With the ship stable at warp the crew was busy with the work that needs to be done after a planetary mission. The equipment that was deployed to the planet needed to be checked, cleaned and sterilized. The crew was mainly busy with the equipment check as the science crew was equally – if not more – busy.
"Data feed to the autolab is reduced but stable, as expected." Sarah reported.
The automated lab they had left behind on the planet was designed for automated long-term research and analysis. A basic AI was controlling different sorts of actuators, sensors and simple robots and was enabled to perform a wide range of tasks. For more complicated tasks and decisions a human input was required. For this a communications array was added to the lab that was able to send and receive data over long distances.
"Good. Anything out of the ordinary?" Dr. Schmitz asked.
"No. I've run a full diagnostic of the system before we broke orbit and everything checks out and works as designed."
"Very good. Inform me the moment something changes."
"Of course." Sarah answered rolling her eyes.
Al over the ship samples taken from the surfaces where secured in long term storage. Initial analysis had taken place on the planet so only minor details where further analyzed.
That left time to further analyze the debris recovered from the destroyed station before exploring the planet.
Sunblast was busy analyzing a piece of machinery that was partially dismantled in a workshop to the side of the cargo bay holding the salvaged debris.
He was supporting several of the scientists together with several of his engineering ratings.
"Interesting. Is this there version of a conductor?" He asked.
"That would make sense. The material is basically a superconductor with an insulation surrounding it. This material is fascinating. Based on these scans it can easily withstand several thousand amperes. This beats everything we have so far even theorized." one of the scientists answered.
"Cool. Let's take it apart and see for what they'd need that much power." Sunblast stated picking up a spanner and getting to work with a huge grin on his face.
The scene was repeated throughout the cargo bay around different parts of the salvaged debris. Small clusters of scientists and crew members where busy analyzing the technology found. It was keeping everyone on board quite busy.
"You want to do what?" the Captain asked
"We want to try and start the nuclear reactor of the ship we salvaged. If our theories are correct it could.." Dr. Schmitz answered before being rudely interrupted.
"You want to power up an unknown nuclear device on this ship as it is traveling at Warp with about 40 people on board? How is that even remotely safe?" the Captain asked quite a bit enraged.
"None of our simulations indicates that there could be any interference of any kind." Dr. Schmitz said with a look to the junior scientist who was standing next to him and who tried to make himself ever smaller.
"No, Sir." he mumbled.
"There you go. It's perfectly safe."
"Sorry, no. When we find a way to test this device that can't put the ship and everybody on board at risk we can talk again. For now: permission denied." the Captain stated.
After a short intense, and silent, battle of wills the scientist conceded their defeat and left the Captains quarters.
The Captain shook her head and turned her attention back to the report she was still working on finalizing. The Commodore would be quite happy with this find, in fact with their findings so far. A space station ready to settle a large amount of people, a habitable world and a vast amount of ancient and potentially useful technology. And they where still to arrive in their original theater of operations.
She went over the report one last time and amended her recommendations one last time. With that done she saved it and queued it to be sent when enough bandwidth was available, most likely during the next communication window.
Joe was manning her console casually monitoring the its output. As the ship was traveling at a constant speed on a constant heading with clear scanners as far as their range there was very little for her to do. So she spent some time going over the analysis of the ship they had salvaged some time ago. She vividly remembered how she had transported it into orbit and the docking with the Hermes, no small feat in her opinion.
As the analysis of the ship was still ongoing a lot was yet to be figured out yet she could not fully concentrate on participating in it. She had her own ideas on what the ship was meant to do and how it could be incorporated in the fleet, so she noted down her conclusions as a comment to the preliminary report.
The surroundings where quite unfamiliar. After some time confusion gave way to purpose as the scanners detected a potential failure in one of the datalines nearby. After a short travel through strange corridors it arrived at its destination. Assessing the bunch of optical cables it easily found the one it was looking for. The scanner showed a hairline fracture that was potentially problematic if not outright catastrophic. Fixing this would be very easy. It reconfigured two front appendices and attached them to either side of the fracture. The repair was done in a matter of seconds. It sliced through the optical cable, severing the damaged part and fused the cable back together. The data connection was lost for only 2.4 seconds, very much within specs. It would not have been noticed if the data connection would not have been used for a critical components monitoring the Warp core assembly. The connection was switched over to a redundant backup without any delay triggering a low level alert. Checking over the fuseline it made sure that the cable was again good as new, the repaired part would only be identifiable using a very detailed scan.
