The Darmstadt drifted slowly through Omicron Beta, engines set to idle and to any casual observer -as if there were any out here- the ship was completely inactive. The lights were on, but no one was home; mining lasers idle, drives offline, coms and scanners silent. Of course, things are rarely as they appear: the Darmstadt was indeed very active on the inside.
In the field of xeno biology, most of the researchers dream of doing research on proper aliens, like the nomads. Ralph Weiss was no different in wanting this, but he was a bit more practical than some of his peers. Researching nomads usually involve big guns and heavy shielding, neither of which he could really afford at the time. And so, in order to earn enough money to get his hands on the ship he needed, dr Weiss had chosen the less popular application of xeno biology as his specialty: alien micro organisms - space germs.
Dr Weiss sat on the bridge in a comfortable leather seat, with his assistant Walther Dietrich. There were several computer displays up here on the bridge that had nothing to do with operating the ship. Instead they were displaying status readouts of some very complicated machinery. Neither the doctor nor the assistant bothered to look at them. Dietrich picked up a small metal piece shaped like a horse from the table and moved it a few inches. "Check, herr Doktor."
The alien organisms that can be found in the far reaches of the sigma and omicron systems have wide spread applications, though the main one is terraforming: gather the organisms, haul them to a planet quickly before they die, and release them. Once released on a planet, the alien organisms will not reproduce, but for the remainder of their short life span, they will eat just about anything in their path and the waste products are terraforming gases. As the bacteria die off pretty fast, there's always need for more - and this is what Weiss had specialised in.
Radiation from the nebula bombarded the Darmstadt mercilessly. The electro-magnetic radiation shielding was only active around the bridge and the engines; the cargo hold was unprotected. The radiation impacted the armor plates, eating away at them, and they were becoming increasingly brittle. The thick rheinland armor was about as useful to ward off weapons as a brick wall now, but it'd all be replaced soon enough. Approximately eight percent of the radiation penetrated straight through the armor and continued into the cargo hold. As if by coincidence, eight percent is how much of the radiation that remains after it's passed through three inches of the local asteroids, and three inches beneath the scorched asteroid surfaces is where some very dull alien organisms live out their miserable little lives.
Deep Space Research Vessel Darmstadt was an oddity. She had begun as a regular rheinland transport ship, but once Weiss hed gotten his hands on her, the insides had pretty much been ripped out all the way down to the bulkheads, and then filled back up with equipment. In order to do the necessary research, the ship contained a genetics lab, and a small cryo-storage to store specimens - nothing unusual there. The rest of the ship though, was very unusual: About eighty percent of the volume was filled with high-pressure tanks, pipes, filters and compressors. It looked much like an oil refinery to the uninitiated.
Things stirred inside the Darmstadt's pressure tanks. Mostly, this was just the result of mechanical ventilation, filtering out waste, and filling up on fresh gases from the nebula. There were other things moving though: single cell organisms -known aboard the Darmstadt as strain "Omicron Beta 102-b"- swam about in the tanks, gorging on the thick condensed nebula gases inside, multiplying quickly in the modest radiation levels.
The Darmstadt could do the one thing that no one else could manage, at least not in a cost efficient manner: she could breed the alien organisms. Dr Ralph Weiss had early on realised that there was an endless number of different strands of alien organisms: some short lived, others long, some docile and some aggressive. He realised that if he could only find a way to breed them, he could deliver the right bacteria to the right planet - and be payed a king's ransom for each delivery. Recreating the natural habitat of the organisms is very costly: it requires zero-g, radiation, and some very rare elements. The Darmstadt was designed to exploit a short-cut: instead of recreating the alien habitat, you simply fly the ship into the nearest nebula. All you need to do is suck the thin nebula into the pressure tanks, filter out the unwanted elements, and turn off the ship's radiation shielding.
"Beginner's luck." the doctor said sourly, got to his feet and turned his eyes to the computer readouts. "The tanks are almost full. I'll start on the checklists, and prepare for departure. Get down to the lab, and help the guys sift through the new strains we've found." He left the readouts behind, and got into the pilot's seat to begin the checklists. "Jawohl herr doktor!" Dietrich bowed politely with a million dollar "I-win-grin" on his face and headed into the genetics lab.
Cryo-storage is a costly and complicated affair, and only a crazy person would turn an entire ship into a cryo-storage. It's better to store the organisms in a plain tank and let some of them die, than it is to spend the money on the worlds largest cryo-freezer. The Darmstadt was no different from other ships on this point: once the tanks were full, and the ship started to move to the destination - it was a race against time.
Dietrich looked over the computer readouts that concerned a new strand of bacteria, picked up just a few hours ago with the tractor beam, after a small rock had been annihilated by the mining lasers. "It's a bit short lived, but it has some interesting qualities. They might be interested on California Minor... yeah, let's store it." He nodded to himself and slipped a small specimen vial into the recepticle of the cryo storage. "Omicron Beta 804-f. Store." he said to the computer. Less than ten seconds later, the vial had been flash-frozen with liquid nitrogen, and stored alongside another eight thousand identical-looking vials.
