Tales of a broken vessel

[MagicKite]

CV-Argonauta

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Going back to hunting was turning out to be more exhausting than expected. Valentina sure liked her job, but also enjoyed the tranquility the Argonauts gave her.
However, the bounty on Lambda’s head did not go down so easily on her, so getting paid by the Coalition to kill the Rheinland Military, was just a side bonus.
As she’s awaiting the coalition’s response to her last communication, se was travelling to Bornholm Depot, to get some basic supplies for her next flight. She was being assisted by two other vessels, a Courier Freighter class holding a small 5 unit assault team along the two pilots, and their equipment.
The other one was a Reaper bomber class vessel, one of the newest additions to the line, which Valentina did not hesitate to buy to test out.
They entered the system through the Omega 11 system, as they were stationed in Rheinland so that Valentina could complete her last contract.
Jumping in the system, it seemed like a normal flight, even if there is always a bit of concern of Nomadic raids. But it did not faze Valentina. She knew everything was going to go normally, or so she thought.
While passing the Kattegat Field, the Courbe’s sensors picked up a very weak signal coming from 10 clicks from their actual location. It seemed to be an emergency signal.
However nothing could be seen on radar so then Valentina decided to track the signal and see what was going on.
As they are approaching the signal, sensors start to pick up odd radiation coming from the position of the signal, but the dosages do not seem fatal.
This startled Valentina’s curiosity even more.
One click from the location, visual has been established with the object. Two Eagle class Fighters and one Krestel Freighter class, what they seemed to be completely intact, but inactive.
So she decided to see what is going on inside the Freighter.
She contacted the Courbe’s crew, and she attached her ship to the Courbe, so she could leave her Sichel with the second pilot, while she was going to suit up to go on board of the Krestel.
The team was gathering the last pieces of equipment needed to enter the lifeless hull, hoping to find all the answers.

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The operation began. Valentina was leading the boarding party, all in anti-radiation suits to avoid any contamination.
The Sichel was detached from the Courbe so it could attach itself to the Krestel.
All the boarding equipment was ready for use, so as soon as it attached, they started to forcefully open the hatch. But it seemed that it was not necessary.It opened very easy.This started to rise suspicions.
They all got their weapons in their hands with the safety off then she waved them to follow her in the ship.
All of the vessel’s systems were down, except the emergency power supply, which was used to broadcast the weak emergency signal.
Inside it, there was no sign of forced entry, nothing. Yet.
She started to slowly advance towards the cockpit, to see if somebody survived. They entered in a diamond formation, this way it was easy to spot anything at any angle.
However no luck there either. Empty.
Then leaned on the console, and tried to seal the ship and restart life support, but most of electrical equipment was completely fried. Except a databank found in the data center of the ship.
Seems the emergency systems managed to save one , and can contain what has happened to the crew.
That’s where they started to head to.

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All this silence was very strange, almost like it was too silent in the ship. Only a faint sound could be heard from the emergency alarm, and the light red lights that surrounded the inside of the ship.
As they reached the room, the door was wide open, with a flickering light attached to the side of the wall. At the center of it was the database central server, where all the databanks were attached to, so they started to search for the intact one.
However what Valentina found weird, was that they still did not find anything regarding the radiation, while the sensors did not pick any spike either.
But decided to focus on finding the databank for the moment.
At a certain point, you can hear somebody saying that it has been found.
The databank was hidden under the floor, where there the only to it was to find this small hidden button.
Whatever happened here, seems nobody cared about it.
Valentina gets up and goes to her crew and starts to explain the second part of this plan, which was to explore the vessel in the search of the radiation’s source.
So they divided in two teams, one that went to the ship’s powercore and one that went to the cargo bay.

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The team that went at the powercore of the vessel, has found the room closed, so they had to forcefully open it.
They took out the equipment and started to cut the door. So they can take it down.
Not too long after, they managed to enter the room.
It was all dark inside, except the yellow light coming from the auxiliary core, which, according to the scans, would not last much longer after it’s discovery. Estimated time was fifteen minutes.

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Meanwhile Valentina and another mercenary headed for the cargo bay.
As they were approaching it, the sensors started to pick a slight increase of radiations.
Until they reached two big sliding doors. Valentina tries to open it normally, but it seems that the door’s mechanisms are fried aswell.
She reaches a pocket to her left thigh, and takes out a small device which she attached to the doors.
When she attached it, se took about a few meters of space, and pressed something on her wrist.
Suddenly a small explosion occurred which forced to open the cargo bay doors.
Inside there was not much to be seen, except this big black box with a writing on it. “Unknown”.
This definitely had Valentina’s curiosity but how she was about to open it, she received the news from the other team about the auxiliary core meltdown.
So she had to make a plan to take the crate out of the ship.

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It was all laid out.
The plan was quite simple: the Sichel would fire on a precise spot signalled by Valentina from inside, this way they could throw the crate in space and have the Courbe tractor it, after all the crew reentered the vessel.
So they started to act on this plan.
All the team gathered in the cargo bay, where they decided that the best place would be it’s outer doors, which would be first marked by a small explosion from the inside, and the Very Heavy Fighter would finish the job.
That’s when Valentina planted the explosive, and everyone hid behind the inside doors of the cargo bay to prevent anything happened to them.
First explosion goes off. It barely scratches the hull, but it’s good enough to have a precise target on it. The Sichel starts to fire its weapons at the Krestel, destroying the doors with very much ease.
When it stopped firing, the crew started to run towards the crate, to push it in space.
After taking off all the security systems keeping it in place, they started to drag this incredibly heavy yet small crate, almost two meters high, that resembled a black cube.
After a few minutes of effort, they managed to throw it in space, and started running towards the Courbe’s attachment point.
As they were running they started to hear a registered voice: “Meltdown in two minutes”.
They kept running till they reached the hatch, just a rough minute before meltdown.
The pilot was ready to un-engage the safeties of the attachment point, and as soon as he was free, he tractored the crate in the cargo bay of the Courbe and escaped from there, therefore everyone being brought to safety.