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Project Valkyrie
4 - Arrival at Murphy


 Thyra checked the iris valve leading to the cargo area on the middle deck. It showed green, so she pressed the control, and it slid open. The area beyond was a small internal docking space containing a tiny craft. It displaced about five dtons and hardly looked big enough to be worth doing anything with.
 She walked over to the small hatch--not an airlock, so it wouldn't be good for getting into and out of in a vacuum for a biological being--and opened it up. There wasn't much to it. There wasn't even a control area. It held two acceleration couches in front of a small cargo area that could hold about 4 dtons, and it was full.
 If the ship had to move its own cargo, it wasn't via this craft. She sent a ping through her network to the boat, but it didn't respond. It was like every other computer aboard this blasted vessel; it had likely been wiped clean and shut down. She'd bring it back online later and check its capabilities, but for right now, it was useful knowing that she had a way to get down to a planet's surface without landing the ship if she needed to.
 When she closed the little boat up and turned her attention to the cargo bay, she found it was packed full of containers. Some of them were as small as a meter on a side, and others were three meters tall and three meters across and ran from six or even nine meters long. The smaller ones were a fraction of a dton, while the larger ones were 6 and 8 dtons, respectively. There were others in between the two extremes.
 The big ones would be huge pain to move, but there was a cargo crane running along the ceiling to assist. It would be capable of extending through the large cargo hatch on the side of the ship and lowering the containers to the ground.
 Thyra had absolutely no idea what was in any of the containers, and she had no time to find out at the moment. There was a small passage that she could wedge herself through to get to the rear of the vessel, so she did that and shortly found herself at the rear bulkhead. There was an iris valve going up and another going down. She would check those out when she was done looking over the engineering compartment.
 There were two iris valves leading into engineering: one in the center of the bulkhead and one all the way to the starboard side of the ship. She started in the center and found herself in a cramped compartment holding the jump drives. As they were already in jumpspace, the drives were inactive.
 That seemed odd, so she double checked. Yes, it seemed that the jump drives were only engaged during jump initiation. Once the ship was in jumpspace, it coasted to its destination. If coasting were actually a thing in jumpspace.
 At the rear of the compartment were two iris valves, and when she checked, she found a relatively small maneuver drive behind each. Neither one of them was much to write home about, considering the size of the vessel, so she anticipated that it didn't generate much thrust. Of course, it was a freighter, so it didn't need much thrust.
 The one thing she didn't see was a control area for the engineer to access anything. Yes, it could be done from the bridge, but it made no sense to have someone working away from where they were actually needed. Perhaps the engineering area on the lower deck held one.
 She took a couple of minutes to examine the maneuver drives, and they looked completely normal to her. She found that she had a bit of familiarity with them based on the information her connection to the computer was feeding her. They were manufactured by the GravAtomics Corporation, and the dates on the plates indicated that they were about six years old. If the old man had come into the possession of this vessel five years ago, that made sense.
 Thyra made her way back into the compartment holding the jump engines and began examining them more closely. That's where she came across something unusual. First of all, it seemed that they had a mixture of parts. Some had model and serial numbers to go with them, but the vast majority did not.
 It looked to her as if someone had taken the jump drives apart and then rebuilt them. As they had been new--based on the plates that she could find--that was a peculiar sort of thing to do. The ship had been brand-new, according to the old man. What would cause him to tear the jump drives apart?
 Or had he? If there was something unusual about the drives, perhaps the people who had built the ship had done so. What would have made this jump drive different than any other? Another mystery that she would have to find time to look into. For the moment, she was simply grateful that the blasted thing had worked at all.
 Once she was done, she went through the iris valve on the starboard side of the cargo area. It led into a narrow compartment that had the fuel purifiers along the inside wall and a small console at the rear. If the ship took on unrefined fuel, it could be run through these to make it safe to use for entering jumpspace. It was possible the vessel had scoops to get its own hydrogen from a gas giant or to pull water from a planetary surface, but she would have to check on that once she had an opportunity.