Ralph Weiss was very troubled. Had he done the right thing? His meal ticket was gone, and the future uncertain. Just about all the money had been spent already. A life of luxury, gone. Still... the science came first; it was more important than money, and luxuries ...wasn't it? He continued to think, staring into the bulkhead of the shuttle's cabin.
The deal had been struck with Planetform. The Darmstadt had been sold, and the research licensed. It was all gone, but the reward had been irrestistable: more money than most researchers can even dream of, and there was talk of a professor's title from Cambridge after he published his research on alien organisms and the practical applications of it.
The deal had been sealed a long time ago, electronically, but these were junkers: they haggled and tried every angle to suck another few credits out of him. It took three hours to get them to agree to the agreed upon agreement - more or less. "Then we have an accord mr Weiss" the ship dealer said beaming a hundred million credit smile, literally, at him. "Doktor", Weiss said absentmindedly, still gravely concerned, and began the process of retinal scans and DNA registrations. A few hours later, the registrations had spread to every database throughout Sirius via the gate system. It was official: there was a new DSRV Darmstadt.
Weiss waited anxiously on the station's observation deck, while his new ship was being flown to the staion. His assistant and crew were with him; the scientists wouldn't be brough onboard for at least another month. The ship needed rebuilding and repairs, and lots of it. And then just like that, the ship left the planet's shadow and became clearly visible from the station, as if it had been uncloaked. "Gott im himmel..." The rest of the crew fell into a chorus of murmurs, reflecting his words.
The TTR-1130 "Pilgrim", or "slave liner" as it was digracefully referred to these days, was a sight to behold: an ancient behemoth of days gone by. In sheer size it rivalled a navy battlecruiser. Weiss tried to decide if what he had done was a stroke of genius, or sheer madness. His smile was reflecting the same thing, making him look dileriously happy as well as certifiably insane.
"Let's... let's... get to the docking bay..." Weiss' voice barely carried, even in the deadly silence of the observation deck. The crew started to move out. There was no talking; everyone had been briefed in explicit detail about the ship and the first voyage weeks ago. The excitement and tension was apparent, despite the modest purpose of the first voyage: take the ship to Oder shipyards, to spend the rest of the money -close to a hundred million credits- on the very best in Rheinland engineering.
Weiss could swear he was going bald, from tearing his own hair. This damned fools errand! What had he been thinking, giving up riches beyond his dreams to follow his... dream.
The Darmstadt had been performing flawlessly, ever since the ship left Oder Shipyards. It was a beast of a ship, and he had fallen quite in love with it. The crew was performing to the highest standard, and the science team... well they hadn't had anything at all to do, but at least they hadn't complained or gotten in the way.
That was the core of the problem: there was just no research to do. Finding nomads, monsters from drunken tales and blurred images was proving extremely difficult. So far, they had found absolutely nothing. Nothing! All they had to show were a few jumphole locations and some stories from drunken zoners and pirates. This wasn't even the main problem.
Who would have thought the untamed wilds were so... domesticated? At every turn there were ships, and they all claimed some kind of ownership to just about every last rock in the edge worlds. They didn't just claim ownership - they had forced him out. Colonials, the Order, pirate groups... the story was the same: get out, or eat plasma blasts. The frustration was killing him. Followed, accused, warned, threatened, fired upon... he'd experienced everything - except anything remotely alien.
The thing that bothered him the most was the way every single group claimed to be acting in his best interest, and serving as the grandiose guardians of humanity. The Order... oh they just took the cake. Pirates, the lot of them, in Weiss' opinion. Claiming they encounter nomads on a daily basis, fighting a deadly fight to save humanity, knowing the reasons behind the nomad aggression - oh they were only too eager to tell what a grand job they were doing, but they never showed any proof. They refused to let him do his research, every question met with "classified" responses. They couldn't even produce a picture of a nomad. He was beginning to think the sceptics in Cambridge were right: there are no nomads - it's all a massive hoax to scare people off, keep them away from secret installations belonging to God knows who.
They kept asking for cooperation, but they never asked him to cooperate in research, only in doing as he was told - which usually ended up with "get out". It was always such a hostile atmosphere; Weiss clearly wasn't welcome. Weiss thought about the Order the way he thought about everything - with a scientific approach: gather the evidence, all of it - and formulate a theory. Gather more evidence, to prove and disprove the theory. Well, so far, the theory was that the Order was a militant group with unknown interestes, hostile to outsiders and unwilling to share any data abaout anything. Damn them.
"For my own safety, my arse." he grumbled to himself. He'd rather die seeing the truth, than live in the dark. It wasn't greed, not for fame, not for money... It was for himself, for the pure knowledge. Peace of mind. He had to know the truth, even if he died searching for it. They couldn't understand that, barely anyone could; only the most extreme scientists shared that view. Well... it seemed the Order was there to stay, and had the power to keep him in the dark. It was time to strike a deal with the devil.
Weiss sat down and started to compose a message to the Order.
