The search had been quite fruitful; nearly every cubic kilometer of the old Luk'naga golem was accounted for. Varying sizes of chunk drifted in a tesselating grid of parking orbits around the cold, methane-bitten surface of Niffleheim, the most neutral of all the space spanned by the Mul'ulanki federation.
Some chunks had been easily repurposed and were now fully functional members of the warship-cum-planetoid. Most, however, still maintained a defensive, preservationist stance, punishing salvage and recovery attempts while refusing to be reprogrammed. This tenacity was most curious to the commander, but the techies insisted that this stubborn nature was in keeping with the original design and would be a great asset were it properly turned to the federation's purposes.
Except that we can't even melt it down without losing men left and right... The commander shifted the can of pencils from one place on his desk to another, and started reading the reports, hoping for some clue that would let them reuse the recovered components.
He didn't notice the pencils start to rattle, but he did notice when the deck lurched about a foot to his right. That felt like a hyperjump, but the magnitude could only imply a full attack fleet or--that--
He stared out his office's full-wall porthole, barely comprehending. A small planetoid was hovering at the lunar L1 point. The markings were right, and the geometry fit what intel the federation had bothered to collect: this was the Nar'ara golem. Something was missing though...no support vessels? Not even a squadron of fighters on patrol? What was going on?
He absently fingered his watch to answer the chirping that had started just as the lurch had. "Sir, you've probably seen it, but we need you down in Control pronto. The golem is hailing us, and I think this one's above our combined pay grades..."
The
Interfederation Astrophysical Year was conceived as a method for fostering goodwill among the polities of Cluster 6. It involved a wide range of scientific explorations and experiments that would not only push the limits of current physics, but would provide vast quantities of data that would illuminate ill-explored facets of everyday navigation. Probes into Oort cloud ionization, Phil's Phenomenon (a queer error in hyperjump projections), and numerous other oddities were scheduled, with each federation vowing to share any and all data acquired for the benefit of all. It ended up occupying the better part of a decade.
For reasons yet to be understood, the Nar'ara had only deigned to volunteer their golem to the effort.
It was on an assignment from the Secretary General of the IAY that the golem had shown up to recruit the Luk'naga to perform some experiments regarding the effects of light on gravity. (The effects of gravity on light were already understood, you see.)
Nobody tells us anything, the commander thought crossly. He had just gotten off the comm with the President herself, who authorized the release, complete with nuclear arming codes. Wow. I guess we'll just babysit this wreckage until it gets back...
Now, this is curious. My administrators have not bothered to gather intel about the foreign federation, yet here I am cooperating with its golem. I have a question or two that ought to be cleared up...
The commander stood behind the lead engineer's chair, leaving over to make out the figures on the display.
"It just stopped snapping back, like that?"
"Yes sir. We were only testing reprogramming channel one, which is what this screen shows." The civilian pressed a few keys and the patterns on the screen shifted subtly. "Shown here is channel two," again, another yet less subtle change, "and here is channel one on the first find. Since it hasn't snapped we've successfully repurposed all sixteen channels of the prime evaluator drive. We don't know the status of the Deep Sigma Phi, but at least one channel has not snapped in three other wreckage fragments. We're working as fast as we can to try other modules, and I think we'll be ready when it returns." The techneer was clearly proud of his team's achievements in the past twenty-four hours.
"You've done good work here. Get some rest; I'll be by at 1000 tomorrow to follow up." The commander was pleased as well; his long-sought dream of full recovery of the golem's might and glory for the Mul'ulanki federation was in reach...assuming nothing else went wrong.
