This was when she loved working for SHOE. Away from the drama of headquarters on Zactus but still working remotely with her team there.
Zay was a crack data cruncher. Nobody could match her ability to analyze the stream of information Mya collected for insights and directions nobody else would have thought to even look for.
And Leonard was the hunch master. He took the findings of Zay’s data and pointed Mya in the right direction. Mya’s role was to use their support to dig and make the find. To make the calls that could only be made on the grand when you were looking right at a potential salvage site.
They had done this in the North moons with Zay and Leonard in the ship with Mya. But doing it long distance still felt the same. There was lag to be sure. But the latest reflector technology really helped with that and they had learned to deal.
Mya had been cruising low over an empty plane on the far side of Malaikat. Really just staying close to home because she wanted to knock off early. She was exhausted. The plains had been surveyed a million times but something told her to get a closer look at a set of pipes sticking up out of the ground.
They were noticed on the salvager’s collective maps and unusable, undiggable low value abandoned metal. But Mya decided to see for herself.
The metal was indeed not worth the effort to pull out of the ground. It looked a bit like the remains of some kind of plumbing but there was no record of whatever structure had made use of them.
Mya had made a scan and shot it back to Zactus for Zay’s take.
“I’m seeing slight indications of subsurface metal. Maybe more pipe but it would have to be a lot more to account for this number. Scan more detail about 40 degrees south.”
Mya thought it was awfully close to rescan ut she had learned not to doubt Zay. As she was rescanning she got Leonard’s take.
Pipes don’t come out of nowhere and Zay’s data doesn’t jive well with an abandoned structure. There’s definitely something under there. My guess is a ship. I’m looking for matches. So is Zay.”
A ship? She shot back a message telling them they were crazy along with the rescan. She went back to tlook at the pipes while she waited. It was longer than just the lag time before she got a response. This time from Leonard.
“UH. Zya. That’s a ship. At least that’s what I think. Zay found a match to the pipe configuration. He has his own thoughts though.”
Zay’s message came right after. “The chance of it being a ship are low but it’s still higher than the chances of it being anything else we suppose including wall pipes. Those pipes don’t match any known building code. They’r pretty damn ancient but not older than the common piping codes which haven’t changed in centuries. It matches 14% of ancient long-term voyages.”
A follow up from Leonard came right on its heels. “What she’s too coy to tell you is it matches a colony ship. Specifically the generation ships that settled systems in the era Gallium was founded. Those pipes are ventral exhaust and effluent. They kicked out what little unwanted fumes and liquids the colony ships expelled. Which wasn’t much hence how thin they are. I’m not going to SAY it’s one of the Gallian Arks but only because Zay will punch me if I make such an unfounded assertion. So I Say dig.”
Mya doug.
