Despite the extensive external damage, a quick scan showed that Dark Starr was as operational and as airtight as any well-maintained starship. Silver had no reason to be worried about depressurization, so she squirmed out of her pressure suit. The pre-set temperature of Dark Starr's life support system was too hot for her to wear a pressure suit meant to keep a pilot warm against the absolute zero of space, and it was damaged as well so she had no regrets in taking it off. Although humans like temperatures less than 80° F, Dilgar preferred it between 80° and 90°, further proof of the ship's preprogramming.
Without the bulky suit, Silver now had control over her fingers again and felt comfortable looking at the damage on her pressure suit without the fear of accidently electrocuting herself again. Like all pilots, Silver was wearing a form-fitting one-piece jumpsuit under the pressure suit, so it wasn't as if she was naked. She even had a pair of booties on that fit within the gravity boots of the pressure suit.
Just as Silver suspected, her suit was trashed. There was no way she could repair the damage to its systems so she didn't bother wasting her time trying. It had been easy to reactivate the Dark Starr's communication array and then set it to scan through human frequencies to find Babylon 5 or a Starfury. She looped a simple SOS signal and her ID through the communicator, and then set the nav computer to search for any Jumpgate beacon or other ship's nav computer. This gave her four ways of finding her way back to civilization.
Since there was nothing she could do until Babylon 5, a Starfury, a Jumpgate beacon, or another ship was located Silver abandoned her pressure suit and left the bridge. This ship had been purposely scarred to look like it was a wreck not worth anyone's attention, and then set adrift in Hyperspace by the Dilgar so the Earth Alliance would not capture it. There had to be something very important on this ship to make them go to such trouble, and Silver wanted to find out what.
With main and auxiliary power restored, and without the pressure suit, Silver had no trouble walking from the bridge. She started her search at the aft of the ship where the engines were, and checked to make sure they really were functional while she was there. Despite the intense damage and appearance, they were indeed operational. This ship even had a Jump drive to open a Jump gate on its own, rare for such a small ship.
Nothing struck her as particularly odd as she began to walk back to the bridge. The ship's cargo bay was mostly empty with a few crates of rations, basic medical supplies, tools and extra parts, and sheets of metal to mend hull breaches with. Where was this ship's secret that the Dilgar had wanted to protect?
Dark Starr was a small ship, so Silver found herself back in the hall that led to the bridge before long. She checked the mess hall to the right first. One door led to a dining hall with a table able to sit six people, chairs, and a kitchen next to it. The full kitchenette that took up half of the area, and Silver was surprised again to see it on such a small ship. She remembered the food crates in storage and poked her head into the only bathroom she had found. Nothing out of the ordinary there either, so she left to check the quarters.
The crew quarters in the room closer to the bridge were simple with bunk beds set into the wall, a sink with a mirror in the wall, a table with two chairs, several shelves, and a closet split in half. Like with most ships, Dark Starr functioned better with a co-pilot, but it was small enough that a single person could manage it. There was nothing in the barren quarters besides the furniture, and a search left Silver empty-handed.
That meant that the last room to search was the passenger quarters. There had to be something in there worth hiding. Silver didn't believe for a second that it was a file in the computer. There were infinitely easier ways to hide digital information then to do as they had with Dark Starr, so whatever was on his ship was a solid object instead of bytes in cyberspace.
Either she had missed it, or it was in the passenger quarters. She tapped on the door control to the room, and it beeped at her. Silver hesitated and gave the control an odd look. When she repeated her attempt to enter it beeped at her again and did not open.
"Locked," Silver hummed. "Well, that's not the least bit suspicious."
She knelt closer to the panel and ran her fingers around the edge of it. For maintenance purposes, it was possible for her to remove the panel and expose the circuitry behind it. Once she had access to the wires, it was simple for her to override it. There was a trick with Dilgar tech, and luckily for her she knew Dilgar tech.
The door beeped at her again, but the beep slurred and fizzled out. There was a click noise and the door slid open. Silver smiled and stood, glad that her near-death experience hadn't made her lose her touch.
She peered around the open doorframe, still sitting down, and was so surprised by what she saw she lost her balance and collapsed flat on the floor with an oof. Silver sat back up quickly and dusted her jumpsuit off, really glad no one had been around to see that. There was no mistaking what she saw inside the quarters though. Rigged up in self-sustaining technology was a cryonic freezer unit, and it was active.
Silver stood and warily approached it as if expecting it to pounce at her. It was stupid, but she approached that way anyway. The cryotube was old technology, old enough to be from before the Dilgar's destruction. The glass window was frozen over and Silver stood over it before slowly reaching out with her sleeve and running her arm across it.
