Space-5

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The mystery ship’s upload took almost a hour to complete. Partially this was due to limitations in the Amanda Ray’s communications systems (they had been damaged in the fight that had disabled her, and some of what had remained had been shut down to conserve power), but a lot had happened in the past 30 years, as Captain Leigh and her crew discovered when they started to sort through all that had arrived.

In the short term there was little else to do, as the hadn’t been able to send any messages since the data dump had begun. So, the sorting started almost as soon as the data stream had been identified as positively benign, with the crew standing down from quarters less than five minutes after they had been sent there. Word spread that this appeared to be the first part of their rescue, and a relaxed, jovial attitude prevailed, infecting even the first lieutenant, who in discovering two crewmen engrossed in reading up on the exploits of various sports teams, rather than attending to their sensor arrays, had merely frowned. The frown had been enough to return them to their duty (merely the lieutenant’s presence was enough for that), but the lack of any discipline (delivered or even promised) or even any harsh words added to the sense of holiday.

Throughout the Amanda Ray people discovered that the war with the Sasquinaw was over, or apparently over, since no one had heard from them in over 20 years. Allied forces found Sasquinaw sentinel ships vanished, their stations abandoned, even whole planets suddenly depopulated of Sasquinaw life. No clue remained as to what had become of humanity’s greatest threat for the last century and a half.

“Listen to this,” said the sublieutenant, reading in the Times Digest, “‘the crew of the Astoria encountered Sasquinaw station Bravo 3 shuttered and riding without its Anti-Collision beacons. On entering they discovered most systems intentionally powered down, with the exception of the anti-wander system and the A-C beacons. These had apparently failed when rats got at their wiring, leaving the station dark. Rather than repair the beacons for them to fail again, the station was towed to the nearest star for disposal.’ I never thought of the Sasquinaw as having problems with rats.”

“It’s a problem we all face,” said the captain. “They get into everything they can. Mr Finn,” she said to the comm-off, “any luck contacting someone aboard that ship?”

The comm-off coughed before responding. “No, ma’am. I still can’t get a signal past the fu-, past the data dump.”

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