galaxy. The arrival of the Solean Empire was the last straw. In the remarkably short period of a mere ten years, the Solean Empire would conquer the Hisarri Empire, and bring stability back to the region.”

“So I take it that the Hisarri are now another member species of the Empire?”

Iris shook her head, “I’m afraid not. You see there was a reason their empire was declining. The Hisarri race was dying when they were conquered.”

“Dying? How? Some kind of plague?”

Iris gave her a look, and said, “Unfortunately no. The Hissari made extensive use of cloning. It isn’t clear as to how, but at some point they stopped reproducing naturally and ended up reproducing solely through cloning. Unlike the Soleans however, they never solved the problem of replicative fading. The Empire already had the solution for that at the time, but it was too late for the Hisarri. They had been cloning themselves too long. However, that isn’t to say the Empire couldn’t help the Hissari people. They did, Imperial techniques bought them another hundred thousand years, but eventually the end came.”

“In other words, an entire race went extinct due to an over reliance on cloning?”

“Basically. However, they didn’t stay extinct. In the year 2,891,243, the Empire found one of their colony ships. A malfunction in its navigation system had sent the ship into deep space, but it had millions of specimens from before their cloning program became irreversible in stasis. Not all of them survived the eras, but enough were intact for the Empire to reseed their species.”

At that moment the console came to life, but thankfully the dead turret stayed dead. Qei came back, “Found the short. I was able to restore power without reactivating that turret.”

Iris smiled, “Good work. Let’s see if we can’t shut down the security grid.”

Moments later, Iris looked up from the console. “Alright security grid is down. I was also able to access the internal sensors. I’ve updated our tactical systems with a full map of the ship, and points of interest. Found something interesting as well.”

“Interesting? What kind of interesting?” asked Kiru.

May glanced at the console, clearly curious, and Qei looked inquisitive.

“This ship has a full military grade AI core. Same grade as the one on the Constellation. According to internal sensors however, it’s currently in hibernation mode.”

That sounded interesting alright, and it sounded like they just found a new objective. A core like that would need to be recovered. Thankfully it wouldn’t be much of a detour, but Kiru figured it would be a good idea to update Megumi on their progress.