Noting that its internal power supply was below optimum it started moving again in search for a recharge port, so far it had not found one which was very odd. It did not travel far for its scanners to pick up the next potential problem, this one much more severe.
After the hectic and chaos during and directly after the departure from the last planet engineering had finally quieted down a bit. Directly after shift change to the graveyard shift it was peacefully and quit. The center console was showing a normal readout of the engine on one display and a full diagnostic on another screen. Hannes had just finished the handover from the previous shift and was looking forward to a relaxed shift, there was a fascinating piece of machinery he wanted to study, when a alarm started to beep. Easily identified as a low priority by the tone he leaned over to a secondary console and checked the alert.
He was quite puzzled. A data connection had failed but was immediately reestablished by the redundant backups kicking in as designed. He launched a diagnostic of the failed connection to verify the problem. Satisfied that there where no more steps he'd have to take right now before the diagnostic was done he leaned back in his chair and took a sip from his coffee.
"Initiate log. Dr. Colmar, current date is …" Dr. Colmar was dictating in the open audio feed. He was standing next to a large table where one of the specimens that had been retrieved from the debris field was lied out.
"Specimen is of currently unknown species, codenamed 'Squids', resemblance to an earthbound squid are purely superficial. Full length is 4.3m, it has 6 tentacles which are all the same length of 3.2m. The outer layer of skin shows heavy damage from explosive decompression due to a sudden drop in ambivalent pressure, most likely sudden exposure to vacuum."
"The head seems mostly intact. Initiate scan." He nodded to an assistant.
The scanner hummed to life and started its slow travel over the mangled body.
Tony was busy supporting two of the scientists tasked with investigation the small ship. He had spent most of his duty shift disassembling parts of if, trying to understand their purpose.
"This looks like a computer core to me." He said after removing an access panel.
"I'm reading an energy signature, that is remarkable." One of the scientists said.
All three looked curious at the slightly glowing core.
"Any radiation?" Tony asked carefully.
"No, completely harmless. Just a quite faint power source. I don't think it would be able to last very long on its own." the scientist answered.
"Lets get it out and see what we can do." Tony said.
There was a new signal overriding the current priorities.
A low-power alert from an AI core. It canceled its current task and moved swiftly in the direction of the signal.
"Now what do we have here?" Sunblast asked curiously having joint the group that had extracted the computer core together with others.
"It seems to be some kind of computer core with a self contained power source. And it seems to be failing." Tony answered.
"I see." Sunblast checked his scanner.
Similar comments came from the small crowd that had gathered around the workbench that now held the computer core.
"It has its own power supply that is still working after all this time. This must be quit important." Tony stated. "Is there something we can do to stabilize it?"
"Easier said than done. So far we're not very far with our understanding how power distribution works with this technology. We could accidentally drain it or overload it even." Sunblast answered.
"Watch out!" the cry came from one among the crowd. Almost in complete synchronicity they all jumped back from the workbench.
A small spider-like creature had climbed the workbench and was getting to work on the computer core. It was moving its legs in a very determined manner detaching a small panel on the side. Removing it and placing it to the side it unspooled what looked like a cable from its belly connecting it to the plug that was now visible on the side of the core. The core glowed a little bit brighter.
It slowly turned around and moved to a power outlet on the workbench. Swiftly it removed the housing from the outlet and set to work manipulating the receiver.
"What is it doing?" Someone asked.
It had finally managed to reach the failing core. It was surrounded by organic being that it paid no mind to, to high was the priority to save the core. It manipulated the housing of the core and created a charging wire. Connecting it with its own power supply would temporarily stabilize the core but as its internal power supply was very weak that would not do for long. Its scanner showed a power source nearby and it moved next to it. Removing the outer casing was an easy feat. Again it created another cable to act as a connector. Modifying the power source's plug was an easy feat but with the low internal power supply the equivalent of panic was making itself known. Just in time it managed to connect the cable and configure part of itself as a converter to ensure compatibility. It checked the power flow to ensure that the core was save and went into standby.
