Parek walked through the corridors of his ship headed back to the bridge. There were a dozen other ways to quickly get from one point to another aboard but he'd decided to take the doctor's advice and 'smell the roses' as it were. It also let him see a few more of the small crew than he would normally. As he headed down a long empty stretch of corridor he thought he head whispered voices and turned to see what it was. No one was there, but he called out anyways. "Hello? is anyone in this section?"
Before he could investigate further the ship intercom went off. "Captain to the bridge."
Turning back towards the bridge he sped up and was soon walking through the aft door to the ships control room.
"What's our status?"
"Coming out of warp sir. Sensors think they found a ship."
"All hands to Battle stations."
"One ship, approximately twenty five hundred meters in length."
"Full shields, break formation and surround it." Commanded Parek.
Each of the three ships split off on a slightly different course intended to cut off any escape routes.
"Any movement?" asked the captain.
"None sir. We're only showing minimal power readings... it appears to be adrift sir."
"Stand down to secondary alert but keep the shields up. I want full scans."
Each of the three starships closed in to within a few kilometers as they scanned the apparently dead ship. A large hole bigger than one of the Return Fleet ships was ripped in it's starboard side.
"Life signs?" whispered the captain into the silence that had filled the bridge as they viewed the crippled ship.
"No life signs, no atmosphere, but I'm reading some form of stasis field aboard that would be large enough to hold a human."
"Contact our escorts. Prepare boarding teams from each ship."
Within a half hour two shuttles from each ship were investigating the hole that had been torn in the side of the huge warship. Each of the shuttles disembarked a team of ten on a seperate deck after cutting through closed blast doors.
Parek paced the bridge of his ship waiting. "What have you got team one?"
"Well... these ships look like they were built to be tough I'll give them that. There doesn't appear to be any kind of integrity assistance fields in place, just a lot of metal. We're also seeing a great deal of ornate craving. It sort of... Dorn what's the word for this kind of structuring?"
"Gothic Sir."
"Yeah, Gothic. However tough this ship was we're seeing structural cracks. I'm guessing they were rammed."
"Continue your search Commander, let us know if you find anything."
The search team, with the assistance of an old combat android who'd taken to calling himself 'Starkiller' forced open yet another sealed blast door. This room was still pressurised but was far from habitable with the ship's systems offline. Ice covered most of the room's surfaces.
"A cargo bay, and more bodies." commented one of the scanner techs.
"How many people were on this ship?" asked one of the junior crewman.
"Thousands. Had to be, I'm showing enough automation."
"Commander, this way." came Starkiller's synthesized voice. "These bodies are non standard."
Sure enough, as the team approached they saw a pair of what could have been mistaken to be a crude parody of a combat android but taller. The android and scanner tech both disagreed with that assessment though.
"There are humans inside these suits commander, dead but human."
"They're closer to three meters than two. Are you sure they're human?"
"Absolutely. I say we should take one back for the Doc to look at."
Suddenly something in the darkness moved.
004
