Scavenger hunt

OOC – I don’t know where this idea that Jay destroys shuttles came from! That was Dean!

“Here” Jay said handing Jamie a data pad. “Is a manifest of all our support craft…about a third won’t fly again – you can do whatever you like with those, some were offline even before the Hymenoptera attack and we’d just never gotten round to fixing them so you may find fully-fuctioning life-support you can siphon.”
Jamie nodded glancing at the pad.
“These?”
“That’s the bulk of our ships. Repairable with a little time and effort – but mostly surplus. Again take what you need – but if you can salvage some spare parts for the others then do so..
The rest are intact. But I don’t even need all of those running…I’ve set aside what I think we’ll need – a few midgets and starbugs, a few Space Eagles - they’re off limits – save for the Life Support so long as you can get them running again later. What’s left is yours.”
“What’s this ship? I’ve never seen it before.”
“The Inbound Raven. Heavy bomber Dean had built. Seems unnecessary now…you can break her for salvage”
“Sure?”
“Yeah…we won’t need her again. I’ll be off ship for a day or two – tops. Let me know how the repairs are going when I get back..”
With that Jay climbed into the cockpit of a Starbug, and headed out of the hangar bay.
He checked in with Eve and sent her off to the coordinate’s he’d picked out for her, then set a course for his own. He’d settled on an asteroid belt he’d spotted when they returned from the planet below. They were often a haven for salvage. Jay hoped this one would be the same. The asteroids themselves however were often made up of elements that played havoc with scanners – so it was often hard to tell just what treasures might be hidden within the field until you stumbled upon it deep inside.
He reached the belt after 6 hours, and took the Starbug deeper and deeper inside the field. Scanning the rocks and whatever he happened to find in case anything interesting turned up.
“…empty surface-to-orbit boosters…no use…a burned out navigation console…nu-uh…an old rusted Ford Capri…how the smeg did that get out here?...hello….now THIS is interesting…”
Jay set a course for what he’d spotted. As he got nearer the Starbugs spotlights lit up the hulking mass. It was a ship. An entire, powered down ship. A Space Corp at that. The lights glinted off the hulls surface. SCV Sovereign. Jay guessed from the serial number it was from his own era, give or take a few years either way.
He found a docking port, and locked onto the side of the ship.

Life support was offline, so Jay pulled on his EV suit before moving through the docking tunnel and prising open the airlock doors to the Sovereign. Power was offline and had been for centuries. Jay made for the command deck where he could try to restore power and access the ships inventory.
It didn’t take long, given the airlock was situated only a few decks down, and before long Jay was linking into the ships command terminal with his handheld, setting up a kind of universal ‘jump start’ the get the drifting ship back on reserve power.
The screen scrolled with data, Jay tapping a few icons here and there and after a minute or so, the red-tinged emergency lighting flicked on and the tell-tale hiss of life oxygen recyclers kicking back into life was heard. He didn’t remove his helmet right away, it’d take a few minutes yet until the air was breathable but it was a start.
He booted up the Operations console and started flicking through the ship information and inventory screens.
The ship was launched about mid-way through the Blue Dwarfs mission – 5 years or so before the accident, but had been in service a good 20 years after that it seemed. There were file’s about the Hymenoptera, The Aeron and Eniram, Mollopods. Even the Blue Dwarf herself, and how she’d disappeared with all hands, not to mention all the usual Space Corp Personnel records,
Jay was shook the temptation to look up Katrinas file for now, to see if there was any information on what she did after he dropped her off back on earth, or about Max, deciding this was something for later.
Reading through some files it seemed the entire crew evacuated after a radiation leak killed a few engineers. Being a Space Corp vessel, rather than a privately owned “every expense spared” mining ship like Blue Dwarf it had sufficient failsafes to contain the leak before it spread. The self repair systems fixing the almost perfect reactor core, but for some reason the crew had never returned and it was left to drift before it must have arrived in the asteroid field, where it was snared in the belts gravity.
It was then that Jay heard a noise just around the corridor.
He dashed over to the security monitor and checked the CCTV feeds.
There was a ship in one of the hangar bays that clearly wasn’t space corp. Jay also spotted 20? Maybe 30 people who’s faces were obscured roaming the ship, tearing out equipment and breaking into food supplies.
“Take as much as you can carry! But kill anyone you happen to find!” said a voice, clearly just outside the command centre.
“Smeg…” Jay muttered. “Theres no way I can fight this many of them…”
Keeping low, he left the command centre and reboarded the Starbug – setting a course back to the Dwarf.

***

Hours later
“I’m telling you guys…if we can tow it back here, it’s a goldmine. But we need to do it fast, and before the scavengers tear it apart.”
“How many are there?” Cass asked.
“At least 30. It’ll be a challenge no doubt. Normally, I’d say they were welcome to it – they DID find it first…but we’re in no state to let this find slip through our fingers. Besides…who’s to say they won’t come to try and break the ‘Dwarf for salvage after?”
“We can’t spare more than a couple of people though Jay!” Jade spoke up “Certainly not enough to mount an assault…we need people fixing life support, the core, the science labs!”
“No I realise that…but I was thinking, maybe now is a good time to try to come up with an…agreement…with the Huzards. It’s in their interest as much as ours to get the ship up and running, as is it to defend it against outside threats…we don’t have to make peace to look after our mutual interests…”
“I don’t know…” Cass said “They’ve been pretty hostile…”
“Worth a shot though right?”
<Tag – people, we’ve a few hours to negotiate with the Huzards, stock up and get back to the derelict to fight the scavengers and tow it back to BD!

Course, Eve isn’t back yet- but when she is it’ll become clear that what she’s brought back isn’t that useful after all so that we can have a little fun finding something that IS!>