While most of the drone team explored the bridge, four of the smaller drones broke off to bring the frozen remains of the bridge crew back for examination and a proper burial. They might have been dead for longer than Kepler Terminus had recorded history, but Max still felt a connection to these gallant soldiers, and had no intentions of letting them linger in forgotten space forever.
The team on the bridge wasted no time patching into the power supply, feeding the ship's known voltage and frequency to the consoles in an attempt to bring them online. With a bit of luck, there would still be the final message from the Captain saved on one of them, as was standard practice in Max's memory.
The Captain was, by law, the last to leave a dying ship, so they had adopted the custom of leaving themselves a gallant memorial detailing their last moments, to be replayed by whoever should find the wreckage.
It helped determine the course of events, and could also be replayed for their families at home, showing them in the best possible light, as heroes who had done their all to protect those under their care.
One console after another, they powered them up, slowly bringing the whole bridge online, while using the lowest setting on their lasers to heat the surfaces of the bridge enough that the thermal sensors would allow the screens to activate.
The airless void would keep the heat in them for a while, as it could only transfer through to the rest of the ship, allowing them enough time to get the whole bridge online at once.
What they found was more than just a message. Someone had saved the whole shutdown procedure to their desktop. Presumably it was a junior officer, unaware of the security breach that allowing whoever came after you to see how the ship had been decommissioned presented, but it was a lifesaver for Max.
Following the process in reverse, he managed to get the emergency battery backup back online in the bridge, though it was completely drained. Connecting it allowed power to flow through the whole bridge and downward to the other control stations in the area.
As the drones worked to charge the emergency batteries, the Android checked through the consoles to see what else they could find. As expected, there was a message from the Captain, recorded as the ship was dying.
[To whomever might find our wreckage among the stars. Know that I have sent this ship on a final journey to deep space, denying her to our enemies hands. We have been sabotaged, our shields deactivated from within and the atmosphere purged with the blast doors jammed open.
The rest of the crew has already evacuated to the surface, on the slim hope that they can hold until reinforcements from the fleet arrive. I will remain here with my Command Staff to ensure that the enemy does not capture us before the Fusion Core goes critical.
May the Emperor's Light shine down upon our souls.]
Then a notification from the drones.
[Emergency batteries charged to minimum operational values. Charging continues apace, requesting permission to continue with the reactivation sequence.]
Max considered their message. There were countless airlocks to fix on the remainder of the vessel, but as long as they didn't try to reintroduce atmosphere, the rest of the startup process should be alright.
No, that wasn't right. The fusion core should have gone critical, but it never did, or they would have found scattered fragments of the vessel, not a moderately damaged world ship.
[Do not attempt to bring the main power supply back online. I will send a power pod to your location to provide the supply for the rest of the rebooting sequence.] Max decided.
They had a full schematic of the ship now, which Max forwarded to Nico and the others, so they didn't need to search and map the hallways anymore, only check off which airlocks were functional and which were not. That was still their priority. The more doors they got active, the better the chances that they could begin to pressurize areas of the ship and get them in working order while they repaired the rest.
But if the main power supply was booby trapped, or frozen in the last instants of a detonation countdown, they needed to know and stabilize it as soon as possible. Until that was done, they were essentially sitting on a massive thermonuclear bomb, a miniature star in the making.
They were likely to need a fair bit of equipment to get through whatever blockades and barriers had been placed to protect the fusion plant, so max tasked an entire wing of Corvette Class Mecha, along with a drone team of fifty smaller and one large crab drone to the job, with instructions to find the easiest route to the power core and report back when they reached their destination.
There had to be a reason that the ship didn't detonate. It could be a leftover traitor, or even just one engineer that didn't want to die in a fiery explosion or held out hope that they would be rescued by the fleet.
If he didn't have access to navigation, he likely wouldn't have realized that the ship had been sent to deep space, far away from the conflict zone, to breathe its last. Nobody would have found it even if they had looked.
"Did you send the Mecha out? Where are they going?" One of the team members called out from the other room, where the Cats were playing.
"They're headed for the power core of the ship to see what happened over there. The Captain had intended to scuttle the vessel, but it never happened. I want to make sure that it doesn't suddenly blow up on us when we try to get the ship back online." Max replied.
"Oh, yeah, that's pretty important. Even with the shields up, being inside an exploding World Ship doesn't sound fun." She agreed, then went back to playing with their furry morale improvers.
