“Because it is so disconnected. The core does not recognize the shape of its own form and does not understand what these bulkheads and structures that house it are. Like me, perhaps, it has become too isolated from the reality that surrounds it. Does that make sense?”
“Can you reach the Mind and repair it?”
“It is shut off. It is either so badly damaged that it can't respond, or it is dead.”
“If it's gone, can you bring it back?”
“The damage may be too longstanding. The intelligence at the heart of this ship may have forgotten who it is supposed to be and what it is supposed to be like.”
“Well,” said Selene, “do what you can, okay?”
Surtr began to work. With a squirt of his suit's thrusters, Ondo positioned himself beside the Aetheral to study what it did. Selene took the opportunity to check with the two nanosensors that they were still alone. Local space remained quiet.
A third nanosensor had shown up, translating out of metaspace a few light-seconds away, but it was a known device following its correct routing. She instructed it to take up a position that gave her improved visibility of a quadrant of space behind the bulk of the Dragon. As it manoeuvred, she queried it to see what data it held.
The device had recently interfaced with a second nanosensor that had, in turn, recently returned from the Refuge. There was good news there, at least: four days ago, the Refuge had been intact, safe in its solitude. Ondo's nanosensor network had continued to function properly without any supervision. She relayed her findings to Ondo, who responded with an expression of delight. He'd clearly been worried that his whole network had been compromised.
There was a faint electromagnetic signature from the ship, now. Whatever Surtr was doing, it had jump-started the regeneration process. She sent an acknowledgement to Ondo, then hand-walked herself back across the Dragon's hull to try the airlock door again. This time it responded to her fleck communication, sliding wide at her instruction. She propelled herself through and completed the door cycle.
Inside, everything looked normal. No damage to the bulkheads in the area of the airlock and a breathable atmosphere around her. Light levels were a little lower than normal, but she could see perfectly well with both of her eyes. There was even artificial gravity. The ship had successfully sealed off the breach to its hull. She wasn't going to take any chances, though, and kept her EVA suit on.
“Ondo, I'm inside.”
“How does it look?” His voice was fuzzed by the intervening layers of the ship's structure. Normally their messages were relayed by the ship with perfect fidelity; it was another sign that most of the systems were down.
“So far, completely normal. More and more is coming online, but I'm getting nothing from the ship's Mind when I try to talk to it. I also can't reach the metaspace control interfaces. It's like all of that is gone.”
“Once the hull breach is sealed, restoring that is our priority. We're too vulnerable out here without a functioning ship.”
“Yeah, if Concordance do show up, I don't want to have to waste ten minutes explaining to our friend there what to do about it.”
She set about working her way up through the familiar corridors and decks of the Dragon. It felt good to be back somewhere that she considered home. Every door she came to was sealed shut – a standard response to any hull breach – but she could tell that there was atmosphere on the other side when each simply opened at her fleck command. She saw no damage anywhere, no sign that the Dragon had barely survived a battle with Concordance.
She reached the entrance that would take her onto the cartography deck, and finally the door in front of her refused to open. Most likely, there was hard vacuum on the other side. She backtracked and instructed the last doorway behind her to reseal itself. The short section of corridor in between could act as an internal airlock.
“Ondo, I've reached cartography. Get back from the breach so you don't get hit by any debris once I open up the door.”
“You're clear to go,” said Ondo after a few moments, “although Surtr informs me I'm at no risk and that it can protect me.”
“Sounds like you've been getting along really well in my absence.”
“Just make sure you don't get sucked through the hole,” said Ondo. “I put a lot of work into repairing you; it would be a shame to lose it now.”
She smiled at his words, then ran through her suit's pre-vacuum check protocols, more out of habit than anything. When she was ready, she braced herself against the doorframe in case something went wrong and the section of corridor decompressed rapidly. Ideally, she'd have been able to suck the air out of the corridor back into the Dragon's tanks, but that mechanism was still offline. They'd have to sacrifice a little atmosphere, but it was nothing they couldn't replace. She then sent the override codes to the locked door, instructing it to open slowly.
The door responded, valves within it releasing to allow the pressure between the two decks to equalize. Her external microphones picked up the high-pitched hiss of escaping air, always a sound to send alarm clanging through a starship traveller. The rush, however, remained properly controlled, and her sensors told her that she was under no risk of being sucked in. She still maintained a firm grip on the doorway with her left hand. An explosive decompression wouldn't think twice about trying to squeeze her body through the narrow breach in the Dragon's hull.
“You should be seeing atmosphere venting now,” she said to Ondo.
“We see it,” he replied. Slowly the hissing subsided – partly because the corridor didn't hold much atmosphere, partly because sound stopped transmitting in the thinner and thinner air. Three minutes later, the door reported that pressure had been equalized.
She told the door to open. It slid
