I was glad I wasn’t on an exploration team.
Word was, they kept finding signs of a long and bitter fight down in the interior of the ship. Places where battles had moved back and forth across the same area for weeks, with each side improvising defenses that the enemy destroyed when they re-took it. Fabricator bays that had been turned into bot factories, wrecked, repaired and wrecked again. Miniature fusion plants set up in mess halls and cargo bays, to replace the ship’s crippled reactors.
The ship’s crew might have been evil space Nazis, but you had to respect their dedication. They’d sold their lives dearly, and kept fighting to the last man. But in the end there had just been too many bots.
I made a mental note that if I ever had a giant warship of my own to command I’d make sure we had lots of defenses against boarders. A few regiments of marines didn’t seem to get the job done when the enemy could drop millions of warbots on you. Maybe a brigade or two of regular troops, and a giant bot factory somewhere in the interior that we could fire up to make more defenders if we needed them?
Okay, maybe I was just being silly. It’s not like I was going to be commanding a battleship anytime soon.
The crews investigating the tank farm took a lot longer to get anywhere than I’d hoped. Apparently tracing kilometers of feedstock pipe through a giant maze of corridors and maintenance tunnels wasn’t easy. The salvage ships were providing a lot of their engineering support for that effort, but the Square Deal was still their main base of operations. Which meant that I got to sit around being bored for hours at a time waiting for a call to come in, and then I’d suddenly get eight different people all insisting that they needed a power line or water pipe or a hundred-ton tank of coolant fluid right away. It was a good thing I could multitask, or I never would have been able to keep up with it all.
On our third day of investigation they finally found something promising. Not the gold, but a small tank full of iridium-bearing feedstock that was almost as valuable.
“At current market rates the contents of the tank would be worth about twenty million credits,” the leader of the survey team announced at the inevitable meeting. “The same assembly has similar-size tanks we expect will contain other noble elements, including gold and platinum. Unfortunately the tanks are all armored, and the contents have long since frozen.”
Lord Yamashida frowned at the display. “Surely this is not the full extent of the cache?”
“No, my lord,” one of the salvage captains hastily interjected. “We’ve identified three other tank farms in the port hangers, and the drone survey indicates that the starboard layout is symmetrical. We think they simply split the valuable elements up among multiple locations to ensure they wouldn’t all be lost to a single catastrophic event.”
“Sounds like the Mirai,” Akio agreed. “Their backup systems have backup systems. How long to extract it all and convert it into a portable form?”
“Probably several weeks, my lord,’ the shipyard chief said nervously. “We’re going to have to cut each tank open, carve up the frozen feedstock inside, and move it to a processing plant to turn it into bars.”
“That is unacceptable,” Yamashida said coldly. “The first courier is due to arrive in eight days, and I expect to have concrete results to report. Put the work crews on double shifts if you must, but I require this project to be completed expeditiously.”
“I’m sure we won’t need to resort to special inducements, Uncle,” Akio said mildly. “Will we, Yumi?”
“No, my lord! We’ll get started right away. I’ll work my girls around the clock if I have to.”
“Good. Now, I understand the marines have some news for us?”
“Yes, my lord.” Major Wen pulled up a cutaway diagram of the ship. “One of my recon teams has found a way down into the objective area. They had to go in through the hole where the number three turret used to be, and open up a route through the lasing chambers and some other engineering spaces. But the security bulkheads in that area were all breached in multiple places by the invaders, just as we’d hoped. We’ve broken through into officer country, and I’ve just received confirmation that the route to the captain’s cabin is clear. If the yard dogs are right about that secure hold’s location, we should find it in the next few hours.”
“Well done,” Akio said with a smile. “At this rate you just may earn yourself a personal reward.”
The inugami practically glowed at that, but Yamashida had to be a wet blanket.
“Let us confirm the discovery before speaking of rewards. We still don’t know if the mirror will be there. The captain may well have moved it for safekeeping, or made an attempt at evacuation.”
“Maybe, but I have a good feeling about this,” Akio said. “In fact, I think this merits some personal attention. If we do find the mirror here, it would be fitting to do it in person.”
“Very well,” Yamashida replied. He studied the twisting route the marines had found through the ship for a moment. “This appears to be a long trip.”
“Ninety minutes or so, my lord,” Major Wen confirmed. “You’ll need to take a shuttle around to the turret we’re using as an entry point, and then descend through the beam aperture. I’d suggest bringing a strong escort with you, just in case. We’re finding a lot of intact warbots down there, although so far none have gone active.”
“Of course,” Akio agreed. “There’s no reason to take unnecessary risks. Alice, would you like to come with us?”
“Me?” I squeaked. Darn it, so much for acting mature.
“If your captain has no objections. This could be a historic moment, if the mirror is actually there.”
“That’s fine,” Captain Sokol chuckled. “I’m sure the salvage work can spare her for a few hours.”
“Um, sure,” I said. “Only, these Inner Sphere warbots make me nervous. Is it alright if I bring a couple of shield bots, and an anti-bot weapon? Just in case something wakes up at an awkward moment?”
“Certainly, Alice. Take whatever precautions you wish.”
That was how I ended up venturing into the heart of the wreck with a bunch of heavily armed yakuza, with only Emla and a couple of shield bots to watch my back. Well, and maybe Akio. He might be a crime boss, but I was starting to feel like I could rely on him to look out for me.