 Her exploration of this deck complete, Thyra climbed the small ladder leading to the iris valve in the ceiling and went into the upper cargo deck. It wasn't a very large area--twelve meters by fifteen--but it was packed with cargo. Nothing much to see here, so she went back down and then to the lower deck.
 She found herself standing at the rear of the cargo area, and in front of engineering again. There were two hatches leading to the rear, so she went to the first of them and found the power plants with a two-seat console for the engineers.
 Interesting. She wondered why someone would put two consoles down here, away from everything else. It was an odd design choice.
 When she went over the power equipment, things got really strange. None of the information she had or was able to pull from the computer could identify what exactly these were. Power plants were typically fusion power plants, but this equipment didn't look like that at all.
 She checked the consoles and found that they were generating more energy than the size of the power plants should be able to kick out. A double check of the information she had confirmed that. However, this equipment was generating power, it probably wasn't doing it through fusion.
 What was left? She had no idea and no time to consider the matter right now. It was working, and the consoles said everything was normal, so she would leave it alone until she had time to truly go over everything and figure out what she was looking at.
 Thyra exited the compartment and went to the other iris valve and found that it was locked. There was a palm print reader and a retinal scanner. She wondered whether or not she had access to whatever was inside. Only one way to find out.
 She put her palm against the panel and then bent down to let the retinal scanner read her eye. She didn't actually have a retina, but she was willing to bet that her equipment was able to produce something that read like one. Everything else about her was lifelike, so why not that?
 The red light over the security controls turned green, and the iris valve opened. Inside, she found an armored compartment that was filled with small crates. She had no idea what was in them, but they must be valuable.
 Giving in to curiosity, she opened one and found herself looking at sand. Okay, it wasn't precisely sand, but it was a powdered material of some kind. It had a high metallic content, and a good portion of that was precious metals, but that wasn't all that was in there.
 She would have to take a sample to one of the labs to get a full read on exactly what this was, but she couldn't imagine what purpose it served. The old man was going to take far too many of his secrets to the grave, but maybe she could crack this one, given time.
 Thyra closed the crate back up and hefted it onto her shoulder. It looked pretty heavy, but her body was able to handle it without any problem. She was indeed very strong.
 Thankfully, it wasn't a very large crate, as she wouldn't be able to carry it through the maze of containers that filled this cargo deck otherwise.
 There wasn't anything unusual on the rest of the cargo deck, and the ship was indeed full of cargo. She found the ladder leading up to the iris valve in front and climbed up with her crate. Once the valve opened, she slid the crate on the floor above and climbed up after it. Then she made her way to the first of the cybernetics laboratories.
 She set the crate on one of the workbenches and opened it back up, taking a small sample of the material and going to one of the pieces of equipment that could tell her everything about it. She didn't know precisely how she knew that's what the equipment did, but the knowledge was there, as well as how to operate it.
 Apparently, she had science programmed in her. Or perhaps the other computer did it and was simply sharing that information through their linkage. She needed to get a full list of skills that she could perform because finding out that she knew things after the fact was ridiculous.
 The mass spectrometer--for that's what it was--took the sample and began running it. That process would take a few minutes, so she spent the time pacing around the laboratory and examining the various pieces of equipment.
 It had been important enough for someone to put aboard this vessel, and the old man hadn't used it. What kind of research would the people who had built the ship have done here?
 Obviously, they intended to build cybernetics, but it would have to be cutting-edge stuff because all this equipment was tech level 16, and there was a fair bit of equipment that seemed to be even more advanced than that, if only by a little. This was a cutting-edge laboratory. Somebody was surely very angry that it had been stolen.
 When the mass spectrometer finally gave her an answer, it added to her confusion. The powdered material was highly metallic, and so far, she could see, it might be used to make robots, but it was just dust. Worse, if it were to be utilized, it would have to be smelted and pure metal of various kinds pulled out for the purposes for which it was needed. In this form, it was useless.
