There were indications that this area was originally configured to support Snarks, as well. We can see sealed windowed areas that were probably control centers for some kind of operational staff. And a couple of the unidentified vessel types appeared to have hatches and viewports. Scans, however, had not shown one single trace of life. This whole operation was running on automatic.
The non-rotating outer shell was 100 yards thick, consisting mostly of some kind of friable material. It wasn't structural - it was intended to absorb meteor impacts and block radiation. But it had many embedded design details, like a rigid support frame in the docking bay for the Boogens. And the item we were most interested: the vector-matching system for getting from the non-rotating outer shell to the swiftly rotating inner shell, without being ground up like seeds in a peppermill. Getting access to what we were calling the spin-transfer system was our ultimate goal.
It must have been an interesting engineering challenge for the builders, and the solution, based on our SUDDAR scans, was genius. An elevator shaft ran through the outer shell from the cargo bay to the inner surface. Maybe elevator wasn't the right word, since with no rotation there was no artificial gravity to worry about, but it was as good a label as any.
Embedded in the inner surface of the outer shell was a magnetic rail system circling the gap between the inner and outer shell, with components attached to each shell. A container would run along the transport rail from the cargo bay, then transfer to the vector-matching system, and accelerate to match velocity with the rotating inner shell. At that point the container would be handed off from the outer shell to the inner, after which you would dock at one of four stations spaced equidistantly around the circumference of the inner shell.
Well, that was the theory. We haven't seen a single container actually make the trip on any of the entrance assemblies that we've been surveilling. As near as we could tell, the containers were all docked at the base of the transport rail. The Boogens didn't need to go inside, and apparently nothing inside needed to come out.
The Boogens settled onto their assigned racks and maintenance bots moved forward to perform oil changes or whatever they did. Our drones detached from the Boogens, staying as close as possible to avoid becoming free-floating silhouettes, and floated slowly along the length of the vessel. They had orders to transfer to a wall before they got to the nose area, just in case sensors were still active. We thought the Boogens were probably in maintenance mode at this point, but best not to tempt fate. In the end we were depending on the complete lack of curiosity and total single-minded focus on the task at hand that typified every AMI in existence. As far as we knew.
The Gamers, in charge of flying the drones, were frame-jacked high enough to be able to take the time to consider their actions and the possible consequences, but that also meant I'd have to jack if I wanted to communicate with them. Constant disassembly and reassembly of my VR would be too disconcerting. I decided to just remain a spectator. We could compare notes later.
Soon the drones were positioned in a small alcove created by the intersection of an airlock area and two support columns. SUDDAR scans had indicated that this would be out of line-of-sight for most of the bay. There were a number of cameras and sensors in evidence, but without tracing the circuitry, there was no way to know which ones might be surveillance of some kind, and which ones were strictly operational. We had already decided not to worry about it. There was no way to make this op completely safe, so we would learn from our failures and try again if necessary.
The drones waited for a break in activity, then scooted to the next rally point: a dead area between two different types of docking racks. They whipped around the last corner into the alcove… and almost ran right smack into a maintenance bot.
“What the hell!” Bill exclaimed. I jacked immediately, VR be damned.
“Anyone have any idea what that thing is doing here?” I said to the drone operators in general. At this clock speed they were represented only by their metadata tags, hanging in a virtual void.
One of the tags labeled ‘Randall’ replied “No, and it wasn't on the planning scans. There's nothing here, it's just a gap in the… oh.” A window popped up and spun around for all to see. “Looks like a bulkhead repair and progress.”
“Friggin’ hell,” I muttered. “It's times like this that I'm glad I don't have an actual heart to have a heart attack with.”
I returned to regular Bob time, reassembled my VR, and turned to Bill who was just moving his lips to begin whatever next sentence he had in mind. I cut in before he could get properly going.
“It's doing bulkhead repairs - complete coincidence. And were above its sensor area, so it probably hasn't noticed us.”
“Peachy,” Bill replied. “No alarms so far, anyway. We might just pull this off.”
It took several more hops by the drones, but there were no more coronary-inducing events. The drones found themselves in front of an access panel. According to our scans, this would lead to what some wit had called a jeffries tube. In theory, it should get us to the acceleration track used by the mechanism that connected the non-rotating outer shell to the rotating inner shell of the megastructure. But from that point on, there would be more ‘winging it’ involved, as not all the engineering