Had Silver been holding something, she would have dropped it when she saw who was inside. Instead, she turned to the monitors and checked the vitals quickly, but the inhabitant of the cryotube was alive and perfectly stable.
"No way," Silver whispered.
She looked back at the person in cryonic suspension. It was a Dilgar, pureblood likely, but it wasn't a Warmaster of the Dilgar's army or Jha'Dur herself. Sleeping inside the cryotube was a Dilgar girl, maybe ten years old by human time.
"A girl," Silver whispered. "The point behind disguising this ship is a girl? Why would they go through all this trouble just to hide one girl?"
The next question became who was she, but Silver didn't know. Perhaps it was time to search the ship's data banks for information, assuming she was able to get access to the main computer. Silver shook her head in surprise, not expecting to see another pureblood Dilgar with Jha'Dur dead.
Her throat tickled suddenly, causing her to cough. It was a deep, harsh cough that came from deep in her diaphragm. Silver clapped a hand over her mouth as the coughs racked her system, and leaned against the cryotube with her free hand. There was a metallic taste in her mouth, and Silver froze. Very slowly, she lowered her hand from her lips and saw that there was blood splattered onto the palm just like there was in her mouth.
"Blood," Silver whispered. "I'm coughing up blood."
Was it because of oxygen loss? No, that didn't make any sense. Silver curled her fingers to her bloody palm and suddenly ran from the room with the Dilgar girl to the bridge. Desperately she tapped on the panels to access the computer. Jha'Dur and the rest of the Dilgar often used bio-weapons against their enemies. Whose ship was this?
Silver had an access code from her pureblood Dilgar grandmother, and it was enough for her to open the mainframe and start scrolling through it. She froze on the ship's ID number. The last two digits of the series of number and letters were 'XX.'
"Oh shit," Silver whispered and leaned back in the chair. "Guess I shouldn't have taken off my helmet after all."
XX was used for ships registered to any of the many bio-weapon laboratories. Silver would admit that the Dilgar were clever. The oxygen in the life support system was tainted with a bio-weapon, probably one of Jha'Dur's from how fast it had begun affecting her. Any Dilgar would know the ship's air was infected with a virus, but unwelcome boarding parties would not. This way, if anyone besides the Dilgar tried to board the ship chances were that they would be killed by the virus.
Silver hadn't had a choice but to foolishly trust this ship's life support because of how low her oxygen had been, but it still was a costly error. She had fallen right into it.
"Give me a break," Silver growled. "I survive getting onto this ship, not an easy thing to do, and now I'm going to be killed by some defensive virus?"
As if fate was agreeing with her question she coughed again, and hacked up a mouthful of blood onto the sleeve of her jumpsuit when she covered her mouth with an arm. She didn't doubt that the girl in the cryotube had the same polluted air in the lifesupport system, and the girl had simply taken an antidote. That way, there was no way an unwelcome guest would survive because there was no clean air on the ship. Harmony Silver had survived Hyperspace without a Starfury and found the secret of Dark Starr, but she wasn't going to live to tell the tale.
The beacon she had set up would likely catch someone's attention at some point, so the Dilgar girl would finally be brought out of cyrosleep. Silver didn't think it would happen quickly enough to save her though, and she was starting to feel light-headed and hot despite being comfortable before. Her vision blurred a little and she felt herself start to fall over off the chair.
Silver forced herself to stay in the seat and altered her message that she was broadcasting, adding a few words: ship infected quarantine. This way anyone who found the ship would be warned of her mistake. It might scare away a civilian craft from rescuing her, but at least they wouldn't become infected with Jha'Dur's leftover surprise. At least Silver assumed this was Jha'Dur's handiwork, but it might not be.
It would be a bad idea to forcibly bring the Dilgar girl out of a deep, long cryosleep herself, so Silver decided to leave her alone. She should be woken at a medical facility. Now at last, someone stood a chance of finding Dark Starr.
"Come on Babylon," Silver whispered. "You better find Dark Starr, or that girl's going to be the only thing alive."
She coughed again, and blood dribbled down her lower lip and dripped onto her jumpsuit. Silver wiped the blood away from her lips with the back of a hand, and then looked at the smear darkly. Babylon had better make it soon.
At last, we meet the girl in the title, but exactly what gift does this girl have and why did the Dilgar go through so much trouble to hide her? Perhaps if Babylon finds Dark Starr before the virus kills Silver, she'll get some answers, and so will you readers.