 Only, the old man had kept it in a locked vault. Or had he simply kept it there because that was a convenient place and someone else--the people who had built the ship?--had intended that vault for something else? Unknown. Just as unknown as the purpose that this dust was supposed to serve.
 Thyra took the sample back to the crate, put it back in, and closed everything back up. Waste not want not. She would eventually figure out what it was intended for, and perhaps it would prove useful. For right now, it could just sit right there on that workbench.
 With that accomplished, she headed to the bridge. Touring the ship and getting her scientific research accomplished had taken almost the full hour that Mimir had indicated they had before they precipitated out of jumpspace. It was time to get her first look at the universe. Her first look in this life, anyway.
 She picked one of the forward consoles and sat there. It would have a good view of what was in front of the vessel once the panels over the viewports were retracted.
 "The jump bubble has collapsed, and the ship is once again in normal space," Mimir said. "Opening the viewports."
 The covers slid up, revealing the starscape all around. It was brilliant and beautiful, the bright, unwavering pinpricks of light in the darkness that were made up of stars far in the distance.
 Sitting in front of the ship was a world the size of a large marble. It was kind of a puce green, so it wasn't that pleasant to look at, but nine billion people lived there, so it couldn't be all bad. Of course, they were living under a dictatorship, so their residence might not be by choice.
 "Do we have any idea what the protocol is now that we've arrived?" she asked.
 "Our transponder is active, and I would imagine that we'll be contacted when we get closer to Murphy. Our sensors show that the world has a large space station orbiting it. That likely counts as the up port, and there are probably also places for vessels to land on the surface at the down port. I would imagine that we will be shunted to the latter."
 "And that puts us right in the middle of a dictatorship? That doesn't sound very comforting."
 "According to what I have found, the area of the starport is controlled by the Imperium. Inside its perimeter, you are not technically on the world itself. The local laws hold no sway within the extrality line. Only if you decide to leave the down port would you be subject to what goes on in this world. It is entirely possible that we are only delivering freight inside the starport itself."
 "And it's also possible that we can find cargo to go to our next destination once we figure out where that is as well," she said. "I suppose that's not too bad. Even so, does this ship only carry freight for other people? Are there things we can buy for ourselves? Do we even have any money?"
 "Unknown."
 Thyra sighed. "We'll have to deal with the old man's body, and that means that I need to find all the paperwork I need inside his office. I also need to go over everything there to see if there is anything to give us a clue about what's really going on. I'll collect everything in there before we activate the robots because he said everything in that room was supposed to have been cleaned out, but something went wrong. I don't want a robot to come along and destroy evidence that we need."
 "Sound thinking," Mimir said. "Each robot will have to be activated manually as they are all offline."
 "Do we have any idea how many robots we have and what kind they are?"
 "Of course. Look at the screen on the console in front of you. Here is a listing of the robotic crew aboard this vessel."
 Moments later, a listing appeared.
 
 1 Class 5 Conscious Intelligence Program running on the primary computer: Mimir
 1 Pilot Brain, Advanced
 1 Engineer Droid, Advanced Plus
 1 Mechanic Droid, Advanced
 1 Medic Droid, Advanced
 5 Gunner Droids, Advanced
 1 Steward Droid, Advanced
 1 Admin Droid, Advanced
 2 Security Droids, Light, Advanced
 2 Security Droids, Heavy, Advanced
 1 Broker Droid, Advanced Plus
 12 Lab Assistant Droids, Advanced
 12 Cargo Handling Droids
 15 Skitter Cleaning Droids
 4 Cargo Loaders, 5-Ton Capacity, Long Range
 1 Superlative Android, Conscious Intelligence: Thyra
 
 Thyra considered that for a moment. "That's a lot of robots. I'm sure that the broker droid will be able to give us some assistance in figuring out what we need to do with the cargo and where to go from there. Even if I have that skill available to me, having someone else with the skill to bounce ideas off of might be helpful."
