After a solid week of work on the abandoned World Ship's power systems and intensive percussive maintenance on the manual actuation mechanisms for the blast doors, the entire marked zone around their cargo bay was now operational, and Nico was ready to start trying to bring it online while the drones and androids continued to search the rooms for relics and any hint of technology left behind by the former occupants of the ship.
According to the power route tracing that she had managed to do, as long as the whole zone was sealed off, she should be able to bring the power back online for this zone, and hopefully that would bring back some sort of functions beyond lights and doors.
There weren't many screens in the ship, and the chances that any of them would operate in a vacuum after being frozen for millennia were very slim. But even a single operational console would be enough to save them months in their work to bring more of the ship back online.
"How is the final check?" Max asked while the team prepared one last round of energy drinks before the big job started.
"Everything looks good. All we need to do is remotely activate the last three inline breakers that we had the Androids install as they were fixing the doors, and we will know if the power system in the zone is salvageable." Nico replied.
Once the snacks and drinks were readied in their spill proof antigravity cupholders with attached bowl, an Innu invention, they all crossed their fingers for luck and ran the script to bring all the doors and lights online from their location.
"We have action. Not quite perfect, we have a few jammed or damaged door mechanisms that won't cycle. I will get the androids on that right away. They're closed for now, we just need to convince the system that they are." Nico narrated.
One after another, the doors cycled, and the lights in the hallways and rooms came online, powered by the link from the Cutter. Then a few of the secondary systems began to come online.
The first to come up was the emergency alert system, which activated flashing red lights in the corridors to inform occupants of the atmospheric imbalance and emergency system.
"Well, that's a bit annoying. But now that it's online, we might get access to something, even if it is just the programming for the emergency alert system." One of the researchers laughed.
Then another system came online. The kitchen tools began to power up.
[Alert, scheduler offline. All preset timers are suspended. Please contact maintenance.] The kitchens in the zone all announced in unison. Any sound they might have made was lost to the airless void, but the screens that were working flashed the announcement, while the signal was transmitted back down the data line that the crew had tapped into.
"You heard them, please contact maintenance. Do we have any sign of where the scheduler might be, or a connection from the kitchen hardware to somewhere without power?" Max asked.
"I think I've found it. I can't tell if it's just offline or if it leads somewhere outside the zone, though. We will need to have the drones manually trace it." Nico confirmed.
Over the course of the day, the androids slowly brought all the doors online, and just before dinner, the flashing red lights in the hallways suddenly turned green.
[Zone secured.] A lighted panel on the floor beneath the exit door to the cargo bay announced.
With that announcement, the state of Nico's investigation changed instantly. The connection from the kitchens was reestablished, and the scheduler was found, though it was still offline and couldn't be powered through the data link.
At the same time, the information screens all over the zone, which had looked like plain portions of wall until that moment, lit up with basic information, declaring in an ancient language that there was still no atmosphere in the sealed area, but that it was otherwise sealed.
"That's it, ladies and Max. We have one zone sealed and functional. Now, we can start moving on to the next zone. From what my scans have shown, the World Ship is fairly conventional in construction, with an organized spherical grid layout, so the core functions should actually be at the core. If we work our way inward, we should reach the ship's main operations areas in the most efficient manner.
The exterior scans have revealed the location of the bridge as well, and it is only a few zones above us, which makes it worth exploring in that direction as well. The bridge might contain overrides that will allow us to bring more of the ship back online as soon as we have repaired whatever damage was done to the main power systems." Nico declared.
The team gathered at the coffee pot to confer about their plan of action, while Max sent the androids around to see if any of the machinery in the zone had spontaneously begun to operate. There was no telling if something might have continued where it left off when the ship was disabled.
Not that there was much left. Even before the crew had been deployed, this had been a fairly spartan military vessel, and now, after the remaining occupants had grabbed everything they could carry and fled, only the most solidly fixed devices remained.
But what he did find was that now the vertical storage lockers everywhere but in the dorm areas were unlocked. All the stored exercise equipment, spare gear and uniforms were available for inspection by the drones, giving them another influx of data about the people who used to live here.
It was a fascinating discovery. Mostly because of the similarity to Kepler training routines. The inside of the lockers had regulation workout patterns, military physical training exercises and even hydration requirements written inside of them for the Commanders to have their troops follow. Nothing was left to chance, it was all clearly detailed inside the equipment storage lockers.
The physical standards information alone was incredibly valuable to their study of the ancient humans. But with the included nutrition and hydration information, it gave them an almost complete view of the species' daily requirements.
