Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Once they were sure that nothing was going to short out or blow up, Nico and the team started working on the plan to clear their way to the core, while Max was assigned the task of getting androids to the bridge so that they could check the condition of the control room.

Even if they didn't clear the zones all the way there, the team was hoping to have someone on the bridge when they reached the core zone and started working on the power relays.

They didn't know what had disabled the ship to begin with, as the only visible damage had been the gouge along the outside, and that shouldn't have been enough to cripple the vessel. So, there must have been hidden damage, and the search for it was all that they could think about.

It was like a murder mystery to them, they couldn't stand not knowing the outcome, but just like the best mystery stories, which were digitally locked, they were unable to skip ahead and see the ending first.

The door at the edge of the zone cycled smoothly as Max sent an android with a team of drones out to head straight for the bridge. If the pattern from their zone held true, the doors would be wide open, so they would only have to walk there without getting too lost.

The others had to try to get all the doors working in the zones between them and the core, which would take days or weeks, but getting a team to the bridge should be fairly simple.

The door sealed behind them, and the small team began to walk, following the predictive mapping model that had been generated during their exploration of the first zone around the cargo bay that they had picked.

There were no stairwells in the ship, instead there were ramps that led between levels, allowing the smooth movement of troops and equipment of all sizes. All they had to do was get to the one closest to the bridge and then follow it up to the proper level, Max assumed.

And for the first hour, that was correct. They wound their way upward, with the predictive mapping leading them to exactly the right spots. But when they got close to the bridge, the pattern changed, and the hallways became staggered, no longer the open passages that the rest of the ship was designed with.

It was an obvious defensive formation, and Max smiled as he saw it.

The walls were up now, but if he recalled correctly they would form a narrow corridor, of which the front half could be lowered to chest height so that the defenders could use it as a barricade to shoot from, while the enemy would not only have to get past them, but around the corners in the hall to reach the next corridor.

There was no sign of battle near the bridge, and the firing lines had never been formed, so the chances were that the ship was never boarded before it was abandoned. Even if the bridge had been moved to a secondary location, the primary would still have been guarded as a diversion to keep the enemy forces at bay for as long as possible.

That was a good sign for the chances of salvaging the vessel, but not a great sign for their chances of salvaging it without major repairs to the power systems. If the enemy didn't need to board the ship, that meant that it had been dead in space already, and that meant a completely disabled main power system.

Max had only been a junior pilot before that battle, and he didn't actually remember much about how these ships operated. With a bit of luck it would be similar enough to something that they had already recovered that Nico and the team could fix it, but in the worst-case scenario, they might have to fabricate and swap in their own power source and Warp Drive to get the World Ship mobile again.

That would be a nightmare of engineering for a vessel this large. Especially if they didn't know how the original power system worked, or what all was left for computers and electronic devices.

The android investigator wound through the hallways, following Max's directions, until it came to a closed blast door. That marked the secondary defence around the bridge, and it was the first sealed barrier that they had found so far.

While everything else had been thrown open and jammed, this set of double airlock doors was sealed tight. Fortunately, it didn't look like the control panel had been damaged, as the manual release was on the inside of the door. There should be a secondary manual release somewhere nearby, but Max didn't recall where it should be, so getting the drones to power up the panel and try to open the door took precedence.

A small flow of wireless energy transmission was all that it took to get the control panel back online, and a summary of the status inside the airlock up on the display.

It had been purged of atmosphere, but it had been fully sealed from both sides, ready for use.

The only problem was, there was no power to the door, and the Android couldn't transfer enough for it to open automatically. Instead, it used the control panel to unlock the door, and then had the drones pull it open with their mechanical claws.

The airlock slid smoothly once the latch was disengaged, free of any sort of corrosion or obstruction. But what they found inside was the first sign that the ship had really been lost in combat and hastily evacuated. Four preserved bodies lay inside, flash frozen by the drop in pressure as the atmosphere was evacuated from the World Ship, and still in their Command Unit uniforms.

They were similar in appearance to the pictures that the teams had found in the dorms, with golden skin and white hair, but these ones were much more slender, barely two metres tall, and with a slightly enlarged cranium.

If Max had to guess, they had been optimized for intelligence and not strength and agility, as the soldiers had been. They would have the answers to that very soon. The bodies were so well-preserved that once he brought them back to the Cutter, the team and the medical androids would be able to do a full scan and analysis of them, which would answer all the lingering questions about the species.

Carefully, the drones moved them from their resting spots in the airlock into the hallway, and then gathered inside to close the airlock door. Once it was sealed, they could open the final door to the bridge and finally see what sort of condition the Command Centre of the ship might be in.

Hopefully, not completely destroyed, Max prayed.

The doors slid open with a gentle tug from the drones, and Max let out a sigh of relief. The bridge staff hadn't damaged the bridge before they had left. Everything was precisely where it should be, intact and ready for use as soon as the power came on.

Presuming, of course, that everything would turn back on.