"Any sign of the derelict?"
"No sir," replied Serviceman 1st Class Alejandro Martinez.
For the past hour the SSV Peleliu, an Alamo class frigate, had been surveying the Abydos system in search of a derelict ship. Approximately 14 hours ago, a merchant ship leaving New Thebes had reported seeing a derelict cruiser of unknown design in the system. The merchant vessel was not equipped to salvage a derelict so they reported it to the Systems Alliance.
After receiving the report, the Peleliu was dispatched to locate the vessel and recover any survivors or evidence of where it came from.
"For crying out loud, how hard is it to locate a cruiser?" asked Captain Damien Fairbanks, raising his hands in frustration. "I know it's not a dreadnought, but we should at least be seeing some concentration of eezo somewhere."
"I'm sorry sir, we're doing our best. But space is enormous. Even knowing that we're looking for a cruiser-sized vessel with an Element Zero concentration to match, it's like looking for a brick in a miles wide dirt field. Until you get close enough, it's not going to stand out," explained Martinez. He hoped that his explanation would calm the Captain down. Captain Fairbanks had a tendency to launch into long-winded speeches when he got stressed. And Captain Fairbanks got stressed a lot.
"I'll be in my cabin. Let me know if something comes up," snapped Captain Fairbanks as he walked out of the bridge. After he was gone, everyone on the bridge crew breathed a sigh of relief. Any day without one of the Captain's speeches was a good day.
{(|)}
Two more hours passed, and the decision was made to look for large deposits of homogeneous metals. Every Citadel species tended to use one, at most two, different types of metals in their ship construction. By scanning for large deposits of homogeneous metals, they were very likely to find the ship regardless of what it was made of.
Another hour went by with no luck. Suddenly, Serviceman 2nd Class Julie Wong jumped up.
"I think I found it!" she shouted. "There's a large cluster of titanium approximately four-hundred kilometers from the starboard bow!"
"Captain, this is Serviceman 1st Class Martinez. We think we've found the ship," said Serviceman Martinez into the ship's intercom. "Would you like us to set a course for the deposit?"
"Affirmative. Set course for the ship, I'm on my way up," came the reply. The bridge crew sprang into action, taking all the appropriate steps to get the ship on a heading for the strange derelict. A few minutes later the Captain walked onto the bridge.
"Captain on deck!" shouted Serviceman 1st Class Antonio Endrizzi.
"At ease everyone," was the Captain's response. "What's the situation?"
"Approximately 4 minutes ago Serviceman 2nd Class Wong detected a large deposit of titanium approximately four-hundred kilometers from our current position. After notifying you we set a course for it and should be arriving in about two minutes," responded Serviceman 1st Class Martinez.
"Very well. Let me know when we're in visual range."
{(|)}
"Whoa. That's definitely not one of ours," said Serviceman 2nd Class Wong.
"One of ours? That's not even one of the Citadel's!" shouted Serviceman 1st Class Endrizzi.
"Lock it up!" ordered Captain Fairbanks. "How large is that thing?"
"Approximately 300 meters sir with no Element Zero readings. Not one trace of it," responded Serviceman 2nd Class Wong.
"How can you even build something that large without eezo?" Serviceman 1st Class Wood chimed in. "Even frigates need an eezo core."
"It's entirely possible the ship is incapable of faster-than-light travel. The earliest human spaceships had no Element Zero," retorted Serviceman 1st Class Martinez. "What if these people just kept making bigger ships without it?"
"That's enough," ordered the Captain. "Something about it doesn't look right. Wong, zoom in on the front of that ship."
"Aye-aye sir."
The screen magnified the strange vessel and focused on the front of the ship. It soon became obvious that several rooms of the ship were exposed to the vacuum. Of course, that would mean that there was something powerful enough to slice this ship into at least two pieces, possibly more.
"What could have done that?" asked Serviceman 1st Class Wood. "No mass accelerator could slice a ship like that."
"Who cares what did it?" responded Serviceman 2nd Class Wong. "That would mean that this ship is who knows how much bigger. If it got cut in half, then we're looking at a six-hundred meter ship built with no eezo whatsoever. Even if it only lost a hundred meters, that's still larger than any non-Element Zero powered ship has the right to be."
"Helm, take us around the ship," ordered Captain Fairbanks. "I want to see if there are any sort of markings on the vessel that might tell us who it belongs to or where it came from."
"Aye aye sir" responded 2nd Lieutenant Brunelle.
The Peleliu began circling around the ship. After a few seconds they saw a giant white insignia on the port side. It appeared to be a bird of some kind, with its wings outstretched sitting on top of a planet, with some sort of banner below it.
"Amazing," said the Captain. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say it looked almost… human."
"Sir, you're going to want to take a look at this," said Serviceman 2nd Class Wong as she zoomed in a portion of the hull further towards the rear than the insignia.
What was shown on the screen shocked everyone. There, in faded white paint, were English letters and numbers. It was unbelievable. Here was an unfamiliar ship, with no Element Zero readings, and on its hull was a combination of letters and numbers reading "FFG-201".
"I… I'll be in my quarters," stammered Captain Fairbanks. "I need to report to Admiral Zhao. Wood, Wong, Endrizzi, keep scanning the ship and looking for anything else that might be important. Martinez, tell Lieutenant Commander Baxter that I want her and her marines in the cargo bay in 20 minutes. Brunelle, keep circling the ship."
"Aye-aye sir!" came the response from all of them as they rushed to do as he ordered. As the Captain walked off the bridge the only thing anyone could think about was that strange ship. There was no way it could be human. It just wasn't possible. But, right in front of them, were those six little English letters and numbers: FFG-201.