The crowd was stunned in silence for a moment having witnessed a frantic and rushed feat of engineering. The lights in the cargo bay dimmed significantly signaling a large amount of power being drawn.
Sunblast raised his scanner and got to work. That action shook up the others and they likewise went into action.
Whoever had a scanner in hand went to work, others send out calls to the Captain and Dr. Schmitz.
Hannes was rattled from his idle work by the high-pitched chime of a high-priority alert. He immediately checked his console. After a quick check he toggled the intercom control.
"Brunn to Sunblast. I'm reading a significant power draw in cargo bay one. Should I shut it down?"
Sunblast answered immediately: "How much? Can the conduits handle it?"
He checked again to verify.
"It is at the limit of the rating for the conduits. Environment control could become endangered if it increases any more."
"Understood. Inform me if anything changes. Don't cut the power unless I say so or the breakers trip."
"Understood."
He sat back down and looked at the readouts. They appeared to be stable for now. He configured an alert for any changed and went back to his diagnostic of the data connection that was disrupted earlier when another alert popped up. This was again a low-priority one. As he was still on edge he called for assistance as this was too much to handle for one person on the graveyard shift alone.
"Alright. What have we got?" The Captain asked the others assembled in the conference room.
Dr. Schmitz was first to answer.
"Please keep in mind that all our findings are preliminary as we still have very little concrete knowledge on what really happened or is happening right now."
The Captain nodded her understanding.
Clicking a button an computerized image appeared on the bulkhead screen, showing the spider-like creature.
"It appears that this creature that we salvaged together with the ship is some kind on maintenance robot. When we extracted the computer core from the ship it seems to have activated a routine to ensure it is provided power. This computer core still had an active, but very faint power source and was heavily shielded supports that theory that it contains some volatile data that would be endangered by a power loss." He presented.
"What do we know about the computer core?" The Captain asked.
The image switched to a schema of the core.
"According to our scans it is extremely dense. The processing matrix is much more dense and complicated than our level of technology. This small core easily has enough power to run the whole ship, including regulating the matter – antimater reaction without even breaking a sweat. All this within the size of a basketball."
The image switched again showing different sections of the core.
"We where unable so far to identify the nature of the power supply integrated in the core itself. We can only speculate that it is a power cell of comparatively density to the computer core itself."
A power graph was displayed on the screen now.
"Judging by the slowly increasing levels we think this power cell is now being charged using the power from the outlet in the cargo bay."
"Do we have any idea when it will be done charging?"
"As we have no baseline nor the specification of the power cell that is impossible to tell."
"How much power is it drawing? Is the ship in any danger?"
"The power draw is bypassing the limit of the outlet and is currently only limited by the conduits to the cargo bay itself. Basic life support is low but stable so far. I don't see any danger to the ship for now." Sunblast reported.
"What about that repair robot. What do we know about it?"
"Initially our scans where unable to penetrate its shell. We tried cutting into it using several methods, all failed so far."
The screen changed again to a basic schematic.
"As it seems to have gone into some sort of hibernation we are getting some results from our scanners. Unfortunately the machinery appears to be about as complicated and dense as the computer core itself. We are still busy analyzing the scans to understand how it works. However it seems to have an equally dense power cell integrated that is currently at a very low level but stable. I think it currently prioritizes charging the computer core to its own power supply."
"Alright. Is there anything else?" The Captain asked looking around.
"Yes, there is. Before the computer core was extracted we experienced several small malfunctions across various systems. They where low level failures that where automatically corrected by the redundancy built into the systems." Sunblast reported pointing to several systems displayed on the screen.
"None of these malfunctions could be identified by a diagnostic that was run directly after they showed up."
"But there is one difference. At the exact moment the computer core was extracted another malfunction appeared right here."
The schematic of the ship zoomed in to show a point between two bulkheads on the second deck.
"This is an optical cable that is part the connection between the main computer and the stem. It seems to have broken right here. We're currently opening the bulkhead to inspect the damage as we have no idea how that is even possible as there is no stress to this area in any way."
"We seem to have quit a challenge in figuring out what happened here. Please double check the rest of the cargo to make nothing else has mysteriously activated itself."
They both nodded.
"Thank you gentlemen, keep me posted."