The room beyond the door was roughly oval and probably had been the flight deck at one time. It was somewhat difficult to tell, because the entire room was burnt almost beyond recognition. The walls inside had most likely once been the same color as that of the walls in the corridors, but now they were the color (and texture) of a charred log. There might have been some sort of pilot and copilot's chairs on the other side of the room in front of a long panel of controls, but now there were only two half melted lumps of metal and plastic. The only redeeming quality of the view laid out in front of me was there were no alien bodies.
"Looks like this ship was shot down," the Doctor stated as he stepped into the burnt room.
"By what?" asked Jeni. I wondered that, too, although I was more concerned with whether or not whoever had access to that weapon was after us. Jeni, on the other hand, would want to know the specifics about any weapon that could punch a hole through a force-field and cause this sort of damage. Of course, she'd want to know so she could build one of her own.
"From the looks of the damage: some sort of concentrated beta radiation burst with penetrating plasma casing," the Doctor rambled.
"A what?" I asked because I hadn't understood anything he'd said except for 'radiation'. "Radiation? Is it safe to be standing here?"
"A canon mounted on another ship did this," the Doctor explained at a more normal pace. "Whatever radiation there might have been is long gone by now. You won't get radiation sickness, I promise."
"Okay," I muttered. I was still riding on that weird confidence boost I'd gotten from my newfound ability to read and speak all languages but the fact that some sort of radiation had damaged and burnt this room had made me wary again.
"Let's go and take a look, shall we?" the Doctor said motioning us to follow him into the room.
He didn't wait to see if we would actually follow him and walked across the room to the flight controls for the ship.
I shrugged and looked over at Jeni. I pointed to the right side of the room and said, "I guess I'll start over here."
Jeni nodded and trotted over to the left side of the room.
I stepped into the room and internally cringed at the bizarre crunching sound made by the warped metal-plastic.
Surprisingly, there was not much to examine. The badly melted walls, floors, and ceiling contained no secret compartments or hidden passages. I eventually made my way to the console, at the far end of which the Doctor was working. He had opened it up and was picking through the internal components, although from the look of the melted circuit board he had dragged out of it, I doubted that there was anything salvageable contained within it.
I dropped down onto my hands and knees to check under the side of the console I had come to. I doubted that aliens that were sophisticated enough to invent a vehicle capable of traveling interstellar distances would also have my sense of organization and would shove anything of importance or value under the console but I figured that, since I had nothing better to do, I might as well check anyway.
Like everywhere else I had looked, I didn't see anything that wasn't melted beyond any hope of salvaging. I sighed and went to stand back up, but as I turned my head I noticed something glint out of the corner of my eye. I snapped my head back to stare at whatever had caught my eye. Whatever it was it was half buried in the melted floor and was well out of my reach.
I grumbled something unintelligible and crawled underneath the console. I grabbed hold of the object and slowly pried it free of the floor. The object was a translucent silver and gold sphere about the size of a shooter marble. It wasn't much but at least it was something. I started to turn around under the console but smashed my hand into something hard and sharp.
Author's Note: Hmm, I don't have a lot to say about this chapter. At some point, I think I'm going to have to improve my knowledge of technobable... I suppose that goes with being more of a fan of fantasy than hard-core science fiction. By the way, any technobable I do include is complete gibberish.
Oh, and I apologize that this chapter is fairly short.
I just realized as I got ready to add the next chapter, that the big reveal is in the next chapter. Any guesses? For those of you that are new to this story, I'd be happy to hear what you think. Or if you'd rather not guess, go on ahead and read the next chapter. After all, I'm the one that supposed to tell you what happens, and not the other way around.