 "Would you like a listing of the skills available to you?"
 She perked up at that. "Yes, please."
 The screen came to life, and a list of skills scrolled up it.
 
 Admin 3
 Advocate 3
 Art (all) 3
 Astrogation 2
 Broker 6
 Carouse 2
 Deception 5
 Diplomat 4
 Drive (wheeled) 2
 Electronics (all) 2
 Fab Creator/6
 Flyer (grav) 2
 Gambler 2
 Gun Combat (all) 3
 Language (all) 2
 Mechanic 2
 Medic 2
 Melee (all) 3
 Navigation 1
 Persuade 2
 Pilot (small craft) 2
 Pilot (spacecraft) 2
 Profession (all) 2
 Science (all) 5
 Stealth 3
 Steward 4
 Streetwise 6
 Tactics (military) 3
 
 "That seems like an awful lot of skills," Thyra murmured. "And a few powerful ones, if the higher numbers mean what I think they do."
 "The higher the number, the more effective the skill is," Mimir said. "I do not know precisely how effective each is or what they mean when executed, but one would assume that you would be a better broker than navigator. Even so, your skills will be modified by how you execute them. For example, the raw number will be amplified--or hindered if it is low, which it is not--by your intelligence. When you are fighting, it will be influenced by your dexterity and strength."
 She thought about that for a moment. "Based on what I can lift, I suspect that my strength is beyond human norms. The same may be true of my intelligence, so I will have to be careful not to reveal myself in ways that would stand out any more than I already do with my greater size. It would be expected that I am strong, but I cannot seem unreasonably so. I will have to figure that out, and that will be a challenge."
 "As far as your likely elevated physical and mental characteristics, I see no reason why you cannot learn to mimic the limits you need," Mimir added. "You've done so once already, so you can do it again. As for Murphy, you may have already visited here many times. It is possible that you have contacts here or that the old man did."
 That could be awkward since she didn't remember them.
 "Back to your skills," Mimir said. "There are 0 level skills that you can load in addition to those skills shown, as there are many of them in the computer. They grant minimal familiarity with the topic. Those are other than the only ones I have already listed for you. Also, the skill levels can be adjusted, though that affects what can be loaded, as this is your rated at your maximum bandwidth and is marked as your default load. So you wish to change it?"
 "No. At least not until I understand things better."
 "Understood. Additionally, there is a program for designing things for a fabrication unit that seems fairly advanced. Now, would you like me to load the main skills for you?"
 "Please."
 A query reached her, asking if she wanted to load the listed skills. She went over the list carefully and then agreed. A few seconds later, they were loaded, and she felt as if the universe had opened for her. She had no personal memory, but now she knew how to do so many things.
 Curious about what the "all" had meant for languages, as well as some of the other skills like science, she checked them. All apparently meant "all." She could speak and understand thousands of languages with more than enough fluency to get by.
 She also now knew so very much about every branch of science, and even had professional skills that could allow her to perform them. Even her understanding of the seamier side of so many worlds and cultures was encyclopedic. She knew how to bribe people and create forgeries, for example.
 That was kind of exciting, really.
 And the number of arts she could now dabble in. Everything from dance to sculpture to painting. It was overwhelming.
 Thyra put that aside. For now, she needed to focus on the immediate problems. For one, the locked computer.
 A check of her new skills made her smile. She had intrusion skills and would be able to get into the computer, though it might take a while. Take that, old man!
 "I suppose I'd best get busy looking through the office to see what I can find," she said as she stood. "With any luck, the old man will have a list of contacts. While I'm certain that he probably took the lead in just about everything--because that's the kind of personality I think he had--knowing who to speak to or, potentially, who to avoid would be very useful."
 "While you do that, I will continue taking the ship in toward orbit," Mimir said. "When we are given the necessary instructions, I will follow them. You have about five hours to find some useful information. Oh, and welcome to Murphy."