The Inner Ring (gxg)

Chapter 19

The hole that Miles cut through the door was four feet in diameter, and easy for them to float through one at a time. Pepper and Vanessa were more than happy to lose their new passenger after tying off their sled, and they joined everyone in heading through the hole into the large bunk room. It was a disquieting experience, being surrounded by the dead as they floated through the airless chamber. The bodies were small, like those of the pilots, though now they weren't in the flight suits, and looked like small animals.

"Foxes?" Pepper whispered to Vanessa.

"They sure look like foxes. I'm sure that will go over well back home." Nessa whispered back.

"Alien dogs?" Brody scoffed. "No doubt the other ship is cats then."

"Miles, take the bags and collect three please," Anton instructed with a sigh. "Leave the rest."

"There is a partially opened door over here!" Lena called out. She was looking out another hatchway that looked to open into a passageway heading further into the ship.

"Excellent! Let's go see where that leads." Anton crowed happily.

"Pepper, do you want to stay here with me? I'd like to secure the rest of the bodies," Vanessa whispered through the earpiece.

"Absolutely!" Pepper agreed. There was no reason to leave them floating unattended throughout the chamber to potentially be damaged.

"Hey dad, you go ahead, Pepper and I are staying here with Miles for a bit," Vanessa announced over the comms.

Anton turned his head, studying the pair for a moment, then simply nodded, and moved towards the open hatch with Lena and Brody. Once they were gone, Pepper and Vanessa started to slowly bring the bodies back to the bunks, one at a time. Some of the bodies were very small, most likely children. Much like the bunks on their own ship, the aliens had straps for the beds that retracted into the frame. They also had an interesting clasp that felt magnetic, but wasn't, since none of the metal the pair had would stick to it.

"Hey Miles, can you cut off some of these straps?" Pepper asked once they had finished settling in the alien remains. There were over a dozen extra bunks with no bodies on them, so they could be spared.

"Yeah, let me get those," he replied, using a knife to saw through the tough fibers of the straps.

Each of the bunks also had a drawer on it, most of which were closed. Pepper and Vanessa started going through them, looking for anything interesting. It turned out, there was quite a bit of interest. Clothes obviously were the most frequent item. But there were also scraps of a cloth-like paper with strange writing, small devices that looked like phones or tablets with various ports, but that seemed to lack a power source after all these years. The drawers were filled with a myriad of items that they had to guess the uses for, such as an item looking like a laser pointer that was in a lot of the drawers. Even Miles joined in on the examination once he had three sets of remains carefully wrapped and stowed on his sled in a small cargo attachment.

"I wonder if we could get power to any of these things?" Miles muttered to himself as he pulled out one of the laser pointers from a drawer.

"I hope we can, I'd like to see what some of these do," Pepper sighed in frustration. With no power, the most useful items might be anything that had writing on it since that could be deciphered at some point. There was no way to tell if the power source for the rest could be duplicated. They all had little net bags, like sea divers use, and were loading anything of interest into them.

"Pepper, come here please." Nessa whispered to her friend. Pepper turned her head and saw Vanessa looking into a drawer. Pushing off the bunk she was near, she joined Vanessa at her drawer. She was staring at a gun. Or something that looked just like one.

It wasn't a sleek laser pistol, like you see in the movies, it was more like a pistol with an oversized barrel and a magazine but made from the same material as the ship. It sent a shiver down Pepper's back as she saw it. For whatever reason, even after seeing the hole in the ship, she had hoped that there would be no weapons on the ship, but this certainly changed that.

"Stay here," Nessa whispered, then launched off to go grab Miles. "Miles, can we show you something?" She said while touching her helmet to his to prevent it from going out over comms. She quickly set up a three-person comm channel with her, Pepper and Miles to make things easier.

Miles moved over to join them, and they all looked at the weapon together. "I assume you're nervous about finding a weapon?" Miles finally asked.

"Yes, though I'm not sure why it bothers me to find a big pistol," Vanessa murmured.

"With the size of the alien's this is more like a rifle," Miles pointed out, causing Pepper and Vanessa to groan at the obviousness of it. "You try firing it?"

"No, we just found it," Pepper admitted.

Miles pulled the rifle out and examined it. The trigger was designed for smaller fingers, and with the suit on it wasn't feasible to get a finger into the guard. But otherwise, it was a similar enough design to other weapons that he'd used over the years. He reached over and picked up one of the laser pointer looking items and slid it into the trigger guard. Bracing himself against the bunk, he aimed at the hatchway that he had earlier cut a hole in and pulled the trigger. All three of them jumped when the gun jumped, and a small hole appeared in the door next to the larger one.

"Holy shit!" Miles exclaimed, pushing off and looking at the hole that had just been made. He returned quickly, an excited look on his face. "That just punched a hole right through that door that took me twenty minutes and a diamond bit to get through. Neat hole too, didn't shatter it like a bullet would have. This is a scary weapon."

"My father will want that," Vanessa realized sadly.

"I know what you're thinking, but there is a good chance that there are a lot more of those on this ship that he' going to end up finding," Pepper said, her gloved hand laying on Nessa's suited arm.

"I just hate that with all of the amazing technology we could get here, most people at home will want weapons. Why not medicine, or energy?" Vanessa complained.

"Because humans are horrible creatures," Miles pointed out. It seemed odd coming from the person who was the most adept at war in the group, but he sounded sincere.

"Put it in the bag I guess," Vanessa said glumly.

A short time later, after the trio had split up to keep searching, Vanessa found another gun, this time much smaller. It looked almost like a toy, but no doubt wasn't. It would have been perfectly sized for a smaller creature to use. She hesitated only a moment before slipping it inside the zippered pouch on her waist. Her father may take all the other weapons, but not this one, she thought bitterly.

"Is it just me, or has it been really quiet with the other group? Lena is usually really chatty," Pepper whispered in a quick message to Vanessa.

"They were probably talking like we were with Miles," Vanessa pointed out. Though, now that she thought about it, it was surprising that they hadn't called out any discoveries or danger.

"You know, I've seen quite a few bodies that are probably kids." Pepper pointed out in a whisper.

"Yeah, me too. It makes me feel so bad that they died like this." In truth, it broke Vanessa's heart to see the tiny bodies, so fragile in their frozen forms.

Pepper continued, trying to make a point. "But why would there be kids here? We have never sent a kid into space, your sleepover doesn't count, so why would there be some here? There is no chance this was a war ship, and yet it was obviously in a space battle of some sort."

Vanessa was stunned into silence. Why hadn't she realized that? Why would there be children on a spaceship in such numbers? And why were they so far out near Uranus? With so many of the little ships as well, it was like a naval fleet, but no fleet like that would be anything other than warships. Warships don't use kids!

Her thoughts were interrupted when Brody called out over comms. "Merry Christmas! We hit the mother lode in an armory, there are thousands of guns in there!" He exclaimed as he returned to the bunk room with Lena and Anton.

Vanessa couldn't see her father's expression through the facemask of his suit, but she had little doubt that he was thrilled at the discovery. She felt the tiny pistol in her pouch, feeling happy this one had escaped him at least.